Give Me Your Heart by Joyce Carol Oates Page A

but they changed their
minds, saying the clouds were looking too threatening. What if you’re struck by lightning? the girls are saying with shivery little giggles. In fact there’s only just heat
lightning (which is harmless—isn’t it?) way off in the distance beyond Mount Hammer, miles from the lake, so I’m thinking, What the hell, I am not afraid.
    “Hang on, Ann’slee. Here we go.”
    This wild thumping ride out onto the lake, full throttle taking off from the marina, and the looks on the faces of boaters coming in—a family in an outboard boat, a fisherman in a
rowboat—register such alarm, it’s hilarious. Everything seems hilarious, like in a speeded-up film where nothing can go seriously wrong, nobody can get hurt. Deek steers Hot
Li’l Babe with one hand, drinks Coors with the other. I’m hanging on to my seat, crowded between two of the guys (Jax? Croke? or is this big guy panting beside me Heins?), trying
not to shriek with fear—in fact I am not afraid, am I? Can’t get my breath the wind is coming so fierce and there’s a smell of gasoline in the boat and in the pit of my stomach
that sickish excited sensation you get on the downward plunge of a roller coaster. Overhead it’s a surprise, the sky is darkening fast, the giant mouth is about closed over the sun, and the
way the thunderclouds are ridged and ribbed makes me think of the inside of a mouth, a certain kind of dog that has a purplish black mouth, oh God. Just these few minutes, there’s nobody else
on Wolf’s Head Lake that I can see. The boat engine is roaring so hard, these guys are so loud, a beer can I’ve been gripping has spilled lukewarm beer onto my bare legs, can’t
catch my breath, telling myself, You are not going to die, don’t be stupid, you are not important enough to die. Telling myself that Daddy is close by, watching over me, for
didn’t Daddy once say, My little girl is going to live a long, long time — that is a promise.
    To a man like Daddy, and maybe Deek, is given a certain power: to snuff out a life, as you might (if you were feeling mean, and nobody watching) by grinding a broken-winged butterfly
that’s flailing beneath your foot, or to allow that life to continue.
    “Made it! Fuckin’ made it! Record time!” Deek is crowing like a rooster; we’re across the lake and okay. Deek cuts the motor bringing the speedboat to dock. It’s a
clumsy-shaped boat, it seems now, banging against the dock; Deek has to loop a nylon rope over one of the posts, cursing Fuck! fuck! fuck! He’s having so much trouble, finally Heins
helps him, and they manage to tie up the boat. We’re in an inlet here in some part of Wolf’s Head Lake that isn’t familiar to me, short stubby pier with rotted pilings, mostly
outboard-motor and rowboats docked here. Getting out of the boat, I need to be helped by one of the guys, slip and fall, hit my knee, one of my sandals falls off, and the guy—Croke is the
name they call him—big-shouldered in a T-shirt, thick hairs like a pelt on his arms and the backs of his hands, and a gap-toothed grin in a sunburned wedge-face sprouting dark whiskers on his
jaw, grabs my elbow, hauls me up onto the dock: “There ya go, li’l dude, ya okay?” Greeny-gray eyes on me; in that instant he’s being nice, kindly, like I’m a kid
sister, somebody to be watched over, and I’m grateful for this, almost I want to cry when people are nice to me, that I can’t believe I deserve it because I am not a nice girl—am
I? Damn, I don’t care. Why should I care? The fact is, these new friends of mine are smiling at me, calling me Ann’slee, Ann’slee honey, c’mon with us. Next thing I
know the five of us are swarming into a convenience store at the end of the dock, Otto’s Beer & Bait, where Momma has stopped sometimes but which direction it is to Uncle Tyrone’s
cottage, and how far it is, I could not say. The guys are getting six-packs of Coors and Black Horse Ale and Deek