63
" Ree sat chilled inside her squat tent. To occupy her mind, she decided to name all the Miltons: Thump, Blond, Catfish, Spider, Whoop, Rooster, Scrap… Lefty, Dog, Punch, Pinkeye, Momsy… Cotton, Hog-jaw, Ten Penny, Peashot… "
― Daniel Woodrell , Winter's Bone
67
" Well, we got to do the right thing by this boy,” Sundown said. “The right thing.” Duncan’s neck relaxed and his head flopped back gratefully. “Uh-huh,” Lewis said. “Naturally we’ll do the right thing by him.” “Then after that,” Powers interjected, “should we dump him in the river?” Sundown raised his arms and shrugged. “What else? Carp got to eat, too.” Now comprehension made Duncan rigid, and he let his important eye flap shut, choosing not to view the most glamorous occurrence, the straight-razor finale, to this his gaudy, but already forgotten, life. "
― Daniel Woodrell , The Bayou Trilogy: Under the Bright Lights, Muscle for the Wing, and The Ones You Do
75
" of the ready green on a blue felt top. The gentlemen who had assembled around it for an evening of high-stakes Hold ’Em were well dressed, well fed, and well heeled, but now their mouths hung loose and their poolside tans paled. “Hands on the table, guys,” Jadick said. “And don’t any of you act one-armed.” A short man with an air of compact power, Jadick moved with brisk precision and spoke calmly. He pulled back the hammers on his archaic but awesome weapon and said, “Scoop the fuckin’ manna, boys.” “Check,” said Dean Pugh. He and Cecil Byrne, his fellow Wingman, went slowly around the table "
― Daniel Woodrell , The Bayou Trilogy: Under the Bright Lights, Muscle for the Wing, and The Ones You Do
80
" YOU WEREN’T born choking on no silver spoon, you know how it goes when you go looking for a job and you need one: You wait in the first indifferent room, ink in the forms, apply in another room with linoleum that’s waxy and squeaks and overhead lights that don’t miss a thing; then there’s the desk and the person behind it who thinks he’s an admiral, or it’s a she and she thinks she’s now in line for the throne to somewhere, and next you’re kissing ass and aw-shucksing toward the desk, telling how bad all your life you’ve been wanting to be night janitor in a chemical plant, or hog wrangler in a slaughterhouse, or pizza delivery boy, how you’ve laid awake in bed gettin’ goose bumps just from imagining how high and wide your life might someday be lived if ever you could average five dollars and forty cents an hour. But "
― Daniel Woodrell , Tomato Red