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1 " Just ’cause a body says somethin’ don’t make it so. You know who you are, and they can’t change that no matter what them cacklin’ hens is to say.” He tapped him on the chest. “What matters is what’s in here, son. Not a soul can take that away from you. "
― Tracy Winegar , Good Ground
2 " Ellis,” he said. “You’re watchin’ a miracle right under your nose.” He gave a few of the seeds to Ellis and let him drop them into the hole he had already made. “In each of them little things, God put life. Now you take care with it, and you feed it with water and sunlight. And, most important of all of ’em, put it in good ground, and that life is gonna sprout right out. "
3 " There was a moment of hesitation in which Joe looked into her eyes, and she looked back without flinching. Many a time, he had been at the same game with her, and she had always crumbled, bowing to his will. Now, he must have realized he was looking into the eyes of a stranger. She was someone he could not recognize, a foreigner inhabiting the body of that old Clairey, the girl he had abused, intimidated, and broken. Clairey decided then and there she would no longer cower before him. It was almost as if she were daring him to strike her in their unspoken exchange. "
4 " In the back of his mind, he had always wondered why — why they harbored such resentment for him. Now he had the answer, and he felt sick. He felt the bottom dropping out. "
5 " Clairey knew well that it was one thing to occupy his bed, quite another to occupy his heart. "
6 " He was born to be a farmer. It was something that he was good at, something he knew well. He was a giver of life, an alchemist that worked in dirt, seed, and manure. "
7 " She allowed herself the luxury of a good cry, figuring that her tears were mingling with the downpour to soak into the soil. It was relief. It was joy. It was the knowledge that she had overcome, and it spilled out with her tears onto the ground that she had toiled with, to become a part of the crop she had planted with her own hands. It had sought to defeat her, and she had prevailed. Now, she was permanently a part of it. "
8 " Clairey tasted the bile rising up in her throat, could smell the pathetic fear she was giving off, and theywere as familiar to her as waking and sleep, as hunger and thirst. In her time of peace there with Ellis, she had nearly forgotten the taste and smell of it, how her joints became liquid and her mouth became sour. That was what violence did to her. "
9 " Ellis squatted down next to her and put his hand gently on her shoulder. “Clairey…” Her name sounded strange on his lips for the first time. "
10 " Amidst his chaotic thoughts, Ellis thought of Clairey’s face, and he clung to that image. He conjured the radiant glow of her eyes when she was pleased with something, and the small, bashful smile that was fleeting but infinitely more priceless because of its rarity. Clairey’s memory was the light that came on the heels of a black and starless night. She was the most beautiful woman he had ever known. It was more than her looks that drew him to this conclusion; it was her kindness, her strength, her spirit. Somehow, the thought of her tethered him to sanity. "
