Nine Minutes (6 page)

     
“The last man?” I
asked. “Not Matthew, right? Please tell me you didn’t hurt Matthew.”

     
“The kid? Nah, I
didn’t hurt him. The guy that tried to rape you.”

     
“Johnny Tillman?”

     
“Yeah, Johnny
Tillman.”

     
“He knew my
stepdad from
Smitty’s
. We called the police and my
parents were
gonna
press
charges, but he skipped town so fast that the police never even got to arrest
him. Found his truck in front of a supermarket. Figured he hitched a ride out
of town.”

     
The part I left
out was that I felt the only reason Vince and Delia called the cops was because
they were worried Tillman was going after Delia’s pot stash. Of course they
didn’t tell the police that part. They just wanted him arrested so they didn’t
have to worry about him showing up again. I think there was some sincere
concern on their part about him trying to hurt me, but Delia’s pot stash was
what they were really worried about.

     
Grizz
looked at me then, and I read something in his
expression. I knew immediately.

     
“He didn’t skip
town, did he? Did you beat him up and chase him off? Is that what happened to
him?” Shock filled me.

     
“No, I didn’t
chase him off, but I did beat him up, and when I was done with him, he was
begging for me to put him out of his misery.”

     
“Okay, so where
is he?”

     
“I don’t know
where he is, but I can tell you where he was.”

     
I rolled my eyes.
“All right, so where
was
he?”

     
“About three feet
from where you were tossing your dirty water.”

Chapter Nine

I’d been at
the motel for about a month when Grunt told me everything that happened the
night Johnny Tillman was brought to the motel. Even I felt sorry for him after
hearing what happened.

     
It was simple and
completely awful. Johnny Tillman was basically relieved of every projecting
body part. His ears, his lips, his nose, even his testicles.
Grizz
slowly cut him to pieces until, like
Grizz
told me earlier, he was begging for death. Grunt wasn’t
sure if he was dead or passed out from the pain.
Grizz
gave the order for him to be tossed into the swamp and the alligators did the
rest. That was the end of Johnny Tillman.

     
When Grunt
finished telling me the story I was numb with shock. I couldn’t believe it. Who
was this person who could hack a man to pieces one day and save a kitten the
next?

     
I’d been sitting
on Grunt’s bed talking to him. He had invited me in to listen to his albums. I
was a little surprised that
Grizz
said it was okay.
He’d seemed so jealous when he asked me about Matthew and told me what he did
to Johnny Tillman. I don’t know, maybe I read him wrong. Or maybe he just
trusted Grunt. Nevertheless, I sat on Grunt’s bed, cross-
legged,
drinking the soda he had offered me. In the background The Moody Blues
serenaded us with “
Nights In White
Satin
.” It was the first time I’d been in his room, and I was really
surprised. It wasn’t as fancy as
Grizz’s
. It actually
looked like a motel room, but it was neat and clean.

     
The most
surprising thing of all, though, was the
books
. Where
a normal motel room might have two double beds, Grunt’s room only had the one
bed, and the wall that separated the room from the bathroom had a massive
bookshelf that was so full of books, you couldn’t see the wall behind it. Books
took up every available space on the shelf. And they weren’t crammed in
randomly, either. When he noticed I couldn’t keep my eyes away from the
bookshelf, he explained they were sectioned off by genre and then alphabetized
by author last name within each genre. I turned to look at him, surprised. Who
was this young motorcycle guy? He told me I could borrow any book I wanted.

     
I noticed
a chess
set on a TV tray in the corner.

     
“You play chess?”
I asked.

     
“Yeah, do you?”

     
“No, but I’d like
to learn.
Who
do you play with?”

     
“I play
Grizz
. Sometimes Fess. But it takes too long between Fess’s
visits for us to play a regular game. I have a game going now with
Grizz
. You want me to teach you?”

     
“Definitely.” Why
not? I thought to myself. It could help pass the days until I could get away
from here. Grunt eventually did teach me to play chess. I became good enough to
occasionally beat
Grizz
.
Grizz
was a good player, and I think chess may have been his only passion aside from
the gang and me. I never did beat Grunt, though.

     
Grunt told me all
about himself that night, including how he came to be part of the gang. He told
me everything I wanted to know except for one thing.
His real
name.
It was the gang’s code: no real names.

     
Grunt was the
youngest of three children. He was born in Miami in 1959. He was only a year
older than me. He was raised in what now would be called a dysfunctional family.
His father died after he was born. It was an accidental drowning. Up until that
point, his mother was a housewife, and according to Grunt she was a useless
waste. She resented being left with three kids to
raise
.
Actually, two kids, since Blue wasn’t really home all that much.

     
 
She worked as a waitress at a local hot
dog joint. They were famous for steaming their hot dogs in beer. After she was
finished with her shift, she would hang out at the restaurant all night with
her divorced girlfriends and spend her tips on beer.

     
She left the
raising of baby Grunt to his older brother and sister. It wasn’t long before
Blue was getting in trouble with the law, mostly for stealing. His sister,
Karen, wasn’t much better. He remembers her locking him in his room while she
had boyfriends over. She was supposed to be watching him, and he was lucky if
he got a peanut butter and jelly sandwich every other day.

     
If it
wasn’t
for school lunches, he probably would’ve starved to
death. His neglect didn’t go unnoticed by the neighbors, and child welfare was
called in several times over the years. Sometimes they removed him from the
home and placed him with a foster family.

     
He didn’t have a
horrible experience with the foster childcare system. The problem was being
pulled in and out of the system and being placed with families in different
school districts. His life was constantly being uprooted.

     
Karen married her
twenty-two-year-old boyfriend practically the day she turned eighteen and
immediately applied for sole custody of Grunt. Unfortunately, it wasn’t because
of her kindness and
love
for her little brother. He
was only nine. She was under the impression she was going to get paid to keep
him. What she didn’t know was that she was not applying as a foster mother;
therefore, the state was not going to give her child support.

     
After she
realized this, she tried to force him back on their mother. But by now, his
mother had skipped town with an abusive alcoholic trucker she’d met at work.
They never heard from her again.

     
Grunt didn’t know
then that Blue was still very much in his life. He didn’t realize Blue was
coming around and giving Karen and her husband money to provide for Grunt. Blue
always came at night when Grunt was sleeping. Blue thought Karen and her
husband, Nate, were
nurturing their little brother, and Blue
didn’t want to interfere.

     
It was just by
chance that one night, when Blue was there with some cash for his sister, a
then-ten-year-old Grunt woke up and came out to the kitchen for a drink of
water.

     
Grunt told me he
remembered the look on his big brother’s face that night. What Blue saw was a
ten-year-old who looked like he was seven. Grunt was wearing only his pajama
pants, and he was so thin he had to hold them up by the waistband so they
wouldn’t fall off his scrawny body. But that wasn’t what Blue noticed first.
Grunt’s body was covered in bruises and blisters from cigarette burns. This was
clearly a child who had been abused on a regular basis.

     
Karen’s first
reaction was to defend
herself
. She said Nate was the
one who hit on the kid. She never hit him. That didn’t matter to Blue. What
mattered was that she never stopped Nate.

     
Just then, Nate
got home from work. If he had been just ten minutes late it might have saved
his life. That was the night Grunt witnessed his first murder. Two murders,
actually. Without saying a word, Blue took out a gun and put a bullet between
his sister’s eyes. Nate had turned in an attempt to run out the front door, but
Blue was too quick. He put one in the back of Nate’s head before he took two
steps.

     
He looked at his
little brother and told him not to be afraid. He was going to take care of him
from now on. Grunt told him he wasn’t afraid. Blue smiled and took his jacket
off. He wrapped it around his little brother’s broken body and carried him out
the front door.

     
Grunt had been
with the gang at the Glades Motel since that night.

     
As I sat there on
Grunt’s motel bed, I couldn’t believe he had shared this with me. It dawned on
me that I wouldn’t be leaving here after hearing these stories of brutality,
and I instantly pushed that thought to the back of my mind.

     
“So did you get
your name, Grunt, because you were the youngest and had to do all the crappy
work, the grunt jobs?”

     
Grunt laughed. “No.
The name is a shorter version of my original nickname, when I first got here. I
was little for my age, so some of the gang started calling me runt.
Like the runt of the litter.
As time went by, the group started
noticing my smarts. Some said I was the most grown-up runt they’d ever known. I
guess I wasn’t an average ten-year-old. Grown-up runt was eventually shortened
to ‘Grunt.’”

     
I laughed at this
description. He was smart. That was interesting. I wondered if he had the mean
streak I’d seen in the others, especially
Grizz
.

     
“So you’re Grunt.
I like it. Especially now that I know what it means,” I teased.

     
“Yeah, I guess it’s
easier than ‘Grown Up Runt,’ but it’s kind of an oxymoron if I ever heard one.”

     
“An oxy what?”

     
“An oxymoron.
Here, look it up,” he said as he tossed me a dictionary.

     
I didn’t know
then, as I innocently perused the dictionary looking for a word I wasn’t sure
existed, that I hadn’t been invited to Grunt’s room to listen to records. I’d
been invited to Grunt’s room to lose my virginity.

Chapter Ten

Grizz
was
ready to sleep with me. The problem was he didn’t want to force himself on me. He
didn’t want to be the one to cause that initial hurt. I was going to be his, and
he didn’t want every time he had sex with me to be a reminder that he’d taken
my virginity. So he ordered Grunt to do it.

     
How he ordered
Grunt to do it sickened me, but more than that, I was baffled by it. It would
take me awhile to discover the reasoning behind
Grizz’s
strange request. But as time passed, it would make more sense.

     
Earlier that day,
he’d called Grunt into number four. I don’t know where I was.
Probably outside with
Gwinny
.
He
told Grunt to bring me into his room that night and slip me some kind of drug
to make me pass out, and to take my virginity.
But not with
his body.
He handed some kind of
billy
-club
to Grunt and told him to cover it with some lotion or
something and take care of it. He wanted me to be asleep. He didn’t want me to
remember it.

     
Looking back now,
it makes sense that
Grizz
didn’t ask one of the girls
to do it. He didn’t want them to know he hadn’t been sleeping with me. As for
the comment that no man would ever touch me, he wasn’t thinking of Grunt as a
man. Grunt had been there since he was ten.
Grizz
just didn’t notice that he had grown into a healthy, virile, sixteen year old.
He didn’t see Grunt as a threat. As to why
Grizz
didn’t
do it himself, it was simple. He couldn’t bear to hurt me.

     
So I was there to
be drugged and raped by someone I thought was my new friend.

     
I was getting
drowsy. Grunt had offered me a soda earlier and I’d been drinking it as we
talked and listened to his records. I didn’t recognize the drowsiness for what
it was and stood up and told him I had to go back to number four. I was getting
really sleepy.

     
He stood up and
gently grabbed my arm. “Don’t leave yet, Kit. Stay here with me.”

     
“Why? I don’t
think
Grizz
would like me to take a nap in your room,
Grunt.”

     
He looked
uncomfortable then, and I immediately sensed something was up, but I never imagined
how deplorable it was.

     
“Please just sit
down. Actually, lay down. You can fall asleep here. It’ll be okay. I promise.”

     
My senses were on
alert and adrenaline kicked in, temporarily killing the buzz.

     
“What is this?
Tell me what’s going on
,
Grunt
. You
have to tell me. Oh!” My mind went into overdrive, and I started to panic. “You’re
going to kill me in my sleep, aren’t you? He’s decided he doesn’t want me, and
he can’t let me leave. I’m going to die tonight, aren’t I?”

     
“Kit, I’m not
going to kill you.
Grizz
doesn’t want you dead. I
want you to sleep because I don’t want you to have an awful memory. Please don’t
ask me anymore, just sleep. Trust me. You’re not going to die.” Grunt fisted
his hands. “Fuck! I wish he’d handle this himself.”

     
“Handle what?” I
blinked my eyes open, willing myself to stay coherent. “And no, I’m not laying
down. Not until you tell me. I’m going to make myself stay awake. You put
something in my drink, didn’t you? Well, I didn’t finish it and I’m not going
to. You have to tell me.”

     
He sighed and
walked over to his dresser. He pulled out the bottom drawer and removed what
looked like some kind of stick. He told me it was an old
billy
-club
. It was on the
smallish side and had a strap at one end so it could be held on one’s wrist.

     
“You’re going to
beat me with that stick?” If he
was
going to kill me
it would take a lot of blows. I felt nausea rising in my stomach.

     
“No Kit.
Grizz
wants you to lose your virginity tonight. He didn’t
want to do it. He told me to do it. With this.” He looked down at what he was
holding. His face was flushed.

     
“And you have to
do everything he tells you?” My voice rose.

     
“What do you
think? If you’d just fallen asleep you would’ve woken up a little sore. I would
have done my best not to hurt you.”

     
I sat on the edge
of the bed and looked at the floor. He just stood in front of the dresser still
holding the offensive object. I wasn’t going to be able to stay awake forever.
I had to make a decision.

     
“You do it.” I
said to him. “You personally, not with the stick. Please, Grunt. I can’t lose
my virginity to something so vile. You do it.”

     
“He would kill us
both if he knew.”

     
“He’ll never hear
it from me. I swear. Please, I can’t stand the thought of you sticking that in
me. It’s awful. Please. We’ll never talk about it again after tonight. Please,
Grunt.”

     
He didn’t say
anything, so I
added,
“I’m on birth control so I won’t
get pregnant. He’ll never have to know.”

     
Well, this was
certainly something I never expected. Here I was begging to be raped. I still
can’t get over the irony of how that happened, but it did.

     
He walked over to
me then, and I stood up. Then he did something I never expected. He hugged me.
He held me close to him for almost a full minute. I was shaky on my feet, and
he eventually let go.

     
I started to undo
my jeans and he undid his. I
laid
back on the bed and
struggled to pull my pants off. The adrenaline was wearing off, and I was
starting to get drowsy again. He helped me pull my jeans and panties down. I
knew he took his off too, but I didn’t look. He reached for some hand cream
that was on his nightstand and coated
himself
with it.
Again, I didn’t look, but I could tell by his movements.

     
He was on top of
me now and gently spread my legs with his knee. I just looked at him. We made
eye contact then, and I said, “Can you call me by my name, just once? Can you
call me Ginny?”

     
“I’ll try not to
hurt you,” and then after a pause, he softly whispered, “Ginny.”

     
“Please. Please
tell me your name. I’ll never tell. I swear,” I pleaded.

     
“I can’t do that.
You know that. You shouldn’t have even told me your name.”
           

     
I was starting to
pass out now. I could feel him slowly entering me. I closed my eyes. I opened
them as he entered me fully. I registered some discomfort, a burning sensation,
but no real pain.

     
I was starting to
go under again. I quickly opened my eyes in an attempt to stay awake.
But to no avail.
They were slowly closing. As they were
closing for the last time and I was losing consciousness, I was certain I saw
tears in his eyes.

     
And I heard him
say, “Tommy. My name is Tommy.”