Chapter 7: iReveal the Past (in Astonishing Detail and Deliberate Ambiguity at the Same Time)
WARNING: sensitive issues implied
…She left dinner cooking on the stove, wet clothes in the washing machine, and no sign of where she was going. She didn't care where she ended up, she just had to get out of that house, that town—as far away as possible.
There was a name no one said, a number she could call. This guy would get her out. He got others out. It was safe. No money, no problem, he would do it for free this time, given her unique situation. He was meeting her in the next town, the corner diner. It was a busy place, part of a franchise, done up like a fifties soda-shop. A lot of people filled the booths, kept the waitresses running around. She knew him by the book he was reading; his message had said to look for it.
She approached the small table wedged between the old-fashioned jukebox and the bathrooms. A lone man sat there reading. He was probably in his midtwenties, a soldier. She could tell by his hair cut, his tucked in shirt, his muscles and his tan (toned by real work in the sun, not a Bo-flex and sitting by the pool.)
There was a time she would have been terrified to do this—to break the rules, to trust a complete stranger—but life was funny like that. Nothing scared her anymore, except what would happen if she stayed. In that house, it was his way and no one left. His family made sure of that, had stopped her twice already, said God didn't believe in divorce. Well, she didn't believe in raising a child with that man.
Waitresses skirted around her, oblivious to her predicament. Cheery customers flirted and ordered the big stack of pancakes. A pair of kids hers age argued nearby about what song to play next.
She licked her lips, and read the book's title with a dry throat, "Gunsmoke?"
The man looked up, and dark eyes widened on a face that otherwise didn't move. "They didn't say you were pregnant."
Marissa caressed her large stomach. "Y-Yes, is that a problem?"
His eyes travelled slowly from the baby-bump to the bruises on her face. His Adam's-apple pulsed and he shook his head ever so slightly. "Just alters the plan slightly, but don't worry. I got tickets and my men are waiting to meet us. Let's go."
He stood, tucked the book under an arm, and with fingers at her elbow, led her out of the backdoor of the diner, through a kitchen where a cook yelled something about hairnets and health inspectors, which Gunsmoke ignored. Her heart was pounding—this was happening. She had hardly dared to hope it would. She remembered to send thanks to the girl in the convenient store who had sensed in Marissa her need for that phone number.
A car waited in the alley. Just a normal looking car; a rental, blue, with pine scent hanging on the mirror. He opened the back door and had her lay flat in the backseat, and she watched the sky move above her as he drove slowly, walked her through the plan.
There would be a bus, then a train station—was going to dress her as a boy, but since the bun was so nearly done—they'd make do with a hat. His men met them at a gas station—the gas station. The girl behind the counter looked relieved to see Marissa again, gave a small encouraging smile as her soft brown eyes lingered on the bruises.
Marissa didn't like this. Her husband used this gas station when he went out of town. His friends were probably watching it. They were going to get caught. Gunsmoke shook his head again, but he made only one promise. She wasn't going back.
They took a different car to the bus station. This one was white, borrowed. There was mail in the visor and a child's smudgy handprint on the window. Marissa starred at that little hand as she lay in the backseat once again. In the front passenger's seat, Gunsmoke's colleague wanted to know why no one bothered to tell him this one was pregnant.
She rubbed her stomach and thought about the life inside it. The life she was giving to the world, and the world she was going to give to this little life. A free world, a safe one away from her husband. She felt stronger. She felt like she could do this, whatever it took. It was all for the baby.
After a horrible bus ride cramped and stuffy with tourists looking wide-eyed at her bruises and the dangerous men escorting her, a train took them across three states. No delays, no hang ups, no trouble. It was too easy. She didn't believe it when he said she was free. It couldn't be true. She'd wanted it too badly - her husband knew too many people.
Gunsmoke only shook his head; he knew more.
She was free. She was never going back.
"You're sister is waiting to meet us when we stop. Does she know about the, uh…baby situation?"
She didn't answer, had her own question, "What was her name?"
"Who?"
"The girl at the gas station. I didn't get her name."
"Rachel."
She smiled, a small thing, but an honest smile nonetheless. It wasn't the first time one of them ever smiled at him, but it was a rare commodity on these ventures. It put her in the smaller group—among the stronger ones. He'd worked in this dark corner of the world long enough to know that it broke people. It broke her, but she was holding herself together. His Adam's apple pulsed again.
"Will you tell Rachel I said thank you?" her voice trembled with sincerity, and her fingers were sprawled over the dome of her stomach. "Thank you so much, for helping me?"
He nodded curtly. "Will do."
"She was an angel, you all are... Does she work for you?"
"She's our eyes on the inside," was his military response.
"Aren't you afraid they'll know she helped us?"
"You don't have to worry about Rachel. She's a trained professional."
Marissa nodded. She still couldn't believe professionals were involved in the first place—to the world that town looked so innocent. It eased her to know she was not alone in knowing the truth. She licked her lips.
"How long have you been, uh, watching The Children?" her voice cracked before she said the name of her old life, her prison, the cult her husband led.
"Nearly ten years now," he answered. She was surprised. He didn't look that old. As he spoke, his face was softer than she'd ever seen it, still it didn't move, just remained that stoic mask of a soldier, but in his eyes she saw something else. "We've helped a lot of people, a lot of them like you."
Marissa didn't believe he was as detached as he pretended. "How many?"
"Pardon?"
"How many exactly? What's the number?" she knew he knew it.
One side of his mouth twitched, quirked upwards in a half smile. Marissa's young purple and yellowish-green face split into a wide, bright smile at the sight of it. The pair actually chuckled—and that was a first, laughing while still in route out.
"Nineteen," he said. "Well—twenty," he nodded at the bump. She smiled in appreciation, but then her eyes moved to the world sliding by outside and the smile faded. She took a deep breath. "The other eighteen…how many of them had families willing to take them back?"
He looked down. She didn't need him to answer. She took a deep breath. "My little sister Jenny's left her dream to help me—well, they all would, really, if I went back but…I married—him—to get away from that life. The circus," she laughed, tears in her eyes, and shook her head, "I used to think that was a prison…"
The train rumbled on, and he sat looking at her from behind that mask. If he was surprised to learn the young woman came from a circus, he didn't show it. She dried her eyes, embarrassed. "I'm sorry."
For the first time since the train had started moving, she worried about where it was taking her. She'd tried to change her life before without a plan, and look where that had gotten her. She knew better now. She wasn't going to get off this train without a life to step into. Otherwise she would just end up taking shelter in another prison again.
"I…I guess I need a job. I need to get a place to stay for…" they both looked at the bump. She'd felt so blessed to learn she was with child, but had been too focused on getting out of that life to consider being a single mother without the material comfort her husband's house had offered.
"Are you good with blood?" he asked suddenly.
"Excuse me?"
"Does blood make you faint?"
She thought about it, slowly shook her head, unsure where he was going with this.
"I know of some work," he said. "It won't be easy, and with the kid…" he shook his head, unconvinced.
"What's the job?" at this point she would do anything decent.
"Nursing, for Red Cross."
"I'll do it," she said immediately. A nurse. Taking care of people. She was good at that.
"It's stationed out of Venezuela," he said as if that was a deal breaker.
She swallowed and nodded; hadn't expected that—but that wasn't a problem. In fact, it was a God-send. Maybe with a couple of national boarders between her and that old life, she would feel safer when these good men were gone.
"Venezuela," she said pensively. "I've always loved the Spanish language."
"Habla espanol?" he asked with real interest. His eyebrows even rose. Her lips pressed together in another smile. She shook her head. "But I'm willing to learn if someone would teach me."
"Consider the rest of this journey your first lesson." He pressed a hand into his strong chest. "Me llamo Gunsmoke. Tu llamas…?" he flipped the hand forward to indicate her.
"Marissa," she said.
"Bueno," he said with another half-smile, impressed.
She was a fast learner, and Gunsmoke was a patient instructor. By the time the train pulled itself into its final station a week later, she had a firm grasp of the basics. A girl no younger than Marissa hugged her before she was completely off the train. The sisters whispered and cried and held each other until they were laughing and squealing, playing catch up.
They didn't talk about The Children, not even the child she was carrying. It was as if Marissa was only returning from a boring boarding school. They talked of their family, and Gunsmoke heard a bunch of names that could only come from a circus, how they would have all been there but the show must go on, and she understood.
"Thank you Jen," Marissa said, "for being here for me."
"Hey," she said, "you would do the same for me, right?"
Marissa nodded and the sisters hugged again. Jenny asked with her chin still on her big sister's shoulder, "So this baby, if it's a boy…"
"Yeah."
Jenny deliberately shrugged it off and put on a smile similar to the flashy one Marissa had given that had raised a real laugh out of Gunsmoke on the train. It came naturally, but on the innocent face of the unblemished sister, it was more clearly a performance smile. "He'll be wonderful. I'll bet he looks like Dad and Papa."
Marissa didn't want to talk about who the baby might resemble. She changed the subject, introduced Gunsmoke to her sister. They had spoken on the phone, but never face to face. It was a pleasure, she hugged him and thanked him, and Gunsmoke said it was just his job, but the look in his eye when he said it told Marissa something else.
She and Jenny began their training as nurses, and he found them an apartment nearby, negotiated the rent and price for furniture. Jenny was a little taken by the exotic soldier after that. Marissa and Gunsmoke had a good time rolling their eyes at her exuberant way of flirting, which amounted to the hard work of a fly trying to fly through a closed window.
"Do you usually help the others this much?" Marissa asked, when he found her at the hospital and announced he knew a woman who was looking to get rid of a crib and some baby clothes.
He shrugged, unwilling to lie or give the truth. He didn't have to. Marissa crossed her arms primly, a syringe between her fingers ready to go for the tomato in front of her—she was meant to practice on it. She had experience with needles, though. Her husband had made her administer his fixes often enough.
"What makes me different?"
He took a moment to think about it. "You're in bigger trouble than they were. Never relocated a victim as young as you, or pregnant, and never all the way out of the country before, either—not to mention who's baby that is."
Well, there was no denying that. Her husband had wanted a son more than anything. She imagined the rage he was in, discovering that his youngest wife was missing in action, and just days after he'd announced to the family that she was going to give him the son they longed for. Her heart hurt when she thought of the innocent people that would pay for her disobedience—her knitting circle, her sister wives—
She'd warned them to get out. They hadn't listened, had turned her in every time she tried to leave on her own. It wasn't their fault. They did what they thought they had to do to protect themselves, their babies. Better to turn over the trouble-maker than make more trouble by agreeing with her.
Marissa refocused on the job at hand, stabbed the tomato and injected it with water while an instructor watched.
"They'll be looking for me," she said, capping and throwing the needle into a metal pan on her cart. The observing instructor smiled and checked things on his clipboard, moved on to the next student. "They'll look everywhere for me…" she said, mostly to herself.
Gunsmoke could tell she was nervous at the thought.
"Not here."
"Even here."
"Well, let them try, honey, this is a military base," he said, and it was a rise she'd never gotten out of him before. Jenny had started trying different things to crack that mask—had resorted to those undignified Mama jokes—without success, and here Marissa need only show doubt in his plans and he snapped like a crocodile.
She would have laughed except he'd called her honey with some kind of manish condescension and it pissed her off.
"Hey," she snapped sharply. Marissa wielded a second syringe threateningly at the burly man's face. "Don't honey me, honey. I am a mother and a nurse and I have been through too much chiz to take that tone of voice from the likes of you!"
He cringed in the way one does when high-pitched noises screw into eardrums. "Damn it, Mary," he said, a hand at the closest ear. "Keep your wig on, all right? I only meant that you're safe here. How many times do I have to tell you that?"
She didn't answer that question, focused on preparing this second needle for injecting. Once the second tomato was squared away and she'd gotten another smile and check from the instructor, she sniffed, brushed at her nose with a knuckle and then planted her fists on her hips. "What did you say about a cradle?"
"I can bring it by later."
"Dinner's at 7."
He nodded and left the hospital.
Jenny wanted candles on the table. Marissa didn't like fire of any sort. Gunsmoke showed up in combat boots, with a dismantled cradle clacking against the gun and knife on his belt as he hauled it through the door and presented it proudly. It was a good cradle, got the girls talking about the ones they had on the road in the circus campers, which then got all those crazy names tossed around again.
Gunsmoke was almost smiling and didn't realize it. He assembled the cradle in silence as he listened to the stories—then Jenny was in the kitchen doing the dishes and Marissa was running an appraising hand over the polished rail of the baby-bed. She looked hundreds of miles away and sad.
"In a few years, you can go home, to the US, if you want."
"A few years?" she repeated in horror, and he knew that she wasn't upset by the word years, but the word few. She shook her head. "He's never going to give up. You don't understand. This is his son! The Son. He'll never stop! The family won't ever stop!"
"That's why we're still here," he said. "In usual extraction, our involvement ends when the victim is taken to a safe house secured by the previous family. We free their body, and turn it over to psychological professionals and doctors to free them in the other ways. You though, you were free up here before you even called us," he tapped his head, then snapped his fingers, "Which reminds me, there's a head doctor on the base, you're to report to him every day."
"What?" she shrieked.
He leveled dark blue eyes on her. "Jenny says you're not sleeping."
Marissa looked away.
"Don't you want someone a little more understanding to talk to about all this?" his eyes jumped briefly to the kitchen and the sound of running water, clanking dishes. He was right. Jenny wanted to help, but she really had no idea.
Marissa swallowed, tried to ignore what her father had always taught her about head-doctors—how they were coots, taking money for doing what a brick wall would do for free. And anyway, this doctor's service was free, like Gunsmoke's.
Between training as a nurse and learning Spanish, and talking to the doctors every day, the short weeks left in her pregnancy flew by. She became a mother on an American base in a small hospital in a hot and sticky climate. A boy; six pounds three ounces, and that was it, he was her whole world. She cared about nothing else but that bundle of joy, not her sister, not herself, not even the man who'd saved her life, who smiled a real smile for the first time when he met number twenty.
...
The next six years unfurled in Venezuela like the exotic blossoms found there. Marissa became the most dependable and skilled nurse on the base, could talk fluently with the locals. Jenny eventually tired of pursuing Gunsmoke, became interested in another soldier with battle scars. The baby grew and started to walk, so Marissa arranged for a locator chip to be surgically embedded in his skull. Not what Gunsmoke would have done had it been his decision, but there was no denying how useful it could be in a crisis.
The baby started talking a little. Marissa entered her twenties, followed closely by her sister, and the boy could say full sentences by the time Gunsmoke left his twenties and embraced that epic old age of thirty. A war started, he was shipped off to a different corner of the world, came back in one piece, went right back to his side-business of saving kidnapping victims across the Americas.
Occasionally, he brought her a jungle blossom and told little Freddie stories about living in the woods. He let him play with his compass, made sure he was well behaved, and then sometimes he just brought Marissa an injured, starved, and tortured hostage freed from jungle warfare as an opportunity to obsess over someone else's health so she could "stop being so—never mind, just let the kid alone for five seconds."
Gunsmoke was first and foremost a solider, but for some reason for Marissa he was a little more, a friend. But where his little twentieth rescue was concerned, Gunsmoke was a human being. He smiled and laughed when he was with the boy. He even volunteered to babysit whenever he could.
Marissa tried to ignore her sister's knowing smile and suggestive looks whenever there was a blossom wilting on the kitchen table, but Jenny liked to make obvious the little things in life that were supposed to stay unmentioned. As far as the young mother and experienced fighter were concerned, however, nothing would happen, should happen, could happen.
Jenny thought there were feelings in his gifts. But Marissa knew that the flower didn't mean that, it was just a little gesture to let her know that she wasn't alone, she had a friend, not just a sister, and a son and a head-doctor.
Then one day, Marissa suddenly wasn't so sure.
She and Jenny both had had a long night-shift in the hospital, had dragged themselves home in the wee hours of the morning and snickered at the scene they found in their living room—a fort of blankets and cushions big enough for one small child and one big one.
Both were asleep inside it. It wasn't the first time their unconventional babysitter destroyed the living room in the sake of imaginary battle glory, or the first time he let Freddie fall asleep in his day clothes without giving him a bath. Marissa had gone to bed with every intention of explaining to her friend, in no uncertain terms, how important it was that her son was bathed and tucked into bed at a reasonable hour every night. The next morning, she forgot to mention it.
It was already hot. Sticky and hot. One thing she missed about North America was the winters—sweaters and mittens and snowflakes. She fought with her humidity-inflamed hair, put it in a bun to keep it off her neck while she worked, and listened to Elmo sing in Spanish with a smile reflected in the mirror. Elmo was Elmo in any language.
Jenny surprised her by sleepwalking into the bathroom to pee.
"Jen!" she cried. Jenny jumped awake with a shout of fear. "What?"
"I thought you were already up!"
"Why?"
"Who's with Freddie?"
"Gunsmoke."
"He's still here?" Usually he left at the crack of dawn, never slept more than a few hours at a time, some kind of habit formed while tracking or evading guerilla-soldiers all the time.
Jenny shrugged in an I-thought-you-asked-him-to-stay-for-once kind of way and carried out her business with droopy eyelids. Marissa went down the hall, stopped just before entering the living room.
She'd been expecting the mess she'd crawled over last night. The room was neat and orderly. Yummy-smelling food was on the kitchen table, abandoned, and the coffee table was lost under crayons and coloring books galore.
Freddie was wide awake, completely captured by the colorful program on the TV. He stood between the couch and his drawing station in just his little whitie-tighties. Gunsmoke avoided baby-bibs and ruined shirts by undressing the kid when he fed him.
Gunsmoke was in the fatigues he always wore, but the shirt was untucked, his shoes and socks were gone, his belt of weapons was hanging up out of child's reach on the curtain rod. She'd never seen him so relaxed and at home before. A stranger might have been sitting there, except he could understand Freddie's lispy Spanglish better even than Marissa—hopefully just because it was so early and Marissa was still tired.
She needed to be more awake to understand what it was that her son was asking for as he danced excitedly with a blue crayon, which he stabbed on the page before him with significant syllables. Gunsmoke, however, only straightened like a man with a mission.
"Ah, that's great. I like the knife, buddy. Look, you have to label it now so Mommy will know what it is and that you drew it all by yourself. Can you do that?"
"Si! Yeah! Eth-cweebo!" the child lisped.
"Let's see it then. Write a T..."
Concentrating so hard his dark little eyebrows scrunched together, Freddie apparently succeeded in the letter because Gunsmoke fed him another one, and another one, until her baby was writing English words across his page, naming the subjects of the picture, which were Freddie and Gunsmoke.
Marissa felt something that made her feel alive again, but she also felt something else, something that was never going to go away. It saddened her deeply, and she hurried back to her room before she was discovered listening in.
A/N: So, yeah, a long chapter entirely about "old" people… we go back to the present next, so don't worry if you got bored.
Hopefully you didn't get bored, though. Maybe we're weird, but we LOVE our Gunsmoke/Marissa, so we like this chapter.
What about you?
