The Affair

The best fights are the ones you don't have", a wise man once said to me.

I said nothing. I’m good at saying nothing. I don’t like talking. I could go the rest of my life without saying another word, if I had to.

He had fallen out of the ugly tree, and hit every branch.

Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.

The third guy was different. He was what you got when you ate squirrels for four generations. Smarter than a rat and tougher than a goat, and jumpier than either one.

The first day of the rest of my life.

No one expects a head butt. Humans don’t hit things with their heads. Some inbuilt atavistic instinct says so. A head butt changes the game. It adds a kind of unhinged savagery to the mix. An unprovoked head butt is like bringing a sawed-off shotgun to a knife fight.

The best fights are the ones you don’t have,

Sometimes if you want to know for sure whether the stove is hot, the only way to find out is to touch it.

On his day of demobilization a lugubrious one-armed, one-eyed brigadier wished him well and then added, apropos of nothing, “Mark my words, Moutier, a great war leaves a country with three armies: an army of cripples, an army of mourners, and an army of thieves.

There are a lot of them, all around the wsorld, all built a lifetime ago, during the long and spectacular blaze of American military power and self-confidence, when there was nothing we couldn't or wouldn't do. I was a product of that era, but not a part of it. I was nostalgic for something I had never experienced.

The Pentagon was built because World War Two was coming, and because World War Two was coming it was built without much steel. Steel was needed elsewhere, as always in wartime. Thus the giant building was a monument to the strength and mass of concrete. So much sand was needed for the mix it was dredged right out of the Potomac River, not far from the rising walls themselves. Nearly a million tons of it. The result was extreme solidity.

Most right-handed people end up walking wide counterclockwise circles, because most right-handed people have left legs fractionally shorter than their right legs. Basic biology and geometry. I avoided that particular peril by stepping to the right of every tenth tree I came to, whether I thought I needed to or not.

They all shared Stan’s personal allegiance to the famous old saying: War is not about dying for your country. It’s about making the other guy die for his.

He said all that needs to happen for evil to prevail is that good men do nothing.

You ever notice how the folks who talk loudest about small government always seem to live in the states with the biggest subsidies?

Rule two: watch his eyes. If they stayed up, he was going to swing. If they dropped down, he was going to kick.

No one expects a head butt. Humans don’t hit things with their heads. Some inbuilt atavistic instinct says so. A head butt changes the game. It adds a kind of unhinged savagery to the mix. An unprovoked head butt is like bringing a sawed-off shotgun to a knife fight. The guy went down like an empty suit.

old enough to show some mileage, young enough to still find some amusement in the world.

It would have been hard to be noisier, in fact, short of firing the Winchester a couple of times and singing the National Anthem.

He also said the day we see the truth and cease to speak is the day we begin to die.

Any day could be the last of life or liberty, so small pleasures were always worth pursuing.

Then I sat in my chair

You looked angry twenty minutes ago. With the McKinney family.” “That was just a technical problem. Space and time. I didn’t want to be late for dinner. I wasn’t angry, really. Well, not at first. I got a bit frustrated later. You know, mentally. I mean, when there were four of them, I gave them the chance to come back in numbers. And what did they do? They added two more guys. That’s all. They showed up with a total of six. What is that about? It’s deliberate disrespect.” Deveraux said, “I think most people would consider six against one to be fairly respectful.” “But I warned them. I told them they’d need more. I was trying to be fair. But they wouldn’t listen. It was like talking to the Pentagon.

Both of them had noses like spoiled eggplants. Both of them had two black eyes. Both of them had crusted blood on their lips. Neither one of them

impatient, reckless, careless, and full of entitlement.