Feast for Thieves

by Marcus Brotherton

  Highly recommended! A hard-edged and well-crafted novel, with surreptitiously smart prose, confident plotting, and characters you feel you know.

  MICHELLE BURFORD, founding senior features editor of O, the Oprah Magazine

  Feast for Thieves is smart, gritty, and unforgettable. Filled with calamity and humor, this book is a hands-down winner. It’s about time veteran writer Marcus Brotherton added his powerful voice to fiction. His writing voice is superb.

  TOSCA LEE, New York Times bestselling coauthor of the Book of Mortals series.

  An exhilarating story told in a neo-Western genre, of all things. Masterful and riveting, humorous yet poignant. Anyone who enjoys books by Ted Dekker, Randy Alcorn, or Leif Enger will enjoy every story woven by Marcus Brotherton. This unique and page-turning adventure will harvest a whole new fold of fans.

  JULIE CANTRELL, New York Times bestselling author of Into the Free

  Part Band of Brothers, part True Grit, this is the rollicking tale of a wartime hero’s fight to find his place in a post-war world. Rich with action, Feast for Thieves is cinematic storytelling at its best.

  ADAM MAKOS, New York Times bestselling author of A Higher Call

  As a great admirer of Marcus Brotherton’s nonfiction work, I was eager to dive into his debut novel. Feast for Thieves does not disappoint. From the first page, Rowdy Slater emerges as a character to root for, complete with flaws, charm, and an unshakeable conscience. I enjoyed this story from beginning to end, a wonderful tale of redemption that will leave readers hoping for a sequel.

  KRISTINA MCMORRIS, bestselling author of The Pieces We Keep

  A gutsy, never-preachy story filled with massive redemptive undercurrents. Why read this? Ultimately it’s a book of hope, and it shows how anyone’s heart can be changed.

  MATT CARTER, lead pastor, Austin Stone Community Church, Texas, and coauthor of The Real Win

  Marcus Brotherton has crafted more than a rousing story here. He’s created characters who leap off the page and a small corner of the world you can lose yourself inside, all held together with stirring prose. I really enjoyed this book.

  BILLY COFFEY, bestselling author of The Devil Walks in Mattingly

  This story is a delight. There is a strong sense of literary quality here, combined with a remarkably unique redemptive message. The characters are real, the descriptions potent, and the force of a good story well told is strong throughout. Highly recommended.

  DAVIS BUNN, bestselling novelist, writer-in-residence at Regent’s Park College, Oxford University

  © 2014 by

  MARCUS BROTHERTON

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  The author is represented by the literary agency of WordServe Literary Group (www.wordserveliterary.com).

  Edited by Pam Pugh

  Interior design: Ragont Design

  Cover design: Erik M. Peterson

  Cover photo of man in water: copyright © by Pearl/Lightstock. All rights reserved.

  Cover photo of landscape: copyright © by Im Perfect Lazybones/Shutterstock. All rights reserved.

  Picture of paratrooper on back cover, courtesy the family of Joe Toye

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Brotherton, Marcus.

  Feast for thieves : a Rowdy Slater novel / Marcus Brotherton.

  pages cm

  Summary: “Sergeant Rowdy Slater is the most skilled-and most incorrigible-soldier in Dog Company, 506th PIR, 101st Airborne, an elite group of paratroopers fighting for the world’s freedom in World War II. Through a bizarre set of circumstances, Rowdy returns to the States after the war, turns his life around, and falls into the only job he can find-preacher at the sparsely populated community church in Cut Eye, Texas, a dusty highway town situated at the midpoint of nowhere and emptiness. The town’s lawman, suspicious that Rowdy has changed his ways only as a cover up, gives an ultimatum: Rowdy must survive one complete year as Cut Eye’s new minister or end up in jail. At first Rowdy thinks the job will be easy, particularly because he’s taking over for a young female missionary who’s held the church together while the men were at war. But when a dark-hearted acquaintance from Rowdy’s past shows up with a plan to make some quick cash, Rowdy becomes ensnared due to an irrevocable favor, and life turns decidedly difficult”-- Provided by publisher.

  ISBN 978-0-8024-1213-3 (paperback)

  1. World War, 1939-1945--Veterans--Fiction. 2. Life change events--Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3602.R64798F43 2014

  813’.6--dc23

  2014002536

  We hope you enjoy this book from River North Fiction by Moody Publishers. Our goal is to provide high-quality, thought provoking books and products that connect truth to your real needs and challenges. For more information on other books and products go to www.moodypublishers.com or write to:

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  Printed in the United States of America

  Contents

  Part 1

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Part 2

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Twenty-Nine

  Thirty

  Epilogue

  Author's Note

  The Historicity of Dialect

  Thanks

  About the Author

  Friend,

  Thank you for choosing to read this Moody Publishers title. It is our hope and prayer that this book will help you to know Jesus Christ more personally and love Him more deeply.

  The proceeds from your purchase help pay the tuition of students attending Moody Bible Institute. These students come from around the globe and graduate better equipped to impact our world for Christ.

  Other Moody Ministries that may be of interest to you include Moody Radio and Moody Distance Learning. To learn more visit http://www.moodyradio.org/ and http://www.moody.edu/distancelearning/

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  The Moody Publishers Team

  For the hungry and thirsty.

  Part 1

  ONE

  MARCH 1946

  When it came to robbing the bank, we wasn’t polished or nothing. We just set the old truck’s hand brake and jigged out the side while the motor was still running, shrugged off the rain while throwing sacks over our heads to hi
de our faces, and bustled straight up the middle with our rifles aimed forward. Shoot, I never would have hurt nobody innocent. I just needed money real bad, like anyone does if he’s spent time in the clink and nobody will give him a job once he gets out.

  Right through the front door, Crazy Ake walloped the guard over the back of the head and he went down like a sack of peas thrown on a stock house pallet, which I felt sorry about, but not much blood was coming out, so I ran to the counter and stuck my rifle up in the clerk’s skinny face so the man could see I wasn’t fooling. We was only carrying one sack to fill—mine—so as one partner could be more of the muscle if folks decided to fight back. Besides, it was a big sack, and the clerk stuffed it full while Crazy Ake strode back and forth up there on the countertop yelling about how he was the fires of hell and was pouring down wrath on the town.

  All that yelling may not have been simple scare tactics with Crazy Ake. He was foaming around the edges of his mouth where the sack was cut for an airhole, and cursing a blue streak, and he looked genuinely like his finger might twitch tight against the trigger and blow some man’s head away if aggravated enough. Yes sir, that worried me a mite. It did. But I didn’t offer much time to my worrying because once my sack was good and full we ordered the folks to lay down on the tile and count backward from five hundred to one while we skedaddled out the door and back to the truck for our getaway.

  Dang that rain. Our old truck’s motor coughed its last revolution just as Crazy Ake slid behind the wheel and I slid in the other side. He stomped on the starter but the wetness must have already slunk into the wiring because the motor sputtered and growled, but no life came. It never rains in West Texas, least never when I was growing up near here, and I don’t know why we picked this day of all days to commit a crime. Sure enough, the rooftop gutters on the adobe bank were full and overflowing, and muddy rivers were flashing up and rolling down the streets already. Crazy Ake slugged me hard in the shoulder as if the truck’s dead motor was my fault. I moved to paste him back when I thought smarter and hollered instead, “Run!”

  The bank sits square on Main Street, right across the way from the sheriff’s office and jail. We sprinted east a block, hooked south onto Highway 2, and kept running. Far in the distance we could see our goal. There ain’t but one stretch of two-lane in and out of the town of Cut Eye, Texas, and if we’d had more time we would have done smart to hide somewhere. But since we could already hear a siren starting up from back of the sheriff’s house, we kept running, hoping to get lost in the wide section of bunch grass and mesquite trees out of town.

  We passed by the café and mercantile, the tavern and pool hall with its shady rooms on top, and pushed ourselves hard past the Cut Eye grade school, a red-and-white brick building that squats direct across the street from the tavern. I reckoned city planners wanted their children to grow up seeing the evils of strong drink up close, which made me laugh, though by the time we reached the far edge of the school’s baseball field the thought of the school’s ill location flitted out of my head. Except for a few scattered houses, the town of Cut Eye was finished. Crazy Ake and I were running free.

  That’s when a bullet zinged behind my ear. I jagged to the right and Crazy Ake jagged to the left. Another bullet rang out and thudded into the mud on the highway’s gravel shoulder five yards in front of us. That sheriff behind us was never a military man, I reckoned, to shoot so far away from his target such as he was doing. Or maybe he was simply a man of mercy and wanted to catch his criminals before frying them in the chair.

  I glanced back and saw the long snout of the car’s hood gaining on us. No way we could outrun it no how, and I could already see the narrowed eyes of the two men inside. By the cut of the man’s uniform in the driver’s seat, I knew it wasn’t the sheriff but only a deputy. He shot out of the window of the squad car with one hand on the wheel and another on his gun. That meant he was shooting left-handed and squirrely, though a bullet is a bullet any way you look at it. Another man in regular clothes sat beside him, just some hayseed in overalls who probably had money in the bank, so I knew he weren’t the sheriff neither, which further relieved me a mite.

  Even so, I sprinted harder and jagged off-kilter again so the next bullet would be just as hard-pressed to find the back of my head. Sure enough two more shots thudded into the blacktop near my feet, and then a fifth and a sixth. I noticed the deputy shot with a Smith & Wesson square-butt military and police revolver, a real gem of a weapon that’s warmed the hearts of thousands of men in authority across the country. So with six shots fired, that meant he needed to pause and reload. That gave me a moment to hatch a plan.

  A hundred yards ahead lay the bridge across the river. Crazy Ake and I jagged closer together and kept sprinting forward. The squad car pulled in close and breathed on our heels; it’s a wonder the deputy didn’t accelerate and run us over. Wasn’t much of a plan, I knew even in the moment, but I dropped my rifle to the pavement, lashed my gunnysack to my belt while still on the run, and hollered, “Jump in the river! Swim with the current!”

  Our boots clattered on the edge of the bridge’s grating just as two more bullets whizzed over our heads. Crazy Ake didn’t answer at first. Then he yelled, “That’s my money! You remember that, Rowdy Slater!” And he leaped over the guardrail and dived into the water faster than you could yell jackrabbit.

  I jumped after him and counted on the long way down. One Mississippi. Two Mississippi. Three Mississippi. Four—and sucked in a quick lungful of air right before I hit. The shock of cold water smacking my body flattened me out. It was all mountain runoff, and I burbled underneath the black river that raced along now in flood proportions from today’s heavy rainstorm. Immediately something hard struck me from behind and scraped its way along the top of my head. I fought against the current and scrambled to reach the surface, but no surface could be found. I pushed and shoved with my hands and arms, kicking with my legs so as not to go deeper under. Whatever was blocking me rolled and turned this way and that. I was stuck.

  From its feel, the blockage seemed to be the stump of a tree trunk caught over my head. The deadwood washed its way down river same speed as me, except now I was tangled in the bare branches on the stump’s other end. I kept counting, all the while struggling to break free. Thirty Mississippi. Thirty-one Mississippi. Thirty-two—I clawed and pushed against the branches. Nothing would budge. I couldn’t bounce upright and I couldn’t clear myself away. Hundred-and-one Mississippi. Hundred-and-two Mississippi—my lungs pounded in my chest. The tree became my lawman, judge, and jury, and was trying me for my crimes, finding me guilty, holding me under. Two-hundred-and-fifty Mississippi. Two-hundred-and-fifty-one Mississippi—my hands flailed against the branches above. Air trickled out of my nose. My lungs emptied and I fought a strong urge to gasp.

  Strange how a man is racing along under the surface of a rain-swollen river, he’s but a moment away from death, and he takes a split second to take stock of his life. Maybe the thought rushes at him because he can’t help himself. I knew I was about to die and I wasn’t afraid. No, it honestly wasn’t fear. Last December 1944 I’d survived the artillery blasts of the Battle of the Bulge. For two months I’d slept in a foxhole during Belgium’s coldest winter in thirty years. We were outgunned and outmanned with no proper winter clothing or supplies. We ate thin brown bean soup with maggots in it and peed on our hands to warm them before pulling the trigger against our enemies. No, it wasn’t fear.

  ’Twas regret. That was the thought that rushed at me. All that scrapping around I done. All that getting loaded. All that visiting the shady rooms above taverns. My C.O. once called me “the most incorrigible man in Dog Company,” and considering we were a combat-hardened group of paratroopers who brawled, drank, and visited brothels every chance we got, that was paying me no compliment indeed. Shoot—I was the worst of the lot. From a hundred yards away I could fire my M1 and hit the wings off a fly, and that’s the only thing that saved me. My skill as a sharpshooter won
their respect. My ability saved their lives. My knack with a rifle saved me from going to the clink before I did, even though I undoubtedly deserved it way ahead of time.

  The thought raced away from me as quick as it came, and I continued to fight. Raging water surrounded me. I began to black out. Still I fought, but still the branches wouldn’t come loose. My chest sunk flat and a pressure caved the insides of me. I inhaled a lungful of muddy water, and then another. The river swirled into me like a bullet from a Nazi’s rifle, choking my insides, filling tight my lungs.

  That’s when I heard him. I swear I did. The man spoke loud, although I couldn’t tell from what direction his voice came. Some man I didn’t recognize, maybe a lawman who sprinted alongside the riverbank. He shouted at me the same clear way I’d shouted at Crazy Ake exactly eight minutes and thirty-eight seconds earlier by my count of Mississippis.

  “Hey fella!” came the voice. “You want to live?”

  How that man’s voice was reaching me so far under the water, I couldn’t rightly fathom, but there under the river, caught as I was and speeding along in the current of destruction, I nodded my head and hoped a saving rope would soon follow.

  “Then find the good meal and eat your fill,” it said. “Swear you’ll do that?”

  I nodded again. What a crazy thing for the man to say, I thought. Maybe I was going unconscious, but just then the tree broke loose like a strong hand moved it, the tangle of branches passed over my head, and I shot to the surface. A moment later my knees scraped gravel on a shallow section of riverbed. I stumbled forward out of the river, walked three steps onto dry ground, and vomited a bellyful of muddy water.

  No one was around. I flopped down on my side and stayed flat against the cold river stones for some time, panting. I could see the river bent right where I washed up. The river’s force must have propelled me to safe ground, and the lawman, whoever had yelled at me, was lost in the dusk. Maybe passed by on the bank.

  Little by little, the rain let up. Somewhere a coyote howled. Crazy Ake was nowhere to be seen, same as the deputy and the fella in the overalls chasing me in their car. The sack of money was still tied to my belt. After a time, I stood and walked to the river’s edge. I washed away the vomit’s slime from my mouth, then scrambled a mile or two more downstream on my feet, all the while taking stock of what to do next. I found a thicket to hide myself and waded into the midst of the trees. Again I listened carefully. No sirens. No dogs in the distance. If the shouting lawman had been near he would have caught me by now. I didn’t know exactly how far I’d traveled, but I might be ten miles away from Cut Eye now at the rate that river raced.