Big Green Country

by Frances Rivetti

  Maggie swished the almost translucent, ruby colored wine in its clear glass globe, deliberately taking her time in suspending reality a few minutes more as she took herself a couple sips.

  “Marcus, whoa, hold on a second,” she said, reaching for my arm. “I’ve barely taken a sip and my vision’s blurry all of a sudden. There’s a fuzzy edge to those Latino guys in some sort of uniform hunched over the pool table over there.”

  I turned to take a look at two already empty pint glasses and a row of empty shot tumblers lining the shelf behind two postal workers and their half drunk beers.

  A faceless dude in denim and a cowboy hat sauntered up and sat down beside me, nodding, undoubtedly confused as to what sort of drama was playing out with a couple of outsiders with the female one of the two of us growing increasingly distressed by the second.

  Simon and Garfunkel belted out Cecilia from a beat-up juke box in one corner. I took Maggie’s hand in mine after wiping the cold sweat from her palm with a paper napkin.

  If I had laid my ear to her chest I believe I’d have been able to hear the thump, thump of her heart beating above the clink of the pool balls and the shuffling footsteps of the postal workers. She fixed her eyes on a working pot-bellied stove at the far end of the room, its smokestack built up into the ceiling. I pulled my stool closer as she rested her forehead on her fingers and thumbs, breathing deeply through her nose; a controlled effort, I figured to dispel an overwhelming sense of nausea and the smell of stale beer. There’s no easy way to disguise a panic attack from someone like me.

  I placed my arm around her shoulder. The unfortunate fact that she suffers from these occasional silent freak-outs makes me feel more a good deal less concerned about my own shortcomings. I placed my mouth by her ear and suggested that we step outside for some air. “Before you even think of returning that phone call,” I added.

  “I have to know what’s happened,” she gasped as she took in three or four more deep breaths, gripping the bar stool in an effort to steady herself. She raised her eyes and looked headlong into the concerned eyes of the bartender, a weathered looking chick with a beanie pulled low over a pair of scrawny pigtails. She was keeping her cool in assessing the situation, as well she should have. I’d wager she’s seen a lot worse than Maggie’s stress out session.

  The bartender poured a tall glass of water over ice and slid it over the bar top in front of Maggie who, in turn, took herself a good, long, icy gulp. She pushed the barely touched glass of wine aside. I steadied her as she stood up from the stool, inhaling another round of long, slow breaths.

  Maggie’s phone vibrated on the bar. She picked it up, checked the caller ID and showed me the screen. It was Lori. By then everyone in the bar was staring at us. Ranch hands and Summer of Love Boomers gaped like they’d never seen a cell phone before. Had we stepped back into 1967? Maggie took the call. My heart lurched in time with hers.

  “OK, I’m sitting down,” she spoke into the phone, digging her nails into my wrist with her free hand and settling herself back on her stool. “Speak up, it’s loud in here and please, just tell me.”

  I waited for her face to react. She kept her expression deadpan a minute more as she listened to what it was that Lori was telling her. “They’ve found her, Marcus, oh my God, I can’t believe it,” Maggie gripped my arm. She was sharing the news with me in the midst of Lori’s call. “Lizzie’s connections somehow came through it appears. Mia is alive and she’s safe.”

  Maggie caught her breath as she attempted to let the news sink in. “Lori, wait,” she urged, bursting into a flood of breathy tears, unsure whether to stand up or sit down, holding tight to the phone with Lori as messenger on the other end. She was trying to force a smile as her body shook.

  I positioned my back to the prying eyes of those behind us, all of them still staring like we were from some other planet, wrapping a quieting Maggie in my arms and encircling her as she resumed the call.

  “So sorry, Lori, I’m in crazy shock. I was so close to giving up. Are you still there?” she asked. “I’m confused. I mean, why? If she’s somewhere safe, how is it she never reached out to Bridget to tell her what happened?”

  Lori patiently explained how Mia was doing as well as could be expected considering the ordeal she’d been through. She described how Mia was ensconced in a safe and secure home for women and that it was not unusual for it to take considerable time for a victim to decompress.

  So she was alive and she was free and she was being looked after. This was way better than any of us had been hoping to hear and yet, the disturbing part of it was that she had not let anyone know.

  “Apparently we have to wait for Mia to give her permission before Bridget or myself are able to make direct contact,” Maggie relayed to me Lori’s strict instructions. “The most important thing is that she made it out, away from those fucking bastards who held her since September.”

  Lori was still on the line. I heard Walter’s deep voice in the background. “Tell Maggie and Marcus to come on back to Garberville,” he said, “tonight.”

  “We’ll talk in more detail back at Walter’s house,” Lori said. “Drive safely you two, we’ll expect you in an hour or so.”

  “Where is she?” I asked after Maggie ended the call. “Where is this safe place? Do we know?”

  “Exactly where it’s supposed to be . . . somewhere safe,” Maggie replied.

  The bar had filled up while we’d sat there awash in our potent blend of relief and semi-disbelief, doing our best to take in this sudden mixed bag of news. It was happy hour and the cash was flowing.

  Maggie pulled out her credit card to pay for the drinks that neither of us drank. I slipped it back into her wallet, pulling bills from my pocket. “Credit card and cell phone shunning clientele,” I said — “hey, you’re keeping company with the cash kings, now, Maggie.”

  One of the postal workers had finished his beer and was walking haphazardly to the bar, his fingers full of empty glasses. A group of regulars stopped him in his tracks and they talked animatedly, laughing freely to the pulse of a reliable generator that would frequently be employed to keep the lights on in such a remote spot. I bet myself the postal workers were the only ones to pay taxes, seeing as they work for the government and therefore have no choice. Nobody much in these parts even registers to vote, it’s the pioneer days here still, the general idea of minding your own business, far from the trappings of city and suburban life.

  While I waited for the bartender to take her time in making change, my thoughts turned to Bobby and his crowd of regulars at the roadhouse. They’d be missing him real bad by now.

  “If Mia had come to me in the first place,” Maggie tried to express her rush of feelings, “I’d have told her, run, yes — but head to the city, to me, into my care for once. I would’ve looked after her, Marcus, helped her find a job, a space, for what it’s worth, now.”

  “You don’t know what she may have gotten into in San Francisco,” I replied.

  “True. But what if she doesn’t want to go home?” Maggie asked. “What then?”

  None of us had given that possibility a thought in our desperate race to find the girls.

  “You’d best figure it all out with Mia, face to face,” I told her. “All we need to know right now is that she’s safe. The rest of it is up to her.”

  Maggie called Bridget from the sanctity of the truck while we still had wireless reach. What they shared in their conversation is private, as it should be when something as momentous as this is talked about between two sisters. Those two had endured far more than enough already.

  Darkness engulfed the redwood forest and a light rain started up on the windshield. I drove south through the Avenue of the Giants, passing no one, not one single vehicle in either direction of the avenue’s 31-mile span. In the summer months, tourists by the thousands flock to gape and wonder at the world’s largest remaining stand of virgin redwoods. That evening we were totally alone, the two of us, heading into a
starless indigo and violet tinged night.

  “I can’t believe it’s over,” Maggie said, leading to a several minute silence as she blew out air: “To be honest, I was scared to death these past few days that we were already way too late.”

  “It’s not over, Maggie,” I said. “None of it. Not by a long shot. We all expect a swift return to normalcy after bad things happen, but that’s not how it works. Take it from me, you and Bridget and Mia will have your work cut out for a good while yet in figuring out which way is up. Some of it’ll glue back together, you’ll see and other parts may never truly fit right again. It’s the nature of it and you have to learn to make the best of it is all.”

  Chapter 24

  Mia

  By the time Christmas came, I had taken to rattling around the compound lighting candles in plastic cups during those darkest and most depressing of hours. This was my own small, if pathetic effort to remind myself of the season despite things having gone so deathly quiet on the top of that cold, lonely mountain. I’d been reduced to being sole exclusive slave, Jefe Hombre being the one remaining motherfucker on the compound.

  The sick fuck was old enough to have daughters my age. He never talked about his family, though I caught sight of a faded photo that slipped from his wallet one time. From what I could see, he was stiffly posed with a woman and a bunch of small kids, all of them dressed up in their Sunday best. I would not have been surprised if the bastard had been taking them to church.

  After the others left, he refused to leave me unattended during his long round trip journeys into town and back, and so, rather than lock me up, he took to bringing me along.

  After my bullshit punishment in the barn, tying me up like a goddamn animal, shaving my head, keeping me from Jazmin, I never made one single wrong move insofar that he saw. I knew full well that my timing had to be perfect for me to make it out alive. I also had to figure on getting out without putting Jazmin at risk. No one would be able to know I was gone.

  He’d warned me, the night they dragged me into the barn, he was a man who was capable of far worse than the nightmare treatment I had already undergone at his hands. Every tiny atom inside of me yearned to be unleashed, to kick the shit out of him, to bite and spit and scratch and scream. If there were any way that I could have shed my skin, I would have; it crawled so bad I could hardly stand it. He and his crew of animals had stolen my strength, my dignity, worst of all, my soul sister, my sweet Jazmin. I plotted away inside my head, day and night, hour by hour, minute by minute, gradually building any ounce of courage I could muster. I readied myself to roar.

  I went on stoking this mounting fire through the end of December and all the way into January, my anger building by the minute. He thought he had me at his mercy, subdued, tamed. Men like him, I’ve learned the worst way, they think they know women, they’re so sure they’re stronger than us, that they’re the dominant sex. They’re wrong.

  Who knows where I found the strength I needed, but I did and I kept it together. I’d made up my mind when I was shackled like a beast in the barn, if he should let me live through that, oh man, I would make him pay. Full price. No returns.

  The key was to convince him otherwise. I surrendered to his every need and demand, a sick game, but essential in that I pandered to every single one of his sadistic, narcissistic needs.

  Fuck, I had nothing to lose but to set the stage for the fight of all fights. I promised myself I would risk it all when the moment was right.

  After I was left there alone with him, there was no more creeping back to my bunk at night. I stuck on a mask of fake surrender as I tried my best to imagine being with a guy my own age, someone I was with willingly.

  I forced myself to lie still beside him each time he was done with me, though my shoulder muscles would tense and my back set rigid. And I worked to maintain the slightest skin contact so he that began to figure I was warming to him. It was effective and I learned to play him like a fool.

  In my head I stuck to my games of make-believe. I’d cycle through the one same reassuring story line, over and over, picturing myself lying in bed, in my own apartment, Jazmin in the next room, studying. I fantasized about the pictures I would put on the wall, which classes I would take that day, the cool outfits I’d soon have hanging in my closet. I even thought about the tasty food I’d stack in the refrigerator, pesto, cream, butter, good cheese, all the stuff I missed so bad it made my stomach hurt.

  I somehow perfected this trick of looking outward in suspending my reality, half way convincing even myself that the body of the small, fat, hairy middle-age man splayed there beside me was not a monster but my boyfriend. Even I was surprised at how good I’d become at gaslighting myself — you know, twisting reality. Self-preservation baby.

  I’d been tasked with cooking and other daily drudgery, doing his laundry and cleaning the place after the others had gone. It gave me something to do that wasn’t directly tending to him. I trained my mind to drift off in thoughts of the wild animals of the forest around me, the birds of prey, the ones that were free to roam and fly and feast on the rotting corpses of the less fortunate captives of this murderous place. I was on constant alert as I formulated a plan to get myself out of there, away from him, forever, alive and breathing, free from his horrible hands.

  I was, in equal turns, afraid for my life and for Jazmin’s life if I messed up, desperately lonely and totally bored out of my brain. Jefe Hombre appeared to have little purpose during the day other than to patrol the property, fix fences, shore up trailers against the storms that had come in with a relentless cycle of wet weather.

  The more the rain fell, the colder it was on that isolated mountaintop and the earlier in the evening he’d make his nasty demands on my attentions.

  My hair had begun to grow back. I had regained a little of the weight I’d lost, though not through any solid nourishment.

  I’m pretty sure he had worked out what was going on with me, physically. It was becoming impossible to hide. We barely spoke, in part due to the language barrier of my Spanish not being as good as it should be and also, because, why the hell would we? Still, I detected small efforts on his part to behave in a slightly less rough and abrupt way with me when he was in one of his more affectionate moods. It felt even more sickening to be treated nice than not. What sort of monster figures someone they’re forcing into something this disgusting would ever come to care for them? I’ve heard there’s a name for that. Well, it did not apply to me, even if he thought it did.

  I went on faking it as best as I could. I hoped that Jazmin was doing the same that is if she hadn’t made a run for it already. How I prayed she was free and would send someone to come find me. I never would have guessed it would be me who bust out first and by a couple weeks at least. I like to think we were mentally connected, the two of us, on the timing.

  Truth is, he knew and I knew, if he should have decided to do away with me at any given time, not a soul would have any idea, other than Jazmin, that is. She would have known.

  The alternatives were equally grim — what if I was still there when the baby came? What if he got rid of it and kept me or, less likely, I thought, killed me and kept the kid?

  It was my worst fear that he would do something unspeakable to the one living thing other than Jazmin I cared for more than myself. A light bulb had come on along with my growing condition and it kicked my ass into gear.

  An inner protective instinct to nurture, I guess you’d say, surfaced from someplace deep I never knew existed. I was shocked at the strength of feelings I had inside of me. This was after I’d come through weeks of total self-denial. I guess it’s not surprising to want to pretend something like this is not happening and yet it grew impossible for me to ignore the signs. An innocent human being was taking root inside of me and the shock of the realization of this being real, gave way to a whole set of new and even more unexpected emotions. Instinctively, all I wanted to do was to wrap my arms around it, hide it from him, protect it and
keep it warm and safe and, most importantly, growing. I started stashing towels and blankets, scraps of material, obsessing on how I’d take care of it.

  I willed myself to keep on exhibiting my restrained acceptance toward him in bed and out, for the sake of survival, for the baby and for Jazmin mostly.

  I took to looking him straight in the eyes, those ice-cold, dark brown almost black mirrors of his wicked soul, unblinking. I felt my power grow as I drew the fucker further in.

  The last time we’d headed into town for supplies, he had made the mistake of letting me sit beside him with my hands and feet untied. I was still not allowed to wear shoes. Plastic bags served as protective footwear over a pair of ugly pink, fluffy socks he’d given me as some sort of concession from the dirty white athletic socks I’d worn for months.

  It had been a first, me sitting up front beside him. Though I’d given him no real cause for concern since it had come down to him and me and he was growing more accustomed to my company in and out of his bed.

  This time, I kept a close eye on his facial expressions as he took to the wheel, crooning along in his low, rough voice to the same dire tracks of the number one Latin pop compilation I’d suffered through during previous road trips into town and back.

  I tapped my feet and rocked my head to and fro in rhythm to the music, faking like I was getting into it, waiting for the songs he liked best, the ones I knew he would rattle his piggish hands on the dashboard to. The asshole sang along to his favorite parts as rain lashed at the windshield, the wipers swishing back and forth in time, a kind of percussion to the sickly beat of the song.

  He took his eyes off the road and turned to look at me, full on, grinning like a sucker. It turned him on big time, to think that I was somehow the hell into it all, the music, the ride into town, being with him. His sleazebag gaze traveled back and forth from the road ahead and up and down my body.