Tea Cups & Tiger Claws (39 page)

Mack
turned on the light and sized up the door. The handle turned, and the door opened about half an inch, but that’s as far as it went. He reared back and plowed forward with his left shoulder. It gave the same half inch as before but nothing more. He grabbed some wire cutters from one of the drawers and then pushed against the door with his left shoulder and tried to force the wire cutters into the half inch gap. They slid uselessly out of place. Now, with a clenched jaw and a body that leaned like the wall of an A-frame, he tried with both hands to force the cutters into the gap, but they just didn’t fit. He stood up straight and said, “She wrapped bailing wire around the knob and handrail. I can feel it through the gap, but I can’t get the wire cutters close enough to do any good.”

Then the roaring clamor of a cold diesel engine swallowed the gentle midnight chorus.
Dorthea had started the engine, and their metal compartment echoed like a drum. Sarah felt vibration from toes to teeth. Before the three had time to do anything except exchange worried glances, the gears of the truck ground roughly into place, and the trailer lurched forward. The girls gasped. Mack grabbed their arms, and together they collapsed to the floor.

Mack
quickly swiveled in place so that he faced the door and yelled over his shoulder, “Prop yourselves against my back while I try to kick it open.” The cousins scooted into place, side by side, their backs to his, their feet braced against the saddle racks. Sarah heard the blow to the door and felt it on her back and then her seat as the force of the kick slid everyone out of position. The bouncing trailer didn’t help. They braced themselves again, Mack got back into position, and kicked again. The door didn’t budge. As they set up for another attack, the truck made a sharp left turn onto the main drive and their bodies slid sideways, but now the bouncing stopped, and Mack landed blow after blow.

After a while, though, he stopped kicking and said, “This isn’t working.
” Sarah looked over her shoulder and saw a dented metal door that hadn’t budged a single inch.

“Where is she taking us?” asked Veronica.

“Not far,” said Mack, “the front gate is blocked and she didn’t close the back doors on the trailer. I can hear the loading ramp dragging on the road.”

Sarah
tuned out the surging diesel engine and heard a scraping, grinding sound coming from the back of the trailer. It didn’t make sense—like most things with Dorthea—but that didn’t matter; if you knew she had a frozen heart and a black soul, you didn’t need to know anything else. She looked at Mack and asked, “Is there another way out of here?”

“This is single layer sheet metal,” he said, pointing to the wall
that separated them from the rest of the trailer. “If we find a week spot, or a gap, maybe we can break through, and go out the back.”

Sarah
stood up unsteadily and banged her fist repeatedly into the wall. Veronica and Mack joined in and added the twang of flexing sheet metal to the ruckus of the engine and the squeaky torment of the trailer’s suspension. Then the truck turned left again, the trailer swayed right, and hands flew everywhere in search of stable handgrips.

“She’s on the circular driveway to the house,” said
Sarah, one hand on the side of the counter, the other on the forward saddle rack. As soon as the words came out, the truck turned yet again to the left, the trailer swayed right, and bounced wildly as the tires jumped the edging between the driveway and the landscaping. Veronica plopped down onto the top of the storage bin. Mack and Sarah hit the floor. Their world then turned into a screeching, groaning, violently bad carnival ride as Dorthea plowed through bushes and boulders and who knew what else. Veronica allowed herself to fall from the storage bin down to the safety of the floor.

“She’s going to the back,” yelled
Sarah over the jarring chaos. “There’s nothing back there.”

“Except the canyon,” Veronica yelled back simply.

Sarah and Mack’s eyes locked, and then unlocked, machine-like. Mack rose unsteadily to his feet and yelled, “We have to get out of here! Now!”

“
What are you saying?” asked Veronica.

“She’s sending the trailer
over the cliff! We have to get out!” said Mack.

In unison they attacked
the steel wall panel. Veronica crawled back onto the lid of the storage bin and kicked with both feet. Mack and Sarah braced themselves with wide stances and yanked open cabinets and drawers.

“There’s a gap here!” yelled
Sarah. “I can see straight through.” She pointed into a cabinet that measured about two feet by two feet.

Mack
first ducked his head in for a quick look, then grabbed the countertop with both hands, and swung his legs into the cavity. He kicked frantically. When Sarah saw him slide out of place, she plopped down and pressed her back against his, as she’d done before. He kicked again and again, each time sucking air, slamming his feet into the wall, and then loudly releasing the spent vapors from his lungs.

Sarah
felt the power of each blow and thought she heard progress—the popping of broken welds and the flapping of loose metal—but then she stole a glance and saw an opening fit for a rabbit, or maybe a skinny raccoon.

Mack
paused. “We’re not going uphill anymore,” he said.

And they weren’t. Dorthea had plowed to the top. Only rosebushes and a hedge separated them from the cliff.
Mack loudly sucked air and slammed his feet into the wall with a force that Sarah felt to her ankles. “That’s it. I can’t get any more,” he said, as he lowered his head into the cabinet, reached out with an unsteady hand, and bent the dislodged flap up and out of the way. Then he slid back and said, “One of you has to squeeze through.” Veronica scooted over to look. Sarah looked too, and thought of an anorexic contortionist, but not of herself, not in her wildest, most starved, celery stick dreams.

"I can fit through there," said Veronica, as rosebushes scratched the sides of the trailer and the ground sloped decidedly downhill.

"Veronica?" said Sarah.

"I can. Look at me. I weigh 88 pounds. I can slip through, go down the ramp, and open the door."

Sarah looked at Mack. “It’s our only chance,” he said.

The trailer slowed and the ride
became more bouncy, less jolting.

“Go fast,” said
Mack, “and use these to cut the wire.” He tossed the cutters through the opening and helped lower Veronica to the floor, stomach first. She quickly shimmied forward, put her left hand and arm through the opening, followed by her head and left shoulder. Then, like a snake swallowing a rabbit, the crooked sheet metal mouth swallowed the rest of Veronica’s upper body. Sarah blinked, surprised, hopeful. Veronica wiggled and squirmed forward an inch at a time, sometimes more when the trailer bounced and propelled her body forward. She made it to her waist, her skinny little waist, and then the trailer stopped. The ratcheting sound of the parking brake being applied echoed through their chamber. Dorthea had found her spot.

“I’m stuck. I can’t move,” said Veronica with a muffled voice. “My jeans are stuck.”

Mack dove into the opening. Sarah looked over his shoulder. Veronica’s jeans, her beloved bell bottom jeans, had snagged and bunched up on the small steel rail that ran along the floor, to which the panel had been welded.

“Try
to lift your body and push forward,” said Mack.

“I can’t! I can’t move at all!”

She sounded panicked.

“I’ll push on your feet,” yelled
Mack.

They’d reached the end.
Sarah saw it in Mack’s fearful, desperate face. She saw it in her cousin’s stuck, truncated body. She heard it in the chatter of the idling engine, monotone, robotic, like the emotionless chatter of a lost soul about to jump to its death. In that moment, in that distorted envelope between life and death, she saw what remained of their lives, from the terrifying plunge, to the quiet, mangled coffin at the bottom of Bryson Canyon.

And so she prayed. Not because she’d seen the light, but because she’d seen the dark. The groping, stumbling kind of dark
ness, where good and bad and right and wrong and life and death are treacherous obstacles in a blind man’s world; where thoughts of decency and kindness are hidden stumbling blocks that only result in a trip and a fall and a curse in the night. In this dark world people press and squirm like maggots, not fighting to get to the light, but to get to a better spot on the carcass. It was the kind of darkness her mother used to see around every corner. Yes, her mother, because when it came right down to it, only her mother had ever warned her about a world like this. So Sarah turned to her mother’s faith, to the faith she used to know.

With a thump and a groan, the brakes released, and the trailer came back to life.
Sarah closed her eyes tight and hugged the saddle rack like a scared child. But the trailer didn’t plunge. It leaned steeply, inched forward, but didn’t plunge. It seemed Dorthea had found a better launching pad just a step away. And a horrendous step it turned out to be. With a sudden, deafening crash, everything not bolted down flew a foot into the air, including her body, and Mack’s. But as soon as they hit the floor it stopped, except the resigned creaking and moaning of the defeated trailer.

"I'm free! I'm free!" shouted Veronica.

Mack and Sarah sat up, looked into the opening, and saw nothing. She’d made it through! They scurried to their feet and fell into each other’s arms.

“Hold onto me tight!” said
Mack. “We’ll jump out together! Hold on tight!”

“I’m here! I’m here!” yelled Veronica.

They heard the tapping, clicking of the wire cutters. They leaned against the door and waited.

A rapid fire
clackety-clack sound told them that Dorthea had applied the parking brake.

“Hurry Veronica! Please hurry!” yelled
Sarah.

“I’ve almost got it!”

Then they heard the thud of the released parking brake and felt the sickening sensation of movement. The trailer shuddered, collapsed from beneath their feet, and pointed steeply downhill. Veronica squealed. They pressed hard against the door. The trailer picked up speed. Veronica screamed loudly. Sarah cried out and buried her head into Mack’s chest. And then the door popped open and out they flew, first Mack, then Sarah, wrapped up in his bear hug. When they hit the ground she heard him groan from the impact, but didn’t feel anything herself except a hard jolt. They immediately started rolling. With flying elbows and heads that banged against a spinning world, with great scoops of dirt that choked and clogged, they rolled in the only possible direction: down the canyon.

And then with a thud and a whack they stopped.
Sarah opened her eyes and spit mud from her mouth. She planted an elbow into the ground, raised her spinning head, and through dirt encrusted eyes saw a bright light. She wiped away the grime and, like fire shooting up from a hole in the earth, she saw the truck and trailer, their would-be coffin, engulfed in flames at the bottom of the canyon.

“We made it
, Mack! We made it!” She said, but he didn’t answer. She rolled to her left and saw his white, rolled back eyes. Then she saw the boulder behind him, the boulder he’d slammed into, the boulder she hadn’t even grazed. “No!” she said out loud. They’d jumped from the trailer together, rolled up like a newspaper; if she’d escaped injury then the same had to be true for him too. "Mack, Mack, wake up. Please wake up.” She wiped the dirt from his face, cradled his head, and immediately felt the dampness of blood. She didn’t need to look, but did anyway, and saw the flickering light brilliantly reflected on her blood covered hand. He needed help. “Veronica!” she yelled.

“And what do we have here?” came the low, sinister voice that sounded like bubbling sludge.
Sarah struggled to her feet and saw Dorthea at the top of the canyon, just twenty feet away. Her gown sparkled in the firelight. “Of course it had to be you,” she said, “because you’re the little nothing who knows how to hang on. Your name isn’t worth a line in the phone book, so you hang on to a better one. Your house isn’t fit for a dog, so you hang on to Sunny Slope Manor.” Dorthea raised her right arm and pointed a gun at Sarah. “Fleas and ticks know how to hang on, but they still don’t belong. And neither do you.” She pulled back the hammer, squinted, and fired the gun. Sarah saw the bright flash, heard the loud crack, and heard frightened screams coming from up at the house, but didn’t feel any pain; nothing at all. The shot had missed. Dorthea pulled back the hammer and aimed again, but this time, before she had a chance to shoot, flood lights came on and blanketed the backyard. Someone had turned on the lights.

“Don’t do it
, Dorthea! Look behind you! There are witnesses!” pleaded Sarah.

The
second story verandah, barely visible from where Sarah stood, brimmed with bodies dressed in tuxedos and ball gowns. They stared intently at the spectacle by the cliff.

“You still don’t understand, do you?” said Dorthea. “I belong and you don’t.
They might witness a shooting, but as soon as I wrap my fingers around their throats they’ll smile and blush and fall gently back to sleep.”

“You won’t get away with it!”