Bendigo Strange's

 Bendigo Strange
June 1st, 2025
Nightfall 
70°

It was an old story. A upper middle class girl had fallen in with the wrong crowd and, subsequently fallen under the spell of a twenty-five year old man who frequented the restaurant she worked at. Rebecca*, who had never smoked a cigarette or tried alcohol was first introduced to weed, then “a little coke”.  

The drugs led to sex. First in his car. Then a cheap motel rooms. One night, after he had gotten her high on cocktail of weed and pills is where the heroine got introduced. With that a young girls life began going off the rails. In secret. 

Soon the pressure of living two lives began catching up with her. The solid oldest daughter, the most responsible one, from a stable family began losing to the girl who was shooting up and “in love” with a guy several years older, and fresh off probation. Fissures, became cracks. Cracks became a chasm into which she spiraled down into. When a worried friend went to her parents a intervention was staged, along with a drug test. In the middle of tears and confessions she asked to go to her room to collect herself for a few minutes. There alone in her childhood room, the girl made a decision. A bag was packed, thrown out the window and ten minutes later she was gone into the night.

A year later, sitting at their dining room table I listened with the parents as the girl’s aunt told me of the phone call that she received two days earlier. The girl had managed to use a phone at a resale shop to tell her what she could in the span of few minutes. She was in Oklahoma. The “boyfriend” long gone, but not before he traded her for a car. Leaving her and, that town behind. She now belonged to a pimp known only as KitKat. Desperate to return to the life she once knew she called, pleading for help. 

We knew the city, the name of the street and a rough description of where she was staying. A rundown house on a numbered street “with a chain link fence across the front yard, next to the empty lot.” The aunt had reverse called the number back numerous times, but no one there knew who or what, she was talking about. I surmised she had been on some sort of budget shopping trip, saw the phone and, seized the opportunity to call.

As we sat at the table, two parents holding out for hope to bring their daughter home again her Dad asked me if I thought I could find her. I felt like I could, and said as much. He then asked if I thought I could “get her out”? I understood what he meant, but there was some level of not only explanation needed but also expectation. While a “rescue mission” is often in the forefront everyone’s minds, it remains far more realistic to conduct such matters it as a business deal first. It sounds cold and unemotional, and that is what you want in such circumstances. Having been involved in three very dynamic “rescue” missions up to that point I began having some very sound opinions on the matter. Two of them I had been fortunate enough not to get killed or maimed. They were certainly exciting, they were also potentially very problematic. One nearly landed me in a Central American jail, and ended with me and that client on the run, literally through the jungle, from a heavily armed gang. As a private citizen you can be paid to take action of a morally just cause while simultaneously being completely outside of the law. Make bad decisions and you will suffer the consequences for it. Despite what the action novels tell you about the hero taking “swift violence of action” to perform feats of daring do, violence in the real world and on the street level is almost always based on emotions. Anger, frustration, fear, those are the feelings that lead to the average persons violent act. If they can be removed from the situation the less chance of danger everyone is in. Myself included. Then, with all of that explained I simply said “I will bring her home.” Our meeting concluded we moved towards the door. My retainer fee paid, I was handed twenty-five thousand in cash to be used to negotiate her return if need be. Before leaving Dad asked us all to bow our heads and prayed that I might find Rebecca with such little information to go on, and bring her home. As I walked out the door I stopped and asked for something that she would recognize from home, as to establish my bona fides’ when I found her.  Mom went to go find something.

I walked out to the still relatively new black Jeep Cherokee (60th Anniversary model) with blacked out windows, parked out front of the large two story home with it’s near perfect manicured yard. Having been in every kind of home one can imagine, from squalor to unimaginable wealth, from houses in complete chaos to houses in complete order you learn some things. You never want to be in either extreme, but rather right in the middle. They were nice people. Very orderly and very Presbyterian, and the home teetered on the verge of too much order, as such they were not ready for the chaos that befell them. Their daughter had rebelled in the oldest of ways, all in secret.  

Mom walked up, placed a hand on the door jamb handing me what I had asked for. Then said in a flat, even tone “I don’t care who you have to kill to bring her home.” There is always a point where someone wants to play the legal eagle, or say something to cover their ass. One can always talk about ethics, morals, and legalities to the point of nausea. Especially, when it’s not your missing and sex trafficked daughter. I nodded to her and closed the Cherokee’s door. 

I was not then, nor have I ever been in the business of killing. Driving off I wondered then, as I have wondered every time before or since when faced with similar circumstances; could I get this done without shooting anyone? More importantly could I get this done without getting shot?  Ernest Hemingway once wrote in his posthumous novel “True at First Light” when forced to contend with a wounded a leopard that  had escaped into the bush, ”every wounded leopard in thick bush is a new wounded leopard. No two will ever act the same except that will always come, and they will come for keeps.” 

Each circumstance, no matter how familiar it may seem, is still it’s own. 

It was around noon when I parked and, made my way upstairs to “The Roost”. A sixteen hundred square foot apartment that was an antique in and of itself. Built sometime around 1915 it held all the charm of an era had long since passed. Varnished wooden stairs, and solid oak doors inlaid with frosted glass would cast a shadow of anyone outside. Over time you became familiar with people’s silhouettes and their footfalls as they came up the interior stairwell. The single paned windows rattled in the winter or against heavy rains, the hardwood floors were empty and spacious. The decor was that of Banana Republic meets Army Surplus store. Some of it was intentional by design, some of it was just second hand bachelor.  There were only two apartments on the top floor, thus leading to their generous sized interiors. 

  For some, their most prized possession may be a car, or boat, a house. Some physical and tangible thing. For me it is individual freedom and, it was here that I was, for the first time in my life really experiencing that opportunity by my own will and choice, but personal freedom comes at a price. Several months earlier I had abandoned my career in Fortune 500 America to pursue whatever I was now. Private Detective? Freelance “bodyguard”? Professional Problem Solver? Ronin? I was certainly masterless. In my quest to abandon the chains of corporate business I had also quite willingly abandoned a steady paycheck. With the retainer fee paid I was no longer behind on the rent. A check I happily wrote, as I loved the Roost very much, it being the first home I had every created for myself. 

There was something special about entering it, and I never took it for granted. It had become my sanctum sanctorum. So much was it from another time that, upon entering one had to step into a large foyer area where you were greeted by a ten foot spear hanging over the doorway. The windows were nearly floor to ceiling and, provided a two hundred and eighty degree view neighborhood. To the right was the Living Room where I spent much of my time. It held two particular features that endeared it to me. The French doors that opened to overlook the street below and, a large no-longer-functioning gas fireplace that acted as my de facto  arms locker. Instead of having a false bottom it had a false upper. Inside the over mantel,  I had created a place to cache guns and sensitive materials. Had I died unexpectedly someone in the future would come across a small treasure trove of guns, ammunitions, knives and information. Next to the fireplace sat a leopard print and a reading lamp that occupied many of my winter evenings. Behind it was a  two foot tall clay vase that was full of rolled up maps. Though it would seem a foreign concept in this modern age there was a time before Google Street View, and driving apps. The era of physical maps was not over, and it was here that I kept dozens of paper maps of various countries, states, cities. Rummaging through them I eventually found a map of that particular city in Oklahoma; where four or five years before I had taken a course on lock picking and electric counter measures taught by a retired CIA spook. He had spent the Cold War setting up burst transmitters around the globe, while simultaneously tracking his Soviet counterparts who did the same thing. 

With the map spread out over the dining room table and a fresh pot of coffee made I spent the afternoon getting a rough lay of the town. The small round dining room table sat in what I called the Big Empty. It was the sister to the living room on the left side of the foyer. Aside from some vintage artwork on the walls and the small table and chairs the 16 x 20 ft room was otherwise empty. Hence the name. Where it would have bothered many people to have an empty room I loved the vacancy. As a kid I grew up in 9×9 bedroom in a chaotic home with four other people. The Big Empty became a sort of modern art piece for me. The room was anything and nothing simultaneously. I began laying gear and clothes I thought I would need out on the hardwood floor. By self-admittance I am an over-thinker, because of this I fight between my desire to keep it simple and pack for armageddon. Experience has repeatedly shown that the K.I.S.S. principle to be the superior mindset that only reveals itself in hindsight. Going into the kitchen pantry I removed the 1970s vintage Remington 870 wingmaster from it’s vertical mount, and slid it into a gun-case. If a long gun were proved to be necessary this felt like a shotgun was going to fit the bill better than any rifle. I cached my beloved Colt .45 in the fireplace and pulled out a recently new-to-me Makarov in 9x18mm, two spare magazines, a box of Corbon hollow points and two boxes of hardball, which was probably all the ammo I had for it at the time. I instinctively reached for my .22 Beretta Bobcat only to be confronted with the memory of it’s “confiscation” in Central America a few months prior. The pen light between my teeth flashed on my Spyderco Spydercard, a wharncliffe blade deep cover knife, and slid it into my back pocket. Then pulled out a North American Arms Minimag revolver and it’s Thad Rybka pocket holster, along with a box of .22 magnum ammunition. “Keep it light” the little voice kept telling me, and I am always inclined to listen to it. 

When evening had set in I slipped my airweight snub nosed .38 in my waistband, locked up the apartment. Heading out the kitchen door at the back of the apartment and down the no-longer-up-to-code creaky back stairs into the alley, it was a perfect evening to walk to “The Loop”. I liked walking the alleyways and using various cut throughs of the old neighborhood. Finally coming out onto a side street and turning onto the main thoroughfare I walked to what was my unofficial office; a place called Blueberry Hill. Finding an outside table on the spacious side walk I ordered dinner, and chatted with several people I knew. As I ate alone I thought through the next several days trying to anticipate each move. What her family saw as a “rescue mission” I looked at is as a purchase. If KitKat had traded a car for the girl, he would most likely accept a cash buyout, and I had cash.

It wasn’t quite ten p.m. when I walked back in the apartment. I checked my cell phone that sat on the kitchen window sill. Nothing. When I had worked for the Fortune 500 Executive I carried two phones, and a Blackberry. For a long while after anytime a Nextel walkie talkie chirped my stomach would drop. My life had been a non stop amount of buzzing and ringing, and constant connectivity. Because of that, I was more than happy to leave my cell phone on the kitchen counter. With no missed calls, I took a shower and headed to bed, planning to be on the road around sun up the next morning. The roughly five hour drive would put me in town midday. 

I slept terrible, having the odd dreams as one is inclined to have before such misadventures. One revolved around forgetting to pack shoes. Finally around 4am I just succumbed to the anxious energy, took a shower, filled a thermos with coffee, grabbed an apple, a peanut butter sandwich, checked thirty times I was wearing boots, tossed my gear in the back of the Cherokee and drove off into the pre-dawn darkness. Bound for Oklahoma. 

KitKat, it would turn out, was not a hard man to find. He had at some point in his life, became the long term tenant in a run down part of town near the railroad tracks of an old two story motel. It looked like a location scout’s dream to film a movie in. Mustard color curtains sometimes covered the windows. Paint chipped from wrought iron railing, broken deck chairs lined the motel’s only redeeming feature, a poured concrete swimming pool that sat in the middle of a courtyard with the motel horse shoed around it. Girls lingered in front of rooms at the railing or the pool, wearing whatever they wanted or didn’t want. The flophouse motel for all of it’s rundown weariness sat juxtaposed against the immaculate pool with it’s crystal clear, heavy chlorinated water. 

Walking up to the front “office”, I was met by a very large guy, who was clearly security. While I was certain that I did not want him to throw me through any of the walls, he looked as though one solid punch to the heart, or blow to a knee would end him. “You the guy looking for KitKat?” I smiled and said “I’m here about his 401K.” This earned a laugh, and he turned his back and waved a couple of thick fingers indicating I should follow. Instead of going into the office we walked through the courtyard, past the pool to a set of concrete stairs. Kitkat had utilized a second story motel room, that not only overlooked the pool, but the primary entryway in and out of the motel.

The office, as it were, was comprised of lounge chairs, coffee tables, and for some reason, a couple of filing cabinets. Under the window that overlooked the pool was an SKS rifle with a scope mounted to the receiver, and what I knew to be a Chinese made, Norinco knock off, of an Uzi carbine. To be honest, I was impressed by this. He had a walled compound, his office/headquarters was in a tactically sound position that gave him overwatch, protected from any drive-by shootings coming off the street. He had a sniper rifle to one extent or another, with the ability to lay down suppressive fire. Thus making it virtually impossible to access him without creating a whole lot of problems for assaulters. Whether they were of the criminal or law enforcement persuasion. 

I looked over at the security guy and wondered if he was called Tiny, so I called him that. ”Gotta frisk you man.Listen if you a cop...” I raised my hands up away from my shirt, having expected this, “Promise you, not a cop. Just a man here on business, that’s it.” Tiny went through the motions of frisking me for a gun. Under the arms, and around the waistband. It was here that he found my pistol. Pulling it out he said “you get it back when you leave, sorry man that’s the rules to see the Man.” I nodded. He had missed the spare reload in one of my pockets and, when he asked about the bulge in the front right pocket I partially pulled out a wad of cash. The Spyderco Credit Card knife was tucked behind the wad and out of sight. This was his turn to nod. He looked my handgun and gave a snort before adding “Makarov. Nice. I got the same fucking thing“, then proceeded to pop the magazine free from it’s heel clip release and clearing the slide, before setting both the pistol, magazine and solitary round on a coffee table. Had he checked my boots he would have found an ice pick with it’s spike nestled into a piece of surgical tubing, split at the top allowing the handle to rest somewhat secure. I also had two razor blades. One duct taped to the inside of my jeans at the center of my back, and the other under the insole of my right boot. It was a tough spot to be in. If I went in over gunned, it would look potentially like something else. If I went in unarmed, I potentially looked like a snitch with the cops down the street, or a punk. The only thing down the street in this case was my Jeep Cherokee, with the pump shotgun and a North American Arms MiniMag revolver under the floor mat. 

That business taken care of, Tiny walked over to the door of an adjoining room and palm slapped it a couple times. A moment later the door opened, and in walked KitKat. Dressed in an oversized polo shirt, basketball shorts, and a pair of Adidas slides KitKat was built just like one of the skinny chocolate bars. We were about the same height, and he was probably a few years older, but I had to outweigh him by at least forty pounds. He was rail thin, but he had that look that told you, don’t be deceived. He wore a pair half glasses that looked like gold chain links fused together and set with small square lenses that were worn on the bridge of his nose. Sizing me up with a nod while at the same time sticking out a hand he smiled “What can I do for the business man.”  

We sat on the two Howard Johnsons orange, low backed, swivel lounge chairs with a short circular table off to one side, my Makarov pistol and it’s magazine sat atop of some magazines. As we sat I pulled a hundred dollar bill from the breast pocket of my Banana Republic photog vest. There were four other, one hundred dollar bills in the pocket, all of them arranged so they could be pulled out one at a time. 

There is an art to using money, whether it’s for information, access, or even to be ignored. People believe that one needs a suitcase full of hundreds, when in reality a single $50 bill will often get the job done. I knew going in this wasn’t going to a $50 bill situation so I pulled the hundred. Even as I passed it to him, I was not sure in the moment it was the right play to be honest. Taking it, he now eyed me suspiciously “What’s this for?”, “That is for seeing me. Nothing else.”, “Or maybe you seeing me. To get an ID on Kitkat.”, “I can appreciate that, but no. I am not looking for you. I am trying to find a girl working for you.” Now Kitkat nodded. He knew in essence what I was. “Some Mommy or Daddy paying you to track their daughter down, that it?” Nodding, “That is entirely it.“, he sucked on his teeth pondering. “Is she here? You see her walking in?”, “I did not.”, “How you know I got her?” as he took a pack of cigarettes off the coffee table and lit one. “You traded a car for her.“

When Kitkat returned from the next room he was flipping through a brown leather address book that had gold leaf edges. “She lives with Loretta.” in a tone that suggested that I knew who Loretta was. I nodded all the while making a note of about where he was in the book when he looked at the address. “She’s across town, but it’s all good because we need to talk about monetary compensation for my loss.” As it would turned out Kitkat either owned, rented or out right had people squatting in run down houses across town. In turn he charged himself overly high rates for rent so he could launder his own money. 

 We came to terms quicker than I expected. From what I could tell, he was use to selling his girl’s time and body, but not necessarily use to selling people. It was KitKat who was not sure where to begin with the negotiating price, but he had mentioned the used car he had traded her for so I had an idea of where he might be monetarily speaking. He was willing to part with “Youngfine” as he called her for just over ten grand. I paid him $2,000 up front with the understanding we would meet the next day at a Perkins parking lot “neutral ground”, he called it, for the exchange. I felt fairly confident that the two grand would be forgotten by our meeting the following day. What I didn’t expect was when KitKat picked up a phone and the address book and dialed a phone number “You wanna talk to her, so you know she’s good?”. I of course wanted to speak with her, I wanted her to know someone was there for her, but more importantly I now knew KitKat didn’t have the phone number memorized. He began to dial the number.

Business concluded, KitKat asked Tiny to come in an escort me out. My pistol, spare mag, and lone round lay on the coffee table…next to the address book that was opened face down to the very address “Youngfine” was at. The plan developing in my head was done so in the moment. We shook hands and KitKat took his exit, leaving me with Tiny. Ignoring my Makarov I walked out behind the big bodyguard leaving it behind. When we got to the top of the landing a girl came over to ask Tiny something, and I tugged at my waistband pretending to just then realize what I had left in the room. “Hey man, I left my pistol. Mind if I go back in?”, engrossed in his conversation with the young lady he jerked his head toward the room. Permission granted. 

Once at the coffee table I picked up the address book, dog eared the page he had looked at, shoved it into a vest pocket, put the loose round in another pocket, slapped the magazine into the Makarov and walked out the door, stuffing the old pistol into my waistband as I did so. I was keenly aware that the gun was not chambered, but the clock was ticking. Reaching into my jeans front pocket I palmed the Spyderco Credit Card knife, blade closed, as I came out onto the catwalk balcony that led to the stairs I had come up. Tiny was now on the far side of the horseshoe shaped motel catwalk, still on the second story. In a foot chase he couldn’t catch me. It was about the fourth step down on a the first flight of stairs when I heard “Hey Mother fucker!” KitKat had come looking for his book.

Without any fanfare I jumped to the first landing, made the turn and took the second set of stairs to the ground floor. KitKat stayed with me. All the while running and trying to hold up his basketball shorts and the pistol in his waistband. As we came through a brick corridor he made his lunge. His thin but strong arm shot out, his right hand grabbing my upper right arm. Instead of pulling against him, I used the momentum of his pull on my arm to put my elbow in his mouth. The strike didn’t land as well as I hoped and he recovered quick enough to make another grab at my arm. It was about this time I saw the pistol in his left hand. Free to move, but needing to create distance, I clicked the blade open on the knife and made a rather awkward backhanded swat that I didn’t have much faith in. In my head I saw the motion as more of a direct and straight down strike. That was not what occurred however.

When the blade landed just behind the wrist bone on his arm it made a  sideways pivot. I felt the knife’s flat grip turn in my hand, the blade traveled parallel to the KitKat’s bone, deep under the skin and into the muscle of the arm. There was some resistance. Then no resistance. The blade had traveled it’s journey only to find air once more. Kitkat’s pistol clattered to the ground. The top of his forearm had been filleted from just behind the wrist to a few inches below the elbow. We both stood there for a split second realizing what had happened. He was bent over with his left hand clamped over the forearm trying to put pressure on it as blood began to spill out. Looking wounded and angry, like a hawk that had been shot, but not killed, his new found hatred and pain were pure as hell. As Kitkat turned his head to yell for Tiny I braced my hands against the door jamb, put a foot on his knee, and lunged as though taking a step upward. I felt the knee pop and he collapsed under it. I kicked the pistol back down the ground-floor passageway and made for the street. Running hard and fast for the Jeep.

From my reckoning the house were she was living was about two to three miles away and ran parallel four streets over. I got myself under control and went five over the speed limit. Getting tied up with the cops for speeding would only work against me. While it was apparent that KitKat didn’t remember the house’s phone number, I could damn sure bet he knew where it was. One might question why I chose to change the plan, as opposed to just sticking to the agreed terms. I had no reason to believe that KitKat would have stuck to the terms after having a night to reflect on it. He would have either come back with a higher dollar amount, changed his mind on letting her go, or just as likely; figure it to be some sort of trap by law enforcement and not show altogether. The opportunity had been presented and one makes hay when the sun shines. 

Confirming the address in the little book, I decided against calling the house. It was a roll of the dice, but I remain in the camp of never giving anyone a head’s up. Mom had given me a family photo, still in it’s frame from her daughter’s room before I left. The bona fides I had asked for to show Rebecca, or “YoungFine” as KitKat had called her, upon on our meeting. She would know who had sent me.

Two blocks from the house I knew I was getting close based on the house numbers and the rundown, worn out feeling of the neighborhood. The sun was out, the skies were clear, and it was an otherwise perfect afternoon. At the end of the next block I saw a lone white girl leaning over a short chainlink fence. Next to an empty lot. Gunning the Jeep’s engine I pulled up in front of her. Looking more like a hard thirty year old than eighteen, and twenty pounds under weight on an already slim frame, smoking a cigarette with her eyes closed was Rebecca. Leaning across the passenger seat, holding the family photo out the window I saw as her eyes, now open, only widened upon seeing her old life. “Tick Tock Darlin’ we gotta roll”, was all I said. “Can I grab something real quick?”, “As long as it is fast as fuck.” She sprinted barefoot inside a house that looked more like a place to shelter at the world’s end than an actual house. A moment later she returned. Just as barefoot, clutching a red backpack. A teddy bear’s head sticking out from the top. Opening the passenger side door she jumped inside in a violent and frantic fashion, as though she was fighting to stay in a surreal but wonderful dream. Crying as she tried to buckle the seat belt she apologizing for not remembering her shoes, we sped for home.

An hour later the adrenaline had worn off for both of us. We had established contact with her parents and they talked on my phone for only a few minutes. Whatever needed to be unpacked would be done at home. 

In Tulsa I bought a bag full of cheeseburgers, fries and a couple of chocolate shakes. You will often hear so-called experts talk about how a person can go weeks without food, what they fail to mention is the complicated emotional and physical states a human suffers under from a lack of nutrition. Rebecca was clearly underweight, had suffered through a series of traumas well over a year, combined with a drug and alcohol addiction. Experience had taught me a person needs not only the nutritional comfort of food, but the psychological comfort of having a surplus of it. “This is a lot of food!” She had said. I instructed her to take as much as she wanted, and in kind she handed me a cheeseburger to share. She ate her way through the bag and drained the shake, and as the mass caloric intake began to take hold, she leaned the seat back and relaxed. I handed her a fleece blanket that was rolled up and  attached to the back of the head rest. A few minutes later she was sound asleep. In an age of foodies and delicate meals, never underestimate to power of a cheeseburger to soothe a soul.

As evening gave way to night and quiet had settled inside the vehicle we were brought to a sea of red taillights as a jacked knifed tractor trailer had all of the eastbound lanes closed. Having been here before I knew the drive home was going to be delayed by at least two hours. We were not being “hunted” and as far as I knew, no one knew what our vehicle looked like. Even at that point in my career I had run thousands of hours surveillance and counter surveillance to know if we had a problem. We did not.  So taking full advantage of the situation I put the Jeep in park and closed my eyes for ten or fifteen minutes. The world still moves, no matter your own predicament. Rush hour traffic, lane closures, jack-knifed tractor trailers, escaped cattle, thunder storms, snow storms will always happen. You have to be okay with were you are, especially if it is just sitting in three miles of closed highway. Know when to be still.

When she awoke we were moving again at highway speeds and unaware that we had ever stopped. Still hours from home, we fell into conversations easily enough. Never one to shy away from the elephant in the room, while understanding that one has to have some patience in letting a conversation build itself into a direction; I was able to ask her what led to all of this. Perspective is often myopic, and what the parents knew came only from three things. The friend that had gone to them, the hour long intervention that preceded her flight into the abyss, and the phone call to the aunt. In truth, they did not know much as they believed. In truth, her spiral downward had happened in a whole other year, prior to the arrival of “the boyfriend”. Rebecca, had discovered that her mother, was having an affair with a man, a family friend. The religiosity of her up bringing stood in stark contrast to the hypocrisy she had discovered. Isolated by the secret she learned, and had kept locked away it had eaten at her. The “perfect” family life she thought she had been living all seemed like a lie. Hidden anger, depression, anxiety, all soon followed. When “the boyfriend” appeared she said “it felt like the devil came to rescue me. I knew none of it was right, but I just wanted revenge against all of it. So I just went for it.”

As adults we get use to the fallible nature of man. We learn that putting people on pedestals is a risky thing but we yearn for it, even the most jaded amongst us. But for a kid, when that first adult falls off the first pedestal the gravity is heavier, the fall longer and the impact more profound. It wasn’t that Mom didn’t believe in her own beliefs that she had passed down, it was that she just warred against her own-self.  As we talked, we discussed what going home was going to be like. I cautioned her against acting like everything is fine and I relayed what I had known about hostages who had been kept in captivity and people who had been shipwrecked and rescued. Her old life was going to feel surreal and her best bet was not to fake it. She was going home to what her family would see as a different person; she was going home as a more worldly version than they had known. “I don’t suppose you have any cigarettes?”. A few exits later I found a truck stop and bought her a pack and told her not to worry about smoking in the Jeep but, not to let my seats get burned with ash. Smoking a Marlboro Red was the least of this girl’s troubles. 

Her return was an emotional one. There, in the midnight light of a front porch she returned to them, shoeless and underweight. Her life as a prostitute fueled by drugs was undeniable. Every light in the house was on, the whole family, siblings included sat on the porch holding a simple sign that read “WE HAVE MISSED YOU!!” She leapt from the Jeep and ran to them. All of them. There was no condemnation, no anger, nor accusations only tears of joy mixed with regret.

It is often the seemingly most innocuous details that later reveal themself to play a most pivotal role. As it would turn out, the day Rebecca went into the resale shop with one of the other girls she lived with they had walked passed the glass countertop at the entrance. A day-of-the-week calendar noted the day’s date, which happened to be her youngest sister’s birthday. The kitschy quote of the day had read “Aunt’s forgive faster”. Home was beckoning. Walking through the store she passed by a stuffed teddy bear that wore a shirt saying “Littlest Sister’s give the Biggest Hugs” and a voice inside her said “buy that.” Feeling something that could not be ignored she handed the lady behind the counter all the cash she had. A five dollar bill. In turn she was given the remaining change of ninety cents. As she milled around the store waiting on the other girl, she suddenly filled with grief and the voice inside her said “It’s time to go home.” An internal conversation began. She didn’t know how to get home. The little voice, no longer so little said “I will take care of that.” Feeling overwhelmed she told her friend she was going to use the bathroom in the back of the store. There in a small alcove was a payphone. Free from observation she quickly dialed her aunt’s home phone. The automated voice instructed her to insert 90¢ to complete the call. A moment later, in the middle of the day, her aunt answered the phone.

Now in the kitchen of her parent’s home she retrieved the teddy bear. The very teddy bear whose head had been sticking out of her backpack as she fled the dilapidated row house into a stranger’s Jeep. A stranger holding her family’s picture. Handing the bear to her now eleven year old sister she said “I’m sorry I missed your birthday.”

As I drove home through the earliest hours of morning I replayed something she had said to me. There had been a length of silence and I could feel her waiting to speak. “Do you believe in God?” She asked, “Very much so. Why ?” “Because today when I was outside at the gate I was praying, asking God for help and I haven’t prayed in a really really long time. I thought maybe He had forgotten me. When I opened my eyes you were pulling up.”

It is a difficult thing to be human and, we do not sit lightly upon the surface of the Earth.