Read The General and the Horse-Lord for Free Online

long gone.” Gabriel looked out over the park. “Now I’m unbearably stupid and too embarrassing to be seen with in public.” The groundskeepers were finishing the white lines, and a group of kids dressed in food costumes, a burger and a hotdog and a taco, were having a footrace out behind second base. Four middle-aged women in matching purple tee shirts were preparing to sing, standing next to a microphone, and a retired astronaut was pitching a ball to the catcher, getting ready to throw out the first ball of the game. The setting sun touched Gabriel’s face, turned his skin gold, and John looked at the laugh lines that fanned out from his eyes.
    Gabriel turned in his seat, looked at John with a smile in his eyes. “What are you looking at?” His eyes were the dark brown of very old Irish whiskey, and John smelled cedar and orange in his aftershave.
    John turned back to the park, watched the big orange mascot, Astro, shake his butt at the little taco, winner of the footrace. “Just admiring the fine view.” He could feel Gabriel smiling next to him. “You want a beer? I’ll drive if you need something stronger.”
    “They don’t make anything strong enough for the father of a fourteen-year-old son. A son who has decided he wants to go to college to be a video game tester. I told Martha I’d pay for the braces but I wasn’t going to pay for college to teach him how to play video games. She said we have to support him and let him make his own choices. Really? I don’t think so, not at fourteen. He’s like one of those soft-shell crabs in the middle of molting. Not ready to make choices about anything. Absolutely at risk from any passing predator. Dumb as a fucking stone. That’s why he’s not speaking to me. I told him he can’t be a video game tester, and then he says why don’t I know he hates seafood?”
    “You shared with him the soft-shell crab analogy?”
    Gabriel nodded. “That was probably a mistake.”
    “It’s early days yet. I think Kim was fourteen when he wanted to be an ice skater.”
    Gabriel turned in his seat and grinned. “Yeah, well, it’s all just performance art with that kid, isn’t it? I think I will take that beer. Tell them to float a piece of lime in the neck.”
    When John got back with a couple of beers, Juan was showing his father his new tee shirt. Gabriel was holding it up, and the look on his face was one John had seen before. The shirt was black, a size 2XL, and the picture showed a babe in Daisy Dukes, breasts popping out of the cut in her torn tee shirt, straddling a big bike, holding a beer in each hand. Coronas. John stared down at the beers he was carrying. Coronas, one in each hand. “Good God.”
    Gabriel shoved the tee shirt back at Juan, who put it in the bag. He showed a grin full of braces. “So, I can tell Mom you’re okay with it?”
    “Take it back and exchange it for something else. Like, right now.” Gabriel stared at Juan the entire way down the aisle before he turned back to John. “That little wiseass.”
    John handed over his beer. “The look on your face reminded me of that time, where were we, Ivory Coast? You remember? You caught that mechanic sitting on his ass, puffing on a cigar and talking to his girl back home when he was supposed to be doing maintenance on your chopper.”
    “I might not have kicked his ass so hard but he was smoking that piece of shit cigar in my hanger.” He looked over at John, took a long pull on his beer. “Okay, well, I would have kicked his ass regardless. He was begging for it. Seems like just yesterday, but that was ’90, right? ’91?”
    “Must have been ’89. We were in the Middle East in ’90. Well, time goes by.”
    “You got that right, brother.” They clicked their beer bottles together, a quiet salute to the times. “So, what did Kim have to say? He wouldn’t tell me anything on the phone. Said you had the details. He was very charming in his apology, by the way. I assume you chewed him