“Don’t wait. You can’t afford to tarry a minute longer.”
Whirling about, Gritta expected to find someone chiding her. But found no one there in the tent with her.
Loud noises swallowed up the small voice and invaded her small, private world. Horses whinnied and stamped out there, just beyond these tent walls. Something deep within her, something that clung on to the familiar routine of each day now reminded Gritta that the men would be breaking camp shortly.
“You must act now—if you are going to act at all,” scolded the tiny voice inside her head.
She glanced over her shoulder again, found no one there, and shuddered to think it was her disembodied soul speaking to her. Ordering. Demanding.
“The crock. Go to the crock.”
Glancing one last time at the gap in the tent flaps, Gritta willfully stepped over to them and straightened the canvas so that they overlapped, just as she did whenever she sponged herself of the mornings before leaving the tent and boarding the ambulance to ride out the day. She went back to the table where the bowl and crock sat, then stared down at her hands. They had gone soft, not feeling like her hands at all. Marveling at their smooth texture, she ran one over the other, then pushed up the loose sleeve on the left arm and gripped that wrist tightly in the vise of her right hand. The white skin slowly bulged as the blood trapped in the veins, gone bluish beneath her skin—so pale now after so, so long without the sun. They did not look as if they were her hands.
Perhaps it would not hurt her—since these were not her hands any longer.
“The crock. Take the crock.”
“Yes,” aloud she answered obediently, releasing her wrist and seizing the tall crock between her trembling hands.
“Break it!”
Bringing it over her head, she flung it down against the edge of the table, clenching her eyes at the explosion as shards and slivers rained across her, warm water splattered, steamy, drenching the front of her open dressing gown. The sudden flush of moist heat felt welcome, reassuring as she fell to her knees in the muddy puddle there beneath the tiny table and found what she was instructed to find.
“A big one. Do it right the first time!”
Savagely dragging the gleaming shard of crockery across her wrist once, she gazed down at the sundered flesh beading with the bright red blood.
“Again! Cut it—you must hurry! Cut it—again, again!”
Once more, twice, then three times more she raked the shard across her inner wrist. Shiny, gleaming, warm liquid made her swoon as she crouched there on her knees, drenched with crimson as the clamor suddenly ballooned around her.
Hands seized her, yanking Gritta’s left arm away from her body, other hands grappling with her right hand, prying the sharp sliver of crockery locked in her fingers. Gritta felt far more pain in those fingers the others bent backward than she felt in that welcome, reassuring warmth in the wrist.
“Damn you! Damn you, George!”
“I’m sorry. So sorry, Colonel Usher!”
“Get her feet!” Usher ordered as Gritta began kicking to free herself: lashing out, flailing about at those rescuing her.
There were more than two of them on her now. The fog of faces, smells, cursing voices all tumbled together as they pinned her legs, lifted her.
“Get the wrist, dammit!” Usher growled. “Stop that bleeding.”
“She’s fighting too much, Colonel! Goddamn—it’s just spraying all over me!”
“George—by God! Get something and wrap her wrist!”
“Yessir!”
As they threw her down on the mattress, yanking her arms out from her body and pinning her legs atop the rumpled blankets, Gritta began to sense the first rise of pain in the wrist. The warmth was seeping out of her—replaced by spidering slivers of a cold so icy, she knew she had done some damage.
In the struggle an arm crossed in front of her eyes, and she snapped for it, feeling the taut flesh give beneath her teeth.
“Eeeeiks! The bitch … she’s got a holt of me! Get her off! Get the goddamned bitch off me!”
Someone pulled her hair, yanking her head back brutally. Gritta felt some of her hair come loose as she struggled against them, at the same time sensing some of the flesh tear loose from the man’s arm still locked between her teeth. His blood felt warm and thick on her tongue as the pain grew across her scalp.
“Jesus damned Christ! Lookit this, Colonel! The bitch gone and took a hunk outta my arm.”
“Damn you, woman!” Usher bellowed.
She saw his arm swinging toward her, his balled fist at the end of it like a blur, and unflinchingly met it with the side of her face, staring up at him with a smile on her lips. Her head lolled crazily to the side. Usher swung at her again, backhanding her across the other cheek. Still she looked up at him with real triumph lighting those cloudy blue eyes of hers.
Usher glared at her, his eyes wide with disgust, starting to pummel her again.
Gritta glanced over at the wounded man gripping his bloody arm, dark fluid oozing between his fingers where he held himself. Then she looked back at Usher and spat her tormentor’s bloody flesh right into Usher’s face.
His left hand swiped the bloody gore from one eye, some of it trickling down into the black mustache and beard, his face twisting into something of unmitigated terror. Usher struck her with an open palm, again and again and again until she sensed the bile burning the back of her throat.
Coughing it back, choking down on her own vomit, Gritta was powerless to move against the hold they had on her as she convulsed on the hot, stinging fluid trapping her lungs. She felt herself slipping away.
Blessed, blessed death—come take the one who is ready.
“You got that wrist now?”
“Yessir.”
“Simes!”
“Colonel?”
“You and Hampton take George outside.”
“Sir?”
“Take the nigger outside and tie him to that cottonwood by the fire.”
“Tie him—”
“Yes, by damn! George will be punished for this.”
“Colonel—I’m terrible sorry for—”
“Get the nigger out of here! Now!”
The commotion quieted somewhat after that, allowing Gritta to turn her head, to roll it slightly to the side and spit out the blood from the wounded man, spit out her own blood from the tongue she had cut on her teeth, spewing free the sour, stinging bile trapped at the back of her throat where it had gagged her.
Convulsing for a moment, Gritta knew she was going to die as Usher dragged her head back so she would have to stare directly into his face, her chin clamped painfully in the palm of his hand.
She winced as his other hand brushed some of her hair out of her eyes, his fingers then tracing down the side of her cheek, where she flinched with pain, sensing, that her flesh was already puffing in hot protest to the beating. In the end his fingers stopped at her throat, where they slowly, agonizingly tightened.
She had no will to fight him. As her eyes rolled back in her head she thought she saw other faces behind his. But they only watched in fascination as Usher tightened his grip all the more. No one held her now. Her arms felt light and free: she could grab his hand, pull it away from her throat if she had wanted. But Gritta did not try to stop him. She wanted him to kill her.
Though she could not speak with her lips, her eyes told him what to do. In silent triumph they roared out at Usher.
“Kill me! Yes go ahead and kill me!”
The warmth trickled from the corners of her eyes as he released his crushing grip on her windpipe. Gritta’s body betrayed her, savagely drawing in that first hungry draught of air.