Give Me Your Heart (8 page)

Yardman swatted Leonard’s shoulder companionably as he turned to lead his credulous client back to the driveway. It was that touch, that suggestion of brotherly solicitude, that made
Leonard recoil. A thrill of pure loathing, revulsion, hit him like adrenaline.

Swiftly it happened: the pitchfork was in Leonard’s hands, leather gloves gripping tight. So this was why he’d taken care to wear leather gloves! Without so much as grunting with the
effort, Leonard had managed to wrench the heavy pronged implement out of the hardened manure pile, and in the next instant, as the garrulous man was about to step outside, Leonard came up behind
him and shoved the prongs against his lower back, knocking him violently forward, off-balance; and as Yardman turned in astonishment, desperate to grab hold of the thrusting prongs, Leonard shoved
the pitchfork a second time, and a third, at the man’s unprotected throat.

How quickly then what happened, happened. Afterward Leonard would have but a dazed and fragmented memory, as of a fever dream.

Yardman on his knees, terror shining in his eyes, and perplexity—what was happening to him? And why? Now fallen and flailing on the dirt floor, straw and bits of manure floating in swirls
of dark blood. Leonard thought,
Earth is dark, blood is dark
—
it will soak in, it won’t be noticed.
As Leonard circled Yardman, striking at him with the pitchfork, the
wounded man was fighting to live, bleeding from numerous wounds, now pleading for his life. Yet Leonard had no mercy—he hadn’t come thousands of miles to exact mercy! With the
unexpected strength of his shoulders, he drove the prongs into Yardman’s bleeding chest, Yardman’s forearms raised to protect his face. Several feet away the leather cowboy hat lay,
thrown clear.

Leonard stood over the dying man, panting. So strange that his fury hadn’t abated but seemed to have burst from him into the very air: “Laugh now! Make a joke now! What’s funny
now? Yardman.”

The man’s name was flung from his mouth, like spittle.

Emerging then from the barn. Uncertain of his surroundings, and he was very tired, arms like lead. Where was this? He’d last slept—couldn’t remember; on the
plane? Jolting and unsatisfying sleep. And when he’d called home, the phone had rung in the empty house in Salthill Landing, and when he’d called Valerie’s cell phone, there had
been no answer, not even a ring.

There in the driveway was the Suburban, parked where Yardman had left it. At the rear window the Airedale barked frantically. The heavy pitchfork was still in Leonard’s hands; he’d
seemed to know that there was more effort to be made. Once begun, such an effort was not easily stopped. Though his hands in the blood-splashed leather gloves ached as if the bones had cracked, he
had no choice; Yardman’s dog was a witness, could identify him. Slowly he approached the Suburban. The Airedale barked louder, slobbering against the window. Leonard cautiously opened one of
the rear doors, speaking to the dog in Yardman’s commanding/cajoling way, but the vehicle was built so high off the ground it was awkward for Leonard to lean inside, virtually impossible for
him to maneuver the pitchfork, to stab at the dog. Leonard glanced down at himself and saw in horror that his trousers were splattered with dark liquid. The maddened dog was smelling blood.
His
master’s blood. He knows.

It was becoming increasingly difficult for Leonard to think clearly. A mist seemed to have pervaded his brain. “Kaspar? Come here . . .” But the panicked dog had leapt into the front
seat of the SUV and so with a grunt Leonard managed to climb into the rear of the vehicle, again trying to maneuver the pitch-fork, to strike at the dog, but unable to get leverage, and in an
instant, quick as an adder’s thrust, the Airedale managed to sink his teeth into Leonard’s exposed wrist, and Leonard cried out in surprise and pain and hastily climbed out of the
vehicle, dragging the pitchfork behind him. For he must not surrender the pitchfork, he knew. Standing dazed in the driveway in this place he couldn’t now clearly recall, which seemed to be
tilting beneath him as in a mild earthquake. The flesh at his right wrist was torn, bleeding? A dog had attacked him? Why?

He glanced around to see a dust-colored pickup approaching from the road. A male figure wearing a cowboy hat in the driver’s seat, a female figure beside him, staring. Seeing the bloodied
pitchfork in Leonard’s hands, they stared. There came a man’s hoarse voice: “Mister? You in need of help?”

Strip Poker

That day at Wolf’s Head Lake! Nobody ever knew.

Of my family, I mean. Not even Daddy. I did not tell Daddy.

It was late August. Humid-hot August. At the lake you’d see these giant thunderhead clouds edging across the sky like a mouth closing over, and in the mountains, streaks of heat lightning
that appear and disappear so swiftly you can’t be sure that you have actually seen them. For kids my age, nothing much to do except swim—unless you liked fishing, which I did not, or
boating, but we didn’t own a boat—and the only place to swim for us was on the far side of the lake at the crowded public beach, since the lake on our side was choked with weeds so
slimy and disgusting only young boys could swim through it. That day we’re over at the beach swimming, trying to dive from the diving board at the end of the concrete pier, but we’re
not very good at diving; mostly we’re just jumping from the high board—twelve feet, that’s high for us—seeing who can jump the most times, climb the ladder dripping wet, run
out on the board and grab your nose, shut your eyes, and jump, reckless and panicky and thrilled, striking the water and propelling beneath and your long hair in a ponytail trailing up, bubbles
released from your dazed lips, closest thing to dying—is it? Except sometimes you’d hit the water wrong, slapped hard as if in rebuke by the lake’s surface, which looks like it
should be soft, red welts across my back, murky water up my nose so my head was waterlogged, ears ringing, and I’m dazed and dizzy, staggering around like a drunk girl, all of us
loud-laughing and attracting disapproving stares. And there comes my mother, telling me to stop before I drown myself or injure myself, trying not to sound as angry as she’s feeling, and
Momma makes this gesture—oh, this is mortifying! makes me hate her!—with her hands to suggest that I might injure my chest, my breasts, jumping into the water like that, as if I give a
damn about my breasts, or anything about my body, or if I do, if I am anxious about my body, this is not the place, the public beach at Wolf’s Head Lake on an afternoon in August, for Momma
to scold me. I’m a tall lanky-lean girl almost fourteen years old with small-boned wrists and ankles, deep-set dark eyes, and a thin curvy mouth that gets me into trouble, the things I say,
or mumble inaudibly; my ashy blond hair is in a ponytail straggling like a wet rat’s tail down my bony vertebrae; except for this ponytail you’d think that I might be a boy, and I hoped
to God that I would remain this way forever, nothing so disgusting as a grown woman in a swimsuit, a fleshy woman like Momma and her women friends that men, adult men, actually looked at like there
was something glamorous and sexy about them.

Momma is glaring at me, speaking my full, formal name, Annislee, which means that she is disgusted with me, saying she’s driving back to the cottage now and I’d better come with her
and Jacky, and I’m stubborn, shaking my head, no, I am not ready to leave the beach, where it’s still sunny and maybe will not storm, and anyway my bicycle is at the beach. I’d
biked to the beach that morning, so I’d have to bike back. And Momma says all right, Annislee, but if it starts storming, you’re out of luck. Like she hopes it will storm, just to
punish me. But Momma goes away and leaves me. All this while I’ve been feeling kind of excited and angry, and sad—why I’ve been jumping from the high board not giving a damn if I
do hurt myself—this fiery wildness coming over me sometimes.
Why should I care if I hurt myself, if I drown!
Missing my father, who isn’t living with us right now in
Strykersville, and resenting that my closest cousin, Gracie Stearns, went away for the weekend to Lake Placid in the Adirondacks, staying with a new friend of hers from Christian Youth, a girl I
hardly know. People at Lake Placid are likely to be rich, not like at Wolf’s Head Lake, where the cottages are small and crowded together and the boats at the marina are nothing special. All
this day I’ve been feeling mean, thinking how could I hurt Gracie’s feelings when she came back, our last week at the lake before Labor Day and I wouldn’t have time to spend with
Grade, maybe.

This guy I met. Wants me to go out with him. He’s got a boat, wants to teach me to water-ski.

There was no guy. The boys I went swimming with, hung out with, were my age, or younger. Older kids at Wolf’s Head I scarcely knew. Older guys I was scared of. Mostly.

At the lake we stayed with my mother’s brother Tyrone and his family. Momma and my younger brother, Jacky, and me. Uncle Tyrone’s cottage, which wasn’t on the lake but a hike
through the woods and a haze of mosquitoes and gnats and the lake off-shore choked with weeds and cattails and I wasn’t comfortable sleeping three to a room, Momma and Jacky and me, anxious
about my privacy, but Wolf’s Head Lake was something to look forward to, as Momma was always saying now that my father was out of the picture.

Out of the picture.
I hate such a way of speaking. Like Momma can’t bring herself to say exactly what the situation is, so it’s vague and fading, like an old Polaroid where
you can’t make out people’s faces that have started to blur. As if my father weren’t watching over his family somehow or anyway knowing of our whereabouts every day of our lives
you can bet!

Him and Momma, they were still married. I was sure of that. This time Daddy said, I will lay down my life for you, Irene. And the kids. Just tell me if ever you wish it.

Momma doesn’t even know how true that statement is. Momma will never know.

There was a time when I was seven, Daddy had to go away. And Momma got excitable then. We were cautioned by Momma’s family not to upset her. Not to make loud noises playing and not to get
up at night to use the bathroom if we could help it, Jacky and me, because Momma had trouble sleeping and we’d wake her and might scare her. Momma kept a knife under her pillow in case
somebody broke into the house; sometimes it was a hammer she kept by her bed, but never any kind of gun, for Momma hated guns—she’d seen her own brother killed in a hunting accident.
She made Daddy keep his guns over at his brother’s house, his two rifles and his shotgun and the handgun called a revolver with a long mean-looking barrel, which he’d won in a poker
game in the U.S. Army stationed in Korea at a time when I had not yet been born. That made me feel shivery, sickish, for my parents did not know me then and did not know of me and did not miss me.
And if they had not married each other, it would be that they would never miss me.

So we were told not to upset Momma. It is a scary thing to see your mother cry. Either you run away (like Jacky) or you do something to make your mother cry more (like me). Just to show that
it’s you your mother is crying about and not something else.

“Ann’slee—what kind of name’s that?”

This older guy, must be in his late twenties, named Deek— what sounds like Deek—oily dark spiky haircut and scruffy whiskers and on his right forearm a tattoo of a leaping black
panther so it’s like him and me are instantly bonded cause I am wearing over my swimsuit a Cougars T-shirt (Strykersville High’s mascot is a cougar), a similar big cat leaping and
snarling. Just the look of this Deek is scary and riveting to me, him and his buddies, all of them older guys and strangers to me, hanging out at the marina pier, where I’ve drifted to
instead of heading back to the cottage, where Momma expects me.

I’m embarrassed telling Deek that Annislee is some weird name derived from a Norwegian name—my mother’s grandmother was Norwegian, from Oslo—but Deek isn’t hearing
this, not a guy who listens to details, nor are his beer-drinking buddies with big sunburned faces and big wide grins like they’ve been partying a long time already and it isn’t even
suppertime. Deek is near-about a full head taller than me, bare-legged in swim trunks and a Harley-Davidson T-shirt, winking at me like there’s a joke between us—or am I, so much
younger than he is, the joke?—asking how’d I like to ride in his speedboat across the lake, how’d I like to play poker with him and his buddies? I tell Deek that I don’t
know how to play poker, and Deek says, “Li’l babe, we can teach you.” Tapping my wrist with his forefinger like it’s a secret code between us.

Li’l babe.
Turns out that Deek is Rick Diekenfeld, owns the flashy white ten-foot speedboat with red letters painted on the hull,
Hot Li’l Babe,
you see roaring around
Wolf’s Head Lake raising choppy waves in its wake to roil up individuals in slower boats, fishermen in stodgy rowboats like my uncle Tyrone yelling after
Hot Li’l Babe,
shaking
his fist, but
Hot Li’l Babe
just roars on away. There’s other girls hanging out with these guys. I am trying to determine if they are the guys’ girlfriends, but I guess
they are not. Seems like they just met at the Lake Inn Marina Café, where you have to be twenty-one to sit by the outdoor bar. These girls in two-piece swimsuits, fleshy as Momma, spilling out of
their bikini tops. And the guys in T-shirts and swim trunks or shorts, flip-flops on their big feet, and the names they call one another are harsh and staccato as cartoon names, sounding like
Heins, Jax, Croke. And there’s Deek, who seems to like me, pronouncing and mispronouncing my name,
Ann’slee,
running the tip of his tongue around his lips, asking again
how’d I like to come for a ride in his speedboat, quick before the storm starts, how’s about it? Deek has held out his Coors can for me to sip out of, which is daring—if we get
caught, I’m underage by eight years—but nobody’s noticing. Lukewarm beer that makes me sputter and cough, a fizzy sensation up inside my nose provoking a sneeze-giggle, which Deek
seems to find funny, and something about me he finds funny, so I’m thinking,
What the hell.
I’m thinking,
Daddy isn’t here, I am not even sure where Daddy is. And Gracie
isn’t here. This will be something to tell Gracie.