Sounds like your daddy. Thumping his Bible.
-Wasn't just Bibles he thumped.
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... I would've told him to do exactly what he's done. "Marry yourself a widow, Donnie. You'll be getting a grateful woman."
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I don't need reminding. I know what I've lost.
-Sometimes that's all life is, Margaret. The list of what we've lost.
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The government agents came into the house when I was eight. They took me and put me in their truck. You know, I thought I did something wrong and that my mother didn't want me anymore. But then I could see she was crying. All the mothers were.
-You were eight?
They cut my hair off. And washed me in kerosene. And beat me. To kill the Indian inside. I guess they did. So when I came home, I couldn't understand my grandmother's words anymore.
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Isn't that what you've always told me? Over and over. That I don't know when it's time to call it quits.
-And I'll be the one gets the job of picking up those pieces, huh?

First time I held him, he arranged himself just right in my arms and snug to me. And light as can be, like feathers...

===
The Weboys:

My people originally came from Illinois. Filed a homestead claim north of Gladstone before there was a Gladstone. I'm one of eight. Lost an older sister to pneumonia. My brother Carl drowned in a neighbor's cistern. Another fell off a truck, lived in a wheelchair for the rest of his days. My aunt Ruth got caught in a whiteout, froze and died right where she stood, not 30 feet from that back door. Hard life. Not for everyone. My other brothers and sister lit out, soon as they could. Never looked back.

I stayed. When I first met Henry Weboy, he couldn't stop talking about heading for Florida. I figure I had more than a little to do with his decision to stay. Now he's buried in the same cemetery as my folks and his. Yeah. And my boys are fourth-generation Weboys, born and living on North Dakota soil.