I briefly flashed on the cell phone that I wished I had. Yet another one of those presents I’d never gotten. I didn’t think Fannie Mae had one, but Barrett should. I turned to him and whispered, “Do you have your phone with you? Maybe you should call 911.”
He put his lips to my ear and breathed, “Already thought of that, cahuna. We left it back in the car. Can’t get much signal out here anyway.”
Great.
I shrugged and turned back to the area where we could hear the sounds coming from. The moon was hidden by clouds and as if God heard my thought the clouds parted and we could suddenly see what was before us. Tamara Rogers lay on the ground, spread-eagled. Her cheerleading uniform lay on her in tatters, ripped open to reveal her breasts. Her skirt was pulled up to her waist. Her panties were probably somewhere in the grass on top of one of the graves.
She was crying silently and staring at the sky, doubtless not seeing anything.
Mason Smith, star quarterback, sat a few feet away from her. He was leaning against a stone monument, a small smile on his face. His pants were around his ankles and his penis flopped uselessly against his thigh. It glistened wetly.
I looked at Tamara again, noticing for the first time the trail of blood oozing down her thighs.
I saw red. Before I knew it I was rushing toward Mason, not feeling the arms of my friends as they tried to haul me back. He saw me coming but didn’t have time to react before I kicked him square in the balls as hard as I could. He howled silently, not able to catch a breath. The cords in his neck stood out in stark contrast against the night.
“Motherfucker!” I screamed at him. I honestly couldn’t tell you what else I screamed at him, but there were definitely quite a few choice obscenities in there. I turned toward Tamara, who hadn’t reacted to my presence. She was still staring at the night sky above her, her hands flung out above her head. The only sign that she was still alive was the tears slowly leaving a trail down her cheeks.
I took a step toward her, but that was when Mason grabbed my ankle and yanked me back with all of his football quarterback might. I tumbled to the ground with a whumpf, landing with my face in Tamara’s stomach. She screamed again and shoved me off her, trying to scuttle away from me. I whimpered and rolled to my back, trying to catch my breath.
Mason loomed over me, buckling his belt and zipping his pants. An evil grin was on his face, accompanying the scratch marks that trailed down one of his cheeks. At least Tamara had gotten her licks in. “You’re gonna pay, Johnson. Oh, are you going to pay.”
I tried to gain my breath, gain my legs, something, but before I could Mason lashed out with a kick of his own and got me square in the upper thigh. I screamed as a lightning bolt of pain welled up inside of me. For a second all I saw was white. If he’d gotten me in the nuts it would have been all over. My dreams of getting a vasectomy at 21 and living a carefree life of random sex would have been all over. Just give me an invitation to the falsetto section of the choir and I’d sing my heart out for the rest of my life.
Thankfully, he’d missed.
Where are friends when you need them?
I glanced behind me as I struggled to get a handle on the pain and tried to get my hands under me. I could feel nothing except for the throbbing in my thigh. It felt like my leg was broken, though I was pretty sure it wasn’t. Barrett and Fannie Mae were both behind me trying to pull Tamara away from the fight. She was letting Fannie Mae touch her but wouldn’t have anything to do with Barrett. He and I locked eyes for a moment and all I saw in them was shame. In that moment I knew there’d be no help for me coming from him. He was a coward.
I looked back at Mason, who apparently thought I was incapacitated. He was looking at Fannie Mae with a gleam in his eyes and rubbing his crotch. Maybe this was a normal Friday night for him, but I’m pretty sure if it was I’d have heard about it at school. I don’t know what had gotten into him, but I was going to take it out.
Ignoring the blazing pain, feeling the anger blossom like a solid thing in my head, I managed to get to my knees. I swayed like a prize fighter going down for the last count, but some reserve of strength managed to well up within me and I finally managed to get to my feet. Mason looked at me.
“Something wrong there, Johnson? You might want to stay there on the ground or I’m going to have to put you out again. I think I’m going to have a taste of your little friend over there. She’s probably even tighter than old Tammy. Who’d have thunk that that little slut was a virgin, huh? With the way she flashes it all over town?”
I roared as I launched myself at him. Well, it sounded like a roar inside my head anyway. It caught him completely by surprise as I tackled him like a sack of potatoes. He flew backward with me still attached to his hips, my arms wrapped around him to keep him off balance. We came to a sudden stop as he hit the granite monument behind him with a sickening crunch.
My face landed in his lap as we hit the ground again, whipping my head back with a grunt and catching my tongue with my teeth, quickly filling my mouth with blood.
Barrett pulled me to my feet. “Are you all right, man?”
I spit the blood out of my mouth in the general direction of Mason Smith. Doing it again and again, trying to get the taste out of my mouth. I shook my head to clear it, then put my hand up to my face. “Ow,” I said.
I tried to put my weight on my leg but it buckled beneath me. Fortunately Barrett still had a firm grip on me.
“Someone needs to take the car into town to get the cops,” I said.
Barrett looked at me blankly. “Why?”
Maybe my head wasn’t very clear. “What do you mean, why?” I said around the blood. “He just raped Tamara and we just kicked the shit out of each other. We need to explain it all to the cops so he can go to jail.”
Barrett didn’t say a word. He just pointed at Mason. Looked at me. Pointed again. “If we call the cops you’re the one going to jail, Duke.”
“What?” What? I turned to follow his finger, keeping my weight firmly off my leg. “Oh, shit,” I said weakly.
“Yeah,” Barrett said.
Mason lay against the monument, his eyes open and glassy, staring into nothing. His neck lay at a crooked angle and I could see smears of blood decorating the stone behind him.
I gripped Barrett tightly. “That’s it. I’m done. So much for dreams. No more escape from the trailer park, from this state, from this life. I’m going to jail forever, man.”
I couldn’t help it. I started to cry. Everything was gone.
A new voice spoke up behind me, “It doesn’t have to be that way, Duke.”
“Huh?” I asked, not turning around. “How’s that? I just killed a man.”
Tamara appeared in my line of sight, wrapped loosely in Fannie Mae’s coat, leaning heavily on Fannie Mae. Much as I was leaning on Barrett. The tears on her face had dried up, although it looked like they’d started on Fannie Mae’s.