With a final shriek of mingled pain and disappointment, Jessie let her hands go limp once more. Her shoulders and upper arms quivered with exhaustion. So much for sliding out of the cuffs because they were M-17s instead of F-23s. The disappointment was almost worse than the physical pain; it stung like poisoned nettles.

“Shit and fuck!” she cried at the empty room. “Shit and fuck, shit-and-fuck, shittenfuck!”

Somewhere along the lake-farther off today, by the sound the chainsaw started up, and that made her even angrier. The guy from yesterday, back for more. just some swinging dick in a red-and-black-checked flannel shirt from L. L. Bean’s, out there playing Paul Kiss-My-Ass Bunyan, roaring away with his Stihl and dreaming about crawling into bed with his little honey at the end of the day… or maybe it was football he was dreaming of, or just a few frosty cold ones down at the marina bar. Jessie saw the dork in the checked flannel shirt as clearly as she had seen the young girl in the stocks, and if thoughts alone could have killed him, his head would have exploded out through his asshole at that very moment.

“It’s not fair!” she screamed. “It’s just not f-”

A kind of dry cramp seized her throat and she fell silent, grimacing and afraid. She had felt the hard splinters of bone which barred her escape-oh God, had she-but she had been close, just the same. That was the real wellspring of her bitterness-not the pain, and certainly not the unseen woodcutter with his blatting chainsaw. It was knowing that she had gotten close, but nowhere near close enough. She could continue to grit her teeth and endure the pain, but she no longer believed it would do her the slightest bit of good. That last quarter to half an inch was going to remain mockingly out of her reach. The only thing she would manage to do if she kept on pulling was to cause edema and swelling in her wrists, worsening her situation instead of bettering it.

“And don’t you tell me I’m toast, don’t you dare,” she said in a whispery, scolding voice. “I don’t want to hear that.”

You have to get out of them somehow, the young girl’s voice whispered back. Because he-it-really is going to come again. Tonight. After the sun goes down.

“I don’t believe it,” she croaked. “I don’t believe that man was real. I don’t care about the footprint and the earring. I just don’t believe it.”

Yes, you do.

No, I don’t!

Yes, you do.

Jessie let her head droop to one side, hair hanging almost down to the mattress, mouth quivering abjectly.

Yes, she did.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

She started to doze off again in spite of her worsening thirst and throbbing arms. She knew it was dangerous to sleep-that her strength would continue to ebb while she was out of it-but what difference did it really make? She had explored all her options and she was still America’s Handcuffed Sweetheart. Besides, she wanted that lovely oblivion-craved it, in fact, the way a hophead craves his drug. Then, just before she drifted off, a thought which was both simple and shockingly direct lit up her confused, drifting mind like a flare.

The face cream. The jar of face cream on the shelf above the bed.

Don’t get your hopes up, Jessie-that would be a bad mistake. If it didn’t fall right off onto the floor when you tipped the shelf up, it probably slid to a place where you haven’t got a snowball’s chance in hell of getting hold of it. So don’t get your hopes up.

The thing was, she couldn’t not get them up, because if the face cream was still there and still in a place where she could get hold of it, it might provide just enough slip to free one hand. Maybe both, although she didn’t think that would be necessary. If she could pull out of one cuff, she would be able to get off the bed, and if she could get off the bed, she thought she would have it made.

It was just one of those small plastic sample jars they send through the mail, Jessie. It must have slid off onto the floor.

It hadn’t, though. When Jessie had turned her head as far to the left as it would go without popping her neck out of joint, she was able to see a dark blue blob at the farthest edge of her vision.

It’s not really there, the hateful, doom-mongering part of her whispered. You think it’s there, perfectly understandable, but it’s really not. It’s just a hallucination, Jessie, just you seeing what most of your mind wants you to see, orders you to see. Not me, though; I’m a realist.

She looked again, straining a tiny bit farther to the left in spite of the pain. Instead of disappearing, the blue blob grew momentarily clearer. It was the sample jar, all right. There was a reading-lamp on Jessie’s side of the bed, and this hadn’t slid off onto the floor when she tilted the shelf because the base was fastened to the wood. A paperback copy of The Valley of Horses which had been lying on the shelf since mid-July had slid against the base of the lamp, and the jar of Nivea cream had slid against the book. Jessie realized it was possible that her life was going to be saved by a reading-lamp and a bunch of fictional cave-people with names like Ayla and Oda and Uba and Thonolan. It was more than amazing; it was surreal.

Even if it’s there, you’ll never he able to reach it, the doom-monger told her, but Jessie barely heard it. The thing was, she thought she could reach the jar. She was almost sure of it.

She turned her left hand within its restraint and reached slowly up to the shelf, moving with infinite care. It would not do to make a mistake now, to nudge the jar of Nivea cream out of reach along the shelf, or knock it backward against the wall. For all she knew, there might now be a gap between the shelf and the wall, a gap a small sample-sized jar could easily drop through. And if that happened, she was quite sure her mind would break. Yes. She would hear the jar hit the floor down there, landing among the mouse-turds and dust bunnies, and then her mind would just… well, break. So she had to be careful. And if she was, everything might yet be all right. Because…

Because maybe there is a God, she thought, and He doesn’t want me to die here on this bed like an animal in a leg-hold trap. It makes sense, when you stop to think about it. I picked that jar up off the shelf when the dog started chewing on Gerald, and then I saw it was too small and too light to do any damage even if I managed to bit the dog with it. Under those circumstances-revolted, confused, and scared out of my mind-the most natural thing in the world would have been to drop it before feeling around on the shelf for something heavier, Instead of doing that, I put it back on the shelf. Why would I or anyone else do such an illogical thing? God, that’s why. That’s the only answer I can think of, the only one that fits. God saved it for me because He knew Id need it.

She whispered her cuffed hand gently along the wood, trying to turn her splayed fingers into a radar dish. There must be no slip-ups. She understood that, questions of God or fate or providence aside, this was almost certainly going to be both her best chance and her last one. And as her fingers touched the smooth, curved surface of the jar, a snatch of talking blues occurred to her, a little dustbowl ditty probably composed by Woody Guthrie. She had first heard it sung by Tom Rush, back in her college days:

If you want to go to heaven

Let me tell you how to do it,

You gotta grease your feet

With a little mutton suet.

You just slide out of the devil’s hand

And ooze on over to the Promised Land,,

Take it easy,

Go greasy.