Blood Rites (16 page)

“No.”

“You live around here?” he asked.

“No.”

He pointed to her knapsack. “That all the luggage you got?”

She studied her rescuer. Though he might be as old as her father, he looked like a kid drifter—his lean build, dirty blond hair, jeans, and check shirt letting him fit in anywhere, his accent impossible to place. And his face—well, it was the sort of face no one would look at twice except for the eyes. Though they were a cold, flat blue with an evenness that gave hints of danger, they crinkled at the edges as if he always smiled. He also smelled of after-shave, the spicy friendly kind she’d always liked. Even though his grip was so tight it hurt, she stared at him and nodded.

“Need a lift?”

She wondered what would happen if she said no and decided to avoid the risk. “Where you headed?” she asked.

“Anywhere’s better than here, ain’t it?” he answered. They walked around the side of the building to an old Chevy wagon. He pulled her knapsack out of her hand and dumped it behind the seat next to a leather suitcase and a sleeping bag. Donna got in the front, wondering if she had made a mistake and not certain how to get out of it.

They crossed the border into Wyoming and left the highway, pulling onto a dead-end dirt road. He reached into the glove box for a bottle. “Have a drink,” he said.

“I’m a minor,” she responded.

He grinned. “So I figured.”

Donna tasted it, coughed, then forced herself to swallow one gulp. Maybe it would calm her down a little bit, help her think. “What is this shit?” she asked as she looked at the unfamiliar label.

“Armengac,” he said. “French brandy.”

She read the label, noting the importer. “You from Cleveland?” she asked.

He buried his hand in her long hair, forcing her to look at him. “Listen, girl. Don’t ask where I’m from. Don’t ask why I’m here. Don’t even ask my name and we’ll get along just fine.”

She stared at him, real fright showing for the first time in her eyes. In response, he twisted her hair. She gave a low sob of pain and he kissed her, then crawled over the seat, pulling her after him onto the mattress.

Donna never had a chance to determine if what followed was rape or a mutual agreement, if she should fight or just let him have his way. It was over too fast. When he handed her the bottle again, the brandy tasted better, its warmth filling her, helping her relax. “Here’s the deal,” he said as she pulled on her jeans. “I’ll take care of you for as long as you want me to. When you tell me you want to leave, you go. OK?”

She refused to agree to anything. “You broke my zipper,” she replied instead.

He swung the car around and drove into Newcastle, parking in front of a women’s clothing store. “What size are you?”

“Size five.”

“Wait here.”

As soon as he was out of sight, she opened the passenger door, got out, and pretended to stretch her legs. There were people all around her, a police station on the corner. All she’d have to do was grab her bag, go to the station, and report him. They’d pick him up if not for rape, then for sex with a minor. Then they’d send her home and her father would beat the hell out of her.

To Donna an unknown danger was always less threatening than a certain one. She got back in the car.

He came out a few minutes later carrying a shopping bag filled with packages. “Go on, look,” he told her, laying the bag on her lap.

Inside were jeans, shirts, a sundress, panties, and a pair of pink baby doll pajamas with a white feather trim. Donna didn’t thank him; after all, she was worth more than a quarter. “What can I call you?” she asked.

“Russ.” He didn’t ask her name. For the next few weeks she would be known simply as “girl.”

She’d expected that Russ lived in his car or had a hovel somewhere, a place matched with his personality so his spread near Buffalo surprised her. The ranch house was on a gravel road rising into the Bighorn Mountains with only four other houses on the street, the nearest at least a quarter mile away. He dropped her dusty bag in its spacious foyer and led her through the living room past blue vinyl couches and glass-topped tables to the kitchen with its long dining counter. He opened two beers and took her out back to show her a pool and patio with a built-in barbecue surrounded by a high wooden fence.

Even when Donna didn’t have a place to stay, she managed to sponge off and wash her hair every day. Now she stood on the patio, amazed to the point of speechlessness by her good fortune. He took off his clothes, then methodically stripped her and tossed her in the pool, diving after her. The water was warm as the womb, and for the first time since she’d met Russ, she relaxed. After the swim they had sex on a chaise longue, then lay back and baked in the late afternoon sun. Later they grilled steaks and Donna had her first good meal in days. Those hours were the only pleasant ones she would ever have with Russ.

The abuse started the next morning. Eager to display her domestic skills, she’d gotten up early, put on the pink pajamas he’d bought for her, and made breakfast. She hand-squeezed the oranges for juice, cooked French toast and bacon, and arranged place settings on the counter. To fill the time until he got up, she cleaned the living room, putting all his books and magazines into neat piles on the glass-topped coffee table. Afterward, she turned on the radio, so low that Russ wouldn’t be disturbed, and began to dance.

Once she had dreamed of being a dancer but that had been years ago in the better times when the family had money and she could afford to dream. The memory hadn’t faded. Not yet. Maybe never. She still danced when she was happy and she knew how well she danced, how beautiful she looked in her grace—like Loretta Young in her flowing gowns rather than the dull-haired little creature she saw each morning in the mirror. She whirled around the room, wrists crossed above her, her bare feet brushing silently over the ivory-colored rug until the song ended and she slowly folded forward like a flower closing for the night.

Russ came into the room, wrapped in an old flannel robe. “Where were you?” he growled.

Donna jumped to her feet and brushed the lint off the feathers on her pajamas. “I cooked. I made . . .”

“I can get my own damned food. I want to wake up with you next to me.”

Russ might have meant that as a compliment but it didn’t sound like one. He grabbed her arm and yanked her off the high stool, dragging her down the hall into the bedroom, pushing her back on the bed. He crawled in beside her, not touching her at all. Donna tried to hide her tears, wiping her nose on the edge of the sheet because she didn’t dare ask him to pass her a tissue.

Later, he got up and left her. She stayed in bed another half hour before she tapped the courage to get dressed and leave the room.

Russ was in the pool swimming laps. A dirty cereal bowl sat on the counter. He’d had some of her orange juice, that was all. She began scraping the dirty dishes and stacking them by the sink when she abruptly doubled over the trash can and started to sob.

You’re a survivor
, she reminded herself.
You’ve survived worse before, you ‘ll get through this
. After rinsing her eyes at the sink, she soaked the dishes, then peeked out back. Russ was still swimming his laps in the small pool with an energetic crawl that made him look like an animal pacing a cage. Now was her chance to find the phone. She’d call her grandmother in LA, explain what she’d done, and ask for help.

As she looked for the phone, she realized that she hadn’t noticed the street name or house number or memorized the license plate of the car. She could call the operator, ask them to trace the phone number. Then what?

Her stupidity didn’t make any difference. Russ didn’t have a phone; not in any of the rooms, not even in the bedroom closet or the one in the spare room, empty except for a few storage boxes.

“What are you doing, girl?”

Donna whirled. Russ stood in the doorway dripping water from his bare body onto the hardwood floor. “Looking for sheets,” she replied, thankful she’d learned through her years at home to be a quick, experienced liar.

“I don’t have spares. Besides, the ones on the bed are still clean.”

“Not after last night.” She gave him a seductive look and though his lips smiled, his eyes looked ready to kill.

“You stay out of my stuff, you hear?”

“Yeah. I hear.”

He moved closer to her and unbuttoned her blouse, pushing it off her shoulders, cupping her breasts and letting them fall. “I suppose I won’t have to teach you a lesson, not this time anyway.”

“No, Russ. Never.” She shook. She couldn’t help it. In the last few minutes her danger had become clear. No one was looking for her. No one knew she was here. He could keep her here as long as he wanted, do anything to her, even kill her and no one would ever know. In response to her fear, she saw his penis harden. When he pushed down on her shoulders, she knelt and did whatever he demanded, no more.

The doors and windows all had deadbolts and Russ had the only key. Donna would have broken a window or scaled the back fence and ran but she never had a chance. He was with her every minute of the day and every time she’d get up at night he would wake and wait for her to come back. Over the next week she watched their food supply dwindle, laying her hopes on the day he’d have to drive to town. Then she’d take her chance and leave.

The waiting took its toll on her. She drank too much, forgetting to be wary. One day she woke late and realized vaguely that she was alone. She wanted to stand but went back to sleep instead, rising when the setting sun was slanting in the windows. She staggered into the kitchen, saw the half dozen bags and stacked canned goods on the counter. Too numb to hide her emotions, she watched Russ bring in another pair of bags from the wagon, and thinking of the weeks he must be stocking up for, she began to cry.

He stood in the door. “Not happy to see me?” he asked.

“No, Russ. I’m just sick, that’s all.”

“You bitch. You slept the whole day, didn’t you?” He didn’t even bother to look at her or wait for a reply, just walked past her and began putting the cans away, filling the upper cupboards.

She should play it cool, she knew. Apologize and be more careful next time. She should but the ruse wouldn’t work anymore just like it hadn’t at home. She wished she had her brother’s baseball bat so she could use it on Russ the way she had on her father, one horrible but oh-so-satisfying thud the revenge for all her pain. She grabbed the scotch bottle, held it next to her, and waited until he’d reached up to put the flour on the top shelf, then swung, hitting him as hard as she could on the side of the head. The bottle broke and she struck one more time, cutting his neck. Not waiting to see how much damage she’d done, she ran as fast as she was able out the front door.

He caught her at the road, pulling her down on the gravel, dragging her by her feet back into the house. She screamed all the way but there was no one to hear her or maybe someone did and didn’t care.

For the rest of the day, Donna learned that Russ was as much a master of pain as he was of fear. She wished he’d beat her the way her father did, with closed fists and open rage. There was something almost innocent in that compared to the way Russ managed to bruise every part of her body and do no real damage. No, the damage would come later, getting worse day by day until he killed her. She was so convinced of it that she didn’t even react when he told her this, then untied her ankles from the footboard of the bed and raised her knees so he could enter her.

I am a survivor. A survivor. I cannot forget that
, she reminded herself, repeating it in time to the pumping of his body above her.

He cut off her alcohol; probably, she thought, because it dulled the pain. He kept her handcuffed to the headboard at night and during the day when he didn’t feel like watching her. The rest of the time, she had the run of the place. She cooked, did the laundry in the narrow utility room off the kitchen, swam with him, talked with him when he asked her to talk, shut up when he told her to. And through it all, she was conscious of his eyes on her, of his unchanging even expression as he sat and chain-smoked and drank.

Sometimes he’d watch her every move, self-consciousness adding to her torment. At other times, he’d ignore her, reading books, magazines, everything he could get his hands on, with the same brutal speed with which he swam. Donna never knew smart people could be as rotten as Russ. She wondered if smart people let themselves be beaten. Maybe that’s why he picked her. She’d been dumb enough to let herself be grabbed.

Though she knew it was probably useless to try to escape, she kept a sharp eye out for weapons, hoarding everything that could possibly be used that way behind the hamper under the bathroom vanity. In the next few days she collected a dull steak knife, a roll of masking tape, his spare Zippo lighter, and a bottle of rubbing alcohol. None of it was lethal, really, but each addition gave her a new reason to hope.

She learned to read his moods, to anticipate the moment when the beatings would start. Then she’d turn off the fear, hide from the pain. She discovered that he enjoyed defiance so she’d fight back when he grabbed her, swallow her sobs when he hit. Her struggles made him want her, her hate made him hard, her hope kept her alive.

Eight days passed that way. Donna kept track of each of them the same way she noted every detail of Russ’s face, every tiny hint of his life, every clue to his past.

Then a car pulled into the driveway. The driver gunned the engine twice and sounded the horn. Donna heard footsteps on the gravel, pounding on the door.

Russ pulled out of her, swearing as he put on his jeans. Donna followed him into the hallway, wondering if she should scream. When Russ reached the foyer and saw who was knocking he came back down the hall, pushing her into the spare bedroom. “Don’t open this door, don’t make a sound or so help me, when he’s gone I’ll strangle you.”

Donna couldn’t tell if he was angry or scared so she crouched next to the door and listened.

“A long time, hey, Lowell?” the man asked.

“Yeah,” Russ answered.