Volume 54, Issue 1 (April 2023)

Table of Contents
Arkansas Review: A Journal of Delta Studies 
 (formerly Kansas Quarterly) 
 Volume 54, Number 1 Spring/April 2023 
 
 
 “A Tainted House of Prayer”: Artist V. L. Cox on White Supremacy, Southern Culture, and Her Persisting Love of the Delta 3 
 

by Guy Lancaster 
 
 
 excavation (poetry) 15 
 

by laura vogt 
 
 
 Car Lot Cowboy (fiction) 16 
 

by Addison Griffis 
 
 
 Even Small Things (poetry) 22 
 

by Mary Ann Larkin 
 
 
 We Lost Bill Harrison (memoir) 23 
 

by M J Melneck 
 
 
 Roads and Bridges (fiction) 25 
 

by Robin Kozak 
 
 
 A Cordial Letter to Kaylee Muthart (poetry) 34 
 

by John Wall Barger 
 
 
 Refuge (fiction) 36 
 

by Kenneth Gulotta 
 
 
 Summer (poetry) 42 
 

by Leslie Hodge 
 
 
 The Early History of Streetcar Transportation in Little Rock, Arkansas, 1870–1948 44 
 

by Zuzana Chovanec and Timothy S. Dodson 
 
 
 Abecedarian for a Hometown Tornado (poetry) 59 
 

by Andrew Alexander Mobbs 
 
 
 For Whom the Writing Goes (creative non-fiction) 60 
 

by Damon Guinn 
 
 
 Arkansas Review 54.1 (April 2023) 
 1 
 
 
 
 
 
 Delta Sources and Resources 67 
 

The Hemingway-Pfeiffer Summer Writer’s Retreat 

Hemingway-Pfeiffer Museum and Educational Center 

Piggott, Arkansas 

by Marcus Charles Tribbett 
 
 
 Reviews 68 
 

Pierce and White Jr., eds., Race, Labor, and Violence in the Delta: Essays to Mark the Centennial 

of the Elaine Massacre, reviewed by Michael K. Rosenow 

Imahara and Meltzer, eds., Jerome and Rohwer: Memories of Japanese American Internment in 

World War II Arkansas, reviewed by Ali Welky 

Kirk, Winthrop Rockefeller: From New Yorker to Arkansawyer, 1912-1956, reviewed by Melanie K. Welch 

Wegmann, An American Color: Race and Identity in New Orleans and the Atlantic World,
reviewed by Travis C. Perusich 

Horowitz, Katrina: A History, 1915-2015, reviewed by Jon Carvell 

Erikson and Peek, The Continuing Storm: Learning from Katrina, reviewed by Stan Weeber 
 
 
 Contributors 79 
 
 
 
 Courtesy of C. Andrew Buchner. 
 Editor’s note: In the image to the left, modern
day construction workers uncover intact rails on
East 3rd Street, Little Rock, remnants of the
city’s streetcar railway system, permanently shut-
tered about seventy-five years ago in 1948. See
the fascinating article in this issue, pages 44-58,
on this unique part of the city’s heritage. 
 
 
 Arkansas Review 54.1 (April 2023) 
 2 
 
 
 
 
 Contributors 
 John Wall Barger’s poems and critical writing have ap-
peared in American Poetry Review, Kenyon Review On-
line, Missouri Review, Poetry Ireland Review, and Best of
the Best Canadian Poetry. His sixth book, Smog Mother
(Palimpsest Press), came out in fall 2022. He’s a con-
tract editor for Frontenac House, and teaches Creative
Writing at The University of the Arts in Philadelphia.
 Jon Carvell is Clinical Assistant Professor of Disaster
Preparedness & Emergency Management at Arkansas
State University and served as the university’s emer-
gency manager during the Covid-19 pandemic. He
holds a BA in English and an MPA from Arkansas
State University and got his start in emergency man-
agement by volunteering for recovery efforts during
the aftermath of various natural disasters in Northeast
Arkansas. 
 Zuzana Chovanec, PhD, RPA works as an archaeolo-
gist with the US Army Corps of Engineers and is af-
filiated with the Department of Anthropology at the
State University of New York at Albany as a Volunteer
Research Associate. Her areas of interest include his-
toric preservation, cultural resource management,
human-environment relationships, and the archaeol-
ogy of Cyprus and North America. 
 Timothy S. Dodson MA, RPA is currently the Regu-
latory Archaeologist for the Nashville and Mobile Dis-
tricts of the US Army Corps of Engineers. He has
published several peer reviewed articles focusing on
archaeology and baseball. 
 Addison Griffis is a Mississippi writer and finance
manager at a car dealership. His work is found in
Appalachian Review and Roanoke Review. Addison is
currently querying literary Western and magical
Southern manuscripts for representation. Instagram
is @addisongriffis 
 Damon Guinn is a writer and nonprofit professional
who grew up in Jonesboro, Arkansas. He spent years
writing for a humanitarian organization, traveling to
remote communities around the world to gather and
share stories about families battling extreme poverty.
He now resides in Minneapolis, Minnesota, within
eyeshot of George Floyd Square, where he works with
Twin Cities Habitat for Humanity to advance racial
equity in housing. Samples of his work are available
at damonguinn.com. 
 Kenneth Gulotta writes fiction and poetry. He has an
MA in creative writing from the University of Texas
at Austin and a PhD in English from Tulane Univer-
sity. A technical writer by trade, he spends his days
solving puzzles that involve communication, design,
and coding. Kenneth was born and raised in south
Louisiana, but he has also lived in Austin, TX, Wash-
ington, DC, and Baltimore, MD. He now lives in New
Orleans with his wife and stepson. 
 Leslie Hodge has poems published or forthcoming in
journals including Pigeon Pages, South Florida Poetry
Journal, Spank the Carp (where she was featured in The
Mind of the Poet), and The Main Street Rag. Leslie lives
in San Diego and has deep family roots in central
Missouri. 
 Robin Kozak’s writing has appeared most recently in
Arkansas Review, Drunk Monkeys, Pleiades, The Rappa-
hannock Review, and Sequestrum. An authority on
antique and estate jewelry, she currently is at work on
her second novel. 
 Guy Lancaster serves as the editor of the online Ency-
clopedia of Arkansas, a project of the Central Arkansas
Library System, and is the author, co-author, or editor
of several books on race and violence, including Amer-
ican Atrocity: The Types of Violence in Lynching (U of Ar-
kansas P, 2021) and The Murder of Oscar Chitwood in
Hot Springs, Arkansas (co-authored with Christopher
Thrasher and forthcoming from The History Press). 
 Mary Ann Larkin is the author of That Deep and Steady 
 
 
 Arkansas Review 54.3 (December 2023) 
 79 
 
 
 Hum and six chapbooks of poetry. Her work has ap-
peared in many journals and in more than twenty an-
thologies. She was a co-founder of The Big Mama
Poetry Troupe, a group of five feminist poets based in
Cleveland. Larkin has taught writing at a number of
colleges, most recently at Howard University, and
written for NPR, NIH, Foundation News and others.
She has enjoyed residencies at both Yaddo and the
Jentel Foundation in Wyoming. With Patric Pepper
she co-founded Pond Road Press, which published
Tough Heaven: Poems of Pittsburgh by Jack Gilbert. Born
in Pittsburgh, PA, she lives in North Truro, MA.
 M J Melneck earned the MFA degree from the Uni-
versity of Arkansas in May 1980. His catalog includes
the novel Old Music and many features, reviews, film
scripts and short stories. He and his wife Pat and their
spoiled rotten dog Max live in western Colorado
where he writes about and photographs the nearby
desert and mountains. 
 Andrew Alexander Mobbs (he/him/his), a native
Arkansan, is the author of the chapbook, Strangers and
Pilgrims (Six Gallery Press, 2013). A Pushcart Prize no-
minee, his poems have appeared in Crab Creek Review,
Frontier Poetry, New Delta Review, Ghost Ocean Maga-
zine, and elsewhere. He co-founded the online lit mag
Nude Bruce Review and will soon earn his MFA at Ore-
gon State University. 
 Travis C. Perusich: Travis is a PhD candidate at the
University of Arkansas, studying African American
soldiers in the American Revolution. He earned his
Bachelor’s degree at the University of the Ozarks and
his Master’s degree at the University of Central Ar-
kansas. He is a former member of the United States
Air Force and a former public school teacher. 
 Michael K. Rosenow is Associate Professor of History
at the University of Central Arkansas and is the au-
thor of Death and Dying in the Working Class, 1865-1920
and articles about labor and working-class history. 
 Marcus Charles Tribbett is General Editor of Arkansas
Review: A Journal of Delta Studies and Associate Profes-
sor of English at Arkansas State University, where he
also teaches for the interdisciplinary Heritage Studies
doctoral program. He has published scholarly work
on blues performers, on a nineteenth-century slave
narrative, and most recently on contemporary novels
by Jessmyn Ward and Tupelo Hassman. 
 Stan Weeber is Professor of Sociology at McNeese
State University. He has written several papers about
natural disasters, and wrote Post-Rita Reflections (2009),
a professorial memoir of the Katrina-Rita era. 
 Melanie K. Welch was born in Little Rock in 1976 and
graduated from the University of Central Arkansas in
1999, receiving a baccalaureate degree in history. In
1999, she received the Lucille Westbrook Local His-
tory Award from the Arkansas Historical Association.
In 2009, she earned a PhD in modern American his-
tory from Auburn University. An independent histo-
rian, her work has appeared in Arkansas Review, the
Arkansas Historical Quarterly, and the Encyclopedia of
Arkansas History and Culture. 
 Ali Welky is Associate Editor of the online Encyclope-
dia of Arkansas, a project of the Central Arkansas Li-
brary System, as well as a freelance editor for books
and magazines, including the Oxford American. She
holds a BA in English from Truman State University
in Kirksville, MO, and an MA in English from the
University of Central Arkansas in Conway. She co-
edited the Encyclopedia of Arkansas Music (Butler
Center Books, 2013) and edited A Captive Audience:
Voices of Japanese American Youth in World War II Arkan-
sas (Butler Center Books, 2015). She lives in Conway
with her husband and two children. 
 Laura Vogt studied literature and history in undergrad
and grad school, focusing on Shakespeare, folk tales,
and the History of Mentalities. She also attended the
University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop writing pro-
gram in Dublin, Ireland. Her poetry is published in
several journals, her prose has placed in a few contests,
and her novelette Blue Beyond the Sea is available as a
chapbook with Bottlecap Press. Her forthcoming
debut novel In the Great Quiet is a historical fiction
and fabulism blend based on her ancestor. 
 
 
 Arkansas Review 54.3 (December 2023) 
 80

Reviews
Race, Labor, and Violence in the Delta: Essays to Mark the Centennial of the Elaine Massacre. Editedby Michael Pierce and Calvin WhiteJr. (Fayetteville, Arkansas: Universityof Arkansas Press, 2022. Pp. ix + 248, acknowledgments, introduction,notes, contributors, index. $29.95, paperback) 
 In Black Reconstruction, scholar and activist
W.E.B. Du Bois argued that emancipation pro-
duced a dramatic reversal of fortunes for African
Americans: “The slave went free; stood for a brief
moment in the sun, then moved back again to-
ward slavery” (New York: Russell and Russell,
1935, p. 30). Du Bois’s idea of freedpeople being
pulled “back toward slavery”—the title of the pen-
ultimate chapter of his book—is more than a
haunting diagnosis of the failed possibility of Re-
construction. Rather, it provides a way to under-
stand much of Black history for the rest of the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Every time
Black Americans organized, countervailing forces
attempted to thwart their efforts at improvement.
Such was the case in Elaine, Arkansas, when in
1919 whites murdered hundreds of Black share-
croppers who had begun to unionize, thereby
temporarily crushing hope for Black freedom in
the Delta.
In 2019, scholars and community members
commemorated the centennial of the Elaine
Massacre, which resulted in Race, Labor, and Vio-
lence in the Delta. Nine essays make a convincing
case that labor relations,
 
techniques of oppression, and the incessant striving for better lives fundamentally shaped the Delta’s history. The first three essays examine aspects of labor and race relations from the 1870s to World War I, while the next three probe the interwar period with an emphasis on the 1920s. The final three essays address discrete topics that span the second half of the twentieth century. Some of the historians draw on previously
published research to produce new insights related to the Elaine Massacre. From his prior examinations of nineteenth-century labor
organizations in Arkansas, such as the Agricul-
tural Wheel and the Knights of Labor, Matthew
Hild finds patterns of interracial organizing and
violent white backlash demonstrated in both the
Cotton Pickers’ Strike of 1891 and the Elaine
Massacre. Jeannie Whayne taps her extensive
body of scholarship to situate the 1921 lynching
of Henry Lowery within the community net-
works of power rooted in the plantation econ-
omy of Mississippi County. Whayne interprets
Lowery’s murder as proof that whites had no tol-
erance for collective or individual acts that ques-
tioned their authority—whether that was
organizing a union in Elaine or requesting a
written statement of accounts from a planter as
Lowery did. Greta de Jong offers wisdom col-
lected from aspects of her three previous books
on struggles for social justice in the South, par- 
 
 
 
 Arkansas Review 54.1 (April 2023) 
 68 
 
 
 ticularly after 1965. She shows that old and new
forms of violence continued to impact Black lives
during the late twentieth century.
Other contributors offer new insights and
point toward future areas of research. Cherisse
Jones-Branch challenges readers to rethink white-
produced narratives of Black women’s criminal-
ity after World War I and instead interpret their
actions as reflecting desire for opportunity. Mi-
chael Pierce disputes the claim made by some
scholars that white landowners sought Mexican
braceros after World War II due to a labor short-
age. By studying the activism of Ethel Dawson,
Pierce contends that Lincoln County planters
hired seasonal workers to drive down wages and
incentivize Blacks to leave the county to preserve
white political power. John A. Kirk explores the
continuities of Black activism and the discontin-
uities of white responses during the twentieth
century. He suggests that the authority for poli-
cing the color line moved away from mob vio-
lence and toward state and local law enforcement
as demonstrated by Governor Winthrop Rocke-
feller’s mobilization of the National Guard to
prevent whites from attacking Lance Watson and
his fellow marchers in their 1969 walk against
fear.
A final group of authors consider nightrid-
ing and forced labor as unique forms of coercion.
Through careful research in Arkansas news-
papers, Guy Lancaster documents the pervasive-
ness of nightriding before and after the passage
of Act 112 (a 1909 law intended to outlaw the
practice). William Pruden III examines federal
prosecutors’ attempts to punish night riders, con-
cluding that the Supreme Court’s ruling in the
1906 Hodges case must be understood within the
broader historical retreat from using Reconstruc-
tion-era measures to protect Black rights. Michael
Vinson Williams investigates the forced labor
camps of levee workers after the 1927 flood and
how the National Association for the Advance-
ment of Colored People and the American Fed-
eration of Labor attempted to improve labor
conditions.
Considered as a whole, these essays remind
readers not only of the Elaine Massacre—one of
the most horrific acts of racial violence in United
States history—but also, crucially, of the intersec-
tions of race, labor, and violence in the Delta in
the decades before and after this devastating epi-
sode. The book serves as a helpful introduction
to the region’s rich labor history. It is also an in-
spiration for others to continue investigating the
events, organizations, and trends that either re-
ceive glancing treatment, such as the Southern
Tenant Farmers Union as mentioned in Michael
Honey’s epigraph, or did not appear in these
pages. The authors compellingly demonstrate the
focusing power of a centennial. Each essay ex-
amines strategies of oppression, and many au-
thors find an indomitable spirit of resistance that
not even the worst forms of violence could drive
out of the Delta.
 --Michael K. Rosenow 
 Jerome and Rohwer: Memories of Japanese American Internment in World War II Arkansas. Edited by Walter M. Imahara and David E. Meltzer. (Fayetteville, Arkansas: The University of Arkansas Press, 2022. Pp. xxii + 228, foreword, preface, acknowledgments, introduction, appendix, index. $29.95, hardcover) 
 
 
 Arkansas Review 54.1 (April 2023) 
 69 
 
 
 The memories captured in this book are cru-
cial ones to help us acknowledge and understand
what really happened during the time of Japanese
American incarceration during World War II.
Every person affected went through many of the
same things—being informed by authorities in
California after the bombing of Pearl Harbor
that they would be sent away, having to live in
temporary sites such as horse stalls at racetracks,
taking a train trip across
 
the country to get to
camps (including the
two in Arkansas), attempting to make a
home in tiny barracks—
but they each experienced it in their own
way. The accounts in
the book are full of details, big things and
small things remembered all these decades later. Taken together, they
reveal the personal struggles of all the people af-
fected—from realizing that, despite the fact that
they had been told they were being held mostly
to protect them from the surrounding populace,
the guards’ guns were pointed at them, not away
from them, to the daily humiliation of having to
bathe and use the toilet without privacy. Histori-
cal accounts can paint with a broad brush, but
seeing these finer brushstrokes has real value in
seeing the effects of conflicts and policies on real
people living their daily lives.
 Living in Arkansas myself and having done
my own delving into the history of the Rohwer
and Jerome camps, I appreciated the vivid de-
scriptions by these Californians. James Ichinaga’s
account of Jerome is as follows: “If I were ever in
charge of punishing a group of people, this is the
place I would send them. The environmental ele-
ments were very hostile. It was hot and humid in
the summer, freezing in winter. . . . I remember
seeing those odd creatures called flying squirrels,
bats, many species of birds, those wonderful in-
sects called fireflies, and hearing the noisy croak-
ing of the frogs at night. To this day I have never
seen mosquitoes as huge as those in Arkansas” (p. 38).
Captured also in the book are the diverse de-
tails of what happened to people and families
after they left the camps as the war was drawing
to a close. Some returned to their homes and
farms in California—although not without care-
ful forethought. As Fran Inouye Imahara said,
“My father wanted us to go to Japan to live after
our release and applied for Japanese citizenship.
Relatives advised us there would be nothing for
us there. They canceled our request and we re-
turned to Fresno in 1946. We were very fortunate
to have a place to return to since a dear family
friend, a policeman with the Fresno Police De-
partment, looked after our home” (p. 54). Many
were not so lucky and had nothing to return to;
they made other plans, such as the Imaharas’
move to New Orleans, where they developed a
thriving landscaping business (p. xviii).
A few accounts have details that astounded
me. Clover Johnson said, “While [his friend]
Harry [Nagata] was in the service in the Midwest
or on [the] East Coast, he encountered fellow sol-
diers who had never seen anyone of Japanese an-
cestry before. Someone in command decided it
would be hard for the men to fight an enemy
they’d never seen. Harry Nagata was ordered to
dress up in the uniform of a Japanese soldier and
parade in front of the troops so they could see
and hate ‘the face of the enemy.’ Needless to say,
that was a horrible thing to do to a loyal Ameri-
can soldier and it breaks my heart every time I
think about it” (p. 70). Another account, by Joh
Sekiguchi, recalled a Boy Scout jamboree that in-
cluded boys from Jerome and Rohwer as well as 
 
 
 Arkansas Review 54.1 (April 2023) 
 70 
 
 
 boys from nearby Arkansas City—noting the dif-
ferences in the boys’ food and supplies: “The
scouts from the two relocation camps . . . were
loaded into the back of supply trucks and rode
into town. . . . I remember one boy [from Arkan-
sas City] climbing in with the rest of us and I no-
ticed other boys from town in the other trucks.
It must have taken a lot of courage for them to
join a bunch of complete strangers—especially
strangers many folks considered to be ‘the
enemy.’ Some of the boys from the relocation
centers had brought their scout uniforms with
them when they relocated, but none of the Ar-
kansas City boys had uniforms” (p. 130). The Ar-
kansas City boys also ate from one big pot of
beans, while the camp boys had army-ration-style
food trucked in from the camps, including des-
sert. Finally, Tim Taira recalled learning years
after the fact the circumstances surrounding a
visit to Jerome by a group of Hawaiian soldiers,
who gave candy and cookies to the kids. He later
learned that this group had been from the 100th
Battalion, training at Camp Shelby, Mississippi,
as part of the 442nd, the much decorated Japa-
nese American regiment. As Taira said, “The
## Nisei [second-generation Japanese Americans]
from Hawaii had not been interned and were a
happy-go-lucky and gregarious bunch, quite dif-
ferent temperamentally from the mainland Nisei.
These differences were causing considerable fric-
tion during training, so their CO had an idea.
He sent busloads of the Hawaiians to Jerome. . .
. En route to Jerome the group was cheerful and
boisterous; during the return trip there was
stunned silence. They were shocked to see the
families of fellow trainees imprisoned behind
barbed wire. They understood the situation now,
and the friction between the two Nisei groups
stopped” (p. 148).
Acquiring and arranging all these accounts
was a huge task and one that was done carefully
and well. However, it is difficult to present a col-
lection of oral histories in a cohesive manner,
and that difficulty showed a bit in this book. The
accounts have many common elements that can
feel repetitive when reading cover to cover. The
accounts are also arranged in alphabetical order
by name, rather than by theme or location or
chronology, which can leave the reader a bit off
balance, encountering one new voice after
another without always having a sense of how
each story fits into the larger picture. Even the
very beginning of the book sets up this scattered
format, with a foreword written by three people,
a preface by one editor (but not the other), and
an introduction written by two people. Co-editor
Walter Imahara’s account is in alphabetical order
with the others, but I would have liked to have
seen his story at the beginning, framing the other
accounts and lending some cohesion.
Overall, the book is a valuable collection of
the voices of people who will soon be lost to
time—although their stories will remain—and it
will be a precious document in years to come to
people doing research on family members and
on the camps in Arkansas.
 --Ali Welky 
 Winthrop Rockefeller: From New Yorker to Arkansawyer, 1912-1956. By John A. Kirk. (Fayetteville, Arkansas: University of Arkansas Press, 2022. Pp. xi + 267, acknowledgments, notes, bibliography, index. $24.95, hardcover) 
 In 1953, Winthrop “Win” Rockefeller, a 
 
 
 Arkansas Review 54.1 (April 2023) 
 71 
 
 
 third-generation
 
member of one of
America’s wealthiest
and most powerful fam-
ilies, moved to Petit
Jean Mountain in Con-
way County. He built a
showplace Santa Ger-
trudis cattle-farming op-
eration, which he
named Winrock farms.
In 1991’s Agenda for Reform: Winthrop Rockefeller
as Governor of Arkansas, 1967-71, historian Cathy
Kunzinger Urwin analyzed his service as Arkan-
sas’s Republican governor from 1967 to 1971, but
his New York life has received little scholarly at-
tention. Until now. John A. Kirk, who is George
## Washington Donaghey Distinguished Professor
of History at the University of Arkansas at Little
Rock (UALR), examines his formative earlier life
experiences to develop a more complete and nu-
anced portrait of the man. Based upon the Win-
throp Rockefeller Collection, which is housed at
the UALR Center for Arkansas History and Cul-
ture, the Winthrop Rockefeller Papers at the
Rockefeller Archive Center (RAC), interviews
and other sources, Kirk argues convincingly that
his life in New York shaped his later career in
Arkansas.
Following a well-crafted introductory first
chapter, the author devotes Chapters Two
through Six to describing his childhood, educa-
tion, and earlier career in the oil industry. Born
on May 1, 1912 in Manhattan, Winthrop Rocke-
feller was educated at the Lincoln School, a prac-
tical learning-oriented institution, and the
Loomis School, which was a traditional, college
preparatory school. A poor student, he preferred
the kind of “hands-on” learning, such as the les-
sons in cattle-raising, he engaged in at Lincoln.
Notably, he and his brothers Nelson and David
received diagnoses of dyslexia much later in their
lives. Much to his family’s disappointment, Win-
throp’s poor academic performance resulted in
his resignation from Yale University in 1934.
Kirk refutes some Rockefeller family historians’
previous claims that an on-campus liaison led to
his dismissal from Yale.
To his family, his choice to enter the oil busi-
ness helped make up for his lack of academic suc-
cess. In 1934, he began learning each stage of the
business by starting work as a roustabout laborer
in Texas. He loved the experience—working in
the field, the adventure, and the people.
He inherited his family’s commitment to im-
proving race relations. During his time in Hous-
ton, Texas during the 1930s, he tried and failed
to interest white leaders in establishing a com-
munity health program for African Americans.
Through the experience he gained “valuable in-
sight into the difficulties in dealing with south-
ern race relations” (p. 80).
His oil career did not quite live up to his fam-
ily’s expectations. Returning from the oil fields
in 1937, he joined his father John D. Rockefeller
Jr. and his brothers in the family’s New York City
offices. In 1939, he began working in the foreign
trade department of Socony Vacuum, a deriva-
tive of his grandfather John D. Rockefeller Sr.’s
Standard Oil Company. As someone who dis-
liked working behind a desk, he struggled to find
his place in an office.
In Chapters Seven through Ten, Kirk details
Winthrop’s army career during World War II, in-
cluding his service in Guam, Leyte, and Oki-
nawa. He distinguished himself in the field of
battle, returning from the war a decorated com-
bat veteran. While in the army, he became
friends with Frank Newell. In the early 1950s,
Newell, an insurance broker from Little Rock,
showed him the property that became Winrock.
For this reviewer, who was less familiar with the
 
 
 Arkansas Review 54.1 (April 2023) 
 72 
 
 
 full extent of Winthrop’s military career, this sec-
tion was particularly informative.
The final two chapters cover his first mar-
riage to Barbara Paul “BoBo” Sears and his move
to Arkansas. At the time of their marriage in
1948, she was pregnant with his only son, Win-
throp Paul Rockefeller. Within eighteen months,
the couple separated and became involved in a
well-publicized, nasty, and drawn-out divorce,
much to the embarrassment of Winthrop and his
family. Their divorce was finalized in 1954.
As Kirk has shown, his life was very much
shaped by the “tension between seeking . . . to
fulfill the high demands of being a member of
the Rockefeller family . . . and . . . striving . . . to
become his own person” (p. 6). Moving to Arkan-
sas and building Winrock allowed him to con-
tribute to his family’s legacy—in his own way.
Kirk’s book is not hagiography. His subject
emerges as a socially conscious, civically engaged,
adventurous, courageous, and flawed individual.
More than fifty years later, his legacy lives on in
his adopted state. Thoroughly researched and en-
gagingly written, From New Yorker to Arkansawyer
should be essential reading for scholars of Arkan-
sas’s late twentieth century political history.
 --Melanie K. Welch 
 An American Color: Race and Identity in New Orleans and the Atlantic World. By Andrew N. Wegmann. (Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press, 2022. Pp. xvi + 238, acknowledgments, note on language, introduction, notes, bibliography, index. $29.95, paperback) 
 In the final chapter of his work, An American
Color: Race and Identity in New Orleans and the At-
lantic World, Andrew N. Wegmann references the
prevalent eighteenth- and nineteenth-century no-
tion that American society could not be shared
between white and non-white Americans. De-
spite this supposed incompatibility between the
white and black com-
 
munities, the New Or-
leans mixed-race Creole
people forged a path
and identity for them-
selves, embracing the
ambiguous line between
white and black, and in
turn defining and rede-
fining themselves as
uniquely Creole within
the changing American
landscape. These are the people Wegman brings
to the fore as he analyzes the origins and devel-
opment of mixed-race middle-class Creoles in
New Orleans—from their French origins in the
1730s through to their embrace of their Ameri-
can home in the 1860s. For Wegmann, these
Creoles underwent a process of Americanization
in which they carefully crafted their cultural iden-
tity over more than a century to promote eco-
nomic and social uplift, as well as lay claim to a
place uniquely theirs within New Orleans and
greater American society. They were proud, edu-
cated, ambitious middle-class people who con-
stantly endeavored to promote their
community’s growth and claim to status in a con-
stantly shifting Atlantic World. In doing this,
they understood race, race science, and racial am-
biguity—manipulating these elements to their ad-
vantage while also forming a sense of identity 
 
 
 Arkansas Review 54.1 (April 2023) 
 73 
 
 
 and belonging in a changing American land-
scape.
In constructing his argument, Wegmann ad-
dresses a historiographical record that, in his own
words, has “complicated and simplified a massive
antebellum population” (p. 3). In particular,
Wegmann identifies Ira Berlin’s Slaves Without
Masters as a landmark title that, while a substan-
tive account on free blacks, overlooked the com-
plexities of the Louisianan Creole population. In
particular, he suggests Berlin’s work overstated
and oversimplified the level of caste-subservience
experienced by all free people of color—as well as
removed these Louisianan mixed-race Creoles
from the historical narrative of America. Con-
sequently, the historiography since Berlin’s 1974
work has ignored these francophone peoples in
studies of the South, instead incorporating them
into Caribbean studies. This is the position Weg-
mann argues against in An American Color. He as-
serts that these New Orleans Creoles were very
much a part of the narrative of American history
and the greater Atlantic World; that they devel-
oped within and because of greater worldly
events; and that they shared many qualities with
free mixed-race peoples in other parts of the
American continent. In short, these New Or-
leans Creoles raised their status, forged a unique
identity, and positioned themselves socially bey-
ond the parameters of Berlin’s conclusions. Weg-
mann argues that these Creole people of New
Orleans were just as “American” as other ele-
ments of the country—and consequently, equally
deserving of consideration within the greater his-
torical narrative and history of the Atlantic
## World.
Wegmann’s argument is divided among five
chronological chapters in which he examines the
New Orleans Creole community through signif-
icant changes they experienced in the world
around them and how they subsequently met
those changes as a community. In chapter one,
the origins of this community under French rule
are explored. Significant to Wegmann’s analysis
here is the fact that the Creole population of the
nineteenth century had its roots in the conscious
manipulation of race and power within the con-
fines of French authority. For example, Weg-
mann asserts that “free women of color during
the colonial period utilized sex and race to carve
out [a] niche in the socioracial order” (p. 12)
when they chose to have relations with promi-
nent Frenchmen. Combined with the French
language lacking a word for a free person of color
until 1774, the free mixed-race community under
French rule was able to lay a substantive founda-
tion for future generations.
Following the transition to Spanish rule,
chapter two describes how the Creole population
continued to promote its own interests through
a manipulation of the race science that accompa-
nied Spanish rule. In particular, the Casta Sys-
tem of racial hierarchy allowed middle-class
Creoles to develop their identity and use their
light skin and free heritage for social elevation.
With the transition to United States authority,
as seen in chapter three, the Creole community
in New Orleans further embraced new cultural
mores to further elevate its status. By embracing
white culture and becoming propertied, New Or-
leans Creoles were able to elevate and assert
themselves as uniquely different. “To New Or-
leans white society, [Creoles] were not colored,
black, or negro. They were something else alto-
gether . . . ” (p. 61).
As the status of this Creole community
climbed in the years following the War of 1812,
it began imitating white American society by re-
fining its middle class through avenues like fash-
ion, family, and socializing. Like other free black
communities across the country, in their own
way, New Orleans Creoles were using class con-
 
 
 Arkansas Review 54.1 (April 2023) 
 74 
 
 
 sciousness and controlling the way they were per-
ceived in society to improve their station and de-
mand legitimacy within greater American society.
Subsequently, Wegmann’s final chapter explores
the ways in which the Creole community reacted
to the American Colonization Society and repa-
triation efforts during the nineteenth century. To
this end, Wegmann explores the nuances that ex-
isted between various mixed-race communities in
different parts of the country and their motiva-
tions to leave or stay. By the eve of the Civil War,
New Orleans Creoles had undergone a process
of Americanization, and saw their home not
abroad in Africa, but locally, where they had
grown and cultivated a uniquely American
Creole culture for over a century.
Through his analysis, Wegmann cogently ar-
ticulates the nuanced history of New Orleans
Creoles through over a century of political and
social change. He situates the community within
the greater narrative of United States history and
the Atlantic World, and in so doing, recontextu-
alizes important political and cultural historical
developments. Wegmann has not only made a
valuable contribution to the greater historiogra-
phy of mixed-race communities in the United
States, but also provided a social history that is
applicable to a plurality of historical fields—from
colonial to Antebellum America, and beyond to
the greater history of the Atlantic World.
 --Travis C. Perusich 
 Katrina: A History, 1915-2015. By Andy Horowitz. (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2020 Pp. 281, introduction, notes, acknowledgments, index. $36.00, hardcover) 
 Whether the author of this Barcraft Award
winner intended to create irrefutable justification
for the paradigm shift toward prioritizing vulnerable 
 
 
populations in emergency management, it
appears he has done so while also adding a scan-
dalous historical context that public officials can-
not afford to ignore. Andy Horowitz illuminates
the need for such drastic shifts, and their com-
plex challenges, a century in the making with
Katrina: A History, 1915-2015. It pulls no punches
assessing Katrina’s aftermath, but also brings per-
spective from the detrimental impacts of com-
mercial dredging on Gulf Coast marshlands and
broken promises to share the extracted wealth for
a better future, all of which suffer in the name of
disorganization, disaster opportunism, segrega-
tion, and outright lies. Public policymakers, his-
torians, and students can apply these assessments
of both the good, but mostly the bad, lessons
from Katrina. At times undeniably demoralizing,
the writing seems designed to provoke meaning-
ful change with an infuriating narrative that
spurs its readers to action.
In recounting one man’s protest dating back
to New Orleans’ ill-begotten flood control plan
of 1927, Horowitz personifies decades-long warn-
 
 
 Arkansas Review 54.1 (April 2023) 
 75 
 
 
 ings and bitter debates in disaster policy that
seem to overlook the people most vulnerable to
catastrophic change. “But four decades after the
state engineers directed the Mississippi River to
flood his house, the catastrophe was not yet over
for him. Disasters can seem acute, his protests re-
mind, but their causes are long in the making
and their effects last a very long time” (p. 23). In
another example, a familiar refrain, levee failure
is attributed directly to cost-saving measures
enacted over time by the Army Corp of Engi-
neers. In a much less commonly understood
parlance, however, the author goes on to pain-
stakingly underscore years of indirect cause that
arguably became too overwhelming for any gov-
ernment agency or citizen group to overcome.
Looking back over nearly a century of unfettered
and unbalanced growth in the city, Horowitz un-
derscores the vulnerability of certain geographic
areas and populations in New Orleans from the
underappreciated lens of culture and heritage.
The early pages paint an intriguing picture
for those unfamiliar with New Orleans’ political
history. Even if one knows the Big Easy inti-
mately, there are throughlines to discover that
public officials and the social sciences grapple
with today. A century of half-measures leaves
New Orleans vulnerable to storm surge, and
more than two centuries of racism and segrega-
tion culminates in an irreparable relationship be-
tween New Orleans and many of its African
American citizens. These realities illustrate the
political backdrop when Hurricane Katrina
makes landfall. Calls to abandon certain parts of
the city in the wake of the 2005 storm are echoed
throughout, but the book also reminds us that
New Orleans has been sinking for a hundred
years as the result of dredging for transportation,
and later oil. Readers may recall pleas to save the
irreplaceable culture of New Orleans against calls
to finally let the city slip into the gulf after Hur-
ricane Katrina. What they may not remember are
warnings from scientists thirty years prior of this
inevitable result, which came alongside concerns
from citizens that the city did not seem to be able
to protect one area without flooding another.
“Despite the concerns raised at the public hear-
ing, the Army Corps announced in August 1975
that it would proceed with the project as de-
signed” (p. 89). The author extends both practi-
cal and cultural concerns from the paved streets
into the swamp itself, linking the ecosystem as in-
terdependent in regard to flood protections sur-
rounding the city. “But in 2005, forty years later,
a plodding bureaucracy and piecemeal federal ap-
propriations process had left the hurricane pro-
tection system unfinished” (p. 129).
The inevitable storm surge floods wealthy
and poor alike in neighborhoods borne of
drained marsh, only for the segregation still
upheld by tradition and economics to rear its
ugly head during a recovery that is ongoing to
this day. Unflooded low-income housing is de-
nied occupancy so that it can be razed, and dis-
placed citizens are outvoted regarding the future
of New Orleans before they are allowed back into
the city of their heritage. The underbelly of Lou-
isiana politics is again brought front and center
in a 1915 reboot for the modern era, and readers
are pointedly reminded of what is at stake.
“People died for no other reason than lack of or-
ganization” (p. 124). If the history leading to this
point is a sad reminder of how far we have come,
the recounting of Katrina’s aftermath in this
book is a gut-check for the wounds left to heal.
In these pages, one sees many examples
where unregulated progress and profit motive ig-
nore intangible concepts like culture and tradi-
tion. While it is hard to place monetary value on
such things, to ignore them is to ignore the
people they belong to, and, in many cases cov-
ered here, to deceive them. “Public efficiency and
 
 
 Arkansas Review 54.1 (April 2023) 
 76 
 
 
 private profits were difficult to reconcile, because
a totally efficient system of delivering public
funds to individuals would have yielded no pri-
vate profits at all” (p. 150). As with the flood
water, the funding only seems to move from one
place to another, never lifting all boats. The dis-
regard for sustaining the culture of New Orleans,
or more accurately the people who created it, is
juxtaposed with not only the occurrence of dis-
aster but our response to it. “As a process for
change, tradition is the opposite of disaster, in
which the present seems to arrive out of no-
where” (p. 189). The main characters in this work
are those who would stifle such tradition to
further their own self-interests in both 1915 and
in 2005. Katrina: A History, 1915-2015 does not
let us forget this fact, and offers no glossy finish
for the prejudices that often underpin such
thought. Anyone wishing to effect change for dis-
asters like Hurricane Katrina will find here the
political realities, historical injustice, and all
manner of obstacles they may face along the way.
 --Jon Carvell 
 The Continuing Storm: Learning from Katrina. By Kai Erikson and Lori Peek. (Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press, 2022. Pp. xv + 142, prelude, postlude, acknowledgments, notes, index. $32.14, paperback) 
 Sociologist Kai T. Erickson observed in 2014
that Hurricane Katrina would be the most telling
storm of our era, not just because of the damage
it inflicted upon people and property, but be-
cause of what it revealed about our culture and
ourselves. Social scientists were eager to learn
more about the human costs of the disaster and
went to work soon after the storm passed, sifting
through reams of data, striving to make sense of
it. Among this group were some of America’s
best disaster researchers, their colleagues, and stu-
dents who lent support. The best of this work ap-
peared on The Katrina Bookshelf, the most
comprehensive social science coverage of a dis-
aster found anywhere in the literature. The Con-
tinuing Storm is the capstone of this series.
This book is a somber reflection, thoughtful,
with a measured academic tone. Yet, simulta-
neously, it is a brutally honest story of the abuse
suffered by some of New Orleans’ most vulner-
able citizens. It is a short, powerful read, essential
for those who want to deeply understand what
happened before, during, and after Hurricane
Katrina.
At the center of the narrative are the poor,
mostly Black residents of New Orleans, some eld-
erly, handicapped, and medicine-dependent,
stuck in Katrina’s path and unable to escape the
storm’s wrath. They died in floodwaters that
reached as high as their attics; they died swim-
ming through toxic sludge, trying to find some-
thing to hold on to as the water inched higher;
they died on bridges and overpasses, waiting for
help that was late in coming; some died in the
filthy squalor of the Superdome and the Conven-
tion Center, dehydrated, hungry and without
medication. Those that survived were hastily
loaded on buses or planes, headed for unknown
destinations, separated from some of their family,
and after a while living in a new place, feeling
like utter outcasts in their new environment. For
these souls, the hurricane is not over; it is a con-
tinuing trauma. Wherever these survivors go, so
goes Katrina.
The book succeeds in reorienting our percep-
tions of time and space as it relates to the hurri-
cane. As humans, we like to corral nature into 
 
 
 Arkansas Review 54.1 (April 2023) 
 77 
 
 
 specific, often short,
 
timeframes. For exam-
ple, as a meteorological
event, Katrina was
short-lived; it began on
August 25 near south-
east Florida and ended
on August 29 over east
Mississippi. The storm
surge abated. The flood-
waters in the geo-
graphic bowl that is
central New Orleans eventually receded. But
human suffering will last a lifetime. Coastal
towns like Venice, Buras, and Waveland were
completely destroyed, having to build back from
scratch. Memories of what was lost and the grief
about those things have no official time stamp or
expiration date.
Regarding space, we like clear geographic
boundaries that we can identify and point to on
the map to remember those who suffered in that
part of New Orleans, such as the Lower Ninth
Ward and St. Bernard Parish. But in the travels
of those displaced from those places, Katrina
lives on. Wrenched from their homes and made
to feel unwelcome to return, Katrina followed
them wherever their diaspora took them.
Meanwhile, among New Orleans’ elite busi-
ness crowd, there was jubilation as they witnessed
the storm’s devastation. As affluent people living
on higher ground, they suffered less damage and
had the resources to get out of town as the storm
passed. Surveying the flooding in the poorer, pri-
marily Black district of New Orleans, some ex-
pressed thanks to God for the “gift.” The storm
did what they always wanted to do but could not.
Their town’s “criminal element” had just
boarded buses and was now gone. The city would
gentrify and do all possible to make it nearly im-
possible for the displaced to return. Possibly this
slight was the lowest depth of humiliation for
those in the diaspora, to be unwanted by their
city. They were uprooted from their homes,
treated like garbage, shuttled away, and barred
from returning. The New Orleans business
crowd wanted a smaller, taller, and whiter post-
Katrina city, and they got all that. It may be true
that no one reads Herbert Spencer anymore, as
Talcott Parsons once wrote. But these business
types wore their Social Darwinism on the sleeves
of their freshly pressed suits. The “unfit” of their
town had just been expelled. We learned from
Katrina that Social Darwinism was stitched into
the fabric of New Orleans and much of white
America, which stood by silently watching.
The Continuing Storm reveals the limits of a
neo-liberal democratic state in the current age to
protect its citizens after a disaster. In this pro-free
market, pro-business way of governing, the re-
sponsibility for disaster preparedness lies squarely
on the shoulders of the individual family unit
and local communities. Individual responsibility
rules the day. The fittest will survive and the rest
will fail. The federal government and state gov-
ernments can help with infrastructure projects or
resiliency initiatives and some limited forms of
aid. Still, it is not their job to replace your home
or to make you whole again. The political system
insists that to receive substantial assistance, your
local representatives must continually approach
the halls of Congress, hat in hand, to beg for
more relief money and prove that your district
needs it—an exhausting, years-long process.
Louisiana now encourages families to have
an action plan before the next storm arrives in
the Gulf. That plan involves adequate insurance,
savings, a roadworthy car, a “go” kit to save time,
and a place to meet family members during an
evacuation. Unfortunately, many of the vulner-
able poor in New Orleans lack access to these re-
sources today just as they did in 2005.
 --Stan Weeber 
 
 
 Arkansas Review 54.1 (April 2023) 
 78

Car Lot Cowboy
by Addison Griffis 
 Marcel Vickers stared at a bullet hole in the
hood of his pearl Mercedes parked in Magnolia
Motors’ used car lot. As he gazed and sipped
scorched coffee from a Styrofoam cup, the speck
of blackness seemed to spread across metal luster.
His navy Western shirt, adorned with a rose
patch on each sleeve, clung to his skin in the Mis-
sissippi humidity. He scowled at the task of con-
vincing a prospect to pay top dollar for the
damaged Mercedes on the final day of the deal-
ership’s Fourth of July sale extravaganza.
Vickers placed his cup on the ruined hood.
He snatched open the diamond snap-button of
his chest pocket, shook out a cigarette from the
carton. The cigarette bobbed in his mouth as he
cursed the Mercedes and texted the parts man-
ager for a quote on a replacement.
Gonna be at least 1400.
Vickers lit his cigarette. I’m getting fucked with-
out being kissed for that price. Vickers blew out
smoke, lifted his white Stetson cowboy hat, and
ran his fingers through his blonde hair, tucking
stray strands behind his ears.
Stephen, a salesman on the lot, snuck up be-
hind Vickers and slapped his back, knocking the
cigarette from the sales manager’s mouth. “Aye,
ole Buddy, I got a trade I need you to step up in.”
“All this bullshit on my last day at work.”
Vickers popped another cigarette into his mouth.
“I’m damn near broke from the divorce, and now
I have to replace the hood or find a fucking pro-
spect who doesn’t give a damn.”
“Yeah, I saw that shit earlier this morning
when I was walking the lot.” Stephen held out a
form with the info for a prospect’s trade-in. “I
didn’t want to be the one to tell you that some-
body drove by last night and shot the hell out this
fucker.”
“Naw, the hole is too wide for a straight-on
shot.” Vickers shook his head as he took the
form and shoved it in his back pocket. “That bul-
let tumbled from the sky. Those hoodlums across
town started firing their fucking Glocks off into
the air when everybody was shooting fireworks
last night and hit the car. That’s fucking odds for
ya.”
“Dude, just check this out.” Stephen reached
into his pocket and dropped a mushroomed .45
hollow point onto Vickers’ palm. “Somebody
shot the shit out of your car with a big ass bullet.
I found it up against the engine block.” Stephen
tucked his gold chain and crucifix beneath his
red polo shirt. “Still runs good, I grabbed your
spare key from the showroom box.” Customers
on the way back from a test drive wheeled a silver
diesel dually into a parking spot at the front of
the dealership, and Stephen headed toward
them. “I bet you’ll find your customer before the
day’s over.”
Vickers’ phone buzzed. A text from a
number not stored in his contacts flashed across
the screen. You are a coward, not a cowboy.
Vickers’ fingers coiled over the bullet. I think
you got the wrong number.
A picture of Vickers’s business card pinched
by a man’s hand appeared on the screen. Black
spade tattooed on the thumb.
I ain’t got time for games. Say that shit to my face.
Vickers shoved his phone into his pocket and
scanned the lot. As customers browsed like cattle
through rows of shiny metal, a tall thin man wea-
ring a tropical print tank top and cut-off jean
shorts emerged from a maroon-colored mobile
firework stand in the barren dirt lot across from
the dealership. Chrome aviators flashed in the
sunlight. The man’s long black curls rippled in
 
 
 Arkansas Review 54.1 (April 2023) 
 16 
 
 
 the wind as he stood clutching a three-foot sleeve
of firecrackers.
The crushed bullet felt hot in Vickers’ hand.
The firecracker man adjusted his shades. He
waved an arm riddled with flash art and mo-
tioned Vickers to come over.
Vickers threw his cigarette on the ground
and stamped it out with his alligator boots. He
downed the rest of his coffee. “Fucking fruit
cake.” Vickers shoved the bullet in his pocket. He
made his way back inside the dealership, where
desk phones rang like summer solstice wedding
bells. Cool air chilled the sweat on his forehead
as his boot heels kept a steady cadence against
large, sand-colored tiles. Vickers entered his glass-
wall office set in the middle of the showroom.
He hung his cowboy hat on a brass hook of an
old wooden hat rack in the corner of the office
and then eased down in his brown leather chair.
Vickers removed a bottle of Woodford Reserve
from the bottom drawer of his metal desk. He
filled the Styrofoam cup and watched salesmen
hold gross and close customers.
Vickers flipped through his Rolodex and
called everyone he knew about buying the Mer-
cedes. And when the high mileage and asking
price became a quick deterrent to all prospects,
he’d slam down his phone, take a sip of whiskey
and flip to the next card.
The front door of the dealership let out a
shrill squeak. Vickers looked up from his Rolo-
dex and saw a white girl with rainbow-colored
dreads walking toward his office. Flip flops
smacked her heels. Her cotton-white romper be-
came cheeky mid-stride. She clutched a brown
leather purse. Tangerine nail polish.
Vickers rose from his chair. He placed his
knuckles on the cool pane of glass that covered
his desk to steady himself from the whiskey buzz.
“Can I help you?”
The girl stopped at the threshold of the of-
fice. “I want to speak to your Finance Manager.
I need to get approved.”
“Our finance guy works every other Satur-
day. But I’m sales manager here. I can help. You
have any credit?”
“No.” Rainbow dreads brushed the girl’s jaw-
line as she shook her head.
“It ain’t looking too good for you, sweet-
heart.” Vickers rapped his knuckles against the
glass top. “But I have a car that I’m ready to
move. Take a seat and let’s take a look at your
credit just to see what we are working with.” He
sat in his chair. Removed a silver pen from his
pocket and clicked it. “Most folks don’t know
shit about what kind of credit they have.”
The girl sat down in one of the black leather
chairs in the office. Vickers took her information
and learned her name was Tessa, nearly twenty
years his junior. He added three years to her job
time at the glove factory, promoted her to shift
manager, and gave her a two thousand dollar
raise to round things out.
Vickers slid the credit app across to Tessa.
She looked him in the eye as she signed and
pushed the pen and paper across the desk. He
transferred her information to the computer and
pulled her credit.
Tessa rubbed an esoteric geometrical design
tattooed on the left side of her neck as if wishing
the Kosmos for good luck.
Seven hundred Equifax. Six eighty TransU-
nion.
Holy hell.
Two lines of credit. Four thousand dollar
high.
## Fuck.
A short-term loan with twelve percent inter-
est from the piece of shit credit union downtown
and a Victoria Secret credit card paid perfect.
Vickers pushed the spring-loaded end of his
pen down on the desk. The pen shot up, and he
caught it. “Your score’s low and file a little thin.
That seafoam green sled of a Chrysler what you
drove up in?”
“Yeah that’s my trade, got the title in my
purse.”
“I’m going to give you what my wholesaler
will give me. Two-fifty. You got any down pay-
ment?” Vickers wrote numbers on a buyer’s
 
 
 Arkansas Review 54.1 (April 2023) 
 17 
 
 
 order. A salesman without a customer at his desk
scowled at him through the glass for not turning
the girl over.
“No.” Tessa propped her elbows on the desk
and crossed her arms. “Is that going to keep me
from buying a car?”
Vickers stopped writing. The tip of his pen
waivered his grip. “You’re going to have to bring
something to the table, my dear.”
“How much?”
Vickers clicked his pen. “Three thousand.”
“I don’t have anywhere close to that.”
“How much?”
“None.”
“The banks won’t like that.” Vickers leaned
back in his chair. “Especially since your credit
score is below five hundred.”
“I think we can work something out.”
Tessa crossed her arms. “You gonna co-sign
with me?”
“Your rainbow-colored ass ain’t fucking up
my credit.”
Tessa smiled, shook her head. “Well I don’t
have any extra money.”
Vickers took a sip of whiskey. “I heard you
the first time.” He refilled the Styrofoam cup
with Woodford and pushed it across the desk.
“You got something worth three thousand dol-
lars."
She looked down at the offering then up at
him. “I ain’t a whore.”
“And I ain’t a pimp, but you better bring
something to the table or you ain’t gonna ride.”
“I don’t even know what I’m buying or for
what price.”
“You’re buying a Mercedes. High mileage,
but runs like the day I bought’er. Just one small
blemish on the hood.”
Tessa’s green eyes widened. “I can’t afford
that.”
“That just depends on the interest rate and
how long we stretch it out.”
Tessa took the cup and downed the liquid.
“You aren’t into any weird shit, are you?”
“Weird shit?” Vickers took a sip from the
whiskey bottle. “You talking like butt stuff? No
darlin, I just fuck.”
“You get high?” Tessa brushed a violet lock
from her face.
Vickers stood and removed a room card
from his snakeskin wallet. “That Western Motel
just across the street.” He handed the card to her.
“Room thirty-eight. It’s on the end there out by
the canal. Just go on in and make yourself at
home. It’s almost quitting time.”
Tessa left the dealership with the room key
and cup of whiskey in hand.
Vickers strolled out his office into a show-
room without a customer. “I don’t know about
the rest of y’all.” He snatched eight cups from the
water cooler dispenser. “This summer dust got
my throat a little scratchy. How about one last
drink with your sales manager? Because after
today, I don’t ever——”
“Want to see your cheap ass again.” Stephen
jumped up from his chair and rallied the rest of
the salesmen. They locked the front door, cut off
most of the lights, and crammed into Vickers’ of-
fice.
Vickers removed an unmarked bottle full of
jade tequila from his drawer. “This Mexican
Chernobyl shit been simmering in my office all
goddamn summer.” Vickers shook the bottle.
Medallion slices of jalapeno swirled.
The sales team passed the wretched tequila
around while they drank and boasted and
bragged with burning tongues about the head-
knockers they’d thrown to smiling customers,
and other men’s wives that they had fucked in
the backseat during test drives. They cursed every
rich bastard who showed no quarter when hag-
gling over trades that they still scooped and re-
sold for small fortunes.
Stephen raised his glass. “To Marcel T.
Vickers, the best damn sales manager in the tri-
county area . . . and the last cowboy of the car
lot.”
Everyone cheered and chugged what liquor
remained in their cups.
“Aye, aye, ole buddy.” Vickers grasped
 
 
 Arkansas Review 54.1 (April 2023) 
 18 
 
 
 Stephen by his shoulder. “Y’all are all cowboys.”
He gazed around the room. “All goddamn cow-
boys. Hell, you got to be in this fucking busi-
ness.” He grabbed the tequila and strolled into
the showroom. “Now all of y’all have a good
night.” Vickers adjusted his crotch and knocked
the bottle against the turquoise stone inlay of his
belt buckle. “I have one last down payment to col-
lect.”
Howls echoed through the halls of the deal-
ership.
Vickers left through the side door of the
showroom. He journeyed past the used cars, and
his phone buzzed when he got to the road.
Traffic sped by as Vickers stood and watched
a surveillance video of his Mercedes pulling up
to the garage door of another man’s house. The
timestamp jumped forward a couple of days, and
the garage door opened, revealing a mobile fire-
work stand painted maroon.
All I can say is that your wife invited me over.
Vickers crossed the road and made his way
through tall weeds growing in cracks of the motel
parking lot. Shards of brown beer bottle glass
crunched under his feet as he traveled along the
iron fence that circled an empty concrete pool.
Vickers drummed his knuckles against the
door as he entered his room. The lamp on the
nightstand illuminated wallpaper covered in pic-
tures of succulents, casting light across Tessa laid
up against the bed’s backboard.
Tessa shot the rest of her whiskey. “You’re
talking about that pearl Mercedes on the lot,
right?”
“Yep.” Vickers slid the chain lock into place.
“I could definitely ride around in that.” She
rummaged through her purse. “How long you
been living here?”
Vickers laid his cowboy hat on his suitcase
and stood by the side of the bed. “Long enough
to plan my next move.”
“What’s that?” Tessa removed a zip-lock bag
filled with crimson gummy-shaped stars the size
of quarters.
“Take a train out west to Colorado or Wyo-
ming. I don’t care. I’ll find work.” He eyed crim-
son stars and placed the tequila beside a potted
cactus on the nightstand. “What the hell are
those?”
“You want to get high, don’t you?” Tessa
shook the plastic bag. “These are death stars.
They’ll fuck you six ways to Sunday.” She ex-
tended the bag to Vickers, and he took one. “I’d
only eat half a star if you’ve never tried edibles
before.”
Vickers ate a star. “I ain’t scared of your hip-
pie-ass snacks.” He grabbed two more from the
bag before Tessa could pull it away.
“So why you living here?” Tessa put a single
star on her tongue and shoved the bag into her
purse.
“Cheap weekly rates.” He tossed a gummy in
his mouth. “Short walk to work.” He popped
another. “Wife kicked me out my own goddamn
house about six months ago.”
“Why?”
“Shit that happened in this room. Shit that
might get me killed one day.”
“So you gonna take your boots off before you
get in bed?”
“I do things the outlaw way.”
“This is the weird shit I was talking about.”
Tessa winced and arched her back.
Vickers lit a cigarette and sat down on the
bed with his back to her. The haze of smoke grew
thicker in the room with each puff. Tessa put her
hand on Vickers shoulder, and he shrugged her
off.
“You work at the glove factory.” Vickers
knocked the ashes of his cigarette across the
potted cactus on the nightstand. “You know
## Drew?”
“Drew from shipping and receiving? Yeah, I
know him, always riding around on the forklift,
loading and unloading.” Tessa squinted at
Vickers. “Are you like his dad or uncle?”
“Father.”
Tessa clutched her face and shook her head.
“Jesus Christ, will the next safety meeting be awk-
ward.”
 
 
 Arkansas Review 54.1 (April 2023) 
 19 
 
 
 “You know he could do so much more than
that.”
“What’s wrong with driving a tow-motor?”
“I never pictured my son barely making ten
dollars an hour.” Vickers turned and shook his
cigarette at her. “You know he couldn’t buy a sin-
gle unit off the new lot? Even with good credit?
That’s what’s fucking wrong.”
“If you think he could make his life better, I
think you need to tell him that yourself.”
Vickers shook his head. “We haven’t talked
in forever. Doesn’t even know where I stay.”
“I’d give anything to talk to my father again.
It just ain’t right that y’all don’t talk.”
“Maybe we just need space as big as the god-
damn horizon.” His long exhale swirled smoke.
“I think you got a bad batch of them marijuana
gummy bears.” He snuffed the cigarette out in
the dirt of the cactus pot. “I’m sober as Saint
Peter. Time to put your sweet ass in a new ride.”
A grin remained on Tessa’s face as she
grabbed her purse.
Vickers open the door just enough to check
if anyone would see them leave. He took Tessa by
the hand and led her down the sidewalk, passing
fancy cars with tags from neighboring counties.
The edge of darkness washed away the color of
fire in the sky as they traveled to the dealership.
The two crossed into the lot, and when they
got to the Mercedes, Vickers hit the keys in his
pocket to make the horn chirp at Tessa, who
skipped in delight. They hopped inside the car.
Vickers barked the tires and sped to the front of
the dealership, where he used his key to enter,
keeping the lights off in the showroom as he led
Tessa to his office.
Vickers sat down in his chair, pulled Tessa
onto his lap. He banged the keys on the mouse.
The computer screen flashed on. Ivory glow
flooded the office.
“I’m about to show you how a deal is done,
darlin. Can you handle a three-fifty payment?”
“How’d you know?”
“Cause a three-fifty payment is what every-
body wants. Five-thousand dollar sled. Son of a
bitch wants three-fifty. Sixty-thousand dollar
truck. Three-fifty.” Vickers chuckled. “It’s fucking
crazy.”
Vickers arranged the figures in his computer
and power booked the unit, adding additional
safety features and a sport package not found on
the Mercedes.
Vickers submitted the deal to four banks,
and four pending notification boxes popped up
next to Tessa’s name on the screen. Her heart-
beat pulsed against the palm of his hand.
Three red turndown arrows popped up.
“Fuck.” Vickers banged the keyboard.
Tessa huffed and pulled away from Vickers.
“Why did I get turned down when I brought
something to the table?”
“Thin file.”
“You’re not understanding what I’m fucking
telling you. Why the fuck did I get turned down
when I brought something to the table?”
“We still in the game, darlin. One bank is
still simmering on it.”
A green acceptance arrow appeared by her
name.
“Well fuck me sideways.” Vickers slapped his
desk.
“What does that mean?”
Vickers pushed Tessa off him. “It means you
got approved.” He clicked into the deal. Proof of
income required.
“Deal has a little hair around it, but we’ll
make it happen. Hand me your paystub.” Vickers
dialed his finance manager. “Aye ole buddy, I
know it’s late, but I have a favor for you, young
stud.” He snapped at Tessa to hurry up. “I need
you to give this pretty girl in front of me a nice
fat figure on her year to date. Make it match what
I sent in on the credit app and load that bitch up
cause we’re ready to sign.”
Tessa dumped the contents of her purse out
on the table.
They began signing paperwork, and within
ten minutes, Tessa became the proud owner of a
certified used Mercedes.
Vickers faxed all the documents to the bank
 
 
 Arkansas Review 54.1 (April 2023) 
 20 
 
 
 as the death star high crept up his spine. “God-
damn I’m feeling smooth as Velveeta.” Vickers
propped his boots on his desk, kicked back in his
chair.
Tessa racked her belongings back into her
purse. “Aren’t you going to show me everything
on my new car?”
“Yeah I’m just waiting on my favorite part.”
A stack of gold coins popped up by Tessa’s
name. Vickers jumped and clapped. “We just got
funded.” Vickers shut off his computer, grabbed
the spare key from the key-box in the showroom,
and the two walked out to the car.
“Pleasure doing business.” Vickers handed
Tessa her papers, and a flash of green light
flooded the night. A boom shook the windows
and rattled Vickers’ chest. He braced himself
against the Mercedes as he wrestled with the cas-
cading of ecstasy from the drugs and the after-
image of Tessa’s illuminated face.
Streams of golden embers crackled as they
fell from above. Columns of flame erupted from
fire fountains in the barren lot across the street,
spewing smoke clouds that rolled over the ve-
hicles.
Tessa cried out and collapsed. Blood gushed
from the exit wound in her back as her body
twitched on the asphalt. The storefront window
behind Vickers shattered. Shards of glass broke
across the concrete and reflected bursts of fire in
the sky.
Vickers choked on smoke as he saw the fire-
cracker man walking toward him with a chrome
.45 in hand. The firecracker man’s shadow
pulsed across the asphalt as he took aim.
A flash of light erupted from the gun barrel.
Vickers stumbled back from the blast. He
touched his shoulder. Blood-stained flesh. A bul-
let whirred past his head, shattering another win-
dow.
Vickers ripped open the Mercedes’ door. He
grabbed Tessa and pulled her onto the back seat.
He shook her limp body and moaned her name
as bullets shattered the windows of the vehicle.
Leather became slick with blood, and Vickers
peered through the shattered windshield to see
the firecracker man dumping spent shells of his
revolver.
“Fuck of a fucking fuck.” Vickers climbed in
the front seat and shoved the keys into the ig-
nition. Headlights flashed the chrome of the .45.
Vickers stomped the gas. The Mercedes sped
forward. The firecracker man belly-flopped onto
the hood and took hold of a wheel well. Vickers
swerved. The Mercedes crashed into an SUV dis-
played on the lot, pinning the firecracker man
between crushed sheets of pearl and black metal.
Vickers pushed open the door and fell onto
asphalt. His lungs burned as he crawled to the
trunk of the Mercedes.
Vickers grasped the tire iron.
The night sky thundered no more.
Plumes of flames receded into the cones of
fire fountains.
The firecracker man clawed pearl metal as
blood dripped from his mouth.
Vickers struck the firecracker man three
times across his skull.
Sirens wailed in the distance, and iron
clanged against asphalt. Vickers took out his cell
and scrolled to a text conversation between him
and his son that had been inactive for eight
months. He typed Western Motel. Room 38 if you
ever want to talk. The chatter of his mind grew si-
lent as his thumb hovered over send.
Vickers looked up from the screen. The dead
man’s arms lay sprawled across the hood as if em-
bracing the carnage of bent metal. Vickers had
observed the Mercedes countless times over the
years, but this time he saw an altar of acceptance,
where he could take solace for a few minutes.
Blue lights flashed across the car lot. He
dropped the cellphone onto the asphalt. Vickers
put his hands behind his back and kneeled be-
fore his idol made manifest by the marriage of
man and machine.
 
 
 Arkansas Review 54.1 (April 2023) 
 21

For Whom the Writing Goes
by Damon Guinn 
 
 It’s 1:30 p.m. on the first day of a writing re-
treat at the Hemingway-Pfeiffer Museum and
Educational Center in Piggott, Arkansas, and I’m
camped out in a bathroom between the mu-
seum/house and gift shop. I’m supposed to be
working on “my art,” but the gastric remains of
junk food, coffee, and energy drinks—fuel from
a two-day road trip—have just erupted in my lower
GI. 
 Earlier, seven attendees and I kicked off the
retreat with introductions and an overview from
the instructor and writer-in-residence, Mary
Miller. Miller, a storyteller whose prose chron-
icles the tension and tedium of everyday life, has
published two novels, two collections of short
stories, and several pieces of flash fiction. She’s
shrewd with a sharp wit, and after reading her
story collection, Big World, I was convinced that
she would have something to teach me. 
 Arkansas State University Heritage Sites has
been hosting the retreat at the Hemingway-
Pfeiffer Museum annually since 2002. Every year,
the visiting author signs a quilt square that is
framed and placed on a wall in the Educational
Center. The earliest square is from July 7, 2002.
It’s signed by author Lorian Hemingway, the
daughter of Gregory Hemingway, Ernest’s young-
est son with Pauline. Both she and her father—
who later identified as Gloria and underwent
gender reassignment surgery—each have fascinat-
ing stories all their own. 
 Following our morning discussion and an
awkward lunch, we are given an hour and a half
of independent writing time. The director, Shan-
non Williams, tells us that we are free to write
wherever we like—at the Educational Center, in
the Pfeiffer house, or at the studio above the barn
where Hemingway did most of his work while vis-
iting. I decide to follow Dr. Adam Long, who is
the executive director of Arkansas State Univer-
sity’s Heritage Sites, and a sixty-something man
named Bill from Kentucky. 
 Adam leads us to the house and gives us a
cursory tour of the rooms, pointing out choice
spots. I pick an open room on the second floor
with conference chairs arranged around the peri-
meter. 
 Adam explains that there probably won’t be
any tours, but if people do come through, I can
just close the door and continue working. That
will be interesting, I think, imagining myself
springing to my feet and slamming the door on
a family who planned months in advance to visit
this historic home once graced by Hemingway.
He adds that he will lock the front door to the
house because it tends to blow open. Then he
and Bill head off to see the rest of the house. 
 I start working on a story about rivalry be-
tween childhood friends, something I’ve been
playing around with for years, but I’m too unset-
tled to focus. 
 Before traveling to Piggott, I watched Ken
Burns’ PBS documentary on Hemingway, so I’m
curious to explore the house and see remnants
of the writer’s experience in Arkansas. As I
wander from room to room looking at the mem-
orabilia, the downstairs door opens and closes. I
hear shuffling and banging. Bill must have re-
turned, and it sounds like he’s burglarizing the
place. I want to investigate, but my gut starts to
rumble, and I’m forced to bolt down the stairs
of the museum three at a time and make a
clench-cheeked beeline for the bathroom. 
 My first day and I already can’t stomach it. 
 Fathers and Sons (with a Mother in the Mix) 
 My trip to Piggott had taken a surprise turn
when my traveling companion, my eleven-year- 
 
 
 Arkansas Review 54.1 (April 2023) 
 60 
 
 
 old son Oliver, and I arrived at the midway point
of our drive. I had reserved a teepee on Airbnb
for a stop in Kansas City, Hemingway’s old
stomping grounds, on the way to my parents’
place in Jonesboro, Arkansas. Oliver was going
to hang out with his grandparents and cousins
while I attended the retreat.
 At the first sight of the teepee, Oliver was
thoroughly nonplussed. “Do we have to stay there
tonight,” he whined. He wanted AC and TV, not
BS. He wanted to be back home playing Fortnite
or Minecraft on his PC, not hanging out in a tee-
pee with faux-Native American décor, listening
to his old man snore. 
 “It’ll be an adventure!” I enthused. 
 “Yeah, right,” was his dejected reply. 
 Situated off a deteriorating highway flanked
by abandoned storefronts, our teepee was tucked
in the backyard of a modest suburban home and
right next to a murky pond that belched with bull
frogs. I went to “test” the outhouse and told
Oliver we would have the distinct privilege of
pooping in a sawdust-filled five-gallon bucket. He
dropped his head in defeat and sulked to the
teepee. 
 It was muggy outside, and Oliver complained
that he felt sticky and gross, so he stripped off his
shirt and settled in to watch YouTube videos on
his phone. That’s when the bull frogs kicked up
their croaks a notch and started doing call-and-
response with a chorus of crickets. 
 “How am I supposed to sleep tonight with
all this noise?!” Oliver demanded, storming over
to a chair and announcing that he would be lis-
tening to Yo-Yo Ma until he fell asleep. 
 “Good call,” I replied, returning to my place
in Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast. A short chap-
ter later, I glanced over my shoulder to see Oliver
soundly sleeping while the frogs and crickets
competed for swamp cred. 
 The teepee was illuminated inside by solar-
powered patio lights that were brighter than a sin-
gle table lamp but dim enough to be ignored by
heavy sleepers. Oliver always slept with a lamp
on; I customarily slept in darkness that rivaled
Vantablack. By 2:00 a.m., Oliver’s phone was
dead, and I was wide awake. Oliver started to toss
and turn while I thought through the logistics of
Plan B. I would simply book a hotel the next day,
and we could spend the afternoon in Kansas City
with friends before driving to Jonesboro on
Sunday. 
 Plan B changed to Plan C the moment
Oliver woke up. 
 Bolting upright, he screamed, “I can’t sleep!”
before springing to his feet and frantically pacing
back and forth in the teepee. 
 “Do you want to pack up and drive to Jones-
boro?” I asked him, hoping he would say no to
the six-and-a-half-hour overnight drive. 
 “Oh, Dada, I know!” he beamed. “We can
get some gum and energy drinks and listen to
loud music to stay awake! You can get a coffee
and an energy drink, so you’ll have a back-up after
you finish the first.” 
 We were back on the highway in less than 15
minutes. At 2:30 in the morning. 
 By the time we made it to Jonesboro, the car,
my son, and I were all cruising on fumes. Oliver
slept soundly for hours after our arrival, while I
struggled to catch any rest whatsoever. 
 My eyes eventually dimmed as I reread lines
from Hemingway’s story, “Fathers and Sons”: 
 Like all men with a faculty that surpasses
human requirements, his father was very
nervous. Then, too, he was sentimental, and,
like most sentimental people, he was both
cruel and abused. Also, he had much bad
luck, and it was not all of it his own.
I, too, had been cursed with much bad luck, bad
luck that had left me feeling suicidal at times.
Fortunately, I had a loving son to accompany me
on my journey. 
 When Monday morning rolled around, I
packed the car for the short drive northeast from
Jonesboro to Piggott. I’m nearly fifty, but my
mom nevertheless insisted on loading me up
with a pantry’s worth of snacks before taking my
picture in front of the car. I felt like an overgrown
kid heading to summer camp. 
 The drive through rural Arkansas, through
towns named Marmaduke and Rector, made me 
 
 
 Arkansas Review 54.1 (April 2023) 
 61 
 
 
 lonely—the flat farmland and small, sometimes
desolate, towns reminded me of how empty and
quiet our country can be, so far removed from
the cacophony and occasional chaos of cities like
my current place of residence, Minneapolis.
 I decided to attend the retreat based on my
favorable impression of Miller’s writing and my
mom’s recommendation. My mom has been at-
tending the retreat for years, reading occasional
poems about the childhood exploits of my
brothers and me . . . like setting fire to the kudzu
in the ravine behind our old home, “running
away from home” to a fort in said ravine, and
stealing money from an envelope reserved for
church tithing. 
 Recalling her descriptions of past retreats, I
had serious doubts about attending. I envisioned
a writing group at a retirement home—a bunch
of old biddies and geezers sharing stories about
their grandkids and sciatica. I had never attended
a writing retreat, and I didn’t relish the idea of
having my writing critiqued by a group of geria-
tric strangers. And, honestly, I’m not even a big
Hemingway fan; I enjoy his writing, but I wasn't
convinced it was worth the thirteen-hour drive
to visit the place he occasionally visited while
writing A Farewell to Arms. 
 Despite all of that, my mom somehow con-
vinced me that I would benefit from the collegial
atmosphere and discussions about craft. Plus, it
was a good excuse to visit my parents and try
something different after a grueling year of
COVID quarantine. That and I was unemployed
after a year and a half of job rejections. 
 When I finally pulled into the drive of the
Pfeiffer home, I took a moment to sit in my car
and examine the large but plain Victorian façade.
It wasn’t as stately as I anticipated. It didn’t look
grandiose enough to temporarily house Heming-
way’s larger-than-life persona or the fortunes of
his in-laws’ pharmaceutical empire, even as it
dwarfed the ’70s-style brick rambler that served
as the Hemingway-Pfeiffer Educational Center,
where our writing classes would be held. 
 As I entered the center and angled my way
toward a seat, an older woman at the conference
table blurted out, “I bet I know who you are!
You’re Fay’s son.” She introduced herself as
Charlotte. Another woman in the room chimed
in, “Oh, yeah. Fay with no E. She’s a regular.”
That was Talya, the only published novelist in the
group besides the instructor. 
 Oh, great, I thought. Every expletive and
lurid phrase I read aloud is going to find its way
back to my mom. 
 A Clean, Well-Lighted Place 
 We kick off the first class with a great con-
versation about the humor and wisdom of Anne
Lamott’s Bird by Bird, a book all novice writers
are encouraged to read, and then dive into a
reading of Joe Brainard’s I Remember. Miller, our
instructor, reading the crowd, skims over Brai-
nard’s more titillating memories about his sexual
experiences. 
 We break for independent writing time after
lunch. That’s when I wind up alone in the
Pfeiffer house. Returning to the Educational
Center, Karen, an assistant with ASU Heritage
Sites, announces to the room, in what could
easily be confused as a conspiratorial tone, that I
selected Max’s room. Max was the Pfeiffer’s
fourth child who died from the 1918 flu epi-
demic at age eleven. I had chosen the dead kid’s
room, who died from the flu no less! 
 Once the entire group reconvenes, two at-
tendees volunteer to share what they wrote dur-
ing the break. Tonia, a retired attorney from
Little Rock, details her discovery that the man
she adored as her maternal grandfather wasn’t
her real grandfather. Next, Bill, whose occupa-
tion escapes me, launches into a sprawling, bor-
derline-metaphysical account of his life and the
universe. We’re dumbfounded. It’s a prolix solil-
oquy that sounds like free verse. (The next day,
Bill transforms the first chapter of prose into a
poem per the group’s recommendation, and we
all agree that it’s much better.) 
 With that, we’re dismissed for the day, and I
jump in my car and make a run for the Missouri
border. Piggott is in a dry county, and I need
booze to help me sleep and process my first 
 
 
 Arkansas Review 54.1 (April 2023) 
 62 
 
 
 strange day at the retreat.
 Back in my room at the Inn at Piggott, I pour
myself some scotch, fire up Spotify for back-
ground music, and set to work on a story. But
again, I’m too distracted and it’s only the first
day, so I step outside my room to inventory the
inn’s lounge and dining room. As I do, the door
clicks shut, and I immediately realize I’m locked
out. Shit! My cell phone is in the room, and
there’s no phone in the lobby. I ring the front
bell, but no one responds, so I head back to the
second floor and nervously knock on the guest’s
door across from mine. No answer. I cross the
hall and knock on another door. 
 “Is someone out there?” a woman yells. She
peeks through the curtain in the door’s window,
and I recognize Charlotte’s face. “Who is that?!” 
 “It’s Damon, Charlotte. I’m sorry to bother
you, but I’ve locked myself out of my room, and
I need to call someone to let me in.” 
 “I’m not dressed, Damon,” she adds before
quickly cracking open the door and thrusting her
phone at me. 
 “I’m very sorry. This should only take a mi-
nute,” I reassure her. 
 “It’s okay,” she tells me. “I’m your mother’s
friend.” 
 Sleep comes easier that evening with the
help of scotch. Like the old man who stays too
late drinking at a café in Hemingway’s story, “A
Clean, Well-Lighted Place,” I feel like the loneli-
est man in the world, the drink in hand my only
companion. But I am settling in. I don’t even
mind the rumble of trains outside the inn. 
 A Way You’ll Never Be 
 We open the conversation on the second day
with a discussion about Jo Ann Beard’s essay
“Now,” which I love for the vivid description of
Alaska, the author’s channeling of her father’s
World War II experience, and references to Neil
Young and Denis Johnson. There is dissent over
the essay’s value. Some of us like the imagery and
the free-form style; others are frustrated by the
lack of structure and focus. 
 We learn that the piece was originally a
speech Beard presented and later printed in
AGNI magazine. Beth, a writing instructor at the
University of Tennessee-Martin, is not cool with
this. “Do you think we could get away with some-
thing like that?” 
 Mary adds that Beard wrote a celebrated
essay for The New Yorker called “The Fourth State
of Matter” about a mass shooting at the Univer-
sity of Iowa that won her a loyal audience. Mary
promises to hunt it down. 
 Next up is Cheever’s story, Reunion. This one
is about an estranged father and son on a day-
drinking excursion. It promptly brings out the
psychoanalysts among us. Bill, for the first of
what will be many times to follow, opens the Pan-
dora’s Box of his personal life and shares an ac-
count of his time in a psychiatric hospital. As he
veers farther off topic and into the murkier re-
cesses of his mind, the rest of us, intrigued and
unnerved, collectively pull back a little from the
table, acknowledging that a boundary has been
crossed. 
 Charlotte, a former school librarian, soon
mollifies us with a piece about her childhood in
the ’50s. Then Beth shares a story about meeting
William Stafford during her stint as a graduate
student, recalling how she smugly treated the an-
thologized poet. Her story is full of subtle refer-
ences to Stafford’s “Traveling Through the
Dark.” The references are lost on our group. It’s
been more than twenty years since I’ve read the
poem, and the others haven’t read it at all. But
it’s a clever story, and a beautiful reminder to
wake up every morning and get to work on what
you love. 
 That evening after dinner, I grab some
scotch, my portable speaker, and a copy of
Beard’s “The Fourth State of Matter” and head
to the rear deck of the inn to read and scribble
some thoughts. The sun sets in time with Yo-Yo
Ma’s cello. The deck shakes as a train blows by
in the background. Birds dart by, surfing the
breeze and skirting past a waxing gibbous moon
that has just begun to peak around the corner of
the inn’s roof. A text from my wife says she’ll call
soon. The phone remains silent. 
 
 
 Arkansas Review 54.1 (April 2023) 
 63 
 
 
 
 I look across the town from the balcony. It
must have been a much different place in Hem-
ingway’s day. I gulp down the scotch, savoring the
earthy-sweet bloom of heat in my mouth. I know
that I will never be the writer I want to be.
 Back in my room, I pull up Elia Kazan’s A
Face in the Crowd on my laptop. The movie is Pig-
gott’s other major claim to fame. Part of the film
is set in the town. 
 The movie had a resurgence after the 2016
election. Several political commentators noted
the similarities between Donald Trump and the
film’s main character, Larry “Lonesome”
Rhodes. Lonesome is a drifter who uses his good-
ole-boy schtick to rise to celebrity status on TV
before wedging his way into politics. He’s even
referred to as an “influencer,” just like today’s
tech-savvy promoters. And, like Trump, he em-
bellishes a populist persona to pitch false claims
to “real Americans” over the airwaves. 
 Piggott is smack dab in Trump country. I
could walk a few blocks from the main square
and spot at least two or three “Trump 2020”
banners and even a crudely written “Stop the
Steal” yard sign. 
 The irony isn’t lost on me, but, judging by
the political placards lingering long past the elec-
tion, the locals didn’t get the memo. 
 A Day’s Wait 
 On Wednesday morning, Mary is excited to
ask us about “The Fourth State of Matter.” We
dig into Beard’s description of the degeneration
of her dog, her husband’s abandonment of their
marriage, and the mass shooting that kills her
colleagues in the Department of Physics and As-
tronomy at the University of Iowa. It’s a riveting
essay with an eloquence that forces us to question
our abilities as writers. If it takes a topic as horri-
fic as mass murder to be a noteworthy writer,
what hope do we have? 
 “I guess I can’t be a writer, then,” Charlotte
says. “Nothing that interesting happens to me.
My life is too normal.” 
 We take turns offering her hollow words of
encouragement, but each of us seems to realize
the reality of the situation. A devastatingly sad
essay has left us sadder still. 
 Fortunately, Karen turns our thoughts and
stomachs away from despair. A veteran violist
with the Memphis Symphony Orchestra, Karen
shares a short piece about a subject that is near
and dear to our hearts and stomachs: pork. She
strings together a comparative history of pork
dishes in the Mid-South with their native dishes
in Austria, Germany, and France, singing its
praises by way of allusions to great composers. It’s
the perfect transition to lunch. 
 I head back to the inn for a phone interview
for a job in Minneapolis then set about revising
my unfinished short story. It’s my turn to read
my work during the afternoon session, and I’m
not relishing the potential criticism. 
 Back in the classroom, I read the first part of
my story, summoning the speed and tone of the
story’s insecure, adolescent narrator. Even
though I emphasize words like “piss” and “dick,”
the overall response is positive. A couple of the
attendees say they can relate to the narrator’s
plight. Some want to know what happens in the
second part since I accidentally include a page
and a half of it. I’m reworking the second part, I
explain, describing some of the potential plot
scenarios. 
 Talya reads a flash fiction story next. It’s
about an aging woman inspecting her garden in
the morning. I can easily imagine the piece in
the “Readings” section of Harper’s magazine. 
 Before we break for the day, I invite the
group to join me for dinner at the pizza place on
the square and note that the deck behind the inn
has a great view of the sunset. I’m in need of
some company. Tonia and Talya are the only
takers. 
 We are the only customers, too, so we ask the
teenage waitress holding down the fort if it’s okay
to bring our own wine into the restaurant. “I
don’t know, but I doubt anyone will be here to-
night, so I really don’t care,” she replies noncha-
lantly before returning a few minutes later with
three large Styrofoam cups. Without missing a
beat, Tonia hands me the key to her room and 
 
 
 Arkansas Review 54.1 (April 2023) 
 64 
 
 
 gives me instructions on where to find her box
of Franzia. Minutes later, I retrieve it from the
mini fridge, two short paces past a three-box
tower of cigarette cartons. I also grab a bottle of
red from my room and smuggle the stash back to
the pizza joint in my book bag.
 Tonia, Talya, and I wash down our pizza with
glassfuls of contraband, rehashing the day’s dis-
cussions and basking in the moment. 
 One Reader Writes 
 We dive into some flash fiction samples on
the following day, starting with George Saunders’
story “Sticks.” One of my favorite living writers,
Saunders captures my attention by creating ab-
surd and surrealistic settings that are navigated
by characters struggling with their humanity.
“Sticks” is about Saunders’ father’s tradition of
decorating a pole for the holidays. 
 The story inspires me to search for quotes
from Saunders while the group reviews our other
samples for the day. Saunders has a reputation
for producing quotes like this: “What I regret
most in my life are failures of kindness. Those
moments when another human being was there,
in front of me, suffering and I responded . . .
sensibly. Reservedly. Mildly.” 
 I will soon discover that this is the universe,
via Saunders, preparing me for the afternoon
session. 
 One o’clock rolls around, and I meet with
Mary for my one-on-one review session. I had de-
cided to share the first ten pages of a memoir I
began writing during the pandemic because it felt
like the most earnest writing I’ve done to date.
The book opens with a recollection of a near-fatal
night in December 2020 before shifting to the
year I spent in Bulgaria after graduating from col-
lege. Mary points out that the sections about Bul-
garia come across more naturally than the rest.
She encourages me to keep working on the ma-
terial and share the draft with her once I have
two hundred pages. 
 I leave the review session feeling optimistic
about my writing for the first time in as long as I
can remember. I’ve always considered myself
more of a reader than a writer, so the validation
gives me a boost. 
 The confidence doesn’t last long. Back in the
class, I read a couple of my poems, foolishly fol-
lowing Beth, the real poet in the room. I first
read a poem called “Old Man Winter.” At the
end of the first page, I freeze. I haven’t printed
the second page. The room is silent. Embar-
rassed, I quickly print copies of the second page,
pass them around the table, and resume my
reading. When I finish, I get an obligatory
“That’s nice” from someone before the others
start lobbing questions and comments my way. 
 “What do you mean by ‘latent snow’?” one
woman asks. 
 “I was thinking of the dormant quality of a
pending snowstorm,” I argue. “You know, when
you can feel it coming? The expectancy. The
nearness.” 
 “Maybe you should change this to a flash
fiction piece,” another recommends. 
 “Yeah, I can see that” is my lame reply. 
 “Do you really need the adjective ‘dusty’ to
describe the smell of radiator heat or ‘musty’ for
the warmth of an afghan?” the instructor asks. 
 “Well, younger readers might not have a clue
what radiators smell like and might not even
know what an afghan is.” It was a weak defense,
but it makes sense to me. 
 The next poem I read is about my daughter—
her search for knowledge and answers and my
fear of losing her too soon to a cruel world. I
choke up as I read a stanza about wanting to
shield her from pain as she grows increasingly
distant. “But you’re leaving me at thirteen,” I
read. “/ Too soon, it seems, / To fully protect you
or to fully grieve.” 
 The tears flow without warning. My strained
relationship with my daughter has been lingering
in the back of my mind for months now, and I’m
finally processing it. I apologize and explain it’s
the first time I’ve read the poem aloud. The
others smile as I finish the piece. My pathetic
display is met with positive reception, and for the
first time all week, I’m glad to be here. 
 That evening, after a catfish dinner with the 
 
 
 Arkansas Review 54.1 (April 2023) 
 65 
 
 
 group, I let myself decompress. In a sense, I’ve
accomplished something I wasn’t expecting—I’ve
held out my writing as a mirror image of myself,
reflecting deeply seated thoughts and beliefs for
others to see, while discovering another vision of
who I’ve become and who I want to be.
 The End of Something 
 Boobs. That’s the topic that provides some
much-needed levity during Friday’s discussion.
It’s inspired by the reading of Lucille Clifton’s
poem, “homage to my hips.” The attendees
wonder if any poets have written about boobs in
the same way, prompting Charlotte to search the
web. She comes across a book about Asian
breasts. I jokingly tell her to proceed with
caution. Scrolling down a webpage, she gasps,
“Oh, my!” and we all start laughing. 
 The conversation takes a more serious tone
when we discuss the story “Envy” by Kathryn
Chetkovich. It’s about her relationship with Jo-
nathan Franzen, and her jealousy over his suc-
cess. She doesn’t mention him by name in the
story, but everyone looks it up. 
 It’s an appropriate choice for one of our final
readings during the retreat. Envy could be con-
sidered a central theme of Hemingway’s work.
His characters envy bullfighters, wild game
hunters, other men’s women. To an extent, Hem-
ingway envied the writers in Paris who helped
him get recognized for fiction: Sherwood Ander-
son, Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, and F. Scott
Fitzgerald. Some of those writers ultimately en-
vied him in return—or, at least, Fitzgerald did if
Hemingway’s own egotistical account in A
Movable Feast is any indication. 
 I’m certainly envious of the other writers in
the group who appear confident and at ease with
their writing, something I had hoped to achieve
by attending the retreat. 
 As the final day progresses, Talya shares a
story about the deterioration of her long-vacant
high school and the disappearance of time. We
take turns sharing memories of our old schools,
enchanted by nostalgia. 
 Karen captures our attention with a trave-
logue about visiting Key West during the Cuban
Missile Crisis in 1962. We all want to hear more
about the mermaids of Weeki Wachee and
Karen’s mother’s nucleomituphobia (a term that’s
new to all of us). I don’t think to ask Karen if she
knew about Hemingway when she was a little girl
traveling through his former place of residence a
year and a half after he blew his brains out in
Idaho. And what would the author have made of
the Bay of Pigs and the missile crisis? Hemingway
didn’t have much interest in Castro and Guevara
or their fight against Batista. He just wanted to
fish and drink and salvage his reputation as a
writer with The Old Man and the Sea. 
 The reading that most intrigues me is a final
poem from Beth called Trail. She asks us to con-
sider two possible endings. I opt for the first ver-
sion but think she should stop short with the
lines: “Listen to the bell ring. / It does not have
to be / the devil declaring / he’s come to call
again.” 
 I recognize it as a nod to Hawthorne’s
“Young Goodman Brown,” but I don’t probe
Beth about the allusion, and I gloss over the pos-
sible connection to For Whom the Bells Tolls. It’s
only after the retreat that I review the ending of
Hemingway’s highly regarded novel. The book
ends with the main character, Robert Jordan,
lying in a forest with a broken leg as he prepares
to blow up a bridge to thwart the enemy’s ad-
vance. Jordan faces a dilemma: He can carry out
the mission and wait for the enemy to find him
and kill him while his fellow soldiers escape, or
he can try to flee with his comrades and possibly
live out his days with his lover, Maria. He chooses
to stay, the smell of the pine needles on the forest
floor flooding him with nostalgia. 
 The novel reminds us of nature’s maxim: All
things must come to an end; we are simply part
of the cycle. Life can seem futile, but does it re-
main so if we get to choose how to live it? 
 I came to the retreat with a sense of dread. I
thought I would be bored, that I wouldn’t have
anything in common with the attendees. I would
realize my efforts to write were hopeless, and it
would drive me deeper into the depression that 
 
 
 Arkansas Review 54.1 (April 2023) 
 66 
 
 
 
 
have haunted me for years.
 Instead, I left the retreat with a sense of pur-
pose. Impressed with the insight of my fellow
writers and their confidence to examine mem-
ories both beautiful and hideous. I want that. I
don’t want to succumb to despair and cut my life
short like Hemingway. 
 The devil might very well come calling again,
but hopefully I’ll be too busy writing to pay him
any attention. 
 
 Delta Sources and Resources 
 
 The Hemingway-Pfeiffer Summer Writer’s Retreat Hemingway-Pfeiffer Museum and Educational Center Piggott, Arkansas by Marcus Charles Tribbett 
 
 
 Hemingway-Pfeiffer House. 
Photo courtesy of Damon Guinn. 
 Hosted annually since 2002 (as 2021 at-
tendee Damon Guinn notes in his essay in this
issue), the Summer Writer’s Retreat at the Hem-
ingway-Pfeiffer Museum in Piggot, Arkansas, has
attracted a wealth of talent for decades—both
among participants and teachers. Recent past
writers-in-residence have included Matt Gal-
lagher, author of two novels and a collection of
short fiction; Mary Miller, who has two novels
and two short story-collections; Hugh Martin
with three book credits; C.D. Albin, journal ed-
itor, poet, and short story author; and Pat Carr
with sixteen published books. 
 An interactive experience for aspiring and
published writers alike, the retreat strives to be a
place where the craft of writing is sharpened, cre-
ativity is strengthened, and camaraderie and
friendships are fostered. The teachers have dec-
ades of experience among them as creative writ-
ing instructors and workshop leaders. 
 This year’s writer-in-residence is Matthew
Pitt, Associate Professor of Creative Writing at
Texas Christian University. Pitt has worked in tel-
evision and as an editor, has published two short-
story collections, These Are Our Demands and
Attention Please Now, with a third underway and
a forthcoming novella, The Be-Everything Brothers. 
 Additional information about the retreat,
held this year from June 19th to the 23rd, and a
downloadable registration form can be found on
the museum’s website at hemingway.astate.edu.
As the site notes, “participants come from all
backgrounds and experience levels.” Seize your
chance to be mentored and work in a construc-
tive and collaborative atmosphere in a beautiful,
historic setting. Registration fee is $325. 
 
 
 Inside Hemingway’s Barn Studio. 
Photo courtesy of Damon Guinn. 
 
 
 Arkansas Review 54.1 (April 2023) 
 67

Refuge
by Kenneth Gulotta 
 
 Roberta scraped her chair across the boards
of the little back porch off the kitchen, moving
closer to her coffee cup on the table. Back at the
old house she would have had a nice ceramic ash-
tray, something green and leaf-shaped, maybe, for
the outdoors feel, just something small for her
morning cigarette. But not here: no ashtray, be-
cause no morning cigarette. That was one of the
first things they put an end to when they moved
her in here with them, her grandson Paulie and
that wife of his, Robin. Paulie kept making jokes
about her getting along with Robin because their
names were so similar. Like three letters were
enough for two grown women to talk about. 
 They had moved her to this place and sold
her old house out from under her—sold it and
used the money to buy the new wood paneling
and carpets and plumbing and what-have-you to
fix up their house. They did let her have the
bigger bedroom, but she knew, just knew they
were making plans for it after she died. She knew
they were doing that—thinking about their To Do
list for the day after. 
 Roberta picked up her coffee cup, took a sip,
and winced: she had left it sitting there too long,
and it wasn’t coffee anymore. It was whatever cof-
fee turned into after it stopped being hot. Dead
coffee, maybe. 
 The screen door yawned open, its spring pro-
testing. 
 “Getting you some sun, Grandma?” Paulie
asked. 
 “A tolerable amount,” Roberta said. “Not
too much. People with sense step out in the
morning when it’s easy.” 
 “I know, Grandma. That’s how you always
liked to do.” 
 “Stay out in the hot sun too long, without a
hat or nothing, and you’ll fall out. And you two,
with your beach tans, you’re just crazy. Look like
you’re farmers, but you don’t even grow any-
thing.” 
 “Well, it’s just the style these days, I suppose.
Anyway, I’m heading off to get boards for the
windows. I get back, and put them up, and then
we’ll be hitting the road.” 
 “Never had to evacuate from my house.” 
 “Yeah, but down this way, we’ve got to ske-
daddle for anything category two or up.” 
 “Don’t know why you’d move down here,
then.” 
 “You know why. You know. We’ve gone—for
my work. I’ve got to be in New Orleans for
work.” 
 “Oh, stores can be anywhere.” 
 “Stores can be. That’s true. But galleries
can’t—they’ve got to be where people who buy art
will be.” 
 “Art. Nobody painted it. They’re just camera
pictures.” 
 “I’m going, Grandma. We’ll be leaving in
two, three hours.” 
 The screen door hung for a moment, inched
a bit, and then plunged, slamming against the
jamb. Thumps sounded and faded as Paulie
walked through rooms. The house took a breath
as the front door opened and huffed some air
back out as it slammed. 
 Then the screen door creaked, creeping
open. Robin came slowly into view, pressing a
hand against her lower back. She stepped a foot
or two outside, holding the door open with her
free hand. 
 “Grandma, I thought you were looking for-
ward to this,” she said. “To spending some time
with Carl, in his house, I mean.” 
 
 
 Arkansas Review 54.1 (April 2023) 
 36 
 
 
 Grandma.
 “I am looking forward to going to Carl’s
house. But I can’t say it makes sense to have to
pick up and leave your house every time it’s a
threat of rain.” 
 “I just—I wish you would take it easier on
Paul. About his work and all.” 
 “Missy, I’ve known him a lot longer than
you, and it’ll be a cold day when I have to hold
my breath around him. So you’ll just have to live
with it. Just like I do with all the . . . improvements
you’ve made around here.” 
 The screen door trembled in the sunlight. 
 “You better shut that,” Roberta said, “before
you let all the skeeters in.” 
 “There aren’t—it’s—” 
 The girl shook her head and shuffled right
back in, the screen door letting out a series of lit-
tle creaks as it dipped slowly shut behind her. 
 Roberta turned her chair an inch or two to
the left, away from the little table with her cold
coffee. Across the street, at the house one corner
over, a woman moved about on a high porch,
bringing potted plants inside one by one. A sta-
tion wagon stopped in front of the house, and a
bald-headed man stepped out. He stood with one
foot on the road and the other inside the still-
running car. 
 “Miss Emily, how you doing?” he called. 
 The woman on the porch peered at the street
under her hand. “Who’s that? Oh, Peter. I had a
real fun time at that party.” 
 “Did you have a good time at the party?
What are you up to?” 
 “I did. I had a real good time. I’m just getting
ready for the hurricane.” 
 “You getting ready for the storm?” 
 Roberta levered herself up from her chair.
“Good God,” she muttered as she limped to the
door to go inside. Across the street, the woman
was calling, “I am. I’m getting my plants in before
the weather hits.” 
 “Going to stretch out a bit,” Roberta grunted
as she passed Robin, who was sitting on the sofa
watching the weather station. 
 She slid her right foot against the polished
wood floor with each step to her bedroom, refus-
ing to wince at the creaking and twinging of her
right knee. Years back, when she was twenty-two,
so . . . fifty-six years back, her son Jimmy, Paulie
and Carl’s father, started screaming in the back
yard like he was dying, and she ran to the back
door and leapt down the steps and the knee just
popped and crunched as she went down. It was
never the same. After a time it strengthened
enough that she didn’t have to limp, though it
sometimes let out a single pop, like a knot of
pinewood exploding in a bonfire, which her left
knee never did. Now, though, she seemed to have
crossed over some hill in the healing process, and
her knee was returning to its former state: each
day she limped a bit more; each day it took her a
bit longer to make sure that her leg would sup-
port her after she woke in the morning. 
 And after all that, Jimmy’s screaming had
turned out to be part of some fit because he had
buried some marbles and forgotten where. Play-
ing treasure hunt and then crying over it. 
 She made her way to the bed and lay on her
back. The morning sun fell through one of the
bedroom windows in a cluster of slanted, defec-
tive squares across the bottom half of her bed.
Her knee lay under the patches of light; it
warmed slowly as they crept across it. 
 She watched the ceiling for a while, and then
she closed her eyes. The television mumbled
about storm tracks and wind speeds through the
closed bedroom door. A door slammed outside,
and a few minutes later there were bangs and
grinding on the other side of the house. 
 She breathed more slowly. She imagined the
sunlight moving like molasses over her knee,
dripping down the bed and across the floor.
Then, with two muted, casual cracks, the joints
of her leg seemed to release and let the blood
flow through, bringing pinpricks to the sole of
her foot. 
 The light disappeared with a thud. She
opened her eyes and dimly saw the plywood ac-
ross the window. The wood scuffed from side to
side, and then the grinding, louder now, began
again, as Paulie, outside, drove the screws to hold 
 
 
 Arkansas Review 54.1 (April 2023) 
 37 
 
 
 the board in place.
 “House looks the same,” she said to Carl as
he closed the front door. 
 “Yeah, well, I haven’t been doing any remod-
eling, like these two,” he said. He tugged on the
doorknob as he twisted the deadbolt key. “How’s
it coming over there, anyway?” he asked as he
turned into the living room. 
 “Pretty much done,” Paulie said. “You’ll have
to come down and see it soon.” 
 “Well, if I can get away. And it’d have to be
during the daylight. I don’t like going down there
at night. Just the other night in the news they
were talking about those carjackings down
there?” 
 “Come on, Carl, it’s safe. You know it is.
Long as you lock your doors. It’s just like any
other place—you just have to use your basic
sense.” 
 “Well, I don’t know.” He sat in an easy chair
next to the sofa; the vinyl cushions hissed. 
 “I wouldn’t bother coming right over, any-
way,” Roberta snorted. “They always got some-
thing else they want to do to that house—you’re
liable to come and see it, and then it’ll just be dif-
ferent a week later and you’ll have to come
again.” 
 Robin put her hand on Paulie’s, lacing her
fingers through his and digging them into the
top of his leg. 
 “Y’all made good time,” Carl said. “I was
sure it’d take you till midnight to get here.” 
 “It would have, but Paul knows all the alter-
nate routes,” Robin said. “All the back roads and
side streets and everything. From when he
worked for the antique store.” 
 “Which makes a better living?” Carl asked.
“Are you making more running that gallery than
you did for the antique shop?” 
 “Usually, yes,” Paulie said. “It just depends
on business. I was driving for the antique store,
so I didn’t make much money, but it was always
the same amount. At the gallery, my pay can go
up and down depending on how many prints I
sell and what kind of commission I’m getting
and so forth.” 
 “It’s that old story—you can go for the steady
money or you can take a risk and maybe get you
a bigger payday.” 
 “What I don’t know,” Roberta said, “is how
either of those places make any money. One
place they’re just selling other people’s old junk.
The other they’re selling snapshot pictures. I
mean, I had a houseful of old furniture, and I
can snap a Polaroid. Seems like I should be rich.” 
 They all stared at the spaces before them.
Robin’s hand tightened slightly over Paulie’s. 
 “Anyway,” Carl said. “Let me get you folks
settled in your places for the night.” 
 The power went out, and branches scrab-
bled as the wind whipped through the trees, but
otherwise the night seemed as quiet as any other. 
 “This far back from the city,” Carl said—he
called the four-stoplight town six miles from his
house a city—“a night like this can actually be
kind of pleasant. The wind takes some of the
heat off, and we’re far enough up from the creek
we don’t have to worry about the water. As long
as you stay out from under big tree limbs—which
side of the shed did you park on?” 
 “This side,” Paulie said. 
 “Well, then, we’re all okay, then. All we got
to do is wait for the power to come back on.” 
 So they settled into their various beds, lying
on top of the sheets in the warmish but not un-
bearable air—Carl had run the air conditioner at
sixty for the last two hours before the power went
out—and they all ended up sleeping through the
night, waking to the clear skies and light breezes
that follow hurricanes, as if the storms scrub the
paths they lumber through. 
 “That didn’t seem like nothing at all,” Rob-
erta said at the breakfast table. “Seems like we
could’ve set still.” 
 “Up here is one thing,” Carl said. “Could’ve
been a lot worse down there, down in that New
Orleans bowl.” 
 “You got a radio?” Robin asked. 
 “Forgot to buy batteries,” Carl said. 
 “When we finish eating, I’ll go turn on the
car radio,” Paulie said. 
 
 
 Arkansas Review 54.1 (April 2023) 
 38 
 
 
 “We may as well load up and head on,” Rob-
erta said. “Listen to the radio on the way back.”
 “What’s the hurry?” Paulie asked. “You’ve
been saying for months you wanted to visit Carl.” 
 “Yeah, Grandma, you sick of me already?”
Carl asked. 
 “I just don’t want us to overstay our wel-
come, is all.” 
 “Anyway, it doesn’t make sense to load up
yet,” Paulie said. “Let me listen to the radio and
make sure the roads are open first.” 
 They chewed the pastries that Paulie had
bought on the way out of the city the afternoon
before—two jelly doughnuts for Roberta and
chocolate croissants for everyone else. The
kitchen door rattled as someone rapped on the
other side of it. 
 “Tell whoever that is to knock softer,” Rob-
erta said. “My heart pretty near stopped.” 
 Carl got up and peeked through the window
over the sink. “It’s just Chick,” he said. “He
didn’t mean nothing—that’s just how he knocks.”
He went to the door and opened it. A roundish
man with a brown beard stood on the other side. 
 “Y'all know about the road?” he asked. 
 “Which road?” Carl asked. “You mean our
road to the big road?” 
 “Yep. Blocked. Trees’re in it—damn near the
whole woods, looks like. Tornadoes, they saying,
Bull and Pearl and them. We’re trapped. Every-
body’s meeting up there where it starts, just a
hundred feet or so up.” 
 Carl turned back to the table. “Paulie, you
better come on with me so we can see what this
old guy is talking about.” 
 Paulie got up and walked to the door. 
 “Have you heard anything about the rest of
the roads?” he asked as he and Carl stepped out-
side. “Back to New Orleans?” 
 “New Orleans is gone, man,” Chick said as
Carl closed the door. As the three men walked
away, his voice came faintly through the kitchen
window. “They’re saying it’s completely under
water, or washed away. Saying different things.
No one’s going back, anyhow.” 
 Gravel crunched softly into silence. Roberta
wiped some jelly from her lips. Robin looked at
her and then looked away. She pressed a hand
against her swollen stomach and shifted slightly
in her chair. 
 “Man’s real name is Chick—that’s what he
said, anyway,” Paulie said. “And get this—his best
friend is named Bull.” 
 “Now that can’t be his real name,” Robin
said. 
 “That I do not know. I didn’t ask him.” 
 Paulie was back at the kitchen table with
Robin and Roberta, telling them about the
people he’d met that morning, some of Carl’s
neighbors who had gathered to talk about the
blocked road. Carl was still out there with them. 
 “There’s more,” Paulie said. “These two guys
have dogs—I mean, each one has a dog—and guess
what they named their dogs.” He waited while
Robin lifted an eyebrow, and then he chortled,
“Bull and Chick!” 
 “Wait . . . they named their dogs with their
own names?” 
 “Yep.” He swiped at the sweat on his fore-
head, leaving a streak of dirt just below his hair-
line. He got up and pulled a paper towel from
the roll on the kitchen counter and mopped at
his face. “Uhh,” he grunted, wadding the paper
towel. He looked around, found the trashcan,
and pitched the wet lump at it. Then he bent
over the sink to open the kitchen window. “Cold
air is all gone,” he said. “We may as well start
opening these to get some breeze, at least.” 
 “Are you rhyming on purpose?” Robin asked. 
 “No. Was I? I’m worn out.” He sat back
down at the table. 
 “So which dog belongs to who?” Robin
asked. “Whom, I mean.” 
 “What?” 
 “I mean, did Bull name his dog Bull and
Chick name his dog Chick, or did Bull name his
dog Chick and Chick name his dog Bull?” 
 “I don’t know. It didn’t come up.” 
 “Because that seems like a big difference.
Either they’re full of themselves or they truly are
the best friends ever. I mean, maybe they’re 
 
 
 Arkansas Review 54.1 (April 2023) 
 39 
 
 
 more—maybe we’re talking about something else
here.”
 Paulie and Robin laughed. 
 “This is all so interesting,” Roberta said.
“But what I want to know is what’s being done
to clear the road.” 
 “Well, Grandma, we spent most of the
morning digging, but we didn’t make much
headway with crowbars and chainsaws.” He
turned to Robin. “Chick, at one point, he had
me use a crowbar as a lever to lift a tree and get
a block under it, so could get at it with the chain-
saw, and afterward the crowbar was bent.” 
 “So you just came on in while your brother
stayed out there working?” Roberta sneered. “Just
like always—old Carl sticks with the hard work
while Paulie hightails it inside.” 
 Paulie turned and looked at her for a mo-
ment. Then he said: 
 “Let me ask you something, Grandma. Why
am I always Paulie, but he’s Carl? You know I
want to be called Paul. Why isn’t Carl ever Car-
lie?” 
 “Oh, you’ve always been Paulie,” she said.
“And Carlie isn’t a man’s name, even. It’s no
name at all!” 
 “What about Carly Simon?” Robin asked.
“That’s someone named Carly.” 
 “A woman, though, right?” 
 “Yes.” 
 “So. So that’s why.” 
 “It doesn’t matter,” Paul said. “What matters
is I want to be called Paul. I’ve been wanting to
be called Paul since I was thirteen, but you’ve al-
ways just refused. I would think you could just
call me by my real name when that’s what I
want.” 
 She didn’t speak. 
 “Anyway, Grandma, Carl isn’t still out there
working. He and his friends are having beers on
Chick’s porch, and I came back here instead to
check on you two.” He turned again to Robin. “I
told them there was no way we were digging our-
selves out of here, not with the tools we’ve got. I
started climbing through, and the fallen trees
were so thick I couldn’t even make it. I just hope
I didn’t get into any poison ivy or anything. But
I bet I didn’t even make it a tenth of the way
through. Who knows? I maybe did hear engines,
though, just at one point. So I think the town,
the municipal workers or whatever, must be dig-
ging us out. The others say there’s no way the
town would have anyone out here, down this
back road, this quick, but, I don’t know, someone
was moving stuff out there.” 
 “What about home?” Robin asked. Then,
she said in a lower voice: “Was there any more
about how bad it is? Like, word on which neigh-
borhoods got it the worst?” 
 He shook his head. “They’re saying all kinds
of things. I think we just have to wait until we
can get out somewhere we can get some real
news, some real information, before we let our-
selves get worked up about anything.” He glanced
over at Roberta, and then he looked back at
Robin. “I didn’t feel much like hanging out with
those guys for beers. One of them—young guy,
too, this—started going on about”—he altered his
voice, injecting a twang into it, and crooked the
index and middle fingers of both his hands into
mid-air quotation marks—“jigaboos in the city
going around looting everybody’s houses.” 
 “Really?” Robin scoffed. “Psh.” 
 “Well, maybe they are!” Roberta glowered.
“Maybe there are looters down there right now
in that city, just doing whatever they want—wha-
tever they’re always wanting to do.” She jabbed a
finger at Paulie. “This is what you’ve done. You
moved down into that city and you brung me
with you. I would’ve been happy still in my own
house, but you went and sold it away, and you
used that money for your own place, and your
own place probably just got washed away!” 
 “Enough!” Robin shouted, slapping the
table. “Just stop it! Stop acting like we stole from
you and forced you into something.” She shook
her head. “You asked to move in with us. You
begged us. And your house was barely standing.
There were rats in the walls—they were rotting,
the walls were rotting and the roof, the inspector
said, the roof was about to collapse in four
places.” She waved her hands above her head at 
 
 
 Arkansas Review 54.1 (April 2023) 
 40 
 
 
 collapsing bits of roof. “You had to sell! And we
didn’t take your money from you! You offered us
some money for renovations so we could give you
your own room and bathroom. The rest of your
money is in your bank account. We haven’t
touched a penny of it, and we won’t, either!” She
dropped her hands back to the table and pressed
them together. Paulie placed one of his hands on
top of both of hers.
 “I don’t have to just take getting yelled at,”
Roberta said, shoving her chair back from the
table. “Not from my grandson’s wife, I don’t!”
She pressed down on the tabletop, hauling her-
self up. “I’m going to find Carl and see what he
has to say about the road getting cleared.” 
 She walked to the door, her knee ratcheting.
She went out, leaving the door open behind her,
and walked up the driveway. Her knee made less
noise with each step; by the time she was on the
dirt-and-gravel road, it was quiet and seemed to
be back in some kind of working order. 
 She trudged around the bend in the road
and came upon the wall of fallen trees. Chick
had been right: it seemed like the whole forest
was there, pressed all together in one clotted tan-
gle. The strange thing was, the rest of the forest
was still there. There was a forest’s worth of trees
where the road had been, but they didn’t seem
to have come from anywhere else in the forest—
the standing trees looked just as thick as when
they had driven past them the evening before. 
 She heard voices and laughter off to the
right. She peered into the trees and bushes and
saw another driveway going down from the dirt
road. Carl's snorting laughter rose. The leaves
seemed to shake with it. She could walk down
that driveway, probably, and find him and his
friends. 
 She looked around; there was a sawed-off sec-
tion of log on the side of the road, standing up-
right—someone had been using it as a stool, most
likely. She trudged over to it and sat down. 
 She looked at the wall of fallen trees, won-
dering what would happen. Who was right? Was
that grumbling in the ground the township dig-
ging them out, like Paulie (Paul) thought? Or
were Carl’s friends right? Would they have to dig
their way out on their own, over days, weeks, or
months, living in the meantime like pioneers
back in this sopping little valley, no electricity,
catching fish and drinking creek water? Living
worse than pioneers, probably, because she
doubted any of them had any pioneer know-how.
Is that what was going to happen? Was she going
to die out here in circumstances more pathetic
than those of an old pioneer woman? 
 The grumbling in the ground grew louder
and became coughing and snarling in the air.
Cracks and pops began echoing in the trees. The
coughing settled into a roaring that rose and fell,
again and again, until the branches at the edge
of the wall of fallen trees trembled and parted. A
log spun slowly backward, and a pair of black
metal beams pushed through the opening, fol-
lowed by a set of orange metal boxes. 
 Some sort of backhoe worked its way
through the trees and pushed into the clear por-
tion of the road. A boy with blond hair was driv-
ing the machine. He couldn’t have been older
than twelve or thirteen. He looked around and
saw Roberta, and then he reached down and
turned the machine off. 
 “Do you work for the town, young man?” she
called to him. 
 “No, ma’am,” he responded. “My grandpa
and my cousins and I are trying to dig as many
people as we can out today. Lots of these dirt
roads have got trees down, but this is the worst,
seems like.” He thumped the machine’s side with
his heel. “This here’s my grampa’s Kubota.” He
glanced at her again, and then he twisted around,
looking for other people. “Do you live back on
this road, ma’am? I’m sorry, I guess I don’t rec-
ognize you. Do you need help back to your house
or something?” 
 “No,” she said. She bent forward to push up
from the section of log, but then she let herself
fall the few inches back onto it. It had been sawed
unevenly, and a ridge near the edge dug through
her dress, gnawing at the underside of her leg.
“No,” she said again. “I don’t live back here. I
don’t live anyplace at all.” 
 
 
 Arkansas Review 54.1 (April 2023) 
 41

Delta Sources and Resources
have haunted me for years.
 Instead, I left the retreat with a sense of pur-
pose. Impressed with the insight of my fellow
writers and their confidence to examine mem-
ories both beautiful and hideous. I want that. I
don’t want to succumb to despair and cut my life
short like Hemingway. 
 The devil might very well come calling again,
but hopefully I’ll be too busy writing to pay him
any attention. 
 
 Delta Sources and Resources 
 
 The Hemingway-Pfeiffer Summer Writer’s Retreat Hemingway-Pfeiffer Museum and Educational Center Piggott, Arkansas by Marcus Charles Tribbett 
 
 
 Hemingway-Pfeiffer House. 
Photo courtesy of Damon Guinn. 
 Hosted annually since 2002 (as 2021 at-
tendee Damon Guinn notes in his essay in this
issue), the Summer Writer’s Retreat at the Hem-
ingway-Pfeiffer Museum in Piggot, Arkansas, has
attracted a wealth of talent for decades—both
among participants and teachers. Recent past
writers-in-residence have included Matt Gal-
lagher, author of two novels and a collection of
short fiction; Mary Miller, who has two novels
and two short story-collections; Hugh Martin
with three book credits; C.D. Albin, journal ed-
itor, poet, and short story author; and Pat Carr
with sixteen published books. 
 An interactive experience for aspiring and
published writers alike, the retreat strives to be a
place where the craft of writing is sharpened, cre-
ativity is strengthened, and camaraderie and
friendships are fostered. The teachers have dec-
ades of experience among them as creative writ-
ing instructors and workshop leaders. 
 This year’s writer-in-residence is Matthew
Pitt, Associate Professor of Creative Writing at
Texas Christian University. Pitt has worked in tel-
evision and as an editor, has published two short-
story collections, These Are Our Demands and
Attention Please Now, with a third underway and
a forthcoming novella, The Be-Everything Brothers. 
 Additional information about the retreat,
held this year from June 19th to the 23rd, and a
downloadable registration form can be found on
the museum’s website at hemingway.astate.edu.
As the site notes, “participants come from all
backgrounds and experience levels.” Seize your
chance to be mentored and work in a construc-
tive and collaborative atmosphere in a beautiful,
historic setting. Registration fee is $325. 
 
 
 Inside Hemingway’s Barn Studio. 
Photo courtesy of Damon Guinn. 
 
 
 Arkansas Review 54.1 (April 2023) 
 67

We Lost Bill Harrison
by M J Melneck 
 
I left Missoula and drove into Fayetteville on
Labor Day weekend, 1969, in a 1956 Ford Crown
Victoria that I’d bought from Jim Crumley for
$325 that I didn’t have. Pretty much everything
I owned fit in the car, including my wide carriage
Olympia SM-9, a wad of bad poetry and a couple
of mediocre short stories. I had that, and a dog
(Spanky Benchmark) in Montana. Bill had Mer-
lee, three kids, two golden retrievers, The Theolo-
gian and In a Wild Sanctuary.
 The workshops began, and the first thing I
learned from Bill was that there are only eight
colors in the Crayola box, “And f*%$#ng ‘Burnt
Sienna’ isn’t one of them,” he said one after-
noon. I don’t remember who tried to use that
color; I was just glad it wasn’t me. We were “al-
lowed” two adjectives per fifty pages. Nouns and
verbs, verbs and nouns. “Understatement is the
particularization of art.” The workshops went on;
we newbies took and taught Faulkner Grammar,
staying only a couple of pages ahead of the stu-
dents. At a gathering one night Paul Williams’s
wife complained to Bill that Paul wanted to write
fifteen hours a week. Bill looked her in the eye
and said, “Dina, I erase fifteen hours a week.” 
 My assistantship paid $144 a month, and
September’s $75 rent degraded to my one-fourth
part of a cinderblock hovel down the hill from
the student union—$30. I was miserable, took In-
completes, and drove back to Montana without
looking in the rear-view mirror because I knew
too well what I’d left behind. 
 Bill published Lessons in Paradise in ’71, the
Rollerball book of stories in ’75, and in the
summer of ’76 I got married while Bill published
Africana. The first paragraphs of that novel are
still, to me, one of the greatest “Oh, shit, here it 
 
 
 Bill Harrison. 
Photograph courtesy of the author. 
 comes” openings I’ve ever known. I fell in love
with Val too, but of course she was too beautiful
for ordinary men. I had a finished manuscript of
my own Old Music, though it would take three
agents and twenty plus years to get it published.
I sent Bill fifty or so pages and he invited Pat and
me to come back to finish my MFA. Hello, Fay-
etteville, 1978. Make up the Incompletes, teach,
write, adopt three Special Needs kids, and watch
Bill put out Savannah Blue, then Burton and Speke.
In the midst of that came A Shining Season, for
which he won a prize. I took the MFA in two
years, got a three-year no-tenure teaching gig,
then went to work for President Martin as Direc-
tor of University Information. Bill was writing
Three Hunters. 
 I did this; Bill published The Buddha in Mal-
ibu. I did that; Bill gave us The Blood Latitudes. I 
 
 
 Arkansas Review 54.1 (April 2023) 
 23 
 
 
 
 
 
 Members of the University of Arkansas Creative Writing
program: (front row) Bill Harrison, Carolyn Forche, and
Jim Whitehead; (back row) Miller Williams and John
Clellon Holmes.
Photograph courtesy of the Pryor Center for Arkansas
Oral and Visual History, University of Arkansas. 
 had a “necktie life.” Bill gave us Texas Heat, and
Black August, the Rollerball and Mountains of the
Moon scripts. 
 You’ll notice that the constant in these past
decades—isn’t me. It’s Bill Harrison. The writer.
The guy who got it done. Again and again. He
told us one day, in a workshop that hadn’t gone
all that well, “You people don’t want to write—
you want to have written.” The gap is something
like the distance between the near side of this
Universe, and the far side of another one. Bill
knew the gap like none of us could, then or per-
haps now. 
 Bill made me—makes me—a better writer, per-
haps more by inspiration than by instruction.
And if there’s a better angel somewhere inside
me, Bill still makes me trust it and leaves me a
great deal to strive toward. Our visits grew farther
apart, as did our phone calls, but I’ve known no
stronger bond. I lost it the day he told me he was
“losing” nouns. 
 Bill Harrison changed me, quite for the
better. And if he hasn’t changed you, you aren’t
paying attention. Bill’s beacon will shine for me
all of my own days, and if I can pay it forward as
he did so beautifully, long past my time. Because
of Bill Harrison I am blessed far beyond my de-
serving. 
 Rest, my friend—you will always be much
loved. 
 
 
 
Bill Harrison in Africa 
Photograph courtesy of the Pryor Center for Arkan-
sas Oral and Visual History, University of Arkansas. 
 
 
 Arkansas Review 54.1 (April 2023) 
 24

Abecedarian for a Hometown Tornado
by Andrew Alexander Mobbs 
 
 Cabot, Arkansas, March 29, 1976, 3:18 PM 
 A ntagonized by charcoal skies, townsfolk 
bowed their heads in prayer, beelined for Polaroid 
cameras to document southern springtime 
destruction bleeding out in the electric air. 
Elementary schoolkids curled under wooden desks, 
fearful of the sky tearing its seams, sirens 
going off at the drop of a drugstore dime, 
hallways left hollow in metallic hiss and creak. 
I imagine my parents, twenty-something and 
just out of college, exchange a fleeting 
kiss goodbye before dad got in his gold Nova, 
lead foot gunning for his folks’ during 
midday darkness, drifting in brick-splitting wind. 
Not much back then but your family farms, 
open land to gobble and shred, those five 
poor souls laid flat beneath white sheets in the 
quiet aftermath of pine sap sizzling. 
Remember, just weeks before, several 
science teachers at the local schools had 
taught lessons on twisters—how spiraling 
updrafts and downdrafts can waltz inside 
violent velocities of daggered rain. How 
when the storm cellars finally open up to a 
xanthic haze of debris, each living throat 
yells out their drawled grief, a soft 
zephyr spreads the scent of honeysuckle. 
 
 
 Arkansas Review 54.1 (April 2023) 
 59

“A Tainted House of Prayer”:   Artist V. L. Cox on White Supremacy, Southern Culture, and Her Persisting Love of the Delta
by Guy Lancaster 
 V. L. Cox was born in Shreveport in 1962 but
grew up in Arkadelphia. After working in marketing
and advertising after college, she devoted herself to her
art in 1997 and has not looked back. Her most well-
known work is the “End Hate” installation, produced
in response to a 2015 bill before the Arkansas Legisla-
ture that would have permitted discrimination against
members of the LGBTQ community by reference to re-
ligious beliefs. The installation consisted of differently
colored doors with labels on them such as “Colored
Only” and “Whites Only” and “Veterans Only.” The
last door in the series, labeled “Human Beings,” was
wrapped in chains. Her work has since been featured
twice at the Rosa Parks Museum in Montgomery, Al-
abama, and at the Delta Cultural Center in Helena-
West Helena, Arkansas, as well as the Virginia
Holocaust Museum in Richmond and the LGBT
Center in New York. Most recently, her work was on
display at the Annex Gallery at the Pendleton Art
Center in Cincinnati, Ohio. Being a radical lesbian
artist whose work touches upon the history of Jim Crow
has made V. L. Cox the target of much ire in Arkansas,
from both conservatives and progressives alike. In 2021,
she relocated to Peekskill, New York, where she has had
greater opportunities to be herself and to connect with
the larger art world, even if the barbecue up there is
terrible and the fried catfish nonexistent.
 The interview occurred over a shared electronic
document during November and December 2022 and
has been lightly edited, with occasional editorial inser-
tions placed in brackets. 
 Guy Lancaster: I grew up in eastern Arkan- 
 
 
 V. L. Cox with self-portait Escape Velocity. 
Photograph courtesy of V.L. Cox 
 sas, amid the flat land of the Delta, and as a con-
sequence I was always fascinated by places that
possessed “actual geography,” hills and whatnot.
But you grew up in the hilly country around Ar-
kadelphia. What attraction does the Delta have
for you? 
 V. L. Cox: I was briefly introduced to the
Delta when I moved to Memphis, Tennessee in
the early ’80s to sow the wild oats of my youth. I 
 
 
 Arkansas Review 54.1 (April 2023) 
 3 
 
 
 had taken a break from college and followed ex-
tremely talented friends from Arkansas who were
in the Memphis Blues, a new Drum and Bugle
Corps that had formed in the historic music city
only one state away. Boy what a new world Mem-
phis was for a small-town country girl. I worked
as a waitress and bartender on historic Beale
Street before it became so commercialized and,
after long double shifts, would often sit on the
banks of the Mississippi River as the sun set and
look south across the rolling water towards a
strange, flat land that I felt I knew. A land with
black soil and a strong, silent voice that echoed
across the water beckoning me home. It wasn’t
until decades later during my Civil Rights jour-
ney that I started learning about the Elaine Mas-
sacre and the stories and history of the Delta that
we were never taught. Every time I was back in
Arkansas I began spending as much time as I
could in Helena and Elaine, and as the sun sank
low in the sky, I drove desolate, flat, farm roads
through endless tiny ghost towns whose presence
was marked only by the weathered boards of
abandoned mercantile stores or empty wooden
churches on the side of the road.
 It was during these numerous explorations
that I would stop and talk to the locals if they
looked interesting. One guy was named Moon-
pie, and after visiting with him about his life, he
politely asked if I would help him cut a tree down
on his property if I was going to stick around
long enough. Another was a store owner who
told me gruffly an inch from my face to “get out
of town before sunset or [you] could be knocked
in the head by the locals” (I backed out of that
place slowly towards the door). I always kept my
eyes out for the Arts though, which I feel has
been shunned in the Arkansas Delta and not ac-
knowledged or explored fully due to its rural lo-
cation and socioeconomic status. 
 On my last trip, I stopped to photograph an
old church that caught my eye and, while looking
down, saw a molted snakeskin laying at my feet.
I picked it up, photographed it and found it rep- 
 
 
 Cox with the molted snakeskin. 
Photograph courtesy of V.L. Cox 
 resentational of my journey. The Delta is a cal-
ling. And if you answer it, you shed your outer
self and become something entirely different.
You never leave the same person after experienc-
ing it. I still have that photo. It’s framed in my
studio to this day. 
 GL: What does the Delta do for you or to
you as an artist? Do you find that the art you pro-
duce in response to experiencing the Delta is of
a different quality or theme than your other
work? 
 VLC: The Delta has been a life changing ex-
perience for me, yet I think it goes hand in hand
as far as my Civil Rights and Social Justice work
goes. The secrets and the stories that have longed
to be told are finally beginning to surface in the
Delta. The Art World, however, can be full of it-
self at times with pretentious economic exclu-
sion, closed-door academic exclusion, and retail 
 
 
 Arkansas Review 54.1 (April 2023) 
 4 
 
 
 dollars often taking precedence over creativity,
sacrifice, and talent. I have bucked that closed
system for years much to my own demise, with
the Delta being my constant reminder of who I
really am and the simple message my work needs
to convey. Staying true to yourself through hard
work, integrity and embracing the truth, good or
bad and learning from it, is much more impor-
tant than being accepted in a clique or a club. I
am a Southern woman who has travel and an ex-
tensive group of friends and acquaintances under
her belt, but my heart remains in the South. I’ve
climbed the mountains where I was raised, I’ve
swam naked in clear mountain streams, I’ve
walked a million miles barefoot through the
woods, and I’ve slept on the ground so many
times I’ve lost count under a comforting blanket
of a thousand twinkling stars. But nothing calls
to me creatively like the Delta. The last painting
I did in Arkansas before relocating to New York
was a self-portrait standing in a Delta cottonfield,
clutching a rainbow flag with my bare chest par-
tially exposed, while looking North. It repre-
sented strength, growth, vulnerability, and a
longing for change. My Guggenheim Fellowship
proposal that year was to travel back from New
York and follow the same path Robert Kennedy
did in the 1960s, document the Delta with the
looming effects of Climate Change on the hori-
zon and highlight the ongoing struggles, resil-
iency, and creativity of the people there. I would
then create a completely new body of work based
on the photos and data in hopes of telling and
preserving the stories that remain. The proposal
was too broad for them, but inclusiveness is im-
portant to me, so broad is how I prefer to roll cre-
atively. I continue to think about this project all
the time, and I fully expect to complete it.
 GL: There’s this big region in America we
call “the South,” that draws together Delta flat-
lands, Ozark and Appalachian uplands, coastal
communities, rivertowns, the staggering wealth
of Miami and Atlanta, and the poverty of so
many other places. Do you see anything that ac-
tually unifies all of this? And if there is some re-
ality that unifies this Southern experience, does
it then still make sense to call the Delta, as it has
been popularly dubbed, “the most Southern
place on earth”? 
 VLC: Yes. Food and Art. Those two things
alone can bring about unity and world peace.
Why do you think one of the first things authori-
tarian governments try to crush is the Arts? It’s
because they know the extent of its true power.
The Arts are a different, yet universal language.
One that cuts through the constant onslaught of
blather, documents historical events and visually
crosses religious, political, and socioeconomic
boundaries with ease. Its unification and educa-
tional qualities are embraced yet feared by many,
and in all my travels I still stand by my belief that
some of the most talented people I have ever
known and some of the best art I have ever seen,
are from the South. And I have seen a lot of art.
The South is where the magical, cherished oral
history of storytelling evolves to a different level
and creatively begins to take another form. 
 The food of the South is known worldwide,
and God bless ’em, Brooklyn doesn’t know real
BBQ to save their life, but they’re trying. I have
also known of divorce proceedings being consid-
ered in the South over someone putting a cast
iron skillet in the dishwasher, and I would wager
that crime runs the full social economic spec-
trum. Art and food, especially in the South, are
what I consider the most basic, cherished tools
of survival and the secret to knowledge, unity,
and peace. The history of the rich, fertile land,
the people from old indigenous communities to
now, the deadly, hidden secrets of the past that
have long needed to surface so they can begin to
heal, the mysterious beauty of the swamps, the
life-giving rivers, the incredible home-grown food,
the art, the relentless blistering heat, the beauti-
ful sunsets and the sounds of the cicada at dusk
singing their ancestral song as they welcome the 
 
 
 Arkansas Review 54.1 (April 2023) 
 5 
 
 
 stars. The Delta is definitely “the most Southern
place on earth,” and I will die on that hill.
 GL: Well, you’ll have to leave the Delta to
find a hill to die on! 
 VLC: Ha! 
 GL: Thinking about the Delta as the most
southern place on earth brings to mind your
work “Delta Mercantile,” which strikes me as one
of the most southern artworks you’ve done. If
you’ve driven through the Delta, you’ve seen
those long-abandoned places covered over in
rusted signs. Where did you get the materials for
this? It looks like you’ve converted some old
shutters into the walls. 
 VLC: “Delta Mercantile” is created from an
original old copula salvaged from the top of an
old structure that had been located somewhere
in the Delta. The rest are pieces I’ve collected on
my travels and explorations through the South.
I try to use original materials with provenance
when I can find them, but these pieces are be-
coming as scarce as hen’s teeth as many structures
of the Delta fall into disrepair or decay. 
 I’ve always had a special place in my heart for
those old mercantile stores. I have driven by nu-
merous skeletal remains of them in the Delta and
remember the ones I frequented fondly in the
hills as a child. The creaking, wooden floors, the
smell of smoked bacon and lunchmeat being
trimmed and sliced in the back, the cast-iron
wood burning stove with mismatched chairs in
the corner, the obligatory gallon jar of pickled
eggs (that I never saw anyone eat) that sat not far
from the cash register or the butcher counter and
the rack of comic books that changed my life and
turned me into a creative, fanatical book collec-
tor for over 40 years. The old Vacation Bible
School bus I found myself on every summer, de-
spite my pleas and protests, would careen on two
wheels to a stop in front of Thompson’s mercan-
tile store on Highway 8, announcing our arrival
in a hot cloud of dust. The sweltering bus was 
 
 
 A front view of Delta Mercantile. 
Photograph courtesy of V.L. Cox 
 
 
 Arkansas Review 54.1 (April 2023) 
 6 
 
 
 not air conditioned, and all of us country kids,
after being told by the bus driver that sweating
brings you closer to God, would pour off that di-
lapidated oven on wheels in search of the cold,
life-giving holy grail of the South. An ice-cold
Coke with a bag of Tom’s salted roasted peanuts
poured in. Now THAT was true salvation. I felt
closer to God in that old mercantile store than
any rural church. Those memories flood back
every time I see the remnants of one of those
holy stores in the Delta, and after the “Delta Mer-
cantile” piece, I’ve considered creating a small
series of these stores from the photo archives of
my travels.
 GL: There seems to be some conscious irony
whereby we think of these mercantiles as places
that were so intensely local, and yet their local
importance depended greatly upon their offering
of products from so far away. 
 VLC: That’s true. From food variety, to fancy
bolts of fabric, pantyhose and homemaker
supplies to farming supplies, pocket knives and
hardware. Loyalty came with variety. My father
was a staunch Case Knife man, which originated
in 1889 and was sold out of the back of a wagon
in upstate New York yet was found in every mer-
cantile store throughout the South. My father
loved those “northern” knives so much, he was
buried with one in his pocket in a southern rural
family cemetery. 
 The importance of these old stores had many
different levels. They also served and took care
of the most vulnerable in their community. One
of my main memories after my grandfather
passed, was when my grandmother and I went to
Welch’s Grocery in Arkadelphia in the late ’60s
early ’70s. She would always hand Mr. Welch her
list, and he would help gather her sundries then
carry them to the car. This day, however, was dif-
ferent. It was during desegregation, and his store
had a direct view to the courthouse in downtown
Arkadelphia. As we walked through the squeak- 
 
 
 Corner view of Delta Mercantile. 
Photograph courtesy of V.L. Cox 
 ing wooden door, hearing the little tinkling of
the bell announcing our arrival, Mr. Welch met
us with a look of concern on his face. He took
my grandmother’s list, put his hand on her
shoulder and quietly told her, “Now Mrs. Hard-
man, you take that grandbaby, turn right around
and go on home. It’s not safe here today. I’ll de-
liver your groceries here shortly.” As we got back
in the car and were leaving, I glanced across the
road towards the courthouse and saw a surging
white crowd in turmoil sprinkled with men in
white helmets. I didn’t realize the national impli-
cations of desegregation due to my youth at the
time, but my hometown wasn’t immune to it. 
 GL: You’ve got two “self-portraits” that seem
to be having a conversation with one another.
The first, “Reflection,” is mostly taken up with a
wardrobe slightly open, showing a Confederate
flag hanging up inside, with the self-portrait com- 
 
 
 Arkansas Review 54.1 (April 2023) 
 7 
 
 
 ponent being confined to a mirror on the ward-
robe, with your own image barely visible in the
glare. The second, “Escape Velocity,” features you
in your characteristic flannel shirt (but no bra or
undershirt) and torn jeans, standing at the edge
of a cotton field, holding the pride flag in one
hand and gazing into the cloudy sky threatening
a storm. And I can’t help thinking that, although
it’s the Rebel flag in the closet, your identity is
the one being erased by its presence, in contrast
with the second painting, where both you and
flag are out in the open.
 VLC: Those are two of the most personal
pieces I have ever painted. “Reflection” is an ac-
tual moment where I caught my reflection in the
mirror of an old Civil War–era wardrobe I had
acquired from Tennessee. I had been storing flags
inside of it for some of my future art projects
(Pride, American, and Confederate), and one af-
ternoon I heard the creaking of the wardrobe
door open behind me. As I turned around, I saw
that my cat had jumped on top of the wardrobe 
 
 
 
 
 Reflection. 
 Photograph courtesy of V.L. Cox 
 
 and jarred the door open, exposing the lone
Confederate flag, which was ominously peeking
out from the shadows. It sent a shiver up my
spine. 
 I am a bonafide Southerner, but the South
has not been truthful about its evil past. I was
taught in public school that the war was fought
over “States Rights” (bottom line, the right to
own other men), Northern Aggressors or “Yan-
kees” coming down to take our rich farmlands
and resources (it’s easy to flourish financially
when you have free labor), and higher taxes on
our cotton. I was also taught that slaves had de-
cent, stable lives on plantations and floundered
so much after being given their freedom, they
were given 40 acres and a mule by the U.S. gov-
ernment. But as we all know, during Reconstruc-
tion almost all land allocated during the war was
restored to its pre-war white owners, yet I’ve
heard this bitterly mentioned by disgruntled
white, male southerners my entire life, of “why
they can’t get ahead?” I was never taught about
the brutal, deadly depths of slavery, didn’t learn
about the Elaine Massacre or Black Wall Street
and the Tulsa Race Riots until I was in my 50s,
and still to this day often hear the n-word fall out
of ignorant mouths in south Arkansas more
often than a prayer. This brief visual moment of
reality when that wardrobe door opened was a
stark reminder that no matter how much you try
to educate yourself and pull yourself out of the
ignorance, myths, and whitewashed history that
you were exposed to your entire life, parts of that
racist, close-minded environment will always re-
main in your background trying to overpower
you and claim you as its own. The struggle at
family reunions, the painful conversations with
your elders or the youth in your family due to
perpetuated disinformation of hatred and dis-
crimination, believing in the preservation of
“heritage” and “southern pride” in a twisted
form of religious white supremacy, that never
goes away. Acknowledging that ominous and
ever-present struggle, however, is part of what has 
 
 
 Arkansas Review 54.1 (April 2023) 
 8 
 
 
 made me who I am today. A strong, rebellious
Southern woman, continually striving for the
truth, who never forgets that the symbol of a
white supremacy heroic fable, mixed in cruelty
and injustice, continues to reach out of the
shadows in hopes of claiming yet another gener-
ation.
 As far as “Escape Velocity” goes, I am a firm
believer that there are only two emotions in life.
Fear and Love. Every other emotion stems off of
these. I painted this piece after leaving the South.
The cotton field, a worn, vast, battleground of in-
justice, shows snapped antiquated telephone
wires and a twisted telephone pole in the form
of a cross representing the isolating lines of truth
and communication in the Bible Belt that have
been intentionally severed and broken over gen-
erations never meaning to be repaired. The self-
portrait conveys strength, exhaustion, the raw
vulnerability of feeling you have nothing left to
lose (hence the open flannel shirt with no bra or
undershirt), while firmly grasping and refusing
to drop the colorful, beautiful, symbol in my
hand of who I truly am. Gazing North, through
ever-present tumultuous southern storm clouds,
with hope and determination to survive and start
a new life. 
 The historical cruelty crafted during the
2021 Arkansas Legislative Session [with the pas-
sage of anti-transgender legislation], indistin-
guishable from a backwoods snake-handling Tent
Revival, influenced this painting and my deci-
sion to finally leave the home I’ve always known.
Arkansas lost all the progress and anti-discrim-
inatory ground that they gained in 2015 [when
previous such legislation was voted down], and
the timing during a deadly global pandemic was
wickedly plotted and executed. Civil Rights were
ripped away from decent, hard-working Ameri-
can citizens and modern-day Jim Crow bigotry
rammed through by laughing lawmakers as Ar-
kansans struggled with limited supply chains, ac-
cess to food, medicine, and basic staples, not
knowing which loved one would be the next
taken by the mysterious angel of death to suffo-
cate and die. This painting, despite political at-
tempts to once again whitewash history, will
continue to tell a Southern story of life, pain,
hope, resilience, diversity, survival and the truth. 
 GL: Your mention of a snake-handling tent
revival provides a nice segway to talk about the
next piece, “Tent Revival.” You’ve written online
that it was inspired by a picture of a revival held
by the Ku Klux Klan and that it is crafted from
the robe of a Grand Wizard. I spent some time
pondering the piece and wondering why you
used a real Klansman’s robe to make it when you
could have used anything. And then I realized
that, though the art piece is empty of people,
should we imagine an actual revival taking place
there, then all those Christians would literally be
“under the hood.” It speaks to how they are not
only implicated in these evils but being revived
spiritually in the context of evil. It speaks to that
Protestant doctrine of total depravity, how every
person born cannot help but to act in service to
sin without the grace of God, but here the taber-
nacle of God’s grace is constructed out of a relic
of that sin. And I remember, too, how a professor
of mine in Japan remarked that while snow in
Western cultures is often viewed as a symbol of
purity, in Buddhist traditions a white blanket of
snow serves the symbolic function of that which
obscures sin, smooths out the contours of sin so
that you can’t see it anymore. The more I
thought about it, the more there was going on in
this piece. 
 VLC: There is a lot going on in this piece,
yet it’s a pretty simple message. The concept orig-
inated one day after talking on the phone to an
antique dealer out of Atlanta, Georgia. I had no-
ticed on his website a tiny old vintage photo-
graph of what I thought appeared to be a Revival
Tent with a “Knights of the Ku Klux Klan” sign
in front of it. Now, I have gone to (or was dragged
to) plenty of church revivals in my youth under 
 
 
 Arkansas Review 54.1 (April 2023) 
 9 
 
 
 
 
 
 The artist with Tent Revival. 
Photograph courtesy of V.L. Cox 
 the promise of partaking in true communion
after the sermon, southern fried chicken, so it
really caught my eye. After looking closer at the
photograph through a magnifying glass, it was
then when I noticed the “Religious Services -
Sunday Evening - All Welcome” sign sitting right
next to it. The Klan and the local Church were
sharing the same exact tent. This tiny photo said
a lot, so I acquired a unique robe the dealer had
in his personal collection as well for the project.
 This Revival Tent is made out of an original
Cyclops Klan robe that belonged to Roy Frank-
houser Jr. in Pennsylvania. Boy, he was some-
thing else. [Frankhouser was a Grand Dragon of
the Ku Klux Klan, a member of the American
Nazi Party, and later a leader in the Christian
Identity movement.] And Roy had a following. 
 After reading the history of this robe along
with historical and current events, I realize that
a large population of Christians have, and con-
tinue, to congregate “under the hood.” I’ve done
extensive research of the history of the Klan,
drove over 2,000 miles cross country a few years
ago to be the first to see and read rare discovered
doctrine and minutes of secret klavern meetings
from 1922 and was shocked to see the blatant
similarities from the past to today. “Are you a gen-
tile or Jew?” “Were your parents born in the
United States of America?” “What is your reli-
gious faith?” were some of the initiation ques-
tions asked. Documented images from the
Library of Congress show Ku Klux Klan
members marching in the street by the thousands
only two generations ago under the banners
“One God, One Country, One Flag,” “Jesus
Saves,” or “For God, One Country and Each
Other.” (Sound familiar?) As a business owner in
the past, you were expected to be a member of
the Klan, and if you weren’t or you rejected their
doctrine, you were shunned politically, econom-
ically and socially. It was like a bastardized ver-
sion of a freak Chamber of Commerce of sorts. 
 
 
 Arkansas Review 54.1 (April 2023) 
 10 
 
 
 Members of the Klan were warmly welcomed in
church pews across the country dressed in their
full regalia only recognizable by their hands or
their shoes. It was, and still is, a hateful, danger-
ous, militarized religious cult whose ideology has
been recently revived with the aggressive and vi-
olent recruitment of yet another innocent gener-
ation.
 “Being revived spiritually in the context of
evil” is what we are seeing take place today. I
never realized until now the depths that insecure
people will go to to achieve a desperate sense of
belonging and how spiritually fragile, scared, and
lost people are to where they will instantly sell
their soul, family and friends out to embrace the
first so called religious “Savior” that walks
through the door, even though the Bible specifi-
cally warns us over and over against this. 
 I use a lot of historical relics in my work with
this being constructed into a deadly symbol of a
tainted house of prayer, cloaking the congrega-
tion in white supremacy deceit while promising
spiritual superiority and a false hope of salvation.
And the primitive wooden church pews under
the cloak of white supremacy are visually worn
for a reason. They continue to be heavily used.
White Supremacy, ferociously claiming the white
pages of the Bible as its own, brutally twists and
moves the black letters around at will but the last
time I checked, and I’m pretty sure I’m accurate
on this, the robe Jesus wore didn’t come with a
hood. 
 GL: Let’s wrap up with “No Vacancy.” It’s
made in large part from the steeple of a Delta
church, but I’ll be honest—after thinking about
“Tent Revival,” I can’t see that white cone shape
as anything but a Klansman’s hood. Is that some-
what intentional? 
 VLC: Good catch. That’s exactly what it’s
supposed to represent. I try not to be too literal
in my creations, but I don’t think a lot of people
grasped that visual. “No Vacancy” is created from
an old 9-foot-tall church steeple from the Delta
after reading the story the Arkansas Times did on
a young man in northern Arkansas who received
a letter in the mail from his church telling him
he was immediately being removed from their
membership records because he was gay, and
then another story about a man who had to ac-
tually move his deceased partner’s grave due to
the threats in Baxter County. The worker for the
monument company who was moving the tomb-
stone was even approached and threatened by a
man with a Bowie knife in a Wal-Mart parking
lot, who asked “why he had that faggot’s head-
stone in the back of the truck.” 
 The neon letters on the handmade cross
ominously flicker off and on like a cheap, sketchy
Motel sign on the side of the road, leaving the
viewer wondering if there are any vacancies or
not. And if there are? Is that really a place that
you would feel clean and safe and where you
would spend your time and money? 
 While creating “No Vacancy,” I was reminisc-
ing upon a piece I did several years ago called “30
Pieces of Silver,” which was based on an experi-
ence I had after being invited to visit a small rural
country church in South Arkansas. I had briefly
met and befriended a few of the younger
members that attended there so I agreed to join
them that next Sunday. Everything was going
pretty much the way it normally does when I visit
church, I was lip syncing through a few of the old
hymns since I can’t carry a tune in a bucket,
squirming while trying to get comfortable on the
hard wooden pew since us Presbyterians are used
to a little bit of cushion and padding, and won-
dering where to politely position myself as a guest
in the potluck line afterwards. 
 As we finished “Onward Christian Soldiers
Marching Off To War” (which I always found to
be an odd song for a church), the old white
haired preacher in a shaky, shrill voice stood up
behind the podium and began to preach. He
hadn’t been three minutes into his sermon be-
fore all of a sudden, he lunged forward on the 
 
 
 Arkansas Review 54.1 (April 2023) 
 11 
 
 
 pulpit, grasped it so hard his knuckles turned
white and screamed the words that still ring in
my ears to this day at the top of his lungs—
“NI**ERS AND QUEERS”—in relation to an
abomination he had chosen to cruelly twist out
of the Bible. The hair on the back of my neck
stood straight up, and I nervously started visually
trying to find an exit in case I needed to run.
While planning my frantic escape, it was then I
noticed the people in the pews. It was chilling.
His actions or words didn’t faze them at all. In
fact, they were all nodding their heads in agree-
ment. After practically stumbling out of the front
door into the gravel parking lot, I asked an older
female congregation member what had just hap-
pened. She promptly grabbed her Bible that had
been tucked under her arm like a well-oiled fire-
arm, opened it up and tried to find some butch-
ered, obscure passage that they believed proved
that the mark that God placed on Cain after kill-
ing his brother Abel, was making him black. And
“that” she told me “is why blacks should be
shunned and treated beneath everyone else.” I
stood there with my mouth open. Seriously? She
was firm in her stance despite my continued
questions, and I resolved myself to never visit that
church again. Oh, and in case you were wonder-
ing, I didn't stick around long enough to ask her
about the queer part, nor did I partake in the
potluck line.
 White Supremacy and bigotry that reside
under steeples know no bounds. I don’t think
this is what Christ had in mind when he told
people to “love thy neighbor.” 
 GL: Attached to this steeple is a hotel sign
you’ve fashioned into a cross, with the words “No
Vacancy” running the horizontal, intersected by
the vertical of “Acceptance.” And I can’t help
thinking how that “no vacancy” both has and
hasn’t been the rule in the Delta in a long time.
You probably got this church steeple because the
church itself was vacant. Chances are, whatever
town was there or nearest had plenty of va- 
 
 
 No Vacancy. 
Photograph courtesy of V.L. Cox 
 cancies. And while a good part of this vacancy is
predicated upon economic factors, there’s more
than enough also thanks to the very attitude of
“no vacancy,” no room for people who are differ-
ent. The “no vacancy” axis is like the flat of the
Delta horizon, but it’s the “acceptance” axis that
rises above. 
 VLC: I agree with this analogy. It’s not just
the Delta though. Churches everywhere are strug-
gling with numbers. That is, except for the reli-
gious-political Mega churches who fleece their
congregation to the tune of private jets, Man-
sions, and Ferraris in exchange for smooth-talk-
ing comradery and false superiority with “please
vote for my tax break” sermons. 
 A little background: I am an ordained Pres-
byterian Elder who has spent most of my life in
a pew. Calling out greed, hypocrisy, and question- 
 
 
 Arkansas Review 54.1 (April 2023) 
 12 
 
 
 ing any type of cruelty or behavior that hurts
people is our job and responsibility not only as a
Christian, but as a decent human being. Also,
the last time I checked; the position of God was-
n’t listed in the Employment Section of the Want
Ads. In other words, it’s not your place to EVER
decide who does or does not receive the love of
Christ or demean them regardless of what reli-
gion they choose to worship. Yet so many people
and religious leaders arrogantly claim that el-
evated role for power, perks, and money with no
concern or remorse from the devastating results.
Yes, there are some wonderful people and caring
religious organizations out there, but churches
hold immense amounts of community power
over the people, and cruel rigidity in a belief sys-
tem that has had numerous translations, twisted
interpretations and manipulative editing over
thousands of years can only survive for so long
without valid questions and will eventually take
a generational toll. As a child, I once asked my
grandmother why Native Americans often re-
ferred to “The Great Spirit” instead of a Chris-
tian God. She sweetly smiled, patted my knee
and said, “God has many names honey.” I have
never forgotten that.
 The world changes. Progress happens. We
learn and become more intelligent, Economic
challenges come and go, leaving the past behind
while issuing a new day of efficiency, new tech-
nology, and hope. Being defiant and obstinate to
“outsiders” or any type of progress, especially dur-
ing extreme economic, climate, and environmen-
tal changes in these Delta River towns and
farming communities, will take a heavy toll.
Water is literally drying up in some river areas
due to heat or geographically rising in others due
to melting polar ice caps, drastically impacting
populated shorelines and economies. If not ad-
dressed quickly, the reluctance towards diversity
and change will leave endless communities be-
hind, churches, and businesses abandoned and
continue to create poverty and a sparse, mi-
gratory population. 
 GL: Much of your art is constructed from
the found objects of the Delta’s past. But do you
think much about the future of the Delta? If so,
how does that look to you? 
 VLC: I think about it all the time. I’m a vi-
sionary. I see the value the Delta still has. I also
know as I mentioned above, that with the scarcity
of water from California through the panhandle
and the Midwest breadbasket predicted to shift
due to environmental change, the Delta could
play a major role in future food production with
education and the implantation of new technol-
ogy, new crops, unification and modern distribu-
tion and management despite changing water
levels and flood zones. I may be naive, but with
New Orleans surviving as long as they have below
sea level (at least for now) with the right tools and
structural ingenuity, I believe the Delta can not
only survive but thrive. 
 These changes do not come cheap, however,
and electing politicians who lazily do the back-
float in hard earned American tax dollars, while
arrogantly poking their fingers toward others, in-
tentionally stirring the dangerous division of an-
tiquated, time-consuming culture wars, has not
helped the Delta with growth. Because the truth
is they really don’t care. Stirring antiquated divi-
sion is easy, lucrative work, but only for them.
They know they are going to be just fine with all
their political perks, bloated contributions,
family privilege to skirt deadly discriminatory
state laws if needed, and could not truly care less
about the backbone of their working community,
the hardworking poor or their minority neigh-
bors struggling down the road. 
 Have you seen the billions of dollars spent
on political campaigns alone? Can you imagine
even half of that hard-earned contribution
money that politicians literally beg you for being
donated back into struggling communities in-
stead? Real change will begin when the people
put vengeful, media-driven, sport voting aside 
 
 
 Arkansas Review 54.1 (April 2023) 
 13 
 
 
 and elect sincere political leaders that will peel
out of a slick suit, put on a pair of jeans and
boots, roll their sleeves up, stop spending all their
energy figuring out how to fearfully manipulate
a “base” based on the color of political jerseys,
and instead spend it on the people and the fu-
ture. Leaders that are not ashamed to break a
sweat and actually get to work to truly advance
ALL the people, securing desperately needed
funds to strengthen communities with modern
technology, training, new jobs, new ideas, while
aggressively recruiting an outside diverse, com-
petitive talent pool.
 Change will happen when we hold these re-
ligious community anchors accountable when
they are given the opportunity to welcome new
residents from different backgrounds and tal-
ented skillsets bringing fresh ideas and business
into their community. Communities will flour-
ish by encouraging these diverse communities to
work together for a common goal of success and
growth for the entire region instead of being sup-
pressed and played like pawns on an antiquated
chess board for cruel political folly and selfish fi-
nancial and political gain. 
 I believe the Delta, due to its rich culture,
hard-working people, and fertile resources can be
one of the most influential places in the country
if not the world if allowed, but only when people
who have been intentionally misguided to be
angry and fearful of change are encouraged to
open their hearts and minds towards new people,
fresh ideas, and new beginnings. Because as we
all know historically, progress and change are in-
evitable and we only have two choices: You either
learn, adapt, become a part of it, and thrive, or
you shut the world out, become angry and bitter
and left behind. 
 If the rigid religious and political obstinance
which is targeted and intentional, wary of any-
thing new due to fear of losing control, con-
tinues, then the rich, beautiful Delta will
eventually become a vast ghost town with aban-
doned buildings and empty communities. We see
this with our own eyes as we drive down the
Delta back roads as a hot, life-giving sun sets over
what once were fertile crops and communities.
Empty, dilapidated buildings, hand-painted
wooden crosses, some with angry, judgmental
messages, sprinkle the landscape, complimenting
arrogant political billboards that continue to
spew a message of fear, division and hatred. That
transition, if not reversed, is already underway. 
 
 
 Arkansas Review 54.1 (April 2023) 
 14

excavation
by laura vogt 
 i’m no anthropologist, but if you’re 
digging in the dirt and expecting magic 
you’re an explorer 
 magic doesn’t need to be defined, play 
doesn’t need a purpose, you don’t even 
know what’s real 
 in the sunlight, the trees shimmering in the 
wind, that first physical warmth of spring, i 
hope for everything 
 i hear robins, the distant weed whackers, 
and the children as they build a new 
world in the forest 
 slate-brown bark, new green leaves, far off 
the sun lighting along the edge of your body, 
a line of light enclosing you, like you’re 
traced by liquid magic 
 it’s like we’re here, but not. sunlines reminding 
me of illusion, of transference. where would i 
go, but here? 
 what would i dig down to, flee towards? i 
like it here, just fine. if only i was not too 
tired to enjoy 
 if only i could pause, sleep a year, then come 
back to today. you’re so startlingly beautiful. unique 
in your own way 
 no, i’d go nowhere but here, over and again, 
once more 
 excavation, digging into the dirt. whatever 
you are, you are your own hope. time is 
lost in you 
 whatever this is, childhood, a 
moment, i wish we could stay here 
forever 
 
 
 Arkansas Review 54.1 (April 2023) 
 15