Bad Games

16



Two wooden docks bordered Crescent Lake, each one extending close to twenty feet out over the water—more than enough distance to cast a decent line into the belly of the lake.

As the family settled in on the dock closest to their cabin, Amy was skeptical but amused by her husband’s child-like determination for the afternoon’s activity. His enthusiasm for family adventures that held low but harmless odds for success was one of his many charms she loved, finding it irresistibly adorable.

“Wait and see,” Patrick told her, head down, fiddling with the crank on his fishing pole. “Just wait and see, my poor pessimistic wife.”

Amy snorted. “I will see, my dear, dopey, delusional husband.”

“Ah—three. Touché. However I got three in the car with Caleb on the way back from the bait shop. All with the letter C. So that’s actually four if you count his name, which of course I used.”

“Sorry, four-year-olds don’t make credible witnesses for the absurd, asinine, alliteration affairs you make me take part in,” she said.

He cast her a sideways glance, raised an eyebrow, looked at the sky for a rebuttal. His shoulders eventually slumped. “I’ve got nothing. Kudos, baby.”

She took a bow and blew him a kiss.

“Dad?” Caleb said.

“What’s up, brother?”

Caleb looked down at the pole in his hands, to the bait container on his left, and then finally up at his father.

“I’ma comin’, pal.” Patrick started towards Caleb to help him prepare his hook. He looked at Amy first, smirked and said, “Baby, can you hold my rod while I help Caleb?”

Amy tilted her head to one side, bit down on her lip, gave her husband a look that read: Darling, that double entendre was so blatantly obvious that it would belittle us both if I even attempted to retort with some equally juvenile quip.

She took his fishing rod from him all the same, but had released the bite on her lip, no longer capable of fighting off a devilish smirk of her own. Patrick’s smirk remained, a naughty pumping of the eyebrows joining it, adding to their foreplay, the notion that such actions were limited to the bedroom a foreign concept to the couple.

“Carrie, sweetie, do you want to watch Caleb bait a hook?” Patrick asked his daughter, who was in the process of trying to hold Oscar in her arms for more than two seconds at a stretch before he wiggled out.

“No,” she said bluntly as she scooped the dog up again, managing three seconds this time.

“Women,” Patrick said, winking at his son. Caleb winked back and smiled. “Alright, brother-man, dig me out a good one so we can bait that hook of yours, okay?”

Caleb walked over the wooden planks and picked up the Styrofoam container. His tiny fingers worked at the plastic lid, eventually peeling it off and dropping it to the ground. He looked at the dirt and the slimy critters therein, then back at his father with an uncertain face.

“They won’t bite, pal, I promise. They’re just a bit slimy.”

Caleb looked back down at the container, closed his eyes, and dug his little digits in.

“That’s my boy,” Patrick beamed.

Caleb withdrew his fingers from the soil and immediately placed his catch into his father’s hand. He would dig and he would grab, but he wasn’t about to hold just yet.

Patrick laughed and looked down at the worm Caleb had given him. It was exceptionally thick and coated black with soil. He picked it up with his other hand, dusted off the dirt, and spotted a fingernail.

“Jesus!” Patrick flung the finger away.

Both Amy and Carrie turned.

“What?” Amy asked.

Patrick pointed at what he had just discarded. It was less than two feet from where Amy stood.

“Is that?” she asked, inching closer, slowly leaning her torso forward to get a better look. “Is that? It is! It is!”

“What? What is it?” Carrie asked.

Amy whirled around and blocked her daughter’s view with her body. “Nothing,” she said, shifting from left to right, stopping her daughter from slipping past. “It’s nothing.”

Oscar, unfortunately, did not see the discarded finger as nothing. He saw it as an appetizer. With one swift motion he trotted towards it, sniffed once, and then gulped it down.

“Oscar!” Amy cried. “Oscar, no!”

The dog turned and looked up at Amy with an innocent expression on his face that in dog language would have surely translated to: It was edible, lady. I’m a dog. What’s the problem?

“Did he eat it?” Patrick asked.

Amy nodded appallingly, one hand over her mouth.

“Eat what?” Carrie asked, now breaking her mother’s defense and approaching the dog. “Tell me.”

Both Patrick and Amy ignored their daughter. Patrick walked over to his wife and placed his lips to her ear. “Please tell me I’m not crazy,” he whispered. “Please tell me that our son didn’t just scoop a finger out of that bait container. And please tell me that mangy little thing didn’t just gobble it up.”

“You’re not crazy,” Amy whispered back. “That was a f*cking finger.”

Patrick ran a hand through his hair and breathed in. “Okay then—let’s go to obvious question number two, shall we? Why was there a finger in our bait container?”

“I don’t know, sweetheart,” Amy replied, her tone exceptionally condescending. “Did the man at the bait shop have all ten of his fingers?”

“Yes, darling,” Patrick replied, matching her tone, “I believe he did.”

“Well then Jesus, Patrick, you tell me. Was it that stupid lady who tried to sue Wendy’s by putting a severed finger in her chili? You didn’t happen to notice her at the bait shop did you?”

Patrick burst out laughing.

“Are you actually laughing? How the hell can this be funny to you?” She splayed her hands, let them slap back down onto her thighs. “I mean for Christ’s sake, what more can possibly go wrong this weekend?”

“Whoa, wait a minute,” he said, patting the air before putting a finger to his lips. Her outburst was creeping out of PG territory and about to introduce the kids to PG-13 or possibly R. “Let’s not make too big a deal out of this.”

“No? Our four-year-old son finding a human finger in your container of worms is an everyday thing?” She was losing the fight at keeping her voice a whisper.

Patrick’s smile from his recent burst of laughter was gone. He now wore a look of concern; he knew that when his wife got started, their kids’ eager ears and a bus full of nuns armed with rulers would not stop one of her profane tirades.

“Okay, you’re right, I’m sorry.” He put a hand on her shoulder and she instantly shrugged it off. He sighed. “Alright, I’ll go back to the bait shop right now and talk to the owner,” he said.

“Don’t even bother,” she said. “The thing is in the belly of that stupid dog right now anyway. We would have no proof.”

“Well someone lost a finger. Maybe it’s someone else who works at the bait shop.”

“It wasn’t a stupid employee at the bait shop, Patrick. Someone put that finger in our bait container deliberately.”

“What? Why would someone do that?”

“Why? I don’t know why. Why would a strange man buy us a tank of gas for no reason and then trade candy to a little girl for a stupid doll? Why would a pervert stalk me in a supermarket then look in on us while we had sex?”

The whispering was gone, so was the presence of mind to spell out sex (even though he was fairly sure Carrie knew how to spell it). “I thought we decided—”

“Shut up. Maybe I saw him, and maybe I didn’t. But I did just see that finger, and so did you.”

“So let me get this straight.” Patrick was still insistent on whispering. “You’re suggesting that one of the two weirdoes we ran into this weekend put that severed finger in our bait container? How and when would they have done that?” Patrick asked.

“I don’t know but they did.” She turned to Carrie and Caleb.

“Kids, let’s go. Fishing’s over.”