Rachel regarded the next eight years of her life as her term on the wheel of abuse. Merle Henderson deposited her in his house trailer by the landing strip and kept her there. He allowed her to visit town once a week to go to the laundromat and the grocery store. The rest of her time was spent waiting on or waiting for Merle and helping him work on his planes.

Each morning Merle took off in the crop duster, taking with him the keys to the pickup. Rachel spent the days cleaning up the trailer, eating, and watching television. She grew fatter and Merle began to refer to her as his fat little mama. What little self-esteem she had drained away and was absorbed by Merle’s overpowering male ego.

Merle had flown helicopter gunships in Vietnam and he still talked about it as the happiest time in his life. When he opened the tanks of insecticide over a field of lettuce, he imagined he was releasing air-to-ground missiles into a Vietnamese village. The Army had sensed a destructive edge in Merle, Vietnam had honed it to razor sharpness, and it had not dulled when he came home. Until he married Rachel, he released his pent-up violence by starting fights in bars and flying with dangerous abandon. With Rachel waiting for him at home, he went to bars less often and released his aggression on her in the form of constant criticism, verbal abuse, and finally, beatings.

Rachel bore the abuse as if it were a penance sent down by God for the sin of being a woman. Her mother had endured the same sort of abuse from her father, with the same resignation. It was just the way things worked.

Then, one day, while Rachel was waiting at the laundromat for Merle’s shirts to dry, a woman approached her. It was the day after a particularly vicious beating and Rachel’s face was bruised and swollen.

“It’s none of my business,” the woman said. She was tall and stately and in her mid-forties. She had a way about her that frightened Rachel, a presence, but her voice was soft and strong. “But when you get some time, you might read this.” She held out a pamphlet to Rachel and Rachel took it. The title was The Wheel of Abuse.

“There are some numbers in the back that you can call. Everything will be okay,” the woman said.

Rachel thought it a strange thing to say. Everything was okay. But the woman had impressed her, so she read the pamphlet.

It talked about human rights and dignity and personal power. It spoke to Rachel about her life in a way that she had never thought possible. The Wheel of Abuse was her life story. How did they know?