“Hi,” said Janie. She placed her magazine down on her page. Ernie stepped out of the doorway, and scratched at his neck. Sunlight made the hair there glow like copper.
“You hold still now, Janie,” he said.
Janie did like she was told — but it puzzled her. Ernie would only say that, in the way he just said it, when she got to one of her spells and was set to do herself some harm.
“I’m just readin’,” said Janie. She stood and held up her magazine, cover-out, to prove it.
“Hold still.” Ernie was born with sad eyes. They drooped at the corners like he was going to cry. And his mouth wasn’t happy either, not as a rule. Janie would smile and frown and cry and yell depending on how she felt, but Ernie only ever looked sad. Janie thought sometimes that Ernie’s face muscles just didn’t work.
“You upset, Ernie?” Janie couldn’t read it from his face, but he was moving funny. His shoulders were bent, and his hands hung from them like hooks on the end of a couple of chains. He was looking right at her.
“Don’t move,” he said.
Then it came to her. Janie put her hand up to her mouth, made a fist and gasped. “You — you see a wasp, don’t you?”
Ernie didn’t answer — just kept coming.
Janie stood still. Jeez Louise, a wasp! Janie’d been stung last summer, out behind Ernie’s shed, and oh! How it’d set her howling! There’d been a whole nest of them, and when she touched it wrong they’d stung her seven times, then spit poison into the sting-holes that made them hurt like the Devil, then stung her some more when she got mad and started whacking at the nest with her shovel. She’d learned her lesson about wasps that day — Ernie’d explained it to her: “Stand still when there’s a wasp around. Stand still, an’ if it gets near you, let it get a sniff and go on its way. It’s more ascared of you than you are of it.”
Janie didn’t think that was possible. But she sure could stand still, scared as she was. She shut her eyes tight and clutched her story magazine to her chest. “Oh, Ernie, get it, get it, get it.”
“I’m sorry, Janie,” he said. “I shouldn’t have eaten it. I was just so hungry, Janie, so hungry. Mr. Swayze said it’d be a good thing, but now it’s in me.”
What’s all that got to do with wasps? she wondered for just a second, before she realized what was what.
He hit her in the stomach first, and she took that hit hard. Usually when Ernie hit her, she’d done something to deserve it, so she’d know it was coming and could prepare herself. But what’d she done? Read a story magazine? She hadn’t broken nothing, hadn’t swore or soiled herself or embarrassed Ernie in the grocery.
Janie bent forward, and as she did her hands came up. The story magazine ripped apart and the pages scattered around the porch-room. It felt like her innards had tore loose inside and she couldn’t even breathe it hurt so bad. She fell on her knees and bit down on her lip.
Ernie cuffed her in the ear. She fell sideways, and her elbow hit the floor first, and that sent a juicy kind of pain up through her shoulder so strong she thought her heart would blow up from it. She put out her hand and managed to hold herself upright, but only barely and not for long.
Because next Ernie kicked that arm out from under her. He was wearing his big work boots, and they added weight enough to the kick that she fell completely.
She rolled onto her back. She was wearing boots too — not as big as Ernie’s, but high and black and plenty hard in the heel — and though she knew better, she used them to kick up at her husband. She caught him in the knee, and it wasn’t the right angle to knock him down, but it sure must’ve hurt. Because he yelled something fierce then — louder even than when he’d chopped near-through his pinkie finger with the wood-axe that time, mad enough to put a bit of fear in her.
He jumped back on one foot, and clutched at the other one with both hands and hopped around some. Janie finally sucked in some air, which was good because her eyes were starting to go all speckly for lack of it, and she started to get up.
She was up on one knee when Ernie let go of his knee and stopped hollering. His foot dropped to the floor with a thump, and his hands fell back to his sides again. Janie put her other foot beneath her and stood up. Hers and Ernie’s eyes met, and Janie thought again about the wasp rule.
Should have done like I was told, she thought, fear still working at her middle like a little gnawing mouse. Should have kept still.
Let him get his sniff.
Because sad-eyed Ernie didn’t look sad any more. His eyes had lost their droop, and his mouth had managed to turn itself up at the corners, opening a little more than usual in the middle. She’d seen him smile once or twice at least in their twenty years together, but Janie didn’t remember her husband having so many teeth.
He jumped at her.
He came so fast she might as well have had her eyes closed. One second he was standing there grinning, showing off those teeth — the next, he was on top of her, and she was back on the floor. He punched and punched. Lying now on the floor with the sky turning black before her eyes, Janie remembered him hitting her in the stomach, in the ribs, a bad hit to her neck, and then, when she put her wrist up to block him, he bit—
And that was all.
“Ow,” muttered Janie. She brought her hand up to her head, touched it to a crusted-over gash above her ear, and took it away again. She didn’t remember getting that one. Must’ve happened after the neck punch and the bite; in that whole time Janie couldn’t remember when the sky had gone from blue to black.
Janie put the hand underneath her, and pushed herself upright. She was scared that she wouldn’t be able to stand up, and she was a bit dizzy at first. But she shut her eyes and counted to three, and when she opened them again she felt better. She got to her feet and looked around her.
The pages from the story magazine she’d ripped were still on the floor. Some of them had blood on them. There was a lot of blood on the floor where her head had been. The front door from the porch was closed. The floor lamp by the big window had fallen over. When Janie went to pick it up, she looked out and saw that the waves were so big they washed clear over the top of the dock. There was no boat at the dock. So Ernie was gone.
Janie looked at the floor where her head had been, and although she knew it would hurt, she touched the cut over her ear. The cut was shaped like a crescent, and had scabbed over it felt like. Janie knew better than to pick at it. She looked outside again.
Mr. Swayze’s island wasn’t very big — it didn’t have room on it for more than his lodge, a shed for the gas generator and one dock for a motorboat. That was all Mr. Swayze needed, though. He liked to come out here to write his stories these days, and like he told them both when he gave them the keys last month, too much room is distracting.
Ernie was gone. He had given her a beating for no good reason and now he was gone. It didn’t figure.
Somewhere outside, something fell over with a clang and a bong. It was probably a drum, one of the open ones that didn’t seem to do nothing but collect rainwater by the side of the lodge. When she had met Mr. Swayze and they learned that he was a writer of scary stories, Ernie had said, “I guess you want a horror story, can’t find nothing scarier than that acid rain. Kill a whole lake full of fish with just a drop. There’s your horror story.”
“That’s pretty scary all right,” Mr. Swayze had agreed. “I’ll have to put it in my notebook.”
Maybe the rainwater gave Mr. Swayze ideas for his acid rain story. Well, now it had fallen down and was spilt out everywhere and no good to nobody. Janie opened the front door and stepped outside.