Chapter 12
The culmination of a lot of planning and thinking and hoping, on the part of a number of people, occurred during the last week in August, at the height of the prune harvest and when the apples were just acquiring their final gloss of ripeness.
This came about because of two factors which happened to coincide: Big Lou Rombaugh became very drunk one evening, and his niece picked this particular time to pay him a call at his house.
She had wanted to find out if he had heard from Laura that day and, if so, when she would be back to town. For some reason Laura hadn't called her in more than forty-eight hours, and this was unheard of, ever since they had become good friends. Even when the older girl was on an extended stay in the eastern part of the state, she had always called once a day ... until this time.
Jill couldn't wait any longer, and she thought that her uncle may have heard from Laura.
She walked to the front door of his house, pushed the bell, and waited. At first there was no answer, then she heard a thumping sound from somewhere and her uncle's shout, "I'm coming." This was followed by a curse which was spoken with slightly less volume but still plainly audible outside the closed door.
She wondered what was the matter with him.
She had her answer promptly.
When the door was thrown open, he stood there, a giant of a man with no shirt on and his suspenders hanging in loops at either side of his sagging trousers His hair was mussed, and his bleary eyes were reddish-tinged.
He roared at her, "What do you want?" Only after he had squinted did he realize who she was.
Jill wondered if she should turn around and leave.
Big Lou laughed suddenly and held the door wider. "Come in, honey! Come in!"
Jill eyed him apprehensively. "Uncle Lou, if you're not feeling well, maybe I'd better wait until tomorrow. I can talk with you at the office."
He reached and grasped her arm. "Come in, Jill. Confound it, what's the idea of standing out there?
Don't you know you're always welcome in this house? I'm happy to see you any time, baby ... just any time at all." His voice was thick and he swayed a little from side to side.
She moved into the house timidly and he swung the door closed. He turned to face her, smiling in a peculiar way. She didn't like the way he was looking at her.
But, then, Jill hadn't liked the looks of any man recently. Nowadays she didn't like anyone's looks but Laura's.
Big Lou took a step closer. "You sure are pretty, Jill! I just can hardly believe how pretty you are. You know, if you weren't my sister's daughter ... " He grasped her arm again and this time his fingers hurt. He had tremendous strength.
"Please, Uncle Lou!" Jill suddenly was afraid. She wanted to leave as soon as she possibly could. "The reason I came over was to ask about Laura ... whether you'd heard from her today."
"Laura?" he echoed loudly. "Laura Preston?" He laughed. "Say you two have been thick as thieves lately, haven't you?"
"Please ... " she murmured again, this time closing her eyes. She could hardly stand to look at him, and his breath stank of whiskey.
"Funny she didn't tell you..."
"What?" Jill's eyes blinked open.
"Laura," her uncle repeated. "Funny she didn't tell you she was quitting."
"No! She couldn't."
"She did tonight. Called me from Twin Falls. Said she'd taken a job in the Middle West and she was gonna leave right from there. No advance notice or anything. That's the kind of courtesy a man gets nowadays. Why. when I was starting out in business .
He talked on but Jill didn't hear. Laura had Quit. Laura wouldn't be back. This was all Jill could think about. The truth kept hammering in her brain; she wanted to cry out. Worst of all. Laura hadn't told her. She hadn't said a thing when she left.
"...told me to tell you," Lou was saying, and she listened dully. "She said she hoped you'd understand that she didn't have time to call you herself. She had to catch the next plane going out."
Jill stared without speaking, and Big Lou broke into a sudden smile. "Well! No use just standing here like this. Come on into the living room." He moved close to her and became very confidential: "How about a little drink, huh? Just a teensy one?"
His breath almost nauseated her and she pushed at him. "Leave me alone, you old drunk!" She tried to sidestep past him to the door.
Big Lou grasped her arm. "What did you call me your own uncle?" t
"Never mind," she muttered. "Just let me go I want to get out of here."
"I won't let you go," he said. "I don't want you to go. You're all I've got now, Jill honey. Now that Fanny's not coming back, you're all I've got in this town. We don't see one another often enough." lit leaned close to her again. "Say ... how about a kiss for your old uncle, huh?"
She swung her right arm and struck him across the side of the face.
The blow didn't hurt, but it made him very angry. Jill could see the fury rise in his face. She tried to get away, but he grasped her with both hands, his fingers bruising her arms.
"I'll scream," she threatened. "You let go of me or I'll yell my head off." She felt desolate anyway, after hearing about Laura, and she certainly as not going to put up with this.
"Why, you ungrateful little ... " He began to shake her by the shoulders.
She was wearing a low-cut dress and, as her body tossed back and forth in the grip of his massive hands, the exposed tops of her lush breasts wobbled. They wobbled and shook and nearly leaped from their flimsy confinement.
Big Lou, staring at this sight, suddenly was engulfed in a torrent of lustful desire. All the lascivious thoughts he had ever had about his niece now seemed to return to his mind en masse, swamping his senses. He forgot himself completely who he was, who this was in front of him, what he mustn't do.
He saw only a sweet young girl with luscious breasts a girl he longed for, a girl who could fill the emptiness in his life.
He embraced her, pulling her against his huge body and wrapping his arms about her back. His wet lips sought hers as she struggled desperately with him. Her small fists pounded at his chest and upper arms, but the blows were like hailstones against a wall of concrete. He laughed and pulled at her all the more. Her dress became twisted, partly from the pressure of his arms and partly from her own twisting efforts to escape.
A shoulder strap broke...
As one of her fresh young breasts leaped to naked freedom, its pink nipple pointing arrogantly, Big Lou lost every last bit of restraint he had possessed. He grasped the top of her dress with one thick hand and yanked toward him. The dress split to her waist.
Now both her breasts were bare and they bobbed naked before Lou's eyes. She clutched frantically at what remained of her clothes, but Lou continued to pull at them, causing her dress to drop and her half-slip also.
She stood before him now in nothing but panties sheer, pink panties that concealed none of her loveliness.
He pulled her into his arms, twisting to try to get her down to the floor. As she fought him, he lost his balance. Jill pulled free and her uncle tottered, striking his head against the wall. He slumped.
She was out of the house and running across the lawn without giving a thought to her lack of clothing. Terror was clutching at her heart and, beyond that, there was the terrible hurt of Laura Preston's leaving a hurt that she somehow knew would never heal.
When Big Lou awakened a long time later, during the early hours of the morning, he stared at the evidence of what had taken place during the evening.
He picked up Jill's dress, her slip, her bra. He remembered she had been there and that he had wanted her intensely. He remembered their struggle and that he had torn the clothes from her.
At this point, Big Lou's memory failed him. But he didn't have to remember any more. Wanting her as intensely as he had, for such a long time, he was sure he knew what had happened next.
He had raped her.
He had raped his own niece his sister's daughter.
Desolation claimed him, made even more intense by the physical effect of his hangover.
Big Lou kept a rifle in his house, for he was a hunter of sorts on the rare occasions when he had an opportunity to get away from his office. He stumbled through he house to where the rifle was kept.
He didn't take time to think over what he was about to do. Why think? He had thought and brooded too much already about his wife whom he loved and had lost, and about his niece whom he had lustfully coveted and finally defiled.
There was nothing more to think about.
There was something he had to do, and then he would never have to think any more.
The news of Big Lou's suicide spread through the community that Sunday morning, and nearly everyone was shocked. Nearly everyone grieved.
But there were a few men who viewed his death as a tragedy which was not without its beneficial side
... to them, at least.
Jill Marshall was surprised when she heard, but she felt neither sorrow nor satisfaction. Emotionally she was incapable of feeling anything but an intense sense of loss over the departure of Laura Preston. Nothing else mattered at all.
Jill had run nearly naked back to the hotel the evening before, dodging from building to building, up back streets and alleys. She didn't think she had been seen, but she didn't care if she had. What difference did anything make?
She let someone else telephone her mother in Portland and inform Sarah Marshall of her brother's death. Jill received word back that Sarah was leaving for Fruitvale right away.
This meant that Jill that she must leave town immediately. She didn't want to face her mother. She didn't want to stay for Uncle Lou's funeral, either. She just wanted to get away.
As soon as she gave her notice to the manager of the hotel, the word spread. Certain men in town, who long had hoped and talked about the opportunity to have her some day, realized they must act now or forever lose their chances. And now, they felt they were free to act because Rig Lou was no longer around.
One of these men knew Jack Able had dated the girl once. He thought Jack knew her better than anyone else, because they had been working together every day. This man had a talk with Jack.
Plans were set.
That afternoon, as Jill was packing, Jack called on her at the hotel.
Persuading Jill to go for a ride with him in his car wasn't easy, but finally she agreed because she had skipped lunch and now found she was hungry. If he was willing to buy, why shouldn't she take advantage of the fact?"
They went to a cafe at the edge of town. Afterward, instead of heading directly back to the hotel as he had promised, Jack aimed his Plymouth toward the country.
Jill turned to him: "What's the idea?"
"You'll see," Jack said tightly.
He didn't relish the idea of treating any girl this way, but if ever there were one who deserved such treatment it was Jill. She had teased nearly every man in town; she had been instrumental, Jack suspected, in breaking up her uncle's marriage and later in causing him to take his own life; and she had caused Jack himself to suffer with frustration. What was more, there was talk that she had turned Lesbian and was having an affair with Laura Preston.
So she deserved what the boys intended to do with her.
Jack felt sure there was no risk, because she had come with him willingly and she was of age, Anyway, she wouldn't talk. Not her. She was too anxious to get out of town before her mother arrived to take her back to Portland.
When Jack reached the spot which had been selected by the others a large hayfield some distance from any house he noticed their cars parked in a grove of trees along the road. The men were not in the cars, however. They would be hiding behind the hay sack where Jack was to take her.
She didn't want to get out of the car, but he insisted. "I think we should have a talk before you leave Fruitvale," he said.
Jill felt that to give in and listen would be easier than resisting, so she went along.
They strolled across the sunlit field and, when they reached the haystack, she turned to him: "Well? Please say what's on your mind so we can get out of here. I want to catch the four o'clock bus."
Jack didn't say anything.
He didn't have the chance, for at that moment Pete Larrabee leaped from the hay and grasped Jill from behind. She cried out, but there was no one to hear.
Pete Larrabee had no sooner wrestled her down into the edge of the haystack, than the other men appeared Mort Hopper and a couple of others, one from the Rombaugh office and one from the plant.
They began to tear at her clothes.
Jill's frantic shrieks were to no avail, and she couldn't resist the men. Terror filled her. She knew that this time she would not be rescued as she had been in the hotel. As the certainty of this became more apparent, her dread gave way to a strange kind of numbness. It was as if she couldn't really feel anything, as if she were standing somewhere to the side and watching the men do this to some other girl.
Her dress was up around her waist now, along,-with her half-slip, and the men were pulling off her brassiere. Her naked breasts bobbed and shook as she continued to struggle, her back deeply imbedded in the hay.
The men were crouched all around her, saying nothing. Their eyes were hard and their hands rough as they pawed at her breasts and reached up her legs to grasp the elastic at the top of the pink silk pants silk pants which Laura had given her.
Jill's pants came away and then the final phase of the drama began.
Jack Able took her first, with the other men holding her securely.
She screamed at the first assault, and then she reverted to her previous state of feeling nothing. Jack worked and worked, his passion soaring,, but Jill felt nothing at all. Her breasts rolled against him and he paused a couple of time to capture her nipples between his lips. Then he went on.
He achieved his release in a shuddering spasm of intense pleasure which, in some measure at least, paid him for the weeks of frustration she had brought to his life.
After Jack was Mort Hopper. Jill closed her eyes and ceased to struggle.
Come one, come all, she thought giddily. What was the difference? What did anything matter?
After Mort there was the man from the plant whose name she didn't know. Then there was one from the office a salesman n-rnd George Hartley. Come on George, she thought lurry up and finish. Finish and get out of my life, all of you! I'll never see one of you or this stupid town again!
The last was Pete Larrabee, and he took longer than any of the others ... or perhaps this was just the way the time seemed to Jill. He insisted on kissing her a lot and playing with h:r breasts, and then he rolled her onto her face so that he could have fun with her buttocks.
What did that matter, either? she thought. Let him have all the fun he liked.
As he took her, she stared, grabbed fistfuls of the hay stuff, then held her eyes tightly closed until he was finished. She hadn't felt a thing.
Only after she was dressed, when the other men had left and she was on her way back to town with Jack Able, did she realize that the warnings which her mother had drummed into her brain during all the years that she was growing up hadn't proved out at all. There had been no real hurt.
But her sister, Edna, hadn't been right, either. There had been no pleasure.
Jill had felt absolutely nothing.
She rode morosely at Jack's side, not talking, but staring blankly at the scenery which moved past. All of her senses still seemed numb.
"Would you believe me," Jack said, "if I told you I was sorry?"
"No." The word sounded to her own ears as if it had come from someone else.
"I am ... as strange as that may seem. I wanted to treat you that way. I wanted to, as much as anyone else. But now I'm really sorry. Honest I am. I wanted to say that even though I suppose it sounds foolish."
"Yes, it does."
"You and I could have meant something to one another, Jill. We really could have." She didn't say anything.
"Maybe ... maybe we still could, if you could somehow forgive me."
"Please, don't talk any more," she said evenly, without turning to face him. "Just drive me back to the hotel."
He sighed. "All right."
After a little while, he asked, "Are you going to report this to the sheriff."
"What do you think?"
"I don't think you are," he said frankly, "If I had thought you'd do that, I guess I wouldn't have done what I did."
"You're a bright boy," she said bitterly.
They were back in town by that time and they rode silently up Main Street. When Jack pulled his car to a stop in front of the hotel, he said again, "I'm sorry."
Jill turned on the seat to look at him. And she laughed. She merely laughed and that was all. Then she got out of the car and walked into the hotel without looking back.
As soon as she reached her room, she lav out fresh clothing, then went down the hall to run water for a bath. She felt unspeakable filthy. She wasn't sure if soap and water would help, but she wanted to try.
The bath made her feel quite a bit better.
She slipped into her robe, returned to her room, and got dressed. She felt more nearly herself, now, but still there was a terrible emptiness.
Her lips twisted in an ironic smile as she completed the process of packing her things. Now that she'd had the ultimate experience with a man with five men all at once she wondered what all the fuss and worry had been about.
Except for a slight initial hurt, which passed quickly, what had happened had been less than nothing. She hadn't felt any of the excitement she used to feel when boys petted her, or when she lay alone in her own bed and imagined she was being loved.
And she certainly hadn't felt anything like the kind of ecstasy she had known with Laura.
She wondered if she would ever know that kind of happiness again.
At this moment, this was hard to imagine, for Laura was gone and Laura was the only one she could care for. But perhaps ... some day...
When the four o'clock bus pulled out of Fruitvale, Jill Marshall was aboard. There was no one there to see her off.
But Pete Larrabee was standing on the sidewalk, a little ways down the street. He had been in Bailey's Tavern, hoisting a few and watching a Sunday afternoon baseball game on TV.
He stared as Jill stepped onto the bus.
Mort Hopper moved up behind him. "Well, there she goes."
Pete looked at the other man. "Good riddance, too. She turned out to be cold as day-old mashed potatoes. Why, a five-buck hooker will show a guy a better time than that."
"But do you think you'll ever forget her?" Mort asked.
Pete shook his head as he watched the bus pull up the street. "Not-likely."
"Go for another beer?" Mort asked.
Pete grinned. "Sure. If you're buying."
The men turned and ambled into Bailey's Tavern.