by Matt Hilton
And yet, there he was, reluctant to raise the subject of Elspeth Fuchs because in doing so he might break Tess’s heart.
Tess came out of the house. Po looked up at her expectantly but she wouldn’t meet his eyes. She was carrying a six-pack of beers from the fridge. She had foregone make-up and her blonde hair was still damp from the shower, curlier than what it was when she dried and styled it. She wore one of Po’s old T-shirts with a Harley-Davidson logo and the sleeves fully cut off, and pared-down denim shorts, frayed at the edges. Her legs and feet were bare, pale as milk except for where her shoes had rubbed her skin raw. She smelled of shampoo and something citrusy. She was stripped back and to Po she was a vision of beauty.
‘Budge along,’ she said, inserting her backside on the chair, and wiggling for room, ‘I’m not a string bean, you know.’
Po made way. Tess tucked her feet under her backside, turning so she was partially facing him. Often they sat on the swing chair together, listening to the roar of white water, or trickle through the rocks, dependent on the season. For now the Presumpscot River was running low, and there was more of a rustle caused by the hot breeze through the canopy of trees than sound from the falls. On cooler nights Tess wrapped up under a blanket, sometimes with a woolen hat pulled down over her ears, but today was the antithesis to winter. Po was warm enough to have taken off his leather jacket. He could feel more welcome warmth radiating off Tess’s bare arm, and through his jeans where their thighs touched. He put his hand on her knee and was relieved when she let it rest there. She passed him a bottle of Budweiser. It hadn’t occurred that he’d finished his other beer, and was holding the empty bottle, swinging from his fingers by its neck. He put the empty down by the chair, and worked the cap off the second bottle. Tess opened a bottle too, and they tapped the bases together.
Po angled his beer towards her. ‘Does this mean I’m forgiven?’
‘Forgiven for what?’
‘For leaving you standing.’
‘You didn’t leave me standing, I walked.’
She adjusted so she could touch her chafed toes on her right foot.
‘They look painful,’ said Po.
‘I’ve blistered,’ she said.
He gently touched one of the risen sores, and Tess hissed, over-egging the pudding a little.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said.
Tess didn’t comment, she left her feet alone and instead pressed the pad of a thumb into her thigh. She took away her thumb and watched the dimple in her skin take a few seconds to smoothen out. ‘Am I getting fat?’
‘You have lovely legs.’
‘Wouldn’t you prefer it if I was taller, a bit skinnier?’
‘Tess, what’s this all about? I love you just the way you are.’
She shrugged. ‘So you say. I just wonder what your actual type is.’
He turned and stared at her. Tess was always conscious of her weight. Her mom – a mother to three children no less – was decidedly pear-shaped, and Tess occasionally fretted she’d end up the same build. But this wasn’t about the propensity of genes she’d inherited from her mom. It explained her comment about not being a string bean, and asking if she was growing fat.
‘You saw me with her, didn’t ya?’ Po sighed.
‘If you mean that tall, ravishing redhead, yeah, I saw.’
‘Tess, it wasn’t what you think.’
‘What am I supposed to be thinking?’ she challenged, her face serious again. ‘That I was stood up because you wanted to spend time with a beautiful woman taller, skinnier and younger than me?’
‘Elspeth isn’t younger than you,’ he said, and instantly regretted it.
‘Oh, well that makes it OK then!’
‘No. That’s not what I meant. It’s just, well, whatever you saw, I guess you misread it.’
‘If you mean seeing you embracing, and blowing kisses like a couple of teenage sweethearts, there wasn’t much to misread.’
‘That’s not how it was, Tess, and you know it.’
‘Explain to me then, tell me what it was I really witnessed.’
‘Elspeth’s an old flame—’
She stalled him with a sour grimace.
‘Hang on; you knew I’d been with other women before I met you, Tess. I got released from prison, not a darn monastery.’
She nodded several times, admitting she was being unfair. They had never gone into specifics before about his relationships, but she knew he wasn’t a forty-year-old virgin when they met, and that was fine because she’d slept with a few guys in the past and had just come out of a long-term relationship with a previous fiancé too, and they’d never allowed any of those partners to come between them.
‘You’ve never mentioned her to me before,’ she said.
‘Why would I have? I haven’t seen her in more than a decade; as far as I was concerned she was ancient history.’
‘You haven’t seen or spoken with her in all that time?’
‘Nope. Bumped into her outta the blue today. The thing was, when I went to say hi, she acted like I was the boogieman and tried to gimme the slip.’
‘But you chased after her? Why not just let her go?’
‘I had to know why she was so frightened of me.’
‘Apparently you cleared that up, you parted on friendly enough terms from what I saw.’
Po took a long swig of beer. It was as tasteless as the first one he’d consumed. He took another gulp, while considering his next words. ‘It turned out it wasn’t me in particular she was afraid of. She just panicked when she realized somebody had recognized her who might carry tales back to her husband. She didn’t go into details, but it sounds as if she escaped an abusive relationship and doesn’t want to go back.’
‘And she thought you’d be likely to tell him where to find her? She doesn’t know you the way I do.’
‘We were both young back then, and we were only together a month or so before she upped and left me. She was fearful I might be bitter and enjoy taking my revenge on her.
‘Anyway, you know that ain’t me. But Elspeth wasn’t to know that, I guess.’ He pursed his lips. ‘I said if there was anythin’ we could do to help, she need only ask.’
‘You told her about me?’
‘Why wouldn’t I? You’re my fiancée, and my partner. I told her if her husband was causing her trouble then there was perhaps something we could do. You saw when she hugged me, right? That was her thanking me for the offer, after she turned me down flat. She said she’d be better off goin’ elsewhere where there was less chance of him findin’ her. That kiss she blew? That was her way of sayin’ goodbye, said she owed me it from when she walked out without an explanation last time.’
‘So she’s leaving town?’
‘I guess she is.’
‘Why come here in the first place if she didn’t want to be recognized?’
‘I don’t know. I didn’t get chapter and verse of her life, Tess. I only spoke with her a few minutes. Remember I said she ran away from me at first, I had to track her down to an ice cream parlor and wait until she came outside to speak with her.’
Tess started picking at her feet again. Absorbing his explanation, and he supposed he’d put her mind at rest for now. Pity he’d have to broach the other subject regarding Elspeth’s presence in town. He cleared his throat with another long swallow of beer. ‘Did you see the kid?’
‘Yeah. I take it he’s Elspeth’s son?’
‘Yeah. Well, that’s the thing, Tess.’
She cocked her head to regard him and he could tell she suspected what was coming next.
‘He’s called Jacob and he’s ten years old.’ He exhaled. ‘I think he could also be mine.’
FIVE
Eldon Moorcock supervised the unloading of the truck from the comfort of his own pickup’s cab while he took a phone call. His sons, Darrell and Randolph acted as overseers on the actual ground, ensuring there was no loafing around by the workforce. Larger boxes and crates were transport
ed on stacking barrows and handcarts, whereas the smaller stuff was manhandled from the flatbed truck into the hangar. Men, women and even some of the older kids had been drafted in to make the human chain, and they mostly worked without complaint. There was always a dissenter in most groups, somebody unwilling to carry an equal load, but it usually only took a stiff warning from one of Moorcock’s boys to get the slacker moving. Occasionally, things had to be handled differently, take what happened with Mikey Stewart for instance, whom most people here assumed had moved to California: he hadn’t.
All but the oldest or weakest members were expected to work; it was an ethos that had been agreed upon during the establishment of their community almost a quarter century ago and had carried through to the present. Back then the agreement had been mutual, now Moorcock and his closest allies enforced it.
After his telephone call ended, he put away the phone and Moorcock hit the pickup’s horn to beckon over Darrell. With his first son Caleb gone, Darrell was the elder of his two boys present and by default in charge of the unloading of the truck.
Darrell gestured a few curt orders for where to stack some drums, then strolled over to his father.
‘Everything in order?’ Moorcock asked.
‘Yup. I checked everything off the manifest. It all seems to be there.’
Moorcock nodded. ‘Hand-pick me four of our most trusted men, I’ve another job for them.’
‘Sure thing, Pa. You want them now or when we’re done with this load?’
‘Randolph can finish off here. Get your men and have them come over to the bay. I’ll meet you there.’
Darrell walked away, hailing a couple of the nearest guys. Moorcock started the pickup and reversed away. He pulled a turn and drove down a trail formed of poured concrete. Over the decades the road had weathered, and it had crumbled in places, with some of the concrete sections sinking at their joins. It was a bumpy ride.
He pulled the truck to a halt outside the bay. This was not a coastal enclave, but the large opening into the side of a wooded hill. The entrance was surrounded by reinforced concrete and protected by sturdy pneumatic steel doors. With the doors open there was space to drive a couple of freightliners inside, with room to spare. At its far end, raised concrete platforms made unloading direct from the backs of flatbed trucks easier. Back in its day, it was a loading bay to the subterranean weapons storage area in the hillside behind it. It was only one of a number of repurposed military bunkers on Moorcock’s property. After the Cold War ended, the federal government closed down more than 350 military installations and realigned many others to increase US Department of Defense efficiency. While many of the most remote decommissioned bases were taken over by the Bureau of Land Management and reinvented as state parks and nature reserves, others were sold off to private companies and landowners. In 1995 Eldon Moorcock purchased the defunct National Guard training encampment comprising of 840 acres in upstate New York, and set up home there. He was a man that did not believe that the peace accords would hold, only that the nation’s enemies would change, and only those prepared and ready to protect themselves would survive the coming apocalypse. In time, Moorcock had drawn other patriots with a similar fear for the future of humanity to his fold. His community had expanded to over one hundred inhabitants now, with their ages ranging over several generations, and he’d been elevated to the status of ruler over his private fiefdom. He granted property and rights to his vassals in return for allegiance and service. He was about to call in a debt now.
He carried a key to the bunker. He left the huge steel doors shut for now, opening only a smaller door fitted into one of the larger doors. This door could allow easy access for people on foot. He was about to enter when he heard the rumble of tires and saw Darrell approaching in a GMC SUV, bristling with occupants. Moorcock waited until the SUV had disgorged its passengers. He rubbed at his bushy blond mustache as he evaluated those his son had chosen for the as yet unspoken task, and was happy. He clicked his fingers to usher them to him, then entered the bay through the door. He went across to a bank of switches on the wall and hit the lights. Overhead fluorescent tubes blinked to life, casting an ambient glow that didn’t fully reach the corners. Darrell and the four other men trooped in and stood to a modicum of attention in front of Moorcock.
Without preamble he launched into what he expected of them. ‘I’ve just had word from Caleb that he needs our help. Is there anything stopping any of you from giving him what he needs?’
His question was not asked to provoke a negative response. A couple of glances were exchanged between the men, but nobody refused.
Moorcock indicated one of the men. He was in his thirties, tall and square-shouldered with a laborer’s thick forearms and wrists. ‘What about you, Adam? You’re about to become a father for the first time, your wife Julie is due to give birth, right?’
‘She could go into labor at any time,’ Adam Noble agreed, ‘but she has her mother and sisters to take care of her till I get back. If Caleb needs me, helping him is never in question.’
A smile ghosted Moorcock’s lips. Adam had given the correct answer, and it would serve to ensure the other men understood that they were not being given a choice to volunteer, that choice had been made for them.
Parked inside the bay there was a fleet of vehicles, most of them SUVs and pickup trucks, and a trio of vans. ‘You’re going to need one of the vans,’ Moorcock told Darrell, because he was expected to assist his older brother too. ‘Take the panel van, and have our boys here collect weapons from the arsenal. According to Caleb he isn’t expecting trouble, but it’s best to hope for the best but prepare for the worst.’ He held out a keychain to Darrell, bristling with keys of various sizes and purposes. ‘I’ll have those back off you before you leave. Take some of the grab bags we prepared, and also food and water. It’s a seven-hour drive, and I don’t want any stopping except to take a leak. I’ll have Caleb coordinate with you as you get closer, and have told him to expect you around about midnight tonight.’
Darrell checked his watch, then nodded at his instructions. It was a tight timescale, but achievable. None of this was a surprise to him, as he knew full well where his brother had gone and why. He’d been on stand-by to go help Caleb for days now, and was pumped for the mission. He clapped his hands to grab the attention of the others. ‘You heard my pa. My big brother needs us. Let’s hustle. Follow me to the armory room and let’s get tooled up. It’s a-ways to Portland and I don’t want to waste any time before gettin’ going.’
SIX
‘I’m bored.’
‘I’ll switch on the TV for you.’
‘I don’t want to watch TV. I want to go outside. To walk. You said we could walk whenever we wanted, Mom, you said we’d be free to do whatever we pleased.’
‘I did. We will. But right now we need to stay here. We need to get some rest before we move on tomorrow.’ Taking Jacob out for some fresh air had been a rash move, but Elspeth was unable to keep the boy locked away all the time. They had both had more than enough of their lives being controlled and when she’d brought him with her it was with the promise that they would be free to do as they pleased. Earlier, against better sense, she’d caved in and taken him for ice cream and to see the boats and the ocean for the first time in his young life.
‘I’m not tired.’
‘I know, but we can’t risk bumping into anyone else that recognizes me.’ Elspeth sat down on the hotel bed alongside her son. She folded her hands on her knees. ‘That man we met earlier, he’s an old friend, but I can’t trust him not to tell others he saw us. If he tells the wrong person …’
‘Nobody here even knows my dad.’
‘You’d be surprised who knows him,’ said Elspeth, but didn’t explain. She had first met her husband here in Portland and had followed him back to his home in New York State. This was before she discovered his true nature, and that the bucolic lifestyle he’d promised her had turned out to be a lie: instead of running barefoot
through the wilderness, she’d spent most of the last decade behind concrete walls and locked doors. He had connections to people in many of the surrounding states of Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts and here in Maine, criminal types. ‘Tomorrow we’ll get on a bus and go south, yeah? We’ll go to Boston, or if you want, we’ll head down to Manhattan. You want to see the cities, right? We’ll be able to hide in one of the bigger cities and never have to worry about your dad finding us again.’
‘Can I use your cell phone?’
‘What for? You’re not going to—’
‘I only wanna play a game on it, Mom!’
‘I’d rather you didn’t.’ What Elspeth really meant was that she didn’t want to risk handing over her phone in case Jacob had had second thoughts about running away and wanted to call his father. ‘I’ll put on the TV, and we’ll call out for pizza. You like pizza, don’t you?’
‘I don’t wanna watch the stupid TV, and I’m sick of stupid pizza.’
‘Jacob, please listen to me …’ She reached for him, but he turned away from her. He thumped down on the mattress and pulled one of the pillows over his head to muffle her words. His lean arms were exposed, the sleeves on his T-shirt riding up to expose the circular scars dotting his flesh.
A pang shot through her. Jacob’s father liked to smoke cigars, and he liked to exert discipline; sometimes he’d enjoyed both pastimes together. Her own arms, her thighs, her breasts, they all were marred by similar scars, a reason why she favored long-sleeved blouses and billowing skirts. Her son’s scars pained her more than hers did. Elspeth reached and touched the boy’s scarred flesh, silently cursing herself for leaving it too late to protect her son from their abusive existence. He flinched from her touch, but she didn’t relent. She wished to soothe him.