Hey, funny you mention that. I was talking to a fella on the train, must've been, um, winter last, works in publishing. Did you know that in the original Goldilocks, it was witches, not bears? In any case, he tells me, think about this poor girl, no home of her own, just wandering the woods. This fella said that to his mind, Goldilocks is the classic example of an outsider in search of himself. If you think about it, the story's got no ending. I mean, the bears, they get justice chasing an intruder out of their home, but for the girl? Well, she's back out in the cold. No family, no home. Doesn't fit in anywhere.
Got me. Could be a statement as to the underlying unreliability of time. Or a testimony along the lines of "seize the day". They don't pay me to write 'em, just slap 'em up. Which I did. And now it's done. And I find myself once more at a crossroads, unemployed. So I suppose for me the future I once feared has arrived as predicted by this very billboard.
Buel birthed him in a tub with her mama. I was downstairs with the girls. I swear I couldn't hear a sound. My missus, passing a twelve inch head through a six inch hole. On my best day, I'm half as tough as that. And this ain't my best day. No, siree. That's behind me, I think.
Listen to me. This is it, what they make us do. We're paisan. Come on. We change our names, we eat each other, we forget. For what? Don't you get it, Joe? This is a ladder, but there's nowhere to go.
Please be calm. This is just part of the new plan. Our national plan for the nation. New York, Chicago, Kansas City, Miami, Texas, California. You too are a national outfit, yes? Mm, wait, no. You are one man in one city. What do they say? Big fish, small pond. But we are the sea. Mm, I can tell you are thinking you can just kill me the way you kill the men before. But this is a mistake because when you look at me, you don't see the man behind me and the man behind him and all the men that follow. Forever. Mmhmm? You see them now. The wave that never ends. We understand each other. Cheer up. Look at it this way: we are not taking half, we are leaving half. You work for us now. You do what we say or we kill you and find someone who will. [in Italian] End of story.
History is a form of memory. But what does it mean to remember? We think naturally of our own past, our lives day by day, and through them we see the events of our times. We are black and white, rich and poor, foreign-born and domestic. And yet, if our pasts are separate, then aren't our histories separate, too? Segregated? Ask yourself, who writes the books? Who chooses what we remember and what gets forgotten? My name is Ethelrida Pearl Smutny. This is my history report.
That...I agree with you there. We were just trying, me and my girl, to get out. School board meeting, my A-S-S. And then Mr. Abernathy, the math teacher, he came at me like something from a zombie movie. Which, don't come at a mama lion when she's got her cub. You know what I mean? But the officer, that...He was just wrong place, wrong time.
I mean, it was a school board meeting. I'm on the committee for the new library. We're trying to raise money to expand thrillers and mysteries. Lee Child and the like.
