We circled that hole together, thinking the same thoughts, then parted.
After several minutes of contemplative silence, we addressed each other with our backs against opposite walls.
Ethan ran a hand through his hair. “You do good work.”
“Thanks. You too.”
“I’m sorry you didn’t want to come with me today. There’s some great rock formations about twenty miles from here. I figured we could do some climbing and have ourselves a little picnic on the summit.”
“That might have been fun,” I allowed.
“Yeah.” He kicked at the dust with the toe of one boot. “Would have been nice to have some fun. I don’t even remember what it’s like anymore.”
“Boo fucking hoo.”
“Yeah. I guess you know what it’s like.”
“And then some.”
He seemed to hoard his next question before letting it go, all in a rush. “I’m sorry, but I have to ask this. Did he ever fuck you?”
“Who?”
“The Bastard.”
Even then, it took me a second to figure out who he meant. “You mean, Daddy? Christ, no!”
“Did he ever make you blow him?”
If he didn’t stop this, I was going to break his neck right here and now. “Is that what she told you?”
He relaxed. “Don’t take it the wrong way or anything. I’m just saying, you never know. Not considering the kind of shit he used to do to her.”
“He never did anything to her but take what she dished out.”
“According to him.”
If he was trying to anger me, he was doing an awfully good job. “I don’t know what fucked-up stories she told you, but she’s lying. She was the bad one.”
“How do you know?” he countered. “Were you there?”
I thought of all the things Daddy had told me about her, from all the dreams she’d denied him, and all the petty betrayals she’d used to wound him, to all the words she’d used to castrate him. “What about you? Did you ever fuck the Bitch?”
He didn’t object to me calling her that. “She offered once. About four years ago. I was thirteen, and half out of my head from jerking off fourteen times a day. She was already working five nights a week at the Horny Jackal, putting away enough cash for my training, so helping me out too wouldn’t have meant all that much more. When I said I’d rather not, she didn’t push it. Instead she got one of her co-workers to pay me a visit every couple of weeks.”
“Ewww,” I said.
“It wasn’t too bad. But then she finally saved enough money to support us out here, and all that stopped.”
“What do you do now?”
“Nothing, I think those shots have done something to my balls. I don’t even think about it anymore.” He drew another line in the dirt. “You could just give up, you know. That’s what the rules say. Say you can’t beat me and we won’t have to do this. We can just go rock-climbing tomorrow instead of today.”
I shook my head. “I can’t do that to Daddy. Unless you want to give up instead?”
“Can’t do that,” he said. “Not all by myself. Not and miss the whole point of being born in the first place.”
“Yeah, well.” I shook my head, pushed myself away from the wall, and met him at the pool’s deepest point.
We clasped hands.
He said, “Nice meeting you, Jen.”
I said, “I’m gonna kill you, Ethan.”
Would you believe he looked hurt?
Why did he have to go ahead and make me feel shitty like that?
Daddy and I went back to the cabin so he could shave my head.
I can’t say I wasn’t bothered. I owed my hair a lot. For all too long, sitting in school among soft boys with flabby necks and skinny girls with toothpick wrists, all of whom indulged their pretend adolescent cruelties without assets enabling them to last thirty seconds against a genuine real-world enemy, I’d had to pretend that I didn’t hear the whispers. I heard them pointing out the crewcut and the enlarged jaw and my tree-trunk biceps and the nose flattened by a punch in the years before I’d learned to see an attack coming. Before Daddy relented and let me grow my hair long—always with the understanding that I’d have to cut it again for my match with Ethan—I’d heard them wonder just what the hell was I was supposed to be anyway. The long blonde hair helped, as if I wore it right it placed me within shouting distance of pretty. There’d even been a boy once, and sweaty gropings on the couch in his parent’s basement. It had been fun enough, though that had ended, painfully, the one time he put a hand on me without warning. Unfortunately, that incident happened on school property. Daddy had apologized and paid for the Emergency Room visit. I took the one-week suspension knowing that the lesson would not need to be taught again.
The hair was a loss. But I had always known I wouldn’t be wearing it long, around my brother. Long hair was dangerous. It could get in my eyes and blind me at a crucial moment. Maybe I’d have a chance to grow it back and maybe not.
Daddy sat me down on the bed, used a pair of scissors to cut my hair short, the electric shears to reduce what was left to stubble, and a straight razor with medicated shaving cream to make my scalp baby-smooth. By the time he was done the mattress was itchy from liberated blonde. Then, surprising me, he opened up the suitcase and showed me a big floppy white hat.
“For afterward,” he explained. “I think you’ll look pretty in it.”
My eyes welled. I hid it well, batting my eyes at him, in the manner of any southern belle.
By six we were still so far from sunset that the sky hadn’t even faded to a darker shade of blue. But more than half of the pool bottom was already in long shadow, the other half a surreal fresco of diamond-shapes cast by the fencing. Ethan and I had both consumed our last food and water and both taken our final opportunities for a civilized bathroom break. Daddy had given me my final instructions, which mostly consisted of strategies I already knew: to exhaust Ethan’s wind by keeping him on the move, to retreat to the shallow end whenever I needed a breather myself, to be careful around that gaping hole in the deep end and to lure him into it, if I could. I was kind enough to react to all of these suggestions as if they were new and exciting ideas.
When he was done he gave me yet another hug, told me that I was his special girl, and promised me that things would be different once this was over. He said I could have anything I wanted. He made the mistake of asking me to name the first thing I’d want for myself when we were done, and for the life of me I couldn’t think of anything. My life had never been about anything other than today and the idea of wanting something afterward was so ridiculous that it might have been spoken in another language entirely. When he pressed the point I couldn’t speak the first answer that came to mind, which was that chance to go rock-climbing with Ethan. That was just stupid. By definition, there’d be no Ethan. So I just said, “Maybe we’ll go shopping.”
He kissed me on the forehead and said, “Sure.”
By half past six, Ethan and I were stripped, greased, and in the process of being fitted with our respective hobbles.
Our parents had recognized, while Ethan and I were both still toddlers, that even with equal training he would probably still emerge with a substantial edge in brute strength. That appraisal had turned out to be an accurate one, but Daddy had pointed out that even Ethan wouldn’t be able to end the fight with a single punch, or crushing bear hug, if unable to use his arms. Mom had agreed to taking corrective measures on the single condition that I was prevented from fighting dirty, by which she meant the use of teeth or nails.