The Standard Grand Read online

  This ritual erasure once evoked pride. Bound by brotherhood, backed by the resolve of a nation under siege. These days, his thirtieth birthday lying in ambush, his long hair thinning, his beard ever thicker, he’s a sad, aging white dude. More clown than commando. A bought-and-sold soldier. Gone from fighting a right war—ready to notch kills as payback for the obliterated 3,000—to waging a wrong one. After which, Ray let himself be poached by one and another private security company, figuring if he was going to fight for wrong reasons, he should be sorely compensated. In terms of pay grade, entering the private sector was like getting promoted to one-star general. He put the money to good use. After his in-laws, the Jalals, were killed in the Al-Rashid district of Baghdad, he started sending 10k here, 5k there, to his mother in Jersey without so much as a note. He could tell how she was doing by how long it took her to cash his checks—the longer the better. When he was recommended for the Standard surveillance job, he’d been pulling down a thousand dollars a day for a three-months-on-one-month-off schedule. From that there to this here, earning half his rate but over a full 365, selling his skills in the States to who-knew-who, and toward what end he has no idea. But he would damn sure find out.

  * * *

  Smith woke with a neck crick as the sun rose. Little notion who she was. Tired with travel. The stinky, humid cab of her truck parked at a gas station. Hearing the shoosh of semis outside and the morning sounds of her empty stomach, a nearly audible ache to pee.

  She slapped her face and hupped to, at attention behind the wheel, her sense of self partly restored by the sting. With it, a sense of purpose: she wanted to go for a swim in the ocean, get clean. She’d grown up splashing between the Gulf of Mexico and Florida’s Space Coast, and she’d been landlocked or sandbound since she enlisted. She had a couple hundred bucks. Enough for four more tanks of gas at ten-miles-per.

  She spent the last of her cash at a BP in Pennsylvania she thought to boycott because of the Deepwater Horizon mess but she had no choice. As she approached the East Coast, her jaw aching from all the gas-station jerky she’d been gnawing, she couldn’t steer clear of interstates—all roads and signs leading the way to New York City. Might not be so bad to have some hustling bustle after the isolation and military monotony of Leonard Wood.

  Her truck got her over the Tappan Zee before it sputtered, died, and coasted to a stop on the shoulder. Relieved, she ditched the three-year-old Dodge Ram for whoever found it first. Her 10k signing bonus for re-upping all went toward the down payment on that pickup instead of paying down some of her debt. From the ashtray she fished out her rings, planning to pawn them. She removed any trash that might identify her. Unscrewed both license plates. Popped the truck’s VIN plate off the dash. This would only buy a little time. VINs were stamped on every major car part. Law enforcement would eventually process, trace the truck, and alert AWOL Apprehension.

  She slipped out of her jeans, pulled on her last clean tank top, flashing traffic, and climbed into her dirty camos. She’d draw more attention in uniform, but she’d be safer. Earn a little sympathy, maybe a handout. She clipped the leather holster of the small, weighty pepperbox pistol at the small of her back, shouldered her field pack, and humped it through the outer boroughs. Took her a couple days to thumb and bum her way into Manhattan—she wasn’t getting on no death trap of an underground train—and got dropped off in the West Village at nightfall during a July heat wave.

  The Christopher Street celebrities deadbolted themselves into air-conditioned townhouses. Out came the trannies done up like vampires, reedy black boys in bras.

  Heading farther downtown to get sight of the ocean, she found her way to the southwestern-most pier, between the New York Council of the Navy League and the terminal for the Staten Island Ferry. The water’s edge lapped against the pylons. A dim Statue of Liberty in the distance. Hand up like she had a question.

  The nighttime temp had risen from ninety-odd degrees at midday—humid, heavy—and Smith stank from high heaven to hell’s cellar. Couldn’t tell the smelly soup of her self from the odor wafting off the water.

  She tucked her holstered pepperbox into a pocket of her field pack and draped her digicams overtop, a pixilated camouflage heap in a shadowy corner. If someone stole all her stuff, so be it. Hopping the banister, she dangled, then plunged into the black Atlantic.

  Frigid, dreadful, and dark, the ocean was a withdrawal dream. She scrubbed and rinsed as best she could, gargled and spat while she treaded salty water. The current was strong and suggestive, coaxing her—away from the rearing, beaming center of Western civilization—into deep water. The draw of it more frightening than any sea creatures below the surface. She floated a moment, let the current carry her. If she did nothing, if she relaxed too long, she’d be shuttled out to sea past Lady Liberty, who, come to find, didn’t have her hand up to ask a question—she was waving. Bye-bye, Bellum.

  * * *

  When the maintenance and retrofits of the liftboat were finished, twelve days late, Evangelína stayed a week in one of the Lacie’s two cramped VIP staterooms, like a stowaway in a teak closet, during the slow, sickening motor out to the Veslefrikk Z platform.

  At platform, the Lacie had trouble with the preload. The ROV driver was a twitchy techie from British Columbia—pimply and pálida como el hueso. Entirely incompetent, he took a week to find firm seabed before they could jack up.

  During the delay, she ran weighted laps around the heliport. Eight and a half circuits about equaled a mile. After each mile, she changed direction or she became queasy. As the delay reached its seventh day, the roughnecks turned overly deferential, which made her increasingly suspicious. She memorized each of the international crew’s names, first and last, but she addressed them by their jobs: Driller, Derrickman, Shakerhand, Mudman. Helped keep them in line—in the face of her gender, despite her height—if not under control. A few she gave nicknames. They found them endearing even though insult was her intent. The slippery South African toolpusher she called Atún, Tuna. The floorman and motorman, rotund Algerian twins, hairy and happy-go-lucky, were Alegrías. When they asked what it meant, she told them joyous, and kept to herself that it was slang for testicles.

  The American roustabouts were worse than the grabby Tampico locals, whistling and winking, behind her back whispering, Shorty this, Shorty that, but they dealt an entertaining poker game. The youngest and tallest among them claimed to be a bayou shark, and he did have a wide, white smile that seemed sharpened.

  Evangelína refused to trust a word he said. Her dismissive disbelief made her mull—for a minute—taking the lanky boy to bed. She’d be done with the tens of thousands of dollars in bills for doctors and sperm donors. Her mestizo child would have a sound chance of growing taller than five feet. But she didn’t. She wouldn’t. “Bayou roustabout,” she said, reconsidering her strong hole cards—pair of jacks—before the flop came down and checking her bet to give the false impression of weakness, “you think maybe just this once you could not deal me a hand like a chicken foot?”

  He shuffled his chips like a professional, said, “I might could,” and yet he had the tells of a mark—closing up his hand a minute before he mucked it, fingering his stack well before he raised—and she only lost money one night, the last.

  * * *

  On her way uptown in the Day-Glo night, Smith felt cold and ashamed. Her hair dripping the length of her spine. She’d lost control. Then it hit her. She wasn’t under control; control was hers to lose.

  She marched up Broadway through Times Square at midnight, every bit as gaudy and egregious as the Vegas Strip, only it sprawled up instead of along.

  All in one place at one time, there were more people of every persuasion moving hurriedly about in the middle of the night than she’d ever seen in her life. She tired of juking the motley lot. Made herself a cardboard sign. Worked in a misspelling. The dumber they thought you were, the more they gave—Lady war vet could use assistence, peace!

  Soon she had
enough to buy herself a five-dollar hot dog tonged from gray water by a man who smelled stronger than she did and occupied a cart that, on its side, read, If you love you’re Freedom thank a veteran. When she held out her fist filled with pocket change, he shook his head. “On house. Nice one with Bin Laden.” He gave her a hamming thumbs-up. “Next, you get King Abdullah. Mindmaster nina leven. Send all drones. The better the more. Waterboard him one time for Ahmadis.”

  She said, “Well alright, Amadeus,” and, “Hotdamn,” returning his Lynndie England thumbs-up.

  He smiled and said, “Hot dog.”

  She deposited the coins into her pack along with her sign. Bit the nasty-looking, delicious dog, ate it plain and fast and nearly choked it up when she saw the box of a building in front of her, neon Stars and Stripes on its side, was a recruitment office.

  Fighting back a panic attack, she focused on her breathing exercises. Hastened east on Forty-Second, cut down around Bryant Park, then up Fifth. She strode north toward Central Park, and it took a couple of wandering, sleepless days before she got comfortable with her bivouac, or was too beat to care. Not hard for a soldier to camp out, she told herself, especially in summertime. More police than people in the park after dark. Its deepest uptown reaches seemed remote as Ocala Forest, except for the sirens wailing out of ambulances caught in 2 a.m. traffic and the admonishing burps belched from cop cars with wicked indigestion. Eventually, she found the perfect tree for her tree hammock, an out-of-the-way beech northwest of the North Woods, near the old stone fortress of the Blockhouse flying a threadbare flag.

  To keep rats, raccoons, and possums from ransacking her roost, Smith peed duckwalking around the base of the tree. She climbed up and reclined beneath the canopy.

  While she lay swaying, exhausted awake, she told herself she’d get her daddy to wire her some money his broke ass didn’t have because he owed her bigtime. Roughing her up and chasing her off the way he did. She’d run from him and into the arms of the Army, and here she was running from the Army. Shit, she’d rent a little studio, or a loft, whatever that was, like they did on TV. Maybe she’d even be on TV. That didn’t come to pass, she could hang herself from this here beech. Sure way to wind up on all the newsstands.

  Trying to put herself to sleep, she came up with tabloid headlines that would run over the picture of her dangling body. One she liked best was No Jessica Lynch.

  Staring through the dark spangled leaves of her tree, she returned to her recurring fantasy—she sneaks into Islam’s holiest place, Mecca, wearing a black Gulf-style abaya, covered head to ankle, barefoot. Mixed in among the throng, she undresses. Removes first the niqab from her face. Then the hijab from her head. Lastly, she pulls the abaya off her body. She wears nothing underneath. The mob gasps, parts, goes silent. Naked before the bearded men and covered women, here she usually starts cursing them and their prophet. This time she sees herself raising her open hands to her ears, palms forward, fingers slightly splayed, as if signaling the crowd to stop, asking them to hold their stillness.

  When they do, she lowers her hands and folds them across her bare chest, right atop left, overlapping to the wrists. She’s doing what she’s seen Muslims do a million times. She unfolds her hands, bows at the waist, hands on knees slightly bent, spine perfectly parallel with the ground. Poured water would not fall from her back. She rises. Then settles to her knees, bowing again, knocking her forehead painfully against the ground, feeling as much of the ground with her nose as her brow. She holds this pose and waits for the first stone.

  * * *

  A lusty Ada danced the jitterbug with little Sammy Davis, Jr., in the Stardust Room of the Berle. The scene she brought to life was silent, motion picture in a time before talkies, more memory than dream—getting difficult to distinguish the difference.

  Milton Xavier Wright’s next thought was the same as it’d been for thirty-five years: Ada was dead. Slung from the giant two-door coupe, Ada skipped across the tarmac. He could see himself there at the crash site, though he shouldn’t’ve been, couldn’t’ve been, she facedown in tall grass on the shoulder, burbling her last breaths into a blood puddle. He’d been afraid to move her, her neck kinked like a canvas fire hose; he’d been afraid not to move her, she drowning in her own fluids. But he hadn’t been there. Had he?

  Milton roused—hungry, coming to in the deprivation chamber of the oubliette, an egg-shaped hollow below the armory cellar, discovered as part of the caverns when the basement was blasted and pick-axed. Excavated bluestone became the armory walls.

  Modeled on the one under the Bastille, the oubliette once stored dynamite, then ice. The room remained a constant 50 degrees, needed no heat in winter or cooling in summer. An efficient space. In it, Milton was nearer the inner elements. Closer to the core. Here, the cavernous air, the weather underground, felt therapeutic, even if he worried about the noxiousness and flammability of the earthly emissions.

  Ada forced her way through his newly occurring migraines, his occasional blackouts, or she was their cause. His reflections were becoming painfully vivid, continuous. Hallucinogenic. More like flashbacks, they overtook him. The vapors. Then they vanished—he felt like himself. But they were becoming more frequent. The visions swelled like balloons in his brain, caused him considerable confusion.

  He’d spent decades gaining a measure of control over his intrusive thoughts. Here he was, in his dotage, losing control. Especially when those thoughts concerned Ada, who was domineering in life. Willful as all get-out. Why should she be any different in death?

  Every morning Milton made this same transition. Primordial lungfish emerging from muddy water: sluggish, hesitant, the pull of ages drawing him back into the primitive ooze. He spent time between two elements, amphibious—the past present, the dead alive.

  This carried him to his next daily realization. He was dying.

  The thought shook him stark awake. He held his breath, pounded his sternum with his fist. Far before dawn; he hadn’t gotten more than four hours sleep in decades.

  How strange. He must rediscover his looming mortality morning after morning.

  Two years ago, he received a partial laryngectomy, endured the removal of twenty-six lymph nodes. Convalescing after the surgery, his neck stitched, glued haphazardly back together, he got his stage-IV diagnosis. Dealt the death card, ace of spades.

  To discuss treatment, the oncologist brought in reinforcements. Visited with the radiation and chemo staffs, outnumbering Milton five to one.

  They took turns describing a harrowing narrative of trial and pain without promise of redemption. Seven weeks of intense radiation therapy, when a sore throat so severe would develop that swallowing, eating, and talking would be difficult, if not impossible, for upwards of a year. Another staffer added: And we’ll mix in chemo once a week beginning with radiation therapy. Each treatment—

  His voice, like a hacksaw, rose hurtfully out of him: Not interested.

  Sergeant Wright, quality of life is an important factor in this decision, but we need to be perfectly clear you understand what it’ll mean to refuse further treatment.

  Surgery was one thing. You all are trying to drop the atom bomb on me now. Not putting any more toxins in this body. What got me here in the first place. Didn’t have a say that go-round. This time, I got a say. I say zap some other poor sap.

  Maybe you should take a little time.

  Just tell me one thing. Without treatment, how long I got?

  The radiologist turned to the oncologist, a small, waistless woman who looked like a teenager. Milton didn’t understand why most of the VA doctors were residents of SUNY Downstate, kids who wouldn’t know Basic Training from potty training. She turned to Milton reclining in his hospital bed. Without treatment, Sergeant Wright? Her voice was loud, insistent. Six months to two years? We simply can’t know. Could be longer, but it could also be shorter. Your cancer’s metastasized. It’s sure to continue spreading. To the lungs, maybe the brain. After that, it’s pretty quick, an
d not painless.

  Consider it my contribution to lowering the costs of healthcare.

  In all seriousness, Sergeant Wright, the short end doesn’t give you much time.

  Most folks I grew up with are long damn gone. Life expectancy for black men aint what it is for the rest of you all. Survived me a war, a wife. Outlived my parents and hers. Got no living siblings, no kids. I’ve some loose ends, same as anyone, but I have zero desire to spend my last days too sick to talk. We got work to do, a shelter to run. Whose big idea’s it anyway?

  The five healthcare professionals shifted and shrugged uncomfortably in their baggy scrubs. The fingers of a small hand doing delicate work in an extra-large glove. His oncologist, the thumb, offering her opposition, said, What big idea are you referring to?

  He tried to clear his throat, couldn’t. He sat up, unsure where he was. In a neglectful VA hospital or his tumbledown Catskills hotel. In the living past or the dying present. The thin line getting thinner all the time. Had he said all that, and right after surgery? If he hadn’t, he should’ve. Should’ve said all that and then some.

  * * *

  Wind was hiring landmen away from petroleum. Evangelína had entertained two good offers for management positions from upstart outfits in an industry where her womanhood was at a premium. The wind rush in the windswept West Texas plains, especially the Llano Estacado, was allowing ranchers and farmers to lease their land to wind developers for a set rental per turbine, or a percentage of gross annual revenue. Wind offered a clean revenue stream to supplement farming income without disturbing planting, harvesting, and grazing. Cows chewed and cotton grew all the same beneath the great, gradual sweep of the tri-blades, even if they swatted migratory birds out of the air by the dozens.

  Part of the wind recruitment pitch had been: Don’t do harm. Do good. Wind was a greeny, crunchy culture less inclined toward discrimination. That was why she hadn’t made the jump. She wanted the challenge of succeeding among the ts’ulo’ob, those-who-are-not-us, starched, determined white men with high hairlines, boxy shoulders, and shovel chins.