The only thing that worried Ott in all this was how his mother was handling the news. She refused requests to be interviewed by the reporters staking out the mansion in Buffalo; but, to Ott’s surprise, by Saturday afternoon some of the networks were airing balanced and even sensitive background reports about Barratte, Amina, and the Rabuns of Kamenz, explaining how Amina had saved the Schriebergs in Germany, how the Rabuns had been gunned down by Soviet troops and Amina and Barratte had been raped, and the litigation over the Schriebergs’ theaters and property. Some commentators even began to create an almost sympathetic picture of why Ott might have kidnapped us for the sake of a Holocaust documentary, causing Ott to believe more deeply than ever that he had done the right thing. All he wanted in the end was justice. He even started comparing his actions to the courageous exploits of Amina herself in Germany-at an age not much younger than his-viewing Sarah and me the way Amina had viewed the Schriebergs, providing us with the necessities for our survival-water, food, baby formula, diapers, and an austere but safe shelter in the woods. He offered us some sweatshirts because the mushroom house had no heat, and he asked himself: “Am I not protecting this woman and this child from those who would harm them? From men like Holden Hurley and Tim Shelly who would one day hunt them down and murder them? Will they not be safer when the truth of the documentary is known?”
Sarah slept while I sat up awake worrying during our first day of captivity in the squalid, stinking mushroom house, the only light coming from small gaps and cracks around the door, and the only bathroom facility a bucket in the far corner. I knew nothing about the documentary and was convinced we had been kidnapped as part of a plot to extort Holden Hurley’s release from prison. I assumed by now that the police and FBI agents would be searching everywhere; we just needed to hang on until they found us, and do nothing to provoke Ott and Tim any further. I prayed to the God of the Old Testament, the righteous and just God, to deliver us from our enemies. And to smite them.
When Sarah woke I fed and changed her and sang Hot Tea and Bees Honey to her over and over. I whispered stories to her about her daddy and her grandparents and great-grandparents, and even her great-great-grandmother, Nana Bellini. I hadn’t thought of Nana Bellini in a long time, and her memory calmed me. We played patty-cake and cuddled in our sleeping bag. Sarah was so good and brave. She didn’t fuss or cry. I think she enjoyed the close contact and the darkness, which might in some way have reminded her of being inside my womb.
Ott and Tim took turns checking in on us. Like the famous Stanford psychology experiment with college students assigned the roles of prisoners and guards, Tim Shelly reveled in the role of jailer; he shoved me around, barking orders and obscenities at us, throwing our food on the floor. He held no firm convictions of his own; he acted only on what others told him, but he would die for those people-for anyone to whom he could attach his childlike adoration in the vacuum created by his father’s death and Holden Hurley’s arrest. He was a mercenary, not a martyr; Ott understood this and took full advantage of it, playing on Tim’s fantasies of battle and the camaraderie of men-at-arms. Ott needed Tim’s help-his brawn and expert knowledge of weapons-to pull off his plan. To get it, he lied to Tim about almost everything. He told Tim they would hold us hostage until Holden Hurley was freed from prison, and said that from his jail cell Hurley had secretly instructed Ott to start the race war they had been preparing for so long to fight. Tim would become a great soldier in that war, Ott predicted, a national hero; and Ott promised Tim that if things went wrong, his family’s contacts in Germany and elsewhere, who had helped SS Colonel Haber and other fleeing Nazis, would assist in their escape to South America where money would be waiting.
Tim believed Ott’s every word and longed for his chance at glory, but by the second day of waiting for the real combat to begin, boredom set in. Tim got into the habit of conducting hourly searches of the mushroom house with his flashlight, examining the walls and dirt floor to see if Sarah and I were tunneling an escape. He would end his inspection with a pat down search of my body, demanding that I lean with my face and arm against the wall and my legs spread wide. I still wore my black skirt and cream colored blouse from work, and the sweatshirt Ott had given me; my stockings disintegrated on the rough surface of the floor, and I had long since abandoned them. With each pat down, Tim would linger a little longer around my crotch and breasts, then call me a slut or whore and walk out. I made no reply, worried it would only agitate him further.
Late during our second night in the mushroom house, Tim performed his usual search but at the end walked up to where Sarah and I were huddled in our sleeping bag and yanked her away from me. I fought to hold onto her, but he hit me in the mouth with his elbow, knocking my head against the block wall, then carried Sarah to the opposite end of the building and plopped her down in a corner. She whimpered softly for a moment and then became quiet again. I tried to get on my feet to go after her, still dizzy from my head hitting the wall, but Tim slammed me back down onto the sleeping bag and in the dim yellow glow of the flashlight began tearing off my clothes. I screamed for Ott and tried kneeing Tim in the groin and scratching and biting him, but even with two good arms he would have easily overpowered me. He was a large man-I no longer thought of him as a kid-built strong and solid with a thick chest and arms. He slapped me across the face and told me to stop screaming, and when I continued, he started punching me over and over until blood spurted from my nose and mouth and I fainted. When I regained consciousness, he was on top of me. He had my panties off and my bra pulled up, and his pants were off.
Ott slept for two or three hours at a time during the night and had just awoken to make his rounds. He was outside relieving himself when he heard my muffled screams coming from the mushroom house. Still half asleep, he had left his gun behind. When he burst through the door and saw Tim writhing on top of me, he thought at first that he was dreaming the same nightmare that had terrorized him as a child, of seeing his mother being raped and his Aunt Bette being raped and beaten to death. To toughen up her son, Barratte Rabun had begun telling Ott at an early age about the terrible things the Russian soldiers had done in Kamenz, sparing him no detail in recounting the story and repeating it over and over, as if to inoculate him by the horror of it against those same impulses that she believed coursed through every man, even her own son. She would not stop until he started to cry, which indicated to her that the vaccine was working. Thus, growing up, Ott Bowles had no basis for distinguishing between sexual crimes and sexual relationships. Intercourse was, to him, the ultimate evil act, and this led him to fear girls and withdraw from them, and to believe his attraction to them was shameful and a sickness. He never had a girlfriend, and when his friends talked about having sex, he recoiled from them with loathing and disgust.