The Captive Condition (14 page)

Madeline was drenched in sweat. The morning had been cool, but by late afternoon, when the sun broke through the clouds and beat down on the barn, the rumbling heat and pressure inside the loft seemed capable of crushing a person, and the twins wondered how Lorelei tolerated it. The cluster of pale yellow leaves hanging heavy and limp from the enormous branches of white oaks offered little shade, and the earth around the barn looked parched and broken. Finding only dirt beneath the mattress and the dried wings of moths and the shattered shells of field crickets, Madeline let out a protracted sigh. In her most convincing imitation of a matronly voice she said, “Okay, where is it?” She crossed her arms and tapped one foot on the floor. “I asked you a question. Where did she put it?”

“We shouldn't be up here.”

“I'll ask you just one more time.”

Sophie's own voice wavered, and she made the mistake of letting her eyes drift to a loose plank on the floor. “She hid it someplace safe—”

Madeline raced to the spot, lifted the plank, and reached a hand inside.

“—so you wouldn't fool with it again.” Sophie moaned. “But Lorelei said—”

“Lorelei, Lorelei, Lorelei!” Like a practiced gunslinger, Madeline twirled the
.38
on an outstretched finger and then pointed the revolver at her sister. “I want you to confess. It was
your
idea to give her this gun, wasn't it?”

“People have been killed that way!”

Though terrified by her sister's unpredictable behavior, Sophie stood her ground, refusing to admit guilt. They were both responsible, and Madeline knew it. They never planned to steal the gun and didn't even know of its existence until one night last month when their dad went outside to gaze at his haggard reflection in the black water of the pool and, like so many small-town people bereft of hope, to nip at a jar of grain alcohol until he fell fast asleep in one of the Adirondack chairs. The girls slunk into the master bedroom to take regular inventory of their mother's belongings—the costume jewelry, the curious creams and powders, the combs, brushes, hair clips, and the wrinkled and musty turquoise sari now sealed in a plastic bag. After assessing the items in the dresser drawers, they explored the dark recesses of the closet, and there, behind an untidy pile of their dad's dirty magazines, they discovered the small mahogany case containing the gun and a full box of cartridges. They opened the lid, carefully removed the revolver from its dusty sarcophagus, and counted the bullets. “They're silver,” said Madeline, holding one up to the light. “Daddy musta bought these special. To kill the werewolves. Do you think maybe we should give the gun to Lorelei?”

At the time Sophie thought it was a good idea, but now, as she backed slowly toward the ladder, she regretted having been an accomplice. “Please, Madeline, put the gun away.”

“No, I'm bringing it back home. Before Daddy finds out it's gone.”

“But what if Lorelei needs it? You even said there are werewolves, remember?”

Madeline shook her head. “I finally figured it out. I think Lorelei turns into a werewolf. And tonight there's supposed to be a full moon. We need to get out of here. It's not safe.”

Sophie intuitively understood the seriousness of their transgression and knew from hard experience that adults, women in particular, had an innate ability to detect mischief and could, if they so wished, materialize out of thin air whenever things got out of control. And so it came as no surprise, at least to Sophie, when a tall figure rose phantomlike from the hole and screeched, “What the hell is wrong with you two!”

Sophie lowered her head in shame but raised her eyes just enough to see Lorelei stomping toward them, her long hair still dripping from her afternoon swim in the river, her T-shirt clinging to her belly. As always, Sophie marveled at the array of fish tattooed to her arms, from her wrists up to her shoulders. “My sleeves,” Lorelei called them. “The morning I turned eighteen I went to see Colette Collins. She sat me down in a chair and went to work. Took her a whole month to finish them, but then she's a true artist and takes her sweet time. She's gifted as hell, that old lady. She can do almost anything—paint, sculpt, tattoo, distill moonshine. Calls herself a Renaissance woman.”

But tattoos were a sign of trouble, that's what their mother always said, even though their dad had a few on his arms and legs.

“You have to be quiet in this barn,” Lorelei now lectured them, her face pinched with chronic fear and worry, her eyes dark and hooded from so many sleepless nights. “How many times do I have to tell you? What a racket you two make. You sound like a couple of hyenas. I don't want any more unexpected visits, okay?”

Madeline tried to conceal the gun behind her back and looked at her sister. “Well, it's all
her
fault.”

“Yeah, I bet.” Lorelei snatched the
.38
and slid it into the back pocket of her jeans. “You're both old enough to be held accountable for your crimes. Because in real life it's always a matter of accountability.”

“So what are you accountable for?” Madeline asked brightly. “Are you going to tell us more of your secrets?”

“Like what?” Lorelei scowled and began organizing her books, Hawthorne, Poe, Lovecraft, King, placing them in proper order on the makeshift shelf she'd constructed from old milk crates and pieces of plywood.

“Who did you kill?” Madeline wanted to know.

“I never killed anyone. At least not yet.”

“I bet you murdered someone. That's why you're hiding here. You're on the run from the law, aren't you? I can see it in your eyes. You've got the eyes of a killer.”

Lorelei smirked. “Nobody has the eyes of a killer. You can't tell a killer from a regular person. No one can. That's why we have judges and juries in this country. People have to hear the whole story and think things over.”

“Well, you musta done
something
bad.”

Lorelei seemed to consider this for a moment, and her eyes fixed on the bottle of wine beside the mattress. “I sort of did something bad once. With another girl. But only once.”

Sophie, who'd remained silent during this exchange, now stepped forward and presented her with the satchel. “Look what I brought you!”

Lorelei held one of the mason jars up to the light. She shook her head. “Some of these come from pokeweeds. And these are baneberries, I think. Very poisonous. I'm not sure about the white ones. Mulberries? Ah, but here”—she plunged her fingers into another jar—“we can eat these.” She popped a handful of blueberries into her mouth. She didn't even bother to chew; she just swallowed them whole.

“How do you know all this stuff?” Madeline demanded.

Lorelei's eyes flashed with confidence and fiery aspiration. “The wilderness is the best schoolroom, a place for sojourners seeking enlightenment on the road of life.”

“Is that poetry or something?”

“Kind of.”

“We're already in second grade!” Sophie boasted.

Lorelei set the jars down and flipped through the pages of a hardcover, examining them for damage. “Well, just wait until you get to college. Sometimes I think my professor doesn't care about anything except collecting a paycheck. No different from a high school teacher, I suppose. That's the one practical lesson I learned. School is just a way for adults to make ends meet because they aren't clever enough to earn a living any other way. You'd think at least one of those pointy-heads would have the guts to say to his students, ‘Let's face facts, folks. I'm here because I have bills to pay. Don't expect much from me and I won't expect much from you.' That's essentially what it boils down to. It's just no one ever tells the truth about it.”

“If you're so smart,” asked Madeline, “why'd you run away?”

“I
told
you.” She scrutinized the dust jacket and tried to rub out a small nick with her thumb. “After my mom died I went to live with my sister but she was married to a predator. Only a sick man would make eyes at his wife's kid sister. Anyway, I saved some money from a summer job. Good tips. Too bad I had to quit. I almost had enough for the first and last month's rent on an apartment.”

“The boss fired you, huh?” said Madeline matter-of-factly.

“I had to take a leave of absence, you might say. Personal reasons.”

“Cold weather'll be here soon.” Sophie wiggled her fingers between the planks of wood. “A freak snowstorm is on the way. That's what the weatherman says.”

“Yeah, you'll end up freezing in this barn.” Madeline seemed delighted by the thought. “It must get awfully cold at night.”

Lorelei adjusted the mattress and a lumpy pillow. “Oh, it'll be warm for a while longer yet. Besides, I have a pile of blankets and a heavy black cloak with a hood. I also have a bag of flour and a little sugar. And over there, in the cooler, I have a stick of butter and a couple of eggs. I even have a little cinnamon and nutmeg.” She pointed to a wooden crate where she kept the small treasures of her lonely existence—salt and pepper shakers, a box of baking soda, a tin filled with lard, a stainless-steel bowl, a wooden spoon, a rubber spatula, a dozen plastic jugs of spring water. “Hey, do you wanna help me bake a pie?”

The twins smiled and clapped their hands. “Yes!”

And now all three of them, as they hastily gathered up the utensils and ingredients, seemed to be genuinely happy for the first time in many days.

In the field near the barn, keeping an eye out for those deranged birds, Sophie collected a bundle of dried sticks and placed it inside a kiln, a vaguely geometric jumble of chipped and broken limestone blocks that over time had turned white and chalky. The kiln reminded her of the photographs in one of Lorelei's books—the ruins of an ancient city, its excavated streets and avenues littered with what looked like the plaster casts of bodies, a dog curled against its master, a man and woman locked in a final embrace, a mother clutching her two wailing children—and she remembered what Lorelei had told her: “They suffocated under thirty feet of hot, volcanic ash…”

Madeline helped knead and roll the dough and then stirred the berries and sugar together in a wooden bowl. Lorelei then placed the dough in a dish, carefully tore away the overhanging edges, and after pouring the heady mixture from the bowl, draped a lumpy sheet of dough on top and then pinched the crust closed with thumb and forefinger. They listened to the hiss and crackle of the fire, and when the pie was done baking, the three returned to the loft, where Lorelei struck a match and lit the scented candle she'd been saving for a special occasion that never seemed to come. The malformed concoction, with dark juices oozing from its cratered center, roughly resembled a pie, but these imperfections didn't deter the girls from gorging themselves on slice after slice.

“It's just like a party!” Sophie said, sitting cross-legged at a cardboard box that served as a table.

On the horizon a band of clouds stained with the soft lavender hues of sunset floated toward the barn. From the shattered window near the peak, they could also make out a cluster of houses crowded along the rim of the valley—“a working-class penal colony,” Lorelei called it—including their own house with its peeling paint, its disintegrating chimney, its dark and empty windows.

“See how pretty it can be from high up here?” said Lorelei, embracing her knees. “It's like a giant smashed a handful of berries and smeared it across the roof of the world. Too bad the world isn't so sweet. I suppose there has to be one person stuck with the burnt piece. Forced every day to eat charcoal. You never get used to that taste either. Starts to make you sick after a while.”

Madeline and Sophie nodded their heads. They knew exactly what Lorelei meant. The pie was beginning to make them a bit queasy, and they rubbed their grumbling tummies.

“People want too much of a good thing, that's how the addicted mind works. They're never satisfied with what life has given them so they try to take what's yours. Did you ever learn about the food chain in school? People need to feed constantly, sometimes on one another. The people of this town, they feed on me, too. I'm the feral creature that feeds their fears, the monster that lives beneath the surface, the unspeakable thing from the dreaded depths that no one wants to see and will not admit exists.”

Soon an inky twilight seeped into the loft, and a gust of cold air made the scarf of orange flame flicker, a gentle reminder that in the weeks to come Lorelei would be shivering under her black cloak, fighting against killing blizzards, icy tempests, the interminable winter squalls that savaged the loose planks of wood and sent restless fingers of snow searching deep inside the heart of the barn to squash any hint of warmth and life. Above the treetops the hunter's moon gazed at them red and unblinking like an inflamed, omniscient eye before it slipped behind the thin gauze of a vapor trail.

Sophie smacked her lips. “That was really good, Lorelei, but I think it's time for us to go home.”

“You're probably right.” Lorelei slid between the girls and stroked their backs. “Listen to the crickets. At this time of year it gets dark so quickly. What if you lose your way in the woods? I've seen coyotes prowling around lately. I think it's best if you stay here with me. I don't mind.”

Sophie shifted uncomfortably and ran one finger through the remnants inside the pie dish. “Well, we'd have to go home first and ask our dad.”

“Your dad? I thought you said he drinks himself into a stupor every night.”

Madeline seemed doubtful. “But we'll get into trouble.”

“You don't have to go back home anymore. Whether you girls know it or not, you've been living on your own for a long time now. Even before your mom died.”

Sophie knew there was only one thing that might make Lorelei happy, but even she sensed the absurdity of the idea, the childishness of it, knew it for what it was, a supreme cliché, something she'd heard on TV, but she went ahead and said it anyway. “You could come live with us. We have lots of extra room at our house.”