A/N: Conversations. Longish writerly note at the end you should feel free to skip.
Burying Dirt
Chapter Sixteen: With or Without?
"Sarah, huh? And what are you holding? Chuck," Ellie revolved to him, "she's carrying a handgun. I saw it earlier, when she got things out of the trunk."
Ellie released Chuck's one hand. Pointed to his other, the shell box. "And now you're carrying her...ammunition?"
Chuck faced Ellie. "She's the reason I'm here, Ellie. Sarah is. She saved me. She's a spy, CIA, well, sort of. It's complicated."
Ellie's eyes pinned the assassin. Intent. Suspicious. Needle through a dead beetle. Then back to Chuck. "A man was found dead in the hospital the day you were taken, Chuck. Did she take you?"
"No, I mean...She stopped the assassins that were sent to kill me. That man, he must have been one of them." He looked to Sarah. She looked back, nodded.
Ellie, watching the exchange. "Chuck, you were taken by a man in a policeman's uniform and a woman dressed as a doctor. A man and a woman who matched witness reports were found dead, naked, in Los Padres…" Again, Ellie revolved, the assassin, now. "That was...you."
Another nod. Ellie blanched. Sarah felt the apartment complex rock, boat on choppy waves. Slight nausea.
"So this woman," handwave at Sarah, eyes to Chuck, "this woman that you brought to our apartment and have entrusted with me, Devon and Morgan, this woman is responsible for three deaths...that we know of."
"She saved me, El. Nursed me. Took care of me." His voice softened, slowed, then he continued. "Saved me again earlier today. I wouldn't be alive if it weren't for her."
Ellie eyed Sarah. "Is that true?"
Before Sarah could speak, Morgan: "And she saved me. At The Buy More. Like I said in the car. Some evil woman, and some guy...She and Chuck knocked' em out." {antomimed Chuck's one-armed swing over his final words.
Ellie stood. Walked to Sarah. Stared into Sarah's eyes. "Okay, for now." The words slow, suspicious. "But you and I are having a serious chat after I check my brother's shoulder. Don't go anywhere, ...spy girl."
Ellie marched away. "Bring my bag, Chuck."
Chuck got up, picked up Ellie's medical bag, handed Sarah the shell box as he passed. "Sorry."
He followed Ellie into the bedroom. Pushed to door to.
ooOoo
Morgan and Devon, staring. Sarah looked away. Plastic bag with Chuck's things. Medicine. Alcohol. Probably not necessary. Still. Put down the rifle case and shell box. Picked up the bag. Down the hallway.
Morgan talking to Devon. "So, she comes in the storeroom...all quiet-like, shiny gun out, looking like a noir Valkyrie, and she makes a motion with her finger, put it on her lips, for me to be quiet…" Morgan's last words, mumbly. His own finger illustrating.
Shift of attention to voices, muffled, other side of the door.
"Ellie, ouch!, don't treat her like that. Sarah. Ow, ow. How is it?"
"Oh, Chuck," tears in Ellie's voice. "It's...It's okay. Healing well. The bruising's about where it should be. Yellow. Oh, Chuck, the scar, though. It was going to be bad, but the pulled stitches. It'll always be there. Marking you, for life. I...I'm sorry, Chuck, but you're my little brother, kinda my...boy. I hate it. Hateful, fucking bullet. A goddamn monster with a gun!"
Sarah put her hand down, positioned to knock. I am the monster. Bullet, mine. Tears. Wiped them away. Breath.
Knocked.
A moment of quiet. Ellie opened the door. Says nothing.
"Here're Chuck's things. Meds and stuff I was using."
Ellie took the bag. Turned away. "Come in."
Chuck was on the bed. Shirt off. Bandage too. Stitches. Red, mottled flesh. The work of Sarah's hands. Right hand, left hand. Willy-nilly. Will ye, nill ye? Willing and unwilling. Still, her hands. Hand. Sits down, doesn't look. Tries to, not look. Ellie tends the wound.
Chuck reaches back. Right hand out. Sarah puts her left hand in it.
Ellie stared at their hands. "You're together?"
Neither answered.
Ellie huffed. "I don't understand. Talk to me, Chuck, why are some spies trying to kill you, and other spies saving you? Where the hell did all these spies come from?"
Head duck. Chuck. "El, you remember...that suitcase of Mom's that we found?"
Ellie's hands stopped. "Yeah, Chuck, I do. The one with the photograph of Mom and Dad inside. The photograph taken in Virginia? Dad's inscription. 'Love you so much. I'm always with you.'"
"Right. I didn't just take that suitcase out to the trash. In the lining, there were passports, passports of mom's. But they weren't in her name. They were aliases." Chuck rushes onward. "I started digging. Mom was a spy, Ellie. Like Sarah, except Mom — she killed people, Ellie, assassinated them. She was an assassin. She stopped that after...when she got assigned to Dad."
Ellie, a step back. Almost a fall. "Assassin? Assigned? Chuck, that can't be right. Can't be. She was...insurance…" Ellie's hands, small random motions in the air.
Chuck reached out. Broke contact with Sarah, caught Ellie's hands. "I'm sorry to just...bomb you with this. I am. But you need to know. — No, Mom wasn't in insurance. And their disappearance, Mom's and Dad's. Connected to the CIA. I started...hacking again...digging…"
"Chuck, you promised! Promised that was done. Before you went to college."
Chuck reddened. Guilty. "I did stop. But I never told you how much I did before I stopped or how...famous...infamous...I became. I had a...name. Piranha. And when I realized...about Mom, I became the Piranha again. Broke my promise. Lied."
"And you...hacked...the damn CIA?" Ellie caught up, shock about her mom shunted aside. "Shit, Charles, what were you thinking? — Shit. You brought all this down on us, our heads? Why?"
"I had to know. What happened to them. Mom and Dad. There was the project, Omaha." Chuck reached into his pocket. The thumb drive. "Mom and Dad were connected to it, somehow. And the project was overseen by the now-Director of the CIA, Langston Graham. He had done all he could to bury it…"
"And you dug it up? Grave-robbing from a CIA digital cemetery?!" She stopped, panting a moment, fisted her hands. After closing her eyes: "So, do you have it? Do you know what Omaha is, what happened to Mom and Dad?"
"No, only generalities. But I hope to know a lot more soon. I have a computer. Finish with me and I will get to work."
Ellie did. Sarah helped Chuck put on his shirt, Ellie watching. She pointed to the door. "Go work, Piranha. Sarah and I are going to chat."
ooOoo
Ellie closed the door.
Silence. Ellie repacked her bag. Closed it.
"So, ...Sarah. What's happened, what's happening between you and my brother?" Ellie waited.
The assassin studied the wood floor of the bedroom. Scarred, the floor. Deep scratches everywhere. A lifetime of misuse.
"So, you are CIA?"
"I am...was. At the moment, I'm...rogue. Or Graham is. Hard to keep score."
"So, this Graham...Graham's calling the shots...the literal shots. Sending agents to kill Chuck. But why? Why not just make Chuck give that thumb drive back? Isn't that enough?"
"No, because Graham must be worried that Chuck knows something that Graham does not want him to know. Graham would want the thumb drive, sure, but he's worried about what's in Chuck's head."
"But Chuck doesn't know anything...yet."
Shrug. "Not that he knows he knows, no."
"Jesus...You are a spy. That sounded more like code than English. — And so you saved my brother from Graham's tax-dollar killers and now you're...sleeping...with Chuck?"
"Ellie?"
"Don't deny it. You walked into a room in which my brother sat, shirtless, and he did not squirm or cover up. Two things about Chuck: he's reticent both about public displays of affection, and public displays of his person. But not with you. And that means…"
"Yes, we're together...sleeping together…" A few days of a good man.
Ellie, arms crossed, staring. Silent. "I knew it." More silence. "I'm assuming this is just...temporary. He's your...Bond girl?"
A gasp. Ellie speaking Sarah's current thought — and Chuck's earlier image. "No, no...yes, temporary."
"He knows?"
Nod, weak. "More or less."
Long sigh from Ellie. "I see how he looks at you. You're going to kill him, you know."
"What?"
"When you leave him. My brother doesn't love with a part of himself. It's why Mom and Dad...why it shattered him. It took me a long time to put him back together. And except for the people in the other room, he's never loved anyone again. Until now. You. A bloody, goddamn spy...That's who he decides to love. Another one, I guess, and a different way. Mom, damn it. Now you."
"Love?" The assassin spoke the word. Interrogating Ellie, herself.
"Yes, and, despite what you have done for him — I guess I have no choice but to believe all of that, thanks — and despite your...obvious charms, you are so not-the-right-woman for him. So, though I don't relish putting him back together again, I'll do it." Ellie stopped. Her voice, grown hard, softened. "I really do thank you, Sarah. But you have to know. What you do, who I assume you've been...I don't pretend to know how you feel about Chuck," Ellie paused but the assassin studied the floor, "but I can't imagine this meaning for you what it does for him. He's just some kind of...mission...isn't he? Given what you've done, you need him and Omaha to get reinstated. And that's all, really, right?" Ellie's voice grew no louder but became more intense. "You don't love him? You don't...see anything with him beyond this mess? You don't see a future?"
"I don't...see a future…" I keep trying.
"Then be fair to him." Intensity lessened. "And maybe to yourself. End it sooner, not later. Otherwise, all your help will ultimately be hurt."
Ellie picked up her bag. Left. The assassin sat in the bedroom, hunting a future in the floor's scars.
ooOoo
Left the room after a while. Wiped her eyes.
Chuck talking, telling them about what he remembered since waking up. He had the computer open and was typing, working. Ellie looked up at Sarah. Ellie's face, unreadable. She looked back at her brother.
Chuck had not noticed her. The assassin picked up the rifle case, the shell box. Devon noticed, spoke.
"Are you leaving, Sarah?"
Everyone looked. Chuck.
"I'm going to try to even the playing field. Chuck has a burner phone. Leave all of yours off, sim card out, as I told you in the car. There're probably pizza places that will deliver even here. Use a fake name. Cash. You have cash?"
Devon nodded. Chuck was staring at the assassin.
Moved to leave, the door. "Sarah?"
She stopped, facing the door.
"Sarah, I'm coming with you."
"No."
"Yes. Here, Ellie, the burner. Sarah, what do you like on your pizza?"
Shut her eyes, sighed. Chuck. "Veggies. But without olives. Chuck, you need to stay, work. What I am going to do I need to do alone."
"I can bring the computer with me. Work in the car. I'm not using the internet. Everything's on the thumb drive, I just need to put it...together. It's like a jigsaw. I've got the straight bits but there's something missing in the middle. Please let me come."
No use to fight. Did not want to fight. Wanted him near. Turned to face him. Noticed Ellie, watching closely, closely, waiting.
Does he love me, Ellie? No one has ever…
"Okay. But you have to promise to do what I say. Including staying in the car if I tell you to stay in the car." Sidelong glance at Ellie, the assassin expecting protest. Ellie was still watching. No visible reaction.
Chuck shut the laptop and got up. He got to her, turned to the others. "We'll be back."
A/N: Thoughts, reactions?
Writerly stuff (skip if uninterested). Since it's come up in the reviews and in a number of PMs, a word about what I am trying to do here. A Guest mentioned Hemingway, and although I am not comparing what I am doing to him (of course not), it bears comparison with him: he is in the background. So too, though, Gertrude Stein. Her book, How to Write, left a lasting impression on me, as did her The Making of Americans. — But behind both of them is the Hebrew Bible in the KJV translation. The syntax of that, its often radical parataxis, is the biggest influence on what I am doing. (There's a reason for the admixture of scripture throughout, for Sarah calling her story an Old Testament story.) Other writers matter too: various noir fiction writers of the '50s I admire, like David Goodis, but also other later, non-noir writers like J. P. Donleavy and Patrick White.
Hemingway's so-called Iceberg Principle does matter here, but crucially supplemented with a Stein-like deep concern with verbal patterning. My concern with patterning is so pronounced that it threatens to push the prose over into poetry, free verse. (Among my favorite moments in prose are those moments in Dickens, typically moments of high drama or low comedy, where his prose shuffles off its prosaic coil and transfigures into free verse.) My intent has not been simply to pare the prose down (as if I were offering story notes in lieu of a story), but rather, pared down, to freight the prose with meaning, meaning carried not just by the words in isolation but by the words-in-patterns, by repetitions, echoes, placements, and displacements. I hope the prose is a (sometimes brutally) brief but a collectively effective way to put Sarah's addled, fragmented spirit on display, to show its slow, fitful changes. (Sarah is not just in mind confused but in soul perplexed.) The reader is challenged to assign grammatico-logical roles to words and phrases, since the radical parataxis and the manipulated, unfamiliar or broken syntax leaves the words in need of such assignment. Also, the reader is challenged to keep the verbal patterning in mind so that extensions of it can be recognized and understood. That's one reason I have pushed myself with the posting schedule. If the reader forgets the words of the previous chapter(s), the reader will almost certainly fail to understand the present one, its full meaning. So many of the words that matter are particles, unremarkable little words, considered in isolation: 'with', 'ago' 'so', 'long', 'left', 'right', etc. The goal has been to make those particles swell in significance.
Just to be clear: I'm not claiming success here. Not at all. I'm describing the will, not the deed. Perhaps it all sucks. But this has been the aim, what I've been pushing toward in these little chapters.
— Zettel