[Jack would] tell Howard what he was going to do once he got some money together, the new boots he would buy, the automobile, how he would blast out of the county and head west or maybe north, to the open country. When Jack drank he grew expansive and good-natured, continually convinced of the infinite possibilities of the world. He told vivid tales of fantastic dreams, of the spaces beneath the mountains he visited in his sleep. He gazed at the faces of the people around him and clumsily attempted to describe just what amazing creature they all were. Afterward people would lie in their racks at night staring at the dusty timbers of a ceiling and wonder just what the boy was all about anyway?

It amazed Forrest that so many men seemed to wake up in the morning needing some kind of beating or another, men saying and doing fantastic things for the sake of getting another man to smash his face. Perhaps it was the aftermath, the burning humiliation of it they sought, when the aching morning came and they rolled over in the dirt and felt their mouth for teeth or lightly touched the split ear, the face in the rearview mirror swollen and crusted with blood. Forrest figured if these men wanted it he might as well give it to them.