Shackles

The Seventy-Fifth Day

Five straight days of snow and chill moaning winds. Drifts piling up outside, deep enough to cover the lower third of the shed. Meat-locker cold in here-so intense three nights ago that I had to flatten out one of the cardboard cartons and wrap it around my body under my clothing. The instant coffee is almost gone, and there is only half a package of tea bags left. At least I don’t have to worry about the pipes freezing and cutting off my water supply: If that were possible it would have happened by now. Whoever plumbed this place must have used copper piping.

Sniffles in the morning, chronic runny nose, but no major symptoms of illness. So far.

I can get the leg iron, now, to within half an inch of coming off. Frustrating, that last agonizing half inch, but I just don’t dare try to force it any farther. I must have lost nearly thirty-five pounds but I still need to shed another five or so. God, how long to do that? Another ten days to two weeks at the most. I don’t think I can stand the waiting any longer than that.

The Eightieth Day

Sunshine, the first in more than two weeks. And the temperature has climbed a good fifteen degrees in the past twenty-four hours.

Thank Christ.

The Eighty-Fourth Day

Out of coffee. Out of crackers and cookies and most other things. Enough provisions left to last about three more weeks-more than the thirteen he planned.

Thirteen, thirteen. That damned number haunts me, and yet its meaning continues to elude me.

But I’ll be gone from here before the food runs out. Long before. Soon. Any day now. Every time I sit down to try removing the leg iron again, I start to sweat and tremble with anticipation. Still can’t quite do it. Almost, but not quite yet.

The Eighty-Seventh Day

So close…

The Eighty-Ninth Day

It isn’t thirteen years or thirteen weeks, it’s thirteen days. That’s the significance in the number, that has to be what this is all about. Why didn’t I realize it before this? Blocked out the details, that’s why, the same way I blocked out the image of my old man.

Thirteen days in April, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and seventy-two. Thirteen long, difficult days. But if that’s it-and it must be because I just don’t see how it can be anything else-I still don’t know who he is. Or the exact nature of his motive. Or why he would wait all this time, nearly sixteen years, to take his revenge.

He wasn’t someone directly connected with what happened back then; I’d remember him now if he was. And yet I must have met him, we must have had some kind of contact, else why the disguising of his voice, why the ski mask to keep me from seeing his face? A relative or friend of Jackie Timmons, as crazy as that possibility is?

A relative or friend of the sixteen-year-old boy I killed?

The Ninetieth Day

FREE!

Part Two. Salvation

The First Day

It came off with almost no effort. All the long days of waiting, all the struggle and frustration of trying to work it free, and on this last day, this first day, it came off with the same ridiculous ease as removing a shoe.

I dragged the chain into the bathroom, I sat on the floor and took off my left shoe and sock, I greased my ankle with a mixture of soap and a little fat from the last can of Spam, I eased the leg iron over the heel and pushed it down the instep. And there was a moment of binding and resistance, just a moment, and then it slid right off, all the way off, and I was sitting there looking at it-an empty pair of locked iron jaws held in both my hands, shining a little from the grease, like a skinny obscene gray doughnut with a huge hole in the middle. I must have stared at it stupidly for a few seconds before I reacted. Then I yelled out loud and hurled the thing away from me, couldn’t bear to be touching it any longer, and half-crawled, half-stumbled out of the bathroom.

The next several minutes were an emotional blur. I laughed a little, cried a little, grabbed up a pen and wrote the word FREE! in big block letters on the journal pad. Found myself at the cabin’s front entrance, pawing at the door knob, and it was unlocked and I threw the door open and lurched outside and stood there in a patch of old snow with my face upturned, dragging in the cold mountain air, free air. The wind, chill and blustery out of a dirty gray sky, and the snow cold-burning my bare foot, eventually started me shivering and drove me back inside. And when I shut the door and leaned against it I was all right again, back in control again.

My naked foot was numb in places, tingling in others; I returned to the bathroom, sat on the floor to pull on my sock and shoe. There was a shrieking urge in me, then, to gather up some things and get out of here for good. I refused to give in to it; summoned logic to keep it at bay. Things to do first, several things. And it was already past noon. I’d be a fool to leave now, with only a few hours of daylight left and snowdrifts on the ground and no clear idea of where I was or how far I would have to walk. I could stand the rest of today and one more night in this place, now that I was free of the chain and the leg iron. Couldn’t I? Not much choice in the matter: I had to, so I would.

I took a couple of breaths and made myself walk slowly across the room. I was conscious now of my unshackled leg and it felt odd to be walking normally, without the restricting weight of the chain. When I got to the chair he’d hauled out and sat in on his night prowl I had another impulse, gave in to this one, and kicked at the chair, sent it clattering against the front wall. One of its legs broke; I laughed when I saw that. It felt good to laugh again. It had been so long that the sound came out cracked and rusty.

I stopped in front of the door that was standing ajar, pushed it wide open with the tips of my fingers. Bedroom, empty except for a roll-away bed topped with a pillow and two blankets and a comforter-the bed he must have slept