Drawn Into Darkness(50)

Quinn took a moment to lean back in his expensively comfortable desk chair, checking on his own emotional weather. It startled and gratified him that he and Forrie seemed to be on the same page for once. But it also gave him kind of a chill he didn’t like. Forrie wouldn’t be going anywhere unless he felt afraid, as Quinn felt afraid, that something serious had happened to Mom.

• • •

Down on my hands and knees on the rough wooden floor, at gunpoint, trying to gather goopy remnants of dead snake with a scrap of cardboard, I considered that Zeno or any other Stoic had nothing on me when it came to accepting the vicissitudes of life.

“Hurry up,” Stoat said.

Why? It wasn’t like we were going anywhere. “I need a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser,” I said, thinking of the hypercivilized ads on TV and trying to joke.

“Just shut up and do it.” Stoat sounded extra cranky. I realized he had to be in a great deal of pain, although he would never say it or show it. But surely he felt like killing something. While keeping his shotgun close at hand, he had his knife out also and was flicking it into the table over and over again, as if practicing to improve his short-range accuracy. Cold little lizard feet of fear scampered up my spine, and I hurried to collect the ophidian carnage and carry it outdoors, where, I had decided, I would just keep going. Starving in a wilderness would be way better than being terrorized by Stoat.

But it was as if he had read my mind. “Stop right there,” he ordered as I reached the back door. “Stay where you are and pitch the stuff outside and come back here.”

“But I need to go to the privy!” The moment I said this, it became suddenly and urgently true.

“Privy,” he mocked. “What the hell is a privy?”

I tried again. “I need to pee.”

“Too bad. Either hold it or else squat where I can see you.”

“You’ve got to be kidding.”

He raised the shotgun and thumbed back one of the hammers with a click.

“Okay, okay!” I threw my cardboard and its contents into the bushes, decided I was going to have to delay urination a little longer, and came back inside to look at the snake blood on the floor. No way could I get it up without a scrub brush and water.

“Would you like something to eat?” I asked Stoat as a diversion.

“Hell, no. I still feel like I’m gonna puke. You eat if you want to.”

This was going to be a very long day. Unless it was shortened by death, either his or mine.

And if he was going to die from the snakebite, I would have thought he’d be doing it by now. Damn.

Although not really hungry, I decided to eat for the sake of something to do, or, more important, something for Stoat to watch me do. I needed to keep him occupied in ways that did not involve shooting me. Looking around our too-cozy hut, I found the multiple-purpose pocket tool. Had Justin intentionally left it for me? Was there any way I could use it to escape from Stoat? Both questions drowned, answerless, in my swampy mind as I looked over the selection of possible food. I saw no cans missing. If Justin hadn’t taken the can opener and something to eat, what the heck kind of plan could he have? My whole body weakened with worry for him.

I made myself open a can of peaches and sit down at the table across from Stoat and his gun.

“I hope you don’t really think I threw that rattlesnake at you on purpose,” I told Stoat after a while. “I’m not crazy. It’s just that you surprised me, that’s all, and I thought it was the other snake.”

It was difficult to interpret any expression on his grotesquely swollen face and in his one functional eye. But as far as I could tell, he was staring at me as if I were the freak.

“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” I said, which, strictly speaking, was true. I had meant only to escape from him. And looking at him gave me an extreme case of mixed feelings. Vengefully glad I had wreaked such damage. Appalled, shuddering, to know I had grabbed a rattlesnake with my bare hand. Sorry for him, sorry about his pain, and I couldn’t believe my own empathy for this creep. Even more unbelievably, I felt grudging admiration for him; the bastard was so tough he wouldn’t give in to the poison in his system. He refused to pass out or even lie down.

My face must have shown far too much. “Don’t you dare pity me!” Stoat growled. I sensed he would have liked to shout, but his breathing was too shallow, his face pearled with sweat, and a pulse pounded in his temple. “I thank you for this goddamn pain because it means I can’t sleep and you ain’t got a chance in hell to get away until I feel better, at which point you’re going to be the one to die, Miss Lee Anna. I advise you to keep that in mind.”