Chapter Nine
I stand at one of the stands in the local farmer's market, looking at the display of fresh fruits and vegetables. I can see some of the townspeople casting furtive glances in my direction and whispering to one another in hushed tones. I'm used to it. The plain gray, shapeless dress I wear singles me out as one of Noah's Children. And if there's one thing I've learned, it's that the people of Elk Plains don't care much for Raymond and Noah's children – not that I can really blame them.
But you'd think that Raymond's cult, being part of the community more or less, for as long as they have, people would get used to seeing us. Or would eventually grow bored with all of the whispered insults and dirty looks. It took some time, but I eventually learned to just let roll off my back.
The sound of a Greyhound bus rumbles by behind me. I turn and watch it go, part of me still wishing I could hop aboard and just go – anywhere. It doesn't matter where. I just want to go anywhere that isn't the Ark. Actually, if I had my choice in the matter, I'd never set foot in the state of Wyoming again.
When the time is right, I keep telling myself. When I'm strong enough and ready, I'll leave. I'll put the Ark and Noah's Children and Raymond behind me. Forever. When the time is right.
I've thought about running away more times than I can count. I even started to head toward the bus terminal in town once. But then I remembered – like I always remember – Raymond's warning. Every time I step foot off the Ark, he reminds me that there is nowhere I can go that he won't find me. Even remembering his words – and the tone of his voice when he says it – right now still sends chills down my spine.
And I've seen his Shepherds drag enough runaways back to the compound that I believe him. I have no idea how he does it, how he tracks down the runaways, but he somehow manages to find them. And when he gets them back, they face severe consequences – like the girl who'd just been lashed.
The threat is real enough that it keeps me in line. Keeps anybody thinking about running away in line. Not that there are all that many of us. Most of the girls he keeps on the Ark are broken down, brainwashed and subservient to him. Raymond is good at that.
Having overcome that – most of it, anyway – I guess I'm one of the lucky ones.
It took me a long time to see him for who he is, but now I see it plain as day. Well – time and help from Danny. Before I met him, I was a mess. A shell of a person, really. I'd let Raymond beat me down and take away any sense of my own power and control. Raymond ran my life and dictated everything to me.
I know it's all part of his need to control me. It's all part of how he programs and controls everybody who comes to live at the Ark – especially the young girls. That's just who Raymond is.
In the beginning, like all the other girls on the Ark, I'd been broken down. I'd been made to feel useless. Worthless. Degraded. I came to believe that without Raymond, I was nothing. That he was my whole world and my only salvation in this life. He made me feel good. Important. Like I mattered.
At least, until I hadn't provided him with a child and had been set aside. Had become one of the Fruitless. Now, I'm barely a consideration to Raymond. I'm little better thought of than a house maid. I guess now that he considers me past my peak child bearing years, my only value to him and the community is as a servant.
It had been the lowest point of my life and there were a million times I thought about ending it all.
But then Danny and I struck up a friendship, and things began to change. My whole world began to change, actually. During my trips into town, we'd talk quite a bit. It took a while – and a lot of patience and persistence on his part – but he finally started getting me to open up to him. I told him all about the horrible life out on the Ark and the abuse I – and the other women – suffered at the hands of Raymond and his Shepherds.
Over time, Danny showed me how wrong my thinking had been. Had showed me that I actually was worth something. That I could have my own thoughts and feelings. With Danny's help, I'd started to piece together all those shattered pieces of me. It would take some time to heal completely – if I ever really did – but I was starting down that road.
“Hey, I wasn't expectin' to see you today,” he says softly. “I was surprised to get your text.”
I turn at the sound of Danny's voice and try to offer him a smile, but feel it falter before it ever crosses my face. I can feel the tears welling in my eyes and curse myself. The last thing I need is for the townspeople to see me crying – or Danny comforting me.
I have no idea how Raymond knows the things he knows. The only answer that makes sense is that he has spies among the people in town. Spies that report back to him, tell him what we're doing when we're in town. Elk Plains is a small town and we tend to stick out like sore thumbs, so it wouldn't be too difficult to keep tabs on us.
It's one of the reasons Danny and I keep our relationship a secret. Why we jump through a million different hoops to see one another. He keeps a cell phone for me in his cabin that I use to contact him when I'm going into town. We take separate routes to the cabin and arrive at different times.
We take every precaution we can think of to keep from being seen together – and still I worry. The last thing I want is for anything bad to happen to Danny because of me. Because of our relationship.
“You okay?” he asks.
I pick up an apple and pretend to inspect it, gritting my teeth and willing away the tears threatening to spill down my cheeks.
“No, not really,” I whisper.
“Did he do something to you?”
I shake my head. “Can we go to the cabin?” I ask. “We need to talk.”
Danny looks around and nods, a pensive look upon his face. “Yeah, sure,” he says. “I just need to get Tom to watch the stand.”
During the school year, Danny is a teacher. But he also helps out at his friend's fruit and vegetable stand when school isn't in session – which is where we meet when I'm able to slip into town on my own. It's actually where we met for the first time – he'd been working and I was picking some things up for the compound.
“Okay, I'll meet you there,” I said. “Oh, I need you to pick something up first.”
“Sure, what?”
When I told him what I needed him to pick up, his eyes grew wide and his face paled. But he nodded and said he'd grab it and meet me there.
I pay for the apples and leave the stand, walking back the way I'd come – back toward Danny's hunting cabin out in the woods. It's in a secluded section of the forest and he owns the land around it, making it a nice little hideaway. One well away from prying eyes where we can be together without having to worry about being discovered.
Danny's cabin is where I began to put the shattered pieces of my life – myself – back together again. It's where I discovered that I'm not what Raymond made me believe I am. It's where I learned that I'm not just an extension of Raymond, that despite what he's made me believe, I am my own person, free to have my own thoughts and feelings. Free to form my own opinions. Free to question.
Danny's cabin is where I've been finding salvation and redemption for myself.
But now, I'm terrified that all of the work I've done is going to be undone. That my world is about to come crashing down around me.
Please – if there is a God out there – don't let my worst fears be true.
~ooo000ooo~
“I – I can't believe it,” he says.
Danny is sitting across from me at the kitchen table in his cabin looking every bit as dumbfounded and shell-shocked as I feel. I look again at the stick in my hand and shake my head. I can't believe it. I really can't believe it.
“I'm pregnant,” I say, my voice a quavering whisper.
Danny sits back in his seat and runs his hand over his face. “I – I can't believe this,” he says again.
“How did this happen?” I ask. “We've always been so careful. So safe.”
He sighs. “Nothing is ever one hundred percent,” he says. “We happened to roll snake eyes.”
It feels like there is a physical pressure to the air around us that's pressing down on me. My heart is thundering in my chest and the adrenaline is flowing freely through my veins. I look at the pregnancy test again and see the trembling in my hand is getting even worse. Honestly, I'm terrified.
Danny stands up and paces around the room, running his hand through his short, brown hair. His face is tight, his eyes pinched. He's the picture of stress. And I can only imagine the look on my face mirrors his.
Maybe it was stupid. Naive. Or maybe I'd just been too caught up in enjoying the first taste of freedom I've ever had in my life. Danny was the first man I'd ever willingly given myself to. He's a good man with a good heart. He's the polar opposite of Raymond. I enjoy our times together. Enjoy being with him – not just sexually, but in every other way.
But pregnancy was not something I ever really thought about.
I look up and see Danny turn to me, a smile on his face. He sits back down across from me, his smile seeming to grow even wider and looks like he'd just had the most brilliant thought to ever cross the mind of man.
“Danny, I don't think we have much to be smiling about right now.”
He nods his head. “Actually, we do,” he says. “We're just looking at this the wrong way, Calee.”
I shake my head, not knowing what to say to him. Turning up pregnant at the Ark – given that I'm one of the Fruitless and have supposedly been untouched by any man since I was set aside – is surely going to mean my death. Raymond doesn't tolerate betrayal, and even though he has a dozen other wives, he isn't going to see this as anything but that – a betrayal.
“I don't understand,” I say. “I don't know what other way there is to look at this.”
“This is actually great news,” he says.
“Great news?” I ask. “I don't see how this –”
Reaching across the table, he takes my hands in his. “This gives us our way out, Calee.”
“Our way out?”
He nods and gives my hands a squeeze. “You know you can't stay out there with Raymond,” he says. “Not being pregnant with somebody else's child.”
“I know.”
“I know you're scared to leave the Ark,” he says. “I know you've been waiting for the time to be right or whatever. Maybe this is your sign that the time is right.”
“Where will I go though, Danny?” I ask. “I have no money. No job. No place to stay. I can't just leave and –”
“We can figure all of that out,” he says.
“We?”
He nods eagerly, his smile even wider. “Yes, we,” he says. “You, me, and our child. We can leave here and start fresh somewhere else. We can build a life together, Calee.”
His words hit me like a sledgehammer and I don't know what to think or say. Whenever I thought about running away, it was always just me. I've always pictured myself building a new life somewhere alone.
“I love you, Calee,” Danny says. “And I want to us to be together, hon. This gives us that chance. Don't you see that?”
“Danny, I –”
“We can be a family,” he says.
Love. It's such a small word but one that has so much meaning. I've never really thought about whether or not I love Danny. I enjoy our time together. Enjoy being with him. But do I love him? I don't know. I really don't know. I certainly care about Danny. That's not even a question. But love? I'm just not sure.
My automatic reflex is to say yes. To tell him what he wants to hear. To tell Danny I love him and want to run away and start a family with him somewhere. It's been second nature for me to make others happy – but I know that's the default setting Raymond had programmed into me. For so long, it was something ground into me. Ingrained into me. As Raymond's wife, my only thought, my only goal, was to say or do whatever it took to make him happy.
But after spending the last couple of years de-programming myself and asserting my own personality, I see things differently. I'm thinking differently. I've grown stronger. I feel like for the first time, I'm my own person. And it's a feeling I'm not ready or willing to give up again.
And I find it somewhat grimly ironic that it's Danny who helped me get to the point inside myself that I'm at.
“What do you think, Calee?” he asked, excitement coloring his voice.
“I – I don't know, Danny,” I say. “I'm scared. Probably more terrified than I've ever been in my life.”
He nods. “I think that's probably to be expected,” he says. “Life out on the Ark is about the only life you've ever known. The idea of leavin' it – no matter how horrible it is out there – has to be scary.”
That much is true. No matter how terrible life on the Ark is, it's the life I know. And as backwards and twisted as I know it sounds, there's a sense of comfortability in the familiar. I don't want to be there, but being somewhere else – somewhere unfamiliar – fills me with an anxiety unlike anything else I've ever felt.
He stands up abruptly and runs to a closet. Flinging the door open, he grabs a box from the top shelf and brings it back to the table and sets it down, the smile on his face making him look like a delighted child. He takes the top off the box and removes a smaller box from it.
“I put aside a little cash. It's not much, but it'd be a start,” he says. “It's sort of my rainy-day fund and from where I'm standin', it looks like it's rainin'.”
I stare at the roll of cash in his hand. There's probably a few hundred dollars there. I know I don't know much about the outside world, but I don't think a few hundred dollars will get us very far. I look up at him, offering a weak smile.
“I also got you some clothes,” he says, holding up some jeans and shirts. “Y'know, just in case.”
“Sounds like you've been planning this,” I say.
He shrugs. “Kinda,” he says. “I guess, more like hopin', really.”
“I need time to think, Danny,” I say. “I – I'm scared.”
He comes around the table and kneels down beside me, taking my hand in his. “I know you are,” he says. “And I understand. Think about it. But don't take too much time, Calee. We don't know when you're gonna start to show.”
I nod. “I won't,” I say and glance at my watch. “I should go.”
Danny holds my hand as he walks me to the door, holding it open for me. I turn and pull him into a tight embrace.
“Thank you, Danny,” I say. “For everything.”
“You're welcome,” he replies. “I love you, Calee.”
I give him a chaste kiss and then turn, heading back through the forest and to the road that will take me back to the Ark.