[more third person]
Tonasket, 1986...Her mom was in the shed outside with Mister Hendricksen, who wasn't her father, 'working mommy's job'. On the television, Big Bird was trying to get Maria to understand that Mister Snuffleuppagus was real. Lisa thought that was really funny-that the adults couldn't see Big Bird's best friend.
Lisa wished she had a friend like snuffy. it would be better than being in the house alone while mommy worked for Mister Hendricksen out in the steel shed out back, but maybe momma would be worried if she started having friends like that.
Momma worried a lot. This was the third place they'd lived this year, and she didn't like some of the things Mister Hendricksen did to her mother at night.
Not one bit, but he was better than George, who tried to make Lisa take her pants off and that was why they left Oroville.
On the television, the police are friendly, but Lisa knew that her mother was afraid of them, though why, she didn't know, only that before Oroville, when they were in St. Helens, Lisa talked to a friendly police officer in the store, and they had to leave St. Helens in a hurry at night, and all her toys and most of her stuff.
the sun was up, but she could see bright red and blue flashes on the window-shades, and so she hid, because that's what her mother told her to do when red and blue lights were nearby, and Lisa was a good girl and did what she was told.
there was a noise from the front of the house-the loudest smash she'd ever heard, and from her hiding place under the sink, she could hear boots slamming through the house.
There was shouting outside, and inside the trailer. "Police! everyoen come out!!"
Lisa stayed where she was hiding, as boots tramped in the kitchen, and she heard cupboards opening, and slamming closed.
But then, she heard her mother yelling at someone, words indistinct, and a wt smack she'd heard before.
Lisa came out of the cupboard and latched onto the first thing she saw-a man's leg, and she sank her teeth into it...
"BOOM!!"
"Jesus CHRIST BEKKER!! You moron!!" there was another man there, holding the man sh e'd bit by the arm, lifting both of them off the floor, "YOU ALMOST SHOT A KID!!"
the man holding Bekker off the ground, lifted Lisa away from him with ease, and surprising gentleness. "We. do.not.shoot blind!!" the man's skin was the same color as coffee, or chocolate, and he was big.
Lisa had learned a lot at home, when momma wasn't busy. the word on the chest of the big dark man was 'Monroe' and it was right across from a star-shaped badge.
"What's your name?" he asked gently, careful not to hold her so it hurt-unlike how Mister Hendricksen would sometimes grab her.
"I'm Lisa, where's my
mommy!?"
"Hello, Lisa, I'm Linus."
"It says monroe on your chest!"
"That's my last name, My first name is Linus...Your mommy is in a lot of trouble, Lisa..."
Lisa didn't miss that Bekker, whose shirt under the black was green, was running out the door, the sound of retching outside.
For three days, Lisa stayed with Linus and his wife, while someone from his wife's work tried to find relatives.
***
the place Linus took her after three days was strange, the house was huge, it had windows near the ground and wasn't skirted, and it wasn't an apartment. The old man who met the car out front, was skinny-looking and wrinkled.
it would take until they let Lisa see her mommy in jail before she believed these people at this big house far from town were her family, that she had a grandpa and grandmama, and that the red-haired girl in cowboy boots yelling at the men was her Auntie-because momma never talked about having sisters, or brothers, or parents, except when she drilled Lisa in 'cover stories'-which were lies to keep them both safe.
It would be years before she learned
what her mother had been hiding her from, and why when the television started talking about superheroes, Aunty Cindy would either change the channel, or turn it off and refuse to turn it on for the rest of the night.
[Now, back to Lisa-vision]
2008..."...this is where your uncle Troy died, where Sun-Primal tore his arms out of their sockets." Cindy explained. "He was one of the six that hit us that day, looking for your mom."
"oh jesus, Grandad said Troy died in an
accident!"
"Yeah, we invent stories to tell ourselves, when the truth's...worse." Cindy told her, "Margot shot the son of a bitch, it took her nine tries to kill him, and while she was trying, he was tearing our oldest brother apart with his bare hands."
"Margot? she hates guns!"
"Yeah...she got three of them, Lisa-regeneration doesn't help if you knock out the brain-stem, and powers aren't much good if you're so hooked on having them you don't realize your 'bulletproof' can be overcome with enough gun...come on."
I follow her out past the former equipment shed.
"This is where uncle Gerald was killed. He managed to go down fighting, and took Speedvixen down before he bled out. wounded Mister Moonshadows too, I was supposed to be hiding over there-" she points at the well-house, "only I wasn't, which is why Mister Mooney didn't come out of the shade of the pumps and grab me. Instead, I was over where they killed Jack, and I had his carbine, so when Moonshadow popped out under the truck we had parked there, I didn't even really have to aim-pop-pop-pop and half-jellied brains everywhere." she pauses, "That was the first night, they killed eight of our hired people, both of the boys, and wounded dad, but we got three of them before we legged it for the north stretch."
"Why are you telling me about this
now?"
"answers, truth, the fact you have the powers your mom joined that cult to get?" Cindy shrugged, "because I have to make it make some kind of sense to
me what happened all those years ago? most of the hands who survived the siege moved on before the end of the year. I think the only guy in the area who remembers is old man Marsden, and that's because he was on the gun line with us when the last of them assaulted the cabin on the north side of the property. He lost two of HIS sons, the third one, your friend Isaac's father? was in Pullman. he skipped the fighting and what had to come after, skipped having to clean up the aftermath..."
"What did you do?"
"We loaded the bodies into a wood-chipper and buried whatever we couldn't get rid of any other way." she tells me, "at that time, you have to understand, Dad was in with some
extremely bad people out of asia, and at that time, a 911 call had a response time measured in
hours anyway. we disposed of the bodies, reported the deaths of my brothers, buried their remains where you've seen the headstones, and tried to pretend everything was normal...but dad did manage to end his overseas business relationship, told them the cops were getting too close, even accused them of ratting us out to DEA." she sighed, "You and your mom were in the wind-we didn't even KNOW about you until Linus Monroe showed up two years later and I found out I was an Aunt. Dad might've known something, but even if he did?"
"yeah?"
"He wouldn't have talked...but the Cultists, they didn't know he didn't know anything, or maybe they did, they didn't get your location from us, and we killed the ones who came looking."
