sister, and Lecia answers back that way.)
“I fought him and wrestled around and clawed at his face,” she said. “He had a fat, wadded-up kind of face. Very German-looking. His big beer belly pressed down in my middle. He said, ‘I love it when they fight.’” Mother looked off sideways, as if for intervention from some unseen bystander.
He shoved her over and got behind the wheel. He said his name was Dutch. On his right forearm was the tattoo of a great gear wheel with big square teeth. Dutch was a talker, it turned out. He couldn’t stop yakking about all the things he was fixing to do to my mother.
“Like what?” I wanted to know. The back door was open to a noisy summer thunderstorm. All the plants danced and shimmied under the rain.
“You
know,”
Lecia said. But I was a vulture for morbid detail, the result of reading by flashlight under my covers at night
Sergeant Rock
comics, where you could see soldiers flayed and dismembered and blown—as the Sarge said—to smithereens.
“Don’t be a dipshit,” Lecia said again. A flash of lightning made the backyard surge up in its jungle colors before dimming down again under the gray rain. She stood on one leg like a crane with her other foot propped on the opposite knee.
“He said he’d left women dead in ditches before,” Mother said. Thunder clapped, and I felt my forehead clamp onto that thought—
women dead in ditches.
“I would’ve just jumped out,” I said. “Jumped and rolled and hit the ground running.” It was a Batgirl move I could picture executing with catlike grace, cape flapping behind as I loped down the highway toward the cruiser I’d conjured there.
“Never happen,” Lecia said. She pulled out a column of Saltines not yet torn into and did we want some. We didn’t.
“He was in the fast lane, or I would’ve, “ Mother said.
Lecia tore open the wax paper. She started crumbling that whole tube of crackers into a crockery bowl.
“I knew what he was after,” Mother said. “Said he was ‘a high octane sex fiend.’ That was his phrase.” Lecia was pouring buttermilk on her cracker crumblings, mushing them up with a spoon.
Till that moment, my mind had blurred past the sexual nature of the attack. I’d heard the tale as one of a deranged killer. The urge to choke the life out of my mother was somehow more palatable than some oaf wanting to rape her.
Lightning flashed again. “That was close,” Lecia said. She started counting out loud to see if the storm was moving toward us or away.
One Mississippi, two Mississippi…
I asked Mother couldn’t she just have kicked this guy in the nuts? This was the recommended wisdom when facing rape. Knee him in the cojones. Though I’d never actually witnessed anybody doing it, I’d seen a fastball landing in a little league catcher’s crotch bow the fellow up like a cut worm.
“I couldn’t get to his balls,” Mother said. “I was scared shitless. He was gonna
this,
he was gonna
that,
” Finally she told him she
wanted
to go with him, got him convinced.
This was maybe the most boggling fact in the whole story. How would you convince a man with a gear wheel tattooed on his forearm of your ardor for him, especially when your shirt was torn half off and your face bleeding where he’d popped you? Mother waved her hand as if to shoo something off. “He wasn’t exactly the brightest bulb on the tree,” she said. She told him she had money for a bottle if he’d just pull over at the package store. When he did, she jumped out and started yelling, and he took off the other way, toward the rice fields. The guy in the liquor store grabbed his shotgun and went after him. Mother got behind the counter with the guy’s wife, who called the law.
It turned out Dutch was fast for a fat man. Before the liquor store guy could get his weapon shouldered, he made out Dutch’s figure on the other side of the barb wire, scrambling over the top of one of those rice levees. Like a
“I fought him and wrestled around and clawed at his face,” she said. “He had a fat, wadded-up kind of face. Very German-looking. His big beer belly pressed down in my middle. He said, ‘I love it when they fight.’” Mother looked off sideways, as if for intervention from some unseen bystander.
He shoved her over and got behind the wheel. He said his name was Dutch. On his right forearm was the tattoo of a great gear wheel with big square teeth. Dutch was a talker, it turned out. He couldn’t stop yakking about all the things he was fixing to do to my mother.
“Like what?” I wanted to know. The back door was open to a noisy summer thunderstorm. All the plants danced and shimmied under the rain.
“You
know,”
Lecia said. But I was a vulture for morbid detail, the result of reading by flashlight under my covers at night
Sergeant Rock
comics, where you could see soldiers flayed and dismembered and blown—as the Sarge said—to smithereens.
“Don’t be a dipshit,” Lecia said again. A flash of lightning made the backyard surge up in its jungle colors before dimming down again under the gray rain. She stood on one leg like a crane with her other foot propped on the opposite knee.
“He said he’d left women dead in ditches before,” Mother said. Thunder clapped, and I felt my forehead clamp onto that thought—
women dead in ditches.
“I would’ve just jumped out,” I said. “Jumped and rolled and hit the ground running.” It was a Batgirl move I could picture executing with catlike grace, cape flapping behind as I loped down the highway toward the cruiser I’d conjured there.
“Never happen,” Lecia said. She pulled out a column of Saltines not yet torn into and did we want some. We didn’t.
“He was in the fast lane, or I would’ve, “ Mother said.
Lecia tore open the wax paper. She started crumbling that whole tube of crackers into a crockery bowl.
“I knew what he was after,” Mother said. “Said he was ‘a high octane sex fiend.’ That was his phrase.” Lecia was pouring buttermilk on her cracker crumblings, mushing them up with a spoon.
Till that moment, my mind had blurred past the sexual nature of the attack. I’d heard the tale as one of a deranged killer. The urge to choke the life out of my mother was somehow more palatable than some oaf wanting to rape her.
Lightning flashed again. “That was close,” Lecia said. She started counting out loud to see if the storm was moving toward us or away.
One Mississippi, two Mississippi…
I asked Mother couldn’t she just have kicked this guy in the nuts? This was the recommended wisdom when facing rape. Knee him in the cojones. Though I’d never actually witnessed anybody doing it, I’d seen a fastball landing in a little league catcher’s crotch bow the fellow up like a cut worm.
“I couldn’t get to his balls,” Mother said. “I was scared shitless. He was gonna
this,
he was gonna
that,
” Finally she told him she
wanted
to go with him, got him convinced.
This was maybe the most boggling fact in the whole story. How would you convince a man with a gear wheel tattooed on his forearm of your ardor for him, especially when your shirt was torn half off and your face bleeding where he’d popped you? Mother waved her hand as if to shoo something off. “He wasn’t exactly the brightest bulb on the tree,” she said. She told him she had money for a bottle if he’d just pull over at the package store. When he did, she jumped out and started yelling, and he took off the other way, toward the rice fields. The guy in the liquor store grabbed his shotgun and went after him. Mother got behind the counter with the guy’s wife, who called the law.
It turned out Dutch was fast for a fat man. Before the liquor store guy could get his weapon shouldered, he made out Dutch’s figure on the other side of the barb wire, scrambling over the top of one of those rice levees. Like a
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