Drowning of Stephan Jones (15 page)

Frank craned his neck, checking the fuel gauge for any sign of movement. Silently and anxiously they watched the distance decrease while the gas decreased, praying that the distance would disappear sometime before the gas did. This time around, luck was with them. Over on the right, not two hundred yards past the Tastee-Freeze stand, was the sign that they were waiting for: THE CAMPBELL S. YAW AUTO SERVICE CENTER. Although the sign was lighted, the free-standing cinder-block building was blacker than a witch’s heart.

Stephan successfully steered the gleaming hulk onto the paved front yard of the building before allowing himself one mighty sigh of relief, and finally turned off the motor. Had this been any night besides Saturday, they might have made themselves comfortable in the RV until morning, when Cam could have driven them home. Problem was, like most local businesses, Cam Yaw’s place was closed on Sunday, that being the Lord’s day.

As the men walked along the dark and nearly deserted strip of highway, Stephan pointed to a sign at the side of the road: RACHETVILLE 4. “Hey, it’s not so bad! That means we’re only three miles from Parson Springs.”

Frank rubbed his eyes. “Yeah, well, I don’t feel like walking three more miles.”

“Considering how late it is now and how early we got up, I’m surprised you even feel like breathing.”

The night was warm, the moon was full for the moment, and from the lush and luxuriant forest of the Ozarks there came a range of summer sounds: a convention of crickets, a screech owl, and at least one desperately-lonely-for-love coyote.

When the men reached the bridge over the Pascaloosa, Stephan stopped short, putting his hand to his ear. “Listen, something’s heading this way. Maybe a truck.”

Moments later, one of the Tyson’s Chicken Company’s sixteen-wheelers, loaded with stack upon stack of plastic poultry crates filled to cramped capacity with chickens, came barreling down the highway. Frank wildly waved his hands and shouted as though he were trying to attract the attention of the Almighty: “Taxi! Taxi! Hey, taxi!!!”

The grizzly faced driver, who up to this moment thought he had seen
everything,
did a double take, his jaw drooped, and he shook his head in wonderment. Apparently, being mistaken for a cab was beyond his previous bag of experiences. At least up until now it had been.

“Taxi?” asked a perplexed Stephan as the great truck went highballing down the road. “What the hell did you yell ‘taxi’ for?”

Frank slipped off his linen jacket and leaned against the bridge’s iron guardrail. “’Cause I couldn’t, on the spur of the moment, come up with any other single word meaning ‘Drive us home. We’ll pay the fare.’”

Leaning against the bridge’s rusty and crusty rail, the men gazed in quiet admiration at the serpentine turns of the swollen river below. “What a racket water makes!”

Pointing downstream, Stephan exclaimed, “Well, no wonder! Can you see them? Look at those rapids!”

Because of the river’s crashing, splashing noises, neither Stephan nor Frank was aware of the hum of the heavy car’s motor until it was almost upon them. At the last possible moment, Frank jumped quickly into the road and thrust his right thumb high into the air. ‘Can’t you see they’re going the other way,” called out Stephan, still mesmerized by the primordial call of the swiftly moving waters below.

The black power-car zoomed over the bridge on its way back to Rachetville, its six young occupants at first far too involved with their own lives to take much notice or interest in a couple of poor, unfortunate hitchhikers. But after he’d driven some ways down the road Andy suddenly slammed on the brakes. “Dear Jesus!” he yelped. “It’s them! It’s the fags!” And in an unexpected and flashy maneuver he spun the car around in such a way that it looked as if he were a contestant in the Indianapolis 500.

If Andy’s obsession with the men had been dormant, it certainly wasn’t dead. Pressing the accelerator flat against the floorboard, he exclaimed, “It’s them! Sweet Jesus! I
know
it’s them!”

Carla reluctantly raised her resting head from the shoulder of her man. She had been feeling gloriously excited by the unaccustomed
alcohol that had raced through all the main routes and byways of her now supercharged bloodstream. No doubt that she felt somehow different than she had ever felt before because she had drunk more than she had ever drunk before. Two beers,
only
two beers may not sound like a lot, but for a novice drinker, it was more than enough.

She felt so-o-o good. She thought it funny that she had never before noticed how wonderfully perfect this old world really was. Andy, of course, was perfect, but so was everybody in the car. Absolutely perfect! And surprise of all surprises, for the first time in her life, she, Carla Abigail Wayland, was perfectly perfect too!

Even the speeding Oldsmobile added to the high excitement that had not only invaded her senses, but conquered them. She felt so very special that she was convinced that if she really wanted to, she could reach out and hug the whole world. She possessed power enough to make certain that Andy Harris would never stop loving her and that nothing bad could ever again touch her. “Well, what are you going to do, Andy?” she asked, feeling an unexplained attack of the giggles coming on. But the narrowly focused look he wore of pure, dead-on concentration excluded answering anybody, anybody at all.

“All right, then, have it your way!” she announced good-naturedly. She began rhythmically singing and clapping, “GO Andy Go!” Laughing and teasing, Donna and Lisa followed by Spider and the Ironman joined in. “GO Andy Go!” Now they were all together and all really belting it out. “Ohh, Go Andy Go!!! Go Andy Go! Go! Go!! Go!!”

The car sped back down the highway, its high beams punching bright, shining holes through the darkness. Not more than a few hundred feet from where the men were originally sighted, those beams picked up the sight of them. With suit jackets slung jauntily over their shoulders, they were leisurely strolling across the Pascaloosa Bridge back toward Parson
Springs. And as they walked, Stephan was singing, “I must be who I am ... take me or leave me ... only let me be free ... free to be who I am ...”

Andy dead-aimed his car straight at the two blissfully unaware walkers. Both Carla and the Ironman stared with a growing sense of frozen disbelief before finally screaming: “
Brake! Brake!!
” At the last moment possible, Andy slammed his foot against the brake, making the car veer crazily to the right before finally screeching and grinding to an ear-piercing halt.

As a stunned Frank absorbed the situation he was surprised to hear bombarding inside his head words from his old college ROTC instructor: To defeat the enemy, divide the enemy.

Violently he shoved a nearly paralyzed Stephan forward, broke into a run, and shouted, “Run, Steve! RUN!” Frank raced off in the opposite direction from Stephan, who finally began racing back across the bridge.

The door on the driver’s side swung open and Andy lunged. It was this last, crazed action that careened into Carla’s bubble of enchantment and shattered the spell.

Carla tried to grab hold of Andy’s wrist while crying out, “What
are
you doing!?” She felt swept by shame that moments earlier she had egged him on with her raucous cheers.

Catching only a scraping of his fine, young skin beneath her polished pink nails, she watched in stricken silence as Andy, quickly followed by Spider, Ironman, and even the high-heeled Donna and Lisa, piled out of the car to race with a kind of frenzied fever after their all-too-human prey.

Although Frank Montgomery raced across the bridge as though his life depended upon it, Andy Harris was clearly narrowing the gap. Less than twenty feet separated him from his intended victim when Andy turned his head to glance behind, but nobody was there backing him up. Not Ironman, not even Spider. At that moment, Andy seemed to lose all interest in the chase.

Carla, looking and acting as though she had just undergone electroshock therapy, finally stumbled out of the car. Standing alone in the middle of the bridge, she heard the harsh panting, raspy puffing, and occasional bursts of profanity coming now from the combatants somewhere at the far edge of the bridge.

Suddenly she slapped a hand across her mouth. Although she felt like vomiting, she also felt like screaming, but she didn’t do either. For an instant she wondered if she was still too much her mother’s daughter to be like everyone else and to enjoy fun and games like the others. Or could it possibly be that the problem was that Andy and the others didn’t have enough compassion to understand when something is anything but fun and games?

Then she was aware of how the sounds had changed. She heard the crash of racing feet. The chase was taking place down below, somewhere down on the river’s dry and leafy shore. Carla could hear the swishing, swaying, and cracking of branches as well as the thud of footsteps landing hard in quick succession on dry and rotting branches. But most disturbing of all, she heard the curses and groans of various contenders straining desperately to either hide or to seek.

“AHHHHHHHHhhhhhh!!!!” The cry splintered the night and sent chills of foreboding streaking up Carla’s spinal column.

“I
got
me one!” shrilled Spider. “I caught me a fucking faggot!” A jubilant Andy whooped and hollered back his congratulations along with his order to escort the prisoner back onto the bridge. “Hey, which one did you catch!?”

“The little
fairy
and our old pal Stephanie!”

Less than five minutes later, the celebrating Spider and Ironman marched Stephan Jones—head bowed, hands held behind his back—back to where Andy waited with sweet although barely contained anticipation. Although Spider may have made the capture, and Ironman may have secured the prisoner, there
was no question who was running the show. With legs spread apart in the supradominant male stance, Andy began barking out orders as though he had been born taking private lessons from the cream of the Gestapo’s high command.

Cupping his hands, he yelled directly into the right ear of the prisoner. “Drop to your knees, faggot! You fucking Stephanie Jones, son of a whore, son of a bitch, Goddamn queer bastard!”

Stephan’s mouth was a thin, pink line. His eyes were clenched tightly shut, as though by shutting out the view, he could somehow shut out the physical pain ricocheting around his auditory canal, which felt like it was being attacked by a platoon of straight pins. Although his lips were ever-so-slightly moving, it was impossible to hear Stephan’s words over a combination of obscenities, abusive shouts, and war whoops. Then out of nowhere Lisa and Donna appeared at Carla’s side, pulling her to the very eye of the action. “Come on! Come on!” squealed Donna with obvious delight. “It’s SHOWtime!”

Now as Carla observed Andy’s naked cruelty at close range, she felt waves of repulsion roll over her. She knew that her alcohol induced fog was finally clearing and now without question or quibble she knew exactly whose side she was on.

Sliding an arm around her boyfriend’s waist, she gave him a gentle nudge while purposely blowing her warm moist breath into his ear. “Come on, Andy, we’ve got better things to do. Come on, babe, come on, let’s get out of here!”

But without so much as a sideways glance, he shoved Carla away with a quick push from the palm of his hand. Then grabbing Stephan’s ears, one in each of his hands, Andy began screaming into the man’s face. “What’s the matter with you, you fucking atheist? Don’t you believe in the Bible!?”

“Yes, yes,” Stephan yelled. “I
do
believe!”

Bursting with swelling masculine pride, Spider and Ironman held Stephan between them as if he were a much-prized Safari
trophy.

Carla forcefully grabbed Andy’s arm. “Andy, please ... please, I have to go home now! It’s getting late. We promised my mother—remember?”

If looks could kill, then the frozen stare that he now fixed on her was capable of dispensing instant death. Between clenched teeth, he warned, “Back off! Way off! Carla, get away now.”

Grinning like a winning warrior, Andy barked out commands while Ironman and Spider held Stephan’s arms securely behind his back.

“What are you, some kind of infidel who laughs at Jesus Christ Our Lord and Savior?” demanded an irate Andy, while twisting his captive’s ears as though they were easily replaceable parts.

“No! No!” yelled Stephan, his voice splintered by a combination of fears and tears. “I’m not—not an atheist! I studied for the priesthood! Two years for the—oh, please let me go. Please! I never hurt anybody ... I never hurt ...” Sobs began to rack his slight body and for some moments he was unable to speak.

Andy’s words came out with a surprising softness. “Hey, that’s okay. You can cry if you want to, but when you’re ready to talk we’re here ready and able to listen. Now what could be fairer than that?”

With an effort borne of desperation, the defeated Stephan sucked back tears to start again. “I studied for the priesthood ... Weston School of Theology. I’m a man of God ... never in my life hurt anybody, so why are you hurting me? Why???”

“You think that surprises me?” Andy queried while returning to a strident tone. “All those priests running around wearing their long, black dresses? You think I don’t know why? ’Cause they’re all faggots—why else would they wear dresses? And that goes double, triple for your pope. Pope ... pope—what’s
his name?”

Stephan had to stifle back sobs before he was capable of answering. “John Paul. Pope John Paul the Second.”

Andy spat from the side of his mouth. “And that’s what I think of your Mary-worshipping fag of a pope. You think God is just kidding around when he said: And if a man lays down with a man the same way he lays down with a woman, both have committed an A-BOM-IN-A-TION!”

“Andy could you please make him open up his eyes?” Donna politely requested. “My mother says you can always tell a fag by his eyes.”

“You heard the lady!” Andy drawled, putting heavy accent on the word
lady.
“Go ahead and open your eyes, faggot!”

Obediently Stephan’s eyes popped open, but there wasn’t enough visibility under the existing moonlight for either Donna or Lisa to make a “fair judgment.” So Stephan was half dragged, half escorted by Spider and the Ironman to the front of the Oldsmobile where the high beams still shone. Because the auto’s lights were too concentrated for Stephan to keep his eyes open for more than a blink, Andy obligingly held them apart while Donna and Lisa took their time looking deep into the man’s earth-brown eyes. “Well, I guess he looks enough like a guy in his eyes all right,” Donna allowed after some thoughtful consideration. “But I sure do wonder ... I wonder if he looks like a guy
everywhere
?”