The Captive (27 page)

And then it was all done, their things packed, the cabin cleaned and made straight, Mina got ready for bed, teeth brushed, hair combed and feet washed, since they went barefoot much of the time. Bill's expedition had left now, and it was fully dark. The other group was in the cabin down the hill. She had written the message on a long strip torn from a grocery sack and now was wrapping it around one of the brown cords that formed the mattress of Mina's little bed. She wrapped it tightly with string, which made it look pretty much like a part of the cords. She hoped Barry would tear things up looking for a message and that he would  especially look at the trundle bed because it was beautifully made. She had put down in tiny script everything she knew about the group, where they were going, and when the rally was to be held, and how much she loved him and that they were all right and that she could hold up through anything as long as she knew he would find them sometime. It was a good job, she thought, looking at it from a distance.  Perhaps so good even Barry would not find it? No, he would look, leaving no mattress string unravelled. Mina had watched this operation with a curious smile. Renee looked up once and thought her little girl looked very much like Alice in Wonderland smiling back at the Cheshire cat.

And then her speculations disappeared as she heard the unmistakable sound of distant gunfire, many guns firing at once, and they kept firing, sounding like distant firecrackers, and then there was a dull thump! like a dynamite blast she had heard once when her father had blasted some stumps. She stood up with her hands pressed to her throat, listening as the firing died away. They weren't doing target practice at night, and the sounds were much farther away. But all those shots? There, another series was fired, then silence. Had the police caught those men? But what was the explosion?  She felt her hands shaking against her throat as she held her breath, listening.

***

I sense them down the road around the flaming hulk that was Barry's little car, even with my sight now as their black shadows move about outlined against the flames. They are looking for his body. Now some of them are taking flashlights  off into the woods, and I hear them shouting to each other. They can see into the open doors of the Model-A and know there is not a body in that cremating flame. The  flashlights are coming back out of the woods now, and I see one shadow, the tallest one, put his rifle to his hip and fire into the dark forest as fast as he can cock and pull the trigger of the carbine, Blam! Blam! Blam! seven times before he stops. I find myself intrigued by these people and wonder at police acting thus. But they are not police, I realize, as I see them getting back into their car and driving slowly up toward me around the blazing hulk that now is dying down, the tires still flaming, the glowing frame tipped away from the road on its broken springs. I lie very still just inside the trees and watch the car full of men as it passes slowly, the small  spotlight rushing along the tree trunks over my head. They are not police. And then I catch the scent. It is Bill, with other men in that car. It is them! The search is over. My hackles rise, my body instantly on full alert as I get to my feet and trot along in the edge of the forest, following the slow-moving car with its lights and great noise, tumbling through this silent wilderness like a circus. They are still looking but reluctant to go out in the dark after their quarry. I hear their voices plainly.

"He's dead, I tell you. I seen him fall when I shot."

"We didn't find a body, and I know that Jew-boy. He's got the lives of a cat," Bill's voice says.

"You ain't gettin' me out in them woods."

"He's likely got a gun," a man says and spits out into the dark.

"Goddammit, you guys a bunch of cowards?" Bill again.

"Watch your mouth, Hegel."

"You don't know how it is in the woods at night. He'd be lyin' somewhere with a bullet in him and pick us off one by one."

"We've got lights. We could -"

"You shut your face, you pissant Yankee, before I turn your insides out with this." Whatever "this" is, I think as I trot along, it silences Bill for a time.

"I didn't go out to do no murderin' anyway," says a last voice before the car speeds up and I lose their voices in the motor's roar.

I move out of the trees and break into a run along the grassy center of the road, keeping them easily in sight but allowing the little red eye of their taillight to get some ways ahead so none of them will see me if they look back, not that any of them have eyes that sharp, but the moon is rising now, making cold long shadows. And then the taillight vanishes. I speed up, catching the shape of the car in my spatial sense as it bounces off to the left among the trees. I slow to a trot, keeping many trees between the car and myself. They drive slowly through the woods, their headlights making the forest look artificial, like a movie set. I almost catch up with them, cutting across through the trees, and now I can sense the cabin ahead. The car stops behind some other cars and the men get out, still arguing, waving their weapons in the air. The men walk up on the porch of the log-and-plank building, and a guard who is sitting on the porch gets up to greet them. How many, I wonder, and are there more inside?

"You guys been out gigging frogs?" the one on the porch says.

"Out poachin' Jew-pigs," says another, clumping onto the porch.

"I need me a drink," says another.

"Bunch of chickens," says Bill's voice. A growl rises in my throat. I could almost throw caution away and charge up there right now, pick him off with one swipe, break his neck and be back in the dark before they knew what had happened. But there are Renee and Mina. They must come first. I feel strange as I make that resolve, as if Barry and I were fused together, putting the safety of those loved ones ahead of my most violent need. But I know it is my strong feeling for the little girl that makes me cautious. She must not be harmed. She is my friend.

"Well, I'm going down to the big place. Maybe they havin' a better time." Another voice agrees, and two of the returned men walk away from the cabin into the trees down the hill. There are more down there? I trot in a circle around the cabin, keeping the walking men in my perception, although  they are easily seen because they carry a flashlight. There is another cabin, I see now, and I sense about but find no guard here as the two men walk up onto the porch and into this larger cabin. I must know how many men are here. I slip up to a side window, listening, feeling in every direction with my spatial sense for approaching humans. I must take a chance and look in to see if there are only two or three or twenty. I edge my eye up to the side of a window, but there is a shelf or some piece of furniture over part of the window, so that I must look over it. As I finally get a clear view of the inside, showing me a group of about ten men sitting around a table drinking and listening to a radio, a man's face pops up in front of mine on the other side of the glass, a goggle-eyed face with mussed black hair and a little moustache over an open mouth. I curse myself and drop out of sight, but inside I hear the face become articulate as I creep away into the woods.

"Yaaagh! I seen it out there. Gawd Almighty, I seen it. I seen a monstrous animal looking in at the window. Oh Crise, shut the door. Where's my gun?"

The screaming goes on as I sneak back up the hill. Damn my fastidiousness in wanting to know their number. I had put my face next to one of the bunks just as the man who was lying there sat up. Well, the fat is in the fire now, I think somberly, approaching the smaller cabin. I didn't see the woman or child in the big cabin, so perhaps they are in this one. I hear behind me the sound of men tromping out of their cabin, their yells of bravado echoing back and forth as they bump about in the dark. Too bad. Now somebody will get hurt.

***

Renee sat down at the table as she heard the car rattle to a stop outside and the men get out with their loud talk and cursing. There came the pound of boots on the porch. The door flung open against the wall with a bang and Bill stood there, his hair wild and his eyes maddened like those of an animal vicious and ready to bite. He held the rifle lightly as a twig in his hand, seeming larger than life as he strode across the little room to stand in front of the white face woman sitting at the table.

"He's dead," Bill said, leaning forward so that his red rimmed eyes came close to her face. "Your Jew-boy lover is dead and burned to a crisp, you hear?"

She sat stiffly, gripping the edge of the table, not believing him, seeing only this big, insane brute standing in front of her, dangerous as a mad dog. She looked into those eyes and said nothing, feeling she could not stand to communicate with this last bit of insanity in the animal cage she had been trapped in.

"You don't believe me? Come on out to the road, and I'll show you the car with his burned up carcass in it, that little Model-A he drives. That's it, isn't it?" He grinned viciously as her face contorted with pain. "And he's dead, DEAD!" he shouted, and she felt the saliva from his mouth hit her face.

She did not dare to let go of the table edge, did not dare to think beyond the moment before this madman had come into the room, would not think past that time, would not allow anything in her mind to move beyond the moment when Barry was a reality, where the picnic glowed brightly with life, where Barry's loving arms hugged her close.

Bill slammed the rifle on the table, leaning over so that his sweat streaked face almost touched the woman's tightly held expression, and he was about to say something else when there was a noise from down the hill, men shouting, hollering, sounding alarm. He drew back and looked at the  blankness of the window past the lantern that hung from the center beam.

Suddenly Mina squealed as if she had been stuck with a pin.

"He's here!" she screamed, startling Renee into looking at her daughter. "The Big Pussy Cat is here."

And as if on cue, a giant, yellow-furred animal came leaping  into the room, knocking aside like a wooden tenpin the man who had stood by the door and who had no chance to scream before he was thirty feet away sprawled unconscious in the pine needles. Bill snatched up the rifle from the table when his daughter screamed and now turned toward the door, cocking it and firing as the beast made its final leap, but the shot went into the wall, for the animal was unbelievably fast, faster than a human reflex by three or four times, and with smooth grace the bear-cat struck as a lion does on the run, one paw a blur of speed that hit solidly so that the man's right arm and the stock of the carbine shattered with a single loud snap and the big man, his head flung to the side, flew across to hit the wall with a crash, bringing a smashed bunk on top of him. The great beast was on the pile of bedding in another instant, groping with its rapid claws to find the man's face.

The little black haired girl ran across to the huge tawny beast and began slapping about on its back while her mother, terrifled out of her voice and wits, sat at the table yet, her face fixed in the stage before madness.

"Don't kill him, Big Pussy Cat," the little girl said,  slapping the animal's big, yellow head. "He's a mean daddy, but don't kill him, now," she was saying.

The animal turned large green eyes on the little girl, backed away from the mass of blankets and splintered planks tangled with the man's body and seemed to speak.

This is my enemy, Mina. He nearly destroyed me twice. I must kill him now.

"Well, he's my old daddy, and you mustn't," Mina said, standing with her face almost touching that fearsome muzzle full of teeth.

My enemy
, the beast seemed to say. But after a long  moment it said,
All right, my friend Mina
, and it turned away to see the man called Tommy standing in the door raising a rifle to his shoulder.

The beast swung fast and low to one side. The man had to pivot quickly and shoot so that his first bullet went into the floor, and before he could work the pump action rifle, the beast's furious paw had slapped the gun spinning into a far corner. The man's hat had flown off with the impact, and he scrambled into another corner, his face whey-colored as he tried to draw a hunting knife from a sheath at his belt. The great yellow beast faced him, snarling.

"That's the man that killed our pet squirrel," the little girl said, standing in the middle of the room like the director of the scene. "You can have him for dinner, Big Pussy Cat, 'cause he's mean."

The beast gave a low throaty growl, and the man dropped the knife, sliding along the wall, his mouth open and drooling with terror. The beast took two sinuous steps closer to the man who was standing in front of the window now, his hands held in front of him as if he would ward off a tidal wave with his quivering fingers. The beast made a feint at the man, and he turned and hurled himself through the window, taking sash and glass with him as he fell to the ground outside. They heard him then running through the dark and screaming  until he ran full speed into a tree and was silent.

Outside someone hollered, "It's in there," and bullets chunked into the log walls. The beast turned to Renee and said,
Put the lantern out and hide outside by the cars. I'll find you.

Renee sat unmoving until Mina ran up to her mother and kicked her leg hard so that the woman jumped up and grabbed the lantern from the beam and blew it out. In the dark outside the cabin she heard at cry and the crash of broken wood as something went through the porch railing. A volley of shots brought another cry, this time of pain followed by cursing. A man was shouting something when his voice was cut off suddenly as by a giant fist. She took Mina's hand and they felt their way off the porch and down to the line of cars. Her feet stumbled into something soft, and she fell onto the body of a man who did not moan or say anything. There came the crack! of a close bullet, and she pulled Mina down beside her, both of them huddled beside one of the cars for protection. The shots went on from different locations in the pitch-black woods until she heard Ludwig's angry shouting.

"Das Feuer einstell Sie!"