A Gallery of Tuesdays
[NOV2022]
As I lie here staring up at the corrugated ceiling of my military nest this last Tuesday morning I'll know, I'm struck by the uncanny fact that many, if not most, of my life-changing events have happened on Tuesdays.
Tuesday. Classically the most prosaic day of the week. Not the much maligned Monday nor the God-invoking Friday, not even the benchmark hump day of Wednesday. It's just Tuesday. Neither here nor there. But of the noteworthy events of my life, most seem to have fallen on Tuesdays. A coincidence that would have escaped me if it weren't for my current ascetic of examining the smallest details of my days.
I spend the morning strategically unlocking directories on my hard drive and placing key documents around the room as if casually strewn about. I purposefully leave the coffee pot on so that it will burn out as if forgotten in a hasty departure. I write out a fictitious 'To Do' list with tasks for the week ahead. Investigators of this setting will have no reason to suspect that I wasn't planning on ever returning here.
I also attend to real tasks, scanning the horizon for transports unreported and short wave frequencies for anomalies. I scan the perimeter camera footage from the night before for thermal signatures other than coyotes, skunks or rabbits but all of them fall into their expected silos of non-events.
The clock seems to slow before 1500 as I clean the scope lens and load my sniper rifle. I place a jar of white paint and a brush into my pack and half-way through the door in the floor I stop and take another look around. There are no important moments that come to mind as I think about the past 42 months in this place. I do recall when the hot plate fell and burned a neat pattern of concentric circles on my cot mattress and the afternoon I arrived back to find a raccoon rummaging through the trash—I nearly fell down the ladder that day. I think I was more frightened of that little shit that afternoon than any Rebel Militia in the brush. It's a good last recollection that makes me smile before slamming the door closed and descending the ladder.
As I walk south toward the car hood target I peer through the scope to see if Mack is coming too and for half a second I see a figure and know it's him. When I get to the hood, I set down my pack and rifle, pull out the brush and paint and look for just the right spot on the hood to draw a fresh target for my faceless friend. About one meter off the ground and just to his left of center. I chuckle at the symbolism of letting this right wing wacko shoot left of center. I paint the target an inch smaller than usual as a challenge and a compliment knowing he will hit it dead-center.
Today it's my turn to shoot first. So I clear the ground, set up the tripod and snap in the magazine. Looking through the site I see that Mack has matched my circle size with mutual respect and right of center. Could he possibly be making the same political commentary? Perhaps in any other setting at any other time he and I would be friends, even with our ideological differences. Because, in any other setting at any other time, our ideologies wouldn't be armed with more than political discourse and name calling.
We always take our time with the first shot. Partly to calibrate for wind and temperature but also to extend the game as long as possible. It was obvious how much we both valued this time together for neither of us ever failed to show up since that first exchange almost three years ago.
As I tweak the wind speed arrows and range finder settings I think about that first exchange. I didn't realize at the time that I had a mirror. I was patrolling the south flank right here at this spot when I caught a glimpse of, what I later learned was Mack, in my binoculars. I assumed he was a coyote. But to be sure, I fired off a round toward the blur expecting to scare the coyote into the open and confirm that that's what it was. I fired but nothing jumped. Maybe it was a tumbleweed or maybe nothing at all. As I slung my rifle onto my shoulder the sharp thudding ping of a high caliber round struck the ground a meter in front of me. I hit the deck. "What the fuck?!" and immediately wondered why I had gotten out of the habit of wearing my armor and helmet. I belly-crawled behind the nearest mound and frantically scanned the sector with my site. Then I saw Mack. His barrel pointed right at me. He never lost a bead on me and could have easily taken me out with a follow-up round or, for that matter, any time between US6 and this spot. When I shot, I didn't know I was shooting at an enemy combatant. But why didn't he shoot me? Instead, electing to hit the ground a meter in front of me which, when intentional, is a more difficult shot to make than hitting an upright six foot tall man.
For the next couple of hours we both laid there motionless as snipers are trained to do. Both targets clearly in sight but neither taking the first shot. Another vital piece of training and muscle memory that surged to the surface even after being out of the service for over fifteen years. If sniper one takes the first shot, there is a millisecond of time after the rifle kicks and the puff of smoke can be seen by sniper two. If sniper one misses, sniper two knows he can squeeze off at least two rounds before sniper one fully resets. It's a zero-sum game and if the first shot does not connect, the odds favor sniper two by 150%. The longer we laid there and did nothing the more evident our advanced training was.
Then came the moment that our détente ended and our long distance relationship began.
The bane of living in the open space of western Colorado is the spotted skunk. Whole evenings are ruined every two weeks or so when one of these little bastards lets loose their defenses. I hated them. And if Mack the Mirror lived out here as well, we had to have at least that in common.
Well into the second hour of our stand-off, a skunk trotted out stopping almost right between us. It was enough stress that day to have learned that I had a highly skilled sniper mirroring my post, but I'd be damned if I was going to let this skunk wander free and threaten my night. I couldn't help myself. When the skunk scurried on, I drew a bead on him and squeezed the trigger. This action flew in the face of every hour of training the Army invested in me. I let my olfactory senses overcome common sense and left myself wide open for a bullet to the head. The skunk leaped into the air and spun around. It was a hit. But I had no time to enjoy it as I shifted my site right back onto Mack. Thankfully he fired no follow-up shot. At the edge of the scope I could see the skunk hobbling away. "Damnit!" Not only was the skunk not dead but now he was probably pissed-off. Just then I saw a puff of smoke from Mack's barrel and the skunk hurled forward in a spray of red. "I like this guy." I said aloud to myself.
It became clear then that neither of us had any intent on being sniper number one. So we just packed up and left. We repeated the ritual of staring each other down for a couple of Tuesdays thereafter. Then, one Tuesday while trekking to my spot, I came across the car hood. Dark green with rusted edges and shredded latches. I theorized that it was not fully closed and simply blasted off its host car and into the brush when the car hit a critical mass speed. Who knows how these things get out here?
I dragged it to the spot, dug a trench and set it upright facing toward Mack. I then scraped "Kilroy Was Here" and its iconic doodle in the paint—a gesture of soldier solidarity that transcends our orders and our uniforms. I set myself up a few meters away and waited. Before long, Mack got up, retreated to his shed and in a few minutes I saw him dragging a piece of his plywood out to his sniper nest. He set it up and drew a similar target with a piece of coal. That afternoon we spent blasting holes in each others' targets and the Tuesday Shooting Club was launched.
Today, all but the center left region of the hood looked like speaker mesh. And the plywood targets had been splintered to smithereens so many times over the past couple of years that I imagined Mack was resorting to his own shelter walls to provide me with targets.
I finalize my settings to today's conditions, exhale and squeeze the trigger sending the ballistic right through the center of the circle. I knew I had at least ten minutes before he would take his shot so, instead of rolling six meters to the side, I scrambled backward out of Mack's sight then maneuvered to the brush directly behind the hood.
Today I wore my combat fatigues as if engaged in a surprise battle but I only attached the items someone in a hurry would grab. Even my boots were half-tied. Usually I would spend that ten minutes cleaning and disassembling my rifle, but today I kept it strapped with a near empty magazine.
As I lay here in the crisp air gripping the cold carbon fiber of the rifle, I think about another Tuesday. The one when I first talked to Miriam. I can still see her in the reflection of that case so clearly. There are too many regrets that escort her memory that I will never feel finality with that Tuesday or this one. She'll just have to be the elegant, sweet sorrow that flavors these last moments.
Still out of Mack's sight, I crawl up to the back of the hood. The smell of the dirt reminds me of that Tuesday in Socorro. I smile with satisfaction of a plan well executed. Then the sense memory of being kicked to that same ground a couple days later makes me wince. Then the image of Baaleth's Perp Walk and all those artifacts in Angelica's museum being tagged and prepared for shipment back to their countries of origin relieves all that. I see Seth's face nodding at me at the Governor's Zozobra party letting me know that the task of getting Siméon and the crate with the two feathers logo on film was complete. I recall Officer Clarke's smile after I handed him Baaleth. Their prime suspect with a motive and the opportunity to murder the First Lady. Not to mention this black market criminal that INTERPOL was unable to catch up to. The rivalry between the two agencies was famous and on that day, Homeland Security won.
I hoist myself to my knees behind the hood, the back of my head one meter off the ground and just to my left of center. Seeing the sun beams shining through the bullet holes makes me think of the hole Baaleth's men put in the morion during our escape from the kivas on another Tuesday and another loose end tied. Right now, in a vault below the Smithsonian sits a pristine gold plated helmet masterfully crafted with period welds using period tools and embossed with the crest of Cortés. For a few years, the entire world looked upon this helmet and imagined the horrors of that savage Spaniard and his men never knowing they were looking at Rafael Vidal's finest work. Vigils were held for the children of the Aztecs and the Hopi who were never given their justice. Even the Pope apologized for that dark period of Inquisition and the slaying of a culture an ocean away. And the fourth world of the Hopi folded closed. It's a rough start for the fifth, but a fresh one. And my mind turns to the other morion with the bullet hole that sits again in silence in a kiva deep in the red rocks of Anasazi Territory and the shaman boy who protects it.
I savor one last memory. The stark visual contrast of Angelica's saturated red dress against the dull sage brush of the Socorro desert. I recall how chambering the bullet of my .45 seemed to load the chamber of her mouth with hopeless confessions. How my arm thrust the gun forward as if to add torque to the barrel but I paused. The droning churn of metal on metal as the S.E.T.I. dishes shifted reminded me of the Tibetan chants that wafted across the Yarlung River and I became very still. Angelica mistook my stall as her chance for mercy.
"It was Siméon's idea, Emit. All his. He was sure you were going to expose our affair that night." she began.
Seth, their photographer, had filled me in on all the details that last week in the hospital. I knew everything. And it had taken me two years to be there in that desert on that morning so I took a truculent pleasure in watching her mascara bleeding eyes confess.
"Carlo was only supposed to shoot your tire...to keep you from coming that night. We never meant for her to be hurt, Emit, never! I adored..." I thrust my arm forward again and took a step toward her to stop her from saying Miriam's name.
It wasn't the affair they feared we would expose; it was our threat to their tidy little, billion dollar black market artifact business. The tire shot was only meant to cause a flat tire and buy them time until they could pay me off. As if that were an option. It was a plan gone awry but it achieved their goal. For a time. Miriam was gone and I was a psychiatric out-patient who could easily be discounted. In the end, it was Angelica's own conceit that foiled their plan. Seth's lenses had caps, his ears did not.
My favorite sound on that cold Tuesday morning was the punctuation at the end of her last sentence. A single, red, .45 caliber period in her forehead.
As I look back up at US6 which thunders every fortnight with the machines and young souls of war everything is now serene. I think of Jack and how his early need for self-reliance and strategic chess playing mind are why he's risen to the rank of Lieutenant so quickly and how both attributes are my accidental gifts. I suppose this Tuesday will end up being significant for him as well. He's going to hate it here at first, the solitude, the lack of combat adrenaline, the safety. But sometimes a man has to be a father. In three days, Colonel Pike will open a document that reports an uptick in combat in this area and a letter that wills this post to my son if anything happens to me. This is the only way I can keep at least part of that promise to him. "Yes, Jack. I promise. Just know that whenever we're apart, the whole time we are, I am trying to get back to you and make you safe."
By the time the next convoy finds me here, Mack will have realized that the Tuesday Shooting Club has disbanded and will abandon his post. The wind kicks up the dust from the shoulders of US6 and whistles across the sage to where I kneel against the back of the hood. I gauge the exact spot where I painted the small circle on the other side then ease the back of my head against it. There is just one more loose end to tie. One more merciful bad move so my son can know the serenity of US6.
The End |
