TWENTY-SIX

Come on!” Brank jerked the rope. “Your little escapade may have cost us the day. A wind’s blowing up that’s gonna turn our faces to jelly.”

She sat and stared at him. He scowled back, his thick brows drawing down over his eyes. “Gehorchen, Trude. You don’t want to be a big old tall girl with a jelly face. You won’t get any boyfriends that way.”

She did not move until he pulled his right foot back. Then she remembered her ribs, and the penalty for not gehorchening. Without further protest she rose to her feet. She followed him back to the camp with tiny, crippled steps, stumbling like a comic character in a flickering silent movie.

The sun had climbed well above the mountaintops by the time they reached the tent. He tied her to a tree while he gathered his supplies, then he walked over and began to loosen the rope around her wrists.

“Take off that jacket,” he ordered when he’d freed her hands. “We’re going to do it a little different than we did yesterday.”

Slowly, she removed her jacket and stood naked in the sunlight.

“Now you’re gonna see what happens to girls who run away.” Brank stuffed her jacket into his sack. He threaded her arms through her pack from the front, pressing her breasts hard against the aluminum frame as he tightened the straps. Though she winced as the straps bit into her skin, she pressed her lips together and refused to cry out.

When he’d secured the heavy pack to her chest, he took a length of rope and tightened it around her neck. He took a long piece of cane he’d found in the woods and whacked her across her hip.

“There,” he chuckled. “Girls who run away get driven instead of led.” He whacked her again, raising a welt on her backside. “Giddy-up. You balk like a mule, then you’ll get treated like one. Walk on, Trudy.”

With the rope tight around her neck and the pack now saddled to her chest, she started forward.

For hours she limped in front of him, her head bent against a stiff headwind that blew across the mountaintop. Though the pack was much more uncomfortable against her breasts, she didn’t mind walking this way. She didn’t have to look at or smell Henry Brank, and she could almost imagine, until the rope tightened around her neck, that she was out here all by herself.

The wind blew incessantly; as they walked around a wide tangle of bushes Mary had called laurel, it turned her face raw and stiffened her already swollen knees and ankles. She had known howling prairie wind in Texas, but that was playful as a spring breeze compared to this. Just when she feared she might scream from the endless whine in her ears, the laurel ended. They began a slow descent into a valley that spread below them like an undulating carpet.

Immediately the hike grew easier. The wind calmed to a breeze; the sun warmed rather than blistered. If timber had ever been harvested here, there was no trace of it; the mountains bulged with ripe autumn abundance.

Out of the wind Alex felt stronger. The tiny steps she had to take came easier and she’d figured out just the right distance to stay beyond the reach of the cane pole. It was impossible, though, to bend any weeds as they passed. Whatever trail she had managed to mark had ended on the other side of the laurel. Once she thought of Charlie and almost burst out laughing. Here she was, being driven like an ox through the Appalachian Mountains while he was in some cushy Canadian hotel, lecturing on fleas. He would phone her midweek, but he would not think it odd for her to be out. No, she thought, as her urge to laugh floated away like milkweed on the breeze. It would be Friday before Charlie started to worry. By then, she would be dead.

At midafternoon Brank pushed her into a weedy meadow. There, in the distance, she saw two log cabins connected by a covered sidewalk, just like a touristy ghost town she’d once visited in Arizona.

She stopped walking. She had assumed he was going to drive her through the woods yammering in German until he made up his mind to kill her. That they were headed for a specific place had never occurred to her. Now, apparently, they’d reached their destination. Destination. The syllables thudded, final as death.

“Is this where we’re going?” The words spurted out of her mouth before she could stop them.

He walked up beside her and stared at her. That she spoke and had emotions always seemed to take him by surprise. “Yep.”

“Why are we coming here?” She may as well find out as much as she could. There was no percentage in just musing about how you were going to be murdered.

He took off his Yankees cap and grinned. “We’re gonna get to know each other a little better, Trudy. I’ve been thinking about this since you ran away. We’re gonna rewrite the Brank family values.”

He slapped her again with the cane. She stumbled along blindly, a wave of nausea rising from her belly. She was going to be reeducated into the ways of a madman. This was to be her destiny, just as this awful place was her destination. Okay, she decided, looking up at the sky, realizing that her options were dwindling fast. Just let me think of a way to either kill him, or get him to kill me fast.

The cabins had once been substantial, but spindly walnut seedlings now sprouted in the crumbling mortar of the chimneys, and jagged panes of shattered glass served as the only windows. A small creek boiled through the back of the property, while the mountains ringed it like sentries on the other three sides. It was a perfect place for someone who did not welcome unexpected guests.

“Home, sweet home,” Brank announced as he pushed her through the thick mat of weeds that overran what had once been a yard. When they came to one of the cabin doors, he pushed it open first and pulled her in behind him.

A vaporous stench stung her eyes.

“Goddamn bats made this mess,” he grumbled, squinting. “See? Over there.” He pointed to the far wall. A wide splash of grayish droppings splattered down the timbers and into a heap on the floor. “I bet I’ve shot five hundred of ’em, but they keep coming back.” He peered up into the shadowy eaves of the cabin. “They roost under the roof and crap in here.” He laughed and poked her with his elbow. “I guess everything likes having a warm place to shit. This cabin used to be the bunkhouse for a logging camp,” he explained, continuing his tour. “Now it’s my storage room.”

He walked over to the corner, where an old copper kettle sat. A long copper coil sprouted from its top. “This is Gertie.” He patted the tub affectionately. “I named her for you, but I don’t use her for making whiskey. Sugar and corn cost too damn much and dope’s just too easy to grow.”

Alex watched him and waited.

He grinned, then pointed at one of the toothed iron rings that hung from the cross-beam of the ceiling.

“You know what these are?”

She did not answer.

“Traps.” He nudged one of the rings, setting it swinging like the pendulum of a clock. “This one’s for bear, that one’s for fox. This one here I made special for you, Trude. Watch.”

He stepped out onto the porch, then returned with a log as thick as his arm. He positioned the wood in the middle of the Trudy trap, then jabbed upward. With a sharp crack, the jaws slammed shut, and the log clattered to the floor, sheared in half.

“That’s what it was supposed to do to your leg.” Brank chuckled.

Alex started to tremble. The reality that she would truly die here finally sank in. Before, in the woods, she’d banked on the slight chance of getting away. Here, in the cabin, she was cornered. Why hadn’t she had the guts to try and stab him the night before? He probably would have killed her, but at least she wouldn’t have to be tortured to death in this homespun hell.

He pulled her back outside and tugged her along the porch to the second cabin, opening the door with a flourish. “This is where I live,” he announced with a wink.

The dry smell of old dust greeted them. Animal skulls grinned down from the walls, and a row of raccoon skins stood on little ironing boards in front of the fireplace at the far end of the cabin. A rumpled cot was set beneath one shattered window, a stack of ragged paperbacks and old magazines piled beside it. In one corner of the cabin stood a curious table heaped with items from a flea market. Three yellow plastic Frisbees lay next to a stringless guitar; baseball caps were piled on top of an old stereo; cheap jewelry and fishing lures spilled from a tackle box. An array of snake skins dangled from the rafters overhead like gypsy beads.

“Some of these things I brought with me,” Brank explained. “Others are souvenirs from people I’ve run into over the years.”

It suddenly made a kind of perverted sense to her. Henry Brank was a trophy hunter. Pelts from raccoons, Frisbees from children, tattered Stephen King paperbacks from mountain vacationers. He took what he found, and stole whatever he wanted. Was Martha Crow’s Saint Andrew medal tangled in that tackle box, along with the fake pearls and beaded necklaces?

He pulled a battered cardboard box from beneath the cot. “Remember what Papa used to do to us when we were bad?” he asked, dropping the box on the squeaky cot.

She shook her head.

He laughed. “Of course you don’t, Trude. You were never bad, were you?” He sat down on the cot, his eyes glittering beneath his brows. “When you were bad, you were always smart enough to blame it on me. I was the one who always got taken to the garage because of some shit you did.”

Keep playing dumb, she thought, raising her shoulders in an apologetic shrug.

“Well, that’s too bad, Trude. Looks like we’re gonna have to reeducate you from the ground up.”

She lowered her eyes. Whatever he might do, she was never going to give him the pleasure of seeing her cry.

“First, though,” he announced, “let’s have something to eat. We’ll need all our strength for this.”

He set the box aside and unhitched the backpack from her shoulders. While she relished the feeling of freedom, he pulled out the box of Moon Pies from his sack. He took two for himself, then offered her the last one.

She shook her head.

“You should try these, Trudy.” He bit greedily into the pie, oblivious to her harsh gaze. “They taste like that old Kuchen Mama used to make. They’ll give you enough energy to get through what we’re going to do.”

Suddenly her fear left, replaced by a fury that electrified every cell in her body. “Guess what, Henry,” she hissed. “I don’t give a shit about Kuchen or Mama or any of our fucked-up family values. If you want to know the truth, I think you’re still the pathetic little toad you always were.”

He stopped chewing and looked at her, his yellow eyes hard as glass. “Don’t you talk to me like that.”

“Oh?” She smiled, deliberately taunting him. “What are you going to do? Hit me with another stick? Or just dangle that stupid snake in my face?” She shook her head. “Worked once, asshole,” she said. “Won’t work again.”

His face grew red. “You shut up!” he cried, spewing half-chewed Moon Pie all over himself.

Though she tried hard to contain them, Alex couldn’t quash the ripples of her own laughter. This was insane. Her mountain monster spat Moon Pies when he was pissed. Quickly, she sat down and put her face between her knees, laughing uncontrollably.

When she stopped she heard a quietness, as if the earth were readying itself for some volcanic eruption. Her body instinctively tensed. Then she felt his hands wrap tight around her throat. With one motion he jerked her upright; the bones in her neck cracked.

“Are you laughing at me again?” he screamed, his face an inch away from hers. “Are you?”

She clasped her hands together and tried to spike him between his legs, but he saw the blow coming and twisted away an instant before it landed.

“Don’t you do that!” he screeched. His left arm pulled back across his face, then her left cheek exploded in pain. “Don’t you ever laugh at me! Why the fuck do you think I killed you before?”

“I don’t know!” she cried. “Why don’t you tell me?”

“Don’t you remember the fall of sixty-eight? Old man Parsons’ cornfield? We were hunting deer. I wanted to shoot one so bad, just to show Papa I could do it.” His eyes bored into her, hot chips of saffron fire. “But you wouldn’t give me time. You were such a show-off. You cut in front of me and killed my deer, then you called me names. Wixer! Hosenscheisser! You made me mad.”

He pressed closer to her. “Got you back, though, didn’t I? The first bullet got your knee; the second really mangled your throat. You were crying and bleeding like a stuck pig.” He laughed at the memory. “You even wet your pants!”

Her cheek burning, she tried to make her features expressionless, but he pressed her jaws backwards with his thumbs, bending her face up cruelly to meet his. She could feel the pulse in her throat fluttering like a bird caught in a trap.

“Now maybe I’ll make you wet your pants again.”

He jerked her back onto the porch and around to the side of the house, where several nailed-together boards lay on the ground beneath the window. Clutching her tether, he lifted the boards up, uncovering a pit about two yards wide. He grinned and pulled her toward the hole. “Go ahead, Trudy. Call me a wixer now!”

Trembling, she peered down. The pit at her feet was deep, with black earthen walls. At its bottom a writhing knot of rattlesnakes coiled in on each other like the entrails of some beast. For an instant, she feared she’d faint.

“Mostly I sell these to Bible-thumpers who are too busy tattling to Jesus to do their own snake-catching,” Brank informed her. “But I’ve also found that if I uncover this every night, nobody ever climbs in my window.” He snickered.

“But the thing you need to be aware of”—Brank picked up another long piece of cane and jabbed down into the pit—“is that if I ever again hear the slightest tinkle of laughter coming from your mouth, I want you to know that this pit’s about four feet taller than you are.”

She stared at him, then she looked down into the shadowy pit. End it now, Alexandra, the voice in her head urged. Just jump in and let them have at you.

She took a step forward. It’ll hurt like hell, but it’ll be over fast. He’ll never be able to put his hands on you again.

She was at the very edge of the pit when she felt the cord bite into her neck.

“Not yet, Trude,” Brank warned. “Our fun’s just about to start.”

“You want to bet?” Alex asked, tensing against his rope as she gave him the darkest of smiles.