Hard Limits Read online

“Chapped?” I said.

  “What?”

  “Your lips. Are they chapped?”

  “No. Yes. I was just…nothing.”

  Brett took her fingers away and crossed her arms across her chest. I used my advantage.

  “When was the last time you saw Lyon?” I asked as firmly as I could without making her even more defensive.

  “I’ve never met the woman,” she said.

  “No?”

  “No.”

  “And what about Skyler? When was the last time you saw her?”

  “Skyler? Oh, that would have been months ago.” Her brow furrowed. “I think it was June. Yes, it was June. I remember now because it was just before her birthday.”

  “When was her birthday?”

  “June fifteenth,” she answered without hesitation.

  When I’d finished writing, I closed the pad and got up from the table. I drained my cup.

  “Thanks for the coffee,” I said. “That’s all I need.”

  Brett stood. She looked surprised.

  “Of course,” she said. “And if there’s anything else you think of, any way I can help, just feel free to ask.”

  She hesitated while I put on my jacket. We were at the front door.

  “You know, Wynonna, I’m sorry about the way things ended between us.”

  I waved her apology away with my hand.

  “No worries,” I said. “We’re good. Really.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “Well, then,” she said. “Good.”

  “One more thing,” I added. “You recently bought forty-two acres of woods around here. Can I ask why?”

  I watched her reaction. Her eyes darted for a quick moment, a strange movement, back and forth.

  “No reason. I just liked the idea of having more land. Land is always a good investment.”

  “My granddaddy would have agreed with you about that,” I said. “You take care now.”

  Back at my Harley, I wrote three things in my pad. One. Brett had Skyler’s birthday memorized. We only remember the birthdays of people who are important to us. Two. Brett lied about never meeting Lucy. I don’t know this for a fact but my gut says it’s so. Three. Brett is a good liar.

  People lie for lots of reasons: to save face, to protect feelings, to avoid punishment. Criminals lie for just one. To get away with their crime.

  Brett

  Day five of slave training. That morning I brought my tools. It’s amazing what you can order on the Internet these days. Lucy was sitting in her corner of the cage when I entered the cabin. I walked over to the wall hooks to remove her leash. At the cage door, I undid the lock and let myself in. I left the door ajar and just stood there, towering over her in my boots. I didn’t say anything. She looked up and her eyes met mine. Then her head went down for a quick moment before coming back up.

  “Crawl,” I said.

  Lucy hesitated for less than a second. Her palms went to the floor as she got on her knees. She kept her head down, like a soldier, then crawled to me. When she was at my feet, she slumped into a classic slave position, kneeling, arms extended, right hand over left. Reaching down, I put the palm of my left hand on the top of her head.

  “Good girl,” I said.

  But I was doubtful. The change had been too sudden. She was playing me, I was sure of it. With my other hand, I attached the leash to her collar.

  “Heel.”

  I led her like a dog on all fours outside the cage toward the equipment. I snapped her wrist cuffs into the trigger clips, one at each end of the bar. This left her standing with her upper body forming a Y. There were bolts and clips in the floor where I attached her ankle cuffs. She was now an X. I removed the leash.

  “I was just thinking about something,” I told her. “I made you a Y and then I made you an X. Y, that’s the male chromosome. XY is male. XX is female, as we know.”

  She was watching me. I let her watch.

  “Ever hear of XYY Syndrome?”

  She shook her head slightly to indicate no.

  “About one out of every thousand baby boys is born with an extra Y chromosome. Some people believe that an extra Y predisposes the male toward violence. For a while on TV it seemed like all you saw were crime stories about XYY serial killers.”

  Lucy was listening.

  “For at least forty years there has been a quiet feminist theory that says males are a genetic mutation. Elizabeth Gould Davis promoted this way back in the seventies when I was young. It never really caught on in mainstream circles, but it’s been around ever since.”

  Despite her hatred of me, her eyes showed interest.

  “You know? You can visualize it. Like you now: you’re an X, your body is forming a perfect X. But if I were to, let’s say, step outside and pull my axe from the tree stump where I left it, and if I were to chop off your right leg at the crotch, well, then you’d become a Y.”

  I watched her pupils dilate in alarm at the suggestion.

  “Davis thought it was like that. Sometime during the early evolution of life, a perfect thing, the X chromosome, broke off a piece of itself and became imperfect, giving us the male.”

  I stepped up close to her. I lifted her chin and looked into her eyes.

  “Woman is perfection. Her body, I mean. When you look at a man’s body, you can see the flaw in the design. It’s his genitals. They’re necessary from a reproductive standpoint, and some women find them pleasurable. But they’re ugly. I’m talking about aesthetics. A man’s body is displeasing, aesthetically. His penis and his testicles.”

  I let her consider this.

  “I don’t hate men,” I continued. “Men have their place. They have their function, but a lesbian is a woman who doesn’t need a man. A lesbian is a woman whose sexuality is reserved for other women. A woman who fucks men is not a lesbian, she is a bisexual. Or a pansexual. Or a queer. Or whatever the hell you call yourselves these days. But she is not a lesbian.”

  I moved my hand up to Lucy’s long, oily hair. I grabbed a fistful at the top and yanked it hard enough that it lifted her head.

  “Do you understand? Do you?”

  I dropped her head and walked away before she could answer.

  “Straight men are dangerous,” I muttered. “Playing with straight men is crazy. They’re too prone to violence and rape and rage. As we have learned, haven’t we, Lucy?”

  I turned back to her.

  “Haven’t we?” I said, louder.

  “Yes, Master,” Lucy mumbled.

  “Yes,” I said.

  I got my kit from the chair, where I had set it.

  “Today I’m going to mark you as mine,” I told her.

  Removing the tools I’d need, I set them in order on the seat: four packets of PVP wipes; a pair of disposable gloves; a 14-gauge piercing needle; forceps; and two stainless steel barbells. I put on the gloves and opened a packet. I wiped her left breast first, then the right. Focusing on the nipples, I took the left nipple in my gloved fingertips and twisted it. I watched her expression. She winced, but I couldn’t tell whether it was from pleasure or pain. I twisted the right. Her body jerked involuntarily.

  “I think your right breast is more sensitive than your left,” I said. “That’s not uncommon. For one nipple to be more sensitive, I mean. You have beautiful breasts, by the way. Skyler spoke very fondly of your breasts.”

  They were not quite where they were in her youth, I was sure, but they hadn’t fallen much. For a woman her age, her breasts were surprisingly high and round.

  Taking the forceps in my left hand, I placed the jaws over her right nipple and pulled it up and out, toward me. In my right hand I held the needle. I touched the point to the outside of the nipple and with a steady pressure I pushed it in, tapping it through. Lucy gasped.

  “Hurt?” I said. “It doesn’t hurt much, I’ve been told. Although the second nipple always hurts more. I don’t know why. I suppose the body is anticipating the pain. I’m surpris
ed you don’t already have body piercings. But I guess they’re just for slaves.”

  I paused, remembering something.

  “In fact,” I said. “Now that I’m thinking about it, the Ancient Greek word for tattoo was stigmatias, which means, literally, ‘a marked slave.’ Tattooing and piercing were originally used to mark and identify slaves and prisoners of war.”

  I slid the post of the barbell into the hole as I eased the needle out.

  “The Ancient Greeks and Romans believed that the body is beautiful just as it is. Tattooing or piercing desecrated the body. It was something only barbarians did, like the Brits north of Hadrian’s Wall. The Romans called them the Picts. Like pictures. Like people who had pictures on their skin.”

  I released the forceps and returned them with the needle to the kit box. I took the silver balls that attach to the post and screwed them in place. I regretted suddenly that I did not bring pliers. I used my gloved fingers to screw the bells of the bar as tightly as I could.

  Lucy was breathing deeply. Her normally white skin had flushed a blotchy pink.

  “That’s one,” I said.

  The right nipple did hurt more. Her face contorted briefly, such a fleeting expression of pain that I nearly missed it. But I caught enough to feel a small sense of satisfaction. When I was done, I used a new wipe on both breasts before standing back to admire my work.

  “I’m pleased,” I said.

  I dumped her water bowl in the sink and refilled it. She hadn’t eaten her kibble. After dumping it in the trash can near the sink, I refilled that bowl with wet dog food from a can. I released her from her X with her leash back on.

  “On your knees,” I said.

  She went down immediately. I led her, crawling, back to her cage. I closed and locked her inside.

  “You need to eat,” I told her. “My mistake. It. It needs to eat.”

  Snow doesn’t fall here in the mountains in October. The last time it did, the year was 1980 when four inches fell on Savage Mountain. In 1980, I was still in San Francisco. I was seven years out of Reformatory, the California Youth Authority Facility for Girls at Ventura. I was three years done with Probation. I had paid my dues and changed my name and had my juvenile records sealed.

  I woke up that sixth morning of slave training to snow. I don’t pretend to understand chaos theory. How, when a president flaps his lips in America, it affects an iceberg in the North Pole, but I can appreciate global warming and the trend toward fewer snow days. That was why I was surprised when I woke up at five thirty and read that the temperature outside was just twenty-seven degrees. The weather service blamed a polar vortex, breaking apart and swirling its Arctic chill down the East Coast. Weather dot com was predicting a storm would bear down on us by noon. I dressed warmly, ending with my all-weather parka.

  I had to park farther than usual from the slave cabin. The dirt road was icy and even with my four-wheel drive I lost traction in spots on the incline up the mountain. As soon as I saw the cabin, I knew what had happened. There was a gaping hole in the window. It can’t be, I thought, but somehow Lucy has escaped.

  There were two shards of glass lying in the snow, glistening in the sunlight that was breaking through the gray clouds overhead. Smaller pieces lay beside them, jagged and broken. The window looked like the jaws of a beast with sharp glass teeth.

  The padlock was still in the staple on the front door. I used my key to open it quickly and stepped inside. The cage door was ajar and the Meister lock was on the floor. Picking it up, I saw two silver posts jammed inside. Of course. The barbells I put through Lucy’s nipples. Lucy used them to jimmy the lock. Clever girl. For a moment, I had to admire her resourcefulness.

  Next to the lock was her discarded collar. I picked it up and stuffed it in the pocket of my all-weather, hunter-orange parka. After glancing around the room, I focused on the window, broken from the inside. She had used the fire poker. It was on the floor beside the chair that was lying overturned on its side, probably kicked over during Lucy’s struggle to lift herself through the window.

  I assessed the scene. Her collar was on the floor of the cage, where she discarded it. Her cuffs were hanging from the coat rack, where I left them. I picked up the collar and pocketed it. I took the leash and cuffs off their hooks and pocketed those as well. I took the Taser. Mentally, I reviewed what I didn’t see on the way in-the axe in the tree stump. I went back outside. I was right, the red-handled axe was gone.

  I stepped back inside just long enough to throw two logs in the stove, to keep the fire going. Outside again, I looked from the window to the snow on the ground. There were bright red tracks that started at the broken shards. Now that I was looking for them, I could see drops of blood in the snow, like a trail of garnets. There were boot prints that followed the dirt road near the two-line rut made by my all-terrain tires that morning. I set out on foot, following the footsteps and the blood.

  I was aware of my own blood as I walked. I could feel my heart thumping an anxious rhythm in my chest. I intentionally slowed my step, noticed my breathing. Slow down, slow down. I willed myself to stay calm. It was freezing outside; I don’t want to break a sweat. I tried to remember, frozen lung. At what temperature did runners freeze their lungs?

  I walked slowly, deliberately. Lucy was naked from her bare feet to her long black hair. I was wearing a ski cap pulled down over my ears because what is it the survivalists said? Seventy percent of heat loss comes off an uncovered head. Something like that. She wouldn’t get far, I told myself. And yet, I couldn’t risk the chance that she would get away. There was too much at stake.

  The snow crunched underfoot. I heard the wind in the denuded trees, felt it sting my face. It was the only sound. There were no birds, no animals, nothing. The sky darkened. A light snow began falling. Gentle snowflakes landed on my face, melting on my lips. A short while later, I lost the blood trail. I was still on the gravel driveway.

  I stopped to look off into the distance as far as I could see, south into the cemetery, north into the woods. I tried to think like Lucy. She would be running west, down the mountain, toward Metcalf Creek Road. I had to find her before she got to the public road.

  A hunter knows that a wounded animal will take the easiest route to safety and will choose a clearing over a brush. Lucy wouldn’t want to fight her way through the woods. I hadn’t seen her on the drive when I was coming up about an hour before. She’ll be in the cemetery.

  I let my eyes survey the parallel rows of headstones rising from the snow like gray, gapped teeth: Adcock, Morris, Stevens, Smith…the Confederate dead. I started my walk among the graves: Copage, Dixon, Abernathy, Hughes… Overhead, a bird cried out. Looking up, I spotted a red-tailed hawk making wide circles in the sky. The hawk is a bird of prey, a sharp-eyed raptor. Above the tree tops, layered clouds turned the color of old silver, forming a low-hanging blanket. When I looked again, the hawk had disappeared. Then the world went white.

  The storm came on fast. The cloud descended suddenly, dropping a hard, thick snow that blew in gusts across the blue mountains. I made my way against the wind, head down, shoulders hunched. The force of it hit me like a sandblaster, blowing horizontally against my body. I walked against a gale once in San Francisco, in a rainstorm. This felt stronger. The wind howled in my ears, through my hood. It made a roaring sound, almost like a hoarse voice calling, “Whooo?”

  I struggled as long as I could before giving up. Backtracking to the slave cabin, I found the fire inside still burning.

  This would have been day seven of her slave training. I found Lucy at the grieving angel. It’s a monument in granite, larger than the rest of the markers, a winged figure slumped over a headstone. The engraving read, Baby Boone. B: April 30, 1861. D: April 30, 1861.

  The red handle of the axe peeked up out of the snow at her side. She was dead, of course, no one could have survived a night outdoors at these temperatures, naked and exposed. I almost pitied her. Freezing to death is not a good way to die
. The Nazis taught us that. At Dachau, Hitler’s scientists conducted hypothermia experiments on captive Russians and Jews and homosexuals. Some victims were placed in tubs of freezing water while others were left naked in open air as cold as twenty-one degrees Fahrenheit. The Nazis determined that the human body can survive down to a core temperature of about seventy-one degrees. Below that, most people die.

  I imagined Lucy’s last day. Yesterday, before she decided to escape, Lucy had begun her day at an internal temperature of about ninety-eight point six. Although she was unclothed, the cabin was warm, comfortable. A fire was burning in the wood stove, filling the small room with heat.

  Her last meal was Alpo Beef and Vegetable Stew. I had emptied the can into her bowl Thursday evening before I left and watched her eat kneeling on all fours, like a dog. When she was done, there was gravy on her chin. I told her to wipe it off and lick her fingertips. She did.

  This is what I imagine happened to Lucy yesterday when she made the decision to escape. As she crawled through the broken window of the slave cabin, her exposed skin hit the icy air of the world outside. Inside her thick skull, the hypothalamus, the part of her brain responsible for thermoregulation, ordered the capillaries near the surface of her flesh to constrict in a desperate effort to generate body heat. The muscles of her neck and shoulders tightened as she began running for freedom. Involuntarily, she shivered. Her feet and hands started to ache. Her core temperature dropped to ninety-seven degrees, even as she ran, even as the adrenaline of flight surged through her bloodstream. At this point Lucy entered the first stage of hypothermia.

  As the storm clouds pushed in from the distance, Lucy’s internal temperature continued to fall. Before long it slipped to ninety-five. Her body began to shiver involuntarily, violently, uncontrollably. The cold air felt like needles piercing her flesh. Her hands and feet went numb. The wound on her leg was still bleeding, but it had become only a minor consideration, overpowered by the awareness of the freezing cold.

  Her mental state began its slow slide from confusion to weariness. She felt tired, bone tired, wanting only to rest. At this point she was still able to think, but her thoughts had grown fuzzy. She began to think magically; surely someone will find me, this can’t be the way my life ends. She found a place to stop. Lucy told herself that she was closing her eyes just for a moment, just to rest. Eyes shut, snow drifting on to her lids, she listened to the howl of the wind.