True Grit

by Charles Portis

PEOPLE DO not give it credence that a fourteen-year-old girl could leave home and go off in the wintertime to avenge her father’s blood but it did not seem so strange then, although I will say it did not happen every day.

People in Arkansas did not think much of Texas mustang ponies. They were little and mean. They had never had anything but grass to eat and did not weigh over eight hundred pounds.

If Papa had a failing it was his kindly disposition. People would use him. I did not get my mean streak from him.

Everything seemed to be there, even his knife and watch. The watch was of brass and not very expensive but I was surprised to find it because people who will not steal big things will often steal little things like that.

On his deathbed he asked for a priest and became a Catholic. That was his wife’s religion. It was his own business and none of mine. If you had sentenced one hundred and sixty men to death and seen around eighty of them swing, then maybe at the last minute you would feel the need of some stronger medicine than the Methodists could make.

But the magazines of today do not know a good story when they see one. They would rather print trash.

Nothing has changed.

I do not fool around with newspapers. They are always after me for historical write-ups but when the talk gets around to money the paper editors are most of them “cheap skates.”

The paper editors are great ones for reaping where they have not sown.

That's a great line.

MR. GOUDY: Your honor, will you instruct this witness to keep silent until he is asked a question? JUDGE PARKER: Yes, and I will instruct you to start asking questions so that he may respond with answers.

“They tell me you are a man with true grit.”

We have our title, folks.

“By God!” said he. “A Colt’s dragoon! Why, you are no bigger than a corn nubbin! What are you doing with that pistol?” I said, “It belonged to my father. I intend to kill Tom Chaney with it if the law fails to do so.” “Well, that piece will do the job. If you can find a high stump to rest it on while you take aim and shoot.”

Knowing the Gospel and preaching it are two different things.

As he drank, little brown drops of coffee clung to his mustache like dew. Men will live like billy goats if they are let alone.

“Blast coon hunting! This ain’t no coon hunt, it don’t come in forty miles of being a coon hunt!”

Dad took me coon hunting when I was a kid. I didn’t like it, being afraid of the dark and easily bored at standing around waiting for the dogs to find a coon and run it up a tree so Dad could shoot it. The next time he wanted me to go, I said I’d rather stay home and watch “Wonder Woman.” He didn’t press me on it. Years later, I would tease him that letting me stay home was why I turned out gay. He just rolled his eyes.