On Benediction

Kent Haruf, Benediction

- I might get me some kind of better grade of beer before I go. A guy I was talking to said something about Belgian beer...So the truth was he was dying...Someone would cut his name into the face of a tombstone and it would be as if he never was. -

- Mercy heavens! she cried. Mercy! She cupped water onto her face and chest. Lord! I'm an old woman and I've never been naked outdoors before. Look at me. -

- She was marked and known. It was how you paid for love. But over time that was lost too. She became part of the history of the town, like wallpaper in the old houses - the ageing lonely isolated woman, the unmarried schoolteacher living out her days among other people's children, a woman who'd had a brief moment of excitement and romance a long time ago...-

- So they prayed again, but it didn't change anything. -

- I think he's a good man, one man said who hadn't spoken yet. I can see that. That's not in question. He's someone with a vision of how it could be.
Not here though. -