by Rex Miller
The face: wrinkle city. But the hard work and toughness wasn't all that was there. Something else showed. A gaunt, indefinable harshness that one could see on the faces of derelicts, on some of the elderly forgotten in nursing homes, and—sometimes—in the faces of the insane. Eyes deep-set in the outdoor face. A couple of teeth missing in the easy smile. The look all the more unsettling for its inexplicability.
The body: slim and sinewy in an old-fashioned barber's work shirt buttoned at the throat.
“And I know you."
“Is that so?” Eichord had his ID case in hand but hadn't flashed it yet.
“Dollars to donuts."
“Hmm?” The oddity of his words, the loud, booming voice, and his appearance gave off disconcerting vibes, and it was this image that would stay with him. That was the instant Eichord thought the man Owen Hillfloen might not be sane.
“Dollars to donuts either you are the tax man or you are the law. Which is it, pray tell?"
“Yes, sir,” Eichord said, showing his identification. “We're investigating the death of two children.” He pulled the police circular out and handed it to the man. “Do you recognize them?"
“Lordy. Well...” He took the photo circular and made a show of getting glasses out of his shirt pocket and putting them on the tip of his nose, holding his head back a little and studying the pictures and descriptions. “Mmmm."
“These are the Alvarez girls. They were killed sometime in the last seventy-two hours. Killed and raped. Do you recognize them?” He watched the old man carefully.
“Lordy, Lordy. I don't know as I can say for sure. These foreigners"—he shrugged and looked up at Eichord—"they're so hard to tell apart. Are these the ones that lived down the block here?"
Eichord nodded. “Yeah. Did you know them?"
“No, sir. I can't say as I did."
“How did you know who they were?"
“It says the names on there."
“I mean, how did you know they lived down the block?"
“Oh, we been seeing the story on the television and in the papers over the weekend. Tragic thing."
“Um hmm."
“Kids running around unsupervised and all."
“How do you mean unsupervised?"
“Why, I hear tell their mother never knew where they were after school and so forth. Just let them run loose, you see? Unsupervised. That's the way these third-worlders are. They don't have the same values as we do.” He shook his head.
“Third-worlders,” Eichord repeated easily, drawing the old guy out.
“Hispanics, La-TEE-nos, Chicanos, I don't know all the different names they go by now. Your Latin types from down under. Your drug-country people. Brown-skin types. Your Mexes and your boat people. LORdeeee!"
“You realize we're talking about mutilated children, Mr. Hillfloen?"
“That's what I'm talking about.” He shook his head. “Unstructured, unsupervised third-worlders. Running loose. Mother and father Lord knows where. THAT'S how they get into trouble."
“Some sicko grabbed these girls in front of their home and tortured and killed them. Mutilated the bodies. Decapitated the kids. We're talking about somebody who REALLY had it in for these little girls. Do you hate people of color that much, Mr. Hillfloen?” Eichord's eyes bored into the old man.
“ME?” He laughed mirthlessly, drawing himself up and returning Eichord's glare. “'Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for such is the kingdom of Heaven ...’ Matthew nineteen:fourteen."
But you do not lock a man up for giving off bad vibes, looking vaguely strange, or for having a voice like a loudspeaker. Nor is it against the law to be a bigot, so long as you keep your feelings to yourself. And that was the thing about Owen Hillfloen: whatever else he might have been, he was a private man.
North Buckhead
The ego is an amazing thing, Tina Hoyt thought as she watched the woman confide in her. Telling her that her speech had been so EXCITING and MEANINGFUL. Tina had already formed a poor first impression of her as she chattered on, trying to impress Tina with her intellect and misusing the words “comprise” and “hopefully” in a single utterance, thus losing Tina Hoyt's full attention.
Yet the ego is such a phenomenal animal that you will stand there and smile and soak it all up as if it had some meaning as a critique, because it flatters you to do so, she thought. Because it is exciting and meaningful. Tina allowed her smile muscles to go slack and took a deep breath.
“Just so incisive and brilliantly handled, and I—” The smile flashed back on in automatic response, but it was getting late and she had worked her butt off this week, and now this nothing lecture in North Buckhead, and she had to drive all the way crosstown to Buckhead Christian Church, and—she stole a look at her watch—it would be ten-forty-five, eleven o'clock before she got home.
The woman paused, an anxious look on her face, and Tina snapped out of it long enough to nod.
She'd already forgotten this person's name. White, was it? Janet WRIGHT—that was it, Wright. She was proud of her ability to retain name/face association. It was a vital skill to anyone who had the slightest glimmer of interest in a possible political future, which Tina Hoyt most assuredly did.
“Awfully nice of you.” She hurried on, starting to move. “I hate to rush off but I have another engagement clear across town,” she said moving, the smaller woman following her.
“I understand,” the Wright woman said, shaking her head no furiously. “It's wonderful how much in demand you are. And the consciousness-raising you...” jabbering on a mile a minute as she followed Tina outside to the glass doors. Tina felt a hand on her arm and turned. The woman with her fingertips resting on Tina's sleeve. Standing a little close. Not wanting her to get away now and telling her of her great interest. One of those moments when it could go either way. Tina speculating idly for just that instant as to motive. Wondering if Janet Wright was gay. Not particularly caring, but mildly surprised at the thought. She patted the fingers and said sweetly, “I DO appreciate it,” pushing on the heavy doors and striding out into the parking lot.
The woman was staying with her. “I wish you knew just how much it meant to hear you tonight. Such a remarkable experience for me...” Fine, but let it go. The persistent woman gushed on as Tina Hoyt stopped at her car, fishing keys out of a bag, “...feminist movement and the separatist...” the flexuous critique winding on.
Enough. She cut the woman off with a crisp and airy “Thanks again. Goodnight!” Slamming the door on Janet Wright's parting words, waving good-bye, and smiling automatically as she started the car and began backing out. She hitched her skirt up to get comfortable, exposing a pair of slim, shapely legs. She felt as if she'd been wearing her pantyhose for three days. She'd have to work to keep her concentration buckled down when she spoke to the church women. Tina was tired and she felt herself getting a little bitchy over nothing, and she cracked the window and breathed deeply.
The rural traffic was backed up behind big John Deeres and massive combines and cotton trailers, rolling their wide loads down the road to waiting fields. Tina braked, flipping her interior light on to check her wristwatch against the car clock. That was her first mistake. The woman driving the van coming from the opposite direction saw her lit up like an omen, an attractive young (?) woman alone in an ‘86 Toyota Corolla DLX 4-door, and she braked, making a neat, slow U in the next road, and easing up behind the cars waiting for the farmers to clear the way. The driver of the van appeared to be talking to herself in the rearview mirror, the way people sometimes do.
Tina tried to relax, remembering some of the things the talkative Janet Wright had said about how important she was to the movement, and she breathed in the smell of woodsmoke as she drove. The thought of fires in some adjacent field reminded her of zoning laws, and she rolled her window up and zoomed around the slow-moving farm machinery.
The woman pulled the van up a couple of car lengths behind the Toyota as Tina Hoyt f
ound a parking spot near the basement entrance of Buckhead Christian.
Tina was moving in the direction of the church door, heading for the thickly carpeted stairway that led to the church basement, when she heard a voice behind her call, “Hey! Excuse me?” And she turned and saw the beautiful woman click-clacking across the street toward her on extremely high heels.
“Yes?"
“Could you spare me just a few seconds?"
“Gee. I'm sorry. I really can't. I'm running late as it is. If you can wait till after I finish, I'll be glad to speak with you then."
“Please,” the woman said in a strange, hoarse whisper. “You'd better come hear this.” The beautiful woman conveyed an urgency and Tina turned back. “Just a few seconds."
“All right.” Sigh. “But hurry, please."
“Get in with me for a second.” She opened the door on the driver's side and gave Tina a big flash of long legs.
“I don't have time to get in. Speak your piece."
“I've got something you need to hear—and see.” She held up an envelope and some papers. “Thirty seconds, I promise. You won't regret it. It's extremely important to YOU."
“Tell me out here.” Tina shook her head. She'd had every manner of woman put the make on her or try to. Something in a certain-type woman, she suspected, gave off a feral scent. She'd been cruised in the most surprising ways and by the most unlikely persons.
“Please,” breathy and hoarse in that sexy, somewhat kittenish whisper.
“Okay, but HURRY,” leaving the door open on the passenger side as she slid in, checking out the woman. She was gorgeous, but with more makeup than Tina liked, and she'd piqued her curiosity.
“Read this.” She handed a thick folder to Tina. “Pull the door to. You're not going to want anybody to see this."
Tina ignored her. “Who are you, by the way?” Tina asked, looking at what appeared to be a bill of sale for an automobile. She didn't recognize any of the names. She was starting to look up at the woman and forming the words “What's this got to do with me?” when she heard a metallic noise there in the van behind her and sensed someone's presence. Someone sitting back in the darkness had moved behind her and she was turning to look when she was penetrated.
She did not feel much pain at first, only her hair being pulled and twisted and the needlelike thing going in, and as soon as she felt something stabbing into her ear, she screamed but it was too late for screaming then as the awful sharp thing plunged all the way in and the blinding red-hot agonizing pain hammered her under without warning or preamble.
Vega, 1961
The first time they made it together was really not the first time at all. It was the first time in bed, together, both of them totally nude, nobody else in the house, a slow seduction-cum-rape scene. The first time had been years before. The first time he made her climb a tree with all the boys from the neighborhood standing underneath, the kids having coughed up a silver nickel each to “see London.” And she climbed innocently, sans underpants, showing the boys how well she could climb, but all of them laughing for reasons she would never fathom.
The first time, then, had been a series of firsts. First the tree-climbing exhibition. The second first was Playing Doctor and Nurse, as he called some young interns in to lecture them on the finer points of female anatomy. This time it was necessary for him to have her hold the full skirt “over her head” as he gingerly probed and pushed and prodded the mysterious folds and lumps and oddities around and in “the hole."
The next first time had been some sort of prepubescent folie a deux in which the two of them sprawled together in the deep weeds in back of the overgrown Colman place down the street, rubbings and gigglings and “messings,” as they called it.
So this first time was the first SERIOUS time, and with their advanced ages being what they were, the traumatic event took on the ritualized trappings of an initiation. It would be the first of many such couplings through the years. Years of crushing abuse and punishment.
It began innocently enough, with her slamming the front door downstairs and shouting “Mom?” as was her usual custom. “MOM?” No answer. “MOM? Hey. Mom? You home?” The sounds of the house. She throws her books onto the rump-sprung sofa. “Anybody home?"
She runs up the stairs, taking the stairs two at a time until she reaches the first landing, and shooting up to the second floor without touching the banister, past the wainscoting and ornate carvings, and the hallway full of family paintings of dead strangers, and she opens her stepbrother's bedroom door and he is there in the bed, rubbing on himself.
“Sorry,” she says, flinching, waiting for the shout, the blow, the stinging slap, waiting for him to come after her in his rage. “I didn't know you were home. I called out and I didn't think—"
“That's okay,” he says in his most frighteningly quiet voice. “Uh, come here I wanna show you something."
“Huh?” she says.
“Come ‘ere.” A quiet voice. His dangerous tone. She is instantly wary, but he is not mad. No anger this time. He does not stop rubbing. On his back in the center of his bed. Wearing only a pair of white Jockey shorts, rubbing away at his crotch, which is bulging as he touches it.
“Huh."
“Yeah. Come over here.” She walks over by him. Stands beside the bed. He reaches out for her and she jerks away. “I want to ... Come here, goddammit. I won't hurt you.” His hand is out like he wants to grab her. She does not move closer.
“I wouldn't hurt my sweet sister,” he purrs quietly. She is not used to him like this, but he stops rubbing himself and only looks at her so she shrugs and moves over and stands beside the bed. He does not grab her. He cups the back of her bare leg with his hand and just sort of pats her leg as he says, “I want to show you something I have,” but he makes no effort to move.
“What?"
“Something you'll like."
“What is it?"
“Say, Pretty please show me."
“Pretty please show me."
“Pretty please I'll suck your peter show me."
“NO."
“Come on. Say it and I show you. Pretty please I'll suck your peter."
“Huh uh.” She shakes her head. She is plain. Made more so by the awful clothes she wears and the cruelly severe haircut that has left her head a homely cap of ragged bangs. Everything about her is out of step. Out of style. Wrong. The girls at school even tease her about her socks. All the girls in her class wear white socks, but somehow hers are the wrong type and this social gaffe renders her hopelessly and embarassingly declassé.
“Just say it. I won't tell on you. Just say it real fast. Pretty please I'll suck your peter,” this said in a rushed whisper.
She relents and says without feeling, “Pretty please suck your peter,” and to her amazement he pulls back the fly of the tight shorts and the bulge is his penis, which is thick and veined and rudely awake, standing straight up in the air proudly, and he says, unnecessarily, “Now watch,” and he does something with his stomach muscles and the penis waves like a flag and he laughs.
She laughs and says, “God."
And he says, “Ask it a question,"
“What?” She can't believe this is happening.
“Ask it something. Say, Do you want me to suck you? Say it."
“No."
“Come on."
“I—"
“Ask it."
“I don't wanna."
“ASK IT,” he says with some exasperation.
“Huh uh."
“I won't HURT you, stupid. Look. I'll do it. Do you want her to suck you. Mister Dick?” And he makes the penis wave back and forth like it is shaking its head yes and she laughs again.
“I bet you never saw that before, did you?"
“I gotta go,” she says, but before she can turn he is up out of the bed and he has her and he pulls her back over to the bed. “Come on, don't. That hurts,” she tells him.
He pulls her hair and makes her sit d
own on the bed with a thump and then he pushes her over on her back and sprawls across her and tries to kiss her.
“DON'T!” She tries to fight him. “I'll tell Mom,” she says, and he pinches her and makes her scream.
“Don't scream again or I'll punch you in the breadbasket,” he tells her, and he is doing something to himself with his hand as he wiggles around on top of her.
“You're gonna get in TROUBLE,” she threatens him, and he hits her in one of her flat breasts with his fist. Not real hard, but it hurts a lot and she begins crying, which eggs him on.
“Fucking crybaby girl. Now let's see how tight that little cunt is.” And she feels him stab into her with a finger and she cries louder, so he slaps her lightly. She is quite afraid of him when he is like this.
“Fucking crybaby,” he pants. He wets his hand over and over and then rubs himself with it. Why is he doing this? she wonders. And suddenly his stiffened part is ramming in between her legs.
“Please,” she begs him. “Don't. Come on, that HURTS.” And her tears flow down her cheeks and he tries to kiss her, a mashing of the faces and mouths together, but she is crying and forces her head to the side and he cannot kiss her, and he cups her mouth with his hand and begins to knead her breasts as he rocks back and forth in her and almost as soon as the pain begins it ends and he is spent and breathing hard and moaning and he has released her mouth and she waits patiently for him to get off her. And this time he tries to kiss her again and she does not move her mouth so that it is a kiss of sorts, at least the mouths mash into each other, but she remains motionless and awaits the next loathsome development.
“Open your mouth and stick your tongue out,” he commands, “or I'll whip the living shit out of you, you fucking crybaby bitch."
She complies and it inflames him more than he had ever imagined. The POWER. The sexual kick of that awesome power when you control another person. And this was only the beginning.