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Category:
Literary Fiction
Publisher: Richard French
ISBN-10: 1539039684
Type: Fiction
Pages: 276
Copyright: Dec 3, 2012
ISBN-13: 9781539039686
Price: $2.99 (eBook)
Carl Norberg has the soul of an artist and spends as much time as he can painting. How does he cope with life as a soldier at the start of a war and then with the pressures of a competitive city?
"The Hills of the Tigers" explores two features of modern-day life, civilian and military. Carl Norberg is an artist who serves in the American army at the start of a war in Asia that doesn't go well. The reader will also learn about the arts community in a large northeastern city, where Carl decides to start his civilian career. Can a man who isn't at home anywhere he goes use his talents to benefit others and build a satisfying, fruitful life? Can he find a woman to love?
Excerpt
It was my day off – a Wednesday or Thursday, I forget which – and the middle of the afternoon. The sun behind me cast a bright light over my shoulder onto a large sketch pad balanced on my knees. Unook, our houseboy, sat under a coconut palm a few feet away from me beside one of the motor pool drivers whom I had learned only the week before was his father. Despite the noise around us – laughter from the swimming pool, the voices of several sergeants talking irreverently about the events of the day, a radio that blared away in the echoing caverns of the supply room, the occasional sound of artillery fire from the training field a mile away – I was able to concentrate on what I was doing. The lines of experience in the older man’s face, Unook’s laughing, considerate eyes that didn’t show much strength, a few jagged curves to suggest the distant Hills of the Tigers, haunting, unreachable, ¬ very likely dangerous – all fell smoothly onto the paper seemingly without any help from me. Although we knew little of each other, we felt at ease, like old friends. I was reminded – for some reason – of a quiet Sunday afternoon at home.
I went to the barracks that evening and sat under the overhead light in the room I shared with two other translators and did a second version of the sketch, a better one, that I put away in my wall-locker with others I wanted to keep. I had promised Unook’s father that he could have the original. I’d put together about three dozen portraits and drawings and landscapes during my eighteen months in Kulon with which I planned to start a career when I got out of the service, if I didn’t stay in Kulon afterwards on my own. I liked what I’d done and was happy about my prospects for the future. I promised myself I’d continue making improvements even if doing so meant I’d have to slither around the mental effects of the threat of fighting nearby. The military is a breeding ground for rumor, you see, and we heard stories every day that the war was on the way to Ban Houei Lan. The number of communist forces in the provinces north of us, had increased in the past few weeks. We all held our breaths. I didn’t know what would become of my pictures – or of me – if there was actually fighting in our area.
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