Michael Malone - Weebly

All men, few of them old, posed or captured
imposed in flat, raw settings. Dirt streets, pine
storefronts, tents, sod huts. Men surrounded by the
machinery and timber of unfinished mines, unfinished
railroads, unfinished towns. At times a dozen men in
one picture, each of them solitary and isolate even in
camaraderie. Some in their dark bowlers and white
shirt-sleeves, some with ties and vests, some collarless,
some mustached, some beside lanky, stifflegged dogs,
some beside rifles, some squinting into pans for gold.
Like this prisoner, all of them angular, raw-boned,
hard-eyed, and hard-lipped. In every face a pinched
alertness and suspicion. In every body a skitterish
readiness for hard work or hard drink and barbarically
hard times. Cold chastity in their whoring. Innocent
indifference to murder or death. Thin, alacritous male
faces, turned westward, ready to move, accidental
founders of states.
"You finished getting a good look at me?" asked
Henry.
"Look, you were in Vietnam, right? I hear you got
some medals over there, and then you ran into a little