Chapter 4
The girl wasn't crying any more. She sat on one hip, her legs curled slightly, and she was propped up on one arm. Her head hung down. The moonlight, streaming over the other hip, made her look like ivory, and again Bull thought of a statue. Some dames looked like nothing, absolute nothing, when you got done with them, but there was no denying that this little girl was a beauty.
He stepped into his clothing. "Oh, come on, now. That wasn't so bad, was that? Hell, I was good, you know I was." The girl didn't answer, and he continued dressing. "That wasn't as if you lost anything. You're not even a virgin, you had nothing to lose. Your boy friend isn't going to find out. Your old man will never know. You got a free kick, and now you're on easy street. Everything is just the way it was. Everything is jake." Her continued silence and immobility unnerved him, and he spoke louder. "Let me tell you something, kid. In this life, you got to get your kicks where you can. The iceman offers you a free kick and nobody's looking, you take that! Who's going to know? Everybody else does, at least if they've got the nerve, so why shouldn't you?" Still she didn't answer, and he made a sound of disgust. "Aargh, what am I telling you for? A babe like you, you've probably had more than your share. A new punk every time you go out on a date." He laughed nervously, went to her, and gave her a clumsy pat on the shoulder. "But none like me, huh? God, but you loved me!" She didn't move, she didn't speak. She didn't even flinch at his touch. Anger welled up in Bull Chapman. "Well, don't just sit there like a damn dummy! Get your clothes on!"
Slowly, painfully she rose to her feet. She tottered over to where her clothing lay, found her panties, and began pulling them on. As she dressed, she made no effort whatever to conceal herself. It was as if Bull didn't exist or didn't count. She might just as well have been completely alone in the woods.
When she was dressed, Bull picked up his flashlight and his stick. He said, "Come on," and led the way back toward the lane, not bothering with the light. The girl, head down, followed behind him.
When they got to the lane, he found that, as he bad guessed, Richard hadn't bothered to move the tree.
Bull: he had simply pushed it aside with his wagon. Bull carefully put it back in place and tried to raise some of the mashed-down weeds. There was no point in giving away a perfectly good spot.
Again, he told Laura to come on-she had waited patiently for him as he had fixed up the turn-off-and she followed him along the rutted road to his car. He got a kind of kick out of her docile response to his commands, but he wished to hell she'd say something.
He got her into the car and started back into town. The girl sat hunched away from him in the far comer, her eyes closed, her face blank. Bull said, "Yeah, everything's going to be all right, now," but she didn't appear to hear him.
Finally he couldn't stand her silence any longer. "Listen! Laura! Look at me!" he commanded sharply.
Her head turned toward him and her eyes opened. He glanced at her a couple of times and could read nothing in. her face as the passing lights revealed it, but certainly she looked okay.
"There's nothing wrong with you! You understand? You're all right!"
"Yes," she said calmly. "I'm all right."
Relief swept through him. "Sure, you are, you're A-okay. We had our bit of kick, and who's the wiser? Your father and your boy friend don't know nothin'. and they're not going to know. You did me a favor, and I'm doing you a favor. And that's what makes the world go round, hey, kid? We're all square now, you and me."
The girl didn't answer, but Bull thought he saw her smile slightly.
He went directly to Mason Road and pulled his car up to the curb almost a block from the Dale home. He reached across Laura and opened the door on her side.
"You better walk home from here. If your folks want to know why, say you had a fight with your boy friend. I'll sit right here and be sure you're all right till you turn up your drive, so don't worry."
Without a word, Laura got out of the car and walked away.
"Good night, kid."
She didn't seem to hear him, and he closed the car door. She walked at an even, unhurried pace, never looking back, and Bull didn't take his eyes off her until she left the sidewalk and entered her driveway. Then he started his car, made a U-turn, and drove away.
He took a deep breath, and the air was sweet in his lungs. He found that he was shaking slightly, and he laughed aloud. He told himself that that was all over now and everything was okay, just as he had told the girl. She wouldn't dare talk, and what good would it do her if she did, a little witch like that who'd probably played around plenty in the past.
But, man, she had been good, one of the best he had ever seen, and he had seen plenty. He liked two kinds, the kind who really went for that and the kind that put up a fight, like this girl. And even the kind that fought really liked that. In the end, they always went for that, whether they admitted it or not. Well, almost always-you ran into a frigid witch now and then, of course. But basically all women were the same, whether they begged or fought you off. Witches.
He had learned about women early. He had started looking around them when he was about twelve, and when he was thirteen there was this sixteen-year-old tramp who used to tease him and get him all wrought up. When she got wise that he was an okay kid and could keep his mouth shut, she started meeting him in an old unused barn on the edge of town. At first she only petted him, but finally she gave him a chance to find out what love was like, and she taught him all the tricks. A couple of years later, after she was married, he would go to her house now and then, and she swore that he was a hundred times better than her husband.
It was the same babe-what was her name? Delia?-who had put him onto some of the other available girls in the town. He was just a dumb kid, and after knowing Delia, he couldn't see any other girl. Hell, he would have married her if he could, he was so set after her. Delia laughed and said that was only because she was his first. He didn't believe her, and after a while-maybe she was getting bored with a dumb kid, even a kid like him-she offered to prove that. She took him over to another dame's house, a nineteen-year-old married woman who was separated from her husband, and told him to try her. Right then and there. He was scared green, and he refused. But Delia said that he couldn't resist this dame if she went away and left them together-which she did. The dame seemed to laugh the whole thing off as a joke, and she gave him a couple of beers and talked to him like nothing was going to happen and all the time her boobs were moving farther and farther out of her dress. And pretty soon he hadn't wanted to resist. The next thing he knew, she had his pants off and was doing all kinds of things to him and then her dress was off and he was giving that to her but good right there on a kitchen chair. After that, he and Delia and the older dame had plenty of wild parties together in that little house.
But Delia finally took off for a couple of years, and the older dame disappeared for good, and it wasn't until he started playing high school football that he really began getting variety in his women. Sure, there was a date here and there, but after his freshman year was over, things got better all the time. He found out that there was more than one babe like Delia in high school, and some of the tramps were pretty good, even came from rich families and had plenty of money to spend. That kind went for the football heroes, and he was one of the best in the game right from the start. So he got his share and more.
That was best, of course, in his senior year. By then there was a crowd of little witches from fourteen on up in school who really knew how to love. If there was a game and they lost, he might still get something because he'd done Ms share, and that wasn't his fault. But when they won, that was better yet.
Then the guys who had really played sort of hung around the locker room until the others had cleared out. Then these babes would come down, four or six or as many as eight, all squealing and kissing and grabbing at you, and everybody got to try a time or two, right there on those hard wooden benches right in front of everybody else, or in the showers, or anywhere else anybody felt like. They all just stripped down and kept playing away. Of course, the guys who'd racked up the most points got first choice, and once after a football game when he'd scored four times, there was no limit for him. He just kept taking every naked little pigeon that got close to him, and when they all went out afterward, he kept doing the same all night. God. he must have had eight girls two dozen times that night, because sometimes he'd start with one and finish with another. God, the things you can do at seventeen-not that he couldn't do just about as good today and do that a hell of a lot better.
But his luck went bad, or so it seemed at the time. He had almost made it through high school when they caught up with him and the whole gang. There was this one little babe, fifteen years old, who wanted part of the deal, wanted to travel with the hep crowd. So they let her go along on a beach picnic, just before the end of school. It had turned out that she was all talk. She went for the petting all right, and she finally took her clothes off, but when she looked around and saw that the action was for real, she got scared. Bull had to smack her down and force her, the damned little tease, while the others cheered him on. He'd gotten quite a kick out of that, but then she went and squealed to her old man, and the balloon went up. It was just lucky that he had witnesses that the kid kept begging him and that he was willing to go into the army immediately.
That turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to him. He hadn't been overseas very long before the war ended and Germany was up for grabs. Or rather the German women were. At first they teased the troops by sneering at them while they sat on their porches with their feet propped up. You could see them but you couldn't touch. But Bull knew that they really wanted loving and, when fraternization began, he saw to it that they got that. There was hardly a night he didn't have a woman or two for four for five cigarettes each, and he never paid more than a pack. If they wanted a pack, they had to do plenty to earn it.
Then there were Korea and Japan, and what he hadn't already learned about women, he learned there. He got into the MPs along the way, and that was for him. If anybody was going to bust any heads, it was Bull; and he was surprised at how soft most MPs really were. That was why he had to get out of the service, he was chasing prisoners and he clobbered this one guy, not so hard, and it looked like he wouldn't come to. There was a lot of talk about a court-martial and a DD or at least an administrative ticket, but the guy lived, so they gave him a regular discharge a few weeks later, with the clear understanding that they never wanted to see him again.
It didn't matter. By that time the old heat was off here in Adamsville. He was a football hero who had been in the army and who knew cop work, so three years ago he came back and got a job on the force. He couldn't have gotten it without his MP experience.
It turned out fine. The cops here were a lot of slobs, but that just meant they stayed out of his way, and he liked to have a lot of elbowroom. For one thing, it let him play the little game he'd heard about long ago. You kept your eyes open. You knew everybody, more people than knew you. You knew where they lived and what other people thought of them.
Then when you were cruising around one evening, you spotted the wife of one of the town's most prominent lawyers, a louse if there ever was one. And the wife just happened to be, not with her husband, but riding around with a local doctor. You followed them to his cottage and waited a couple of hours. You followed them back to her house. When she had gone inside and the doctor had left and it looked as if the dame was alone, you knocked on the door and offered her a little proposition.
If you picked your game well, you weren't apt to be refused.
Bull pulled that a number of times. There was that young English teacher from the high school. All he'd had to do was remind her that a few words spoken to certain members of the school board and she wouldn't get a contract renewal or even a recommendation for a new job. Of course, she hadn't been the best-she'd obliged, but she'd looked at him like some kind of bug, the witch. He'd have gone back and given her seconds, but she hadn't been worthwhile. No response-she probably hid that-and no fight.
Then there was that very respectable widow who had a kid doing yard work for her. The kid started disappearing into the house for an hour or two or more every day. By keeping his eyes open, Bull caught onto what she was up to, and he'd found her so good, he later went back for seconds. Whatever happened to that dame?
Oh yeah. He heard that she hanged herself for some reason. The crazy things that dames do.
Oh, there had been quite a few of them on Bull's list since he'd returned to Adamsville. And there'd be a lot more if he played his cards right.
But the more he thought about that, the more he was sure that there had been no other as good as the girl he'd taken this evening. Small and dark and thin, with those great swelling boobs and luscious round behind! He hadn't done nearly everything he'd like to do to that little witch. If he'd kept his head, he'd have taken her a second time before letting her go.
You had to be awfully careful of who you went hack to for seconds. Some didn't like to pay off twice, and they might do something stupid like blabbing. But this little girl had seemed okay when he got her home; she knew the score. Maybe he'd look her up again.
Soon.
Why not? Hadn't she loved that?
Richard was trembling when he reached his station wagon. He was trembling from fear, relief, anxiety, humiliation, and, most of all, with concern for Laura.
He started the wagon, backed up swinging the tail around, and nosed out into the Lane. It hadn't even occurred to him to move the tree limb, but it was light and he pushed it out of the way and kept going.
He didn't see any police car, but after about a hundred feet he spotted an old Chevy, and he guessed that it must be the officer's.
That was the first time it came to him that the man might not even be a cop. He did look vaguely familiar, but Richard hadn't gotten a clear view of him, thanks to that flashlight. He didn't really know what the man looked like, and he hadn't gotten the badge number. But surely the guy wouldn't have acted the way he had if he hadn't really been a cop. He had seemed decent enough at the end.
But what had he been doing there, and out of uniform at that? Just cruising around looking for trouble? Or trying to make trouble? Richard remembered his saying something like, "I'm always on duty."
The more Richard thought about what had happened, the more his apprehension grew. He wished that he hadn't left Laura behind. Surely he had had no choice
-and yet he wished that he hadn't left her.
Now that he was on his way, he hurried along the lane, hit the blacktop, and headed back toward the heart of town. He couldn't simply go home and hide his head under his pillow-he had to see Laura one more time this evening. The poor girl must be dying
-embarrassment was too weak a word for what she was going through.
All because they had loved one another-still loved one another, he corrected himself-and ached for one another and wanted to be close together and to make love. And because a big lummox of an overeager cop had stumbled across them.
And the man was big! That was one distinguishing mark that Richard would recognize. He had looked like a giant looming up there in the dark, and Richard was no pigmy. He tried to remember the biggest cop he had noticed around town.
He turned onto Mason and headed toward Laura's house. A block short of it, he turned off on her side of the street. He went most of the way around the block and parked the wagon. Then he got out and, feeling like a foolish kid, he sneaked across the lawn, moving from tree to tree and bush to bush. The house was situated in the middle of four acres: it was one of the biggest places in town. If Laura's folks caught him out here-and without Laura-there'd be hell to pay.
He got down on the ground beside, and a little under, a stand of bushes. From here he could see most of the front drive and, by looking over his shoulder, some of the back yard. He mustn't miss seeing Laura when she returned.
She should be here within a few minutes. Still, he had hurried to get here, going over the limit, and he had to take that into account. And the cop might go slowly-he had to take that into account, too. Furthermore, he knew that under the circumstances time would drag another item to be taken into account. He tried to reconcile himself to a long wait, but that only made his anxiety worse.
The evening had grown no cooler, and Richard became aware that he was sweating. It had been comparatively cool on the hill above the lane, and the air had been free of mosquitoes, but here they buzzed and sang about his ears, and he began to itch. But that was nothing compared to the aching that had started deep down in him.
And the aching was nothing compared to his concern for Laura and the situation they had gotten into. It seemed to him now that he had behaved like a scared punk-like the very kind of person whom the cop had at first taken him to be. Why couldn't he have spoken up more and sooner? And even if he had done precisely the right thing, why did he have to feel so unsure of himself in doing it? Why did he have to feel like a scared, licked puppy instead of a man? Why did he have to be so craven?
Feeling as he did, he couldn't blame Laura if she hated him after what had happened this evening. He couldn't blame her if she had lost all her respect for him. And if she had, he saw no way in the world that he could possibly win it back. He had flunked out all the way around.
The minutes dragged by like hours. Surely she should be here by now. Perhaps she had entered the house by the back way and he had missed her. He watched every car that passed on the street, hoping that it would stop and let Laura out.
Then he saw her, walking up the drive.
He waited for a few seconds to be absolutely certain that it was her, then recognizing her shadowed figure and her gait, he rose up and moved from tree to tree to meet her. Twenty feet from her, off the drive, he called to her in a low voice.
"Laura."
She stopped. He had half expected-hoped that she would run to him and throw her arms around him. But she stood immobile and didn't utter a sound. "Laura...." He went toward her, but she didn't look up. He took her hand. "Are you all right?" She nodded. "Come with me."
He glanced over his shoulder at the house, then led her back down the drive and around the block toward his car. He said a few things like, "It's okay, honey, it's all over now. We'll forget all about it," but his words sounded futile in his own ears, and Laura didn't answer.
He opened the wagon door and helped her in and then got in from the other side. She sat curled in the comer away from him, and when he reached for her, she shrank away.
He tried to reassure her again: "Darling, it's all right. I know you feel bad, but everything's going to be okay now."
Still she didn't answer, and fear blossomed in him like a slowly opening wound.
"Laura, talk to me. Laura, please." He hardly dared to ask. "Honey, did anything happen after I left?"
Her voice was small and tight. "That was horrible."
"Of course it was. But it's over-"
"That was horrible."
The wound opened further.
"What was horrible, Laura?"
"What he did to me."
He seemed to be talking without breath. "What did he do to you?"
She was silent but her face worked convulsively.
"What did he do to you, Laura?"
"He forced me."
At one and the same time, he was too horrified by what she was saying to understand what she was saying. "Forced you to do what?"
She was breathing harder, as if she might be crying, but the tears were all gone. "He did things to me. He hurt my breasts. They hurt so! And he made me open his clothes. He hurt me. And he kept saying that he'd tell Daddy and that you'd go to jail for twenty years." Her breath was like the rasp of iron on iron. "And when I was on my hands and knees, he hurt me. I still hurt. And he made me take my dress back off again. And kiss him and hold him and I got sick. And he kept saying that you'd go to prison if I didn't let him, and once he said he might really break my neck and you'd get more than twenty years. And finally he raped me and he hurt and hurt."
Suddenly she was sitting up straight, her eyes open far too wide, and she was gasping as if she couldn't get her breath, as if in some kind of epileptic fit.
"Laura!"
Just as suddenly, she collapsed into his arms, where he cradled her in horror as she wept without tears.
He was numbed. The full impact of what she had been telling him was too much for him to take all at once. But gradually that got to him. The girl he loved, the girl whose body he had enjoyed with such adoration earlier in the evening, had been raped. Her body had been abused and she had been forced to accept. She had been forced into a state of terror close to insanity. The girl he now held in his arms had been befouled by an unknown giant who had come upon them in the dark.
He realized that she was mumbling something: "I can't live, I can't."
"Yes, darling. We'll both live and be happy and I'll take care of you forever."
"I can't, I can't live."
His words had sounded hollow to him as he had said them, and her repeated wail of anguish made them all the more a mockery. How could he say he'd take care of her when he had failed so miserably tonight?
She was quiet for a minute, then she went on: "Oh, I want him dead. I can't live with him knowing what he did to me. I want him all wiped out. I want that never to have happened, never ever to have happened."
He didn't choose his words. He merely heard himself saying them. "I'll wipe that all out. I'll make that never to have happened. I don't know what I'll do, but I'll do something. I'll find that guy and one way or another I'll take care of him. So help me God, I'll take care of him."
It was a vow and he meant to keep it.