You are being provided with a book chapter by chapter. I will request you to read the book for me after each chapter. After reading the chapter, 1. shorten the chapter to no less than 300 words and no more than 400 words. 2. Do not change the name, address, or any important nouns in the chapter. 3. Do not translate the original language. 4. Keep the same style as the original chapter, keep it consistent throughout the chapter. Your reply must comply with all four requirements, or it’s invalid.
I will provide the chapter now.
CHAPTER 17
Patricia went down the shaky front steps with a silver Boy Scout
flashlight in one hand. Mrs. Greene stood in the doorway.
“I’m just going to look around the back of the trailer,” Patricia said,
but Mrs. Greene had already closed and locked the front door.
Patricia heard her slide the chain into place.
All over Six Mile she heard the hum of air conditioners. The woods
around her were a tornado of screaming insects. Every breath felt
like it came through a towel soaked in warm water. She made her
legs move, taking her around the dark corner of the trailer.
She clicked on the flashlight and played it over the big wooden
spool, as if she might see an incriminating footprint outlined in black
ink on its top. She shined her light down on the sandy soil and saw
indentations and shadows and lumps but didn’t know what any of
them meant. She straightened and shined her light at the woods.
The pale yellow beam played over pine trees. They were spaced
pretty far apart and she realized she could walk along the edge of
them and still keep an eye on the trailer. Before she could think
better of it she stepped around the first one, then the second, the
flashlight beaming a lamplight circle on the ground in front of her,
leading her into the woods step by step, as the screaming insects
closed in around her.
Something grabbed her foot and yanked and her heart flooded
with cold water before she saw that she’d snagged it on a rusty wire
stretched along the ground. She looked back behind her, feeling
confident, but the lit windows of the houses were farther away than
she’d expected. She wondered if the police had arrived but knew
she’d see their blue lights if they had.
The smell of warm sap surrounded her, and pine needles were
thick underfoot. She knew this was the last moment when she could
turn back. If she kept walking forward she wouldn’t be able to see the
lit windows at all anymore and then she was going to be out here
alone with James Harris.
Hang on, Destiny, she thought as she started walking deeper into
the woods. I’m coming.
With the flashlight beam bouncing before her, she concentrated on
each tree trunk, not the entire dark mass of them crowding around
and behind her. She went carefully, not wanting to step in a hole,
conscious of the loud crashing sounds her body made as she brushed
through the branches, bushes, and vines.
Something that wasn’t her rustled to the right. She froze and
clicked off her flashlight so it wouldn’t give her away. The night
rushed in around her. She strained to listen over the sound of blood
throbbing in her ears. Her pulse thumped in her wrists. Her breath
rasped in her nose. Then she realized: the insects had stopped
screaming.
Blobs of dark color flashed across her vision. She heard something
scurry through the trees, and suddenly the thought of standing still
panicked her, and she needed to move, but without the flashlight she
couldn’t see her way forward so she clicked it back on and the trees
and pine needles on the ground materialized in front of her again.
She moved fast, flashlight pointed down, looking for a little girl’s
leg clad in denim sticking out from behind a pine tree. Mixed in with
the sound of her breath and her heartbeat and her pulse she heard
things groaning in the trees all around her; any minute a big hand
would settle on the back of her neck. Her pounding heart pulled her
forward.
She should turn around and go home. She was nothing but a tiny
speck in the forest. She was a fool to think she’d somehow stumble
across Destiny Taylor this way, and what was she going to say when
she saw James Harris? Was she going to knock him over the head
with her little flashlight? She needed to go back.
Then the trees stopped and she stepped onto a dirt road. It wasn’t
very wide but the sandy soil was loose and she realized someone
must be building something nearby because of the big tread marks
pressed into its surface. She flashed the light in one direction and
saw the little road disappearing into a dark tunnel of trees. She
flashed the light in the other direction and saw the chrome grille of
James Harris’s white van.
She snapped off her light and stepped back into the pines,
stumbling over a stump. He could’ve seen her. She’d snapped her
light off in time, but she realized that he could’ve seen her beam
bobbing through the trees as she approached, and then she’d stood
there like a dummy looking the other way before shining her light at
the van. She wanted to run but made herself hold still instead. The
van didn’t move.
It wasn’t fifty feet away. She could walk over and touch it. She
needed to walk over and touch it. She needed to know if he was
inside.
She walked toward it, her shoes sinking into the sand, making no
sound, her stomach churning. She waited for the headlights to
scream on and pin her down, the engine to roar to life and run her
over. The van’s grille and windshield swam from side to side in her
vision, bouncing up and down, getting closer, and then she was
there. She realized that inside was darker than outside so she ducked
down, knees popping, to make sure he didn’t see her head outlined
through his windshield against the night sky.
She put out one hand to steady herself. The curve of the hood felt
cool. She wondered if the police were at Wanda’s trailer yet. She
wanted to go back. Didn’t drug dealers have guns, and knives, and all
kinds of weapons? She imagined Blue in the back of the van and
knew she had to look. Destiny Taylor wasn’t her child but she was
still a child.
Patricia slowly rose, knees cracking, and leaned forward until the
edges of her hands touched the cold windshield, and she cupped
them around her eyes and peered inside. Beyond the thin crescent
rim of the steering wheel it was pitch-dark. She narrowed her eyes
until the muscles in them ached, but she couldn’t see a thing.
Then she realized he wasn’t in the van. He was still in the woods
with Destiny, or he’d finished with her and was on his way back.
Before he got there she could look inside quickly and see if there
were any clues, any clothes from that other child, anything that
belonged to Francine. She had seconds.
She walked to the back of the van, wrapped her hand around the
door handle, and pulled. Then she raised her flashlight and turned it
on.
A man’s back bent over something on the floor, his rear end and
the soles of his work boots turned toward her, and then his back
reared up, and he turned into the flashlight’s beam and she saw
James Harris. But there was something wrong with the lower half of
his face. Something black, shiny, and chitinous like a cockroach’s leg,
stuck several inches out of his mouth. His jaws hung open, stupefied,
as he blinked blearily in the light, but otherwise his body didn’t move
as this long insectoid appendage slowly withdrew into his mouth,
and when it had retreated fully, he closed his lips and she saw that
his chin and cheeks and the tip of his nose were coated in slick, wet
blood.
Beneath him, a young black girl lay sprawled on the floor, long
orange T-shirt pushed up to her stomach, legs akimbo, an ugly dark
purple mark on the inside of one thigh, oily with fluids.
James Harris slapped the palm of one hand against the metal side
of the van and the vehicle shook from side to side as he hauled
himself to his feet. He squinted and Patricia realized her flashlight
had blinded him. He took an unsteady, lurching step toward her. She
froze, not knowing what to do, and then he took another step,
rocking the van more, and she realized there was only three feet
between them. The little girl moaned and squirmed like she was
asleep, whimpering like Ragtag in his dreams.
The van rocked as James Harris took another step. There were
maybe two feet between them now and she had to do something to
get that little girl out of there, and he still squinted into the flashlight
beam. He reached for it slowly, fingers outstretched, inches from her
face. Patricia ran.
The second the flashlight beam was off his face she heard his feet
clang once on the van’s floor and then hit the sand behind her. She
ran into the woods, flashlight on, beam dancing crazily over stumps
and trunks and leaves and bushes, and she shoved her way past
branches that slapped her face and tree trunks that bruised her
shoulders and vines that lashed her ankles. She didn’t hear him
behind her but she ran. She didn’t know for how long, but she knew
it was long enough for her flashlight’s batteries to dim. She thought
these woods would never end, and then the woods spat her out
beside a chain-link fence and she knew she was back on one of the
roads leading into Six Mile.
She shined her light around but it only made the shadows loom
larger and dance crazily. She searched for something familiar and
then everything exploded into bright white light and she saw a car
coming her way slowly, jouncing up and down the bumpy road, and
she cringed against a fence and it stopped, and a police officer’s voice
said, “Ma’am, do you know who called 911?”
She got in the back and had never been so grateful to hear
anything as she was to hear the door slam shut behind her. The air
conditioning instantly dried her sweat and left her skin gritty. She
saw that the officer had a gun on his hip, and his partner in the
passenger seat turned around and asked, “Can you show us the
house where the child went missing?” They had a shotgun in a rack
between them, and all of it made Patricia feel safe.
“He’s got her right now,” Patricia said. “He’s doing something to
her. I saw them in the woods.”
The partner said something into a handset and they turned on
their flashing lights but not their siren, and the car flew down the
narrow road. Patricia saw the Mt. Zion A.M.E. church ahead of them.
“Where did you see them?” the officer asked.
“There’s a road,” Patricia said as the police car bounced into Six
Mile. “A construction road back in the woods behind here.”
“Over there,” the officer in the passenger seat said, lowering the
radio handset, pointing across the car.
The driver turned hard, and mobile homes reeled to the right in
their headlights. Then the police car surged forward between two
small homes and they left Six Mile behind. Trees surrounded them
and the officer driving turned the wheel to the right and Patricia felt
its tires slide on sand, heavy and slow, and then they were on the
road she’d found.
“This is it,” Patricia said. “He’s in a white van up ahead.”
They slowed, and the officer in the passenger seat used a handle to
steer a spotlight mounted outside the car to shine into the woods on
both sides of the road, panning across the trees. It was thousands of
times brighter than Patricia’s little flashlight. They rolled down their
windows to listen for a little girl’s cries.
Before they knew it, they’d reached the end of the road, coming to
where it ran into the state road.
“Maybe we missed him?” one of the officers said.
Patricia didn’t look at her watch but she felt like they drove up and
down that soft, sandy road for an hour.
“Let’s try the house,” the driver said.
She directed them back to Six Mile and they parked outside
Wanda’s trailer. The partner let Patricia out of the back and she ran
up the rickety front porch and banged on the door. Wanda practically
threw herself outside.
“She hasn’t come back,” she said. “She’s still out there.”
“We need to see the child’s room,” one police officer said. “We
have to see the last place you saw her.”
“You don’t need to do that,” Patricia said. “His name is James
Harris. He lives near me. He might have taken her back to his house.
I can show you.”
One officer stayed in the living room and wrote what she said on a
pad while the other followed Wanda down the short hall to Destiny’s
bedroom, then a loud shriek filled the trailer. The officer lowered his
pad and ran down the hall. Patricia couldn’t squeeze past the officers
so she stayed with Mrs. Greene until Wanda Taylor emerged from
between them with Destiny in her arms.
The little girl looked sleepy and unconcerned about all the fuss.
Wanda sat on the sofa, Destiny draped across her lap, limp body
cradled in her mother’s arms. The officers didn’t say anything and
their faces betrayed no expression.
“I saw him,” Patricia told them. “His name is James Harris, he
lives on Middle Street, his van is a white van with tinted windows.
Something’s wrong with his mouth, with his face.”
“This happens sometimes, ma’am,” one of the officers said. “A kid
hides under the bed or sleeps in the closet and the parents call the
police saying she’s been abducted. Gets everyone worked up.”
The enormity of what he was saying was too much. All Patricia
could say was, “She doesn’t have a closet.”
Then she realized what she could do.
“Check her leg,” she said. “Beneath her panties on the inside part
of her thigh, there should be a mark there, like a cut.”
Everyone looked at each other but no one moved.
“I’ll look,” Mrs. Greene said.
“No, ma’am,” the officer said. “If you want us to check the child we
need to call the ambulance and take her to the hospital so someone
qualified can do it. Otherwise we can’t use it as evidence.”
“Evidence?” Patricia asked.
“If you want to bring charges against this man, you have to do it
the right way,” the officer said.
“If you’re alleging that you saw a man molesting this child, it is
imperative that a trained medical professional examine her,” the
other officer said.
“I’m a nurse,” Patricia told him.
“No one’s taking my little girl anywhere,” Wanda said, holding
Destiny, her limp head flopping against her mother’s shoulder, eyes
half closed, arms hanging down at her sides. “She’s staying with me.
She’s not going out of my sight again.”
“It’s important,” Patricia said.
“She’s seeing the doctor in the morning,” Wanda Taylor said.
“She’s not going anywhere until then.”
Pounding came from the front door and they looked at each other,
frozen. The aluminum door rattled in its frame until Mrs. Greene
pushed past everyone. She flung the door open. Carter stood on the
porch.
“Jesus Christ, Patty,” he said. “What the hell is going on?”
—
“If my wife says she saw this man doing this, then that’s what
happened,” Carter told the officers, standing in the middle of the
trailer. He looked out of place to Patricia, and then she remembered
he’d grown up poor, and if mobile homes had existed in 1948 he
would almost certainly have been born in one.
“We searched everywhere she told us, sir,” the officer repeated
with a heavy emphasis on the sir. “But that doesn’t mean we don’t
believe her. If they find anything wrong with this little girl tomorrow
we’ll have what your wife said tonight in the report.”
“I’m sleepy,” Destiny said, dreamy and soft, and Wanda began the
process of getting everyone out of her home.
Outside, Carter made sure the two officers had his information,
while Mrs. Greene walked over to Patricia.
“No point standing around outside when it’s this hot,” she said,
and they started back to her house. Then she added, “They’re going
to take that little girl away.”
“Not if there’s nothing wrong with her,” Patricia said.
“You saw how they looked at Wanda,” Mrs. Greene said. “You saw
how they looked at her home. They think she’s trash, and she is, but
not the kind of trash they think she is.”
“She needs to get to the doctor,” Patricia said. “No matter what.”
“What’d you really see that man doing to her?” Mrs. Greene asked.
They stepped over the low railing around Mt. Zion A.M.E. and got
all the way to its steps before Patricia said anything.
“It wasn’t natural,” she said.
It took Patricia two steps to realize Mrs. Greene had stopped
walking. She turned around. In the church’s porch light, Mrs. Greene
looked very small.
“Everyone’s hungry for our children,” she said, and her voice
cracked. “The whole world wants to gobble up colored children, and
no matter how many it takes it just licks its lips and wants more.
Help me, Mrs. Campbell. Help me keep that little girl with her
mother. Help me stop that man.”
“Of course,” Patricia said. “I’ll—”
“I don’t want to hear of course,” Mrs. Greene said. “When I tell
someone what’s happening out here they see an old woman living in
the country who’s never been to school. When you tell them, they see
a doctor’s wife from the Old Village and they pay attention. I don’t
like to ask for favors but I need you to make them pay attention to
this. You know I did everything I could to save Miss Mary. I gave my
blood for her. When you called me on the telephone tonight you said
we’re all mothers. Yes, ma’am, we are. Give me your blood. Help
me.”
Reflexively, Patricia almost said of course again, then wiped it
from her mind. She didn’t say a thing. She stood across from Mrs.
Greene and spoke, soft and firm.
“We’ll save them,” she said. “We won’t let them take Destiny, and
we won’t let that man take any more children. I will do everything in
my power to stop him. I promise you.”
Mrs. Greene didn’t reply, and the two of them stood like that for a
moment.
“Well, that’s that,” Carter said, coming up behind her. “They’ll
have her to the doctor tomorrow and if anything’s wrong they have
my information in the report.”
The mood broke and the three of them walked toward Mrs.
Greene’s house.
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