a real tumbril. Very rough trade, he thought. Loving and leaving. People can get hurt at it.
Who gave you a right to know a girl like that?
Nobody, he answered. But Andrea introduced me to her.
But how could she love a sad son of a bitch like you?
I do not know, he thought truly. I truly do not know.
He did not know, among other things, that the girl loved him because he had never been sad one waking morning of his life; attack or no attack. He had experienced anguish and sorrow. But he had never been sad in the morning.
They make almost none like that, and the girl, although she was a young girl, knew one when she saw one.
Now she is at home and sleeping, the Colonel thought. That is where she ought to be and not in any god damn duck blind with the decoys frozen up on us.
I wish to hell she was here though, if this were a double blind, and have her looking to the west just in case one string did come in. It would be nice if she were warm enough. Maybe I can trade somebody out of one of these real down jackets that nobody ever sold that had one. The kind they issued to the Air Force once by mistake.
I could find out how they are quilted and make one with duck down from here, he thought. I’d get a good tailor to cut it and we would make it double-breasted with no pocket on the right and lay in a chamois shooting patch so the gun butt would never catch.
I’ll do it, he said to himself. I’ll do it, or I will get one off
