Page 34 of Backwoods
—until the Overseer comes?—
—until he found a way to get out of the barn.
The sliding barn door had a long, rusted handle. It didn’t budge, despite him pushing against it with both hands and leveraging all of his weight. He remembered seeing bolts on the exterior. They had secured it in place.
He kicked the door, out of sheer anger. It barely rattled in the frame, and for his outburst, he was rewarded by losing his balance. He dropped to his butt in the hay, the impact banging through his tailbone. He cursed, tears of pain leaking from the corners of his eyes.
It was tempting to lie back in the hay and wait this out. Eventually, someone would open the door and let him out of here, possibly this Overseer guy. Perhaps he could talk sensibly to the Overseer.
But he remembered the fear that had flashed in the bearded man’s eyes at the mention of an audience with the Overseer, remembered the ugly brands that all these people had been forced to bear. Would a man who applied a hot iron to bare flesh be willing to talk sensibly?
And where had they taken Amiya?I think you just his type, the old woman had said to her.
Nick forced himself back to his feet.
He shuffled around the perimeter of the barn. He searched for weaknesses in the walls: a loose board, a gap he could exploit. Although the barn was old and in generally poor condition, he didn’t see a way out, not without the aid of some kind of tool.
He looked up. The window was out of range. Was there anything useful in the hayloft?
He approached the ladder. A couple of rungs were missing, but enough were within his reach for him to climb. He began to ascend. It was a challenge with the shackles. He had to coordinate the movements of his hands and feet or risk tumbling back to the floor.
Straining and grunting, he finally reached the loft.
The wood creaked under his weight. The air up here near the ceiling was so thick and hot it was difficult to draw breath; it wrung fresh perspiration from his pores.
The area measured perhaps ten feet wide and eight feet long. He discovered another pile of hay, gathered together in the shape of a crude bed. A tattered, soiled pillow bleeding tufts of cotton.
Someone else was here, too.
He lifted the pillow, but underneath found only more strands of hay.
What did you think you would find, Nick? A conveniently hidden crowbar?
He laughed at the fatal absurdity of his predicament. Salty sweat rolled into his eyes, mingling with the tears that had begun to stream down his face.
Keep moving, Nick; keep looking. Or go to sleep and wake up when it’s time to get branded.
Descending the ladder was harder than climbing it, and on the way down, when he was about seven feet above the floor, he missed a rung. Luckily, he landed on his feet a few feet away from the ladder, in a bed of straw—and thought he heard something metallic shift in the thin stalks.
He bent over and searched the area, snatching away straw like a kid tearing wrapping paper off a gift.
He couldn’t believe what he found, buried at the bottom of the pile.
An old, rusted claw hammer.
22
They had separated her and Nick, but Amiya refused to yield. She was determined to fight her situation at every turn, to claw and tear—literally, if necessary—until she brought this living nightmare to an end.
As the wagon took her away from the barn where they had imprisoned Nick, and along the winding dirt road toward the run-down mansion, Amiya screamed at her captors. She berated them as cowards. Called them idiots. Told them they would be sorry for what they were doing.
The nameless man, and Betty, ignored her. Despite her shackles, she had wriggled around amidst the lengths of wood, positioned herself to have a full forward view as the wagon advanced across the plantation. The man kept urging the old horse along, and Betty didn’t so much as turn to look at her.
Neither did anyone else.
The path to the estate trailed along the edges of the cultivated fields. She got a closer look at the people working out there—the so-called “field hands.”
The first thing she noticed was the ethnic diversity of the prisoners. There were about twelve of them, and they wereBlack, White, Asian, Latino. Mostly men; she saw only two women. All of them wore clothes that hung on them like rags, but there was no uniformity to the clothing. One guy had on a tattered throwback basketball jersey. Someone else wore a T-shirt turned brown with dirt. One of the women wore a flower-patterned blouse but the flowers had turned gray.
