Chapter 4

BARRY NORTON was a little forgetful. In the paroxysm of rage that possessed him after his failure with Melody, he forgot the jeep in which he had driven to the Flemmings. He walked the two miles through the woods to Templehoffe, the fanciful name of his fanciful rococo plantation home, vintage eighteen-ninety, so spangled with minarets, dormers, steeples and bays that it looked like an illustration out of Grimm's fairy tales.

As always happened when he was out of temper, Barry decided he needed a drink in the worst way. When he arrived at the gingerbread house he went directly to the kitchen and hunted for liquor. He could not find any immediately and began searching in unlikely places. Both his father and mother were heavy drinkers, the father a compulsive alcoholic, she having somewhat more control. They had deteriorated to the point where they would hide bottles from each other because often when one would want a drink the other had gotten there first and that would mean a dismally thirsty trip to Kenton, sixteen miles away, or Gary, eight miles, for another bottle. For some reason they never invested in more than a few bottles at a time. Never so much as a case.

Barry found his father's bottle at the bottom of a clothes hamper and took a long, sucking pull at it. It fought its fiery way to his stomach and then threatened to come back. He ran to the kitchen and took a drink of cold water to chase it. It stayed down so he took a few more pulls.

Then he made his way up the stairs, a pitiable object His thin, ascetic face was riven by blasting emotions that he was powerless against now that the alcohol had begun to work. His brain was a wild vortex sucking up tattered impressions like bits of scrap paper. He hung to the bannister and went up like a Parkinson cripple, carefully, ploddingly. Once in his room he sank into a deep chair, his knees wide, his long-fingered hands hanging over them limply. His mouth hung open vacuously and only in his eyes was the hell inside him reflected.

After a time he heard a noise at the door but he did not move. His mother stood in the doorway and looked at him blearily. She ran her wrist across her mouth. "Barry, darling. You're in a state again. Mother is so sorry. What is it this time?"

"Get out," he said, his voice as mechanical as a recording.

She smiled. "Don't speak to Mother so, darling. It isn't nice."

"Get out," he said again, "or I'll show the painting to you. In fact maybe I'll show it to other people-" She went pale. Turning, she stumbled out of the room. The threat was his surest weapon and had never failed.

The peculiar half-smile now decorated one corner of Barry's mouth. He got up and went across the hall to a staircase, climbed it, opened an obscure door behind which was a ladder. He scrambled up, pushed a trapdoor, and was standing in a walled off, gabled attic. He opened a big cabinet and looked inside. Among the paintings stacked there was an oil of his mother; he dragged it out and stared at it. The woman was easily recognizable despite the exaggerated dwarfishness of the shoulders and head, the exaggerated enormity of the buttocks and thighs. She was nude. Her breasts hung long and slack like fat, dispirited sausages. She was seated on a bed and apparently stunned with drink, her eyes vacuous holes in her head. To signify that she had just been ill, vomit was over floor and bed. The portrait was hideous.

Barry had found her that way one night, had been repelled but also fascinated. He had considered the disgusting sight a challenge to his talents as a painter. He had immediately tackled his canvas.

The first time he had showed the painting to her, she had fainted. Since then, it had served as a weapon with which he could control her as he desired.

As he inspected the horrible female figure, hate surged through Barry like heat waves. He wanted to deface the painting, to slash and rend it, to blot out of sight for all time the bloated monstrosity he had created but he knew he could not. There was too much of himself in it, too much of his torture on seeing his own mother in such condition. He had always been a heartless sort, cruel, unfeeling. Yet, as to most young, his mother had been an image. She had defaced that image and had left him with the ultimate horror of a complete emotional vacuum.

Suddenly he pushed the painting back into the cabinet, locked it. He had been afraid his mother might destroy the portrait, so afraid that for months he had slept on a cot here within the cramped confines of the studio, surrounded by his paints and easels and brushes.

He turned, scrambled down the ladder. He felt a little better now, and definitely hungry. He went to the kitchen where the Negro cook always left supper on the table for them to pick from. They could conform to no regular dining routine so the cook had invented the buffet-style supper for them. Breakfast was also buffet. Only dinner, the noon meal, was served at a specified time and often it grew cold before anyone ate it.

Barry chewed with slow, gluttonous deliberation then sat back in a chair and stared through a window at the deepening twilight. He sat thus for a full hour. Occasionally he would blink slowly like an iguana looking at the sun.

When the twilight had become black night, he stood up. With quick steps he went to his room and changed to a suit of faded khakis. In his pale-blue eyes there was no indication of what was going on in his distorted mind as he walked out of the house. To the south and east a long black pall mounted slowly in the sky, cutting off the starlight. Behind it showed the shimmer of violet lightning. Barry took a deep breath, inhaling the suddenly cool air. Then, like an animal, he slunk off through the woods toward a row of dim lights that marked the homes of the Negroes who worked on the plantation.

For some time he haunted the pathways that wound through brush and scattered trees in the area of the Negro quarters. He moved aside from a path as the sound of lusty singing came to his ears. Finally, silhouetted against the sky, he could make out the vague form of a woman coming toward him at a swinging walk, singing in a rich contralto.

Barry gathered his muscles like a puma about to pounce. His mind was now upon a single objective and the fact that he had heard this same voice many times before did not make the slightest impression upon him.

As the woman came opposite him, he launched himself upon her. The force of the attack bore her to the ground and frightened her half out of her wits, the latter fact accounting for a slight delay in retaliatory action. When it did come, though, it was by no means ineffective. From a big armful of soft woman she turned into an incarnate savage. She let loose a scream that almost lifted Barry's scalp from his head. As he grabbed for her mouth, she twisted and clawed, then threw a whirlwind of punches at him. Out of the furious activity came a combination of blows that knocked him bodily into a wall of underbrush. Barry took to his heels, managing to get away before her screams attracted the crowd that quickly gathered and made a diligent search for him.

Having run frantically through the woods for almost a mile, breath abruptly failed Barry. He sank to the ground at the foot of a huge pine that now swayed in the force of a rising wind. He crawled close to its trunk and wept with the harsh intensity of a child. In the west, thunder muttered as the long line of black clouds rolled ever nearer. A glittering shaft of lightning sprang upward like a snake and tore a sprawling crack in the sky. A crackling cannonade of thunder followed.

Melody Flemming paced up and down in her room. Outside nature raved, rattling sashes and doors. A blaze of lightning exploded over her vision and for a few seconds she was blinded. She smiled and walked to a window. She had a vast love for the rampant efforts of nature: the sluicing rain, the banging roll of thunder and the ripping, the leap of lightning across a dark sky. Tonight her restlessness had been so severe that it had amounted to pain. She was still restless, but now that the storm had broken the pain had become exaltation. The storm, the storm!

The fact was that Melody was a passionate girl with no outlet for her passions. Barry Norton's attempt to ravish her-the constant reading of romantic novels which, in the modern manner, left little to the imagination-the pressures of her own maturing but unfulfilled womanhood-these had combined to incite in her the restlessness boiling in her blood. Her loins ached with a feverish heat and her skin, also hot, felt too tight for her body. Her sensitivity, always acute, was now tingling and leaping with electric reaction. She leaned against the wall and felt a lashing throb go through her swollen, heavy bosom. She rested her forehead against the pane and hugged herself, a sigh of want trickling from her lips.

The storm was doing nothing to soothe her; indeed it was exciting her the more. But she exulted in it. A particularly fierce gust of rain struck the window, and she laughed. As she peered out at the extravagant display, she was wearing a cobwebby creation that would not have been acceptable outside her bedroom even in dim light-a sheer shortie nightgown with scantie pants to match. Even these seemed too warm for her, however, too heavy. How good it would be, she thought, to cool her fever in the pelting rain, to expose her taut skin to the wild kiss of the elements.

Suddenly she threw off the nightie and walked in magnificent nudity to the back veranda. Everyone was gone from the kitchen. The house servants, having done the supper dishes, had run for home to avoid the storm. Joyce probably was snoring in her room after four highballs before supper and three brandies afterward. Not a light showed in the house, not a soul stirred.

So Melody did not hesitate. She bounded out into the cooling downpour and raced toward the clump of yaupon bushes that stood near the barn. She wanted to worship the storm with her body but she also wanted some protection. The corner of the barn would divert winds that otherwise might beat her down.

Even so, the gale whipped into her, driving before it the swirling, pelting rain. The choking deluge distorted the lightning, making it show as big, wallowing balloons of light. Melody gasped and arched her body, coalescing against the crushing downpour. It covered her with glistening cascades, water flowing over her sculptured curves in a slick patina. It streamed downward, fingering her with chilly intimacy, seeking out her every secret and treating each with brash familiarity. She shivered, yet cried out in joy and lifted her face to the wondrous storm. Her hair was slicked against her head. Her breasts strained to meet the flood. Her legs, slim and long, were sturdily spread to sustain her against it.

And under the eaves of the barn Barry Norton stood and watched her, his eyes unblinking even when lightning flashed. His tongue flicked over his wet, cold lips- Barry had seen her run from the house. He had been watching her room, wondering if he could get into it, somehow. Fresh from his defeat at the hands of the redoubtable Negress, on the path, Barry had left the pine tree to stalk Melody. His twisted fury was concentrated on her, for was she not the one who had humiliated him by denying him her body? And the desires she had aroused had sent him after the Negro woman, only to suffer further humiliation.

Ah, if he could but get his hands on Melody, he had thought, spying on her room. She would be helpless. And brutalizing her was what he wanted more than anything else. She would have to pay for what she had done to him. As long as he had been able to hope for marriage, which to him meant merely a ticket to a few days of debauchery without worrying much past that, he had had no particular desire to injure her. But with that hope fading, he had veered to a compulsion to use her as his plaything for a while-then revenging himself on her by making sure no one would ever afterward be able to enjoy her.

And now, here she was. At his mercy. His hands unclenched and became claws. His chest swelled.

He was not surprised that she was nude. He should be, too, he told himself, and repaired the matter expeditiously. And as his own thin body grew as slick with the rain as hers, he slowly crept up behind the unsuspecting girl.

Jumping erect, he swung a blow at her neck that might have broken it had not his aim been bad. Instead, his fist struck her over the right ear, tumbling her to her hands and knees. Then he was upon her like a beast and they rolled in the water that coated the grass. In her stunned condition, she was no match for him. He pinned her down, and took her.

The worst was that at the height of it, Melody's body betrayed her. Even before running out into the storm, she had been in a lather of libidinous want. The elements had lashed her to even higher pitch. All that was missing was a trigger, and Barry Norton served as one. Melody could not help herself. Acute feeling seemed to explode within her and automatically her flesh went into writhing cooperation. A few more moments and for the first time in her life, she knew the shattering ecstasy that can be attained by man and woman. A bubbly scream tore itself from her throat. Her body went into a thrashing, senseless convulsion. And went limp.

But limpness was not afflicting her attacker.

His first onslaught spent, he seemed enveloped in fury as he fell upon her once more. Again he hammered her with rhythmic blows of rigid, penetrating voluptuousness while his hands savaged her breasts. Again she was swept along by the torrent but although her want was unabated, her sanity had returned. Reacting to shame and the shrill voice of reason, she tried to wrestle away from him. His response was to smash her senseless with two or three blows to the chin.

When she came to, she was lying in the area of the barn where cotton was stored. It was warm, soft and prickly to her back. She was spread-eagled, tied hand and foot so that it was impossible for her to move. Equally impossible was it for her to see her assailant. Outside, during the lightning flashes, she had not looked at him and now it was too late. She shrieked, but the storm drowned her voice. Besides, there was no one to hear other than this man unknown to her. He proceeded to subject her to a nightmare of savage licentiousness. She was about to faint when there came a thundering burst of sound as lightning ripped into the barn like a detonating bomb. Barry paid no heed. Not even when flames licked at the cotton room. She had served, and now he was ready to transform her into something no one would ever again care to possess. He smashed at her face with both hands and was gratified to hear her scream.

He got up and started looking for some kind of weapon. Careless of the mounting fire, the smoke, he seized an old, bent pitchfork hanging on the wall. He returned and stood over her. She screamed, tried to roll her body away from him. He lifted the pitchfork and she screamed again.

The figure of a big man hurtled into the storeroom.

For a split second Barry cowered, still holding the pitchfork. Then he threw it from him, leaped through a low window and was swallowed up by the storm.

The big man was Bridge Pilgrim, the plantation manager. Alarmed by the nearness of the lightning strike, he had run out of his cottage, had noted the first signs of fire. Starting the high-pressure pump, he had raced to the barn dragging a hose. He had dropped it, however, when Melody had screamed, and he had bounded to her rescue.

Bridge pulled out his pocket knife, cut the lengths of rope binding her wrists and feet. He swept her up in his arms and raced out of the barn. He knew where her room was so it was there that he carried her. Dumping her on the bed, he looked down into her bruised and dazed face, decided that she was not badly injured.

He dashed out. Negroes had converged to help and in fifteen minutes of touch-and-go fighting, they had wet the flames down to a smoulder. When the flames were under control, Bridge went back to the house, his big body shaking with excitement and fatigue. He found the girl huddled under a blanket, shivering from fright, exposure to cold rain and reactions to her ordeal. She looked at him unseeingly with round, glazed eyes.

Lora, the cook, had returned to the house when the fire-bell was rung. She heard Bridge's yell for help and responded on the double. She was a large woman with a wise but intolerant expression and the thin, tight lips of a born dissenter.

"Gawd!" she gasped. "What happened?"

"Get Miss Joyce," he rasped.

"Ha," she replied. "If all this 'sturbance didn't bring her to, how'm I gonna do it? With what she put away from the bottle today, she's good for twelve, fifteen hours. You didn't tell me what happened to that gal-she looks like she's seen the devil..

Bridge told what he knew in a few crisp words.

Lora cursed with hearty thoroughness. "You didn't see who it was?"

"How could I?" he snapped impatiently. "He was in the shadows. And when he lit out, I couldn't chase him. I was otherwise occupied. Now take care of her, will you? I'm going to call the sheriff."

"Gawd... Gawd," moaned Lora, as he closed the door. Then she stripped back the blanket.

Melody moaned. She was doubled up into a tight knot. She had been bitten and scratched, among other things, and blood smeared her skin as well as the sheets.

Lora turned her over with a gentle hand. "It's Lora, honey. Now calm yourself. Lemme look you over good."

Melody stretched out obediently. Lora examined her with an eagle eye and made several picking motions with her thumb and forefinger, then she covered the girl with a sheet and went out into the big hallway where Bridge was speaking to the sheriff. When he hung up, Lora turned on a table lamp and motioned to him.

"You know she was raped, don't you?"

"I figured as much. I told the sheriff-"

"Now, look here," Lora interrupted. "No colored man in this county would do anything so rotten."

"Hell, I know that." Bridge's big hands were clenching and unclenching spasmodically. "But who could it be?"

She cocked a bright brown eye at him. "Mr. Bridge, maybe it's the same feller."

"Same fellow as who?"

"There was some commotion over near the Norton place before the storm. It reached me second-hand that some feller grabbed Delia Mae Jones when she was comin' home from Pearlie Bate's house. All I got to say, he picked the wrong one. Delia Mae's a ringtailed sowcoon when she gets her musk up and she knocked him loose but they didn't never find out who it was."

He nodded. "I'll tell the sheriff." He frowned, trying to figure out what to do next. "I suppose we should try to wake Miss Joyce."

Lora's bright eyes rolled. "You want to try?"

"Not me!"

"All right. I'll try. I'll pull her outa bed so it will prove somebody did try. Is the sheriff bringin' doctor?"

"Yes. Dr. Fontenot."

"Well, one sure thing. That ole Frenchman knows how to keep his mouth shut 'stead of blabbing the poor girl is damaged goods." Nora started down the hall toward Joyce's room but after a few steps came to a sudden halt. "No, I ain't."

Bridge said, "You ain't what?"

"I ain't goin' in there. I ain't gonna touch Miss Joyce. I'm gonna call Missy. I musta been up in the half-air not to think of that before."

Bridge gave a sour chuckle. "You sure said yourself a mouthful. Call her now."

Lora got busy on the telephone. She winced as Missy's metallic voice crashed through the receiver. "Missy?"

"Dammit, how many people do you know can holler as loud as me? Sure, it's me. What'n hell do you want this time of night?"

Lora gave her a quick resume of the situation. "Miss Joyce is snorin' like a sawmill in high and you know I couldn't wake her now. Sure would be handy if you'd come over, take charge and maybe do Melody some good."

"Joyce ought to be taking care of her own daughter, not me. I'll wake her, by God," said Missy grimly. "I got ways. Now listen to me, Lora. She'll be wearin' that Mother Hubbard she wears winter and summer. I'm leavin' right now and when I get there you have me about a gallon of ice run through that crusher. I'll wake her or I'll put her in deep freeze. I'm on my way... You say Bridge brought her in?"

"Yes'm."

"Did he call the sheriff?"

"Yes'm."

"Good. I'll be there in fifteen minutes. Dr. Fontenot's here. I'll bring him along."