The Fearsome Particles (25 page)

About a dozen stupid responses to that question came into my mind, but I was surrounded by guys I didn’t know that well, and I was playing a game I’d only ever played with my cousins, so I decided to keep my mouth shut for once. I looked at my cards again and at the pair of sixes showing in front of Wedge, then I tossed in a dollar to call and showed my pair of sevens.

“Fuckin’ hell!” Wedge whipped his cards across the table.

“All he had were the sixes,” giggled Tanner.

“Yeah,” said Legg. “We got that.”

Wedge glared at me. “What the fuck were you doin’ calling a check-raise with a pair of sevens?”

“I dunno.” I shrugged. “Winning?”

“No way. No
way
you should’ve called that with sevens. You keep playing like that you’re gonna lose a lot of fuckin’ money.”

I scraped up the quarters from the pot and glanced around to try and figure out where everybody else stood on this whole calling-with-sevens issue. The face I really wanted to read was Legg’s, but he was resting his chin on his arms folded in front of him, and he had his eyes on Wedge.

When it was his turn to deal, Legg swept up the cards and started shuffling with a loony kind of grin.

“Okay ladies, we’re playin’ Butcher Boy.”

Sergeant Leunette leaned back in his chair in disgust. “I hate this game.”

“Ah, shut up.”

“There’s no skill, it’s a luck game,” he said. “You watch, Kyle.” He waited until Legg started to deal the cards, face up.

“See? There’s no hole cards; everybody sees what everybody’s got. And when a card gets dealt that somebody else has, like you get a ten, say, and I already have a ten, the card goes to me.”

“Then we bet,” said Tanner.

“First hand with four of a kind wins and splits with the low hand. All you’re doing is betting on probabilities.”

Legg followed each round of cards he dealt with a fist on the table. “Good fuckin’ game,” he said. “Like slots. Closest thing to pure chance in the fuckin’ desert.”

Wedge straightened his cards in front of him and muttered, “Says the guy who turns his back on the ghosts.”

“What the fuck you care.” Legg slapped the table. “That’s my queen. Fifty cents.”

“Ghosts?” I said. Quarters were flying into the pot from all sides, so I tossed some in too.

Legg kept dealing. “Ghosts is what the Soviets called the Pashtos.”

“You take too many chances, that’s all. It’s risky for everybody. You can’t trust those militia assholes.”

Tanner opened a pack of gum. “They’re okay around here, most of ’em. If they look like they might be trouble I just give ’em cigars.”

“What’d we find in that basement yesterday,” said Wedge to the sergeant, “like six thousand rounds?”

“Close.”

“And some 107s, and a bunch of grenade launchers.”

“Most of that shit’s old.”

“But a lot of it’s from these militia fuckers spreading stuff out to their friends in the jihad who are just waiting for somebody
wearing
CADPAT
to cross their eyes at them and then it’s ‘God is great!’ Boom!” Wedge pounded the table. “Hey, kid, wake up! Are you betting or what?”

I looked at my cards; the betting patterns were so irregular I had no idea what I was supposed to be doing. Legg wasn’t giving me any clues; all his focus was on Wedge. So I took a guess and slid in two quarters.

“It’s up to seventy-five,” barked Wedge. “Fuck, stay with us or get out of the hand.”

“Lay off,” said Leunette.

“I’m telling you,” said Wedge. “They’re just squatting there, waiting for some excuse.”

Legg went back to firing cards around the table. “Ace! That’s mine,” said Tanner.

“If you were them,” said Wedge, “wouldn’t you be?” He watched Tanner reach over to the pile of cards in front of him and take up the ace of diamonds, then he plucked at the sleeve of Tanner’s fatigues. “I swear, they see these colours, we’re like a splinter under their fingernail or something. American, Canadian, I don’t think it matters.” He nodded at Tanner. “You think they like you because you hand out cigars?”

“No,” said Tanner, smacking on his gum. “’Cause I give ’em Cubans. They
love
me.”

“They smile to your face. What are they saying behind your back?”

Legg leered and sniggered. “ ‘There’s that dumb motherfucker hands out Cubans for
free.’ ”

The sergeant was shaking his head. “Most folks around here – I mean besides the ones whipped up by that Mullah Dashti
character – they’re devoted to their families.” He examined his cards. “The main trouble is these people have been through too much … all the wars, they’re practically in shock. Some look at me as if I’m going to open fire on them. That can complicate things. Kyle?”

I was lost. “Yeah?”

“Bet’s to you, son.”

“Sorry.” I shoved in three quarters.

“What,” said Wedge. “Are you raising?”

“No.”

“Bet’s fifty cents then, it’s a new round.
Jesus.”
He picked a quarter from the centre and pitched it across the table. It stung me on the cheekbone.

Before I could react, or even understand what was happening, I saw Legg move. When I look back on those months at Camp Laverne, it seems to me Legg was always doing that, flashing through my vision, pushed by something I never fully understood. That time, I watched him jump out of his seat, grab the top of Wedge’s chair, and tip it backward – “Hey! Fuck off!” – then drag the chair clear of the table. While Wedge was caterwauling and struggling to get out, and Tanner and Leunette were hooting at the table, Legg steered the chair on its back legs like a wheelbarrow across the floor and spilled the corporal over the threshold into the hot dirt outside.

When Legg came back in, alone, he didn’t look at me. Just climbed onto his chair, restacked his quarters, and muttered, “Not playing with anybody whose aim is that fuckin’ bad.”

I
t was almost lunchtime, the sun making a rainbow arc in the crests of mist from the Falls, when I pulled into the old casino’s parking lot. I didn’t have any particular plan, other than to keep doing what I’d been doing, because it seemed to be working fine. But I was hungry – that was one thing that never changed – so after I parked Dad’s car at the far edge of the lot and made my way around all the fenders and hoods, and past two police cars that were sitting under the canopy of the building’s entrance, my first stop was the Market buffet.

In the big all-you-can-eat room, I loaded up on fresh-made pasta with oyster mushrooms and stood at the roast beef table as a thick-chested chef who looked a bit like Tanner carved off glossy slices of prime rib. There were lots of tables empty so I carried my plate over to a spot near the food display tables, ate what I had, and went back for more. Most of the people in the restaurant were aging couples in pastel sweaters; they hovered nervously by the heaped-up serving bowls as if they weren’t sure they were entitled to all the choices laid out for them, like there might be some mistake. Besides the old people, there were four young guys about my age seated behind me at a corner table. They had buzzed hair and they were wearing long, industrial-league hockey sweaters, and when I got up to get another helping I could see them filling their faces and laughing while they eyed the room.

Eating in that big space, surrounded by strangers, reminded me a lot of eating in the kitchen tent at Camp Laverne. When I was finished, I picked up my plate and turned left without thinking, the way I’d done after every meal for nine months, and for a second it was confusing not to see the dirty dishes counter
where we were supposed to scrape off the scraps and leave our plates to be washed. It was strange not to see soldiers hunched over the tables, and sunlight forcing its way in through dusty windows. But then I snapped to, and sat back down hoping for a waitress so I could pay my bill.

She finally came and took the money – never looking at me, looking over my shoulder the whole time – and when I got up to leave I saw one of the hockey sweater guys standing in the aisle, next to the dessert station. He wasn’t holding a plate, which was weird. I had to go past him to get out, and when I tried, Hockey Sweater Guy leaned a shoulder into my path.

“Hey, kid,” he whispered, looking into my eyes. “You got anything?”

I didn’t know what he was talking about, so I said, “No” and shook my head and tried to keep going. But Hockey Sweater Guy got in my way.

“Come on, you got
something
, man. I
know
it.” Hockey Sweater Guy seemed all fired up and eager, as if he was pretty sure something good was coming to him right there beside the black forest cake in the all-you-can-eat buffet.

“I’m sorry,” I said, feeling equa-mouse. “Are you one of the unfortunate deaf?”

Slowly Hockey Sweater Guy’s antsy fervour dissipated, replaced first by confusion and then hostility. I seemed to be ruining his day.

“Are you messing with me, man?” He nudged my shoulder with the heel of his hand. “I asked you a question.” He nudged me again. “What’s this fucking bullshit?”

I tilted my head to the side. Just a few feet away, near the bean salads, two older people held salad plates piled with greens and dotted with croutons. They were watching us, concerned. Way off in the distance, I could hear the jangly sound of the slot machines I’d come to play.

I shook my head. “Sorry, I misheard you. I didn’t realize you wanted me to identify your bullshit.”

Hockey Sweater Guy narrowed his eyes. He looked over at his friends in the corner and back at me.

“I’ll do my best,” I said. “Do you have the bullshit on you?”

Hockey Sweater Guy scowled and shoved me again in the shoulder. “What the fuck you talking about?”

Another time maybe I would’ve explained about my sense of humour, but I could tell he wasn’t in a receptive mood. And there was a security guard eyeing us from the front of the restaurant. I nodded for Hockey Sweater Guy to look. “Probably we should do this later,” I said. “Maybe I’ll see you.”

His eyes were like pins and he punched my shoulder one last time as he left. “Count on it, fuckhead.”

I
n the casino, by the slot machines, I felt jazzy. It was partly the light. It was like being sunk in champagne bubbles; all these scattered rays reflected off a zillion shiny surfaces kept fizzing into my eyes. But mostly it was the sound, shushing and howling around me like I was deep in an electronic jungle, the air filled with the cries of techno toucans, battery-powered acajous, and mechanized screech monkeys. I found an
ATM
, pulled money
out of it, and sat down at a slot machine next to a fake waterfall. I almost felt happy. Then I started feeding the bills into the machine’s mouth and let the numbness of losing begin.

Gradually the sound faded away, and what I thought of first was the cold. I remembered how it seemed crazy to me that a desert world could be so wintry. When Legg had woken me early that morning and I’d tumbled outside, what had struck me, besides the embarrassment of keeping the military waiting, was the slap of ice in the air, the pills of frost on the canvas that covered the trucks, the clouds the men breathed.

Despite the cold, the dust still kicked up off the truck tires. It blew into the cabs through the spaces between the window frames and glass, and up through the vents that sucked and heated the air from outside so that as I bounced on the vinyl seat, I had to pull my undershirt up and over my nose to breathe. The rifleman sitting in the seat beside me turned his head and hacked into the crook of his arm. “Jesus, eh? Like to know whose bent idea this was.” I just grimaced and rolled my eyes, and he went back to looking out the window.

Every stop at every building and well until the end was a torture of nerves, an opportunity for delay; the kite fighters could be gone by the time we arrived. Why did I have to suggest treating five wells? Why not four, or three? Why twelve water deliveries? Why any deliveries at all? None of it mattered anyway, it was all just camouflage. There was only one stop that counted.

As we approached the final well, I glimpsed the kites through the gaps between buildings and felt a surge of relief. I wondered
whether Legg, in the truck behind, had seen them too. Even if he hadn’t, I figured he’d know we were getting close to the kite field from the landmarks we passed – an empty lot turned into a graveyard for rusted orange and white minivans; one solid building topped with a satellite dish painted black, red, and green for the restored Afghan flag; a bombed-out mosque, nothing standing but its gold minaret. If he was really doing his job, though, he wouldn’t be thinking about the kites at all: the D&S guys had been briefed on Operation Slaked Thirst along with everybody else, but they’d had their own briefing too, about Mullah Takhar Dashti, who’d been released from
ISAF
custody and was already whipping up animosities against foreign forces in the country. So Legg would’ve been keeping his eyes on alleys and doorways; he wouldn’t even have been looking at the sky.

At the slot machine, I pulled the lever until my arm burned; after that I just pushed the button. And I thought about the moment we arrived:

Our three trucks pulled up to the edge of the trampled field, and as we climbed down onto the scrub grass and dirt, thirty or forty turbaned men wrapped in patou blankets watched us while the small boys at their feet, or clinging to their necks, cheered on the
gudiparan
. I wanted to see the kites with burning strings, and the look on Legg’s face when he saw them too, but Nila the language assistant had to show me the hotel that wasn’t there.

I went to the well and faked testing the water, held my breath against the chlorine sting, and poured half a pound of calcium hypochlorite tablets from the bag. Then they called me to the edge of the field, to see the man with the scar-tissue hand, and I
left the kit and the bag at the side of the well, rounded the platform of bricks, and rushed over.

It was amazing, the waxy hand, and the look on Legg’s face too – his awe at the tangible proof, that you could live a lifetime of “whatever.”

Then the
gudiparan
fighter came over.