Offspring (18 page)

The man did not seem to register that she was there. His gaunt jaw hung open and flies buzzed in and out, settling on his teeth and tongue.

She saw the reason for the flies immediately.

A puddle of urine at his feet, a pile of feces between his legs, tumbling out from behind and beneath him
.

She realized the man had been there for many days. Standing amid his own excrement.

She felt her stomach heave.

Already the swarm had found her, buzzing across her arms and face.

She swiped at them, the twin boys laughing at the awkwardness of her bound hands.

The girl stepped toward her past the fire. The boys made way.

The girl stood in front of her and untied the thong on her left wrist, then pushed both arms behind her and tied her again, tight.

She smiled and ran her fingers through Amy’s long brown hair, pulling roughly through the tangles, through the burrs and twigs. Her eyes flickered up and down her body.

She was aware again of her open nightgown, of the flimsy bra and panties. The girl’s eyes pawed her.

The girl turned and walked back past the fire. A moment later she returned carrying a length of clothesline and a knife.

And it was not the knife she was suddenly afraid of, it was the line, because the girl was all business with the knife, looping about fifteen feet off the line and cutting it, dropping the knife nearly into the urine pooling out beside her and throwing the line over a wide outcropping of rock above her head.

She watched the line sway and dangle—then saw the girl pull it tight to neck level and panic seized her and she began to struggle. But the twin boys had moved in close beside her, they had her arms now and they had knives too and placed them on either side of
her ribs and held them there sharp and cold against her flesh, not cutting her, barely pressing in. But enough.

“Please,” she said.

She looked at the girl. The girl was concentrating, making a knot in the line. Deaf to her.

The girl made several tries before she got it right, a loop at the far end.

Small, she thought. Not nearly large enough. Not to go over my head
.

So they were not going to kill her after all. Not yet.

The girl pulled at the cord. The knot slipped forward.

She reached abruptly into Amy’s hair again and pulled it back so tight that she cried out, gathered it into a fist and then slipped the loop around it, pulled hard on the cord and then let go with her hand. Where her hand had been the cord now bound her hair together.

She felt a thousand pinprick stabs of pain all along her hairline and through her scalp, yet she could bear this, it was better than hanging, better than dying never seeing Melissa again in this place with flies crawling over her eyes and into her nostrils, the baby squalling, wanting,
smelling
the milk inside her. She could bear this. And live.

She knew she could live.

Until the girl reached down for the other end of the rope and pulled, the twins helping, her feet suddenly lifting off the cool floor of the cave so that she dangled in midair and each of the pinprick stabs multiplied a thousandfold, burning, her body swaying and her mouth falling open in a choked-off, guttural scream
.

The flies flew in and out.

At the place where the trail branched off to the cliffs the Woman handed Eartheater’s body over to Rabbit, placing it squarely on his shoulder, its ruined neck belching a single spurt of blood and fluid across the moss and lichen.

She watched him until he was out of sight, moving toward the cave.

He handled his burden well.

He would grow to be strong—as strong as First Stolen. If only someday he would develop sense.

She had seen no sign of First Stolen, nor of the screaming woman, the boy, or the child. So that it was best now for all of them to return to the cave. To regroup if First Stolen had not found them, and reconsider.

It was early. The moon was bright. There was still plenty of time for the hunt.

She turned down the hill toward the stream, making
her way carefully through the deep woods to the place she had left the man hamstrung, bleeding in the water.

He hadn’t gotten far.

She saw him on the bank, turned over on his side, both shoes resting beside him, trying to bind the wound with his long black stocking. But his hands were trembling with the pain and kept slipping—he seemed to have no strength in them. He couldn’t get it tight. Beneath the dried brown blood his face was pale. His eyes burned as she approached him.

“Get the fuck away from me.”

The man was dangerous.

Fascinating.

A wolf in his trap.

“You fucking crazy bitch. Get the . . .”

She drew her knife. She knelt beside him and placed its point to the bridge of his nose directly between his eyes. She waited until the sharp point of the knife had its say in him, until the fire burned low in his eyes and he grew calm with respect for what she could do to him now or any time.

She put the taped handle of the knife between her teeth and took one end of his stocking in either hand and pulled it tight, knotting it twice.

The man’s breath hissed through clenched teeth. Except for that he made no sound.

She stood and slid the knife into its sheath. The man looked up at her, his dark eyes narrowing. She saw him glance at the guns pushed through her belt.

She smiled. This wolf would bite if given the opportunity.

She offered him her hand.

She would tame the wolf. If it could not be tamed then she would kill it. But first she would see.

She stood in full moonlight and watched the man’s eyes drift across her scarred face to the fierce lightning streak through her hair. She knew the eyes were afraid of her and that was good. She knew too that they dreamed and planned, and that was not so good.

His eyes were thin narrow slits. They glittered in the moonlight. Behind them, in pain, hid the wolf
.

She would draw the wolf out, snapping
.

He took her hand.

She lifted him to his feet and draped his arm over her shoulder. The man did not look at her again, only at the earth below, careful of his step as she moved him easily through the woods up the hill to the path, then over the path where Rabbit had come before her, to the cliff and the seawall.

Bringing him to his lair. And to his cage.

Luke kept to the rocks, well behind them, as they walked the beach.

In the tide pools beside him seaweed like the black legs of spiders waved and swayed from barnacle-encrusted boulders. The rocks were splattered with white guano and the broken carcasses of land crabs.

He watched his footing—and he watched them. Two dark shapes leaving footprints in the lunar sand.

It was no longer possible for him to hear his mother. Maybe the man had stopped hurting her so she didn’t have to cry out anymore, or maybe it was just the distance and the tide churning through the narrow channel that lay between them. Maybe she was still crying. He heard the roar of waves. That was all.

He had no plan. He had no idea what he was supposed to do or when. It just seemed right to follow, not letting the man know he was there. He wondered how long it was till daylight. Someone might come
along then. But he thought that daylight was probably a long way away and he had no idea what he would do till then. Just keep following them, he guessed. They might keep walking forever, right into daylight. It was possible.

The man was pulling her along by the front of her dress, making her keep up with him. The man walked fast and his mother stumbled sometimes but the man wouldn’t stop, just pulled at her until she got to her feet again and started walking.

It was hard keeping up with them.

He was tired and sore and his feet hurt from the barnacles and shells on the rocks. But it was better near the shoreline, faster on the wet sand, and the rocks were there to hide him.

The air was damp here, chilly from the salt spray. He was thirsty.

From here the rocks angled out farther past the tide line. It was the first time he’d come across the problem. He had to stop a moment to consider it. Either he’d have to risk walking the open sand for a while—
the man could turn and see him
—or else he’d have to stay with the rocks. And he couldn’t think for long because they were getting ahead of him, he was already far away.

The rocks or the man.

The rocks felt safer.

He went over them on all fours. They were slippery. Waves rolled in and filled the tide pools, each wave bigger than the next until his pajamas were soaked and his hair was dripping. He had to step into the tide pools too and that was hard because you
couldn’t see how deep they were or what was in them—crabs or eels or what—hidden beneath the shifting foam.

He pulled himself up onto a low flat slab of granite. It felt slimy under his feet.

Something growing there
.

He hopped over to a rounder, higher rock. His footing there was better. He crouched and went hands first onto an even bigger one, its surface sparkling with mica, crawling over it sideways—and then he was going to have to jump, because the rocks were angling back to shore now all except for this last one. This last one formed a kind of point. It was long and flat but half-hidden by the water, a couple feet away.

He went into a crouch again and took a breath and jumped.

He hit the rock and his legs almost went out from under him, he had to scramble to keep his balance, but he got there, he was standing, and he looked up to see how far they’d gotten because he knew this had taken him longer than it should have, he should have risked the open sand, and he saw them way down the beach so far away that even if the man turned Luke doubted he’d notice him now standing way back here, and he started for the next rock which was an easy one going back toward shore when the wave slammed into his legs and knocked him over.

The backwash pulled him off the rock and under. He swallowed water. His feet touched sand and then it was gone again, he was rising. Then going under. He felt the undertow grip him like the invisible pincers
of a huge crab, dragging him back until his lungs were throbbing.

He rose again, broke surface and opened his eyes and wiped away the sting, gulping air, coughing. All he could see was another wave coming toward him, rising, and beyond that, another wave and beyond that, moonlight on the water.
Where was he? How far out?
He turned, splashing, trying to get his bearings as the wave caught him and pulled him forward in a rush of white water and he saw he was headed for the rocks, dark, gleaming, racing toward him like sharks, and something told him to go under.

He took a breath and ducked his head, threw his arms out in front of him and rode the churning water, felt himself turning upside down and back again, felt as though a roller coaster were taking him and tried to straighten as his forearm slammed against stone and went instantly dead and burning and the wave drove him into the sand, piling him in hard, scraping deep across his chin and chest. He rose almost to the surface, the breath bursting out of him past his lips as something hit him in the belly and the wave dragged him across the blunt narrow edge of a second rock.

His body folded in on itself. The sand swirled over him.

He turned face up.

Salt spray hit his cheeks.

His head, then his back drifted up to the sand at the shoreline.

He felt himself settle in, the sand washing away in tiny trenches around him, outlining his body. He lay there a moment gasping, the waves lapping gentlynow at his legs and rising up over him, lifting his arms spread wide at his sides, trying in vain to float him back again.

He had no idea where he was.

His left arm throbbed. His chin, chest and stomach burned in the cool breeze.

There was only one thought in his mind—that he’d lost them. Not that he’d almost died. That he would turn and not see her there, that somehow between then when he was standing on the rock and now his mother would be gone, disappeared.

He raised himself up on one arm, resisting the urge to cry, the
need
to cry, and looked behind him up the beach.

He was closer to them now than he’d ever been.

So incredibly close it was frightening.

He could see them clearly, his mother’s dress torn in front where the man had been dragging her, her hair shining in the moonlight, even her face wet and stained with dirt and tears as they turned away from him toward the high jagged cliffs.

He flattened himself against the sand, motionless as driftwood, and watched them start to climb.

Claire entered the cave to their silent stares, to the crackle of the fire, to the pounding waves far below, and to Amy’s low moan.

The man had thrust her inside and stood behind her blocking the narrow entrance. As though worried she would run. As though she
could
have run seeing Amy there.

And what they’d done to her.

Her hands flew to her face, palms pressed deep into the sockets of her eyes. She shook her head against the sudden onset of dizziness and nausea.

It passed.

Her hands dropped to her sides, clenched into fists. She took a breath. She looked.

Before he retired, her father had been a high school teacher in Brookline, Massachusetts, an English teacher, who always seemed to like the movies—
films
, he called them respectfully—easily
as much as he liked Jane Austen or Proust (though perhaps not quite so much as Hardy, Joyce, or Henry Miller), and he had directed her to and even taken her to films through much of the late 1960s and early 1970s, when bold, often bleak personal visions were still very much in vogue, when American audiences, educated and troubled, apparently would still rather pay to see movies rooted to home truths about their lives than escapist melodramas and comedies.