by Chuck Dixon
Dirya looked at the toilets to find her mother. She looked at the aid workers, who were all occupied greeting newcomers. The thinning column of arrivals did not pay her any attention.
“Do not talk. Do not cry out. I saw you with your mother. Filthy Kurd whore, and her filthy Kurd whore daughter. Where are your men?”
She turned to answer but swallowed the words. The grip on her arm tightened and the Turk pulled her toward the trees, the shadows darker there. She saw the bald man and the others smoking, standing by the SUV. One of them called out to the Turk who was dragging her by the arm. A harsh bark from the bald man silenced the speaker.
Dirya stumbled over a tree root, and the Turk hauled her upright with a curse. They were soon out of sight of the road. He pushed her against the bole of a tree, his heavier body against hers, trapping her. His hand went to the hem of her skirts and jerked them up to allow his hand to touch her leg. His other hand opened her coat, tearing away a button in his haste. She turned her head from him, eyes closed, lips pressed tight.
“Do not worry, little one. I do not wish to kiss you.” He gave a dry chuckle in his throat as his hand climbed the inside of her thigh, fingers cold against her flesh. His voice was husky with excitement, face greasy with sweat despite the cold. Her nose filled with the rancid smell of his breath: cigarettes and garlic. His hand pressed her thigh, opening her legs wider.
And suddenly he was gone. Dirya sagged to the ground, his weight lifted from her. She opened her eyes to see the Turk on the ground. The tall man she’d seen before bent over him. The tall man had the Turk’s shirt front balled in his fist and was repeatedly slamming the heel of his hand into the other man’s face. The Turk’s face was a mask of blood now. A few of his teeth glistened wetly on the cypress needles that blanketed the ground.
The tall man crouched by the now-still Turk. He wiped bloody hands on the tail of the Turk’s shirt before opening the camera and removing the SD card, which he broke between his fingers.
“Go to your mother,” the tall man said in perfectly accented Kurdish. He had the face of a warrior, with a light-colored beard and long-healed scars along his brow ridges. But the eyes beneath the brows were kind.
Dirya started to say something, to give words of thanks.
“Go,” he said. A command now.
She ran, throat tight and eyes beginning to sting with tears.
4
“This isn’t the way to Walmart,” Merry said.
“We’re not going to Walmart,” Sandy replied.
The minivan turned onto the south ramp for the Huntsville Highway.
“Where are we going, then?”
“The outlet mall. Get you some decent clothes.”
“How far is it?” Merry gripped the handle on the door as they came down off the ramp, but Sandy was a better driver than a rider. There was snowmelt on the road surface. The Kia slid in behind a semi, then slipstreamed to the middle lane and around a long truck. Sandy was talking the whole time.
“…and a winter coat that doesn’t look like you found it behind a dumpster. You remembered to bring some money, right?”
“Uh-huh.” Merry’s fingers squeezed the fat wad of bills in her pocket.
“How much?”
“Enough, I think. We’ll be back for dinner, right?”
Sandy laughed.
An hour later, they pulled into the mall lot under a gray winter sky that promised snow. Merry could taste it, the sharp tang of the dry air. They drove through the lot, passing brightly lit stores with their brand logos until Sandy found a parking spot less than a dozen slots from the main entrance.
Inside the mall, Merry trotted behind Sandy, the older girl’s bootheels clicking on the tiles with each long-legged stride. Merry paused to look at the mall directory, a sprawling map that looked like a salamander redrawn as a geometric design with side corridors leading to endcap stores off the broad main building. Sandy called for her to catch up. They started at one end and worked their way through one clothing store after another. Sandy talked Merry into trying on some clothes she’d never consider wearing in public. They argued back and forth, with Sandy pushing for the wild and impractical and slutty. Merry was staying with more sensible outfits.
“You’re like an old lady!” Sandy complained.
“My daddy says I was born old.”
It was like dress-up until Sandy told Merry to get serious. The store staff was eyeing the giggling pair at each stop. A clerk at a shoe store was losing patience with them until she caught a glimpse of Merry’s pimp roll. Sandy’s eyes went wide too, her mouth dropping open in wonder.
Outside, back in the mall proper, Sandy could no longer contain herself.
“Did your dad win the lottery?” she squealed in a stage whisper.
“He didn’t know how long he’d be gone,” Merry said. She thought back to the remaining four rolls in the shoebox in her room.
“Are they all twenties?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t look at all of them.” Merry removed the roll from her coat pocket, only to have Sandy clamp her hands around it to hide it.
“Let’s keep that out of sight, okay?”
Merry nodded and returned the cash to her pocket.
They had two large bags of tops, skirts, a sweater, jeans, belts, and a pair of alligator cowboy boots that Sandy said made Merry look like Taylor Swift. Merry wanted to get something to eat, but Sandy insisted on one more store. Just one.
In a large outlet box store, they squeezed through aisles of coats carrying the bulging bags.
“We’re going to find something right for you and burn this thing,” Sandy said, giving the sleeve of Merry’s parka a tug.
“I like this,” Merry said. She pulled a dark-maroon wool coat from the rack and held it against her.
“Nice, if you’re buying it for Grandma,” Sandy remarked.
Merry turned to a mirror, holding the coat in front of her. Sandy flushed and held a hand to her chin.
“I’m so sorry, Merry.”
“It’s okay. You were just making a joke. You really think this looks too old for me?”
Merry had shared part of her life with Sandy, but not all of it. Like her father’s connection to the death of her maternal grandmother, and the disappearance of her grandfather. Grandmother Roth had been killed by men looking for her father. A lot of those men were dead now, along with a bunch of other men over the past few years, as Levon Cade and his daughter went on the run to escape the consequences of the trouble her father had gotten into. She’d never know all of it, and what she knew would be a secret she would keep to the grave. But she needed to share some of it, even obliquely, with someone else. In late-night gab sessions, Merry had let Sandy into her life. In person. Never on the phone. Never in texts or emails. She was her father’s little girl and knew firsthand the dangers loose talk could call down on them. She’d only recently escaped the “care” of the government.
Sandy brightened. “What about something in leather?” She took Merry by the wrist and led her to racks of leather coats in all kinds of shades with fur collars and paisley quilt or cushy lamb linings. These were high-ticket items secured to the racks by slim steel chains run through the right sleeve of each garment.
“Did you see these price tags?” Merry asked.
“You can afford it, girl. Y’all are rich,” Sandy said.
Could she? Was she? This money, and the rest hidden around her uncle’s farm, had been left for her to use in her father’s absence. To help Fern and take care of her needs. Neither of them knew how long that would be, or if her father would ever return from Iraq. She tried not to think about that. She had spent many days and nights trying not to think about it. She’d grown up with that fear, and couldn’t remember a time when she didn’t have it somewhere in the back of her mind. It was exhausting. Wearing.
A metallic snapping sound took her from these thoughts. Sandy was at the next rack gushing over a shorty jacket trimmed in rabbit fur. The sna
p and click again. It was coming from the other side of the rack she was standing near.
Merry slipped around the corner of the rack to peek at the gap between the coats and the wall of the dressing rooms. A dark-haired girl in a flowered dress crouched there, cutting the security chains with a pair of tin snips. She was smaller than Merry, with hollow cheeks and a pronounced chin. Merry couldn’t see the girl’s eyes, but her skin was brown like milky tea. Her arms were skinny, and she was having trouble working the snips through the fine chain links. She freed a pair of coats from their hangers, folded them, and stuffed them into a large Tommy Hilfiger bag.
Retreating as quietly as she could, Merry waited until the girl had slipped from the hiding place and moved across the store. She caught a glimpse of the girl’s face in a mirror as she passed it on the way to the main corridor. Large dark eyes staring unblinkingly ahead. She was a pretty girl, but her looks were marred by tightly-pressed lips; her face showed strain.
“Let’s go,” Merry said. She yanked Sandy by the arm.
“Hold on! Hold on!” Sandy gathered up the bags to follow her friend through the store.
Merry kept the girl in sight, staying behind her in the crowd of shoppers as the girl exited the store into the main mall. Merry crossed the broad corridor to follow at an angle. Sandy, breathing hard, caught up with her.
“What the hell, Merry?” She tried to hand off one of the bulky bags to Merry, who ignored her, eyes fixed ahead.
“That girl stole some coats.”
“What girl?”
“Flowered dress. Tommy Hilfiger bag. Two o’clock.”
Sandy was confused, so Merry had to point. The girl was moving swiftly, dodging around shoppers walking with snacks or bags.
“She’s a shoplifter?” Sandy asked.
“She’s got about four thousand dollars’ worth of merchandise in that bag.”
“So tell Security. Or ignore it.”
“I want to follow her.”
“Say what, now?” Sandy broke into a trot to keep up. Merry re-crossed the corridor as the girl with the Hilfiger bag turned into the food court.
5
Gunny Leffertz said:
“Sometimes it’s how hard you can get hit.”
Levon was helping the bleeding man to his feet when Baldy and the others came trotting through the trees. They had drawn their pistols and trained them on Levon.
They barked orders at him. He shrugged, palms up in the universal gesture of not understanding the language. Baldy stepped forward to take the bleeding man’s arm and pull him clear of Levon. After a swift kick from another guy to the back of Levon’s knee, he dropped to the ground on all fours.
Baldy growled questions at his dazed comrade. The guy was struggling to maintain consciousness, his slurred speech coming through torn lips. Blood-flecked spittle sprayed from a fresh gap between his front teeth. The guy’s eyes rolled up white, and he slumped to a heap at Baldy’s feet.
“Look, it was a misunderstanding, okay?” Levon said. A kick took him in the side. He rolled away from it, and another foot came down to stomp on his knee. He made an attempt to rise, holding a hand out to ask them to let him up. A foot on his shoulder tumbled him over. He moved his head in time to take only a glancing blow from a heel across his face.
He’d let them work him over for a while; anything to delay the story of the girl being told. Let them think it was just between him and the snaggle-toothed guy. Allow the girl and her mother to get away down the road. One of them took him by the hair, spit in his face, and called Levon some bad names he recognized, followed by what were probably dire promises of future punishment. The others were engaged in a heated discussion over the still form of their pal, probably talking about whether to get him medical care or keep working the yabanci over.
They compromised, forming a circle to kick Levon’s back, sides, shoulders, and ass. He stayed balled up with his legs pressed tightly together and head bent forward into the crook of his arms, fingers splayed across the back of his neck. They did this until they were all winded. One of them bent over with a wracking smoker’s cough.
A knee landed on his back, then his wrists were pulled behind him, and cuffs snapped in place. Rough hands lifted him from the dust to walk-march him back toward the road. Two others had their pal by the elbows and mostly carried him back to their SUV. They bundled Levon into the back seat, banging his head on the doorjamb on the way in. Snickers all around.
One of the human rights workers fast-walked toward them, holding up a smartphone. Baldy met him halfway, shoving him before yanking the phone from his hand. The phone was dashed to the roadway and crushed under Baldy’s heel. A stream of curses and a second shove sent the Samaritan retreating back to his truck.
In the back, a man was seated either side of him, both smaller than Levon and suddenly conscious of it. There was no room in the front seat for Baldy, so he stood on the running board in the open passenger-side door and banged the roof to signal the driver to take off. He clung there, Mussolini-style, as the SUV spun around and headed toward the town spread out above the highway.
Levon lifted his head enough to look past one of the thugs. Beyond the trucks at the intersection, the highway was empty of foot traffic. The girl and her mama were over the horizon.
6
“I thought you were hungry?” Sandy asked. She’d returned to their table with slices of pizza and Cokes that Merry didn’t even touch.
“That girl is with some older men,’ Merry said. Their table provided a vantage point from which Merry could see across the open food court to where the dark-eyed girl sat in a booth with a pair of men. One was a heavy-set guy in a tight-fitting red jacket with the Dos Equis logo in a stripe down the sleeves. The second was a younger guy in a black t-shirt meant to show off prison muscles covered in a dense tapestry of tattoos. Both men sported short-back-and-sides haircuts that left a bushy strip of jet-black hair atop their heads. They were as dark as the girl.
“Probably relatives. Maybe her dad.” Sandy jabbed a long straw into the ice of her drink and squinted at the booth, which was visible over the fronds of plastic plants under a faux atrium roof.
“No. The body language is all wrong.”
“What does that even mean?”
“Eat your pizza and let me watch.”
“I’m eating your pizza, too.”
“Help yourself. Don’t care.” Merry watched the drama playing out. She was right that the girl was scared, and not of getting caught stealing. She was afraid of these two. The older man stabbed a finger at her, his mouth twisting as he spoke. The younger man tilted his head to poke around the Hilfiger bag, which was now under the table. He looked at the tags with an appraising eye. The two men had the remnants of a meal before them, paper plates, crushed napkins, and drink cups. The girl’s eyes moved from the older man’s face to the remaining fries lying atop an open sandwich wrapper. The men offered her nothing.
“Mmmm, pepperoni,” Sandy said. Merry cut her a look and went back to surveillance.
The girl slid from the booth to stand, her back to Merry. The older man scowled up at her and handed her a folded shopping bag. She took it in her arms, nodding to the man. He waggled his fingers at her, shooing her away. The girl turned to go, unfolding the bag, this one from The Gap, as she returned to the mall. She looked around as she moved between the tables to exit the food court. Her eyes met Merry’s for a split second. Merry had never seen eyes so sad and bereft of hope. The girl moved as a ghost might among the living, part of the world but invisible, intangible.
“Go to the car, and I’ll call you,” Merry said, standing up from the table.
“What what what?” Sandy asked around a mouthful of crust and cheese.
“Take the bags. Go to the car. Wait for me to call you.” Merry turned to run after the girl, who was now joining the flow of foot traffic heading for the west end of the mall.
The girl kept walking, the empty Gap bag dangling free in one hand.
Her face was raised to read the colorful logos above each storefront. She paused by a kiosk selling fresh-baked pretzels. Merry feigned interest in the selection of sunglasses at another kiosk, keeping an eye on the girl in a mirror. The girl was on the move again, and Merry followed until she turned to enter an American Eagle store.
Sliding between the racks of flannels and khakis, Merry stopped beside a rack of lumberjack shirts to watch the girl moving between tables stacked with folded jeans. She was studying the labels, looking for whatever the fat man in the jacket had told her to find.
“Can ah help you?”
Merry turned to a rangy girl with blue hair, a nametag that said her name was Cyrise pinned to a t-shirt that announced she was SUPER GAY. The salesgirl was only a few years older than Merry, but her attitude suggested that she was drunk on the limited authority granted her by American Eagle. She made it clear that she did not approve of unattended kids wandering around her shop.
“I’m looking for something,” Merry said. She turned her eyes from the sad-eyed girl, who was now rooting through the high stacks of jeans.
The salesgirl snorted. “That’s specific.”
“These shirts are nice.” Merry fingered one of the flannels.
“Those are men’s shirts.”
“I didn’t think that mattered. You know?” Merry gestured at the salesgirl’s shirtfront.
Cyrise’s lip curled.
“You know, like your shirt,” Merry continued.
The salesgirl looked down at her own shirt. Merry glanced past her to see the little shoplifter lowering a short stack of jeans into her Gap bag. The salesgirl sighed and tilted her head with an eye roll.
“They make us wear this. It’s part of a promotion to show the store’s support of the Pride community.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I’m not gay, but it’d be okay if I was, right?”
“Uh-huh. That’s great. Thank you.” Merry walked away, leaving the salesgirl staring behind her.
