As Benny drove back to see patients that Monday, he started to have second thoughts. There are so many things that can go wrong, he surmised as he contemplated his next move. What if I get caught? What will happen to Marsha and the kids? Yeah, Marsha, he thought. She’s a pretty girl. She can always find someone else. And I’m insured. I think I’m insured for a million dollars. More than that maybe. She bought the policy. Yeah, I remember signing something. Who gives a shit? She’ll make out OK.
It was almost 6:45 a.m. and the rush hour traffic was heating up. Benny was stuck behind a truck at a long stoplight on U.S 20. He had time to think before he arrived at his office. And he knew what he wanted, and what he had to do. Not just for himself, but for his long lost high school buddy, Eddy Moss. What happened to Eddy bothered him about as much as what happened to himself.
* * * * *
Eddy and Twila became an item after they consummated their relationship in the old high school gym. During the summer before starting his junior year, Eddy got a job at the Lake Street Beach as a lifeguard. Eddy loved that job and everybody loved him. He loved sitting atop the lifeguard stand with his bathing suit and whistle, talking to all the kids and listening to the sounds of summer, especially the waves crashing against the shore. People would buy him hotdogs and sodas from the concessions, and he would let them climb up to the top of his perch and look over the horizon and see the faraway ships. Sometimes, when the beach got too crowded, it was all he could do to distinguish the real emergencies from the fake ones when the girls playfully yelled for help as their boyfriends splashed them in the water. One of the coolest things Eddy liked was being able to see the skyscrapers on the Chicago skyline. The Prudential Building, The Pick Congress Hotel, and the Conrad Hilton were as plain as could be on a clear day. Above all, Eddy enjoyed Twila’s company as she sunbathed herself in her revealing bikini next to the stand while he stood guard. Everyone knew the biracial couple was dating and they let them be. After all, it was the beginning of the ‘70s and racial intolerance was passé. Yes, everyone let them be. Everybody, that is, except Frank and his buddies.
Late Sunday evening, around 9:30 p.m., August 24th, 1970, the Lake Street Beach was starting to fill up with the night crowd, mostly teenagers from Wirt, as well as several families who made the long trek from Chicago. That’s when the beach really cooked. There were bon fires, beer, loud portable radios, and even louder radios from the cars that were parked in the gigantic six-acre lot at the end of Lake Street. Bob Cheats was playing his favorite Beach Boy tune, Wouldn’t It Be Nice.
It was a beautiful warm summer night, and no one anticipated what was about to happen.
Eddy went home briefly to see his mom and to walk Twila back so she could get cleaned up. The mile walk was a pleasurable one for them as they held hands and talked the whole way. Then, at around 9:45 p.m. as they neared the beach, they saw a group of white rowdies on motorcycles, making a lot of noise and purposely screeching past pedestrians just to hear them scream. This group of thugs was Frank and his buddies. All of them, including Gerald, Tommy, and Murphy. When they saw black Eddy holding hands with milky white Twila, they went berserk.
“Hey white bitch!” Frank yelled, as he menaced his Harley around them.
Twila didn’t answer. Eddy and she started walking even faster towards the beach where they thought there would be safety in numbers.
“Hey white bitch!” Frank yelled again. “I’m talking to you.”
Twila and Eddy continued to ignore him.
“Hey bitch! Whataya doing with that nigga? You know we don’t allow niggas here.”
Eddy and Twila were almost at the beach and scanning for a cop.
“Hey bitch!” Murphy shouted, as he too got into the act. “We hear you’ve been fucking that nigga. A tasty white bitch like you fucking a nigga. My oh, my--looks like Mr. Ray didn’t finish his job,” making a surprisingly informed reference to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s killer.
Still trying to ignore the mob, Eddy held Twila tighter and started running for the beach. But Frank and the gang would have none of that. Tommy, obeying Frank’s command, grabbed Twila and forced her to sit on his bike and sped off towards a dark alley behind a boarded up beauty salon about five blocks away. Frank went with him. Meanwhile, Murphy and Gerald got off their bikes and grabbed Eddy, who was screaming loudly and trying to resist.
“Shut up nigga,” demanded Murphy, as he dragged Eddy behind an old beat up house just off the road. “One of those white boys may hear you,” pointing to some disinterested passersby, “and call the police.”
Eddy did his best to fight them off, but before he could take a swing at Murphy, Gerald hit Eddy over the head with a heavy chunk of asphalt he picked up from the street. Eddy fell unconscious with a busted skull as a river of blood flooded out from his forehead. But the hoodlums weren’t satisfied. As Eddy lay there bleeding, they lowered his jeans and cut his belly and penis, nearly severing it off at the base. At that moment they heard the sound of sirens and scattered like cockroaches, leaving Eddy, hemorrhaging to death. The police found Eddy, barely alive, and rushed him to the hospital.
There was no sign of Twila. The police knew she was abducted but they didn’t know where. A witness pointed in the general direction, but to no avail.
She was right under their noses, behind that abandoned beauty shop, being assaulted just five blocks away. Tommy held her on the ground, which was littered with rusty nails and yellow crumpled newspapers, while Frank forced his hard, diseased prick in her unyielding dry box. But before Frank completed the assault, he too heard the sirens, and pulled out of Twila. The two cowards hastily kick-started their bikes and zipped away.
With her vagina torn and bloody, Twila got up and screamed as loud as she could as she ran towards Lake Street. An elderly black man who lived in a weathered house nearby, heard Twila scream. He motioned to her as she ran to his house, calling out for a phone. He opened the door as he pointed to his kitchen phone. The police arrived within minutes and took Twila to the same hospital as Eddy, who was now in the intensive care unit following emergency surgery.
The police had no problem finding the young terrorists, who were identified, and found hiding at Frank’s parents’ house, just down the road. They were arrested and booked for attempted murder, rape and a lot of other charges. But the system failed, as each of the sixteen year olds spent only a year in the juvenile detention facility, and then incredibly, were allowed to enroll for their senior year at Wirt, which they never finished.
After the incident, Twila and her mother moved away to another state, never returning to Wirt again. No one knew for sure what happened to Eddy. There were rumors he had died, but some said he and his mother, Joanna, moved to Nashville where they had relatives. Benny found out later.