“But I know that he has a gun. And from the way he is acting—”

could not tell whether the heavy feeling in my chest had to do with what might happen or with what had already happened and was irremediable.

She hadn’t wanted to take the fifty dollars a month alimony. It was the lawyer’s idea. She found herself reliving the moment when Clarence picked up the poker and started for her. And other moments like it.

When his father was Cletus’s age he was milking fifteen cows morning and night.

Your father wouldn’t give me my freedom, she would say, and so I had to go to court and get it that way.…

She was not going to divorce him, and he had no grounds for divorcing

Take all this away and what have you done to him? In the face of a deprivation so great, what is the use of asking him to go on being the boy he was. He might as well start life over again as some other boy instead.

good blood and a good disposition. One

“Palace at 4 A.M.,” I