Everybody Goes to Jimmy's (17 page)

The fire didn't keep the place very warm, and she wore all of the heaviest clothes she could find in the pile. She wondered who the women were who'd worn them before. There were no name tags on any of the garments. One light summer dress had a label from a clothing store in Denver. Were they the girlfriends and wives of the other gang members, the ones she'd never seen? Girls the half-breed had brought up here or kidnapped? Were they alive or dead?

Out of boredom and the realization that she had nothing to lose, she decided to spice it up. She knew that even if the misshapen shit hadn't touched her since the first night, he wanted something to do with sex. That, she could deliver.

When he came in that evening and set the lantern on the table, she was wearing the heavy green velvet dress. She'd pinned her hair up as best she could without a mirror and hoped that she had the distant buxom look of a Gibson Girl. Instead of sitting on the bed, she stirred the stew and cleaned her fry pan in the sink and tended the fire. She was slow, languid, graceful, and superior.

It worked.

He couldn't sit still while he ate. Instead, he fidgeted and rubbed his thighs together and stared at her much more intently, his good eye blinking almost constantly. He jumped up without finishing and hurried out the door. He didn't even give her his plate. It remained just out of reach on the table. That's when she got the first ideas of how she could kill him, and by then, she understood that it wasn't a matter of choice. To get out of that cabin, she would have to kill him. Even if she could get loose from the chain, she was at least twenty crooked snow-covered miles from nowhere. She'd need to take a car, and he wasn't going to hand her the keys. So she accepted it. She hadn't killed anybody before, but she didn't doubt that she could kill the half-breed. Either that or he was going to kill her.

The next night, she gave him nothing. He found her wearing the heaviest clothes. She filled his plate, handed it to him, and sat on the bed. He didn't say anything or do anything, but he was disappointed. She could tell.

The next night, she was a Gibson Girl again, an unmoving Gibson Girl. She served his plate and stood by the fireplace where the flickering light was most flattering and stood as still as she could until he finished. More leg rubbing, more blinking, more agita. It was hard to figure out how to play him, even though she had plenty of boring hours to work on it. She spent the time obsessively going over what she thought of as her weapons, the things she could reach, the things she'd use to kill the bastard.

Everything changed the night after that. He showed up drunk. She could tell something was different from the sound of his approach. He banged against the wall outside and came in with snow up to his knees. He carried the lantern and a Mason jar mostly full of something clear, yellowish, and oily-looking. He fell into his chair and hunched over the table. Breathing hard through his mouth, he stared at her. The familiar smell of the homemade rotgut wafted from the jar. It was on his sour breath and in the sweat that beaded on his forehead. It looked like he was one of those drunks who didn't touch the stuff for weeks or even months at a time and then went on a bender that lasted for days. She'd seen it many times.

How far should she push him? Drunks could be unpredictable. Finally, what the hell—nothing ventured …

She was wrapped up in warm clothes again. She turned her back to him and shrugged off the heavy coat. Next came the jacket, still with her back to him. Strolling away, she took off the sweater and tossed it on the bed with the rest. She turned around, hip cocked, one leg extended. No smile, no anger, no emotion, just a level stare. She still had on two blouses. Standing where the light was best from the fire and the lantern, she undid the first one, taking care with the buttons down the front and at the cuffs. He was breathing faster, she thought, as she got out of one sleeve and then the other. The second blouse was too small for her, too tight across her breast. Good.

One of his boot heels drummed a fast involuntary tattoo on the plank floor.

She stood where she was, shoulders back, tits out. He stared and drank until he raised the jar and found it empty. He hauled himself up and blundered out the door. A moment later, she heard him howl.

She wasn't surprised when he came back hours later.

She was in bed by then, with most of the clothes back on. She had both little sticks of sharpened kindling in her hands. He had a fresh jar, and he still carried the lantern. He'd stripped down to a tattered red union suit and his boots. He came close to the bed and immediately backed away. He seemed to be trying to work himself up for something, advancing and pulling back. She tightened her grip. The next time he brought the lantern close, she sat upright, the heavy coat around her shoulders.

He stopped and lowered the light, and she saw his body through the torn front of the union suit. It was worse than she could have imagined. The shiny mottled hairless scar tissue continued down his chest and belly and groin. His dick was a useless little stub of flesh.

He stood there, swaying on unsteady legs until something made him stumble back out the door.

She stayed in bed and tried to tamp down her excitement. She didn't have to worry about “a fate worse than death” from that piece of equipment, but that meant nothing. In the lantern light she had seen, as clearly as if it was in the noonday sun, a leather thong around his neck, and hanging from the thong, a small leather pouch—small but big enough to hold a key.

He stayed away for four days. The morning he came back, he looked like seven kinds of hell, the bad booze still seeping out of every pore, leaden body, roiling stomach. She did nothing to make it worse for him. Not then. He started slowly on the stew but finally gulped it down. He tossed the empty plate to her, took the slops pot, and came back an hour later with wood for the fire and a bucket

It was important for her to keep herself clean and attractive. She didn't know what fantasies the half-breed had about her, but he saw something he wanted. That's why he had her deliver the money. Maybe he wanted to kill his fantasy, she couldn't be sure. If he was anything like the other men she'd known, though, he'd lose interest fast if she let herself go. She kept the bed and the clothes as neat and orderly as she could. Washed every day and used a little of the perfume when the loneliness and hopelessness of the situation overwhelmed her.

He never changed clothes and stank more as the days went by. She worked out her plan to kill him. It wasn't complicated, because it had to happen in the cabin and there wasn't much to work with. The sharpened sticks were too flimsy to trust.

The pump was in the center of the square room. Her bed was on the east wall. The door and the table where he sat to eat was opposite, on the west wall. The fireplace was in the middle of the north wall. She could easily reach the pump and the fireplace, but the table was a foot and half behind the end of the chain and her outstretched arm. As long as he was sitting at the table, she couldn't reach him. To escape, then, she had to do two things. First, she had to get close enough to touch him. Second, she had to kill him. The way she had it figured, the second part was actually easier. If she could get right behind him, she knew what she could do. Getting close—that was tougher. She thought she had a way though.

On a morning soon after he ate and left, she took the wire coat hanger out from under the stack of clothing. She pulled it and bent it straight so that the crook was at the end of a double piece of wire about two feet long. She moved as close to the table as the chain would allow, got down on the floor, and stretched out on her stomach. Hooking the end of the extended hanger around the bottom of a table leg, she pulled, slow and gentle. It didn't work. The single crook wasn't strong enough and began to give before the table moved.

She went back to her bed and unwound the wire where it was twisted at the neck. Again, she straightened it into a double length of wire and bent a new crook at the other end where it was twice as strong. At least, she hoped it was.

Again, she got down on her stomach and stretched out with the bent wire that was then a couple of inches shorter than it had been before. At first, it wouldn't reach around the leg. She sat up, pushed the iron ring around her ankle as far down as it would go, and stretched her arm until the shoulder joint stretched and popped. The hook barely reached around the leg, but when she pulled, it held, and that end of the table moved about half an inch toward her. She did the same with the second leg at the other end and waited for dinner.

He didn't notice.

She waited a day, then moved the table another half inch. He didn't notice that either.

She suspected that mornings were more dangerous than evenings, but the cabin was dark then, too, and he was more interested in the food. Evenings, he was interested in her. She didn't tease him very often, only once every seven to ten days, and never very much, not like the night he was drunk.

Most nights, she was prim, modest, neatly buttoned. Some nights she smiled. The important thing was not to get too close to the table. By the time she'd got it about six inches from its original spot, she kept a half turn of the chain around the post to shorten it. Since the night he'd come to crouch by the bed, he hadn't been on that side of the room, and he couldn't see the base of the post from his seat at the table. The pump blocked it from his view. The shortened chain kept her farther from the table, but he didn't notice that, either.

Four weeks after he showed up drunk, she sensed he was getting restless, distracted. His morning visit was brief. He brought only a few spongy root vegetables for the stew. She did nothing with the table that day and dressed severely with the heavy coat. By evening, it was bitter cold and snowing again. When he kicked open the door, he was drunker than she'd seen him. She went to the stew pot. He shook his head and took a long pull on the Mason jar. She sat on the bed and draped the blanket over her shoulders.

Before long, he began some kind of rhythmic chant or song accompanied by a measured tap of one foot. It was nothing like the tattoo he'd drummed out when she stretched the tight blouse. This was a lament, slow and sad. His good eye was closed. It went on for an hour or more, she thought, and was broken only when he drank. He left when the jar was empty and was gone for five days.

She had moments of panic during that stretch, thinking that he'd passed out and frozen to death in the snow, and she would freeze or starve chained to the goddamned post. Don't think about it, she told herself, conserve the wood and the stew. Make them last. That's what she did, and she hated to admit that she felt a wave of relief and gratitude when she finally heard him outside. But she didn't let it show, not even when he came in with fresh meat for the pot and more wood and another blanket and a second chamber pot. She acted like nothing had happened and kept her face as impassive as his. It was going to feel so good when she killed him.

After he left, she moved the table another half inch.

To keep herself from going crazy as the table made its painstaking way to her side, she became more animated in the evening, adding more movement back and forth across the floor and the odd wink. Even though he still seemed to enjoy her captivity, she knew he'd tire of it, just as he'd tired of the others before. So she tried to keep him interested. With the spring thaw, her clothes became more revealing, but he was gone longer. He seemed to come earlier in the morning and later in the evening. The faint sounds of activity outside returned, too. One morning when he opened the door, she saw that he had a wooden box on the step outside, a box with dividers that held twelve-quart jars of the oily moonshine. She realized then that he was making the stuff. He had a still nearby, and the sounds she heard were from his customers. Better vegetables and meat appeared for the pot.

She remembered that she'd passed a small shed when she crossed the creek at the bottom of the hill, and from the pump house, she could see part of another building up the slope. So, maybe he sleeps up there, she thought, and sells 'shine from the shed down the hill. That explained how he lived, but it didn't help her. She couldn't make enough noise for anyone down there to hear, and if they did hear her, the half-breed would say it was his squaw.

By late summer, she had the table where she needed it. The next step was to get him there at the proper level of drunkenness. She'd worn all of the outfits many times, except for the homespun Indian skirts and blouses that were too small. But nothing was doing the trick, and she was afraid that this could be her last chance.

Three weeks after his last drunken visit, by her count of days, she started getting ready, pulling stitches out of the homespun clothes, trying them on in different combinations, unsure of how she looked without a mirror. She reasoned that all the clothes reminded the half-breed of other women he'd held there. The green velvet dress, at least at first, seemed to fascinate and excite him more than the others. When she wore tight clothes or left off her bra, she got what she thought of as the “flared nostrils” reaction. He might dig a greasy paw into his crotch for a little while but nothing more.

Maybe the Indian clothes belonged to the first woman or women he brought there. Maybe they had been something more than squaws. Maybe the clothes would keep him there.

When he turned moody, frowning, ill at ease as he picked at his food, she could tell another bender was close.

He was late the next night, and he rolled in with a full Mason jar. It wasn't his first of the day. She shrugged off the coat, walked into the light, spooned up a bit of stew, and brought it to the table. He turned up the wick on the lantern, and she heard his sharp intake of breath.

She was barefoot. The long black skirt was tight around her hips and came down to her calves. The blouse was so short on her that the sleeves barely reached her elbows, and it left her stomach bare. She'd torn it at the neck so she could move her arms freely. He stood, swaying, but didn't move past his usual place at the end of the table where he sat. When he didn't accept the stew, she put the plate on the counter by the pump and stood facing him.