Dead Peasants Read Online Free PDF Page A

tossed the football to his friend and loped to his dad’s truck. Jack had gotten out on the driver’s side and walked around to the curb. “Junior, boy, I’m glad to see you.”
    J.D. bear-hugged his dad until Jack broke away. “Easy, Junior. I’m in good shape except for a bum knee, but I’m fifty now. So go easy on your old man.”
    “Sorry, Dad, and remember I’m not Junior any more. I’ve got your name, but I’ve been called J.D. since I entered the Marines.”
    Jack nodded his understanding as he appraised his son.
I damn sure couldn’t have done much better,
he thought.
Six feet four inches of muscle, and he looks like me, even down to that Bryant dimple in his chin. J.D. had a bumpy road, but now he was on the right track. His mother jerked him out of my life when he was eight, saying I was married to my law practice. Truth be told she was right. She hauled him off to Los Angeles where they lived off her half of our community estate, which was pretty damn good, even then. Jack knew that his son had made it through the two tours in Iraq without a physical injury, but he still worried about the mental toll of war. Was he a victim of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder? It might take years to know for sure. For now Jack just had to be the father he could not be for all those years.
    Jack saw J.D. for thirty days every summer until he was fourteen. By then he was six feet, four inches and weighed two hundred pounds. Unfortunately, he started running with a bad crowd and had no interest in visiting Beaumont. J.D.’s mother told Jack he was getting in trouble, petty stuff, at least when he got caught. And his grades were so bad he couldn’t even try out for football. In the spring of his senior year J.D. got in a fight with three guys in the parking lot of a bar, leaving all three unconscious. One nearly died and J.D. was charged with felony assault.
    Jack flew to Los Angeles and cut a deal with a young assistant district attorney. If the charges were reduced to a misdemeanor, J.D. would plead no contest and promptly enroll in the Marines upon graduation, never to set foot in Los Angeles again. The ADA agreed. The problem was the Marines. At first they looked at J. D.’s grades and his brushes with the law and were about to reject him. They changed their minds only when they gave J.D. a battery of tests that told them that J.D. had a potential for leadership and a little-used I.Q. of 140. The Marines took him and did as their ads promised. Four years later Lance Corporal Bryant completed a second tour of duty in Iraq and was honorably discharged.
    J.D. showed up at his Dad’s office in May and announced that he was going to enroll for the summer session at TCU. He had always liked Fort Worth when he visited his grandparents. Now he wanted to major in computer science and walk on the TCU football team that he knew was becoming a national power. Jack gave him his blessing and promised to fund his tuition and expenses, provided he made respectable grades.
    After J.D. enrolled, he found his way to the athletic department and asked to see the head coach. Coach Patton invited him into his office, which was rapidly filling with trophies and plaques as TCU ascended in the ranks of major college teams, and invited him to take a seat. Patton obviously liked J. D.’s size. If there was an ounce of fat on him, Patton couldn’t see it.
    “Tell me about yourself, son,” Patton said.
    J.D. unloaded it all, including his misspent youth, his lousy high school grades, his trouble with the law and finally got to the four years in the Marines.
    The coach steepled his hands under his chin as he listened. When J.D. was finished, he said, “We’ve got a damn strong program here. I pretty much built it myself. These days we compete with Texas, A & M, and Oklahoma for some of the best athletes around. You’ll have a big learning curve since you never played organized ball. Still, I’ll give anyone a chance. Go down to the basement