THIRTY-NINE

From that moment on, a high whine keened inside her like the hum of angry wasps. It warmed her as she waded through the icy creek to her boots and paint box, the only weapons she possessed, and it did not stop when she filled the box with water and threaded her way back to Joan. She moved supple as a panther in the jungle and she wondered, as she neared their woodpile, if she wasn’t glowing in some spectral shade of blue.

“Mary?” Joan crouched low to the ground, peering nervously into the woods. “Is that you?”

“It’s me.”

“Jeez, Mary! What happened over there? All I heard was screaming!”

Mary slid to the ground beside Joan and told her that the barefoot man kept snakes and traps and a curious collection of souvenirs; that Alex had been tied up but that she was alive; that Mary had fallen into a snake pit kept by Ulagu. She did not, however, reveal to Joan that the barefoot man may well have beaten Alex to death just minutes ago.

“It sounded horrible.” Joan shuddered. “I didn’t know what to do. . . .”

“You did okay,” Mary assured her, offering Joan some water from the paint box. Her own throat felt as papery as the snake skins that decorated Ulagu’s rafters. “You did just fine.”

“What are we going to do next?” Joan eagerly slurped some of the water.

“I’m going to go back and kill him.” The words came out of Mary’s mouth so fast and blunt that they surprised her. She’d just announced her intention to kill a man as casually as if she were going to debone a chicken.

Joan’s eye gleamed like a pearl in the moonlight. “You’re going to what?”

“Go back and kill him.” Mary stared at her, unsmiling.

“But couldn’t we just kidnap Alex back, when he’s gone?”

“He’d be after us in a heartbeat,” replied Mary, the wasp-hum inside her rising. “Even if we got a full day’s head start, he’d catch us.”

“How?”

“Joan, we marked our way with yellow paint,” Mary reminded her. “A myopic cripple could follow our trail. This monster would be eating our livers before dark.”

Joan drew herself up into a small, ragged ball. For a long time she stared mutely at the cabin, fear and misery both twisting across the planes of her face.

Suddenly Mary was stung by a poisonous guilt. If it hadn’t been for her, Joan would be back in Atlanta, safe in a sunny hospital room banked with flowers, talking her trauma out with some kind-eyed therapist. Instead she sat here—sick, feverish, huddled behind a rotting pile of logs, playing hide-and-seek with a madman. The hum notched higher inside her. Joan had been a brave woman to come on this trek. She deserved to survive. Mary knew she alone had the best chance of making that happen. She leaned over and said:

“If I kill him, we can rest. He’s got a fireplace where we can get warm. He’s got food we can eat. He’s even got a damn bottle of vitamins.” She squeezed Joan’s arm. “With him dead we can all walk out of here alive.”

For an instant Joan gaped at her as if she didn’t recognize her—as if the Mary Crow who’d crept into the darkness an hour ago had returned as someone else. Then her face contorted, as if she were remembering that afternoon at Atagahi, when a man had appeared from nowhere and ripped her world apart. “Okay,” she replied quietly. “How do we do it?”

Mary smiled. “Do you remember how tall he is?”

Joan shrugged. “I don’t know. Taller than Alex, probably.”

“Okay, let’s say over six feet. I’ll have to aim pretty high.”

“Aim what?”

“I’m going to take one of these logs and sneak back down to the porch. When he comes out in the morning, I’ll be right beside the front door, waiting.”

“And?”

Mary felt the hum again. “And then I’m going to smash his fucking head in.”

Joan pressed herself tighter against the logs. “Do you honestly think you could do that?” There was a quaver in her voice.

Mary looked into Joan’s mutilated face and remembered Alex’s bruises, then thought of her mother, lying still and broken, so many years ago. “There’s not a doubt in my mind,” she replied.

They talked on in the dark, working out the details of the plan. This time neither of them slept. A breeze rattled the trees. Shadows danced on the ground, and leaves tumbled across the meadow as if swept by an invisible broom. A front was blustering through from the north. This day would dawn frosty, rimmed in ice. Hog-killing weather, Mary thought with an odd little jolt of anticipation.

Joan finally wore out. She splashed some cool water on her infected foot and slumped down behind the logs, fitfully sleeping. Mary knew that she, too, should get some rest, but she did not feel tired. From the moment she had decided to kill Ulagu, a hot, expansive energy had infused her. She felt as if she could stay up all night, kill Ulagu, and party all day tomorrow. Maybe this was what made them kill, she thought, remembering Cal Whitman and the five other men she’d nailed in court. Maybe delivering death was the headiest thrill life had to offer.

She shook her head. She couldn’t allow herself to dwell there.

The old logs glowed like dull silver in the moonlight. She crawled over and pawed quietly through the pile, searching for just the right one. Most were too big and heavy for her to hold comfortably, but underneath some leaves she found a smaller one that had tumbled from the stack. It was almost a yard long and tapered at one end, like a thick baseball bat. She wrapped both hands around the splintery bark and swung it tentatively. The heft felt sweet and firm, and she knew without a doubt that it would cleave a man’s skull like a melon.

When the dark began to soften into dawn, she touched Joan’s shoulder.

“Joan,” she whispered. “I’m going now. I’ll need my jeans to crawl through those weeds.”

Joan blinked, sleepily. “Did we just plan to kill Barefoot?” she asked. “Or did I dream that?”

“No.” Mary untied the laces on her boots. “You didn’t dream that at all.”

Joan tugged off the pants and handed them to Mary.

“Is there anything else I can do to help?” Joan asked as Mary pulled on her jeans and relaced her boots.

Mary shook her head. “Just do like before. Keep watch and yell if you see him sneaking up on me. And you might say a prayer to whatever saint’s in charge of putting mad dogs out of their misery.”

“I can do that,” Joan promised, smiling crookedly. She wrapped her arms around Mary’s neck and held her close, as if trying to fill her with whatever small strength she had left. Mary felt the fever burning within her. “Thank you,” Joan whispered.

“Thank you?”

“For keeping me alive.”

Mary hugged her, then kissed the swollen cheek of the tiny soprano from Flatbush. “Your courage humbles me, Joan. Whatever happens now, I want you to know that you’re a true War Woman. And I’ve never called anybody that before in my life.”

Joan smiled up at her. Her eyes were wet with tears. “And I want you to know that you did the right thing by coming up here. What is it you guys say? It’s a good day to die?”

Mary chuckled. “I heard that once in the movies.”

“Then it must be true.” Joan wiped her eyes.

“See you later.”

“Addio, amica del cuore. Here. Take this. At least it’s some kind of weapon.” Joan held out the palette knife.

Shouldering her log, Mary dropped the knife in the pocket of her jeans and slipped back through the trees. This time, however, she stopped at the back of the cabin. The weeds, she noted, grew taller here. She could creep through them and still remain hidden from anyone looking out.

“Okay, Wynona,” she murmured as she cradled the log in her arms and dived belly-down into the tall grass. “Stay with me one more time.”

The dew had made the weeds slippery and wet. She crawled with her elbows forward, always seeking the rim of another snake pit or the sharp metal edge of a trap. For every three feet she pushed herself through the cold, slick tangle, she felt as if she slid a foot back. She didn’t want to raise up from the grass and expose her position, so she picked one pale star from the Pleiades overhead and crawled directly towards it. Already it seemed to glow less brightly than when she’d started. If she was going to reach the porch before the sun rose, she needed to hurry.

She crawled on. Husks of ragweed tickled her nose. To her left she heard a rustling in the grass. She froze. Ulagu? Could he have seen the tall grass moving in the dark? She held her breath, then the who-who-who-whoooo? of an owl came from the creek. Her heart sank. Uguug. To the old Cherokees, owls foretold death. “So be it.” She shrugged as she crept on. “Let’s just hope Uguug’s calling for him.”

The hum pulled her forward. Her senses were sharp as razors; the dawning world blazed fiery green; she felt as if she could hear spiders spinning their webs in the forest of grass. Had Cal Whitman felt such power when he committed murder? This is what it’s like, a seductive voice whispered inside her brain. This is why they kill.

She crawled on. When she thought she had crept far enough to be hidden behind the cabin, she rose up.

“Twenty more feet,” she whispered, burrowing back into the weeds. Now the goldenrod was intermingled with some kind of plant whose tiny thorns tore at her cheeks and forehead as she pushed through. Wincing in pain, she narrowed her eyes and crawled on

Surely she must be there by now. Again, she lifted her head. This time her position was perfect. She had a straight shot down the windowless side of the cabin and onto the porch. Betting her life that no more traps or snake pits awaited her, she stood up.

With the log clutched against her chest, she sprinted to the shadows of the cabin wall. When she reached them, she stopped, half-expecting a man in green camouflage to pop out from the porch and greet her. “Why, hello,” he would say. “How nice of you to drop in! I’ve been waiting for you for hours.”

But no such thing happened. The cabin remained as quiet as when she’d first visited. She crept along the wall, listening for the sound of someone stirring, a human body awake, but by the time she reached the porch she’d heard nothing except the frantic thunder of her own heart.

The slate-colored light revealed the porch and the door, but little else. From here on, however, she could make no mistakes.

She grasped the log and eased her right foot on the porch, testing the strength of the board. Tentatively, she shifted her weight. The wood did not give or wobble. She held her breath and straightened her knee, moving her left foot up beside her right. Triumph flooded her. She’d reached the porch without making a sound.

The door stood ten feet away, the latch on the near side. She would have to cross to the other side to get the needed leverage to shatter Ulagu’s skull. She inched her right foot three boards toward the door, then shifted her weight. Amazingly, the ancient boards again held firm.

She crept along for what seemed like a century. She had to crawl below the single front window, and she froze once when a board squeaked loudly beneath her. She pressed herself up against the cabin, waiting for Ulagu’s bellow, but nothing happened. Heavy sleeper, she noted with a quickening in her veins. Smug in the protection of his damn snakes.

Finally, she reached the door. With a single swift motion she crept across the doorway and positioned herself on the other side. She was here. She was ready. She’d gone over what to do a million times in her head, but it wouldn’t hurt to rehearse it again. First wait, when the door opens, to make sure whoever is coming out isn’t Alex. Then, if Ulagu comes out fast, swing like hell for the back of his skull. If he comes out slow, smash his face first, then his head if he goes down. If he doesn’t go down, smash his balls, then the back of his skull. And if none of that kills him, she thought as an early-morning robin began to chirp, then the death song that Uguug was singing must have been meant for me.