PART SIX
Gabriel Audaz blinked away the sting in his eyes. The harsh sand was making them tear up, obscuring his vision even more. He was back on the beach again. Isabella, his best friend in the world, was talking to him. She had asked him a question, the same question she always asked in this memory. He hadn’t answered her yet.
“Gabriel...”
He turned his head to look at her, studying the way her blonde hair stayed on her face no matter how much she pushed it off to the sides. A few of the sun-kissed, golden strands hung down almost to her nose. Gabriel looked past the wind-teased locks of her hair to her pale, piercing cobalt eyes. Looking into her eyes was like looking into lakes of solid, crystal blue. The kind of lakes found high in snow-capped mountain ranges. The kind of lakes full of enchantment and mystery.
“You can’t avoid the question,” she said, trying to look him in the eyes.
Gabriel had lowered his gaze to her lips as she spoke. He brushed the loose strands of his own soft, black hair off his brow. He remembered kissing those lips once, the way they felt like a rosy satin against his own. He thought of a flower petal in comparison, the way they are so smooth and delicate at the same time. And, in the next instant he also thought of how they are often better admired from even the smallest distance.
“I’m not,” Gabriel had finally said. “I’m just thinking...”
“About the answer?”
“I guess,” he said distantly. He let his gaze fall back to the sand in front of him. “...About...how to answer, too,” Gabriel continued, hesitantly.
“I’m not sure I understand.” Isabella had been leaning back, her hands buried in the sand behind her, bracing her slim body. She pushed herself upright, straightening her back. “I didn’t think it was that complicated a question.”
Gabriel shrugged his shoulders. He could see the disappointed look on her face.
“Do you have an answer,” she had asked after a moment.
Gabriel could hear the concern in her voice and knew that was the reason for the expression on her glowing face. Her features were beautiful, the skin of her cheeks and brow unmarked by the slightest blemish. She was worried she wasn’t getting through to him, that she was failing in some way. She feared what it could mean. Their friendship had long-since healed from a single, previous fallout, but remained scarred.
Gabriel finally looked at her. “I do.”
She smiled warmly, laughing away her moment of frustration. “Then tell me.”
Gabriel bit his lip. He hesitated for a long moment, listening to the sound of the waves crashing against the shore line. “I’m...I’m afraid,” he began to say. “...I mean really afraid...of...failing to act.”
Isabella frowned. “Huh?”
Gabriel leaned forward, the sand spilling off of his hands as he brought them up, folding his arms on top of his knees he held pressed against his chest. “The things happening inside of me, the feelings I have that won’t go away-”
“Sweety, it’s okay,” Isabella said reassuringly. “They’re natural. It is just who you are-or will be-starting to come out.”
“That’s the thing. I don’t know who or what that is. I want to know but I also want to do the right thing. I’m joining the army, Izzy. And, I know this...stuff...doesn’t matter anymore. Not officially.”
Isabella watched her best friend carefully. “But?”
“But I’m not ready to give these feelings, these thoughts a voice or a name yet. I’m in complete conflict. I...I want to be as honest as possible in my life-with you, with everyone...with God especially. Yet, I can’t help but keep this inside and I’m so, so very afraid that I’m going to die before I can accept who and what I am. Before...before I can finally put my demons to rest.”
Isabella seemed to think for a long moment, considering everything Gabriel had just confessed to feeling. Finally, she grinned at him then scooted through the sand on her haunches, closing the arm’s length between them. She hugged her best friend tightly. “Do you want to pray with me?”
Gabriel nodded.
A noise pierced the fog of his mind. Gabriel was awake in a flash, lost in the space of the world he was occupying for a hazy instant. Sand and gravel shifted around him in the subtle vibration surging through the bedrock. The wind making the limbs of the dry trees and brush all around sway and hiss carried in it the smell of smoke and bitter sulfur. A mortar, Gabriel thought. He blinked away more of the sleep still mired in his eyes. Against the horizon, a thin column of smoke had begun to reach above the cliffs.
Gabriel wiped down his face with both hands, trying to awaken fully. It worked, but not the way he had intended. The deep breath he took in as he dragged his palms down his brow and cheeks drew the strong stench of iron and dirt deep into his nostrils. Gabriel quickly pulled his hands away from his face only to stare at the dried blood stained across the skin of each. It went up and down all ten fingers to each wrist, spiraling unevenly across the backs of each hand and over his shoulders.
He knew it wasn’t his blood. Gabriel remembered the bearded stranger who had tried to take his boots and their struggle that followed. Gabriel felt the weight of the rust and crimson-stained knife tucked into his belt and remembered the other figure in the night. His brain recalled the sound of the gunman’s flesh tearing open as Gabriel drove the serrated blade deep into his body. Then, with a start, Gabriel suddenly remembered the sergeant who had saved him.
“Sergeant,” he called out, his voice low and hoarse. There was only the sound of the wind rolling over the landscape that answered him. Gunfire echoed faintly down the wide valley, its source the same location as the smoke. “Sergeant,” Gabriel called out again, trying to keep his voice low. He didn’t know who else could be listening, waiting unseen in nearby places.
Gabriel tried to stand only to collapse onto his hands and knees. A muscle-wrenching pain, tremendous and unforgiving, seized his left side. Gabriel cursed his cracked ribs. Then, he cursed himself for having forgotten them in that moment, for trying to get up too quickly. He lightly pressed his hand over his fatigues above the epicenter of the pain. He could practically feel the bruise through the dirtied cloth.
Gabriel could have given up right there. A part of him wanted to. The left side of his torso definitely wanted him to throw in the towel, to lay back down and let time and fate roll over him. He was stuck on his hands and knees, fighting back tidal waves of pain barely starting to ebb. He was lost somewhere in a dry, cold corner of a small, war-torn country on the far side of the world.
A rattle of gun fire reverberated down the steep walls of the frozen valley. Gabriel opened his eyes when the diluted sound reached his ears. The first thing he saw was the dried blood on his hands. Gabriel stared at it. People are dying, a voice inside of him whispered. People are dead. Gabriel lifted his head. He spotted the droplets of blood clinging to the dried leaves of nearby brush. He saw how others had become red-brown blotches caked into a discernible train in the dirt. But maybe there’s still time.
“Sergeant,” Gabriel called out again, risking an uptick in the volume of his voice.
With a slow, precise deep breath that brought with it a predicted-but far less intense-wave of pain, Gabriel grit his teeth. His even breath became a gasp as he pushed himself upright. He wanted to scream. He desperately wanted to scream. Somehow, he managed not to do so. His strength, like his courage, was holding. Breathing quick and shallow, Gabriel slowly managed to stand all the way up on his feet. He realized, as the pounding pulse of his heart stopped drumming against his eardrums, that he was humming. Gabriel chuckled at himself.
“Sergeant,” Gabriel called out again, walking quietly through the brush. He was following the crimson trail laced across the brittle plant life and dusty floor. “Sergeant, this is Corporal Audaz. Can you hear me?”
There was a low groan from somewhere nearby. Gabriel listened, adjusting his course toward the sound. “Sergeant, can you hear me?”
A man on the ground stirred amongst the trampled brush a half dozen more paces away. Gabriel smiled with relief. There is still time, he thought. He quickened his pace, despite the pain that throbbed powerfully from his side at every other step. “Sergeant, just hang on.”
The older man groaned, “Hold onto what? I’m already on the ground.”
Gabriel’s smile broadened. “Yes sir, you are.”
“Corporal,” the man said unenthusiastically, trying to roll over onto his back. He was laying on his stomach where he had collapsed in the hours Gabriel had fallen asleep. “...You’re going to get us shot if you...keep...talking so loud like that.”
“Sorry, Sergeant,” Gabriel said, softening his voice. He stood over the wounded man, watching him trying to painfully reorient himself. The older man’s dark stubble peppered his sun-reddened, coarse cheeks. His fatigues were covered in dried dirt and blood. Gabriel blinked before saying, “But you’re already shot, sir.”
The half-dead man opened one eye. “Yeah, well...I don’t want to get shot again. I’m...I’m not trying to to start a collection, Corporal.”
Gabriel tried crouching. He winced as the pain in his side suddenly ratcheted sharply upward. It felt as if the blood and muscle around his left ribs were suddenly coming to a boil. The sensation was too much, forcing Gabriel to stand fully upright again. “You need some water, sir,” Gabriel said, nearly out of breath.
“I know. But you gave me almost all of your water a little while ago.” The sergeant exhaled sharply, groaning in pain as he finally rolled all the way over onto his back. He sighed and said with his dry voice getting raspy, “Getting shot sucks.”
Gabriel smiled. “Yes, sir.”
The man on the ground at Gabriel’s feet, struggling just to stay conscious, dizzily pointed a blood-stained finger up at him. “You should avoid it.”
“Yes, Sergeant.” Gabriel held his smile. He watched the sergeant drop his arm against the dirt. “Still, you need water.”
“I’m not taking the last of your water, Corporal!”
The echoing din of the distant battle swept slowly down the valley. Gabriel lifted his gaze to the smoke climbing into the dawn-lit sky. The few clouds there were stretched at canted angles from east to west. The rising sun was bathing them in brilliant light, coating their windswept, downy bodies in a breathtaking gold hue. The heavens beyond were changing from the velvet darkness of the early morning to the pink and blue of the approaching day.
Gabriel hadn’t realized until that moment how captivating the landscape in that corner of the world could be. He found himself distracted by the view provided by the low cliffside they had stumbled up during the late hours of the night. He smiled, despite himself. He was thankful for the opportunity he felt he had been blessed with. He had been given the chance to live to witness the birth of a new day and a new lease on life.
Gabriel thanked God for the opportunity received, then cast his eyes back down from the illuminated clouds to the column of smoke. “There might be some water that way, sir. Up the valley in that direction,” Gabriel said, pointing toward the cliffs and the smoke beyond them. “There could be more of our guys there, sir. Medics and the like.”
The sergeant did his best to nod. He hardly moved at all, but it was still a noticeable gesture. “Good, Corporal. Go. Get water and get your side looked at. Help the boys there win the day.”
“I’m not leaving you here.”
The sergeant coughed a chuckle. “I’m already dead, Corporal.”
Gabriel shook his head. There was an unshakable determination in his eyes. The sergeant could see it clearly, even in the haze of his semi-consciousness. “Not dead enough to stay here, sir.”
“Corporal-”
Gabriel took a deep breath. He knew what he was about to do was going to create a tremendous, body-shocking amount of pain for both of them. Action had to be taken. They may suffer the effects of their injuries and live, but Gabriel knew without doubt they would surely die if they remained in place, avoiding the challenges of their circumstances.
“Sorry, sir,” Gabriel interrupted, preparing to lift the wounded man off the ground. “It’s time to live. You’ll just have to die some other day.”
Thursday, June 23, 2011
Monday, June 20, 2011
II. "The Glorious Cause"
PART FIVE
For a long time there was only the night and the myriad of cricket songs. Then, all at once, power found its way into the silent house. Electricity was pushed down the idle lines swaying in the occasional breeze. After ten hours without any energy, the cold gadgets and essential appliances plugged into wall outlets throughout the quiet rooms came back to life. Digital clocks beeped and ignorantly flashed the wrong hour on their illuminated faces. The refrigerator rattled and popped as it reactivated. A small telephone chirped once then returned to silence.
Carlos Columbus Audaz was only half asleep when the air conditioner outside of his window suddenly snapped on, its heavy fan loudly whirring just beyond the thin pane of glass. It made enough noise, along with the vibration of the vents in the walls, to startle Carlos fully awake. Groggily, he yawned and stretched over his wrinkled quilt and sheets. The smell of paper was strong in his nose He’d fallen asleep with his cousin’s latest letter over his face. Gently pushing the wrinkled, college-ruled sheet of notebook paper aside, Carlos looked at the glowing face of his old watch. The lens was scratched. The wristband was stiff with years of dried sweat. Carlos sighed and shook his head. Barely an hour had gone by since he had last looked at the time.
He pushed himself upright onto his elbows. One leg was already hanging off the side of the bed, his foot almost touching the soft, thick carpet. Carlos shifted, putting both feet flat on the floor. He stood up slowly, the groggy sensation persisting mercilessly. He tried to remember the last time he had gotten any real sleep. After a minute, and then two, Carlos gave up. He couldn’t recall if he’d ever had a real, decent night’s sleep. It didn’t matter. He certainly wasn’t getting any sleep these days. Stepping into the bathroom, Carlos figured that over the last four nights he had managed to acquire only about a total of six or seven hours of sleep. Reading helped, but it was not a lasting antidote. That was one reason Carlos had dug the letter from Gabriel Audaz out of his cluttered belongings. The other reason had been the dinner with his family. Sitting so close to his uncle had been a grating test of Carlos’ patience and will.
Dinner was served and eaten on an old, round, glass table that had been on the cracked concrete porch since Carlos was twelve. It had been their first summer in California since his father had moved them to Los Angeles from St. Augustine, Florida. The table was bought used, the umbrella that would have gone at the table’s center declared missing long before Carlos’s father had purchased the aluminum-framed furniture piece at a flea market. Carlos remembered that besides birthday parties and the rare winter mornings when his parents felt it was cool enough to enjoy a cup of coffee on the patio, the table was hardly ever used.
“You know your father started spending more time out here,” his mother had said a few minutes into dinner. The conversation had been lagging. The older adults surrounding Carlos seemed so unsure of what to discuss; and, Carlos had nothing he felt like contributing.
He looked up from his food. “Really,” Carlos asked with little enthusiasm.
His mother nodded, “Oh, yes. He said he finally wanted to get some genuine use out of this thing before...” Her words trailed off.
Carlos looked up from his food to his mother again. He couldn’t explain why, but he suddenly felt confused by the heavy appearance of mourning in her eyes. His mother was supposed to be a firebrand, a tenacious and passionate woman quick with her wit and intelligence. She was supposed to be brave, a figure who couldn’t help but naturally demand your attention and respect just by walking into the room. Yet, there at the half-heartedly decorated table covered with plates and serving dishes that were old and discolored, Lucia Audaz appeared weak. The inability to say something so simple as the concept of death, to have lost her frankness and talent to be direct and out with it...Carlos found it tragic.
He quickly decided to finish her sentence. “Since he died?”
Carlos felt and then saw the sharp, pointed glares his older sister, aunt and uncle were shooting at him from their places across the table. He shrugged his shoulders, feigning ignorance.
“Yes,” his mother whispered. Lucia Audaz’s eyes were gazing in the direction of her son but she wasn’t looking at him. It was more like she was looking past Carlos, to another person, another time. “Since he died.”
It wasn’t long after the awkward silence that followed that Carlos’ uncle took the reigns of topics to discuss. Carlos quickly began to feel nagged by his uncle. It started off subtly. Broad questions about studio life and living and breathing a movie rolled without much pause over the glass table top. Maybe it was because Carlos felt defensive since the fiery looks his extended family members had given him. Maybe it was because he simply didn’t like the undertone in his uncle inquiries. It didn’t matter. The conversation was irrevocably heading in one direction. To Carlos’ surprise, his mother did not intervene until it seemed like both men were about to jump across the table at each other.
It had been when his pride was insulted, and then his work ethics and patriotism were questioned and mocked that Carlos could not take sitting at that table any longer. He stood up suddenly as voices had been steadily rising. His stance was aggresive, his chest heaving with hot anger. His shoulders were locked as his hands tightly pressed down on the wavy texture of the glass table top. His uncle took the posture as a signal of escalation. The older man was half way out of his chair when Lucia Audaz’s voice cut through the mild night. The heated argument was over, the noise echoing quickly away. Lucia, with a course and low, even voice, commanded her brother-in-law to sit down.
Mother and son stared at each other. Neither spoke for a second’s-long eternity. Finally, Carlos blinked. “Thank you, mother. Dinner tasted very good. If you’ll excuse me...” There had been the heavy sound of stunned silence behind him as Carlos walked back into the house. He could feel their eyes staring him down, watching him until he disappeared into the darker recesses through the open doorway.
In his room, Carlos stood with his back against the door. He wasn’t quite sure what had happened. A shiver of panic lapped up and down his body. He had shouted his uncle down over insensitive, but meaningless comments. He’d stared his mother down then turned his back to her. He was feeling like the defiant child suddenly and fearfully barricaded in his own room.
A noise in the kitchen shook Carlos back from his drowsy thoughts of the previous evening.
Lucia Audaz steadied herself against the cool granite counter. In her mind she was trying to stay focused, to keep her frustration down and away. It was nearly an overwhelming enough challenge to keep herself steady. It was taking her longer each day to get out of bed. The dizzy spells and pulsing, crippling ache that would twist its way around her head and then down her spine once went away as quickly as they had appeared. Now, it took minutes.
Lucia opened the cupboard above her head. Reaching for a can of coffee on the second shelf, she spied her fingers strangely quivering. No, she commanded herself, willing her nerves to stay steady. It wasn’t working as well as it once did. The coffee can felt heavy in her grip. It took two hands to lift and bring it down from the raised shelf. She still almost dropped it. The wide, aluminum can landed hard against the granite countertop, Lucia’s wrinkled fingers still clutching it. She knew the sound had shot through the house. She didn’t want everyone awake, not yet.
The scoop of aromatic grounds trembled disconcertingly in Lucia’s grip. Her weary eyes, holding back stinging tears, watched her whole hand bounce and twitch without control. Her will was strong, it had always been. But now, in the dim light of her kitchen in the waning years of her home and family, Lucia Audaz felt she had no power to stop the painful dissolve of her entire world.
“Mom?”
Lucia nearly dropped the entire scoop into the waiting filter. She took a deep, startled breath, gathering every ounce of strength to steady herself. “Yes, son?”
Carlos waited for her to turn around. He stood in the doorway to the kitchen, leaning against the trim that was in desperate need of a new coat of paint. Lucia didn’t turn to face her son. She kept her back to him, adding another scoop of coffee grounds into the bleached-white filter. “Why are you up so early,” Carlos finally asked. “It’s only 4:30.”
“I coulnd’t sleep. And, I thought you might be getting up. You never liked to sleep in.”
Carlos let himself smirk. It was true. He liked getting up with sun. Though, while he reveled in it in his youth, at thirty he no longer could muster the enthusiasm. Maybe it was the growing lack of sleep. Maybe it was just life in general.
“I’m making coffee,” Lucia said, a positive inflection revealing itself in her otherwise even tone. “Would you like to have a cup?”
“I can’t,” Carlos said. “Thank you, though. I have to get ready. I have to be on set soon.”
Lucia nodded. “Of course.”
Carlos’ brow furrowed. “It’s work, Mom. I have to go.”
Lucia finally turned around, facing her son for the first time that morning. She once thought he was going to grow up to look just like his father. More than that, there was a time when Lucia was convinced that her son would mature into the man that his father had been, that the character of Adrian Audaz would become the mold Carlos Columbus Audaz would not only shape his life around, but reshape and make better.
It was a different time and a different world when Lucia considered such things, when thoughts like those made her smile. Instead, the young man standing in the doorway of her kitchen had the physical features similar to her beloved and deceased husband. But the shadow of that man had faded over her son. This man was family but he was also a stranger to her. She looked at him as such. Who he was, Lucia did not know. Who he was becoming was a question she feared the answer to, the evidence of his path disparaging to her once bountiful hopes.
Lucia blinked once then nodded her head, almost diplomatically. “Yes, Carlos. I know.”
Carlos stopped leaning against the slightly warped doorframe, standing straighter as he put his hands on his waist. “Are you all right?”
Lucia took a deep, quiet breath as she turned her back to him, returning to her first morning task. “Yes, son. Don’t be late for work.”
Carlos’ hands dropped to his sides. His mother’s distant words struck him like a cannon shot. He blinked, stunned by her cold frankness. He opened his mouth, his lips beginning to form words that never came. There was nothing he could say. So he turned around, walking away to his room while his mother quietly finished making coffee. He never noticed the way the muscles in her arms were as tense as tree limbs. He didn’t seem to be aware of the fact she was struggling to keep her body still, to fend off the queasiness bubbling in her system, to simply keep from collapsing on the floor in front of him.
When the moment’s new dizziness had passed and she had finally swallowed back her nausea, Lucia Audaz filled a pitcher with water, pouring it with well rehearsed, calculated and precise movements into the reservoir of the coffee pot. She never wondered or feared if that would be the last time she would be able to do such a simple task herself. Lucia simply closed the lid over the filled container, making sure the plastic cover snapped into place. She pressed the ON button which glowed red under the pressure of her fingertip. Then, she turned around and walked casually out of the kitchen, remembering to lightly tap the light switch on the wall.
For a long time there was only the night and the myriad of cricket songs. Then, all at once, power found its way into the silent house. Electricity was pushed down the idle lines swaying in the occasional breeze. After ten hours without any energy, the cold gadgets and essential appliances plugged into wall outlets throughout the quiet rooms came back to life. Digital clocks beeped and ignorantly flashed the wrong hour on their illuminated faces. The refrigerator rattled and popped as it reactivated. A small telephone chirped once then returned to silence.
Carlos Columbus Audaz was only half asleep when the air conditioner outside of his window suddenly snapped on, its heavy fan loudly whirring just beyond the thin pane of glass. It made enough noise, along with the vibration of the vents in the walls, to startle Carlos fully awake. Groggily, he yawned and stretched over his wrinkled quilt and sheets. The smell of paper was strong in his nose He’d fallen asleep with his cousin’s latest letter over his face. Gently pushing the wrinkled, college-ruled sheet of notebook paper aside, Carlos looked at the glowing face of his old watch. The lens was scratched. The wristband was stiff with years of dried sweat. Carlos sighed and shook his head. Barely an hour had gone by since he had last looked at the time.
He pushed himself upright onto his elbows. One leg was already hanging off the side of the bed, his foot almost touching the soft, thick carpet. Carlos shifted, putting both feet flat on the floor. He stood up slowly, the groggy sensation persisting mercilessly. He tried to remember the last time he had gotten any real sleep. After a minute, and then two, Carlos gave up. He couldn’t recall if he’d ever had a real, decent night’s sleep. It didn’t matter. He certainly wasn’t getting any sleep these days. Stepping into the bathroom, Carlos figured that over the last four nights he had managed to acquire only about a total of six or seven hours of sleep. Reading helped, but it was not a lasting antidote. That was one reason Carlos had dug the letter from Gabriel Audaz out of his cluttered belongings. The other reason had been the dinner with his family. Sitting so close to his uncle had been a grating test of Carlos’ patience and will.
Dinner was served and eaten on an old, round, glass table that had been on the cracked concrete porch since Carlos was twelve. It had been their first summer in California since his father had moved them to Los Angeles from St. Augustine, Florida. The table was bought used, the umbrella that would have gone at the table’s center declared missing long before Carlos’s father had purchased the aluminum-framed furniture piece at a flea market. Carlos remembered that besides birthday parties and the rare winter mornings when his parents felt it was cool enough to enjoy a cup of coffee on the patio, the table was hardly ever used.
“You know your father started spending more time out here,” his mother had said a few minutes into dinner. The conversation had been lagging. The older adults surrounding Carlos seemed so unsure of what to discuss; and, Carlos had nothing he felt like contributing.
He looked up from his food. “Really,” Carlos asked with little enthusiasm.
His mother nodded, “Oh, yes. He said he finally wanted to get some genuine use out of this thing before...” Her words trailed off.
Carlos looked up from his food to his mother again. He couldn’t explain why, but he suddenly felt confused by the heavy appearance of mourning in her eyes. His mother was supposed to be a firebrand, a tenacious and passionate woman quick with her wit and intelligence. She was supposed to be brave, a figure who couldn’t help but naturally demand your attention and respect just by walking into the room. Yet, there at the half-heartedly decorated table covered with plates and serving dishes that were old and discolored, Lucia Audaz appeared weak. The inability to say something so simple as the concept of death, to have lost her frankness and talent to be direct and out with it...Carlos found it tragic.
He quickly decided to finish her sentence. “Since he died?”
Carlos felt and then saw the sharp, pointed glares his older sister, aunt and uncle were shooting at him from their places across the table. He shrugged his shoulders, feigning ignorance.
“Yes,” his mother whispered. Lucia Audaz’s eyes were gazing in the direction of her son but she wasn’t looking at him. It was more like she was looking past Carlos, to another person, another time. “Since he died.”
It wasn’t long after the awkward silence that followed that Carlos’ uncle took the reigns of topics to discuss. Carlos quickly began to feel nagged by his uncle. It started off subtly. Broad questions about studio life and living and breathing a movie rolled without much pause over the glass table top. Maybe it was because Carlos felt defensive since the fiery looks his extended family members had given him. Maybe it was because he simply didn’t like the undertone in his uncle inquiries. It didn’t matter. The conversation was irrevocably heading in one direction. To Carlos’ surprise, his mother did not intervene until it seemed like both men were about to jump across the table at each other.
It had been when his pride was insulted, and then his work ethics and patriotism were questioned and mocked that Carlos could not take sitting at that table any longer. He stood up suddenly as voices had been steadily rising. His stance was aggresive, his chest heaving with hot anger. His shoulders were locked as his hands tightly pressed down on the wavy texture of the glass table top. His uncle took the posture as a signal of escalation. The older man was half way out of his chair when Lucia Audaz’s voice cut through the mild night. The heated argument was over, the noise echoing quickly away. Lucia, with a course and low, even voice, commanded her brother-in-law to sit down.
Mother and son stared at each other. Neither spoke for a second’s-long eternity. Finally, Carlos blinked. “Thank you, mother. Dinner tasted very good. If you’ll excuse me...” There had been the heavy sound of stunned silence behind him as Carlos walked back into the house. He could feel their eyes staring him down, watching him until he disappeared into the darker recesses through the open doorway.
In his room, Carlos stood with his back against the door. He wasn’t quite sure what had happened. A shiver of panic lapped up and down his body. He had shouted his uncle down over insensitive, but meaningless comments. He’d stared his mother down then turned his back to her. He was feeling like the defiant child suddenly and fearfully barricaded in his own room.
A noise in the kitchen shook Carlos back from his drowsy thoughts of the previous evening.
* * * *
Lucia opened the cupboard above her head. Reaching for a can of coffee on the second shelf, she spied her fingers strangely quivering. No, she commanded herself, willing her nerves to stay steady. It wasn’t working as well as it once did. The coffee can felt heavy in her grip. It took two hands to lift and bring it down from the raised shelf. She still almost dropped it. The wide, aluminum can landed hard against the granite countertop, Lucia’s wrinkled fingers still clutching it. She knew the sound had shot through the house. She didn’t want everyone awake, not yet.
The scoop of aromatic grounds trembled disconcertingly in Lucia’s grip. Her weary eyes, holding back stinging tears, watched her whole hand bounce and twitch without control. Her will was strong, it had always been. But now, in the dim light of her kitchen in the waning years of her home and family, Lucia Audaz felt she had no power to stop the painful dissolve of her entire world.
“Mom?”
Lucia nearly dropped the entire scoop into the waiting filter. She took a deep, startled breath, gathering every ounce of strength to steady herself. “Yes, son?”
Carlos waited for her to turn around. He stood in the doorway to the kitchen, leaning against the trim that was in desperate need of a new coat of paint. Lucia didn’t turn to face her son. She kept her back to him, adding another scoop of coffee grounds into the bleached-white filter. “Why are you up so early,” Carlos finally asked. “It’s only 4:30.”
“I coulnd’t sleep. And, I thought you might be getting up. You never liked to sleep in.”
Carlos let himself smirk. It was true. He liked getting up with sun. Though, while he reveled in it in his youth, at thirty he no longer could muster the enthusiasm. Maybe it was the growing lack of sleep. Maybe it was just life in general.
“I’m making coffee,” Lucia said, a positive inflection revealing itself in her otherwise even tone. “Would you like to have a cup?”
“I can’t,” Carlos said. “Thank you, though. I have to get ready. I have to be on set soon.”
Lucia nodded. “Of course.”
Carlos’ brow furrowed. “It’s work, Mom. I have to go.”
Lucia finally turned around, facing her son for the first time that morning. She once thought he was going to grow up to look just like his father. More than that, there was a time when Lucia was convinced that her son would mature into the man that his father had been, that the character of Adrian Audaz would become the mold Carlos Columbus Audaz would not only shape his life around, but reshape and make better.
It was a different time and a different world when Lucia considered such things, when thoughts like those made her smile. Instead, the young man standing in the doorway of her kitchen had the physical features similar to her beloved and deceased husband. But the shadow of that man had faded over her son. This man was family but he was also a stranger to her. She looked at him as such. Who he was, Lucia did not know. Who he was becoming was a question she feared the answer to, the evidence of his path disparaging to her once bountiful hopes.
Lucia blinked once then nodded her head, almost diplomatically. “Yes, Carlos. I know.”
Carlos stopped leaning against the slightly warped doorframe, standing straighter as he put his hands on his waist. “Are you all right?”
Lucia took a deep, quiet breath as she turned her back to him, returning to her first morning task. “Yes, son. Don’t be late for work.”
Carlos’ hands dropped to his sides. His mother’s distant words struck him like a cannon shot. He blinked, stunned by her cold frankness. He opened his mouth, his lips beginning to form words that never came. There was nothing he could say. So he turned around, walking away to his room while his mother quietly finished making coffee. He never noticed the way the muscles in her arms were as tense as tree limbs. He didn’t seem to be aware of the fact she was struggling to keep her body still, to fend off the queasiness bubbling in her system, to simply keep from collapsing on the floor in front of him.
When the moment’s new dizziness had passed and she had finally swallowed back her nausea, Lucia Audaz filled a pitcher with water, pouring it with well rehearsed, calculated and precise movements into the reservoir of the coffee pot. She never wondered or feared if that would be the last time she would be able to do such a simple task herself. Lucia simply closed the lid over the filled container, making sure the plastic cover snapped into place. She pressed the ON button which glowed red under the pressure of her fingertip. Then, she turned around and walked casually out of the kitchen, remembering to lightly tap the light switch on the wall.
Thursday, June 16, 2011
II. "The Glorious Cause"
PART FOUR
A twig from the dried brush snapped loudly in the still, late hour. Gabriel Audaz opened his eyes in a startled instant. He didn’t breathe. That was probably for the best. The first breath he had taken had been more painful than he was ready for. A sharp, stinging ache clawed at his lungs and chest, making his breathing shallow and staggered.
A silver coil of rancid smoke from a thin cigarette snaked its way through the desert air near Gabriel. He tried to ignore it to not stare at the smoldering butt of paper and foul tobacco held between the dry lips of a man Gabriel could barely discern in the late night darkness. The battle in the air had ceased some time ago. The curtains and trails of smoke had faded to nearly transparent traces, leaving the twinkling stars in the freezing, pre-dawn sky.
Gabriel’s ears burned in the awful silence of the war weary landscape. Even the dying fires in the distance seemed to exist without any kind of noise. There was only the sound of the strange man breathing as he walked slowly through the dry brush. Gabriel’s heart pounded with a racing drumbeat in his chest. The man’s slow march was leading him away one gradual step at a time. He was scanning the dark around him, leery of any movement.
Where are the others, Gabriel thought, struggling not to panic. He didn’t want to tremble or flinch any more than he wanted to feel the reeling ache in his chest and side. Why is there no gun fire? Am I the only one left? Gabriel inhaled as slowly and gently as he could manage. The smell of the man’s cigarette was finally fading.
Wait, Gabriel thought as he quietly exhaled, wincing in the pain of what he was certain were broken ribs. He remembered the soldier from the sky. Suddenly, Gabriel realized he couldn’t completely feel the ground. His head, neck, and the top of his back were in the dirt. Cold sand had turned to matted mud in the sweat-damp hair extending past the rim of his helmet and down to his neck. The rest of Gabriel’s body was splayed across the unmoving torso and legs of someone else-the paratrooper who had fallen into Gabriel’s parachute.
Gabriel managed to move his hand, just slightly, before he froze once more. A near-silent gasp escaped his lips. A spray of dust brushed against his face. More twigs snapped in the dark. The loud movement was much closer than before. Gabriel’s heart beat was fast it was more like the vibrations of a jack hammer than a rhythmic pulse in his body. He thought at first the man from before had quickly circled back around. The figure that appeared out of the dense, cold night didn’t quite look the same. Gabriel could barely see him and he wasn’t about to strain himself to gain a better look. The stench of sweat unwashed for weeks or longer reached out like a malicious entity from the heavily garbed man. Gabriel could still hear the frozen plants breaking under the man’s feet. His gait was uneven, one leg limping behind the other.
The man stopped a step away from the spot where Gabriel was laying as still as the paratrooper half underneath him. Gabriel kept his eyes away from the hints of firelight stretching through the night from unknown places. He tried to hold his breath, inhaling and exhaling quickly when he thought the man had turned away. Over the raging stampede of his frightened heart, Gabriel thought he could hear the man mumbling. He felt the man brush against his boots as he took a few cautious steps into Gabriel’s field of view. With his eyes almost completely closed, Gabriel still saw the man’s lips moving hurriedly. They were barely visible within the wiry, greasy nest of facial hair twice as long as the hair on Gabriel’s head.
Is he praying or simply talking to himself? Gabriel couldn’t tell. He wasn’t sure if it mattered. Is he an enemy soldier or just some wandering tribesman? In the fleeting glimpses Gabriel managed, he could see no rifle or pistol in view on the man. His thick robe of hastily and inexpertly sewn fuzzy, matted patches or dirty, sweat-stiffened tunic showed no evidence of any kind of hidden firearm. So is this man checking closely for signs of life or is he looking for someone or something specific? Gabriel couldn’t answer these questions. All he could do was lay there, atop the corpse of his fellow soldier he wasn’t sure he even knew. All Gabriel could do was pray he would survive.
Still mumbling in a language far from English, the wandering stranger crouched down near Gabriel’s feet. He was out of Gabriel’s limited range of vision. Gabriel would have to move in order to see him. Moment’s later, Gabriel realized he didn’t have to move to know what was happening.
A calloused hand of thick, red fingers slapped against Gabriel’s left foot. It was a probing glance of skin against boot. Gabriel tried not to flinch. He felt his toes curl which made his heart leap into his throat. The man’s slurred mumbling continued unabated, Gabriel’s lack of lifelessness still apparently unnoticed. Gabriel wanted to swallow. He needed to swallow. His throat was on fire. Saliva was pooling in his mouth. He didn’t dare risk the movement of muscles he feared were too easily visible.
The thick fingers tapped along the top of his boot, searching for signs of life and the knotted laces keeping the heavy shoe on Gabriel’s foot. Gabriel could feel the dry, icy breezy teasing the beads of sweat collecting on his skin. How much longer, he wondered to himself. How much longer before he realizes I’m not dead?
The bearded stranger found what he was looking for. Gabriel could feel the fingers going to work undoing the loops and knots on the top of his left boot. Every nerve and muscle in Gabriel’s body was as tense and tight as a board. He knew things could get out of hand at any moment. He was going to need to be ready. Gabriel managed the will to move his fingers, bending and flexing them as subtly as he could. He felt the dead soldier’s belt under the cold tips of his fingers. Gabriel was looking for a weapon or anything he could quickly use as one.
The laces on his left boot were nearly untied. At the same time, Gabriel stretched his fingers out a few more centimeters. His eyes were looking around, scanning the edges of the cold, hellish landing spot. He spotted his dusty rucksack and rifle tangled in the nearby brush. The mumbling stranger tugged on Gabriel’s boot. On pure instinct, Gabriel tried to counter the motion, jerking his foot back toward himself.
In that same moment, the man stopped mumbling. Gabriel knew the game was up. He lifted his head, his eyes instantly drawn to the distant firelight glinting off a small, sharp knife the man had snatched with a hunter’s speed from his belt. Gabriel looked at the knife intensely, then up at the eyes of the man holding it. Their gaze was locked for only a moment, each of their hearts beating like mad. The stranger shouted something, a garbled warning perhaps. Gabriel could barely hear it through the thunderous thudding of his pulse against his eardrums.
The man raised his arm, the knife hanging for less than a second above Gabriel’s foot before the it was brought back down, the wool-covered arm moving in a blur. But Gabriel was already in motion. The padded tip of his boot connected with the man’s bearded chin with enough force to send him sprawling backwards. Gabriel felt the stained blade graze his leg, the fabric of his pants sheering under the razor edge. It missed carving into his flesh by the width of a hair.
The momentum of his defense had sent Gabriel rolling to one side and off his fallen peer. The old stranger was trying to recover in the dirt nearby. He was moaning loudly, crying out for help. Gabriel sat upright on his knees. He glanced at the man and then at the ground. He saw the knife at the same time as it’s owner, listing sideways where it had landed, tip-down, in the sand.
Together, the two men lunged at the same spot. Adrenaline was boiling in Gabriel’s veins as he collided with the older man. Neither reached the knife. They wrestled and fought feverishly, trying to pin or strangle the other before getting overpowered. The old man kept up his shouting, his groaning, rasping voice breaking through the silence around them.
Gabriel managed an advantage he thought he could hold. But a cloud of sand and pebbles peppered his eyes as he swung down with his fist. He slumped backward and off the flailing man, trying to wipe the stinging debris from his eyes. A rock cracked against his helmet with surprising force, sending Gabriel crashing to the ground. He tried to recover as quickly as he could, rolling onto his back before the man could attack again. It was too late. He was on his side when the bearded man leapt. The dirty blade glinted in his hand once more. His rasping voice bellowed noisily above him as he moved his arms in a swift, tight arch.
Suddenly, a sharp crack pierced the night. The older man straddling Gabriel’s body stiffened, his voice dropping off as he choked on a desperate breath he could not take. Gabriel felt a strange warmth on his face and neck. In the dark, he hadn’t been able to see the fine mist of blood that had erupted from the man’s chest. He had been shot, the bullet traveling fast and hot in the late night.
The dirty knife plopped against the dirt, the strength in the man’s fingers going slack. He was dead before he toppled over into the sand. Gabriel was stunned. He lay propped on one elbow in complete surprise and confusion. The sound of the brush beyond his small landing site grabbed Gabriel’s attention away from the dead stranger. Gabriel moved urgently, the hilt of the knife tucked tightly into his sweaty grip as he tried to sink into the shadows around the scene.
The man who had been smoking the cigarette appeared out of the darkness as if the night itself had given him shape. He stopped in the stirred sand between the two bodies, the dead paratrooper and the freshly shot stranger. Gabriel watched him carefully, trying to know when to move. Gabriel knew he would only have one opportunity to strike. The man had a rifle. Gabriel had a knife. He had to make his effort count.
The hunter crouched down, examining with surprise the body of the man in the long, wool tunics. Gabriel knew this was it. The rifleman’s back was turned, not all the way but maybe just enough. There was no counting to three like in the movies or books. Gathering his strength and courage, trying to ignore the racing, reverberating beat of his heart pounding in his chest and feeling another hot surge of adrenaline rush through his body like a tsunami, Gabriel leapt to his feet.
But he did not go farther than a step and half. He stopped and turned his head sharply. The fevered, mad cry of another man barreling out of the shadows made Gabriel nearly jump out of his skin. It was another soldier. Gabriel watched him with baffled amazement. The charging American had startled the rifleman who stumbled back to his feet while trying to turn around at the same time. Gabriel had managed a glimpse of the gun in the soldier’s hand. He had a shot and the time to take it had arrived.
The American’s rifle jammed. Where there should have been another deafening pop under a blinding, white-hot muzzle flare aimed in the direction of the tobacco-scented warrior, there was a much more disheartening noise. A ringing, hollow click and retching of small gears that was as unexpected as it was disconcerting.
The enemy’s gun worked with little effort. The older rifle was off his shoulder and loosely in his trembling grip in an instant. His own shot rang loudly, the muzzle flare as brilliant as the American’s gun would have been. The bullet that leapt like a rocket from the recesses of the dark, scathed barrel did its job as precisely as any other might.
Gabriel knew his countryman would be hit even before he was. The whole attempt seemed like suicide the moment it had started. When the newer, more advanced weapon made its fatal failure, Gabriel started on the step he had stopped. He stayed behind but to the side of his fellow paratrooper, fearing the bullet’s path would find him after exiting the back of his peer a few steps ahead. The soldier slumped to his knees, revealing the breathless corporal racing out of the darkness.
The rifleman saw Gabriel too late. The teenaged soldier pounced at the bearded man, knocking the arm with the rifle in it aside just as his trigger finger squeezed firmly. The shot was a powerful, heart-stopping clap of noise. It muted the hiss of the hot bullet traveling into the snow-dusted brush and frozen darkness. The eye-opening noise did nothing to cover the deafening gasp of the enemy who sank under the weight crashing down on top of him. Gabriel watched his eyes, studying without word or thought in that incredible moment how wide and fearful they became as the dirty blade silently dug into the rifleman’s torso.
By the third, heaving breath the enemy was dead. His blood was hot on Gabriel’s trembling hand. The dust hadn’t settled around the new corpse before Gabriel was on his feet again, backing away from the life he had just taken.
“Good work, Corporal...” said a tired, hoarse voice near his feet.
Gabriel turned around swiftly to look at the fellow American laying in the dirt. He thought he could make out stripes on the man’s shoulder, but he wasn’t sure how many there were. Gabriel guessed he was a sergeant. He didn’t know his name or what company he was with. Right at that moment, it didn’t matter. Gabriel peered at the sergeant’s rifle then over at the old stranger who had owned the deadly knife. “You took that shot?”
“That’s right. And you...you’re welcome, Corporal.”
“Thank you, Sergeant. But then why-”
A bullet slapped against the sand a few feet from the lifeless paratrooper. Another round whistled hauntingly as it zipped past Gabriel.
“Another time, Corporal! The enemy’s comin’! We’ve got to move!”
Gabriel began to panic. A moment ago, his movements and decisions seemed so clear and easy to act on. Now, suddenly, Gabriel felt lost. His thoughts were jumbled up, his mind distracted by the wounded sergeant, his lack of any real weaponry, and the sharp, knuckle-digging ache that would not show him mercy emanating from the side of his chest. From the darkness surrounding them, bullets moving too fast to see crisscrossed the small arena of dirt and blood.
“Can you walk,” Gabriel asked the bleeding officer.
The sergeant tried to sit up but quickly gave up. “Ha, ha...no!”
Shouting voices echoed over the fading gun shots. The enemy soldiers were drawing closer. He could hear the brush crunching as their hurried feet crashed through it.
Gabriel nodded his head. “Okay. Okay,” he said, trying to think. He was scanning the scene, trying to see into the dark. Never more than this would Gabriel have been more than thankful for just a little bit of sunlight. He blinked, trying to focus his eyes. In a passing glance, he spotted his own rifle, abandoned with his rucksack a short walk away.
His heaving chest made him wince as he looked back down at the sergeant. “Okay,” Gabriel said again, fighting back the pain that made him want to wheeze. “i’m going to have to carry you, sir.”
“What? No.”
Gabriel nodded his head. “Yes, sir. I can’t leave you here.”
“They’ll kill us both.”
“Then we’ll die as soldiers together, sir.” There was an unmistakable honesty in Gabriel’s trembling voice. “That’s better than dying out here alone.”
The sergeant stared up at the young paratrooper. Another shot cracked in the dark distance quickly being closed. Finally, the sergeant nodded his head to Gabriel who hurried to grab his near-forgotten gear. The enemy was within sight, the shadows of the early hour bending around them then retreating away completely as their guns came alive.
The fiery rattle of deadly bullets sprayed through the air and through the brush. Gabriel narrowly avoided his life coming to an end. With his rifle and rucksack slung over one shoulder, the frightened corporal returned to his wounded officer. With gritted teeth, he hoisted the sergeant he didn’t know onto the other shoulder.
“Let’s go, corporal!”
Practically dragging the wounded man, Gabriel led them away from the blood-stained landing site. Machine guns ratcheted a barrage of bullets toward them that whistled and hissed as they sailed through the air. Thin fountains of dirt sprang up at their feet where shots fell short. Twigs snapped loudly under their hasty, stumbling gait as they ducked the searing shells passing all too closely.
Gabriel felt a shot near his leg. It singed the thin hairs on his skin as it tore through the already gashed fabric. He took a deep, crippling breath. Tears welled up in his dirt-clotted eyes. The pain only pushed Gabriel harder. He tried to run even faster, carrying himself and the sergeant as swiftly as he could into the predawn darkness.
A twig from the dried brush snapped loudly in the still, late hour. Gabriel Audaz opened his eyes in a startled instant. He didn’t breathe. That was probably for the best. The first breath he had taken had been more painful than he was ready for. A sharp, stinging ache clawed at his lungs and chest, making his breathing shallow and staggered.
A silver coil of rancid smoke from a thin cigarette snaked its way through the desert air near Gabriel. He tried to ignore it to not stare at the smoldering butt of paper and foul tobacco held between the dry lips of a man Gabriel could barely discern in the late night darkness. The battle in the air had ceased some time ago. The curtains and trails of smoke had faded to nearly transparent traces, leaving the twinkling stars in the freezing, pre-dawn sky.
Gabriel’s ears burned in the awful silence of the war weary landscape. Even the dying fires in the distance seemed to exist without any kind of noise. There was only the sound of the strange man breathing as he walked slowly through the dry brush. Gabriel’s heart pounded with a racing drumbeat in his chest. The man’s slow march was leading him away one gradual step at a time. He was scanning the dark around him, leery of any movement.
Where are the others, Gabriel thought, struggling not to panic. He didn’t want to tremble or flinch any more than he wanted to feel the reeling ache in his chest and side. Why is there no gun fire? Am I the only one left? Gabriel inhaled as slowly and gently as he could manage. The smell of the man’s cigarette was finally fading.
Wait, Gabriel thought as he quietly exhaled, wincing in the pain of what he was certain were broken ribs. He remembered the soldier from the sky. Suddenly, Gabriel realized he couldn’t completely feel the ground. His head, neck, and the top of his back were in the dirt. Cold sand had turned to matted mud in the sweat-damp hair extending past the rim of his helmet and down to his neck. The rest of Gabriel’s body was splayed across the unmoving torso and legs of someone else-the paratrooper who had fallen into Gabriel’s parachute.
Gabriel managed to move his hand, just slightly, before he froze once more. A near-silent gasp escaped his lips. A spray of dust brushed against his face. More twigs snapped in the dark. The loud movement was much closer than before. Gabriel’s heart beat was fast it was more like the vibrations of a jack hammer than a rhythmic pulse in his body. He thought at first the man from before had quickly circled back around. The figure that appeared out of the dense, cold night didn’t quite look the same. Gabriel could barely see him and he wasn’t about to strain himself to gain a better look. The stench of sweat unwashed for weeks or longer reached out like a malicious entity from the heavily garbed man. Gabriel could still hear the frozen plants breaking under the man’s feet. His gait was uneven, one leg limping behind the other.
The man stopped a step away from the spot where Gabriel was laying as still as the paratrooper half underneath him. Gabriel kept his eyes away from the hints of firelight stretching through the night from unknown places. He tried to hold his breath, inhaling and exhaling quickly when he thought the man had turned away. Over the raging stampede of his frightened heart, Gabriel thought he could hear the man mumbling. He felt the man brush against his boots as he took a few cautious steps into Gabriel’s field of view. With his eyes almost completely closed, Gabriel still saw the man’s lips moving hurriedly. They were barely visible within the wiry, greasy nest of facial hair twice as long as the hair on Gabriel’s head.
Is he praying or simply talking to himself? Gabriel couldn’t tell. He wasn’t sure if it mattered. Is he an enemy soldier or just some wandering tribesman? In the fleeting glimpses Gabriel managed, he could see no rifle or pistol in view on the man. His thick robe of hastily and inexpertly sewn fuzzy, matted patches or dirty, sweat-stiffened tunic showed no evidence of any kind of hidden firearm. So is this man checking closely for signs of life or is he looking for someone or something specific? Gabriel couldn’t answer these questions. All he could do was lay there, atop the corpse of his fellow soldier he wasn’t sure he even knew. All Gabriel could do was pray he would survive.
Still mumbling in a language far from English, the wandering stranger crouched down near Gabriel’s feet. He was out of Gabriel’s limited range of vision. Gabriel would have to move in order to see him. Moment’s later, Gabriel realized he didn’t have to move to know what was happening.
A calloused hand of thick, red fingers slapped against Gabriel’s left foot. It was a probing glance of skin against boot. Gabriel tried not to flinch. He felt his toes curl which made his heart leap into his throat. The man’s slurred mumbling continued unabated, Gabriel’s lack of lifelessness still apparently unnoticed. Gabriel wanted to swallow. He needed to swallow. His throat was on fire. Saliva was pooling in his mouth. He didn’t dare risk the movement of muscles he feared were too easily visible.
The thick fingers tapped along the top of his boot, searching for signs of life and the knotted laces keeping the heavy shoe on Gabriel’s foot. Gabriel could feel the dry, icy breezy teasing the beads of sweat collecting on his skin. How much longer, he wondered to himself. How much longer before he realizes I’m not dead?
The bearded stranger found what he was looking for. Gabriel could feel the fingers going to work undoing the loops and knots on the top of his left boot. Every nerve and muscle in Gabriel’s body was as tense and tight as a board. He knew things could get out of hand at any moment. He was going to need to be ready. Gabriel managed the will to move his fingers, bending and flexing them as subtly as he could. He felt the dead soldier’s belt under the cold tips of his fingers. Gabriel was looking for a weapon or anything he could quickly use as one.
The laces on his left boot were nearly untied. At the same time, Gabriel stretched his fingers out a few more centimeters. His eyes were looking around, scanning the edges of the cold, hellish landing spot. He spotted his dusty rucksack and rifle tangled in the nearby brush. The mumbling stranger tugged on Gabriel’s boot. On pure instinct, Gabriel tried to counter the motion, jerking his foot back toward himself.
In that same moment, the man stopped mumbling. Gabriel knew the game was up. He lifted his head, his eyes instantly drawn to the distant firelight glinting off a small, sharp knife the man had snatched with a hunter’s speed from his belt. Gabriel looked at the knife intensely, then up at the eyes of the man holding it. Their gaze was locked for only a moment, each of their hearts beating like mad. The stranger shouted something, a garbled warning perhaps. Gabriel could barely hear it through the thunderous thudding of his pulse against his eardrums.
The man raised his arm, the knife hanging for less than a second above Gabriel’s foot before the it was brought back down, the wool-covered arm moving in a blur. But Gabriel was already in motion. The padded tip of his boot connected with the man’s bearded chin with enough force to send him sprawling backwards. Gabriel felt the stained blade graze his leg, the fabric of his pants sheering under the razor edge. It missed carving into his flesh by the width of a hair.
The momentum of his defense had sent Gabriel rolling to one side and off his fallen peer. The old stranger was trying to recover in the dirt nearby. He was moaning loudly, crying out for help. Gabriel sat upright on his knees. He glanced at the man and then at the ground. He saw the knife at the same time as it’s owner, listing sideways where it had landed, tip-down, in the sand.
Together, the two men lunged at the same spot. Adrenaline was boiling in Gabriel’s veins as he collided with the older man. Neither reached the knife. They wrestled and fought feverishly, trying to pin or strangle the other before getting overpowered. The old man kept up his shouting, his groaning, rasping voice breaking through the silence around them.
Gabriel managed an advantage he thought he could hold. But a cloud of sand and pebbles peppered his eyes as he swung down with his fist. He slumped backward and off the flailing man, trying to wipe the stinging debris from his eyes. A rock cracked against his helmet with surprising force, sending Gabriel crashing to the ground. He tried to recover as quickly as he could, rolling onto his back before the man could attack again. It was too late. He was on his side when the bearded man leapt. The dirty blade glinted in his hand once more. His rasping voice bellowed noisily above him as he moved his arms in a swift, tight arch.
Suddenly, a sharp crack pierced the night. The older man straddling Gabriel’s body stiffened, his voice dropping off as he choked on a desperate breath he could not take. Gabriel felt a strange warmth on his face and neck. In the dark, he hadn’t been able to see the fine mist of blood that had erupted from the man’s chest. He had been shot, the bullet traveling fast and hot in the late night.
The dirty knife plopped against the dirt, the strength in the man’s fingers going slack. He was dead before he toppled over into the sand. Gabriel was stunned. He lay propped on one elbow in complete surprise and confusion. The sound of the brush beyond his small landing site grabbed Gabriel’s attention away from the dead stranger. Gabriel moved urgently, the hilt of the knife tucked tightly into his sweaty grip as he tried to sink into the shadows around the scene.
The man who had been smoking the cigarette appeared out of the darkness as if the night itself had given him shape. He stopped in the stirred sand between the two bodies, the dead paratrooper and the freshly shot stranger. Gabriel watched him carefully, trying to know when to move. Gabriel knew he would only have one opportunity to strike. The man had a rifle. Gabriel had a knife. He had to make his effort count.
The hunter crouched down, examining with surprise the body of the man in the long, wool tunics. Gabriel knew this was it. The rifleman’s back was turned, not all the way but maybe just enough. There was no counting to three like in the movies or books. Gathering his strength and courage, trying to ignore the racing, reverberating beat of his heart pounding in his chest and feeling another hot surge of adrenaline rush through his body like a tsunami, Gabriel leapt to his feet.
But he did not go farther than a step and half. He stopped and turned his head sharply. The fevered, mad cry of another man barreling out of the shadows made Gabriel nearly jump out of his skin. It was another soldier. Gabriel watched him with baffled amazement. The charging American had startled the rifleman who stumbled back to his feet while trying to turn around at the same time. Gabriel had managed a glimpse of the gun in the soldier’s hand. He had a shot and the time to take it had arrived.
The American’s rifle jammed. Where there should have been another deafening pop under a blinding, white-hot muzzle flare aimed in the direction of the tobacco-scented warrior, there was a much more disheartening noise. A ringing, hollow click and retching of small gears that was as unexpected as it was disconcerting.
The enemy’s gun worked with little effort. The older rifle was off his shoulder and loosely in his trembling grip in an instant. His own shot rang loudly, the muzzle flare as brilliant as the American’s gun would have been. The bullet that leapt like a rocket from the recesses of the dark, scathed barrel did its job as precisely as any other might.
Gabriel knew his countryman would be hit even before he was. The whole attempt seemed like suicide the moment it had started. When the newer, more advanced weapon made its fatal failure, Gabriel started on the step he had stopped. He stayed behind but to the side of his fellow paratrooper, fearing the bullet’s path would find him after exiting the back of his peer a few steps ahead. The soldier slumped to his knees, revealing the breathless corporal racing out of the darkness.
The rifleman saw Gabriel too late. The teenaged soldier pounced at the bearded man, knocking the arm with the rifle in it aside just as his trigger finger squeezed firmly. The shot was a powerful, heart-stopping clap of noise. It muted the hiss of the hot bullet traveling into the snow-dusted brush and frozen darkness. The eye-opening noise did nothing to cover the deafening gasp of the enemy who sank under the weight crashing down on top of him. Gabriel watched his eyes, studying without word or thought in that incredible moment how wide and fearful they became as the dirty blade silently dug into the rifleman’s torso.
By the third, heaving breath the enemy was dead. His blood was hot on Gabriel’s trembling hand. The dust hadn’t settled around the new corpse before Gabriel was on his feet again, backing away from the life he had just taken.
“Good work, Corporal...” said a tired, hoarse voice near his feet.
Gabriel turned around swiftly to look at the fellow American laying in the dirt. He thought he could make out stripes on the man’s shoulder, but he wasn’t sure how many there were. Gabriel guessed he was a sergeant. He didn’t know his name or what company he was with. Right at that moment, it didn’t matter. Gabriel peered at the sergeant’s rifle then over at the old stranger who had owned the deadly knife. “You took that shot?”
“That’s right. And you...you’re welcome, Corporal.”
“Thank you, Sergeant. But then why-”
A bullet slapped against the sand a few feet from the lifeless paratrooper. Another round whistled hauntingly as it zipped past Gabriel.
“Another time, Corporal! The enemy’s comin’! We’ve got to move!”
Gabriel began to panic. A moment ago, his movements and decisions seemed so clear and easy to act on. Now, suddenly, Gabriel felt lost. His thoughts were jumbled up, his mind distracted by the wounded sergeant, his lack of any real weaponry, and the sharp, knuckle-digging ache that would not show him mercy emanating from the side of his chest. From the darkness surrounding them, bullets moving too fast to see crisscrossed the small arena of dirt and blood.
“Can you walk,” Gabriel asked the bleeding officer.
The sergeant tried to sit up but quickly gave up. “Ha, ha...no!”
Shouting voices echoed over the fading gun shots. The enemy soldiers were drawing closer. He could hear the brush crunching as their hurried feet crashed through it.
Gabriel nodded his head. “Okay. Okay,” he said, trying to think. He was scanning the scene, trying to see into the dark. Never more than this would Gabriel have been more than thankful for just a little bit of sunlight. He blinked, trying to focus his eyes. In a passing glance, he spotted his own rifle, abandoned with his rucksack a short walk away.
His heaving chest made him wince as he looked back down at the sergeant. “Okay,” Gabriel said again, fighting back the pain that made him want to wheeze. “i’m going to have to carry you, sir.”
“What? No.”
Gabriel nodded his head. “Yes, sir. I can’t leave you here.”
“They’ll kill us both.”
“Then we’ll die as soldiers together, sir.” There was an unmistakable honesty in Gabriel’s trembling voice. “That’s better than dying out here alone.”
The sergeant stared up at the young paratrooper. Another shot cracked in the dark distance quickly being closed. Finally, the sergeant nodded his head to Gabriel who hurried to grab his near-forgotten gear. The enemy was within sight, the shadows of the early hour bending around them then retreating away completely as their guns came alive.
The fiery rattle of deadly bullets sprayed through the air and through the brush. Gabriel narrowly avoided his life coming to an end. With his rifle and rucksack slung over one shoulder, the frightened corporal returned to his wounded officer. With gritted teeth, he hoisted the sergeant he didn’t know onto the other shoulder.
“Let’s go, corporal!”
Practically dragging the wounded man, Gabriel led them away from the blood-stained landing site. Machine guns ratcheted a barrage of bullets toward them that whistled and hissed as they sailed through the air. Thin fountains of dirt sprang up at their feet where shots fell short. Twigs snapped loudly under their hasty, stumbling gait as they ducked the searing shells passing all too closely.
Gabriel felt a shot near his leg. It singed the thin hairs on his skin as it tore through the already gashed fabric. He took a deep, crippling breath. Tears welled up in his dirt-clotted eyes. The pain only pushed Gabriel harder. He tried to run even faster, carrying himself and the sergeant as swiftly as he could into the predawn darkness.
Monday, June 13, 2011
II. "The Glorious Cause"
PART THREE
Carlos Columbus Audaz breathed in slowly. How old was he? How old did he feel right at that moment? Still in that disorienting, hazy space between asleep and awake, Carlos Columbus Audaz could have been eight years old all over again. He was in his childhood bedroom, a medium-sized square space in the back corner of a faded peach-colored stucco ranch house. The sound of his phone buzzing across the warped, wooden end-table beside his bed woke Carlos up further. Ignoring the vibrating device an arm’s reach away, Carlos glanced around his room. He scanned the old posters still tacked to the walls, the colors yellowed and opaque, the edges worn down and curling at the corners. He looked at his open closet, at the pile of clothes falling out of it. The door itself was partially and permanently ajar as it hung onto a single remaining hinge.
The top of the end table shook again as his phone gave a few more short, quick bursts of noise. Whomever had called had just left a voicemail. Carlos climbed out of bed, straightening his wrinkled clothes as best he could. He had fallen asleep almost as soon as he had arrived. A nearby comic book-themed clock told him his nap had only lasted about an hour.
It was the smell of his mother’s cooking and not the hum of his mobile phone dancing across the bedside table that had awoken him. He stared past his reflection in the full length mirror mounted to the back of his bedroom door. The dusty glass rattled as another door in the house was opened and then quickly, forcefully shut again. The din of his family was growing in intensity as dinner time approached. Carlos wasn’t paying them much attention yet. His thoughts were focused on himself. He knew where he was in time. His reflection told him how old he was. His soft, jet-black hair he tried to maintain at a stylishly unkempt short to medium length was subtly showing signs of thinning at his widow’s peak. The skin around his tired, reddened green eyes was a little more baggy than it used to be. The lines of his jaw seemed harder and more defined. His chest looked broader, along with his waist, but without any real improvement or difference in his muscle definition.
Maybe it was because he was turning thirty in a few days. That might explain the strange feeling wrapped tightly inside of himself. He felt it like an anchor on his shoulders and in his soul. Yet, he could not define it or explain it. He wasn’t even sure when he had started to feel this way. Surely not forever, Carlos thought to himself.
Suddenly, the sound of his mother’s voice, rolling unstoppably like an avalanche down the hallway to his room, shook Carlos out of his stupor. He heard her rapid footsteps across the carpet an instant before he heard her call to him through the door. While often loud and direct, his mother’s voice still had a tenderness about it. Her spanish rolled off her tongue like a song. She often spoke it around the house but always preferred english when out in public. His mother had worked hard to become an American citizen long before his birth and so chose to speak the language of the country she loved over her own native speech.
She had called him to dinner and there was no keeping Luisa Audaz waiting.
“Look everyone,” his sister announced as Carlos entered the kitchen. “The great filmmaker is awake. Shh, he may be creating in his mind right now,” she added, chuckling deviously.
Carlos screwed up his face at her, his only reply to his always sarcastic sibling. Debbie Audaz was two years older than Carlos, a fact she often made sure to needlessly point out to him or anyone she felt might be curious to know. She was standing against the counter, sweat beading on her brow. She was either waiting to be helpful or just trying to secure attention for herself while other people stayed busy around her. She was absently fingering the slightly tarnished engagement ring on her left hand. It had been over two years since her fiance had proposed. It wasn’t a case of cold feet or procrastination on the couples’ part. They were in the waiting period to get all three marriage licenses needed in order to make it official.
Carlos felt a tender, wrinkled hand on his shoulder. He caught a whiff of familiar perfume before turning around to be greeted by the smiling face of his sixty year-old aunt, Victoria. “Ahh, mijo,” she said radiantly. He had always felt as if he were her favorite. Carlos made a show of hugging her tight in front of his sister. “How are you feeling,” his aunt asked.
Carlos smiled down at the shorter woman. She was watching his face carefully. “I’m fine, Aunt Victoria. I promise.”
Aunt Victoria blinked but kept her gaze locked onto Carlos, peering without a sense of end into his own eyes. Carlos quickly went from feeling awkward to uncomfortable. What is she looking for, he thought, practically in a panic.
Just then, his mother’s voice cut through the steamy silence of the kitchen. Carlos jumped in surprise. His aunt smiled up at him, letting go of his shoulders she had been gripping tightly under her wrinkled fingers. “You’re going to burn a hole in my son like that,” Luisa had said curtly when she entered the kitchen and pushed past her sister in-law. “Now come stir your sauce. I’d like to serve dinner now.”
Carlos stared at his mother. Even sweating in the sultry kitchen that felt as if it had never been touched by an air conditioner, even moving in a busied fluster of motion, Luisa Audaz was radiant. Her strength was like Atlas, her shoulders strong and square as she carried the weight of her family across the top of her back and through space and time.
“Carlos, go sit down at the table,” she said, turning away from the overcrowded stove. “I’ll bring you a plate.”
Carlos didn’t argue. He simply nodded, walking quietly into the dining room. A spicy-sweet scent flooded his nostrils as he crossed the threshold into the softly lit room. It was a wide rectangle with a pair of narrow, curtained windows on the far wall past the foot of the dining table. His mother had repainted in there since he had last been at home. Two years, he realized. At least that. The thick, dark brown, wooden table was the same. All the chairs appeared to be the originals, a fact confirmed when Carlos applied some pressure with his index finger to the top of the one nearest to him. The ornate carvings along the sides and head of each chair were crowned by an evenly finished cross. In his youth, Carlos had been roughhousing during a random adventure. His game ended when the chair rocketing him into space sank backwards against the wall and then to the floor. The jarring impact had made him dizzy and nearly snapped the hand carved cross clean off the top of the chair.
“Not in there,” his mother said, leaning her head through the doorway.
Carlos turned around. “Why?”
Suddenly, the hazy bulbs on the low-hanging chandelier went dark. The mustard-orange glow from above the stove vanished. Everything in the house went quiet and still. Carlos glanced around curiously. He looked at his mother again with confusion.
“It happens everyday, mijo.”
“Everyday?”
“Yes. Sometimes later. But, sometimes not. Today is not.” Luisa shrugged her shoulders. “We’ve learned to start doing without during the time.”
Carlos began to speak, “But...” His mother waved her hand, brushing his thought away.
“We’ll eat outside. The table is already set. Your sister and Uncle Ramòn are outside already.”
Carlos looked toward the windows at the far side of the room. His eyes lingered on the lifeless and lightless chandelier hanging over the center of the table. He turned to his mother once more. “But-”
“Go, Carlos! Dinner is ready.”
Carlos Columbus Audaz breathed in slowly. How old was he? How old did he feel right at that moment? Still in that disorienting, hazy space between asleep and awake, Carlos Columbus Audaz could have been eight years old all over again. He was in his childhood bedroom, a medium-sized square space in the back corner of a faded peach-colored stucco ranch house. The sound of his phone buzzing across the warped, wooden end-table beside his bed woke Carlos up further. Ignoring the vibrating device an arm’s reach away, Carlos glanced around his room. He scanned the old posters still tacked to the walls, the colors yellowed and opaque, the edges worn down and curling at the corners. He looked at his open closet, at the pile of clothes falling out of it. The door itself was partially and permanently ajar as it hung onto a single remaining hinge.
The top of the end table shook again as his phone gave a few more short, quick bursts of noise. Whomever had called had just left a voicemail. Carlos climbed out of bed, straightening his wrinkled clothes as best he could. He had fallen asleep almost as soon as he had arrived. A nearby comic book-themed clock told him his nap had only lasted about an hour.
It was the smell of his mother’s cooking and not the hum of his mobile phone dancing across the bedside table that had awoken him. He stared past his reflection in the full length mirror mounted to the back of his bedroom door. The dusty glass rattled as another door in the house was opened and then quickly, forcefully shut again. The din of his family was growing in intensity as dinner time approached. Carlos wasn’t paying them much attention yet. His thoughts were focused on himself. He knew where he was in time. His reflection told him how old he was. His soft, jet-black hair he tried to maintain at a stylishly unkempt short to medium length was subtly showing signs of thinning at his widow’s peak. The skin around his tired, reddened green eyes was a little more baggy than it used to be. The lines of his jaw seemed harder and more defined. His chest looked broader, along with his waist, but without any real improvement or difference in his muscle definition.
Maybe it was because he was turning thirty in a few days. That might explain the strange feeling wrapped tightly inside of himself. He felt it like an anchor on his shoulders and in his soul. Yet, he could not define it or explain it. He wasn’t even sure when he had started to feel this way. Surely not forever, Carlos thought to himself.
Suddenly, the sound of his mother’s voice, rolling unstoppably like an avalanche down the hallway to his room, shook Carlos out of his stupor. He heard her rapid footsteps across the carpet an instant before he heard her call to him through the door. While often loud and direct, his mother’s voice still had a tenderness about it. Her spanish rolled off her tongue like a song. She often spoke it around the house but always preferred english when out in public. His mother had worked hard to become an American citizen long before his birth and so chose to speak the language of the country she loved over her own native speech.
She had called him to dinner and there was no keeping Luisa Audaz waiting.
“Look everyone,” his sister announced as Carlos entered the kitchen. “The great filmmaker is awake. Shh, he may be creating in his mind right now,” she added, chuckling deviously.
Carlos screwed up his face at her, his only reply to his always sarcastic sibling. Debbie Audaz was two years older than Carlos, a fact she often made sure to needlessly point out to him or anyone she felt might be curious to know. She was standing against the counter, sweat beading on her brow. She was either waiting to be helpful or just trying to secure attention for herself while other people stayed busy around her. She was absently fingering the slightly tarnished engagement ring on her left hand. It had been over two years since her fiance had proposed. It wasn’t a case of cold feet or procrastination on the couples’ part. They were in the waiting period to get all three marriage licenses needed in order to make it official.
Carlos felt a tender, wrinkled hand on his shoulder. He caught a whiff of familiar perfume before turning around to be greeted by the smiling face of his sixty year-old aunt, Victoria. “Ahh, mijo,” she said radiantly. He had always felt as if he were her favorite. Carlos made a show of hugging her tight in front of his sister. “How are you feeling,” his aunt asked.
Carlos smiled down at the shorter woman. She was watching his face carefully. “I’m fine, Aunt Victoria. I promise.”
Aunt Victoria blinked but kept her gaze locked onto Carlos, peering without a sense of end into his own eyes. Carlos quickly went from feeling awkward to uncomfortable. What is she looking for, he thought, practically in a panic.
Just then, his mother’s voice cut through the steamy silence of the kitchen. Carlos jumped in surprise. His aunt smiled up at him, letting go of his shoulders she had been gripping tightly under her wrinkled fingers. “You’re going to burn a hole in my son like that,” Luisa had said curtly when she entered the kitchen and pushed past her sister in-law. “Now come stir your sauce. I’d like to serve dinner now.”
Carlos stared at his mother. Even sweating in the sultry kitchen that felt as if it had never been touched by an air conditioner, even moving in a busied fluster of motion, Luisa Audaz was radiant. Her strength was like Atlas, her shoulders strong and square as she carried the weight of her family across the top of her back and through space and time.
“Carlos, go sit down at the table,” she said, turning away from the overcrowded stove. “I’ll bring you a plate.”
Carlos didn’t argue. He simply nodded, walking quietly into the dining room. A spicy-sweet scent flooded his nostrils as he crossed the threshold into the softly lit room. It was a wide rectangle with a pair of narrow, curtained windows on the far wall past the foot of the dining table. His mother had repainted in there since he had last been at home. Two years, he realized. At least that. The thick, dark brown, wooden table was the same. All the chairs appeared to be the originals, a fact confirmed when Carlos applied some pressure with his index finger to the top of the one nearest to him. The ornate carvings along the sides and head of each chair were crowned by an evenly finished cross. In his youth, Carlos had been roughhousing during a random adventure. His game ended when the chair rocketing him into space sank backwards against the wall and then to the floor. The jarring impact had made him dizzy and nearly snapped the hand carved cross clean off the top of the chair.
“Not in there,” his mother said, leaning her head through the doorway.
Carlos turned around. “Why?”
Suddenly, the hazy bulbs on the low-hanging chandelier went dark. The mustard-orange glow from above the stove vanished. Everything in the house went quiet and still. Carlos glanced around curiously. He looked at his mother again with confusion.
“It happens everyday, mijo.”
“Everyday?”
“Yes. Sometimes later. But, sometimes not. Today is not.” Luisa shrugged her shoulders. “We’ve learned to start doing without during the time.”
Carlos began to speak, “But...” His mother waved her hand, brushing his thought away.
“We’ll eat outside. The table is already set. Your sister and Uncle Ramòn are outside already.”
Carlos looked toward the windows at the far side of the room. His eyes lingered on the lifeless and lightless chandelier hanging over the center of the table. He turned to his mother once more. “But-”
“Go, Carlos! Dinner is ready.”
Monday, June 6, 2011
II. "The Glorious Cause"
PART TWO
Gabriel Audaz awoke with a start. He blinked away the moment’s disorientation. He didn’t even remember falling asleep. It was a symptom of his body he didn’t understand. Despite a decent amount of rest, energy from a good meal, and a self-conscious effort to stay positive and awake, Gabriel had succumb. School plays, big exams with the weight of his future riding on a dozen or more rows of scantron bubbles, even dates he’d let himself get talked or dragged into would result in the same phenomena: nearly insurmountable, embarrassing drowsiness. If he became nervous enough, Gabriel would find himself sliding down a yawn-filled tunnel toward dreamland.
For a long minute after being stirred by a sudden shudder of turbulence, Gabriel felt extremely awkward. That gnawing embarrassment from his recent youth persisted until a new noise reached his ears. He glanced down the length of the noisy Osprey until his halo-green eyes found a soldier heaving into a soggy paper bag. Just like that, Gabriel’s unease about his nervous narcolepsy diminished far from the front of his mind. He wondered briefly in the impending action his company was about to face would shock his system, finally waking him up in the mad waves of his anxiety.
“Thirty seconds!”
Gabriel Audaz, a newly promoted corporal in the United States Army Airborne, looked up at his commanding officer. He took a deep breath, trying to ignore the sound and smell of the soldier upchucking everything he’d ever eaten into the small, white bag gripped like a life line in his white-knuckled fingers. A second later the signal was given and Gabriel rose uneasily to his feet. He had been training for this moment for the last six months. The fact that it had arrived was not easing the terrible fear crawling through every trembling muscle in Gabriel’s body.
The already dim, mustard yellow and dingy orange lights of the grease, kerosene, and vomit-smelling steel world around the standing soldiers suddenly went dark. A piercing red glow instantly replaced the fleeting darkness. Outside the bulkhead, Gabriel could hear the deep, droning, steady whirr of the powerful propellor engines. He was trying to listen beyond the awesome horsepower driving each rotor blade around in racing, blurred circles through the chilly, dark sky.
“What are you most afraid of?”
Gabriel looked over his shoulder at the paratrooper behind him. “Huh,” he asked over the din of the plane. The soldier peered at him strangely, annoyed to be dragged out of his own thoughts by the surprise query.
“Gabriel...”
Gabriel turned his head and blinked in surprise. Where in one moment he had been on a V-22 Osprey flying into enemy territory in southern Afghanistan, Gabriel Audaz suddenly found himself staring into the face of his best friend. He recognized the scene from over a year before the present late night in the armored plane.
“You can’t avoid the question,” she said, trying to look him in the eyes.
Gabriel brushed loose strands of his soft, black hair off his brow. It was another nervous tick, though that one easier to control. It was also breezy. They were sitting in the sand, the waves crashing nearby against the beach. A blanket of stars twinkled above them before being erased in a pocket of clouds hanging in the western sky above the ocean. Lightning lit the rolling, gray masses whose tops were climbing high into the distant sky. An occasional rumble of thunder found its way to the sandy shore line.
“I’m not,” Gabriel had finally said. “I’m just thinking...”
“About the answer?”
Gabriel glanced at his best friend, then away from her. He looked briefly over the sand to the wind-whipped flames of a small camp fire dancing in the frequent gusts pushed off the churning waters. Their friends were laughing and playing around the amber and yellow light. “I guess,” he had said distantly. He let his gaze fall back to the sand in front of him. “...About...how to answer, too,” Gabriel continued hesitantly.
“I’m not sure I understand.”
The environment suddenly changed. Gabriel blinked, his mind back to the present, to the line of soldiers standing in the aircraft. The ramp at the tail of the plane was opening. Eddies of cold, dirt-scented air mixed with the engine exhaust shoved and wound their way up the length of the flying vehicle. The red lights on the bulkheads shifted to green. They were jumping. The time to fight or die had come.
“I didn’t think it was that complicated a question,” Gabriel’s best friend had said. The two of them had decided to play truth or dare, only without the dares. They were graduating high school in a matter of weeks and they didn’t want to part ways without knowing everything they didn’t already about one another.
Gabriel knew she had suspected a secret he had been keeping inside of himself. The question about his fear had been another way to get through the locked door around his heart. He wanted to tell someone, but then, simultaneously, he absolutely did not. Giving it a voice, a description with clearly defined words would make it real. He was afraid of what his world would become after that. And yet, that fear was still less than another.
A strong tap on his shoulder brought Gabriel’s mind forward again. He nodded his head and tapped the shoulder in front of him. The status check went up the line of soldiers to the commanding officer waiting near the door. Behind that man, the dark sky suddenly became bright and alive. A fiery burst consumed the view beyond the ramp. The concussion slammed against the ear drums of the soldiers almost as hard as it hit the plane. Everyone in line braced themselves as the Osprey jumped and rocked from side to side. Gabriel watched the view past the open ramp. He saw the other planes in the convoy dive and pitch away from the exploding rounds beginning to pepper the air.
“Do you have an answer,” she had asked. Her name was Isabella Faroe. She had been in love with Gabriel since the seventh grade. They had tried to date once. The failed attempt had led to a short-lived division in their friendship.
Gabriel remembered looking up at her.. “I do.”
She had smiled warmly, laughing away her frustration. “Then tell me.”
The line on the plane was moving. They were jumping. Gabriel followed close behind the soldier in front of him. Their aircraft rocked once more. Gabriel, along with those around him, struggled to stay standing upright. The bulkheads shuddered noisily. The blistering hot hiss of pulverized shrapnel and debris brushing against the fuselage was disconcerting as Gabriel and the remaining soldiers approached the open ramp.
A sound like air suddenly and loudly being sucked through a straw made every heart skip a beat. It was a noise that was so fast it didn’t seem real. It was replaced, only a second after it was first heard, by a the deafening pop of a devastating explosion. All eyes were on the Osprey behind their own. Each soldier still in the jump line watched with unblinking focus as the swollen, steel bird rolled uncontrollably onto its side. Fire and smoke stretched out of the molten, shattered interior of the crashing plane.
Gabriel thought of the sound before the explosion. He knew it had been a missile. He had been scared to death of jumping out of the aircraft and into the open battle below. But after watching the other plane be destroyed so fast, so mercilessly, Gabriel was now even more afraid to stay on board any longer. The sentiment seemed to be shared by everyone still on board. The remaining soldiers moved hurriedly toward the ramp, leaping into the open night sky with racing pulses and their hearts in their throats.
It was finally Gabriel’s turn. It happened so fast and seamlessly he barely had time to realize or think about it. One moment he was a few steps away from the ramp’s edge. The next moment there was nothing under his feet. The icy-cold air was howling past his ears, the wind buffeting against the gear strapped tightly to his body. Compared to the din of the plane soaring away above his opening parachute canopy, the world around Gabriel suddenly seemed so quiet.
His mind drifted back to that night on the beach. “I’m afraid...” Gabriel had begun to say. “...I mean, really afraid...of...failing to act.”
Isabella frowned. “Huh? I don’t understand.”
Gabriel leaned forward, the soft sand spilling off of his hands as he had brought them up, folding his arms on top of his knees he had braced against his chest. “The things happening inside of me, the feelings I have that won’t go away-”
“Sweetie, it’s okay,” Isabella had said reassuringly. “They’re natural. It is just who you are...or will be, starting to come out.”
“That’s the thing. I don’t know who or what that is. I want to know but I also want to do the right thing. I’m joining the army, Izzy. And, I know...this stuff...doesn’t matter anymore. Not officially.”
Isabella watched her best friend carefully. “But?”
“But I’m not ready to give these feelings, these thoughts a voice or name yet. I’m in complete conflict. I...I want to be as honest as possible in my life; with you...with everyone. With God, especially. Yet, I can’t help but keep this inside and I’m so, so very afraid that I’m going to die before I can accept who and what I am. Before...before I can finally put my demons to rest.”
Gabriel remembered Isabella appearing to think for a long moment. Finally, she grinned at him then scooted through the sand on her haunches. She hugged her best friend tightly. “Do you want to pray with me?”
Gabriel remembered nodding. A sharp, swift noise that became a deafening crackle interrupted his thoughts. He looked up past the canopy of his parachute. A few seconds had gone by since he’d leapt out of the advancing Osprey. Another transport had been hit. It’s frame was lost to sight behind a white-hot plume spraying molten steel airplane parts over the frost-covered terrain. All at once, the late-night sky seemed to come alive again. The sea of descending paratroopers were dark silhouettes against a breathtaking backdrop of exploding mortars, anti-aircraft fire, and the ever more frequent vapor trails of ground-launched rockets.
The ground wasn’t getting closer fast enough. The engines of one of the Osprey’s revved up loudly, the sound climbing over the mire of chaos blending together into one awful, nightmarish noise. Gabriel looked up again into the swaths of blistering fire and choking smoke. Paratroopers were leaping madly out of the dying plane rolling onto is mangled side, fire consuming its blown-open cockpit to the passenger compartment. Gabriel watched the horror of the hell-spawned scene. Wrapped in searing flames glowing brightly, his peers fell out of the deadly storm. From a distance they looked just like any other pieces of debris. But Gabriel knew those were people he had seen and spoken to, people he had eaten beside, people he had trained with.
Suddenly, there were more screams, cries of bloody agony echoing throughout the crowded sky. Between each heart-wrenching bellow, Gabriel was beginning to detect the source of the pain. It became very clear when a bullet meant for his life zipped hotly by his ear. A tracer round rocketed away into the sky to his right. Gabriel watched it appear then vanish in an instant. Just beyond its path, something changed in the dark. It took a moment for Gabriel to realize it was another paratrooper. The soldier’s parachute had been hit by the spray of bullets from the ground.
Gabriel looked down, trying to fend off the panic beginning to set in. He was almost there, the small, dry patches of brush throwing web-like and sinewy shadows across the dirt in the sky-consuming explosions high above his canopy. Another few seconds and he would be on the ground.
Then, something went wrong. Gabriel heard the clinking of metal above him. There was the way the wind shifted and sounded as if bouncing and rolling off of an object free falling through the sky. Gabriel looked up. He managed only a fleeting second to catch a terrifying glimpse of the flailing body before it hit the top of his parachute. The swift, smooth descent to the dusty floor under his boots became a breathless drop.
First, the parachute-wrapped soldier, barely alive, collided with Gabriel. The unstoppable force knocked him onto his back. In a panic, Gabriel and the unknown compatriot rolled over each other as the ground spread out on all sides around them. Gabriel felt the air rush from his lungs at the moment of impact. An overwhelming wave of pain barreled unstoppably through his body. Gabriel remembered smelling sand and burning airplane fuel raining out of the sky. He remembered the feeling of the darkness closing in, blocking out the glow of the fires above him and the sounds of bullets erupting from smoking rifles all around. As he blacked out, Gabriel wondered, for an instant, if we would be waking up again.
Gabriel Audaz awoke with a start. He blinked away the moment’s disorientation. He didn’t even remember falling asleep. It was a symptom of his body he didn’t understand. Despite a decent amount of rest, energy from a good meal, and a self-conscious effort to stay positive and awake, Gabriel had succumb. School plays, big exams with the weight of his future riding on a dozen or more rows of scantron bubbles, even dates he’d let himself get talked or dragged into would result in the same phenomena: nearly insurmountable, embarrassing drowsiness. If he became nervous enough, Gabriel would find himself sliding down a yawn-filled tunnel toward dreamland.
For a long minute after being stirred by a sudden shudder of turbulence, Gabriel felt extremely awkward. That gnawing embarrassment from his recent youth persisted until a new noise reached his ears. He glanced down the length of the noisy Osprey until his halo-green eyes found a soldier heaving into a soggy paper bag. Just like that, Gabriel’s unease about his nervous narcolepsy diminished far from the front of his mind. He wondered briefly in the impending action his company was about to face would shock his system, finally waking him up in the mad waves of his anxiety.
“Thirty seconds!”
Gabriel Audaz, a newly promoted corporal in the United States Army Airborne, looked up at his commanding officer. He took a deep breath, trying to ignore the sound and smell of the soldier upchucking everything he’d ever eaten into the small, white bag gripped like a life line in his white-knuckled fingers. A second later the signal was given and Gabriel rose uneasily to his feet. He had been training for this moment for the last six months. The fact that it had arrived was not easing the terrible fear crawling through every trembling muscle in Gabriel’s body.
The already dim, mustard yellow and dingy orange lights of the grease, kerosene, and vomit-smelling steel world around the standing soldiers suddenly went dark. A piercing red glow instantly replaced the fleeting darkness. Outside the bulkhead, Gabriel could hear the deep, droning, steady whirr of the powerful propellor engines. He was trying to listen beyond the awesome horsepower driving each rotor blade around in racing, blurred circles through the chilly, dark sky.
“What are you most afraid of?”
Gabriel looked over his shoulder at the paratrooper behind him. “Huh,” he asked over the din of the plane. The soldier peered at him strangely, annoyed to be dragged out of his own thoughts by the surprise query.
“Gabriel...”
Gabriel turned his head and blinked in surprise. Where in one moment he had been on a V-22 Osprey flying into enemy territory in southern Afghanistan, Gabriel Audaz suddenly found himself staring into the face of his best friend. He recognized the scene from over a year before the present late night in the armored plane.
“You can’t avoid the question,” she said, trying to look him in the eyes.
Gabriel brushed loose strands of his soft, black hair off his brow. It was another nervous tick, though that one easier to control. It was also breezy. They were sitting in the sand, the waves crashing nearby against the beach. A blanket of stars twinkled above them before being erased in a pocket of clouds hanging in the western sky above the ocean. Lightning lit the rolling, gray masses whose tops were climbing high into the distant sky. An occasional rumble of thunder found its way to the sandy shore line.
“I’m not,” Gabriel had finally said. “I’m just thinking...”
“About the answer?”
Gabriel glanced at his best friend, then away from her. He looked briefly over the sand to the wind-whipped flames of a small camp fire dancing in the frequent gusts pushed off the churning waters. Their friends were laughing and playing around the amber and yellow light. “I guess,” he had said distantly. He let his gaze fall back to the sand in front of him. “...About...how to answer, too,” Gabriel continued hesitantly.
“I’m not sure I understand.”
The environment suddenly changed. Gabriel blinked, his mind back to the present, to the line of soldiers standing in the aircraft. The ramp at the tail of the plane was opening. Eddies of cold, dirt-scented air mixed with the engine exhaust shoved and wound their way up the length of the flying vehicle. The red lights on the bulkheads shifted to green. They were jumping. The time to fight or die had come.
“I didn’t think it was that complicated a question,” Gabriel’s best friend had said. The two of them had decided to play truth or dare, only without the dares. They were graduating high school in a matter of weeks and they didn’t want to part ways without knowing everything they didn’t already about one another.
Gabriel knew she had suspected a secret he had been keeping inside of himself. The question about his fear had been another way to get through the locked door around his heart. He wanted to tell someone, but then, simultaneously, he absolutely did not. Giving it a voice, a description with clearly defined words would make it real. He was afraid of what his world would become after that. And yet, that fear was still less than another.
A strong tap on his shoulder brought Gabriel’s mind forward again. He nodded his head and tapped the shoulder in front of him. The status check went up the line of soldiers to the commanding officer waiting near the door. Behind that man, the dark sky suddenly became bright and alive. A fiery burst consumed the view beyond the ramp. The concussion slammed against the ear drums of the soldiers almost as hard as it hit the plane. Everyone in line braced themselves as the Osprey jumped and rocked from side to side. Gabriel watched the view past the open ramp. He saw the other planes in the convoy dive and pitch away from the exploding rounds beginning to pepper the air.
“Do you have an answer,” she had asked. Her name was Isabella Faroe. She had been in love with Gabriel since the seventh grade. They had tried to date once. The failed attempt had led to a short-lived division in their friendship.
Gabriel remembered looking up at her.. “I do.”
She had smiled warmly, laughing away her frustration. “Then tell me.”
The line on the plane was moving. They were jumping. Gabriel followed close behind the soldier in front of him. Their aircraft rocked once more. Gabriel, along with those around him, struggled to stay standing upright. The bulkheads shuddered noisily. The blistering hot hiss of pulverized shrapnel and debris brushing against the fuselage was disconcerting as Gabriel and the remaining soldiers approached the open ramp.
A sound like air suddenly and loudly being sucked through a straw made every heart skip a beat. It was a noise that was so fast it didn’t seem real. It was replaced, only a second after it was first heard, by a the deafening pop of a devastating explosion. All eyes were on the Osprey behind their own. Each soldier still in the jump line watched with unblinking focus as the swollen, steel bird rolled uncontrollably onto its side. Fire and smoke stretched out of the molten, shattered interior of the crashing plane.
Gabriel thought of the sound before the explosion. He knew it had been a missile. He had been scared to death of jumping out of the aircraft and into the open battle below. But after watching the other plane be destroyed so fast, so mercilessly, Gabriel was now even more afraid to stay on board any longer. The sentiment seemed to be shared by everyone still on board. The remaining soldiers moved hurriedly toward the ramp, leaping into the open night sky with racing pulses and their hearts in their throats.
It was finally Gabriel’s turn. It happened so fast and seamlessly he barely had time to realize or think about it. One moment he was a few steps away from the ramp’s edge. The next moment there was nothing under his feet. The icy-cold air was howling past his ears, the wind buffeting against the gear strapped tightly to his body. Compared to the din of the plane soaring away above his opening parachute canopy, the world around Gabriel suddenly seemed so quiet.
His mind drifted back to that night on the beach. “I’m afraid...” Gabriel had begun to say. “...I mean, really afraid...of...failing to act.”
Isabella frowned. “Huh? I don’t understand.”
Gabriel leaned forward, the soft sand spilling off of his hands as he had brought them up, folding his arms on top of his knees he had braced against his chest. “The things happening inside of me, the feelings I have that won’t go away-”
“Sweetie, it’s okay,” Isabella had said reassuringly. “They’re natural. It is just who you are...or will be, starting to come out.”
“That’s the thing. I don’t know who or what that is. I want to know but I also want to do the right thing. I’m joining the army, Izzy. And, I know...this stuff...doesn’t matter anymore. Not officially.”
Isabella watched her best friend carefully. “But?”
“But I’m not ready to give these feelings, these thoughts a voice or name yet. I’m in complete conflict. I...I want to be as honest as possible in my life; with you...with everyone. With God, especially. Yet, I can’t help but keep this inside and I’m so, so very afraid that I’m going to die before I can accept who and what I am. Before...before I can finally put my demons to rest.”
Gabriel remembered Isabella appearing to think for a long moment. Finally, she grinned at him then scooted through the sand on her haunches. She hugged her best friend tightly. “Do you want to pray with me?”
Gabriel remembered nodding. A sharp, swift noise that became a deafening crackle interrupted his thoughts. He looked up past the canopy of his parachute. A few seconds had gone by since he’d leapt out of the advancing Osprey. Another transport had been hit. It’s frame was lost to sight behind a white-hot plume spraying molten steel airplane parts over the frost-covered terrain. All at once, the late-night sky seemed to come alive again. The sea of descending paratroopers were dark silhouettes against a breathtaking backdrop of exploding mortars, anti-aircraft fire, and the ever more frequent vapor trails of ground-launched rockets.
The ground wasn’t getting closer fast enough. The engines of one of the Osprey’s revved up loudly, the sound climbing over the mire of chaos blending together into one awful, nightmarish noise. Gabriel looked up again into the swaths of blistering fire and choking smoke. Paratroopers were leaping madly out of the dying plane rolling onto is mangled side, fire consuming its blown-open cockpit to the passenger compartment. Gabriel watched the horror of the hell-spawned scene. Wrapped in searing flames glowing brightly, his peers fell out of the deadly storm. From a distance they looked just like any other pieces of debris. But Gabriel knew those were people he had seen and spoken to, people he had eaten beside, people he had trained with.
Suddenly, there were more screams, cries of bloody agony echoing throughout the crowded sky. Between each heart-wrenching bellow, Gabriel was beginning to detect the source of the pain. It became very clear when a bullet meant for his life zipped hotly by his ear. A tracer round rocketed away into the sky to his right. Gabriel watched it appear then vanish in an instant. Just beyond its path, something changed in the dark. It took a moment for Gabriel to realize it was another paratrooper. The soldier’s parachute had been hit by the spray of bullets from the ground.
Gabriel looked down, trying to fend off the panic beginning to set in. He was almost there, the small, dry patches of brush throwing web-like and sinewy shadows across the dirt in the sky-consuming explosions high above his canopy. Another few seconds and he would be on the ground.
Then, something went wrong. Gabriel heard the clinking of metal above him. There was the way the wind shifted and sounded as if bouncing and rolling off of an object free falling through the sky. Gabriel looked up. He managed only a fleeting second to catch a terrifying glimpse of the flailing body before it hit the top of his parachute. The swift, smooth descent to the dusty floor under his boots became a breathless drop.
First, the parachute-wrapped soldier, barely alive, collided with Gabriel. The unstoppable force knocked him onto his back. In a panic, Gabriel and the unknown compatriot rolled over each other as the ground spread out on all sides around them. Gabriel felt the air rush from his lungs at the moment of impact. An overwhelming wave of pain barreled unstoppably through his body. Gabriel remembered smelling sand and burning airplane fuel raining out of the sky. He remembered the feeling of the darkness closing in, blocking out the glow of the fires above him and the sounds of bullets erupting from smoking rifles all around. As he blacked out, Gabriel wondered, for an instant, if we would be waking up again.
II. "The Glorious Cause"
PART ONE
Things could go either way. And, everyone watching the silver-hued screen knew it.
A boy stands in a room that is hot and cramped. A ceiling fan turns slowly, lazily moving the warm air around between the boy, walls of overcrowded bookshelves, and the other occupants in the old church office. The boy can hear a conversation between the two older men behind him, yet he isn’t really listening. As his eyes explore the titles on a nearby bookshelf, each tome a trophy of socialist and communist ideas and achievements, the boy hears the name of his father. It’s breathed out naturally by one of the men: the boy’s grandfather.
Suddenly the boy is much younger, a wide-eyed three year old standing on a gravel driveway. A tall black man in a slim, dark suit and tie stands over him. The engine of a taxicab idles noisily a few steps away. “You won’t understand this now,” speaks the senior to his junior. “But one day, I am confident you will. You will always know what it is to know a dream and stop at nothing to chase it down...to make it real and share its glory with the rest of the world.”
The father crouches down, putting his face closer to his son’s. The boy can almost see his reflection in his father’s glasses. “The world is sick, my boy. Do you understand that?”
The little boy nods sheepishly, not really sure if he understands or not. He’s too young, maybe. But then again, maybe he has an instinct for the things his father is telling him. Perhaps the passion of one already exists in the other, waiting for its time to mature and evolve.
“I have to go now,” says the father stiffly, his voice almost flat and emotionless. “It’s my turn to take up the glorious cause. I have to fulfill the dream of my father. One day, I know it will be your turn and I know you won’t fail in helping to fulfill mine.”
Suddenly, the boy is back in the office. Sunlight dapples across the floor from behind the loosely hanging blinds in front of the open window. The boy hears his grandfather speak again. “I have no doubt, Mr. Davis, that you are the man to trust in these matters. I can’t think of anyone to help guide my grandson on his journey better than yourself.”
All at once, the sound in the room is gone. The lighting was changing, growing rapidly brighter. Then, the image of the two men, the boy, and the office were gone. A blank, white screen reflecting the piercing light of the projector illuminated the small seating gallery of the narrow theater.
“That’s the end of the reel, Mr. Audaz,” shouted a muffled voice, disconnected from the rest of the screening room.
Carlos Columbus Audaz sat up in his seat, stretching his back. He turned his head and nodded once to the scruffy face barely visible in the open window of the projection booth. Carlos also took the moment to glance at the other occupants of the small, private theater. He counted a half dozen men in sharply tailored suits and even more people in the seats behind them, their small notepads and ledgers open and being updated. Carlos figured them for assistants or aids or even assistants of the assistants. Their clothes were far less elaborate in style or brand than most of the executives.
Carlos sat back into his seat, staring for a quiet moment at the empty screen. What am I doing, he asked himself. Is this really it? Is this what I wanted?
Carlos felt a patient gaze centered on himself. He turned his head in time to see his own assistant shift his gaze back to the blank screen still bathed in the bright, white light of the projector. The projectionist had been running dailies in the industry for years. He knew to keep the machines running until the meeting in the theater was over and the executives were walking and talking their way to the exits.
“What is it,” Carlos asked, turning his head to stare at the screen and seats in front of him. There were only two rows left.
“I was going to ask you that,” whispered his assistant. Alex Vale had been working with Carlos Columbus Audaz since Carlos’ very first movie. Carlos had just turned fourteen and was crafting his amateur indulgence in and around his sleepy Los Angeles neighborhood. Alex was eight at the time. He lived across the street from the auspicious young filmmaker. Alex hadn’t know anything about movie making and, at first, didn’t really care. He looked up to the big kid in the house across the street and would do whatever had been necessary to have the privilege of being involved in his games and goings-on.
“You don’t seem quite yourself,” Alex continued, still whispering.
Carlos shrugged his shoulders. “I just...I don’t know, ya’ know? I can’t get comfortable with this one.”
It was Alex’s turn to shrug his shoulders. “Maybe it’s just that this is your first big budget? Like, full-scale instead of our normal, miniscule budget.”
“I don’t think it’s the budget,” whispered Carlos. “At least, that’s not the major part.”
Alex wrinkled his face. “Is it the acting?”
Carlos snorted a laugh. “Ohh,” he moaned softly, “don’t say that.” He glanced over his shoulder. The men in the expensive suits cloaked in the soft shadows almost completely enveloping the rear of the theater were still talking amongst themselves. “But yes, the acting is terrible.”
Alex chuckled quietly.
“They are so stiff,” whispered Carlos. He was directing his voice and frustration at the glowing screen. “There is not creativity. The little boy and the damn ceiling fan were the best performers in those shots!”
“Don’t forget about the schedule,” said Alex.
“Ohh,” Carlos quietly moaned again. “Don’t even get me started on that! Where is the star of this movie? Why is he never on set? I wasn’t ready to shoot these scenes. That set wasn’t even finished yet! I could see the lights out the window!”
“Carl!”
Carlos lifted his head with a start. He spotted the head of the studio turning off the aisle and onto the row in front of he and Alex. Another man in an expensive suit was a few steps behind. The studio chief was known as Douglass Stoll. He was in his late forties and a weathered veteran of Hollywood and the media industry at large. His teen-model good looks had become weighed down and faded by time and choices that weren’t always the best.
“Mr. Stoll,” Carlos said with polite enthusiasm. He stood up as his boss approached, Alex following suit a heartbeat behind.
“It’s looking good, son! It’s looking good,” Douglass Stoll said earnestly, shaking Carlos’, and then Alex’s, hand. “Carl, I’d like to introduce you to someone. This is Mr. Simon. He’s the new liaison from the Administration. He’s here to help with the film.”
The slender man with a tight fitting dark suit, flat chest, and olive skin stepped foward when Douglass Stoll gestured to him. He nodded toward Carlos and Alex warmly. Instantly, Carlos was hesitant about the man standing in the next row. Who was this person? What was he here to do? And why did there seem to be an air of superiority radiating off of him? These were all questions flowing through Carlos’ mind.
The man’s smile broadened as Douglass neared the end of his introduction. “This is my first time in Hollywood. It’s very exciting. So I just want to help in any way that I can. If you need something from Washington and the Administration, just let me know!”
Carlos let himself smile, though it wasn’t one of joy or amusement. “How about the star of the movie? Our lead actor was supposed to be here four days ago but apparently he’s in Washington doing God knows what!” Carlos’ pitch climbed strangely as he was speaking, the words beginning to come out in one rushed breath. His tone went from honest curiosity wrapped in sarcastic-borderline condescending-politeness to curt, bitter, and mockingly pleasant. There was no hiding the hostility he felt and exuded.
Douglass Stoll took a deep breath, his eyes wide with worry. He peered at the man standing near his left side. Mr. Simon was still smiling broadly, his grin now somewhat menacing. He laughed, a nasally rapid guffaw. Douglass Stoll breathed with relief, even joining in on the laugh a little bit. Carlos and Alex eyed each other then looked toward Mr. Simon. Neither could figure out what he was so amused by. Carlos had told no joke nor had he made any attempt at all to be funny. The scene was becoming suspicious and unsettling. Carlos began to wonder if the government stranger before him was advertising signs of mental instability.
Mr. Simon’s laughter settled to a chuckle. He took a slow, deep breath. Then, still smiling with amusement said, “He’s with the President of the United States. You can’t rush those visits.”
“Besides, he’s learning about his character,” Douglass Stoll quickly added. “It’s all for the movie. And that’s important to us, right?” He tried to glare at Carlos without Mr. Simon noticing.
Mr. Simon didn’t seem to care about the look on the older man’s face, even if he had noticed. “I’ll see what I can do. But the President makes these decisions,” Mr. Simon said, shrugging his shoulders passively.
Carlos suspected he was just being told what he wanted to hear. It was in the stranger’s eyes. The words slipping off his tongue might have simply been disingenuous, but his small, crystal brown eyes were screaming his true, concealed insincerity. Carlos had had enough for one day. He broke the probing stare he had been locked into with Mr. Simon. His gaze shifted to Alex instead. Alex instantly understood. He seemed to have been waiting for that look from his boss. With a prompt and courteous nod to the two older men facing them, Alex turned to his right, starting hastily for the aisle.
“We’ve got an early start tomorrow. We’ll be on location outside of the city. If you’ll excuse me...” Carlos was only looking at his boss as he spoke. He didn’t feel a reason to acknowledge a man who had nothing to do with himself or nothing genuine to add to the production.
Carlos didn’t wait for any farewell words or gestures. He turned away from the two men almost as soon as he was done speaking. He felt their gaze on his back as he turned onto the aisle at the end of the row of seats.
“Oh, Carlos,” Mr. Simon called after him.
Carlos stopped in mid-stride. He shifted his eyes to the right, taking notice of the way the other men in suits were watching him. He noticed the way the assistants were trying to watch without looking up from their notes. There was an element of relief Carlos detected from all of them. They were thankful it was not one of their names that had been called, that it was now him stuck in the long stare of Mr. Simon’s sharp, brown eyes. Carlos didn’t say anything when he turned himself around just enough to regard the government avatar. He didn’t need to speak. Mr. Simon was already waiting.
“I’d like to talk with you. Perhaps, tomorrow morning? Before you...umm...have to be on set?”
Carlos lightly bit the inside of his lip before he answered. “I might have five minutes.”
Mr. Simon continued to smile pleasantly. If it was an attempt to be disarming, it wasn’t working at all. “Sounds good,” he said enthusiastically.
Carlos turned and continued up the aisle without another word. The sunlight beyond the lobby windows struck harshly against his eyes. Carlos winced as he walked the last few steps to the glass door. He suddenly drew a sharp breath, pausing for a heartbeat over the padded threshold. Sensors were hidden in the matt-black paneling encasing the near-spotless doorway. They triggered a feature of the building that had been making Carlos cringe.
“Have a pleasant day, Mr. Audaz,” rang a digital, female voice.
Carlos had known it was coming. He’d been through the doors a half dozen times by that point. He also knew that if he continued to stand in the doorway, the sensors under his feet and mounted within the sides of the doorframe would detect him, triggering the the computer to speak again. It was just one of the many, many wonders of the ever-growing Forefront Studios.
Carlos didn’t wait for the ghostly, unsettlingly friendly voice to courteously ask him if everything was all right. He was a few steps from the curb on the wide sidewalk before he heard the door tap lightly against its frame having shut automatically. Alex was already standing there, his sky-blue cell phone pressed tightly to his left ear. There wasn’t much conversation to hear. Unless he really had something to say, Alex Vale tended to be the attentive listener in a conversation.
Carlos wiped a layer of sweat beading on his forehead with the back of his hand. His soft, black hair was already damp and greasy-looking in the warm afternoon. The temperature didn’t tend to bother him. He had lived in Southern California nearly his entire life. Broiling asphalt and sultry breezes winding down the bustling streets and avenues of Los Angeles to only brush the sweat more evenly across his light-brown skin was a part of life. In a way, he kind of liked it. For Carlos, it was home.
A wet, salty droplet slipped off his short, ebony bangs. It stung against his eye, interrupting his thoughts. Where is that driver, Carlos asked in his mind. Alex seemed to sense Carlos’ unvoiced query echoing through the ether of the universe. He turned to face his boss, shrugging his shoulders in reply. Carlos inhaled sharply, then suddenly felt his heart skip a beat.
From beyond the concrete wall behind the theater, the devastating pop of a gunshot coursed through the air. Both Carlos and Alex flinched instinctively, ducking into an automatic half crouch. Screams erupted beyond the the white-painted slab that ran the length of the studio’s perimeter. Glass exploded, the sharp hiss echoing up and down the street beyond the solid partition. Carlos and Alex looked behind them at the theater’s side and the wall behind it. They tried to stare past the unblemished concrete to the barbarous world that had suddenly seemed to take shape where moments before there was the illusion of peace and order.
More shots rang out, the deadly rounds tearing, unseen, through the heat of the day. Both young men stumbled backwards off the sidewalk into the studio street. A terrifying storm of frightened screams and vengeful voices cursing and shouting each other down was making Carlos’ pulse race. Car horns blared, adding to the unseen chaos before suddenly being silenced by a third round of crackling, deafening gunfire.
Carlos glanced at Alex as if to ask what they should do. But the pale, wide-eyed expression on Alex’s face revealed the same question awaiting an answer. Another car horn bleeped loudly. Both boys jumped with a shout then looked at the black, armored sedan idling in the street nearby. The driver’s door opened hurriedly. A man in a black suit and tie stood up, rising part way out of the vehicle. He looked at both young men at once. “Mr. Audaz, this way please!” He had to yell over the soundtrack of battle beyond the wall.
Carlos peered quickly at Alex who finally ended his phone call. The two friends ran the dozen steps to either side of the car, practically leaping into the rear passenger seats before the driver accelerated up the subtly curving road.
“To the office, sir?”
Carlos blinked, trying to get his senses back in order. He wiped more sweat from his face. It felt like it was just trickling from every matted strand of his black hair on his head. “No,” he answered, directing his voice toward the front of the car. “Home. I think we’ve had enough of this place today.”
“A government agent and a gun fight. Are we in somebody else’s production,” asked Alex. His chest heaved. He was trying to steady his breathing.
“It would be nice to know if we were,” Carlos responded. “But I don’t think so.”
The incident had caught him off guard. The whole afternoon had turned out that way. Despite the reference to Mr. Simon by Alex, Carlos found himself disinterested in the mysterious bureaucrat. He couldn’t stop his mind from focusing on the sounds from outside the studio. They had been far away but not far enough. He had been close enough to hear the shot crack open the hot air of the late summer day. He had been near enough to feel the fear in the those curdling screams. They had rippled through the air, through his skin and veins like overwhelming waves.
Suddenly, absently watching the studio gates pass by the passenger window of the armored luxury sedan, Carlos began to think of how he truly felt: the hot, dark fear retching out of the recesses of his soul. He couldn’t stop himself from thinking about his severe vulnerability, how a few different choices might have put him on the other side of that wall behind the theater.
As much as he was thinking about himself, Carlos realized something else. He couldn’t stop thinking about his younger cousin. Carlos knew, as stunning and forever impressing onto his memory the events of the day were for him in the world, they might not have been anything in contrast to the life unfolding for eighteen year old Gabriel Audaz.
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