Holmes shook his head and sneered. “It’s always something with you. This morning you were complaining to the guards. Now you’re claiming you can do anything if we get you some drugs. As far as your pain goes, I don’t give a fuck! Pain is something everyone must deal with, and those that deal with it the best will succeed the most. Obviously, you’re one of those people that can’t cope.”
“I can, Master Holmes. I swear I can cope with the pain.”
Holmes grinned as he tightened his grip on the wooden handle. “All right,” he stated, lifting the sledgehammer high above Robert’s head. “Let’s see if you can deal with this!”
Screaming like a medieval warrior, Holmes shifted his weight forward and swung the mallet’s iron head. Robert raised his hands and tried to deflect the blow, but his reflexes were too slow and Holmes’s efforts were too determined. The hammer smashed into the bridge of Robert’s nose, splintering the delicate bones of his face, not stopping until the cold steel collided with the blood-soaked floor.
“Can you handle that?” Holmes mocked. “Or do you need something for the pain?”
Gasping for air, Robert opened his eyes and lifted his head from the floor with a terrified shriek. He gazed around the room, searching for Holmes with every ounce of energy that remained in his body, but the powerful man was nowhere to be found. The tiny cabin was empty, except for the sound of a feminine voice that was urging him to lie down.
“Honey,” Tonya Edwards pleaded as she stroked her husband’s damp hair, “you were just dreaming! It was just a bad dream.”
Robert tried to catch his breath as he glanced at his wife’s face, but the image of Holmes’s hammer still lingered. The dream had been so intense, so real, that his entire body was dripping with perspiration and his heart was pounding with urgency.
“Shhh,” she begged, “let me take care of you.”
It took a moment to settle him down, but Robert finally did as she requested. He eased his weary head to the cabin’s floor, then stared into Tonya’s dark eyes, searching for answers. “How did you get in here? How did you find me?”
Tonya continued to stroke her husband’s hair, doing everything in her power to calm him. “You collapsed when the guards brought you back from the field, and they didn’t want you to die. They brought me here to help you. I’ve been waiting for you to wake up ever since.”
Robert’s eyes filled with tears as he tried to make sense of it all. The abduction, the brutality, the labor. What had he done to deserve this? He had never lived the life of a saint, but he had never done anything to warrant this. He had never killed, robbed, or harmed anyone. In fact, he had never purposely hurt anybody in his entire life. And what about his wife? Why was she here? She was pregnant, for God’s sake! What could she have possibly done to merit her imprisonment on the Plantation?
“Sweetie, did you hear me?” Tonya sobbed. “Can you hear what I’m saying?”
Robert did his best to focus on her lips, yet he had no idea what she had said. “How did you get in here?” he repeated, not remembering his earlier question.
She swallowed deeply, trying to stay strong for him. “The guards brought me in to take care of you. They want me to try and fix your leg.”
“But you’re not a doctor.”
Tonya smiled, and the small movement of her lips temporarily lifted his spirits. “I know I’m not a doctor, but I’m the only person who’s allowed to help. The guards told me what needed to be done, but I didn’t want to do it until you woke up. I wanted to get your approval first.”
“My approval?” Robert didn’t like the sound of that. If it was a simple medical procedure like putting on a bandage, Tonya would’ve done it while he was asleep. Since she wanted to ask his permission, he knew it was something serious. “What do you have in mind?”
Tonya clambered to her feet-a difficult task because of her pregnancy-and waddled to the bench where her husband was currently elevating his leg. Carefully, she sat next to his swollen limb, trying not to jostle the bench with her body weight. Then, with the tenderness of a new mother, she placed her left hand on his injured ankle.
“Robert, the guard told me you have a displaced fracture. That means your bone was broken and the pieces shifted away from each other.”
“The guard told you? Is he a doctor?”
His wife shook her head as she pointed to his leg. “No, he’s not a doctor, but if you look at it, it’s kind of obvious.” Tonya took a deep breath before continuing. “Your leg’s pointing straight ahead, but your foot is turned way to the right.”
Robert didn’t need to look at his injury. The severity of his pain let him know that something was seriously wrong. “How are you supposed to fix it?”
Tonya gulped before answering. “The guard told me if you want the bone to heal properly, I need to . . . um . . . straighten it out.”
He was going to ask how she was going to do that, but he knew the answer. She had to twist his foot until everything was aligned in his leg. “Do you trust his advice?”
She nodded. “Remember when I slipped on the ice and broke my finger two years ago? The first thing the doctor did was pop it back into place. That way, it was able to grow back together.” She bent her right index finger back and forth. “And see? It turned out just fine.”
Robert agreed with her logic. If he wanted the ability to walk without a limp, he knew that something needed to be done immediately. “Do you think you can handle this? I know how squeamish you can be.”
“Yeah, I can handle it,” she said, smiling. It was a smile that said,
If I’m doing it for you, I can handle anything.
Robert appreciated the sentiment. “I want you to promise me something, though. When you do this, do it quick, like removing a Band-Aid. Just make one decisive move and get it over with, okay?”
“You got it.” Tonya stared at him, wanting to say something to her husband, but the appropriate words escaped her. “Are you ready?”
“Not really.” He laughed through gritted teeth, “but I have a feeling I could never be ready.”
She grinned, admiring his courageous sense of humor. “I think this will be easier if we did it on the flat ground. That way, I’ll be able to anchor your upper leg with my body weight.”
Robert closed his eyes as his wife lifted his swollen limb off of the bench and lowered it to the cabin’s dirt floor. He winced as she placed it on the hard ground, but the pain wasn’t nearly as bad as he had expected. “So far, so good.”
Tonya leaned forward and gently kissed her husband on his forehead. After whispering soft words of encouragement, she turned away from him, resting her weight on his left knee, anchoring his upper leg in place. Without stopping to think, she leaned toward his broken limb and grabbed his foot. Then, with a quick burst, she rotated his foot to the left. The violent twist filled the cabin with a series of sounds-first the grotesque snap of his leg as his bones shifted back into place, then the heart-stopping shriek of a man in agony.
It was a sound that would be repeated by several prisoners in the coming days.
CHAPTER 18
THE
last thing on Payne’s mind was dinner, but Greene insisted that they stop for something to eat. They had to, he said. His stomach demanded it. As a compromise, Payne pulled into the first drive-through he could find and ordered several ham and cheese po’boys, a local specialty.
“So,” said Payne as they waited for their food, “where to next?”
Greene thought about it for several seconds. “The first thing we’re gonna have to do is talk to some of my boys from the Quarter. They’d be more aware of things on the street than me.”