"Mine came out of Texas, as did I. If those were louts, they were my own louts. Origin being as it is an accident outside the scope of one’s will, I tend not to seek much credit for being a Texan. Often (breathes there a man?) I can work up some proud warmth about the fact that I indubitably am one."

dogs come out of the woods with big femur bones already chalk white in their mouths. it’s admirable, how cows go away from the herd to die alone when they're ailing. suicide, when we can’t find them to fix it. my sister writing K-I-L-L-E-R on the puppy kennel in wonky kid stencil, my uncle laughing,

my dad dismayed she'd defaced it, if that’s a word he ever was, dismayed when my , because he , or dismayed when I said something bad enough to warrant . things little girls say, like .

where I came from people say things like, “where I come from,” and dogs get shot. big sheep dogs that transgress, get carried away and eat the newborn lamb instead of just licking at the placenta. little dogs get left out in wintertime and freeze, on accident, when the kids forget to let them in, or the tiny white one named “dolly” and another try named “spirit” are equally hit by cars.

cats get stepped on by horses. of the three named willie, waylon, and merle, only one survives, disappears and comes back now with a chewed ear, now with one eye, but no one remembers much which one this was. halfhearted arguments. we had pulled them by their black scruff out of the styrofoam ice box as kittens and loved them in spite of the little red rings that showed up on our arms afterwards.