Last Stand. Robert Ciancio

laughed. Were they intentionally doing “good cop, bad cop,” or was it an accident? I said I almost laughed, but I must have smiled for real.

      Bucket Guy came running up to me and punched me across the left side of my jaw.

      “You think something’s funny? You try to rape a little girl and you think it’s funny. Is that what you were in jail for in the first place?”

      This time, I smiled and I finally spoke. I looked at all three guys.

      “Look, I know you’re upset. I would be too. But I didn’t rape or try to rape anybody. I don’t know who the girl is to you, but ask her. She’ll tell ya.”

      They all looked at me for what seemed like a full five minutes. Older Big Guy finally spoke first.

      “Go get Jennifer.”

      Short Guy grabbed the older big guy by the arm and pulled him off to the side.

      “Charles, she’s still too worked up. It might freak her out too much,” he said. But now I had two names. The girl I saved was Jennifer, and the older big guy was Charles.

      Charles looked at the younger big guy.

      “I said go get Jennifer.” The younger big guy didn’t move. He kept looking from me to the short guy then back at me.

      “Charlie, I said go get your fuckin’ sister.” This time it was yelled. A third name. Charlie. I must have been right. Charles was the dad; Charlie was his son. Now who was the short guy?

      Charlie ran out of the barn toward what I assumed was the house. Short Guy smiled and looked at me with a doubtful smirk on his face.

      “I hope you’re not lyin’,” the short guy said. Charles looked at me. He was intent on doing me harm.

      “If she comes in here and tells me it was you, I’ll kill ya. You understand that, right?” He moved closer and got face-to-face with me. “I will kill you, and I’ll do it as slow as I can.”

      I could hear a girl crying. She was almost frantic. She kept pleading that she didn’t want to see him. She couldn’t look at the guys that tried to rape her. She couldn’t go in. But I also heard what sounded like a dragging noise across the ground. Charlie must have been dragging her.

      I heard another female voice pleading with Charlie not to make her do it. Charlie came through the door first, and he was dragging Jennifer by her right arm. The other female came through the door next. She was maybe in her late forties and was heavy-set with dark hair. She had an attractive face, but you could see that it had been worn out from hard work. She was holding on to Jennifer’s other arm. Another guy—a kid, really—came through the door last. He just looked angry. When he saw me, he started to move closer to me. It was a slow, deliberate movement. He wanted to hurt me. But then Jennifer looked up, saw me, and stopped crying and immediately calmed down. Everybody stopped and looked at her.

      Jennifer just looked at me. She didn’t say a word. Everybody’s attention was on her. It’s funny what comes to mind when you’re in a stressful situation. I thought of an old Alfred Hitchcock program where a girl was raped. She was taken to the hospital where her husband picked her up. On the way home, she pointed at a guy on the street and said, “That’s him, that’s the guy.” Her husband pulled over and followed the guy into a parking garage where the husband killed the rapist. He went back to the car and told his wife that she’d be okay, that he’d handled it. As they drove down the road, she saw another guy, pointed at him, and said, “That’s him, that’s the guy.” The show ended with the husband’s face and the realization that his wife saw the rapist in every guy and that he had just killed an innocent man. All I could think was that she was going to point at me and say, “That’s him, that’s the guy.”

      But she didn’t. She looked at Charles, whom I assumed was her dad. She then looked at me. Her face was still red. She was upset, and I could tell that she had been crying, but she was calm. She walked over to me and looked up at me. She then reached out and hugged me.