Blood Memory

  “You don’t know shit, do you?” he says.

  “Guess not.”

  “Look at me.”

  “I’m driving.”

  He reaches out with his gun and pulls my face around. He looks as angry as he does triumphant. Why? I wonder, my eyes lingering on his pistol. It’s an automatic, ugly and clean as a fresh scalpel. It’ll do its job.

  “Did my grandfather send you to do this?”

  Billy smiles strangely. “A smart officer doesn’t give orders like this. But a good soldier knows what to do when trouble comes. A good soldier doesn’t have to be told.”

  “Soldier? I know what kind of soldier you are. The kind my father got stuck with in Cambodia.”

  His eyes narrow. “What?”

  “Nothing. You wouldn’t understand.”

  Billy kicks a snakeskin boot up onto the dash of the Cadillac. “You think you’re pretty smart, don’t you?”

  I don’t answer.

  “You smart enough to know what’s about to happen to you?”

  “You’re going to kill us.”

  He laughs. “You get the prize, sweet thing. But that was the easy part. The question is, why?”

  I know better than to take this bait. The more interest I express, the less he’ll tell me. That’s his nature. He’s never had much power, so he takes it however he can get it.

  “Well?” he presses. “Do you?”

  Pearlie bangs twice on the trunk lid. It makes my heart hurt, but at least she’s still alive.

  “Because you’re in my way,” Billy says in a reflective voice. “That’s why.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If you stay alive, you’ll inherit my money.”

  This wasn’t the answer I expected. “Your money? What are you talking about?”

  He laughs again, this time almost a cackle. “Kirkland’s my father, you dumb cunt. You haven’t figured that out yet?”

  After all I’ve heard today, this revelation doesn’t have much effect.

  “My mother worked for one of those DeSalle companies. Bookkeeping. She did a lot of work at home. Dr. Kirkland would go by her house to check up on the figures. I guess the main figure he was interested in was hers. Anyway, he nailed her. And I was the result.”

  “You sound proud of it.”

  Billy shrugs. “Nothing to be ashamed of. He paid her hush money nice and regular. Sent me to school, got me out of a couple of scrapes. That’s how I wound up in the army.”

  “The army or jail, was it?”

  “Something like that. He paid for law school, too, when I got out. Anyway, that makes me your uncle—or that’s what I thought until today. After hearing what he told you in the study, it sounds like I may be your half brother, too.” Billy laughs again.

  “That’s bullshit.”

  “You wish it was.” He checks the safety on his pistol, then flicks it on and off a couple of times. “The thing is, I already got a piece of the gross of the Indian casino. I did a lot of work prepping that deal for him. Wet work, you know what I’m saying? But the thing is, there’s more money to be had. A lot more. My mama’s got records of it. There’s money you probably don’t even know about. Cayman Islands, Liechtenstein, all over. And now that your pretty little aunt offed herself, you and your mother are the only living heirs in the will. You believe that?”

  I believe it. Grandpapa may have wanted sons, but nothing would cause him to bequeath one dollar outside the legitimate family, not even to charity. Not unless he got something in return.

  “He’s been relying on me more and more lately,” Billy says. “He’s seen what I can do. While you’ve been doing nothing but fucking up. You’re a pure liability to him now, that’s a fact. When you disappear, he’ll breathe a sigh of relief.”

  “You’re probably right.”

  Billy looks at me in surprise, but then he nods with satisfaction, glad to have his intuition confirmed.

  Highway 61 unrolls steadily ahead of us, curving through the hardwood forest, leading us ever southward. A gray mass of clouds is gathering to the southeast. If we went on toward Baton Rouge, we’d probably miss it, but the bulk of the storm seems to be piling up over the river, right about where the island faces Angola Prison.

  Only fitting, I suppose, that my last bit of thread should play out in the rain.

  We’re ten miles down the Angola road when the rain sweeps over us. The sound of drops hitting the roof sends me halfway into the trance I learned to enter before I could even think for myself. Billy Neal seems to think the rain a good omen. Smiling with contentment, he tunes the radio to a country station.

  “You like the rain?” I ask.

  “Today I do.”

  “Why today?”

  He turns to me and purses his lips, as though debating whether to confide something. “Because you’re going to drown today, Sis.”

  This strikes me as so absurd that I almost laugh out loud. “How’s that?”

  “You’re gonna drive off the bridge to DeSalle Island.”

  I say nothing, but in my mind I see Brer Rabbit crying, Please don’t throw me in that briar patch! Is this the best that Billy can come up with? If he drives me into the old river channel in this car, I can get myself and Pearlie to shore without even breaking a sweat.

  “I see you thinking,” he says. “Don’t worry, I know all about your free diving. You’re gonna be down at the bottom way too long to save yourself.”

  “If you tie me up, it won’t look like an accident.”

  He smiles his secret smile again. “You’re not the only one who can swim. After you’ve been down there twenty minutes or so, I’m going to go down and take the ropes off. No muss, no fuss. A drunk manic-depressive runs herself and her nigger maid into the river in a storm. Open-and-shut case.”

  “I’m not drunk.”

  “You will be.” He opens the glove compartment and takes out a pint of Taaka vodka. “Found this in the slave quarters. Guess your mama likes vodka, too.” He uncaps the bottle and shoves it at me. “Drink.”

  “No, thanks.”

  “Not up to your standard?” He presses the barrel of his gun against my temple. “Drink.”

  “I can’t. I’m pregnant.”

  “Pregnant!” He laughs from deep in his belly. “Shit, you’re going to be dead in an hour!”

  “So you say.”

  The blow from the gun is so sudden and sharp that everything goes black for a moment. I feel the car swerve, but I manage to right it.

  “You fucking drink this,” he commands.

  “No.”

  He’s tensing to hit me again when I see the turn for the island. “Look!”

  “Go on,” he says. “Take it.”

  Just ahead, a narrow dirt track leaves the road and heads into the deep woods. How many times did I take this turn as a little girl, terrified it would rain when I reached the island, yet powerless to stop the journey? Thirty years later, I’ve come full circle.

  Billy Neal takes a swig from the vodka bottle, then screws the cap back on and throws the bottle into the seat behind us.

  “You’ll drink it,” he says. “Or I’ll beat that nigger to death right in front of you.”

  Chapter

  61

  Billy watches me with visceral hatred as I navigate the Cadillac down a road that is mostly mud. The tail of the car keeps trying to come around on me, forcing me to drive slowly. Still, the road seems all too short. When I sight the low-water bridge leading to the island, Billy points into the trees on the right.

  “Pull in there. Ground’s hard enough. There’s a little clearing up ahead.”

  “How do you know that?” I ask, driving over the ground where I parked the Audi on my last visit.

  Billy gives me a tight smile. “That’s where I parked when I followed you out here the other day.”

  “You chased me into the river?”

  “Who the fuck else do you think it was? Jesse Billups? That spade wouldn’t get out on
the river in a storm if his life depended on it.”

  “Did my grandfather send you to kill me that night?”

  Billy stops smiling. “What does it matter? Pull up there and stop.”

  A clearing has opened ahead. There’s plenty of room for the Cadillac between the tree trunks, but the forest canopy protects us from the brunt of the rain. Billy reaches over and switches off the motor. Soon there is only the ticking of the engine and the soft drip of water on the hood and roof.

  “Nice, huh?” Billy says.

  “I thought you were going to kill us on the bridge.”

  “You in a hurry?” He points the gun at me. “Turn and face the window. Put your hands behind you.”

  “Why?”

  He jams the gun barrel under my jawbone. “Do it now.”

  “You can’t shoot me. You want it to look like an accident.”

  “You’re right, I’d rather not. But I don’t mind popping a cap in your smart-ass maid one bit. Nobody’s going to make a fuss over that dried-up old jig.”

  Will he shoot Pearlie? Yes. But if I let him tie my hands, what chance will I have to save us? Some…But if he ties them to the steering wheel, I’m in trouble. Can he do that now? He still has to get the car onto the bridge….

  It may be the most foolish act of my life, but I turn on the seat and face the window. I’m expecting rope, which I saw on Pearlie in the trunk, but there’s a soft tinkle of metal, then steel bands close tight around my wrists.

  Shit! If I go into the water with handcuffs on, I’m in trouble.

  Billy gets out of the car. For a moment I think he’s going to get Pearlie out of the trunk, but then he starts unbuttoning his jeans. I turn away, expecting to hear him urinate, but what I hear instead is a swish of cloth against flesh. Then he leans back into the open door.

  “Hey,” he says. “Look here.”

  I turn. He’s wearing black bikini briefs, and his eyes are shining.

  “What are you doing?” I ask.

  “What do you think?” A lurid smile. “I want a taste of what the boss man had.”

  He pulls off his underwear and climbs back into the car, pulling at himself as he sits beside me. The gun is still in his other hand. “You got an ass on you, that’s for sure. And you won’t have no more use for it after today. Might as well take it for one last spin, right? Nobody’ll know. We’ll keep it all in the family.”

  My heart flutters like a panicked bird beating its wings to pieces. With a pair of handcuffs, Billy Neal has turned me into the helpless little girl I was when my grandfather raped me.

  “Straighten your legs out on the seat,” he says. “Let’s get those jeans off.”

  I shake my head.

  The glaze in his eyes brightens. “I’m gonna get out and pump four bullets into that trunk.”

  “You’re going to kill her anyway.”

  “True enough. But later’s better than sooner, right?”

  I don’t know what to do. My synapses don’t seem to be firing properly.

  “It’s human nature, plain and simple,” Billy says, stroking himself to erection. “People will do anything they think will keep ’em alive for five more minutes. The Nazis knew that. Used it all the time to control people. Right up to the moment they slammed the door to the gas chambers.”

  “You a big fan of the Nazis?”

  He laughs. “Straighten out your fucking legs.”

  Billy’s right. I want to live every second I can. Every second of life is another chance at escape. The irony is exquisite. All my life I’ve flirted with suicide, yet here I sit, desperately wanting a few more moments of air and sunlight. I’m only alive now because this man wants to have sex with me. And if I become too much trouble, he’ll shoot me.

  Billy’s smile has a manic edge. “There’s another option you may not have thought about. I can shoot you first and fuck you after. You’ll still be plenty warm.”

  My mouth goes dry.

  “I’d prefer it the other way around, but it’s your choice.”

  At least if he shoots me first, I won’t know I’m being raped. I won’t feel it. But suddenly it hits me: I don’t have to feel it anyway. That’s the one magic trick I learned as a child—dissociation. Billy Neal can do what he likes to me, and I can watch it all from the balcony, a disembodied observer.

  “Guess you made your choice,” he says, getting out of the car. “The nigger pays for your pride.”

  “Wait!” I cry, extending my legs down the length of the front seat.

  He leans back into the car, reaches out with one hand, and unsnaps my jeans. Then he unzips them, digs his fingers into the open fly, and yanks brutally until most of my legs are bare.

  “Kick ’em off,” he says, breathing hard from the effort.

  As if his voice controls my limbs, I obey.

  He throws my jeans into the backseat, then points his pistol at my face and tears off my panties.

  It’s eerie how quickly I dissociate from what’s happening. I’m already watching myself the way I watch characters in a movie—fascinated but at a critical remove. I’ve actually asked lovers to act out this scenario with me: rape as pleasure. A lot of normal women have probably done the same. I’ve asked men to tie me and choke me and slap me around. And now that the real thing is happening, it’s not much different from the playacting. It should be, I know. It would be for a normal woman.

  But it’s not for me.

  Would most women endure rape to live a little longer? Or would they fight to the last breath to keep their so-called honor? Fighting isn’t going to stop Billy Neal. It’s just going to make him hurt me more. Besides, what is it for me to be raped once more? It’s happened so many times already that one more violation has no meaning. I see now that I was raped even as an adult. Even when I was saying yes, something beyond my understanding was driving me to repeat the only kind of sexual union I knew.

  “I know about girls like you,” Billy says, pulling me across the seat until I’m facing forward like a passenger on a Sunday drive. “Girl’s who got broke in young. They know how to please a man better than a Thai hooker.”

  He kneels on the floor in front of me and transfers his gun to his left hand. With his right hand he pumps his penis, causing it to swell and grow red. The sight is bizarre yet familiar: a man I barely know is about to insert himself into me. It’s happened more times than I let myself remember.

  “You wet?” he asks, reaching out and checking me like a mechanic checking the oil in an engine. “Shit.” He spits in his palm, then slathers his organ with saliva. Then he spits again and puts his fingers inside me. “There you go,” he murmurs. “Now you’re getting there.”

  Numbness spreads through me like a narcotic, masking everything but the sudden fullness of penetration. It’s nothing to me, though. Only a reenactment, a ritual, a role I learned to play before I learned almost anything else.

  Only this time it’s different. This man doesn’t want merely to use me. He wants to kill me. Like the men of my father’s unit, the White Tigers, who kidnapped village girls as a reward, then raped them all night and killed them to keep them quiet.

  Those girls are my dead sisters.

  Something metallic bangs behind me, and for a moment I’m dragged back into the present, my heart aching for the old woman lying terrified in the trunk. But Pearlie Washington must bear her own burden now. In some ways she’s the lucky one.

  “Yeah,” Billy grunts, thrusting his hips with the fury of an angry carpenter driving nails. “It’s good…yeah.”

  Good? This is good? I’ve heard this word before. But it doesn’t make sense. How can this be good? But he tells me it’s good…that I’m good…and more important, that I’m special. That’s good. I want to be special….

  “You’re too far back,” he gasps, lunging harder. “Scoot up to the edge of the seat.”

  I obey.

  Pearlie keeps banging on the trunk lid, a pitiful sound diminishing in strength, like the struggles
of someone freezing to death. I imagine she’s praying, though why I don’t know. When I last left her, she told me that with God’s help I might just make it through. But God isn’t going to help me. That’s one thing I’ve always known.

  Water is falling on my face. At first I think it’s rain leaking into the car, but it’s not. It’s Billy Neal’s sweat. He pushes up my shirt and yanks down my bra, exposing my breasts. “Yeah,” he says in a ragged voice, kneading them roughly. “Fuck, yeah.”

  His mouth is fixed in a grimace, as though this act causes him physical pain. His breath is bad enough to penetrate my trance. I see the cause of it, too. His mouth is in bad shape. He thrashes his hips wildly, banging me against the seat back, his neck muscles straining like he’s lifting weights, his external jugulars distended like two pipes ready to burst. I’m not sure whether it’s the sight of those veins or the proximity of his teeth that awakens me, but it’s one of the two. Because in the midst of this savage assault, my mind begins to work very fast and with clinical precision.

  The masseter muscle of the jaw is the strongest in the human body. It can generate two hundred pounds per square inch of biting force.

  Nine pounds of force will tear off a human ear. I learned that while working in the ER when I was in medical school.

  What could two hundred pounds per square inch of force driving a mouthful of sharp teeth do to a human neck? It’s a matter of some interest to me now, because Billy’s neck is exposed directly above me, his veins bulging from the exertion of violent intercourse. A caveman could tell me the answer. Teeth and nails were the first edged weapons Homo sapiens ever possessed. I tell that to homicide detectives when I brief them on my forensic speciality. I could bite straight through to Billy’s jugulars, no problem. Clamp down and whip my head back and forth like a pit bull until he’s spewing blood. That would scare the hell out of him—and hurt like blazes—but it wouldn’t kill him. It might not even disable him badly enough to keep him from shooting me in the head.

  A torn carotid would, though. A torn carotid artery would kill him. It would also send him into instant panic. Not many people can watch their blood spurt three feet into the air and remain calm. But the carotids are protected by many layers of tissue.