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“Even the finest sword plunged into saltwater will eventually rust.”
Even the people we loved kept pieces of themselves hidden away from the light.
You always think those things happen in other places,” Harold said. “People in other places think the same thing, Harold.
“Terrible people can do good things sometimes. But they like doing the terrible things more.
After World War I, thousands of Black veterans returned home after saving democracy from the Kaiser with a renewed sense of dignity. They were heroes, after all. Why should they have to bow and scrape to anybody? Then the Red Summer happened and white men, like Everett Cunningham, Scott’s great-grandfather, made it their mission to remind these heroes of their place.
The jejune declarations of young boys trying to find their way as men. Black boys who may not have been able to truly articulate how seeing that statue every day on their way to school made them feel but knew without a shadow of a doubt what that statue meant.
If the impermanent nature of social media was a refuge from the finality of death.
He thought trees were the closest living things to immortal on earth. How many of these arboreal giants had been saplings when the first indigenous people hunted whitetails here?
How many men who looked like him were lynched from their branches in the years following the failed rebellion of Southern landowners and poor hired men?
We all choose to be skeptics when the truth is inconvenient.
he was a devil that chased down demons.
the multifaceted tapestry that lives in us all.
man cursed to forever miss a departing train by just a few minutes. That was what policing a small town felt like some days. You were always a day late and a dollar short.
“My grandma used to tell me how the early members of the Mennonite church was against slavery because they thought owning another person couldn’t be part of God’s plan. They felt like being slave owners was an unforgivable sin that would curse them to hell. Stain their sons and daughters for generations.” Pip took a breath. “Charon’s been the home of so many terrible sins. Maybe there’s a curse here. One that’s stained us all,” he said.
