There was a knock on the door just as she walking past it and Evelyn jumped. Shaking her head and taking a deep breath, she went to the door and opened it. As soon as she saw who it was, she started talking rapidly.
"Sometimes I get so sick and tired of Adam," Evelyn said. "I don't know how you can stand him! I don't know how I stand him!"
Her sister-in-law Ruth stood in the doorway awkwardly balancing an armful of grocery bags and blinked. "Whoa, girl!" Ruth smiled. "Back it up a minute! Invite me in and we'll talk about it, okay? I need to put this ice cream in your fridge 'fore it melts, then we can talk. And how 'bout something to drink?"
"We got some tea," Evelyn said with a shrug and headed for the kitchen, her head hanging slighted, her shoulders bowed.
"Where is Adam, anyway?" Ruth asked.
"Oh, he's gone off hunting with that pack of idiots he's been hanging out with lately." She shook her head as if to get it out of her mind.
The kitchen was her favorite place, especially when Ruth came to visit. They often sat at the table together, drinking iced tea and talking their hearts out. They could talk for hours, if Adam wasn't there. Having someone to talk to like that was always such a change for Evelyn that she couldn't help loving it.
"Honey, you sure look unhappy," Ruth said as Evelyn handed her an icy glass. "Just what it is he did this time, anyway?"
"Oh, he arranged some stupid hunting trip with his pals at Wal-Mart! I wouldn't mind him going, but he didn't even tell me about it until we were going to sleep last night! 'Oh, didn't I mention that?' he says, as if it was the smallest oversight in the whole world. This is the first weekend he hasn't had to work in a month, and does he spend it with his kids and me? No, he hauls ass with those nitwit, alcohol-sucking idiots he works with at the store!"
"I see what you mean, sweetie," Ruth said casually. "But, actually, that's what men do, you know? It's what they're good at."
"What's what they're good at?" Evelyn frowned slightly.
"Going off and leaving you holding the bag. Leaving you with the work. Leaving you just when you need them most or when you want them most. Most of them haven't really liked a grown woman since they met their mother.
"Is that really true?" Evelyn asked with widened eyes.
"Hell, I don't know, Evelyn," Ruth laughed, "but it sounds true! Besides, I shouldn't talk like that, considering that Adam's my brother and his mother's my mother."
"Yeah, I wondered about that," Evelyn said, nodding her head slowly as if now she understood, though she couldn't see as where she did.
"My little sister Babs," Ruth said, "she ended up married to someone who didn't really like grown women. You've met her'n Joe Dan, haven't you?" Evelyn nodded. "Yeah, I thought so. Can't nobody hardly stand them, the way they carry on about religion. Joe Dan's a lot like Adam, but Joe Dan ain't even as smart as Adam, if you ask me."
"I-I never much thought of Joe Dan being anything like Adam," Evelyn said, confused by what she'd just heard. "I only met him a few times at big family gatherings. I never talked to him, really. You say you think he's like Adam, but worse?" She spoke in a puzzled voice, scrunching up her eyes at her sister-in-law as if to see better. Ruth saw her expression and laughed.
"Yeah, yeah, I know! But he really does make Adam seem like a genius sometimes, if you ever get to know him! What Babs ever saw in him, I swear I don't know, especially since she used to be so wild. Maybe he was good in the sack, but I doubt that's it, since the two of them are always acting either like sex don't exist or else that it's the world's biggest sin."
"They do?" Evelyn asked, her eyes opening wide.
"Oh yeah. At least that's how they act nowadays. I mean, obviously they still do it, because Babs keeps shootin' out those babies."
"God," Evelyn laughed, "you make it sound like peas being shelled!"
"Well, you know, it probably is something like that for them," Ruth grinned. Ole Babs has got four now and is bound to be pregnant soon again. I used to figure they just turned out the lights and had fun and then felt guilty about it afterwards, but I finally decided they prob'ly don't have fun at all!"
Evelyn raised her eyebrows and Ruth grinned. She knew she was getting carried away with her story, but didn't care. Sometimes it was just fun to talk.
"They just grit their teeth and feel guilty right smack while they're doing it, is what I think!" Ruth giggled.
"Is that really true?" Evelyn asked.
"Hell, I don't know!" Ruth laughed lightly. "But it'd make as much sense as anything else I know about them! I ain't ever heard either of 'em say a word about sex that wasn't totally uptight. They're prudes, for sure. Of course, it's worse than that, really."
"How do you mean?"
"Well, maybe I shouldn't tell you, but you're family, and you're not a blabbermouth, I guess."
Evelyn nodded her head solemnly in agreement, not knowing it was even true that she could be trusted, but wondering what confidence was about to be told. Really, she wasn't sure about Ruth's assertion; she didn't know if she was a blabbermouth or not. She guessed she wasn't, since nobody'd ever said she was. She put her elbows on the table, rested her chin on her hands, and sighed, preparing to listen carefully. She always used to love listening to gossip at her Aunt Heather's house, but that'd been a long, long time ago. Her aunt had died when Evelyn was sixteen, and she hadn't met a woman she really liked listening to since then, except for Ruth. Her sister?in?law was always interesting. She didn't get to talk to her all the time, though, because Adam could barely stand his sister. From what Ruth said, hardly anyone in Adam's family could stand anyone else.
She could understand not liking a brother. When she was eleven, Evelyn's older brother and some of his friends had caught her in the woods, taken her clothes off, and tied her up. Then left her in the woods to find her way home alone. She's stumbled home, naked. She felt humiliated, even though she wasn't really sure what had happened to her. She slipped in through the back door into her room without anyone noticing. She'd never even told her parents. At times she was afraid that Adam or Ruth might suddenly tell her that something like that had happened between them, but Ruth didn't seem to hate Adam quite that way, so Evelyn had decided that that wasn't it. It must be something else, she guessed.
"About ten years ago," Ruth continued, "Babs was leaving the shopping mall late at night and got kidnapped by some men."
"Oh, God, that's awful!" Evelyn shuddered.
"Yeah, it was," Ruth said perfunctorily. Evelyn was increasingly amazed at how little telling the story seemed to bother her. Evelyn wondered if maybe Ruth liked her sister as little as she liked Adam.
"Adam never told me about that!" Evelyn said.
"Well, he doesn't talk much about stuff like that, you know that. Anyway, that was the summer he was off at that camp as a counselor. He was too young to know a lot about it. Babs herself was only twenty then, and hadn't gotten so fat yet. So you can imagine what those men wanted. And they got it, too."
"Didn't anybody try to stop them?" Evelyn asked.
"No one even noticed it happening, honey. Babs kicked and screamed, but they had a hand clapped over her mouth and had dragged her into their van before she'd gotten two yelps out of her mouth. Then once she was in the van, they stuffed a rag of some kind in her mouth and tied her hands behind her."
"I don't like this story at all," Evelyn shivered.
"Would you rather I didn't tell it, dear?" Ruth asked.
"No, I didn't mean that. What happened when they got in the van?"
"Well, they got started putting their hands under her clothes-all over her, you know. And they talked dirty, telling her everything they were going to do to her when they got her to their cabin. One of the men unzipped himself and pushed his thing up against her face. He was laughing at her and actually hitting her with it! I guess he thought he had a club between his legs.
"Anyway, not to be too gruesome or long-winded about it, they took her to some cabin way out in the woods near Pineville and took turns raping her. Over and over again. Every way they could. I mean, every way."
"Oh," Evelyn murmured. He throat felt dry.
"Yeah," Ruth said. "I could tell, talking to her later, that it was more sex things than Babs had ever even heard of."
Ruth shook her head sadly and paused to light a cigarette. Evelyn barely noticed it; she was too upset by what she'd heard to say anything. Adam didn't like anybody smoking in his house, but Ruth always ignored him. Besides, he'd gone hunting and probably wouldn't be back for a long time. Evelyn could air out the house before he came home. Ruth seemed to have collected herself and then went on, her voice growing increasingly bitter.
"Of course, they beat her up, too, as if putting their goddamn ugly little dicks in her wasn't enough for them!"
Evelyn flinched at Ruth's strong language, but said nothing.
"She was black and blue all over," Ruth continued, "and had two teeth knocked out and a broken rib. They'd burned her with cigarettes, even urinated on her! I swear, the thing that's frightening about people who do such crazy things is that it seems like there's just no limit to their craziness, and-"
Suddenly Ruth though about Evelyn's nervous breakdown and wondered if she was making the girl nervous. Maybe she should just shut up.
"Excuse me, sweetheart!" she told Evelyn. "You know I didn't mean you!"
"Yeah, I know," Evelyn grinned sheepishly. She tried not to be too sensitive.
"Why should I have to feel guilty?" she wondered. "I didn't hurt anybody, except maybe some people's feelings. People get over that."
"What happened in the end?" Evelyn asked. "Did they just let her go?"
"No, nothing as easy as that," Ruth said, sipping her iced tea. "I need some more ice," she said distractedly. She tilted her chair back, twisted in her chair, and opened the refrigerator door. She groped to open the freezer door, but when it was open, the door itself was in the way.
"You can't reach the ice that way," Evelyn said. "I've tried."
"Too bad," Ruth sighed, standing up and getting her ice the regular way. She sat back down and looked thoughtful.
"No," she said, "they didn't just let her go. They left her there tied up and naked. That's when they peed all over her, all of them thinking it was the funniest thing they'd ever seen. She nearly choked. She said they were all drunk, but I can't imagine anyone being that drunk. What would they do a thing like that for? How could you get any pleasure out of it? Animals don't do that! Anyway, they took her clothes with them, too, so when she finally struggled free a few hours later there was nothing to cover herself with but the disgusting old rotted piece of curtain she'd been lying on when they pissed on her. It was about midnight then, and she was deep in the woods with no idea where she was. By the time she found her way to a house where she could ask for help, it was two in the morning. The people she woke up, they thought she was some kind of banshee, beating on their door at that hour, whining and crying at the top of her voice, then smelling like a urinal when they let her in the door!"
Ruth smiled suddenly at her own description. Evelyn was startled by Ruth's amusement and stared at her, frowning. Ruth saw the look and shrugged.
"I know, I know," Ruth said, "I seem cold about it, don't I? But it was all a long time ago, and the drama of it's sort of all faded away, you know? Besides, before things were over, part of it did get sort of comical. At any rate, it got so outrageous that about all you could do was laugh. In fact, it just got weirder and weirder."
"What do you mean?" Evelyn asked.
"Well, Babs' husband. Joe Dan went crazy when he found out about it. He ranted and raved about the wrath of God and talked about going out to find those men himself and kill them. He was going to kill them all and cut off their peckers! Daddy shook Joe Dan and told him to calm down, he wasn't going to make things any easier for Babs talking like that. Joe Dan shut up, but he was still red in the face when he slipped out of the house a couple of hours later. The next day, Daddy had to go down and get him out of jail. The sheriff out there had caught him and some of his friends rampaging around those woods around Pineville with rifles and handguns of all sorts. One of the guys with him, some guy named Eddie, had got so crazy he shot some poor cow to death out in a field, and that's why the sheriff had to grab them. Old Sheriff Hardegree was in office then, and he told Daddy he just locked the boys up for their own protection. I was kind of tickled by it. He said, 'I just don't want Joe Dan out there shootin' any more cows; they kinda expensive, you know? 'Sides, I don't want 'em getting their worthless damn butts shot off by some farmer neither!' Ha! You know how ole Hardegree talked!
Evelyn just nodded to be agreeable, so Ruth would go on with her story. She actually didn't remember the sheriff, much less remember how he talked. She'd never much been one for watching the news or local politics.
"Well, Daddy was pissed off, but he paid for the cow and he bailed Joe Dan and his friends out. A few weeks went by, then months, and they never did catch anybody for what they did to Babs. Joe Dan went back to work like a robot of some kind, and got worse-tempered than he'd ever been before, and wasn't even very nice to Babs when she came home from the hospital. As far as he was concerned, what had happened was something that had happened more to him than to Babs. Men are such assholes."
Evelyn again nodded slightly in agreement, though wondering for a moment if she really did. She'd always hoped that men just seemed that way because of her experiences. In the back of her mind, she'd held out hope that maybe they all weren't like that. Yet Ruth seemed to think there wasn't much hope, and Ruth was pretty smart.
"Anyway," Ruth said, lighting one cigarette off the previous one, "Joe Dan got worse and worse. Just turned into a nut. Finally he came home one day after a weekend fishing trip with his buddies and acted happy for the first time in months. He was smiling and even trying to be nice to Babs again. Which scared the shit outta Babs. She was afraid to even ask him what was going on, so she called me and I went over and talked to him."
"You didn't mind talking to him about stuff like that?" Evelyn asked.
"No, not really. But, anyway, I didn't really know what he was gonna talk about. I just knew Babs was scared, and Joe Dan had always been able to talk to me more easily than anyone else in the family, so I went. But it was damn weird stuff when he got to talking, I have to admit."
"What'd he talk about, then?"
"Ha! He said he'd decided that he didn't have to find those guys and kill them after all! After the first few weeks of searching for those guys, he ended up spend-ing a lot of time talkin' to a couple of his "born?again" Christian buddies. I'd al-ways thought he was over the dam about religion, but now it seemed like he'd got religion with a vengeance! Somehow his twisted little born-again brain had fig-ured out that he didn't have to take revenge!"
"Really?"
"You bet. God would do it, that's what he'd decided!"
"You're kiddin'!" Evelyn said, smiling despite herself.
"Yeah. He stood right there in front of me, smiling gently-as if that gross idiot ever had a genuinely gentle sensation in his whole damn life!-and starts talkin' the wildest half-baked theological shit!
"'I don't got to do nothin'," he says. "'If I just get right with God, them rapists' penises are gonna rot and fall off, and that that's a lot more terrible punishment than I could give them!'"
I wanted to laugh right in his face at first, but then I thought how much trouble he'd caused up until he reached this weird conclusion, so I nodded my head and did my best to keep a straight face and go along with him. It was as good a way as any for him to look at it, I thought, if it'd just stop him thinking and talking about it all the time! So I told Joe Dan he was probably right, and I went and told Babs and Daddy and everybody else in the family to just let him believe it, since it seemed to have quieted him down. The silly bastard's been so quiet ever since, at least on the subject of sex, that if it wasn't for all them kids I'd think his prick had rotted and fallen off!
"Is he really that crazy about God?" Evelyn asked.
"He rants about God, if you ask me!" Ruth laughed. "And he's such a horrible little twerp, I imagine anyone in the world would be more pleasant to discuss God with! You mean, you haven't ever had to listen to him spew about this?"
"No, Joe Dan doesn't talk much in front of me for some reason," Evelyn said.
"That doesn't mean much, though. He doesn't really like talking to women, not even to Babs."
"How come?"
"I don't really know. I suspect he just thinks women are stupid and dirty, some kinda 'Vile Temptation' or somethin' like that, now that he's got so damn much religion."
"I think Adam's a little bit like that, too," Evelyn said. "Don't you think so?"
"Yeah, a little bit. All men are, at certain times. Though it ain't always religion that makes them act that way. Some of them'll take any excuse to speak badly of women. I still think it's cause their mamas ran them down too much when they were little or made 'em feel neurotic and guilty about wantin' to look down their Mamma's dress. Problem is, they don't really take it out on their mothers. They take it out on you and me, the nasty shits, 'cause they're still afraid of Mamma!"
Despite the terrible tale she'd just heard about Babs, when she heard Ruth's last remark, Evelyn broke into helpless laughter.
"Well, they are!" Ruth giggled.
Current draft: 03/02/03
© 1989 Ronald C. Southern
