“Where are you going?” said Father Poole.
“Inside,” replied Jessie disinterestedly. “I’m getting hot.”
Father Poole’s patience with her detachment was at an end. He knew he’d have to confront it sooner or later and figured now was as good a time as any. “What did I do to you?” he called out to Jessie as she was about to turn the corner of the Benson house.
She stopped in place, froze, and looked to her feet. “What do you mean?” she answered.
“We used to be closer than this,” replied the priest. “Why have you shut me out?”
“Close?”
“Yes. We were like a family.”
“How?”
Father Poole paused, not knowing quite how to respond. He took a deep breath. “I know you’re upset about your dog… .”
“It’s not just the dog,” Jessie said angrily, turning around to face him. “I’ve been like this for weeks. I was attacked. ATTACKED! And you didn’t even try to find out what happened to me. You didn’t want to report it to the police, and you didn’t bring a doctor up here to tend to me. It’s as though you want to protect the man who did it. Either that or you just don’t care!”
The priest ran over to her and grabbed her by the arms. “That’s not true! I’m trying to protect you.”
“From what?” cried Jessie, sounding lost.
“From what people might think.”
Jessie’s first impulse was to spit in Father Poole’s face, but she promptly calmed down. Still, she looked into Phineas’s eyes with such contempt and animosity that she didn’t even hear what she said next. “Maybe you just don’t want people to think it was you who did it!”
“JESSICA BENSON!” Father Poole screamed.
“It’s true!” she said, beginning to cry. “I… I don’t know who did it either. I don’t trust anyone. I’m afraid of all of you. No matter how I try to tell myself that it could never be you or my brothers, it’s not enough. Ever since Sis left, things have gone wrong, almost as though whoever attacked me waited for her to leave because he knew how she she’d never let anything bad happen to me. WHERE WERE YOU WHEN HE GOT ME? YOU SHOULD HAVE BEEN THERE!”
All of these accusations danced around like wildfire in Jessie’s brain, and without thinking she shouted, “MAYBE I’M RIGHT! MAYBE YOU DO KNOW WHO DID IT, AND YOU’RE TRYING TO PROTECT HIM!”
Phineas couldn’t control himself. He swung his hand back and slapped Jessie hard. When he released her with his other hand, she backed away, stumbling, and held her hand up to her cheek.
“Jessie,” Father Poole said. “I’m so sorry.”
She only shook her head slowly, still backing away from him, before turning and running into the house. He called for her to come back, but she kept running and never looked back.
Things between Father Poole and the rest of us were strained, to say the least. Over the next few weeks he sometimes left us in the care of Mrs. Keats for the entire day. Apparently he figured that, with Ziggy gone and the youngest ones now seven and eight, we wouldn’t need as much supervision as before.
We assumed that Father Fin was going to Exeter to see Sister Ignatius, and as much as we all wanted to go with him in order not to be left alone on the hill with Jack White, we agreed to stay behind.
Father Fin knew how we resented him for repeatedly leaving us, so he began to avoid us, sneaking out early in the morning and not returning until late each night. We expected that he would appoint Mrs. Keats as our guardian in his absence, but unbeknownst to us Father Poole turned to Jack White for this responsibility.
The priest had asked him one morning in early September when he saw White out on the lawn doing sit-ups.
“Ninety-one, ninety-two, ninety-three,” grunted the stranger, dripping with sweat.
“Good morning, Jack!” said Father Poole.
The man ignored him and continued counting. “Ninety-six, ninety-seven, ninety-eight.”
“I’m going on some business for the entire day down in Exeter.”
“One hundred,” Jack White said, falling back on the grass and panting.
“You know,” Father Poole continued, “Mrs. Keats is not exactly the best person to put in charge of the boys. Would you mind watching them today for me?”
The stranger stopped panting. He pondered for several seconds before his expression brightened. “I’ll be glad to watch over your boys, Father,” said the man, no longer disguising his southern accent. “I’ll watch over everyone for you, including the little lady.”
“Thank you, my son,” he replied, shaking Jack White’s sweaty hand.
We were all up in the tree that morning when we heard Jack White screaming out our names as he approached the maple. We worried that he was going to do something to us while Father Poole was off the hill.
“Where are you, little piggies?” he called.
None of us answered.
“Come to me, little piggies! COME TO ME! I know you’re all up there. Come to me! I only wanna be friendly.”
“You go away, mister!” Charlie Ryder said bravely. “We don’t want trouble.”
“Is that Charlie Ryder?” said the man. “Little man, I don’t appreciate your tone of voice. Perhaps you need me to kick your nuts a little harder this time. Come on down here! Let me show you how friendly I can be with y’all.”
“Leave them alone!” a voice said from behind the stranger.
We all moved through the leaves and branches to see what was going on. The stranger slowly looked to see who it was standing behind him.
Zachary Black’s expression became stone-cold when he saw Jessie. “Excuse me, beautiful? What was that?” he said.
“You heard me. I told you to leave them alone.”
“I see,” he began. “And what are you going to do if I don’t? Beat me up?” Zachary then tore off his shirt, exposing his bare chest, and threw it angrily to the ground.
Even from high up in the tree we could see the muscles that were a testimony to his brute strength. It was one of the things that made us so terrified of him. The lot of us together weren’t a match for him.
“You haven’t answered me, girl,” continued Zachary Black. “How are you going to stop me?”
As he began walking slowly toward her, Jessie pulled out from behind her a rifle that had belonged to her grandfather. Zachary Black stopped and stared at the gun pointed at his head.
“Mister,” she began, “ever since you got here terrible things have happened. I don’t know who it was that attacked me or Sue Ellen, but as far as I’m concerned anyone who goes around looking to hurt one of my brothers is at the top of a very short list. Father Fin may want you here, but we don’t. So while he’s gone, why don’t you make yourself scarce before I have to show you how determined I am to use this rifle on you?”
“Are you going to shoot me?” replied Black. “I’m not afraid to die. The thing is, are any of you?” He turned his attention back up to us in the tree, and again we froze, afraid even to breathe.
“Leave,” Jessie demanded.
Zachary Black picked up his torn shirt and slowly walked away.
Jumping down from the tree, we thanked Jessie for coming to our rescue, all except Theo who was furious with her. “What’th the matter with you, Jeth? He’th gonna have it out for you!”
“I’m not afraid of him,” she replied. “It’s funny. After it happened, after the… .” She paused. “After it I’m not afraid of anything anymore. I mean, nothing can scare me now. I should have answered ‘No’ to his question.”
“What do you mean?” asked Jordan.
“I’m not afraid to die,” Jessie replied.
As we filed inside Theo decided to stay by the maple with Jessie. His concern for her wellbeing grew after she’d brandished that rifle i
n front of Jack White. “I don’t care anymore, Theo.”
“I don’t want you to get him angry.” replied Theo. “I’ve theen what he can do.”
“He attacked me.” Jess confessed. “I’m almost sure it was him.”
“I think tho too. In fact, we all believe that. But…”
Neither one had to say it. No one was going to accuse Jack White of anything, least of all Jessie, who was less afraid for herself than she was for her brothers. If it were Jack White, then he must have also been responsible for little Ziggy’s death. She couldn’t bear losing another brother. For his part, Theo remembered Jack White’s previous threat about slitting everyone’s throat in their sleep. Theo knew the stranger to be in deadly earnest.
It was quiet on the hill at dusk. Dinner was served in the rectory, where Mrs. Keats ate with Jack White and us boys. While we had our Yankee stew, White angrily hummed his “Piggies” tune, putting us all except for Mrs. Keats on edge. We could hear him breathing heavily, a sign that some kind of fury was brewing inside him. The stranger finished his dinner long before we were even halfway through ours. He then pushed his chair back violently and stormed out of the rectory.
Jessie, of course, was now living full-time with the Hartleys and so ate all her meals there. Their supper was more cordial than ours, although Mr. Hartley seemed distracted and preoccupied. This behavior had not gone unobserved by Jessie since the time of Sue Ellen’s assault.
“Is something wrong, Mr. Hartley?” asked Jessie. “You seem out of sorts tonight.”
Walt Hartley put his fork down and smiled weakly. “Oh, I suppose I’m just not that hungry,” he said.
Swell and Jessie went out to the porch to talk after washing the supper dishes. Their conversations were always restricted to certain subjects because Jessie was hesitant about sharing specific details of her attack, even though Sue Ellen knew more than anybody else about it. She’d been privy to so much because she had been the one to find Jessie shortly after it happened and also because the same thing had happened to her.
Swell was sure that it was the same man since during both rapes he’d worn a deformed pig mask. Neither girl knew why, in contrast to Swell’s experience, Jessie had been spared a savage beating, and they didn’t bother to speculate.
“I think the man who got me got you as well,” Swell said.
Jessie stirred uneasily in her chair. She took a sip of her lemonade, not bothering to ask her best friend again, as she had repeatedly done, to exonerate Billy Norwin.
“Jess,” continued Sue Ellen, “I don’t want to make you uncomfortable, but this guy is still out there. We could still be in danger.”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Jessie said.
Swell began playing with a bracelet Mr. Hartley had given his daughter for her seventh birthday. It reminded her of her father, and of the fact that he now knew a dreadful secret, which Sue Ellen was ready to tell Jessie.
“I’m pregnant,” Swell blurted out.
“How do you… ?” began Jessie.
“Know?” said Swell, finishing Jessie’s question for her. “Oh, let’s see. I’ve been nauseous every morning for the last four or five days; my nipples are sensitive; and I haven’t gotten my period since before it happened.”
“It could be nerves.”
“All I know, Jess, is that I haven’t been so scared in my life. This to me is more terrifying than what happened under the rectory. I know it sounds crazy, but it’s true. I feel so lost and so alone. I’m going to be a mother, and I don’t want to be.”
Sue Ellen paused briefly before continuing, “Jess, did he go inside you?”
Jessie turned away again. She felt this question too terrible to answer. Not only because she wasn’t sure if her attacker had penetrated her, but because she was too ashamed to admit it to Sue Ellen. She walked over to one of the porch’s pillars, put her arm around it, and lay her head against the side.
“What did he do to you?” asked Swell.
“I was looking for my dog that afternoon.” began Jessie. He wasn’t in the house. First I went over to the rectory, where I saw Ziggy on the front step. I asked him whether he’d seen General Lee, and his response was, ‘Does your toilet go up?’ You know that’s how he described it when a toilet overflowed.”
She smiled at Swell, who smiled back faintly. Sue Ellen’s shattered front teeth were visible through her parted lips, and she became self-conscious about this almost immediately.
“Anyway I asked Ziggy to go inside the rectory and look for the dog. He did. In the meantime I was going to come over here to see whether maybe you’d let him inside. As I walked past the rectory stairs, I noticed that the lattice cover was missing and that the hole leading into the crawlspace was wide open. I figured that General Lee might have gone in there to… .”
Jessie stopped and thought for a moment. She remembered the man in the greasy overalls whom Jonas and Joey had buried years earlier. She also remembered what General Lee did after she had allowed him in there about a year ago. When she went to retrieve the dog a few hours later, she discovered that he’d dug up the man’s remains and carried the bones over to a far corner of the crawl space, as though they were his own private collection. She cried out in repulsion and shouted at General Lee to come out of there. He hung his head low and did as he was told. Unable to bear the thought of touching human remains, Jessie took a tablecloth from the dining-room hutch and tossed it on top of the bones. Then she shoved all the dug-up dirt back into the hole that General Lee had excavated.
Leaving these details out of her story to Sue Ellen, she continued. “I walked over to see what had happened to the lattice cover. Peeking into the hole, I saw it lying there. When I reached for it, a hand grabbed me and pulled me inside. The last thing I remember was a horrible mask of a mutilated pig. After that I blacked out.”
“If you blacked out, then he had no reason to beat you,” said Sue Ellen matter-of-factly. “You were lucky to be unconscious through the whole thing.”
“I don’t feel lucky.” Embarrassed at what she’d said, Jessie apologized and added, “It’s just that awful pig mask! I’ll never get it out of my head. We should tell the police about it. If they can find it, the mask may have fingerprints. God, how it scared me when I saw him wearing it!”
“I know,” said Swell. “It scared me too, but we don’t want the police to investigate. Daddy even says that he wants to keep it this way. And as long as I live, I won’t say a word about it.”
Jessie was reflecting on something. “Swell,” she began. “Jack White… .”
“Shhh,” cautioned Sue Ellen, inspecting the grounds on both sides. Jessie did the same a second later.
“He…,” continued Jessie in a lower voice. “Being how he is… . Don’t you think that it could have been… .”
Jessie couldn’t finish articulating her thought. As she had explained to Jack White by the maple, he was at the top of a very short list of suspects, but she still couldn’t prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that he was her rapist. Moreover, being uneasy when saying his name in the cool September air, Jessie didn’t press the matter with Sue Ellen.
“We’ll get each other through this,” said Swell. “We’ll help one another.”
“But what are you going to do?” replied Jessie. “You’re pregnant!”
It was now Swell’s turn to walk slightly off to the side and stare out onto Holly Hill as the last of the day’s sunlight slowly expired. “It’s his,” said Sue Ellen. “The man who… . I know it is.”
“You don’t know that for a fact,” remarked Jessie. “You’ve been with other boys. It could be Billy’s or… .”
“I never let them stay inside me. When they were ready, they pulled out. That was the deal. This man finished inside me more times than I care to remember.”
“You m
ean he did it more than once?”
Without answering directly, Swell said, “How long do you think you were out for?”
Jessie thought for a minute. “I woke up to General Lee’s barking. He and Ziggy were outside, and Ziggy was calling for me.”
“Yes,” said Sue Ellen. “I remember because that’s when I came out and saw the two of them before we heard you start to scream.”
“I came to at that point. I figure I was down there only a few minutes.”
“That’s where he got me too, and I was there for at least an hour.”
“You still haven’t answered my question, Swell. What are you going to do now?”
Sue Ellen motioned to the porch’s ceiling. “My father knows. I told him about the man in the pig mask, about what I was doing in the crawl space, and about the baby.” Swell began to cry.
Jessie played over in her mind the morning where she and Billy had overheard Jack White singing his piggy song. She had also heard him call the boys piggies before she threatened him with the rifle. Making a connection between piggies and their attacker having worn a pig mask, coupled with the fact that these attacks coincided with White’s arrival on the hill, Jessie was more convinced than ever that it was him. Still, she said nothing about any of this to Sue Ellen, as she was worried her friend still had feelings for Jack White. Perhaps if Jessie had shared this bit of information with her, Sue Ellen might have been convinced.
The fact of the matter was that since her attack Sue Ellen had avoided Jack White. As ardent as her feelings were for him, she wrote in her diary entry for August 22, 1942, that she believed he was the man who had raped her.
The two girls hugged and stayed outside a bit longer. When they began to tire, Swell put her rocking chair back against the wall, and Jessie did the same with hers. Shortly after they went inside the house, a figure emerged from its side. It was Zachary Black, and he had heard everything.
As Zachary lay in bed that night, infuriated by what he’d heard the girls discussing, he found a need to clear his mind and think about other things. He reflected back on the events of his life since leaving St. Andrew’s thirteen years earlier. His life had been anything but easy from the moment he left Holly Hill.
Embracing Darkness Page 52
