“He’s left town again? I heard he just got back…”
“See, only important men are invited to do his bidding. Men like me.” His yellow gaze slowly turns to you. “Do you believe that? Do you believe that I am an important man?”
He sounds so strange now. You know you must ingratiate him. “Oh, yes, sir, I do, very much so. I understand that you are one of Mr. Gast’s most important foremen.”
“Yes…” He nods. “Yes, that is true.” Then his eyes focus. “Do you like me? What I mean is, do you enjoy my company?”
You shiver. “Oh, yes, sir. You’re a very handsome and rugged gentleman.”
“Now, I realize that I just put you through the wringer a mite hard. So you’ve probably had enough. Right?”
You’re not sure how to figure him. You don’t know what to say. You know he’s very, very violent. “Only if you feel you’ve had your money’s worth, sir…”
He blinks. “Hmm. Yes. And I suppose I have. But…you just said that you enjoy my company…”
It’s getting too strange. You don’t like it at all.
“So…I’ll tell you what. I’ll leave it up to you. If you’d like me to stay a bit longer, then I will. Or’n if you’d rather I leave now, then I’ll leave.”
He’s plotting something, you can feel it. You know that your next response is very, very important. If I ask him to leave, then I just know he’ll beat me’n take the ten- dollar piece with him…
“Well, sir, I would like it if you stayed…a bit longer…”
The man shrugs, then grins. “Whatever you say, honey.” And then—
smack!
—the web of his hand catches your throat and slams you off the couch to the floor. He moves in a blur and pins you down. He’s got one knee across your throat and the other on your belly.
“I’m always one to oblige the request of a lady,” he says, and then he laughs so hard and dark that you think it’s more like a caterwaul from hell. “Don’t’cha move, now,” he warns, “less’n I might have to break your windpipe.” So you lie perfectly still, breathing fiercely through your nose as the pressure of his knee on your throat increases. Then—
swish!
He slides that long knife out of the scabbard. “I skinned me a lotta women with this, and cut off a lotta ears’n tits. Mostly Injuns’n creek people. You work hard as me, you need some sport.” The tip of the blade tickles up your thigh. “Does this scare you?”
“Yes, it does, sir.” You choke out the words.
“I like a honest gal,” he says, then laughs and puts the knife back in the scabbard. “Don’t’cha worry none—you’re too pretty to cut. But I’ll be cuttin’ on someone else with it real soon. Now…Let’s see this apple-dumplin’ cart,” he says and jacks down the top of your ruffled blouse. The terror makes your breasts quiver. His hand plays with one; then his fingers begin to pinch the nipple. You look up through slits for eyes and see his cigar smoke ringing his head like an unholy aura.
“Let me put a little spark in your day, huh, pretty girl?” His forefinger and thumb begin to vise the tip of your nipple until it hurts. Then, “What we got here—ahh, perfect,” but you can’t see what he’s reaching for, and then, “Look it. Think this’ll liven ya up?”
With his other hand, you see now, he’d taken a long sewing needle out of the pincushion on the end table.
“Oh, my God, please, Mr. Morris, I’m beggin’ you not to—”
He sticks the needle directly into the tweezed tip of your nipple, and the sound that comes out of your throat is like an animal’s shriek. Your body bucks beneath his weight as you watch the entire two-inch-plus needle disappear into your breast.
The shriek reels out of your throat like ribbon. “What?” he asks. “Does that hurt? Awwwwwwwww…I’m sorry.”
He removes the needle, and your body goes limp.
“See, some gals like a little spark…but I guess you ain’t one of ’em.”
You’re breathing so fast you can barely understand him. His face looks blurred through your tears.
“Guess I’ll be on my way. I done told ya. Got a chore or two up the house…”
Please, leave! Please, please, please!
But if he’s leaving…why does he still have the end of your nipple pinched between his fingers?
One last grin and he says, “Honey, aren’t ya glad ya asked me to stay?” And then he puts the lit end of the cigar to your nipple and begins to puff.
You drown in the instantaneous wave of pain, and then your mind turns black.
The room is darker when you wake up. Your left nipple burns in a slow, thudding pain. It doesn’t take you long to remember what happened.
“At least he’s gone,” you whisper in relief.
The end of your nipple is inflamed beneath a scab. You carefully re-cover your breasts and collect yourself, then crawl around the couch to where he’d dropped your ten-dollar gold piece.
It’s not there now.
You bolt out of the room. You haven’t felt this enraged since the time the German man sold your baby. When you storm into the parlor, Bella looks up surprised from a plate of chocolates.
“Why…Harriet! What—”
“That shitty man burned my nipple and stole my money!” you wail. “Do you have a gun I can borrow?”
“Calm down, dear! My, oh my, you ain’t gonna be shootin’ no one. Now just you sit down and —”
“No! I’m gettin’ my money!”
“Harriet? Honey? Listen now. You just have to accept that these things happen to a gal in this line sometimes. Sometimes we get took advantage of—”
“I earned that money and I’m going to get it!” you bark.
“Settle down! You just leave that Mr. Morris alone, girl! He’s crazy! Lotta them rail men are awful rough with the girls, but he’s the worst. He’ll kill ya—”
“He can try!” you scream and tromp out of the house.
Bella calls after you but you don’t listen. You’re running up the hill…
To the Gast House.
Your rage sends you running up but then you begin to slow down and eventually stop, because that’s when you notice the man hanging by his neck from the biggest tree in the front yard.
The rope creaks as the well-dressed corpse turns very slowly. You see that it’s Mr. Gast.
My…God…
You keep stepping back, because it almost seems like the corpse turned by a will of its own, to look at you. Mr. Gast’s face is pressed with a dead grin, and you can see yellow in the slits of his eyelids. The scariest thought sends a chill up your back: that those yellow eyes will fly open and he’ll begin to laugh…
The lowering sun covers the yard with dark molten light. You hear a snuffling and notice several stray dogs nosing through some bushes. A brief shadow crosses your face and you look up, still stepping backward, and see a lone raven gliding silently overhead.
“Ohhh!” you yelp, and turn just before you’d fall. You’d been stepping back farther from the corpse, and now you see what you’d almost fallen in: a hole.
