Drawn Into Darkness(9)

Justin came running in. “Stop it!” he exclaimed with no threat in his voice; he sounded frightened. Grabbing my shoulders to hold me down, his face hovering over mine, he begged, “Stop it, ma’am. Fighting only makes it worse. Believe me.”

I looked up at him, and as if what had happened to Schweitzer were not bad enough, I saw something unspeakable shadowing his eyes. There was nothing blank about this boy. I stopped struggling, but my body still heaved, now with hurtful sobs. My ribs and belly ached, I cried so hard.

“I’m sorry,” Justin said, “I’m sorry,” as if it were all his fault. “Lie still.” He disappeared someplace and came back with a box of tissues plus a moistened washcloth. Sitting on the edge of my bed, he wiped snot and tears from my face, pulled the knotted gag out of my mouth and tucked it under my chin, then helped me blow my nose. “Please try to calm down before Uncle Steve gets back,” he urged, folding the washcloth to lay its cool, clean side on my forehead. “I have no idea what he’ll do if you cry. He hates women.”

That statement instantly stopped my bawling. It made a soldier of me. I am woman, hear me roar. I stared up at Justin. “He’s not your uncle,” I stated with barely a quiver in my voice.

“I’ve got to call him that.”

“You’re not a woman, but I bet he likes to make you cry too.”

Justin did not reply except with shifting eyes. With a fresh tissue he swabbed my face like the deck of a storm-drenched ship.

I said, “Justin, what about your mother? Do you want her to keep crying?”

“Don’t talk about my mother.”

“Why are you still here? Your family wants you back. What are you waiting for?”

He shook his head, stood up, and went to look out a window toward my house. Then he disappeared into some other part of the shack and came back again with a roll of gauze. Moving quickly, he started wrapping my ankle where the handcuffs—I couldn’t see the handcuffs, but that’s what the metal things had to be—where they had cut and bloodied me.

“Justin—” I started to question him again.

“Don’t talk.” He shoved the gag back into my mouth. “I have to hurry and do this.”

He had finished my ankles and was starting on one wrist when we heard the door open. I stiffened. Justin kept on wrapping gauze. I heard footsteps stop at the bedroom door. Stoat demanded, “Whatcha doing that for?”

“You want her to bleed all over the mattress?” Justin’s soft, husky voice made this retort sound peaceable enough.

I could not see Stoat and did not want to look at him, but I imagined he’d decided in Justin’s favor during a long, silent moment. He gave a raspy laugh. “She threw a fit when I shot her dog, huh?”

“Yes, sir,” Justin said tonelessly, bandaging my other wrist.

“Well, I didn’t do it out of meanness. You know that. She should know that. It was the only sensible way to take care of the dog, what with him yapping all the time till somebody might notice.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And if the damn dog would have stood still, it would only have taken one shot.”

“Yes, sir.” Justin finished my wrist and stood up.

Stoat told him, “Now get out of here, and I don’t want you in here with her. I’ll take care of her.”

Sure, he would, I thought, forced to face it now. Same way he took care of Schweitzer.

I just wondered how soon.





THREE





By nightfall I almost did not care how soon. My back ached atrociously, and when I tried to ease my joints—hip, knee, elbow—the metal bit into my wrists and ankles. It would have hurt much worse if Justin hadn’t wrapped them, but it still hurt some. And I had to keep flexing my feet and hands because even in the subtropical heat I felt them going cold and numb, losing blood circulation. Maybe because I couldn’t move, or maybe because I was so scared. I had to be strong, I coached myself. Take care of myself. Flex my muscles, keep myself ready to move, watch my thoughts.

Trying to be more bored than frightened, I examined the perforated white tiles—what were those things made of, anyway, Styrofoam?—and I tried to see patterns in the squares on the ceiling. And in the overhead light fixture, but it was just the usual two bulbs covered with a frosted-glass square bug-catcher. The hermaphroditic positioning of the lightbulbs gave me mental fodder for a few moments but nothing uplifting. I felt my backache getting worse, plus discomfort from pressure points on the mattress; I began to understand how people got bedsores, and I badly wished somebody had thrown a blanket over me, covering me, if only for psychological comfort. But I didn’t make a sound. Didn’t want Stoat’s company. Neither he nor Justin—what was Justin’s real last name? My memory had dropped it somewhere between here and the living room. Anyhow, neither of them came near me. I smelled macaroni and cheese, supper, but nobody offered me any, which made me feel starved and abused even though my knotted stomach would not possibly have let me eat it. When I thought divorce was the best way to lose weight quickly, I was wrong. Being a prisoner in fear of one’s life looked even more effective.