the last book I ever read (The Accursed by Joyce Carol Oates, excerpt nine)

from The Accursed by Joyce Carol Oates:

Upton was speaking with such passion, Meta had to pluck at his wrist, to quiet him; for individuals on the platform were listening, very curiously. And Upton fell silent, abashed. For in the next seconds there came along the track the three-car shuttle called, by locals, the Dinky, making its way from Princeton Junction to the village of Princeton, its thin perky smoke puffing upward. Upton Sinclair hurriedly scrambled out of the railroad bed and up onto the platform, helping his wife beside him; he would have stayed to watch the half-dozen passengers climb onto the little train, with a kind of envy, had not Meta, hugging her cotton shawl close about her, murmured: “Upton, please—I want only to go home now.”