Sail Cat Road, the sequel to No Good End, continues below. It is being posted tweet-by-tweet daily on Twitter (http://twitter.com/ttaylordude). I will post each chapter here (in chronological order). Thank you for your time.
Chapter 12
Jimmy Gantt slapped a mosquito into a splotch on the back of his neck. He knew every cop in the southeastern U.S. had his picture memorized.
Being hunted felt normal. He sipped the bottle of sweet tea and tried to remember when it wasn’t so. Even as a teenager, he was a suspect.
That is how he ended up in Vietnam. But his skills proved to be a talent in a place where death was routine and delivering it was rewarded.
Recently, it had only been rewarded with suffering to those he had come to love. His son, Ab: dead by ambush. Gus: hanging on in a hospital.
It was his granddaughter, however, that he thought about as he sat in the truck along the swampy area off highway 29 in south Alabama.
Jimmy waited for a call from Ritko. It had been a day since his last update on Gus’ condition. It ached in his head like an abscessed tooth.
The humidity boiled sweat from his back against the seat and soaked his shirt. Her felt trouble like a barometer sensing pressure.
Something was wrong. He cranked the truck and waited, thinking about of Gus and Jolene and his bent life. He had to fix what he had broken.
His ex-wife was a drunk. Ab was dead because of him. Gus never trusted him. Jolene could not believed him even when he told the truth.
Jimmy felt regret for the first time in his life. He knew it would come eventually, but he never expected it to take his rationality.
Should he go the hospital and check on Gus, risking his life and Gus’? Should he trust Ritko? Should he try to find Jolene?
Jolene was so much like Jimmy it concerned him. She didn’t have the benefit of Uncle Sam’s training or the discipline and experience.
She just had the instincts and serial calmness that pulsed in his veins. It was not a lack of morals as much as a ruptured sense of justice.
Jimmy looked at his cell and called Ritko. No answer. That confirmed bad news. He wondered what form it had taken.
