Saving Savannah

"Yes, Boss," she said. She looked back over at me then. She had a smile on her face but her eyes were barely above slits. "Savannah come on back to your room so we can figure out what sizes you'll need in everything," she said.

I could hear her grumbling as we walked down the hall. When we got back into my room I cornered her.

"Look Kerrie, I know you don't like me. I'm just another what did you call me?...A lost puppy. Well I can't help that. But I promise you that I'm not trying to hurt you or take anything away from you. I will not try to get in between anything going on between the two of you. Any time you need me to make myself scarce all you have to do is tell me and I'll find somewhere to go so I don't intrude on your uhm...privacy."

Her mouth dropped open, then and for a few minutes she didn't say anything. I could tell she was really angry and then she just started laughing like there was no tomorrow.

"You...think that you....Hah ha ha ha...snort," then she started pointing at me and started laughing again.

From the way she was pointing at me and laughing it was clear that she didn't think that I was a threat to her.

"Okay maybe my tits aren't very big and I don't have a bunch of tattoos," I said. "But men like me."

She started laughing even louder then. She fell into a chair and I noticed that she was actually crying, she was laughing so hard. Then as quickly as it started, it stopped and she looked at me again.

"Wait a minute," she said suddenly. "You like him don't you?" Then she started laughing again. She wiped her face and came over and patted me on my head like I was a dog. I didn't like that at all.

"Honey, don't get your panties in a bunch. At least not until I go out and buy you some," she said smiling. "First off, whatever made you think that something was going on between Greg and me?"

"You told me before that you love him," I said.

"I do," she smiled. "A hell of a lot too, but not the way you think. Well...not anymore. If you'd showed up a few years ago, I'd have beaten your little ass and hid the body somewhere, but now I'd be the happiest woman on earth if the two of you did hook up."

I just looked at her.

"Savannah, I am you. Or I was five years ago. Five years ago my mom and dad threw me out of the house. I was too wild for them to control. I ended up down here with my uncle. He's the county judge. He couldn't control me either. I left his house and tried to get a job as a waitress or anything else I could do. Nobody down here would hire me. Greg runs a bunch of businesses on his property. He has a small part run CNC manufacturing shop, a small warehousing operation and several online businesses all housed on his property. Back then, Savannah, I was one of his lost puppies too. He hired me and taught me most of what I know now. When he thought I could do more, he sent me up to the community college and I got my degree. Now I manage everything for him."

"For a while, I really did have a crush on him. He is the best guy I know. But Honey, emotionally, he's kind of broken. Something happened to him before he came here. It kind of makes him keep his distance from people. I know about it and so does my uncle, they're fishing buddies. The Sheriff hangs out with them too. But nobody else around here knows anything about him before he showed up here. He does so much for the town as far as helping out and what not. He doesn't go to the church himself, but he's probably the biggest contributor they have for any of their programs. After Katrina he pretty much single handedly made sure the town was okay. As far as this town is concerned, he's the guy. But he doesn't ever ask for anything. He just wants to live and let live." She shrugged her shoulders.

"Oh alright, I'm lying, he does have a tendency to drive way too God damned fast and they don't ticket him, but that's really it. And as for me, I have someone in my life. You'll meet Pete later. He works for Greg too. And he looks like me." Then she looked at me and started laughing again.

She'd given me a lot to think about. She looked at me and smiled. "I can see that you'll be needing smaller sizes on top."

Over the next couple of days, I got settled in at Greg's house. The house was one of those old Antebellum mansions, that was probably a tobacco plantation at one time. Greg had gutted the entire structure and renovated it. He'd had it landscaped and added a pool and a deck as well. He'd also built several outbuildings on the property to house his businesses. It had all been done in an extremely tasteful manner. The buildings for the businesses couldn't be seen from the road. They were also downhill from the house and you had to really know where to look to spot them.

For me living in that house was a huge adjustment. The room they gave me was bigger than the entire shack that I'd been living in. And everything was so clean. Probably the hardest thing for me to adjust to was the fact that I didn't have to do anything.

I had my own bathroom that I didn't have to share with anyone. There was a television in my room. But I could also watch the huge TV in the media room. Kerrie warned me that there were certain times that Greg and his friends watched football and NASCAR there.

I didn't see Greg my first few days there. Apparently there were complications with his injury and he had to stay longer than they thought. The first time I realized he was home was one afternoon when someone knocked on my door.

"It's open," I said. The door swung in on its well-oiled hinges.

"Hi," was all he said. It was enough to make me almost spit out the piece of my sandwich that I was chewing. I inhaled while I was trying to avoid spitting on his floor and ended up choking.

"Uhm, sorry," I said straightening up. "I didn't know you were here...er home...uhm back."

"I've been home for a long time," he said. "Almost an hour."

"How's the arm?" I asked. He lifted the cast and smiled.

"Healing," he said. "It itches like crazy though. And I can't do any of those little tricks like sticking something inside the cast to scratch it, because I might rip some of my stitches."

"I'm so sorry," I said. "I kind of feel like it was my fault that this happened to you." His eyes got really big. I swear I've never seen eyes that were that expressive. I was ready to hear him say something like, "Well, it really was your fault. I was helping you." What he said instead shocked the shit out of me.

"I was thinking the exact same thing," he said. "That what happened to you was my fault."

I looked at him and saw that he was serious. "How was what happened to me your fault?" I asked. "A psychotic bunch of guys kidnapped me and..." My words trailed off as I thought about it.

"You can come in here," I said. He was standing outside of the door. "You do remember that this is your house?"

"But this is your room, for now," he said. "So I'd never want to go where I wasn't wanted or violate your privacy." There it was again, that weird feeling that there was just something different about this guy. If there was anybody that I'd want to have violating anything I had, it was him.

Something that he'd said stuck with me too. He'd said, "It was MY room, for now." That 'for now' bothered me. I wanted it to just be my room.

"Please come in and have a seat," I said. "I tried to be as polite and as formal as he seemed to be."

"There is something that really has been bothering me and I'd like to talk about it," I said. He walked in and sat down. He was about to sit on the edge of the bed and then he just stiffened and pulled out a chair from the desk. He had to pull the heavy chair out one handed so I laughed while he didn't see me.

"How come you didn't just sit on the edge of the bed like you were going to do?" I asked teasingly. I'd gotten a glimpse into his personality and manners big time. It just seemed so funny that a guy who was so plugged into technology and all of that crap could be so old fashioned at the same time.

"So what's bothering you?" he asked. "If there's something that you need all you have to do is ask and..."

"Why DID you leave me that day?" I asked. "I just don't understand. WE were getting along great. You'd almost gotten my car started. And then you just left. Did you have something extremely important to get back to? I just don't understand."

He looked down at the floor. "I'm really sorry," he said. "I had no idea. I just never thought..."

"You couldn't have known what they'd do," I said. "You aren't to blame for the actions of a group of people you don't even know. I just wondered why you left. I didn't want you to go. I'd rather that you had stayed and even if you couldn't fix my car..."

"Well one of them said he was a mechanic," he said.

"None of them were shit," I spat. "They towed my car behind their truck and sold it off piece by piece. They chained me to a wall in their house and raped me every day, sometimes multiple times daily for over a year. One of them even got me pregnant." His eyes opened wider at that.

"I barely had any food to eat. And they had no problems with hitting me," I didn't realize it but my voice was getting louder. Some of the rage and anger I'd been holding in was coming to the surface and once it started there was simply no stopping it.

"I was nineteen years old. I was barely out of my dad's house. I lost a year and a half of my life. I'm twenty-one now. I don't even remember being twenty. All I remember is being starved and beaten and fucked. Fucked, fucked, fucked, over and over again whether I wanted it or not. And just between you and me, I never wanted it. I had only had sex a handful of times before it happened. They used me more in my first day in that shack, than I had ever done in my life before then."

"Do you know what they did if I even tried to say no?" He shook his head. "They'd still force me, they just enjoyed it more and they were much rougher on me. So I learned to just lay there and take it. I learned several little tricks in my head to just take me away from it. That lady psychologist that the hospital sent to talk to me, she doesn't have a fucking clue."

"She uses all kinds of big words that I barely understand, but the gist of it is that she thinks I'm fucked in the head. She says things like I'll probably never have a normal loving relationship for the rest of my life. The joke is on her though, because I've never had a normal loving relationship anyway. I've never had a relationship period, normal or otherwise. One second I was a flat-chested girl dreaming of princes and unicorns that nobody ever looked at twice and the next second every man I meet including my brother and my own God damned father wants to FUCK me. The second after that, I'm chained to a wall and every man in the house, all four of them, get to do it any time they want, sometimes one after another. Now I'm free, I'm going to have some guy's baby when I still think of myself as being a baby."

I was screaming at him by then. I'd asked him to come into the room not because I wanted to rail at him, but because I just wanted to talk to him. He was so shy and I really was drawn to him. But I ended up screaming at him.

"So forgive me if I'm imposing on you but I really just wanted to know why the hell you left me with those men?"

By that time there were people gathered outside of the room. My screaming had brought people quickly.

"Because I thought it would be better for all concerned," he said quietly. "This is after all the south. Things have changed a lot, but then again they haven't changed that much."

"What the hell are you talking about?" I asked. "Maybe I'm stupid but I don't see this."

"They're your kind of people," he said.

"So you think I'm an inbred, redneck rapist?" I screamed. He shook his head. "Then what the hell is my kind of people? I know you're from up north and I'm from Mississippi. I guess you went to college and I'm just a redneck girl but what the hell is my kind of people?"

"Savannah," he said. It was the first time I'd ever heard him say my name. Shivers went down my spine. It wasn't just THAT he said it, it was the way he said it. People from the south have a way of butchering southern things. When we say "New Orleans" and it comes out "Norlins," it takes away some of the beauty and the charm of the name. The same way southerners and Cajuns pronounce Savannah. Most of them truncate the first syllable and stretch out the middle one. So my name comes out sounding like "S'vayanna." But when he said my name I understood all of that bullshit I'd read in the witchcraft books in the library about how a person's name can give you power over them. I wanted to hear him say Savannah for the rest of my life."

Even as he said it, he treated my name like it was a very precious thing. I was in heaven, but only for a fraction of a second. In the time it took him to utter that fraction of a sentence he took me higher than the clouds only to slam me bodily into the ground. In just that second that it took him to begin, I realized that skydiving would never be for me, because going that high only to be dashed back to earth was foolish.

I also wondered how in the same breath any human being could lift my spirits that high only to dash all of my hopes by spouting such utter bullshit.

"Savannah, I'm a black man and you're a wh..."

"Don't you even finish that God damned thought," I screamed. Luckily for me Kerrie stepped into the room and saved us before either one of us said something that we wouldn't have been able to take back.

"Savannah," said Kerrie. Strangely enough when she said my name I didn't feel shit. "Remember, the psychologist said that you were going to be prone to outbursts as the shock wears off from what you've been through. Maybe I should get you one of those sedatives, she prescribed. And Greg, Honey you're supposed to be resting and eating until you build your blood volume back up."

The deputy who'd been there looked at me curiously. I couldn't make out the expression. He just tipped his cowboy hat and said, "Ma'am, I had been expecting to ask if you felt up to answering any questions. There's also the fact that the Drucker woman wants to speak to you. But I'll wait for a better time. You need to just take your time. After what you've been through, it's gonna take a while before you're back sittin' straight in the saddle."

They all left the room and as soon as the door shut I fell on the bed and started crying. I didn't realize that anyone had come in until I felt a soft hand stroking my hair.

"Savannah, what's wrong?" she asked.

"Kerrie, I really messed that up," I cried. "I just wanted to talk to him. I don't know where all of that screaming and yelling came from. I just wanted to thank him for saving me and for taking me into his own house and the next thing I know I was screaming at him like an old Harpie. I messed it all up and now he'll never want to talk to me again."

"Savannah, calm down," she said. "It's not that bad. He's spoken to your doctors too. Everyone knows that you went through a traumatic ordeal and that you're going to have all kinds of things to go through before you're whole again. We're all your friends, so we understand. By tomorrow both of you will probably have gotten over this. But I'm going to tell you something, girl. You have to stop flashing like that. You're giving everything away."

"What am I giving away?" I asked.

"Savannah, you know that a woman doesn't let a guy she's interested in know it too early. You want him to have to work for it some. If he thinks he can have you too easy, it's not good for the relationship. You were so busy screaming at him that he probably didn't notice it and the other guys are men too. But you were being way to frigging obvious."

"What are you talking about?" I asked.

"Well, when he said your name, I thought your eyes were going to roll back in your head. And the whole time you were yelling at him you were moving closer and closer to him and your nipples were standing out, a lot. You may not have much in the way of boobs but those nipples get as hard as diamonds, don't they?" I started blushing.

"Kerrie, I don't know about any of that stuff," I said.

"Well, just act you did with your other boyfriends at first," she said. "You're already moving towards the stage where you've been with him for years."

"Kerrie, I've never had a boyfriend," I said. She just looked at me strangely.

"This is going to be a lot of work," she sighed.

The next morning, as Kerrie and I had breakfast together, I got to meet her boyfriend, Pete. It was quite an experience. Pete was very tall, over six feet, but I don't know how much over. He had long hair like those guys from all of the rock bands in the nineties. He had tattoos everywhere. Both of his arms from shoulder to wrist were covered. He even had several tattoos on his neck. He, like Kerrie, had several piercings on his face. I'm sure it was a very normal, modern thing to do because I met several other young people over the course of the next few days that had them.

"Hi, I'm Pete," he said to me, holding out a giant hand with several tattoos on it. I didn't want to be rude so I shook it. He sat down next to Kerrie and across from me. As he grabbed for the pitcher of coffee his phone rang. The ring tone was a song. It was dark and moody and seemed to fit his personality.

"Evanescence," he said to me as he answered the phone. He spoke into the phone quickly and continued to grab slices of bacon and muffins loading up his plate as he spoke. Then suddenly he yelled into the phone. "Shut it down now," he yelled. "Don't do a fucking thing until I get there."

He leaned over and grabbed his plate full of bacon, muffins and fruit. He kissed Kerrie and shrugged his shoulders. "So much for a leisurely breakfast, babe," he said.

"What happened?" asked Kerrie.

"The new guy I hired last week is running that HAAS milling center. The coolant levels were low and he wasn't paying any attention. He burned out the cutter and ran almost a complete pallet of out of tolerance parts. All he had to do was pour the pre-mixed coolant into the frigging machine. This is going to cost us money and time. I've got to go." He looked over at me.

"I've heard a lot about you Savannah. I'm looking forward to getting to know you. We have to get you some ink and maybe a decoration or two..." Before he could say anything else, I noticed Kerrie elbowing him and shaking her head.

"Well, see you around," he said.

He seemed really nice, but his appearance was going to take some getting used to. I wondered how he managed to stay so pale in the heat of the south. Kerrie was amazingly white as well. I'd have to ask them about it someday.

Kerrie gave me a tour of the property. I got to see the building where Pete worked and all of the machines that made all kinds of parts. I got to see another building where they warehoused all kinds of items that were sold at a variety of online stores. Kerrie told me they had several different ebay stores and sold hundreds of different items. They shipped them directly to the customers from the warehouse and they had deliveries and pickups from UPS several times a day.

She also showed me their computer lab. I guess that was where some of those kids worked, if you could call what they did work. All I saw them doing was playing games and doing stuff on the internet. But I didn't know enough about computers to be able to tell. For all I knew they could have been doing research into curing cancer. I was never much of a computer person. The last thing Kerrie did was to show me the rest of the house. She showed me a lot of things that I'd never seen including her office where she managed all of the different businesses. Each business had a manager, like Pete ran the manufacturing shop, but all of those managers answered to Kerrie. She also handled the payroll. She had a couple of accountants who came in starting at about nine a.m. to do the book keeping and account work but they answered to her too.