"Ranger training," Tim responded his expression wry. But where usually he'd have just left it at that off-hand explanation the sniper heaved a sigh and shifted until he was leaning back against the older man. Not quite as desperate a hold as before, but comfortable, as if they were curled up on a sofa instead of standing in a horror tube.
"Spent a lot of my life hungry," he began. He'd told this to Malcolm, seemed only right he open up about it to Raylan. "Ain't in my file jacket, Marshal Service did me a solid and only walked back to when I joined the Army. My mom was a drug addict, the hard stuff. Part of what pissed off my father no end.
Anyway, keep this from getting maudlin, when I was big enough to reach the knobs on the back of the stove while standing on a kitchen chair, he slapped kraft singles and white bread down on the counter and it was 'make two and give one to your mother'. That point on, I wanted to eat? I fed myself." Had been about age five.
"Made Ranger training a breeze. Everybody else was suffering on the forced 3000 calorie intake, if you were lucky, 10,000 calorie output that they put you through? That shit was a cakewalk." Probably part of why he'd done so well. He hadn't had to suffer through the calorie withdrawal like his classmates.
"Kraft slices, white bread, vanilla ice cream, coffee and beer. What else do we need?" Of the pair of them Tim was the one most likely to maintain a healthy diet. But there was a sense of discomfort in the peek he'd just given to his childhood. A need to give Raylan the joking route out of the emotional weeds.
cw: drug abuse, rough childhood
"Spent a lot of my life hungry," he began. He'd told this to Malcolm, seemed only right he open up about it to Raylan. "Ain't in my file jacket, Marshal Service did me a solid and only walked back to when I joined the Army. My mom was a drug addict, the hard stuff. Part of what pissed off my father no end.
Anyway, keep this from getting maudlin, when I was big enough to reach the knobs on the back of the stove while standing on a kitchen chair, he slapped kraft singles and white bread down on the counter and it was 'make two and give one to your mother'. That point on, I wanted to eat? I fed myself." Had been about age five.
"Made Ranger training a breeze. Everybody else was suffering on the forced 3000 calorie intake, if you were lucky, 10,000 calorie output that they put you through? That shit was a cakewalk." Probably part of why he'd done so well. He hadn't had to suffer through the calorie withdrawal like his classmates.
"Kraft slices, white bread, vanilla ice cream, coffee and beer. What else do we need?" Of the pair of them Tim was the one most likely to maintain a healthy diet. But there was a sense of discomfort in the peek he'd just given to his childhood. A need to give Raylan the joking route out of the emotional weeds.