He dropped to his knees. He put his hands on her neck and pressed her against the damp cot. She could not turn her head from side to side. She could not breathe.
“When you’re my girl,” he hissed, whispering even though no one could hear, not the racoons or the owls or the rising moon. “You will not take my things.”
My neck. Breaking. Stars at the edge of rising water.
The hands, lifted.
To breathe. Shuddering. Her own hands, small and soft, on her own skin. Sweet skin.
“I’m sorry.” Her voice was hoarse, strained.
He sat on the floor, against the wall. The moon, now, was shining directly into the room. A pile of droppings, in the middle of the floor. A cast-iron tea kettle on the stove. The belt.
The raccoons, upstairs, made no sound. Wind, the sigh of grasses, leaves.
No crickets, no frogs.
This is how it had come to Freddy, when he had reached for the rope and settled it around his neck. You are walking straight ahead, not knowing you approach a threshold—and a door slams closed. You walk into it. You and the door meet.
Enid dropped her face onto her knees, held herself. The doll. She saw it, now. Wooden head with no face, wooden arms and legs. No name, no eyes or mouth; yet she had given it the life she should have had. A wedding. A daisy for a bonnet. Rhubarb leaf for a gown. Crooning, songs. Hear that, dolly, held to the sky when the night birds sang.
Dying.
“I had one…toy…just wanted…another. Didn’t know it was…yours, Mr. Tu—”
“Ain’t a toy. No more than my houses are toys.”
“No,” she whispered, frantic, wiping her face. “No, no, I didn’t mean to say toy.”
He sat with his wrists on his knees, hands hanging. Fingernails, like onion skin. The tremulous rush of air going into his nostrils, the huff of its return. She heard an eerie yipping coming from field or forest; remembered the scream of the bobcat, it’s not a woman, Freddie told her, but still she had dreaded the sound, like a woman being murdered, she told him, the sound she always feared they would hear coming from Doreen.
Why would Mr. Tuck want a brass duck. Duck, Tuck, luck.
A charm.
“I’m going to ask you one thing, Enid Salford.” He made a pistol with his finger but aimed it at the carpet bag and then shifted it to the iron stove with glints of metal like slitted cat’s eyes. “I am going to ask you one thing and I will know if you are lying. If I so much as think that you are lying, then I am going to put my hands around your neck. And I am going to strangle you.”
Say yes. Say nothing. Say nothing.
“I want you to tell me where you put that duck.”
The floorboard was where Flora hid the money. Flora had never told anyone but her about the money.
“I put it under my pillow.”
“Any part of it showing?”
“The beak. The beak was showing.”
He snatched her chin, wrenched her face towards him.
“That’s true, isn’t it.”
She nodded into his hand. He released her. He bent forward, holding his forehead.
Flora, Flora, Flora.
Roaring in her ears, a throb behind her eyes, her chest aching with the pressure.
She would hear the clock-clock of hooves coming up the road. They would be looking for her. They would come.
He planted his hands on his knees and pushed himself up. He hitched his pants at the waistband, testing. He picked up the belt. He buckled her hands to the scrolled metal headboard, all the while whispering to himself. He picked up the carpet bag and slung it over his shoulder. He did not look back.
The drumming of hooves on dirt was like a scattering. Pepper on the night. Sprinkled.
Fewer.
Fewer.
She heard a soft thump upstairs, again the scrabble of claws. She struggled, wrenching her hands, feeling the skin on her wrists stretching. Her breasts. She could not cover them with her arms, bend forward, protect her face, belly. She could only kick. She could kick at the raccoons when they jumped up on her. She could scream.
Another thump, close overhead. A second racoon, following the first.
Scritch scritch. A rapid, wild raking. Would a scream frighten them away or signal her vulnerability? They would approach, hunchbacked, with their sidling, sneaky scuttle. Eyes, glinting.
Flora and Josephine and Ellen and Maud would by now have alerted Mr. Fairweather and everyone else they knew. Enid has been stolen by Mr. Tuck.
Ellen: You keep clear of that one.
Flora: Stay away from him.
She explored with her fingertips. Her thumb touched the bar of the buckle, her finger straightened the prong. Slipped, snagged, slipped, snagged.
She gave up.
Tears. She licked them from the corners of her mouth.
Try again. Maybe he didn’t tighten it as much as he could have.
She pressed back against the headboard to loosen the belt. She bent the belt upwards with thumb, fingers, nudging the leather over the prong.
Nudging. Nudging.
She heard the thump of a racoon coming down the stairs.
“You get away,” she shouted.
The prong slid down. She pushed it back up, bent the leather. Panting, now.
Over and over.
The prong suddenly, miraculously, slid from the leather. She worked the belt through the bar. It slithered to the floor.
She pulled up her legs and sat cross-legged on the bed, bent forward, forehead on knees, rubbing her wrists. Trembling. Let them come, those racoons, she thought, feeling vicious contempt.
I can attack. I can run.
When she escaped from the Mallorys, there was no house on Creek Road; no Josephine and Ellen and Maud; no white-painted bedstead and patchwork quilt and chest of drawers with leaf-shaped pulls. No sister.
No hope.
Only fear.
“Get up,” she whispered, swinging her legs over the side of the bed. “You are just hungry and thirsty, that’s all, Enid. You’re not even hurt. You get up, now. You walk home.”
—
In Mr. Fairweather’s carriage, Flora clutched her face, as if to blind herself would also hide the scenes
