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| sample chapter 1 |
| Saturday came-- beautifully. The Kansas
sky was cloudless, the sun benevolently warm. George wheeled his Ford
Galaxy into Blue’s driveway. Her heart skipped beats. There
he is, she thought, peering through the curtain. He looks so confident.
Enviously, she believed confidence was something only men had-- not women,
and certainly not her. There was a knock at the door. George stepped in without waiting for her to answer. “Hi,” he said impishly. “You ready, good-lookin’?” “Yes!” she said emphatically. “This is the first time I’ve been out of the house in days,” she told him as they walked toward the car. “Welcome to the outside world,” he quipped, opening his car door. Blue got in on her side. She felt reckless and excited, shifting in her seat. She was drawn to George’s charisma and magnetic personality, but at the same time, she felt apprehensive. There was an undeniable darkness about him... In minutes, they were out of the city limits. With the top down on his red convertible, Blue’s dark hair flew wildly in the warm wind. It made her feel free and sexy. “I love this feeling,” she yelled. The noise of the wind and the car radio made it hard to talk in a normal tone. “What feeling?” George yelled back. “Freedom!” she shouted. “I love it!” George pushed in the car lighter. It popped out and he lit a Kool. He took periodic drags but soon lost the ash in the wind. He let the cigarette go. “Doctor said I shouldn’t be smokin’ anyway,” he said. “Ever since I came back from Nam I’ve been suckin’ down three packs of those cancer sticks a day.” “Is that what the war did to you?” Blue questioned. “That and a whole lot more,” he shouted. “I don’t believe in killing,” Blue yelled. “The aftermath of that war will keep destroying the people of Vietnam and their land for a long time.” “You got that right... destruction for decades to come,” George shouted back. Blue had known George almost six weeks, meeting him a few months after moving to Wichita-- not too long before she booted Carlos out of her life. Prior to knowing either one of them, it had been a hard year for her-- young and pregnant. The baby’s father, Theodore, had disappeared from her life. Nine months later alone and scared, she delivered a seven-pound baby-- only to give him up three weeks later. Out of nowhere, Naomi and Robert called her from Oklahoma. Perfect strangers to Blue, the two of them heard she was going to give up her baby and they wanted to adopt. Naomi asked if she would live with them until she delivered. Blue accepted. After twenty-four hours of excruciating labor, she gave birth. Lying in her hospital bed, she held her son’s tiny body in her arms. Powerful instincts took over and she changed her mind, deciding to keep him. But in only a few weeks, needing her own mother and overwhelmed with being a mother, Blue called Naomi in tears and asked her to come and get him... “Hey, little bitty, pretty one. Are you on this planet?” George’s voice brought her reeling back. “Oh, sorry. I was just thinking about some people I used to know,” she shouted above the noise. The car slowed as he turned into a driveway. The tires spit gravel and thick dust left an opaque cloud. “Where are we?” Blue inquired. “This is my buddy’s place,” he replied. “He’s a guy I dropped out of the sky with in Nam. You don’t mind, do you?” “Hey, that’s cool,” she said casually, concealing her disappointment. The truth was, she wanted to be alone with George. He looked over and gave her a wink. “You’re okay, Blue.” A muscular, stocky man burst through the back porch screen door. “Hey, Georgie-boy, my man-- slow down. You drive your car like that broken-down piece-of-shit you commandeered in Nam. It’s a good thing I’m quick on my feet... jeezus!” he said, jumping out of the way. He stopped abruptly when he saw Blue. “I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure. You gonna introduce me to your woman, George?" he asked, continuing to stare at Blue. "I bet you’ve been keepin’ her a secret.” “I keep all my women a secret, Den. If I didn’t, you’d have ‘em for sure! Blue, meet Denny. Denny-- Blue.” Denny walked around to her side of the car. “Blue, nice to meet ya. She’s a fox, Garret.” With a gallant gesture, he helped her out of the car and kissed her hand. “That’s why I keep all my beautiful women anonymous. You can see how the man operates,” George teased, giving Blue a grin. Blue gave Denny one of her million-dollar smiles. “Why, Denny,” she cooed, “you must be the one remaining true gentleman on earth. I didn’t know there were any left.” “Hey, I’m a dying breed,” he volunteered, giving her a wink. “Well, come on in. We’ll break out the beer,” Denny said. “Hey, George. Got any reefer with you?” “You know I’m always stocked.” George threw him a good-sized bag of grass. Several hours had passed. Blue stepped outside for some fresh air. The setting sun filled the sky with scarlet, pink and purple. She loved Kansas sunsets. The land was flat and the horizon’s blazing colors could be seen without obstruction. It reminded her of a time, as a small girl, when she and her dad sat on a hill behind their Virginia home and watched God paint the sky as the sun went down. She missed her dad. He had died so suddenly a few years ago. But you never really knew dad, she thought. He was like a slippery fish. As soon as you thought you had him in your hands, he’d slide right out... always using the church to keep his distance. Blue and her parents had been close when she was young and able to be influenced. But when adolescence arrived, she became someone neither one of them understood. That’s when they turned against me, she thought. From then on I was the scapegoat, the willful girl they couldn’t handle. Things were never the same after that. Blue pushed the memories away, only to notice, in dismay, the sunset’s disappearance. “What’s the good of havin’ a woman if she’s running off all the time to watch a sunset?” She heard a deep, throaty voice behind her. A hand lifted the skirt of her gauze dress and squeezed the soft flesh under her panties. George’s touch was possessive. It alarmed and excited her... like the passionate kiss they had shared at the party. She let out a gasp as she turned around to face him. “You know how to surprise a woman, don’t you,” she said breathlessly. She looked up at him. His look startled her. His dark eyes seemed vacant-- almost hard. “It’s a little chilly,” she said with a shudder. “Can we go in?” “You bet we can, sweethaart,” he said, imitating a Humphrey Bogart accent. He grabbed her by the waist and pulled her towards him. “It’s too breezy to get naked out here,” he chuckled, amused by his own humor. Blue was remembering the very first time she noticed George, before running into him at the bookstore. He was standing on the sidewalk in downtown Wichita, talking to a homeless man and sharing a smoke. She watched as he put a generous handful of money in the man’s hand, giving him the peace sign as he walked away. That impressed her. He acted down-to-earth and didn’t seem to think himself better than anyone else. He looked good too, she remembered. He wore a tweed wool blazer, a little too short in the arms, and jeans that looked like he’d been born in them. They hugged his long legs right down to his shiny, brown leather boots. A shock of thick, black hair hung carelessly over his forehead. He had beautiful, sexy hair, she remembered. Hair I wanted to grab a hold of. She recalled the moment their eyes met as she walked toward him. He had nodded, smiling at her to reveal a mouthful of perfect, white teeth with a little space between the two front ones and sensuous, full lips that embraced them all. “You want a hit?” Denny asked, breaking her spell. He was leaning against the kitchen wall, completely stoned. He passed it to her. Blue inhaled the sweet smoke and held it. “You remember in Nam what old Cooper would say to us?” he asked George. “He’d say, ‘girls, lock and load. Lock and load.’ I wonder how many fuckin’ times we heard Cooper say that. You always knew when you heard it you were headin’ into a landing zone and it was time to kill or be killed.” George was sitting in the faded, yellow upholstered chair in the corner of the kitchen. Blue passed him the joint. He took a long hit, then several short ones. “We heard it so many times that I felt like fraggin’ the bastard,” he retorted, talking as he held in the smoke. “What were those cigarettes, man... the ones we smoked over there?” “The ones with weed in‘em?” Denny queried. “Yeah,” George said. “Dien Bien Phu, man,” Denny replied. “We called ‘em bennies. God, they were potent...” Seconds later, George was laughing so hard tears were rolling down his cheeks. “Hey asshole,” he said, wiping them with the back of his hand. “Do you remember the night in Nam... during monsoon season, when we got so stoned we stripped down to our underwear and chased those pigs in the pouring rain? And you fell on your ass in the mud?” he continued, his shoulders shaking with laughter. “I tried to pull you up, but I was so ripped that I fell on my butt! We both laid there in the middle of the road laughing like fuckin’ bedpan idiots.” “Yeah, I remember,” Denny laughed. “It was your brilliant idea to chase those damn pigs. I swear I had one by the back leg before I went down. Jesus Christ... the stuff we did, it’s a wonder we came out of that war alive.” “No shit, man. There were too many ways to die in that hell hole.” George’s face was serious. “It was a fucking nightmare... and you just prayed you’d wake up the next morning and it would be all over and you could go home. "Then when you got home man, everybody hated you,” he laughed derisively. “No thank-you’s, no pats on the back, no ‘good job, soldier.’ Just people staring at you in disgust. I even had a guy spit on me! We fought that bloody war for what? For nothin’-- that’s for fuckin’ what!” George concluded angrily. “Nobody won that war,” Denny said. “Christ... I’ll never forget that bent-over, old Vietnamese woman. She was carrying around two hundred pieces of American shrapnel in her body. She’s probably still alive... a walking munitions.” Denny got quiet, his mind creating pictures-- of disembodied arms, legs and torsos. Of faces half blown off. Buddies screaming in indescribable pain. The bloody images crowded his memory. “Fuck man, let’s just shut the hell up! I can’t take this!” His voice cracked as the pain slipped out. Blanching, he looked as if he would vomit. Denny had been one of the first young men in Wichita to sign up for the war. Serving his country was what he had always dreamed of-- just like his father had in World War II. Mom was crying, he remembered, and dad had tears in his eyes when he shook my hand. My dad was so proud the day I left for boot camp. He said, “Be a good soldier, son. We don’t need medals, just do your best. Keep your nose clean and write us when you can.” George noticed Denny’s faraway look, one he’d seen before. “Hey, man. You okay?” he asked. This wasn’t the first time he felt afraid for Denny. He’d seen him strapped to a bed in a locked hospital ward so he wouldn’t blow his brains out. He remembered their camping trip when Denny woke him up with blood-curdling screams. George understood. He had nightmares about the war too. “C’mere babe,” George told Blue, motioning her to come over and sit on the arm of his chair. “Denny’s patriotism got him into trouble,” he told her, in a confidential tone. “The idiot couldn’t wait to rush off to Da Nang and be a marine. He volunteered for combat, so he could kill those jungle boogers. I guess he wanted his pop to be proud of him. "He got to fight all right... jungle combat that would scare the shit out of anybody. And it was the Cong’s jungle. That was the hell of it. Helicopters dropped you out of the sky in the middle of the night into an open field. Take your choice-- land mine explosion, sniper fire, ambush. You were so terrified you pissed your pants.” Denny’s voice sounded distant. “You know, George. After a while, I stopped countin’.” “Yeah, man. I know,” George answered. “I stopped too. After dropping eight million tons of bombs in eight years on a country, you kinda lose count,” he said sardonically. “We have fucking Nixon and Johnson to thank for that.” Denny continued, as if he hadn’t heard his friend. “You wanna know why I stopped countin’?” His voice had a shrill, desperate tone. “Because, after awhile, every dead body just looked like every other dead body. They all looked the same, starin’ up at me with those lifeless eyes... all those bodies... and the stench, man... the stench. Jesus Christ.” His voice trailed off. The three of them fell silent and the hum of the refrigerator was the only sound... |
