You could skin the muskrats and stretch the pelts and sell them for a lot of money. - P10
But that time had vanished for them; they refused to recognize it even if they were shown the evidence in snapshots or forced to listen to it in family conversation. - P7
With the runoff from the fields muddying the water and the pale sunlight on its surface, the water looked like butterscotch pudding on the boil. - P7
The flood had been so recent that these paths were not easy to follow. You had to kick your way through beaten-down brush and jump from one hummock of mud-plastered grass to another. - P8
They were too old to raise sticks and make shooting noises. They spoke with casual regret, as if guns were readily available to them. - P9
The river could be counted on every year to sweep off and deposit elsewhere a good number of surprising or cumbersome or bizarre or homely objects. - P9
Even the use of names that were outrageous and obscene and that grown-ups supposedly never heard would have spoiled a sense they had at these times, of taking each other’s looks, habits, family, and personal history entirely for granted. - P10
Any one of at least a dozen boys could have been substituted for any one of these three, and accepted by the others in exactly the same way. - P10
But these differences dropped away as soon as they were out of sight of the county jail and the grain elevator and the church steeples and out of range of the chimes of the courthouse clock. - P11
They had something close in front of them, a picture in front of their eyes that came between them and the world, which was the thing most adults seemed to have. - P12
|