“He’s beautiful, Camelia. And he’s not so brown-skinned like you,” the girl said smiling, truly unaware of unbelievably stupid she sounded, “He could pass for white.”
“Could he now?” Camelia’s response was dry.
“Oh yes!” the girl replied, then cooed again at the baby. Her admiration of the infant was interrupted by a voice at the doorway.
“So this is what has everyone in a dither,” Scott Cooper said, leaning against the frame.
Camelia felt a line of fear run through her. “Is there something you need, Cooper?” she asked as evenly as possible.
She reached out and took the baby from Alenoush. He was so impossibly tiny in her arms, so perfect.
His eyes flickered over the child for a brief moment, taking in the dark hair and eyes, the pale skin. The boy was several shades more pale than Camelia’s bronze skin. “What are they good for, anyway?”
Camelia wouldn’t respond; she couldn’t. This man had given her a baby, but it certainly wasn’t out of love, or even kindness. He obviously cared nothing for children. He had told her as much, told her that there had been other women who showed, and that he had ended their lives.
The fact that she was the only doctor, and therefore under Sulwyn’s protection, however limited that might be, meant that he hadn’t killed her. But he had warned her that if she told, thereby endangering him and his progress inching up the racist neo-Nazi group ladder, that he would end her life and the baby’s.
Sulwyn had suspected that Cooper was the father of the baby. It wouldn’t do for Sulwyn’s new right-hand man to be coupling with a “disease-infested colored Spic”—especially since his precious daughter Delwen had professed an interest in pairing with him. It was why he had held Cooper back from the last two raids, which had had devastating results. Three men dead, one badly injured, and two horses lost to the group. The men had grown to depend on Cooper’s tactical knowledge and fought well under him. Without him, they fell into a state of disorganization worse than they were before his arrival.
Cooper strode into the room and with one quick move pulled the baby from Camelia’s arms. She screamed, “Wait!” she thought a moment and then blurted out, “I’m not telling you who the father is, but if you kill my baby, you can just forget about me doctoring another person, because I won’t do it. That’s my price. Let him live, let me care for him, and I’ll keep doctoring.” She felt a presence in the doorway, but ignored it, “I swear to you, I’ll help no one if you hurt my baby. He’s mine.”
Sulwyn spoke from the doorway, “Give her back the little brat.” He glared at her, “Threaten me again and I’ll kill you and your half-breed runt. Caring for it had better not affect your doctoring or any other duties.”
And he walked away, satisfied that Cooper couldn’t be the father—otherwise why would she have said to Cooper she wasn’t going to tell him who the baby daddy was? For all he knew it could have been one of those idiots who had died on recent raids. Cooper was clean. It looked as if Delwen would get what she wanted after all.
Inside the room Cooper gave the tiny bundle back to Camelia, gave her a cold smile, and left the room. She released a breath she hadn’t realized she had been holding until that moment. He was hers; she could keep him. She looked down into his warm brown eyes, his perfect face, and soft downy black hair. Hers.
Alenoush moved closer and touched the tiny patch of soft, downy hair on his tiny head. “What are you going to name him?”
Camelia’s thoughts turned to a memory of a smiling Hispanic man, standing outside her car window, with soft black hair and warm, brown eyes. The rifle strapped to his back was unusual, but then again, the whole trip from New York had been surreal. Military everywhere, helicopters and unusual military aircraft filling the skies, checkpoints and questions about where she was heading, and long stares at her scars.
She had answered them all calmly, “I’m heading to Texas, and I’ve been offered a nursing position there.”
The nursing home was filled with a mixture of elderly residents and a special wing for burn victims. The perfect place for her, she had thought, a place she could fit in and not be stared at every day.
“Run out of gas?” he had asked her.
“Yes, it looks like it. I hoped I could make it to the next gas station. The ATMs were all down, and none of the bigger gas stations were willing to take my credit card,” she had said to him. “I turned off the main roads, hoping to find a smaller place, but...” She tried not to feel nervous; after all, he didn’t have the rifle in his hands.
“I’m Armando,” he had said, reaching out a hand, “Armando Velasquez.” She had taken his hand, shook it, and then he had said, “I’m really sorry I can’t help with gas, there’s been nothing but shortages in the area, but my house is just up the hill there.”
He pointed and continued, “If you like, you could try calling someone to come pick you up.”
“There’s really no one to call.” She realized as the words were coming out how bad that sounded. What if he were some crazy serial killer?
“I mean, I was headed to Texas, and...” She stopped when she saw the man shake his head and look sick. “What?”
“It’s just that I heard over the emergency radio, well, there’s been a nuke in Austin,” Armando told her.
“What?! That’s, that’s...I mean, it’s impossible. You can’t be serious. What, who...” She stopped and took a breath, struggling to conceptualize of a nuke inside U.S. borders, “Why would someone do that?”
Armando shrugged, “I don’t know. Things have been getting rather scary in the last few days. The military is putting up barricades, shutting down borders to the southern states. It looks as if...well, as if the United States is at war.”
“With who?”
“With itself.”
Camelia stood by the side of her car in shock. A thousand questions raced through her head.
Eventually, she let him help her move the car off of the road and bring her bags, and eventually her boxes of books and other necessities she couldn’t live without, up to his large, sturdy home. There they would listen to the increasingly bizarre news reports on the emergency radio. Armando lived there alone. He was a widower, his wife having died in a car crash several years before. Slowly she told him the story of her scars, the remains of what extensive plastic surgery could not fix. She had survived the Amtrak Train Bombings, when so many others had perished. The scars, she said, were a testament to her will to survive.
He had touched them, ran long gentle fingers over the ridge of scars on her face, and told her she was beautiful, inside and out. She had stayed in his house, and they had fallen in love, quietly survived the chaos in the secluded mountain retreat. They had soon welcomed two more Hispanic families when the sentiments of the area had turned ugly and desperate.
A racist group, a leftover of the American Nazi Party, had been blaming the war and the nuke in Austin on Mexico. Between shortages of food, no power, and an intermittent water supply, the few Hispanic families in the area stuck out like sore thumbs. They had banded together, worked the land, traded with those who weren’t spouting racist rhetoric, and kept to themselves. Camelia hated the memories of those last few moments, when the Amerika Reborn group had attacked them without provocation, seeking to rob them of what little food and supplies they had.
Armando had fought. All of them had. When Maria, the smiling, round-cheeked mother of two teenaged boys had fallen, though, Camelia had laid down her gun and got to doctoring. She had tried in vain to save the woman who had come to be her closest friend and confidante next to Armando. After that, the boys, Maria’s husband, even Armando had fallen while she was busy trying to save Carlos, a young newlywed. As she worked, the southern wall was on fire, the fire set by the attackers.
The Amerika Reborn soldiers had grabbed supplies, ripped the medical supplies from the table next to her and even the needle and thread from her hand after Sulwyn stopping them from shooting her, seei
ng her medical expertise in action. She had been a fine ER nurse prior to the bombings, but scars like hers scared the patients too much. She had screamed and fought them, even as they pulled her from the burning building and past Armando’s lifeless body. She had kicked them, bit at them, and tried to get away, until a hard punch had knocked her out and carried her away into the darkness, away from everyone she had come to love. And here she had been ever since, nothing better than a slave, nothing more than a tool to be used at the whim of Amerika Reborn.
Until now.
Tears came then, as she held the infant in her arms. How she and Armando had tried to have a baby, despite the troubles surrounding them. Armando had called it an act of faith, that the world would get better, that life would return to normal. But each month, there was such disappointment, no matter how often she prayed for “just one chance.”
She stared at the baby’s beautiful brown eyes and saw instead the eyes of the kindest man she had ever known reaching out to brush her hair from her face and tell her she was beautiful, telling her that the scars didn’t matter to him. You should have been his.
She turned to Alenoush, “His name is Armando,” she said.
No Shotgun Required
“The first symptom of love in a young man is shyness; the first symptom in a woman, it is boldness.” – Victor Hugo
Chris stopped in at the house for lunch, rinsing the dirt off his hands. It was April and planting season was in full swing. He felt an almost electrical current of stress in the air from the moment he walked in. Carrie and Liza were both in the kitchen and Liza looked tense. He gave his wife a quick kiss and tilted his head at Liza, “What’s up, Liza?”
His sister-in-law was chewing nervously on a slender fingernail. She glanced toward the den. “Gramps is in the den with Carl.”
“What for?” Chris began to ask and then thought of Carl and Liza’s more outward signs of affection recently and groaned. “Oh boy.” He had caught the two kissing and holding hands several times. It was just a matter of time before Fenton caught on, if he hadn’t already. Carl had been a regular visitor on the farm for over two years now, and it wasn’t as if the writing wasn’t on the wall. The two had been an item for quite a while.
Liza was quick to defend herself. “I’m not pregnant!” Her face flushed at the thought. “We just...Carl and I...it’s just time, that’s all. He asked me and I said yes.”
“Yes to sex? Or yes to getting married?” Chris asked a playful smile on his lips. Carrie slapped his arm, her mouth turned down disapprovingly, but her eyes crinkled at the corners, a sure sign of amusement.
Liza glared at him, “Oh yeah, Chris Aaronson, you’re one to talk!”
She had a point. He and Carrie had “mixed up the natural order of things,” as her grandfather had put it. That had been nearly three and a half years ago, and their marriage was a good one, despite the losses they had endured. Carrie’s first pregnancy had ended in a premature birth, and there had been several heartbreaking miscarriages since. Fenton had come around, eventually, although the sight of the shotgun still gave Chris pause.
“If you must know, Mr. Smarty Pants, Carl asked me to marry him. They’ve been in there for a few minutes.” She bit off another fingernail and said, “I think it’s going well. He hasn’t started yelling yet.”
That hopeful moment was shattered. “Where’s my shotgun?” Fenton bellowed from the den.
Chris winced, “Oh yeah, Liza, that went really well.” He then grinned at Carrie, remembering several moments of shotgun-induced terror that the old man had brought on for him. His wife rolled her eyes at him and walked toward the den to head the old man off.
Carl came out of the den first and made a beeline for Liza, who grabbed his arm and pulled him close. She wrapped a determined arm around his waist and whispered something in his ear, then kissed him. This earned another bellow from Fenton, who was limping down the hallway, Carrie slowing him down only the slightest bit.
“Are you pregnant, young lady?” Fenton was unusually brusque with his youngest granddaughter.
Liza stood her ground, holding Carl in his place and shushing him with a determined look. “Nope, Gramps, not yet.” Her hazel eyes, snapped with mischief. “But if you give us a half hour, I’ll see what I can do.”
Fenton gaped at her. For that matter they all did. Carl looked terrified, “Uh, sir, I don’t think she meant that.”
“Oh yes, I did!” Liza said, her jaw firmly set. Chris looked bemused, Carrie stood wide-eyed, and Carl’s face had broken into a sheen of sweat.
“Gramps, I’m not a kid anymore.”
“You are sixteen years old!” Fenton bellowed.
“I’m seventeen years old, Gramps, almost eighteen. And I know what I want,” Liza countered.
Chris watched with admiration. The Perdue women were strong-willed, and Liza was probably the most strong-willed one of them all. Carrie held some of her mother’s quiet calm, but Liza was fire and ice, especially when she felt strongly about something. She stood there, back straight, immovable, in the face of her grandfather’s wrath.
Fenton faltered, ever so slightly, his wrath fading as he grasped at straws.
“What would your parents say to you getting married this young?”
His eyes began to redden and the old man looked exhausted. “You are barely more than children.”
His gruff demeanor was nothing but a façade, and the vulnerability Fenton tried so hard to keep hidden came sliding into view. Above all things, he loved his three grandchildren, and his grandson-in-law. He loved them fiercely, deeply.
Liza’s tone changed in response, “The world is different, Gramps. Carl and I,” she pulled Carl closer and stepped forward toward her grandfather, “we’ve talked about this for a long time. And we love each other.”
She stared into the old man’s eyes, eyes that reminded her so much of her father, gone for nearly eight years now. Isaac would have liked Carl, just as Fenton did.
“We’re getting married, Gramps.” Her words were a statement, not a question. A moment passed and no one spoke. Then Liza continued, “So, will you give us your blessing?”
Fenton closed his eyes in exhaustion. He did not understand these young people, so eager to hunt for blueberries and get married. But he knew resolution when he saw it—and his granddaughter was full of it. Heck, the girl was overflowing with resolution. He thought about all of the smiles, the surreptitious hand-holding he had tried his best to ignore, and the way Carl fit into the farm, just as Chris had. A good fit.
Fenton opened his eyes and looked at Liza, standing there, Carl at her side. She looked so beautiful and so resolute. She had always known her own mind, and fearlessly faced her future. Just last fall she had successfully operated on one of the town boys who had come down with acute appendicitis. She had saved that nine-year-old’s life and firmly established herself as the town’s doctor.
Since then there had been a stream of steady visitors who would knock on the farmhouse door, day or night, with varying degrees of injuries and illness. At seventeen, Liza was accepted by Tiptonville residents as “the best at doctorin’ in the area,” as old Otis Liles had said to him at Christmas while Liza looked after a nasty cut the frail centenarian had received after he fell in his cluttered parts shop.
It seemed that Fenton was the only one who still saw the wide-eyed child who had stood waiting with her mother and older sister at the airport. Her hair parted down the middle and fastened into two neat braids. All of them wearing black and still reeling from the loss of his son Isaac in the Amtrak Train Bombings. Amy, heavily pregnant, Carrie, her thin young face drawn with grief, and Liza, who had just looked up at him, opened her arms wide for him to pick her up, and said nothing. She had nestled her face in his neck and wrapped her small arms around him tightly. To him, she was still that little girl. But it was time he saw her for what she was: a young woman who knew her own mind.
Wearily he mustered a half-frown, why oh why did t
hey all have to grow up so quickly? “Fine,” he said, “you have my blessing.” Then he pointed a gnarled finger at Carl who looked very relieved, “And you just wait on any fun stuff until after the weddin’, you understand me, young man?”
“Yes sir,” Carl nodded. And despite Liza’s efforts to the contrary, he kept that promise.
They had a June wedding.
Their first child, Molly Ann Owens, was born on Valentine’s Day the following year.
A Gift on Our Front Stoop
“I saw her huddled there on our front stoop, red curls matted with dried blood and piercing green eyes. She looked up at me, as if she knew me. Like Erin had been reborn into her. She’s not the Erin I knew, however. She’s kinder, gentler, and almost magical. But in that first moment, when I saw her shivering there for the first time, it felt as if my friend had come home to me. How could I turn her away? In some way, it was as if I had a second chance. To make it right, to be there when she needed me. I know they are different, and that my friend is long gone, but still...” – Jess’s Journal
Jess and Becka were digging out the last of the potatoes, and David and Jacob were hard at work on the carrots. David’s sister Tina was sitting cross-legged on the ground some distance away, oblivious to the cold, studying a new plant that had sprouted that year and comparing it carefully to a sketch in an old worn leather book. The skies were overcast and gray; there was a sharp bite to the wind. Any time now they’d see rain, maybe even a freezing drizzle. Winter had come late this year. But now it was clearly on its way. Some distance to the north there came rolling echoes of gunshots—one, two, and three—in quick succession. Quincy tensed, delicately sniffing the air, her hackles in the air.
Jess couldn’t help wondering what the dog smelled. Quincy’s reaction was far from comforting. A small whine sounded in her throat as she continued to stare in the direction of the gunshots, her ears pulled back against her head and her nose twitching.
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