When the Smoke Clears

A small dust cloud jumped up over a far distant hill, working its way across the flat, open spaces between the mesas. As I drove across western Texas, I could see such anomalies for miles, see their progress, entertained by their life cycle of generation to extinction. Such a locus for attention helped to pass the time on the long drive west.

Not that I was bored. I was fascinated. We have such an amazing country. Just the day before I careened through southern Mississippi and Louisiana on engineered roads propped up for miles well over the misty swamps and bogs beneath.

But the open expanses of the desert constituted today’s Great Show playing before my windshield. Very few signs of man marked the plain beyond a few feet from the highway. Gusts occasionally shook the vehicle.

As another dust cloud formed I watched it move towards an off-ramp in the distance. I needed to stretch. A few minutes later my Jeep followed the exit to the source of the cloud’s ire, a single structure, simple gas station at an exit, the only sign of humanity rising from the blacktop.

A child of about 8 played by the rust-stained ice machine, squatting over a pile of pebbles on well worn sandals too big for his feet, his dark brown eyes squinting through the dust swirling, his black hair whipping in a frenzy. He intently searched for some treasure, the characteristics of which only a child’s imagination could identify for certain.

After starting the gas pump and noting its slow turn, I headed inside the building, walking past the only other vehicle, a faded blue Ford pickup with tires stained brown from dirt. Well past on hills and flattops giant wind turbines stood overwatch, sentinels keeping time with an occasional distant clacking.

The shop floor’s beige tile sported brown and red streaks tracing the common footpath from the door to the restrooms to the right and the counter to the left. Shelves too close together held the same things always found in convenience stores, though without the careful order and precision of a more commercially established gas station. And there were the items more common to this part of the country, cheap blankets, Texas shot glasses, a mini-diorama of a campfire scene in a black box.

From behind the counter a woman ducked her head down below the cigarette display to get a view. Dark inkings close to her scalp and above her brown eyes admitted the lie her unkept long blond hair told, frazzled from the dry desert. I smiled. She didn’t care.

Grabbing a drink from the coolers, I brought it to the counter, handed her a couple of dollars, and waited. She never looked me in the face.

The door opened and in rushed the boy. Her expression changed to anger, brow furrowing. “Out!” she commanded. The boy looked up hurt, glanced at the door where wind used the dust to pound away, demanding entrance.

“Baño?” he asked.

“No!” she cracked, slamming my change on the counter as punctuation. He turned and left, reluctant.

“Cute boy,” I commented. She turned away, busying herself with lottery tickets.

“Not mine.”

She rolled a new set of scratch-off tickets into the dispenser. “I’ll take 2 of those, and one more water,” leaving a ten on the counter as I walked back to the cooler. By the time I returned, my change waited beside the tickets. I’ve never been one for lotteries, but it seems to fascinate some people.

“Where’s the boy come from?” I asked. Realizing she wasn’t getting rid of me until my curiosity was satisfied, she came back to where I stood.

“Don’t know. Shows up around here sometimes. Ain’t nothing but a problem. Watches the customers.”

“He ever ask for anything?

“No. Keeps to himself. Just stares at folks.” I could relate. I nodded back and walked out.

I couldn’t see the boy as I wandered to the pump, the numbers turning over far too slowly for my patience. He wasn’t over by the ice machine. But she told me what I needed to know. He was an observer, like me. I stepped to the other side of the island and sat down on the curb, drinking from the bottle of water. Children tend to come to me for some reason. Maybe it is the detachment I sometimes show, so used to being doted over as they are. He poked his head around. I raised the other water bottle towards him along with one eyebrow, an easily understood gesture. He assessed the situation; assessed my Jeep. Smart kid, especially in this world of monsters in human flesh. Perhaps it was his instincts or the Army stickers, but he rated me trustworthy.

He accepted the bottle from me and sat nearby, but not too close. I looked away as he drank. He said something that sounded like a question and ended in “soldado?”

I’m not that familiar with Spanish, but I guessed. “Si. Militar.” He nodded, smiled, and set his bottle down. From his pocket he pulled a small blue memo pad, pages disorganized in different misshapes, the spiral wires crushed to one side or another, from another pocket a cheap, capped blue pen. He flipped through several pages that had some scribbles, some letters, to a blank one, then handed me both.

I wasn’t sure what he wanted. “Firma?” he asked. “Yep, it’s pretty solid,” I replied. He looked confused. I had failed to respond appropriately. He shook his head and make a flourish with one hand as if scribbling on his palm. “Te llama?” Ah, I knew this one. I signed my name, then took a lottery ticket from my pocket along with a penny, using it to mark my place as I closed the pad, and handed it back to him.

He looked a little excited, opening the notebook, his eyes shifting between the lottery ticket and my signature, trying to take both in. I heard the click from the gas pump signaling a full tank. He sat back down and began scratching on the ticket. By the time I was done he was standing next to me, holding the ticket towards me to decipher. I read the rules. Find the 9s. He had two. $19. Not bad. I smiled, held my finger up and walked back in the store. He was already making scribbles in his notebook on the page opposite my scratch.

The clerk had gone from indifference to dislike towards me. I winked at her, walked down an aisle to where I knew there would be nail clippers, playing cards, tire pressure gauges, and just what I was looking for: a small black, hardback notebook with the word “Record” embossed in the lower corner. I grabbed it, a black pen and walked back to the counter, handing over the lottery ticket as well.

She looked at it, scanned everything, and handed me the change. “Do you have an extra rubber band or two?” I asked. She sighed and opened a drawer, shifting the contents, handing me one wide brown one and a thin red one. “Thank you.” I stuffed the change back in my pocket, pulled out my wallet and counted out enough to make $19 as I headed out the door. Tucking the six bills into the book and wrapping it with the rubber bands, I heard the woman call out, “That boy ain’t gonna be nothing but trouble.”

I looked back to her and said, “I know… he’s a writer.”

—–

A couple of weeks later I drifted back to this moment while in class. “And where else would you see the threat?” the instructor asked. We stood around a table looking at photographs and maps.

“Just here, across from these kids,” another student posited.

“Exactly,” the instructor said. “American Soldiers and Marines have a very obvious, glaring weakness in the eyes of our enemies. Children. We are easily distracted and protective. They know this. They have exploited this.”

And I thought of the little boy walking away from me after he handed me a sheet with his name scribbled on it, a sheet I unfortunately lost somewhere on the way.

I recognize the “weakness” as well. And it defines for me the nature of my enemy, for if he would exploit children in the interest of harming my Soldiers, my Marine brethren, then there is no moral gray area. And that, in turn, adds to my strength.

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