a filthy thing to do!”
“I ran upstairs and locked myself in my room. I wouldn’t come out. I didn’t go to the party. I cut up the blue dress until there wasn’t one piece bigger than a postage stamp. And I refused to wear another dress until I went away to Gainesville after Daddy died. I was a big scarecrow, and jeans and shorts and khakis were good enough for scarecrows. That’s part of it, part of the reason, I guess.
“Anyway, by the time I was fourteen, I had a pretty good knowledge of what Jenna’s local career had beenlike. I won’t mince words, Alex. It was as if she had some strange kind of disease. Most of the boys she knew and a lot of men, married and single, in the county had lifted her little skirts, practically by invitation. I don’t know when or how it started. Or why. I know she had matured early, and I know I certainly didn’t. At fifteen I still looked like a skinny boy. Maybe I wanted to be a boy. I don’t know. But in the six months before Daddy died, I suddenly turned into the same approximate shape I still am. Sort of bovine, I guess you could call it.
“And I certainly didn’t want to follow in Jenna’s footsteps. She’d been gone a long time but they still talked about her. Dirty talk. It offended me. My ideas of romance were highly platonic. I wanted no part of kissing games. I was going to prove that there could be a Miss Larkin who could stay off her back, excuse the expression.
“In my freshman year I came back for Christmas vacation. All my friends were back. There was a big holiday dance at the high school auditorium. I had a date. There was a lot of drinking going on, out in the automobiles. And a rough element was hanging around, quite a few of them from Davis. By the time I realized my date was coming apart at the seams, he was too drunk to drive me home. I didn’t want to spoil anybody else’s fun by asking for an early ride home. So I started to walk it. It’s only about a mile.
“I got about a hundred yards from the auditorium. And suddenly, there in the dark, there were three men around me. They wanted to know where I was going all by myself. They smelled like ’shine. I tried to run and they grabbed me and took me around behind the gym. I kept trying to scream and fight, but they kept clamping their grimy hands over my mouth, and they kept hitting me so that I was dazed. They ripped most of my clothes off, and two of them held me down. I could hear the band playing in the auditorium. If theyhadn’t been quite so drunk, I wouldn’t have had a chance in the world. But I kept kicking and bucking and squirming. I think one of them was trying to knock me out. Then somebody drove in and when they came to that turn in front of the gym, the headlights shone on the little scene and it scared them. Just then, thank God, the music stopped and I got my mouth free and yelled. And the car backed up so the lights were on us again. They took off. It was Ben Jeffry, coming to get his daughters. He had an old blanket in the car and he wrapped it around me. I was blubbering like a big baby. He took me to the doctor and even though I begged him not to make a fuss, he phoned the sheriff’s office and reported it as rape. Sheriff Lawlor himself came over. By then word had gotten to the dance somehow. Buddy was there, stag, and he came to the doctor’s office and then went home and got me some clothes. I wasn’t marked up too badly. I did develop two dandy black eyes, and I was cut on the inside of the mouth. I didn’t know who the men were, and I couldn’t describe them, and I couldn’t have identified them anyway.
“You know this town, Alex. There was more damn talk. I felt as if I couldn’t walk down the street without people running out of their houses to stare at me. By the time the gossips got through with it, it was rape instead of attempted rape, and there had been a whole gang of them, and I was pregnant. And, as I learned later, there was one contingent that
“I ran upstairs and locked myself in my room. I wouldn’t come out. I didn’t go to the party. I cut up the blue dress until there wasn’t one piece bigger than a postage stamp. And I refused to wear another dress until I went away to Gainesville after Daddy died. I was a big scarecrow, and jeans and shorts and khakis were good enough for scarecrows. That’s part of it, part of the reason, I guess.
“Anyway, by the time I was fourteen, I had a pretty good knowledge of what Jenna’s local career had beenlike. I won’t mince words, Alex. It was as if she had some strange kind of disease. Most of the boys she knew and a lot of men, married and single, in the county had lifted her little skirts, practically by invitation. I don’t know when or how it started. Or why. I know she had matured early, and I know I certainly didn’t. At fifteen I still looked like a skinny boy. Maybe I wanted to be a boy. I don’t know. But in the six months before Daddy died, I suddenly turned into the same approximate shape I still am. Sort of bovine, I guess you could call it.
“And I certainly didn’t want to follow in Jenna’s footsteps. She’d been gone a long time but they still talked about her. Dirty talk. It offended me. My ideas of romance were highly platonic. I wanted no part of kissing games. I was going to prove that there could be a Miss Larkin who could stay off her back, excuse the expression.
“In my freshman year I came back for Christmas vacation. All my friends were back. There was a big holiday dance at the high school auditorium. I had a date. There was a lot of drinking going on, out in the automobiles. And a rough element was hanging around, quite a few of them from Davis. By the time I realized my date was coming apart at the seams, he was too drunk to drive me home. I didn’t want to spoil anybody else’s fun by asking for an early ride home. So I started to walk it. It’s only about a mile.
“I got about a hundred yards from the auditorium. And suddenly, there in the dark, there were three men around me. They wanted to know where I was going all by myself. They smelled like ’shine. I tried to run and they grabbed me and took me around behind the gym. I kept trying to scream and fight, but they kept clamping their grimy hands over my mouth, and they kept hitting me so that I was dazed. They ripped most of my clothes off, and two of them held me down. I could hear the band playing in the auditorium. If theyhadn’t been quite so drunk, I wouldn’t have had a chance in the world. But I kept kicking and bucking and squirming. I think one of them was trying to knock me out. Then somebody drove in and when they came to that turn in front of the gym, the headlights shone on the little scene and it scared them. Just then, thank God, the music stopped and I got my mouth free and yelled. And the car backed up so the lights were on us again. They took off. It was Ben Jeffry, coming to get his daughters. He had an old blanket in the car and he wrapped it around me. I was blubbering like a big baby. He took me to the doctor and even though I begged him not to make a fuss, he phoned the sheriff’s office and reported it as rape. Sheriff Lawlor himself came over. By then word had gotten to the dance somehow. Buddy was there, stag, and he came to the doctor’s office and then went home and got me some clothes. I wasn’t marked up too badly. I did develop two dandy black eyes, and I was cut on the inside of the mouth. I didn’t know who the men were, and I couldn’t describe them, and I couldn’t have identified them anyway.
“You know this town, Alex. There was more damn talk. I felt as if I couldn’t walk down the street without people running out of their houses to stare at me. By the time the gossips got through with it, it was rape instead of attempted rape, and there had been a whole gang of them, and I was pregnant. And, as I learned later, there was one contingent that
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