Characters in The Man in the Black Suit

… had come back to finish the other of Albion and Loretta’s two boys. And here is something else: I had been stung by bees before, and although the stings had swelled more than is perhaps usual (I can’t really say for sure), I had never died of them. That was …

… by myself—he had to go over and see Bill Eversham about some cows. I said I sure didn’t mind going by myself, and my Dad smiled like that didn’t surprise him so very much. He’d given me a bamboo pole the week before—not because it was my birthday or anything, …

Candy Bill, our little black Scottie dog, was standing alertly beside her feet, looking up, waiting for anything that might drop. My mother was looking at me. “I promise,” I said.

… It was 1914, the summer after my brother Dan died in the west field and three years before America got into World War I. I’ve never told anyone about what happened at the fork in the stream that day, and I never will . . . at least not with …

… the first cigarette I ever smoked (cornshuck behind Dicky Hammer’s pig-shed, and I threw up). Yet of all the memories, the one of the man in the black suit is the strongest, and glows with its own spectral, haunted light. He was real, he was the Devil, and that day …

“What do you promise, Gary?” she asked. “Promise not to go no further than where it forks, ma’am.” “Any further.” “Any.” She gave me a patient look, saying nothing as her hands went on working in the dough, which now had a smooth, silky look.

… and that if she ever had to see Helen Robichaud again (that was Mama Sweet’s real name), she would slap her eyes out. She wouldn’t be able to help herself, she said. That day, Dad wanted me to lug wood for the cookstove, weed the beans and the cukes, pitch …

… back to finish the other of Albion and Loretta’s two boys. And here is something else: I had been stung by bees before, and although the stings had swelled more than is perhaps usual (I can’t really say for sure), I had never died of them. That was only for …

The man in the black suit was the Devil. He had walked out of the deep woods between Motton and Kashwakamak, and now he was standing here beside me. From the corner of one eye I could see a hand as pale as the hand of a store window dummy.