Steve Hanks Sunshine After the Rain painting

Steve Hanks Sunshine After the Rain paintingSteve Hanks Country Comfort painting
," Mannix had whispered out of the shadows then. He seemed to have snapped fully awake and, following the lecture intently, he appeared to address his whispers not to Culver, or the colonel, but to the air. "You bet grandiose," he said, "even if you don't know what grandiose means. I'll bet you'd sell your soul to be able to drop a bomb on somebody." And then, aping the colonel's instructions to the corporal—one of the enlisted flunkies who, after each lecture, passed out the reams of printed and mimeographed tables and charts and resumes, which everyone promptly, when out of sight, threw away—he whispered in high, throaty, lilting mockery: "Corporal, kindly pass out the atom bombs for inspection." He smacked the arm of his seat, too hard; it could be heard across the auditorium, and heads turned then, but the colonel had not seemed to have noticed. "Jesus," Mannix rumbled furiously, "Jesus Christ almighty," while the colonel droned on, in his countrified voice: "Our group destiny," he said, "amphibiously integrated, from any force thrown against us by Aggressor enemy."