Sam > Status Update

“Gods and heavens were made up by the first guy who got scared about dying. Take it from me, Annie; death created God in six seconds.”

“Winnie assumed his Professor Higgins demeanor and stated, “There are three-board farms and there are four-board farms, Eliza. Three-board means sleazy, tacky, probably a seedy riding school run by some little dictator, attended by eager young girls and deeply frustrated women. Four-board is for a horseman or a horsewoman.”

“You see, dear Annie, Belinda is one of those southern women raised on pasteurized magnolia sap and honeyed manners. One basic purpose is bred into the marrow of their bones – to give a man exactly what he wants in order to get exactly what she was raised to have. Southern mothers baste their daughters’ brains with manipulation.”

She was not crying, but Sam thought she was.
“Don’t cry.”
“I’m not, but it’s allowed, isn’t it?”
“Yes, but once you start, it cracks your strength.”
“Sounds like what Cumberland daddies tell their kids when they fall off of a horse.”
Sam smiled. “It is.”

“I doubt if I could even if I tried. I just wouldn’t mind talking right.”
“Tell me you love me,” he said.
“I love you, Sam.”
“Sounds like you talk pretty good to me,” he drawled and leaned over to kiss her again.

“Annie had observed how the rich women dressed to stroll around the back stretch at Saratoga, looking at their horses, smiling like royalty at the help. Having noted their shoes, the jewelry, their hairdos, their make up, she understood the difference between showing off the goods a woman might have to offer and the elegant simplicity of someone so secure that showing off was never considered.”

“Nevertheless, there was little friction; instead, Annie discovered a camaraderie of survival in a bizarre world of perfect bodies, naked glamour, and ridiculous fantasy.”

“They did it once in front of my father when he was drunk. He laughed. He… laughed.”

“I ran as fast as I could, but when I got there, he was drinking and got mad seeing me naked, screaming at him. He grabbed me by the arm and threw me so hard, my arm broke… I was 10. Two times five.”

3/3

“I can see it now. He took some bacon grease. When he started back, I begged him not to, but neither one of them listened. He hurt me pretty bad, but even so, after he was done and Fungo let me go, I ran out of the place to find my father. He was a switch man on the railroad, and worked up the line about a mile away.”