True Grit

by Charles Portis

He had mistaken the drummers for men. “The wicked flee when none pursueth.”

Some people will take it wrong and criticize me for not going to my father’s funeral. My answer is this: I had my father’s business to attend to.

I will go further and say all cats are wicked, though often useful. Who has not seen Satan in their sly faces? Some preachers will say, well, that is superstitious “claptrap.” My answer is this: Preacher, go to your Bible and read Luke 8: 26-33.

Nature tells us to rest after meals and people who are too busy to heed that inner voice are often dead at the age of fifty years.

You must pay for everything in this world one way and another. There is nothing free except the Grace of God. You cannot earn that or deserve it.

“You can’t serve papers on a rat, baby sister.” “I never said you could.” “These shitepoke lawyers think you can but you can’t. All you can do with a rat is kill him or let him be. They don’t care nothing about papers.

Men will live like billy goats if they are let alone.

“Are you still game?” “Game? I was born game, sis, and hope to die in that condition.”

“It is true enough. We done it in the war. I seen a dozen bold riders stampede a full troop of regular cavalry. You go for a man hard enough and fast enough and he don’t have time to think about how many is with him, he thinks about himself and how he may get clear out of the wrath that is about to set down on him.”

But I had not the strength nor the inclination to bandy words with a drunkard. What have you done when you have bested a fool?

People love to talk. They love to slander you if you have any substance.