Killin' Time

There was dead silence, then Mark had to look away. Amy rested on an elbow, her chin in her hand, smiling slightly. He stared at her thoughtfully. It was pointless to expect her to like him, the new guy in town, a transfer senior from another state, ineligible for sports, wasting away the last two hours of each day in study hall while the other guys were on the football field.

She squirmed lazily, then glanced up and grinned. The emotion was so real he could feel it and what finally got to Mark about Amy, was that she stared back. She had hazel eyes flecked with green, ash blond hair, smooth, light-colored and unblemished skin, and full ripe lips. She was soft-spoken, debonair, and un-objectionably beautiful...

"Uncle Al said to tell you he'd be out in a few minutes," said Joel, a handsome young man of about eighteen. He was suntanned, with long brown hair hanging out from under his weather beaten hat, his pants were tucked in the tops of his boots, and silver spur rowells scrapped across the hard wood floor with every step. He had been raised by his uncle on the Stirrup Ranch and had been a cowboy almost from the day he was old enough to ride. "He said for me to keep you company until he gets here," he added.

Ana Cordova tried to act nonchalant to satisfy the nephew of the man she wanted to hire out to as cook and housekeeper. Inside, she doubted she'd ever get a job from someone as wealthy as Al Culbersen, a man who was said to have owned over 6,000 head of cattle and horses, as bad as her aunt wanted her to find work...

The quaint little town of Dawn, Oklahoma wasn't known for much of anything except the fact that it had lost more young men to the unpopular war in Vietnam than any other town in the state, a reality that gave Robert Barnes the shivers.

He worked a shred of Skoal from between his cheek and gum and spat it toward the ground with such force it was followed by a loud grunting sound. Leaning over the top of his best friend, Danny Wilson, he lifted a bottle of Bud Light from the cooler, opened it, and lit another cigarette.

He pulled the draft notice he'd received only a couple of hours earlier out of his shirt pocket and stared at it for a moment, then wadded it up and tossed it up on the hood of his truck. The sight of it made his stomach sour. "Damn rotten luck," he said. "I don't want to go to Vietnam."

"I understand," Danny said, sympathetically.

"No you don't," Robert said. You don't have the slightest clue of what I'm going through here. You didn't get the draft notice, I did. And, you don't even have a girlfriend. So, how would you know..."

"I'm not going to make it, am I?" Shane Bolton said, not opening his eyes or moving a muscle.

Nurse Kelly jumped as if she'd been stuck with a pin. "Well, cowboy," she said, happily. "Welcome back to the real world. You've been out for almost a month now and I'll have to admit, we've been worried about you."

Shane shook his head. "Are you going to answer my question, or not?"

She made a face. "Why would you ask a question like that?"

"Nurse Kelly," he managed. "You helped bring me into this world twenty-four years ago and I've known you almost all my life. You've never lied to me yet, so don't start now."

Nurse Kelly spoke up then. "I'm not lying to you, Shane."

Shane's mouth was cotton dry. "Maybe I couldn't talk," he whispered. "But, I heard old Dr. Prater tell you I wasn't going to make it. So, did he say I wasn't going to make it or not?