Cold Rain Gotta Fall

WARNING: Triggers. Contains violence.

I don’t remember exactly when it started but the beginning of the end happened behind a restaurant in Esau, West Virginia sometime in the fall of 1964. A cold rain fell from a dark sky and I could hear Marty Robbins singing about “the West Texas town of El Paso.” I knew that song and I knew the bar where it was being played on the big jukebox by the door.

I was fifteen or sixteen, depending on whether my birthday had passed, but I knew I wouldn’t get much older if I could not get out of the rain and cold. I’d come to the alley behind the restaurant soaked to the skin with my teeth chattering. I had planned to sleep under a pile of waxed cardboard produce boxes but someone had carried them off during the day.

The garbagemen had emptied the cans, too, so I had no supper. My clothes and hair were filthy but I did have a coat, an old plaid jacket I’d found in an alley much like this one. I fingered the items in the pocket of the coat. They might bring me some money or at least a place to sleep out of the rain.

I pulled them out and looked at them. I couldn’t see them in the dark but I knew what they were: a pair of cheap costume clip-on earrings and a tube of bright red lipstick.

I clipped on the earrings and applied the lipstick as well as I could with no light and no mirror, but I had done this before. Most times it earned me some money, or at least a place to sleep for a few hours. I’d also been beaten and raped, but those things seemed to happen anyway, almost at random.

I made my way to the door of the bar playing the country ballad, keeping close to the buildings to try to stay out of the rain. I lingered outside of the door, needing to be seen but afraid of being noticed by someone who might call the police.

It had been more than a year since my father traded me for a bottle of whiskey and fifty dollars to a trucker leaving Chicago bound for Philadelphia. After getting what he wanted from me more than once, the trucker left me at a truckstop in Esau where I had been hiding in the restroom, trying to stop the bleeding from my ass with a roll of toilet paper.

Life had been hard since then but somehow I kept surviving. There wasn’t much I wouldn’t do to stay alive, but sometimes I couldn’t remember why I bothered.

Standing in front of the bar, out of the way of people going in and out, I hoped to see a familiar face, maybe of someone who had given me money before. But no such luck.

“Christie!” I recognized a voice calling one of my names, but too late to avoid the owner. He already had a hand on the back of my neck.

“Hello, Jack,” I whispered. He was a former customer, a cheapskate who had stiffed me before, if that isn’t too accurate a way to phrase it. Last time, he’d left me nothing but bruises. Could I afford to turn him down, now? A dollop of rain down the back of my collar reminded me of why I probably shouldn’t.

“Hey guys,” said Jack to a couple of his friends, if a man like him had friends. “This pansy has the sweetest ass-cunt in the state!” He pulled my face up toward his with the hand he had behind my head. He kissed me, hard, on the lips, forcing his tongue into my mouth.

I groaned in frustration and shivered with the cold but Jack took both as credit to his skills. “Yeah,” he whispered again, “you want it don’t you, Christie?”

“Take me some place warm and dry, Jack,” I told him. “I’ll be yours for the night.”

He laughed. “My friends, too?” he asked with a sneer in his voice.

I shrugged, not willing to commit to being gang-banged.

“Gross,” one of them protested. “She’s a he?”

“You sure?” asked the other. “She looks more like a drowned rat than a tranny hooker.”

Jack grabbed my chest, “See!” he said. “No tits.”

One of the others made gagging noises and someone laughed. “I ain’t fucking no fairy cocksucker,” said one of them.

Suddenly, Jack shoved me away. I missed the curb with my ragged sneaker and my foot went into a puddle between the cement and the tire of a parked car. I bent to try to pull my trapped leg out and Jack hit me in the face.

Down I went, feeling something give way in my ankle. “I’m dead,” I thought. “They will kick me to death or I will lie here and freeze.”

I heard meaty sounds in the darkness and a cry of anguish that sounded like Jack then feet running away. “Shit, it’s a cop,” someone muttered.

I knelt there, one knee and my trapped foot in the gutter, the other leg sprawled across the sidewalk, head down, holding my face off the pavement with my hands and forearms.

A big shadow knelt over me, a darker darkness. “Can you stand up?” a voice asked.

“My foot,” I said, trying not to sob.

A shape bent over me, I caught a glimpse of a craggy face in a bit of reflected neon from the bar sign. I’d almost forgotten about being cold and wet when a big shiver seized me. At the same time, gentle hands pulled straight up on my left leg, freeing my foot but leaving my ragged sneaker behind. I ground my chattering teeth together to stifle a shriek.

The man holding me up was head and shoulders taller than me and I leaned on him and I leaned on him. He didn’t flinch away. “Can you stand?” he asked.

“I don’t think so,” I whimpered. Could I maneuver his obvious sympathy for me into a place to get warm and dry for the night? Did he need his cock sucked? He was a big guy, I’d rather suck it than take a monster dick up the ass.

Suddenly, he picked me up, cradling me in his arms. “My truck is here,” he said. “I need to get you out of the cold.”

“Okay,” I said. I trembled with hope and relief. The cold rain still struck me in the face but we moved rapidly through the parking lot. It turned awkward when he tried to get me into the cab of the truck, my ankle protested any weight being put on it, but he managed it.

The interior light gave me my first view of my rescuer’s face, and I suppose, his of mine. He had strong features that could even be called craggy. Bushy eyebrows, a crewcut, a cleft in his chin, I took in details including that he was smiling at me.

“You’re going to be okay,” he said to me. “Can you put your seatbelt on?”

I nodded and while I struggled with the device, he closed the door and raced around to the driver’s side. Already the cab was warmer than outside and no rain fell on me. I knew I must be dripping on his seats but he didn’t seem to mind.

I think I passed out about then, hanging onto the still unfastened seatbelt.