Turtle tests the edge against her thumb, looking at her father.
“That’s a goddamn lesson in life, right there,” he says.
She turns the knife in her hands, uncertain.
He says, “You just don’t trust me, do you?”
“I trust you,” she says, and she thinks, you are hard on me, but you are good for me, too, and I need that hardness in you. I need you to be hard on me, because I am no good for myself, and you make me do what I want to do but cannot do for myself; but still, but still—you are sometimes not careful; there is something in you, something less than careful, something almost— I don’t know, I am not sure, but I know it’s there.
“Here,” he says, taking the knife from her and shoving her down the hallway, leading her to the living room. They go back through the door and he points to a chair. “Step up on that,” he says. Turtle looks at him, steps onto the chair. Martin points to the table, and she steps up onto it, stands among the beer bottles and old plates and steak bones.
“That rafter,” he says.
She looks up at the rafter.
“I want to show you something,” he says.
“What?” she says.
“Jump up to the rafter, kibble.”
“What are you going to show me?”
“Goddamn it,” he says.
“I don’t understand,” she says.
“Goddamn it,” he says.
“I know the knife is sharp,” she says.
“You don’t seem to know that.”
“No,” she says, “I trust you, I do. The knife is sharp.”
“God fucking damn it, kibble.”
“No, Daddy, it’s just that it was Grandpa’s knife, and he’ll be disappointed.”
“It isn’t his anymore, is it? Now grab on to that rafter.”
“I wanted to try taking care of that mirror polish,” she says, “just try and take care of it, that’s all.”
“It doesn’t matter. That steel, it’s gonna rust away into pits by the end of the year.”
“No,” she says, “no it won’t.”
“You haven’t had to take care of a thing like that yet, you’ll see. Now jump up on the rafter.”
“Why?”
“God fucking damn it, kibble. God fucking damn it.”
She jumps and captures the rafter.
Martin overturns the table from beneath her, spilling the deck of cards, the plates, candles, beer bottles. He puts his shoulder against it and shoves it out from beneath her, carrying all of its detritus along like a bulldozer, leaving Turtle hanging from the rafter above the floor.
She racks and reracks her fingers so they lie comfortably against the grain. Martin watches her from below with a grimace gathering almost to anger. He walks to her and stands between her feet, turning the knife this way and that.
“Can I come down?” she says.
He stands looking up at her, his face growing stiffer, his mouth setting. Turtle, looking down at him, can almost believe that looking at her like this makes him angry.
“Don’t say it like that,” he says. Then he raises the knife and lays the blade up between her legs, stands scowling up at her. He says, “Just hang in there.”
Turtle is silent and unamused, looking down at him. He presses up with the knife and says, “Upsy-daisy.”
Turtle does a pull-up, places her chin on the splintery beam and hangs while Martin stands below her, his face stripped of all warmth and kindness, seeming fixed in some reverie of hatred. The knife bites into the blue denim of her jeans and Turtle feels the cold steel through her panties.
She looks across to the next rafter, and the one after that, all the way to the far wall, each rafter felted with dust and showing wandering rat tracks. Her legs quiver. She begins to lower herself, but Martin says, “Uh—” abruptly and warningly, the knife resting against her crotch. She trembles, not able to fully raise herself back to the rafter and so puts her face against its splintery side, holding her cheek there. She strains, thinking, please, please, please.
Then he lowers the blade and she comes down with it, unable to do otherwise, trembling and shaking with the effort of lowering herself as slowly as he lowers the knife. She hangs at the full extension of her arms and says, “Daddy?”
He says, “See, this is what I’m goddamn talking about.”
Then he begins to raise the blade again, clucking his tongue warningly. She goes up into a full pull-up and hooks her chin on the rafter and hangs there, quivering. She starts to lower herself and Martin says, “Uh—” to stop her, grimacing as if it’s sad the way things are, and he would even change it if he could, but can’t.
Turtle thinks to herself, you bastard, you fucking bastard.
“That’s two,” he says. He lowers the blade and she lowers herself with it, and then he raises it, saying, “With a little incentive, you can really rack up those pull-ups, huh?”
He makes her lower herself with agonizing slowness. She does first twelve, and then thirteen. She hangs trembling from her exhausted arms, and Martin, raising the blade with a slow and menacing pressure, says, “You all done? Tapped out? Dig deep, kibble. You better find something. Let’s go for fifteen.” Her fingers ache, the grain cuts into her flesh. Her forearms feel numb. She doesn’t know if she can do another.
“Come on,” he says. “Two more.”
“I can’t,” she says, almost crying with fear.
“You think the knife’s sharp now, don’t you?” he says. “You believe it now, don’t you?” He saws the blade forward and she hears the denim whisper apart. She digs deep for any last ounce of strength, trying desperately to hold on, and Martin says, “You might want to hold on, kibble. You might not want to let go, little girl,” and then her fingertips peel off the rafter and she comes down onto the blade.
Martin jerks the knife out from under her at the last possible moment and it saws through her thigh and buttock. She lands on her heels and stands there splay-legged and astonished, looking down at her crotch, where there is no sign except a cut in the denim. Martin holds the bowie knife bloodless and unmarked, his eyebrows going up in astonishment, his mouth opening into a grin.
Turtle sits on her butt and Martin begins to laugh. She stoops forward to look through the parted cloth and says, “You cut me, you cut me,” though she cannot feel or see any cut.
“You should’ve,” Martin says and stops and bends double with laughter. He waves the bowie knife through the air to try and get her to stop so he can get his breath.
“You should’ve—” he gasps.
She lies back and unbuttons her jeans. Martin sets the bowie knife on the counter and grabs the bottoms and upends her out of them. She spills across the floor, recovers herself, and then stoops over her thighs, trying to see the cut.
“You should’ve—” he says. “You should’ve—” And his eyes clench with laughter.
Turtle finds the cut and a whisker of blood.
Martin says, “You should have seen—your face.” He screws his own face up in a mimicry of adolescent betrayal, opening his eyes wide in astonishment, and then, waving one hand through the air as if to brush all teasing aside,