Free Twist by John Lutz Page A

snapped the recently woven cane until the chair was in worse condition than when they’d started working on it.
    “There’s plenty more cane in there,” she said, pointing to a long cardboard box set against a wall. “See what you can do with it. I’m gonna check at lunch time, you hear?” She slapped him on the cheek to emphasize her words.
    “I hear,” he said softly, then again, louder, to be sure that she’d heard.
    “You don’t do it good enough, you’re gonna sit in the shit house till dark, you understand?”
    “Understand.”
    He hated it when she locked him in the wooden outhouse, especially if it was still daylight. He could see out through the spaces between the vertical slats, but the cracks also let the wasps in. There were also plenty of flies, the big ones people called horseflies. They could bite you, and it hurt. But he feared the wasps more than anything, and it seemed he was always recovering from a bad sting somewhere on his body.
    He would sit on the wooden bench with its circular hole and try not to breathe the foul odor from below, or to hear the ceaseless buzzing of the flies, and the more militant drone of the wasps. It was the stench, along with the heat, that attracted the wasps, he was sure.
    They weren’t so bad once it got dark, around the time he’d see the woman coming to release him, wearing her flowing nightgown so white in the night, lifting her Coleman gas lamp high in one hand so she wouldn’t trip over the paving stones that were laid unevenly on her way to unlock the outhouse door.
    Usually a beating with her leather belt followed his release from the outhouse, but it was so much better than the wasps that Squeaky almost welcomed it.
     
     
    But right now it was a long time till evening.
    “Take a swig of water,” she told him.
    He did.
    “Chore time.” Mildred hefted herself up the wooden stairs, into the light of high morning. Against the clear blue sky she looked as huge as a storybook goddess, towering above him.
    Then the storm cellar doors clanged closed and he was in dimness.
    Mildred hoisted one of the steel-clad doors back up part way and stuck a block of wood under it so it would stay open about six inches, letting in light and air. The heavy chain clattered as she fed it through the handles, then fastened it with the padlock.
    There was no way out for the boy, and he knew that.
    There was no way out.
    Patiently, he used the back of his thumb to rub sweat from his eyes, then he began working again with the cane.
    He did know he was becoming more skillful, and he took a certain pride in that.
    One of his mother’s favorite homilies stuck at the fore of his mind. A job worth doing . . .

14
    New York City, the present
    I t was odd the way she met the guy.
    Connie Mason was drinking alone in Jill’s Joint, a Village club with a sixties theme. Jefferson Airplane was doing background music from the big Bose speakers angled downward around the walls where they met the ceiling. Grace Slick, singing her heart out. Not loudly, though, which was a shame. Grace was made for loud.
    The fact was that many of Jill’s Joint patrons had actually lived the sixties and now were in the country of the old, where softer music often prevailed.
    As for Connie, she was twenty-six and barely noticed the music, and thought Grace Slick was some kind of television sitcom or reality star who was branching out.
    A man at the bar, younger than many of the drinkers, caught Connie’s attention. She was mildly interested. Not that he looked like a winner. It was more that he didn’t look like an obvious loser. At best he was average looking.
    She reassessed with a mind dulled by vodka.
    Well, no, he was better than average looking. Why was that?
    She openly scrutinized the man, which didn’t seem to affect him. He returned her stare with a sort of neutral one of his own.
    There was nothing you could say was wrong with him. He had regular features, was average height and weight. He had