The Ravaged, page 9
Out here, there is nothing but space and time to reflect. With barely a hint of life, it is the serest, most inhospitable place he has ever seen. Out of habit, he looks to his wrist for the time. Nothing but a pale stripe to show where his watch once resided. A gift from Sarah, now gone forever, leaving behind only a bad memory. His tongue feels dry and foreign in his mouth. He thought about Fabiola—her kindness and her insistence that he believe in her dreams. That his are trying to tell him something about himself. Did she take him for a fool? Jack never believed anything outside the realm of science. He tried to explain this to her. If it wasn’t something of physical form, something he could apprehend through scientific methods, he had no use for it. But out here, maybe things are different. The people and their customs. Their culture. Their beliefs that were millennia in the making. Here, life is hard, but not nearly so maddeningly complex.
Jack’s heels are rubbing in spots and have started to burn. To take his mind off the hurt, he reflects on what brought him here, to this moment. After losing Sarah, he realized he had nothing left, that life had passed him by. So he decided to travel, to pull up stakes and fly to South America. With the same skills he had learned in business, he researched the different countries he would be crossing. Reading up on Chile, Argentina, Peru, Bolivia, and Colombia, taking in histories of the people and the regions, adding to what he knew about this area he is now traversing: San Pedro de Atacama. Yes, it is the driest desert on earth, and yet people have lived within it dating back some ten thousand years. The people here were once ruled by the Inca Empire. Then the Spanish arrived, and the Incas fell. War came. Independence. And the creation of the Bolivian and Peruvian territories. Then, in the eighteenth century, came the War of the Pacific, and a division and self-identity among the Peruvians, Bolivians, and Chileans. Chile claimed the Atacama region and its indigenous people. During the nineteenth century, the Atacameños were employed to mine silver nitrate and copper. Then, in the twentieth century, the silver industry collapsed and created an economic crisis. And life in the Atacama got even harder.
Hours have passed, and Jack has a problem. Not a single vehicle has driven by, and the burning sensation on the ball of his right foot is getting worse. But even though everything hurts, he can’t take his eyes off the beauty of the skyline—brilliant blue above, against it the earth tones and glowing orange of the mountains, aproned with dazzling white mineral deposits. Breathtaking, but there is no shelter from the unrelenting sun. No hiding from the heat. And for all the material wealth he has accumulated, none of it can do him a damn bit of good. He wants to stop and sit, but that won’t get him anywhere. He needs a ride, a rest area, or a gas station—even a scraggly thornbush to provide a little shade. He wonders whether the heat is making him delirious. Tears sting his eyes as he thinks of Sarah. Meeting in high school. Him washing dishes in a diner. Studying with her. Sharing their dreams. She wanted to be a lawyer—something not too many women did back then. Dating all the way into college. Coming home in the summers. Working for Sarah’s father at his family-owned insurance company. It was there that Jack saw a way to make a lot of money fast. His future father-in-law wouldn’t be too happy about it afterward, but by then it wouldn’t matter. Jack would already have his ticket up the corporate ladder.
Studying the market, Jack learned how he could achieve economies of scale. Earn the biggest return. So unlike now, slogging down an empty desert highway at the ends of the earth, broke in more ways than one. Broke of money. Broke of spirit. But in the beginning, for Jack it was all about money. When a man comes from nothing, he is hungry to create something. Jack was always about creating something more, doing something no one else had done. He used Sarah’s father’s company to run a scheme. Was it crooked? Not if he didn’t get caught. He used it all summer after college. Building his bank account to buy into American Pharmacy. A business he would parlay into something much bigger. His scheme was simple. When customers made their insurance payments to his father in-law’s company, he took their cash and invested it in stocks. Got a return. Made their payment, and whatever return he made from the market, he reinvested. His net worth kept piling up. He kept gambling their payments. Then he cashed out.
His business plan for American Pharmacy was also simple: go beyond the pharmacy; create a drive-through; add groceries; expand the makeup, shampoo, snacks, and other consumer goods. Create a one-size-fits-all solution in the puzzle of American consumers’ lives. Twenty-four-hour photo development. And before long, he had restructured and helped open stores all over the United States. And his ideas were catching on in other retail sectors, eventually combining retail with pharmacies, groceries, oil changes, and lawn and garden. A one-stop shop to pull trade from both the supermarket and the department store. Creating superstores. The only remaining task was to outsource labor. Hello, China and Mexico! Hello, profits.
All the years he’d spent building and networking, promoting his ideas, was time spent away from a family that was growing without him. A son who had attended a trade school, for God’s sake! A fucking trade school to become a journeymen electrician, only to lean on the crutch of drugs. Inevitably, the crutch grew to become an addiction.
Sarah would lose their second child and want to adopt, only to see that child grow into something unlike anything she or Jack could have imagined.
They adopted Megan as a small child. She was vibrant, cute, and smart. Had come from a broken home—an alcoholic father and mother who didn’t want a child. Meanwhile, Jack was out dining on Kobe beefsteaks and expensive whiskey. Getting little sleep. Following expense reports, business trends. Staying ahead of the game. Sarah was giving up her dreams of becoming a lawyer to be a good mother. Jack never paid attention to the trends in his own family. How his adopted daughter’s earlier abuse had damaged something deep inside her. So many things he missed. Warning signs that would lead to Megan hanging in her cell after the trial. And to his son rebelling by turning down a topflight business school for a trade school, then becoming addicted to cocaine, meth, and booze. And his wife was becoming tired more often, and Jack thinking it was from everything she had to deal with. Then his mother’s age just sort of sneaked up on him. The strong, fearless woman who had raised him, going into that hospital to die and telling Jack to “run, run away from it all.” Processing it all, he realizes he never really knew his children—he only paid for them, for their habits, their luxuries.
His shoulders are already sore from the pack straps, and his feet sting and burn with every step. What he would give to sit in a vehicle with an air conditioner! Even a beat-up truck and a rolled-down window. Anything other than walking under a brutal sun. He had decided on South America because he told himself he needed to get away from everything. Everyone. A change of scenery. Well, this certainly qualifies. He looks out at the barren landscape. An excursion to clear his mind, rebuild his soul. To run, run away from it all. To figure things out and, just perhaps, discover something within himself. But he has no good idea what that might be.
Fabiola’s words ring loud and clear in his head. You ran away from a world that you controlled. Because you couldn’t control what you had lost. And that’s when Jack hears the sound of tires on hard dirt, and the Doppler swoosh of a vehicle passing from behind.
ANNE
Voices come from all directions, bouncing through the silent maze of boxcars, tankers, grainers, and flatcars, mixed and matched, coupled in rows on several tracks. Crunch of ballast stone beneath their feet. Anne is a ball of anxious worry as Cinnamon yells, “This way! Hurry!”
Searching for a grainer to hide beneath, because the wide V-spaced compartments have enough space for multiple bodies to wait while the foot traffic passes, watching the hustle of angry men, their feet clomping up and down the row of cars, and then crossing over to the next track. Cinnamon, Anne, and Trot slowly uncrouch and look up and down the line, ready to dodge the yard workers. Staying hidden. Listening to steel toes kicking up rock, the beer-bellied men winded and panting. The ring of cell phones, the static of radios.
One whiskered man in a camouflage ball cap and faded bib overalls looks to another man with thick muttonchop side-whiskers and faded bibs and mutters, “Where the hell’d they go?”
Hunched forward with palms resting on his knees, chest heaving, Muttonchops lifts an arm and points. “Seen ’em over that way.”
“How many, you think?” asks Camo Cap.
In a tone of uncertainty, Muttonchops says, “Four, maybe five—not real certain.”
Kneeling and waiting, watching the two men from a distance, then pulling back, Cinnamon holds up a fist to halt, then an index and middle finger letting everyone know there are two men. Then she points in the direction they need to flee. Watching the two men turn away, half limping, half walking in the opposite direction, Anne feels frightened enough that she might vomit. Maneuvering through the rail yard illegally. The thought of being caught, taken to jail. Sent back home to face what she left behind. All these thoughts are roiling in her gut. Cinnamon waves at her and Trot to follow her. Crossing to the next track. Maneuvering under another grainer car. Smells of diesel and creosote. Staying hidden. Waiting. They listen, hearing only their own gasps as they try to catch their breath, slow the adrenaline.
Cinnamon peeks out. Looks left then right, sees nothing. Not a single shape. “Move,” she tells Anne and Trot. Crouch-walking to another track, sliding beneath another car, their packs snagging and bumping, getting caught on the undercarriage of the cars each time they bend down to maneuver.
Waiting again, this time Cinnamon tells Anne, “Take a peek, real slow. You need to learn the ropes of evading the yard bulls.”
Peeking out. Looking both ways, her whole body vibrating with nerves. Thrown into a situation she’s never been in before, not even knowing where she is, going on instinct. Not seeing any motion, she looks straight across, searching for a break, for the next car to hide beneath. Closing her eyes, she focuses through the surging adrenaline. Get your shit together, girl, she tells herself. This is what you wanted. Takes a deep breath, opens her eyes, leans her head back in just as legs come from nowhere on the far side of the next track. Yard workers walking up the row. Stopping. Kneeling to search down the row. She fights the urge to bolt from cover and run. Not wanting to get caught, sent to jail. Have everything end before it even begins. She wants to face her life head-on. See this through.
She sees the single track enter off in the distance, splitting into multiple tracks on the left, then the right. Some empty, others with long rows of coupled freight cars. Beyond them, beyond all the steel of rails and locomotives and chain-link fence, are the welcoming woods, soft and green and vibrant.
Anne feels closed in, hunted by predators in the wilderness of the rail yard. If she were to envision an industrial hell world, it would look a lot like this.
Still sucking wind, trying to slow her breath, she feels her jitters turning to outright panic. She asks, “How do we get out of here?”
Cinnamon says, “Breathe. We’re close. Got a few more rows of cars and track to manage, then a stretch of bare ground to cover before the fence. Then it’s the woods. That’s what we want. But they’s gonna be a bull positioned somewhere, trust me. They know to funnel us where they want us to go.”
Trot asks, “How we get by them?”
“We wait as long as it takes. Then we cover ground. Watch. See where they go, and remember who we seen. Sometimes, there’s more than one. So when I give the word, we break for the woods and you-all follow me. The jungle ain’t far.”
Anne feels queasier than ever. Is this a test? To see if, when shit goes sideways, she and Trot will hold up or crumble under the pressure? Or might Cinnamon leave her and Trot as bait for the wolves so she can make her way to the jungle?
Slinking from track to track. Watching legs in grimy coveralls walk up and down the rows, pause to look beneath a car, then move on. More waiting. Anne’s heart is thumping loud enough to wake the dead. She tries to imagine an unknown future, in which she meets and surrounds herself with others like her. They are the misunderstood, the mistreated, who had a gap in their home life and who want only love, family, connection. Maybe this will be her chance for that family. If she survives this. If she doesn’t get caught. And then she sees Mitch, lying on the kitchen floor. All that blood. Stealing the money. Cops looking for her. No. Pull your shit together! Not a useful train of thought. Placing her hands over her ears. Bending her head foreword. Quit obsessing, she tells herself. Trot’s hand squeezes her knee. Whispers reassurance. “We’re gonna make it.”
Anne’s head lifts. Her eyes meet his. She musters a tentative smile.
Cinnamon’s head jerks back. Anne says, “What’s wrong?”
“White pickup parked twenty feet away. Looks to be a bull. Probably keeping watch. We gotta wait a little longer. When he drives away, we make a run for it. Not a moment sooner.”
After a few very long minutes, they hear the pop of gravel under tires as the white truck backs up and rolls away. Cinnamon makes eye contact with Anne and Trot. Smiles and says, “Y’all ready?”
Anne gulps and says, “We are.”
“Let’s move,” Cinnamon commands.
Coming from beneath the metal compartment, moving over the empty tracks until they hit another row of railcars. Hearts are pounding, they work their way down the last line of boxcars. They hunker down and duck walk beneath. Thighs burning, they come out the other side and are looking at the chain-link fence, a mere twenty feet away. Beyond it, the woods. Freedom.
From nowhere, a deep voice yells, “They’re down here!”
Turning, they see the muttonchops man leaning against the next car, a tanker, huffing air.
“Now or never,” Cinnamon says. “Follow me. The break in the fence is down here, just past the pole. Come on!”
Running down the fence line, Anne’s dog-bitten leg is throbbing. The yard bull is coming at them. Though he’s not fast, he’s constant.
“Stop!” He yells.
Anne keeps running, through the pain.
Trot yells, “Where is it?”
“Farther down,” Cinnamon says, waving her arm.
Pointing at a large pinkish rock, she says, “There!”
Hands grab the stone and roll it away from the fence, pull back the stiff panel of galvanized chain-link. Trot goes first, snagging his pack on the clipped wire ends. “Shit!” He yells.
Anne’s fingers work frantically to get the pack free. Then, shoving it through the gap, she holds the wire up for Cinnamon. Clomp of boots and heavy panting from the winded yard bull. “Damn you kids. Don’t get paid enough for this bullshit.” Growing louder, closer behind Anne as she unhooks Cinnamon’s sleeping bag from the wire. Shoving her and her gear through.
“Shit, shit, shit!” Anne mutters aloud.
Trot is holding the wire back for her while Cinnamon tries to pull her through. Leg throbbing, she wriggles her head and shoulders under, then can’t go farther. She feels her pack being jerked backward. She tugs forward. “Get the fuck off me!” she growls.
Muttonchops snags his forearm on the sharp wire. Releasing Anne’s pack, he snarls, “Little cunt!”
Her waist and butt have wriggled under, and she is using her elbows to dig and drag herself through. She’s spent, swimming in slow motion, moving through taffy, trying to pull her feet through. Her pursuer manages to work his way back down onto all fours and grabs her injured leg. A jolt of fire sears up from her ankle to her hip.
“Fucker!” She screams. Rolls over onto her butt. She sees a face scrunched up in anger as he tugs her back toward him. She cocks her other leg and kicks hard. Trail-runner shoe sole meets face, and she feels the give of nose cartilage and bone. The man’s hands go to his nose, which is fountaining blood as his mouth spews profane threats.
Cinnamon and Trot grab Anne’s arms and drag her up off her ass, onto her feet. Cinnamon yells, “Sorry, not today, yardman.” And they run.
Into the woods, Anne half limping and half running. Dodging trees and being raked by brush and briars. Through a swarm of gnats. An evergreen branch slaps her face. Moving through dense undergrowth until Cinnamon is satisfied the pursuers have given up the chase. She slows to a walk. Everyone catching their breath.
Cinnamon laughs. “Wow! What a fucking rush.”
Anne can no longer contain the stress—or whatever is in her belly—and she pukes. Planting her palms on her thighs, bends forward, heaving and coughing until she’s dry.
Hands, warm and comforting, gently rubbing her back, giving her a clean bandanna to wipe her mouth. There is affection, a tenderness of emotion that Anne has never felt from another person, male or female.
“You okay?” Cinnamon asks with a look of genuine concern.
Anne straightens, smiles, her lips filmed by ick. And she laughs. “I think so. But you ain’t lying. I thought that whiskered tub of guts had me.”
Trot laughs too, saying, “Damn, that was too close.”
They walk for what seems a long time. Then sounds of voices grow in the distance. Cinnamon tells them, “Just a little ways.”
The sound grows louder and more distinct. Bicycles are strewn about the little clearing in the woods. Leaning against a big oak tree, others lying on one side, some with wheels, some without. A headless doll, buckets. Wads of trash and a dirt path curving and leading to an orange-and-gray tent on the left. A blue-and-gray tent on the right. Beyond these, several lawn chairs. Then everything opens to a clearing with tarps spread out over poles and tree limbs to create a shelter. Young men and women sit around in lawn and camp chairs or on the ground. Grimy faces and matted hair. Greasy. Dreadlocked. Twisted and braided. It’s a combination of styles, with “ungroomed” the prevalent theme. Some are smoking. Mouths chewing. Shooting the shit. Eyes reading books. And when some of those eyes look up and see Cinnamon, bodies rise and come forward with arms spread wide. Offering warm, heartfelt hugs.
