It’s dusk when he rises out of bed, takes Dolphie from the fruit basket, and walks downstairs. His mother and father are in the kitchen, flirting and cooking dinner for the guests. He smells wafts of browned hamburger meat and steamed broccoli. As he opens the small door under the staircase, he overhears Rufus say, "Why don’t you grab holt of my stick and see what you’re in for tonight, you old stinky woman."
The downstairs runs the length and breadth of the hundred and eighty-six year-old house, unique to the island as the vast majority of residences sit several feet above ground to protect them from the flooding nor’easters and the storm surges of hurricanes. Consequently, this basement has been underwater numerous times since its construction.
It served as slave quarters in the 1830’s. Servant quarters at the turn of the century. And one of the most extensive wine cellars in North Carolina in the 1920’s. Ten years ago, Rufus wired two of the rooms for electricity.
The rest are lit by candle or not at all.
The stone in one of the rooms is charred black all the way up to the ceiling.
In another, the rock is stained burgundy.
Though Luther has spent many hours down here, he’s still prone to losing his way, especially when he ventures beyond the cluster of rooms near the stairs. Two thirds of the basement lies behind the staircase, a maze of confusing passageways that were lined with wine racks eighty years ago. Broken glass and pieces of cork can still be found in some of the alcoves.
One of the Kites’ favorite pastimes is playing hide and seek with the failed converts. The game is started by turning the guest out of their cell and spotting them a two minute head start into the labyrinth. Then the entire Kite family sets out in search of them. Sometimes they play with headlamps or candles. Sometimes they play in the dark.
Because Rufus has never trusted a body of water to keep a body hidden, all of his failed experiments are stored down here.
It’s deathly silent as Luther arrives at Vi’s cell and unlocks the door. She sits naked against the wall, snoring, the baby asleep on her chest, wrapped in her T-shirt, the candles all but melted away.
He drops the stuffed animal on the floor.
Vi wakes, startled.
"I want to hold Max," Luther says.
"Why?"
"I just want to."
"He’s sleeping."
"I won’t hold him long, and I’ll be careful."
Luther steps forward, leans down, and lifts the baby out of her arms.
"Support his head," Vi says.
Luther cradles the baby’s head in the crux of his arm.
Vi takes the pillow from behind her back and hides her nakedness.
"What’s today," she asks.
"Why?"
"I want to know my son’s birthday."
"July twenty-ninth."
"Thank you."
Luther stands there for several moments, gazing into the face of the sleeping infant.
"You’re never going to let us leave, are you?" Vi says.
"That’s up to my father."
Luther bends down, hands Max back to Vi.
"That’s for him," he says, motioning to the stuffed dolphin on the dirt floor.
"What’s his name?"
"Dolphie."
"Thank you, Luther."
He nods, turns to leave.
"I saw what you did to that family in Davidson," Vi says. "And their two boys. Why are you nice to my baby?"
"I don’t know."
It is one of the rare truthful moments of Luther’s life, and he leaves, trembling.
# # #
On a humid summer night, just before bedtime, Rufus walked into the kitchen of his silent house and poured himself a glass of buttermilk. Then he strolled the narrow hallway between the kitchen and the foyer and unlocked the small door beneath the staircase. As he descended into the basement, sounds of retching and agony emanated from the inhabited cells. He took a seat on the bottom step, the dirt floor cool beneath his feet, and sipped his cold, thick milk.
That would be Andy groaning and Beth sobbing between bouts of nausea. Their heads probably felt like they were imploding. Nothing to do for them really but let them ride it out. They’d be good as new in a few days.
Rufus wiped his milk mustache.
Baby Max was screaming now, fighting mad at having been woken again.
Yesterday, the first of August, Rufus had stopped dispensing drugs. The haloperidol, Ativan, nitrous oxide—it all abruptly ended. Vi had been weaned off the narcotics during the summer leading up to her delivery, but Andy and Beth had, with brief exceptions, been very fucked-up since mid-November. Rufus had never kept anyone on the needle this long, and though he’d anticipated this brutal withdrawal, the payoff would be well worth the risk.
For the last nine months, he’d dedicated a minimum of six hours per day to working with his patients, and their sessions with the mind machine and drug-enhanced hypnosis had been wonderfully productive. In addition, they’d all watched countless hours of home movies, and with the aid of laughing gas, had begun to see the humor and innocuousness in violence.
Andy in particular seemed to be moving beyond the illusions that plagued him.
As Rufus climbed the stairs back up to his bedroom on the second floor, where his angel, Maxine, was already fast asleep, he realized he hadn’t been this excited and hopeful since Orson.
# # #
I woke to a gentle, rocking motion. There was light here, more warmth than that awful darkness. I detected the cry of gulls, slap of water falling back into itself, and the imperceptible whisper of wind moving through open space.
My eyes opened. I found myself sitting in the cramped cabin of a boat, Violet King across from me, a baby in her arms, Beth Lancing at my left.
Duct tape had been applied to our mouths.
Vi was awake, Beth still unconscious, her chin resting against her collarbone. I went to shake her awake but couldn’t move, my wrists, ankles, and torso having also been thoroughly duct-taped to the high-backed chair.
I looked across the table at Vi and raised my eyebrows. She responded with a headshake—she knew as little as I concerning where or why we were here.
We sat there, immobilized, confused, watching the time on the stove clock creep toward noon. Through an ovular window above, I could see the tinted blue of the sky. Sleeping bags and wrinkled clothing had been stowed in the V-berth.
Barely audible voices emanated from the deck.
I tried to think back, to claim some recent memory, but could not.
The cabin door opened. Luther ducked and stepped down inside.
"Gonna need a hand with them, Pop!"
One by one, we were lifted in our chairs and carried up onto the small deck.
The day was brilliant and hot.
Maxine Kite lounged in a beach chair, in unabashed oiled nakedness, her face hidden beneath the brim of a straw hat, so emaciated a breeze could’ve lifted her into the sky like a dandelion seed. She was engrossed in a book called At Home in Mitford and seemingly oblivious to our presence.
Our chairs were arranged three abreast and portside on the deck of the twenty-four foot Scout Abaco 242.
The clouds—puffy white monsters—went back innumerably into the horizon, land nowhere in sight.
Luther watched from the cockpit, stretched out in the bucket seat behind the steering wheel and sheltered from the breeze by the wraparound windshield, a bag of Lemonheads in his lap.
Sweat trickled into my eyes.
The pasty chicken legs of Rufus Kite propelled him toward us. He grinned, toothless, his pale, hairless chest exposed by a chaotic Hawaiian shirt. We could see ourselves in the huge mirrored lenses of his sunglasses.
"Been a pleasure knowing you three," he said. "I swear it has."
I thought I sensed our fate in his tone of voice.
"Y’all are sitting there looking at me, cognizant for the first time in months, and don’t think I can’t feel your hatred. You think I’m a monster. That I’m cruel and indifferent. Think I don’t have your best interests at heart."