Chapter Twenty-Four:
A New Calling
Cameron rolled the fluorescent green Ninja race bike out of the shed.
I looked on in quiet fear while statistics for motorcycle accidents ran through my brain.
He went back into the shed and returned with a plastic bag. He ruffled through it, took out a vanity plate and matched it to a drivers’ permit card.
“So, who are you today?” I teased, though my brain was now at statistical data for fatal motorcycle accidents.
I picked up the card while he screwed the plate to the back of the bike. “Melvin Longhorn from New York,” I announced. “It suits you.”
Cameron chuckled and continued to get everything ready for the ride. He handed me a child-sized black helmet. “It’s the helmet I wore when I got my first bike. It should fit your little head.”
“Remind me again why we’re not taking the car?”
“I don’t use anything that can be traced back to me when I’m working. You never know who’s watching. Besides,” he said with a full-toothed smile, “this is a lot more fun.”
Fun wasn’t one of the words that had been floating through my brain.
I squeezed my head into the helmet. My cheeks were compressed so much that my lips were forced into a fish pucker. Cameron laughed and took advantage of my incapacitated state to pat on my helmet and steal a kiss. “This is the last one for a while,” he reminded me.
I would have nodded or growled but I was afraid the heavy helmet would knock me off balance.
He climbed on the bike, and I, with extreme ineptness, got on behind him.
We zipped down the gravel driveway, leaving Meatball to eat his breakfast on the porch. I kept my eyes shut while the flying pebbles stung my face. It wasn’t until we reached the pebble-free road and I was still getting stung, that I realized that the pebbles were actually bugs, making like a kamikaze against my exposed skin. I made a point of keeping tight-lipped after that.
Cameron skillfully weaved in and out of traffic. At some point he complained that he couldn’t breathe. I was forced to relax my death grip around his torso. I even eventually opened my eyes and watched the scenery whoosh by.
We drove on the outskirts of the city and made our way down a country road that snaked the Callister River. The river divided the state of New York from the province of Ontario, serving as a natural border between the United States and Canada. Although a freshwater supply trickled down from the Canadian mountains into the river, it was, for the most part, sourced with salt water from the Atlantic that poured in at its basin. Because of its proximity to the ocean and its practically bottomless depths, the river was almost always congested with commercial schooners that motored back and forth from one country shore to the next and back into the ocean.
Little by little, the evergreens turned into cornfields and farmland. There was something exhilarating about being exposed and open to the elements and about holding onto Cameron for dear life. After a couple of hours, Cameron turned onto a farm road. My hips, legs, and arms were starting to cramp up and I had to close my eyes as rows of corn hypnotically whipped past us. When we finally came to a stop and I opened my eyes again, what I saw was not what I had expected to see.
There, in the middle of a field, stood a slanted wooden barn … and nothing else. There were no ten-foot-high electric fences, goons with machine guns, or man-eating dogs—just an old barn, barely big enough to fit a tractor. And there was a lot of corn around us. My first experience with the drug world was, so far, extremely disappointing.
When I got off the bike and tried to put my full weight on my frozen legs, I almost fell on my face.
“Ready?” Cameron whispered anxiously. I wasn’t sure if he was checking with me or himself.
I yanked the helmet off my head—it was like sucking a strawberry through a straw—and struggled to put the escaped hair locks back into my ponytail.
“Leave your hair down,” he commanded.
“I hate having my hair down,” I whined.
“That’s the point. It’ll force you out of your comfort zone. Make you look like you’re on edge.”
Like most things, what he said made no sense to me. I didn’t think that now was the right time to argue with Cameron about my follicle insecurities. I grudgingly obeyed and pulled my flattened helmet-hair out of its comfort zone. Cameron gave me a quick once over. I thought for sure I had spied a hidden smile in his eyes and couldn’t help but feel like I’d been duped.
With one head nod, he indicated that it was time. I watched his face expertly turn to stone. He stepped away from me like I no longer existed. Even if I knew that this was just an act, it still stung.
Cameron coolly walked toward the barn, and I not-so-coolly followed not-so-closely behind him. He opened the barn door, and a shadow moved within the darkened barn. My eyes anxiously tried to adjust to the barn’s obscurity as we stepped through the threshold.
“Ginger!”
My heart leapt. The voice that, until then, I had assumed I, or anyone else on earth, would never hear again.
“Geez, you’re a sight for sore eyes,” he told me. I could finally see Griff; he had jumped off the table he was sitting on and grinned from ear to ear as he marched toward me, ignoring Cameron.
Cameron turned to glance at me just as Griff walked past him. From the sour look on his face, I knew that he was, one, extremely jealous, and two, warning me to stay in character. With extreme difficulty, I glanced away from Griff and kept moving with Cameron.
It was painful to watch Griff’s face wince at my snub.
“Open the hatch,” Cameron ordered him impatiently.
“Yes, sir,” Griff bitterly obeyed. He walked to a bale of hay that was loosely strewn in the middle of the wooden planked floor and pitchforked it to the side, revealing a square door within the floor. He pulled on the exposed cords and the hatch-door opened. Stairs led down the uncovered hole to a darker hole under the floor.
Cameron strolled past Griff and started to climb down the stairs.
Griff uncomfortably shifted, deliberating. When he decided, he called after Cameron. “I heard what happened to your brother,” he said softly, genuinely. “I’m sorry for your loss. He was a really great kid.”
“Thank you.” Cameron almost looked surprised, but his still harsh voice did not betray him.
I followed him down the stairs and waited until I was sure he was out of sight before quickly turning to Griff. I smiled at him, only for a moment. The effect was instantaneous—Griff’s face instantly lit up. He understood the game.
The hatch closed above us, and we walked through a doorway that had been carved out of the ground. The barn’s floorboards above were soon replaced with rock and dirt as we walked further into the cave. A few feet ahead was a stainless-steel door. Cameron pressed the yellow button next to it, and we waited in silence.
A million questions were speeding through my head. Most of which involved Griff’s new job location. With every inch of my self-control, I resisted the urge to ask any questions. Like he could sense my fraying composure, Cameron cleared his throat to get my attention, and his brown eyes quickly glimpsed above. There were glass globes above us with cameras scanning back and forth. We were being watched.
The door finally opened into a compact elevator. We stepped in and were plunged deep into the ground. My ears kept popping from the increasing pressure. I had to swallow repeatedly to prevent the pressure that was pushing against my skull from forcing my brain through my nose.
When the elevator door opened, two men stood to greet us. The man in front was tall and sturdy. From the wrinkles that were starting to line his olive skin, I guessed that he was in his mid-thirties. His demeanor was grave. His black hair and dark facial features only enhanced his severity.
The man who stood behind him was older—much older. Although he had similarly dark features and skin, he was shrunken by two or three inches, and his face was leathery and worn. Except for the few black strands that remained on his head, his hair was grayed and went straight down to his elbows, like dead straw. His tired eyes twinkled—and stared at me without abandon from the moment we stepped out of the elevator.
“New bodyguard?” said the young leader with a grimace.
Cameron didn’t flinch. “I brought my accountant.”
I almost choked and hoped with every fiber of my being that I wouldn’t be asked to test my fictional mathematical skills.
“You haven’t seen the need to bring an accountant before. Why now?” the young leader continued to probe.
“Things change,” Cameron said plainly. And then, in a haughty-tone, he said, “I’m a busy man, Hawk. If you don’t want to talk business, I’ll take my business elsewhere. I don’t like to waste my time.”
While Cameron and Hawk stared each other down, the older man continued to look intently at me—like he was waiting for me to make a mistake. I was trying hard to ignore his stare and keep my facial muscles tensed and expressionless. But I could feel the corner of my mouth starting to twitch as the exerted muscles of my face were slowly surrendering. I had no idea that being purposefully uptight was so much work.
Hawk finally acquiesced and hesitantly turned on his heels to have us follow him and his older counterpart. They led us through a pearl white marble tunnel. Because of the narrowness of the tunnel, Cameron and I were forced to walk shoulder-to-shoulder, which made it even more difficult for me to neglect him. I focused on looking ahead.
Unlike the cave tunnel under the barn, the winding tunnel was sparkling clean and tailored with silver lanterns on the walls and expensive-looking cameras on the ceiling. Every few feet, we awkwardly brushed past armed guards that would look me over as we passed by.
Hawk and the old man continued to move ahead of us. I could hear their echoed voices as they started discoursing in French. Though the men’s dialect was definitely different, with a little concentration, I could understand most of what they were saying. My mom had grown up in Marseille, France, and was, by no stretch of the imagination, a proud Frenchwoman. Of the few childhood memories I had of my mother, almost all of them included her correcting my French.
Suddenly aware that I had been intently staring at the back of the men’s heads, I averted my eyes just as Hawk anxiously glanced back. He thankfully didn’t notice, or at least I didn’t think that he had. He turned back to his partner, while I continued to eavesdrop with my eyes on my feet.
“Why the hell would they bring a girl like that here?” Hawk exclaimed in French to the old man, “The crows are hiding something, Pops. I can feel it.”
“I don’t know about the boy, but I think you are right about the girl. She is without a doubt hiding something,” croaked the old man.
“Like what?” Hawk asked nervously.
“I’m not sure yet, but I sense something distinctive in her.”
“Do you think she could hurt us?”
“How much harm could one young girl do?” the old man said pensively, like he was talking to himself rather than his partner.
“I don’t know. There’s definitely something strange about her,” the young leader continued.
“There’s something strange with all the crows, son,” said the old man. He chuckled hoarsely. “At least the girl is easier on the eyes than the unpleasant baldheaded crow they call Spider.”
Hawk groaned in annoyance and wondered, “What should we do?”
The old man paused before answering. “Call the guards. Tell them to be on high alert. We’ll see where this goes.”
Hawk took out his shortwave radio, and his uneasy voice reverberated within the marble tunnel through the radios that were holstered on the belts of the tunnel guards. While I was growing nervous, Cameron remained unchanged. I doubted that he had understood any of the men’s discussion and wished that I could warn him. But I knew that if I could so easily hear the men ahead of us, they would just as easily hear me if I spoke. I remained silent, for now.
A pungent smell had started to seep into the tunnel. By the time we had reached the end, the stench was unbearable. I understood the source as we stepped out of the passageway and into a large greenhouse. Fluorescent lights were hanging low from the ceiling, acting as artificial sunlight to the illegal plants. People in white coats were moving about the room, tending to them. Lined up against the walls were more armed guards, all of whom were glaring in our direction—now on high alert.
Cameron and Hawk met up and walked ahead between the tables, while the old man joined me behind. Cameron spied the plants and disapproved. Their color, their size, and their quality were, apparently, unsuitable. This, of course, sent Hawk into an uproar, and the two business men commenced arguing over proper pricing of the crops. While I fixed on the argument, I could feel the old man studying my every move. That was when I realized that, in an unconscious response to the overpowering smell, my face had recoiled into a grimace. I corrected this immediately, but not before the old man had noticed and smirked at his detection of my defection.
I was starting to feel sick from the reek of the plants. Eventually Cameron and Hawk were able to agree on a price that neither seemed pleased with. I was really glad when we continued to move forward. The old man had rejoined Hawk ahead, and Cameron was back at my side, continuing to artfully ignore me.
Hawk turned to the old man—his face was red and sweating. “That insulting … How dare he attack the quality of our work? We have been growing for generations, before that kid was even born.”
The old man was calm. “You know as well as I do that it’s a bad crop. The boy is smart, and he’s a good businessman. You shouldn’t be severe with him for doing his job.”
Hawk huffed. “Well, whatever his reasons, I’ll make sure to give him the worst of all of the plants. Maybe next time he’ll think twice about insulting us.”
The old man quickly peeked back and caught me looking at him. I veered my eyes away and felt my cheeks burning. He only smiled and kept walking.
We passed the endless tables of plants and headed into another marble tunnel. Large vents were churning out fresh air over our heads. I cheerfully took several large inhalations.
I could see the old man’s mouth moving but couldn’t hear what they were saying because of the noise from the vents. This was the opportunity I had been waiting for. I waited until I was certain that they weren’t watching then I turned to Cameron with urgency, unsure as to how long I would have before they noticed us talking.
“They think that I’m hiding something … they don’t trust us … they put the guards on high alert … you’re right, the crop is bad … the Hawk guy is planning on giving you all the worst plants … oh and, why do they keep calling you crow?” I finished, out of breath.
Cameron first looked at me with puzzlement, and then his face quickly turned to fury. He pushed me behind him so quickly, so fiercely that I almost fell to the floor. Hawk, who had come running in my direction, looked violent, his rage equal only to Cameron’s.
“What game are you playing at? You brought the girl so that you could spy on us?” Hawk screamed. I had been tricked into thinking that they couldn’t overhear me. Hawk and the old man had now heard everything.
Cameron shoved Hawk away and looked like he was ready to kill him. “Step away. Now.” His voice was sharp, leaving no doubt that he would kill if pushed to it.
The old man stepped between the two boys and urged them to calm down. He then he turned to me with an excited smile.
“I knew I recognized those green eyes,” he said in French. “You looked like you understood what we were saying, but I had to be sure. There aren’t many people in these parts who speak French. Your brother Billy was the only one I knew outside our tribe.”
The old man started to move toward me, but Cameron barred him and looked at me—absolute confusion on his face.
I translated in a hurry. “He knows I’m Bill’s sister.” That was the gist of it anyway.
Cameron continued to stand his ground, glancing from me to the old man, trying to figure out what to do. In my mind, there were only two options: fight through an army of armed guards and try to escape without too many bullet wounds, or let the defenseless old man approach me. Deciding for both of us, I held Cameron’s gaze and tugged his arm down. He let me by with great reluctance. The old man gleefully looped his arm around my shoulders—Cameron flinched as he did so.
“In Manuuk tribal legends, crows,” he explained in French as we moved ahead of Cameron and Hawk and continued to wind our way down the vented tunnel, “are said to be spirits of great powers that move between the worlds of the living and the dead. They are highly intelligent creatures. They learn and adapt quickly.”
“Crows are also greedy and tricky,” bitterly added Hawk, in English for Cameron’s benefit—the effect was lost on Cameron, as this was the only portion of the conversation that he had understood.
“Yes, crows are mischievous—they like to play tricks on us, but they are also extremely loyal to their kind. When a crow is struggling, it will seek out its kind to survive. They take care of each other like a family, blood ties or not. Your brother and this one,” he said pointing at an oblivious Cameron, “were a lot like the crows of my tribe’s legends when I first met them.”
We arrived at another elevator, and the four of us squeezed in. Hawk pulled the elevator grid closed.
“I’m Emily,” I blurted out. From the look on Cameron’s face as I said this, I thought he was going to jump out of his skin.
“Your brother called you Emmy, yes?” the old man asked, his inquisitive eyes persistent.
I figured that I wouldn’t be able to lie to him, so I chose not to. “When I was young.”
“And you’re not young anymore,” he said. This was funny to him. “I’m Jerry, but call me Pops.”
The elevator motor hummed. Pops still had his arm looped into mine. He patted my hand like he could feel my heart beating a mile a minute. His skin was cold and rubbery, and I could smell pipe tobacco off his clothes. I usually didn’t like to be touched by strange old men. But I decided that I liked him, even if he was a drug dealer … distributor.
We stepped out of the elevator into a darkened grotto. The rock walls and ceiling were glistening with dripping water, and a stream gushed along one of the walls through gaping holes, from one side of the cave to the other. The room was barely lit by lanterns that were clumsily hung on the walls. I couldn’t see my feet in the darkness and had to rely on the old man to guide me to a small bench that was next to the gushing stream. We sat down, while Cameron and Hawk silently stood behind us. Men with guns against the walls completed the scene. We waited. For what, I didn’t know.
“I was really sorry when I heard your brother passed on. He was a good kid. Much too young to die.” Pops was sincere.
“Thank you,” I said in English.
The water bubbled. It was too dark, I couldn’t see, so I leaned in for a closer look. A big fish suddenly surfaced, and I screamed, almost falling over the bench. Cameron caught me before I busted my skull open on the rock floor. Everyone laughed, except me. Cameron chuckled, only a bit. The men quickly went to work as more fish broke the surface. Pops and I watched from the sidelines. One by one, the whale-sized fish were pulled from the water by the gunmen and gutted—guts in the form of plastic bags fell out.
“Look real, don’t they?” Pops said proudly. I nodded, still in shock.
“They’re just robots covered in latex,” he explained.
“Where do they come from?”
“From everywhere—boats, submarines, neighboring states, Canada. This batch came from a German boat two miles off the eastern coast.”
“Aren’t you afraid that they’ll get seized?” Or fished?
“Hasn’t happened yet.” He seemed amused by my questions. “They can’t be traced back to us anyway.”
A string of curse words erupted between Hawk and Cameron. They had resumed their earlier argument over the market value of the merchandise. I had to plug my ears as echoed profanities bounced off the rock walls.
“Are they always like this?” I asked loudly.
“This is the most well-behaved I’ve ever seen them. By this point, I usually have to order them to put their guns away or get one of the guards to pull them apart,” he said. “Both as stubborn as mules.”
Pops caught Cameron nervously glancing over at me for the hundredth time. I quickly distracted him.
“What was my brother like?”
From the smile on his face, he knew it was a diversion, but went along with it anyway. “Your brother was just a boy when I first met him,” he remembered. “One day he showed up unannounced and demanded to speak to me. The first thing he said to me: you need to change your alliances. I didn’t know what to make of this kid. He was either a fool or pretty brave for strolling in here like that. I decided to listen to him. Well-spoken kid. Made a good case. He convinced me. Been doing business with these crows since.”
I inertly smiled at this memory of my brother. Apparently his charm had also worked on drug dealers, not just girls’ panties.
Pops’s voice brought me back to reality. “This one, on the other hand,” he said nodding in Cameron’s direction, “was very young. Too young to be in this business. Your brother relied on him quite a bit. The boy’s smart, but I always thought it was more than a kid like that could handle.”
Pops eyed me, like he was waiting for a sign that this part of his discourse had mattered to me. He didn’t need to wait long for me to falter. Cameron glanced to check on me again, and our eyes locked for a split second. I motionlessly signaled that I was okay. I was starting to recognize Cameron’s subtle changes in demeanor—and he was definitely angry with me. I would have to deal with this later. I had bigger fish to fry for now.
It had pleased the old man to spy us silently communicating. “He’s a quiet young fellow. Impossible to read. He seems lost, as if he’s already in the spirit world. We don’t like to do business with crows who don’t have any roots in this world,” he qualified. “But he’s a good businessman and has always been fair to us. I’m glad to see that he’s human after all.” His smile was telling.
I wasn’t threatened by Pops, but that didn’t mean I wanted to gossip with him about my relationship with Cameron—even if I had understood anything about our relationship.
“What’s in those plastic bags?” I garishly blurted out again.
Pops didn’t draw back at my insolence. “What do you think is in them?” he asked with amusement. He hadn’t been fooled by my pretend ignorance.
“Drugs?” I said, taking another glance at the plastic bags of multicolored pills and powders.
He neither confirmed nor denied. “What do you think about that?”
I’m fine with it, seemed like the appropriate response. The truth was that, as much as I loved Cameron, what he did for a living did bother me. It didn’t lessen my love for him in any way. I had been able to tuck this small disturbance in a locked compartment inside my head. But I found myself unable to lie to this complete stranger.
“It just seems awful to think that these drugs might end up in the hands of kids,” I tried to put nicely.
“I don’t sell to kids,” he quickly replied, his brow furrowing.
“But you can’t control what happens to … the product once it leaves here,” I said apologetically. “I mean, at some point, some street thug will try to push drugs on kids.”
Pops crossed his arms over his belly and crossed one leg over the other. “Kids don’t decide to start taking drugs because of some pusher they don’t know on the street. They’re convinced through peer pressure, through family and friends. You know, children are more likely to start by looking through their parents’ medicine cabinet for drugs that won’t cost them anything.”
It sounded a little rehearsed. I quickly realized that Pops was looking for a sparring partner on the topic. I didn’t know if I could deliver. I wished that I had paid better attention in my high school political-science class when the issue would have probably been debated.
“Yes, but drugs lead to violence,” I argued.
“Violence in the media has been the leading cause of violence. Illegal drugs might cause bad people to do bad things, but so do alcohol and licit drugs,” the old man argued back.
“But drugs do increase crime.” I had no idea if they did, but it definitely sounded good.
“Most of the drug crimes relate to the sale of drugs. If selling drugs wasn’t illegal, then you would free up the court system and jails.”
Pops waited with delight for my next claim.
I searched for something, anything. “Drugs are just really bad for you. People can die if they take drugs.”
“People do all kinds of things that are bad for them, like eating fast food and smoking,” he said with satisfaction. “You know heart disease is the leading cause of death in America. More people die from fast food and cigarettes than they do from anything else.”
Cameron and Hawk looked like they were about to come to fisticuffs. Whatever Cameron said had set Hawk on another vulgar dissertation, and both were angrily facing off. I looked at Pops for his intervention, but he just smiled at me.
“My son has a hot temper,” he explained. “He doesn’t trust the crows. Though … I think his opinion may change about this one after today.” He winked at me and then he glanced back at the businessmen and got up. “I’m afraid there isn’t much that I will be able to do with the one they call Spider. There’s something false about that boy.”
Pops made his way to the barking men and calmly put his hand on his son’s shoulder. “Give him what he wants, Hawk,” he ordered in English.
Hawk was incredulous. “What? Why would I do that?”
“Because I said so,” Pops answered with authority.
Cameron was just as surprised as his sparring partner, but took advantage.
“And the plants?” he asked Pops, glancing at me from the corner of his eye.
“Only the best ones.”
Cameron and Hawk stood there. I imagined that their jaws would be agape, if they had been like normal people. Everyone in the grotto had gone silent at this development. All I could hear was the swishing of the stream’s current.
Pops broke the tension and turned to Cameron. “If there is nothing else, then I suggest you take this young girl home. I’m afraid I have taken enough of her time, and she will soon grow tired of me.”
Arm in arm, Pops and I made our way back through the underground maze, with Cameron and Hawk now quietly, reflectively in tow. I could feel Cameron’s eyes hammering into me. We walked through the stinky greenhouse, and I permitted myself to make a casual comment.
“Your electricity bills must be insane,” I said, surreptitiously eying the torrent of fluorescent sunlight substitutes.
Pops caught my meaning. “Hidden solar panels on the surface,” he clarified with a warm grin.
We left Hawk and Pops at the elevator doors, but not before Pops whispered in my ear, “I hope we will see you again, young Emily.”
I didn’t look at Cameron’s face as we stood in the elevator. I already knew that I was in really big trouble. We headed back where we had come from and met Griff at the top of the barn stairs.
“Have a good day, sir. And madam,” Griff added with emphasis, bowing with a grin on his face.
Cameron walked at a quicker pace, his shoulders tense and erect. I figured that I couldn’t get in much more trouble than I already was. I genially grinned back at Griff before sprinting to meet up with Cameron at the motorcycle. He handed me my helmet without looking at me. I snuggled in behind him on the bike, but the trick didn’t work its magic this time. He remained on edge as we sped off in a cloud of dust.