First Family Read Online Free PDF Page B

though, because they didn’t like pity. They might kill a man over pity.
    Fred cherished telling the story of how the Koasati had gotten their name. “It means lost tribe. Our people left here in two groups long ago. The first group left signs for the second group to follow. But along the Mississippi River, all signs from the first group disappeared. The second group continued on and met up with folks who didn’t speak our language. Our people told them that they were lost. And in our language
Koasai
means ‘we are lost.’ So the folks wrote it down as my people being Koasatis, meaning the lost people.”
    Quarry, who’d heard this story about a dozen times, spoke up. “Well, Fred, to tell the truth, in some ways, we’re all lost.”
    About an hour later, as the sun blazed down on them, filling the flimsy awning with furnace-like heat, Quarry rose, dusted off his pants, and tipped his hat at them, promising to come back soon. And he would bring a bottle of the good stuff and some corn on the cob and a bucket of apples. And smokes. They could not afford but liked the store-bought cigs over the rolled ones.
    Fred looked up at him, his face even more leathery and wrinkled than Quarry’s. He took the homemade cigarette out of his mouth, went through a protracted coughing spell, and then said, “Bring the unfiltered ones next time. They taste better.”
    “Will do, Fred.”
    Quarry drove on for a long way over dirt trails that were so rutted they knocked his old truck from side to side; the man barely took note. This was just how he lived.
    The road ended.
    There was the little house.
    Actually, it was not really a house. No one lived there, at least not yet, but even if they did, it would never really be a place where anyone could live for an extended time. It was really just a room with a roof and a door.
    Quarry turned and looked in each direction of the compass and saw nothing but dirt and trees. And the slice of Alabama blue sky of course that was prettier than any other sky Quarry had ever seen. Certainly nicer than the one in Southeast Asia, but then that horizon had always been filled with anti-aircraft fire aimed squarely at him and his U.S. Air Force–issued F-4 Phantom II.
    He walked toward the structure and stepped up on the porch. He’d built the place himself. It wasn’t on the Atlee property. It was several miles from there on a plot of land his granddaddy had bought seventy years ago and never done anything with, and for good reason. It was in the middle of nowhere, which fit Quarry’s purposes just fine. His granddaddy must’ve been drunk when he bought this patch of dirt, but then the man had often been drunk.
    The building was a mere two hundred and twenty-five square feet but it was large enough for his purposes. The only door was a standard three feet wide with no raised paneling and set on ordinary brass hinges. He used a key to unlock the door but did not go inside right away.
    He’d built all four walls two and a quarter inches wider than was normal, though one would have to possess a keen eye to discern that construction anomaly. Encased behind the exterior walls were thick sheets of metal welded together, giving this little house incrediblestrength. He’d done the welding himself with his own acetylene Oxy-fuel welding flame torch. Each seam was a work of art. It would probably take a tornado landing right on top of the place to knock it over, and even that hammer of God still might not do it.
    He let fresh air fill the place before he stepped inside. He’d made that mistake before and had almost passed out going from full oxygen on the outside to barely any on the inside. There were no windows. The floor was two-inch-thick wooden planks. He’d sanded the boards down fine; there wasn’t a splinter anywhere. What there was, though, was an eighth-of-an-inch gap between each floorboard; again barely discernible to the naked eye.
    The subfloor was also special. Quarry could say with great