Read Online A Morning for Flamingos by James Lee Burke - Free Book Online
Authors: James Lee Burke
Ads: Link
with the barrel of the .45 lifted just above the mud. The underside of my body is slick with green-black ooze; my elbows, knees, and boots make sucking sounds with each movement forward. My face is alive with cuts and mosquitoes. Behind me I hear Doo-Doo easing a clip into his rifle.
The grass thins at the edge of the coulee, and down the incline Martinez lies crucified in a half inch of water, his flak jacket blown off his chest, his face white with concussion, his dented pot twenty yards down from him. He has long eyelashes like a girl’s, and they keep fluttering as he looks up at me; his mouth opens and closes as though he’s trying to clear his ears.
The ground on the other side of the coulee is flat and clear for thirty yards back to a line of rubber trees. The sunlight here is bright and hazy, and I shield my eyes with my hand and try to look deep into the shadows of the rubber trees. The air is breathless, the reeds and elephant ears along the bank absolutely still. I drop over the lip of the coulee and slide erect down the embankment with my boot heels dug into the mud.
Martinez tries to speak, but I see the sucking chest wound now and the torn, wet cloth of his undershirt that flutters in the cavity from the release of air. He sounds like a man strangling in his own saliva.
I try to lift him on my shoulders and hold one of his arms and legs in front of me, but my knee folds and we both go down in a pool of muddy water that’s hotter than the air. Then I see them walk out of the rubber trees against the sun. They look no bigger than children. Their black pajamas stick wetly to their bodies; their faces are skeletal and filled with teeth. One of them squats down and aims Martinez’s blooker at me. A man behind him shakes cigarettes out of a pack of Lucky Strikes for his friends. They are all laughing.
My .45 lies somewhere in the clouded water, my boots are locked in mud. I hear Doo-Doo firing, but it makes no difference at this point. I stare at my executioner, my body painted with the tropical stink of his country, an unformed prayer wheezing like sand from my throat. The short, fat barrel of the grenade launcher recoils upward in his hands with a deep-throated roar, and a moment later I’m caught in an envelope of flame and I feel a pain in my chest like jagged iron twisting its way through tendon and bone.
Then I am on all fours, like a dog, vomiting blood on my hands, and in the smoke and the smell of burnt powder I stare up the embankment at where the small men in pajamas should be but are not. Instead, Jimmie Lee Boggs takes his package of Lucky Strikes from his blue jeans pocket and lights one. His mannequinlike head is perfectly still as he puffs on his cigarette and lets the smoke drift from his lips. Then he flips the butt in an arc out on the coulee, works his way down the embankment, and finds my .45 in the water.
He works the receiver and knocks the barrel clean of mud on his jeans. He casually points it behind my ear, lets the iron sight bite into my scalp.
“You thought the zips were going to get you, but I’m the one can make you cry,” he says.
I woke up with the sheets twisted across my chest, my body hot in the cold square of moonlight that shone through the window. Outside, the pecan trees were black against the sky. I lay awake until dawn, when the light became gray, then pink, in the flooded cypress on the far side of the bayou. Then I tried to sleep again, but it was no use. I helped Batist open up the bait shop, and at eight o’clock I drove to work at the sheriff’s office and began processing traffic accident reports, my eyes weak with fatigue.
That afternoon, four days after Tante Lemon and Dorothea’s visit, I drove to Minos Dautrieve’s house in Lafayette. He lived in the old part of town on the north side, a neighborhood of Victorian homes, deep lawns, enormous live oak trees, iron tethering posts, gazebos, screened galleries, and cascading leaves. He had
The grass thins at the edge of the coulee, and down the incline Martinez lies crucified in a half inch of water, his flak jacket blown off his chest, his face white with concussion, his dented pot twenty yards down from him. He has long eyelashes like a girl’s, and they keep fluttering as he looks up at me; his mouth opens and closes as though he’s trying to clear his ears.
The ground on the other side of the coulee is flat and clear for thirty yards back to a line of rubber trees. The sunlight here is bright and hazy, and I shield my eyes with my hand and try to look deep into the shadows of the rubber trees. The air is breathless, the reeds and elephant ears along the bank absolutely still. I drop over the lip of the coulee and slide erect down the embankment with my boot heels dug into the mud.
Martinez tries to speak, but I see the sucking chest wound now and the torn, wet cloth of his undershirt that flutters in the cavity from the release of air. He sounds like a man strangling in his own saliva.
I try to lift him on my shoulders and hold one of his arms and legs in front of me, but my knee folds and we both go down in a pool of muddy water that’s hotter than the air. Then I see them walk out of the rubber trees against the sun. They look no bigger than children. Their black pajamas stick wetly to their bodies; their faces are skeletal and filled with teeth. One of them squats down and aims Martinez’s blooker at me. A man behind him shakes cigarettes out of a pack of Lucky Strikes for his friends. They are all laughing.
My .45 lies somewhere in the clouded water, my boots are locked in mud. I hear Doo-Doo firing, but it makes no difference at this point. I stare at my executioner, my body painted with the tropical stink of his country, an unformed prayer wheezing like sand from my throat. The short, fat barrel of the grenade launcher recoils upward in his hands with a deep-throated roar, and a moment later I’m caught in an envelope of flame and I feel a pain in my chest like jagged iron twisting its way through tendon and bone.
Then I am on all fours, like a dog, vomiting blood on my hands, and in the smoke and the smell of burnt powder I stare up the embankment at where the small men in pajamas should be but are not. Instead, Jimmie Lee Boggs takes his package of Lucky Strikes from his blue jeans pocket and lights one. His mannequinlike head is perfectly still as he puffs on his cigarette and lets the smoke drift from his lips. Then he flips the butt in an arc out on the coulee, works his way down the embankment, and finds my .45 in the water.
He works the receiver and knocks the barrel clean of mud on his jeans. He casually points it behind my ear, lets the iron sight bite into my scalp.
“You thought the zips were going to get you, but I’m the one can make you cry,” he says.
I woke up with the sheets twisted across my chest, my body hot in the cold square of moonlight that shone through the window. Outside, the pecan trees were black against the sky. I lay awake until dawn, when the light became gray, then pink, in the flooded cypress on the far side of the bayou. Then I tried to sleep again, but it was no use. I helped Batist open up the bait shop, and at eight o’clock I drove to work at the sheriff’s office and began processing traffic accident reports, my eyes weak with fatigue.
That afternoon, four days after Tante Lemon and Dorothea’s visit, I drove to Minos Dautrieve’s house in Lafayette. He lived in the old part of town on the north side, a neighborhood of Victorian homes, deep lawns, enormous live oak trees, iron tethering posts, gazebos, screened galleries, and cascading leaves. He had
Similar Books
