As the creature moved, the branch swayed over the rock ledge that bordered the river, a coercion of grace. Pia shifted in her sleep. The owl’s head swiveled until it looked at us or past us with glowing yellow eyes. Unimpressed, it turned away, lifted its mantle of wings, and flew. It vanished among the branches, then reappeared as a black silhouette that skimmed across soft night clouds. I felt myself flying with it, and for those moments I was free of pain, free of my past, free of any fear. We were going to make it out of this place, I felt sure of it. The sweetness of the night informed me, the owl told me in its way; even the drumming pain in my arm declared that my living blood still pulsed through me.
I don’t recall falling asleep. I only remember being up with the bird, soaring and hunting, until—with all the logic of dreams—I was back in art school. Massachusetts College of Art, Boston, 1995. It was late at night and I was alone in one of the fine arts studios. Dressed in paint-stained jeans and a T-shirt and stupidly high on too much coffee, I slathered oils on a canvas as tall as myself. I was deep in that stop-time thing when nothing else mattered but painting. The delirium of youth informed me that the parade of beautiful paintings I would create stretched out forever and without end. No death. Just this. I was joyous. I inhaled the turpentine fumes as I worked, a smell that forever became inseparable from elation.
But even in dream logic something felt off. The smell wasn’t quite right. What I detected was something ranker, less chemical based.
More human.
The insides of my eyelids glowed a roseate pink. By degrees I came to understand that morning had arrived, as much as my beautiful dream wanted me back. I allowed into my reverie a sensation of being observed. The hair lifted up on the back of my neck.
I let my eyes open to slits. My mouth and throat were parched; my lips cracked apart slowly. I had fallen asleep propped on my good elbow, head and back against the tree, legs splayed out. A foot below my eyes, hundreds of tiny red ants swarmed around a neat cone of sandy dirt near the coiled, stiff fingers of my broken arm. Pia’s pile of rocks sat several feet away, utterly out of reach.
I heard a cracking noise. A sound my dad used to make as he crushed two walnuts in one strong hand. Someone chewed something; crunched, openmouthed. A sniffle. Rachel stuttered awake, but I watched her settle down, feigning sleep. Her eyeballs jerked under her closed eyes. Pia slept on, her flat, muscled belly rising and falling, her bandage slipping off her ghastly wound. I closed my eyes again.
I inhaled a rancid smell of sweat and rotted cloth.
Heard a rustling sound.
A click.
“Rise and shine, little ladies.” Simone’s gristly voice. “Day’s wasting away.”
Monday
June 25
44
Simone squatted on a rock ledge behind and just over us, her gnarled feet spilling out of tire-rubber shoes, her dirty leather skirt tucked up under her. Nests of hair twined with bits of bone and tiny pinecones snarled from under the orange ski cap. Pendulous breasts swung free under her stretched-out sweater. Eyebrows working, she peered down at some sort of nutmeat in her palm that she picked at delicately with grimed fingers, some of the nails so long they curved down and in, wedged with triangles of dirt. A tidy pile of shells was arranged in front of her, next to Rory’s gun, which lay pointing in our direction, so close I could smell the cold copper, the snap of gunpowder. She didn’t look at us.
“Here’s a question for you, my friends: Do you have any idea how many times I could have killed you in the past twenty-four hours? Anybody?”
Rachel pushed herself to a sitting position. Pulling up her sagging bandage, Pia winced as she turned toward Simone. I jimmied myself up with my working arm, in the process trying to edge myself closer to the pile of stones. Ridiculous.
Coyly, she shook back her hair. It rattled with forest detritus. “Yes, it is a rhetorical question, which means, of course, no, you don’t have to answer it. Granted. But let’s look at the facts. I do have a gun pointed at you, which—well, I think—demands a higher level of politeness.” She lifted her eyes from her snack and lasered them into me. “Winifred, what are your calculations? How many times could I have blown you to bits, say, or cut you all to ribbons like your pitiful raft?” She nibbled a morsel of nutmeat, white teeth flashing in her weather-beaten face. “Thoughts?”
“I don’t know.”
“My opportunities were limitless, dear ladies. On your stupid log raft. All night long by the light of the moon. Early this morning. But I am discreet. Everything has its time and place, especially death.” She picked up the gun and stood to her full height, shells tumbling from her tattered skirt. Good God, I’d forgotten how big she was, all over but especially through the shoulders and chest. “The fact is, I thought the river would do me the honor, but no. Here you are, so, I still have homework to do.” Her arms hung by her sides, one stretched-out sleeve obscuring the gun.
“We never did anything to you,” Rachel said. “Just let us go.”
Simone’s mouth dropped open. “Never did anything to me?” She raised the gun and trained it at Rachel’s head. Eyes wide, Rachel scuttled backward on the dirt. Simone tilted her wrist skyward and fired.