Texas Wherever You Look — Gerald Duff

In Texas Wherever You Look (a selection from the short story collection Fire Ants and Other Stories by Gerald Duff), at the end of the Civil War, a family moves from Louisiana into Texas, looking for better farmland and an improved life. The father is a dreamer, the mother pregnant with her third child and the eldest child a truth-teller of the first water. 'Once you're in Texas,' she tells her young sister, who breaks into sobs at the announcement of the message, 'you're a part of everywhere you look, and it's a part of you.'