The Captive

by Fiona King Foster

  “Fair enough,” the man said, taking out his wallet.

  Brooke watched him count the money loosely with his thumb. Four times what they would charge a local, and he hadn’t even blinked.

  “Great view you have up here,” the man said, handing her the cash.

  Brooke folded the bills into her pocket without comment.

  “Must get lonely, though.” The man bounced on the balls of his feet as he surveyed the hills. “Way out here. My daughters would implode.”

  Robin reappeared, pulling two jerry cans. “How long is the drive to the city?” he asked, fitting a plastic nozzle onto the first can.

  The cottager helped him lift and empty the gas into the tank. “Four hours. Bit more. It used to be faster, but the roads out here are even worse than before. And they were never great.”

  The man laughed, and Robin smiled. Brooke’s stomach burned as she imagined her brother riding away in the shiny leather interior of the cottager’s car.

  When both cans were empty, the man reached into his glove compartment for a package of wet wipes. “Thanks for your help,” he said, offering the package to Robin.

  “Where’s your cottage?” Brooke asked, trying to match the man’s light tone. “The cottage.”

  “Down on Diamond Lake. You want to keep an eye on it for me? The front gate says Twin Pines.”

  “South side of the lake or north?” Brooke asked, amazed to find a grown man so gullible.

  “North. Nice rustic place on the bay. Cedar deck. I used to time-share it with my brother, but I bought him out. Got too rough for him.” The man winked, opening the door of his car. “Sure is beautiful, though. No place like it. It’s too bad I’m the only one who gets to see it anymore.”

  The next day, Brooke took Robin to the north shore of Diamond Lake on an ATV. It was easy to follow the tracks of the man’s car in the gravel road. No other vehicle had been this way in a season. She pulled up outside a gate where lettering had recently been painted a glossy forest green: TWIN PINES. She got a drill from her backpack, unscrewed the cane bolt from the lock, and swung the gate wide, propping it open with a rock. She climbed back on the ATV in front of Robin and drove through.

  It was just as the man had described. The deck of the big, old-fashioned cottage had been swept clear of fallen leaves and pine needles, and a wooden lounge chair sat looking out over the lake. Through the trees, the surface of the water shivered with overlapping arcs of breeze. At an inlet across the bay, there was a collection of gray wood where floating docks, detached from their moorings, had drifted.

  Too bad I’m the only one who gets to see it, the cottager had said.

  Brooke started with the garage. Whoever had made off with the man’s gas cans hadn’t taken much else, by the look of it. There was still a wall of peg-mounted tools, a charcoal barbecue, a chest cooler, two kids’ bikes with blue and purple streamers on the handlebars.

  Brooke took a fifty-foot coil of grounded extension cord from a hook on the pegboard and dropped it in the cargo box of the ATV.

  “We said we’d keep an eye on it for him,” Robin said.

  “No, we didn’t,” Brooke said. She knew Robin had kept the wet wipe. She’d seen it in his drawer, folded carefully, feather dry and spotless.

  “You’re just going to take his stuff?”

  “We are going to take his stuff and sell it,” Brooke said, climbing the deck to examine the front door of the cottage. “Did you notice how quick Mama was to sell that asshole gas? We need money. And you need a job.”

  She had thought about it. Salvaging required strength, independence, and ruthlessness: all the toughening up Robin needed. If she could teach him this, he might be all right without her.

  “He wasn’t an asshole,” Robin objected.

  “He didn’t even argue about paying a hundred and twenty for two cans of gas. He’s rich.”

  “So what?”

  “So, he’s de facto an asshole. This isn’t even his home, Rob. He has this place just for relaxing.”

  Brooke wrenched the door open with a crowbar. Inside, they found a bookshelf stuffed with dusty paperback novels and magazines, board games, plaid upholstery, wicker baskets, antique kitchen implements.

  “What is it about a cottage that makes people think they’re living in the past?” Brooke asked. She swung the crowbar into a wall. Robin flinched as the brittle plasterboard crumbled.

  “Copper,” Brooke told him, reeling wire from the ruined wall. “Ten dollars for thirty feet.”

  “I don’t want to do this,” he said. “I don’t want to wreck things. I don’t want a job. I want to go to school.”

  “There is no school, Rob. You know that. That world is gone.”

  “It’s not gone,” Robin said quietly, lifting a small porcelain figure of a Dalmatian from the bookshelf. “It’s only four hours away.”

  “Put that down,” she snapped. “It’s worthless.”

  Tears sprang to Robin’s eyes. Brooke never shouted at him.

  “You have to take this seriously,” she said, holding out the coiled wire. “It’s for your own good. Please.”

  He wiped his tear-darkened lashes and moved to help her, slipping the little Dalmatian into his pocket.

  Brooke drove them into Shaw Station with the stuff from the man’s cottage. The hardware store bought the satellite dish, extension cord, boat motor, and floodlight system, along with the copper wire, for two hundred dollars.

  “Hide this,” Brooke told Robin, handing him fifty from the salvage money, plus twenty more from the cottager’s cash. The rest she brought to Emily at dinner that night.

  “How much gas did that jackass buy?” her mother asked, riffling the stack of bills.

  “A hundred. The rest came from salvage. Robin’s got a new project.”

  Emily held Brooke’s eye for a moment, appraisingly. “Good for him,” she said.

  After that, every day they could be spared from the refinery, Brooke and Robin sifted through cottages and boathouses for things to sell: floodlights left in brackets, copper wire snug in walls. Brooke moved like a machine, weighing the price of everything she saw against the effort of carrying it out. Robin gravitated to all the wrong things: photo albums, handmade crafts, quilts—objects with no worth—amassing a collection of junk in his closet at home. Brooke didn’t have the heart to stop him. He still salvaged enough to make a profit, and he was back to something like his old, chatty self, speculating about the cottagers who had left these things behind, what they’d been like, why they’d spent their summers here, what they must miss.

  Brooke didn’t know if people had meant to come back for all the things they’d left—toasters, mini blenders, lawnmowers, weed trimmers, chainsaws, cedar-strip canoes, stereos—or if they just didn’t care. Then there were the things that rich cottagers would never have thought to take: electrical wire, brass fittings, glass fuses, fiberglass insulation, water tanks.

  The main part of their earnings went to Emily, but Robin’s secret savings grew steadily.

  Callum laughed at the scavenging operation, calling them scrappers and grubbers, but as long as they were earning, it was tolerated. Callum had been living in town with Pauline, and he was often away now, developing new contacts. He wanted to press further, beyond the local trade, into the city. The border was more permeable all the time, and there were networks on the other side who were interested in cheap chalk from the country. The Hollands could hold that market unopposed, he said, if Anita could just get the Cawleys out of the field.

  Anita had been doing her best, though the Cawleys were less disorganized than Callum had originally supposed. Where the Hollands took over their territory, Delia and Frank Jr. hit back. Anita got better guns. Edmund and Emily brought in cameras, trip wires, dogs—Rottweiler crosses that they kept hungry and anchored to old tractor wheels at the edge of the property.

  Edmund said it was a sign they were succeeding; the Cawleys, like any animals, would lash out when threatened.
Emily said the Cawleys were doomed to fail. Trash like them would take chalk as well as sell it, and this would make them sloppy, lacking in self-discipline.

  Brooke wondered whether her mother didn’t see Callum’s and Anita’s red eyes and worsening teeth, or notice their paranoia, the unpredictable edge to their anger. Brooke had watched them change. They had been so many things to her over the years: competitors, comrades, confidantes; they shared a galaxy of memories, unspoken understandings, jokes that were meaningless beyond themselves. Now Callum and Anita were just one thing, the same boring, hollow thing, and Brooke hated it.

  It was what happened to everyone—Callum had been right about that much. Chalk clung to the county like a hand over a mouth. Brooke dreaded the day when it would close over her, too.

  6

  Dawn crept over the meadow. No one had come in the night. Brooke began to nurture a cautious hope that they had evaded their pursuers. If the Cawleys hadn’t found the tracks leading into the creek, their search was unlikely to bring them here. It should be safe, now, to continue over land.

  Brooke stood stiffly and crept over to the sleeping bags where Milo and the girls slept. Crouching, she laid a hand on the night-damp fabric.

  “Hm?” Milo lifted his head, blinking at Brooke.

  “Morning,” she said. “Time to get up.”

  “No,” Sal muttered, burrowing into Milo. “Warm.”

  “Come on, guys,” Brooke tried again. “Let’s go.”

  Holly grunted, twisting deeper into her sleeping bag.

  “Hey, can you hear me?” Impatience edged into Brooke’s voice.

  Milo pulled himself, bare-legged, out of the sleeping bag. Sal curled up like a caterpillar and rolled against her sister, eliciting another grunt.

  “Girls,” Brooke said sharply.

  “I’ve got it,” Milo said, rubbing his face awake. “You make breakfast. Just give me my pants back.”

  Brooke’s jeans were damp and chilly against her skin when she pulled them from the juniper bush, but she told herself they’d be moving again soon enough. She rifled in her pack for something to feed them. Even if they stretched the food another day, they’d be arriving hungry in Buffalo Cross. She added a careful measure of powdered milk and quick oats to a half-full bottle of water and shook: a cloudy, foaming swirl.

  She poured a small amount into a second bottle and threw it within Cawley’s reach. He stared at it, blinking. He looked rough this morning: hollow-eyed, with dark, cadaverous shadows around his mouth. The carrot from the night before lay uneaten on the ground. He reached out for the bottle, unscrewed the lid awkwardly with his bound hands, and took a small sip. Instantly, he spat it out and retched into the grass.

  This looked like more than just coming down, Brooke thought. Cawley must be in full-blown withdrawal. In that state he risked heart attack, coma—though perhaps those dangers were past if he’d made it through the night. Still, Brooke would have to watch him even more closely than before. A serious addict was desperate, unpredictable.

  Brooke’s thoughts were interrupted by the sound of Sal’s giggle. Milo was at the sleeping bags, talking softly to the girls, coaxing them out. Holly emerged, looking around with the scrunched-up expression she had woken up with since she was little. Sal finger-combed her shiny dark hair, which had come loose in the night. She redid her braids, fastening each with a blue elastic.

  “Stay over there,” Brooke said, carrying their breakfast as far as possible from Cawley.

  Holly and Sal settled themselves cross-legged on the lichen-bloomed rocks and passed the cold oat mixture between them, trading escalating descriptions of how disgusting it was. Around them, ground frost steamed under the morning sun, wrapping the meadow in wisps of vapor. As she and Milo packed the bags, Brooke kept Cawley in the corner of her eye. He made no further attempt to eat, though he retched a few more times and coughed phlegm onto the ground.

  When they were ready to go, Brooke watched with the rifle as Milo untied Cawley’s ankles and detached the lead rope from the juniper bush. Cawley was a shivering ball against the rocks. Brooke saw him wince when Sal shouted to Holly in her high-pitched voice as they ranged around, inspecting the meadow.

  “Girls,” Brooke said, pointing to an opening in the trees to the south. “You first. Keep straight as you can in that direction.”

  “I could hold the rope today,” Milo said, as Holly led Sal from the meadow. “Share things a bit?”

  “I’d better,” Brooke said, reaching out her hand for the rope. With his kinder impulses, Milo could not be trusted to contain Cawley if he took a notion to run. “Just make sure you stay between him and the girls,” she said. “I don’t want him close to them.”

  “We’re doing this together, you know,” Milo said. “All of us.”

  “I know,” Brooke said. “But hurry up, they’re way ahead.”

  Milo blew out his cheeks and turned to follow the girls into the trees. Cawley went next, limping slowly, chin on chest. Brooke was last, and she brushed away the signs of their campsite behind her.

  The sun shone in a royal blue autumn sky. They walked with their wet things drying from the top straps of the packs. Deer runs and the well-worn paths of smaller animals crisscrossed the woods. Their progress was slower than Brooke had hoped. Raspberry canes caught their pant legs and scratched their hands. The girls were in front, with Milo as a buffer between them and Cawley, and this meant they set the pace. The underbrush was heavy in places. Several times, they had to retrace their steps and detour around some impassable feature in the landscape. Cawley was excruciatingly slow, stumbling and swearing at every obstacle in his path.

  “Hang on,” Brooke called forward to Milo after they had lost a half hour getting back on course because Holly had veered too far east. “I can’t steer from the back like this. Not while I’m dealing with him. We’re losing a ton of time.”

  “It’s not my fault,” Holly objected. “I don’t know where we’re going.”

  “Here,” Brooke said, throwing the rope to Milo and kicking forward through the underbrush to Holly. “We’re going south. Show me south.”

  Holly lifted a questioning eyebrow and pointed into the trees.

  “Just about.” Brooke held Holly’s wrist to adjust her bearing. “All you have to do is find three landmarks on that line. So, the boulder, there. Then that broken-off birch farther on, see? Hanging down? And what’s another one?”

  Holly stared into the forest for a moment. “The porcupine?”

  Brooke squinted, searching in the distance until she found the dark ball sleeping high up in a spindly tamarack.

  “Good. So, when you get to the boulder, you square up the birch with the porcupine and find a new third mark on the same line. See?”

  “How does that—” Holly broke off as understanding dawned. “Oh, I get it.”

  “Get what?” Sal asked, staring into the distance. “Where’s the porcupine?”

  “It’s like a slide ladder,” Holly said.

  “Yeah,” Brooke said. “Exactly.”

  “Where’s the porcupine?” Sal repeated, louder.

  Holly was already walking. She moved faster now, more confidently. “I’ll show you when we get there. Come on.”

  In this way, they kept southward, Holly taking bearings and announcing each new mark to Sal, who relayed the information to her parents, puffed up with her own importance.

  The day grew warm. Brooke meted water out in sips. There was a bottle and a half left. Not much, considering she couldn’t be sure how much longer it would take to reach Buffalo Cross. They were still west of Highway 12, somewhere between the foothills and the ranch land farther south; more than that, Brooke could only guess.

  At midday, they paused in an ironwood grove carpeted by fallen leaves. Brooke directed Milo to tie Cawley at the far edge of the grove. Once that was done, she put down the gun and gratefully eased her pack off, shaking out the stiffness in her bad shoulder.

  “How much fart
her is it?” Sal asked, slouching against a tree trunk next to Holly.

  “I’m not sure,” Brooke said. “We made it about five miles in the creek, and probably another five this morning. We might be halfway there?”

  “Is that all there is?” Holly asked, watching Brooke pull two small bags of food from her pack.

  “For now.” Brooke passed them each a couple strips of dried sweet potato and a handful of soy nuts. Milo took an extra piece of sweet potato from the bag and carried it to Cawley on the other side of the grove. Brooke chewed her soy nuts and said nothing.

  “Where did you learn that trick?” Milo asked, returning and lying down with his backpack for a pillow. “With the landmarks.”

  “I don’t know,” Brooke said, caught off guard.

  “You don’t know?” He raised an eyebrow.

  It was Emily, of course, the practical counterpart to Edmund’s lectures; Emily had taught Brooke to swim, drive, sink a fence post, and Brooke had taken to each new skill just as she’d seen Holly do this afternoon, keen for her mother’s praise. But for the most part, Brooke had chosen not to pass this knowledge on to her daughters. It was too hard to know where some of Emily’s lessons ended and others began: how to track and evade, how to shoot, how to survive, how to withstand pain, how to cause it.

  Sal made an unintelligible sound through her mouthful of food.

  “Chew, doofus,” Holly said.

  “I said, will there be movies in Buffalo Cross?”

  Brooke was relieved to have the subject changed. “We’re not going for movies, Salamander. We’re just getting Cawley to the marshals.”

  “Your friend?”

  “He’s not my friend.”

  “Then who is he?”

  Across the grove, Cawley was holding the strip of sweet potato in front of him, his bound hands striped bloody from raspberry canes. He had looked up at his name. Brooke saw a spark of clarity in his eyes, a new energy. The worst of his withdrawal was ending. He might be less of a hindrance walking, but he would also be more dangerous.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Brooke said, meeting his gaze. “He’s no one.”