Skinner felt extremely blessed. As he drove the back roads of Tibbehah County, two fingers on the wheel of his red Dodge Ram 2500 that smelled of fresh leather right off the dealer’s lot, he marveled at the beauty of his home in north Mississippi. A light fog lifted off of the pasturelands and rolling hills, looking almost like smoke drifting into the tall stretch of pines. Old barns sat crooked on land he’d known since he was a boy. Twisted creeks brought back happy memories of swimming holes and cane poles, drinking Coca-Cola from little green bottles and smoking rabbit tobacco. This was a land of values, faith, and history. He had his radio turned to a family station out of Tupelo, a morning show discussing how Chicago had become a lawless hell and how an Army chaplain was being court-martialed for speaking out against gays. Skinner shook his head as he drove, mad enough to spit, wondering how the America he’d known as a boy had all come to this. He’d no more set foot in Chicago than take a rocket to the moon. Those people were living like gosh-darn savages.

Tibbehah County was his home and he’d be damned if anyone would try and invade it.

Skinner’s people had settled this land in the 1850s, driving out the red man, taking a few arrows for the effort, and had stood tall during the Civil War. Skinner was a proud member of the Sons of the Confederacy, having ancestors on both sides of his family who’d fought with honor. If some no-’count so-and-so wanted to come to Tibbehah County and remove the old boy in the kepi cap from the Jericho Square, he’d chain his old bones to the statue.

As he turned off onto County Road 433, rolling toward Vardaman’s lodge, he had no doubt white Christians were under attack. That’s how the whole idea for the Tibbehah Cross came about. The cross would become a beacon for every man, woman, and child moving through his little ole country county. They’d see the bigness, the majesty of Christ’s power, light shining up into the heavens. And in the process, it would dim the glow on that den of iniquity outside the Rebel Truck Stop.