“All I am able to pray for, since it seems I am officially the winner of the worst mother of the year award, is that the girls are together and they’re unharmed,” she said.
Maggie fiddled with the laptop. “I don’t get it, why has neither of them made contact with anyone?” she asked. “A text at the very least.”
At that late hour it was looking increasingly unlikely the storm was in any mood to temper its hissy fit that night. “I’d best be leaving, afford you all some privacy,” I announced, before the weather took a turn for the worse. It struck me they were all three of them way out of their league in knowing what in the hell to do with the scant information they did have.
Three sets of rattled eyes bored to mine. They shook their heads in unison at my suggestion of taking off. The situation was deeply troubling. And so like it or not, there was no way I was getting out of it, either.
“The Emerald Triangle has a shady and dangerous side, as we all know,” I said, breaking my silence. Commonplace shootings, robbery, bodies buried in the forest, kidnappings, I hated to say it, but the distressing nature of news from the northernmost neck of the woods was becoming all too frequent. I never intended to alarm anyone without due cause, no more than necessary but I felt it my duty to share what I knew. “Even the most seasoned of weed trimmers know to best steer clear of the more remote areas,” I said. “Let’s hope the girls have that good sense about them.”
“Marcus is right,” Bobby said. “It’s the lure of the big bucks that draws the innocents into the seasonal gig. What I don’t get is why in God’s name they’ve chosen to stay up there? They should have headed on home by now.”
The idea of two girls of eighteen wandering around in the forest, months after harvest and presumably without any basic gear or training for survival was what concerned me most.
“Do you think I’m stupid?” Bridget burst out. “I know full well what it’s all about, the whole trimmigrant deal, the good grows and the bad. I’d be a hypocrite if I said I wasn’t aware of what goes on, what they might have gotten into.”
“So you just let her go headfirst into it, knowing all of this?” Maggie asked, scrolling through the icons on the computer screen in search of her niece’s email. “OK, I get that you’re a stoner yourself, Bridget, too lazy or weak to get a grip on your one and only child. What I want to know is why did the other girl’s parents wait so long?”
Bridget’s eyes flashed once more with fury. “I’ll thank you not to cast any further judgment, miss perfect on your high horse. Who the fuck are you to barge in here and point fingers? If you must know, Jazmin’s family is undocumented. They’ve been way too afraid to deal with the authorities to make a complaint,” she explained, angrily. “They’ve tried their best to find the girls and they’re rightly terrified of bein’ deported if they make themselves known to the police.”
This shut us all up. ICE has been a genuine threat in the region, terrorizing people over the previous few months, arresting many. I saw it myself as they handcuffed a terrified and distraught woman, a single mother of three young kids as she worked the checkout where I buy my bread and milk. The only thing they say she was guilty of, aside from having no papers, was a black mark against her for an outstanding warrant for some minor traffic incident years back. It makes no sense. They say that some good soul at her place of worship stepped up to take those kiddies in, the three of them born and raised in the same small ranching community where it all went down.
The way I look at it is I never joined the army in order to defend some and not all. This new regime makes me sick to my stomach. I’ve put away my medal, the Purple Heart no less, the one thing I’ve managed to keep ahold of from my army days. I’ve stuck it where I don’t have to look at it ‘til things in this country are running the right way again. One thing that I’ll never forget, many of the best soldiers I served with, stand-up Latino guys and gals, they signed up for these documents — they put their lives on the line for the love of this country, no different from the rest of us.
Maggie finally pulled up Mia’s email account. She clicked it open. “Looks like her last entry was in early September,” she said, scrolling through her niece’s communications from the previous summer.
The two sisters sat side by side, softly illuminated under a low beam cast from a heavy overhead light fixture. Maggie painstakingly backtracked through messages sent and received the previous summer between Mia and her friend.
“Garberville. That’s where we need to start,” Bridget said, slamming her fist on the table, her mind working to absorb the basic motivations of her teenage daughter’s unfortunate decision-making. “Shit, I had no idea how much she hated it out here, how mad she was at me.”
“It’s the usual teenage angst to a certain extent, Bridget,” Maggie reassured, making nice after her earlier outburst. “Rebelling — it happens to the best of us, though more often than not, it backfires, hopefully, in Mia’s case, not horribly.”
“None of these emails give us much to go on, other than the knowledge they were primarily money motivated,” Bridget said. “We have to get up there, you guys.”
“There’s no wasting any more time,” Maggie agreed. “We’re talking first thing in the morning, Bridget. Get your shit together, sis, even if this is all the info we have to go on, it’s a starting point, we’re headed north. Who’s in?”
~
“It’s called the Redwood Curtain for good reason,” I confided in Maggie, after Bridget and Bobby took off upstairs to bed. “Once you travel beyond the divide, it’s a different world — one that spans thousands of miles of twisting, turning, winding dirt roads that lead deep into the wilderness,” I said, calm and clear, upfront though I didn’t want to freak her out entirely. Last thing I was trying to do was deflate her go-get-’em enthusiasm for finding the teens.
“We’re talking hundreds of thousands of acres of dense forest canopy, Maggie. An unimaginable number of nooks and crannies for hiding out in a vast goddamn realm that for the most part, is completely impenetrable to outsiders.”
She perched herself on the high-back wooden chair she’d flipped to face me as I sank back on the couch and crossed her arms. “My take on their emails,” she said, “is that it’s the sort of friendship that fosters taking risks they might otherwise never have dared to take alone . . .” The chair back served as a buffer between us, our physical proximity. I was acutely aware that it was now just the two of us.
“Sounds to me they’ve made the only move they figured was open to them,” I ventured. “Whatever it is that is keeping them from coming home, it has to be something to do with their not knowing what they were getting themselves into and where they are.”
It had been decided I was to spend the night on the couch. The woodburning stove crackled from the last of the firewood Bobby threw into the burner prior to turning in for the night.
Maggie stood, stretched, stepped forward and reached behind the couch for a stack of blankets and a pillow. She smiled as she informed me that it was she who had warmed my makeshift bed for me the night before. “Never quite made it upstairs,” she said, yawning. “Long story.” She wrapped a blanket around her shoulders and sat herself beside me, close enough for me to feel the spark of static from the sides of our thighs as they barely touched. Outside, the rain fell and distant thunder rumbled and clapped above the midnight tide. The last of the glowing embers jumped and furled. I focused my gaze on the dwindling fire.
I found talking with Maggie a whole deal different from the usual small talk I so detest. To my relief, our conversation flowed, comfortably, surprisingly naturally. She reached out a hand and I braced myself as she rested it lightly on my disfigured limb, the exact place she had seen it join with the prosthetic under the dining table. I took it on to be up front with her right from the get-go that night as I revealed the source of what she’d seen. “Well, you know what? I respect your honesty, your humility,” she replied as I fought the urge to take her face in my
hands, to kiss her on the lips. Instead, I employed my better judgment and I let it pass, figuring, this, whatever it was, if it was going anywhere at all, would have to come from her. Her face was flushed by the firelight. I felt the blood flow under my skin as I garbled, distractedly at how I was okay with what others may consider a disability. “It’s not that I am . . . that I am overly courageous,” I said. “I’m getting on with my life is all, making the best of a bad deal.”
What I never said was that once she doused the lights and left me for the night, I was liable to feel my whole darn leg like it was still there. Sometimes it happens this way, though it pains me, the mind playing its cruel and humiliating tricks. And it hurts like hell. There are other night terrors I have learned to deal with. Not every night, now, but more times a week than I care to count.
Despite the howling outside and the practical matter of the short, lumpy couch, I fell into a few hours of oddly untroubled sleep. By morning I had mulled it over, my position. It was clear to me before I so much as put my one foot on the ground. I was off work a few days anyways due to the storms and the flooded roads. I’d pretty much figured during supper on my heading north with Bobby, Bridget and her sister. Hell, no, this was not me going along for the ride, I would be the ride — my truck and me. I would be the one to take the driver’s seat in this emergency expedition into the wild.
If anyone owed this family, it was me.
“That’s a big deal for us to ask of you, Marcus,” Bridget said over a mug of fresh brewed coffee. The way they’d had my back over the past few years, Bobby and Bridget, they’ve been as close a thing to my own people as I’ve had in this world.
“I’ll not see the three of you off as innocents,” I said.
Bridget raised her mug and declared a toast to me, a sucker for punishment, she said and one with a taste for rough terrain. “Yes, ma’am, that sounds about right,” I said.
“Will you walk with me out to the barn, Marcus?” Maggie asked. “I’m hoping to hunt down the emergency supplies Bridget says she stuck out there in storage, years ago.” I noticed Bridget shoot Bobby a look.
Our plan, outlined by Bobby himself, was to head north by way of the Sonoma coastline and up into Mendocino and the more remote neighboring region known as the Lost Coast. He thought maybe the girls would have innocently taken that longer, more winding route north, neither of them having been up into the Emerald Triangle before.
It had pissed down earlier that morning, though patches of blue attempted a weak push through the dark layers of clouds. Storm conditions had calmed temporarily, as far as the wind, but the rain was turning itself on and off like a faulty bathroom faucet, showering the green and sodden earth in random intervals. There was no end to it. Conditions were dire for embarking on any such shoreline expedition. I knew this to be the case and yet I ignored my instincts in order to appease Bridget’s desperation and please her sister. It took over any voice of reason in my head. The one that told me we should wait it out.
The dairy barn was in good shape compared to the house. I already knew this, as it was me who had helped Bobby and Bridget in clearing out the last of her old man’s milking machinery three summers prior.
Maggie opened and shut a half dozen doors into cold, drafty storage recesses, rustling up sleeping bags, camping gear, a water canteen, a couple big flashlights, candles, a rope and a big ol’ metal spade that Bridget had referred to as the shit-shoveler. “No food, or the rats would have had a field day,” Maggie said. “We’ll take what we can from the kitchen.”
It is not have been out of the realm of possibility to find ourselves cut off from the world for days, weeks, a month even, in these remote parts, should the ‘Big One’ rumble and hit this part of the Bay Area. My tank is always at least half full of gas and that day was no exception. I’d filled up on my way to the ranch. We’d need it if we stuck to the coast road, for there’d be no more refueling for many miles.
I scanned the general condition of the sturdy old barn from my former trade perspective as an army construction carpenter. My job had been to assist with the building of temporary and permanent structures on tours in Afghanistan and Iraq. I know my way around lumber, plywood, plasterboard, concrete, masonry and bricks. I’m adept at hunting and cooking in the outdoors. Ask me to build you a structure and I will happily set about concocting a suitable shelter from almost any available material.
Before the inconvenient incident of having half my leg blown off, I worked with dozens of outfits ordered to build and repair bridges, buildings, foundations, dams and bunkers.
The barn was rendered a hollow, empty space back when we’d stripped it of the last vestiges of its former use. It had struck me as a gloomy, solemn place back then. Standing in the barn that morning with Maggie by my side, its still solid structure began to show surprising signs of new life. It was like it was pleased she was there. I looked around and pictured the barn repurposed, doors flung open wide to let the sunshine in.
“Your barn here has real solid bones, you know,” I said.
“The old-timers, they built it to last,” Maggie replied. “It’s in serious need of some fresh air if you ask me — time to flush out the ghosts,” she said. “If I’m honest with you, Marcus, this whole sorry place is trapped in the past.”
“We all have history,” I said. “Trick is not to let it take you down.”
Maggie looked up into the cobwebbed cubicle office, the corner of the barn where her old man had ruled the roost.
“He’s here,” she said. “I can almost see him sitting at his desk, usual scowl on his face, wiry gray hairs poking out of his Wrangler shirt, a goddamn toothpick stuck between those tobacco-yellow teeth of his.”
I could see no such sorry vision in the silvery, thin light, though if I had caught the old feller glancing over at us, I believe it would have been on account of his awaiting this particular daughter’s return. If old man McCleery is still here, he darn sure willed Maggie home to fix his failings. Maybe, after all and despite her best intentions, she’d heard his call.
“Do you know?” I asked, as I stepped closer and took a hold of her hand in mine: “In some African societies it’s said they divide humans into three categories. Those who are still alive, others who have recently departed — they’re known as the living dead. And then there are those who live on in the minds of the living. When the last living person to remember the deceased passes over, he or she who has been the longest gone is finally able to move on.”
Maggie laughed. “Not sure where you are going with this.”
“If your old man lives on in your mind and Bridget’s mind, then you have nothing to fear is all. Way I see it, he’s likely gonna hang out here ‘til nobody remembers him.”
She reached through the air with a wide sweep of her free hand. “Well then, to my old man and all the other ghosts in the barn, I see you, I remember you,” she said. “Have at it.”
She pulled me gently towards her, so close I could see for the first time the crinkle of a set of fine lines that framed her beautiful eyes, their color intensified by the beam of daylight through redwood, reflecting a different shade of green from that which I had noticed in our brief walk outdoors.
A thin streak of wintry sunlight shifted through the narrow cracks in the soft boards of the barn’s siding, gentle rays further highlighting her features and the luster of her loosened hair.
The moment was broken by the whistling sound of a barn owl, calling out from the cross beams in the space between the barn roof and the briefest of a first embrace.
“I dare say your sister will take off without us if we dally here much longer,” I said. “Catch your breath, Maggie, it’s time to make our move.”
Chapter 14
Mia and Jazmin’s Email Thread
Jazmin Marques
To: Mia McCleery
RE: Hey Girl!
On August 15, 2018, at 11:00 AM, Jazmin Marques [email protected] wrote: I’ve been up since five, out the doo
r by five thirty. These early mornings are killing me, M. I want you to know, between us, me and my mom, we cleaned three stinky fish restaurants top to toe by the time you rolled your lazy ass out of bed, ha ha!
BTW, not a peep from you these past few days, so what’s up?
On August 15, 2018, at 11:15 AM, Mia McCleery [email protected] wrote: Let me see. Oh, nothing much. Except for the fact that my mom might die on me (insert operatic sigh). On August 15, 2018, at 11:17 AM, Jazmin Marques [email protected] wrote: WTF? You kidding me, right?
What’s going on?
On August 15, 2018, at 11:19 AM, Mia McCleery [email protected] wrote: Breast cancer. And if that’s not bad enough, she’s totally nuts, claims she’s taking care of it with her lotions and potions and the weed she’s been growing out back. Pretty much stoned the whole time. Fuck this.
On August 15, 2018, at 11:21 AM, Jazmin Marques [email protected] wrote: You gotta trust her, let her do her thing.
Give her a minute, M. Takes time to process this sorta heavy shit.
On August 15, 2018, at 11:23 AM, Mia McCleery [email protected] wrote: It’s fucked up is what it is (insert wads of soggy tissue up sleeve).
I just wanna be someone else for a while, quit the hick life. What about you? Who do you wanna be, my sister from another mother?
On August 15, 2018, at 11:25 AM, Jazmin Marques [email protected] wrote: Girlfriend, you know who I’m gonna be. Just watch. You see if I don’t get myself into the J.C. and pre-nursing classes next year, somehow, someway. One thing for sure, I’m not planning on cleaning scuzzy floors for the rest of my life.
On August 15, 2018, at 11:30 AM, Mia McCleery [email protected] wrote Oh yeah? Right on. And what’s your momma gonna say about that, you in school? Who’s gonna look after the little ones when she’s on her hands and knees scrubbing floors while you sit yourself in an air conditioned class all day? (Insert gasp).
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