One Summer (17 page)

When Rachel emerged from the kitchen, carefully balancing a filled plate in one hand and a cup of black coffee in the other, Johnny was still as she had left him, sprawled on the couch with his head thrown back. But his eyes were closed. For a minute she thought he was asleep.

“I went to Detroit to tell Sue Ann,” he said abruptly, opening his eyes as she set the plate down on the table where the whiskey bottle had been and handed him the
cup. He took it, but his hands were so unsteady that the steaming liquid sloshed over the side to splash down on his thigh. Swearing, he brushed at the spreading wetness with his free hand. Rachel just managed to save the rest of the coffee from a similar disaster by removing the cup from his hold.

“She doesn’t have a phone. Can’t afford it, she said. She’s on welfare, you know, with three kids. And she’s pregnant, out to here.” He made a gesture in front of his own flat belly to demonstrate. “In a two-room apartment with a broken toilet. Her boyfriend, the one who knocked her up, came around while I was there. He’s a sleazebag, a scumball, and he treats her and the kids like shit. I wanted to beat the crap out of him. But I didn’t. What the hell good would it do? Christ, she’s only twenty-four.” He was talking in rapid, disjointed sentences, the words just barely coherent, his head resting against the back of the couch, his eyes focused on the ceiling. Rachel made a soothing sound and lifted the cup of coffee toward his lips.

“Here. Drink this.”

Johnny ignored her. “I gave her what money I had. Christ, it wasn’t much. She and the kids looked so bad. They were skinny—her too, except for this huge bulging belly—and there were flies all over the place because the screen over the window had holes in it and it was hot as hell. And I thought I had it bad in stir! The place was a fucking resort compared to the rathole she lives in.”

He laughed bitterly. Only dimly understanding that he was referring to his stay in prison, Rachel touched his arm. Her main concern at the moment was sobering him up as much as she could and getting some food into him. She suspected he had not eaten all day, and maybe not on Sunday either, though surely his sister had fixed him something.

“Johnny, please drink this. It’s coffee, and you need it.”

His gaze slewed around to her. His eyes were as turbulent as a thunderstorm. “You don’t know shit about what I
need. How could you? Have you ever wanted for anything? Hell, no! You and your big house and your fancy words and your la-de-da parents—what do you know about people like me?”

“I know you’re hurting.” Her voice was very soft, but the words seemed to sting him. He winced, his mouth twisting into a furious sneer.

“Yeah, I’m hurting. Hell, yes. Why not? I’m human, just like everybody else. I hurt.”

With a curse he sprang to his feet, overturning the coffee table in front of the couch with a single furious swing. As it crashed, he turned to glare at Rachel, his eyes savage. Even the fact that he was swaying slightly on his feet did not detract from his air of menace as he towered over her, his hands clenching and unclenching at his sides.

Rachel looked up at him with a calm that was only half pretense. “Feel better?”

He stared down at her, the rage in his eyes slowly turning to something else. He ran his fingers through his hair with a muttered curse.

“Christ, why aren’t you afraid of me? You should be afraid of me. Everyone else is,” he said. All at once, without his rage for reinforcement, his knees seemed no longer able to support his weight. He sagged forward, then almost crumpled, sitting down heavily on the floor at her feet, his back half turned to her.

“I’m not afraid of you, Johnny. I never have been,” Rachel said, because it was true, and because she thought it was what he needed to hear. He looked around at her then, a tired smile flickering in his eyes for no more than an instant. He dropped his head back so that it rested against her knees.

“Beats me why not,” he muttered.

Staring down at that untidy black head, feeling the weight of it and the bony hardness of his skull and the silkiness of his hair as it nestled against her bare legs, she felt compassion so strong that she ached with it. Setting
the cup of coffee down on the lamp table beside the plate of toast and eggs, she laid a gentle hand on his head and stroked his hair.

“I’m so sorry about your father, Johnny.”

He gave another of those harsh laughs. “Sue Ann said she wouldn’t come to his funeral if she lived right next door. She said she hated the old bastard. Buck hated him, too—I called Buck. And so did I. Do I, I mean. Hate him. Damn him to hell!”

A sudden catch in Johnny’s voice caught at Rachel’s heart. She continued to stroke his head, her fingers soothing as they smoothed the tangled strands that tumbled around her knee. If he even felt her touch, she had no idea. He talked on and on in a hoarse, creaky voice that sounded as if he were being strangled.

“Grady—Grady. He used to beat on Grady worst. Buck was too big, and I was too mean, and Sue Ann was a girl. I can still see poor little Grady—he wasn’t very big, you know, just a skinny little runt with a mop of black curls—I can still see the old man yanking down Grady’s pants and laying into him with his belt. I can hear Grady screaming, and then not screaming after the old man picked him up and slammed him into a wall until he shut up. He never could understand why the old man hated him worse than the rest of us. If he even saw Grady’s face, he’d pop him one. Kid used to hide out in the closet if he couldn’t get out the door before the old man got home.”

Johnny paused to take a deep, shuddering breath. Rachel said nothing, just stroked his hair and listened. From the way he stared off into space, she wasn’t even sure he remembered she was there.

“Ah, Grady. We were tight, you know? They wouldn’t even let me out to go to his funeral. Drowned. I couldn’t believe it.” He chuckled then, the sound as harsh and full of pain as a sob. “Kid always swam like a fish. Only sport he was ever any damned good at. I think he had a death wish. I did a lot of reading in stir—hell, there wasn’t much
else to do—and I came across a lot of psychological stuff. Most of it wasn’t worth toilet paper, but some of it made sense. Grady was always getting hurt as a kid. He had more broken bones than the rest of us put together. He even set himself on fire once, playing with a cigarette lighter, and damned near french-fried himself. Not that the old man cared. Never even took him to a doctor, and the kid had scars all over his legs and back till the day he died. I think that it hurt Grady so bad that my mom left and my dad hated him that he wanted to die. I think that’s why he drowned. He wanted to die. Hell, they locked me up for murder, and they never did a thing to the old man, and he was sure as hell a lot guiltier of it than I ever was. Never. Nobody. Did nothing. Do you know that Grady was so scared of him that all the old man had to do was give him a certain look and he’d piss his pants? When he was half-grown, a teenager, even. A look, and Grady would piss like a baby. Somebody should’ve helped him, you know? Somebody should have taken him away from the old bastard. But nobody gave a shit.”

Jaw clenching, Johnny broke off abruptly, and his eyes closed. His head was heavy against her knees. Rachel, horrified at what she had heard, sat silent, her hand frozen in his hair. She had suspected abuse, but this raw pouring-out of emotion made it so immediate, so awful, so far beyond anything she had ever imagined. Abuse was a clinical term she had learned in school. This pain was dreadfully real.

“Hell, some of it was my fault, I guess. I never told anybody. None of us ever told. Remember when you asked me if my old man was beating us up? I laughed in your face, didn’t I? I laughed because I was too ashamed to admit the truth. Everybody thought we were trash. I didn’t want to prove ’em right. I hated it that all the nice Wonder Bread people looked down their noses at us. If they knew the truth, they’d just look down their noses more. He. was a goddamned drunk and he beat us up, and
we didn’t want anybody to know. Goddamned bunch of lily-livered kids.”

His breathing changed, grew harsher, and he sat up suddenly, lifting his head from her knees and turning around so that he met her eyes. Mesmerized by the sheer power of his ragged confessions, mute because she could not think of anything to say, Rachel could only look back at him, horror and pity mixed in her eyes.

“You know you were the only teacher ever even to ask about it? Hell, we had as many bruises as a Christmas tree has ornaments, and not a single other person ever even asked about them. Know why? ’Cause we were trash, that’s why, and nobody gave a shit. But you asked. God, I hated for you to know that my old man beat me up! You were so—” His eyes narrowed, flickered, and he stopped abruptly, as if he just realized what he was saying. It was a second or two before he continued. “I went home that day, and when he lit into Grady, I lit into him. We had the father and mother of a fight—remember, I was out most of the next week?—and I can’t say that I won. But he saw I’d fight, and he wasn’t so quick with his fists or his belt after that. Just his mouth, and sometimes that hurt more. He used to call us boys damned queers, and Sue Ann a whore. There was nothing I wouldn’t do to keep him from thinking I was a queer.”

He stopped again, then drew in a harsh, shaking breath. His hands came up to grip her skirt on either side of her thighs, bunching the material tightly in his fists. His eyes burned into hers as if hell raged at their backs.

“He was an asshole, and a bastard, and we all hated him. Only I didn’t. I thought I did, but when I saw him on that table and he was all cut up—”

He drew in another harsh, shaking breath, and Rachel realized to her dismay that it was a sob.

“I found out I loved the fucking old bastard after all, may he burn in hell!”

His teeth clenched as if at unbearable pain, his eyes
glittered wildly, and then he bowed his head. His face dropped onto her lap, his fingers gripping and twisting her skirt as if he would never let her go.

The broad shoulders heaved. Desperate sounds muffled by her skirt and her legs tore at her heart. Feeling tears rise to her eyes, Rachel stroked his head, and his shoulders, and his back, and murmured inconsequential soothing words that did nothing to stem his pain.

“It’s all right, now. It’s all right,” she said over and over again. He didn’t seem to hear, but nestled his head closer into her lap, his hands clutching her with convulsive strength. The harsh, strangled sounds continued unabated. Rachel dropped her own head to rest her cheek against his hair. Her arms wrapped around his back, hugging him to her, trying to give comfort if she could.

Finally his despair eased, and he lay limply against her, his face in her lap while she stroked his hair and part of an ear and a section of bristly cheek.

For a long while he lay like that, warm and heavy against her legs, and then she felt him gather himself together. His head lifted. Without warning Rachel found herself impaled by a pair of red-rimmed, smoky blue eyes, suspiciously damp around the edges, ones that blazed into hers with all the intensity of a soul in torment. Her hands rested on his wide shoulders. Self-conscious suddenly under that burning gaze, she let her hands drop into her lap.

“You know what I used to dream about, in stir?” His voice was hoarse, the words low and fast and faintly guttural. “I used to dream about you. You were the only clean and good and decent thing left in my life, and I would dream about you. I used to dream about taking your clothes off piece by piece, and what you would look like naked, and how it would feel to fuck you really good. I used to dream about that in high school, too. In fact, I got off almost every night for the last fourteen years, dreaming about you.”

Rachel’s lips parted with shock. Speechless, she stared
at him wide-eyed for what seemed an eternity while her heart suddenly hammered and her throat went dry.

“I’m fucking tired of dreaming,” he said fiercely. Sliding his hands up her thighs beneath her skirt, he caught her hips and pulled her down onto his lap.

17

H
e was kneeling, and all at once she was straddling him, her hands splayed against his chest, her legs bent at the knee and parted all the way to her crotch as he pulled her tight against him. Her skirt, a useless flimsy thing of green cotton with huge, absurd strawberries printed all over it, was pushed almost up to her waist. Only the thin, silky nylon of her pink panties protected her from the rough denim of his jeans and the hard metal of his zipper and the swollen thickness that bulged beneath.

“So tell me no, teacher,” he said when her gaze locked with his. His hands were hard with tension as they gripped her hips. His thighs were rigid beneath her bottom. She could feel the steely strength in the chest muscles beneath her hand—and the tantalizing, mesmerizing stiffness of the hillock on which she sat.

She couldn’t say it. She could not. She wanted him too badly. For most of her life, it seemed, she had wanted him.

Shocking, shameful thought. But her body burned.

“Johnny,” she whispered helplessly. Her eyes fell as she could no longer sustain his gaze. But in falling, they found his mouth, which was a mistake. Long and sensitive, very masculine, very beautiful, it took on a sensuous curve that stole her breath as she stared at it.