on the liquor he’d drank to keep him slower and his fat gut to make chasing me a stupid idea that he’d get tired of doing when he got too winded.
But that nasty white man kept at me, grunting and wheezing and he put his own speed into his steps and I swore I could smell the sick stench of his breath fogging in the air around me, getting closer until it was against my neck.
My moves went sloppy and the buckle from my t-strap shoe popped, slowing me into a stumble, the gravel from the road falling into my shoe until I couldn’t move much, until a hop or two to remove it had me falling on my knees just long enough for Andres to catch up.
“You listen to me.” His words were clipped, winded and came out in a rasp and he edged closer, reaching out his thick, short fingers toward me. “When I say you come to me, you better get your tail right in damn front of me. You hear me?”
He was drunk, I reminded myself, knowing that what I did just then this bastard wasn’t likely to remember, and then Andres took hold of my arm, pulling me up from the ground to shake me between his damp palms.
“I tell you to… to come… and you…” He shook me hard, fingers curling, grabbing onto the collar of my shirt until he had a fistful of fabric in his fist and two buttons popped from the movement.
He lunged closer and all I could smell was that hooch: thick and warm and wet and the dirty, sickening smell of his sweaty, round body. All I saw was those chapped, fat lips of his coming closer and closer. My sense returned and again I told myself this drunk man wouldn’t remember, and I did the only thing I could; I hauled back and socked Joe Andres one good time in his eye.
I think, maybe he was surprised. I was barely a hundred pounds and there wasn’t a whole lot of strength in that punch. I knew that and reckon he did too. But Andres stopped trying to put his mouth on me. He made a small, shocked noise, something that might have been a belch, maybe the air sticking in his throat but the sound was wet and gurgling, something that would have made me laugh if he still didn’t have his hands on me.
Andres opened his mouth, reminding me of a guppy sucking on the air around him when he jumped out of his bowl, but I wouldn’t let him speak. I jerked back, twisting away from him and I think, maybe, he was too surprised to move at first, that some “gal” had the gumption enough to fight back.
The gravel under my feet dug into the soft surface of my heel, and I pulled away from Andres, twisting my hips to get out of that tight grip, but he held on and I could hear a ripping sound as I moved. Four sharp steps back and Andres held part of my shirt between his fingers. I looked down, mouth hanging open and breathing hard as I pushed down that burning sweet anger that had me wanting to scratch this drunk bastard’s eyes out, and noticed that my skin was against the open air and my skimpy undershirt was showing. And when Joe Damn Andres looked down at my bosom, when he threw down the rip of my shirt and took to licking his lips and stepping toward me, I stomped my one-shoed heel onto the top of his foot and didn’t wait to see how bad I’d got him afore I was off in a scared rabbit run, back the way I’d come.
The sun was nearly gone now, except for the faint shadow that covered the ground. I ran on and on until I’d cleared most of the empty sugarcane field, ignoring the rich smell in the air and the row of crows watching me thunder down the road back toward my Bastie’s cottage.
I didn’t stop until I was past the cottage, back against the south fence line, past the tool shed and away from the house and where Sylv and I had mustered up the smarts enough to build a small tree house against one of the largest oak trees on the left of the property. The tree house was no more than a few loose boards tied together with fraying rope in knots, and