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Category:
Historical Fiction
Publisher: Two Schnauzers' Press
ISBN-10: 1310875065
Copyright: Aug.11, 2014
ISBN-13: 9781310875069
Price: $3.99 (eBook)
What does it mean to be honest in a dishonest world?
Weeks before the conventions, the president dies from dabbling in cocaine and a heat stroke fells his folksy challenger. Politics as usual breaks out with assassins, voting machine hackers and a prosecutor who kidnaps an American official for a war crimes trial. A man who lost his dreams must find his way home through a twisted American landscape, and discovers we all are the dog on a rope.
Excerpt
A south wind ruffled the buffalo grass on the hillside as sunlight glinted off the Pepsi can. The wind blows that way, strong enough to flutter tree leaves and tall grass but not so great to ease the heat, early afternoon in early July in the Kansas Flint Hills. Jay Dean Fine steadied the .243-Winchester rifle as he squinted at the reflected light, firing just high of the can.
“Shit! Your turn.” He handed the gun to younger brother David as dust drifted over the edge of the hill, revealing a gash among the short-grass prairie, milkweed and buffalo grass.
“No. This is ridiculous. Even more ridiculous than you coming up here to play cowboy two years ago. I feel like a fool.”
“Just take the gun and nail that sumbitch can. Then you'll understand why I'm here.”
“No. Look at the road. Someone's coming.” David scurried inside as a rooster tail of dust kicked up behind a pickup truck.
“That's just Will,” Jay Dean said, stepping behind a tattered lawn chair.
The truck bounced over the ruts leading up to Jay Dean's trailer, stopping in front of the green-fiberglass-shaded porch.
“I don't want to know what you're doing out here or if that was your boyfriend or what, but I hope to hell you're finally shooting at a coyote.”
“No coyote. And that was my brother David – from Dallas – and I was just demonstrating to him the ultimate in freedom -- shooting your gun naked on your front porch.”
“Well, ain't you the philosopher pervert. Get your pants on.”
“David, toss out my clothes. Ol' Will's getting excited.”
David stepped back into the doorway, flipping boxers, socks, a shirt and blue jeans toward Jay Dean.
“I'd say I'm pleased to meet you if I was sure you weren't as loony as your brother,” Will said to David as he pulled on a golf shirt.
“Look, he's always had a way of talking me into crazy schemes. I've been trying to get him back to Dallas and teaching again -- line coach position is open in Richardson and he's got a real good shot at that and then replacing the defensive coordinator when he retires in two years. Said I had to see 'freedom' from his point of view before he'd even listen to me. So that's why I was out there undressed –”
“Like I told Jay Dean, I don't care if you're his brother or his boyfriend. I came up here to tell him to saddle up that wreck of a horse of his and join me along the Lost Creek bluffs. Three calves were killed up there. Bobcat, it looks like. Probably come over from the Ozarks.”
“Anybody seen a bobcat?”
“No. But the calves were clawed up.”
“Anybody call the state game department to set traps for a bobcat and then take it back to the wilds?”
“No. It isn't an endangered species. The only thing endangered out there are my cows and calves. And as soon as we saddle up, that critter will be endangered.”
“I know this isn't exactly the time to get philosophical about animals but did you ever – ”
“The only thing philosophical I care to discuss about this is the price of cows and how much it's costing me to lose them to a bobcat or a coyote or whatever the hell is killing them.”
“Will, I wish you wouldn't interrupt me,” Jay Dean said, tugging his jeans straight as he stepped out from behind the lawn chair. “Because that just makes me want to make a point. So here it is. If those wild animals are so diabolically smart, then instead of killing them, we ought to just shoot at their feet and sting them with dirt any time they got close to calves, chicken houses or anything else you make money off of. That way, they'd figure out real quick what they could and couldn't kill to eat, and they'd stick to eating the rats and mice and feeble raccoons and skunks that crawl into the barn and eat cattle feed.”
“Hell. I don't know who's crazier. You for coming up with that or your brother for thinking you ought to be back in Dallas teaching and influencing young people. Just get your horse ready, a sleeping bag and something to eat for a couple of nights. And exert your ultimate freedom with that gun on the bobcat's ass.”
“You want me to go along?” David asked Jay Dean.
“No. You stay here. Lisa's bringing up Angela for a visit. You can meet them here in case it takes more than a couple of days to convince Will he won't come out ahead by killing that bobcat.”
“Lisa?”
“Yeah. I got a letter the day before you got here saying Angela wanted to see me this summer and so I went down to Will's and borrowed the phone and we worked it out. Lisa was downright agreeable for the first time in two years.”
“I'd rather not see her.”
“Why? She taking out on you what she used to take out on me before I moved up here?”
“Well, I guess I'd better tell you. I ran into her at a party New Year's Eve and she was drunk and despondent and I offered to drive her home and we started talking and she thought I was charming and she talked me into spending the night.” David spit out the words rapid fire, a habit when he didn’t want someone to actually understand what he was saying. Jay Dean shook his head and turned away from his brother.
“Will, does that tell you which one of us is crazier? He tells a lonely man with a gun that he's been sleeping with his wife and then he's not even trying to get out of the way.”
David, seeing through the flippant reply, continued his explanation.
“I left before anything could happen. I know I shouldn't have been there. That's how she got so mad at me. I didn't call her back for three months.”
“Now you know why I may get divorced. Just don't piss her off if I'm gone when she gets here. I want to see Angela.”
David nodded and went back inside to finish dressing.
“Ultimate freedom,” Will let out in a rough whisper as he scanned across the edge of the hills. “I'll give you your ultimate freedom if we don't get that bobcat. Hell, it's city boys like you wanting to play at country living that's causing this problem in the first place. You go out to the hills, get you twenty acres and build a 'retreat' out in the wilds so you can get close to nature. Only nature don't want to be close, so you chase it my way.”
“Will. Don't blame all of society's ills on city folks. Most of us were country folks in the first place. You done philosophizing?”
Will nodded. “I'll meet you at the creek and we can camp there. But I got to go to Council Grove on Thursday to find out what the bank's going to do with my loans. It's nip and tuck this year with cattle prices down. Hell, they may force me to sell, and then the only job on this place for you would be to dress up like an Indian and ride around through a buffalo herd.”
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