Gabriel Tallent - My Absolute Darling

They pull back onto the highway. He hasn’t touched Cayenne, she is sure. But Christ, she thinks, what’s wrong here is that you think you’d know. Grandpa can’t have known, and maybe you wouldn’t know, either. Maybe he fucks her all the time and you can’t tell, just like no one could tell with you. She’s eating out of his goddamn hand. Well, Turtle thinks. He can be pretty fucking persuasive. And what if she came from somewhere that no one cared about her, and all of a sudden there’s Martin. What would you do, if you’d never had that in your life? If you were a child. You’d do a lot, she thinks. You’d put up with a lot. Just for that attention. Just to be close to that big, towering, sometimes generous, sometimes terrifying mind. Turtle is looking out at the dark road. There are no other cars out. No matter who this girl is, Turtle can’t help her. Turtle has her own problems.

They pull up the drive, lurching in and out of ruts. It is late, but Jim Macklemore’s truck and Wallace McPherson’s VW Bug are still parked beside Martin’s truck. Turtle parks in the grass and she and Cayenne get out, Turtle reaching into the cup and retrieving the scorpion. She walks to the house with the shotgun slung on one shoulder, holding the scorpion by its tail. The girl follows, carrying her book. The electricity is back on, but the house is dark. The men are playing cards by the light of a single lamp.

They go up the porch and in through the sliding glass door. Cayenne bursts into the house and runs ahead to where the men are gathered around the newly purchased table.

“Martin!” Cayenne says. “I ate a scorpion!”

Martin scoffs and does not look up.

Jim Macklemore turns, fat and blond, with thinning hair pulled back from his blushed-red face, his Hawaiian shirt unbuttoned to show his greasy chest and thick blond chest hair with a small silver cross. He has two little sapphire ear studs. Wallace McPherson sits opposite, in a white dress shirt, a black silk vest, and X-wing fighter cuff links, a bowler hat beside him on the table, arms sleeved with tattoos.

“We ate a scorpion,” Cayenne insists.

Martin says, “Cayenne, not now. Go to kibble’s room.”

“Why, Julia, how you’ve grown ,” Jim says, smiling and holding out his hand.

Turtle shoulders past him and drops the scorpion onto the poker table. It lands on a mound of quarters, tail raised, claws moving reflexively through the air.

“Holy shit,” Wallace says, “holy shit.”

Martin lights a cigarette.

“There is a scorpion,” Wallace says, “on the table.”

“I did,” Cayenne insists. “I ate a scorpion.”

“Nah,” Martin says patiently, taking the cigarette out of his mouth to lean forward and inspect the creature.

“She did,” Turtle says, “and we brought this one back. Thought you might be hungry.”

Martin makes no expression, but waits before exhaling the smoke, and then he blows it out raggedly.

“Try it, Marty,” Cayenne says.

Wallace says, “You’re not really going to eat that, are you?”

Putting his hand on her shoulder, Jim Macklemore says to Turtle, “What are you studying now in school? I myself was always interested in politics.”

Turtle ducks out from under his hand and asks Martin, “You gonna eat this?”

Martin holds his burning cigarette upright. The cherry is just barely visible in the dark; above it, the tower of ash. He turns it slowly, inspecting it from all angles. He says, “You want me to eat that scorpion?”

“Try it!” Cayenne says.

Turtle can see that the girl wants to share this with him. She wants this to be something they’ve all done together. But Turtle doesn’t want him to do it. She wants to show Cayenne something important here, about her own substance and about Martin’s, because Martin, Turtle thinks, is afraid.

Martin says, “You didn’t eat a scorpion.”

“Why would we make this shit up?” Turtle says.

Martin draws on the cigarette, squints at them through the smoke.

“It was fucking delicious,” Turtle says.

“You’re not really going to eat the scorpion,” Wallace says. “That would be crazy. To eat the scorpion. That can’t be healthy. Aren’t they full of poison?”

“Nah,” Turtle says. “Nah, it’s fine.”

“Come on, Marty!” Cayenne says.

“Yeah,” Turtle says, “come on, Marty.”

“If I can do it, you can do it,” Cayenne says.

“The girls have a point,” Jim says.

“Don’t be a little bitch, Marty,” Turtle says.

Martin chews his lip. At last, he says, “You really want to see me eat this scorpion, huh?”

“Yeah, Marty,” Cayenne says. “Julia ate one.”

“This is the thing we’re all doing, huh?”

“Yes!” Cayenne says.

“Okay,” he says. He leans forward, rubs his hands together in prefatory consideration. The scorpion hunkers on the pile of coins, tail raised, claws spread.

Martin opens thumb and forefinger, reaches out, withdraws his hand. He rubs his forefinger to his thumb as if preparing for the creature’s texture.

“Just like that,” Turtle says. “Just like that.” She indicates picking up the scorpion by the tail. “Come on,” she says.

Martin extends his hand again. Wallace leans forward, smoking a cigar, to get a better look. He’s still holding his cards, shaking his head in wonder. Martin spreads thumb and forefinger, hesitates just above the scorpion, which raises its tail and spreads its open pincers. Small expressions, too fast to read, chase themselves across his face.

“You didn’t eat a scorpion,” he says. He draws his Daniel Winkler belt knife and drives the point down into the scorpion. The creature twists, arching its back painfully, its tail striking the spine of the knife. Its claws are outstretched, straining open with visible and painful urgency. Martin lifts the knife, the scorpion skewered on the tip, and then he reaches down and plants the knife against the floor, and with his heel, scrapes the scorpion’s twisted, straining body from the blade and grinds it under his boot. He wipes the flat of the blade on the table edge and throws the blade down among the coins and cards and beer cans.

Cayenne mews in surprise, putting her hand to her mouth. Turtle pulls up a chair and sits down. Martin considers her. In his let’s be serious tone of voice, dry, slightly affectionate, forgiving, he says, “Come on, you didn’t eat a scorpion.”

Turtle looks at him levelly.

From their places at the table, Jim and Wallace exchange glances.

“We did,” Cayenne says. “I told you we did.”

Martin laughs, his laugh sharpening almost into a titter, and he collects the cards and begins shuffling them. “Oh right,” he says, laughing again. “It’s some fucked-up bonding thing, and now I fucked it. Well. Well. You cunts. Christ. Always getting in some fucking trouble for some fucking bullshit . Never anything right.” He talks in an aggrieved tone, racking the cards hard against the table’s edge, then breaking them and bridging them and striking the deck against the table’s edge and breaking and bridging them again. Everyone else sits in silence. He says, “The fuck , the fuck if I’m gonna be in trouble for not eating some fucking bug . The fuck . Isn’t that always the way? Christ, you bitches. All the same, with your bitter, female minds.”

Martin deals out another hand of cards, and the game gets going again, the lovely handmade Daniel Winkler knife sitting on the table, the blade still with bits of shell and smears of guts. After that hand, with the girls sitting there, the game winds down. When the men are packing up, Turtle grabs Wallace’s arm and says, “I’ll walk you out.” Wallace nods, closes the lid down on his yogurt container full of change, and then walks away to the door, Turtle beside him. Cayenne sits on the counter, holding her injured hand and watching the departing poker players.