by Barr, Nevada
Had Katie purposely called the attention of the thugs to Elizabeth’s escape? Had Gerald done something? Had she done—or not done—something that twisted Katie’s mind?
“It’s not too bad,” Elizabeth said to Katie. “Not heavy exactly.”
Katie moved to take her place, each girl on a paddle handle like dray horses readying to pull a wagon.
“Thank you,” Leah said. “You’re a good girl,” she added, because that was what Heath would have done.
“Just part of the machinery,” Katie said in a voice like treacle.
“Ready?” Leah asked.
“Ready as I’ll ever be,” Heath said with a smile.
Heath believed Katie had nearly gotten Elizabeth shot, yet she smiled. Leah had never been able to tell if smiles were real, what they tried to communicate.
“Hold Rick Shaw steady,” she said to the girls. She helped Heath get into the seat. Once she was settled, Leah took a roll of duct tape from her toolbox, then taped Heath to the chair at waist and chest.
For the minutes this took, Leah lost herself again in the rhythm of building, testing what she had built, seeing its use taking shape. Taping done, she put Heath’s feet on the makeshift foot rails and attached them firmly.
“These are for balance,” she said, retrieving two straight pieces of tubing she had salvaged from the original chair’s frame. Duct tape was wound around one end of each to give Heath a better gripping surface.
Using them like ski poles, Heath balanced herself above the single wheel. “They sure as hell don’t teach this in therapy,” she said.
“Dude,” Reg said. “Weapons.”
The dude turned slowly, his eyes no more fathomable in the light of day than they had been in the dark of night. Leah couldn’t even tell what color they were: the color of a stormy sky, mud, a sandstorm, the oil slick on the garage floor? Leah felt a strange kinship for this cold, colorless man. He, too, lived in a world by himself. That he chose to destruct rather than to construct didn’t make them opposites.
“Balance poles,” Heath said and tossed him one. She didn’t throw it but tossed it with obvious gentleness. Heath was on borrowed time, living because Katie had said she was wealthy. Leah wondered if Katie had lied from kindness or habit, or if it mattered.
It wouldn’t take much for the thugs to choose to divest themselves of Heath. Though given the choice between dying and bushwhacking six miles in Rick Shaw, escorted by homicidal maniacs, Leah might have chosen the dying, Heath would never choose death. Heath knew watching her murdered would permanently damage Elizabeth’s psyche. Leah didn’t think the same would be true of Katie.
The dude neatly caught the pole in his right hand. He was ambidextrous. A weird sense of déjà vu washed through Leah. For a moment the dude held the pole, balancing it on his palm. It weighed next to nothing. “Keep it,” he said. No attempt was made to toss it so Heath might catch it. He just dropped it for them to retrieve as they wished.
Reg picked it up. “Dude, I tell you, this is a weapon.”
“If she starts knuckle-dragging after you with those things, you can shoot her. How’s that?” the dude said dismissively.
Leah saw the insult slap Reg’s cheeks and flash in his black eyes. Reg was not good at taking insults—or orders. Evidently the dude was so used to hurling both at people he’d grown inured to their reactions.
“Stabbing,” Reg said through stiff lips. He jabbed at the air with the untaped end of the bar to illustrate his meaning. Reg would know about stabbing with found weapons: pens, broken bottles, sharpened sticks.
Reg dropped the pole.
Ignoring him, the dude took his cell phone from the wallet on his belt, punched a button, and held it to his ear. The look was incongruous to the point of perceived anachronism.
Heath had banned cell phones on the trip. Heath’s first excuse was that there were many places along the Fox where there was no cell reception. Her second was that the girls wouldn’t be able to leave them alone. The real reason was that they offended her friend Anna.
“Yeah,” the dude said into the phone. “We’re headed out. Six-point-seven miles. Should be there in a few hours.”
Reg was shaking his head, grumbling. “Took us a fucking lifetime to get here, and we were following the fucking river.”
Gutter language was not a part of Leah’s life. Of course she had heard the word “fuck” before. She’d just never heard it used as a verb, a noun, and an adjective, often in a single sentence.
The dude didn’t put his phone back in its holster but held it in front of him, watching the GPS map on the screen.
“Let’s move,” he said.
Stepping between the poles, Leah took over for Katie. “You push,” she said to Elizabeth. Too late, she realized she had marginalized Katie, disincluded her. Had she always done that? Had Katie chosen to keep her distance? Had Gerald orchestrated their relationship? The arrangement had once seemed to suit everyone concerned.
Their little train began to crawl out of the clearing, the dude leading, Reg behind him, Leah pulling Heath, Elizabeth behind pushing. Katie was nearly treading on Elizabeth’s heels, keeping as far from Sean and Jimmy as she could.
The first fifty yards, where social trails had been stomped into the soft earth by summer campers relieving themselves or searching for firewood, were comparatively easy. The chair moved smoothly on its doubled wheel, and there was space enough to each side for Heath to use her poles to maintain balance so her weight didn’t shift and jerk on the pulling handles.
Then the short honeymoon ended. Underbrush, laced with a loose weave of fallen twigs and branches, made movement a muscle-wrenching struggle. Hard physical labor was another thing that was not part of Leah’s life. Had the dude not been slowed up by fighting through thick vegetation, she, Heath, and Elizabeth would have been unable to keep up. Rick Shaw would have been abandoned, and Heath gotten a bullet between the eyes.
As time passed, Leah almost wished for it. In tight places the chair had to be pivoted on its wheel and pushed like a plow, Heath’s back serving as the blade that cleaved scrub and low branches.
Elizabeth, and even Katie, pulled, one on each paddle handle, while Leah pushed. Then Leah pulled and Elizabeth pushed. Over the bigger logs it took all three to lift the chair. Heath worked with her poles and thanked them again and again. She told them they were the most beautiful women she had ever seen, that should she die without sin and be ushered immediately into heaven, the angels that greeted her could be but a dim reflection of their glory.
The compliments seemed to fuel Katie and Elizabeth. Leah shut them out. They were not angels, they were not beautiful. They were sweating and grunting, bruised and bleeding, wrestling with a problem that, ultimately, could never be solved. People problems never could. The thugs would kill them, sell them, or ransom them. The thugs would be caught, imprisoned, put to death, or stay free to live like kings. Life had no solutions; it was a series. Once the issues were solved, the series was over, dead.
Leading with his cell phone GPS, the dude continued in a straight line regardless of difficulty. Reg grumbled, but he was strong and young. Sean and Jimmy didn’t do as well. Jimmy was short of breath. Sean, almost crippled with blisters and inappropriate shoes, minced along last, his mouth set in a hard line.
From the look on Heath’s face when she caught sight of him, Leah knew she took satisfaction in the creep’s suffering. Leah took satisfaction in the fact that Rick Shaw was proving up to the rigors of the terrain.
After three hours even this small pleasure was buried.
Heath asked Leah to duct-tape her hands to her makeshift ski poles because her fingers no longer had the strength not to drop them. Katie quit helping and reverted to nonstop whining. The paddle handles Leah thought she’d used so cleverly came to look like the oars in a slave galley, she and Elizabeth the unfortunates condemned to pull them until they died on the benches where they were chained.
The thugs did not volunte
er to help, nor did Leah or Heath ask them to. Heath, undoubtedly because to be tended to by the kidnappers was a worse fate than breaking the backs and ripping the skin of friends and family.
Leah didn’t ask because she knew the answer would be no.
TWENTY
Such was her exhaustion, it took Heath a few seconds to realize that they had stopped. Through eyes bleary with sweat, she peered ahead. Reg was squatting on his heels, his chin up, watching the dude. Over his shoulder, Heath could see the dude in profile standing in a small clearing, staring down at his cell phone. Though his face was as blank as ever, the muscles at the corner of his jaw bunched as if he gritted his teeth.
“Rest,” Heath said.
Leah and Elizabeth dragged Rick Shaw to where they could set its handles on a rock, keeping Heath on the level, then both dropped to the ground as if shot. Heath started peeling off the grubby duct tape that affixed her hands to the poles. Katie came up beside them, then sat down a little ways away, her back to her mother, and began picking at the blisters on her palms.
E was bleeding from a long gouge in her shin where a footrest had torn through her pants as she wrestled Rick Shaw through a bad patch. Scratches from the low dead branches thrusting out from every pine tree like spines from a porcupine cross-hatched the unbattered half of her face, her neck, her hands. Leaves, gold and red with autumn, tangled in her hair. Sweat darkened her jacket beneath her arms and in the middle of her back. Her face was so red it frightened Heath.
Not once had she complained. It wasn’t that Elizabeth was an abnormal teen. At home she could be as annoying as anyone else her age. This trauma was so reminiscent of the one that had brought them together that Heath feared it would break her. Instead, it almost seemed she had prepared for it. E had worked with a wonderful therapist Aunt Gwen recommended. Apparently Elizabeth had not only hunted down and faced her demons but had chosen how she would act should more demons come.
Wise, Heath thought. More demons always came.
“Lunch,” the dude announced abruptly.
Lunch; such a civilized activity, mundane, a thing taken at a small table on the mall in Boulder, or while reading in the sun at the kitchen table. Under the circumstances, the word had little meaning for Heath.
Sean shoved past. With a grunt, he fell to his butt, leaned back against a tree, and pulled off his boots. The bandages were off. Heath would have liked to see nasty suppurating sores, but it was too soon to expect that.
Reg went to stand by the dude and stare down at a creek cutting through the woods. Maybe fifteen feet from steep bank to steep bank, not deep, but running fast.
The bunching of the dude’s jaw indicated something more ominous than a river crossing. Heath watched him as Elizabeth crawled over and began ripping the duct tape from Heath’s ankles. Heath started to thank her, caught a glare from Katie, and resisted the impulse.
The dude was glancing from his phone to the abbreviated horizon of half-nude tree branches. Pacing the bank of the creek, he moved his phone up and down and side to side in an unconscious parody of a devout Catholic crossing himself.
He’d lost service, Heath realized. He had no signal, no GPS. They were lost, or, if not, they soon would be. She couldn’t decide if that was good or bad.
Finished with the duct tape, Elizabeth wedged her shoulder beneath Heath’s left arm. “Ready?”
“As I’ll ever be.”
As Elizabeth helped her lower herself to the ground, Heath watched herself kick her daughter, then absorbed the sharp end of a broken branch. “Sorry,” she said to Elizabeth. “I hope I didn’t hurt you.”
“No, but the branch will think twice before messing with you again,” Elizabeth gasped.
Heath knew the branch had won. Blood was probably pooling in her sock below the puncture. Shorted circuits in the lower half of her body didn’t register pain as did the upper half, but she could tell when she’d sustained an injury. The only way she could explain it to the able-bodied was that it almost hurt.
“Damn it,” Heath said. Her heels were drumming against the ground.
“Possessed by an Irish clog dancer,” Elizabeth said. “Call the exorcist.”
Heath laughed. It felt both marvelous and inappropriate.
“Gimme your bag.”
Jimmy shattered the moment of transient pleasure. Before Leah could take the pack off, the bearded troll grabbed it and yanked roughly backward.
“Hey!” Heath yelled before she could stop herself. She’d learned any wrath she brought down upon her own head would likely also be visited upon that of Elizabeth.
“Shut up,” Jimmy said and proceeded with ripping the pack from Leah’s shoulders. When he’d finally freed it, Leah was sprawled in the dirt. Her face, always pale, was so colorless, it looked more like bone than flesh. Katie was whimpering, the small awful sound baby animals make when frightened.
“Katie,” Heath said. “Your mom is okay.” Katie flung herself onto Heath’s lap, knocking the air out of her lungs. She was long-legged and coltish, no longer lap-sized. Heath stroked her hair, looking over the top of her head at Elizabeth. E shrugged. Katie was an enigmatic pain in the ass, the shrug said.
Reaching out, Elizabeth gave Heath’s shoulder a reassuring squeeze. Heath wished it were Elizabeth on her lap, wished she were still young enough to think her mother was safe as houses. E began pulling off her boots and socks the way she always did on hiking stops. Anna had convinced her that feet needed to breathe. Leah was watching Heath comfort her daughter. An emotion more like confusion than jealousy shadowed her eyes. She made no move to come collect her weeping offspring, just watched with what appeared to be befuddled interest.
Jimmy had taken the day pack to the edge of the sunken stream. Inside were three-quarters of a loaf of white bread, a package of sliced bologna, and a package of individually wrapped Kraft American cheese slices. For reasons known only to genius engineers, this was the lunch Leah took to work every day. When Katie saw it in the cooler, she said, “Well, at least Leah won’t starve.” This childhood food relic, sneered at by foodies from L.A. to New York, was currently being fought over as might be fine caviar in a discount fish market.
Reg had one shoulder strap, Jimmy the other, and they were worrying it between them like two dogs with a bone. Jimmy’s rifle, slung across his back by a strap, was flopping about with such vehemence Heath dared hope it would go off and blow their brains out.
The skirmish distracted Katie from her tears. Wiping her eyes with the back of her arm, she pulled out of Heath’s embrace. Curling her legs under her, she leaned back against a tree and pretended to close her eyes. Heath could see small shining crescents where she peeked from beneath her lashes.
Elizabeth stood and, in bare feet, walked toward the skirmish.
“E,” Heath called desperately. “Never mind. We aren’t hungry.”
Elizabeth pretended not to hear. Stopping close to the grapplers, she waited. The peculiar nature of her nearness and silence brought the tug-of-war to a halt, though neither Reg nor Jimmy relinquished the strap he’d captured.
“What do you want?” Reg asked.
“I’ll make the sandwiches for you.”
“Right,” Reg said, “and spit in them.” Heath was startled to hear her thoughts on the petty vengeance of slaves come from the mouth of a man whose great-great-something was probably among that number.
“I won’t,” Elizabeth said. “You can watch. You’re smashing the bread, and nobody will have anything.” Her voice was calm, a little obsequious and shaky. Fear or exhaustion, or both. For once Heath was unable to read her daughter’s emotions.
“You want a sandwich, I suppose?” Reg asked.
“That would be nice,” Elizabeth said meekly.
“Fuck off,” Reg said to Jimmy, as he put the heel of his hand against Jimmy’s sternum and casually pushed the smaller man down. “Make ’em,” Reg said, putting the pack in Elizabeth’s arms. “I’ll say who gets what.”
; He almost shot a glance toward the dude but stopped himself. Heath noted only a slight jerk of the head.
“We’ll say who gets what,” he corrected himself.
With no mustard, no mayonnaise, and no plates, the making of sandwiches was akin to dealing cards. Jimmy and Reg watched unblinkingly as Elizabeth dealt out bread, then bologna, then cheese until she had six sandwiches assembled. Heath noted approvingly how careful she was not to do anything sudden or fishy, to keep her hands in sight so the men watching wouldn’t suspect her of anything. She also noted, and without approval, that Elizabeth was sucking up to them. Perhaps there was no harm in that, and maybe some good—even if it was only a sandwich to eat. Still, she didn’t like it.
Reg took a sandwich for himself, then carried another to the dude, who continued to pace by the creek. Heath wondered if any of the others had yet reached the conclusion she had, that they had lost their electronic guide.
Jimmy jammed his sandwich into his mouth where he stood. Elizabeth brought two sandwiches to Heath to be shared among the four of them, then carried the last to where Sean sat morosely gazing at his torn feet.
“Eat fast,” Heath whispered as she handed one of the sandwiches to Leah. Heath was riding, she reasoned, she didn’t need food. She shoved the sandwich into her coat pocket for Elizabeth. The pocket was not a particularly sanitary place for food storage, but Heath had no doubt, once the men finished their sandwiches, they would grab anything not yet eaten. She was determined to keep Elizabeth’s few bites safe.
E delivered Sean’s lunch. She didn’t just hand it to him, she folded down cross-legged on his right side. Her bare toes were close enough to his thigh that, if she flexed them, she would touch him. “I brought you a sandwich,” she said.
Or somebody said. The voice was E’s from five years past, the E who had been a scared little girl, innocence lost, and nearly her mind with it. This Elizabeth was tiny, smaller than Katie, and no more than nine years old. A pit yawned inside Heath. Dizziness threatened to topple her into it. Elizabeth had seemed so strong, so able. Had Heath been fooling herself, projecting what she wished to see? Had she blinded herself to the fact that her daughter was regressing in the face of this second brutal attack?