Texas has a tight cohesiveness perhaps stronger than any other section of America.
He never fell, never slipped back, never flew.
..it's awful not to be loved. It's the worst thing in the world...It makes you mean, and violent, and cruel.
I've done my damndest to rip a reader's nerves to rags, I don't want him satisfied.
Your audience is one single reader. I have found that sometimes it helps to pick out one person-a real person you know, or an imagined person and write to that one.
The impulse of the American woman to geld her husband and castrate her sons is very strong.