The gritty strains on an indiscernible Merle Haggard song bled through the fuzzy speakers of Russ's Waters Edge Tavern, on the outskirts of Cape Girardeau, Missouri. Muffled sounds of peanut shells crackling under the feet of a nonstop progression of Midwestern rednecks combined with the occasional slaps of pool balls colliding to create the Webster's Dictionary definition of Honky Tonk Heaven.
Despite the fact that the usual crowd had gathered in the seedy, Marlboro smoke filled bar, at a quarter to midnight on a cold and gusty late November Friday evening, by the time the few stragglers that had stumbled in for a pitstop from I-55 had departed, it was evident to all the regulars left, that there was a special vibe permeating the establishment.
Everyone seemed to be going about their normal business of either drinking heavily and trying to smooth up to someone of the opposite sex, or drinking heavily and trying to win a few dollars at a friendly game of pool or poker in the cordoned off game room. Despite the appearance that it was a normal weekend night at Russ's, the unmistakable sight of a young woman hanging upside down on the far rear wall of Russ's back room, with her hands and bare feet each tightly secured in restraints caused the 50 or so locals left inside of the bar to buzz with a keen sense of anticipation.
* * * * *
Stephanie Jean Conroy had been born to a sixteen year old runaway Mother, seventeen years and 364 days prior to the night she found herself hanging upside down on the wall of a beer dive on the outskirts of Cape Girardeau.
The force of gravity had caused a good deal of blood to redden Steph's cherubic face as she dangled there, looking expectantly up through her tilted sightlines at the parade of drunk men and women that anxiously circled around her.
Clad only in a tee-shirt and a pair of blue denim shorts, Steph had to fight the occasional urge to scream out in laughter each time a stranger came over and tickled her bare, clamped feet.
"Goddammitt...Girl...you gonna get it good tonight," one of the drunk billiards players snickered down to her before quickly turning around to take his shot on the table.
The Daughter of a truck stop prostitute named Jessie Conroy, Stephanie had never known her Father. With her Mother making a living working the truckstop circuit up and down I-55 well into her late 20's, Steph was baptized into that lifestyle from day one and had steadily built up a hatred and distrust for men that far exceeded her years.
Even though there was a healthy stream of men in and out of her Mother's life as Steph grew up, the young girl quickly came to understand that anything walking around with a dick was only good for two things, a fuck and rent.
Trapped in the social malaise of hopelessness that had burdened her family for generations, Steph Conroy was left with no legitimate outlook for the future, thus everyone in Steph's circle of acquaintances, including herself, lived for the moment, constantly seeking out their daily wants and dependencies with little care of the consequences.
Not one to ever have any patience or persistence with anything in her life, the 17 year old girl hanging helplessly from the bar room wall felt an eerie sense of detached calm as she looked up at the clock that was ticking away the final 10 minutes of her 17th year of life. At the stroke of midnight, Stephanie Conroy would be 18 and that was what everyone assembled inside of Russ's Tavern was waiting for.
Perhaps the man there with the greatest amount of anticipation was a 38 year old local man named Melvin Gathers. Melvin had grown up in Cape Girardeau and after a failed attempt to make it with the US Army, returned to Missouri when he was 21 and spent the better part of the next two decades in and out of prison.
About 8 months prior to Stephanie's strange birthday party, Melvin had been drinking at Russ's when he bumped into a woman named Jessie Conroy. The dysfunctional and immoral leechlike nature they each shared immediately attracted Jessie and Melvin to each other and they started to date. The fact that Jessie had a good looking and rather socially active 17 year old Daughter gave Melvin more of a reason to stick around for a while.
Even though Melvin spent many of those days since trying to figure out how to get into Stephanie's pants, he knew that he was treading on thin ice with his parole officer and he was in no mood to go back to prison to finish out his 10 year larceny and possession with the intent to distribute sentence just because he wanted a taste of Jessie's Daughter before she was of age.
So Melvin Gathers did his best to control his urges despite the fact at the sexual tension between the two constantly boiled just under the surface.
About a month before Stephanie's 18th birthday, she had been laying on the sofa in her Mother's living room, watching tv at 1:30 in the morning, when Melvin staggered through the front door after a long night of drinking.
Knowing Jessie was already drunk and passed out in the rear bedroom of the trailer, Melvin dragged himself up to the sofa and dropped his weary body down right beside a none to pleased Stephanie.
"Leave me alone...don't you have a home to go to?" the unsettled and sleepy, then 17 year old sniped at the older man as she coiled her long tee-shirt and panty clad body into a tighter knot.
"God... your such a dick tease," Melvin drunkenly spat, glaring openly at the girl's bare legs. "You know you want me!"
"Yeah...right," Steph sarcastically rolled her eyes.
"Mom would kill you if you ever tried anything!" Stephanie added, loud enough for her Mother to hear in the other room, if Jessie were actually still conscious.
Knowing Jessie was too far gone to hear anything happening in the living room, Melvin snarled back to the younger girl.
"You know she don't give a damn about you...she don't give a damn about me either...all the Bitch cares about is her fuckin' Crank habit!
Rolling her unwashed dark blonde hair between her chubby fingers, Steph slipped her spent chewing gum to the front of her mouth and showed it to Melvin as if to say, "You want this?"
"Then why don't you just go ahead and fuck me instead of going around all the time looking at me like your undressing me...you really want it...here it is," Stephanie gruffly told her Mother's tettering, and on the verge of blacking out, boyfriend.
"Yeah...I'd fuck you...yeah right...I know you and your big mouth...you'd go tell your Mom...that boyfriend of yours...his Uncle's a cop...you'd yell rape and I'd be on the next train to the State Pen...your nasty ass ain't worth all the trouble," Melvin blathered correctly.
"I ain't huh...shit...you stay up at night thinking about it," Steph also correctly assessed.
