Bull Head (14 page)

“Nice weather, if you're a duck,”

He can feel her looking at him.

“We might have to build an ark. Though I don't know if we could find two of everything in this hell hole.”

“This hell hole happens to be my home.”

She smiles and laughs for the first time, and he thinks of how she should be studying at home or helping her mother cook dinner. She slaps his arm. “Ah, yes, of course it is.”

He's not sure what she means by that, but she cracks him up.
He holds open the door to his motel room and bows. “Welcome to my hell hole.”

Her hair ends are wet and cling to her face and cover her eyes. He hands her a towel, but she ignores it. Offers her a glass of rye. She shakes her head.

“I don't drink.”

She opens the night table drawer, pulls out a Gideon Bible, places it on the night stand, flattens her palm on it, closes her eyes, and whispers to herself.

“What's that for?”

Startled, she opens her eyes. “You never know when your card is drawn.” She stuffs the Bible in the front pouch of her wind-breaker and takes it off, folds it over a chair. “You don't mind if I take this with me, do you?”

She's right, you never know. “Isn't that breaking a commandment?”

The girl hooks the underside of her T-shirt with her fingers, peels it over her head, and tosses it aside. A small gold crucifix hangs from a thin piece of twine against her sternum. “Kill the light.”

When it's dark, she finishes undressing silently and climbs into bed. “I've seen it all. C'mon, neither of us are getting any younger.”

He kicks off his boots and takes off his clothes, lies on his back next to her with the covers pulled to his chin, and shudders uncontrollably, convinces himself that he's cold. She curls into his side and wraps her thin arms around him. There's no face to stare at, just warm flesh pressing against his. She wriggles against him, pulls him on top of her, and in that brief instant,
when he eases into the girl, her small hands gripping his arms tight like she's afraid to let go, he feels something strange like relief. But the girl is nothing like Sarah. His eyes adjust to the darkness. Her silence unnerves him; she's efficient and moves with a bloodless sigh. Her eyes bore into him, but he avoids her gaze. The crucifix winks in the weak light leaking in from the window. He moves in and out of her slow and hard, feels ugly with each lift of his hips and turns his face away, leans into the pillow, hopes the disgust in himself will fade. He holds his breath but is unable to finish, rolls off, and turns away from her. She lays on her back for a long time. He wants to apologize, to help her understand, to make himself feel better. He lights a cigarette. “It's been a long time.”

She grabs his cigarette, inhales deeply, pauses, and exhales long toward the ceiling. Car lights flash across the window. In the parking lot, a man shouts, bottles break, more shouting. She sits up, flicks on the lamp on the nightstand, examines his face. “You look chock full of it.” Her ribs poke out like slats. A large welt curls around her side. He touches it.

“Don't.” She slaps his hand away; the nerves tremble on the dorsal part of his hand, prickling along the tops of his fingers. He holds out his hand, turns it over. He makes a fist; pain shoots through his wrist up his arm. The booze has worn off.

“Jesus Christ, you're all the same.”

“I didn't mean to—” He touches her shoulder.

She slaps his hand away again. The pain tears into him like searing metal. By reflex, he reaches to hit her but stops himself, his open hand poised in front of her. He shakes out the heat until it thins, and his fingers go numb.

“Go ahead. Punch me.” Her eyes blaze. “Go on, punch me.” Her quickness surprises him when her fist smacks his face. He rubs his cheek. She punches him again, harder. “Hit me. Get it out of you.”

His skin burns along his jaw, races up the side of his face, and for an instant he is tempted to slug her, to strike out and destroy what remains. He grabs her wrist and forces her to slap him again and again with the heel of her hand, and the sharp sting feels better than anything he's felt for a long while. He shouts out, “There, it's gone. Now what?”

“Sweet Jesus. You are all the same.” She pulls her hand away and sits on the edge of the bed, facing the window. “I've got nowhere to go.” She keeps her back to him, her voice a whisper.

The girl isn't going to last long at this. She'll be dredged up from the river come spring thaw, unrecognizable, bloated. His skin crawls to think what could happen to her. What did he think he'd do, save her? Talk to her about Sarah and his girls? He reaches for his jeans in a clump on the floor. Riffles through the pockets and pulls out the remaining bills, sets them on the night table on top of the phone messages. “This should get you through the next couple of days.”

“And then what?” She wipes her eyes and nose on the sheet.

“You do what anyone else does. You carry on.”

“Carry on?” She shakes her head sadly, steps across the room, her blanched skin stained black and red with bruises and welts on her back, thighs, calves. “If you don't mind, I'm going to take a bath to warm up before I carry on.” As she passes the mirror, he notices the front of her body is scarred by more welts and bruises. The girl turns on the light and closes the door. She sets
the toilet seat down. Moments later, the toilet flushes and the bath starts. He is surprised that the sounds comfort him.

He flicks on the TV. Polar bears lumber along the impossible white of the landscape. There's enough iron in their livers to kill any person who ate one. He doesn't know how folks figure these things out, but the part that gets him is one of the ways the polar bear hunts. It swims in the water alongside thick chunks of ice, covers its nose with its paw to camouflage itself, floating until it reaches an ice floe where seals and their pups lay. Some pups scatter into the water, some are unable to move quick enough. The attack is sudden and messy.

He lets go of the remote and stares at his hand, empty, older, tells himself there is no remote, there is no daughter's or wife's hand touching him, holding him. He counts out all five fingers with the other hand, picks up the remote, and clicks the TV to mute.

A few months before the car accident, he had walked along the river at the back of their property with the girls. The river had been frozen over. Five deer emerged from the timber. They stepped across the ice, lifting their black hooves high, setting each hoof down delicately, one after another in single file, hooves clicking on the surface. The girls heard the ice crack behind the deer.

“Daddy, they're talking!” Jody said.

But when the lead deer dropped through and thrashed around, breaking up the ice around it, she started to cry. He lifted her up and turned her away.

“Look,” Christine said.

The other four deer paused and twisted around on the spot,
followed their tracks back to the river's edge, trotted a few hundred yards upstream, and crossed there. Christine and Kate grinned. Jody stopped crying.

“It must have been her time,” Kate said. “Nothing she could do about it.”

“Are they safe now, Daddy?” Jody said.

The deer jerked against the ice. He nodded.

“Promise?”

He nodded again. The deer flailed in the river, trying to get its hooves onto the ice to prop itself up; steam rose off its neck, its nostrils shrill.

“Yes.” He set her down. “I promise.”

She stared hard at him, her little brows wrinkled in disappointment. “I don't believe you.”

They can never really be safe, no matter what we do to protect them. He knows that now.

Dwight rubs his eyes hard, knuckles digging into his sockets. He glances at the realtor's messages and considers a visit to the house; the girl can have this room for the long weekend. Maybe if he went back, stepped onto the porch where his girls played with their dolls, where Sarah and he sat late into the summer evenings watching the stars whirl in the vast charcoal sky, he wouldn't need to know what to do next, and he wouldn't be like some animal looking for something half dead to drag in.

The sound of the faucet rumbles in the bathroom; the girl coughs. He runs through the options. Drive to a neighbouring town, go shopping, get her some shoes and new clothes, pick up a bucket of chicken for the drive back, or let her sleep late, bring her coffee, watch TV together.

The taps shut off, and her body stutters as she slides in against the tub. A car horn honks outside, another bottle smashes. Then there's silence all around and he feels uneasy again. He peeks out through the curtains. The sky murky, fog hanging like cold blue smoke, low to the ground, the neon of the Northerner's sign faint. She could come to the house, sit in the truck while he checks things out.

“You're welcome to stay. Just don't expect me to hit you. Not till we get to know each other better.” He chuckles to show that it's a joke. “So, what do you think?” He flips through the phone messages, crumples them, and tosses them to the carpet. He knocks on the bathroom door. Water splashes. His fingertips numb against the doorknob. “So, what do you think?”

“What's that?” she says.

He listens to the waves ripple, the drip of the tap, the supple pulse of her voice rising from the water. He holds onto the doorknob. On the back of his hand, the veins bulge next to the scars from when he punched through the ice to haul out the deer.

“Tomorrow,” he says. “I was just wondering about tomorrow.”

T
RAVIS INSISTS THAT
I have another drink. He's bragging about his conquests again and needs the audience that free drinks buy. Well into our second pitcher. The last round of neon syrupy shooters has blasted a hole in my brain. I've got an early start in the morning, but he's a pushy bastard. The new Aussie waitress spins into the dining room, three pizzas balanced in one hand. She props the door open with her hip, leans forward, and turns her head back toward the kitchen. “Are there any more clean plates?” she says. I'm a sucker for accents.

“Come and get it, baby.” The dishwasher holds a plate in front of his crotch. Another greaser from out east, slumming it on his father's nickel, doing the boho thing, long hair tied back beneath a ball cap that reads
Dish Pig, Let's Get Dirty.
The waitress snatches the plate and strides into the bar.

“Dollars to doughnuts he's tapping that.” Travis pours me another, lifts his glass. “This town. Christ. To easy prey.”

The waitress sets down the pizza and plates, brushes a strand of hair out of her eyes, and glances our way. Travis raises his glass toward her. Every woman he meets is fair game; it's hunting season year-round. She smiles and ducks into the service area, lights a cigarette, and leans against the panelled wall.

“Check this out.”

I turn to him. “Let me guess, you're going to marry her.”

His mouth breaks into this shit-eating grin, teeth right out of a comic book, all bright and white and shaped like Chiclets. He grabs my neck and licks the side of my face. “I love you, man.” He gets like this when he's drinking. People seem to think it's funny as hell, especially the women. I wipe my face with my sleeve. He holds up a hunting knife with a long wooden handle, snaps out the blade.

“Where'd you get that?”

“If you were paying attention, you'd know the answer.” He turns the knife over in his palm and points it at me, carves a circle around my face. “The Bride. Last night.” He jabs it hard into the tabletop where it quivers. He leans back, smiles. “Pay up, buddy-boy.”

“Yeah, right.”

He waves our empty jug at the waitress.

She crushes her cigarette into a coffee cup saucer and comes over with a third pitcher. “If you needed a steak knife, you could've asked.”

That accent. I'd crawl forty miles over broken glass just to come home to that. A pink stone dangles from her neck, down between her breasts.

Travis grabs her wrist. “I was just making a point to my buddy. Why don't you join us when you get off?”

She yanks her hand away. “No thanks. I don't date psychopaths.”

“Who said anything about dating?”

“Man, you can be such a jerk,” I say.

“He's all mouth, no teeth. Harmless beneath all that B.S., aren't you?” She smiles, slaps Travis on the wrist and walks away.

“Mouthy little wench.” Travis pours the beer. “Her ankles will be wrapped behind my ears by the end of the week. Guaranfuckinteed.”

I'm tired as hell and look around the bar, map my escape route. The waitress bends over a table, picks up some plates and cutlery, her shirt tight on the curve of her waist.

“I'm telling you man, the Bride is crazier than she looks. She's pure butter.”

“Butter?”

“Everything but her face.” Travis laughs. “Seriously, she's got a little place in the Annex. Weird paintings on the walls. Gave me the creeps. And she's got this cat. Dude, she's crazy about that cat.” He laughs.