Chapter 3

"You got to stay quiet," Arley said. "You don't, ol' Bigdog yonder might chew off a leg. Course, I don't 'spect you to bust outa' them ropes, but just in case, remember that Bigdog's watchin' mighty close."

Heather's wrists ached where the ropes bit into them, but she didn't complain. She watched his back, covered now by the old blue shirt, and the crisscrossing of his overall straps. He had some kind of lamp on his head, fastened to a billed cap, and from the white flame that hissed in the reflector, he could see his way into the deep, thick woods. Heather watched him out of sight in the blackness and, when he was gone, whispered to her sister, "Honey, can you wiggle over here?"

Honey said, "No, he's got me tied to a post, too. Besides, there's that dog."

"We've got to get away from here," Heather said sharply. "We just have to. He-he may even kill us, rather than let us get back to the police and turn him in for rape."

Honey said, "I don't know how we'll get away. I mean, all tied up like this, while Arley is out hunting. Besides, even if it wasn't for the dog, I'm not all that sure how to find the road again, are you?"

Heather struggled with her ropes, but they only bit deeper into her skin, and she stopped twisting at them. "N-no, I'm not sure, either. There were so many twists and turns, but we have to do something, we have to try."

"I'm just glad Arley left the rags burning," Honey said. "They don't smell very good, but they're keeping most of the mosquitoes off. I'm kind of glad Arley let us put on some clothes, too."

Heather said, "Don't call him Arley-Arley-as if he was a friend!"

"Well," Honey answered, "he got pretty friendly with both of us."

"That-that's nothing to make jokes about," Heather snapped. "You could get pregnant and. . . . "

"Not unless your pills don't work," Honey said. "I've been taking them for a couple of months, just in case. And, what do you know, I did get raped."

"You're-you took my pills? Honey Hyatt, you're not the girl I've known all these years! I don't know what's happened to you, but this is no joke; we're in a very serious position. He-this man is brutal, savage. We should never have asked that other man in the truck; we should have just kept walking, looking for the cabin to rent."

"Arley called him by name," Honey said, "called his Artis. They must be brothers because the names are too freaky for them not to be. He really goofed us up, all right. I mean-leading us most of the way through those woods and carrying the bags and all, as if he was being a real polite you-all type of gentleman. The bastard, he knew what would happen to us here."

"Honey! Such language. I'm surprised at you."

"Well," the girl said, "that's what he is, but I'm not all that uptight about Arley doing it to me. It had to happen sometime, and it felt pretty good. Now I know I'm not frigid, or unable to reach an orgasm, or any of that stuff they scare you with in school."

Heather worked at her bonds again, tugged without much hope at the post that held her at one end of the porch. "Aren't you even trying, Honey?"

"Okay," Honey said, and dutifully twisted at her own ropes.

The girl wasn't nearly so frightened as she ought to be, Heather thought. Did losing her virginity do that to Honey, somehow numbing her better feelings and making her more a creature of the senses? Arousal was still too new to Heather to be dissecting its motivations and anticipating its goals. If she couldn't control her own topsy-turvy emotions, how could she expect a child like Honey to do so?

"I-we can just put all this unpleasantness behind us," Heather said. "When it's all done, we won't ever mention it again. It wasn't our fault, and nobody can possibly blame us for-for participating in such an orgy. You and I were both forced into it."

Honey stopped working at her ropes and just sat calmly on the porch, her legs crossed under her in Indian fashion. She said, "Tell me, Heather, did you and Vic ever make it like that? Like you did with Arley, I mean? I heard you groan and kind of scream with Arley, but I never heard a sound back in the apartment when you and Vic went to bed."

"Honey!" Heather felt blood darken her face. "Honey Hyatt, that's a terribly thing to-to ask anybody, much less your own sister! I'm ashamed of you, really ashamed. Just because you've been raped, that doesn't mean you have to turn into a dirty-minded girl."

Honey said, "You really don't have to answer. I'll bet you never swung with Vic."

"If I could reach you," Heather said, "I'd slap your face."

Honey giggled. "But you did swing with Arley, just like I did. So maybe it's not all that bad for us here. I mean, we're hiding out, like we came down here to do. For sure, nobody would ever think of looking for us out here on the edge of the swamp. And we're getting some kind of education out of it, so why not go along with the guy? If we're really nice to Arley, he's bound to ease up sooner or later, and then we can cut out-if we still want to."

Heather shifted her legs to get more comfortable on the porch. "Of course we'll still want to. I can't even pretend to-to enjoy sharing his lust. That was something freakish today with him. It must have been some kind of combination of fear and my protective instincts and-and-well, a lot of things."

"Sure," Honey said, "and I was pretty smashed."

Heather sat quietly, listening to the noises in the woods. A breeze moved off the river she could not see from the house, and a nighthawk cried mournfully from some hidden clearing. Marching almost up to the yard, water oaks and pines were so thick they made a solid black shadow. Scattered among them would be chinquapin and magnolia trees, she knew, remembering the hours at her grandma's knee, and the tales Grandma told of aristocrats and woods' runners, of honest folk and white trash.

There'd been other stories, too, creepy things whispered of moonshine stills and lynchings, legends that seemed far more real here and now, as Heather sat bound helplessly upon a cabin porch and stared into a night peopled with terrors and garlanded by the gray ghosts of Spanish moss.

When her sister spoke, Heather flinched. Honey said, "Arley lives off the land, he says. Grows vegetables in back, and hunts, fishes in or out of session. He makes whiskey, too."

"I don't care what he does or how he lives," Heather said. "I only want him to let us go. Honey, you didn't hear the stories Grandma told, the things she said about the red-necks down here. They're dangerous, bad, they can kill people without the slightest compunction. You saw how he slapped me, and you know he'd have hurt you if you hadn't done exactly as he said."

Honey moved her feet, crossed slim legs. "I don't even remember Grandma, only what you've told me about her."

Heather felt the chasm between them, a generation gap as wide as that between present-day daughters and their mothers. Yet her sister had always been a good girl-a responsible, reasonable kid who did well in school and stayed home nights. She'd been a virgin until Arley Santee forced her to do it with him, and that meant something in these days of corrupted morals. But now Honey seemed to be letting go, to be sliding downhill into a morass of carnality. She was so very casual about being raped, about admitting that she had known a sexual climax.

The girl had been nearly as casual about having to leave the north and flee down here, she'd helped to buy the travelers' checks, five hundred here a thousand there, while Heather was doing the same thing on the other side of town. It had actually been Honey's idea on hiding the Company money again and a good idea it was. People who might be following them wouldn't find the money now and Vic's insurance was more than enough to carry them for a while.

An eerie sound came from the trees, and Honey whispered, "What's that?"

"A screech owl," Heather said. "Grandma used to imitate its call perfectly."

"Wow," Honey said. "I thought owls went hoot-hoot; that damned thing sounds like a ghost."

"Don't curse," Heather said, and they went quiet again, hearing the buzz of mosquitoes, the movement of trees in an unseen wind. After a while, the hound rumbled low in his chest and got up to pad across the hard-baked yard. Big-dog stood at the edge of the clearing, and Heather could only make out the faint outline of him against lighter brush. A moment later, the dog came back to the porch and lay down across the lower step.

Watching, Heather saw the spot of light dancing about in the woods, a quick specter of white moving across black, over green. The carbide lamp on Arley Santee's head, she knew, and was conscious of dual emotions. She was sorry he'd come back before one of them could work loose and free the other, but she was somehow glad that he would be here to protect them from things that might lurk in the dark.

The man came silently across the yard, rifle swinging from one hand, a big, shiny fish from the other. The fish was so big it looked prehistoric, some monster swum up out of a place where dinosaurs stalked the marshes. Catfish, her mind told Heather, one of the huge mudcats that Grandma was always bragging on, but that huge? Its tail touched the ground when Arley had the wide, ugly head against one hip, and it had whiskers like the moustache of a dead Chinaman.

"Good 'un," Arley announced. "Scrabbled him out'n a cypress stump fore he knew what had him."

The lamp on his head bobbing, Arley kneeled and propped his rifle against the porch steps. He lay the fish on the edge of the porch and made a swift, deft motion with a knife that had suddenly appeared in one hand. Then he stood and threw the guts of the big fish across the yard and into the brush.

Climbing the porch, he stooped and used the unclean knife to free Heather's hands. "Get some matches and kindlin', light you a fire out yonder under the iron water pot. Water gets to boilin', dip this here old mudcat into it and his skin'll fall off pretty as anythin'. Then chop his head off with the ax and bring him in the house. We'll soak him in water with some bakin' soda, and fry some of him for breakfast."

Rubbing her wrists, Heather climbed to her feet and moved into the house where she'd seen a box of wooden matches on the mantelpiece.

Feeling in the dark she found them, struck one, and lifted the glass shade on a coal oil lamp to light the wick. Then, moving stiffly and afraid, she went back outside to do exactly as she was told, even though the very touch of the fish would send cold shivers through her body.

Honey was probably right about being nice to Arley Santee, so they could lull him into not watching them so closely, make him believe that they liked being kept as slaves or squaws or whatever his evil mind could contrive for them.

She saw Honey standing on the porch, saw Arley stroking the girl's hip before turning to find his quart fruit jar of colorless corn whiskey. There was a hand-rolled cigarette dangling from one corner of his mouth, and she saw that he needed a shave worse than ever.

Gingerly, she moved pitch pine kindling under the old iron pot propped on crumbling bricks, and the thin pieces burst into immediate flame at the touch of the match. Peering into the pot, Heather wanted to dump out the water already there, but was afraid she'd have to draw some more from a dark well. When it boiled, it would be sanitary, she thought, and carefully avoided looking over at the monstrous catfish.

"Doin' right good for a city woman," Arley said, and she didn't look at him, either. He was working on the whiskey, and she was fearful of what the liquor would do to him. Surely, she thought, he wouldn't be all that eager to-to do it to one of them again, not so soon.

Her husband had a schedule of twice a week -less if she wasn't feeling well, and only after both of them had fresh baths. This woods' runner had already had sex with two women within the space of a few hours, and it just didn't stand to reason that he would be able to do it again tonight.

"Take a spell for the pot to boil," Arley said. "Come over here and get you a drink."

Heather looked up. "I-I don't want one, thank you."

"Didn't ask what you wanted," he said. "Told you to get your ass over and swaller a drink of this here good corn."

Drawing a deep breath, Heather walked across the yard and saw the yellow eyes of the big hound dog following each step she took. The dog and the man were two of a kind, she decided; both were lean and hungry looking, and both were dangerous.

The corn whiskey was nearly without taste, but when it hit her stomach, it burned furiously, and Heather coughed, choked, and gasped for air. She tried to turn away, but Arley grabbed her by the hair and twisted her head to him. "Take you another 'un," he ordered. "Good for what ails you."

Struggling against nausea, she swallowed, swallowed again so that the stuff he was pouring into her mouth wouldn't choke her. He let her go then, and she grabbed the railing for support.

Arley laughed. "Get you some strength up for fuckin'. I aim to really tear up your pussy tonight, city woman, figure to let HI' sister's pussy rest a spell, seein' as how she was cherry and must be sore clean to her asshole after the screw-in' she give me afore. But you got some lovin' to do yourself."

Heather pulled air into her lungs and felt the sudden onslaught of the whiskey as it spread insidious tendrils swiftly throughout her nervous system. She'd never been a drinker, and this potent stuff went right to her head. The water, she thought, and made her way to the pot to check it. When she held the huge fish by the tail and dipped it into the bubbles, she was glad for the courage the liquor gave her. She only shuddered a little bit as she carried the catfish into the house after Arley chopped the ugly head off.

Scrubbing at her hands in a washbasin, she felt him come up behind her. He put both hands under her arms and caught her by the breasts while he shoved his swollen penis against her buttocks. He was already stripped, she thought, and her head spun as much from shock as from the heady swirling of the whiskey there.

"We'll have us a genuine good fuck," Arley Santee said, and she was so numbed that the word didn't cut as deeply into her senses.