It was after nine before John and Sally made it home. They’d taken the time for a reasonable dinner at the Warwick again, mostly just because it was on their way home.

John felt he was pretty well beat to shit after all the frustrations of the day. He’d accomplished a few things, but only through difficulties or in reaction to crises. He hadn’t even gotten close to the few things he’d had on his list to do in the first place.

At least Sally seemed to be in better shape than the night before, when she’d been tired and distraught over the accident and Teresa’s injuries. She still seemed defeated, but at least she seemed to believe there was a little bit of hope from the efforts he’d made for her.

“John,” she said about as soon as they were in the door. “I think you need the hot tub tonight.”

“Don’t I know it,” he sighed. “This has been a real pisser of a day.”

“It hasn’t been the easiest for me, either,” she told him. “I feel so sorry about seeing Teresa laying there in that bed. There’s so little I can do for her, but I have to somehow keep her spirits up without letting her know how worried I am for her.”

“Sounds to me like you need some tub time, too.”

“Yes, I could get addicted to it,” she smiled. “Thank God there’s that.”

It didn’t take long for them to be settled in the hot tub, naked of course; there wasn’t any discussion about it this time. They talked about nothing in particular for a while, and spent a little time talking about the progress Teresa had made. While John hadn’t talked with Teresa’s doctor – he hadn’t been there at the right time – Sally seemed to think Teresa would be able to leave the hospital in another couple days, given a good place to stay and recover. It didn’t appear as if complications were happening, so mostly her recovery would be waiting for time to pass. However, John imagined it would pass slowly for her – he’d seen that she was in casts with her knees bent, so for at least a while there would be no walking. She’d be confined to a wheelchair, and have to be helped in and out of it.

Any kid would hate that, he thought. While he still had little idea of what Teresa was like, she was still a kid, after all, and being forced into inactivity for months on end would be wearing on her, to say the least.

But there was a limit to how much they could talk about that, and soon their conversation began to dwindle. The sentences became shorter, and the silences became longer. Finally, after a silence of a couple minutes, Sally shook her head and said, “You know, I would never have believed it.”

“What?”

“If someone had told me back in high school that I’d end up naked in a hot tub with you two nights in a row, and you hadn’t made a move on me.”

“Well,” he smiled. Actually, for a number of reasons, some good, others not so good, he hadn’t even thought about making a move on her. There had once been a time when he’d been eager to get points on the scoreboard, but those days were long in the past. He smiled again and threw it back at her: “If someone had told me back in high school I’d wind up naked in a hot tub with you at all, I never would have believed it either. I never would have figured it of you.”

“I never would have figured it either,” she said, a little distantly. “Things have sure changed. God, my folks had me totally buffaloed with all the shit they fed to me through the church. I even thought they were right. I mean, I thought I was totally doing the right thing by doing what they wanted me to do. It wasn’t until after we graduated that I learned that it had all been a sack of shit, and that they thought of me as their slave.”

“You haven’t said much about that, other than they forced you to get married,” John said, hoping to hear a little bit more about what had really happened. She’d been reticent about it before, probably for good reason, but now the door appeared to be opened a crack.

“Yeah, that just shows how badly they’d filled me up with shit,” she shook her head. “Of course, they used the church as their excuse. In our family everything was done according to what the church wanted, no matter what I wanted, and it was made clear to me that I had no other choice. I mean, the church was fucking everything.”

John had known, of course, that Sally had come from a pretty churchy family, and that she had been pretty pointed about her own salvation when she’d been in high school. She’d never unbent from it, as far as he knew; it was part of the reason he wouldn’t have tried to bother to get anywhere with her back then. Sally had been a very firm Didn’t, and that was that, so there had been no point in trying. “So what happened?”

“It all went to hell as soon as I graduated,” she shook her head. “We’d worked it out that I was going to go to Blessed Saviour Christian College in Nebraska. It looked like a pretty good place and the doctrine was close enough to what we considered acceptable. Or, at least I thought we’d had it worked out. What really happened was that as soon as I got home there was a man waiting there for me. I’d never met him before, but I was told I was going to marry him. I mean, right fucking then, not an hour after graduation!”

“No shit! Did they actually mean it?”

“Oh, they meant it, all right,” she shook her head. “I didn’t know it then, but they’d literally sold me to him, or at least that’s what Seth threw into my face just about every other day. He paid pretty damn good money, too. There was nothing I could say about it. God, I didn’t believe things like that still happened in this day and age, but there wasn’t shit I could say. I mean, my folks and my minister and Seth were standing right over me, and I didn’t have much else I could do, no place to go, or anything. If I’d walked toward the door I’d have been thrown out, or maybe even worse. I mean, this came out of fucking nowhere. I never even had a hint that was what they’d planned for me.”

“So you went along with it,” John said with a sinking feeling.

“Of course,” she shook her head. “What choice did I have?”

John thought for a moment before he opened his mouth. “Your minister didn’t happen to be Archie Swift, did it?” Swift was a righteous pain in the ass, the pastor of the most conservative and obnoxious fundamentalist church in Bradford. As far as John knew, he was still there, and still making a pain in the ass of himself.

“No, it was Kermit Hansell, over in Amherst. My folks went to the Disciples church in Bradford when I was little, but they got into some kind of an argument with them so they found an even more asinine church in Amherst. Talk about a lying, hypocritical sack of shit! Hansell took the prize. As I look back on it, he made Swift actually look pretty good. Why do you ask?”

“Long story,” John replied. “I don’t know too much about it, but apparently no one does. When Jennlynn came home from her sophomore year at college she had a falling out with her folks. Nobody seems to know anything about it, and she’s never said very much about it, at least to anyone I’m aware of. All I’ve heard is that she left in tears and flew out to Nevada to start her career as a legal prostitute. So it’s clear that her folks really pissed her off and she wanted to get back at them as much as anything. I can’t help but wonder if her folks dropped some bomb like that on her. It would explain an awful lot, and I wouldn’t put it past her old man.”

“I wouldn’t have any idea,” she sighed. “That would have had to have been long after I left Bradford. At least she had an alternative. I didn’t.”

“So you went with this Seth character?”

“Yeah,” she shook her head. “Like I said, I didn’t have anything else I could do. It turned out my folks had already packed a couple bags for me. Christ knows what happened to the rest of my stuff, but they probably gave it away or sold it or something. We were married on the spot, and I was on the way to Texas by the end of the day.”

“I never knew that,” John told her. “I don’t think anyone did. Emily told me one time you’d gone to some college out west, and that she’d never heard anything more.”

“Well, going to college out west was the plan I had, so that’s probably what the rumor mill had to work with,” she shook her head, “but my plan apparently wasn’t anyone else’s. Anyway, that was the last I ever saw of Bradford or heard of my folks, at least till you told me that Emily said they moved away long ago. Believe me, I still don’t want anything to do with them, after the shit they pulled on me. My God, was that all I was worth to them? A fucking slave?”

“Sounds like it,” John shook his head. “I can’t blame you for being pissed with them. That is absolutely the most disgusting piece of shit I’ve ever heard.”

“Oh, you have no idea how pissed with them I was, and still am,” she sighed. “Like I said, they sold me for cash to that fucker Seth. God knows what they did with the cash, but I’d bet they gave a lot of it to that asshole Hansell. Maybe even all of it. The idea just about had to have come from him, and shit, living with Seth was no picnic. I’m just lucky I survived as long as I did.”

“A real asshole, huh?”

“You have no idea. Let’s just say there was a damn good reason why he had to buy a wife since there was no way he could have ever gotten anyone to marry him the conventional way. John, I was a virgin when I went with him. Within four hours of when we got to Texas I had a black eye, bruises, and I wasn’t a virgin in any hole. I was bleeding from places I didn’t even know I had. It was that night I lost my faith in God. I mean, I’d been faithful to Him and He’d let that shit happen to me? What a crock of shit! I have no idea why I swallowed it whole for so many years. I just had to be totally fucking stupid to do it.”

“Probably because you didn’t see much of an alternative.”

“No shit. I mean, you go back to when we were in high school, and I thought I was living in the middle of a bunch of sinners and that I was above all that. Well, I damn sure learned differently.”

John tried to remain impassive, but her story was dismaying. He knew that there were some real religious jerks out there, but he hadn’t realized it was quite that bad. Sally had proved that she knew better. What a sack of shit! As far as he knew – as far as Emily knew – her parents were no longer in Bradford. That was too bad – if they were he might be tempted to do something about them. Maybe not kill them, but . . . well, there were ideas. But, there was nothing he could do about it now, and maybe never. But the thought was tempting . . .

Better get rid of that idea for now, he thought. No matter how bad they are, it’s probably more trouble than it’s worth. “I take it life with Seth didn’t get much better,” he said.

“Fuck, no. That first night he was being easy on me,” she snorted. “It got a lot worse from then on. I’d have walked out on him, but I didn’t have any place to go, as if I could have gone anywhere from being chained to the bed. I didn’t know where the hell I was anyway, and I didn’t know anyone. I mean, nobody. He never let me out of the house, but just beat the shit out of me whenever he happened to feel like it. It was his warmup for raping me, and he did it a lot.”

“So how did you get away from him?”

“Sheer goddamn luck,” she shook her head. “One night he beat me up so bad he broke my arm. I mean, there was a shitload of other stuff, but that was the worst. Usually he kept me chained up so I couldn’t get away, but this time he didn’t, mostly because he was drunk and he passed out before he could do it. I knew I had to get some help, so I just managed to get out of the house. I mean, I had to let myself down on sheets strung from a second-story window with a broken arm to get out of the damn place, but I was in so much goddamn pain everywhere else I didn’t really even notice it. I went to a neighbor, and when they saw the condition I was in, they called an ambulance. The ambulance crew called the cops when they took one look at me.”

“I’ve had to do it,” John said. “It’s amazing the stuff some women have to put up with. Shit, especially when I was making runs in Detroit, I saw some stuff that made me sick. The hell of it was that sometimes, maybe a month or two later, we’d have to go back to the same goddamn place and put up with the same people, same goddamn stuff. Why the hell nobody did anything about it is beyond me, and why any woman would put up with it and even go back for more escapes me.”

“At least I can say I only put up with it as long as I did because I didn’t have any other choice,” she sighed. “I mean, I beat feet the hell out of there the first chance I got.”

“So what happened?”

“Well, they took me to the local hospital, patched me up, and set my arm,” she said. “I was so beat up they decided to keep me for the night. I didn’t know till then that I was in Beaumont, Texas. The cops came and talked to me that night, and told me they’d picked up Seth and thrown him in the drunk tank. Well, that was good, I thought. But the next morning a cop came back in to talk to me, and who but Seth should turn up. Somehow they’d turned him loose. Well, he started in on hitting me right in front of the cop.”

“Not a smart move?” John smiled.

“No, thank God. There was a hell of a mess in the room, but the cop finally wound up dragging Seth off in handcuffs. After he left, I got to thinking about it. If they’d let him out of jail that quickly, there was no doubt he’d be out on the street again within hours, and the first thing he’d do would be to come for me again, and I’d be in an even worse world of shit than I already was. So I put on my clothes, which were still all ripped and bloody, and just walked the hell out of there.”

“Probably a smart thing to do,” he said.

“I’ve sometimes wondered,” she shook her head. “There was no way I’d go back to him, and no way I’d even think about going back to Bradford, not that I could have gotten there anyway. Hell, my folks would have just called him up and put me back with him, the fuckers. And to top it off, I didn’t know it at the time, but I was pregnant, too. I didn’t figure that out for a couple months.”

“So how did you make your escape?”

“I just walked out of the entrance of the hospital and started hitching,” she told him. “I figured it didn’t matter where I went, as long as it was somewhere else. I mean, I knew Seth would come looking for me, and the harder I made it the better it would be. I knew hitch hiking wasn’t real smart, but it had to be better than going back to Seth.”

“Well, yeah,” he said. “That seems pretty obvious to me.”

“I figured anything else was better,” she said. “For the most part it has been, at least better than staying with Seth. I don’t doubt that he’d have killed me sooner or later. Hell, he almost did as it was.”

“So what happened?

“Well, after hitching a bit, and changing directions, I wound up in Monroe, Louisiana,” she replied. “I got a little lucky with one of my rides, and I was able to stay with a family there. They got me a few new clothes, well, used clothes but some that weren’t all bloodstained and dirty. They also helped me get a job cleaning rooms in a highway motel. It wasn’t a good job, but at least I made a little money. Well, one day I was working on a room when I looked out and saw Seth’s car. I knew it was his car because it had the crumbled fender he had on the thing. God knows if he actually knew I was there but I didn’t stick around long enough to find out. I mean, I went out the back door and got lost. I snuck over to the family I’d been staying with, got my clothes, and used my money for a bus ticket. I never went back there again.”

“Did you ever see Seth again?”

“No, thank God. I have no idea where he is, but I’ve tried to be somewhere else. The odds are he’s still in Texas, he was a real Texas man and he was always ready to prove it to someone, if you know what I mean. Anyway, my money ran out in Albuquerque, New Mexico. I was planning on going to Vegas, but I didn’t make it there for years. I got another job in a motel and kept it as long as I could, until I was so pregnant I couldn’t work anymore. Fortunately, I’d made a friend there, a Mexican gal who felt a little sorry for me, I guess. I hadn’t really had a place to stay, and had just sort of floated around for a bit, sleeping where I could and eating as cheap as I could, sometimes from dumpsters. Well, she took me in for a while, and I stayed there until after I’d had Teresa. This gal took me over to get a birth certificate for her, and it was then I had one of the best pieces of news I’d ever had.”

“What was that?”

“You remember how my folks stood me up in the living room and made me marry Seth right after I got back from graduation? Well, they forgot one little thing. While they said I’d married him in the eyes of God, somehow no one ever bothered to get a marriage license.”

“I sort of wondered about that. I mean, as quickly as they dropped it on you, and all.”

“I’ll tell you that I’d never thought about it,” Sally told him. “I guess I still had some of that bullshit my parents had shoved down my throat hanging around me. Anyway, that meant I’d never really been married to him, except in the eyes of God. Since I didn’t believe in God anymore, that meant I wasn’t married to him at all. Anyway, I made up a name when they asked about her father for her birth certificate. If something ever happened to me, I didn’t want her winding up with him somehow.”

“So she’d have to be what? About fourteen? She looks younger than that, not that I’ve had a good look at her under normal circumstances.”

“Not quite fourteen,” she replied. “She’ll turn fourteen in June. God, the poor kid has put up with a lot of shit from being with me, but I’ve tried to do my best for her, even if there are times my best hasn’t been very good.”

“At least you’ve tried,” he shook his head. “I’ve seen a lot of moms who don’t care about their kids as much as you seem to.”

“Yeah, I’ve tried,” she said. “Maybe I could have done better, but I’ve always tried to stay a little loose in case I have to take off again.”

“Still worried about Seth finding you?”

“Yeah, I guess,” she sighed. “I don’t want to think about what he’d do if he found me. I mean, it’s been years, but let’s face it, I’m still scared of him. John, you may think you’re a crude asshole, but you’re an angel compared to him.”

They sat and talked for quite a while longer. John learned a lot more about Sally, and the crap she’d been through in the years since she’d left New Mexico. As she’d said, if there were a degrading minimum-wage job, she’d held it. Motel maid, fast food, waitress, stripper, and a dozen more, so many that she didn’t remember them all; John couldn’t help but wonder what she’d left out deliberately. There had been good times and not so good times, in many parts of the country except east Texas and the upper Midwest, although she tended to stay in the south.

The longest she’d been in one place was in Memphis, where she’d managed to stay for a full three years, working at a series of jobs while Teresa started school. She had started to think she might be able to stay there permanently, but after a while things went sour and she had to move on. Her next job was in a seafood restaurant in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina; it lasted a few months, until the end of the summer vacation season, when she was laid off, and it was time to move once again. By now, John wasn’t real clear on what came next; he had the feeling she’d been skipping around a lot in the rendition of her story.

Once in a while, not often, there had been some guys along the way – she and Teresa had lived with several. Some of them hadn’t been too bad, but some of them had been bad enough to bring up memories of Seth, so she’d left at the first opportunity. None of them had been anyone she’d wanted to stay with for an extended period.

It had been, John thought, a hell of an existence. She’d faced a few good times and a lot of hard times. Things had mostly been fairly successful until recently, when a couple of jobs in Miami had gone sour, and her luck had turned bad. Finally there had been no choice but to move on; she’d had a lead on a possible job and place to stay outside Atlanta. Then, there’d been the accident yesterday, and until John had recognized her she’d figured she was shit out of luck.

As she told stories of some of the things she’d done, John was impressed with the determination of this woman. Given an extremely tough row to hoe, she’d done her best with it, trying to make a decent life for herself and her daughter. True, she’d been only moderately successful at the best of times, but for the most part she’d managed to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table. But her history made her seem flighty in the extreme; whatever happened, she probably wouldn’t be around long.

It was a hell of a way to bring up a young girl, John thought. While Sally had obviously tried to do her best for her, the instability, the moving around, and the uncertainty couldn’t have helped her very much. And really, there was nothing to indicate anything better in Sally’s future than she’d already managed.

He couldn’t help but wonder what his responsibility in this was. He’d told Sally he’d take her and Teresa in until the girl was better, and he figured he’d better keep his word on that. But after that? Who knew? If her mother couldn’t get a handle on her life, what would be the chances the daughter would be able to?

Watch it, John, he said to himself. Helping out is one thing, but it would be real easy to get yourself sucked into this a lot deeper than you want to be.

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