The Tin Roof Blowdown
A Dave Robicheaux Novel
CHAPTER 1
My worst dreams have always contained images of brown water and fields of
elephant grass and the downdraft of helicopter blades. The dreams are in
color but they contain no sound, not of drowned voices in the river or the
explosions under the hooches in the village we burned or the thropping of
the Jolly Green and the gunships coming low and flat across the canopy,
like insects pasted against a molten sun.
In the dream I lie on a poncho liner, dehydrated with blood expander, my
upper thigh and side torn by wounds that could have been put there by
wolves. I am convinced I will die unless I receive plasma back at
battalion aid. Next to me lies a Negro corporal, wearing only his trousers
and boots, his skin coal-black, his torso split open like a gaping red
zipper from his armpit down to his groin, the damage to his body so
grievous, traumatic, and terrible to see or touch he doesn't understand
what has happened to him.
"I got the spins, Loot. How I look?" he says.
"We've got the million-dollar ticke ... read full excerpt from The Tin Roof Blowdown: A Dave Robicheaux Novel ebook
