Page 8 of Stone Blind

“I’ve never known a Technician to receive the yearlong training you’re about to undergo. You are beautiful, Helen, inside and out,” he told her. The next words which came out of his mouth shocked even him. “At any time, any time you want out, and away from it all, just call me, and I’ll come for you.”

“What if, in between or any breaks I get, we find each other over the course of the year, would you be willing to be my solace?” she asked, needing to know.

“Gladly, because for some damned reason, you’ve become mine,” he said, pushing the biscuit aside. “Follow the path laid out before you; listen, learn, and stay safe.”

“Maybe you should have said stay sane,” she added. “How does one learn these things and not turn into a psychopath?”

“I think, Ms. Helen, you’re being put through the paces to ensure that you don’t,” Mustang added.

For now, it was enough. The planned weekend activities included a cookout later in the day on the back deck by Mr. Slow and Sunday dinner with Mark and Ruth Neary. Monday, she would drive to Wisconsin to begin her training as an elite member of an unknown society. Helen was ready to learn.

Chapter 2 – Trail

Monday, Janesville, Wisconsin

The sun had barely broken over the tree line when Helen loaded the forest green Subaru 4 x 4 hatchback and eased from the gravel driveway. She’d never driven long distances alone before, but she wasn’t afraid. In fact, she felt almost free. Sunday morning, a cryptic text arrived on the Technician phone given to her, changing the meeting location from Brown Deer, Wisconsin to Janesville, Wisconsin. Initially, her fear of being set up for a takedown would have overtaken all of her thought processes, but the text was followed up from a brief call from Azrael, her handler.

Brief wasn’t quite the correct term to use. The woman growled in the phone that her training had been moved to Janesville, then she hung up. Louisville, Kentucky to Brown Deer Wisconsin would be a nearly seven-hour drive. As she checked the GPS system, Janesville wasn’t much different. Helen put on her favorite CD of Mary J. Blige, getting it crunk in the dancery and she was off to begin her new life as a Technician.

With one stop to fuel up and recharge the snack supply, at fifteen minutes after one in the afternoon, she arrived at the address on the GPS. She crept slowly up the driveway, thinking, praying, and hoping that the address was incorrect. The lopsided mailbox displayed the number of the home, which matched the numbers on the two-story farmhouse.

“This can’t be right,” she said, slowly rolling up the drive path.

The two-car garage in the rear of the home was missing an entire door, which rested against the building. A barn, if one could call it such, sat in the rear of the property with no front to it whatsoever. Half of the roof for the barn was missing, while the other half was falling in. She could almost say the same for the house. Just as she began to believe she had arrived at the wrong address, on the back porch, if one could call where Bad Apple was standing to be a porch, was the man himself.

Honestly, he was scary, a tall black man, solid in form and coated in a soft umber skin tone. His hair, cut low, showed signs of receding on both sides of the widow’s peak, and his beard was scruffy with a neatly trimmed mustache. He pointed to where his pick-up truck was parked, indicating she should park next to the vehicle. Sighing deeply, she mentally checked her arsenal, not that she had much of one. In her purse was a .360, and she had a 9mm in her overnight bag and three knives in her skirt pocket.

“Relax. You’re here to learn,” she said, cutting the engine.

Helen exited the vehicle, bringing her purse along with her. She didn’t offer the man a smile since she didn’t want him to get any ideas on how friendly this training session would be. “Bad Apple,” Helen said.

“Apple is fine Cranberry,” he said to her, using the Technician handle she’d chosen.

“Good enough,” she said, walking up the small stairs to the home. “What do we have here?”

“It’s an investment project,” he told her. “The foundation is solid overall, and the project has good bones, but it will need a heckaton of nurturing and care to make it shine and be a worthwhile asset.”

The metaphor wasn’t wasted on Helen’s sharp mind. She wouldn’t insult the man by asking if the reference made was about her or the home, so she didn’t. The yard, from where she stood, needed a great deal of work as well. A lone apple treeleaned in the distance, the branches cracked and weighed from years of no one pruning or picking the fruit which had become dead weight.

“Shall we take a look inside?” Helen asked, waiting for him to lead the way. Apple’s response was simply to arch an eyebrow. He pushed away from the railing to enter the home.

It wasn’t as bad as she’d mentally envisioned. The kitchen was dated with honey oak cabinetry covered in years of fried dinner grease. A lone gas stove rested against the wall with no cover, simply showing off the iron exposed burners. She was grateful no fridge existed in the home, imagining the dead bugs who would have called it home. Beige tile with grungy grout left little to the imagination to envision on the yuck which more than likely existed under the cracked tiles.

“Bathrooms?” she asked.

“Only one,” he said.

“You adding another?”

“Yes,” Apple said.

“Bedrooms?”

“Five total,” he said as the sound of vehicles arriving drew his eye away. Helen walked to the window to see what new hells-cape would arrive to make the three months of training either miserable or downright unbearable.

In the drive, a heavy-duty pickup arrived, towing a 38-foot Silverlake camper. Behind the wheel was a white male with an affixed scowl on his face. Helen balled up her fist, trying to tamp down the anxiety.

Apple noticed, offering gently, “My contractor, Ricky Collins. He stays in the camper and works on the house. Good guy, former Army Ranger, Special Forces, knows your cousin. He can’t cook worth a shit and usually burns everything he tries to grill, but he can sand down these cabinets in a day and add new fixtures by dinnertime.”

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