Sovereign Ground (Breaking Bonds)

by Hilarey Johnson

  “No.” He pushes my arms down. “You are made in the image of God.” Wind blows and he continues to yell. “A God who dances over you because you are his creation, his delight. He gives dignity—he doesn’t take it like the world does. He loves you.” A twenty spirals in the air near us and lands. Hayden grabs it from the dirt. “I love you.”

  “You love Sabine.”

  His face becomes angry then wounded. “Sparrow, I love you.” He rips the bill five or six times before flinging it. The bits join the mini-cyclone of wind tossing my hair around and the wind carries the pieces away.

  Hayden turns and walks back to the rest stop. He still wears my backpack. I don’t move, even when he ducks behind the building into the treed area. A chill passes over and through me like a current of water. I could go back to the hotel and stay the night. Forget Hayden. Brody’s guys would probably never find me. I could start over.

  Yeah, my curse and I could just start from scratch.

  I know what waits for me in Salt Creek. And it isn’t a God who gives dignity instead of taking it, a glass slipper or a returning prince who is willing to die for me.

  And it isn’t Hayden.

  When I return to the pine tree cove, Hayden only shrugs. I lower down beside him. He rubs his hand across my back, and then pulls me forward as his face draws near. Our deep kisses taste salty. The moisture comes from his cheeks.

  He stops and presses his forehead to mine. I can’t look into his eyes this close. He wants too much from me. He wants everything.

  I cannot give like he gives. The weight of this realization oppresses me. Even though it’s summer—it’s dusk, and I’m already starting to shiver. The sweat from my run cooled the surface of my skin, my shell. The footsteps behind me chilled my heart.

  “Who is Sabine?”

  Hayden doesn’t answer.

  “Who was she?”

  “A girl I knew in Spain,” Hayden says.

  “Don’t make me ask, just tell me.”

  “She wanted to be a model, was always trying to find the right opportunity. She answered an online ad for an American modeling agency. I couldn’t take her to the interview.”

  My deep breath interrupts the silence that follows. If he doesn’t want to tell me, fine.

  “I got a phone call.” He speaks so softly I have to lean in. “It was her voice. She cried, said a street name in Amsterdam. Asked me to come before she hung up.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “I did. I walked up and down the street for several days before I realized that I needed to go during the night. I didn’t recognize her at first, she was so thin. I had to pay for a night with her to talk to her.”

  “She didn’t become a model?”

  “No, she was kidnapped. Forced to work as a prostitute. She was too scared to come with me.”

  “Oh, Hayden, where is she now?”

  “Dead.”

  I’m a void. I lie on my left side against the hard ground. Although I no longer think my rib is broken, I’m still sore. Hayden matches the fold of my joints and buffets us. I face the tree trunks and he backs the world. We sleep.

  A crackle of pine needles wakes me. Someone approaches. Hayden is near, but not touching. A band of weight slithers over me, close to my neck. Another wraps around my arms. Heaviness presses, then constricts. It will smother me. It tries to kill me.

  I want to call out, but my voice stumbles, trapped under the snake-vice on my throat. No. I gasp and suck, but cannot coax a noise out of me. The curse will consume me in my bed, while help lays close beside me. I feel his derision, spite and disgust. He squeezes.

  I wake.

  I thought I was already awake, but the sensation of cold air and the prick of pine needles hold a greater sensation than the last time I woke. Still, I feel a bruised soreness on my throat and arms. It really happened. My watch reads 3:15 a.m.

  “Come out and dance for me, Baby.” Clint sits beyond the trees. He has been watching us sleep.

  I rise to sit. My neck hurts, I attempt to massage away the sensation and make the blood flow again.

  “It won’t work. Come out here. Let’s go for a walk.”

  If I leave Hayden’s side, the evil will consume me. I want to wake him, but again, no sound comes from me.

  “Baby, you are only as valuable as you are sensual.”

  The gravity of Clint seems to pull me against my will. Who can save me? Who has authority? Matty said I have authority, that I could tread on snakes and scorpions.

  I try to speak, but only cough over the sand in my mouth. I point away. Leave me.

  Clint chuckles like I’m a grade-schooler telling a knock-knock joke.

  I have authority to trample on snakes and scorpions and overcome the enemy; nothing can harm me.

  “Yes.” Clint responds to me as though I spoke aloud. “If your name is recorded in that vile book.”

  Jesus.

  “I know that name,” Clint answers my thoughts.

  I look to Hayden’s sleeping form.

  “I know that name too. But I do not know yours.” He starts to rise. And by rise, I mean swell.

  I fumble at my backpack, frantically dumping the pictures and CD in the dirt. When I have my flute, I blow frantically. The notes squeak out at first, but through the wood I’m able to breathe as though it’s a diving mask. I sing through my flute.

  An old man, a wizened version of my dad, stands in my mind. No, he’s here. It’s not my father—my father hated long hair on men. This man has streaked, black braids draped across his chest. He wears a beaded choker with a turquoise cross positioned just under his Adam’s apple. He points to Clint. Clint crouches like a shamed dog. My notes rise with ease now. The man lifts large hands to the heavens and points again. Clint drifts away from us like dandelion seeds: unwanted, carried by wind.

  The man looks at me with black eyes, light shines from them. He holds out his right hand and in one small jerk, he bids me “come.”

  Hayden’s hand rests on my knee. “Haunting…beautiful,” he says and puts his other hand on his own chest to restrict his breath, or encourage it. Is he as overcome by the song as I? The flute remains perched on my lower lip.

  “Why are you crying?”

  “I…” Why am I so afraid if Clint is gone?

  “Sparrow?”

  “I thought I had authority …” I drop my flute to my lap and weep. “I thought I could overcome my curse.”

  “Sparrow, if I led you to believe you could overcome your curse, I’m sorry.”

  What could he know about my curse?

  “That’s why Jesus Christ, God’s son took our curse. He took it on himself when he died.”

  “Jesus?” The name Clint knew. He didn’t just know that name—when the rose couple spoke of Jesus’ love, he shuddered.

  “Jesus is the prince, the one who took the arrow in my story.”

  “Are you the glass slipper?”

  “Oh.” Hayden’s forehead becomes a tectonic shift. “I have truly failed you.”

  “You haven’t—you saved me.” He was my barrier from Clint.

  “I can’t save you, Sparrow.” He sighs. “I can be the fairy godmother in the story. I can tell you to go to Christ, tell you about the ball. But Christ is the one who hung on a tree, became cursed to redeem us.”

  “Redeem?”

  He goes on to explain a loving God, creation, the first sin, which he calls “the fall.” We speak for hours. His words are true. The sun rises and his words are still true.

  “Sparrow, would you like to know the words to your song?”

  I hold my flute up. “You know the words?”

  “Play it again.” and when he touches my flute his hand caresses it.

  While I fill the morning with the song I thought my father wrote, Hayden sings: “Santo, Santo, Sa-an-nto. Dios poderoso.” He inhales and his voice matches the otherworldly strain of my flute. “Hosan-na, Hosan-an-na. En las altur-as.”

  Without stopping,
we sing it twice.

  We face each other and a strange, intimate peace envelopes me. I’m euphoric and spent. There’s no reason to believe only some of what Hayden said. Either it’s all true, or all false. Either his God becomes my God, or there is no God.

  But to say there is no God would mean there is no evil. And I’m not a fool.

  “Sparrow,” Something has changed in the way he says my name, the way he looks at me. “Let’s go to Salt Creek, look at this CD and call Malcolm.” He loads my backpack.

  Hayden is relaxed, freer than I have seen him since he beat up Brody. There’s a closeness beyond what I felt when I kissed him. Something I imagine should be between a husband and wife, or a mother and child—if the mother doesn’t abandon her baby with the dad.

  “What’s this?” Hayden holds up a smooth black and gray object, about two inches long, with rounded corners.

  “A tiny, cordless mouse?” I take it from his hands and flip it over. It fits in the palm of my hand.

  “Sparrow.” He jerks it back. “This is a GPS tracker.”

  Chapter 27

  “Tracker?”

  His jumps up out of our shelter. A little kid screams, startled no doubt by the homeless people jumping out of the trees. The kid has a basset hound on a leash, and the dog starts baying. Hayden ignores him and spins, sweeping three-hundred, sixty degrees with eager eyes. I step the rest of the way out and put my pack on. The panic in his face makes me hot all over. I remove my jacket and tie it in a knot around my waist.

  I follow him to a table by the entrance to the rest stop. The little boy points at us and the trees, and his parents glance around with worried faces. They shuffle several kids into the car and almost squeal their tires leaving the rest stop.

  It isn’t us they need to worry about. Hayden fiddles with the tracker and finally puts it on the ground and smashes it. “I’m surprised they haven’t found us yet.” He pulls pieces apart and throws the silver disk battery in a separate trash. “Maybe a bad signal?” He scans the area again. “Or the mountains.”

  Without a word, we trek out toward Salt Creek. The pace he sets is unreal, I almost have to run to keep up with his walking strides. At every car, he turns to watch. I don’t know what we’d do if the van showed up here. Head out into miles of abandoned mountain desert? But I’m glad he looks anyway.

  We get to Salt Creek in half the time it took me yesterday. We both have dark stains under our arms; Hayden also has a sweaty strip down his spine and around the neck of his shirt. He walks directly to the Truck Stop & Go. I try to walk behind him, close.

  “Do you have a pawn shop in town?” Hayden speaks to the same attendant who was here when I walked through yesterday with George.

  “Yeah, right next to Joan’s place.” The attendant makes eye contact with me, but doesn’t seem to recognize me.

  Hayden looks in the direction the man’s pointed arm.

  “The gentleman’s club.” I wish I hadn’t clarified as soon as the words leave my mouth.

  “Got it.” Hayden turns and walks through the front door without waiting for me. I don’t try to keep up. It will always be this way. I’ll always have the same history.

  When I step outside, Hayden puts a sweaty arm around me. He doesn’t speak but I see it as an apology when he kisses my forehead. The manly scent of his body mingles with my own unwashed odor. It isn’t entirely unpleasant.

  “Can I carry this for a little while?” He lifts my backpack and I let him.

  “Why are we going to a pawn shop?”

  “I know Malcolm will come get us, but in the meantime, we need to…”

  “Take a shower?”

  He doesn’t smile. “Hide.”

  I guess a pawnshop is as good of a place as any to hide. We enter the door and a noise buzzes.

  “Hola.” The overweight man has an untrimmed black beard and rimless glasses. “What can I do for you today?” His words jut out so fast I’m not entirely sure he said them in English.

  “I have something to sell.” Hayden swings my pack around and unzips it.

  I should have known. My life is a starved carcass and this is a vulture tearing the last scrap of dried meat from sun-bleached bones.

  Hayden doesn’t hold my flute when his hand emerges, but a harmonica. “It’s gold.” His voice is quiet.

  The clerk slides a blue velvety cloth across the counter and Hayden lays it down. He begins to inspect it.

  I grab hold of his arm. “You have a gold harmonica?”

  “Yeah.” Hayden zips the pack and lays it by his feet. “It’s more resistant to acids from your mouth or hands.” He holds his hands up awkwardly and then shoves them into his pockets.

  “Where’d you get it?”

  “My parents…when I left Spain.”

  “I’ll wait outside.” I turn from him because I have nothing to offer. Will I ever give like he gives? Love like he loves?

  It isn’t long before he joins me. “How much did you get?” I don’t want to know, but I can’t think of anything else.

  “Enough. We’ll get a room, shower and hide.” He takes my hand and holds it tenderly, not interwoven, but like I’m fragile and small. “Don’t worry. I’ll get it back when Malcolm comes.” His hand tightens and releases like a hug. “You can’t take things to heaven, only people.” He smiles.

  “I guess I understand.” We are almost back to the Truck Stop & Go. “I lost my flute once. Well, it was stolen. I could lose it again.” I won’t tell him how much I thought I was losing it a minute ago.

  “There is only one thing you’ll never lose.” Hayden’s voice is soft.

  “What’s that?”

  “God’s love.”

  I’m eager to believe him. “I was so mistaken about the idea of love.” We’ve arrived at the Truck Stop & Go, but don’t go in. “I only saw the action of love, the making love part.” Hayden nods at me to continue. “That isn’t love at all though. That’s just a base action, an animal instinct or something.”

  Hayden blushes and swallows. “Maybe when that is all there is, but Sparrow…” He swallows again. “God created sex.”

  It’s a while before he joins my laughing. “No. I’m serious.” He smiles beautifully. “I think what most people experience as sex is just a vague shadow of what God intended.”

  A shadow. A dull shape of the actual object. An evil shade.

  “Hayden, if that is true…” No words appear. What can you say about a God who creates like that? A God who dances over you? Gives to you, protects you. Hayden looks at me like he is on the verge of saying something or doing something important, but he can’t go through with it. We are close enough that I smell his breath. Before I can help myself, I glance over Hayden’s body. He is so lean, tan, strong. He exhales and his warm breath is like musk and honey mixed. My legs tremble. Thankfully, I suppress the urge to place my palm on his chest—I’m curious what it would feel like, though. I am hungry for his love.

  Hayden doesn’t back away. I was wrong that day, at the Jones’ house, when I said he didn’t know what to do when somebody kisses him. He knows. I see it in his eyes.

  “We aren’t getting a room.” He doesn’t smile; he just turns and opens the door.

  I follow him, but not too close. We pick out food: microwavable burritos and under-ripe bananas. Hayden also buys me a grape soda. My legs still quiver a bit at the thought of being with him. When he pays at the counter, he adds two private showers and an hour on the computer in the driver’s lounge. We walk down the hallway where I followed George yesterday. Hayden says he wants to call Malcolm and look at the disk, so I eat and then let myself into the women’s locker room.

  I turn the deadbolt and use wet paper towels to wash off dirt spots from my jeans. Next, I shake out my clothes. It probably isn’t wise to hand wash my shirt since I have no way to dry it, but I can’t put that thing back on in its current condition. After I rinse my shirt, I wring it out as best I can.

  “Shower number,” th
e automated speaker pauses, “fifty-three” another pause, “is ready. Please proceed to shower room,” I pull the ticket from my jeans, “Two.” It’s my turn already. I duck down the hall while the speakers repeat the directive and slip inside the private shower room.

  The dull, white tile is cold against my feet. When I finally get warm it’s time to get out. I’ll have to ask Hayden more detail about the perfect, complete cleansing he mentioned. I try out a little prayer, not a ritual—just simple communication. “God?” It isn’t a question of his existence anymore. I just address him.

  Suddenly, I don’t know what to say. “Would you? Please?” I think the kind of God Hayden painted would understand all my unspoken thoughts.

  The wet T-shirt clings to my arms and feels horrible. I don’t want to be nearly washed, a wrung out rag that is better than filthy, but still not new. I need to make sure things are right. I can’t step out that door until they are.

  “God.” I try again. “I am…”

  I picture myself running from this place yesterday. “I am in need. Completely. I have nothing to offer.”

  He doesn’t show up in the literal sense, but I still feel him. Stronger than the terror of my curse, of Clint, of my grandfather—there is this glorious fear of a God who dances over me.

  When I leave the women’s stall, George waits in his wheelchair. Seeing him has less impact than it should. His eyes shrink and crinkle at the sides when he smiles.

  “Are you here for your room?”

  “No.” I tuck a loose hair behind my ear. I wish Hayden didn’t have the backpack; I need something to hold in front of me.

  George cranes his neck as though he wants secrecy. “Need more money?” His chair zooms back, and he opens the door to his office a crack.

  “No.” I answer again and start to step back. I turn to go down the hall, hoping Hayden isn’t long in his shower.

  “Need anything else?” Something in his voice makes me turn back.

  His right hand cradles Hayden’s harmonica. The gold gleams, even under the flickering florescent lamp. He stretches out his arm to offer it. I step forward. Hayden intended to get this back by the end of the day. George’s hand draws back slightly, and the door to his office simultaneously opens wider.