"Take all these scrawlings of yours down to the bottom of the yard and burn them."

"I can't do that."

"You can and you will!"

"But I've been writing them for years."

"And they'll all burn up in two minutes, which should teach you something about this world, Jakabok."

"Like what?" I said, with a sour look on my face.

"That it's a place where whatever you work for and care about is bound to be taken away from you sooner or later, and there isn't a thing you can do about it." For the first time since this interrogation had begun, she took her eyes off me. "I was beautiful once," she said. "I know you can't imagine that now, but I was. And then I married your father, and everything that was beautiful about me and the things that were all around me went up in smoke." There was a long silence. Then her eyes slowly slid back in my direction. "Just like your pages will."

I knew there was nothing I could say to her that would persuade her to let me keep my treasures. And I also knew that it was approaching the time that Pappy G. would be coming back from the Furnaces and that my situation would be a lot worse if he picked up any of my Revenge Stories, because all the most terrible things I'd invented I'd saved for him.

So I started to throw my beautiful precious pages into a large sack my mother had already laid beside them for this very purpose. Every now and then I would catch sight of a phrase I'd written, and with one glance I would instantly remember the circumstances which had caused me to write it, and how I'd felt when I'd scrawl the words down; whether I'd been so enraged that the pen had cracked under the pressure of my fingers, or so humiliated by something somebody had said that I'd been close to tears. The words were apart of me, part of my mind and memory, and here I was throwing them all — my Words, my precious words, along with whatever piece of me was attached to them — into a sack, like so much garbage.