Southern Ouroboros

by Matt Kilby

  “Vick?” she answered with a panic that said there couldn’t be any good reason he was calling.

  “Has she called you?” He hated to be blunt, but Maribeth would see through any attempt to ease her there.

  “Suzanne?”

  “Yeah,” he breathed.

  She didn’t say anything for long enough he checked to be sure they weren’t disconnected. As he held the phone away from his ear, she asked, “What did you do?”

  6

  Suzanne was aware of the stale air before the grit of the floor under her chin or her arms and legs splayed as if on a torture rack. Before the ache of the gunshot wound made her nauseous, she realized she was underground.

  Opening her eyes, she recognized the mercy in that. The dim light made her squint and inched her toward throwing up. Any brighter, it would have been unavoidable. Her first attempt to bring her arms under her managed an inch before thick chains rustled at her wrists. She twisted her hands and wrapped the cool metal around her fingers for leverage, testing a few short jerks before yanking hard, holding her breath as the blood rushed into her face. Her arm throbbed and she gagged but accomplished nothing.

  She’d try again once the drug they injected into her wore off but needed to save her strength. She tried to find a comfortable way to do that. Unable to move her arms, she might bring her legs under her to flip onto her back. At least then she could get her mouth away from the floor. But moving one leg, she discovered more cuffs held her ankles.

  Drugged and chained spread eagle on a basement floor brought one thing to mind, but her clothes were still on. If they violated her, she couldn’t tell so was either still numb from the injection or spared that single indignity. One of them might have copped a feel, but there were worse ways to wake up. They might have raped her, so she could live with the idea some stranger grabbed her breast or stuck his hand down her pants. She could survive any idea as long as she stayed alive.

  Once she decided that, she went about seeing she did, starting with the first step she learned to take in any disaster situation. Assess your surroundings. A blind date once told her that as he went on about being some ready-for-anything expert camper. He considered himself John Rambo and Grizzly Adams with six-pack abs and a two-hundred-and-fifty-pound bench press, but she smelled douchebag at once. That had been her first and last blind date, but those words lingered. Assess your surroundings.

  She thought of them at the Hovington when two inmates held her hostage. Vick’s distraction helped, but the short glances to track her captors gave her the opportunity. Not that it would work again. That had been in a place she could walk blindfolded, having cleaned it every day as a teenager and during her summers home from college. But here was different. She was in Louisiana, outside a town called Creek Hollow. From the highway, she had crossed woods and a field before the small house, which had a shed beside it. There were two men: one burly and the other smaller. If she had any hope of overpowering one, it’d be the second, but she was getting ahead of herself. She had to start with now. Closing her eyes, she took a cleansing breath. When as calm as possible under the circumstances, she opened her eyes.

  The floor was concrete and, though she couldn’t see far, she made out thin bars rising out of the dark. A cell felt like overkill since she couldn’t move, but she guessed “better safe than sorry” was the best policy for kidnapping women. The last thing those guys needed was someone to escape and bring anyone who listened to their local sex dungeon or murder room. If she did, she would get all the law enforcement available. Reporters and good ol’ boys. They’d dismantle the place and the perverts. She would make them sorry they picked her.

  Her thoughts wandered, so she closed her eyes to focus. The mental fog didn’t help. She never tried anything harder than marijuana but remembered horror stories about stronger drugs, like that using heroin once made someone addicted. If true, she might be suffering withdrawal along with everything else, but it might have been a rumor—a friend who had a friend who experimented. They were valedictorian in high school and homeless a couple years later, doing unspeakable things for unreasonable pay.

  She couldn’t stop her mind’s roaming. Like a river, it carried her fast and far from where she needed to be. She rested her head on the floor and wondered if sleep was a good idea. It would leave her vulnerable, but she was already that. The men would do whatever they wanted, and she could only beg them to stop, but they probably wanted that too. So why not drift away for the worst parts?

  Because that meant dying.

  Not that it mattered if they stuck another needle into her neck—maybe another dose of heroin, though she didn’t think it’d be green. She once read human traffickers used it to keep their victims complacent, so they didn’t know where or even who they were. High the rest of their lives, they didn’t care who bought or sweat on top of them. Numbed minds made the best slaves. Though hers didn’t abandon her yet, for now she let it wander.

  Time didn’t matter, so she couldn’t tell how much passed before a door opened somewhere above. Boots clomped down wooden stairs. The big one was coming, and she shivered at the things that meant but didn’t close her eyes—not one blink—even when his steps crunched toward her across the dirty floor. She measured her breaths, keeping them slow and easy as if the quiet made a difference. He knew where to find her. What came would hurt bad however she prepared. She stopped trying to figure everything out when the cell door squealed.

  He kept out of sight, so the first she knew of him was his fingers twisted in her hair. She didn’t give him the satisfaction of crying out, even as she thought he would slit her throat. Eyes wide, she focused her breaths, which grew sharp through her nostrils. When his other hand moved in front of her face, she sucked air but then saw what he held—a paper plate filled with some kind of fish and potato stew with fried squash and a dinner roll.

  The large hand set down the plate as the other lowered her chin to the floor. They expected her to eat like some kind of dog, and in spite of herself, her stomach grumbled. She didn’t remember the last time she ate but wouldn’t touch anything they offered. Besides the depravity, she couldn’t know what they put in the food: poison or something to keep her docile.

  “Eat,” he breathed, but she didn’t answer. She stared at the plate and wished she had one hand free to throw the whole thing into his face.

  “Eat,” he whispered again and nudged her ribs with his boot. She shook her head. Above her, he huffed to either bend or squat. He yanked her hair hard as he pulled the plate closer. She tried to distract herself with breathing but had trouble shutting this out. As soon as her whimper came, she swore it was just one failure.

  “Eat,” he yelled into her ear and shoved her face into the food. Defiant, she kept her mouth tight.

  “Eat,” he shouted, pulling her up before shoving again.

  “Eat,” he did it all one last time and too hard. Her forehead hit the floor and burst a flurry of lights behind her eyes. Stunned, her mouth opened, the stew clogging her nose and throat when she struggled to breathe. He pushed until her lip smashed on the floor, splitting to season the meal with salt and copper.

  “Okay,” she screamed with her mouth full and then chewed and swallowed. She groaned as it went down but refused to show any more weakness—no whimpers or tears—but to her surprise those sounds came from behind her.

  Within the sobs, the seat of his jeans brushed the ground as he slid to the bars. He cried from the gut, desperate and terrified like a kid who fell off his bike and waited for his mom to come kiss his scrapes. He had her in chains and had bashed her head into a plate of leftovers. He’d do worse before it was over, so she didn’t feel the least bit sorry for him. Neither did mom apparently, the only response a cold, monotone voice from above Suzanne recognized as the man who’d shot her.

  “Come back,” he said and somehow stopped the crying. The big man grunted as he got up, his heavy steps crossing the floor. The hinges squealed and bars clanged but nothing mor
e followed his short sniffle as he started up.

  She listened for the other voice to say something else but heard only the big one’s progress and the door slamming shut. There might have been a muffled voice on the other side yelling. With her mouth stinging and brow throbbing, she wasn’t sure of much but one thing: if she didn’t get away soon, she never would.

  7

  On a Wednesday night, the congregation of Creek Hollow Baptist Church sang the closing hymn as its pastor lowered his head and closed his eyes. Those were the times the Lord spoke to Brandon Marshall. Picking out the elderly Iva Lefitte’s warbling soprano on one side of the sanctuary and young Beau Douchet’s booming bass on the other once helped him understand it was time to start inviting the area’s homeless to their Sunday evening pot luck supper. There, they ate out of the same dishes as church members, from Gretchen Castor’s fast-disappearing banana pudding to the inevitable bucket of KFC the busy or lazy slipped onto the table at the last minute. As they feasted, they’d sit with the people who fed them and talk about whatever they wanted: how they got to be destitute or how they planned to survive. When the conversation lagged, the members provided their own solution by way of the risen Jesus. They didn’t push—only suggested and made sure their guests understood the food wasn’t conditional. They were welcome back next week no matter what. It was a fine idea, but he didn’t take credit. That belonged to God.

  On Wednesday night, they all sang, “There is pow’r, pow’r, wonder-working pow’r in the blood of the lamb.”

  As he prepared the sermon, he needed more of that guidance. He decided to speak about fathers, a touchy subject. His had been a low man who set out to ruin not only his and his son’s lives but everyone he met, making it hard to speak on God’s commandment to honor fathers and mothers. How do you honor a man who breaks every other of those rules without becoming him? Brandon made his decision long ago, the right one, and it never stopped troubling him. Choice can be an easy thing but the repercussions far more complicated. Turning left instead of right might lead to a car wreck. Going inside the local McDonald’s instead of through the drive-thru might introduce someone to their future wife. Those things were in the Lord’s hands, and faith meant trusting where He pointed. Sometimes calling the police on your father. Sometimes harboring a different fugitive.

  “There is pow’r, pow’r, wonder-working pow’r in the precious blood of the lamb.”

  The room might as well have been silent. As they ran through all four verses, Brandon heard nothing from Heaven. He found no answers in prayer or those voices below but didn’t feel abandoned. God wanted to see what he would do on his own. Job lost everything before proven faithful. Anything less was a bargain.

  “Brothers and sisters,” he said when the singing stopped and the congregation sat again in their pews. “I hope God filled your hearts with his message tonight and that I served as an able vessel to deliver it. I chose tonight’s hymn because of one final note I want you to remember when thinking about how to honor your mother and father. They are your blood, but their blood doesn’t have the same power as the one who truly made you. Follow him first, even when it goes against what anyone else says is right. Now, let us pray.”

  When the service ended, he went next door to where his office sat at the end of a plain white hallway. He took off his tie and jacket, draping them over the back of his chair as he unbuttoned his shirt collar and paced behind his desk. The last time he was that agitated, he was eighteen and standing at a gas station, waiting for his father to drive up and say he simply forgot him—that it was an honest mistake. Decades later, he still remembered the fading grin when patrol cars boxed the truck in. He did that to his own father, which should make it easier to do the same to a complete stranger. But now, he might help someone. He did it with each sermon and every Sunday night as people with nothing found hope because of what the Lord did through him. This was his test—to find out if he was the same weak boy who couldn’t do more than send his father to jail or a man who could mend things with God’s help. It sounded simple, but just as he thought his mind made, he wondered if it was all a form of pride.

  He stopped pacing and tried again, his eyes closed and head bowed. Listening to the quiet, he thought the voice would speak any second. He shook with concentration, but a heavy door slammed down the hall and footsteps clicked his way. Frustrated, his temper rose in a way it stayed when he was a child. Unchecked, the anger would take over, so he breathed deep until it subsided. The Lord’s mercy kept his visitor back until he managed. His God knew him, so the tap at the door could be an answer.

  Standing, he smoothed his hands over his pants to make sure he didn’t wrinkle them. He wiped his face on his sleeve and called out.

  “Come on in.”

  Iva Lefitte did, her cane hung over her wrist as she opened the door. Her other hand held a covered dish that made him smile.

  “Pastor Marshall,” she said and hobbled a couple steps before he came forward. He took the cool dish, knowing she kept it in the church’s refrigerator during the service. “I saw how much you liked my broccoli casserole last Sunday, so I made one for you.”

  He didn’t remember, the woman’s eyesight all but gone, so it was possible he never did. Still, he thanked her as he put the dish on the desk, hoping her eyes weren’t so bad to poison him. As he turned to close the door behind her, he found she hadn’t budged. By her smile, she came for more than food delivery.

  “You know, my granddaughter isn’t much younger than you. You’re a little over fifty, right? Her mother had her young so I got to see them both get old. Anyway, she’ll be in town next week, so you should meet her. She was married, but her husband left her for some yoga instructor, if you can believe that. Would do her good to find a better man.”

  Brandon blushed and considered whether to talk his way out or grin and bear it. There was nothing wrong with a cup of coffee or dinner and a movie, but anytime he thought about intimacy, his father’s leering smile flashed in his memory and turned him off the whole thing. There was power in the blood, but sometimes genetics, and it was better not to walk into temptation to see if he could walk away. He had enough on his mind without another complication, though he nodded and kept his smile warm.

  “I’ll pray on it,” he told Iva. “Maybe God will surprise us both.”

  Her smile beat his as she took his hand and patted it with hers. He questioned if he just agreed to the date after all but didn’t bother clarifying when she walked to the door. As long as she left him alone, he called it an even trade.

  When she was gone and the outside door banged shut a second time, he put on his coat and stuffed his tie in the waist pocket. Casserole in hand, he cut off the lights in his office and the hallway and locked the door as he left, waving to the last car leaving the parking lot. A sharp January wind blew brisk with nothing to cut it, forcing his arms across himself as he walked to the small, ranch-style house behind the sanctuary.

  The pastor before him had a wife and three small kids, which amazed him every time he walked in the parsonage’s front door. The living room barely fit more than a sofa and armchair. Beyond a small kitchen, a short, narrow hallway led to two bedrooms, a bathroom, and a slide-away door. Behind that, a spiral staircase rose into an attic large enough to count as a bonus room. He stopped by the kitchen for a fork and glass of water that he balanced on the dish’s rubber lid as he walked into the hallway. He slid open the door and took slow steps up.

  He didn’t have many possessions, the room bare except for an inflated air mattress and canvas camping chair. The young drifter sat in that with a terrible posture, elbows on his knees with one hand across his stomach as if it bothered him. Though Brandon made enough noise on the stairs, the young man didn’t raise his head until he put the casserole in front of him.

  “All yours,” Brandon said with a smile. “This is better than anything I can cook. I’d take Mrs. Lefitte’s worst over fast food any day of the week.”

  “Why ar
e you helping me?” the drifter said, his eyes still down.

  “Because it’s the right thing to do.”

  “You wouldn’t say that if you knew what I did,” he shook his head, “what I can do.”

  “Maybe not, but that’s a good enough reason not to ask about them.”

  “Not very smart,” the young man grumbled.

  “True,” he said and peeled away the lid, “but some limits are better left untested. Charity is one. Jesus wouldn’t turn away someone who needed him to save his own life.”

  “But he knew how he was going to die.”

  “Another good point,” Brandon chuckled as he stuck the fork into the food and stepped back, as if his guest was a stray cat that wandered onto his back porch. He kept every movement smooth and deliberate to prove he didn’t mean any harm. “But you’ve been here three days without doing anything to make me believe you’ll hurt me.”

  “Ever hear of Pine Haven, North Carolina?”

  He nodded. “I doubt many people haven’t.”

  “What if I told you what happened there is my fault?”

  “Are you telling me that?” Brandon asked.

  “I don’t know,” the young man looked at him. Worry made him look years younger. Brandon put him in his early twenties and expected some drug problem when he found him raiding the dumpster behind the church, digging for scraps after last Sunday night’s outreach supper.

  There’s warm food inside, he told him as he dropped the trash bag he carried beside the bin. We can talk if you like or you can just eat and go.

  He stared before shaking his head and starting to walk away.

  You don’t want me here, he said. You can’t help me.