UNDERWORLD
A NOVEL
Chapter One
We were about thirty miles below the Canadian
border in a rambling encampment that was mostly
barracks and other frame structures, a harking
back, maybe, to the missionary roots of the
order - except the natives, in this case, were
us. Poor city kids who showed promise; some
frail-bodied types with photographic memories
and a certain uncleanness about them; those who
were bright but unstable; those who could not
adjust; the ones whose adjustment was ordained
by the state; a cluster of Latins from some
Jesuit center in Venezuela, smart young men with
a cosmopolitan style, freezing their weenies
off; and a few farmboys from not so far away,
shyer than borrowed suits.
"Sometimes I think the education we dispense is
better suited to a fifty-year-old who feels he
missed the point the first time around. Too m ... read full excerpt from Underworld: A Novel ebook
