The Adventures of Latakia Billows

Episode I: A Matter of Luck


Maybe it was just the fading light, but the pile of cash in the middle of the table looked at least as big as the pile of empty beer bottles dumped off toward the corner of the porch, right next to where the ash tray had been dumped three times already.

The cards were starting to feel heavy, but it could have been from bad luck or alcohol. Five of them spread apart to reveal a ten, a four, a queen, a three and a seven, all four suits, garbage that only a fool would play.

Christopher Billows watched as the man to his right, an old poker-playing Texan, tossed a few more twenties onto the pile. Around the table, the cards flew in: fold, fold, fold, fold. Chris looked at the losing proposition in his hand and then back to the Texan. The horses running toward the barn told Chris the rain was coming and this was probably the last hand, and even the beer couldn’t make him forget the spectacular losing streak he was on. If he played the odds, the odds would tell him to fold the hand, since there was no way he was ever going to pull the cards he needed. But the odds were also telling him that he had to win eventually, and it might as well be now. Chris stared straight into the Texan’s eyes and confidently announced he’d call.

Chris’s cigar gave way to crushing teeth and spilled some of its juices down his chin. It was cheap stick, named god-knows-what and bought god-knows-where and stored in an unappreciated refrigerator so he wouldn’t have to fuss over a humidor. If it had cost him a buck, it would have been too expensive. He firmly believed a man couldn’t smoke expensive cigars without inviting expensive problems. The flavor was harsh and bitter until his trip-nines got beat nearly a dozen hands ago, when he flicked the ash and the cherry all over the winner.

The host was too agitated to laugh, but four out of five of his guests thought it was funny. The other was looking at the embers burning into his shirt and wondering if his wife would still believe he had been at a board meeting all night.

The Texan’s cigar, meanwhile, was still burning, steadily and evenly. It was a Cuban Cohiba, and to Chris, it smelled of exorbitance and one-upmanship. It may not have been the cigars as much as the way the Texan told everyone they were welcome to a “real” cigar and then hid the box under his chair before anyone could take him up on it. He was a rich fool, and a fool and his money are soon parted. By the end of that hand, Chris planned to reveal the fool for who he was.


The dealer, a Mexican farmhand Chris brought in years before, absent-mindedly picked up the deck. His keen eyes had spotted the rain off on the horizon, but the Texan brought everyone’s focus back to the game with two words.

“I’m good.”

Chris pulled the ten and queen from his hand and tossed them toward the dealer. Thunder rolled across them from the desert as Chris slapped his hand down on the replacement cards. He thought, for a second, about picking them up, but in a fit of bravery, he decided against it. With his raised eyebrow, he dared the Texan to bet.

Shaking his head in amusement, the man tossed a fresh $100 bill onto the table. Chris noticed the Texan only had two hundreds left and raised enough to make him wager his last dollar.

Smiling, the Texan called and turned over a straight running from ace to five, a hand know as the Wheel. Chris laughed as he turned his three, four and seven onto the table and stood up.

Still without having seen his last two cards, Chris turned the first to reveal a five. Closing his eyes, he took a few seconds to will that last card to be the six he needed to win. The Texan blew a long, shrill whistle through his teeth.

“Ain’t no way your luck’s good enough for one more card,” he said. “That money’s good as mine.” The gamblers-turned-spectators around the table mumbled their agreement, tipping their bottles well back into the air.

Chris held his hand in the air until the porch went quiet, save for the rustling of the trees and the stillness of a storm in waiting. He let the hush build until it screamed, and then his upheld hand swooped down and swiped his last hidden card, flipping it over and rising again toward heaven in a victorious pose.

The snickering began immediately. Chris looked down to see the queen of clubs.

“Dammit, Jose, why do you deal me such crap?”

Jose tossed the deck onto the pile of cash the Texan was scooping up. When the host goes broke, the game is over. Not satisfied to assume his guest knew that maxim, Chris looked to shoo everyone away by grabbing and throwing everything in arms reach.

His hat came off and flew toward the front door. The cigar that he never bothered to relight bounced off Jose’s left ear. Then Chris grabbed the nearest bottles, fit three into his throwing hand, and hurled them into the yard. Pabst Blue Ribbon was not only one of his favorite beers for a special occasion, but also a damn fine projectile. The bottles and the lightning hit the Pinyon Pine together, and the tree exploded in fire.

The swaying and staggering cowboys watched the storm put out its own fire and followed the smoked as it joined the clouds above that had snuck up on them from the west. No one noticed the clouds rising in the east and approaching quickly.

A Lincoln Town Car motored up the long dirt road linking what was generously called a highway to the Billows ranch. The road had no lines, no lights, and no lack of snares for unfamiliar drivers.

Anyone heading that way was lost, crazy or determined. A few hands went to their hips. Chris made sure his shotgun was still leaning against the porch railing.

The car pulled up next to the row of pickups and Jeeps parked next to the house, and the driver stepped out. With the headlights still on, the gamblers on the porch could only see the shadow of a man and the umbrella he opened, and then the silhouette shrank a foot as the figure let his foot drop into a rabbit hole. All the trigger fingers got a little less itchy.

A dozen eyes watched as the mystery visitor limped his way toward the front door. When he hit the steps, Chris recognized the old-fashioned glasses and overly wide tie.

“Artie, what the hell you doing here,” he said. “Fellas, meet the family lawyer. Artie, you’re doing pretty good for being so far from the ocean.”

Arthur Abrams shook his umbrella as he folded it up.

“Yes sir,” he muttered, inspecting the dirt that had painted his left leg. “I did manage to get quite lost venturing into the desert.”

A few of the gamblers let loose a snicker.

“No, Artie, I was calling you a shark,” Chris laughed at him.

The lawyer shook off the leftover rain and the insult. “Mr. Billows, I have some business I must conduct. Can we speak in private?”

Chris pushed his hat back with a quizzical look. “All right boys, you heard him. Game’s over."

A big hand slapped Chris on the shoulder. “The game was already over,” the Texan chuckled. “You already gave me all your money.”

As the guests made their way down the steps, Chris grabbed Jose by the arm.

“Whoever invited that guy is off the Christmas list,” he said, nodding toward the Texan.

Jose said, “Sure thing, boss,” but muttered, “Lo mereces,” a Spanish phrase roughly translated, “Serves you right.” The Mexican started picking up the bottles as Chris and Artie headed inside.

The house was everything you might expect from a recovering city boy taking refuge in the desert. The décor was early native and modern taxidermy with the occasional accent by Smith & Wesson. No one would have suspected the cowboy living in the middle of New Mexico was a former stock broker who abandoned his mile-a-minute lifestyle and six-figure salary for a simpler way of life, but they wouldn’t have mistook him for a real cowboy either.

Despite his attempts to bury the remnants of Wall Street, he still hadn’t shed his impatience, his natural leaning toward multitasking, or his desire to win at anything where there’s a score to be kept.

He also hadn’t yet managed to shake the attorney, but Arthur had been his father’s attorney and his grandfather’s before that. It was hard to find a lawyer with that kind of loyalty along with a willingness to drive into the dark, off the paved road, in the middle of a storm.

Chris led Arthur to a small office off the main hallway. Here, on a small, handmade table, Chris kept the few indulgences from his New York life: a laptop he rarely opened and a satellite phone he never carried. The nearest town, Socorro, had cellular reception and broadband Internet, so Chris was careful to move just far enough away to avoid those technological temptations.

“So, not that I’m unhappy to see you or anything, but why are you here?” Chris asked. “There problems with my money?”

The aged attorney sat down across the table from his client and opened his briefcase. “No, nothing like that,” he said. “I’m here to execute your grandfather’s will.”

Chris stared for a second. “But my grandfather’s been dead for ten years,” he blurted out in disbelief.

Arthur looked at him over those oversized, square glasses. “We prefer missing,” he said, “since his body was never found, probably still in a cave or some such, but we won’t say ‘deceased’ until he’s found.”

Chris shook his head, “Fine, whatever, but it’s still been at least ten years.”

Arthur nodded. “Ten year’s exactly,” the lawyer said, “as specified in his will. He specified we save one item for just this moment.”

Chris shifted forward in his chair. “Well, what is it?”

With arthritic hands, Arthur pulled an intricate, ornate wooden box from his briefcase. It was not quite as big as a shoebox and covered in symbols that looked vaguely familiar to the cowboy, whose thoughts immediately returned to his grandfather’s office and the chalkboard he used to translate artifacts he had dug up.

“We took the liberty of translating the symbols,” Arthur said. “These are Nahuatl pictographs, the language of the Aztecs. The top of the box is something similar to ‘Search for meaning inside,’ and the bottom means, ‘You are the answer.’”

Chris noticed grooves along the sides of the box and tried to slide off the lid, but it wouldn’t move. He tried to lift it off with no success. He tried twisting and yanking, but could not open it.

“I tried it as well,” Artie said, “but I found the same results. There is a ‘button’ of sorts on each side, but they appear to do nothing.”

Chris prodded the sides until his finger sank into the wood about a quarter inch, then he pressed the other three, but the lid still wouldn’t open.

“You know, Grandpa wouldn’t have wanted this opened before I had it,” Chris said. “It would be just like him to use a box that two people had to open. Here, you push two and I’ll push two.”

As the men sunk their fingers into the box, they nudged at the lid with their thumbs. After a slow first inch, it easily slid off.

With reverence, Chris sat the lid aside and reached into the box, pulling out an old, black and white photograph. There he was as an infant, diapered and tinted sepia, sleeping in his grandfather’s arms in his grandfather’s office.

As he stared at the moment of frozen history, Chris’ elbow bumped into the box, knocking it only a few inches, but it was enough to produce a rattle. He reached back into it and emerged holding a wooden pipe, well used but still looking relatively new. It bore a forked-tail “P” and was stamped “Irish Free State.” After all the years, it still smelled vaguely of ash and smoke.

Arthur closed his briefcase and stood to leave. “Artie, why did he want me to have this now?” Chris asked. “What does it mean?” Arthur took up his umbrella. “I think,” he said, “it means you’ll have to go home and figure that out.”

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