Gnash

by Brian Parker

  Grayson laughed on the other end of the line. “Alright, I’ve gotta go and get a little prep work done for tomorrow. We’ll talk when you get home tonight, ok? And babe, don’t be too hard on Millie,” he said. “She’s a good dog, a little hyper but she really does like you and wants you to like her.” He’d had the Weimaraner for a little over six years. She was a great dog but apartment life didn’t suit her so well. When he bought her he’d been stationed at Fort Bragg and had land for her to run on. She needed constant attention to keep her from going crazy and it got on Emory’s nerves a little bit. At least she doesn’t bark very much, she thought gratefully.

  “Fine, I’ll make sure to take her for walks and play fetch with her for you. Hell, if I didn’t she’d probably think she’d been abandoned since you spoil her so much. Start planning your next credit card purchase now. And tell everyone at your office that I hate them.”

  “Love you too Babe.”

  TWO

  14 April, 0738 hrs local

  I-495 the Capital Beltway

  Washington, D.C.

  Shit, that was close! he thought as he jammed his palm down against the horn on the Wrangler’s steering wheel. He was pissed about this trip in every way, now he had to deal with the idiot drivers on the Beltway. Grayson Donnelly had just been given the big fat finger by his boss when she told him he had to make a last-minute trip to Fort Sill, Okla-fuckin-homa on his anniversary with Emory. Sometimes he thought it was worse being an Army civilian than back in the days when he was an Active Duty soldier.

  His boss, Colonel Reeds, was a one of those people who had succeeded only by the help of those around her and it showed constantly. This time, she had waited to make a decision until yesterday morning so he had to rush around to get his flight booked and make hotel arrangements to go to Fort Sill as a representative for the HQDA[3] for the field test of the new howitzer they were interested in producing and fielding to the Army. And to top it all off, because of the late notice, the only flight available was out of BWI in Baltimore. It would have been so much easier to ride the Metro over to Reagan National, or even to take the bus to Dulles, but those flights were all full.

  He knew he should just take it in stride and not let it get to him, but that woman was always doing dumb things, often repeating mistakes she should have already learned from, and her people suffered as a result. When he was still in the Army he would have never put up with it. He’d risked insubordination on several occasions in order to take care of his troops and this was really nothing different. Except that in the military, his superiors had looked at his actions with respect for the dedication he had for his guys and now that he was a civilian, he could get fired for telling his boss that she didn’t know her ass from a hole in the ground.

  When he thought about his current work situation he sometimes wished he’d either stayed in until retirement or not gotten a civilian job with the military. But the economy was in the toilet when he got out in 2008 and the government job was good, guaranteed income. If he looked at it objectively, he really should be thankful for his job. If he’d went to some company as a new-hire manager-in-training then his position probably would have been one of the first cuts at a struggling company. Hell, over the course of ‘08 and ’09 that company probably would have gone out of business anyways so maybe he’d made the right choice after all.

  And, there was Emory. Their relationship looked like it was going to continue to flourish. He’d meant it when he told her if she played her cards right she’d have a real anniversary yesterday. He could easily see himself marrying her, settling down finally and having a couple kids. At 35, he really did need to make a decision if he was going to have a family or not. He’d always really wanted children, but the problem was usually the women that would come with them. He was a perfectionist and never could find someone that he wasn’t sick of after a few months. When he turned thirty his mother told him his opportunities were over and that she wouldn’t get any grandchildren out of him. What did she know? She was old-fashioned. If she’d had her way he would have been married off two weeks out of high school the way her and Dad were back in the Seventies.

  He enlisted in the Army after high school. He knew that he ultimately wanted to be an officer, but as a kid, his father, a retired NCO[4] in the Marine Corps, had told him stories about the merits of officers he’d known who had been enlisted first. Chief among those merits were the ability to understand the viewpoint of the regular Marine and their common sense approach to leadership. After his initial training, his first duty station was Fort Hood, Texas, which was only about three hours from his mother and father in Ozona, Texas. He signed up and went to night school at the University of Texas at Austin which was about an hour drive down the back roads from the base.

  He didn’t even have time for women or socializing outside of work for those five years that it took him to earn his degree, but he did it, only a little behind schedule and he’d been able to use a combination of tuition assistance and his Army income to pay for school along the way, which meant that he didn’t have the student loan debts that most college graduates did. After that, he got the approval of his chain of command to attend Officer Candidate School down at Fort Benning. He graduated at the top of his class and became an Infantry officer. He suffered through Airborne and Ranger schools with the rest of his classmates and was assigned to Fort Bragg, North Carolina to the storied 82 Airborne Division.

  He didn’t regret any of the years that he’d dedicated to his Army career. He’d deployed to Iraq once and Afghanistan twice, leading troops in combat over all three deployments. He got a 7.62mm bullet through his forearm in Fallujah during a riot in April 2003 and had skin from his ass and thigh grafted to his arm now. He’d taken shrapnel to his face and neck when an RPG round hit a wall he was taking cover behind in eastern Afghanistan in early 2005. Then his unit went to New Orleans after the president called the 82 in to provide aid and help rescue the residents after Hurricane Katrina.

  It was there, in the Big Easy, after his second deployment, that he began to feel dissatisfied with what he was doing. He didn’t join the Army to keep people from fighting over food and umbrellas while he simultaneously saved people who used their situation to act like animals. People were murdered for food, or even worse, for big screen TVs. There had been rampant looting and vandalizing of the city for no reason. Hell he’d even seen more than one person waiting in line for the buses out of the Superdome pull their pants down and shit right there beside the line because they didn’t want to lose their place. What kind of people did that? Not even the Iraqis or Afghans did that.

  He decided to get out after at the ten-year mark, adding another deployment to Afghanistan and a messed up shoulder after his Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle was overturned when it was hit by an IED to his other two Purple Hearts. The truck worked as advertised and he was alive thanks to all those last-minute armor upgrades by the Army. That pretty much sealed it, he figured he’d tempted fate too many times, so he got out a before he would have been eligible for Major. His father tried to talk some sense into him. He said that Grayson was throwing away ten good years of his life and was already halfway to retirement, the economy sucked and he would be plenty young enough to get a second career when he retired at 38. But Grayson wouldn’t be swayed about getting out. He did take part of his dad’s messages to heart and signed up as an Army civilian so that his time in service would ultimately count towards his thirty-year retirement. A year or so later he met Emory and they hit it off right away.

  Grayson parked in long-term parking and pulled all of his baggage out of the tiny trunk space of his Jeep. He checked everything at the airline counter except his backpack that held a laptop, his MP3 player, a book and a couple magazines. He made his way through security and went to Terminal C where his plane would be leaving. Luckily, directly across from his gate was a bar that was open early.

  He pulled out a barstool and sat down heavily on the worn wood. “Watcha
havin, sweetie?” the bartender, Katy her name tag said, asked him.

  “I know it’s only 9:30, but I would like a bloody mary, some onion rings and a grilled chicken sandwich, no mayo and a glass of water.”

  “Mister, we open at 5am every day, so it’s never too early for a drink. Be right back.” He liked her way of thinking and that was one of the good things about being a civilian, not traveling in uniform and being able to have a drink any time he wanted. “Here you go,” she said as she thumped a highball glass on the varnished wood bar. After a few minutes she came back from helping a few other customers. “Where ya headed?”

  “Oklahoma. For work.”

  “I went through there on the way here from New Mexico, you know, come to D.C. and be involved in your country’s politics. Like that worked. Went to a couple rallies and tried to work at a campaign office, but I soon realized that America’s political system was a train that can’t be derailed and one person really doesn’t make much of a difference. Anyways, not much there in Oklahoma you know.” She mixed him another drink without being asked for it and passed it over to him.

  “Tell me about it. Thanks,” he said as he gestured to the bloody mary. “I’ve been there before and I’m not too happy about going back to that part of the country.”

  “So, you from around here or just passin through,” she asked standing up on her tippy toes and biting her lower lip as she looked him over. Grayson wasn’t what anyone would call gorgeous or any of that, but he did have a rugged handsomeness to him, his scars added a certain amount of intrigue and you could definitely tell he spent a lot of time at the gym.

  This wasn’t his first rodeo and he knew where the bartender was going, “I live down in D.C. with my fiancé.”

  “So you’re not married to her though, right?” A little lean in over the bar and he could smell her Juicy Couture perfume and just see the top of her cleavage.

  “Katy, you’re a really cute girl and three or four years ago, I’d have been hitting on you like crazy, but things change. Is my food ready?”

  “Oh,” she said dejectedly. “Let me go check on it.” She returned a couple minutes later carrying his plate. He thanked her and she went down to the other end of the bar to wash some glasses.

  Her movements got more pronounced and with each successive glass she washed she slammed them down into the water harder. Grayson could tell she was working herself into an angry frenzy. “It’s not like I was coming on to you, I was just making conversation with a patron, trying to pass the time. I work for tips you know,” she said loudly across the bar.

  He tried to make peace with her, but she wouldn’t have it. He finished his sandwich and the second bloody mary as quickly as he could. He stood up, dropped a fifty down on the bar and with a practiced motion, put on his backpack and walked out towards his gate. He pulled out a magazine from his bag and sat far away from the open entry to the pub.

  Thankfully the wait wasn’t long before the flight attendant called over the intercom for boarding to begin. He stood up, and risked a glance over his shoulder. Katy was glaring at him across the empty bar from behind the counter. The seventeenth century author William Congreve was right when he wrote the phrase “Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, nor hell a fury like a woman scorned.” In popular culture it had been bastardized into “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned,” but the message was the same.

  The McDonnell-Douglas MD-88 landed at the Lawton-Fort Sill Regional Airport at

  4:43 p.m. Grayson retrieved his bags from the baggage claim and picked up a Chevy Cobalt at the rental desk. When he got to the car, he tried to put his bags in the trunk, but the car that had been reserved for him was so small that he was only able to fit one suitcase in the trunk and he angrily shoved the second one into the back seat. All the money the military literally wasted on things but they had to save five bucks a day on a vehicle upgrade.

  He pulled out his cell phone and sent Emory a text message to let her know he’d made it alright, then he called the office of Colonel “Butch” Ulrich, the director of the Field Artillery’s Doctrine and Training Development Branch to let him know he was there and to get the low-down on where to meet tomorrow.

  After two rings the other end of the line picked up. “FADT-Development, this is Carolynn, how may I help you sir or ma’am,” a female voice queried.

  “This is Grayson Donnelly from HQDA Force Management Operations, I’m calling to speak to Colonel Ulrich,” he said, once again slipping into the no-nonsense military manner that had been a part of his entire adult life.

  “One moment please, Mr. Donnelly.” The phone clicked over to hold and he listened to the local country station, which was bootlegged over the system. By the time the phone had clicked back over he’d finished the short trip to his hotel and was sitting in the parking lot.

  “Grayson, its Butch. How the hell are ya?”

  “I’m doing well, sir. Just calling to let you know I made it into town and checking into my hotel.”

  “Where they got you stayin’ at this time?”

  “The Best Western, again.”

  “That shithole? Ah well, the casino is within walking distance from there anyways.” The Cherokee Nation Casino and Sport Club was actually closer than walking distance, they practically shared the same parking lot. “We’ve got a meeting at 1400 tomorrow afternoon with the program manager to go over a few technical details before we go out for the live-fire shoot on Saturday at Observation Point Mow-Way. You’ve got all your field gear right?”

  “Always, sir. Ok, I’ll be there around noon tomorrow.”

  “Alright, see you then. Bring a book, it might get boring around here.”

  Grayson jotted down the meeting information on a notebook before he got out of the car. He’d found it was always better to write the information down when it was fresh in your mind instead of trying to remember the details later on.

  He checked into his room and threw his bags onto the second bed. He pulled the comforter off of his own and put it in the closet. After he took his clothes out and hung them up, he called room service and then Emory. They talked for a little bit then he told her he was going to play poker over at the casino next door and would call her back later that night.

  ***

  14 April, 1832 hrs local

  Cherokee Nation Casino and Sport Club

  Lawton, Oklahoma

  The acrid smell of cigarette smoke hit him full in the face as he pulled open the tinted doors to the casino. He’d been to Fort Sill several times for the Army over the past several years so he knew exactly where to go for the poker room. The lights from the slot machines were garish and obnoxious, second only to the sounds coming from those same machines. The people sitting at them glanced over at him in a daze. Their routine went something like: drop a quarter in, push the button, distract me with bright lights while I wait for disappointment, reach for another quarter…What a waste of time, he thought.

  He made his way back to the poker room and put his name on the wait list. There were three names ahead of him so he went over to the blackjack tables to pass the time. He sat and cashed in $100 for some chips.

  Before too long he heard his name over the intercom. He tipped the dealer and scooped up his chips. He was down by five bucks, not bad considering he’d seen people blow whole paychecks during his fifteen minutes at the table. He walked up to the poker room desk and got his seat assignment.

  As he sat down, he said a general hello to everyone at the table and cashed in $155 to bring his total in play to $250, more than enough to play all night if he didn’t get caught up in something stupid. The waitress brought him a Miller Lite in a can and he set out to begin reading the other seven players at the table while making the minimum bets.

  After about twenty minutes he pretty much had it figured out. There were two players at the table who knew what they were doing but both were so short-stacked they couldn’t do much with their hands. There was one guy who looked li
ke he was in over his head, losing a little money in several of the smaller hands, but he consistently played and said he was just there to learn the game. Grayson decided that one was probably better than he let on and was waiting for his time to make a move. Three of the other guys were probably good friends because when one would get into a hand the other two would get out of the way a the majority of the time.

  That left “Jim Bob,” if you believed the patch sewn onto his overalls. He had several thousand dollars on the table in front of him and bullied just about every pot. Grayson watched him do it over and over, regardless of what was on the table in the community cards. From the snippets of conversation he overheard, Jim Bob was a farmer of some type. Six months out of the year, the government paid him not to farm so as to keep supply and demand in balance and to give all farmers a share in the market. Looks like his latest paycheck was sitting on the table plus quite a bit more.

  Grayson considered himself a smart poker player and one of his strengths was the ability to read his opponents. The mood of the table shifted noticeably when Jim Bob heaved his mass out of his chair to use the bathroom. Players started to actually play the game instead of being bullied off the pot by Jim Bob’s over-betting.

  In the twenty-five minutes that he was gone, Grayson had busted two of the three musketeers and one of the short-stackers had called it quits. His little stack of $250 had grown to over $900 and it was looking like a good time to cash in and leave. Two new people were sitting at the table trying to get in on the action. Then the farmer came back. He had a mustard stain on the bib of his overalls that wasn’t there when he left the table. “Well, well,” he said, “the new kid got a little action while I was gone. Guess that’s how all of you play, huh? Afraid to put your money on the table. My truck needs a bigger lift kit installed and I wanna put some Super Swampers under that boy, so let’s play!”