Chapter 10
~§~
As Clark promised, work began on the clinic as soon as the school was completed, and by mid September the new building stood proudly near the top of the hill. Larger than the old clinic, it boasted a waiting room, examining room and, as a bonus, a tiny recovery room. Everyone in San Pablo agreed that perhaps not all of the consequences of the earthquake were disastrous.
Gillian gave directions as supplies were moved from the temporary clinic into their permanent home. With additional disaster relief funds along with some assistance from the ICRC, she and Jeff had managed to procure a second-hand examining table as well as sterilization equipment and a locked supply cabinet. Whitewashed walls and a laminated eye-chart combined with the neatly organized shelves stocked with bandages, bottles of alcohol and jars of cotton swabs all collaborated to produce a clinic that San Pablo could be proud to have. The inspector sent from the ICRC agreed, and with the approval official, the doors opened for business.
Nothing he’d done to date had given Clark the same satisfaction and sense of accomplishment as the teary thank you Gillian offered to everyone who’d worked so hard to rebuild the clinic. Her eyes shone as she sought him out in the crowd gathered for the dedication, and the smile she gave him held a special message of gratitude. And with Clark standing by her side, she herself screwed the bolts that affixed Christopher’s plaque to the front door.
With the families back in their homes, the school completed and classes resumed, and Gillian happily attending patients in the new clinic, Clark turned his attention to helping the farmers directly as they resumed day to day living. Doing everything from turning over unbroken land to mending fences to discussing crop rotation, except for the year-round growing season, he could have as easily been living in Smallville.
There was a happiness and a satisfaction still to be had from working hard all day and sleeping deeply at night, but something in the back of his mind had started to niggle at him. He’d never had any ambition to become a farmer. Otherwise, he would have remained in Smallville, working alongside his father on the Kent family farm. Yet here he was, digging in the dirt, worrying about rain and wishing there was a way to get tractors that would operate on the steep slopes of the Andes.
He was starting to fear that his work in San Pablo was done.
But returning to Metropolis, or any other large city for that matter, involved complicating a life that he’d simplified to near perfection. There was little he could find motivating enough to go back to that way of living, alone and in hiding.
So he found things to keep him busy. Forcing the doubts from his thoughts, he took joy in the weariness he felt at the end of a long day, telling himself that he was still needed in San Pablo.
Besides, he rationalized as September rolled into October, the villagers were far from safe.
As San Pablo regained her feet from the terrible blow she’d received from Mother Nature, a far more sinister force began to tear away at her. Visits from roving bands of FARC soldiers were becoming more common place, and it was getting harder and harder for the villagers to avoid notice.
Three times in the recent week Gillian and Clark had been forced to seek refuge in Roberto’s cellar, and twice the week before that. Jeff suspected that an entire regiment was being mobilized, and since San Pablo had both a store and a cantina, it made for a good watering hole. Thankfully, none of the unwelcome visits lasted for more than a few hours, and none of the soldiers remained behind to establish a permanent FARC presence.
The second week in October proved to offer no relief, however. It was almost dusk when the word came down to Clark, who was working on a retaining wall at the southern edge of the Morales field, that a fairly sizable band of FARC soldiers was a mere mile from the village’s main street. Within seconds he had zipped to the clinic where he bustled a sputtering Gillian away from her administrations to Cesare Fuentas, a pregnant woman well into her seventh month.
Safely ensconced in the cool, earthy cocoon of Roberto’s cellar, Gillian lit one of the small oil lamps. She placed it on the wooden crate and reached for the deck of cards. “Gin or poker?” she asked as she shuffled them smoothly between her nimble fingers. “Or maybe we should just go hog wild and play crazy eights.”
Clark wasn’t nearly so accepting of the situation. Not this time. He was tired of hiding away like a criminal evading the hangman’s noose. And it was starting to wear sorely on him, the injustice of the whole situation. Not to mention the danger that Gillian was in each time the guerillas were on the move.
“You need to leave this place,” he stated sharply, his anger at the situation funneling down until it dripped steadily on the woman seated before him.
“Now?” She glanced up at the trap door offering them thin protection. “Well, I suppose I could say that my father and mother adopted me and that’s the reason I don’t look like anyone else in San Pablo.”
“No, not now,” he clarified, feeling his frustration mounting. Her easy acceptance of the danger was almost as intolerable as the danger itself. “You need to leave Colombia. As soon as possible.”
“Oh, well OK then,” she said, dealing two piles of cards despite his refusal to join her. “Just give me a couple of hours to pack up my stuff and make some reservations for a flight out to Paris. I hear it’s lovely this time of year.”
“I’m serious, Gillian. This is just nuts. You hiding down in this hole like some kind of a rabbit, waiting for the snakes to find you.” He stopped pacing to give her a stern glare. “It’s just a matter of time, you know. Before they come and decide to stay.”
She shrugged. “Yeah, well, I could also get hit by a runaway burro tomorrow. We’ve all gotta go some time.”
Her cavalier attitude infuriated him. “I can’t believe you’re joking about this. You are twenty six years old. You have your whole life ahead of you, and instead of taking your safety seriously, you’re hanging around this place just begging to get kidnapped. Or shot. Or worse.”
A shudder rumbled through him, the thought of Gillian in any of those scenarios too chilling to contemplate. He remembered the first time they’d sought the refuge of the cellar and her description of what could happen should she be discovered. He’d thought then that it would be tragic, especially for her family. And at the time, he’d only known her for a short while. Now, after six months spent with this amazing woman, he knew that her capture would be in fact devastating, and not only for her parents. Somehow, things had changed, and he was certain that whatever bad might happen to her would happen to him as well.
She stopped dealing and gave him her attention. “And just where would you have me go?”
“Home.”
“Home to Grosse Pointe? Where I can give rich kids unnecessary flu shots and worry about the bunions on old Mrs. Morrison?” She shook her head and started dealing again. “I want to be where I can make a difference. Where the people actually need me.”
“You don’t think there are needy people in the United States?” he argued. “There have to be thousands of free clinics all over the country where you can help people. Hell, some parts of Appalachia are no better off than San Pablo. Why is it so important for you to stay here?”
“I don’t have to explain myself to you,” she hissed, snatching up the two piles she’d dealt and crushing them together.
“Maybe you do,” he said, equally as hard and full of anger. “Maybe I care about you and as your...friend...I have some...interest in making sure that you don’t do anything stupid.”
“Stupid?” Even by the dim light of the lamp he could see her eyes flashing. “Well, as my friend, you should appreciate my decision to stay.”
He wasn’t buying her argument. “Stay in a place where any second guerillas could haul you off at gunpoint to do who knows what?”
“Sam, if my own father couldn’t make me go back, what makes you think you hold any sway?”
She had a point, but he didn’t care. This was far too important to let that stop him. “So what’s it going to take, then? Getting shot at directly? Some midnight raid that no one has any warning of?”
“Maybe.”
He released a growl of frustration, wanting to shake her until she saw how ridiculous she was being. “Seems to me like maybe you have a bit of a death wish.”
“Wow, that sounds kind of romantic,” she bit out sarcastically.
“Hardly,” he bit back. “There’s nothing romantic about dying.”
“Oh no? Isn’t that kind of what you’ve done?”
“Me?” he said, incredulous.
“Yeah, ditching your old life to come live here in the middle of nowhere. Isn’t that kind of the same as dying?”
“The difference is that I can go back when I’m ready,” he countered, completely ignoring her accusation because it held absolutely no validity. Temporary avoidance was far different than permanent abandonment.
“And when will that be, Sam?” She rolled to her knees, leaning forward to glare up at him. “San Pablo’s back to normal, at least as normal as it ever was. Your work here was done a month ago. So when are you going to be ready to go back?”
“I have to stick around here to save your neck!” he shouted as loud as he dared, sparing a glance at the trapdoor over his head.
“Don’t do me any favors,” she whispered stridently. “I can take care of myself.”
He laughed, a short harsh bark. “Yeah, I’ve heard that before. Usually right before I snatch someone out of the path of a freight train.”
Instead of another sharp retort, Gillian remained quiet. Clark paced the short length of the room to the shelves, inspecting the dusty jars as he tried to cool himself down. He hadn’t intended to fight with her, but she was so damn obstinate. She wouldn’t listen to him even if it meant risking her very life. Persistent? He was starting to think of about a dozen other words to describe her, and none of them she would find pleasing.
“Do you want to know how Chris died?” she asked from the other side of the room. Her voice was oddly calm, all traces of anger gone.
Her question threw him completely off guard, momentarily knocking the fury out of him. “I thought he died in a car accident.”
When she didn’t answer, he walked back to the blanket, looking down at her expectantly. She stared at the cards held in her hands, gripping the deck so tightly her knuckles were white. For a long minute she remained silent, and when finally she started to talk, she spoke so quietly he could barely hear her.
“When we were growing up, Chris had this best friend, Garrett. They’d known each other since, like, kindergarten. I remember the first time Chris brought him home to play after school. They told me to get lost and it just about broke my heart. I really hated Garrett because he’d taken away my playmate.”
Clark lowered himself to the floor, his legs crossed, bent knees touching hers. All thoughts of FARC soldiers left him completely as he focused on her and the soft stream of words coming from deep inside a place he already knew held great sorrow.
“Then we got older, and somewhere around junior high I developed this huge crush on Garrett. Of course, he never thought of me as anything more than Chris’s sister.” She laughed softly, lifting her head to give him a sheepish smile. “That didn’t keep me from doing all kinds of crazy stuff to try to get him to like me. I’d sneak into Chris’s room when Garrett would sleep over and try to kiss him. Or sit behind them at the movies and throw popcorn at him. Stupid stuff.
“It got worse when we went to high school. It became almost an obsession with me, to get Garrett to notice me. So when Garrett asked me...” She paused and took a deep, shuddering breath. “When he asked me one night to get stoned with him, I was thrilled. I thought finally, he was starting to like me. And there was an added bonus because it was something that was just me and Garrett, not Chris. Kind of like payback for the days when they’d left me out.
“At first it was just pot. We’d get high in his car after school and at parties on weekends. Pretty harmless stuff. My parents never found out because I always got good grades and pretty much stayed out of trouble otherwise. But Chris knew what I was up to, and he hated it. So many times he threatened to tell Mom and Dad what I was doing, but I always told him to butt out of my business and he’d back down.
“When Garrett and I graduated from marijuana to harder stuff like Ecstasy and speed, Chris was furious. We were seniors, and he told me that if I didn’t stop seeing Garrett and messing around with the drugs, he’d not only rat me out to our parents but also tell the dean of our school. I’d get expelled and blow my spot in the nursing program at the University of Michigan.” She shook her head ruefully. “God, I hated him then. For weeks I wouldn’t even speak to him. I was so nasty.”
Clark nodded his understanding, but inside, he was dumbfounded. Never would he have guessed that the woman he’d come to know so well had had such a wild youth.
“One day after school, Garrett and I were tripping in his basement. He must have gotten a hold of some bad stuff because something in it made me pass out. He freaked. Thought I’d overdosed and called Chris in a panic. Chris came over and rushed me to the hospital.”
Her voice turned more matter-of-fact, as if she were discussing one of her own patients. “Turns out it wasn’t Ecstasy that Garrett had scored but something that was new at the time. Special K...ketamine. I had a severe reaction. The doctors were going to call my parents, but by some miracle of God they were in London for a medical conference. Chris talked them into calling my older brother instead of tracking my parents all over England. Since David was twenty-seven, they let him approve of my treatment. I was out of the hospital that night, and my parents never found out. David even paid the hospital bill so it wouldn’t go through insurance.
“After that, I swore to both Chris and David that I’d never use any drugs again. Nothing. I’d never been so scared in my whole life, so it was a pretty easy promise to make. David told me if he ever caught me using anything harder than aspirin he’d personally make my life a living hell, much less Mom and Dad. Not to mention the fact that he made me pay him back.” She chuckled and glanced up from the eight of hearts she’d been worrying between her fingers. “You gotta know David. He’s really big. I’d rather face my dad than him any day of the week.”
Clark smiled but remained silent, willing her to continue.
“So I stayed clean, and even though he should have hated me, Chris got me through those last couple of months before graduation. I practically had no friends because the people I’d used to hang out with couldn’t understand why I wouldn’t party with them anymore. I kind of became a pariah. Not to mention the fact that I couldn’t see Garrett at all, and I still thought I was in love with him. I though it was the worst time in my life. So many times I wanted to just say screw it and get stoned. But Chris would always be there to stop me, reminding me that I’d promised him.
“We went off to college and I kept my promise. For five years, the wildest I ever got was a beer or two at a frat party. And it wasn’t until three years ago that I saw Garrett again. It was the summer after my first year of the nurse practitioner program at UCLA, and Chris was heading into his second year of med school. Everyone thought we were so cute, the twins, matching nurse and doctor. Everyone except my father, of course.”
“Why not your father?” Clark asked, his voice cracking slightly over the lump that had settled in his throat.
“Because he wanted me to be a doctor. He thought I had the brains for it, even more so than Chris.” She laughed a small, dry laugh. “He even told Chris that once, but it didn’t stop Chris from going pre-med. He struggled, but still he stuck with it. Chris was the original do-gooder.
“Anyway, we got invited to this party some old high school friends were having, kind of an impromptu reunion. When we got there, there was Garrett. Chris wanted to leave right away when he saw him, but I told him he was being too uptight. I’d not even so much as smoked a cigarette since that day senior year, so I told Chris he needed to just trust me and stop being such a wet blanket.”
Clark felt himself tensing, knowing already that the story had a tragic ending. Half of him wanted to stop her, to save himself the knowing of the details and her the reliving of it all. But she needed to tell him, and he wanted to understand her. Needed to know everything about her.
“I don’t know why I did it. Every day since that night I go over how different things would have been if I just hadn’t been so damn stupid.” The tears came then, pooling in her eyes until they resembled the mercury at the bottom of a thermometer. “I don’t know. Maybe it was seeing Garrett again. After a few beers, I was feeling pretty sloppy. I was stressed about going back for my last year, and I hadn’t dated anyone for a while. Garrett told me he’d really missed me and all of the good times we’d had together. He hadn’t changed a bit, and all of those old feelings started to come up.
“He asked me if, for old times’ sake, did I want to try something that would give me a really good buzz. He pulled a tiny packet of white powder out of his pocket...” She paused, looking past Clark into the darkness beyond him, her eyes distant. “It’s funny, but even with all of those club drugs I took in high school, I always wrote them off as not really hard-core stuff. It was like I had this imaginary line drawn, and as long as I didn’t cross over into stuff like cocaine or crack or heroine, I wasn’t really using drugs. When I went to nursing school, I learned how wrong I was, but for whatever reason, I still kind of thought of myself as having just missed getting hit by a train.
“Maybe that’s why I did it. I thought I was immune. That I’d gotten away with all of that crap in high school, so if I tried cocaine just once, to see what it was like, it’d be no big deal. Kind of an experiment. And then there was Garrett, offering me the chance. So I said yes.”
Clark’s stomach twisted painfully, wishing he himself could travel back in time to stop her. To keep her from making such a horrible mistake. He wanted to pull her into his arms and hold on to her so tight she couldn’t do it...
But since he couldn’t change the past, Gillian continued, her voice hard and flat. “By the time Chris found us, we were both higher than a kite. I’m sure he was angry, but I don’t remember much. I know that he put both me and Garrett in his car, me in the back seat. And I remember Chris yelling at Garrett, calling him all sorts of names and Garrett cursing back at him. Then there was a loud crash and a lot of screaming, and the next thing I remember was waking up in the hospital three days later.”
She cleared her throat and swallowed, willing herself to go on. “Chris and Garrett had died instantly. I had a concussion plus a broken collarbone, and pins in both my left arm and two places in my left leg from where the front seat was compressed into the back seat. They said it was a miracle I lived at all. Of course, once I found out what happened to Chris, I wished that I had died.”
Clark did reach across the space then to pick up her hand. He cradled it between his own, stroking his thumb over the soft skin, trying to wipe away the guilt and horror etched on her face.
She gave him a sad smile. “It’s why I didn’t go back to nursing school for my last year. I was in physical therapy for six months, and when I was finally better, I came down here with my father. And here I am now.”
Her expression turned apologetic, her tone almost pleading. “I figure the world was cheated out of someone pretty special when it lost Chris. And since I had a pretty big hand in what happened, the least I could do was try to make a difference.”
“So that’s why you’re here. To make it up to Chris,” he guessed.
“It’s my fault he’s dead. Don’t,” she said, shaking her head vehemently when he started to protest. “I’ve been through this with my parents a thousand times, and there’s nothing that you can say that will make me believe that if I hadn’t taken that coke, Chris wouldn’t still be alive today. I might not have killed him, but I put him in front of the loaded gun.”
He nodded his understanding, everything about her starting to make sense. “And you chose Colombia because of the drugs.”
At that, she gave him a weak smile. “I knew you were pretty smart underneath all of that muscle. I figured it was poetic justice or irony or something. It was cocaine that killed Chris, indirectly anyway. And it was because of that crack baby that I got into nursing. I figured someone was trying to tell me something. So I came here where all of that stuff is made to try to do something…anything...”
Squeezing her hand tightly, he waited until she looked directly into his eyes. “I’m pretty sure Chris wouldn’t have wanted you to die all in the name of filling his shoes.”
“If he was meant to go young, maybe I am, too,” she whispered. “I mean, I’ve cheated death twice now. Maybe I’m missing the point.”
“I don’t believe that,” he said, needing for her...no, insisting that she agree with.
“Did you know that we were an accident?” she said with a loud sniff. “David was nearly ten when my mom got pregnant. Tom was already thirteen. It was a ‘surprise’ when it happened. They never planned to have any more kids, especially not twins.”
Her implication was clear, but again, he didn’t believe what she was proposing. It was inconceivable to think that any parent wouldn’t love Gillian. “I’m sure that they were happy to have you and Chris.”
“Oh, I know they loved us – still love me. Just as much as they love Tom and David. I had a great childhood, and my parents were everything anyone could ever ask for,” she admitted readily. “Still, I always had the strangest feeling that we weren’t supposed to be here. Like we were just visiting or not really a part of the life everyone else lived in. Does that make any sense?”
“A little,” he said, but then nodded his head. “Yeah.”
Yeah, he knew exactly how that felt. He was a visitor, an alien in every sense of the word who’d joined life on Earth and had tried to make it his own. But always there was the knowledge that if things had happened the way that they were supposed to, he’d be somewhere else, living a completely different life. His entire existence was borrowed.
“So when Chris died, it just seemed right that I should leave,” Gillian was saying. “Go out and find the place where I was supposed to be.”
“I think that’s one of the reasons I’ve stayed here,” he said, surprised by the admission coming from his own mouth. “For the first time in my life, I feel like I’ve found a place where I fit in. Me, the entire person not just me the superhero or me the...”
He stopped, the habit of the last six months – no, his entire life – kicking in. With no one except his parents did the two sides, Superman and Clark Kent, exist in a single conversation.
“The what, Sam?” Gillian pushed.
He didn’t hesitate. With Gillian, the dichotomy didn’t exist. She knew him, the entire being, and like his parents, could be trusted completely. “Me the normal man. The guy without the superpowers.”
“But you are a normal man,” she whispered loudly, as if she were pointing out that he’d left his fly open.
“A normal man who can bend steel bars and fly all the way to the moon,” he said pointedly.
“So?”
“So?” he echoed. “Gillian, there’s nothing normal about me. Hell, you think you don’t fit in? I’m not even from this planet.”
She shook her head and started to gather up the cards that had fallen out of her hands and spilled over the blanket. “Doesn’t matter where you’re from. I’ve only known you for a little while, but I think you might just be the most normal person I’ve ever met.”
“How can you say that? All of my life I’ve had to actively concentrate on doing things the way other people do. To walk instead of float. Or fly. To not accidentally eavesdrop or look someplace I wasn’t supposed to.” Heat flooded his face, the frustrations of his entire life reaching the red zone as he vented. “And heaven forbid I actually use my powers to try to help someone. If anyone ever saw me stop a car out of control or blow out a fire, it was a pretty sure bet I’d have been packed off for the circus. Or worse, some lab where I’d be dissected.”
“Why do you see your abilities as handicaps when, really, they’re gifts?” she asked, holding his gaze in a vice-like grip. “Talents. Like Mozart writing symphonies when he was eight or Michelangelo lying on his back for four years to paint the Sistine Chapel. You think those guys ever thought they should try to hide what they could do? And if they ever did, thank God somebody talked them out of it.”
“Because no one would accept a normal man who happened to have the abilities that I do. Only when I decided to advertise my differences, to put on a flashy suit, were people willing to let me do what I can do. And when I take off the suit, I have to put away all of those abilities as well.” He took a deep breath. “That’s the problem. It’s all or nothing, and it seems that the ‘nothing’ part isn’t enough.”
She studied him for a moment, her eyes narrowing. “Is that what happened with that woman you loved? The one who married the other guy?”
“You remember that?” he asked, momentarily sidetracked. They’d never talked about it, his confession the night of the Fourth of July party. And since she’d been pretty drunk, he’d figured that she simply hadn’t remembered the conversation at all.
“Yeah, she was a bodybuilder right? Who spoke French.”
He laughed out loud, remembering her drunken ramble of what she thought Lois might be like. “Something like that.”
“She loved just the superpowers part and not the rest. The ‘nothing’ part, that’s the part she didn’t want.”
Gillian said it as a statement, not as a question. She’d reached the conclusion that he’d avoided for almost the entire year he’d known Lois until she’d told him outright and he couldn’t deny it any longer. Even after six months, it still hurt to acknowledge that truth. But now, instead of a sharp, overwhelming pain, it manifested itself as a deep sadness and lingering regrets that maybe he should have done things differently.
But in the end, it didn’t matter. It was all part of the past. There was no point in hiding it from Gillian, so he agreed. “Yeah, pretty much.”
An odd pain flashed across her gray eyes, but he saw it for what it was. Not pity for him, but sadness for what he’d suffered by loving someone who didn’t return it. It was the same thing he felt for her. He didn’t feel sorry for her in any way. She was far too strong of a person to invoke such a feeling. But he was sad for what she’d had to go through in her struggle to find herself, and if he’d had any power at all to change things, to spare her the pain, he would gladly have given anything to do so.
Lifting a hand, she brushed it over his forehead, pushing aside his ever-errant lock of hair before letting it move down to cup his cheek. She lingered for only a second before dropping her hand, but the touch conveyed her complete empathy for him.
“I feel really sorry for her,” she said finally, a tinge of contempt in her voice. “She missed a great chance to be loved by a pretty terrific guy. You are so much more than the sum of your parts. If you took away any one thing about you, you wouldn’t be you. And I lo...I really like the entire you.”
She glanced away, picking up the rest of the cards. With a focus far too intense for such a simple task, she took the time to make sure that the flowers on the back side of each card faced the same direction.
“I’m not perfect you know,” he said, feeling a need to break the heaviness of the moment. But inside a heady glow had spread throughout his chest. The feeling of her fingertips lingered warm on his skin and the fact that she thought he was terrific made him ridiculously satisfied.
“Hell, yes, I know,” she snorted. “You can’t play poker for crap and you drive like a maniac.”
“Has anyone ever told you that you’re crazy?”
“Completely,” she agreed with a grin. “Now, will you shut up and play cards?”
He gave it one last shot. “Gillian, I mean it. About you leaving Colombia. I really think – ”
She lifted a hand, stopping him. “Listen, I can’t promise you anything except that I’ll think about it. Can you live with that?”
He nodded, satisfied for the moment but determined that he’d convince her one way or another.
Silently she dealt the cards, but Clark could sense that something still bothered her. When she finished, she looked up to catch his gaze, and he was startled to see the tears pooled in her eyes yet again. “Sam, I need to know...now that you know...what kind of person I was, when I was young...and some of the mistakes I made...”
He didn’t let her finish, knowing instantly what she was asking. “Gills, nobody on this earth has a life totally free of regrets. We’ve all done things we wish we hadn’t.” He thought a minute, trying to find the words that would show her how much he still respected her. Cared for her. “I think if Chris were here right now, he’d be really proud of the woman you’ve become. And I’d have to agree with him.”
Tears streamed down her cheek, but when she smiled, it reached her eyes. “Thanks,” she whispered hoarsely and picked up her hand.
They played innumerable games of gin rummy and poker, and she taught him three new ways to play solitaire. Dinner consisted of a jar of olives and another one of stewed tomatoes. As the hours passed, she remarked that if the FARC were going to make these extended visits a habit, she was going to have to do a better job of stocking the cellar with fresh food and water and maybe a radio.
Clark eyed her grimly, worried that her speculations might prove to be too accurate. But since he didn’t want to start another argument, he focused on the floor above them, scanning Roberto’s store. It remained dark and empty, but with his super-hearing he could make out strange voices just outside and down the road a short way.
Neither one of them had brought a watch, but it became obvious that they’d been down in the cellar far longer than they ever had before. Their internal clocks kicked in and Gillian started to yawn widely, guessing that it must be near midnight or later. Clark encouraged her to sleep, but it finally took the flickering of the oil lamp to convince her. Deciding that they should conserve the oil in the second lamp, Clark turned it off, pitching them into a darkness so black the resemblance to a grave was complete.
Using his chest as a pillow, Gillian slept. He dozed as well, but his mind wouldn’t stop rolling around the story she’d told him. So clear now he could see the guilt that drove her, her need to prove her worth and make it up to a brother she felt responsible for killing. Every day she struggled to earn the right to keep living, always uncertain that she deserved such a gift.
And too, she felt the reluctance to return home where she’d be forced to face life without Chris, to face a family with a gaping hole where a son and a brother used to be. Like Clark, her future contained an empty void that she had yet to figure out how to fill.
He guessed it must be morning when he heard shouts nearing the store. With his x-ray vision, he watched as four heavily armed soldiers entered the far end of the building, fingering the various items displayed on the shelves and in the racks placed next to the counter. Roberto hurried from the back, offering to assist the men with any needs they might have. Did they want cigarettes perhaps? Or maybe bottles of soda or beer.
Tensing, Clark placed a hand loosely over Gillian’s mouth and shook her gently, ready to stifle any words she might utter in her drowsiness.
“Ssshhh,” he whispered directly into her ear. “They’re in the store.”
She nodded her understanding, and he removed his hand. As he sat up, she reached over and located the oil lamp placed just where they’d left it. The strike of the match against the flint seemed unnaturally loud, and he winced. When the wick caught, she turned the flame as low as possible, giving only the slightest glow to the space immediately surrounding them.
The voices got louder, boot steps on the floor boards sending a cascade of dust raining down upon them. They covered their mouths and noses in the crooks of their elbows, trying to stifle the coughs that might give them away. Clark pulled Gillian’s head into his chest and leaned over her, forcing her to use him for cover.
Although the words were muffled, it soon became clear what was happening right above their heads. Harsh commands were issued for Roberto to open his till and hand over the money within it. The store was being robbed.
Clark stood immediately, ready to burst through the hatch and take out the thugs. He’d had enough. Enough hiding. Enough of letting these men get away with their terrorism.
Gillian’s hand on his arm stopped him, and he turned to give her a warning look, his command low and hard. “Stay down. No matter what happens, don’t come up – ”
She shook her head violently, her voice a strident whisper. “No, Sam. You can’t go up there now.”
“I’m not going to cower down here in the dark while those brutes rob Roberto.”
“So you’ll what? Barge up there and knock them all out? What about the soldiers standing out in the street? And the ones on the other end of the village? You have no idea how many there are. Not to mention the ones waiting a few miles away for their buddies to return.”
He glanced upward, scanning the store above him. The four men stood around the room, weapons trained on Roberto while he dutifully pulled pesos from the small box he used as a cash register. Clark’s view of the road immediately in front of the store was limited, but he could make out at least twenty or more soldiers loitering about.
Gillian grasped his hand and squeezed it tightly, understanding his frustration. “I know. It’s so hard to let it go. But you have to. Helping them now will only cause them more pain later. You have to let it go.”
Slowly, he sank back to the cool ground, pulling his knees toward his chest. Impotent rage clutched his chest tightly, and he buried his forehead into the forearm he rested on his bent knees. He was the strongest man on Earth, the fastest and most powerful. Yet he sat there, doing nothing while Roberto’s store was robbed. He hadn’t felt so helpless since the day of Lois’s wedding.
An hour later, the three sharp taps sounded on the trap door. As he stood, his aching limbs protesting from the forced stillness, he realized that Gillian still held his hand. She’d never let it go.
to be continued...
