A Nail Through the Heart

5

The guard's head breaks the surface, spouting pints of muddy water. His jaws have been clamped open with a stainless-steel device designed for root canals. When it was forced into the guard's mouth, it dislocated his jaw, which sags to the side like something in a funhouse mirror.

The largest of the three shirtless men ringing the hole in the lawn puts a hand the size of a badminton racket on top of the guard's head and pushes him back under.

One of the other men laughs.

"I'm glad you find this amusing," says the lady of the house, and the laughter stops as suddenly as though someone had shut a door on it.

The guard surfaces again, and the big man slams him on top of the head with the broad side of a brick. Red brick dust settles on the surface of the water. His arms flailing, the guard tries to get a grip on the grass fringing the hole, but the man who laughed puts the edge of his boot heel on the closest hand and grinds down. Whatever it is the guard is trying to say, the dental appliance turns it into one long, agonized vowel.

The biggest man picks up the garden hose that they have used to fill the hole and wields it like a whip, the metal at its tip opening cuts in the guard's scalp and face. Water spouts out of the hose in lazy arcs, sparkling in the late-afternoon sun. The guard goes underwater, this time on his own, trying to dodge the hose, and the man lashes at the surface of the water, splashing the thick liquid everywhere.

The lady of the house moves her chair back so she will not get mud on her shoes. She says, "Give him another drink."

When the guard surfaces again, one of the men grabs his ears, tilting his face up, and the big man thrusts the end of the hose into the guard's mouth and six or eight inches straight down his throat. Then he pinches the guard's nostrils closed. The guard begins to spasm, thrashing, striking out with his arms, spouting water like a fountain. After ten or fifteen seconds, the big man pulls the hose out, and a spurt of water gives way to a ragged howl loud enough and high enough to lift the birds from the trees and send them skimming over the placid, coffee-colored surface of the river.

"Two more times," says the lady of the house, settling herself in her chair to watch the hose snake once again into the wide mouth. "Or maybe three."

The scream is cut off as abruptly as it started. "Then we'll start to ask him questions," she says.