Only the Rain(5)

Thinking back on it now, the only other time I had that feeling in my chest was in Mahmudiya. I remember waking up with that feeling for most of a week, and how all throughout the day I felt like I was pushing through water, like the sand under my feet was the ocean floor. This was in the second week of February—you know where I’m going with this? The city was full of Shia Muslims for that festival they call Arbaeen. I remember how strange it was to see people crawling through the streets on their hands and knees, all to show their allegiance to Muhammad’s grandson. But it was also damn impressive they could have so much respect for a guy who got beheaded a thousand years or so ago. The only thing people in this country might crawl through the streets for is a chance to win a big-screen TV.

Anyway, you kept reminding us to expect some kind of trouble, what with those millions of Shias in the city. “It’s supposed to be a really peaceful time for the Shias,” you told us, “but you can expect the Sunnis to see it as a prime opportunity to fuck up somebody’s day.”

Our squad was on security detail along the road leading up to the grandson’s shrine, just standing there watching and making our presence known. When the propane tank exploded it made this woo-whooom kind of sound, first the bomb itself and then, before you could even think, bomb!, the tank explosion. I felt the air punch into my ears and smack me in the face and then I went down hard on my ass. I never even noticed that shard of metal stuck in my interceptor vest until you pointed it out to me. Funny thing is, after you checked under my vest, then pulled out the hunk of metal and handed it to me and I saw there was no blood on it, my chest didn’t feel heavy anymore. That heavy fog feeling I’d had all week was gone. Except that now there were dozens of other people dead and dying, bleeding and crying and screaming, when all they’d wanted was to be peaceful and pray.

In any case, the heaviness I had that morning at the plant was like the first heaviness in Mahmudiya, not like the other one I get whenever I think about those dead pilgrims, or about Springer or Pops and my mother and Gee. I was doing my usual rounds, making sure everybody was busy, when out of nowhere my boss Jake’s amplified voice cut through the cloud of limestone dust like a kind of muffled explosion, but I felt its punch all the same. “Attention, Russell. Attention Russell Blystone. Please stop by the office before you clock out. Thank you.”

Thing is, there was absolutely no reason for that announcement. At the end of the day I always change clothes and shower off the worst of the dust, and then I have to walk right past Jake’s door on my way to the bike, which I keep parked up against the rear of his building so it stays relatively clear of the dust. Most of what we produced was a fine aggregate used for highway construction and concrete reinforcement, but that week we were filling an order for talcum that was headed to Indonesia. So that week was a particularly dusty one for me, what with the slightest breeze stirring up the material on the conveyer belts as well as in the big piles.

But whatever kind of order we were filling, it was always my routine to say “See you tomorrow” or “See you Monday” to Jake on my way out, unless it was the second or fourth Friday of the month, in which case he’d be sitting there with my pay envelope in his hand. So for him to make that announcement over the loudspeaker when it was completely unnecessary, well, I couldn’t do anything but stand there in that thick cloud of talcum and feel like every last drop of air had been sucked right out of me. I think I even took off my mask, which is a stupid thing to do when you’re enveloped in white dust. All I remember for sure is staggering over to the office building while coughing my lungs out. Even now I can taste that dust in my mouth. It’s a gritty, chalky, suffocating memory I’m not likely to forget.

“Stop right there,” Jake said when I stepped into his doorway. “I said before you clock out. Not this very minute. Meaning after you’ve showered and changed clothes first.”

“I’m here now,” I told him. “What’s up?”

“You must’ve left a trail of dust the whole way down the hallway.”

“Did something happen to Cindy or one of the girls?”

“Nothing like that,” he said. “Come back in an hour when you’re supposed to.”

“Tell me now. I’m already here.”

“You look like Casper the fucking ghost,” he said. “You’re not stepping in here looking like that. And I don’t want to have to tell you this without us sitting down face to face.”

“Are you firing me?” I said. I couldn’t believe he ever would, being a friend of Pops and all, and having told Pops several times already how glad he was to have me there. He’d said that in almost forty years I was the only foreman who ever went voluntarily down to the pulverizer to check on things. The only one who’d scramble up a belt if he had to, or get his hands up inside a piece of jammed equipment. Plus he was always joking around with me when I was at my desk across from him, working on my reports. Out of the blue he might ask me something like, “Anybody ever tell you you look a lot like Billy Conn?”

And I might answer back something like, “You mean James Caan, the actor? The guy from Honeymoon in Vegas? Man, he’s a dinosaur. He’s almost as old as you.”

To which he would say his standard line, “You fucking college kids, that’s all you know about, isn’t it? Movies and television and all that Internet stuff.”