“It’s not a worthy golf resort if it doesn’t include mineral rights.”
“At’s my girl.”
“The schedule?”
“Posthaste. We want you started yesterday. That’s why we yanked you off the Lacie. You’ve got little more than two months. End of the calendar year. Afraid you’ll be gone for Armageddon.” He winked. “If you need to get back here to Houston, to check in with your mother for any reason, you have the use of a company jet, so long as it’s not excessive.”
“One more question?”
He waited.
“Am I still being encouraged to apply to the executive program at Darden?”
He didn’t answer right away, and the hesitation told her more than what he eventually said: “IRJ always encourages employees to further their educations.”
As she turned to go, she let slip her phone. It clattered to the floor. She kicked it. Bending, she stole a look at the TV console. All the screens, some ten or so, displayed a series of dust-blown video streams. Desert vistas. Drone’s-eye view. A couple crumbling urban settings. Pockmarked sandstone. A few displays showed pipelines stretching through sand to hazy horizons. Others focused on road crews. Then there was one frantic live-action shot televising what she guessed were IRJ contractors outfitted like Zapatistas: flak-jackets, black balaclavas, assault-rifles. A muzzle flashed and she looked away.
She grabbed her phone and stood, tugging down the hem of her skirt, shrugging her jacket up her shoulders, sickened. She wondered if IRJ chief operations officer was a job she’d ever be able to manage.
Bizzy was regarding her. “Evy,” he said, “how are you feeling?”
“Sir?”
“I mean your stomach. You’ve gone a little … blanca.”
She tried to swallow the acidic burp caught in her chest. “It’s passed.”
“Any luck yet?”
Another jab at her card playing. “Luck with?”
“Dr. Heller.”
Her fertility specialist. She hadn’t told anyone. “Not yet, far as I know, but I’m putting all my poker winnings toward treatments.”
“Must play for big stakes. Cost a pretty penny. Worth it if it takes. It’s not easy, juggling something like that with a full workload, especially alone. You let us know if there’s anything we can do to make things easier. I’ll check in on your mother.”
She thanked him in Spanish.
“And, Evy. Don’t go up there worrying about lawsuits. You give it the hard sell. No pulled punches for fear of reprisal. This landowner’s hard to get hold of. You’re going to have to be creative. You know the drill. Pun unintended. Our out-of-house legal council on this is a local boutique firm. The thinking was—keep a low profile till we saw how Cuomo was leaning. He’s someone we’ve worked with in the past.”
“Cuomo.”
“Ellis Baum. He, Baum, practices—”
“Land-lease?”
“Real-estate. With a land-lease background—that doesn’t concern you. He’s your supervisor. He operates out of an office in Kingston, knows the area, over and under. We’ve got you on a company jet. A driver will meet you at the airport and take you to Ellis. If you have to use the loo, you hold it till you’ve seen Ellis, understand? He’s more than your boss on this, he’s your eyes and ears. He speaks for me. He’ll make approval of any offer before you present. He’s already got a small team up there information-gathering in anticipation of your arrival so you’re not wasting time in the courthouse digging up county records. They put together what’s in the file, misspellings and all. But it should be trustworthy, mostly. Chain of title’s all right here.”
She turned to go.
“And one more thing, Evy. There’s also a chance Wright murdered his wife back in the mid-seventies, so take precaution.” He cocked his head, fixed eyes on the TVs. “One last thing.” He didn’t look at her. “You fuck this up the way you did Fort Worth, I will fire you.”
Marisol walked Evangelína wordlessly, solemnly, to the elevator, cradling an inch-thick corporate report.
Before the elevator doors dinged open, Evangelína asked for an aspirin. Marisol simply shook her head. She waited till Evangelína pushed the L button before handing over the heavy portfolio. Bizzy hadn’t given up the one on his desk. His contained information she wasn’t privy to, but that was nothing new.
* * *
Trying to ride out the weather, Smith huddled in her tree hammock. Cold. She burrowed beneath her plastic poncho. Icy rain yanked yellow leaves from their branches and slapped them down on her. When she felt a seepage, warm, between her thighs, she knew: of fucking course. Made her miss being at war, where you skipped your sugar pills, jumping straight to the next cycle. Last thing soldiers needed, they’d joked, was more bleeding.
Shivering and swaying, she dug a Ziploc freezer bag from her field pack. Her toilet paper, her pepperbox pistol, and the bandolier that held her tampons and a dozen .38 Special rounds. All still dry. She pulled herself up, untied the hammock, climbed down from her tree, and packed her effects. She had an afternoon date to meet Milt on the southwest corner of Central Park North and Fifth. With nearly a full day to kill, she started walking to warm herself, looking for a place to change.
On the corner of 100th, distracted by a black Lincoln crashed into and wedged under a parked FreshDirect truck, no drivers in sight, she almost broke her nose running smack into the clouded window of a phone booth, surprised to find they still existed. Last time she was in a phone booth was on FOB Ghazni, where soldiers lined up backwards and facing away from the phones to give callers the privacy to cry.
She closed herself inside the booth. The pissy stench, ammoniac and potent as smelling salts, snapped her awake. Undressing, she danced on top of her boots, trying not to touch the floor with her socked feet, climbing into her damp, hand-washed fatigues, wanting to be in uniform to meet Milt. If she decided not to stand him up.
Changed, she was exhausted. At her thighs, the yellow receiver of the telephone swung from its cord. She picked it up and dialed her husband’s number. A recorded voice instructed her to please deposit four dollars and sixty-five cents. She hung up, opened the door on the slowing rain, lifting her face to the cold spittle and drawing a few clear breaths. A cop cruiser was double-parked at the corner. She closed herself back in the booth and raked through a pocket of her field pack: about seven heavy dollars.
She let go of the last nickel, knowing that at this hour Trav would be as good as dead after mashing and snorting his bedtime Oxy. She didn’t want to talk, all she wanted was to hear his recorded voice. To do so, she was willing to pay a begged-for four-sixty-five.
When Travis answered on the third ring—“Who’s it?”—the words, slurred together, were a comfort. For a second she was happy, nearly hyperventilating with homesickness, her heart full and fast as the house music whumping in the background. He could say something to keep her from going into the wilds with a black Airborne Ranger three times her age. She said, “It’s me. I—”
Another voice, female, on his end. Over it he said, “That you, Bellum, you cunt?”
Her breath caught; his cussing her was nearly a reassurance.
Sprawling silence passed between them. Then: “Don’t just call me after all this time and breathe, bitch. Or quit breathing why don’t you. Slit your own shit throat. Fucking cowardly cooze.” He sighed or blew smoke. “You know I’m only kidding, baby. I’m just upset’s all. You know I love you more than me. You know—”
A man’s voice, booming over a PA, drowned out Travis: “Let’s have us a round of applesauce for Ms. Golden Delicious and her pet iguana, Sir Licks a Lot.”
“That’s right,” Travis said. “Out having me a hoot here at Big Papa’s. Got a stack of dollar bills. What? Hold up a sec.” The music faded a moment, came back full blast. “Shoshanna says hi.” Shoshanna Roshanda, a sweet-tempered dancer—her stage name was Jinx—had a daughter, LaLa, who Bellum and Travis had sat for some nights. “Oh yeah, we’ve
got real friendly. Hope you’re happy cause I am.” In his loose jabber-jaw, he sounded jacked-up and brought down both—coke, meth maybe—probably a half-empty fifth of Goldschläger in his Carhartt pocket. “MPs’re hunting your ass down, if you’re you.” He hocked out a wet smoker’s cough and spat. “Couple of mooks come by the house twice saying they was with AWOL Apprehension. Said a notice went out to law enforcement the world over. You there? You hearing this? Don’t matter. They even sent a letter to your old man. Been visiting him. I read it. Hysterical. Bunch a fried baloney about duty, honor, yada yada la-de-da-de-fucking-da. The joes said they dropped you from the rolls. Gave you a separation something-or-other. Told me you can’t apply for any college. Had me a chuckle at that one, dumb as you is. Hey, you still there? I love you, baby. Let me step outside for a sec so you can talk to someone.”
The music stopped and she wanted to hang up but she held fast to the receiver pressed painfully to her ear.
“Here, say hi to Mama. Say hi.” Snuffling, followed by a sliding sound. “That’s gross. Goddamnit!” A yelp. “Said say hi not slobber all over my fucking smartphone. You hear that? Foxtrot says hi. Hey, you crying? You sound asleep? You ODing? You want to quit, gohead. Wither up and die, you witch.” He coughed. “You got nothing? Four years married and four months gone and you got zip to say? Know what? Matters not one squatting iota. We had shit to say to each other since you got back. Fucking everybody in the Stan but the bearded Taliban. Them too, for all I know. Foxy-T, quit your fucking whining. She don’t give two shits bout neither of us.”
The more she listened, the less she held her edges—Travis saying he had a side business going. Worked it out with your pops. Come to like ol’ Increase. He could give a hoot though. Been two suicide-by-cop in Devils Elbow since you left. Sometimes I even catch myself thinking you did right to bolt stead of going back for the triple dip. But don’t worry about old Travis, who—hey, man, sup. Yeah, hold up. I’ll catch you inside soon as I’m done talking to my bitch wife who done split on me.
A voice, inaudible, was followed by Travis’s girly laugh. Then, an explosion of bass-heavy music before all got quiet save the whines of sweet Foxtrot. Foxtrot helped her regain some of herself. Helped get her perimeter secured, Travis on the outside.
“Hear that?” he said. “Dude said least you didn’t do like his wife and take the dog. That joe won’t pay but thirty for these jellynose pills I got. Say, if you—”
A recorded voice cut Travis off: “Please deposit another—”
Smith depressed the chrome tongue.
The cop car was still at the corner, rain turned snow. Had to be getting close to dawn. If she got herself arrested, or shot, she wouldn’t have to decide what to do next.
She crossed the street and stood at the driver-side door of the police Impala. On the other side of the glass sat a white woman in blues puffed up by a ballistic vest, staring into her lap. Texting.
Smith rapped her knuckle on the window.
The cop looked irritably up from under finely plucked eyebrows penciled back in, her only makeup. Through the closed window, she said, “I help you?”
Smith tapped her own wrist. “Got the time of day?”
The cop took a long look at Smith, then shook her head.
“Obliged.” As Smith turned to go, she heard the window power down.
“How long you been in that phone booth?”
Smith’s heart got jump-started. She didn’t turn, kept crossing the street, about got bowled over by a cyclist who shouted as he whizzed past.
“Hey,” the cop said. A metallic clatch as the car door opened, then the chic-clunk of it slamming shut. “You answer me when I ask you something.”
Stepping up the curb, Smith shrugged her field pack off one shoulder. When she turned to face the cop, the bag wheeled around and came to rest hanging at the front of her hip—the pocket, holding her pepperbox pistol, unzipped.
The lady cop was young, younger than Smith, and alone. There had to be a partner nearby, probably fetching coffee. The cop stood at arm’s length, hands ready by her hips. A name bar engraved Cole. “How long you been in that booth?”
“Was I breaking any laws?”
Cole reached and depressed the button on her radio clipped to her shoulder but didn’t speak into it. “You in there when the accident occurred?”
“When I went in, that’s how they were.”
Cole’s hand rested on the butt of her holstered sidearm, a Glock made of mostly plastic. “What happened there?” Cole touched her own eye.
“Some schoolgirls hit me upside the head with a rock.” Smith nodded toward the cop car. “Here comes your partner. They always put females together?”
“Move along, soldier. That’s an order.” Cole crossed the street to the cruiser and her breakfast delivered in a bag by her partner. The officers exchanged words. They looked at Smith and gave her sloppy salutes, cop salutes but salutes all the same.
As a return gesture, Smith reached in her field pack and gripped her gun, staring through the pair of lady cops to Travis at her funeral, blubbering like a chubby girl, her daddy consoling him, father and son-in-law all buddy-buddy as “Taps” was blown from a bugle. A snappy three-volley salute. Then they’d receive her folded flag from an honor guard on bended knee after a tear-jerker thank you. But burial honors were reserved for veterans discharged under circumstances other than dishonorable. Dead, she’d be interred unceremoniously, same as any civilian.
She pulled her hand, empty, from her field pack and waved. The cops waved back. Smith didn’t care to continue on. Nor did she want Travis or her daddy to have any sort of satisfaction. She would abide to spite them, because they’d both tried to kill her, Travis by increments and Increase all at once. Her death would somehow prove them right about her.
If she couldn’t kill herself, she wondered if she could go home. Back in Devils Elbow, there’d be one outcome. She wasn’t worried about the court-martial. It was Travis. Not what he’d do to her but what she’d do to him. She’d rather face the possibility of being raped and dismembered by a Catskill serial killer than confront the certainty of committing a domestic homicide and spending the rest of her life in jail.
She double-timed it toward her rendezvous point. As she jogged, a cadence, the original jody call, came to her. She sang loud as she could:
Aint no use in lookin’ back,
Jody’s got your Cadillac.
Aint no use in lookin’ blue,
Jody’s got your husband, too.
Aint no use in feeling sad,
Jody’s got the job you had.
Sound off: one, two.
Sound off: three, four.
Sound off: one, two … three, four!
Smith stopped at the public restroom overlooking the Harlem Meer. Sitting on the toilet, she broke the breech of her pistol and dropped in four rounds. Some six hours early, she felt ready to meet Milt.
* * *
Astounding. A short episode in a life could become a life’s obsession. Milton’s memory of the jungle heat, heavy, burdensome as a sodden quilt, was like fighting against a greater gravity. Then the chill during a snap monsoon that lasted a month. Entire team with trench foot. Nothing as exhausting as a twelve-hour shiver on soaked ambush. When he got C-rats, a reprieve from freeze-dried LRP rations, he dug a hole and buried the four cigarettes that came with the accessory pack. An offering to the land that was not theirs. Spur-of-the-moment superstition become a pre-mission ceremony for whatever six-man team he was part of. All of them gathering to jokingly bow heads, someone saying: Who do you voodoo, Doctor Cockadau?
Someone scatting back: And the doowop girls go, Doo do doo do doo do do doo.
Someone else chiming: Howdy Doody, hocus-pocus.
And, finally: Izzy-wizzy, Milton, baby, let’s get busy.
Then they all fell silent and lay to rest four fresh smokes in a mini mass grave.
Next, he might summon a few of his countless close calls. The cau
terized hole punched through his rain poncho by a friendly tracer. Friendly hands patting his back to put out the friendly fire he wore. Funny as hell at the time, calling him HIR—the human illumination round—for the rest of the mission, code-named Greensleeves. How, on a later recon, he set the four-position selector switch on his CAR-15 to burst. Hopped, firing, from the hovering skid of a Huey into a hot LZ. Waves of elephant grass like a churned-up lake. Only to have his first-aid kit shot clean off his belt. The force of the enemy round at his hip making him do the twist. Spinning him 180 degrees as he squeezed the trigger. Three measly bullets striking the fuselage, rendering the chopper inoperable. Having to establish and secure a perimeter so the Huey could be airlifted by a lumbering Chinook. The sight awesome and absurd. A helicopter giving birth to a helicopter. Then to have the Chinook shot down with the Huey in tow—two birds, one RPG—killing both crews. Getting redesignated a Ranger partway through his second tour. Becoming a Ranger meaning zilch at the time—he was a recon man first—being a Ranger meaning everything now. All the intimacies with the NVA, a fighting force that made the Vietcong seem like a ragtag company of farmers, orphans, and widows, which they mostly were. And then the scene in his mind where he expended the most attention: his untimely attachment to the Screaming Eagles of the 101st and his small part in the futile defense of Firebase Ripcord.
On an on, near miss after hair’s breadth, and, in the end, the irony wasn’t lost on him: he was bound to be a casualty—decades late, a couple million dollars short—and his downfall wouldn’t be a sexy, leaden-eyed sapper of a suicide mamasan with a toe-popper in her cooch, nor getting snakebit by a pair of communist pit vipers mating in his foxhole. Instead, he was bound to be a belated fatality in the War on Weeds, nixed by military-grade Roundup, zapped by friendly spray thanks to all his wartime exposure to the rainbow defoliants—the Orange, but also the Blue and White—while he was on recon through Thùa Thiên—his mind straying to Monsanto at four-odd-o’clock in the morning. Monsanto, along with Dow Chemical, was a main producer of Agent Orange.
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