Mary had not seen him in five years; now she sat across from him guarded by a man with a gun. He looked older, with deeper laugh lines. Though his hair was still Cherokee black and his eyes sharp, his mouth seemed drawn, as if the burden of raising a daughter alone had been much harder than making bows and tracking bears. She’d last gazed at him after a long night of love in an Oklahoma motel. She’d said “see you after court” and he’d said “okay.” He’d left to put on his one suit; she’d seen him at court, but he’d walked out in the middle of her testimony. When she went back to the motel to explain everything, she’d found an empty room with a note, asking forgiveness and understanding. It took her two seconds to understand, but she still wasn’t sure she’d forgiven him.
Now he sat, with a wrecked shoulder, staring at his boots. She glanced at the men, arguing in their own strange tongue, one pointing towards Tennessee, the keeping an eye on her. She doubted they could understand Cherokee, so she drummed up what words she could remember.
“Gawoniha!” she told him softly. Say something!
He lifted his gaze to her face. As always, she could read his eyes. At that moment they were full of pain, anger and something she once knew as love.
“Hatlu Lily?” he replied. “Tennessee?”
“Gone to Murphy,” she whispered, if the girl had, indeed, done as she’d told her.
He brightened at her answer, knowing that Murphy would mean safety for Lily, a future unmarred by memories of murder and assault. But neither Murphy nor Tennessee could help the two of them. Too many miles and too much snow lay between them and any hope of rescue.
“Wado,” he said. “I owe you. For her.”
She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Yes, he did owe her. But not for Lily. He owed her for all the days and months and years that had brought them here, tied up and staring at each other while two crazy men argued over how to kill them. For a moment her outrage boiled; then, just as quickly, it cooled. She had chosen to respond to Lily’s plea. She had elected to leave her warm bed and venture up here in a blizzard. The choice had been hers-—Jonathan was just trying to save his child.
She looked at him and suddenly saw him in a different way. Though she knew his voice and his smell and his body as well as her own, there was a new strangeness about him. He’d traveled far away, made new friends, laughed at different jokes. No longer was he the familiar extension of herself.
“How bad is your shoulder?” She switched to English, her Cherokee reaching its limits.
“Shot to hell. But I’m better off than Leroy.”
“Who’s Leroy?”
“The asswipe who frisked you.”
Mary glanced at the chubby man Lily called Uncle Jake.“What’s the matter with him?”
“Septicemia,” said Jonathan. “That first night, I threw Ribtickler at him and nicked his bowel.”
“So all that blood in the bathroom was his?”
Jonathan nodded. “If he doesn’t get to a doctor soon, Chet’s going to have to drop him off at the morgue.”
“Chet?” Mary looked at Rifleman, who cradled his weapon like a precious child.
“Leroy and Chet. Kentucky’s answer to Romulus and Remus.”
“So septicemia’s bad?”
He nodded. “Basically, you turn into a pile of pus. Then you die.”
“Ugh.” Mary shuddered.
She watched the two men arguing. Leroy kept pointing down the road and lifting his shirt to reveal the flaming wound in his abdomen. Chet kept shaking his head, pointing at her. When their eyes met briefly a chill went down her spine. She’d seen similar expressions before, in court. It was the angry, feral look of men accused of doing monstrous things to women. Usually they stood cocky, their attorneys insouciantly claiming that their victims were to blame, with their fancy makeup and provocative outfits. You can’t fault a boy for just being a boy and he was only being playful, and he never heard her say no. Mary always took special pleasure in putting men like that away.
But that one brief look told her volumes. She knew what would come next. Rape, for sure. They’ll put us in that camper, assault me, make Jonathan watch and then kill us both. Or maybe they would make me watch while they killed Jonathan and save the raping for later. Maybe I’ll get to be their little party doll all the way back to Kentucky.
The certainty of it made bile bubble up in her throat. She glanced at Jonathan, who was watching the men, a look of pure hatred on his face. Should she tell him her fears? Warn him? Would it do the least bit of good?
No, she decided. What could he do, anyway, with a rope around his neck and one arm in a sling? She would fight in the way of all women—kicks to the groin, thumbs in the eyes.
“I think they’ve killed a lot of little girls,” Jonathan said abruptly.
She thought of the decals she’d seen in the camper and the pictures she’d given Lily. “What makes you say that?”
“I found a little bra where they kept me locked up. Some kid had written inside it. Somebody else had written on the backside of the carpeting. I think that one was written in blood.”
Mary closed her eyes, appalled at the men and furious at her own stupidity. Why had it taken her so long to figure this out? Only a freak snowstorm had kept Lily from becoming another victim.
“Got any bright ideas about getting out of here?” she asked.
He shook his head. “Julunahuhski.”
Fight hard. She gave a deep sigh, thinking of sweet Victor and the life they would not be sharing.
“Nigohilvuh,” he said. Always. Suddenly, all the anguish left his face and he smiled at her—the same bright grin he’d flashed that morning on the school bus, so many years ago. “Guhgeyu, Mehli Koga. I always will.”
Before she could respond, they came, marching in tandem, their footsteps squeaking in the snow. Uncle Jake jerked her to her feet and pulled her coat off. Rifleman watched, snickering while he kept the bullpup pointed at Jonathan.
“Get your filthy paws off me!” Mary sputtered, once again channeling JimAnn Ponder.
“Since you sent Kimmeegirl to Tennessee, you’re gonna have to take her place.” Leroy grinned at her, his small, pig eyes sly. “I’m going first, then it’ll be my brother’s turn.”
Mary laughed. “You sure you’re up to it? You stink like bear meat gone bad.”
“Shut up!” cried Leroy. “Lay that coat in the snow and get down on your knees. You’re older than I like, but you’ve got a pretty mouth, when it isn’t yakking.”
Jonathan lunged forward, but Chet grabbed the rope and jerked him back against the camper. Mary gasped, terrified that the man was going to shoot him right there.
“Don’t you worry about your brother,” said Leroy. “We aren’t gonna kill him yet. We want him to enjoy this, too.”
Before Mary could answer, Uncle Jake or Leroy or whatever the hell his name was, squeezed the top of her shoulder so hard it brought tears to her eyes. “Down on your knees, sis. We’re gonna see just what that little hillbilly mouth can do.”
He pushed her down in front of him. Slowly, he unbuckled his belt with his left hand as he put the pistol up against her temple. “I think you know what to do. But just in case you get any bright ideas about using your teeth, there’s a pistol on you and a rifle on your brother.”
A wave of revulsion went through her as he unzipped his fly and pulled her into the ripe aroma of rotting flesh.
She swallowed quickly, trying hard not to retch. She wondered what vomiting on him might do. It might repulse him–men usually recoiled from puke. But it could also enrage him to the point of murder. No, she decided. Gagging was too risky. She would have to try something else.
“Come on, mama,” he said. “Give that boy a juicy little kiss.”
Humiliated that Jonathan was watching all this, she concentrated on the stains on Uncle Jake’s underwear as she reached for his penis. She groped for it clumsily—it was a soft, limp thing that felt more like a turd than an appendage—but when she finally managed to grasp it, she knew what she was going to do.
She pulled his dick out with her left hand, quickly turning her head away from the gun, spitting out the saliva that was flooding her mouth. With her head still turned away, she reached up further into his underwear and grabbed his testicles. She heard him gasp as she clenched her hand like a claw and squeezed his scrotum as if extracting the last drops of juice from a withered lemon.
He screamed; the gun went off somewhere above her head, ringing her left ear like a bell. She lunged into his stomach, flattening him on the ground. He rolled in the snow, still screaming as she held on tight.
“You little bitch!” He gave a high, thin howl, like an animal caught in a trap.
They thrashed in the snow. He tried to cover his crotch, and roll away from her, but she clung to him, squeezing him even harder. Suddenly, he started to scream.
“Argonish! Jurnosk!”
“Luradoo!” Chet yelled back.
A loud volley came from the rifle. Mary looked up, expecting to see Jonathan, lying dead on the ground. But Jonathan was on his feet, frantically trying to saw through his rope with the point of Mary’s arrow. The gunshot had come from Chet, aiming at her. He rushed toward her, clutching the bullpup, intent on murder.
“You fucking bitch!” he roared. “I’m going to kill you!”
“Mary!” she heard Jonathan bellow. “Let him go! Now!”
She loosened her grip on Leroy’s testicles and tried to extricate herself from him. But somehow he’d sensed his brother coming to his rescue. Wrapping his legs around hers, he pinned her to the ground. As they struggled like co-joined insects, she realized her only chance was to drag herself away, back into the snow. But it was pointless. She’d only crawled a few feet when a heavy weight crashed down on the back of her neck. She looked up, over her shoulder. Chet’s foot was on her neck as he pointed the rifle at her temple.
A few feet away, Leroy groaned in agony, curled up in a ball. “Just shoot her, Chet,” he whimpered. “Shoot her now.”
Chet pressed his right cheek against the gun and sighted down the barrel. Leroy kept moaning about something, but Mary couldn’t make it out. All she could do was stare at that gun. Soon a bullet would come out, destroying her face and her brain. Suddenly, her life started to play out inside her head. She saw her mother, Jonathan, Irene Hannah, Victor. How sweet it had been, even the awful parts. How sad she would be to leave it. She watched as if in slow motion as Chet put his index finger around the trigger. He drew his lips back in a smile of pure evil, then he squeezed the trigger. She heard a huge blast, but felt no heat, no pain, nothing. Instead a warm spray of liquid splattered over her face as the world went dark and silent.