Read Online Run Between the Raindrops by Dale A. Dye - Free Book Online Page B

Autry, beginning with how useless it is to keep reminding everyone that his real given name is Leon. We are becoming buddies in this reeking trench as we wait for the order to start up the street toward the Treasury Building. Autry probably has a bunch of friends nearby, but here I am with the potential for recording it all and what the hell. He’s never really talked to a reporter of any sort before this chance encounter. It’s a familiar tale about high school football, fast girls, illegal beer runs, and the big life-changer when he joined the Marine Corps to “get me a set of them fuckin’ dress blues, man.”
    As I listen distractedly to Autry’s ramble, a time tunnel opens and I’m through the wormhole to a little Southeast Missouri town where I have been shuttled off to spend time with my Dad who is separated by the bottle from my Mom. On one of those sultry summer days just before I’m scheduled to start military school, a shotgun blast too close to my grandparents’ house sends me to investigate. And there’s my Dad—or what’s left of the chunky, intelligent, tow-headed Irishman that was my Dad. Now he’s dead by his own hand and I’ll never listen to his rambling stories again, never stand by his barstool and marvel at the way he could spin the simplest situations into fascinating adventures. It was so shocking that I couldn’t cry and simply stood there watching his blood pool around the new white basketball shoes he’d bought for me. The carefully folded American flag they gave me at his funeral served as a pillow for lots of long nights spent crying rather than sleeping. And then one morning I woke up dry-eyed with a firm resolution never to love anyone again as deeply as I did my father.
    Of course, there were testosterone-fueled teenage years ahead, but I was never very good at anything beyond the hunt for frequent and fervent sexual encounters. It came to a head right after I graduated from that military school when a girl I felt slightly more passionate about than usual broke what was left of my heart. She’d hung in with me during a long, sultry affair then finally decided there was no future in it. She curtly handed back my graduation ring which had until that moment had hung between her luscious boobs, and walked out of my life. At a time of forced introspection, I had no idea where that life might lead. What I needed was direction, discipline, and distraction. I needed an outfit that didn’t ask many questions or expect many from its minions. It didn’t take me long to decide that outfit was most likely the U.S. Marine Corps, America’s version of a French Foreign Legion where sad souls can escape and forget. So, running away from one death that haunted me, I joined a lash-up that specialized in, sometimes even glorified death, as long as it was all done the Marine Corps way with attendant honor and glory.
    Go figure—and there in that slimy ditch in Hue City listening to Gene Autry tell me about a much more normal adolescence, I had nothing better to do than figure. Life’s a bitch sometimes, I tell Gene Autry, and snap the notebook shut on his story and mine.

Treasury Building
    Gene Autry elbows me back to Hue, nodding and pointing at the Treasury Building up ahead of our ditch. “I think I see them fuckers moving up there.” His grubby finger brushes my nose and I see shadows flitting back and forth in the courtyard fronting the building. Those gooks know for sure what’s coming their way and they’re getting ready for it, improving positions at street level and up high in the building. Not hard to see why they were able to hold off Hotel’s determined assault yesterday. It will be a mix of plunging and grazing fire when we get within their range. A clutch of dark clouds passes the sun, and in that brighter light I can see that the front of the building is torn up with bullet holes. It looks like some berserk architect has taken a jackhammer to it.       
    There is a