I said I did.
“Then go now,” is what he said, and we went. We scurried across the road and climbed uphill into the woods. At some point a motorcycle passed. It bore two riders, the back one a woman whose hair streamed out light-colored and long behind her. And I remember thinking, Well, what’s ahead can’t be too bad if a woman’s part of it. Lord, you have to laugh. But I was young.
Now’s a good time for another shot. Go ahead, Vic, send it around again. This story goes down better with whiskey.
Twenty, thirty minutes later, we were in sight of it.
“Now you listen to me,” Daddy said. “If you make a peep at the wrong moment, you’ll get us killed. Or worse. So don’t talk. Hear me?”
I nodded at him. My heart was beating like crazy.
“Stay behind me,” is what he told me. “Go where I go,” he said. “I want to get you a look and then I want to get out of here.”
The woods ended where a driveway curved up from the highway. And where the drive led was up to a broad, graveled expanse that abutted the edge of the lakeshore. Tall pine trees reached up at regular intervals, and among them were hundreds of RVs and campers and motorcycles, many of them parked beside pitched tents, and outside these tents and vehicles sat people, mostly men—but not all—some of them in folding chairs, others lounging on couches that had been dragged outside, or on pickup tailgates, or at wooden picnic tables set up next to charcoal grills. Mouthwatering smells rose up from those grills. I hadn’t had supper that night, and my stomach growled, and Daddy gave me a stern look as if I could help it. They were drinking, most of them. Maybe eight meters from me, a man was tilting a frosty bottle back to his mouth, and his feet were extended in front of him and propped up on a cooler. Relaxed like I’d never seen the likes of. I could make out the beads of condensation on that bottle. I could see the tread on his new-looking hiking boots. He had a paper plate balanced on his knee, and he set the bottle down to pick it up and lift a hot dog to his mouth.
Daddy crooked a finger to say, Come on. We started making our way around the perimeter of the campgrounds at a not quite run, keeping to the shadows and hiding behind trees when there was one to hide behind. We stopped on a little wooded rise on the far side of the camp. The disintegrated remains of an old outbuilding were overrun with creepers, more honeysuckle, and its perfume wafted around me on the cool mountain breeze. Following Daddy’s lead, I settled down on my belly, propped up on my elbows. The nearest camper was just down the rise from us, fifteen meters away, maybe. A group of men were congregated in front of it. Laughing. Passing around a bottle. Smoking home-rolleds, the sweet smoke tickling my nostrils.
Daddy pressed something into my hand. His fold-up binoculars. I put them up to my eyes, adjusted the lenses, and looked at the men. They were about my father’s age, a couple maybe a handful of years younger. I guess, if there was something to notice about them, the first thing was that they were all big men—tall, broad, strong-looking. Like they lifted weights or did hard labor. The white guys had leathery skin that had seen too much sun, ruddy faces, deep creases around their laughing eyes. Stamp scars. But they all had on clean, new-looking clothes, button-down shirts, lightweight tan trousers, glints of gold on their wrists and fingers, around a couple of necks. I’d say now—now that I’ve seen more of the world, or learned more of it online—that they looked like men going out together on the town, barhopping.
Something else came into the frame suddenly. I wiped sweat out of my eyes. I took a long breath to try to steady my shaking hands. I adjusted the lenses again, but she was still there. A girl. A teenager. Lanky, knees knobby as a calf’s, hair long and dark and carefully brushed out around her shoulders. She was wearing a little cotton dress cut like a slip. Spaghetti straps. Cheap little rubber flip-flops on her feet, and her toenails painted bright orange. The men had formed a half circle around her. What I could hear of their conversation, from my perch above their campsite, was unintelligible. Through my binoculars, it was a dumb show. But I gathered what was happening. The men jostled one another. Teased. One rubbed his chin, as if deliberating. Two of them checked the contents of their wallets. Finally one of the men stepped forward, raising a hand with some bills tweezed between his index and middle fingers. I noticed activity at the edge of my view and lowered my binoculars. A small person emerged from a large RV, which I could now see was idling nearby, and scampered to the man. Plucked the bills from his grasp and just as quickly ran away. I lifted the binoculars again in time to see the girl, a thin red smile carved into her sallow face, follow the man into the camper. His group of friends lifted their drinks. Cheered.
We stayed for another fifteen minutes—long enough for five more girls to come out for the men’s inspection. Two of them they considered and ultimately waved off. Two were invited into the camper. Another one—she had a club foot and a long scar running down her face—well, the men chased her off, making barking sounds. A boy came out. Ten or eleven, I’d guess now. Clad in jean shorts, thin chest bare, bare feet. The men booed. One tossed his empty liquor bottle at him. “Fuck off!” a man yelled. I could hear it clear as day from where Daddy and I hid.
I got a better look at the small person from the RV, the one who collected the bills for each transaction. A child. A girl, I think, though she moved too quickly to see for sure. Grubby, also barefoot. Hair hanging in her eyes. At the RV, she’d do a little jump and get the door open and slide herself inside in one swift motion. On one trip she caught her foot on the step and fell forward. Busted her face on the door, and the men howled with laughter. How they laughed. The door opened, and a set of arms came out, took the child up by the wrists so that she was dangling—both her wrists in one huge hand—and paddled her bottom. More laughs from the men. The door closed. The RV pulled off, and the men who hadn’t made a selection returned to their lawn chairs and their drinks.
After this, I turned to Daddy. I looked him in the eyes. It felt like the first time I’d looked my father in the eye. Really looked, I mean. And though he’d told me not to talk, I said, real soft, “I want to go,” and he only nodded.
We made it back to the woods, to the road, to our bicycles hidden in the thicket off the side of the highway. I pedaled back the way we’d come twice as fast as I’d pedaled coming to, and my father fell behind.
Back at our camp, he talked to me as we loaded the bikes back into the wagon. He said that the campsite in Flat Rock had been there over a decade that he knew of, and there were others like it. He said that terrible things happened there. A few I’d seen. Many I hadn’t.
“That child,” he said to me. “The one who collected the money.”
“What about her?” is what I said.
“They’re usually children of the girls. Like the ones you saw,” he said. He was talking about the prostitutes. He said, “They put them to work just about as soon as they can walk. The ones that child’s age, they call them squirrels. What you saw—that’s the least of how it can be. How bad it can get for them.”
I motioned to the tent. I said, “You think she was a squirrel.”
“I do,” Daddy said.
“And you wanted me to just turn around and put her back where I found her.”
His face got real grave. Stony. He said, “They don’t let people go. And if they’re done with someone, they kill them. They don’t drop ’em off like puppies on the side of the road. She must’ve run away, and if she did, someone’s looking for her.”
“For a burnt-up, broke-down kid?” is what I asked.
“For their property,” Daddy said. “They’ll make an example out of her. So no one else will try what she tried.”
I wasn’t foolish. I told you that. I looked around at what we had. Our camp. The wagon with the bikes and the clean water and the changes of clothes. Daddy’s lab, all that good, world-saving work he was doing. My mother—I could hear her warm voice through the tent wall, see her s
ilhouette, her thin shoulders and long neck leaned over, a book open in her hands, the child a dark mound on the floor beside her. I could see what he was trying to protect.
But what I said out loud to him was, “I wonder at the fact that you could show me all that and expect I’d do anything but protect her.”
He said, “You shouldn’t. Wonder. Because you’re everything to me and your mother, and that child’s nothing to us.” He said, “When you have one of your own, you’ll understand.”
I bet that’s one y’all have heard a time or two. When you have kids.
He said, “I’d give up what soul I’ve supposedly got to keep you safe. Without a second thought.”
I understand him better now than I did then. Because of Violet. Which is funny, if you think about it.
Well, you’ve seen Violet. There isn’t any suspense on that account. My ultimatum stood. It was going to be both of us or neither of us—and Daddy chose both. She became part of our family from that day forward, and no one from the Flat Rock campsite ever showed up looking for her. Or not that we saw, anyhow, since we kept hunkered down as we always had, never settling in one place for long, never approaching strangers. There came a day when Violet went looking for them. The bastards at Flat Rock, I mean. But again, that’s another story for another time.
You have a lot of questions, maybe. Well, so do I. I don’t know how Daddy knew all that he knew about that place. I guess I didn’t want to know. And I don’t know everything that Violet endured there, but I’m just as happy to be spared that, too. She hardly spoke to us for a full year after we took her in. She grunted. Made hand signals. Would mumble a couple of words, saving them up for about a second shy of the point you’d decided to take her for empty-headed. But she sure wasn’t telling us her life story, and by the time she was talking on the regular, her memories were pretty spotty, or she claimed they were. We let her be.
I’ll claim the last swallow of Vic’s brew for myself. Talked till my throat’s raw. I think I’ve earned it.
Even after you’ve heard Violet’s story, there’s a look in your eyes. I know it well. And all I can say to it is that what you want to hate about her—her ugliness and her meanness—you created. Yes, each of you. You’re complicit in the acts of evil that made her who she is. You’re complicit because you’ve let yourself be comforted by lies. You’re complicit because all of those comforts you have in-zone come at a price, and Violet is one of many of us who’ve paid the bill.
You want to argue with me. But you don’t. There’s a lesson in this. Sleep on it tonight.
You don’t argue with the ones holding the guns.
June held up a hand and Vic grabbed it, pulling her to a stand. Wes sensed that this was a performance of age, a way to humanize her, make her kindly. He suspected that June, when it counted, needed no help springing to action.
“Well,” she said. “That ended on an unfriendly note.” She laughed. She brushed her bottom off briskly. She pointed. “Tonight we’ll gather at the river, as the old song goes. We’re smoking two pigs for y’all. That’s about as friendly as it comes, you ask me. You’ll be able to meet our people. We’re good people.”
Wendy coughed.
“We’re good people,” June repeated more softly. “Any rate, you have the afternoon. Rest up. Keep to Town Hall. If you go off wandering, one of your minders will escort you back.”
She and Vic left. The battered remnants of the OLE group—Wes, Marta, Edie, Jesse, Anastasia, Berto, Lee, Tia, Wendy, and Ken—exchanged glances, dazed.
“Not that any of you has the gumption to form an escape plan,” Andy said. “But I’d advise against it. Randall and I will be right outside.”
They left. Then—for the first time in what felt like weeks—there was silence. Enough quiet for Wes to hear the roar of his own blood flow. We can’t waste this time, he thought. We mustn’t. There might not be another moment like this one. Another opportunity to talk, unwatched.
Marta was clutching something in her fist. Staring at her hand, as if she couldn’t believe what was there. Wes lifted his brow.
She opened her fingers. Just a Smokeless. Still shrink-wrapped in its Canteen box.
Ten
A gorgeous night. Brisk. Clear sky. The stars, as promised in OLE brochures, were so prevalent as to form a haze overhead, and down on Earth, lanterns strung across the footbridges made pretty reflections in the steady-flowing Little Tennessee. The residents of Ruby City numbered in the several hundred, and they settled along the banks of the river on blankets and in fold-up chairs, unpacking plates and glasses from baskets, looking, to Edie, utterly familiar—like every group you’d ever seen gathered for Wall Day fireworks or a street festival in the artsy part of the city. There were a few bonfires. A plank stage where a bluegrass trio played. The only thing missing was a hayride for the kids.
And kids, come to think of it. The youngest people in attendance were in their mid-teens, at least. Maybe the children were being watched somewhere away from the adult fun. Maybe their parents didn’t trust the hostages around them.
Edie mentioned their absence to Jesse, and he shrugged. “Didn’t notice,” he said.
“But now that it’s been pointed out to you?”
He shrugged again. “That’s the least of my concern, if I’m going to be honest, babe.”
There had been a few moments earlier today, after Andy and Randall left the OLE group alone in the Town Hall, when the ten hostages had tried to make a plan. To think. Wes Feingold kept saying that: We’ve got to think! Thinking didn’t seem to be this bunch’s long suit. Edie herself was just so goddamn tired. She wanted to lie down. Her head ached. Her feet and back. Two men holding guns were posted outside the only door. What was the point?
“This thing at the river tonight,” Wes said. “Maybe some of us could slip off. Get help.”
Jesse said, “Well, if you’re volunteering, go right ahead.”
Wes shook his head, mouth pursed with disgust. “Screw you, man.”
Anastasia, lying on her hip with her palm tucked under the weight of her head, spoke without opening her eyes. “You’re an idiot, Jesse. Have you paid any attention? Wes is the one they want. How long do you think the rest of us will last here if he takes off?”
Jesse surled up. “I was making a joke.”
“You’re a joke,” Tia said. It was the first time, since the kidnapping, that Edie had heard their other OLE guide speak. She had wondered about Tia and her intentions—wondered if she was really as innocent in all of this as she seemed to be, or if she’d been installed among the rest as a spy, and would report their every word back to Andy. But Edie didn’t think the look of wounded shock on Tia’s face last night could be manufactured, nor the fury in her eyes each time Andy piped up with one of his snide speeches. “Shut the fuck up for once. I’ve been wanting to say that to you for three weeks now. Shut. The. Fuck. Up.”
Jesse recoiled in shock, and the corners of Wes’s mouth twitched.
Edie, irritated at them all, grabbed her pack and staked out a spot as far from the others as she could find. She lay on the plank floor, facing a window, letting the sun warm her face. Before she could decide to do it, she was sleeping.
Now—rested, full of food—she could recognize how stupid they had been to indulge in bickering and even sleeping when so much was at stake. There was a new set of armed guards tonight, fresh-faced in clean uniforms, but they were young and bright-eyed, like the ones who’d been tending those flowers earlier in the day, and their watch over the hostages was characterized by that same lighthearted half-attention. They wore their guns on their backs as they ate pulled pork off plates. They filled their glasses with cloudy beer from a cask, laughed uproariously at one another’s stories. It wouldn’t be hard to escape their notice, but to what end? Run into the woods—no water, no Stamp, no sense of direction? It would be a suicide mission.
There was a sensation—an impression?—that Edie had been mulling over since awakening in early evening, as the sun was setting. Something nagging at her. She had pretended to keep sleeping so she could think more about it. Isolate it. Make sense of it. And finally it occurred to her: admiration. Admiration for June. She’d shaken her head roughly, as if she could jar the feeling loose that way, but it didn’t budge. Despite herself, she admired the small woman who commanded the guns pointing at them. She was fascinated by her.
Which was to say, despite her fears about what the people of Ruby City intended for her and the rest of her fellow hostages, and despite her suspicion that they’d squandered their one chance at staging an escape, she found herself being lulled: by the festive mood among the Ruby City residents, by the beauty of the evening. By the plate of food she held: shreds of juicy smoked pork, some kind of salad with pickled beets and a bitter green, grilled slices of squash, fry bread. The bluegrass trio—men on standing bass and fiddle, a woman on banjo—played with spirit, and Edie had to make a conscious effort to stop her foot from tapping along with the beat.
Jesse also seemed to be charmed—or perhaps he’d decided that enthusiasm was the way to ingratiate himself with his captors. He slurped down pints of the molasses-tasting beer until his face flushed red, then joined the trio onstage with his ukulele. The crowd met this imposition of his with good nature, clapping a little, and the pretty young woman on banjo moved over to give him room. They played a couple of songs, up-tempo numbers, Jesse picking along in the background. Then they took a break. The four drew together to confer. When they pulled back from their conference, Jesse had assumed the lead singer’s spot center stage, and the fiddler sketched out a jaunty four-note intro before the other instruments joined in.
Jesse sang, “I’ve got this feeling and I don’t want to hide it.”
Edie glanced furtively around, pink with embarrassment, and caught Wes Feingold’s eye. His expression was kind; it was a relief to be spared his judgment of Jesse, to not have to do the work of withstanding it on her lover’s behalf. Wes lifted his hand, waved a little. Raised his eyebrows. Edie nodded a little and beckoned him over.
The Salt Line Page 18
