Drowning of Stephan Jones (16 page)

“Everywhere?” Andy asked, clearly perplexed.

“Well, you know,” Lisa joined in, attempting to help out. “Oh, come on, Andy, don’t be
entirely
stupid—in the one and only place that guys
really
look like guys.”

Andy blinked as though somebody had given him an unexpected sock on the jaw, then grinned. “Well, I guess in the name of scientific research we could find out. Okay, men, pull down the prisoner’s pants!”

As both Spider and Ironman glanced at their leader’s face
to check if he was really serious, Andy began shrieking at them. “Do it! Do it!!!!”

At first hesitantly, Spider followed by Ironman began fumbling with their captive’s silver belt buckle as a screaming and kicking Stephan begged, “No, no, please, Dei Mater! No! No! Don’t let them do this to me, please, please Dei Mater!!!”

All at once, Carla lunged forward and shoved Spider and Ironman off balance and out of the way while managing to skillfully wedge herself between Andy and his prey. “All right, Andy! All right!” she spoke between zippered teeth. “If the others won’t tell you, then I will! You have no right, no right at all to do this to another human being! Enough is enough! You’ve had your fun! Now let him go!”

“Know what’s wrong with you, Carla?” Andy spoke evenly and seemingly without a trace of anger, and it was just that evenness that gave his words added authority. “You wouldn’t know a real soldier for Christ if you fell over him. But hey,” he exclaimed, raising his hands in a sign of surrender, “that’s not your fault, and I don’t blame you for it either. Considering that your own mother is the town atheist who had the gall to argue against Rachetville erecting a manger scene, well, then how could
anybody
expect you to understand the least little thing about
true
Christian ethics? You ought to get down on your knees and thank God that at least you were born pretty.”

The next moment the only sound was from the rushing of clean, mountain air racing into Carla’s lungs. The tension from that silence was almost unbearable until her strong index finger suddenly jutted forward. “Who the hell are you to put
my
mother down?” She poked at Andy’s chest and looked at him with withering disgust. How could she have fallen for someone so cruel? “If you weren’t so damn ignorant then you’d know that Plato and Aristotle were teaching ethics to the Greeks hundreds of years before the birth of Christ. As far as comparing ethics, yours to my mother’s—that’s a joke! She’s the jolly green
giant and you—you’re an ethical pygmy—no, an insect. Yes, yes an insect, an ethical insect ’cause only someone that small”—she flicked the tip of a polished fingernail—“would gang up on an innocent man.”

“Innocent?!! Andy thundered. “Can’t you see
anything?
I’m giving you a chance, Carla. I’m telling you, he’s breaking God’s law.”

“You mean, it’s God’s law that he’s breaking?” she asked incredulously.

“Yes!” he boomed. “God’s law!”

“But, Andy, you believe—you’ve
told
me that you believe that God is all powerful!”

“God
is
all powerful.”

Carla shook her head as though somewhere a lie was lurking. “If you really believed that then you’d allow God to punish Stephan Jones.”

“Can’t you get it through your thick but pretty head—he’s a faggot?” Andy’s outstretched hands seemed to Carla to almost be begging her for understanding at the same time he unintentionally sprayed her with fine spit. “A friggin’, fucking faggot!”

“I’m pleading with you—please! Let him go, Andy. Please. Nobody elected you ruler of the world! So please, please just let him go!”

Andy released a great sigh followed by an even greater pause—he seemed to be mentally adding, subtracting, and doing a final tallying up of the scores: What would be the losses if he continued the bashing? What would be the losses if he relented, letting Stephan go? Would he lose his status with the others? It seemed to boil down to keeping the fairy and teaching him a lesson he wouldn’t forget or keeping Carla, his only real girlfriend. She was the one girl he could never forget. Who would have believed that it would come down to choosing between Carla and a faggot?

“Okay, okay.” His words had a weariness about them, and yet more of a softness than she had dared hope for. “Get back into the Olds, Carla. I’ll be there.”

Feeling a tremendous sense of relief, she knew that she must say absolutely nothing to provoke him further now he had publicly done an about-face. At least allow him a little face-saving, she told herself. “I’ll wait for you in the car,” she announced matter-of-factly. She then turned and without once looking behind her, walked straight to the Olds where she slid onto the passenger seat and slammed the door behind her.

Although she noticed Andy steering everybody across the bridge and farther away from the strong glare of the automobile’s lights and deeper and deeper into the privacy of the darkness, Carla was not exactly worried. Knowing Andy, she figured that just once more he had to appear blazingly macho before keeping his word and finally allowing Stephan Jones to go free.

The minutes, or maybe they were merely seconds, went by. They went by so slowly Carla wished she had on a watch. How long had she been there, sitting alone in Andy’s car? Once she heard Lisa’s high-pitched voice taunting Stephan: “Baby! Baby! You’re nothing but a baby!”

Lisa’s cruelty was almost more difficult for Carla to understand than Andy’s because for some reason she only dimly understood, Andy Harris was spooked senseless by Stephan Jones and Frank Montgomery. It was as though he believed that his very maleness would be increased by stripping Stephan of his. Although the logic escaped Carla, she knew that Andy’s contorted beliefs convinced him that what he had been doing was justified.

But Lisa, Lisa Crowell, what could be her excuse? So did you rummage around searching for that little void within the man that could stand a bit more pain? So you did your thing and supplied it. Well, well, how very thoughtful of you, Lisa
Lee Crowell!

Without a watch and
with
only an overwrought nervous system to guide her, Carla couldn’t be sure how much time had passed. But even so, it felt as though it had been a long wait. After all, how long does it take for a red-blooded Rachetville boy to demonstrate how really heroic he is?

But Carla was afraid that getting out of the car again, checking things out, wouldn’t be smart, not a bit! For it could rekindle the rage that Andy had already so nicely simmered down. On the other hand, what if he didn’t see her? What if she first unscrewed the bulb that automatically went on whenever the door opened? And what if she then opened the car door without bothering to slam it closed and went to check?

In the next minute, she was tiptoeing her way through the darkness toward the sounds and shapes of Andy’s semicircle, and when she heard his easy flowing laughter, she felt greatly comforted. So much so that she began wondering if Stephan hadn’t already been sent (shaken, but basically unharmed) on his way.

As she soundlessly stood there, considering whether or not it would be okay to rejoin the group or slip back into the car unobserved, something happened to change everything. Lisa, helpful-as-ever Lisa, pointed out an ugly rip on the jacket of Andy’s rented tux.

“Look! Look what you’ve done!” thundered Andy as he began punching the helpless man. “My daddy will kill me for this, and it’s all your fault, you son of a bitch!!!”

Carla saw that Andy was clearly out of control. Nobody could successfully interrupt his rage. Whatever she tried to do now could only make him and it worse. Seeing him battering an already physically and mentally beaten man told her that the fragile fragments of control that Andy had regained moments before had totally deserted him. Deserted him on the mere tear of a tuxedo sleeve!

She had to get help and get it fast! The keys were still in the ignition, and driving the Olds probably wouldn’t be totally different from driving her mother’s old stick-shift Volvo. Only now—damn—they had all moved too close to the car!

Kicking off her three-inch heels and grabbing up as much of her ankle-length skirt in her arms as possible, she began running in her stocking feet back across the bridge, back toward the closer town, back toward Parson Springs.

But before she had even reached the end of the bridge, her bare feet had already endured punishment from roadside debris, mostly small-to-medium-sized rocks. Each time an unprotected foot struck one of those painfully hard objects, her instinct was to slow down at least long enough to nurse her hurt. Momentarily hopping on one foot, she cradled the wounded limb in her hands while promising that she’d make no more concessions to pain. Had to keep moving ... faster forward ... faster forward. No matter what, ’cause the only thing that mattered was getting help before Stephan Jones got mutilated.

Once across the bridge, Carla began running along the narrow grassy stretch that paralleled the road, and while that was easier on her feet, she had another problem. Her breath was now coming in short jabs. And soon her body was constantly demanding that she stop and rest.
Rest, rest,
it pleaded, if only for a moment. But instead of resting, she remembered Andy’s handsome face contorted into hideousness by hatred that raged beyond his ability to control.

She stumbled forward, and beads of perspiration rolled down her forehead and onto her cheeks as her eyes scanned the wooded area along the left-hand side of the highway. Somewhere on this side of the road, back there mostly hidden by the leafy summer foliage, she remembered seeing a house. Actually, she wasn’t even certain she had ever seen it. But she had seen its rural mailbox a month or two or three ago. She remembered
riding by that mailbox because tied to its post was a festive bouncing-in-the-afternoon-breeze bouquet of blue and silver helium balloons.

Then in the distance, but not very far in the distance, there was something on the side of the road that looked as though it could possibly—quite possibly—be a mailbox. She told herself two things: Don’t despair if it isn’t and, whatever it is or isn’t, don’t,
don’t
stop running. Never, never stop running. ’Cause it has to be along here somewhere, along here. She didn’t dream it, certainly not the helium balloons!

With the abundant skirt of her party dress that she held in her arms, she wiped the heavy moisture that rippled down her face. Now, as each tortured step took her closer and closer, she didn’t think there was any mistake about it. Thank God! It really was what she prayed it would be: a mailbox. In a burst of speed that she did not know she was capable of, she turned at the mailbox, and with her last ounce of energy sprinted up the driveway to the quietly sleeping bungalow.

Chapter 18

O
N THE BRIDGE
, Spider grasped the prisoner’s wrists and Ironman grasped his feet. They began swinging a totally distraught Stephan Jones back and forth, back and forth like a burlap bag of potatoes. All the while, Donna, Lisa, and Andy were laughingly revising and updating a version of one of their favorite childhood rhymes:

Fairy, Fairy ... quite contrary,

How does your garden grow?

With silver bells and cocksucking infidels

And fucking fairies all in a row ...

As the young men roughly set down their captive on the bridge’s roadway, Donna whined into Andy’s ear, “Did you forget all about us finding out whether or not he’s a HE downstairs, where it really matters? Or are you just a little too afraid to do that?”

“Afraid?” roared Andy. “Who’s afraid? You think I’m afraid of a queer!? Strip the bastard!” He screamed as though his soldiers needed hearing aids. “Strip him I say!”

This time neither Spider nor Ironman wasted a moment checking Andy’s face for confirmation, for this time they knew exactly what to do. With a precision that would have done a drill team proud, they went to it, straight to it.

If Stephan had previously fought the good fight to save his modesty, then it was only a pale copy of the ferociousness of the battle he now waged. Although his hands and legs were secured by the two strong members of Andy’s army, he lunged his body from side to side, snapping his teeth like a caged and crazed animal.

When Andy and the girls began to work his silver belt buckle, Stephan threw back his head and shrieked, “Dei Mater! Help me! Please! Please! Dei Mater!” In spite of his desperate
wailings, it neither brought the divine intervention of the Mother of God nor did it touch the heart of any of the five elegantly attired young people.

Together, Andy and Donna pulled off Stephan’s right shoe. They laughingly called out “one potato” as it went sailing high over the railing and sang out “two potato” as the left one followed.

Then, when Andy and the girls managed to grab the waist of Stephan’s trousers, Andy waited until Donna unbuttoned them, with her thumb and index finger delicately bringing the zipper all the way down to its base. Not until then did their commandant commence counting: “One ... two ... three ... DOWN!” With everyone pulling together, the trousers were dragged all the way down to the prisoner’s ankles. “HOORAY!” In unison, the mighty cheer went up, but even so it could not entirely drown out the deeper groans of pain and humiliation.

The only thing saving Stephan Jones from total waist-down nakedness was a pair of white jockey shorts that hugged his body like a second skin.

Again Andy began the countdown as he and the girls clutched at the underwear’s elastic waistband. “One ... two ... three ... DOWN!!!” This time as Stephan was exposed in all his bareness, the whoops and cheers of victory were louder and more triumphant than before, but the anguished moans and groans of defeat were more terrible than before.

The curious five crowded around the prostate and quaking Stephan Jones to look down upon a long, but limp penis resting against a backdrop of pale pubic hair. Although they were mercilessly observing the most private part of his body, Stephan kept his eyes clamped closed. It was as though his last scrap of pride was tied up in his steadfast refusal to set eyes upon the faces of those who humiliated, tormented, and defiled him.