Jacob Blackstone and the Valley of the Lizards
an excerpt

Barcelona – March 1938
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I was looking out the back of the dingy old Ford truck with the canopy over the back of it that the partisans had conjured up for an ambulance and I was sick. I was sick of mud, sick of people screaming in pain, sick of losing, and sick of myself. It had occurred to me that not only was I just sick of the whole Goddamned mess that Franco and the boys on one side and Catalonia on the other had cooked up for us, but that Cosmo’s parents would probably kill me having let him come along with me there the second we got back home if we ever did. It was just time to go.

Badger was smoking one of those dog-turd stogies of his, his arm up on the tailgate, keeping to his own council. He was like that though, Badger was. Cos was in the back holding a cigarette for one of the boys we were bringing back to the hospital in Barcelona, and he would lean over every minute or so and his bandaged head would drop behind Cosmo’s hand and you could see the ember glow red as he took a drag in the gloom and the damp and the shadow. There was only so much the field doctors could do for them and they needed an escort Cos had made it clear that he wanted to hit Rosie's cat-house one last time before we went back up to the mountains but I wasn't so sure I'd be going back with him this time, or any time again. I wanted out and that was it. I had no idea what Badger had planned but he had swung his saddlebags up into the tailgate when we were leaving the encampment so I supposed that was that for him, too. Like I said, he minded his own business and you were wise to mind yours around him.

Cos had been one of my best friends since I pulled a bully off of him in the second grade. I got the beating of my young life for having gotten involved in that fight, and when we straggled our way back to his parents place his Mom had been as concerned about me as she had for him - maybe more even, although Cos had always been small and a little slow, or that's the way his family saw him anyway. She sent me back to my place all bandaged up and had come along bringing food and a lot of thanks for my folks. Mom gave her an odd look at the front door but she was ok with me spending time with Cos after that even though she hadn't been before, and Cosmo’s family had lived right across the street for years.

You see, Cosmo’s family was one of convictions - six or seven amongst his brothers and Uncles, and two of them commuted to public service. He came from one of those original Mafia families from upstate New York that hid their retiring members on the other side of the border - sometimes in Windsor, sometimes in Kingston, sometimes in Toronto, and everyone had been more than just a little cautious when it came to them as a result. His folks were mobbed up the wazoo on either his Dad or Mom's side, I could never quite make out which - both sides seemed to have a lot of broken noses when I had been invited to gatherings or whatever afterwards. His Mom considered me one of her boys after that and I know there were times when my own parents would have had things a little rougher if somebody in his family hadn't told someone else to back off. We weren't involved in any gangsterism in my family but it was second nature to Cos. Dad's barber shop had had to pay protection from one of the Jewish gangs and that stopped right away as soon as I knew Cosmo and he started following me around, Mutt to my Jeff. I think that's what he was getting away from, actually - he told me once that he was sick of just being the last in the long line of juvenile court cases and that he wanted to make something of himself outside of Toronto and when he heard that I was headed off to Spain then that was it. I was glad he was with me, but I had to keep my eyes open for him as well - if anything happened then things might go really badly back home on Parliament St.

"We're gonna go to Rosie’s, when we get to town, right Shep?"

"Yes, Cosmo - I promise." Badger snorted at this, and I shot him a grin. He set his hand on my shoulder for a second then and then leaned back again and took another drag from his turd.

"Good." Cosmo seemed satisfied with that.

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