"He wore a black, dirty slouch hat and a blue work shirt over which was a buttonless vest, his jeans were held up by a wide harness-leather belt with a big square brass buckle, leather and metal polished from years of wearing and his shoes were cracked and the soles swollen and boat-shaped from years of sun and wet and dust. The sleeves of his shirt were tight on his forearms, held down by the bulging powerful muscles. Stomach and hips were lean, and legs, short, heavy, and strong. His face, squared by a bristling pepper and salt beard, was all drawn down to the forceful chin, a chin thrust out and built out by the stubble beard which was not so grayed on the chin, and gave weight and force to its thrust. Over old Tom's unwhiskered cheek bones the skin was as brown as meerschaum, and wrinkled in rays around his eye-corners from squinting. His eyes were brown, black-coffee brown, and he thrust his head forward when he looked at a thing, for his bright dark eyes were failing. His lips from which the big nails protruded, were thin and red.
(Chapter 8, Pgs. 71-72)
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"Pa thought he knew why Noah was strange, but Pa was ashamed, and never told. For on the night when Noah was born, Pa, frightened at the spreading thighs, alone in the house, and horrified at the screaming wretch his wife had become, went mad with apprehension. Using his hands, his strong fingers for forceps, he had pulled and twisted the baby. The midwife, arriving late, had found the baby's head pulled out of shape, its neck stretched, its body warped, and she had pushed the head back and molded the body with her hands. But Pa always remembered and was ashamed. And he was kinder to Noah than the others.
(Chapter 8, page 78-79--Audio: Ch.8-Part XII-1:13)
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"We got to do somepin," she said. And she pointed at Winfield. "Look at 'im," she said. And when they stared at the little boy, "He's a-jerkin' an' a-twistin' in his sleep. Lookut his color." The members of the family looked at the earth again in shame. "Fried dough," Ma said. "One month we been here. An' Tom had five days' work. An' the rest of you scrabblin' out ever' day, an' no work. An' scairt to talk. An' the money gone. You're scairt to talk it out. Ever' night you jus' eat, an' then you get wanderin' away. Can't bear to talk it out. Well, you got to. Rosasharn ain't far from due, an' lookut her color. You got to talk it out. Now don't none of you get up till we figger somepin out. One day' more grease an' two days' flour, an' ten potatoes. You set her an' get busy!"
They looked at the g round. Pa cleaned his thick nails with his pocket knife. Uncle John picked at a splinter on the box he sat on. Tom pinched his lower lip and pulled it away from his teeth.
He released his lip and said softly, "We been a-lookin', Ma. Been walkin' up to ever' house, even when we knowed they wasn't gonna be nothin'. Puts a weight on ya. Goin' out lookin' for somepin you know you ain't gonna find."
Ma said fiercely, "You ain't got the right to get discouraged. This here fambly's goin' under. You jus' ain't got the right."
Pa inspected his scraped nail. "We gotta go," he said. We didn' wanta go. It's nice here, an' folks is nice here. We're feared we'll have to go live in one of them Hoovervilles."
"Well, if we got to, we got to. First thing is, we got to eat."
Al broke in. "I got a tankful a gas in the truck. I didn' let nobody get into that."
Tom smiled. "This here Al got a lot of sense along with he's randy-pandy."
"Now you figger," Ma said. I ain't watchin' this here fambly starve no more. One day' more grease. That's what we got. Come time for Rosasharn to lay in, she got to be fed up. You figger!"
"This here hot water an' toilets--" Pa began.
"Well, we can't eat no toilets."
(Chapter 26, pp 350-51)
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Pa sniffled. "Seems like times is changed," he said sarcastically. "Time was when a man said what we'd do. Seems like women is tellin' now. Seems like it's purty near time to get out a stick."
Ma put the clean dripping tin dish out on a box. She smiled down at her work. "You get your stick, Pa," she said. "Times when they's food an' a place to set, then maybe you can use your stick an' keep your skin whole. But you ain't a-doin' your job, either a-thinkin' or a-workin'. If you was, why, you could use your stick, an' women folks'd sniffle their nose an' creep-mouse aroun'. But you jus' get you a stick now an' you ain't lickin' no woman; you're a-fightin', 'cause I got a stick all laid out too."
Pa grinned with embarrassment. "Now it ain't good to have the little fellas hear you talkin' like that," he said.
"You get some bacon inside the little fellas 'fore you come tellin' what else is good for 'em," said Ma.
Pa got up in disgust and moved away, and Uncle John followed him.
Ma's hands were busy in the water, but she watched them go, and she said proudly to Tom, "He's all right. He ain't beat. He's lie as not to take a smack at me."
Tom laughed. "You jus' a-treadin' him on?"
"Sure," said Ma. "Take a man, he can get worried an' worried, an' it eats out his liver, an' purty soon he'll jus' lay down and die with his heart et out. But if you can take an' make 'im mad, why, he'll be awright. Pa, he didn' say nothin', but he's mad now. He'll show me now. Hes awright."
(Chapter 26, pp 352-53)