The Shore (15 page)

“Should've nailed 'em all to the fence when we had the chance, like you do with weasels,” Bo chipped in. Her head snapped up at that, but she still didn't say anything. “Fuckers're prolly tunneling back in already.” He drawled it out one side of his mouth. “Guess we can save that for Monday. Think the nail gun's big enough? Pow! Right through the skull.”

“You nail weasels to your fence, Bo?” Chick asked.

“My daddy used to, when we caught them in the henhouse,”
he said. “Kept the rest of the vermin off. Did it sometimes to the neighbors' cats, when they come around too often.”

Ellie was tensing up; there was going to be a fight in a minute, and we hadn't even started drinking.

“Also cleaned a skunk out,” I cut in before he could go on. “Chewed the radio cord all to pieces, sprayed Bo down good.”

She smiled at that.

“Did it improve the stink?” she asked, and Chick chuckled. Bo scowled at her. “Thought that's what I smelled. Been sayin' we needed a radio what took batteries, so we could run it when the power's off.”

Tiny came in with a sack of quarters from the laundromat change machine and a bottle of knockoff Coca-Cola under each arm from the gas station. Bo shuffled and dealt while Chick poured whiskey and Coke into the Mason jars and Tiny split up the quarters. Bo and Tiny had played three-card draw on payday off and on for years. Generally Chick played a few hands before going home to his wife and kid, and Ellie hung around for it when the mood took her. I'd felt odd joining in at first, and still did sometimes when it was just the three of us, like walking into church when mass was half said, and my hands and feet and laugh too big to fit comfortable anywhere. We kept playing till someone ran out of quarters, then Bo and Tiny would usually hit the bars, see if they couldn't get some action, spend as much cash as possible; mostly I went along with them.

The first few hands went fast; no one was in a good mood. Bo and I folded several times, but Ellie kept throwing out coins like a slot machine, and Tiny kept scooping them up. As soon as Chick handed her a drink she'd swirled it around and drained it. He poured a second round once we caught up to her, and we
all mellowed out a bit. Bo and Tiny started ribbing each other, the friendly way they do when they've had a few, then Chick called them both fatheads, so they started in on him together. The three of them was pretty much raised together, so they've got a lot to rib him about.

When he was five dollars ahead Chick collected up his quarters and made for the door. “I'll see you all Monday morning. Fuck anything up tonight and no one will ever find the bodies.” Bo and Tiny got up and walked out with him, not to leave but to go piss in the bushes out back. I had to piss too, but I liked sitting where I was more. The whiskey had made me feel loose in the joints and shiny all over, and Ellie was sitting across from me, her elbows together and her cards up to her face but the tops of her breasts just peeking over the neckline of her shirt, saying hello.

She smacked the cards down, ran her eyes around the molding at the juncture of wall and ceiling and took a deep drink.

“Pretty house, ain't it?” I said, trying to start a conversation. We could hear Bo and Tiny hooting at each other out near the back edge of the property.

“S'pose so,” she answered.

I wanted to roll one of those breasts in my palm so much.

“Wonder what made them sell up.”

“They died.” Her voice was flat, and for a bit I thought that she was going to leave it at that, but when I'd given up on hearing more she continued. “My grandparents lived here. Ma said they were crazy, that they used to beat her and make her play in the snow naked. That they had a bunch of other kids, but they killed them all and buried them in the garden to make the vegetables grow.” She paused for a drink. “Sounds like utter horseshit
now, but when you're five years old you believe everything your ma tells you.”

“Do you think she was telling the truth?”

“Are you kidding?” Her laugh is a sharp bark. “Ma was the crazy one. She lied about pretty much everything and everyone.” She finished off her drink and, even though it was against the rules, I sloshed some whiskey into the bottom of her jar. “Didn't matter what was true or not, she never let us meet them. Didn't want them turning us against her. Like she hadn't done that herself.”

“First time I stepped into their house was to rip it up.”

She sat up straight of a sudden, scooped up her cards again, then drained the whiskey out of her jar so no one would know she'd gotten an extra drink. Then I heard what she'd heard, Bo and Tiny on the stairs, chuckling to each other and stepping heavy already, and by the time they walked in she was back to her normal self.

This was the time when we'd usually hit the bars and get trashed on our own dime. But between the short pay and the fact that we still had most of that handle of whiskey there was little reason to leave. We tossed Chick's seat against the wall, squared ourselves off around the crate, added an extra dollop of the hard stuff to each of our jars, and kept on playing. Ellie came out with a few ripe comments about the girls Bo and Tiny would normally be picking up at Shucker's Roadhouse at that hour, loud and bold now that the day's work was over. She teetered on her crate, and it seemed the whole world was a laugh. Bo cussed her, but Tiny looked at me like we both knew she'd hit a nerve and didn't have to push her point. After that she kept
her mouth shut. We'd almost forgotten she was there until she handed over her last quarter, folded, then drained her Mason jar.

“Where you think you're running off to, sugartits?” Tiny asked.

“Got nothing left to bet with, have I?” she answered, and stood up real carefully. She'd been keeping up with us drinking, since no one got a refill till everyone was empty. I didn't think she'd make it to the door: she was broad-shouldered for a girl but more than a foot shorter than Bo, and all that whiskey didn't have nowhere to go but her head.

Bo looked at her close, like he'd forgotten her name and was trying to remember. “Sit your ass back down,” he said. “You're set for another few rounds.”

She slumped over, leaning against the packing crate, feet pigeon-toed and legs tangled. She wasn't going anywhere. “OK, wiseass, what am I betting?”

“Shirt's a good start,” he said.

She shot up like she had rockets on her ass, but Bo reached out with one of his coal-shovel hands and pushed her down onto her seat. Tiny was staring at her, and I guess I was too. My face had started feeling fuzzy the way I liked a few hands back, and I didn't want the evening to end just yet.

“No fucking way,” she said, and crossed her arms over her chest like a little kid. Her breasts did look like peaches, soft and juicy and just begging to be let free.

“ 'S'just a shirt,” I said. “Win a round and you'll have it back right off.”

She stared back at us.

“Got a third nipple or something under there?” Tiny asked.
“It's nothing we haven't seen before. Like he said, it's only a minute, just to keep the game going.” Ellie kept her arms crossed firmly, and Bo reached for the hem of her shirt. She smacked his hand away, and Tiny fixed Bo with a look until he settled back in his place. “Make you feel better, I'll join you.” Tiny peeled off his own shirt. His chest was caved in up the center, the skin yellowish and sticky-looking, with wiry single hairs springing up here and there like a boy's first beard. “You don't really want to pack in the fun now, do you?”

You could see the gears turning in her head, deciding whether to play along. I was staring hard now, and I knew it, right at the front of that shirt. She saw me, and she smiled, moved her hands down and cocked her head at me like she was going to take it off. My heart sped up a little. She gave a shimmy. Then she reached down and threw a black flip-flop on the table. The cards came back out, Tiny won the hand, and the second flip-flop came off. That hand she won, scraping the quarters into her lap, her knees spread wide so they could rattle down into the bowl of her loose black skirt. She bet with the flip-flop first this time, and Bo won it with a pair. Then we all went back to laying out quarters, slower now, but topping off our jars between each hand, not waiting for everyone to be empty. Then she was out again, and stood up to leave. Bo pushed her back down.

“We're not finished yet.”

Ellie looked at us, blinking slowly, but no one moved or said anything this time. She hadn't slowed up with the drinking though she'd slowed up with the betting, and was rocking even more now. I was holding my breath. Bo and Tiny weren't pushing it, and she wasn't fighting it, and at that moment I would've
shoved my whole pile of quarters into her lap, and thrown my share of payroll in after it, to see that top come off.

For a few long minutes she hesitated, looking at me, before slowly peeling her white shirt off in one long, smooth motion, and letting it puddle in the center of the crate. Tiny whistled, and she smirked and wiggled a little before picking up her cards again. She was as white as skimmed milk, but she had muscle. The stomach underneath the white band of her bra was hard like a man's, harder probably than any of ours, with all the beer we drank. I don't know what I had expected since she kept up with us day in and day out, but with work clothes on she'd looked like a shapeless lump, smaller but not really different from Bo or Tiny. Heat was growing low in my belly, and it wasn't the whiskey.

Bo smirked at her, laid down a straight, and scraped up the pot. She didn't look too happy then, and didn't move to take anything else off.

“How about the skirt?” Tiny suggested. Bo reached over and began pulling on her bra—it wasn't more than a strip of cloth—but she smacked his hand away again and scraped her milk crate back.

“Hang on, cool your jets,” she said, got up unsteadily and turned her back to us. The skirt was long and full, and I couldn't really tell what her wiggling was doing until she turned around with a piece of white cotton crumpled up in her hand.

“That's as far as I'm going,” she said before she put her underpants down in the center of the crate, and dropped back onto her seat. Bo and Tiny both catcalled her a bit, but she bent her head over her cards. I had a flush that time, but I folded without
a word, hoping to give her a better chance. Tiny won anyway. He looked her in the eyes as he gathered up the quarters, but when his hand hovered over her underpants she snatched them away and jumped up.

“I've had enough. Gimme back my shirt, I'm going home.” She reached for where Bo had it draped across his knee. He held it out of her reach, but instead of diving for it like he wanted her to she moved toward the door. He grabbed her wrist and jerked her down onto his lap. She fell onto him hard, and he snaked his free hand up under her bra.

“The fuck is wrong with you?” she shouted. Bo was rubbing his face against her shoulder, running his hands up and down. She kicked herself back up, but he held on to her wrist, laughing a little, like she was a fish on the end of a line. “Is this 'cause I wouldn't screw you again?”

Tiny and I looked at each other—that sure was news. I'd jumped up when Bo pulled her down; the room was unsteady, or else I would have pulled her away from him. Punched him, maybe. Done something.

“You sucked the first time, needledick, there's no way I'm giving it a second go-round.”

That made him mad. He yanked her back down and bit her shoulder, then took the top edge of her bra in his fist and pulled; it tore in half with a ragged sound.

“Get the fuck off me!” she screamed.

Her tits were perfect handfuls; the nipples stood up like gumdrops. I tried to say something, reached out a hand. She snapped her arms down over them as she squirmed to get away from him. Bo threw her at Tiny, who caught her around her middle, the other hand on her tits. Bo tossed her shirt into the
corner farthest from the door. She lunged for it, but Tiny had hold of her still. She kicked at him and tore away, stumbled, and fell down on her knees into the corner. Bo followed. His hand went almost the whole way around her neck. She clawed at him, making noises like the cats we'd cleared out earlier. He elbowed her in the small of the back and she went down, all her breath gone. He raked her skirt up to her waist, and ran his hand over the skin of her legs. The sight had me sick and giddy all at once, and it felt like my heart was going to beat its way out of my chest.

“You're going to go to jail for this, you bastard.” Her breath was like sobbing as she said it. His free hand slid up higher, probing. Her back arched; she made a sound that would have been a scream if he hadn't been crushing her throat. “Please don't do this, Bo.” It wasn't more than a whimper now.

“Going to jail? You think anyone's going to believe you over the three of us?” Tiny said. He knelt down over her, Bo's hand still around her neck, and fiddled with the front of his jeans. The sound of the zipper did it; she writhed like a snake for a second, hard as she could, but I saw the muscles in Bo's arm bunch as he squeezed her neck. She let out little clicking sounds, and Tiny pinned her ankles to the floor and knelt between them so she couldn't pull her legs together. He lowered himself down on top of her, slowly, and she sobbed just once.

He moved against her like all his bones had melted away, like a wave hitting the sand, soft and smooth and crushing all at once. His breathing was thick and wet, gasping, and it filled the room and filled my ears. She was perfectly still. Just her left hand, stretched out, the knuckles almost as white as the shirt they were clamped onto, clenching rhythmically like a heart
beating there on the blood-red floor. That's the only part of her that moved. My stomach was churning, nervous and excited all at once, and suddenly I realized that I hadn't moved since I stood up, my jar of whiskey and not-Coke still clutched in my hand, watching like it was TV.