Damaged Goods

by Heather Sharfeddin

  13

  Carl found Yolanda at the picnic table, gazing out across the fallow wheat field next to camp. The walk home had been dry, and the exercise had warmed his muscles. He’d carefully considered Hershel’s question about the guns. It was a terrible business, the guns. But participation in this victimless crime, as Hershel once called it, was the price Carl paid for steady work close to home. Work that provided him with a sense of purpose in strange and oblique ways. It was best, he decided, to leave the question alone. Let Hershel puzzle it out if he could.

  Yolanda spotted Carl and hastily wiped her sleeve across her face. “You okay?” he asked.

  “Oh, Carlos, I’m fine.”

  “You sure?” He surveyed the camp. A familiar row of satellite receivers pointed south, a platoon of dutiful soldiers. “Look a little down to me.”

  She shook her head. “I miss my boys, that’s all.”

  “They’ve only gone to Eugene—barely two hours away.”

  She said nothing. They’d been gone only three days, and it was routine for Manuel and Eduardo, two hopeless mama’s boys in their late twenties, to roam as far as a day’s drive away for the best work. Yolanda stayed at Campo Rojo, maintaining a tentative sense of family permanence by way of consistency.

  Carl put his arm around her shoulder, and she leaned her head against him. They’d embraced like this before, and it was becoming familiar. Easy in its softness. But he was too cowardly to take the next step—to kiss her temple, to invite her into his home. Today would be no different. He couldn’t bear the thought of her rejection, though he’d take the sweet scent of her perfume with him and lounge on his bed remembering the warmth of her body against his. For days he would find a secret joy in this small touch.

  A door suddenly popped open, shuddering on its hinges, and a man shouted in Spanish. The boy Carl had seen there before ran out and plopped down on the step, looking over his shoulder furtively. His cheeks were ruddy and he’d been crying.

  Yolanda pulled away, and as Carl turned to get a better look she put an apprehensive hand on his forearm. Her fingers were icy, and he could feel them through his shirtsleeve. “Leave him.”

  “Wasn’t planning to do anything else.”

  “These are bad people. Mean.”

  “Yeah, I got that already.”

  “Did they threaten you?”

  “Threaten me? Why would they do that?”

  “I don’t know. I … they wouldn’t. I don’t know why I said that.”

  The door opened again, and the hard little man stared out at Carl and Yolanda. He narrowed his eyes, and Yolanda jerked her hand away.

  “We better go inside,” she said, getting to her feet.

  Carl stood also, and the man slammed the door, causing the boy to cower and bury his face between his knees.

  “Carlos,” Yolanda whispered. “Be careful. Please.”

  “I get tired a little easier than I used to,” Hershel said over cold ham sandwiches. Silvie ate well tonight, and he noticed. “But I’ll get new tires and a battery for that car tomorrow. We’ll have it running by nightfall.”

  “How long has it been … since your accident?”

  “A little over three months.”

  “Does it still hurt?”

  “I get some monster headaches. Keep hoping that’ll go away, but they don’t seem to.” Hershel was coming to appreciate Silvie’s careful questions.

  “I’m sorry about yesterday,” she said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “All that crying—I was a mess. I feel better today.”

  “I can tell. You’re eating, anyway.”

  “It was the work. It did me good.”

  “Do you have anyone back home who’s worrying about you?” Hershel asked. In a way, he hoped she was as alone as he was. It was comforting, the idea that she, too, might not have any discernible connections. He didn’t really wish for her the sort of loneliness that he suffered.

  “My mom, I suppose, is worried.”

  “She doesn’t know where you are?”

  “No one does.”

  “Do you want to call her?”

  Silvie put down her sandwich and leaned heavily on her elbows. “I don’t know what I would tell her.”

  “The truth?”

  “Jacob Castor would be here in exactly the time it takes to drive from Wyoming to Oregon, maybe faster.”

  It was the first time she’d said the man’s name, and Hershel rolled it over and over in his mind. He repeated it to himself, a chant. It was important not to forget this name the way he did all others. “So, I take it she doesn’t know what he’s done.”

  “She knows.”

  Hershel tried to fathom the idea. “How could she allow that to happen? He’s a predator.”

  “Hmm … predator.” Silvie whispered the word. “That’s an interesting way to call it.”

  “That’s what it is—what he is.”

  “You think so?” Silvie took up her sandwich and ate as she waited for Hershel’s response.

  “Of course. Don’t you?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. I was pretty young.”

  “Silvie,” he said, leaning across the table. “You said yourself that you didn’t let him. And I’d say twelve is more than pretty young.”

  She shrugged. “Sometimes I don’t know. That’s what they say, you know? That girls are victims if they’re under eighteen. He paid our heat bill lots of times. I think we would’ve been thrown out on the street if it weren’t for Jacob. He was nice most of the time. I’m sure he paid the rent at least once, but my mom never would tell me.”

  “Was he dating your mother?” Hershel tried to piece together the circumstances of how Silvie had come to be at the mercy of a pedophile.

  “No.” She looked out the window for a few minutes, and Hershel waited for her to elaborate. “Is your mother still alive?”

  “She lives in Baker City. Out on the eastern end of Oregon.”

  “Do you talk very often?”

  “No.” He struggled with the urge to change the subject. But maybe it would help her to know that she wasn’t the only one with a messed-up family life. “They didn’t even come to see me when I was in the hospital.” He cringed as soon as he said it, realizing how trivial it sounded. She’d suffered worse things than he had. And Hershel was certain that he was responsible for the absence of family harmony, though he couldn’t remember what he’d done that was terrible enough to keep them away in his hour of need.

  “Wow, that’s harsh.”

  “It didn’t feel very good.”

  They sat quiet and comfortable in shared silence for a while. Finally Hershel said, “What kind of mother would tell this Jacob Castor where you are? Why would she do that?”

  “She wouldn’t do it on purpose. Not to hurt me, anyway. She drinks too much. She’d be all relieved to hear from me and tell everyone that I called and exactly where I am.”

  “You don’t have to tell her where you are.”

  “I know. I should call her. I don’t want her to worry, really. It’s just that I know Jacob is asking her. He’s probably stalking her, waiting for information, and she’ll tell him. She will.” Silvie finished her sandwich in silence. Then she sat back and smoothed her hair, lost in thought.

  “Two lonely people, we are,” Hershel said, as he stood and picked up the dishes. He set them in the sink and got down a pair of tumblers. “Brandy?”

  “I’ve never had it.”

  He poured them each a drink and returned to the table. “It’s your business. I won’t bring it up again, but if you want to call you’re welcome to use the phone.”

  “It’s long-distance.”

  “I can afford it.”

  Silvie sipped her drink daintily, her nose wrinkled as if she wasn’t sure whether she liked it. “Thanks for everything you’re doing for me. Bet you didn’t expect this much trouble when you stopped to help me that night on the road.”

  “Nope, not even
half this much trouble.” They both laughed. “It’s okay. I wasn’t doing anything important, anyway. Was sure as hell sick of my own company.”

  “Do you think Kyrellis will really try to blackmail Jacob?”

  “If he figures out who he is? Yeah, I think he might.”

  “He’s gonna lead Jacob straight here—straight to me. I should get as far away from here as I can as soon as I can.”

  “You’re safer here. At least you have people to watch out for you.”

  “You’re no match for Jacob.”

  Hershel felt his cheeks flush as her assessment of him sank in.

  “I don’t mean physically,” she said, suddenly aware of how her statement must have sounded.

  That was worse, he thought.

  “I mean—” She waved a hand in the air, as if to wipe away her last comments. “He’s sort of above the law. He can do what he wants, and there’s no one to stop him.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “Well, maybe in Wyoming, but not here. Probably not even in most of Wyoming. How big is the town you come from?”

  “Small. Six hundred people, about.”

  “Is he the only cop?”

  “He covers the whole county. Jacob and two deputies. He doesn’t even live in Hanley.”

  “You think he’ll do anything to stop Kyrellis and come after you, but I think that’s only true within the boundaries of his world. Why would he risk coming out here to hurt you?”

  “Because that’s how he is.”

  “No. He’s a coward.”

  “He’s not. Don’t be fooled.”

  They stared across the table for a moment, neither backing down.

  “I don’t want you taking off because you’re scared of this guy. If you want to leave, go for some other reason, like that you have some place you really want to be. But don’t just go out of fear.”

  Silvie rolled her tongue across her lower lip, thinking.

  He studied her. Was he making any impact? “If you’re afraid now, how will you be any less afraid somewhere else?”

  She bit into her lip, her eyes cast downward, masked by soft blond lashes.

  “You’ll never be able to stop running.”

  Her eyes came up to meet his, and she had tears.

  “Don’t,” he said, getting to his feet and pulling her up. She leaned against him, and he hugged her. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said those things. I wasn’t trying to upset you.”

  Her hair gave off the faint scent of apples. The unexpected touch of another person surprised him. Her softness against him made him unquenchably thirsty for more.

  “You don’t know,” she said quietly. “You just don’t know.”

  Silvie held Hershel’s cellphone away from her ear and listened for signs that she’d roused him, but the house was still. The clock above the kitchen sink snapped out each second, and the moonlight cast an eerie blue sheen over the linoleum. The phone rang several times, and she knew that he wasn’t going to answer. Still, she held on until the call was forwarded to Kyrellis’s voice mail. She hoped she could appeal to his sense of decency. If not, she would persuade him through other avenues.

  She heard a floor joist squeak above her and she paused a moment to listen. Then she wiped the phone off and set it on the counter, where she’d found it. She had to talk to Kyrellis. Had to understand him. They could negotiate. It was just a matter of laying out the ground rules. Or so she hoped.

  “Everything okay?” Hershel startled her, and she jumped. He came into the kitchen barefoot, wearing a bathrobe. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

  She caught her breath, fluttering a hand over her heart. “Yeah, everything is fine. I just came down for some water.”

  He filled a glass and held it out to her like a gift. He watched her through the darkness as she drank. After a moment, she approached him, taking his hand, and the two slid quietly into each other’s arms. She set the glass clumsily on the counter, and he muffed her ears with his hands, tilting her head back and kissing her. She encouraged him; it was what he expected for letting her stay. But she’d never been with any man but Jacob, and she didn’t really know what to do. Sex in the movies was nothing like what she experienced in Jacob’s bedroom. She often wondered which version was common and which was make-believe. As Hershel sucked her tongue deep into his mouth, she hoped he wouldn’t ask her to strip for him. She hated that more than anything else.

  Upstairs, he guided her to his bedroom but left the lights turned out. She assumed that he didn’t want to see her naked. Was it the pictures? Was he imagining another woman as he stroked her?

  He carefully undressed her, and she opened his robe, finding him erect. She knelt and took him in her mouth while he watched through the darkness. His deep-throated groan assured her that she was doing what he liked. But soon he was pulling her up onto her feet again, seeking her mouth. Had she done something wrong?

  As his fingers roamed her breasts, she tensed. He noticed and stopped. “Is this okay?” he asked. “We don’t have to.”

  “Yes. It’s okay,” she said, admonishing herself for interrupting him. “What do you want me to do?”

  He caressed her hair. “Just let me make love to you.” He kissed her again and eased her onto the bed. She couldn’t quite get used to the soft touch. His skin against hers raised gooseflesh, and she mastered every muscle in her body to stop herself from trembling and making him think she didn’t want to do this. When he entered her it was a sharp, painful breach. She sucked her breath in and held it there as he pulled her hips toward him and struck deeper into her core. When he finished, tears had leaked from the corners of her eyes, but she released a sigh in time with his.

  14

  Carl stepped out of his cabin before dawn, a dream—or, rather, a familiar nightmare of Vietnam—still gripping his subconscious. He scratched at his arms, pockmarked and now raw. No matter how long he abstained, the urge lay only beneath the surface. A simple dream away.

  He wore a wool cap low over his ears, and an extra pair of socks. The landscape lay muted in shades of blue-gray. Rain drizzled out of a dark sky, and he buttoned his coat to the collar. He carried an old metal Tonka truck, dented and hard-used. He’d been saving it for the right kid, and the right kid was just across the muddy yard. Life in this place was too hard for children. There was no room for innocence here. Carl set the truck down on the step, assured that the boy would find it when his father next sent him out. Upon further consideration, he moved it to the ground next to the step, where the boy would see it but the father would not. Carl guessed that its beneficiary would need to hide it in order to keep it.

  When he reached the highway, the rain was falling steadily with a west wind, stinging his nose and his fingers. He shoved his hands into his coat pockets and leaned into his stride.

  “You! Pendejo!”

  Carl turned to see who had shouted. Three shadowy figures followed twenty feet or so behind him. He glanced around for help, but the road was quiet at this hour. A tense unease came over him as he listened to their approaching footsteps. His dream of Vietnam, still fresh, reacquainted him with the idea that someone might kill him for reasons that were more ideas and principles than personal.

  “What do you want?” he shouted back, pausing to face his pursuers.

  “Usted encuentra a la mujer attractive.”

  Carl turned and trudged ahead, puzzling the words together.

  “Hey you, fucker!” another shouted.

  “I’ve done nothing to you,” he said over his shoulder. “I’m making my way, the same as anyone.”

  “Auséntese del Yolanda!” Her name was spit at him with venom. The men broke into a run, the soft gravel along the shoulder of the highway spinning beneath their boots.

  “She’s a friend,” he said, knowing he couldn’t outrun them; he was twice their age. “Amiga.”

  The short man Carl had seen with the boy lunged forward. Carl stepped
back, but the man swung fast, catching him square in the jaw. His head spun, and he heard the bones of his neck pop as he went down. Pain spread across his ribs as one of the men buried a boot in his side. Carl struggled to get up, but he was knocked to the ground again. He took the toe of a boot square in the nose, sending brilliant yellow sparks through his vision. He lay in the gravel, recovering his sight as the three stood over him, staring down, their faces dark and their heads round against the chalky sky. The man who first hit him ran his index finger slowly across his own throat in a warning.

  A pickup came around the corner, its headlights casting a yellow beam across the scene, and the men scattered, running into the brush along the river. Carl heard it pull off the road and idle there for a long moment; then a door slammed. He struggled to a sitting position and wiped blood from his nose.

  The driver stood his distance and shouted, “You okay?”

  Carl worked at getting his feet under him, finally staggering to a stand. “Yeah.”

  “You sure?” The man came closer now, but walked with rigid apprehension. “I called the police. I’ll wait with you till they get here.”

  “You didn’t need to do that.” Carl felt along his side to assess the injury to his ribs. “I’m just bruised is all.”

  “Well, they might come back. I’m not leaving anyone out here to get the shit beat out of them. I don’t care what you did.”

  “I didn’t do anything. I was just minding my own business. Walking to work.”

  Carl pulled his hat off and used it to stanch the flow of blood from his nose. His jaw was aching powerfully, but his breath was finally coming back to him in slow bursts.

  The man leaned against his truck. “Where d’you work?”

  “Swift Consignment Auction.”

  “Oh, yeah,” the man said with a vague nod. “He’s back now, I hear.”

  The sky began whitening in the east, but the rain didn’t let up. Carl wished the man would at least invite him to sit in the truck if he insisted on calling the police and waiting until they arrived. But he simply leaned against the tailgate, his broad cowboy hat shuttling the rain down the back of his waterproof jacket.