With (13 page)

He watched the truck burn for a while, and then he said, “I reckon I ought to put the blindfold back on ye for the last awful mile, but it wouldn’t make no difference nohow even if you could see where we’re a-going, because you’d never be able to hike it by yourself. Now you’d better get on my back.” And he picked her up and put her up on his back, and then he climbed down into that ravine, so steep she yelped in fright, and he said, “Don’t worry, honeybunch, I’ve done this a many and a many a time.” And he reached the bottom of the gorge and climbed up out the other side, and went on. And then there was another ravine, with water in the bottom of it that he had to step across on rocks. And then another ravine with a tree-trunk fallen over the water at the bottom of it that he walked across carefully like a tightrope walker, and then climbed way up out of it like a mountain climber. If she had not been so frightened she would have enjoyed the ride. It was thrilling. “Here comes the tricky part,” he said, and it was really the worst part: on a narrow ledge across a bluff high above the forest below he had to turn sideways and walk sideways, holding her to his chest, saying, “Dropped a whole crate of chickens here yesterday morning, but don’t ye worry, girl, I don’t aim to drop
you
. Close your eyes if it skeers ye too much.” And she had to close her eyes.

When she opened her eyes there were no more ravines or ledges but just a little path that climbed up through the deep dark forest, and he carried her a little ways on his shoulder up that path until it escaped from the forest and they were in a wide field rolling up to the top of the mountain, and there stood a house! “Yonder’s our home,” he said as if she hadn’t already noticed it. And as they climbed to it, she could see for miles and miles out across the valleys and mountains all around. Everything blue and green and it was almost like Paradise, so maybe this was some kind of Heaven. He took her off his shoulder and stood her on her feet and said, “You can walk from here.” And coming to meet them was a dog. He pointed, “Look, here comes our doggie!”

It was the ugliest dog she had ever seen, some kind of mongrel cur, mostly white, not very big, and it was barking and prancing around and swishing its little tail back and forth, and for a moment she thought the dog was going to jump her. “Down, Bitch!’ he said and the dog stopped dancing. And they went on to the house and they went in it. It was a very old house and it was all dusty and faded and there were cobwebs all over the place. There was a fairly clean sofa and he had her sit on it while he built a fire in the room’s heater-stove to warm it up, and then he went to fix her some breakfast.

The hideous dog was trying to lick her ankle. “Get away from me!” she said to it, kicking, and it backed off whimpering.

The man came running from the kitchen. “Hey, you talked! Is Bitch bothering you?” He opened the front door and gave the revolting dog a hard kick that knocked it outside, and he shut the door after it. “If she ever bothers you, just let her know who’s boss.”

She was, come to think of it, hungry, and he had her sit at a small table in the kitchen near the kitchen stove, one of those old-fashioned iron wood-burning stoves, not a great big one but a sort of squat one that was cute, and it was very warm and nice. He gave her scrambled eggs with some kind of oval-shaped meat stuff. “That’s Spam,” he said. “I reckon we won’t have fresh meat unless I can shoot a razorback one of these days. Now what do you like to drink with your breakfast? You don’t drink coffee, I bet.”

And she spoke. “Milk,” she said.

“Well, I hope you don’t mind powdered milk too awful much,” he apologized and fixed her a glass of something that just sort of tasted a little bit like milk. “‘Course they’s Pet Milk too, but it’s even worse.”

He talked all the time they had their breakfast but she did not say another word. He apologized a lot. He apologized for the cobwebs, saying he’d been too busy trying to get the place stocked up and ready for her and starting a little spring vegetable garden and all, and he intended to give the place a thorough dusting and cleaning today or tomorrow. He apologized for the darkness of the kitchen, saying the windows needed to be washed and of course there wasn’t no lectric lights. He apologized for not having no orange juice, just something called Tang which was the same color and wasn’t very cold because there wasn’t no ice. He apologized for not having no ice cubes. He apologized for the awful dog. She waited to hear him apologize for having kidnapped her, but he did not. “Just tell me anything you need whenever,” he said.

“I need to go to the bathroom,” she said.

He hit himself on the forehead. “Now why didn’t that cross my mind? ‘Course, we aint got any indoor facilities, ha ha. No runnin water. But I’ll show you to our outdoor accommodation, ha hawr.” He started to lead her out of the house, but stopped. “I reckon you need something to put on your feet.” And he ran into the other room, leaving her. She was really desperate to pee. It had been such a long time and she had tried to hold it but now she couldn’t hold it any longer. Her panties started to get wet. He came back with a whole bunch of shoes. “Just take your pick,” he said, and she was amazed to see so many nice shoes, nearly all of them in her size, and she picked out the prettiest pair of sneakers she’d ever had. And put them on, real quick, hoping she wouldn’t pee any more until he showed her where the bathroom was. He had to help her tie them because she still had not completely mastered the tying of shoes.

The bathroom, if that is what it was, was outside about a hundred feet from the house, off where the woods started. It was just a shack, and there was a bench sort of thing with two holes cut in it. “I’ll just wait outside here, this time,” he said, and closed the door after her leaving her alone in it. His voice called, “Have you got enough paper in there?” And she looked and there was a roll of toilet paper on a stob on the wall. She pulled down her blue jeans and her already wet panties and tried to sit on the hole. She had never been in one of these outhouses before although she had heard about them. She hadn’t been told they were so smelly. The hole was too big for her and she had to be careful not to fall into it.

After a long time he called, “Are you okay in there?” But it was so hard and awful and stinky and sad and she could not say anything. But she finished and got out of there.

“Now,” he said, “do you want to take a look at all the rest of the place, and see where the well’s at, and the henhouse yonder, and what’s left of the barn and all? Or would you rather see the real surprise I’ve got for ye?”

“It’s cold out here,” she said. So they went back in the house, and first he let her take her pick of several jackets which he had bought for her. They were all very neat jackets and warm and comfy and beautiful, especially the one she picked and tried on, which was a perfect fit.

Then he said, “And here comes your first surprise!” And he went into the other room and came back with the biggest doll she’d ever seen. It was nearly as big as she was, and was dressed better than she’d ever dressed, with a yellow/orange kimono type of dress, and fancy shoes. She had long dark hair and long eyelashes and such a sweet look on her face. If Robin had been a couple of years younger she would have adored the doll, but she had outgrown dolls of this nature, and much preferred her paper dolls.

“You don’t like it?” he said, and demonstrated how it had a string with a ring on it that you pull to make her change her great big eyes from orange to green to blue to pink. “I got one with dark hair so’s I could tell you’uns apart! Hawr hoo!” The man had an ugly laugh, nearly as ugly as his dog.

She sat on the sofa with the doll beside her and pretended to allow the doll to join in their conversation. She wanted the doll as a witness. She asked him the first of the many, many questions she would ask him.

“Are you going to take me home?”

His face got all wrinkled up. “Why,
hon,
” he said, “I figured you knew that I never intended to do no such a thing as that. We’re here forever, don’t ye know? Just you and me. This is your home.”

She asked him the second question. “Why did you pick
me
?”

“That’s easy,” he said. “I picked you on account of you’re the pertiest gal I ever laid eyes on in my entire life. Lord if you aint. They just don’t make ’em the least bit pertier than you are.”

She asked him the third question. “Are you going to fuck me?”

Part Two:

Sleeping with

Chapter eleven

I
t took all of whatever sawdust he had for brains to devise a way to get out of the house Saturday night. He knew that there was lots of fellers on this earth who just “went out with the boys,” but nobody never bothered to tell him how they got away with it. She was right that he didn’t have no buddies to speak of, so he couldn’t have used that as a excuse anyhow. In all the years he’d been married to her, she had never let him leave the house on Saturday night, or any other night as far as that matter goes, and now that she was ticked off at him on account of his going out to see Robin by himself yesterday afternoon she was keeping a close watch on him and spending all her time thinking up ways to punish him.

He thought of the idea of putting something or another into her iced tea at suppertime that would knock her out for the evening. Of course she’d be madder than a wet hen whenever she woke up, but at least he would’ve been able to spend the whole evening at the roller rink watching his sweet Robin on her skates.

When he was mighty close to giving up on the whole idea, it suddenly hit him that he did have a good relative if not a buddy, Benny Samuels, a cousin, living down the road at Western Grove, and Benny owed him a couple of favors and now was a good time to call in one of them. So he watched for a chance when Louisa was busy and he phoned Benny and whispered into the phone what he wanted him to do, and sure enough a little while later the phone rang and Louisa answered it and Benny told her that his wife was in the hospital and he was all alone and could Leo please come over and keep him company for just a little while tonight? Louisa told him she’d think about it, and hung up. She was suspicious, and said maybe she’d better go with him to keep Benny company, but at the last minute she said all right but don’t you stay too long, you hear me? And you take your pickup and leave me with the car. And he hopped in his pickup and tore off lickety-split out of there and got to the Harrison roller rink just as the girls was hitting the floor.

And didn’t he have him one heck of a swell time! He got him an Orange Crush sody pop and a sack of pork skins and he sat in the bleachers sort of place with the other spectators, moms and dads and the folks who were handling the birthday party, part of which they had right there in the rink, with favors and hats and tooters handed out, and they let Leo participate, so he didn’t need that sody pop and pork skins because they was handing out fresh pizza and then birthday cake. And wasn’t Robin just thrilled to pieces to have her grandpappy there! And after the party part was over and they’d et all the cake and the girls went back out onto the floor to do their skating, she more than once hollered, “Grampa, watch me!” as if he needed to be told, because he couldn’t take his eyes off of her. She was a sight to behold, and he was just a little afraid she was a-fixing to hurt herself with one of them jumps and spins and turns and even skating backward besides!

He wondered what happened. At the far end of the rink was this little balcony place where the skaters sometimes stepped out between numbers to grab a breath of fresh air, and he never took his eyes off her but she went out there, and it was dark, and the next thing he knew it looked like some feller just reached up and plucked her right off the balcony! Leo started to run out across the floor, but they hollered at him because you aint supposed to be on the floor if you aint wearing skates. So he had to turn around and run out the front door and around the side of the rink to reach that balcony. And she was plumb gone. Not a sign of her. He couldn’t believe it, and wondered if his old eyes was a-playing some kind of crazy trick on him. He looked around all over for her. Not a trace. He went back into the rink and looked around in there, thinking maybe she’d not really gone on the balcony, or maybe gone to the Ladies’ or something. But he couldn’t find her nowhere. He started to ask. He asked the little girl that they was giving the party for, “Say, have you seen Robin?” But she hadn’t. He got the same answer from the other girls. He went to the manager of the rink and said, “Excuse me but it seems like my little granddaughter has turned up missing.” And the manager asks her name and he tells him and the manager gets on the
P.A
. and booms out, “WILL MISS ROBIN KERR PLEASE COME TO THE FRONT DESK?” and they wait and wait and then the manager says on the
P.A
., “HAS ANYBODY SEEN MISS ROBIN KERR?”

After a good long while, the manager says to Leo, “Maybe her momma came and got her.”

“I doubt it,” Leo says. “I think maybe you’d better get the cops to come over.” So the manager makes a phone call.

By the time the police arrived, the skating had all come to a halt, and all the girls and their parents that brought ’em was just milling around talking to one another and looking as sick with worry as Leo felt himself.

One of the officers set in to asking him a bunch of questions. What was the victim’s full name? What was the victim’s age? What was the victim’s physical description? What was the victim wearing? When and where had he last seen her? Leo led the officer over to the balcony and told him about the feller plucking her off of there. You’re sure it was a man, then? the officer asks. “Couldn’t no woman have just snatched her like that,” Leo said. What was the man wearing? the officer asked. How old was he? “I’m sorry, I didn’t get a good look at him.” Leo said. “You see, he was out here in the dark and it happened so fast.” And you say you’re her grandfather? “Well, actually I’m just married to her grandmother.”