Apocalypse Crucible Read Online Free PDF

size all his life. He couldn’t remember a time when his size hadn’t drawn attention. “Aye, sir,” Delroy replied.
    “Your folks must have felt plumb relieved when you left the house.” The old man smiled, revealing a few yellowed teeth in his wrinkled prune of a mouth.
    Delroy grinned and dropped the wet backpack on the floorboard between his feet. “Aye, sir.”
    “Don’t keep sirring me,” the old man said. “Only officers get sirred like that.”
    “Were you in the military?”
    “Army,” the man declared proudly. “Infantry in World War II. I was at Normandy.”
    Delroy looked at the man.
    “Don’t you be starin’ at me, boy.” The man took a tin of Prince Albert and a book of rolling papers from his top bib-overalls pocket and built a cigarette with quick, simple movements that showed a lifetime of experience. He licked the paper’s edge and sealed it together to hold the tobacco. “You ain’t no spring chicken your own self.”
    “No,” Delroy agreed. “Thank you for the ride.”
    The old man took a lighter from his overalls, cupped his hands, and lit the cigarette. The sweet smell of tobacco flooded the pickup’s interior. “Been out here long?”
    “Hours. Haven’t seen a soul since I left 231.”
    Waving the cloud of smoke from in front of his face, the man said, “Name’s George.” He stuck out a hand.
    Delroy took the old man’s hand, surprised at the strength in a hand that had gone almost fleshless with age and felt more like a bird’s claw than a hand. “Says Luther on the truck.”
    George squinted at Delroy through the cigarette smoke that coiled restlessly inside the cab. “Luther was a friend o’ mine. Up an’ lost him in ’91. He left me this truck. Swore her off to me while I was holdin’ his hand an’ he died. Only fair since I worked with him an’ we paid her off together. Burned her note over at Mabel’s Café in ’62. ’Course, we mortgaged her now an’ again to keep our business open durin’ hard times. We went back to Mabel’s an’ burnt them notes, too. Mabel always counted on us for regular business. Me an’ Luther, we lost a lotta skin from elbows an’ fingers between us keepin’ ol’ Betsy up an’ runnin’.”
    “Must have been quite a friend.”
    “He was more’n that, boy,” George said. “Luther, why he was the onliest thing I had for family, time I got back from the war. Lost my daddy while I was over there, an’ my momma got hit by a milk truck before I got back. I was the onliest chile they ever had.”
    “It’s hard to lose family.” Delroy settled back in the seat but had a hard time getting comfortable because a spring threatened to poke through the cover. Strips of gray duct tape appeared to be the only thing keeping the seat together.
    George pulled the column shift down into low gear. The transmission groaned and whined as the gear teeth fell together. The radio crackled and spat, and John Lee Hooker faded away as B. B. King flowed from the speakers. The windshield wipers strobed across George’s reversed amber reflection in the glass.
    “My smokin’ bother you, boy?” George put his foot on the accelerator and let out the clutch. Betsy ground grudgingly into motion.
    “No.” Aboard Wasp as well as at other posts, Delroy had gotten used to men smoking.
    “Want a cigarette?”
    “No, thank you.”
    “Only carry roll-your-owns.” George shifted into second gear. The truck still felt like the makings of an avalanche gathering momentum.
    “If you don’t know how to roll a cigarette, why, there ain’t no shame in it. Be glad to roll you one.”
    “I don’t smoke.”
    George looked at him again, the cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth and ash dribbling into his gray whiskers. “You got a name, boy?”
    “Delroy.”
    “That your onliest name? Most folks I know gots two names.”
    “Harte,” Delroy said. “Delroy Harte.”
    “I knowed some Hartes in my day. Still do. Josiah Harte, now he was a