It’s daylight. The forest is alive with morning sounds. I see his outline, half-turned from me, putting the zip tie he’s taken from our ankles into his jacket pocket. He stands, stretches, and looks over his shoulder.
“Morning,” he says.
He kicks the ashes of the dead fire with his boot.
“You like coffee? Of course you like coffee. Who doesn’t like coffee?”
I pretend I’m asleep while he retrieves a large bottle of water and tips some into a metal container then puts the container on the small gas cooker to boil. He opens a cooler, gets out two plastic mugs, and spoons in some instant coffee, pouring in hot water last.
He looms over me.
“Sit up.” I don’t move. “Quit fooling, Amelia. I know you’re awake. You’ve got coffee coming.”
I give in and try to raise myself up but it’s difficult with the zip ties on my wrists so he helps me to a sitting position and guides the mug into my hands.
“Don’t burn yourself.”
I think about throwing it in his face. Then what? Run again? Make him angrier than before? So I go with it and take a sip. It’s piping hot and way too strong.
He makes oatmeal in the metal container and feeds me again.
“Do your hands hurt? Your wrists?”
I nod.
“It needs be one or the other.” He sounds apologetic as he removes the wrist ties but secures my ankles.
After he’s done, he stands up and rubs the back of his neck.
“Okay,” he says, blowing out a breath. Like, okay, there’s work to be done. Okay, what can I do to her next?
Okay turns out to mean performing the mundane duties of cleaning the breakfast bowls and coffee mugs then returning to the trunk to pull out a shovel and two brown tarps. He lays one tarp flat on the ground between two trees, and hooks three tartan bungee cords through the other tarp’s aluminum grommets and secures it to the tree like some sort of lean-to shelter. He retrieves something else. A sleeping bag and two pillows.
Oh God. I’ve seen enough true crime documentaries to know how this goes. He’s in this for the long haul. He carries on, busies himself gathering wood, setting up the supplies, digging a latrine, and I lie down on my side and close my eyes because I don’t know what else to do. I can tell by his light-footedness that he’s happy and I wouldn’t be surprised if he started humming or whistling to himself. I try to think of a plan, some sort of plan, to regain some control, but I seem to be in this strange state of shock, a stunned paralysis of the mind where everything will not compute properly, as if I’m a survivor of a plane wreck, walking around in circles in my own mind.
12
When he shakes me awake again, it’s dark. I’ve slept for the entire day. He tries to give me a polystyrene cup of instant noodles but I push them away.
“Come on, now, Amelia.”
“I don’t want any,” I say.
He pauses and puts the noodles on the ground. I feel him come close and I flinch because it makes me think of yesterday when he touched me and I’m not sure I can survive a second time. His forearms brush against my ears and I brace myself and wonder if he’s about to push my head down into his lap. I think to myself that I’m going to bite that sorry thing off but he unties the knot of the mask instead, releasing the cloth from my face, taking great care to arrange the hair around my shoulders.
It’s a shock to see him, unfiltered and larger than life, so close, looking at me with his caper green eyes, jaw rotating while his molars crush what’s left of his food. All I can think of is Kevin Costner in his older years. A man’s man. A broad-shouldered man’s man in a tavern with a misted mug of beer in his big fist, shooting the breeze with the burnished-skinned old-timers, recounting a day of felling trees or hunting or building a barn from scratch. A man’s man who, for some reason, wanted me or someone like me—a proxy for a mother or sister or aunt he blamed for some deep-seated wrong done.
Slowly, he strokes his chin as he studies me. Then, quite suddenly, he says—
“You have pretty earlobes, Amelia Kellaway. Very pretty earlobes. I like the fact they’re not pierced.”
He picks up the noodles and holds them out. “I know things must be strange for you and what-not, but it’s important you eat, Amelia. Just a few forkfuls, would you do that for me?”
I hear his words but I’m still in shock that he’s removed the mask.
“Amelia?”
I nod my head.
A smile breaks out on his lips. “That’s the spirit.”
He reaches around and runs a strand of my hair through his forefinger and thumb. I wonder if he has a “type” and whether I fit it. I wonder if any woman in her late twenties around five-seven with medium length-brown hair is enough to turn his head and cause him to strap his leg into the moonboot and pull the flat tire routine. I wonder if I am simply one of a number, and if I am, what happened to the others.
He moves to the other side of the fire and lounges against a tree trunk, one shoulder against it, watching me. I pick up the noodles and bring the tiny plastic fork to my lips. I attempt to still my shaking hand and wonder whether this is the moment I should beg for my life.
“I need the bathroom,” I say.
He looks at me and pauses. “You bet.”
He removes the ankle ties and pulls me to my feet and walks me to the edge of the campsite and points to the hole in the ground he dug earlier.
I’m free and this is my big chance to run but I just stand there.
“Go on,” he says.
I squat over the makeshift latrine, balancing my right foot on one side, my left on the other, and deliver the whole shebang. It all comes out, everything, and I’m mortified by the noise and the smell. I glance up and he’s turned his face away, averting his eyes. I need to wipe myself and he gives me a roll of toilet paper then turns his back again.
“It won’t always be like this,” he says.
*
He has a large bag of Honeycrisp apples. He has already eaten two and is on to his third. He offered me one, but I told him my stomach hurt, and after the latrine, he doesn’t push the issue.
“You don’t say much, do you?” he says, chomping.
He’s emanating a syrupy aroma and I know I will never be able to eat my mom’s apple pie again.
He pulls my backpack toward him, opens it, and begins rifling through. I feel instantly violated with him going through my things like that, pulling out my tees and sweats and underpants and sports bras. He finds my copy of Anna Karenina, the one that I thought would double as entertainment and a bug killer.
“Tolstoy,” he says, spitting out a black pip. “I’m impressed. Although I prefer Steinbeck myself, but then I guess I’ve always been a patriot.”
He puts down Anna and continues searching. He finds my wallet and opens it.
“So you weren’t fooling about being a lawyer,” he says, studying my business card. “Manhattan, no less. Your parents must be proud, Amelia.”
I wince and he sees it.
“I touched a nerve.” He stares me. “Issues with your folks? I understand. My mother was no better than a street whore herself.”
He returns the card and pulls out the photo of Matthew that I was planning on using in a farewell-to-ex-fire-lighting ceremony somewhere along the trek.