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The contestants, young girls and their fellas, hold one another up, determined to make their mark, to bite back at the dreams sold to them in newspaper advertisements and on the radio. They have sores on their feet but stars in their eyes.
The wind has existed forever. It has seen much in this country of dreams and soap ads, old horrors and bloodshed. It has played mute witness to its burning witches, and has walked along a Trail of Tears; it has seen the slave ships release their human cargo, blinking and afraid, into the ports, their only possession a grief they can never lose. The wind was there when President Lincoln fell to an assassin’s bullet. It smelled of gunpowder at Antietam. It ran with the buffalo and touched tentative fingers to the tall black hats of Puritans. It has carried shouts of love, and it has dried tears
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If the wind were a sentinel, it would send up the alarm. It would cry out a warning of terrors to come. But it is only the wind, and it knows well that no one listens to its cries.
“Just as long as they know my name.”
It set the tone of their friendship: Memphis was still there to get Gabe out of trouble, and Gabe was there to help Memphis get into it.
“Keep working, darlin’, and you just might be ‘first girl from stage left.’ ”
She wears her grief like a coat of feathers too heavy for flight.
“No. To make me feel better. Otherwise I’ll cry.”
“The line between faith and fanaticism is a constantly shifting one,” Dr. Poblocki said. “When does belief become justification? When does right become rationale and crusade become crime?”
“Haven’t you heard, darlin’? You’re supposed to marry for money, not love.”
“Absolutely positively! I’d bring a gun and shoot that horrible man with all six bullets. Then I’d stab him to be sure he was dead.” The beautician shrugged and resumed combing. “You gotta be sure.”
But it wasn’t enough to chase away the ghosts.
“When the world moves forward too fast for some people, they try to pull us all back with their fear,”
‘Some craps game, this life, kid. Don’t let ’em take you without a fight,’
