Chapter 18
CHAPTER
EIGHTEEN
My body throbs from my shoulder blades to my ankles as I’m walked back to Redemption Keep.
Troy has been taken ahead of me and is locked in his cell.
He presses his face to the bars, and I manage to flash a weak smile at him while Keeper unlocks mine.
I want him to think I’m okay. The truth is I’m not sure I’ll ever be the same again.
It’s all of it, not just the beating. The hopelessness of it. The tiny taste of the world that I got, the way falling in love opened my eyes to everything I could’ve had, and the realization that it isn’t going to happen.
After I’m shoved inside, I go straight to the mat and lie on my stomach. Keeper and Governor James don’t stick around. As soon as we’re alone again, Troy whispers through the vent.
“Sybil. Can you hear me?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“This isn’t your fault.”
“It is. It was my plan and if I’d left you out of it…”
“Then I’d be stuck here forever for them to punish when they see an opportunity. And it wasn’t your plan, it was ours.” I sniff, balling the blanket up to use as a pillow. “Next time, we should make a better one.” I’m trying to keep my voice light, to hide how unlikely I know that is.
“I swear if I get the chance, I’ll kill every one of them.” His voice cracks and he pauses. “Are you okay?”
“I think so. I don’t think they broke the skin.”
“No, the welts weren’t bleeding, but you’re going to be bruised.”
That’s good to know. “I’m alright.” I notice the bulging trash bags sitting under the table. “There are bags in here.”
He sniffs and takes a deep breath. “It’s your clothes and stuff from your trailer. They brought mine too.”
That’s right. Keeper had Jane and Tara bring them. Tara is living in my little trailer now. At least that will make Jane happy. I wonder if I’ll ever see her again.
“They probably won’t feed us for a while,” I warn him. “They starved me for five days last time.” My tears have faded and I’m suddenly so tired. “I think I need to sleep for a bit. You should get some rest too.”
“Try to sleep. I’m right here, Sybil. Right here with you.”
“Always,” I murmur, drifting mercifully into the dark.
A loud clang jars me awake, and my back and legs scream when I jerk to a sitting position. I’m just one large bruise. The hatch on the cell door is open, and I can hear Troy talking to someone.
The angle of fading sunlight that cuts through the high window tells me it’s going to be dark soon. I must’ve slept the entire day away. I walk stiffly over to look at the large tote bag sitting in the open hatch.
Matron Ruth speaks to me from the hallway. “Make this last until tomorrow night. Your meals for twenty-four hours will be delivered every night after I’ve cleaned up from dinner. I’ll collect your empty containers then as well.” She can’t seem to look at me.
“Thank you,” I mumble and pick the bag up.
As soon as the outer door closes behind her, Troy calls my name. I can’t see him, but I know he has his face to the bars and I do the same. “Did you get food?” I ask. It’d be like them to use that against us, feed one and starve the other.
“Yes. How are you feeling?”
“Better,” I lie. It feels like I’ve been thrown off a cliff. “Did you sleep?”
“Yes, I woke up a few minutes ago.”
“I’m going to find some clothes while it’s light enough to see. I can still hear you.”
It’s reassuring that we can hear each other.
We can talk normally while standing at our doors, or loudly from anywhere in our cells.
And if we’re near the vent we can talk without being overheard.
I’m not completely isolated. That would be worse, to be here alone, cut off from him and not know where he is or what they’re doing to him.
We’re in hell but we’re damned together.
I set the bag of food on the table and pull the large trash bags out from under it. My belongings have been shoved in with no sort of organization. I find most of my clothes, plus some bathroom items like my hairbrush and toothbrush in the first bag.
A grateful sob leaps out of me when I open the second bag.
My radio is there, along with my small collection of cassette tapes, including the most important one with the little heart drawn on it.
The bag also contains at least twenty of my coverless paperback books.
Jane is a damn angel. I don’t know whether they’ll be angry that she brought me these things or not, but I’m thrilled to have them.
“Sybil?” Troy calls, concerned.
“My radio is in the bag.” I’m surprised to see there’s an electrical outlet near one end of the sleeping mat. We don’t have a light in the cells, but I guess they anticipated a need for electricity.
“Really? Where’s my TV then? Stupid steward only brought my stuff from the bedroom and bathroom.” My laugh is forced but I hope he can’t tell. He’s trying to keep my spirits up. After I change into clean warmer clothes, I sit down by the vent and open the food bag.
“She put a lot in here, even for a day. Matron Ruth never wants anyone to be hungry,” I remark.
Troy’s agreement comes from the vent, and I know he’s sitting right on the other side of the wall, unpacking his food as well.
I choose a container of beef stew to eat first since it’s still warm and won’t taste very good once it cools down.
With the light in the room rapidly dying, we eat dinner and talk through the vent.
No one else is around as far as we can tell.
Is this how it’s going to be? I suppose there’s no need for a guard.
We can’t escape through steel and concrete.
It doesn’t appear they’re interested in anything we might say and why would they be?
They’ll put us here and forget us until we need to be paraded around as a lesson.
After we eat, I plug in the radio and set it right up to the vent where we can both hear.
I wrap the blanket around me lightly, mindful of my swollen bruised back, and lean my shoulder against the wall.
It’s full dark now, and the moonlight casts a square of light around me as Troy says, “Play our song, sweetheart.”
I do as he asks, crying softly as the music fills the hopeless space.
Never tear us apart.
I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop. Every time I hear the door open, fear turns my stomach, but it’s always a matron delivering our food.
Troy and I sleep late every day, probably until around lunchtime, though we don’t have a clock to be sure.
We eat and talk and try to pass the time that inches by.
On the third day, I start reading a book aloud to him while we sit on our mats by the vent.
At night, I lean against the wall, wrapped in a blanket, and watch the moonlight inch across the room as we listen to the radio.
On the fifth morning, my body has healed and physically, both of us are much better, but my anxiety is growing.
I can’t help but share my fear. “They must be planning to do something to us.” I lean my forehead against the wall, picturing Troy on the other side.
“They didn’t cut my face like Mindy. Because they don’t intend for me to be seen again by the others.
Keeping us here, feeding us without getting any work out of us, that’s not how they operate.
They’re just letting us stew in it before they kill us. ”
“No, sweetheart, try not to let your thoughts go there.”
“What do you think happens after you die?”
He sighs and takes a moment before replying. “I don’t know. I believed in an afterlife when I was a kid but not anymore. Do you?”
“No. They tell us heaven waits for us after we die so we’ll accept the hell they create while we’re alive. We want something to be eternal so badly because we aren’t. I wish I could believe there’s something better, that we could choose where we end up.”
“Where would you choose?” he asks softly.
“Do you remember the night you parked in the cornfield?”
His voice is low and filled with emotion. “Of course I do.”
“Right there. I’d spend forever dancing in the headlights with you, hidden from the rest of the world.” And why not? It’s as plausible as anything else we’ve ever been taught. Maybe heaven is a cornfield on a late summer night with the man I love.
Voices from the opposite end of the building interrupt, and I scramble to my feet. Matrons don’t come until evening. My first thought is that we may be finding out about the existence of an afterlife sooner rather than later.
I can’t see anything through the barred window except for the opposite wall. Male voices call back and forth to each other. “Troy?” I whisper.
“Right here.” He probably has his face pressed to the bars as well, straining to hear.
After about twenty minutes passes, footsteps echo toward us, and I move back.
Keeper looks into my cell, then unlocks the door.
I hear him do the same to Troy’s. Without a word to either of us, he leaves as Governor James opens my door.
“Get out here,” he orders.
When I don’t move fast enough, he grabs my arm and pulls me into the hall.
Governor Nolan opens Troy’s door as I’m led down the hallway.
The section of the building with the cells is only a small portion.
The rest is open and set up like a warehouse with multiple workspaces.
Long metal tables are bolted to the floor and coiled piles of chain sit at random spots.
Governor James walks me over to a corner where three large washers and dryers wait. A deep sink has been installed at the end of a shelf that’s full of laundry and cleaning supplies. He pulls out a metal cuff and orders, “Give me your foot.”
There’s no use in resisting. I lean against the table and raise my leg, letting him snap the cuff around my ankle. He picks up the end of the chain and locks it to the cuff, then gestures to the large rolling bins nearby.
“I want all of this washed, dried, and folded.”
He brought me out to do laundry? “Yes, Governor.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Troy being chained to another group of tables on the far side of the building. I’m not sure what job they have him doing, but Governor Nolan is showing him a paper and explaining something.
They’ve really put some thought into how this place is set up.
They can chain us to the floor of whatever area they need us to be in, and we have enough length to reach one of the two bathrooms, but not to get near an outer door.
They built a prison complete with a workhouse.
It occurs to me that I was always going to end up here, and Troy probably was too.
At least this explains them keeping us alive.
Governor James leaves me to get to work, but I can feel his eyes on me while he joins Troy and Governor Nolan.
I roll out the first bin to find it piled with soiled girls’ clothing.
With this explosion of new members, of course the daughters’ and sons’ dorms must be struggling to keep up with the laundry.
Until now, there was only one small building with a handful of old washers and dryers that most of the collective shared.
I load up all three washers, the first two with clothing, and the last with a load of towels.
Once the machines are running, I get started on pre-treating stains on the boys’ clothes.
Governor James and Governor Nolan wheel in large containers. I watch as they open them and Troy pulls out a pile of plants. The scent reaches across the workroom to me. Weed. That’s what they’ve got him doing, processing their marijuana harvest.
It takes me about six hours to finish all the laundry, and afterward, I’m chained across the table from Troy, who’s busy weighing and packaging the weed. “Teach her to use the rolling machine,” Governor James orders. “Fifty per bag.”
There are worse jobs to have. The governors wander in and out but mostly we’re left alone to work until we’re put back in our cells that night.
They come for us again the next morning and it’s a repeat of the day before. They make me wash laundry for the governors’ house, then put me with Troy to count pills into small plastic bags. Troy says they take everything to Madison to sell to the college kids.
I once read that humans can adapt to almost anything, given a routine, and we have one now. Wake up, eat, work while chained, shower, eat. Then listen to music together or read aloud until we fall asleep.
It’s not the same every day. There are days when there are no drug deliveries to deal with or laundry to do. On those days, when we’re left in our cells, we do the only thing left. Dream about a better life far away from here.