A
World The Color Of Salt - Excerpts
Excerpts from
A WORLD THE COLOR OF SALT
(William Morrow, 1992, ISBN 0-688-10824-5; Avon, 1993, ISBN
0-380-71571-6; Books on Tape, ISBN 0000670486/1340762-001; Parrot Audio Books,
ISBN 1-886392-02-1)
From
Chapter 1
First
they shot him in the mouth. His
tongue split down the middle like a barbecued hot dog. That was from the .22. Of
course, we didn't know that until the autopsy.
Usually with stop-and-robs it's a quick, "Hand me the
money"--"No, I won't"--BOOM!, and it's done.
But there was something different here.
Because first they shot Jerry Dwyer in the mouth, and then they went
back for a bigger gun.
From Chapter 32
Bonnie
and Clyde's bullet-riddled death car rests in the lobby at Whiskey Pete's. At
the casino across the highway from the "Death Car," as it is billed,
stands a ferris wheel you can ride at the Prima Donna casino. Up the road a
little is Kactus Kate's, and beyond that the Gold Strike, behind which is
nested, in this bleakest of terrains, the Sandy Valley Correctional Center, a
medium-security state prison with rust-colored block houses and beige guard
towers that stick up on the north and the south boundaries. Rectangular slits
at the top of the towers look like the eyeshields of welders' masks, except
that from the highway they seem to stare not at the yard, but at you. Guys at
Sandy can look down at the Gold Strike and plot escape long enough to blow
quarters down the chutes for the ten-thousand-dollar prize and then ride, man,
outta there. I'd forgotten what Nevada could mean.
Here,
in another life, I was Dusty Rose, and then I was Smokey Shannon. Alias
Samantha Montiel, or, rather, the other way around. My hair was red, my legs
were long, my costume was less than I now wear to bed. …
Time
does funny things to you. I think
most people are basically the same all their lives, the same person.
But I'm so many me's I'm going to have to start a color-coded file.
Click below for:
________________________________________________________________________
