Chapter 4

Week two, day one, Saturday

In the morning, after I’d had my usual quick and refreshing bath in the swimming hole, I sneaked some breakfast into Miss Gregson’s room before she was awake enough to use more bad language about me disposing of her iPod without her say-so, and then I drove into town food shopping. I knew I’d have to deal with her later, but there were chores that needed doing first.

Out of habit, I stopped off at the dump first and rooted around a bit; there wasn’t a great deal of any interest to me, but I did find a discarded Tazer body. It was clearly not working, but I hazarded a guess that my captive wouldn’t be able to tell that. It would be a sight more convenient than the ether pad, and it had the bonus that if I fucked up and she DID somehow get her hands on it, she couldn’t actually harm me with it – nor threaten me, because I knew about the bluff. A real working Tazer doesn’t care who it zaps, and could be turned against me. I’d seen them in action, taking down fanatical insurgents so they could be safely restrained, and I knew for sure that I couldn’t counter it if I was the victim of the shock.

I also spotted a couple of old painted armchairs that had been put out for sale; they were tatty but sound; they’d do fine out on my porch to sit in of an evening, and at a dollar each they were a snip. I paid the guy, stashed them in the back of my truck and headed on for the foodstore, before filling up with gas and going home. I checked my telltales, unloaded my purchases onto the porch, and left the truck parked where it was, because I was going out again later.

I’d bought six cases of bottled water, and planned to put one of them in her room as her emergency reserve. I’d also found her a couple more paperback books and gotten some fresh batteries for the radio, and I gave her a couple of packs of store-made salad-based sandwiches for her lunch. She didn’t thank me. Luckily I wasn’t expecting any gratitude, so I wasn’t disappointed.

I ate my own sandwich lunch, changed clothes to put on a clean sweat shirt and a pair of old BDU pants, dropped my laundry off at a service wash, then headed over to the Hallett Construction office to work on my studies at my computer. Henry Hallett happened to drop by to work on a project bidding document while I was there; he asked how the assignments were going, and I was able to tell him that I was getting mostly ‘A’s, thanks to him letting me study at the office. He was pleased with that, he seemed to really want me to succeed. He was a good boss to have, keen for any of us who wanted to progress in our trade to get the chance. There are too many people in the industry who don’t want their staff to get better qualified in case they want more money or go work elsewhere; Henry was clued-up enough to realize that he couldn’t supervise everything himself, and that he needed some of us to step up and accept responsible positions if his business was to keep growing.

I did as much as I needed to do, turned off my computer, put my head around his office door and thanked him again. I picked up my clean and ironed laundry, dropped in at a small diner to buy two large pulled-pork and salad subs and something for later, and headed back to the cabin.

Miss Gregson was sarcastic when she saw me in the BDU pants, asking if I’d been out in the bushes playing cowboys and indians, and had I run away from the little pop-gun bangs like the yellow-bellied coward I was? I just smiled in response. She was still trying to needle me, and it wasn’t going to work. Didn’t make me like her any better, though.

I did notice when I took her in a clean towel and washcloth that she’d eaten every scrap of the sub. Hey, I’d enjoyed mine too. The fresh green crispness of the salad had countered the sweet greasiness of the pork just right. I locked up and left her to her thoughts and took myself on a leisurely stroll around my property until the onset of dusk. I saw a couple of deer and watched them for a while; they were wary but not spooked, I guessed that they felt safe on my land. I might take one for the larder come the late fall, but until then I’d enjoy just watching their graceful movement.

Her late supper was a big chunk of a meat and onion gravy pie that I’d also picked up from the diner; it ate real nice cold, better than it looked. Well, mine sure did. Hers was all gone when I checked on her before I went to bed, so I guessed that she’d managed to bring herself to eat it. It was the kind of food that people who work for a living enjoy, tasty, nutritious and filling, so I wasn’t sure that she’d have experienced it before in her exclusive little world of high society calorie counting haute cuisine. Hell, she’d probably never even eaten leftovers, at home the servants would have had them, and been duly grateful for such largesse. She’d scowled and sneered again about the BDUs when I’d taken her meal in. Fuck her and the pampered pedigree shetland pony she probably rode as a kid.

Sunday morning I relented a little and let her have another bathe in the swimming hole, mainly to save the bother of doing it one evening during the working week when I would be tired. I took her in the bag of towels and stuff, showed her the Tazer I’d found at the dump and suggested that she co-operate if she didn’t want to be zapped. She treated it with appropriate respect, and there was no trouble until I got her back into her room.

Then she began mouthing off again. I was still wearing the BDU pants, and today I’d donned a National Guard t shirt, printed with a slogan about being proud to serve our nation and bring peace to Iraq.

She tried to jerk my chain. Actually, this time she made a half-decent job of it, and truly got my goat.

She dropped the bag on her bed, turned to me, and started in on me. From the length of her diatribe, I later worked out that she must have been rehearsing it while she was bathing.

“And that bullshit about serving your country! Pretending to be a soldier! Did you ask your big brother to buy that stuff on ebay for you? I bet you’re even wearing camo shorts and socks, and that you have camo PJs to give you a hard-on at night to jerk off into your camo tissues! You’re just a fucking weenie, fantasizing about being a man. I bet the closest you got to serving is that you once met a guy who had a friend who’d done ten minutes of kitchen police as a recruit and cried his little baby blue eyes out until they let him leave. Besides, Iraq? That’s only for the little people, the rejects, the ones who get offered the choice to enlist rather than go to jail. The soft ones, the snowballs who can’t take the heat, who can’t exist without taxpayers dollars. Taking money for spending months getting high, rotting their bodies with steroids and watching porn in air-conditioned cabins with KFC and burgers on tap, maybe beating up some helpless cripples or raping a few women and kids for excitement. It’s not a dangerous place like Afghanistan, it’s more like mall security but better paid.”

Oh my.

That dreadful insult to our soldiers really rang my bell. That wasn’t mere fake news, that was a downright dirty lie and a slur on the honor of brave men.

I slapped her so hard on the ear that she went sideways, down on the hard wooden floor with a body-shaking thump, and burst into tears.

My company had been the honor guard for sending home the remains of some of our brave soldiers who’d lost their lives protecting others, and she wasn’t even fit for them to piss on. I was trembling so bad with fury that I hardly dared trust myself not to kick her as well.

“Don’t you ever demean our servicemen and women again! Some of them may have had no other career choice, but they stepped up to the plate, served their country, risked their lives, and some paid the ultimate price for doing their duty on YOUR behalf. You and your privileged ilk fucking disgust me.”

I backed out of the room, locked the door, switched off the battery lighting system so she was left alone in the dark, and drove into town, still fuming with anger at her arrogance and ignorance. I was shaking a little, I’d almost lost control of myself. She’d come that close to getting a beating or worse.

I calmed down drinking a couple of draft beers at a bar, ordered myself a burger with all the trimmings for lunch, and sat and watched sport on the TV to relax some more. After a few hours of that, I reckoned I could eat again, so I treated myself to a large pizza in a box, ate half of it with another beer, then drove back to the cabin, used a flashlight to get to bed, and slept soundly until dawn.

The Monday morning sun was shining bright, so I took myself off to the swimming hole and bathed, then quietly got dressed, ate the rest of the pizza cold for breakfast, and went off to work without looking in on the girl, nor switching the lights back on. I reckoned that she’d had nearly twenty hours in the dark, and as far as I was concerned, she hadn’t nearly served her time just yet. She was fucking lucky not to be under six feet of good fertile dirt out in the woods. I almost (yeah, I’m not stupid, I didn’t mean it) wished that I had a few feral hogs on my land. I threw myself into the physical side of work that day, and was able to temporarily forget her insults.

I thought some more when I was in the store after work. I was considering that maybe I’d made the mistake of taking her outburst too personally - maybe she’d just been trying to target me too closely in her efforts to rile me enough to make a mistake and give her a chance to overpower me. Oh, she’d scored a good hit on one of my sensitive places. Maybe I’d leave it another night before going back in there.

By the time I got back to the cabin that evening with some fresh bread and other supplies, she’d had over thirty hours without light, human contact, food or more water. I switched the battery lighting back on, and made myself a sandwich and a coffee, which I ate sitting on one of my new armchairs on the porch. Then I looked through the spyhole, and saw her sitting on her bed, hugging her pillow, staring into mid-air, facial expression indecipherable. She looked cowed yet calm, maybe not all there at the moment. I’d have to be real careful; maybe she was now desperate enough to do some crazy shit that might hurt me, even if it cost her much more than she managed to inflict on me. We’d had some insurgents like that; they were willing, even eager, to give their lives for the off-chance of hurting an infidel, and when they are thinking that way, the only solution is to keep them tightly restrained. Maybe I should have gone the whole hog and bought myself a working Tazer.

I didn’t want to have to chain and cuff the girl, but I would if it was needful. I didn’t especially want to injure or kill her either, so I hoped that she was going to be sensible. If she attacked me and got herself hurt doing it, she’d have to heal by herself. I wouldn’t be taking her to a doctor or hospital; if it got to be real bad then I’d be putting her out of her misery and burying her out the back. Gee, I prayed that it wouldn’t come to that. I’m not a cold-blooded murderer, and I didn’t want to become one. When you’ve seen death for real, close up so you can smell the fresh blood and the emptied guts, killing isn’t as straightforward as it appears on the movies and on computer games.

I put some fruit, a couple of sandwiches, two 8-oz cartons of cold chocolate milk and four bottles of water on a cardboard tray, cracked open the door and silently pushed the tray through before closing and locking the door again. Then I did a couple of hours reading and studying, made myself a quick sandwich and went to bed, not bothering to check on her.

Tuesday morning, I woke before dawn, decided I’d better talk to my captive before things festered any more, and quickly got myself washed and dressed. I soon had some bacon going over the stove and the coffee machine working before pulling on the ski mask and unlocking her door. She was already awake; she looked much more under control now; I guessed that having the light again had helped her pull herself together. I noticed all the empty containers had been neatly stacked on the tray right next to the door. There were still some full bottles of water in the case, so she hadn’t been dehydrated. I mentally praised myself for my foresight in giving her a reserve; I’d punished her, but not risked her health.

I stared at her for a long minute before opening my mouth.

“You ready to apologize for what you said?”

She started weeping as soon as I spoke.

“Omigod! I’m so sorry, I didn’t ever mean to insult our servicemen and women, it’s just that Daddy always tells me how proud he is when he’s made some loser enlist rather than cost taxpayers dollars in jail, and I kinda made assumptions. I wanted to rile you, but I sure got carried away and said some dumb things. I got so frightened when it went dark; I thought for a while that you’d upped sticks and gone; I was so relieved when the light came back on.”

“I’m sorry about leaving you alone and in the dark for so long, but you’d made me so angry that I didn’t trust myself around you.”

She nodded her head in agreement.

“Yeah, I guess I can understand that. I’ve had a lot of time to go through all that happened. I can’t remember everything I said, but I know I was trying my very hardest to get under your skin, and I can now see how out of line I was.”

“Thanks, it’s good that you’ve been doing some thinking. I’m okay with you hating me, because I’ve kidnapped you. I’m not okay with you transferring that hatred to others who have absolutely NOT earned it. When a man or woman chooses to serve our country on our behalf to keep all of us safe, they deserve our respect, especially if they get killed or injured while protecting us. It’s not an easy life being in the service, not at all. I have to tell you that I’d thought better of you, Miss Gregson, much better. I’d almost come to believe you had the potential to become a decent human being. Now I’m thinking that I was wrong there.”

I saw her flinch as if I’d struck her again. Interestingly, she didn’t fly at me. It sure seemed that she had indeed been doing some serious thinking, and maybe hadn’t exactly liked what she saw when she examined her soul. She looked up, finding the courage to look me in the eye as she spoke. I guess that impressed me too. This girl had guts. I knew a whole lot of people who would have just mumbled into the ground in these circumstances, unable to face up to what they’d done.

“I’m so ashamed of myself. I don’t exactly know why I said what I did, I guess I so wanted to rile and anger you, but I also insulted a lot of fine people. I shouldn’t have said those things.”

“Well, I’m glad that you realize that now. Did I hurt you when I struck you?”

She shook her head.

“I reckon it was no more than I’d earned by mouthing off. More shock than pain. Funny, I hadn’t tagged you as the violent type. A real asshole maybe, but you could have slapped me around much more than you have done.”

“Only when you push my button and make me lose my cool. You know something, Miss Gregson? You are the first woman I’ve ever hit. My folks brought me up to respect women, and even though my bitch ex-wife stiffed me like she did, I still have that attitude. Let’s forget the whole sorry episode. You’ve apologized for disrespecting our service people, and I’ve forgiven you. Want some breakfast?”

She smiled weakly, still unsure of herself, uncertain if I was being genuine or just lining her up for another ass-chewing.

“Please.”

“Okay. Hey, how about something new, a hot bacon and egg sandwich?”

She smiled a real smile. Jeez, I’d forgotten how good she could look; even with red eyes, tearstained cheeks and dirty tousled hair, the look on her face brightened my day.

“Are you serious?”

“Sure. That’s what I’m having, it’s no extra trouble to cook for two. Real bread as well. Coffee or tea with it?

“I’d kill for a coffee.”

I grinned back, and risked a joke.

“You can have one for free, no need to kill me. Ten minutes, max.”

Hey, she actually smiled again! I took another calculated risk. I picked up the tray of empties and closed, but didn’t lock, her door.

I set two places at my table, bringing in the other chair from my bedroom, and put the eggs in the pan. I checked again that anything really dangerous was still locked up safely – I had moved pretty much everything there anyway, and only brought it back out into the main room to use it – and plated up bacon, egg and bread for two. Then I went to fetch her.

“Oh my god! I can smell the coffee and bacon!”

I smiled at her.

“Come and get it then, before it gets cold. It’s already on the table.”

She followed me through and sat at the table, looking around in wonder at being out of her cell. I poured us both a coffee, and put the jug back my side of the room, so she’d have to go through me to get it. I gestured at the pile of bacon on her plate and made some small talk to try break the ice a little.

“A friend of mine tried to go vegetarian because the girl he moved in with wouldn’t eat meat, but he just couldn’t get over the smell of meat cooking, used to hang around diners to give his olfactory nerve a good workout. I was eating a pulled pork sub for lunch one day and he cracked wide open and went and bought himself two. His girl still loved him after he confessed, so they agreed that he could eat whatever he liked one meal a day. They’ve got two kids now, and she isn’t all that strict, as long as they eat healthy. I’ve heard that the smell of bacon is the thing that most converts to vegetarian find most difficult.”

“I’ve always tried to eat healthily, lots of fruit, vegetables and salads, but I guess it’s difficult for you out here. I don’t see a refrigerator; how do you keep things cool?”

“We’re way off grid out here. I’ve got a couple of twelve-volt cool boxes that work for small quantities; I guess if I was staying here I’d get myself a twelve-volt fridge or one of those gas or kerosene units. Until then, I just buy little and often. Costs a little more, but any wastage is my fault. Just need to plan what I eat.”

She emptied her plate, wiping it round with another slice of bread. I took it and the silverware from her, and refilled both coffees. She looked up at me.

“Thanks. That was good, er? Sheesh! What do I call you?”

I smiled beneath my ski mask. We were making progress at last. She’d finally realized that she needed to build some kind of relationship with me if she was going to get through this ordeal.

“You’ve already called me most things. Asshole, bastard, cocksucker, dickhead, faggot, limpdick, moron, needledick, pencildick, queer, redneck, slimeball, white trash. I guess I’m a little worried about what that says about your obsession with male sexuality, but hey, we’re all adults here. How about Billy Bob, Jim Bob, or maybe John Boy? Those hillbilly enough for you? Maybe I’m a Jackson, Stuart or Longstreet?”

She giggled. She’d gotten a sparkle back in her eyes; a decent breakfast and some good coffee does that for you. I’d have guessed that she’d been worrying that she’d so badly overstepped the mark that her imprisonment was gonna get a whole lot more severe, and that she’d been disarmed by the hot breakfast and coffee.

“You ain’t quite as dumb as you make out, are you? I guess you did make it as far as junior high? They did have schools up there in the wilderness mountains?”

That was good too; she was trying to make a joke. Her period of dark solitary hadn’t broken her. I stuck my chest out and exaggerated my accent.

“First in the family to make it that far. First to pass fourth grade. My twin sister Daisy-Mae would have done it too, if our baby hadn’t come so soon.”

She tossed her head in amusement, trying not to smile, but failing. I could see a glint of humor in her eyes.

“Why do I get the distinct feeling that you’re holding out on me, Billy-Bob?”