The time with Danny, she reflected, had been sort of interesting. It had done nothing to her, despite the incredible effect it had had upon him. The interesting part was the way she could turn on all her passion and still not feel a thing. Maybe that was the secret of a prostitute, she thought. Give the man his money’s worth without losing any of your reserve. A valuable talent, no doubt. If everything went wrong in New York as it had gone so irremediably wrong in Antrim, she could always cash in on her ultimate negotiable asset and become a prostitute. She evidently had a bent for it
No, she thought. No, Danny Duncan had been the first and Danny Duncan would be the last. She was going to be good from here on out. She was going to get out of town, start fresh somewhere else, and this time everything would work itself out. She sat naked, smoking, letting her wet skin dry as the cool air hit it, and she waited for Danny to come back with clothes and money.
She heard a car and sprang to her feet. The car braked, and she ran to the door, keeping her naked body hidden and craning her neck to see who had arrived.
Not one car.
Five cars.
Each car stopped in turn. Doors flew open and boys piled out. About twenty of them, all with excited glints in their eyes and funny expressions on their faces. She recognized most of them; they were classmates at Antrim High, members of the senior class. She saw Jim Bregger, the fat pimply kid who had tried to date her when Danny had declared open season on April North. She saw other boys, and all of them were coming toward the barn.
Danny was leading them.
The rest waited outside. Danny came on in, and April stared at him. He tossed her a bundle of clothes—a wool plaid skirt, a yellow sweater, underwear and socks and shoes.
“Here you go,” he said. “But don’t put ’em on yet, April.”
She did not understand.
“You need more than clothes,” he went on. “You need money, too. A hundred bucks worth. Remember?”
She nodded.
“Well,” he said, “I got the dough for you. A hundred bucks. See?”
He took a roll of five-dollar bills from his pocket and spread them before her in a fan. Then he folded them once and returned them to his pocket.
“A hundred bucks,” he said. “All for you, April. All you have to do is earn it.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Don’t you?”
She shook her head. But actually she was afraid that she did understand, that she understood all too well. Her earlier thoughts—that she could always become a prostitute if everything else failed—came back to torment her. Apparently she was going to become a prostitute already.
“I didn’t have a hundred bucks lying around, April. Hell, none of the guys have that kind of dough. But I found twenty guys with five bucks each. Five times twenty is a hundred, April. All you have to do is give each guy his five bucks worth and you’ll have a hundred for yourself.” He winked at her. “Judging from what I got a few minutes ago, it shouldn’t be hard for you. Hell, let’s face it. You’re the hottest stuff around. You’ll love every minute of it.”
She wanted to tell him that she had only been pretending, that she would not love it at all. And she did not need the money, not really. It would be definitely easier to go home and get the money than to earn it by lying in a pile of hay while one boy after the other took his pleasure with her.
But what was the use? She was in a spot now. There were twenty boys outside, and they had not come out in the rain just to be turned down. If she tried to call the whole show off, she had a fairly good idea what would happen.
They would force her.
That would not be hard for them. They would hit her, and they would hold her down, and instead of a simple line-up it would be mass rape. Then they would not even give her the rotten hundred dollars—they would leave her half-dead in the barn and go away.
“Suppose I don’t want to,” she said, feeling him out.
“You’ve got to.”
“And if I won’t?”
“You will.”
The certainty with which he said those two words convinced her that she was right. She had no chance. She looked at him, looked at the cocky expression on his face, and she knew that he was not going to let this opportunity slip through his fingers. She was stuck.
“You’re quite an organizer,” she told Danny. Quite a pimp, she silently amended.
He took her words for a compliment. “It was nothing,” he said modestly. “All I had to do was pass the idea around. Everybody went for it like a shot.”
“They did?”
“Sure,” he said. “Everybody’s pretty darn hot to get to you, April. They’re panting all over the place. Every guy I asked was off like a shot to pick up five bucks and come after you. Some of them went and borrowed the dough.”
It was almost funny.
“All except Bill Piersall,” he went on. “You know, the jerk took a poke at me when I mentioned the deal to him.”
“He did?”
“Yeah. Jesus, I wanted to powder him. Here I was, letting him in on a good deal, and he started yelling that I should leave you alone, that you were a decent girl and I was a son of a bitch. He’s a real farmer, let me tell you. Sticking up for you like a clown. He can’t realize that you just love to get it night and day.”
She wanted to laugh, then changed her mind and wanted to cry. All along Bill had been sticking up for her, trying to treat her as a decent girl, while she was playing harlot for Craig Jeffers. And Bill was the one she’d vented all her anger on, the one she had brushed off repeatedly.
“He’s some kind of a nut,” Danny said.
A nut? Maybe, she thought. He must be nuts if he likes me. But he did like her, liked her and respected her in spite of what she had done. And it was not as if he were an innocent kid with a distorted picture of a girl named April North. She could still remember the time he had made love to her in the woods, and she knew how good it had been, better than she had ever permitted herself to realize.
Bill was not after sex. He had had that, and he wanted more. He wanted her—as a person, as a girl, as a woman. But it was too late now.
Too late. Because what might have been could never be now, and whatever chance she had had for happiness with Bill was shot to hell and gone. Now she would turn her tricks for Danny and his boys and take her hundred dollars and run. If she did not, she would just be stuck all over again. Danny would probably take back the clothes and leave her high and dry—or more accurately, low and damp. She would miss out on the ride to Xenia and the money and the dry clothes, and she would probably spend the rest of her life in the abandoned barn waiting for the rain to stop. “Want to get started, April?”
She looked at him. For a second she glared, and he flinched from the venomous hatred her eyes revealed. But instantly she masked this expression and flashed what was supposed to be a coy smile. “I’m ready,” she said.
He laughed, turned and went outside. She waited, inwardly sick, until the first boy came in. She recognized him but could not remember his name. He was tall and gangling, with nervous eyes that could not quite meet hers and at the same time could not stay away from her ripe body. He stared at her legs and breasts and his tongue was hanging out.
A virgin, she thought. A simple slob who didn’t know what a woman was like. “Well,” she said. “I won’t bite.” He stammered something unintelligible. “Get those silly clothes off,” she said.
I’m old and jaded, she thought. What’s the difference? It all makes no difference.
But the gangling boy never got to her. There was noise in the background, a car pulling up sharply, a door opening and banging shut. And then the boys out front were yelling, and then a man was bursting through the open door of the barn.
Craig.
“You stupid urchin,” he yelled at the boy. “Get away from her, you fool!”
The boy backed away, confused. Craig charged into the room and swung a fist at the boy. The boy caught
the punch with the tip of his chin and went down as though pole-axed. He fell to the floor and did not move.
Craig turned to April, his eyes bright. “Well, how lovely,” he said, lips curling in a smile. “This is the reformation of April North, isn’t it? I looked all over for you, dear. I wondered what had happened to you. And then I passed a caravan of cars loaded with boys singing dirty songs. And sure enough, dear, they led me straight to you.”
She tried to cover her nakedness with her hands and he laughed at her.
“April North’s life of purity,” he said. “Taking on the senior class. What are they paying you, April?”
“One hundred dollars.”
“Great Caesar’s ghost,” he said. “That’s magnificent. Get your clothes on, April. If you’ve got to play harlot, you might as well do it properly. You can live a life of luxury for the same work.”
“With you?”
“With me. It’s only sensible, April. If you’re going to use sex to stay alive, you might as well get some benefit out of it. You’ll live luxuriously at my house. You’ll have parties and friends and excitement instead of serving as a doormat for the students of Antrim High School. Doesn’t it make a little more sense that way, dear?”
It did. She had sworn to stay away from Craig, but now she was only selling herself cheaply. If she had to be a tramp, she might as well make it pay. And it would pay better as Craig’s mistress than as mistress for twenty kids, all of them damp behind their ears.
Danny was in the doorway, shouting something, yelling at Craig. She saw Craig step in close to him, then lash out with his right foot. Danny buckled, clapping his hands to his groin and groaning, his face contorted with pain. The edge of Craig’s hand came down in a deadly chop and caught Danny on the side of the throat. The boy fell all the way down, landing in a crumpled heap on the barn floor.
“Get dressed,” Craig snapped. “These churls won’t bother us. They have us outnumbered, but that won’t do them any good.”
She dressed quickly, putting on the clean dry clothes Danny had gotten from his sister. April tried not to look at Craig while she dressed. She felt terrible, but there was nothing else for her to do. She had had one chance—Bill Piersall—but she had muffed it. And you did not get a second chance. “Come on,” Craig said.
They were in the Mercedes now. The other boys were milling around, trying to get up the courage to try to get their prize away from Craig. But they did not have enough time. Craig started the sleek sports car and spun around in a fast U-turn, heading back toward 68. He put the accelerator on the floor and the car was a streak in the night.
April noticed another noise, another car spinning around in a tight U-turn and coming after them. She looked over her shoulder, and her heart leaped up into her throat and she could not swallow it down again. The car was a hot-rod. The driver was Bill Piersall.
12
“WHO,” said Craig, “is that?”
She was still staring, open-mouthed in wonder. It’s my knight in shining armor, she wanted to say, my knight on a charger of nuts and bolts.
She said: “It’s Bill.”
“Bill?”
“Bill Piersall,” she said. “The boy who made his own hot-rod. I was telling you about him.”
“And what’s he doing?”
“Chasing us,” she said.
Craig laughed. “Chasing a Mercedes in a home-made job? He must be out of his mind.”
Craig had the accelerator on the floor but the rod was coming on in hot pursuit. They were pulling away from Bill, moving away, and she felt almost as though she were being torn in two. Because she realized all at once that she wanted Bill to catch them, to draw ahead of them and force the Mercedes to stop. Bill still loved her, she thought. He still wanted her.
“I’ll show that whelp what a real car can do,” Craig was saying. “Watch this, April.”
She was watching the hot-rod instead. She thought of the way she had contrasted Bill and Craig by contrasting their cars. But she had had it all wrong, she knew now. Craig was a rich man’s son who bought the car he wanted with money he had inherited. But Bill had built the car he wanted, had put it together with his own hands and his own sweat. Any rich man could buy a Mercedes and drive hell out of it. Not everyone could build a rod like Bill’s.
And, amazingly, the rod was gaining on them. She stared at it, saw Bill at the wheel, concentrating on his driving with single-minded attention. He was pulling almost even with the Benz, his hands riveted to the steering wheel. It amazed her that a car so sloppy in appearance could be capable of such a burst of speed.
Well, appearances were deceiving. She had misjudged Bill’s car just as she had misjudged Bill, and now she was just beginning to see the light when it was almost too late to do any good. They were careening down the dirt road now, the rod just a few feet behind the Mercedes, with Route 68 not far ahead.
“Dammit!” Craig was shouting. His face was flushed and the effort was telling on him. “That little bastard—”
Craig swerved sharply to his left, brushing the nose of the rod in an effort to spin the rod off the road. But Bill held on, sweeping to his left and putting on an extra burst of speed to draw even with the Mercedes. He went out in front, then slashed sharply across in front of the Benz. April saw the look of horror on Craig’s face, saw the nose of the Benz moving toward the tail of the rod, and she knew they were going to crash.
The rod did it neatly. Bill tickled the Mercedes’ nose, then spun forward. But Craig did not make it. The car careened out of control, spilling over the side of the road.
April held her breath …
She was thrown up over the side of the car and into a pile of brush at the side. Her arms and legs were scratched and her head ached but she was alive and more or less unhurt. She raised herself onto one elbow, and then she saw Bill.
His car was parked on the road ahead, miraculously unhurt. And Bill was at the Mercedes, working feverishly. He managed to lift the unconscious Craig, dragged him off to one side.
The Mercedes burst into flames, burning like a beacon at the roadside. The racy automobile was no longer a dream car, no longer a car at all—just flaming metal and leather.
She ran to Bill, calling his name.
Sweat coursed down his face. He lowered Craig into wet grass and stood for a moment, looking at him. He checked Craig’s pulse, listened to his heart beat.
“He’ll live,” he said.
“Bill—”
“Are you all right, April?”
“I’m all right.”
“Are you positive?”
“Yes,” she said. “I’m positive.”
“I wanted to tear Danny’s head off,” he said. “When he told me what he was setting up I blew my top. I wanted to take him apart and throw the parts away.”
“He told me.”
“I had to find you. He didn’t tell me where he was keeping you and I started chasing around looking in likely spots. I remembered the barn and got here just when you and this jerk were pulling away.” He sighed. “I guess I got here just in time, huh?”
She could say nothing. She looked at Bill, remembering the hurtful things she had said to him, and realizing how wrong she had been about him from the beginning. He was a good person, a fine person. He was not Danny Duncan and he was not Craig Jeffers.
He was something special.
“I’d better get you home,” he said.
“I can’t go home.”
“Why not?”
Haltingly she told him about the pictures. At first she was sick with embarrassment, but as she talked she realized that she would never have to be embarrassed with Bill. He respected her; moreover, he was able to accept her for what she was and at the same time to honor her for what he felt she could be. She explained how impossible it would be for her to stay in Antrim.
“I can see that,” Bill said. “You can’t stay here. And neither can I, April.”
“Why not?”
 
; “Because I have to be where you are, April. I can’t be alive unless I’m with you. See?”
“Bill—”
“I love you, April.”
She started to say something but his mouth stopped her words before they could be spoken. All at once he was holding her, his hands damp with sweat, and he was kissing her, his mouth hard against hers. She did not love him. But love was not the most important consideration now.
He gave her an out. If Bill took care of her everything would be all right. She could stay with him, marry him if that was what he wanted, and she would be out of Antrim and safe somewhere else.
Would it be fair to him? It would, she told herself. She could be a good wife whether she loved him or not. She would be faithful and warm, and he would never know that she was not in love with him.
She stayed close to him. He smelled of sweat and axle-grease and masculinity, and she buried her face in his chest and hugged him as hard as she could.
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s get going, April.”
“Where to?”
“I’ll tell you on the way.”
“What about—him?”
“The jerk with the Merc? To hell with him, April. He’s alive. He’ll get back home somehow. His kind always manage. They step on people and grind them into the dirt and they always come out of it smelling like a rose. You don’t have to worry about him, April. He’ll get along.”
She followed Bill to the hot-rod. She sat next to him, and he started the rod down the road. He turned right on 68, heading toward Xenia and away from Antrim forever.
They sat at a table in the rear of the diner in Yarborough, a few miles east of the Indiana state line. The waitress brought four hamburgers and two cups of black coffee.
“Let’s dig in,” Bill said. “I’m starving.”
She picked up a hamburger and began gnawing it. The meat tasted good—maybe not like a seven-course meal at Kardaman’s, but just as good when you were hungry enough to appreciate it. She devoured the first hamburger, then took a sip of the steaming coffee and made a face.