“You old mule-sniffer,” he asked himself thoughtfully, alone in the jail, “jest what is it, anyway, makes you so bad?”But he believed he knew, really. “It’s because I never had me a mother,” he decided, “to guide me onto the correct paths of life.”For that matter he had never had a father either, or not for long, nor was his name actually Magee. He had been born William Dilinghaus but he had not been able to pronounce that, not when he was first old enough to understand that something else went with the Billy, and Dingus had been the result when he tried. Magee was a cousin. “You might as well call yourself whatever suits your liking,” he had told the boy. “Because there ain’t nothing else gonter come easy in this world, and that’s the gospel.”On the other hand he did believe he remembered his father faintly, a short, pink-lidded man with hunched shoulders and gone prematurely to fat, and would dream of him from time to time. In the dream his father was ways sitting at a table, dealing cards.
What do You think about The Ballad Of Dingus Magee?
