Retribution

            Retribution

                                                     By

                                           David Blackburn

I met Mona when she was a freshman at the University Of Texas. She was one of many new students who attended the Orientation program during the summer and I was one of the advisors who helped those kids with registration, book purchases, tours of the campus, and so on. She was very pretty, very bright, and radiated a sparkle that filled the room.

We started dating in October and spent a lot of our time together. As the semester drew to a close, she told me that the coming Friday night she was going to attend a party hosted by two teaching assistants for members of her Spanish class. The party was held off campus somewhere and she was looking forward to having a good time with her classmates. However, things went terribly wrong.

It was about three AM when Mona showed up at my door. I was sound asleep when I heard her knocking. I let her in and saw that she looked like hell. Her clothes were disheveled and she was crying. I asked her what was wrong and she told me she had been raped by the two teaching assistants.

The two perpetrators were both foreign nationals. They were each about forty years old and had been employed at the University for several years. They supplied alcohol for the party and encouraged Mona to drink.  After several hours the party started to break up. Because she was very inebriated, they told her they would give her a ride back to her dorm. Instead, they took her to a vacant apartment and forced her into a brutal sexual assault. When they were done, they left her on the street in front of the apartments. She walked to my house and told me what had happened.

I became enraged when I heard what these guys had done to this young girl. After she calmed down a little, I suggested that we call the police. She did not want to do that.

“I don’t want my parents to know about this. I don’t want anybody to know. How could they do this? They’re my teachers; how could they do this?”

I didn’t have the answer to that question, but I was positive that they would not be doing it again anytime soon. I looked up their names in the phone book and got their home addresses. Mona, my roommate Mike, and I got in my car and went to the home of Jose, the one who had orchestrated the whole thing. We went to his house and I told Mona to wait in the car while Mike and I went to the front door. By now it was almost five o’clock in the morning. I knocked loudly on the screen door and soon a woman dressed in a bathrobe answered. She asked what I wanted at such an hour and I demanded to speak with her husband immediately. She retreated to the bedroom and in a few moments Jose came to the door. He looked at me warily then asked what I wanted. I told him I needed to speak to him about the events surrounding the party and asked him to step outside so we could talk privately. He looked past me and saw my roommate Mike standing in the yard; he also saw Mona sitting in the front seat of my car. He became very apprehensive and refused to come outside. I told him if he didn’t come out I was prepared to go in and we would have our discussion in his living room. The anxiety in his eyes was growing and again he refused to come outside. Then he reached up and latched the screen door. A smug smile crept across his face as he assumed that I would not follow through with my threat to enter his home.

My anger exploded and adrenaline surged through my bloodstream. I reached forward and grasped the handle of the flimsy screen door and pulled it towards me with all the strength I could muster. The latch came out of the door frame as did the hinges. I threw the door behind me into the front yard. I grabbed Jose by the collar of his pajamas and pulled him towards me. The smug look on his face disappeared and was immediately replaced with panic and terror. When I punched him in the face I could tell that he had never been in a fistfight in his entire life. He squealed like the coward he was and I popped him a couple of more times. Then I planted a round kick to the left side of his head and knocked him to the floor.

As he was crawling away and gasping for breath, his wife was freaking out. She stepped between Jose and me trying to protect him. She was screaming, “Why are you doing this? Why are you doing this?” I told her the truth.

“Because your husband and one of his buddies raped a seventeen year old girl last night!” 

Her attitude changed and she started screaming at Jose in Spanish. I couldn’t understand what she was saying, but she was no longer trying to protect him. Jose was trying to get to his feet. I punched him again in the face and he fell onto his back. I knelt down and placed my knee on his chest.

“Mona is never going back to your class. And she gets an ‘A’ for the semester. And if you ever bother her again, I’ll come back here and beat you to death in front of your wife and children, you understand?”

“Okay,” he whimpered. “Okay, okay, okay….”

I slapped him with my open palm and then I felt Mike grab me by the arm. “That’s enough, Dave. That’s enough.”

Mike was right; Jose had enough—for the moment. We left him crying on the floor and returned to my place. Mona spent the rest of the night in the shower then slept most of the day. I caught a few hours of shut eye then walked to the campus. I went to the office of the Dean Of The College Of Arts and Sciences, the unit that housed the language classes. I knew the Dean due to my work at the Dean Of Students Office as an Orientation Advisor. I told him what Jose and the other teaching assistant, Rafael, had done. The Dean was incensed. 

“Why, both of those guys are over forty! They supplied liquor to this party of underage kids? And this freshman girl is only seventeen?”

He was nearly as mad as I was. He told me that he would address the situation and I was confident that he would, but there were still a few steps I planned to take.

That night I had to participate in a karate demonstration at a meeting of the Jaycees. Mona tagged along because she was still pretty shook up and didn’t want to be alone. There were four other karate students taking part in the show, including John York. John could be a mean bastard when the situation called for it. Years ago, he broke into (yes, INTO) a jail in Louisiana to beat up a guy that had pissed him off. He was a good friend and he liked Mona a lot, which would prove to be a major advantage as the evening wore on.

The demonstration at the Jaycees meeting was not what any of us expected. I assumed that a Jaycees meeting---the Junior Chamber Of Commerce—would be comprised of young businessmen trying to establish contacts with like minded individuals in an effort to further their career paths. Instead we encountered a large group of guys in sportscoats that were shitfaced drunk and ready to party. It was a statewide gathering of different Jaycee chapters from all over and they were intent on having a wild time. I have no idea who booked a Tae Kwon Do presentation as part of the evening’s entertainment. I am sure the Jaycees would have preferred strippers, but we gave it our best shot. The crowd was rambunctious and loud. They kept screaming for blood (“HIT HIM! KICK HIM IN THE HEAD!”) and severely rattled all of us. John York lost his concentration and focus; he ended up hitting one of our students in the face and broke his nose. I was relieved when the presentation was over. 

As we left the building and walked to our cars, I spoke to York for a moment. “Hey John, I need to go whip the shit out of somebody tonight. Wanna go with me?”

There was not a bit of hesitation from York: “Sure. Let’s go.”

We dropped York’s car at my place and I drove us to Rafael’s apartment. York asked me, “Hey Dave, what did this guy do to you? Not that it makes any difference; just curious…”

I told him about what had happened to Mona the previous evening and York turned very dark and menacing.  He had a thing about guys who abused women. York became more stoned faced and silent as we arrived at Rafael’s front door, which was solid wood with no screen door in front of it. I knocked loudly and shortly a timid voice asked who I was. The door did not open; obviously Rafael had been warned by Jose that I might come calling. I demanded that he open up and step outside. I heard him turn the dead bolt. I started to think that we might not get a chance to see Rafael in person; he was not stupid enough to open the door for us. As I pondered my next move, John York took three quick steps forward then hit the door with a flying side kick that knocked it completely out of the frame. Within an instant the door was lying flat on the floor of the living room and a terrified man stared at us, his eyes as big as hubcaps. York rushed past me and grabbed Rafael by his shirt collar. Then he began to beat the dogshit out of him.

Rafael’s wife was standing in the background and began screaming. York kept hitting Rafael and shouted, “Why did you rape that lady last night, you motherfucker?”

I was frozen in shock for a moment. I addressed the screaming wife and said, “Your husband and Jose raped a seventeen year old girl!”. The look on her face changed completely when she heard this; I had noticed the same reaction from Jose’s wife the night before. She started screaming in Spanish—not at me, but at her husband. She moved to York’s left side and began slapping Rafael as York continued to beat him senseless. I suddenly realized that both of these two guys had a history of adultery and sexual abuse that their wives were aware of. By now Rafael’s face was a bloody mess and his wife was screaming and crying—not in fear, but in her own fit of rage and anger. I tapped John on his shoulder and told him we should go. We left the apartment with a semi-conscious Rafael sitting on the floor, his wife shouting and slapping him, the sounds of their children crying in their bedroom, and the front door lying flat on the carpet.

The next couple of days passed without incident. On the third day I found that the University had fired both Jose and Rafael. Mona was bouncing back from her trauma and seemed pleased with the fact that the two teaching assistants had gotten a beating and lost their jobs. We both assumed the ordeal was over.

On the fourth day I got a call from my attorney.  Jim Barrow was the law partner of the mayor and I valued our relationship highly. At this point in my life I had never had any legal troubles, but it never hurts to have a good lawyer. 

“David, you’ve got trouble. I was down at the police station a little while ago and heard that there is a warrant out for you. It’s for assault and battery. What’s the story on this?”

I told him everything and he suggested that I meet him at the police station in about an hour. I was reluctant at first, then he explained the severity of the situation to me. “If you don’t come down voluntarily, they will just come pick you up. And you don’t want the cops serving a warrant at your apartment, do you?”

A police officer informed us that Jose and Rafael had filed charges on me for breaking into their homes and beating them up. There was no mention of York, so I assumed that no one involved knew his identity but me. My name must have been revealed through the Dean’s office. I told the officer what had happened and he was actually very sympathetic. He did not arrest me, but said that I would have to appear before a judge at some point to answer the charges. Barrow nodded and gave me a thumbs up sign, then the officer said I could go.

A few weeks later I arrived at the Travis County Court House to face the music. I was not sorry for my actions. If anything, I was even more angry because these two assholes had filed assault charges against me. I entered the courtroom and was pleasantly surprised to see a lady judge. Jim had managed to get my case assigned to the only female judge in Travis County. As Barrow addressed the bench, I noticed Jose and Rafael seated at the back of the courtroom. They both had the same smug look on their faces that I had seen on Jose when he latched his screen door and thought he was safe from harm. This was a preliminary hearing and the judge asked me to explain my behavior regarding the two former teaching assistants. After I told my story, she sat silently for a moment. Then she looked me in the eye and spoke.

“Mr. Blackburn, I cannot condone your actions. However, I can understand what precipitated them. I am going to dismiss these charges; you are free to go.”

I was incredibly relieved. Barrow smiled at me and then I heard the judge’s voice once more. “Bailiff,” she said, “Detain those two men in the back row and bring them before the bench.”

Barrow and I waited while she read the riot act to Jose and Rafael. She told them that she could not hold them since the victim of their sexual assault refused to press charges, but she made it clear that if they ever appeared in her courtroom again, they would be looking at serious consequences. Their smug looks vanished and they scurried out of the courtroom as quickly as they could. 

Barrow saw me glaring at Jose and Rafael. He took me by the arm and gave me his advice. “Let it go, David. They got their beating and they got fired. Let it go, you hear me?”

I heard him loud and clear. The judge had given me a pass this time, but she would not be so lenient for any future transgressions. Rafael moved back to Venezuela and Jose left Texas to take a job as a Spanish instructor at a small community college in eastern Pennsylvania. Rumor has it that a karate guy from Maryland paid him a visit a couple of years later and some broken bones were involved, but of course I had nothing to do with that and therefore know none of the details. Mona was okay and did not seem as shattered as some women might have been. She was strong, young, and resilient. Life got back to normal. However, I wanted to make sure that she was never taken advantage of again.

“Mona, I want you to start going to karate class with me. I want you to learn how to defend yourself. Will you go with me?”

She agreed and soon was training three nights a week with Mike Uselton, the best Tae Kwon Do instructor I ever knew and also a devastating fighter. I told him about the rape incident and he made it his personal mission to teach Mona how to handle herself if anyone ever threatened her in the future. Before long all the instructors had taken her under their wings and she quickly learned the concepts of technique, focus, speed, and power. She got to be pretty danged good and enjoyed the classes immensely.

I fell madly in love with Mona and we were inseparable for the next several years. We were living together in South Austin; I had graduated and was working at a boring job while Mona finished her senior year at the University. She loved dogs and I bought her a puppy, a solid black German Sheperd. The pup was only a few months old when she decided to take him to the park one afternoon.

When I got home from work, Mona was very upset. She was pacing around the house and had been crying. I asked her what was wrong and she told me she had been accosted by some guy at the park.

“I spread out my blanket on the ground and was reading my book while the pup ran around. Then this guy comes up and starts talking to me and wouldn’t go away. He tried to take my top off. He scared me; it reminded me of what happened with Jose and Rafael.”

I exploded into a rage. “How long ago did this happen?”

“About forty five minutes ago,” she said. “I just got home a few minutes before you came in.”

“Get in the car. We are going back to the park and if that guy is still there I want you to point him out to me.”

“No, David, we don’t need to do that.”

“Yes we do,” I insisted.  “I want you to show me that bastard and I’m gonna straighten him out!”

“You don’t have to, David. I took care of it”

I must have looked puzzled as I asked her what she meant.  Her eyes hardened for a moment and she said, “You don’t have to do anything because I KICKED THE SHIT OUT OF HIM!”

I broke into a wide smile and gave her a hug. I kissed her on the forehead and said loudly, “That’s my girl!”