We buried them together on the rise Ma loved, the one she gazed at from the kitchen window, the one that looks out over the dried-up Beaver River. - P79
"Billie Jo threw the pail," they said. "An accident," they said. Under their words a finger pointed. They didn’t talk about my father leaving kerosene by the stove. They didn’t say a word about my father drinking himself into a stupor while Ma writhed, begging for water. They only said, Billie Jo threw the pail of kerosene. August 1934 - P80
I walk to town. I don’t look back over my shoulder at the single grave holding Ma and my little brother. I am trying not to look back at anything. - P81
My father stares out across his land, empty but for a few withered stalks like the tufts on an old man’s head. I don’t know if he thinks more of Ma, or the wheat that used to grow here. - P81
My father will stay, no matter what, he’s stubborn as sod. He and the land have a hold on each other. But what about me? - P83
I don’t know my father anymore. He sits across from me, he looks like my father, he chews his food like my father, he brushes his dusty hair back like my father, but he is a stranger. - P84
I am awkward with him, and irritated, and I want to be alone but I am terrified of being alone. - P84
The water will seep back into the earth. It’ll never stay put in any old pond. But my father has thought through all that and he’s digging anyway. - P85
But as long as I live, no matter how big a hole he digs, I can’t forgive him that pail of kerosene left by the side of the stove. September 1934 - P86
How can such a flower find a way to bloom in this drought, in this wind. - P89
I couldn’t watch at dawn, when the flower, touched by the first finger of morning light, wilted and died. I couldn’t watch as the tender petals burned up in the sun. September 1934 - P89
Without the sod the water vanished, the soil turned to dust. Until the wind took it, lifting it up and carrying it away. Such a sorrow doesn’t come suddenly, there are a thousand steps to take before you get there. - P91
The Path of Our Sorrow
But now, sorrow climbs up our front steps, big as Texas, and we didn’t even see it coming, even though it’d been making its way straight for us all along.
September 1934 - P92
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