Jake and the Girl with the Pretty Legs, J.C. Laird [speld decodable readers txt] 📗

bag and back-pack, he turned to her. She could see tears in his faded blue eyes. “Thank you…ma’am, I mean…miss…er, Rachel…,” he faltered, but continued on. “Don’t forget… once I was different…better, that is…not like this.” Then his mind slipped gears again, and that childish and embarrassed smile creased his weathered and lined face. “You still have the prettiest legs I ever seen in my whole life.” He turned and walked away.

Rachel watched until he had disappeared around the corner. She hadn’t known what else to do or say.

#

A week passed, and the clear, high desert nights of Albuquerque had become increasingly cold. It was late, after eleven pm, but Rachel had had a late dinner with her boyfriend, Jon, and she needed her daily run. Wynne said she was crazy to be jogging around town that late at night, but Rachel, in her baggy grey sweat suit to combat the cooling October night, was fearless. Besides, she had her trusty Mace in her pocket.

She stuck to the well-lit areas around campus and the adjoining neighborhoods. But she was cold and decided to take a short-cut back to her apartment. She detoured between the two O.M.I. buildings near the loading dock—a route she had taken dozens of times.

But this night, it was a terrible mistake.

The first attacker, wearing a hooded sweat shirt, came out of the darker recesses of a doorway and hit her low, like a football player, driving her into the adjoining building’s stucco veneer. Her head thudded off the wall, the sledgehammer of pain buckling her knees, black stars on a brilliant white background exploding in front of her eyes. The man’s fist crashed into her jaw, and the stars grew bigger, threatening to meld into total darkness. Her legs failing her, she began a slow slide down the wall, but still managed to maintain her hold on consciousness, trying to concentrate on getting enough wind back in her lungs to scream.

Mauling hands were pulling, yanking her sweatshirt and bra up, over and covering her head, pinning her arms above her. More hands, a second person, was pulling at her sweatpants, trying to pull them off as she sat dazed on the cold cement, propped weakly against the rough wall.

Her sputtering mind latched onto one horrific word…rape…she was going to be raped! She would have screamed, but her jaws wouldn’t work anymore; all that came out was a hoarse, raspy moan through her clenched teeth and bleeding lips. Her mind lurched, stumbled, prayed, ‘Help me God…help me please…the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want…’

Suddenly, miraculously, the grasping, grabbing hands were gone from her body. There were sounds of scuffling, swearing, fighting. A scream, someone tripping over her. Her mind registered that someone was trying to help her.

Rachel slowly slumped over onto her side, gasping and gagging. The pain was so intense in her head and jaw that she thought she might vomit. She curled up into a half fetal position, bringing her knees up to her chest, but was too weak to work the sweatshirt down from over her arms and head. It was so dark and she was so cold. She couldn’t hear the sounds of fighting anymore.

Then someone was covering her nakedness with something warm. She mercifully slid into unconsciousness, thinking and feeling no longer an option.

#

She could hear voices, words, disjointed sounds. Slowly, they began to coalesce, sticking to her consciousness. She opened her eyes, squinting at the red and blue flashing lights swirling through the darkness. Her head was throbbing and her jaw hurt. Slowly, things came into focus.

Two police cars were parked near the loading dock entrance, their emergency lights slicing through the night. An ambulance was backed onto the down ramp, a stretcher with a moaning, inert shape awaited its loading.

Rachel pushed herself into a sitting position, resting against the rough stucco wall. Two male EMT’s standing next to her, waiting until the second ambulance was ready for her, immediately knelt down. The older of the two spoke. “Take it easy, young lady, you might have a concussion; why don’t you lie back down?”

Other than her head, jaw and swollen lips, everything seemed to be normal. “I’ll be okay.” A wave of nausea washed over her and it hurt to talk, but she wanted to know what was going on. “Did they catch the guys who attacked me?”

With an audible grunt a heavy-set police officer, whom she hadn’t seen at first, knelt down beside her. “The other ambulance is hauling away the two guys who assaulted you. They were beaten pretty badly, but we can’t take credit for that. They confessed to attacking you, but said some young guy in an army uniform came out of nowhere and beat the hell out of them. A campus police officer on foot patrol heard yelling and screaming, came to investigate and found you and those two punks unconscious, but no sign of any army guy.”

The grey-haired cop reminded Rachel of her father. He was still talking. “Any chance I can have that blanket and picture now?” he said.

Rachel glanced down. Her sweat suit was back in place and a dark wool blanket was now covering her lower body. In her left hand—and clasped tightly to her body—was a threadbare, brown army blanket, and in her right, a photograph. Both hands were cramped and sore.

“You’ve had a death grip on that old blanket and picture ever since we found you. You’ve been semi-conscious, but refused to let go of either. Someone had covered you with that blanket; I don’t know where the picture came from, either.” The officer reached out and touched her arm. “I’m Officer Mike Jenkins and I’ve been with the Albuquerque Police Department for thirty years. You have my word that I’ll take care of the blanket and picture and get them back to you.” He stood up and reached down.

Rachel reluctantly released the old photograph from her stiff fingers. The blanket she brought to her face, the coarse surface a caress against her cheek, inhaling deeply the faint odor of sweat and musk. The tears came silently; she handed the blanket to the officer.

Glancing from the photo to the smiling, but tearful, young woman before him, he asked, “Do you know the soldier in this picture?”

“I’m only twenty-four, that picture’s like forty-five years old.”

“And you know this how?” Officer Jenkins looked from the old army blanket to the photo, then back at Rachel.

She remained silent.

He sighed. “I don’t think I even want to know. We’ll get a description of the good-Samaritan from the perps and try to locate him.”

Rachel’s smile faded a bit. “I think he’s gone, officer. I think, maybe, he was just on loan.”

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Imprint

Text: John C. Laird
Images: istockphoto.com
Editing: Alexandra Laird
Publication Date: 03-02-2012

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