Joseph Cirelli - Attack from behind

And the cops with their snide remarks and off-color questioning, the neighbors who would always look at her questioningly and whisper behind her back of what really happened that night!

She knew that she couldn't face it, that this awful nightmare had to be her secret, to share with no one! This small town was not like the big city, where a girl could escape her past… she had to pretend that this never happened. She had to try and forget those awful people at Sal's, the ones who had forced her into this wicked and despicable perversion… for they had won! She was defeated… there was no way for her to strike back!

Even today, years and years later, when she sat waiting for her husband, a full woman of twenty six, she felt her pulse quicken and her blood run cold as she remembered that night, how she had cleaned herself as best she could in a closed service station, using the leftover water in the hose. How she had pieced her dress back together with a pair of hairpins from her long blonde hair and hitched a ride into town with a college boy returning home from up at Chapel Hill.

She hated Red Collins with the kind of festering hatred that only intensifies with age, strengthening like a corked bottle of pepper sauce, but it was her private hatred… not one that she dared to share with even Don.

The shift-change whistle sounded deep in the bowels of the huge brick building and Diane heard the anxious shuffling of hundreds of feet as production workers, executives and foremen, and the dozens of miscellaneous workers like her husband Don began to leave.

Red started to leave, putting his hat back on and covering the bald spot on the top of his close-cropped head. "Maybe we could talk about it, Diane. I mean, about… well, about the job and all," he stammered, wiping his brow with the back of his forearm. "Tomorrow night, maybe… that is, if…"

"You know Don has Army Reserve meetings that night… he does every week."

Red managed a thin smile, though his lips threatened to twist into a leer. "Yeah, I know… I kinda' thought you could come, anyway. We could talk about it over a couple of beers."

Diane's face reddened and she would have said a lot more if she hadn't seen Don coming off the platform and moving quickly toward the car. "You… you must be crazy, Red Collins! You must be nuts to even think such a thing!"

He glanced up and saw Don approaching, a look of distrusting concern on his ruggedly handsome face. "Well, I'll be seeing you, Diane. Don, how's everything?… I was just shootin' the breeze with your wife. I hope you don't mind," he said without a trace of sincerity.

"No, I don't mind… but after next week, you'll have to find somebody else, 'cause she won't be picking me up, remember?"

Red scratched himself and looked up at the platform as if he hoped that something would happen. "Yeah, I guess you're right about that."

"Well, I'll be seeing you," he said to no one in particular and ambled off in his peculiar kind of limp, a left-over from the Korean War that brought him a disability check every month from Uncle Sam, though there wasn't a man within ten miles who would chance a fight with him unless he had a big stick and a head-start.

"What the hell did he want?" Don spat angrily as he got in and lit himself a cigarette, switching on the radio. "Trying to rub it in a little?"

"No, nothin' like that," Diane smiled, passing her hand over her husband's muscled thigh. "Just passing time, that's all… we were talking about some people who used to live in town, just gossiping."

"Well, who gives a shit," he grumbled, slinking down in the seat and resting his head on the back as she drove out of the crowded parking lot. "Who gives a shit about him… or this fuckin' one-horse town?"

"Aw, Don honey, you shouldn't talk like that. This town's been pretty good to us up 'til now. This is the first rotten break that's been dealt us, so we can't really complain."

Don snorted. "The hell I can't complain. I'm getting the shaft, baby, and that's something to complain about!"

"Is it that bad, Don? I mean, it's really final, huh?"

"Of course… that's what I was trying to tell you."

"Can't you find something else? There must be…"

"Oh, sure… just run downtown and pick up a job, is that the way? Honey, there can't be more than one or two jobs open in this whole God-forsaken dump… and there'll be more than twenty guys out of work. What'ya think the chances are? Some of these guys have uncles and brothers and cousins all over town… Me, I'm still an outsider. No, there ain't a chance in hell… We'll just have to look somewhere else, I reckon."

"Leave Evansboro? Oh, honey, you can't mean it!" Diane blurted, taking her eyes off the road and stirring a cloud of dust as the wheels edged onto the shoulder.

"Look where you're driving! Yeah, I mean it… you're damn right I mean it. I'll leave first chance after next week and go up north and look for something. You'll just have to stay on here and wait for me to send some money."

Diane sobbed softly, keeping her head turned away from her husband so that he wouldn't see her crying. Maybe he wasn't emotionally tied to this town, but she certainly was… it was her birthplace, the town where she had grown up. Where her mom and dad had lived happily until their deaths… and now he wanted her to just pack up and leave? For what? Some cheap tenement housing in a northern town? A place where she had no friends? Where she wouldn't be able to leave the apartment for fear of being mugged or raped?

Even now, the faintest glimmer of an idea sparkled almost unnoticed in the back of her mind. It was nothing now, not even an idea… that was yet to come. But Diane knew that she had to do something – anything! – to turn this whole mess around.

She had to!

"Diane, I just don't understand why you keep harping on it over and over," Don said irritably as they sat on the sofa after dinner. The news was on but he had turned the sound off and some nameless politician wiggled his lips and contorted his face silently on the television screen.

"I'm sorry… I really am, honey. But it just sounds so awful to me, that's all. I can't get used to the idea of leaving Evansboro."

He sat up and turned to face her. "But, Diane, we always talked about one day moving up to Raleigh and getting one of those nice houses with the fancy lawns and raising a couple of young'uns."

"Sure, but this isn't the same… It isn't Raleigh you're talking about. And there won't be any nice house with a lawn. Even if there is a… oh, skip it."

"Skip what? What're you getting at?" he demanded angrily. "There's something else bugging you, honey. Let's hear it… spit it out!"

"Nothing…" She lowered her face sulkingly. "C'mon… don't play games with me. What is it? What is it?"

Diane swallowed hard. "I'm… I might be pregnant."

Don had the pained, stopped-in-mid-air look of a man just kicked in the gut; all the color had drained from his face and it took a couple of seconds before he was back to normal again.

"Pregnant? You think you're pregnant!?" he gasped, his eyes widening and his cheeks puffed with angry disbelief.

"Don, I'm sorry. But you know I just had to stop taking the pill because it was messing me up something awful. It must have been that night you came home from bowling late and we played around without using anything… you can't blame me. It took two of us, you know."

They were passing the Stop-Over, a local beer joint and hangout that offered pool tables and pinball and too-friendly hostesses. Don had often frequented the place, but it wasn't something that he told his wife about.

"Stop here… stop the car!" he demanded. Diane wheeled up to the curb, her hands shaking as they tightly gripped the wheel. "W-what's wrong, honey? P-please, don't make a scene here, right in town!"