Steven Jensen had, at 22, launched a tech start-up which later sold for a few million dollars. Undeterred by his initial success, he launched three more concerns in as many years. Two failed almost out of the gate, leaving him with “a solid 50-50 success rate, which is actually pretty good, as these things go.” He’d then parlayed his half-right reputation into a technology investment firm. For the next two decades, he funnelled other people’s money into still other people’s start-ups, taking a tidy profit off both ends. He proudly maintained his 50-50 success rate the whole time.
He bought a subscription to Tall Pines Refuge from Gregory Cole himself in a good year, and for whatever reasons kept it up during whatever bad years followed.
After his investment firm was established, Steven had the leisure time to find himself in something besides ceaseless innovation. It started with yoga for his twisted-by-desk-chairs back, then broadened into an exploration of eastern philosophy, meditation, and altered states of consciousness. This was where he met Samantha, who was enjoying her own voyage of discovery.
The two became inseparable and in a few scant months were in love, pregnant, and engaged—although Steven was never quite sure which order those came in. They married in a yurt on the Mongolian steppes before she was showing, then came home and bought a big house in which to raise their family.
And then Samantha miscarried.
Even as he was telling me the story more than a decade later, tears welled in his eyes. Neither of them could understand why this had happened to them–they searched their past for some error, some crime, that deserved such a punishment. Their gurus failed them, saying that their suffering came from their expectations and desires, but the Jensens wanted a reason that this had happened.
Samantha found it in her mother’s church, and came home from her visit newly baptized. She insisted Steven come along the next Sunday. He would do anything for her, and so he went and learned that the wages of sin are death, and sin is inescapable in this fallen world. Finally, a reason.
Steven was baptized, too, and then they were pregnant again. Samantha delivered with no complications, and before their son Paul was walking they were pregnant with Faith. After Faith came James and Grace. Their big house was filled with children, the blessings of the Lord God, who had made it all possible.
Steven had grown up an only child, and so the raucous chaos of four children was more than a little daunting to him. But Samantha became a model stay-at-home mom, running them all between school and church and baseball and ballet. Steve, maintaining his .500 business batting average, was happy to bankroll the surprisingly tall bills for keeping small humans fed, clothed, entertained, and productively stimulated. His business trips might take him away for up to a week at a time, but he always came home in time for Sunday services with the family. Church was the cornerstone, their foundation, their bedrock.
Looking back with perfect hindsight, Steven could see how shallow their fervent faith had been. They attended services. They took the kids to Vacation Bible School. They paid their tithe and more (an expansion of the church building was named in honor of Samantha’s late mother). And they did it all because they knew, deep down inside, that they were terrible and worthless people and the only reason they had anything at all was because God had given them a break. That was why they never missed a Sunday. That was why their kids were signed up for every program. That was why they gave and gave and gave. Not doing so seemed like stiffing a bill.
Which is why, when Steven discovered that Samantha had been sleeping with their pastor, everything fell apart.
It was his own fault, really, Steven assured me. He was never at home. He had abandoned her to a maelstrom of childrearing and homemaking as he flew off to Tokyo or San Fransisco or London. They used to have long, deep talks together, out under the stars at Angkor Wat or the Sonoma desert. But then they’d stopped talking, because Samantha always seemed so tired, and besides they already knew all the answers, anyway. Just trust in God. He’d take care of everything.
Steven found that he could barely look at her.
The business trips grew longer. He didn’t always make it back by Sunday. Even when he did, he’d claim exhaustion and bundle the kids into the car and bite down the impulse to tell Samantha to say hi to her lover. He quietly found and furnished a small apartment, and sometimes he’d come home from a business trip to the apartment instead of their house. He’d leave for the next trip from there.
They never divorced; they never even legally separated. Steven didn’t know how to tell the kids. Their children had become an insoluble problem. He could not simply abandon them, but he did not know the first thing about caring for them, either. He realized he hardly knew them.
He remembered telling her, when she was pregnant, that he would be the most active, most involved, most plugged-in father any child had ever had. But that had been the first pregnancy. The miscarriage. He’d never made any promises over the later pregnancies. Such optimism seemed… dangerous.
He got in touch with his old gurus. He found a new church near his apartment. One day he sat down in the executive lounge of an airport and resolved to piece his life back together, somehow. He started making lists and a plan of action, but was interrupted by a commotion across the lounge.
The business news was always on the giant screen near reception. A small knot of people had clustered around it, loudly bemoaning whatever was being reported. The rice harvest had come in, and the mercury had tested too high again. There was a run on other grain futures (except, of course, corn), and the international food markets were in disarray. And then the broadcast cut out in the middle of the reporter’s sentence. Not even a technical difficulties placard took his place.
The intercom announced that his flight would be delayed again. He didn’t wait. He was three hundred miles from the house and the kids and Samantha; a rental car could get him home. He composed packing lists in his head as he drove, and when he got home, he and Paul packed the minivan. The next day, they left for the refuge.
Steven was not happy with the state of affairs inside the walls, and admitted that things could be considerably better. But he was getting to know his eldest son as they dug or hammered or harvested side-by-side. The rest of his children were young enough that they were in day care instead of put to work.
And perhaps the refuge would give him and Samantha a second chance. He had screwed it up the first time. Maybe his 50-50 average would be his salvation.
As I explained to Maggie after our impromptu interview ended, even though he wasn’t about to upset the status quo, Steven was hardly a lost cause. As much as he valued the silver lining he’d found around the dark cloud of Tall Pines, he recognized the place’s flaws. He wouldn’t volunteer to be a front-line revolutionary, especially with his three youngest children turned over to the refuge’s care every day. I probably wouldn’t ask him to stand up and be counted publicly–his dissatisfaction did not eclipse his vulnerabilities.
But we needed more than angry voices and willful bodies. Steven could pass messages. He (and perhaps his wife) could mind the children of more strident voices taking more direct action. He might hear something and pass it along to us.
And if things got very bad, his dissatisfaction might overtake his vulnerabilities after all.
—
The chill mountain wind hissed through the copse of trees around us, pulling the heat from exposed skin and leaving only the scent of distant granite and pine sap. The sun was making good time towards the horizon, and the western sky glowed yellow shading to orange. The faint tick and scrape of digging carried down from the slope above us.
I looked down at the fresh envelope of vials in my hand. Aubrey had called me out of my work detail, again. She’d thrust a packet of no-doubt contraband into my possession, again. I slowly shook my head. “Aubrey, I can’t do this. I need you to tell me what these envelopes are. I need to know what I’m trafficking, here.”
The nurse pursed her full lips in frustration. “Don’t you trust me, Susan?” she asked, glanced left and right, and then stepped up close. I could feel the heat coming off her skin; I could feel her breath flutter across my collarbone. “I need you to do this for me.”
I looked up into her dark brown eyes. I wanted nothing more than to trust her. I almost threw off my misgivings then and there and made myself trust. It would be so much easier. But too much could go wrong.
I opened my mouth to say as much when her hands fell onto my hips and she drew me closer still. Her lips pressed against mine, teased them, swallowed them. The whole world around us went silent. My hands were on her hips. Her fingers slid up the back of my neck and dug through my hair.
And then the kiss broke, leaving me gasping and heart hammering. I held on to her for support as much as the feel of her sides under my palms. My head was swimming, but the rest of my body sang in a chorus alternating Yes! and More! I had known I wanted this, but not how much.
Aubrey pulled back a little so she could smile down into my face. One finger stroked my cheek. She caught my eye, held it. “Just trust me, yeah?”
I could feel my head nodding along agreeably, and she had already taken a step back before I realized my pounding heart and not my spinning head had decided to trust her.
My brows bunched up; I groaned, and not happily. “No, wait, wait,” I begged her.
Aubrey paused, the victorious smile on her lips starting to fade.
“Look, that was— that was… fabulous, Aubrey, and god damn I want more, but—” I took a deep breath to steady myself. “I can’t run drugs for you on the strength of a really nice kiss.”
My body screamed at me that yes, I bloody well could do just that and more for kisses like that. I tried to ignore it.
“Run drugs?” she asked, her features settling into a disappointed frown. “You think I’m running drugs? And using you to do it?”
I reached out to her, but she stepped away. “Please, Aubrey, I don’t know what to think. This place… it makes everybody do crazy things.”
“This is medicine,” she insisted, and knelt down to pick up the envelope where it had fallen.
“If it were legitimate meds, you could just give it to Teddy yourself,” I pled with her. “But you need me, and so… I mean, what else is this supposed to look like?”
Aubrey stepped forward again, but this time without any tenderness to her. More than anything, she looked hurt, which was more intimidating than any menace. She grabbed my hand and slapped the envelope into it. “This is medicine that Mister Mahone needs, and I need you to deliver it.”
I wanted nothing more than to melt back against her, something her body language clearly declared was not going to happen. My hand closed around the envelope, trying to grab her fingers, but she slipped away. “Aubrey, I–” I started, but realized I didn’t know what to say.
She ignored me. “You will deliver this as instructed, Susan,” she hissed, “because you are a poolie and I am a sweetie. And that’s how things work here.”
She stepped back and scowled at me for a moment, as if the entire situation had been my fault, that I had turned an exciting tryst into this naked status game. My heart hammered in my chest; I could do nothing in response.
“I think you’ve got a work detail to get back to,” Aubrey spat, turned on a heel, and stalked back downhill.
I watched her go, then quietly crumpled onto the ground. What had just happened? A distant voice in the back of my head shouted that she was using me, tried to manipulate me into doing what she wanted with that kiss. And when that didn’t happen, she pulled rank, and what did that say about how she saw our… relationship, if it even meritted that word? But that sensible voice, which I knew would come to the forefront eventually, was drowned under a wave of emotion.
The thrill of that kiss replayed in my mind’s eye over and over, ending each time with the crushing disappointment on her face. Her walking away. I’d made her angry. I’d spoiled the kiss. I’d made it so that nothing like that would happen again. I’d ruined everything because I couldn’t just shut my mouth.
Fleetingly I considered chasing after her, promising her I would trust her, promising her I’d do whatever she needed me to do, anything to repair that bond. Anything so she’d touch me like that again. But she was long gone, and I could hear my name being called from uphill. Back to work.
I scrubbed my face and brought my breathing under control, shoved the envelope into my back pocket, and forced my feet to turn back to the walipinis.
—
The next day was berry-picking, which was one of the cheerier jobs a poolie might be assigned. Not only did a few berries inevitably get “lost” to “quality testing” while our overseers weren’t looking, but the knowledge that something sweet was coming out of the Mess soon did wonders for one’s mood.
Maggie and I found ourselves picking alongside Delores and another gentleman of little opinion and less willingness to share it. Conversation was sparse and remained light. Sometimes that’s a blessing.
As the day waned, Maggie and I finished off the last of a row and turned to collect the buckets we’d filled with the day’s harvest. Weston gave us a nod of acknowledgement and permission, and we began the awkward hike down the hill to the Mess.
When we arrived, the usual bustle that naturally developed around the preparation and serving of dinner was ratcheted up a few notches. We could hear the shouting from a distance, and just before we reached the building, a young girl was shoved out the door and took off for the infirmary at a run.
Sobbing and placating voices floated about as we reached the threshold. Poolies from Beaver Lodge looked up at us, looking shell-shocked more than anything. A knot of bodies were huddled over a twitching body laid out on one of the prep tables. This young man was plainly the source of the sobs.
A giant pile of wet rice sat on the ground nearby, steaming angrily in a pool of white, starchy water. An empty industrial stockpot, easily twenty gallons, lay on its side nearby.
“The pot got knocked off the stove and spilled all down his legs,” one of the kitchen poolies finally told us, voice hollow. “He tried to jump away, he slipped, he hit his head… he fell right back into the spill…”
Maggie cursed under her breath and I silently agreed. I spied the sweetie tasked with running the kitchens, a broad-shouldered man everybody just called Chef. He was at the injured man’s side, directing others: “bring the ice here,” “be gentle with his shin!” and “mind the puddle, don’t slip.” Needless to say, he was not receiving deliveries of produce at the moment.
“Should we…” I began to ask the kitchen worker nearest me, “…leave these outside? Chef seems occupied, and I don’t want to interrupt.”
She looked at me, plainly confused for a moment, and then wrenched herself out of the lurid scene before her. “No, no, not outside in the sun,” she stammered, and then pointed. “There.”
Maggie and I hoisted our load of berries and slipped as quietly as possible along the back aisle of the kitchen and through the swinging double doors at the back corner of the room. The pantry was dimly lit and cool, a long row of concrete walls that formed the core of the Mess.
Tall industrial refrigerators lined either side, alternating with wire mesh shelves. For a moment I was taken aback at how much food was set out in apparently rude display. Bins of beans, shelled and unshelled, propped up stacks of carrots. A hundred dead eyes of chilled fish stared out of frosted refrigerator doors. Orange and yellow pyramids of fat squashes loomed from the top shelves. Soy greens were jammed everywhere else, leafy sprawls plastered into corners and up against refrigerator walls. Near the end of the pantry sat four fifty-gallon drums, their sides spray-stenciled “RICE.”
We ate so sparsely when the refuge had all this? But then the calculator in my head caught up with the direct line between my eyes and my stomach. All this food on display amounted to tonight’s supper and tomorrow’s breakfast and little more. Eight hundred refugees [Population Number] could eat their way through this room–and did, on a daily basis.
We found a bin of berries in one of the glass-fronted refrigerators, half-full with berries. The tight confines of the pantry required no small amount of shifting and grunting as we emptied our buckets into the bin. Just before we were done, Delores appeared with her load, and we firelined them into storage.
“Where’s that lead to?” Maggie asked as she slapped the refrigerator door shut. She nodded down the length of the room to the stairs that sunk into the ground at the end of the aisle.
“Pantry,” Arthur grunted from the kitchen door.
She frowned at him. “I thought we were in the pantry.”
“This is the Day Pantry,” he clarified. “Down there’s the Storage Pantry. Chef doesn’t like it when we call it the root cellar.”
I shared my calculation on the shelf life of the Day Pantry, and Maggie whistled. “We’re a ravenous bunch, aren’t we?”
“You’ve no idea,” Arthur agreed with a roll of his eyes.
I held up the empty berry buckets to Arthur. “Where do these go?”
“Round over here,” Arthur answered with a dip of his head and lead the way. His crutches clicked along the floor as he went. “I’d be chivalrous and offer to take care of them for you, but carrying things and walking at the same time is a bit beyond me.”
We had to go back through the kitchen on the way. Two medics had arrived from the infirmary, and were already administering a shot and a topical cream. Neither medic was Aubrey, a fact which I found both disappointing and a relief. I filed the disconcerting sensation away for later.
Arthur swung his way out the door and along the back wall of the building. Dusty equipment cabinets were built into the structure here. He pointed at this with his crutch. “Baskets go somewhere in here, I think.”
Maggie snorted. “Almost helpful, Soza.”
“Gimme a break, I’ve only been working here for a couple weeks,” he retorted. “And it’s not like I get around easy.”
“Gee, have you been hurt or something?” she fired back, eyes wide in mock surprise. “I hardly noticed without you drawing attention to it every sixty seconds.” I fought hard not to smirk.
The first cabinet was filled with coiled hoses, the next stacked high–and full–of folding chairs. Opening the third cabinet, I hit paydirt: it was full to bursting with collection baskets. The mass of them was so haphazardly stacked, in fact, that my wrenching the door open sent them toppling out of the cabinet.
Arthur immediately guffawed. “I think you found the place.”
I shot him a look, although half-heartedly. I’m sure I looked ridiculous with a tide of baskets around my ankles. I bent over to start restacking them. More stacks of baskets immediately tumbled out onto my head.
“I’d offer to help,” Arthur managed to choke out through his laughter, “but bending over and I parted ways recently. If I hadn’t already mentioned.”
At least Maggie and Delores bent over to help bail me out of the flood of buckets.
I pulled a few more baskets out of the bottom of the cabinet, thinking that they must be the reason for the stacks’ instability, and quickly sorted them by size. But the next one I removed revealed an odd, open-sided box behind the now-dismantled wall of baskets.
“What’s this?” I asked no one in particular, pushing aside baskets to get a clearer view. It was perhaps a foot tall and wide and two feet long. The walls of the box were punctured by large, square windows, and a two-inch lip jutted out around the bottom edge. Inside I could see a handful of little figures, most of them carved wood save two ceramic dolls no more than a few inches tall. “Did somebody hide a… home-made dollhouse back here?”
“I know what that is,” Maggie said beside me. “That’s a spirit house.”
“A what now?” Arthur asked, hobbling up behind us.
“A spirit house,” she repeated. “They’re all over Bangkok. It’s a little shrine.”
Delores put her hand to her collarbone, but I leaned forward. Now I could see the little pools of white wax in the corners, with blackened nubs of wicks poking up from their centers. Candles.
“So if we disturb it do we get haunted by evil spirits?” my ex chuckled, leaning forward and reaching for one of the figures.
I slapped his hand with a sigh. “We will do no such thing. This is somebody’s shrine and it’s important to them. Hands off.”
Together with Maggie and Delores, we restacked the baskets into a wall obscuring the spirit house. When we were done, there was no sign that the cabinet held anything more than an overabundance of baskets.
“I wonder whose it is,” Delores said to the baskets.
“At a guess, they’re Southeast Asian,” Maggie said with a wan smile. “That should narrow things down around here.”
“Yeah but–” Arthur began and cast a worried look at me. I immediately recognized it as the face he made when he didn’t know how to say something without risking horrific offense.
“Spit it out, Arthur,” I said with a weary wave of my hand.
“I mean, are there even any… South Asians in the refuge?”
“Southeast,” I corrected him mildly and patted his arm. At least he didn’t ask about “the orientals.” I looked to Maggie and shrugged. “There’s no Southeast Asians in Ponderosa labor pool, but that’s not even a fifth of the refuge. They could be in any of the other lodges.”
“Or maybe,” Delores suggested, “somebody left it here before. You know, on a weekend of something.”
Maggie shrugged elaborately. “Possible. Looked a little dusty to me. Instead of chattering about hypothetical Cambodians or whatever, though, I suggest we go get in line for dinner.”
