That night in Oregon left me indelibly marked. I escaped from the academy and ran all day through the woods without any plan whatsoever, without a thought in my head other than to hurt my father and free myself of the therapists and their group sessions, I was fed up with their sugarcoated friendliness and their obscene insistence on sounding out my mind. I wanted to be normal, nothing more.
I was woken up by the car speeding past, and I ran, tripping over shrubs and tree roots and pushing the pine branches away from my face, but when I finally found the road, which was less than fifty yards away, the lights had disappeared. The moon lit up the yellow line in the middle of the highway. I figured other cars would come past, because it was still relatively early, and I wasn’t wrong; I soon heard the noise of a big engine and saw two headlights shining in the distance. As they got closer the lights turned out to belong to a gigantic truck, with wheels as tall as me and two flags flapping from the chassis. I ran in front of it, waving my arms desperately. The driver, surprised by this unexpected vision, slammed on the brakes, but I had to jump out of the way, because the enormous mass of the truck kept running along for another twenty yards before it came to a complete stop. I ran to the vehicle. The driver leaned out the window and shone a flashlight over me from head to toe, studying me, wondering whether this girl could be the decoy for a gang of raiders—it wouldn’t have been the first time something like that happened to a truck driver. When he checked that there was nobody else around and saw my Medusa hairstyle with sherbet-colored highlights, he relaxed. He must have concluded that I was an inoffensive junkie, another silly druggie. He motioned me to the other door, reached over, and unlocked it, and I climbed up into the cabin.
Seen up close, the man was just as overwhelming as his vehicle: big, burly, with the arms of a weight lifter, a tank top, and an anemic little ponytail sticking out the back of his baseball cap, a caricature of a macho brute, but it was too late to back out. In contrast to his threatening appearance, a little baby bootie hung from the rearview mirror, as well as a couple of religious pictures. “I’m going to Las Vegas,” he informed me. I told him that I was going to California and added that Las Vegas was just as good, since no one was expecting me in California. That was my second mistake; my first was getting in the truck.
The next hour went by in an animated monologue delivered by the driver, who exuded energy as if he was charged up on amphetamines. He kept himself entertained during his eternal hours behind the wheel by communicating with other drivers to exchange jokes and comments about the weather, the asphalt, baseball, their trucks, and the roadside restaurants, while on the radio the evangelical preachers foretold the second coming of Christ at the top of their lungs. He smoked nonstop, sweated, scratched himself, drank water. The air in the cabin was unbreathable. He offered me french fries from a bag on the seat and a can of Coke, but he didn’t ask my name or what I was doing on a desolate road in the middle of the night. However, he told me all about himself: his name was Roy Fedgewick, he was from Tennessee, he’d been in the army, until he had an accident and they discharged him. In the rehabilitation hospital, where he spent several weeks, he found Jesus. He kept talking and quoting passages from the Bible, while I tried in vain to relax, my head leaning against the window, as far as possible from his cigarette; I had cramps in my legs and a disagreeable tingling on my skin from the strain of my day’s run.
Fifty miles on, Fedgewick turned off the road and stopped in front of a motel. A blue neon sign, with several bulbs burned out, showed the name. There were no signs of activity, just a row of rooms, a pop machine, a pay phone, a truck, and two cars that looked as if they’d been there since the beginning of time.
“I’ve been driving since six this morning. We’re going to spend the night here. Get out,” Fedgewick announced.
“I’d rather sleep in your truck, if you don’t mind,” I said, thinking of how I didn’t have money for a room.
The man reached over me to open a compartment and took out a quart of whisky and a semiautomatic pistol. He grabbed a canvas bag, got out, turned around, opened the door on my side, and said I better climb down if I knew what was good for me.
“We both know why we’re here, you little slut. Or did you think the ride was going to be free?”
I obeyed instinctively, although in our self-defense course at Berkeley High they’d taught us that in circumstances like this the best thing to do was to throw yourself on the ground and scream like a lunatic, never to collaborate with the aggressor. I noticed he was limping, and he was shorter and heavier than he looked when he was sitting down. I could have run away, and he wouldn’t have been able to catch up to me, but the thought of the pistol stopped me. Fedgewick guessed my intentions, gripped me firmly by the arm, and practically carried me up to the reception window, which was protected by thick glass and bars, shoved several bills through a hole, received a key, and asked for a six-pack of beer and a pizza. I didn’t manage to see the employee or make any signal; the trucker kept his carcass in the way.
With the man’s grip crushing my arm, I walked toward number 32, and we entered a room that stank of damp and creosote, with a double bed, striped wallpaper, television, an electric heater, and an air conditioner that filled the only window. Fedgewick made me shut myself in the washroom till they’d brought the beer and pizza. The bathroom contained a shower and sink with rusty faucets, a toilet that didn’t look very clean, and two frayed towels; there was no lock on the door and only a small skylight for ventilation. I cast an anxious glance around my cell and understood that I’d never been so helpless. My previous adventures were a joke compared to this. They’d happened on familiar territory, in the company of my friends, with Rick Laredo looking out for us in the rearguard, and the certainty that in an emergency I could always run home to my grandma.
The trucker received what he’d ordered, exchanged a couple of words with the employee, closed the door, and called me to come and eat before the pizza got cold. I couldn’t put a thing in my mouth; my throat had seized up. Fedgewick didn’t insist. He looked for something in his bag, went to the washroom, without closing the door, and returned to the room with his fly undone and a plastic cup with a finger of whiskey in it. “Are you nervous? You’ll feel better after this,” he said, passing me the cup. I shook my head, unable to speak, but he grabbed me by the back of the neck and held the cup to my lips. “Drink it, you little bitch. Or do you want me to make you?” I swallowed it, almost choking, my eyes watering; I hadn’t tasted any alcohol for over a year, and I’d forgotten how it burned.
My kidnapper sat on the bed to watch a comedy on television and wolf down three cans of beer and two-thirds of the pizza, laughing, burping, apparently having forgotten all about me, while I stood waiting in a corner, leaning against the wall, feeling faint and dizzy. The room kept moving, the furniture changing shape; the enormous mass of Fedgewick blended in with the images from the TV. My legs were buckling under me, and I had to sit down on the floor, struggling against the desire to close my eyes and give up. I couldn’t think, but I realized I’d been drugged: the whiskey in the plastic cup. The man, bored of the comedy, turned off the TV and came over to check what state I was in. His thick fingers lifted up my head, which weighed a ton; my neck couldn’t hold it up anymore. His repulsive breath hit me in the face. Fedgewick sat down on the bed, poured a line of cocaine on the bedside table, straightened it with a credit card, and snorted the white powder with evident pleasure. Then he immediately turned and ordered me to take my clothes off, while rubbing his crotch with the barrel of his gun, but I couldn’t move. He lifted me off the ground and tore my clothes off. I tried to fight him off, but my body wouldn’t do what it was told; I tried to scream, and my voice wouldn’t come out. I was sinking into a thick quagmire, with no air, drowning, dying.
I was half unconscious during the hours that followed and unaware of the worst humiliations, but at some point my spirit returned from afar and I observed the scene in the sordid motel room
as if it were on a black-and-white screen: the long, thin, inert female figure, open like a cross, the minotaur mumbling obscenities and thrusting over and over again, the dark stains on the sheet, the belt, the gun, the bottle. Floating in the air, I finally saw Fedgewick collapse facedown, exhausted, satisfied, drooling, and instantly starting to snore. I made a superhuman effort to wake up and return to my painful body, but I could barely open my eyes, much less think. Get up, ask for help, escape, were all meaningless words forming like soap bubbles and disappearing in the cotton of my dulled mind. I sank back down into a merciful darkness.
I woke up at ten to three in the morning, according to the fluorescent clock on the nightstand, with my mouth dry, my lips split, tormented by a terrible thirst. When I tried to sit up, I realized I was immobilized; Fedgewick had secured my left wrist to the bedstead with handcuffs. My hand was swollen and my arm was rigid, the same arm I’d broken before in the accident on my bike. The panic I was feeling cleared a little of the dense fog from the drug. I moved carefully, trying to find my way in the darkness. The only light came from the blue glow of the motel sign, which filtered in between the filthy curtains, and from the green reflection of the luminous numbers on the clock. The telephone! It was right there, beside the clock, very close, as I discovered when I turned to see what time it was.
With my free hand I pulled the sheet and cleaned the slime off my belly and thighs, then I turned onto my left side and slid slowly, arduously, down onto the floor. The tug of the handcuffs on my wrist made me groan involuntarily, and the creaking of the bedsprings sounded like a train slamming on the brakes. Kneeling on the rough carpet, my arm twisted into an impossible position, I waited in terror for my captor’s reaction, but above the deafening noise of my own heart I could hear him snoring. I waited five minutes before daring to pick up the phone to make sure he was still sprawled in a deep drunken sleep. I crouched down on the floor, as far away as the handcuffs would let me, and dialed 911 to ask for help, muffling my voice with a pillow. There was no outside line. The room phone only rang at the reception desk; to make an outside call you had to use the pay phone in the lobby or a cell phone, and the trucker’s was out of my reach. I dialed the number for reception and heard it ring eleven times before a male voice with an Indian accent answered. “I’ve been kidnapped, help me, help me . . . ,” I whispered, but the employee hung up the phone without giving me time to say anything else. I tried again, with the same result. Desperate, I drowned my sobs in the grimy pillow.
More than half an hour went by before I remembered the pistol, which Fedgewick had used like a perverse toy, cold metal in my vagina, in my mouth, tasting of blood. I had to find it, my only hope. To get back on the bed with one hand cuffed I had to go through contortions worthy of a circus performer, and I couldn’t keep the mattress from bouncing under my weight. The trucker emitted a few snorts like a bull, rolled over onto his back, and his hand fell on my hip like a brick, paralyzing me, but he soon went back to snoring, and I could breathe again. The clock showed twenty-five past three: time was dragging, there were hours to go before daybreak. I understood these were my last moments; Fedgewick would never let me live. I could identify him and describe his vehicle. If he hadn’t killed me yet, it was because he was not finished with me. The idea that I was condemned, that I was going to be murdered and they’d never find my remains in these woods, gave me unexpected courage. I had nothing to lose.
I shoved Fedgewick’s hand off my hip and turned to face him. I was struck by his smell: beastly breath, sweat, alcohol, semen, rancid pizza. I looked at his awful face in profile, his enormous chest, the bulging muscles of his forearms, the hairy crotch, leg as thick as a tree trunk, and I swallowed the vomit that rose in my throat. With my free hand I began to feel under his pillow for the pistol. I found it almost immediately, within my reach, but wedged there by Fedgewick’s big head. He must have been very confident of his power and my resignation to have left it there. I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, grasped the barrel with two fingers and began to pull it inch by inch, without moving the pillow. Finally I managed to remove the pistol, which was heavier than I’d expected, and held it against my chest, trembling from the effort and the anxiety. The only weapon I’d ever seen was Rick Laredo’s, and I’d never touched it, but I knew how to use it; movies had taught me that.
I aimed the pistol at Fedgewick’s head: it was his life or mine. I could barely lift the weapon with one hand, trembling with nerves, with my body twisted and weakened by the drug, but it was going to be a single shot at point-blank range and I couldn’t fail. I held my finger to the trigger and hesitated, blinded by the deafening pounding in my temples. I calculated, with absolute clarity, that I was not going to have another chance to escape from that animal. I forced my index finger to move, felt the slight resistance of the trigger, and hesitated again, anticipating the blast, the recoil of the weapon, the nightmarish explosion of bones and blood and bits of brain. “Now, it has to be now,” I murmured, but I couldn’t do it. I wiped off the sweat that was running down my face and clouding my vision, dried off my hand on the sheet, and picked up the weapon again, put my finger on the trigger, and aimed. Twice more I repeated the gesture, unable to fire. I looked at the clock: three thirty. Finally, I left the pistol on the pillow, beside my sleeping tormentor’s ear. I turned my back on Fedgewick and curled up, naked, numb, crying with frustration at my scruples and from relief at having freed myself from the irreversible horror of killing.
At dawn Roy Fedgewick woke up, burping and stretching, with no sign of a hangover, talkative and in a good mood. He saw the pistol on the pillow, picked it up, held it to his temple, and pulled the trigger. “Boom! You didn’t think it was loaded, did you?” he said, and burst out laughing. He stood up naked, checking out his morning erection with both hands, thought for a moment, but gave up the urge. He put the gun in his bag, took a key out of his pants pocket, unlocked the handcuffs, and set me free. “You wouldn’t believe how handy these handcuffs come in. Women love them. How do you feel?” he asked me, patting my head with a fatherly gesture. I still couldn’t believe I was alive. I’d slept dreamlessly for a couple of hours, as if I were anesthetized. I rubbed my wrist and hand to get my circulation flowing again.
“Let’s go have breakfast, the most important meal of the day. After a good breakfast I can drive for twenty hours,” he told me from the toilet, where he was sitting with a cigarette in his mouth. After a while I heard him take a shower and brush his teeth, then he came back in the room, got dressed, humming, turned on the TV, and rested his imitation alligator-skin cowboy boots on the bed. I gradually moved my numb limbs, stood up like an ungainly old lady, stumbled to the bathroom, and closed the door. The hot shower felt comforting. I washed my hair with the cheap motel shampoo and scrubbed my body furiously, trying to erase with soap the despicable things that had happened during the night. My legs, breasts, and waist were bruised and scratched; my wrist and hand were deformed by the swelling. I felt burning pain in my vagina and anus, a trickle of blood ran down my legs; I improvised a dressing out of toilet paper, put on my underwear, and got dressed. The truck driver put two pills in his mouth and swallowed them with half a bottle of beer, then he offered me the rest of the bottle, the only one left, and another two pills. “Take these. It’s just aspirin, helps get rid of the hangover. Today we’ll get to Las Vegas. You might as well stay with me, girl, you’ve already paid the toll,” he said. He picked up his bag, made sure he wasn’t leaving anything behind, and left the room. I followed him weakly to the truck. The sky was just starting to brighten.
A short time later we stopped at a roadside restaurant, where there were already other big transport trucks parked, and a trailer. Inside, the smell of bacon and coffee whetted my appetite. I’d only eaten two energy bars and a handful of french fries in over twenty-four hours. The driver walked into the place bursting with bonhomie, joking with the other customers, who he seemed to know, kissing the waitress, and greeting the tw
o Guatemalans doing the cooking in terrible Spanish. He ordered orange juice, eggs, sausages, pancakes, toast, and coffee for both of us, while I took in at a glance the linoleum floor, the ceiling fans, the piles of pastries under the glass bell on the counter. When they brought the food, Fedgewick held both my hands across the table, bent his head theatrically, and closed his eyes. “Thank you, Lord, for this nutritious breakfast and this beautiful day. Bless us, oh Lord, and protect us for the rest of our journey. Amen.” I observed hopelessly the other men eating noisily at the other tables, the woman serving coffee with her dyed hair and her weariness, the Mayans flipping eggs and bacon in the kitchen. There was no one to turn to. What could I say? That I’d asked for a lift and he’d charged me for the favor in a motel, that I was stupid and deserved my fate. I bent my head like the trucker and prayed silently: “Don’t let me go, Popo. Take care of me.” Then I devoured my breakfast down to the last scrap.
Due to its position on the map, so far from the United States and so close to nowhere, Chile is off the usual narcotics trafficking route, but drugs have arrived here as well, like everywhere else in the world. You see some kids lost in the clouds; I saw one on the ferry, when I crossed the Chacao Channel on my way to Chiloé, a desperate kid who was already in the stage of seeing invisible beings, hearing voices, talking to himself, gesticulating. Marijuana is within anybody’s reach, more common and cheaper than cigarettes, on sale on street corners. Coca paste or crack circulates more among poor people, who also sniff gasoline, glue, paint thinner, and other poisons. For those interested in variety there are hallucinogens of various kinds, cocaine, heroin, and their derivatives, amphetamines, and a full menu of black-market prescription drugs, but on our little island there are fewer options, just alcohol for anyone who wants it and marijuana and coca paste for the young people. “You have to keep very alert with the children, gringuita, no drugs in the school,” Blanca Schnake told me, and then proceeded to give me instructions on what symptoms to watch out for. She doesn’t know that I’m an expert.