By the time I was sixteen, Austin and I weren’t allowed to walk the streets of Colorado Springs alone, but we could go out with either Mom or Dad. Dad enjoyed walks to the park; so if Mom was busy, he would invite me or Austin. Most marked people stayed indoors, but there was a marked man named Willy, who often sat at the ancient park. Willy’s scars and sores were worse than most people’s, but that didn’t stop him from sitting in public and talking to anyone who happened by.
“Hello, Cephas! What’s the good news today?” Willy said.
“It’s the same good news as yesterday and tomorrow, Willy. Christ loves you.”
“Do you have a prayer for me?”
“Don’t I always?”
Dad walked up to the man, placed his hands on his shoulders, and said a prayer for him. I hid behind Dad. I didn’t want to look at the scars or think that Dad was touching them.
“Is this your daughter?” Willy asked, when the prayer was over. “My, what a beautiful young lady she is.”
Dad thanked Willy and we continued our walk.
“Dad? Is it ever hard for you to pray for someone who calls me a beautiful young lady one minute, but might try to kidnap and sell me into slavery in the next?”
“I’ve never regretted kindness…” he said, “… no matter how it was repaid.”
“Evil doesn’t understand kindness…” I began.
Dad’s eyes flickered to the mountain.
“I know a thing or two about evil, Jocie. I’ve felt the lash of evil on my back…”
His eyes went to the ground.
“… and I’ve held the whip in my hand. I’ll choose to receive the lashes over delivering them every time.”
He looked me in the eye.
“The Marked are not the enemy, Jocie. Indifference to their suffering is the enemy.”
******
Dave and Elizabeth’s guest bed is soft and warm, and I find myself drifting off immediately. It’s dark when I wake up and the glowing clock near the bed says it’s nearly midnight. I can see a light under the door; so I carefully open it and find I can hear Dave and Elizabeth talking in their room.
“There’s something odd about her,” Dave says. “She studies everything, like she’s casing the place to rob us.”
“I don’t know about robbing us, but I noticed it too,” Elizabeth says. “She watched me unlocking the door as if she’s never seen a set of keys before. It was the same way when I lit the burners on the stove and used the mixer to mash potatoes.”
I hear something downstairs, but Dave and Elizabeth don’t seem to notice it. I cross the room and look out the window, to see two strange vehicles with Maryland plates parked at the end of the driveway. There’s a crash in the kitchen.
“What is she doing?” Dave asks, and I hear him get out of bed.
By the time he crosses the hall, I’ve opened the door. His eyes go wide when he realizes there’s someone else in his house.
“Lock yourself in the room,” he says.
I close the door, but grab the expanding fighting stick Austin built for me, then open the window. There’s a porch roof under the window that I can use to reach a tree to get to the ground. By the time I get there, I can hear shouting inside. Dave has some sort of hunting rifle, but either he couldn’t bring himself to shoot someone, or he realized there are many robbers in the house and he’d quickly be overwhelmed regardless.
There’s just one man outside, standing guard. He looks like he’s barely older than Austin. He doesn’t even appear to be armed.
“We don’t want food!” one of the men inside yells. “We know you have money.”
“I don’t have cash,” Dave yells. “Mine was all confiscated by the government, just like everyone else.”
“Yeah, but you’re a builder,” the man says. “You must have metals. Metals we can trade.”
“I build with wood.”
“Take him outside. I need room to swing.”
Seven men, none of them much older than me, wrestle Dave out through the door. I don’t see any guns, but they all have weapons, like baseball bats, lengths of pipe, and knives. They force him onto his knees on the lawn. I feel like they should all have black lines across their faces.
They’re all looking to a tall but thin man for what to do next.
He’s the leader, but he doesn’t really have control of them.
“Life sure is an interesting series of choices,” I say from the dark, then step forward so they can all see me. “You choose to jump in a car; you choose to drive all the way here from Maryland; you choose to rob and beat an honest man.”
“Where did you come from?” the leader asks, with a sneer on his face.
I’ve seen a sneer like that one before.
“I’ve been getting that a lot lately …” I say, “…but we’re not talking about my choices right now. I think you boys need to choose to leave - now.”
The largest of the group kicks Dave in the back, sending him to the ground.
“Leave? The party has just started!” the largest one says. “We drove all the way out here just to throw J.W. here a party.”
He nods to the leader, who is apparently known as J.W.
“Now that you’re here, we’re going to have a special party … just for you. Go get her boys.”
They look to J.W. for his approval. He doesn’t appear to like this new plan, but I watch as he resigns himself to it, and nods his head.
Five of the group drop their weapons and start walking towards me. The expanding weapon that Austin made for me is in my hand. When the bravest one is at the right distance, my weapon springs to full size and I hit him in the side of the head.
“Party time, boys” I say.
******
The rest try to scramble back for their weapons, but two of them never make it before I trip them up, which causes J.W. to laugh. Dave tries to use the confusion to roll away, but J.W. pushes him back to the ground, and then puts his foot on the back of Dave’s neck. The first guy I hit is still dazed, but the remaining five surround me while the leader watches.
“Last chance, boys,” I say.
Their attacks are awkward, wild swings, without any thought about follow-through or pattern or coordination amongst themselves. The big guy has a baseball bat, and the rest of his friends have to keep diving out the way to avoid it, allowing me to hit them when they’re defenseless. I haven’t done real damage to any of them; I’m just trying to give them enough bruises to reconsider their plan. Eventually, one of them catches a backswing from the bat in the face, and I’m down to just four opponents.
“That bat is dangerous,” I say. “Just not to me.”
He takes another swing and I block the bat downward, allowing my staff to rake his knuckles, so he drops it. When he tries to pick it up, I kick him in the face. He backs away, holding his bloody nose.
“Stop fooling around, you guys,” J.W. says.
“Why don’t you give it a shot?” a guy with a short metal pipe says. “She’s just too fast.”
“Put that thing down or I’ll stand on his neck,” J.W. says to me, and increases his weight on Dave.
I stop moving and stare at him.
“I wouldn’t do that,” I say.
“Why?”
“Because the only one here who’s been fooling around - is me.”
Within ten seconds, the remaining three attackers are all on the ground. It was one fluid attack. One perfect solution of anticipation and movement to solve the puzzle.
“Take your foot off his neck …” I say, “… or prepare to lose some teeth.”
From the look on his face, it’s already a done deal.
I hear one of the guys behind me getting up and grabbing the baseball bat. I hear his weight shift and the beginning of his swing. It’s aimed for my head. It makes a slight swish in the air, and smile starts to form on the leader’s face.
Puzzle pieces. Wonderful puzzle pieces. Thank you, Dad, for not training me. Solving the puzzle for myself is wonderful.
I duck and spin, and the bat passes over me while I jab the man in the gut. As he doubles over, I come down on the bat, breaking it near the handle; then spin again and turn a full round-house swing loose on the leader’s jaw. His neck turns a little too far for my comfort before he’s spun to the ground.
The rest take off running for their trucks. Their leader must be the only one with the metal sticks needed to start one of them, because they all jump into the other one and take off.
Dave stands.
“Help me carry him into the house,” I say.
“Why? The police should be here soon. Let them carry him to jail.”
“Fill out a police report …” I say, “… but please leave me out of it. I’d rather not talk to the police. They’d ask too many questions that I can’t answer.”
I dig through the young man’s pockets and find the ring of metal sticks, which I throw to Dave, and ask him to hide the vehicle that brought this young man here. We carry the young man to the basement, which is apparently called a “recreation room” and lay him on a couch. Upstairs, the doorbell rings.
“I’d ask if you can handle any trouble out of this guy …” Dave says, “…but it would be a stupid question.”
I listen to the muffled voices of Dave, Elizabeth, and a policewoman for fifteen minutes before the young man on the couch begins to stir. He sits up and his eyes go wide at the sight of me; so I clamp my hand over his mouth and whisper that the police are upstairs. He’s confused, but has an instinct for being quiet when he hears the word “police.” Even so, he spits part of a tooth and some blood into his hand.
After another half hour, the policewoman leaves, and Dave and Elizabeth join us.
“She’s gone,” Dave says. “Now, do you mind telling me why she didn’t take this guy with her?”
“I told you. Too many questions,” I answer.
“Then how about answering some of my questions?” Dave says. “Like, how is that while my face was in the dirt, seven guys ended up getting their clocks cleaned?”
“I can answer that one,” Elizabeth says. “I was watching from an upstairs window. Jocie mopped the floor with them. She’s like a perfect ballerina - but with a stick.”
“Tell me about it,” says our young captive, rubbing his jaw.
“I told you that life is an interesting series of choices,” I say, then turn to Dave. “Do you have more of the meat dish you served for dinner?”
“It sounds like you had enough for one day.”
“It’s for him. His stomach has been growling since he got here.”
“He broke into my house, dragged me outside, stood on my neck, and now you want me to feed him?”
This young man is not my enemy. Indifference to his life is my enemy.
“He looks like what he really needs is for someone to show him kindness,” I reply. “I suspect it’s not very common in his life.”
Ten minutes later, he’s eating like a hungry dog.
“You can sleep down here,” I say. “You can’t start your truck, so don’t try to leave. We’ll talk in the morning.”
“He’ll run …” Dave says. “…or attack us in our sleep.”
I turn to J.W.
“You can attack us in our sleep, if you want. Just keep in mind that I tend to wake up violently.”
******
The next morning, I find the young man sitting at the table, speaking with Elizabeth as he eats a stack of pancakes and scrambled eggs.
“Jocie, come join us,” she says. “J.W. here has been telling me about himself. He’s a war orphan, just like you.”
“He can tell me all about it while he gives me a ride into Baltimore,” I say. “Is Dave still here?”
“He’s in the garage, getting together the tools and supplies he needs for the day.”
When I reach the garage, I notice Dave looks like he hasn’t slept.
“Dave? I need something from you, and it’s going to sound strange.”
“Strange is pretty relative, for a girl who appears out of the woods and beats the tar out of a group of armed men. What do you need?”
“Were they right last night when they said that, as a builder, you can get your hands on metals?”
“Sure, but I don’t work in metals, and funds are pretty tight.”
“Don’t worry about the money. I’ll take care of that. How much would you need to make one of those barn trusses out of metal instead of wood?”
“I know a guy in Winchester who could make a steel truss for a few hundred.”
“What about other metals?” I ask. “Could he get his hands on metals like chromium, titanium and vanadium?”
“That would be a lot more expensive.”
I take the pouch of gemstones from my pocket and empty it into my hands.
“Are those real?” he asks.
I hand him the two biggest diamonds.
“Get a price,” I say.