Filter House (21 page)

Somebody started the car and backed it up the dirt road to where the pavement began again. They turned left and kept driving.

She could feel when they came from under the trees. The sun was so low it struck through the sedan’s windows, warming the back of her head. Almost ready to set.

“They’ll be taking off soon.” That was the sweatered man talking.

“All right, we’ll circle around the island a few times.” The thin man. They didn’t use each others’ names. As they talked more she figured out the discussion was about the boat museum’s construction crew going home for the weekend. Farmer said something about ransom money. She had been right. Such a comfort.

Kevin began crying again. With his gag in she felt more than heard him: hot tears soaking her skirt, shoulders trembling. She tried humming the lullabye, but this time her voice wouldn’t cooperate. It cracked, wanted to rise up and up, roll out of her loud and high. The gunmetal pressing into her neck muscles put an end to that before it got properly started.

Where were they going? She lost track of the turns: angles, curves, left, right, hummocks and dips that might lead anywhere. Nowhere. The boy’s weeping went on and on. She did her best to shut it from her mind and think how to escape.

The scarf was too tight. Her coat was untied and off; the wind blowing from the river cut through the thin material of her uniform. Her shoes, heavy with mud, slipped on the unseen ladder’s rungs and she held herself on as best she could, arms half-numb from being pinned to her sides. Then she reached the floor. The wind died, and the smell of earth and concrete rose around her.

A shove on her shoulder sent Leora sprawling to the side, but she stayed upright. What was happening? She had to know. She tore at the scarf, her short, blunt fingernails useless. Muffled sobs and shrieks came closer and closer, lower and lower, accompanied by the scrape of leather on wooden rungs.

“Dump him in the corner over there.” That was the thin man, the one who had forced her down the ladder by telling her he had a gun aimed at her head. He gave all the orders. He was the one she had to convince.

She needed to get calm, get ahold of herself. She had a plan. It had come to her in the car. She willed her hands away from the knotted silk blinding her weeping eyes. Worked instead on the gag, wet with her own drool. Quickly, while they were too busy with Kevin to notice. The handkerchief was cheap, a gift from Big Momma, flimsy cotton. It tore easily and hung in damp shreds around her neck.

“I got a confession,” Leora announced. “About my boy.” Swear words and fast steps filled the darkness. Air brushed her cheek; she flinched.

“Wait.” The thin man again. No blow landed. “Let’s hear her out. Yell for help and you die,” he promised.

“You gone and took the wrong one. This here’s my son.”

More swearing. The thin man cut through it. “You’re saying Farmer made a mistake?”

“I nivver did! That there’s the McGinniss heir—on my life it is!”

“That’s what you think.” She spun them her whole sorry tale. Mr. McGinniss had got her in the family way, she said, and Big Momma sent her off to her sister Rutha’s house in Ontario to have the baby boy and leave him there.

Then Mrs. McGinniss got pregnant, too. But her child never drew breath in Leora’s version of events, so Mr. McGinniss called Carter back to raise him as his son. Which he was. Had been.

It was true enough, and better than what actually happened.

“Well,” said the thin man after she finished. “That’s a very compelling narrative.”

“What?” Farmer protested. “You believe that bullshit? I wouldn’t raise some half-nigger as my kid no matter—”

“There are precedents…. Of course, without proof—”

“We’ll still collect us a ransom, won’t we?” The least familiar voice, so it must be the sweatered man.

“Maybe,” the thin man answered.

And that was when Leora realized what a bad mistake she had made.

The kidnappers didn’t let them go. If the ransom never came, they weren’t about to. Ever. Her lies had nearly made Kevin and Leora worthless. Only the kidnappers’ disbelief kept them alive.

It was so cold. They had tied her arms with her coat again, but that was no protection.

She and Kevin were together in the same corner. Her new understanding of the criminal mind helped her reject the notion this had anything to do with how she or the boy felt. For whatever reason, it was simply more convenient this way for the kidnappers. Probably they had just the one gun.

The floor was cement, rough and uneven. Leora lay on her side, Kevin curled up in front of her like a question mark. His wool britches smelled like pee. His silent sobs were weak and hopeless, old-seeming.

At least no one had tried putting her gag back on. “You wanna hear a story, Kevin?” She waited while his sobs slowed. No other response came. That figured; no call for the kidnappers to take his gag off. She started anyway, her voice low and soothing. “Once there was a little boy. Now I’m talkin about
real
little, not a big boy like you. He lived far away, in another country, far away from his momma and his daddy.

“Why?” Leora made believe the boy had asked her a question, then answered it. “On account of he was a prince in disguise, and bein off in another land was the best disguise his momma and daddy could come up with.”

She stopped. Was this idea any better than her last one?

She had something else to try first, something maybe a little easier; it depended on which kidnappers had been left to watch them. And how many. What seemed like hours ago she’d heard feet climbing up the ladder. Now she struggled to remember: One pair? Two?

“I need to use the lavatory,” Leora said, loud enough anyone nearby could hear her.

“That’s a shame, since we got no such
facilities
on the
premises.”
Farmer. Him she could handle. “Guess you’ll have to wet yourself.”

“It ain’t that….” Leora let her sentence trail off, pretending embarrassment she wasn’t far from feeling.

Farmer laughed, but the thin man interrupted. “Take her through to the other room.” Him she was afraid of.

“What? She shits, I’m supposed to wipe her black ass?”

“Don’t act any stupider than you are. Untie her, let her take care of it herself.” A pause. “Do it.”

A hand on her shoulder helped her clumsily up from the floor. “I’ll be right back,” she told the boy.

Her plan wouldn’t work so well with two of them there. But maybe she could overpower Farmer when she was untied and alone with him in this other room, take away any weapon he had, or do something to get him on her side. She shuffled carefully through the darkness, grit crackling beneath her feet.

By the change in the echoes around her, Leora figured they had entered a smaller space. Farmer shoved her front against a cold, damp wall and freed her arms. He was out of reach by the time she turned around. She took a step forward, another, hands extended, without connecting.

“What’s the hold up? Do your business!” He sounded like he was talking to a dog.

“It’s—I think I’m gettin my monthlies—” Leora improvised. “I won’t know just by touching myself. I’m gone hafta see—”

“Jesus
Christ!
I don’t—you expect me to take off your blindfold too? That’s a lot of nerve you got, nigger gal—”

“No!” He was closer now, she could tell by his voice, the noise of his breath. “No, only, how about you…reach in for me…and find out yourself.” Lord knew what she looked like, lipstick smeared off, mascara and eyeliner and rouge running all down her face, mud caking her uniform. She smiled anyway, and when he said “Yeah,” sounding half-strangled in spit, she opened her mouth in anticipation, as if this was something she had waited for her whole life, his callused hand hiking up her skirt and skinning down her nylon underwear, parting the tangled hair and inserting one finger where no one had been in years. She sighed and rode up and down on it a couple of times for good measure, and he said “Jesus Christ,” again, but in an entirely different tone of voice.

He had his pants unbuttoned in seconds, and replaced his finger without even laying her on the floor.

She felt a jackknife in his pocket as he scrabbled against the concrete. The blade wouldn’t be longer than two or three inches, she judged, but good to have all the same. He slumped to one side, done. Before she could retrieve the knife he recovered and pushed himself away from her.

“You two having a nice time in there?” The thin man’s voice sounded maybe forty feet off.

“Yeah. I’ll be out in a jiffy.” He tied her arms again without saying another word, not a bit won over, and Leora had no choice but to let him.

Time to put her new plan in action.

“Well,” the thin man said as they re-entered the first room. “I see you
did
have a nice time.” Her face and neck went hot. “Unfortunately, you’re not my type.” He laughed at his own joke.

“Listen,” Leora said. “I lied before. About the boy. I—”

“Sure you did. What happened—you had a chance to realize the consequences if it was true?”

“Well, some of it—”

“Sit down and shut up.”

Farmer pushed her to her knees.

“I’ll tell you the—”

“Shut up!” Farmer knocked her the rest of the way to the ground. “There must be something to—I’ll stuff your drawers in your mouth, I don’t care!” He rolled her back and forth, wrestling her skirt up again.

“The real one’s still alive! I know where they hid him!”

“Will you—”

“Wait a minute! Why are you so determined to keep her from saying what she wants? Something you’d rather I didn’t learn about?”

“But you told her shut up!”

“I changed my mind. A gentleman’s prerogative.” The thin man bent over her. “All right. Upsy daisy.” He helped her sit with her back to the wall. “Now talk.”

“It—he’s my son, but you let us go I can tell you where they took the other to be raised.”

“Let you go. That’s rich. Yeah, that’s exactly what we plan on doing, let you go and head off on some wild goose chase looking for a boy who died or don’t even exist.” Farmer slapped her hard. This time the thin man let him.

Half her face was numb. She made her mouth work. “I told you the truth! We swapped them two at birth, and only they daddy ever knew. He was thinkin ahead to when somethin like this would happen. You want the ransom or you want Mr. McGinniss to be laughin at you? You already sent him the note, right? He ain’t answered you yet has he?” A guess. She hoped it was a good one. “And he ain’t gonna. You know why? Cause he don’t care!”

Silence. Then the unclear sounds of them moving around—doing what? If only she could see! Their voices came from more of a distance, muffled and senseless. All she could tell was that they were angry, till they returned and the thin man said, “Here’s the deal.

“You tell us where the heir is. We release you, but we keep your kid till we find the real one’s hideout.”

Leora breathed huge gasps in and out. Oh, God, she wanted like hell to agree, to get out of that hole in the ground where they had her, she had done her duty and then some, and what was Kevin to her anyway? Just a job, and maybe even the reason her own boy Carter had died, lost in the woods when he wandered off from Great-Aunt Rutha’s cabin because his momma hadn’t been there to take care of him, gone and disappeared while Leora watched over this white child who she owed nothing,
nothing!
She was crying, crying hard, she couldn’t do anything about that or what she heard herself saying, which was, “No! NO! You cain’t take him! I won’t letcha! No I won’t!”