The Rise of Rachel Stark (5 page)

She had a second cigarette, then a
third, a fourth. Meanwhile, a couple of young men had come in and
were playing a game of shuffleboard while they drank draft beer,
talked loudly and sang along with the jukebox.

"Hey, Rob," Penelope called. She
had been sitting on her bar stool for almost an hour. "Gimme a
double."

"You sure, Penelope?"

"Damn it, Rob!"

He shrugged, poured the whiskey
and set it front of her. She downed it with one gulp. "Another,"
she said.

A couple of hours later Rob tried
to send her home. "I'm not driving," Penelope said. "I'm walking.
So I'll stay here long as I want to."

"Well, you're hardly even
walking," Rob said.

"Oh, shut the hell up," she said,
and let out a long cackle. She slid off her barstool and staggered
to a booth, where a housepainter named Clint Hansen, who had been
watching, joined her. They drank and filled the bar with drunken
conversation. They danced to the music of the jukebox and pawed
each other and kissed until Rob told them to knock it off. They
didn't argue. Rob had been known to place one of his burly paws on
top of the bar and vault over it to break up a fight or grab a
customer and toss him out into the street.

At midnight, Rob came over to
their booth. "I'm closing," he said. "Let's all go
home."

"Sounds good to me," Clint
shouted. "C'mon, honey, let's you and me go home."

"Not tonight, you big dork, I've
got a headache." She cackled again.

"C'mon, now, don't be that
way."

Penelope staggered out the door as
Rob was turning off the lights. Clint was right behind her. Out on
the street, he grabbed her by the arm. "C'mon, now, let's
go."

Penelope jerked free and almost
fell down. "I said not tonight. I'm going home. So leave me
alone."

"You been talking shit all night
and now you're going home? What the hell is that?"

"Get outta here. I'm going home."
She walked away.

"Bitch! Prick tease!" Clint
yelled.

He spun her around and threw a
drunken punch that missed Penelope but hit the concrete block wall
straight on, shattering several bones in his hand. He fell to the
sidewalk and lay there twisting and moaning.

Penelope cackled and staggered
away, bumping into buildings as she went down the street, but
staying on her feet.

Two blocks from home she passed
out and fell into a ditch. She lay there for some time before she
woke up and tried to get on her feet. She slipped and fell several
times before she managed to crawl out and stand up.

Her bare hands had turned blue
with the cold. The snow swirled around her in gusts. Two or three
times she fell to her knees and threw up. She sloshed around in her
own vomit as she tried to get up again.

Finally she found herself standing
on the sidewalk in front of her house, but she seemed unsure how
she got there, unsure where she was. She stared at the house for a
second, then seemed to recognize it. She put her hands in front of
her as she began to stagger toward it.

When she got to the concrete steps
leading up to the front door, she reached for the railing but
missed and fell. Her head popped against a step.

When Jimmy walked out the door to
go to school the next morning, he found her iced-over body. A
stream of frozen blood the color of her hair led nearly to the
street.

●●●

"I could have saved her," Jimmy said aloud.
"When she didn't come home for dinner that night I should have gone
out and looked for her. Why, why, why didn't I? Why? I waited till
morning, and by then it was too late."

The snowstorm was getting heavier, and Jimmy
broke into a trot.

"Hurry!" he yelled to his friends.

"Hurry!"

Tabby Moore and Sheldon
Beasley

Tabby Moore and Sheldon Beasley walked arm in
arm up Cemetery Road. They lagged behind Jimmy and Bull, not
because their sense of urgency was waning or because they were
physically unable to keep up, but because they wanted to
talk.

Privately.

Not as lovers – this was hardly the time for
that. They wanted to talk simply because it was what they did. They
began talking with each other almost as soon as they were able to
talk. And talking is what had kept them together ever
since.

"I got what you were doing when you asked
whether we had the right to invade the Stark family's privacy,"
Sheldon said.

"I knew you would," Tabby said. She smiled at
him.

"You just wanted to give those guys the chance
to, well, to confirm, I guess, to confirm, maybe in their own minds
as much as to us, that what we're doing is really what they want to
do," Sheldon said.

"Well," Tabby said, "Jimmy sure didn't leave
any doubt where he stood, did he?" She gave a little
laugh.

"No, he
was
rather forceful, huh?" Sheldon
said. "And Bull, he's solid. We don't have to worry about
Bull."

"And you? How about you? We've had some pretty
wild adventures together, but this one really scares me. So I could
ask myself the same question. What about me? How solid am I?" Tabby
said.

Sheldon thought about it for a few
seconds.

"I guess at least part of the answer to that,"
Sheldon said, "has to do with what binds one person to another.
What is it about Rachel Stark that makes us want to take what you
have to admit is a very, very serious step – barging uninvited into
someone's house in the dark of night and essentially telling a
mother and father that they can't do – that we won't allow them to
do – what they think is best for their daughter."

"I really don't know Benjamin and Holly Stark
all that well," Tabby said. "I think they are decent, hard-working,
good people. But although I'm sure they do think an abortion is
best for Rachel, I wonder whether they're more concerned about
themselves than they are about Rachel. I think they have a selfish
interest in this."

"You could be right," Sheldon said.

"As for why I like Rachel so much, that's
easy," Tabby said.

"Music," Sheldon said.

"Yes," Tabby said. "Rachel Stark
is my soul mate. And she was my soul mate the instant she opened
her mouth and I heard her sing that very first note, before I ever
said one word to her. She is an incredible, incredible talent. For
that reason alone she should be allowed to have a long, long life,
because she is going to give so many people so much joy. I'm not
guessing that is going to happen, I
know
that is going to
happen.

"So I am going to do whatever I have to do to
save Rachel's life, to save that beautiful voice. And I do
literally fear for her life. I have been reading about these wire
hanger abortions. They are ugly, deadly things. We can't let this
happen. We just can't. Invasion of privacy be damned. I'll go to
jail or whatever if that's what it takes."

She paused for a moment.

"What about you?" she said. "Why are you doing
this for Rachel?"

"Couple of reasons," Sheldon said. "One reason
is you. Your soul mate is my soul mate. I don't have to tell you
that.

"The other is Rodney. Now I know that football
and sports in general don't have the spiritual heft that something
like the art of serious music does, but – "

"Not true," Tabby said. "The display of
physical strength and agility is as beautiful an art form as any
other. The Greeks taught us that centuries ago, so don't knock
it."

"OK, I won't argue," Sheldon said. "But
anyway, Rodney, his considerable talent as a football player aside,
is a kindred soul to me, just as Bull and Jimmy are. I knew that
when Coach O'Connor named Rodney the starting running back last
fall, and Danny Jackson and Oscar Olney started giving Rodney a bad
time in the locker room one night after practice, because he beat
them out for the starting job. And he's only a sophomore and they
are seniors. It was getting pretty ugly, but Rodney handled it like
such an adult. Never backing down, never showing that he was
afraid. Instead, he complimented those guys for their hard work on
the field, and said he looked forward to helping them make the
Chante Lions a better team. He totally disarmed them. It was a
beautiful thing to see. That's when I knew. Rodney Stark is a
brick."

Tabby smiled and gave Sheldon's arm a
squeeze.

"I remember the first day I met Rachel," Tabby
said. "It also was the first day I met Rodney. Do you remember
that?"

"Oh, yeah," Sheldon said. "Oh,
yeah."

●●●

Tabby and Sheldon walked hand in
hand to school on Sept. 6, 1965, their first day as seniors at
Chante High. They had been dating since they were freshmen, but
they had been "together" ever since they were 2 years old,
next-door neighbors playing in each other's back yard.

The high school, an imposing
three-story red brick building, sits on a hill overlooking the
town, which is situated in Chante Valley, through which the
Missouri River courses its way south.

To reach the school's front
entrance, Tabby and Sheldon had to climb a long, wide flight of
concrete steps with galvanized pipe railings. Once inside the
building, they walked up two flights of well-worn wooden stairs
leading to the assembly hall.

Along the way, they greeted fellow
students, some of whom they had not seen since the end of school
last spring. Complain though they might that the summer vacation
had ended, the kids were always excited that first day of school,
none more so than the seniors.

Chante High is a relatively small
school, no more than 50 students in the senior class, and Tabby and
Sheldon knew everybody in their class, and almost everybody in the
entire school. One thing was for sure: Everybody knew Sheldon and
Tabby. Sheldon was a star athlete and scholar. Tabby was the
runaway favorite to be the senior class valedictorian, and she was
the leading soloist for the Chante Chanteuses, a girls' vocal
group. Both were outgoing and friendly, humble despite their
status, funny and easy to talk to, and beautiful. They had it all,
it seemed.

So it was that as seniors, Tabby
and Sheldon were members of the royalty at Chante High, and they
were treated with deference by most students, and even some
teachers. If you could count Tabby Moore and Sheldon Beasley among
your close friends, something most students aspired to, you were
part of an elite circle. When Sheldon and Tabby took their seats in
the senior section of the cavernous assembly hall that first day,
one almost expected a standing ovation.

In the back row of the senior
class that day, sitting alone in a crowd, was a slender girl with
straight dark hair that hung down in no particular style. She wore
a plain grey knee-length dress, clean but somewhat worn. Her tennis
shoes were grey, her socks black. She spoke to no one. No one spoke
to her.

Her name was Rachel Stark, but no
one except for a few teachers knew that for several days. She was
an invisible presence. She came and went almost
unnoticed.

That changed a few days later when
she showed up for tryouts for the Chante Chanteuses.

When Mr. Nelson, the music
instructor, called her name, Rachel walked onto the gymnasium stage
and stood in front of the microphone, her hands folded at her
waist. It was the first time most of the students had heard her
name.

"Rachel," Mr. Nelson said, "you're
new here, am I right?"

"Yes, sir."

"Well, welcome to Chante High.
We're glad to have you. Where do you come from?"

"Tennessee, sir."

"Tennessee. What brings you to
this part of the world?"

Rachel hesitated.

"Well," she said. "My dad is a … a
carpenter. And, uh, he thought … he thought he could find work
here."

There were chuckles from some of
the students.

"Well, good luck to him," Mr.
Nelson said. "And good luck to you, Rachel. What are you going to
sing for us today?"

"I thought I would sing
Unchained Melody
," she
said.

More giggles, and a mass rolling
of eyes.

Mr. Nelson turned to the girls in
the audience.

"I'm sorry, ladies," he said, "but
you are being very rude, and I might add, very childish. You're not
grade schoolers anymore. You are Chante High School students.
Moreover, you are in this room because you want to be a Chante
Chanteuse. That is a high honor in this school, and you are
expected to act accordingly. So if I hear any more laughing I will
clear the room, and there will be no more tryouts today. Is that
understood? Good."

He turned back to
Rachel.

"My apologies, Rachel," he said.
"Don't let a few ill-mannered people upset you. You have a lot of
friends here. So relax. And when you're ready, let me
know."

Mr. Nelson sat down at the piano.
Rachel adjusted the mike and nodded to him.