The last of the Police cars were pulling out of the hotel parking lot just as the sun was peeking over the Mount Vernon, MO, Waffle House. They’d threatened to haul me in for stealing my own truck back — but I’d held firm, and they’d thought better. Blanca was fine. I’d need a new ignition switch. But my key still worked, so it could wait.

“Hey, y’all want to walk over and get a cup of coffee before we head on over to Topeka?”

Grace grabbed one of those free local classified papers off of a stand, just inside the entrance of the Waffle House. And no sooner than we’d sat down at our table was she pointing out a 1970 Coupe DeVille.

“Y’all look,” Grace said. But was interrupted by the server asking if we’d like coffee. “We’ll take three coffees to-go,” she replied and handed her a pink credit card. Then continued, “Y’all, I’ve got to have this car.”

I looked at Beau, and he just shrugged like — what are we going to do? Then said, “Let’s go buy a Cadillac.”

The waitress brought our coffees and Grace’s card. Grace of course tipped her twice what the bill was, and off we go again. Topeka bound, just with a slight detour through Neodesha, Kansas.

Read more

FloydFest isn’t a festival so much as a temporary agreement between gravity, music, and a few thousand people who have decided to trust the mountain.

It sits out there in the Blue Ridge like a rumor that built infrastructure. Stages tucked into slopes, vendor rows that wander instead of line up, hammocks strung between trees like punctuation marks in a sentence no one’s quite parsed. Five days of bluegrass, jam bands, Appalachian folk, and the occasional electric thing that wandered in from the future. Kids with painted faces. Old heads with folding chairs that look inherited. Dogs who seem to understand more than they should.

My friend Abner calls it Burning Man with trees, and that’s close enough if you tilt your head. Less dust storm, more backbeat. Less apocalypse chic, more front porch after the world didn’t end. Call it Appalachian Burning Man if you want—same loose contract with reality, just with better shade and a banjo keeping time.

But you don’t arrive at FloydFest so much as you get processed by it. We came to do a job. That much was clear. What the job was—less so. There was talk of pie.

Jean-Paul, the curiously sentient stuffed peacock, oversaw the operation. Hank handled the physical traffic. Beau channeled the head traffic.

Grace set up like she’d been expected.

Read more

Azalea Festival morning in Wilmington looks like someone shook a snow globe full of colored petals and civic pride.

The motley three come in low and slow on highway 74, windows down, air thick with river damp and something frying three counties away. The truck rolls like it’s got a leadbelly. In the bed: ten red coolers, sun-faded, road-scuffed, each one labeled in block letters that suggest both massive effort and questionable supervision.

EMOTIONAL SUPPORT PRAWNS
MANNEQUIN PARTS
TOADS, CRICKETS, VERMIN, ETC.
NEWFOUND LOVE
FRAGILE: SENTIMENTAL ICE

Grace has added these stickers along with glitter hearts, a peeling flamingo, a saint card with the eyes blacked out “for privacy.” Beau claims labeling is half of legitimacy. Hank says the other half is driving like you belong. Jean-Paul, the one-eyed taxidermied peacock, stands guard.

Riegelwood waits inland, where the road forgets it was ever scenic. The warehouse squats behind a chain-link fence patched with zip ties and hope. Corrugated metal siding the neutral color of an uncommitted senator. A hand-painted sign reads COASTAL DISTRIBUTION & LIVE BAIT. Two forklifts nap in the shade like yellow livestock. The Cape Fear River meanders out beyond the trees, sluggish and muddy and minding its business.

A man in a mesh cap signs the clipboard without reading it. A handshake agreement. No questions, no receipts that couldn’t pass a light rain. They unload with ceremony.

Beau sets down MANNEQUIN PARTS like it contains a long-lost cousin. Hank carries TOADS, CRICKETS, VERMIN, ETC. one-handed, a critter pallbearer. Grace kisses NEWFOUND LOVE right on the pink bow before surrendering it to the pallet jack. The coolers disappear into the dim interior where a lazy sermon of industrial fans stir the air.

Outside, cicadas are tuning up. The crew climbs back into the truck lighter by ten mysteries. Hank cranks the engine. Gravel flies. They nose toward the road, past a billboard half-eaten by sun and time. Then the bend. Then the banner.

NORTH CAROLINA AZALEA FESTIVAL

Grace doesn’t say anything at first. She just leans forward, eyes narrowing the way they do before weather changes. “Boys,” she says finally, “that feels like destiny wearing pastels.”

Hank signals left.

Fireworks rigs crouch by the river. Girls in hoop skirts practice their posture like it’s an Olympic event. A soundcheck rattles bass through the live oaks. Grace inhales.

“Boys. We are not, not stopping.”

Read more

They chose this town because it minded its business.

Low ceilings. Wet air. A marina that smelled like diesel and rancid popcorn. The kind of Gulf place where men lost boats, found religion, and did neither properly. The poker room sat above a bait shop called Live & Let Live, which felt optimistic.

They were here for the cooler.

It had been taken in what Hank described as “a shystery maneuver,” which was not a word but carried emotional truth. Now the only way to retrieve it was to win the invitational tournament run by men who ironed their jeans and used the word “proprietary” in casual speech.

So they practiced.

A small table. A single bulb. Humidity so thick the cards curled like old photographs. Grace curled with them.

“Hands above the table,” Beau said.

“I am above the table,” she muttered. “Spiritually.”

“Physically, Grace.”

Hank nodded solemnly. “Not everyone we play will be as sweet as we are.”

Grace squinted at him. A week ago, she had believed Hank was a mango character living inside MJ’s brain.

“Hank, we didn’t even think you were real.”

“And yet,” he said, spreading his hands, “taxable.”

On the lacquered bar cart behind them stood Jean-Paul.

Taxidermied peacock. Former conversation piece. Formerly abducted over the Gulf in a beam of light that hummed like a broken refrigerator. Returned three hours later with one cracked glass eye and one new eye that pulsed faintly, like it had swallowed a lighthouse.

The new eye was awake.

Beau rose casually and adjusted the bar cart an inch to the left.

“A little more,” Hank said.

Grace lowered her cards. “Are you two positioning a bird like it’s a satellite?”

“It is a satellite,” Hank replied.

They had tested this.

The live eye did not merely reflect. It interpreted. When someone bluffed, the pupil tightened to a sharp black pin. When a hand was weak, the iris dimmed. Strong pairs produced a slow, tidal glow, as if the Gulf itself approved.

It did not always show the truth.

But it showed something.

“Cheating,” Grace said.

“Corrective accounting,” Beau replied.

“The cooler was acquired through shystery,” Hank added. “We are restoring balance.”

Read more

New shoes? Story.

Chipped coffee mug? Definitely a story.

Last Tuesday? Oh, I hope you’ve got time.

Storytelling is just what I do. Part of it is probably the way my brain is wired, sure. But it’s heritage, too—I’m not the only one. If you sit in the parish hall, or stand in line at Publix, or linger at your mailbox long enough, you’ll see. You’ll hear the history of someone’s macaroni salad. Why the woman in the checkout line prefers dill pickle to sweet relish. Or why the gentleman down the street will only put Duke’s mayonnaise on his tomato sammich.

It’s in the South. It’s in our bones. We tell stories. It’s how it’s done.

When I was a kid, I came back to the South after years of being an Air Force brat—overseas, then up north—and my ear wasn’t quite tuned yet. Southern accents still slipped past me sideways.

One morning, right before Christmas, I woke up and announced to my grandmother that I needed to bring something for the school party that afternoon. Immediately. As children do.

She didn’t miss a beat. She pulled out a bowl, a potato, a jar of peanut butter, and an entire box of confectioners’ sugar and said she could whip up some osh potato candy real quick.

At least that’s what I heard.

Read more

Hank showed it to Beau over coffee that tasted like it had been brewed through a gym sock.

“UFOs,” Beau said, squinting at the screen. “Or drunk college kids with drones.”

“Could be both,” Hank allowed. “But Dale don’t lie about lights. He once spotted a Waffle House two exits early just by reading the aura of the interstate.”

Grace appeared in the doorway of the Pink Tree Atelier draped in a blanket the color of cotton candy and bunny slippers that had seen better decades. “Are we talking about space visitors? Because I’ve been waiting my whole life for this conversation.”

That’s how they ended up pointed toward Pensacola, Jean-Paul riding shotgun with the dignity of a bird who’d seen stranger pilgrimages, the cooler secured in back with fresh duct tape and a prayer.

They arrived at dusk, the Gulf flat and pewter-colored under a sky that couldn’t decide between storm and forgiveness. The beach was mostly empty—a few die-hard joggers, one metal-detector enthusiast hunting for meaning in the sand. Hank surveyed the scene with the tactical focus of a man preparing to witness either revelation or disappointment, possibly both.

Read more

It started, as these glorious trainwrecks tend to, with Grace spotting the billboard just as they pulled out of the Flying J. Meat sticks and pork rinds flanked their tankards of coffee.

“Southern Fried Poetry Slam – Finals Tonight – Knoxville Convention Center”

The phrase “Southern Fried” landed on Beau like a cast-iron skillet to the solar plexus—hot, heavy, and smelling faintly of bacon grease and existential joy. “Oh my,” he exclaimed, “that’s the best idea since moonshine-flavored lattes.”

Grace, driving like a hummingbird on espresso, squealed. “We’re goin’! Poetry with a side of cornbread? That’s my love language.” Hank grinned his easy, thoughtful grin. “Dawg, fate just texted. If there’s free parking, I’m in!”

They rolled into Knoxville under a sky the color of overripe peaches, city lights flickering like nervous haikus. The Convention Center was too shiny, too official.

Grace squinted out the window. “Knoxville has the cutest pizza delivery boys. It’s a known fact.”

Hank gave her the side-eye. “That peer-reviewed?”

“Extensively,” she nodded. “I’ve done the research.”

After some ogling and a pie, they found the real pulse throbbing from Sassy Ann’s, an afterparty. The dive on 4th Ave was thick with the perfume of spilled IPA, fresh sweat, and the ozone tang of smoky metaphors. The unholy trinity slipped inside, cooler still bow-tied, cryptic in the truck bed.

The bar was alive with Southern poets: a team from Birmingham dropping bars like slow-cooked ribs, a St. Louis crew spitting fire about rivers and red clay regret. Grace claimed a high-top, ordered three green smoothies—“for the aura, y’all”—and proceeded to drink hers like it was communion wine. She finished it in three long pulls, then started on Hank’s without asking. “This one tastes like forgiveness with kale notes,” she announced, eyes bright as new pennies. Beau pushed his toward Hank. “You finish it. I’m allergic to virtue.”

The emcee—a wiry woman whose voice carried the gravel of too many open mics and not enough sleep—called for wild-card entries. Grace’s hand shot up like a pink flare. “My friend here,” she said, pointing at Hank with the certainty of someone who’d already won the argument in her head, “has a piece that’ll make y’all re-evaluate your entire life choices.”

Read more

I was perched on the porch, coaxing lazy blues out of my old guitar—notes drifting like cigarette smoke in the humid afternoon—when my phone buzzed. Hank. Three words: “Bowling alley. Now.” Then: “Got something for you.”

I drove over. Hank was already twitchy, sweat beading like he’d run the whole way from whatever shadow he’d been hiding in. Without ceremony he heaved a red cooler into the back of my car. Big white stencil across the lid: HUMAN ORGANS.

“Hank,” I said, “what the hell is this?”

He glanced at the lettering like it was news to him. “Exactly what it says on the tin. Don’t open it. Don’t let anyone else open it. I’m headed to Cincinnati. Back soon as the wind allows.”

He vanished in a cloud of gravel before I could protest. Curiosity, that old serpent, didn’t even wait for his taillights to fade. I popped the lid.

Read more

Primalbeet was born Beau Pritchett IV, but nobody has dared say it out loud since the third grade, when he answered to it by putting a frog in the teacher’s coffee. After that, he was just beet. The “primal” got tacked on in college when he showed up to a keg party wearing nothing but Carhartt overalls and said he’d calculated how long it would take the rest of us to die in the woods when the apocalypse hit. But lately, he’s gone back to being Beau.

He grew up on a trout farm outside of Penrose, North Carolina, in a house that smelled like woodsmoke and cathead biscuits. His father raised hunting dogs and collected confederate flags; his mother raised heirloom tomatoes and quiet defiance. Beau learned early that irony is basically grief wearing camouflage. By fifteen he could field-dress a deer, quote Flannery O’Connor, and make moonshine that tasted like a pine tree having a psychic experience.

He left for Chapel Hill with a football scholarship he never really wanted and a duffel bag full of Faulkner paperbacks. Played one season of middle linebacker, broke three helmets (none of them his), then quit the day the coach called a play “Toilet Swirl.” Walked straight to the journalism school, declared a major in “whatever lets me sit in the dark and ruminate,” and never looked back.

Read more

She pointed toward the frilliest, laciest, pinkest building in three counties — a Victorian fever dream called Miss Primrose’s Palace of Pretty Things.
Her eyes lit up. Her smile widened. She sighed like home.

“They said it’s ready to pick up,” she smiled. “…do y’all mind?”

The next thing MJ and Beau knew, they were sweating, grunting, and knocking over “Hank’s” cooler trying to wrestle a massive antique pink velvet sofa into the back of the truck. Grace clapped her hands in pure pink-princess delight.

“Careful with the cooler,” MJ muttered. “Hank trusted me with it.”

Beau half-turned. “MJ… Hank’s not—oh, never mind. What is in that cooler anyway?”

Read more

I closed my journal and checked my phone, it was 28 degrees. No wonder it was so warm — I’m used to it being much colder up here. I tipped my Little Buddy over, just enough to extinguish the propane flame and pulled my pants on. The 6 AM alarm trumpeted as I was walking into the Hampton Inn. I smiled and greeted the clerk at the desk with a, “Good morning,” just as a regular guest would, and I made a beeline for the restroom around the corner.

This was my third day out, so I thought about shaving. But decided that since it ort-to-be a fairly short day, I’d stop later and get a full shower. There’s a Flying-J just before the Kentucky line that’s usually pretty clean. Not the Deadman’s store, that’s over on I-65. I’m gone be on 75-South most of today I reckon. I’ve got a little time this morning, the dispensary doesn’t open until 9am. So after I emerge from the restroom with my business complete, I start me a waffle and load my plate down with bacon and powdered eggs. By the time I’ve got my coffee and OJ on the table, my waffle’s beeping done.

I sit there for almost an hour — get the logs all straight, and my day mapped out. Then I hop on Substack to see what my fellow writers have going on. I run through my notifications — answer a few comments, then read and share both and ’s stories from yesterday. I just love the community I’ve found on Substack — it’s jam packed with gifted and talented writers like those two, and I’m excited to get to meet them tonight!

By 7:30 I’ve finished up everything left undone from last night’s pickup, and have my pre-trip inspection logged. I’mma run with my numbers on today so my logbook has got to be correct. I don’t mind it in the grey area, but I don’t take any unnecessary chances out on the road. And since I’ll be riding dirty on this trip, there’s no room for error — everything needs to be buttoned up real tight. I map the Red Roof sitting just across the Michigan line and pull out.

Read more

It started, as these things often do with our unholy trinity, with a wrong turn off I-20 near Pell City and a cooler that wouldn’t stop whispering.

Hank was at the wheel of the ‘94 Chevy—shotgun loaded this time, because “you never know when a gator’s gonna jaywalk in Alabama”—hauling what he swore was a “perfectly legal” cargo trailer full of artisanal moonshine jars labeled as “Grandma’s Pickle Relish” for plausible deniability. Beau rode shotgun, scribbling on a Waffle House napkin about how the interstate was just America’s varicose vein system, while Grace perched in the back with Jean-Paul the stuffed peacock, feeding him potato candy and Flannery O’Connor quotes to keep him from molting in protest.

They’d been aiming for a quick drop in Huntsville—Hank’s latest hotshot gig, delivering an RV to some tech bro who’d invented an app for rating sunsets—but the GPS glitched (or Hank ignored it, same difference) and spat them out onto Alt72, straight to Point Mallard Park. It was Memorial Day weekend, and the air was thick with the scent of propane burners and funnel cake grease. Billboards screamed “Alabama Jubilee Hot Air Balloon Classic!” like evangelical promises of ascension.

Hank, ever the opportunist, grinned that Robin Hood grin. “Boys and girls, looks like the Man’s throwin’ a party. Free park’n? Word. Let’s crash it.”

Read more