Michael Malone - Weebly

He was an unlikely cavalier, in quest of his own
wife.
That sharp crack of noise, unnoticed by Barnum,
had slapped at Maynard Henry, a half-mile back, with
the impact of an explosion.
He was coming west down over the top of the ridge
when noise leaped into the sky with the old nauseating
loudness he thought he'd have forgotten. With a volley
of curses he flung himself over his German shepherd,
pulling it, rolling with it over the slope of the highway
shoulder. "Uncool." He chuckled softly. "Can't hack it,
Night, you know, getting old. Fucking blisters. Right,
should have waited to get the truck. Still the dumbest
fuck around, just the way Arn always said."
From where the sound had come, some miles to the
north, a pulsing spurt of fire jumped into the dark haze.
Off beyond the marshland it spread over the sky like
the bright orange, bright black of firefight, those schoolmade
Halloween colors of Vietnam. The Halloween
trick in Vietnam of that whoosh, that deep black smoke
of napalm ballooning up in the jungle sun. Guys freaked
under its spell. Too much power to get your hands on, it