“For you, too, I imagine,” Martha said.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Of course you do. But her secret didn’t die with her, Walt. I know. I survived. We were too young back then to know how to tell Dad that dear old Uncle Walt had raped us. Maybe for Rachel the despair of suicide seemed like the hope of salvation. But not me. I’m still here.”
“You’re one crazy fucking bitch, you know that?” Uncle Walt rocked back and forth, the gun pointed straight at her. “What the fuck do you want?”
“Call it survivor’s guilt, but I swore one day I’d see justice served by bringing you in to answer for your crimes. Today’s that day. I’m just sorry I couldn’t have done it years ago before Rachel’s botched suicide. I had to grow up first.”
“You can’t let anything go, can you? That was a long time ago.”
A long time ago that she relived nearly every day. She almost laughed out loud. “We can leave here together, Walt, or I can haul you out on a sled. Your choice.”
It was his turn to laugh, a bitter chuckle. “You never were the smartest of the Whitaker kids, Martha. I ain’t goin’ nowhere. You seem to forget who’s holding the gun. The ice will be breaking up on the lake soon. No one will ever find you. I’ll be sure to shed a tear with your Pa.”
“Guns are overrated,” she said, with more confidence than she felt.
She had called on all her training to prepare herself for this moment. She had been up half the night performing the katas, one after another, until she had no more tears to weep. Still she danced. At the end, every muscle sang in anticipation, every lethal point of contact fused into their memory. With the first sweet light of morning, she had entered Rachel’s room, brushed out her bed-matted hair, held her cold hand, and kissed her brow. The feeding tube was gone, the oxygen mask hung off the tank. Tubes and tanks had all been pushed aside. Her father sat dozing in a chair by her side. Rachel, eyes closed, face serene. Whether she had found oblivion or peace, it was over. Her last wish fulfilled.
She let her father sleep. She envied him. The troubled sleep of the grieving was perhaps better than the waking dreams of the vengeful, but she couldn’t think about that now. Rachel was dead. And now it was time. She dressed for the twenty-below temperatures, found her snowshoes, and wrote a note telling her father she was going to deliver the news to Gran on the reservation. She might need to stay a while. And that she loved him. And Rachel did, too.
And she did go to Gran’s. Stopping long enough to tell her the news and trusting her enough to share her plan. Gran puffed deep on a cigarette, tears welling. A hand as wrinkled as a winter apple reached out for Martha’s. She coughed, and said, “Only you know what your spirit is telling you to do, Marti. Be safe, my wild one, be safe. The lake can kill you as easily as Walt. I have one granddaughter to mourn; don’t make it two.”
Martha made the first move. She bolted left. Startled, Walt swung the deer rifle from the hip, but when she pulled up short, turning sideways, narrowing the target, he couldn’t stop the heavy rifle fast enough. His shot went wide. A scream came from inside the cabin. She spun and made straight for him as he tried to jack another shell into the chamber. He made it just in time to shoot his big toe off as Martha hit the gun with a well-placed kick. She twisted it away, dislocating his right shoulder in the process. He screamed with the sudden pain. An elbow slammed into his ribs. A shattered kneecap dropped him to the porch like falling lead. But Walt Boudreau hadn’t survived Vietnam for lack of courage. A hand snaked out toward an axe beside a stack of wood. Martha broke his fingers with the heel of the rifle, then tossed the gun into the snow.
He had blown the front of his boot off. His big toe still clung to the bloody stump of his left foot by a ligament. Panting, Martha looked at it and said, “Now, I’ll have to pull you back to town, you lousy bastard.”
He winced and a groan escaped his lips. With cold eyes, he snarled, “I don’t think so, cunt.”
She kicked him hard in the groin. He succumbed to the pain and doubled up.
More screams came from inside the cabin. Martha raced inside, found nothing, and headed up to the loft.
A dark-haired girl, no more than twelve or thirteen, stood beside the bed in wide-eyed terror. Not so long ago it might have been Martha. Martha steadied herself against the door jam. It took a moment before she could find her voice. “It’s all right, honey,” she said, “He’ll never hurt you again. Never.”
But the girl just stared at her with wild eyes. It was then Martha saw she was handcuffed to the bedpost. She had tipped over a bucket that had obviously been used for a chamber pot. The girl’s thin body was draped with a see-through nightie. Sores covered her pencil legs. Martha took a step closer, and the girl jammed herself flat against the wall. Martha stood very still.
“It’s okay, LuAnn,” she said. “That’s your name, right? LuAnn. I saw the poster at the rez. It said you were missing. It’s okay. It’s all right, honey. I’m here to take you home.” She slowly reached out a hand. “Everything will be okay.”
Martha knew what a lie that was, but she had lied to herself for so long, stuffing down the pain, that the lie came easily. Still, what she had gone through was nothing like this. The flyer had been posted a month before. A month at the hands of this monster. Oh, God, she hadn’t been able to save Rachel. Now she was too late again. Rage and despair threatened to paralyze her. Breathe. Move. Act. The litany to confront her fears brought her back.
She forced herself to speak, her mouth dry, her voice hoarse. “Do you know where the key is, honey?” She pulled a quilt off the bed and recognized Gran’s handiwork. She wrapped it around the girl’s shoulders and knelt down. She touched the handcuffs. “The key to the handcuffs?”
LuAnn just stared at her with wide, feral eyes.
“Okay, I’ll be right back. I promise I’m not going anywhere without you. I promise.” The girl started screaming again as soon as Martha’s head disappeared down the stairs.
From the porch, a bloody trail led down the steps. Blood on white snow like Japanese calligraphy to where Walt, on his belly, clawed the snow with one arm. He rolled over and his hand rose up holding the rifle.
A long icicle hanging from the eaves turned the sun into a prism of light. Martha snapped it off and flew off the porch, all her rage focused on the monster’s face. She reached him just as he shouldered the gun. She drove the icicle deep into his right eye. One last shot exploded wide, missing her by inches. He screamed like an animal in the wild and began to thrash. She rammed the icicle deeper still, into his brain. And then, it was done.
She sat back and then elbowed away from him. But he filled all space. Just like he had at the motel on US Highway 2 outside Superior, Wisconsin, the night everything had changed. With her father recalled to Washington, DC, good old Uncle Walt had offered to drive Martha and Rachel to Gran on the reservation. He carried the sleeping Rachel, still a few months shy of eight, into the room, undressed her and put her into bed. Sitting next to Walt in the dark, Martha ate cold Kentucky Fried Chicken and watched David Letterman. She could smell the whiskey as he inched closer. It started slow, a gentle touch, then a second. Pretending she was a statue, that she didn’t exist, didn’t stop him from placing her hand on his leg and then on the bulge in his undershorts. That’s what people who love each other do, he whispered. You love your Uncle Walt, don’t you?
Love him? Of course she did. He was her Dad’s best friend. She had grown up with Uncle Walt’s bear hugs and thought that love smelled like the tobacco and whiskey the two men shared.
That first time, he made her sit on him. Martha still remembered the shock and pain of him penetrating her. She felt like she had been ripped in half. Over the next nine months, he raped her five more times. Martha was too scared to tell her father, too ashamed to let anyone else know, and too frightened to fight back. Not even when she was old enough to understand what had happened.
Now it was over. He lay still
in blood-soaked snow. Her panting began to subside. It was finally over.
She picked herself up and brushed off the snow. She found the key to the handcuffs in the pocket of his work jeans. She ran back to LuAnn.
The next few hours felt like dancing a kata underwater. If she had any emotions about having just killed Walt Boudreau, she couldn’t find them. All she knew was that he would never brutalize anyone ever again. Martha had planned on justice, but vengeance would do. It touched her with no regrets.
LuAnn slumped to the floor, nearly catatonic, when set free. Martha carried her downstairs, wrapped in the quilt. Warming water over the fire, she bathed the girl, scrubbed the dirt from under fingernails, and cleaned as many of the sores and wounds as she could. She found a comb and slowly began to stroke her tangled hair. All the while LuAnn rocked back and forth, humming a three-note tune. Martha ransacked the kitchen for food and forced LuAnn to eat and drink; forced herself, as well; she needed to refuel if she hoped to pull the girl out of the woods.
Finding none of LuAnn’s clothes, Martha bundled the girl in Boudreau’s flannels and wool, covering it all with his down jacket. It made her nearly gag, but she had no choice. She laced heavy Sorel boots to her feet. She set scarves and hats and gloves for both of them by the door. When Martha stepped outside, LuAnn found her voice and began to scream again. Nothing Martha said would reassure her, so she just walked out the door with the promise that she would be back shortly.
A path through the snow led to a large shed, nearly hidden amongst the trees. Martha located the wood-hauling sled and inspected the runners and leather harness, cinching up the straps to fit her smaller girth. She slipped into the harness and hauled the sled to the front door. She needed blankets, hides, anything to provide warmth to get LuAnn back across the lake. One old deer hide was stretched and tacked to the wall. She ripped it down and threw it on the sled. She climbed the ladder to the loft. There, she found several more hides and a couple of sleeping bags, strewn about like a nest—and a second chamber pot.
This had to be where Walt hid LuAnn—and who else?—when her father came to visit. Regular as reveille in the morning, her father brought out supplies to Walt on the first of each month. They drank bad whiskey and got drunk. Her father would spend the night, and in the morning, turn the snowmobile down the river toward home. He would never know a young girl was bound and gagged out here.
Fuck you, Walt, fuck you. May you rot for all of eternity and beyond in the lowest regions of hell. For a moment, she wished she could kill him all over again.
Back at the cabin, Martha layered the bottom of the sled with deer hides and two sleeping bags. Beside the door, she piled blankets to go over the girl. A second deer hide, with the hair still attached, would go over it all.
By noon, the sun had faded and heavy gray clouds crept across the sky. She had no choice but to leave before the body was found. She couldn’t have stood a night in the cabin anyway.
In the kitchen, she assembled a survival kit in case she didn’t make it across the lake before nightfall. Matches, several candles, some kerosene sealed in a Mason jar. She packed them all in a small pot, in which she could melt water if needed. She added firewood, more food, and a flashlight. She found a compass in the gun case. She thanked her stars for a father, a marine, who had taught her a thing or two about survival. The compass would guide them even in a whiteout and keep them alive. She had no intention of being reacquainted with Walt in death anytime soon.
What she did next, she did for her father. Walt was dead. Whatever justice Martha and LuAnn might find would come from that fact. But, just as she had kept her secret from her father, she refused now to see him destroyed by this.
She dragged Boudreau’s body into the house. This prompted a long series of moans from LuAnn, now too exhausted to scream. Comfort was not Martha’s to give, not now, so she continued her tasks. She wrapped the body in a wool blanket and found his stash of booze in a bottom kitchen cabinet. She dumped first one bottle, then a second on the blanket and onto the floor around him. She scattered the bottles around the floor. Then she soaked it all in kerosene. She took a nip of the last bottle of scotch before pouring it out on the floor. She wiped down the rifle and placed it back in the gun case.
Heavy flakes of snow swirled down through the trees in wide lazy circles as Martha loaded LuAnn onto the sled. A snowstorm could spell death. Martha brushed a flake off LuAnn’s nose. The girl showed no reaction. Martha slipped into the harness, picking up her snowshoes from the drift beneath the porch, and hauled the loaded sled back toward the river.
She returned to the cabin. She made a torch from the end of a burning log from the fireplace and one of Walt’s wool caps. From the doorway, she tossed it inside, watched the kerosene smolder for a moment and then ignite. She shut the door. As she shrugged back into the harness, she heard the first whoosh of the alcohol exploding. She never looked back as she began the trek down the frozen river toward Lake Superior. For the next two hours, as the falling snow grew heavier, as the afternoon slipped away and the distance grew between her and the cabin, Martha caught glimpses of the blaze. The old cabin with its dried out timbers and planked floor and cedar-shake roof burned like an offering to angry gods.
At the head of the lake, Martha stopped long enough to eat and drink. She checked on LuAnn who either had passed out or was sleeping. All that mattered at the moment was she was still breathing. Martha brushed snow off the blanket and pulled it back up over the girl’s face. Massaging her shoulders did little to relieve the pain. From the edge of the woods, heavy snow was driven in swirls and bursts of white across the ice. The afternoon light disappeared early and fast in the far north, but at the moment it offered enough visibility to take a compass reading on the point of land three miles across the bay.
On the frozen lake, where the wind had blown the snow clear of the ice, her snowshoes were useless. She tucked them into the sled.
Crossing the first hundred yards of the lake was the hardest thing she had ever done. A winter of gales had stacked the ice up along the lee shore of the lake like a broken field of cordwood. Slabs two feet thick rose twenty feet high in places. She tried to retrace her path in, but there wasn’t always enough room for the sled. She picked her way around the largest barriers, hauled the sled over the smaller ones, all the time pushing to get through the ice field before the gray skies turned impregnably black. Finally, sweat pouring down her back, she came to the end. Before her lay open ice. She took another compass bearing in the last of the light and began pulling through the gloaming with only the rubber soles of her boots to grip the ice.
But she found a rhythm and soon began to make steady progress. The wind blew at her back—one small gift from the karma gods. Her hands went numb from the cold and she could no longer feel her toes buried deep in her boots. A patch of ice circled her scarf. The sweat down her back had long since grown cold, sending shivers through her body. What muscles she could still feel cried out in unrelenting pain. The leather harness felt like it had burrowed under her skin.
Once, she thought she saw the cabin still burning, dim but visible in the distance. Only it appeared directly in front of her. Had she gotten disoriented and come full circle? She began to panic. Hypothermia was setting in, leaving her judgment in question and compromising her ability to make a shelter even if she was able to make it to shore, something she now began to doubt. It took her three attempts to turn on the flashlight. The compass still pointed in the right direction. She tapped it with the flashlight. The needle moved freely in the liquid. She looked again. Either the compass was broken or there was definitely a light coming from the far shore. Regardless, she set her course for it. Neither she nor LuAnn would survive a night out on the ice. She hadn’t brought enough wood to keep a fire burning for an entire night, so she pressed on, all thought melting away as she put one foot slowly in front of the other, jerking the sled, inching it on behind her.
Within a half an hour, she was looking at
headlights through the driving snow. Another ten minutes and she had hauled the sled up the bank and onto the shore. There was her car parked at the end of the road. Beside it was Gran’s rusty old pickup truck, its headlights beaming bright across the bay, twin beacons guiding her home. Gran slid out of the cab, country music blaring from the radio. She tossed a cigarette into a snow bank and poured steaming hot coffee from a thermos. The old woman showed her strength when she lifted LuAnn from the sled and carried her to the warm truck. Martha stumbled beside her through the snow, grateful to be back, grateful to be alive, grateful she had finally begun to put the nightmare of her life behind her.
Maybe now the wounds could begin to heal. Scars would remain, but life left its scars. Scars meant you had survived.
In the thirteen years to follow, not a day went by when she didn’t think of Rachel. Now, sitting in her Mini Cooper, Martha thought about Gran and Hewitt, both now gone, the only two people who knew the full story of what happened that day in the woods.
Smoke in the backcountry had been reported, but when you live off the grid, you die off the grid. Charred bones were discovered amid the ashes of the destroyed cabin a few weeks later. On the first of March. It was her father who found them. He had ridden his snowmobile to the cabin with the month’s supplies. He planned to share the grief of losing his daughter with his best friend, only to discover that he had a second funeral to plan. This one he arranged and conducted himself, alone, Marine to Marine, brother to brother. Semper Fi.
Whatever story Gran had told LuAnn’s family and the officials on the reservation, it never reached Martha’s ears. Whatever story LuAnn had told, it never included her.
Martha still heard from LuAnn White, now Sister Rachel, from time to time. Gran had put them in touch a few years after her return. It turned out that LuAnn was a survivor as well. She found her strength and solace in God and with it the ability to forgive if not completely forget. In a convent in Calgary, she was sequestered from the outside world.
Out of the Cold Dark Sea Page 11