Crush (30 page)
Nobody’s going to find him out here for at least a dayor two. Right over there! Park!”
“But…”
“No, come on! It’s almost one o’clock! Let’s do this!” Hoodie opens his door, jumps out, grabs me roughlybythe legs and pulls me out. Amuffled squawk escapes me as my upper body plops on the ground.
“Come on!” Hoodie roars at Puffy Jacket. “Grab him!” I’m yanked up bymyshoulders.
We’re on another lonelyroad, this one unpaved. I haven’t the faintest inkling where. Theycarryme into a sizable orange grove to the left of where they’ve parked the car. The trees are loaded with fruit. Thick, tangled yellow and green grass grows at the base of each tree. It’s isolated, shadowy, and I can see no lights indicating civilization, not for miles and miles. Myheart is whacking painfully. I’m dizzywith terror.
About ten rows or so in, theydeposit me to the muddyground and let me lay there. Hoodie kneels and unbinds my feet again, then myhands.
“Whyyou untying him?” asks Puffy.
“Gotta give him a fighting chance,” sneers Hoodie. Then, he growls at me, “You know what the bible says about faggots, don’t
slobbering, bleeding mouth.
“It says you’re an abomination,” Hoodie says. I can practically
see him leering at me, but I can’t see what color his eyes are. I
can’t see anything that will help me identify him. “You’re
disgusting!” He lowers his disguise just long enough to hock back
and spit into myhair.
“Come on, man,” PuffyJacket says uneasily. “You’re wasting
shiny, metallic. I scream and curl into a ball, waiting for a squall of bullets to begin ripping into me. Instead, I hear and feel the dull crack as something slams into myright shoulder. I scream again. Puffy Jacket exclaims keenly in reaction. I launch myself forward, trying to yank the towel bar away from Hoodie’s grip. He easily pulls it out of reach of my fingers and brings it down, hard, on my right arm. I howl again as the weight of the blow reaches deep into the weather-sensitized bones that were broken sixteen years ago. Hoodie backs away for an instant and then hurls another strike at myleft shin.
“For fuck’s sake!” Puffy yells. “Someone’s going to hear him screaming!”
“Nobody’s going to hear anything,” retorts Hoodie, admiring his handiwork, me, cowering in the damp soil, writhing in agony.
“Whyare you doing this?” I sob.
“Shut the fuck up, faggot!” He hits me again, across the left thigh. I grunt in pain as I lunge again, my right hand closing around the jagged, twisted end of the broken towel rod. My right shoulder is on fire, blazing its protest of what I’m doing. I employ my left hand as well, desperately attempting to yank the weapon awayfrom myhooded nemesis. He swears at me again and gives a tremendous pull. Another shrill scream echoes in the darkness as the razor-sharp metal gouges deeplyinto myright palm and my torn fingers uncurl involuntarily. The metal bar slams down on my shredded right hand. Bones crunch and I scream so high and loud myvoice breaks. I recoil, cradling mybroken right hand in my left, my eyes facing the leaf and grass littered floor of the orchard. “Please,” I whisper. “Please stop…please stop…” The blood in my nose and mouth tastes stickyand metallic.
“Come on,” Puffy Jacket says, reaching out to Hoodie. “Let’s go. Let’s just go.”
“I’m not finished,” Hoodie breathes.
“You’ve done enough…let’s leave him here. I think we’ve made our point. We don’t have to…”
Hoodie swings the length of metal and it smashes against myleft flank, forcing the air from mylungs in a
whoosh
. I can’t even
“Stupid fuck, I told you not to use our names!” Hoodie says and takes a hostile step towards Puffy, brandishing his weapon.
Something is popping, bubbling inside of me when I’m finally able to re-inflate my chest. I roll my body up again, gasping with each stabbing inhalation, trying to stop the warm, strange pain spreading up into myback. Myforehead touches myknees.
“Now he can I.D. us, asshole!”
“This has gone too damn far,” Puffymumbles.
Ray…Ray…it’s Ray.
I don’t believe it. I don’t understand it.
Please, wake up,
I tell myself.
This is a dream. A nightmare. Wake up. Wake up
.
“Tell me…is it true?” Ray asks me, advancing on me again. “Do you like to suck cock?”
I struggle to sit up, folding myknees beneath me.
“Are you a porn star?”
How am I going to survive this?
I look up into Ray’s eyes. They glint with sick thrill. I’m garbage to him.
Lloyd, what happened to me?
I ask the sliver of moon above.
You saved my life. I love you so much I couldn’t even be mad at you for getting to me before God did. You saved my life, and I wanted to kill myself tonight. What happened to me, Lloyd?
“Yeah, he’s a star,” floats the sinister, feminine voice of Light Colored Sweater. “He’s famous.” Now I know who she is. “He
loves
cock. He loves taking Daddyup his ass.”
“My Dad is dead,” I gasp through my swollen, tacky lips. “He’s dead. He raped me for years. Then he killed mymother and then blew his fucking head off…”
“Should have shot you too, faggot,” Ray scowls. “No matter. You’ll finallyget what’s been coming to you.”
“You’re just like them.” I spit blood at him. “No, you’re worse!” I’m going into shock, imbued with a paradoxical audacity as I whisper, “I punished myself for everything they did to me. I even pretended I liked it. I punished myself, because if I was the bad guy, they could make sense to me. But they never made sense. They were evil and you can’t make sense of evil. I can’t make sense of what you’re doing now,
Ray
,” I stress his name, so he’ll know I know it’s him. “Evil makes no sense…”
“Ray, for God’s sake, let’s get the fuck out of here and go home! Leave him!”
My need to survive is as strong as it was the day I watched Lloyd grieving over what my monsters did to me. I’m kneeling in the mud, so weak I can scarcelyhold myhead up. “I didn’t deserve what theydid to me, and I don’t deserve this.”
“We’re not leaving until we exterminate this little piece of vermin! Besides, he’ll only tell the cops. He knows me, thanks to you! I’m not letting him live now…As for
you
,” Ray leans over me and grabs me bythe hair, shakes me back and forth, upsetting my re-broken right arm and making me screech silently, “you deserve
worse
than I could ever do to you! You’ve turned Tam into a flamer. You’re both gonna get it from God!”
“You don’t have to kill him,” Puffygroans.
“I do now, dumbass! Blame yourself for this, not me!” The metal rod lands against the left side of my body again. I try to deflect the next strike with myleft arm, but I’m too slow, too weak. I feel ribs cracking, splintering, under its force.
“You’re the one who’s gonna get it,” I whisper when I’m able to draw in a few gasps of iced oxygen after a very long moment. I’m nauseous, dizzy…myblood pressure is falling…
I’m wandering off…I can feel myself floating. I’m weightless, as I was in my deathbed before Lloyd came to save me.
Tammy, Tammy, where are you? Tammy? Where are you? When are you coming? Tammy?
“Tammy’s not here!” shouts the female. “Nobody’s coming to help you!”
I fight to keep ahold of solidity. With my good hand, I reach into myscrub top to clutch mylittle pewter angel on the silver chain Tammygot me the other day. “Please call 9-1-1,” I slur. “I think I’m
head.
“Please…call 9-1-1,” I beg again. “I won’t tell…I won’t tell who
did this…”
“I
know
you won’t,” he nods ominously at me. “What are you
holding in your hand so reverently?” he snarls. “Oh, how cute! An
angel!” His hand twists into the chain cruelly, like he wants to
strangle me with it. The metal pinches me as he rips it from
around my neck and drops it, scowling at me evilly, raising the
towel bar again.
“Please, Ray…I won’t tell,” I bargain in a hoarse, bubbly
whisper. I see micro-drops of red spraying from me as I talk. “Ray, just hurry this along,” the female I know complains
nonchalantly. “It’s cold!”
“Please don’t leave me here…” My hopeless sobs infuriate
me. That they’ve reduced me to a bloodied pulp,
begging
for their
compassion! “Please don’t leave me here.”
With every ounce of muscle he has, Ray brings the rack
down on to myhead.
I watch as I slump over, the right side of my head split open,
a slow, black stream of blood beginning to ooze. My hair begins to
harden into dark spikes.
Everything gets black and quiet.
“
I was born this way! God does
not
make mistakes!” I say
with a booming authority that should be impossible given my
physical condition.
NowI knowwhat to say?
Now?!
When I’m exhausted and on
death’s porch? Nowmy voice returns?!
It’s silent…My tormenters say nothing.
I come to for a moment. My ears are ringing. They shove me
up against the thin, gnarled trunk of one of the orange trees.
“Gimme that garbage bag,” Ray orders Puffy Jacket, pointing to a
large square of black plastic laying next to another tree. I still can’t see any of their faces. Is it the Ray I’ve known for
throws it at me and it floats, making its crackling plastic sound, down over myface and chest.
“Think he’s dead?” the woman asks.
“Myhead hurts,” I murmur, but mylips aren’t moving. They’re glued together with blood.
Ray picks up my left wrist, palpates with his thick fingers, unable to detect the threading pulse that yet sustains me. He then prods at my neck and shrugs, “I don’t know. No…I hear him breathing. But it won’t be long. It’s cold. If the freeze doesn’t finish him, I’m sure I’ve ruptured him somewhere. Little piece of shit’s as good as dead sooner or later.”
I slip away again.
“And do you really believe your God is pleased with you kidnapping me, dragging me out here, beating me, spitting on me, leaving me to die alone…in an orchard?!”
They ignore me…they simply turn and walk away.
I reach for them…I want to call them back...
My lips are numb. I watch blood seep from under the nails of my broken right hand.
It’s dark and silent in the forest.
I’m alone again.
My ire soars to life as they stand before me, more rotten and vile and grotesquely disfigured than I imagined they could be. They’re not glorified or pretty, they’re ugly, presented to me as they truly are. Mom’s eyes are swollen closed, her long black hair twisted and tangled, her skull exposed, stained with blood and decay. Daddy stands beside her, his head mangled on one side from the bullet he gave himself.
“
What you did to me makes you evil first and mentally ill second,” I sternly assert “You made me do horrible things. You made me feel worthless! You slowly killed my spirit…or you
tried
to. Lloyd saved me! I beat you!”
Like Ray and his companions, my parents say not a word. Why aren’t they speaking? Why aren’t they upholding themselves against my judgments? Why aren’t they laughing and hooting at my predicament?
What gives me so much power
now
?
I rally just enough strength to open my eyes, open my one functional hand, close it around the pewter pendant laying beside me. I’m shocked they didn’t take it from me. I bring it up to my chest.
The cold penetrates everylayer of me.
Myhand tightens around myangel.
God, howI love you
, he’d said that day.
I love you, Tammy,
I said tonight.
I’ll love you always. All my
chapter thirty-five: tammy (december 30)
Jamie’s car is found abandoned, just outside Sommerville’s town limits, at approximately eight-twenty AM. The police search the area around Solano Street, which isn’t far from the high school, on the other side of town from where Jamie lives. Myears can onlysnatch small doses of information as people pass bythe open door. No body has been found, no clothing, no spoor they can follow. Nothing.
In the interrogation room, I’m asked about my association with Jamie, but I’m too freaked to do anything except ask over and over, “Have you found him?! Have you found him?!
“No…where is he?” Officer Howard asks tolerantly. “I don’t know! Whyare you treating me like
I’m
a suspect?!” “Let’s start with your relationship with Jamie Pearce,” Officer
How do I begin to talk about the complexities that have made up our relationship in these past days? I tell them I met him in high school, that I moved to L.A. for a long time, and when Mom fell and got hurt, I came home and became reacquainted with Jamie, who is a nurse at the hospital Mom stayed in.
I tell them that we recentlybegan a sexual relationship, and I hope to leave it right there. How can I talk to these strangers about Jamie’s sexual hang-ups? About how the trauma he suffered with his parents has affected both of us? About how he spoke of suicide last night?!
Threatened
suicide?! How can I broach this stuff with them?! Do I mention the video?
My disinclination to describe the awe and woe of our affiliation predictablyfuels the suspicion I’m now under. I ask for a phone call and Cantrell smirks, “Sure you can make a call…You’re not
under arrest
…we’re only questioning you. Didn’t you know that?”
I call Stacy. “Jamie’s missing…he never made it to work last night…theyfound his car…he’s missing…”
When she arrives, Officer Howard leaves the questioning room to meet with her. I can’t hear them. Cantrell stares at me until I’m readyto jump from myskin.
Howard comes back in without Stacy. “Miss Pendleton says you dragged Jamie out of The End last night…is that right?”
“I didn’t
drag
him…We left together…I was upset and I…told him I wanted to leave…he went with me…I didn’t
drag
him.” My eyes narrow in defiance of their allusions.
“Whywere you upset?”
“It’s…private…” Astill, small voice tells me I should tell them everything…tell all…I try to speak…the words are clear…
Yvette Feldman…you probably know her from town…sent me a pornographic video of Jamie being raped and tortured as a child by his own parents…Yvette told me about it at the bar…I don’t know where she obtained that video. Her sending it to me was a gesture of hostility…in high school she spread rumors that Jamie was gay…she hates him…I pulled Jamie out of the bar because I wanted to get him the hell away from her…
The words are there. My mouth opens, but nothing comes
