Filter House

by Nisi Shawl

  “I got a confession,” Leora announced. “About my boy.” Swear words and fast steps filled the darkness. Air brushed her cheek; she flinched.

  “Wait.” The thin man again. No blow landed. “Let’s hear her out. Yell for help and you die,” he promised.

  “You gone and took the wrong one. This here’s my son.”

  More swearing. The thin man cut through it. “You’re saying Farmer made a mistake?”

  “I nivver did! That there’s the McGinniss heir—on my life it is!”

  “That’s what you think.” She spun them her whole sorry tale. Mr. McGinniss had got her in the family way, she said, and Big Momma sent her off to her sister Rutha’s house in Ontario to have the baby boy and leave him there.

  Then Mrs. McGinniss got pregnant, too. But her child never drew breath in Leora’s version of events, so Mr. McGinniss called Carter back to raise him as his son. Which he was. Had been.

  It was true enough, and better than what actually happened.

  “Well,” said the thin man after she finished. “That’s a very compelling narrative.”

  “What?” Farmer protested. “You believe that bullshit? I wouldn’t raise some half-nigger as my kid no matter—”

  “There are precedents…. Of course, without proof—”

  “We’ll still collect us a ransom, won’t we?” The least familiar voice, so it must be the sweatered man.

  “Maybe,” the thin man answered.

  And that was when Leora realized what a bad mistake she had made.

  The kidnappers didn’t let them go. If the ransom never came, they weren’t about to. Ever. Her lies had nearly made Kevin and Leora worthless. Only the kidnappers’ disbelief kept them alive.

  It was so cold. They had tied her arms with her coat again, but that was no protection.

  She and Kevin were together in the same corner. Her new understanding of the criminal mind helped her reject the notion this had anything to do with how she or the boy felt. For whatever reason, it was simply more convenient this way for the kidnappers. Probably they had just the one gun.

  The floor was cement, rough and uneven. Leora lay on her side, Kevin curled up in front of her like a question mark. His wool britches smelled like pee. His silent sobs were weak and hopeless, old-seeming.

  At least no one had tried putting her gag back on. “You wanna hear a story, Kevin?” She waited while his sobs slowed. No other response came. That figured; no call for the kidnappers to take his gag off. She started anyway, her voice low and soothing. “Once there was a little boy. Now I’m talkin about real little, not a big boy like you. He lived far away, in another country, far away from his momma and his daddy.

  “Why?” Leora made believe the boy had asked her a question, then answered it. “On account of he was a prince in disguise, and bein off in another land was the best disguise his momma and daddy could come up with.”

  She stopped. Was this idea any better than her last one?

  She had something else to try first, something maybe a little easier; it depended on which kidnappers had been left to watch them. And how many. What seemed like hours ago she’d heard feet climbing up the ladder. Now she struggled to remember: One pair? Two?

  “I need to use the lavatory,” Leora said, loud enough anyone nearby could hear her.

  “That’s a shame, since we got no such facilities on the premises.” Farmer. Him she could handle. “Guess you’ll have to wet yourself.”

  “It ain’t that….” Leora let her sentence trail off, pretending embarrassment she wasn’t far from feeling.

  Farmer laughed, but the thin man interrupted. “Take her through to the other room.” Him she was afraid of.

  “What? She shits, I’m supposed to wipe her black ass?”

  “Don’t act any stupider than you are. Untie her, let her take care of it herself.” A pause. “Do it.”

  A hand on her shoulder helped her clumsily up from the floor. “I’ll be right back,” she told the boy.

  Her plan wouldn’t work so well with two of them there. But maybe she could overpower Farmer when she was untied and alone with him in this other room, take away any weapon he had, or do something to get him on her side. She shuffled carefully through the darkness, grit crackling beneath her feet.

  By the change in the echoes around her, Leora figured they had entered a smaller space. Farmer shoved her front against a cold, damp wall and freed her arms. He was out of reach by the time she turned around. She took a step forward, another, hands extended, without connecting.

  “What’s the hold up? Do your business!” He sounded like he was talking to a dog.

  “It’s—I think I’m gettin my monthlies—” Leora improvised. “I won’t know just by touching myself. I’m gone hafta see—”

  “Jesus Christ! I don’t—you expect me to take off your blindfold too? That’s a lot of nerve you got, nigger gal—”

  “No!” He was closer now, she could tell by his voice, the noise of his breath. “No, only, how about you…reach in for me…and find out yourself.” Lord knew what she looked like, lipstick smeared off, mascara and eyeliner and rouge running all down her face, mud caking her uniform. She smiled anyway, and when he said “Yeah,” sounding half-strangled in spit, she opened her mouth in anticipation, as if this was something she had waited for her whole life, his callused hand hiking up her skirt and skinning down her nylon underwear, parting the tangled hair and inserting one finger where no one had been in years. She sighed and rode up and down on it a couple of times for good measure, and he said “Jesus Christ,” again, but in an entirely different tone of voice.

  He had his pants unbuttoned in seconds, and replaced his finger without even laying her on the floor.

  She felt a jackknife in his pocket as he scrabbled against the concrete. The blade wouldn’t be longer than two or three inches, she judged, but good to have all the same. He slumped to one side, done. Before she could retrieve the knife he recovered and pushed himself away from her.

  “You two having a nice time in there?” The thin man’s voice sounded maybe forty feet off.

  “Yeah. I’ll be out in a jiffy.” He tied her arms again without saying another word, not a bit won over, and Leora had no choice but to let him.

  Time to put her new plan in action.

  “Well,” the thin man said as they re-entered the first room. “I see you did have a nice time.” Her face and neck went hot. “Unfortunately, you’re not my type.” He laughed at his own joke.

  “Listen,” Leora said. “I lied before. About the boy. I—”

  “Sure you did. What happened—you had a chance to realize the consequences if it was true?”

  “Well, some of it—”

  “Sit down and shut up.”

  Farmer pushed her to her knees.

  “I’ll tell you the—”

  “Shut up!” Farmer knocked her the rest of the way to the ground. “There must be something to—I’ll stuff your drawers in your mouth, I don’t care!” He rolled her back and forth, wrestling her skirt up again.

  “The real one’s still alive! I know where they hid him!”

  “Will you—”

  “Wait a minute! Why are you so determined to keep her from saying what she wants? Something you’d rather I didn’t learn about?”

  “But you told her shut up!”

  “I changed my mind. A gentleman’s prerogative.” The thin man bent over her. “All right. Upsy daisy.” He helped her sit with her back to the wall. “Now talk.”

  “It—he’s my son, but you let us go I can tell you where they took the other to be raised.”

  “Let you go. That’s rich. Yeah, that’s exactly what we plan on doing, let you go and head off on some wild goose chase looking for a boy who died or don’t even exist.” Farmer slapped her hard. This time the thin man let him.

  Half her face was numb. She made her mouth work. “I told you the truth! We swapped them two at birth, and only they daddy ever knew. He was thin
kin ahead to when somethin like this would happen. You want the ransom or you want Mr. McGinniss to be laughin at you? You already sent him the note, right? He ain’t answered you yet has he?” A guess. She hoped it was a good one. “And he ain’t gonna. You know why? Cause he don’t care!”

  Silence. Then the unclear sounds of them moving around—doing what? If only she could see! Their voices came from more of a distance, muffled and senseless. All she could tell was that they were angry, till they returned and the thin man said, “Here’s the deal.

  “You tell us where the heir is. We release you, but we keep your kid till we find the real one’s hideout.”

  Leora breathed huge gasps in and out. Oh, God, she wanted like hell to agree, to get out of that hole in the ground where they had her, she had done her duty and then some, and what was Kevin to her anyway? Just a job, and maybe even the reason her own boy Carter had died, lost in the woods when he wandered off from Great-Aunt Rutha’s cabin because his momma hadn’t been there to take care of him, gone and disappeared while Leora watched over this white child who she owed nothing, nothing! She was crying, crying hard, she couldn’t do anything about that or what she heard herself saying, which was, “No! NO! You cain’t take him! I won’t letcha! No I won’t!”

  Farmer hit her again, but it was the thin man’s unbelieving laughter that brought her back to her right mind.

  The kidnappers were standing her on her feet. “So we believe you now about this one being your kid,” the thin man said. “Otherwise you would have taken us up on our offer. So let’s have the rest of it.”

  Their test, and she’d passed it without knowing. “You gonna—”

  “Tell us where the McGinniss heir is or we’ll shoot your son and throw him in the river.”

  “Canada,” Leora said. “Ontario.”

  “Windsor?”

  “In the country. I can give you directions—”

  “You’ll do better than that. Here you are, Farmer.” The thin man’s voice moved away. “Keep it trained on her. I’ll be back fast as I can. Try not to have too much fun.” The sound of his feet rising up the rungs. Then another noise: wood on wood, something dragging, scraping, then falling loudly on the ceiling, the floor above her head.

  She was alone in the basement with a rapist and a helpless, tied up white boy.

  Who she should have left to his fate. At least she should have tried to. When Farmer yanked him out of the car seat like that, she could have let him. And she would have, too, if only she’d been thinking instead of feeling. Using her brain, not her heart. If Kevin hadn’t looked so much like his brother. Carter.

  She wasn’t going to cry. Leora had done enough of that already. Big Momma had taught her to be strong, to survive. Do whatever it took, even if it went against the Bible.

  One more plan.

  She struggled to remember the words to that lullabye. She had always known she’d need to use it someday, in the special way Big Momma had learned her. How did it go now?

  “Hush-a-bye, don’t you cry;

  Go to sleepy, little baby;

  When you wake, you shall have—”

  “Okay, turn around so I can take this thing off,” Farmer interrupted her thoughts, tugging at her blindfold. Which was when she realized her arms were untied again. Why? She hadn’t sung a note, and anyway, it wasn’t supposed to work like that.

  Maybe she wouldn’t have to, after all.

  The knots in her good scarf proved too tough for Farmer, too, and he sliced them apart with his knife. She heard him open it, felt the silk give way.

  Her eyes hurt. They were in a cellar, big metal buckets over in one corner with a fat flashlight standing on one on its end. In another corner lay a short, lumpy shadow, white patches showing where Kevin’s skin contrasted with his clothes and the bandanas over his mouth and eyes.

  No sign of the ladder they’d made her walk down.

  She whirled quickly to find Farmer behind her but out of reach, and grinning like a natural-born idiot. He had the knife and the gun both, but the gun wasn’t aimed. “You want another fuck?” he asked. “I think there’s time before we head out.”

  With a one-minute man like him there’d always be time, Leora figured. She didn’t say that, though, mindful of the weapons. She gave him her back and went to Kevin.

  Farmer followed her, pushing her out of the way. He cut the line holding the boy’s legs, then his hands. Leora took them up in her own, kneeling beside him. They were cold, and mottled looking in the dim light. She rubbed them to start the blood moving. Farmer got rid of the boy’s blindfold; she saw when she looked up at his face. Bees and butterflies, flutterin round his eyes…. Those same long lashes—

  “Why you doin this?” she asked Farmer. “You lettin us out of here?” She might be wrong about the man, and he’d taken a fancy to her, after all.

  “So I am, after a fashion.” He brought the knife up against Kevin’s neck. “We’ll be taking a drive over the border, and you’re less likely to stick in folks’ memories without the ropes and things. Think you can convince your kid to keep his mouth shut when we cross the bridge?” Dark eyes darted to hers and away in every direction, taking in the room. Leora couldn’t talk. She nodded yes. The knife moved up to the bandana’s edge and ripped its way through the stained fabric. Not the bruised, white skin.

  Kevin couldn’t talk, either. He’d been gagged much longer than Leora. He needed water. When she had him sitting up she asked Farmer for something to drink and got a flask of what smelled like cheap whisky, the sort of thing the Purple Gang once smuggled in. She gave it to the poor child; better that than nothing. Then she made him walk a little. He stumbled like a baby. She held him by his arms, surreptitiously looking for the ladder or some other way out.

  There were three rooms counting the main one, the one where Farmer took her earlier, and what amounted to a closet. Doorways opened between them without doors. None contained stairs or a ladder, and Leora suddenly recalled the sounds she’d heard as the thin man left, the scraping and bumping. Like a picture she saw it in her head: he had pulled the ladder up with him and put something over the hole he went out of to shut it.

  No wonder the kidnappers weren’t worried about letting loose their hands.

  After helping Kevin go the bathroom she sat down with him in the corner the furthest they could get from the stink. “Now what?” he whispered, the first words he’d spoken since the gag came out.

  A hopeful sign. “We wait, I guess.”

  “For what? What are they—”

  “None of that, now! Speak so I can hear you, or else!” Farmer stood from the bucket where he sat and took a threatening step toward them, gun up.

  “He just wants me to finish the story I was tellin,” Leora lied.

  “Go on then. So I can hear.”

  She hadn’t gotten far past the beginning before, she was pretty sure. “So this prince was sent to a foreign land—”

  “What was his name?”

  “Foster.”

  “That’s a dumb name.” Sounding more like himself every second.

  “Anyway, he was a prince, so you don’t have to feel sorry for him. And he lived on a farm with a kindly old couple who always let him have whatever he wanted.” Even if what he wanted killed him. “They had rules, but when he broke them, those old people would never raise not a hand against him.”

  “No spankings?”

  “Not a swat. He was a prince; hittin him was against the law. Now one day, the little boy got up early, before anybody was awake. And he went down to the kitchen and fixed a bowl of cereal, and then he went outside and walked off into the forest all by himself, although he had been told not to.” And told and told and told.

  “Why wasn’t he supposed to go in the forest?”

  “Because he wasn’t supposed to go anywheres. Remember, he was a prince in disguise. He couldn’t be runnin around where folks would see and recognize him.

  “Then, of course, he went and got los
t.” In the great Canadian wilderness, trees and rocks and marshes—miles and miles of loneliness— “Lost. And he was hungry and tired and miserable, and he wished he’d never, never left that kitchen table.

  “But what he didn’t know was his momma—”

  “The queen?”

  “Yeah, that’s right, his momma the queen, she had lit a magic candle to proteck him.” Like Big Momma said to do. If only she had done it instead of worrying was conjure the devil’s work. Well, that wasn’t going to stop her now.

  “The sun went down. Night was fallin. All of a sudden he seen a light.”

  “The candle?”

  “The candle! You such a smart boy!” Same as Carter. “That’s right, the prince seen the flame of his momma’s magic candle, and it led him straight home to the farm where he lived. The End.”

  Kevin stayed quiet, thinking the way he usually did when she finished a story. She always knew he was thinking by the questions he would ask later, long after she’d forgot the things she said.

  The candle she lit after the funeral had been for Carter. Not to protect him. Too late for that. It was to commemorate his spirit, Big Momma had said. And to be what she called a conduit, a way they could speak with one another.

  Of course Leora had never attempted such a blasphemous thing.

  Banging and a blast of cold air from the ceiling told her the thin man was back. The ladder slid down to rest its foot on the floor’s middle, and the thin man descended it, aiming his thin smile and a second gun through the rungs at them.

  It took her till the sweatered man came down, too, to work out what was different. No masks.

  It took her till they’d exchanged some talk she didn’t follow and herded her and Kevin between them up out of the cellar and into the black-and-purple sedan to understand why this made her sick to her stomach.

  No mask to prevent her from seeing the thin man’s blonde moustache and the way his nose tipped up at the end and the squint lines radiating from the edges of his eyes. No mask to stop her noticing the sweatered man’s freckled forehead and the crease in his chin he didn’t look to bother shaving.