The Captive (9 page)

They have moved me now into my new home, a small stone room beneath a barn. The beams over my head have been whitewashed many times until now they look as if they were carved out of some soft white stone. There are spider webs everywhere, and a pleasant odor of cow and hay drifts down to me on my bloody old mattress that has come apart from being dragged with my weight on it. It is not a bad cell, one small window where faces appear and disappear at  intervals, a large wooden door that looks quite sturdy and a generous pile of straw beside a bucket of water. I am beginning  to be hungry, but as yet they have not thought to feed me. I wonder what they suppose a rare Russian dancing bear would eat?

If it were not for my constant pains, I would be enjoying this to some extent. I want rest even more than food. I hope to be able to go soundly to sleep sometime, but now there is still much activity going on outside. Suddenly there is a blinding flare from the tiny window. A photographer. Now there will be a picture of something in the papers. I hope it looks enough like the Russian bear to cause no further  speculation. I wonder, or Barry wonders, if Renee will see the picture. He is very far inside now, having come out only to experience his near death by my wounds that he could not handle. He is in what might be called a coma now from that experience. I search for him, but his mind has receded again, deep down. His emotional need for the woman is an interesting  thing, different in kind from the sexual needs Charles had, more like Little Robert's love for Aunt Cat and Martin. It is in some way valuable to me also. I muse on that, but it takes much will to keep the pain at bay, and at last I drift into real sleep.

I have learned from the conversations I can hear outside my dungeon that the young people did not betray me. They were followed when bringing me food and had to admit they were taking care of an "animal" in the cellar of the old McKinley house. They were rushed back out of danger after the fat bellied man took a look into the cellar when I was asleep. It was he who organized the capturing posse, and the policeman present was not in his ofllcial capacity, but was a friend of the farmer who now holds me captive. They feed me canned dog food and corn meal mush. I am hungry enough to eat my jailer, and if the food does not improve, I may do that. But I manage to get most of it down with large gulps of water. I would entice some chickens in if there was a crack large enough for a chicken to get through. Tonight  I will try some rats, which I have felt in various parts of the barn. Rats are terrible to eat, although the ones in barns are not so bad as those from city refuse dumps. They will, I hope, taste better than Red Heart, for all of its three delicious flavors. It must be a terrible thing to be a dog.

I judge three days and nights have passed, so it is the fourth day in the dungeon. During daylight hours there is a constant stream of faces appearing at the little window, and at about two hour intervals I notice someone washing off the nose and hand prints. They must be charging admission. Once or twice a privileged visitor has been allowed a peek through the cracked-open door. The variety of comments at first amused me, but now I have almost tuned them out and can concentrate on the healing of my body. I am feeling much better. Perhaps it is the rats. The barn is almost clean of rats now, and while they are not the tastiest of hors d'oeuvres, they are nourishing if eaten whole. I will reach out to see if I can draw in some from the nearby corn crib tonight. Photo flashes go off at irregular intervals, and once a day a very old woman in a hideous flowered print dress brings my dog food and mush and freshens my water with a garden hose. She seems completely fearless now, since I have made no moves while she is in the room, and I have heard her say to someone outside that "the poor old thing is most likely goin' to die." Certainly if the diet they are providing were my only nourishment, I might come close to dying. There is another problem that any animal in confinement  must have, and that includes humans. My excrement, like most other animal offal, has an offensive odor. It, along with the old rotten mattress, is producing a fetid atmosphere that makes me irritable even though my pains are getting less. I seem able to move the claws of my left paw again, and the pain in the wrist is much less than it has been. The leg is still throbbing occasionally, but my back feels better, and the stomach lacerations and the torn ear are well on their way to healing up solidly. Internally, I feel much stronger, but I do not want to rush things.

Before the old woman comes today, I will try some sign language to let her know my plight. I push all the filthy straw and the mattress over in front of the door and lie down on the brick paving, my chains rattling horribly. Now she will have to either wade through it to get my food dish and water pail, or she will get the idea that it should be shovelled out.

The old woman has responded well, getting another person  in her family to pull the filth away and throw in new straw for me. They remarked on my intelligence at this display  of fastidiousness, but the large, fat bellied young person,  whom I take to be the son of Owner Fat Belly, said it was just like cats using a sandbox, and that all bears did that.

Another week or so and I will be able to move out of here, shift and disappear from this ridiculous situation. The apparent security of this dungeon is dangerous to my life. I am forgetting that these people consider me nothing more than a large, dangerous animal, something to be destroyed if it gets boisterous, perhaps experimented upon if it shows signs of intelligence. I have carefully avoided any show of that quality to keep observers from getting ideas about  taking me to some university or laboratory where experts in animal taxonomy may get a look at me. That possibility is the worst that I have considered, outside of outright death by shooting or noxious gas.

The people have stopped looking in at the window, and it is getting dark. The nights are almost as hot as the days now, and during the day it is increasingly like a steam bath in my dungeon, even though it is partially under the ground. The heat outside must be over one hundred degrees these last few days. But Fat Belly and a stranger are talking in low voices outside my door.

"I believe it's gettin' better," Fat Belly says.

"Best get it into that cage you're gettin' made, Otis," the other voice says. "Or that thing goin' to come outta that basement room like a truck load of dynamite."

"Ah shit. Why that door's solid oak, and the window's too little for it to get out of."

"Yeah, but that floor above it ain't but inch and a half planks over the beams."

"What you think we got in there, a fucking grizzly?" Big Belly is laughing.

"What you got is a helluva big animal. I saw those shoulders  and paws on that thing, and I think they better 'a made that cage like for King Kong."

They walk away through the barn talking, laughing, leaving  an alcoholic odor behind them. I concentrate on drawing a rat from the corn crib after they are out of range. The difference between my captor and my dinner is not great enough, I am thinking with a smile, and I might draw him in through one of the cracks between the foundation and barn floor, a journey that would rearrange his shape  considerably. I am a bit worried by the talk of a heavy cage. If I am put into a cage that is truly unbreakable, it will be  difficult to get away properly, and in addition, I will be more widely visible to the public. It is that factor that upsets me. One more week.

***

They have done it, and most cleverly, too, without danger to themselves. Last night near morning I fell asleep, and the smell of the gas did not wake me soon enough. It seemed harmless enough as it occurred in my dreams, a rather sweet, oily smell, almost like the perfume the girl wore when the young people helped me. I stayed asleep, and then when it was too late I tried to wake, but already the gas had stunned me. Now I am in the cage, and it is as bad as I feared, for Big Belly has announced that he will offer me to the highest bidder, circus, zoo, or curiosity fair. It is the worst that I feared, although at least they have removed the chains which were beginning to gall me. I am feeling stronger each day, but the terrible summer heat, now that I am outside  of the dungeon during the day, is almost as debilitating as the lack of any exercise or good food. Perhaps now, at least, I can draw in some rabbits and chickens. 

I am becoming more alert. I can feel my senses sharpening as the pains die away and my body functions more nearly as it should instead of being merely a hospital for my wounds. They have winched my cage up onto the truck, this time without the canvas covering, and I expect tomorrow to be taken somewhere and sold. Big Belly has made a  considerable profit from me already, I should think, judging by the signs I noted and the high admission charged to peek into my dungeon window. My cage is evidently hand made by some local iron monger, cross pieces welded to the close-set,  rectangular bars at about two foot intervals. The only weak places are at some of the welds along the floor, which is of sheet iron about half an inch thick. All in all, I would have to be in top condition even to attempt breaking out of this thing bodily. And it is an iron oven in the daytime. I find it difficult to keep my face hidden all the time people are looking at me, and I will probably give some curious photographer a good shot sometime, after which I can expect  the zoologists and biologists to come flocking in, wanting  to take me apart and classify me.

The night is hot and hanging with moisture. I can feel thunder far off that I cannot hear yet, and the buildup of electrical charges is having its usual effect on my disposition. I feel tense and excited, my pelt prickling along my spine and the back of my head. A thunder storm of great size is building up from this week's heat. The men on the farm have been quarreling all evening. I hear the voices coming from the house, which is just out of sight of where I am in the cage on the parked truck. Inside the open barn door at the top of the sloping dirt drive, a guard with a rifle sits tilted back on a chair, asleep and probably drunk also. Fat Belly has promised money to those who have helped him, and they are celebrating my sale. I have not heard who is buying, but surely if there is opportunity to break away tonight, I must chance it even though I cannot shift yet. I think they are taking me to a town tomorrow for a public display before the sale. Perhaps they will auction me to the highest bidder.

There is not a flicker of movement in the air. The leaves of the large elm trees around the yard hang as still as in a photograph. I have trouble maintaining my body temperature  at a comfortable level because I cannot move about. There. Lightning off in the southwest. It lights a vast  blackness under which the crooked streaks of light race like  messengers before the host of a huge, dark army set to attack. I feel the rumbles of the thunder and soon will be able to hear them. I shiver as with a chill, waiting for the first  cooling wind as one waits for a drink of water after a desert journey.

The guard is a carved wooden image. The leaves hang immobile in the dark, solid air. Now distant rumbles are continuous, and the guns of that far but approaching battle front reverberate from one side of the world to the other. I wish now that I had more protection than this open cage, for the storm will be a heavy one. It will be cooling at any rate, but I suspect it will be uncomfortable to be swept by rain in this open spot. Now the lightning outlines the trees on the near horizon of farms not more than a couple of miles away. The horizon has become the line of battle, a silhouette of far rounded trees, barns, silos, houses, telephone poles, all cut out precisely and lit by the continuously flickering lightning. The rumble continues and is close enough now so that I can guess which way the storm front is headed. We are directly in the path of an enormous thunder cloud that might be fifty miles across and extend miles into the upper air. I feel itchy and tingling all over now, wanting the storm to burst in all of its power. I feel exhilarated and more healthy than I know I am. It is like drunkenness. I feel strong enough to snap the bars like sticks, but I know it is an illusion brought on by the electrical charges in the air. And still there is not a breath of wind.

In my excess of good feeling, I reach out with my will and touch the sleeping guard. I command him to come to the cage and open it. I feel out in the dark for his movements, although now I can almost see him by the growing illumination  of the approaching lightning. He snaps his head up and tilts the chair forward. When he gets up, he staggers, drops the rifle, almost falls off the elevated ramp that leads to the barn. I try to steady him. He will do me no good with a broken neck. He walks down the ramp with a wobbly, sidelong gait, far gone in liquor and sleep. But when he gets to the cage and I can if I wish reach out and touch his white face with its half-lidded eyes and slack mouth, I find he does not have the key to the padlock. He fumbles apologetically with the large padlock on the door, searches his pockets earnestly, and finally, under my strongest mental prodding, he begins to weep and rub his face on his sleeve. This is too absurd. I let him stagger back up the ramp to the door of the barn, where he lies down on the concrete and falls  instantly asleep again.

At that moment the air makes a shivering movement around me, and I see in the flickering of the lightning the horizon of trees begin to thrash as if they were being wrestled  about by invisible giants. I hear the soughing of air almost at the same moment as the wind sweeps through the farmyard, lifting the leaves and branches upward into a leaping  motion as the wind hits, pulls away and hits harder with a swooshing sound, raising a line of dust in the yard and flinging it over the roof of the big barn. Now the wind has changed direction and is sweeping toward the storm as if it meant to draw us into the dark battle under that cloud with its flashing artillery that booms closer now so that it is  possible to time some of the strokes with their attendant sound. Far off I hear a crashing as of a distant waterfall, the  coughing of a line of surf against a shore, almost articulate, like a stadium full of wildly shouting people watching the battle and being swept along with it. As the wind builds up and begins to change around again, I feel the first hurled drops of rain, sailing horizontally under the belly of the cloud, smacking into the sides of the truck with loud spanging sounds like bullets. Thunder is continuous and closer, and a stroke no more than a quarter mile away cracks open the night and rumbles away into the distance. I hear a door slam and the sound of men's voices coming around the end of the barn.