Road to Paradise Read online

  Partial list of my delusional shallows: everything is going to be okay. What else could possibly go wrong? We’ll fix it. We’ll work it out. I need to find my mother. I wish the girl weren’t with us.

  “So Nebraska is landlocked, right?” That was Gina. She had her mischievous face on. She was always good for a laugh at times like these. Except when she wasn’t.

  “Yeah, so?”

  “Well, how do you explain that a quarter of it is covered by sand?”

  “What?”

  “Exactly. And not just sand, but dunes of sand. A quarter of the state, an area nearly as large as New York state, 37,000 square miles, covered by hills of sand that blew in, formed into dunes and remained. How do you explain it?”

  “Since I didn’t know about it, I don’t explain it,” I said. “How do they explain it?”

  Gina waved her hand at me. “They say it’s glacial outwash from the Rockies.”

  “Well, if that’s what they say, that’s what it is.”

  “What the hell is glacial outwash?” Gina exclaimed. “Nobody can explain that. And while we’re on the subject of things no one can explain, the Rockies are 500 miles away from here. Dunes usually protect a coastline fifty to a hundred feet away. We’re talking about 500 miles. Must be some pretty strong wind glacially outwashing sand from mountains.”

  “What are you getting at?”

  “It’s a geological impossibility.”

  You know what was a geological impossibility? Meeting a human being named Candy, materialized—for the second time—out of thin air at a traffic light at a picnic marsh. Every other imponderable paled by comparison.

  Leaning her head through the seats and smiling impishly, Candy said, “Maybe it’s an act of God.”

  “There you go again.” Gina pushed her slightly back. “It’s science!”

  Candy wobbled back in, like a weeble. “Well, then explain it.”

  “I can’t. But scientists are working on it.”

  “Any time, then?”

  “Shut up.”

  “Can scientists explain why we give alms to the homeless?” asked Candy.

  “Shut up! We’re talking about the Sand Hills of Nebraska.”

  I piped up. “Where is this famed sand?”

  “It’ll be hard to miss. Sand two thousand miles away from an ocean. And Candy,” Gina added, “why would God need to put sand dunes in the middle of landlocked Nebraska?”

  “How should I know? That’s why it’s called a miracle. Because we don’t understand it.”

  “I never called it a miracle. I said a geological impossibility.”

  “Same difference.”

  That’s when I laughed. “How does it feel to be hoisted by your own petard, Gina Reed?” I said to her, finding her ribs to tickle.

  That took three miles and five minutes.

  Without music or the petty banter of three bored girls, the atmosphere within the car grew ever more bleak, somewhat like the surrounding landscape. We passed through wet, fog-shrouded hills, no lights showing anywhere, no other cars for miles down the road, and every once in a while a small farm, dripping farm equipment, a factory. Nebraska, at least in these parts, did not resemble Iowa. Now I knew the difference between a rich state and a poor state. Iowa farms were big wealthy plantations, painted and landscaped. Here, rust powdered overgrown front fences, and the houses were ramshackle and neglected. There was some farming industry, but we saw no stores. Not one. There wasn’t a single sign that pointed to a gas station, a deli, a happy ice-cream parlor, or a shoe shop. There. Was. Just. Nothing. Except the endless rain, fog, and grassy hills. Like this we traveled on U.S. 20 for a hundred miles. Laurel, Randolph, Osmond. Once in a while a car would pass us. The bright lights jumped in the fog, got larger, then whoosh, disappeared. It was quiet. Plainview, Royal . . .

  I longed to hear about a girl named Grace, but instead, Candy leaned between the seats, close to my ear and Gina’s ear and quietly began to tell us about a man named Erv.

  “He was a coin collector, and in construction,” she said. “Then he got involved in photography, in video production. All cash business,” was how Candy put it, slowing down her speech a bit just as she was exhorting me to speed up. “Some of his cash business was procuring girls for his many friends. Not his businessmen friends, more low-rent than that. Workmen, truckers.” She paused. “And . . . I was one of those girls.”

  Ah. So I was hearing about a girl named Candy. “You were?” I didn’t believe her. “What do you mean?” I said. “You’re only seventeen.”

  “Yes, nearly too old for him. I started four years ago.”

  “When you were thirteen?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’ve given yourself to men for money since you were thirteen?”

  “I have.”

  “Oh my God, Candy.” I felt sick.

  “What?”

  “Why would you do that? Why would you agree to that?”

  “It was very good money.”

  Her hand patting me, Gina turned her body to Candy. “Candycane,” she said mildly, “what about your mother? How could she allow something like that?”

  I’d been hoping Candy would say, my mama didn’t know, because that was the only thing that would make sense to me.

  “My mother liked Erv and wanted to keep him,” said Candy. “Her previous boyfriends had been such losers.” She fell silent a while before continuing. “I stopped going to school, and that was why we had to keep moving, so the school attendance board would get off our back. I slept during the day and worked at night. I brought home a paycheck. It wasn’t too bad.”

  We didn’t stop listening, but she stopped talking, as if suddenly she’d run out of things to say. When we reached O’Neill (“The Irish Capital of Nebraska!”) we gassed up and got some coffee. Gina asked, “If you needed a job, why didn’t you just get a job at Burger King?”

  “I was too young. Who’d hire a minor under fifteen?”

  “Dear God, Candy,” I said. “You could’ve babysat.”

  Candy waved her hand. “Babysitting paid a buck an hour. And I was making ten to twenty, plus good tips that I sometimes didn’t share with Erv. Ten bucks for ten hours or 200 for ten hours. Big difference, no?”

  “How much money did they have to give you to do something you didn’t want to do?” asked Gina.

  “I’d guess about ten to twenty an hour,” replied Candy.

  We got back in the car and I just drove, swallowing away my nausea, aching and sad for her. Miles passed. It stopped raining, the sun peeked through clouds and, finally, the road dried.

  “Did it mean anything to give it away?” I asked, almost in a whisper.

  “Who gave it away? Not me. Maybe you. I gave something they wanted in return for something I wanted. That’s not giving it away. That’s being smart. I placed no value on the thing you talk about. It was just a means to an end. But money—now that had value. Money would buy my ticket out of that life.”

  “Where’s that money?” asked Gina.

  “Well, I used to keep it with me. But Erv was a big spender. He bought a boat, two trucks, a summer house on the Chesapeake. When he was short, he’d take from me. He’d ransack my room till he found it. He’d say without him I’d have nothing. Which was true, but when he took it, I also had nothing. So I had to start hiding it. I kept some with me, like a decoy for hunters, but the rest I sent away. Some to my dad, some to Mike in Paradise, and to my friend Jess in Reno, but most to Floyd, the one we’re meeting tonight.”

  “I can’t believe you sent any to your dad,” Gina said. How respectable she had become between South Bend and O’Neill! “Candy, don’t you think Erv knows who you wired the money to? One Western Union receipt and he knows. What if he got to Floyd first, and is waiting for you in Rapid City?”

  “I’m not stupid, I kept all the receipts.” Her lips tightened. “Receipts, the Bible my dad gave me when I was a kid.” She paused. “And the thing Erv wants to kill me
for.”

  We waited, me barely breathing so I wouldn’t miss a thing.

  “I took a reel of 16mm film,” she said reluctantly, eyes downcast. “One of the more recent films Erv had made. From this master reel he dubbed cheaply made things called videotapes and sold them at an enormous profit. The reels were guarded like gold at Fort Knox. It was a miracle I was able to take even the one.”

  “Why in the world would you take something like that from a man like him?” I gasped. “Don’t you know him? Don’t you know better?”

  “I know him,” she said. “I took it because I needed protection. Without it, we’d all be dead.”

  “You took a reel of film from him for which he wants to kill you,” said Gina, “and you call that protection?”

  “You don’t understand anything,” said Candy. “Yes, protection.”

  “What’s the film, Candy?” I asked.

  “Oh, underage girls doing overage things,” Candy replied tiredly. “In one raw, unedited footage, Erv tied me to a tree and . . . well, sort of tortured me in front of the camera. Hurt me, like he was killing me. Did all kinds of things to me, then pretended like it was a snuff film. He’s been making these for a couple of years now, selling them on the black market, since they’re illegal and all.”

  “Illegal? You don’t say,” said Gina. “Underage girls in a faux snuff flick?”

  “Is there a market for something like that?” I asked skeptically and incredulously, my naïveté morphing into revulsion.

  “He made a fortune. You wouldn’t believe what a cash cow it was,” said Candy. “He was making so much money that he could’ve stopped pimping me out, that became just pocket change to him. In films, instead of selling one me to one or two men, he was selling one me to four thousand men.”

  “I think,” I said, “you were the cash cow, Candy.”

  “You could be right. Which is why he was so reluctant to part with me. These films are the reason why the truckers are so eager to help him. He supplies them, too. It’s the most profitable thing he’s ever done.”

  “Candy,” Gina said officiously, “don’t you know it’s against the law to transport across state lines any obscene, lascivious, or filthy matter of indecent character, particularly of a graphic visual representation of children?”

  “You are a font of information. I’m not transporting it anymore. I gave it to my father.”

  Gina and I took a breath. Mine was more like a gasp. I stared at Candy through the rearview. “Candy, the blue film Erv made that broke all U.S. and international laws you gave to your father?”

  “Yeah, so?”

  She must have taken our shocked silence as judgment because she said, “You think you’re better than me because you give it away for free to complete strangers? That doesn’t make you better, it makes you stupid.”

  I don’t know about Gina, but I hadn’t been judging her. I was imagining the Trappist monk Estevan Rio, in the monastery for fifteen years, spooling Candy’s film onto Melleray’s only projector in the small rec room off the library, flicking it on, sitting back. Perhaps other monks were in the screening room with him. Did they get popcorn and candy, a little Coke, as they watched Estevan’s fourteen-, fifteen-, sixteen-year-old daughter being tied naked to a tree and sexually tormented?

  While driving through Nebraska, though, I did silently judge Estevan Rio for not doing more to help his child. My opinion of Bruggeman had not changed. He was beyond disapproval. It was like judging a rock. No matter how much you judge that rock, it will never make a very good goldfish. For one, it’s too heavy.

  The man from last night came back to my eyes. Had that man been looking for Candy to give her back to Erv so he could make more movies?

  Gina could not believe the film had been bequeathed to Brother Estevan, but what I felt was a melt of relief that it was not with us, a short-lived melt, to be sure, since to convince Bruggeman it wasn’t with us, I knew was beyond my capabilities.

  “Candy, I know you think it might be Christian of him to take it . . .” Gina continued, and couldn’t finish. Even the fearless Gina couldn’t finish!

  “I had no choice,” said Candy. “I didn’t take the stupid reel to blackmail Erv, or to bribe him. I took it so he would let me go. It needed to be safe.”

  I began to understand why Erv wouldn’t want to let Candy go.

  “The demand for these movies is greater than anything you can imagine,” Candy told us. “And the supply is real low. In the last two years, since he got into it, he must have made, and I’m not exaggerating, maybe three, four million dollars.”

  “How much did you make?” I asked.

  “A few bucks.” She sounded evasive. “Enough to change my life. Now we have to collect my money.”

  “We? We’re going to be pretty busy,” said Gina. “Bribing pornographers, driving points home, shaking people down for money in Rapid City.” She snickered. “That’s rich, Cand. What’s Sloane’s role going to be?”

  “The most important one. Driving the getaway car.”

  I groaned.

  “What’s my role going to be?” asked Gina. “Breaking their kneecaps when they don’t pay up?”

  “Why wouldn’t they pay up? Floyd’s my best friend. I wire him my money, he gets to keep half, the rest he saves for me.” Her voice was low, almost like she were speaking in the woods at night. “With him keeping half, my share is still about twenty grand. Just think about that.” She laughed softly. “Not bad for a seventeen-year-old, huh?”

  “Yes, not bad,” I said. “Why did you stop? You didn’t want to do it anymore?”

  “Something like that,” she said vaguely. “I said I was leaving, but Erv saw it differently. He refused to let me go.”

  “Ah. Well, why would he?”

  “At first I thought it was because of the money, losing his income. But his partners had other girls they could’ve used. No, for Erv it was about something else.” She furrowed her brow. “When I saw he wasn’t going to let me go easy, I tried to force his hand. I got myself tattooed so filming me would be impossible.” She smiled bleakly. “I thought that no one would like a tattooed chick.” Shaking her head, she went on. “But he just beat me and started hiring me out again by the hour, saying there were plenty of men who’d take a girl with tattoos. I know he wanted me to stay, even though he was pretty mad about the tattoos, and normally I would’ve stayed, but I had to go. None of my pleading, or tattooing myself, or telling him I didn’t want to do it anymore was driving home the point. I knew I had to find a way to convince him. I had to leave, and he needed to leave me alone. So I took the reel.”

  “Ah. How’d that work out for you?”

  “Admittedly not great.”

  Gina stared intensely at me. I narrowed my eyes on the road and didn’t return her glare. What had we gotten ourselves into? Gina and I were momentarily speechless—for about thirty miles.

  “He’s pursuing you,” Gina said, “because he’s afraid if that film gets out, he’s going away for life. And he’s right. You’re a threat to his entire existence. He knows if he gets the film back, he’ll be safe.”

  “Yes. Which is why I can’t let him get his hands on it.” Candy tutted. “I told him and told him to leave me alone. I begged him to let me go. Is it my fault he’s stubborn and refused to listen to reason?”

  “No, that’s not your fault,” I drew out. We were so screwed. My hands were shaking. Erv, the pornographer, knew his work was not for public consumption. His oeuvre, for example, was unlikely to be released at the local movie theater. And he was in the reel of film with Candy.

  “What kind of a fucked-up mother did you have?” exclaimed Gina. “Where the hell was this woman while this was happening, while you and her boyfriend were doing this? Did you have a work studio right in the house?”

  “No. We went someplace else.”

  “Oh, well, that’s all right, then!”

  “Look, my mom’s had a real hard life,” said Candy. “S
he ran away from home herself when she was thirteen, lived on the streets with her boyfriends, had one child before me who died, had some serious health problems, calcification of the kidneys, cirrhosis of the liver, her boyfriends beat her, and her sister was strangled by her newlywed husband two months after the wedding, and,” said Candy, widening her eyes, “on top of all that she got impetigo.”

  “What the hell is impetigo?”

  “It’s some kind of a horrible skin infection,” said Gina. “Yuck.”

  “She’d been living pretty dire before she met up with my dad. He was probably the nicest to her, but she was too flighty to settle down. She didn’t see that life for herself. My mother is not a very spiritual person. She’s not exactly looking for answers to things. When I came east, she was scared at first of having me with her, but then she lightened a little. Saw the potential. My money allowed her not to work, to have things she liked.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like Southern Comfort and cigarettes. It allowed her a new Maytag top-loading washing machine and a Frigidaire fridge and freezer. She bought the house she lived in and wasn’t a renter anymore. She bought herself a truck. I was her only child, and I made my mother’s life a bit better.”

  “I don’t know how that can be,” said Gina. “She’s still with Erv.”

  Candy stared at the back of Gina’s head for longer than I thought necessary, as if trying to force a quest for reflection on her own choices, but Gina was thinking only of Candy and didn’t feel the pointed stare.