Chicago 11, page 7
Terry was a little smug, and she’d never been intimate with even one man. Not that some of her girl friend’s fathers hadn’t tried. Nor would there ever be any more boys in her life. No one ever but Paul. Since she’d met Paul she hadn’t let another boy touch her. She never would. As God was her judge she would be the best wife and mother of his children that any boy ever had.
In spite of the excessive amount of traffic, she made good time. It was five minutes of noon when, lost in her plans for the future, she realized her turnoff was less than a quarter of a mile away and she was in the wrong lane.
She edged over toward the right lane and tried, in vain, to wedge her way between two fast-moving cars. Finally, with the turnoff coming up fast, she was forced to flick on her right-tum indicator and cut m between the two cars, a new Buick and an older model Chevrolet, with a determined suddenness that forced the youthful driver of the Chevy to stand on his brakes and swerve his car off onto the shoulder of the road to keep from running into her.
“Goddamn woman driver!” he shouted.
Then she was in the clear and on the secondary road, where there was very little traffic. Minutes later she turned in through the open, rust-covered wrought iron gate and drove down the crumbling brick drive of the old unoccupied house on the lake and braked her car at the top of the stairs that led down the low bluff to the lake.
The number of weathered For Sale signs thrusting up from what the long winter had left of the weed-choked front lawn always made her a little sad. People had once lived here, people who probably had once been as happy as she knew she and Paul were going to be. Now all that was left were the weeds, the For Sale signs and a pile of stone.
Paul’s car wasn’t in the drive. That meant if she hurried she would have a few minutes to check her makeup and comb her hair before he arrived.
She kneeled on the seat and got the blanket from the back of her car. Then, carrying it and her beach bag, she walked down the wooden stairs to the beach. Their beach was as beautiful and private as it always had been. Humming happily to herself, Terry spread the blanket on the dry sand and anchored the comers neatly with her bag, the thick medical book, her purse and the new transistor radio she’d bought Paul as a happy father-to-be present.
The blanket arranged to suit her, she put on fresh lipstick and combed her hair and added a trifle more eye shadow to make her large brown eyes look larger than they were. Then, satisfied she’d made herself as pretty as she could, she leaned back on her hands and stretched out her legs in the sun. She hoped Paul would like her new playsuit. She thought he would. The saleslady who’d sold it to her told her that all natural blondes looked well in pastel green.
Five minutes passed. Then ten. To kill time while she waited for Paul, Terry turned on the radio she’d bought him, tuned to a rather raucous recording of “No Place To Go” and sat snapping the fingers of one hand as she reread the last letter from her father.
The Cowboy didn’t have to feel sorry for her. She was making out just fine. Little Terry could take care of herself. As he’d requested, she’d put the certified check he’d sent for the first and last month’s rent on a new apartment into the bank. But until she’d talked to Paul and they’d made their plans, she didn’t know what to do about looking for an apartment. Or, for that matter, what to do about the furniture in the present one. She could probably use some of it but it was certainly more furniture than she and Paul would need in the small apartment they would be able to afford, even assuming her father would be willing to continue her allowance until after the baby was born and they could get on their feet.
Problems. Problems. Problems. Terry was a trifle annoyed as she returned the letter to her purse. And now, just when she needed him the most, instead of being there waiting for her as he usually was, Paul was late.
The time they’d agreed upon over the phone had been 12:30 sharp. She was here. Where was he? When Paul didn’t arrive by one o’clock she started to worry. Anything could have happened to him. He could have had a flat tire. He could have been in an accident.
She was relieved when she heard a car drive up the drive. Her relief was short-lived as four boys, none of them Paul, appeared at the head of the stairs and one of them exclaimed just what she and Paul had first voiced.
“Hey. What do you know? A private beach all our own.”
CHAPTER 8
Jean Nicolet is credited with being the first white man to navigate Lake Michigan. Sent west by Samuel de Champlain on a voyage of exploration, he threaded his way in a birch canoe from Georgian bay through the Straits of Mackinac and thus discovered Lake Michigan in the summer of 1634 . . .
It is about 321 mi. in length, averages about 70 mi. in width and has a maximum measured depth of 924 feet . . .
The dangerous storms of the autumn, winter and early spring are usually westerly. Ice interferes with navigation in the northern part of the lake in winter; the average closing and opening dates for navigation in the Straits of Mackinac are Dec. 15 and April 12, respectively . . .
ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA, VOL. 15
Michigan, Lake
Terry wet her lips with the tip of her tongue as she regarded the four boys. This would happen. The one afternoon she wanted to be alone with Paul, four cruds would discover their beach.
She found and adjusted her prescription sunglasses so she could see them better. Being able to see them better didn’t improve their appearance.
All of them wore ducktails. As far as she could tell all of them were barefoot and were wearing wrinkled slacks that hadn’t been washed recently and T-shirts just as filthy. All but one, who seemed to be their leader. He was wearing a cheap blue yachting blazer over his bare torso and had what looked like a fifth of whiskey pulling down the right-hand pocket of his coat. In addition, while Terry doubted that he was much older than she was, he was wearing a scraggily-looking beard, which he caressed lovingly from time to time. She hoped Paul would come soon. The four boys looked like kooks to her. And a girl could never tell what a kook would do. She’d met some who’d had the damnedest ideas of fun. Especially when they were high on bennies or had been smoking tea.
She tried to will herself small so they wouldn’t see her. It didn’t help. Staggering slightly as they walked, the four boys descended the stairs and waded the sand to the edge of the blanket on which she sat and squatted on their heels looking at her.
“Well, what do you know?” the boy with the beard said. “You go along beating the bushes for days. Then all of a sudden you get lucky.” He was philosophical about it. “That’s life, I guess.”
“Life,” the boy squatting next to him echoed.
The beard took the fifth of whiskey from his sagging pocket, drank from the bottle and passed it. “Permit me to do the honors, miss. I’m Frankie the Beard. And this is Joe Joe and Harry and Solly. Say hi to the little lady, men.”
“Hi,” the three other boys said.
They sipped from the bottle in turn and passed it back to the boy with the beard, who returned it to his pocket. “I don’t believe we caught your name, miss.”
Terry put the transistor radio to her ear and sat snapping her fingers, pretending they didn’t exist.
“Oh, come now, beautiful.” Frankie the Beard scooped up a handful of sand and dribbled it from one hand to the other. “That isn’t nice. I said we didn’t catch your name.” Terry took the radio away from her ear and said sweetly, “That might just be because I didn’t give any. Now go away. Beat it. Before you get into trouble. You are trespassing on private property.”
Frankie continued to dribble sand from hand to hand. “Well, pardon us. We didn’t know. You live here? You own this beach?”
“No. Not exactly,” Terry admitted. “But my boy friend and I found it first. And he’ll be here any minute.”
“You don’t say?” Solly said.
Joe Joe nodded sagely. “She did say so. You heard her, didn’t you, Harry?”
The other youth had trouble focusing his eyes. “Say what?”
Terry tried to tug down the bottom of her playsuit to make that area of her body a little less attractive to the eye and only succeeded in directing more attention to it.
“Hey. You don’t suppose she’s got beer in that barrel, do you?” Frankie asked.
“You don’t suppose she’s got beer in that barrel, do you?” Joe Joe echoed. Then he and the other two youths rocked back and forth on their heels in laughter and slapped at the sand in front of them as they gave vent to their mirth.
Terry didn’t see anything funny about the remark. If it was some sort of a private joke, she didn’t get it. Nor did she like the way the boys were looking at her. If Paul didn’t arrive, and soon, she could be in trouble. When boys got that look in their eyes they had only one thing in mind. Nor would there be any use in trying to reason with these creatures. Judging from their appearance and actions, in addition to being so drunk they barely knew what they were doing, all four of them were way out in space, way out where the goof balls lived.
This would have to happen today. Just when everything had been so beautiful. She tried again:
“Look. I mean it, fellows. Why don’t you go away? If you try any funny stuff, you’re just going to get yourselves in a jam. My boy friend will be here any minute. And he’s six feet tall and weighs two hundred pounds and he’s an All City letter man.”
“You don’t say,” Frankie the Beard said politely.
Terry fought mounting panic as she kept tugging at the bottom of her playsuit. Staying with a boy was one thing. Being raped by four crumbs was something else. And even if it didn’t get into the papers, this kind of thing happened every day in the week.
She could feel her flesh starting to crawl as her mind raced on. Just last Friday afternoon a girl in her home room had told her that, while it hadn’t been in the papers because the school board was keeping it quiet, only the week before, in one of the South Side high schools, three dropouts who’d been drinking and joy popping all day had somehow managed to get into the building and hide without anyone seeing them. Then after the last bell had rung and everyone else had gone home, they’d dragged a fourteen-year-old girl who’d never been with a boy before into the principal’s office and, with one of them holding a knife at her throat, the others had stripped her of her clothes. With the girl pleading with them and screaming her head off with no one to hear her, they’d pushed her down on the principal’s couch and beaten her so badly and stayed with her so many times and had forced her to perform so many unnatural acts, that when the school custodian found her the next morning the girl had been out of her mind and was hemorrhaging so badly internally that she’d almost died.
She didn’t want that to happen to her. She couldn’t let it happen. Not now.
“Please go away, boys,” she pleaded.
“When we’re ready,” Frankie said. “Is that your car up on the drive, miss? The white 5Q0XL with the red upholstery?”
“Yes,” Terry was puzzled. “Why?”
“Did you just come down Highway 42 about an hour ago? Driving like a bat out of hell?”
“I was trying to make time,” Terry admitted. “Why?”
“I’m asking the questions,” Frankie said coldly. “Now tell me this. Did you cut in between a Buick and a Chevy to get to the turnoff road?”
“Yes.”
“Well, we were the guys in the Chevy. And you damn near wrecked our car and we’ve been looking for you ever since. You see, we feel you owe us a little something.”
“I’m sorry,” Terry apologized. “I wasn’t thinking.” She picked up her purse. “And I’ll pay for any damage I may have done to your car. It was just that I was in a hurry to get here.”
“You see,” Frankie the Beard explained to the others, “the little lady has a bad case of hot pants and she was anxious to get laid by her boy friend.”
The other three boys laughed.
“Don’t talk like that,” Terry said.
She thought, wildly, of scrambling to her feet and trying to run but her legs felt suddenly numb. Besides, she doubted if she’d get very far. Nor would her telling them she was pregnant make any difference. The fact would only amuse them.
“Well, what do you think?” Frankie asked his companions. “Shall we show her a good time?”
“I vote yes,” Solly said. “I’m that way just squatting here looking at her. So let’s quit horsing around and get at it. The only question is which one goes first.”
“I go first,” Frankie insisted. “I bought the whiskey and the bennies. It was my car she almost wrecked.”
“Okay,” Joe Joe agreed. “You go first.” He glanced up at the head of the stairs. “But what about her boy friend? What if he shows up while we’re putting the blocks to her?”
“The hell with her boy friend,” Frankie said. “I don’t care how big he is. The four of us can take him.” He looked back at Terry. “Well. How about it, blondie? Are you going to make it easy on yourself? Or do we have to beat on you a little?”
Terry sat with her crossed hands covering her lap, weeping silently, wishing, if for only a few minutes, that she could turn into a boy. Then would they be surprised. Just thinking about what was going to happen made her ache. It didn’t seem possible that a morning that had started out so beautifully could turn into such a nightmare. Still, she didn’t want them to beat her. That could be even worse for the baby. She might even lose it.
“Well, all right,” she said finally. “If I have to.” She added, “But I won’t do it with anyone watching. I—I’d be too embarrassed.”
“That makes sense,” Frankie agreed. “Okay. We’ll give you that much of a break.” He took a switchblade from his pocket and handed it to Joe Joe. “You go up and stand by the gate. And if her boy friend shows, tell him that you’re representing the owner and he has closed the beach to all outsiders.”
“To all outsiders,” Harry said thickly.
Joe Joe sat a moment longer admiring the girl on the blanket. Then opening the knife he got to his feet. “Whatever you say, Frankie.” He waded through the sand to the stairs. “But don’t be too long about it. I’m with Solly. I’m that way just looking at her. Oh, Jesus, am I that way.” Solly got to his feet with an effort. “What about me and Harry?”
“Yeah. What about us?” Harry asked.
“You’ll get your turn,” Frankie assured them. He picked up the blaring radio and tossed it to one of the youths. “But for right now, go listen to some music or take a walk or something. I’m not going to use it all up. There’s plenty here for all of us.”
Wet-eyed, Terry watched the two boys, the one they called Solly holding to his ear the radio she’d bought for Paul, stagger down toward the edge of the lake. When they were alone, the remaining boy unbuckled the belt of his trousers and sat on the blanket beside her.
“Now let’s see the merchandise, baby.”
Weeping but passively permissive, Terry allowed him to unfasten and remove her halter and expose and play with her breasts. Numb with revulsion she allowed him to kiss them and her. She tensed instinctively, but didn’t resist him when the bearded youth eased her back on the blanket and, after pulling her hands away from where they were, unfastened and stripped off the pants of her two-piece playsuit and tugged the skimpy crotch of her briefs aside.
“Nice. Very nice,” he admired her as he first stroked, then explored the flat, crisp, taffy-colored triangle that he’d exposed.
If it has to be, it has to be, Terry told herself. It wasn’t as if she was cherry. The best thing she could do for all concerned was to get this over with as soon as possible, then try to forget it had happened.
Attempting to ignore what was happening to her she continued to weep silently but made no resistance when, finally satisfied with his intimate explorations, the youth forced her quivering thighs apart and covered her nude body with his. But then, when, perspiring heavily now, too much in a hurry to possess her to even strip off the pulled-askew cotton briefs that along with her sandals was the only article of clothing he’d left her, he effected a rather awkward entrance, with the boy smell of him sour in her face and his wisp of a beard tickling her nose as he attempted to kiss her, when she felt his insistent flesh actually moving in hers, an innate sense of outrage caused her to revolt.
She must be out of her mind. She couldn’t allow this to happen. She didn’t care what the punks did to her. They could beat her until she was black and blue. They could cut her into little pieces. She couldn’t, she wouldn’t, go through with this. Not with Paul’s child in her body. And when the punk raping her had finished, she still had to go through this same thing with the three other filthy young animals.
With the hot sun beating down on their joined bodies and the perspiring youth thrusting at her with ever mounting urgency, trying to force her to respond to him, Terry felt frantically for some weapon, and the fingers of one hand closed gratefully on the neck of the whiskey bottle protruding from the pocket of the blue blazer that Frankie the Beard hadn’t bothered to discard.
Rape her, would he? Force her to be untrue to Paul? She lay a moment longer, quiescent, getting a good grip on the neck of the bottle. Then in a fury of pent-up contrition for being even an unwilling partner in what was taking place, Terry did three things in rapid succession.
She twisted her body sharply to one side to free it of the unwanted connection. She brought up one of her knees as hard as she could. She swung the bottle with sufficient force to stun the bearded youth momentarily and shower both of them with broken glass and whiskey.
Then without bothering to scoop up her clothes or any of her other possessions, she was on her feet and running across the dry sand, to the stairs, leaving her tormentor kneeling in agony on the blanket, clutching at himself with both hands as he screamed, “Stop her, one of you guys! The little bitch just kneed me, then slugged me with my own bottle.”
