Endangered

29

Brenda stood at the edge of the root cellar doors, wearing her heavy winter coat. Liv saw she was wearing the same scarf over her hair that she had worn when she introduced herself as Kitty Wells. It was almost dark out.

Brenda didn’t look down. Instead, she peered off into the distance and motioned with her arms, indicating Come on, come on.

Liv was confused. But when she heard the low rumble of heavy equipment, she realized what drew Brenda’s attention.

She said, “Brenda, what’s going on?” Her voice was flushed with panic.

Brenda shushed her with her hand, then continued gesturing.

Liv could hear the sound of a truck entering the compound.

When Brenda finally bent slightly and looked down, Liv thought she could see tears on her cheeks.

“It’s time, girl,” Brenda said. “Eldon’s back with a full load.”

Liv closed her eyes.

“Put all them dishes and the silverware in the bucket. How’d you like the pork chops? I made ’em especially for you this time. Eldon and Bull will have to wait for theirs later on tonight. At least, if that damned Bull ever shows up. And Dallas, too. He saw this snow and took off an hour ago on that snowmobile. But I bet he’ll be back later for his dinner.”

She talked to Liv as if Liv cared about these details.

Liv said, “You don’t have to do this, Brenda. I told you, I won’t talk.”

Brenda ignored her and started lowering the bucket hand over hand with the rope.

“Just put everything inside, sweetheart,” Brenda said. “Don’t make this any harder than it already is.”

“Are you really going to bury me in raw sewage?”

“Don’t think of it like that.”

Liv felt cold fear spasm through her. “How in the hell can I think of it any other way?”

“Don’t get hysterical, darling.”

“Why are you doing this to me? Why don’t you just shoot me and get it over with?”

“Shhhhhh.”

The pump truck was coming toward the root cellar. It was still out of view. Liv heard a squeak of brakes. Then it began to back toward the opening.

Reep-reep-reep.

As it got closer, the warning increased in volume. Liv saw Brenda glance up at it and cock her head to the side to guide it in. She had moved to the other side of the opening so that the bumper of the truck wouldn’t knock her into the root cellar.

Brenda was suddenly lit up in red from the taillights. Liv could smell the exhaust of the big truck now, and she saw a bronze valve, like a snout, ease over the opening of the cellar.

“Don’t come any closer, Eldon,” Brenda shouted. “You’re far enough.”

To Liv, she said, “Put them dishes in the bucket. I can’t bear to lose a place setting.”

The sheer unreality of the situation almost overwhelmed Liv. Brenda was concerned about her dishes getting buried in filth? That’s what she was concerned about?

“Eldon,” Brenda said. “That’s good right there.”

Liv raised up her hands for the bucket as it lowered. She looked up to see that Brenda was distracted by the proximity of the release valve of the pump truck.

Liv grabbed the top of the bucket in a firm grip and yanked down as hard as she could, putting all of her weight behind it. A guttural sound came out of her as she did it.

Instinctively, Brenda didn’t let go in time. And now she pitched forward off balance, pausing for a half second on the edge of the opening and windmilling her arms before falling in.

Liv threw herself to the side of the wall so she wouldn’t get hit. Brenda dropped fast, her body hitting the floor with a horrible crunching sound like a full bag of ice cubes dropped on pavement.

Reep-reep-reep.

The ear-piercing sound filled the hole.

Liv bent over Brenda, who had landed facedown. Her housedress was flopped up on her backside, exposing her thick white thighs and knee-high support hose, and her coat had bunched up on her shoulders. Brenda’s arms were splayed out on either side. Her head was turned toward Liv and her eyes were open.

Brenda’s eyes bore into Liv with so much hatred that Liv shuddered.

But she couldn’t move. Brenda Cates was alive, but she’d broken her neck in the fall.

Liv’s words were absorbed by the reep-reep-reep when she said, “God forgive me for what I’m about to do.” Somehow, though, Brenda must have heard her because her eyes got even harder.

The reep-reep-reep sound suddenly cut out above and the motor sputtered to a stop.

“Brenda?”

It was Eldon. He’d shut the motor off and was clambering down out of the cab of his pump truck.

“Brenda, where are you? Where did you go?”

Liv knew if Eldon saw Brenda’s damaged body down there, he’d likely grab his gun and start blasting. She knew she could try to wedge herself beneath Brenda’s bulk, make herself harder to hit, or . . .

—

ELDON SAID, “Oh no. What the hell happened?”

He was bending over the opening, looking down, the beam of his flashlight moving gently over Brenda as if caressing her with light.

The pool of light found Liv. She was on her side, legs and arms splayed out as if she’d fallen, too. She kept her eyes closed even as the light turned the inside of her eyelids orange.

Then it was gone.

“Oh nooooo,” he said, his voice choked with emotion.

When the light vanished, Liv opened her eyes a crack and found Brenda still glaring at her from a few feet away. Liv had never experienced so much raw, focused hate in her life. But this time, instead of shuddering, she grinned.

She whispered, “What’s wrong? Cat got your tongue?”

Then: “You can watch what happens next.”

—

AFTER THIRTY SECONDS of Eldon’s panicked shouts to Bull for help, which went unanswered, and then to Dallas, who wasn’t there, he slid the ladder into the root cellar. The feet of it settled between Brenda and Liv and broke up their staring contest.

As Eldon backed down the ladder, he grunted with each step. Liv closed her eyes again in case he shined the flashlight at her.

Eldon reached the floor and immediately turned to Brenda. He bent down over her, stroked her hair and back, and said with grateful astonishment, “You’re still breathing.”

Liv cracked her eyelids to see that Brenda’s eyes were on Eldon in a sidewise glance. They looked desperate. She was trying to warn him.

“What happened? Did you fall in? Don’t tell me I hit you with the back of the truck and knocked you in here.”

As quietly and gracefully as she could, Liv rolled to her feet and grasped the rock in the wall. It pulled free, but it was heavy.

Brenda’s eyes clicked back and forth between Eldon hovering over her and Liv approaching him from behind with the rock raised unsteadily over her head.

Eldon said, “Did that nigger bitch get you down here somehow?”

Before he could turn around, Liv smashed the stone down on the crown of Eldon’s head and he rolled forward onto Brenda, whimpering like a wounded dog.

Blood streamed down the sides of his face onto Brenda’s coat and back.

—

BEFORE SHE MOUNTED the ladder, Liv looked over her shoulder. Eldon’s arms and legs were twitching slightly and the back folds of his C&C Sewer and Septic Tank Service uniform shirt tightened and relaxed. He was still breathing as well. He was a tough old man with a really hard head, she thought. That rock would have instantly killed anyone else.

She climbed the ladder recklessly, once losing her footing on a rung and nearly falling back into the cellar. The near-accident focused her attention and she climbed out very deliberately the rest of the way. But when she reached open air and felt the sting of the cold fresh wind on her face, she whooped.

Then she grasped the ladder and started to pull upward. It would not come free.

Liv yanked hard on it and there was some give, but not enough.

Was it stuck on something?

She peered down into the hole and cursed. Eldon’s huge hand grasped the bottom rung. He was still on the ground, still on top of his wife, but he held the ladder in a death grip. Even with one hand, he had more strength than she did.

Liv looked around. The compound was silent. The only light was the porch light at the main house. Bull and Dallas were still away.

Maybe Eldon had some kind of tool in his truck, she thought. Something she could slide down the ladder or drop on Eldon to make him give up his grip.

She found a flathead shovel sticking up on the side of the pump unit and she pried it loose. Liv ran back to the root cellar and threw the shovel down blade-first like a spear. It bounced harmlessly off Eldon’s back and clattered in the corner of the cellar. He still had that one-handed grip.

Then she thought about leverage. She couldn’t outmuscle him, but . . .

—

SHE TWISTED THE LADDER hard to the right. It gave, but not enough. Then she violently reversed the twist to the left in a full rotation and it came free. She’d managed to wrench it out of his fingers.

When the ladder was up and out of the cellar and lying in the snow, she whooped again.

Hot tears stung her eyes and her cheeks. She didn’t want to look back down in that hole, didn’t want to see Eldon and Brenda Cates twitching down there like bloody salamanders.

She just wanted to be out of there.

That’s when she looked up and saw headlights coming fast from the west.