Somebody Else's Daughter (11 page)

“Consider it your initiation.”

“I don't get it.”

“Prison poker. Right here, right now.”

The men around the table snickered, shaking their heads. Willa tried to swallow, but her mouth was too dry.

“Now if you lose, we take your tooth, understand?”

At length, Teddy said, “What if I win?”

“You get all this.” Again, Rudy picked up the bucket of money and put it down. “There's around three grand in there. You can buy your girlfriend a present.” Rudy glanced over at her and held his gaze a moment longer than necessary and it made something quiver in her belly, as if her insides were being tickled with a feather. “She
is
your girlfriend, isn't she?”

But Teddy didn't answer him and she felt a burning in her chest.

“Of course I'm rooting for Dale,” Rudy went on.

A smile flashed across Dale's mouth. His grim eyes brightened whenever he looked at Rudy, and Willa could tell he looked up to him like a brother and always ended up paying for it in the end. It was time to go, but Teddy wasn't moving. Surely this was a joke, she thought. Any minute one of them would burst out laughing, but the minute passed and nobody did. They all just sat there, waiting for Rudy.

“We have to go, Teddy,” Willa said.

“She's talking to you,” Rudy said almost hopefully.

Teddy glanced over at Willa and raised his chin a little and looked into her eyes and the look made her quiver.

“You willing to lose a tooth, son?” Rudy said.

“Teddy,
please.
”

“Deal the fucking cards,” Teddy said.

“Well, all right then,” Rudy said. “You're either stupid, or you've got some fucking balls. Now who else wants to play?”

Willa looked at the men around the table. Dale had a ferret face, with a pointy chin and beady little eyes, and he was scrawny and stoop-shouldered. He was staring at the pile of money like he could almost taste it. He nodded at Rudy to deal him in. The man named Harv nodded too. “I'm in.” Then the man in the bolo tie took out his false teeth and said, “I'm afraid I don't qualify, gentlemen. I guess I'll sit this one out.”

Rudy shuffled the cards and dealt them out. Willa watched their faces as the men studied their hands. Rudy had thick, wind-burned skin and cold black eyes. She could remember the first time she'd seen him, pulling onto the farm in a banged-up Chevy pickup. Willa knew the horses didn't like him on account he always wore spurs and readily used a crop, nor did the South American boys who came to work in the barn and would do anything he asked just to keep their jobs, but her father had said he was the best barn manager he'd ever hired. Her mother had told her that Rudy had grown up an orphan and had gone to reform school as a boy, and then on to prison as an adult for nearly beating someone to death in a fight. Once, Willa had snuck into his quarters over the barn and found a stack of library books by his bed, all of them biographies of famous men. It was hard to imagine a man like Rudy reading about Jefferson and Washington, but he did.

It was already eleven o'clock; her parents would be looking for her by now. She tried to catch Teddy's eye, but he was fixated on his hand. Leaving was the thing to do, but how would she get home? She would have to call her father, and she didn't want him knowing she'd spent the better part of the evening in a place like this. The men at the table were quiet and when the bartender came around with more drinks nobody seemed to notice, but they all picked up their whiskey and sipped. Under the table, Dale's foot was shaking, but Teddy seemed calm, as if he was resigned to whatever came next. It made Willa wonder again about Teddy's father and what had become of him, whether the mystery inspired Teddy to do things like this, to take risks.

They played out the hand leisurely. Willa sat in the chair, her sweaty hands tearing up a paper napkin, letting the pieces fall down to the floor like snowflakes. “I'm gonna fold,” Harv announced. “I got a whole lot of nothing.” He threw down his cards like they were poison. Rudy gazed over his hand at Dale, then at Teddy. He tilted his head back and forth as if he was trying to make up his mind. “Aw, shucks, boys,” he said a bit too happily. “I'm gonna have to pull out too.”

Teddy looked up for a moment and their eyes locked and Rudy grinned wickedly. Dale was clutching his cards. Teddy lit a cigarette then handed it to Dale who accepted it like a man about to go before the firing squad. Then Teddy lit another for himself. “What do you got?” he said to Dale.

A smile lit the corners of Dale's mouth as he laid out his hand, a full house. He sat back carefully in his chair. “Beat that,” he said.

Teddy sighed—with relief or regret, she couldn't tell which. “Well, that's a really good hand, Dale. Really good.”

“You see that?” Rudy reached over and slapped Dale on the back.

Then Teddy laid out his hand. “But I got a straight flush.”

Dale let out a gasp, as if he'd been hit from behind. His eyes went bright and watery.

“I guess this just ain't your lucky day,” Rudy remarked without emotion. Then, in the voice of an undertaker, he said, “Walter, go get me my pliers.”

The old man in the bolo tie left the room and Willa wondered if she should go after him and try to stop him. But she didn't move, her body suddenly enervated, as if she couldn't even stand. “Now wait just a second,” Dale said, holding up his hands like a man under arrest. He stood up and backed away from the table, but Rudy grabbed him, gripping him around the back, and, in a kind of awkward dance, led him across the floor. “Come on, now, Dale,” Rudy said almost gently, “you knew the rules.” Dale wriggled free for a moment, but Harv, who was beefy and strong, wrestled the thinner man down to the floor. Under their powerful hands, Dale writhed like a trapped animal, pleading for them to let him up, his spit flying out of his mouth like sparks from a fire. “Don't do it, Rudy!” he cried. “Please!”

“This isn't right,” Willa insisted, standing up with her hands on her hips, her heart thumping so hard it hurt, but nobody seemed to hear her. Teddy just stood there watching Dale with a troubling fascination. Willa wanted to walk right up to him and slap the look off his face, but she didn't dare, and then Walter came back with the pliers, which looked rusty, and handed them to Rudy. By now you could smell Dale's sweat and he'd begun to whimper.

Rudy handed Teddy the pliers. “Here you go, Junior. Winner does the honors.”

Teddy put the pliers down. “Keep your money. I can't do that.”

Rudy grabbed hold of him in the same way he'd done to Dale and shoved him across the room. Teddy fell into some chairs. He pulled himself up. A cut had opened on his forehead. Furious, Teddy shoved Rudy back, but Rudy was quick and before Willa knew it he'd twisted Teddy's arm up behind his back. Pinned like that, Teddy's face turned crimson and she could see a ribbon of sweat up the back of his shirt. Rudy went up close to his ear, intimate as a lover. “You'd be amazed at what a man can do when he doesn't have a choice.”

“I don't want the fucking money,” Teddy whined, and she thought he might be crying. “I don't fucking want it.”

“You gonna show me what you're made of, rich boy? Huh? We're into this thing now.” He let Teddy go and again handed him the pliers. He gestured to Dale, who was cowering on the floor under Harv's hands. “Now get it done.”

“Please don't,” Dale implored Teddy. “You can't do this to me.
Please.
”

Incredibly, Teddy straddled Dale's hips while the other men held him down. “Hold still now,” Teddy ordered, his voice eerily tender, but Dale clenched his teeth defiantly, and the more he refused the more determined Teddy became. “Son of a bitch! He won't open his mouth!”

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Rudy said, crouching down at Dale's side.

“Don't be a fucking pussy.” Using his hands, Rudy manipulated Dale's jaws so that Teddy could get the pliers in. Dale's eyes flared white as Teddy grasped hold of a back tooth and began to pull. Horrible noises curled out of Dale's throat. From where she sat Willa could see that the sole of Dale's boot was coming off and she could see his red sock underneath. Teddy's face had gone white and Rudy was standing over him, overseeing the extraction from above, a passive expression on his face. He was a man, she knew, who had grown accustomed to witnessing terrible things. Behavior like this, she imagined, was an acquired habit. Dale began to scream and Teddy pulled the pliers out like he'd been bitten by a snake and he shook his head and threw them down. “I can't get it, I can't do this.” He shook his head again, waiting for Rudy, and Rudy nodded. “But you tried, that's the important thing. You put the effort in.” Then Rudy picked up the pliers and with savage determination finished the job.

They let Dale up and he staggered, holding on to his mouth in pain, and she could see tears glittering in the corners of his eyes. His hand was covered in blood, thick as a glove. He walked by Rudy like an invisible man, but he gave Teddy a cold look and shoved him out of his way, leaving a handprint of blood on his school clothes. Rudy fished in the bucket for a twenty-dollar bill and stuck it in Teddy's pocket. “Here's a little something for your trouble.”

But Teddy snatched it out and dropped it on the floor.

Outside, behind the house, Teddy puked up his whiskey. He leaned up against a tree, shaking his head. “I'm sorry,” he said, “you shouldn't have seen that.”

He rode her home, sweating out the whiskey. The air was colder now, but she felt numb to it. The moon was high and keen. You could smell wood smoke in the air and she knew before long there would be snow. She wondered about Dale, where he lived and what it must have been like being down on that floor. She'd never been held down by anyone and she imagined it must be the worst thing to endure. Just imagining it made her skin go clammy. It made her hate Teddy a little for what he'd done, but the hate was twisted up with other things, things that made her chest and thighs and belly warm, things she did not understand nor could she explain.

When she got home, they stood in front of her father's enormous house. He had his hands in his pockets like a little boy. “I'm really sorry, Willa.”

"I know.”

“Forgive me, okay?” He looked at her a minute more. “Later,” he said, and rode away.

Behind her, the door opened, and her father stood there waiting. He would want an explanation, she knew, and after she lied to him, fabricating a story about studying all night for a Latin test and losing track of the time, she would kiss his forgiving cheek good night, and crawl into bed and weep with gratitude that somehow God had given her this life—these parents, this house—her beautiful horse—and that, at least for now, she was safe.

10

The man with the burn on his face was named Luther Grimm. People said he'd burned his mother's house down for the insurance money and had gotten caught, but for some reason nobody could figure out why they'd never convicted him. He was harmless, people said, slow. His mother had gotten hurt in the fire, she was an invalid now. They lived in a small house across the railroad tracks, a mile or so from Teddy's grandfather's house, through the woods and down the hill. Sometimes in town Teddy would see Grimm's truck with the dog chained up on the back of it. It was a brawny animal with short muscular legs. If you got anywhere near that truck the dog went ballistic, barking like crazy and foaming at the mouth. On several occasions when Teddy went walking through the woods behind his grand-father's house, he'd hear the dog barking and it was not an ordinary dog's bark, he'd decided, but one shrill with desperation, a frantic yodeling that gave him a stomachache.

One afternoon after school, on his way home from Marco Liddy's house, where he'd gotten exceptionally stoned and eaten most of the contents of the Liddys' SubZero—Marco's mother was a pastry chef— he heard the dog barking and decided to go down to Grimm's house to have a look. The woods were a jumble of overgrowth. Prickers coiled up from the ground, sticking to his jeans. He crossed the railroad tracks then shuffled down an incline through piles of leaves. He made a lot of noise walking through the leaves and the dog started to howl. Teddy stood on the edge of Grimm's lumpy yard and saw that the dog was chained to a tree. The driveway was empty, Grimm was not at home. The dog was barking and jumping around, yanking the chain, which was the length of a jump rope. Teddy had read up on pit bulls and knew they were, in some circumstances, dangerous, but part of him believed he could save this dog from its miserable fate. The dog kept yanking the chain and the more it yanked the more irritated it got and the louder it barked. You didn't put a dog like that on a short chain, Teddy thought, unless you
wanted
to irritate it.

He didn't like it when people were cruel to animals. There was a lot of cruelty in the world, you saw evidence of it every night on the news, you saw it on those cop shows, when they'd catch someone and maul them to the ground and snap on the cuffs. Even in his own life back in L.A. he'd seen things. And he'd witnessed a kind of brutality in himself that night at the Men's Club. What he'd done to Dale, the way it had felt holding him down. He'd been in fights before once or twice, but this had been different. It wasn't something he could explain and he wasn't proud of it and every time he thought about it he felt sick.

Teddy surveyed the muddy yard, Grimm's house. Most of the paint was peeled off and the window curtains were yellowed and drooping. Just behind the house was a ramshackle well with a little wooden roof over it. Teddy gave in to his curiosity and crossed the yard and looked into the well—a funnel of darkness—then climbed up onto the back porch, which had all sorts of junk stacked on it, rusty old tools and broken machines with buttons and levers, and by now the dog was barking like crazy and there was foam dripping out the sides of its mouth. Teddy peered through the window in the back door. He saw a kitchen that was surprisingly neat. A short dog crate sat under the window. There were pictures of Jesus all over the place, on the walls, the tables. A short hall led to another room where he could make out a hospital bed pushed against the wall. Grimm's mother was in it, which creeped him out. He couldn't see her face, only the back of her head, a nest of white hair. A TV sat on a rolling cart beside the bed, playing a game show. It was turned up so loud that the flimsy walls of the house trembled with the sound of applause.