She pointed to an area opposite the low flat building.
“See that area at the end? It’s mostly shrouded in trees, but that end down there is ‘the cage’,” she said.
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Again, she emphasized the words.
“Okay,” I said.
“That’s where they put you. That’s where you stay. The cabins? Those are for show, when inspectors come,” she said.
“Wow, that’s messed up,” I said.
She scoffed again. “It gets better,” she said.
“Inside the cage, there’s low rows of shelters, like dog kennels. There’s not enough room for everyone. They’d only leave enough food to feed about half of us. You had to fight to survive,” She said.
“Wow, I’m sorry that happened to you,” I said.
I put a hand on her shoulder. She pulled away.
“No, you don’t understand what I mean. We were like gladiators in there. In the center, there’s a challenge ring. Every night, they offer more food for the prisoner who can take all comers. Last woman standing eats like a queen,” she said.
I had nothing to say to that. The place looked so innocent from up here. Perspective was everything.
“That’s when it gets interesting. If you keep winning, they move you out, to a cabin. ‘Cabins are for winners’ they always told us. And they’d rub our noses in it.
They’d take a few of us for a work detail. We’d tend the garden and cut the grass and clean the cabins, while the champions lounged around,” she said.
She looked at me. Tears were streaming down her face. She turned her back on ‘the farm’ and sat, arms folded.
“I’m not a fighter,” she said. “I almost gave up in there. A lot of women died while I was there. But, after a few weeks, you get hungry. At first, I’d just fight to get a share of what they dropped in. Just to keep from starving.”
“But night after night, you saw the champions feast. They’d set them on a platform, in the center of the ring, with bright lights. They’d put candles on the table and bring out steaks, and bread. You could smell it so vividly, the taste would stay in your mouth for hours,” she said.
She looked up at me.
“You’re not going to like me if I tell you the rest of this,” she said.
“Why?” I asked. “It doesn’t sound like there’s much choice.”
“Yeah, maybe, but you can choose not to like it,” she said. “When I finally snapped, it must have been about six weeks in, I decided. I wasn’t just going to win, I was going to kill whoever came in that ring.”
She stopped. Her shoulders sank.
“It’s okay, you caught me with a truck bed full of teddy bear bodies, who am I to judge,” I said.
She laughed.
“Yeah, that’s some pretty sick shit, Dalton,” she said.
She wiped her nose with her hand.
“So, I got in that ring, and at first it was easy. The most desperate ones come first. They know they’re gonna die if they don’t fight, and either winning, or being killed is preferable to starving in some corner of the cage and having your body drug out by the dogs they send in to get the dead ones,” she said.
Her voice grew stronger.
“I made sure I was first into the ring,” she said. “It’s kind of king of the mountain. There are no rules, but generally, the girl in first has the title to defend. But, it was my first time, so the big contenders held back, let the desperate ones soften me up.”
I sat down and took her hands. She didn’t pull away.
“Finally, the big guns came in, and one of them was this girl, Anna. She’d been helping me. She was tough, ex-marine, I think. She’d shown me some stuff, in the squabbles outside the ring, but now it was real. It was her, or me.”
“I didn’t even know what I was doing,” Leeanne said.
She started crying, sucking in between each phrase to clear her throat.
“I just jumped on her and clawed at her eyes, when she went down, I was surprised, but I didn’t let up. I grabbed her throat and squeezed, until she was dead,” Anna said.
Then she got quiet. I held her. She sobbed. For a long time. I was crying. I looked toward the edge, toward the hell that had done this to my friend.
“No one else came in the ring that night,” she said. “They all just stared at me, and I had to sleep alone, cold.
Normally, you could find someone that wanted to stay warm. I could hardly eat the meal they brought me. I felt awful. But the next day, it all changed.”
She kept talking. She told me how they had moved her into a cabin, how she only went to the cage to fight in the ring, and she kept winning. The cabin girls spent their days in a gym, with a trainer, and had the best meals delivered. She started to feel like she had earned it.
Soon, she forgot about the fence.
“It’s funny,” she said. “You give a prisoner just a little power over anyone in there and they start to see themselves differently. I got to thinking I was part of the system, like the guards. I forgot, they’d put a bullet in me, like we’d seen them do many times, if I stepped one foot out of line,” she said.
“Wow, I can’t even imagine,” I said.
“It gets weirder,” she said.
I looked around. We’d been there a long time and I was feeling exposed.
“Listen, if this place is as bad as you say, and I believe you, is it safe up here?” I said.
She looked around. She seemed like she was waking up from a dream. She stood up, and hacked, and spat, with a growl toward ‘The Farm’ I didn’t blame her.
We walked back to the truck and drove down the road in silence. By the time we reached the highway, Leeanne was asleep and I decided to leave her alone. Whatever else she had to say, I couldn’t change it today. That much was sure. Any solution was going to take time. I could be patient.
For the second night in a row, I carried Leeanne into the apartment and crawled into the bed behind her. My sleep was fitful. I dreamed about ‘The Farm’. I dreamed I was a prisoner there. I fought Vern, and Sheriff Crawford, and Hal, but there was one shadowy figure that I couldn’t see. That was the real enemy, and he was still out there somewhere.
I woke up more determined than ever to find out what was in that bear’s head. I went to the kitchen and made breakfast. Leeanne came in quietly. She smiled at me, and put her hands on my back. I turned to face her.
“I sorry,” she said.
“For what?” I asked.
She had nothing to be sorry for.
“For wanting you right in the middle of all this,” she said.
“Why?” I asked. “It’s not like they know you’re here. Right? You’re clear of that now, you served your time, right?”
Leeanne deflated into a chair.
I sat the breakfast plates on the table and dug into mine. Leeanne just looked at me.
“I wish that was true,” she said. “But it’s not. If they find me, they’ll kill me, and I’m so stupid, I came right back to the scene of the crime.”
I was confused. We’d been more than an hour away. ‘The Farm’ seemed so removed from River Grove that I couldn’t connect the two. Obviously, I was going to need the rest of the story.
“I feel like I’m missing something,” I said.
“Yeah, you are. That’s my fault. I should have told you from day one. Anyone that helps me, is putting themselves in danger, and this town is right in the center of it,” she said.
She started eating. She was past feeling sorry for herself. I could see her spine stiffening. Her shoulders squared.
“I’m going to finish what I started,” she said. “I came here to get justice and I’m going to.”
“So, the rest of your story?” I asked.
“It can wait,” she said.
I hoped she was right.