But relief gave way to gloom, for she realized he would kill her anyway—probably even sooner now, in a violent rage of frustration.
“Help me out here, babe.”
He was grinding against her with somber determination. His hipbones banged into her hipbones, his chest slapped against her breasts, his chin dug into her forehead…
Desie fought off waves of nausea—the man stank of rancid perspiration, syrupy cologne and unlaundered clothes.
“I’m not… used to… this.” Mr. Gash, panting gaseously.
The rank heat of his breath made Desie shudder.
“Used to what—women?” she said. “You bi?”
“No! What I’m not… used to… is one woman. I’m used to… more.”
“How many more?”
“Two… three. Sometimes four.” He told her what he liked to do (and have done to him) while hanging in his lizard-skin sling from the ceiling.
“Whew,” Desie said. “Can’t help you there, chief.”
Mr. Gash stopped grinding and pushed himself up on his arms. “Sure you can. There’s lots of things you can do, Mrs. Stoat.”
Twilly awoke facedown in mud. He blew clods out both nostrils when he lifted his head.
His head! He’d never known such pain. He tried to spit and again nearly blacked out. His left ear clanged like a fire alarm. The whole side of his skull felt flaming hot; liquid and distended.
Twilly thought: I guess I’ve finally been shot. He was incensed but not especially afraid, which was a chronic problem in his life—anger supplanting normal, well-founded fears.
Twilly had an unhealthy lack of concern for his own safety.
He rolled over and saw stars. They vanished behind a wispy curtain of fast-moving clouds. It was nighttime and a hard rain was ending. Twilly didn’t know where he was, or what he was doing there, but he had a hunch somebody would bring him up to speed. He raised an exploratory hand to his head and located a large raw knot, but no bullet wound. His fingers came back sticky so he held them in front of his face to check the color of the blood; the brighter the better. That’s when he knew he’d lost the vision in his left eye.
“Hell,” he muttered.
With a forefinger Twilly gingerly probed the socket and was relieved to find the eyeball externally intact. Slowly he raised on his forearms, teetering in the sloppy mud. Overhead the stars and clouds spun madly around the treetops. Twilly waited patiently for the world to slow down. With his good eye he discerned bulky motionless shapes on either side of him—to his left, a bulldozer; to his right, a boat-sized station wagon.
Progress, he told himself.
Gradually the locomotive ringing subsided and Twilly could make out distinct noises—the wind in the pines, an incongruous jingling in the understory, almost like sleigh bells…
And, from inside the car, a muffled struggle.
Twilly tried to stand, bracing himself on the fender. He noticed it was shimmying. Once on his feet, he felt dizzy and sick to his stomach. Meanwhile the jingling sounded closer, causing him to speculate it was all inside his head; something loose or broken.
But the station wagon was rocking—not much, but enough to keep Twilly’s shaky equilibrium in flux. Miserably he sunk to his knees and listed against the car, his cheek mashed against the cool steel. He groped for purchase and found a door handle.
There he hung like a drunken rock climber until the latch clicked and the heavy door swung open. Twilly lost his grip and slid limply to the mud. He lay blinking at the heavens as his eardrums pealed with the jingle bells of the oncoming sleigh. Where’s the snow? he wondered sleepily.
Moments later, Twilly saw the sleigh shoot over him, a hulking black shadow that momentarily blotted out the stars and the clouds. He smelled it, too, though it didn’t smell like Christmas. It smelled like a big wet dog. From inside the car came a startled cry, and suddenly Twilly remembered where he was, and what was happening. He remembered everything.
“He’thinks it’s a game,” Desie explained.
“Make him let go!”
“He won’t hurt you.”
“Get him off me, goddammit, so I can kill him.”
The mutt was riding Mr. Gash as if he were a pony. The wet, filthy mutt! Its yellow fangs were planted on his neck—not hard enough to break the skin, but firmly enough to bring severe distress to Mr. Gash, who was not an animal lover. (He regarded the 911 tape of the testicle-chomping chow as one of the most harrowing in his extensive collection.)