The dream of her was the glow of a spent fire on a cold night: warm and welcoming. It was the only way I could untether my spirit from myself, let it fly high as a kite in them fields. I had to, or being in jail for them five years woulda made me drop in that dirt and die.
Pop becomes a kite later in the book when he holds Leonie back from continuing to slap her two children in the wake of her mother's, Philomene's, death. I wonder at the contrast of kites and birds as metaphors in this book. The Unburied are strange birds. How is kite better? Does it have more agency than a bird? Why not a kite for the unburied? They are the ones that seem to be more adrift and subject to the winds of chance than a bird would be.
