At age seventeen, Susan Kelley had experienced more sex and violence than most people encounter in a lifetime. The man who was married to her mother had repeatedly molested her during early childhood; she was raped at age sixteen, ran away from home, turned to prostitution to earn her living, and became an accessory in a brutal murder. Arrested, she is placed under the care of a psychiatrist and a social worker. The latter relates every minute detail of her sex-crammed life, and poses the question: Can Susan now live a "normal" existence?
INTRODUCTION
Due to the very nature of the work he does, a social worker runs into some of the weirdest, most perverted people on earth, and unless his senses are dead, he can hardly help but be affected by these people, no matter what they may have done; no matter what problems they may have.
A social worker in a mental hospital often comes in contact with the strangest people of all. In the several years that I worked in association with Northfield State Hospital, I came into close contact with many strange types. I had-and still have-a lot of pity for these unfortunate individuals. The problems which many of them have are problems that the normal, healthy person will never face. The problems are often so complex that they may never cease to bother them, throughout their lives. In many cases, the goal of treatment in a hospital such as Northfield is to get people to live with, and understand, their problems.
The social worker in a place like Northfield is there for a number of reasons. For one thing, he may marshal the community resources available to help the patients. Also, he is often the one who makes needed connections between the patient in the hospital and the factors outside the hospital which will affect-or have affected-the patient (such as lining up a job for a patient about to be released, or contacting a person who will let a released patient live in his home).
Despite the multiplicity of cases on which I have worked, a few are especially memorable. I can recall a dozen or so cases which, for one reason or another, will always haunt me.
The case of Susan Kelley is a good example. Possibly it was her youth-she was just seventeen when she came to my attention-which causes me to remember her. Or maybe it was that she had already had so many abnormal experiences in her life. Or maybe it was that she had been involved in a gruesome murder. Or maybe it was that her future was so unsure-so blackened by her past. Maybe it was all-or none-of these things.
At any rate, her case is tragic by any standard. The tragedy of her past may well continue for many years-even for her entire life. By the time she was seventeen, her father had deserted the family. She had withdrawn into a private shell due to the lingering influence of her father. She had been raped. Her mother had (without Susan's knowledge) tried to marry her off. She had run away from home and become a prostitute, and had become involved in a murder. Susan Kelley is deserving of pity.
Susan's case is an example of multiple actions and reactions, as are the cases of most people confined to mental hospitals. If we at first understand that actions and reactions play an important part in every person's life, then we can apply that concept to Susan's case to better understand why she did what she did.
Actions and reactions.
We human beings act and react to actions and or reactions directed at us. Each action we undertake is a response to some stimulus (i. e., another action). The action may be passive (a thought, a mumbled word, an attitude taken) or active (kicking a chair, a blow struck, a murder). We all act in reaction to something.
As you, the reader, follow the account of Susan Kelley, her mother, and her father, keep in mind that Susan does not do what she does for no reason at all. Each move she makes is in response to preceding moves. Actions and reactions.
CHAPTER ONE
FIRST LOVE
The court had ordered Susan Kelley to be committed to Northfield State Hospital for thirty days of psychiatric examination due to the gruesomeness of the murder in which she had been involved. At Northfield it was to be determined whether Susan was legally sane, and a recommendation was to be made by the staff as to what should be done with her. To achieve these dual ends, a psychiatrist and I both interviewed and tested Susan. The following account was obtained through the interviews we had with her, as well as from the police report and interviews with certain other people (principally her mother) involved in the case.
The story of Susan Kelley's first seventeen years of life is a story of twisted passions and abnormal emotions. The case does not begin with Susan herself, but rather with her father, Harry Kelley.
Harry Kelley and his wife, June, had had another daughter before Susan. Her name was Alice. She was some eighteen years older than Susan. In fact, Alice really never knew Susan, because several months before Susan was born, Alice had eloped with a sailor named Jin Adams.
Harry Kelley was depressed by this, for he loved Alice very much. He didn't understand why she would do this to him after all the love, all the gifts, and all the attention he had showered on her. Harry Kelley wanted his daughter to have a big church wedding when she got married. As it turned out, he wasn't even present for the wedding. In fact, all he ever knew of the wedding was a card he got from Alice two weeks after her elopement, saying that she and Jim had been married by a justice of the peace and would be living somewhere on the West Coast. And that was the last the Kelleys ever heard from Alice.
While Harry Kelley was depressed and disappointed by Alice's elopement, his sadness did not last long. He had to wait only a few months for the birth of another daughter, whom he named Susan. In his eyes, Susan was a replacement for Alice. Harry could almost put Alice in a closed file of his mind now that he had an infant daughter to replace her.
Actions and reactions.
The Kelleys were somewhat old to have an infant child. At the time of Susan's birth in August, 1949, Harry Kelley was forty-eight and June Kelley thirty-nine. In their section of Seville, the medium-sized town where they lived, no other couple could lay claim to such a disparity of parent's and child's age; nor would others desire that questionable distinction.
The Kelleys' might not have wished for another child either, but after the elopement of Alice, Harry was glad it had happened. He needed someone to fill the vacuum Alice's elopement created. Mrs. Kelley adapted herself to the loss of Alice; she did not need a replacement for her. But she understood her husband and understood why he did need someone to take Alice's place.
Harry Kelley had devoted much of his energy to making Alice love him. He had come from a background where he was not loved, or even wanted. His parents, both drunkards, were only sporadically aware of his existence. From the time Harry was thirteen he had had to be virtually his own support. He had worked part time as a helper in a grocery store, had sold newspapers on a downtown street corner, and had worked in a lumber mill. In times of utter despair, he had oven stolen food from markets so that he and his parents would not starve. Eventually he landed a stockroom job with the Seville Manufacturing Company, a fairly large concern. That job gave Harry his first "big" income. He stayed with Seville Manufacturing for many years, and worked his way up through the ranks to certain supervisory jobs.
Harry was sixteen when he got the job with Seville Manufacturing. He would have liked to move away from his parents' home, a shack on the outskirts of Seville, but they pleaded with him not to leave because they "would surely die" if he did. He was their sole support. Tiny depended on Harry for life itself. Harry succumbed to his parents' sobs and begging and continued to live at home, supporting them until he married.
He met June in 1928 in a small Seville department store. Harry didn't have to try very hard to get June to marry him, for she-came from as sordid a background as he did. Her parents, too, were alcoholics and depended on her in part for their support. Harry and June made a pledge to not use alcohol, since they saw what it had done to their parents. It was a pledge they kept. They were married in late 1928.
When Harry left his parent's home, he promised to send them money occasionally. He kept this promise until the deaths of his parents in a fire at their home in January, 1934. Harry also financially helped his wife's parents from time to time until their deaths in the late 1940s.
There is no doubt that Harry loved June very much. However, when they had Alice, Harry found he loved Ms daughter even more. He devoted his whole existence to the girl, molding her as he wanted her to be. Harry Kelley wanted her to be his loving robot, instantly obeying his every wish. Slowly but surely, Harry Kelley began to ignore his wife because she was not as "trainable" as his daughter. Harry was brainwashing Alice to provide him with those things he had missed in his own stark youth.
It didn't work, really. Alice grew up, and as she did she came to hate her father for his aggressiveness toward her; for his desire to command her attention. She grew away from him in a terrible way. Alice Kelley found an elopement with Jim Adams an escape from a suffocating situation.
At this juncture, June Kelley thought she might win back the love he once showered on her, but that was not to be. She was pregnant, and Mrs. Kelley knew that once the baby was born, her husband would begin to brainwash it, just as he had done with Alice. Mrs. Kelley thought about an abortion, but by the time Alice eloped it was too late.
In August, 1949, Susan Kelley was born. While Mrs. Kelley was less than overjoyed by this event, Mr. Kelley couldn't have been happier. He saw in little Susan a second chance to "create" a person who would love him as if he were a god. He needed this kind of devotion. He needed it to bolster his ego. His past "demanded" it.
Actions and reactions.
June Kelley gave up then and there. It was no use. Harry had another warm body to mold into a loving, respectful subject for his private kingdom. At one point she might have considered killing her child to win back Harry's love, but now she was resigned to her fate as a sort of servant in her own household. It wasn't so bad, she told herself. Harry Kelley was a pretty good provider. He was no drunkard as her parents had been. It wasn't so bad living like this. There were worse things, she knew.
Then what Mrs. Kelley thought would happen did happen. The little girl became her father's child, body and soul. As he had done for Alice, Harry Kelley presented the new child with a flood of gifts and his constant attention.
When the baby was only a few years old she began showing her gratitude for such favors. She would cling to him more than she did to her mother. This affection brought untold joy to the aging man's heart. Harry Kelley found it difficult to tear himself from Susan's presence.
Whether he was with the youngster all the time or not didn't matter in his brainwashing of her. To Susan, Harry Kelley was omnipresent. It seemed as if he was always there, or at best just in another room.
Before long, Harry and Susan were taking walks together. They were private walks, which never included the infant's mother. On these little strolls, brainwashing continued. Harry Kelley would hold the child's hand, and sometimes carry her. He would fondle her. In the little girl's mind, he was the one who gave love and the attention she needed and desired. Her mother had receded into the background of the child's mind.
Harry Kelley was more than a father to Susan; he was her mother, too. He would bathe and feed her. He would rock and burp her. As a baby, he even held the infant over the toilet when she had to go. He bought the girl's clothing and took her on many shopping trips.
While father and daughter did many different things in the daytime, their evenings were much alike. Harry Kelley had purchased a large number of books for Alice and had multiplied their number for the benefit of Susan. Each evening from the time the child was a couple years old until she was in the third grade, Harry Kelley and young Susan would go to a room the father had designed for his children. The place was virtually off-limits to Mrs. Kelley. Books and toys were kept in this room. In this private room the father read to his daughter. Often Susan would select the book to be read, and run to her father with it. He would gather her up in his lap and read to her the book of her (or his) selection. Sometimes his reading would be serious; sometimes in a comic vein. He liked to see Susan laugh.
"I loved it when Dad read to me," Susan told me. "There was something about the way he did it. It was relaxing, leaning against his big chest and listening to him read."
The door to this room was always closed when Harry took his daughter into it. And for a good reason. It was here that the aging man did his most dramatic-and most successful, as it turned out-brainwashing. With the little girl in his lap, her legs spread apart, Harry Kelley would place his hand on her genital region and very slowly caress it. To the young girl there was nothing wrong with this; there were no sexual connotations. She was listening to a story and growing drowsy. She could not recall when the old man began his caressing of her sex parts.
"Were you two? Four? Six years old?" I asked.
"By the time I was aware that Dad did that to me, I was about five," Susan replied. "But he'd been doing it for a long time before that. One evening I was aware that he had a hand there. That's all. I didn't question him about it. I didn't ask if he had a right to put his hand there. All of a sudden, I was just aware it was there."
Susan would usually be very ready for sleep when her father had finished one or two children's stories. If she was not asleep by the time a second story had been read to her, she was so drowsy that her father knew she would quickly fall asleep when he put her in her bed. She was nearly always pajama-clad during the session of sleep-inducing reading, so the transition from the reading room to bed was an easy one.
"Dad would carry me to bed," Susan related, "and carefully put me down. He'd kiss me on the cheek, and sometimes on the mouth. And ... and for the first time when I was about six ... he ... he kissed me on the genitals. Now, I was very aware of that! It felt strange, him having his mouth down there. I think he started off kissing my tummy and then went-went between my legs. Of course, I didn't question that either."
"It wasn't too long before he started doing that every time he put me to bed. Even when I was half asleep I could feel it when he'd lay me down on my back and spread my legs apart, then kiss me down there. I'd feel his lips on my genitals and get such a strange feeling while he did it. When he left the room, I'd roll over and go to sleep."
This was just the beginning. Harry Kelley was creating not only a psychological dependence, but a sexual one as well in Susan. He was attempting-with success-to get the girl to depend on him alone for all pleasure, all comfort, all security.
No one knows whether or not he had done these things with Alice. He showered her with gifts and attention, to be sure. There is physical and remembered evidence of that. But whether or not he tried to sexually stimulate her, only Alice herself knows. And Alice was not available to me for questioning.
Then there were the rides. The Kelley family went for automobile trips even when Susan was an infant. These were short rides, and June Kelley accompanied her husband and daughter. Later there were other rides-rides whose purpose was the same as what went on behind the closed door of the reading room.
"The first ride I remember taking with Dad alone was when I was about five and a half," Susan recalled. "I think we went by the Seville Manufacturing Company where Dad worked. Then we went to a park that had a lot of trees. We watched for birds for a while. It was spring and there were a lot of birds in the park. They were building nests, you know. I was real interested in those birds. They were some of the first birds I'd seen up close. There weren't too many birds that would come around our house. I was watching some bird very hard when Dad put an arm around me.
"Come lie down here," he said.
I remember I resisted-I wanted to watch the birds. But Dad said he'd spank me if I didn't lie down. So I lay down, right next to him. He pulled up my dress and began to rub me between the legs. He'd never rubbed me like that before. When he read to me his hand was just resting between my legs. Sometimes he'd move his hand slowly around that place down there, but never before had he rubbed me so hard. I didn't know what he was doing exactly or why he did it. He was my Dad, so I let him do it. You understand that, don't you?"
As the child grew older there were more trips.
"On weekends Dad and I sometimes took overnight trips," continued Susan. "Dad would hardly say anything to Mom about where we were going. I know he sometimes said we were going to visit some aunt or uncle. And we really did visit a few relatives. But a lot of times we'd just drive some place and visit a park or go to a movie or something like that. I guess I wondered why Mom didn't come along, but I never asked Dad about it. He was fun. He was all I needed or wanted."
Susan drew in a deep breath as she told me about the trips. The deep breaths gave her the courage she needed to relate her story.
"It was on the trips that the-you know-sexual thing started," she said. "I must have been seven or seven and a half when the first thing occurred. Dad and I went to Shaddock State Park. They have a very nice waterfall there and he said I ought to see it. So one weekend in the spring we went to see it. We spent about two hours in the park and then Dad took me to a motel to spend the night. We had a very good supper at the motel restaurant, then we went back to our room. Dad told me to get ready for bed. I did, in the bathroom. He got ready for bed too, although it couldn't have been more than eight o'clock. We had a double bed in that motel room. This was the first trip we'd taken where we had a double bed in the motel room. Before Dad had always gotten twin beds. I lay down on the big bed. It was a lot of fun, because my bed at home was just a single. That thing was the biggest bed I'd ever been in." Susan drew in another deep breath and continued. "Dad in his pajamas lay down beside me. That business about caressing me between the legs and kissing my genitals had become such a habit that I automatically flung my legs apart. And this time Dad did what he usually did-he ran his hand between my legs and a minute later he kissed my stomach then my genitals. But ... but there was a difference this time. He gave my genitals a couple of kisses then he ran his tongue around there. At first I didn't know what was going on. I just felt something warm down between my legs. I remember that I started to get up to see what it was down there. Dad felt me move and raised his head.
'It's all right,' he said. 'Just enjoy, it.' So I did. I got a glimpse of what he was doing with his tongue and so I knew what that warm, wet feeling was. I'll admit it really felt queer the first time he did it, But He was my Dad, and I loved him, so I didn't question what he was doing."
Once more Susan Kelley took a deep breath.
"He licked me between the legs for about five minutes, I guess," said Susan as she continued the story. "Then he stopped and rubbed me down there again to dry off his saliva. Dad was trembling, I remember. I don't mind admitting that I got scared right then. I can see him in my mind to this day as He got up from between my legs and pulled Himself up to my face. He was sweaty-like. Lord, what a look He Had on His face! I still see his face the way it was at that time in my dreams! All of a sudden He kissed me square on the lips. He kissed me Harder than He'd ever done before. He said, 'Open your mouth!' He was very hot and very serious. I obeyed; I opened my mouth. Dad stuck his tongue inside and explored my mouth. I nearly gagged on his tongue. In a moment He was pressing His tongue against mine. I still remember that first experience with that kind of kissing. It sent a sort of electricity all through me. I tingled, as though tiny electric sparks were stabbing me. In a couple of minutes Dad stopped that. Then...."
Susan drew in another deep, courage-giving breath.
"Then Dad asked me to: put a hand on His pajamas, right in the middle where his legs came together. I was scared about this whole thing and He knew it He managed a smile and said something like, 'It's all right, baby!' So I did what he asked. Of course, I'd never touched my Dad there and I didn't know what to expect. I guess I must have realized that boys and girls are different down there, but I had no idea what boys had between the legs. I was shocked-maybe even horrified-when I put my hand on Dad's pajamas and felt a long lump. He said, 'Don't be scared baby. Rub it like this.' Then he put his hand over mine and began moving it slowly up and down that long lump. The lump got longer and harder. It seemed like it was going to burst out of his pajamas. I could feel it straining against the cloth of the pajamas. Dad closed his eyes and gave out with a couple of sighs. In just a minute or two I wasn't scared any more. I just thought of it as something I was doing that pleased my Daddy. All fear of that lump had disappeared in just a minute or two."
Susan inhaled and exhaled deeply a couple of times.
"In a few minutes Dad told me to put a hand in the fly of his pajamas and take out the thing I'd been rubbing. I was curious now. I wanted to see that long, hard thing. So I put a hand in his pajamas and touched something that was fleshy and seemed to have a lot of hair around it. Dad wiggled a little to help me get it out. And all of a sudden, there it was! I stared at it for a long time. Dad told me about it, or maybe I should say, a little about it. He said it was his penis, and that it made him feel good when it was rubbed. He said when his penis was especially happy with the rubbing, it gave off a squirt of liquid. And-and he wanted me to make it happy. He said he needed to have it made happy. Dad showed me just how to hold his penis and just how to move it. He let me explore it a little before I got down to serious rubbing. I moved the skin on my Dad's penis just the way he told me to. I remember Dad made motions with his body. Just little motions, like he was getting all rigid. At the time I didn't know what the motions meant-I didn't know those were the motions a man makes when he's getting excited and ready to ejaculate. In about five minutes Dad had an ejaculation; a big one. I jumped. I was scared again. It was as if I'd cut Dad and he was bleeding a sort of white blood. Again he said something like, 'Don't be scared, baby. It's all right' So I wasn't scared any more about that either."
To Susan, what was going on between her father and herself was not abnormal or even sexual, As yet, Susan Kelley had not even heard those words, and she had no concepts about good or evil in this area.
Right after the trip on which Mr. Kelley first had his daughter play with his penis, he Began to reward his daughter with gifts for her actions. At the time, Susan was not even conscious that a connection existed. After my interviews with her, however, I could point out to her that there was a relation. The day after she had committed a sexual act with Her father, he would come home with some sort of present for the girl. In this manner, Susan's sex play With Her father became all the more pleasurable, because subconsciously she knew that she would get some sort of present for doing it. Harry Kelley was conditioning the girl to expect a reward for her services. Harry Kelley was very effectively brainwashing Susan.
As time went on, Mr. Kelley; Became even more sexually aggressive with his young daughter.
"For a long time we didn't do any more than we'd done at that motel when I was seven and a Half," Susan told me. "He'd fondle me and kiss me between the legs, and I'd manipulate His penis until he Had a release. Then, when I was almost ten, He started something else. Mom had gone out for the evening and Dad and I were alone at Home. Dad told me to come back to his bedroom, Of course, I thought He might want me to play with him. He usually didn't have me play with him at home unless Mom was out of the house. That's why Dad and I still took trips ... so I could play with his penis in some park or motel. But since Mom was gone tonight, I had a hunch that he wanted me to help him ejaculate before she got back. Well, I got to the bedroom and Dad was already nude. He was standing on one side of the bed he and Mom occupied with his legs spread apart and his penis in his hand. He told me to undress. In just a moment I was nude. We both laid down on the big bed. Everything was going along just like always. Dad had caressed me between the legs and had kissed me down there. I was manipulating his penis. Then he said, 'Get on your back again.'
I did. He put a pillow under my hips so that my genitals were raised up off the bed itself. Dad put his head down there again and licked me. Then he did something he hadn't done before. He put his tongue in my split. His tongue was right in my opening! I must have jumped two feet off that pillow! Lord! What a feeling that was! I can still remember that feeling as if it had been done to me just a minute ago! Dad got his head out of the way just in time, or I think I'd have knocked him cold. I think he knew I was going to jump like that. Anyway, he laughed. Then he said, 'Baby, I want to do something a little different tonight. Hold your legs apart like this.' And Dad took my legs and bent them up and apart. It-it's the position you'd use for-for intercourse.' Dad got between my legs and over me, supporting himself on his elbows and knees. He had a huge erection and laid his penis right on my split. It was a strange feeling. In all the time I'd been playing with Dad's penis, he never had allowed it to touch anything but my hand. His penis resting on my genitals made chills run up and down my spine. He said something like, 'Relax. Enjoy it.' He began to let his penis rub against my genitals. It's another one of those sensations I can remember as if it had just happened a minute ago! It was very exciting to me. It only took a few minutes of that to make Dad's penis shoot out its liquid. His sperm came all over my tummy. That was the first time I'd really felt his sperm. It was warm, like warm, slimy water. When Dad was through with me, he rolled over and told me to go clean up. I did as he asked. In the bathroom I got a washcloth and cleaned his sperm off me. I went back to Mom and Dad's bedroom, and Dad and I got dressed."
"And I suppose this new sort of play continued," I said.
"Oh, yeah," said Susan in a matter-of-fact voice. "Each time we played with each other, Dad would wind up on top of me with his penis lying on my genitals."
"And you never thought there was anything strange about what your father was doing with you?" I asked.
"Why, no!" said Susan very emphatically. "He was my Daddy, and he had every right to do whatever he wanted to do with me."
Susan looked down at the floor.
"I ... I know now that what he was doing is considered abnormal or queer or maybe even insane," said Susan. "But to me, even now, it doesn't seem that what he was doing was so harmful. Just different. There were good reasons for what he did. I'm sure there were good reasons."
And indeed there were good reasons. One reason, already mentioned, was that Harry Kelley was setting himself up as the center of Susan's life, hoping that he would be more successful in doing so than he had apparently been with his older daughter, Alice. Mr. Kelley was flooding Susan with gifts, attention, and certain sexual relations. By this technique he hoped to become a sort of god whom young Susan would worship and respect; in whom she would find all comfort and her only true security. And as it happened, Harry Kelley would be quite successful in attaining the goal he had set for himself.
Mrs. June Kelley was the second reason why Harry Kelley paid so much attention-sexually and otherwise-to Susan. When I talked with her, Mrs. Kelley herself admitted that she was frigid toward her husband. But in examining the case, it is clear to me that Harry Kelley had no one but himself to blame for this condition. Years ago he had shoved his wife into the background of his life. On her part, she had pretty much given up allowing him to have her sexual favors. Subconsciously this was her retaliation for the lack of attention he paid to her. She figured that if he wasn't going to love her and show his love, then she wasn't going to allow him to have sexual relations with her. So Harry Kelley turned all his attentions to his daughters, particularly Susan.
When Mrs. Kelley turned against her husband, consciously or unconsciously she turned against her daughters. She would have as little to do with them as she had to do with her husband. This was the quality in her which allowed Harry Kelley to have such a free and successful hand at brainwashing his children in the manner he did. Mrs. Kelley's intervention between Susan and her father might have helped if that intervention had come soon enough. As we shall see, at the last moment June Kelley did try to exert some favorable influence over Susan, but by then it was too late. Far too late.
And so Harry Kelley had a totally free hand in molding young Susan into just what he wanted to make her-a worshipful creature of his creation.
I asked Susan about her mother.
"Mom's all right, I guess," she replied. "I've just never had much to do with her. I've never thought much about her. Of course, in the last few years I've had more to do with her and thought more about her than when I was young, but even now I don't think I know Mom the way I know Dad."
I continued to ask about the relationship between Susan and Harry Kelley.
"He's wonderful" Susan exclaimed. "Dad's always been wonderful to me. He couldn't have done more for me. That's why I love him, I guess. He's done so much for me. Every time I'm around him I get a warm glow. That may sound silly to you, but it's natural and wonderful to me.
"I'll admit that I got used to what Dad and I did sexually. I looked forward to his touching me down below, particularly after I was about ten years old. About that time the sensation he aroused between my legs became very noticable and very pleasnat. I didn't really get a big charge out of handling his penis. His male organ was something which fascinated me more than it excited me. I got a sort of charge out of it when he rubbed his penis against my genitals to produce an ejaculation. I think maybe I even sexually got a kind of warm sensation when I felt his sperm shoot onto my tummy. Yes, I think by the time I was ten or so I looked forward to our sex games as much or more than I looked forward to the little present he'd get for me afterward."
"By the way, how often did you two have these relations?" I asked.
"Well, sir, it varied quite a bit. Every time Dad put me to bed-which was almost every night-he'd give my genitals a caress or two and usually he kissed me between the legs. But the other stuff, where I manipulated his penis, would go on at home only when Mom was out, which was maybe an average of once a week. We used to take trips so we could do that on the av erage of once or twice a week in the spring, summer, and autumn. We even took an occasional overnight trip in the wintertime. Overall, we sexually played with each other about twice a week."
"And your mother never caught you?" i
"No, never. A couple of times she walked in the house unexpectedly, but we could hear her and could get dressed fast enough that she never caught us in the nude. Maybe I should have known there was something unusual about what Dad and I were doing when I saw how panicky he got when he heard Mother come in the house. But no. I just never questioned it."
Susan Kelley never-until much later-conceived of that which she was doing with her father as "sexual" in any way. Her father certainly never put it into her head that they were "having sex." Yet, paradoxically, he talked to Susan about sex.
"The word sex was never mentioned, but just before I began first grade Dad gave me certain warnings," Susan told me. "He told me just how I ought to sit, with my legs crossed or together. He told me to watch just how high up my dress crept. He told me not to talk to strangers, much less get into a stranger's car. He told me that I shouldn't let anyone even touch me. Dad said that sometimes bad things happened when people, even people you know, touched you. And he gave me the usual talk about crossing at corners and being nice to the other kids and the teacher. Dad was big on respect. He said I should always remember my place in school and be respectful to the teachers and the principal. I must say that he put a lot of emphasis on that business about not letting other people touch me."
"I take it you followed what your dad told you about that."
"Certainly. It was something he told me to do, wasn't it?"
Harry Kelley's advice to his daughter about her conduct in school is logical when we consider the man's motives and objectives. Since he was making himself the center of Susan's life, he could not allow anyone or anything else to come between himself and her. On the first day that Susan attended public school, Mr. Kelley must have asked himself if it wasn't here that Alice had begun to grow away from him. Was it here that Alice had developed a mind of her own; a mind that would say "no!" to him; a mind quite independent of him? Was it here that Harry Kelley had lost Alice's love and adoration? Was it here that Alice had learned that there are other pleasurable things in the world than Harry Kelley? Mr. Kelley may well not have given Alice the same warnings that he gave Susan. He may not have told Alice to not let any other person touch her. Harry Kelley may have felt that it was another person's touch that caused Alice to cease to love him and, in the end, caused her to elope with Jim Adams. No one knows what, if anything, he told Alice on her first day at school. We can only speculate.
At any rate, the warnings Mr. Kelley gave six-year-old Susan are an indication of the relationship he desired to continue with the girl. Since he wanted to be her god, he was of necessity jealous. Any demanding person is jealous, for they fear that someone or something else will attract the person of their affection more than themselves. So Harry Kelley was jealous with a kind of insane jealousy most people never know. He knew that his wife was not going to come between him and his daughter, but he didn't know-he couldn't know-whether or not someone in the school would affect Susan in some way detrimental to him. This doubt about the school must have nearly driven Harry Kelley out of his mind at first.
But not for long. Since Susan continued to adore the aging man, it must have soon become clear to him that she was not transferring any affection from him to anyone in school. In fact, it was after she started school that Harry Kelley began to have what I would call major sexual relations with his daughter-i.e., having her manipulate his penis and placing his penis on her genitals. Still, a certain fear of what went on at school must have haunted Mr. Kelley. He must have thought that some place in school Alice learned to hate him and in the end ran away from home.
The relationship between Harry Kelley and Susan must have seemed ideal to Harry. It must have appeared that his plan was working. Susan looked to him for all things, as if he were God Himself. Susan certainly thought their relations were ideal She willingly demonstrated this by allowing her father to take her on those trips where he would always wind up fondling her sex parts and, as time went on, where she fondled him in return.
And what should we say of such a relationship? The obvious thing to do is to condemn it as immoral. Outwardly it appears to be an incestous relationship; the father making love to his daughter. But here are other factors to consider.
Primarily, there is the fact that Mr. Kelley never had intercourse with his daughter. According to Susan Kelley, Mr. Kelley's penis never once penetrated her vagina.
"A couple of times, when I was about eleven, Dad asked me to take his penis and put it at the opening of my vagina," Susan related. "When I placed his penis there, I could feel it get a lot harder all of a sudden. He pushed it against my opening just enough to make my vagina open a little. It was just the tip of his organ that went in. But really it didn't go in. Just about a quarter inch of it got past the outer skin. Only a quarter inch! Then he'd put his penis on my slit and have an ejaculation."
If we define incest as intercourse between father and daughter, then Mr. Kelley must be found not guilty of the charge. If, on the other hand, we define incest as the mere thought of a sexual relationship between father and daughter, then Mr. Kelley is guilty. He was using his child's sex parts to further his ultimate goal, and this we might define as incest on his part.
But to Susan, the whole thing seemed ideal-perfect. Susan had learned to accept this life as normal. It was the life pattern against which she would judge any other existence.
"Love" was the key word in this perfect world. Harry Kelley kept emphasizing that term. Almost every day he would ask Susan if she loved him, and Susan, naturally, would answer yes. Or he might ask her who she loved, and Susan would say his name. He would confess his undying, eternal love for her and hold the youngster tightly.
"After I'd made Dad have an ejaculation he'd tell me he'd always love me and we'd always be together," Susan recalled.
Her own father was her first love. He filled all her needs. He was in every corner of her life. He was ubiquitous. Her life would be empty without him.
CHAPTER TWO
LOSS OF LOVE-LOSS OF VIRGINITY
If the relationship between Harry Kelley and Susan Kelley had continued undisturbed, I probably would have never known about them. The fact is that their relationship did not continue without problems ... terrible problems.
For Susan, the first-and biggest-problem thrust itself at her in late May, 1961, when the girl was in the sixth grade.
On this particular spring day, the child arrived home from school at the usual hour and entered the house, a neat wood and two-story brick house on a tree-shaded street. She recalled that on that very day the world seemed perfect, with no warning of the impending tragedy. Several of the Kelley's neighbors in this middle-class, conservative suburban neighborhood waved to Susan.
On entering the house, Susan was surprised to find her mother sitting in the living room staring into the fireplace. Susan had never seen her mother just sitting and staring before. Her mother's posture and gaze made Susan know that something was wrong. Ordinarily Mrs. Kelley would be doing housework, or preparing a meal, or possibly reading a magazine at this hour. But not today. Today she just sat and stared into the empty fireplace. Susan wasn't quite sure what to make of this.
"Sit down," Mrs. Kelley commanded as she noticed Susan.
The eleven-year-old girl sat in a near-by chair facing her mother.
"I have something to tell you," said Mrs. Kelley, turning and looking her daughter straight in the eye. "Something's happened. Something that's going to make a big change in us."
Mrs. Kelley was silent for a moment.
"Harry's gone."
That's all Mrs. Kelley said. Just, "Harry's gone."
Susan didn't quite comprehend the meaning of the words. She didn't know what definition to put to the word "gone."
"What do you mean?" asked the child.
"I mean Harry Kelley is gone," said Mrs. Kelley with emphasis. "He isn't going to be around here any longer. He's left us."
Still the words were incomprehensible to young Susan. The scene was unreal.
"You mean Dad's not coming home any more?" she asked.
"That's what I mean," said Mrs. Kelley.
Susan's face dropped. She thought it might be a he, but Susan could not think up a reason for her mother lying about her father not coming home again.
"Don't look so down-hearted," said the girl's mother. "It isn't all that bad. We're going to get along. We'll get along just fine. Of course, there will be changes. I'll have to look for a job since Harry won't be supporting us. There's about seven hundred dollars in our joint savings account, but that won't last us too long. I hope ... I hope I can get a job before it runs out."
Mrs. Kelley allowed a minute of silence to elapse before continuing.
"You'll have to do most of what I was doing around the house, you understand," said Mrs. Kelley. "You'll be responsible for the cleaning, ironing, most of the washing, the dishes, making the beds, preparing meals...."
Susan looked at the floor in despair.
"Of course, I'll show you how to do all those things," Mrs. Kelley assured her daughter.
Susan looked her mother in the face and smiled a bit. Mrs. Kelley smiled back at her-the first time she had smiled at her in years, so it seemed.
"We'd better get to it," said the child's mother. "Take fifteen minutes to change your clothes then come to the kitchen. You might as well have your first cooking lesson tonight."
Slowly and with great effort, young Susan arose and walked to her bedroom. She placed her books on the small study desk her father had given her on her ninth birthday. She stood still a minute and looked at the desk. It seemed that now the wood and metal object somehow represented him; it was a little reminder of the old man who loved her so much. Susan also looked at other things in her bedroom which were purchased for her by her father. There was the clock, several stuffed animals, a few cosmetics, some decorative cups and saucers, a ceramic figurine, and all her clothes. It did not strike Susan as odd that her father had bought her clothes and not her mother. To Susan, her father going with her to pick out the garments she would wear was normal. But now, for the moment, at least, all these objects which her father had purchased took on a strange, mystical quality. These objects became substitutes for him; reminders of him and what he stood for in the child's life.
The youngster changed from her school clothes into some older, more haggard-looking garments. Even as she put these on, she could almost feel her father caress her; as if his fingers were in the cloth of the slacks she was slipping into. When the child pulled the slacks up, the part where the legs came together touched her genitals, reminding her of the pressure of her father's penis when he laid it between her legs. The old blouse Susan now put on recalled to her young mind the loving touch her father often laid on her shoulders and back. Suddenly her bedroom was one grand reminder of the father her mother said Was gone.
"I lay down across the bed after changing my clothes," Susan recalled. "I just stared at the ceiling, wondering. I wondered if my Mom was telling the truth about Dad. I wondered if this was some sort of joke. I wondered if Mom had misunderstood about Dad leaving. Maybe he was just on a trip for a while. But, too, I wondered if it was true; and if it was true, why. Why would Dad leave us? It didn't make sense for him to leave. No sense at all! I had a strange, scared feeling just then. It occurred to me that now I'd be dealing with Mom, and I didn't know just how to react to that. Weird, isn't it? A person I'd lived with for more than eleven years, and I didn't know her; I didn't know how to react to her? Looking at the ceiling, I could only wonder about this thing, about Dad being 'gone'."
In a few minutes, June Kelley called her daughter to the kitchen and the youngster's first cooking lesson began. Mrs. Kelley showed her child where the cookbooks were kept and how to read them. The two generations of women prepared a small meal (Susan didn't remember just what it was) and ate it. Afterward Mrs. Kelley showed Susan how she was to do the dishes, where to put them, etc.
The mealtime lessons were enough for one day, so at about seven o'clock Mrs. Kelley released Susan from further duties that day.
Susan went to her room with the intention of doing her homework and retiring for the night. On the way to her bedroom she passed the small room in which she and her father had made their private little universe. Susan opened the door to this room and peeked inside. A dim light shone through the window, but it was enough light to let Susan see the many books and other presents which her father had given her. Like her bedroom, this small room held many pleasant memories for the young girl. Susan looked at all the room held, remembering the things which had gone on inside it. One small tear crept into her eye. She remembered not only the gentle caresses her father had placed all over her body, but the love which had been known in the room. Susan could almost see the past events which had taken place in the room. Her mind's eye became very active.
The child crossed the room and closed the open window, then pulled the drapes across them. She walked out of the room and closed the door behind her. It seemed as though she was closing the door to a tomb so that a dead body would not escape. Closing that door was a hard task for the youngster.
Susan went to her bedroom. She turned on the lamp which sat on the small study desk, sat down, and opened a school book. She was going to do some homework. But she could not bring herself to concentrate.
"I was too worried or scared, or I don't know what," Susan said to me. "The words in the book didn't make any sense. I couldn't even make them go together right. It took me five minutes to read a sentence and make it mean anything. Each word wanted to stand alone, meaningless. I looked over at the clock. It was something like eight or eight-fifteen. When I saw the time and knew that Dad wasn't home, then I knew that Mom must not be kidding about Dad being gone. He'd never been later than seven-thirty getting home before. I couldn't ever remember an evening when he wasn't home by seven-thirty. Usually Dad was home by six, sometimes even earlier. Only when the company asked him to work overtime did he come home later than six. So I knew that something was wrong when he wasn't home at eight o'clock.
"Since I couldn't study, the only two other things I knew to do were watch television or go to bed. I walked into the living room where we had the television set and I saw Mom watching it and reading the evening newspaper. Usually Dad and I would watch television in the evening if I didn't have homework or if we weren't doing something in the small library room. I don't remember ever watching television with just Mom. I think I was scared to. So I went back to my bedroom and undressed. I got into my long blue nightgown and turned off the lights.
"I lay on top of the bed. It was very warm that night and I was very restless. I closed my eyes several times, but it was no use. They wouldn't stay shut. All I could do was toss and turn and stare at the white ceiling. I listened to the clock. Tic-tock, tic-tock, tic-tock. I was aware of every passing minute. I kept hoping that I'd hear Dad's car in the driveway. Every once in a while I'd look at the time. I remember being awake that night at one in the morning.
"I finally fell asleep. It wasn't any peaceful sleep, I can tell you! I dreamed, and I squirmed as I dreamed. I saw my Dad's face, smiling and happy. It seemed like he was leaning down to kiss me, just like he did when he was with us. I could almost feel his kisses. I felt them on my cheeks, my lips, my neck, my stomach, and I even felt them between my legs. I felt his hands too, as I dreamed that they caressed my entire body, especially between the legs. Dad liked to caress there best of all. After I started dreaming that Dad was fondling me between the legs, I remember that I pulled up my nightgown and put my hand down there, moving it slowly just as he did. This was the first time I'd ever fondled myself down there. Dad had told me that I shouldn't play with my own genitals-it was a bad habit. He said he loved me enough that he'd take care of caressing me down there. I fondled myself now only to make those caresses of his about which I was dreaming more real.
"I dreamed about Dad's smiling face for quite a while. Then, suddenly, I saw my Mom come out of the blackness which surrounded Dad's face. Mom was much smaller in scale than Dad, and she had an axe. She lifted the axe and took a swing at Dad. At the last moment Dad tried to duck to avoid the axe, but it was too late. Mom hit him square in the middle of the head with that axe and blood began to gush from the wound. I think I gave out with a little scream just then. Anyway, everything in my dream went black for a minute.
"Then I saw a misty-gray haze. It seemed to be early morning in a swampy place, maybe near a river or lake. I saw that I was dreaming of a place with tall grass and soft earth. I saw that in the earth there was a hole, about six feet long, a couple feet wide, and a couple feet deep. I saw someone-it was too hazy to tell who-shoving a body into the shallow hole. The bloody body was just kicked into the hole-just kicked. No ceremony, no nothing. Just that kick. Some loose grass was thrown on the body and the person who had kicked the body into the hole turned and left.
"Man, I'll tell you-that really sent chills up and down my spine. I broke out in a sweat.
"Then all of a sudden I saw Mom's face. It was huge in scale, bigger than Dad's face had been. It was unsmiling and mean-looking. It came right at me, as if it had been shot from a gun. When it got close to me, I saw her mouth open. I thought she was going to swallow me. Then I woke up and sat bolt-upright in bed. I was covered with sweat and trembling."
Susan's dream on that night when she first learned that Harry Kelley was gone was proof of how effective his brainwashing of her had been. She had dreamed of him as the smiling, loving parent. She had dreamed of her mother as a monster, angry-looking and revenge seeking. The interpretation Susan put on this dream was that her mother had, for some reason, killed her beloved father and might well do the same to her. This interpretation was the one Harry Kelley had conditioned his child to make. By implication, he had made Susan think of her mother as a mean stranger who was not capable of giving the girl the sort of love he could give her. Mr. Kelley had put a sort of fear into the mind of his daughter-a fear of almost anyone except himself. Particularly, there was the fear of her mother. To some extent, Mrs. Kelley could blame herself for this condition. She had not made an effort to make herself a factor in her child's life. When she saw that her husband was trying to brainwash Susan as he had Alice, Mrs. Kelley gave up. She as much as said, "Well, what's it worth. I'd have to fight Harry at each turn. So why bother? Let him do to her what he will. Maybe Susan will elope at eighteen-or sooner."
Susan's personality was shy, withdrawn. She was not outgoing because she never had a cause to be. Her father had supplied her with everything she neededand more. Susan didn't have to fight for it. Susan had no desires which her father had not fulfilled.
The day after her mother told her that her father would not be coming home any longer, Susan trod off to school at an abnormally early hour. The girl did not want to face her mother, possibly because she feared her. Susan no doubt had a fear of her mother before her dream of the previous night, but that dream increased the fear even further. At the school, which was about a quarter mile from her residence, the young girl had to wait over forty-five minutes before she could enter the building.
All day long the eleven year old girl was sullen, moody, depressed. Ordinarily she was quiet, almost withdrawn; but she was also smiling. It was easy for her teacher, a Mr. Collins, to notice the sudden change in his pupil's behavior. He must have wondered why she was depressed. In fact, Susan recalled that he asked her that day if there was anything wrong. She had replied in the negative. He put his arm around her-an action he had never performed before-and she, thinking of her dear father, leaned against him. If it hadn't been for this situation at home, she might never have leaned against Mr. Collins, or even permitted him to touch her. Her father's warnings about letting other people touch her body were very much with-her. Yet, momentarily she needed the reassurance of some man's touch.
At the time when Susan learned that her father had left his family, the public school year only had about two and a half weeks to run. There was not enough time left in the school year for the teachers and administrators of Susan's elementary school to inquire in depth as to why the young girl had suddenly become depressed. Susan is sure that they speculated about it. It is likely that the speculation ran from things like, "She's just in a mood," to something more clinical such as, "She's having her first menstruation."
Each afternoon when the youngster came home from school she and her mother would have another house keeping lesson-about doing washing, ironing, cleaning, food preparation, etc.
Naturally, it was not long until the entire community (i.e., the southern end of Seville) knew that Harry Kelley had disappeared. The community wondered and watched the Kelley house. Some neighbors asked where Harry had gone. To the inquirers Mrs. Kelley merely answered, "He's gone," the same answer she had given Susan. To the few neighbors who asked Susan about her father's absence, all the child could do was shake her head.
At about the time school ended and the pupils' summer vacation began, Mrs. Kelley found a job as a saleswoman in a medium-sized department store which was located in Seville's only shopping center. The job didn't pay much-about fifty-five dollars a week-but it was enough so that Mrs. Kelley could maintain the house and keep her daughter and herself from being poverty-stricken. These were hard times not only for Susan, but for Mrs. June Kelley as well.
As it turned out, she knew what had happened and why her husband was no longer coming home. But she dared not tell anyone, least of all Susan. Mrs. Kelley knew it would be hard on the eleven-year-old girl, but she thought if the youngster was kept busy she would forget her father and face this new existence with a fresh outlook. June Kelley hoped against hope that Susan would forget Harry Kelley. But that was a futile hope.
Susan could think of nothing but the wonderful man she had for a father for eleven years. Each day she recalled some nearly forgotten thing they had done. A walk in the park, reading a favorite story, a game, a special television program they had watched together-a million memories, so it seemed, flooded the young girl's mind.
Susan thought ahead. During the daylight hours that summer of 1961, her thoughts were well thought out. At night when the girl slept, her thoughts were just the opposite. Her thoughts, manifested in dark dreams, were of terror and horror; or disaster not far off. Susan's dreams of the future were abstract and illogical. Still, Susan attached significance to them as if her jumbled dreams could predict the future more surely than the logic she used when she was awake. She had no concrete interpretation of her dreams about the future. She only feared that the future must be filled with unpleasantness.
The seed of these dreams had been planted many years ago by Harry Kelley. He had cultivated the idea that he, and he alone, was Susan's security; that he, and he alone, was the center of her life, her very being. Without him she would be insecure. She would be lost in the wilderness of life to grope and float about; she would be adrift with nothing to cling to. The abstract, nerve-racking dreams were Susan's reaction to Harry Kelley's act of brainwashing.
But in the hot summer of 1961, not all of Susan's dreams were of an insecure future. Many of her dreams, she told me, were pleasant. They were memory-dreams of the life which had suddenly left her dreams of her father and herself.
"I dreamed about all the things Dad had done for me and all the things we had done together," Susan told me. "The walks, talks, conversations-they were all there. Every pleasant thing we'd done I remembered during that terrible summer. I was reminded of Dad every day as I went through the house doing the jobs Mother had told me to do. Every inch of the house reminded me of him. Even when I cut the grass and watered the flowers I was reminded of Dad. I felt almost as if he was still present-invisible, but present."
Other pleasant memories of Harry Kelley were on Susan's mind.
"That summer of 1961, the nights were much harder than the days," Susan confessed. "When I lay on my bed at night, I couldn't help thinking about those things Dad and I had done in bed. A lot of times I'd dream of him and me doing what we did in bed. The dreams were very real. I could literally feel Dad's hands on me. I could feel his penis in my hands. I could feel his stiff organ as he pressed it against my genitals. It was all so real. For about the first month after Dad disappeared, I didn't have dreams about the things we'd done in bed-not too often, any way-but about the second month I began to think more and more about it. I ... I guess that's because I missed it.
"I guess I began to think more about Dad and sex because of the ritual. If it wasn't for the ritual-well, maybe I would have forgotten what Dad and I did in bed-maybe."
"What ritual?" I asked.
"You see, in January of 1961-that was four months before Dad disappeared-I started noticing that I was, uh, developing. You know what I mean, don't you?"
"Yes," I answered, "I think so."
"So I started examining myself in front of the full-length mirror that was attached to my closet door. I did it in secrecy. I'd always have the door to my bedroom closed when I looked in the mirror. I'd stand nude before the mirror and look at myself. I'd notice how my breasts were getting larger, and how the nipples grew. Pretty soon I got to the place where I liked to touch the parts of me that were changing the most. I'd run my hands around my breasts and let my finger tips play with the nipples. I didn't have too much feeling in my breasts-nothing compared with the sensation I can arouse in them now-but it was fun. I think it was about March that I began to notice that my genitals were changing, too. That was when I noticed the first few dark hairs on that region. Years before I'd seen the hair my Dad had between his legs. He had told me that some day I'd have hair between my legs also. He had said that I'd probably be twelve or thirteen before I got hair on my genitals, so I was a little surprised when I saw some dark hair there when I was only eleven and a half. All in all, I was very proud and happy at this time. I was growing up and I was proud of that-you know how kids are about that! Especially after I saw those first hairs on my genitals, I began to really examine myself every day very closely. Before, I really hadn't paid much attention to my body, even though Dad played with it the way he did. Now that I was entering puberty, I couldn't keep my eyes or hands off myself. A few times I thought about what Dad had said about not playing with myself, but I was too excited by my development to keep my hands off those developing parts.
"I almost always examined myself in the afternoon after coming home from school. I'd go to my bedroom to change from school clothes to home clothes. I'd take off all my school clothes, then examine myself for, oh, about ten or fifteen minutes. Then I'd dress in sloppy home clothes. Mother would be the only one in the house, and she would always be someplace other than the end of the house where the bedrooms were located.
"One school day in early April-about six weeks before Dad disappeared-I was standing in front of the mirror examining my sexual development when the door flew open. There was Dad! I about jumped right out of my skin! I had one hand on a breast and one hand between my legs feeling my new pubic hair. I was afraid for a minute, afraid of what Dad was going to say about me feeling my body. He just stood in the doorway for a while, looking me up and down. I wasn't embarrassed or anything because Dad had seen me often when I was nude. It happened that we had not had any sexual play between us for a couple of months for some reason. Dad hadn't seen my development-he hadn't seen the way my breasts were growing or the hairs which were appearing on my genitals. That's why he was staring at me. Dad was really fascinated by my development. When he saw me standing like I was, he said, T see you're going through the ritual.' I'd never heard that word, ritual, before, so I asked him what that meant. He said, 'You're doing a pubic ritual examination-you're exploring your female parts."
"Dad then closed the door to my bedroom once more and came over to me. He stood behind me and ran his hands from my breasts to my genital area. Up and down he went, time and time again. When he caressed my body this time, it felt a lot different that it had ever felt before. I must have excited Dad much more than usual this time too, because as he stood behind me I could feel his male organ become erect. As he was feeling my body, he said something about being home early today because the factory had shut down due to some equipment failure. I didn't really hear what he said because I was getting so worked up myself. Dad's touch had never made me tingle like this before. Oh, Lord, was it exciting! I've got goose-bumps right now just recalling how it felt as he ran his hands over my naked body! Gee!!! He removed his hands from me and unzipped his pants. Pulling down his underwear, he asked me to take his penis in my hand and massage it. He closed his eyes and trembled as I did it for him. I think his penis was harder then than at any other time I ever had it in my hands. He asked me to stop after a couple of minutes. He mumbled something about Mom being in the house. I think he would have taken me straight to bed if she hadn't been home. I hadn't made him have a sexual release for such a long time, you know. He needed it. "Dad zipped up his pants and told me to he down on the bed. He went and got Mom's hand mirror. With my bedroom door closed, he then proceeded to tell me about sex and the way a woman's body functions. He told me about the purpose of my breasts-both their erotic purpose and their biological purpose. He kissed my breasts and sucked them too. He said in a year or so I'd find that to have my breasts kissed and sucked would be very stimulating. Then he showed me what the sex parts of my genitals are for. He held Mom's hand mirror so I could see my split from top to bottom. Dad had me spread it wide open so that all the parts inside would show. Dad pointed out each part and named it and told me each part's function. He explained about menstruation, and what I would have to do when I menstruated. Once again he kissed my genitals. He told me all these things in almost a whisper. I think Dad was afraid that Mom would hear us."
"You see, I'd never before that thought of Dad or what I did with him in a sexual light. After he disappeared, I might not have thought of Dad and sex-or of sex at all-if it hadn't been for that time when he caught me examining myself and proceeded to tell me about sex. If it hadn't been for him explaining that girls like to examine themselves and if it hadn't been for him explaining it and some other things about sex, well...."
Susan's voice trailed off as she contemplated the reasons why in the late summer of 1961 she began to think of her father in connection with sex. It was a difficult group of thoughts for the child to contemplate.
In the late summer of 1961, Susan Kelley began menstruating. She recalled what her father had told her about this female condition and took the appropriate measures.
"It was one of the few times when I felt badly about not being able to talk freely to Mom," Susan told me with sadness in her voice. "For some reason, it hadn't sounded right coming from my Dad. It didn't seem to me that he should have been the one to tell me about menstruation. It was strange getting that information from a sixty-year-old man who wasn't even a doctor. Mom should have told me. Once I started to menstruate I would have liked to talk about it with Mom, but ... but I just couldn't and she didn't approach me about it. I guess it wasn't really necessary. After the first couple of months everything was fine. I knew what to do. But, still, it would have been nice to talk to Mom about it...."
In August, 1961, Susan had her twelfth birthday. The latter part of that month Mrs. Kelley took the youngster shopping for clothes for the coming school year. In contrast to the shopping trips she had taken with her father, on this one Susan was given wide freedom of choice about what she would buy. Her mother did not force choices on her; Susan was free to make up her own mind. Susan took a long time to make up her mind on this shopping trip. It was so unusual. The girl just wasn't accustomed to making up her own mind on these matters.
Susan Kelley began the seventh grade in September, 1961. She had never been an outgoing person, but with the departure of her father she became downright withdrawn. The teachers at the junior high school she attended did not know what her personality had been at her elementary school, so they accepted her shy, withdrawn personality as her natural mood.
By the time she began seventh grade, her old classmates knew about the disappearance of her father. Since this disappearance was unexplained, Susan's old friends-mostly due to orders by their parents-began to shun the twelve-year-old girl. To them, she developed a negative quality, as if her father's absence from home made her something evil. Susan had never developed any close friendships, but in school she did have friends. (Possibly the term "acquaintances" is more descriptive.) Now, in the autumn of 1961, she didn't even have these. Her fellow students would talk to her, but the conversation never got very friendly. Their conversations with her were cool and mechanical. The coolness the other students showed toward her didn't bother Susan. She was use to having only one friend. She only needed this one friend-her father. But he was gone now.
But young people are wonderful at adjusting. Susan adjusted to this new life in the manner one might easily predict. She became quiet and withdrawn, and did her schoolwork in a mechanical, perfunctory way. Because she thought so much about her father; because she was so insecure without him; because she worried so much, her grades suffered. In elementary school Susan's grades had not been excellent, but they had been slightly above average. In junior high school her grades ran mostly to Cs; occasionally even below that. The massive memory of her father was weighing too heavily on her mind.
The year Susan Kelley was in the seventh grade was a torturous year. It was the period when the youngster had to allow the reality of her father's disappearance to permeate her whole being. It was the period when she had to adjust to the actuality of his loss.
Actions and reactions.
Susan performed the action of adjusting in reaction to her father's disappearance. By the time she was in the eighth grade, Susan once more could smile. No more was she in a constantly depressed mood. Her teachers noticed this change in personality and no doubt were happy about it. Susan's grades improved somewhat.
She was still to be avoided, the other students thought. Susan's fellow classmates were still not as friendly to her as they had been when they were in elementary school. They were not unfriendly-just "cautious."
For several years after the day in 1961 when Susan learned of her father's disappearance, each day seemed like each other day. Her life was monotonous.
"It was the same thing done at the same time done in the same way," Susan told me.
Yet, young Susan Kelley didn't really mind it. Except for the things her father had done with her, Susan hadn't learned to like anything of the "outside world." Her world had been tied up in the person of one man, her father. She had developed no interests beyond him. The monotony didn't bother her because she, until several years later, didn't realize it existed. Harry Kelley had conditioned his daughter to look to him for every cue to action. When he dropped from sight, Susan had no built-in cues to action. She had none and developed no outside interests. That's how effective Harry Kelley's brainwashing had been.
In the first couple of years after Mr. Kelley disappeared, Susan spent most of her time watching for him in the hope that one fine day he would suddenly reappear. Her mind was consumed by thoughts of the sixty-year-old man who had vanished for no reasonno reason known to Susan, that is.
But that didn't mean that Susan was unaware of that which was going on around her. Susan was aware of her fellow student's reaction to her and her father's disappearance. She knew that she was being rejected by them, though it took her a month or two to find out why. Susan was not made happy by this rejection, but it did not weigh heavily on her mind. After all, the only person in the world she cared for was her daddy. It was his reactions and responses that counted in her life.
And, too, Susan for the first time in her life was aware of her mother and her feelings, function, and future. Susan began to see her mother in a different light. No longer did Susan see her just as that person who prepared meals and did the housework. The youngster saw her mother as the person who now had the responsibility that once belonged to her father. Mrs. Kelley had become the breadwinner and protector of young Susan. For the first time in her life, Susan Kelley saw her mother as a mother and not just as a body who happened to live with her and her father. Susan developed a favorable impression of her mother for the first time in her life.
Young Susan began to have a lot of sympathy for her mother.
"Until Mom made me do the housework I never realized the kind of life she must lead," said Susan in one interview. "I began to understand what her life must be like. I thought about the way Dad and I had treated her. We had never included her in on anything. We had ignored her, as if she was not a living, feeling thing. We had treated her the way we treated our television set-as an object to be used at our convenience. Yes, for several years after Dad left us, I could sympathize with Mom."
Susan may have sympathized with her mother, but she didn't love her.
"Maybe it was too late for love," Susan observed.
"Mom and I ... we had been strangers too long. Now she was gone all day and very tired when she got home in the evening. We didn't really have time to get to know each other, if you know what I mean. In fact, most of the first year after Mom started working, she'd come home and eat supper, then go right to bed. In the mornings, she'd usually be gone by the time I left for school, so I didn't really see her then. And, as you know, Dad was on my mind a lot...."
A situation such as Susan faced is almost too much for a person of that age. Never in a normal person's life do things change as fast as in the period which begins with the entrance into junior high school and ends at about the end of senior high school (roughly, ages twelve to eighteen). The social structure changes. It is necessary to make new friends. A new and immense desire for acceptance by the group is felt. A person becomes aware of how others feel about oneself. It is as if the spotlight was turned on one all the time. Attention is paid to the mannerisms and personality of one's classmates and oneself. As if this wasn't enough, there are the physical changes of puberty-the sudden and dramatic growth, and the sexual changes. The whole world seems to change!
Actions and reactions.
The majority of people who pass through puberty and the high school society adjust to the demands of both and emerge as more or less mature adult. Some people emerge at the end of high school with certain scars left by their fellow students, yet still able to cope with the world in an acceptable way. A few persons emerge at the end of their high school experience with personalities so warped by some event and or experience that they could never view the world in a "normal" fashion.
Susan was one of those who could easily have gotten out of high school with severe scars which might never have healed. Her view of the world might have been so rotten that she would never trust anyone again as long as she lived. It happens that Susan left high school before graduation as an embittered young lady, yet, in her way, coping with the world and what it threw at her.
Susan Kelley was just fourteen when she entered the ninth grade; the first year of senior high school. A lot had happened between the time, two Septembers ago, when she entered seventh grade; the first year of junior high school. Susan had developed her own system for coping with the coolness the other students showed toward her. She had become more shy and withdrawn than she had been in elementary school. And Susan had developed physically. The girl was of average fourteen-year-old build, with hazel eyes and charcoal black hair. Puberty had done its job of bringing out sexual characteristics. Her bust, so she told me, measured about thirty-four or thirty-five inches; her waist, twenty inches; and her hips, thirty inches. It was a striking figure for one so young to have.
Obviously, a girl with measurements like that is not going to go unnoticed for long. While not too many people noticed her and her figure in junior high school, Susan was acutely aware that they noticed it in the beginning of senior high school. From the first day, the young lady received glances which told her that she was "more" to her fellow students than most other girls.
"On the first day of high school a boy whistled at me," said Susan to me with a giggle in her voice.
The boys did more than whistle at her. They rapidly sized her up. The consensus of opinion was that she was very pretty, sexy, and desirable. Had Susan Kel ley been an outgoing, gregarious person, certainly she would have been picked up (or rather, picked out) by a boy who might have showed her what heterosexual love between two persons of the same age was like. But Susan's withdrawn personality was against that. Even to the people at Seville High School who had not known what she was like in junior high school and who had no knowledge of her father's disappearance, Susan Kelley was unapproachable. A strange halo hung over her, like some sort of protective shield. The shield did not allow Susan to reach out to her fellow students, nor did it allow them to reach her. The shield had been constructed by Harry Kelley. It was very well made; invisible but very, very strong. But there was a crack in the shield, a crack of which no one was particularly conscious. In a while another person would creep through to Susan by way of the crack.
To say that Susan was withdrawn in the beginning of her high school career is to sell her short. True, her personality was withdrawn, but this does not at all mean that she was unaware that the boys noticed her.
"Dad explained just before he disappeared that by the time I was in high school boys would notice me, just as they notice all girls," Susan related. "Dad told me why the boys would be watching girls. He explained that the older boys in high school would be, well, out for kicks. He told me to be careful around the boys. Dad said that any sort of 'provocation' might excite them and I could be in real trouble. Boys have been known to shove girls into school closets and take liberties with them, Dad said. He told me that if a boy ever tried anything on me I should keep my legs together and if possible hit him in the genitals. Dad didn't say what to do if a gang of boys ever jumped me, and at eleven years of age I didn't ask. The thought of rape never crossed my mind. When Dad was telling me about such things I was just too young to know about-about boys in general."
Mrs. June Kelley knew the boys would be watching.
"By the time Susan was in the eighth grade it was clear what kind of body my girl was going to have," Mrs. Kelley told me. "She was almost as big through the chest when she was fourteen as I was when I was in my mid-twenties. She was wide and curvy through the hips, too. If you'll pardon the expression mister, my daughter had a sexy body by the time she was a freshman in high school. She had sexy movement too. Not intentionally, mind you, but it was there. I knew the boys would be looking long and hard at her in high school. I could almost hear them panting the day she left for her first day in high school. I know what's on those teen aged boys' minds! I wasn't born yesterday! In fact, mister, I was hoping they'd look...."
Mrs. Kelley's voice faded out, as though she wanted to explain her last statement-which, in fact, she later did.
It took only a couple of weeks before a few boys-juniors and seniors in the high school, began to seek out and talk to Susan Kelley, the shy freshman. They would catch her in the halls, slide alongside the pretty brunette, mumble some sort of introduction, and ask her for a date for the approaching weekend. Susan would coolly and mechanically turn them down, and the boys would go off rather dejected that they had not been able to impress her favorably. Fourteen-year-old Susan might have liked to accept, but Harry Kelley's brainwashing had taught her that she must not even talk with a boy-much less go out with him-without the approval of her father. With her father's various teachings about boys running around in her head and with her father absent now from her life, Susan subconsciously rejected any approach a boy made.
It was not a case that she disliked boys or that they somehow offended her best senses. Her general attitude toward boys was favorable enough. Atfer all, her father was a boy; a male, as were the high school boys. But her father was a special male, different from all other males. And he was the male who had erected a barrier to all other males.
During her entire freshman year Susan turned away all boys who made any sort of advance toward her. However, she looked longingly at them, for, in a mystical way, they reminded her of her beloved father whose disappearance she did not yet understand. She looked more longingly at the male teachers in the high school, particularly the older ones, since they more directly evoked memories of the girl's missing father.
"In particular, there was Mr. Lowe," Susan said, recalling the teachers who most reminded her of her father. "He was a white-haired man who must have been about sixty. Sixty is how old Dad was when he disappeared in 1961. I remember that Mr. Lowe had about the same build as Dad. He even had the same color eyes. He was a real nice man, like Dad was. Mr. Lowe taught biology, and the year I had it I don't think I took very many notes on his lectures. I was too busy looking at him, you know. Mr. Lowe had a strange effect on me. I felt that I would do just about anything he wanted me to do. I would have died for him, I think."
"Do you think you were in love with him?" I asked.
"Maybe. Yes ... yes I think so! Now that you mention it, I think I was in love with him the same way I was in love with my father. Sometimes at night when I was thinking and dreaming about Dad, I'd see Mr. Lowe's face in place of Dad's. I'd imagine what it was like to be kissed by him. I wondered if it would be the same as being kissed by Dad. A few times I think I was on the verge of asking Mr. Lowe to kiss me. A few times I stayed after school and asked him if I could help him straighten up the biology lab. He let me do that a couple of times. And when Mr. Lowe would appear in my dreams, I sometimes would wonder what his body was like. I'd wonder if it was like Dad's. I'd wonder what it would be like to have Mr. Lowe kiss my genitals the way Dad did. I dreamed about Mr. Lowe lying down with me, and about him having me take out his penis and caress it. I wondered what his penis felt like. And I wondered if his penis would feel the way Dad's did if he were to lay it on my split and move it around. Sometimes I'd dream about Mr. Lowe putting his male organ between my legs. I'd even put a hand down there and rub myself to make it seem more real. When I got excited, I'd imagine Mr. Lowe having an ejaculation on me. I wondered if his sperm would look like Dad's, or whether different men had different types and colors of sperm."
The elderly Mr. Lowe wasn't the only male teacher who seemed to affect Susan Kelley.
"There was a Mr. Rule, who was only about forty," recalled Susan. "He was a very friendly man, a teacher all the kids liked. He gave all of us a lot of individual help in his algebra class. He was a great kidder. We always had a lot of laughs in his class. He liked to go around the room helping his students with their algebra, and as he did that he would often put his hands on a student's shoulders. It did something to me when he did that. I could feel a kind of chill go up and down my back. Sometimes when he put his hands on me, I'd close my eyes for a moment and try to remember Dad doing that. When Mr. Rule touched me, it helped to bring back certain memories of Dad. I'd remember what Dad did to me with his hands-how he petted my face, how he rubbed my back, how he caressed me between the legs, and so on.
"And there was Mr. Conley, the music teacher. He was pretty young-I'd guess he was around twenty-five when I took required high school music. He reminded me of Dad only in that Dad used to occasionally sing to me, especially when I was young. I guess you'd say that he didn't really sing-he hummed more than anything else. Sometimes when Dad and I did ... did the sexual thing, we had the radio turned on. So Mr. Conley reminded me of Dad because he too sang. Once or twice a year Seville High would have a musical assembly and Mr. Conley would do a few solos. I'd think of Dad then, and some of the things we use to do to music. But actually no one matched Mr. Lowe when it came to reminding me of Dad."
In August of 1964 Susan turned fifteen, and that September she began her second (sophomore) year at Seville High School. Her mother, as in summers past, had not allowed Susan to go outside the Kelley property without being accompanied by her. Therefore, Susan's summer had been dull and dead. She had plenty of leisure time. Much of this time she spent in repose on her bed thinking about her departed father. She contrasted her life before and after the summer of 1961. Each summer since 1961 she had so much free time that she could almost constantly think of Harry Kelley. She thought on his teachings, his personality, and the love he once showered on her. Over the summer Susan had made up her mind (as she had made up her mind at the beginning of her freshman year) to ignore the passes the boys made at her.
So Susan Kelley began her sophomore year by still being cool to the boys who, once more, tried to be friendly toward her. The boys who had tried to make friends with her the year before largely ignored her, though a few thought she might have changed over the summer and would be worth approaching this year. Most of the boys who tried to talk to Susan in the beginning of her sophomore year were boys who had not noticed her the year previous or who were new to the school. But all the boys received a uniform cold shoulder from the very pretty, sexy, desirable Susan Kelley.
"I could see how lonely she was, how moody she could be on most occasions," Mrs. June Kelley told me. "I knew this whole thing was hard on Susan, but there wasn't anything I could do about it. I didn't make the situation we were in, now did I? Many times I wanted to tell that girl why her father had left home, but, well, I didn't think she'd understand just yet. I planned to tell her the story when she graduated from high school. By the time she was old enough to be a high school graduate, I figured she'd be old enough to understand. In the meantime, I knew that Harry would be on my daughter's mind. Believe me, mister, I knew what kind of hold my husband had on that child! I knew how he wanted her to run to him for everything. I knew how he wanted her to depend on him for all of life's little wants and needs! But now that Harry was gone, I didn't want Susan to just sit around waiting for him to come back. I wanted her to be like the other kids. Good night, mister! I wanted my girl to be normal and accepted by the other kids."
Mrs. Kelley paused a moment to let the import of what she had said soak in.
"So, that's why I started talking to Susan about ... about going out with some boys," she continued. "In September of 1964 I figured she was old enough-she was fifteen then-to have a few dates. I wanted to get her mind off Harry. So I tried to talk her into being friendly with the crowd at high school. I knew the boys must at least be looking at her. I use to ask her about them. I'd ask if she'd spoken to a boy that day-you know, statements like that. I'd ask her if she wouldn't like to go out with some of her high school friends. I told her that I certainly wouldn't object to her going out in the evening as long as she was home at a reasonable hour."
"The beginning of my sophomore year, Mom started to push this business about going out with boys," Susan told me. "She said I ought to go out; I'd enjoy it. She said I needed it! She'd ask what boy had spoken to me recently. She wanted to know their names and addresses, and how I liked them. I kept telling her that I didn't speak to boys. I told her I wasn't interested in them or in going out with anyone, male or female, from that high school. But good ol' Mom, she just kept prying. I got the third degree almost every evening. I got furious with Mom. Sometimes I'd just get up and walk out of the room."
"Harry had put the pressure on Susan to not have any friends in school," related Mrs. Kelley. "I felt that I had to counter that by putting pressure on her to seek friends. That's why I kept after her to develop some friendships in school. I would have liked it-and I let her know it-if the friends were some nice, eligible boys."
Her mother's pushing the boy issue simply hardened Susan's attitude toward boys. Her father's warnings about males rang louder than ever in the young lady's ears.
Mrs. Kelley could see that she was getting nowhere on the problem, so about December she quit talking about boys.
"I just hoped and prayed that Susan didn't reject friendships for her whole life," Mrs. Kelley commented. "I didn't want her to just sit around and wait for Harry to come back so he could approve any friends she might want to have. I hoped that some day soon Susan would begin to live her own life, if you understand me." Actions and reactions.
The hate Susan felt for her mother deepened as a result of her mother's trying to get her to break away from the spell Harry Kelley had cast on her. Susan was still within her father's invisible grasp. His brainwashing was still effective.
Harry Kelley's goal had been to make his daughter look to him for all pleasure. Nothing in life was supposed to have a positive value unless the child's father had put his stamp of approval on it. As we have seen, Mr. Kelley's brainwashing had been tremendously effective. When he disappeared, Susan, in one respect, stopped living. She withdrew into herself and rejected the influence of any outside stimuli. She thought constantly of her beloved father. We may well say that Harry Kelley had achieved his goal with Susan.
We may say also that Harry Kelley achieved his goal too well. Susan was frantic for the touch and inspiration of her father. Many nights she lay tossing and turning in worry and fear over the loss of her father. She needed his presence to go on living. Harry Kelley had planned it that way.
Susan Kelley could not forever be content with just remembering her father. She needed his physical attention too much. It was not just his spirit which made the youngster love the old man, it was his touch and body too.
At first it hadn't been too hard for Susan to live without her father, because there was hope in her heart that he would return soon. But as the years dragged on she could tell that it was un-likely that he would return.
The darkest of thoughts about her father's fate became the clearest, most logical solution to the mystery of his disappearance-i.e., that he had died. Susan never allowed this idea to become the final answer to the riddle of Harry Kelley's disappearance. She always had some faith that he was alive and would someday return to her. Yet, the possibility of death was strong....
Soon it was spring, 1965. It had been almost four years since Harry Kelley had mysteriously vanished from his home in Seville. It had been a terrifically long time for Susan to endure the absence of her father. It may be properly said that Susan was slowly but surely going crazy for need of the return of the man to whom she looked for all goodness and pleasure.
This was the crack in the invisible, protective shield which Harry Kelley had constructed for Susan to keep her from contact with the rest of the world. Harry Kelley had made his physical being so important in the life of Susan that she could not live without it and keep her sanity. Possibly if Mr. Kelley had not caressed Susan so often, if he had not sexually played with her, if he had not made his touch virtually the basis of their relationship, then Susan might merely have contemplated his "spiritual" qualities and waited patiently for his return. But that was not the way it was. She needed something more physical than the memory of Harry Kelley's "spiritual" qualities.
So in the spring of 1965, the boys in Seville High School began to look better and better to young Miss Susan Kelley. She did not just suddenly turn to them. For her, acceptance of the attentions of the boys at Seville High was a slow, intellectual process. It took courage on her part to break with the idea of waiting for her father to return, and then accepting the young men in her high school as substitutes for him. In the spring of 1965, Susan was tiring of her mother being the only other person with whom she was closely associated. She needed a male in her young life. Adolescent girls tend to need a man in their lives somewhere, and this was especially true for Susan since she had gone so long without the presence of her father.
"I ... I wanted to be around a man again," confessed Susan. "I ... I would have liked it to be my Dad, but, as you know, it couldn't be. So, I thought it might be all right to go out with one of the boys from school. I knew why I wanted to go out with a boy, and I must tell you I had some doubts about my reasons. But, you see, I was getting so-so 'housebound' and so darn tired of always being around Mom that I thought I had to get out. I wanted my Dad, but I knew I couldn't have him. I thought maybe going out once or twice with a boy would relieve the pressure, so to speak."
It must have seemed like an awfully sudden change to the boys when Susan, the black-haired, quiet beauty, started to smile and say hello to some of their number. The suddenness of this change in attitude didn't bother the boys. They were happy for it. The young men who had previously given up on ever attracting the sexy girl's attention approached her with renewed vigor. Susan's smile, manners, and speech were maybe a little forced, but they were also effective. Greetings were exchanged, smiles smiled, conversations held. The boys were cautious with her. Many of them knew how cool she had been and how she had turned down all offers of dates. It took them a couple of weeks to warm up to this new face Susan showed them and to work up enough courage to ask her out.
The boy who finally decided to ask out the now friendly Susan Kelley was Herb Tanner. Herb was a year ahead of Susan in school, and was delighted when she accepted his invitation to a movie. Susan was happy that he had asked. Herb was a big, strong boy with a quick smile and many friends in school. He came from the wealthiest neighborhood in Seville. To Susan, he seemed to be the type of person her father was-friendly, fun to be with. She could see many of her father's features in Herb.
"I was a little worried about what Mom would think about me going out, though I should have known I didn't have to worry about her reaction to the idea," Susan told me. "After all, just a short time earlier she'd been practically threatening my life if I didn't go out with a boy! When I told her I was going out with Herb, her eyes lit up. It was the first time in a long time that I could remember her smiling."
"Yes, I was very happy about it," commented Mrs. Kelley. "I hoped this would be the ice-breaker. I hoped that some boy would make her live and forget Harry."
Susan was apprehensive about her date with Herb. She so much wanted him merely to be a young Harry Kelley! Her whole rationale for going out with a boy at all was to find someone who would in some way take the place of the only person in the world she had ever felt close to-her own father. She asked herself whether or not Herb would satisfy the longing in her mind and body for a substitute for her father. Until he had taken her out, she would not know how he suited the role she wanted him to play.
Before, during, and after the movie, Herb Tanner played the perfect gentleman. Susan enjoyed him. She found him attractive and restrained. He was cautious and careful with her.
It seems to me that there was a good reason for Herb's restraint. Susan had had an air of mystery about her all the years she had been in school. Her change from cool to warm personality probably caused young Mr. Tanner to exercise great caution in his initial realizations with her. How could he know that she might not suddenly go cool on him if he was too friendly? How could he know whether or not she might not just get up and leave him right there in the theater if he made a false move? He knew nothing of her personal background, other than what he could observe in high school. He had no way of knowing what she was looking for in him. He knew nothing of her rather incestuous relationship with her father. So Herb Tanner approached the fifteen-year-old girl with great care. He didn't want to lose her.
Susan found Herb so attractive and enough like that which she was looking for that when he asked her for a date for the following Saturday night, that she accepted at once. She didn't say much about Herb to her mother; and Mrs. Kelley, not wishing to spoil the arrangement, did not press questions about him on her daughter.
On the second date Herb had greater courage than on the first date. Susan allowed the young man to touch her hand, and she recalled that he actually held it for a while. The pair seemed to be getting along in grand style, so Susan anxiously accepted Herb's invitation for another movie date.
"After that second date, I thought I'd really found someone who might take Dad's place," Susan recalled. "Herb was kind and gentle like Dad had been. In the week between our second and third date, I started to dream about Herb and Dad. I guess you'd say I was comparing them. I guess I even vaguely compared them right after the first date, but it wasn't until after the second date-when I decided Herb was so good that I really began comparing. Herb seemed so much like Dad, as though-as though Dad was somehow in Herb. I wanted Herb to be Dad. After that second date I would dream of the two of them and how they were alike. I began to want to be around Herb all the time, like I had been around Dad all the time. I wanted to be touched and kissed by Herb. I-I wanted to encourage Herb to do that."
"I remember Herb Tanner-not well, but I remember him," Mrs. Kelley told me. "He seemed very nice. He obviously came from a rich family. The boy was dressed very well every time I saw him. When he came to our house, he came in a new, fancy car. I'm not much on identifying cars, but I could tell it was an expensive one, like an Oldsmobile or Buick. I was very glad my daughter was going out with him. He seemed so nice-so right for her."
"On our third date I let Herb hold me and kiss me," Susan said with a rather far away look in her eyes. "It was nice. So nice! Do you know that I hadn't been kissed in four years? I'd missed Dad's kisses and caresses and ... well, I hoped that Herb was going to make up for that. He was so much like my Daddy!"
Here Susan nearly cried, remembering how much young Herb had been like the father she loved and had lost.
"I wanted things to be so good between Herb and myself," she continued. "Maybe I was like a lot of other teen-aged girls. I had marriage on my mind. I began to think about marrying Herb some day. And I hoped that he had the same thing on his mind. After that third date, my dreams were all of Herb. I just pushed Dad out of my mind-for the moment. I dreamed a lot about what Herb and I could to make it like-shall I say, old times? I dreamed about Herb's kisses, Herb's touch, and-what Herb's penis must be like. I began to have dreams about Herb like I use to have about that nice Mr. Lowe, the biology teacher.
Almost every night after that third date I would lie in bed and think how nice it would be if Herb would let me teach his penis. I wanted to do the things for Herb feat I'd done for Dad. I wanted to make his male Organ hard and erect. I wanted to feel it between my legs. I wanted to help Herb have an ejaculation, and I wanted him to hold me after he did like Dad use to do. I-I wanted Herb so much that it was driving me crazy!"
"You thought about him constantly, like you'd thought about your father in the past?" I interjected.
"Yes. Each day I could hardly wait until I could see him. I didn't pay any attention to what was going on in class. I was barely getting my homework done. There were several tests in this period and I did poorly on all of them. He'd call me a couple of times a week. I could hardly wait for those calls, mister."
"You worried a lot about your relationship with him?"
"Yes. I wanted it to be good and lasting."
"Did you feel jealous? Were you afraid someone else might attract Herb?"
Susan considered the question a minute.
"Well, now that you mention it, I guess I did. I wanted him so much...."
Susan Kelley's reaction to Herb was not an uncommon one for a teen-aged girl to have toward a boy. One of the most common things in the world is for a teen-aged girl to fall madly in love with a teen-aged boy. Each one of the partners in such an arrangement is afraid that the other will find someone that person is more in love with. Also, it is far from uncommon that a girl will choose a boy with whom to fall in love because he reminds her of her own father. (It is, of course, also true that a boy sometimes chooses a girl to fall in love with because she reminds him of his mother.) Fears and anxieties are part of teen-age love arrangements.
And all the more so in the case of Susan Kelley. Susan had a background different from most teen-aged girls, and her attachment to Herb Tanner was affected by that background.
Action and reaction.
It might have worked out that Herb would have been madly, permanently, and faithfully in love with the pretty Susan Kelley. I believe this would have been a good arrangement and might have solved the problems brought on by the disappearance of Susan's father. Harry Kelley had brainwashed Susan into thinking that no one could ever be as good as he could be, but Herb, in Susan's mind, might have come close enough. It might have worked out that way-but it didn't.
"After our third date, Herb couldn't take me out again for two weeks," Susan related. "He had gotten a low grade in two subjects on his report card, and his parents had told him he couldn't go out for two weeks after that grade card came out. So it wasn't until the first weekend in May that Herb could see me outside of school again.
"Saturday afternoon Herb called me and said that he'd been in an accident. It was nothing serious, but his car had had to be towed to a garage and would be out of commission for about a week. His parents had gone out of town the night before, taking their car with them. The only money he had was what he had put aside to pay our way to the movies that evening. So that Saturday afternoon Herb asked if I minded riding the bus to downtown Seville that evening and meeting him there in front of the theater. I said I didn't mind at all. I told Mom what I was going to do, and she approved.
"The movie started at eight o'clock, so I left the house at seven-thirty. It took me about five minutes to walk to the bus stop, and the bus would take about fifteen minutes to reach downtown.
"When I got off the bus downtown, it was still daylight. I had to walk four blocks to get to the theater and meet Herb. I thought I'd take a short-cut through an alley. I walked one block down the alley and had just entered the second block of the alley when it happened. There was a large loading dock in the first building in the second block of that alley. When I looked down the alley, I couldn't see anyone at all. No one! But just as I got even with that loading dock, I saw them. Five guys were standing up on the dock, leaning against the closed back door. They were all smoking cigarettes, I remember. All of a sudden, one of the guys throws down his smoke and says, 'Let's take her!,' and they all jumped off the dock and grabbed me. I never had a chance to run-not even one small step! One guy grabbed me from behind and held his hand across my mouth. He dragged me over against the wall of the building and another guy said, 'How are we gonna take her?' "
Susan began to cry a little. But bravely she continued her tale.
"One of the guys said, 'Just hold her', and that's what the one guy did. Another guy unbuttoned my blouse and cut off my bra with a long knife. He began to squeeze my breasts. Someone said something about a lookout, and one of the guys ran to the intersection of the alleys to watch for anyone who might come down them. One of the other four guys who were working on me began to suck one of my breasts, while the guy who cut off my bra kept squeezing the other one. A third guy took off my skirt and ripped off my panties. He forced his hand between my legs. I tried to keep my legs together somehow, but-but I couldn't."
Susan started to cry openly. It took her a couple of minutes to regain her composure.
"T ... then one of these guys says, 'Let's do it to her. No one's coming.' The two guys who've been working on my breasts pick up my legs and throw me down. They held my legs apart while the guy who'd been holding my mouth held my arms and shoulders to the ground. He couldn't keep his hand over my mouth, and I gave out with a few cries. I don't think they were too loud. I was too scared to shout. Those guys, one by one got between my legs and-and raped me. Oh, Lord, it was painful! I was scared. It was all so unreal, so terrible! Those four guys took turns doing it to me, and it hurt worse and worse each time. Only the guy who was the lookout didn't do it. I think he would have done it, though, but he saw someone coming down one of the alleys. He yelled some sort of warning and the guys let go and ran. I couldn't move. The last thing I remembered was some old man who ran over to me and asked me what happened. He must have been the one who the lookout saw coming. I don't remember answering the man about what had happened. I believe I fainted.
"The next thing I knew a doctor and a policeman were standing over me in the Seville Hospital Emergency Room. I was dazed and confused. I remember how sick I felt. The policeman kept asking questions, but none of them made any sense to me. I couldn't even hear straight. I do recall hearing the doctor say something about I shouldn't be questioned now. But that policeman kept asking questions for some time. Finally he gave up and left. I fainted again.
"It wasn't until the next afternoon-Sunday afternoon-that I woke up and felt like talking about the rape. A policeman had been waiting since early that morning in order to get a statement from me. My mother, who had been told about what happened, and had been brought to the hospital by the police, had stayed with me all night. She motioned for the policeman to come in and get my story. All I could tell him is what I've told you. I didn't recognize any of those guys. I coudn't even remember what they looked like. The whole thing happened so fast, you know. Nevertheless, a couple of days later the police had me look through a lot of photos to see if I could recognize any of them as the people who attacked me. I couldn't.
"The doctor confirmed that I had been raped. He said that there had been a lot of blood on me when I was brought in, but that as far as he could tell there had been no permanent physical damage to me."
There may have been no physical damage, but there was great psychological damage. Susan Kelley had been raped and had lost her virginity (albeit, unvoluntarily) in the process. She did not know those who had committed this crime on her body; she could not identify them from police pictures and in the end they were never found.
"They kept me in the hospital for five long days for observation, they said," continued Susan. "It gave me plenty of time to think this thing over. Each night I'd dream of that attack and sometimes I'd scream. Some nurse would run in with a sleeping pill and that would put me out for the rest of the night. Other than dreaming about being raped, I started to think about the purpose of that rape. I was sure there was one.
"I-I thought it might be a punishment, maybe a punishment from God Himself, for being unfaithful to Dad. I had been unfaithful, you know. I was seeing Herb, and liking him too. I had thought dangerous thoughts about Herb; how he was like Dad, and how he might take Dad's place in my life. I thought this rape was punishment for that. I had always been true to what Dad had taught me about not associating with strangers, and especially about not letting boys get near. I had thought about Herb sexually; I had even wanted to hold his penis and make it ejaculate, just like I had done for Dad. God must be punishing me for thinking such things-that's what I thought.
"I thought something else too, but not until my last day in the hospital. I thought it was possible that Dad was alive and still around Seville somewhere. I thought maybe he was watching me and knew about Herb. I thought maybe he sent those five guys to that alley to-to make me lose my virginity. This was his way of punishing me for going out with Herb without his okay. I began to think that God didn't have anything to do with it.
"I went home on a Friday. Mom said the principal of the high school had called and said I didn't need to come back to school until I felt like it. In fact, he said I didn't have to come back at all that school year.
"At home, Mom made me go to bed and stay there all day Friday. That gave me all the more time to consider the situation. I did a lot of thinking about Dad and Herb and the guys who'd raped me. I cried a lot that Friday. I guess I'd been too frightened or in too much shock to cry about it before. Everything was confused. I decided one thing that Friday-I decided that I wasn't good enough for Herb now. Dad had told me that good guys deserve to marry virgins, and Herb was good and I wasn't a virgin any longer. I began to think that that was what the rape had really meant that I wasn't to have Herb.
"Herb called me the day after I was brought home. I talked with him a while. I couldn't bring myself to tell him that it was all over between us. But Sunday when he called again, I screwed up my courage and told him I couldn't see him any more. He wanted to know why. I couldn't come right out and tell him. He didn't want to hear my theories about the rape, I was sure of that. But he did go into a long speech about how he liked me and how he wanted to protect me so I wouldn't get hurt again. It was nice, almost warming, the way he talked. But I decided I didn't want to inflict myself on Herb, and that was the way it was going to be. I told him not to call again. Then I hung up on him and cried." Actions and reactions.
Harry Kelley's brainwashing was still working, still grotesquely effective. In a sense, Susan had almost slipped from Mr. Kelley's grasp because he had created such a terrific need in her for a male friend, whom he thought would always be himself. When he disappeared, Susan had remained true to him for four years, but the combination of need which Mr. Kelley had built into her and the common adolescent desire for the companionship of a member of the opposite sex had caused her to turn to Herb Tanner. Now an unexpected, tragic ingredient had been added to the personality of Susan Kelley. She had lost the most precious thing-her virginity. It had been cruelly taken from her and there was no restoring it. Sex seemed a terrible thing now. For the first time she became truly aware of the terribleness of it. With her father and in her fantasies about other men, the sexual organs were objects of pleasure and symbols of stability and security. One might well say that Harry Kelley had cemented his weird relationship to his daughter with the hot, sticky sperm he ejaculated from his erect, caressed penis. It wasn't sex she experienced then; it was her concept of true, undying love. Susan wanted to re-establish the love relationship with a male, and this is why she turned to Herb Tanner. It is too bad the relationship didn't work out.
The rape had changed everything. No longer could her mind dwell on the nice Herb Tanner as an acceptable substitute for her father. It was that idea for which, in Susan's mind, the rape had been punishment. For the first time, a certain fear of her father entered the fifteen-year-old's heart and mind. She had never thought of her father as a vengeful person. But now she could hardly think of him in any other way. Again, it was her reaction to his brainwashing. In the few weeks she had dated Herb Tanner, the vision and oppressive omnipresence of the memory of her father had nearly vanished. Now he was back in full force. His memory and teachings had been turned up to full blast in the mind of the teen-aged Susan Kelley.
What to do! What to do! Aside from revenge for dating Herb Tanner, what did this taking away of the youngster's virginity mean? How should she interpret the terrible event? How should she react?
Susan prayed that in some way she be given the proper meaning for the tragic happening. She badly needed direction in this matter. All sorts of alternatives went through her young head. Should she do as she had done before (i.e., act cool and withdrawn, minding her own business)? Should she meditate and pray for her father's return? Should she look for a different boy who-some way-would receive her father's mystical blessing?
Susan returned to school for the last two weeks of the 1964-65 school year. For the time being, she decided to go back to her "old" personality. (This, of course, was perfectly predictable. She had tried a "new" personality; it had resulted in tragedy, so it was most logical to return to the safety of the personality she had used prior to her sexual disaster.)
Susan had once hoped that the summer of 1965 would be filled with the company of Herb Tanner. But it would not be. It was filled, as the four previous years had been, with thoughts and memories of her departed father.
It seems to me that the problem with Susan this summer (and it had been, in my opinion, the problem with her since her father's disappearance) was that the child had entirely too much time to think about her father. In her mind, he achieved a god-like status. He was too good, too unreal now that he had disappeared. He reached a sort of perfection in Susan's confused mind.
Susan Kelley, using her own form of logic, reached a decision about the meaning of her rape by August, 1965-the month of her sixteenth birthday. To Susan, her crime against her "perfect and good" father had been that she had mistrusted him and the possibility that he would one day again enter her life. She had sought out Herb Tanner when she should have waited for a sign from her father. As a punishment for her slip from devotion for her father, she had been raped. Harry Kelley had told her that a woman's most prized possession was her purity in being a virgin until marriage, and now that valuable asset had been snatched from her. When she turned to Herb Tanner for comfort and companionship, she fell from grace in the eyes of her father. Whether her punishment was from divine powers or by direction of her own father, she did not know. At any rate, she was sure that her rape was punishment! Nothing could dissuade her from that idea.
Now, because of the lack of faith she had showed for her father, she was an unworthy. This is Susan's reclassification of herself. The term for her has only an abstract meaning, but roughly we can say that it means she felt she was now worthless; her life useless and abstract. No worthwhile man would want her, she felt. Her own father would now reject her because she had let him down. She had not trusted in his omnipotent powers (which, of course, he didn't really possess). In a sense, life was all over for the youngster. Why fight anymore to be the pure, "right," moral person her father had wanted her to be. She just wasn't "pure" any longer! Actions and reactions.
In a manner of speaking, Susan's rape, regardless of how terrible the incident itself was, had set her free. Her reaction to that terrible act was to stop trying to be her father's ultra-devoted subject. It is, however, very unfortunate that in breaking with her father she developed the feeling of uselessness and unworthiness. For Susan, the actions she took as a result of her reaction to her rape were unfortunate.
It seemed to Susan that there was no point in her staying around Seville. For a number of reasons, the town was now just a collection of bitter memories for her. She couldn't love her mother; she was now unworthy of her father. Too many things in her home and the town reminded her of her father, whom she had tried, but failed, to please. Seville was depressing. Why should she bother with it any longer?
Susan might have run away by the time school started that September, but she lacked courage to make that move-for the moment, at least. Susan had been so well insulated from the real world outside her home and school that she simply wasn't sure how to run away from home.
"I knew for a fact that I didn't want to be living in Seville, but I didn't know what I'd do someplace else," said Susan. "That problem was about driving me buggy! I took to pacing the floor of my bedroom every night, planning to run away, but not knowing how to do that, and not knowing where to go when and if I did run away. A few times I even wrote down certain plans for escaping, but each time some question would come up in my mind and I'd give up the idea for a week or so."
I asked Susan what self-asked questions would come to her mind as she contemplated running away from home.
"Two questions, mainly," she replied. "One was, where would I get the money to pay for a ticket on a bus or train or something? It takes money to run away, you know. The second question was, what would I do when I got to wherever it was I was going? You see, the whole thing was a financial question."
And so Susan stayed with her mother and in September began her junior year in high school.
To Susan Kelley, it seemed as though this home imprisonment might well go on forever. She could not formulate a workable plan for escape. Since she had been raised in a manner which made depending on herself very difficult, we could logically expect Susan to have a hard time in planning an escape from home. She simply could not think ahead in the way necessary to be a truly successful runaway. Something would have to force her hand. Something would have to give her a push. If that push was not provided, then Susan would remain a prisoner of her home and of her past until maturity, experience, and/or circumstance gave her the courage to make some sort of break with her present home life.
In school, Susan did the poorest work of her academic career. Someone who has recently been raped and was in so severely a depressed state of mind could hardly be expected to do good school work. In fact, I would consider it abnormal if Susan had done good work.
"I didn't do well in school that year, and my teachers noticed that right away," Susan related to me. "My home-room teacher called me in about the middle of November to talk about my grades. This was right after the first report card of the year had come out. I'd gotten a lot of Ds. Well, the home-room teacher and I talked about those grades for about thirty minutes, and that was it."
Susan did not discuss her father, home situation, or the rape. The talk between Susan and her teacher was apparently fruitless. Susan's grades did not improve. The reason was, to put it simply, that the girl had no interest in school. Too many other things were pressing on her mind.
"I met Tom Kinnic at the store where we both worked," June Kelley told me. "One day in November we happened to sit together in the employee's cafeteria and struck up a conversation. I found out that he was recently widowed and that his wife had left him well provided for. He didn't say just what he meant by 'well provided for,' but I guessed that he meant that she'd left him a fair amount of money. He was just a seventy-five dollar a week men's wear salesman. He said something about taking off for a couple of years and just finding another job when he felt like it. You can see where I got the idea that he must have come into some money. Tom was, well, youngish-maybe in his early forties, though he didn't look over thirty-five-and that's what gave me the idea. Really, I don't know what made it pop into my head, but as he sat there telling me about himself, I thought that Susan would sure make a nice wife for him. Mrs. Susan Kinnic. It had a nice ring to it."
"And so did the money that went with Mr. Kinnic?"
I interjected.
"Yes. Yes, I admit that now," said Jane Kelley, looking toward the floor. "Money had been such a problem, especially since Harry left. But, too, I really was thinking of Susan's future happiness. I knew that she couldn't go on living with just me forever. She ought to be looking for someone to take care of her. This Tom Kinnic seemed to be just the sort of fellow I'd have liked her to wind up with. If Susan did marry him, it would take her off my financial back and-and he might have helped me out too in the financial department. I'll admit it-I was being selfish about trying to tie up Susan with Tom."
"Mom had been real good about not discussing that attack on me," said Susan. "She said at the time that what those guys did to me was terrible and that they should be caught and punished. She said that I mustn't think about it and mustn't think all boys are like those guys. Then she dropped the subject. One day in late November-or maybe it was early December-she suddenly starts talking about men and sex. 'Not all men are like the ones who raped you,' she says. 'Don't let it ruin your life,' she says. 'You had such a nice time with Herb-why don't you get another guy?' she says. This was exactly what I didn't want her to start doing-convincing me that just because some guys attacked me, it doesn't mean that they're all bad. Well, anyhow, I already knew that! Every once in a while Mom had the habit of harping on something, and I had hoped that she wouldn't harp on that. Maybe I should have known that she was leading up to something....
"A week or so after she began rattling her mouth about how I shouldn't fear all men, she said she'd run into a guy she thought I'd like a lot if I got to know him. His name was Tom Kinnic. He worked where Mom worked. She said that if I got to know him, I'd so? that there really are nice guys in the world and that they can make a girl feel very nice and needed. Well sir, I tuned her out on that, but she kept going on and on about it until I was ready to scream. So, one cold December Saturday, I went with Mom to the store and got a look at this Tom Kinnic."
From the time she met him, Mrs. Kelley had been building up Mr. Kinnic for a meeting with (or, at any rats, a glance at) Susan. June Kelley had forced her way into one small comer of Tom Kinnic's life; just enough so that he would talk with her and allow her to plant the idea that she had a daughter in whom he might be "interested." By exactly what process he came around to the idea that he might be interested in sixteen-year-old Susan I can not say, (since I never interviewed him.) He did indicate enough interest so that June Kelley was anxious to have her daughter at the store at a time convenient for a "planned-accidental" meeting with him.
"Mom was scheduled to work only that afternoon, so we reached the store about eleven-thirty in the morning in order to eat lunch before she had to go on duty," Susan related to me. "We ate in the employees' cafeteria. We no sooner sat down than this Tom Kinnic came over to sit with us. He was a fairly handsome guy. He looked like he might be in his late thirties, which sort of surprised me. I had expected someone in his twenties. Mom never said anything about his age, so, you know, I expected someone sorta close to my own age. Tom sat down and was very pleasant. I had had a lot of bad thoughts about men ever since the raae but when I met him those thoughts vanished. He seemed so nice."
"And possibly he reminded you of your father...." I put in.
"Well, maybe," Susan answered. "Anyhow, we seemed to hit off as if by magic. Mom was pleased-it showed all over her face. We all talked about the weather and some other stupid subjects like you often do when you don't really have anything to talk about. Lunchtime ended and Tom went his way and Mom and I went ours. Mom gave me twenty dollars and told me to go shopping and to a movie if I wanted to. I spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around the shopping center. I decided not to take in the movie that was playing at the shopping center's theater."
"Tom said he really was impressed by Susan right off the bat," June Kelley informed me. "He said something like, she looked like she had possibilities. I told Tom that she wasn't dating anyone at the moment, and that I was sure she'd like to go out with him. All he had to do was call. I gave him our telephone number."
"Well, I guess I was happy when he called me for a date," said Susan. "I thought maybe going out would take my mind off the other problems. He seemed nice enough. He wanted to take me to a dance the week before Christmas. I had to tell him that I didn't dance. We settled on a movie for the next Friday night."
At first it must have seemed to Susan that Tom Kinnic was a sort of older, second Herb Tanner-a nice guy who might fill the void left by the disappearance of the girl's father. Mrs. Kelley was extremely happy about the apparent friendship between Susan and Tom Kinnic.
He arrived that Friday evening in a new powder-blue Cadillac, confirming Mrs. Kelley's beliefs about the amount of money Tom Kinnic's first wife must have left him.
Susan was more beautiful and desirable than ever that evening, as Mrs. Kelley recalled it. She thought they made a strikingly handsome couple. As they disappeared into the crisp and dark winter evening, June Kelley retired to the television set to think on the great possibilities of Susan and Tom Kinnic.
The couple went to the movie, where they carefully minded their respective manners; not being too friendly, but at the same time not being cool to each other.
After the movie, Tom invited Susan to his house to have a late evening snack.
"Strangely enough, I didn't have any fear of going," recalled Susan. "It seemed sorta natural for some reason. Tom was so nice and polite-I guess it didn't enter my mind what might happen there. You see, he kinda reminded me of Dad....
"He had a nice house on the outskirts of Seville. That house of Tom's was quite pretty sitting there in the dark moonlight. It had snowed while we were in the movie, and all around Tom's house was fresh, unbroken snow. The big house was very lovely. Tom took me inside. It had become windy and cold while we were in the movie, and the first thing Tom did was heat up some coffee. He asked if I'd prefer tea, but I said coffee would be all right. Usually I don't drink coffee, but I didn't say that to him. We sat in his living room and drank the hot coffee. After we'd finished the drinks, Tom took the cups to the kitchen. He came back to me with two glasses in his hand. He said he'd poured us each a small drink of brandy. He said that it would take the chill off even better than coffee. Dad had always been very strict about liquor-he never touched it, and neither did Mom, and they expected me not to. But I figured, what would one little sip hurt. I didn't even plan on finishing the glass. I was interested to see what just a taste would be like. Well, I sorta liked it. It was different, and with the lights turned low like Tom had them-well, it was just nice and warming.
"Tom sat on the couch very close to me. He put his arms around me and held me very tight. He gave me a feeling like I'd never had before. I was all warm and feeling very romantic. I'd never felt like this with either Dad or Herb Tanner. The feeling I got from them was-different. The way I felt with Tom was not like any feeling I'd ever had before. We sat there on the couch for what seemed to be a long time. He caressed my hair and face. He made a tingle run through me. He began to brush my face with his lips. After a while, he began to nibble on my ear. Finally he turned out all the lights.
"Tom got a lot more personal with the lights out. He caressed my breasts for a while. Oh, I can't tell you what that did to me! Finally he worked down to my legs and up under my dress. I was completely dizzy by then. For some reason, I really didn't care what happened after that.
"The next thing I knew we were both nude and in his bed. That bed was the biggest one I'd ever seen; a Super-King size, I believe it's called. At first when we got in bed he didn't say a thing. For me, everything seemed pre-destined and automatic. I reached over and took his penis in my hand, just as I had done with Dad's. I played with it. I spread my legs apart and put Tom's hand between my legs. He had a huge erection. I didn't know a penis could be that hard! After a while, he asked me to put my mouth over the end of his penis-in order to warm it up, he said. I did as he asked. It was a very strange sensation having that big thing in my mouth. After a few minutes of sucking on his penis, I laid back on the bed and he put my nipples, one at a time, in his mouth. The nipples got very hard. My whole breast area became firm. Tom slid down to my genital region and kissed around there. Eventually he put his tongue in my split and wiggled it. From there it was one easy step for him to get on top of me and force his penis into my vagina." Actions and reactions.
It may well have been that Susan let Tom Kinnic do what he did because he somehow reminded her of her departed father, but it seems to me that a more likely explanation is that in a moment of insight she saw Tom as a figure from the world outside her home and school who might pull her into that world. In other words, Tom Kinnic was a door through whom she might escape the misery and depression of her home life. He represented "another world," and his acceptance of her would allow her to enter that world thereby escaping from the world she no longer liked. No doubt the brandy Tom Kinnic persuaded her to drink made Susan's willingness to have relations with him all the more acceptable to her, but I suspect she would have gone to bed with him in any case. Perhaps even if he had not steered her into his bed she would have had sexual relations with him by taking the initiative herself. At some moment while she was with Tom Kinnic, the solution to her escape problem dawned on her.
CHAPTER THREE
ESCAPE FROM THE PAST
"I had wanted to get away from home for a long time-ever since the rape-but I just didn't know how," Susan told me. "But after that night at Tom Kinnic's place, believe me, I knew how. It was so obvious. A lot of things I already knew fell into a pattern that told me how I could get away from Seville and the miserable time that town had given me. It was simple. All I had to do was go to a large town and make myself available."
Before her rape, the idea of prostitution was unthinkable to Susan Kelly. Her whole background was against it. Her father had warned her about boys and the fact that they liked to take advantage of girls. In high school, the teacher of the required sophomore health course had mentioned girls who had relations with men (with and without pay) and how dangerous such a thing was. But the pressure of an unpleasant situation will make people do things they never thought they would do. When Susan had her virginity torn from her; she viewed it as a sort of punishment for turning for affection to Herb Tanner. The rape made her feel unworthy. The sexual affection Tom Kinnic had shown her proved to Susan that she was attractive enough to be a successful prostitute. (She would probably have known that any way. She was not so stupid as to not know that her stunning figure and beautiful face would attract men.) Her experience with Tom had shown her that intercourse for her was not hard. "In fact, I rather enjoyed his penis being inside my body," she told me.
Escape money would be a problem since sixteen-year-old Susan didn't have any money of her own. However, she knew that her mother usually kept about twenty dollars around the house. That would do to get her a bus ticket to a city some distance from Seville.
The physical escape from Seville would be easy, now that the youngster had a plan. One night she would pack a small suitcase and the next morning after her mother left for work she would merely take a city bus to the bus depot and buy a ticket for some distant city.
The day Susan chose for her escape from the past was December twenty-third. She chose this day because she knew that there would be many people downtown where the bus depot was located and she knew it was easier to become lost in a crowd. She would appear less conspicuous at both ends of her escape route if there were a lot of people around.
School had let out for the Christmas holidays on the twenty-second. That evening Susan packed her suitcase with things she knew she would need in her new environment-wherever that might be. She did this quietly so as to not disturb her mother. It would, of course, be difficult for Susan to explain to her mother just why she was packing a suitcase.
Immediately after Mrs. Kelley had left for work the next day, Susan conducted a search of the house to find the money she was sure her mother kept around. Soon she found it. She remembered it as being about twenty-two or twenty-three dollars-enough for what she wanted to do.
Susan Kelley bid farewell to the neat, old house which had been the only home she had ever known. She was sad to leave its warmth that day; she was sad to leave the good memories it held. But to Susan it was a necessary step-a step she needed to take to preserve her sanity.
The young lady carefully closed and locked the front door to the house. She walked to the comer where she could catch a city bus for the downtown bus depot, and turned for a final look at the house which once meant so much to her. Then she turned her back on it and waited in the cold, snowy morning for the bus.
At the large, crowded bus depot, Susan Kelley, suitcase in hand, looked at the arrival-departure schedule posted on one wall of the depot. She saw that there was a bus leaving for Rushing Falls in about an hour. It seemed like the ideal place to go. Rushing Falls was a city of more than fifty thousand population located about forty miles from Seville. To Susan, it seemed like the ideal town in which to set up her "business." So it was that the youngster purchased a ticket for Rushing Falls, then bought a magazine to read and hide behind (lest someone who knew her would see her here and ask what she was doing) while waiting for the bus to depart.
She was in luck. No one she knew saw her. The bus departed Seville and arrived in Rushing Falls right on schedule.
In the depot of Rushing Falls there was a moment of confusion. Not hesitation about what she was doing, mind you, but mere confusion brought on by the fact that never before had she had to depend on herself for survival.
"I can still remember that first moment in Rushing Falls," recalled Susan. "Before I came to Rushing Falls, I looked at it-and several other cities-on a State map. The dot that marked Rushing Falls wasn't too much bigger than the dot that marked Seville. I knew it would be bigger than Seville, but I didn't realize how much bigger. The moment I stepped off the bus I felt lost Real lost! That bus depot must have been three times the size of the one at Seville. Walking from the bus to the depot I got a good look at the city. It seemed huge compared to Seville. The buildings were larger and taller. The streets were bigger. Everything moved faster. I didn't know which way to turn."
Here, then, was a moment of panic. Susan had never before had to find her own lodging before, and she was unsure as to how to go about it. Well, she thought, there was no rush about it. She was tired from the tension of the trip-even though the trip had taken only slightly over an hour.
Susan sat on a bench in the bus depot and put her suitcase between her legs. She leaned over to one corner and put her head against the back of the bench. The youngster only meant to rest her eyes for a few moments while thinking about just how she was going to find a place to stay in a town she had never seen before.
The fact of the matter is that Susan herself at first thought she had only closed her eyes for a few minutes, but when she opened them she could see it was dark. The bus depot was not deserted, but it was far less crowded than it had been at eleven o'clock that morning. Susan looked around for a clock. When she spotted one, it read eight-fifteen. She had slept for nine hours! (Actually, this is not unusual. Often after the release of psychological tension there is a need to sleep. In her current situation, Susan needed the escape of sleep, not only because she had just broken with her past, but also because she was in a state of confusion about what exactly she should do next.)
The sixteen-year-old girl looked around. There was another moment of panic.
"The first thing I thought was that all the hotels might be full," she related. "I thought maybe I'd have to sleep on a bus depot bench, and, frankly, that didn't appeal to me at all. I knew that I'd have to look for a place to stay right away. There was no time to loose.
"I got up and walked toward the door. It was so dark and so strange. It was cold and there were snow flurries. I walked away from the big bus depot and began to look for a hotel-an inexpensive one, just a hotel. Down one street I could see several hotels, but I could tell that they'd be too expensive for me. I only had about eighteen dollars left.
"I began walking down a rather dark street on which were a lot of older buildings. I thought I might find a place down this street that wasn't too expensive. Really, I didn't know beans about hotel prices, except what little I could remember from when Dad and I use to take those private, special trips. It ran in my mind that a hotel bill could easily be ten dollars a night, and I couldn't afford that. I didn't know how long it would be until I started earning a little money by ... uh ... doing what I came to Rushing Falls to do. So I looked on this old street for a hotel that was less than the best.
"I found a hotel on this street. All it had to identify it was a small neon sign that said 'Hotel.' The sign must have been old, because it hardly glowed and you couldn't even see it in the snow flurries until you were right up on it. I went inside and walked up to the desk. I asked the desk clerk if he had a room, and how much it was a night. He said he had an empty room and his rate was two dollars a night. He was about to let me sign the register when he asked how old I was. I told him sixteen. He slammed the register book closed. He wasn't allowed to let anyone rent a room if they were under eighteen, he said. Why was I out on a night like this at my age he asked. I didn't even answer. I picked up my suitcase and walked out of the hotel. The group of men playing cards in the lobby looked at me as I walked out the front door.
"I walked down to the corner and stood under a street light. I hadn't thought about the fact that a hotel wouldn't let me rent a room on my own. I didn't know what to think or what to do. I thought I was going to be spending the night sleeping in the bus depot. It was the only solution I could think of.
"Then I felt a hand on my shoulder. I turned around and stared into the face of a man. He seemed dirty, unshaven. His clothes were old. His blue overcoat was torn on one sleeve and on the shoulder. I could smell alcohol on him.
"'You ain't got no place to stay tonight, have ya,' he said to me. I nodded my head. 'Well,' he says, T got a room in that hotel you were just in, and I'll let ya share it with me."
"He didn't have to draw me any pictures. I knew I wouldn't just be sharing a room with him. I knew he was going to demand some sort of payment-namely, sex. When this old guy asked me about sharing a room with him, I stood and looked him in the eye for a couple of minutes without speaking. Well, I thought to myself, this is what I came here to do! I won't make any money from this old guy, but he'll provide me with a place to stay in exchange for a little bit of sex. Maybe I can stay with him long enough to get some money ahead. Maybe in a while I can move into a good hotel and really set up shop. Next time I went to register in a hotel, I'd lie about my age. I knew I could fix myself up to look twenty or so. But I had a problem that needed to be solved right now, so I took this guy upon his offer.
"The old boy told me he'd slip the night clerk five bucks to look the other way, and he did."
Susan accompanied her new-found friend to his dingy room on the third floor of the old hotel. The room, she recalled, was dirty and at first she considered it rather unpleasant. But it was warm and it was a place to stay. It met her immediate needs.
When they arrived at the old man's room, Susan put her suitcase in one corner. They removed their coats, stood a few feet apart, and looked at each other.
"'Course there's only one bed in here," the man said, "so...."
"So we'll both have to sleep in it," said Susan finishing the sentence for him.
They looked at each other again for a moment.
"Look," said Susan, "I know why you offered to share your room with me. It's all right. I'll let you do it."
A smile broke over the old man's face.
"And it's about bedtime, isn't it?" said the man.
"If you say so," answered Susan.
The young lady asked the way to the restroom. After she did what she had to do there, she returned to the room and her sex partner.
They undressed each other, then each stood nude examining each other with anxious eyes. The old man moved in and against Susan, taking her tenderly in his hairy arms. Trembling as he held her well developed body, he kissed her on the cheek. He pulled back and nervously examined her again. Then he took her in his arms and crushed her against himself, planting hard, hot kisses all over her face and neck.
The man put sixteen-year-old Susan in the old, sagging bed and snapped out the light. He rushed to the bed and climbed in. The two came together in a passionate embrace. He squeezed and kissed her breasts while she reached for and manipulated his penis. Soon he was sucking her large breasts and fondling her genitals while she continued to play with his erect penis. After a time of this, the man got between her legs and they had a prolonged intercourse. The old man gasped and wheezed as he worked toward achieving a climax.
When it was all over both the old man and Susan lay on the bed panting. In about fifteen minutes the man got up and turned on a low-wattage table lamp, got a cigarette, lit it, and sat on the edge of the bed.
"That's the first lay I've had in two months!" he exclaimed to Susan. "By the way, what's your name?"
"Susan Kelley."
"And you're how old?"
"Sixteen."
"You do good for sixteen, sister! You musta had experience."
"Yes, A couple of times," admitted Susan.
For the next two hours, Susan Kelley poured out her heart to this old man whose name she didn't even know. She told him about the disappearance of her father, her general dislike of her mother, how badly she had been doing in school, her rape, her experience with Tom Kinnic. She told the man of her escape from Seville and of her plans to make a living in Rushing Falls by letting men use her body for a price.
The old man seemed genuinely sympathetic.
"He sat there, completely in the nude, and listened to me ramble on for a couple of hours about my life," Susan told me. "He really seemed interested in me, which was really weird. Why should he give a dam about me? But the fact is, he did. And I don't know what possessed me to tell him about my life. All of a sudden, as I was lying on the bed after intercourse, I got the urge to talk to someone, and he was the closest someone there was. I just had to talk, that's all there was to it!"
Actually, there is, it seems to me, a perfectly good reason why Susan wanted to talk to this elderly man. The reason is the old one-he reminded her somewhat of Harry Kelley, her idol who had been lost to her some years ago. While it was true that Susan no longer felt herself worthy of the love and protection of her father, she still loved him and thought of him as her idol. He still was very much on her mind; she still thought about him, though it was a subconscious act now. Exactly why the old man resigned himself to listening to Susan's story we cannot know. Possibily he was just a kind old fellow who felt sorry for a seemingly sweet young girl who would have to earn a living by selling her body on the streets. Possibily he was a man who once had a family of his own and who felt kindly toward children from a broken-home situation.
At any rate, he apparently didn't have any quams about having intercourse with a girl so young, for after he had listened to Susan's sad story, he plunged his penis into her once more.
The next day was the twenty-fourth-the day before Christmas. The couple went to a nearby bar-and-grille for a late breakfast. Over coffee, eggs, and bacon, Susan learned that the old man's name was Willie Seddons and that he worked most of the time as an unskilled laborer. For the last six months he had been employed-more or less steadily-as a freight handler for a local trucking company. He had lived in the hotel for the last three months. At one time he had had a car but the finance company repossessed it when he failed to make payments on it. Now he traveled by foot and the city bus line. For an hour in the bar-and-grille, Willie and Susan shared problems, particularly their mutual one of lack of money.
After eating, the couple went to a small grocery store and bought a few items to tide them over Christmas. Among the items were peanut butter, bread, and luncheon meat. They also bought a bottle of Port wine with which, Willie said, to celebrate. He didn't say what they were celebrating, exactly.
In early afternoon the old man and the young girl arrived back in the hotel. Once again each undressed the other and they climbed into bed. They performed various acts on one another. Each was immensely aroused by these intimate acts so that when Willie finally plunged his penis into Susan's vagina, both sex partners were sweating profusely.
After it was over they lay limp and exhausted on the sagging bed.
"You're good-very good," Willie said to Susan. "If you want to make a go of it as a prostitute, I think you can. You got what it takes!"
"Thanks," replied Susan. "I'm glad you think I'll be a success."
"You know what, kid? I'm gonna help you!" said Willie with enthusiasm. "I can set you up. I'll arrange everything. Hell, I know a dozen guys right now who'd be glad to pay, say, five bucks apiece to screw you. You're well worth it! Maybe we can get some of the convention trade that stays in those hotels on Thurston Avenue. A lot of those convention guys are after a good lay while they're away from their wives, and they've got plenty of cash. We could charge them ten bucks for an hour with you. Why, I've known half a dozen men who've sold women in those fancy hotels! A lotta money in that, I'll tell you! Let's make a business arrangement right now, Susan. I'll be your partner-your business manager, you might say-for a percentage of the take. Whataya say?"
Susan hesitated a moment. This wasn't quite the arrangement she had in mind when she escaped to Rushing Falls, but she figured it would be all right. In fact, as she considered it, it seemed to be a better thing than what she had planned. She wouldn't have to wait on street corners or in bars for a man to approach her. She'd have a "manager" who would take care of procuring customers for her "service." It could be real great!
"All right, Willie," said Susan. "Let's go into business together."
A big smile broke over Willie's face. No doubt dollar signs could be seen in the gleam of his eyes. The pact had been made. Susan was as good as "in business."
"I trusted Willie," Susan commented to me. "He seemed so interested in me and in trying to help. There were lots of advantages to our arrangement. He knew the city. He knew where to find customers. He could set me up in a room and serve as look-out for the cops. It was ideal! Willie said that the desk clerk would turn his head the other way for a payment of twenty or thirty dollars a week. He said that the hotel didn't like a set-up like this, but that it went on all the time. He told me that just a month earlier there had been a girl living just down the hall who would pick men up in bars and bring them to her room. She paid off the desk clerk and was able to carry on business without any problems.
"Willie told me that it probably wouldn't be until after the first of the year that he could start bringing men to me. I said that was okay, because I'd be menstruating for the next five days, and I was sure no man wanted to go up me while I was in that condition."
Christmas and the next few days passed quickly. The couple drank the wine and discussed the future. Willie Seddons had to work three days between Christmas and New Year's Day, but he found plenty of time to get the dirty old hotel room in shape for the expected flood of customers. He bought several "girlie" and nudist magazines, and had Susan cut the appropriate pictures out of them. With masking tape, Willie and Susan pasted the pictures to the wall, especially in the vicinity of the bed.
Two days before New Year's Day, Willie brought a friend up to meet Susan. Susan recalled that the man's name was Jack something. It seems that Jack had a Polaroid camera. Willie wanted Susan to pose in the nude for some "publicity shots." He assured her that in none of the pictures would her face be shown-just her body.
"I was very hesitant about that," Susan told me. "I'd never considered posing for that sort of picture. All I wanted to do was to get away from home and earn some sort of living. I was going to start out by raising money by selling my body. Period! No cameras, strip shows, or anything like that. But Willie convinced me that it was necessary. He needed to show potential customers that what he was selling was quality and worth the price he would ask for using me. So I said okay.
"I don't remember exactly how many pictures this Jack took, but it must have been at least a dozen. He took one picture of me fully dressed standing up. From then on, he had me strip down until I was nude. That took about six or seven pictures. He had me turn around, bend over, and get into a lot of positions on the bed in order to take the rest of the pictures that Willie thought he had to have. One picture was of just my breasts. Another picture was of my hands squeezing my breasts. And one picture was of me laying flat on my back on the bed with my legs spread wide apart. He took a picture of my genitals head on! In fact, most of the pictures showed that area. Willie and Jack said men got very excited when they saw a woman's hair down there. Willie and Jack both fluffed up my black hairs in the genital region so that they'd be 'sexier.' "
Susan never got more than a glimpse of the pornographic pictures. She didn't want to see them at all. She confessed she had felt somewhat ashamed for posing for such photographs. Her idea of prostitution was that it was only a method of escape from a situation she could no longer stand. Intercourse with a variety of men was meant only to produce the revenue she needed to live on. This photographing business was getting into the sex game deeper and in a more public way than she really cared to do. But Willie had said it was necessary....
Since Willie Seddons was, as usual, short on money, he paid Jack for the advertising pictures by allowing him to have an hour or so with Susan. This came as a surprise to her-Willie hadn't said anything beforehand about this deal. However, a go with Jack would widen her experience with men. And, after all, it would be good training for the time when she would be taking on a variety of men. If she could satisfy both Willie and Jack, then maybe she could satisfy any man who came her way.
Willie discreetly left the room while Jack again positioned Susan in a number of the same ways in which he had just photographed her. He managed to insert his penis into her warm body while she was in each of these positions. As he was doing this, he informed her that, after all, there was more than one position for intercourse. Susan hadn't realized this before, since she had had intercourse in only one position. Jack finally flipped Susan over on her back and reached his climax this way-the old, familiar way where Susan was concerned!
Early the next morning, Willie told Susan to expect customers New Year's Eve. He had told some of his fellow workers at the trucking company that he knew a girl who would be fun to be with New Year's Eve. Six guys were to pay him five dollars each for the privilege of some New Year's Eve sex.
Willie laid in a supply of liquor to keep the boys happy until each one's turn came.
True to what he had said, at about eight o'clock on New Year's Eve the boys began arriving. Quickly the room filled with men, smoke, and the odor of liquor. Susan didn't like alcohol, but Willie said things would go better if she at least sipped a glass of the stuff. And so she did.
For about an hour it was quite a party. Susan was introduced all around, and was definitely a hit. Everyone except Willie and Susan was rather loaded by nine-thirty.
"It's time for a little fun, fellas!" announced Willie. "Everybody's gonna wait his turn in the hall. We're gonna draw numbers for turns."
Willie tore up a sheet of paper into six parts. Each paper was given a number from one to six, then the men drew the papers to see which turn they got. Willie and his friends left the room, allowing Susan time to turn off the bright overhead light and turn on the dim table light. Quickly Susan stripped in anticipation of the first customer.
In a minute he came in. He was a fat man, thoroughly drunk. He tottered over to the bed where Susan lay nude with her legs apart. Wobbling and rocking, the man stood there looking at his prey. In a minute he was undressed and in bed with her. His odor was almost more than Susan could stand! She had never been around a man who was drunk before this, much less had intercourse with one. She began wondering if all the men Willie would bring to her would be in this condition. The man ran his hands over her exciting body, and quickly his penis became erect-not a firm erection, but an erection nevertheless. He was so drunk that he could hardly get on top of her. When he finally managed to get himself into a position for intercourse, he couldn't find the opening to her vagina. Susan put his penis in the proper spot and the man pushed it in. He labored long and hard to force himself to have an ejaculation. Then the man collapsed and fell on the floor. For a couple of minutes he just lay on the floor, as if felled by a bullet wound. In fact, Susan thought the man might have died of over-exhaustion. But he got up, still very drunk and wobbling, and tottered out of the room. He had only put on his underwear; the rest of his clothes he carried in his hands to the hallway. As he walked out, Susan could hear the other men laughing at him.
The second man entered the room. This one was not nearly so drunk; in fact, he hardly tottered at all. He quickly undressed and climbed in bed with Susan. This one was crude, forceful, and direct. He put his mouth over her breasts, petted her for a minute between the legs, then plunged his stiff penis into her body. Within ten minutes it was all over.
The other men were more like the second man. None of them lingered more than twenty or twenty-five minutes with young Susan. They were there to have relations with her; not to linger and love her. It was strictly a business deal. For five dollars they would be allowed to see, feel, and have intercourse with this young girl. Possibily if this group of males had not been so well stewed, each would have taken longer to "know" her. Each man might have tried to do more than put his penis into her vagina. But in their condition, all each man wanted to do was the most exciting, release-producing thing-namely, have full, inter course with her.
The whole thing was over before midnight. The six men went drunkenly on their seperate ways. Willie Seddons came back into the room to see how Susan had taken her first night of "mass business."
"Intercourse had never hurt me before, except when I was raped," Susan commented to me. "But doing it with six guys in a row-that had hurt. The opening around my vagina was sore. I asked Willie to look at it and tell me if I was bleeding or if the opening looked raw. He said it looked all right, but he agreed that it had been hard on me. Willie said that most of the men had said I was a good lay, and that they'd be back from time to time. We both finished off the liquor and got into bed. Willie didn't have intercourse with me that night because he knew I was sore. We both fell into a deep sleep just after the bells of Rushing Falls had rung in the new year."
In a short while Willie and Susan fell into a pattern of living. He was still steadily employed by the trucking company which meant he had to leave Susan during the day. At night Willie began to hustle clients. He showed her photographs around and was able to entice a fairly large clientele to the room. Only rarely did Willie happen to mention where he picked up the men he brought to her. He rarely mentioned just what these men were being charged for the privilege of using her body.
During the day Susan slept and ate and cut out photos to be pasted on the walls. At night, of course, she worked for Willie.
By February Willie had the ability to bring from two to five men a night to Susan. They were all sorts of men, but never were they so drunken that they couldn't stand up, as the one man had (almost) been. Each week, Willie tried to give Susan one or two nights off to "recover"; however some weeks business boomed and there were no nights off. Willie himself only had relations with Susan once or twice a week, for he knew that by the time the paying customers were through with her, she was in no mood to take him on.
"At night, when all the men had gone and all the money from the night's business was stashed away, Willie and I would lay in bed and talk," Susan recalled. "He'd talk about how much dough we were making, how much he had to pay the night clerk to be silent, what kind of men he'd like to bring to me, and so on. Eventually we'd always got around to saying it was too bad that I had to make a living like this. Willie would put my head on his shoulder and console me, as if I was his daughter who he was feeling sorry for. He said it was too bad there weren't some other line of work I could get into, but at my age there was nothing. I believe he really felt sorry for me. Oh, I suppose he could have been putting me on and just saying all that stuff so that I wouldn't think of leaving him and doing something else. Several times he gave me the line about how much we needed each other. He needed the money I could bring in and I needed him to get customers and protect me. And, of course, he had provided me with a room in which to stay, which I might not have gotten on my own. Yes, even now I really believe that Willie was truly interested in my welfare."
"At this time, Susan, did you think you would someday break off your relationship with Willie?" I inquired.
"I didn't think about that," she answered. "This arrangement wasn't what I had in mind when I left Seville, but once I got into it-no, I didn't think about the future. Well, why should I? Everything was going so nicely. We were making a lot of money. I didn't worry myself about police interference, and there wasn't any. It was a nice life. I liked it. It sure as heck was better than staying with Mom in Seville and being reminded about Dad, and how badly I was doing in school, and all that kind of stuff. We were making more money each week than Mom ever did. After we'd been in business about a month, Willie and I went shopping to get me a decent wardrobe. We spent more than sixty dollars that day. We didn't buy too much, but it was nicer stuff than I'd been able to buy since Dad disappeared."
"And speaking of money," I interjected, "just how much did Mr. Seddons ever pay you for your services to him?"
"He bought things for me, like I just told you, and every week he'd give me five or ten dollars to do with as I liked," replied Susan. "He always left some money in the room for me to buy food with, though usually the only food I bought myself was lunch. He said he was saving my share of the profits for me. And he told me there had been expenses-he had to go into places to get customers and that usually meant having a couple of drinks with the potential customer. That cost. He had to buy about a hundred dollars in new clothes so that he could go into the better hotels. That money came out of our profits. Actually, he never did tell me in dollars and cents just how much I was supposed to have made."
Loneliness had been a pervasive emotion ever since the disappearance of her father in 1961, and Susan Kelley's escape from Seville had not taken that emotion from her. True, she had found a friend and business partner in Willie Seddons. But he was away from her most days and there was loneliness then. There simply wasn't much to do. Granted, this was a different type of loneliness than that she had suffered in Seville, but it was loneliness nevertheless.
Susan had no friends in the hotel. She didn't like being cooped up there all day and all night, which was nearly always the case except for the times when she or she and Willie went out to eat or went on some shopping trips. The loneliness she felt in Seville she had combated by dreaming, planning an escape, and even by masturbating. The loneliness she felt in Rushing Falls she would combat in a slightly different manner.
Willie had told Susan to stay in the hotel during the times he was away. He permitted her to go out to eat lunch, but that was all. Every other excursion from the hotel would be one on which he would accompany her. Susan didn't mind this. The type of loneliness-and boredom-forced on her by this situation wasn't as bad as what she had suffered at home.
As one might expect, however, the confinement to the hotel eventually depressed young, energetic Susan. She began to feel that there wasn't any real necessity for her staying inside the dirty, old hotel all the time while Willie was at work. Susan well remembered her rape and that memory helped her, for a while, to be content to stay within the safety of the hotel walls. After a while, though, Susan reasoned that her rape had taken place at dusk and in an alley; it had not taken place on a busy street. So, she thought, it wouldn't really be dangerous for her to explore the neighborhood as long as she stayed on the main streets.
She mulled this idea over in her mind for several weeks. By mid-March of 1966 Susan was just bored enough and just brave enough to want to venture beyond the bar-and-grille where Willie had told her she could go for lunch.
So it was that one warmish day in mid-March Susan ventured down the street a little farther than usual to have her lunch. After eating she walked around the block and bought a couple of magazines. Fine! It was a pleasant experience.
The next day she did the same thing, and extended the range of her walking. Since nothing bad happened, Susan's belief that it was safe to wander around downtown Rushing Falls was reinforced. From that day onward she had no qualms whatsoever about walking around the downtown area, looking in windows, touring buildings, occasionally buying small items in the department stores. The whole thing was quite nice as far as Susan was concerned. These outings relaxed her. She didn't bother to tell Willie about them.
Susan Kelley became a familiar sight around the neighborhood. Within a few weeks some of the local shopkeepers would even offer her a friendly hello, which she returned.
Her bravery increased. She began going out at earlier hours; sometimes right after Willie had left for work. She picked out certain eating places to be her favorite hang-outs. She really didn't do much there; usually she just sat and enjoyed the atmosphere. It was a change from the confining environment of the hotel.
One fine day in early April Susan was sitting in Jack's Place, one of her favorite inexpensive restaurants, when a young man in his early twenties came in and sat down across the table from her. This surprised Susan.
"I didn't know him; I didn't remember meeting him before," Susan told me. "I thought this guy had his nerve, sitting down across from me uninvited. He smiled at me as though I was some long-lost friend. I gave him a blank stare and hoped he'd go away. He was rather ugly as far as I was concerned, and I didn't want anything to do with him."
"Hi ya!" the young man said to Susan after looking her up and down for a minute. Susan didn't reply.
"I know you, but I guess you don't know me," the man said. "I seen ya around the neighborhood, in the shops and places like this. Some of my friends know you too."
A moment of panic gripped Susan's heart. The first thing she thought was that he might be a policeman. The idea that the "service" she was performing might be raided by the police had never bothered her until this moment. The idea that she might be arrested and go to jail had not worried her until now.
"So you know me, do you?" said Susan, trying to be cool about it.
"Yeah," said the man. "Some of my buddies have visited your hotel room. They say you're a damn good lay."
A lump welled up in the girl's throat. She never before had realized that someday she might be recognized on the street, and that some people would have no hesitation about reminding her of her occupation.
"Is that so?" said Susan.
"Yep. That's so. Let me buy you a cup of coffee."
The young man motioned to the proprietor and two hot cups of coffee were brought to the table.
"I ... I was wondering if you'd like to take on a customer now," inquired the man. "I've got the time and the money, honey."
Never before had Susan thought what she would say if someone approached her without Willie being around. She didn't know if Willie would be mad about her taking on a customer without his prior say so. Susan thought it over in silence.
"All right," she said after a few minutes silent deliberation.
The man broke into a small laugh and gave her a broad smile. The couple quickly downed the coffee and hurriedly left the small restaurant.
In the hotel room, the man seemed relaxed and in no great hurry to get it over with. This was in distinct contrast to most of Susan's customers. She had discovered that most men were interested in the act of intercourse and not in relaxing with her or in foreplay. But this man-who had not yet told her his name was different; somewhat akin to Tom Kinnic, the man Susan's mother had decided would be a good husband for the young girl. Kinnic had been interested in relaxing and slowly working up to ultimate sexual activity.
This man was casual and quite confident. Susan had the feeling that he knew a lot about her. However, like the other sex partners she had known it didn't take him long to get around to the main action. He began by caressing her well developed breasts through her clothing. Then he proceeded to put his hands up her dress and remove her panties. Susan stood with her legs apart as the man pulled the panties down to her knees. With a small giggle he next forced a finger into her rectum. As Susan remembered it, this was very painful as she had not lubricated herself for such a thing. No matter. The man seemed to get great pleasure out of forcing his big finger into her small rectal opening. By this time, Susan was used to men being rough with her; she could endure a lot of pain. It was part of the job. A few of her customers had even slapped her around, either out of some sort of built-in sadism or due to some unnamed anger they felt. But not many of Susan's customers had forced a big finger into her rectum. She remembered only a very few who had done this, and Susan had asked each of them to wait a moment while she put petroleum jelly on her opening. But this man-well, Susan did not say anything to him. After a few minutes of wiggling his finger around inside the young girl's rectum, the man yanked it out. Susan felt a great burst of pain.
The man rapidly removed the rest of her clothing. Susan could see that he had become greatly excited. His penis was stiff; its contours could be seen right through his pants. She reciprocated, rapidly undressing him and giving his very large penis a squeeze as she removed his underwear. Hurriedly they got on the bed and began to fondle each other.
The man for the first time looked around at the girlie photos on the walls, then gazed back at Susan.
"You're a damn sight sexier than they are," he asserted.
For the next while the lovers performed every sexually stimulating act they could think of. Susan even urinated into a drinking glass and had a bowel movement on some old newspapers at the man's request. Finally they had a prolonged intercourse in the old, familiar position.
When it was all over, Susan got dressed and went to the bathroom to dispose of the urine and bowel movement in the toilet. When she returned her lover had dressed and was sitting in a chair. Most of Susan's customers had to lie for some minutes on the bed-to recover. But not this one. He seemed to be virile and energetic. It took quite a man to be as awake and calm as he was. It seemed as if he bad not expended any energy at all.
"What they said about you was true," the man commented. "You're damn good. My prick hasn't been that bard in years! I don't usually play around with a girl much before I lay her, but you-you're worth taking some time with. Makes it more exciting."
Susan didn't know what to say except, "Thanks."
She sat down on the other chair in the room. "I want to ask you-how did you know me?" she said.
"Oh, I saw you walkin' around the area," said the man. "I walk around this neighborhood too, ya know. Day and night. But I first saw you in the pictures. I recognized you from them and from my buddies' description."
"What pictures?" asked Susan.
The man pulled a beat-up envelope from his hip pocket.
"These pictures," he said handing the envelope to Susan.
Nervously Susan opened the envelope and took out half a dozen photos. At once she recognized them as the photographs for which she had posed some four months ago. Susan was both surprised and angry. She thought only Willie had the photographs, and that he was only going to show them to potential customers. How in the world did this guy get them? Oh top of that, this was the first time Susan herself had seen the photographs, so it was only now that she realized that in some of the pictures her entire body-including her face-was shown. Willie had promised that her face would not be photographed! Why had he lied? Why had he allowed his friend with the camera to walk out of the hotel room with photographs in which her face was shown?
"Where did you get these?" snapped Susan.
"From your pimp, Willie Seddons," the man answered. "I paid that old geezer five bucks for these. That's a hell of a lot of money, you know. In fact, I'm mad at him about the price. Some guys tell me he's been selling these sets to other people for a buck."
"He's selling copies of these pictures?"
"Sure. That's the idea wasn't it? When he sells them, he asks the buyer if he'd like to meet the model. That's how he gets some of the guys to come up here."
"Why that old.... How many sets of these pictures has he sold?"
"I dunno," answered the man, looking toward the ceiling. "Let's see-I know at least ten guys who have 'cm. lie's been selling them at his job and all over town. Hell, there must be at least a hundred sets in circulation."
Susan was furious.
"That ... that ... oh! I don't even know what to call him! He never told me he was going to sell those photographs! And he never told me my face was in any of the pictures. He promised me my face wouldn't show! That liar!"
Pusan began to cry. The man attempted to console her.
"You mean you didn't know he was selling these pictures?" the man inquired.
"No, he never told me about it," said Susan through her tears. "I thought he was just showing them to men so they'd be interested in spending some time with me."
"That's too bad," said the man. "He sure has treated you rotten. I hope he's at least giving you a good cut of the money you're making for him."
"Oh, I haven't gotten too much. Some clothes, a few dollars a week spending money. That's about it."
"It sounds to me like he's taking you for quite a ride! The bastard's making a mint on you and not parting with it. He's just throwing you a few lousy bucks. You'll be lucky if they aren't counterfeit!"
"Willie seemed so nice. He seemed like he was trying to help...."
"Aw, that's the way a lot of those guys are," said the man with a snear on his face. "They find a young girl and set her up in this racket and take advantage of her. The first time they have any trouble with her they kick her out in the street. She's had it! Girls who work the street alone-don't make much, so a lot of girls who know they're being taken by their pimp don't complain. But it's a shame."
For a moment Susan had the urge to pour out her life story to this man, but stopped herself.
The man took out a cigarette, lit it, and leaned back in the chair.
"You ought to leave Willie," he said. "You're too good a broad for that old bastard. He's not doin' right by you."
"I guess not. I'd like to leave him after what he's done to me. But ... well, he's given me a lot of protection here. No trouble with cops and so on. As far as I know, maybe he'll give me a lot of money if I ask him about it. Maybe he really is saving money for me-that's what he's told me. But selling copies of those pictures-that makes me mad!"
The man arose from his seat and went to the young girl's side. He slowly pulled her to her feet and held her, something like Willie Seddons had done on the first night they met.
"Let's face it, baby, he's just using you to make himself a hell of a lot of money," the man said. "A nice girl like you shouldn't throw herself away on an old goat like Willie. You oughta be driving a Cadillac and be dressed in the finest stuff money can buy. You could make any guy a lot of dough, and it isn't fair not to share the money with you."
Suddenly the man held Susan away from himself. His eyes lit up.
"I got an idea," he said excitedly. "Why don't you get outta here and come live with me? I can do everything for you that Willie can do-and then some!
I'll bet you'd rather go to bed with a young man like me than some worn out old weasel like Willie. It'd be perfect! I'll share the loot with you, too! And no photographs. 'Course, I'll probably have to show the set I've already got to let guys know I got a girl worth what I'll ask for you. But that's all I'll do with the photographs. I promise."
"I don't know. I ought to talk it over with Willie. He's been good to me...."
"Quit kidding yourself," said the man in anger. "He'll give you some phony story about the pictures and the money. That old pimp is a natural-born liar. I could tell the first time I saw him. Get out now while the getting's good!"
"Well...." said Susan, unable to come to a decision.
"Come on, baby! Now is the time. You can be outta this mess within an hour."
"I want to talk to Willie tonight," said Susan. "Then I'll make up my mind. I'll meet you at Jack's Place tomorrow at the same time and give you my answer."
Clearly the man was disappointed at Susan's answer. She could tell that he had thought she would go with him on the spot. But Susan had a built in sense of fair play, and she wanted to give Willie a chance to explain himself.
After the man left, Susan cried. She wondered if her life was going to be one man after another, each in his turn taking advantage of her. For the first time since she had left home, she wondered if this might not have been a huge mistake. After all, she only had two years to go and she would have been a high school graduate and eligible to find a legitimate job. At that point she could have kissed Seville goodbye if she'd wanted to. But now she was in a mess, a sort of pawn in a macabre game. Was this to be her life? Always leaving one man for another? How terrible!
When Willie came back to the hotel room from work, Susan confronted him with her new knowledge about his dealings with the photographs of herself. Willie was shocked that she knew about his selling sets of those pictures. He apologized, saying that he had been greedy to make as much money as he could from Susan. He promised a full accounting to her of all the money and promised to give her her share of the income.
"Willie seemed really surprised when I told him what I knew about the pictures," Susan told me. "He broke down and cried. He admitted that he hadn't been fair. He really seemed to be sorry about it. I didn't tell him about the man, but he begged me to tell him where I found out about his double dealing. I wouldn't tell him. He must have suspected there was another man, because he pleaded with me not to leave him. He said he needed me!"
But that night Susan made up her mind.
The next morning, she met the man as she had said she would do. She told him about what Willie had said, and the man replied that Willie's crying and confession of wrong-doing was just a trick to get Susan to stay with him. Susan agreed. She told the man that she had made up her mind-to go with him.
A big smile broke over the man's face. The pair hurried to the hotel room where they packed Susan's belongings in her suitcase and in paper bags.
As they walked from the hotel room, Susan turned to give the room one final look. In a sense, the room held fond memories. Here was the place where she had learned her trade. Here she and Willie Seddons had lived for four months, and in a way, he had been a real friend. On her arrival in Rushing Falls, she had needed someone like him. So, all in all, the hotel room hadn't been such a bad place. Susan wondered what Willie would think when he returned to the empty room that evening. This thought even worried her a bit. She closed the door as she and her new lover walked into the corridor.
And what of this new man, whose name she didn't yet know? Well, Susan figured, if he was a louse she could always leave him as she was now leaving Willie. So what did she really have to lose by going with him?
As the couple walked out into the coolish warmth of an April day, the man turned to Susan and said, "By the way, my name is Al Beaumont."
CHAPTER FOUR
LOVE REGAINED
As they walked out of the old hotel, Susan had no idea where Al Beaumont was taking her. She had no idea where he lived. All she knew was that she was throwing herself into a rather abstract situation again, just as she had done when she escaped from Seville. She was trusting to fate to help her; to provide a solid, secure existence.
Al and Susan walked north for a couple of blocks, then west. In a few blocks they came to a bowling alley. After .entering it, Al parked Susan on a bench near the coat check room then went to one of the lanes where he met some of his friends. From where she was sitting, Susan could see Al having an animated conversation with the six men who were bowling. On seeing Al, they stopped their game and huddled together with him. Susan knew they must be talking about her. A couple of times Al pointed in her direction. The men looked her way.
After about five minutes, Al and one of the men came back to Susan. Al said this man's name was Jerry, and that he would take them to the place where they would be staying.
"Al told me why we had to come to the bowling ally," Susan related to me. "It seems that he doesn't have a car, and he had to find a friend who did. Al said we might have walked to the house where he lived, but it was quite a distance and he didn't want me to get tired. So we had to look up Jerry.
"Jerry's car was an old thing that made a lot of noise when he started it. Those men joked about the car; about how often it broke down, about how many repairs it needed, and so on. I didn't say a word on the trip to the house.
"The house was an old two-story job on the fringe of downtown. It was right next door to the Hammond Plastics Company factory. Maybe because the house was so close to the factory, it was very beat-up looking, with peeling paint and a very dirty lawn. The other houses in the neighborhood looked the same way. We parked in front of the house, and Al and Jerry carried my things inside."
The interior of the house proved to be more dingy, dirtier, and more rancid than the hotel room Susan had just left. The place looked like it hadn't been cleaned in a year. The furniture was haphazardly arranged around the walls, leaving an empty square in the middle. The kitchen was filled with pots and pans, empty soup cans, assorted plates and eating utensils, and grease spots all about. There were two bedrooms, and each looked as if it had not been cleaned for a long time. Al was apologetic about the condition of the house.
"A bunch of us guys live here," he explained to Susan, "and we don't clean up too often. Possibly we can do something about this mess."
And so after Jerry departed, Al and Susan began rearranging the furniture and gathering laundry to be done at the local laundromat. As they worked, Al told Susan something about the house and its inhabitants.
It seems that Al and five other young men shared this house. The men had banded together mostly for economic reasons. This way, they could share rental and other living costs. Also, when one or more of them was out of work, the house would provide a refuge until the unemployed found work again. At the moment, Al told Susan, three of the six of them were not working, though all the unemployed expected to find jobs within a month. It so happened that Al was one of the three out of work, which was why he had spotted Susan walking around downtown. He, too, was bored, and pending finding a job he had taken to wandering through department stores, cafes, and small restaurants. He had met Willie Seddons one evening and Willie had sold Al a set of pictures of Susan. It was soon after that that Al saw Susan on the street.
Although Susan had not asked Al about his living quarters, she was surprised that he lived in a house, and even more surprised that he shared it with other men. She had rather assumed that he, like Willie, lived in a hotel room, or maybe even an apartment. She didn't know why she assumed this, but she did.
Al quickly explained that they would have one of the bedrooms to themselves, and that the other guys would share the other bedroom and the living room. Before the arrival of Susan, Al said, there were two guys in each of the two bedrooms, plus two guys who slept in the living room. The last ones in each night slept in the living room.
Al said that the other guys would cooperate when Al and Susan were conducting their "business," but that it would be necessary to let the other men have a "little fun" with Susan and it would also be necessary to slip the other guys a few dollars each week from the proceeds of the "business." After all, Al explained, the guys had lent him money when he was out of work and they were using the house which they were all renting.
The whole arrangement made Susan rather nervous. She didn't like the idea of five other guys in the house. It sounded too crowded to her.
However, as it turned out, the arrangement was satisfactory. The other men seemed to stay out of her way most of the time. None of them approached her without Al's permission. He allowed them one go a week with Susan. He himself did it each night, no matter how many other men she had taken on.
"Al really drummed up the business," Susan recalled for me. "Whereas Willie use to bring around one to four men a night, Al rarely brought less than five. I took on as many as ten in one night. And I don't mind saying that I was sore afterwards. After a couple of those ten-a-night sessions, I asked Al to not bring more than six in any one night.
"All in all, the kind of guys Al brought were a little sleazier than the kind Willie got for me. Willie would get customers from good hotels and nice bars usually. Al got truckers, drunks, and about any other shoddy type who wanted to have intercourse. Al's rates were five dollars a go, and Al said I'd get half of what he brought in. In the end, though, I never saw too much of that money. Al bought some new clothes with the money we made and he bought me a few presents. He gave me some money from time to time, but it wasn't anything like half of what we made."
Life with Al and "the boys" was far more hectic than life with Willie. Primarily this was due to the age difference between the two men. Willie had been older, no longer just out for fun. He had used Susan merely as a source of revenue. Al was far younger, and while he used Susan to make money he also used her to work off his sexual aggressiveness. Willie had been calm and mature, in his way. He was even (relatively) steadily employed. Al was-as the saying goes-full of life, less mature, and out for kicks. Neither he nor the young men with whom he lived were very worried about jobs and their future. In fact, one or more of these men was usually unemployed and not too worried about it.
"Jerry was the only one in the group with a car," Susan told me. "Two of the others had motorcycles. All of them could borrow a friend's car almost at a moment's notice. Well, at least the cars those guys came to the house with they said was a friend's car. Granted, the cars might have been stolen, but if they were, the guys never admitted it to me."
I asked Susan what living with the six men was like.
"The other guys stayed to themselves pretty much," Susan commented. "Al was always around me when he wasn't out on business-you know, getting customers and the like. Al once said that he'd told those other guys to keep their mits off me or they'd have to answer to him. Since Al was the toughest one in the crowd, they did what he said. Anyhow, most of the guys weren't around the house until after dark. Three of them had jobs. The other two just disappeared during the day. They said they were looking for jobs, but I don't know for sure if they were.
"As for Al Beaumont, he and I got up around ten in the morning and I fixed breakfast for us. Usually that wasn't much-toast and an egg, something like that, Then we'd go out for a while. A lot of times we'd just drive around Rushing Falls. We'd drive Jerry's car, since Al didn't have one. Al said he paid Jerry ten dollars a week for the privilege of driving that beat-up thing! Jerry was one of the employed ones, and another guy who worked where he did picked him up each morning. So Jerry didn't really need the car anyway.
"Around six or six-thirty in the evening we'd eat. A lot of times we went to a hamburger joint a few blocks from the house. Other times Al and I would go shopping and cook something at the house. If one of the other fellas was home at suppertime, we'd always invite him to eat with us. Once word got around to those guys that I was a fair cook, most of 'em started showing up at suppertime when they knew I was fixing a meal. They were tired of the sort of thing they'd get at a hamburger stand. And the only things they ever fixed for themselves at the house were things like soup, peanut butter sandwiches, and weiners.
"Of course, most of the evenings I was in business, with Al bringing one guy after another to the back door of the house and then into the bedroom. But some evenings he felt more like going out on the town, so we'd dress up and make the rounds. Sometimes the whole gang would go and we'd ride around to where the action was-hamburger joints, drive-ins, carnivals and so on. Al and I even went on one of the motorcycles sometimes. I'll say this: with Al, there was always something going on!"
The majority of the time, the "something going on" was the prostitution business. Al knew that in Susan Kelley he had a valuable property. She was young, well-built, able to take on many men without tiring, and she was free of any veneral disease. In fact, when I finally encountered her, she was still disease-free and not pregnant either! This is somewhat surprising considering the fact that she took on so many men and that none of the men, to Susan's memory, used a contraceptive device. How a young girl with apparently normal sex organs who had intercourse at virtually all points in the mouth could not get venereal disease and/or pregnant is beyond my understanding!
While the life Susan lived with Al Beaumont was more active than the life she lived with Willie Seddons, the majority of Susan's time was still taken up with servicing the customers Al brought to her. The prositute who works the way Susan did (one customer after another being brought to her) is bound to get bored. Sex, sex, sex, can be just as boring-if not tiring
-as doing anything else day in and day out. It's monotonous.
After some six months as a prostitute, Susan Kelley began to consider other lines of work. She was still only sixteen, and the legitimate sources of employment open to a runaway sixteen-year-old were limited, to say the least. However, on some days when Al and the boys left her alone at the house, Susan would go out and buy a newspaper and look through the "Help Wanted" section. Usually there was nothing at all for anyone her age. The minimum age mentioned for most jobs was eighteen-and Susan would not be that old for more than a year.
"It finally dawned on me that what I was doing-you know, selling my body-was a dangerous thing," Susan told me. "Well, I decided I wanted out, I'd had a bad experience with Willie-with those pictures and not getting much money-and I didn't know but what the same thing would happen with Al. I thought Al might tire of me someday and throw me out in the streets. Some of those confession magazines I'd begun to buy on the newsstand told about things like that. And, too, there was the problem we might have with the cops. As far as I knew, the house could be raided any day. Dad had once said something about prostitutes always being in danger of getting a disease and being thrown in jail. Well, sir, I didn't want any of that!
"Around July, when I had been with Al about three months, I began to get the urge to get a decent, honest job. I was getting nervous about being a prostitute, even though six months ago that looked like my only 'out' from Seville. So I thought I'd go to some of the bigger companies in town and ask if they had a job for someone my age.
"At first I thought about lying about my age, and even about my name. But I knew that any decent company would probably check up on me, and if they found I lied on my job application, I'd really be in trouble. Of course, I wasn't about to tell them I'd run away from home. I'd just say something like my parents had died, or something like that."
In the time she had to herself, Susan Kelley canvassed the largest employers in Rushing Falls, from the hot, smoky factories to the cool, neat department stores. From all of them she received the same answer: she was too young to be legally hired.
Susan was depressed by this news. In the months since she had escaped from Seville, the young girl had been free of terrifying dreams; but upon hearing the sad news that she was too young for the jobs she would have liked to have, the dreams reappeared. They were dreams in which she was tied to a bed while a parade of men with erect penises climbed on her. She floated in a sea of sperm. No life-preserver was available. She was drowning, drowning....
Something had happened to Susan's personality after she broke her physical (and some mental) ties with Seville. She had, in a very real sense, matured emotionally. She was less afraid of the unknown now; she was more adventuresome. There was less fear in facing an abstract situation. So, with a certain determination, Susan continued for a number of weeks to look for a job in a legitimate business. She was determined that she was not going to be a prostitute all her life, even though at one time she had thought she would be. If she could get out of the sex business now, that would be ideal. If she had to wait a while, she would. But she would get out!
For some reason, it had not occurred to Susan to apply for a job right next door at the Hammond Plastics Company. For several weeks Susan looked for employment elsewhere. One fine July day it struck her that this large company, located only a few steps from her front door, might be a good bet. Her hopes were not high when she went into the company's employment office, because already she had been turned down at more than a dozen other large companies.
"It was a large office, with an awful lot of people filling out job applications," recalled Susan. "I felt a little silly even trying to get a job there, when I was sure that most of these people filling out applications were better qualified than I and also were of the right age. But I figured I had nothing to lose. Who knows? They might remember me in a couple years when I would be eighteen and call me in to work for them. So I filled out the application.
"After putting it in a basket, I sat down to wait for the personnel man to interview me. I sort of looked around at the workers going here and there. There was a good view through an open door of one large room in the plant. I was sitting almost directly opposite that door and could get a good look at the people in that room.
"I wasn't watching anything in particular in that room-just the machinery and the men running the machines. I'd look at one machine for a while, then at another. Same thing with the men who ran the machines.
"Suddenly a man crossed my field of vision. He was an old man, a little stooped, and walking slowly. I sat straight up in my seat. The man looked like-like Dad! Good Lord! I hadn't even thought of Dad for nearly six months, then all of a sudden there was this man who for all the world resembled him! No, no, I don't mean it resembled the man I'd known five years earlier. It resembled what he would look like with five years added to the man I had known. In 1966 he'd be sixty-five, you know. Don't ask me how I could know it was Dad; I just knew it.
"My mouth must have dropped to the ground. I was ... well ... hypnotized. Until he completely crossed the area of the room I could see, I couldn't take my eyes off him. Man, I'll tell you, I was really shook! In fact, I was so shook that I got up and walked out of the Hammond Plastics Company and went back to the house. I think I was shaking all the way. When I got home, I lay on the bed, trying to be as calm as possible."
As she lay on the bed, Susan wondered. Was the old man she had seen really her father? Or was she just imagining it, wishing that it was true? Was she wishing that her father would come along and rescue her from the mess she was now in? Or did she fear that he might be alive and find her, then be angry at the way she had turned out, and reprimand her? Susan wondered-if the old man she had seen was not her father, would she go on imagining that some old men were he as long as she lived? It was a terrifying thought!
That very day Susan knew that she had to find out-one way or another-whether or not the man she had seen was her father. The question was, how would she go about finding out?
Once the young girl had recovered her composure, the answer seemed obvious. She would go to the employment office of the plastics company and ask if Harry Kelley was employed there. (After all, what more obvious way could there be to find out if her father worked there?)
It wasn't until the following day that Susan had the opportunity again to go to the plastics company and ask the question which had tormented her for the last day.
"I went to the employment desk at about ten that day," Susan recalled for me. "I asked if a man named Harry Kelley worked there. At first, the personnel man told me that they didn't give out names of people they employed. I then told him that I was his daughter, and that it was important that I contact him. I didn't go into the details about Dad disappearing from home or any of the rest of the story. I guess I looked like I had a good reason to know if Harry Kelley was employed there, because the man looked through his files for me. Then he said that Hammond Plastics had no one by the name of Harry Kelley.
"That really depressed me. I was so sure that the man I had seen the day before was Dad! I don't know why I was so sure-I was just, well ... sure!
"I went back to the house and sat around the rest of the day. None of the guys were around all day. I had plenty of time to think about that man I had seen. About five-thirty I decided to go outside and watch the men leave the plant, hoping to see that man again and convince myself that he either was, or wasn't, my Dad."
Susan stood by the plant gate.
"I watched them as they left," Susan told me. "I watched each man's face and posture, looking for the man I had seen from a distance and only for a couple of minutes. The workers were almost all out when I saw him. Yes, I was sure of it. It was the same man I had seen the day before. As he got closer to me, I looked at him very hard. I was certain that it was Dad! I nearly cried on the spot! I wanted to run to him, but my legs were like lead weights. I wanted to attract his attention; yet, I still couldn't be certain-real certain it was him. Maybe, I still thought, I was just imagining it was him.
"I waited until he was almost opposite the place where I was standing. Then I said loudly, 'Mr. Kelley."
If it wasn't Dad, then, of course, the man would ignore my call But he didn't He stopped dead in his tracks. He turned and looked around for the person who had called his name. Now I was sure it was him! Again I almost cried. I called again, 'Mr. Kelley.' I waved this time, and he came toward me. I could tell he didn't recognize me, but then why should he? I had changed a lot in five years.
"He was timid as he approached me. He said, 'Did you call someone?' I said, 'Yes, if your name is Kelley.' We stood silently looking at each other for a minute. All I had to do was look closely at his face to know I had found Dad."
After they had studied each other a minute, Susan said, "I'm your daughter, Susan."
That sentence was all it took. He recognized her, and the couple embraced each other fiercely. Both of them cried. Both of them were shaken by the experience of this reunion after five long years.
Susan would have taken her father to the house next door, but she feared the boys would be back at any moment So she suggested that they go to a small restaurant a block away and sit and talk.
As Susan recalled it, they simply exchanged pleasantries that day. It was a sort of "How have you been?" session. Each feared to ask the other just what he was doing in Rushing Falls. After a short while, they made an appointment to meet again on Harry Kelley's day off-the next Friday.
In the intervening couple of days, Susan worried about what she would say to the old man who had deserted her and her mother more than five years previously. Obviously he would ask her questions about what had happened in those five years, and why she was in Rushing Falls now.
And she wanted to ask him why he had left Seville.
This question had been gnawing on her mind for years. It was a question she wanted to ask, but wondered if she should ask.
Susan decided to "play it by ear." She would not confess her role as a prostitute unless she had to. She knew it would hurt her father to know she had sold her body to a horde of men. Susan thought she would not ask her father why he had left Seville. She would leave it up to him to tell her, or not tell her, as he wished. Maybe it was none of her business. Maybe she was better off not knowing.
They met Friday in the same small restaurant where they had gone two days earlier. They could not carry on a confidential conversation there, so Harry Kelley suggested that they adjourn to his place. Susan agreed.
The young lady's father took her to his car, an ancient thing which Susan said must have been manufactured in the fifties. She recalled it as a rusty, dusty thing which had a hard time starting and rattled quite a bit.
The place where Harry Kelley lived was a run-down shack located about a mile from the Hammond Plastics Company. Harry said that he had moved to the place two years earlier, and it looked to Susan as if the house hadn't been cleaned since the day he moved in. He had to move some of the debris before his daughter could sit down.
There was a nervousness and a tenseness between the pair. Neither exactly knew where to start a conversation. Each was in a rather awkward position. They wanted to see each other, yet each would have a hard time explaining his actions to the other. It seemed to be a sort of black comedy situation.
"I'm very surprised to see you in Rushing Falls," Harry finally said. "Are you visiting someone?"
Susan thought she had better not lie on that question.
"No," she answered. "I've ... uh ... left home. I'm looking for work in Rushing Falls."
"Oh," said Harry. "Well, of course I'll be glad to help you if I can."
There was a silence between them again. Harry Kelley looked nervously at his daughter, whom he had deserted five years earlier. He knew the question which burned in her mind. Still, he couldn't yet bring himself to answer it.
"How's your mother?" he asked, still being guarded in his talking to Susan.
"She was fine the last time I saw her," said Susan. She didn't bother to explain that the last time she had seen her mother was more than seven months ago.
Harry Kelley nervously got up and went to the kitchen to fix cups of hot tea. This may seem a little silly since it was late July and the temperature was already in the high seventies.
The couple, who had been lovers five years earlier, sat drinking tea and looked at each other as if they were strangers. Then, the tea finished, Harry Kelley decided it was time for confession.
He reached in a desk drawer and pulled out a long cigar and lit it. This surprised Susan, since when she had known him he never smoked. In fact, he had warned her against it.
"You're older now, Susan," Harry began, "and since you've found me here, I guess I ought to tell you why I left home. I know that's troubling you, and I don't blame you for being worried about it. God knows, I wanted you to know why I left Seville, but at the time you were just a little girl and you wouldn't have understood. But now you're nearly seventeen and you're old enough to know, and maybe understand. I'll spell it out as simply as I can, and hope you get the meaning of what I say."
Harry Kelley paused a moment, gathering courage.
"First, I want you know that I have always loved you and your mother. Everything I did was for your good. I never intentionally did anything to hurt you or her. But ... but I know it didn't turn out that way.
"The trouble started in early 1961 when I worked at Seville Manufacturing Company. There was an opening for an important job at Seville Manufacturing. I was in line for that job. I'd been there longer than anyone else the management was considering for the job. The job belonged to me by all rights. Well, honey, there was another man there named Alvin Moss. He was just a young fellow, only about thirty. He'd only been with Seville Manufacturing about three years. I'd been there over forty years. Think of that! Forty years experience versus three years! But this Moss was an ambitous type and he meant to have that good job that should have been mine. Oh, he was smart, and all that. He had a college degree. Me-I was just a worker who'd come up through the ranks. It took me twenty-five years to get where he started out. Still, that job should have been mine!
"Of course, an ambitous fellow like Moss wants to make sure that management chooses him for the job he wants. The easiest way for him to insure that they'd pick him for that job was for him to find out something dirty, something bad about me, then leak it to the men responsible for filling the job.
"I don't know how he did it, but he did find out something about me-something I thought was in my past, dead and buried. I never thought anyone would find out....
"But he did, and he intended to use it against me. He said if I didn't tell management I didn't want that job, he'd tell the whole town-Seville Manufacturing's managment, the newspaper, my pastor, everyone-what I'd done years earlier."
Harry Kelley was silent for a minute, puffing on the cigar which had nearly gone out.
"Your mother is a good woman-I don't want you misunderstanding me about that," continued Harry. "But she and I didn't always get on well. No man and wife get on well all the time. We had words from time to time, as any married couple will. There were times when we were sleeping in different parts of the house, if you know what I mean.
"It was during one of these times of difficulty that I did it the first time. I was driving home from work one day in the spring of-let's see, it must have been about 1947-when I saw a girl playing by herself on the sidewalk. I pulled the car to the curb and called her to me. I don't know why I did that. There was just something that told me to do it. The girl and I just talked for a while. Then I got the idea that she might like to go on a ride with me. I asked her to get in the car and drive around the block with me. Without even saying a word she got in the car. I drove around a while, then headed for the farmlands outside Seville. We pulled into a deserted farmyard and I stopped the car. It was dusk. I turned out the car lights. We sat a moment and looked at each other. I asked her if she'd like to have some fun. She said yes.
"I remember it like it was yesterday. I was sweating and panting, not able to think at all. I reached for the girl. I held her and kissed her. In a minute I reached up under her dress and touched her between the legs. That sent an electric shock through me like nothing else ever had. Before I knew what was going on, I had taken this girl into the empty barn and closed the door behind us. There was some old blankets in one comer of the barn. I shook out a couple of them and laid them in one corner of the barn. I undressed the girl, then myself. She was young-only about ten or eleven years old. She didn't have breasts yet or hair between her legs. But that didn't matter! My penis was erect. I was wild with desire to take this little girl. I laid her out on the blanket and got over her. It took some doing, but I finally got my penis into her. She cried a little, but never once said anything about it hurting her or wanting to stop.
"When it was over, I put my clothes on and helped her dress. It was only then that I realized what I'd done. I was ashamed and scared. Very quickly I drove the girl back to the place where I'd picked her up. All the way back she was silent. She didn't cry or anything. When she got out of the car, she just ran around the comer. I got out of there as fast as possible."
Susan could see that her father was clearly shaken by his telling to her of this story. He shook a little as he paused to relight his cigar.
"For the next week or so I was very afraid that I might be arrested or something," said Harry Kelley, as he continued his tale. "But nothing happened. I swore that I'd never do anything like that again.
"Well, baby, I kept that promise for about six months. Your mother and I had words about something or other. A day or so later I found myself cruising around an elementary school playground just as school let out. At first I didn't even realize why I was there. It seemed as if some inner voice had directed me to come there. At last, when most of the children were out of the school, I saw a girl of about ten coming out of the school alone. I did what I'd done several months earlier. I asked her if she'd like to go for a ride. This was a poor neighborhood, and a lot of those kids had never been inside a car in their lives. I suppose that's why she accepted my invitation. We drove around the city a while, then I headed for the farmlands again. I went to the same deserted farm. We went into the barn. Again I had intercourse with a child on the same blankets as before. This kid put up more resistance than the first one, but I was a lot bigger and heavier than her and I was finally able to get my penis into her body.
"On the way back to town, this girl cried. I was nervous and shaken, like the time before. I let this kid out several blocks from the school. She ran down the street, crying all the time.
"Again I was shaken for a week or so, but again nothing happened. No newspaper story or anything.
"Again I swore I'd never do it again. I didn't understand why I'd done such a thing.
"Your mother was pregnant with you in 1949 when she and I had another fight. Once more I was on the prowl. I went by several elementary schools, and this time I realized-vaguely, at least-why I was there. I wanted to hug, feel, and have sex with some little girl. I didn't then realize why I wanted this, but I knew I wanted it!
"At last I found a school where three girls-all about ten or eleven years old-were playing. I parked near the school and watched them for a while. Suddenly and without warning I got the urge. It seemed as if an invisible hand were moving me. I got out of the car and walked toward the girls. Without even knowing what I was doing, I grabbed one of the girls. I literally carried her off to my car. All three of the girls screamed.
"As I had done with the others, I drove this girl to the deserted farm. She cried all the way, but didn't make an attempt to jump out of the car or fight me. I led that girl into the barn as I had the others. She fought me a little as I undressed her. I kept telling her I wasn't going to hurt her! But I was, and I knew it.
"Again I laid the young body on those blankets. I guess she was real scared, because she didn't cry. Tears came from her eyes and she shook, but she didn't make a sound. I got on top of her and finally shoved my penis into her. She made a little sound then, but nothing too loud.
"After I'd done it to her, we got up and I dressed her. I guess I was mad at myself for doing what I'd done, so I hit this girl a couple of times. I dragged her back to the car and we went back to Seville. I was going to drop her off like I'd done the other girls.
"I got to about three blocks from the school. I pulled the car over and was about to let this kid out when out of nowhere a policeman comes up to the car window and puts a hand on my shoulder. 'You're under arrest,' he says. The girl climbs out and all of a sudden it looks to me like there must be a hundred cops all over my car.
"They hauled me out and dragged me into a police car and took me to police headquarters. They booked me for kidnaping and threw me in a jail cell. About an hour later, a couple of plain clothes cops come and took me to a small room. They questioned me for a long time-five or six hours I'd guess-about why I'd taken the girl. It only took me a little while to break down and tell them about what I'd done to that girl and to the other two.
"These cops then gave me all the details of what happened to men who did those things to little girls. They said I'd be sure to spend ten years in prison, if not the rest of my life. They said if I ever got out no one would ever hire me for a job, no one would ever trust me especially around children, and so on. I tell you, Susan, they really had me scared.
"The policemen finally took me back to the cell. More than two days went by before I heard anything from anyone.
"I was brought to that same small room again and faced those same cops again. They told me that the parents of the last little girl I'd picked up had decided they didn't want to press charges against me. Since there was no way of knowing the names and addresses of the other girls I'd picked up, the police said those parents couldn't file charges against me. The point was, they now had no reason to hold me! I was free!
"The cops gave me a lecture about watching my behavior and they said they'd be keeping an eye on me. But the point was, I was free!"
Harry Kelley paused a moment and took out another cigar. After lighting it, he continued.
"I had to tell your mother about the arrest and so on. She seemed to be very understandng. I'd missed two days work at Seville Manfacturing, but all I told them was that I'd been ill those days. Except for your mother and the police, nobody knows anything about what I did to those girls or about my arrest. And I'll say this: I never touched another kid again!"
Harry stopped again and took a few drags on his cigar. Susan was watching her sixty-five-year-old father as she had never watched him before. She was seeing him in a new light.
"No one ever knew about my brush with the law-I thought," continued Harry Kelley. "Not until Alvin Moss told me he knew. Lord, I wish I knew how he found out!
"Well, honey, I guess it didn't make any difference how he'd found out. He'd found out! He had me scared, because he spelled out the whole story to prove he knew what he was talking about. I knew Moss wasn't kidding about broadcasting that story all over town. In fact, I was afraid he'd broadcast it no matter what I did.
"That's when I made my decision. I decided that I couldn't have you and your mother subject to the embarassment of my past. Your mother and I talked it over and we decided it would be better if I just dropped out of sight. So I did. I left her a note telling her where I was going. That's the last contact I had with her."
Harry became silent, as if he expected some sort of response from Susan. But she gave no response. She just sat and stared at the old man, the one who had been her first love, her protector, her ideal, her god. Now his confession had laid his tragic offense bare to her. He wasn't such hot stuff after all. Susan now saw him as a man of questionable morals; indeed, even she didn't need it pointed out that her father had been (and just possibly still was) a sick man. It was at this point that it struck Susan that what her father had done to her back in Seville-sexually using her body-was wrong. The question of whether or not what he had done to her was right or not had never before crossed her mind. But the terrifying story of her father's sexual assaults on three little girls made Susan see the wrongness of what he had done to her. True, he had never once pushed his penis inside her vagina, but, she wondered, how long would it have been until he did? Susan thought that if Harry had not left his home in Seville, he might have eventually have had intercourse with her. In the time it had taken Harry Kelley to tell his story, he fell from his pedestal in Susan's eyes.
Harry's eyes looked toward the ceiling.
"It hasn't been easy living in Rushing Falls," he commented. "Who wants to hire a sixty-year-old man? I had to look a long time to get the job I've got. I held a lot of low-pay jobs before I got the one at Hammond Plastics. I had several years of only working part time. It's been hard. I just barely kept myself alive. I was hungry a lot of the time. I had nowhere to go, no one to turn to. I cried a lot, and I don't mind admitting that to you. I ... I just hope you understand."
To some extent, Susan did understand. While she did not any longer think of her father as a god, she did have a lot of sympathy for his problems. From her own experiences she knew how tough his life must have been. She felt sorry for the old man.
Harry arose from his chair and came to his daughter. He lifted her up to himself and held her close against his chest.
"I ... I'd like to know how you got here, but it doesn't matter really," he said. "Tell me if you want to; don't tell me if you don't want to. The fact is you're here and we're together again. The facts of the last five years in your life don't matter to me if you don't want to tell me about them. I love you, Susan! That's the point!"
And it was, too! Each of these people knew that this is what they wanted-to be together again. Certainly Harry Kelley had always desired to be with Susan and Susan Kelley, despite the fact that she held her father in lower regard now than five years earlier, still had a lot of love for Harry.
The moment Susan had seen her father again, she thought about leaving Al and the gang at the house next to the Hammond Plastics Company. She didn't love Al or any member of that gang; nor had she loved any of the men who had used her body. Her father was still her great love, despite the fact that at one point she felt herself completely unworthy of him. Of course, now he was a little tarnished in her eyes, so, in her view, they were basically on the same level. They merely had different reasons for being on that level!
Harry and Susan formulated plans to be together again.
Harry said, "Why don't you move in today-right now?"
Susan knew it wouldn't be that easy.
"I'd like to Dad," she said, "but I have some things to clear up before I do. I will, though. Just give me a day or two."
Susan didn't want to reveal to her father the fact of her life of prostitution. He had already been wounded enough in his life, she figured, and he would not be helped if he knew what sexual crimes his daughter had committed. She didn't want her father to be any more disappointed in her than possible.
Harry Kelley offered to take Susan to bed an "do what we use to do." The girl thought this somewhat strange considering the story he had just told her. She refused as politely as possible. She now thought of their bed games as of questionable value. She now had much better knowledge than before of what men did in bed!
The pair parted in late afternoon. Susan told Harry that it would take a while to get her affairs in order so that she could move in with him. She didn't bother to explain that getting her affairs in order meant planning an escape from Al and his companions. Susan didn't think this would be hard, however. She hadn't found it difficult to leave Willie Seddons.
That night she spent her last night as a prostitute for Al Beaumont. He had half a dozen customers; a pretty good night.
That night she had intercourse with Al for the last time, and when it was over she snuggled up to him to dream. She dreamed that he was her father. She dreamed of the nice time she and Harry would have now that they would be reunited. That night was the most pleasant she had had in a long time.
The plan was that Susan would phone her father on his job when she was ready to move in with him. That day-a Saturday-she phoned and left a message for him at about noon. He was to meet her outside the Hammond Plastics Company main gate that afternoon when he got off work.
True to the plan, the couple met at the arranged time at the arranged place. Harry gave his girl a big kiss and took her suitcase in his hand. They went to his old car, and from the Hammond Plactics Company's parking lot to the old house where they would live.
In a sense, this arrangement seemed ideal. Certainly Harry Kelley was happy. To him, it was like old times. Susan Kelley was happy, too. This is what she needed; what she had been looking for. She had lost her security when Harry disappeared. She had been on a search for five years to find security again. First it had been with the high school boys, especially Herb Tanner. Then it had been with Tom Kinnic, her mother's friend. Then with elderly Willie Seddons, who had used her to make money. Then with Al Beaumont, who also had used her as a source of revenue. But the only real security for Susan was being with her father, and now that was possible.
The day she moved in with Harry Kelley, Susan was happier than she had been for years. In fact, she was so carried away by the magic of the unexpected reunion that she agreed to let Harry sleep with her that night.
"For the first time I had doubts about going to bed with Dad," Susan told me very seriously. "As you know, I never questioned it before. I mean, it seemed the natural thing. But I was a lot older now; I knew more about men and what they liked to do with a girl's body. Dad had told me about those three girls he had raped. So now it seemed strange and a little uncomfortable to climb in bed with him. Still, he was my father. He had never harmed me. And besides, if he did decide to have intercourse with me-well, he wouldn't be the first man! It wouldn't be as if he took my virginity away from me."
What Susan was affirming with the above statement was that she was aware that she was a different person now than she had been five years earlier. She knew more about life-at least, about the sexual side of it. Too, she knew a lot more about her father. Sometime earlier she had stopped most of her physical and mental dependence on her father. Susan had known and enjoyed the company of men other than her father. (However she admitted romantic feelings only toward Al Beaumont-and these feelings she described as "rather temporary").
Despite all this, Harry Kelley was still the greatest love of her life. After a five-year absence, his brainwashing was still effective to some degree. This is shown by the fact that she was so excited at finding him. It is further shown by the fact that she consented to move in with him, and that on the very day she did that, she once more consented to go to bed with the sixty-five-year-old man.
In bed that night, Harry trembled as he removed Susan's nightgown and saw for himself the fantastic development of her body. The last time the old man had gazed on her nude body, she was just beginning to become a woman. Now the process was complete. Her breasts were large; fully developed. Her genitals were covered by hair as black as that on her head. Her openings between her legs were as exciting as before.
Susan saw her father's penis become quite erect as soon as he touched the place between her legs which he loved so much. He seemed to be stimulated by her whole shape. He took a very long time to tour the body of the girl he loved so much. It seemed to Susan that he examined every inch of her body.
A fat and drawn Harry Kelley eventually climbed into the old familiar position over his daughter's body. It was, so to speak, the moment of truth. Would he push his erect penis into the lovely young girl's body? Or would he use the youngster's body as before, with his penis just resting on her genitals? Quickly Susan had the answer to the question.
As he kissed Susan's lips, Harry allowed his hard penis to rest on her genitals. As he had done years earlier, he moved it back and forth in order to effect a sexual release. Susan could tell that age was taking its toll with Harry. The aging man could no longer have a fast release. As she laid on the bed allowing Harry to do with her what he would, Susan wondered whether or not in the previous five years he had had any sex with any girl. If he had not, that might be the reason why it now took him so long to have an ejaculation. At any rate, it took Harry a full half hour of working at it to be able to shoot his watery sperm on to Susan's genital region and stomach. The old man had to stop half a dozen times in order to catch his breath.
It made Susan happy that her father had chosen not to penetrate her vagina. She thought that she might have thought less of him if he had. Somehow she just didn't think it right that her own father should have an actual intercourse with her, though Susan did not know the concept of incest. Though Susan had questioned her father's right to go to bed with her, once the aging man had positioned himself above her, all questions of "rights" disappeared. The feeling of security that she needed took precedence over any other feelings the young girl had. Once the old man had finished his act on Susan's body, he lay next to the youngster, thoroughly exhausted and sweating. In a few minutes, Susan pulled herself near Harry Kelley and fell peacefully asleep.
The next few weeks were among the most peaceful and satisfying Susan had known in years. She had her father, the great love in her life, back again. Each morning he would go off to work and each evening return home once more. It was almost as if the clock had run backwards, placing Susan and Harry Kelley where they were more than five years previously. It was the same relationship all over again. Things had changed-and changed drastically-to be sure. But in the psychological and sociological sense, Susan and Harry were back where they had started off.
Young Susan worked very hard to make the old house Harry had rented a livable place. She scrubbed it, dusted it, and swept out every corner. Never had such work made her so happy! Harry gave her money with which to run the house. It was never very much money, but it sufficed for the two of them. The couple was very happy.
Harry continued to sleep with Susan and he continued to achieve sexual release by rubbing his penis between Susan's legs. However, the elder Kelley did not do this every night. It was simply too difficult for him now. Susan recalled that he averaged two or three releases per week at this time.
It was in late September, 1966, that the Kelleys learned that their happiness was to be short lived. Harry was in the middle of having relations with Susan when he suddenly collapsed and fell to the bed. He clutched his stomach. At once Susan could tell that the old man was in excruciating pain.
"I looked over at Dad and I could tell that something was hurting him," said Susan to me. "I asked him what it was, but he couldn't answer. All he could do was groan. It was horrible! I didn't know what to do. In a few minutes he seemed much more relaxed. Dad said he had had a stomach cramp-from indigestion, he thought. I got up and made him some tea, and that seemed to relax him. He went to sleep quickly."
But Harry Kelley's problem wasn't indigestion at all. In the next few weeks, he had several more such cramp attacks in front of Susan. He was finally forced to confess that he had been having these cramps for three or four months now-since just before Susan and he were reunited. Harry had not seen a doctor about the cramps because he put them down to minor stomach trouble which he thought would clear up by itself in time.
In this instance, Susan had more sense than her father. She pursuaded him to see a doctor at once so that the cause of the cramps could be found out. An appointment was made with a local doctor.
An office physical could not do the job of detecting what was wrong with Harry Kelley, so arrangements were made to send him to the local hospital for a series of diagnostic tests. These tests were conducted during the last week of October, 1966.
Though he didn't express the thought, Susan could tell that her father was worried about the tests. The daughter visited her father each day in the hospital and saw him grow more depressed day by day.
"He was very pale, as if all the life had been drawn out of him," Susan told me. "I'd never seen Dad so sick-looking. He didn't say much when I was with him. He was silent and looked very worried."
As the week ended, so did the tests. One week after he entered the hospital, Harry Kelley was released. He was to check with the doctor the next week to learn the results of the tests.
Susan wanted to go with her father to the doctor's office, but he wouldn't allow it.
"I think Dad suspected the worst and didn't want me around when the doctor told him," Susan related. "His appointment with the doctor was for ten o'clock on his day off. That morning, Dad was up by six-fifteen. I could tell he was really worried. He was very shaky. He didn't want any breakfast or any food of any type except a few cups of coffee. All Dad could do was pace the floor and worry. At about rune-thirty he left the house for the doctor's office."
It seemed to Susan that Harry was gone an awfully long time. She had thought that he would be home for lunch, so she prepared some food at about noon. But he didn't show up to eat it.
One o'clock came and went, as did two o'clock, three o'clock, and four o'clock. Daytime disappeared and it was well into evening when Harry Kelley came back to the house.
He walked in the front door, took off his light-weight jacket, but said nothing. He had bought a newspaper on the way home, and now he sat down to read it Susan didn't disturb him for more than an hour.
At about seven-thirty she asked him if he wanted anything to eat He replied negatively.
Susan could wait no longer to ask her father what the doctor had told him. As she asked the question, Harry slowly lowered the newspaper.
"I took a long walk this afternoon," Harry said to his daughter. "I was trying to find the words with which to tell you-and I'm still looking for them. So I guess the best thing is just to tell you straight out"
Harry Kelley laid the newspaper on the floor and looked straight at Susan, who sat directly opposite him.
"You're a big girl now, Susan," he began, "so I don't need to fool around with fancy wording. You can take it, probably better than I can."
There was a pause as Harry lowered his head then raised it again so that his eyes met Susan's.
"The doctor says I've got cancer of the stomach."
Harry Kelley was silent for a moment in order to let those words sink in.
"He said there was no use kidding me along. The doctor says it's best to know if you've got something like this. You can put your affairs in order if you know how much time...."
Harry didn't finish the sentence. Susan was shaking her head "no" as though this might change things.
"The doctor says I've got a pretty advanced case of it," continued Harry. "He said the bad pain will begin very soon, so he gave me some pills for it. He thinks I have maybe another three or four months. I...."
Harry Kelley could not go on. The tears had come to the eyes of both father and daughter. Neither could speak. Susan fell at her father's knees and cried. He petted her head and tried to console her. In a few minutes the crying was over, though Susan remained at her father's knees.
"It doesn't seem fair, does it?" said Harry. "We were separated for so long, and as soon as we find each other-this! But that's life, Susan."
The couple were silent for a moment.
"I haven't had such a bad life," Harry reminisced. "Oh, there have been bad times, to be sure. But all in all, it hasn't been so bad. I never made a lot of money and we never lived in a fancy house, but we sure were never poverty-stricken. Your mom and I didn't get along sometimes. Alice eloped. I had that trouble with the police about those little girls. Well, baby, those things I could stand. There's only one thing in my life that ever made me mad-only one real bad unfairness. And that's Alvin Moss. What he did to me! He's the one responsible for the trouble we've had the last five years. That blackmailer! He made me leave everything I'd built up in life. I know life couldn't have been easy for you and your mother after I left. He's the one responsible for that! He's responsible for my ... my sickness. If I'd been home where I could have had June looking after me; well, I wouldn't have come down with this ... this illness. I was so worried ... that's what did it! I didn't eat right for a long time. That's what caused it, I'm sure!"
Harry arose from his chair and began to pace the floor while Susan remained on the floor looking at him.
"Damn that young squirt! Damn you, Alvin Moss! You're the cause of this, you ambitious bastard!"
Harry Kelley was worked up into a full lather over Alvin Moss. Harry clenched his fists and pounded them together as he walked the floor.
"If only Moss hadn't found out!" lamented Harry. "If only he hadn't blackmailed me into giving up my job and leaving Seville! Many a night I've lain awake thinking what I'd do to that man if I had the chance-and the courage. God only knows how many Other people he'll blackmail before he's through. Alvin Moss is a guy who needs to be stopped!"
Harry stopped pacing and put a fist inside his open hand. He looked right at Susan.
"Moss has made us all suffer," said Harry. "I'm not excusing myself for what I did to those girls, but I can't excuse Moss for what he did with the information he got about me. He should be dealt with for that!"
Again Harry stopped speaking as if considering what to say next.
"While I was walking around this afternoon, I thought about him and what he's done to our family," Harry continued. "And I thought about what sort of punishment he deserves. I've thought about that before, but until now I've never had the courage to do anything about it. Susan, I've got the courage now! A man sees things a lot differently when he knows his time is almost up."
The old and ill man sat down in his chair.
"Before I die, I'm going to get Alvin Moss and make him pay for this!" exclaimed Harry. 'I'll have a plan within a week. Somehow ... someway ... I'll get him. I don't know how or where yet-but just give me the week and I'll think up something!"
These words put fear into Susan's heart. She had never thought of her father as one who would seek revenge, no matter what injustice was done to him. She saw him in a different light now, however. As the next week passed, she wondered just what the dying man's revenge would be.
It was the following Sunday evening before Harry spoke of his revenge again.
He walked from the bedroom into the living room where Susan sat and announced, "I'm going to kill Alvin Moss. He killed me and made you suffer. Killing is a fit punishment!"
"I was shocked by that statement," Susan told me. "I never thought of Dad as a ... a murderer! But I could tell from the look in his eyes that he meant it. This was no joke to him. I knew he'd carry out his plan."
A week later Harry Kelley out-lined his plan to Susan. Alvin Moss still worked for Seville Manufacturing, where he was now a vice president. Harry planned to kidnap Moss and bring him to the house in Rushing Falls, and there execute him for his crime against the Kelleys.
To carry out this plan, Harry and Susan would have to "case" Moss's movements for a week or so, in order that they would know when he left the plant, how many people would be around, where the best place to kidnap him would be.
Since Harry Kelley knew he was going to die within a few months, he had no qualms about quitting his job at Hammond Plastics Company so that he could devote full time to his punishment of Alvin Moss.
Perhaps we should stop here and consider again the mind of Harry Kelley as he stands close to the end of his earthly life. We must recall that Harry Kelley is a man possessed-possessed by the need to have someone love and need him. He needs to be worshipped. For this reason, we recall, he had done everything he knew how to do to make his daughters love and adore him. With his oldest daughter, Alice, he had failed, and was depressed by it. We may never exactly know why he failed, since Alice has not been located so that we might interview her. All we may say is that Alice eloped, apparently to get away from her home life. With Susan, we know Harry succeeded to a great extent, for up until she was brutaly raped, Susan tried to "preserve" herself so as to be worthy of her father, whom she hoped would return to her someday.
But that was not to be-Alvin Moss had seen to that! In what we must consider to be an attempt to protect his family (and himself) from public embarrassment, Harry Kelley had decided to leave town in hopes that either Moss would keep his mouth shut (which he apparently did) or that if word got out about Harry's trouble with the police, at least he wouldn't be in town to hear about it, and the town would have pity on his wife and daughter.
On leaving Seville, Harry had, to a great extent, reconciled himself to a lonely old age, plugging along as best he could, content with only the memory of his past happy life. While revenge against Alvin Moss was on his mind (or so he told Susan), he apparently had no intention of carrying it out. But suddenly his world was shaken by the discovery of Susan in Rushing Falls. This changed his plans for the remainder of his days. Harry must have reasoned that Moss, indirectly at least, had something to do with Susan running away from home. Possibly it was at this point that he began to formulate a plan of action against Alvin Moss. And then Harry found he was dying of stomach cancer. This pushed him over the line as far as taking action against Alvin Moss was concerned. In Harry's mind, not only had Moss caused him to leave Seville, but, indirectly, had given him a fatal illness. Harry could stand the fact that he had deserted his family. It seems to me that he pictured this as his punishment for the molesting of the three girls. But he could not stand dying due to the blackmail by Alvin Moss-no matter how indirect a connection there might be between Moss and his cancer.
So in the end Moss must be punished for killing Harry Kelley; or so Harry thought. To Harry, the killing of Alvin Moss would not only be a personal revenge, but also a public service, since no one could tell how many other persons Moss might blackmail. There was no doubt of it where Harry Kelley was concerned-Alvin Moss must be executed!
And what of Susan's mind on this matter? She told me that she was surprised and horrified over the fact that her father could commit such an act as murder. Yet, Susan still loved the old man and as far as she was concerned, whatever he did was right. She found it easy to follow his reasoning, even if, deep inside, she had doubts as to the wisdom of what he was doing.
The day following Harry's announcement to Susan of what he was going to do with Alvin Moss, the two Kelleys set out for Seville and the Seville Manufacturing Company. Harry's old car didn't move very fast, so, whether they wanted it to be or not, the couple had a long, leisurely ride to Seville. On the way, Harry told Susan that he visited Seville from time to time since the place held so many dear memories for him. He occasionally drove past their home, and a few times he had even seen June through a window. He drove by his place of employment for iorty years and fondly reminisced about those years there when he had been happy in his work. He had even entered the plant a few times, each time disguising himself somewhat so as not to be recognized. He hadn't found it too difficult to slip past the gate guard with some other workers who didn't recognize him due to the sunglasses and the false mustache he wore. It was on his rare visits to the Seville Manufacturing plant that he kept tabs on Alvin Moss and Moss's rise to a vice presidency.
Harry parked his car in the Seville Manufacturing Company's parking lot directly across from the main gate. It was nearly four o'clock when the Kelleys arrived at the factory. They waited for Alvin Moss to emerge.
Finally Harry spotted Moss. The father pointed out the hated man to his daughter. Moss, she saw, was a tall, thin man, very well dressed and with a very business-like air about him. His walk was brisk and purposeful. He seemed to be a handsome fellow who was greying slightly at the temples.
Moss got into his expensive, new car which was parked just outside the main gate in a small parking lot reserved for major executives. Harry pulled out of the employees' parking lot as Moss pulled out of his parking lot. All the way to Moss's expensive suburban home, Harry followed him, leaving a block or so between himself and Moss.
The next day the Kelleys did the same thing, checking the route to see where would be the most likely spot to stop Moss's car and take him. (There were too many people coming out of the factory when Moss did for them to kidnap him there.)
On Wednesday, the Kelleys showed up in Seville several hours earlier than on the previous two days. Susan had told her father that she wanted to walk around Seville by herself for an hour or so since she had not visited the place in nearly a year. Harry had been reluctant to agree, but agree he did. Susan had assured the old man that it was un-likely that she would rim into anyone who would know her, since her acquaintances would be in school, completing their senior year. In spite of this, Harry demanded that Susan wear dark glasses and a trench coat which would hide most of her features.
All young Susan wanted to do was to walk around Seville, the town which had been her home for sixteen years. The factory was near the downtown area, so Susan decided to head that way to see again the shops and sights which had been familiar to her when she lived in Seville.
At this hour of the day, there was little activity in the downtown area. Susan saw a few customers in the stores, a little traffic in the streets. It gave the girl a warm feeling to again walk the streets which she had at one time associated with a happy home life.
It was a rather gloomy Wednesday and Susan saw little reason to keep the sunglasses on. She took them off in order to see the town a little better. She stood looking in the window of a dress shop where she and her father had purchased some items when she saw in the window glass the reflection of a woman standing behind her. The reflection looked all too familiar.
"Mother!" said Susan as she wheeled around and confronted the woman. Susan clasped a hand over her mouth. She hadn't meant to say anything that would give her away. Now it was too late.
As she thought it was, the reflection turned out to be June Kelley, mother of the runaway girl. Mrs. Kelley advanced on her daughter and forced a smile at her.
"Is-is there someplace we can talk?" asked June Kelley of her daughter.
"I guess so," answered Susan, and motioned toward a small restaurant a couple of doors away.
Without speaking, the two generations of women went to the restaurant and took a booth far back in the dining room. They ordered hot chocolate.
"Are you in town for long?" asked June Kelley, as if her daughter were some casual acquaintance whom she hadn't seen in some time.
"No, not for long," replied Susan casually.
"I was hoping you'd drop back someday," said Mrs. Kelley nervously. "I hoped you wouldn't stay away forever. You don't have to tell me why you left home if you don't want to. I was unhappy about it, but I know that home wasn't the most pleasant place...."
"It was just something I had to do," said Susan.
"Are you living someplace near?"
"No, not too near Seville. I got a job in another town and I'm happy there."
"I'm glad you're happy," commented June. "I can't say I was happy when you left, but, well, I can't say it was unexpected. I know living like we did was hard on you. Not too much money, and so on."
Susan didn't really have much to say to her mother. In fact, she was hoping not to see her. Now she hoped her mother would not prolong their conversation. Yet, Susan felt an urge to tell her mother about Harry's condition. After all, her mother was Harry's wife.
"If I may ask, what town are you living in?" inquired June Kelley.
"In Rushing Falls," answered Susan.
"Now that you've taken off on your own, maybe I can tell you-your father's alive and living in Rushing Falls," June said to her daughter in a matter-of-fact tone. "Of course, I don't know if he's still there, but that's where he went when he left us. Maybe you'd like to hear the story of that someday. Naturally, the chances that you'd run into him are very slight...."
"Oh, but I did run into him!" exclaimed Susan, without thinking what she was saying.
"You did!"
"Yes. I-I know about why Dad left Seville. He told me about it."
"Oh. Well, that's all for the best," said June Kelley. "I was going to tell you myself as soon as you'd graduated from high school. I thought you'd be old enough to understand something like that then."
Susan was silent and thought for a moment.
"There's something I ought to tell you," she said to her mother, as a sort of spirit of compassion overcame the girl. "Dad found out a couple of weeks ago that-that he's got cancer."
A shocked look came over Mrs. Kelley's face.
"You being his wife and all, I think I should tell you," Susan continued. "He's only got a few months to live, or so the doctor told him. In fact, that's partly the reason we're in Seville. Before he dies, Dad wants to settle with that Alvin Moss, the man who blackmailed him into leaving Seville."
"What do you mean, settle with Alvin Moss?"
Susan hesitated, not really knowing if she should tell her mother about the plot to kill Moss. But Susan trusted her mother, and at that moment felt her mother might actually be happy to learn that Harry was going to deal in a drastic way with the man he felt had ruined the final years of his life.
"Dad's going to kill Alvin Moss."
June Kelley looked at her daughter in horrified disbelief.
"Good God! You aren't serious about that, are you?"
"Why, yes," said Susan. "I'm sure Dad's serious. I know that sounds terrible, but Dad says it's the only solution to what someone like Moss does. Blackmailing, you know."
"And what do you have to do with this?"
"I'm helping him. We're tracking Moss now to find cut where's the best place to kidnap him and take him to Rushing Falls. The home Dad rents in Rushing Falls is the place where he's going to do it."
"For God's sake, Susan, don't you know what you're doing? Don't you know what the penalty for murder is?"
"Well...."
"Don't well me!" said June Kelley. "You've got to get out of this before you wind up in trouble you'll never get out of. Susan, come back and live with me! Get away from Harry! Let him carry out his own murderous plans!"
"I can't leave him," pleaded Susan. "He needs my help."
"Undoubtedly he does!" said June in a sarcastic tone. "But seriously, you can't go along with him on this if he really means to carry out some plan to murder someone."
At this, Susan became angry with her mother.
Harry's brainwashing to make the girl loyal to himself was still working.
"He needs to do this," said Susan. "He's only righting a wrong. And I'm his daughter, whose help he needs. I intend to give it to him!"
Mrs. Kelley saw her daughter's determination. Her tone softened as she spoke to her daughter again.
"Do you think you have to help Harry Kelley just because he's your father?" asked June Kelley.
"Well, yes!"
"And because he's your father and, in your eyes, has suffered so much, you think you need to help him, no matter what?"
"Yes, I guess that's it."
June Kelley fingered her coffee cup, deciding what to nay next.
"I'm going to tell you something, Susan, and I hope it'll change your mind about helping Harry in this crime," said Mrs. June Kelley. "You see, Susan, your Dad and I-we sometimes had rough going. It's like that in any marriage. We didn't always love each other. In fact, sometimes I hated that man."
"Dad told me that," interjected Susan. "He said you two hadn't always gotten on well."
"Well, my dear, I'll tell you something about our not getting on well that even he doesn't know," continued Mrs. Kelley. "You see, a few of those times when we weren't getting along so well, I-I turned to other men for love. I'm not going to excuse that on my part, but, when you get right down to it, it was Harry's fault. If he'd paid some attention to me-if he hadn't always been fooling around with Alice or you-things might have been different. But, no. He'd just used my body to produce you two. Then he spent all his time trying to make you two love him forever. He wanted to be your master in every sense! But a wife needs some love and attention sometimes. You'll find that out if you ever get married, Susan!
"I took the lack of love and attention for a long time. After all, my life with Harry was a lot better than my mother's life with her husband had been. But finally it caught up with me. I needed love. And right down the street was a man who was willing-yes, even anxious to give it to me. He was a man who worked the night shift at one of the factories in Seville. His wife worked days as a secretary at City Hall. It happened that one day we struck up a conversation and from there it was only a short step to love. Within a month after we met, he was taking me to bed. About three months later I found that I was pregnant.
"I told my lover about it, and he was plenty frightened. Neither of us had even considered the possibility that that might happen. We were scared, not knowing what to do. But we hit on the only sensible solution we let Harry believe that he was the one who had made me pregnant. You, Susan, are the child of that pregnancy. Harry Kelley isn't your father!"
June Kelley fell silent in order to let her confession of sexual transgression sink in. Susan had a shocked look on her face.
"It can't be true!" said Susan.
"I'm afraid it is," said June Kelley calmly. "I was never going to reveal that secret-never!-but if it saves you from joining Harry in the murder of a man, it's worth it."
"I just couldn't believe it," Susan told me. "It was so unreal, like some sort of nightmare. I felt destroyed. Here the man I'd loved for so long as my own father turns out to be ... well, not my father. I think that was the greatest shock of my life-finding out that Harry Kelley wasn't my Dad."
"Now that you understand about not being Harry's daughter, you don't need to join him in his crime," Mrs. Kelley said to her daughter, as though she believed her confession had turned her daughter against Harry Kelley.
"He always thought of himself as my dad, didn't he?" said Susan.
"Yes, I'm sure he did."
"As far as I'm concerned, he was and is my father!" declared Susan. "He's a dying man who's always loved me as if I was really his blood and flesh. Why shouldn't I treat him as if he really was my father? He's always thought of me as his daughter!"
Susan angrily arose and walked out of the restaurant, leaving her mother to look on as she walked away.
"For a moment I thought about telling Dad that Mom had had an affair with another man, but then I thought that that sort of information wouldn't do a dying man any good," Susan told me. "It would be better to let him die thinking his wife had always been true to him. Dad had done a lot for both Mom and myself-he didn't deserve the pain of knowing his wife hadn't always loved him, just as he didn't deserve the pain of knowing I had let men use my body."
By the time Susan got back to her "father" at the Seville Manufacturing Company's parking lot, it was nearly time to tail Alvin Moss again.
As he had on the days previous, Moss took the same route to his suburban home. After following him there, a smile crossed Harry Kelley's face.
"The same route every time," said Harry with a smile. "Same time out of the factory, same time to drive to his home. No variation. I suppose I should follow him for a coupla weeks, but time's against that. So baby, tomorrow we grab him!"
Harry planned to force Moss's car to the side of the road as he drove down a nearly deserted stretch of road between Seville and the "bedroom community" where he lived. Moss would be taken from his car at gun-point (Harry had purchased a pistol in a Rushing Falls pawn shop) and taken to Harry Kelley's house in Rushing Falls, there to pay for his blackmail.
"I was beside myself with fright when I heard about Harry's plan to kill this Moss man," Mrs. June Kelley told me when I interviewed her. "Of course, I had hoped to talk Susan out of joining Harry in this murder, but I couldn't. She was too devoted to Harry, even though he wasn't her real father.
"After Susan left me, I just didn't know what to do. At first I thought I should call the police and have them stop Harry, or at least warn Mr. Moss. But then I thought that maybe I shouldn't interfere. Susan was old enough to make hero wn decisions. She'd left home because she couldn't stand it-and me-any longer. If she wanted to get involved in a crazy murder, let her! That's what I thought all Wednesday night. In fact, I thought that most of Thursday too. And then I came to my senses. I felt it was my duty as a mother to protect my daughter. I didn't want to see Susan involved in something she'd pay for the rest of her life! Over and above that, I had a civic duty to stop this crime if I could, regardless of how much this Mr. Moss might have deserved the punishment my husband wanted to hand out to him. At five o'clock that Thursday I called the Seville police and told them what I knew."
All Mrs. Kelley knew, of course, was that her husband planned to kidnap Alvin Moss and take him to Rushing Falls for the purpose of murdering him. No time or date had been mentioned to Mrs. Kelley so that she could pin-point for police just when this was supposed to happen. The Seville police were interested in her report, but apparently put it in the category of a crank call. They were forever getting phone calls about possible murders, most of which didn't happen. They didn't move particularly fast on this call.
It was fully six o'clock that evening by the time a police crew drove to Seville Manufacturing to ask Alvin Moss just what he thought about the call from June Kelley.
By that hour, Alvin Moss had been gone for nearly an hour, so the police crew drove-at a leisurely speed-to his home, some eight miles to the east.
The police would find that he had not yet arrived home. Sometime just before five-thirty that evening, Mr. Moss's shiny luxury car was forced into a drainage ditch on a lonely stretch of road between his place of employment and his home. At gun-point, he bad been forced from his car into the old car which had caused him to run off the road.
"We didn't say anything to him," Susan told me in describing the kidnaping of Alvin Moss. "Dad just pointed the gun at him. Moss understood. He got out of his car and into Dad's. Mr. Moss had a very scared look on his face. He asked if this was a robbery. Dad said no. Dad handed the gun to me, and Mr. Moss and I sat in the back seat as Dad drove to Rushing Falls.
"We got to Dad's place in Rushing Falls about six-thirty. We took Moss into the living room and sat him in a straight-back chair. Dad tied his hands behind him. Suddenly Dad had one of his severe pains and had to go to the bedroom and take a pill and lie down for a while. I sat in the living room with Mr. Moss and held the gun on him. Mr. Moss asked why he had been brought here. I told him Dad would explain it later. I could see that he was scared.
"About thirty minutes later, Dad came out of the bedroom. He looked quite pale, but he was determined that this chance to punish Moss would not pass."
"Do you recognize me, Alvin?" Harry Kelley asked his prisoner. "No," replied Alvin Moss.
"You should, you bastard!" declared Harry. "You're the reason I've led such a miserable life for the last five and a half years. I'm Harry Kelley. Now do you recognize me?"
"The name is familiar, but-but you don't look like I remember you," said Alvin Moss.
"I jolly well should think I don't look the same. I've suffered a lot these last five years, and it's all because of you. You blackmailed me into leaving a good job at Seville Manufacturing. You blackmailed me into leaving the whole town of Seville! It's been a hard five years, Alvin."
"I remember," said Alvin Moss. "We had a disagreement about a job promotion...."
"Disagreement!" exclaimed Harry as he coughed. "It was a little more than a simple disagreement, and I think you remember it. You threatened to expose my past to everyone in Seville if I didn't tell management I didn't want that job promotion. You wanted it for yourself, you selfish bastard! And because of that threat, you ruined my life-everything in my life!"
"What are you going to do to me, Kelley!" asked Alvin Moss.
"Do? I'm going to make you pay for these five and a half years of misery-that's what I'm going to do!"
An expression of fear crossed Moss's face.
Harry Kelley went into the kitchen and then returned to the living room with a butcher knife.
"And here's the instrument that's going to make you pay for what you did to me, you son of a bitch!" shouted Harry.
Susan remembers the horror that showed on Moss's face as Harry flashed the knife in front of him. Susan remembers the look of satisfaction, the fire in his eyes, as Harry raised the knife above his head and brought it down across the face of Alvin Moss. That's all Susan remembers of the execution of Mr. Moss, for as the blood squirted from Moss's face, she fainted to the floor.
When the Seville police failed to find Alvin Moss at his home at a time when his wife said he was usually home, they began to suspect that Mrs. Kelley's call to them was no crank call. For the first time, they were worried that a murder might be in progress.
Quickly they radioed headquarters of Alvin Moss's disappearance, and headquarters phoned the Rushing Falls Police Department. Alerted to the possibility that a murder was being committed in their city, the Rushing Falls police looked up Harry Kelley in their phone book. It seems that Harry had not adopted a pseudonym, so his address and telephone number were listed in the phone book.
Two Rushing Falls policemen were immediately dispatched to the run-down house Harry Kelley rented. As they approached it, they could see a dim light in the living room, indicating someone was home. Cautiously, the two policemen approached the front door. One policeman knocked on the door. There was no sound from within, so the policeman tried the door. He found it unlocked. Opening it, he stuck his head inside and mechanically said, "Anyone home?"
A split second later he spotted the grizzly spectacle. Susan was lying on the floor. Harry Kelley was on the floor near her, apparently unconscious. Alvin Moss was still in the straight-back chair, his hands still tied behind him. Harry had done quite a job on his hated enemy-the man he felt was responsible for five and a half years of loneliness and misery. Moss's face bad been slashed, as had most other parts of his body. The man's fingers bad been cut off. His pants had been ripped open, and, in a meaningful, symbolic move, the penis of Alvin Moss had been hacked from its proper place on his anatomy.
The terrifying spectacle was enough to make the policemen nearly loose their cookies, but they radioed for help. Then they made out their report on the execution of Alvin Moss.
The murder was as grizzly a thing as had happened in Rushing Falls in decades, and so the newspaper took proper note of the event.
Harry and Susan Kelley were revived at the local hospital, and given medical attention. At once they were booked on a first-degree murder charge. As soon as the defendants came before the judge, they were put into Northfield State Hospital for psychiatric observation, considering the viciousness of the crime.
And here is where I met them. Here is where I finally got the story from Susan Kelley, the seventeen-year-old accomplice of Harry Kelley. Here is where I interviewed Susan's mother, along with certain police officers. Here is where I read police and other reports about the murder. And it is from here that I report the case and certain of its ramifications to you, the reader.
Actions and reactions.
A girl like Susan Kelley may never be able to lead an entirely normal life. Who could, after what she'd been through? After the brainwashing, the disappointments, the assaults on her body by hordes of men, the shocks and traumas of her young life, why shouldn't he have an adverse, abnormal reaction to the world? It would be a miracle if she didn't!
And what will Susan's actions be in the world? It is far too soon to tell in terms of something she had actually done, but we can speculate. Li one sense, her de facto father's confession of his assaults on three little girls and his murder of Alvin Moss showed Susan that Harry Kelley wasn't such a great guy after all. It gave her a more real view of the man, and maybe of men in general. Yet, even though she had now taken her father off his self-constructed pedestal, he continues to be a sort of off-beat ideal for her.
"He was my Dad; he acted like my Dad, and he thought of himself as my Dad," Susan commented to me. "I owe him what any child owes his Dad. Love. He did what he thought was right for me. No, he wasn't any saint, but then most people aren't. He tried to be good; to do what was right. Sure, he did a lot of things wrong. The doctors here and you, Mr. Fargo, made me see that he did a lot of bad things, but, not matter what light you put it in, he always tried to do what he thought was the right thing!"
As I said, Susan has a more realistic view of Harry, but she still idealizes him. Although we got her to understand that Harry was probably mentally ill (to some extent, at least), and that he had abnormal sexual urges, Susan still defends his right to having used her body the way he did. To Susan, it was normal-it was "fatherly"-for Harry Kelley to caress her genitals and kiss her between the legs. Later on, it seemed (and to her still seems) proper for Harry to have her manipulate his penis and lay his male organ on her genitals. Harry Kelley had brainwashed the youngster into accepting this as normal. He bad set himself up in such a way as to be one who could do no wrong and one from whom all goodness and rewards were forthcoming.
And this is the way Susan will probably always think of Harry Kelley-as a man who was basically good and loving, in spite of whatever crimes he may have committed. No matter bow much the staff at Northfield tried to show her what an abnormal person he was, Susan always came back to the idea that Harry at least tried to do the "right" thing. To her, Harry Kelley will always be her first and primary love. Harry Kelley's brainwashing continues to be effective!!
So what of the future? Naturally, this is hard to predict. In an agreement between the county prosecutor, police, Northfield Hospital officials, and a county criminal court judge, it was decided to place Susan Kelley on probation until she is twenty-one, and release her in the custody of her mother. Susan was ordered back to Seville High School to complete her formal education.
No doubt she will again have dreams about her father. Whether the dreams will be happy, sad, sexual, or terrifying, only time will tell. Once she escaped from Seville, Susan stopped her practice of masturbation, due, in part at least, to he fact that she took up prostitution. It is now probable that she will start this practice again. (It should be pointed out that the practice of masturbation has never been found to be harmful. However, it is sometimes-as in the case of Susan-a sign of an emotional problem.)
There is a question about what her future relations with males will be. We must remember that at one time she rejected males (and females as well)' because she was waiting for her father's return. She could not accept a friendship he did not approve of first. It is possible she could go back to this mode of operation again, though it is also possible that she will be able to accept people on her own, now that her father has an altered place in her thinking. We may also wonder what Susan will do sexually where males are concerned. Certainly she now knows that men like sex, and she may see the granting of sexual favors as a way to win friendships. The Northfield staff was careful to point out to her that promiscuity was both wrong and dangerous. But she has used it before to solve problems, and may well use it again. If for some reason Susan once more decides to escape from Seville, almost certainly she will use sex to support herself for some time. It must be remembered that, according to her story, prostitution never worked a hardship on her. She accepted it, even though she didn't particularly like it. (She is no longer saving her virginity for her father so that he will love and approve of her!) Considering all the sexual experience this girl has had, she may never be able to accept "normal" concepts of sex. Her future in this area is something to be watched!
Speaking of things to be watched, it must be remembered that Mrs. June Kelley at one time wanted to palm Susan off on Tom Kinnic. What is to prevent her from trying this again? It could be that June Kelley thinks of an early marriage as a way of solving Susan's personal problems-or as a way of solving her problems. After my interview with Mrs. Kelley, I have no doubt that the woman loves her daughter, but Susan has presented quite a problem to her-both financially and personally. One way Mrs. Kelley may show her love for Susan is to try to get her married off at the earliest possible moment with the feeling that Susan would simply be better off with a man to support her. This, of course, is not necessarily true. Marriage to simply anybody is certainly no answer for either Susan or Mrs. Kelley. Marriage could be the most miserable thing possible for Susan if she doesn't wind up with a man who understands her. The "wrong" man could force her back into a promiscuous life, and possibly back to her mother's arms.
One wonders what would have happened to Susan if Harry hadn't placed his hand between her legs to bind her heart and mind to him the way he did. Might a return to what most people consider a normal life have been easier for her if the man she considered to be her father hadn't been the first one to use her sexually? Most certainly so! When the man she loved and respected gave the abnormal use of the child's body his blessing by doing what he did, he gave her a psychological image of what sex was about, even though while he was doing what he did he never mentioned the word sex. In other words, without using language, Harry Kelley made Susan make a connection between sex and the approval of someone she loved. Only after her rape did she connect a baser concept of sex with men. Therefore, where the future is concerned, it is entirely possible that Susan will use her sexual attributes to try to win a man to replace in her heart the place Harry Kelley once held. (I should point out again, however, that it is also possible that Susan will use sex as a means to economically and physically separate herself from her mother and Seville-if her mind again turns to thoughts of escape from the past)
As for Harry Kelley, we no longer need to worry about his future. Soon after he was taken to the hospital from the murder scene he lapsed into a coma from which he never recovered. He died one week after he murdered Alvin Moss.
He is dead and buried now, but his influence lingers on. Mrs. June Kelley will find it hard to forgive him for what he has caused her to go through, both financially and with Susan. And as for Susan, as we have seen, he continues to be an all too pervasive influence. It would be best if Susan could forget him, but-as of the moment, at least-she can not
