It was full-fledged summer again with sticky mornings and evenings, each afternoon interrupted by the kind of thunderstorm that dumped hail on rooftops and cars, cracking windshields; the kind of storm with scared children whose parents comforted them, “oh, that’s just the sound of God’s angels bowling in heaven.” For a few stupid years their children believe them, until they simultaneously figure out that heaven isn’t a place, that angels don’t bowl, and God doesn’t exist.
It was the kind storm that brought the horses in from their pastures - lightening could kill, you know.
It was thundering but most of the sky was still blue. The barn doors were open and in less than fifteen minutes her mom would be leading two horses at a time into their stalls. But right now, from where she stood she could look beyond his broad shoulder and see her mother trotting in circles around a practice ring through the window, its wooden cross creating four small glass panes like a square halo around his head.
“So, whad’ya say? It’d be between you and me, no one would have ta know. In fact, you won’t be able to tell no one where you get the money. You hear?” he tucked his chin when he spoke to her, like she was one of his own three daughters. She didn’t answer and he took a step closer, the heel of his boot scraping across the stone floor; she took a step back. He smiled, just enough to make her feel like a child, and his bribing teeth were in her face, cigarette-stained and angled all wrong. "Look, you do somethin for me, I do somethin for you. It’s business. You oughta know all bout that. Yer dad’s a business man, ain’t he?”
She could barely understand what he asked of her, hearing only the thunder outside. “Just a bunch of angels,” she told herself, “bowling, bowling, bowling.”
“I thought you were married,” she finally spoke to him.
“Well… sort of.”
“I can’t accept your money.”
“You’ll do it for free?” his smile widened wickedly and he walked around her as if she were already guilty.
He never would have put her older sister here. Broad faced, she would have killed him on the spot.
But Caitlin blushes, gets embarrassed, goes weak in the legs. She shivers in ninety degree heat. The edge of her brow glistens with sweat and traps blonde fly-aways. Inside she is raging, she is more a killer than he, and if she knew how to let the monster out, she would have him ravished and dead at her feet.
“Where do you get off thinking you have the right to talk to me this way!?” She wants to say. She wants to grab the iron shovel behind her, the one used to pick up horse shit and smash him in the face with the rage of a hundred raped women. She wants him face down, she wants him to smell the dust on the cobblestone floor and choke on it when he tries to breathe between blows. She wants to keep hitting his back with the shovel, over and over, until his lungs burst and he slowly suffocates. That’s how it feels, suffocating, and she wants him to feel it too.
“That’s not what I meant,” she said.
“What if I ‘ncrease your worth? Make it five.”
“I can’t…”
“Do you know you have beautiful skin?” he reached out to touch her, his wide index finger stained with dirt stroked her earlobe and she could feel the callused, chipping skin on his hand. Straight ahead, her mother is still riding her horse outside, and the thunder is increasing around them. “Bowling, bowling, bowling,” she tells herself.
He plucked the strap of her green tank top and snapped back to her sticky skin. He stepped back. He looked down at her, his face wrinkled and mean. His brow was drawn together tight, his eyes - a father’s pair, a husband’s pair, brown like the color of the manure she stood in. She tried to glare back but her muscles wouldn’t work. “I thought you were open-minded,” he said, “I thought you were an artist.”
She wanted to be. She wanted to be open. She wanted to create. She wanted to be. “I am.”
“No. You’re just as boring as ev’ry one else here.”
“I have made enough mistakes.”
He thrusts his palm against the wall beside her and yells in her ear, “You’re young! You’re suppos’ t’ be makin mistakes.” His breath, hot and sticking to her exits his mouth in puffs, with emphasized pronunciation. “If you don’t take this offer, one day you’re gonna look back and see I’m right. You will wish you accepted my offer.”
He stepped back and she exhaled. “Then I guess I’ll just have regrets.”
“Don’t regret me,” he said, embarrassing her again. She wanted to cover herself. She wanted to protect her skin from his touch. She wanted him to keep his hands to himself.
But she doesn’t, and he won’t.
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