“Woman and children behind the lines!' he yelled, and all the girls jumped. Henry froze with his mouth open. 'Bang the drum slowly and ask not for whom the bell's ringing, for the answer's unfriendly!' He threw a fist in the air. 'Two years have my black ships sat before Troy, and today its gate shall open before the strength of my arm.' Dotty was laughing from the kitchen. Frank looked at his nephew. 'Henry, we play baseball tomorrow. Today we sack cities. Dots! Fetch me my tools! Down with the French! Once more into the breach, and fill the wall with our coward dead! Half a league! Half a league! Hey, batter, batter!'Frank brought his fist down onto the table, spilling Anastasia's milk, and then he struck a pose with both arms above his head and his chin on his chest. The girls cheered and applauded. Aunt Dotty stepped back into the dining room carrying a red metal toolbox.”

“Frank sniffed. 'You know me well, wife. I thought those were in the basement.''They were. You should have been an English teacher, Frank.''What are we going to do?' Henry asked.'We're going to build a wooden horse, stick you inside it, and offer it up as a gift,' Frank answered.'Burn your bridges when you come to them,' Dotty said. She smiled at Frank, picked up the empty plates, and walked back into the kitchen.'Can we watch?' Henrietta asked.'You,' Frank said, 'can go play in the barn, the yard, the fields, or the ditches, so long as you are nowhere near the action. C'mon, Henry.'The girls moaned and complained while Henry followed his uncle up the stairs. At the top, they walked all the way around the landing until they faced the very old, very wooden door to Grandfather's bedroom. Uncle Frank set down his tools.'Today is the day, Henry. I can feel it. I never told your aunt this, but my favorite book's in there. I was reading it to your Grandfather near the end. It's been due back at the library for awhile now, and it'd be nice to be able to check something else out.”

“Cyrus walked straight to the tallest crack of light, a seam between two doors. They were locked, but they were also thin and old, and they bent a little with pressure from his shoulder.He backed up."Try one of Skelton's keys," said Antigone. "Is there a keyhole?""Nope." Cyrus threw himself against the doors. Wood popped, but he bounced back. "I can break it.""You mean a rib? Maybe your shoulder?" Antigone adjusted her grip, propping Horace in front of her."There's just one little bolt," said Cyrus. "And it's set in old wood." He paused. What was he hearing? Voices. Shouting. "You hear that?" he asked.Antigone nodded. "They don't sound happy."This time, Cyrus used his foot. The wood splintered, and the two doors wobbled open onto a world of emerald and sunlight.”

“Tom shut his eyes again, because when his eyes were shut, he could tell himself that there was light.”

“Here Spring just grows and greens and warms, spreading life, wrapping us in her arms, until suddenly we realize that she's not a girl anymore. She's a woman. A woman named Summer.”

“Every year, Kansas watches the world die. Civilizations of wheat grow tall and green; they grow old and golden, and then men shaped from the same earth as the crop cut those lives down. And when the grain is threshed, and the dances and festivals have come and gone, then the fields are given over to fire, and the wheat stubble ascends into the Kansas sky, and the moon swells to bursting above a blackened earth.The fields around Henry, Kansas, had given up their gold and were charred. Some had already been tilled under, waiting for the promised life of new seed. Waiting for winter, and for spring, and another black death.The harvest had been good. Men, women, boys and girls had found work, and Henry Days had been all hot dogs and laughter, even without Frank Willis's old brown truck in the parade.The truck was over on the edge of town, by a lonely barn decorated with new No Trespassing signs and a hole in the ground where the Willis house had been in the spring and the early summer. Late summer had now faded into fall, and the pale blue farm house was gone. Kansas would never forget it.”

“Then he half raised himself from the ground, threw his arms into the air, and fell forward in his side. He was dead.”