by Zoje Stage
“You can’t control everything,” said Tilda.
“I know. You shouldn’t listen to me all the time.”
Imogen wished she could see her sister’s face. “No, that’s not the problem. I should listen to you, but you should listen to me too—we have to listen to each other, all of us. So yes, I will do what you tell me. But if I have an idea you should listen in return. We keep missing each other’s cues. We’re running out— We have to keep trying.”
“Agreed, yes,” Beck said, sounding a bit revived.
“If only we could get the gun from him,” said Tilda.
“Maybe, somehow, we can get him to stay—here or at Slate—long enough to trigger our rescue,” Imogen said, thinking aloud. She wasn’t quite sure how they’d cope with so many more days in his volatile company, but at least they’d be alive. “Afiya would be the first to know we weren’t back, how long would she wait to call someone?”
“Knowing her, about fifteen minutes past the ETA I gave her. Especially if I didn’t call or text.”
“That could work,” Tilda said.
“You guys…” Beck’s voice faltered, full of emotion. “I hate to put her through all that worry. She’s pregnant and you know how hard it was…” She choked on her words.
“She’s pregnant?” Imogen leaned up a little, and felt Tilda do the same.
“She wasn’t showing,” Tilda said. “She didn’t say anything.”
“She’ll—we’ll—be crushed if we lose another pregnancy.”
“Oh, Beck—”
“And I have to be there for her, for them.”
“You will.” Imogen wanted to embrace her so badly. All she could do was inch her shoulder a little closer, blow a kiss toward the back of her neck.
“She’ll be at thirteen weeks when we get back. We were going to tell you then.”
“I’m sorry, Beck,” Tilda said.
Imogen was sure Tilda knew about one of the miscarriages, but maybe not both. Imogen was in awe of the strength and faith it took for Beck and Afiya to keep trying. It wasn’t fair that their love wasn’t enough to give them the child they both so wanted.
“And I’m sorry I’m saying sorry when I should be saying congratulations.”
“Maybe you should tell him,” Imogen said, suddenly inspired. “He might think you’re lying now, but maybe he’d understand, sympathize. He started all this to try to see his daughter and granddaughter—why didn’t you say something?”
“We told people too soon before. And there’s no way he was going to be the first person I told.”
For all Beck’s ability to boss people around, it struck Imogen that she could be a little clueless about human nature.
“Imogen’s right. He’s a fucking monster but he has a soft spot for babies. This is something you could really connect to him with.”
“I don’t want to connect with—”
“It’s a strategy, Beck,” Imogen snapped. “Remember how I just said we should listen to each other? Tell him every fucking thing—tell him how you’re going to decorate the baby’s room, tell him what names you’re considering. For fuck’s sake, tell him about Afiya’s miscarriages. Make him see you as someone he relates to, that’s what the experts would say!”
In the silence that followed, Gale’s snores were oddly reassuring.
“You really do watch too much TV,” Beck said, ending the standoff.
Sometimes when Beck told her that, Imogen interpreted it as a judgment. But now it helped to squelch her anger. “Yeah. I’ll save your dumb ass with everything I’ve learned from TV.”
Behind her, Tilda snorted, and Imogen had the sense for the first time in eons that Tilda was really listening to her.
Beck conceded. “Okay. When I get a chance, when it feels natural and not like a ploy, I’ll tell him.”
“Good.” Tilda sighed—tired or satisfied or vexed, Imogen couldn’t tell.
“But…we should prepare ourselves. Mentally. To be ruthless. Because that could be what it takes. We can’t shy away. You’ve seen what he can do.”
Maybe, given the evolution of their captivity, their options were only going to become bleaker, more desperate. But hearing Beck verbalize the need to kill him brought home a reality that Imogen wasn’t sure she could face. She was notoriously bad at fighting back—though this time she had advance warning. She needed to wrap her head around it. Change her inner monologue and start thinking of herself as a survivalist, willing to do anything.
“Can you do that? Kill him? What about ‘First, do no harm’?” Tilda asked.
Imogen had been wondering about that too. “Is Gale technically your patient?”
“That isn’t actually part of the Hippocratic oath,” Beck said.
“Seriously?” said Tilda.
“Nope. Nothing even close. And Gale understands self-defense as a means for doing whatever’s necessary. We have to be able to do that too. Train yourself now, mentally. Think about what you don’t want to lose. We may only get one chance.”
“I want to have kids someday too,” Tilda said softly. “Jalal would be a good dad.”
“You finally got a good one,” Beck said.
“I did.”
They were the last words any of them spoke for the night.
Imogen didn’t want to know what Beck was mulling over, what brutality she was replaying in her mind to ready herself to act (like Gale) without hesitation. Or maybe she was only dreaming about a future where she held her infant son or daughter, with her brilliant, gorgeous wife at her side. Tilda was probably creating a family for herself, too, the future she didn’t want to lose.
Who was Imogen supposed to live for?
No one knew, but in recent years she’d started fantasizing about being a mother. Sometimes children appeared in her mind out of nowhere to live out a moment—sharing a meal, talking through a difficult life lesson. Occasionally she would wonder what her day would be like if the girl or boy she passed in the library or grocery store were hers. But her maternal love was for the possibility of a moment, not a duration of forever.
Oh, how emotional she could get, her heart well trained from years of writing to fully bloom for even the less-than-real and most ephemeral of souls. Because I’m a writer. A false narrative had lurked in her subconscious for a year, telling her her contributions to the world—to tikkun olam—were inconsequential. But it wasn’t true. Even a creepy mystery book could look meaningfully at the human condition. And just then, the young heroine from her unwritten fairy tale appeared in her mind—to remind her she didn’t yet exist. To beg Imogen to bring her to life. I have more stories to tell.
That was reason enough, wasn’t it? Something to fight for? She had as much right to be who she was as anyone else. And she was remembering more of the dreams she’d long since buried.
Though she didn’t want to be a mother, she pondered the possibility of being an aunt.
She didn’t have much experience with babies, but she made herself imagine swaddling a niece or nephew, its little face bursting with delight as Imogen cooed and described, in a baby voice, the adult doings of the world. It hadn’t seemed urgent, after the earlier announcements, to put a plan in motion; she thought she had seven months or more to figure it out. Not this time. Now she knew there was only right now.
Should she move to Flagstaff? Was that even realistic?
So many things, even under preposterous conditions, reminded her of the race she was losing—the race she hadn’t bothered to sign up for. The race in which she watched everyone speed past her while she made no effort to keep up. She didn’t mind that Beck was winning the race, but she didn’t want to be left so far in the dust that she couldn’t join the celebration at the finish line. She wanted her sister’s child to know her. One way or another, she was certain she wanted to have a meaningful role in this child’s life.
First things first: they all had to get home. Imogen drifted to sleep with images of herself enraged and ferocious. She might
be able to kill for her sister’s chance to be a mom, and her own chance to love someone unconditionally.
33
Imogen was outside, sitting cross-legged in the middle of Beck’s backyard. A tiny brown child ran around her in circles, squealing, and the ponderosa pines, silent but friendly neighbors, waved and grinned from the sidelines. A warm wind swept through Imogen’s hair, across her skin, so comforting, until…it turned from warm to hot, hot to blistering, and the sky morphed from blue to orange. The child started screaming, its curly Afro alight with flames.
The screaming woke her. Beck’s dream home was gone and in the darkness Imogen wasn’t sure where she was. Beside her something writhed, the frantic undulations of…Tilda. Tied up. Bucking against her restraints. A banshee yell ricocheted off the rocky enclosure.
A flashlight blinked on and a haggard man—their captor—stumbled over.
“What’s going—”
“Help me!” Tilda wailed. “Help me!”
“What’s the—”
“My hand!”
Beck and Imogen tried to roll over, to see what was wrong, but of course they couldn’t do more than strain their heads. Gale directed the flashlight toward something behind them, presumably Tilda’s bound hands.
“Oh shit!” Suddenly more awake, he fumbled around, grabbed a fist-sized rock.
“What is it?” Imogen screeched. But given the hour and where they were, she knew it was likely one of two things, and both were bad. Both were poisonous.
Gale slammed the rock down a few inches beyond Tilda. For good measure, he picked it up and hammered again.
“Scorpion.” He sounded relieved, now that it was dead. Tilda, no longer screaming, sobbed, twisting in pain.
“What color was it?” Beck asked Gale.
“What the fuck, I don’t know.” He looked dazed, wrenched from his deep sleep.
“Then we have to assume it was a bark scorpion, they’re the most common. And venomous—she needs to be treated.” Her words were a little slurry, a combination of her swollen face and being groggy.
“Please!” Tilda begged.
“Fine, what do I do?” From what Imogen could see of his face, he looked honest-to-God scared. It struck her as a thoroughly human reaction, the instinct that came with middle-of-the-night emergencies. She could almost see him rushing to Crystal’s bedside as she cried from a bad dream.
“Untie me!”
“Not gonna do—”
“It’s okay, Til, the binding will work like a tourniquet, slow down the venom while Gale cools it down. Pour cold water on the sting,” Beck instructed Gale. He ran to the makeshift kitchen and came back with two canteens. “Pour it slowly and just keep pouring water on it. Try to relax,” she told Tilda.
“Is this gonna kill me?”
“No, you’ll be achy. Maybe pins and needles for a couple of days, hopefully nothing worse. But after Gale cools off the wound he’ll give you some antihistamines and ibuprofen—they’re in the first aid kit.”
Tilda pressed her face into Imogen’s hair and wept. “Please just let us go.”
Imogen reached with her tied hands, grasping for Tilda. All she got was a piece of her sweatshirt, but she held on. Wan daylight filtered in; the colors of their clothing and sleeping bags emerged from the gloom. Now that she was more alert, Imogen registered how stiff she felt—the pressure on her right shoulder and hip, and the tingling in her hands and feet from being in one position for so long.
“Is it feeling any better?” There was a crackle of nervousness in Gale’s voice as he stepped back, holding the empty canteens. He looked to Beck for further guidance.
“I guess,” Tilda said. “Can you please? Please, Gale—whatever happened before. We just want to go home.”
“I’ll get you those pills.” He went rooting around in the disorganized packs. Tilda whimpered.
“You’re okay.” Imogen squeezed the fistful of sweatshirt, hoping Tilda was even a tiny bit soothed.
“The pain will subside in a few minutes. You’ll be okay,” Beck said.
“I’m not—we’re not. None of us are okay!”
Gale squatted beside her and helped her sit up a little. “Two a both?” he asked Beck.
“Let’s start with one of each.”
“See? I’m helping,” Gale told Tilda. “The sisters are right, you’ll be okay. I got bit by a cottonmouth when I was a kid. ’Bout scared me to death—my momma too—but lived to tell the tale.”
Unable to sit fully upright, Imogen and Beck squirmed, trying to keep an eye on what was going on. Tilda hesitated to take the pills from Gale’s cupped hand, but finally she accepted them and the fresh canteen he held to her lips. She swallowed them down.
“So fine,” Tilda said, flopping back to the ground. As had become a pattern with her, anger crept into her misery. “I won’t die of a scorpion bite.”
“Sting,” Beck corrected.
“Does it matter?” she spat. “It still hurts like a—” Imogen gave her sweatshirt a yank, trying to remind her of Gale’s admonition. “Like the male child of a female dog.”
“The ibuprofen will kick in,” Beck said. “It’s not that different than a bee sting, as long as you don’t have any sort of allergic reaction.”
“Good thing we got a doc with us.” Gale paced to the overhang and gazed out over the morning. Imogen wished she could see it: the gelatinous light finding purchase on distant rocks. From where she was it looked as if the sky had fully cleared. Maybe it would put him in a more optimistic mood than the one he was in when he went to bed; maybe he’d suggest heading to Nevada after all. With his back turned he asked, “You girls get some sleep?”
“Yes,” they mumbled.
“Good, me too. Needed that.” He unzipped his fly and pissed on the dawn. After stretching his arms over his head and arching his back, he came back over, refreshed. “Might as well get up, first light as they say. I wanna get away from…whatever ya call this place. Before anyone else comes by.”
He started breaking down their camp—letting the air out of his poached Therm-a-Rest, stuffing his sleeping bag into its sack.
“Can you leave us here? Please?” Beck asked. “Just as we are, tied up? Even if someone comes into Boucher, no one’s going to spot us up here and you’ll get a good head start. Eventually we’ll work ourselves free and head out, but we understand now, about not telling—”
“No.” His tone was a warning, a command. His good night’s sleep hadn’t changed anything; the day was off to a terrible start. He took several minutes to reorganize the contents of the packs.
“Can you untie our feet at least? So we can sit up?” Imogen wouldn’t have taken the risk of asking, given how quickly his concern for Tilda had dissipated, but she was desperate to change positions, move her aching muscles and release the pressure from her hip and shoulder.
“Soon,” Gale answered.
When Gale was finished repacking, instead of untying his captives he started on a new project. Among the dead man’s things he’d found a small roll of duct tape. With that and a length of thin cord he proceeded to fashion himself a spear, attaching his knife to the end of Tilda’s walking stick.
Imogen, Beck, and Tilda—awkwardly supporting themselves on their elbows in their half-twisted positions—observed him. What conclusion should they draw that his first task of the morning was to make a weapon? And the spear was a good one, useful at close range, as well as a few feet away. And if the distance grew farther there was always the gun; its weight made his pocket droop.
He looked quite pleased with himself. When the blade was firmly attached, he leaned the spear against the rock wall. Imogen had almost forgotten he still had Beck’s Swiss Army knife until he withdrew it and opened the main blade. As he approached them, their instinct was to retreat, but their only option was to lie back down, pressing themselves into the rocky ground. But the backup knife was just for show; he wouldn’t cut their bindings if he intended to reuse them.
/> It probably wasn’t because she’d asked, but he untied Imogen’s feet first. He took her elbow and helped her stand. She stumbled, her feet half numb, and shook them out, encouraging the blood to circulate. He led her, hobbling and wincing, a few feet away, then redid her wrists so they were in front of her. “Better fer getting stuff done,” he explained.
Apparently she remained the one he liked to boss around. A part of her was almost flattered by his trust even as the other part was insulted, but it was undeniable that she felt safer as his servant, unbound—even if the ability to make a run for it was an illusion. She eyed the spear; it beckoned like a fickle lover with its casual stance, indifferent to her burning need. Gale had her dismantle Beck’s and Tilda’s beds, never mind that it left them lying on the hard, cool ground. She pulled the sleeping bags and mattress pads out from under them as they lifted their feet, their hips, to assist her. She rolled and stuffed and moved back and forth to attach their gear to their packs. While she worked, Gale claimed a rock near the entrance to sit on. He whistled in a lazy way with the spear across his knees.
As daylight slowly brightened the shelter, details emerged from the shadows. Beck’s puffy lip had a scab on it, but otherwise didn’t look worse than it had the day before. The swelling around her eye, however, had inflated overnight, a rainbow of affronted colors that virtually sealed the eye shut. Imogen couldn’t see Beck’s knee, but didn’t expect it was much improved, not after a night with no blood circulation. Her legs had surely stiffened, but hopefully she could still walk.
Tilda complained about feeling “weird,” but Beck promised her that was normal, a combination of the medications and the sting, and that she would be okay. None of them were really okay, Tilda was right about that. Imogen felt like her brain had been replaced with a wet wad of cotton; she couldn’t think straight and her head sloshed when she moved. Her balance was rickety as she packed up the last of their stuff. She hoped the hike over to Slate was as easy as Beck had implied—though walking might be the least of their concerns if Gale followed through on his plans to disappear. Most people who wanted to disappear didn’t take three unwilling people with them.