Chapter 6

When Bobby came in the back door and stomped his boots clean, Mavis noted that Meg and Sally took an inordinate interest in how school had been for him. He had written several notes to Mavis in the last week, in response to questions from her about one thing or another, and she knew he was much smarter than the rest of them thought. She also knew that, in his heart, he was a good boy ... or man, as it were. She too had seen the marks on his back, and knew that that could have made him mean, but hadn't. And he was almost a man, she thought. She looked at him speculatively. She hadn't taken the time to think about him all that much. He'd fitted in well, and hadn't caused a single problem. Well, not yet anyway. She'd also seen what swung between his legs. She'd reacted to that lovely penis herself, and she certainly couldn't blame two young, single women for noticing it too.

Could that be a problem? she wondered. There would certainly be a sensation in town if either of them turned up with a swelled belly. She pondered that for a minute and snorted. There was no way in the world Sally had the gumption to take up with the boy. And Meg ... well Meg might bear some watching. It was possible that she had just loosened a few buttons because it was hot in the bathroom, and then re-buttoned them wrong.

She looked at Bobby. He was smiling. He had a beautiful smile. He was a handsome man, or would be if he got a little more meat on his bones. And that would happen too, at the rate he ate. He had asked for paper and pencil and was writing a note to Meg. She got up from peeling potatoes and went over to see what was going on.

Meg had just finished reading the note. "His teacher wants to spend some extra time with him," said Meg. She didn't sound happy about that, though there was no real reason why it wasn't a good idea.

"Well, he needs an education," said Mavis neutrally.

"Yes ... but..." Meg's voice dropped off.

"But what, Meg?" asked Mavis calmly.

"Oh nothing," said Meg, handing her the note, her jaws clenched."

The little danger flag in Mavis' mind inched higher on the flag pole.

Over the next week Rachel kept Bobby behind at school three more times. That he was intelligent she could tell immediately upon testing him some more. But when she asked him why he couldn't talk, he got a guarded look in his eye and couldn't provide any information. At one point she made him open his mouth, to see if he had a tongue or not, and he looked at her strangely. In the process she got close enough to him to smell his scent. He didn't smell like most of the men she met on a casual basis. They smelled of stale sweat, and most had poor oral hygiene too. Bobby, on the other hand, smelled good, like a man should in her mind. And his breath was clean too.

She asked him about that, and learned through his writing that he had been taken to a dentist once, and after that he had done everything possible to make sure he never had to go again. She looked again and saw where the tooth had been pulled. He showed her the new toothbrush Mavis had gotten him, that he still carried in his pocket, and used each time he ate.

He read everything she gave him, and only rarely pointed to a word to have her explain its meaning. While she didn't have the classics in the school house, she owned a few herself, and knew people who would loan her things ... Chaucer, Shakespere, more of Twain's work and many others. During regular school he sat in a corner and read, unless she needed him to help, which he did willingly. He was a wizard at teaching the younger children their numbers, and how to add and subtract. And he sat with them and helped them draw out their letters too, showing them his own and then watching closely as they tried to copy that. She smiled at the two girls who had a crush on him. If June Bug and Emily had been ten years older they'd have lost their virginity to him by now. She wondered what it would be like lying with Bobby.

Her head jerked. Where in the world had that thought come from? She looked at him, as if he might be working some magic spell on her, but he was simply reading at the time. Reading with those deep brown eyes of his, under those too long lashes of his. Her head jerked again and a child asked a question. She was only too happy to focus on that.

It was Friday night when the accident happened. Jerry and Terrence were playing catch in the parlor. They were throwing a rolled up sock back and forth. When Jerry's throw went wrong, Terrence dove to catch it and hit the clothes tree that several coats were hung on. It tipped, and the weight of the coats sent it into the window nearby. There was only one hook on the clothes tree that wasn't occupied, and that was the one that hit the window. The glass broke with a crack and tinkling sound as the pieces fell, mostly outside in the snow. Terrence was still off balance, though, and he instinctively tried to grab onto something to stop his fall. His nine-year-old hand landed on the broken edge of the glass still in the window frame and nearly took two of his fingers off.

The breaking glass got everyone's attention. Terrence's screams as he saw his bloody hand got them all running.

Mavis knew it was bad when she saw the amount of blood that had already spilled and welled out of the boy's tightly closed hand, which he was holding to his chest as he sat and rocked and screamed.

She had towels brought to her and had Meg hold Terrence tightly while she pried his hand open to try to stop the bleeding. Her blood ran cold when she saw the damage. He had to be seen by a doctor, and he had to be seen soon. She stuffed the end of the towel against the wound and let him close his hand again. Then she instructed Meg to help him hold the hand tightly closed. Prudence and Donna were already gone, since it was so close to bedtime. That only left her and Sally to take care of the kids, since Meg was tied up with Terrence.

She went to the desk and, with bloody hands, wrote a note. She called to Bobby, who had been standing and watching.

"Take this down to Doctor Johanson's office. He lives upstairs from his office. If you can't find him there, go to the saloon. He has to get this note, Bobby, and he has to come soon. Terrence could bleed to death if not.

Bobby took time to get his coat, which was good, because it was bitterly cold in the night air. He ran, but when he got to the Doctor's office on C street all the windows were dark. He headed for the saloon. The back door was closer, so that's where he went. He burst into that door, into the kitchen, where an amazingly fat woman was standing at a big wooden table rolling out pie crusts. She looked at him and frowned.

"Don't need no snot nosed boys hanging around here!" she barked. "Now git!" She brandished the rolling pin in her hand.

Normally, Bobby would have done exactly what she said. But he couldn't.

"Doctor" he said explosively. He was so unused to speaking that only one word came out. He held up the bloody note and the woman paled.

"In there." She pointed to a set of double glass doors with lace curtains making it impossible to see through them.

Bobby darted to the doors and pushed one open. Inside there was a table, set for dinner. Through another set of doors Bobby could see the saloon proper. He was in the dining room. There were six men sitting around the table, smoking cigars, the remains of dinner cluttering the table. A bottle of whiskey stood unstoppered beside a man wearing a vest. The doctor was sitting in another chair. Bobby had been with Mavis one time on a shopping trip when she stopped Doctor Johansen to ask him a question about a rash on one of the children. She had introduced Bobby, who, of course, had said nothing.

Bobby went to the man and thrust out the bloody note. The man read it quickly and jumped up.

"Gotta go boys," he said, grabbing his coat. "House call," he added. He went out the doors to the saloon immediately. Bobby started to follow but was grabbed by the collar of his coat.

"No you don't, boy!" said the fat woman, who had followed him into the dining room. "You go out there and the constable will make my life miserable for a month. Out the way you came in!" she said. Bobby wondered if she knew the constable himself was one of the men sitting at the table. She manhandled him with surprising strength and dragged him back to the kitchen and to the back door. She opened the door, shoved him through it and slammed it again without another word.

He pulled up the collar of his coat and started down the line of buildings that abutted the saloon. He had to pass a smaller building, set back from the alleyway, and noticed that there were lights in its windows. He didn't think anything of that until he was right beside it and heard a muffled scream. It obviously came from that little building. He heard a woman scream "get out!" and then a sound he knew only too well, that of a hand hitting flesh. He moved closer, and heard the woman crying and pleading "Don't do this."

Bobby stood there, unsure of what to do. Whatever was going on in there wasn't any of his business. He thought to go on and the woman screamed again, a terrified sound. There was another slap and a gruff male voice shouted "Shut up bitch, or I'll kill you!"

There was a pile of discarded trash and crates against the wall and Bobby saw a board lying loose. It was about three feet long, and narrow enough that he could grip it. He picked it up and stole closer to the nearest window. There were curtains inside, but there was a slim gap in them that let him see part of the room.

He could see half of the back of the man, and beyond him a bed with a woman on it. The woman lay crossways on the bed, her knees at the edge, her feet hanging down. The man raised his right arm and slapped the woman again, making Bobby wince. He had put all of his strength into that blow. He couldn't see the woman's upper body, but he could see that she was naked, though her clothing lay on the bed under her. He realized her dress had been torn open and she was lying on top of it. He could see that the woman had golden blond hair between her legs that puffed out and looked strange to Bobby.

He could also hear her terrified screams as the man pushed his suspenders off his shoulders and let his pants fall.

Bobby didn't have a clear understanding of rape, or the ins and outs of sexual behavior between adults. But he knew that nobody deserved to be treated like this.

Then the man moved, and Bobby saw that the woman was Miss Templeton.

After it was all over he couldn't remember running to the door, or pushing it open. What he did remember was the knife in the man's left hand as he stood over Miss Templeton and the stiff penis that jutted from the man's groin. He remembered the man turning his head toward Bobby, and the snarl on the man's face as he raised the knife.

And Bobby remembered swinging the board, aiming for the side of the man's head.

The man went down instantly, and the board was jerked from Bobby's hand, driving splinters deep into his fingers.

Level two of Mr. Maslow's pyramid is where events like this take place. Bobby, according to Mr. Maslow, had just defended someone he cared about. It was an animal reaction, which is quite normal on the lower levels of the pyramid, but it was based on a very human thought process.

Bobby stared at the blood where the board, for some reason, seemed stuck to the man's head. He noticed that the knife was lying on the floor, and that the tip had a reddish glint to it.

Then he looked at Miss Templeton, who lay splayed on the bed, naked and sobbing. There was blood on her too. It was coming from a wound under her chin, and had trickled down her chest to cross one pale breast.

He couldn't help but notice her breasts, even though that wasn't uppermost in his mind. They were probably twice as big as Meg's, and rounder. Meg's nipples were brownish, but Miss Templeton's were pink.

Then she saw him and struggled to sit up. Once her motion got going she flew up off the bed and she tripped over the man's body at her feet. Bobby stepped forward and caught her, his hands sliding up her sides to her armpits. Her forward motion made her take a step and she stepped on the man's body, then up and over it into Bobby's arms. She was crying hysterically and her grip on Bobby was so strong he couldn't have broken it if he'd have tried. He would have spoken then, but he had no idea what to say. The man wasn't moving, and Bobby didn't know if he was in trouble or not.

So he just stood there and held her. Her torn dress covered her back, as it was still whole across her shoulders, but her naked front was pressed against him. He knew that, yet he didn't think of her in the same way he thought of doing this with Meg. He did not get erect.

Bobby began to suspect more and more that he was in trouble. He'd spoken to the fat woman, but not to anyone else. Maybe he could still get away with playing mute. He knew he had to go get someone. He couldn't stay here, and he couldn't just leave. He remembered that the constable was in the saloon, or had been when he left the dining room.

She finally began to calm, her shuddering breaths coming more easily, and words beginning to tumble out of her mouth. She must have said "Thank you" ten or fifteen times in between her recounting of how the man had forced his way in, and ripped her dress said he would kill her if she screamed.

He pried Miss Templeton back away from him, his eyes going automatically to those big, round pale breasts. He pulled at the tatters of her dress where the buttons had been ripped off, and pulled the cloth to partially cover her. Her hands gripped him, but he pushed her to a chair and made her sit in it. He saw pencil and paper on a table nearby and wrote "I'll get help" on it.

She looked at the paper without reading it, still sobbing. Bobby shook her and pointed at the note. She brought it close to her face.

"Noooo, don't leave meeee" she wailed.

Bobby looked at the man. He had the look of the dead. Bobby had seen death before, on more than one occasion. Back where he had come from men ended up in alleys looking like this man looked. He went to the man as Miss Templeton's eyes followed and he kicked the body, which rocked and settled again. His intent was to show Miss Templeton that the man was no threat to her. Then he went back to her and pointed at the note again.

The door was still open when he turned to it, and her cries for him not to leave her were still calling out to him as he closed it behind him. He ran back to the saloon, and through the kitchen door. The fat woman was still there, but she only had time to take a breath to yell at him and he was already through the double doors into the dining room. The Constable had just stood up and was putting on his coat, his cigar clamped in his jaws.

Bobby went to the man and grabbed his arm, pulling.

"What?!" the man growled, jerking his arm. "What are you up to now, boy?"

Another man at the table spoke up.

"He cain't talk Homer. He's one of Mavis' brood."

Bobby jerked again, harder, making it obvious that he wanted the constable to come with him.

"Well let's just go see what kind of trouble you found boy," said the man.

Four men followed the constable out into the back of the saloon as Bobby pulled him. They moved as a gaggle toward Miss Templeton's house, one of them announcing that that's who lived there. When they got to the front door Bobby reached for the knob and a hand closed over his wrist.

"Is she in trouble boy?" asked the constable, his voice low.

Bobby nodded and the man reached beneath his coat and pulled out a huge revolver. He pushed Bobby to one side and opened the door. He only had to take one step to be able to see the whole house, for all intents and purposes. His eyes swept first to the body on the floor, and then to the source of sobs in the chair. Her condition, and the knife on the floor made it obvious what had happened.

"Jules, check that man," he ordered tersely, as he stepped toward the young woman in the chair.

"It's all right miss," he said in a surprisingly soft voice. "It's all over now. What happened here?" Her dress was hanging open in the front, and he couldn't keep himself from noticing her lush body either.

Rachel, between sobs, told of the man coming into the house and threatening her with the knife. She told how he'd ripped her dress, and told her that she'd be glad when he was finished. She'd fought and he'd threatened to kill her. Then Bobby was there. She looked around at the men, who were all staring at her.

"Bobby was here," she said. "Where's Bobby?" She lunged up out of the chair and gripped the constable's coat lapels. "Where's Bobby?" she screamed. She couldn't remember what he'd done, or if the man had stabbed him or not. "He saved meeee," she cried.

"There there, he's fine. He's outside," said the constable. "You're bleeding missy. We need to get the doctor to take a look at you." He patted her head like she was a dog. "Missy, I have to ask this. I know it's hard, but I have to ask. Did he have his way with you?"

Rachel's head came up and her eyes cleared. "No!" she said. "Bobby saved me. Where's Bobbeeeeeee" she started crying again.

"He's dead, Homer," said the man who was kneeling beside the rapist. "Kid must have hit him with the board. Had a nail sticking out the end. Punched clean through his skull. Fell where he stood, more'n likely."

"Well shit!" snarled Homer.

Rachel flinched and leaned away from him.

"Sorry ma'am" he muttered. "Him bein' dead kind of complicates things."

He stood up and looked at one of the other men. "Jasper, get on over to Mavis' house and fetch doc. Since this boy is the one that come and got him, I s'pect that's where he is. Tell 'im I got a dead body and a mostly raped woman, and I need 'im over here. Get there Pronto, Jasper."

The man took off running and bumped into Bobby, who was shifting from foot to foot in the doorway. Homer leaned out and grabbed him.

"Don't you go nowhere, son. We got us a mess here, and you're neck deep in it." He pulled him into the room.

As soon as Rachel saw Bobby she leapt up out of the chair, her dress flopping open and she rushed to hug Bobby, again gripping him so hard he couldn't get away. The men looked at Bobby with a mixture of emotions on their faces. They'd seen what she was pressing against him too. Some of them felt ashamed at feeling lust for a raped, or almost raped woman, but later on they'd shake their heads and talk about what a fine figure of a woman she was. Most of them had wished they could see that body ... even if it wasn't like this. And there it was, pressed up against a dumb orphan kid.

The constable gave up trying to separate Rachel from Bobby and spoke to the man nearest him. "Kenny, your place isn't far. Why don't you go see if Eunice will come over here and sit with Miss Templeton." He spoke next to Jules again. "See if she's got some more dresses or something she can put on." He turned to the last man. "Tom, I guess that leaves it up to you to go get Blaine Coggs." Blaine was the town undertaker.

Homer went over to the dead man and rolled him over to check for himself. He made a sound. "Know this feller. Throwed him out of the saloon earlier tonight for causing trouble. He was drinkin' hard and had no money to pay. Should'a throw'd him in jail."

Kenny got back first, and came in to announce that Eunice was on her way. Eunice got there right on his heels, and had two more women in tow. They shooed the men out into the snow and gathered around Rachel to do what only women could do for her just then. They had to pry Rachel's arms from around Bobby. When they told him to leave too, Rachel's sobs and pleas for him not to go were so pitiful that finally Eunice relented.

"You stand over there, and turn your back," she ordered. Bobby did so, wondering where all this would end up.

The women had just gotten Rachel into another dress when there was a thump on the door and Doctor Johansen called out. He was let in, and Mavis charged in right behind him. She saw Bobby and rushed over to him.

"Are you all right baby?" she asked anxiously. "They said there'd been a killing and that you were involved! Bobby what's going on?"

Bobby was tempted to just tell her and be done with it. Life was getting way too complicated for the teenager. But just then Homer called in, asking if he could come in. Since none of the women in the room knew what actually happened, he was welcome, as long as he answered questions. The doctor did a cursory examination of Rachel and pronounced that the throat wound was minor and would take care of itself. He was more concerned about Rachel's mental state. The women conferred and announced that Rachel would be going with them, and that they'd take care of her at Eunice's house until she recovered. Kenny looked pleased, until his wife caught him looking pleased. She knew he'd been in this room before she got there, because he'd described the scene to her. And she knew how poor Rachel Templeton had been dressed, so she knew what her husband had seen that he hadn't described.

She faced her smirking husband. "Kenny Holland, don't you be thinking you're sleeping in our bed tonight. You just go on over to the hotel and get yourself a room. I'll send word when you can come back home."

He tried to resist. "Now Eunice, don't be that way. Why can't she get a hotel room?" There were groans from two of the other men, who were looking in through the open doorway, and Homer shook his head sadly. He grabbed Kenny's arm and pulled him to the door before Eunice could go looking for something to hit him with. As he was led out Kenny kept complaining. "What in tarnation did I do? I helped for pity's sake! And it's me that has to find someplace to sleep?"

The doctor went to the man on the floor and leaned down. He pronounced the man dead and then stood up. "Nothing more I can do here. I still got an injured boy to finish tending to, if this town can settle down for an hour. Homer? I got to stitch the boy up. Try to keep a lid on things for a while, all right?"

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