Hot Summer in the City Book Review (Part 2: The Book vs The Movie, Day 2, Chapter 3)

Chapter 3 starts off Day 2 virtually the same as in the movie, except Duke has retrieved both Debbie's bra and panties (In the movie, Debby's bra somehow stayed on her shoulders  during the onslaught of her body in the car) from the car. Duke presents them to an appreciative Debbie in what to her represents a moment of kindness and possible remorse. Here the book may have made a plot oversight, as Debbie's shoes (so pivotal later) remain in the gang's car. Debbie also is able to repair her dress with some pins and provide some coverage for her most feminine parts, which the author informs us are aching from the use she had been put to the night before. 

Debbie was tasked by the Duke to make the gang breakfast, something not shown in the movie. As they eat she scanned the room to re-examine her need to chose a man to attach herself to and try and obtain protection. Again, she determined that man should be Duke, because he was the gang's leader, and had shown her kindness that morning, and at times while inside the cabin last night.  In making her choice she observes she chose to date her boyfriend Bill in high school due to his being the most like her of all her male classmates, and how different  the terms were under which she was having to maker her choice of a man for her now. 

Right before the Mafia looking man ("The Man's" Representative in the movie) and Jodie arrive, Debbie over hears the men talking about a plan and riots. She sensed Duke seemed fearful and on edge, and pondered whether she would learn the reason for that when the guests arrived.

When they arrive, the Man's Rep is described as stocky, well dressed, and with Italian accent. Jodie is described just as the actress appears in the movie. Debbie is kneeling by the fireplace when they walk in the door and stays kneeling when Jodie confronts her for the first time, otherwise the dialogue is exactly the same as the movie. Oh and staying consistent, the HSIC movie producers decided to change Jodie's name just like Debbie's, as she is listed as "Jody" in the credits. 

THE MEETING: Here is where the book give us the most information not presented in the movie.  As Debbie observes the Man's Rep pay the gang $20K, Debbie connects him as representing a central organized group behind the riots, realizing that the race riots from last year were not spontaneous, but planned. We also learn that Shorty has been involved in this mysterious organization since it started, three years ago. 

Just as in the movie, Debbie is ordered into the kitchen to make sandwiches with Jodie. She confronts Debbie, warning her not to touch Duke, in the same dialogue as the movie. Duke then kindly tells Debbie to take a seat next to him and tells her she may want to "change sides" in the "war" after she see's the plans they have for the honkies in Detroit.

"Sit down baby and listen. You gonna see how the Great Race War of Nineteen hundred and sixty-seven really begins."

Debbie listens in fascination as the Man's rep lays out the plan. Two of Duke's men are expected to act drunk, break a window in a cleaning shop, then start a fight when cops show up, and then a third gang member is to function as an arsonist by throwing a Molotov cocktail into a nearby Supermarket.  Next, we learn that 20 rooms have been reserved for 25 Guerrilla Fighters, former Vietnam vets, trained in Cuba who will be Snipers using M-16s. There are also 40 additional rooms spread out over multiple buildings for the snipers to move to when their initial positions get identified, from which they will be shooting at policemen and firemen.  The Man anticipates these experts will  outmatch the police and green National Guardsmen, at least initially. Then, whenever significant resistance is encountered, the snipers have escape routes planned through the sewers. 

Duke is taken aback by the degree of firepower to be implemented and doesn't want to see his own people killed. The Man describes this as inevitable, just as in the movie.  Duke is further told that some blacks will be shot by snipers, so the government can be blamed and motive black communities to rise up, instead of waiting for "100 year too late promises" as the Man's rep stated.  The Man's rep then demands that Duke must follow the plan as he and the others had taken a pledge to follow the leaders of the organization. Then he offers Duke the opportunity to get out, stating he didn't believe any of his gang members would follow him. Duke, feeling humiliated from not having a greater role in the violence of the plan and sensing the remainder of his gang would stay committed, ultimately affirms he will stay a part of the plan. 

As the meeting continues Debbie is horrified and sees that the gang is being played to advance white interests. Namely she recognizes the objective is to create a barrier between blacks and whites and derail the civil rights movement.  Like in the movie, her conclusion is reached in part from her learning that the apparent leader of the organization was going to collect on a large insurance policy. Despite what the gang had done to her, she begins to feel empathy for the plight of her captors; still being discriminated against in society, and now being manipulated and used as potential cannon fodder for an unwinnable war.

As the Man's rep leaves, Duke cryptically states he will come down to Detroit tomorrow (only in the movie is night specified) to set things off. Then there is some idle drinking and sullen small talk made by the gang, as they contemplate what is apparently going to go down tomorrow and will place their lives at risk. There is also some leering at Debbie, which culminates in Coke asking for the use of the "honky chick" for the night. A frightened Debbie is given a reprieve by Duke's assertion that Debbie would be sleeping with him tonight. This then sets off Jodie who attacks Debbie, only to find herself being thrown off Debbie by Duke and punished by an order that she is to be raped by the gang, with Stitch instructed to go first. 

Here the author gives us a fascinating insight into the significance of this moment from Stitch and Jodie's perspective, and how it fueled the already intense hate Jodie had for Debbie into a towering inferno: 

"[Stitch had been given] the leader's girl, the one whom had always lorded it over him and teased him, in his idiotic ignorance and driven him half insane with her promising touches on his arm or a secret smile she had given, safe in the knowledge that he would never dare to touch her as long as she was Duke's girl...But now, now it had changed. She was a sheikh's favorite suddenly thrown in anger to the camel drivers whom she had teased and tormented from afar for so long."  

"A moment ago {Jodie] had been a proud and untouchable queen, the girl of the ghetto leader, but now she was just another piece of female flesh that would from now on be passed among them to be fucked and used as each of them in turn would so desire and when they would so desire. Her humiliation knew no bounds and she grunted and moaned beneath her wildly pumping attacker as though her world had suddenly ended."

"Duke baby, noooo make him stop, God, make him stop! 

Her face was contorted in pained disbelief at her sudden fall into the depths of gang whoredom from which she could never return. But Duke ignored her and sat silent. He had spoken and there was no more to be said. 

Unlike the movie, which shows Debby standing at Duke's side watching Jody's forcible violation and defilement, placement from which Jody found herself looking upon Debby as the newly ascendant queen who had taken her crown as the gang leader's girl; book Debbie remains kneeling on the floor at Duke's side as he sat down at the table to watch as Jodie' s fall from grace unfolds.  The author takes us inside Debbie's mind and brilliant unpacks her complex assessment of the circumstances at hand:

"Debbie could see the contempt on Duke's face as he calmly watched the battered and used body of the girl he had protected and called his own until a few moments before. There was no compassion in his eyes now, and Debbie sensed that tonight he was destroying all that he was leaving behind before he began the horrible holocaust that would result from his actions tomorrow in the ghetto."

Then after Jodie's ravishment had ended, the author describes how Debbie could feel her new antagonist's hate filled gaze: 

"Involuntarily she found her hand snaking across the floor by her side and closing over Duke's ankle. Her fingers closed around it in a silent prayer for protection from the hate-filled eyes of the dethroned Negress glaring at her. There was no one else to turn to, she had to hang on to him no matter what humiliation or degradation she would be exposed to. He was the only one with the strength and power to save her."  

For his part, Duke relishes the feeling of Debbie's hand clasped against his ankle and pats himself on the back for executing his plan for playing the women off of each her perfectly. Duke prides himself on knowing how to bring a girl to her knees, by taking the anger of an out of favor woman and using it to inspire fear in the newly ascendant one, who would come to feel completely dependent on him for maintaining her privileged and protected position.  He observed how it had worked again: 

"The little white bitch was groveling at his feet out of sheer terror of what would happen to her if he let the vanquished  Negress get at her. He would enjoy her tonight. Yes, he would take all she had to give and then some..."

Chapter 3 ends with Duke savoring these feelings and enjoying watching Shorty violate Jodie next, as Coke stands by "like a jackal waiting for his turn to feed on a wounded lioness." As in the movie, Debbie witnesses Shorty inspect Jodie's body, then forces her to her knees to give him head. For our heroine, her witness of  Jodie's violation would portend to her own violation, as the author explains so vividly at the end of Chapter 4: 

"He held her head in front of him with a strong vice like grip until he had emptied himself completely into the once proud queen's sperm filled mouth...His soft deflated cock slipped with a wet sucking noise from between her cum covered lips, a thin, stringlike trickle of white still connecting them together. The hallows of her throat worked for long moments afterwards, swallowing in great gulps the white fluid he had creamed into her throat.

Debbie's horrified mind was jerked suddenly from the lewd , obscene sight of the Negro's cumming into the helpless girl's mouth as a pair of hands reached under her armpits and suddenly lifted her from the floor where she lay. She was half aware of being drug across the rough pine-board floor toward the bedroom where, she realized, it was her turn to be fucked again into insensibility as she had been last night on the filthy unkept bed in the corner. She started to scream, but choked the sound down inside her chest by the sudden realization that if she did it would only make matters worse. She half struggled to her feet to ease the pain of her legs scaping against the floor and half walked, and half staggered in the arms of drunken, lust incited Duke to the bed where she knew she must pay her ticket to safety from the other two Negros, who were even now lifting the prostrate form of the used and humiliated Jodie to the bed for further and even more obscene acts of sexual depravity.