The staked Goat

He turned to me with it. It was Ricker, now in the uniform of a National Policeman.
    ”Sorry about this, sir,” he said, ”but I don’t want to press my luck.”
    The water hit me in the face. I woke up shivering, but my face was dry. I was staring at a Sheetrock ceiling with some peeling pipes and crudely rigged rafter space. There were wide water skis, ancient fishing rods, and chipped wooden oars. It was dark, but not pitch black.
    My eyes smarted and my head hurt worse than my mugging aches. I was tied spread-eagle on an old iron twin bed. My suit, tie, and shoes were gone, my shirt, briefs, and socks still on. My mouth was taped. I could move my head one hundred eighty degrees, my line of sight like the arc of an old protractor. I could just touch my chin to my chest, but the additional view wasn’t worth the discomfort.
    There were broken lawn chairs and a dust-covered old bicycle in one corner. Paint cans and a bucket with a rake and broom in another. Some army olive-drab canvas hung from a rafter. A magnified rectangle of indirect moonshine spotlighted a patch of concrete floor from a high, closed window. By arching my back and riding up on my neck like a wrestler, I could see, upside down, the top couple steps of a wooden staircase.
    It was early March, and I was freezing to death in somebody’s cellar.
    I lay quietly for about fifteen minutes. I couldn’t hear anyone walking around upstairs. In fact, no noise at all. No TV, radio, car, or even wind noise. Just a nagging, numbing cold.
    The backs of my wrists were lashed palms outward to the top of the iron bed’s headboard to keep me from grasping the railing with my fingers. My ankles were secured similarly at the other end. I tried throwing my hips ceiling-ward to see if I could rock the bed. It bucked a little, producing almost no noise or progress.
    Then I heard footsteps above me.
    The cellar door opened, and a light flicked on. High heels clattered lightly on the slat steps. I decided to play possum.
    The shoes sounded more muffled on the concrete floor. A whiff of perfume preceded the accented, female voice.
    ”Open your eyes.”
    I stayed asleep.
    ”My husband put pressure thing on the bed. Wire upstairs. I know you awake. Open your eyes or I hit you in the nuts.”
    I opened my eyes.
    She smiled down at me. She was Vietnamese, maybe thirty-five. Probably five feet tall without the heels. She wore designer jeans, a cowlneck sweater, and a baby blue parka. She held a short hunting knife in one hand and a short leather sap in the other.
    ”Better. When my husband come back, you talk. You talk plenty. But now you be quiet. O.K.?”
    I nodded my head.
    She looked me over, head to foot. ”You good-looking man.”
    I didn’t nod.
    She set her knife down on the bed. She unfastened the top two buttons of my shirt and slid her hand in. It was warm against my cold skin. She ran the tips of her nails lightly over my right nipple. She spider-walked her fingers over to my left nipple and did the same.
    ”You like?” she said, licking her lips.
    I nodded, very slowly.
    She slipped her hand out of my shirt and drew it slowly down my front. She stroked and probed very gently around where my zipper would have been.
    ”Ah,” she said huskily. ”You like a lot.”
    There was a flash of brighter light through the window and the crunching of tires on gravel. She dropped the sap and used both hands to quickly rebutton my shirt.
    ”Too bad,” she whispered as she snatched up her weapons and click-trotted away and up the stairs.
    It looked to be a long evening.
     
    ”We’re in Mexatawney. ‘Bout fifty miles from the D. of C. Kind of a fishin’ community come springtime. Probably nobody in a mile to hear you if you was to holler or anything.”
    I still had the tape on my mouth, so all I could do was listen.
    Ricker shifted his butt on the creaky dinette chair. He’d brought it down the stairs with him. He sat on it backwards, the back of the chair toward me and him astride the seat, like a saddle.
    ”Yessir, you’re in the house of a friend of mine from the ‘Nam. Curly Mayhew. ‘Nother Looziana boy. He’s part of, oh, kind of a ‘club’ I belong to. Senior noncoms. Old Curl’s a good man, helps another member out, just like in the ‘Nam. Don’t know how he stands this commutin’ though. Fifty miles. Each way, each day. Whew!”
    I blinked a few times. Ricker brought his wrist up to his eye level, exaggeratedly, like an actor in a