Soul Woman

HEAT

Chapter 4 - Part 1

Fill had developed a routine at Matlacha.

In the morning he would take his guitar down to the dock behind the cottage and play. He had a plan. He was warming his technique up so he could learn a number of new tunes to play with his friend Richard - who was a really good guitar player. Nobody was up at that point and he could simply pick away - to the osprey and the gulls.

After that he would eat and then do the reading/research he needed to do on the book and that usually took him into the late PM.

Then it was down to Bert's Bar & Grill for 'happy hour' - $1.50 pints and $4.00 blackened shrimp - sitting on Bert's outdoor patio and watching the boaters and the pelicans.

Today Fill was having an especially good time because the folks around him were being so bloody entertaining with their talk about politics and guns and Obama. He had to restrain laughter more than once as folks were going on about how gun control was the first step in a master plan to allow the UN to take control of the US, etc.

Fill could see Jenade at the the far end of the outside patio with some friends of his that hadn't seen soap or shower for a while. They were drinking $1.50 pints like they were going out of style and chain smoking like a ban had just been lifted on smoking.

Jenade was from Orleans France and had been here since 1968 when he came over to visit his sister who married a GI. Orleans was where the maid of Orleans, Jeanne d'Arc, one of the patron saints of France, was from.

Unbeknownst to Fill - the soul that inhabited young Joan 700 years ago was the same one that was now inhabiting him - and 'it' had similar work to do ....