In the Vines

by Shannon Kirk

  A hush overcame the barn. I moved my ankles and feet faster. Had I been freed in full of my ankle tie, I would have taken my chance and run then. It’s a good thing I didn’t, for a million psychics would fail to anticipate what was about to happen next.

  A knocking at the barn’s front door cut a quick hush in the barn. We must have missed it before, Hatchet’s voice and her shrill having masked it and also masked the roll of the tires and quiet engine of the car in the driveway that preceded the knocking. We missed such noise given her consuming monologue and her spike of screeching laughter. And so, evil thwarted her own self.

  The barn door creaked open, then flung wide, and the bright morning sun invaded and blinded the darkened barn interior. Wind bent the highest part of the trees outside and loosened yard objects, such as Aunty’s various garden flags, flew about behind the man in a green coverall at the entrance. Also behind him, my red Volvo.

  The mechanic had come to return my Volvo. He’d said in a message somewhere in the last week that he’d drop it off when it was ready, and he’d walk the three miles back to the garage, for he liked this stretch of road. Being in the haze I’d been in over the last week, I hadn’t called him back to warn him about the chains at the end of Aunty’s driveway, and in that moment, looking up at him from the floor of the barn, I realized she’d unchained them on the night we ate pizza in Rye. She must have left them unlocked when she returned. I don’t know why. I can only speculate on her lessening defenses.

  I assume he heard the commotion in the barn, knocked, heard more commotion, and opened the doors. Crazy Hatchet, about twenty feet from him, her leg wedged wrongwise in the shipping crate, didn’t hesitate. So while he startled at the sight he stumbled upon, his mouth wide open to see a bloody woman in a bloody gown, leg stuck in a make-do stage and two women on the floor tied and duct-taped, she snatched her hatchet on the cardboard-box table and threw it like a master Indian hunter with such force and precise aim, it hit the mark on the center of his face and stayed.

  Aunty in the side room awaited her chance too. At this very moment, she limp-crawled quick from her confinement and out, past the split mechanic and into the sun. From the crown of her dented head dripped blood, down onto her shoulders and torso, like a red candle, melted of the flame. Aunty didn’t turn to look at me and my companion. Didn’t look at the mechanic. She crawled like a bloody animal, hands and knees on the seashells and pebbles in her driveway, and disappeared in shades of sunlight that blinded our darkened pupils. Growing hurricane wind lifted her gray hair, blending her in the coming storm.

  Crazy Hatchet went wild, screaming and screeching, “You bitch,” as if her voice would slow Aunty’s slothful, yet seemingly fruitful, escape. Hatchet worked her leg, trying to free herself, and this is when I didn’t waste another minor second on watching the mechanic twitch or animal Aunty disappear into stormy sunlight. This was the best chance I’d get to haul out. I was not only desperate to free myself and my companion but also desperate to check on the wellness of Manny.

  Now, tonight, in this hurricane, I bring myself to think of that moment, the seconds before standing, horror-struck I might find Manny, dead behind the barn. This something in thought so unbearable to me, as if I lost my own soul. My real soul, detached, dissolved, making me nothing but skin. This possible reality was so far beyond frightening, a fraction of acknowledging it diminished the horror of the scene in the barn and the tremendous risk I was about to take for me and my companion. But the time was prime, no better moment than when Crazy threw the hatchet at the mechanic and wailed and flailed about in a riotous furor over Aunty. I’d been waiting for something, didn’t know what, but that had to be the moment, and so, I acted.

  Turns out, there is something I did learn, an invaluable and, turns out, practical—not metaphysical or philosophical—lesson in tutoring those human-trafficking refugees. Seems I did get their backstories. I was listening, storing their stories to the backup hard drive of my mind. One story flitted to the active hard drive of my mind during the time I sat tied in the barn.

  Pradina was one of the refugee sex-trafficking victims I tutored. I coached her through a reading of my tattered copy of The Mummy Market, which is criminally out of print, for it’s a classic.

  Pradina, a sixteen-year-old girl who dreamed of competitive swimming, was snagged from a corner in Honduras, about a two-hour walk from her two-hundred-square-foot shack in the mountains. She used to talk of a monkey who stole her breakfast banana and papaya bread every morning, so she walked hungry to the city factory in which she cleaned bathrooms. She did laugh about the monkey and her long mountain walk, so I assume part of her home life, she did indeed mourn. I connected with Pradina over her wish to swim. In retrospect, the perspective she gave me was a thousand-volt lesson on privilege, how I shouldn’t waste it and how I should spread my born-into gifts: Pradina had thousands of roadblocks and hurdles just to be able to find a muddy pond in which to swim one lap, whereas, if I wanted to swim competitively, I need only train off the coast of two estates, in one of two Rye pools, Princeton’s pool, and register in any race among thousands of options.

  Pradina had been tied behind her back and at the ankles once, after being held for three months in a literal pit and raped every day by a man named Stink. Stink was known as the “prep cook,” charged with preparing victims for a trafficking ring’s trade. On the day the ring was set to transfer Pradina to another pit, Stink tied her up, like an animal about to be thrust in a pile for a barbecue. Pradina said people tied as such waste their energy on the hands, trying to deknot with fingers. But, to Pradina’s teachings, your legs are “powerful trunks of muscles,” and if you’re tied at the ankles, like she was, like I was, best to keep flaring the heels out and out. This option is usually undetectable and will loosen the rope fibers while also working up lubricating sweat. In her case, her legs were lazily tied together, as were mine, one rope around both ankles, not crossed in the middle. This parallel between Pradina’s and my ankle tying gave me confidence to focus on my ankles and nothing else.

  “Do not focus on the horror of what happened or the fear of what is to come. Focus only on the best activity with the best potential to escape; this will give you your greatest asset, a sense of control, and thus the greatest chance to win,” Pradina had said. “Focus and stay on course with that one activity. Truly, it is mind over matter.” Her words echoed to me in the barn like ancient verse, prophetic advice, divine direction. There are no words more pure than Pradina’s. In this, I do believe.

  In Pradina’s story, about an hour or two into her truck ride from one pit to another, her right heel wormed out. With her legs free, she scooted to the end of the open bed of the moving truck and, when slow enough, jumped, rolled down an embankment, and ran with her hands tied for four hours through jungle and farmland. The best part of Pradina’s story was how she rested on a rock on the edge of jungle and open field. Dozing for a second, she was awakened by the sound of scraping down the tree behind her. A monkey with nimble fingers worked the loosening of the rope on her wrists and took her rope, scurrying back up the tree, freeing Pradina’s hands. When she thought the hero or thief, whatever he was, was long gone, a banana dropped from the canopy above, where his monkey face appeared through the thickness of leaves, and his monkey hands poked out to dangle his stolen rope. He either paid Pradina for the rope with a banana or mocked her. She ate the banana, thinking of her monkey in the mountains and how this hero-thief brother monkey might be part of the monkey network, and this was the network’s way of saying thanks for all those stolen breakfasts back home. Thereafter, Pradina somehow found a missionary who connected her with the UN. I’m not sure of the legalities—they aren’t the point. As for Pradina’s belief in a network of brother monkeys and nature’s connection to all, I did fall into her belief when she told the story, but then I pushed it away as fantasy. But today, I see Pradina’s wisdom, and I agree with her fantastical belief. Nature saved Pradina. And nature would save
me. I believed. I believe.

  This morning, I finished working my ankles while I wished for a nimble-fingered brother monkey to untie my wrists. Pradina’s story lent me the forethought to forgo my hands and focus all my energy on my feet. She gave me hope. She gave me focus.

  I did what Pradina did. But I had it better than her: I had my mother’s beach-glass stall right behind me.

  My mother had done the same as me, for when I nudged her a couple of times as a way to say, do what I’m doing, she listened to the message of a daughter’s touch. The second Crazy Hatchet loosened herself from the stage, limp-springing (I think she broke an ankle) toward the open barn doors toward the mechanic or Aunty, I’m not sure, I sprang and ran to the beach-glass stall, and my companion did too. My companion, my mother, my love.

  With my hands still tied in back, I grabbed my mother’s wire cutters, fished the point end into my back pocket, and, nodding my duct-taped mouth to my companion, indicated we needed to run for the back barn door, which was closer to us than to Crazy Hatchet.

  We made no mistakes of hesitations and ran for the back door. Aunty had failed to re-bar the back or Crazy Hatchet had unbarred it or Manny had, and if the last were true, that lent to Crazy’s story that he was dead. I shook to push the back exit and find it unbarred.

  My body did not hesitate to escape, but my mind held back, afraid to find Manny lifeless.

  Something bit me in the calf on the way out. It was not until we were in the sunlight that I realized she’d flung her hatchet clear across the barn at me, having retrieved it from the mechanic. The only fortunate part of the blow was that the distance thrown diminished the force. Had she been closer, my leg would have been severed.

  I scoured behind the barn for Manny, ignoring the searing pain in my leg. The competing needs to escape and find Manny distracted me from collecting the hatchet in the doorway.

  My frantic search was fast and thorough, for my companion and I had no time to lose. There was no disturbance behind the barn. No body, no footprints, no broken plants, no moved bricks, nothing. So Hatchet either lied or Manny lay elsewhere.

  From within the barn, I heard a scowling howl. “Let me go!” Hatchet screamed. Then a thud, which I presume was her falling. Perhaps the mechanic grabbed her ankle in his last dying act. Maybe Aunty returned. Maybe one was our hero. I don’t know, but whatever happened within the barn, the thudding, the scraping, yelling I heard, allowed enough time to lapse for me and my companion to make it to the burned-out basement hole, jump into the false door, nearly breaking our legs in the fall, for we couldn’t use our tied hands to climb down. Underground and hidden, I wormed the wire cutters from my back pocket, turned my companion around by directing her with head nods, turned my back to her back, and clipped with care at her wrist ties. Once free, she removed the duct tape from our mouths and cut me free. Then we worked to tie a tourniquet around the bleeding hatchet wound on my calf—using the kerchief holding her hair back—and shivered together, in disbelief, grief, mournful reunion, blood loss, muscle fatigue, hunger, thirst, and fear.

  All day went by. We did not speak. She was weak, and we didn’t want our voices to carry on the wind. And besides, about ten minutes in, about when I thought we could test our luck, haul out, and escape to Manny’s, my companion passed out. I couldn’t carry her out. We were stuck. And having been separated from her for what felt like an eternity over two years, there was not a chance I would test the waters on my own without her. The wind whipped up as the day bore on, and the witch woman yelled along with the wind in search of us. If you didn’t know there was a hidden hatch door, you wouldn’t know we could get underground, so I believe she passed by our spot, which is hidden by vegetation, several times.

  I believe she scoured Aunty’s house ten, twenty times.

  Now, I wait in an impossible hope for Aunty to somehow save us in her death state. All day in the hole, every single damn time my companion awoke and I thought I could convince her to use all her strength and follow me out, Crazy Hatchet’s voice would near and kill the plan. And ten minutes later, my companion would again pass out. All day, cycles like this. The sounds of Hatchet bleeding to us underground, above the increasing winds. By some miracle, the blood from my wound had collected in my scrunchy sock and my sneaker until I was in the hole, at which point it flowed all around until tourniqueted. So no blood trail betrayed our whereabouts.

  Scraping, cycling, fitful winds sang songs of rising laments, all day and into the night. I begged the Ocean Goddess to save us. My companion dozed in and out of consciousness, her head in my lap.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  AUNTY

  Earlier today

  I’m lying on the floor of my barn’s side room. You’re lying on the floor of your barn’s side room. She’s hatcheted my skull; she’s beaten me with a bedpan. I’ve entered my death process. I’m dying. You’re dying. I won’t, I can’t, I won’t, you can’t, let Mop and Johanna die. I won’t, you won’t, give in to this lovely darkness. I won’t fail, you won’t fail, I can’t fail, you can’t fail, to make the call this time. It won’t be like with Daddy. No gray clouds of moldy cotton. Only darkness awaits me after I finish this one last, necessary task, that is all. I just need to crawl into the light, now flooding, a man standing in the mouth of light. He’s in green—perhaps he’s the gravedigger. He’s opened a door for me to crawl out and find a phone. And then, then darkness may shroud me.

  Go! Now! Crawl out now! I need to go, now, and crawl out, now.

  With the aches of a thousand flus and every virus I’ve ever had, my muscles tight and resisting, inflamed they feel, under my fire skin, I press up to palms and knees and push. I’m an animal, all right, dying and draining, muscles failed and failing, forward pressing, repeat. A rising fire in my throat foretells of retching.

  I pass the gravedigger in his green suit. He’s on the floor now. I keep going. Pulsing virus balls ache within my body. Blood flows anew from the gash in my skull and covers my dead eye socket in a liquid mesh.

  Get in the house. The cordless in the library. And then you’ll be best positioned, in there, to spring your premade grave.

  Save them. Spring the grave. In a limited range of movements. In one confined room. Triage. Efficiency. I’m a nurse. You’re a nurse.

  I press on through my foyer. I believe screaming or wind or both is behind me. Blood drops from my face to my white marble foyer.

  The library. Turn right. I turn right and enter the library.

  The cordless under my Roosevelt gun. Perfect. The cordless under your Roosevelt gun, perfect.

  I can’t let Mop and Johanna die. I won’t let that happen. With my literal last breath, I must make the call. I will not fail this time. Not like with Daddy. You cannot fail this time. Not like with Daddy. No gray clouds, no loss of consciousness. Fight. Fight. I press. Keep pressing. My muscles pulse up on my inner skin, breaking through fat and cartilage.

  I nudge the table with the cordless with my bloodied head. Next I ram harder, using every ounce of strength remaining. The cordless drops to the floor, beside my right hand.

  Thank goodness the batteries didn’t pop out.

  And now, with that motion, the remote to the CD player falls too.

  Blood from my skull drips on the phone and CD player remote.

  With the last ounce—as in, it hurts so much to do this, requiring so much effort, I gag, cough, and choke to near final death—I press one button on speed dial. My hand then falls of its own will upon the remote, and “Die Rose,” always primed to play, blares from the speakers at full volume.

  As I listen to the forever ringing of my placed speed-dial call, “Die Rose” plays on in instruments and foreign operatic words, and I recite the poem lyrics in English in my head. My eyes droop, my shoulders droop, my body is falling toward the floor. Oh, “Die Rose,” you accompany this never-ending fall, fall, falling to the floor and the never-ending ring, ring, ringing of the phone. Your lyrics about a regretful rose
about to die.

  The answering machine at Rye picks up after nine million rings in eternity. But I am in free fall to the floor, and “Die Rose” is weaving knots of foreboding in my mind. I can’t speak now, can’t say a word to the woman who I know will listen to this recording first. She is far away from me now, three galaxies of telescoping darkness, maybe, and I am listening to the ting-ting of piano keys and opera poetry in some unknowable space while I continue falling through my own floor, through the basement, the earth, and out beyond. But I know her. I know her secret. I know she’s proud for what she did, despite being kicked out of the church for it. And I don’t blame her. I’m proud for her too. She’s a relentless, tireless, constantly suspicious, headstrong woman. If anyone is going to figure out why I say no words, for I can’t, it’s her. I’ll pass the baton to Aunt Sister Mary to save our shared niece, our girl, and save our Johanna. I wish I could scream, wish I could say the word help, but I can’t. I couldn’t dial more than one programmed button. If I could, I would have dialed 911. With my final breaths, which are shallow and nasal only, I send a wordless SOS to the only one who will agonize and overthink on the words unsaid.

  Leaving the phone line open, I try, although I know I’ll fail, to crawl up the wall, which holds my glass-cased Roosevelt gun. If only I could crank down on the glass box and open my grave. Crawl out there and die in my intended death well. Above me would be my spiral of sunflowers, which I would command. And I would at once strip this ugliness and be pure power, beautiful power.

  “Die Rose” has begun to play again. I think I must have set it to replay, or perhaps it is the only song I will ever hear now, in my eternity.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  MOP