The Chu Lai Jacket

By Allen Glick

Puller Hobbs, war weary veteran, wants little more than to truly be the man that his wife and daughters assume him to be. But he senses that a piece is missing. Hoping to be an artist and possessing the technical skills, Puller is nonetheless void of vision. He works as a carpenter, an occupation with little ambivalence and, safely, little need for introspection. But one day at work, a violent and fatal accident impels in him a formidable artistic insight that he urgently needs to express. Standing between him and fulfillment, however, is his Vietnam past.
Living in rural East Texas, caretakers of an antebellum plantation, the Hobbs family are surrounded by and caught up in a century and a half of racial inequities that Puller, having fought beside men of all colors, cannot condone. A close friendship with their black neighbors becomes a foreground for his first real work of art. But through this work, a voice – a persona – from the past reaches out and, frightened, Puller confronts a psychological trauma that had never healed. The scar had merely been plastered over, in the fashion of many combat veterans, when Puller had patched together his post-war sanity. Now he must face a terrible possibility: an essential part of himself may be irrevocably lost.
His role as father and husband both eases and complicates Puller’s quest. One day he finds a tangible war memento, a child’s embroidered jacket bearing the words: Chu Lai, Vietnam. The jacket is a talisman of a traumatic event that forced a sundering, a division, of his very psyche. It was the start of what he remembers fearfully as his madness, which he feels creeping up around him again. When Kelly, his six-year-old daughter, refuses to wear the jacket, Puller’s disappointment leads him to wonder just what sort of imagery the child bears of her father’s role in the war. What exactly did he do?
The journey into the darkness of his own past is his only route into a hopeful future. Without the love of family and friends, he fears he will be hopelessly lost. The Chu Lai Jacket is a story of the sort of renewal that every combat veteran deserves to find.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Allen Glick
• Release date: Nov 10, 2011
• ISBN: 9780984814428

Allen Glick

Allen Glick enlisted in the US Marine Corps and served his duty in the jungles of Vietnam. Upon returning home, he became a master carpenter, a husband and the father of two daughters. After earning both his B.A. and M.A. in English, he began a new career teaching high school English in Texas. In 2006, he returned to Asia traveling through Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand and China. Throughout all this time he was, first and foremost, a writer, completing four fiction novels. His most recent novel, Pity for the Crow is a tale of magical realism, weaving together 500 years of Texas, Mexico and Central America history into an engaging modern day conquistador adventure. He is now writing his first non-fiction work, a retrospective on his life and travels.

Book preview

The Chu Lai Jacket

by Allen A Glick

Copyright 1988 AAGlick

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It remains the copyrighted property of the author, and may not be reproduced, copied or distributed for commercial or non-commercial purposes. If you enjoyed this book, please encourage your friends to download their own copy at Smashwords.com, where they can also discover other works by AA Glick. Thank you for your support.

Table Of Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

About The Author

CHAPTER ONE

Puller had a pot gut. No longer any doubt. He agonized in front of the mirror, in the dim morning light. He moaned at the dip in his skivvies: hitched high over his rump, slipped low under his belly—

—like a saddle on a fat pony, he muttered.

Maggie stirred and he hopped quickly from the mirror. Working out, she kept saucy and trim while Puller sprouted love handles. Young guys on campus were flirting with his Maggie!

It was a quarter till six in early dark spring, and the rooster still ruffled in cockerel dreams. Puller slid into coveralls, strapped one shoulder, squeaked onto the bed to lace his boots. The rooster finally crowed—cursed bird!—too pea-brained to know who was boss of the hilltop. Puller should have clipped his spurs long ago. But it was a handsome red-green crossbreed. Macho as hell as it strode about with two inches of horn on each scaly leg.

Foul tempered as the cock was, Maggie hung the washing with caution. Have to shoot that goddamned bird. Puller was drowsily thinking. Promote one of those leghorns that think they’re capons.

He was leaving the bedroom as Kelly padded in, fists to eyes. They collided softly in familiar routine: size thirteen boots poised carefully over tender toes, second grade feet daring fate, curling confidently onto papa’s rough-worn stompers.

He loved to hug his girls in the early morning, sleep still on them like a musky fog. Mists of genesis. Visions of squirmy critters popped out fresh, unsullied, needing their old man—Puller liked to believe—as much as they needed air.

Dju wake Kate?

"No, pop.

French toast?

Mmm hmmm.

He tickled her neck with his mustache, breathed her fawn’s fragrance.

You crack some eggs, okay? I’ll put coffee on.

Old joists gave and sprang back, the pine floor bounced, the antique cupboard shook and rattled. They collided in the kitchen. Kelly dropped an egg, the thick-shelled farmyard kind that did not break on the yielding floor. A forgiving floor in a fine old plantation house. Perfect crash deck for toddlers. Unbiased, it had bounced children of all creeds and colors for one hundred and fifty years.

Legend told that Sam Houston had brought an Indian sweetheart to this very house in eighteen and thirty-eight. Perhaps old Sam had appreciated the pliant give that same floor had provided.

Batter-soaked bread was sizzling in a skillet when Kate ambled in like the sun rising, sparkle-eyed, one pink toe jutting from a hole in her snuggly.

Hon-gy papa!

You are, eh?

Ummm. Re-eel hongy! She stretched and reached and Puller snatched her up for a squeeze. She wrinkled button-nosed at the skillet.

Ummboy! Finch toe! Finch toe, Kelly!

Kelly looked up from her stool at the island, head propped in hands, elbows on counter, blue eyes drooping shut she yawned to show her boredom. I know, Kate. It was my idea. I helped papa make them.

Kate gasped and looked accusing. Kay ‘elp too!

You want to help? Okay. Go in and wake momma with a kiss. Very gently. Tell her breakfast.

Hey! Kelly objected. I wanted to wake up momma! But Kate had already squirmed free to dash from the kitchen.

"You soak your head. I mean, soak some bread!"

Can I cook the whole things, pop?

You’ll burn your hands.

I promise I won’t.

Puller glanced at the clock. It was five past six.

Okay, he relented. I’ll pack lunches. Are you brown bagging today?

The kitchen was solid unpainted pine, batten-boarded and old and yellowed. There was a bulletin board nailed to one wall, papered in drawings and notes, where Puller glanced to read the menu.

Fish sticks with ketchup, Puller quoted, potato tots, broccoli with cheese sauce, rolls, bananas and strawberries, milk... OR, pizza sandwich basket!

Yucch! I’ll pack my lunch. Kelly was at the stove, on a footstool, concentrating in the perfect flip. One, right. Two, right. Third time, toast on the floor. It slapped on the egg-y side, left a slop mark as Kelly hastily snatched it up with the spatula.

Oops, she giggled. That one’s yours, pop.

How about a ham and cheese sandwich, hard-boiled egg, an apple and a granola bar?

Will you make some chocolate milk?

Sure Kelly. If you’ll eat the piece that dropped on the floor.

Kate steamed in dragging Maggie by the hem of her robe, the little engine that could, merrily tugging its load.

See! the child announced. Momma here!

Puller winked at his puffy-eyed wife. Momma wishes she was elsewhere. And then he caught her when she leaned heavily into his chest. Her breath was sour. He kissed her and didn’t mind.

Late night?

Mmmmm, she muttered. Bed at midnight. But I finished those layouts.

You’ll make another ‘A’.

...damned well better. Maggie had a lean, high-cheeked face in contrast to her husband’s round one. She had good bones that kept her face from falling with sleep. Puller awoke with a face like melted wax. Fortunately, the girls had their mother’s bones and her wide sensuous mouth: but they had Puller’s deep blue eyes. Yet anything would have pleased him. One freckle that was his. You see! They got that freckle from me!

Puller gulped his breakfast. He slurped his coffee, went to the bathroom to brush his teeth. He didn’t bother to shave.

Back in the kitchen once more:

Maggie, where the hell is my old family bible?

His wife arched surprised brows behind her coffee cup.

You got mad, remember? You threw it in the trash.

Yeah, yeah, sure, he made a rueful face. "But you fished it out again, I know you did.

Maybe.

So where is it?

I put it away.

Can you un-put it real quick? I need to look something up.

What?

Tower of Babel.

Maggie shook her head at his retreating back.

He was in the kitchen again, packing lunches, when she set the old bible on the counter. The black leather was faded and frayed. It zippered shut all around, which suited Puller’s notions. Zip it up tight lest the truth spill out.

Don’t tell me you got old time religion in Shreveport?

Puller winked at her. He scraped the mayonnaise jar.

A cracker at work keeps quoting the Book to me. He’s getting on my nerves.

Easy nerves to get on, baby.

Funny thing is, I probably know the bible better than he does.

There was a rare quiet. The girls were tumbling in a far part of the house. Maggie snuggled beside him for a scratchy-beaded kiss.

I love you, Puller Hobbs.

Oh, yeah? More than those jocks at college?

Mm hmm... They’re cute enough. But they just can’t shake it like my old man.

I’m getting a belly, he groaned.

More to hold onto.

Promise you won’t leave me for some hunk?

Well, she smiled, not for more than a fling.

The girls found them, of course, like air finds an empty bottle. Quiet is a vacuum that children are required to fill.

There was a horse race to reach the folks. Kelly tripped Kate into a tumbling crash but the three-year-old bounced up with a vengeance to yank Kelly’s hair. There was a yelp and then a fight. A horn honked outside. Puller grabbed his lunch, stole quick tearful kisses from his girls, hugged Maggie, snatched up the Good Book and dashed from the kitchen.

The dining room—like all the rooms except the kitchen—was furnished in antiques that creaked and squeaked as Puller’s big boots heeled across the old Persian rug. The hallways were massive. They intersected at the center of the house, which measured sixty feet on each side. The ceiling reached to thirteen feet... the devil to heat in the winter that lay only a cold nose behind them.

Each crossed hail exited at huge double doors that opened onto steps. The front doors opened onto a pillared porch as wide as the house, which perched on a hilltop in the deep pinewoods of East Texas. So east, in fact, it was nearly Louisiana.

Puller kept tools on a bench in the hallway, by the side doors that opened on the drive. He put on his tool belt and popped on his hard hat. He grabbed his long wooden toolbox, dropped lunch and bible inside, and pushed open the right hand door. Down the steps, past Maggie’s station wagon, beyond his own truck, sat AJ’s old blue pick-up idling in blue fumes. Dusty moved to the middle as Puller set his tools and hat in back. But he took the bible inside. His buddies hooted when they saw it, but with less than their usual irreverence. They were country-bred after all, and the fear of brimstone dies hard.

Puller’s girls came hurrying into the dewy morning—Maggie in a long terry cloth robe, Kelly dressed for school, Kate with her pink toe in the wet grass. Maggie carried his cup and the coffee pot. She joked with AJ and Dusty while she filled their cups. She kissed Puller again. Then they were off, down the plantation hill and onto the country road toward Waskom, the biggest town for miles.

That’s some woman you got, Puller. Hope you have the good sense to keep her.

In other words, Dusty cracked, tell AJ if you don’t.

Puller winked appreciatively. Each of his buddies was divorced. Ex-wives had custody of their kids.

The road wound through heavily forested hills. The soil was a red mixture of sand and clay that reminded all three men of the countryside in Viet Nam. They tried not to talk about that often.

AJ would sometimes ask about Puller’s daughters, drawing little familiarities from him. His ex-wife had remarried in Houston. For a year, he had raced down each weekend to see his children until, one visit, he noticed a bruise on his boy’s cheek where the step-dad had popped him. So he blacked the guy’s eye. Then a judge put a halt to his visits.

Puller told him a funny one about Kate. AJ laughed, then choked on it. His eyes misted. Dusty and Puller glanced away.

Thank God it’s Friday, Dusty groaned. As if that served as a rationale, he yanked a pencil-thick joint from a pocket. Dusty’s gray eyes slid sidewise, left and right.

Get that away from me! AJ barked.

Puller shook his head. I don't dare. There’s millwork to set.

Pussies, Dusty accused. You can do that job in your sleep.

Save that till after work, we’ll all have a toke.

I got more. Dusty struck a sulfur match. The smell of burning rope filled the cab.

You’ll be useless all morning.

Look, all I gotta do is dig a ditch.

You should’a hired on as a carpenters apprentice.

Quit preachin’ that to me! I make more money swinging a pick. For almost a year, AJ and Puller had worked as journeymen carpenters on a union site. Dusty was hired a few months later; union laborer, nine bucks an hour. Good work for a man with no direction, a job to suit Dusty’s mood of late.

Puller cracked his window an inch. The acrid smoke swirled and shot out in a stream past his nose.

Won’t do you any good, Dusty remarked. You can’t hold your breath all the way to Shreveport.

Ahh, but I can keep my thoughts pure.

What is that bible for, anyway? You having sudden doubts?

It’s for Smitty, Puller shrugged. "He talks bible but he doesn’t know it."

What a guy. Mouth enough for two sets of teeth!

Yeah. And the nearer that church gets to completion, the nearer old Smitty gets to heaven.

Have you seen him suckin’ up to that preacher? The joke is, once that church is finished they won’t want the likes of Smitty coming through the door.

The cost of the massive complex—church, auditorium, recreation hall, and more—was five million dollars. It was a disturbing figure to AJ and Dusty, nurtured as they had been by the concept of a poor and humble Jesus, in modest wooden temples. To Puller, who was more worldly, it was simply corrupt. He had tried to sketch it once, had tried to elicit from lines of graphite and charcoal a common dream that had failed, as though an empty silhouette might reflect the lost visions of his kind: the meek who were supposed to inherit it all. But his sketches were incomplete.

Dusty blew smoke in his face. Puller stirred and shook his head at the offered joint. It was a familiar and lulling drive that made it easy to fall into silence. On hilltops and curves, the easterly sun would stab their eyes. In the washes and shadowed vales, it would dim. But near Waskom, they turned onto the interstate, a straight shot east, and the morning glare was full in their faces. Dusty’s smoke hung heavily in the air. Tires hummed on the concrete. They crossed the state line but the terrain was changeless: hilly, spattered with the deep blue-green of pines, lighter green where oaks and hickories brought forth buds. The startling white of dogwood blooms were like eruptions of virgin snow.

It was mid-February. Winter might swipe at them again, but it would not deter the waxing of spring. Puller would be forty soon, his own spring long past, his summer passing, the thought of his pot belly a private dishonor.

Puller’s old drill instructor came to mind, as he occasionally did, rock—jawed and flint-eyed, brim of the Smokey Bear pulled low over his brow... Quitting so soon, Hobbs? Falling out? You maggot! You couldn’t hump one hill with a load!

Puller squirmed. He resolved not to eat the granola bar in his lunch. He would lose ten pounds before his birthday, by God, or go to live with the hogs!

Full of resolve when they arrived at work, Puller leaped from the truck like he was hitting the beach, juiced up, eyes slit, mouth set in a challenging line. Then he realized he was stoned, done in by the thick smoke in the cab.

The construction site brought him down: acres of naked rouge clay gouged from a hillside, booms and I-beams like rusted bones. The red brick complex, tall spire of the proud church—copper capped—all glinted crimson in the morning sunlight. Bought with the blood of Jesus. Blood of the lamb. His old sweet grandma rocking Puller, singing in her crackly voice beside the coal stove, sublime in her faith, a better world was coming. Each Sunday she dug deep to tithe what she could not afford.

Puller held the bible in his hand. It had been hers. Grandma’s law. He had thrown it in the trash once, in a dramatic moment, not because he was angry at his sweet grandma, but angry at something else. What could that be? Anger at God required belief, but Puller would not admit to that luxury. He knew people had faith because they needed it, and perhaps that's what had made him mad: their simple need.

He placed the book in his tool box and surveyed the church, safely beyond its reach. It seemed more and more like this each day—that he was working amidst the icons that had driven him from his faith.

Puller’s boots sucked mud as he slogged towards the church. Men climbed from cars and trucks, doors clanged, tools clanked, hardhats slapped legs or rattled atop heads. The crowd converged into a stream, some life in their strides because the eagle shits on Fridays.

I’m tired of this job. Dusty had stepped beside him.

You ain’t even had it a year.

It sucks.

You’re stoned, Dusty. Mother humper you got me stoned too!

AJ’s pissed at me.

He’ll get over it.

Dusty stared at him. The procession of workers was clattering away.

What the hell are you doing here, Puller? I know about the rest of us. Were getting by. We’re making the best of what we got. But you’re different.

I’m no different.

You got talent. You’re a damned artist!

"Shit. I don’t know what art is. Neither do you."

Maybe not. But you know, Puller. And you’re afraid of what you got. You duck it.

I should be flattered, Puller smiled ruefully. But all I do is sketch a little, and putter with stuff. There are thousands who do it better.

Maybe so, Dusty squinted. But I read somewhere about art. Supposed to make you feel somethin’ real, ain’t it? Well, ain’t it?"

I guess that’s part of it.

I rest my case. Then he smacked Puller’s chest. Try to get me on an inside job, how ‘bout it?

Sure. If Kirkland bothers to ask me. He doesn’t like your attitude lately. I think he plans to keep you in the ditches.

Don’t mean nothin’. Dusty shrugged. Don’t expect to get rich, anyway. How’s this? He plopped on his hardhat and marched in place, spattered mud, pumped his elbows and knees.

"I’ll never get rich

by digging a ditch—

I’m in the union now"

They slopped through the clinging mud and joked about the monsoons in Nam.

The old man was taking his time giving out assignments. Most of the men knew their jobs but Kirkland was letting them dog it for a few minutes. Friday. They’d work like hell through lunch, work pretty good till two when the old man handed out the checks, then for two hours most of them wouldn’t be worth a damn.

But the project was on schedule. And the supervisor took a rough satisfaction from mornings like these—from jest and banter, the animation of rugged men who pulled together as a crew. It had taken months to shake them down. To pick and choose. Kirkland was particular hell on his carpenters, having been one himself, and he ran off any who were less than able.

Puller had sketched a scene like this, and it hung in Kirkland’s trailer: a square of cardboard, dashed with layout chalk and the charcoal of a burned wooden stake. A quick silhouette of the crew, action and repose, an eye—blinking and energetic moment.

Kirkland stepped off the pallet into the mud. He waved the men up and a crescent of forty bodies arced around him. A sour breeze stirred the stink of the port-o-cans. Kirkland wrinkled his nose and called out names, checked them from his roster, funny how no one was ever sick on payday.

When he called out assignments, men stepped to the tool shed or trudged into the church.

Puller Hobbs. Pick a laborer and get on with those cabinets.

Yes sir. I’ll take McInnis.

Pick someone else. Kirkland frowned.

Puller shrugged at Dusty, who did not bat an eye.

Then I’ll take N’Komo, Puller said.

Get moving, the old man nodded.

Puller heard a snicker from behind, caught fragments of voodoo and jungle love. He turned to glare at Smitty and the smaller, older man gestured innocently. Smitty was a redneck jokester. His buddies were grinning.

Children of Ham, the bible says, and Smith held up an instructive forefinger.

Puller lifted his Good Book from the toolbox that lay at his feet. I have to tell you, Smitty, that you’ve made me question my ways. And I’m going to study this so you and I can have a talk.

Surprise came into Smitty’s angled face. He smiled with rapture. Lord be praised! Why anytime at all, Puller. Anytime at all!

Lifting his toolbox, Puller walked toward his helper, Ham’s descendent.

N’Komo was a Nigerian, very black-skinned, and his face was scarred by smallpox. He kept apart even from the other Black laborers, and he especially avoided Smitty—confounded as the redneck was by a nigger who spoke with an Oxford accent, at work on a master’s degree.

What tools shall I bring, Puller? The Nigerian flashed his big white teeth.

Puller always marveled at the crisp educated speech that came from that scarred head. He slapped N’Komo’s muscled shoulder.

I have everything we need.

It was as they were walking towards the church that Smitty’s path crossed theirs, deliberately enough it seemed.

How’s it goin’, Como?

Fine, Mr. Smith.

Make your morning sacrifice, did you?

Puller watched as N’Komo forced a silly grin.

Yes, of course. Every day. Right as rain.

You have to keep your crocodile gods happy!

Yes, of course.

Smitty’s shoulders shook with glee as he walked away. Weeks past, it had started as a joke, a notion that Smitty had pieced together from old Tarzan movies and segments of Jungle Jim... They sacrificed babies to crocodiles in Nigeria. Hell, everyone knew it! Smitty made the connection into an outworn joke.

Yet was it a joke? How real did it become to Smith? Puller had lived for years in the deep woods, but still he could not fathom the shallows of the redneck mind.

You oughta' knock his dick in the mud, Puller spouted.

I would only lose my job. N’Komo shrugged. And he would have the satisfaction of proving me a savage.

What religion are you? I’ve never asked.

What would you guess, Puller?

Uhhh... a Muslim?

N’Komo smiled. I am a good Catholic, as is my father and his father.

Puller laughed as he tossed back his head.

A fish eater! I’ll be damned. My wife is Irish-Catholic. Least she was till she married me. Big family up north, you know. They all breed like minks but I sure love ‘em.

Breed like minks? And what’s that?

How many kids in your family, N’Komo?

Twelve.

That’s what I mean, son. They’re fucking all the time!

Maybe that is Mr. Smith’s problem, eh?

How’s that?

His church commands the fucking be done only one night a month.

They had just entered the cavernous temple and Puller’s laughter broke against the canyon-like walls. He supposed that the huge space was meant to be humbling, but Puller felt trivial instead, each morning he came through the huge doorway. He was made to feel insignificant.

A screw gun whined, a forklift rumbled. The men fell into routine with a cadence of hammer falls and shrieks of power saws, and the slam shot of lumber dropped on the concrete deck. The vast chamber was dry-walled. Every sound echoed off the ceiling that vaulted to sixty feet. Cabinets and millwork were in a cottage sized stack near one wall. Puller stowed his gear there and spread out the rolled blueprints and millwork key.

There were cabinets for various kitchens, and enough bookshelves for a small town library. There were a score of desks and dozens of vanities for bath and powder rooms. Some of the sets were too short or too long and some had pieces missing. Everything was disassembled, lying in numbered bundles, a huge plywood puzzle to solve.

Puller planned to deposit each set in the appropriate room, and then move from room to room to assemble them.

We’ll need a flatbed cart, N’Komo.

The African nodded and hurried to fetch one while Puller lost himself in the intricacies of the blueprint. When he looked up again he noticed the church pastor stroll in. He was a distinguished looking man, appropriately solemn, appropriately affable. But Puller had never spoken to him. He was the only man on the crew who had not.

Puller recognized his prejudice. He knew that it was petty-minded to continually avoid the preacher; yet he also sensed that he was comfortable with his own bias. A mutual understanding had sprung up, over the months—the pastor had ceased trying to approach him, and Puller had kept well out of the man’s way.

This is more than just a church! It’s a damned corporation! was Puller’s rational for rudeness.

He knew of the intrigue that went along with even a poor pulpit. It was bad enough when there were bickering deacons to quell. Add a board of directors and a rich church would be no different than a bank. There would be a bottom line. Ministry measured in the collection plate. Rancor over where best to invest, in God’s name, and all tax-free.

What a racket— Puller muttered.

And what’s that? N’Komo asked as he pushed up the cart.

Oh, just commenting on our Savior’s bank account. When He comes back, He’ll be a very rich man.

N’Komo cocked his bead. You’re an odd chap, Puller. You make sport of religion, yet you secretly crave something greater than yourself.

He sometimes drank beer with N’Komo, after work, down the road at a local saloon. They would bend their elbows and talk about Life or Art. Puller envied the man his fine education.

Puller shrugged. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to put down your faith. I won’t—

A nasal voice pierced the air.

HEY REV’REND!

It was Smitty, climbed high on the scaffold. He paused to wave at the preacher, who returned the gesture self-consciously.

GLORY BE TO GOD!

Amen! the Reverend called, and quickly strolled on. Puller had to admit that the pastor was an understated man. It’s why he was popular with the crew.

N’Komo was just warming up. He pointed at the carpenter who had climbed aloft. "Take a man like that Smith... He longs for nothing greater than himself. He craves something lesser. That’s why he insults me with racial jokes about sacrifices to crocodiles. His choice of God merely reflects his own need to be superior. A man such as he should not even bother with religion... But you, Puller, are naturally suited to the deeper questions of God. Yet you show nothing but scorn for them."

Puller gestured about. What do you see around here that inspires deeper questions? It all seems pretty basic. Drop coins in a plate. Build a stairway to heaven.

I know that you would find true believers here, N’Komo replied. I think that you are confusing hypocrisy with their display of wealth. Perhaps these are not very expressive people. They do not have Mardi Gras. They have a big expensive building in which to celebrate their God. Nothing so terribly wrong with that. We Catholics like big, cold, and expensive churches. Our passion for them was called the Renaissance!

At least that was art, Puller laughed.

Once again, my good man, you are trying to define what is art? That would take very much beer and more time than we have. N’Komo gestured to the distance. And I see old Kirkland watching us.

Oops! Puller jumped. They began to hustle the numbered stacks onto the cart.

A forklift rumbled past them into the main chamber of the church. It was loaded high with materials, the driver carelessly blind-sided but gunning it a bit, travelling too fast.

Puller thought to yell at him. From the corner of his eye he glimpsed the preacher stepping backwards, looking up as Smith neared the top of the scaffold that reached the ceiling.

The forklift driver shouted too late. He could not stop in time, and the startled preacher could not jump aside quickly enough. Braking and swerving, the driver veered to miss the man. They all heard a teeth-clenching CLANG as one tine struck the scaffold a great jolt.

Then they heard a shriek. Puller saw the redneck Smitty lose his grip and topple, and his plunge came fast and hard—more like an awkward dive—his hands held out in terror, his angled face a flint of fear, his scream short—lived as he met the concrete, head first.

Smitty struck with such force that one eyeball was knocked cleanly from its socket. It arced through the air a dozen feet and smacked the open—mouthed pastor on his clean white shirt. Then the eyeball landed, plop, on the floor trailing a bloody vein.

In a swoon, the preacher fainted dead away.

There was a moment of numb silence from the startled crew. Old Kirkland was closest. He stepped quickly toward the preacher and then stooped with a red bandana to scoop up Smitty’s eyeball. Then the hubbub suddenly arose. Everyone started to shout at once, and there was the jumbled rush of many feet.

Puller stood rooted to where he was. He saw old Kirkland kneel by the body and without blinking—as if to correct some indecency—shoved the eyeball adroitly back into its socket, backwards, the vein hanging out as if Smitty had sucked spaghetti through his eye.

The crescendo of voices seemed a garble of many tongues. The crew gaped at one another as their mouths worked, but no one appeared to understand a single word.

It struck Puller like a vision, his Tower of Babel.

He turned to N’Komo, who also stood as if rooted.

Maybe he pissed off the Crocodile God, was all that Puller could think to say.

CHAPTER TWO

What can be done with thirty eggs a day, every day, as sure as the sun might rise? How to use two gallons of raw milk, twice a day, seven days a week for much of the year? Where do you keep a bumper crop of spinach that threatens to overflow on your kitchen floor?

These were some of the questions that filled Maggie’s day. Not to be confused with the less mundane questions of academics, the how and when of graduating from college while keeping her family on track.

Her soft days were on Tuesdays and Thursdays, devoted to studies and a small-time advertising job. She went to class on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays and toted Kate along to the campus daycare. Weekends she was Ma Kettle on the farm. At all times, she was wife, mother, lover and part-time vet who could doctor critters with aplomb.

On this particular Saturday morning, she was the egg inspector, giving the old bucket-of-water test to a hidden cache of eggs that Kelly had found. There were some outlaw hens who never laid in the henhouse. Sometimes the nests would lay hidden till a batch of eggs would explode. But that was in the scorching summer. In the spring, like as not, they ended up as feast for some spotted king snake.

The king snakes were okay. They kept copperheads and rattlers away. But it stopped your heart to reach in a dark nesting box and grab one.

Oooh, Momma! Kelly pointed into the bucket. That one’s bobbing in the water!

Mmmm. Sure is. It looks to be about a half-charge. And Kelly laughed. It was papa’s slang for the explosive potential of a rotten egg. A full charge was one that floated all the way to the top. Momma wouldn’t even let Kelly touch one of those.

Kelly reached daringly into the bucket to grasp the mini-bomb.

You be careful. If you drop that we’ll stink for a week.

The girl held the egg up cautiously, dripping, and tried to see what forces stirred inside as light through the window cut a beam across the table. Kate was itching to grab the thing and Maggie had to restrain her.

Pop says it‘s sulfur gas, Kate And other yukky stuff— She glanced at her mother. Maybe Pop will let me throw it against the barn.

That was Puller’s measure of explosive scale. Once he had thrown an egg that exploded so loud one of their hogs had burst through the pen. That was a full-charge that had never been equaled. He told his girls that, someday, he hoped to explode one so deafening that the cow’s milk would turn sour. He was certain that would be the rottenest egg of all time. And Kelly agreed.

But it would have to wait until Clover was fresh, and they were milking her again.

Put it in the bowl and leave it on the back porch, Kelly. Then we’ll box the rest of these eggs.

The child walked uneasily away with the tiny grenade, Kate at her heels, and Maggie held her breath for fear the three-year-old was in the mood for a flying tackle.

But nothing ensued. The girls came un-bickering back to the table to help with crating.

There were two days collections of eggs, plus the maverick nest that Kelly had found, about seventy-five eggs in all. They washed the poop and hay from each in a mild disinfectant—Kate would sometimes drop a couple as she dried them—but that was of little consequence. Maggie would fry the broken eggs, shells