The Woman

by Jack Ketchum

  Brian walked in looking kind of flustered.

  “You feed the dogs?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I need you to go out there again. Get the pooper-scooper off the beam and bring it in here. Brian? I smell something.”

  Brian looked down at his hand.

  “I thought I had it hosed all off of me. I slipped and fell into some dog turds.”

  “Well, go wash your hands for godsakes. Then get me that scooper.”

  ~ * ~

  Darlin’ made believe that she was the animal woman. She was the animal woman and the men were all running away from her but she was bigger and faster and rawr! she said and grabbed one up and the little man looked at her and said noooooo! Noooooo! Don’t eat meeeeeee!

  She bit his head off anyway.

  ~ * ~

  He pulled the scoop off the beam and noticed on the shelf beside it his father’s old hand-crank drill. His father had an electric drill now of course but it was his habit to save everything whether it was going to be used again or not.

  Brian thought he might have a very good use for it indeed.

  He popped a stick of Wrigley’s in his mouth.

  He worked fast and hard too because it was more difficult than he might have guessed to get the thing through three-quarters of an inch of weathered wood and he was nervous as hell because if somebody glanced out the window and saw him out here doing this there was going to be big trouble. But in a while that seemed like a long while he had a hole drilled at the bottom left-hand corner of the door about two feet above the base. He brushed off the shavings and got down and had a look.

  At first all he saw were her legs, dim in the darkness of the cellar. Then he adjusted his position. He saw her thighs, her belly streaked with grime, her breasts. He blinked and looked up again and saw her face and rolled away onto his back as though struck by sudden lightening.

  She was staring straight at him.

  He could feel his face flush, the pulse pounding in his forehead.

  Easy, he thought. Calm down, kiddo.

  He took out the wad of gum and rolled it in the dirt until it was completely covered and plugged the hole and then smoothed it over with his hand. Looked good — the same brown color as the door. He stood up and dusted off his ass, grabbed the scoop and drill and raced back to the barn, dropped the drill on its shelf and walked back to the house all laid-back and casual.

  His mother was carefully dumping boiling water from the chili-pots into a pair of wash buckets. His father was reading his paper.

  “Where you been?” he said.

  “I was playing around with the dogs a little.”

  His father put the paper down.

  “You?” he said.

  “Yeah. I do, sometimes.”

  His father shrugged, then stood.

  “We ready, Belle?”

  “We’re ready.”

  “All right then. Brian, take a bucket. Careful not to spill.”

  “Yessir.”

  And that was it. He’d gotten over.

  FIFTEEN

  Light pours through the musty room, and wind. She is grateful for the breeze and the scent of land and living things. For a moment she is blinded again to all but the dust-motes swirling in front of her. She sees the figure above like a black ghost which gradually resolves itself into the man, her captor, descending the stairs.

  She braces herself. For anything.

  ~ * ~

  “How we doin’ today?” he says and sets the towels and dish rags and Lava soap down beside the winch.

  “Sorry about this. But with you I’m taking no more chances.”

  He cranks the winch. One turn, two. He knows this is uncomfortably tight now, can see the pull in the tendons of her arms and thighs. But it’s necessary. The woman makes no sound of complaint, not even a grunt. Again he admires her. Tough bitch, this one is.

  He gives the winch one more turn.

  ~ * ~

  And she can feel the bolt at her right wrist give slightly. The man has done damage to his own handiwork. Not enough damage, not yet. But some. Her wrists are oozing blood but when the boy and the woman walk down the stairs to join him he turns his back to her for a moment and she works the wrist as best she can.

  ~ * ~

  Belle and Brian set the buckets of steaming hot water down on the cellar floor.

  “The scooper, Brian.”

  “Right. Forgot.”

  The kid takes the stairs two at a time. He knows his son’s enjoying this. Let him. His son’s practically a man.

  He unwraps the bar of soap, folds it into a dish rag and dips it into the water. Damn! that shit’s hot! It practically burns his fingers. He works it into a lather experimentally as Brian bolts back down the stairs with the scooper. Thinks, this’ll work just fine.

  “Gonna scrub her down, pop? I never seen anybody — smelled anybody — that nasty before! Jeez!”

  His son is grinning.

  “Your mother and I are. But first you need to clean up her mess.”

  “Me?”

  “Yes, Brian. You.”

  The grin’s disappeared now. Cleek doesn’t blame the boy. It’s not a job anybody’d want. She’s missed the Tupperware bowl entirely with her shit, though most of her piss is in there.

  “Use the scooper and one of these rags here. We’ll just have to clean up after her until we get her…”

  “Potty trained?”

  The grin is back again. His son is nothing if not resilient.

  “Exactly.”

  Brian sets to. And it’s not lost on him that the boy is concentrating on those long firm legs as much as he is on the job he’s doing. Brian points to what’s left of the food and the food bowl.

  “This too?”

  “Yeah. Let her think on eating for a while.”

  When he’s done he just stands there, scooper in hand.

  “Okay, now get.”

  “But I can help you…”

  He gives his son a look. It’s a look that’s always stopped him dead in his tracks and today is no exception. Fun is fun but he’s not about to let his boy wash down a full-grown woman. Brian sighs and trudges up the stairs.

  “And close the door behind you.“

  Cleek turns on the overhead light and snaps on a pair of rubber work gloves. The cellar door slams shut.

  Belle’s standing behind him, twisting nervously at her wedding ring.

  “You might want to take that off,” he says. “And put on a pair of these. This is going to be messy.”

  He watches her work the ring off her finger and shove it in the pocket of her Bermudas. It occurs to him that all this time down here Belle hasn’t yet said a word. He’s guessing she’s not too sanguine about all this. He wishes she were but he knows his wife. She’s always been a timid thing. When they met as kids that was attractive to him. It’s not anymore.

  She puts on the rubber gloves.

  “Grab a bucket.”

  They move to within about three feet of the woman and set down the buckets. He dips the soapy dish rag into the steaming water, lathers it up more and presses it to the woman’s forehead and

  ~ * ~

  she smells it long before it touches her, a disgusting mix of fats and other scents not of her world and when it touches her she can feel her skin crawl beneath the hot cloth and bastard! son of a whore! she screams and tears at the shackles holding her, every muscle in her body working to get to him and tear at him screaming all the while as he stumbles back and

  ~ * ~

  kicks the pail at Belle’s feet, which nearly overturns, sloshes steaming water all over his wife’s bare legs so that she screams and the woman is screaming at him too “Bastart! Mac dar striapach!” over and over, thrashing side to side and forward and back — he can hear her spine banging against the shelf behind her and the rage comes riding through him like a runaway train.

  “That’s how you want to play? Fine!”

  He bends down and picks up th
e bucket at Belle’s feet and flings its contents. The water that has scalded his poor wife’s legs now leaps out of the bucket all over the woman’s shoulder, her neck, her cheek, her belly. Her scream goes hoarse and guttural.

  And abruptly, stops.

  ~ * ~

  It burns! Hot enough to take her breath away.

  The man picks up the second bucket. And she is immediately aware of two things simultaneously. The first gives her hope. The bolt to her right has loosened considerably. The second gives her shame. Because she knows that the look in her eyes has changed.

  From a look of defiance to one of fear. Fear of that second bucket.

  And knows he sees this too.

  ~ * ~

  Brian sits at the screened window staring out toward the cellar. It isn’t fair, he thinks. But then, when were adults ever fair? He jumps up at the sudden screaming outside coming from the cellar and heads for the door. No way he’s missing this. Fuck it. Peg passes him in the hall. She’s chomping on an apple.

  “Hey! You’re gonna catch hell if you go back down there, Bri,” she says.

  “Suck my dick, sis,” he says.

  He races outside.

  ~ * ~

  “This what you want? You want more?”

  And she gets his drift. He can tell she gets it. There’s something in her eyes that’s almost humble — almost pleading with him. He likes that. Likes it a lot. He wonders if she’s ever looked at anybody that way before exactly and he likes that thought even better. That he should be the first.

  He sets the bucket down.

  He looks to his wife.

  “You okay, honey?

  Her legs are splotched beet red. She hisses in a breath, speaks through gritted teeth.

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Let’s try this again.”

  She shakes her head like this is crazy which he doesn’t much care for but unwraps her own bar of soap and folds it into a dish rag which he likes.

  ~ * ~

  His mom and dad are standing in front of the woman with dish rags in their hands and he doesn’t see what all the commotion was about. The woman seems calm enough. His view through the peephole is perfect but he can barely hear them through the door. He listens carefully. He doesn’t want to miss a thing.

  “Maybe we should let this cool down a bit before…” his mom says.

  His father interrupts her. “Now hon,” he says, “you know as well as I do that the best way to get something clean is with good hot water. Might as well be shuffling germs around if we go cold or hell, even room temp. Remember, we’re totally in control here.”

  His dad approaches the woman with the rag and squeezes some soapy water out over her head. It runs down her forehead and cheek and neck all the way down to her tits. Even from here he can see that her nipples are hard.

  So is he.

  The woman doesn’t move. His dad is pleased.

  “Good,” he says.

  He dips the rag into the water again and brings it to the woman’s cheek and scrubs. Brian can see her wince at his touch.

  “Look there. We got a clean spot.”

  His mother says something he can’t quite hear.

  The woman sneezes. The soap tickling her nose he guesses. Brian almost laughs out loud but he stifles that. She looks so miserable hanging there. He’d bet she’s never had a proper civilized soap-and-water bath in all her life.

  This is awesome fun.

  His dad washes her other cheek. Her forehead, then her nose and chin and around her mouth. That’s a little bit scary, this part. He remembers — and he knows his father sure as hell remembers — that she took off the tip of his finger just yesterday. She could easily take off another right now if she wanted to but she doesn’t for some reason. Then he notices that the whole right side of her looks scalded. So that was what all the screaming was about.

  His dad’s tamed her. With scalding hot water. Way to go, dad.

  The woman’s face is still streaked but way cleaner and gleaming wet and bright from the heat. His mother’s just standing there with the soapy rag in her hand, watching him. He wonders why she isn’t helping. He sure would.

  His father’s dipped the rag again and gone on to her neck, front and back, scrubbing hard. The woman’s glaring at him now. He doesn’t seem to notice.

  “Come on, Belle, give me a hand here.”

  His mother dips her rag in the water but that’s all she does. It’s as though she’s afraid to move. But it‘s not that. He sees something in her posture that he’s seen before — it‘s very familiar. Something his father also doesn’t notice. His mother’s angry. It’s all bottled up inside her there but she’s angry all right.

  Dad’s done with her neck. He’s working on her shoulders. Getting closer and closer to…

  …those amazing tits…

  ~ * ~

  She has known for some time now. She has sensed it and there is no need to put it to the test. In the slightest movement of her hand inside the bolt she senses it.

  ~ * ~

  “Don’t you go getting all foolish on me, Belle,” his father says. “It’s just something’s gotta be done.”

  Her shoulders are clean. He dips the rag into the water again.

  ~ * ~

  He tries to hide it from his woman and perhaps he can but he cannot hide it from her. His heart is racing. His pulse pounding. He is focused on her breasts. He reaches out for them with the dripping cloth.

  And the second he touches her, the second she feels the heat, she tears the bolt free of the wall and her hand darts to his neck like a striking snake and she is soaring, roaring with elation. Her fingers dig deep into the muscles of his neck and the man struggles, tries to pry her hand free but his two hands are not nearly a match for her single hand and the long-bred strength which resides there and she is grinning directly into his horror-struck face as he writhes and chokes and sees his death hovering in her eyes.

  This is the pleasure of the hunt.

  This is the will and the power and the freedom.

  This is the joy of her creation.

  He is going down beneath her grip.

  Then the door is flung open and thunder booms.

  ~ * ~

  He has raced back to the house for the gun and it’s all a blur, one huge red blur — it seems only an instant later he’s run past Peg and Darlin’ standing in the hall with Peg saying what?? and down the stairs and then he’s there inside the cellar, first dimly aware of his father on his knees in front of her by now, his arms limp at his sides, the woman’s hand clutching his neck and his mother simply standing there with her hands over her mouth and then the next thing he knows the .45 leaps in his own hands and a bullet ricochets off the back wall and the side wall and the stairway directly behind him.

  And then he’s in front of her pointing the gun right in her face and he hears himself say back off!

  The woman hesitates, looks him in the eyes as though to verify his intent. And then drops his father gasping for breath to the cellar floor. His father is coughing violently. He can hear it over the gunshot ringing in his ears. He’s aware of movement behind him and then a firm hand pushes him roughly aside.

  He corrects his balance just in time to see his mother, lips pressed tight together, tears pooling in her eyes, whack the woman in the side of the head with a length of two-by-four. The woman goes slack.

  The woman is out.

  He realizes he’s barely breathing. He hauls in a deep one.

  His mother. Who’d have thought it?

  It’s ridiculous and yet not so ridiculous given the occasion but an old song lyric pops into his mind that his dad likes.

  Stand by your man.

  His mom tosses away the two-by-four clattering to the floor and goes to him. Helps him up.

  “Thanks,” he says. His voice is weak. His eyes all skittery. His hand is at his neck. He turns to Brian.

  “Go get me a hammer and the drill, son,” he says. “Need to drive a new
one. Deeper. A lot deeper.”

  He reaches for the gun and Brian hands it over.

  “Dad. I’m sorry. I know I’m not supposed to…but…”

  “It’s okay, boy. You did good. Real good. Now get me those tools, okay?”

  And it stays with him, what his dad said, as he hits the stairs. You did good. Real good.

  He has never quite gotten those words out of his father before.

  Not once. Never.

  SIXTEEN

  He can do this practically with his eyes closed as he can do most other things which require physical skill and dexterity but he’s having trouble concentrating and he thinks that even Belle can see that, Belle standing to one side with the .45 to the woman’s head by way of discouragement while he drives the eye bolt into new hole which he means to get all the way down to the loop but he’s missed the damn thing twice which is not like him at all.

  His trouble is that he isn’t quite sure why he’s doing this. Why he doesn’t just let her go to live out her miserable savage life however she sees fit. And this is not like him either, to be unsure. He’s sure in his business and he’s sure with his family and friends and acquaintances which is a better word actually because he has no close friends really, has never wanted them, has never trusted them. He trusts Belle and his kids and that’s it. That’s all he needs.

  He’s looked over the subject of why he’s doing this and around and through the subject and he doesn’t have an answer except that he wants to. He knows it’s probably dangerous, forget the fact that physically she’s one fucking dangerous beast, but if he wanted to count them he knows he’s probably breaking a dozen laws or more, he’s putting them all in a kind of jeopardy here but all he can come up with in terms of a why is that he wants to see this little experiment of his through to its fruition. Just as his cheerful sweet drunk of a mother used to call Chris her own little experiment meaning that she’d have one kid, sure, but no more, she’d never willingly birth another.

  But he sees this wildness in her and it attracts him powerfully in both his dick and his brain, he knows that much and he does want to tame her, he does want to know if it’s possible. He’s tamed himself god knows. And if he could do that with the kid he was why not her? If he had the will and the strength to break himself like you’d break a crazy wild horse he ought to be able to do the same with her.