Faces in the Fire (11 page)

“Time to be impulsive,” she heard Grace's voice say, but it was disconcerting being unable to see her lips.

Be impulsive.
Who had said that? Oh, yeah. She had.

Corrine walked across the floor, settled into the chair, tried to relax. She wanted to check her hair, make sure she hadn't jarred the wig when she sat down, but she didn't want to draw attention by messing with it now. At least it had stopped itching.

Grace had her back to her, messing with stuff on the table. Preparing. After a couple of minutes, she turned again, holding an instrument that looked somewhat like a bad kitchen implement.

“This is the tattoo gun,” Grace said, obviously picking up on the questions in Corrine's eyes. “I attach the needle here, draw ink into the tube up here. Just relax.”

Relax. Sure, she could relax.
Breathe. Breathe normally.

“Okay,” Grace continued. “Any more thoughts on what you want? Where you want it?”

“My arm,” she said. “Something big. Something strong.”

Grace nodded, adjusted the task light so it was focused on her arm. “Maybe slip this arm out of your shirt,” she said. “So we don't stain it.”

Corrine did as instructed.

“Now,” Grace continued, “like I said before: just try to relax.”

Corrine heard a whirring sound—also something like a bad kitchen implement—and immediately felt a ripple of pinpricks on her arm, followed by a few seconds of silence. She watched as Grace wiped away some ink, then triggered the gun again with another whirr. This time, the pinpricks didn't feel quite so bad, and her eyelids seemed heavy.

She closed her eyes, listening to the tattoo gun grind, the wheels on Grace's chair squeak with subtle movements, the lightbulb in the work lamp hum, and within seconds, she felt nothing.

3.

The appeal of being on a traveling sales crew had faded faster than a cheap T-shirt.

Corrine had answered an ad in her local newspaper just a few months earlier, a small ad filled with exclamation marks and promises:
Earn $100+ Every Day! Exciting Travel
Opportunities! Full Training!
The ad had said nothing about traipsing from door to door, aiming to look like a poor, starved soul doing your best to stay off the streets and stay out of trouble or, depending on the person who answered the door, to earn scholarship money for college. After a few months on the road, Corrine had begun to write the ad that lured her in her own style:
Earn $100 Every Day for
Your Crew Leader! Exciting Travel Opportunities for Anyone
Who Loves Riding a Thousand Miles with Six People Stuffed
into a Junky Van! Full Training, Complete with Hotel Lockdowns
and Beatings!!

Corrine had figured out in her second week that she'd signed up for something like a forced labor camp. Marcus,
their crew leader, kept them locked away—all six of them in one room—when they weren't on the streets selling. He pitted them against each other, making them compete to get the most sales. Sometimes, if you didn't meet your quota, he handcuffed you to the bed in the dive hotel room, kept a gag over your mouth.

Yes, the wonderful world of traveling sales was certainly
Exciting!
Still, Corrine had figured out the most effective way to deal with it was to roll with the changes, keep your eyes forward, don't stand out by being at either the top of the ladder or the bottom.

But not everyone in her crew was like that. One of the girls, Jenny, seemed to have this odd fascination with Marcus, a hero-worship thing. Something like the dog that gets beaten by its owner, yet always runs to lick the owner's hand when he holds it out. Jenny, you had to be careful of; if you said anything in the hotel room at night, she would run and tell Marcus the next morning.

At the opposite end, a round-faced kid from Iowa named Terrance often seemed to thrive on the abuse. He tested Marcus at every turn, almost willing him to beat him or take away his money or lock him away for the day. Terrance, it seemed, thrived on being the whipping boy. And after he'd been on the crew just two weeks (he'd joined about a month after Corrine, at another of the endless stops across the Midwest), she saw the pressure building between Marcus and Terrance. She understood that pressure would naturally find its release in an explosion, and she also understood she would very likely be standing at ground zero when it happened.

So it came as no surprise to be here, at this very moment, stuck in the third seat of the minivan next to Terrance somewhere in the middle of Oklahoma, as Marcus screamed at him from the driver's seat. Corrine watched casually as Marcus's hateful gaze darted to the rearview mirror every few seconds, fixing on Terrance in the backseat beside her. Terrance, for his part, simply smiled beatifically every time he saw Marcus glance at him in the mirror, which in turn caused fresh waves of anger to radiate away from the front seat.

It had been like this the whole hour they'd been on the road this morning, and they had about another nine hours to get to Sioux Falls, their next destination.

Terrance, she thought idly, might actually be energized by nine more hours of listening to Marcus losing his selfcontrol. What little self-control he had. The rest of them in the car winced every time Marcus screamed—especially Jenny, who seemed to take every uttered expletive with a painful jolt.

Of course, Corrine could stop it. She could step into the middle of it, be the peacemaker, calm Marcus's frustrations, distract Terrance with some idle chatter. Terrance had a thing for her, anyway. She could tell.

But that would go against her personal code. She needed to stay invisible, in the middle of the pack. Just ride the waves and get through it. That code had brought her through her first couple months, and it would bring her through a couple more. Until she figured out her next steps. Until she figured a way out of this white van with the taped-on bumper and the red passenger door retrieved from a junkyard.

Just before the accident, Marcus had said something she knew would stick with her forever, a bit of Confucius-inspired wisdom that would change her life even though Marcus had meant it as just another of his many insults.

Marcus looked into the rearview mirror, beads of sweat on his angry red forehead. “You're just a bottom-feeder, Terrance,” he said. “You're all just bottom-feeders, and that's all you'll ever be.”

Yes, there was something that rang true about that in Corrine's mind. She liked the image of herself as a bottomfeeder; it was comforting.

But the image didn't have long to give her comfort, because Marcus had kept his eyes away from the road for too long, staring at Terrance, who dumbly smiled and nodded. Jenny had time to get out a single “Marcus!” (and even in her panic, Jenny had managed to inject his name with a reverent tone) before the van slipped off the small shoulder and into the ditch running beside the highway.

At roughly seventy miles per hour, the van had cartwheeled, going end over end once, twice, three times. Corrine knew this because the whole event had slowed down, happened in slow motion for her.

Both she and Terrance, in tandem, had slid forward in their third-row seat. She had clipped the back headrest of Jenny, just in front of her. But Terrance had somehow become more airborne than she, as if he were lighter, and he actually slid over the top of Brad, the freckle-faced kid sitting just ahead of him.

At the next revolution, Terrance had disappeared, sliding out of the van somewhere—one of the windows? the windshield?—and Corrine had time to think that this was what it must feel like inside a clothes dryer. She tumbled, her face hitting the ceiling of the van and then her shoulder being painfully wrenched away, and then it all stopped.

It was only then she realized that all of this had happened in utter silence; amazing as it was, she'd never heard a scream, or a shudder of metal, or a screech of brakes, during the whole accident. It was only after they'd come to a stop, the van slowly rocking back and forth on its collapsed roof, that sound returned.

Jenny, of course, was wailing. Outside, something sounded like rain coming down on the van, even though Corrine knew the sky above had been blue. After a moment, she realized it was dirt, kicked up by the rolling van, coming back down in a fine mist on the van itself.

“Shut up, Jenny,” she said, and amazingly, Jenny did. The fine spray of dirt ended, and Corrine pushed herself away from the ceiling of the van; next to Jenny, the window was literally gone.

“Crawl out the window,” she said to Jenny.

The girl sniffed a few times, muttered something under her breath, and managed to slide out the window.

Corrine shifted position, feeling a deep twinge in her shoulder, and slid forward, then out the window behind Jenny.

Now there was a new sound surrounding them. A ticking sound, punctuated by a slow hiss. Steam from the radiator, maybe?

“Help me get them out,” she said to Jenny, deciding she needed to go back into the van. She went in and pulled out Brad, dragging him across the ceiling and onto the dewed grass of the field where the van now lay on its back like a helpless bug.

Jenny remained outside, rocking back and forth with her knees pulled up toward her chest. Corrine started to say something, then decided it really didn't matter.

Now she smelled smoke, and when she slid back inside the van, she saw a thick black cloud starting to spew from under the dash. Or rather, above the dash, since the van was upside down. Terrance had slipped out of the van somehow, and so had Dianna, who had been sitting in the front seat beside Marcus. Marcus was the only one left.

Corrine slid outside once more, noticed the driver's door beside Marcus was wedged open just a few inches, tried to push at it. It was stuck. She stepped back, kicked at it a few times, finally got it open another foot or so.

Black smoke now filled the interior of the van, making her cough.

“Leave him.”

Corrine spun around, and Jenny said it again.

Still sitting on the grass, still pulling her knees in toward her chest, still rocking. She stared at nothing in particular and repeated her command: “Just leave him.”

Odd words coming from the one person who seemed to care anything about Marcus, but Corrine had no intention of leaving him. She didn't know why, and now was no time to start wondering.

She slid into the door, grabbed hold of Marcus's purple button-up shirt, and pulled. His body came easily, as if he were nothing more than a bag of flour or something, and she continued to pull at him until he was free of the van. Grass now stained his purple shirt.

Corrine stared back at Jenny, sitting on the grass next to Brad, who still hadn't stirred. “You better get away from the van,” she said to Jenny as orange flames joined the black smoke.

Then, out on the lonesome secondary highway, which seemed an impossibly long way off, she saw a blue pickup pull to the side of the road.
Evidently, it was the first vehicle to pass since the accident.

An older man in a straw cowboy hat popped out of the door, yelled something she couldn't understand, then disappeared into the ditch for a second and began running in her direction. She walked toward him, making it fifty feet or so before Cowboy Hat met her and clutched at her arms a little too tightly; her shoulder rumbled in pain.

“Are you all right?” he asked, and she thought it an odd question.

She'd just been in a huge car wreck—how could she be all right? She laughed, realizing it was an inappropriate reaction but knowing she couldn't control it. Laughing was her natural reaction.

She started to point back toward the van, then pulled her arm back when the shoulder protested. “Can you check on them?” she asked, and Cowboy Hat nodded before continuing toward the van, eager for his chance to be a hero.

Corrine ran toward the blue pickup, stumbling down into the ditch and crawling up the other side. The pickup was still running, idling at the side of the highway, where dark chunks of dirt marked the path of the van.

Without looking back, she crawled into the pickup, shifted it into first, and sped out onto the highway.

Toward her future.

42b.

Corrine awoke, shuddering as she shook off the effects of the bad dream. She'd dreamed about that morning on the Oklahoma prairie so many times. But not in the last few years.

She opened her eyes, peered into hazy darkness, felt someone rubbing at her tingling arm.

Oh yeah. Be impulsive. She was in a tattoo shop. Parlor. Whatever.

She turned to look at her arm, to see what Grace had chosen to do, and for a moment she stared breathlessly.

She'd heard people call tattoos body art, and now she fully understood why. Her upper arm had been transformed into a colorful catfish, sparkling with iridescent blues and greens, the entire image outlined in a heavy, black line.

A catfish. A bottom-feeder. It even tied in with her Catfish Compound in China. Perfect.

“A catfish,” she said in wonder.

Grace looked at her, as if shocked to hear her speak. And maybe she
was
shocked to hear Corrine speak, after she had obviously slept through the whole tattoo experience.

“What's that?” Grace asked.

“I said, a catfish. A beautiful catfish.”

Grace stared at the tattoo, as if seeing it for the first time. “I was thinking more like a dragon,” she said.

Corrine smiled. “Same thing, really, in Chinese culture.” She thought about the Heilongjiang Province, the Black Dragon River province, home to her Catfish Compound. “To the Chinese, the catfish is a dragon, a fighter, a symbol of strength,” she said. “That makes it perfect.”

Grace was scrubbing her arm, looking intently at the tattoo, so Corrine shut up for a few minutes.

Finally, Grace spoke again. “I . . . uh, need to give you something,” she said. She turned, picked up a couple of needles and some other piece off the tattoo gun, transferred them to a plastic sharps container.