CHAPTER THIRTEEN

I didn't have anything to say. Apologies would have been foolish, excuses even worse. I had stepped out of line, that was all. I had taken advantage of our privacy in the boat to assume that because she was naked and I was naked and we were alone and were conversing on reasonably intimate terms, I could then automatically go on to other intimacies. That was my mistake.

Joanie turned and looked away from me. I sat up straight in the stern and concentrated on bringing the boat back to the dock. During the ten or fifteen minutes it took to sail back across he lake, neither of us said a word. I felt like a man who had killed the golden goose, or something. I had grabbed too soon, and probably fouled up my chances forever.

The boat glided shoreward. When we were in knee-deep water Joanie hopped out and tethered the boat to the dock while I lowered the sail. We left the dock in silence. Just as we passed the oar shack, Joanie turned to me and said, "I'm sorry, Al."

That was all. Just I'm sorry, Al, in a small, choked-sounding voice. Then she was gone.

I stood with my hands on my hips watching her disappearing. Then I walked over to the nearby basketball court. I picked up the ball that was still lying where I had left it and fired it with all my might against the farther backboard. It rebounded high in the air and went rolling away toward the tennis court.

I wished I had pockets to put my hands in. I was in the sort of mood where you want to slip your hands in your pockets and let your shoulders sag and your arms go limp. I didn't feel like walking straight and proud now, even though that was the posture nudism almost automatically enforced on you. I didn't feel proud of anything right now.

I went over to the baseball diamond and took a seat on one of the wooden benches along the first-base line, resting my head dejectedly on my fists. It was about eleven o'clock. The sun was high and hot, and the ground was rapidly drying out. Perhaps by the afternoon the baseball field and volleyball court and all would be in playable shape.

After a while I slouched up the hill to the cabin area. A few games of catch were under way, and a few people were just lolling in the sun. The rest were down at the waterfront. I went into my cabin. Meehan wasn't there. I sat down on the edge of my bed, feeling as dismal and as desolate as I had felt since the days when my marriage was breaking up minute by crumbling minute. If I had never gone out in the boat with Joanie at all, it wouldn't have been so bad. But to go out—and then to make a crude and clumsy pass and ruin everything when all was going so well—that was what I couldn't forgive myself for.

There was nearly an hour to kill before lunchtime. In my present mood I didn't feel like going out and socializing with the carefree nudists. And naturally working on my book was impossible just now. So I pulled my legs up and stretched out on the bed to stare at the ceiling of the cabin until the gong rang.

I wasn't very hungry or very talkative at lunchtime. The people I was sitting with realized at once that I was down in the dumps, and in a tactful way they drew a little cloak of privacy around me. In a nudist camp, where your body can never be hidden, they give you an exaggerated degree of privacy in other ways. Nobody was going to bother me if I felt like sulking. Nobody would make phony gestures of cheering me up.

Leaving the mess hall early, I wandered around the front end of the colony for a while, going finally into the music room. On a sunny day like this, I could be guaranteed a couple of hours of solitude here.

I switched on the phonograph and dug through the stack of long-plays until I found something that fitted my present mood—a disk of some Chopin played by Rubinstein. I was in a mood for cornball sentimentality, and Chopin is the best cornball stuff there is. So I sat there listening to cagy old Rubinstein spinning out all that self-pitying piano music in his masterful way, and after a while I stopped feeling quite so sorry for myself.

I told myself that things would never have worked out with Joanie, that we were too far apart on too many of the really important things. So maybe it was lucky that I had turned grabby at that inopportune moment. My real error was in thinking that Joanie's personal maturity was on the same level as her physical development. It wasn't. Her unhappy experience of three years back had obviously turned her into a badly neurotic woman.

That was just what I needed: a neurotic woman. Like a hole in the head.

After a little while longer I was almost convinced that Joanie was not what I really wanted. Almost convinced. The experience in the boat had left me with a powerful sexual longing. Unfulfilled desire sent painful throbs through my loins. After the almost feverish pace of my first couple of days in the Sunland Health Colony, my sex life had dwindled to absolutely nothing at all, while I went around chasing my golden-haired will-o'-the-wisp, Joanie. And now I was in dire need.

I clenched my fists tensely. Every nerve seemed to be twinging individually inside me. All of a sudden I was colossally horny. Joanie had left me frustrated, and I had to turn elsewhere for relief.

Where?

Bonnie was gone. Sandra was underage, though no doubt willing.

That left Harriet.

I was a bit queasy about going through another session with the trimly built little redhead masochist. I didn't even know if she'd be interested in me. For all I knew, she was getting the hell slapped out of her by Riccio's friend and was gloriously enamored of him.

But it was worth a try.

I had done her a favor when she was keyed up and needed relief. Maybe now she would do the same for me, I thought.

I shut off the hi-fi in the middle of a waltz and put the record away. Quickly, I left the music room, going out the back way, crossing around the mess hall and heading up the dirt road toward the staff quarters. Everything looked quiet up there. Doubtless the cooks and waitresses and all were down at the lake with everyone else, having a good time on this sunny day.

The cabin that Lorraine and Harriet shared was at my left. I walked up onto the porch and knocked at the outside door.

No answer.

I started to turn away. But I heard sounds coming from within.

Sounds like sobs.

I stood there a moment longer, listening. Yes, someone definitely was inside. I knocked again, and, getting no response, turned the handle and let myself in.

Harriet's door stood open, and her room was empty. The sobs were coming from Lorraine's room, whose door was closed nearly all the way.

"She isn't here," Lorraine said in a dismal voice, broken with sobs. "She and Tony are down at the waterfront."

Cross that idea off, I thought. But Lorraine was still sobbing. I hesitated outside her door, wondering if I ought to butt into her business. I was half perturbed by her sobs, and—I admit it—half interested in the notion of taking a tumble on the bed with her, if she were in that kind of mood.

I said through the door, "Are you okay, Lorraine?"

Sobs.

"Lorraine?"

"Who are you?"

"Al Fieldston."

"Go away." More sobs.

I decided to chance it. I pushed the door open and walked in.

The room was a mess. The dresser was overturned, the chair was broken, the closet had been dumped. Lorraine was lying face down on the unmade bed, her head in her hands. She was naked, of course, and every few moments I saw the tender flesh of her buttocks quiver as a sob racked her.

She looked up at me.

She was more of a mess than the room was. Her lower lip was split and bloody, her eyes were red from crying and she had the beginnings of a neat shiner on her left eye. There were scratches on her breasts, and the marks of punches here and there on her body.

"My God," I said. "What happened here?"

She shuddered. She looked pathetic, naked, bedraggled, battered.

"Riccio," she said in a hoarse voice.

"What did he do?"

She turned eyes wild with fear on me. "He's drunk," she whispered. "He went into town last night and bought a bottle of whiskey, and he was up half the night drinking it. He was drunk in the kitchen this morning, and then just before lunch he finished the rest of the bottle." She shivered. "The cook threw him out of the kitchen and told him to pack up and clear out. Instead he came back here and waited for me. He was here when I came in after lunch. He—he was angry with me. He said I made him jealous. He—he beat me up."

She began to sob again. I stood above her, lifting her face, and saw that her eye was rapidly swelling shut. He had really given her a pasting.

"He wanted to make love after he finished hitting me," Lorraine went on in a rasping whisper. "Of course I wouldn't. So then he threw himself down on top of me and forced my legs apart and—and—" She buried her face in the pillow, unable to go any further. Any thoughts of making love to her myself had long since vanished from my mind. Lorraine drew her legs up, huddling in a pitiful little fetal ball, sobbing constantly at the outrage that had been done to her.

"Where is he now?" I asked.

"I don't know," she said in a hollow, muffled voice. "When he was through—through raping me, he went away. He said I should wait for him here, that he'd come back in a little while and—and do it again. But that was half an hour ago. I don't know where he is. But he's dangerous, Al. He's dangerous when he's sober, and he isn't even sober now."

"You mustn't stay here," I said. "Come on with me. I'll take you to the Richardses, and then we'll catch this Riccio and see that he's put away."

"No! I'm afraid to leave! If he comes back and finds I'm gone, he'll kill me!"

"He won't touch you," I said. But Lorraine would not budge. She clung to her pillow, shivering and sobbing, insisting that she was afraid to leave. I scowled indecisively and finally made up my mind to leave her here.

"I'll send someone to stay with you," I told her. "Don't worry about Riccio. He won't touch you again."

I darted out quickly. My heart was racing. A drunken rapist was just what a nudist colony needed least. All of my original suspicions about Riccio were confirmed, now. I felt almost sick with anger at the thought of what he had done to Lorraine, and of what he might be doing at this very moment to—to Joanie, I thought, and the sudden wave of alarm that swept through me told me that I had been only fooling myself in the music room when I had persuaded myself I did not love her.

The thing to do now was to get back on campus and alert Dr. Richards about what had happened. Then someone could be sent up to comfort Lorraine while a posse of men hunted down Riccio. What would happen after that, I didn't know. Dr. Richards might not want to risk phoning the police, and might simply expel Riccio from the colony without dragging in unwanted publicity. Well, that was his problem. The important thing was to get the news to him that Riccio was marauding somewhere on the colony grounds.

I passed the mess hall and started down the road to the cabins.

I heard a scream.

My first thought was that the scream had come from the staff cabins, that it was Lorraine screaming—perhaps at Riccio's return, perhaps at the mere retrospective horror of what had happened. I stopped short, about to whirl around and retrace my path back to Lorraine's cabin, when I heard the scream again.

This time the scream was cut off before it reached its peak. And it had not come from behind me.

It had come from the left, where a back road led from the baseball diamond to the social hall past the auxiliary tennis courts. The road was rarely used, and massive oaks gave it a secluded atmosphere, hiding it from view at any considerable distance.

I started to run.

A row of little hemlocks had been planted at the entrance to the road, screening it. I darted around the hemlocks and stopped.

There was Riccio.

He was busily trying to rape Naomi Gardner.

Naomi lay on the ground, naked. Her dark hair was flying in every direction and her breasts rose and fell wildly as she struggled to keep Riccio away. He was kneeling above her, naked too, looking like some wild satyr, his maleness aroused, and he was desperately trying to force her legs open and keep her from screaming and prevent her from kneeing him in the groin, all at the same time.

He had one of his knees forced between her tightly-clamped thighs, and slowly, inexorably, he was forcing her legs apart. In another moment he would be able to thrust himself between her legs and take the girl. Roughly, brutally, a searing experience that would remain imprinted on her brain the rest of her life.

I'm not exactly the hero type, as I may have already made clear. But there are certain times when even the most pacifistic of men doesn't stop to weigh the ifs and buts. This was one of those times.

"Riccio!" I yelled, and I hardly recognized the sound of my distorted voice. "Riccio, you drunken bastard, get off that girl!"

And I went plunging forward.

Riccio saw me and looked up, scowling, his dark, long-beaked face a mask of utter hatred. For a moment it almost seemed as though he would ignore me and continue forcing the girl, now that he had practically succeeded in prying open her legs. But I kept on coming, and he rose from her to turn to me.

I had him by fifteen or twenty pounds, but that was where my advantage ended. He was a couple of inches taller, a whole lot longer of arm, and ten times as mean. He was younger and tougher, too.

Naomi rose to a sitting position, her eyes blank with terror. I screamed at her to run and get help, but she just sat there uncomprehendingly. In a state of shock, I guess.

I practically collided with Riccio.

One long arm snaked out and crashed into my face. No teeth went, but I felt my lips slicing against my choppers, and warm, salty blood spurted into my mouth. At the same moment I barrelled a punch straight forward aimed at Riccio's bony stomach. It landed and produced a satisfying grunt from him.

The idea of physically fighting another human being had not occurred to me in more years than I cared to think about. But I was in it now. I was profoundly grateful that we were both naked. Riccio was the sort who would be carrying a knife, if he had any place to keep it. But he wasn't wearing a thing—no hat, no socks—and so I knew I had nothing worse to face than his bare fists.

Drunken, bloodshot eyes loomed up in front of me. A hand clawed for my face. I swiped it away and started to aim a body-punch, when his leg began to rise. I got out of the way just barely in time. I had more to fear than fists, evidently. Riccio was going to fight me tooth and claw.

I parried a couple of other wild kicks and punches, and tried to get close enough to him to land one myself. But his long arms and legs kept me at bay. Naomi still sat stupidly in the grass, watching us in a dazed sort of way and ignoring my shouted requests for help. I envisioned myself getting beaten to a pulp by this drunken madman before anyone heard the sounds of battle.

But Riccio was drunk. That was my salvation. It made him an unpredictable opponent, but it also interfered with his coordination.

We traded a couple of wild blows. Then he reared back and aimed another kick at my groin, but this time I was ready. As the foot came up, I sidestepped and wrapped both my hands round his bony ankle and yanked. He came skidding forward on the grass and tried to pull free, but I held tight, and he started to topple. He went over in a spidery tangle of arms and legs, yelling in agony as his other leg folded up underneath him, and the next moment I was sprawling on top of him.

He still had plenty of fight left. He smashed me in the midsection hard, two or three times. I just wanted to pin him. His leg was still caught under him, and if I could only get those flailing arms to hold still—

I tried to pinion his wrists. He squirmed loose and managed to roll halfway over, freeing his leg and nearly throwing me off. His ugly face was contorted with hatred and contempt. He arched his back, trying to toss me, and I grabbed his throat, feeling the protruding adam's-apple against my palm.

"Lie still or I'll choke you!"

"Go to hell."

I tried to tighten my grasp, but he caught my wrist and started to pull my fingers off my hand, and I had to release him. He writhed again in an attempt to throw me off. This time he nearly succeeded. He moved two feet along the grass, but I moved with him. One of his arms was pinned down, now, but the other moved freely, clawing at me, going for my eyes. I heard Naomi stirring behind me; she was coming out of her daze at last. But I didn't know how long I could hold out against Riccio. I was running out of breath fast, and before very long I would have to release him.

Once he got the upper hand it could be slaughter. He was just drunk enough not to worry about gouging out my eyes, kicking my teeth down my throat, or otherwise messing me up.

Luck was with me, though. Luck and a bit of flexible morality. What I did wasn't exactly approved technique for gentlemanly fighting, but I didn't see why I had to stick by the rules if my opponent didn't.

His shift in position had brought his head within a couple of inches of a large flat rock. I wriggled him over a little more. Then I buried my fingers in the thick, greasy coils of his hair, lifted his head about four inches off the ground, and smacked it down hard. He let out a yelp and struggled hard to break free. I grabbed him and banged him down again. I think I might even have wanted to kill him, just then. But his eyes started to glaze. I gave him a third smash and felt him go limp all over. His head lolled to one side. I clung to him for a couple of moments, on the wild chance that he might be shamming, but he didn't move. He was out cold. I didn't feel like a conquerer, somehow.