The Poisonwood Bible: Book Four

They take turns leaning forward to point out their moves with shrewd congeniality, playing it like a chess match, the kind of game that allows civilized men to play at make-believe murder.

A Belgian newspaperman there recognized wit and raw avarice—a useful combination in any game.

He gave an impromptu speech about the unquenchable African thirst for liberty.

Why, Daniel replied, ‘I do not revere false idols but the living God, who is chief of all mankind.’

“This is blasphemy!” He spread his hands wide as if casting out demons only he could see, and shouted, “There is nothing fair here!”

But by the time he got to the edge of the yard she was gone. She’d vamoosed into the tall grass, and off she was headed for the jungle, where it was plain to see he’d never find her.

We wondered: Is he looking for the world’s longest The Verse to give Leah on the subject of impudence?

Easier to find were the dikonko, edible locusts and crickets, whose plump abdomens were shrunk translucent like balloons half-filled with water.

If you even think you can picture how awful it was, you are wrong. Lambs to the slaughter. We were, or the animals were, I don’t even know who I feel sorry for the most. It was the most despicable day of my life.

If there had been a grocery store within one hundred miles, believe me, I would have walked there on my own reconnaissance for some cuisine that didn’t still have feet attached to it.

After the howl, wide-eyed silence without breath. Her bluish face creased with a pressure closing in, the near proximity of the other-than-life that crowds down around the edges of living.

Mother’s dark hair would be all askew on the pillow and her face sweet and quiet.

But Ruth May was shrouded in so many misty layers of mosquito netting I could barely make out any semblance of a dead child inside.

The air was thick and ponderous with humidity.

I recited the 23rd Psalm, the 121st Psalm, the 100th and 137th and 19th and 66th Psalms, the 21st chapter of Revelation, Genesis one, Luke 22, First Corinthians, and finally John 3:16: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life.”