Page 17 of Something Has To Give

A big hand grabbed the scruff of Elsie’s coat, hauling her roughly to her feet. “Are you hurt?” Quint demanded.

Elsie had no idea she was shaking until Quint let go of her coat and she was left to just stand there on badly wobbling knees. She stared at the rifle in his hand and then up at him, and it took Quint asking a second time before she could even make the words make sense.

“Damn it, Elsie, are you hurt?” He grabbed her, feeling his way up and down her frozen body until she slapped at his hand.

“No,” she stammered, and his already angry face darkened like a thundercloud.

“Well, you damn sure ought to be! Get in the house!”

“I have to find Pita!”

“She was on the back porch! Get in the God damn house!” He caught her arm, spinning her sharply around and landing an earth-shattering whack to the seat of her snow-covered pants. The force made her hips jolt, her knees buckle and her icy bottom burst with the most unbelievable pain.

She couldn’t move fast enough after that, both the waist-deep ocean of snow and her own trembling legs worked to bog her down. There was no avoiding the two other swats he delivered to keep her moving and the one time she snapped around to tell him to knock it off, he quickly whipped off his belt and doubled it over in his hand. After that, Elsie slogged just as fast as she could for the house. The one time she fell, he grabbed her by the waist of her jeans and hauled her roughly back to her feet before giving her a push to get her moving again. Although he didn’t spank her, by the time she had staggered her way up the porch, her clothes were so heavy and wet and snow-encrusted, they feltas if they weighed a ton, and she was shivering so violently she couldn’t grit her teeth hard enough to keep them from rattling.

It was only through supreme effort that she didn’t burst into tears when she saw Nanny Pita on the front porch, where Quint had no doubt put her, surrounded by the other goats and chewing on the porch railing. She greeted Elsie with a tail waggle and a bleat and completely ignored the hard look Elsie shot her in return. His hand in the small of her back, Quint forced her to keep moving. When her fingers refused to coordinate enough to work the simple doorknob, he got it open for her and pushed her inside.

The sheer heat of the house enveloped her like an oven, at once both heavenly and suffocatingly hot. She couldn’t remember it being this hot when she’d left the house what…ten, fifteen minutes ago?...but now the heat seemed to be scalding at the back of her throat with every breath she took. It made her cough, and the racking force of that almost made her rubbery legs give out.

Shutting the door before the goats could follow them inside, Quint threw his belt on the couch and grabbed her jacket. “Shuck,” he ordered.

“W-w-what are y-you d-d-doing?” she gasped when he stripped it right off her.

“Saving your life, God dammit. Now, shuck!”

“My h-h-hands wo-won’t work.”

Swearing, obviously still angry, Quint stripped her shirt off over her head, dropping it on the floor next to her jacket. She barely had time to regret not wearing a bra when he grabbed for her pants. She almost fell when he jerked her around, her legs unable to keep up with how fast he seemed to want her to move.

“W-wait…” she stammered, but he already had the zipper down and then he was peeling the icy fabric down her bright red legs. Her whole body was the shade of a really bad sunburnand shiny with the wetness of the melting snow. When he got her boots off, a small stream of liquid came pouring out onto the floor. Her toes like her fingers were purple. When Quint grabbed her, all she could do was throw her arms around his neck. She yelped when her feet left the ground, but then he was rushing her down the hallway toward the bathroom, kicking open the door with his foot and depositing her in the tub with her underwear still on.

It was the only strip of modesty he allowed her, but to be fair, he wasn’t taking advantage of the situation to look at her. His movements were short and angry, his mouth was a hard flat line as he slapped the water on, grabbed the shower head off the wall and the next thing Elsie knew she was being boiled alive.

She screamed, throwing up her hands to ward off the burning water and jumped to get out of the tub. Quint caught her, refusing to let her pass no matter how desperately she thrashed and writhed and screamed.

“Stop!” she wailed, but he continued to douse her in the fiery spray.

Except that it wasn’t fiery. It wasn’t even hot enough to make steam. He hadn’t subjected her to that torture even one minute before parts of her—her stomach, her chest—began to register just how truly tepid the water was, and yet her hands and feet continue to scald. Only now, it wasn’t just burning. The shower head spray sent prickling, stabbing sensations cutting into her. It felt every bit as physical and real as if she’d thrust her hands and feet into bags of needles. How could she not be bleeding?

Exhausted by her all-too brief fight to escape, Elsie sagged against Quint and simply wept until, at last satisfied that he’d hurt her as much as he possibly could, he turned the water off. Shedding his now water-logged coat, he wrapped her in a thick towel and in brisk rubbing motions dried her off. Except that he didn’t stop at just drying her. He kept rubbing, scrubbingpurposefully down her arms and legs, aggressively rubbing at her feet, hands, chest and back before ending with her head and hair, and then starting all over again. By the time he deemed her done, she felt raw, both physically and emotionally.

Leaving her swaying on her feet in the tub, Quint left the bathroom. He returned a short few seconds later with a homemade quilt, which he slung over her shoulders before robbing her of her towel and then her still dripping panties.

“Step,” he said, drawing them down to her ankles.

She couldn’t do it without holding onto something. She chose the wall over his shoulders and stepped, one unsteady foot after the other. And then there they were, staring at one another, her swaddled like a baby in that quilt with her tears still wet on her red face and him, fully dressed and every bit as wet from hugging her throughout her fight with the shower. Worse, he was still angry. His eyes were bitter and hard with all the things he was trying not to say out loud. When he did finally speak, all he offered was a somber, “I’ll make some coffee.”

“I don’t want your coffee,” she muttered, more hurt by that anger than she had been by the shower.

Halfway out the door, Quint snapped around and came storming back to her. “Too damn bad, because you’re going to drink it anyway! Every damn drop!”

“Why are you mad at me?” She thought she was all cried out, but she couldn’t even get through that one small sentence before her voice broke. The next thing she knew, she was sobbing all over again. “How is this my fault? How was I supposed to know there was a mountain lion out there?”

“You think this is about the damn cat?!”

“Stop yelling at me!”

“I’m not yelling!” he thundered, his voice like cannon fire in the tiny confines of the bathroom. They stared at one another—her eyes huge and watery, his snapping furiously. He threw uphis hands, as if knowing he had to get distance between them, and then turned on his heel and stomped out. Except that a handful of steps later saw him marching right back into the bathroom again. “And you’re God damn right I’m mad,” he told her. “You haven’t got the sense God gave a cricket! What the hell were you thinking going out in that storm? You could have been lost! You could have gotten hurt! You could have been killed and you damn near froze to death!”

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