63
THAIS & (ATTICUS)
Kade kicked open the door to his room; it smashed into the wall. “Do you have any fucking idea what you’ve done?” He shoved me onto the floor and then kicked the door closed behind him.
I scrambled to my feet, held my fists out in front of me, my heart pounding, my legs shaking. I started to answer, to brazenly tell him I saved Atticus, but he marched toward me with repercussive intent, his dark eyes blazing in the lamp-lit room. Instinctively, I tried to back up toward the wall but was stopped by the sofa.
“Now every person in Paducah will want to fight me for you!” he growled into my face.
I shrank away from him, feeling the heat of his breath on my mouth.
“Should’ve kept your mouth shut!” he ripped out the words. “You could’ve had freedom here with me—safety!—but you royally screwed that up! There’s no telling who you’ll end up with—do you know what you’ve done?” His voice thundered in my ears.
A sharp pop sounded as my hand smacked across the side of his prickly face; his hand flew upward near his eye in reaction to the sting.
I glowered at him, my teeth gritted behind tightly pressed lips. “What I’ve done,” I growled, “is figure out how to change my situation”—(Kade’s mouth snapped shut, and his eyes narrowed with regret for the things he’d told me)—“My limitations are what got me into this mess, remember?” I stepped up to him daringly, now my eyes blazing in the lamp-lit room. “Well, my limitations will not define or confine me. And no one—no man or woman or city full of people—will ever own me!”
A white-hot pain shot through the left side of my head and silver spots flashed across my vision when he struck me with his open hand. I fell backward against the arm of the sofa; the decorative wood gouged into my hip and I bounced off it and fell onto the floor.
Kade was on top of me before I could shake the spots from my eyes. “I do own you, you mouthy little bitch,” he barked. He straddled my waist; one hand moved to lift up my skirt, the other fastened around my throat. “And because I own you, I can take whatever I want from you”—he pressed himself against me between my legs—“and you will do whatever I tell you to do. And when someone challenges me for ownership of you, you’re gonna tell them you want to stay with me, and that even if they won a fight against me you wouldn’t cooperate with them, that you’ll never share your knowledge and skills with anyone but me!”
His fingers had become so tight around my throat I struggled to breathe; my eyes fought to stay open; my hands clawed at his arm, trying to pry it away, but it only made him squeeze tighter.
“IS THAT UNDERSTOOD?” he screamed into my face. Then he smiled like a madman, his teeth bared. “How are those limitations now? How are—”
His ferocious face shifted in a blink to something eerily relaxing; his eyes fluttered as if he were drunk and shocked simultaneously; his lips parted and his hand around my throat loosened. I gasped—I didn’t even have time to let the breath that rushed into my lungs settle—as blood poured down Kade’s neck. His body swayed on top of me; his hands probed robotically at his throat and blood covered his fingers and dripped onto my clothes.
Drusilla pulled back her hand from his throat, the wet blade glistening in the semi-darkness, and then she plunged it deep into his back.
“Limitations are an illusion,” Drusilla said to Kade, her mouth next to his ear; one hand still at his back, the other wound in the top of his dark hair.
Kade choked, and his eyes rolled into the back of his head; he coughed and blood spattered his face and my face.
With a tremendous cry of anger and retribution, Drusilla shoved Kade from me; he fell onto the floor beside me, dead before his body settled.
“We need to leave now,” Drusilla said, and she held out her hand.
Still in shock by the events, I had a difficult time getting my words together. But not my actions—I knew better than to stall. I took Drusilla’s hand and went to my feet quickly, and then Drusilla practically dragged me out the door.
There was no one in the halls as everyone from the arena probably had not made it back into their homes yet, so Drusilla and I dashed, hand-in-hand, down to the bottom floor without being seen by anyone other than a few drunk, uninterested men. Rushing out a back door, we darted into the parking lot, weaved our way between the school busses and then small buildings and finally we came to the fork in the road. When we made it to the accounting office, Drusilla stopped beside a dumpster, got down on her knees, and slid her arm underneath it. She stood up with a pair of heavy-duty bolt cutters in her hand.
“Hurry!” she told me, grabbed my hand again, and we headed for the Humane Society building.
There was one man sitting outside guarding the door that led into the kennels. When he saw us, he stood from the cement block he’d been sitting on, gripping a baseball bat in his hand.
I stopped when Drusilla stopped; I looked to and from Drusilla and the bat-wielding man, my heart in my throat.
“Let me pass,” Drusilla told the man calmly, but not with as much confidence as I would have liked. “You owe me this favor. Consider us even.”
The man’s eyes fell on me momentarily; he looked at Drusilla again, contemplating. After a moment, he stepped aside, motioned the bat at the door and let us pass without a word.
“Atticus!” I whispered in the darkness as we went down a slim aisle with cages lined on both sides. “Atticus, where are you?”
I jumped back and swallowed down a startled yelp when one cage I’d walked too closely to, rattled vociferously, and a hand shot out at me through a hole in the links. The man behind the chain-link door wound his fingers around the links, shaking it with all his strength. He growled and spit and gnashed his teeth like a feral dog.
Drusilla grabbed my elbow and pulled me along, both of us keeping to the center of the aisle.
“Where is he?” Drusilla asked, keeping her voice low. “We need to find him now—there’s no time.”
We made it past fourteen cages—seven on each side—me peering into each one as we went by, until finally, in the eighth cage on my right, I found him, lying on his side.
“Atticus!” I grabbed the cage and shook it, but he did not move. “He’s in here!”
Gripping the bolt-cutters in both hands, Drusilla positioned the blades on the padlock, and with a lot of effort and my help, the lock snapped in two; it fell onto the cement floor, and the door swung open.
“Hey, let me out of here!” a man in a cage across from Atticus’ shouted. “Please, you’ve gotta help me!”
I ran into the cage. “Atticus, you have to wake up!” I smacked his cheek, trying to rouse him, but got no response. “Atticus, if there’s any part of you awake, you have to get up!”
Finally, Atticus stirred.
Hope flooded me, and I could barely hear Drusilla hissing behind me to hurry my heartbeat was so loud.
Atticus moaned, his face strained against the pain, but he tried desperately to get up.
I fell into a squat, braced one arm behind his back, and with difficulty I lifted his heavy body into a wobbly stand.
Drusilla rushed around to Atticus’ other side and draped his arm over her shoulder.
“Let us out of here!” the other prisoners shouted.
“You can’t leave us in here like this!”
“HEY! OPEN MY FUCKIN’ CAGE NOW!”
“Please help me….please,” said another.
But amid all the demanding and pleading and threatening and the rattling of the cages, Drusilla and I passed them all by and led Atticus, barely able to walk and only half-conscious, out the back door.
“We’re even!” the man with the bat called out to Drusilla as we rushed past him. “I’m not helping you anymore!”
Drusilla led me and Atticus away from the buildings.
“Where are we going?” I asked, out of breath, as we struggled to keep Atticus on his feet.
(My breathing was labored, and although only half-aware of what was going on, I could feel the pain from my stab wounds, and my battered face, and my broken fingers, and my dislocated elbow and it was crippling me all the more. Thais’ voice sounded far-off in my ears. Was I hearing her? Was Thais helping me escape? Or was it all just a dream?)
“There’s a carriage waiting for you,” Drusilla said. “It will take you as far as the Mississippi River. From there you’ll be on your own.”
I had many questions, but trying to hold Atticus’ heavy body up was all I could focus on.
“We can’t stop, not even for a minute,” Drusilla warned when Atticus tried to sit down. “I know you’re in pain, but if you miss this carriage, there won’t be another one.”
I held onto Atticus’ waist more firmly, using strength that didn’t belong to me—just seconds ago I thought I would drop him because I could no longer feel my own arm. I gritted my teeth. “Come on, Atticus, just a little ways more.” I hoped it truly was just a little ways more.
A minute later, I breathed out the words: “What happened, Drusilla? I thought you were leaving Paducah.”
Drusilla stopped long enough to reposition her arm behind Atticus; she grunted with the effort. “I changed my mind,” she said, straining, and we went into motion again. “I have things to do in Paducah, so I can’t leave yet.”
“Why did you help us?” I asked. “Did you…miss your chance to escape because of us?” If it was true, I was grateful, but it would make me feel guilty just the same.
“I didn’t miss my chance,” Drusilla said. “At the last minute I simply chose to take another route—the carriage I’m taking you to now was supposed to be my way out of Paducah.”
I looked over the back of Atticus’ neck, his head hung low between us, to see Drusilla on his other side.
“You’re sacrificing your freedom for ours?” Grateful. Guilt. So much guilt.
“Your conscience is clear, Thais,” Drusilla told me. “I didn’t decide to stay only to help you.”
“But it was part of your decision.” I was sure of it.
“Yes. It was part of my decision. But I would have made the same decision even if you weren’t here to help.”
“Thank you,” I said with emotion in my voice.
Drusilla nodded; she repositioned her arm around Atticus once more.
“But I thought you said there wasn’t time to help free Atticus.”
“I negotiated,” Drusilla said. “Everything in Paducah is a negotiation. Anything can be bought for the right price. Let’s keep moving. Less talk. It expels too much energy.”
Having to agree, I didn’t say another word. I wanted to tell Drusilla how grateful I was to her, how I would never forget her for as long as I lived—I wanted to take her into my arms and embrace her as my friend. But no energy or time could be spared for such things.
A “little ways” turned out to be the longest fifteen minutes I had ever walked, and when I saw the “carriage”, which was just a small flatbed utility trailer on two wheels pulled by a man on a horse, relief flooded me, and lent extra movement to my exhausted, pain-stricken legs.
The man on the horse jumped down.
“How in the world did you two carry this man all that way?” the man asked as he reached for Atticus’ arm, draping it over his own shoulder to relieve me and Drusilla. The man was as tall as Atticus, maybe taller, and easily helped him onto the utility trailer without our help.
“With difficulty,” Drusilla answered.
She turned to me then, cupped my elbows in the palms of her hands, and peered into my eyes. “When you get to the river,” she began, “there should be a flat-bottom raft hidden in the woods not far from where he leaves you. I don’t know where myself, or even if it’s there; I just know that it’s supposed to be. I can’t say you’ll be safer on the river, but I can say it’ll be faster.”
“Why don’t you go with us?” I reversed our arms, cupped Drusilla’s elbows instead. “You can leave this place and travel with us to—.” I stopped myself. My whole heart trusted Drusilla, but I had learned too many lessons on The Road.
“I have to stay,” Drusilla insisted.
I squeezed her elbows.
“But these people are—”
“They’re negotiable,” Drusilla cut in; her brown eyes enriched by her smile. “Now go”—she took me into a hug—“and make it to your destination safely. I will pray for you.”
The hug broke, and our hands fell slowly from one another.
“I will do the same for you,” I told her, and then I climbed onto the trailer with Atticus who lay on his back, his eyes closed.
I heard the rider’s heels tap the horse’s sides, and the clicking of his tongue against the roof of his mouth to instruct movement.
“Thank you again,” I called out as the horse pulled us away. “I will never forget you.”
Under the blue-gray moonlight and a black sky full of stars, Drusilla raised a delicate hand into the air and waved me good-bye.
“Good-bye, my friend,” I said, though Drusilla was too far away now to have heard.