in time for Christmas

It was evening and Barstow before I remembered the desert, the strange, squat towns hunkered down in the scrub and dusk. The street names were about the wind and the sidewalks ended abruptly in heaps of sand. A gauzy sunset gathered overhead. I thought, beautiful! I thought, how can anyone live here? The answer flashed by in the space between howling semis. It was Corinthians in capital letters on sheet metal: “WE WALK BY FAITH NOT SIGHT.” On the low southern horizon the pump jacks nodded slowly. It might have been in agreement. They are blind creatures themselves.