Liberty or Death (35 page)

Clyde wheeled around and hurried back, bending down solicitously. "Come back inside," he said, with a nervous glance at the church. "We'll call the police."

Mary Harding shook her head. "What good can the police do?" she moaned. "They couldn't even get one of their own back." She covered her face with her hands. "I can't believe it. I can't believe it. The poor little thing. They won't know how to take care of him."

I followed them back inside, looking around for a box of tissues. I found one and handed it to Mary. She murmured a muffled "thank you" behind her hands and a moment later, looked up. "I can't believe it," she repeated. "They swore an oath... Jed told me... to protect each other's families... that was one of the most important things. Me and Lyle, we're all the family Jed's got."

But if she knew what they were willing to do to people—if she knew what had happened to her daughter-in-law—why did this surprise her? Because Paulette had been an outsider? Because she had sinned and so deserved what she got? No one deserved what she got. I bit my lip. This was not the time to ask that question.

"When did you last see him?" Clyde asked.

"When I put him to bed around seven-thirty. He was tired. Cranky. I hoped it was the heat but I was afraid he was coming down with something. And then I went to bed myself."

"So you have no idea how long he's been gone?" Not that it mattered much. There was so much wilderness around here that in ten minutes they could have disappeared in any direction.

Mary Harding drew a tremulous breath. "Not long. Maybe an hour."

"You didn't hear anything?" Clyde asked.

She shook her head. "I'm upstairs and he's down. And I had the fan on. I know. I shouldn't have. Sometimes he calls out in the night. But I was so hot, and if I don't sleep, then I'm useless to both of us." She sighed. "When Jed's home, he takes care of the boy, nights. Since he's been gone..." She didn't have the energy to explain. Nor did she need to. We all understood. I also understood that this sudden shock was doing harmful things to Mary Harding, not just emotionally but physically. Her already pallid skin had gone beyond that to a deadly white.

"We have to call the police," I said.

"Why bother?" Mary Harding sighed, but she didn't argue. "Better to talk with Theresa."

I wanted to ask "Why Theresa," but instead I picked up the phone. All I heard was silence. No dial tone. I looked over at Clyde. "Line's dead."

"We'd better go back to the restaurant, then," he said. "We can use the phone there."

"I'm ready," she said, standing up. She was such a proper woman that I was surprised she was willing to go without dressing first, but she didn't seem to care. Together we handed her carefully down the front steps and into the car. In the minutes since she'd discovered her grandson gone, she appeared to have aged many years. I sat in the back as we whooshed down the silent street and onto the dirt road behind the restaurant. One of us supported either elbow as we slowly climbed the few stairs and went into the kitchen.

Without a word, Theresa pulled out a chair and we helped Mary Harding into it. "Watch her," Clyde ordered, for Mary Harding looked like she might topple off her chair. Her skin had taken on an ashen hue and her breathing was labored,. "I'm calling an ambulance."

"You'd better call the police, too," I said.

"Mary doesn't want..."

"Call them! It's time to stop protecting men who hack people to bits, steal small children, and terrorize elderly ladies..." But arguing would only delay things and Mary Harding needed my attention. She was slipping off her chair, her hand clasped to her chest, her eyes half shut. I eased her down onto the floor, trying to remember my lifeguarding first-aid course. Loosened her robe and bent low enough so that I could hear her breathe. Except that I couldn't hear anything. Grabbed a piece of my hair and held it over her mouth. It didn't move.

"Help! She's not breathing. Who knows CPR?"

Theresa stared for a moment, frozen, then said, "I'll check the dining room. Maybe someone out there..."

Kalyn said, "Me, too," and hurried out after her. That left me and Cathy and Natty and Clyde in the kitchen.

I looked at him. "Natty?" He shook his head. "Cathy?" Another shake. At least she looked like she wanted to help. She just didn't know how. It was up to me to recall what I'd learned almost sixteen years ago. I checked her airways to be sure they were clear, took a breath, and went to work. Reviving someone is hard enough when you're fit and sixteen. When you're on the verge of collapse yourself, it becomes a grueling task. I kept at it, repeating the steps I'd memorized, until finally Mary Harding began to breathe on her own. I sat back on my heels, the room swimming, staring at the ring of blurry faces. "She's breathing again," I said. Around me, people who had been holding their own breaths sighed and started to breathe again, too.

As the whirling stopped and things settled down, I saw with a sharp stab of fear that one of the people who had been watching was the Reverend Hannon. Kendall Barker was with him, as was the silent Timmy, and some others I didn't know. He jerked his chin toward me. "Okay, the girl's done her job. Now take her."

 

 

 

Chapter 24

 

I looked UP at his cold, ugly face, hoping that the surge of panic I was feeling might energize my brain and lead me to some plan or strategy or give me some magic words that would persuade him to leave me alone. Normally, being bullied and threatened doesn't make me fuzzy with fear, but I wasn't myself. I was barely up to the challenges of breathing and mobility and I was in a situation that called for a level of skill and adroitness few people other than professional negotiators possessed.

"Why do you want me and where are you taking me?" I asked, rising slowly to my feet.

He didn't answer, only signaled for his men to move closer. Then he pulled a photograph out of his pocket and slapped it down on the table. I didn't have to look. It was what I'd been dreading—a newspaper photo of me, looking like death warmed over, coming out of an emergency room, leaning on Andre's arm. Beside it, he placed another—me in my underwear and spiffy red high tops, standing in a bleak, wet field. Of course, the picture was black and white, so only I knew the shoes were red, that my lips had been blue, that other parts of me were both black and blue. And that then, too, I had been battered by life, faced terrible odds, and was struggling to go on. Only I knew that in the house behind me, a gunman stood with a high-powered rifle trained on me; that I was trying to save two hostages. Everyone who saw it knew just about everything else about me. Thank goodness for sturdy cotton underwear.

I've never been one of those people who crave fifteen minutes of fame. No reasonable person would want either of these photos of herself emblazoned across the papers for the whole world to see. And now they were coming back around to bite me on the ass, the ass that was so nearly displayed in the second photo. As Hannon's companions leaned in for a closer look, Clyde reached past me, picked up the second one, and studied it silently. "Nice," he said, setting it back down, and gave me a sweet smile. Absurd, yes, but the circumstances were absurd. At least no one suggested that if I wanted to waitress, I should have worked at Hooters.

Roy Belcher, whom I hadn't noticed earlier, snatched up the same picture, bent over it with a loose grin, and snorted. "Honey," he said, "you sure do live an interesting life." His eyes roved over me like dirty hands. "You wouldn't be half bad if you bothered to fix yourself up." If I thought fixing myself up would attract the likes of him, I'd learn how to fix myself down. But this wasn't the audience for that observation. I lowered my eyes and remained silent. I wanted to go on living my interesting life, or even a much less interesting life—these things always look more glamorous from the outside—but surrounded by all this menace, I wasn't feeling optimistic.

If nothing happened to prevent it, soon I would leave this room in the company of some very violent men—men who hacked the women they didn't approve of to pieces. Despite the heat in the room, even though I was wearing a sweatshirt, I shivered, wrapping my arms around myself to keep them from noticing. Across the room Kalyn was watching me and I could tell she wished she could do something. Instead, she hung her apron on a hook and headed for the door. "Night, all," she said, like this was a normal situation. Except that she stopped and gave me a quick hug, which wasn't normal at all, and whispered something I didn't quite catch.

Go home and call the cops, Kalyn,
I thought. I didn't have much hope that she would, though, and even less hope that the cops would know where to look for me.

In the movies, this would be the moment when the good guys were racing against time to save me, or massing just outside the door, ready to rush in, guns blazing. Involuntarily, I glanced at the door. It was too dark to see anything, but I didn't get the feeling they were out there. The good guys didn't know what was going on here. From the dining room, someone hollered, "Hey, can we get some service out here?" I took a step toward the door and remembered. I didn't work here anymore. No one else moved to offer service, either. A few seconds later the door swung open, a man looked in, and then the door closed again. It was Clyde who picked up an order pad and went to see what he wanted.

"Okay," Hannon said. "Let's go."

I shook my head. It was risky to defy him but I had no choice. "Not yet," I said, nodding toward Mary Harding. "I can't leave her until the ambulance comes. She might stop breathing again."

He shrugged, looking down at her and then dismissing the poor woman on the floor as though he wasn't responsible for her condition, as though the fate of a fellow human being didn't matter. Probably, for him, it didn't. "She'll be fine. Let's go."

I searched the circle of faces until I found Theresa. In the past, at least, she'd seemed to have some clout with these people when she was willing to use it. "Theresa, are you going to let this happen? You know what these people are like."

Theresa shrugged, as indifferent as the rest of them. "Nobody made you come here, you know. You brought this on yourself." She looked around at the others. "I've got a business to run. I can't afford to make enemies around here..."

You lily-livered, two-faced, self-centered greedy old witch, I thought. You have worshiped at the altar of the almighty buck until it has drained away your soul. If they can do it to Harding's wife and they can do it to me, they can do it to you. Unless your vicious son Jimmy, the useless sack of shit, protects you.
Aloud, I said, "Theresa, I only meant I should stay with Mrs. Harding until... until help comes."

She looked at Mary Harding, and a flicker of something crossed her face. Compassion. Or gas. Or maybe sciatica. Something that pained her. She folded her arms resolutely across her chest. "She's right, you know, Stuart. She should stay with Mary until the fire department arrives, just in case..."

Oh thank you, Saint Theresa, you mercenary bitch, for small favors.

He shook his head vehemently, cutting her off with an abrupt, "Sorry, Theresa, no. I think the fewer witnesses to this the better, don't you?" He nodded to his minions, then took a step toward me and reached for my arm, but I'd had quite enough jerking around at his behest.

"Keep your hands off me," I said, stepping back. There was no way I was leaving Mary Harding. I'd saved her life once, and that made her my responsibility until I could hand her over to someone who knew CPR. Mary had trusted these people, which maybe made some of this her fault, but it was a mistake anyone could make. She had also tried to be a good person. She'd sacrificed the comforts of her old age to care for a child. She'd remained loving and loyal to her son. And these were her friends and neighbors. Even knowing what she knew, it had seemed reasonable to trust them. Most of them.

"Girl, you are forgetting something. You aren't in charge here." Hannon took another step toward me, anger at my defiance clouding his face. I was breaking his rules and I was doing it in front of people. A double-dipper sin.

The trouble with his thinking, the trouble with what was going on here, was that while the alleged underpinning of their actions was the preservation of democracy—at least as they defined it—they'd lost sight of what fundamental democracy was all about. In my book, it was about two things: preservation of the right of the individual voice to speak, even if it was a voice I didn't agree with; and acceptance of a common body of rules we'd all agreed upon, but which each of us individually then carried the responsibility to observe. I didn't think, though, that he was interested in my views on liberty. He only wanted obedience.

I didn't care. I drew myself up until I was looking him straight in the eye. "Not until the ambulance comes, you miserable excuse for a man. What if she stops breathing again? Why don't you try picking on someone your own size for a change, instead of helpless women and children?" As a delaying tactic, it wasn't very sensible—I knew he was mean and violent and that he could jerk me out the door anytime he wanted—but I wasn't in my right mind anyway. Besides, I suffer from a pathological inability to let bullies pick on people weaker and more helpless than myself. I looked down at Mary Harding. No one could look more helpless—a frail, ashen-faced woman with tiny, birdlike bones, lying in her faded cotton housecoat on a worn linoleum floor, fighting for breath.