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.
This guy I met. These guys. Riding on the lake, and they taught me to play poker.
So we pile into Hot Li’l Babe, these four big guys and me. There’s lots of people around at the marina, nothing to worry about, I am thinking. Or maybe I am not thinking. Momma says, Annislee, for God’s sake, where is your mind? Well, it looked like—I thought—these other girls were getting into the speedboat too, but they changed their minds, saying the clouds were looking too threatening. What if you’re struck by lightning? the girls are saying with shivery little giggles. In fact there’s only just heat lightning (which is harmless—isn’t it?) way off in the distance beyond Mount Hammer, miles from the lake, so I’m thinking, What the hell, I am not afraid.
“Hang on, Ann’slee. Here we go.”
This wild thumping ride out onto the lake, full throttle taking off from the marina, and the looks on the faces of boaters coming in—a family in an outboard boat, a fisherman in a rowboat—register such alarm, it’s hilarious. Everything seems hilarious, like in a speeded-up film where nothing can go seriously wrong, nobody can get hurt. Deek steers Hot Li’l Babe with one hand, drinks Coors with the other. I’m hanging on to my seat, crowded between two of the guys (Jax? Croke? or is this big guy panting beside me Heins?), trying not to shriek with fear—in fact I am not afraid, am I? Can’t get my breath the wind is coming so fierce and there’s a smell of gasoline in the boat and in the pit of my stomach that sickish excited sensation you get on the downward plunge of a roller coaster. Overhead it’s a surprise, the sky is darkening fast, the giant mouth is about closed over the sun, and the way the thunderclouds are ridged and ribbed makes me think of the inside of a mouth, a certain kind of dog that has a purplish black mouth, oh God. Just these few minutes, there’s nobody else on Wolf’s Head Lake that I can see. The boat engine is roaring so hard, these guys are so loud, a beer can I’ve been gripping has spilled lukewarm beer onto my bare legs, can’t catch my breath, telling myself, You are not going to die, don’t be stupid, you are not important enough to die. Telling myself that Daddy is close by, watching over me, for didn’t Daddy once say, My little girl is going to live a long, long time—that is a promise.
To a man like Daddy, and maybe Deek, is given a certain power: to snuff out a life, as you might (if you were feeling mean, and nobody watching) by grinding a broken-winged butterfly that’s flailing beneath your foot, or to allow that life to continue.
“Made it! Fuckin’ made it! Record time!” Deek is crowing like a rooster; we’re across the lake and okay. Deek cuts the motor bringing the speedboat to dock. It’s a clumsy-shaped boat, it seems now, banging against the dock; Deek has to loop a nylon rope over one of the posts, cursing Fuck! fuck! fuck! He’s having so much trouble, finally Heins helps him, and they manage to tie up the boat. We’re in an inlet here in some part of Wolf’s Head Lake that isn’t familiar to me, short stubby pier with rotted pilings, mostly outboard-motor and rowboats docked here. Getting out of the boat, I need to be helped by one of the guys, slip and fall, hit my knee, one of my sandals falls off, and the guy—Croke is the name they call him—big-shouldered in a T-shirt, thick hairs like a pelt on his arms and the backs of his hands, and a gap-toothed grin in a sunburned wedge-face sprouting dark whiskers on his jaw, grabs my elbow, hauls me up onto the dock: “There ya go, li’l dude, ya okay?” Greeny-gray eyes on me; in that instant he’s being nice, kindly, like I’m a kid sister, somebody to be watched over, and I’m grateful for this, almost I want to cry when people are nice to me, that I can’t believe I deserve it because I am not a nice girl—am I? Damn, I don’t care. Why should I care? The fact is, these new friends of mine are smiling at me, calling me Ann’slee, Ann’slee honey, c’mon with us. Next thing I know the five of us are swarming into a convenience store at the end of the dock, Otto’s Beer & Bait, where Momma has stopped sometimes but which direction it is to Uncle Tyrone’s cottage, and how far it is, I could not say. The guys are getting six-packs of Coors and Black Horse Ale and Deek tells me to get some eats, so I select giant bags of taco chips, Ritz crackers, and Cheez Whiz and at the deli counter some cellophane-wrapped ham sandwiches and dill pickles. Out of the freezer a six-pack of chocolate ice cream bars; I’m leaning over and the frost-mist lifts into my warm face, so cool it makes my eyes mist over, so one of the guys, I think it’s Jax, pokes his finger toward my eye meaning to wipe away a tear, I guess, saying “Hey, li’l dude, you okay?” This guy is so tall, my head hardly comes to his shoulder. Maybe he works at the quarry; those guys are all so big, muscular and going to fat. The quarry at Sparta was where my father was working last time I heard. Up front at the cashier’s counter there is this bleach-hair bulldog woman older than Momma staring at the five of us taking up so much space in the cramped aisles, not cracking a smile though the guys are joking with her, calling her Ma’am, trying to be friendly. A thought cuts into me like a blade: This woman knows me, she will call Momma. How I feel about this possibility, I’m not sure. (Do I want to be here, with these guys? Is this maybe a mistake? But girls hook up with guys at Wolf’s Head Lake—that is what you do at Wolf’s Head Lake, isn’t it? What people talk about back at school next month? And Labor Day in another week.) The cashier woman doesn’t seem to know me, only just regards me with cold curious eyes, a girl my age, young even for high school, with these guys who must be ten, fifteen years older, guys who’ve been drinking beers for hours (you can tell: you can smell beer on their breath, their reddened eyes are combustible), speaking to the girl in a kind of sly teasing way but not a mean way so I’m feeling a stab of something like pride, maybe it is even sexual pride, my flat boy-body and dark eyes and curvy mouth and my thick ashy blond hair springing
from a low forehead like my Daddy’s, prone to brooding. Ann’slee is like music in these guys’ mouths, this name that has made me cringe since first grade. Hearing Ann’slee honey, Ann’slee babe makes me grateful now. Deek tugs my ponytail and praises the eats I’ve brought to the counter and pays for everything with a credit card.
Next we hike through a marshy pine woods, clouds of mosquitoes, gnats, those fat black flies that bite before a thunderstorm. A sultry wind is blowing up, yet the sun is still shining, rifts in black clouds hot and fiery so you think there might not be a storm, the clouds might be blown away. In the woods are scattered cottages linked by a rutted lane. Loud voices, kids shouting. Bathing suits and towels hanging on drooping clotheslines. Most of the cottages are small like my uncle Tyrone’s, with shingleboard siding or fake pine or maple, crowded close together, but Deek’s uncle’s cottage is at the end of the lane, with nothing beyond but trees, bushes grown close against the cottage so neighbors can’t see into the windows. Deek tries the front door but it’s locked, dumps his groceries on the porch and goes around to the back of the cottage to jimmy off a window screen, Heins is excited, asking what the hell is Deek doing, doesn’t he have a key for the cottage? “This is breaking and entering,” Heins says, but Deek only laughs, saying, “Din’t I tell you? This is my uncle’s fuckin’ place I’m welcome in, any fuckin’ time.”
When Deek gets the screen off the window, he turns to me, grabs me around my middle, and lifts me like you’d lift a small child, not a girl weighing eighty pounds and five feet three, which is tall for my age, saying for me to crawl inside and open the door, I am a better fit through the window than he is. Deek’s fingers on me are so hard almost I can’t catch my breath, squirming to get free like a captured bird, but a bird so scared it isn’t going to struggle much, and next thing I know Deek has shoved me through the window with a grunt, headfirst I’m falling, might’ve broken my neck except I’m able to grab hold of something, scrambling up on my hands and knees, panting like a dog and my heart pounding fast as the guys are cheering behind me, and the skin of my buttocks, inside the puckered fabric of my swimsuit bottom, is tingling from the palms of Deek’s hard hands shoving me.
It’s no problem opening the front door of the cottage, just a Yale lock. The guys come whooping and laughing inside, dropping six-packs and groceries on a dingy counter. Seems like more than four of them in this small room. It’s one of those cottages that is mostly just a single room with two small rooms at the back for sleeping. In the main room are mismatched pieces of furniture, a rickety Formica-topped kitchen table, chairs with torn seats, against a wall a narrow kitchen counter, a tiny sink, and a tiny two-burner gas stove, cupboards and one of those half-sized refrigerators you have to stoop to reach into. Smells here of cooking, old grease, plain old grime. Looks like it hasn’t been cleaned or even swept for months—there are cobwebs everywhere, dust balls and husks of dead insects on the floorboards, ants on the sticky Formica-topped table on the counter, tiny black ants that move in columns like soldiers. Deek is looking through a stack of magazines on an end table, whistling through his teeth and laughing: “Oh, man. Sweet Jesus.” The guys crowd around Deek, looking at the magazines while I’m ignoring them, removing the groceries from the bags, wiping down the sticky Formica-topped table and counters with wet paper towels, trying to get rid of the ants. Damn nasty ants! And the smell in here. The way the guys are carrying on over the magazines, the crude things they are saying—I’m edgy, embarrassed. Deek sees me, the hot flush in my cheeks, laughs and says, “C’mere, Ann’slee. Look here.”
But Jax says quick and sharp, “This ain’t for her, Deek. Fuck off.”
Deek is laughing at me, saying not to be looking so mean, but I’m turned away, sullen and uneasy, not smiling back at him, saying maybe I don’t want to play poker after all, my mother is probably wondering where I am, I can walk back to our cottage, I won’t need a ride. Deek says, “Okay, li’l babe,” dumping the magazines into a trash can, and one of the guys has opened a Coors for me, icy cold from Otto’s Beer & Bait. They are trying to be nice now, so I’m thinking maybe I will stay for a while, learn to play poker—it’s nowhere near dark. Nothing waiting for me at the cottage except helping Momma and my aunt prepare supper and if it’s raining just TV till we go to bed. Here I’m entrusted with setting out food for these big hulking hungry guys, there’s a feeling like an indoor picnic, finding paper plates in the cupboard, a plastic bowl to empty chips into, unwrapping the mashed-looking ham sandwiches. The storm hasn’t started yet, maybe there won’t even be a storm, the thunder is still far away in the mountains. I’m thinking that Deek really likes me, the way he looks at me, smiles. It’s a special smile like a wink, for me. Pushing me through the window. He touched me! He touched me there—did he?
I won’t need many beers to become giddy-drunk.
That buzzing sensation in the head when your thoughts come rushing past like crazed bats you can’t be sure even you’ve seen, blink and they’re gone.
Deek says: Name of the game is five-card draw.
Deek says: Poker isn’t hard, is it? Not for a smart girl like you.
Hard to tell if Deek is teasing or serious. These first few games, I seem to be doing well. Deek’s chair is close beside mine so that he can oversee my cards as well as his own. Like we’re a team, Deek says. Telling me the values of the cards, which isn’t so different from gin rummy, euchre, and truth (which is the card game my friends and I play). Royal flush, straight flush, flush, five-of-a-kind hand (when the joker is wild), and it is all logical to me, common sense I’m thinking, except maybe I’m not remembering, Deek talks so fast and there’s so much happening each time cards are dealt. In the third game, Deek nudges me to “raise” with three eights, two kings; Deek whispers in my ear that this is a full house—I think that’s what he said, “full house”—and the cards are strong enough to win the pot: fifteen dollars! This is amazing to me; I’m laughing like a little kid being tickled, and the guys are saying how fast I am catching on. Heins says, “Li’l dude is gonna pull in all our money, wait and see.”
Deek has been the one to “stake” me, these early games. Five one-dollar bills Deek has given me.
In his chair close beside mine, Deek is looming over me, twice my size, breathing his hot beer-breath against the side of my face, hairs on his tattoo-arm making the hairs on my arm stir when his arm brushes near. Like we are young kids whispering and conspiring together. I am thinking that poker isn’t so hard except you have to keep on betting and if you don’t stay in the game you have to “fold,” and if you “fold” you can’t win no matter the cards in your hand and so you have to think really hard, try to figure out the cards the other players have, and if they are serious raising the bet or only just bluffing. Deek says that’s the point of poker, bluffing out the other guy, seeing can you bullshit him or he’s going to bullshit you.
Doesn’t it matter what your actual cards are, I ask Deek, if they are high or low? Deek says sort of, scornfully, like this is a damn dumb question he will answer because he likes me. “Sure it matters, but not so much’s how you play what you’re dealt. What you do with the fuckin’ cards you are dealt, that’s poker.”
Through the beer-buzz in my brain come these words: What you do with what you’re dealt. That’s poker.
These first few games, when good cards come to me or Deek tells me how to play them, it’s like riding in the speedboat across the choppy lake, gripping my seat, squealing and breathless, and the boat thump-thump-thumping through the waves like nothing could stop it ever—such a good feeling, a sensation in my stomach that is almost unbearable, Deek casting his sidelong glance at me, stroking his whiskery jaws, saying, “Okay, Ann’slee honey, you are on your own now.” A flashing card-shuffle in Heins’s fingers and the cards flicked out and I’m fumbling my cards, blinking and trying to figure out what they mean. The guys keep opening cans of Coors for me; could be I am drunk and not knowing it, biting my lower lip and laughing
. Goddamn I am clumsy, dropping a card (an ace!) that Croke can see, and the guys are waiting for me, seems like I’ve lost the thread of what is going on so Deek nudges me, saying, “You have to bet, Ann’slee, or fold.” I’m frowning and moving my lips like a first grader trying to read; what’s it mean—ace of hearts and ace of spades and four of diamonds and four of clubs and a nine of clubs, should I get rid of the nine, I guess I should get rid of the nine. My thoughts seem to be coming in slow motion now as I toss down the four of clubs—no! Take it back, it’s the nine of clubs I don’t want. Heins deals a replacement card to me and I fumble turning it over. My face falls; it’s a nine of spades—I’m disappointed, should I be disappointed? The guys are trying to be patient with me. I am itchy and sweaty inside the Cougars T-shirt, and my swimsuit beneath, halter top with straps that tie around the neck and puckered fabric bottom, still damp from the lake, and my ponytail straggling down my back still damp too. Momma says we should shower and shampoo our hair after swimming in that lake water; there’s “impurities” in it—sewage draining from some of the cottages, diesel fuel leaked into the lake from motorboats. Some people, Uncle Tyrone says, no better than pigs. Must be. The guys are waiting for me to make a decision (but what decision should I be making? I’ve forgotten). Deek leans over to take hold of the nape of my neck, gripping me the way you’d grip a dog to shake it a little, reprimand it—“C’mon, babe, you in or out?”—and I try to ease away from him, I think it’s meant as a joke, and not some kind of threat, and Heins says, “She’s just a kid, Deek. Why’d you want to play with a kid?” and Deek turns on him: “Fuck you, Heinie! Ann’slee and me, we’re a team.”
This is warming to me, to hear. Team—we are a team. So I say, “I’m in,” toss another bill onto the pile. Croke mulls over his cards, decides to fold, Jax folds, Heins raises like he means to provoke Deek. By now my bladder is pinching so hard I have to pee again, itchy and nervous, uncertain what to do, guess I will “fold” now, should I “fold”? A single dollar bill is left of all my winnings. The winning hand is Heins’s, though maybe in fact Heins’s cards are weaker than my two pair, but damn it’s too late, I’m out. I folded, and I lost. Could cry, my winnings are gone so fast, it’s like the dollar bills Deek staked me were my own, now gone. A childish hurt opens in me like an old, soft wound.
Give Me Your Heart: Tales of Mystery and Suspense Page 7