The First Billion

Opening his satchel, Gavallan withdrew the copies of the documents he'd signed at Norgren's and filed them in his drawer along with the other markers routing his path to perdition. He folded the receipt for the two-million-dollar check in two and slipped it into his pocket. Then he leaned back his chair, kicked his feet up onto the desk, and laughed.

It was not a joyful laugh, nor one with any hint of amusement hidden inside its rolling baritone folds. It was a sad laugh, a mocking laugh, one tinged with doubt, disdain, and wonderment at his own folly. Oh yes, he was cutting it close this time. He was hanging it out there in the wind real far. He'd always been one to enjoy the roll of the dice, to crave the giddiness of a measured risk, but this time he had overextended himself. This time he'd bet on events that he could not control, only witness. This time he'd been plain old stupid, and it was about time he admitted it.

Gavallan felt a wave of reckless anger build inside him, a steady roar expanding in his chest, filling his lungs, and scratching at his throat. If his rage was directed at himself, it was no less explosive for it.

In response, he made himself absolutely still. He slowed his breathing and laid his palms facedown on his desk as if he were about to stand. But he didn't move, not a muscle. Instead, he closed his eyes and began to count. He'd taught himself this trick years ago, when he was young and wild and given to bouts of unbridled fury. As a teenager he'd gotten into frequent fights. Not the clawing, awkward wrestling bouts of high school rivalries, but knock-down-drag-out, bare-knuckled exchanges with older, stronger men, the winner losing a tooth and the loser going to the hospital for stitches and X rays.

Gavallan didn't know from what spring the violence inside him flowed. His father was distant, but kind; his mother a fixture in the household; his sisters adoringly attentive. He himself was for the most part an obedient, dutiful, and undemanding youngster. Yet there was no doubting the wild streak, the inclination toward anger, the predilection for the nervy, rash act. Twice he was arrested for disorderly conduct. The first instance was when he beat the tar out of a Texas A &M lineman who'd stood up his oldest sister for her senior prom; the second and less valiant occasion occurred when, shit-faced in a Matamoros bar, he picked a fight with the biggest Mexican in the room just to prove he could whip him. He did, but he'd ended up with three broken knuckles, a cracked rib, and an eye swollen to the size of a grapefruit. Only through the benevolence of a local police officer had both acts been expunged from his record.

Aware of this flaw in his character and unwilling to allow it to defeat him, Gavallan had decided to isolate it and raze it from his behavior- or, at the very least, to keep it hidden from public view. Deep down, he knew his anger to be primal and lurking, and impossible to extinguish altogether. But slowly, and with an iron discipline new to him, he'd altered the way he acted.

He had always harbored ambitions, dreams of a life that would take him far away from the twelve-hundred-square-foot cinder-block home where he had grown up sleeping in the same bedroom as his three sisters, away from the unrelenting heat and humidity, from the mosquitoes that preyed on a man from dawn till dusk, from the bleak horizons of his parents' timid expectations.

By the age of fifteen, he knew what he wanted. He wanted to see the world as a pilot in the United States Air Force, and to be an officer and a gentleman in the best sense of the words. He wanted to be honorable, truthful, dependable, and courageous. He wanted to be respected not only for his skills as a pilot but for his integrity and character, and he expected to earn that respect. He wanted a wife and two children, and it was very important to him that he fall truly, madly in love. One day he hoped to wear a general's star on his shoulder.

To others, his dreams appeared fanciful or, worse, illusory. He had no money, no connections, no guidance but his own. But never did he doubt that he would gain his ambitions. He set forth a plan and he did not alter from it. He knew what he had to do. He must work harder than the rest, he must expect unfairness and some degree of intolerance. He must never complain. He must present the world a façade of unrelenting good spirit, equanimity, and drive. Above all, he must harness his rage.

To a large extent, Gavallan succeeded. He tempered his behavior. He fought down his rage and played up his humor. He showed the world what it most liked about itself.

Most of his ambitions were realized, though for a price beyond his reckoning. But deep inside him, the anger still burned, the rage still flickered, and he knew he must be ever watchful. For if he wasn't, one day it would surely rise up and destroy him. In the blink of an eye.