Chapter 7
He sat there silently, smoking cigarette after cigarette, his eyes drawing out so much that was inside her, so much that no other human being in her entire life had ever heard. She had never had the desire or the need to tell it, until now. Not even to Harry. The only human being in her entire life that she had ever talked to on such intimate terms about her feelings had been her father. Here Matt sat, a thief, a rapist, an unconscionable man of violence, with a callousness that had terrified her-the complete antithesis of that most dear of all men, her father, and still she continued. Nor did she stop until all she had remembered had been said.
For some time after that, he remained silent, regarding the wisdom of voicing what seemed to him so obvious. Now he ground out the light of his cigarette and said to Evelyn, "You said before that you weren't Estelle when I mentioned all the guys she had-"
"I didn't mean that in a disparaging way against her," Evelyn interjected. "She's told me all about herself, and the kind of life I was reared for, prepared for, is so different. My father-"
Matt's face hardened, and the words slashed his lips like a blade. "Your father was a damned faggot!"
Evelyn blinked her eyes, startled at his vehemence, and uncomprehending because of her unfamiliarity with the word.
"A faggot. A fairy-a homosexual!" Matt said, shouting the words.
She recoiled against them as if struck with a whip. He continued the assault with a vitriolic outpouring, while she was too stunned, too numbed to react.
"What do you think all that horseshit was all about-that stuff about sensitivity and delicacy he stuffed down your craw? The vulgarity of a woman's sex with a man, the ugliness and the degradation of it, that image of untouchable purity that was supposed to save you, keep you like some kind of butterfly from dirtying your wings and getting sucked up in the mud. What a woman could give when she spread her legs, that was ugly and vulgar. He had to get you to forget what you had between your legs, to close them and keep them closed, because for the faggot every woman's snatch is a threat. You talk about Stell's old man," he said. "That old bastard was at least a man!"
Suddenly jolted from her transfixion, Evelyn lashed out and struck Matt across the face. Reflexively, he grabbed her arm. A taut muscle quivered in the hard set of his jaw. Then he relaxed and flung her away from him. Evelyn grabbed up her under things and her dress. Near the door, she pulled them on hastily and then slammed out into the night. Hatred and resentment was a bitter gall she could hardly contain.
She found herself walking quickly, stumbling, and then running, directionless, away from the motel, away from him. She was moving along a dimly lit, deserted road with no awareness of her surroundings, all of her thoughts still drawn inward by the immensely monstrous accusation. But even as she cursed him, unwanted images swam up from dark corridors of the past. Forgotten instances, disconnected episodes, were reordering themselves into comprehensible contexts. Her father's hand-holding affection with his friend Raymond Archer when they walked together around the grounds. The kissing when they greeted each other, and the point that her father had always made of praising the wonderful demonstrative affection of the Latin and the Slavic men with each other. Their open, outgoing kisses and embraces. The showers and the baths they would take together, scrubbing each other. The succession of swift images superimposed themselves on each other, and frantically, Evelyn quickened her pace as if to escape them. The time when her father was nursing the handyman who had attacked him and she had walked into the room to discover her father washing and fondling his sex organ.
How startled he was, and then, how he made a point of likening his gesture to that of Christ who found it not beneath him to wash the soiled feet of his disciples.
Evelyn cried out, a stabbing pain in her chest, and stood still, struggling to regain her breath. In that instant, the revelation was complete and irrefutable. There was that shrill, raging argument between her father and Raymond Archer, which her father had tried to dismiss as "a business argument." But she recalled the words, from inside the library, where they had shut themselves off. "Jealousy. You're jealous because he finds me attractive," Raymond Archer had said. And other words: "unfaithful", "embrace," and then the doors of the library were flung open with Raymond Archer angrily striding out, almost spitting the words, "You're too old physically, too old to love."
Evelyn stood in the middle of the road, grief draining away all anger and bringing the onset of deep fatigue. She felt for an instant as if she wanted to drop down on the road where she stood. She looked around and realized that she was in utter darkness and didn't know how far it might be before she arrived at a town. She began sobbing in despair. Then she turned around and started to retrace her steps in the direction of the motel. She thought, "I'll stay in the car. I'll rest there until morning, and then-"
Once inside the car, she let herself fall back on the seat. She lay there in the darkness, beginning to shudder in the coldness of the night air. Bitter tears continued to spill. She realized now that Matt had told her the truth. Recalling Estelle's earlier talk with her, she understood in some ways, despite all the differences in their backgrounds, they were quite alike. Estelle's father had closed off a part of her when he frightened her about having an illegitimate child that had crippled in her the capacity to experience orgasm, until Matt... Evelyn now understood the measure of the crime perpetrated upon her. Her father had not only crippled that capacity in her but virtually closed off the entire fount of her womanhood. He had avoided all contact with women, constantly referred to them as "females." In his own daughter, he could not tolerate female sexuality and tried to render her sexless.
She sat up. Wasn't that what Matt had tried to tell her? Cold, miserable, bewildered, she did not know what her next action should be. With all the past suddenly wrenched away from her like a mask, it seemed to her that her entire life, her home, her marriage, everything was part of a long deception. The recollection of her willing intimacy with the two strange men earlier, her yielding response to Estelle's perverse overture, her exposure to the most bizarre orgiastic behavior and her repeated violation since she was taken from her home dragged her down like a weighted stone. She felt suddenly that she could never rise again. Now, where would she go? It seemed that only the door ahead lay open to her, the door that led to Matt and Estelle.
The stark beam of light turned on her face was blinding. She leaped with a start and flung her hand up to shield her eyes. She heard the car door open and found herself staring into the face of a wizened man holding a flashlight, his skin drawn into leathery folds. "My missus told me she saw someone crawling into the back of one of the cars. You're one of the girls from number seven aren't you?" Evelyn nodded numbly, though not without relief to discover that it was the motel keeper, an elderly, hobbling man. "My missus knows the way you and your friend were carrying on with those two men," he said. "She's been after me to get the cops on you. We don't run no whorehouse around here. What kind of trouble are you up to, huddling up in the car like that?" He swung the car door wide open, beckoning for Evelyn to come out. "I think maybe she's right. We don't want no trouble around here."
"There's no trouble," Evelyn stammered. "I -I just had an argument with my-husband and decided to sleep in the car."
He grinned with uneven tobacco-stained teeth. "Husband, huh? Pimp's more like it, I'd say." Then, eyeing Evelyn as she stepped out into the open, he appeared surprised. "You're mighty pretty. Not one of them doggy prostitutes. If I could still get myself up, I'd have a go at you." He chuckled asthmatically. And quickly he made a half turn, squinted in the direction of the motel office, and then spun back to lean over against Evelyn with a conspiratorial tone.
"But if you show my brother Dib a good time, I'll forget all about the cops." He clutched her by the arm and glanced back again over his shoulder hastily. "If my old lady caught us, there'd be hell to pay. She hates Dib's guts anyway, always after me to get rid of him." He kept up a running patter and led Evelyn in the direction of the motel without awaiting her response. "I keep Dib in room ten; that's only three down from your own." In this way, happenstance seemed to have taken control and Evelyn allowed herself to be led.
Perhaps this is the way it was intended to be, Evelyn thought bitterly. "Now, Dib, he ain't right up here," the motel keeper continued, tapping his forehead with his finger. "He was in a construction accident seven years ago. A big plank almost knocked his head off. But he's harmless enough. It's just that my old missus hates him, says that he eats enough for three and scares the customers off. That's why I keep him in most of the time. It'd be nice for him to have a little real woman company. It might perk him up some." He chuckled, breaking into a hacking cough.
As he inserted a key into the lock and pushed the door open, Evelyn felt a sudden onrush of panic. She felt she had to go to Matt. The man felt the tug of her arm and looked up at Evelyn, his grin now threatening. "You want me to get the cops on the whole lot of you?" The door slammed behind her. She was in the motel room.
The figure, its back to them, seated on a chair amid a littered debris of empty beer cans, seemed immense. "Dib-Dib," the motel keeper repeated several times before the man stirred and stumbled to his feet. Evelyn stared awestruck. He was easily six feet in height, but it was his massive girth that gave him the fearsome aspect of a man swollen like a balloon to abnormal dimensions. His hands and feet, too, were inordinately large, even for his size.
"Look, Dib-look what I brung you. You ain't had yourself a woman since Fat Marie died."
The expression on the face of the one addressed as Dib was dull, apparently barely comprehending. Evelyn felt a bony hand on her back thrusting her forward before the massive form, easily exceeding four hundred pounds in weight. His head, normally proportioned, was oddly small for the rest of him, devoid of any of the bulges of fat elsewhere prominent and retaining a boyishness of indeterminate years. The old man shoved her suddenly, and Evelyn stumbled against the large man.
"Give it to her, Dib, the way you used to bomb old Fat Marie." His voice was shrill, trembling with excitement.
The large hands closing over her shoulders had the effect of piercing that translucent shield that Evelyn had imposed to dim her consciousness, and she burst into a sudden frantic kicking and struggling protest, which action, instead of warding off her offender, seemed to animate him and make his moves more purposeful. The largeness of his hands literally clamped her arms to her torso, and the weight of him made a farce of her resistance. The motel keeper rushed forward nervously at the sounds of her outcries and stuffed a handkerchief in her mouth, exclaiming, "I don't want Hilda to know what the dickens is going on here."
Evelyn was lifted easily and placed down on the edge of the bed, her legs upraised and pressed forcefully until her knees ground painfully into her breasts. Looking down in horror from this vantage point, she saw his incredible prodigiousness. He rubbed, stirred, pressed himself against her exposed buttocks (her undergarments having been hastily torn away) in frantic efforts to bring himself to a state of rigidity. Her flesh quivered against his huge body. Evelyn had turned her head away and shut her eyes in an attempt to seal off her mind, but the near-hysteric exclamation of the motel keeper drew her attention against her will. "Geesus, Dib, that is really something! You're still as good as a damned bull in heat." The sight that met Evelyn's eyes caused her whole body to recoil, with a wild desperation that made him lose his grasp on her, and she slid off the side of the bed against his legs. His body, like some huge quagmire of flesh, seemed to spout his manhood -thick as an arm-an independent, deeply veined limb dominating his total person. Evelyn scrambled at his feet, broke loose and darted for the door.
"Get her, Dib," the motel keeper shouted and ran up to block her way at the door. Evelyn kicked and scratched him, almost overcoming him before the hard, sinewed hands closed over her from behind and yanked her, this time with a fierce rage of suspended passion, and slammed her down on the bed, alongside which he stolidly implanted himself, one hand guiding himself to his mark on the threshold of her vitals. Evelyn leaped back, and he attempted to follow, those trunks of knees driving the mattress close to the floor. He grabbed her again, hands girding her shanks, and pulled her roughly back to the edge of the bed, where he wrapped one great arm under the small of her back and held her while he probed and pressed at the bank of that narrow, delicate, unyielding ravine. His entire face and character underwent a grotesque transformation. The dull features quivered to life. Teeth grinding, mouth and eyes straining, showing the dilation of blood vessels, he attempted to overcome with sheer force the barrier of unmatched proportions. In searing agony, Evelyn unleashed a piercing, blood-curdling scream. Her nails found his eyes, and as he recoiled she broke free again, screaming still, as she stumbled toward the door. Before she reached it, it burst open. The harridan face of the motel keeper's wife appeared. The woman was raging, hurling obscene oaths, and shaking her fists. Behind her were the horrified faces of two women, occupants of an adjacent room. And then-Estelle's face, and Matt's!
"Dib! Dib!" The motel keeper was now frantically attempting to control his monstrous brother, who had seized Evelyn again, raising her up against him as he stood, her legs spread-eagled. Matt, still pale and sallow from the enfeebling fever, flung himself into the room, knocking over the motel keeper's wildly gesticulating wife. He came up alongside Evelyn's attacker and axed the gargantuan hulk of a man across the exposed tendons of the neck with the side of his open hand. The released Evelyn struck the floor with the impact of a dead weight, but her assailant turned with a hoarse outcry and faced Matt. The leaner man shifted to the side of the bullying figure, drove an elbow into his windpipe, followed with a hard knee thrust to the groin. The massive hulk stumbled forward, smashing Matt against the wall. Momentarily dazed, he made an effort to drag himself clear of the massive arm which struck with a closed sledge of a fist. Matt's head snapped, and he felt a warm outpouring from his nose and mouth. As he rose to unsteady knees, another blow caught him across the side of the head and sent him tumbling backward. The room spun about him. Somewhere above, he made out multiple images of the hulking figure, a crushing leg upraised Matt fumbled in his trouser pocket, closed his palm over the hard wedge of steel, and squeezed off six shots.
The figure above him swayed, and stark red rivulets burst forth where the hot metal had punctured the ballooned flesh. All in the belly and below, they had struck. The formidable brute was now shreds of mutilated flesh and spilling entrails. His face met the floor squarely. He was dead before he hit the ground. Matt shook his head to clear it. In the milling chaos about him, the desiccated motel keeper flung himself to his knees beside the fallen man, wailing his despair and crying out his name to arouse him, while his wife tore at his back, lashing him still with shrill outcries. "He's dead. Good riddance. That pig-faced Mongoloid. Now get up, you bastard! Get up! And get the cops to lock up these whores."
Estelle was assisting Evelyn to her feet, and with a child's queasiness at the sight of blood averted her face from the flow between Evelyn's thighs.
"Come on, we've got to get the hell out of here," Matt said to them. And noting Evelyn's condition, he told Estelle, "Grab some towels and get the ice trays from the refrigerator in our room." He brandished his weapon to keep the motel keeper and his wife from leaving the room. Then he made an effort to lead Evelyn out of the room, but when she slumped against him, he lifted her and backed through the doorway. He deposited Evelyn in the front seat alongside him as he got in behind the wheel. He started up the ignition and called to Estelle- "Come on, Stell, shake your ass!" She came running out immediately, stumbling on her heels across the gravel roadbed, her arms burdened with the ice trays and towels. The vehicle was moving before Estelle slammed the back door, inside which she had settled herself. He floored the gas pedal, but at the first sign of a side dirt road, he turned off it, went several hundred yards and then killed the lights.
"Give me some of that ice and a towel, Estelle, and quick."
Then he flicked open the glove compartment and, working by this illumination, separated Evelyn's legs to examine the extent of the bleeding. Evelyn moaned and winced at his ministering fingers. She was hemorrhaging steadily, and it was not until he pressed the blood flow for a minute or two and then removed the pressure that he was able to determine her condition. It was a laceration in the outer lip; there was no indication of internal damage. "Nothing is going to happen to you," he said to Evelyn evenly. "You're going to be all right." Evelyn bound herself around the steady directness of his eyes and clung to it, as if it were the only light in the world. He told Estelle to come around to the front seat and then lifted Evelyn and settled her, full length, in the back of the car.
He started the car and continued at a snail's pace, with his parking lights, exploring somewhat farther the turn in the road he had taken. When he came to a hard-topped road, he turned right, following his general rule of going back in the direction of the area from which he had come, a useful tactic he had long ago discovered that seemed to befuddle or temporarily delay pursuit.
"They'll dragnet the county," he said aloud. "Homicide is no small deal out here in the sticks. It's their big chance to play cops and robbers." Matt knew that his immediate task was to switch vehicles. They would be out looking for a car of this description and they would have the license plate number. Matt forced himself to concentrate. His face and his head still ached from the mauling he had taken, and the dull, throbbing ache deep in the tissues of his arm informed him that he still had that infection to contend with.
"Matt-" He heard her voice calling him weakly, and he turned to Evelyn to ask what she wanted. "Nothing," she said. "Nothing."
A slight upward curve broke the straight line of his mouth.