Page 7 of Velvet and Valor
My seemingly errant shot rockets back past the eight-ball, missing it by a whisker, and strikes the center of the clustered stripes. Billiards balls shoot around, clumping into leather harnesses in a beautiful display of Newton’s theory.
“And that’s how it’s done,” I say, tilting back what remains of my beer.
“Oh yeah?” Harlowe says with a snicker. “Look again, Minnesota Fats.”
I turn back just in time to see that I’ve given a little bit too much English on the cue ball. It slaps the edge of the eight-ball on a rebound and sends the black orb racing for the corner pocket.
“Aw, Hell no,” I say. But the ball’s not listening to me. It disappears into the pocket and that’s the game.
“Newton is laughing his ass off in Hell,” I grumble, handing the stick back to Cole.
“You scratched?” he sputters. “Damnit. Now we have to wash Bastian’s car.”
“YOU have to wash it,” I said. “I never agreed to any such thing. I only agreed to be your partner for the doubles game.”
“You practically sold yourself to the room as the greatest pool hustler who ever lived,” Cole says, flabbergasted to the point of turning red. “You were begging me to pick you as my partner.”
“You and I have a different perspective of begging,” I say. “I was just putting out some information into the universe you might not have otherwise been aware of.”
Cole just stares at me blankly. Dane laughs.
“Might as well give up, Cole. You’ll never be able to pin Axel down. He’s the squirreliest bastard I’ve ever met.”
I shrug and head to the cooler, tossing away my empty on the way.
“Flattery will get you nowhere, Dane…” my hand thumps around in an empty box. “I think we’re out of beer.”
“No way,” Cole says, going to the cooler. “We had a whole…damn, we’re out of beer.”
“I’ll go on a beer run,” I say, grabbing my jacket off the back of a chair.
“You’ve been drinking,” Harlowe points out.
“I’ll walk. Corner store’s not that far and it’s a nice enough day.” I head out the door, singing as I go. “Bee, double Ee, double arr yew ennn Beer Run! All we need is a ten or a fiver, cars and a key and a sober driver…”
The door slams shut behind me, but I can still hear Dane’s cry ofthank godwhen I stop singing. My grin soon fades, before I even make it down the block. Without the voices, the music, and fun of my welcome aboard party at Platinum Security, it’s hard not to slip back into dark places.
Truth is, I never really left the battlefield and I know it. I don’t think anybody else does, though. I’d like to keep it that way. No way am I going to be the ‘broody’ guy at the office. Axel is the guy you call for a beer and a laugh, period. End of story.
I wasn’t kidding about the knife. About the purpose part. I sometimes wonder what I am without a purpose. An empty set of clothes? I don’t even have a uniform to hold up as my identity any longer.
I kind of always felt something was missing when I was growing up. I don’t know why. My parents loved me and treated me well. I don’t have a criminal for a pop like Harlow and Dane, after all. My parents weren’t rich, but they both worked and I had all the stuff you’d expect for a suburban kid. My own room, birthday parties at Chuck E. Cheese’s, pretty standard stuff. I certainly wasn’t deprived.
But at the end of the party, or the video game, or whatever, I always thought: Is this it? Is there anything more? After I became an adult and started getting laid, I thought I’d found the answer. For a while.
But after a time, even hooking up with gorgeous women lost its continuing appeal. The army fixed that. I felt like I had a purpose. I was defending the innocent. Stopping the bad guys. Making the world a better place.
The city streets envelop me like an old friend I haven’t seen in ages as I step out onto the cold concrete. The neighborhood is kind of struggling, but there’s also a gorgeous mural of people in a flower garden painted onto the side of a building across the street. There are people who care, brief glimmers of hope in the urban rot and decay.
Like fierce dandelions, growing up through the cracks of red-speckled crumbling sidewalks.
I envy them for their hope. It’s been hard for me to find hope again, after my time in the service. Sometimes I feel like a jerk, because I had buddies who lost limbs over there. Or their minds. Or both.
I didn’t lose any body parts, and I was never even seriously injured. Nobody died in my arms as I watched them bleed out.It wasn't any one major event that snapped something inside of me. It was the overwhelming despair I saw everywhere the army sent me to fight.
The playful whoops and hollers of the young children playing soccer in the vacant lot morphs into the screams of dying children in my memory’s ear. Afghanistan. An airstrike by the enemy went way off course, and struck a school a mile away from our position. The smell of burning flesh, just like overcooked eggs.
I cover my mouth and nose with my hand, suddenly nauseous. So many horrors. People shoving their eight-year-old daughters into my hands, begging me to marry them–not out of greed, but because they thought it was the only way they could avoid watching their child starve to death.
