Reverend Sherman slid off his robe and draped it over the foot of the bed. “If you think this track of conversation will rile me, you are sorely wrong, girl. I know my father was a bad man. A hypocrite. To him this place was … a game. His treacheries against my mother, God of Cain rest her, do not compare to his treacheries against the compound and its people as a whole. I am not like him. All I have ever wanted is to make you at home among your people. Good night, Vern.”
Vern had craved a confrontation. Instead, she’d been quietly dismissed. Instead of adrenaline and pain and hot sparks, she’d gotten more questions, this time about Eamon Fields. But on the compound, questions were pointless. They only dug the hole in her deeper.
“You are like him,” she said. It was a pathetic retort and she knew it, but she couldn’t let Reverend Sherman have the last word. Vern flipped off the light on her nightstand and joined her husband under the covers, impatient for the cough syrup he’d made her drink to take effect. The sooner she was under its influence, the sooner it’d be over with, her mind her own again.
Brother Jerome arrived moments later. He took the belts already affixed to the bed and crossed all six over Vern’s body, attaching them to loops that ran through the middle of the mattress and to the top and bottom posts. She wondered if the belts dated back to Eamon Fields’s time, if his wife, Sherman’s mother, had slept under these when pregnant with her son.
“No gag tonight,” Vern said. “I’m feeling a little sick. Took too much Evenyl,” she explained.
Brother Jerome looked over to Sherman, and Sherman nodded his approval. Jerome strapped Sherman down next, pulling the belt taut before looping it through and gagging him.
“Have a blessed night,” Jerome said, but Vern wouldn’t. The weight of her pregnant belly made that impossible, and while Sherman drifted off quickly, sleep never came for Vern. Instead, she coughed and gurgled up bile. Evenyl glazed a ghostly film of grape-flavored acetaminophen down her tongue and throat, and she turned her head to the side so as not to gag on the sick rising from her gut.
“Sherman!” Vern whispered to her sleeping husband. “Sherman!” She writhed in her bonds. “Sherman, damn it, wake up.” He was too lost in a night terror, and he strained against his straps hard enough that the bed shook.
Reflexively, Vern tried to sit up, but her body pressed into the six leather belts securing her to the bed. She strained against them anyway, addled and confused by the syrup. She grunted as she pushed and pushed.
The second strap from the top gave against the pressure of her movement.
Never before had it done that. Pop.
“Huh?” she said out loud, confused, like she’d heard a voice. But nobody was talking to her; it truly was the sound of the strap snapping.
Vern wiggled until she was able to ease her left arm out of the hold to undo the other belts. With such limited mobility and her faculties compromised by the medicine, it took time, but she had that. Sherman and the rest of Cain would be asleep all night. She could strain and fiddle and work her poor fingers sore as much as she wanted, and no one would be the wiser.
She smiled like she never had before once finally free. Just like that, the straps hung limply at the side of the bed. Just like she hadn’t tried this same thing a million and one nights before.
Woozy from the cough syrup, Vern wobbled as she stood. “Sherman!” she said. “Look at me!” Vern giggled. “Guess you can’t stop me from sleeping on the porch now.” She poked his hollow cheeks. “Olly, olly, oxen free!” she yelled. Even if he did wake, he could do nothing but look on.
Vern had no reason to stop at the porch downstairs. She could sleep in the yard. She could sleep on his platform at the center of the compound. She could sleep in the woods. Vern could live in the woods.
Vern packed her bags.
Mam’s gospel song played on. Steal away, steal away.
Once outside, Vern plowed a path through the bristly browned grass. She walked past the olive grove, past the pecan trees, past the orchard of lemon trees and lime trees and orange trees and peach trees and plum trees and pomegranate trees, toward the woods.
She was a giantess, limbs heavy. Before tonight, this mightiness lay buried. But tonight she walked. Tonight, she left. The Girl Who Went.
Vern’s uncanny strength had been with her that very evening. It was why for the first time ever she’d been able to snap the straps and free herself. There was something inside of her making her strong, and it had been with her since Cainland.