Authors: Jackie Calhoun
“What black truck?”
It was about eighty degrees in the small vehicle, but Sam was shaking so hard her teeth chattered. The truck was gone, but she was sure it was just around the corner. “It’s there, it’s there,” she said.
“Hey, get it under control. Who’s gonna kill you?” the passenger up front asked.
Jamie started talking about the black truck and the driver. How he waylaid them and elbowed his face and kicked him till he couldn’t breathe and tried to force Sam into the truck. How weeks ago this same guy had broken his nose. The others listened, although Sam thought Jamie’s tale sounded jumbled as he mixed up the earlier beating and this one and the first time they’d encountered the guy in the black truck.
The driver interrupted him. “Where do you live?”
Sam got out with Jamie at the dorm. She and Jamie hurried inside, took the stairs two at a time, locked his door and huddled on his bed. Jamie rocked back and forth, clutching his midriff.
“I think he broke something,” he said. “How does my face look?”
“Terrible.” It was swollen again and already turning colors. “Now what do we do?” She held herself with both arms, trying to stop the shaking. How could they safely walk home from work at night? “I thought you gave the cops his license plate number?”
“No, I gave it to the doctor. Truckin something.” He pulled out his phone. “What number do I call about an assault? Nine-one-one?” He posed the same question to whoever answered and then whispered to Sam, “I’m being transferred to the police department,” where he launched into a detailed description of the assault. “I don’t know what kind of truck. Hang on.” He looked at Sam and she shook her head.
“A black four-wheel drive,” she said.
“We can’t come to the station. How would we get there? Can you send someone here? We’ll meet them in the lobby. We’re at Sellery Hall, one of the two towers. The other is Witte.” He spelled their names.
Sam looked at him. “I don’t want to go sit in the lobby.”
“Why don’t you call Karen? Maybe she’s still up. She can go with us.” His pupils were huge as she supposed hers were too. “I’ll call her,” he said when she didn’t answer.
Karen had on her pink flannel pajama pants with cats on them and a rumpled T-shirt, and smelled of sleep. “Are you all right?” she asked, hugging Sam so tight that it almost hurt.
Sam thought of her mindless screaming, the waving of her arms in the air as she ran. “I’m okay,” she said.
There were two officers in the lobby when they got downstairs—a young man and a woman who looked a little older. After giving them a recap of the assault, Jamie said, “Didn’t anyone do anything about this last time it happened? I gave the license plate to the doctor. He said he’d report it. It’s Truckin something.”
“What was the doctor’s name?” the woman officer asked. They’d given their names and showed their badges, but the names hadn’t registered with Sam.
“I don’t remember, but I’d know him if I saw him,” Jamie said.
“It looks like you need some medical assistance,” the woman said.
Jamie touched his cheek gingerly. “I’ll go tomorrow.”
“Call this number and give one of us the plate name or number when you find out.” Again it was the woman officer who spoke.
Her partner tore off a copy of the sheet he’d been writing on and handed it to Jamie. He said, “Go in groups and avoid lonely streets.”
A chill galloped across Sam’s already cold skin. She tightened her hold on herself. Karen put an arm around her.
“Goddamn, my face hurts,” Jamie said when the officers were gone. “Good thing I kept some of those pain meds.” He’d taken a couple of Tylenols with codeine before they left the room.
“What if your cheekbone is broken?” Karen asked. “Shouldn’t you go to UHS now?”
“There’s probably no doctor there. I’ll be all right till tomorrow. Besides, what do they do with a broken cheekbone? Put a cast on it?” His laugh was like a little yelp.
Sam was talking to Julie in her head.
He grabbed me. I knew he’d take me somewhere and rape and murder me and maybe stuff me under leaves
.
He’ll come back. I know he will.
She was thinking how cold and lonely and humiliating it would be sprawled in the snow, naked from the waist down, even if she was dead.
Later, she lay in Karen’s narrow bed, listening to Karen and her roommate breathe. Karen was curled against her, spoon-like, with an arm draped over her ribs. Sam was so incredibly tired and so wide-awake.
In the morning, while Karen showered, Sam put on yesterday’s clothes, placing Karen’s borrowed T-shirt on the bed. Karen’s roommate, Lisa, had already gone to breakfast. Sam sat on the bed till Karen returned.
When she dropped the towel, Sam noticed how her nipples puckered, the tips resembling pink gumdrops. Water droplets glistened on the ends of the black patch of pubic hair. She was peeking without trying to peek. That would have been how she’d have looked, naked in the snow.
“I’m going to the apartment,” she said.
“Should I come over tonight?” Karen asked.
Sam looked away. “I’m going to pack.” And sleep, she thought, that too.
“What are you packing?” Karen stood before her, dressed in a black bra and dark red bikini panties.
“I’m going home.”
“You can’t go home. I just found you.” She sat on the bed next to Sam and put an arm around her. “I’ll keep you safe.”
“How?” she asked.
“At least wait till Jamie finds out about the license plate.”
“Jamie can’t protect himself.” Her voice was flat sounding. She could not think about last night without panicking. “I can go to UW-O.”
Karen pulled Sam down with her on the bed. Her hand snaked under Sam’s top and cupped a breast.
This evoked an image of the man with the black truck doing the same and Sam jerked away. “Don’t. Please.”
“I’ll call Jamie,” Karen said. “Maybe he can walk you back to the apartment.”
“Hey, Jamie, where are you?” Karen asked, the phone to her ear. “At UHS? They’re bringing in a doctor?” Karen turned her back to Sam, but Sam could hear. “Listen. Sam wants to go to the apartment and pack to go home. Will you talk to her? She’s really spooked by what happened last night.” She handed the cell to Sam, saying unnecessarily, “It’s Jamie.”
“Hey, Sam, don’t do anything until I get there. Okay?”
“If you had your car, we wouldn’t have been walking,” Sam said accusingly.
“I know. I’ll go get it.”
“When?” she asked.
“This weekend. I’ll get a ride home. Will you stick around till then?”
“I’ll go with you.”
“Look, I’m stuck here for a while. They’re looking for the license plate info.”
She handed the phone back to Karen.
“How’s your cheek?” Karen asked and said after listening, “I’m glad it’s not broken.”
Sam hadn’t even thought of his cheek. She got up and headed toward the door.
“She’s leaving. I gotta go.”
Karen’s hand was on her arm, restraining her. “Wait a minute. Fuck my class. I’ll walk you to your apartment. Okay? Let me get my stuff.”
Karen did all the talking on the way back to Sam’s apartment. “I’ll take care of you. Just don’t go away.”
She realized, though, that there would be the one time when no one could be with her, and he’d find her. The only safe place was home, because he didn’t know where home was.
When Jamie arrived, his ears and one cheek were red from the cold. The other cheek was so bruised it looked like mold gone amok on a peach. She stared at it. “You should never have made him mad.” She felt like she was walking around in a bubble. Karen was sitting on her bed. All of them had skipped their classes.
“The doctor said he called in the license plate info, but the police couldn’t find the truck. Next time we have to get the make and model and the license number. What are you doing, Sam?”
“Packing.” Her suitcase lay on the bed. She couldn’t bear to think of a “next time.”
“You’re not seriously thinking of leaving, are you?” he asked.
“Where are you going?” Nita was standing in the open doorway.
“What are you doing here?” Jamie asked.
“I live here. Remember?” she said with some asperity. “What’s going on?”
“I can’t stay here anymore,” Sam said.
“And who’s going to pay your half of the rent?”
“Carmen.” Sam brushed past Nita on her way to the bathroom. She put her toothbrush and shampoo and toothpaste and all the other things she used in the bathroom into a plastic bag.
“What happened to your face, Jamie?” Nita asked.
She leaned against the sink as Jamie started to describe the assault in detail. When he got to the part about the guy grabbing Sam and elbowing his cheek, she sat on the toilet lid, her head in her hands. Her heart was pounding.
“You and your smart mouth started all this. What if he’d managed to kidnap Sam? What then?”
Sam suddenly couldn’t stay alone. She grabbed the plastic bag and hurried back to her room as if she were being chased.
She felt their eyes on her as she dropped the bag in her suitcase and shut the lid. Nita put a hand on her shoulder and she jumped. “Don’t sneak up on me.”
“Sorry.” Nita held her hands up. “Look Sam, I’ll walk home from work with you. So will Jamie, won’t you Jamie? Maybe Karen will too. He won’t dare attack us when we’re all together.”
Sam slumped between her suitcase and Karen, who put an arm around her again. The thing was, she didn’t want to be touched. It reminded her of the attacker’s grip and her helplessness. “Who do you think he’d grab, Nita? You or me? Look in the mirror. You’re the one who’s not safe.”
Jamie said, “Hey, listen. I talked to Aunt Edie. She knows where Dr. Decker is. Decker gave her the name of someone at the clinic you can talk to.” He pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket. “Sharon Arnold. She said Dr. Decker said for you to give her a chance, Sam.”
She stared at Jamie, alert now. “Where is Julie?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t ask.”
“What’s Edie’s number?”
“Sam, Decker’s not doing therapy,” he said gently.
She began crying softly and was unable to stop. Her throat hurt. Her chest ached. Her nose ran.
Karen dug a wrinkled tissue out of her pocket and handed it to Sam. “Hey, it’s okay. You’re safe.” Her grip tightened on Sam’s shoulders, but that only made Sam sob harder.
Nita set Sam’s suitcase on the floor, plunked herself down and put her arm around her too. Their attempts to hold her were too much like the assault. Sam struggled to get away as they held on.
“I’ll find out where she is. Okay? I’ll call Edie right now,” Jamie said in an alarmed voice.
Sam went still. “Will you take me there?”
“Yeah, sure.” He put the cell to his ear and waited. “Call me ASAP, Auntie. We’ve got an emergency here.”
“Look, I’ve got a class I can’t miss,” Nita got up. “Don’t go anywhere till I get back. Okay, Sam?”
Sam nodded and curled up on the bed. “I’m so tired.”
“Should I stay?” Karen asked.
“No, you better go to class too. Lock the door.”
“I’ll stay,” Jamie said.
In her dreams, her mother came to take her home. They loaded her luggage in the backseat. On Highway 41, a silver semi in the outside lane sideswiped her mother’s car and forced it off the road. She and her mother screamed as they ran from the driver who was now chasing them. She woke up with a scream crammed in her throat. Jamie’s cell was ringing.
He was asleep at the foot of the bed, his mouth agape in a snore. She poked him with a foot, and he sat up. “Huh? What?”
It was Edie. “Hi, Auntie,” he said in a groggy voice. “Yeah, I was just taking a nap. I worked late yesterday.” He looked Sam in the eyes. “Listen, that guy in the black truck found us last night.”
Sam could hear Edie’s voice but not what she was saying.
“He nearly broke my cheek and busted my guts and he tried to kidnap Sam. We were walking home from work after midnight. We got away, but Sam really needs to talk to Dr. Decker. And I really need my car.”
Again Sam listened to Edie talking without understanding a word. Jamie thrust the phone at her. “She wants to talk to you.”
“Hi,” Sam said softly.
“Hi, Sam. Lynn was the one who talked to Dr. Julie Decker at a meeting. She took a teaching job at UW-O when someone went on sabbatical.”
It was that easy. “I thought she didn’t want me to know where she was.”
“No, of course, not,” Edie said gently, “but Dr. Decker isn’t practicing therapy right now. Was this man who gave you trouble last night the same one who Jamie nearly backed into in the parking lot?”
“Yeah.” He had to be. Why would another man in a black truck accost them?
“Listen, I’m coming down next weekend with Lynn. We can bring Jamie’s car if that will help.”
She was crying again and handed the cell back to Jamie without answering.