Michael Malone - Weebly

head….
By God, women will, in good time. Scalp you
pretty close, and charge you for the haircut." And his
father had laughed and Uncle William's bright laugh had
skipped like a pebble down the path.
That memory, so long undisturbed, of hearing his
father, now long since dead, laughing with William
Bredforet had made the sight seem all the worse when
he saw it, the sight that was keeping him awake now in
his den four years later. The sight of that black burnedout
waste someone had made of his father's land. Like
a nightmare twist to a nostalgic dream, the sight had
scared the past away and sickened him. It did not look
like land cleared by fire for future planting, but like land
annihilated forever. It looked unnatural. And angry,
though the anger had no focus, he had cursed aloud,
then hurried on northwestward through the now ruined
beauty of the day.
He had kept walking for hours, harder physical
exercise than any he had done since the war, had hiked
all the way out of the marsh that afternoon four years
ago, until he came upon a large artificial clearing beyond