His mother cupped her palm over the mouthpiece and aimed the black receiver at his chest. “Gino,” she said in a thin reedy whisper, “you talk to him and be civil.”
I like to think of Sammy and me as living the kind of life that everyone would live if he had the chance. Some people call us bums, some call us beachcombers, some people don’t call us anything: they just look, sigh, and say, enjoy it for...
On the first day I tell them: “When searching for the Seven Cities of Cibola, Coronado was so disappointed by what he found in the land that would one day become Kansas that he strangled the guide who’d brought him here and turned around.”
The Sons of Cain were gone. The Sons of Cain didn’t exist anymore. I watched the detachment go up in an IED south of Ramadi, our five-ton Humvees leaping in the air, the taste of metal on the back of my tongue.
