Blaze

Memories are contrary things; if you quit chasing them and turn your back, they often return on their own.

He was going to make this happen. His feet and his head was set, and when he got that way, he always did what he said he was going to do. It was his pride. The only one he had.

Blaze himself was pretty sure he himself was going to hell, as were most other people. It was a dirty world, and the longer you lived, the dirtier you got.

Ain’t none of you ever been stuck in the mud and needed a push? I won’t ask you how you can be for this and still call yourselves Christians, because one of you would have some kind of answer out of what I call the Holy-Joe-Do-It-My-Way Bible. But, Jeezly-Crow! How can you read the parable of the Good Samaritan on Sunday and then say you’re for a thing like this on Monday night?

Blaze thought: I’m going somewhere. Then he thought: I am somewhere. The first thought made him happy. The second was so big it made him feel like crying.

Sometimes when he was in the country he would sleep in a barn and wake in the night and go out and look at the stars and there were so many, and he knew they were there before him, and they would be there after him. That was sort of awful and sort of wonderful.

A man gets older, that’s the thing. You don’t know nothin about that, but you will. He gets older and his whole life starts to seem like a dream he had durin an afternoon nap.

It was a very long staircase. Made, he supposed, for colorful cunts to sweep up and down at big dances like in Gone with the Wind.

And how much was in this fabled wallet?” “About two hundred and fifty dollars.” “Baldheaded Jaysus, and I bet you got it all in your pockets, too.

Blaze was stumped for a moment. Then he blurted, “George.” “Lovely name! From the Greek. It means, ‘to work the earth.’

Loretta Lynn was singing that your good girl is gonna go bad. George would laugh and say something like, ‘That’s right, honey – you can go bad all over my face.