The Captive (12 page)

I stand up in the cage to show that I am unhurt. I do not want them bringing a vet out here and trying to subdue me for examination in some way. The young man is very angry and is holding the side of his head. The older man is my former guard.

"Well, it's as good thing she wasn't much of a shot," the older man says, standing awkwardly to one side while the young man climbs down off the truck.

"She damn near ruint the truck, anyway," the young man says, fingering a number of holes in the door and hood. I can hear air escaping from a tire somewhere also. "Now what the goddam hell you suppose gets into a person to do something like this?" he says, walking around the truck.

"I seen her out here t'other day," Orville says, holding a great coil of hay rope over his shoulder. "She was hollerin' and a couple people hauled her off."

The two men look at the boy, standing there with the huge coil of rope, and both of them begin to laugh at the same time.

"Orv," the young man says, laughing and holding his head. "I wish you could have tied her up with that hay rope. She couldn't 'a moved for the weight of it. Why'nt you bring the hay fork along with it?"

"You got enough rope there to tie up a whole raft of women," the older man says.

Orville is put off at first, but then he smiles and swaggers a bit. "She wouldn't 'a got away, I'll tell you," he says, grinning fatuously.

"Oh shit, Orville," the young man says. And they all walk back into the house.

From that time on, one of the family, at least, is on guard night and day, and at night the dogs are tethered to the truck for additional warning. I am sinking into what might be called cage-apathy. I am healing, but slowly, and the heat and poor food and the constant wearying presence of the old hag are numbing my mind so that I feel very tired all the time. The crowds yesterday hardly seemed there, a murmuring procession of blurred faces and clothing, the vibrations  of their presence dulling away into a monotone, monochrome  of boring life, a continuous worm of living matter that wound up the steps, paused on the hay wagon next to the truck and passed on, each segment no different from the others, as alike as snake ribs. Today the young man and the fat boy are putting up a fence across the driveway between the house and the barn, I suppose because a few people have driven their cars too far into the viewing area, trying to get a free peek at the exhibition. I watch them desultorily in the heat, listening to the background susurration of the crowd, whose voices I have turned down in my hearing so that they have become no more than the rustling of leaves or the whirring of insects. I treat the spectators to a view of my hide, and that is about all. Unless I have to turn around to ease my stiff muscles, I do not show my face.

Suddenly I feel Barry alert inside me. He almost forces my head up. I push back against him, annoyed at his  disturbing me in the heat and boredom of the day.

"Get up, goddammit," Barry says.

No.

"She's out there!"

I turn on my other side, peering out under my arm at the crowd. There are a half dozen people standing on the hay wagon that has been rigged with rope barriers so that it looks like the people are standing in a portable boxing ring. In the ring are two women I know, one with lustrous black hair and white skin, one with short blond hair and wearing green, the sisters Renee and Vaire. Renee looks puzzled, standing with one hand on the top rope of the ring, the other holding the hand of her daughter, Mina, a slender dark-haired little girl whose excited face is radiant.

"Mommy look." The little girl is jumping up and down. "It's a big gold bear."

Vaire stands back from the rope, one hand pressed to her heart.

Barry is insistent. "Get up, dammit!"

No. Can't take chances.

But he presses against me with such force it is easier to give in, and I am thinking perhaps I have grown too  apathetic these last few days. I must do something before my will grows so weak from being caged that I simply allow them to do with me what they wish. I can, if I have to, control these women, even though for some reason I cannot control their mother. Their husbands are not with them that I can see. I face them from my crouching rest position, raising my head so that they can see my full face. I see them both step back, and the crowd murmurs as I turn up my hearing to listen to the sisters.

Renee speaks, the voice Barry loves so much, the low pitched, intimate tone that even at this moment he hears and agonizes over. "The face," she says. "It doesn't look like a bear, more like ..."

The little girl is studying me also. "It looks like a big, smart pussy cat."

The two women look at the little girl with surprise, then they speak to each other in low tones.

"That's the animal," Vaire says, her hand pressed to her cheek. "That's the thing that was in the house the day Dad was shot, but it's bigger now."

"The same one, you think," Renee says. Her brow is furrowed by two vertical lines over her nose. "It's strange looking. Yes, like a smart pussy cat, Mina." She hugged her little girl to her side. "Like it really knows what we are saying."

"Mother says it's a demon," Vaire says. "But it was right beside me that day, and it only hurt the men who were going to hurt us. And it's so much bigger than I remember it."

"Hey, move along up there." People in the crowd wanted to get up on the platform now that the beast was awake. "C'mon, you're hoggin' the show."

The women move along, still facing me, then turn and almost stumble down the steps off the wagon, pulling the little girl with them. In spite of the growing noise from the crowd at the sight of my face, I can keep them tuned in as they stand behind the wagon. I put my head under my arm again.

Barry is in agony inside, pushing to come out, to see and hear more of Renee. He forces me to extend my will to the two women; suggesting gently that they move beyond the end of the wagon where he can see them. They are talking in low tones and begin to move as he suggests, appearing around the end of the hay wagon next to the rope that is the limit past which the spectators are not supposed to go.

"It did raise its head and look at us," Renee is saying.

"I know it understands," Vaire says, her hand on the rope barrier. "Renee, I know it's not a bear, and I think Mother may be right about it being able to change into  something else."

"Vaire!", Renee is wide-eyed, both her hands reach out to touch her sister, take her hands. "You think it really is a demon?"

"Maybe just something we don't know much about," Vaire says stubbornly. "I've had a fight with Walter every time I mentioned the thing, but I've seen," and she puts her hands on both her sister's arms, "seen that thing twice, and maybe three times." She looks hard into her sister's face.

"And every time it was right in the place where Little  Robert had been."

Renee is stunned. She believes her older sister, but  somehow cannot accept that such a thing can happen. As when a terrible accident happens we watch it happening from a distance, watch our body being torn apart, or a loved one being killed while a part of us is turned off, as if we stood outside the world and watched ourselves suffer.

"It changed
into
Little Robert?". Renee says, her voice almost inaudible even to me.

"That's why Mother carries those beads with the amulet on the string around her neck. She never takes it off." Vaire is whispering now. "She says it keeps the thing from changing."

Renee is staring at me now. And from inside I can feel Barry agonizing at being so close to his loved Renee, and even the ghost of Little Robert somewhere out of existence is crying for Vaire. It is most uncomfortable, for I cannot split my attention so many ways, and something awkward can happen at any moment. I use all my force to keep hold on my form. The love-crazed Barry would shift right before this crowd of people. He threatens me with torture, but I am able to keep him back by putting all my will behind it. The situation is distinctly uncomfortable. I feel Barry trying to reach out to Renee, and before I can organize defenses, he has pulled her and the little girl beyond the rope barrier so that they are standing very close to the cage, standing at the back of the truck within five feet of me. I find it hard to resist Barry who is turning my face toward her. Her eyes are somewhat glazed from the applied force, and the little girl is hopping up and down, saying, "Pick me up, Mommy, I can't see."

"Hey there, lady," I hear from the far side of the yard. The young man is walking fast in our direction, carrying his digging bar. "That there's a dangerous animal. Get back from his cage now."

She seems to be looking into Barry's eyes through my own. I feel merely an intermediary between these two  humans, as if I have become no more than a transparent scrim which no longer hides the scene behind it as the stage lights go up. Her face becomes radiantas she sees something behind  my eyes, and Barry projects into her mind, "Renee!"

"Here, lady,", the young man says, putting his dirt caked hands on Renee's shoulders. "You and the kid get back now. We can't take chances on somebody gettin' hurt. You know that bear killed my uncle."

He is taking them back to the rope barrier where he holds up the rope so they can duck under. Barry is watching through my eyes, so that again I feel almost as if I have shifted, quiescent and transparent to his will. For the  moment it is agreeable to me, and I feel nothing dangerous can happen as long as I retain hold on my form. Renee, Mina, and Vaire are walking slowly around the end of the barn along the rope that guides people back to the parking lot in the pasture. I hear a few words before they get out of range.

"I believe you now."

"It's too fantastic. I'm going to think I'm crazy in a minute."

"Mommy, can we have a big pussy cat like that?"

"I keep thinking of someone I know, or knew."

"You mean that one you told me about?"

"Mommy! Can't we have a
big
pussy cat?"

And now theyhave moved beyond my hearing, past the end of the barn. I lie back in the roasting hot cage, letting the crowd sounds wash over me again. My eyes are slitted so that I am still watching the end of the barn where the two slender, beautiful women and the child have disappeared, watching that area as if over the sight of a rifle, the point of the front sight sticking up in the circle of my narrowed  vision, my whole being aimed along the path they took in departing. And what strange vision is projected down that tunnel, a wish for acceptance, acknowledgement of self, some wild, half-crazy wish for the Family to include - me? I close my eyes.

Only some hours later in the cooling air of evening I  realize that the point of the sight was real. It is the tip of the digging bar that the young man left leaning against the back of the truck when he came running to warn Renee away from my cage. And I believe that I can reach it.

Barry will not be restrained any longer, and perhaps it is best to be moving away from here. I am healed enough now to run at a good speed, and that is most important. We have been waiting for the family to go to sleep. I feel the old woman intermittently at her upper window and wonder if she never sleeps. She must relax her vigil sometime, and if she does not, I can block out her consciousness if I have to. The evening wears on. The last light in the house has gone out and the digging bar is still there, poking up like an iron lance, long and tough steel, something to work with. The guard is wandering around at the edge of the garden looking for a place to urinate. I cannot wait any longer. The old woman is gone from the window, and the chorus of tree frogs and crickets is building up a dense background of sound beneath the trees of the yard and out in the fence rows. Now the guard is back inside the door of the tool shed sitting on the old chair they have put there for him. He will go to sleep very fast now. I apply pressure of my will to his senses, and he blanks out, the rifle lying across his lap, his head hanging on his chest.

I reach out carefully by lying full length on the floor of the cage and stretching my best arm out through the slot they push the food pan through. Very carefully I wrap my claws around the top of the bar, raise it far enough to get a grip with my other claws, tip it, take another hold and I have it, sliding it in through the slot. I place it quietly along the side of the cage and begin examining each welded place along the bottom edge of the cage, feeling at close range with my spatial sense for the thickness, the hardness, the ridges of metal, the tiny openings where the weld has not quite bridged between the two pieces of iron. Here is one. The one next to it might break, might not. The next one is very weak, the metal building up in a ridge around the end of the bar but not fused to the floor. I must bend two of the bars up to get out, bend them outward if I can. I listen, extend my spatial sense. No one but the sleeping guard and the dogs beneath the truck snoring and having dreams of rabbits. I take the bar and angle it between the stronger bar and the weakest one, move my claws to the far end of the bar and get ready. I want a clean snap, not a lot of noise. I  concentrate all my force on the movement I am about to make, take a breath, concentrate on my claws and snap the bar hard. The digging bar bends like lead, but the cage bar has already snapped free from the bottom of the cage with a loud ping. Easy! The next one won't be so easy because the digging bar is bent and the cage bar is stronger. I fit the digging bar in so that I will be pulling against the bend. Awkward. If it turns in my hand, I am liable to pull a muscle. I get it wedged as tight as I can, pull slowly, this time so that the bar begins to straighten, keep the force applied so it won't slip, take a breath and snap it.

Another loud ping, and another cage bar has come loose, but it is the one I was using for leverage, not the tight one. Now I have two bars loose, but they are not next to each other. Inside me, Barry is fuming and ranting uselessly. I order him silent so we can concentrate all on the task. I examine the next bar along with my spatial sense. Possible. Wedge the digging bar in again, more awkward this time because the bar has a doublebend now, not bending back in the same place, but bending farther along so that it  resembles a stylized S. Pull on it to test. Maybe. Repeat the act. Ping, and another bar is loose at the bottom, two of them next to each other, so that now I have only to bend them upward. I pull as far as the digging bar will go to give the bar a starting bend. The iron is soft, bends more easily than the digging bar. I have a start, and now it is easier. Now we will see how well the arms have healed. I grasp the one bar in both claws, wrap them around the iron and pull upward. It moves! I am bending it! There, one bent. Now the other, and I am exultant at the prospect of freedom. I grasp the other.