Bled

by Jason McIntyre

  She landed at the bottom, pain ripping through her body but not yet registering in her young brain. She lay there, rag-doll flopped, arms askew, legs in another direction. Before she could start to cry, she saw Daddy at the top of the stairs, his dark-ringed eyes visible to her from even down here. Unable to get up much past his thighs and with his right hand clutching the hilt of his hunting knife he reached out for Mama who clawed away from him on her belly. Her breasts and tummy slid on the floor as she got fingers and palms onto the hardwood at the top of the stairs to pull herself out from under him.

  When he reached with both hands, it was with a force that a man as weak as he purported to be could not have possibly managed. His left came down on Mama’s back, clutching her blouse into a fisted bunch. His right, well, it came down with the same force, but still gripping the finely sharpened steel knife. Its blade plunged into Mama’s back and she shrieked.

  Her body on that side went limp but her other tried to compensate for it. She pulled away again, scraping that floor and still splayed across it with her husband covering her bottom half and reaching for her hair. The knife remained sunken into her flesh, grazing her spine if not right through a section of it.

  Silent tears streamed from Teeny’s eyes. The burn was starting to grow in her body where her joints and parts had concussed against stair boards, wooden railing, the wall, and herself. She saw Mama tear away from him in one big thrust. But that knife stood stolid in Daddy’s grip as his lips snarled over bare teeth.

  She pulled forward from underneath his heavy weight but a good chunk of her back tore away as she did. It came away like a long pink shred of back bacon, thick and juiced, ready for grilling.

  Outside, the family barbecue was smoking from under its lid. Mama had forgotten to turn it off.

  11.

  Daddy had traipsed down the stairs like a bumble-bee. This way and that, he banged into the railing and the wall nearly as much as Teeny had when she’d been pushed over the top edge moments before. She thought he would fall right on top of her and crush her. As he descended, he acted like a swarm of bees was right up inside his own head, behind his eyes and under his tongue. He grabbed at his own face and head, yanked on his hair. He barely managed to step over his daughter, in a pile of mangled limbs and a bloodied face at the foot of the stairs. One of his bare feet brushed her but she was paralyzed. Catching the feel of his touch was like bad electricity. Voltage current that swam into her.

  Upstairs, one arm dangling down the height of two stairs, Mama was not moving. Then came the deep, dark, earthy smell of blood as it poured out of the missing strip in the back of Mama’s blouse, then trailed down the stairs towards Teeny at the bottom. One step’s tread, then riser, then the next, then the next, snaking its way to Teeny’s blinking eyes as she lay in wait.

  12.

  Daddy would be found an hour later on Scagway Avenue holding his hunting rifle and shouting. When he pointed it roughly at deputy Doletz while Doletz was trying to console the man, that’s when the deputy let a shaky finger get off four rounds before his arms came back in tune with his head on the matter. One round took Daddy in the chest, another in the left side of his forehead. The other two, thank God, Mama would say some time later, went wild and missed the onlookers who’d spilled out of the stores and the pub to see the hum and bother.

  13.

  When Teeny—who was curled in a blanket on the couch and nursing her wounds by simply not moving—heard the news, she sat quiet and unmoving for a long time. The sun had gone down by this point and Mama had been taken by chopper to Memorial Hospital after getting stabilized island side. Police were in the house and so were other people, though Teeny, at six, didn’t know who they were or what they were doing. One man was using that machine with the window and the red dial that make the clicking noises of static and buzzing.

  Teeny finally started to cry. But ol’ Doc Sawbones said he was getting better, she wanted to say. She wanted to tell all these people in her house that things were going to be getting better now. Mama said Daddy had his appetite back. She said it.

  Her words hitched in her throat then compounded with violent sobs. Then she finally got some out.

  “He wanted steak,” Teeny bawled at the strangers in her parents’ home. “He was feeling better. He wanted steak from the barbecue.”

  Part V

  Just Dessert

  1.

  The main door to the ladies’ room boomed open and banged against the interior wall of the bathroom, possibly hard enough to crack some of the green tile work that went halfway up. Light spilled under Teeny’s stall door, hers the second of two and closest to the opposite wall.

  Noise and light yanked her out of her recollection, back to the present-day. A beat, then she heard Helen’s voice. “Teen—ya in here?”

  Without even thinking, Teeny answered. “Yeah, I’m here. Just getting changed.”

  “Well, good. Dab’s here—if ya can believe it. He’s doing early rounds, the cooks are pissed and we are getting bi-zee. Gonna be a real rootin tootin shittin’ heap of a day, I bet. Any way you can start early, hon? Take off some of the strain? Dab says he’ll pay you double for the extra hour.”

  “Can do,” Teeny called, bunching up her wad of bloody napkins in one hand then reaching for a few squares of toilet paper with the other—not that Helen could see her behind the stall door. She tried to keep her voice steady, unwavering, conscious that it might crack. But it didn’t, not this time.

  “Kay. Thanks Teeny-bikini. See ya out there.”

  The ladies’ room door whined shut. The light disappeared and it seemed even darker in here than it had before Helen had burst in.

  In this new darkness, Teeny couldn’t help but now see a grey-white flash of Daddy’s hunting knife. It was going up and down on the brown leather stropping belt. Up and down that blade went, this side of the steel, down, and then that side, up. Long loud stroke down, long loud stroke up. It brought to mind that bobbing leather belt of Mr. Moort’s and how it had been clicking its buckle against the wall of the men’s room stall, a stall that looked nearly identical to this one, where Teeny sat on the toilet and willed herself to pee.

  How stupid she had been. God, almighty! she thought. How stupid to think she would enlist her brothers to take Frank Moort out of his house late some night. How stupid, stupid, stupid. Here in the fresh light of a new day, even with her hurt so hot and deep, down between her legs, the idea that she would take some kind of revenge was, well, it was laughable. Downright funny. She blinked hard against tears, worried they would squeeze out of her eyes and fall. She clenched against losing them.

  In a hushed, forceful whisper, Teeny recited Psalm 37:8 three times.

  Refrain from anger and turn from wrath; do not fret. It leads only to evil. Refrain from anger and turn from wrath; do not fret. It leads only to evil. Refrain from anger and turn from wrath; do not fret. It leads only to evil.

  She closed her eyes against seeing those two brown straps of leather, broad beneath the shine of that silver blade. She closed her eyes hard against imaginings of Frank Moort getting dragged by his hair from his bed by her big brothers. But behind the blackness of her eyes, the sight of these ideas overlapped. They interchanged, grew in intensity. Now she was sure in her memory that Mr. Moort had a blade going up and down his belt too as he had sat in the bathroom stall getting himself primed and ready.

  (—turn from wrath; do not fret. It leads only to evil.)

  And he had that smile too. Same as Daddy’s had been at six years old and looking up at him out back of the house sitting in the shade of the old garage. Mr. Moort’s smile was maniacal, though. Toothy with something more than Daddy’s—which she had always believed grew from love.

  (—do not fret. It leads only to evil.)

  Teeny shook her head, trying to break these images out of her mind, as if a physical action could release such mental tension. The tears ceased their forward march. Her neck gave a painful crack and she r
ealized how tense she was. She lolled her head on her shoulders, around this way, and then that way and let out a huge exhale. She filled her underwear with new paper napkins and eased herself off the toilet seat to stand upright without straining her rectum or inner thighs. She let out another breath, this one of relief that she might be starting a healing process.

  (—it leads only to evil. Only to evil. Only to evil...)

  She changed into her work uniform, gingerly of course, then left the ladies room.

  2.

  There, at the end of the diner in his usual booth, was Frank Moort, settling into his usual spot facing the kitchen. As Teeny emerged from the ladies room—essentially another dark world into this light one, Frank Moort was folding his suit coat neatly and, as always, laying it with care on the bench seat beside him.

  Without thinking, Teeny’s face burned as red as the fingertips on her right hand and she moved deftly across the café to his table. Teeny’s mind fired off inside her: He’s gonna tell me he lost it, he mislaid it. He’s gonna say his wife accidentally put it through the wash. He’s gonna tell me some big fat lie—

  Helen was in front of her, like a roadblock thrown up for a criminal heading over the out-of-town bridge. “Whoah there, Teeny. Dab wants you on ten through seventeen. Get a move on. Shake a leg and all that. Y’all right?"

  Rubbing her reddened fingers, Teeny blinked back from Helen, this sudden intrusion, this blast of cold common sense. “—Yeah, I’m fine. Ten to seventeen. Got it. I’m on it.”

  “Good. Now get goin’.”

  As if Helen had ever been Teeny’s superior. Today she was talking to her like she was. Teeny knew she must be giving off the vibe that she most definitely was not okay, the vibe that she needed managing. It was probably just as well, to help keep her going in a straight line instead of a crooked one and, well, down the path that led only to evil. Not necessarily evil deeds, those were as far-fetched for a girl like Teeny as they were for Teeny’s mama. But certainly, Helen dropping from the heavens to halt her from saying something loud and out-of-place on this crowded, busy pre-lunch crowd, well, that would most definitely save Tina McLeod some major embarrassment.

  She worked. Teeny worked. And she did it fast, so fast, in fact, she was getting dizzy. She spun orders back to the kitchen and out to their tables faster than she had done in a long time, not since she was new and trying to impress Dab. She got tables cleared and new folks sat down to lunch. She cleared ash trays for new ones — even though the stink of the butts up that close nearly made her sick. She brought refills and topped up coffees.

  The pain in her rectum, her right forefinger and second had departed for the moment. The aspirin had done the trick for now and she glanced over at Frank Moort’s table when he and a few others let out a large guffaw of laughter.

  But Teeny’s vision was doubling now. From across the café, she thought there might be four or five men with Frank Moort at his table, which was usually empty except for him, even when the whole place was a mad house. He had never, so far as Teeny could remember, offered an empty space to little old Mrs. Harcourt or any of the women from the auxiliary club.

  Dizzy and realizing her skin was hot as a stove-top, Teeny turned on her heels and retreated to the kitchen—not to pick up an order, but just to be away from the sight of him.

  Through the porthole on the outside of the kitchen’s swinging doors, and with some fresher air in her lungs, Teeny peered through and saw Frank Moort sitting at his table, in his usual spot. And, yes, there were four other similarly-aged men with him. Mr. Parson, the middle-aged owner of the town’s only hardware store, sat across from Frank Moort, his back mostly to Teeny hiding behind the kitchen door. She could tell it was him by the war tattoo—a dragon’s tale, she believed—snaking down the length of his visible arm, beneath the end of his short-sleeved dress shirt. Mr. Parson always wore a dress shirt, even when it was hot. His allowance was wearing the short-sleeve variety when summer showed its teeth.

  Mr. Banks was there. He ran the garage on Paramount. Dean Freeman, an investment specialist and one of Frank Moort’s other buddies stood next to the group. And beside Frank Moort with a big grin on his face was Dabney Saum, Teeny and Helen’s boss-man, owner of the Highliner Café and a few other businesses on the island. He was raising his water glass and Frank Moort himself was beginning to stand up from the table as Teeny came out and the door drew shut behind her. She could only stand agape. Was he going to make a speech? Or just headed for the john, like usual?

  The Highliner was crowded, packed really, and thick with cigarette smoke and heat. The fans overhead just moved it around. But the din settled almost immediately when Frank Moort said in a loud voice, “If I could have your attention. Everyone? Excuse me. Sorry to interrupt your lunches.”

  Teeny’s neck was throbbing. It probably stood out bright red against the white collar of her uniform shirt. She realized her upper body was tense. The throb in her rectum had returned. It was in her bulbous fingers again too and she fisted both hands.

  Everyone did turn to look. Everyone did pay their utmost attention to Frank Moort. They all respected this man that Tina McLeod hated...even though hate was wrong according to her mother and her mother’s church.

  “Seems I’ve come into a lil spot of money,” Frank Moort said, hands coming together like those of prayer. “The good Lord seems to have seen fit to bless me with a little something extra. Wanted to let you know that lunch and dessert is on me today—”

  Then Frank Moort glanced over at Teeny, more in her direction than actually face to face with her. He finished. “—If you could add all the bills to mine today, that would be swell.”

  Frank Moort sat back down. There was a moment of silence while it dawned on everyone. And then the smiles and the thank-yous erupted. The men at Frank Moort’s table chuckled and slapped their open palms on his back and shoulders. He cringed, good-naturedly from their physical touches but smiled openly, even though his face still looked grey and his hair was even thinner than a few short weeks ago. Then the applause started. Then customers began to stand from their tables.

  Frank Moort waved his open palms and splayed fingers at the crowd, looking more like a politician after a rousing speech than an office manager for the rail line casually addressing a café. Several came and crowded at his table, still clapping, still boisterous. Dab Saum shook Frank Moort’s hand. Others offered theirs.

  Anger boiling in her, Teeny blew through the cigarette smoke hanging in the air of the Highliner Café’s dining room, over to Frank Moort’s table and forced her way through the throng of happy patrons, some she’d been serving just moments before. She leaned down, hands on his table like a poker player threatening assault after losing. Her eyes were right up close to Frank Moort’s. She growled at him, low enough not to be heard by most, but surely heard with clarity by some.

  “Give it.”

  Frank Moort was still smiling, making eye contact with his friends, neighbours, co-workers, saying thanks and no problem and glad to do it to the townsfolk of Dovetail Cove, some of whom he’d known for twenty or twenty-five years. Then he made deliberate eye contact with Teeny.

  “Bring my dessert, wouldja, dollface? Bring everyone’s!”

  And everyone cheered at this. Hoorays and hollerings of yippee from a few of the kids. More applause, even.

  Teeny’s eyes, already wide with reddened whites, blew open like portholes on a deep-water trawler. Her face went slack and pale. Her two fingers throbbed on the table top. She retreated. Anger gone, now just sheer incredulity at this horror of a man.

  Back through the heaving crowd of elated restaurant patrons, pleased with what appeared to be the unbelievable come true: A free lunch. Back through the mostly and seemingly oblivious gang of them. Back through the double swinging kitchen doors. Back past Miguel and the grill smoke and the heavy sizzle. Back past the storage room and out into the hot air of the summer day in a back alley that smelled of grease and old garbage and a
nimal feces.

  3.

  Hands on her hip, Teeny bawled. She paced. She ran down the length of one alley block and then back. She wanted to scream. She bit back that scream.

  Asshole! she wanted to cry out but didn’t.

  4.

  Fingers stretched into the dark, out, out, and under the metal shelving rack in the store room. Finding purchase on that softened can of Tahitian cut pineapple. Fingers sheathed in yellow rubber gloves, dirty with grease stains from a thousand plates of Denver sandwiches and fried bacon and bloody steak plus A1 sauce.

  Hands groped the heavy industrial-sized tin with awkward determination. They hauled it out of the darkness, off the ground like a football at arm’s length. They twisted it easily because its middle was soft and pliable like a tin pie plate instead of a sturdy aluminum can. The black that looked like char now split open, the white foam like that on the skin of a stormy, churned up sea came apart. Inside, the worst smell but red-faced and tear-stained, Teeny ignored its burn in her mouth and eyes and nose. She pawed through the pineapple chunks inside the putrid mess, leaving the thickened juice to sluice down the prep counter and onto the floor like the watery guts of a large fish gutted on deck.

  Behind her, Helen came in and said, “Everything all right, Teeny-uh-bikini?"

  Teeny returned nothing, didn’t even acknowledge, only grabbed two yellow rubber paw-fuls of those matching yellow chunks, the best looking ones, and piled them like messy roadwork on the partially thawed cheesecake base. Then she yanked the gloves and they dropped to the floor. She pushed past Helen, out into the dining room and headed for Frank Moort.