Simon the Fiddler

by Paulette Jiles

Simon turned back at a run to get his fiddle. It was all he had against a chaotic world and the mindlessness of a losing war, against corruption, thievery, cowardice, incompetence, cactus, gunsmoke, and hominy.

Thus they solidified as a group as musicians do, or perhaps their minds and thoughts precipitated out of the military suspension in which they had been held and so they once again became servants of music and not of the state.

Plus a noxious sink of rock oil where your milk cow can sink in up to her hocks and die.

She was in a state of continual and relentless emotional terror as it was. She did not need his own outrage pouring out upon her.