S is for Spoon

Welcome to today’s post for the A to Z Blogging Challenge. For each day, I’ll be sharing the opening paragraphs to a book that starts with that letter and is sitting on my shelves or my Kindle.

Spoon by Robert Greer

Big Horn County, Montana
Autumn 1991

A year ago this past August, on the outskirts of Hardin, Montana, riding along I-90 on the crest of a warm downslope summer wind, I picked up a hitchhiker wearing a $250 5X beaver Resistol cowboy hat and no shoes. He told me his name was Spoon. TJ Darley, I told him in return. His hat was snow white with a Tom Mix block, and he wore it tipped forward just enough to shade his eyes. When I asked him what had happened to his shoes, he winked, looked deeply reflective, and said, "Shoes can be excess baggage when a man's in a hurry."

A mile or so of silence later, he told me he was a part-black, part-Indian cowboy searching for his roots and that he'd just been fired from a ranch eighty miles back down the road. Pensively drinking in the landscape, he added that he was hungry, and if we ran over a jackrabbit, we could build a fie and roast it on a stick. I nodded without responding, now surveying the countryside I'd known all my life just as intently as Spoon. When a jackrabbit popped up along the shoulder and Spoon yelled, "Hit that long-legged s-o-b!" I knew with certainty he meant every word.

So, what do you think? Read it soon or give it away?