Some fell to the floor and shattered. ("Virginia") Sandpiper told him that she had found a man named McKibbon who owned an old squirrel-rifle, and had gotten him to put the bullet-hole in the wall by the chair while she could not swear to the historical accuracy of the gun, Mrs Roman D.
The pain only appeared to come and go. After awhile it didnt want to go back anymore, and if someone took it back and set it free it would only crouch in one place, afraid and hurting and homesick in two unknown and terribly ineluctable directions, until something came along and killed it. He could smell the sweat of her recent exertions, and while he actually liked the smell of fresh perspiration - he associated it with work, hard effort, things he respected - this smell was secretive and nasty, like old sheets thick with dried come. Paul thought this was akin to proving that meteors never struck the earth by showing five days when not a single one had hit Farmer Johns north field, but he could understand the weight he argument would have carried with the jury just the same.
His mother liked to tell Mrs Mulvaney on the other side of the fence what a marvellous imagination he had, so vivid, and what wonderful little stories he was always writing down (except, of course, when she was calling him a sissy and a bawl-baby). Without the piling, there was no tide.
Paul sat quietly, a steno pad of his own on his lap (he had finished the last legal pad the previous evening), and listened to Annies voice as she made a statement which consisted of all the things she had told David and Goliath four days ago. "And although that set the panicky little voice of his lesser self to squealing again that he was caught and might as well give it up, might as well confess and hope for her mercy, he managed to meet her suspicious gaze with an ironic weariness.