Bank Owned

by J. Joseph Wright

  He heard his wife. Unguarded. Unbridled. A climactic vocal display only reserved for the utmost of private moments. Brian had made her produce those sounds, not much lately. Hearing them drove a spike of both rage and desire through his spine, and had him running up a flight of stairs to the bedroom door. He wasn’t there more than a second when he heard her again, breathing deep and loud. At first he thought she was alone, pleasuring herself. Then the thumping, rattling, fast and firm and repetitive, made him aware of another person. He didn’t know whether or not to burst in and find out for sure, so he put his ear to the door, and had to flinch away at what he detected. A low groan. Faint yet distinctive. A man!

  “Angie!” he shouted without thinking, and her sounds of ecstasy only grew more heated, the pounding against the wall harder. “Angie! Is someone in there with you!”

  The person with the deep voice mumbled something, and Angie giggled, but the commotion didn’t stop. In fact, it became even more forceful. Her moans of delight became blatant, shameless, wailing in time with the beat. Brian, driven to severe desperation, twisted the doorknob and pushed, but it refused to budge, not even a little. Like a foot-thick sheet of steel. Unyielding, unmoving.

  “Angie! What’s going on in there!”

  Giggling became laughter. Laughter became shrieks of hysteria. Angie sounded on the verge of delirium. Screeching and screeching, until it became obvious her vocalizations signaled something more than just pleasure. She cried out in pain after a sharp slapping sound, then again after another.

  He body-slammed the door, hitting so hard he felt something snap. The pain he ignored. His own suffering didn’t matter. He only pictured his wife, and some intruder, some home invader, someone who’d slipped inside his house in the dark of night.

  Then her voice became muffled, garbled, forced. The slaps continued, one after the other, harder and harder. Brian wrenched the doorknob as hard as he could, straining his knuckles, pushing to the limit of his strength. Nothing. Goddam thing was jammed. Finally, after one particularly decisive and hollow Crack! he heard Angie no more, and that spiked his blood with so much anxious power, the door became no match. He kicked and punched at the same time, and it flew open and took a divot from the sheetrock, crashing so hard, it startled Angie, who, much to Brian’s shock, was all alone.

  “Brian!” she admonished him groggily. “Don’t scare me like that!”

  “Are…are you okay?” his vision darted up, down, left, right—searching for the intruder who seemed never to have been there.

  “Of course I’m okay,” she didn’t like the way he looked. Sweaty and out of breath. “Are you okay?”

  He made his way, carefully, to the other side of the bed, and flicked on the lamp. “What? Yeah, yeah. I’m fine.”

  “You sure? You don’t look fine. You look a little sick. Do you have a fever?”

  He checked the windows, each of them closed and latched. He stood to the side of the closet and slid over a group of hangers, taking special notice down low, where he’d surely spot someone trying to hide.

  Angie grew impatient. “What are you looking for? Brian?”

  He stopped what he was doing and stared at her. Then he strode briskly and pulled down the sheets, inspecting her wrists, her neck. She had on purple pajama bottoms and one of his T-shirts. Her hair was perfect, her skin flawless. Just the way he’d left her.

  “What?” she started to feel self-conscious. “Why are you staring at me?”

  “You were—” he sat on the bed and stared into nowhere. “But I—”

  She sat up and scooted next to him. “But you what?”

  After a time, not too long, he shook his head and laughed through his nose. “It’s nothing,” he stood again, reclaiming his masculinity. “I’m sorry. I was just hearing things. Probably the furnace or something,” he backed out, then, after swinging the door, discovered the hole in the plasterboard. “Shit,” he muttered under his breath, picturing the patch job in front of him.

  “You slammed that pretty hard,” she ruminated. “What did you think was going on in here?”

  He avoided eye contact. “Never mind. It’s no big deal. Go back to sleep.”

  “Brian?” she wanted to know. “Tell me.”

  “Go back to sleep,” he caught her gaze just before closing the door. He wanted to believe he’d heard something else. The furnace. That was it. Or the wind, moaning through the house, playing it like an old flute. In a place as ancient and as spacious as this one, random noises and mysterious occurrences were the norm.

  After that, Brian had trouble focusing on work, and missed his follow-up call to Larry. He ended up getting nothing constructive done at all. Angie didn’t get much sleep, either. Brian had scared her. A lot. And for the remainder of the night, she had the TV on to give her some company in that big old bedroom. After tossing and turning for two hours, she stumbled out of bed and into the ensuite bath, heading straight for the shower. Waiting for the water to get steamy, she stretched and yawned and winced at her own reflection. She lifted Brian’s T-shirt over her head and was about to step into the bathtub when she caught her backside in the mirror. Long, jagged scratches. Four of them. Dried blood and ruptured flesh.

  “BRIAN!”

  4.

  A dinged fender from a Douglas-fir branch. A chip in the windshield from flying gravel. Her Lexus was taking a beating already from the pothole-ridden, wildlife-infested backcountry roads. She’d begged Brian to trade it in and get an SUV. A Mercedes hybrid, preferably. But buying the house had tapped all their savings. He just didn’t feel comfortable being saddled with more debt. Honestly, neither did she. So, beat up the Lexus she did. It didn’t matter. She loved the house, and a little sacrifice went a long way, as far as she was concerned. She couldn’t explain away the marks on her back, though she tried, and Brian had tried to believe her. Must have happened when they were moving, probably the couch. In an effort to forget, on her way to Portland, she decided to stop at the Coffee Hutch across from milepost 28, on Highway 47.

  The early hour afforded her a ticket straight to the front of the line, and the woman inside the drive-up window looked nice. Everyone in Vernonia looked nice.

  Angie didn’t need a menu. “Can I get a small, nonfat half caf hazelnut vanilla cappuccino, please?”

  “Getting an early start, are ya?” Betty asked. She’d never seen the young woman in the out-of-place import, and that piqued her interest. Somehow, though, she had to keep from sounding too nosy while still satisfying her own curiosity. “Where’re ya’ headed?”

  “Huh?” Angie turned down her stereo. “Oh. Portland. Going to work.”

  “Oh, really,” Betty glanced at her husband, Earl. He didn’t look up from the newspaper in front of his face. She worked the cappuccino machine like the 23-year veteran she was, and probed further, her curiosity on overdrive. “Just move to the area, or…”

  “Oh yeah,” Angie smiled big. She couldn’t help but be proud of her new house, and how great of a deal they got. “My husband and I. We bought the big house up on Pebble Creek Road.”

  Betty nudged the frother and spilled foam onto the counter, staining her needlepoint. Earl folded the paper and dropped it on his lap. Angie saw none of this. With Adele playing, she just had to turn it up, even though the radio station came in a little fuzzy.

  “You talkin’ about the Castle?”

  “What?” she turned the music down again.

  “The Castle? On Pebble Creek Road.”

  “That’s right,” Angie remembered what the realtor had said. “You know it?”

  Betty found it hard to maintain eye contact. So many things she wanted to say to this young, beautiful child. So young. So innocent. Such a shame.

  “Yes, dear,” she smiled. “I know it.”

  Angie sensed something in the way the older woman spoke, especially that last bit, about her knowing the house. She’d placed a certain emphasis on her words, conveying more meaning than was on the surface.


  “What is it?” Angie, now, became the curious one.

  Betty snuck another look at her husband. Fifty years of marriage, and she never thought it would come down to this. With her, Betty Crenshaw, pillar of the community, leader of the Baptist Church choir, and grandmotherly figure to scores of young ones—with her old-fashioned rules of morality and human respect—reduced to this. A quivering, spineless jellyfish, chained to a hunk of sweaty pig fat named Earl, and scared shitless. In a glorious moment of spinal self-healing, she found her old self, the one who’d never stand for such outright wickedness, and cleared her throat.

  “It’s about that house—” she said before she even knew it, then wished to hell she hadn’t, because the second she did, Earl stood and ended the conversation.

  He slammed the service window closed, and started grumbling something to his wife. Angie wanted to say something about how rough the jerk was being, but then thought better of it. Small town. Strange ways. Her watch also got her moving. Long drive to work.

  5.

  “I told you it had to be shipped yesterday, Larry. The vendors are on board, the marketers are up to speed, but we’re all waiting for you. What’s wrong with this picture?”

  Brian leaned forward and placed his elbows on the desk, massaging his scalp under the headset. Hated those headsets. Always rubbed his ear into a piece of raw cauliflower.

  “Larry? You there, buddy?”

  He hadn’t noticed until that second, but the Skype screen had frozen, a blurry still of his zipper supplier’s vacant stare plastered in the frame. That’s when he discovered, for at least the fifteenth time, his internet connection had failed.

  “Dammit!”

  He unplugged the modem, waited, then plugged it back in. That seemed to work before. Then he clicked on the browser. Success. Back online. He hurried to get Larry again, then he’d make plenty sure that shipment of zippers got out, pronto. When he clicked on Larry’s Skype ID, though, he got an onscreen message:

  Gone to lunch. Talk later.

  “DAMMIT!” he punched the desk and the cat scurried out the door. That’s when he decided to take a break.

  In all the excitement, he’d forgotten the house came with ten acres. Mostly wooded land. He even had a miniature apple orchard, which, once out there, he discovered was bigger than first estimated. The cat followed him, stopping at irregular intervals and aiming her ears in various directions, her radar on high alert for field mice, no doubt.

  As Brian approached the center of the quaint little grove, he saw something swing in an unnatural way. The entire time he’d been out there, he thought the brownish gray protuberance was a tree stump, dead and leaning amongst the healthy ones. Then it moved, and two deep black eyes fixed on him. His pulse fluttered, then he took one giant breath of relief. A deer. A buck, to be precise. A young male with two stout, forked antlers.

  “Hi, guy,” Brian said. The deer moved not a muscle. Then it lifted its back leg, scratched below the ear, and, when that was finished, strained its neck into the lower branches of the tree, reaching for a sweet reward. “You want an apple?” he saw a few ripe ones which were higher than the deer could reach, so he shook a branch, and one fell right next to his foot. He plucked it off the ground and held it at arm’s length. “Here ya’ go,” he bent a little and used a sweet tone. “Here, fella.”

  The buck sniffed the air, his shiny black nose twitching at the succulent scent. One step, then another, and after a third, it had halved the distance between them, and looked like it wouldn’t stop.

  “Good boy,” Brian smiled, amazed at his luck. A beautiful and wild animal getting this close, eating right out of his hand. What a wonderful inaugural experience to his property, almost as if nature was greeting him with a warm embrace.

  The deer slowed as it approached, and began to sniff again, separating its lips and showing its flat front teeth. Brian waved the apple, thinking the smell would stir the animal into losing its apprehension. It worked too well. After almost halting altogether, the deer inhaled hard once, ejected a puff of breath from its nostrils, and charged. It moved too fast for Brian to react. Two gallops and it was right on top of him, and, with a keen swipe of its hoof, kicked the apple from his hand. His fingers stung as the deer rose up on its haunches and towered over him, thrashing its forelegs, missing by inches. Whish! Whish! Whish! went the sharp hooves, brushing past his nose.

  He had no command over his legs, and only had time to put up his arms and shield himself from the sudden and vicious attack. The deer huffed and grunted. It high-stepped again and again, aiming its hooves right at his throat. One wild fling caught him on the arm, and he felt the bone bruise instantly. It sent him right on his ass in the hard earth. The jolt got his legs working again, and he managed to spin to his hands and knees and crawl like a dog up the small slope to the yard behind his house. He glanced behind him, and saw the deer’s ass end, tail standing straight, bounding through the brush in three high hops. Then it was gone.

  His elbow stung, and he had to flex his fingers over and over to get the feeling back in his hand. That did it. He was getting a rifle and a deer tag.

  6.

  “So, since we’re living out of boxes, we might as well eat out of boxes, is that it?” Brian cast a look of disdain at the plastic tray before him. Angie felt his pain.

  “I know,” she said. “But I don’t feel like cooking. And you know how I feel about unpacking.”

  He sighed and stirred the watery mashed potatoes. “If I unpack the waffle iron and the Bisquick, will you make me a nice batch? ‘Cause this ain’t doin’ it for me.”

  She felt a twinge at the base of her neck, the proverbial pain brought on only the way a husband knew how. “You do know I drive three hours a day, on top of the eight, sometimes nine or ten I spend working? You know that, right?”

  “Hey, you’re the one who wanted this place.”

  “You’re right. And I still do. I’m just saying…I’ll unpack when I feel like unpacking. Besides, you’re here all the time. You can do something you know?”

  “Hey, I work. A lot, if you haven’t noticed.”

  The slight twinge of pain turned into a roasting fire. “Are you trying to say I don’t work hard? Because you know I do. I just took some time off for the move.”

  “I know, I know,” he saw right away he’d poked at a hornet’s nest, and backed off before he got stung. “I’m sorry. Listen, let’s talk about something else. Hey, here’s a weird story from the ‘when animals attack,’ file.”

  “What do you mean?” she listened to his deer tale, and the more he went on about an attack in the woods, the more worried she became for him, until, by the end of his story, she was checking him for wounds, digging under his sweatshirt and forcing her arms around his waist, butt, back, shoulders.

  “I’m fine, really,” he chuckled. “Though I can’t say I’m hating this.”

  Her search for injury turned to a saucy massage. She felt good. Happy he was okay, but still worried. “How could a deer do that? I mean, why?” she kept kneading his chest.

  “Honestly, I don’t know. That kind of thing happens, I guess. It’s rare, but it happens. Especially in rutting season.”

  “Rutting season?” she giggled, and stopped rubbing. “You mean it wanted to have sex with you?”

  “Ha, ha. No, it probably saw me as some sort of competitor. It thought I wanted to have sex with his girls,” they shared a good moment of levity, leaning on each other. Then she stood straight and said, “I have a weird story, too.”

  “Yeah? What is it?” he flattened the sweatshirt she’d wrinkled, and proceeded to hear about her morning, the meeting with the coffee lady and how she’d mentioned the house, only to be thwarted, suddenly and forcefully, by Mister Coffee Lady. At the end, he’d become just as scared for her as she’d been for him.

  “Honey, I don’t think you should be going to that coffee stand anymore.”

  “What?” she was incredulous. “Why?”
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br />   “They sound like kooks. I mean, who acts like that? The old man cuts her off like they’re afraid to tell you something about this house. Seriously, come on. Something’s wrong with those people.”

  She wouldn’t get on board with his theory. “They’re fine. Just eccentric, small town old folks. I’ve met tons of people like them. They don’t mean any harm. They are who they are.”