Deadliest of Sins

by Sallie Bissell

  “Did you make him do it all day?” His mother put a hand under his chin, inspecting his body proprietarily, as if it were still somehow attached to her own. “He’s blistered with sunburn. And look at these spots all over his arms!”

  “Aw, they’re just mosquito bites.” Gudger scoffed. “You treat that boy like he was a china doll.”

  “But he’s covered in these things!” She turned to Gudger in a rare show of anger. “Couldn’t you have given him some insect repellent?”

  “It’s okay, Mama,” Chase said, not wanting to stoke Gudger’s wrath further. “I’ll go wash up and put on some lotion.”

  “Good idea, boy.” Gudger said a bit too heartily. “By the time you get back, we’ll have a nice plate of fried chicken ready for you.”

  Chase went to the bathroom, weak with relief. Gudger hadn’t been mad at him; Gudger had been mad at his mother not having a hot, home-cooked supper on the table at six thirty. He turned on the overhead light. As he started to fill the sink with water, he caught a glimpse of himself in the bathroom mirror. Suddenly he realized why his mother was so upset. He looked like something out of an old sci-fi movie, where people had been zapped by too much radiation. His skin looked like raw flesh from his hairline to his collar bones, covered in both mosquito bites and smaller, paler pimples that he’d never seen before.

  “Wow,” he said, barely recognizing the face that stared back at him. “No wonder Mama got mad.” He washed the dirt from his face with cool water and dabbed pink Calamine lotion on his bites. He looked cleaner, but slightly comical, spotted in pink and white dots. He went to his room and put on a clean T-shirt, in case Gudger decided it would be fun to post more pictures of him on YouTube.

  By the time he got back to the kitchen, Gudger sat hunched over his plate, making short work of three big pieces of chicken.

  “Here, sweetie,” his mother said, giving him another worried look as she retrieved a plate from the oven. “I kept yours warm.”

  He ate. Fried chicken, macaroni and cheese, applesauce his mother had canned last fall. Never had anything tasted so good. He was about to ask for another piece of chicken when Gudger scooted back in his chair and tossed his napkin in his plate.

  “I’m going to catch the rest of the game.”

  Chase focused on his plate as Gudger went into the den. Soon the voices of the baseball announcers wafted into the kitchen. As he scraped up his last bite of applesauce, his mother started clearing the table. He could tell by the way she carried the plates that her hand was hurting her, so he got up to help her.

  “That chicken was good, but it wasn’t as good as yours, Mama,” he said, handing her his dirty dishes as she filled the sink with hot water.

  “Did you get enough to eat?” She tried to squeeze her swollen hand into a rubber glove, but it wouldn’t fit.

  “I can wash the dishes,” he said. “I’ll wash and you dry, just like Sam and I used to do.”

  For a moment she smiled, then she leaned over the sink and started to cry. “Oh, Chase,” she sobbed. “What are we going to do?”

  Suddenly, he couldn’t stand to see her like this anymore. The words he’d earlier decided not to say filled his mouth. Sam called yesterday, Mama. I talked to her. She’s alive, but she’s in trouble. I called Mary Crow about her this afternoon. They were just about to spill out when Gudger’s voice cracked like a whip.

  “Chase!” he yelled. “Get in here, boy. You and I need to have a little talk.”

  His heart stopped. Gudger must have found out about his making that phone call. All night he’d just been waiting for the right moment to spring his trap. “I’m helping Mama clean up,” Chase called, stalling for time.

  “Your mama can clean up by herself. You come on in here.”

  “Go on, Chase.” His mother wiped her eyes with the corner of her apron. “These dishes won’t take long. I’ll be in there in just a minute.”

  He had no choice. Gudger was calling, his mother was telling him to go. His mouth chalky with fear, he walked slowly into the den. Gudger sprawled in his lounge chair, a small pile of beer cans in a wastebasket beside him. Chase approached the man cautiously. Gudger was mean enough sober; drunk, he was ten times worse.

  “Yes sir?” Chase stopped well out of range of Gudger’s fists.

  “I wanted to tell you that I’m proud of you, boy,” Gudger said, just beginning to slur his words. “You did a man’s work today, and you’ve earned a man’s rest tonight. Come watch this game with me.”

  He was stunned by Gudger’s offer of camaraderie, also distrustful. It would be just like Gudger to pretend to be friends, and then blindside him when he wasn’t expecting it. “Thanks, but I’m kind of tired. I’d really just rather go to bed.”

  “You felt strong enough to help your mama a few minutes ago … are you saying you’re now too tired to watch a ball game with me?”

  Chase knew he was walking into a trap, but he couldn’t tell what kind it was. Anyway, he knew arguing would only make Gudger more determined to spring it. “No sir,” he said. “I’ll watch the game.”

  He walked over and sat down on the sofa. On television, the Braves catcher was jiggling his fingers between his legs—some kind of signal to the pitcher. He didn’t know anything about baseball—his father had been a Cincinnati Bengals fan. He sat staring at the screen, wishing Gudger would pass out when he felt something cold against his bare leg. He jumped, looked down. Gudger was holding an icy can of Pabst beer against his shin.

  “There you go, boy. Working man’s reward. Uncork that puppy and knock it back. It’ll cure what ails you.”

  Chase shook his head. He’d had beer before. It looked a whole lot better than it tasted. “No thanks,” he told Gudger.

  “Aw, what’s the matter? You too much of a mama’s boy to take a drink?” Gudger’s eyes glittered with dark glee, as if he’d discovered some secret Chase had been trying to hide. Again, he knew he was trapped. If he didn’t drink the beer, he’d hear about it for weeks, possibly months.

  “No, I’ll drink it,” he said. Slowly, he pulled the can open. White foam gurgled to the top. He took a small sip; bitter, pungent bubbles filled his mouth. Sputtering, he put the can down. Gudger started to laugh.

  “Go on, boy, knock it back! Chug it like a man!”

  Chase took another sip, choked a mouthful down.

  “No!” cried Gudger. “Not like that. Like this.” He opened a new can, held it up to his mouth, and poured it down his throat, his Adam’s apple bobbing. He tossed the empty in the box and turned to Chase.

  Just get it over with, Chase told himself. He did exactly what Gudger did—held the can up high and poured it down his throat. Though he hated the taste, hated the way the stuff foamed up into his nose and sinuses, he managed to gulp the stuff down. When the can was empty, he gave it back to Gudger. “There,” he said. “I chugged it like a man.”

  Gudger was going to say something, but the game on TV caught his attention. Chase sat back on the sofa, belching as one player hit the ball and another player caught, then dropped it. Gudger began screaming at the TV. Suddenly, the men on the screen grew fuzzy—comical pin-striped characters frolicking across a field of green. He blinked—his face felt hot, his skin tight. The room began to tilt as he felt a rolling sensation in the pit of his stomach.

  “Did you see that pitch, boy?” Gudger turned to him, excited.

  He couldn’t answer as his mouth began to flood with saliva.

  “What’s the matter with you, boy?” cried Gudger.

  “I-I think I’m going to be sick.”

  “Aw, come on,” said Gudger. “After one beer?”

  Quickly, he stood up. He knew he was going to puke—either here or in the toilet. Tripping over Gudger’s feet, he stumbled toward the bathroom.

  “Are you kidding me?” Gudger started laughing, then grew silent as
Chase lurched into the door frame. “Oh, go on and get out of here, you lying little weasel,” he says. “Just see if I waste a good beer on you again.”

  With the house spinning, Chase managed to get to the bathroom just as the beer erupted from his stomach. He clutched the commode like a man on a life raft as the beer and fried chicken made its way into the toilet. Though the room still spun and his body trembled in a cold, drenching sweat, Gudger’s parting words sobered him quickly. You lying little weasel. There would be no reason for Gudger to call him that unless he knew that he’d been on the phone, talking to his sister.

  Twelve

  Sam couldn’t remember if the doctor had pulled her shorts back on; what she did remember was being flipped over on her stomach, then a sting in her left buttock. After that she floated away, back to Chase climbing high into Cousin Petey’s sycamore tree, back to her father waving to her from his truck, back to a strange, lush land where people had wings and dogs walked upright, reciting poetry. For days she traveled through dazzling meadows with a poetry-quoting Airedale, then, when they came to a river that flowed like honey, the dog turned to her, saying, Little Mary, quite contrary, how does your garden grow? With silver bells and cockle shells and pretty maids, all in a row!

  Grinning at her, the Airedale vanished. She jumped, surprised by his disappearance. She found herself not in a magical land with talking dogs, but back in a shabby motel room. She sat up in the bed, blinking, still looking for the dog and the meadow and the lapping river, but she saw only a gray linoleum floor, a boarded-up window, an ancient television crowned with a rabbit-ear antenna. For a moment she sat there, wondering where the dog had gone; then the edges of reality sharpened. There were no dogs or golden meadows here. Here was only a sweat-stained mattress, a battered bureau all in a concrete-block box.

  As she grew more fully awake, she realized she was both thirsty and needing to pee. She lifted the lint-speckled blanket that covered her and stood up. The soles of her feet tingled as they touched the cold linoleum floor. She felt woozy but managed the four steps to the bathroom without stumbling. As she sat down on the toilet, she saw that someone had scratched this place is a hell hole at knee-level, on the wall.

  “You got that right,” she whispered.

  As she peed, she closed her eyes, tried to piece her recent past into some kind of order. A horrible old doctor had examined her in front of a man named Boris? Bucko? She couldn’t remember his name, but his actions were etched her in memory—he’d yelled at Ivan, and then the man who looked like an ape pointed a rifle at Ivan; flames had come out of the barrel. But why? What had made Boris-Bucko so mad? She put her head in her hands and tried to think—was it something the doctor had done? Some part of her body that he founding lacking? She was filing through hazy wisps of memories when suddenly, she remembered! Ivan had let her use his cell phone! She’d called home and talked to Chase!

  Chase, I’m in trouble, she remembered saying. I’m scared. Please tell Mom.

  What did you say?

  She could barely hear him, the connection was sketchy and someone seemed to be hammering in the background. Tell Mama some men are going to send me away! she’d finally said, yelling as loud as she could.

  Then a huge noise, then blood, then Ivan slammed against the wall right beside her with half his face gone. She covered her own face, trying to block out the memory. Had Chase heard anything she’d said? Had he told Mama? Had either of them called the police?

  Sam didn’t know; the world had gone crazy after that phone call, becoming a maelstrom of shouts and voices, none of them speaking a word she could understand.

  “Oh Mama,” she whispered, longing for her mother’s arms, the soft shoulders that had blotted so many of her tears. “I am in so much trouble.”

  She sat there trembling, then she remembered her father speaking to her in another dream—a dream of warm, deep darkness. It’s all up to you, Sam-I-Am.

  “I guess it is,” she said. Neither Chase nor her mother could get her out of this mess. This time, she would have to save herself.

  She dried her eyes and got to her feet. She pulled the lever that flushed the ancient john with some trepidation, but the tank emptied and refilled, making a curious tapping sound as the water level rose. Grateful to at least have working plumbing, she stepped over to the sink to wash her hands. As a stream of tea-colored water issued from the faucet, she lifted her head to look in the medicine cabinet mirror. Someone (maybe the person who’d written the hell-hole graffiti) had put a fist in the middle of the thing—cracking the glass so that her face looked as if it had been jig-sawed into a puzzle that didn’t quite fit together. She traced one of the long shards with her finger. It wiggled in its rusty metal frame, sharp as a stiletto.

  Okay, she thought. If it comes to it, I can take myself out of here. Better that than whatever Boris has in mind.

  Turning away from the mirror, she stepped back into her room. She’d assumed it was her same old room, but as she looked around, she realized it was different. Ivan’s blood did not stain the floor, nor did any bullet holes speckle the wall next to her bed. This room had a bureau shoved in one corner, one drawer of which held a tattered collection of old sci-fi paperbacks. The television pulled in a single, fuzzy shopping channel, and when she tried to peek out the nailed-shut window, she saw nothing but a sheet of plywood. She walked over to the door and flipped the switch for the overhead fluorescent. Neither on nor off had any effect; the cold, anemic light that shone now would, apparently, illuminate the room 24/7.

  As she fiddled with the light switch, the john began rattling again. The sound reminded her of their scary old toilet back in West Virginia. It had seemed like a living monster when she was four; she was convinced some ogre lived in the thing, just waiting to grab her bottom and pull her down into the dark, watery depths. Then her father explained it was just air in the old pipes.

  “Only there probably is a monster in this john,” she whispered, thinking of Boris. “It speaks Russian and has a head like a cue ball.”

  After a moment, the tapping stopped. She paced off the room—twelve feet by twelve feet—the same size as her last one. Something was different here, though. Before, she was aware of a world beyond her locked door—the sounds of girls trooping past her door twice a day, distant music playing, loud arguments usually involving Dusty and the men. Here, she heard nothing. Except for the noisy toilet, this room was as silent as a tomb.

  Suddenly she panicked. What if Boris had locked her in here and gone away? What if Chase had called the police and they’d taken everyone to jail, but hadn’t searched the place well enough to find her? What if Boris and the doctor were saving her for something worse than the truck stop? What if they’d gone and just left her here to die?

  She turned and started pounding on the door. “Hey!” she cried. “Is anybody there? Can anybody hear me?”

  She stopped, pressed her ear to the crack, and listened. Nothing.

  “Hey!” she called louder. “I’m hungry! I need some food!”

  She listened again, praying to hear something—anything—even that mama, mama, mama girl was preferable to this. Again, she heard nothing.

  “Please!” she cried, banging harder. “Somebody! I need help!”

  She listened again. Did she hear footsteps? She pressed her ear to the door as the muffled sounds seemed to grow louder. Then she heard a key fumbling at her lock. Scared, she hurried back to the bed. As she did, the door opened, revealing a short, dark-haired man wearing jeans and bearing a tray of food. He stepped inside the room and kicked the door closed behind him. His brows were knitted above his nose, his mouth a thin, downward curve. His expression was stern but neutral; his dark eyes focused on her face rather than her body.

  “You ho-kay?” he asked in heavily accented English.

  She didn’t know what to say. She wasn’t in physical pain; no doctor was stuffing his fa
t fingers up her crotch. Still, she was about as far from okay as she could get. “Where am I?” she asked. “What day is it?”

  “You with Yusuf,” the little man said. “You eat, then drink tea.”

  He put a tray down on her bed. It was not the fast food crap that Ivan had brought her, but real food. Orange-colored chicken stew over rice with little triangles of bread, accompanied by a small teapot that had steam seeping from the spout. As she inhaled the savory aromas, her mouth began to water. She couldn’t remember when she’d last eaten.

  Yusuf snapped a big linen napkin open and laid it across her lap, then sat down on the floor, keeping his eyes on her the whole time. “You eat. I stay … make sure you ho-kay.”

  She frowned, realizing that he wasn’t going away until she finished. She looked for a spoon or fork on the tray, but found none there.

  “I don’t have anything to eat with,” she told him.

  “Turkish way.” He made a motion of scooping something into his mouth. “With bread.”

  She picked up a triangle of the flat bread and scooped up some stew. It tasted as delicious as it smelled—chicken and cinnamon and a lot of other spicy-sweet flavors she couldn’t name. She shoveled the food into her mouth; never had anything tasted so good.

  He watched her as she ate, his gaze never wandering. At first he made her nervous, then she decided to ignore him. This Yusuf seemed another version of Ivan—short and dark instead of tall and blond—but a foreigner, nonetheless. If she could make friends with him, maybe he would tell her where she was, what they planned to do with her. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and smiled. “This is good. Thank you.”

  “Good to eat,” he said. “Make healthy.”

  “Does everybody here eat like this?”

  Yusuf shook his head, as if he didn’t understand. “Everybody here?”

  “Here.” She spread her arms to indicate the whole building. “As opposed to the cornflake and Big Mac wing.”