We buried them together on th...

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

Permission to play at the Pal...

Permission to play at the Palace. - P26

Someday, I plan to play for President Franklin Delano Roosevelt himself. Maybe I’ll go all the way to the White House in Washington, D.C. - P29

No Too Much To Ask
We haven’t had a good crop in three years, not since the bounty of ’31, and we’re all whittled down to the bone these days, even Ma, with her new round belly, but still when the committee came asking, Ma donated: three jars of apple sauce and some cured pork, and a
feed-sack nightie she’d sewn for our coming baby. February 1934 - P30

Ma would have thrown a fit
if I’d taken a gift from him. - P33

Fifty Miles South to Home
In Amarillo, wind blew plate-glass windows in, tore electric signs down, ripped wheat
straight out of the ground.
February 1934 - P34

We shake out our napkins, spread them on our laps, and flip over our glasses and plates, exposing neat circles, round comments on what life would be without dust. - P35

all the while I glare at Ma’s back with a scowl foul as maggoty stew. - P42

Instead she makes me feel like she’s just taking me in like I was so much flannel dry on the line. - P44

I sensed it before I knew it was coming. I heard it, smelled it, tasted it. Dust. - P45

The wind snatched that snow right off the fields, leaving behind a sea of dust, waves and waves and waves of dust, rippling across our yard. - P46

While we sat taking our six-weeks test, the wind rose and the sand blew right through the cracks in the schoolhouse wall, right through the gaps around the window glass, and by the time the tests were done, each and every one of us was coughing pretty good and we all needed a bath. I hope we get bonus points for testing in a dust storm. April 1934 - P49

I look at Joe and know our future is drying up
and blowing away with the dust. - P51

I wish I could see poppies growing out of this dust. - P56

On Sunday, winds came, bringing a red dust like prairie fire, hot and peppery, searing the inside of my nose, the whites of my eyes. Roaring dust, turning the day from sunlight to midnight. - P58

I wish the dust would plug my ears so I couldn’t hear her. - P75

Ma died that day
giving birth to my brother. - P77

[오늘의 한문장] Out of the Dust (Scholastic Gold)

I suspected Mad Dog had come first to Arley Wanderdale’s mind, but I didn’t get too riled. Not so riled I couldn’t say yes. - P26

[오늘의 한문장] Out of the Dust (Scholastic Gold)

She’s an old mule on the subject of my schooling. She says, "You stay home on weeknights, Billie Jo." And mostly that’s what I do. - P24

Daddy named me Billie Jo. He ...

Daddy named me Billie Jo. He wanted a boy. Instead, he got a long-legged girl with a wide mouth and cheekbones like bicycle handles. He got a redheaded, freckle-faced, narrow-hipped girl with a fondness for apples and a hunger for playing fierce piano. - P17

old as ancient Indian bones, and mean as a rattler, - P18

Now Livie’s gone west, out of the dust, on her way to California, where the wind takes a rest sometimes. And I’m wondering what kind of friend I am, wanting my feet on that road to another place, instead of Livie’s. - P22

하지만 내가 방금 묘사한 느낌은 사라지지 않았고, 결혼식이 끝나고 열린 조촐한 피로연에서도 내가 정말로 거기 존재한다는 느낌은 들지 않았다. 내가 그 자리로부터 제거된 것처럼, 모든 것이 조금 멀리 있는 듯 느껴졌다, 그게 내가 하려는 말이다

-알라딘 eBook <오, 윌리엄!> (엘리자베스 스트라우트 지음, 정연희 옮김) 중에서 - P61