We rode along in silence, thinking our private thoughts. Charlie and I had an unspoken agreement not to throw ourselves into speedy travel just after a meal. There were many hardships to our type of life and we took these small comforts as they came; I found they added up to something decent enough to carry on

Returning his pen to its holder, he told us, 'I will have him gutted with that scythe. I will hang him by his own intestines.' At this piece of dramatic exposition, I could not hep but roll my eyes. A length of intestines would not carry the weight of a child, much less a full grown man.

Here is another miserable mental image I will have to catalog and make room for.

We can all of us be hurt, and no one is exclusively safe from worry and sadness.

Where is your mother, Charlie asked. Dead. I’m sorry to hear that Thank you. But she was always dead.

It is true, I thought. I am living a life.

I do not know what it was about that boy but just looking at him, even I wanted to clout him on the head. It was a head that invited violence.