Status Updates From Days Without End

22. Family life. Poulson searching for a deserter and Thomas going to give himself in, with less confidence in a happy end than he appears to.

21. Back in drag to get out of Fort Laramie where one ‘s looking for Startling Carlton’s murderer. And then Winona and Thomas travel back to Tennessee, by coach, by train, by boat on the Mississippi River. And then still some walking left to do to John Cole. I just hope he’s still around, because it has been awfully still and I think I remember from before, he his end is due before the book is finished…

20. Brutalities. shocking chapter. Winona saved but no mercy for Major Neal (or Sterling Carlton), who is now beyond redemption.

Winona the only soul not thrown on the bonefire. She seen the worst and seen it before. It makes her silent, so silent the silence of winter is like a clattering.

Word so black they were blacker than dried blood

Gruesome, savage slaughter and in the middle of carnage, Thomas goes for Winona to bring her to safety.

19. The exchange of Winona Cole for Angel Neale.

Hardly any action, possibly my favourite chapter in the book

Winona, the Queen of this o’erwhelming country. God damn it but a corporeal best not weep.

If ever you forget why this book is so dear, look up p249 again. There you’ll find Thomas McNulty showing a whole lot of humanity in a handful of thoughts…

Sometimes you know you ain’t a clever man. But likewise sometimes the fog of usual thoughts clears off in a sudden breeze of sense and you see things clear a moment like a clearing country. We blunder through and call it wisdom but it ain’t.

Two weeks with Startling Carlton would wear out St. Paul. I’m so hungry I could eat the head off John the Baptist…

As said before, McNulty’s vocabulary, grammar and spelling can get rather tiresome, but I love it when out of the blue he shows his depth, going all biblical or referring to the Greek classics, as he does.

Every life has its days of happiness despite the ugly Fates.

18. Farming at Lige’s. And a shoot-out with Tach Petrie’s gang.

The vernacular sometimes irritates. Remarkable that even without a proper sentence, the meaning does not get lost…

You could arrest sunlight for attempted murder out on the plains.