"Ben" Yair’s Reviews > Benediction > Status Update

"PEOPLE BEGAN TO COME to the house in the middle of the morning, to offer sympathy and gifts of food, and Berta May came over again to help. Mary and Lorraine had dressed in good clothes by now and they met the people at the door and brought a few in for a brief visit."

-Haruf, Kent. Benediction.

"WE HAVE TO GO over there a last time, Berta May said. I want to tell him good-bye. I want you to come with me."

-Haruf, Kent. Benediction.

"IN THE DAYS FOLLOWING the sermon Lyle began to wander in the town. After supper with his wife and son, he’d put on a jacket and cap and begin to walk—after the sun was down. It was usually nine or ten before he began."

-Haruf, Kent. Benediction.

"AFTERWARD IT WASN’T CLEAR what Lyle expected the sermon to accomplish. But he wasn’t even half-finished when some of the congregation, men mostly, hurrying their wives and children with them, but some women too, began to rise up from their pews and glare at him and walk out of the church."

"ALENE AND HER PRINCIPAL came out of the beautiful old redbrick hotel with carved stonework onto the street a block east of Union Station in downtown Denver."

-Haruf, Kent. Benediction.

"IT WASN’T THE IMAGE of her naked beneath the thin raincoat standing in front of him in the back office of the hardware store that Dad Lewis remembered. It was the look on her face before she slapped him."

-Haruf, Kent. Benediction.

"DAD CAME OUT from the bedroom through the hall in the hot still summer afternoon using his wood cane, with Mary following behind, her hands held out in case he needed help, and they came on into the living room where the preacher and Lorraine were sitting together on the couch."

-Haruf, Kent. Benediction.

"YEARS AGO Alene walked along a wide Denver sidewalk with her arm in a man’s arm. That was in wintertime. A snowy evening. The snow was falling thickly and it was pleasant under the lights along the street, walking slowly past the city stores, looking in the windows, delaying going back to the hotel for the pleasure of being out in the cold air together."

-Haruf, Kent. Benediction.

"You son of a bitch! He killed himself! You son of a bitch.

Who is this?

You know who it is. He went to Denver and started drinking and took a gun and blew half his head off. He never even left a note. Because of you. You did this. You’re the one that made him. Oh I hope you rot in hell! Oh goddamn you! I hope you burn in hellfire forever."

Haruf, Kent. Benediction.