They knew it would take a long time for the dust to settle out of the air.
I don’t want to be forgotten, Henry. That is greater horror to an old man than death – to be forgotten.
And of course they were descended from the ancient kings of Ireland, as every Irishman is.
Her dark eyes made little reflected stars. She was looking at him as she was always looking.
Aron felt that something had to die – his mother or his world... He got to his feet and pushed his mother back into death and closed his mind against her.
There were people who gave everything they had to the war because it was the last war and by winning it we would remove war like a thorn from the flesh of the world and there wouldn’t be any more such horrible nonsense.
Up ahead they’s a thousan’ lives we might live, but when it comes, it’ll on’y be one. If I go ahead on all of ‘em, it’s too much. You got to live ahead ‘cause you’re so young, but – it’s jus’ the road goin’ by for me.
I know why I’m going – and, Tom, I know where I’m going, and I am content.
So often men trip by being in a rush. If one were properly to perform a difficult and subtle act, he should first inspect the end to be achieved and then, once he had accepted the end as desirable, he should forget it completely and concentrate solely on the means. By this method he would not be moved to false action by anxiety or hurry or fear. Very few people learn this.
By the time Cyrus was released from the hospital and the army, his gonorrhea was dried up. When he got home to Connecticut there remained only enough of it for his wife.
But when you get hunted – that’s different. Somepin happens to you. You ain’t strong; maybe you’re fierce, but you ain’t strong. I been hunted now for a long time. I ain’t a hunter no more. I’d maybe shoot a fella in the dark, but I don’t maul nobody with a fence stake no more. It don’t do no good to fool you or me. That’s how it is.
There was a wall against learning. A man wanted his children to read, to figure, and that was enough. More might make them dissatisfied and flighty. And there were plenty of examples to prove that learning made a boy leave the farm to live in the city – to consider himself better than his father. Enough.
For some reason he remembered the Mexican name for carnations. Somebody must have told him when he was a kid. They were called Nails of Love – and marigolds, the Nails of Death. It was a word lie nails – claveles. Maybe he’d better put marigolds on his mothers grave.
Tommy, I got to thinkin’ an’ dreamin’ an’ wonderin’. They say there’s a hun’erd thousand of us shoved out. If we was all mad the same way, Tommy – they wouldn’t hunt nobody down – ’’ She stopped.
Smiled with amusement at the myths of these country boys.
They had spoken once, but there is not need for speech if it is only a habit anyway.
Tom grinned. “It don’t take no nerve to do somepin when there ain’t nothin’ else you can do. Well, thanks. We’ll drag on.” And he got in the truck and moved away.
Out of the long tunnels of his eyes Adam saw his half-brother Charles as a bright being of another species, gifted with muscle and bone, speed and alertness, quite on a different plane, to be admired as one admires the sleek lazy danger of a black leopard, not by any chance to be compared with one’s self.
And the owners not only did not work the farms any more, many of them had never seen the farms they owned.
You know that a soldier is the most holy of all humans because he is the most tested – most tested of all. I’ll try to tell you. Look now – in all of history men have been taught that killing of men is an evil thing not to be countenanced. Any man.