I opened the outer screen door.
It made barely a whimper.
The inner door was trickier. Its wood had expanded with humidity. I turned the handle and pressed my fingers against the doorjamb, my thumb against the door. I pushed slowly, gently.
It groaned.
I pushed harder and more steadily. I held tight to the handle, keeping a slight backward pressure so that when it did open it wouldn’t pop and shudder.
It groaned some more.
I was sure the entire house was hearing this. Everybody.
I still could run if I had to. It was good to know.
Then all of a sudden it opened. With even less noise than the screen had made.
I listened.
I stepped inside onto the landing.
I turned on the penlight. The stairs were cluttered with rags, mops, brushes, pails—stuff Ruth used for cleaning, along with jars of nails and paint cans and thinner. Luckily most of it lined just the one side, the side opposite the wall. I knew the stairs were going to be firmest and least creaky right next to the wall, where they’d have support. If I was going to get caught this was the likeliest place, the place there’d be the most noise. I stepped down carefully.
At each stair I’d stop and listen. I’d vary the time between steps so there’d be no rhythm to it.
But each stair had its say.
It took forever.
Then finally I was at the bottom. By then my heart felt ready to burst. I couldn’t believe they hadn’t heard me.
I crossed to the shelter door.
The basement smelled of damp and mildew and laundry—and something like spilt sour milk.
I threw the bolt as quietly and evenly as possible. Metal squealed against metal all the same.
I opened the door and stepped inside.
It was only then, I think, that I remembered what I was doing here in the first place.
Meg sat in the comer on her air mattress, her back against the wall, waiting. In the thin beam of light I could see how frightened she was. And how badly the day had gone for her.
They’d given her a thin rumpled shirt to put on and that was all. Her legs were bare.
Willie had been at them with the knife.
There were lines and scratches crisscrossed across her thighs and down her calves almost to her ankles.
There was blood on the shirt as well. Dried blood mostly—but not all. Some of it seeping through.
She stood up.
She walked toward me and I could see a fresh bruise on her temple.
For all of that she still looked firm and ready.
She started to say something but I put my finger to my lips, hushing her.
“I’ll leave the bolt and the back door open,” I whispered.
“They’ll think they just forgot. Give me maybe a half an hour. Stay to the wall side on the stairs and try not to run. Donny’s fast. He’d catch you. Here.”
I dug into my pocket and handed her the money. She looked at it. Then she shook her head.
“Better not,” she whispered. “If something goes wrong and they find it on me they’ll know somebody’s been here. We’d never get another chance. Leave it for me…” She thought for a moment. “Leave it at the Big Rock. Put a stone on top of it or something. I’ll find it, don’t worry.”
“Where will you go?” I said.
“I don’t know. Not yet. Back to Mr. Jennings maybe. Not too far. I want to stay close to Susan. I’ll find a way to let you know as soon as I can.”
“You want the flashlight?”
She shook her head again. “I know the stairs. You keep it. Go ahead. Go. Get out of here.”
I turned to leave.
“David?”
I turned again and she was suddenly next to me, reaching up. I saw the tears gleam bright in her eyes just as she closed them and kissed me.
Her lips were battered, broken, chapped and torn.
They were the softest, most beautiful things that had ever touched me, that I had ever touched.
I felt my own tears come all in a rush.
“God! I’m sorry, Meg. I’m sorry.”
I could barely get it out. All I could do was stand there and shake my head and ask her to forgive me.
“David,” she said. “David. Thank you. What you do last—that’s what counts.”
I looked at her. It was as though I were drinking her in, as though I were somehow becoming her.
I wiped my eyes, my face.
I nodded and turned to go.
Then I had a thought. “Wait,” I said.
I stepped outside the shelter and ran the flashlight beam across the walls. I found what I was looking for. I took the tire iron off the nails and walked back and handed it to her.
“If you need to,” I said.
She nodded.
“Good luck, Meg,” I said and quietly closed the door.
And then I was in the midst of it again, in the close jarring silence of the sleeping house, moving slowly upward to the doorway, weighing each step against the creaking of beds and the whispers of the branches of trees.
And then I was out the door.
I ran across the yard to the driveway, cut through to the back of my house and into the woods. The moon was bright but I knew the path without the moon. I heard the water rushing full by the brook.
At the Rock I stooped to pick up some stones and lowered myself carefully down over the embankment. The surface of the water gleamed in the moonlight, shattered over the rocks. I stepped onto the Rock and dug into my pocket, put the money in a pile and weighed it down with a small neat pyramid of stones.
On the embankment I looked back.
The money and the stones looked pagan to me, like an offering.
Through the rich green scent of leaves I ran home.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
And then I sat in bed and listened to my own house sleeping. I thought it would be impossible to sleep but I hadn’t counted on strain and exhaustion. I dropped off just after dawn, my pillow damp with sweat.
I slept badly—and late.
I looked at the clock and it was almost noon. I got into my clothes and ran downstairs, gulped down the requisite bowl of cereal because my mother was standing there complaining about people who slept all day and where it got them as adults—mostly jail and unemployment—and bolted out the door smack into the sticky August sunlight.
There was no way I dared going straight to the Chandlers’. What if they’d figured it was me?
I ran through the woods to the Rock.
The little pyramid I’d made of stones and dollars was still there.
In the light of day it no longer looked like an offering. It looked like a pile of dogshit sitting on a pile of leaves. It sat there mocking me.
I knew what it meant. She hadn’t got out.
They’d caught her.
She was still inside.
I felt this terrible sick feeling in my gut and the cereal nearly slid up again. I was angry and then I was scared and then I was plain confused. Suppose they had decided it was me who threw the bolt? Or suppose they’d done something to make Meg tell them?
What was I supposed to do now?
Get out of town?
You could go to the cops, I thought. You could go see Mr. Jennings.
And then I thought, great, and tell him what? That Ruth’s been torturing Meg for months and I know she has for a fact because I’ve sort of been helping?
I’d seen enough cop shows to know what an accomplice was.
And I knew a kid—a friend of my cousin’s from West Orange—who’d done almost a year in Juvenile for getting drunk on beer and stealing his neighbor’s car. According to him they could beat you, they could drug you, they could stick you in a straightjacket if they wanted to. And they let you out when they were damn good and ready.
There’s got to be some other way, I thought.
Like Meg said about keeping the money—we could try again. Thi
nk it through better this time.
If they didn’t know about me already.
There was only one way to find that out.
I climbed over to the Rock and gathered up the fives and singles and put them in my pocket.
Then I took a real deep breath.
And then I went over.
Chapter Forty
Willie met me at the door and it was clear that even if they knew or suspected, Willie had other more urgent things on his mind.
“Come on,” he said.
He looked drawn and tired, excited though, the two combining to make him uglier than ever. You knew he hadn’t washed and his breath was foul even for him.
“Close the door behind you.”
I did.
We went downstairs.
And Ruth was there, sitting in her folding chair. And Woofer. Eddie and Denise perched on the worktable. And Susan sat bloodlessly silent crying next to Ruth.
Every one of them sitting quiet while on the cold damp concrete floor Donny lay grunting on top of Meg with his pants down around his ankles, raping her, her naked body tied hands and feet between the four-by-four support beams.
And I guessed Ruth had finally changed her mind once and for all about touching.
I felt sick.
I turned to get out of there.
“Unh-unh,” said Willie. “You stay.”
And the carving knife in his hand and the look in his eyes said he was right. I stayed.
They were all so quiet in there you could hear the two flies buzzing.
It seemed like a bad sick dream. So I did what you do in a dream. Passively I watched it unfold.
Donny covered most of her. I could see only her lower body—her legs and thighs. Either they were very much bruised since yesterday or had gotten very dirty. The soles of her feet were black.
I could almost feel his weight on top of her, pressing down, pounding her to the rough hard floor. She was gagged but not blindfolded. Behind the gag I could hear her pain and the helpless outrage.
He groaned and arched suddenly and clutched her burned breast and then rolled slowly off her.
Beside me Willie breathed relief.
“There now,” said Ruth, nodding. “That’s what you’re good for.”
Denise and Woofer giggled.
Donny pulled up his pants. He zipped them. He glanced at me but wouldn’t meet my eyes. I couldn’t blame him. I wouldn’t have met his either.
“You probably got the clap now,” Ruth said. “But never mind. They’ve got cures these days.”
Susan suddenly started sobbing.
“Mommeee!”
She kept rocking back and forth in her chair.
“I want my mommeeee!”
“Oh, shut up why doncha?” said Woofer.
“Yeah,” said Eddie.
“Shut the fuck up,” said Ruth. “Shut up!”
She kicked her chair. She backed up and kicked it again and Susan tumbled off it. She lay there screaming, scraping the floor with her braces.
“Stay there!” said Ruth. “You just stay there! Stay where you are.” Then she looked around at the rest of us. “Who else wants a turn?” she said. “Davy? Eddie?”
“Me,” said Willie.
Ruth looked at him.
“I don’t know about that,” she said. “Your brother’s just had her. Seems sorta like incest to me. I dunno.”
“Aw hell, Mom!” said Willie.
“Well, it does. Not that the little whore would give a damn. But I’d feel a whole lot better if it was Eddie or Davy.”
“Davy don’t want her for chrissake!”
“Sure he does.”
“No, he don’t!”
She looked at me. I looked away.
She shrugged. “Maybe not. Boy’s sensible. I know I wouldn’t touch her. But then I’m not a man am I. Eddie?”
“I want to cut her,” said Eddie.
“Yeah. Me too!” said Woofer.
“Cut her?” Ruth looked puzzled.
“You said that we could cut her, Mrs. Chandler,” said Denise.
“I did?”
“Sure you did,” said Woofer.
“I did? When? Cut her how?”
“Hey. Come on, I want to fuck her,” said Willie.
“Shut up,” said Ruth. “I’m talking to Ralphie. Cut her how?”
“Put something on her,” said Ralphie. “So people’ d know. So people’d know she was a whore.”
“That’s right. Like a scarlet letter or something,” said Denise. “Like in the Classic Comic.”
“Oh, you mean like brand her,” said Ruth. “You mean brand her, not cut her.”
“You said cut her,” said Woofer.
“Don’t tell me what I said. Don’t you tell your mother.”
“You did, Mrs. Chandler,” said Eddie. “Honest. You said cut her.”
“I did?”
“I heard you. We all did.”
Ruth nodded. She thought about it. Then she sighed.
“Okay. We’ll want a needle. Ralphie, go up and get my sewing kit out of the … I think it’s in the hall closet.”
“Okay.”
He ran by me.
I couldn’t believe this was happening.
“Ruth,” I said. “Ruth?”
She looked at me. Her eyes seemed to quiver, to shudder in their sockets.
“What.”
“You’re not really doing this, are you?”
“I said we could. So I guess we will.”
She leaned close to me. I could smell the cigarette smoke leaking from every pore.
“You know what the bitch tried to do last night?” she said. “She tried to get out of here. Somebody left the door unlocked. We figure it was Donny because he was the last one in yesterday and besides, Donny’s sweet on her. Always has been. So I finally let him have her. You have a woman, you don’t much want her anymore. I figure Donny’s cured now.
“But it’s good to let people see and know what she is. Don’t you think?”
“Mom,” said Willie. He was whining now.
“What.”
“Why can’t I?”
“Can’t what?”
“Fuck her!”
“Because I said so, goddammit! It’s incest! Now you leave me the hell alone about it. You want to go skinnydipping into your own brother’s scum? That what you want? Don’t talk to me. You’re disgusting! Just like your goddamn father.”
“Ruth,” I said. “You … you can’t do this.”
“Can’t?”
“No.”
“No? Why not?”
“It’s not … it’s not right.”
She got up. She walked over to me and I had to look at her. I had to look straight in her eye.
“Please don’t tell me what’s right, boy,” she said.
Her voice was a low trembling growl. I was aware of her shaking with a fury that was only barely under control. The eyes flickered like guttering candles. I stepped backward. I thought, my God, this was a woman I’d liked once. A woman I’d thought funny, sometimes even pretty. One of the guys.
This woman scared the hell out of me.
She’ll kill you, I thought. She’ll kill us all including her own kids and not even care or think about it till later.
If she feels like it.
“Don’t you tell me,” she said.
And I think she knew what was in my mind then. I think she read me completely.
It didn’t concern her. She turned to Willie.
“This boy tries to leave,” she said. “Cut his balls off and hand ’em over here to me. You got that?”
Willie returned her smile. “Sure, Mom,” he said.
Woofer came running into the room holding a battered cardboard shoebox. He handed it to Ruth.
“It wasn’t there,” he said.
“high?”
“It wasn’t in the closet. It was in the bedroom on the dresser.”
“Oh.”
She op
ened it. I caught a glimpse of jumbled twine and balls of thread, pincushions, buttons, needles. She put it down on the worktable and rummaged through it.
Eddie moved off the table to give her room and peered down over her shoulder.
“Here we go,” she said. She turned to Woofer, “we have to heat this through, though, or she’ll get an infection.”
She held a long thick sewing needle.
The room was suddenly crackling with tension.
I looked at the needle and then at Meg lying on the floor and she was looking at it too and so was Susan.
“Who gets to do it?” said Eddie.
“Well, I guess to be fair you can each do a letter. That okay?”
“Great. What’ll we write?”
Ruth thought about it.
“Suppose we keep it simple. How ‘bout we write, ‘I fuck. Fuck me.’ That ought to do it. That ought to tell whoever needs to know.”
“Sure,” said Denise. “That’ll be great.” To me at that moment she looked just like Ruth. The same twitchy light in her eyes, the same tense expectancy.
“Wow,” said Woofer. “That’s a lot of letters. Almost two each.”
Ruth counted, nodded.
“Actually,” she said, “if David doesn’t want in on this, and I suspect he doesn’t, you could make it two each and I’ll just take the one over. David?”
I shook my head.
“I figured,” said Ruth. But she didn’t seem angry or mocking about it.
“Okay,” said Ruth. “I’ll take the I. Let’s do it.”
“Ruth?” I said. “Ruth?”
Willie moved closer to me, moving the carving knife in slow lazy circles right beneath my chin. He made me very nervous because you couldn’t tell with Willie. I looked at Eddie and watched him fiddle with the blade of his own Swiss Army knife, eyes cold and dead as I knew they’d be even before I looked. Then at Donny. It was a new Donny. There was no help from him either.
But Ruth just turned to me, still not angry, sounding calm and sort of weary. Almost like she were trying to tell me something I should have known all along, strictly for my own benefit. As though she were doing something really nice for me. As though of all the people here in this room, I was her favorite.
“David,” she said, “I’m telling you. Just leave this be.”
“I want to go, then,” I said. “I want to get out of here.”