Just Passing Through

By James Morgan Ayres

This is a collection of writings: journeys, places, lovers and friends; a magic knife, a motorcycle journey across France, a friendly werewolf, an exile and quiet hero, a bear hunting Crow Indian etre bien dans sa peau, and a meditation on beauty and death.

• Language: English
• Publisher: James Morgan Ayres
• Release date: Jul 11, 2011
• ISBN: 9781452459752

James Morgan Ayres

James Morgan Ayres served with the 82nd Airborne and the 7th Special Forces Group (Green Berets); he has also worked as a private contractor with various US government organizations. He graduated from the US Army’s jungle survival school in Panama and the winter survival school at Camp Drum, New York. During the past decade, Ayres has written dozens of articles and stories for Blade Magazine and the Knives annuals. His books include The Tactical Knife and An Introduction to Firearms. He resides in Southern California.

Book preview

Just Passing Through

Volume 1

James Morgan Ayres

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © James Morgan Ayres

Published by Nomadic Press

June 2011

Cover design: Shawn Carlson

Cover photo: James Morgan Ayres

Book design: ML Ayres

Smashwords Edition License Notes

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Acknowledgements

Thanks to:

Joseph Shields for enduring friendship, the right title and professional advice and support beyond all expectations. Thank you my brother

David Shields for suggesting I do this collection

Ashley for insisting that I tell my stories

Shawn Carlson for a cool cover design

My family for everything

ML for pulling this book together, for loyalty, for love, for making it all worthwhile

Dedicated to

Wives and lovers

Family and friends

Traveling companions

ML always

Table of Contents

Introduction

Ruby

Walkabout In Werewolf Country

The Thin Blue Line

A Fine And Quiet Season

Moonwinds

Motorcycle Memories

Spanish Steel

Indian Time

To The Hills

Introduction

This is a collection of writings: journeys, places, lovers and friends; a magic knife, a motorcycle journey across France, a friendly werewolf, an exile and quiet hero, a bear hunting Crow Indian etre bien dans sa peau, and a meditation on beauty and death.

The thread that ties these pieces together and gives the collection its title is the sense that life is a journey and that we're just passing through. I’ve never truly settled in one place, never lived in a place that felt anything other than temporary. Perhaps that’s true for each of us. After all, we’re all on the way to another place.

They’re short stories that can be fitted into a busy life and offer a slight refuge from tedium and the work-a-day world. Memory is a fragile flower; details might be misremembered, but the stories are all true. I hope you enjoy them.

Sincerely,

Morgan

Ruby

Sloe gin, bathtub gin, fine imported gin, it’s all the same to me and I hate the taste of all of it. Gin and Ruby get mixed up in my mind when I drink too much, which I do from time to time when I think about that woman.

I first met Ruby on the sidewalk in front of Jesse’s, a hillbilly bar across from the train station where I used to go to watch the trains pull out and wish I was on one. It was one of those heavy magnolia scented nights near the end of summer the week before I turned eighteen. She was about twenty-five or twenty-six, right in there, had flame red hair to her waist, go to hell green eyes and a switchblade in the hip pocket of her long legged skintight Wranglers.

Ruby smiled her devil’s smile at me and snatched me off that sidewalk the way a hawk will take a backyard pussycat. Took me up to her room and didn’t let go. We slept a little after dawn. Midmorning sun was streaming through the lace curtains when she woke me again and… We didn’t leave her bed until she had to go to work that night and all I could think about was getting back to her.

Ruby lived in a one-room apartment over Jesse’s where she waitressed. At night the light from the red neon sign made her look like she was on fire. Hell, we were both on fire, all tangled in the sheets and each other. She played The Wayward Wind, night after night and it almost drowned out the music from Jesse’s. She had one of those old style record players, played 33 1/3 records and she had a stack of them but only played the one song. We drank sloe gin, Beefeater gin, any damn gin she had. All she drank was gin.

I didn’t much like gin. But Ruby, well, she was something else. So I drank with her. The juniper tasting stuff was bad enough but that sickly sweet sloe gin was the worst, except when it was mixed with the taste of her summer hot body. She would trickle some of that sweet stuff over her breasts and belly and it would run down thick and slow and mix in with her fiery tangle and then it was just fine.

It went on for weeks and I lost my job detasseling corn because I just couldn’t get up out of her bed in the morning. I would watch the sunrise through the arch of her knee, my head on her smooth thigh, and then she would turn to me and her eyes would catch a shaft of sunlight and glow devilish green with flecks of amber and