Bob and I returned to his house after a fun afternoon with our friends. I was as upbeat as I'd been in several weeks. Carol wanted to talk to me, and according to Bob and my own hunch, she wanted to get back together. Life had started to look a lot more promising.
When we entered the house, we stepped into Hell, or at least I did. First thing we noticed was a palpable air of tension. Through the doorway to the living room I saw Bob Sr. sitting in his chair. He looked drunk. The little boys heard us come in and ran to us, throwing their arms around us. They seemed scared.
Sandy asked, "Why did Daddy spank Carol so hard? I think he hurt her."
Daddy spanked Carol? What's going on here? My blood ran cold, then boiled. What to do? Confront him or check on Carol?
I asked the boys. "Where is Carol now?"
"In her room."
Bob took the boys to settle them down and get them ready for bed. They should have been there an hour ago. Something was really fucked-up here. I ran upstairs to Carol's room and tried it. It was locked. I knocked on her door.
I heard a groan, then her voice, sounding like she'd just wakened.
"What?"
My anxiety for her showed in my voice.
"Carol Anne, Honey, are you OK? Sandy said your dad hurt you."
Her reply sounded distant, hopeless.
"I'll live, but I shouldn't..."
I felt fear gripping my chest.
"What happened?"
Despair and pain in that voice!
"I can't tell you. Please go away, David. It's all over now. I mean it! Go away. PLEASE! There's nothing you can say or do now to change things."
I was confused. She called me 'David' and said 'please', but 'it's all over'? Change what things?
"What? You're not making any sense."
She was starting to sob.
"I-I said it's over! I can't tell you a-anything! PLEASE, DAVID! Just go away!"
"Carol Anne, I can't just leave you now! Not like this! You're hurting and I want to help."
Her voice suddenly went flat, lifeless, as if in ultimate realization...
"You can't help me now, David. It's over, we're finished."
"But, Carol Anne..."
She interrupted me, suddenly screaming hysterically.
"IT'S OVER! WE'RE DONE! GO AWAY! I CAN'T SEE YOU AGAIN!! GO-O-O AWAAAAY!!"
Her screaming broke down into wracking, wailing sobs like her heart had completely shattered. What had that asshole done to her? I stood and waited outside her door, powerless, for an eternity. Her wailing and sobs gradually subsided. She sensed I was still there. In a drained, emotionless voice she spoke. Her words had a total finality to them in their very flatness. There would be no reprieve this time.
"Just go away, David. Our world is dead. Just bury it. Go away. I won't answer if you try to talk to me again, ever. Now go."
My life in ruins at the finality of her words, I was at a loss for ones of my own. All I could do was leave. I poured my whole heart into my last words.
"OK, I'm leaving. Good night, My Love. May the Goddess protect you. I love you more than life itself, and always will."
Her last direct words to me were completely final.
"Good bye, David."
I turned and started down the stairs. It was so quiet I heard her whisper.
"I kno-o-o-w... I kno-o-o-ow. Oh dear God, I know."
And then the wailing, wracking sobs began anew.
Broken, crushed, defeated, and desolate, I slowly trudged down those stairs. Bob met me in the hall.
"You heard, Bob?"
"Yeah. She'll get over it."
"Not this time, at least not any time soon, Bob. It's really over this time. What the fuck happened here tonight?"
Bob grabbed me by the arm and dragged me into the front porch so we could talk without being overheard in the living room. He started by telling me what Iain had told him while he got them ready for bed. Age ten, Iain was extremely bright with an excellent memory. He was going to be every bit the scholar Riekie was. What little blood was left in me drained completely away as Bob re-told Iain's story.
"Iain said Carol was happy all day then after supper, something happened between her and Dad. He said Dad was drunk most of the day, and sat drinking all through supper. Apparently Carol took him a drink, even though she didn't want to. It must've been close to the boys' bedtime, because she made them wait at the dining room table and play in their colouring books until she fixed Dad's drink and took it to him. Iain said he could see Dad's chair from there. When she handed him the drink, Dad put his hand up Carol's leg under her skirt and she tried to move away. Something was said that Iain couldn't hear, but Dad got mad and suddenly threw Carol over his knee, ripped her panties off and started spanking her. He spanked her so hard she screamed and screamed in pain and fainted. Dad didn't stop spanking her until she passed out. Iain said Sandy and him were scared to death and never so glad to see anybody as us when we came in.
"Anyway, when Dad saw the boys watching, he acted scared, and told them everything was alright now. Carol had been a very bad girl, and he punished her."
I was getting very angry now, suspecting the worst.
"Did Iain see him do anything else?"
"No. Iain said Carol only fainted for a few minutes and came to as Dad was telling them everything was OK. When Carol sat up, Dad said something to her too quietly for Iain to hear, but whatever he said, must've shook Carol up badly because she screamed again and ran to the stairs. Iain thought he must've told her if she ever was bad like that again, she'd get another bad spanking. That's what he figured Dad would've said to him if it had been him getting punished.
"He said she ran, but then he said she couldn't very well. She acted like her bum was too sore. Iain said he knew what that felt like from his own last spanking. He said Carol couldn't lift her feet to climb and actually crawled up the stairs. That's why Sandy thought she was hurt. She probably was.
"Dad doesn't lose his temper with us very often, but when he does, his spankings are brutal. I don't think Carol had ever been spanked before. She saw me and Riekie get it a couple times, and that was enough for her. That's the first time any of us ever got it bare-ass that I know of, and the first time he ever hit one of the older kids.
"After Carol crawled upstairs, the boys didn't know what to do. They were scared Dad would go after them next. You know how it is when one kid gets punished, they all think they're gonna get it. Dad just sat in his chair drinking, so Iain snuck upstairs to ask Carol if she was OK. She was crying but told him not to worry about her. Sandy and him just stayed at the dining room table drawing and colouring where Dad could see them from his chair until we came in. Iain said Dad never paid them any attention. He's been sitting there drinking ever since. He's probably totally juiced by now."
"I have to talk to him, Bob."
"What's the point? He's probably too drunk now to make sense."
"I still hafta try, Bob. Something's fishy here."
"OK, but don't do anything stupid. You can't help Carol at all if you can't come here anymore."
"I'll try to hold my temper."
We had been talking quietly in the front porch, now I headed into the living room to beard the lion in his den. I told Bob to stay out and leave us alone. Bob Sr. was still sitting in his chair, a drink dangling limply in his hand. In his other, he held a wisp of material. I approached him.
He greeted me like an old army buddy.
"Well, well, Old Man! Quite a show, eh? I showed that little slut a thing or two! She'll never miss a slice off a cut loaf! Beautiful legs, but a lousy lay! You're well rid of her! I heard her screaming at you to leave her alone. By the feel of her, she's been whoring it up with every Tom and hairy Dick in town, or was it just you? She was wet before I ever touched her!"
I wanted to beat the living shit out of the drunken bastard right then and there, but was mindful of what Bob said, so I kept my wits and kept my fists to myself. Of course she was wet! She always was when she was happy with or about me! Another sign that until he got going, she was coming back to me! My eyes held his drunken ones steadily, enforcing the strength of my words and my reply was icy cold.
"A gentleman doesn't tell tales out of school, and I know you're lying about fucking your own daughter, so why the brag? From what I hear, what you did do is bad enough, but if I thought for one tenth of a second that you really had, you wouldn't be alive now to brag to me about it. If I ever find out that you really did rape her or ever lay a hand on her again, I will personally hunt you down. So now, tell me exactly what happened and I may remember I'm a gentleman."
He paled at my cold, flat statements, but thought he'd try me.
"Young man, you can't talk to me like that in my own house. You had better leave now."
I wasn't backing down.
"For now, this is just between us, but perhaps Dolly and the police would like to know what you claim to have done, eh, 'Old Man'?"
He really paled at that not so thinly veiled threat.
"No need for that, I think. I didn't do anything except feel her up a little. She was wet, I thought I excited her. My finger slid into her and I discovered she was no longer virgin. I lost my temper and gave her the spanking she deserved for being a tramp. The little boys saw the whole thing. When she recovered, she went to her room."
As I spoke my next words, I heard Dolly come in. She didn't hear most of our next exchange as she puttered in the kitchen, but she caught the tone, and she definitely heard what he said last.
"For your sake, and Carol Anne's, that better be true. She is no tramp or slut. She belongs to me. Remember what I said about hunting you down."
"Idle threats don't frighten me, young man. Well, if she 'belongs' to you, then I guess these are yours, too. Enjoy them. From what I heard from her just now, it will be an extremely long time, if ever, before you get to see or touch where they came from again."
He threw the wisp of cloth to me. It was her panties. I slipped them in my pocket as I replied. I destroyed Carol's torn panties the very next day. The memory associated with them was too painful.
"Hear me and hear me well. I do NOT make idle threats. As the Goddess is my witness that is a promise I WILL keep."
He had started to grin, but my words and my oath wiped it off his face. He snarled.
"You will leave my house now, and never return."
Dolly heard that last remark, and had a few things to say. I had never heard her raise her voice to him before, but it was obvious from his reaction that when she spoke to him like that, he better pay attention and mind. I wondered what hold she had on him. I never found out.
"Robert Scott! I have no idea what is going on between you two, but I live here too, and as long as I live here, or wherever we live, David is ALWAYS welcome. Do I make myself clear?"
"Yes, Dolly."
"Good. You're drunk again. Get to bed."
He did as he was told.
'David? What is going on?"
I could have, and probably should have told her everything. Instead, I told just part of it.
'Dolly, Carol Anne was going to make up with me tonight. That's not my wishful thinking, it was going to happen. That's what she wanted to talk to me about before I went swimming. Now she's totally broken down, and it's over between us, this time for sure. Your husband has something to do with it. He said or did something tonight to turn her away from me again, and this time it's complete. He's been poisoning her mind against me since August. He told me last year he would break us up, now he's succeeded. I just decided to tell him what I thought about that. I'm sorry to have caused a disturbance in your home. I'll leave now."
"David, you're still welcome in my home. If you felt my husband was hurting you, it is your right to have it out with him. I don't see any bruises on either of you, so I guess your argument was civilized. I won't have violence in my home. You did well. Come back tomorrow, maybe Carol will be more reasonable then."
I thanked Dolly for her kind words, said good night to her, found Bob in the kitchen and said goodnight to him, too and went home. I had already suffered the biggest blow in my life when I first came home from camp and hadn't fully recovered from it when this latest blow fell, but I had been managing. You can only take so much pain before you become numb, which is how I felt now -- numb. Except the ache deep in my heart became permanent.
The next morning, I told my parents what had happened, and that Carol and I were finished for good it seemed and probably would never get back together. Mom said never was too long a time; someday we would get back together. She never gave up hope.
While I was talking to my parents, I had a revelation. Bob Sr. may not have actually raped Carol, but if he told her he had and she believed him, what would that do to her? She would probably react just the way she did and hide from me in her shame. Now I knew we were through, because there was no way she'd ever believe me if I tried to tell her he was lying about such a thing. He would have to tell her himself, and I couldn't see me making him do that any time soon. My threat to tell Dolly and the police rang hollow to me. It would be his word against mine — the decorated veteran versus the high school kid whose girl friend told him to take a hike. In her shame, Carol would probably deny it.
Today, allegations of sexual abuse are taken very seriously. In 1965, in small town Ontario, any complaint from me would have been looked at as sour grapes over a failed teenage relationship and treated accordingly. It would probably have made things worse for Carol. So, much as I wanted to help her, my hands were effectively tied.
I also began to believe what Mom had said about an evil around us. It seemed that just when we were getting things sorted out, something else happened. I thought it might be time to leave it alone but I still loved her, and since hope springs eternal, I'd still try to get her back. I just didn't like my chances.
I went back to the Scotts' early that afternoon. Carol was still holed up in her room. I went up to say hello, but she wouldn't reply. Bob Sr. had risen early and disappeared from the house. Dolly thought he simply went back to his job early to avoid further confrontations with me. I don't remember much else of that day or the next two. I went to school and kept my usual routine, including waiting for Dad at their house after football practice. Carol stayed in her room while I was there, and wouldn't go to school.
Wednesday, I had just got to the Scotts' when Bob Sr. arrived. When he saw me there, he frowned a bit, but he was very, almost overly, polite with me and solicitous of my well being. He was quite jovial with everyone.
He called a family meeting and I said I should leave to let them have their privacy. Dolly asked where would I go. Dad wasn't due for another hour and a half, so I stayed. Bob Sr. didn't object and even allowed as it would affect me too, so I should stay, it wouldn't take long. Carol even came downstairs for the meeting after Bob Sr. looked at me almost for permission, then went up and spoke to her through the door. I didn't hear what he said, but she at least came downstairs. She kept as far from me as she could. I thought she looked terrible the first time -- this was MUCH worse.
Carol had no life in her whatsoever. She shuffled when she walked. Her normally superb posture was gone, replaced by a slouched and curled stance like she was trying to make herself invisible to the whole world, not just me. Her shoulders were rounded and drooped as if carrying a huge load. Her eyes were bloodshot and swollen from constant tears. Her clothing was totally nondescript, sloppy and wrinkled like she slept in it. There were huge bags under her eyes and her hair had lost all its sheen. But it was what lurked inside those eyes that chilled me.
Carol's eyes had become flat, indifferent -- lifeless. They emanated utter despair, grief, deep soul-searing pain, hopelessness and something else I suspected was total shame. Her voice, when she spoke was flat and lifeless. The only time she spoke a complete thought was to ask her mother.
"Why is David here? I told him to go away. We're finished."
One thing I had noticed with this latest and apparently final breakup with Carol: she never stopped calling me 'David', and used my name quite frequently. I took this as her signal that this time it was definitely not me that was at fault, and the original reason for our breakup was resolved. Even in the midst of adversity, one can sometimes find a ray of sunshine. That was mine: I was still 'David', which meant there was love there, regardless of it being unreachable.
Dolly's answer was simple and almost brutal as if she had lost patience with Carol. If Dolly only knew!
"Carol, you may be finished with David, but he's still a friend to the rest of us. He is welcome, and can stay. You live here, but this is NOT your house to say who can visit and who cannot."
Carol flinched at her mother's words and remained silent.
Once we were all gathered at the dining room table, Bob Sr. dropped a bombshell. They were moving. He had put this house up for sale, and bought a brand new one in Don Mills, a new subdivision in Toronto. They would move in and take possession the first of October, now less than two weeks away! He claimed it was because he was tired of being away from home so much, and he could now spend as much time as possible with his family.
The family's reaction was less than overjoyed. No one wanted to move. Carol froze at the comment about spending more time with his family then her whole body simply slumped. I saw a flash of fear cross her face. She didn't say anything. Once all the grumbling was dispensed with the rest of the meeting was taken up with the details of the move, and I was asked if I would help them pack and load. Professional movers would do the bulk of it, but there was still a need for a strong back (and a weak mind... ).
After the meeting, I managed to get alone with Bob Sr. for a few minutes. He was very nervous. I spoke as coldly and pointedly as I could muster. I drew upon what I'd learned and seen from the officers at camp when they dressed down a defaulter. I made sure he understood me, and that I was not making any idle threats.
"I say this three times: Remember my promise. I know the real reason for this move is to get yourself and Carol Anne away from me. I'm not fooled for a minute. From her look of fear, she thinks similarly. You didn't have your way with her, I know that, but I'm almost positive you told her you did, and she believed you. You would be well advised to make your peace with her before this day is finished, with a promise you WILL keep, that what happened Saturday night will never happen again. If you ever want your daughter to regain a semblance of normality, you must do this, at least. Look at her! She's almost suicidal! And you did that to her! For her sake alone, you should really tell her that you didn't do anything other than beat her, but I don't think you will, because knowing she didn't shame herself would let her come back to me, and you won't allow that.
"Don't think for a minute being in Toronto will protect you. Bob doesn't know everything, but he is very suspicious of your intents toward Carol, and has been for some time. He is watching you now. After today, he'll be watching you even closer. I think Dolly is suspicious at some level, too, and will be watching. If you try anything with Carol Anne, one or both will catch you, and at least one of them will tell me, and probably the authorities. Do you know what they do to incestuous rapists in the Pen? Ask my dad. He works there. That is, you might go to jail if I don't catch you first. Do I make myself perfectly clear?"
If a family member reported him, it might be a lot different than a jilted boy friend's claim, so I used it.
Bob Sr. knew the significance of the three times preface to what I told him. His reply was clear and to the point.
"I understand three times. I have already made an overture to Carol, which is why she came to the meeting. There will not be a repetition of Saturday night, and she knows it."
"Good. You owe her that much, at least."
Just then, Dad blew the horn to let me know he was there. I grabbed my stuff, and said a quick goodbye to everyone. When I said goodbye to Carol, I blew her a kiss as I said, "Good night, Sweetheart. May the Goddess protect you. I love you."
She seemed to fold in on herself, as if my words hurt. She did speak once, though.
"See you, David."