I was parched in the searing heat as I drove my rented car rapidly down the four-lane highway and over the last hill of meadowland, my face feverish and soaked with swear. As I sucked in the hot air, my car plunged into swampland, black and forbidding, impregnable, growing so near the road and overlapping it in places that strange shadows blotted out the sun.
Water smells were strong, dull and stagnant with the hint of things dead and dying. The broad highway was pot-holed and I knew no amount of work or expense could keep a good road bed down in swamps like these.
I wiped sweat from my face and as I leaned forward to pry my soaking shirt from my back, I thought of Jamie Meadows and of the sweat on her body one day the previous summer in Rome. It was the last time I saw her and until I received her cryptic, frantic letter a few days ago, I didn't know what had happened to her.
I knew almost nothing about Jamie, except that I was obsessed with her, and that though I had been intimate as hell with her, I had never made love to her.
I passed a couple of cars as the swamp growth receded somewhat. There were bayous now, slime-green and filled with broad lily leaves and white flowers and stubs of ruined trees and in front of the highway along the water were several huge billboards advertising hotels and motels in Harrisville, Jamie's hometown to which I was headed.
Now the swamp was receding further and there was a shining blue and white service station off to the right and a couple of hundred yards further a huge Holiday Inn motel, its glass facade glistening in the sunlight.
I wiped sweat from my forehead with the back of my hand, and to my left I saw a bright red building stuck on thin stilts over a bayou. A neon sign flashed BAR AND GRILL, and I jerked my foot from the accelerator, gently braked the car, then turned off the highway.
There were a dozen cars on the steaming asphalt parking lot as well as a highway patrol car. I parked at the side of the building beside a huge flowering bush.
Signs on the red building advertised Jax and Falstaff beer and Old Crow and Old Stagg bourbon. My shoes sank slightly into the molten-like asphalt and I paused on the steps to pry some asphalt loose, then shoved open the screen door and walked inside.
The booths along both walls were filled with deeply tanned men in short-sleeved shirts and' women in sleeveless cotton dresses drinking frosting cans of beer or tall ice-filled glasses of bourbon and water.
A rock-n-roll song slammed from a gaudy jukebox in the corner beneath a tall floor fan which wheezed as though suffering asthma as it stirred the humid air.
A bar crossed the back of the oblong building, and at one end sat two middle-aged couples sipping gins-and-tonic and at the other end were several men in blue suits and two highway patrolmen in blue uniforms and gray, Buster Brown hats, beer guts hanging over broad, bullet studded gun belts.
I sat at a tall bar stool between the two groups, rested my elbows on the brightly striped Formica top, and glanced at the gigantic fishnet strung across the back wall, decorated with giant, gaily colored shells and brown starfish.
A tall, plump woman in a flowered dress walked in from a back room.
"What are you drinking?" she asked, as she wiped a strand of bleached-blonde hair from her forehead.
"A can of beer," I said.
"We've got the coldest beer in the county," she said as she opened a Royal Crown Cola icebox. The dress was stretched taut across her broad buttocks, but despite the weight her fifty or so years had put on, she was still well-proportioned.
She opened the beer and shoved it across the counter, then moved down the bar to the knot of men.
"What are the chances for another stay of execution?" she asked.
"It's not-likely," one of the men in a blue suit said. "He hasn't got any more courts to appeal to now."
"I sure hope the bastard gets the chair tonight," a man with wire-framed glasses said. "After what he did. There's been enough delay now."
There was an undercurrent of muttered approval and the men sipped their drinks. I drank my beer and it was so cold it made my teeth ache.
Frank Sinatra was singing "It Was a Very Good Year" on the juke box, and I poured down the cold beer and felt some of the heat and tension draining from my body.
The woman looked over at me. "You heading for Harrisville?" she asked.
I nodded. "How much further is it?"
"About another thirty miles," she said. "You sure picked a hot day. Hottest day this summer. You ever been to Harrisville before?"
"No this is my first trip," I said.
"Well, honey, it's a good town, I reckon," she said, as she stepped down to me. "You picked a kind of bad time, in addition to the weather. There was this terrible thing happened, this trial, and it kind of stirred people up. But that's all finished now, I guess, and the town will go back to normal."
"I couldn't help but overhear your conversation," I said and drained my beer. "What kind of trial was it? Is someone going to be executed tonight? What kind of murder was it?"
"Oh, it wasn't a murder," she said. 'This guy raped little Millie Perkins. And she was only seventeen."
"And he gets the chair for that?" I asked.
"Listen, he's lucky to get the chair," she said. "The way these people were worked up, they might just have dragged him out into the swamps and taken care of him themselves."
"Yeh, it was a terrible crime," one of the men in blue said, as he turned to me. He had a pinched, wrinkled face and he stared at me a long moment. "This guy tried to slander the little Perkins girl, said all kinds of nasty things about her. He was arrogant and never showed any remorse, and he was an outsider. Had only been town a couple of months."
"People in Harrisville are the friendliest folks on earth," the woman said. "If you give them half a chance. But you got to meet them halfway and you got to respect the things that are important to them. This fella, he was kind of arrogant and a bit standoffish, and he wouldn't give a inch to folks here or their ways.
"like that Meadows fella," the man in blue said. "Of course, old Ron Meadows got so much money and power, no one in town could touch him. But there are a lot of people who would like to see him brought down a few notches."
A chill stabbed my sweating back. Ron Meadows. He was Jamie's father. I started to speak, but checked myself.
"I changed my mind," I said, after a moment. "I think I'll have another beer."
"Sure thing," the woman said, and moved to the ice box.
The blue-suited man turned back to his friends and I took the beer from the woman and poured down a deep swallow. I was thinking of what Jamie had told me of her father and his relationship with the town, when the girl's voice made me look up.
"Mama, I finished the work in the back room," she called. "I want to go home now."
"All right, honey," the woman said, without looking around.
She came from the back room, a short girl who was a little heavy, but it was all concentrated in the best places, and she had some pair of breasts which shoved against her tight, red blouse to show she wore no bra.
She stopped and stared at me, her brown eyes limpid and stupid, almost cow-like. But she was damned sexy, in a lazy, sleepy way, and she licked around her lips with the tip of a broad, pink tongue. She posed for a moment with her weight on one leg so that her jeans were drawn taut across her broad, rounded buttocks.
Then she swayed past me, smiling slightly at the men who stared at the way she rolled those buttocks with each slow step.
I drank the beer and a flood of warmth permeated my body, and I knew this was not from the humid heat. I had chanted to myself many times in the past few hours to cool the sex thing with Jamie, to forget trying to make love to her and concentrate on getting her away from Harrisville, out of whatever trouble she was in. I wanted to marry Jamie, and then worry about sex with her.
But I was one aroused bastard as I thought of the girl who had just swayed past. I drained the beer, threw some coins onto the bar and nodded at the woman, then I walked quickly across the oblong room.
I shoved open the screen door and stepped into the wet, blinding heat. The door clapped shut behind me and I stepped down onto the soft asphalt and crossed the blazing parking lot to my car.
I grabbed the handle and jerked my hand from the burning metal, then jerked around at the sound behind me.
It was the girl, and she was motioning from the flowering bush at the edge of the building. I glanced around, then stepped over.
The building was high off the ground because of the stilts and the girl moved back into the shadows beneath it. I hesitated again, took a couple more steps, then stopped. "Get under here, quick, before somebody sees us," the girl hissed.
'That's what I'm afraid of," I mumbled. But I stepped under the building.
It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the dimness, and as I blinked, she threw herself against me. A weakening surge of fever shot over my body as her huge breasts pressed against my chest, and she wiggled her thighs against mine. I sucked out my breath and my heart went berserk as she wrapped her legs around my thigh and started hunching.
I tried to pry her loose, but she dug her fingers into my neck and smothered my lips in a wet, sucking kiss.
I tore my mouth away. "What in the hell is this?" I whispered as I pried her loose and shoved her back.
"What does it look like, honey?" she said. "No need to whisper now. Too much noise in there for them to hear us. Don't you want me? You looked at me inside like you did. And you sure felt like it just now. Let me see again, honey."
She reached out, but I stepped back and nearly stumbled on some rocks.
"Don't go up there no further," she said. "We can lay down by the bayou, where there's some pine straw."
"This is absurd," I muttered. "How old are you?"
"I'm eighteen, sweetie," she said, and started unbuttoning her blouse. "That's the legal age in this state. Besides, I wouldn't yell rape like that imagine Perkins girl. I'm no sheltered scared debutante. Come on, hon. I could tell upstairs you got class, and now that I rubbed against you I want you more than ever."
Turn around and get the hell out of here, something sane screamed inside me.
But the ghi pulled her blouse off, and her enormous, uptilted mounds, with flat, brown nipples, screamed their own message at my hot, excited body and I stared at the broad, fleshy white thighs she was revealing as she wiggled from her jeans.
I sighed, brushed sweat from my face, and stepped to the girl. I was never the man to turn down an invitation like this.
She ripped off her pink panties and pressed her body against mine. She hunched furiously, her hot, damp body molded there between my legs as her nails dug into my neck. I cupped her squirming buttocks.
She locked her powerful thighs around my legs and hunched wildly as I lowered my head to kiss and lick at her breasts. I sucked the brown nipples and wallowed my face in the steaming, sweaty valley of flesh, and she slid her stubby fingers beneath my shorts to claw at my buttocks.
I staggered back under her weight, and gasped when a sharp nail rammed into my buttocks. I heard myself whimpering as I sucked at her lips, and my prick ached when she tongued the roof of my mouth.
I staggered again, my knees buckled, and we sank to the mat of pine straw. She helped me fumble from my soaking clothes, and with sweat smothering me, I fell to her body, skated a hand over her slick, fleshy thighs, and sucked at her breasts.
As I squeezed her breasts, the brown nipples hardened in my fingers, and she thrust her head back and forth and spread her thighs wide.
My body ached with a searing, exquisite lust as though my skin had been pealed away and I lay on her scalding, wet body with my nerve ends exposed. My prick burned and ached as I rubbed it over her thighs, and my breath came short and gasping as I sucked at her tongue, and her nails raked over my back and buttocks.
"Shove it in, mister," she moaned. "Quick and hard."
She was whimpering and gyrating her buttocks, and her stomach undulated beneath mine. That heaving stomach knew some damned provocative moves, but I was too far gone to appreciate them.
She gasped and opened her thighs as I guided my screaming, sore prick through those slick lips. I paused an instant, heard my own animal-like whimpering, then shoved hard as I grasped her pounding buttocks.
She grunted, froze for a second, and then she locked her legs around me and I bit my lips until I tasted blood.
She twisted muscles in her body and worked those buttocks and rocked her thighs, and her nails and teeth left small painful trails from my shoulders to my thighs.
Her heavy body rocked across the ground and with each move, I moaned and pumped harder. And then as I groaned and sank my teeth into her shoulder, I felt the release building somewhere deep inside me, building as though a thousand threads of searing feeling were being drawn quickly out of my body and through my prick.
I whimpered, thrust once more, then collapsed onto her quivering body, my head on her heaving breasts. She was still too; but for our gasping breath, we might have been dead.
I was weak from the release and the heat. But when I heard a sound from the parking lot, I tore myself from her sweat-slick body, and scrambled to my clothes.
While I dressed, she turned over and propped herself on her elbow, those sexy cow-eyes half closed.
"That was something, honey," she said. "But why rush off? We got plenty of time."
"It was good," I muttered. "Damn good. By the way, what's your name?"
"Gladys," she said. "And how about you?"
'Carl," I said, as I fastened my belt. "Look, it was great, but I've got to get out of here. We wouldn't want to get caught."
She shrugged and scratched her buttocks. "Guess not," she said. "But when you want some more, you know where to find me."
I paused at the edge of the building and glanced out. But the lot was deserted. I ran over, burned my hand on the handle again, and climbed onto plastic seat covers that nearly cooked me alive.
In less than a minute, I was gunning the car down the highway. I slowed down, wiped sweat from my forehead, and thought of Jamie.
CHAPTER TWO
I drove slowly and tried to remember my loneliness when I met Jamie that day on the Via Veneto. Instantly, as we sipped Cinzano and talked, I thought of making love to her. But also from the first, I realized I was hung up on her far beyond the idea of possessing that ripe, young body.
I'm considered a cynic, but deep in each cynic is a romantic, and in all those years of women-years living mostly for sexual pleasure-there had always been a vaguely defined but quite definite ideal of a girl. This ideal had been with me in the trenches in Korea, in several years as a merchant seaman, in construction work in Africa and in deep-sea diving in the Mediterranean and the Red Sea.
Jamie was the ideal and though I considered half of what she said ridiculous, I quickly fell in love with her.
But something in the lush, wet undergrowth I passed pulled only sex images of Jamie from my memory, and as the swamp rolled past, I remembered her lying on the balcony of my apartment overlooking the Piazza Navana in Rome, her incredibly lovely, incredibly pale body glistening with sweat which matted her tiny panties to her buttocks.
My fingers were slippery on the steering wheel and as I turned in the vent to catch the steaming air, I remembered most her death-white skin that burned with a molten quality that resembled warm, white honey.
Jamie lay that afternoon on the cold marble balcony, naked but for the damp panties, and I lay beside her, propped up on an elbow, my lips sucking clumsily at her enormous breasts, my tongue circling the too-long nipples of bright red, while her slender fingers toyed with my ears and damned near drove me crazy.
For two hours, we had kissed and petted there on the balcony, with the sounds of water in Bernini's fountain splashing below.
For two hours, I had kissed her puffed lips and felt her slender tongue rub my tongue and the roof of my mouth.
I had cupped and squeezed her breasts and kissed her nipples and stomach and licked along her feverish, wet thighs, and had even laid on top of her and pumped at her buttocks with my desperate hands.
This un-likely petting session was typical of our three-week-old affair, and as usual I was so aroused I ached, and completely unnerved by, and obsessed with, that body and the huge, innocent blue eyes and the halo of honey-blonde hair about the beautiful face.
And so we lay on the cold marble balcony and I sucked at the oblong, red nipples and gasped out my frantic breath.
"Please, darling, take it easy," she said, in her soft, childish, Southern accent, as she pulled her fingers away. "Please, Carl. You know I don't want to tease you and get you excited and all, and I've told you a dozen times I won't go all the way with you."
"Dammit, I love you," I mumbled, and took the breasts in my hands and squeezed too hard and she gasped and bit her Up. I released the breasts and sucked at her lips and shoved my tongue into her mouth as I rubbed over the warm, wet flesh of her thighs to the bottom rim of the white bikini panties.
But she suddenly doubled her knees and twisted away to block my trembling fingers. And she tore from my sucking hp.
"Please, Carl," she said, and sat up, smoothing her hair back from her sweating forehead and narrowing her blue eyes. "Darling, I love you, too, but this is leading nowhere. You're going to get worked up again, and I can't bear that. But nice girls don't go all the way where I come from."
"Christ, you're in Rome, Jamie," I snapped, as I lay back on my elbows and cursed beneath my breath. I had lived a large part of my life for sex and only sex, and I'd made love to women in half the countries on earth. In the past few years, three girls had teased and petted heavily and then refused to make love. I knocked the hell out of two of them. The third one, a particularly pretty, nasty little California bitch I raped.
But I was lonely and desperate and particularly vulnerable that July. I had fallen in love with, as far as I knew, the last 20-year-old virgin on earth.
"Let's not start that again, Carl," she said. "I've told you and told you I won't go all the way with any man until I'm married and I warned you tonight before I came up here that all I would do is pet. And it's not often I let a boy get me down to my panties and even lay on top of me."
"This is madness, Jamie," I said. "Dammit, I'm not a boy. I'm a thirty-five-year-old man. And you're a woman. And as you know, I'm perfectly willing to marry you."
"You're impossible," she said. "I do love you, or as much as I could love anybody I've only known three weeks. But marriage is out of the question for now. And so is any more sex, darling. You scare me. I know you won't hurt me, but there's something very frightening and animalistic about your behavior tonight."
"Christ, I'm hot as hell," I said. "And I could have a dozen women. But I want only you, Jamie. I'm obsessed with you, baby. I love you. I worship you."
"Please don't talk like that," she said, and took a sip of soda from the glass beside her.
"Forget going all the way, as you so cleverly p,ut it," I said. "I think it's sick, frankly, but I'm too hung up on you to push things. Just lay back, and let me kiss you all over."
"Everywhere?" she asked, with just a hint of unexpected desire and wickedness.
"Everywhere," I said. I reached for the panties, but she blocked my hand with hers.
"I've never let a boy take my panties off," she said. "Twice, when I was pinned to boys, well, I let them put their fingers under my panties and well, you know. But I didn't let them take the panties off."
"I want to be as intimate with you as I can, no matter how," I said, and realized I had come to accept sex on her level. Yet anything further might break down her resistance, and make her want to make love. "I've never done this to a woman, except as a part of making love. So it will be a first for both of us."
"That would be kind of degrading to you, I'd think," she said, and the blue eyes widened. "Frankly, I think that kind of thing with your mouth is awfully nasty, and all, but well, if you really want to. When in Rome, or something like that."
"I really want to, Jamie," I said.
"Don't try to get me all excited, or anything like that," Jamie said, as she lay back down. "I mean, it might get me kind of excited, but I've petted a lot and I can control myself, and I'd never forgive you."
"Don't worry, Jamie," I said, and scrambled between her luscious, tapered legs and spread those virginal, hot-ivory thighs and her unreal fever seemed to flow into my body.
The panties were matted to her skin and the bulge was large against the white silk. There was a faint smell of powder as I rubbed my flat palms over the upper thighs and inched my face forward, and with the powder a further smell, slightly pungent, and so arousing my mouth fell open and saliva dropped from my lips and I slid my hands to cup her buttocks as I nuzzled the panties and mumbled, "Jamie, Jamie," into the silk.
I noticed her flat stomach was heaving and her little hands had doubled into fists at her sides, and then I planted my lips against the silk and groaned aloud at the sensation.
I tore the panties off those squirming thighs, kissed over the sweating flesh, and then I slid my hands beneath her to fondle her poking buttocks as I gazed for a moment at the huge mound of matted blonde hair.
I sucked in my breath and there was no powder smell then, and I extended my tongue and flicked at the mat of hairs and my heart pounded and a strange warmth permeated my rigid body.
I felt Jamie's body tighten, and then I licked through the thick curl of hair and when my tongue touched the flesh, touched the firm-soft, wet, sticky lips, I heard myself gasping.
With an animal cry, I buried my face, kissing and licking and sucking in a frenzy.
Then as I pumped at her moving buttocks, my lips and tongue found her clitoris, and as though I had discovered salvation, I took it in my lips and sucked, and my tongue lashed frantically.
Jamie abruptly jerked her body away, and scrambled across the balcony, her breath coming in short, desperate gasps.
I looked over, my eyes glazed, my face flooded with moisture, my body weak, hot and aching.
"No, Carl, please, this is enough, this is wrong," she was babbling, as she tugged her panties on. "If you love me, please stop. I should never have let you do that."
"My God, I do love you," I said. "I want you, darling, more than I've ever wanted a woman. I'll marry in this instant. Please, I want you. I need you."
And then my little virgin got the panties over her thighs and she bolted up and backed toward the door. "Don't ever be weak with me, Carl," she said, in a strange, cutting voice. "If anything ever comes between us, it may be what you just did. Let's go somewhere, and talk. I do love you, but I just hate sex like that."
We dressed and crossed Piazza Navona to Tre Scalini and sat in the outside cafe in front of Bernini's Fountain of the Four Rivers, beside the Church of St. Agnes in Agony.
Jamie ate a tartufo, a huge mound of rich, dark chocolate ice cream, covered with chocolate and whipped cream, and filled with fruit. She ate greedily and with a touch of mischief and a child-like quality.
After the ice cream she had espresso and I drank Peroni Beer. We sat with our chairs together and I put my arm around her as bells pealed vespers and swallows circled in the deep blue sky above the faded red and brown houses that lined the square.
The fountain has four giant stone figures each representing a river, and Jamie studied the gigantic figure with the cloak over his face, that looked onto the church.
"Why is his face covered like that?" She asked.
"He represents the Nile," I said. "And in Bernini's time, the source of the Nile was unknown. But there's another explanation, which you don't find in the guidebooks."
"What is it?" she asked eagerly.
"Bernini thought the guy who designed the Church of St. Agnes in Agony was a lousy architect, and he considered the church so ugly he had his stone man hide his face rather than look on it."
Jamie laughed. "I like that story best," she said. "It is an ugly church. Why is it called St. Agnes in Agony?"
"She was a Christian maiden during Roman times," I said. "And this was a stadium, this whole piazza. A Roman nobleman became obsessed with her and she refused his advances. So he had her stripped and tortured in the arena. But her hair miraculously grew long to cover her body and save her from humiliation."
"That's some story," she said.
'That's not the whole story," I said. 'They tried to burn her alive, but the flames wouldn't burn her, so they had to cut her head off."
"Poor St. Agnes," Jamie said. "To be remembered by such an ugly church. And to be humiliated like that. Even if her hair did grow down, she must have been abused sexually and degraded in front of all those people."
"It's just a legend," I said.
"Oh, it's probably true," she said. "It makes me shiver just to think of it, Carl. I can't conceive of anything worse than being sexually humiliated or exploited. Or of being weak, and at the mercy of someone else's sexual whims."
"Baby, the world's not like that," I said. "No one has to be exploited, or at anyone's mercy. But people do want each other, very much, particularly when they're in love. And I love you, dammit. To get excited or passionate isn't weak, Jamie."
"Oh, I believe in love," she said. "I really love Daddy, and I think I love you. But Daddy has raised me never to be weak or to want anyone or to let myself get obsessed with anything. He hates weakness. And so do I, Carl. I want you to love me, darling. But don't ever get carried away like you did upstairs."
"You know, you've got a real goddam father hang-up," I said. "It's time you grew out of it."
"Don't try to provoke me," she said. "I guess I am hungup on Daddy, as you say, particularly since my mother died when I was young. But I do respect his incredible strength and his ability to be successful without needing another living soul. Except maybe me. I think you're a lot like him. But you were really weak with me about sex, Carl. And a nice girl just doesn't go beyond a point."
"How can I argue with you?" I asked. "It's a hopeless goddam argument. I've never been obsessed with a woman the way I'm with you, because I've never been in love with a woman they way I'm in love with you, Jamie. In my world, people meet and if they like each other, they make love. You're right, I'm not weak. But I've never been involved with a so-called nice girl like you. Nothing you say makes sense to me."
"Oh, you are mad," she said and nodded with mock severity. "It is a useless argument, darling. But our worlds are so totally different, you have to be patient with me. To show weakness with anyone, even over here, makes me wary. Daddy has to be so careful, and I know I'm his most vulnerable point."
"Now, you've lost me again, crazy girl," I said.
"Carl, Daddy went into our town many years ago, with nothing but his clothes, not a penny," she said, "and he scratched and clawed and built up a huge business and got awfully wealthy. But the town doesn't like strangers and people really resented that an outsider could become so wealthy. And to get where he is, Daddy had to step over a lot of people."
"So his friends and neighbors are just waiting for a chance to undo him?" I asked.
"Oh, not everyone, silly," she said. "But some people would love to see him ruined. Why, the next door neighbors, the Conways, are practically bankrupt, because of Daddy's business activities. And that terrible Peggy Sue Conway just hates me. And people hate Daddy, too, because he did it all alone, and never asked for any help, and is so independent and strong, he can't be touched or degraded in any way."
"And you're afraid someone will use you to hurt him?" I asked.
"They sure would, but they'll never get the chance," she said. "I'm awfully careful to be the nicest girl of all, and not to pet too much or drink too much, and girls like that Peggy Sue just despise me and would love to see me make a slip."
"Hell, baby, that sounds like an awful life," I said. "Why not marry me and get the hell out of there and live your own life?"
"It's not a terrible life, either," she said. 'There's fun and nice people and everything is gentle and proper and I like it that way. And Daddy needs me."
"Hell, let's walk," I said.
We had this kind of argument before, and as usual I ended it before I got angry. I thought she was half crazy, and her values and arguments ridiculous. But I was hopelessly infatuated with her.
And so we walked and held hands and I could only hope that in time, I could pull her from her background, and alter her values and ideas.
Later I took her back to her pensione, and we made a date for lunch the next day.
But I never saw Jamie again. In the morning mail came a short letter saying she had received a cable from her father and had to go home. She said she loved me, and would write me, but she never did.
She had never told me her hometown, and so I could never contact her.
I was hurt, my goddam guts ripped out, and for weeks I lived only for the three time a day mail delivery at the trattoria where I got my mail.
I later went to Morocco, to the Red Sea on a diving job, and then to Crete, to stay with a woman.
On my return to Rome, there was a letter from Jamie, several weeks old, asking me to go to her hometown and help her.
I cabled her I was on my way, and planes to New York and New Orleans led me to this drive through the swamps.
CHAPTER THREE
Four hours later I sat in the dining room of a hotel across from Harrisville's tree-lined square and sipped strong, black coffee.
Dusk was purple and quiet and a string of naked light bulbs glowed in the square, strung between the magnolia and oak and pine trees. The courthouse was an old, white-columned building topped with a tower which had a clock on each side. The clock on this side told me it was eight. I thought of trying to call Jamie again-half a dozen earlier calls had gone unanswered-but I was nervous as hell and I decided to drive out to her house again.
People in town had been friendly enough, but there was obviously a residue of tension about the recent rape trial, and the execution due to take place at midnight in the state prison.
I finished the coffee, and asked for my check, then paid the tall, thin waitress for my two gin rickeys with shaved ice and bottle of beer, stuffed, deviled crab, cole slaw, pecan pie and coffee.
I walked quickly to my car and the tires squealed as I drove off. There were several new buildings lining the square, modern glass-and-brick structures that testified to the town's prosperity that had come since the Second World War from the establishment of half a dozen medium-sized factories, as well as offshore oil drilling in the nearby Gulf of Mexico.
I had noticed, in my first trip out to Jamie's house, huge, gleaming modern shopping centers and rows of rectangular brick apartment houses at the edge of town.
These relatively new parts of the town could have been found anywhere in the country. But there was another side to Harrisville.
It was essentially a traditional Southern town, with broad, tree-lined streets radiating from the square, and pleasant old houses set behind thick lawns surrounded by neat flower-filled gardens.
This was the picture of Harrisville Jamie had given, a lovely, tradition-bound town that had molded her and made her dislike sex or anything that wasn't "nice." I turned a corner and saw a huge brick house with white columns across the front. But this time, there were lights inside. I parked and ran up the curved, flagstone walk and rang the bell. But there was no answer. I cursed aloud, rang again and waited. Then I pivoted.
On my second step across the broad porch, the door opened behind me. I stopped and turned and there was a lovely, black-haired girl in a white linen dress.
"Yes, can I help you?" she said, in a slow, deep accent.
"I'm looking for Jamie Meadows," I said. 'This is her home, isn't it?"
"It certainly is," she said. "But Jamie's not here, and neither is her daddy. My name is Peggy Sue Conway, and I'm their closest neighbor. Live just on the other side of that big hedge yonder. And you must be Carl. Why, old Jamie was talking up a storm about you coming and all."
"That's right, I'm Carl," I said, as she extended her small hand.
"I'm glad to meet you," she said, and we shook hands and I glanced from the breasts which nearly spilled over the linen dress, to the angular, tanned face and big, black eyes framed by black hair. But it was her heart-shaped lips, both sweet and obscene, that made me go warm.
"I just scooted over to see if they had any ice, but they're all out, too," she said. "We're having this lawn party at my house, Carl, and it's been such a hot day, why, we gave out of ice. You come right on over and join us. I promised Jamie I'd look after you if you got here while she was away."
"Where is Jamie?" I asked, and stared at those luscious, nearly bizarre lips.
She shrugged. "Oh, she and her daddy went somewhere," she said. "Don't you worry. We'll take care of you until she gets back."
She took me by the hand and led me across the thick carpet of grass.
"Look, I'm not dressed for a party," I said, as we passed through a wrought-iron gate between two enormous hedges. "Maybe I better go back to the hotel and change."
"That's no problem," she said. "I'll just show you up to my brother's room and you can freshen up and borrow one of his jackets and ties. He's away in the army."
"Well, if it's not too much trouble."
"like I said, I promised old Jamie I'd look after you," she said, and led me into another huge, white-columned house, down a long hallway, and up a sweeping stairway to a second-floor bedroom.
"Now, you get all cleaned up and dressed and all, and I'll get you a drink," she gurgled, and we stared at each other a moment.
She was one goddam good-looking girl, and besides those wicked lips and large breasts, she had an incredibly narrow waist, flaring hips, and perfect, tapered, deeply tanned legs.
She left and I walked over and stared out the window at the party below. Pretty girls in sleeveless, flowered dresses and men in jackets and ties were dancing beneath Japanese lanterns, while Negro men in white jackets served drinks. Everything seemed serene and natural, except for one very large question.
Why in hell was this girl, who Jamie had said despised her, and whose father had been nearly ruined by Jamie's father, coming on with this gushing, good-neighbor bit?
When Peggy Sue returned with my drink, it seemed her dress was somehow drawn tighter and lower to emphasize the thrust of her large, rather oblong breasts. Or was it my imagination?
But I'm certain she had put on some perfume, a musky, provocative scent. And there was no doubt she had dabbed pink-frost lipstick onto those sweetly obscene heart-shaped lips.
"Lots of gin and just a little tonic, and so cold it will chill you right through," she said.
"So the ice came?" I said, as I took the tall, slim glass. Her small hand lingered an instant on mine.
"What ice?" she asked. "Oh, that. We finally got some from the ice house."
I tilted the glass at her. 'Thanks," I said. "Aren't you drinking?"
"Oh, I hardly ever do," she said. "Sometimes a little punch or some sherry at a party, you know.
But I don't do much real drinking, I'm afraid. None of us do, really. I mean, nice girls around here don't do that kind of thing."
I took a long swallow and the drink was goddam cold and lethal. "How about the nice boys around here?"
She giggled and stepped closer. "Silly," she purred. "It's different with boys. Everything is. But nice girls are special around here."
"So I gather," I said, and drank the gin.
She cocked her pretty, tanned face and the big, black eyes sparkled with all kinds of innocence and charm.
"I've got to get back to my guests, Carl," she said, as she raised up on her toes. "You get all cleaned up and dressed and then you come right on down and join us." Her breath was warm on my face.
Of course, I kissed those damp lips, softly pressed against them and there was a texture, a quality of flesh I'd never experienced.
She twisted her mouth slightly and an electric chill coursed my body. I kissed her fiercely and shoved my tongue into her mouth, and she stiffened, but she moved her childishly obscene, hot lips in half a dozen exciting ways. Then she nibbled at my tongue.
And as I slid my free hand around to squeeze her buttocks and draw her slim body tighter against mine, she suddenly bit hell out of my tongue.
She pranced away, dimples showing in her mocking, innocent smile. But her dark eyes were narrowed and deadly as the eyes of a bird of prey.
"Nice girls have to be careful, Carl," she said, as she backed to the door.
I nodded and sipped the gin. "You're a very nice girl," I said, intending to be sarcastic, but my suddenly heavy breathing and red face negated the attempted scorn of my words.
"I can sort of see why old Jamie-likes you so much," she said.
"When is old Jamie getting back?" I asked. "I don't think you told me where she and her father went."
"They've gone out of town," she said. "I imagine they'll be back by tomorrow at supper time, Carl. Now excuse me. I have to make sure Millie Perkins is getting along all right."
"Millie Perkins?" I asked. "Isn't she the girl who was raped?"
"That was poor Millie," she said, and shook her head. "And he seemed like such a nice boy. We're all afraid she'll never recover from what happened. A girl like Millie can't handle that kind of thing."
"You're having a lawn party on the night of the execution of the man who raped her?" I asked.
"Why, we decided it was the best possible way to keep her mind, and everybody else's, off the execution."
"Beautiful," I said, but she walked quickly from the room.
I crossed over to the window and sipped my drink. Beautiful, I repeated to myself, as Peggy Sue ran out of the house and down a flight of stone steps to a cluster of people around a short, blonde-haired girl with an exquisitely fragile and beautiful face, and a doll-like body.
It must have been Millie because Peggy Sue put her arm around the girl's shoulder and they walked away.
"Jesus," I mumbled and drained the gin and tonic.
About a dozen things didn't fit into place, but I had no goddam idea what was wrong. And I told myself to cool it until I saw Jamie.
But as I started to go into the bathroom, I saw Peggy Sue and Millie walking back through a garden, into a grove of flowering bushes. They were secluded from the party.
And delicate little Millie Perkins, the nice girl whose violated body was sending a man to the electric chair in a few hours, sank to her knees, pulled down Peggy Sue's panties, and buried her lovely face between Peggy Sue's thighs.
I stared for the full five minutes that Millie stayed on her knees. Then she stood up and Peggy Sue put on her panties. And both girls, smiling sweetly, returned to the party.
As I walked into the bathroom, my stomach was knotted and my legs rubbery, and I had that strange, hot weakness I used to feel just before going into combat in Korea.
CHAPTER FOUR
A long shower relaxed me, and dressed in a blue sport jacket that was a little tight across the shoulders I walked down the stairs and through a hallway to the back of the house.
There was a steady hum pf talk punctuated by sudden sharp laughter or a shrill giggle, and behind this noise the steady beat of a rock song.
I stepped outside and paused at the top of the steps that led down onto the flagstone terrace, and for a moment no one noticed me. Then everyone seemed to glance over at once, and in the same instant there were quick, whispered conversations and then beaming smiles.
I plunged into the crowd, and from out of nowhere Peggy Sue scurried up, her black eyes sparkling and her sweetest hostess smile crinkling her lips.
"Why, I was just wondering if you'd fallen in upstairs and drowned," she said. "Everybody knows you're here, and they're anxious to meet you. But first, you probably want something cold to drink, don't you, Carl?"
"I could use a drink," I said.
Peggy Sue led me through the crowd, and people smiled and spoke and stared a bit openly. Everyone was young-obviously this was a party for Peggy Sue's crowd. Off to the side, I saw a middle-aged couple and laughed to myself as I realized all these nice girls would certainly have a chaperon at any party.
And then I remembered Peggy Sue and Millie and the interior laugh knotted up in my gut and I glanced at the pretty smile Peggy Sue flashed as she looked over her shoulder, and at the subtle but provocative way her lovely, rounded buttocks moved beneath the white linen dress.
We paused at a long table covered with a white cloth and jammed with plates of shrimp, oysters, hors d'oeuvres and potato chips, bottles of bourbon, Scotch, gin and vodka, tonic, 7-Up, ginger ale and Coke, and a huge, crystal punch bowl filled with pink liquid in which floated cherries and chunks of ice.
Behind the table stood a short, gray-haired Negro man in a white jacket, whose face was deeply etched with wrinkles. As we approached, he smiled and nodded.
"Carl, this is Raynold," Peggy Sue said. "He's been with my family for many years. Raynold, this is Mister Carl. He's going to be visiting old Jamie and her daddy."
Raynold's smile faded an instant at the mention of Jamie and her father. But he quickly smiled again.
"Pleased to meet you, Mister Carl," he said, and nodded. "You sure picked a hot day to come visiting. What can I fix to cool you off?"
"Glad to meet you, Raynold," I said. "A vodka and tonic would be good." As he mixed the drink, I caught myself staring at Peggy Sue's lips, then her enormous breasts surging against the thin, virginal-white linen.
I looked away and took a tall, frosting glass from Raynold. The drink was strong and bone-cold, and I poured down two quick swallows.
"Well, now that you're getting yourself cool, it's time to meet everybody, Carl," Peggy Sue said. "Then we can dance, if you like."
"Fine," I said, and took another quick swallow before turning to face the party guests who were standing in groups talking or dancing to some song from a stereo set
Peggy Sue led me to group after group, all people in their late teens and early twenties, the men generally tanned with crew-cut brown or blonde hair, dressed in expensive summer sport jackets with ties, the girls ranging from plain to blandly pretty to damn beautiful, and I shook hand after hand and exchanged the inanities necessary at mass introductions.
The girls smiled and a couple giggled, and the men smiled, too, and made light talk, and there was music in the background, and the brightly colored Japanese lanterns swayed in a thin, warm, breeze that brought the deep, sweet smell of honeysuckle. But permeating every movement, every smile, every handshake was tension, uneasiness, even wariness.
Another Negro man in a white jacket served me a second drink before I finished the first. I pumped the hand of a tall, broad-shouldered boy named Ted, and saw that we were a few feet from the middle-aged couple. But as I turned toward them, Peggy Sue put her hand on my arm.
"Just a minute, Carl," she said, softly. "Before you meet Mother and Daddy, I want you to meet poor Millie and some of Jamie's really special girl friends."
Peggy Sue took my hand and we walked over to a cluster of white, wrought-iron lawn furniture beside a stereo set which blasted out a Beatles song to which several couples were dancing.
Four girls were gathered around Millie Perkins, who was dabbing at her brown eyes with a daintily patterned lace handkerchief. Millie stood up as we approached, and as I stared at those little-ghi eyes filled with grief and seven kinds of wronged and raped innocence, I had the strangest feeling, a combination of attraction and repulsion that was overwhelming.
". . .so awfully glad to meet you, Carl," Millie was saying, and I shook her small hand as another girl glanced at her watch, giggled and whispered something to Peggy Sue.
The wind tousled Millie's short, honey-blonde hair, and I thought of that fragile, incredibly lovely face between Peggy Sue's thighs, and saw that her apparently doll-like body had been somewhat deceptive from a distance, because though small, she had fairly large breasts and nice hips that flared slightly against her tight, powder-blue dress.
All this took an instant, and then Peggy Sue introduced me to Kerry Lawrence, a sexy, pixie-cut, round-faced girl with green eyes, short, shaggy red hair, small breasts, narrow waist-a slim girl with perfectly shaped legs and incredibly provocative buttocks that poked out too fax, but just far enough to be damned arousing. We shook hands, and exchanged greetings, and she giggled.
Kerry, it was obvious, giggled a lot, in a childish way, yet when she moved, it was with a liquid like, very grown up lady type movement that accentuated the jutting buttocks without being overly obvious or cheap.
Next, it was Sandy Clark, who was no more than 5 ft. 1 in., and who stared at me with enormous, robin's-egg-blue eyes, stared in a way that was not only challenging sexually, but was also unnerving. As she said, "Pleased to meet you," and we shook hands, she glanced at her watch.
Her small, beautiful face was covered with freckles and framed by shoulder-length curly brown hair. Sandy had moderate-sized breasts and lovely legs and buttocks and she seemed to be always doing something with her puffed, damp lips-twisting them slightly, nibbling the lower lip, licking the lips.
As I stepped from Sandy, she glanced at her watch again and so did Kerry and the nearby music seemed louder, the frantic rock beat more intense, the hum of nervous, tense noise from behind us more desperate. And Millie was crying softly.
Then I was shaking hands with Julie Rawlson, who was five feet seven inches tall, maybe half an inch more, a willowly girl with rather sharply uptilted breasts. She was burned a heavy brown from the sun, and her short, dirty-blonde hair was sun-bleached a shade lighter.
She was more cute than pretty, with an insolent, provocative smile, dark brown eyes, and slim, powerful legs whose muscle tone indicated she liked sports.
And finally, as Millie got up, smiled quickly at me and walked away with three of the girls, I shook hands with Emily Ann Walters, who must have been at least 19 or so, but whose slim face looked about 14, and whose blue eyes looked younger, and whose sweet, pleased-to-meet-you smile showed her deep dimples.
And this very thin little girl, with the child-face and short-cropped, blonde hair, had one of the largest pair of breasts I'd ever seen, out of all proportion to her body, or most any body, gigantic mounds that thrust proudly upward and strained against her sleeveless white blouse.
"I heard Jamie talk so much about you, I couldn't wait until you got here," she said, in a soft voice that inflected the end of a declarative sentence as though it were a question.
"Do you know where Jamie went or when she'll be back?" I asked.
Emily Ann glanced at Peggy Sue. "Why, no, Carl, I don't know," she said, quickly. "Jamie and her daddy pop off like that sometime, don't they, Peggy Sue?"
"Why, they sure do," Peggy Sue said. "But I told Carl we'd take good care of him until Jamie got back."
"We'll sure do that," Emily Ann said. "What time is it, Peggy Sue?"
"Now, you stop that, you hear me?" Peggy Sue said. "Everybody has simply got to stop looking at their watches every two minutes."
"I don't think midnight will ever get here, I swear," Emily Ann said. "I think I'll go right on over and have me something like gin to drink."
"Emily Ann! You had one," Peggy Sue said. "What will everybody think? Oh well, I guess tonight is sort of special." And when she thought I wasn't looking, Peggy Sue flashed a smile at Emily Ann.
Mr. and Mrs. Conway had been staring at me for the past several minutes, and now they made a point of talking busily and looking the other way as Peggy Sue took me over. But they turned quickly to us when we approached, smiled deeply and welcomed me to Harrisville.
Mr. Conway was a short, fat, red-faced man in his early fifties, and every word and every gesture was lined with nervousness, and as he talked too rapidly and too politely, his small eyes darting quickly over my face, as though trying to pry beneath my superficial words and determine my real relationship with Jamie and her father.
Mrs. Conway, who was also short, but very thin, said little, but merely nodded at her husband's every sentence.
"And how long will you be in Harrisville?" Mr. Conway asked.
"I really don't know." I said.
"Well, it's a fine town," he said, 'Though recently, there has been this terrible ordeal. With the stranger and the Perkins child. Thank the Lord the ordeal is nearly over for everyone."
"I don't want to talk about it anymore, Daddy," Peggy Sue said.
"Shall we dance?" I asked.
There was a slow record now and Peggy Sue snuggled into my arms and we danced slowly, around the flagstone terrace among the other couples, and Peggy Sue knew just how to rub her body against mine in ways that weren't obvious to anyone, but which sure as hell were obvious to my body.
And in turn I danced with each of the girls, and each of them, Emily Ann and Kerry, Sandy and Julie, moved their bodies to excite me, moved in secret subtle ways that must have driven dozens of young, scared boys to the brink of erotic disaster on many a terrace and country club dance floor.
And then I danced with Millie as the bizarre party continued, and the pace quickened and even the nice girls drank gin and vodka and people moved nervously and glanced at watches.
Millie, too, worked her violated body against mine, and her tears wet my white shirt and sweat matted my undershirt to my back. The humidity seemed to rise, the smell of honeysuckle was stronger, and fireflies blinked on and off in the dark garden as that strange imitation of a New Year's Eve party staggered toward midnight.
But un-like New Year's Eve, this midnight brought only a sudden silence, as every movement stopped, and the tension seemed to drain from people as though someone had pulled a master switch.
I stood alone with a drink. Millie was nowhere to be seen, and Peggy Sue had vanished also, and as I gulped down the cold vodka and stared at the people who stood still and quiet, I thought wildly of the garden scene again.
And then people moved as though one cue, finished drinks and thanked the Conways and fled the terrace as though the ark waited around the house and they would be caught in the flood if they did not escape. I waited my turn as the terrace emptied and the street was filled with car sounds and screeching tires.
I had lingered until last, hoping to say good night, then slip next door and make certain Jamie and her father had not returned. I thanked Mr. and Mrs. Conway, and said good night to Raynold, then looked around for Peggy Sue.
I saw Emily Ann, who smiled and vanished around the house with a tall, blonde boy, and then Kerry, who called good night. And then the Conways had gone and I was alone, except for the Negro men who were cleaning up.
To hell with Peggy Sue, I muttered to myself. I'd had all of this incredible night I could take. I wanted to check on Jamie and then get back to the hotel, where I could drink alone and try to fit some of these un-likely pieces together.
I walked quickly from the terrace and through the iron gate in the hedge, and there, coming from a dark house, was Peggy Sue.
"I went to turn the lights out," she said. "And then I waited for you to head for your car. I knew you'd come this way to check again. But they're not back yet."
"Well, it's all over now but the shouting," I said. "And where is poor little Millie?"
Peggy Sue stared at me an instant, those dark eyes narrowed again. Then the eyes sparkled and she smiled sweetly.
"All over but the shouting," she said, and shook her head. "Now, that's an awfully strange thing to say, Carl. A couple of the girls took Millie home. Worst thing in the world is for her to be alone, I mean, even with her parents."
"Yes, that would be awful," I said. "Well, I appreciate your hospitality, but I've had a hell of a day, and I think I'll go back to the hotel."
She put her hand on my arm and stepped closer, her musky perfume mingling with the scent of honeysuckle. "Oh, not yet, Carl," she said. "Why, we haven't had any time at all to talk, and I'd like to know all about you. Mother and Daddy think I went over to Millie's so we could be alone for a while. We could walk back into the garden behind Jamie's house, and Mother and Daddy couldn't see us at all."
"Isn't that improper for a nice girl," I asked.
"Now you're making fun of me," she said, in a little-girl-hurt voice. "You're older and all, and I do feel like a child, Carl." She circled a shirt button with a sharp nail, and looked up at me, her eyes narrow. "But even a nice girl might surprise you, in a place like that garden."
She stepped closer, and her breasts brushed my chest. My body tensed with a thousand hot points of sexual excitement and I remembered her earlier kiss.
I told myself this might be a perfect chance to find out what was really happening, and knew I'd be a fool to offend Peggy Sue at this point.
"All right, let's go for a walk in the garden," I said.
Peggy Sue smiled and took my hand. We walked beside the tall hedge and though I told myself, that I disliked this little girl, I also had to admit that she was one lovely and provocative woman.
And of course I knew she was involved in something awful with Millie, with the rape thing for all I knew.
But I inhaled her perfume and kept thinking of those lips, and frankly, I found it was a little difficult to walk.
CHAPTER FIVE
It was dark behind Jamie's house, so Peggy Sue led the way among the flowerbeds and rose bushes. She seemed to know it well.
We stopped beside a gigantic weeping willow and Peggy Sue pulled her hand from mine.
"See that window at the right, on the second floor," she said. "That's Jamie's bedroom."
I glanced up, but the house was so dark it was difficult to make out the windows very distinctly.
"And which one is her father's?" I asked.
"Now, why would you want to know that?" she asked. "You know, I'm not even sure."
"Just an idle question," I said. I put my hand on her shoulder, and squeezed slightly, and she looked up and smiled.
"You say some strange things, Carl," she said, and toyed with another button on my shirt. "like that thing about the shouting and all, when we were up by the hedge. That whole terrible rape thing is nothing to joke about. At least, not around here. You're new and I sure do like you, but you wouldn't want to get off on the wrong foot with people and talk about something like Millie's rape in a way people might misunderstand."
"Millie's rape," I said, "You make it sound like something valuable that belongs to her."
She shook her head. "Now, see, that's exactly what I mean," she said, and unbuttoned the button. "You just can't offend people."
"Am I offending you?" I asked, and stroked her neck, then slid my hand behind her neck and drew her face up close. She took a step, and her breasts moved against my chest, and then her small hands were tickling around my neck and ears, and her breath was warm on my cheek.
"Not yet, Carl," she said, very softly, and directly into my ear, so that her hot, damp breath sent a surge of warmth over my body. "I do want us to become friends, but I'm not quite sure about you."
She bit my ear, and I gasped at the sudden pain. She danced from my arms, her eyes narrowed, her lean, lovely face set and almost grim in the moonlight.
"You like to bite, don't you?" I snapped, but my anger at the pain was offset by the way her teeth had aroused me.
"Sometimes," she said. "I can bite lots harder, Carl. Or I can use just my lips and they're very, very soft. But we were going to talk, remember."
I tried to check my heavy breathing as I stared at her body moonlit in the white linen, and then I had the wild thought of what lay between those slim, smooth thighs. Sweat dropped from my forehead and my ear ached and there was a sexual throbbing of mild pain between my own thighs and I had the wild idea: what if her fantastic lips are indicative of what lies below.
"What are you thinking, Carl?" she asked, as she pulled a leaf from a rosebush. "You've got the strangest look in your eyes."
"I was thinking about you, Peggy Sue."
"And what were you thinking, sir?"
"You're a very attractive lady." My pants were drawn tight between my thighs, and I took a step to relieve the pain they caused. I wanted this little bitch, wanted desperately to make love to her, to tear off that white dress and discover the nature of her treasure, to fondle it and see if it had the same bizarre quality as her mouth. I had no idea of her sexual experience, but after witnessing the incident with Millie, I knew this girl, un-like Jamie, was not innocent, and certainly no "nice girl."
"Well, that's very kind of you, Carl," she said, and picked a yellow rosebud and smelled it. "But from the way you were staring, I had the idea you were thinking of more specific things about me."
"Does it frighten you?"
"Do I seem frightened, Carl?" she asked and held out the rosebud for me to smell.
"No, Peggy Sue, you seem very sure of yourself," I said.
She threw the bud away, and cocked her head up at me. "You met Jamie when she was traveling in Europe, didn't you?"
I ignored the question. "How long have you and Jamie been good friends?"
"Why, for ages," she said. "At least since her daddy started making all that money and they could afford to move out here. You can't help but be friends when you're next-door neighbors."
"And is your father also a good friend?" I asked. "I mean of Jamie's father?"
She shrugged, and looked away. "It's different with men," she said. "I mean, they're both in business and all. They both belong to the Rotary Club, and things like that. Why? What did Jamie tell you about her daddy and my daddy?"
"Nothing," I lied. "And almost nothing about herself. I only knew her a short time. Yes, it was in Europe. In Rome."
Peggy Sue traced a finger over my cheek, then my lips. "Did you come here to well, I mean, are you serious? Or going to get married?"
I kissed the finger, and she moved to me again.
"Aren't you prying a little?" I asked. "That's something between Jamie and me, isn't it?"
She put her arms around me and rubbed her body against mine she smothered my lips in a wet, twisting kiss, and the touch of her hot, moving lips shot over my tense body an electric shock of excitement.
She pulled her lips away, but rubbed her breasts against my chest.
"Is it?" she asked, and stared at me, her eyes wide, the tip of her tongue licking around her maddening lips. "If we're going to be really good friends, Carl, I've got to know. Surely you can see that."
I put my hands on her narrow waist and tried to kiss her again, but she avoided my lips and tongue. Kissed my aching ear as her small fingers stroked my neck, then moved up into my hair.
I cupped her rounded buttocks and shoved her squirming body hard against mine, shoved so tightly until my body was hot and aching against her thighs. Her tongue-tip flicked against my ear, and then her teeth were nibbling very faintly.
"Don't wrinkle my dress, it's brand new," she mumbled into my ear, as I squeezed and fondled the gyrating buttocks.
"We're a little exposed out here, even though it is pretty dark," she said, "if the Meadows came back. Jamie and I used to play house under the branches of this willow tree, when we were little. Just let me get out of my dress."
Peggy Sue stepped away, and her hands shot behind her back to unfasten the dress. My heart raced and I stared at this girl and the thin veneer of rationale about wanting to find out something from her, to help Jamie, was stripped away as she carefully removed the dress.
I knew she was trying to pump me, also, and that if she hated Jamie's guts, she would be getting a great deal of satisfaction out of having me right in Jamie's backyard.
Christ, it was a crummy thing, I mumbled to myself, but then Peggy Sue had the dress off, and she straightened up just as the moon broke from the clouds.
And bitch or awful girl though she was, her deeply tanned body bathed in faint moonlight was irresistible. No amount of feeling for Jamie, or even realization of the dangerously compromising position into which I was putting myself could have eased the searing throb of white-hot desire that pained my sexual parts and made my legs rubbery.
"There now, that's better," she said matter-of-factly, and neatly folded the dress and put it on the grass, then stood up and twisted a mocking, provocative smile on the corners of her sweetly obscene lips as she posed in the moonlight.
Her copper-toned body was highlighted by her vividly white bra and panties and a white garter belt. Her tapered legs flowed up from her white, high-heel shoes, sleek in her stockings, and her smooth, golden upper thighs were vivid contrasts with the starkly white garter belt and lace-trimmed bikini panties.
The thighs glistened faintly with sweat, and I sucked in my breath as I stared at the unusually large bulge against the thin silk of the panties.
I glanced over the flat stomach and narrow waist to the large breasts which nearly spilled from the frilly white bra. Her lips were slightly parted and her eyes wide.
"Well, silly, say something," she purred, and pivoted slowly on her toes. "Or maybe you don't like me."
"Baby, I like you a lot," I said. "You've got some body."
"I love to be sweet-talked," she said.
"What else do you love, Peggy Sue?" I gasped, as I reached for her.
But she moved away. "Come on, where no one can see us, Carl," she said. And then, I swear to God, she giggled.
That nearly broke the mood, but she took my hand and led me through the willow leaves. The low dripping leaf-covered limbs fell away from the trunk to create a small enclosed area big enough for us to stand up.
She leaned against the trunk and put her arms around me, and as I kissed her fiercely, she wrapped a leg around my thigh, and I slid my hands over her buttocks and jerked her hard against my screaming body.
Her tongue slithered through my lips, and tickled the roof of my mouth, worked in fantastic ways while her burning, wet lips sucked at mine and her nails scratched my neck and back beneath my shirt.
She bit my tongue-tip and when I gasped, she giggled again, and licked my tongue with hers, and her thighs worked in a maddening rhythm against my body, and all this time my hands clawed at her squirming buttocks.
Then, gasping for breath, my face scarlet I pulled away, and ripped off the thin patch of material that imprisoned her breasts.
It was pitch black and I could not see the huge mounds, but I fondled and squeezed them until the large, flat nipples hardened, and then I lowered my head to kiss and lick and suck the breasts and nipples. And finally, I showed Peggy Sue I could bite too.
But she only groaned softly, and worked the breasts in my mouth, while her nails scratched at my neck and shoulders.
I was dangerously hot now, my sexual nerve ends aching acutely, and Peggy Sue was kissing, sucking and tonguing my mouth and tongue in ways that would have been envied by well-known and very expensive hookers in Paris or Rome.
But when I tried to lift her by her undulating buttocks and lie her down, she tore her lips away and her slim, hot body stiffened.
"No, Carl," she muttered, and tried to free herself from my hands. "No, dammit. Let me go."
"Christ, what are you doing?" I snorted, as anger for an instant overcame my lust and I realized that despite the way she came on and her expert kissing and the scene with Millie, who might indeed be a virgin-and nothing more than a little tease.
"Let me go," she said, with an edge of desperate bitterness on words."
I released her and cursed aloud, because I dared not try to force her in any way. But I had never been hotter in my damn life.
So I stood there beneath that stupid willow tree behind Jamie's house and snorted out my breath and then I heard Peggy Sue giggle again, and I came close to hitting her, despite the consequences.
"Why, you didn't think I'd go all the way, did you?" she asked. "Why, don't you know a nice girl never goes all the way, until she's married, Carl?"
I didn't trust myself to speak, and turned to storm out from the tree.
But she grabbed my arm, rather roughly and with surprising strength.
"Boys have to be satisfied and all, Carl," she said. "I know that, silly. A nice girl like me couldn't make love, darling. But as long as I don't go all the way, there are other ways I can satisfy you. That is, if you really like my lips an awful lot, Carl."
I swallowed and blood pounded at my temples as I turned again. "Jesus, of course, I love your lips, Peggy Sue," I said, weak in the knees from excitement and the hint of what she was promising. "Believe me, I've been around, and I've never seen a girl with a mouth as lovely or provocative as yours. And believe me, baby, you can kiss better than anyone I've ever known."
"Even old Jamie?" she asked, as her fingers slid along my belt, and started unfastening the buckle.
"Even Jamie," I said.
"Now, Jamie and I are friends and all," she said, and tugged the pants loose and very slowly lowered the zipper. "But I just don't agree that a boy you really like ought to have to suffer after petting. I mean, as long as you remain a nice girl and don't go all the way. But old Jamie, well, she used to think differently, as you probably know."
"What do you mean, used to?" I asked, then grunted as a slender finger poked through my shorts to tickle my stomach.
"Oh, did I say that?" she asked, as she tugged down my pants and shorts and sank to the ground. A slip of the tongue."
She giggled at her joke, then kissed my thighs and my lower stomach, hot, wet kisses punctuated by her tongue, and her nails left tiny trails of sharp, hot pain across my buttocks. I squirmed and grunted and dug my fingers into her silky hair. My head was thrown back and my legs slightly bent, and when Peggy Sue's lips first brushed my stiff, aching prick, I whimpered and my entire body quivered.
She sucked very slowly, with a mouth hot as an oven, her tongue subtle and maddening, her teeth scraping faintly.
I dug my fingers deeper into her soft hair as her tongue lashed back and forth over the sensitive knob, lashed and tickled to drive me to a point of madness.
I heard myself groaning aloud again and again as those lips made a journey up-hotter now and wetter now-and then the return journey. And the tongue, God that tongue worked on the knob, like delicate sandpaper, and my body seemed composed of a thousand thin exposed wires burning from my aching nipples, through my stomach, and over my thighs into my prick, which could barely endure the agonizing ecstasy of her lips and tongue.
And when her teeth scraped the knob and she nibbled and bit softly a few quick times, I whimpered like a child.
Abruptly, she pulled her mouth away.
"Now, old Jamie didn't do this for you, did she?" she asked, in a calm, deadly voice.
"God, no, Peggy Sue, don't stop," I babbled.
She kissed my prick softly, tenderly, clawed my buttocks and then my thighs, licked around the knob a couple of times, while I stood there with my legs spread, my knees ready to buckle.
"Carl, when Jamie wrote you to come, what reason did she give?"
"She said she desperately needed help," I gasped without thinking.
"What kind of help, darling?" she asked softly.
I tried to pull her head forward again, but she would not move it. However, she traced a sharp fingernail along my prick, and I gasped at the sensation.
"Christ, she didn't say, I swear," I babbled.
"Cross your heart and hope to die?" she asked in a little girl voice.
"Dammit, yes," I muttered.
She giggled and leaned forward. And she kissed and bit and licked and sucked to pull from deep inside me a depth of building climax I had seldom ever known, sucked me fiercely with expert lips and pain-giving teeth, until my prick was so raw with desire I could hardly endure it.
Yet when the climax came, the pain and rawness were so sweetly scalding and brought such an ecstasy of release, that I closed my eyes and thrashed my head back and forth and whined again and again as the very depths of my sexual being flowed forth into her mouth.
I stumbled back against the tree trunk, but she scurried up.
"I've got to scoot home, darling," she said, in a matter-of-fact voice, as though she was late from a bridge party.
"Christ, how can you stay calm?" I gasped, as I fought for breath.
"Oh, a nice girl can always control herself," she said. "But I'm perfectly satisfied, Carl. There are ways a nice girl can satisfy herself. You just weren't in any condition to notice, silly."
I heard the leaves rustling as she went out. It took me a couple of minutes to calm myself enough to get dressed and walk outside. She was just fastening her white linen dress.
"Listen, you give me a call, you hear," she said, and pecked at my cheek. "Even when Jamie comes back, you call me up, Carl. But now, I've simply got to run."
And run she did, that awkward, ridiculous run girls have in heels, her white dress ghost like in the dim moonlight. And then she was gone through the hedge.
Weak and drenched with sweat, I dragged myself to the car. I'd never had a more unique or bizarre night of sex than with this little bitch, and it was frightening how hot she had gotten me and how much I'd wanted her. Or how easily she'd gotten from me the information she wanted about Jamie's letter.
But I was too drained and exhausted to care about anything but falling into bed.
CHAPTER SIX
I hit the bed like a rock, thinking I'd fall into a deep sleep and instead I tossed half the night, wrestling with all the strange unnerving pieces of this puzzle into which I had come.
Consequently, I slept late the next morning, and when I woke up I felt sluggish as I always do when I spend too many hours in bed.
I called Jamie's, but there was no answer. So I had breakfast and three cups of steaming black coffee in the hotel dining room, and read the New Orleans Times-Picayune.
Then I took a walk through the square and told myself to cool everything until I talked to Jamie. She could explain things, and I could save myself a lot of trouble and the danger of coming to wrong conclusions.
The courthouse clock struck noon. I looked briefly at a cannon and a Civil War monument, and then left the tree-shaded square to glance in store windows-and bake in the sun and fierce humidity.
There was an interesting display of offshore oil-drilling in the huge window of a new, aluminum and glass building, and I studied the scale model of an offshore rig. But I could not shove from my mind, despite my resolution, the fact that a man had died last night in the electric chair and that I had attended a party and seen his victim.. . Forget it, I told myself, but I thought of Peggy Sue, and how she had pumped me about Jamie, and how she had used her mouth.
Nice girls all, I muttered. And if they had no connection with Jamie's troubles, then why had Peggy Sue gone to such lengths-
As I crossed the street to the square, a white Ford convertible screeched to a halt beside me.
"Lord, what are you doing walking around in the heat this time of day?" a girl asked from the car.
I leaned down and looked into the window. It was Kerry Lawrence, her pixie face smiling deeply.
"I'm heading back to the hotel, Kerry," I said.
"Climb in and I'll give you a lift," she said.
"It's just across the square," I said.
"It'll save you a few steps in this heat," she said.
I climbed in and shut the door, glancing at the tight, white bikini slacks that hugged her hips and the sleeveless white blouse, which was also tight enough so that her small breasts shoved against the thin material to show she wore no bra.
She drove slowly, and stopped at the corner for a red light.
"I was just on my way out to the drive-in to pick up a hamburger," she said. "Mother and Daddy are out of town and it was so hot I told the cook not to bother fixing me anything to eat. Have you had dinner, Carl?"
"I was just going to ask the hotel clerk to recommend someplace to get seafood," I said. "I had some beers with Ted Daniels and I'm starving."
"Oh, I know this simply great place, Carl," she said. "Would you like some company? Though actually, I'm hardly dressed for going anywhere proper."
What could I say. "I hate to eat alone. And you look fine."
"I couldn't go into a restaurant like this," she said. "You know, we could pick up some boiled shrimp and deviled crab and stuff like that and have a picnic. I know a good place for a picnic on a hot day. It's cool and awfully private."
My resolve to avoid the girls melted in an instant. I was intrigued at what Kerry had in mind.
But she shifted in the seat and I caught a glimpse of those slim thighs, perfect legs and excessive little buttocks, and I wondered if she was a "virein" and a nice girl like Peggy Sue. . .I licked my lips and wiped the sweat from my forehead.
"Sounds good," I said. "Let's go."
Kerry pumped down on the accelerator and the car shot forward and she had to swerve to avoid an old woman getting out of a parked car.
"Old bitch," she mumbled. "Oh, sorry, Carl. That was an awfully bad thing to say. My daddy would skin me alive if he heard me use a word like that."
She ran the next red light, and turned a corner on two wheels, and blew the horn and she plunged through a stop sign.
"Best way to cool off," she said, and turned her vent to catch the rushing wind. "I'll swear, some of the people from the country are such slow pokes. If you didn't practically drive right over them, you'd never get anywhere."
She didn't slow down once, but there were no more near-mishaps, as with the old woman. We roared down quiet streets lined with thick-leafed oak trees, then a couple of blocks with only one or two houses, then past a couple of motels, glistening in the sun, a bright red and white filling station. And finally we plunged into swampland, the trees growing over the road like a canopy, their tops laced with stringy gray moss.
The speedometer neared 100 and we crossed a narrow bridge over a sluggish brown stream filled with the stubs of dead trees and broad, green lily leaves.
She took her foot from the accelerator and I saw a building on the right, and a cluster of cars shining in the sun.
"They have take-out service here," she said. "I'm ijlad you mentioned seafood. It's perfect for a hot day like this."
She slowed, braked the car, and we pulled into the lot of a large pine-paneled building with a picture window overlooking a broad greenish bayou.
She turned off the ignition, and twisted around in the seat. "After we eat and all, we'll have to talk a lot and become real good friends, Carl," she said, and giggled slightly, then put her hand over her mouth. "I didn't get any chance at all to really welcome you last night, and we're all sure going to take care of you until Jamie comes back. Listen, you'll have to run in for the food. I couldn't be seen like this. I mean, maybe you noticed, but I don't have a bra on."
"Sure, I'll go in," I said. "What do you want?"
"Just whatever you're having to eat," she said. "And a cold Dr. Pepper to drink." She paused a moment and stared at me and I realized the lovely green eyes were brown-flecked. "Carl, did I upset you by saying I didn't have a bra on? Did I embarrass you?"
"Oh, Jesus, don't be ridiculous, Kerry," I said.
She giggled. "Well, sometimes that kind of talk coming from a girl like me shocks boys."
"A girl like you?" I asked. "What kind of girl are you?"
"You'll see, when you get to know me better, Carl," she said. "I guess I'm a little sensitive about my breasts, really. They don't poke out at all. I mean, they're awfully small, though the nipples aren't. And I have to compensate for them, sort of. Now, if most boys heard a nice girl talking like that, why, they'd be shocked silly, and my daddy, why he'd take my car away and probably turn me over his knee."
"Why are you talking like that to me, Kerry?"
The eyes sparkled and she laughed softly. "Oh, you're different and older and sophisticated and maybe I'm trying to impress you or even shock you."
"You'll have to do better than that to shock me," I said.
"Lord, go get the food and that cold Dr. Pepper," she said. "Before I burn to a crisp right here."
"Be right back," I said, and climbed from the car, disturbed again at how easily these little girls turned me on sexually.
CHAPTER SEVEN
I lay on my back beneath a tall, stately pine tree, my body cushioned by a bed of brown pine needles, and listened to the rushing water of a small, clear stream a few yards away. Kerry was kneeling beside me, opening her third bottle of Dr. Pepper.
"You want another can of beer, Carl?" she asked.
"That would be good," I said, and raised up on one elbow.
"I'll get it," she said. "You just stay right where you are."
I was happy to stay where I was, though I twisted around slightly to watch Kerry flow down to the stream, where we had lodged her Dr. Peppers and my beer behind some smooth, moss-slick rocks.
And flow was the word, not walk, as my suddenly aroused body told me with a rush of heat. This giggling young girl moved those jutting buttocks with a liquid motion that made it appear she was on wheels.
French women can move somewhat like that-a way of quietly accentuating the buttocks that is so provocative it's often unbearable-but few had perfected the technique as Kerry had.
And the rims of her panties were clearly visible beneath the tight, white cloth that enclosed the rolling buttocks. I sucked out my breath and felt the sudden familiar movement, then the slight ache, between my thighs.
Easy, I warned myself, as she bent down to the stream. Take what's offered but don't get hot and vulnerable, as with Peggy Sue last night.
But hot I was already as Kerry swayed back with a can of Falstaff and a bottle of Dr. Pepper. Her thin lips creased into a smile that showed her dimples. She sank beside me again, and opened the can and bottle.
"Care for another shrimp?" she asked, as she handed me the beer.
"I'm stuffed," I said. "Too full to move a muscle."
The rust-flecked green eyes were wide and the dimples faded as she twisted a tiny, enigmatic smile on the edges of her mouth. "Too bad," she said and giggled slightly, then drank from the Dr. Pepper. "Too bad, Carl. You keep eating like that and drinking all that terrible beer, and you'll get fat."
She poked me in the stomach, and I grunted.
"Hey, watch that," I said.
She put the bottle down and took the beer from my hand. "And you don't want to get fat, Carl. You want to stay all lean and strong and muscular, like you are now."
She stretched out, stomach down, and propped herself on an elbow, facing me.
We stared at each other a moment, and I tousled her shaggy, red hair, and kissed her lips softly. She returned the kiss in the same soft way, but opened her lips slightly, and she slid a hand beneath my shirt and T-shirt, and scratched at my stomach and chest.
"I bet I could make you move quick," she said.
"By jabbing me in the stomach?" I asked. "I might jab back."
"No, Carl, that's not exactly what I had in mind," she said, and traced a nail up my stomach and over my chest, then gently scratched at a nipple as she pressed her mouth over mine.
Her kiss wasn't as devastating as Peggy Sue's, but Kerry used her lips expertly, teasing, then sucking, nibbling, twisting, and very expertly she tantalized with the tip of a very slender tongue.
Her nail was scratching my nipple in ways that showed it had been that route many times, and I had to shift over a little, because I was aching again, against a tightly drawn pants leg.
I slid my hands down from her shaggy hair to stroke her ears and neck, and then over her back. Her blouse was pasted to her back with sweat and she groaned through the kiss as I scratched her back, and then she worked one leg over mine, and rubbed it back and forth.
She sighed and sucked at my lips and her tongue shot against mine when I slid my hands down to fondle her buttocks. She pulled her hand from my chest and with both hands she scratched and tickled my ears and neck and head-alternating the sharp scratches and the soft caresses the way Arab women do to make the alteration of pain and pleasure little eternities of ecstasy.
Kerry tongued the inside of my mouth, and I cupped the firm-soft buttocks and tugged her between my thighs, and gasped aloud at the sensation as she undulated over my straining, aching instrument
I kneaded the buttocks, stroked them, followed the rim of the tiny panties, and then cupped and squeezed the wonderful poking mounds. And Kerry all the time rotated her thighs and stomach.
Sweat poured from my face and body, and I kissed her fiercely, and bit her lips. And my sexual parts throbbed, crushed there between us, enduring the expertly erotic writhing of this pixie-faced little girl.
But all too soon I soared up that up that peak of excitement and I had to move my hands quickly and tear from her searing kiss.
"Wait, Kerry," I gasped.
She fell away from me, her dimples showing in her scarlet, sweating face. "I know, Carl," she said. "It was rather obvious what was about to happen. Here, darling."
Her cute face went deadly serious and she fell back and reached out to pull me to her.
But I paused, then started unbuttoning her blouse, and she smiled again, and suppressed a giggle. And yet as I opened the blouse and gazed at the tiny breasts with oblong, bright-red nipples, I noticed she was undulating her buttocks slightly.
I put my hands down onto the breasts, palms open and mashed just slightly and she sighed and her little hands doubled into fists at her sides and she closed her eyes. I mashed harder, and her body jerked slightly, and when I tickled and scratched the long, red nipples, she whimpered and dug her nails into my shoulders.
And when I lowered my head and kissed the nipples, then nuzzled them with my teeth, Kerry's body jerked, and her buttocks moved steadily. The nipples hardened in my mouth.
I Kissed the breasts and nipples again, then kissed down over her heaving stomach and her rather large navel. And all this time the buttocks moved and her fingers scratched and tickled my head and shoulders and neck and ears and my rushing, irregular breathing matched hers-and her long nipples were not all that was so stiff if ached.
I unfastened the white bikini-slacks and then jerked down the zipper. The slacks were so damn tight I had some difficulty getting them off. Then I gazed down at her incredibly narrow waist, flaring hips and slim thighs highlighted by the small patch of white silk. All along the smooth flesh were beads of sweat, and when I rubbed the palm of my hand over her warm, slick thighs just below the panties, we both gasped at the sensation.
Kerry's flesh was steaming, and her buttocks jerked to every touch of my fingers along the thighs and stomach and around the rims of the panties, and she rocked her head back and forth and I saw that she had bitten her hp sharply.
I lay down, half on her burning body, and sucked clumsily at her lips, licked along the tiny ridge of teeth-marks that had nearly drawn blood, and shoved my tongue through her twisting lips.
With my hand, I circled the top rim of the panties, then slid my fingers beneath the patch of damp silk. But she twisted her legs and blocked my hand with hers.
"Just a minute, Carl," she gasped. "Let me catch my breath."
"Christ, this is no time to worry about breathing," I muttered, suddenly cautious.
She pulled a strand of sweat-matter hair from her forehead and smiled to show her dimples.
"Don't be afraid I'll leave you just hanging, Carl," she said impishly. "I'm not like that. Did Jamie do that kind of thing? Pet really heavy and then just quit?"
"That's between us," I snapped, but she had enclosed my hand with her hot, wet thighs and was rubbing it back and forth against her panties, and I was in no shape to fight with her.
"And what's between us, darling?" she asked, and giggled. "If I'm going to do terribly intimate things with you, you know, I ought to know what happened with Jamie. She's a good friend, of course, but she's a strange girl, kind of. And you haven't seen her for a year, have you?"
I pulled my hand from the fleshy, maddening prison of her thighs. "Jesus, stop that goddam talking," I said. I jerked the panties off, nearly tearing them, and she made no effort to stop me.
In fact, she spread her thighs and lay back. I stared down at her small vagina-smaller than usual-with a tiny mat of dark, curly hair. The lips seemed almost dehydrated, and when I slid a finger along the edges, there was little response from Kerry.
Even when I carefully stroked her for a couple of minutes, she lay still and quiet, and almost idly rubbed her fingers over my body.
But when I slid a hand around to scratch and tickle her buttocks she groaned and thrashed and the buttocks gyrated and sweat poured from her body. She rather roughly pulled my head down to her. breasts, while she raised up and tongued my ear.
Then, abruptly, she rolled away, and I got to my knees, and gasped for breath, wondering what her game would be now.
"What were you and Ted talking about, Carl?" she asked, as she took a sip of the Dr. Pepper.
I moved to her and threw the bottle to the ground. "Don't you ever stop talking, Kerry?" I snapped, and forced her to the ground again.
"Only when I feel like it, Carl," she said, and the dimples showed in her mocking smile. "I only do exactly what I want."
I started to say something, but she raised up on her elbow and started unbuttoning my soaking shirt, while she licked my eyelids and cheeks and then my lips with her slender, burning tongue.
She tugged the shirt off, and her nails lingered to tantalize my chest. "We've hardly talked at all, you know, Carl."
"Kerry, you've talked enough to last me a lifetime," I gasped. "Hell, Ted and I discussed working on offshore rigs and we talked about the party last night. And about football."
"Lie down, Carl," she said softly.
I lay back, and she straddled me and unfastened my belt. And she removed my pants and shorts, but very, very slowly, her small lingers lingering with quick strokes between my thighs that had me squirming and panting.
"And about Jamie?" I said. "He said he used to date her."
"They were pinned," she said. "Now he's nearly engaged. What did he tell you about Jamie and her daddy?"
I grabbed Kerry by the shoulders and threw her to the ground. "To hell with Jamie and her father," I said, and fell between her thighs, as I cupped a squirming buttock and mashed my mouth over hers.
She lay still for just an instant, flicking my tongue with hers. Then her entire body stiffened and she locked her thighs around mine and squeezed until I groaned.
I freed myself from the vise of her legs and my stiff prick slid over her wet, burning thighs as I tried to force her legs wider. But as I guided the sensitive-hard prick at her small, dry vagina, she suddenly and expertly doubled a leg to block me.
"No, Carl, why you can't do that to me," she said, and pulled her hair from her glistening forehead. "You ought to know that about me. Why, I never go all the way."
"I thought you said you wouldn't leave me hanging," I said, as my prick jerked with raw-nerve desire and my breath poured out and my heart went beserk.
"I just mean a nice girl doesn't make love until she's married, Carl," she said. "But there are other things to do. I'm not like Jamie was, when you knew her there in Rome."
"And how had Jamie changed?" I asked, and rubbed my hand down and pinched her slightly squirming buttocks. She jerked and gasped and bit her lips together, and her stomach quivered as though in a spasm.
I scratched the sweaty soft-firm buttocks and cupped them roughly, and she whimpered with delight. "I didn't say she'd changed," Kerry said. She giggled. "I only meant I knew she petted heavily, but was a real little bitch about not satisfying a boy. Do you suspect she's changed terribly, Carl?"
"How in the hell could I know," I said.
Kerry turned over on her stomach, and looked back over her shoulder as she raised herself slightly on her knees.
"like I said, I have to compensate, Carl," she purred and sighed and bit her lips until droplets of blood spilled when I dug my nails into the quivering flesh of her buttocks. "I'm small everywhere but my rear end."
"You want me to take you in the buttocks?" I asked. "Do you know what that's like?" But I inched up on my knees, and when I shoved a finger into the buttocks and twisted, she gasped out, "Yes, I know what it's like. Do you? Or are you less sophisticated than I thought?"
I rubbed my screaming prick around the buttocks and they jerked to its touch and all over my rigid body I ached with the desire to invade those undulating mounds that dripped with sweat In a last rational moment I knew she was so aroused I might could find out something from her.
Then I heard myself gasping and I leaned forward and slid my hands around the buttocks and grasped her thighs, that all-encompassing weakening sheet of fever seared over me and I dug my fingers against the thighs, and she shoved her buttocks into my prick. The buttocks were tight, even when she adjusted her legs. I was merciless in jamming my swollen prick into the withered flesh. Kerry grunted and wiggled and I rammed harder.
I thrust with all my strength and the muscles gave and my prick slid into the tight, burning passage and Kerry yelped and thrashed her head.
But as I grasped her body-it was difficult because she was sweating so much-and worked with her buttocks, she twisted those twin mounds of magic flesh and worked those tight muscles in fantastic ways that drew from my prick a different kind of ecstasy, and with each difficult thrust I made, a thousand fires soared through my thighs, from deep in my guts, and Kerry groaned and rocked and bit her shoulder again.
With all the erotic delight of shoving again and again into that narrow, furnace-hot channel, it seemed at times when Kerry manipulated those incredible, tight muscles that my prick would be mashed, and once, she squeezed with all her strength, and I yelped at the jolt of pain that shot over my prick.
It took a surprisingly long time for the climax to build, and by now it was nearly impossible to grasp Kerry's sweat-slick body, and we both made sounds like the whimperings of small, pained animals.
And when finally indeed the release built and exploded into her writhing buttocks, I sang out the agonized ecstasy of climax and collapsed with my head on her sweating back-and she still moved those buttocks in the same rhythm, imprisoning me expertly.
"Again, please," she groaned, and spread her thighs.
I instantly responded to a wicked, new thrust of her stringent muscles, and I started working with her once more.
CHAPTER EIGHT
I sat in the pine-paneled restaurant and sipped a vodka martini as I watched the sun set pink and purple in the clouds over the bayou. The rays spread through the gaps in the thick growth of trees, vines and moss on the other side, and a flight of small black and white birds with yellow feet suddenly soared up, circled the bayou, then dipped back again behind the swamp-growth.
The restaurant was filled and I was immersed in polite, inaudible dinner talk and the soft sounds of silverware against plates and cups against saucers.
I was still weak from the afternoon session with Kerry, and my sexual parts ached dully. Yet when Kerry dropped me off in town, she hadn't seemed particularly affected by the session. Except for the sweat that matted her tight slacks and blouse to her body, she had no signs of my assault on her buttocks, and had talked and giggled and said we had to get together again some time.
Jamie and her father had not returned, and after showering and taking a fitful nap, I had decided it was time I did something constructive.
The little girls with their nice-girl kind of wild sex were getting to me, and I knew tonight or tomorrow, another one would come on to me, with some speciality of eroticism that preserved her virginity.
I had a vodka and tonic in the hotel bar and as I had looked out across the square, I had felt like a lamb being fattened for something I didn't understand.
And when I left the hotel and headed for my car and saw Peggy Sue and some other girl driving quickly down the street-they had obviously been watching the hotel-I knew it was impossible, even stupid to wait for Jamie's return, trying to find out what in the hell was happening.
Now I drained the martini and called the waiter over. I ordered a dozen oysters on the half-shell, trout almondine, a salad, and a bottle of dry white wine.
I stared out at a long, beaded black snake lit by the fading sun in the bayou, moving slowly along with his back-arched in and out of the water. On the stump of a tree, a long-legged white bird with big bill watched impassively, then rose gracefully and dove after something in the water a few yards behind the snake.
I decided the first thing I had to admit was that I had perhaps badly overestimated my ability to handle what ever was happening to Jamie, and particularly my ability to handle these girls. Because of my adventures with women all over the world, I had been far too contemptuous of these little girls.
But their whimpering, giggling, oh-so-proper debutante style, coupled with their way-out and obviously well-practiced sexual tastes had me off balance and sexually aroused. In a sense, I was out of my league, and they had called every tune so far.
I had been careless, and was damn vulnerable for whatever they had in mind. But what in hell did they have in mind? And except for avoiding sex with them, what could I have possibly done?
The oysters came, huge oysters on a bed of shaved ice, cold and juicy and perfect. I ate them slowly, enjoying the sensual swallowing of each oyster, followed by a sip of the white wine.
As the trout arrived and I began to eat-it was excellent-I wondered if I was making too much out of this. Perhaps I had simply stumbled into a nest of spoiled, bored, rich girls who kept their reputations spotless while playing their virginity-preserving erotic games.
I took a swallow of wine. Perhaps they were only coming on to me to get at Jamie, for some kind of spite, a joke because she was something of a sexual puritan.
Christ, there were too many loose ends. How did they keep their reputations? And why did they pump me about Jamie? And how about Jamie's letter, and her disappearance with her father?
And then I thought of the rape and the man who was electrocuted, and a chill shot up my back. These little girls were tough-perhaps deadly-and still I had no idea what to do.
I said to hell with it for the present, and finished the fish and salad and the wine. Maybe it was better to wait for Jamie after all.. . .
The two girls thought I hadn't seen them as they searched the room, and when I glanced up, the quickly looked away and took a table by the door. There was no way I could leave without speaking to them.
Peggy Sue was stunning in a short, black, low-cut dress that hugged her body, set off by a single strand of pearls at the neck. And Emily Ann wore a pair of glasses that offset her nymphet face, and her breasts seemed even larger in a low-cut striped green blouse and dark green skirt.
I called the waiter over. So the game had begun again. And again, I was going to be forced to play it on their terms.
I ordered coffee and a double Remy Martin, and drummed my fingers on the table. I was angry at being helpless to change things. I had always been a man of direct action, and believed any action was better than being swept along no matter what the danger.
'To hell with it," I muttered aloud, and an elderly couple at the next table glanced over disapprovingly.
I drank my coffee and cognac quickly, paid the check, left a couple of bills on the table and headed straight for the girls.
"Why, Carl, what a pleasant surprise," Peggy Sue gurgled when I reached the table. "And you remember Emily Ann Walters? Why don't you sit down and join us?"
"Thanks, I will," I said.
As I sat down I stared openly at Emily Ann's huge breasts which seemed ready to tear through the thin striped blouse. And then I glanced at the 14-year-old face of lovely innocence and those child's blue eyes behind the glasses, and I wondered what she did and got hot just thinking about it. I realized part of me, though sore, was no longer weak at all.
"Carl stares at a girl like that sometime, Emily Ann," Peggy Sue said, with a broad grin. "But he's really quite sweet."
Emily Ann smiled back and nibbled at her shrimp cocktail. "I knew he'd be awfully sweet, or
Jamie wouldn't have invited him down like she did."
"I just can't imagine what happened to them," Peggy Sue said, and took a sip of iced tea. "Why, they're not back yet. You know, Emily Ann, I have to say it was kind of thoughtless of Jamie to ask Carl to come all this distance and then not be here."
"But you and Kerry have really taken good care of me, for Jamie," I said. "I'm sure shell want to thank you in some special way when she gets back."
Emily Ann burst out laughing, and her breasts heaved with each laugh. "Well now, Jamie's bound to thank us her own special way, isn't she, Peggy Sue?"
Peggy Sue nodded. "Oh, I'm sure Jamie will. She's that kind of girl. But then, Carl, you don't really know her too well, do you?"
I had stormed over with the nebulous idea of confronting the girls with something of taking some action and now they were toying with me as though I were a child.
"I know her well enough," I said quietly, and ordered a martini. "But obviously not as well as you girls who are her good friends." I came close to mentioning the rape, or the scene in the garden with Millie, but something warned me to be careful.
Peggy Sue picked up her glass of tea, then paused and stared at me, her tongue licking the rim of the glass.
"You do say some funny things, Carl," she said. "It's just that you met Jamie in Europe, a year ago, and knew her a short time. Sort of like a shipboard romance, you know."
"You're trying to say the Jamie I knew in Italy won't be the same girl I see here," I snapped. The waiter brought the martini and I took a deep, lethal swallow.
Emily Ann prodded at a shrimp. "I think we could safely say that," she said. "In fact. . . " But she glanced at Peggy Sue and trailed the words off quickly.
"You mean because she's changed or because I didn't really know her, know the real Jamie in Europe?" I asked. I drained the martini and felt it.
Peggy Sue laughed and sipped her tea. "And I thought we were going to be such good friends," she said, and patted my hand. "You've got that terribly nasty and sarcastic tone of voice again, Carl. And I had thought since you're alone tonight, that Emily Ann might keep you from getting bored."
"Let's not fight, Carl," Emily Ann said, and her beautiful, nymphet-sexy face beamed. "There's no need for you to get angry because we tell you Jamie's not the same girl you knew in Europe. You'll find that out."
"Look, I've got to eat and run," Peggy Sue said. "Or I'll be late picking up Millie and getting down there and all, Emily Ann. But you can take your time, since Carl will be here to keep you company."
Emily Ann glanced at her watch. "Yes, you better hurry."
CHAPTER NINE
I should have guessed. Though an hour later, when I lay beside her on the bed in the fishing camp and sucked at her grinding lips and felt the lash of her tongue and cupped and fondled her breasts, I still didn't know how she would satisfy me and get her kicks.
The breasts were indeed phenomenal, and they stood up proudly, the tiny, pink nipples hard, the deep crevice between the mounds steaming and slick with sweat.
I kissed down from the damp lips and licked slowly around the breasts while my hands skated the slick skin of her stomach, and then her back, to raise her body tighter against mine.
The breasts were all the more incredible because Emily Ann was so thin, and it excited hell out of me to squeeze my hands nearly around her narrow waist while I licked, kissed and sucked the breasts frantically.
Emily Ann, her blue eyes wide and penetrating, toyed with my ears, neck and shoulders, light, swift touches of her thin fingers, accentuated with sudden, slightly painful digs of her nails. She rocked her body with passion and sighed and breathed heavily.
I made animal-like slurping sounds as my lips sucked the moving mounds whose flesh had the quality of solid honey-honey-smooth and flawless, yet with the firmness there was nearly a strange liquid quality, hot liquid as though molten. My body screamed with desire and my head and face throbbed with dull pain and my sexual parts felt strained as though they had been jerked and twisted.
I slid around on the bed to take the pressure of my body off them, and wallowed my scarlet face in the breasts, back and forth, nuzzled the hard, tiny nipples, then went berserk with my mouth there between the breasts, licking and sucking and gasping for breath, while Emily Ann tickled my ears and groaned and undulated her whole body.
I slid a hand over her quivering stomach and under her skirt, then freed my other hand and pulled myself from her breasts to remove the skirt. But she stopped me, and smiled sweetly, her big blue eyes wide.
"Forget that, Carl," she gasped. "Please, kiss my breasts some more right now, and just use your hands between my thighs a little."
I didn't argue, but fell again to take the taut, rose-bud nipples between my lips using my teeth and tongue to bring moans of frenzy that matched mine.
And I skated a hand over her lean body and beneath the skirt and bikini panties to tickle and fondle her small vagina, covered with a thick mound of very silky hair. She thrashed her thighs, pressed the thin, slick thighs against my hand, released it, enclosed it again, then slowly and steadily worked her thigh muscles and muscles in the vagina as I stroked the dampening folds of flesh beneath the tangled, silky hair.
After several minutes of this, I kissed up to suck at her mouth again, and our tongues rubbed and we twisted our bps crazily and she slid her hands down to start undressing me.
But when I was naked and again sucked at her breasts, she still wore skirt and panties, though her skirt was pulled up over her stomach, to reveal her thin thighs, which still worked steadily, even without my fingers. I had little doubt what the rhythm was doing to her-already her panties were damp-and for a fevered moment I was afraid she had somehow tricked me and would leave me in this state while I worked with her breasts and she finished by herself.
Then she suddenly wrapped her arms around my head and hugged me face tighter against her burning, heaving breasts and I could tell her heart was going berserk. So was mine, and I slid over so that my prick was rubbing against her small thigh. She didn't like that at all, the the thigh motion stopped abruptly and she released my head.
When she lay back and I looked down, those blue eyes were narrowed and her child's face was red and twisted with passion-a strange grimace of lust that showed her dimples.
"Straddle me, Carl," she panted. "Don't wait, take me now. Aren't you ready?"
"Jesus, yes," I said, and raised up slightly to move myself between her thighs and tear the panties down.
"No, Carl, not there," she said and shook her head to throw off the sweat that was pouring from her forehead. "Here, straddle me, darling, and move up to my breasts. Don't you want to do that, Carl? My breasts and nipples are so sensitive, darling, it will be wonderful for both of us."
"So that's it," I mumbled, as I straddled her, and worked my way up, my swollen, aching prick sliding over her warm, heaving stomach. Her thighs were working again now.
I tentatively touched a breast with my anxious prick, and an electric thrust of pleasure shot up the instrument and over my body, and Emily Ann thrashed her head and dug her nails into my hips. Her mouth was twisted and she uttered a series of short, guttural sounds of inhuman pleasure.
I guided the prick and rubbed a hard nipple, and then lowered it into that tight valley of flesh, and the sensation was overwhelming.
"Oh, God," she moaned and I felt her lower body undulating with a steady rhythm, while she took her hands and pulled the breasts apart slightly, then with both hands shoved them together around my prick.
A whimper of ecstasy fled my clamped lips, and I tasted blood as I started rocking back and forth and put my hands on the tops of the breasts and mashed the nipples, while Emily Ann pressed them together, twisted the mounds, worked them in expert ways.
Her blue eyes slowly closed, her thighs rubbed together, her body humped, and whined and pumped and my prick rubbed through that hot, sweat-damp prison of the breasts, and flood after flood of raw nerved feeling raced over my prick, into my gut, up to my nipples.
Then as I worked faster and groaned with each thrust, Emily Ann's hands fell away and doubled into fists that opened as my climax built to grab the sheets and twist them violently, while she bit her lips and her body went berserk.
The scalding release poured from my soul, it seemed, taking something of my very essence with it. I nearly squealed so great was the final unbearable flood of acid-edged pleasure through my prick there between the breasts.
Emily Ann was still now, deathly still, except for her irrational breathing, which caused the breasts to jerk.
Her breasts and her neck and her face were covered with my release and our sweat, but she lay there fighting for breath a full two minutes before she rolled over and began to wipe herself off.
I couldn't even move by then, and just lay weak and drained on the wet sheets, my eyes closed, the faint taste of blood in my mouth, my prick limp and sore again. And now the pain in my head and face throbbed again, but I was too weak to care.
An hour later, she again drove expertly along the twisting, narrow swamp road.
She leaned forward as she drove, her glasses on the end of her nose, her hands rigid on the steering wheel. She was a good driver, but drove dangerously fast. The undergrowth grew up to the road on both sides, and there was obviously water in many places, and I knew one mishap and we would plunge into some slimey bayou or bog or bed of quicksand.
"Well, what do you think now that you've had your turn?" I asked.
"I'm quite satisfied, Carl," she said, and shook her head up and down, then shoved her glasses back up on her nose. "It was delicious. And how about you? Are you satisfied?"
"Jesus, yes, I'm satisfied," I said. "It was one of the most unique nights of sex I've had. But, Emily Ann, I wanted to make love to you. I don't mind taking you that way, too, but dammit, don't you understand that things like that should just be part of foreplay or a variation and that men and women should make love. This whole keep-your-virginity-at-any-cost-bit is ridiculous. Can't you see that, baby?"
"You simply don't understand, Carl," she said, as the headlights picked up an alligator scrambling off the road. She shivered. "Those things give me the creeps. Look, Carl, the mistake you're making is bringing your values to Harrisville. Nice girls here don't go all the way, but they do pet if they like a boy, and sometimes, they pet heavily. The things we do are just extensions of that, of heavy petting.
I shook my head and switched on the radio. A trumpet number blasted out, sudden and strange in the swamp darkness. 'That's ridiculous," I said. "What about Peggy Sue and Millie, and that lesbian bit, baby?"
"You're just impossible," she said. "They're not lesbians, silly. Girls are often affectionate with each other, at least around here. And since we don't go all the way, well, sometimes we kind of help each other, you know, kind of finish. I mean, Carl, nothing we do to each other, physically, could really be wrong, now could it? We all come from the oldest and best families in town."
I snapped the radio off. "Christ, you mean if Millie goes down on Peggy Sue it's affection, but if she did it with some waitress, it would be lesbianism?"
"There's no need to get all upset, darling," she said, sweetly. "You seem to be enjoying yourself and after all, we're not trying to convert you. Anytime you like, you can leave and go back to whatever kind of life you're used to. But while you're involved with us, it would be a good idea to accept our values."
"I want to know about Jamie, dammit," I said. "Emily Ann, please tell me what's happening, in the name of God."
"You enjoy yourself and soon you'll see Jamie," she said. "Just admit you can't do anything but wait."
"What in hell if I start talking," I said. "I imagine Harrisville would be shocked at your sex games. Or what if I just slapped hell out of you and made you talk? We're alone here in this swamp."
"You won't talk and you won't touch me," she said. "No one would believe a word you said, and since you're Jamie's boyfriend, in more ways than you know it would be devastating for her if you tried to say nasty things about us. Don't think we can't take care of ourselves. And you'd wind up under the jail. like tonight, Carl, if I'd started crying, or accusing you of just the simplest little thing at that honky-tonk you'd be in jail right now."
"You mean I'm absolutely helpless to do anything but play sex games with you girls, and wait?" I asked.
"You don't have to play our games, Carl," she said. "You don't even have to stay in Harrisville, though I do hope you're here long enough for Julie and Sandy and Millie to have their turns. Damn road. I've been over it and thousand times, but it drives me crazy. Soon, we'll have lots of good roads, all over this area."
"The freeway interchange?" I asked quickly as I sat up.
She glanced at me. "Why, what in the world are you talking about?"
"I heard some talk in town that there was going to be a huge freeway interchange constructed," I said. "And that if the right people owned the right land they would make a great deal of money."
"Oh, that highway thing," she said, and shrugged, but her attempt to lapse into her little-girl-innocence tone failed. "They've talked about that for years, but nothing ever comes from it."
"I see," I said. I settled back, and gingerly touched my throbbing cheek. I was too weak and sore to argue with Emily Ann, but another piece of the puzzle was slowly coming into place.
The freeway story broke in the Harrisville paper the next afternoon.
I bought a copy, and after making my usual call to Jamie's, I went to a bar across from the square and ordered a glass of Falstaff. I was sitting at a stool at the front of the bar, and as I drank the first swallow through the thick head, I glanced out the window and saw Kerry and some other girl driving slowly around the square. They stopped an instant in front of the hotel, then roared off.
But I was more interested in the story in the paper, because a few pieces were falling into place-though still in a nebulous, disjointed way-and I sensed the key might be in this freeway development, in line with what Ted had said about
Jamie's father locking horns with the town's old families again.
Actually, though it had a banner headline, the story was brief. It stated that a joint announcement from the state capital and from Washington had confirmed rumors that a gigantic interchange complex, linking three important federal and state highways, would be constructed on the edge of Harrisville, and would throw a ring of elevated highways and exits around the town.
In addition, the existing highways would be widened and many secondary roads paved and widened, with a process that would put down roadbeds that would hold in the swamps. It was to be one of the largest construction programs in the state's history. But the story stated that final details had not been announced, nor the exact location of the interchange route or the feeder roads and exits.
There were several side stories: the mayor stated that this was indicative of the town's progress, the head of a large construction company said this would be a boon to the town's economy and provide many jobs, and the president of the Blue Bell Garderi Club hoped this would not ruin the scenic approach to Harrisville from the Gulf which was apparently lined with flowering bushes.
When the bartender brought my second glass of beer, he nodded at the headline and shook his head. "Wish I'd believed them rumors that were going around," he said. "I'd like to have bought a little property a few months ago, and be sitting on it now. Jesus, no more bartending for me."
"The story says the route isn't known yet," I said.
"Listen, buddy, it's not a matter of knowing the route," he said. "It's a matter of where the smart money in this town has been buying up property. Hell, Washington don't care if some exit is a few hundred yards this way or that, on this lot or that one."
"So, you'd sell now and make a killing?" I asked.
He shook his head and picked at a rotten tooth with his fingernail. "Only if I was holding some of that swamp land that costs so much to drain develop," he said. "like the Conway-Lawrence land company. They can unload that damn near worthless land now for lots of money. But that ain't what I mean. That's just a one shot deal."
"I don't follow you," I said, and sipped the beer.
"Hell, buddy, there will be dozens of approaches and exits and thousands of cars every day," he said. "In lots of places they'll just abandon the old highways and build new ones. Can you imagine the money to be made if them new exits and approaches are on your land, you can put up motels and filling stations and restaurants?"
I nodded. "I see what you mean. Well, where has the smart money been buying land?"
He picked at his tooth again and stared at me. "What's your interest in this?" he asked suddenly suspicious. "You new around here, ain't you?"
"I'm just visiting for a few days," I said. "My only interest is idle curiosity."
"Buddy, in the bar business you learn curiosity is never idle," he said. "It don't matter, though. Some of the smart money, I'd say belongs to that bastard Ron Meadows, and you can bet he'll try to get those exits on land he owns now. And some of it belongs to the Conway-Lawrence bunch. You bet your butt they's some finagling going on with the county board of supervisors and the state highway commission and such. It's just a matter of whose money turns out to be smartest, and who you believe will get the route on his land."
Someone called him down to the other end of the bar for a drink, and I drained my beer and dug out a dime and walked over and made my ritualistic phone call.
My heart pounded-the line was busy.
I hung up, waited a minute, then dialed again. It was still busy. I went to the bar, ordered another glass of beer and through the window I saw Kerry's car circling the square again.
I smiled to myself and thought of the girls who wouldn't get their turns, and the blood was pounding at my temples as I dialed again. But it was still busy so I forced myself to sit down, take it easy, and finish the beer before dialing again.
CHAPTER TEN
Three glasses of beer later, I dialed and the phone finally rang. It rang a long time, so long I was afraid I had just missed whoever had talked so long.
I recognized Jamie's "Hello," but the voice was strained.
"Jamie, how are you? This is Carl. Are you all right? Christ, I can't wait to see you." I was nearly babbling, I was so happy to be talking to her.
Her flat, unenthusiastic words were chilling. "Hello, Carl," she said. "So you didn't get my letter saying that I'd changed my mind and asking you not to come?"
"No, I didn't get that one," I said. "But I'd have come anyway. How are you, baby? You sound tired. What are you doing and where have you been? I've been here for days."
"Yes, I know," she said. "Well, I'm truly sorry I sent you that stupid thing and dragged you thousands of miles on a wild goose chase."
"What in hell do you mean?" I asked. 'Talking on the phone is no good. I want to see you. Can I come out? How about something to drink? You sound as though you could use it."
"Oh, not now, Carl," she said quickly. There was a pause, "I just can't see you today. We got back late last night, and I've got, well, obligations, and you'll be busy.. . . "
"I'll be busy?" I asked. "What do you mean? I won't be doing a thing but worrying about you. Surely you can see me for a few minutes. I can be out there in ten minutes."
"No!" the word was spit out in a way that sent a thin sliver of ice racing over my spine. "No." Softer this time. "I simply can't see you today or tonight, Carl. But listen, tomorrow we can get together, and I can try to explain things and apologize for bringing you all the way down here. But really, I, well, there is simply something I have to do today and tonight."
"Jamie, how are you? Are you all right? Where have you been? And how is your father? Is he ill? Dammit, I've a good mind to come out there, Jamie."
"So help me, I'll never speak to you again if you do, Carl. Oh listen, I'm acting terribly, but I haven't been feeling well, and daddy has been kind of in bad shape. Oh, Carl, of course I want to see you, darling. Tomorrow, I'll feel better and be rested, and all, and it will be so much better."
"Jamie, what did you mean I'd be busy?"
"Oh, did I say that? I just mean, you probably already have some kind of plans. Peggy Sue mentioned some of the girls had been showing you around and all."
"What else did Peggy Sue say?" I snapped.
"What else would she say, Carl?" she asked.
Easy, I warned myself. "Okay, Jamie, we'll do it your way and wait until tomorrow. What time? What time? How about lunch?"
"Well, all right, lunch would be a good time to talk. How about one o'clock? I can meet you, on, say in the square. You're in the hotel there, aren't you?"
"I'll pick you up."
"All right, if you want to, Carl."
"I want to, Jamie. I want very much to see you."
There was a long pause, and I thought for a moment she had turned away from the phone and started crying. Her voice was a little thin and rasping when she spoke again.
"I can't talk any more, Carl.
She hung up, and I held the phone a half minute, my heart pounding, before putting the receiver down.
With this glass of beer, I had a double shot of Old Forester, but it did little to calm me.
I was to restless to sit in a bar, so I had one more quick beer, then walked into the furnace of an afternoon and immediately regretted the bourbon, which was cloying in my throat and. feeling like a lead shot in my stomach.
I hurried to the hotel and saw no sign of Kerry's car. I walked only a half block, but I was soaked in sweat and my throat was drawn dry with thirst. I felt weary and dirty and thought of a cold vodka and tonic and a long, hot shower.
I had just turned the key in my lock when the phone started ringing. I rushed inside and jerked the phone off the hook, hoping to hear Jamie's voice.
"Hello, Carl, this is Emily Ann."
"Oh, hello," I mumbled and sat down on the bed and pulled off my shirt
"Carl, I have to see you right away," she said."
'I'm sorry, baby, but Jamie's back, and the games are over," I said. "The other girls will just have to miss their turns. Or do you want to tear off a quick one this afternoon?"
"You are such a conceited, naive idiot at times," she said. "Well, it's up to you. I had something to tell you, something important. But I'm not going to be insulted or get into a stupid argument."
I hesitated. But what if she were going to tell me something important? Perhaps she had had a change of heart. . .
"Well. . . " Her voice was impatient.
"Okay. Where and when? I was just going to take a shower. Name someplace and I'll be there in an hour."
She named a cocktail lounge on the highway to the Gulf, and said she'd wait for me on the terrace there.
I had a vodka and tonic sent up from the bar, and took the hot shower, which made me feel better, but did little to relax me. And in a few minutes, I was back out in the broiling sun.
The place was further south than I had realized, and I was late getting there. It was a beautiful drive, and I admired the carefully spaced flowering bushes the Blue Bell Garden Club was worried about.
Emily Ann was sitting on a palm-tree shaded terrace that looked out onto a broad stretch of hulking cypress trees growing in a lily covered lake. She was stunning in a soft blue outfit, short skirt and low-cut blouse from which her breasts nearly spilled-the cleavage was fantastic and I went warm just thinking of making love there in the hot, sweaty crevice between the breasts.
She wore huge, round shades and was sipping a tall drink with shaved ice through a red and white striped straw. The glass was filled with orange wedges and cherries.
'i was afraid you got lost," she said, as I sat down. "Or that you decided not to come."
"Took me longer to get down here than I thought," I said. "Why did you pick a place so-far away?"
"Well, I didn't want anyone to see us together," she said.
"Why not? Half of Harrisville saw us in that restaurant," I said.
"I mean I didn't want the girls to know I was meeting you," she said. "First of all, promise me you won't tell them about his,"
"Sure, Emily Ann, I'll promise, of course. But it's not-likely I'll see any of them again."
Her laugh was harsh. "It's hardly-likely you won't," she said, and sipped her drink.
"No more turns," I said firmly. "That's very-likely. And what is this? A nice girl like you actually having a drink, and not even with the rationalization of an electrocution-party? Or is that lemonade?"
She snatched the shades off and her blue eyes burned into mine. "You listen to me, Carl," she said. "Either you stop trying to hurt me, stop picking on me and being arrogant and snotty like that, or so help me I'll walk away and you won't see me again. You'll see some of the others, believe me, darling, but not me. Now, is that clear? You make up your mind right this instant. I'm taking a real chance just seeing you like this."
Her voice was rising and her face was flushed with anger. I knew I was being a bastard talking to her like that, and in any sense, it was stupid before I found out what she wanted to tell me. I also realized that in some ways I was getting to like Emily Ann-although the realization surprised me.
A waiter came over, and I ordered a vodka and tonic. "Do you want another drink?" I asked.
She nodded. "A Singapore Sling," she said, softly, and put her shades on.
I waited for the waiter to leave. Then I leaned closer to her. "You're right, I'm acting like a bastard, Emily Ann. But you have to realize what I've been going through."
She smiled. "How is your face? Here let me see? Does it hurt much?"
She gently touched my cheek. "Oh, it's not too bad," she said. "It's not too noticeable."
"The pain comes and goes," I said, and shrugged. "I've had worse. Tomorrow, you won't be able to see it."
The waiter brought our drinks. I relaxed back in my chair and took a deep swallow. Emily Ann sucked out the last of her first drink, and started on her second.
"I do drink a little sometimes," she said, in a soft, confessional tone. "My secret vice." Then she laughed "Or one of them, anyhow. But never more than two Singapore Slings."
"Listen, even for a good drinker, those things are lethal," I said, and stared at her breasts as she leaned to sip from the straw. The breasts fell forward-dangerously forward-and for an instant I thought they might fall out of the dress.
She caught my intense stare and shook her head as she leaned back. "Today is strictly business," she said. "What I wanted to tell you was that since I saw you last might, a couple of things have changed drastically. I know you won't leave until you see Jamie, of course. But, Carl, when you see her, then you must leave. You must get out of Harrisville quickly."
"Slow down," I said. "Now what in hell has changed so abruptly, and why must I run away?"
She sighed and looked out at a stork standing in the shallow water. She started to sip her drink, then checked herself and looked over at me.
"Trust you?" I said. "Oh, come on, baby. There's no reason on earth for me to trust you, now is there?"
She nodded. "True. There's no reason for you to trust me. So perhaps my warning you is useless. But I had to try. I don't want to see you get hurt, Carl. I'm not like some of the others. I'll do what has to be done if people get hurt, and hurt very badly, I don't even mind that. But needless infliction of pain isn't valid with me. I like you and you'll get hurt if you don't get out of here."
I drained the drink and leaned forward again. "What is all this abstract talk about pain and hurting? What are you majoring in at the University?"
"Philosophy," she said, and couldn't suppress a smile. "I'm the bookworm of our group."
"You look like anything but a philosopher Ann, who's your favorite author?" I asked.
"I think Nietzsche comes closest to what I believe," she said. "Though some of his beliefs I disagree with, of course."
"Nietzsche," I said. "It figures. The superman. You and the other vestal virgins are from such old, aristocratic, pure families that you consider yourselves a group apart, a privileged group of girls who are so superior that nothing you do is wrong, no matter what it is."
"Why, Carl, that states it pretty well," she said. "Though I believe with this superiority goes a great responsibility."
"Okay, forget the philosophy and let's get back to stark reality, Emily Ann," I said. "Now obviously I'm not going to believe your warning unless you tell me what's happening."
"Well, that's up to you, Carl," she said, and took a long, slurping sip of her Singapore Sling. "I really do like you and I sincerely wish you'd see Jamie and leave Harrisville. At least I've tried to warn you."
Emily Ann, it's not hard for me to figure out that what came up were the return of Jamie and her father and the newsbreak on the freeway interchange," I said. "Even last night I could tell you were lying about not knowing about the freeway thing."
She stood up abruptly, her breasts bouncing a little in a way that made me wish we were alone. I stood up, too.
"I've got to run," she said. "Please don't devour me with your eyes that way. I said today was strictly business."
"And philosophy," I said and she smiled.
"Carl, take care of yourself," she said, as she pecked at my cheek and turned. Her breasts brushed my arm and I went warm and sucked in my breath.
Then she stopped. "And Carl, you may not go out with Sandy and June. That's up to you. But don't cross Millie. She's a dear sweet friend, but if she wants her turn, give it to her. And exactly the way she tells you. If you don't, it will be Jamie who will have to pay. Goodbye now, and take care of yourself. And try to trust me just a little bit, darling."
And so she left, her powder-blue dress hugging her slim body, her thin, tanned legs sleek in stockings. I sat down and ordered a drink, and saw the stork flying off as my mind was flooded with confusing and contradictory thoughts.
I got a little drunk out there on the terrace and when I drove back to town, the dominant thought that emerged was: Tomorrow at lunch you see Jamie. Don't do anything till then.
And perhaps I wouldn't have, despite Emily Ann's hazy warning. But when I stepped into the hotel, a sealed envelope was handed to me with the key. I tore it open.
The note was typed: I must talk to you. Please meet me at seven tonight at the corner of Elm and 34th. Wait in you car there.
There was no signature.
"When did you get this?" I asked the clerk. "Who brought it?"
"About half an hour ago," he said. "An old Negro man brought it in and said it was important."
"Okay, thanks," I said and walked wearily up to my room.
I wanted to hope the note was from Jamie. I knew somehow it was not. But in any case I dared not fail to show up. I lay down, after leaving a call for six o'clock.
I got there at five minutes before seven and waited fifteen minutes. The street was near the edge of town, and there were few houses and few street lights. I had just decided to wait another five minutes when I saw headlights in the rearview mirror.
The car was coming very slowly. Then it stopped for a moment. It moved even slower when it approached and pulled up beside me. For an instant I couldn't see who was at the wheel, but she leaned over and opened the door and the light caught her face. It was Millie Perkins.
"Come on, hurry, get in," she said.
I got into her car and the wheels squealed as she drove off. The car was filled with a provocative perfume, and Millie had on a red blouse which hugged her breasts and the shortest, tightest pair of red shorts I had ever seen on a woman.
"I've only got a few minutes," she said. "Something came up, so we'll have to get together tomorrow night, Carl."
"Now, wait a minute, what in hell did you want to talk to me about, Millie?" I asked.
"Don't be stupid," she said. "I just had to be careful what I said in the note. You know what I want."
'There was no doubt in my mind exactly what she wanted from me but I was going to be more than just casually cautious now.
"You want your turn with me," I said. "Tell me what is your peculiar sex kick, outside of sending men to the electric chair?"
"I assume that was meant to make me angry," she said, matter-of-factly. "Say what you want, Carl. I don't care. And I won't get angry. And I won't discuss the rape. Tomorrow night, after a while, things will be different."
"How will things be different, Millie?"
"That would spoil the fun, to tell you," she said. "I had really wanted to see you tonight. But I have to be somewhere in about ten minutes."
She turned the corner on two wheels, drove quickly down a short block, and turned sharply around another corner. I realized she was taking me back to my car.
"Look, Millie, now that Jamie's back, things are different," I said. But I said it without conviction because I remembered Emily Ann's warning about Millie and I was well ready to believe it.
"Then you don't want me?" she asked, and turned again and slowed down. My car was in the next block.
"Want you how, Millie?" I asked. "To make love to you? Maybe that way. What is your sex game? Look, Millie, you can't blame me for being wary, with the rape thing and all."
"I can blame you for anything I want to," she said. "Actually, you're afraid that you can't handle me sexually."
"Handle you how, Millie? I don't know even now what in hell you want-what in the hell your sexual quirk is."
She stopped beside my car, and cut out the lights, but left the motor running.
"Give me your hand, please," she said rather sternly.
I hesitated, and she leaned over and took my hand firmly, while she slid a few inches closer. She put the hand on her thigh, and at the touch of her warm, smooth, intimate skin I went warm and there was a faint stirring between my thighs.
"Do you like this?" she asked and when my breath poured in and out quickly I inhaled the deep, arousing perfume, and through it the smell of her hair, which had obviously just been washed and smelled fresh and clean.
"Very intimate and very soft," I said, but my heavy breathing belied my attempt at casualness.
Then she spread her thighs wide and slid my finger up the soft flesh slightly moist now with sweat. My finger brushed several little ridges and she held the fingers there.
"What do you think those are?" she asked, and leaned a bit closer to me, so that I could see the beautiful, exquisite features of her doll-face.
"I don't know," I said.
"They're tooth marks," she said, and tugged my hand away and slid back under the wheel.
I played the game, and my fast breathing and pumping heart told me I wanted to play. "Whose?" I asked. "Anyone I know?"
"Maybe," she said. "Now out you go or I'll be late."
I climbed from the car, and cursed myself for the bulge in my pants and the way my face was blazing. I slammed the door so hard the car rocked, and then cursed myself again for letting her know I was aroused and upset.
"Carl," she said, in barely a whisper.
I bent down.
"Tomorrow night at seven here," she whispered. "Please be here, Carl. And Carl, I just love big, strong, confident men like you. The stronger and more independent the better. But, Carl. Please don't lose control of yourself and bite me, like somebody's big, strong daddy did. That makes me so angry it's frightening."
I barely jumped back in time as she pumped down on the accelerator and the car shot away, the tires screeching.
"Christ," I muttered as I watched her taillights disappearing. I stood there three or four minutes before I drove slowly off.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
I was certain that sleep would be hard to come by and I was prepared for another night of tossing and turning while I tried to find out at least part of the answer that always eluded me in the end.
The next morning was one of the longest I ever spent, and by noon, it seemed I had been up for days. But finally it was a quarter to one and I fortified myself with a quick drink and headed out for Jamie's.
The day was humid and overcast, with huge, dark clouds racing moodily across the sky and the rumblings of thunder and streaks of jagged lightning promising a flood at any moment. When I drove out to Jamie's, it was so dark some cars had their lights on.
I parked where I had my first night in Harrisville, which now seemed an eternity ago. I stared a moment at the Conway's house, then climbed out and walked slowly up the sidewalk.
The front door was closed, and I pushed the bell impatiently. When there was no immediate answer, I pumped the bell, and had the wild, irrational fear Jamie would not be there, or would have disappeared again.
There was a movement behind the door and it was slowly opened by a short, heavy gray-haired negro woman in a gray and white uniform.
"You must be Mister Carl," she said, as she smiled and stepped back.
"Yes, that's right," I said, and stepped inside an entrance foyer with a gleaming wooden floor, and handsome, dark-wood antique furniture. "Is Jamie here?"
"Miss Jamie, she had to step next door for a minute, and said to tell you to wait in the library." The room was large and wood-paneled, lined on two walls with floor-to-ceiling bookcases filled with expensive, leather-bound books. A gigantic brick fireplace took up most of the third wall, and the fourth was broken with two large lace-curtained French doors which led out to a terrace.
"Can I get you something to drink?" the woman asked.
"Some vodka and tonic would be good," I said.
"You make yourself at home while I go into the kitchen for some ice," she said. "Miss Jamie, she'll be right back."
I sank down into a long, leather-covered couch in front of the fireplace, and saw that the ceiling was beamed with handsome walnut strips, and in the recesses of the cross-beams were carved wood panels.
A faint breeze rustled the white curtains and I sat up on the edge of the couch, exhaled, and then stood up. I walked over to a bookcase, stared absently at the handsome leather-bound books, and pulled out several volumes. They all seemed brand new, as though they had never been opened.
I heard the sound of voices back in the house somewhere, as I walked over to a desk between the French doors. It was cluttered with papers and envelopes, and on one side was a picture of Jamie, her lovely face serene and beaming in a smile, and beside it a picture of a man, obviously her father, a man who looked perhaps forty, with a lean, tough, firm face, a firmly set almost begrudging smile, brush-cut dark hair and intensely black, burning eyes that made me uneasy, even in a picture.
I heard the woman bringing the ice back and turned. But it was Jamie who walked slowly into the room carrying a silver bowl.
We stared a full minute, and I saw she held the silver bowl so tight her slender fingers were white from the pressure. Her blue eyes seemed watery and there were faint but distinct lines beneath them, on that smooth skin I remembered so well.
She had her full lips clamped together, and I noticed that her honey-blonde hair was in disarray as though she simply did not care enough to brush it For the rest she looked the same: very pale skin and the same luscious figure, with huge breasts, flaring hips and perfect, tapered legs, a body carelessly enclosed in a wrinkled, sleeveless white blouse and jeans that didn't quite fit. But her in a town drenched daily with sun, the pale skin seemed sickly somehow.
"Well, welcome to Harrisville," she said, suddenly, and obviously had difficulty forcing a smile.
She hurried across the room and stood a foot from me, cocked her head and nibbled her lower lip, and now her eyes were watery and a bit red-tinged, as though she had been crying, or was fixing to burst into tears.
"How are you, baby?" I asked, tentatively, truly afraid I didn't want to hear the answer.
"Oh, a bit tired," she said, and sighed.
I moved to kiss her, and put my hands on her waist, and she flinched and stiffened, as though she expected me to hit her. She avoided my lips and I ended up brushing her cheek, which burned as though feverish.
Then she scurried away. "Let's see, you wanted a vodka and tonic. Well, it's so muggy today, that's a good choice. I wish it would go on and rain. We could use it and maybe it would cool things off."
Each word came out faster as she moved to a small, pine-paneled bar and began to mix my drink.
I saw she was mixing herself one, also, and the amount of vodka she poured into the two tall glasses made me flinch.
"And how have you been," she continued, even faster, as I crossed over to the bar. "What a stupid thing I did to drag you down here, at the hottest possible time of the year. And Carl, I'm dreadfully sorry I wasn't here when you got here and all, but something came up at the last minute.. . "
I stepped behind the bar and put my hand on her waist, and she broke the sentence and stiffened again and bit her lip. But she couldn't move away, because she was facing the wall and was hemmed in by the bar.
"Jamie, darling, talk to me," I said. "What's wrong?"
Her fingers shook slightly as she finished the drinks, and she stood there with my hand on her waist as though its touch repulsed her. When she turned to hand me the drink, her face was only inches from mine. She was a damn mess: eyes red and watery and now puffy, no color at all in the scalding cheeks, her hair in tangles, her body so she might have been a gigantic wooden puppet-except for the heavy, irregular breathing which made her breasts heave quickly against the white blouse.
"Let's sit down on the couch and let me catch my breath, Carl," she said. "Please, move and let me out." She sounded desperate, as though she might panic at any moment.
I stepped back and she hurried to the couch and sank. She took two shuddering swallows from the vodka and tonic, then sat on the edge of the couch holding the glass in both hands and staring down into the drink as though she might see something there among the ice and lime.
I took a swallow, paused a moment, then went over and sat beside her.
We drank in silence for a minute and she played with the lime, then shoved it down viciously with a finger.
"Are you hungry?" I asked. "Why don't we drink and get out of here?"
"No, frankly, I'm not too hungry," she said. "I'll have to run up and change. I can't go out of the house looking like this. But I got delayed at the. . .I got delayed next door. Oh, Carl, I do look a mess, don't I?"
She started to look up, but avoided my eyes and glanced past me, swallowed, then returned to her drink, which she drained with another frighteningly-long swallow.
"I'm so glad to see you I hadn't noticed," I said. "Perhaps you do look a little ragged around the edges. But you said you were tired." I was speaking slowly, carefully choosing my words and their tone. "Look, you don't have to change. I'm not too hungry myself. Had a late breakfast. Why don't we grab some shrimp and stuff and have a picnic."
She turned quickly and her lower lip trembled when she spit out, the words: "Yes, pick up some shrimp and stuff and drive out to some pine-surrounded stream for a picnic. That's just what I've been looking forward to."
To myself I said: Oh Jesus, you stupid bastard to mention the picnic bit. To Jamie I said: "Look, baby, let's just get out of the house. How about it?"
She nodded. "I'm sorry I snapped at you like that, Carl. Silly of me. We do need to be alone and have our talk and get it over with. Here, let me get you another drink."
She got up and I finished the drink and handed her the glass. I'd never in my life needed a drink more. And I watched her mix two drinks that made it seem vodka was water and tonic something so scarce it had to be carefully rationed.
"You have a lovely home here," I said, grabbing desperately at any neutral topic.
She shrugged and took a sip of the drink. 'Thank you," she said. "Daddy decided he wanted to live in this very house, a few weeks after he came to town, when he was living in a furnished room near the railroad tracks. He spent a lot of time fixing it up, and I helped some, but mostly it's all his doing."
"He seems to like books," I said.
"Oh, those?" she asked, and for the first time, she laughed, and seemed to relax some. "Lord, he never has time to read. He bought all these books down in New Orleans, at a store in the French Quarter, because he'd seen leather-bound books in some of the old homes here. I've read some of them.. .I used to like to read. But the lovely books have been rather neglected lately, I'm afraid."
We talked about the beamed ceiling and she showed me the living and the dining room-both decorated in expensive antiques-and then we returned to the library.
"You about ready to go?" I asked, as I set my glass on the bar.
"Actually, I was half waiting for Daddy," she said. "He wanted to meet you and said he'd try to get out here around one, if at all possible. He's terribly busy, with some important stuff. Though I guess he's always terribly busy, actually. That's why we were gone. He took me on a business trip with him."
"Sure, I look forward to meeting him," I said.
So we had still another drink and talked about innocuous things, and I realized she was quickly getting drunk. T hoped I could get her away before she got too drunk and something happened.
". . .used to roast wieners and marshmallows here when I was little," she was saying, as she nodded toward the fireplace. "You wouldn't think it would ever get cold enough down here for a roaring fire, but the winters can fool you."
There was a sound at the front door and she glanced quickly-almost furtively-around and took a quick sip of her drink, then set her glass on the bar. I put mine beside it, and we stared at each other for a moment and I saw a faint, terrible shudder pass over her body.
Then the door opened and her father came in, shuffled in, I should say, and stood a moment in the doorway without looking at either of us.
"Daddy, this is Carl," Jamie said, quickly, urgently. "Carl, I'd like you to meet my father."
I stepped over with hand extended and Mr. Meadows turned to me, turned slowly, and we shook hands-he grasped my hand and his grip was firm, yet his hand seemed strangely soft.
"Well, welcome to Harrisville," he said. "You must have traveled a long way to see my little girl. Sorry we couldn't be here when you arrived. But I guess Jamie explained all that. Tell you what, Jamie, I believe I could use a drink."
"We were having vodka and tonic, daddy," Jamie said.
"Now, young lady, you know I don't like that kind of drink," he said. "Pour me some Jack Daniels on the rocks, Jamie."
Jamie mixed drinks again and we stood without talking and I tried to keep from staring at the hulking, somehow drooping giant beside me.
Because Mr. Meadows was a giant of a man, perhaps six feet, four inches tall. But his shoulders seemed to hunch slightly and his blue suit sagged on his frame and it was obvious he had lost weight and had not gone to the trouble of having his clothes altered.
He seemed to be suffering from a wasting disease, and I remembered Ted's comment that he had always seemed a man who was younger-looking and stronger than his year, but had suddenly over-aged. His face was lined, not wrinkled, and his lips a little slack. His hair had grown longer and was touched with several streaks of gray. And the eyes that had bored at me and disturbed me from the picture: they seemed to have lost their intensity, as though they had been diluted.
The silence hung and from out in the garden I heard honey bees and somewhere an eternity away the sound of a car horn. Mr. Meadows did not speak again until Jamie handed him the bourbon and he poured down half the glass in one great swallow.
Then he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and turned to me again. "Well, Carl, Jamie tells me you can only spend a very short time with us," he said. 'Too bad. But I well understand if you have to get back to work. She said you were a driver. That must be fascinating work. Yessir, must be fascinating."
I glanced at Jamie, who avoided my eyes and sipped her vodka and tonic. I nodded. "Well, I'm not actually sure how long I can stay," I said, and took a small sip of my drink.
I heard the phone ringing out in the hall and in a minute the maid stuck her head in the door.
"It's for you, Mr. Ron," she said. "Man says it's important."
"No rest for the weary," he said and went out to the phone.
"Just a few more minutes, and we can leave, Carl," Jamie said. "But you probably won't have a chance to see Daddy again and I thought.. "
"What is all this bit about my leaving so quickly?" I snapped.
Then Mr. Meadows returned. "I'm afraid something has come up downtown and I'll have to run," he said. "Perhaps we can get together later in the day, or this evening. Jamie, you make some plans so we can all get together."
Jamie said she sure would, and Mr. Meadows and I shook hands, and he left. Jamie drained her drink, and she seemed a little unsteady on her feet. There was a loud jolt of thunder and she jerked and gasped.
"Shall we go?" I asked.
"Oh, yes, God yes, let's go," she mumbled. "Are you driving, or did you take a taxi out? If you like we can use my car."
"No, I rented a car at the airport in New Orleans," I said. "I'm getting to know my way around Harrisville," I added, with an attempt at lightness.
"I would think so," she said, as she walked from the room, weaving just a little.
I followed her from the room out the front door, just as the first raindrops fell-huge, round drops that stirred the dust and brought the fresh, clean rain smell sweeping across the lawn. As I moved down the walk behind Jamie, I glanced around and saw Peggy Sue looking at us from an upstairs window in her house. She smiled and waved and licked her lips, but I ignored her and ran after Jamie.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The storm was tropical in its force and we sat sweating in the car, the windows rolled up, as I leaned forward and tried to see the highway.
"I think I better pull over," I said. 'This is getting dangerous." The windshield was a sheet of rushing water and at times the force of the wind-driven rain seemed ready not only to stall the wipers, but rip them off.
"Oh, no, Carl," Jamie said. "No, go further, please. Away from town. I've got to get away from town for a little while. I just have to."
"All right, baby," I muttered, and held my hands on the steering wheel with an effort, because in that closed, humid car, I was sweating so badly my hands were as slick as though they had been greased.
But another five miles and the force of the wind was bucking the car and I could only creep along and hope I wasn't near the shoulder. "Christ, I've got to pull over and find some shelter," I said. "It's just not possible to go on."
Jamie sighed. "I guess you're right. It seems it might just pick us up and blow us away, and I'm simply sweltering."
"Just where in hell are we?" I asked. "Wait, I see something on the right. What is that? It looks like a relay tower for high-voltage electricity."
"Oh, I know where we are then," she said. "Just beyond that tower, there's a road to the right, if I remember correctly, the left side as we turn, the one the wind's coming from, is a high bank for several hundred feet. The road was cut through a hill, I guess."
Jamie remembered correctly and I managed to crawl off the highway and make the shelter of the hill. That took the force of the wind off us and since it allowed the wipers to work again, I could see the road ahead. It was blacktop, full of pot-holes and in places it was like driving over corduroy.
"What's that building on the right?" I asked.
She leaned forward. "There's an old sign that says 'bait,' but the place looks deserted to me. In fact, I can see huge cracks in the walls. If anybody lives there, they're drowned by now."
I risked getting off the blacktop and pulled around behind the rotting, one-room shack, which was obviously deserted. There was an overhang from the roof, and we were fairly effectively shielded from most of the storm. To our right was a lake or bayou or river-it was difficult to say. I cut off the motor and lowered the window a little, then as I took out my handkerchief and brushed sweat from my steaming face and forehead.
Jamie was dripping with sweat, her pale face soaking, her thin blouse so wet her bra was clearly molded against the material, and there were spots of sweat on the jeans.
"Don't brush off the sweat," she said. "It makes you look sexy."
"I take it that's a compliment," I said.
"Of course, sir," she said, and nodded. "For you, I have only compliments."
I slid across the seat and put my arm around her. "Jamie, baby, what's wrong with you? What in the hell has happened? In the name of God, talk to me."
"Do you really want to talk?" she asked, and looked up with a faint, provocative smile twisted on the corners of her lips. "We don't have long together, Carl. Do you want to waste the time talking?"
"You're talking riddles again, crazy girl," I said, and brushed a tangle of blonde hair from her forehead. "I'm not going anywhere, Jamie. Not without you. I'm not going to lose you again."
Sighed. "Carl, listen. I was, well, I was fond of you in Rome. But that's been a year, and things have changed. I've changed. Oh, Carl, how I've changed. Now, I was just a little depressed about a couple of things and wrote you that stupid letter. like I said, I sent you another letter asking that you not come."
"Jamie, I'm in love with you," I said. "And baby, you're in trouble, real trouble. You look awful. And you look like you're about to go off the deep end. Now, dammit, I'm going to help you. I have some idea of what's happening, and I intend to. . . "
Her kiss was sudden and sucking, a wild, wicked kiss that made gasp. Her tongue moved against mine, then lashed the roof of my mouth, while she rubbed her breasts hard against my chest, and clawed at my neck with her nails.
And with ragged breath against my cheek, there came a short grunt of pure animal lust. When I pulled from her mouth a couple of minutes later, she was sucking at my tongue and biting my lower hp, and she had curled a leg between my thighs and her knee was rubbing expertly to send sheets of tense, hot desire over my body.
"Jamie, listen, wait," I mumbled, but her pale face was strange, blood-red now, twisted into a mask of beautiful, abandoned passion, with the blue eyes half closed as though drugged.
"Don't you want me, Carl?" she whispered, her voice hoarse. "We don't really have anything to discuss. I made a mistake asking you to come and now I want you to leave. But just this once, Carl, I want you."
"Jamie, wait a minute," I gasped, but her fingers were doing things over my body that made me want her very badly.
She was biting my ear now, tonguing the ear, her lips hot, wet and hungry and she tore two buttons getting my shirt open. She was like a frenzied animal, and I was rapidly losing control of myself. But I knew something was terribly wrong, and that I would be making a mistake to take her this way. . .
"Damn you," she suddenly said, and shoved me away, her blue eyes blazing. Then she burst into tears, and huge teardrops streamed down her red cheeks and mixed with the sweat.
"Take it easy, baby," I said soothingly, but I was burning up, with the heat in the car, and with my own heat.
Her nostrils were flared, her lips moving slightly, her breathing fierce and desperate.
Suddenly she scrambled over the seat, and climbed up onto the back seat. She tore her blouse open and pulled it off, then reached for the bra snap.
I turned, and leaned over the seat. "Jamie, I love you and want you, of course, but not like this."
"Not like what?" she asked, as she tore the white bra off and her breasts spilled free, mild-white mounds bathed in sweat, the too-long bright red nipples seeming to glow with a red-molten fire. "This is sex. What other way is there?"
I went over the seat as she unfastened the jeans and started jerking them off. I reached her just as she dropped them to the floor, and I stared at her luscious, sickly pale body, at the milky-smooth thighs and the tiny piece of white panty cloth that was ripped in two places is front to show a hint of the huge mound of matted blonde hair I remembered so well.
I caught her wrists as she tried to kiss me again and shook her so that her tangled, sweat-streaked blonde hair flew down and was matted to her forehead.
She struggled furiously for an instant, then went limp and fell back. I let her go.
"What's wrong, Carl?" she asked in a whisper. "I'm a big girl now. I go all the way. You spent every night for three weeks trying to get me to go all the way in Rome. Well, you're in luck today." She laughed, and traced a sharp fingernail around the bottom rim of the ripped panties. "Fight me or give in, but before you take me back to town, I'm going to have you, Carl."
I sat there staring dumbly at her naked body, aroused beyond endurance, and totally unsure of what to do.
"Poor panties," she said in a soothing voice and shook her head. "They were brand new. That's what I get for not being able to wait."
She suddenly pulled the panties off, dropped them on the floor, and in the same motion flew against me again, and sucked a wet, searing kiss over my mouth, her lips pumping, her hands going berserk on my neck and ears and in my hair, while her knee shoved against my trapped, throbbing prick. I gasped, and all resistance fled-fled down my soaking, screaming body and my prick flared up, dancing like an insane puppet to each touch of her knee.
I kissed her fiercely, and slid my hands over her glistening back, and when I squeezed her wet, squirming buttocks, it was like grasping two handfuls of syrup that has just gone solid from excessive heat.
Jamie mashed the wild kiss harder, her teeth nibbling, her lips sucking and her tongue lashing the inside of my mouth, while her boiling, irregular gasps of breath poured against my burning cheeks.
"Aaaah," she moaned. "Aaaaaah"-through the sloppy, artless kiss, and then, as her nails dug ten points of pain into my neck and she humped at my thigh: "Uh, uh, uh, aaaaah" again.
I tried to grasp the jerking buttocks but they were so slick it was difficult, and finally in a moment of blinding passion in which my prick throbbed with the ecstasy of pained arousal, I dug my nails into her buttocks and slammed her body against mine, and she ground her breasts against my chest and through my shirt I could tell the long, red nipples were so firm they must be aching.
"Your clothes," she gasped as she pulled from my lips and tore at my shirt.
I helped her tug it off, as she sat on a leg and hunched up and down, and tried to lick my lips, my ear, my chin, my chest. We somehow got the T-shirt off, too, and then she put her little hands palms down and flattened them against my stomach and shoved them below my belt, and leaned against me hard, with her nails digging into my stomach while she bent her head and tongue kissed my chest and nipples.
I kissed her ears and her damp, tangled hair and scraped my finger along her slick, jerking body. Then I grunted as she pressed her nails harder against my stomach and nearly took my breath away.
I was bursting with desire, the urgent throbbing of my prick sensitized to acid-sharp rawness by memories of Jamie in Rome, of all the times I had petted with her. And now I was ready to devour the scalding body that was hunching and clawing and biting at me, and my breathing brought animal lust sounds that matched hers.
Moving with clumsy, lust-heavy fingers we fumbled my pants and shorts off and fell cramped onto the narrow seat while the wind shifted and rain spray blew through the open from window and chilled our sweat-hot bodies with cold mist that made me shiver in a strange, warm way.
I fell between Jamie's open thighs and hugged her glorious body to mine and she enclosed me and rocked back and forth, while I kissed and bit her ear. A lone, slender finger trailed points of pain across my buttocks, paused then plunged deep and twisted. The blade of pain tore my buttocks apart, and I sank my teeth into her neck and she scrambled so that my erect prick fell against her large, damp vagina and she groaned and wrapped her legs around me.
I ripped her thighs apart and for a moment fingered the slick, pulsating lips of her vagina, then rammed down into that, sucking, burning hole of honeyed delight. Jamie was rigid a fraction of a moment, her hands doubled into fists so tight the nails drew faint traces of blood in her palms.
Then her body went berserk, and she rocked and wrapped herself around me, muscles strained and pulsated in her buttocks and thighs and in the vagina, muscles that worked the slick, sticky-tight flesh against my frantic prick. And I grasped her buttocks and pumped steadily, twisted, changed the pace, thrust and teased and hurt, worked steadily once more.
We bit each other, clawed and scratched and thrashed, our breathing impossible and inhuman, and I soared up that peak of blinding pleasure and as though a hand had reached up through my prick, into my gut and my soul and jerked hard, a searing release built up.
I moaned and whimpered and my nipples ached, and then came the explosion: a razoredge of burning release poured through my body and I screamed and thrust a final time, then collapsed on Jamie's inhumanly hot, white heaving body.
She lay still now, too. That is, she was sexually spent, but some of her muscles still quivered as though she had worked them to such a peak of unnatural excitement she could not control them, and her breathing was so irregular and so fierce it jerked even the bulk of my large body.
And so we lay wrapped about each other, sweat-slick and chilled by the rain spray, the hving dead gasping out breath after what the French call
"the little death."
Then Jamie stirred, and my drained, withered prick, still lying there at the wet lips of her vagina, stirred with her and life began to swell into it once more, and I felt the breasts rubbing beneath me and kissed her forehead and cheek and slid a hand along her side to her thigh.
She jerked, lay still, sighed with her eyes closed, doubled her hands into quickly opening fists. Then she opened the eyes and with surprising strength doubled her legs and twisted savagely beneath me.
"Get off, you're mashing me, you're hurting me," she whined, in a panicedged voice, and beat at me with her little fists.
I scrambled up, gasping for breath, "Listen, Jamie," I started, having no idea what in hell to say.
She scooped up her clothes. "Don't talk now, dammit," she snapped. "I'm burning up and covered with sweat and feel awful. Let's get out of here. You get dressed back here and I'll take the front seat. Just don't talk to me, dammit. I feel awful."
I nodded and sat back against the seat, rivlets of sweat cascading down my body. As Jamie climbed over the seat, for one beautiful instant her naked buttocks were thrust up, and I saw several broad red welts that I had not inflicted with my fingers and which I had not noticed in the heat of lovemaking.
When we finally got back near town, the rain had slacked up. Jamie insisted I take her straight home. She sat huddled in the corner between the seat and door, her legs doubled up on the seat and her arms wrapped around them as though she were trying to draw her body together as tightly as possible and escape from everything external.
"Jamie, it's no good my taking you home now," I said, as I stopped for a red light. "Dammit, we've got to talk. I'm here to help you. Don't you understand that I can help you, baby? If you'll just.. . . "
"Do you see the policeman directing traffic?" she asked. She sat up abruptly and put her hand on the door. "Unless you promise to take me directly home I swear I'll jump out of the car and tell him to make you leave me alone."
Her blue eyes were wide and her voice rising with the tinge of panic.
I nodded. "Okay, calm down. I'll take you home. But I'm not leaving Harrisville, Jamie. Don't be ridiculous, baby. Don't you understand that I can help you?"
The light changed and I drove slowly down the street. The rain was falling heavier now and the humidity was up again.
"Don't you want to get cleaned up?" she asked. "I'm just soaking wet and feel dirty and awful. I could spend an hour in a hot shower."
"Sure, I want to get cleaned up," I said. "All right, why don't I drop you off and then I'll pick you up in say an hour and a half.. . "
She shook her head. "Just drop me off and leave me alone. I mean, until tomorrow, Carl. I simply can't spend any more time with you today or tonight. I'll try to make it up for your having come this far for nothing. If you insist, I'll make love to you again. Any way you want. But you can't help me, as you say. Carl, a year has passed, and I've changed. Everything has changed, and you have no idea what is happening to me or my father, or anything in this town, and you're not being smart. . . "
"I'm smart enough to have figured out that you and your father are in some kind of serious trouble, because of the freeway interchange, and somehow because of those girls, and baby. . . "
Her laugh was sudden and harsh, coming from that lovely, slim white throat. "Those girls have played with you like you were a toy. You're really going to be a big help, aren't you, darling?" Her tone was lightly sarcastic. Then it altered abruptly into a slow, dull deadly pitch. "The only way you can help me and my father is to get the hell out of here. Your coming has only complicated matters, and if you want me to tell you what I really think about you, and hurt you? Why not just remember our good times in Rome, and call this afternoon's little lovemaking payment on an overdue debt."
I turned the corner onto her street. "What hold do the girls have on you, Jamie? What control do they have over you? And what about that so-called rape? And what happened to your father? He hasn't been physically sick, but something has drained him. I'm not leaving, and I know too much already, baby."
I pulled up in front of her house. It was pouring rain. Suddenly, she slid across the seat, her smile bright and her blue eyes sparkling.
"Silly, the girls just don't like me," she purred, and kissed my cheek. "They took great delight in playing with Jamie's boyfriend while she was away. And then telling me all about it. Oh, they're some bunch, aren't they? Me, I just found I like to make love. I wouldn't have anything to do with that bunch of creepy little perverts. Now look, you call me tomorrow, and we'll go out again. Maybe down to the Gulf and spend the day. I'll be rested then and feel better."
I smoothed her hair from her forehead and started to tell her she was lying through her teeth. But I just kissed her forehead. I forced a smile.
"I was stupid with the girls," I said. "I'll tell you all about it tomorrow. Look, if we can go away, maybe we can spend the night together." I laid it on thick, as if I believed her every word. "I guess I don't understand things down here in Harrisville, Jamie. All that waiting put my imagination into high gear, I guess."
"Okay, look, I'll run now," she said, and brushed my lips with hers. "Tomorrow, everything will be fine, darling. I'm sorry I've snapped at you and been such a little bitch. But I really am beat, and this heat just takes something out of me."
"Sure, I understand," I said. "It takes something out of me, too. Look, I'll call you around nine in the morning, all right?"
"Yes, I'll be waiting," she said, kissed my cheek quickly, then slid across the seat and climbed out into the rain. She ran across the lawn and as I leaned over to shut the door, I saw Peggy Sue staring from the upstairs window. This time she did not wave.
I drove slowly off. I decided to go the hotel, take a hot shower, a short nap, then have something to drink. When I was rested and reasonably calm, I would make a decision. And it would not be the kind of nebulous what-can-I-do decisions I had made when being played by the girls.
In combat, and in diving, in most work I've done there is a point at which each man makes a decision, considers that he may die or be badly hurt, but he makes the decision and goes on.
In some three hours I was going to make such a decision, and then I would do what had to be done, and to hell with the consequences.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The next morning at nine, Jamie answered my call on the first ring, and confirmed my suspicion.
"Carl, I'm sorry I lied to you yesterday," she said, in a flat, weary voice. "I felt so awful and it was the only quick way I knew to get rid of you. I simply can't see you today, or see you again at all. Won't you please accept this, Carl, and leave? Surely our little bout in the car showed you I'm not the girl you thought you loved in Rome."
"You won't even meet me for a drink?" I asked, debating about what to say.
"Oh, no, Carl, that's no good," she said. "Please, if you do love me you'll believe what I say and leave me alone before you make things infinitely worse."
"I see," I said quietly. "Well, maybe that's that, Jamie. I don't know what else to say. I love you, but it's obvious you don't love me. All right, baby, I'll leave. But Jamie, I'm going down to New Orleans for a week or so. I'll be at the Jung Hotel. If you change your mind, please, come down."
"Oh, Carl, I do like you," she said. Then she seemed to catch herself. She cleared her throat. "I'll call you at the hotel, at least. And you know, when you're gone a couple of days and I have a chance to relax and think about things, you know, I might just go down there and spend a few days with you and who knows what might happen."
"That would be great," I said, and babbled on and we said goodbye and talked again and finally she did cry, and finally she hung up.
I checked out of the hotel, found the Avis agency and got another car, one entirely different from the one I had been driving. Then I bought a pair of powerful binoculars.
I knew it would be impossibe to wait for Jamie anywhere qn the street, but fortunately her house was at the edge of town, and all the houses out there were actually estates, with gardens in the back, often lakes, and behind the Meadow's and the Conway's a sloping hill, covered with a cane growth that grew down to a narrow, rushing twisting stream.
I could watch Jamie's from the cane growth with my car parked on a little-used blacktop road a couple of hundred yards behind the growth across the stream. When Jamie left her house, she might turn left, back into town, which would make it difficult to get to the car and catch her, because she could turn so many different ways.
But if she turned right, the street bled off into a blacktop road that went straight for some ten miles, through meadowland and cane growth. And the road my car was on paralleled it and finally intersected it, about a mile before the swamps began. I had a very strong feeling that Jamie would turn right.
But she did not leave the house for hours. I sat, squatted, stood in the cane and watched her house in detail through the binoculars, or sometimes, just with my eyes, and what I saw was that Jamie spent several hours lying on the bed.
Then, as dusk came and I finished the last of the beer and sandwiches I had brought with me, Jamie bolted up, and ran from her room. And I noticed in the Conways' that Peggy Sue was standing by the telephone. I couldn't see Jamie but I knew somehow she was talking to Peggy Sue, and when I looked through the glasses, I could tell Peggy Sue was angry and nervous. Those heart-shaped lips were moving in angry speech and she paced back and forth as she talked. And then she smiled abruptly, shook her head up and down, and hung up. A moment later, Jamie hurried into her bedroom.
She peeled off the jeans and blouse in which she had been sleeping and she wore nothing else. I leaned forward and adjusted the glasses and saw that stark-white, luscious body and the mound of silky hairs and I swallowed and felt a little warm.
Jamie stood strangely still a minute or two, as though undecided. Then she tentatively rubbed a hand down over her stomach to her thighs, her stomach jerked, and she touched at her vagina. She bit her lower Up, and closed her eyes and threw her head back, then turned and ran into what I guessed was a bathroom. There was small, frosted window there and I could see nothing.
But I saw that Peggy Sue was driving down the driveway of her house in a small red sports car. She paused at the street, turned right and drove rapidly away, toward the swamp.
Ten minutes later, Jamie emerged from the bathroom and ran to a closet, paused, turned, went to a chest of drawers, paused again, shook her head and brushed at her hair with her hand, then went back to the closet.
She dressed quickly, in a light blue blouse and short, blue skirt, and she wore no socks. She glanced quickly into the mirror, picked up a brush, put it down, then picked up a tube of lipstick, threw it down, then pivoted and ran from the room.
A minute later, she emerged from the side of the house and climbed into a white Volkswagen. She backed from the driveway, turned right, and drove very slowly down the street.
I turned and fought my way through the cane to my car, jumped in, and lurched down the narrow road, through meadowland and cane growth pushed steadily down on the accelerator, my heart pounding, and after several miles, through a break in the cane, I saw that I was even with Jamie's white car, though it was moving faster. I pumped down on the accelerator and sighed, wiped sweat from my forehead, and raised my shoulders, tensed my muscles.
After all the merciless waiting, the uncertainty, the sense of being helpless and being toyed with, I felt that now I was making a move that would somehow resolve things.
I drove faster and easily reached the intersection before Jamie, and backed into a growth of small white oaks that shielded my car. Jamie passed the intersection in a couple of minutes, driving straight ahead, into the thickening swamp growth.
It was deep dusk now, the sky that last purple before black, and moss-laced, overhanging trees blotted out what light of day remained. I waited a minute, then pulled out and followed Jamie, my lights off.
The road got worse as we got deeper into the swamp, and huge pot-holes I hit because. I had no lights rattled the car to the very frame. Once, I thought I had lost her, as she turned onto a narrower road which twisted treacherously among the bogs and bayous. I passed a huge growth of hulking trees and a brilliant purple blaze of bougainvillea vines, and I realized I had passed the same spot with Emily Ann-we were obviously on the way to her fishing camp.
Another turn off, a twisting road-and I did lose Jamie. I stopped, cursed, mopped sweat from my forehead, as the night sounds throbbed from the swamps and water thrashed and something squealed nearby. I drove off slowly, and flicked my lights on. To my right, a long, black and beaded snake slithered lazily around the limb of a cypress and my lights caught for a second the frenzied rush of a possum across the narrow, hole-marked road.
I stopped again, drove off, made a wrong turn, then saw something else I remembered, an abandoned shack, its walls covered with huge white vine flowers.
Finally, I found the road to the camp. I paused, glanced around and backed up, climbed out and with slow, prodding steps discovered a piece of solid ground in a tangle of thorn vines and plum trees. I carefully backed in, and cut off the motor and lights. I found a flashlight in the glove compartment, and holding the beam down so it could not be seen far ahead, I started down the road.
After walking five minutes, I saw lights ahead, and hurried on. Once, I thought I heard something behind me and stopped abruptly, but there was only the steady, eerie throb of swamp sounds, and the shrill call of some bird and a thrashing of wings back in the darkness.
The lights were distinct now and in their glow I saw the fishing camp, and fifty yards in front, the fence and gate that spanned the road. I kept well the farthest side of the road and easily climbed the fence, the flashlight off now.
As I crouched in the dark shield of the swamp growth, I heard voices now, not distinct as individuals, but each high-pitched and filled with tension.
Then I stopped abruptly as a loud, pain-ridden groan filled the night. "Oh, God, not that again," Jamie wailed, quite distinctly.
I ran forward, past the parked cars, and around to the side of the building. I paused, caught my breath, then climbed a huge twisting vine that was shielded by its flowers and leaves, and looked into the building, and I had to clamp my lips to supress a gasp that would have betrayed my presence.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Jamie was naked, on her knees, and Peggy Sue stood in front of her, in a blouse and red bikini panties. Behind Jamie stood Sandy, naked from the waist down, and she held a leather belt which was doubled. In the background I saw Millie and Julie, but there was no sign of either Emily Ann or Kerry.
"I've done everything you asked," Jamie said. "I just had to get out of town with Daddy, but I've certainly paid for that mistake. Oh, Peggy Sue, I can't take it any more, no matter what you do, Daddy. I'm going crazy, I really am."
"Poor Jamie," Sandy said, and slammed the belt against her hand. "And I remember when you were self-confident and so icy and aloof. Now, you beg me to whip you, if we let you play with yourself and finish. You're just like a little animal, dear. And tell us again about your session with Carl."
"What more can I tell you?" Jamie moaned. "I made love to him. You know I'm not a virgin like you, Sandy. I'm not anything. Oh, God. I'm not anything. Oh, Peggy Sue, don't you understand I tried to get Carl to leave-he promises he'll leave now. And Daddy, well, if you and Millie can't break his determination, as obsessed as he is with you, then what can I do? He's like a crazy man about that freeway thing. There's nothing I can do."
"What do you want to do right now, Jamie?" Peggy Sue asked. "Right this minute. Look at you. You're covered with sweat, your nipples are swollen and your thighs are practically rubbing together. You simply have no self-control. And to think you made your debut and thought that you were as good as we were."
Jamie shook her head. "Peggy Sue, I have no pride left. I know how terrible I am. How weak. I know I let myself be whipped just to have one of you let me finish, just to keep you from holding me down and teasing and making an animal out of me." Tears streamed down her face now. "I've done everything you asked, and I've degraded and humiliated myself and all, but please, don't make me do that to you, Peggy Sue. Please, anything but that."
"We should give her a choice again," Millie said. "We do want to be fair with her. Though I can't understand why she hesitates about using her mouth that way. Her Daddy seems to love it, the more he can use his mouth and the more he can squirm and beg. And Jamie, sweetie, we all know you protest, but when you do, you get all hot, just like a little animal. Just like Daddy, though Daddy's stubbornness about that highway thing means he's through. . . "
"Shut up, Millie," Peggy Sue snapped. "You talk too much. All right, though, we'll give Jamie a choice. Either she uses her mouth on me, or she lies down on the bed and we see just how hot we can get our little pig. . . "
Jamie scrambled forward and put her hands on Peggy Sue's waist and looked up with tear-reddened eyes. "Not that," she babbled. "I'll use my mouth on you. Yes, I want to. I really do."
"Are you sure Carl is leaving tomorrow?" Sandy asked. "I'd like my turn with him, but with things the way they are, I'm willing to pass it up. But are you damned sure?"
"Yes, we're through playing with him, dear," Millie said. "I had such nice plans for one more session, but it's far better he get out of here. He knows and suspects too much. But after discovering what his virginal, self-controlled little Jamie is like now, he's probably anxious to leave."
"He told me he was going to New Orleans," Jamie said.
Julie stepped forward, an insolent, dangerous smile on her face. "If he doesn't leave, you will be very sorry, my dear."
"He'll leave," she whined. "Do you think I want him to stay after what he found out about me, after he found out I'm a nymphomaniac, and God knows, if he had any idea. .
Peggy Sue dug her fingers into Jamie's hair. "Enough talk," she said. "It's getting late, and I have a date with somebody's great big daddy, and what I do during our date, and maybe what I tell people after, is going to depend on what happens with that mouth of yours, Jamie, darling."
Jamie put her fingers on the top band of the red panties and jerked them off, hesitated, stared at the most incredible vagina I'd ever seen, leaned forward, hesitated.
Those obscene, heart-shaped lips were indicative of what lay between Peggy Sue's thighs: an enormous pair of vagina-lips, enormous beyond any proportion, puffed far out and so wet they seemed to be fountains, and the tangle of hairs was enormous and wet, and from that distance, I could nearly sense the pungent, unpleasant yet arousing smell that Jamie must have sucked in with each short, frantic gasp of breath.
Suddenly, Jamie bent forward, and Peggy Sue smiled and spread her thighs, digging her fingers into Jamie's hair and slamming her sucking, kissing, licking mouth tighter against the huge, wet, pulsating lips of the vagina.. .
I scrambled down from the vine, determined to rush inside and rescue Jamie, to knock hell out of the four girls, to.. .I paused, caught my breath, glanced back inside and saw that while Jamie gasped and sucked at Peggy Sue, she had moved a hand down to play with herself between the thighs, and the girls were laughing now, and taunting her.
I turned away, my body shaking with fury. I could rush in, but still there were ways I could severely hurt Jamie and her father. If Jamie could just endure a few minutes of this degradation, I would intercept her on the road so the girls wouldn't know.
But when I got her on the road, I would not let her go again, would take her away, even if it meant kidnapping. Though I was stunned by the animal ferocity with which she went down on Peggy Sue, the way she was unable to control herself, the way she seemed to nearly revel in her degradation.
I climbed down and ran crouching past the cars and over the fence, where I switched on the flashlight. When I reached the car, I sank down onto the seat, brushed sweat from my face, and tried to clear away that animal lust picture of Jamie there playing with herself as she worked between Peggy Sue's thighs.
To hell with her father, I told myself. So he was somehow hung up on Millie and Peggy Sue and God knew who else. Tonight, I was taking Jamie out of this terror, out of these swamps, away from this life that was about to destroy her pride, her very being.
I settled back, and closed the door to cut off the light.
I had a long wait, so long I nearly said to hell with my caution and went back up to the cabin. I would not let myself think what Jamie had been forced to do in that time, but my fury was building, and I was tense and desperate for a drink, a hundred drinks, for the chance to hurt someone, to bust someone's face, to rip him-or her-apart at the seams.
And then I heard the first car. It passed a minute later, and then came another, neither Jamie, and then Peggy Sue drove slowly past in her red sports car.
And then the last car came, very slowly, a full two minutes behind the others. When Jamie passed, I could not make out her face in the darkness, but I could almost sense how that beautiful, degraded face looked.
I gave her a minute, then pulled out. She was driving no more than ten miles an hour and when I came up behind her there was no sign of the other cars.
At first she didn't seem aware of my car. Then as I shot around her, she glanced wildly from the window. I cut in front of her car, and she slammed on brakes, and swerved, and skidded down and missed a pool of stagnant water by an inch.
I reached her before she had time to react from any more than the shock of being forced off the road, which was what I intended. I opened her door and reached in and none too gently I pulled her out.
Her blue eyes were wide and her lips quivered and she threw her hands, doubled into small fists, in front of her.
"Don't hurt me," she gasped. "Please, I'll do anything, but don't hurt me."
"Jamie, I won't hurt you," I said. "Everything is all right, now, baby. I won't hurt you."
She looked at me as though she was realizing for the first time who I was. She took a tentative step backward and her body stiffened, and I expected her to start screaming, beating at me, resisting me. But she suddenly went so limp she nearly dropped to the ground, and I had to hold her up.
"Do whatever you want," she said, and shivered. "I just don't have any fight left. I don't have anything left, Carl. I'm just a weak, perverted, despicable little girl. You must despise me like everyone else. I'll do whatever you want. Just don't hurt me." Her eyes were wide now and she was babbling. "I'll make love to you or use my mouth on you or let you have me in the rear end or do things I'll bet you thought girls like me didn't know and you know what, the more you humiliate me, the more I'll beg you to go on, because that's what I am, Carl.. . "
I slapped her sharply, her head jerked and huge tears ran down pale-white cheeks glowing with a swath of bright red.
"Hit me again," she said, as she sniffled. "I'll love it." Then she seemed to sober abruptly.
"Where did you come from, Carl? You must have been on the road to the fishing camp. Or were you there? I don't remember. Oh, my God, did you see me, see what I did with them?"
"Get in my car, Jamie," I said, and didn't give her a chance to answer, but put my arm around her and led her over, opened they door, shoved her in, and sprinted around climbed in and drove off.
She sat death-still now, except for her heavy breathing, and she held her hands rigidly in her lap, her legs together. She did not speak again in the quarter hour it took me to find an isolated and safe place to park, on the edge of the swamp in front of a deep gully, beneath tall, stately pine trees.
I switched off the engine and the lights and slid over to her. But I didn't touch her. She looked up, her eyes puffy and red from crying.
"I'm calmer now, Carl," she said. "Just tell me one thing. I guess you followed me out there. Did you see what happened?"
"I saw most of it," I said, and tentatively moved a hand toward her.
"No," she said. "Please. Don't touch me, I feel dirty and awful. How could you want to touch me, Carl? Do you know I'm so hot, so aroused, after that perverse scene with those girls I hate, that if you touch me, I'll rape you, or try to, I swear to God."
"No, baby," I said. "I'm going to touch you, very gently, put my arm around you, and you're going to tell me what's happening-right from the beginning. And then we're going to decide what to do, and everything is going to be all right, no matter what."
And I slid my arm around her. She flinched, went rigid, sucked in her breath. Then she abruptly relaxed, flowed against me as though a balloon whose air had been released. She seemed to have only warm, weak, slightly shivering flesh, but no bone structure or spine that would allow her to function without my support.
"God, Carl, I'm hardly even a person any more," she said. "I think I'm having a nervous breakdown. I'm incoherent half the time, and have these moods of depression and panic, well, you saw me. And I just hate myself, loathe myself, and yet I can't escape the terrible sex of the girls. I can't fight you. I just don't care anymore. I'll tell you whatever you want to know. But you'll hate me. No one could like a girl that has done what I've done, Carl. If I hate myself, so, how could you hate me, even more?"
"Slow down, crazy girl," I said, softly, and very gently squeezed her shoulder. "You tell me everything and remember, I may be crazy, too, but I love you very much. Now you start when you left Rome, and tell me everything."
She nodded and leaned up and kissed my cheek gently. "Hold me tighter, just for now. Even if you hate me later, right now, while I talk, hold me as though you never wanted to let me go, no matter what. And one thing more, please, one more favor, even if you never want to see me again. Please, when I finish, will you make love to me?"
I held her tight, and stroked her burning cheek. "Yes, I'll make love to you, Jamie," I said, softly. "Now tell me what happened."
And she snuggled against me, and put her arms around my chest, and she told me what had happened since she left Rome:
She got a cryptic but urgent-sounding cable from her father, and he seemed to have sensed from her letters that she was involved with someone. She had been in Europe several weeks, and visiting friends in New York before that, and she had never been away from her father that long. She was also afraid she was falling very much in love with me, and felt she couldn't handle this until she found out what was happening with her father. She did fully intend to write me, and see me again, when she left Rome.
When she reached Harrisville, she realized something terrible had happened to her father in the weeks she had been gone. He was a nervous wreck, and for the first time seemed unsure of himself and she was appalled at how much he needed her, wanted her love and sheer physical presence.
She knew something was terribly wrong, but he refused to talk to her, just saying he'd been working too hard. Finally, September came, and she went back to the University, very unsure and torn up, and she nearly wrote me half a dozen times, but decided she first had to somehow help her father.
She worried that he might be very sick, with something like cancer. And finally, she went home unexpectedly in the middle of the week.
like many families in Harrisville, they too have a fishing camp, and when Jamie's father wasn't at home and she couldn't find him, she got worried and drove out to the camp.
Because of a washed-out place in the narrow road, she had to park a quarter mile away and walk to the camp, so her father did not hear her. And as she approached, she heard voices-that of her father, and that of a girl. She hesitated, started back to the car, but could not resist the temptation to look in on her father.
"I guess I knew that, being a man, my father would need women now and then," Jamie said, as she snuggled tighter against me. "Although in his incredible strength and aloofness and self-sufficiency, frankly, it seemed impossible to think of his needing a woman in any way. Just finding him with a woman would have been a shock. But, Carl, it wasn't just a woman." She paused and wiped her eyes. "Go on," I said. "You'll feel better once you tell me everything."
She sniffled. "Yes, I know. I feel better already. Well, it wasn't just a woman I found him with when I sneaked up on the porch and looked through a window. It was a girl, a teenager, probably no more than sixteen or seventeen. And she was such an obvious tramp. Oh, she was blonde and pretty, sexy I guess a man would say and she had a sexy body and all. But she was so obviously cheap, just a waitress or something."
"Did your father know you were there after that?" I asked.
She shook her head. "No. I watched for several minutes, stunned and horrified, then ran back to the car. Daddy was far too involved sexually to have heard me. I mean, involved in a terrible way with that girl, not just making love or something. They were lying on the bed and he was naked, and you know, all aroused physically, and his face was red and he was sweating, and he was pawing her. And she was smoking a cigarette and though she was naked, too, she didn't seem at all excited, or even really interested. And what he was saying, oh, I just couldn't believe he was my father."
Another pause now, and when Jamie shifted around again, her burning body nearly molded against mine, it aroused me quickly, and I felt that urgent, familiar movement against my pants. As she started to talk again, I shifted also.
"Please, Flo, come on, honey, I'm so damn hot I'm burning up,' he was babbling, and he tried to pry her legs apart, but she kept them together and leaned over and mashed out the cigarette. And then she smiled and said: 'What about that green Ford you was talking about giving me, Ron, honey?'
Jamie suddenly started talking faster, as though she wanted to rush through the story as quickly as possible, and as she talked, I gently stroked her damp, tangled hair.
She told me her father promised the car to the girl, also a new dress, and finally she slid down and spread her thighs, and he climbed between her legs. But just before they started working together, she said something else: "Ron, sweetie, you got to stop coming down there and coming on to me when I'm working, and stop looking at me like that in my jeans. I know it's a long way from where you live but your going to get us both in trouble. You got to control yourself, honey. I know you said you're hung-up on girls rhy age, but in these past three months you been going with us down there you been getting worse and worse, like trying to finger Paula out there in the parking lot . . "
Jamie shuddered. "And to think I had built my life, my values, on him," she said, her words strangely bitter. "Well, that's when I ran back to my car. I drove as fast as I could back to the house, fixed myself a strong drink, something I never do, or at least didn't then. But then I couldn't stand the thought of waiting alone for him to come back. So I ran out to my car and drove all the way to the University that night The servants were gone so Daddy did not even know I'd been home."
I shifted my legs again, and wiped sweat from my forehead. Jamie sat up, and sucked in her breath.
"I'm sweltering here in this car at the edge of the swamp," she said. "I'm dying of thirst Please, Carl, could we get something to drink before I go on?"
"You're sure this isn't an excuse to keep from telling me everything?" I asked.
"No, darling, believe me, I want to tell you everything," she said. "But you look like you're burning up, too. Well both dehydrate if we set out here any longer. I don't even feel sexy any more."
"All right, I could sure as hell use something cold to drink," I said. I kissed her feverish cheek and slid under the steering wheel
"There's something else, too," she said, as she nibbled at her lower lip. "My car, Carl. There's just a chance one of them might go out there again."
"That's true," I said. 'Then I'll drive you back there to pick it up, but I don't want you going home. Just hide it somewhere."
"But wouldn't it be better if I took it home alone, and then sneaked out," she said. "Otherwise Peggy Sue will know I'm not home yet, and she'll get suspicious."
'To hell with Peggy Sue," I said. "I'm not going to have you dance to that bitch's music any more. Besides, isn't she out with your father?"
"Yes, she sure is, and they will be out for a long time," she said. "Oh, Carl, I hate them, hate Peggy Sue and hate my father and yet I still feel I have to help him.. . "
"Calm down, baby," I said, as I switched on the engine and lights. "First, we drink. Second, you talk. Third, we decide what to do. But don't get panic-stricken or hysterical on me."
She tried a laugh that didn't come out too well. "Okay, Carl," she said, and nodded. "I'll do whatever you say."
I drummed my fingers on the steering wheel. "Somehow, something still doesn't fit into place," I said. "When I was out at the camp, I sensed something drastic was about to happen, but I have no idea what."
"Well, maybe when I finish talking, things will be clearer," she said. "They're certainly clear enough for me, clear and terrible."
"All right, no worries or deductions until the tale is told," I said, and started driving slowly and carefully for the gully, as Jamie moved across the seat and put her head on my shoulder.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Her car was so dangerously close to the bog of water I had to get it back up on the road for her, and I barely made it Then we drove back to the gully, left her car, and she directed me to a bar on the edge of town where she said none of the girls would ever go.
"A really raunchy place," she had said. "With cheap little waitresses-the only person we might run into there would be my father, but hell be busy somewhere else."
The place was a dive, with loud guitar and saxophone music rocking from a gaudy jukebox, low lights, a haze of cigarette smoke and men in jeans and khaki outfits dancing and feeling girls in tight jeans and short, buttocks-hugging dresses, girls whose excessive makeup showed even in the dim, smoke-hazed light
We found an empty booth in the back, near one of the three tall fans that kept the close, smokey air in circulation but provided little relief from the heat and humidity.
A short, stacked redhead with a bucket of makeup on her bland face took our orders for double vodka and tonics. As she wiggled her body away, the buttocks shoving against a tight red dress, Jamie caught me staring at her.
"For all I know, maybe you like that type, too," she said, and I wasn't sure she was joking.
"Even if I liked the type, and I definitely don't, I wouldn't go for that one," I said. "I'm afraid my type is the blonde, blue-eyed Jamie."
"Well, you indeed went for other types while I was away," she said, and she was deadly serious. "Certainly seemed to enjoy Peggy Sue and Kerry and Emily Ann and Millie, my dear."
I had known this would be brought up sooner or later, in this way. I was ready.
"Yes, I enjoyed what happened with three of them, but hardly with Millie," I said. "I'm only human, Jamie. In all honesty, at first, I thought I could find out something from them, and it seemed silly to alienate them. But I did do it for the sex. I wouldn't do it again, and I didn't like them, or even sex that way, in a sense. Had you been here, I wouldn't have touched any of them."
She nodded. "I can't blame you, I guess," she said, very softly. "When I left, I knew they'd play their games with you. And, well, you see I thought we were finished, and that you weren't mine any longer, that I could never face you after what I'd become, so letting them have you was a kind of punishment I inflicted on myself.. . "
She was nearly babbling, and pulling nervously at the stained red and white squared tablecloth. I put a finger under her chin and tilted her head up and smiled.
"Enough of that kind of talk," I said.
Fortunately, the waitress returned with our drinks, and Jamie grabbed hers and took a couple of deep swallows that seemed to calm her. We settled back in the booth, accustomed now to the slamming music, dense smoke-filled air and rumble of loud, drunken talk, and I put my arm around Jamie. I let her finish the drink, and start on another, before I proded her to continue her story.
She seemed eager to talk again, stopping occasionally to take a sip of her tall drink, or to glance eagerly at me, and seem reassured by my smile, or the squeeze of my hand.
She told me that she was physically exhausted and emotionally torn up when she got back to the University, and for days drifted around in a kind of daze, avoiding people, and sleeping far more than usual.
Gradually, she drifted back somewhat to normal, and overrationalized the situation by convincing herself at least he wasn't physically sick, didn't have cancer or something, that he was only human and the affair would pass. Of course, she knew from what the girl had said her father had been going through the same routine for many weeks.
And she knew-and this raised her compassion somewhat-that it was tearing her father up, that his own self-image of total independence and control wouldn't allow him to accept this apparently new-found weakness without having his insides wrenched out.
She hesitated about going home, and only after she had stayed away nearly a month and finally had a call from her father did she go home one weekend, hoping desperately her father world be back to normal.
But he actually seemed worse. Yet, while he had obviously deteriorated physically and emotionally, he was still the same confident, ruthless businessman. At times, he seemed even more ruthless, as though he had to make up for his sexual affairs and prove to himself nothing had really changed in his ability to handle anything.
"I never mentioned what I knew," Jamie said, as she started her third drink. "I wouldn't have known how. And a couple more times I sneaked out to the camp and saw him with the girls, sometimes nearly groveling, promising, sometimes using his mouth on them."
And Jamie said she began to notice that her own self-confidence began to slip, that she was unsure of her own strengths and weaknesses. And that she would sink into deep depressions and wonder if her father could sup like that, and become so weak and so degraded, what could happen to her; and she also noticed that when she parked with boys, she no longer felt that absolute control of her body she had always had, and it got so bad, she finally wouldn't even let a boy kiss her goodnight
"And all this time, my damn father was pushing that debutante thing," she said, and shook her head; "I had never gotten along too well with all those girls from the old Harrisville families, particularly Peggy Sue. They resented my father's social pretensions, and were angry that in each encounter my father forced their families to back down. And the crowning point to my father's determination to power his way to everything he wanted was to be my debut at Christmas of last year."
All the old families resented Jamie's debut, but they were willing to accept it as inevitable-and even with some grace-but Peggy Sue and her friends were livid, and as nasty as possible. And Jamie admitted she was nasty, also, more than was probably necessary.
"Well, you've seen me," she said. "I can be pompous little bitch, and really get up on my high horse, and I did everything I could to strike out at that bunch of girls. And of course, each unpleasant incident I blamed on my father. We started having a few bitter scenes ourselves, and I got furious when he would stand there and lecture me as though nothing had happened, and I would think of him out there humiliating himself with some little whore and get livid. I started to drink more and more, and thought of wild things, like leaving home. But I knew I couldn't, knew I still loved my father and would do anything to help him."
So Jamie made her debut and got through the Christmas holidays and fled to the University. Even at this point, she began to suspect that Peggy Sue and her friends were up to some pretty wile-things, but she didn't concern herself with it because she didn't care.
I made Jamie drink a little slower, because I knew that in her physical and emotional condition she could get very drunk quickly, particularly in that stuffy bar.
"One weekend in the early spring, the blow fell," Jamie said, and sighed. "Those girls pranced into my room at school, closed the door, and proceeded to tell me that they had learned my father was involved with some teenage tramps, gave me explicit details, let me know some of the girls were under legal age, and then taunted me and joked about exposing him to Harrisville."
She paused. "Please, Carl, I've just got to have another drink. I'm so punchy if I stop drinking I'll either jump up and scream or fall asleep. If you want me to keep talking, you're going to have to keep me supplied with vodka, sir."
"Maybe we ought to get out of here, Jamie," I said. "Except for the cold drinks, it's not much of an improvement over the car."
She looked up at me. "Oh, no, please let's stay to get the whole terrible story out, as quickly as possible."
"You do look like you're about to fold up," I said. I felt her head. It was burning. "And you feel as though you have a fever. Okay, baby, you just talk, and I'll fill you full of vodka."
I ordered another round, and Jamie sighed, and started talking again.
She knew that the girls would take great delight in exposing her father to the town, and she also knew it would literally kill him. So she swallowed her self-respect and begged them not to do it, knowing they would want something from her, something terrible, to keep quiet.
"If only I had known how terrible, right away," she mumbled, and paused to attack her drink. "But you see, they had enough sense to start me slowly. I was shocked and resentful when I found out what they were up to, of course, and I thought their rationalizations about anything being all right if they kept their virginity just so much self-indulgence. But they were so spoiled, so pampered, so self-centered, they couldn't believe anything they did was wrong. And like I said, it wasn't too bad at first."
The first week, Jamie was simply forced to double date with the girls-always boys in towns far from the University-and pet heavily and do things like masturbate a boy or let him lay on top of her or work his penis between her thighs, things that were just extensions of heavy petting.
"Tell us all about it, Jamie,' one of the girls would say. 'Every single feeling and detail so we can see you're human after all and no more an iceberg than your daddy.'"
And Jamie shuddered again and sipped her drink and said she'd tell them, all the time cursing her father and planning to get home the next weekend and have it out with him. But then when she got home, she backed down.
She laughed, a short, harsh laugh. "I had rehearsed all week what I was going to say," she said. "But it was so absurd when I actually confronted him in the library. I mean, how could I say something like, Okay, Daddy, out with it, what's all this stuff about your degrading yourself with teenage tramps. Do you see what I mean?"
I saw exactly what she meant, but I didn't interrupt the rapidly increasing pace of her talk.
"At least at first I couldn't," she continued. "I talked about how bad he looked and how nervous he was and how upset I was about him and wouldn't he please talk to me and let me try to help him some way. Finally, after another week, I got so depressed and so desperate, I went home, got good and drunk and blundered my way into telling him I knew about the girls at the camp, but as though I had only recently found out."
He didn't even ask her how she found out, and merely shrugged and he said he'd worked hard all his life and had the right to whatever pleasure he wanted. Jamie said people in town might find out, and he said angrily no one would find out, and that he would crush anyone who did and he became nearly irrational. And then he said abruptly perhaps she was right, and that he would take care of things.
He seemed to get better and she continued to play the sex games with the girls figuring in a short time he would be free of the tramps and be safe. But to her horror, she discovered a couple of weekends later he was more involved than ever, with a seventeen-year-old carhop, who made him give her lavish gifts.
"And things with the girls got worse," Jamie said, and blushed. "Lots wilder and rougher with the boys I was forced to date. I had to let a boy have me between the breasts, then I had to let a boy give me a spanking, finally I had to use my mouth on a boy. Oh, God, that was awful, Carl. And then, I had to let a boy take me in the buttocks, and that nearly ruined me, both physically and emotionally."
Jamie paused, nibbled her lips, glanced up at me, took a swallow of her drink.
"Go on, you're almost finished," I said, and squeezed her shoulder.
"I would have stopped then," she said. "Because I realized to my horror that while I was repulsed by what I was doing, I was also irrationally excited by each sexual thing, no matter what. I was getting so aroused I couldn't control myself. I had always been so careful to damn up any sexual feeling that it was as though the floodgates had been opened. I couldn't get enough sex, and yet hated myself each time I got that tingle in my thighs or each time my nipples started hardening."
But then the very day she decided to have it out with her father, then the girls, she found out that they had carefully been hooking him, one by one. None of them made love to him, but they promised they might, later, if. . .
They didn't do their specialties, to let him finish, but just petted heavily, taunted, teased, and got great delight in making him use his mouth on them. He became obsessed with Millie and Peggy Sue.
"Now they really had him, Carl," she said. "And when I confronted him, he got angry and refused to talk to me about it. So I hit on another desperate scheme, which was to somehow get him out of town for a while."
"And I knew then my continuing to play the games was partly to save my father. But more and more it was because I enjoyed it, enjoyed each erotic minute, yet loathed it. . . " This was babbled out, then she caught herself, and calmed down.
The girls soon realized Jamie's weakness, and they quickly exploited it, she said, bitterly. They held her down once, undressed her, and teased and aroused her for over two hours, and made her confess exactly how she felt. After that,, they subjected her to various lesbian acts, oral sex, whippings.
"My God, I seemed to revel in my sexual degradation," she said. "It was sheer masochism, Carl. I just moved as though in an erotic dream of self-disgust. I knew I was going off the deep end, was on the verge of cracking up, but I just didn't care any more. It seemed I had to punish myself for what I was enjoying and had always hated before. And it seemed also as though I was punishing myself for having built my life and my values on my image of my superman father."
She finished her drink and gnawed her lip and shook her head. "I'm smothering in here, Carl. Can we go now, please? There's not much else to tell really. I still hoped in some vague way to get my father out of town. He was amazing, Carl, and how I could go on loving him, I'll never know. He refused to discuss things with me, though he surely knew I knew, and he became more and more ruthless in business, and he just continued to stagger on day to day, and just wouldn't accept the reality of what those girls could do to him, of the power they had over him. . .Oh, hell, Carl, let's go. There's just nothing else to tell."
"Let's get everything out while we're at it," I said. "First, how did you start making love? Obviously, you weren't content to just play the girls' sex games."
"No, once those flood gates opened, I wanted all the sex I could get," she said, and blushed again. "I let one boy go all the way and I knew then I wanted that more than anything. So every chance I got with a boy, I went all the way."
"Listen, that's a healthy sign," I said.
"That's Jamie," she said, and brushed her hair from her forehead. "Healthy as they come. Carl, I'll talk all night if you get me out of here, but I'm so warm and all I'm getting sick."
I nodded and called the waitress over for the check. I felt smothered, also, so I ordered a six-pack of Falstaff to take out, and we left, my arm around Jamie.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
She slept curled in the corner against the door, as I drove slowly back out the gully. I drank a beer, and felt pretty damned beat myself.
She had filled in the gaps in this fantastic web of sex and evil, or most of them. I still had to press her about a couple of unpleasant points. And I still felt I was missing something big.
I drove past the last streetlight of the city and into the stretch of meadowland and cane growth, alive with the throbbing of insects. The night was cloudy now so it was quite dark, and I kept glancing at Jamie as though I had to protect her from minute to minute, shield her from the pain and humiliation into which she had let herself be pulled.
I finished the beer and threw it out, then opened another as I drove into the beginnings of the swamp. Total darkness, the trees and moss and vines giving a tunnel effect, strangely dissected by the sharp, bright car lights. Again, I glanced at Jamie, and saw that she was stirring now.
What were those damned girls up to, I asked myself as I took a swallow of beer. I sensed something far more dangerous than telling the town Jamie's father was something of a dirty old man. Because I had realized one fatal weakness in their threat that apparently had not occurred to Jamie.
She was awake and wiping her eyes as I pulled up beside her car at the gully. I took a final swallow of beer and threw it out.
"I slept like a rock," she mumbled, as she sat up and yawned.
"How do you feel?" I asked, as I moved over to her.
"Much better," she said. "Nothing great, but a little bit more like a human being again."
"How about a beer? I'm like you were back in the bar. So beat if I quit drinking I'll fold up."
"I'm not much of a beer drinker," she said. "And that short, heavy sleep kind of took the edge off things. I think I'd be better off without one."
I opened a beer and rushed a swallow to catch the gushing foam. This one was somewhat tepid, but I drank several quick swallows.
"I lived up to my end of the bargain," Jamie said, when I sat back and looked at her. The blue eyes were wide, and there was a faint, provocative smile twisted on her full, damp lips. It seemed her body was a luscious, molten mass straining against her clothes, and her skirt was pulled high on her slim, white thighs.
I went hot in an instant. "Yes, you did," I said.
The smile fled and her voice nearly broke when she spoke again. "Oh, Carl, am I making a fool of myself again?" she asked, and put her hand on my arm. "Do you want me? I feel so wretched, so utterly depraved, I find it hard to realize anyone could want me, except for some kind of perverted sexual thing. . .
I grabbed her shoulder and shook her. "Dammit, stop talking that way about yourself," I snapped. "Of course, I want you, Jamie. I love you. What happened makes no difference with us, now that I know. Sure, it's all pretty sordid, but
I've been around and I've been involved in some things that might curl your pretty blonde hair, baby. Now, dammit, stop punishing yourself, and remember that night-mare is over. You won't have to get involved with the girls again."
"I love you, too, Carl," she said. "And you were right. Telling everything made me feel much better. You know what I want right now, I mean, next to you, darling. The longest, hottest shower in history, to wash away every trace of those little bitches. Tonight, after they left, I spent a couple of minutes just washing my mouth out there.. . "
"Jamie," I interrupted. "There are a couple of things we must discuss, baby. To get everything straight."
"Yes, I know," she said, wearily, and took a deep breath. "The rape, I suppose."
"The rape," I said. "Tell me what really happened, Jamie."
"I can only tell you what I think happened," she said, and turned her face up to me. "Honest, Carl, they would never had taken me into their confidence. Of course, I know he didn't rape Millie, as said. I mean, it wasn't that he drove her out to some spot, against her will, and beat her up, and raped her, just because she had dated him and let him kiss her good night. Well, that's what she testified at the trial."
"What did they tell you about it?"
She shook her head and looked away. "Absolutely nothing, Carl. It's just that knowing what I knew about Millie and the girls, I knew she teased and taunted that poor guy until he couldn't stand it and he did beat her up and rape, try to rape her, God knows exactly what happened. You know, I really think he just beat her up, I really do. That would infuriate Millie worse than anything, and she tends to fly off the handle and do extreme things. And I wouldn't be surprised if she didn't run home and scream rape and then it was too late to back down. The other girls were down on her a lot, and they're constantly telling her to shut up or calm down or something."
"You knew all this and you let that poor bastard go to the chair?" I asked.
"Now, Carl," she said, and her body stiffened, and there was desperation in her voice. "You can't turn against me now, Carl. I believed in you and what you said and I told you everything. Don't hate me for that. I hate myself enough. Do you know what that did to me, knowing, suspecting what I did? The girls kept me under their thumbs and I was just in that terrible nightmare of not caring and hating myself. Now, Carl, you do hate me, after all. . . "
I stopped her babbling with a kiss and held her tight. "Easy, baby," I soothed. "I shouldn't have jumped on you like that. No more talking for now, how about that?"
She kissed my ear, and snuggled against me, her breasts heaving against my chest. "I like that," she said. "Later, we can talk and talk. But not now, Carl."
"You know, just one thing, Jamie," I said. "Do you realize the weakness in the girls' threat to expose your father?"
"No," she said. "And this sounds suspiciously like more talking." She traced a nail around the rim of my ear, and her breath was warm and damp on my neck.
"Just a minute," I gasped, as she pressed her warm, quivering body tighter against mine, and I went warm all over. "The threat was valid as long as they simply knew he was involved with the teenage tramps. But once he got involved with them, to expose him would be to expose themselves."
"What a fool I was not to have realized that," she said. "Well, I wasn't realizing anything at that point, and those flood gates had opened and I might not have stopped even if I had realized it."
"Jamie, those girls will never let your father win that freeway fight, if they can help it," I said. "From what people say, it would ruin their families. A large part of what wealth they have left is tied up in land. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe they would expose themselves, to ruin your father. Or maybe they would claim he tried to corrupt them.. . "
I did not want Jamie to return home, but she was adamant, and finally I agreed it was best.
"Be reasonable, darling," she said. "You can't abduct me in the middle of the night. My father would definitely call the police. And no matter what, we can't abandon him like this."
"I'd say to hell with him," I said. "I have little sympathy for him, frankly. No, that's not fair. He is your father, and I fully believe those girls capable of damn near anything. Look, you go home. But you don't leave that house, under any conditions, without me."
She nodded. "That's suits me, Carl," she said. "I'll just tell the girls I'm sick."
"Listen, you don't have to do what the girls want, Jamie," I said. 'Tell them to go to hell."
"Carl, I've got to play along somewhat, until we can find out what they're going to do about Daddy," she said. "You've got me convinced they're going to do something, darling. By the way, what are you going to do tonight? Go back to the hotel?"
I shook my head. "No, the girls think I'm leaving and if they check and find I've left the hotel, it will throw them off guard. I agree. If we're going to help your father, we'll have to play games with them a while longer. But, Jamie, you realize that whatever happens, it won't change the fact your father is hung up on young girls. No matter what these girls have in store for him, he might still crawl after Peggy Sue on his hands and knees, and there's nothing we can do about that."
"I know that," she said. "I'm going away with you, darling. And after that, Daddy can crawl all he wants to. We've just got to help him now, when this freeway thing could make the girls do something desperate. But Carl, how do we start helping him? We have no idea what's happening."
"I have a plan," I said. "And a few definite ideas, Jamie. But they can't involve you. So you go on home and try to sleep, and don't leave the house."
"Sure, baby," I said. "If I'm not dead asleep. In that case, I'll call tomorrow morning."
We kissed goodnight, and she got into her car and drove away. I followed her several miles, but cut away when she got to the intersecting road.
I checked into a motel, but was wide awake with tenseness and knew I wouldn't sleep. So I drove out of town to a honky-tonk I knew the girls would never visit.
But as! had my second beer, and thought again about my plan for tomorrow, I did have a familiar visitor-the fat, red-faced deputy sheriff.
"Still hanging around?" he asked, as he sat down opposite me in the booth. He ordered a beer from the tall, thin waitress.
I shrugged, checking my anger, telling myself a brush with the sheriffs office would ruin everything. "I'll be getting out of here tomorrow," I said finally.
"Well, that's good news," he said. "Because I been hearing some more about you messing around with some of our nice girls. And I was just tonight thinking I might have to pick you up for questioning. Or something."
The waitress brought the beer and he nodded at her, smiled pleasantly, then drank half of it in one great swallow.
"That something you wouldn't like, buddy," he said, as he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
"I see," I said, and busied myself with my beer.
He finished his beer in another huge swallow and stood up. "I wouldn't let sundown tomorrow catch me around here, if I was you, buddy," he said, nodded pleasantly, and lumbered away.
I cursed aloud, drained my beer, and ordered another. Then I got change and picked my way through the crowd back to the telephone on the wall.
Jamie answered on the first ring. She was whispering and I could barely understand her with the noise all around.
"I love you," I said, interrupting an excited and somewhat garbled flow of words.
There was a pause and then she spoke louder. "I love you, too, and I thought you would never call," she said. "Where are you? Things have been happening since we separated. Sounds like a party."
"I couldn't sleep and drove out for some beer," I said. "What's happening? Are you all right?" I decided not to tell her about the deputy's warning.
"I'm okay," she said. "But I miss you. It's kind of spooky here, and I'm not at all sure what's happening, but Daddy got home about half an hour ago, and he was in some state and went into the library and started drinking bourbon. Well, I went in, and we looked at each other but didn't talk. We haven't in weeks, months really, about his involvements with the girls. But he looked all funny and red-faced, and he put down about four quick shots of bourbon and then he turned to me, Carl, and said, and he was nearly shouting: "Nothing will stop me getting that freeway on my land. Nothing."
A drunk stumbled against me and I turned from the phone, but he staggered away. When I put the receiver to my ear, Jamie was saying: "Are you there, Carl?"
"Some drunk shoved against me," I said. "Sorry. Go on."
"Well, I said something like, sure, Daddy, and he said that this would be the peak of his climb from the other side of the tracks, and that kind of thing," she said, talking softer again. "And he said, in a loud, kind of shouting voice again, that he worked hard and would not apologize for his affairs with women, and that he had been involved with women before who got money and gifts out of him, but that he didn't care, because he had the money to spend. Then he said he hadn't had time for girls when he was young, had worked too hard, and never dated and had always wanted the girls he didn't have when he was my age, and he rattled on, and. . . Just a minute, Carl."
"Jamie? What's wrong?" I asked.
"I thought I heard someone," she said. "Well, then he poured a double shot of bourbon and said that tomorrow night the board of supervisors and the highway commission was having a joint meeting and he had everything lined up and would have things his way. He was like a man gone man, Carl. And finally, he shouted that he didn't give a damn what the town thought of him, and that if a bunch of stupid girls thought they could pressure him, they were crazy, that it wasn't the first time women had tried to use his sexual quirks to pressure him. He stopped abruptly, and he was shaking, and he walked out and went upstairs. Five minutes later, the phone rang, and he got to it first and it was for him and I listened on the extension."
"And it was one of the girls?" I asked.
"Peggy Sue," she said. "She was so sweet and gushing, and called him Ron, and said she was sorry she had been so nasty and threatened him. She said that she was just upset and that she felt awful about the things she'd made him do, well, I needn't go into those disgusting details. But she purred so sweetly that she had had a change of heart and simply had to meet him tomorrow right after lunch, and that she wanted him to be the first man to go all the way."
"He agreed?"
"No, he said tomorrow was difficult," she said. "But I could tell he was practically panting over the phone. Oh, what a fool he is, Carl. To think how I literally worshipped him all those years. He's really despicable."
"But did he agree to meet her?" I asked.
"Yes, at one-thirty," Jamie said, and caught her breath. "But I don't know where. They just agreed on the 'usual place' and she hung up. What do you think that means?"
"It means, baby, your father better not go out with her," I said. "Look, somehow, you keep him from meeting her. I don't care how. I'm going to be busy tomorrow morning, and by noon, I hope to know what the girls have in mind."
"What are you going to do, Carl?" she asked.
"I don't want you involved, Jamie," I said. "Please trust me. Stay at home, and make sure your father doesn't go out with Peggy Sue."
She reluctantly agreed to trust me, and not ask questions. We said good night, and I hung up, fended off the lurching drunk, and walked back to my booth.
I didn't want to tell Jamie that my plan was to get Emily Ann to go out with me, by whatever he or means necessary, and ply her with Singapore Slings and get her to tell me the truth.
Jamie had mentioned in our talk after love making earlier that Kerry and particularly Emily Ann had not been too bad with her, had never taken part in the worst things, and that Emily Ann at times seemed sorry she was in this setup, though she always played the giggling, nice-girl game, and always spouted off about the old, aristocratic families and that kind of nonsense.
I sank down into the booth and sipped the beer. It was tepid. I ordered a fresh beer, and relaxed back in the booth and shut my eyes as I remembered Emily Ann's nymphet-face, glasses, and those damn breasts. . . .
"Strictly business, and deadly business tomorrow," I muttered aloud, and forced myself to think of Jamie.
That was easy, and pleasant, and I sipped the cold beer and thought of our life together when I got her away from Harrisville.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
I called Emily Ann the next morning at nine, and caught her by two minutes, she said.
"I decided to go out of town for a couple of days," she said. "Aren't you leaving, too?"
"I wanted to talk to you once more before going," I said. "I have to see you, to tell you some personal things, some important things, Emily Ann."
"Carl, I'm all packed," she said. "As I mentioned, if you'd called two minutes later, I'd be gone. What kind of personal things, Carl?"
"Not over the phone," I said. "You asked me to trust you once, remember. Well, I did, and I'm leaving. Now, won't you trust me, and at least have a drink with me?" I warned myself not to lay the lies on too thick. Emily Ann was no fool.
"Well, I don't know," she said. "Okay, just a drink. Nothing, you know, physical."
I laughed. "Giving it up for lent?"
Her voice changed. "Maybe for longer, Carl," she said. She forced a laugh. "Maybe from now on, I want to look like Socrates and be liked for my brains or something and not, well, you know. Just one drink now. How about the same place, down on the highway to the Gulf? I'll be heading out of town that way."
I said I'd meet her in half an hour, and hung up.
I got there in less than half an hour, but Emily Ann was late. So late I thought she'd decided not to come, and called her house without reaching her. I was having my third drink and worrying about what in the hell to do when she walked out onto the terrace.
Emily Ann was dressed in a sleeveless, high-neck pink linen dress, and I had forgotten the true magnificence of the gigantic breasts that shoved proudly upward against the thin pink material. The dress was short, and her slim legs were sleek in stockings. She wore the large shades, and a faint breeze from the water rustled her hair.
"Sorry I'm late," she said, as she sank down onto a chair. She perched on the edge and smiled quickly, glanced around, smiled again. She was a nervous wreck.
"I had about given you up," I said, and looked from the breasts at the child's face beneath those absurd glasses. "A Singapore Sling, I seem to remember."
She laughed. "Seem to remember, hell, Carl," she snapped. "Have you calculated how many it will take to get me drunk? It might actually surprise you."
I called the waiter and ordered her drink. As I turned back, she pulled the glasses off, and revealed a swollen, black eye.
"Christ, what happened Emily Ann?" I asked.
"Wouldn't you suspect somebody hit me in the eye?" she said. "I could he and say I walked into a door, but that would be silly and you wouldn't believe me."
"Okay, then who hit you, and why?" I asked.
She sat back in the chair, twirled the glasses by their frames, sat up, tugged her dress down at the hem. "It's not important," she said finally, and put the glasses on. "I left a couple of marks myself."
"The fights I've seen involving women were always nastier than those with men," I said.
"Oh, come on, Carl," she said. "Stop that kind of thing. I know perfectly well you said that so you could find out if I had a fight with one of the girls. Okay. I had a fight with one of the girls. I'm not going to talk about it. Now shall we go through the facade of those important and personal things you had to tell me, so you can start plying me with Singapore Slings and trying to pump me."
The waiter brought the drink. She took one quick sip, then sat back and crossed her legs and her pink dress was pulled high on her slim thighs.
"Okay, no games, Emily Ann," I said. "Just tell me. Why did you come if you knew that's what I wanted?"
"Why not come?" she countered and smiled on the corners of her lips. "I did want to see you again. Are you really leaving? You're not, are you? Carl, please, please leave. Now, right now. I'd do anything to get you out of town before, well, to get you away."
"Before what?" I asked and leaned forward. "And why are you running away, baby? Are things going to get rough, and you can't stand it? Is something supposed to happen to me?"
She picked up the tall, frosting glass in both hands and took a deep swallow through the red and white straw. "No, Carl, not to you," she said. "Nothing bad, that is. I just don't want you here. Oh, Lord, it's too late now, and you're too stubborn to take a threat."
"So you put that fat deputy up to threatening me?" I asked.
She shook her head up and down. "That I confess," she said. "He used to work for my uncle. I just wanted to get you out of town. I wouldn't have really let him arrest you, or anything like that."
"Well, I'm not going," I said, and saw that she was sipping her drink again, in short, nervous sips. I signalled the waiter.
"Well, I am," she said. "And you'll think a lot less of me after what's going to happen. I did so much want you to like me, just a little."
I ordered another, and was relieved that Emily Ann didn't protest. The sun was getting hot now, but the wind breeze stronger from the water, and the humidity was not too bad so far.
"I like you a lot," I said. "And that's no put-on. I liked you more than I wanted to, because I thought what you said and the kind of things you were involved in were pretty damn terrible. You played those absurd sex games, all right, that's your bag, baby, and you were a part to some of that torment of Jamie and I could never forgive you for that, even if you had a small part. And you helped frame an innocent man and you stood out there on the Conway's terrace giggling while he was electrocuted."
"How dare you talk to me that way," she said, and shoved her chair back. "If you think for a minute. . . "
The waiter brought the drinks and she suddenly shook her head, settled back and took a long, very unlady-like sip through the straw.
"I sound like a fool at times," she said. "I guess most of the time, really. Such a short time ago, though, I really believed everything I spouted. It made sense, our sex games, as you call them. At least to me. And I really did think we were something special. I mean, everyone had always told us we were and all, and when I studied philosophy, I seemed to find justification.. . .
I glanced at my watch. The sun was murderous, and I shifted my chair to get the shade of a palm tree.
I let Emily Ann ramble on, and she had another Singapore Sling. She was right. I was surprised at her capacity. I was also getting worried because it was nearly eleven-thirty.
Finally, I had to interrupt. "Baby, what's going to happen?" I asked, and put my hand over hers. "You're a decent girl, Emily Ann. You can't just have a fight and run away from something horrible, when you can prevent it."
"A decent girl and a philosopher," she said. "And expert at being had by men between my breasts. It's been a full life. And yes, I wouldn't want to forget the night I giggled and blushed and pampered Millie and that man died."
She was fairly drunk now, and she squeezed my hand, and I moved my chair next to hers.
"Which one hit you?" I asked, and took the shades off.
"Little Millie hit me, because of some very uncomplimentary things I said about her," she said. "She's very sorry she hit me, because Millie can't stand to be touched, to be hurt even slightly, she not only has a black eye, but a welt on the cheek and several strands of hair missing."
I glanced at my watch. Noon. I took a quick sip of my drink, and my pulse quickened. "And why did you have the fight?"
"I told you," she said. "She didn't like the things I said. Oh, you want the details. I see. The breakup of the vestal virgins. Carl, I don't approve of many things my friends do, or of what is going to happen. But they are my friends and I have a loyalty to them, and I am somewhat involved myself."
"Dammit, what's going to happen?" I asked, and brushed sweat from my forehead. I realized that I should have told Jamie where I would be so she could call me, if necessary. Then I had a sudden fear that in worrying about her father, I had forgotten possible danger to her.
"Emily Ann, what about Jamie?" I asked. "Do you girls have something planned for her, as well as her father? So help me. . . .
She pulled her hand from mine. "Don't threaten me," she said. "Carl, please don't threaten me. No. Nothing is going to happen to her. Did it ever occur to you that despite how you feel about her, that lots of people don't like her? I don't. I guess it's not much justification for what happened, but she was a pretty snooty girl to me for a long time, and she loved those sex games, after a while, Carl. She couldn't get enough, and she seemed to actually enjoy. . . . "
"I'm aware of that, baby," I said. "And I can understand your feeling about Jamie. All right, I'm not asking that you like her. But to hurt her, and her father, to humiliate them, or God knows what else you've planned, that's no good, Emily Ann. There's no justification for that."
"Okay, forget Jamie," she said. "What about her father? Is it right for a man to come into a town and get wealthy and be as arrogant and as ruthless as he was? To completely disregard ways people have been doing things here for a long time? Carl, he was so ruthless with my father, hurt him so much, with all kinds of shady, underhanded business dealings. You don't know my father. He's very gentle. He-likes to hunt and fish and he raises flowers as a hobby. He comes from another era and he's a good enough businessman, but he believes there are rules and there are some things a man doesn't do, and.. . . "
"Christ, I'm not defending Jamie's father," I said. "I know he's a son-of-a-bitch, Emily Ann. But your father is right. There are things you don't do. You don't, for example, let innocent men die in the electric chair." I caught my breath and finished my drink. I had to stop this talk and find out something. It was nearly one now.
"It's going to kill Daddy when all this mess gets out," she said. "But, Carl, we just couldn't let Jamie's daddy get away with this freeway deal. My father alone has a fortune tied up in land. This could ruin him. And that Ron Meadows. He goes out with us, begs us, whines, God knows, he's disgusting, but nothing will change his mind. He has a monomania. Peggy Sue threatened to tell the town every degrading thing he did with her, and with all the other girls."
"That's no threat," I said. "She'd be exposing herself, and he knows it."
"It's more of a threat than you think," Emily Ann said. "Her father will go bankrupt if he loses this freeway deal. No more University, no more sports cars, no trip to Europe."
"Okay, and he still wouldn't back down," I said. "So what in the hell did you decide?"
She sniffled and I was afraid she would start crying. "Don't say 'you,'" she said, nearly begging. "I was against it. And so was Kerry. But the other girls insisted. Oh, Carl, I don't believe I'm caught up in all this. At first, we just wanted to humiliate Jamie. And then her father. He would swagger around town and be so high and mighty, and then he'd go out and beg one of us to make love. I just couldn't stand him, the way he whined and offered to do anything, to revel in degradation, and then the next day be just as arrogant as before. Oh, we realized that what were just kicks might be useful somehow. And then this freeway thing came up and we found out just how much our families had invested in it, which was just about everything."
I stood up. "Emily Ann, it's a quarter after one. You can't stall any longer. I'm asking you, begging you, to tell me." I cursed myself for having spent so long with her, for not having called Jamie. Surely, though she would have found some way to keep her father from meeting Peggy Sue.
Emily Ann took a sip of her drink, hesitated, then stood up, but none too steadily.
"I told Millie last night I wished that guy had strangled her, instead of just slapping her and hitting her a little after she teased him so much," she said, and nibbled her lower lip and avoided my eyes. "That is all that happened, but Millie flew off the handle and yelled rape and couldn't back down and I went right along with it and yes, I did stand out there and giggle, but it won't happen this time, Carl. I don't care if I do have to betray them and my family finds out everything. You should have figured it out, Carl."
She stepped to me, put her hand on my cheek, her breasts mashing against my chest. Then she bolted back, and sniffled again.
"Peggy Sue is going out with Ron Meadows this afternoon, and she is going to yell rape, Carl," Emily Ann said. "Just like Millie. With feeling in town the way it is about him, well, you can imagine the reaction. If necessary, Sandy and Julie will back up Peggy Sue, and say they had trouble with him, but kept quiet."
"My God," I gasped. "I should have figured it out. Where in the hell are they going?"
"They usually go to my fishing camp, though I don't know about today, since I had that fight with Millie and all."
I pivoted, but she called me and I stopped. "Baby, I can't talk now. Thank you for telling me, but it should have been a couple of hours ago."
She jerked the glasses off, her innocent, young face distorted by the horrible black eye. "If you don't hate me too much," she called, as I turned and walked quickly toward the building. "Don't hate me too much." Her voice was breaking. "Please call me and at least talk to me and Carl, please, please be the first man I go all the way with."
I didn't answer, but sprinted into the building and looked for a phone. There was only one, where a fat woman in a flowered dress was talking and giggling.
I tapped her arm and told her I had an emergency call to make. She looked around, frowned, nodded, then talked another few seconds, laughed once and hung up. She stepped back but paused, as though by giving up the phone she had earned the right to learn of the emergency. My look sent her away quickly.
I fumbled for a dime, my heart racing, and dialed Jamie's house. The damn line was busy.
I cursed, dropped the receiver into the hook. Paused. Dialed again. Still busy. I should have known this, have known the girls would resort to this again, but what worried me now was less a rape charge against Jamie's father, which could be disputed, than what her father's reaction might be if Peggy Sue were stupid enough to tell him what she was going to do.
I tried again. Busy. I glanced at my watch. My heart raced. It was one-thirty. I was calculating whether to make a dash for Jamie's house, or to stand here and keep calling, when I heard someone behind me. I glanced over my shoulder. Emily Ann stood there.
"Busy?" she asked.
I nodded. "Look, baby, would Peggy Sue be stupid enough to get Jamie's father out and taunt him and let him know what was going to happen? God knows what his reaction would be. Not even that he might go to the chair, but that with the meeting tonight, he would surely lose the freeway route. He's such a madman about that, he might snap. Even if he didn't give a damn about the town's knowledge of his sexual quirks, or even if he felt he could beat the rape charge, he'd know right then he'd lost the freeway fight."
"My Lord, I'm sure Peggy Sue wouldn't pass up the chance to rub it in," Emily Ann said. "We hadn't even thought of that, Carl. That scares me. That man is capable of anything."
I tried again and the line was still busy.
"Give me the dime," Emily Aim said, and
I held out her hand. "You get there as fast as you can, and I'll keep trying to call."
"Thanks," I said, and put the dime in her hand, closed the fingers into a fist. I squeezed hard and she stepped against me and brushed my cheek with her lips.
She smiled at the sudden stirring between my thighs. But she quickly moved back. "You get going," she said, as she dropped the dime into the phone and started dialing. "But if you can, if you want to, sometime make love to me just one time-the way you'd make love to a real woman."
"Sure, Emily Ann, I'd like that," I said, and I was not lying, though I knew it was impossible.
I was intercepted by the rather irate waiter, had to waste a couple of minutes settling the bill, then ran out to the car. The handle was burning, and the inside of the car was like an oven. I switched on the engine and the tires spun as I lurched onto the highway. The back of the seat was so hot I had to sit up straight, but that was all right, because I was too tensed up to relax at all-tensed not only by the race against time, but by the touch of Emily Ann's breasts, and the thought of what it would be like to take her virginity. A pleasure I would have to pass up, I muttered grimly as I pumped down on the accelerator and passed a truck. Another. Two cars. I brushed sweat from my forehead.
My heart was pumping and my stomach knotted, and I pushed the car faster and had the idiotic idea that this was all for the benefit of a man and girl I disliked intensely.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Jamie was standing on the front porch, her cheeks wet from crying.
"Why didn't you tell me what you were going to do and where you would be?" she called, as she ran across to the car. "I'm frantic with worry. I just finished talking to Emily Ann. Oh, Carl, I don't trust her. I don't see why you had to go to her and not tell me."
She was crying again as I stepped out of the car and took her in my arms. "Come on, baby, buck up," I said. "Where's your father? I guess he went out with Peggy Sue, didn't he? I should have known."
"No, I should have known nothing I could do or say would stop him," she said, her body heaving with sobs. "But you left me alone for hours, and then I called everywhere in town trying to find you, and finally, Emily Ann called and said she'd spend the morning with you, and she told me everything."
"I made a mistake," I snapped and pried her from my body. "This is no damn time to argue, Jamie. We've got to move. Christ get hold of yourself."
She wiped her eyes. "Out to the fishing camp?" she asked. "Shouldn't we try calling first?"
I opened the door and shoved her inside. "You don't think they'd answer the phone, do you?" I asked, as I backed down the driveway.
"Do we have time to get to them?" she asked.
"There's a chance," I said, and pushed the vent to catch the rushing wind. "I don't think Peggy Sue will pass up the chance to taunt and tease your father some before dropping the bomb. Was Emily Ann nasty when she called?"
"No not at all," she said. "She couldn't have been nicer. I mean, under the circumstances. She seemed to be crying, and very sincere, which is why I don't trust her."
"She was sincere," I said, as we rushed through the meadow land and cane growth, dead still in the searing sun that threw shimmering heat mirages of water on the road ahead.
"I tried everything to stop him, Carl," she said. "I told him I was sick, really sick, even. Then finally I just told him he was a fool to go out with her, that she was planning something. I tried to shock him by telling him everything I knew, including my own experiences with the girls."
"And he went anyway?" I asked. "I mean, he didn't show any hesitation or concern? Not even about what had happened to you?"
"No concern in the least," she said, quietly and leaned forward into the rushing wind that tousled her blond hair. "But he never has, Carl. He never loved me. I was just something he used, an extension he could push socially to show the town how much power he had. I think he's crazy, Carl. I really do. The way his eyes looked when he babbled today, not that kind of intensity they used to have, but a strange, unfocused kind of burning stare."
"We'll be there in a minute," I said, to reassure her. "Everything will be okay, then."
"But when I pulled up in front of the fence in the swamp, there was absolutely no sign of another car. Jamie started crying once again. I drummed on the steering wheel for a moment, then got out of the car and climbed the fence. I found the phone by the door. I called the cocktail lounge where I where I had left Emily Ann.
"I decided to wait right here, in case you needed me," she said. "I had a terrible fight with some fat woman who wanted to use it. Did you find them? What happened?"
"I'm at the camp, and they're not here," I said. "What's the next most-likely spot?"
"I have no idea," she said. "Really I don't, Carl. You could any of the other fishing camps. Everybody in town practically has them. Don't forget, since I had that fight with Millie, I haven't been a part of the last-minute plans."
"I'll try them all," I said. "Look, you better call that fat deputy and tell him what's happening."
"Clyde Hilton?" she asked.
"Hell, I don't know his name," I said. "Call him and tell him everything. He wouldn't believe me. Will you do that, baby?"
There was a pause. "Yes, of course, I'll do it, Carl," she said. "I'll make sure he gets lots of men out looking for them. Then I'm going home. I want to tell my family myself about my part in this mess."
"Yes, that's best," I said. "But make sure you get that deputy. And thanks again, Emily Ann."
I hung up and ran back to the car, my clothes sticking to my body now. I climbed in, and peeled off my shirt and T-shirt and threw them into the back seat. Then I backed up as rapidly as I dared.
We tried the camps belonging to each of the girls, and also the Meadows' camp, but there was nothing. Twice, we were passed on narrow, twisting gravel roads by cars with red bubble-lights flashing on top. The deputies stared at us but did not stop us.
An hour later, I drove very slowly back to Jamie's. We were both near exhaustion. And I desperately needed a drink.
"Carl, we can't just go home," Jamie protested. "Surely there's something else we can do."
I shook my head. "If you can name anything, I'll do it. No, Jamie, we should get back there on the outside chance your father comes back, or calls.. . . "
"You mean whatever is going to happen can't be prevented," she said. "Out there somewhere in those swamps probably, something is happening with my father and Peggy Sue, or has happened, and we're totally helpless."
"To put it bluntly, that's right," I said, as I turned into the driveway. 'Things may still work out somewhat Peggy Sue may not tell him. He may react differently than we think. After all, you said he's been behaving in an irrational way, and you can't predict reactions of an irrational man."
"I can predict what my father will do when that smirking, teasing little girl convinces him that no matter what happens, he will lose the fight for the freeway on his land," she said.
I parked and we got out, and walked very slowly into the house. The maid was standing in the door.
"What's happening, Miss Jamie?" she asked. "I don't understand what all this means, but I know it can't be anything good."
"It's Daddy," Jamie started. "He may be in some trouble."
But she couldn't go any further. Huge tears cascaded down her cheeks. She turned to me and buried her face against my chest.
"Mr. Meadows has been working hard lately, and is somewhat distraught," I said, choosing the words carefully. "We think he may be lost out in the swamps. The sheriffs office has men out looking for him."
"Oh, my Lord," the maid said. She shook her head. "I knew something was wrong with him lately. He's been acting very strangely. Can I do anything to help, Miss Jamie?"
"No, there's nothing to do but wait," I said. "Well, you could take some ice into the library."
"I'll do that right away," she said, and left.
I half carried Jamie into the library and put her down onto the couch. The intense spell of crying had a sobering effect on her, and by the time I had her vodka and tonic mixed, she was sitting up and rubbing her eyes.
"I have such an ambivalent feeling about him," she said, as she took the drink. "I truly do dislike him, resent him, blame him for so many things. I truly don't think I love him. Yet I do, and I'm so worried."
"The contradictory feelings are natural," I said, and sat down beside her and put my arm around her.
And thus began one of the longest afternoons of my life, as we sat in the library and drank, and though we talked there were long periods of silence in which small sounds like the buzzing of a bee in the garden seemed loud out of any proportion.
Finally, Jamie broke a long silence and climbed to her feet. "I think I'll go upstairs to my room and lie down," she said. "I'm absolutely dead tired, and yet my insides are wound up like a watch. How about you?"
"I feel just about the same way," I said. "But I sure as hell don't want to he down. Maybe another drink. Maybe I'll take a walk through the garden."
"How about escorting me upstairs, sir?" she asked. "To make certain I don't collapse on the way."
I put my arm around Jamie and we walked slowly up to her room. She opened the door, stepped inside, and reached back with a hand which tugged me inside, also. I saw a large room with lace-white curtains and antique furniture and a couple of stuffed animals on the chest of drawers.
Then Jamie was pressing against me, her breasts heaving, her hands clutching my back. "Don't leave me alone, please," she begged.
Her kiss was open-mouthed and sucking, her tongue wet and twisting, and I squeezed her buttocks and shoved her body tighter against mine.
"No, I won't leave you alone," I gasped, through the sucking kiss, and moved my hands under the skirt to claw at the undulating buttocks. Her nails lacerated my neck and back, and she bit my tongue.
Then she forced a hand between us and unzipped my pants and gripped my hard prick and I groaned at the sensation. She stroked it expertly, and I slid a hand around to fondle the damp lips of her burning vagina. . . .
The ringing seemed strange and far away. We both stiffened, withdrew our hands, stepped apart.
"The phone," I gasped.
"No, it's the doorbell," she said, as she shoved a strand of damp hair from her face. "Oh, Carl. I'm so frightened."
The maid was calling from downstairs. I took Jamie by the arms and shook her very gently and she sniffled and tried to smile.
"I'm okay, I think," she said. 'Though I must look a mess. Here, you wait here just a minute, darling."
She ran out and I heard her talking to the maid. I couldn't make out everything, but there was something about the sheriff. A moment later, she dragged herself slowly into the room and leaned against the wall, as though her legs would no longer support her.
'There's somebody from the sheriffs office down there," she said. "He says it's important. He's waiting in the library."
I took her hand and pulled her from the wall. "Nothing is worse than waiting," I said. "Let's go down quickly and get it over with."
She nodded and let me lead her downstairs. In the library we found the the fat, red-faced deputy, who stood by the bar with his hat in his hand. He glanced at me, nodded at Jamie.
"Miss Meadows, I'm Clyde Hilton from Sheriff Carson's office," he said. "We had this telephone call about your daddy." He stopped, and glanced at me again, as though he didn't know how to go on.
"Jamie knows everything," I said, and put my arm around her waist. "What happened to her father?"
He sighed. "Miss Meadows, your daddy.. .your daddy is dead," he said, as though he himself didn't quite believe it.
"My God, not that," Jamie blurted. "I didn't think he'd die out there. That was the last thing I'd have thought." Her body trembled and she blinked back tears, but she did not really cry, as though she had no tears left. "Who killed him?" she asked, abruptly and bitterly.
"Ma'am, best as we can figure it out, he killed himself," the deputy said. "Well, Miss Meadows, I'm not sure at all I ought to go on, not right now when you're so upset. Maybe it would be better if you had some time alone first, then maybe somebody you know real well could.. . "
"Dammit, tell me what happened," she said. "I want to know everything." She looked up at me. "Isn't this best, Carl? To find out everything now and get it over with?"
"Yes, it's best, Jamie," I said. "You're just making things worse, Hilton, by dragging it out."
"Lord, I reckon I am," he said. "I'm no good at all at this kind of thing. Hated it when I was in the army in Korea. Well, okay, I'll give it to you best as I can, ma'am. Seems he went out with the Conway girl, they went way out in them swamps. Took us a helicopter to find them. Well, seems he'd been seeing the Conway girl, they lots of details not important, but seems there was some things happened a man wouldn't be proud of, and the Conway girl sort of give him a hard time, and said she was going to tell everybody in town, and going to accuse him of rape and all kind of things." He paused and took out a wrinkled blue handkerchief and mopped his face.
"Don't stop now," Jamie said. "Go on, please."
"I'll sure do that very thing, ma'am," he said, and put the handkerchief back into his pocket. "Seems like with all this freeway fight going on, they was an important meeting tonight, to determine what route the thing would take. And seems that was awful important to your daddy. Awful important. And he knowed he'd lose the route no matter what happened when the Conway girl got back to town and started talking. Now mind you, won't nothing be official until the coroner's report. But seems, he dragged the girl out into the swamps and raped and strangled her."
Now Jamie did cry, hysterically, and her knees buckled. The deputy helped her over and put her down gently onto the couch. She brushed at her face and looked up at us.
"But how can you be sure? You must be just guessing. Maybe that's not what really happened. How could Emily Ann know that, why, she wasn't there, and how do you really know.. . . "
"Ma'am, of course we talked to her and she told us lots of things," he said, speaking slowly, reluctantly. "But your daddy himself told us most of it. You see, he wasn't quite dead when we got there. Died before we could get him to a doctor."
"How badly was he hurt?" she insisted and tried to get up.
I gently but firmly forced her back down. "Easy, darling," I said.
"Ma'am, sheriff would have my hide if he thought I was going into details about this thing," he said. "It's not very pretty."
"Just tell me," she hissed, through clenched teeth.
"He shot himself in the stomach with a shotgun," he said. "There was no chance of saving him. It's as though he wanted to die that way, as though he picked the worst way. He was kind of incoherent, of course. Kept talking about the town wouldn't have any kind of victory over him, while he lived. Only after he was dead. That kind of thing."
"Did he say anything about me?" Jamie asked.
The deputy looked at me, took out the handkerchief, mopped his face. "I was coming to that," he said. "The last five minutes of his life he talked about you, ma'am. About all the things he wished he'd have done, and how he'd spent too much time with business and not with you. That kind of thing. Course, like I said, he was a little incoherent, so some of it didn't make too much sense, but I think the one thing he wanted most was to see you before he died."
Jamie became pretty hysterical again and we got a doctor and got her upstairs. The doctor gave her something that made her sleep. Finally, I went back downstairs to the library, where the deputy was waiting.
"Guess I owe you an apology," he said.
"Forget it," I said. "How about a drink? I think we could both use a big one."
"You never met a man who needs a drink worse than I do," he said. 'Til take a large shot of bourbon on some ice, if you don't mind."
"You were lying through your teeth, when you said Jamie's father talked about her at the end," I said, as I mixed the drinks.
"Well, buddy, there are some situations when nobody gets hurt by a lie," he said. "I figure you tell folks what they most want to hear. And Miss Meadows, I figured that it was awful important for her to think of her daddy like that. Course, he never mentioned her."
He took the bourbon and downed it in a swallow. He took the next one I offered, also. But he declined a third.
"Got to get back to work," he said. "Sheriff is next door now, with the Con ways. This thing is going to blow the lid off this town. Girls from the best families messed up in things like that. And that rape thing with the Perkins girl."
He left and I had a couple of drinks alone. Then I fell asleep on the couch.
We had to hang around Harrisville several days, and they were pretty grim ones. Jamie had two particularly bad days, and the second day she really went to pieces.
She got drunk and vowed she could be as strong and independent as her father. She vowed to stay in town and somehow get that freeway on the land she inherited and mostly to make Millie and the other girls pay and pay for what they'd done to her and her father.
It wasn't difficult to convince her of the absurdity of this drunken vow. I forced her to leaving, I told her I had to take care of some business downtown.
I let her keep the belief he had died regretting he hadn't loved her more, spent more time with her, seen her before he died. The deputy was right. That was a lie I'd keep from Jamie.
There was one more he I allowed myself. After the ordeal of the funeral and the legal wrangles, we got out of town as quickly as possible.
I spent almost every minute of that time in town with Jamie. But on the afternoon before leaving, I told her I had to take care of some business downtown.
And I drove out to Emily Ann's fishing camp.
She was waiting for me, sitting contritely on the bed, her eye much better, a beautiful sight in tight shorts and a tight, blue cotton sweater.
"I was so afraid you wouldn't come," she said. "And I'm all prepared for the sacrifice of the virgin."
"You're sure you want to do this?" I asked, my heart racing, my prick alive and straining.
"I'm very sure, darling," she said. "I hope this marks my official entry into the world of living people, of grownup, normal, everyday women."
I sat down on the bed beside her. "Emily Ann, you're very special," I said. "You'll never be an everyday woman, believe me."
She cupped my face in her hands, and kissed each of my eyes, then the tip of my nose, then my lips, a brief, gentle kiss.
"Oh, I have a message for you," she said. "When you finish with me, Kerry asked that you please get in touch with her, and show her how to be a real woman, too."
"Afraid not," I said. "Kerry's all right, but she's not you. I love Jamie. I'm making one exception, because I owe you a favor. And because next to Jamie, you turn me on sexually more than any damn woman I ever met."
"Well, in a couple of ways, I'm more of a woman," she said. "God, what would it be like to be flat-chested?"
"Baby, you'd be devastating sexually if you were flat-chested," I said. "But be thankful you're not. Christ, I'm thankful. Am I thankful?"
And I grabbed those enormous mounds through the thin sweater, and squeezed them until Emily Ann sighed and the nipples hardened in tune, it seemed, to the frantic hardening of my prick.
But she pulled my hands away. And smiled impishly. "No," she said. "Take me without touching my breasts, Carl. Please. That's my great wish, kind sir. To be deflowered, without having my rather overworked and over pampered breasts take part. Lord knows, Carl, my poor vagina must feel awfully neglected."
"It's your deflowering," I said. "I'll do it any way you want."
I stroked her thin thighs and she sighed, and then I peeled the shorts off. She wore no panties, and I stared at the small vagina beneath the patch of curly blonde hair. But just touching those lips caused them to quiver and I felt the stickiness, and Emily Ann was groaning and kissing my lips and ears.
'The first time, be gentle," she said. "And the second, kind of rough. I'm a pretty clever girl and by the third time, I think I'll surprise you with what I've picked up and what I can improvise."
"Jesus," I muttered, and already, as I slid a finger into the lips and felt those quivering pieces of hot, sticky flesh working, I could tell she was improvising.
And she was right-she did surprise me that afternoon. But that's another story, and has nothing to do with the evil virgins whose story ended in the swamps....