J.D. Jordan

Was still between Martha and Jane, then, I was. Between the girl I was and who I wanted to be.

Ain__ no good ever comes of it, if you ain__ steering yourself.

Was like the Green Man said, some you got to put to the bullet. Some to the tongue. Often the latter, with me. But some, you just got to put behind you.

wasn__ no bit of me willing to ride shotgun to my own funeral.

I was the luckiest girl. Don__ you think because I didn__ have no proper man or husband I was anything else. Wasn__ no place I__ rather be than right there. Even now, I pine for that uncomfortable rock. Because he was watching over me and loneliness was some far off thing, echoing off the Rock from other folks. Wasn__ nothing could ruin it for me.

But tell you true, I honestly didn__ think nothing about the Green Man beefing that posse. Was just men and the world__ full of them.

And in the silence what followed, I reckon our eyes had some long conversation our mouths could__e never talked through. Some long, looking talk about things gone and long since said. About cries out in the night and some long ago tangling of limbs. And about them betrayals done time and time again__y both of us__hat led to me pointing the Green Man__ rifle at the man what once loved me under the Green Man__ stars.

Maybe I__ lost something. Maybe I__ lost a lot__ore, even, than I could suffer__ut I still had my own self. And lonesome as I might be, wasn__ no force on Earth or from above what could make me less.

But wasn__ time for what was. Was time to settle up the future.

Seems a lot of men never saw one such as me. A girl what could keep up and fight and ride and curse with the best of them. A girl what ain__ trapped in some dress or some house or some bed. A girl what ain__ waiting on some man to do what she ought to her own damn self.

I appreciate your thinking on me, marshal, but ain__ no trouble of his what ain__ trouble of mine, too.

Ain__ nothing scarier than someone with nothing.

not knowing what I needed to do or where I needed to go, I knew all the same that I was going in the right direction.

The terrible price of living, ain__ it? To live through others dying?

Don__ matter none how bad it gets sometimes. You can always turn this shit around.

Can__ count on no miracles. Sometimes, you just got to have a plan.

That got me to laughing too. His laughter, like his yelling, got into you until you was right soaked with it. So you couldn__ help yourself. But it felt good. Light. I tell you, I hadn__ felt like that in a long while.

what I like and what I need__ two different things.