The Captive, page 9
I am panting. The pain was terrible, more than physical, and it has left me weak and shivering, even though the sun has heated the cage to a point where it is too hot to touch the ceiling. I feel drained, and my thirst is so great that I feel my tongue swelling. My mind breaks into pieces for a moment, and then it reassembles as I hear people coming out the back door of the house. The old woman and the young man. They come to the back of the truck, she talking hysterically, he trying to calm her in what he supposes is her senile aberration.
"No! No! I tell you it understands you. I tole it to turn the water pail over, you know, like you do with animals, just feedin' and waterin' them, and it reaches out and turns it over as neat as you please."
"Now Gra'ma," the young man says patiently. "It's a beast, a bear. It can't understand. What it did was just a coincidence." He looks into the cage, sees the bucket sitting up. If Barry had not disturbed me, I could have turned it back over, perhaps confused them both. But the old woman will not be put down.
"I know you don't believe me, but it's true. It's true. And it looked at me. It knew it'd give itself away." She shook her twisted old fist at me.
"All right, Gra'ma, it's true." The young man stands, hands on hips, head cocked to one side, looking at me where I crouch with my arm over my face. He picks up the hose and presses his thumb over the end so it squirts a hard stream. Some of it hits my head, and I have the impulse very strongly to raise my face and get some of the water, but this time I am prepared, and I keep my head down. He squirts the water around, over the top of the cage to cool it off, finally into the bucket with a spanging sound.
"Have to pull the truck up farther. Sun's gettin' on it," the young man says.
His grandmother looks at him with hard eyes. She doesn't say more, just turns away and hobbies to the house, disappearing through the back door.
***
The next day the people come again. This time I am in the open and can see them, perceive them with my spatial sense all around the truck, feel their eyes from the raised platform of the haywagon where they are allowed to stand after they pay their money, listen to their gabble as they say the same things over and over, passing through my perceptions with an infinite boredom. I try amusing myself by classifying their perceivable characteristics without raising my head to actually see them: here is a couple, smell of pancakes and grease and cow manure, children with voices an octave higher than the adults, slurred language usual among these people, the usual curses, contractions, exclamations, wearing overalls, print dresses, work shoes on both man and wife; local farmers taking an hour off. Class I.
Class II is the city folk who smell of cigarettes and sometimes of beer or liquor, have cleaner clothes and shoes, speak a harder, flatter dialect with fewer contractions and more abundant imagery. Often the woman will be wearing some perfume that smells metallic.
Class III is evidently a higher economic class, smells of soap and cologne, sometimes of leather, speaks a more elevated and precise language. But it is a bore, and I allow myself to drift away into a haze where I can rest, daydream, and keep only the barest minimum of sense available for the most dangerous emergencies.
Once a child gets hold of some rocks and hurls them at the cage, calling me to wake up. The loud clangs startle me half awake so that I raise my head briefly and the people on the wagon say, "Ooh," and "Ahh," to see me start awake. But I disappoint them by covering my head again. Not more than two or three seconds later, however, I wake fully. Someone has screamed. And beyond that, the voice arouses something in me. I know the voice.
"It's him," the voice is screaming. "It's him!" The voice screams over and over again from somewhere beyond the haywagon. I stretch my perception, but only make out the confusing outline of a mass of people waiting at the bottom of the stairway that leads to the wagon. I try to refine on it, not raising my head. The voice cries out to something in me far back, something small but powerful, deep down. I reach for it and the memory comes up with a tall angular shadow, warm arms. Aunt Cat.
***
Night again. Life is becoming difficult in a way I would never have imagined if it had not happened. I am apparently to be plagued from within and without until I am well enough to get out of this situation. Barry will not stay silent, knowing that I cannot, perhaps, destroy him without hurting myself terribly. The ghost, if that is the way to put it, of Little Robert annoys me with his emotional outcries and ridiculous feeling of loss over Aunt Cat, who would probably kill him if he could reappear in her world, and the old woman, mother of Big Belly, irritates me constantly by being always somewhere in my perceptual field, watching me for signs of intelligence, waiting for something she can point to. I think she must never sleep, never eat. She is at the back door, just inside the screen, or she is at an upstairs window, or she is at the door of the tool shed beneath the elm trees, always somewhere, waiting. I find it difficult to concentrate, hard to draw in any food without her seeing the unbelievable sight of a rabbit trying to climb up into the truck so I can eat him. I have eaten half of the dog food, fly blown and hard, out of necessity. I am about willing to go along with Barry and do anything to get out of here.
I am almost asleep, the full moon making its pattern of bars on the floor of the iron cage and across my pelt. I am stiff with keeping curled up all day to hide my face, and now to relax in the darkness, I roll over on my back and stretch out, letting my head fall back so my chin is pointing at the sky, or rather at the ceiling of the cage, and the moon is settling quietly on my closed eyelids like the feeling of close and tiny wings. The sound of a car in the lane disturbs me. It is so late there should not be a car. The engine turns off and I hear a car door being opened and not closed. Then for a long time there is nothing. I doze off. I come back and search for the old woman. She is back in the upstairs window. I cannot tell if she is asleep. I begin to sweep the area and am startled to find a person under the trees near the garden fence. I raise my head to fix the figure in my perception. A tall, angular figure in a woman's hat that is pulled down across the right side of the face. Then a chill fixes me to the spot. She is carrying a shotgun at the ready like a hunter with the quarry in sight. Is it Aunt Cat? Of course. What else. That demented woman is going to kill me. I leap to my feet, fixing her figure in my perception and now seeing her begin the final stalk across the moonlit grass, emerging in a slow and determined walk into the bright moonlight. No mistake. I begin to scream. Scream! Wake everyone. Get them out here. Hey! Hey! Someone is trying to kill your prize bear. Scream! Scream! Where is the goddam guard? From the dark upstairs window the ancient hag calls out encouragement. "Kill it! Kill it!"
She raises the gun. I fix on her and exert my will. The gun wavers, but not far. It blasts fire into the night, seemingly right at me. The charge of buckshot whangs and whistles off the cage bars to my right and into the window of the truck. She raises the gun again. Why can't I put more force into my will to divert her aim? I feel weak. I press against her will with all my will, and her gun wavers again just as she pulls the trigger. Wham! Again the pellets sing around me. I feel a hot pain in my unbroken leg. One pellet has lodged in my ankle. I concentrate all my force on the woman so that her body is wavering, but she is reloading the double barrels, snapping the barrels up again and raising the shotgun to her shoulder, as if from long practice she is capable of doing this deed in a howling storm, under water, when asleep, after death itself. I push against her will again, forcing every ounce of my will against hers, but there is something there that prevents my changing her will to my own, something I feel like a shield, so that I can only just touch her oddly, make her waver but not change her act. Just as her finger tightens on the trigger, I fall to the floor of the cage, realizing I have not shifted her aim enough.
Wham! Again the pellets go singing into and around the cage like hornets, and this time I feel two hard hits in my back. Not deep, for they are ricochets, but this mad woman is going to kill me, for I cannot change her aim with any certainty, and I am a bear in a shooting gallery, going back and forth, up and down in my confined space, trying to keep away from the full charge which will inevitably kill me.
Wham!
For the love of God, where is everybody?
And above it all and through my own terror is the voice of the hag in the high window, "Kill it! Kill it!" she sings like a chant, while the murdering woman standing in full moonlight has snapped the barrels open again and is putting more shells in. I touch her hard with my will and she drops one shell, staggering as if in a strong wind. I can deflect her actions a little. I wait until she tries to load the barrel again, hit her again, she wavers and goes down to one knee, picking up the shell and jamming it in before I can gather my concentration. Behind me I hear the back door open and slam shut. Thank God, someone is coming out. The woman remains on one knee, propping the shotgun up for two careful shots. I hurl all my will at her, seeing the barrels waver, but not enough.
Wham! I have thrown myself to the end of the cage, hoping the gun will not waver back that way, and the iron spangs and sings with the pellets. I am not hit. I turn to face the gun to concentrate, but too late.
Wham!
I open my eyes, not hit again, wondering what has happened. The young man has tackled the woman with the gun, and they are rolling on the ground. Now he has the gun away from her, has thrown it to one side, is trying to hold her. The back door opens and bangs shut again, and the fat boy, son of the dead man, comes out.
"Hey, Orv, get a piece of rope or something to tie up this crazy woman," the young man hollers, wrestling with the tall woman who is apparently almost as strong as he is. The fat boy runs for the barn. I hear the hag in the window cackling now, screeching and crying out to her grandson to let the woman finish the job. Then the woman puts a foot behind the young man's leg and pushes him down. Trying to break his fall, he loses hold of her and she picks up the shotgun again. As he gets up and reaches for her, she swings it like a baseball bat and the barrels clang dully as they connect with the man's, head. He goes down flat, stunned. I hear the fat boy running back and shouting, and now the hag is screeching for someone else. The tall woman, who has lost her hat, stands uncertainly in the moonlight for a moment, then runs off into the shadows, carrying the gun with her. In seconds I hear the car in the lane start up and roar away with spinning wheels. Another man who has just arrived and the fat boy are helping the nephew get up. It is over, for a time anyway. I sit back in the cage and feel about for my wounds. The pellets in my back are nothing, like bee stings, but the one in my ankle is against bone and is painful. But there are no others that I can feel. The most terrifying thing about the incident is that I could not move the woman's will. It was as if she were behind some kind of shield through which I could only touch tentatively rather than simply taking charge of the mind as I am usually able to do.
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.
