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Ree Dolly (where does she go to? (3) Ree cuts through her former high…
Ree Dolly
where does she go to?
3) Ree cuts through her former high school:
- "The Rathlin Valley High School sat across the schoolyard, with its own parking lot, and had russet walls with a white roof. The sports name for all grades was the Fighting Bobcats, and a large picture of several toothy cats with extended claws raking red slashes into a blue sky was painted on a billboard set beside the blacktop." (47-48)
- "Ree crossed the schoolyard snow toward the scraped hard road that led north. She saw pregnant girls she knew […], boys she knew […], lovers she knew […], teachers she knew […]." (48)
2) Gail and Floyd Langan's home to visit her best friend:
- "The Langans had a single-wide trailer that was tan and sat on a concrete pad behind their junk barn." (31)
- "The single-wide had a raised deck and men could piss from a corner to the side of the barn and a short frayed shadow of discoloration had been splattered there." (31)
5) Thump Milton's house to ask about her father:
- "a clenched house of dun stones circled by bare trees" (57)
- "The house had been made without any frivolous stones of lighthearted colors, but was entirely deep-hued and sober. A short roof covered the woman in the doorway." (59)
1) Teardrop and Victoria's house to ask about her father:
- "Uncle Teardrop's place sat beyond one daunting ridge and up a narrow draw. The house had been built small but extra bedrooms and bow windows and other ideas had been added on by different residents who'd had hammers and leftover wood. There always seemed to be walls covered by black tarpaper standing alone for months and months waiting for more walls and a roof to come along and complete a room. Stovepipes angled from the house on every which side." (21)
- "A cuckoo clock chirped nine times. record albums lined along the floor went nearly the complete length of a wall. There was a fancy-looking sound system on a bookshelf, plus a four-foot rack of CDs. The furniture was mostly wooden, country-type stuff. One piece was a big round cushioned chair on a sapling frame that you sat in the exact middle of like you were squatted inside a bloomed flower. Swirly-patterned lavender cloth from Arabia was tacked to a wall as decoration." (22-23)
6) Ree goes to the caves, where she feels good and revitalises herself:
- "Ree left the tracks and crossed a level field to reach the slope of caves." (65)
- "The caves were easy to see from below but difficult to reach." (65)
- "the slant gaping cave she knew best, the cave with a wall of stones standing in the mouth" (65)
- "paradise" (66)
- "The cave was long and had two more rooms, at least, deeper down and chill, but the space behind the wall warmed quickly. "(68)
- "The corner by the wall became very warm and Ree sat there bare-butted and oddly comforted, knowing that so many relatives with names she never knew had hunched here in this very spot to renew themselves after a sad spinning time had dropped over their lives and whirled them raw." (68)
7) Blond Milton drives her to the place her father has last been seen:
- "Down the road" (74)
- "He drove until he reached the drive to a house in the near distance, then parked. The house had burned. Three walls and part of the roof still stood, but the walls were blackened and the roof was blown open in the center with sections slanted away in every direction." (74)
- "That right there’s the last place me or anybody seen Jessup. The other fellas went off doin' things'n when they got back that’s what they got back to, only it still had fire goin'." (75)
- "That shit's all poison, girl. Toxic. It'll eat the skin clean off your bones and wilt the bones, too. It’ll turn your lungs to paper sacks and tear holes in ’em. Don’t you get nowheres near that fuckin’ house." (75)
- "there’s horseweed standin’ chin-high inside that place!" (77)
8) Gail drives her to Reid's Gap where April Dunahew, her father's girlfriend, lives
- "That might be the one last place worth checkin'." (83)
- "There were five streets and two stop signs in Reid’s Gap. Snow was piled high in the parking lot of the elementary school and the Get’n Quik store was the only building with lights on. A field of crashed vehicles butted against the road through town, and these trophies for bad luck from many eras spread crumpled downhill beyond sight. Yard sale signs on sticks were stuck in the ground at corners. Flyers for Slim Ted’s Tuesday Square Dances at Ash Flat were tacked to telephone poles. Churches stood at both ends of town and a windowless senior center at the heart." (87-88)
- "April Dunahew had a rail fence across the face of her yard and bordering the driveway. A rose arbor stood over the sidewalk shoveled clean and the house lights were bright. The house was now an ordinary white with green shutters. Gnarled evergreen shrubs grew squatty along the walls. A small car and a long truck that had a business name written on the side were parked in the drive. The door had a bell that made music of four ringing tones. " (88)
- "The house was by far the most pleasant Ree had ever been allowed to enter. Everything was where it was supposed to be and clean. The furniture had been costly and there were elegant built-in bookcases flanking the fireplace and a dozen special little touches. A carved wooden hutch stood against the wall, featuring an arrangement of delicate blown-glass objects of many odd colors and complicated shapes. A staircase that curved led upstairs and the wooden steps shined all the way up. A television was on in the family room and a man’s head was visible above the line of the couch." (89)
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10) Gail drives her to Bucket Spring:
- "The water here's good for you." (156)
- "Above the springhead there was a space to park, and logs pounded into the slope lengthwise made steps leading down to the clean, clean water. Where the spring boiled from the earth the water was a cool holy blue and rose to make jouncy plashes across the surface. As the water spread downstream the blue dimmed to crystal clarity and watercress grew in swaths of brilliant green along the bed. Boulders had fallen into haphazard stacks near the springhead and a few reached the pool of blue water and made angled sitting spots." (157)
- "The water was a color Ree’d pick for the jewel in a meaningful finger ring. "(157)
- "Where the stream ran from the pool the water was so clear she could appreciate individual rocks on the bottom, clumps of green that swayed, skittish tiny fish facing upstream." (157)
13) Ree goes to the unknown place where her father lies:
- "We’ll carry you to your daddy’s bones, child. We know the place." (180)
- "You can't know where we're takin' you to." (181)
- "Ree tried to guess where they were" (182)
- "Beyond the gate, the car was driven more slowly, meaning there must not be much of a road beneath the tires. There came a stretch of jolting, rhythmic jolting, the jolts all alike, and Ree guessed they were driving sideways over a cornfield. There was an extra noise that could be the dry crack of corn stalks breaking." (183)
- "When I take this sack off your head, you might know where you are. I don’t really think you could, but if you do know where you are, you forget you know it. Get me? Don’t try’n guess where this is, or ever come back here if you know. That won’t be allowed." (183)
- "A field, a line of trees, a small path with a few paw prints wending deeper into the woods. A plump waxing moon and silvered landscape."(183-184)
- "See that tallest little willow? Your dad’s sunk under it, tied to an engine block." (184)
- "The pond in silver light, with the slouched willows and surface of dull ice, instantly became a wrenching vista. Cattails and small nibbling fish in low water, a living grave for Dad." (184)
11) Ree follows Teardrop in Ronnie Vaughn's tavern:
- "Through the frost and fog there were red and green lights, and she scraped a peephole with a fingernail and saw a beer sign over the door to a cement-block building, an unpainted tavern with no windows or name but for the beer sign. Ree knew it as Ronnie Vaughn’s place, and it probably had a proper name but she could not bring it to mind." (167)
4) Little Arthur's house on Hawkfall road to ask about her father:
- "in better weather Ree thought Hawkfall looked sort of enchanted, if a place could be enchanted but not too friendly" (50)
- "Little Arthur’s place was up the slope, nearly to the top of the ridge. His house was built more of wood than stone but there was plenty ofstone. On the steepest side of the house there had been a porch outside the kitchen door but the stairs and pilings had broken away to leave the floor unsupported above a hellish plummet, a beguiling bad idea lying in wait for somebody high to give it a try. Two bullet-riddled barrels and other metal debris rusted near the house and a battered beige car seat had been set against the wall as a summer bench. " (52)
- "The house smelled of old beer, old grease, old smoke. No fresh light made it through the windows at this time of day and it was as shadowed as a sinkhole. The main room was long but narrow and a big square table had to be edged past to go from one side to the other. Pie pans had been used as ashtrays and sat full of butts on the table, the floor, both windowsills. A glistening pump shotgun lay broken open across the table." (53)
12) Ree looks for her father's grave in a cemetery:
- "It was an abandoned family cemetery on the back side of somebody’s farm and headstones dressed with snow were lit by the high beams." (170)
- "Passing years had not rubbed the names to blank space on all the headstones and the name Dolly was in big letters on so many that Ree’s skin spooked." (170)
- "Lookin’ for humps that ain’t settled. […] It’s a lonely ol’ spot – that’s what makes it a favorite place." (171)
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where does she live?
in a old family house:
- "The house had been built in 1974, the ceilings were high, and the single light overhead threw dour shadows behind everything." (6)
- "Warped shadow-shapes lay all across the floor and walls and bulged in the corners. The house was cool in the brighter spots and chill in the shadows. Windows set high into the walls, and outside the panes torn plastic sheeting from the winter before whipped and fluttered. The furniture came into the house when Mamaw and grandad Bromont were alive, had been in use since Mom was a child, and the lumpty stuffing and worn fabric yet held the scent of Grandad's pipe tobacco and ten thousand dusty days." (7)
- "Bromonts had been in the house for most of a century" (176)
in the Orzak Mountains in Missouri, USA:
- "the valley" (3)
- "this tangled country of Orzak hills and hollers" (6)
there is a good chance she will lose her house:
- "the way the deal works is, you-all lose this place. It'll get sold from under you. You'll have to get out." (14)
- "They'll take the place from us. And the timber acres, too." (23)
this house is paramount to the future of her family:
- "I can't forever carry both... them boy's Mom... not... without that house to help." (134)
whom does she meet?
friends and auxilliaries
Gail Lockrum/Langan
relationship with Ree:
- Ree about Gail: "I know her real good." (36)
- the beginning of their relationship: "Gail and Ree had been tight since the second-grade field trip when they’d bumped heads chasing the same frog under a picnic table at Mammoth Spring and stood to rub their ouches, then took a shine to each other and since spent the idle hours of each passing year happily swapping clothes and dreams and their opinions of everybody else." (31-32)
- they call each other "Sweet Pea" (32/34)
- they are very tactile: "She threw her ams around Gail […] and kissed Gail's cheek, her nose, her other cheek." (34), "Ree brushed her fingers into Gail's hair" (34), "rubbing her hands along Gail's calves and ankles" (34)
- Ree likes listening to Gail's voice: "Ree's feelings could stray from now and drift to so many special spots of time in her senses when listening to that voice, the perfect slight lisp, the wet tone, that soothing hillfolk draw." (82)
- Ree shares an ambiguous sexually-connoted relationship with Gail: "The first time Ree kissed a man it was not a man, but Gail acting as a man, and as the kissing progressed and Gail acting as a man pushed her backwards onto a blanket of pine needles in shade and slipped her tongue deep into Ree’s mouth, Ree found herself sucking on the wiggling tongue of a man in her mind, sucking that plunging tongue of the man in her mind until she tasted morning coffee and cigars and spit leaked from between her lips and down her chin. She opened her eyes then and smiled, and Gail yet acting the man roughed up her breasts with grabs and pinches, kissed her neck, murmuring, and Ree said, 'Just like that! I want it to be just like that!' There came three seasons of giggling and practice, puckering readily anytime they were alone, each being the man and the woman, each on top and bottom, pushing for it with grunts or receiving it with sighs." (87)
- Ree and Gail enjoy spending their nights together, sometimes sleeping naked in the same bed: "In Ree's heart there was room for more. Any evening spent with Gail was like one of the yearning stories from her sleep was happening awake. Sharing the small simple parts of life with someone who stood tall in her feelings." (100), "Gailsat on a chair and began to undress. Her breathing floated welcome ghosts into the air. Caked mud broke loose when boots thumped to the floor. Jeans and socks were dropped in a bunch on top of the boots. She fidgeted on bare feet and rubbed at the skin of her shoulders and arms, looking down at the bed. Ree held the quilts pulled wide, patted the sheet, and said, 'One log alone won’t hold fire.' ' (101)
- Gail takes care of Ree's beaten body: "Gail stood her straight and naked and cleaned her body as she would a babe’s, using the soiled skirt to swab the spread muck from her ass and thighs and behind the knees. Gail touched her fingers to the revealed welts and bruises and shook between cries. When Ree moved she came loose and sagged as the chorus inside hit fresh sharp notes. Her agony was the song and the song held so many voices and Gail lowered her into the bathtub where sunk to her chin in tepid water she marked a slight hushing of all the chorus but the singers in her head." (143)
description:
- "Ree's best friend" (31)
- "Gail was thin in the hips and limps with sharp smart features and freckles. Her long hair fell straight and was of a ruddled hue matched to the freckles dusted across her nose and cheeks." (33)
- "skinny body" (33)
- "has been required by pregnancy to marry Floyd Langan" (31)
- "Gail had a baby named Ned who was four month old, and a new look of baffled hurt, a left-behind sadness, like she saw that the great world kept spinning onward and away while she'd overnight become glued to her spot." (32)
April Dunahew:
- description: "April wore a black dress that draped waistless to her ankles and eye-glasses hooked to a glinting chain. She had blond hair curled springy and a ready smile." (88)
- she is nice and tells Ree everything she knows about her father: "Right around when he was arrested this last time...I understood it from how he'd looked away." (90-91)
Sonya:
- description: "heavy and round, with gray hair and fogged glasses" (17)
- she brings food to Ree and her family: "Got meat for you. Canned stuff. Some butter and such." (17)
Deputy Baskin:
- description: "short but wide" (11)
- he takes Ree into consideration: "I didn't shoot the other night' cause you were there, you know." (188)
Mike Satterfield:
- description: "The man stood tall inside his thick coat, a hide and wool sheep coat with wide fuzzy lapels. He might’ve been thirty years old and wore mirror sunglasses and a leg holster. His Adam’s apple was big and jumpy in his throat, brown hair fell thick to his shoulders. Two inches of whiskers drooped from the point of his chin. He looked like he meant no harm but could do plenty if pushed, and said, “I’m Mike Satterfield, from Three X Bail Bonds. We hold the bond on Jessup Dolly" (124)
- he gives Ree money: "Looks like you earned this with blood, kid." (191)
Megan, Thump Milton's granddaughter, at first:
- description: "The woman was young, maybe twenty-five, wearing a tie-dyed bathrobe over a gray fuzzy sweater, black jeans, and boots. Her hair was nearly black, cut short and smart-looking, and she wore sort of burly eyeglasses that made smartness look cute on her." (50), "wearing a pearl-colored cowboy hat with a blue feather in the band" (51)
- she tries to help Ree: "Don’t tell nobody it was me told you this, okay? But, the way I’m gettin’ it is, you’re goin’ to have to go up the hill’n ask for a talk with Thump Milton." (57)
Merab, Thump Milton's wife, at first:
- description: "The woman stood on her doorstep wearing an apron over a print dress with short sleeves, rubbing her hands together, watching Ree draw near. The woman was past the middle of her years but looked pink in her cheeks, robust, with white hair brushed high into an airy poof and sprayed to stay there. She was burly, stout-boned, and flesh rolled when she moved." (58)
- she gives Ree soup: "She carried a wide cup of something steaming" (62)
- she warns Ree: "If you're listenin', child, you got your answer. Now, go, get on away from here... and don't come back'n try'n ask him twice. Just don't." (63)
enemies and opponents
Little Arthur:
- description: "Little Arthur was a little-man mix of swagger and tongue, with a trailing history of deeds that vouched for his posture. He had a mess of dark hair and dark bristly eyes, with sparse curly whiskers and bitter teeth. Even without crank in his blood he always seemed cocked, poised to split in a flash from wherever he stood. He wore a couple of checked shirts, one tucked, one open, and a black pistol grip showed above his belt buckle." (53)
- he raped Ree: "He’d come along behind her on the slope, and they’d bounced smiles off each other in the forest shade for a bit, then he’d hugged her to the ground and she’d felt a tremendous melting of herself, a leaking from one shape into some other form, and she’d been turned about by his hugs to kneel, and her skirt flipped up and Little Arthur knelt to join in her puddling embrace of gods and wonder." (54-55)
- he was here when Ree was beaten: "She was told, man, and didn't listen." (136)
Blond Milton:
- description: "Blond Milton was a grandfather in age but not in manner, square-shouldered and flat-bellied, fair-haired with ruddy skin, and generally wore fancy cowboy shirts over starched jeans ironed into a stiff crease. He was most always shaved clean, barbered, talced, smelling of bay rum and armed with two pistols. "(72)
- he is violent towards Ree: "he flung her down the steps" (72)
- he wants to take her brothers away from her: "we could take Sonny of your hands" (77), "Maybe on down the line we'd take Harold, too." (77)
Thump Milton:
- description: "a fabled man, his face a monument of Ozark stone, with juts and angles and cold shaded parts the sun never touched. His spade beard was aged gray but his movements were young. He crouched, grabbed her chin, and turned her head from side to side, inspecting the damage. He was bigger than she’d thought, hands strong as stormwater rushing. His eyes went inside you to the depths without asking and helped themselves to anything they wanted." (133), "His voice held raised hammers and long shadows." (133)
- Ree is afraid of him: "That man, he scares me way more'n the rest." (57)
- he refuses to help Ree: "He ain't likely to have time for you, child." (61), "He knows what you want to ask and he don't want to hear it." (63)
Merab and her sisters:
- "One of Mrs. Thump’s rollers had jerked loose and dangled springy around her head as she pulled her big hand back to whack Ree another in the face, and Ree swung a fist at those blunt teeth in a red mouth but missed. The other women closed in with boots to the shins while more heavy whacks landed and Ree felt her joints unglue, become loose, and she was draining somehow, draining to the dirt, while black wings flying angles crossed her mind, and there were the mutters of beasts uncaged from women and she was sunk to a moaning place, kicked into silence." (129-130)
- "The women stood over her, spires of menace wearing lipstick and scared calves." (133-134)
- "Me and my sisters, they were here, too." (136)
Megan:
- "Whatever are we to do about you, baby girl? Huh?
-Kill me, I guess.
-That idea has been said already." (132)
the men who let the women beat her:
- "She recognized Little Arthur, Spider Milton, Cotton Milton, Buster Leroy, and one of the Boshell men, Sleepy John." (134)
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