The Woman Traffickers Shouldn't Have Bought

My mother always said the way to a man's heart is through his stomach. I had his in my hand. Still warm. I'd only just taken it out of him.

Chapter 1 I'd done this more than once by now. It still made me sick. I squeezed, hard, and everything he hadn't finished digesting came out with the blood.

I held my breath and went through it with my fingers. Shrimp, still whole. Tomato gone to mush. So he had been eating somewhere else.

I scraped him out and packed him full of the food I'd made that week. Meatloaf. Fried chicken. Stuffed peppers. Every last thing he liked.

The catfish stew was the one he loved best, and that was the trouble. Every spoonful I poured in ran straight back out.

When there was no more room, I put it back where it belonged and sewed him shut. I'm no hand with a needle. By the time I finished I'd stuck myself half a dozen times.

That was what got me. I dropped down onto that dead man's chest and cried. "I did everything my mother told me. I had supper on the table every night of my life, waiting on you.

And you went and ate somewhere else." My voice cracked. "And then you went and had somebody else." After a while I wiped my face and put myself back together.

Plenty more fish in the sea. Clean this one up, move on somewhere new, find another. Simple. It wasn't like it was my first time. It took some looking, but I found what I was after.

A crew that moved women. They could carry me right out from under the police, and at the end of it there'd be a man who couldn't run around on me even if he wanted to.

So I put myself where they could see me. Sweet. Simple. Alone in the world. They fell for it. I got taken. I was thrilled. The whole way there I kept my head down.

Yes sir, no sir, never a word of trouble. A woman who fights costs them money. A woman who doesn't gets watched a lot less.

They sold me into a hollow so far back in the hills it didn't have a name. I had a good look around while they were counting cash. No phone line ran in.

One dirt track going, the same one coming. Perfect. The man who bought me was somewhere around forty. Burned dark from the sun, thick through the shoulders. Also fine by me.

The only thing I didn't care for was the price. Two thousand dollars. That's what I went for. Well. A faithful man is hard to come by. Any way you count it, I came out ahead.

His name was Roy. An old bachelor with nobody left, not one relative in the world. On the walk in he told me every woman in that hollow had been bought and paid for.

He told me to behave myself. Told me not to get ideas about running, or he'd give me a reason not to. I nodded fast, like a good girl. I had cause to.

Coming past the yard next to his, I'd seen a woman chained up outside like a dog.

The second we were through his gate I got down and pulled his boots off and worked the ache out of his legs. "A woman's place is behind her man," I said, sweet as pie. "I'm yours now." He patted my backside, pleased with himself, and started steering me toward the bed by the stove.

I slipped him. Shy about it, so there was nothing for him to get sore over.

Then I put a hand flat on my belly and gave him a small laugh. "Roy, I'm so hungry I'm about to fall over. I'd be no good to you like this.

Let me feed you first." I let that sit a beat. "And I can cook. You'll see." He looked at me a long moment, not sure yet. Then he nodded. I turned and went into the kitchen.

There was a sack of potatoes leaning against the cookstove. The ones on top had gone to sprout. The sprouts were green.

My mother said the way to a man's heart is through his stomach. She never once mentioned that a stomach can take a man's life, too. Chapter 2 There were eggs from the yard hens.

Out back he had tomatoes, cucumbers, a short row of green beans. I looked at that sack of potatoes by the door and my mind made itself up.

Roy was crouched at the stove feeding the fire. I leaned over and wiped the sweat off his forehead with my hand. "Roy, honey. We got any meat in the house?

I want to make you a pot roast." He frowned up at me. "What kind of woman spends all day thinking about her mouth?" If I weren't fixing to own you through your dinner, do you think I'd go to this much trouble?

What he got was my eyes going red at the rims and my voice going soft and small. "This is as close to a wedding day as we're going to get. A little meat.

You'll want your strength tonight, won't you?" One look at a pretty woman making that face, and he had me out the gate and next door before I finished the sentence.

We weren't in the neighbor's yard ten seconds before Roy went off with the man who lived there to fetch the meat. I caught pieces of them talking.

The stranger said feeding meat to a woman who hadn't been broke in yet was a waste of good meat. Roy said his woman knew exactly how things stood. Pretty, too. And she minded.

Then their voices dropped and I lost the rest. So I looked at the woman lying in the dirt of that yard. Her hair was matted into ropes. Her clothes were more hole than cloth.

But her eyes, when they came up to me, were clear. Nothing like the empty look I'd seen from the road. She checked the yard. Nobody in it but the two of us.

One finger crooked at me. I went over. She pressed a wad of paper into my palm and closed my fingers around it. Hide it. I laughed at her, on the inside.

I gave her one second of pity. One. A woman who walked into a trafficker's hands on purpose. What would she want with running?

Nobody was going to get in the way of the life I was building here. Which meant what I was about to do to her, I was going to do anyway.

She kept that look on her face, begging me without a sound, and nothing in me moved. I don't get set up. Not by anybody.

How long does it take two grown men to hand over a piece of meat?

And who leaves the brandnew woman alone in a yard with the chained one, unless somebody wants to see what she does about it? She was a decent actress. I'll give her that much.

But there was arithmetic going on behind her eyes and she couldn't keep it out of them. Here's the thing that settled it for me.

A woman kept on a chain year after year, out in the weather, in rags. Where does a woman like that come by a clean sheet of paper? Not everybody is stupid.

This was a snare, and I was the rabbit they'd set it for. I looked at her, cold and unhurried. You want to work somebody over, and you pick me?

A minute later Roy came out with the meat in his fist. His face had gone dark. He took my arm and walked me home and shut the door hard enough to rattle the frame.

I didn't wait for him to start in on me. I put the wad of paper into his hand myself. Right now the only thing I needed was for that man to believe me. He opened it up.

Whatever was written there, his face let go of it. He took my hand and sat us both down on the bed by the stove. "Verna.

I knew you were a good woman." His thumb rubbed my knuckles. "You settle in here with me.

Give me a big healthy boy." I let myself fall against his chest and made my voice small and puzzled. "Roy, that woman next door. She's got a roof over her and a man to keep her.

Why would she want to run off?" He laughed, low in his throat, and didn't answer me. Then he got up and went back over to the neighbors'. After supper he carried me to the bed.

And through the wall I could hear her. Screaming. Begging. And a man's voice going at her the whole time.

Chapter 3 Afterward, when Roy was done with me, the noise from next door was still coming through. It made me wonder. Maybe I'd read that woman wrong after all.

Roy was lying there looking like a man who'd gotten everything he wanted. I put a whine in my voice. "Roy, this is all my fault.

Now they're carrying on over there and you can't get any sleep." He rolled over and grunted. "Nothing to do with you. That woman next door is no good.

Stay away from her." "That's just what I said." I nodded quick. "Got herself a man and a home, and all she thinks about is running." Roy made a sound in his nose. "She don't want to run.

She got beat tonight because she couldn't get you on the hook.

Her man doesn't get paid for a woman who won't bite." And then he told me the rest of it, and I knew I'd had her pegged from the start.

They'd brought her into the hollow five years ago. She fought at first. Tried to run, more than once. Then they beat it out of her. So she found a way to take fewer beatings.

She started helping them work the new ones. Any time she could get a new woman to admit she was thinking about running, she told her man.

Her man carried it to the head man, and the head man paid out. The money came from whoever had bought the woman in the first place.

Roy patted my hip, pleased as anything. "Verna, every last one of them fell for it before you.

You saved me a pile of money tonight." He yawned. "You keep minding me like that, I'll treat you good." The noise next door thinned out and quit. Beside me, Roy started to snore.

I sat up and looked out the window. Moonlight up in those hills is something. It came in bright enough that I could see his face while he slept.

I reached over and touched his cheek, soft as anything. "You're going to mind me too." A few days later I was out sweeping the yard when the woman from next door came over.

She'd put on clean clothes. They didn't cover much. You could still see where they'd worked her over. She pulled her split mouth into a smile. "Honey. I'm Rhonda.

You and me both came from outside. Let me tell you a few things, woman to woman." I took her inside. I wanted to hear what this one was going to try next. Her mouth was smiling.

Her eyes couldn't hold the hate down. I couldn't tell yet who she hated. The man who'd beaten her, or me, for not swallowing the hook. Her first sentence told me. It was me.

She said if I would work with her, she had a way out of the hollow. I didn't turn her down. I sat there with a pleasant face and let her keep lying.

She put real feeling into it. "Verna. You trust me, don't you?" Did I trust her. I nodded. Something happy went across her face and her voice picked up. "Tonight.

Come to the river down at the mouth of the hollow and wait for me.

We go out that way, we've got a real chance." I let her watch me think about it, and I let my face twist up. "Rhonda, maybe we ought to just stay put.

If they catch us…" She cut me off, dead serious. "I mean it this time. I'm going tonight either way.

You want to keep taking what they hand you, you stay right here." Rhonda sat there in my house, righteous as a preacher, and I had to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from smiling.

I liked it here just fine. I was only curious about one thing. Out of everybody who walked down to that river tonight, how many actually meant it.

Chapter 4 I hadn't answered, so she dropped one more on me. "It's not just me going.

There's others." She'd have kept working on me, but her man hollered from next door for her to come cook. All I wanted was one plain, faithful man and a quiet life.

Why does somebody always have to stir something up? I've lived by one rule my whole life. Leave me be, and I'll leave you be.

As for their big escape, I didn't know how many of them meant it. But I knew for certain how it was going to end, because Rhonda was in it.

After she left I slipped around into her yard. I could hear her in there, breathless with excitement, laying the whole plan out for her man.

That evening Roy came in from the field and I had sweet tea already poured for him. He told me I was wasting sugar. Then he drank every drop.

I wiped him down with a towel. "Roy, it's too much work for one man out there. I wish I was stronger.

I'd be out there helping you." He took the towel from me, and his voice went soft. "You stay in the house and cook. Sun's too hard out there.

I like your skin the way it is." I ducked my head like a shy girl and let him have that. The truth is I never wanted to be in that field. A woman ought to look after herself.

Never go rushing in to take on work nobody asked you for. Nobody thanks you for it, and give it long enough, they stop even noticing you did it.

That night, deep asleep beside Roy, I woke to shouting outside. He sat up and pulled his shirt on, face like a storm. "Something's happened.

You stay in the house." I got up too and handed him the rest of his clothes. "We had nothing to do with Rhonda's business.

But I don't like you going out there in the dark by yourself. I'm coming." I'd told Roy about Rhonda's little offer days ago.

He'd made a face like he'd stepped in something and told me to keep clear of it. I figured somebody was about to get squeezed for money by Rhonda's man. That was all.

Then we got down to the mouth of the hollow, and there was flashlight coming from every direction, enough of it to light the place up like noon.

And in the middle of all that light was a woman's body, already gone cold