Chapter 3

The open road.

Songs have been sung about it, stories written, books and poems composed. The romance of the road is perhaps the oldest one. beginning with Homer's Odyssey. Man's life is a voyage. Adventure comes only to those who are willing to go in search of it, out away a journey through unknown perils and undreamed of pleasures from their houses and TV sets, on to the next town, the next city, and the ones after that.

Jimmy began his odyssey at midnight of the next evening. Just why he should have chosen that hour was not exactly clear to him. Somehow it just seemed to be right.

There was no reason to hang around any longer. His father had started bugging him that evening at the supper table, and Jimmy had known what was coming: "Well, you've had your vacation boy-when are you going to start looking for work? Just because you've got that motorcycle don't mean you don't have to do anything now, you know."

And his mother: "Ned, leave Jimmy alone awhile; he's going to get something soon-aren't you, baby?"

Baby. She still used that word, and just about always at the wrong time, Jimmy had thought glumly then. He liked his mother, but he had to get away from her, too.

"I can maybe get you a job sweeping floors down at the mill," his old man had started in again. "Ain't much, but if you wanted to you could work your way up to becoming a machinist like me. You got the bent; all you need is a little ambition."

Ambition. That was the old man's favorite word. Like it took a lot of ambition to become a machinist or something! Here he was, going on fifty-and he had worked his way up to becoming a turret-lathe operator at a hundred and fifty bucks a week.

Big Deal!

Maybe he could do it in five. Things were easier than when the old man had started out. But five years was too long. And he wasn't going to sweep floors and haul filings.

Not this summer.

So he had played it cool. He had simply nodded and said "I'll think it over," and gone off to his room, knowing there wasn't any thinking to be done about it at all.

His decision was made.

He was splitting. Bugging out, making it, leaving the scene. There was a big world out there, a lot bigger than Coram and a machine shop and a broom. Maybe he'd end up like the old man some day, but first he was going to see what else the world had to offer.

So he had spent the rest of the evening packing his gear. He had a lot of camping equipment and he made use of some of it. It seemed like a good idea, since he had no idea what he might run into on the road. Some aluminum cooking gear, a sleeping bag and an inflatable army surplus air mattress-leftovers from the days when he had been interested in such things and camped by himself out in the hills around Coram. They might come in handy now, and since he didn't have a lot of money he took them along just in case, packing only the bare essentials in the huge leather saddlebags of his motorcycle. No matter what happened, at least he would always have a place to sleep.

For money, all he had was about forty-some dollars in assorted small bills, rolled up and stashed in a bottom drawer of his dresser. It had been there a long time. For some reason he had never touched it, even when he had needed the extra money for the Harley. It wasn't much, but it would help.

Then he wrote his parents a note. It was a brief one, because Jimmy wasn't much for writing:

Dear Mom and Dad, I decided to take off and go down to San Francisco to see about work there for the summer. Hear there's a lot of construction going on. Don't worry about me; I'll write in a couple of weeks or so.

Love, Jimmy.

He left the note propped up on his dresser in front of the mirror where his mother wouldn't miss it when she came in to straighten up in the morning.

Then he walked quietly down the stairs, through the kitchen and out the back door to the woodshed with his bulky bundles.

It took him only a short time to get his gear hung neatly on the big Harley. When he was done, there was room for more.

But he had plenty. You didn't need a lot of junk weighing you down when you were going roaming.

Dressed in a waist-length black leather jacket, tight lack pipe stem cotton slacks, and polished black half-length leather soled boots, he wheeled the loaded down Harley cautiously out of the shed. He didn't want to wake his parents, or the whole neighborhood, for that matter. Not until he was out of the driveway and a good block down the street did he mount his engine and start it up.

Then he was away.

The edge of town wasn't far, and soon he was past the city limit sign: Coram, population 8,000, whizzing past at sixty, and then out on the white moonlit ribbon of highway leading up and over the hills which -rimmed the town.

The night air was exhilarating. Rising ever higher, he gave one last look back over his shoulder at the congestion of little lights in the valley behind him, each little light a house, but one house in particular, Myra's, the one he wanted to identify among them but couldn't.

But maybe her lights weren't on anyway. He faced the road again and accelerated the Harley up to seventy.

There would be no more looking back.

Not now.

He sped over the crest of the highest hill and the town dropped from sight behind him as he began the long swoop downward toward the highway heading south to San Francisco.

After three hours on the road Jimmy found himself becoming drowsy. The mostly empty highway, its monotonous broken white line dotting down the middle like the perforation of a cereal box top, began to hypnotize him; the eerie light bathing the countryside made of it an alluring dreamscape beckoning him away to the Land of Nod. He knew that it was possible to fall asleep driving a motorcycle, as possible as it was driving a car, so when he came to the first likely place for sleeping out in, he pulled off the road and stopped his machine.

The place was a cemetery. Jimmy pushed the heavy vehicle silently in through its rusted iron gate, his body heavy with fatigue, going in deep until he was out of sight from any passing patrol cars on the highway, among the graves and big overspreading trees and soft manicured grass.

A perfect bed.

A safe soft place to lie down in.

Jimmy was well past the age where he could be frightened by staying overnight in a lonely deserted cemetery with nothing but the dead for company. He knew from talking to others that cemeteries were good places to sleep in when you were on the road. Nobody bothered you there, as a rule, and it was always quiet and peaceful.

Just as a cautionary measure, however, he hid the Harley beneath the low-hanging branches of a thickly foliaged weeping willow, getting it completely out of sight. That way, if he overslept the chances were nobody would spot it.

Then he found a spot nearby and began to lay out his air mattress and sleeping bag. Even though it was almost summer, the nights were cool along these coastal roads with the wind blowing in from the sea, and you would need at least a good wool blanket to sleep comfortably in.

A light sleeping bag atop an inflated air mattress was even better.

The best. You couldn't get better sleep on a foam cushion bed, as far as he was concerned. Fresh air and crickets and the smell of new mown grass all around him. He took off his jacket, balled it up into a pillow and slid in, falling asleep almost immediately. One look at the billions of brilliant stars overhead, a yawn and a sigh, and then sleep.

Perfect.

Who could ask for anything better?

It was less than a half-hour later when he awakened however. A noise nearby, a noise which even through his sleep he was able to identify as the crunch of automobile tires on gravel, made him sit up, suddenly alert. He had made his bed in the shallow of a little grassy ravine, away from the graves just over the rise and protected by a line of trees. The noise, at first just the sound of a car engine running, came from just over this rise, behind the trees, and he could see automobile lights reflected and broken up by their branches.

Who could it be at this hour? he wondered. The cemetery was not on the outskirts of a town, like most cemeteries, but isolated along the highway, a very old, country-type burying ground. Would the cops be checking around here for bums sleeping out? It was hard to believe, but he decided he better investigate. Better to see first than to be seen first.

He slid quietly out of the bag, got to his feet and in a crouch went up the rise to the trees. The headlights had disappeared, but the car was still there. He could hear its engine, and finally he could make out voices. Low and indistinguishable at first, but then, as he went between the thick pines and peered around, louder.

Voices and laughter.

The voices were male, and after crawling under the low branches of a pine, he could see the people who belonged to them clearly in the car.

The car was a big new convertible, a Lincoln, with the white top down and the plush interior exposed to the bright light of the moon.

There were three guys in it. One in front, behind the wheel, and the other two in back. They were all drinking from cans of beer, smoking and talking noisily. Drunk, it wasn't hard to figure.

Stoned out of their minds.

It wasn't hard to see that at all. The guy in front was leaning his head back against the seat like he was sleeping, but the two in the back seat were doing the talking and laughing and spilling a lot of beer in the process.

Over a body. Jimmy hadn't seen that at first. She was slumped down between them, a small but curvy platinum blonde, obviously out cold because she wasn't doing anything about the beer being poured over her by the guy on either side of her. First one and then the other poured, the sudsy liquid spilling down over her face and hair, the creamy white throat and the rise of her breasts just above the top of an expensive looking strapless party gown. The beer wetted her face and breasts and shoulders, making them shine in the moonlight like carved marble, making dark splotches down the filmy material of the bodice and skirt-but she didn't move a finger to stop them. She just sat back, like the guy in front, passed out maybe.

They all looked to be about college age. Not too much older than Jimmy himself was.

The girl was beautiful.

Breathtakingly beautiful.

That was the only way to describe her, and Jimmy felt that clutched-up feeling in his throat he got when he saw a really fine looking broad.

He edged closer, trying to get a better look and to hear what they were saying. The whole scene was so odd he forgot about sleep for the moment. It wasn't likely that he'd get any with the racket they were making anyway. They must have thought they were absolutely alone in this place.

The voices came in clear, the two guys in the back seat talking to each other:

"Man, she's really out."

"What are we going to do with her?"

"Ha ha! What would you like to do with her, Smitty?"

"Yeah, I know. But, hell, she's Jake's date."

"Jake's out of this. Besides, he's a fraternity brother, isn't he? One for all, all for one, you know."

"I'm soused."

"So am I. Blitzed, man; wiped out. But that don't mean I don't have ideas. Look at her, mouth hanging open!"

"Maybe Jake wouldn't mind. Carol's a witch anyway!"

"A real teaser. She hasn't loved one single guy in the frat yet!"

"We could fix that right now, couldn't we?"

"Want to?"

"Let's."

"Maybe we ought to ask Jake first. She's his date."

"Listen, why do you think he brought us all the way here? He'd do that himself if he wasn't rotten stoned. Damn, she needs something like this!"

"You're twisting my arm, man."

"Let's try twisting hers. See if it'll wake her up."

"Okay, but not her arm. I've got a better way."

"Show me the way, Smitty baby! I'll follow your lead, you crazy joker!"

Jimmy watched, the guy on his near side reached his hand over and gave the bodice of the girl's dress a good yank.

It came away in one piece.

Her breasts were soaked in beer, only the beer was drying already, making a sticky film over the perfect creamy skin.

They were beautiful breasts.

Perfect.

The girl didn't wake up right away. Her mouth moved and she moaned and tossed her head, but her eyes didn't open. It was as though she were awake but not yet able to move.

The guy named Smitty was able to move. He moved very quickly, grabbing one voluptuous young breast in his hands and ducking his head down to it.

The other guy watched for a minute and then did the same.

Their laughter and remarks were muffled as they moved their heads busily. "Nice?"

"Mmmmm-beer-coated! I love them I"

"What a treat she is!"

"Best boobs on the campus, by gawd!"

"Tasty."

"Too much."

"I'm getting a strong, strong yen from this action, man."

"You too?"

"Right. Why the hell don't we strip her and get her on the grass over there?"

"On a grave?"

"That's the place to stretch her out, isn't it?"

"Man. Like wow!"

"Let's do that. I'm not drunk any more. Just drunk on her luscious melons."

"Okay, but she's waking up."

"Tough. I've got too much going for her to stop now. She's going to whether she wants to or not."

"I'm for that. Gawd, what punching bags these things would make!"

Jimmy rubbed his eyes, unable to believe what was taking place before him.

A strip-tease.

Only the girl wasn't doing the stripping-they were, the college fraternity boys sitting in the back seat with her-and they weren't being very subtle.

They were ripping her dress to shreds.

The dress riped pretty easily, for that matter, by the time they had her down to underpants, garter belt, and stockings, she woke up.

"Oh! What are you doing?" she said in a shocked, half-awake voice, her words slurring themselves together.

"Relax, Carol baby," the guy named Smitty said. "We're just having a little fun."

"My dress!"

"It kind of got ripped-don't you remember?"

"No. No! Let me out of here!" The guy named Smitty stood up in the back seat of the car.

"Damn, she's going to start screaming all over the place. I knew it!"

"Belt her one then!"

Smitty belted her one. As she tried to struggle up from the seat the back of his hand came down across her pretty red lips in a vicious arc that ended in a crack loud enough to make Jimmy wince. The girl's body went back, her head bouncing against the back seat. She shrieked once, covering her face with her hands, and then began to sob.

"Hit her again," the other guy coaxed.

"No, she's all right now. You don't mind us having a little fun, do you Carol? The word will never get past this car, honest."

"Puh-please," she blubberd, "take me b-back to the dorm!"

"She's not going to," the other guy said disgustedly. "Here, let me talk to her."

Smitty moved over to let the other guy talk to her. The other guy knelt across her body and began his conversation.

Using his fist!

His fist smacked into her chest repeatedly, first one side and then the other, while the girl screamed and began to babble incoherently. He held her behind the neck finally and then planted three carefully timed blows in her middle. Smitty watched it all, obviously excited by the sight because he didn't try to interfere. The other guy was much bigger than him, about the size of a good college football tackle.

The girl went: "Uh, uh, uh," over and over. It was the only sound she seemed to be able to make when he was finished. Her white, perfect body curled up like a caterpillar and she fell back on the seat, hugging her knees to her chest.

"See? No more screaming," the guy said, smacking her once more in the bottom of her now exposed buttocks for good measure. He was right.

She had stopped screaming.

She was fully awake, her eyes wide as saucers, her knees pressed against her breasts and her ankles crossed defensively-but she wasn't screaming. She didn't make a sound or move when Smitty ripped her garter belt and stockings down and tore her panties off.

Jimmy's blood was pounding. He didn't know what to do. Those guys were real rough, treating a girl like that, but if he tried to help her he'd just get clobbered himself, three-to-one, because the other guy, the one in front they called Jack or Jake, was waking up now too.

Maybe he'd stop them, Jimmy thought. The girl, Carol, was supposed to be his date.

He waited and he watched, holding his breath. There was something about the scene that excited him, too, making him reluctant to move away.

It wasn't hard to discover what. His eyes kept returning to the girl. He could see her in close detail, the light was so bright-her naked limbs and frightened eyes and her beautiful blonde hair.

Jake, her date, had woken up and was turning around in the seat to see what was going on.

Smitty and his big friend were tossing a coin over the cowering form of the girl.

"Heads. I make her first," Smitty's friend was saying.

Jimmy wormed his way closer under the branches in an effort to see what would happen. The air was very still, not a breeze around, and an electric tension seemed to fill the atmosphere.

"What's going on?" Jake said.

The two boys turned around and looked at him.

"It's Carol," the big one explained. "She took all her clothes off and now she won't."

"Maybe we ought to leave her alone," the one named Smitty said, obviously getting a little nervous now that the driver of the car was awake.

Jake took a long look at his girl, lying naked and doubled-up in the back seat. Then he opened the car door and got out, walking around to the far side where her head was crouched down between the seat and the side upholstery.

What he did then amazed Jimmy completely.

He grabbed her by the hair and started pulling her up over the side of the car.

Jimmy began to feel suddenly queasy when he understood what was happening before his eyes.

A gang rape.

He had heard of them and even been in on one once, but that had been with an old local pro in her forties with seven guys at the lake shore one night. They had all chipped in and taken their turn and that had been pretty lousy and he had been afraid he wouldn't be able to when his turn came, but somehow he had, thereby saving face.

But this was completely different. She was not only a young, swell-looking girl, but she wasn't doing this thing willingly. Weak and drunk as she was, she now realized what was happening to her and was fighting like sixty, screaming and clawing at them as the other two guys helped the driver get her out over the side of the car. He pulled her by the hair and the others grabbed her legs and threw her over and she landed sprawling in the gravel drive. And the guys acting like they were crazy, laughing insanely....

He watched with bated breath, unable to move, a strange, sickish feeling coming over him but all of his senses alerted, even stimulated.

The girl tried to get up and run, but the other two were out of the car now and the guy named Smitty tripped her up with his foot, pushing her at the same time, so that she went spinning down against the side of the convertible, her body making a loud thump against its metal.

"No! Don't! Please! Help me, help me somebody!"

He wanted to. This was brutal, terrible-a scene from some fantastic fantasy going on before his eyes. There was in him the instinct to help her, but it seemed there was little he could do, nothing but miles of deserted road on either side of-the cemetery; if he ran for help it would be too late and if he tried to interfere the three of them would kill him. If he had a gun or something....

But he didn't have a gun.

And, worse than that, he didn't even have the power to move. Because, despite this one instinct, there were others-new ones he had never been aware of in himself and which he wasn't completely aware of now that they were acting on him.

Along with the nausea he felt clutching at his stomach, he felt something else.

Fascination.

It was as though he were watching a movie, a really exciting movie.

A movie which hypnotized him into a state of increasing inner excitement while at the same time paralyzing him physically.

His eyes remained on the girl. He could see in the clear light a thin streak of blood running down from the corner of her pretty lips as she raised her blonde head and moaned. He even imagined he could see the color-a deep red, like her lips. Then her head jerked upward again as one of them caught her by the hair and hauled her to her feet.

They weren't laughing or joking now. They were perfectly silent.

That was worse.

Jimmy sensed it. It was as though he were experiencing what they were feeling and what she was feeling both at the same time-he could identify with her pain but also with their pleasure. Like pulling the legs off grasshoppers or throwing stones at the little girl down the block.

Only they weren't children.

And their silence meant that they knew they had gone too far now; they were charged emotionally by the pain they had inflicted on the girl and couldn't stop what they had drunkenly started. The sight of blood running from a pretty mouth in a pretty face had excited a kind of lust in them that could lead to anything. They were no longer responsible for what they did.

Jimmy sensed all this without reasoning it out. He was held in a spell. He wanted to at least tear his eyes away but he couldn't even do that. The thing had to be carried out to the illogical conclusion, they the actors and he the witness. A captive audience, by now.

"Let me go, please let me go," the girl moaned dully, her head propped back against the rear tire of the convertible after the one holding her hair released her and she had slumped down on her buttocks again.

When the boys spoke again, their voices were high-pitched, unnatural.

"We can't do that now, can we?"

"No. She'd tell. She'll report us anyway."

"Let's smoke on this. I've got a joint left. Let's take off our clothes and smoke a joint. She isn't going to get up."

High-pitched, hysterical voices.

Then, silence as they undressed. The girl continued to sob, slumped against the wheel, one beautiful leg folded under her and the other sticking straight out in front.

Then they were naked, standing around her and passing a cigarette around. Their silence was maddening. Her sobs soon took on an edge of hysteria.

One of them started laughing at her. The louder she sobbed, the more he laughed.

"Listen to her. She knows she's going to be raped!"

"Man, I'm strong for you now baby...."

"Give her a drag. Maybe she wants a drag."

"Want a drag, Carol? It will make things better for you, baby."

The speaker held the cigarette down toward her face, but she cringed away from it.

That was a mistake. There was no way for Jimmy to know this, but somehow he knew it-if she had taken the offer it would have shown she wasn't so afraid of them and they might have remembered what they were doing and how this had started. That might have cooled them just enough.

The would-be donor's reaction was quick, violent. He seized her by the hair and began banging her head against the car's fender. Hard. The hollow-sounding thumps reached Jimmy's ears like physical blows.

Thump thump thump....

Her screams filled the air again. Her legs kicked out and she clawed like a cornered bobcat, but it was of little use. The lust of the three of them was well in evidence. Hands reached down and caught her, lifted her up in the air, carried her-and then threw her hard on the long low rear trunk deck of the convertible.

"Get her, Moose!" someone yelled. "Take her, Moose baby!"

Her body was out-lined clearly on the car; the rearend of the convertible dipped as the big one clambered up on it and forced her to help him carry out his lust. She was stretched out, her head falling back over the edge so that her loosened white-appearing hair streamed down into the back seat. Moose grabbed her ruthlessly and forced himself at her.

She screamed.

The convertible began to rock on its springs, rocking violently.

Again and again.

Jimmy's vision blurred. His eyes seemed to mist over and everything became darker, as if a clod had suddenly covered over the bright full moon. But he could still see them darkly somehow, dark distorted goat-like figures scuffling around the car, breathing heavily, all of them trying to get up on the deck at once.

Taking turns.

Changing partners.

Musical chairs.

Musical rape.

The music of her screams, sighs, groans, sobs, pleas, chokings, coughs, sputterings, moan, silence....

Her silence the worst. Jimmy's head fell down on his crossed arms and he tried to bury his ears away from the sounds, but he couldn't blot them out.

Sounds like meat being slapped and pounded by a butcher. Dull metallic thumps. Sounds like a whip slapping flesh, or a leather belt being used as a whip.

His mind grew dizzy and his ears seemed to fill with a roar like the surf along the ocean; he clenched his eyes shut and saw red whirling pinwheels of flashing light.

Someone yelling something, and then another voice answering, frightened.

He raised his head in time to see the three of them scrambling into the car. The engine boomed to life and gravel went flying out from under the rear wheels as the convertible spun crazily away, headed toward the cemetery entrance under full power.

When he finally came to his senses, Jimmy realized he was alone again.

What had happened to him? He had almost passed out with the thick tangle of sensations that had bombarded his senses. That had been like....

Like....

That had been like with a girl, he realized dully. He raised himself slowly, feeling the cold drying sweat on his skin. He was tremendously thirsty all of a sudden; he looked around for a spigot along the line of graves on the other side of the drive where the car had been.

And then he saw her.

She was lying there, face upward, her body arched slightly across the slight mound of one of the graves so that her fullish breasts were spread wide and flattened somewhat. She lay limp and unmoving. He blinked his eyes at the beautiful vision and finally realized it was real.

She was real. Beautifully real.

He staggered the rest of the way to his feet and hurried over to help her, wishing he had some whiskey or something with him to give her. She would need it.

But when he got to her, he was shocked. Close up, her body still beautiful in contour, was not so pleasant to look at. Dark, ugly bruises, raw red welts, what looked like scars from cigarettes, and dried and drying blood marred the perfection of her face, breasts, and stomach.

Turning sick again, he bent down and tried to raise her head. It was then that he realized her eyes were open and staring at him.

Only she wasn't breathing.

She was dead.

He fell away from her, onto the smooth cropped grass beside the grave and vomited.

When he was able to raise himself, he staggered away in a semi-delirium, his only thought to get as far away from this place as quickly as possible.

In a dream, he scooped up his gear, stowed it in the saddlebags of his motorcycle and got the machine started.

Not until he was well down the highway was he able to breathe almost normally again. He kept the red speedometer needle up near eighty, and his mind a blank. If that had been a nightmare, all he wanted to do was forget it If he could....