I am beginning to think I’m not a good person. And it’s not the bodies in the basement, it's this body I am and the things it’s done. 

Those other bodies, the ones in the basement, those are Earl’s.

I tell him, I tell him, Earl, we got to get better, but I don’t think he understands how I can roll my sins up with his. 

I don’t think he kens what it means to be brothers. 

While Earl’s nude and threatening violence upon the stars, I’m thinking about the time I abandoned him in the woods so I could kiss Misty Rooks without him telling our folks.

After the divorce, Misty said, You ripped the heart right out of me, and I had.

In the morning, there’ll be another body.

I know that’s true. But what keeps me up isn’t Earl’s axe, it’s the little terribles I sowed when I wasn’t careful with my love. 

I never leave bodies, bodies just leave. 

And I can’t put things right any more than Earl can put the blood back. And maybe I don’t want forgiveness, don’t want it at all, ’cept for the time I said to Earl, I said, Earl, you’re the devil in me. 

It wasn’t intended as a dare. I meant it like how Pops used to say to Moms she was the fishhooks in his smile. 

And it’s awful, this image, but I remember them with a savagery they’d call love and Earl’d call nothing since he gave up words so that he would never be tempted to confess all he’d done. 

I say, Earl, there isn’t a place in this house where something hasn’t died. 

I mean our dust dancing to the ground in the moonlight, but there’s no explaining death to a man holding a knife. 

It’s only his whittling knife, but he aims to make a spear. I tell him, I tell him, Earl, there’s no deliverance in turning one weapon into two. 

Pops understood how death hid till it jumped up to grab you unsuspecting. Then you can’t stop seeing it inside every human frailty. 

I remember how Pops never let go Moms’s hand. How I was too scared to look. How that’s the worst thing I’ve ever done because it didn’t spare me nothing. 

I remember, too, finding Earl shivering in the woods and how I thought it was worth it because I meant to marry that Misty Rooks.

I ain’t all talk, but that doesn’t mean talking’s not still my problem. 

Earl, I’ll explain, Earl, if there’s weapons, there’s got to be the opposite of weapons, too. 

The truth is, we got more shovels than blades, and Earl won’t raise a hand against me when I come for him. We’re brothers, after all. 

I want to bury this violence in us. I want to become a good person. I want to be forgiven for the things I did because I can’t ever be for all the things I didn’t.