Rape at Indians Mound (a Short Sketch)

Rape at Indians Mound

A Chapter story from the short story called: “Bittersweet, Were her Kisses!” Written 2006, reedited 6-2008(Based on a true Story—1966)

[The Rape: 11:00 PM] I heard a voice calling for help, and then the voice called my name,
“Dennis, help, help, he’s raping me…!”
And so I left the party with its bonfire blazing, and crackling, and flickers of light, fire light from the wood rising high into the atmosphere. We were over on Indian’s Mound, across from a street called, Mississippi, off Cayuga Street. A party was going on for the kids that were graduating in 1966, I had graduated a year prior, but I knew all the kids, the gang, and then some.

“Please stop, help, Dennis, Dennis!”

I now confirmed it was Sandy’s voice I heard. I had brought her to the party, she wanted to come, I told her it was not wise, that the guys would get drunk and who knows what then. But she insisted, assured me she’d be careful, and not provoke anyone, or flirt all that much. She was at one time my girlfriend, I dated her a while, and then we seemed to drift off, and remained good friends, and I had not seen her the past few months all that much, except for this evening, she had asked me prior to take to this specific party, and she became familiar with a face she had seen at another party I had taken her to, a while ago, this face, Greg was his name, was a relative to a few of my best friends at the party.
I walked about the bushes looking for where the voice was, came from, said, “Where are you Sandy?” feeling the voice had to be her’s, I had a bottle, glass bottle of beer in my hands, looking here and there for her. I was now perhaps thirty-feet behind the fire, in the bushes, and there was Greg straddled over Sandy, slapping her, and tarring her cloths off, like a madman, calling her every name under the sun, like me he was drunk, perhaps drunker,
“What you doing,” I asked Greg (it really was a rhetorical question at best, I mean he know, she knew and I knew what he was trying to do).
In a puzzled way, Greg’s reply was, “What do you think I’m doing!”
So he know, I knew what he was doing to Sandy, and didn’t care who knew, so I said it as plain as he said it, “I know what your doing, you’re trying to rape Sandy, so stop it ,and get off her.”
“Get out of f… out of her, f…off!”
He was at the point of inserting his penis into her, and I said again, “I mean it, don’t do it—stop now!”
He repeated his vulgarity, but with a more stern voice, a voice that said to me: you’re disrupting my magical climax, my moment.
I pulled at his shoulders, and he shrugged me off, saying his choice two words, “f... off!” And proceeded to slap her again, I said in a rapid voice, “I can’t let this happen!”
But he paid no attention to me, and to my dismay, I grabbed him by the hair, twisted his face with his neck halfway around his body, and hit him with the bottle, perhaps two or three times, I don’t know for sure, and he fell backwards, laboriously, he ached himself, somewhat, like an infant,
“What did you do that for!” he cried, it’s funny; he knew everything else but that.
—I had thrown caution to the wind—I agree, Greg lay there on the ground, bellowing, his nose smashed flat, both eyes closed to sheer slits, his face one red facade of pulped fleshy tissue and blood, but through the slits of his eyelids his eyes still blazed with old darkness, it was a ferocious attack, I know, my hand still on the beer bottle, I then dropped it. His jaw, face, and head were in pain. I had knocked men down with one blow, or one straight and solid kick before, but not like this, I buckled him to the ground. I felt myself slipping, I like he was tired and half drunk, my legs trembling, but nonetheless, I rallied to Sandy, who was white from fright, and bruised in her face from his backhand slaps, she received, with her nose bleeding and a raw jaw, other bruises were on her thighs and back.
I heard in the distance a voice say, “Hey, what’s going on?”
When Sandy was being rapped, no one said a word, now when Greg was crying, the gang was starting to worry, a funny dilemma I’ll never understand. Thus, People were starting to gather and come over my way, by the bushes; I was at the end of my vitality.
I needed to get out of there, I knew it, had I stayed any longer, it would be me on the ground trying to fight his relatives I’m sure. I grabbed Sandy by the hand got off that hill quickly, Sandy still in a panic state.

(As years would pass by, Greg would never see it as rape, or if he did, he would complain I used excessive force, and he was right, I perhaps did, and really didn’t have to, I could have beat him fist to fist, but he didn’t allow that, he just wanted what he wanted. He never looked at what he was doing wrong, only that I wronged him. As I would tell him in time, it was one drunk to another, with the perpetrator, crying about his wounds. He was not sorry for what he did, he was simply sorry he did not get away with it. That somebody had the nerve to stop him, and stop him period, without respect, or with the same regard he was giving Sandy—which was zero.)

The Hospital

Greg was taken to the hospital; a number of stitches were used to close his wounds, ones that would leave scares.
As for Sandy, she also was taken to the hospital, for trauma, and bruises, and rape, which she did not name the culprit. The following day, I got a phone call from Sandy’s mother telling me how grateful she was that I stood firm with the man trying to rape her daughter. And she asked who he was, and I simply said, “Ask your daughter, if she wants to tell you, it should come from her.”
On the other side of the coin, Greg’s parents sent me some messages, several of them, from Greg’s family and friends, that they would not forget what I had done to him. He remained in the hospital for a few weeks for recovery.
My response was to his mother, “If you’re so upset, why not call the police, and tell them what I did, and what your son was doing, when I did it, and we can leave it up to the judge to decide if I was using excessive force or not.
I would perhaps have gotten a Blue Ribbon for my bad deed, as he and she, put it. Sandy assured me, her mother would press charges should Greg’s parents try to press charges, if we went to court, thus, it would be a rape case, not a assault and batter case, and that would put Greg away for a very long time, in prison, so everything was hushed up.

Tarantulas' Unver a Gibbous Moon (a chapter story

The Green Sea of the Amazon (from the short story)



March/Summer of 2000 AD, in South America, the Peruvian Amazon, 125-miles from Iquitos (one of several chapters from the story of “The Green Seas of the Amazon”)

Tarantulas’ Under a Gibbous Moon


We were out and under the light of a gibbous moon, a romantic scene indeed, if you can eliminate the mosquitoes, and a few other items, the: the ants, and spiders, and snakes, and so forth, and few big cats dashing through the far-off distance between trees like a flash; nonetheless, the light was as if there were a hale around it, a radiation emanating from it.
The lodge was a good distance from us, now with our guide, in the thick of the jungle, the Amazon. This time there was no path to guide us, not like when we went to the Canopy, or the jungle village, but Avelino assured me he didn’t need one, it was his ‘backyard,’ so he said, matter-of-fact, he said that too many times, it made me suspicious, so I brought my flash light with, plan B, in case he lost his night vision.
Now we were in the dense jungle, a flashlight in his hands, and mine likewise, I guess he was no fool, he was bragging, trying to impress, I liked the guy, but I didn’t like the chances he took with his ego, at my expense. I was born and raised in St. Paul, Minnesota, and even I at night, walked where there were arc lights, the moon was for the animals, not humans, that’s why God gave us electricity, we don’t have the eyes for the night, not modern man anyhow or city slickers.
The moon over our heads we could hardly see anyway, not now, the thick of the jungle was camouflage it—masking it, it peeked its beams through a few spaces of the leafage, but that was all, not even enough to see your hands if you wanted to wash them. Thus, looking for—none other than the big spiders was our mission this evening, the Tarantulas; my wife was with me, and I mean with me, almost on my back, almost had to piggyback her to and from wherever our jungle leader, Gunga Din or Tarzan, was take u s.
We were lucky in that we got our own personal guide and the other group three or four couples to group got one guide for them all. It was, as I wanted it to be, but not always did things turn out the way you wanted them to, on such excursions. We had gone Purina fishing the day before, I ate three perinea that evening, it was delicious, but bony.

As we walked into a deeper part of the rainforest, we past many large trees, larger and thicker than the thickest pillars of any cathedral I had yet seen (except one), and I’ve been in many cathedrals around the world: from Istanbul to Rome, and throughout South, Central, and North America— (and the biggest pillars I’ve yet to discover I found in an underground cathedral, in Colombia, outside of Bogotá called: La Catedral de Sal; 83-feet round; second place St. Paul, Minnesota, Cathedral, 42-feet, perhaps the Catedral de Sal had a larger circumference than the tree, if so it was the only pillars that could match these trees I saw; all along our sides was entangled shrubbery, a wealth of green—immense and at times burdensome. Rosa, my wife, walked shoulder to shoulder by me, if not a foot behind, and as far as I knew Avelino was walking every which way, it seems he knew and didn’t know his backyard as well as he said. But somehow we got him to slow down a bit, lest we get lost, and God help us then.
For me, a few of the stops we made, I got to rest when needed, plus we had stopped earlier in the day at Aveliono’s home village, perhaps—two-hundred natives to the area, several houses on sticks, or I should say, wooded four-by-fours; and a large school house, a square box type building, with a tin roof, and thin wooded sides for walls, not much but it served it purpose—
it now came to mind—as we walked through this thick foliage of a jungle at night—the story he told us, that being: his village was alongside the river, “We got to keep a good eye out on the children, they run off, and get into the bulky high grass, and the big cats come and pull them by the necks, or the snakes come and swallow them whole, but mothers can’t be everywhere all the time, can they…” so he said, rhetorically, with a look at me, a glace from the side of his left eye, as he turned his head to see if I was listening, as we walked from structure to structure in his village. And then he introduced us to his sister-in-law, as she appeared—seemingly out of nowhere, on the platform, of the school building.

All of a sudden we stopped by a big tree, our guide was checking out holes here and there, now he looked, stared at a thick trunk of a tree, it was perhaps thirty feet round, and its roots extended a half foot out of the ground, and a big hole was under one root—he saws it, the largest root it seemed of the tree, or what I could see of the tree, it was dark and the trunk and roots of the tree filled my eyes, and I dared not take them off what he was looking at.
“It’ll all work out,” he said looking at Rosa, and putting his stick into the hole, thinking perchance, Rosa might freak out or something. Rosa was behind me, I was about four-feet from the hole, and of course our guide was almost on top of it, possibly two-feet, with his stick inside of it, moving it about, disrupting—if indeed there was a family meeting going on down deep in it.
Then I saw, and I’m sure Rosa saw, long hairy, red creepy legs coming out of the hole: extending out inch by inch … all will be ok,” he said, not sure if he was talking to us or the creature inside the hole with the rustic legs halfway out; the legs turned out to be bushy like, more reddish-brown, huge spider legs, no, Tarantula legs: larger than my whole hand, legs longer than my fingers, as thick as my fingers, beady eyes. Rosa moved just a tinge,
“Where’d he come from,” she said.
“It’s his home,” said Avelino, “I woke him up, just for you.”
Rosa stood still, stone still by my side, almost on top of my shoulder and back, the creature seemed to have arched himself, lowered his back, as if to jump, and I was amazed, as the eyes of the creature kept staring at me, or so it seemed, and Avelino waved his long magic wand (or stick) around its legs, as if it tranquilized the creature, kept him from jumping, moving too fast. Now the creature stood still, as if guarding its hole, its abode, and we watched Gunga Din do his thing, around them legs, then he took the stick away; I had my flash light on the creature all the time. Then another long legged thick legged tarantula came out, perhaps the mate, as if to either protect its mate, or join in on the festivities. But the second one never came out all the way, like the first one did; it kept its guard, and remained halfway in the hole. And he was leaning over to get a better view of what he was doing, and I was leaning over with the flash light, and Rosa was leaning over on me, and the gibbous moon could be seen slightly through a porthole it would seem, the green sea tops of the trees.
“Be calm Rosa,” I said, I could hear her heart beating, and her breathing was heavy. She had my wife and sidekick only one month, he had gotten married in February of 2000, an it was now March, and I was finding out she was quite brave, even if she was scared, it did not make her run or hide or cry or anything, just extra couscous.
at this point, for less than a year, we had been married but been my she wanted to be part of everything, and she was. For such a small or short woman, she had the guts of a charging elephant, so I was learning
So here we were with two monstrous huge spiders, with beady eyes staring at us, and I guess it was to me, the funniest thing to see this stick tranquilize them to the point of curbing out the danger, to where there seemed not to be any. Fine, it had at that point been a full day, and therefore—after this escapade—we went back to the lodge and had a good night’s sleep, but first we ate our fish.