What reviewers say about
On the Great Wall of Texas
“Our objective as authors (artists) is to make people think! And this does not disappoint.”
-- Mark Jacobs
“This is a very well-written, political irony piece. I admit, it grabbed my attention... I imagine it was written to make people think a bit – it resonates.”
-- Maria E. Schneider
On the Great Wall of Texas
Harry Heyoka
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2009 Harry Heyoka
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This is a work of fiction; all characters, locales, incidents, and situations are figments of the author's imagination. Any resemblence to reality is coincidental, and maybe a little spooky.
On the Great Wall of Texas
Copyright 2009 by Harry Heyoka
The new kid looked lost, no surprise on his first day. Draftees never knew much, and what they thought they knew was often wrong.
It wasn’t too hot for the two of us to sit and smoke atop our pillbox that morning. Like much of the long border, our stretch of “wall” was mainly razor wire punctuated by gun emplacements and flanked by fields of smart mines, snaking along the Rio Grande’s north bank. Cactus-studded desert stretched to the northern horizon, with nobody in sight but the guards at machine guns to our east and west.
Because of seniority I had the day shift, as the beardless kid did because he was green and days are less technical than nights. I had to glance at the tag on his chest to remember his name. “Is something bothering you, Private Flores?”
He stared at the minefield between wire and river, not meeting my gaze. “It just doesn’t make sense to me, Sergeant,” he muttered. An armored hovercraft had come around the bend west of us, cruising down the riverbank.
“The skimmer signals the mines in code, so they don’t go off when it’s nearby,” I explained.