Chicken In Greece excerpt, page 3…
"Bill Treekerson was not what might be called a thinking man, but he delighted in acquiring knowledge. It was exciting for him to think that just an instant ago ancient Sparta was directly beneath the plane. To be sure, not the Sparta that was – that fierce fatherland of superbly disciplined warriors – now it was only a small lonely village. But then, then, thousands of years past. He bit his lip and concentrated on the sky for a moment. He was reasonably certain Sparta was in the Peloponnesus.Or was that Macedonia? No, he was certain! He took a deep breath and sat back in his seat—confident Sparta was below, before.
Treekerson was about to light up his 93rd cigarette in fourteen hours when the sign in the front of the cabin flashed on. He buckled his seat belt and affected a nonchalant landing air as the stewardess passed checking to see if all the passengers were strapped in. He was glad he didn’t use the cigarette, he had had too many, his stomach and mouth felt crummy and sour from smoking so much.
The jet banked softly, dropped altitude and glided in on a path between Mount Hymettus and the Attican coastline where the blue Aegean lapped quietly at the sandy beaches of Greek ship owners.
Treekerson’s fatigue and belly ache, a result of too little sleep, too many cigarettes, breakfast at midnight, sunrise at two in the morning, left him now, giving way to a strong feeling of anxiety. The pain and uncomfortable knot in his stomach moved up to his trachea, there blocking some saliva he was attempting to swallow. He had had this trachea problem before, when he finally made the decision to remove himself, his wife and his large family of little children to Greece. The decision had not come easily, it took months to make, but helping immeasurably was the fact that after he lost he rather well paying and soft job, he had been unable to make contact for another one. The style of living to which they had become used, had become outmoded and some kind of action was demanded. The problem was a serious one—-they were in debt—but no more serious than that which afflicts thousands or even millions of people each year. What made it more serious was that Treekerson was glad. An opportunity for escape had been offered without the utilization of his unproven courage. For Treekerson had not lost his job bravely standing fast to his principles and spitting on the boss’s desk, but ignominiously in the lobby of The World on 52nd Street after a Brigitte Bardot pre-acting flick, for grow incompetence and neglect of duty and for sneaking around movies while he should have been calling on clients. The fact that the boss had been there too made no difference to either Treekerson or the boss, they accepted that Treekerson as the junior man would have to go."