Helen R. - No Sanctuary

“You’d like me to walk out on you, wouldn’t you? A perfect ending to the martyr image.”

Dumbfounded, Bay could only stare. She loved her work. What they were doing was hot and dirty for sure; but the opportunity it represented was a challenge, and a terrific business opportunity. Whatever his problem, she was willing to shrug it off to fatigue and the god-awful heat. Everyone in the shop had been snarling at each other on and off for weeks, thanks to the weather and the company’s money crunch.

“We only have tomorrow to finish up,” she said, drawing on the last of her own patience. “If this project doesn’t go in on Friday morning, you won’t have to worry about more overtime. We’ll have to shut those doors for good.”

It wasn’t an exaggeration since they had yet to begin the painting-finishing process. The gate would be a navy gray, two careful coats of top-grade, weather-resistant flat—a third if, upon final inspection, Bay decided it was warranted. When that was completely dry, they would begin the painstaking hammering of the yellow brass wire wrapped in three strategic points along the length of each lance. She called the design The Iron Maiden, a little tongue-in-cheek acknowledgment after one of Glenn’s remarks about her “ball-breaker” work habits and her dogged determination to keep the shop afloat. As luck would have it a few weeks ago, the grand duchess of all ball-breakers had driven by the small sidewalk-size version of the Maiden exhibited outside and stopped. On the spot, Madeleine Ridgeway had demanded a driveway size model for her new estate. Nobody turned down Mrs. Herman Ridgeway, daughter and sole heiress to Duncan Holt’s vast grocery warehousing empire.

“Friday,” Bay said to Glenn with more emphasis. “And don’t forget Mrs. R. needs access for the caterers and florists by early afternoon. That’ll create a squeeze for us no matter how smoothly things go. What if Zamora shows up in the morning with the shakes, or the paint runs, or the wire snaps too often as we’re hammering the trim?”

“Shit happens.”

“Not when she signs the check.”

“So she doesn’t get her frigging gate in time for her party. You don’t think the house is enough to keep everybody gaping?”

The answer to that was so obvious it didn’t need to be voiced. Nevertheless, Bay wanted people to see The Iron Maiden first.

As a hunch about Glenn settled deeper in her gut, she frowned. This wasn’t about their intense schedule, at least not entirely. Something else was wrong. He’d been as thrilled as she was when they’d landed this job and they’d hugged and cheered, despite it coming only a few weeks after Bay turned down his marriage proposal. She’d thought, hoped, they’d cleared the air since. He’d certainly started up with Holly fast enough. Could there now be trouble in that paradise?

Heaven spare me from love.

They had to hang on. Once their financial pressures were behind them, they could think about expansion, a future that would allow for larger projects, independence. Dreams. The end of what she privately saw as a two-year leeching of everything creative inside her. She couldn’t let him fall apart one check away from freedom and inspiration.

“I can’t and won’t do that to Mrs. Ridgeway,” Bay told him.

“You think she wouldn’t cut you loose in a heartbeat if it suited her?”

Glenn’s cynicism worked like hot salsa on her empty stomach. If this abrasive attitude was his way to complete his emotional “disconnect” from her, to assure her that he’d learned his lesson, he needed to rethink his strategy.

“Look, I’m not a mind reader, and if you have something to say, I wish you’d can the sarcasm and get to the point…only not tonight. I’m begging you, Glenn. Let’s get this job done.”

He stood for several more seconds as though he wanted to press a point, but as abruptly as he’d flared, he reached for another lance from the rolling table behind him, slid it in place and dropped his hood. Striking an arc, he began welding again.

Exhaling in relief, Bay threw a load on her own welder. She began the bottom weld on her lance and was immediately lost in her work.

How long was it before she picked up on the change…the smell? Two minutes. Three?

It couldn’t have been much longer. In any case, the strong odor, wholly unnatural to their environment and so clearly wrong prompted her to throw up her hood and sniff again.

She turned around. “Jesus.”

Smoke was coming from Glenn’s table, so much smoke that she couldn’t see him. Nevertheless, the nauseating smell told her he was there. Swatting the hood off her head, she ran to his machine, flipped off the ignition switch and scrambled over lines to reach him. While her reaction was fact, her movements automatic, her mind froze on one thought. Heart attack. The stench gagged her as much as the smoke did, speaking too clearly of burning clothing and worse. As horror urged retreat, she grabbed the lead to get the stinger out from beneath him, at the same time pushing against his shoulder to roll him off it. In that instant something struck her forearm.

Through tearing eyes and suffocating smoke, she saw a metal rod—no, one of the Maiden’s lances.

The spear was impaled through Glenn’s back.

Six years later

Gatesville Unit, Texas Department of Corrections

Gatesville, Texas

Wednesday, May 9, 2001

“Butler! Shut it down, you have a visitor.”

About to drop her hood to weld the rest of a handrail, Bay Butler hesitated and glanced over at Sergeant Draper scowling at her from the doorway. At first she thought she must be hearing things, then the woman squeezed into a size-sixteen prison guard uniform aimed her baton. Bay shut down the machine.

What the hell…?

She couldn’t imagine who wanted to see her. She had no family, so-called friends had abandoned her ages ago, and the most rabid reporter had long lost interest in her. Nevertheless, she knew better than to question when a prison guard gave a directive, particularly this one. Bay got along well enough with most of the staff—they left her alone, while she pretended they were part of the concrete and steel surrounding her—but Draper had made it clear from day one that she thought Bay belonged on Death Row.

Setting her hood on top of the welding machine, Bay approached the woman whose face would make a plastic surgeon think, “Windfall.” Keeping her own expression passive, she dealt with an unwelcome rush of adrenaline. Why hope? Hope, she’d learned the hard way, was for babies, brides and fools. Yet Draper knew something. Suspicion and trouble were unpleasant scents to season Bay’s memory as she struggled to remember what she might have done wrong in the last six days, never mind six years. It had to be a trick of some kind; no one on the outside cared whether she lived or rotted here and she had no assets, therefore, no need for a beneficiary to encourage her early demise. Her life had been reduced to its lowest common denominator.

Six years…in another six weeks. Any more sixes, she mused, and she was going to start wondering if the Bible-thumpers—whom she avoided as diligently as she did prison troublemakers—were right about the antichrist already being present on earth. That, too, said bad things about her state of mind.

Wary, Bay followed the surly guard’s directives down the hall. She knew better than to ask questions. As far as Draper was concerned, if you were at Gatesville, you were guilty and should serve your full term, and the guard did her best to make sure Bay understood that went doubly for her.

The cloudless Texas sky blinded Bay as she crossed the prison yard, and the packed clay tested her bones and joints as much as the concrete floors of the prison did. Gatesville was the state’s main women’s facility, located about an hour west of Waco, hard country that fooled you. Gently rolling terrain let you believe over the next slope was a lake, a stream, maybe an oasis of woods when the only break from the incessant sun was the scrub brush and rain-starved cedars. For as far as she could see the dusty, heat-scorched vegetation littered the land like storm debris. Bay never yearned for the soothing shade of the piney woods more than when she was ordered outside to fulfill state requirements for “fresh air and exercise.”