Stolen Life (43 page)

Shirley Anne sees her and stops her silly boxing; she disappears into the living room and returns holding the rifle across her chest like a movie soldier.

“That’s useless,” Yvonne says. Shirley Anne looks at her without comprehension.

“It’s a gun, eh?” As if, if she holds it, it must be power.

Chantal appears behind Shirley Anne, frightened. Yvonne goes quickly to her. “Don’t come out now. Watch your brother and sister but don’t ask questions now. Go, sweetheart.”

And she goes, quickly obedient as always, back into the bedroom. There may be heavy thuds and shouts and crashes in the basement, but that small room with most of its floor covered by mattresses for sleep or play must hold only quiet breath. The block letters of the alphabets they pasted to the wall begin just above the middle mattress, Chantal’s, and rise like a mountain to the brightness of the T lit by the streetlight shining through the frilly curtains, and turn the corner of the room on U to Z by the window. Straight across, the ABCs begin again, slant down until M disappears into the closet doors folded open. The three children asleep.

There is no sound from below, nothing. With a jolt Yvonne cannot remember since when there has been no sound, and she is deeply afraid. Silently—her feet are bare—she walks past Shirley Anne by the sink, listening too, open-mouthed, and leans towards the basement door. The door catch has been torn out. There is a slight creak, and slowly she pushes against the door. Inch by inch the steep steps appear beneath her, empty.

And then Chuck’s sudden face is below her. Surging up out of nothing, hard, fast, raw, a face and wide shoulders enraged and already eye-level with her bare feet and in a second he will be nose to nose with her again, will tower over her, and she jerks the door back, he has beaten down Dwa and Ernie and now he will do whatever he pleases, but his big hand out of nowhere grabs the bottom of the door and she jerks harder, she cannot break his grip, she has no space in her terrified mind except, no,
no, not up into the house, knock him loose, knock him back
down
. There is only their desperately silent struggle, both the boys must be out cold and there is no one left but she has to keep him away from the bedroom. She cannot break his grip on the door rim and his other arm is going high, reaching for the knob, and without a thought she slams the door back on him.
Stay out of my house!
And the edge of the door hits his face, blood wells as the skin of his forehead dents and bursts.

She has drawn blood. A fight to the blood is very bad.

Chuck’s face may be bleeding but he is too strong for Yvonne. With one hand he keeps the door open and with the other he grabs her ankle and jerks. She slips off the floor onto the top step, loses her frantic balance and falls forward, headlong into the stairwell. Her desperate hands hook onto the small cupboard she built onto the wall opposite, above the stairs, and she catches herself there, hanging with her full body length stretched out above the bloody, enraged man. He roars to pull her loose, dragging down on her left arm, but she has the strength of terror. If he can throw her aside he will certainly climb up and do whatever he wants in the house. She contorts herself to anchor her right leg on the concrete ledge of the foundation and he clamps onto her hips with both hands and pulls down with all his strength, all his weight. Shirley Anne is kicking at him from the top stair; Yvonne is gasping for help, she knows her backbone will snap. And then at last both Dwa and Ernie are coming at Chuck from below. Cursing, they haul at him, stupidly they add their weight to his on her bending back!

She is breaking, she cannot hold. She manages to scrape one leg free, to get her foot against his chest and shove, hard. And he flies down the stairs against the men to crash into the washer and dryer; even as she falls after them.

Within seconds Shirley Anne is down there with them. All five are now in the tight concrete basement; scrambling to their feet on its concrete floor. From above the kitchen light gleams on Chuck’s bloody head.

S
TREETS LEAD AWAY
from Yvonne’s house in three directions. The south is a dead end blocked by Parkside School. The door clicks behind her, the autumn air innocent as the corner streetlight, not a sound or motion. Her Dodge van stands in the drive where it belongs; she can walk around it and open the door and get in and twist the key and back onto the street easily and she’ll be facing away, every road leading away.

The engine roars as the cold pedal hits her bare foot.
Move, move
. The van swings back, left, and leaps forward. For an instant as she runs under the streetlight at the corner, her eyes draw left, she can’t stop them, and Chuck’s dark Hornet hatchback sits there beside the sidewalk under the trees of her lot. Her thoughts rip like the flash of the streetlight across the back of her mind.

She thrusts a tape into the player, concentrating on play! And George Thorogood’s Destroyers’ guitars clang, then Thorogood wails, “I come in last night … wouldn’t let me in, move it on over …” and she flicks that up to blare, her head rocking into beat. The van drives, turns by itself.

At the Wayside Inn there’s a big bus with blocked-out windows in the parking lot, which means Ladies’ Night, no women allowed
except strippers. Music so loud you can’t think. Yvonne just wants a case of beer from Off Sales and she’ll be gone, away, and the bouncer says, Okay, ya gotta wait for intermission. She stands in the space between the two padded doors of the bar, slumps, and hits the pay-phone. The kids—someone will have to take care of the kids now. But Mom has no phone at Red Pheasant; this time of night there’s only Dad in Butte.

The stripper music crashes to a stop as she’s dialling and the bouncer sticks his head between the doors, Okay, quick. Yvonne approaches the Off Sales desk. One case. Her hand comes out of her jean pocket not with the twenty Dwa just gave her but bills, bills—the cheque she cashed earlier—so she says, “Three, no four cases, four.”

Someone comes up behind her, some huge lunk, talking loud like he owns the world. “Hey, Bud, you can’t serve her, she’s barefoot!”

But both she and the bartender ignore the bossy bugger; she hoists the four cases of beer to her chest and is out of there.
The kids
. She stacks the beer on the entrance floor beside her cold feet.

“Dad,” she says fast, “Dad!” interrupting the long-distance collect operator saying her name and will you accept—into his muttered waking-up.

“Vonnie?”

The door from the bar swings ajar; someone, a man, peers out at her, stands there, trying to listen? And she twists sideways, the receiver jammed into her ear. She’s in Butte, Montana, the little crammed house.

“Vonnie, I can’t hardly hear you, I——”

“Dad, I’m in bad trouble. Can you get hold of Mom, to come get the kids. Something really bad——”

“Where are you? I can’t hear, just noise …”

“I’m between the doors in a bar, I …”

“Where? You in Alberta? Vonnie?”

“Yes! Yes!” she shouts. On the phone she trusts him. He’ll tell her what to do and she’ll do it. “In Wetaskiwin, the house’s okay but something really bad—Dad, a guy keeps peeking out at me. I’ll phone right back, some other place; I’ll phone right back!”

She hangs up, and the man is there again; he must have been listening. “Yvonne?”

It’s the loudmouth at the Off Sales, and she’s seen him before, plenty, always hanging around, she can’t stand him. “What’s wrong? Hey, you’re soaking wet.”

“Nothing!” She’s got two cases under her left arm, grabs the third by the handle, and tries for the fourth but she can’t hold it, it drops to the ground, so she leaves it and swings around to knock the outside door open but it jerks away and she almost falls against two
RCMP
officers coming in. They back up a step, staring at her.

The biggest one says, “Hello, how’s it going … Yvonne.”

He’s grey-haired and smiling slightly.
The cruel cop game of smile and arrest, maybe they’ve already got the guys
. She can do nothing, just play the game as long as it plays.