A Time for Dying Read Online Free PDF Page A

she wished she’d done, and everything she wished she’d done differently. The time went fast.
    10…
    9…
    8…
    Barbara Rutherford sat on the floor, put her arms around me and cried as the remaining seconds ticked away.

7
    That October, on a warm, crisp, sunny Saturday, Bren and I took the baby out to Arrowhead for a picnic. When we drove past the turnoff to Del Ray, I started thinking about that night on the yacht with Mrs. Rutherford.
    “You think she’s still living on that boat?” Brenda said.
    “I don’t know. I haven’t heard from her in months.”
    “We can join the marina if you want to, you know. We have enough money now.”
    “It’s more than just money,” I said. “There are Del Ray people, and there are people like us. We’ll never fit in with that crowd. Which is okay. I like people like us better anyway.”
    Brenda smiled. “Me too,” she said.
    We spread some blankets on the warm sand, shaded baby Kara with an umbrella, sat there and shared a box of fried chicken and a can of root beer. Our anniversary, our tradition.
    And as long as I didn’t get hit by a bus or something, I would be able to do it twenty-four more times.
    After feeding the baby, after burping her and changing her and rocking her to sleep, Brenda and I just sat there and looked at the water and talked about nothing for about an hour.
    An hour that I wouldn’t have traded for anything in the world.
    There would be a time for dying, I thought.
    Someday.
    But this wasn’t it.
    This was a time for living.
    And that’s no jive.

Sample: iSEAL
    Homeless
    A homeless man sat on a bench and stared out at the Mississippi river. He knew that the cold weather would be coming soon. He would have to find a place to stay, or he would die.
    The wind blew a torn piece of newspaper to his feet. He reached down and picked it up. His arm hurt. In fact, there was no part of his body that didn’t. He was sore all over. And hungry. He knew a lot of things, but he hadn’t figured out how he was going to get enough to eat. He would have to work on that, give it more thought.
    Soon.
    Very soon.
    He held the strip of newspaper in his hand for a couple of minutes, and then he unfolded it and looked at it. There was an expired coupon for cake frosting on one side, and part of an Associated Press article on the other:
     
    INDUSTRIAL ACCIDENT LEAVES FIVE DEAD
    Portions of this article were attained from sources who wish to remain anonymous.
    Early Thursday morning a massive explosion destroyed nearly two-thirds of a government research facility located thirty miles east of Memphis, Tennessee. Seconds before the blast,
     
    And that was it. That was where it cut off.
    But the homeless man didn’t need to read the rest of the article to find out what had happened seconds before the blast.
    He already knew.

40 hours and 12 minutes before the blast…
    From the moment he opened his eyes at zero four hundred, Petty Officer Third Class Nathan Brennan knew this was going to be the hardest day of his life. Now, three hours and sixteen minutes later, he stood at the aircraft’s open bay door and stared out at the 13,000 feet of nothingness between him and the ground.
    The only easy day was yesterday .
    It was the motto of the United States Navy SEALs, the best-trained military force in the world, and Brennan had adopted it as his own a long time ago. He’d been dreaming of becoming a SEAL since he was eight years old. It was all he ever wanted to be.
    Three of his fellow SEAL candidates had taken the plunge from the treaded hatch deck already, and five more were waiting in line behind him. Brennan wanted to take a step forward and join his teammates in the dive, but he could not. Paralyzed with fear, he stood there and watched as their parachutes opened in the distance.
    Three or four seconds ticked by. An eternity.
    Chief Watson, the jump coordinator, shouted, “Do it, Brennan! Go! Go! Go!”
    But Brennan didn’t go. He couldn’t.
    “I can’t,”