First Blood (1990) Read Online Free Page A

put up last year.
    In the center of town, he turned left onto a big orange bridge, sliding a hand along the smooth warm paint on the metal rail until he was half across. He stopped to peer down at the water. The afternoon was glaring hot, the water fast and cool-looking.
    Next to him, welded to the rail, was a machine with a glass top full of gumballs. He took a penny from his jeans and reached to put it in the slot and held it back in time. He had been wrong. The machine was not full of gumballs. It was full of grainy balls of fish food. There was a small metal plate stamped onto the machine. FEED THE FISH, it read. 10 CENTS. PROCEEDS BENEFIT BASALT COUNTY YOUTH CORPS. BUSY YOUTH MAKE HAPPY YOUTH.
    Sure they do, Rambo thought. And the early bird gets the shaft.
    He peered down at the water again. It was not long before he heard somebody walk up behind him. He did not bother to see who it was. 'Get in the car.'
    Rambo concentrated on the water. 'Will you look at all the fish down there,' he said. 'Must be a couple of thousand. What's the name of that big gold one? It can't be a real goldfish. Not that big.'
    'Palomino trout,' he heard behind him. 'Get in the car.'
    Rambo peered further down at the water. 'Must be a new strain. I never heard of it.' 'Hey, boy, I'm talking to you. Look at me.'
    But Rambo did not. 'I used to go fishing quite a bit,' he said, peering down. 'When I was young. But now most streams are fished out or polluted. Does the town stock this one? Is that why there's so many fish down there?'
    That was why all right. The town had stocked the stream for as long as Teasle could remember. His father often used to bring him down and watch the workmen from the state fish hatchery stock it. The workmen would carry pails from a truck down the slope to the stream, set them in the water and the ease the pails over to let the fish slide out, the length of a man's hand and sleek and sometimes rainbow colored. 'Jesus, look at me!' Teasle said.
    Rambo felt a hand grab on his sleeve. He tugged loose. 'Hands off,' he said, peering down at the water. Then he felt the hand grabbing at him again and this time he swung around. 'I'm telling you,' he said. 'Hands off!'
    Teasle shrugged. 'All right, play it tough if you want. That doesn't bother me none.' He unhooked the hand-cuffs from his gun belt. 'Let's have your wrists.'
    Rambo kept them at his sides. 'I mean it. Let me be.'
    Teasle laughed. 'You mean it?' he said and laughed. 'You mean it? You don't seem to understand I mean it too. Sooner or later you're getting in that cruiser. Only question is, how much force I have to use before you do it.' He rested his left hand on his pistol and smiled. 'It's such a little thing, getting in the cruiser is. What do you say we don't lose our perspective?'
    People walking by looked curiously at them.
    'You would draw that thing,' Rambo said, watching Teasle's hand on the pistol. 'At first I thought you were different. But now I see I've met crazy ones like you before.'
    'Then you're one up on me,' Teasle said. 'Because I've never met anything quite like you before.' He stopped smiling and closed his big hand around the grip of his gun. 'Move.'
    And that was it, Rambo decided. One of them was going to have to back down, or else Teasle was going to get hurt. Bad. He watched Teasle's hand on the bolstered pistol, and he thought, You bloody stupid cop, before you pull that gun, I could snap off both your arms and legs at the joints. I could smash your Adam's apple to sauce and heave you over the rail. Then the fish would really have something to feed on.
    But not for this, he suddenly told himself, not for this. Just thinking about what he could do to Teasle he managed to satisfy his anger and control himself. It was a control he had not been capable of before, and thinking about his control made him feel better too. Six months ago when he finished convalescing in the hospital, he had been unable to keep hold of himself. In a bar in