21
" I’ll find out who’s inside. Wait here and keep alert!’ Hallam rasped. He skirted the main path to skulk towards one of the shuttered windows on the building’s eastern wall. There was a crack in the wood and he gently inched closer to peer inside.
There was a hearth-fire with a pot bubbling away and a battered table made of a length of wood over two pieces of cut timber. A small ham hung from the rafters, away from the rats and mice. He couldn’t see anyone but there was a murmur of voices. Hallam leaned in even closer and a young boy with hair the colour of straw saw the movement to stare. It was Little Jim. Thank God, the child was safe. Snot hung from his nose and he was pale. Hallam put a finger to his lips, but the boy, not even four, did not understand, and just gaped innocently back.
Movement near the window. A man wearing a blue jacket took up a stone bottle and wiped his long flowing moustache afterwards. His hair was shoulder-length, falling unruly over the red collar of his jacket. Tied around his neck was a filthy red neckerchief. A woman moaned and the man grinned with tobacco stained teeth at the sound. Laughter and French voices. The woman whimpered and Little Jim turned to watch unseen figures. His eyes glistened and his bottom lip dropped. The woman began to plead and Hallam instinctively growled.
The Frenchman, hearing the noise, pushed the shutter open and the pistol’s cold muzzle pressed against his forehead.
Hallam watched the man’s eyes narrow and then widen, before his mouth opened. Whatever he intended to shout was never heard, because the ball smashed through his skull to erupt in a bloody spray as it exited the back of the Frenchman’s head.
There was a brief moment of silence.
‘28th!’ Hallam shouted, as he stepped back against the wall. ‘Make ready! "
― David Cook , Blood on the Snow (The Soldier Chronicles, #3)
24
" What’s Albert going to do?” a boy named Jim demanded. “Where’s Albert?”
Albert stepped from an inconspicuous position off to one side. He mounted the steps, moving carefully still, not entirely well even now.
He carefully chose a position equidistant between Caine and Sam.
“What should we do, Albert?” a voice asked plaintively.
Albert didn’t look out at the crowd except for a quick glance up, like he was just making sure he was pointed in the right direction. He spoke in a quiet, reasonable monotone. Kids edged closer to hear.
“I’m a businessman.”
“True.” Toto.
“My job is organizing kids to work, taking the things they harvest or catch, and redistributing them through a market.”
“And getting the best stuff for yourself,” someone yelled to general laughter.
“Yes,” Albert acknowledged. “I reward myself for the work I do.”
This blunt admission left the crowd nonplussed.
“Caine has promised that if I stay here he won’t interfere. But I don’t trust Caine.”
“No, he doesn’t,” Toto agreed.
“I do trust Sam. But . . .”
And now you could hear a pin drop.
“But . . . Sam is a weak leader.” He kept his eyes down. “Sam is the best fighter ever. He’s defended us many times. And he’s the best at figuring out how to survive. But Sam”— Albert now turned to him—“You are too humble. Too willing to step aside. When Astrid and the council sidelined you, you put up with it. I was part of that myself. But you let us push you aside and the council turned out to be useless.”
Sam stood stock-still, stone-faced.
“Let’s face it, you’re not really the reason things are better here, I am,” Albert said. “You’re way, way braver than me, Sam. And if it’s a battle, you rule. But you can’t organize or plan ahead and you won’t just put your foot down and make things happen.”
Sam nodded slightly. It was hard to hear. But far harder was seeing the way the crowd was nodding, agreeing. It was the truth. The fact was he’d let the council run things, stepped aside, and then sat around feeling sorry for himself. He’d jumped at the chance to go off on an adventure and he hadn’t been here to save the town when they needed it.
“So,” Albert concluded, “I’m keeping my things here, in Perdido Beach. But there will be free trading of stuff between Perdido Beach and the lake. And Lana has to be allowed to move freely.”
Caine bristled at that. He didn’t like Albert laying down conditions.
Albert wasn’t intimidated. “I feed these kids,” he said to Caine. “I do it my way.”
Caine hesitated, then made a tight little bow of the head.
“I want you to say it,” Albert said with a nod toward Toto.
Sam saw panic in Caine’s eyes. If he lied now the jig would be up for him. Toto would call him out, Albert would support Sam, and the kids would follow Albert’s lead.
Sam wondered if Caine was just starting to realize what Sam had known for some time: if anyone was king, it was neither Sam nor Caine, it was Albert. "
― Michael Grant , Plague (Gone, #4)
27
" Will I begin it? said Doyler laughing. That's all that's in it, he laughing said.
Oh sure that grin. Oh sure that wonderful saucerful grin. Jim sat on the grass and he plucked at the blades. He knew for certain sure that Doyler would be turning from him again. He said, You'll be walking away from me soon, won't you now? There was no answer. Jim plucked the grass and stared beyond where the waves broke on the island shore. He said, I wish you wouldn't Doyler. It does break my heart when you walk away.
Old pal o' me heart, said Doyler.
But already he had turned, and he was walking away. Walking that slow dreadful slope with never a leaf or a stone. Walking; and though Jim tried to keep pace, e could not, and sometimes he called out, Doyler! Doyler! but he never heard or he did not heed, only farther and farther he walked away. And when Jim woke from these dreams, if he did not remember, he knew he had dreamt, for the feeling inside him of not feeling at all. And it was hard then to make his day. "
― Jamie O'Neill , At Swim, Two Boys
28
" Candice had been writing for two days’ straight, working on her publisher’s book deadline, when she wrote the end, smiled, and set the book aside. She would start proofing it tomorrow after she’d given her brain a break. Now she’d do what she always did when she finished a book, or reached a good stopping point in one. Clean house. Check her backlog of emails. Pick up some more groceries. And take a run on the wolf side.She finished vacuuming and dusting, swearing every window must let all the outdoors in, and then started a batch of gingerbread cookie cutouts to celebrate finishing another book and the Christmas holiday season. While they were baking, she finally settled down to check her emails. Fan mail always came first, and one from her website got her attention right off. She opened it up and read: Hello, I’m Owen Nottingham, private investigator for White River Investigations, White River Falls, Minnesota and my client, Strom Hart, hired me to locate you. Your parents, John and Cynthia Hart, left you an inheritance and you need to see the lawyer about it so that you can claim it. I need to verify that you are the right woman first. Is there any way that we can possibly meet and get this taken care of so you can collect your inheritance? Strom Hart will be the one to receive it by the end of the month otherwise. His assistant, Jim Winchester, said Mr. Hart is your uncle.”She reread the message again, not believing her eyes, tears filling them. She quickly looked at the date of the message. Two days ago! She knew she shouldn’t have neglected her emails, but when she was into the story, she couldn’t break away.She ground her teeth, raised her fingers to respond, and heard a knocking at her door. No one came here. Never. Ever. Not even salesmen.She glanced at her phases-of-the moon calendar. The waxing gibbous was just beginning. She should be fine. Just to be on the safe side, in case the person at the door was trouble, she pulled a can of mace from her desk drawer and headed for the door. She peered through the peephole. A handsome black-haired man waited at the door, with rugged features and intense blue eyes. He was dressed in a black suit, a red shirt, and a dark purple tie covered in red, purple, and gold Christmas balls. She raised her brows.“I’m Owen Nottingham,” he said to the door, holding up his PI license and driver’s license. He couldn’t know that she was watching him, so he must have hoped she was there, observing him. “I tried getting hold of you on your contact form on your website about your inheritance. Your contact form might not be working, so I had to locate you in person.”So this was the man who had sent the message. But was he for real? He had to be. He wouldn’t have come all this way to see her if he wasn’t. But how had he found her? She opened the door, the bells jingling on her Christmas wreath, and he glanced down at the can of mace in her hand. He smiled, his gaze holding hers with such intensity, it was as though he could see clear through to her soul. “Really, just a PI doing my job.”A chilly breeze carried his scent to her. Wolf scent. She felt so lightheaded all at once, she grabbed the door to keep herself upright, and dropped the can of mace on the tile floor. It clattered, but she couldn’t reach for it if her life depended on it. Oh. My. God.This couldn’t be real. He couldn’t be real. No wonder he was talking to the door. He must have heard her footfalls as she’d approached.He took a deep breath at the same time and his eyes widened in surprise when he smelled her scent. His hand shot out to grab her arm and steady her. For a minute, as she tried to control her breathing, her heart rate, neither of which she could steady. She felt like she was going to pass out.“Hell, you’re the wolf I saw across the White River, aren’t you? "
30
" I have a complicated spiritual history. Here's the short version: I was born into a Mass-going Roman Catholic family, but my parents left the church when I was in the fifth grade and joined a Southern Baptist church—yes, in Connecticut. I am an alumnus of Wheaton College—Billy Graham's alma mater in Illinois, not the Seven Sisters school in Massachusetts—and the summer between my junior and senior year of (Christian) high school, I spent a couple of months on a missions trip performing in whiteface as a mime-for-the-Lord on the streets of London's West End. Once I left home for Wheaton, I ended up worshiping variously (and when I could haul my lazy tuckus out of bed) at the nondenominational Bible church next to the college, a Christian hippie commune in inner-city Chicago left over from the Jesus Freak movement of the 1960s, and an artsy-fartsy suburban Episcopal parish that ended up splitting over same-sex issues. My husband of more than a decade likes to describe himself as a “collapsed Catholic,” and for more than twenty-five years, I have been a born-again Christian. Groan, I know. But there's really no better term in the current popular lexicon to describe my seminal spiritual experience. It happened in the summer of 1980 when I was about to turn ten years old. My parents had both had born-again experiences themselves about six months earlier, shortly before our family left the Catholic church—much to the shock and dismay of the rest of our extended Irish and/or Italian Catholic family—and started worshiping in a rented public grade school gymnasium with the Southern Baptists. My mother had told me all about what she'd experienced with God and how I needed to give my heart to Jesus so I could spend eternity with him in heaven and not frying in hell. I was an intellectually stubborn and precocious child, so I didn't just kneel down with her and pray the first time she told me about what was going on with her and Daddy and Jesus. If something similar was going to happen to me, it was going to happen in my own sweet time. A few months into our family's new spiritual adventure, after hearing many lectures from Mom and sitting through any number of sermons at the Baptist church—each ending with an altar call and an invitation to make Jesus the Lord of my life—I got up from bed late one Sunday night and went downstairs to the den where my mother was watching television. I couldn't sleep, which was unusual for me as a child. I was a champion snoozer. In hindsight I realize something must have been troubling my spirit.
Mom went into the kitchen for a cup of tea and left me alone with the television, which she had tuned to a church service. I don't remember exactly what the preacher said in his impassioned, sweaty sermon, but I do recall three things crystal clearly: The preacher was Jimmy Swaggart; he gave an altar call, inviting the folks in the congregation in front of him and at home in TV land to pray a simple prayer asking Jesus to come into their hearts; and that I prayed that prayer then and there, alone in the den in front of the idiot box. Seriously. That is precisely how I got “saved.” Alone. Watching Jimmy Swaggart on late-night TV. I also spent a painful vacation with my family one summer at Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker's Heritage USA Christian theme park in South Carolina. But that's a whole other book… "
― Cathleen Falsani , Sin Boldly: A Field Guide for Grace
36
" Alexander Smollett, master; David Livesey, ship's doctor; Abraham Gray, carpenter's mate; John Trelawney, owner; John Hunter and Richard Joyce, owner's servants, landsmen--being all that is left faithful of the ship's company--with stores for ten days at short rations, came ashore this day and flew British colours on the log-house in Treasure Island. Thomas Redruth, owner's servant, landsman, shot by the mutineers; James Hawkins, cabin boy--'
And at the same time, I was wondering over poor Jim Hawkins' fate. "
― Robert Louis Stevenson , Treasure Island
38
" Yeah, this place needs a better-quality blueberry muffin." I raised a pointed finger. " And I could provide it." " You sound pretty sure of yourself," Jim said, placing a pat of butter on his baked potato." And there are always blueberry pies," I said, pausing to think of other possibilities. " Turnovers, cakes, croissants..." I popped the fry into my mouth. " I don't think anybody's done blueberry croissants." " No," Jim said slowly. " I don't think they have." " Of course, I'd sell some other things, too. Can't all be blueberries," I mused as I began to envision the bakery- a tray of lemon pound cake, peach cobbler in a fluted casserole, a basket of pomegranate-and-ginger muffins. I could see myself pulling a baking sheet of cookies from the oven, the smell of melted chocolate in the air. There would be white wooden tables and chairs in the front room, and people could order coffee and sandwiches. Maybe even tea sandwiches, like the ones Gran used to make. Cucumber and arugula. Bacon and egg. Curried chicken. "
