Clothes Maketh The Man — Part 73.

The helicopter raced over the flat landscape in a roar of sound and dust. As we moved fast and low I glanced at my traveling companion.

He was indeed handsome but as I studied him a little more closely I began to realize that those rugged good looks could equally be called hardened. There was doubtless a curl to his lip that could be described as ‘callous’, beneath that coal black mustache. I took a moment to adjust and reframe him as kidnapper rather than rescuer. To have thought him a saviour, only to find he was just my next captor was to be lifted and given hope, and then to have it cruelly taken away.

Regardless, I was no longer being fed like a dog nor chained to a wall in the hot Texas sun. My companion handed me a bottle of water from his pack. Things were looking up.

“Where are we going, I asked.

“Somewhere nice,” he replied.

“That’s all I get?” I said.

“Come on,” said my companion. “You don’t really expect me to tell you do you?”

I glanced out of the small Perspex window and saw our shadow to our left dancing over the flat desert ground. That must mean we were traveling south with the afternoon sun in this position.

“Why,” I asked. “I don’t understand any of this. What do you people want with me?”