WOLF AT MY DOOR
In addition to his house and his dogs, Grandpa Bob had left his ‘baby girl’ his three most cherished possessions: a high-mileage Subaru Outback, a Purple Heart commendation, and the assault rifle he had carried with him in “the steamy hell of Vietnam.” Summing up his 13-month slog through the jungles and rice paddies of Southeast Asia as a young conscript, he had told Hannah, “I done whatever I had to to bring my sorry ass home.”
All of the dogs, the ones Hannah inherited, and the ones who showed up at her door, were runty, black or brown mutts. Except for Corey, a.k.a. Boy-Boy, every member of the ‘rat pack’ was a girl. Every night, they climbed the little carpeted stairway Hannah had built for them and flopped down around her in her bed.
Shortly after Grandpa Bob died, Hannah’s favorite fur baby, Cindy, “half-rat, half-Chihuahua,” as she playfully described her, had begun having “spells”. But since Hannah’s income was modest and sporadic, she could not afford to take her to a canine neurosurgeon, as recommended by the vet. Her life had been going that way lately. One hit after another, capped by the totaling of the Subaru by a pothole with her “name on it,” as Grandpa Bob might have said.
Losing her wheels had cost Hannah just about everything: independence, access to groceries and other necessities, and, most importantly, the part-time hair stylist job in nearby Havre de Grace that had enabled her to scrape by financially. This had been a godsend for Hannah, and a perfect fit. She always had enjoyed glamming up her girlfriends as a youngster, and she knew instinctively how to put people, even rank strangers, at ease. The owner of Toni’s Hair Salon thought enough of her social and tonsorial skills to say she’d take Hannah back if she could find a way to get there. But how was that going to help her now?
Following the Subaru S.N.A.F.U., Hannah had tried her hand at various home-based jobs, such as medical transcriber. But she was way too slow a typist to keep up with the blathering physicians. Her brief career as a telemarketer had ended when she broke out laughing while reading the sales script to a prospective customer. She couldn’t help herself. It was so incredibly lame. When her meagre savings ran out, she fell back on what always had worked for her: Seducing men. She posted some suggestive photos of herself on an on-line escort service, billing herself as the ‘Lollipop Queen of Aberdeen.’ The money did not immediately start rolling in, but Hannah got calls from time to time and earned just enough to keep her and the rat pack fed and pay the cable and electric bills. There was one big problem: she did not feel good about whoring. Every time she had sex with a stranger, she despised herself a little bit more. It’s why she always kept her television on with the sound turned up; the noise helped drown out those disturbing thoughts.
Hannah’s first ‘sex customer,’ so to speak, had been her dad. Drifter and drug dealer Ed Hargrove had knocked up Hannah’s mother, Dawn, when she was fourteen and he was thirty. He had never married the teenager, nor paid her so much as a nickel in child support. He did stop by her apartment from time to time. He always brought a fifth of Jack Daniels for Dawn and a box of Whitman’s Sampler chocolates for Hannah. He would get Dawn drunk, wait until she passed out. Then the ‘Big Bad Wolf,’ the monster from Hannah’s favorite bedtime story, would come hideously to life, sneaking into his daughter’s bedroom to have his way with her.
The abuse had begun when Hannah was eleven years old. For the next five years, the man whose fundamental duty was to cherish and protect his daughter had raped and sodomized her every chance he got. The assaults had stopped only after Hannah became pregnant with the child of her teenage boyfriend. After Ashleigh was born, the couple had married and moved out of state together. Their union had lasted less than a year, but it was enough to break the cycle of abuse.
Like so many victims of child sexual predators, Hannah did not reveal what Ed was doing to her to anyone. For one thing, her father had threatened to kill her if she narced him out. She also felt guilty and ashamed for letting Ed violate her. In her immature mind, she blamed herself.
Sometimes, after molesting Hannah, Ed would give her money to help buy her silence, but never more than five dollars. In addition to being a pedophile, Ed Hargrove was a cheap son of a bitch. On the other hand, Hannah had learned from her mom, the man she feared and hated more than anyone else on earth was now flush with cash after selling a new batch of the meth he regularly cooked up in a backyard shed. Now twenty-nine, Hannah phoned her despicable dad and asked him if he’d be willing to help her out by replacing the wrecked Subaru with another used car. When Ed agreed to buy her a new set of wheels if she first sent him a “fuck video” starring her and one of her johns, Hannah had slammed down the phone.
Strangely enough, the fury Ed had unleashed in her with his degrading response to her cry for help also brought Hannah a level of clarity and resolve she had never before experienced. It was time to take her life back, she decided. Time for what Grandpa Bob might call ‘karmic justice.’ An hour or so later, she again called her perverted pater. This time, she offered him something she knew he would not be able to refuse.
“I’ll tie my hair up in a ponytail,” she said, “just like I did for you when I was ‘Daddy’s Little Girl.’ I’ll give you one last blowjob for the car.”
A few days later, Ed showed up, drunk and hollow-eyed, at Grandpa Bob’s. He had driven up to Aberdeen from Charleston, South Carolina, where Hannah had grown up. Hannah’s now twelve-year-old daughter also was living in the historic city with Dawn. Hannah also had been staying with her mother until Grandpa Bob had summoned her to Aberdeen.
Entrusting Ashleigh to the care of a woman who had so miserably failed to protect her as a child was not easy for Hannah. It was one of those compromises people without means are often forced to make. On the plus side, Dawn had sobered up, was holding down a job at the local Walmart, and, most importantly, had kicked Ed Hargrove to the curb. According to her mother, he was no longer a part of her life. Soon, thought Hannah, neither she, nor her mother, nor her daughter, would have to worry about Ed.
“Hello, Daddy,” Hannah said. She was wearing her usual tricking outfit: a robe covering a negligee and heavy makeup—rouge, Mascara, eye shadow, and lipstick. She kissed Ed on the cheek but avoided his embrace.
“Okay, be that way,” he slurred.
Ed plopped himself down on the La-Z-Boy recliner that sat just inside the door. He looked a thousand years old. His rolling stone lifestyle, fueled by way too much booze and drugs, had taken a toll on him. His face was puffy and pale, and stubbled with a three-day growth of whiskers. He had deep circles under his eyes. His teeth and gums, blackened by chronic meth abuse, were as rotten and ugly as his soul.
Ed gazed like an uncomprehending toddler at the flat-screen TV Grandpa Bob had bought for Hannah shortly after she arrived. She had muted the sound before opening the door to the man who had both frightened and excited her when she was a child. Back then, Ed wasn’t a bad looker. And he could charm the skin off a snake. Standing naked in her bedroom, waiting for him to touch her, had always made Hannah tremble—with desire as well as fear. At that moment, she was the most important “woman” in her father’s life. Ed had chosen her to have sex with over her very attractive mom. Every time he molested Hannah, he reminded her of this ‘fact’.
“How do you turn this piece of shit off?” growled the Big Bad Wolf, pointing at the television. Hannah ignored him. She was busy checking out the white Volvo sedan parked in front of the trailer. It looked old but sturdy. No major dents were visible. It probably had a gazillion miles on the odometer, but so what? If it got her to the hair salon and back, it would do just fine. She closed and locked the door. Sometimes, one of her regulars would drop by the trailer, unannounced, for “quick visit” sex. She did not want to be interrupted.
“Wanna drink?” she inquired of a man who already reeked of alcohol. The drunker the better, she thought, considering what she had to do next. Hannah herself neither drank nor took drugs. She found it hard enough to stay on top of things when she was sober.
“Sure,” Ed responded.
Hannah filled a sixteen-ounce plastic tumbler with the rotgut malt liquor one of her johns had left in the refrigerator. Ed quickly drained it. He gestured for her to fill his glass again.
“Show me the title,” said his daughter. “Then you can have another drink.”
Ed could tell by Hannah’s tone of voice she meant business. He put down the empty tumbler and fumbled in his pocket for the document. When he found it, Hannah asked him to place it on the coffee table, just like the envelopes of cash she demanded in advance from her sex customers. She picked it up, saw that the seller had recently signed off on it, noticed the official-looking seal made by the notary public, saw her dad’s signature on the line marked “Buyer”. She handed Ed a pen and asked him to update and sign the document to show he was transferring ownership to her. He complied. For the first time in Hannah’s life, her father had kept a promise he had made to her. He must really want me bad, she thought.
“Thanks, Daddy.”
Ed stood up and hugged his daughter. For a moment, she thought his show of affection might actually be sincere. But when he let go of her, she saw the lust burning in her father’s bloodshot eyes. She remembered that look well. He seemed to turn into an entirely different person, a monster, really, whenever he violated her. Or someone else.
Other little girls, Hannah had learned from Dawn when she finally had confronted her mother about the abuse she had suffered, also had fallen prey to her predatory dad. In fact, Dawn told her, Ed had only recently been paroled after serving a decade in a South Carolina prison for kidnapping and raping a twelve-year-old girl.
“Did he ever touch Ashleigh?” Hannah immediately had demanded. The possibility that her bright, beautiful daughter could end up like her was terrifying.
“Are you kidding?” Dawn had responded. “I wouldn’t let that piece of shit get within ten miles of that child. He’d have to kill me first.
“Not that he hasn’t tried,” her mother added.
That is when Hannah had begun thinking of a way to make sure Ed did not succeed.
She untied the sash of her dressing gown, pulled it open, letting her father see the silky blue nightie she was wearing beneath it. The garment was so short, it barely covered her crotch. After teasing her dad, she closed the gown and secured it again.
“You’re even more beautiful than I remember,” Ed said huskily.
“Let’s get the party started,” said Hannah.
She led her inebriated father into a small, doorless chamber that opened directly off the living room. She called it her ‘work room.’ In it, she shed all shame and inhibition for the duration of each customer’s visit. She became the ‘Lollipop Queen of Aberdeen.’ Or whatever warped-out sexual fantasy role her john wanted her to perform. It didn’t matter. What did matter was that, as an escort, she no longer was a victim. She was in control. She set the rules. No bareback. No anal. No coming in her mouth. No credit cards. Pay me up front and in cash. Place the envelope where I can see it.
“Take off your pants and underwear,” she instructed her father, “and lie down. I’m going to freshen my lipstick.”
“Whatever,” Ed grumbled. “But don’t take all fucking night. I drove a long fucking way and I got you that car. I expect you to deliver your end of the deal.”
“Don’t worry, Daddy,” Hannah assured him. “I promise you’ll get everything you came for, and more.”
When she returned a few minutes later, Ed was reclining on the daybed. His eyes were closed. He was stroking himself in anticipation of the incestuous pleasure he was about to receive. At first, he didn’t notice Hannah had come back. When he finally sensed her presence, he opened his eyes. His now stark-naked daughter, pierced nipples, tattoos, shaved pubis and all, was standing over him with a rifle aimed at his chest.
“What the fuck!?”
“Feast your eyes, old man,” Hannah declared. “My perfect tits and pussy are the last thing you’re ever gonna see.”
Hannah shot her father in the heart with Grandpa Bob’s M-16. Under the cover of darkness, she dumped his body, concealed in a trash bag, into the grave she had dug behind the mobile home. She filled it with dirt and planted flowers on it to keep her nosey neighbors from asking her why she had gouged a coffin-sized hole in her backyard.
The police never questioned Hannah about her missing father or the car. In their eyes, when a man like Ed Hargrove drops off the face of the earth, everyone wins.
Hannah’s customers at the hair salon welcomed her back like a long-lost friend. The Lollipop Queen of Aberdeen would never turn another trick. The Big Bad Wolf would never get the chance to harm another child.
If Grandpa Bob were still around, thought Hannah, he would have danced on the sorry motherfucker’s grave. And he would have been proud of her. Caught up in a war she did not start or fully understand, she had dealt with the enemy, then made her way safely back to the world.
Award-winning investigative reporter, author, and scriptwriter Jonathan Agronsky is working on a screenplay set up in post-Holcaust Europe and writing a book about David Whiting (See excerpt at https://brightlightsfilm.com/who-is-that-masked-man-something-about-david-whiting/).. He has published three other books, including Marion Barry: The Politics of Race. From 1984 to 1994, he served as an international radio broadcaster for the Voice of America. Jonathan’s feature and investigative stories on everything from a fatal police shooting to Oliver Stone’s trilogy of Vietnam War movies have been published in Penthouse, Vietnam, Regardie’s, U.S. News & World Report, and other national and regional periodicals. He also has authored award-winning essays, films, and radio documentaries. Contact the author at jonathan.agronsky@gmail.com