How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #4
"Beau Boutan still lived in the past," she said. "He still thought he could beat people like his paw did thirty, forty years ago. […] When he stopped that tractor out there, I told him not to cross that ditch. When he didn't stop, I reached and got that shotgun Mathu keeps behind the door." (8.82)
Sure, we all know that Candy is lying—but dig what she says about old Beau. Of course, Candy is living in her own version of the past too, isn't she?
Quote #5
Johnny Paul nodded his head. Not to Beulah. He wasn't looking at her. He was looking way off again, down the quarters toward the field.
"Thirty, forty of us going out in the field with cane knives, hoes, plows—name it. Sunup to sundown, hard miserable work, but we managed to get it done. We stuck together, shared what little we had, and loved and respected each other.
"But just look at things today. Where the people? Where the roses?" (9.103-5)
Johnny Paul gives us a seriously moving image of the way things used to be, and of a community struggling to stay together in the face of so much trying to tear it apart.
Quote #6
"How can a man beat a machine?" he asked. "No way? Hanh? That's what you say? Well, my brother did. With them two little mules, he beat the tractor to the derrick. Them two little mules did all they could, like my brother did. They knowed it was the end if they couldn't make it. They could hear the machine like everybody else could hear the machine, and they knowed they had to pull, pull, pull if they wanted to keep going. My brother and mules, mules and my brother. So they pulled for him and pulled for him and pulled for him, sweating, slipping, falling, but pulling for him. Slobber running from their mouths, the bit cutting their lips, the slobber and blood mixing and falling to the ground, yet they pulled, pulled, pulled, in all that mud for him." (9.133)
Tucker's story gives us a really, really close look at the fight to protect a way of life and, at the same time, the dignity that comes from hard work.