Tuesday, October 23, 2012

First Paragraph

The stooped figure peering out of the hatch of the chopper looked utterly out of place. He was a generation older than the next-oldest man aboard. The younger men wore bush jackets and olive drab pants bloused into jungle boots. He wore a plaid, short-sleeved sport shirt that exposed the wiry white hair on his arms. The shirt was not tucked in but hung out over a pair of baggy blue cotton slacks ending in brand-new tennis shoes. His face was puffed and pale with fatigue. With its sagging jowls, tired eyes, and gray flesh it seemed composed of old molten wax and cobwebs - an arresting face, a face out of Dickens, rendered all the more incongruous by the suburban weekend dress. The heavy lower lip hung loose and his head drooped as he gazed down at the moving shadow the helicopter towed across the jungle canopy. Undisciplined wisps of hair fluttered from beneath an army cap perched on top of his head. Blazoned across the front of the cap were the words "Tegoose Station - Send Lawyers, Guns and Money."

- From Casey by Joseph E. Persico

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