Hang Man

Jane knew many things could be lost, and there were many ways to lose them. For one, Grandpa had lost his finger to a lawnmower. Whenever Mama launched into the story of how Mrs. Donovan next-door lost her husband, she always used the phrase, “Right before Jane was born,” to place the tragedy in time, a tactic that never failed to make Jane feel, in part, responsible. Once, Jane overheard fatherless Tim Donovan tell his twin, Jim, as they worked under a battered Buick with only the bottom halves of their legs sticking out, about losing virginity. Jane thought her ten years made her pretty smart, but how the Donovan twins and their ugly laughter connected with the Blessed Virgin Mary flat-out stumped her.

She let the soft grass muffle her footsteps until she safely reached the back of Donovan’s garage. Then she sat and leaned against the wall, feeling the concrete warm and gritty even through her shirt. Tim and Jim worked on the other side of the garage wall, scuffing back and forth in black boots that had silver tips and heel plates. Even in the summer heat they’d be wearing coveralls that were the color of cigarette tobacco. She’d watched them often enough from her bedroom window.

Tim and Jim were teenage twins who reminded her of Bart and Brett on the Maverick reruns. One had blond-brown hair and made jokes; the other, dark and handsome, always got the ladies.

The Donovan twins had dropped out of school, so their waking and sleeping hours didn’t match up with the rest of the neighborhood’s. Jane could lie awake in bed well past midnight and catch the sound of metal tools clunking concrete from next door.

That was Tim dropping a wrench, she thought, and her stomach tingled as if the tool’s cold metal had touched her own bare skin.

One of the Donovan twins sang and spelled out a lady’s name with the radio. “L-O-L-A, Lola, L-O-L-A, Lola …. I may be dumb but I don’t understand, why she walks like a woman and talks like man…”

“Jeanie Sheeter!” the other one exclaimed.

“No. She talks and walks like a man.”

“She looks like a horse.”

“She rides like a horse.”

“Shit. That girl’s got a face like a horse, and she’ll rock you like you’re on one.”

“She’ll rock anything in pants.”

“You have her?”

“Shit, yeah. Whenever I want. Even when I don’t want.”

“Ah, fuck her.”

One twin burst out. “Ha! I did.”

His brother laughed. “Me, too.”

Jane snuck around to the garage door, but stayed hidden from the twins. She rubbed at the marks on her legs from where she’d been sitting still in the grass, listening. She’d heard the word “fuck” before. Someone had scrawled it in black magic marker on the back exit door of the school bus. Now the door read “Fucking Exit,” which sent the older boys on the bus laughing whenever they read it out loud, which was at least once a day. She liked the way the two hard consonants stopped in the back of her throat, ending the word even faster than she’d expected.

Fuck her, fuck me, fuck you. Fucking A. Fuck that shit. She didn’t know what any of it meant, only that she liked hearing it tumble out of the Donovan boys’ mouths.

Metal hit concrete again. Tim swore, so he must have dropped a tool. From where she stood, Jane could only see half inside the garage. The room was crowded with tools, belts, hoses, and shiny car pieces, all attached to the peg board that stretched the full length of the garage wall. Tim’s body was bent over, his head inside the car’s front. He shifted his weight, leaning full on one leg, then the other, while he tried to get closer to the grimy insides of the engine. Jim sat behind the car's wheel and gunned the motor when he was ordered to.

“The fucking timing’s still off,” Tim cussed. His voice was muffled by the metal that surrounded him.

Jim yelled above the radio and the whining motor. “You want me to gun it again?” He sat half in the car, with the driver’s door open, his left leg still on the ground. He might begin any minute to push it across the garage floor like Fred Flintstone. Jim punched the gas pedal until the motor screamed.

“Will you cut that shit?” Tim’s face appeared from under the hood, and he sliced his throat with his finger. He’d begun to let his beard grow so everything under his bottom lip was shadowed.

Nothing but the stutter of “My-my-my gen-gen-eration…” through the garage.

Jim got out of the car and jerked his head to swing back his long, dirty, blond-brown hair. It hung straight to his shoulders. “Sorry, man. I couldn’t hear you.”

“Yeah, right.”

The twins argued, both their heads now under the hood. The car door still yawned open. Slick black upholstery covered the inside. Stuffing puffed up through the punctured armrest. Jane crept into the garage, taking care to step over the oil spots, to the wrench that Tim had dropped She weighed the tool in her palm and then slipped it lengthwise inside her middi blouse. It hung there above the elastic, under her nipples. That was how an underwire bra might feel, with the “underwire” first cold, and then warming up against her skin. She could hear Mama’s voice inside her head: You won’t need a bra for years, honey.

Since the Mustang’s open door blocked the twin’s view of anything behind the car, as long as she kept low to the ground she’d escape. At the garage’s edge she took the tool from under her shirt. Her body had warmed the metal. She brought the end that looked like the enlarged eye of a needle up to her own eye. Its metal circled her brow, rounded her cheekbone, then followed the hollow alongside her nose. She closed her other eye and viewed the world through the end of a ratchet wrench. All seemed miniaturized and far away.

“What are you doing with that?”

Her stomach muscles twisted tight. Tim had snuck up behind her. She imagined the page in her Girl Scout manual picturing the different kinds of knots to tie, wondered which felt most like the one in her stomach.

Tim grabbed the wrench away from her as Jim’s face appeared above the Mustang’s brake light. He wiped grease from his hands onto a rag of old underwear. Fruit of the Loom. “Who’s the rug rat?” Jim tossed the underwear her way.

“It’s that kid from next door.”

“Well, what’s she doing in our garage?”

“Don’t know,” Tim said. “But it’s private property. She’s trespassing.” He sounded like a policeman. “We prosecute trespassers, don’t we, Jimbo?” Tim said this and shook his head, as if he would be forced to do something he’d rather not. She’d left them no choice. “We’re going to have to teach her a lesson, don’t you think?”

Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.

Tim grabbed her, held her with his arms looped around her waist so she looked like she was swimming through the air as he walked away with her. Just how Fern had carried Wilbur in Charlotte’s Web once he’d grown into a big pig. Jim shouldered a coil of rope from off the garage wall and followed.

They would tie her up and do unspeakable things to her. Mama had warned her about strange men who might try to tempt her into their cars with promises of candy or a ride or the line, “Your Mom sent me to pick you up.” Accept under no circumstances. “They’ll tie you up and do unspeakable things to you,” Mama said. Now here they were, her own next door neighbors, about to tie and gag her. Tim’s grimy hands clasped across her bare midriff.

“Got to teach her she just can’t walk in and take our tools.” Jim sounded like they had right on their side. She had no business there, no business at all. Now she’d get the business, whatever it was. She could hardly wait.

Down one hill and up another, across the backyards, they struggled until the garage was no longer in sight, and the second floor of her own house seemed to grow right out of one of the closer hills. Tim adjusted his grip a couple times, leaving greasy residue in slashes (his fingerprints!) on her bare belly. They stopped at an old sycamore tree that would not grow leaves.

“Here’s as good a place as any.” Tim dropped her. “It’s far enough.”

She didn’t run. She hugged her stomach. Tim’s long finger marks, red and in a line, had rubbed her tan off her skin. Jim cast the rope over the lowest branch, still far above Jane’s head, even if she’d been standing.

Tim took her wrists and held them together in one hand. “Going to teach you a lesson, rug rat.” He jiggled her wrists with every word.

Then he picked her up, still holding her wrists so she couldn’t grab and pull his hair. Jim tied the knots. When Tim let her go, she would dangle by her arms from the tree. Her feet would flail and touch nothing.

“First your shoulders will give out,” he teased. “While the rope burns and cuts into your skin. And your body will hang and sweat in the sun until the buzzards fly down to rip out your heart and peck out your eyes.”

He didn’t release her completely, just enough so her arms pulled. The rope began to rub at her skin. Her arms tingled. Blood couldn’t travel uphill.

“You can’t go taking other people’s shit.”

I know that, she thought. The way her arms were stretched over her head made her whole body lengthen, as if she were growing right out of her clothes.

“Especially if it’s mine,” Tim added. He was her favorite, the one who looked like Brett Maverick needing a shave.

Jane’s legs dangled. The seat of her shorts pressed deeper into her crotch.

“Should we leave her here?” Jim said.

Tim swayed her back and forth, supporting most of her weight. His whiskers brushed against her thigh. If the branch was a little bit lower she could have sat on his shoulder.

She imagined St. Catherine of Alexandria tacked on her wheel, an instrument of torture she thanked God for. Saints were like that. The more suffering, the better. All for the glory of God. All in a day’s work. Like the circus girl pinned to the felt backdrop, arms raised above her head, while the ringmaster threw daggers all around her body. Danger was her life. Something Jane needed to learn. She’d heard Daddy tell Mama, “You’ve got to roll with the punches, Annie.” Good advice for this moment as she hung from the tree. She’d do whatever they asked.

Tim ducked and put his head between her legs to support her. Her calves hung down either side of his chest. His whiskers scratched the insides of her thighs. His nose touched the skin at her shorts’ hem. He took in deep breaths through his nose, then moved his head left to right again and again so his neck backed up into her crotch. She thought she would pee in her pants. It was wonderful except for her arms held high in the rope. She felt as if she were riding a horse. She wanted to lean forward and bring her knees together, but of course she couldn’t. She could only sit on Tim’s shoulders and rock with him slightly. She couldn’t let him know she liked this.

Her panties had ridden up into the crack between her legs, and they were wet.

“Hey, Jim, check this,” Tim said.

Jim had stretched himself out on the ground under the tree, knotting and untying the extra length of rope while he waited for a signal that they were done. He looked up, but his gaze skimmed Tim and settled on two people coming out of the woods.

“Steverino,” he called. “Amigo, what you doing out here?”

Steve and Maggie walked towards them.

Tim ducked and unwound himself from Jane’s legs, but he still supported her weight with one large palm underneath her butt.

“You guys high, or what?” Tim half chuckled.

“Nah,” Steve said.

Jane saw his arm loop around Maggie’s waist and sneak under her untucked tank top. Their uneven walking made them bump hips every other step. Their faces were flushed. Steve’s jeans were only half-zipped shut and much of Maggie’s hair had escaped her long braid so it clouded around her head full of static electricity. She looked like she just woke up.

“Man, you guys look whipped,” Jim said.

Steve tossed back his hair with a flick of his empty hand. “What are you guys doing?”

Jim burst out with a laugh. “Playing hang-man.” He fell into a giggling fit.

“Caught her sniffing around in the garage,” Tim said. “She took one of our tools. So we’re teaching her a lesson.” He shook Jane’s legs. “See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil, steal no evil. Comprehende?” He let her go.

Jane struggled with the rope, with her whole, long summer. Her arms were fiery from shoulders to wrists. Her mouth opened and screamed.

Maggie rushed forward and lifted her up. “You guys are jerks, you know that?”

Tim looked to Jim. They shrugged with their shoulders and their eyes.

Tim said, “Cut her loose.”

Steve took out his pocketknife and sawed through the rope until she dropped into Maggie’s arms.

“Are you all right?” Maggie put her face close. Her eyes were red, maybe from looking at the sun for too long. Her breath smelled like Bazooka bubble gum.

“I’m okay.” It was the first time Jane had spoken all afternoon, though her throat felt like she’d been screaming for hours.

Maggie sat her on the ground, and folded her own legs Indian-style next to her. Tim and Jim had already taken off, back up towards the garage. The big show was over. Maggie rubbed Jane’s wrists where the ropes had been, but the skin there skin hurt, and Maggie’s touching made it worse.

Steve said, “You sure you’re okay? Did they hurt you at all?”

He sounded like Eliot Ness, as if he’d turn his own brothers in if they’d broken the law.

“They didn’t.” She wouldn’t look him in the eye.

Steve shrugged. “Okay then.” He scooped his arm towards Maggie. “Come on.”

They left her alone.

She sat for a long time, staring at the sun through the bare sycamore limbs. She stared until her eyes burned as much as her throat and her skin did. She was thirsty and she wanted a bath.

They’d know if she’d talked, if she bragged, or worse, turned them in. The longer she held the story back, it was less likely that truth would show up. The hanging, as she thought of it, would close over like a cut beginning to heal. In a few days, she’d wonder if it really happened or if she only imagined it, wished it.

That’s what Tim would say. “You wished for it didn’t you?”

She felt her wrist bones rattle in his grip. Maybe next time, if she pestered them long enough, they’d whisk her away in the back seat of the hot rod, drive her to the brink of someplace crazy. Already she could feel the Mustang’s seat leather, hot from the enclosed summer heat, searing the skin on the backs of her legs.