Sisters of the Road

by Barbara Wilson

  “Thanks, June.”

  “Sink or swim… I think I’m sinking,” she added as she got out of the car and fell into a drift.

  I helped her out and we started up the road.

  The night was full of stars and frost; the black firs on either side wore coats of white and peaked white caps. As we stumbled up the slope I thought I saw footprints on the road, but we didn’t have a flashlight and it was too dark to be certain.

  “I don’t know whether I want anybody to be there or not,” June said. “What I’d really like is for a nice grandmotherly creature to fling open the door just as we get there and say, Pam and June! Just in time for a nice hot buttered rum!’”

  “How’s your training in outdoor survival?” I asked. “Do you know how to dig a snow cave for protection and conserve your body heat?”

  “My people came from Africa, girl. We don’t have those anti-cold genes like you reindeer hunters.”

  “Once, when Penny and I were twelve, our parents took us to Norway in the spring to visit relatives. That’s the big skiing season, but that’s also when they have all the avalanches. And every night on television they’d have these public service clips—showing families making snow caves and telling you how to survive until help came.”

  “I’m glad that at least one of us is prepared.”

  “Well, I never actually found myself in an avalanche… I think you’re supposed to be carrying a lot of basic necessities. Food and extra clothes and stuff.”

  We chattered to keep from freezing and kept walking.

  “Look,” June said. “There’s a cabin. You think that’s it?”

  A small one-room cabin with a shed full of wood attached huddled under a tall stand of firs. Through the window the flicker of a kerosene lamp was visible.

  We crept silently up and looked inside, afraid to even whisper to each other.

  The room was clean and cozy, with a couch, a big pine table and chairs, a bookshelf and a small wood stove. There was a braided rug on the floor and a couple of pictures on the wall. No one was there.

  June and I looked at each other and then she opened the door and we went in.

  It was freezing cold and our heavy boots made the floor creak.

  “Hello,” I said, in too loud a voice. “Anybody here?”

  “Somebody must have been here,” said June, sounding relieved. “They must have just forgot the lamp.”

  “Wait,” I said. I had noticed a loft with a ladder leading up to it. “Anybody up there?”

  Silence. Neither June nor I could get up enough nerve to climb the ladder. But all of a sudden I became aware that someone was in the room was us, even though I couldn’t hear breathing.

  “Trish,” I called cautiously. “Trish, are you up there?”

  Nothing.

  June picked up the ski pole that was standing by the door and pointed the sharp end of it towards the loft. Even in her heavy down jacket and beret there was something warrior-like about her. “I’m coming up,” she said threateningly. She advanced up the ladder with the ski pole before her. Halfway up I heard her gasp.

  “Oh, my god. Child, what has he done to you?”

  She went all the way up and I followed at her heels.

  Trish lay naked and gagged on a bare mattress. Her skin, even in the intermittent light of the kerosene lamp, was blueish and splotched with waxy white. Her eyes were half-closed and she was hardly breathing.

  “Is she alive?”

  “Barely, she’s half froze to death. Quick, take off your jacket and go down and look for blankets or something.” June lay next to Trish and held her. “You’re gonna be all right, honey.”

  I found a sleeping bag downstairs and we wrapped her in it, then I went back down and fumbled with the wood stove, trying to start a fire. Who had left her here to freeze to death? Had she told him that she saw him kill Rosalie? Why hadn’t he killed her right away then? Why this way, this cruel way? But maybe he wanted it to look like an accident. If he came back later and took the gag off and dressed her, no one would ever know. Probably he’d drugged her. People would just think that a poor teenage prostitute with a messed-up past and no future had taken too many downers, maybe on purpose, and had let the fire go out.

  June came down the ladder. “She needs a doctor, but we can’t take her outside in this cold. I’m going to get help. You find some tea or soup or anything hot and start feeding it to her. Keep the fire going and don’t rub her, whatever you do. Friction’s not good for frostbite.”

  June went out the door and was gone in the night. It would take her almost an hour to get to Index and probably another twenty minutes to get back if the State Patrol had a snowmobile or land rover. I pulled the couch in front of the door and went up the ladder.

  Trish seemed to be responding slightly. Her eyes were still half-closed but her lips moved and she mumbled something.

  “Trish, it’s me. It’s Pam. You’re going to be all right. June’s gone for help. She’ll be back soon.” She had started shaking convulsively and I hugged my body to hers, trying to warm her. After a few minutes the shakes subsided and she seemed to fall into a doze. I went downstairs and found a little jar of bouillon cubes, boiled water and made a cup of it.

  “Trish, come on, wake up, drink this. It will make you feel better.”

  Her lips parted, but she couldn’t help choking. I managed to get some of it down her. How long had June been gone? A half hour at least. Maybe it wouldn’t take as long as I imagined. Ten minutes to town after she reached her car; and if it didn’t take the State Patrol too long…

  “Trish, it’s Pam. Do you hear me?”

  She succeeded in opening her eyes slightly, and I saw she recognized me.

  “Pam,” she croaked, and there was a kind of horror in her expression that I’d only seen in photographs of torture victims and concentration camp survivors. As if their humanness had been stripped away.

  “I know, I know, but I’m here, it’s all right. Just drink a little more of this. Don’t try to talk now.”

  But she couldn’t drink anymore and after a few seconds her eyes closed again and she seemed to fall asleep. I went down the ladder again, and then stopped.

  I hadn’t heard anyone come up to the cabin, but someone was turning the door knob. A man’s voice, muffled, said, “Anybody here?”

  I didn’t answer, couldn’t figure out whose voice it was.

  The door knob rattled, harder now. “Karl, are you there? This is Wayne. I’m looking for Trish. For christssakes, is she all right?”

  It had been Karl then. But where was he? Outside somewhere, on his way back? I didn’t want to trust Wayne but I was more afraid of Karl than Wayne. I was especially afraid that June had met Karl on the road and that he’d done something to her. I might need Wayne’s help.

  “Wayne,” I said. “This is Pam Nilsen. Are you alone?”

  “Of course I’m alone,” he said and his voice sounded young and anguished. “Please let me in—I’ve got to see if Trish is safe.”

  I pushed back the couch and opened the door.

  39

  WAYNE’S HANDSOME FACE WAS pale under his tan and his eyes were burning blue.

  “I’m going to kill him,” he said. “I couldn’t believe it when he said Trish had called him and he’d gone down to Portland to get her. Why didn’t she call me?”

  “Calm down,” I said. “You’ll wake her.”

  His eyes darted anxiously to the loft. “Is that where she is? Are you sure she’s all right?”

  “She’s fine—now,” I said. “It looks like Karl just left her here to freeze to death. I don’t know where he is. I hope he’s not lurking around outside somewhere.”

  “Oh my god.” Wayne sank down on a chair and buried his face in his hands. “If you knew what I’d been through tonight.”

  “How did you find out Karl had brought her here?”

  “It occurred to me eventually. I’d given Karl the key to the place once and he must ha
ve made a copy. He didn’t tell me when he called around seven. He was taunting me. Said he had Trish and wasn’t going to tell me where. Said he was going to kill her. I was terrified. I’d taken Trish down to Portland to get her away from him. I knew he’d do the same thing to her as he’d done to Rosalie.”

  “So Karl killed Rosalie then?” Somehow it was all fitting together. “Only he didn’t know it was Rosalie, he only knew her as Abby. Had she ripped him off somehow, muscled into his drug dealing?”

  Wayne nodded, head still in his hands. He looked young and very vulnerable. It’s such a fucking long story,” he said. “I don’t even know where to begin.”

  “Start a year and a half ago, when you met him.”

  “I didn’t know anything about him then,” Wayne said in a low voice. “He was an artist from New York. I was impressed. But he had this big thing about how artists couldn’t make any money through art. It was impossible. So he was going to deal coke, like he had in New York. He needed money to get started though. That’s where Trish and I came in.”

  “So he was pimping both of you?”

  “I’m not gay,” Wayne murmured. “Not really. But it didn’t seem so bad at first. We needed money. I never told Trish what I was doing. But after a while it seemed like it was really girls who could make more money. I was getting too old anyway. And Trish didn’t seem to mind.”

  “Because she was hooked on you. She wanted to break away but she couldn’t.”

  “That’s not true! We really cared about each other!” Wayne raised his head. “You’ve got to believe that. I would never do anything to hurt her. I’ve always tried to help her. Karl would have run her into the ground. I tried to protect her as much as I could.”

  “So you recruited other girls to help. Was that how Rosalie came into the picture?”

  Wayne nodded. “But she had other ideas. She didn’t want to hook. She wanted in on the drug action. Finally Karl agreed. He set her up with some cash. She was supposed to give him fifty percent of the sale. The first few times it went okay. Then he found out she was holding back on him. He didn’t tell me what he was going to do, but he arranged to meet Rosalie at that apartment building near the airport. What he didn’t know was that Rosalie had asked Trish to come too, for protection. But somehow Trish didn’t get there in time and… you know the rest.”

  “But Trish didn’t actually see him.”

  “No. It was just me who figured out it was Karl. I didn’t dare ask him if he’d seen Trish. I just wanted to get her out of Seattle. So when she called and said she was at your place I went and got her.”

  “And you never told her you thought Karl had killed Rosalie.”

  “No. I didn’t want to scare her.”

  “Why didn’t you tell the police?”

  “And have my whole connection to Karl dragged out? My dad could maybe understand about the drugs, but not that Karl was gay, not me going with men for money. I couldn’t take him knowing that!”

  Wayne bent his head almost to his knees and rocked back and forth, making a low, anguished sound.

  I couldn’t help it, I felt sorry for him. In spite of everything he’d done to Trish, in spite of his screwing me around for days. I went over to him and put my hand on his shoulder.

  “It’s all right,” I said. “It’s going to be all right.”

  There was a silence broken only by his strangled moans, then, from the loft above, came the small cracked whisper, “He’s lying.”

  Afterwards, like all victims, I went over and over the events, looking for things I should or shouldn’t have done. I shouldn’t have opened the door, not to anyone except June. I shouldn’t have believed anything he said. I should have fought back harder. I shouldn’t have let it happen to me. I was stupid, I could have gotten away if I’d really tried. I was weak and cowardly and a woman. I deserved it.

  He picked up the ski pole and said, “I’ll stab you if you struggle.” He lunged for me and pinned me down on the floor, tied my hands with rope from his pocket and gagged me with a kitchen towel.

  I couldn’t believe it was happening. Even though I knew now what he had done to Trish and Rosalie, a part of me kept seeing the tanned, smiling young artist in the Hawaiian shirt, the vulnerable little boy. He wasn’t smiling now, he wasn’t crying either; his eyes were dry and the once caressing playboy gaze was cold and hard and full of hatred.

  “You never fooled me,” he said. “Not with your Jane Eyre or your coke deal. You never bought coke in your life. You were just spying on me. And I hate spies.”

  He slapped my face and brought tears to my eyes.

  “I should have known you’d come following Trish up here. You fucking dyke. She told me about you. Told me you’d tried to get her to stay with you. And then you followed her down to Portland and got the cops involved. She wasn’t going to say anything about Rosalie until you put the idea in her head. Now I can’t trust her.”

  He slapped me again, so hard my head jerked back. All I could think was, June, please come soon, please.

  “Yeah, I killed Rosalie. You want to know why? The bitch wanted Trish off the streets; she said she and Trish should get a piece of the action. Like Trish belonged to her or something, the fucking nigger whore. Trish belongs to me.” Wayne’s lips tightened to a streak of white and he picked up the ski pole and swung it towards me, missing my forehead by about an inch. “That’s what she thought. I found out where she was holing up in somebody’s apartment on the strip. I didn’t know she and Trish were supposed to be meeting that night. I got out the side window but not before I saw Trish. I didn’t think she’d seen me, but I knew, even if she had, she wouldn’t tell.” He swung the ski pole in my face again and I closed my eyes. “It was you who put that idea into her head, so I couldn’t trust her. And now you’re going to end up just like Rosalie. A lesson to Trish. You hear that bitch?” he called up the ladder. “If you ever try to get away from me again you’ll be next.”

  Wayne was almost starting to enjoy himself now. He put down the ski pole, took off his down jacket and removed a syringe and a tourniquet and a baggie of coke from his pocket. He mixed the coke with water in a spoon and heated it over the wood stove. Then he tied off his arm and shot himself up. And all the while he was talking.

  “I can’t believe you suspected Karl. Karl couldn’t do shit. He’s just a drunk. The only thing I was afraid of was he’d tell you I was in Portland. Yeah, I took her there, and I picked her up too, when she called me. She didn’t know who else to call. She can’t do anything without me. Can you, bitch?” he shouted up at the loft.

  Then he turned to me. “I’ve thought about this for a long time,” he said. “When you came with that game of buying the coke. If you hadn’t had your friend with you I would have. But this is going to be even better. By the time I get done with you you’re going to be sorry you were ever born.”

  He raped me. With a punishing violence that had nothing to do with sex and everything to do with rage and hatred. My vagina was as dry as my mouth and every pounding blow stabbed through my body like a sword dipped in fire. It was like surgery without anesthesia, like nothing I’d ever felt. I almost blanked out; my whole being reduced to a tiny pinprick that cried out no.

  “Bitch, cunt, lezzie, pervert, whore, how do you like this, you fucking dyke.” The cocaine and his fury made him demonic; he slapped my face over and over and thrust into me again and again. It seemed endless; a world of pain spread through my back, down my legs. I felt that whatever made Pam a person, whatever I knew or had known about myself was being crushed out of me, was spinning into fragments like a planet smashed by meteors.

  Then June burst through the door; she picked up the ski pole and struck at him, on the back, on the arms. If the State Patrol officers, right behind her, hadn’t stopped her, she would have killed him. I’m sure of that.

  40

  RAPE IS SOMETHING YOU RECOVER FROM, but at first you don’t believe you ever will. It haunts you like a nightmare that has
no waking end. Over and over I saw myself as the patrolmen must have seen me, pants down, bleeding and exposed. Degraded and exposed. One of them, I’m positive, was turned on. I saw it in his eyes. And strangely enough, it’s his expression I remember most. I can’t really remember the hatred on Wayne’s face and the ripping feeling I had inside. It’s buried too deep. But I remember the secret glint in the officer’s eyes; I can’t seem to forget it.

  If it had been Cagney and Lacey, the show would have stopped right there, with the dramatic moment of rescue. But somehow it didn’t. I had to go on living. And living was hard.

  I had back pains and pains that shot down my legs. The entrance to my vagina was torn and my face was battered black and blue. I was afraid of noises and of the dark and I couldn’t stand to look at men; even passing them in the street scared me. I knew they weren’t all rapists, but it didn’t matter. Right after you’ve been raped you don’t feel quite the same about men; you don’t feel quite the same about your body either, you don’t feel that it’s totally yours. Some boundary has been violated; a boundary you used to feel was strong and indestructible feels more like tissue paper, easily torn.

  I didn’t feel “good” anymore. I felt “bad.” In other people’s eyes anyway; in the eyes of the patrolmen, in the eyes of the doctor and nurses at the emergency room, even in the eyes of some of my friends. They were there to help me; they felt pity and they tried to be supportive, but I still felt I was the one who’d transgressed, that I was one who’d done something unspeakably wrong. Being a victim doesn’t make you self-righteous; it makes you defensive, suspicious, ashamed. I felt like people knew something about me that I didn’t want known, like they could use it against me. I felt I would never be just Pam again. I would be Pam who was raped, did you hear about it?”

  Of course I was saved, I wasn’t killed; I wasn’t pregnant either, I was grateful for that. We were all saved, Trish, me, June. Not Rosalie though. And Wayne was in jail, with counts of murder, rape and attempted murder against him. If we were lucky he’d be behind bars for years after the trial.