NOW
It was cold and damp inside the container, the air scented with mildew and dust, which had probably been accumulating for years. I went back and sat on the bare mattress, brushed the dirt from my feet, pulled on my socks and shoes and wrapped the wool blanket around my shoulders. I was hungry and thirsty and needed to pee. I wondered how long Mark planned to keep me here.
Something scraped against the outside of the container and I returned to the window to see what it was. A breeze made the tree branches lift and fall. The raspy sound came again and I guessed it was the wind. Nothing else moved.
The compound where I was being held was cupped in a small wooded valley with the clearing and the sagging cabin in the center; the shipping container from where I watched was set a few yards up an incline on the north side of the property. To the south was another rise. To the east, rugged gray peaks rose like watchful giants. Above them, the sky burned bright blue.
A small greenhouse was situated at the western edge of the garden. Next to it was a rototiller without any wheels, a dented aluminum rowboat, a rusted set of box springs and a snowmobile with a broken track. Nearer the cabin were two small structures made out of graying plywood. One might have been an outhouse. I didn’t know what the other one was for. The place looked sad and used up, as if it had grown too tired to go on and was just waiting to be reclaimed by the forest. And yet I knew Mark would have loved this place for the wildness of the land, for the self-sufficiency it demanded, for the isolation and for the challenge. A place like this would be a giant middle finger to rich white jerks like those two LA producers—men who, Mark always said, bought huge houses as a way to display their manhood and drove overgrown SUVs that would take them nowhere more adventurous than Palm Springs.
The forest cast shadows over the container and I yearned for fresh air, for the ability to walk more than a dozen feet and for a drink of water. I willed Mark to return from wherever he’d gone and head toward the container so we could talk. I didn’t know how long I stood there, but finally I saw the dog Shadow emerge from the aspens on one side of the cabin, sniff the air and flop down in the sun. He’d been the first to greet us after Xander and I had crossed the footbridge.
We had been following a narrow trail through the forest when the dog raced up, gave a single bark and rushed away again. Xander started to run after him and I grabbed the back of his sweatshirt.
“You have to stay with Mama,” I said, although what had that gotten him over the past nine months? Sad dinners of canned soup and ramen noodles. A mother who was about to lose the only house he’d ever known. A mom who’d dragged him into the woods because she thought she could fix something she’d broken beyond repair.
“But the doggy wanted to play with me,” Xander protested.
His blue eyes under pale lashes began to fill with tears.
“I know, baby,” I said, and dropped to one knee, pulling him into me.
Xander had just turned seven but was small for his age, with a forehead that was just a little too high and a mouth that was a little too wide for his face. They were the only outward signs of the genetic glitch in him—the subtraction of just three genes from the thousands that each of us is supposed to carry—that changed everything for him. And yet I always thought the subtraction had added things too. Xander was a happy kid with such an enthusiasm for people that it would take only a few seconds for him to become your best friend. He also had keen hearing and a love for music that was infectious. I’d watch his face light up when his favorite country songs came on the radio, and all you had to do was hum a few bars from a tune on his playlist and chances were he could name the title and artist before you got to the chorus.
“We just need to go slow so we don’t get lost, all right?” I told him, and wiped the tear from his cheek with my thumb. “Remember how we always stay together?”
He nodded. “Eyes on me. Eyes on you,” he mumbled.
It was a trick his occupational therapist had taught me as a way to focus his attention.
“Exactly,” I said, and kissed him on the forehead.
He rubbed his nose and I stood and took his hand.
“Come on, let’s find that dog.”
The trail wove through thick stands of brush and around skeletal gray logs. Trees rose high around us. We walked for about ten more minutes before we emerged into the clearing where the dog stood in front of that run-down cabin, trembling with barks. A hardy-looking young woman wearing a long paisley skirt and a flannel shirt stood in front of the hut with a rifle cradled in her arms. She had long chestnut hair with colorful beads twined into a braid near her face, but all I could focus on was the weapon. My pulse ratcheted upward.
“What do you want?” she hollered.
I pulled Xander behind me. “I’m looking for Mark Russo.” I tried to make my voice sound confident and powerful, although I felt neither.
She lifted her chin. “There’s nobody here by that name.”
There was something about the way she glanced away and then looked back at me that made me think she was lying. “How about you let me check?” I called.
“Are you a cop or something?”
“How many cops show up with a kid?”
I could feel Xander poke his head around from behind my legs. The muzzle of the rifle in the woman’s hands lowered and she frowned at me.
“Who are you?” she asked.
“I’m his wife and this is his son and I think you should go get Mark.”
The woman’s mouth opened but nothing came out.
I was just starting to tell her that I was pretty sure Mark was there, when a figure slipped from a stand of aspens next to the cabin.
The man was tall and slender, with long golden hair and an ax in his hand.
“Daddy,” Xander cried.
I swallowed at the memory of that moment. How naive I’d been to come here.
I turned and looked around the container. The urge to pee was stronger now. Whoever had lived in this awful box must have used the forest for a bathroom and hauled water to drink because there was no toilet or faucet or sink. I wondered what Mark expected me to do.
I thought, I will not give him the satisfaction of my humiliation by wetting my pants or peeing in the corner like an animal. My bladder pulsed and I knew I couldn’t wait much longer. I tossed the blanket from my shoulders and began my search. I dug through the steamer chest and looked behind the woodstove. Nothing. My discomfort grew. I hurried over to the fifty-five-gallon drums and spotted a small aluminum pot wedged between one of the drums and the wall. I didn’t have time to look further. Quickly, I unzipped my jeans and squatted over the container.
I felt exposed, vulnerable, animal-like. I finished, zipped up and looked again at the container’s corroded walls, the high window, the horrible mattress, and thought that there wasn’t a single person in the outside world who knew or cared where I was.