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 lullaby. 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 as well, 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. 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 whiskey, 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 had taken 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 had climbed out of.
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 furthest 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 else 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 lost.” 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—”