Nah Mama, it Ain't Like That

‘If you’re engaged in armed combat there just ain’t no way it’s legal. I don’t care who your enemies is.’

‘Mama I’ll tell you the truth.’

‘Why not just tell me a lie?

‘Sorry, what?’

‘Marion, sweetheart, if y’alls gonna lie to me anyway, why not just say, ‘Ima tell you a lie’?’

‘Nah mama, it ain’t like that, I swear.’

‘Let the boy speak, woman!’ Artie grumbles. His arms are still crossed. He’s still sitting ramrod straight. He’s still looking through Matt’s chest.

‘You watch the way you speak to me, Papi!’ She’s shaking her head and rolling her eyes. ‘See how stubborn he is?’ she says. ‘Why in the world would you want a stubborn old mule like that on your team?’

‘Lori, I swear I ain’t lying to you. We good. We law-abiding. The fact is them Sovereigns are out of control. Literally alls we did was defend ourselves – all legal. Swear to g-d.’

Lori smiles at me. She reaches across the picnic table and places her hand on top of mine, which is resting beside my paper plate. ‘Ok, son. I do believe you. Aight?’

‘Nah, you don’t. But I’m tellin you mama, it’s true.’

‘Well let’s set it aside for now. What I can’t understand is, why Artie? Ain’t their a thousand guys that could do what Artie can?’

‘Mrs. Alcalé, you are in charge here,’ Cabel says. ‘We aren’t ever going to tell you what to think. But you aren’t fooling anyone speaking that way about your husband. We all know Artie’s one in a million. The reality is we need a man who can lead with wisdom and honor – and if we’re being honest with ourselves, Mr. Alcalé’s talents are being wasted in that winery job.’

‘Is that what you call raising two boys, Marion? Artie put in his time; he don’t owe nothing to no one.’

‘Ah hell, Lori. We didn’t mean it that way. Honest. We jes excited to get a chance to work wither old mans all.’

She rises from the table and turns around. I get up, too. I look to Artie. He nods. So I walk around the table to Lori. I imagine the guys are watching me, I keep my head down.

‘Lookit mama, I’m sorry,’ I say softly, touching her shoulder. She pushes my hand away.

‘Don’t never apologize for speaking truth. It’s them lies that kill.’

‘We’re trying to be straight with you, Lori. I don’t know what you want me to say.’

‘C’mon, Marion. Walk with me.’ She take my hand, leading me out of the shade onto the baked-up tarmac.

Lori and I stroll across the cracked-up surface, the unforgiving autumn sun baking everything up, the blacktop radiating the sun’s awesome energy, so hot that we feel it through the soles of our shoes, through our socks. Foxtail and puncture vines push through the cracks, baked up like everything else. In the middle distance, a line of Saltgrass crowds the chain link marking the perimeter of the tarmac. The tips of the tall grasses sway in the breeze, which relieves somewhat the oppressive hotness. Lori is holding my hand, and although my palm is sweating in her grasp, she doesn’t seem to mind. She doesn’t release my hand, in any event.

‘Marion honey, Ima fight you on this. I don’t want it. You ain’t gonna win me over with no story. But you know Artie’s his own man. You know he gonna do what he gonna do. So you just gotta be straight wit me, honey. I just need you to be straight, can you do that?’

‘Yes ma’am,’ I promise. ‘I’ll be straight.’

‘Ok. Cuz it don matter if y’all are engaged in something illegal, or if y’all or losing, or if y’all gonna get yourselves kilt. There ain’t nuthin I can do with nun of that. We both know that Artie ain’t gonna consider nun of that when he makes up his mind. Alls he gonna think about is honor and mission. So I jes needa know how bad it is, sos I know what to expect. Aight?’

‘Lori I understand. Ima be straight with you. The truth is I come to you guys cuz I owe it to you and Artie. You always been there for me. This here’s a chance for him to do something meaningful and honorable where he can get paid. I know Artie’s the best at what he does. But all you gotta do is listen to the way he talks about his service to know he misses it. I always thought he’d lead security in GreenGuns – I wrote the whole damn business plan with him in mind. Well look – it’s real now. I got the funding. So I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t offer it up to you guys.’

‘Well that’s thoughtful Marion. Don’t think I don’t appreciate it. But what you talkin about is dangerous. I can’t have my man bein kilt.’

‘ I ain’t gonna say there ain’t no danger. You seen the news. But I can tell you that we got the resources and the support we need to survive, and we also got the state on our side. We the good guys, Lori. We gonna be ok cause them Sovereigns are a militia that don’t got no state support. We more like civil defense, you know? Just the backstop for state and local authorities.’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘What?’

‘Nuthin. If that’s the way it is that’s how it is. I believe you.’

We’ve reached the edge of the tarmac. Lori leans against the fence. The Saltgrass crowds the fenceline. The fecund smells of the salt marsh, the petroleum smell of baking asphalt, the cooling breeze on our faces. She turns to me, looking up into my face. She smiles. Lori’s smile is like ground water undermining an industrial park, creating a sinkhole that sucks up a traffic signal and the Kia Sport standing before it. The sinkhole fills with water, and alligators, and then the traffic signal and the Kia Sport and the poor fucker driving it.

I remove my broken eyeglasses. Casqued in face blindness I smile back at Lori. I put my arms around her shoulders, and I draw her to my chest.

‘I love you, Loretta Alcalé.’

‘I love you too, Marion. Thank you for being honest with me.’

We gaze back across the tarmac to the little party sitting at the picnic table. Heat rises in waves from the blacktop. The sun is directly in our eyes. The men appear as playthings in the distance.

We’re walking back across the tarmac now. The sun, which had been at least partially obstructed by some wisping clouds has now broken entirely free; the sweat is beading up in the corners of my eyes, causing them to burn. I’m sweating in my pits. My genitals are adhering to themselves and my leg. I have an overwhelming urge to reach into my pants and separate my genitals. I shift my gate a little to create some space down there.

‘Do you really think this could be good for Arturo?’

‘Well here’s how I see it – there are two pieces to the opportunity – one part is good for your family, and one part of it is good for Artie. Why don’t we start with Artie, and before we get back to the picnic table I’ll also explain why it’s good for the family.’

‘Aight let’s hear it.’

‘I’ve worked with Artie long enough to know there are three concepts that really resonate for him: competence, discipline and mission. It seems like I’ve heard him use them three terms with me about a hundred times.’

‘That’s funny, bolillo – you can’t say the man ain’t consistent. My boys coulda finished that sentence for you.’

‘Well there ain’t no one who worked in that cellar moren a season who couldn’t do the same thing. It’s just what he cares about. An look – them first two concepts you can apply just fine to any work environment, right? Like he always used to say to me, ‘anything worth doing is worth doing well’.’

‘Shiiit. He use that one at work too? I thought he was jes driving my boys crazy with that shit.’

‘Haha. Yeah – every day Lori. He’s the reason that cellar is the model for the industry that it is.

‘But lookit – the third concept – mission – that’s the thing that really animates everything else. That’s where he finds meaning. And the truth is – and Lori I ain’t tryina piss you off again.’

‘It’s aight Marion – I know where you goin. You ain’t gonna piss me off. You go ahead an say it.’

‘Aight – the truth is there ain’t much by way of mission at Krug. Like – continuing a hundred-year family legacy – I get Artie’s loyal, but ain’t there more meaningful work out there for him?’

‘Yeah I hear you.’

‘An look how Pete promotes folks past him instead of given Artie a chance to shine. Our mission is protecting democracy and minority rights. We don’t make no apologies for that. It’s work he can be proud of, Lori, and it’s a chance to lead. It’s a chance for Artie to be valued and respected in his work. It’s about his dignity. I mean, as a man.’

‘I get it. I jes think Arturo has his own mission, an the work is jes how he get there, you know? Artie’s mission to providing fer us an raising them boys into men. But I didn’t never think about it like yer sayin now. I didn’t never think about his dignity. You really think he’s that miserable at work?’

‘Lori I really can’t say what’s in his heart. I jes know what I see – an I don like it. I’s jes tellin you how it looks to me, see?’

‘I do see. Thank you, son, for making me look at it this way. You said there was another reason?’

‘Well like I said that first reason is most about Artie, but I know you care about it. This other reason is about the family. Lookit I don’t know what Pete’s payin Artie right now, but I do know it is way less than he’s worth. We’ll start him at $200 with a $100k starting bonus. Full benefits package including 100% match on the 401 (k), 90% of your insurance premium through either Cigna or Kaiser, life, vision, dental, short-and-long term disability – it’s a serious comp package and it sets your family up for life. Them boys already got the GI Bill, so this package is about everything else. Pay off your mortgage, build up your savings, you know – jes get ahead once and for all.’

‘That’s a lot of money, Marion. You got all this written down somewheres?’

‘Yeah, Lori. Cabel gots it all in a folder. We wasn’t sure y’all would be interested in lookin’ at it, but we brought it along jesincase.’

*****

We’ve returned to the picnic table. Artie and Matt are deep in discussion. Cabel is pacing inside the hangar, on his phone again. Artie's clearly engaged. Almost smiling. Matt is leaning in.

Cabel puts the phone back into a tactical pocket in his trousers. He looks at me.

A crack like a backfire, a muffled thud somewhere just beyond the perimeter. I look around for the noise, but Artie, Cabel and Matt are already lunging forward. Lori jerks, collapsing against my body. I am startled. I let Lori’s body fall. Her head cracks against the bench seat.

‘There!’ Artie is shouting, Cabel racing toward the perimeter, side arm drawn.

Even as Artie yells and points, and Cabel draws his weapon, even as Matt lunges toward the open hangar door, even as Lori collapses, cracking her head as she falls, even as the deep red irrigates her hairline and a bright pink blossoms and froths upon her breast, even as Cabel returns suppressive fire and Artie secures his wife, barking violently at me to grab her feet as he drags her body out of the kill zone, it’s as though time has slowed for me. I take Lori’s feet, crouching low as Artie drags his wife through the hangar door, the halogen-lit cavern cool after the baking blacktop. Red streaking lustily behind us.

Matt has already opened the cargo bay and sprinted up the stairs to the cockpit. The mechanical whine of the spooling engines is already too loud to shout over. Cabel has backed into the bay door, pressing himself hard against the left side of the opening, his side arm raised to protect the fatal funnel.

Artie’s screaming, gesticulating toward the Pilatus. I realize he wants me to fetch the trauma bag. When I return he has ripped her blouse apart. With his dark hands, so striking against Lori’s white breast, Artie is applying pressure to the wound; blood frothing out, brilliantly pink and delicious, through his fingers, pooling in a brilliant puddle beside her. He gestures to me to take over at the wound site, and he drives his bloody hands violently into the trauma bag, emerging with a flat, vacuum-sealed plastic square. He clamps the packaging in his teeth and rips it open with a jerk of his neck.

I am on my knees beside Lori. Her beautifully pink blood soaking hot, slickening across the concrete, inundating my dungarees. Her body is gasping, failing to fill her punctured lung. Even within the deafening hangar I hear the wound sucking the hangar’s sweet, fuel-rich air. With each desperate gasp the hot, aerated blood and viscous foam streak through my palms, gurgling through my fingers, collecting along her chest wall, pooling upon the cool concrete floor. Her ribcage shudders beneath my palms, and my body shudders with the violence of the fully engaged Pilatus engines. The smell – Jet-A fuel, baking blacktop, the hot, raw, meaty stench of blood leaking from her body. I am on my knees, and the one woman I ever truly loved, I mean the one woman for whom I never harbored a single fantasy, the one set of breasts I never cared to fondle, is beneath me now, and I am pressing down on her chest, and I feel her body giving out beneath me. I feel her breath hot and wisping on my neck. Her face the waxy pallor of the dying. I am so close that I see the chicken and rice stuck in her dentures, chunking and stringing under the halogens. Never have I been so intimate with a woman.

I am on my knees, and it is as though I am dreaming. And Artie is awake. He is awake and fully in his element. ‘Hands off!’ he commands, and Artie’s voice breaks my trance. I obey. Real military. The sucking returns, before Artie slaps the adhesive vent hard over the wound.

‘Stay with me man!’ Artie is yelling. He’s sweeping his hands beneath her back. When he pulls away they are soaked in blood. ‘We roll her on three. Ready! Two! Three!’

Her back is soaked in blood. Rag! Artie commands and I pull one from the trauma bag. He plunges it into the wound. More! he demands wiping as much blood away as possible, revealing devasted flesh and cloth, shattered bone. He’s ripping a second box, slamming the adhesive seal over the wound.

Artie grabs me by the neck of my Polo. ‘Her legs! We lift on three!’ He slides his hands under her armpits just as Dave had done with Eddie last night. I am grasping her knees. We heave her up; the dead weight of her dying body. My Mephistos slipping on the bloody concrete. The adrenaline, or whatever, carries me forward. As we waddle toward the waiting cargo bay she’s slipping from my bloody grasp. Her body sways between us as we make our way. Finally we reach the cargo bay, and Artie heaves his wife’s body over the lip. Then he hoists himself onto the deck of the bay and grasps her by the belt loops. I can see the strain as he hoists his wife over the lip. I lean into her thigh and heave upward. I reach my hand up to Artie and he hauls me into the plane.

Cabel is backing away from the hangar opening, side arm covering the gap. Artie draws his own weapon, covering Cabel as he hoists himself into the bay. He reaches for the hydraulic to lower the hatch; Artie grabs his arm, screaming into his ear. I can’t make out everything he says, but I hear ‘The boys!’ Cabel nods and steps aside as Artie looks at me, pointing to Lori’s body; he drops back onto the hangar tarmac and Cabel hits the hydraulic. As Artie sprints back to the hangar opening the bay door rises and I am again in darkness beside Lori as the airlock seals shut.