Chapter four from the R.M. Dolin novel, “What Is To be Done”
Half-an-hour into poker and it’s already Dominic’s second deal. The two Mexicans huddled at the far end of the bar are unsure regarding American protocol, but since the Anglos are still here, they figure they’re okay. The old man’s about done with his beer and bump but seems pretty immersed in sketching. It’s dealer choice, so, Dominic can call any game he wants, but it’s been years since anyone’s called something other than Texas Hold-em or Omaha; a two-member set open to vague and often lame interpretations depending on who’s dealing. As a matter of principle, Armando won’t call Hold-em on account of it being from Texas and Dario prefers pot-limit Omaha because the high/low split encourages players with marginal hands. The PhDs like to invent versions of each so convoluted one round requires weeks of email arguing over contingencies and what-if scenarios.
“Straight up hold-em,” Dominic announces as he starts to shuffle. Once called, the dealer must complete a full round during which rules cannot be altered, and should a contingency arise not specifically caveatted, ‘house rules’ apply. This holds regardless of how ridiculous a game becomes, which unfortunately occurs with regrettable regularity, and no one wants a repeat of last fall’s fiasco; “You call it – you deal it,” that’s the policy now in place. Depending on the variant of Hold-em or Omaha called, a round can go quickly or drag on through re-deals, free cards, death cards, run-away wild cards, and thresholds for winning. As a former nuclear weapons code developer and Mind’s Eye project lead for software integration, Dominic likes logic and structure. “I don’t care if it’s boring,” he says while starting his deal.
A short stocky Italian from upstate New York, Dominic enjoys wine as much as homemade pesto made with New Mexico pinon and garden grown basil. He passionately promotes hybrid wines from New York’s Finger Lakes region, because his childhood friend, Anthony, developed many of the hybrids at his Cornell research center. Part way through dealing, Dominic stops. “I want you guys to know, I appreciate what you did.”
“He deserved it.” Dwayne scoffs.
“How the hell is someone with five DUI’s not in jail forever?” Preston demands.
“Freaking pendejo’s either rich or connected,” Dario concludes. “That’s how things work.”
“Guys!” Jon quietly scolds, “there’s people here.”
“Well thanks, if you hadn’t done what you did, I might have done something dangerous.”
“Not often the world provides a way to make things right,” Jake states.
“We’re glad you’re back,” Preston smiles while reassuring Dominic with a soft arm squeeze.
“I am.” Dominic awkwardly looks at his cards hoping someone changes topics. “I mean as much as I’ll ever be,” he adds after no one steps up. A silence settles over the poker table that’s amplified by the echoes of the old man scratching in his journal, the Mexicans trying to blend in, the baseball game on mute, and the relentless Santa Anna’s pressing against the white plaster walls. Dominic understands his friends are waiting for him to signal it’s okay to move on. “I’ve been working on my tax model, and based on current Washington dysfunction, Tax Freedom Day slides out at a rate of two point three days per year coupled with an out-year escalation rate of one point two six.”
Dario angrily tosses his cards into the pot to fold. “What the hell, I’m already working till June just to cover my freaking taxes.”
Jon, a tall thin physicist who somehow manages to retain a New Jersey accent despite working at the Lab since undergrad, splashes his cards over Dario’s. “I’m sorry,” he challenges, “the expansion rate cannot be constant. Did you account for COVID? They’ve already devalued the dollar 20% with giveaways and you know they’re gonna make it back on our backs.”
Dwayne, a Berkeley metallurgist by way of Nebraska, clears his throat. “How the hell can you factor in COVID?” he scoffs while sliding his thumbs down psychedelic suspenders. “Those clowns in Washington screwed that pooch big time.”
“Whoa there ya nasty varmint,” Dominic teases. “I do account for COVID, and according to my model, Tax Freedom Day falls on October first in twenty thirty-three, which means-”
“Every dollar Americans earn that entire fiscal year,” Jake interjects, “goes toward the cost of government.”
“Exactly!”
“Your model has to be wrong,” Theo counters, “no way they’d risk the wealth of our nation?”
“Naively spoken like a true Minnesota lefty.”
“Really, Jon?” Theo counters. “Personality politics? The last bastion of the ignorant?”
“I agree,” Preston jumps in. “I mean about Theo’s first point. I guess his second too. Even politicians can’t be that pathological.”
“Oh, Cabron, by their very vocation are they not?”
“What the hell,” Dario booms. “We should just start the revolution now!”
An awkward quiet descends like fog settling over a mountain meadow after a summer rain. Some pretend to examine their cards while others fidget with chips. The old man and the Mexicans stare at the escalating emotions, but what they all fail to appreciate is that the stifling silence has brought an altogether new kind of tension to the Al Azar; an echoing consensus that tonight carries more gravitas than usual. Collectively, the ANA understand bitching about what’s wrong with the world until they die won’t solve a damn thing. Men confront moments like this throughout their lives; moments when it’s clear something must be done. Most pretend they don’t recognize the moment when in fact they do. Others surrender, believing nothing can be done. For the men of the ANA though, looking away or giving up are not options, they’ve spent their lives confronting moments of moral and ethical dilemma with a courage and resolve few can muster. One does not design nuclear weapons without staring into the abyss of difficult decisions and devising logically defensible paths forward. What separates this moment from those reached by countless other complaining old men in bars, coffee shops, and cafés around the world is that the men of the ANA not only embrace that something must be done, they possess the resources and intellectual tenacity to effect requisite deltas.
Since before the pandemic even began, the ANA have been postulating ways to execute redress that go undetected, a ‘virtual coup’ they call it. Driven as much by curiosity as profound patriotism, they’ve gone so far as to develop a general framework while teasing at the edges of various hypothesizes. As they danced around the boundaries of lawless sedition, three things simultaneously happened. First, they got caught up in the excitement and challenges such a problem presents, and the more they engaged the more intoxicated they became by a need to achieve success. Their rabid aversion to failure rapidly evaporated any sense of caution caused by the consequences of what they’re contemplating.
At the same time, the realization the country is deteriorating at a pace requiring action sooner rather than later became compellingly clear. They understand that problems in the small are orders of magnitude more manageable than problems in the large, and for a dysfunctional government incrementally ceding control to maniacal oligarchs, today’s relatively small issues are exponentially becoming problems in the large. Any reasonable consideration of current events leaves little doubt that not only must something be done; it must be done now.
Finally, and perhaps most profound in the convergence of their first order parameters, is a burgeoning confidence in their ability to craft orchestrated outcomes. They’ve tested aspects of their virtual coop and found to their astonishment, it’s not as hard as one might imagine. Until the incident with Dominic, their plan was only hyperbole, but intervening on Dominic’s behalf became the catalyst causing them to go live with measures they had previously only hypothesized. Once Dominic was restored, they backed away from further action; but then came Jake’s tragedy and a realization the problem was far greater than they thought. Tonight though, things are different, perhaps they’re caught up in the spirit of Cinco de Mayo – the grass roots push for Mexican independence. Maybe it’s the lingering effects of allergy season wrapped within the Santa Anna’s sinister swirl. It could even be, as Jake keeps warning, unrealized events hurtling toward them with cataclysmic calamity. Whatever the reason, for the serious men who sit in silence, the sense they’re cresting the cusp of a perfect storm is collectively clear.
“It’s not revolution,” Preston softly offers to break their gridlock of silence.
“Okay,” Dario bristles, “insurrection, sedition, anarchy, pick your poison.”
“Not really those either,” Jon suggests. “We may call what we’re doing a virtual coop, but really, we’re trying to stop one.”
“Difference without distinction,” Dario asserts. “Especially when they line us up against a firing squad.”
Armando catapults from his chair with a fluid energy that startles everyone. He looks back surprised how surprised everyone is. “I’m gonna grab a beer,” he casually announces. “Anybody?”
The boys look at each other to gauge the mood, do they follow Dario down his revolutionary rabbit hole or allow Armando to segue them to safer topics? Jake swirls his glass, “another cocktail perhaps, if you can make it right this time.”
Armando snatches Jake’s glass. Unable to craft a sanguine rebuttal, he briskly retreats behind the bar mumbling displeasure. “Make it right.” He dumps the old ice out. “Put stinky ice in a glass. Pour in bourbon.” He looks for where he might have misplaced the bourbon bottle. “It’s not like building a freaking bomb!” The two Mexicans wonder if they might be called upon to back up their generous host who has clearly been insulted. Armando spots his bar towel in front of the Mexicans. “Red, blue, green or black, Cabron?” he shouts.
“It’s gotta be green,” Jake confirms, “I’m on a winning streak.”
In Spanish, ‘Cabron’ literally means ‘old goat’. In Northern New Mexico lingo it has many, often contradicting interpretations, such as, someone I like, someone I don’t like, and just about any other imaginable positive or negative connotation. It’s not clear which incantation Armando’s summoned. He pulls out the bottle of Jake’s bourbon with the green foil top while surveying the bar. The old man’s not quite finished his beer and bump, but the Mexicans are ready for another round. He studies his two patrons of questionable status while jamming lime wedges into fresh bottles wondering if perhaps, they’re the ones who broke into his bar last week; after all, the thieves only took Corona. He convinces himself that they don’t really look like thieves but probably know who thieving pendejos are.
Armando ganders toward his poker group in case anyone’s re-calibrated. The oblong table is positioned under a precariously balanced Coors florescent light. Dwayne, Jake, and Preston sit on the back side of the poker table facing the front door. Dominic, Theo, and Jon sit across from them facing the pool table. Dario’s at one end facing the bar, while Armando’s at the end nearest the bar. Behind the pool table is the storage room last week’s thieves desecrated. The exterior exit has since been sealed rendering the singular way in or out of the Al Azar through the main entrance; probably something the fire marshal would take exception to, if Nambe had a fire marshal.
Armando opens the green bottle bourbon not letting go of Jake’s offense. “You get a glass,” he mumbles, “you add ice.” The sound of hardened cubes angrily clanking around the whiskey glass resonates around the quiet bar. With great bravado Armando adds the requisite spirit. “You dump in bourbon.” He holds the glass at eye level admiring his work. “So easy, a Mexican could do it.” Without pause he smiles at his two patrons with indifference, “no offense.”
The Mexicans stare at Armando in a way that suggests they don’t understand but do. They know better than to act offended but nonetheless are. They like a bar where questions about status go unasked, so diplomacy necessarily trumps machismo, even though they are rethinking their previous commitment to back their host against the Anglos.
As Armando starts toward the poker table, the front door explodes open, and a disheveled woman stumbles over the threshold collapsing toward the floor. With the stealth agility of a mountain lion, she contorts her fall in a way that allows her descending momentum to bounce upward before the full weight of her body impacts downward finishing on her feet immediately glancing back for pursuit. She frantically surveys the room categorizing people based on who’s no good, while looking for secondary exits.
Out of breath and sweating desperation, her long black hair and bark brown skin combine to betray her origins. Her sleeveless emerald-satin dress hugs the contours of her malnourished body providing concealment only halfway down her thighs. She possesses a determined elegance making her appear taller and fuller figured than closer inspection reveals. Her stockingless legs have a deceptively shiny sheen that somehow accents her lime leather shoes that once came with very high heels. The bottom of the dress and her calves are patched in dirt, scratches, and in places dried blood. Fresh mud encases her shoes suggesting she slid down the Pueblo side of the Nambe before crossing the damp creek bed.
Bright red lipstick and sparkling eye liner paint a story of obvious misdirection. A gory gash on her left shoulder oozes blood that trails down her front shoulder before escaping to the careful confines of seclusion. Cheap jewelry hangs from her ears, around her neck, and on her wrist pretending to be gold when clearly copper. Jewelry that encases emeralds and rubies that are really just glass. The kind of stuff easily found at flea markets along the highway or at tourist joints off the plaza.
The terror in her eyes and the tense way she’s frozen yet ready to pounce make clear she’s fleeing something. That something is obvious to everyone in the bar as each man knows the stories and like most, pretend until they can’t, they’re not really true. To their credit, the men in the bar have never actually talked to a girl like her and have certainly never paid for what she provides – except for maybe the Mexicans, who can say?
It’s strange how in an instant you can know everything about someone without knowing anything at all. Before this desperate woman fully rebounds from her contorted fall, it’s clear to every man in the bar she’s been forced into prostitution, that she’s endured a horrendous and unspeakable journey from her native country to the doorway of the Al Azar, that she’s a modern-day slave on the run and soon someone will come for her; a very bad someone.
They know all these things and everything else connected with such tragedies. They know this drama plays out on a daily basis and yet, like someone diagnosed with cancer, they’re easily able to deny it until forced to face what they already know. With the probable exception of the old man and perhaps the Mexicans, every man’s prepared to do something; they just need a moment to take in what’s happened, what’s about to happen, and to formulate a plan. Everyone that is, except Dario who, as a combat vetted Corpsman, instinctively catapults to action. As others down-select details of yet unformatted action plans, Dario’s cleared the poker table on his way to provide aid and comfort. His hurried approach, however, startles the woman who retreats against the wall beside the old man.
Dario’s treated many Marines in combat with that same terrorized look. “Ahora estas a salvo,” he whispers while reaching a hand toward her wounded shoulder. The woman draws back revealing a blood-stained knife, looking at Dario in adrenaline fixed terror desperately re-canvasing the room for exits. Dario inches closer, “Soy un médico, puedo tratar su herida.” Saying he’s a doctor and that he’ll treat her wound isn’t a lie, for six years his 150 Marines called him Doc and he was far more than any civilian practicing, Harvard-trained, doctor ever could be.
The woman’s eyes dart back and forth with a panic reserved for those who have truly touched hell and felt the heat of melting souls. She cycles through multiple iterations of raising, then lowering the knife before concluding he’s not evil. She sets the knife on the old man’s table and touches the gash only now realizing how badly she’s hurt. Slowly Dario approaches in the same calm way he reassures his five-month-old colt, he slides her hand away from the wound and begins triage, but suddenly, headlights pan across the bar and the woman grabs the knife, shakes free from Dario, and once more searches for exits. Everyone understands, that very bad someone they knew was coming, is here.
Armando looks anxiously toward the door. “Take her to the back,” he tells Dario. “We’ll deal with the coming shit-storm.”
The woman doesn’t know who to trust. “No hay mucho tiempo, Puedo esconderle en la espaldo hasta que ellos se marchen,” Dario impresses the need to act quickly so he can hide her. Out of options, her escalating desperation overrides instinct, and she allows Dario to escort her past the stunned men at the poker table who are still sorting through what’s happening. Unlike Dario and Armando who face the conflicts of valley life on a routine basis, these intellectuals live in an isolated world where physical conflict simply does not exist.
Ruben throws open the blue double doors with the force of an unwelcome tornado, everyone stares at him as if watching a play still not committed to the realization they’ve become part of the unfolding drama. “Where’s my whore!” he demands.
“Senor,” Armando nonchalantly pans. “This is not that kind of Cantina.”
“Don’t screw with me old man, I swear to God, I’ll tear you up.”
Armando stares down this gangster wannabe. “I seriously doubt you and God are on speaking terms.”
Ruben steps toward the poker table dismissing Armando. “I’ll only ask once, where’s the whore?”
“Technically, Cabron, that is the second time you’ve asked.”
Ruben darts toward the bar needing to show everyone what a bad-ass he is. Jake realizes he has to do something and is about to when a sudden blur of green flashes past as the woman still clutching the blood-stained knife, rounds the poker table at a full lope.
Ruben smiles past his tobacco-stained teeth welcoming her aggression. He’s knows the best way to train runners on the futility of escape is to first find them, and then to round out their re-education, give them a convincing beat-down. He’s so practiced on what’s about to go down, he calmly awaits her lunge. As the woman flies with rage into range, Ruben leans into a fast-moving punch. The collision of his fist against her face creates an impact as hard as two objects flying toward each other can. The energy of his evil against her desperation abruptly halts her forward momentum and, in the process, knocks her out. The woman drops to the floor unconsciously clutching the knife. Ruben looks down satisfied. “Now, get your ass back to work.”
Jake starts to get up just as Dario bolts from the back room. While Ruben easily has thirty pounds on the woman, in measures of men he’s small and scrawny. Dario launches his massive frame with the inevitable devastation of a multiple warhead missile. So fast and furious is Dario’s attack all Ruben can do is cover his face and body from the barrage. Like high canyon water bursting from a broken dam, Dario repeatedly pummels Ruben with unmitigated veracity. He hits him high then low, he grabs Ruben’s greasy unkempt hair while punching him three times in the face with bone shattering viscousness that leaves Ruben bleeding from his nose and mouth in a centuries old flow of Northern New Mexico justice. Dario punches him one last time in the stomach so hard it forces half-digested food into Ruben’s sinuses. Dario then grabs Ruben by the back collar and belt and runs him the length of the bar throwing his collapsing body out the front door with the ease of a prairie cowboy tossing dry hay bales.
In this moment Dario is devoid of emotion, there’s not yet any pain from repeatedly punching Ruben, there’s no thought of police reports or the certainty of retaliation, there is only the cold emotionally estranged satisfaction in knowing something needed to be done. Dario is every ounce the stoically flawed individual God made, and this is not in question. He’ll tarnish himself with wild acts of imperfection, then sally forth with a profound chivalry modern man simply cannot muster. He’ll berate himself senseless each time he lapses into socially unacceptable behavior while giving no credence to his grand acts of redemption. In a confusing world ruled by modern men, his flaws mark him as despicable yet, simultaneously render him heroic. Those possessing the ability to look beyond cause and effect admire men like Dario for their struggle; a juxtaposition as profound and pitiful as it is out of place. God bless Dario because by most accounts, for those all too eager to judge, he is decidedly condemned.
