Feast for Thieves Read Free Page A

front of me lay thin growths of tussock and salt grass. One lone juniper tree stood tall in the dark. I wondered what distant land I might run to now, far away from Cut Eye, Texas, and the law. There came another rumble deep in my gut, one I couldn’t shake no matter how hard I tried, and I recognized it as the kind of ache that brings about death if a man ignores it long enough. I wondered how I might find that good meal, the one the voice was talking about, and eat my fill.

TWO
    T hey say the town of Cut Eye sits halfway between nowhere and emptiness. It’s been around for some one hundred and thirty years, ever since the days of the Wild West. The only highway for two hundred miles in any direction is Highway 2, which passes right through Cut Eye, and I knew if I didn’t find that highway, I’d be wandering around in the sagebrush until the buzzards ate me.
    So I left the riverbank, pointed myself southeast, and started walking. What I hoped to do was flag down a long-haul trucker, a man passing through who had no knowledge of the events that transpired the late afternoon before. What I didn’t want was any locals to come along and get suspicious of a man standing beside the side of the road with his thumb sticking out, someone they didn’t recognize straightaway.
    It took me most of the night to find my way back to the blacktop. I hid in the ditch while a car or two passed. When a tanker truck loomed in the distance I took a risk and stepped up. Morning sun was just beginning to show, and on the truck’s side was painted “Kansas City Southern Lines:
For the Duration
,” so I knew he was hauling for the railroad, most likely out of Shreveport or Lake Charles. Sure enough, he pulled to the shoulder and I ran to the cab.
    “Where headed?” He was a colored man, which didn’t bother me none, and although he was leaned over so as he could speakto me, I could still see a shotgun resting across his legs pointing my direction.
    “Next town ahead.”
    “You drifting?” He wasn’t smiling.
    I paused before answering truthfully. “Yeah.”
    He looked me up and down as if weighing his options. “Lots of fellas drifting these days. A man of your height and build surely saw some action. What branch?”
    “101st Airborne.”
    “I was Red Ball Express. We hauled your sorry butts up to Bastogne. You fellas had it tough up there, fighting surrounded like you were. Good thing Patton broke through the lines to save y’all.”
    I coughed and muttered, “Patton might have broken through, but he sure didn’t
save
us.”
    The trucker launched into a big grin, then laughed and set the shotgun back on the rack behind him. “Hop in. I can always use someone’s ear to bend on these long empty roads.”
    I climbed aboard and the trucker took off at a slow crawl, working through the gears, gradually gaining speed.
    “I’ve always wondered what kind of courage it takes for a man to jump out of a perfectly good airplane,” he said. “How many campaigns was that for you, anyway—Normandy, Market Garden, Belgium? You make it into Germany too?”
    I shook my head. “Belgium but not Germany.”
    “So what now? Headed for the oil fields? That’s some hard labor, but a man can make a buck at it if he puts his back into it.”
    “Not me.” I was still telling the truth. Two months ago I spent a week working for a rig. Every day we worked from dawn to dusk, slippery crude covering us ’til we was black as darkness. But late one evening at a bar, I was drunk and punched out some yahoo who ratted on me to the company’s manager. The manager became mistrustful and asked to see my papers, which he’d overlookedat first. When he saw my dishonorable discharge, well, I was out on my ear. It wasn’t a new story.
    “Farmhand then?” the trucker asked. “Ranch hand? Lumberyard? Trucker like me? A man returns from war and he’s got to find his trade.”
    I shook my head and kept silent. I’d tried all those. Applied, anyway.