Gabriel Tallent - My Absolute Darling

“Come on ,” he says. “Two more.”

“I can’t,” she says, almost crying with fear.

“You think the knife’s sharp now, don’t you?” he says. “You believe it now, don’t you?” He saws the blade forward and she hears the denim whisper apart. She digs deep for any last ounce of strength, trying desperately to hold on, and Martin says, “You might want to hold on, kibble. You might not want to let go, little girl,” and then her fingertips peel off the rafter and she comes down onto the blade.

Martin jerks the knife out from under her at the last possible moment and it saws through her thigh and buttock. She lands on her heels and stands there splay-legged and astonished, looking down at her crotch, where there is no sign except a cut in the denim. Martin holds the bowie knife bloodless and unmarked, his eyebrows going up in astonishment, his mouth opening into a grin.

Turtle sits on her butt and Martin begins to laugh. She stoops forward to look through the parted cloth and says, “You cut me, you cut me,” though she cannot feel or see any cut.

“You should’ve,” Martin says and stops and bends double with laughter. He waves the bowie knife through the air to try and get her to stop so he can get his breath.

“You should’ve—” he gasps.

She lies back and unbuttons her jeans. Martin sets the bowie knife on the counter and grabs the bottoms and upends her out of them. She spills across the floor, recovers herself, and then stoops over her thighs, trying to see the cut.

“You should’ve—” he says. “You should’ve—” And his eyes clench with laughter.

Turtle finds the cut and a whisker of blood.

Martin says, “You should have seen— your face .” He screws his own face up in a mimicry of adolescent betrayal, opening his eyes wide in astonishment, and then, waving one hand through the air as if to brush all teasing aside, he says, “You’ll be okay, kiddo, you’ll be fine. Just, next time— don’t let go! ” At this, he begins to laugh again, shaking his head, his eyes slitting closed and leaking tears, and he inquires of the room, “Jesus! Am I right? Am I right? Jesus! Don’t let go! Isn’t that right? Fuck!”

He kneels down and takes her naked thigh in his hands and, seeming to see her distress for the first time, he says, “I don’t know why you’re so afraid, baby, you’re hardly even nicked. See, I wasn’t going to cut you. I took it out from under you, didn’t I? And if you’re so afraid, goddamn, next time, don’t let go.”

“It’s not that easy,” she says from behind her hands.

“It is, you just— don’t let go ,” he says.

Turtle lies flat on the floor. She wants to smash to pieces.

He rises and walks down the hall and into the bathroom. He returns with a first aid kit and kneels between her legs. He tears open a green disposable wound sponge and begins to dab at the cut. He says, “This? You’re worried about this? There, I’ll take care of it, there.” He unscrews the cap on the Neosporin and begins to dab it into the wound. His every touch sends ripples of sensation through her body. He opens a Band-Aid and lays it flush against her skin and smooths it to ensure the contact is good. “All better, kibble, look at that, it’s all right.”

She raises her head and ropes of muscle stand out from her mons pubis to her sternum like a bread loaf. She watches him and then she lays her head back down and she closes her eyes and she feels her soul to be a stalk of pig mint growing in the dark foundation, slithering toward a keyhole of light between the floorboards, greedy and sun-starved.

It is Friday and they have a Friday ritual. Turtle walks up from the bus stop to the two fifty-gallon drums where they burn their trash, flooded with rainwater the way any bucket, any barrel or pot left in their yard fills with water, and will keep filling until June, though the weather has been unpredictable. She takes the fire poker laid crosswise over the barrel mouth and plunges it deep into the ashen water and draws out an ammo can on a looped steel runner. She pops it open and takes out a 9mm Sig Sauer and a spare magazine. She is supposed to take the precaution of clearing the house slowly and carefully, from the front door and into every room, discovering every target. But Turtle has grown bored of the process, and so she goes up the porch steps and throws open the sliding glass door, gun up, and there are three training targets by the kitchen table, plywood and sheet-metal stands with printed silhouettes stapled to them, and Turtle takes them one at a time, sidestepping out of the doorway with tight double taps, one after another, six shots in a little less than a second, and in all three targets the shots are between and slightly below the eyes, so close together that the holes touch.

She walks casually to the hallway door, stands off to the side of it, on the hearthstones, and soft-tosses it open and moves in a swift arc across the doorway, three steps back and then sidestepping so that the hallway comes into view by degrees, and she takes each of three plywood and sheet-metal targets as they appear around the jamb, tight double taps into the nasal cavity, then she steps through the door and quickly out of the fatal funnel. Gunman’s shuffle down the side of the hallway, into the bathroom, clear—into the foyer, one bad guy, two shots, clear—into the pantry, clear. She ejects the magazine and replaces it with her spare and moves to Martin’s bedroom door at the end of the hall. There is not enough room to pan across the threshold, so she tosses open the door and takes three swift, retreating steps back down the hallway, firing as she goes—six shots, two seconds, and when her field of fire is clear, she advances on the door again and finds three more targets, taking each in turn. Then there is silence except for the hot brass rolling around the bedroom and the hallway. She walks back to the kitchen and sets the Sig Sauer on the counter.

She can hear Martin coming up the drive. He parks outside and throws open the sliding glass doors and walks right through the living room and sits down heavily on the overstuffed couch. Turtle opens the fridge and takes out a Red Seal Ale and pitches it underhand to him and he catches it and fits the bottle cap between his molars and pops the bottle open. He begins to drink, taking long satisfied gasps, and then he looks back to her and says, “So, kibble, how was school?” and she walks around the counter, sits down on the arm of the couch, both of them looking at the ashy fireplace as if there were a fire there to absorb their attention, and she says, “School was school, Daddy.”

He rakes a thumbnail across his stubble.

“Tired, Daddy?”

“Nah.”

They sit and eat dinner together. Martin keeps looking at the table, furrowing his brow. They continue to eat in silence.

“How did you do, clearing the house?”

“Well.”

“But not perfect?” he says.

She shrugs.

He sets his fork down and considers her, his forearms resting on the table. His left eye squints. His right eye is bright and open. The two compose an affect of complete and nuanced absorption, but when she looks at them carefully it is upsetting and strange to her, and the more genuine her attention to his expression, the more alien it seems, as if his face were not a single face at all, and as if it were trying to stake out two contrary expressions on the world.

He says, “Did you check the upstairs?”

“Yes,” she says.

“Kibble, did you check the upstairs?”

“No, Daddy.”

“It’s a game to you.”

“No, it’s not.”

“You don’t take it seriously. You come in here and you saunter around, placing your shots right into the ocular cavity. But you know, in a real firefight, you can’t always count on hitting the cavity exactly, you might have to fire for the hip—break a man’s hip, Turtle, and he goes down and he does not get up—but you don’t like that shot and you don’t practice it because you do not see the necessity. You think you’re invincible. You think you won’t ever miss—you go in there just cool and relaxed, because you’re overconfident. We need to put the fear on you. You need to learn how to shoot when you’re shitting yourself in fear. You need to surrender yourself to death before you ever begin, and accept your life as a state of grace, and then and only then will you be good enough. That is what the drill is for.”