Do you hear it, Peg? The bell—do you know what it means? Listen. It means your mother knows about you and Lily. There’s the diary to prove it. So that’s what she was doing while you lay there wishing her away. She knows, goddamn her! How dare she read the diary. Now she knows everything. Listen to the bell ringing your shame. You’re a criminal, according to the law. What are you going to do, Peg? Ask for your mother’s pardon? Explain yourself? Defend yourself? What you really want to tell her is that you’ve made a mistake. You never loved Lilian Stone—you loved the idea of her. The thrill. The danger. Lily was right, you can admit it now. Foolish of you to think that you could follow her home and share her life. Forget her. Leave this place, spare your mother the trouble of sending you away. Here’s a thought: escape. Get dressed and run, Peg, run out into the blizzard, run through it, you can do it, you know how to survive. Make it to the train station over at Kettling, and you’ll be free forever. Pack the small canvas suitcase, take the money from your mother’s purse, and run.
Wait, Peg, listen: Don’t you hear it? The tolling of the bell. Beware, beware! Stay inside, Peg, pull the covers over your head, go to sleep—the best refuge possible short of death. There have been too many deaths today already. A doomed day. A Christmas full of catastrophes.
Remember, as soon as you enter the hunter’s line of vision, you belong to him.
Run, Peg! No, don’t run. What should you do? Your mother is ashamed of you. She knows. That’s the thing about mothers. Sooner or later they always know. Run, then. Spare her the humiliation. Leave her your gift—an illustrated book about home decoration, which you ordered from the Ladies’ Home Journal, from an advertisement in the same issue with a feature story titled “Everyone Should Be Rich!” Ah, that caught your eye—in these prosperous times, everyone should and can be rich. Give yourself a few years, Peg, and you’ll claim your share of the nation’s great wealth. But your mother loves you as you are, Peg, you don’t doubt this. Even though you’ve succeeded in disgusting her. If you lived in our time, a mother like Ellen would tolerate a girl like you. Unfortunately, you’re seventy years behind us, Peg, and your mother doesn’t want to understand. You couldn’t bear to face her. What would you say? If you loved Lilian Stone it would be one thing. But it’s not that one thing. You don’t know what it is. Or was. An experiment? A trial run? Will there be others? What a muddle. It would be easier if you’d forgotten your own name. Peg Griswood, daughter of a housekeeper. Each time someone says your name you’re hammered farther into the ground. Now’s the time to go, Peg, or it will be too late. Run. You’ll be in Kettling by evening. You can spend the night in the station waiting room and take the first train to Syracuse. And then go on from there, far away from the Manikin and this confusion. Lose yourself, Peg.
What is your name? Your age? Your occupation? You should be able to make up the answers to these questions on the spot, Peg. You’re a lady of a sort, “finished” by a provincial academy for girls, good for nothing but marriage to a man slightly your social superior. Oh, you can take care of yourself, Peg, yes, you believe this, you believe this with such confidence that you fancy yourself immortal. Most children do. In this respect you’re still a baby, even though you have a woman’s body. How much is your body worth? You could ask Mr. Craxton, he’d be able to tell you. Pervert. No, you’re the pervert, Peg. Hal Craxton is just an ordinary man with an ordinary taste for young girls. You could have let him fuck you, Peg, he would have paid for the pleasure, over time you could have put away a tidy sum—just like Lilian Stone’s daddy. Secrets are expensive. How much will Lily cost you? More than you have, certainly, more than you could borrow. You barely have enough for a one-way ticket to New York City. What will you do when you get there? Rely upon a lot of guile and a little bit of luck. Steal, if you have to. See—your mother has three dollars and thirty cents in her purse. You have twenty-two dollars of your own. Can you start a new life with twenty-five lousy dollars? You’ll have to lie about your experience, Peg. And why don’t you change your name while you’re at it?
Listen: Someone is shouting. A door slams. Mrs. Craxton and her son have probably had another row. Parents and children. Must it always end this way? A diary left out. A severing. Flight. Escape. See how one idea so quickly replaces another. The intoxicating danger of escape. Someday you’ll tell the story of your life to someone you trust, you’ll describe how you ran away from home when you were sixteen years old. On Christmas Day. In a blizzard. And all the picaresque adventures that followed. The thrill of it. Yes, you’ll go, there’s never been any question about that. You’ll go now. A double layer of underclothes—layering’s the key to staying warm, you know from Lore. A shirt. A hooded wool sweater. Two pairs of socks. A pleated gingham skirt. Laced boots. You wear whatever you can’t fit into your suitcase. Leave the hand-me-down maid’s uniform behind, of course—you won’t need that where you’re going.
Where are you going, Peg? To the station over at Kettling. And from there? Far away. Prove your courage. Go out into the world and make your fortune. Someday you’ll return to the Manikin dressed in fox fur and kid leather gloves, a handsome husband at your side, a child in your arms. Is this what you want? Yes. No. Chop off the heel of your foot and maybe the silver slipper will fit. Who would want you? You must make them want you. You must make yourself desirable. Instead, you’ve hidden yourself in a heap of old clothes. Layer upon layer. A beggar woman wearing her life on her back. Hurry, Peg, or your underclothes will be soaked with sweat and chill you in the open air. Write a farewell letter to your mother. All right, then—don’t. The diary will suffice. And when you’ve settled in some distant place you’ll write to her about your travels.
Softly, softly down the stairs. The commotion below has passed, and the house is quiet again, tense with expectation. You hear a jumble of whispers. What is going to happen? What will you miss? Oh, there are adventures to be had inside as well as outside. Lock just one person in a whitewashed, unfurnished room, and there will be adventures. There’s a storm raging inside the Manikin even now, Peg, and you’re going to miss the worst of it. You’re going to miss so much. You’ll miss your mother, won’t you? Even as you descend, you remember being carried down a dimly lit staircase when you were small, floating in your mother’s strong arms, buoyant and trusting. And you remember watching your mother polish a silver tureen, her busy, spidery fingers a chalky pink at the tips. The same thing day after day. Or so you think. You’ll show her what a modern girl can do with herself in the modern world. You’ll make your mother proud.
Luck is with you today, Peg—the kitchen is momentarily deserted, the activity located in some distant room, the living room or the library. Well, it’s no business of yours. You’re running away, so take what you can. A loaf of bread. A bag of raisins. A piece of Sylva’s applesauce cake. A can of biscuits. Wrap your scarf around your face, pull your hat down, and don’t let the wind slam the door behind you. Good-bye, Mother. Good-bye, Lily. Good-bye, Junket, little brother. The wind drags away your whisper. Snowflakes like shattered glass. Now it’s you against nature, an old story—you know it well, thanks to Lore. Snow already a foot deep, drifts up to your thighs. You don’t mind. The more difficult the journey, the more heroic you’ll seem at the end. Good-bye, Sylva. Keep to the road, Lore would remind you. Go slowly, but don’t sit down to rest. Always travel with two boxes of matches—one in your pocket, one in your sack. A gun. You’d be better off with Lore’s shotgun. Forget it. Forget everyone. Peg Griswood, daughter of a housekeeper. Forget her, too. Snow against your face. Christmas Day. The blizzard of ’27. You will leave the Manikin without a trace. A ghost of a girl. Spirit of the wood. But you never belonged to the woods, Peg. You were born to be a city girl, and now you’re merely fulfilling your destiny. A poignant scene. You imagine the silent movie of your life: a bundled girl making her way up the drive, disappearing into the storm. The audience weeps. As soon as you have a nickel to spare you’re going to a picture show. You can hardly wait. What else will you do, Peg? Buy yourself a White Castle hamburger. You’re not hungry now, but you’re anticipating hunger. The effort. Twelve miles to Kettling. Millworth is five miles in the opposite direction. Why don’t you go there, Peg? Because Kettling is on a rail line. Because the train will take you into your new life. You should have filched something from the Manikin. Something valuable. The preserved Madagascar moth with its tongue twenty inches long. The sheaf of fossil ferns. Five semiprecious stones would pay for your freedom, Peg. Change comes at a price, like secrets. Some changes cost dearly. Some are cheap. You’ll have to manage on twenty-five dollars and thirty cents. Maybe if you had waited and asked your mother she would have given you more. Maybe she would have turned over her meager savings just to be rid of you. But she loves you, Peg, more than you will ever love her. Such is the nature of a mother’s love. She wants the best for you. So why did you have to go and disappoint her? Now she can’t bear the sight of you. It doesn’t mean she loves you any less. Leave her—that’s the way you can return her love. She’s been expecting you to go. That you would run away like this, without warning, even in the midst of the season’s first blizzard, has always seemed inevitable. It is your destiny. You both have known this for years, though you’ve never spoken of it. Your destiny. Her fear of losing you. As though you were a foundling, born to and abandoned by the gods, and your mother has been nothing but a temporary caretaker. It could be—have you ever thought of this, Peg?—that from the beginning your mother didn’t trust you, not because of who you are but because of what she has suffered. She has lost almost everything—you are all she has left. You, and her position. She can’t afford to lose her position. But all along she has expected to lose you, and you have taken it upon yourself to fulfill her expectations. It could be—have you thought of this, Peg?—that in her distracted way she loves you too much and has made you feel entitled? But maybe you don’t deserve a better life. Maybe ahead of you is a lifetime of service in one form or another, and it doesn’t make much difference whether you push on or turn back.
Don’t worry, Peg—your doubt is as old as the story that you’re living. You against nature. Go forward or turn back? Already your cheeks feel numb from the battering of snow, and you’ve come less than a mile. Hadley Road, dirt beneath the snow, an unbroken white strip at your feet, smooth as paint spilled from the back of a truck. Crooked, shrubby sumac half buried in snow, and shag-barked hickories on either side. Everything around you will survive the storm. You will, too, Peg. Smell the snow and pine and drenched bark. The fragrance will nourish you. The beautiful smell of life sustaining itself.
Up ahead the road curves around the huge Hadley oak. Rest, lean against the trunk, fold into the bark, disappear. How long has the tree been here? Red Vic once told you that if you feed a handful of acorns mixed with oats to a black horse, you will alter its color to dapple gray. You were a little girl then. You believed him. Remember, Peg? And you believed your mother’s stories about the wood-witches. Remember? And Lore’s superstitions about the souls of animals. Each beast a necessary sacrifice. When you were older you started telling the same stories to Sylva’s boys—to tease them, not to teach. Those boys will be the first to notice the food you took. The applesauce cake. You reach into your coat pocket and break off a piece. Sylva’s applesauce cake. Sylva’s face glistening with sweat as she kneads a round of dough. Her baby is due in June. You wouldn’t want to miss that, would you, Peg? Maybe you’ll be back home by then, your pockets full of hundred-dollar bills instead of cake crumbs. Maybe you’ll be back even sooner. Maybe, Peg, you’ll spend the night at Kettling and return to the Manikin tomorrow. You shouldn’t stay away too long—you’ll kill your mother with worry. She loves you. So what if you’ve gamboled and frolicked with a modern vamp? Your mother will forgive you, eventually, just as you’ll forgive her. How long is eventually? Is twenty-four hours long enough?
You’re not as brave as you thought. Not as eager for experience. But you’ve come this far. How far? You’ve passed the Racket Farm—empty for fifteen years, ever since Henry Craxton bought the land. A hollow shell of a house. Roofless barn. Fallow fields. You’ve come more than a mile and now turn onto Gulf Road. Eleven miles to Kettling. In a blizzard. It’s a story you can’t wait to tell. The time you walked all the way from the Manikin to the Kettling train station. In a blizzard. On Christmas Day. You were only sixteen years old. Crazy girl. You’ve always been the mercurial type, always as changeable as the weather in this region. A boisterous toddler, a high-mettled child. Nothing dainty in your behavior—ever. Though you can’t hold yourself steady against the kick of a shotgun like Junket can. Poor Junket. It isn’t fair to leave him without any explanation. Turn back, Peg. Silly of you to have thought you could make a go of it. Alone. Twenty-five dollars and change in your wallet. You’re like Alice in a winter wonderland. A child surrounded by festoons of snow. Garlands and chaplets and bangles of snow. The land bedecked for Christmas Day. Hard to believe that you aren’t the only person in all the world. Even stranger, imagining yourself on a crowded city street. You don’t want to go—you’ll admit it. If you turn back now, your mother might never realize that you’ve been missing. But you must allow her enough time to forgive you, force her to forgive you. Let her suffer your absence. Let her think that she’s lost you forever. You’ll make it to Kettling by midafternoon, at this rate. You will keep going, won’t you? How snug your body feels inside its burrow of old clothes. You’ll go to Kettling, rest there, and tomorrow you’ll walk back to the Manikin. Twenty-four miles in twenty-four hours. Junket will be so impressed. All the way to Kettling in a blizzard! Your mother will clutch you to her bosom. Lily will stand grinning in the corner of the room. A marvelous homecoming—the audience will weep. Go on, then, and come home tomorrow. But you have no home, remember? You share a room with your mother in someone else’s home. A lifetime spent in service. Maids, gardeners, groundskeepers, cooks. Modern slaves working for such low wages that they’ll never be able to improve their situation. Yet they insist on treating the Manikin as though it were their own property. Someone needs to remind them that it would take only a few sharp words and Mrs. Craxton could have any one of them put out the door. Or all of them, and they would share your predicament, Peg, you could lead the way to Kettling, and they’d thank you for it at the end. Another fine ending. Strange, how in the midst of the most extreme adventure of your life, you still imagine other versions, always living a double life, one actual, one theatrical. Rather a childish game, don’t you think? But here’s a little secret: when she was your age, Peg, your mother wanted to be an actress. She didn’t want to be a star, no, in her usual pragmatic fashion she dreamed of playing numerous small parts—that way, she figured, she’d always be able to find work. She never told you this, did she? Not surprising, since she hasn’t thought of it for years, and she wouldn’t want to encourage you in that direction. Or in this direction, either—toward Kettling and the train station.
But you’re not paying attention to anything but the effort. Freeing each foot from the grip of snow. The rough work of going forward through the storm. Your pace neither as spry as it was a half mile back, nor sluggish, just steady and careful, your torso tipped forward, as though you were tied to a log, straining to pull it along. Exertion as rhythmic as your breathing. The flutter of your pulse is like a voice urging, Double march! Look alive! Get a move on! But you know better than to move too quickly. Remember, you’re the prey and cold the predator. Don’t yawn, Lore has warned you, or the cold will rush into your throat. Don’t let yourself get drowsy, don’t pant or droop or flag, for the cold will trick you into a fatal sleep. Go forward slowly, at your own pace, and don’t lose the road.
Stop—a sudden thickening of snow, as though a pillowcase were being shaken overhead, the feathers falling in clumps. You stand in your tracks, marveling at the bulk of snow in the air. So much snow. The wind has relented a bit, and the snow makes a wet, prickling sound as it alights, reminding you of summer, of hot, still days, of cows ambling through tall grass. During summer you could have begged a ride from a passing driver and made this trip in an hour. No motorcars now. Nothing. A prehistoric landscape. Yet even in its severity there is something peaceful about the scene. The weather no longer menaces. You’ve proved yourself, you’ve been initiated, the storm has given up trying to bury you, and now it wants to show you its magic. Each thick flake an ornament adorning the woods, the road, and you, Peg. Queen of winter with your ivory robes and silver crown. If Lily could only see you she couldn’t help but commit herself to you forever. But she doesn’t love you, remember? And you, being the type of girl who can withdraw love on a whim, or so you think, don’t love her. Definitely not. You’ll avoid Lily for the remaining months of her stay. That’s if you go back, of course, and you will, yes, a comforting thought, you’ll go back, so you can walk forward with abandon. It’s not such a crucial journey after all—it’s just one more example of Peg Griswood’s impunity. A wild girl, people will say when it’s all over. Walked all the way to Kettling in a blizzard. Shackle her to the cellar wall, that’s the only way to manage her, lock her in the coal bin. There’s a lesson to be learned from a day in a coal bin, Lily knows better than anyone, and she’ll never provoke her father again, not if she can help it. When she acts up she’ll do it behind his back, collect her escapades in her own secret book, which she’ll hide on the shelf of her richly furnished Victorian mansion once she is married. Everything in its proper place, and if Peg Griswood wants to make trouble, she should go elsewhere. Here. Even if you move on, you can go no farther than this isolated place, this snowy abyss midway between the Manikin and Kettling.
Your own father—you wonder what he’d say about your situation. You hardly ever think of him, and when you do it’s always the same fragment of a picture: a stocky, bearded man stretched on a sofa, sleeping, a newspaper open on his chest. Not today, though—this magical place invigorates memory, takes it to the boggling point just short of hallucination. At any moment a shadowy figure will emerge from between the trees. Your father. You stare into the snow, not expecting to see your father’s ghost, merely hoping that if you strain your eyes long enough you might be able to conjure the mirage of him. Your father. How would your life be different if he had survived the war? Your mother wouldn’t have been so eager to put you to work, that’s for sure. Maybe you would be heading to college right now instead of to the station at Kettling. A different kind of modern life. Work chosen according to your abilities—that’s Plato’s idea of justice. You read The Republic in school. You also learned how to add simple fractions. And to embroider. In the depths of winter you’d stay overnight at the Academy—your mother somehow scraped together the money for temporary room and board. She wanted to get you out from underfoot. Education as distraction. No, it was more than that. She wanted to give you chances that she never had—another old story, one that usually fails. A better life for the children. A life among the feuding, loving, gossiping gods of Olympus. That’s what you deserve, in your mother’s opinion. It feels like you’re almost there, doesn’t it, Peg? On the slopes of Mount Olympus. Half educated. Half dead from fatigue. Yes, it’s true, you’re tired, your body feels as though some potent sedative were working its way through your veins back to your heart, but you’re not afraid anymore—you know you’ll return to the Manikin tomorrow.
At the end of this stretch of road the next county begins. Already the trees have given way to sky and open fields; the tips of last summer’s leveled cornstalks are visible above the snow. In the distance you can see the yellow eyes of a house, a room lit with electric lamps, the two front windows aglow. An Acme Feed Center beyond. A garage yard cluttered with rusting farm machinery. And now, only a gentle drizzle of snow. These signs of the populated twentieth century should comfort you, Peg, yet they have the opposite effect. The forest looked so magnificent in its winter garb, and the fields seem so miserly in comparison. Dirty, spattered snow along the edge of the road. A plough must have come this far some hours ago and turned back again. Walking is much easier now, the layer of new snow only ankle-deep. And soon you see more evidence of active life: a snowman wearing a stocking cap, and the wheel ruts of a car still visible in the road. As you pass one farmhouse the front door opens, a coatless child scampers out, its mother follows, grabs the child before it plunges down the porch steps, and carries it inside. Ahead, you see a man walking with two dogs—you slow your pace to avoid overtaking them. They disappear at each low rise and reappear when you reach the summit. Occasionally, the man throws a stick for the dogs and stops to watch them leap through the snow.
The appearance of another human being out walking, just for the fun of it, apparently, adds to the bleakness of the scene. Such a paltry drama, this twelve-mile journey. A meager blizzard. You’ve hardly risked your life. But you’ve come this far, so you trudge on, irritated by the cold that has begun to penetrate now that you’re not overheated by the great effort of motion. Irritated by the distance still to go, as well. How many miles to Kettling and the train station? At least four. The sole remaining purpose to your journey is a spiteful one—you’ll give your mother a fright, Peg, and she’ll be sorry for intruding into your private affairs. She’s probably standing at the backdoor now, calling for you, wringing her hands, though she won’t lose much sleep over it, you can count on that, and she won’t send out a search party! Ah, you’re feeling as mean-spirited as the countryside—bored, too—and there’s the growing pressure of your bladder. What are you supposed to do, undress here in the middle of the road and squat? Maybe those two Newfoundlands would like to sniff the little puddle in the snow when you’re through. Oh, annoyance, you’ll have to hold it until Kettling. All the discomforts of travel, though you’re not the first person to complain, Peg, and anyway, you’ve sought out trouble, you’ve led yourself into this predicament. On Christmas Day, no less. At least you’re alone and can give yourself over to your bad mood with all of your spirited sixteen-year-old temper. Just look at you. It’s your own fault, goddammit!
You’re so occupied with your anger that you don’t even realize you’ve entered the town of Kettling until the road butts into desolate Main Street, with its streetlights burning uselessly behind the fog of light snow. The train station, a small brick box of a building, looks as deserted as the rest of the town, and the front curb has yet to be shoveled. No trains running today, obviously. Fine with you, since you’ve long since given up the idea of boarding one.
Small Town, America, 1927, and they haven’t started locking the door against transients and vandals. Footprints on the walk winding back to the platform give you pause—who else would seek refuge in such a lonely place today? But a glance through a window assures you that the room is empty. The stationmaster probably paid his daily visit already—a good thing that’s out of the way. You won’t have to worry about explaining yourself to him. Peg Griswood alone at the Kettling station. What would he say about that? You know him by name—Mr. Felspar—since you’ve had to tolerate his banter on trips to Syracuse. An elderly man with whiskers so overgrown that he used to frighten you when you were younger. But he’s a harmless wolf who wants nothing more than to lift schoolgirls onto and off the trains.
No sign of him or anyone else in the waiting room. You stamp your boots on the planks, imagine for a moment the floor swaying beneath you, like the deck of a three-master abandoned by its crew, a ghost ship, and you have to navigate alone. How lonely you feel—not sweetly alone as you did in the woods, but abandoned. A homeless orphan, for all practical purposes. You peel off your wet gloves and shake the snow from your hat. A soft, metallic ping gives you hope that the heat has been left on, but the radiator is ice-cold to your touch. Still, you drape your wet coat over it, and with this simple gesture you begin to feel like a child inside a playhouse. Ping. You hear it again. An old echo of heat lost in the pipes.
You use the ladies’ toilet, brush out your hair, and tidy yourself just in case Mr. Felspar does make an unexpected visit. Back in the waiting room, you arrange a modest supper for yourself: raisins, bread, cherry soda pop from a vending machine. How pleasant, really. A suitable Christmas feast. Ping. If only it weren’t so cold in here, you’d be content. But at least you’re not the weakly nineteenth-century type of heroine who, under emotional stress, succumbs to a tragic fever. You’re as hearty as they come, Peg—a strong-willed, strong-limbed girl with modern aspirations. And sense enough to know that when you finally set out to seek your fortune, you’d better do it with your mother’s blessing. She’ll be ready to help every step of the way, once she has forgiven you. And that is only a matter of time.
Time plods along obligingly, day folds into night without passing through twilight, and outside the storm picks up again, filling the station with strange wheezing and moaning. The lamps have been left lit on the platform, and they give a gloss to the darkness inside the station. You’ve been leaning against your small suitcase, but you’re tired enough to sleep, so you pull off your boots and stretch out on the bench. The thought of Mr. Felspar coming in now, switching on the light, and finding you here almost makes you laugh aloud.
What did the dog drag in, eh?
It’s only me, Mr. Felspar. Peg Griswood!
Fancy that, Peg. The shock you’d give the old man. Pink-nosed, feet up, hair hanging loose. A modern girl. And like most modern girls you’ve grown unbearably bored with your latest adventure. Or so you tell yourself—so bored you could die. Instead, you’ll rest. The distance of the night—from this side it seems as formidable as the distance you’ve traveled already today. The trick will be to reach morning without waking. Or, if you do wake, to soothe yourself back to sleep as quickly as possible. A long day. You try to subdue your mind by recalling the effort. You weren’t scared at the beginning of your journey, and you’re not scared now, are you, Peg? Alone in the station waiting room. Not a single train has passed since you’ve been here. You have the station to yourself. Your little playhouse. Remember the games you used to play with Junket—pretending to hunt, pretending to run away? Make-believe more exciting than the lived event. Even today—hardly worth telling. Twelve miles on foot. In a blizzard. So what? Just another false start. Peg Griswood, daughter of a housekeeper. Your life has yet to begin—this is your last thought before sleep overtakes you and settles like snow upon your mind, burying you.
Wake up, Peg! In your dream, Mrs. Craxton’s bell rings with crazed fury, but you ignore it. Wake up, wake up! You sleep so stubbornly on your wooden slab of a bed, ignorant of the danger threatening you. Open your eyes, Peg! Don’t you see him? A face in the window: snow crystals frozen on his eyebrows, a mustache clipped and pasted into a smiling crescent above the straight, cruel line of his lips. He is looking at you, Peg. Spying on you while you sleep. This in itself is a form of theft—stealing a glimpse of a sleeping body. What you don’t realize, Peg, is that this stranger has been hovering about the station all day, peeking in this window behind your bench. More important, he has seen you before. He knows you, Peg, even though you don’t know him. He knows all about you. Not an angel and not the devil, Peg. Just one man who has stepped out of the crowded world in order to do you harm.
Who is he? We’ll never know. In one guise he is a gentleman—an untrustworthy one to be sure. In another guise he is a butcher. He has no permanent home, no family, no job. He trades one pseudonym for another every few months. He has been living at the Millworth Inn since December, posing as a landscape painter. He, like you, is running away from the Manikin. And it is only a coincidence—a miracle, we might call it, if it had a happier conclusion—that you and he have ended up here, alone together in the Kettling station.
Wake—
But you are awake, startled from sleep by the weight of a man’s body. His hand across your mouth so you cannot scream. His other hand holding your wrists. Glint of metal like a fish’s eye in water. A flash of comprehension—for a moment you understand what is happening, what he means to do, what he is doing. His knees digging into your thighs, through them, nailing you to the bench. His knuckles, and the flat edge of a jackknife cold against your cheek. Yes, for one brilliant moment you understand perfectly well what it means, and though you try to free yourself from his annihilating weight, your strength has fled, and you cannot even lift your head.
The hand that had been smothering you is groping now, digging in your groin. His mouth against your ear, whispering obscenities. But you can’t hear him, Peg, nor do you care what goes on between your legs. Your only fear is that he’s going to rip your ear off with his teeth. You’re so disoriented that you think the pain you feel is at the side of your head, and you mistake his hot breath for your own blood. There, he’s done it, the monster has begun to sever your ear from your scalp, to devour the fleshy lobe while he pounds against you, still cursing, though his words do nothing for you, Peg, since you’re unable to make sense of them. You’re thinking only of your left ear, unsure whether you have lost it all or only part of it and fearful that you’ll lose all memory of the velvety sounds as well—crickets, rain, Sylva’s chatter, motors, fire, snow, music, birds, your mother’s steady breathing while she sleeps.
Another old story, Peg, what he’s done to you, though it’s not often told in your day. His final groan brings you to your senses, and you know clearly what has happened. You hate this stranger. You hate him enough to kill him. This is more certain than any measurable fact. Hatred. A splendid hatred. If only it were matched by physical strength, then this man—whose hatred toward you, Peg, is not nearly as pure, as powerful, as yours—would suffer a violent death.
As he plays with you, taunts you, pressing the sharp edge of the knife against your lip, your nostril, your throat, again you imagine his head blown to pieces by a shotgun blast. Imagination is a weak, inadequate defense, but it will have to do. The dream of his brutal death. And it does have some value, subdues you sufficiently so that his words glance off you. Cunts, tits, the broken puzzle of your body—you hardly care what he says because in your mind he is dying or is about to die in an explosion of blood, blown apart by a shotgun like a rabbit, or something smaller, a squirrel or a rat. He will die, and you will survive him. You’re not dead yet, are you? And your ear, your ear is still in place, unscarred—you’d be grateful to him for sparing it if you didn’t despise him. You’ve yet to realize that he has spilled your blood, though when you do see it—the thin drainage from your crotch—you won’t weep for your rent hymen like some other girls would. To the end of your life you’ll deny that this stranger succeeded in stealing your innocence or freshness—he took your body, used it, and returned it to you, injured, perhaps, but not less than what it had been.
And now, at last, he has tired of this sport. While you wait with your eyes squeezed shut he stands up, meticulously rearranges his suspenders, folds his knife. You open your eyes just in time to see a paper bill flutter through the darkness. “For your services,” he mutters with a smirk, and you let the bill rest somewhere in the folds of your skirt, imagining his death with such intensity now that you begin to expect it. The door will open, young Junket will appear with his father’s rifle, and while the monster is straightening his bow tie, Junket will fire into the back of his head.
This is the way it should happen. And when it doesn’t, when the stranger mockingly tips his hat to you, opens the door himself, and sinks back into the night, you let out a howl, not in anguish or fury, but in disbelief. He should not be allowed to go unpunished. He should be killed. Instead, he has slipped away, disappeared forever from the story of your life, and you’re just a small, torn body burning inside a heap of clothes, shrieking into the darkness while your mind returns to the beginning and replays the violence over and over, until gradually, one name that he’d repeated rises to the surface of the sickening memory, and you hear him repeating it in a low murmur, as though he’d meant to threaten you with it—“Lil”—the name surrounded by obscenities and hitched, you finally recall with a start, to a revealing possessive: “My,” he’d said. “My Lil.” It is enough to keep you on the run.