There’s the kitchen with mustard-colored appliances and linoleum floors and a table covered in a plastic tablecloth. Dust covers everything in sight. There are spiderwebs and a layer of dead Asian beetles on the windowsills. It smells.
“Get used to it,” I say. I see the disgust in her eyes. I’m sure the judge’s house would never look like this.
I flip the light switch and test the water. Nothing. The cabin was winterized before he took off for the winter. It’s not like we talk anymore, but I keep tabs on him anyway. I know his marriage fell through, again, know he got arrested a year or so ago for a DUI. I know that a couple weeks ago, as he does every fall, he packed his shit and left, back to Winona, where he works for the D.O.T., clearing ice and snow off the roads.
I yank a phone from a phone jack and, finding a pair of scissors in a kitchen drawer, cut the wire. I glance at the girl, who hasn’t moved from the door. Her eyes are fixed on the plaid tablecloth. It’s ugly, I know. I step outside to pee. A minute later I return. She’s still staring at that damn tablecloth.
“Why don’t you make yourself useful and start a fire,” I say.
She puts her hands on her hips and stares at me, with that god-awful sweatshirt from the gas station. “Why don’t you?” she says, but her voice shakes, her hands shake, and I know she’s not as fearless as she wants me to think.
I stomp outside and bring in three logs of firewood and drop them to the ground beside her feet. She jumps. I hand her some matches, which she lets drop to the floor, the carton opening and matches falling out. I tell her to pick them up. She ignores me.
She needs to understand that I’m the one in the driver’s seat. Not her. She’s along for the ride, so long as she keeps her mouth shut and does what I say. I yank the gun from a pocket and attach the magazine. And I point it at her. At those pretty blue eyes that go from sure to not-so-sure as she whispers to me, “You’ve got this all wrong,” and as I cock the hammer, I tell her to pick up the matches and start a fire. And I’m wondering if this was a mistake, if I should’ve just handed her over to Dalmar. I don’t know what I expected from the girl, but this sure as hell isn’t it. I never figured I’d end up with an ingrate. She’s staring at me. A challenge. Seeing if I have it in me to kill her.
I take a step closer and hold the gun to her head.
And then she caves. She drops to the floor and with those shaking hands, picks up the matches. One by one. And drops them in the cardboard box.
And I stand there with the gun pointed at her while she scrapes one match and then another against the striking surface. The flame burns her fingers before she can start a fire. She sucks on her finger and then tries again. And again. And again. She knows I’m watching her. By now, her hands are shaking so much she can’t light the damn match.
“Let me do it,” I say as I come up quickly behind her. She flinches. I start a fire without any trouble and brush past the girl, into the kitchen, looking for food. There’s nothing, not even a box of stale crackers.
“What now?” she asks but I ignore her. “What are we doing here?” I walk around the cabin, just to make sure. The water doesn’t work. Everything has been shut off for the winter. Not that I can’t fix it. It’s reassuring. When he winterized the house, he wasn’t planning on coming back until spring, the time of year he goes underground, lives like a hermit for six months of the year.
I can hear her pacing about, waiting for someone or something to come barreling through the front door and kill her. I tell her to stop. I tell her to sit down. She stands there for a long time before she finally backs a plastic chair against the wall opposite the front door and drops down in the seat. She waits. It’s apocalyptic, watching her sit there, staring at the front door, waiting for the end to come.
Night comes and goes. Neither of us sleeps.
* * *
The cabin will be cold by winter. It was never meant to be lived in beyond November 1. The only source of heat in the cabin is a wood-burning stove. There’s antifreeze in the john.
The electricity had been shut off. That I fixed last night. I found the main breaker and flipped it back on. I literally heard the girl thank God for the 25 watts given off by an ugly table lamp. I made my way around the periphery of the cabin. I checked out a shed out back that’s filled with a bunch of crap nobody’d ever need, and a few things that might come in handy. Like a toolbox.
Yesterday I told the girl she’d have to piss outside. I was too tired to deal with plumbing. I’d watched her walk down the stairs as if she was walking the plank. She hid herself behind a tree and slid down her pants. She squatted where she thought I couldn’t see, and then, because she wouldn’t dare touch her ass with a leaf, she opted to air dry. She only peed once.
Today I find the main water valve and slowly let the water in. It sprays at first, then begins to flow normally. I flush the toilet and run the sinks to get rid of the antifreeze. I make a mental list of things we need: insulation and more duct tape for the pipes, toilet paper, food.
She’s pretentious. Smug and arrogant, a prima donna. She ignores me because she’s pissed off and scared, but also because she thinks she’s too good for me. She sits on the ugly red chair and stares out the window. At what? At nothing. Just stares. She hasn’t said more than two words since morning.
“Let’s go,” I say. I tell her to get back in the car. We’re going for a ride.
“Where?” She doesn’t want to go anywhere. She’d rather stare out that damn window and count the leaves falling from the trees.
“You’ll see.” She’s scared. She doesn’t like the uncertainty. She doesn’t move, but watches me with fake courage and deluded defiance when I know she’s fucking scared to death. “You want to eat, don’t you?”
Apparently she does.
And so we head outside. We get back in the truck and take off for Grand Marais.
I make a plan in my head: get out of the country, soon. I’ll leave the girl behind. I don’t need her slowing me down. I’ll get a flight to Zimbabwe or Saudi Arabia, some place where they can’t extradite me. Soon, I tell myself. I’ll do it soon. I’ll tie her up in the cabin and hightail it to Minneapolis for a flight before she has a chance to spread my face all over Interpol.
I tell her that I can’t call her Mia. Not in public. Soon enough word will leak out that the girl’s missing. I should leave her in the car, but I can’t. She’ll take off. And so she wears my baseball cap and I tell her to look down, don’t make eye contact. It probably doesn’t need to be said. She knows more about the gravel than me. I ask what she wants me to call her. After enough hesitation to start to piss me off, she comes up with Chloe.
No one gives a damn that I’m missing. When I don’t show up at work, they’ll assume I’m lazy. It’s not like I have friends.
I let her pick out chicken noodle soup for lunch. I hate it but I say okay anyway. I’m hungry. We get about twenty cans. Chicken noodle, tomato soup, mandarin oranges, cream corn. The kind of food you find in a survival kit. The girl realizes this and says, “Maybe you don’t plan to kill me right away,” and I say no, not until we’ve eaten the cream corn.
In the afternoon I try to sleep. These days it doesn’t come easy. I get an hour here, an hour there, but most of all I’m awakened by the idea of Dalmar coming after me or the cops showing up at the door. I’m on the lookout, all the time, peeking out every window as I pass. Always looking behind me. I barricade the front door before I sleep, glad to find the windows sealed shut by some idiot with paint. I didn’t think I had to worry about the girl trying to escape. I didn’t think she had it in her. I let my guard down, left the truck keys out in plain sight, and that was all the encouragement she needed.
And so I’m sound asleep on the sofa, hugging the gun, when I hear the front door slam shut. I’m on my feet. It takes a minute to get my bearings. When I do I see the girl fall down the second half of the stairs down to the gravel drive. I run out the door, screaming, irate. She’s limping. The truck door is unlocked. She gets in and tries to start the ignition. She can’t find the right key. I can see her through the driver’s window. I see her pound a fist on the steering wheel. I’m closing in on the truck. By now she’s grown desperate. She slides across the front seat and out the passenger door. She takes off into the woods. She’s fast, but I’m faster. The tree branches reach out, scraping her arms and legs. She trips over a rock and falls face-first into a pile of leaves. She gets up and continues to run. She’s getting tired, losing speed. She’s crying, begging me to leave her alone.
But I’m pissed.
I grab her by the hair. Her feet continue to run but her head snaps back violently. She lands on the hard earth. She doesn’t have time to cry out before I’m on her, all two hundred and some pounds crushing her slender frame. She gasps, begging me to stop. But I don’t. I’m mad. She’s crying wildly. Tears stream down her face, mixing with blood and mud and my own spit. She squirms. She spits on me. I’m sure she sees her entire life float before her eyes. I tell her how stupid she is. And then I hold the gun to her head and cock the hammer.
She stops moving, becomes paralyzed.
I press hard, the barrel leaving a mark on her head. I could do it. I could end her life.
She’s an idiot, a damn moron. It takes every ounce of goodwill I have not to pull the trigger. I did this for her. I saved her life. Who the hell does she think she is to run away? I press harder with the pistol, dig the barrel into her skull. She cries out.
“You think that hurts,” I say.
“Please...” She’s begging, but I don’t listen. I should have handed her over when I had the chance.
I stand up, grab her by the hair. She bawls. “Shut up,” I say. I drag her by the hair through the trees. I shove her ahead of me and tell her to move. “Hurry up.” It’s like her legs don’t work right. She trips, falls. “Get up,” I snap.
Does she have a clue what Dalmar would do to me if he found me? A bullet in the head would be the easy way out. A quick and easy death. I’d be crucified. Tortured.
I push her up the steps, into the cabin. I slam the door shut, but it bounces back open. I kick it shut and throw the table down to keep it closed. I yank her into the bedroom and tell her that if I hear her so much as breathe she will never again see the light of day.
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