A Hole in the Universe - Mary McGarry Morris [147]
“Why? So he can stink and shit for a few more hours?”
“No, I know this lady. She’ll come and get him. She’ll bring him to the animal hospital. They’ll know what to do.”
“Why bother. I know what to do.” Beer bottles and cans clinked as he kicked through the trash-strewn brush. “Same thing,” he grunted, picking up a broken cinder block. “Put him out of his misery.”
“No!” she screamed, both arms out, afraid if she moved, he’d do it.
“Yes!” He laughed, and the sun glinted on his sweating scalp as he raised the block chest high. The crazed, snarling creature tried to creep back, out from his long shadow, but couldn’t.
“Please don’t. Please don’t, Thurman. Please,” she gasped, barely able to speak.
He tossed the block aside. “All right, but now you gotta give me something.”
“What?”
He dragged the largest piece of cardboard deeper into the woods. She followed, stopping when he came to a damp, needled patch of ground under three tall, spindly pines. She held on to the cardboard while Thurman knelt and clawed away rocks and sticks. He patted the ground a few times to be sure, then smoothed the pine needles back into place. She handed him the cardboard. He removed his big black sneakers, then lay down with his hands behind his head, looking up at her with an almost embarrassed expression.
“Well?”
“Well, what?”
“You just gonna stand there?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“C’mon! What’re you waiting for?” He held out his arms. “You’re scared, aren’t you.”
“No.”
“You ever do it before?”
“Well, yeah.” She rolled her eyes.
“So, c’mon. C’mon, bitch,” he said softly. “You’ll like it. You’ll like the way I do it.” He sat up, grabbed her hand, yanked her down beside him. “But first you gotta take this off,” he grunted, tugging at her shorts.
“No!” she said, crossing her legs. “Not unless we buy him some dog food.”
“Not now!”
She kept thinking of Polie and her mother. Polie and the baby. Polie all the time pawing at her. She tried to get up, but Thurman rolled on top of her, forearm hard on her throat. “We had a deal, so now I’m going to fuck you. You know I am, right?”
She glared up at him. He stared back, then burst into laughter and tore at her clothes in a frenzy of giddy, almost weeping passion. When it was over they got up quickly. Neither one spoke. He urinated behind the tree while she dressed. She felt cold. Mosquitoes buzzed at her ears. She wondered if she’d been raped, then decided it couldn’t have been that. She had agreed to it at first; then even when she didn’t want to, she’d been too afraid to fight very hard. All she could think of was the old woman’s twisted face recoiling each time her mother kicked her, so she had clung to him with such desperate anguish that in the end he had to push her away.
“What about the dog food?”
“I don’t have any fucking money,” he called, trudging on ahead. He was tying his T-shirt around his bare head.
“You had five bucks!”
“Yeah, before. But then I had to give it to Antawan. Sorry.” He looked back with a smirk. “Besides, you oughta pay me for the favor. It’ll be a hell of a long time before you get something good as that again.”
The rock she picked up was as big as her fist. She threw it hard, then winced when it whacked into the small of his back. He turned, fists clenched and glaring. Scared, she knew better than to run. She kept on walking, safer now on the sharp edge of his cold smile. She could handle this Thurman, the one who didn’t want anything more than to hate. When she came to the Dumpster behind the Market, she hoisted herself up and pulled out a crushed loaf of bread.
“What’re you, some kinda pig?”
“It’s for Cootie’s dog,” she called back.
He watched her jump down. “What happened to your dog?”
“Leonardo?”
“Yeah, the shitter. That’s what Polie called him, anyways.”
“I think he got lost, or maybe somebody took him. I don’t know. Every day I go out looking for him.”
“Yeah, well, don’t bother.” He laughed.
“Why? You know where he is?” She grinned stupidly, futilely, heart racing with that battered hope that beats