The Drowning Game

by LS Hawker

  “Where’s Sarx?” I choked out. “What did you do to Sarx?”

  “Pepper spray,” he said. “The dogs’ll be all right if you listen to me. Understand?”

  I nodded.

  “Call the dog off or I’ll shoot him.” He raised the pistol and pointed it again.

  “Off, Tesla,” I said, giving the hand signal.

  Tesla backed off, pacing in front of the door, sneezing and whining.

  Randy turned to me, unsteady on his feet. If he’d only been a little drunker, I could probably have disarmed him. But as it was, he had a .357 Magnum in one hand and pepper spray in the other. So I made sure to keep my knees loose and watch for an opening.

  “You listen to me,” Randy said. “You’re going to marry me, and you’re going to show me some respect. I’ve put up with your silent treatments and your playing hard to get. I’m sick of it. You’re going to marry me, and you’re going to have my sons. You’re going to start wearing makeup and dress like a real woman, and you’re going to cook and clean my house.”

  He stuck the pepper spray in his back pocket and his gun down the back of his jeans. What came next happened in slow motion. He corralled my waist and crushed me to him, but his mistake was trying to pin my arms to my sides. I pressed my wrists together, bent my knees and slipped his grasp. He stood blinking dumbly at me for a split second before he drew the gun and fired out the screen. “I will shoot the dog. Stand still. Do it. Stand still or I shoot the dog.”

  My dad had always said if it was ever between me and an animal, choose me. But Randy would still have a gun, and he was drunk. So I did as I was told. He caught me around the waist again and pulled me against him, then mashed his mustache into my lips. Without any warning at all his tongue plopped into my mouth too, and then I thought I was truly and really going to vomit. I didn’t crush his windpipe the way my dad had taught me, although I had never wanted to do anything more. I just stood there and took it.

  “Open your mouth a little wider,” he said into the side of my face before diving back in. I did. That tongue lashed around inside my mouth for a while, and that mustache went in my mouth too and up my nose and made me need to sneeze. While this was going on, he slipped his hand down the front of my sweats and between my legs. He did it so easily, as if it was nothing, as if this wasn’t the one thing my father had tried to prevent my whole life. It was as if he’d cut me open, reached inside and exposed my deepest thoughts to a jeering crowd. But the move released my right arm and without thinking at all I brought my fist up and boxed his left ear. He pulled his hand out of my underwear, took hold of the neck of my T-­shirt and slapped my face so hard I saw double.

  Tesla went berserk outside the screen, throwing himself at the door again and again.

  “You want it rough, huh?” Randy said, feeling his ear. “So do I.” Then he slapped me again before shoving his tongue in my mouth. His hand traveled up to my right breast and squeezed so hard the pain and violation made me gasp. I imagined biting his tongue off and spitting it in his face. For the umpteenth time I wished I could revive my dad and kill him all over again. And then I’d put him and Randy and Mr. Dooley into the meat grinder and let the dogs eat them.

  I stood limp, nauseated, until he stopped. He smiled at me as he felt his ear again, moved his jaw around. “Don’t worry,” he said, winking at me. “We’ll save your cherry for our wedding night. I’m kind of traditional that way.”

  My breast, my face, and my crotch all throbbed, but I didn’t move. I didn’t speak. My body parts blazed humiliated red, no longer my own, no longer protectable or private. Just spoiled meat you’d feed to pigs.

  “Here’s what’s going to happen,” he said. “We’re going to the courthouse tomorrow, and we’re going to get married. You don’t have any choice, and you know it. I’ll come for you at one o’clock, so you get a dress on, and we’ll go into town.” He started for the door and then stopped and turned back to me. “Almost forgot. Here you go.” He dug in his front pocket, snatched my hand up and put a black velvet box into it. I let the hand fall to my side. Impatiently, he took the box and opened it, holding it in front of my face. “Here’s your engagement ring. Put some ice on your face. See you tomorrow.”

  Before he opened the door, he said, “Call the dog off.”

  I thought about giving the signal to attack, but I was afraid Randy’d have the chance to pull the pistol out of his pants and shoot me or poor old Tesla. So I complied. Randy winked at me again and walked off into the night.

  Once he’d driven away, I ran out into the road and found Sarx wandering and bumping into the fence posts with bubbling lips, nose, and eyes, crying and whining. He must have gotten the bigger chemical dose. I led him back to the front steps and did my best to flush his and Tesla’s faces with the hose. I brought them into the house, and I was able to see in the light how burned their poor eyes and noses were. I locked up then went into the bathroom.

  My face was lopsided. I touched the cheek Randy had slapped, and it hurt. It would be bruised.

  I would never forget this. That had been my first kiss. It was something I’d daydreamed about since I was twelve or so. I always imagined it would be in the moonlight, underneath a willow tree, maybe with music in the background. I looked at the picture of my mom, her smiling, happy face, and imagined her first kiss had been wonderful, magical. I could never do it over again. It was done.

  I knelt in front of the toilet, stuck my finger down my throat and puked then spit several times. I brushed my teeth and rinsed my face.

  Then I let myself cry.

  As I inspected the photo of my mom again, I felt stronger. I imagined finding more pictures of her. Finding out what her name was. Finding out why my dad had done what he did. The answers to these questions must lie in the city we left when I was three: Detroit. After I got the box, the laptop, and the envelope, that’s where I was going, and anyone who wanted to stop me would have to do more than slap me around. They’d have to kill me.

  Chapter 10

  Monday

  THE SWELLING IN my face had gone down, but my left cheek was bruised and still hurt. Worse was how my brain felt foggy and disjointed, which made me nervous. I needed to be sharp, and I couldn’t wait another day.

  I checked out back. Everything was set for the dogs. Now it was time to make the call. If just one domino in the sequence fell too early, the whole plan was ruined. I closed my eyes and prayed everything would work.

  The iPhone’s keypad sang out notes as I pressed the numbers to the supermarket in Saw Pole. “I need some groceries delivered,” I said when a lady answered. “How soon could you get them to me?”

  “How far are you?”

  “Fifteen miles on County Road 167.”

  “Within the hour,” she said. “Dekker just got back from lunch. Dekker?” She shouted the name away from the phone receiver.

  “Dekker Sachs?” I said, aghast. It was the boy who’d brought the washing machine out to the dump my last day of work, the boy who’d tried to help me at the bank.

  “You know any other Dekkers? ’Cause I sure don’t.”

  “Do you have any other drivers available?”

  The lady laughed. “Honey, he’s our only driver. Where do you think you are, New York City?”

  This was a monkey wrench I hadn’t accounted for. I didn’t want the driver to be someone I knew. But it was too late to back out now. I read the lady my list of canned goods. She repeated it back to me and said Dekker would be here soon. Then I erased the records of the calls I’d made, turned off the phone and smashed it with a hammer. I buried what was left in the yard.

  I waited out front, keeping an eye out for the red Dodge pickup. Randy might decide to come by early, so I kept running inside to check the oven clock. It was 11:28 when I looked out the door and saw a cloud of dirt-­road dust moving toward me. The vehicle that had caused the clo
ud pulled up to the house. It was Dekker’s yellow pickup truck. The dogs attacked the truck, of course, and Dekker looked concerned behind the dusty windshield.

  “Off,” I yelled and signaled. They reluctantly backed away and sat, snarling and growling.

  I scratched both their ears, feeling sentimental. Then I lifted the two bags out of the bed of the truck. Dekker rolled his window down an inch. “Can I carry those in for you, Petty?”

  “No,” I said. “I got it. But can you hold on a sec? I got something I want to ask you.”

  I took the canned goods inside, put them on the kitchen counter, and took one last look around. Then I went outside and locked the door.

  The dogs were still sitting and growling, and Dekker’s window was still cracked open.

  “I wondered if you could take me into Saw Pole. I have an errand I need to run, and I can’t drive.”

  He stared at me. “Really?”

  “Yes.”

  “Sure. Get in.”

  “Just a minute.” I turned away and squatted down to scratch the dogs’ ears. I hugged them both. “Thanks for taking such good care of me,” I whispered to them. “Sorry about the pepper spray.”

  They sat, panting and smiling at me as I got in the pickup truck. I was hit by the smell of cigarette smoke, and Dekker waved his hand through the air as if to make it disappear.

  “Sorry about that,” he said. “Wasn’t planning on having a passenger. I’ll roll down my window.”

  A scrunched pack of Camels sat on the console along with a lighter. I watched out the back window as we drove away, and I felt that sting behind my eyes.

  “Those are some intense dogs,” Dekker said.

  I’d never been alone in a car with a boy my age. Dekker was so tall, the tips of his hair brushed the ceiling of the little truck, and he had big brown eyes. He had long fingers too and a large, pointy Adam’s apple.

  He pulled out onto the county road and drove west toward Niobe. “How’ve you been? How you holding up?”

  “Okay,” I said, my face to the window.

  He turned down his music, as if he expected to have a conversation or something.

  I kept looking out the window, my heart pounding with nerves.

  “I was surprised when Candace told me who I was delivering to,” he said. “Guess I didn’t realize you’d never learned to drive.”

  I didn’t say anything, so he went on.

  “How come you didn’t? I got my license the day of my sixteenth birthday. I couldn’t wait, man. I mean, it’s not like you can’t walk wherever you want to go in Saw Pole, but just the idea of it, you know? The freedom. The idea I could drive to California if I wanted to . . . of course, I’ve never had the money to do anything like that, but . . .”

  I stared out the window.

  “Am I talking too much?”

  “Yes.”

  “No one’s ever answered that honestly before,” he said. “Hey. I always wanted to ask you . . .”

  I looked at him then and cringed. I could only imagine the kinds of things ­people wanted to ask about me and my dad.

  His face fell. “Never mind.”

  We drove in a silence for a beat.

  He drummed on the steering wheel to the music on the radio. “So did all your relatives roll into town for the funeral? You have a houseful?” He squeezed his eyes closed briefly. “And I’m going to shut up now. Sorry. Didn’t mean to be nosy.”

  I kept my eyes on the right shoulder, looking for the little green Mile 211 sign.

  “Stop,” I said when I saw it.

  “I will. I tend to talk too—­”

  “No. I mean pull over and stop the truck.”

  He braked to a stop. “Wow. This is unprecedented. I promise I’ll shut up. You don’t have to get out.”

  “Can you wait here?” I asked.

  “Um, yeah?”

  I jumped out of the truck and ran down into the ditch. I breathed a sigh of relief. The camouflage I’d arranged the day before on my walk had done its work. I brushed it away and lugged my bundle out of the ditch, and hoisted it into the bed of the truck. Then I got back in the cab.

  Dekker looked through the back window and then at me. He blinked. “Is that a suitcase?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  He shrugged and put the pickup in gear. “Okay.” He continued drumming on the steering wheel.

  We drove on, and I could feel Dekker’s curiosity eating him up, his desire to talk dissolving his insides. It was kind of weird. I needed to focus so I let it go. He drove for five minutes before he spoke again.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Mr. Dooley’s office,” I said.

  “The attorney?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay. That’s cool. Awesome. It’s kind of great when I can get away from the grocery store because no one else our age works there. You’re, like, twenty-­one, right? It’s all old ladies. I’m only working there until I can get enough money together to go back to K-­State. ­People probably told you I flunked out, right? But I actually ran out of money, so . . .”

  Who was he talking to? What ­“people” would have told me anything about him?

  He rolled his eyes. “Sorry,” he said. “You make me nervous.”

  “No, I don’t,” I said. He couldn’t possibly know about my knife or Baby Glock, so what about me made him nervous?

  He did a double take, a little smile on his lips. “No, you definitely do. You’re just . . . I don’t know. It’s not you. It’s me.”

  He shut up when we hit the city limit and I started scanning the streets for the red Dodge.

  Dekker watched me. “So drop you off, or . . .”

  “Could you wait for me?” I asked. “I’ll only be a few minutes.”

  “Yeah. Sure. No problem.”

  He parked and I got out. I reached into the truck bed, unzipped the side pocket of the suitcase and removed a collapsible bag. I glanced up and down Main Street twice. It was deserted. I walked to the door of Mr. Dooley’s office, which was unlocked. I was actually kind of disappointed; I wouldn’t get to use the key he kept hidden under the windowsill.

  I poked my head in the door and called out, “Hello? Mr. Dooley?”

  No answer. It was straight-­up noon, so as I’d hoped, he was gone, probably to lunch at the Cozy Corner. I went inside and closed the door behind me.

  I ran into the inner office. On the desktop were piles of loose papers and stacks of file folders, and I despaired of finding mine. Where was it? I lifted several, afraid to upset the delicate balance of the folders, and finally I saw it.

  I grabbed the folder, flopped it on top of everything else and opened it. There was the envelope. I shoved it into my bag, closed up the file, and put it back where it had been. As I ran through the outer office toward the stairs, a shadow darkened the front shades. I waited for Mr. Dooley to come in, but the shadow passed on by.

  I took the stairs two at a time. The box and laptop were where I’d left them. After I shoved Dad’s laptop into my bag, I pulled the tape from the top of the box and folded back the sides. I lifted everything out and set it on another box. On top was a photo album, which I stuffed into my bag, feeling prickles of excitement all over. More photos! Underneath was a stack of letters rubber-­banded together, typed addresses on the envelopes. I shoved them in the bag too.

  Below that lay coiled a silver necklace—­the same necklace, I realized with a tingling chill, that Mom was wearing in the photo. Hanging on the chain was a silver box with polished gems on the sides and a hinged top. I felt like I might float to the ceiling. I examined the clasp and rather than try to figure it out, since I’d never worn any jewelry, I put it in my jeans pocket. I wanted to open the little box and look inside, but I had to hurry. Later.

  There wasn’t much roo
m left in my bag, but all that was left in the box were longer, brownish-­green file folders, the hanging kind. The top one was labeled BELLANDINI.

  As I reached for it, I heard the front door of the office open.

  Chapter 11

  AS I SAT waiting in my pickup, I kept thinking about all the things I might have said when Petty got in with me. “Third time’s the charm,” or “If you wanted to go out with me, you just had to ask,” or “Fancy meeting you here!” and cringing at my utter lameness. I’d only had two girlfriends in my life, one in high school and one during my Brown Mackie days, so I wasn’t exactly a player. I wouldn’t allow myself to linger on the thought that kept rearing its pathetic head: all these chance meetings had to mean something. Right. Like we were destined to be together. Petty was beautiful, but she was also odd to an astonishing degree.

  I lit up a Camel, ready to chuck it out the window the moment she appeared in the doorway. The clock on the dash told me I needed to be back to work in eighteen minutes. My boss Candace was a stickler for timed grocery runs, which was stupid because you never knew how long it would take. She claimed she’d clocked every possible route and knew exactly how long each one should take. She talked about this accomplishment as if it were exceptionally noteworthy, like climbing K2 or memorizing the phone book.

  While I watched Dooley’s office door, I tried to figure out a casual, conversational way to bring up the gig opening for Autopsyturvy. But two things occurred to me—­no matter how I brought it up, it sounded like bragging. And secondly, it would mean exactly nothing to Petty. She’d have no idea how big this was. Then I allowed myself to imagine inviting her to the concert so she could see it for herself. That would be miserable for her—­in a crowd with strangers, loud music. But this didn’t stop me from picturing her standing in the front row, an expression of rapture on her face at my drumming brilliance.

  Just then, Keith Dooley ambled down the sidewalk, in no hurry to get back to work after lunch at the Cozy Corner. Which struck me as weird. Why hadn’t Petty come out when she realized Dooley wasn’t there?