Dirty Work Read Online Free

getting your
ass
shot
off.
Especially if your ass was black as mine. Yeah. Aw yeah, y’all went out and trained, I know. But you ain’t got that threat over you. My mama, Lord, she cried, just took on something awful. Wasn’t never gonna see her baby again. Got down on her knees and begged You not to take me. Couldn’t stand to see me go. Closer to time it got, more she cried. Every night.
    What’d she think, reckon? You’s gonna step down between me and the U.S. Government? She prayed enough for it, didn’t she? Never saw a woman so heartsick. Looked good then, didn’t I, Lord? Two hundred and nineteen pounds of blood and bone and muscle. That old woman raised me on peas and biscuits. Go home that’s what she’dfeed me. Tell me to eat. Last time I left I know I was laying in there in my bed and I woke up just before it was daylight. Light was on in the kitchen, and I could smell her cooking biscuits. Wasn’t nothing but a little old shack. I was gonna build her something better later. I woke up, just wide awake. I was leaving that day. Boarding a plane at Memphis, going for orientation and weapons fire before we jumped off. What we called jumping off. Jumping off the world. I had all that in head of me and I woke up in my mama’s house with her cooking biscuits for me. Smelled the same way every morning. Always smelled the same. She never woke me. Didn’t have to. Biscuits woke me. I heard her tell people, That child can smell them biscuits in his sleep and when he smells em he wakes up. My mama was so good to me.
    I laid in there that morning. Had my uniform hanging up in there. Soldier of the most powerful nation in the world. And all I could think was Why, you know, why? I didn’t even understand the whole thing. Just went cause it was my duty. I’m sure there was plenty who went didn’t understand the whole thing. Just went cause it was their duty. This my country, I’m gonna fight for my country. Sentiment was strong for God and Country, young boys, listen up. Everybody’s daddy had been in World War II. Some daddies, anyway. Now they telling us we won’t never be in another one like that one again. That one taught us a lesson. We ain’t having no more futile wars. Till we have one in the Middle East. Or down in Nicaragua.
    Ain’t no need in having a war lessen they just bombthe hell out of you like Pearl Harbor or something. Then all you can do is just bomb the shit out of them right back, and fight, and get a whole bunch of people killed and finally not accomplish a goddamn thing except get your economy ruined forty years later.
    Everything just pisses me off. The world gets worse all the time. Had one man one time that would have stopped it. Of course they had to kill him. And then things just went to shit. I don’t know what they want to watch this crap like “The Love Connection” for. If all these people so attractive and not married why ain’t they out legging down off TV? They seem like they had a good time, though. I guess I sort of like “The Love Connection.” I like old Chuck Woodery. But half the time these motherfuckers’ll let you get halfway through a program and then switch channels. Fraid they might miss something else. That morning I woke up in my mama’s house was the last morning I was whole, and with her. I’d shined my shoes the night before. Me and her had watched some old movie on TV. I’d brought us home a sixpack of Miller. Loved her a cold beer, now. She drank two and I drank three. It was old Jimmy Stewart in something. He was in the Civil War. And he got shot, and he had this beautiful horse, and his arm was almost blowed off, and this doctor said he couldn’t save his arm but saw that horse he was riding and remarked over what a fine animal it was. This guy was like a low-down motherfucker on the battlefield of life. Couldn’t save his arm, see, just couldn’t save it. Then he seen old Silver over there. And old JimmyStewart told him, Doc, if you’ll save