chains would drop away and she’d be pure again.
She was off the carpet now and crawling faster toward the door, knowing she wasn’t going to escape, that she had no chance, as always. A woman with an M.B.A. and a responsible job…what am I doing here? She clenched her teeth and whimpered. She wouldn’t scream. That was one of the rules. She’d been commanded not to scream. And if she did, if her neighbors heard and called the police, how would she explain? Her bare knees thumped on the hardwood floor, and her hands made desperate slapping sounds louder than her moans.
The whip whistled near her ear, sending a line of fire across her upper back and curling around her shoulder. It burned again across her tender inner right thigh. He knew how to use a whip, this one.
Ten feet from the door.
The whip set fire to her right buttock. There was less time between lashes now. She crawled even faster, hurting her knees and the heels of her hands. The whip followed, flicking her like a dragon’s fiery and agile tongue.
The man standing over her was the dragon.
Afterward, maybe she’d lie with him, cuddled in his arms, and he’d pretend to love her. It wouldn’t be real, like what he was doing to her now wasn’t exactly real, but that didn’t matter. She had no right to expect real.
As she stretched out an arm and her fingertips brushed the door, he clutched her ankles and dragged her back and away from freedom.
It began again.
What am I doing here?
11
Bent Oak, Missouri, 1987.
Two days before Luther Lunt’s fourteenth birthday, state employees in Jefferson City dropped a cyanide pellet in the gas chamber, killing Luther’s father.
Luther’s mother had already been dead for more than a year. She’d died on the same day and in the same way as his sister, Verna, beneath the thunder and buckshot hail of his dad’s Remington twelve-gauge. Luther had hunted with the gun twice and knew what it could do to a rabbit. What it had done to his mom and Verna was lots worse.
Seeing it, hearing it, smelling it, even listening to the slowing trickle of blood from his mom’s ruined throat, was the kind of thing that stayed in the mind.
Luther cried almost nonstop for days and nights, wondering why Verna had to go tell their mom what she and Dad had been up to. He shouldn’t blame her, Luther knew, as she was only twelve, and it was his father, after all, who’d squeezed off the shots from the old double-barrel.
But the fact was, Luther did blame Verna, as well as his mother. They all knew anyway, and it was Verna and his mom who brought it all into the open, who uttered the words that made it real so something had to be done about it. Everything had been going along fine until then. Going along, at least.
And since his father had taken it on himself to start going into Verna’s room, he’d stopped coming into Luther’s.
Verna’s fault.
Verna and his mom’s.
Then his father’d been taken from Luther to rot away in a cell in Jeff City, waiting to die when his appeals ran out.
Leaving Luther alone.
“He’s suffered something terrible,” Luther’s great-aunt Marjean from Saint Louis had said of him after the murders, “but I’m eighty-seven years of age and get by hardscrabble on my Social Security. No way I can help the poor thing.”
So Luther had gone into the foster-care system, and was taken in by the Black family, Dara and her husband, Norbert. The Blacks had temporary custody of three children besides Luther, who was the oldest. Dara Black, a stout woman with an apple-round face who almost always wore the same stained apron, watched over the children in the old farmhouse, while Norbert was away painting barns and houses in the surrounding countryside.
Luther used to watch her bustle around the house, smiling too much and even sometimes whistling while she got her work done. Luther was aware that she knew and didn’t know that Norbert was molesting the children. Nobody ever talked about the
She was off the carpet now and crawling faster toward the door, knowing she wasn’t going to escape, that she had no chance, as always. A woman with an M.B.A. and a responsible job…what am I doing here? She clenched her teeth and whimpered. She wouldn’t scream. That was one of the rules. She’d been commanded not to scream. And if she did, if her neighbors heard and called the police, how would she explain? Her bare knees thumped on the hardwood floor, and her hands made desperate slapping sounds louder than her moans.
The whip whistled near her ear, sending a line of fire across her upper back and curling around her shoulder. It burned again across her tender inner right thigh. He knew how to use a whip, this one.
Ten feet from the door.
The whip set fire to her right buttock. There was less time between lashes now. She crawled even faster, hurting her knees and the heels of her hands. The whip followed, flicking her like a dragon’s fiery and agile tongue.
The man standing over her was the dragon.
Afterward, maybe she’d lie with him, cuddled in his arms, and he’d pretend to love her. It wouldn’t be real, like what he was doing to her now wasn’t exactly real, but that didn’t matter. She had no right to expect real.
As she stretched out an arm and her fingertips brushed the door, he clutched her ankles and dragged her back and away from freedom.
It began again.
What am I doing here?
11
Bent Oak, Missouri, 1987.
Two days before Luther Lunt’s fourteenth birthday, state employees in Jefferson City dropped a cyanide pellet in the gas chamber, killing Luther’s father.
Luther’s mother had already been dead for more than a year. She’d died on the same day and in the same way as his sister, Verna, beneath the thunder and buckshot hail of his dad’s Remington twelve-gauge. Luther had hunted with the gun twice and knew what it could do to a rabbit. What it had done to his mom and Verna was lots worse.
Seeing it, hearing it, smelling it, even listening to the slowing trickle of blood from his mom’s ruined throat, was the kind of thing that stayed in the mind.
Luther cried almost nonstop for days and nights, wondering why Verna had to go tell their mom what she and Dad had been up to. He shouldn’t blame her, Luther knew, as she was only twelve, and it was his father, after all, who’d squeezed off the shots from the old double-barrel.
But the fact was, Luther did blame Verna, as well as his mother. They all knew anyway, and it was Verna and his mom who brought it all into the open, who uttered the words that made it real so something had to be done about it. Everything had been going along fine until then. Going along, at least.
And since his father had taken it on himself to start going into Verna’s room, he’d stopped coming into Luther’s.
Verna’s fault.
Verna and his mom’s.
Then his father’d been taken from Luther to rot away in a cell in Jeff City, waiting to die when his appeals ran out.
Leaving Luther alone.
“He’s suffered something terrible,” Luther’s great-aunt Marjean from Saint Louis had said of him after the murders, “but I’m eighty-seven years of age and get by hardscrabble on my Social Security. No way I can help the poor thing.”
So Luther had gone into the foster-care system, and was taken in by the Black family, Dara and her husband, Norbert. The Blacks had temporary custody of three children besides Luther, who was the oldest. Dara Black, a stout woman with an apple-round face who almost always wore the same stained apron, watched over the children in the old farmhouse, while Norbert was away painting barns and houses in the surrounding countryside.
Luther used to watch her bustle around the house, smiling too much and even sometimes whistling while she got her work done. Luther was aware that she knew and didn’t know that Norbert was molesting the children. Nobody ever talked about the
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