Carthage (39 page)

For now the effort of even simple speech was beyond her like swimming across a vast dark rushing river.

On the Interstate headed south. In the 1999 Dodge pickup painted what the long-limbed sandy-haired woman called
oh-ber-jene—“eggplant”-color
—which the woman thought was a beautiful grave spiritual color.

She wasn’t able to eat—swallow—solid food. Something had tightened and twisted in her stomach. Tenderly the woman fed her liquid fruit-drinks, through a straw. Chocolate milk, banana-strawberry smoothies.

Vow to Christ I will make you healthy again. I will bring you back to life again. No one will hurt you again, girl.

Haley McSwain. She was thirty-two years old. She’d been a sergeant in the New York State National Guard. Haley was from Mountain Forge, New York—in the northern Adirondacks. She’d been called up for Iraq but had not seen active combat. In that terrible place she’d come to loathe as she’d come to loathe her fellow soldiers—(not “sister”-soldiers: “fellow”)—she’d been discharged with a disability. A chronic cold, bronchitis untreated and then a virulent strain of T.B. she’d been misdiagnosed, hadn’t been able to see a doctor for weeks. Her superiors had been indifferent to her suffering. She’d been brought up not to complain and not to show weakness but came to learn that was a mistake even among family let alone strangers. Yet, she hadn’t been treated so badly by the military as others, who’d died of infections
.
A friend had died of a raging fever. And it was said to her—you let this happen to yourself, you have only yourself to blame. Haley McSwain. Her sister Sabbath had died aged seventeen, when Haley had been deployed in Iraq. It was the tragedy of Haley’s life. Died in a car-crash their drunk stepfather at the wheel and a head-on collision on the state highway at Keene. Photos of Sabbath, her birth certificate and Social Security card Haley kept with her, cherished always, for it was believed by Haley that this was a way of keeping Sabbath alive and not to be forgotten; and it was believed by Haley that one day she would re-encounter her sister in the form of another. She would never lose faith.

These she would give to the badly beaten girl they’d found at the roadside by the Nautauga Preserve.

Early-morning Sunday which is the time for miracles.

It is Sabbath acquiring life again. This is all I ask, that Sabbath will live again somehow.

The girl resembled Sabbath. So Haley was convinced.

Like Sabbath, the girl had large liquidy-brown eyes. Like Sabbath, she was small-boned, and had dark curly hair.

Sabbath had been a beautiful girl, Haley believed. This poor beaten-girl with swollen mouth, nose and bruised eyes was far from beautiful but Haley had no doubt, her soul would shine forth radiant and new once she was borne to a new life far from her tormentors.

HALEY WAS DRIVING
to see her friend Drina. Last heard of Drina she was living in Miami.

Quit her job in Mountain Forge where she’d been a driver for Valley Oil fuckin dead-end job she thought it and near as she could figure out she took home less wages than the male drivers.

Drina had been stationed in Iraq too. They’d hooked up there but lost contact when Haley shipped home sick.

Three-four years Haley was in love with Drina and liked to say she was
patient
and
faithful
as they come.

“Like, you see pictures of dogs, they’re lying by the graves of their masters? Don’t ever
give up loving
? I’m like that, see. I can be patient. I can wait for years, for Drina. We do email, that’s our connection. If she don’t answer me no big deal, I just keep writing. And Drina will answer. She’s with someone else right now, but that won’t last. Her feeling for that person will burn out. I know this. I have faith. Her feeling for this person will not
endure
in the way that my feeling for Drina will
endure.
”

Haley McSwain was not one to interrogate another. She was not one to puzzle over mysteries.

Enough to know, her beloved Sabbath had been returned to her.

How grateful Cressida was!
Cressida
Mayfield
had become hateful to her, repugnant. How much more beautiful,
Sabbath McSwain.

And it did seem, this encounter was fated. Though she had been born in April, and Sabbath had been born in August, yet both had been born in 1986.

In Haley’s long arms. Gathered in a blanket in Haley’s arms, deeply asleep as she’d rarely slept in her old life for her hurtful brain was always rattling and chattering and careening like a berserk roller coaster that had flown off its tracks and capsized and crashed and now all that was finished, she wept for joy.

Understood that the beaten-girl who’d become Sabbath had no people who cared for her. Understood that no one would miss her except to worry she might contact the Beechum County sheriff as another beaten-girl might’ve done, but she had not. For she’d
fled the evil place
of her destruction.

Not once but every evening on the drive south to Miami, Haley had bathed the beaten-girl when she’d rented a motel room for the night. (Otherwise most nights, they camped out in the pickup. If at a campsite, there was water available but not hot water.) Tenderly washed the beaten-girl’s face with stinging soap and water and applied Bacitracin and bandages. Sergeant McSwain had been attached to a medical unit in both her Iraq deployments and had much admiration for doctors and nurses if but hostility and detestation for her fellow-soldiers and superiors.

In a man’s flannel shirt, bib-overalls. In a Valley Oil cap pulled down low over her short-cut sand-colored hair. In work-boots despite the summer heat for she distrusted any other sort of footwear—“Like if you have to run, suddenly. Run for your fuckin life. You’d naturally take to the woods, and there’s rock-hills in the woods, and you can break your fuckin ankle if you don’t have the right footwear. So best to be prepared. One fuckin good thing you learn in the military.”

Driving south on I-95 in the rattly Dodge pickup. Painted the precious hue of
aubergine
and on each of the doors a hand-painted butterfly with rainbow wings and in the back, beneath a waterproof tarpaulin, suitcases, tote bags, shopping bags and boxes of Haley McSwain’s
earthly possessions.

Drina didn’t know she was coming to Miami, exactly. Thought she’d keep the probable date of her arrival a secret.

Haley McSwain listened to country-and-western music on her satellite radio. Told that Sabbath McSwain had been crazy for Johnny Cash—“Hurt,” “I Walk the Line,” “Ring of Fire”—the new Sabbath McSwain came to cherish these songs too.

Haley and Sabbath singing together in the cab of the Dodge pickup.

Haley sang in a raw-girl voice, Sabbath almost inaudibly. But it was thrilling to sing!

Drinking from a can of beer positioned between her knees as she drives Haley says, “Know what, hon? Humankind creates their own laws and morals. There was a Jesus Christ but he was ‘human’—see? If you’re a little ahead of the crowd you see how the laws and morals can be shifted. One time, a person would die for a belief—like, for God, or for his country—but now, almost nobody would.”

Though Haley McSwain had seemed, to her young companion, to be bitterly contemptuous of the U.S. military, yet Haley seemed now to be arguing that the trouble with the U.S. was that nobody gave a good God-damn for their country and would not sacrifice for it. “Comes back to same old thing—in the U.S., nobody will die for a belief.”

Saying of Timothy McVeigh the man went too far, but—“He had the soldier’s ideal. He was a patriot in some damn army hadn’t yet been formed.”

Haley’s companion listened to Haley’s hoarse-grinding voice. It wasn’t just that Haley’s hair was sand-colored, and her skin was coarse-textured like fine sand, it was also the case that Haley’s voice sounded like sandpaper rubbed against sandpaper.

Sabbath wasn’t going to protest. Though it was puzzling to her, to hear her friend Haley defend Timothy McVeigh she knew to be a
domestic terrorist
who’d killed innocent children in a bombing in Oklahoma City.

Haley said excitedly, “Now I know what you’re thinkin, hon. But the point is, not that McVeigh killed innocent people and children, he called it ‘collateral damage’—that didn’t go down so well with folks. But in the U.S. military, it’s a principle of war. It’s a strategy. McVeigh was a
patriot
. I’d have been a sister or brother or cousin of his, I’d have tried to help him with his mission—I’d have cautioned him to be damn careful not to kill any innocent folks. Because there are those that are God-damn guilty, that are traitors to their own government. It might’ve been done, with a different federal building or even that particular building, some different time. He did not intend to kill anyone really, I think—it was a warning.”

Haley paused. Haley was breathing hard.

“McVeigh was a good soldier, even so. A good soldier dies for his beliefs.”

IN JACKSONVILLE,
the air turned spit-hot.

Air-conditioning in the motel didn’t lower the temperature much. A bad headache settled over Haley’s young companion like a vise gripping her head tight.

She was
Sabbath McSwain
by this time. But, in Jacksonville, it was the last time she would recall
Cressida Mayfield
.

Obviously, Haley was correct. Who you’d been did not matter much of a damn. Only who you would be.

This last chance to try to comprehend. Seeing a swath of water-stained newspapers, headlines. Or a glimpse on TV news, faces of strangers, Iraq War footage, Afghanistan war footage and how small it was, where she’d come from and who she’d been, and quickly forgotten.

Like in a rearview mirror. What you see is rapidly shrinking.

There were girls in the TV news—lost girls, runaway girls. Murdered girls.

Photos of mostly white girls with long straight blond hair. But sometimes, dark-skinned girls, women.

Missing. Gone missing. Last seen.

Have you seen.

Please call . . .

Reward!

Grimly Haley said standing flat-footed in front of the TV drinking beer, Poor damn girls didn’t escape in time. Nobody to help
them
.

In the pickup, Haley had her weapons of protection: a tire iron kept beneath the driver’s seat, a Swiss Army knife kept in a glove compartment, a hammer, a screwdriver.

Saying, Had me a nice little firearm until last week, a thirty-eight- caliber Smith & Wesson revolver. But not a permit for it, and for sure, not for carrying across state lines.

No reason that made sense, a Florida state trooper stopped Haley’s pickup just south of Jacksonville the next evening. Pulled up close behind the Dodge with the rainbow-butterflies though other vehicles were speeding past and sounded his God damn little siren like a smirk you could not ignore.

Officer what is wrong? Haley asked swallowing hard for you could see the fright in Haley McSwain’s face, she had learned not to trust any uniformed man, not ever.

Routine check, ma’am. Looks like your right rear light might be broken.

This was a surprise, and a suspicion. For Haley was scrupulous in her care of the pickup and had checked it out thoroughly before the long drive south.

Driver’s license? Vehicle registration? Hand over ma’am please.

Mean little smirk,
ma’am please.

Shone his long-handled flashlight into the glove compartment as if something suspicious surely had to be tangled inside there, he’d come along in his state-trooper cruiser just at the right time to expose.

H’lo what’s this?—taking out the Swiss Army knife. What’re you planning to do with this, ma’am?

Ain’t against the law to own a knife, Officer.

What’s this?—sneering at a plastic container, remains of a tofu-curry salad from a day or two before.

Officer I hope you are not harassing me because I am a woman, Haley said quietly.

And the officer said not so quietly, Ma’am, both of you step out of your vehicle hands on your heads.

Haley and Sabbath climbed down out of the pickup. Standing in front of the pickup positioned on the shoulder of the highway, their hands on their heads.

What is your relationship to each other, the state trooper asked. Shining his flash rudely into Haley McSwain’s face, and into Sabbath McSwain’s face.

Haley protested, She’s my sister, Officer. Younger sister.

Sabbath McSwain’s ID was presented. Not the birth certificate but a Mountain Forge High School laminated-plastic card expired since June 2003 so you could see the dark-curly hair, the dark eyes and a pale skin that might’ve been Haley’s new young companion, in shadowy light.

The Florida state trooper was more suspicious of Haley McSwain’s ID he had to check a second time—driver’s license, credit cards.

What’s all this stuff in the back? You movin to Florida?

No sir.

What’s all this stuff, then?

Just my things.

All these boxes?

My things like—clothes, CDs.

The state trooper shone his flash into the rear of the pickup for a few minutes muttering to himself.

OK, girls. Where’re you goin so fast?

We wasn’t going
fast,
Officer. Not like other drivers on the Interstate, see?—out on the highway, enormous trucks rushing by, trailer-trucks whipping along at seventy miles an hour, minimum.

You was going over the speed limit, I clocked you.

Plus, you were
weaving
. Why I noticed the taillight.

Of all driving charges
weaving
is impossible to prove, and impossible to prove you weren’t doing.

Slow and easy Haley drew in her breath so you couldn’t tell how she was trembling with rage, indignation.

Haley was wearing a man’s T-shirt, sleeves cut off at the shoulders. And Haley’s shoulders were hard-muscled. On her long legs, worn and tattered jeans, and on her size-twelve feet, hiking boots.