A Storied Man

Bernie is a poverty-stricken woman whose life takes an unexpected turn when an old friend returns to town. This is Part Seven.

Related reading: Talk With a Killer, Wall

Part Seven

“Kenneth! Are you okay?” Bernie yelled. The terror in her voice frightened her.

She stayed there waiting to hear anything — a whimper, a cry, any human sound, waft up from the darkness below the cliff. The call of a distant whippoorwill was all she heard.

After several minutes without any response from Kenneth, she got on her hands and knees and crawled away from the edge. She awkwardly stood and pulled up her pants, tears splashing onto the backs of her hands as she worked to zip and button her shorts. It was then she first realized she was crying. Despite what Kenneth had tried to do, her intent was not to kill him.

She wanted to get away quickly to find help, but from Sugarloaf’s peak that would have meant flying.

Instead she had to carefully work her way back down the narrow crevasse most commonly used by casual climbers, a feat she never had accomplished alone. She jumped across a narrow gap to get to the spot where she could begin her descent. Wriggling backward toward the ledge felt unnatural and scary with nobody waiting below, but she scooted until her feet found toe-holds and only her arms and head remained above the ledge.

Breathing between sobs, she methodically worked her way down the 12-foot drop to an area about 10 feet wide and surrounded by rock. She stopped and took two deep breaths. The rest was almost as easy as walking down stairs.

Once she reached the bottom of the rock, the leaves blocked out most of the moonlight. Relying on her memory of many walks down that hill, she ran the smooth stretches and slowed only when it got rough. Switchback after switchback she did this, before nearly sprinting the final straight downhill stretch. As she emerged from the woods into the field below, the moon set ablaze the dual yellow stripes running up the hood of Kenneth’s Chevelle. They seemed to glow within the dark green paint, parallel beacons of hope.

But Bernie didn’t have the keys.

“Dammit!” She stopped and leaned on the car, her legs shaking and her left big toe throbbing.

Somewhere on the opposite side of the mountain, Kenneth lay dying or dead, and she had nothing but her legs to carry her. If he was hurt, she was sure there was no way she could get help in time.

Seeing no other choice, she ran along hardpan ruts in the dusty gravel road. With the back of her hands she wiped away the streaming tears. She ran a short distance along Highway 110 before Pete Gist, the youth minister at the local First United Methodist Church, picked her up and took her to the hospital. She closed her eyes as they drove past the spot where her brother was killed.

“Nurse, prep a Vitullo kit in exam four,” said Frank McLain. He had delivered Bernie and was the only family doctor she had known. Of all the people who could have been on emergency duty that night, Dr. McLain was there.

Bernie sat in a gray metal chair, a portable stainless steel tray beside her, trying to place the smell in the air. It was unnatural, like nowhere else in the world.

McLain handed her a tissue. “Here, Bernice, take this, but just pat your eyes, don’t wipe.”

“What’s a Vitullo?” Bernie asked. She dabbed her eyes with the tissue.

“It’s a rape kit,” McLain said.

She blew her nose, then set the tissue on the tray. “But he didn’t actually rape me.”

“It’s something we should do, to protect you and your family,” he said. “Barbara will be in there, too. You remember her, one of my nurses? You can wait with her while I call your parents.”

“My parents?” Fresh tears fell. Her tissue spent, she wiped her face with her hands.

“I want to clear the exam with them first. You’re still just 17, right?”

“Yes.”

McLain led her to exam four, which was just one of several hospital beds in the same room. Rings on what looked like a shower curtain jangled along a semicircular rod as he pulled the curtain around one of the beds to form a cramped space.

“You can sit or lie down here while I go call,” McLain said.

Although it was the same doctor, the exam was nothing like her usual gynecological visit. McLain seemed tense and unsure how to handle the instruments. Twice she felt sharp pain and he apologized. Nurse Barbara held her hand and spoke in comforting tones, but Bernie wasn’t listening.

She replayed the events over and over. After just a few minutes of that, questions pushed out everything else. Why had Kenneth turned on her? Had she done something wrong? Would she get in trouble?

When the exam was over, she had no time to think before the police and her parents showed up.

“Tell us exactly what happened, ma’am,” said the young officer. It was Dale Regan, a high school football star when Bernie was in grade school.

Bernie’s mother grabbed her hand. “Oh, my sweet girl,” she said. “It must have been just awful.”

“Now, let Dale do his job, dear,” Bernie’s father said. Then, to Bernie, “Go ahead, honey, tell them everything. We’re here for you.”

She told the truth about what happened that night, but only her parents seemed to believe it. Kenneth was very popular, an athlete talented in football, basketball, and baseball. He wasn’t a mean boy, consensus said.

Though no legal action was taken, for years almost the entire town blamed Bernie for his death. He had trapped her up there on that cliff, had pushed her down and hurt her. He tried to force himself on her, in her. Nobody wanted to hear that she had defended herself, and she didn’t dare suggest that maybe he deserved what he got.

It wasn’t just adults. Even at school she found no respite, reading accusation in all her friend’s eyes.

Everybody except Shonda. Although they never had spoken of it, Bernie thought she saw a look of understanding on Shonda’s face. As if she had some reason to believe.

Now, nearly 20 years after Kenneth’s death, as she dried off with a towel used before by countless truckers, she held out hope that she might finally get some answers.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 20th, 2008 at 1:39 am and is filed under Drama. You may follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed, and/or leave a comment below.