Lay Down My Sword and Shield by Burke James Lee

Author:Burke, James Lee [Burke, James Lee]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: 1950-1953 - Veterans, Political Fiction, Civil Rights, Ex-Prisoners of War, Political, 1950-1953, Elections, Fiction, Politicians, General, Suspense, Korean War, Elections - Texas, Ex-Prisoners of War - Texas, Texas, Mystery & Detective
ISBN: 9781439165454
Publisher: Pocket Books
Published: 1971-01-02T07:00:00+00:00

I warned him once or twice

To stop playing cards and shooting dice.

Rie was sitting at the table in the front room of the union headquarters with a cup of coffee in her hand. She was barefoot and wore a pair of white shorts and a rumpled denim shirt, and her face was pale with hangover. I went through the screen door without knocking.

“Get in the car, woman. I’m going to do something for that Yankee mind of yours today,” I said.

“What?” She looked at me with her hair in her eyes.

“Dinner on the ground and devil in the bush, by God. Come on.”

“Hack, what are you talking about?” Her words were slow and carefully controlled, and I knew she really had one.

“I’m going to introduce you to my boyhood. Goddamn it, girl, get up and stop fooling around.”

“I don’t think I can do anything today.”

“Yes, you can. Never stay inside with a hangover. Charge out into the sunlight and do things you never did before.”

“How much did I drink?”

“You just did it with bad things in your mind.”

“I’m sorry about last night. I must have seemed like a real dumb chick.”

>“You could never be that.”

She smiled and pushed the hair out of her eyes.

“I’m sorry, anyway,” she said.

“Right now there’s a green river about seventy miles from here, and under a big gray limestone rock there’s an eight-pound bass with one of my flies hanging in his lip, and unless you get your ass up I’m going down the road by myself.”

“You’re a real piece of pie, Hack.”

“No, I ain’t. I’m shit and nails and all kinds of bad news. You ought to know that by this time. If you need any references you can contact my brother. I left him yesterday with his ulcer bulging out of his throat.”

She put her fingers to her forehead and laughed, and that wonderful merry flash of light came back into her eyes.

“I’ll be out in a minute. There’s some chicory coffee and corn bread on the stove,” she said.

“For a Yankee girl you may be all right after all,” I said, and watched the smooth curve of her hips against her shorts as she walked into the back of the house.

We drove north through the hills and flat farmland of string bean and corn fields and cow pasture to a wide, green, slow-moving river lined with willow, redbud, and juniper trees, where I had fly-fished as a boy with my father. The river was low from the drought, and the surface was covered with seeds from the juniper trees, but there were still eddies and deep holes behind the boulders in the current, and I knew that I could take all the crappie, bream, and bass that I could put on a stringer. The mud banks were covered with the sharp, wet tracks of deer and raccoons, and mockingbirds and blue jays flew angrily through the hot shade of the trees. The sunlight reflected off the water, and farther down, where the

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.