I tried not to lean against
anything. Leaning, I Feared, would give the wrong impression. It could
seem too casual. Sitting was also not an option. I also did my level
best not to make eye contact. This was harder than it sounds. When you
are surrounded by people with dentition that resembles broken picket
fences and forearms adorned with jail house style tattoos (some
apparently made by carving shapes into the skin then pouring India ink
into the wound) it's very difficult to look anywhere other than their
eyes. Fear causes this.
Other people will try to bully, or force, you
into taking the deal they're offering you. Stand firm and don't give
into their pressured tactics either.
James Douglas Muir Leno was born April 28, 1950, in New
Rochelle, New York. His Italian father Angelo sold insurance and his
Scottish mother Cathryn was a housewife.
you
could try here
Truly the only thing Hannah's
was good for was drinking, and despite our ages we ordered up and were
served the working man's traditional shot-and-a-beer. In fact we were
served a lot of tradition that night, and by two in the morning we were
beginning to feel our oats. The dark
figure standing, staring by the street, is noticed by the two men in the
front seat of the truck, they stare but keep going, --trees blowing to
his right and left, the waves of the Great Lake of Superior, makes a
humming sound, and everything else, as if you were in the middle of a
hurricane, the stranger stands erect yet, never moving. He sees the eyes
of the passenger in the Ford-truck, a small figure, a man of about
forty, the driver calls him Skip, and he hears that. The taller man at
the wheel, his arms are solid, and frozen to the wheel, is called Amery,
for some reason you know he knows that.
Once there, Teddie stashed his bike in the storage shed
and they mounted the front steps of their new apartment together. She
fumbled in her pocket for the key, her hands shaking, some part of her
expecting to see the man in his big
buy truck frame pull up
at any minute. He doesn't even know you're gone, she thought, and
finally found the key. To digress a bit, I need to tell you that Sgt. Grace lied. First,
the language I was assigned to study was Vietnamese. Second, after going
through the 101st Airborne Division's jungle combat school in Phan Rang,
I was assigned to the 1st Brigade, a reactionary unit. I joined them in
Dak To, and early the next morning was flown out to join an artillery
battery in what was called "Operation Eagle Bait". Didn't take long to
find out we were the bait, and Charlie was the eagle. The objective was
to tempt the Viet Cong into attacking us, then bring in an assault wave
of Huey's loaded with infantry, and wipe the enemy out. What I quickly
discovered is that there is nothing in the world comparable to the first
night you are brought out of a deep sleep by M-60 machine gun fire. It all came back to her then, how he'd lain sobbing in his room
across from hers while the man raged in the livingroom, how she'd
slipped into his twin bed with him and wrapped her arms around him until
he was finally asleep, how she'd read chapters of "Charlotte's Web" to
him each night, how he'd raced on his bike through the dark streets the
night they'd finally made their escape. She'd let him in on it early on,
told him all about her plan to find a new place where it would be just
the two of them and how he wouldn't ever again have to lie awake at
night afraid of what was going on in the livingroom or of what he'd see
in the morning as he headed out for school. He'd told no one. It was
their secret. A little later I waved my hand around in front of my face to
clear some of the smoke and give myself a line of sight. I drained my
beer and told Murphy that I had to bail. He slapped me on the back and
headed toward the old scarred pool table. As I walked out into the
sunlight I was thinking that I'd never have to see the inside of that
place again.