Ben Killburn Quotes

″‘Oh,’ M.C. said, and then: ‘Are her greens any good this year?’ ‘Nothing’s any good this year,’ Ben replied. ‘My daddy says it will get worse with mining going on everywhere.‘”

“The problem for both of them was that they couldn’t walk a path together for fear M.C.‘s father or others might see them. M.C. would walk the paths and Ben would stalk him, hidden in the trees.”

″He’s my spirit, M.C. thought. He can see me and everything around me and the path, too. Good old spirit.”

“Calling like birds and animals wasn’t just a game they played. It was the way M.C. announced he was there without Ben’s daddy and his uncles finding out. M.C. wouldn’t have wanted to run into the Killburn men any more than he would want his own father to know he was playing with Ben.”

“Boys scattered around the hills never would play with Ben. They said it was because he was so little and nervous. But M.C. had played with Ben from the time he was a child and didn’t know better. When he was older, he had been told. Now he guessed Ben was like a bad habit he couldn’t break and had to keep secret.”