by Alison Stine
“What did you give her?” I asked.
“Fuck,” he said. “She must have tried it.”
“Tried what?”
“Somebody brought something. I told her not to. Told her we were going to sell it.”
“Tried what?”
He shook his head, couldn’t keep the twitching smile from his lips even as she lay there, drooling on herself. “Your mama.” He got this look when she drank him under the table; when she danced for him and his friends, bottle in one hand, joint in the other. I had seen her, through the windows, her eyes closed, shaking to music only she heard. Lobo was impressed at her verve. My mama, wound up enough to fly away, a music box dancer. She didn’t belong to me, to anyone. She was barely in this world. “She’s a wild one.”
“Is she okay?” I said.
“She will be.” We bent to her, straightening her back, rearranging her arms. Lobo got a pillow from the couch for her head. I wiped the drool from her cheeks with my shirt. Lobo knew what to do. “I won’t let her do that again,” he said.
I looked up at him. “People don’t tend to try some things just once. You taught me that.”
“What do you know about it? Runt.” But then his face twitched again. He changed. “I won’t let her do that anymore. I promise you.”
That was the thing about Lobo. He was violent, cruel—and he kept his word. I could count on him like a burn: to wound, to fester, to flare up. Then to smooth over everything, like the hurt had never happened. To be a faint scar forever.
* * *
There was no plan, no discussion. Jamey put Starla to sleep, singing a country song I didn’t recognize, down on the same bed as Kaylee. The only bed, on the floor.
In a clearing by the farmhouse, meat sizzled on homemade spits: a hot dog skewer and a curtain rod. There was deer meat, and something greasy, maybe groundhog. I wondered if Grayson had prepared it. The men sat around the fire in stained canvas chairs or reclined on the dirt. The naked man had wrapped a sleeping bag around himself and put on shoes. The men were drinking—and it was only the men afforded this luxury. The women—because there were women at the campfire, Jamey and a few other girls who looked like Jamey—served, tending to the meat, replacing the men’s beers. I wanted to ask Jamey: where had the other women come from, why were they there? The men threw the empties into the woods.
Grayson and Dance sat among the men—but uneasily, on the edge of their circle. They were not drinking, either on purpose or because they had not been offered anything. Grayson had grease on his face; he had been working. He also had a fresh bruise on his forehead, and when he saw me looking at it, he tightened his mouth and shook his head.
Say nothing.
Their hands were not bound, I was relieved to see. Almost nothing would surprise me anymore, not zip ties or chains. Not a blizzard. Not a landslide of dust to sweep all of us, every living thing, away. Grayson fiddled with something. Keys.
I hoped they were the truck keys. He turned them over and over to keep his hands from trembling. Dance just sat there, cross-legged on the ground. He looked stunned and exhausted. What had they made him do?
“Stop staring.” Jamey thrust a bowl into my arms.
I looked down at the contents: shriveled brown potatoes. “I’m not staring.”
“Yeah, you are. Your boyfriend is fine.”
“They’re not my boyfriend. Either one of them.”
“If Jake thinks you like them, he’ll do something about it.”
I looked up from the bowl. “What does that mean?”
“He’ll send them away. They’ll disappear. Or worse.”
What was worse than disappearing? I tried not to look at the men after that, but I couldn’t help it. Men were everywhere, drinking, lighting bits of trash on fire. One man pulled a woman down onto his lap. She laughed, pushed his hands away, eventually stopped laughing.
Jake sat in the center of the circle, the place of honor, in a faded, old recliner, larger than the other chairs. Stuffing vomited out the sides. He looked like the king of shit. His feet were up in those flip-flops. A ratty fleece blanket, printed with a wolf’s face, was thrown over his lap, and he was laughing. He turned his head to me, his eyes pale as a dog’s. Was this the moment he saw what I could do? Was this the moment he made me work for him?
“Stop looking,” Jamey hissed.
I turned my head down to the potatoes. “What do you want me to do with these?”
“You got a knife?”
Did I want to lose it to her? Did I trust Jamey? “No,” I lied.
A burst of laughter, like machine gun fire, from the men. Something one of the women did, or was made to do.
Jamey licked her lips, hesitating, then pulled a pocketknife from her coat. “This is sharp. Cut out the eyes and cut the taters into chunks, then fry ’em in the deer grease.”
“I know how to cook potatoes.”
“Then act like it,” she snapped.
A couple of the women set their serving platters down and began to dance. It was such a slow, languid motion that I did not understand what was happening at first. One of the women unzipped her coat. It fell in a puddle at her feet. Then, despite the cold, she stripped her off her silver T-shirt. She faced my direction, rocking her hips awkwardly. Her skin was a sky stippled with bruises. There was no music. One of the men began to beat on the underside of a pot with a knife or stick. He couldn’t keep time. The women moved like hypnotized snakes, drugs or exhaustion slowing their blood.
“I got something for you,” Jake said, scrounging in his pockets.
For a moment, I remembered the Pumpkin King. But it wasn’t seeds Jake pulled from his pockets. It was quarters. He flung a handful at the women. Coins dinged off their bodies like hail.
He snapped his fingers for more beer.
I turned away. I found a dirty, cast-iron skillet beneath a tree, and snapped off a stick to scrape it out with. I was crouched on the ground, my back to Jake and the women, scrubbing at the skillet, when I saw movement in the woods.
I stood. Behind me, the campfire cast a red glow on the men clustered around it, giving their ball caps and hoodies horns, giving their faces long bearded shadows, even the men who had no beards. There were work lights, powered by a generator, strung up on some of the outbuildings, but about half of the bulbs had burned out. Or been shot out. A pale lantern lit the dome of the skate park, flickering over its curves like a cave.
But the woods around the compound were black and unfathomable. The movement I saw looked pale as moonlight. There was no moon tonight.
I took a step closer to the trees. I saw cars and trucks covered by tarps, saw more and more each time I looked. Skate State was more junkyard than skate park. But this thing moved. A slender, light shape. It weaved.
I glanced back at the campfire. Men laughed and drank. The quarters on the ground glinted by the fire. Nobody moved to pick them up, or to cover the women. The meat was cooked, and some of the women sliced it off the spits with Bowie knives.
If only they would take those knives and escape. Jake was drunk, all the men were drunk or getting there. The women could overpower them. They could get away. Starla was sleeping in the shed with Kaylee—that woman would be a burden, to carry or convince, to deal with her sickness as we drove far, far away from here. Were there other children in the compound, hidden in trailers and shacks? Would we have enough cars to carry them?
The shape in the woods made a sound, and I looked for it again, willing my eyes to adjust to the shadows. The figure wobbled, tripped. As it came closer through the trees, it no longer appeared graceful. I heard the snap of branches and leaves. I heard a moan.
The men tore into their meat. The women would eat last, if at all; I knew this without even asking. Dance and Grayson would eat with the women. I looked at their empty hands, their eyes as they watched the other men ch
ew. Most of the women had their eyes cast down, or were making themselves busy picking up the beer bottles and bones, trying to stay on the edge of the circle and avoid attention.
But Jamey looked straight at me across the fire. She said loudly, “Where the hell are those potatoes, girl? The men want potatoes with their meat!” She began to stride across the ground to me, purposefully. She touched my shoulder and turned me away from the fire, away from Jake. She lowered her voice. “What’s wrong?”
“There’s somebody in the trees,” I said. “Are you missing anybody? Did anyone run away?”
“No.”
“Look. Just stand here and look. Someone’s in the trees.”
She stood with me, so quiet I thought she was holding her breath, so close I could almost believe we were friends. Together we saw the pale shape stumble forward, almost colliding with a tree. If not for Jamey beside me, seeing it, too, I would have thought I was seeing a ghost.
Jamey said: “That’s not a person.”
I looked back at the shape as it sank to its knees.
“It’s a damn deer.” She sounded disappointed.
But then I knew something. “Jamey, we can’t eat the meat. The deer meat. If that’s a deer...” It was beating its head against a trunk. Dazed, as if dosed. So thin its rib cage stood out like a prow. “If the deer meat came from the woods around here, we can’t eat it. Nobody should eat it.”
“Why?”
“I’ve seen this thing before. At one of our neighbor’s.”
We’d been driving, on our way back from visiting Mama at one hospital or another. Lobo had kept his promise—but my mama hadn’t. A wild thing, she was drawn to other wildness: drinks that burned, pills that stilled. If it had been just the weed...but it wasn’t just weed.
I had explained to Lisbeth—I couldn’t try anything. I couldn’t take the chance that something might take, something might stick to me, like it did to Mama. She couldn’t shake it off.
The silence of our drive was broken by Lobo swerving off the side of the road. He stopped the truck and drew my attention to the window, to the deer: thin and pale, stumbling in a stripped cornfield. The deer sank onto its skinny knees and just lay there.
We did not accept meat from that neighbor’s woods again.
“It’s wasting disease,” I said to Jamey. “Like mad cow for deer. Or AIDS.”
Jamey took a step back. “Is it catchy?”
“Not from touching. Or breathing. But we shouldn’t eat the meat. We might get sick from it.”
“The meat,” Jamey said.
She turned and ran back to the campfire. She raced into the light and sped around the circle of men, flipping tin plates out of their hands. “You can’t eat the meat!” she said. The glow from the fire made her face look wild. “The meat’s poison!”
Men stood up, shouting, as their plates tipped over, food spilling into the dirt. The woman without her shirt was deposited onto the ground. Grayson and Dance leaped to their feet. Jamey pulled the plate from Jake’s hand and threw it into the fire.
“What the fuck,” Jake said. “Jamey, what the fuck did you do?”
Jamey looked up at me. “Now,” she said.
“Run!” I said to Grayson and Dance. I turned before I knew if they were following, but they were, crashing behind me. I was headed away from the campfire, but beyond that, I didn’t know where to go.
“Where’s the truck, where’s the truck?” Dance was saying.
“We shouldn’t be separated!” Grayson said. “I have the keys!”
But we were already splitting off, Dance straight ahead, Grayson to the right. I panicked and ran on instinct, heading to the first hiding place I could see: a huge garage. There was a slanting tin porch attached to the side, supported by two-by-fours. In the dark, I couldn’t tell if the building was half built or half rotted away.
I heard shouting. Grayson and Dance had disappeared. But from down the hill came the calls of men and the wild, spinning beams of flashlights. They were following.
I ran to the garage. I shoved into the building, and into the dark.
9
I locked the door behind me, but it was a cheap lock. All the locks were cheap. The men could break the door down, if they wanted to. They could break the building down.
I flung my arms out, almost knocking over a rickety table. My fingers fumbled over a Coleman lamp. I picked it up, found the switch, and cranked it high. Light flicked into the garage. A girl stared at me from the wall. It was me.
I flinched for a moment, startled by my own appearance in the mirror hanging there. There were leaves in my hair, dirt on my face. I touched my collarbone. The cord was still there, the leather pouch of seeds: pumpkin, apple, millet. I thought of them like a prayer to give me courage. I had a fresh scratch on my throat. There was a pink sticker on the top of the mirror. It said: Dirty girl.
I looked around. There were mirrors along the wall of the garage, bunk beds in the corner, and in the middle, a stage with a silver pole, glinting in the lantern light. Sleeping bags were slumped on the floor of the stage.
I heard a cough from the direction of the bunk beds. I spun around, the lantern swinging.
“Jesus, man, the light.” A hand came up from the bottom bunk.
I lowered the lantern and saw, raising herself up from a rumpled bed, another Jamey. She had a rounder face than Jamey, stringier hair.
“Where’s the way out of here?” I asked.
The girl pointed: past the stage. There was a doorway curtained by plastic.
“Thanks,” I said.
I didn’t look at the pole. I didn’t think about the stage. I pushed aside the plastic, and then the smell hit me: the salty-slick smell of blood.
The doorway opened up on a slaughterhouse. It was a room for butchering, but dirtier than any deer-processing place I’d seen. My lantern flashed into the corners. I saw a table, flecked with blood. I saw red parts, a barrel, knives, a saw. I smelled blood and meat left to putrefy. Something hung dripping on a hook.
“Shit.” I swung the light back through the doorway. The girl on the bunk was sitting up now. She looked sleepy, unconcerned. “Why is all that here?” I asked.
She shrugged. “Meat and meat.”
The garage door jumped in its frame. Fists pounded and the knob rattled.
“Bitch, let us in!” the men said from outside.
“Hold your horses, hold your horses,” the girl on the bed said loudly. “I’m coming, I’m a’coming.” But she didn’t move. She lifted her chin at me. “Well, get out.”
I ran through the butchering room. I ran past the table, holding my breath. I didn’t look at the animal parts. Whatever they were, they were dead now. My boots slid on the slick floor, but I didn’t look down or drop the lantern. Come with me come with me, I should have said to the girl on the bed.
But I didn’t. I just ran.
At the back of the butchering room, there was a row of metal roll-up doors. There was also an ordinary door on the side. It was not locked. I flung the side door open, thinking it would lead outside.
Instead, the door opened onto a small, windowless room. I shielded my eyes. The walls in the room pulsed with silver. Grow lights had been hung from the ceiling, over rows and rows of familiar plants.
Something was wrong. The plants were too pale. They looked stunted, diseased. They drooped in the stale and cold air. Dead yellow leaves papered the floor.
The men were in the building now, behind the plastic curtain. I heard them yelling at the girl. I heard the girl yelling back. Then a slap, and no more yelling.
I ran from the grow room, leaving the dying plants. I saw a butcher knife on a long table beside a deer skull; a tall boy rested in one of the eye sockets. I should have grabbed the knife.
But on the floor was a remote control with green and red
buttons. I stamped on the green one. With a jerk, one of the garage doors rattled up. I ran out into darkness, into open, cold air. Little fistfuls of snow pelted me like the quarters Jake had thrown at the girls.
The hill ahead was in total blackness, broken only by the gray crowns of trees. I kept my eyes on them. My lantern light was weak. It lit the square in front of me and no farther. Then the ground changed.
I noticed too late. I tripped over the edge of the empty swimming pool—and then I was down, over the rim and tumbling. I bumped to a stop at the bottom of the skate park, and skittered into a small puddle of ice, which cracked. Cold seeped into my clothes. The lantern had fallen, too; I heard it crashing beside me. Breaking.
I tried to sit up. Already my damp clothes felt heavy, and the side of my hip burned, skinned or bruised badly. High concrete sides sloped up all around me. A light burned into my eyes.
Jake peered down from the rim. He held a flashlight, shining it in my face.
I scrambled across the concrete, trying to make it up the side. But the sides were smooth, made slicker with ice. I moved half an inch, then slid back down again.
The flashlight skipped as Jake ran lightly down the ramp into the bowl, practiced and effortless. He moved like a young boy.
“Not a skater, huh?” he said.
I pressed my back against the wall. “I didn’t do anything to the meat.”
“I didn’t say you did.”
“I didn’t do anything.”
“Not yet,” Jake said. He walked across the basin, until he was inches from me. “But everybody’s got to be useful here.”
If I reached for one of my knives, he would see, he would grab me. If I ran past him, he would drag me down, into the ice. I froze. My heartbeat throbbed in my ears and my chest felt tight. There was no exit.
Jake pitched suddenly to the side. His head swung like someone had punched him, a quick flick, eyes rolling back, then he was down.
Whatever had hit him was so fast and surprising I hadn’t even seen it. Only a blur. Then Jake was at the bottom of the basin. He rolled, groaned once, and went still. Blood trickled down his face. A skateboard rolled past before striking the sloped side of the bowl and flipping over, wheels spinning.