He wrote rapidly on the clipboard: Had the man been after the mother, or had he been after the child who he saw as easy prey? Some men instinctively ignored unattached women and looked for those with small children.
She'd certainly had no problem with time factors, he thought. Her words had come out like bullets. Details about the apartment and even the candy and the way the man had dressed were all that her mother might have told her. However, no one but the child could have remembered so vividly what the man had allowed and thereby encouraged.
"That's all", the woman said, interrupting his train of thought. " Are you wondering if it's unusual to remember so far back? I don't have an explanation for it. There's nothing more in my head until a few months later, when my mother and I were living with him in the first farmhouse. I can't remember if things were clear, even then. For instance, when you were two, how do you know where you will find someone, unless you have found them there many times before? But I knew without anyone telling me that day, just where the step father was. His family – his mother, father, and sister – had come out to the farm to spend the day with us. Just before dark, their car was packed up; they were ready to go back to the city and wanted to say goodbye to their son.
"Suddenly, he was nowhere to be found. So I went straight to the cornfield a little way from the house. Summer was ending, the cornfields were full ; you couldn't see into them. The corn was high, like a green , swishing forest above my head. I remember the milky odour of the tasselled, drooping ears; the smell of the earth and the feel of it, dark and crumbling between my bare toes as I trotted along with a broken two- year -gait.
" It was darker between the rows of corn; the heat of the day was still wrapped into the soil under my feet and in the long green fronds. He was there. Lying between two of the rows, with his hands behind his head, waiting. He was uncovered. He always wore work pants and a shirt -his pants were down.
A jittery staccato laugh preceded the lighting of another cigarette, downing of her coffee. The words were not totally clear because she cried through them, telling of being placed atop the stepfather's naked body, astraddle first his midsection, and then moved lower. She described something fleshy coloured and curved, with masses of dark, wiry hair surrounding it. She said there had been a feeling of body warmth. Through it all, she used not a single word for either the male or female sex organs.
Short of asking her,he had no way to tell how far the first or second sexual encounters had gone. "Do you remember any other occasions with your stepfather?" "Except for maybe two other times, there are no clear pictures, only flicks against my mind. The flicks scare me and I cry. I can't stop."