Blind God's Bluff A Billy Fox Novel - By Richard Lee Byers Page 0,70
else how do I even know this isn’t some kind of trick? Maybe Timon’s way of flushing out the subjects who hate him the most.”
That stung. “Do you really think I’d do something like that?”
“No,” she said, “and if it was just you and me, I’d trust you. But it’s not. You want me to help convince my friends to trust you. So you’re going to have to make me understand.”
I sighed. “Okay. I get it. It’s just that I’m no good at talking about this kind of shit.” I flopped down on the bed, and she pulled up a chair and sat across from me. “You have to let me work my way into it. When I was a kid, it was almost like there were two of me. There was good me, who wanted to make good grades, stay out of trouble, and make my dad proud. And there was wild me, who just wanted to party, play poker, shoot pool, and street race.”
“I think lots of people feel something like that.”
“I guess. But wild me was pretty strong. Strong enough that for a long time, it was anybody’s guess which guy I’d grow up to be.”
I took a breath. “But Dad kept working on me. He kept telling me about responsibility, the self-respect he said you only get from making a contribution, and things like that. Then I got together with Vic, and even though the wild me kind of turned her on, she really wanted the good me, too.”
“So you decided that was who you were going to be.”
“Yeah. After years of blowing off school, my grades were nothing special. Definitely not good enough for a scholarship, and, even if I’d been willing to take it from him, Dad didn’t have any money. So the big plan was for me to go into the Army. It would make a man out of me, and get me money for college.”
“From the way you’re talking about it,” she said, “this was before 9/11.”
“Yes, and after it, I was suddenly a real soldier, fighting in a real war in Afghanistan. And at first, that was okay, too. Scary as hell, but okay. I’m an American. I was pissed off. Before we finally got him, I wanted to catch bin Laden as much as anybody.”
A’marie nodded. Like always, it bounced her curls around. “What changed it for you?”
“No one thing. A bunch of things piled one on top of the other. We let bin Laden slip away and hide. I shot some real terrorists, or close enough, but I’m pretty sure I also shot some guys who never even heard of the World Trade Center. They never even heard of skyscrapers. And I found out I don’t like shooting anybody.”
She surprised me by reaching over and squeezing my hand. “That’s a good thing.”
“Maybe not always. Not when they’re shooting at you. But anyway. I also saw our own side do some… Abu Ghraib stuff. Then the US invaded Iraq, and all of a sudden it felt like nobody back home even cared about what my buddies and I were doing anymore.”
“And it all disillusioned you.”
I shrugged. “Maybe. I wasn’t a general or a political expert. I tried to believe that if I could just see the big picture, everything would make sense. And, I just concentrated on staying alive until I could go home.”
“But more bad things happened when you did?”
“Yeah.” My mouth twisted. “I found out Dad had cancer. He’d worked the same place for fifteen years, but the insurance plan was screwing him over. He hadn’t gotten things he needed.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“If I’d known, I could have gotten out early and maybe done something. But he didn’t tell me. He never liked asking anybody for help, and he didn’t want to mess up the big plan. He made sure Vic didn’t know how bad things really were, and twisted her arm so she wouldn’t tell me he was sick, either.”
I realized my eyes were wet—it was a bad morning for leakage—and, angry with myself, knuckled the tears away. “Long story short, I only had a couple more months with him before he died. And after that, I just couldn’t get motivated to follow through on the big plan. It didn’t make sense to me anymore. Why do all that work when I could place a bet or play a game and come away thousands of dollars ahead?”