Something happened to my ability to choose "friends" during my stint in the military. Through grade school, high school and college I chose my friends well and had normal things happen in my life. My relations with women were good and my best male friends were always there for me, as I was for them.
After my service years, I was everyone's dependable, caring patsy. A great long time friend borrowed my truck and never returned it; a live-in girlfriend stole things from my house and tried to get even more; my brother conned me out of my savings because of needed "cancer treatment" which was a lie. Add twenty-five more years and my wife had cheated on me and split. I raised my son and daughter and put them through college, only to discover they told lies about how bad their rather privileged childhood was. Still they came back to the well often.
My reaction to my shortcomings was to withdraw, work my growing, ever more successful farm longer and longer hours and watch crazy things on the news that I could not understand.
Almost dusk one Thursday, Alcario, an ever present, ever willing worker on my farm, came racing toward me. His English was usually passable even though he often seemed slow witted. He was so excited that he could not remember his English and just pushed me toward my four wheeled Kawasaki "Mule" and pointed toward a distant bank where the state highway ran along the property line for a couple hundred yards. He seemed relieved that he had passed on some responsibility and hurried toward the little house he shared with his wife and two young children. I had no idea what to expect but I headed into the lengthening shadows cast by the forest on the other side of the highway.
On my first pass I looked along the base of the hill that rose thirty feet up to the highway. I did not find anything but spotted a break in the wire fence and went to investigate. Among the thistles was a deathly still, beaten and bloody young girl. She looked older than the high school girls you see at the mall but she was dressed like them. Her skin was medium brown and her hair was cold black. When I moved her, she groaned. Most of the blood came from a slit along the side of her neck and two cuts on her head. She had been rolled down the bank. Every way I tried to sit her up caused her to moan in pain. I remembered a story about how in-crowd high-schoolers haze others. She would be pretty all cleaned up. Her blouse was torn. Her skirt was above her waist and her legs were scratched from her tumble. Her panties were torn and there was blood between her legs.
We were twenty miles from what passed for a town and over forty from a small hospital. I tried to be gentle, but every part of her seemed bruised when I laid her onto the flat deck of the mule. As we bounced along back to the house, I thought of how to describe her to the police - "5'6", 130#, 18 or 19, Arab-like features."
I put her on my bed and reached for the telephone. Her voice was hoarse; her throat was dry and she was using all her strength to plead with me, "Don't call the police. I'll be alright. Please, don't."
She nodded, "Thank you" when I put the telephone down. She did not have the strength to object when I put a chair in the shower, removed her clothing and sat her under the warm spray to clean her and examine her wounds. Under other circumstances her soft, pretty body would be sexy and fun to bathe. I had stripped down to my boxers. Mentally I was full of concern for her and my decision not to call the police. Physically, my cock began to respond. She noticed but looked away. I dried her and tended her torn skin as best I could.
"Did you start your period?"
"No."
"Were you raped?"
"Not exactly."
I figured she had been making out with her boyfriend but then resisted when the asshole penetrated her. I could see him irate and pushing her out of the car and her rolling down the hillside. Now she wanted to protect him. Later, I was to find out my imagined story was way off.
Her hands worked but both her wrists were badly sprained. I had two carpal tunnel braces among some clothing that a former girlfriend had left in a closet. As she sat nude on the side of my bed I put them on her while I admired her artistic shaving of her pussy's hair. She made some attempt at closing her legs. She only had to open them again when I put some panties on her along with some pajamas and a robe.
"Can I get you to the kitchen and give you some food? Or would you like for me to bring you some things in here."
"I can make it to the kitchen."
"What's your name?"
"Johara."
She decided on some milk, eggs and toast. While I cooked for her, I talked, "Johara, I'm John, John Innas. This is my farm. You are twenty miles out of Cottonwood. Tell me who to call, so your family will know you are alright and can come get you."
The tears began rolling down her cheeks and she was inconsolable. I stopped cooking and just sat with her, touching her left forearm gently. Her sobs hurt her bruised ribs but she cried anyway. It was close to eleven p.m. before I got some food into her and got her to talk to me.
"I live with my uncle. My mother sent me to him so I could continue going to school. I should have graduated but he does not approve of girls learning to read. He is a mullah. He will never accept me now. I cannot go back to his house."
Johara's judgment was as bad as mine. She wanted to be an American and was sucked in by a clique of spoiled bigoted kids. She had told her "girlfriends" way too much. They knew where she was from, how some in her family fought against American troops; how her uncle would reject her if she was not pure; and how he disapproved of almost everything she did because she did not wear the burka and adhere to his traditional ideas. Today was the day her "friends" choose to betray her, lash out against all Muslims and defile her in the eyes of her family. Five people held her while the boy she liked, laughed at her, spit on her, called her horrible names and plunged three dry fingers into her, and in the eyes of her family, ripping away her value as a human and bringing shame into her uncle's household. In her mind, her world was gone now. Any publicity would make everything worse.
"If we do not notify your family, they will report you missing."