Girl on a Rock

Girl on a Rock

White graffiti lined the concrete sides of Jeffries Bridge closest to the bank of the creek. The bridge had a long history dating back before the revolution when it was made of Pennsylvania red and white pine planking. Before aerosol paint, they used skinning knives to carve initials and dates into the knotty wood and the Lenni Lenape fired their arrows at it in a game of hit and miss. Washington had overlooked the importance of the bridge during the Battle of the Brandywine allowing Cornwallis’ skirmishers to cross and flank him. If the British had known of the power of the place, they would have stopped there for tea and afterward, being sensitive and high cultured and so respectful of early Americana, moved farther north to cross at the grinding mill in Mortonville. It had always been a powerful place drawing people and animals to it. A place where Mason and Dixon put away their swords and star gazed from the rocks to survey the location of a nation.

Biker gangs like the place and so do poets and when they by chance meet there by invitation of a mutual acquaintance, it is surprising how gentle and wicked their conversations. Chester County landscape artists like it as do families with children on matinee swims. Fishermen like it, who hardly noticed, sit on the rocks early in the morning and leave before anybody else gets there. On Sundays, the Spanish Pentecostals would bring their worst cases there to baptize them washing away their sins into the muddy water.

When the railroad came through in the mid-19^th century, they didn’t detract from the place being careful to stay on the east side near the road so as not to disturb the large crystalline boulders that arched out from the bank. They ran their rails through the narrow passage up the creek between the cliffs where raptors made their nests. There was a cave there too on the creek side of the cliffs that I explored as a kid. If you crawled deep enough inside and dug enough you could find arrowheads but feared going too deep in case you might find someone missing or dead. Jeffries Bridge was a public place; so public that the police stayed away from it. Authority was out of place there as much as the people who held the deed to it were out of place who had given up trying to scare off trespassers long before they were considered the property owners with old money.

                                            ___________

A girl sat on a rock that extended into the creek. It was summertime but people noticed that it was getting darker sooner, cooler in the evening, and there were fewer mosquitos and gnats to slap at. The crickets had just begun their irritating mate chirping that gave no rest. The place never slept. Depending on when you were there, you were forced to count time by the widening shadow of the trees, the rise and fall of the moon, or by the location of the Ursa Major. Up the creek a ways, up the narrow corridor between the high rocky cliffs, you could faintly hear bullfrogs belching. It was too early for an orchestral of full throated males who hid just below the waterline with their bullfrog radar searching to devour their young. The moon was just an inch above the eastern hills. A water moccasin slid across the current sensing the change in temperature on the vibrating, yet unlit surface. The creek was high enough to splash the center concrete bridge column causing a rippling effect. The waves sounded like a wet towel being lifted and lowered slapping water. A bat zigzagged and split at a sharp angle downward to the brown creek snatching a giant flying water beetle in midair as if it were a prehistoric raptor. You could hear the crunch of its hard shell and broken wings as the bat disabled it and disappeared into the fading gray and orange horizon to the west. A small flock of geese landed in the meadow beyond the tree line, honked a little, and became quiet in fear of the foxes and the farmer’s feral cats. The decaying vegetation had awakened and begun to feed and decompose on the air. The creek had digested the sun's heat, had accepted the fallen weak that had surrendered to the muddy banks, and was returning its warm flatus to the blue black sky. There was a breeze that was pleasant provided that you didn't turn your face into it. On the road, just across the railroad tracks, the breeze carried the almost spent scent of a dried out muskrat carcass that had been hit by a car.

The girl on the rock was wearing only white panties and bra and black plastic glass frames. There wasn’t anything unusual about wearing just panties and a bra at Jeffries Bridge rock. The people, who went there to swim, had courage and a flair for exhibitionism. They could be easily seen by passing cars whose drivers craned their necks to see if anyone was skinny dipping when they reached the top span of the bridge. The girls who skinny dipped there were mostly biker chicks but girls from the urban areas attending West Chester University skinny dipped there too testing the rural waters and their mother’s warnings. Those who wanted more privacy, mostly couples, moved up the creek walking the railroad track a ways nearer to the belching frogs in the lily pad cove. On occasion, they might pass an old fisherman who upon seeing them, would pull in his bobber and line, knowing that he had stayed a little too long and must give up the river to the young swimmers.

Her clothes lay to the side. There was a polka dot blue shirtwaister dress with white buttons, a pair of white socks soiled on the bottoms, and brown shoes with long laces. Nothing more. No towel, pocketbook, or backpack. No sweater. No canteen of water or bottles of Stewart’s Cream Soda a summer favorite along the Brandywine that you could buy at the Mortonville Store or at Meredith’s in Modena on your way to Jeffries Bridge if you were coming down from the north. She must not have come to the place from the north. Her one leg was bent at the knee and the other was underneath her as a cushion. She was watching the approach of the creek’s night creatures to whom the water gave no forgiveness.

A mother possum with a litter on her tits tried to scale the steep muddy bank but fell back from the weight of her children. Her babies sensing her weakness fell off accepting their fate to go it alone. One or two strong ones fought the current and made it up the bank to the cover of weeds while two or three fell into the water and disappeared. The mother swam back upstream struggling against the current. She found a log where two of her babies had landed, dislocating a group of painted turtles who fell off to seek the warmer muddy bottom. The mother possum shook herself, chose the strongest child, and with it in her mouth made it to a section of the bank that was less steep, climbed it, and disappeared. The girl looked down the path as I approached and then turned back to the stranded baby possum but it was gone and it made no sound when passing. The creek had claimed it. Perhaps, a snapping turtle had risen up to take it, or perhaps, an owl had silently and instantaneously struck unnoticed off a nearby branch while her eyes were diverted. The mother possum had stayed too long on the other side eating from a patch of sweet stinging nettle. She had eaten well, had regained her strength, and was engorged by the milky fibers but had paid for her appetite by crossing too late after the creek had risen.

I made enough noise, I thought, walking up the narrow path from the bridge where I parked my Chevy Vega to alert her that I was coming. I wanted to be discreet. I had a six-pack of beer in one hand and a sycamore stick in the other. With the stick, I rustled weeds; chopped an empty beer can, and flicked a stone into the creek.

“Hello,” I said. I expected her to be surprised and cover herself. She came to attention, tucked her hair behind her ear, and pushed back her bent black, plastic frame glasses, as if she were daydreaming and I was calling her to take her turn at Parcheesi.

“Hello. What’s your name?” she asked too anxious to befriend a companion. She wrapped her arms around one leg and seeing that I posed no threat, rested her chin on her knee. She was short with thick thighs and narrow hips. Her legs were tapered and ended in small, wide feet. She curled her toes inward because it was cold.

“Ted's my name,” I put down the beer and hunched down next to her close enough to where my arm barely touched the colorless hairs on her white arm. She wasn’t bothered by my touch. In front of her, she drew a line across the face of the stone with her finger. "Nice night for swimming,” I said.

“It’s too cold,” she said and stared back into the water. She had bleached blonde hair; a bad sign for such a young woman, I thought. She was the type of girl who is very attractive before she has her first child and becomes overly ample; before she gets her own trailer, too many cavities, works too hard, drinks too much, gets slapped around by her men, and has nothing to do except read tabloids, nibble on a candy sampler, and watch the soaps in the afternoon.

“Why are you…” I hesitated. “Undressed? You know, if you’re cold...”

“I'm waiting for my cousin," she said. "He told me to take off my clothes and wait. Are you my cousin, too, come out to meet us?”

“I don’t think so,” I said. “What’s your name?”

“Robin,” she said.

"Hi Robin.”

"Hi," she smiled.

"Like robin red breast?" I said. "Are your breasts red then?"  I nudged a little closer to her.

"Noooo," she laughed. "They're white. Very white.” She shivered. “I don’t get outside much ‘cept when it rains. Then we all get the soap and wash ourselves down."

“Sounds like fun," I said. "Hope it rains then."

“Used to be fun,” she said. “But not anymore since my tits got so big. They gets the men a goin’, you know. Mama says that’s not good.”

“No?” I said.

"I was the first girl in sixth grade to get my tits," she said. “Mama got to sixth grade ‘fore she quit.”

"Guess you were happy 'bout that."

"Whether you gets 'em first or gets 'em last, it don't matter. You has to get 'em in between, you know?" she said.

"I guess it's like getting hair for boys," I said.

"No. That's totally different." There was a long silence. "Would you like to see them?" she said. "My cousin, Gerry, said that if any of my cousins ask to see them, I'm supposed to show them.”

"Okay," I said. I don't think a little peek would hurt, do you? I mean, I practically see them most of ‘em now.”

Her bra was too small for her. She rolled her bra straps that left red lines down her shoulders and turned to face me. Her breasts fell out easily. 

"Beautiful," I said. “Like cooing doves or hungry puppies.”

“They make good soup,” she said.

“Puppies?” I said.

“Noooo. Doves,” she laughed. “You knew that, didn’t you? You was just joshin’, right?” she said fixing herself. She had difficulty putting all of herself back into the bra without stretching the elastic. It pinched her. One nipple struggled to sneak down inside and laid over the top of the cup. It hurt her. She gently pulled the cup outward and the nipple fell into place. She shivered.

“Listen,” I said. “You better put your clothes back on. You’re freezing.” I thought about what Tom had said about me being too nice with girls. How I rescued one at a party once when she got too drunk and drove her home. I was always too nice. Maybe I was going in the wrong direction with this one. I had gone to Jeffries Bridge that evening to drink beer with Tom and to see if we could hook up with some girls who wanted to party. He was known as an expert pick-up man. He had promised to show me how to pick up girls and not be so nice. I was never very good at it. I had gotten a summer job at the paper mill in Downingtown. He and I worked together there stripping waste off of blocks of cartons of Summer's Breeze with small jackhammers. Tom promised to reveal his secrets with women.

“I can’t. Gerry wants me this way,” she said. “I have to do him a favor, he says. I’m just visiting, you know. I’m not from here, up north. I'm from Spruce Pine. Spruce Pine, North Carolina but my Mama lives in Johnson City. That's in Tennessee. Where you from?”

“Coatesville," I said. “Can I put my arm around you? Might warm you up.”

“That'd be nice,” she said. She picked at one of her toenails that had been painted red some time ago; took something out from beneath the nail, smelled it, rolled it into a ball, and flicked it into the water.

There it was. I was nice. I didn't want to be nice. I wanted to be mean, wear black leather, carry a pistol, and ride a motorcycle. I didn’t want to be a poet or philosopher. I moved around to the back of her and nestled her between my legs. That was a good move I thought. I wrapped my arms around her legs and pulled her close to me. I put my chin on her shoulder and tried to dismiss the thought of reciting poetry.

“Better?” I asked.

“That’s nice.” She took a deep breath, looked up at the starry sky, adjusted the black framed glasses, and closed her eyes. There was a silence and we enjoyed the moment just holding one another. It was nice. "Where's Coatesville?" she asked turning her head to look at me.

"Just up the road a bit," I said. "Will you be staying in PA long?"

"Jus' the summer. Jus' until the trouble passes," she said.

“You got family troubles?”

“Papa be goin’ to jail soon. He stole some tractors. Well, he didn’t actually steal ‘em but he sold ‘em,” she said.

"You can get in trouble for that for sure,” I said. “You still cold?”

“No. I’m alright,” she said. “You’re warm.”

“I’m always warm. How old are you?” I asked.

"How old you think I am?"

"I don't know," I said.

"You saw my tits. Now, how old?" she asked.

"Ahhh, eighteen."

“Naaa, that's way too old. I’m almost seventeen. She sighed. “I’m old enough where I come from, boy. You can bet your bottom dollar on that. Don't you worry yourself 'bout that. Most of my friends is married already, yep. Mama says that I'd better get hitched soon before I get all worn out." She hesitated. “Are you a cop?” she asked turning her head to look me in the eyes. “You shouldn't be drinkin' if you're a cop."

“No,” I said. "I'm not a cop. Why? Are you hiding a tractor down there?" I flicked the top of her bra cup and she took my hand and held it.

"Don't do that," she said. I thought she wouldn’t have said that if I weren’t so nice.

"Sorry," I said. I guessed I wasn’t being nice.

“You ask a lot of dumb questions like a cop and you have cop hair,” she said. She touched the top of my head and smiled.

“Sorry,” I laughed. "It will grow back."

"Oh, you're not a cop, then," she said laughing. "Cops don't laugh like that. You have a funny laugh. Cops are very serious, you know.” She paused. “Are you going to make trouble? Please tell me if you gonna make trouble." For the first time, she seemed scared.

“No,” I said. “No trouble. I promise. Are you here with those guys?”

"Yea. They're all my cousins," she hesitated. "You don’t belong here, do you? You might get hurt.”

“I know Gerry,” I said. “I know his kind.”

“You’re not his friend though, are you?” she said.

“No. I’m not,” I said. "but I know him. I know him well enough to know that he can’t hurt me."

"You have a style 'bout you, don’ you," she said. "Class.”

“A little bit. I’m not that far from the trailer park.”

“You live in a trailer?” she asked.

“No. I’m one or two generations from the trailer,” I said but she didn’t understand.

“How close is that,” she asked.

“Not that far,” I said.

“Sometimes, Gerry’s very mean. You got a girlfriend?” she asked.

“Yea, I’m seeing somebody,” I lied. “How ‘bout you?”

“No. I got no boo,” she said. “Papa, he…well he don’t cater to courtin’.”

“Robin! What you doin’ over there with him?” Gerry shouted. She jumped and moved away from me.

“Ouch,” she said. She had scraped her leg on the rock.

"Are you okay?" I asked.

“Nothin’. I ain’t doin’ nothin’,” she hollered to Gerry.

It was 1977. I was twenty-two and come December, I would be the first in my family

ever to graduate from college. Jeffries Bridge had not yet become gentrified like it is today by canoers, kayakers, fly fishermen, and conservatory environmentalists. In 1977, the area around Jeffries Bridge was still considered country, off limits, and unpredictable. The Brandywine was still considered dirty because up the creek about five miles Lukens Steel Company was still pretty much in high gear although layoffs had begun two years earlier. I was one of them and there would be many more to come. There were things in the creek you had to watch out for like oil slicks, soap suds, and snagged fishing lines. The area was off limits to township cops and rarely did you see a State Cop and if you did, he would slow up, maybe stop and ask how you were doing, and drive off. The locals didn't bother you because they and their children had swum and partied at Jeffries Bridge, too, and it was far enough away from any houses to be ignored. Voices and laughter were drowned out by the creek and if there were an echo across the valley, it got mixed with the sounds of falling ingots from Lukens Steel in Coatesville. I had never heard of anyone getting seriously hurt or killed there.

Jeffries Bridge was the place where in the morning live bait fisherman sat on the bank or the rock and fished for catfish and sunnies; poor white folks swam and drank there at night; and on Sunday afternoons, it was reserved for the Puerto Rican mushroom pickers from southern Chester County. Rarely did blacks swim there. They had their own pools in Coatesville at their community centers like the rich had pools at their country clubs. I never found out until years later why black people didn’t swim there. Rumor had it that someone had swum there and disappeared. I guess that had been enough over the years to keep the swimmers color coded.

Tom was talking to a man with very white hair near the bridge. I knew the white haired man as The Albino because his skin and hair were so white. His real name was Gerald.

I had gone to high school with The Albino. I knew his kind. Hi family was poor and my family was one paycheck from the street. That was our difference. That was the result of my father marrying down. His family had been southern sharecroppers and had come north from North Carolina or Tennessee to find work in the steel mills during Reconstruction and later more would follow during The Depression. Some made it across the Mason-Dixon into Southern Chester, York, and Adams Counties of Pennsylvania; some even made it as far as Honey Brook, traveling from the Chesapeake Bay up the Routes 272/10 corridor into Pennsylvania where they settled into the Welsh Mountains; some, like Gerry’s family, stopped short in Hereford and Cecil Counties of Northern Maryland finding the rural more familiar than the industrial, trickling north much later.

Some of The Albino's family settled around the serpentine barrens south of Oxford, Pennsylvania; but most settled around Rising Sun and Elkton, Maryland where they might join chapters of the well-established but small enclave of KKK and entertained themselves at the Cecil County Dragway on Friday nights and listened to Campbell's Corner, a radio program out of Oxford that played music that the locals called hillbilly after church on Sundays. They weren't called sharecroppers anymore. If they were white, uneducated Scotch-Irish, they were called hired men who worked seasonally for farmers, mushroom growers, nurserymen and rose growers, cattlemen, horse breeders, fox hunters, and apple growers. If they were black or Puerto Rican, they were called migrant workers. The socially mobile of the group had risen enough on the social ladder to move into trailer parks that the surrounding townships zoned as low income housing that kept out the projects from speckling the pristine horse country countryside.

They never could acculturate themselves to the industrial, fast paced life of the north. In the fifties about the time Hank Williams died, they would be replaced by Puerto Rican migrant workers. They lived in trailer parks or low income areas like Modena, the Spruces, Hayti, or Boxtown; became disabled in middle age, collected social security, and accepted their generational poverty. Some lucky ones became landed and opened up junk yards or collected other people's trash and opened up reuse it shops. Socially, they were lower on the totem than Blacks or Hispanics who pitied them. They were White Trash.

My mother’s family were in this pitiful group who found homes and sympathy in black neighborhoods. My mother was one of five sisters. When her mother got sick and had to stay at the Pennsylvania Hospital in Philadelphia, their black neighbors took her in because her father drank too much. When my mother was fourteen, she met my father when her goat had climbed onto his convertible and ate the rubber roof. He had to marry her and they say I take after my father’s sister Edna who also wrote poetry. Yes, I knew their kind and if not for my mother’s goat and Aunt Edna’s genes, I might have been one of them.

In school, they wore pants that were too short, faded shirts, and were reluctant to take gym because they were ashamed to show the toll that life had already exerted on their teenage bodies; bodies scarred by dark spots left by bed bug or jigger bites; bodies that had felt the strap; bodies with long curled uncut toe nails; faces and backs with blackheads; and unwashed hair with dandruff that was slicked back. They didn't speak much. They knew their place. They took vo-tech classes in auto mechanics or body shop and if they were upwardly mobile and not too resentful became very good auto mechanics, owned classic cars, or joined motorcycle gangs when they got older. Then, there were others, like the Albino, who dropped out of school and became involved in petty crime. It would take at least two more generations to come before they learned how to read or attend a community college. They were the leftovers of the broken down south that still after one hundred years had not recovered from the humiliation. They were an ignored social class of people that benefitted no one to study, no one to research, and no senator ever sponsored a bill for their relief once they left Appalachia. They were the Caine’s that Levon Helm sang about that you could not raise once in defeat.

The Albino lived in a house on a hill that always had at least a half dozen broken down cars in the driveway. I got to know him well one day in high school when I broke the soap dispenser with the side of his head. My uncle's truck had been vandalized. A couple of chainsaws had been stolen and Gerry had been seen in the vicinity. He denied having stolen them but I was sure if he didn't steal them then he knew who did. Whether he did or didn't, I wanted to send a message to keep his kind out of our neighborhood. My uncles' trucks were never violated again.

The Albino’s family was known to be petty criminals. The kind of criminals that is so dumb that the cops really didn't have any time for them as long as the victim had insurance. Everybody knew they were snitches trying to play both sides of the fence when it was to their advantage. No one trusted them.

I left her on the rock and walked over to where Tom and The Albino were talking. I wanted to figure out what their plans were for his girl.

“Did you see that beautiful girl over there?" I said to Tom.

"She's with them," Tom said. Tom looked concerned.

"Who says?" I asked Tom. Tom pointed to The Albino.

"Is she with you?” I asked The Albino.

“She's my cousin,” The Albino smiled. “Richards? Right? Ted Richards.”

"You know who I am, asshole," I said.

“What are you doing out here?” he asked.

“Lookin’ to party. Catch a buzz by the river,” I said.

“You can’t party here tonight,” The Albino said. “We’re going to fuck our cousin.”

"What?" I laughed.

Two men at the edge of the Brandywine Creek looked up at us. I recognized one to be Gerry’s younger brother by the shape of head and the ashen hue of his skin. The other man's name was James. He was older and appeared to hold some authority.

"You ever fuck your cousin, Richards?" The Albino said, "How about your sister?"

"No, 'fraid not Gerry," I said. "Only royalty, the rich, and white trash fuck their cousins and sisters. Which one are you Gerry?" James laughed.

"Well...I sure ain't no king and I sure ain't rich," The Albino said.

“She’s your cousin?” I said. "I don't believe it. She's too pretty to be your cousin."

“Yea. She’s from Tennessee. She’s up here for a while,” The Albino said. "She stayin' with us. They seen some troubles down there."

“She’s a beautiful girl,” I said. "Are you sure she wants to fuck you? You a rapist and a thief, Gerry?"

"She'll be sure," he said. "She doesn't know yet but she does know what she have to do."

"She showed me her tits, you know," I said.

"Yea?" The Albino said.

"She's half naked on a rock and she doesn't know?" I said. "She knows what you’re planning on doing."

"She ain't too bright, you know," The Albino said. “She’ll say anything but she knows what she has to do. You just mind your own fuckin’ business, hear?"

I didn't ask for more details. I couldn't imagine his cold pale skin and lice hair on top of her. I couldn't imagine The Albino making her very happy either with what he had downstairs. I remembered we used to make fun of The Albino's baby powder white, little stub of a dick after gym class in the showers.

"Let's get out of here, man," Tom said. "I got the creeps."

"So, Albino...you get to know your relatives by fucking them?" I said.

"I'm not an albino," he said.

"I guess that's how your father got to know your mother, right? Keep it in the family," I said.

"Richards, you a mother- fucker," The Albino said.

"And you a cousin fucker, Gerry," I said.

“You have to go, Richards,” The Albino said. His voice changed tone. “You and your friend aren't going to fuck my cousin. You might have seen her tits but that’s all you gettin'. Understand? She's all mine tonight.”

“I don't want to fuck your cousin, Gerry,” I said. "I just want to make sure she wants to fuck you."

“Well, we’re about to get started. If you give me a beer, you can watch,” The Albino said. “Do you want some beer?” he said to two other men.

I didn't want to be nice. Watching wouldn't be nice. I might even get my turn but I didn't like the idea of being so far down the totem with Gerry and his cousins. I had been in situations like this before. With Joanne, with Karen, and with a school teacher from Pottstown who moonlighted doing bachelor parties. It was called pulling a train. With the exception of Joanie, the girls involved in the trains were sober, knew what they were doing, and enjoyed it. As for Joanie, well, I rescued her because she was drunk.

I had no moral calling card. This was before anyone heard of date rape  I had known Joanie from the old neighborhood. I took her home. I wasn't easy getting her out of the house. I had to just about lift and carry her on one arm and spar with guys pissed off because I was taking her from the party with the other. She threw up in my car and her mother beat her ass. Until she died, Joanie's mother always sent me St. Jude cards every Christmas. St. Jude is the patron saint of hopeless cases. I guess she too thought I must be hopelessly nice. What I never told her mother was that her daughter kept begging me the whole time I was driving her home to take her back to the party. Joanie still doesn't speak to me to this day and it was a good lesson I learned about being nice.

Gerry’s brother looked to be about fifteen. The other man, James, was older. He had a Steve Buscemi look about him. He looked to be about twenty-eight with greased back black hair. They were ignoring Gerry. They didn’t say a word. They brushed passed us. James came very close to me, paused, and continued walking over to the girl on the rock.

Tom said, “Let’s go, man. This is their party not ours.”

I pulled a can of beer off the plastic holder and gave it to The Albino. He smiled. He opened the beer and drank, wiping his mouth with his arm. "Remember, just watch," The Albino said. James and The Albino's brother had already reached the girl on the rock.

The girl was looking up at the two men and nodding her head as if getting directions to a place she had never been. I heard them mumbling. Before James had finished speaking, she reached back and undid her bra. She handed it to James who took a few steps around her and placed it neatly with the rest of her clothes. She had gotten his directions right. She ran her hand over the hard rock as if to find a comfortable spot. She showed James where she scraped he leg. James looked over at me. James had stopped talking. James circled back around to the front of her. She pulled down her panties to her ankles and tucked her knees under her chin like a girl sitting on a beach.

James said something to her and she hesitated. The Albino's brother seemed in a hurry. He reached down with one hand and pulled at the elastic on the panties. He was trying to open her legs. The Albino’s brother slapped her. She turned her head and held up her hand to shield herself. The girl lost her balance and leaned to the side on one hand, her half off her face.

"No!" I shouted. I took a couple of steps toward the girl. She looked up, fixed her glasses, and saw us watching.

"No trouble," she said waving to us. "You promised. No trouble."  Her hands shook as she refit her rims on her face.

James stopped The Albino's brother. James said something to the girl about "having to do it." She pulled her panties up and she rose up on her knees, neatly fixing herself.

The Albino's brother said, "Fuck that!"

James said something and she lowered her panties half-way down to her knees and was motionless, breasts thrust out, waiting for further instructions. James lit a cigarette, took a step back, and exhaled. James and the Albino's brother had reached a compromise. The Albino's brother stepped forward and reached down to lower the zipper on his dirty jeans. The girl lowered herself to her haunches.

I started over to the rock. I was disgusted. Perhaps, it was the slap. Perhaps, it was her glasses that were crooked on her face. Perhaps, it was this girl's surrender. Perhaps, it was my inability to pick up girls and that I had failed in this easy opportunity. No. It was more. Perhaps, it was my inability to rationalize what was happening. Define it. It wasn't rape. It was more than abuse. It wasn't pornographic. It was the nihilation of humanity. The rendering of another person into pure objectivity. Pure utility. She was no more than a receptacle for masturbated semen. A disposable tissue or Handiwipe. A dirty pair of underwear that would dry by morning for your mother to wash. It sent pangs of sharp pains through my intestines.

"Hey," The Albino yelled.

"Ted, don't," Tom said.

I positioned myself in front of her between the two other men. The two men moved out of my way. The Albino's brother said, "What are you doing, man?" James said nothing. I just gave The Albino's younger brother a look. He took a step back. I wasn't worried about being physically accosted; I was worried that I too might be treated as pure object and utility. There was no meaning to it. The only response I could make was a half joke and hope that the two men would get it.

"I just want to see if she's really a blonde," I said. They understood. They understood. The sick bastards understood, I thought.

I knelt and looked at the girl. "It's okay," I said as I ran my hand from the bottom of her back down and around her round buttocks. I gently pushed her back to where I could pull her legs out from under her. She swung her legs around. She had both hands on the rock at her hips. I took her legs and raised them slowly at the knees and spread them as if she were about to give birth. There was no resistance. I looked. She was small considering her thick thighs. The girl tilted her shoulder and drew up to get a good look at herself. She wasn't a natural blonde but it seemed she did get some satisfaction from what I was looking at. No one moved. Our eyes met. She smiled, tilted her head to the side, relaxed and extended her legs, and sighed as if bored. I got the feeling that she had done this before maybe with her father or an uncle or with the men who her Mama had warned her about while showering in the rain. She looked at me through her thick glasses that hid glossy green eyes. She put her hands around my neck and pulled herself up. She touched my head.

"Cop hair," she said.

"What you gonna do man, shave her, eat her, or fuck her?" The Albino's brother said. "Go 'head. Grab a hold of that thing." He reached for her. I pushed him away.

“Richards. What are you doing here?” The Albino said. “You don’t belong here. Get the fuck outta here.”

“Are you alright?” I said to the girl.

"Yes, I'm alright," she said. "You're nice." I pulled up her panties. I took her by the elbows and pulled her down into a more modest position. Touching her knees, I pushed her legs together. I had decided to be nice.

“You don’t have to do this,” I said.

“I want to," she said. "They’re my cousins,” she said tilting her pretty head to the side. She relaxed and sat back. She smiled and seemed oblivious to her body. "Stop causing trouble," she said to me almost in a whisper. “I’m with them. Not you.” She seemed more afraid of what I would do than she was of what the three men were going to do to her. Tom was already walking to the car. I stood up. She grabbed my hand. "I was blonde when I was a little girl," she said.

As I turned to go I heard the girl say, "He's nice." I felt cheap that I couldn't do more for this girl. Felt cheap that I had spread her legs and looked at her. Felt cheap that Tom was walking away and not interested in this girl either for sex or to help her.

“Hey, since you're leaving, I’ll take the rest of your beer,” The Albino said to me. He was trying to prove something, trying to earn his turn with the girl.

I put cans of beer in the plastic holder, down on the rock between The Albino and me. "Take 'em. They're still cold," I said.

He bent down to pick them up. I kicked the beer cans into the creek. I positioned myself ready to knock one or two of them into the creek. I had worked out with the boxing team at college, never was very good, but I knew I was good enough to handle these guys. The Albino's brother scurried down the rock to retrieve them. James didn't move or say a word.

James had as much respect for The Albino as I did. That may have been the only thing we had in common. We both avoided eye contact with one another. I knew that if we made eye contact it would put us both on an unequal level and that would have made it impossible for either one of us to walk away.

“You always were a snob, Richards,” The Albino said. “If you so much better than me, why you out here? You just want her like we do.” I thought he was going to cry. I had humiliated him in front of James.

I said, "You know, Gerald, I've always wanted to tell you how good you looked in that pink tuxedo you wore at our senior prom. You looked like a real fucking pimp." James laughed.

I turned to James without raising my head. I spoke as if speaking into his chest. "Are you going to let this happen, James?" I said. I waited.

"No," James said the way Carmine said in the movie, A Bronx Tale when C asked him if he really killed a man over a parking space.

"Thanks," I said.

"Fuck!" The Albino shouted.

Robin said she was cold and had to go to the bathroom. James helped her up.

"Get your clothes," James said.

James and Robin disappeared toward the river. I got in my car.

“Man, that was strange,” Tom said. “I don’t feel like drinking anymore. Take me home.” Tom was shaking. “James had a gun. You didn't see it?”

"He was so cool that I knew he was holding something," I said.

The Albino was going to get trouble from James. James didn't say much. Those are the guys you have to worry about in those situations. I had the feeling that James was there to do a job, to collect a debt, to be paid homage, or receive a reward. I think James knew that it was better to have Robin under her conditions than under those of The Albino. Perhaps, James had a list of troubles and needed time before adding one more to the list that might make him use his gun from which there was no return.

As I pulled away, I saw James and Robin with her clothes coming out of the brush, moving as if they had to be somewhere else or as if there was a warning of impending danger. The Albino was angry shouting profanities at his younger brother. James got to the car first. He reached into the backseat and pulled out a small orange pocketbook and handed it to the girl and opened the front door for her. The Albino and his brother would be riding home in the backseat. James had kept his word. She was safe now with her orange pocketbook at least until they found shelter. She could look inside the orange pocketbook if she needed to tell somebody who she was or where she was from or if someone needed to identify her.

A dirty pair of white socks lay on the rock. It was much too late for any cars to cross Jeffries Bridge. There were no car headlights or moon. Across the creek beyond the water weeds, cattails reeds, and Canadian thistle, lightning bugs flew over the farmer's fresh cut field. The breeze had shifted from the west. It carried the smell of timothy, cinquefoil, and fescues over the creek and mixed with the dead muskrat musk. The heat from the field was rising, blurring the yellow light of the lightning bugs, making the individual bugs and their sparks almost indistinguishable. If you had been there and listened with your third ear, you could hear the laughter of children as they slaughtered the flashes of light with plastic baseball bats and badminton rackets. There was a squeal of death and innocence. A fox sprinted across the field hugging the ground with a small struggling rabbit in its mouth that had launched itself too early from the nest to know the wisdom of the night. The bullfrogs began jumping off the banks and logs making loud splashing sounds that sounded like fish jumping out of water. Dragonflies flew for their lives as the wide gapping mouths of the frogs floated slowly down the black surface of the creek swallowing anything in their way that would fit into their mouths. The chirping crickets were in full orchestral. A limping muskrat that had barely escaped the trapper's trap limped across the railroad tracks and up the road to cannibalize what was left of his mother's carcass. By now, Robin was in bed dreaming about an Appalachian rain.