Give Me Your Heart: Tales of Mystery and Suspense Page 19

  Had to be past 11 P.M. The moon continued to rise in the sky above Mount Hammer. She’d gotten off work at the boathouse at 6 P.M. In the Jeep she’d called home on her cell phone. Left a message for her mother: she’d run into friends from school, wouldn’t be home until late.

  Please don’t wait up for me, Mom. Makes me nervous, okay?

  The boy in the Jeep didn’t know Miriam’s brothers, hadn’t known Miriam’s father. Orlander meant nothing to him. Maybe to his father, who owned one of the new A-frames on East Shore Drive, Orlander meant something. In the Adirondacks there were local residents and there were property owners from downstate. If you were a local male, you worked for the downstate property owners: carpentry, roofing, plumbing, hauling away trash. You paved driveways, you exterminated vermin. You fenced off property to keep out deer hunters like yourself. The expensive new lakeside houses were always in need of upgrading: redwood decks, children’s rooms, saunas, tennis courts. Les Orlander had been a roofer. His brother-in-law Harvey Schuller siphoned out waste from buried septic tanks and dug new septic fields. YOUR SHIT SMELLS SWEET TO ME was a joke bumper sticker Miriam’s father had had printed up, but Harvey kept it displayed in his office, not on his truck. If you were a local female, you might work inside the summer residents’ houses: cooking, caring for children, cleaning. You served at their parties. You picked up after their drunken houseguests. Uncomplaining, you wore rubber gloves to retrieve from a stopped-up toilet a wadded Kotex or baby diaper someone had tried to flush away. You wore a nylon uniform. You smiled and hoped for a generous tip. You learned not to stack dirty dishes from the dinner table but to remove each plate ceremoniously, murmuring Thank you! as you took the plate away, Thank you! you murmured as you served dessert and poured wine into glasses. Thank you! mopping up spilled wine, on your hands and knees picking up shattered glass. Your employers called you by your first name and urged you to call them by their first names, but you never did. Ethel laughed to show she thought it was funny, such bullshit. Not that she was a bitter woman, for truly Ethel was not.

  Beggars can’t be choosers, right?

  Miriam’s mother thought this was an optimistic attitude.

  Three years of his five-to-seven-year sentence for assault Miriam’s father served at Ogdensburg men’s facility, and during those years of shame her mother worked for summer residents and for a Tupper Lake caterer. Often Ethel stayed overnight at Tupper Lake, twenty miles away. It began to be said in Star Lake that she met men there, at the resort hotels. She took “gifts” from them. At this time Miriam was in eighth grade and deeply mortified by both her parents. Her father she loved and missed so badly, it was like part of her heart was locked away in the prison. Her mother she’d used to love but was beginning now to hate. Wish! Wish to God something would happen to her. When Miriam’s oldest brother, Gideon, confronted their mother one day, Ethel shouted at him that her life was her own, not her damn children’s. Her “money life” and her “sex life” she said were her own business, not some damn loser inmate’s who’d let his family down. Shocked then by the fury of the words roiling from her, Ethel had tried to laugh, saying it was a joke, some kind of joke, anyway isn’t everything some kind of joke, the way life turns out? But Gideon would never forgive her.

  Quit roofing, moved to Watertown and impregnated a woman he never married, and a few months later enlisted in the U.S. Marines and got sent to Iraq.

  Even when their father was paroled and returned to Star Lake to live, Gideon avoided the family. Every time Miriam came home she steeled herself for news of him: he’d been killed in that terrible place. Or for the sight of Ethel, disheveled, lying on her bed in the waning hours of the afternoon.

  I wish. Why don’t you. Why, when you’re so unhappy!

  “Looking lost, Miriam? Where’s your rich boyfriend?”

  Miriam was a girl to be teased. A hot blush rising into her face. Her eyes were warm glistening brown with something shrinking and mocking in the droop of the eyelids. Her hair was streaked blond-brown, the commonest color. Before meeting Kevin after work she’d hurriedly brushed out her hair, pursed her lips, applying dark red lipstick to make her appear older, sexier. Now it was hours later and the lipstick was eaten off and her hair was in her face and so many guys were looking at her, laughing at her, all she could do was shake her head, blushing and embarrassed.

  Oz Newell, who’d been Gideon’s closest high school friend, was calling down the table: “What’d he do, the fucker, take a leak and fall in? Want me to break his head?”

  Nervously Miriam laughed, shaking her head. She was scared of something like this. Older guys relating to her like she was their kid sister, wanting to protect her, and somebody getting hurt.

  Her brothers had gotten into fights at places like the Star Lake Inn. Her father.

  Star Lake Resident Pleads Guilty, Assault

  Reduced Charges Lead to 5–7 Years at Ogdensburg

  The kind of work men did here in the Adirondacks, a belligerent attitude was natural. Drunk Friday night was natural. It was sheer hell to take orders from foremen, bosses. Rich men from downstate, like Kevin’s father. “Manual laborer.” By age forty-five you’d be limping. By age fifty your back was shot. Natural to want to break some fucker’s head. Miriam thought, I had fists like theirs, I’d feel the same way.

  Must’ve been Miriam had wandered past their table looking lost. Looking like a girl who’s been dumped by her boyfriend, trying not to cry. Also she’s underage. Also she’s never had sex. Also she’s been feeling sick, gagging in the restroom in one of the smelly toilet stalls, but nothing came up. Whatever he’d given her: Baby, you need loosening up. In the Jeep, a joint they shared that made her cough, choke, giggle insanely. At the Star Lake Inn, vodka and cranberry juice for Miriam. She was confused about where Kevin had gone, exactly where they’d been sitting, couldn’t find the table, someone else had taken the table, but maybe Kevin was inside at the bar, maybe Kevin was looking for her? Cigarette smoke made her eyes sting and blur, she couldn’t see. Somebody grabbed at her arm, grinning faces lurched at her: “Miriam? Miriam Orlander? What’re you doing here?”

  So she was sitting with them. Practically on Brandon McGraw’s lap. Like she was their little-girl mascot. Maybe because she wasn’t beautiful. She was fleshy, warm-skinned, but not beautiful. These were older guys in their twenties who’d gone to school with her brothers or who’d worked with them. One or two of them might’ve worked with Miriam’s father. And one or two of them with Miriam’s uncle Harvey Schuller. Where their girlfriends and wives were, Miriam wondered. When she asked, they told her it was boys’ night out. She figured they’d come to the Star Lake Inn immediately after work to begin drinking. In summers you worked late, until 7 P.M. Miriam’s father and brothers worked even later. The table was strewn with dirty plates, empty bottles. The remains of hamburgers, deep-fried shrimp, pizza crusts. Onion rings, coleslaw, ketchup. A grease sheen on the Formica surface. The table was outdoors, above the lake; still the air was heavy with smoke from their cigarettes. They were drinking beer, ale, whiskey. They were drunk, high, stoned. Miriam saw the red-rimmed eyes she knew to associate with drugs: speed, crystal meth. These guys weren’t into smoking dope like the kids she knew. Beyond wanting to feel mellowed out and restful, like they could love mankind. She shivered to hear: raw male laughter like the braying of coyotes. Their young faces were reddened, coarse, and prematurely lined from outdoor work. Their shoulders, necks, upper arms were thick with muscle. Their hair was buzzcut short or straggling past their collars. Martin had worn his straggly hair tied back in a kind of pigtail. The loggers and tree trimmers, who worked with chain saws, were likely to be scarred or missing fingers. If Miriam got drunker/sillier, she’d count how many fingers were missing from the table. Sex energy lifted from the men’s heated skins, frank as sweat. Most girls would be uneasy in the company of so many men, but not Miriam Orlander, who’d grown up in a household with three older brothers she’d adored.

&nb
sp; Well, mostly. Mostly she’d adored them.

  And her father, Les Orlander, she’d adored.

  “Drown the fucker in the lake, who’d know? His rich daddy can drag the lake for his corpse.”

  This was Hay Brouwet. The subject seemed still to be whoever it was who’d brought Miriam to the Star Lake Inn, then abandoned her.

  “What d’you say, Miriam? Pick out which one he is.”

  Quickly Miriam said, “He isn’t here now. I don’t see him.”

  Hay cupped his hand to his ear, not hearing. The rock music was so loud. The braying at the table so loud. Miriam caught her breath, seeing the smooth shiny stub of Hay’s right forefinger. Hay was a logger, must’ve had a chain-saw accident. Miriam felt faint imagining having to kiss that stub. Suck that stub in her mouth. If he asks me to, I will.

  In the Jeep, in the parking lot, Kevin had made some joke about Miriam sucking him off; Miriam pretended not to hear. In the tussle she’d lost her sandals. He hadn’t meant to hurt her, she was sure. Hey, baby, I’m sorry—just joking.

  Except Hay was married, wasn’t he? One of the older guys at the table, had to be thirty. Seeing Miriam’s eyes on him, winking.

  “You see the asshole, let me know, okay?”

  It was pretty clear Hay was high on something. That mean-happy red-eye-glittering look, and he’d sweated through his shirt.

  Crystal meth. Each of Miriam’s brothers had instructed her individually never to try it. Not ever! Miriam was scared but intrigued. She knew that Stan, who was twenty-three, had had something to do with a methamphetamine lab—a cook-shop, it was called—but he’d never gotten caught, and now he lived up in Keene. Ice was for older guys, not a fifteen-year-old girl whose hope was to go to nursing school at Plattsburgh State. An immediate high, wired straight to the brain. Her brother Martin was back in rehab at Watertown. Fries your brain like nothing else. Makes you shiny and hard. Why’s that bad! What’s better you got to offer!

  Ethel had slapped him; he’d been yelling and laughing and stomping in the house so hard the windowpanes shook like a army bomber from Fort Drum was passing too low over the roof. Martin had hardly felt the blow, only brushed Ethel away like you’d brush away flies.

  A few minutes later they heard him outside. A noise of breaking glass.

  “Miriam, what the hell? You crying?”

  It was the smoke. Making her eyes water. Her eyeballs burned in their sockets. She was annoyed, shaking her head, no, why’d she be crying? She was having a great time.

  Her left wrist where Kevin had grabbed and twisted was reddened in overlapping welts. Half consciously she was touching the skin, caressing.

  “He do that? Your wrist?”

  “No.”

  Brandon McGraw’s blood-yellow eyes were peering at Miriam’s wrist. His bristly eyebrows nearly met over the bridge of his nose, which was large, red-flushed, with deep, stretched-looking nostrils.

  A look of shocked tenderness in Brandon’s face so you’d almost want to laugh. Like the look she’d seen once on her father’s face as he squatted in the driveway to stare at something small, wriggling, dying, a fledgling robin blown out of its nest.

  “Like hell, Miriam. This looks like a guy’s finger marks.”

  “Really, no. I’m just clumsy.”

  Miriam drew her arm away. Shrank both arms against her chest.

  How she’d got there she didn’t know. Six miles from home. Too far to walk in the dark. Missing her shoes. She was drunk, she’d been sweating so. Miriam! I’ve been sick with worry.

  She hated Ethel. Couldn’t bear to see Ethel.

  Alone. The two of them. In the house on Salt Isle Road. Ethel, Miriam. Where there’d been six people, now reduced to two.

  These guys felt sorry for her, Miriam knew. Seeing her, they were thinking Orlander: bad luck.

  “He didn’t hurt me. I don’t care about him. See, I’m having a great time. I want to dance.”

  Dance! Miriam wanted to dance! Stumbling and almost falling. The floor tilted beneath her like the deck was a boat. Were they on a cruise boat, on the lake? Choppy waves?

  Through the speakers blared heavy metal rock. Maybe you could dance to it. Was anybody dancing? Miriam wasn’t the girl this was happening to. Miriam wasn’t the type. How she’d got here to the Star Lake Inn, which was a biker hangout on the marshy side of the lake, she didn’t know. Underage but looking eighteen at least. No one asked her for ID. The kind of place the bartenders stayed inside and there were no waiters. You pushed your way in, got drinks from the bar, pushed your way back out onto the deck. Lights on tall poles. Insects swirling around the lights like demented thoughts. Miriam’s brothers had come here. She’d been eating cold french fries from one of the greasy plates. Hadn’t eaten since lunchtime. None of this was remotely like Miriam Orlander. At the boathouse, she was the girl who blushed easily. The girl who didn’t flirt with men. Had not wanted to waitress, so she worked in the store, where she was the youngest salesclerk and got stuck with the hardest work, like unpacking the merchandise, stocking the shelves. What embarrassed her was the female employee uniform she had to wear. Red T-shirt with white letters, au sable boathouse, straining against her breasts. Worse yet the white cord miniskirt trimmed in red. The miniskirt rode up her thighs. Sitting, she had to keep her knees pressed tightly together. Walking, she had to tug at the skirt, uncomfortably aware of her thighs rubbing together. Men stared. Some smiled openly. Miriam was a healthy girl: five feet six, one hundred thirty pounds. Ethel had crinkled her face at the uniform. Miriam! I don’t think this is a good idea. She’d wanted to come with Miriam to the boathouse to speak with Andy Mack, who’d hired Miriam and provided the uniform for his girl employees, but Miriam had screamed at her and run out of the house.

  Now Miriam was dancing. Wild and tossing her body like it’s impaled on a hook she’s got to wriggle, wriggle, wriggle to get free. Oz Newell was dancing with her, and for a while Hay Brouwet. For such burly muscled guys, they got winded fast. Miriam laughed at them. Miriam loved how the music poured like something molten into her veins. The beat was so fast her heart raced to keep up. Maybe it was ice he’d given her; maybe this was the ice rush, and she loved it. Breathing through her mouth, panting. Bare feet, kind of pudgy pale feet, toenails painted dark to match the sexy lipstick, she’s picking up splinters in the tender soles of her feet from the raw floorboards but doesn’t feel any pain. Not a glimmer of pain. No more pain! Maybe it doesn’t matter if she isn’t beautiful, the way Oz Newell is looking at her. His eyes on her breasts in the tight red T-shirt, his eyes on her soft rounded belly, her hips and thighs in the tight white miniskirt trimmed in red. Rivulets of sweat trickle down Oz’s sunburned face. Oz does construction work for Herkimer County. Oz had some kind of disagreement with Gideon; they didn’t part friends. Miriam is weak with sudden love for him. Laughs to think how surprised Oz would be if she slipped her bare arms around his neck and tongued his face, licked away the sweat droplets like tearor -six is twenty-five orsix. Ten years older than Miriam. Gideon’s age. Not a boy but a man. His hair is a blond buzzcut. Eyebrows and lashes so pale you almost can’t see them. Gray eyes like pinwheels, spinning.

  Hay Brouwet is back, and another guy, fattish and drunk-silly, grimy baseball cap on his head advertising watertown raceway. The dancing, if you can call it dancing, is getting out of control. Hay is shaking his shiny stub-finger in Miriam’s face, gyrating his hips like some stoned rock star, collides with an older man carrying beers, two beers in the stretched fingers of each hand, and the beers go flying, there’s a comical scene like something on TV, Miriam is helpless, laughing, panting, and breathless, and almost wets herself. There’s a feeling like fire: wildfire. The guys’ eyes on her, the heavy-metal vibrations thundering inside her head. Like, with a fire, the wind blows it in one direction and not another—it’s the difference between somebody’s property going up in walls of roaring flame and somebody else’s, only a few hundred feet away, untouched. There are controll
ed burns in the Adirondacks. You have to get permission from the county. And there are uncontrolled burns—lightning, campers’ fires, arson.

  Arson. There’s times you are so angry, so beaten down, you need to start a fire. Toss a match, evergreens dead and dried from acid rain, it’s like a fireball exploding. Miriam remembers one of her brothers saying this. Hey—just joking.

  Miriam’s father had been a volunteer fireman for Au Sable township. There’d been years of the excitement and dread of hearing the siren, a high-pitched wail from the firehouse a mile away, seeing Daddy roused to attention, hurriedly dressing if it was night, running out to his pickup. Often they’d smelled smoke, seen smoke rising above the tree line, heard sirens. Those years Miriam had taken for granted would go on forever. But after Ogdensburg, Les hadn’t rejoined the volunteers. Maybe there was a law against ex-convicts being volunteer firemen, Miriam hadn’t wanted to ask.

  Abruptly the deafening rock music stopped. For a moment Miriam didn’t know where she was. Her eyeballs were burning as if she’d been staring stupidly into a hot bright light. Inside her tight-fitting clothes she was slick with sweat like oil. Damn miniskirt had ridden up to practically her crotch. Like a child, Miriam wiped her damp face on her T-shirt. Somebody’s arms came down heavy on her shoulders, somebody stumbling against her, a big guy, soft fleshy belly, a smell of whiskey and heat pouring off his skin. Quick as a cat, Miriam disentangled herself and backed away. Ran barefoot to the edge of the deck, where, overlooking lapping water just below, it was quieter, smelling of the lake. Miriam recalled as if through a haze that she was at Star Lake: six miles from home. The way the moon was slanted in the sky, now east of Mount Hammer, it had to be late. Worried sick about you. You’re all I have.

  Star Lake was dark, glittering by moonlight. Said to be in the shape of a star, but up close you couldn’t see any shape to it, only glittering water and opaque wedges of shadow that were trees and, on the far shore, the east side, lights from the new houses, not visible from the shore road. Miriam had never been in any of these houses; she had no friends who lived in them. Mostly these were summer people who kept to themselves. Their houses were architect-designed A-frames, split-levels, replicas of old Adirondack log lodges. The last months of his life, Miriam’s father had worked for a roofing contractor on several of those houses. He’d been disbelieving, the prices people from downstate were paying. Like another world, he’d said. It’s another world now. He had not seemed especially grieving that day. Quiet and matter-of-fact, informing his daughter as if it were something she should know.