the last book I ever read (Washington: The Indispensable Man by James Thomas Flexner, excerpt two)

from Washington: The Indispensable Man by James Thomas Flexner:

His most extensive adventure grew out of his personal efforts as a lobbyist. He secured confirmation of a confused promise of land made by Dinwiddie to those who had early enlisted in the Virginia Regiment. The area involved was so large it could only be found in the outer wilderness. Washington traveled in the autumn of 1770 again to the Forks of the Ohio—where he had previously seen emptiness there was now a settlement of some twenty cabins called Pittsburgh—and then drifted down the river for eleven days. His objective was the confluence of the Ohio with the Great Kanawha, where he had heard that the land was fine. This journey deep into the almost unexplored wilderness was in some ways a replay of the embassy northward which had opened his public career. There was danger—reports of Indian hostilities and ticklish meetings with braves in war or perhaps hunting dress; there was hardship—snow fell—but this time the impediments were not truly lethal. They added spice to lyricism.

Keeping notes of the appearance of the shores along which they passed, Washington saw an identity of beauty and utility: the taller the trees and the fairer the meadows, the more fertile the land. Deer, buffalo, and wild turkeys abounded. Eventually Washington found and marked out a paradise of rich meadows, towering vegetation, mill sites, vast reaches, boundless skies, where he eventually secured title to thirty thousand acres, most of the tracts “beautifully bordered” by the rivers.

the last book I ever read (Washington: The Indispensable Man by James Thomas Flexner, excerpt one)

from Washington: The Indispensable Man by James Thomas Flexner:

Yet the Fairfax connection boasted a physical giant who, even if he had never crossed the Alleghenies, had surveyed in the semi-wild Shenandoah Valley. Furthermore, although only twenty-one, George Washington carried the manifest air of one born to command. He was assigned two interpreters: a Dutchman, Jacob van Braam, whose knowledge of French was testified to by the badness of his English; and a fur trader, Christopher Gist, who was to prove less conversant with Indian tongues than he should have been. Add four backwoodsmen of low degree who acted as “servitors,” some riding horses, and a flock of pack horses, and you had the expedition which in October, 1753, already fighting through heavy snow, descended from the mountains into the wild Ohio Valley. The French wilderness masters, so numerous and so familiar with Indian trails and embassies, would have regarded this tiny, amateur force as comic. Yet the tenderfoot who led it was no ordinary man.

Washington soon dashed ahead of his party to where the Monongahela joined the Allegheny to form the lordly Ohio. Although “the Forks of the Ohio” (now Pittsburgh) was the strategic position that controlled thousands of miles of wilderness, he found there no signs of humanity except empty trails. For two days he explored by himself through the tangled forest, seeking, despite his military ignorance, the best location for a fort. His judgment was confirmed by both the French and the English, who were in succession to erect major works at the spot he chose.

the last book I ever read (Angel Down: A Novel by Daniel Kraus, excerpt thirteen)

from Angel Down: A Novel by Daniel Kraus:

and there’s no way, absolutely no way, that Bagger and Arno enter this hornet’s nest and aren’t pulled like pork, and so, by silent accord, they enter anyway, no weapons to speak of but the ferocity of their cries, Bagger’s the fermata of the final hymn echoing through his father’s church, Arno’s the high-pitched yap of apelings as they sling themselves through jungle eaves, élan, boys, élan,

the last book I ever read (Angel Down: A Novel by Daniel Kraus, excerpt twelve)

from Angel Down: A Novel by Daniel Kraus:

and she peeks at Bagger, and though he’s never sired a child, not to his knowledge anyhow, he knows what he’s feeling is what any father feels when the mother, holding her baby for the first time, locks eyes with him over the child’s head, that boil of pride and fear, but also melancholy, it’s a farewell of sorts when a father meets the child who, as of this moment, will begin to replace him,

the last book I ever read (Angel Down: A Novel by Daniel Kraus, excerpt eleven)

from Angel Down: A Novel by Daniel Kraus:

and when Bagger hears war screaming louder than before, he knows the earth above them has finished falling, and how about that, they didn’t get buried after all, he shakes soil off his back, the dugout behind him now a dirt hill topped with that most routine of Great War accessories, the dead horse,

the last book I ever read (Angel Down: A Novel by Daniel Kraus, excerpt ten)

from Angel Down: A Novel by Daniel Kraus:

and he bellows, top of his lungs, can’t hear it over the barraging drums of a new round of Jerry’s shells but sure the fuck feels it, larynx shredding in the force of his war cry, holy shit, Cyril Bagger’s got a war cry, same as the other boys, it expels from his guts with the same skyward explosion as the missiled earth, he’s bloodthirsty, he’ll do anything he needs to protect she who needs protecting,

and a piece of him, a tiny, Arno-sized splinter, knows there’s something awry with all this, something awry with him as he fuses into the bloodlust funnel, the precise act he’s always avoided, individuality swapped for the exhilarating namelessness of being a ball bearing inside a mechanism, he’s succumbed, but lord, don’t it feel good, ain’t it the easiest way to bash past regret and shame, feels so much better to lose himself to a mass, to dilute into a flood of fury,

the last book I ever read (Angel Down: A Novel by Daniel Kraus, excerpt nine)

from Angel Down: A Novel by Daniel Kraus:

and the monster cocks its head in apparent interest at Bagger’s latest physical change, and there’s a pause during which Bagger believes the circular orifice of its trunk distorts into a smile, before the monster brings a malformed hand to its face, pinches its own baggy cheek, and copies Bagger again by tearing its own face off,