The Final Confession of Mabel Stark: A Novel (An Evergreen book) (32 page)

I entered the alley. To my left was the sound of people talking and
arguing and laughing and being randy. To my right was clanking. I
walked quickly, having great confidence in my own surefootedness,
and as I walked I was conscious of the grime existing on the walls inches from my shoulders. The alleyway jogged slightly and I passed
through a pitch-black courtyard, picking up the alley on the other side.
In the distance I saw a rectangle of light and the rail cars beyond. I
think I slowed my walking a titch, though I can't say for sure. What I
do remember is the smell of the hand that darted from an alcove and
smothered the lower half of my face, the crook between thumb and
forefinger clamped beneath my nose. In moments like these the senses
sharpen, and I could pick out sweat and leather and tobacco and dirt
and the salt of male seed. The hand was big, too, meaty and plump and
no stranger to rough work. The other hand grabbed my right wrist and
bent it around back until the muscles in my upper arm screamed.
Without a word, only rough breathing, he turned me around and frogmarched me in the direction I'd come. A tear dribbled out of my left
eye and dampened his hand and I wondered if I could soften his resolve
with the wetness of it.

He marched me toward the courtyard but instead of picking up
the other half of the alleyway he turned me right into the gloom and
after a few steps I made out a parked jalopy. He stepped me up to the
hood of the car and moved his hand away from my mouth and put it on
the back of my head and slammed the side of my face into the hood. I
was silent despite the pain for I figured probably my life depended on
it. Was never a word spoken, just him roughly grabbing the top of my
skirt and panties and yanking them straight to my ankles, exposing my
ass to the night air, me suddenly knowing what this was all about and
wanting to die because of it.

Then the man lifted his right hand in the air and brought it down
hard on my buttock, making a slap would've been heard a full block
away were it not for the clanking sounds of the factory. I yelped, and
was preparing for Sodom-like humiliations when he reached down and
seized the waist of my skirt and panties and with a single violent jerk
pulled them back into place. Then my arm was forced behind my back
and the other arm was forced to meet it, and when my wrists were
crossed I felt a rope binding them together in a tight, scratchy knot. He
pulled out a long red bandana and twirled it in the air so it went into a
tube. When this was done he pushed it against my mouth, the force of
it parting my teeth and chafing against the corners of my mouth. My
tongue was forced to the back of my mouth and I started gagging. Was
this in combination with pure dog fear that made tears skitter down my
cheeks and jawline and by the time they'd dribbled down my neck
they'd gone cool. He pulled at my collar and spun me around. He was
breathing heavily, and while he caught his breath I took my first look at
his unshaven face through eyes gone so wide I couldn't've shut them if
I'd tried. I could feel a welt coming up on the side of my face and a
palm-shaped bruise on my buttock, and it was the understanding this
violence was really happening that made my nose get so snotty I could
barely breathe through it. His arm shot out, and I prepared to be hit,
though instead what he did was seize the back of my collar and spin me
around again and march me to the passenger side door.

He opened the door and pushed my head down and shoved me
into the car and ordered me to stay there or next time I'd get myself a
spanking that'd leave my ass as raw as the Dakotas in winter. One of
my feet was still a little ways out of the car, the man kicking at it until
I pulled it inside. He slammed the door behind me and locked it.

He got in himself and started the engine, and when it came to life
it belched and farted and generally sounded like an old man sputtering
at the end of a nap. He backed it up and took a lane bisecting the blackness in the other direction. I didn't know what my survival would or wouldn't depend on, so I blinked away tears and forced myself to look
hard at everything. I figured I was being driven to another grey tenement, or maybe a farmhouse way in the country, where I'd be held,
barely fed and subjected to round-the-clock buggery until the life was
gone from me. In other words, I was on the lookout for avenues of
escape. Being trussed up like hog bound for slaughter made it difficult
to imagine one, so I was visited with a single overriding thought: Why
in Sam Hill didn't you bring Rajah? I spent the rest of the car ride imagining what Rajah would've done to the driver and believe me it was as
bloody as bloody gets.

We drove through streets with broken lights. I kept hoping we'd
pull up beside a cop on the beat and he'd notice that the woman in the
passenger side was gagged with a bandana turning wet with gob, snot
and tears. Course, it didn't happen, there never being a cop around
when you need one (and cops back then tending to work on a user-fee
system anyway). I kept taking quick glances at the driver, who was dark
and hairy at the neck. He wore an overcoat in need of repair, which I
mention to show how crazy the brain goes in moments of extreme
stress: I saw that frayed brown fabric and for a moment felt sorry for
him and the circumstances that could make a boy grow up as foul and
bad-smelling as he was. Meanwhile, I watched where we went, hunting
for information that might be useful should escape present itself. Was
impossible. The car kept taking turn after turn after turn, the steering
wheel big and plastic and grooved and grey and tilted forward like
a bus's.

When we stopped in front of a police station everything finally
started making sense.

He shut off the motor and, as he walked around the back of the car, it
clanked and sputtered and caused the car to shudder. After flinging
open the side door he grabbed hold of my right upper arm and pulled
hard, saying the second thing he'd ever say to me: "Out."

With that, I was on my feet and getting marched into the precinct.
It seemed to me I wasn't the first person to ever get this brand of treatment, for when we came bursting through the doors not a single head
turned. The man pushed me up to the desk sergeant, and once again I
was flung forward, the front of me hitting the wooden desk.

"Here," he barked, and walked out.

They'd been expecting me. The desk sergeant, a jowly owlshaped man with no hair and considerable midriff, nodded and came
around and took my arm and double-timed me to the back of the station where the cells were. We passed the lock-up holding that evening's
allotment of drunks and reprobates, and of course seeing a women
with her hands bound sent them to hollering whatever lewdnesses came
to mind. I glanced over and recognized a few of the workingmen in
there and was glad they were paying me the honour of not yelling out
vile, venal things like the others.

We finally stopped in front of a small cell holding one other
woman. The sergeant told me to turn around, and when I did he untied
the gag and the rope binding my wrists. My jaw ached and my wrists
came away chafed and sore. The sergeant then opened the cell door and
I considered it a small measure of kindness when he more guided me
than shoved me inside. He locked the door with a clang and walked
away, hollering, "Pack it in!" when the lock-ups started yelling how he
was fat as a pig and smelled like one besides.

The jail fell silent. I sat on the bunk not occupied by the woman,
who'd obviously been working the same streets we'd driven through to
get there: the heaviness of her makeup spoke volumes. Now that the
immediate danger was over, my heart leapt into overdrive, and the
nerves in my head started firing so fast the cell filled with shards of
colour. It took a minute of slow, even breathing to get me in a state one
ratchet down from panic. I closed my eyes and tried to moisten my lips.
I also thought about saying hello to the woman but could see she wasn't in the mood for chatter as she hadn't so much as glanced in my direction. Impatient, was the way she looked, for she was loudly chewing her gum and bouncing a foot in the air.

The long and short of it is I was there all night, not a phone call
offered or a word spoken or bread and water brought. I was too revved
up to sleep, the sense of boredom and containment soon getting harder
to tolerate than what I was going to have to face come morning.
Sometime in the middle of the night, with the men in lock-up snoring
like wood splitters, two guards approached the cell. I kept still, hoping
whatever they were there for had nothing to do with me. My cellmate
took the gum out of her mouth, stuck it to the metal cot and
approached the bars. There was whispering between the two guards
before one sort of stood aside while the other crowded the bars.

Even though I was on the far side of thirty and spent my days
working side by side with workingmen, there were still ways I was a little naive. As the woman sauntered toward the bars, I honestly thought
her time was up and she was about to be released, the only thing striking me as odd was them doing it in the middle of the night.

Next thing I knew the woman had dropped to her knees and I
could hear the sound of a zipper being pulled and I realized what was
happening was the same thing I'd seen in that sepia photo of Dimitri's so
long ago. The slurping sound lasted maybe a minute, the guard throwing
his head back and emitting a noise like an after-meal burp. He zipped up,
and a second later the other guard was pushed against the bars and helping himself to the sepia treatment as well; he finished pretty much like the
first, after which the woman stood and wiped her mouth with the back of
her hand. The first guard then detached a key ring about as big around
as a dinner plate from his belt. He opened the cell and let the woman out.
The three walked off, and that was the last company I had till daybreak,
when another guard brought a red wooden tray holding a bowl of cold
oatmeal and toast and chicory coffee as thick and tasty as gravel.

I sat glumly chewing. Once I finished eating what I wanted,
which wasn't much, I put the tray on the other bed and sat with my hands folded in my lap, desperately missing trains, rubes, cats, Rajah,
applause, the smell of elephants, anything circus. Meanwhile, the place
was getting loud. People were screaming they had to get out and they
needed to call their lawyer and they were innocent and they knew their
rights. Some of the others were screaming for dope, which was worse,
for they added a layer of racket that was high-pitched and frenzied and
that worked at your nerves like a fork. Every ten minutes or so a guard
would come walking down the hallway clacking his billy club against
the cages and shouting, "Pack it in goddammit, pack it in!" and the
noise would stop for two, maybe three, minutes. Then it'd start up
again, a murmur at first then growing into a roar. Was like cycles, and
I occupied those early hours listening to it flood and recede, flood and
recede. Outside, the sun was barely above the horizon.

As the morning progressed it got hot and airless in the station,
which added smell to the whole equation; after a time I got so bored and
anxious I thought I might even do some yelling myself and probably
would have had I not still been clinging to the whispery notion I was a
circus queen and had to act as such. Was then a pair of guards came
walking down the hallway accompanied by a man with mussed hair and
the pissed-off expression of someone who'd been woken early. He
wore a suit and carried driving gloves in his hand, which he waved
around as though he was directing traffic.

All three stopped in front of my cage. I looked up and immediately felt like I recognized the man who wasn't a guard-was the
thinning sand-coloured hair, the wire spectacles, the jowliness of the
bottom half of the face. In fact, it looked like a face I'd spent a goodly
amount of time trying to forget, and as soon as this thought passed
through my head I knew who it was. I was looking up at Horace B.
Sights, Superintendent, Western State Hospital for the Mentally Insane,
Hopkinsville, Kentucky.

That son of a horse's ass just eyed me, stretching the moment
out, for it was clear he'd been waiting for this a long time and was delighted it was finally happening. He even made a show of taking off
his glasses and wiping them on a starched white handkerchief before
perching them back on his nose; was as though he was saying 1 wouldn't want to make a mistake, Officers, no I wouldn't want that.... Then his
beady, raincloud-coloured eyes roved up and down my body, and it
wouldn't've surprised me if I'd found out he was picturing me nude,
specifically those parts of me he'd poked and prodded every time he'd
inspected me for female irregularity. He even stroked his chin, as
though he had a thoughtful side he wanted to put on display.

He turned to one of my jailers and nodded.

"You sure?"

"Oh yes," Sights answered.

The three stared for a while longer, and when the guard in charge
turned and gestured that he could go Sights hesitated a little and said,
"May I speak with her?"

The two guards looked at each other, for a long time actually, as
if they were inspecting each other's mouth corners for yolk. Finally, the
one in charge shrugged, pulled his keys, opened the cell door and said,
"Five minutes."

Sights sat. He looked at me, stared at me, in fact, letting a wrinkly
little worm-wriggle of a grin infect the right side of his lips. Was probably the happiest he'd been in years. Mostly I kept my eyes on the floor,
though I kept taking fleeting glances at his smirk, true ugliness being
something difficult to keep your eyes away from.

He spoke. "I just wanted you to know something, Mrs.
Aganosticus."

Here he obviously wanted me to mutter, "Oh really, what's
that?" so I didn't say boo, though I did shudder at hearing myself called
by Dimitri's surname.