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Shawn Holloman
Buck was Shawn’s mentor after Pop died. He’s tall and slim, has no facial hair, and wears gold chains around his neck. When Will meets Buck’s ghost in the elevator, Buck is wearing a T-shirt commemorating his own death. Though his real name was James, he acquired the nickname Buck because he couldn’t grow any facial hair as a young man. As far as Will knows, Buck never went by anything else—the only time Will ever saw Buck’s given name was on his headstone. Buck was raised in a difficult family situation: his father was plagued by the “nighttime” (a kind of inner darkness or dangerous streak) while his stepfather was a preacher and tried to get Buck on the right path. This attempt failed, however, and Will wonders if the “nighttime” is something Buck couldn’t escape. Following Pop’s death when Buck was 16, Buck took Shawn under his wing, ceased selling drugs, and instead started to rob suburban houses. This earned him a reputation as a skilled thief who always had expensive stolen items in his possession. As a mentor to Shawn, Buck passed along “the Rules” of the neighborhood and taught him how to handle his gun. Will recognizes that all of Shawn’s advice about girls also came straight from Buck. Buck was killed when a man named Frick attempted to rob him. Around the time of his death, he passed his gun down to Shawn, along with the chain that Shawn was wearing when he died. In death, Buck is a jokester and doesn’t take Will’s desire for revenge seriously. He heckles and teases Will, though this comes off as an attempt to get Will to reconsider his choices. In Buck’s serious moments, he also attempts to make very clear to Will how the neighborhood’s cycle of violence functions and continues. He does so by drawing clear connections between himself, Frick, Shawn, Will, and Carlson Riggs (whom Will plans to kill to avenge Shawn’s death). Buck is also the first to begin smoking in the elevator and provides cigarettes to most of the other ghostly elevator passengers.
Buck Quotes in Long Way Down
The Long Way Down quotes below are all either spoken by Buck or refer to Buck. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Seven
Quotes
[...] I thought about this when the man with
the gold chains got on and checked to see if the
L button was already glowing. I wondered if he knew
that in me and Shawn’s world, I’d already chosen to be
a loser.
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Six
Quotes
Then
the bus-stop
lean back
to get a glimpse
of the world.
But the metal barrel
dug into my back,
making me wince,
making me obvious
and wack.
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SHE BRUSHED HER HAND AGAINST MINE
to get my attention,
which on any other
occasion would’ve
been the perfect
open for me to flirt
or at least try to do
my best impression of Shawn,
which was
his best impression of Buck.
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Five
Quotes
The end?
he murmured,
looking at Buck,
motioning for a light.
It’s never the end,
Uncle Mark said,
all chuckle, chuckle.
He leaned toward Buck.
Never.
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Three
Quotes
A DUMB THING TO SAY
would’ve been to
tell Buck how important
that soap was
that it stopped Mom from
scraping loose a river
of wounds.
But instead
I just said,
Riggs.
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Two
Quotes
I TOLD HIM
about the
drawer,
the gun,
that I did
like he told me,
like Buck told him,
like our grandfather told
our uncle, like our uncle
told our dad.
I followed The Rules.
At least the first two.
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Buck Quotes in Long Way Down
The Long Way Down quotes below are all either spoken by Buck or refer to Buck. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Seven
Quotes
[...] I thought about this when the man with
the gold chains got on and checked to see if the
L button was already glowing. I wondered if he knew
that in me and Shawn’s world, I’d already chosen to be
a loser.
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Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Six
Quotes
Then
the bus-stop
lean back
to get a glimpse
of the world.
But the metal barrel
dug into my back,
making me wince,
making me obvious
and wack.
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Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
SHE BRUSHED HER HAND AGAINST MINE
to get my attention,
which on any other
occasion would’ve
been the perfect
open for me to flirt
or at least try to do
my best impression of Shawn,
which was
his best impression of Buck.
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Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Five
Quotes
The end?
he murmured,
looking at Buck,
motioning for a light.
It’s never the end,
Uncle Mark said,
all chuckle, chuckle.
He leaned toward Buck.
Never.
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Three
Quotes
A DUMB THING TO SAY
would’ve been to
tell Buck how important
that soap was
that it stopped Mom from
scraping loose a river
of wounds.
But instead
I just said,
Riggs.
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Two
Quotes
I TOLD HIM
about the
drawer,
the gun,
that I did
like he told me,
like Buck told him,
like our grandfather told
our uncle, like our uncle
told our dad.
I followed The Rules.
At least the first two.
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