With Ma gone, if the mud’s to be busted, the job falls to me. It isn’t the work I hate, the knuckle-breaking work of beating mud out of every blessed thing, but every day my fingers and hands ache so bad. I think I should just let them rest, let the dust rest, let the world rest. But I can’t leave it rest, on account of Ma,
haunting. January 1935 - P113
My father’s voice starts and stops, like a car short of gas, like an engine choked with dust, but then he clears his throat and the song starts up again. - P115
I can’t make myself over the way Ma did. And yet, if I could look in the mirror and see her in my face. If I could somehow know that Ma and baby Franklin lived on in me … But it can’t be. I’m my father’s daughter. January 1935 - P117
Tonight, for a little while in the bright hall folks were almost free, almost free of dust, almost free of debt, almost free of fields of withered wheat. Most of the night I think I smiled. And twice my father laughed. Imagine. January 1935 - P118
The little ones drank themselves into white mustaches, they ate and ate, until pushing back from their desks, their stomachs round, they swore they’d never eat again. - P120
When I do come, I study how fine that baby girl is. How perfect, and that she is wearing a feed-sack nightgown that was my brother’s. February 1935 - P126
I ran half a mile in their dust to catch them. I didn’t want to let that baby go. "Wait for me," I cried, choking on the cloud that rose behind them. But they didn’t hear me. They were heading west. And no one was looking back. February 1935 - P127
Ashby and Rush were cooking up moonshine in their giant metal still on the bank when Sheriff Robertson caught them. He found jugs of finished whiskey, and barrels and barrels of mash, he found two sacks of rye, and he found sugar, one thousand pounds of sugar. - P128
Apple pandowdy! These kids, Sheriff Robertson said, ought to have something sweet to wash down their dusty milk. And so we did. February 1935 - P128
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