The Women

Sarah makes a bold move to free Carmen, even as Joe retreats. Chapter 26 of The Lost City of Desire.

[This is a serialized novel, chapter by chapter. You can read the previous 25 chapters here. A new chapter delivered every week.]

As a child, I’d always assumed mountains went up and then down, and hiking them would be like climbing to the 20^th floor of a skyscraper and then back to the first floor.

But the truth is that they go up a little and then down and up and down and up and down and then again and you never seem to get anywhere. This was some twisty, hard and sweaty stuff. Joe led the way, because, as I was discovering, he couldn’t let me lead – he just had to be in front. I didn’t mind so much, as I felt less tired when there was someone setting the pace. At places we’d pass through clouds of nubby little gnats that would crawl in my ears and sit at the corners of my eyes until I squished them out, staining my cheeks. Something about the sweat. And the mosquitoes, well, I swatted them all day long. 

After about two hours we noticed broken saplings and crushed leaves along the trail, and even footprints where the dirt was moist. We slowed our pace and kept our eyes and ears open for any movement .

“I can feel her,” said Joe.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean really, I can feel her presence. She’s not far from here.”

We kept walking, and after just 10 minutes found ourselves at the edge of an encampment.

“Shit!” Joe said.

We crouched behind a hillock and scanned 360 degrees to see if anyone was on to us. Down the hill, through a thick grove of birch trees, was a yurt, and beyond that were tents and huts, even a wooden house built to follow the trunk of a tree up two stories.

Through the trees, we could see a woman tending a fire. Another woman in a tank top leaned against a tree, absentmindedly pulling strands of hair from her head, one by one, and twirling them in her fingers before flicking them dismissively to the ground.  She was talking to someone who remained inside a house, with the door open.  Then a tall, strong woman came by and the hair flicker stiffened, and stood straight. The tall strong woman spoke sharply to her and pointed across the camp.

This had to be the La Shonda that the guy on the trail seemed so in awe of. She had spongy-looking braids twisted in a tower standing up from her head. Her face was dotted with fat brown freckles, and her eyebrows were thick black sculptures. She went through the open door and stayed for a few minutes. When she came out, someone was following her.

“That’s Carmen,” said Joe. “Look  -- that’s her.”

Tall, thin, blond hair. She wore the same blue and white checkered shirt she’d worn three days before, when they took her.

“She looks pretty good,” I said. “I think they must be treating her ok.”

La Shonda headed across the compound towards Carmen, who stood in the courtyard. I wasn’t sure what we should do. I didn’t see any weapons, and none of the women, other than La Shonda, looked especially tough. I mean no tougher than your average tough person.  But there were only two of us, and a bunch of them, and we had no idea what or who was hidden in those houses.

“Looks like a pretty tight community down there,” Joe whispered. “Where did Carmen go?”

“She walked off with La Shonda, I think.”

“I haven’t seen a single man down there,” Joe said.

“Women only, for sure.”

We scanned the village for a few more minutes until we saw Carmen sitting on a bench with La Shonda, near the edge of the woods, where the village ended. They were talking passionately about something. I could tell it was a thoughtful exchange, not an argument. At one point La Shonda handed Carmen a shiny container. The two of them took turns examining it, stroking its smooth skin.

I heard buzzing and looked up above the leafy canopy: damned if it wasn’t an insect drone from the other side -- maybe. A big one, with four wings, or was it a dragonfly? Wasn’t trying to hide itself at all. I didn’t think it could see Joe and me. Then it took off towards Carmen.

At the noise, La Shonda put the stainless steel thing under her shirt to hide it.

Interesting.

The whole thing puzzled me: Carmen’s relative freedom, even though La Shonda clearly was interested in her. This shiny cylinder. The drone, if it actually was a drone. This wasn’t a kidnapping so much as an exchange of ideas, I realized. The kidnapping had morphed into something else.  

The drone circled above the little village and flew on. Out came the cylinder again. La Shonda asked Carmen some more questions.

I realized what I had to do.

“I’ve got a pretty good idea that I should go in there alone,” I said to Joe. “So as not to offend them – it would just be me and the girls.”

“No, no that won’t work.”

He started to stand and I gave him a look.

“What? -- I just mean I should do it.”

“Why’s that?”

“I’m bigger. I’m a man. They might listen to me more --- if you go it will be the same thing as them catching Carmen. They’ll be more scared of me. Plus, my sister needs me.”

“She does. Which is why I should go in alone. Seeing you will just make them defensive.”

“I don’t want you to get hurt,” he said.

I felt a moment of contempt for Joe right then. Looking at him, I felt stronger. But not strong enough to tell him that.

“I won’t get hurt. And anyway, this is what’s happening -- I’m going in there alone.”

“What would be your plan?” he asked.

“Just walk in. Be straight about it. Work something out.”

“Wow,” he said. “I’ll be scared out of my mind for you, but I also know that you’re pretty good at taking care of yourself.”

This surprised me, as I’d expected him to continue his protest, to say it would be way too dangerous for me to go it alone down there. Suddenly, he seemed afraid.

Joe handed me his buck knife and told me to go save his sister. Illustration by Stephen

“I guess you’re right, it’s  the only way,” he said. “I hate to leave you alone, but I think if I went it might trigger some bad reactions. Like you said, it’s all women -- clearly, they don't want any men around.”

“You sure?” I said, because in truth, I wasn’t.

“Yeah. But take this,” he said, handing me his 6-inch buck knife.

“What if I go in there and say I’m here for my girlfriend – I’m taking her back.”

Joe laughed at the outrageousness of it. But he thought it was a pretty clever idea.

“Just go in there like you own the place,” he said.

“That’s what I’ll do.”

“I’ll watch from here and come in if you need me.”

Would he actually help? I wondered.

Maybe he couldn’t even admit it to himself. Maybe he wasn’t so tough. I stuck the knife in my back pocket, and said thank you and a quick goodbye.  He didn’t want me to leave. He said he’d be watching me from above. It was like a general sending his grunts into the ravine to be speared by the enemy.

I was halfway down the hill when I heard a ruckus behind me on the trail and turned to see three of the “warrior” men grab Joe, tie his hands together with a bandana, and drag him away.

“Goddamnit I’ll kill you,” Joe shouted, flailing at the men.

I started back up the hill to help him but two of the men pulled out their bows and threatened to shoot me. I felt paralyzed, not sure which way to go. Then I ran down the hill towards Shonda’s village. Maybe, I thought, if I can free Carmen we can go together to rescue Joe.

 I ran down the hill, gasping for breath, feeling the trees closing in on me. What was I going to do? Behind me, Joe’s cries faded as they subdued him and dragged him off.

The trail widened near the village, and the path evened out somewhat, so I slowed my pace and walked in like I belonged there, shoulders back, chest forward.  “Fake it till you make it.” I’d seen that scrawled on the entrance to an old clubhouse down on Perry Street.

The trail opened into a clearing in a birch grove where the village began.  The sun bore down hard as the tiny leaves of the birch trees flipped and flopped in the wind.

Whooosh, snap.

I jumped back. Jesus! I turned to see a rock embedded in the tree next to me. I froze.

“Chew want?” said a woman’s voice. “What do you want, girl? What you doing here?”

I turned to face the voice: a small woman with rainbow ribbons braided into her ginger hair and all around her face. She had thin white eyebrows and a bony jaw. She was kind of cute looking, actually, especially for someone who’d just thrown a rock at my head.

“I’m looking for my friend – I think you all took her,” I said.

Charcoal under the woman’s eyes made her look fierce. 

“My friend, her name is Carmen,” I said.

She didn’t answer.

“Do you have her?”

“That’s very, very possible,” she said. Then she became super nice. “My name is Sheila.”

She held out her hand and I took it, but instead of shaking she head-butted me. What a crack! That’s the last I remember of that.

I guess she wasn’t so nice after all.

I came to on my back on a rug on the floor of a small room.

Carmen sat on a pillow next to me.

“Hey,” she said when she saw me stir.  “Thank God you woke up. I was worried about you. You’ve got a big knot on your forehead. They smacked you good.”

“Oh man, it hurts.”

 Where’s my brother?”

“He came with me but we decided I should come down here alone. As I was going down the hill the men up there took him. I don’t know why.”

“The fake Indians?”

“The fake Lenapes. He was going to wait up there for me to come back with you. I didn’t know what to do when they grabbed him. I tried running at them but they pulled out their bow and arrow to shoot me. She took my hand and held it. I put my other hand to my forehead to see how badly I’d been bruised. It felt like meat. Not good.

“He’s tough. Jesus. What have we gotten ourselves into? Are you ok?”

“My head still hurts.”

She dampened a towel and held it to my forehead. 

I’m so sorry --- I’m the one who wanted to go over the wall. It’s my fault. You guys were doing fine without me,” I said. I felt like shit. 

“Sorry to break it to you, but we weren’t going to come at all until Joe overreacted and shot that guy in the leg.  Basically, we came with you so we couldn’t get attacked.”

“Yeah,” I said, though it didn’t make me feel much better.

“We’re the ones who wanted a change -- Joe most of all. He wanted to come. And he’ll be fine. I’ve never seen anyone hold him back.”

Now that I was here I wondered what the hell I was thinking I could do to save her. Did I think I was just gonna bust Carmen out of here? Not any longer. I hadn’t made the most obvious connection, that now that I was here, I was just as much a prisoner as anyone else. I’d have to finesse a way out, with Carmen, I hoped. 

“Hey, when Joe and I were spying on you from up on the ridge, I saw Shonda holding this metal thing -- and she hid it when a drone went by. What was that?”

Carmen said the cylinder was the key to everything. Shonda was obsessed with getting it to work. It was a device that all The Westerners used on the other side, and it did everything. Everything. Whatever that meant. My thought: did it hoe the earth around your corn plants? Could it gut a fish? Was it able to rig a rooftop for solar-powered hot water?

No, no, and not likely. Still, Shonda just had to have it.

Where’d she get it?

“Someone found it in an abandoned house over there and brought it back here,” Carmen said. “The wall is so close that some people go back and forth, I guess. Shonda thinks you and I are worldly geniuses because we’ve been in New York. She thinks we are more sophisticated -- people in the know.”

I tried to imagine that.

“I’ve got a plan,” Carmen said. “A really fucking good plan. But I'm going to have to count on you, because without that I’ll never get out  of here.”

“You’ve got it,” I said.

“It’s got to do with that cylinder. Shonda’s obsessed with it. But it needs electricity to work. Shonda doesn’t have any of that. She needs to charge it up, which means plugging it in.”

The goal was to cross the wall and discover the world. Illustration by Stephen

Which meant – I’d never plugged in anything in my life, so I wasn’t the person to ask. But I got the general idea.

“Why don’t we offer to take it over to the other side and get the Hard Forkers to give us some kind of system so she can charge it – a new solar array or whatever. One that isn’t broken,” Carmen said.

“Solar?” I said. No one had had working solar in a decade, I’d heard. I’d never seen it working. The panels didn't last.

“Yes – or at least that’s our promise to her. That we’ll  smuggle something like that back here.”

“But then we never return,” whispered.

“Well I’m definitely never coming back,” I said.

We were so taken by the brilliance of our plan that we didn’t see that, obviously, Shonda would have thought about this very same possibility -- that we’d screw her. 

There was that word I’d read in the Libray. What was it? Oh yea: “Duh.” But in the moment, I couldn’t remember it.

“By the way, who was the troll who head-butted  me?” I asked. “I want to punch her back before we leave.”

[This is a serialized novel, chapter by chapter. You can read the previous 25 chapters here. A new chapter delivered every week.]