"Smart bugger, aren’t you? Well, all I got to say to you is better watch out." - P16
But the way he behaved didn’t always depend on how drunk he was. - P16
BUD SALTER had two older sisters who never did anything useful unless his mother made them. - P17
"Stop swearing. Stop tattle-telling. Grow up." - P19
And, unlike Cece Ferns’s father, he didn’t change his tune when he came into his own house. - P19
This was a family who accepted burdens of one kind or another with even less fuss than they accepted the weather. In fact, nobody in that house would have spoken of Jimmy’s father’s condition or Aunt Mary’s eyesight as burdens or problems, any more than they would of Fred’s shyness. Drawbacks and adversity were not to be noticed, not to be distinguished from their opposites. - P20
But nobody complained. Everybody praised. Complaints were as rare as lightning balls in that house. - P20
Did this explain why Jimmy kept his mouth shut that Saturday at dinnertime? They all kept their mouths shut, all three of them. - P21
It was just that their houses seemed too full. Too much was going on already. This was true in Cece’s house just as much as in the others, because even in his father’s absence there was the threat and memory all the time of his haywire presence. - P21
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