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[last lines]
Wilfred James: In the end, we all get caught.
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Arlette James: Here's to Shannon Cotterie and her future bubbies, and if my son don't know the color of her nipples, he's a slowpoke. You just make sure when you're laying down with her in the corn or behind the barn that you're a "no poke". Explore all you like and, you know, rub it with your Johnny Mac until he feels good and spits up. But you stay out of the home place, lest you get locked in like your mama and daddy.
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Wilfred James: I discovered something that night that most people never have to learn. Murder is sin. Murder is damnation. But murder is also work.
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Henry James: I can't pray now, or ever again. I think if I got down on my knees God would strike me dead. I hope there is no god. I imagine all murderers hope there isn't, because if there's no heaven, then there's no hell.
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Henry James: Papa... it'll be quick.
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[first lines]
Wilfred James: [writing] To whom it may concern. My name is Wilfred Leland James, and this is my confession. The issue that led to my crime and damnation was 100 acres of good land in Hemingford Home, Nebraska, willed to my wife, Arlette Christina Winters James, following the death of her father. It was much my intention to add her 100 to our 80-acre freehold farm, as it was to someday pass it all on to my boy, Henry Freeman James, and to his thereafter.
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Wilfred James: In 1922, a man's pride was a man's land. And so was his son.
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Wilfred James: [narrating] I believe that there's another man... inside of every man. A stranger. A conniving man.
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Wilfred James: A murdered man or a woman dies not on God's time, but on man's. And if she is cut short before atoning for sin, well, all errors must be forgiven.
Henry James: But what about us, Pa? Wouldn't we go to hell?
Wilfred James: How can you say so when you see heaven all around us? Yet she means to drive us away from it. And think. If she does go to Omaha, well, she'll be digging her an even deeper pit in Sheol. If she takes you, you'll become a city boy. Yeah. Just forget all this and... and start learning city ways.
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Wilfred James: [writing] In 1922, I murdered my wife. My son... aided me. This is a thing I regret, even more bitterly than the crime, for the reasons that this document will show.
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Wilfred James: Money fixes everything, right? As the wife says, no money *spoils* everything, boy. Now I know that. Shannon will, too, now that she's got a baby to watch out for now. You'll see.
Henry James: Not if they make her give it away.
Wilfred James: That don't change how a woman feels when she got a chap in the belly. You see a chap makes a woman feel wise in ways a man don't understand, son. Now, I haven't lost any respect for you, just because you gonna have a baby. Or her. You ain't the first. You certainly won't be the last. But you will not, hey, You will *not* ask a five-month pregnant girl to run off with you.
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Wilfred James: [narrating] Waiting for a teenage boy to come to his senses is like waiting for a broomstick to sprout flowers.
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Wilfred James: [narrating] No father should have to kiss his son for the last time... but if any father deserved such a fate... it was I.
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Wilfred James: [narrating] Whenever I tried to busy myself with work to keep out the thoughts... they'd find me.
1922 Quotes
Extended Reading
