Davis Grubb

"Preacher walks away and stands for a spell staring out the cell window with his long, skinny hands folded behind him. Ben looks at those hands and shivers. What kind of a man would have his fingers tattooed that way? he thinks. The fingers of the right hand, each one with a blue letter beneath the gray, evil skin—L—O—V—E. And the fingers of the left hand done the same way only now the letters spell out H—A—T—E. What kind of a man? What kind of a preacher?"

"Salvation! Why, it's always a last-minute business, boy."

"Ming Hang Hung! the words rang faintly through his daydream like echoes of Miz Cunningham's tart little doorbell. Then he looked again at the old woman herself. Why, she was really quite wonderful—this old fat woman! In the end, she got her hands on nearly everything in the world! Just look at her window! There by the pair of old overshoes were Jamey Hankins' ice skates. There was old Walt Spoon's elk's tooth. There—his mother's own wedding ring! There was a world in the window of this remarkable old woman. And it was probable that when Miz Cunningham like an ancient barn owl fluttered and flapped to earth at last, they would take her away and pluck her open and find her belly lined with fur and feathers and the tiny mice skulls of myriad dreams."

"He thought again of the watch in the window. It had twelve black numbers on its moon face and there was magic to that. For these were numbers that were not really numbers at all but letters like in words. He shivered at the possibilities of such untold magic."

"It was a warm night for the end of March. Walt had left the front door to the ice-cream parlor open when he went out after supper to gossip with the old men down at Darly Stidger's store. And yet it was not spring, although winter was dead and the moon was sickly with the neitherness of the time between those seasons: those last few weeks before the cries of the green frogs would rise in stitching clamor from the river shores and meadow bogs."

"I am afraid of Mr. Powell. I am more afraid of him than I have ever been of shadows or the thunder or when you look through the little bubble in the glass of the window in the upstairs hall and all of the out-of-doors stretches and twists its neck."

"When you tell a lie it must be to keep from saying a worse thing. Then lying is not a Sin and God will not punish you. (But what if God is one of them?)"

"Old houses move in their sleep like the dreaming, remembering limbs of very old people. Boards whisper, steps cry out softly to the whispering remembrance of footfalls long gone to earth. Mantelpieces strain gently in the darkness beneath the ghosts of old Christmas stockings. Joists and beams and rafters hunch lightly like the brittle ribs of old women in their sleep: the heart recalling, the worn carpet slippers whispering down the halls again."

"Deep in the brush filth above the north pasture a rabbit gave the shrill death cry before the soft owl fell from the moon, and she thought: 'Deed, it's a hard world for little things."

"Miz Cooper says don't pay her no mind because she is most likely one of them Duck River Baptists and probably a Republican to boot and we just went on home down the street."

"Lord save little children! They abide. The wind blows and the rain is cold. Yet, they abide."

"Toby sighs and sees his breath suddenly being upon the icy window pane and that printed breath is a faith that already ancient, faery legions of the Ice King are bearing his letter high and away for the right eyes to read."

"Christmastide and a good heart’s breath against a cold pane are enough to bring lost faces back in evergreen eternity."

"It was as if, within that still winter night's vastness a strange soft-feathered bird of passage had come to beat its hopeless wings against the windows of her heart."

"The mirror’s Magic—that mirror—the one he gave me—because it tells me the sweetest lies about myself! I’ve looked into it time and time again since then—by daylight—by lamplight—by moon and starshine—and each time that dear little mirror says: Jewel Luchak, you’re the prettiest girl in twelve green counties! Mayra smiled and thought silently to herself: Couldn't it be, my child, that the Magic's not in the mirror at all? Couldn't it be that it's having someone love you is making you prettier all the time?"

"Is goodness just for Sundays and is love just for Christmas? Must the living fragrance of human love be packed away with the tree ornaments once Christmas day is past?"

"Hate, my gentle lady, said Captain Anschutz, is only Love that has lost its way home in the dark."