He stalked her from the edge of the field as she unloaded groceries from the car, and he didn’t move until he was sure. He’d been crouched there for a long time and his legs were tight and numb. Chickens scratched and pecked along the side of the house, one bronze and gray having spotted him a few minutes before now watching him suspiciously. When she went into the house, he rose and trotted over the open yard, the brood of hens dashing to the back of the house, his footsteps crunching dead grass.
Slinking onto the porch, he turned with his back against the clapboards. The doorway was open to his left. Adrenaline coursed through his veins now like it had the very first time. Ten years old, tucked in a ground blind with a rifle rested across his knees, Dwayne held his breath while a small doe came through a laurel thicket behind him. Footsteps tramped through dried leaves until the doe was close enough that he could’ve touched her, but he held his breath, his heart racing in his chest, his hair standing on end, amazed at how a man, if he’s still enough, can completely disappear. It was that same feeling now, a hunter stalking prey, and he closed his eyes to listen to the slightest subtleties of sound.
Exhaling softly through his nose, he heard footsteps coming through the house. She was humming a song, her pace quick and unsuspecting. Closer she came. Closer still. She was almost there and he opened his eyes as she came through the door. Angie Moss did not turn as he took one long stride and hooked under her chin. One arm constricted into her throat, while the other forced the back of her head into the choke, him leaning back until her feet were off the ground and she kicked violently at his shins. Fingernails tore into his arms like hot irons, but he closed his eyes and let that feeling ease over him. It was easiest to embrace pain, to inhale deeply through his nose and lose himself for a short moment in the honeysuckle smell of her hair against his face. Angie reached up in a last-ditch effort to claw at his eyes, but Dwayne lifted his gaze to the tin awning and swayed his head slowly back and forth until her hands fell and her legs went limp and she at once melted against him.
This was not like the movies. This wasn’t some chloroform-soaked-rag Hollywood bullshit. Dwayne Brewer understood this like he understood she would come to in a matter of seconds—ten seconds, maybe twelve—so he moved quickly. With short, hurried stutter steps he lowered her to the ground then rolled her onto her stomach, pulled a set of zip cuffs from the back pocket of his jeans, and married her wrists at the base of her spine. Counting in his mind, he turned her onto her side and waited for her to wake. Ten. Eleven. Her eyes opened and widened and she rocked her head back and forth trying to make sense of her surroundings, trying to decipher what was happening.
Dwayne watched her pupils dilate into focus, and when she saw him she tried to get up from the porch, but he straddled her chest and kept her there. Angie screamed and Dwayne slapped his hand over her lips and she bit at his fingers and thrashed her head, blond hair whipping about the dusty slats like threads of unraveled rope, the back of her skull thwacking against the boards. Some people gave up easy, and some fought like hell. Angie Moss bucked with a wildness he’d only seen in animals, but it was of little use. He knew to be patient. Her face flushed red and she huffed wet breaths from her nostrils over the back of his hand and he held her there until she slowed, her eyes filling with tears, her mascara running like watercolor, and in time she surrendered.
When she ceded, he leaned down and pressed his clean-shaven face against her cheek. Her skin was hot against him.
“I’m going to let you up now and you’re not going to scream,” he whispered. “You get to screaming and I’ll rip the throat out of you like a goddamned speckled trout.”
Leaning up, he held his grip tight over her mouth until her eyes widened and she nodded that she understood. He lifted his hand and that fast she took a gulp of air and kneed hard into his kidneys, letting out a cry that ripened her face tomato red.
“Suit yourself.” Dwayne seethed as he stood and, with a fistful of her hair, yanked her to her feet.
Angie’s legs whirled and she tore herself away from him. A tangle of thin corn-silk hair hung from Dwayne’s fist. She made it to the edge of the porch and down the first step before her momentum got the better of her. Arms bound at her back shifted her weight forward and she slid out into the yard with the loose black skirt she wore spread over the ground like a blanket. She crashed not far from the porch and he made up that distance before she could right herself. Grabbing her by the hair again, he kept her hunched over and led her around the house to the shed out back where he’d hidden his car from the road.
With one arm holding her, he fought to get the key in the lock with his other hand, to pop the trunk, and as it opened, he reached inside for a roll of silver duct tape. That fast, and again she was gone. She wrestled free and sprinted for the front yard, but her feet got tangled in the loose flow of her skirt and she fell at the corner of the house. Hands bound, she writhed about on a grassless scab of red clay, trying to get to her feet, but again he was on top of her, his weight pinning her flat as he whipped the tape around her face and capped her cries inside.
Grabbing for her ankles, he ducked as her legs fired like pistons. A kick found its mark under his chin. A burst of white light flashed his eyes. As he swatted at the air trying to catch her feet, his vision returned and he managed to grab ahold of one leg then the other and finally bound her fully. Muffled screams stuttered against the tape over her mouth, her breaths loud huffs through her nose. He scooped his arm around her waist and carried her on his hip to the open trunk, tossed her inside, and glared down where her body bent over the spare tire, her skirt climbing her legs. She had beggar’s eyes, an expression washed with terror, and he carried no pity for weakness. It sickened him the way she gave up, and he slammed the lid, satisfied to no longer have to look at her. There was only the pathetic sound of her now drumming about the inside of the trunk.
The sun descended and Dwayne looked toward the light to gauge the time. He’d figured she’d only be gone a few minutes, but it was hours he’d crouched in that field waiting, all that time making him more and more vulnerable. In the days after Calvin led him to the back pasture, Dwayne had set about to learn their schedules and knew them now down to the hour. Calvin came home around six.
He opened the driver’s-side door, put his knee on the seat, and reached across the cab for his pistol. He shoved the 1911 into the back of his waistline and made his way to the house. The door was open, the front room filled with the smell of cheap cinnamon candles and cigarette smoke. Through a doorway to the right, he entered the kitchen, where bags of groceries lined Formica countertops and a small square table. Her cell phone lay at the edge of a woven beige place mat and he used it to check the time. It was four forty-five, and his mind eased knowing there was plenty of time to spare.
Dwayne rifled through the bags and spotted a tub of butter pecan ice cream and a can of sardines. He ripped the lid off the ice cream, scooped a bite along the crook of his finger, and shoveled it into his mouth. Starved to death, he worked his way through half the tub before he slowed enough to catch his breath. The fish he ate whole, and when he finished the last of the can, he licked the oil from his fingers and smoked a cigarette down to the filter before mashing it out on the linoleum under his boot.
It was a little after five when he stood from the table and slipped Angie’s phone into his pocket. He gathered a few bags of groceries to take with him and headed out of the house through the back door, passing through a tiny screened-in porch floored with green outdoor carpet and down a few wooden steps to the backyard, where he loaded the groceries into the passenger-side floorboard. Climbing behind the wheel, he dug the 1911 from the base of his back and set the pistol on the dash. The exhaust sputtered as he backed into the yard and steered around the side of the house, passing Angie’s car with its doors swung open and down the drive where field stretched to his right. He could hear her kicking at the sidewalls of the trunk and he closed his eyes and rubbed at his temples when he reached the edge of the road.
A pack of motorcycles roared around a curve, old men with Florida tags on tricked-out baggers chasing fall color as they barreled around switchbacks. Dwayne rolled down his window and threw a hand up as they passed. The bikes rumbled away and the sound of her grew deafening in their absence. He turned the radio on and cranked the volume as loud as it would go, the music scratching through busted speakers. Janis Joplin sang “Me and Bobby McGee,” and he hummed along to a song he knew word for word as he whipped out onto the two-lane.
The sun continued down and the temperature fell with its light. Dwayne drove with his arm rested on the opened window, the cold air beating against the hairs of his arm. Dried blood painted his skin where Angie had clawed. He checked the rearview and when the chorus came he sang as loud as he could until all that existed was the road and the direction and the absolute truth of the words.