Joey tore his mouth from hers and slid his wet parted lips around to her ear, then said:
"Don't scream, you little witch! Don't you dare! I'm gonna have you and you're gonna love it. And you're gonna forget all about old Al. I guarantee it, baby."
He slid his mouth to the neckline of her blouse, while one of his hands slid and groped back and forth across her bosom. The other hand was at the silken crotch of her panties, fingering the elastic aside.
Ellie's brain was reeling. This had all happened so fast. One minute they'd just been sitting there and she'd been feeling the pleasant effects of the beer; the next, he was all over her, his lips bruising hers, his tongue plunging, his hand sliding up her legs.
And now his finger was working at her much as his tongue had worked before. She wanted to fight. She had to fight. But . ...
"Jesus, man, look at that!" Ralph Zuck exulted huskily.
"She's gonna let him have it, sure as hell," replied Howie Harper, who now was less than anxious to break up the show.
"She won't let him have it," Carl Jennings insisted. "She'll make him stop."
"Yeah?" For the last couple of minutes, Drew had been wanting an excuse to change the plan. Now he had it. "We'll see," he told Carl. "It'll be good for you to find out the way a girl acts when a guy starts goin' after her. You never believed me when I told you Ellie would put out. Okay. So watch ... "
CHAPTER ONE
River Glen was a town of some thirty-two hundred persons, set in an out-of-the-way part of Idaho on the rambling Snake. The state highway, which served as the town's main street, crossed the river on a two-lane bridge that dated back to 1915. The highway was now being widened, and this called for a new bridge-one which would be wider, higher, and longer than the old span, eliminating the dip in the roadway as it approached the river.
Bids had been received, and a contract had been awarded. The contractor had put out a call for men, and this had marked the beginning of an invasion.
Boomers-so called because their arrival turned sleepy hamlets like River Glen into boom towns overnight-had begun streaming in from all points of the compass.
Some had heard of the project by word of mouth; some had been notified by agencies and unions; others, who were known to the contractor, had received letters from him.
Because of a shortage of transient accommodations in the area, the contractor had put up frame barracks at the construction site about a mile north of town, and the men were being quartered there.
It was with varying emotions that the townspeople viewed the arrival of this horde of rough, unattached males. Most citizens were happy that the new bridge was being built at last. Businessmen were anticipating a rush of trade, but the more staid elements of the community were apprehensive about the possibility of trouble. This apprehension was fed by the admiring glances which the younger womenfolk cast at the army of newcomers. To the girls, the presence of these men promised to add zest and interest to what was normally a pretty placid way of life.
None knew exactly what to expect, for such an experience as this had never come to River Glen before.
Among those most excited by the prospects was sixteen-year-old Ellie Stewart who, on her way home from Central High School, was walking beside her friend Rolanda Peters when a heavy truck and trailer passed them on Main Street, carrying construction equipment to the bridge site. Hanging onto the back of the trailer was a bare-chested young man in hard hat and tight jeans. The latter were unbelted and rode so low on his hips that his navel was prominently displayed. Sun-bronzed, he cocked an arm in jaunty salute to the girls.
"Hey, look at that," Ellie murmured.
Rolanda glanced. Her voice, lower-pitched, was more casual than Eleanor's:
"He's a big one, all right. That chest would just about flatten a girl."
"But what a way to die," Ellie remarked appreciatively as she shyly returned the man's brash wave with a smile.
The heavy trailer rumbled up the street, a red flag dangling from its back, the man looking now for other prospects.
"They've been coming through all day," Rolanda said. "I saw them when I was walking home for lunch."
"Where are the guys gonna live?" Ellie asked. "Gee, the hotel here in town isn't big enough to put all of them up."
"They're camping by the river." Rolanda smiled wisely as she added, "And don't think our fathers aren't glad of that."
"Why? What do you mean?" Light-haired, pretty Eleanor turned an innocent face toward her friend.
"You child, you! Don't you know what fellows like that look for as soon as they arrive in town? They're like a bunch of jailors just off a ship."
"Oh," Eleanor said. "Well, I don't see why anybody should be worried. The girls around here can take care of themselves."
"Some of us can." Rolanda's tone implied that she thought Ellie could not.
Rolanda had an olive complexion and jet hair which she wore close to her head, straight except for a saucy curve at the tips. Her coloring gave her a striking and exotic look-exotic, at least, for River Glen, Idaho. She had a confident manner which made her seem older than seventeen.
Her chum Ellie was just the opposite-girlish to the tips of her unpainted toes. She used only a touch of lipstick, which was all her mother would permit. Her hair was done in an unsophisticated style. Only her burgeoning figure belied the general impression of childishness. Her breasts had already grown to fair-sized melons, round and high and firm. Her buttocks were chubby, too. But so far her waist had held its own.
Rolanda, in addition to being half-a-year older than her best chum, was a couple of inches taller and more angular. Her breasts were pert but not conversation stoppers. Her legs were lean.
Both girls were less than a month away from passing from junior to senior level at Central High.
"How long are they gonna be around, I wonder?" Ellie asked. Because there had been a lag in the conversation, she added, "The bridge guys, I mean."
"Until the thing is built, of course."
"How long'll that be?"
"A few months. I don't know. Do I look like a construction expert or something?" Ellie thought aloud:
"Gee, it's gonna change the town a lot having them here."
"Any change will be for the better, far as I'm concerned."
"Now, Rollie," Eleanor chided, "just because you came from Portland, you don't need to look down your nose at us ordinary folks. River Glen isn't such a bad place."
"To die in, maybe," was her friend's laconic reply.
Just then a noisy car pulled over to the curb.
"Give you two a lift?" yelled a youth with a plump smiling face and an unruly shock of brown hair hanging over his forehead. He was riding on the passenger's side, leaning out the window.
"Now he shows up," Eleanor said in a loud voice, ostensibly to Rolanda. "After we're almost home."
"Tell him we don't want any," the other girl replied, also loudly.
"Too bad, Carl," Ellie said. "You missed your chance." They were almost at the corner where Main Street intersected Maple, the street on which Ellie and Rolanda lived, next door to each other.
The car continued to creep along beside them and the dark-haired, handsome boy who was driving leaned forward and called out:
"Goin' to the dance Friday night?"
"Who was that meant for, Drew?" Rolanda asked. She knew, of course, but she was trying to train him to be more attentive.
"Okay, Rollie," he said, "you goin'? "
"If someone were to ask me nicely, I might consider it."
"Okay! So I'm asking."
"Nicely, I said." She kept walking alongside Ellie, facing front.
"Aw, for cripe's sake!" Drew Michaelson pulled the car to a stop, hopped out, and rounded the rear of the jalopy. He trotted over to the girls, wheeled in front of them, and stopped Rolanda with an elaborate bow. "May I have the pleasure, your ladyship?"
Ellie giggled.
"Really, Drew!" Rolanda said. "Don't be such an oaf."
"Well, pardon me for living." He was becoming teed off with her.
Rolanda saw this and decided she had carried the game far enough. She said:
"All right. I'll go with you."
"Tuff!" He brightened. "Pick you up at seven-thirty, huh?"
"Okay."
"How about you, El? You goin' with Carl?"
"I don't know," she replied haltingly. "He hasn't asked me."
"He'd like to take you," Drew said.
"You his agent now?" Rolanda wanted to know, and glanced at the other boy who was still in the car, too far away to hear what they were saying in a normal conversational tone.
"No. But I just thought ... "
"Let Carl talk for himself," Rolanda advised. She took a tighter grip on the books under her arm and edged past Drew.
Ellie didn't care for Rolanda's attitude. She would have been glad to accept the invitation there and then, even if it came second-handed. Now she lagged a little and glanced from Drew to Carl.
"Hey!" Drew yelled at the youth in the car and swung his arm.
Carl, responding, hopped out.
"You want to take Ellie to the dance, don't you?" he asked his friend with a slight tinge of disgust.
"Sure."
"Well, ask her, you dink!"
"Will you go with me, Ellie?" He grinned.
"Yes," she said. "I'd like to."
"Are you coming?" Rolanda inquired from several paces ahead.
"Yes." Ellie gave Carl another quick smile. "See you."
He grinned back.
After the girls had moved a little way along the sidewalk, Drew said:
"You know ... we've got us a fair-sized problem shaping up, man."
"What do you mean?"
"That bridge gang that's comin' into town. They're gonna be on the make for our chicks."
"Well, they hadn't better!" Carl stiffened.
"Just sayin' that isn't gonna keep 'em away." He turned back to the car and Carl followed.
"Most of them are pretty old," Carl said.
Drew walked around the back of the hot rod and slid behind the wheel.
"You dork! Don't you know the older a guy gets, the younger he-likes it?"
"But they'd find themselves in trouble."
"They live on trouble, bastards like that." Drew put the jalopy into gear and it started to roll. "Anyway, they'll be movin' on in a little while, so what do they care?"
The car passed Ellie and Rolanda just as the girls were turning up their street.
"What can we do about it?" Carl asked.
"Keep our eyes open. When we see one of 'em trying to move in, we pass the word among the guys. Then a bunch of us manages to be on hand the next time the cat shows up. We make it hard for him to operate. Stay close. You know. He'll get the idea, and so will the chick he's after."
"I don't think Ellie would pay any attention to them."
"Don't count on it, man. As loose a hold as you've got on her, anything might happen." Drew glanced at the boy who sat beside him and asked confidentially, "You made out yet?"
"Ellie doesn't do it."
Drew snorted a laugh.
"You don't know chicks very well. There isn't one of 'em that's not waitin' for a guy to put it to her."
"You think so?"
"Shoot, yes! Now, you take Rollie. You'd probably figure she wouldn't let a guy, either, huh?"
Carl just looked at him.
"I'm not sayin' I've made out with her," Drew went on, "That's not the thing for a guy to say. But I can tell you she's a lot warmer when you get her alone than she seems when other people are around. All chicks are, if you give 'em a little encouragement."
Carl thought that over silently and Drew added:
"That's why we gotta be on the lookout for those bridge guys. They're liable to pick themselves off some quick scores if we're not careful."
"Okay, Drew, I'm with you."
Drew tossed a hand signal and wheeled the jalopy to the left onto a side street, screeching the tires a little. He gunned the motor, let it idle down, and listened to the pipes. Ashe pulled to a stop in front of Carl's house, he said:
"If you're smart, you'll take my advice about something else, too."
"What's that?"
"You and Ellie. She's prime. I know what I'm talkin' about. If you don't make out with her pretty soon, some other cat's gonna beat you to the cherry."
"Shoot, man. . . "
"The way things are now, you're just invitin' one of those bridge builders to move in."
"Aw, Ellie wouldn't. . . "
"Will you stop with that Ellie-wouldn't crap? She would. They all would, and will. Take it from a guy who knows."
Carl gave him a close look, then swung open his door.
"See you."
"Yeah."
Drew gunned the car down the street toward his house, a couple of blocks away, as Carl headed for the concrete walk which led to his front door.
Might be a pretty good life, Carl thought, the way those bridge guys live. Going from town to town. He couldn't stand the heights, though. From what he'd heard, the new bridge over the Snake was going to be a deuser.
It will be a kick watching the thing go up, he thought.
This aspect of the bridge crew's presence loomed larger in his mind than the warnings Drew had issued.
At her house, as she entered her room and flopped face-downward on her neatly made bed, Ellie Stewart was thinking about the big man who had waved to her from the back of the construction trailer. He had looked right at her, and he'd waved and smiled. Ellie had gotten a warm feeling that still lingered.
She wondered how it would be to have a man like that make love to her. Or any man, for that matter. Even Carl Jennings, who wasn't a man yet but was certainly old enough to do what a man could do.
But he hadn't done it to her. Nobody had.
The guy on the truck couldn't be too much older than she and Carl. He was nineteen or twenty, maybe. She had noticed that quite a few of the construction guys were about that age.
She lay on her bed for a little while, thinking about the men, then about Carl. She would be going with him to the dance in just a couple of nights. Maybe this time he would really kiss her-not the peck-on-the-cheek bit, but a genuine smooch. She'd never been kissed really well in her entire life.
As she was thinking about this, her eyes fell to her school books which she had placed on a chair. She would have to get into that geometry homework right away, she decided. That is, if she wanted to watch "Shindig" and "Burke's Law" tonight.
That Burke-he was an operator.
She got up, reached for the book, lazily, and flopped back onto the bed.
The guy had waved right at her!
She wondered if she would get a chance to meet him or some of the other men. She wondered how they would act. She wondered how she should behave with them.
CHAPTER TWO
The project site, near the edge of the river, was stacked with materials and crowded with heavy equipment. It was dry, dusty, and hot. The corrugated steel buildings, which had been slapped together to house the working crews, resembled the make-shift army barracks which had been used so widely in the Second World War. Allen Sullender was too young to remember that, and he had been in grade school during Korea. He hadn't seen military service in the peace-time draft because of a slight hearing defect. It didn't bother him, except when the construction equipment was going, and then a man could stand at his elbow and shout his head off without Allen knowing he was there.
He pulled his blue Mercury, covered with the dust of two states, into an open space amid a collection of parked cars. He cut the engine and got out.
The quality of most of the cars around him said something about the men who worked on heavy construction jobs-especially the ones, like Allen, who risked their lives on the high steel of bridges and skyscrapers. It said something also about the kind of wages they received. There were two or three Cadillacs, a couple of Lincolns, a T-Bird, and a Chrysler, mostly current or year-old models. There were others in the Olds-Dodge-Mercury class. But there wasn't a Corvair or a Falcon on the lot. The foreign jobs in evidence were sporty and expensive models-an Alfa and a Jag XKE. The only cheap car was a VW, which must have belonged to someone on the engineering staff because it was parked next to the field office.
Boomers made three to five hundred dollars a week, when they were working, and most of them had no family to spend their money on. Even the ones who did, managed to hold out enough to enjoy themselves when they were away from home. A good car was a means of enjoyment in itself, and helped to promote enjoyment of another, more personal kind.
Pussy wagons, the guys called their chariots.
Among the parked vehicles, Allen spotted the one belonging to Pete Burgos, the guy who had tipped him about the River Glen job.
You couldn't very well miss Pete's white Caddie with the miniature steer's horns on the front of it. Though Pete wasn't from Texas, he liked the touch those horns gave his car.
Mopping his sweating face with the short sleeve of his sport shirt, Allen ambled across the open area toward the three barracks which were lined up in a row. If Pete was there, Allen wanted to say hello to him before heading to the office.
He stuck his head in the first doorway. Two or three men lounged on the cots. Another, in his shorts, was heading for the John at the far end of the long room, a towel and shaving implements in his hands. Pete wasn't among the group.
The second building was occupied at the moment by two men, Pete and a younger guy who had a hard hat on the back of his head and tight jeans riding low on his hips. He was standing beside the cot where Pete was stretched out, and he was grinning as he delivered the punch line of a story:
" ... so the salesman asked him what Wahoo meant, and the old Indian said, 'Wrong hole'. " The young man whooped.
Pete, his lanky form at rest and his hands cradling the back of his head, grinned around the cigarette which was planted between his lips. He was about thirty-five and had coal-black hair, straight as string, and a leathery face. He once had told Allen that he was half Cherokee. The other half was Eastern European stock-Greek, maybe.
When he saw Allen, Pete sat up.
"Well, I'll be a sonofabitch! Look who fell in."
At that, the other fellow turned around. He couldn't have been more than nineteen and was big and muscular, with brown curly hair and a face that said he got a kick out of life.
"Hello, Pete," Allen said with a grin and nodded at the man.
"Joey, this is Al Sullender. Joey Foss."
"Hi, Joe."
The young guy stuck out a hand.
"Glad to meet you. You and Pete are old buddies, huh?"
"We worked together in Detroit, and Pete tipped me about this job." He looked at Pete again. "Thanks for the wire, partner."
"You been over to the office?" Pete asked.
"Not yet. I saw your horny Cadillac out there, so I thought I'd look you up first. How are prospects?"
"Damn good. They don't have nearly enough men yet."
"Got a spare bunk in this flea-trap?"
"Hell, yes. Take your pick. The only ones spoken for are the ones with the duffel on the shelves in back."
"I'd better check in at the office first."
"You won't have any trouble getting on," Pete said. "They're crying for guys. The boss has a couple of men in Boise scouring the town."
"Sounds good," Allen replied. "I'm ready to go to work."
"What I'm ready for don't have nothin' to do with puttin' up no bridge," Joey Foss proclaimed in his Georgia accent. "Man, there's some good young tail in town!"
"I didn't see much," Allen said. "It looked like a pretty dull place."
"They're all home doin' their homework now," the young man retorted. "When I came through a little while ago, school had just let out. Man, the tender titties! And them clean young legs!"
"You better not mess with jailbait," Pete warned with a twinkle in his eye. "This ain't like a big city, where you can hit and run."
"Ah, balls! You spend your time with some barroom tramp if you want to, daddy. I'm goin' after the fresh stuff."
"The superintendent will have somethin' to say about that at the meeting he's called for tonight."
"Screw the meeting!" Joey glanced from Pete to Allen. "You don't think I'm gonna waste time listnin' to that sonofabitch throw his weight around when there's good honey fugglin' to be had in town, do you? What kind of a crap-brain do you think I am? How about you, Al-you gonna go on the prowl?"
"I might go with you," Sullender said good-naturedly.
"I wouldn't." Pete's expression was serious. "You'd better hear what the super has to say first. Small towns are different. You can get your ass in a sling easy. And the company has to answer for what you do. There's local politics involved."
"Politics!" Joey scoffed and turned toward the head. "I'm gonna shower the dust off, and then it's River Glen, here I come. You're welcome to join me if you want to, Al."
"Thanks," Allen said, but he didn't commit himself beyond that. He respected Pete's judgment, and if Pete said to go easy, maybe he had better listen to the man.
There was no trouble getting hired on. There was the usual form to fill out, followed by a short talk with a red-faced perspiring man in a white shirt with turned-back sleeves. Then there was a visit to the doctor who had a two-by-four office on the site during the initial hiring period.
Less than an hour later, Allen returned to the barracks, having stopped off at his car to pick up his bags. Pete was alone.
"All squared away?" he asked from his horizontal position on the cot.
"Yep. They don't quibble."
"I told you. They're hurting."
Allen selected an unclaimed bunk across from Pete's and dropped his luggage there. He pushed one bag onto its side, opened it, and began to load his clothing into the small chest of drawers at the head of the bed.
"Where's Joey? He take off?"
"Yeah," Pete said. "His cock was so hot, it was burnin' a hole in his pants."
"That's a bad way to be," Allen remarked.
"You didn't really want to go into town with him, did you?"
"Not particularly. I thought I'd be friendly, though, if there was no reason not to."
"There's a reason to watch your step around here. This outfit, Conway and Griggs, is an Idaho firm. They've got a reputation to protect in this state, and a pretty strong 'in' with the local politicos. If any of their men mess up with under-age town girls, there's gonna be hell to pay. Far as I'm concerned, I'm gonna find me a nice comfortable whore."
"I don't like whores," Allen said flatly.
"Then at least get yourself a girl who's grown up. That pink stuff is dynamite in a setup like this."
Allen finished unpacking and announced:
"I've gotta get cleaned up whether I go into town or not. That was a dusty drive today."
"Looks like you have a clear field back there," Pete said.
Allen stripped off his shirt and pants and strode to the John, which had four basins with mirrors for shaving, a urinal trough, and two toilet stalls; at the opposite end of the enclosure was an open shower with three spouts and a concrete floor that sloped to a center grate. He hung up the towel he had brought from the supplies at his bunk, got out of his shorts, and went under the water.
He soaped thoroughly, enjoying the needle-sharp lukewarm spray. He rinsed, then gave himself a fast shot of cold water.
He felt invigorated and optimistic. Starting a new job always made him feel this way. Arriving in a new town did, too. He wasn't very concerned about what Pete Burgos had told him. There would be action in River Glen, as there was action everywhere else, and he would find it. He wouldn't have any trouble, either, because the girl wouldn't yell, whether she was under-age or not. He would keep her too happy for that.
He dried off and strode back to his bunk with the towel wrapped around his middle. Pete was reading a paperback, so they didn't talk for awhile. As Allen put on fresh clothes, he speculated to himself about what might be awaiting him in River Glen.
The contractor's superintendent turned out to be a short, bald, plump man by the name of Kale. Barney Kale or Benny Kale-Allen hadn't caught the introduction clearly. He was in his late forties, and he had an angry look-which he tried to submerge. Maybe the look wasn't so much angry as harried, Allen decided. Superintendents always looked pretty much that way.
All the men, except for the ones who had taken off for town, were gathered in one of the barracks, standing elbow-to-elbow between the bunks and in the aisle. It was hot and close and uncomfortable. Sweat was trickling inside Allen's shirt, spoiling the shower he'd taken a couple of hours ago.
At first Kale gave them a rundown on general work rules and routines at the campsite. Actual construction was not to begin until Monday, but there would be work for the men to do, getting ready. Once the job was underway, there would be overtime for the men who wanted it. The contract called for completion of the bridge in what would be almost a record-breaking time. Conway and Griggs was determined to meet the deadline. They preferred to pay overtime rather than to suffer a loss in the form of penalties. Everyone was glad to hear that.
Kale then turned to the matter he seemed most concerned about, and his talk went pretty much along the lines Pete Burgos had predicted. The whole spiel could have been summed up in three words: Take it easy. He didn't tell the men to leave the town girls alone. He evidently knew this would be futile. But he made it clear that if the men got into trouble, the company would be in trouble, too. And no trouble was what Conway and Griggs wanted.
He said:
"You can't ramble around this burg the way you would in Chicago or Detroit. Or even in Boise. Here, everybody knows what happens to everybody else, and there's a local newspaper that prints most of it. You get some young kid in trouble, and the townsfolk will be beatin' on the boss's door. They may have their State Representative ring him up. You know what that'll mean."
Everyone seemed to know. Or, if not, they didn't ask questions.
"Lewiston's only a two-hour's drive," he added. "It'd be a lot safer for all of us if you'd do your hell-raising there." His tone indicated that he didn't have much confidence that his advice would be taken. Four hours' driving of an evening would severely cramp a man's style.
"I'll tell you this," was the way he finished his talk. "If we get any bad reports on any of you guys, it's gonna go rough with you. Whatever you do, be damned careful. Okay, men. That's all." He turned and strode out of the room, his briskness indicating that he was glad to have put an unpleasant task behind him.
"Did that change your mind about taking off for town tonight?" Pete wanted to know as he and Allen walked back to their barracks.
"Nope. But I don't think I'll go, anyway. The town can wait for awhile. How's chances, do you suppose, of getting a game?"
"Now," Pete said with a sly grin, "you're talking my language."
CHAPTER THREE
Rolanda Peters hadn't gone out to look for fun that evening.
You didn't go looking for fun in River Glen, Idaho. At least, not when conditions were normal. What fun there was, happened in the natural course of events, and usually was tame.
But conditions were no longer normal in River Glen since the boomers had begun to arrive. Though Rolanda had recognized this fact, she had not decided what, if anything, to do about it.
She was an independent-minded girl but level-headed. What she wanted was eventually to find a man who would think the world of her and give her a good home in some worth-while place-not a town like River Glen-with all the automated conveniences, and two, perhaps three, children. To aid her in the search for such a man, she planned to go to college for at least two years and take a business course. Then it would be back to Portland or perhaps to San Francisco and go to work in an office.
Her father was vice-president of the local bank, having been transferred from a lesser position at the main office in Oregon. The family had lived in River Glen for a year and a half, and her father was awaiting the retirement of the bank's elderly president so that he could succeed to that job. After a sufficient stint at the helm of the small branch, he would be moved to Boise, Spokane, or perhaps back to Portland, if his record so warranted, and then he would be well set. Rolanda expected that by then she would be on her own.
She had been having a kind of affair with Drew Michaelson, the son of a local market-owner. She thought of the affair as a halfway thing, because she didn't have any feeling for Drew except what was purely physical, and this never began until he commenced to pet her. But a girl had to go steady with someone, and Drew was well thought of, both at school and among adults. She had been going all the way with him because she'd wanted to learn about life and love and how to get along with a male. At least, this was what she had told herself. In spite of what her mother had taught her, Rolanda had concluded that virginity was an old-fashioned concept. This was a hip age, and desirable husband-prospects didn't expect or really want a girl to be inexperienced. The world had changed in the twenty years since her mother had gone husband-hunting. You had only to visit the movies or watch TV to realize that. Rolanda was in step with the times, she believed.
Still, she was reasonably cautious. She had warned Drew never to talk about them. She had, in fact, established this as a prior condition before she would give in to him. She had let him know that if so much as a whisper were to reach her ears indicating that he had bragged to some buddy about making a score, she would cut him off right away. Cold-blooded? Perhaps. But that was the way she wanted things to be. He had accepted the condition and, so far as she knew, had lived up to it.
They did their playing at lonely spots in the country, usually on a blanket spread out on the ground. Drew carried the blanket, folded-up, in the trunk of his jalopy, and he kept the trunk locked. He seemed to like the certainty of their arrangement. He seemed to feel also that it was worth the price of silence, though this was a heavy price for a hungry young ego to pay.
As a lover, Drew had improved a great deal since the first time. On that occasion, he had been so excited that he had ejaculated almost as soon as he had breached Rolanda's virginity. She hadn't known much about sex technique, but she had known in general what she needed from a boy, and her instinct had told her how to bring the boy along in order for her to have it. Now she got what she needed every time. Still, she believed she could get along without. All she would have to do would be to keep a boy from feeling her up. So long as he kept his hands to himself, she believed that her libido would behave.
This particular evening, she had set out for the library to pick up a book on which to write a report required for her English class. On the way, she had stopped off at the Snack Shoppe on Main Street to see who was there and to sip a Coke.
When she stepped onto the sidewalk again, she nearly collided with a large good-looking young man who had just emerged from the tavern a few doors down the block. The man was well on his way to getting drunk. She could see this in his eyes and in the way he grinned at her. She recognized something else about him: He was the man who had waved at her and Ellie Stewart from the back of a construction truck that afternoon. Now his massive chest was covered with a white shirt, jacket and tie, but he was every bit as handsome. Rolanda appreciated him more now that she saw him close up, and now that she had bumped into the rock-hard chest which she had seen before all hairy-bare.
"Oh!" she exclaimed. "I'm sorry."
"Well, I'm not," he drawled, catching her by the elbow. "It was a pleasure."
As he stood grinning at her, Rolanda was faced with the choice which millions of girls face with young men every day-encourage him or not?
Why she decided as she did is a question which no one could have answered with assurance, least of all Rolanda. Perhaps something within her said it was time to move up-to graduate from boys to men. Perhaps the experience she'd had with Drew Michaelson had given her an appetite for variety. Perhaps she merely liked this big man's looks, and the matter was resolved on the most basic fleshly level.
At any rate, she returned his smile. This was all the encouragement a man like Joey Foss needed, drunk or sober.
"Hey, little lady," he said, still holding her by the arm, "what's there for a pair of wild ones like you and me to do in a town like this on a warm summer's evening?"
Rolanda teased him:
"I don't know if I like being called wild. Anyway, summer isn't here yet."
"It's sure hot enough. Hooo-eee!"
By now, second thoughts were crowding first impressions. The man was an unruly sort, Rolanda decided. And he was drunker than she at first had believed. Though she was aflutter with excitement, she suppressed this and tried to edge past the man who suddenly had become an obstacle.
"Hey, don't run off!" he exclaimed, taking a firmer hold on her arm.
"Please."
He said laughingly:
"Now, wait a minute! Maybe you and me got off on the wrong foot, but that ain't no cause to act this way. My name's Joey Foss. I'm gonna help build the new bridge for you people."
"Thanks a lot," Rolanda said sarcastically. "I'm sure we appreciate it."
She began trying to pry his fingers off her arm. A couple of persons passed on the sidewalk and glanced, but they evidently assumed that this was only a kids' quarrel and therefore didn't feel they should intervene. Joey kept grinning all the time, and Rolanda tried to mask her feelings.
The truth was that her feelings were too confused to be portrayed clearly, even if she had permitted her facial muscles to work of their own accord. She was afraid of this man; a little repelled by his aggressiveness, and at the same time stimulated to an extent which Drew had never stimulated her-at least, not by mere talk and casual touching. This man was different. He was from the big world, the world she was going to grow up in, and this recommended him to her. But fear and caution also were strong.
"I'll tell you what," Joey said, suddenly yielding to her prying fingers and letting his hand drop from her elbow. Rolanda stared at him and didn't run. "Why don't we go for a little ride in my car? I'm parked just around the corner. I've only been in River Glen a day and a half, and I ain't had nobody show me the sights."
Her voice was a little husky when she replied:
"I can't. I'm on my way to the library. My folks expect me home."
"You don't have to kowtow to them, do you a big girl like you?" He let his gaze sweep quickly. He continued to grin in a disarming way. "The library can wait, can't it?"
Rolanda heard herself saying:
"I suppose so."
Five minutes later she was in his car, and she couldn't understand how she had permitted this to happen. It wasn't like her at all. She was too sensible to be bowled over by a bumbling big honey-talker, yet here she was. And she was tingling with a mixture of excitement and apprehension. She was perhaps as much afraid of herself as of him.
Joey's car was a Pontiac Grand Prix, pale-yellow and handsome, not yet half-paid-for. He often took delight in pronouncing the car's name as if it were English and thereby shocking the girl he happened to be with.
The car, with its luxurious upholstery and appointments, was finer than the economy-model Chevy Rolanda's father owned. She glanced around her in admiration as the lights winked on and the three-hundred-plus horses beneath the hood surged into life, sweeping the car around the flat-bed truck which was parked in front of it, up Main Street, and into a left turn.
Rolanda thought with alarm, He's too drunk to drive. Then she asked herself, What am I doing here beside him? I must get out. I'll have to make him stop. If he doesn't stop, I'll have to jump.
She started to reach toward him, to place her hand on his arm, but the motion halted in midair and her hand fell back to her lap. She didn't say anything. The yellow Pontiac gathered speed, and pretty soon the street on which they were traveling had become a country road.
Rolanda sat back against the plush upholstery and listened to the beat of her heart which threatened to rise and block her breathing. He was taking her into the country, racing ahead now without even speaking.
She suddenly realized that he was going to rape her. He was big and strong, and she would not be able to resist him. She could see them, in her mind's eye, struggling on the seat of the car, her knees lifting to try to ward him off, her skirt sliding back toward her lap. His hand would be on her bare legs. He would be feeling higher . ...
"Wh-where are we going?" she found the strength to say.
Joey laughed, a rough edge on his voice.
"For a ride, baby, like I told you. Beautiful evening, huh?"
Twilight was turning to dark. The scene around them was one with which Rolanda had become all too familiar in the time she had lived in River Glen-the pastures, the great barns, the haystacks, and the manure piles, the blocks of fruit trees here and there interrupting the level pastoral scene. The road ran near the edge of the high valley in which the town was located, and the mountains rose steeply nearby. The scene was familiar, but the circumstances weren't. Rolanda had been here many times with Drew; those occasions bore no resemblance to this.
Rape ... rape ... rape! Fear and excitement sang a wild duet within her. Why had she permitted herself to be caught like this? What had been the matter with her? Where were her brains?
"Stop!" she said suddenly. "I want you to stop the car."
"Why, honey?" Joey asked, the edge of tension even stronger now. "What're you afraid of?"
"You. Take me back to town. Right away. I'll scream."
"Nobody'd hear you out here." Joey laughed. "We're alone on the road. See? There ain't another car in sight."
There wasn't, and it was fast becoming pitch-dark. A cool breeze was sweeping down from the mountains. A chill came over Rolanda, and she felt very much alone-alone with a fear that grew and grew, overcoming the pleasurable excitement she had felt before.
Suddenly she thought, He won't take any precaution. Rapists never do. He'll give me a baby.
She screamed and began to beat her fists against Joey's arm and shoulder.
"Hey!" he exclaimed as the car swerved on the narrow road. "What're you doin', you crazy bitch? You want'a crack us up? Watch out!"
He put on the brakes, and the Pontiac snaked to a stop on the shoulder of the road, pitching forward and back. He cut off the motor.
There was utter silence except for the sounds of heavy breathing. Joey's face, when he turned it toward the girl, was reddened with anger.
"You damn little fool, you could've run us into the ditch."
"Take me home," she demanded.
"Now, look ... " He recovered his composure to some extent and grinned. "You came with me 'cause you wanted to, baby. You know that. So be sweet and let's enjoy ourselves, huh?"
"What's with you, anyway?" Rolanda replied. "You think you can grab a girl right off the street and carry her away?"
"I didn't grab you," he said, his voice rising, "and I didn't carry you away. You came with me. Let's get that straight."
Rolanda fell back on the final and most persuasive argument she had:
"I'm under-age. I'm only seventeen. If you touch me, you'll go to prison."
A cloud came over Joey's face, but he grinned it away, then said:
"That's only if you talk, baby. And you're not gonna talk. I know good and well that you ain't gonna make no fuss and trouble."
Before she could assure him that she would do so, Joey was all over her, his hulking weight bearing her against the back of the seat. She felt as if the air had been pressed from her body. Fear tightened her throat.
She smelled the stench of beer, and she tried to struggle, but she couldn't budge Joey's weight. She began to cry as her hands pushed futilely against his bulging shoulders. He blubbered something close to her ear. His wet lips were against her neck, sliding along.
"Oh, please!" she said. "You can't! For God's sake ... "
He paid no attention. The more he pressed against her, and the more he trailed his parted lips along her flesh, the less resolute she became. She felt a giddiness seeping into her brain, and there was a growing warmth at her loins. She wanted to part her legs.
But she couldn't! She couldn't let this man take her! He was a rapist, and he would give her a baby. She had to hold him off somehow. She had to get out of the car.
As his mouth neared hers, she turned her face, but he lifted his big hands to cradle her jawbone and hold her for his kiss as his elbows pressed against her upper arms, pinning her to the back of the car seat. She seemed powerless. She couldn't do a thing but accept his wet, parted lips when they closed on hers.
He pressed her lips hard, his own working. The constriction in her throat grew worse. Her brain reeled. She was moist between the legs.
Her mouth opened wider, at first just a little and only in response to the pressure Joey exerted. Then suddenly she let go, and his lips rode hers as far apart as he could get them. Her brain screamed warnings, but they were like shouts against a roaring gale, swept away by the tumult before they could be heard.
Joey's tongue was plunging at her. Drew had kissed her this way, but not with anything like this degree of force, this sense of confident command. And Joey's tongue was bigger and thicker. It seemed to fill her mouth. She couldn't help but rub her own tongue against his. He eased his pressure against her lips as his tongue lashed about. She could have bit him-she realized this later-but she didn't entertain the thought right then. All she could think of was the excitement of this big, thick presence within her mouth, whipping her into a frenzy as it moved.
Joey raised his face, gasping, and she could see the tongue she had just felt.
"Ohhh, you sweet wild little baby!" he exclaimed. "I've gotta have you. I've just gotta."
"No ... no ... " Her voice was absurdly weak and ineffectual.
His big hands were dropping to her white summer blouse which was sleeveless and had buttons running down its front. The bottom of it hung outside her skirt. He brushed her breasts, then started to unbutton her.
This fact seemed to carry the weight required to tip the balance between fear and desire in her mind. She couldn't let him get at her breasts. Once this happened, she would be lost. She had to fight him with all the strength she possessed. And all the female devices, too.
He had worked her top button free. Now, as he shifted his arms so that his hands could get at the second one, Rolanda managed to dislodge her right arm. She raised her hand quickly and brought her curled fingers down across the side of his face.
He howled and sat up straight, releasing for a moment the pressure which he had been applying against her. Rolanda fumbled for the handle of the door, pulled it upward, and the door swung open. She tried to slide out of the car.
Though the pain was still sharp and his face was bleeding, Joey recovered enough to fall against her thighs, pinning her lower body against the car seat. She cried in panic and tried to wiggle her bottom free, but the man was pressing and grappling against her.
She could move one leg a little bit, and she swung this in a short arc, the side of her shoe catching Joey just below the knee. He cried out again and lessened his pressure slightly. Rolanda braced her feet against the car floor and pushed with all her might, sending her rump off the end of the cushion. She tumbled through the car door, landing on her side in the soft dirt which sloped away from the roadway.
She began to roll, her skirt winding high on her legs. A sharp rock bit her back. She tried to stop herself so that she could get to her feet, but she had gathered too much momentum.
Now she was at the bottom of the ditch. She was covered with dust and was sore all over. As she tried to stand up, she saw Joey's huge form hurtling down at her. She screamed, but only a slight sound came out before she was knocked flat with the man on top of her.
His thick fist was pulling at her skirt, bringing it up the rest of the way. She felt it slide out from beneath her buttocks. And she felt something else, with him pressing against her as he was. She felt the rigid urgency of his penis, like a dull-pointed spear.
"No ... no ... no!" she cried and beat her arms and hands against Joey's chest, flailing wildly.
The blows seemed to have no effect on him. He let out a growl of triumph as his fingers gathered the filmy stuff of her pants and started to pull it down.
His knees were planted at either side of her and he couldn't get her pants off while he was positioned that way. He stretched them away from her belly but they caught beneath her rump and, kneeling astride her as he was, he couldn't gain the leverage to pull them free.
He leaned to the side, lifting one leg, and Rolanda swung a blow with all her might. It struck him on the side of the head and toppled him over.
She scrambled to her feet as he attempted to get up. He made it right after she did, and he lunged after her as she began to climb the steep slope to the road. He grasped the edge of her blouse, but she pulled free, ripping the fabric halfway up the back.
"Goddamn you, you dirty bitch!" he howled as he fell backward, and she gained the top of the incline.
Rolanda didn't know how to drive, so she couldn't make use of the car to get away. She began to run along the road in the direction of town.
A sharp pain knifed at her chest. The mighty exertions which had been required in order for her to get free had tired her, and she knew that she couldn't run very far. What was more, Joey would be in his car in a moment and be swinging it around.
She couldn't get away from him on the road. As the truth of this fact impressed itself upon her, she left the roadway, running and tumbling down the slope at the opposite side. She picked herself up and scrambled through the high weeds to the barbed wire fence which paralleled the road.
She had hurt her knee when she'd fallen. A rock or something had cut her. Now she tore her skirt on the barbed wire strands, and one sharp point raked across her naked side.
She began to sob as she lurched across the pasture.
Joey Foss stood in the center of the deserted road and cursed dismally. She was a goddamned teasing bitch! She had gotten into the car and let him drive her to the country; she had let him kiss her with his tongue and had acted as if she liked it; then when he'd started unbuttoning her clothes, she had fought him like a she panther. There was a name for girls like her: Cock-teaser.
He slapped at the dirt on his clothes. The hump at the front of his trousers had not yet gone down completely.
He considered running after the girl, catching up to her in the middle of the pasture, and screwing her there on the ground. But he decided against this. She had convinced him that she didn't want to give in, and he was afraid of using force against a girl who didn't want it. A few minutes ago, he would have. He had tried, in fact. But the exertions and the cool mountain air in his face had sobered him.
He walked to the side of his car and slid behind the wheel. He cursed audibly. There was nothing to do now but head back to the camp. What a lousy evening this had turned out to be! He would have to finish off by draining his passion in a solitary bed.
But he would see that bitch again, he vowed as he started the car's engine. He would see her and catch her and make her sorry she had treated him this way.
As he swung the car around, backed up, and righted it in the direction of town, he wondered how she would get home. She probably would run to a farmhouse and ask for help. But he doubted that she would make trouble for him. There would be nothing to gain by that. He hadn't gotten into her, so there hadn't been any rape. She didn't have anything to worry about as far as a baby was concerned.
No, she would straighten herself up as best she could and probably tell the people she'd had a fight with her boy friend. That would be the simplest, and there wouldn't be any more embarrassment.
She would have been a hot lay, he thought. If she'd applied all that spunk to screwing instead of fighting him off, they could have had a dandy time.
Well, he would get to her. No girl treated Joey Foss like this and got away with it.
Rolanda watched the lights of his car move along the road. She stood and stared until the twin red dots faded from view.
Now she could relax, as far as the immediate physical threat was concerned. But she found herself in a different sort of trouble. She was stranded at a point about three or four miles from town. This was too far for her to walk. Yet, she looked a fright. How could she present herself at anyone's house looking this way?
She examined her clothes. Her skirt was ripped at the side, and her white slip showed through. She felt at her back and discovered that her blouse was torn up to a point just beneath her bra strap. She was covered with dust, and her knee was bleeding. Also she had a bad scratch just above the top of her skirt, and blood had stained her blouse.
She confirmed all of this by the light of a full moon which had risen to a romantic height, setting the stage perfectly for a boy and girl to enjoy the intimate company of each other.
But not the way that Joey what's-his-name had tried to enjoy her. No, not like that.
Yet within her there was a feeling akin to disappointment. She couldn't understand this. She hadn't been able to understand why she had gotten into the boy's car in the first place.
Perhaps she didn't know herself as well as she had thought. This was the only conclusion she could reach. Perhaps she wasn't the cool chick she had believed she was, the girl who knew just what she wanted and had herself under perfect control at all times.
Well, at least she had gotten away from that animal. That was what mattered.
She hauled her skirt and slip up around her waist so that she could straighten her pants and draw the elastic back to its proper safe elevation. She had come very close to getting raped, she realized. Once he had gotten the pants off her and had planted himself between her legs, instead of outside them, she wouldn't have been able to prevent the penetration. And once he had penetrated her, she knew she wouldn't have been able to fight any more.
She wondered how a boy's thing would feel without a rubber on it.
Letting her skirt and slip drop back to their normal position, she had to face up to the decision of what to do next. There were lights glimmering in the distance-one house in front of her, a little to the right, and another off to the left. The first was about an eighth of a mile away, she judged, and the other a little farther.
She wondered what she could say to the people who lived there. She didn't know who they were. Would they be willing to drive her into town, or would they insist on telephoning her father?
Oh, that would stir up a pretty mess! Perhaps, she thought, her best bet would be to return to the road and wait until a car came along, heading toward River Glen. Surely the driver would give her a lift. And she wouldn't have to say anything she didn't want to. Perhaps she could get him to drop her off a little ways from her house, and she could succeed in sneaking in the back way without being seen.
She didn't consider telling anyone what really had happened to her.
She began to walk back toward the road, aching in every joint of her body. But the ache was not entirely physical. She felt soiled and abused; her pride hurt, and there was that strange sense of disappointment which she couldn't shake off.
She thought about how it would have been if she had given in to the fellow. He would have been a more exciting lover than Drew-she had no doubt about that. Perhaps he would have given her an experience worth the degradation and even the risk of getting pregnant. From what she knew about the rhythm cycle, this would have been a reasonably safe day, she realized now.
She rebuked herself for entertaining the thought that she should have yielded. Yet she couldn't shut the frustration out of her mind.
A pair of headlights moved slowly along the road as she neared the edge of the pasture. But she realized that she couldn't get to the road before the car passed, so she didn't make the effort.
By the time she set foot on the hard macadam surface, there were no lights in either direction. She began to walk slowly toward town.
It was about fifteen minutes later when a car did come along, and by this time she was very tired. She faced the headlights and waved. The car, an old Buick, pulled to a stop.
There was one man in the car-lean faced, about forty, wearing a red check shirt. She didn't know him. He leaned to the side so that he could see her as she spoke to him through the open window.
"I've had some trouble," she said, her voice shaking. "Could you give me a lift into town?"
"Why, sure, little lady. Glad to."
He squinted at her as she got into the car, and said:
"You look like you've had a pretty bad time. What happened?"
"It wasn't anything," Rolanda said, facing front. "I wasn't hurt. I just want to go home."
The man hesitated, then said:
"Yeah, I guess it's your privilege if you don't want to talk about it."
He put the Buick into gear and it began to move forward. Rolanda breathed a sigh of relief. He wouldn't give her any problem. Now all she had to worry about was getting into her house without being seen.
CHAPTER FOUR
Drew Michaelson was surprised to receive a phone call from Rolanda after he arrived home from school the next afternoon. He was even more surprised by what she had to say:
"Can you pick me up after dinner? I'd like to see you tonight."
"Gee, Rollie, I ... "
"Well? Can you or can't you?"
"Sure, I can. You just kind of threw me, that's all. I mean, there's the dance tomorrow night and. . . "
"Drew, for God's sake, quit blubbering."
"I'm not blubbering!" the boy retorted angrily. "What's the matter with you, anyway? You hardly talked to me today at school."
"I wasn't feeling well," she alibied, "but I feel much better now. I'd like to go for a ride."
"Go for a ride" meant only one thing as far as Drew and Rolanda were concerned, and the thought of this perked Drew up. He'd been counting on the next night after the dance, but now it looked as if he wouldn't have to wait that long. To a seventeen-year-old youth, this was good news.
"Sure, Rollie," he said. "I'll pick you up about seven-thirty, huh?"
"All right. 'Bye." She hung up.
Well, if that didn't beat all, Drew thought as he replaced the telephone receiver. He got up from the living room chair where he had sprawled when he'd answered the phone, and gave a happy kick to the hassock in front of him, sending it scooting across the nap of the rug.
He was right on time, picking her up. She saw him from the front window of her house, and she was through the door and walking toward his jalopy before he had a chance to set the brake and get out.
He usually walked to the front door and rang the bell like a gentleman. She had scolded him a long time ago when he'd honked his horn for her.
"You don't get curb service around here," she'd told him sharply.
He had smiled when he had thought about that later. Rollie could be a funny one sometimes.
"Well, hi," he said cheerfully.
This brought no answer. Rolanda was stony faced as she waited for him to open the door from the inside. She got in.
"What's with you?" he asked, still grinning.
"Will you please just drive?" she said.
He blinked, then started the car's engine.
"Where to?"
"Anywhere. Out in the country."
"Tuff!" he said, and they took off.
"Mad at me?" he asked cautiously, after they had driven for awhile and she hadn't said anything.
"No."
"Then what's the matter?"
"Nothing. It's personal."
"Too personal to tell me?" he inquired with an edge to his voice.
"Oh, Drew, don't be such a child. A girl doesn't like to discuss everything."
"That's okay with me," he said and brightened. "Hey, it's a wild night, huh?"
"Lovely," she said with a hint of sarcasm.
The evening was warmer than the previous one, but not too warm. This was the time when lights were being turned on all over town. A kind of exciting time, Drew always had thought, especially when he was going out with his girl and they were going to have real fun together.
He wasn't concerned about Rolanda's attitude. She wouldn't have called him and talked the way she had, if she hadn't meant to follow through. As for the chip she seemed to have on her shoulder, she was like that sometimes. She liked to lord it over him a little. He didn't really mind because he knew how to warm her up. Once he did that, he was in charge and she was the way a girl ought to be. He guessed that her superior air at other times was to kind of offset the way things were when they were screwing. Maybe she felt a little guilty.
He had never gotten over his surprise at her willingness to go all the way with him without there being any talk of marriage between them. That was fine, as far as he was concerned-just great, in fact-because marriage was the last thing in the world he wanted to think about. But Rolanda's attitude went against everything he had heard about the way girls were. Girls from good families didn't just up and give it to a guy without getting him to promise to marry them, or at least making him say he loved them. Yet when he and Rollie had first started going steady and he had begun talking that way to her, she had cut him off. She had said he was being juvenile. Then, the next thing he knew, she was sliding down on the car seat and ... kabunga!
Yeah, she was a funny one in ways.
But he wasn't going to argue. He was glad just to enjoy.
When they reached the place where they did most of their parking-a grassy spot off a little dirt road that wound up through the foothills-he stopped the jalopy.
"Want'a get out?" he asked.
"Sure."
See? he told himself. No sweat. She's gonna come through like she always does.
He hopped out of the car and around to the back where he opened the trunk and took out the folded blanket. This he carried to the door at Rolanda's side of the car. She always waited for him to open the door for her.
She got out, and he turned immediately to open the blanket and spread it on the grass. There was never any ceremony or build-up because she didn't require that. He took her by the hand and drew her down to the blanket beside him.
"Gosh, you're pretty, honey," he said and leaned to give her a kiss. Compliments she liked, and Drew was adept enough to make use of them.
Tonight, however, she didn't react to his compliment with the pleased, if superior, little smile she usually gave him when he said something nice.
Her preoccupation continued even while he kissed her, and Drew began really to wonder what was the matter. She never had been quite this way with him before.
The kiss was not very exciting, since neither of them was really warmed up. Rolanda's lips remained almost closed, and when they were like that they were thin and hard.
Drew backed up and murmured:
"Baby ... ? " His tone and the look on his face reflected concern.
"I'm all right," Rolanda said, as if she were annoyed by his attitude.
Automatically he placed his hand at the outer side of her knee and began to slip it upward. Tall and rather angular as she was, her legs were on the thin side. Drew's hand polished the smooth skin, up and down, having shoved her skirt and slip high. When he slipped his palm back across her knee, he felt a roughness and looked down at what he had touched.
"Hey, why the Band-Aid?" he asked. "What'd you do?"
"I bumped myself," she said. "It's nothing." She reached around to her back and began to open the fasteners of her light-brown dress.
Drew took hold of the cloth at her shoulders and brought it forward and down until the top of her dress lay limp in her lap. Rolanda reached and unfastened her white brassiere. This came away.
"Baby ... " Drew murmured, urging her onto her back.
He got onto his hands and knees above her and let his lips slide along her throat and down to the red-tipped mounds of her bosom.
Rolanda's breasts were not large, but they were firm almost to the point of hardness. like little white tangerines they were, and they kept most of their shape even when she was on her back. Drew kneaded one of them with his fingers while his tongue teased the nipple of the other.
Rolanda moaned.
The routine was familiar, and almost as casual as with a married couple.
Drew went to the other nipple and tongued that one while his hand slid around at her middle, urging her dress lower. After awhile, he leaned back on his knees and tugged her dress and half-slip out from under her rump, with Rolanda lifting to help him.
He stopped when he had the garments halfway down her thighs. He was staring at the scratch which ran across her waist at the side, just above the elastic of her white pants.
"What's that?" he wanted to know.
"Oh, for heaven's sake, are you going to make love to me or ask all kinds of dopey questions?"
He stared at her.
"Dammit, Rollie."
She wiggled her legs and said:
"Get these off," indicating her constricting skirt and slip.
He pulled her dress and slip away, dropping them on the grass. Looking at her now, a slim white shape stretched out before him in the moonlight, her nipples standing like red exclamation points and the dark triangular shadow showing through her panties.
Drew was excited enough to forget any questions or uncertainties he had. There was only one thing that interested him.
Still on his knees, he started to take off his own clothes, first unbuttoning his shirt. When the shirt was gone, he opened the top of his slacks and worked these and his knitted briefs down his legs, past his knees. He left them bunched about his calves.
His slim, rigid penis stood pointing. Rolanda's fingers lifted to it, both hands taking hold.
"I need you bad tonight," she said.
"Sure, baby," he replied huskily and proceeded to remove her pants, lifting her legs in front of him as he took the sleek garment off her feet.
When her legs settled back, they were at either side of his kneeling form. He stared at the dark target of her loins as he dug into a pocket of his bunched-up slacks for the article of protection which Rolanda always had insisted he put on before making entry.
She removed her hands from him and said: "No. Not yet. I want to feel you the way you are."
"Yeah, but, honey ... "
"You won't go off too fast."
"I may not want to stop," he warned.
"You'll have to," was her reply.
She grasped him once more and began to draw the emblem of his proud young manhood toward her.
Rolanda was the only girl Drew ever had taken, and he never had taken her without the sheath. Now as he touched, felt his way, found entry, and sank deeply, the thrill was a hundred per cent better than it ever had been before.
"Jesus ... " he murmured as he held himself there for a moment and felt the sleek moist warmth of her clasped snugly about him. This was the greatest! He'd had no idea.
He started to move, drawing his penis back until it was almost out, then sending it deep again. Holy God! He began to move faster.
Rolanda twisted and moaned. This was better for her than it had ever been, too. There was no pulling, no foreign substance between the two of them to cause the dry friction which she usually felt at the beginning of an intercourse. Now there was just herself and Drew. All she felt was him. And he felt wonderful to her this way.
Her hips began to bound in rhythm with his avid plunging. Oh, it was getting better and better! Glory! In just a few more strokes, she was going to pop.
Suddenly she realized the danger. If she was that excited, perhaps Drew was also. He certainly acted as if he was, drilling her for dear life already.
"No!" she cried and twisted deftly when he was on the upbeat, causing his penis to slip out.
"God dammit!" he exclaimed. "What'd you want to do that for?"
He tried frantically to get back in.
"Put on the rubber," she breathed. "Hurry."
"I don't want to," Drew told her. "Let's take a chance. Just this one time, huh, baby?" As he spoke in a persuasive tone, he was applying force, trying to hold her still so that he could slip back into her vagina.
"No ... no ... no!" she said and began to beat at him.
"Sonofabitch!" he snarled and sat back on his heels.
"Get it!" she demanded.
He did. He had to finish, one way or another. When he was ready, he lowered himself to her, found the very soft opening, and went home. But this wasn't as good. The fine edge of excitement was gone.
He began to hunch in earnest, she moving with him, and they finished without either of them emitting a vocal sound and without him varying the steady rhythm until near the end when he pounded her with a flurry of short, fast strokes.
He backed off, feeling somewhat less than completely satisfied. The release had been as good as he was used to, but now he knew it could be better. It could have been an explosion that would have hurtled him to the goddamned stars.
Rolanda lay quiescent, now that the storm had passed over her. She wasn't sure at that moment if she was disappointed or not. She didn't even know for certain what she had been trying to prove with Drew that evening.
They didn't remain in the country for another session. Neither of them seemed to want this. They got dressed right away, and there was not much conversation between them as Drew drove back to town.
They stopped at a roadside cafe for burgers and Cokes. Rolanda gradually became more talkative and, by the time they left the place, she seemed her old self.
He drove her home early, kissed her at the door, and went on to his own house.
When he walked into the living room, his father was there, a beer beside him, listening to baseball on his transistor radio. Joseph Michaelson was of average height, solidly built, with black hair that was thinning on top. He wore glasses, and he had a face that was pleasantly serious.
He cut the volume of the radio when he saw his son.
"Drew, I want to talk to you."
"Yeah, Dad?"
"You were out with Rolanda?"
"Sure." Drew wondered what was on his father's mind.
"Did she have anything ... oh, special to tell you?" The elder Michaelson obviously was choosing his words with care.
"No." Drew was more puzzled, and his darkly handsome face revealed this.
"I heard something today," his father said, "from a customer at the store-Fred Moody. He has a farm out towards Tipton. I don't know if you know him."
"What was it?"
"Sit down," Joe Michaelson said, gesturing toward a nearby chair. Drew sat.
"Fred told me what he did because he knew you and Rolanda were going together. He said he didn't want to meddle in anyone else's business, but he figured I had a right to know about this. You have a right to know, too."
"Dad ... for cripe's sake, what is it?"
The elder Michaelson took a deep breath, then plunged into the meat of the matter:
"He was driving into town last evening. When he was about three miles out, near the Aintree place, he stopped to pick up a girl who was standing by the road. She was pretty badly mussed up-covered with dust, her clothes torn, her hair out of place. She didn't recognize him, but he knew who she was. He'd noticed her at different times at the bank, when he'd stopped in to see Harvey Peters. It was Rolanda."
"Rollie?" Drew was shocked, then skeptical. "I don't believe it."
"He was sure it was her. She asked him to let her out just a block from the Peters house. She wouldn't tell him what had happened. She would hardly talk at all. But it was a lonely spot where he picked her up. Fred figured she must have been out there with a boy, and that the guy had left her there or else she'd run away from him. They must've had quite a time."
"Rolanda's going steady with me," Drew said defensively.
"I know. And I know you weren't with her last night."
"There's got to be a mistake about this."
"Fred was sure."
"Fred's full'a crap."
"Well ... " Joe Michaelson made a slight gesture with his hand. "I wanted to tell you. Maybe you'll know what to do about it. You're a big boy, Drew. You're almost a man. I guess you can handle something like this by yourself. So there won't be any more talk about it as far as I'm concerned."
Drew sat, half-stunned, and stared at his father as the elder Michaelson readjusted the volume of the baseball broadcast and picked up the glass of beer at his side.
Rolanda with another guy? Drew couldn't believe it. And yet she had acted awfully funny today, and there had been those bruises on her body-the scratch on her side and the scraped knee.
He would ask her. That was the only thing. They would have it out and he would see.
As he walked slowly to his room, he thought about the bridge guys who were camped down by the river. Had one of those bastards grabbed her? If that was what had happened, there was going to be hell to pay.
He would find out.
He thought about calling her there and then, but decided this was something that shouldn't be discussed over the phone. He would wait until tomorrow and try to catch her alone sometime at school. He would ask her point-blank.
The vision of Rolanda with another guy would not leave his mind. Even after he went to bed, he lay awake for quite awhile, seeing her that way-spread out on the ground, as she had been with him just a couple of hours before, only this time with another guy hulking over her. He saw them struggling. Then he saw the other guy getting what he, Drew, had gotten that night. He saw the other guy humping, with Rolanda spread beneath him.
Drew doubled a fist and slammed it against the mattress at his side.
Hell, by God, he was going to know! He was going to make her tell him everything that had happened, whether she wanted to or not. He was entitled. Wasn't he the guy she went with?
And if it was true that another guy had gotten to her, whether he was a bridge guy or who he was, Drew was going to get him. He'd pound the living crap right out of the bastard.
The strength of this resolution gave Drew sufficient mental ease to permit him to fall asleep. He dreamt about Rollie, and everything was confused. Her face kind of swam before him and he guessed, thinking back in the morning, that they had been making love. They seemed to have been naked.
He dressed, ate breakfast, and left the house that morning with a new sense of determination.
CHAPTER FIVE
After two days at the construction camp, Allen Sullender was ready to visit town. His gambling during the two preceding evenings had cost him a net loss of close to thirty bucks. He'd had enough of that for awhile.
He was under the shower late Friday afternoon with Joey Foss, who had taken a lot of kidding around the camp because of the cat scratches on his face when he'd returned from town Wednesday night. Try as they would to find out what had happened, the other men had learned nothing. Joey had remained as silent as a clam, and this was not like him.
As Allen worked up a lather on his chest, he yelled to the taller and huskier man, who was rubbing soap into a hairy armpit:
"You goin' to town tonight, Joe?"
"I guess," Foss shouted back over the roar of the three shower heads, all of which were going. There were half a dozen men bathing at that moment, and several others standing naked and waiting.
Allen grinned.
"You gonna go for another round with that Idaho tigress who put her marks on you?"
"Go to hell," Joey said in an even tone and turned the other way.
She must really have fought him off, Allen thought, or he wouldn't be so touchy about the subject.
"No offense, buddy," Allen yelled. "If you don't object to company, I'll tag along with you tonight. At least, until we can promote something. "
Joey faced him again.
"Okay with me," he said. "There ain't much action, though, I'll tell you that. Christ, I ain't seen such a dull town since I left Peach Blossom, Georgia."
"That's where you come from?"
"Yeah. Two hundred whites and three times that many Negroes. Man, did that place stink! I couldn't wait to get out."
"How old were you when you left?" Allen inquired as he soaped his legs and lower middle.
"Sixteen. I've been knockin' around the country ever since."
"I'm from Wisconsin. Town just outside Milwaukee. I left the week after I got out of high school."
"Hell, I couldn't stay around long enough to graduate," Joey said. "School gave me a pain in the ass. I wanted to be out and doin' things."
Allen finished rinsing and strode over to where he'd hung his towel. Another man moved into the spot he'd vacated under the water. Allen began to dry himself.
"There's not much of anything in those bars in town," Joey said as he moved up beside him. "Every man in this part of the world must either be married or live like a monk."
Allen grinned.
"I doubt if things are that bad. How about the young stuff you were crowing about the other day?"
"You don't see much of that, either. Their fathers are probably keepin' 'em locked up."
"Not tonight," Allen told him. "At the coffee joint down the road where I had lunch, there was a poster advertising a high school dance for today."
Joey looked interested.
"Yeah?"
"You're young enough to pass for a senior," Allen went on. "They might throw me out, but I think I'll take a chance and see."
Joey didn't say anything and went on with his toweling.
"Want to check it out?" Allen asked.
"Maybe." Joey still didn't look his way. "I think I'll try the bars first, though. If a man can't connect with anything there, at least he can get juiced enough to forget it."
"Suit yourself," Allen said and headed back to his bunk to get dressed.
By the time they were ready to leave, Joey had mellowed a little. He allowed as how he might go along to the high school dance. Allen thought his reluctance was peculiar in view of how eager he had been the other day to line up something young. As far as Allen was concerned, he didn't care particularly how young or old they were. It all depended on the girl herself. If she was the right sort, she could be seventeen or thirty.
Each man took his car so that they could have freedom of action later, if the situation required. They parked next to each other on a side street and headed in the direction of the high school, a couple of blocks away.
The town was more lively tonight than it had been a couple of evenings ago. On Fridays people drove in from the surrounding countryside, and the high school dance had brought most of the young crowd out.
As they strolled along Main Street, eyeballing the girls who passed, Joey became more enthusiastic about the evening's outlook.
"Man, check the tits on that one," he would whisper as he nudged Allen in the side. Or, "For a kid, she sure can swing it. Puts me in mind of the Negro girls we had down home."
The high school gymnasium, a separate curved-roof building beside and to the rear of the main two-story brick structure, was ablaze with lights. The doors were open, with kids milling in and out and gathered in knots near the door. There were two or three groups of girls in party dresses, stockings and heels, and an equal number of knots made up only of boys.
The groups laughed and talked among themselves as they ogled one another. Other, more secure teeners arrived in pairs, with no worries about who they were going to spend the evening with.
Allen noticed several guys who appeared to be about his own age, and there were men and women who were older. The latter were members of the high school teaching staff, he supposed.
The music either had not started yet, or else had quit for an intermission.
"Well, shall we?" he said to Joey as they approached the doors.
"Why not?" the other man replied.
He had decided to rely on the natural charm which had always seemed to be attached to his life to protect him from a disastrous confrontation with the slim, black-haired hellion he'd been out with the other night.
He and Allen sauntered into the gym.
Drew Michaelson was at home, trying to concentrate on an old movie which ground away on one of the Boise channels, though his true interest was with the crowd at the high school. His parents had driven to Lewiston for the evening, so he was alone in the house. He never had felt more lonely in his life.
That morning, when he'd taken Rolanda aside and questioned her about the story he'd gotten from his father, she had refused to say a thing. She hadn't denied that the story was true; she simply had refused to talk.
When he had become insistent, she had told him off. He couldn't recall the exactwords she had used, but they had been pretty final-something like, "You can forget the dance tonight and, while you're at it, forget that I'm your steady, too."
"Rollie ... you don't mean that," he had said.
She'd looked at him in a killing way, and snapped:
"The hell I don't! You're too young for me anyway, Drew. You're too much of a baby." And she had left him standing there with egg on his face.
He wondered if she was at the dance with someone else right now. He wouldn't have been surprised. His buddy, Carl Jennings, was there with Ellie Steward. Hell, all the kids were there. ll but him. He was home, looking at a lop-eared movie and wondering where he really stood with Rolanda, whether there was any chance of making up.
He had discovered, in the hours that had passed since he had talked with her that morning, that he thought a lot more of the girl than he used to tell himself he did. He had been the big man with the steady tail and no strings attached, emotional or otherwise. He could drop her any time he wanted to, he had assured himself, and if he were to do that she would be the one who would do the crying.
Now he saw things differently. He decided now that he really loved her, though she apparently didn't give a damn for him. Or else she had gotten herself mixed up in something that'd blotted everything else out of her mind.
The thought kept torturing Drew that it had been one of the strangers in town to work on the bridge job who had been with her the other night-an older guy-and, in spite of the fact that she'd evidently had a fight with him, he must've made some big points. Or else why would she have given Drew that crap about him being too young?
Those blasted bridge builders!
Drew began to think he'd better drift over to the high school and nose around. He wouldn't get dressed up, and he wouldn't go in. He sure as hell didn't feel like dancing after what had happened between Rolanda and him. But maybe he ought to go over and see if any of those strangers had made the scene. A guy had to keep in touch with what was happening in his home town.
He didn't have to consider the matter very long before he hopped to his feet, crossed to the television set, and snapped it off. He would wash up, comb his hair, and put on a fresh sport shirt. Then he'd head over to the school and just have a look. That would be all.
If the bridge boys were around, he would size them up. Then tomorrow he'd get together with Carl and some of the other guys.
Some joint action would be needed if those cocky bastards were starting to muscle in. The guys in River Glen would have to protect what was theirs.
And he would have to do what he could to win back Rolanda. This mattered more to him than anything right then.
CHAPTER SIX
Ellie Stewart, in pink organdy, was as appetizing as a piece of candy nestling in a cup of crinkly paper in the center of a imagine box.
Carl Jennings, though always nervous and uneasy at dances, was proud to be with her. There were more sought-after girls than Ellie at Central High, and girls who had more flash, but to Carl's mind there weren't any whowere prettier. He didn't know of any who had a more appealing body, either.
Bashful though he was, and a little slow for his years, Carl was interested in what the girls put into their snug sweaters and slim short skirts, and what he could see quivering beneath the top edges of their imagine dresses at the dance. In that department, Ellie was supreme. There wasn't another girl at Central who had such large, well-formed, and truly luscious tits.
Carl felt them pressing against him as he and Ellie danced the slow numbers, and the firm-cushiony thrust of her bosom nearly caused him to do some thrusting of his own. Sometimes he had to think, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one. This could louse up a guy's dancing, but numerals worked best. If he tried to visualize a calm lake or a peaceful pasture, he would end up seeing a huge pair of tits bobbing on the surface or standing like monuments in the grass. And that didn't help his trouble at all. It only served to give his pecker another upward nudge.
Carl had been wanting for some time to make a real man's play for Ellie-to bare her beauties some night when they were alone, and then to prove to himself that he had what it took to make her happy. But when he was with her, he was all thumbs and sweat on the forehead, and he had a tongue that was too dry and floppy to say what a guy had to say in order to get his girl in a giving mood.
He had kissed her, of course. A guy had to kiss his girl good night. If he didn't do that, she would think there was something wrong with him. But he could never bring himself to make a real bold play. He thought about it, thrilled to the touch of Ellie, then went home and had his fantasies in the darkness of his bedroom.
This did the trick from a physical standpoint, but there was a frustration which had been growing within him-a something which told him that he wasn't doing right, either by himself or by his girl. And there was a guilty feeling, too. His father had never told him that his habit was shameful. As far as Carl knew, his father wasn't even aware Carl did it. And Carl had read in a sex book, which another guy had loaned him, that there really wasn't anything harmful in masturbation. Still, he'd heard older fellows crack jokes, and he knew what he did was not considered manly.
But to really make a play for Ellie-to pet her the way he wanted to, to take off her clothes, and then to fit their bodies together in the way males and females were supposed to fit-he couldn't get up the nerve to make a move along that line.
Now as they danced and as he felt the charms of Ellie pressing pneumatically against him, he perspired a little, his heart beat faster, and his penis thickened and threatened to tense up, but he didn't say anything to her. He had thought beforehand that he might make a play for her that evening. But he had thought this many times and he had never followed through.
Allen and Joey watched the crowd and made periodic trips to the John where they took swallows from the half-pint flask of Early Times which the younger man had brought along.
They picked out some girls and had some dances. They hadn't started to make a play yet, or even arrived at a firm decision about which girls they wanted. There were a lot of cute ones, but most were well occupied with the boys who had brought them or with other fellows their own age. These guys gave Allen some sharp looks. He was not a member of their crowd or even of their age group-and it was plain to see that they regarded him with disfavor. One of the girls he danced with asked him if he was new in town, and he told her he was there to work on the bridge job.
If there were any boomers at the dance besides himself and Joey Foss, Allen didn't recognize them. But he didn't know most of the guys yet. There were a few fellows who looked old enough. Joey, at his age, didn't seem out of place.
It was midway through the evening, when Rolanda Peters showed up. Joey spotted her right away, and his first inclination was to cut out. He drew Allen away from the girl he was talking with and said:
"There ain't no action here, man. Anyway, my jug's about dry. Let's see what we can round up at a bar. This is Friday; maybe there'll be something doin'. "
Though Allen had drawn sharp looks from some of the boys at the dance, the looks he'd gotten from two or three of the girls had encouraged him. He wasn't ready to leave.
"Stick around," he said. "You give up too easy."
Just then Rolanda danced past them and looked directly at Joey over the shoulder of the boy she was with. Her eyes didn't register anger. They stayed with Joey's for a moment, and then she was gone. She had recognized him-Joey was sure of that-and yet she hadn't acted as if she was going to make any kind of fuss.
"Okay, man," he told Allen. "I'll hang in for awhile."
From that point on, the idea grew within him that he should pick up where he had left off the other night. That black-haired teaser really wanted him after all, Joey convinced himself. And he sure as hell wanted her. He wanted her in the worst way.
Rolanda had come to the dance alone. This was something she never had done before, but times were changing. She was changing. Her world didn't revolve around Drew Michaelson. There was no reason why she should stay home just because he wasn't escorting her.
When she first spotted Joey, there had been a quiver of response inside. Since then, their eyes had continued to meet. Every time she glanced his way, she would catch him watching her.
She was hoping that he would ask her to dance. With the Watusi or the Freddy, you could just get out there and go. But when the band played a slow number (there were lots of these, because the faculty insisted) a girl had to have a partner, and most high school boys were hesitant about approaching a girl whom they hadn't escorted.
She stayed close to Ellie, danced when she could, and chattered with her friend and Carl when they weren't out on the floor. Right away Carl had blurted:
"Where's Drew?"
This had drawn a light poke from Ellie who had heard about their falling out, from Rolanda. She hadn't heard just why Rollie and Drew had had their fuss-only that Drew was "so juvenile"-but Ellie knew better than to ask questions.
When Carl left to go to the boys' room, Ellie asked something else. She had noticed the way her friend had been glancing at the big fellow with the brown curly hair and the carefree grin. Ellie couldn't shake the notion that she had seen the boy somewhere, but she couldn't place him. He certainly didn't go to Central. So she asked:
"Who is he, anyway? Do you know?"
"He's one of the bridge builders," Rollie whispered. "Don't you remember? We saw him the other day on the street."
"Oh, sure." Ellie giggled. "He looks a little different with his chest covered." She hesitated, her eyes narrowing. "He looks just as good, though."
"There's nothing good about him," Rollie stated. "He's rough. Right now, I'll bet he's half drunk."
The conviction expressed by her friend didn't puncture Ellie's curiosity. She asked:
"Who's the guy with him-the older one? He's dancing with Carol Bigelow now."
"I don't know. Another bridge worker, I suppose."
"He's been looking at me."
"Sure. They're on the prowl, both of them."
Ellie whispered excitedly:
"What would you do if they were to come over here and try to get acquainted? Would you talk with them or freeze them out?"
"A girl can't get pregnant from talking."
"Rollie!" her friend breathed in shock.
"Oh, for heaven's sake, El. Don't be a goop."
Joey had been thinking about walking up to the dark-haired girl whose name he didn't know, in spite of the near-intimacy they had shared, but he still was a little afraid. He knew she had a strong teasing streak, and she might have been giving him a come-on with her eyes just so she could cut him dead. His bravado of the other night-his vow to get even for the way she had treated him-had faded as his drunk wore off.
After Allen had his dancing partner reclaimed by her fuzz-cheeked escort, he walked over to where Joey was standing and asked:
"Is there anything more in the bottle?"
"Not much," Joey told him. Then the younger man brightened. "Look! I'll cut out and get us another one if you'll do something for me. See those chicks over there-the light-haired one with the tits, and the black-headed thin one beside her?"
"Yeah," Allen said. He had noticed the blonde a long time ago.
"Go over and get acquainted, huh?"
Allen looked at him.
"You got a broken leg or something?"
"Come on, Al. That black-headed chick ... I had kind of a run-in with her the other night."
Allen grinned.
"So she's the one."
"Yeah. I don't want to just bust right over there. You know."
"As long as it's the black-haired one you're interested in, okay."
"You'll do it, then?"
He clapped his friend on the shoulder and said:
"Go get the booze."
A rasp of drumming and a twang of guitars from the bandstand proclaimed the commencement of a Watusi number as Allen approached the girls. Ellie brightened when she saw he was headed toward them. Rolanda just looked.
Allen grinned at the blonde-haired girl, who looked even better now that he saw her close up.
"Hi," he said. "You want to?"
"All right," she smiled.
He walked with her to the floor and momentarily they were shaking and twisting with the rest of the crowd. This is the one, Allen thought, as he watched her swinging hair and the way her flesh jiggled tautly at the top of her dress. She had hips, too, this wild little baby!
Carl Jennings returned to the edge of the dance floor, looked for Ellie, and saw Rolanda standing by herself. He walked over.
"Where's El?" he wanted to know.
"You took too long in the little boys' room," Rolanda said. "Somebody grabbed her."
"Yeah? Who?"
"I don't know. Some fellow about twice your age. I think he's with the bridge crew that's in town."
"I'll be darned."
Rolanda turned away, her gaze searching the crowd for Joey. He seemed to have left.
Carl didn't ask Rolanda to dance. He stood on first one foot, then the other, until the number finally came to an end. Ellie, smiling and a little flushed, showed up with a solid, sandy-haired man who looked to be in his twenties. Carl had noticed him before. What the heck was a guy his age doing at a high school dance?
"This is Allen," she said, then completed the introduction with, "This is Rollie and that's Carl."
"Hi," Carl said in an obviously grudging tone.
Allen stuck out his hand. "Glad to meet you."
"Allen works for the company that's building the bridge," Ellie announced. "He was telling me about it. It's going to be tremendous."
"I've seen pictures in the paper," Rolanda said, as if the subject were old stuff even though the bridge construction had yet to get underway.
"How about some refreshments?" Allen asked. "Seven-Up ... Coke ... ? "
"Sounds fine," Ellie replied. "Seven-Up for me."
"The same," Rolanda said. "Carl?"
"Aw, I don't care for anything."
"Come on. Let's make it Seven-Ups all around. Stay right here." Allen grinned and turned to make his way to the refreshment stand.
His timing was flawless, though he hadn't planned it that way. Joey appeared just as he was getting the paper cups of Seven-Up from the boy behind the counter.
"How're you doin'? " Joey wanted to know.
"Not bad. That blonde-haired doll's all right. The other one acts a little sour."
"That's her way. I'd sure as hell like to get to her, though."
"You mean you didn't, the other night?"
"Hell no, man. She fought like a wildcat."
Allen grinned and said to the counter boy:
"Another one, huh?"
"Let's sweeten ours," Joey said and patted his side pocket.
"Watch out no one sees you," Allen warned. "Leave it to old dad."
There was a large potted plant which had been placed near the end of the snack bar to furnish one of the few decorative touches in the gym. Joey stepped behind that and removed the bottle from his pocket.
"Pass them over," he said.
Allen passed one paper cup, then another, nervous that someone might see what was going on. But there was another wild rocking tune being played, and most of the kids were dancing. The few teachers who were there must have been dancing, too, or else they had stepped outside to protect their eardrums.
After Allen had received the second spiked Seven-Up, Joey said:
"The others, too."
"I don't think we'd better," Allen told him.
"Crap!" Joey said. "Hand 'em over. A little booze is just what these young ones need to loosen 'em up."
"What if they catch on?" Allen asked.
"They won't. Girls like that probably never tasted it before. They won't know what they're drinking."
Allen passed him the third paper cup and the fourth.
"There's a young guy with them," Allen said. "Let's leave his alone."
"Suits me," Joey replied as he slipped the bottle back into his pocket.
They carried the drinks to where the girls and Carl were waiting. Allen introduced his friend and watched Rolanda's eyes as she spoke to Joey. She acted as if she never had seen him before.
They began to sip the Seven-Ups. Joey had gone heavy on the hootch in Allen's. He hoped Joe hadn't spiked the girls' drinks that much.
They chatted about nothing. What was said back and forth with the eyes was more important, though it was a little difficult to figure out if Ellie's starry gaze indicated a willingness to follow through. After all, she was just a kid.
Allen had never let himself be scared by the eighteen-year dividing line. He had humped them younger than that when he was younger, and he couldn't see that it made any real difference that he had passed the line himself.
Ellie was just about through with her drink, when she remarked:
"They're making the Seven-Up different."
Allen glanced at her wiser girl friend and thought he detected a flicker of amusement.
He asked Ellie:
"How about it?" The music had just started again.
"Sure," she said with a bright smile. She looked very pretty when her face lit up that way.
Joey asked Rolanda, and she moved with him to the dance floor. This left Carl Jennings alone. How do you like that? he thought. Those lousy hijackers! Drew had been right. He had been afraid something like this was going to happen, and he had hit it right on the bean.
Carl turned and stalked to the side of the room, near the refreshment stand.
"Hey, Carl!"
He turned to see Ted Okrand, behind the counter, beckoning him over. Carl complied.
"You know those two jokers?" Ted nodded in the direction of the dance floor.
"They're bridge guys. That's all I know."
"Yeah, well they spiked the drinks they took over to the girls."
"You see 'em do it?"
"Hell, yes. That big one dumped a whole lot of whiskey into each cup."
"Geez ... I didn't taste it."
"They probably didn't put any in yours, you dink. They're after Ellie and Rolanda."
"How the heck did they get in here, anyway?"
"The doors are open," Ted said. He moved away to serve a couple who had stepped up.
Carl decided he would have to do something. But what? Too bad Drew wasn't there. He would know what to do.
Then Carl got the idea of calling his friend. Maybe he could get Drew down there before something happened.
There was a public telephone booth at the corner of the gymnasium, outside. He decided to use that. He made his way past a group of teachers who were standing just inside the door, and stepped into the cool air. It felt good. The gym had gotten pretty steamy. He'd been sweating up a storm.
He walked up to the phone booth and stopped to fish a dime out of his pocket. He was about to open the door, when the blinking of some auto headlights caught his eye. He stood still and squinted. The lights blinked again. They were on a car in the street, in front of the school, but it was too dark to make out the shape of it.
Carl took a couple of steps in that direction, since the blinking had appeared to be a signal. Then he stopped, deciding that the signal couldn't have been for him.
The lights flashed on and off again.
Carl looked around him. Maybe the signal was for him, after all. Whoever was in the car was trying to attract somebody's attention, and nobody else seemed to be looking that way. Carl started to walk again.
Inside the gym, the rocking number had ended and the band was swinging into an old-fashioned fox trot. Allen gathered Ellie Stewart against him and moved off across the floor. Jesus, but she felt good! The girl was really built. Allen was pleasantly high from the succession of drinks he had taken, and in that frame of mind the idea of a quick conquest seemed mighty appealing. Anyway, he had gone without for several days, and he was beginning to feel a strong need. He'd gotten pretty used to the steady stuff he'd had in Seattle.
But she hadn't been anything like the fresh young bundle of sweetness he held in his arms now. This one was choice. He wondered if she was a virgin.
Ellie felt as if she were floating. Her dancing partner's arms were so strong, and he led so confidently. He was nothing at all like Carl. He smelled of shaving lotion, too.
It was exciting to be with a grown-up man this way. The only men who had ever put their arms around her had been her father and her uncles, and that certainly hadn't been the same.
The sense of floating was not entirely a mental phenomenon. Physically she felt different, too. It was a feeling she couldn't quite classify or explain, because she never had felt just like this before. But it was good. She liked it. And she gave all the credit to the man who held her in his arms.
On another part of the floor, Joey held the slim, vibrant form of Rolanda Peters close to him and whispered against her ear:
"Still mad at me?"
"Don't you think I should be?" she asked back.
"I guess. I shouldn't have acted the way I did. I'd had a little too much juice." She didn't say anything. "Am I forgiven?"
"All right," she said, as if someone had asked her for the loan of a pencil.
Actually her emotions were beginning to run riot, much as they had done the other evening. There was this difference, thought: the good stiff jolt of whiskey which Joey had popped into her drink. That had added to her excitement.
"You're really a nervy guy," Rolanda said, "putting liquor in our drinks the way you did."
He leaned back to look her in the face. Her dark eyes had a slight twinkle.
He pulled her close again and chuckled:
"You liked it, didn't you?"
"I'm not saying I didn't. But it was a nervy thing to do."
"Your girl friend didn't get wise."
"I don't think she's had a drink before."
"You have, huh?"
"A few times."
"I'll bet you've had other things she hasn't, too."
"That sounded kindof nasty," she said, stiffening.
He patted her back in a slight gesture.
"I didn't mean anything. Would you like another drink?"
She was silent as he maneuvered her into a turn. Finally she said:
"I wouldn't mind."
"That's the girl."
Joey was becoming more pleased every moment with the prospects for the evening. He was going to score tonight. He could feel it.
"You think your friend will go for another?" Joey asked. He was a little afraid the big-fitted blonde would turn out to be a drag if he didn't get her pretty well juiced, too.
"Why not, if she doesn't know what she's getting?" Rolanda said.
"You won't tell her?"
"I'm not her keeper."
Yeah, boy! There was going to be action tonight!
Carl recognized Drew Michaelson's jalopy as he drew closer to the headlights that had flashed at him.
"Hey, what're you doing here?" he asked as he moved around to the side.
"Never mind. Can you talk a minute."
"Sure."
"Get in." Carl did.
"Any of those bridge bastards at the dance?" Drew asked.
"Are there! A couple of them moved in on El and Rolanda. I was coming out to call you just now. I can't handle those guys by myself."
"Sonofabitch," Drew said.
"What are you going to do about it, Drew?" Carl wanted to know.
"I don't know. I've got to think."
"They're big. Man, I mean, they're rough-looking customers. I'd hate to tangle with them, I'll tell you that."
"Will you knock it off for a minute? I've got to figure out something."
"Sure, Drew."
"Any other guys at the bash havingthe same trouble?"
"Not that I noticed, but there are some other guys there I don't know. They look as if they might be bridge builders, too."
"We've got to get the guys together," Drew said. "But that'll take a little time. Right now, you'd better get back in there. You don't want those bastards to try anything imagine with our chicks."
"I don't know what I can do," Carl complained.
"You can at least hang in, you dink! Don't let them get the girls alone."
"Okay, Drew. I can do that."
"I'll stay out here. In case they talk the girls into going some place for burgers or something like that, make sure all of you leave by the front way. I'll follow their car. I suppose they have one."
"What are you going to do?"
"Keep my eye on them. That's the main thing. That's what you ought to be doing right now."
"Okay, Drew." Carl opened the door of the car.
"You know the guys' names?"
"First names only."
"What are they?" Carl told him.
"Okay. Now get back inside."
"Sure." Carl got out of the car and headed quickly toward the front door of the gym. But he was too late.
Joey Foss had decided, after getting such a solid reaction from Rolanda, that he and Allen would be wasting their time to feed the girls more drinks in the high school gym. He had suggested, as soon as the dance number had ended and the two couples had gotten together, that they go some place where they could get a sandwich with their Seven-Ups.
"I don't know if I'd better," Ellie had said, but her eyes had made clear that she wanted to.
Rolanda had brushed aside her friend's expression of doubt.
" It's all right," the black-haired girl had told her. "Long as we' re all together, what can happen? Huh, Joey?" She had given him a glance that was brimming with mischief.
Joey had taken a quick look around the room for the kid who had been with Ellie, and at that moment he had spotted Carl's shock of unruly brown hair approaching through the cluster of people who stood just inside the front door.
"This way's closer," he had said, grasping Rolanda by the arm and steering her in the direction of the side door. Allen had brought Ellie along.
No one had mentioned Carl.
In Joey's pale-yellow Pontiac-he and Rolanda in front, and the other couple sharing the back seat-they were well on their way to the edge of town before Ellie remarked meekly: "We shouldn't have treated Carl like that."
"He'll get over it," Allen told her. He was sitting close, his gaze sliding over the soft cream-white domes that nestled just below the edge of Ellie's pink organdy dress.
"Just the same, it wasn't very nice," Ellie said.
This observation was for the sake of providing solace, however slight, for her troubled conscience. Actually she was glad to be rid of Carl. The older boy she was with was so much more exciting.
Nothing really would happen, of course. As Rollie had said, so long as all of them were together they were safe.
Maybe Allen would kiss her. She hoped he would. She hoped, also, that she might be able to see him again. He was several years older than she, but wasn't that exactly what she liked about him? Anyway, how could it be so wrong?
She knew that her parents wouldn't understand, but parents never did. Anyway, they didn't have to know everything. She was growing up. She was a woman in every physical sense. In many parts of the world, she would have been married and had babies by now. So she was entitled to do a few things on her own, so long as she was careful. And she would be careful tonight.
Oh, she felt so good!
CHAPTER SEVEN
They had burgers and French fries served in the car at Del's Drive-In on the far edge of town. Along with the food came tall Seven-Ups, and Joey poured what was left of the half-pint of hundred-proof whiskey into the girls' glasses.
"Gawd!" Rolanda exclaimed when she saw the size of the jolts. But she didn't protest, and she didn't hesitate in taking her glass when it was passed to her.
Ellie, in the back seat with Allen, didn't know what was going on.
They munched their burgers and fries, sipped their drinks, then flashed for the car hop, who doubled at the counter inside the cafe. Allen paid, since Joey had furnished the liquor.
By the time Joey backed the car around and turned into the roadway once more, both girls were feeling the effects of the double shot of booze, which built on the single shots they'd had at the dance. Rolanda knew the feeling and enjoyed it, though she never had had so much liquor within such a short space of time. Ellie didn't know what the feeling was, but she felt better than ever before in her life.
"Where're we going?" she asked light-heartedly as Joey gunned his car along the open road.
"Oh, I don't know," he said. "Where do you want to go? What do you say, Al?"
"There must be a good parking spot around here some place," Allen replied.
Joey shot a glance at Rolanda to see what her reaction would be. When he had tried to park with her the other evening, there had been disaster. Now she was looking straight ahead, her profile lean and pretty against the clear light-studded darkness outside the car, and Joey thought he detected the suggestion of a smile.
"What do you say, honey?" He clapped Rolanda lightly on the knee. "Can you give us some directions?"
"El?" she called without turning her head. "You want to park or not?"
"Gee ... " Ellie was thinking about the kiss she hoped to get from Allen. "I don't care, Rollie. S'all right with me, Iguess." The slight slurring of her speech was followed by a giggle, and she swayed against Allen's thick shoulder.
He laughed and slid an arm around her, drawing her closer than she had been. Her warm soft thigh came against him.
"There's your answer, honey," Joey said to Rolanda. "Now tell me which way to go."
"About a mile further there's a cross-road. It's dirt. Take that to the left, and after awhile there's a clump of trees. Nobody ever uses that road at night."
"'Cept you and your boy friend, looks like," Joey said with a laugh.
"I don't have a boy friend ... any more," Rolanda replied.
"No bull? How about you, Ellie? The guy at the dance-that Carl-is he your steady?"
"Yes," Ellie said in a tone that was almost apologetic.
"Seems like too much of a kid for you," Joey said. "Don't you think so, Al?"
"I thought he was a nice guy," Allen replied.
"He is," Ellie remarked seriously, turning her face a little toward Allen's. "He'd be awful mad if he knew where I was now."
"So would some girls I used to know," Allen said. "But, as long as we're not married or engaged, nobody has any strings on us, do they?" He leaned a little closer to her lips.
Ellie's lips were remarkably appealing. Tinted the color of fresh young strawberries, they were softly full and dewy-moist. Allen wanted to capture them and part them with his tongue. But he didn't want to move too fast. Young naive chicks like this could be frightened easily.
"There!" Rolanda suddenly proclaimed, pointing toward a dirt road which intersected the highway.
Joey braked the Pontiac, made a left turn, and the car bounced on the uneven hard-packed surface. He cut their speed. The car's headlight beams wavered over the open grassland at the sides of the road.
A couple of minutes later, they were parked in the shelter of some willows just off the narrow trail. Even if another car was to pass, they wouldn't be noticed there, and they certainly couldn't be seen from the main road which was half-a-mile away.
"You sure knew a good spot," said Joey to Rolanda, as he pulled the keys from the car's ignition and shoved them into his pants. "Slide over, huh?" He moved against her, urging her as far toward the opposite end of the seat as possible, so that he could get out from under the steering wheel.
Rolanda complied. She had been very quiet. Though the liquor was working on her brain, along with the natural excitement she felt over being where she was with this big handsome fellow, she hadn't shown any effects.
In the back seat, Ellie's giddy euphoria had increased. She giggled as Allen snuggled them into a more intimate position which had her wedged into a V formed by the seat-back and the side of the car.
"How about another shot, you guys?" Joey said as he reached to open the car's glove compartment where he had a fresh pint bottle stashed.
"I'll go," Allen told him.
The girls didn't say anything. Ellie was wondering what Joey meant.
He opened the flask and passed it to Rolanda. She lifted it gingerly, got her throat burned by the strong liquor, and coughed as she tilted the bottle down. Joey took his jolt-a long one. He passed the bottle over the seat to Allen.
"What's that?" Ellie inquired.
"Something that's good for you," he said, handing the bottle to her. "Tilt it and take a good swallow, fast."
She looked at the bottle.
"It's whiskey!"
"Sure." Allen chuckled. "The best, too."
"Oh, I can't drink that."
"You did a little while ago."
"When?"
"At the dance and at the drive-in. We put some in the Seven-Ups."
"You didn't!"
Allen chuckled again.
"Sure. Take a little more. It'll make you feel even better."
"Rollie?"
"For heaven's sake, take a drink," Rolanda told her. "You're old enough to find out what it's like."
"Well ... "
"The trick," Allen said, "is to swallow before the strength of the stuff gets to you. It'll burn for a little while, but that'll go away."
"All right ... "
Ellie took another look at the bottle, then lifted it. She gave it a tilt and drank quickly, trying to follow instructions as best she could. She put down a long swallow before her throat started to close and she snapped the bottle upright. She bent forward, coughing into her hand, as Allen took the flask from her. He let a good two ounces of the whiskey slide down his throat, then handed the bottle back to Joey who capped it and returned it to the car's glove compartment.
"Okay, now?" Allen asked solicitously, his lips close to Ellie's face. "I ... I guess so."
"Hey, you guys want to hear a good story?" Joey inquired raucously.
Allen was wary. This wasn't the right approach with a kid like Ellie.
"As long as it's really good," Allen said.
"Oh, this one is. "Joey began to laugh to himself. "There were these guys, see, who were waiting for a bus. Well, this cat-a four-legged cat-came along and one of the guys turned to the other and said, 'Do you like pussy cats?' The guy beside him said, 'Sure do, but my name ain't Katz, it's Cohen'. " Joey guffawed.
Rolanda laughed a little.
Ellie said:
"I don't get it."
Allen eased her against the back of the seat.
"Don't worry about it, honey." He began taking a bead on her moist, parted lips.
"Mmmmmm," Ellie purred. "My head feels so light. Is that what whiskey does to you?"
Allen grinned.
"Pretty good, huh?"
"Mmmmmm ... "
He brushed his lips lightly against hers. "Ohhh ... Allen!"
One of her arms came up around the back of his neck, and his lips found the target, full-on. He moved his mouth to settle it just as he wanted, then spread Ellie's lips apart by opening his own. Her warm moist cave of passion was open to him and he entered with his tongue, sliding between the firm edges of her teeth and as far past them as he could reach.
"Unh," Ellie said in her throat as she gripped him more tightly.
He felt her tongue begin to rub and slide around his own.
In the front seat, Joey and Rolanda were exchanging impassioned kisses as she lay backward in a completely submissive way. There no longer was any question in her mind about what she was going to do. The abortive experience of the other night, plus her fight with Drew, plus the alcohol she had consumed this evening, all added up to an impending "Yes." She felt
Joey's hand sliding along her leg, and the symphony of sensual excitement began to strike up.
In the swirl of Ellie Stewart's consciousness, the thrust and thrashing of Allen's tongue within her mouth was like the flash of lightning in the middle of a storm. The storm was washing over her, buffeting her, carrying her away-to where, she didn't know.
When he released her, she let her head lie back against his arm at the top of the car seat. He moved his other hand, the right one, along her front.
"Oh, no-o-o ... " she murmured as his extended fingers slid across the top of her left breast, then farther, working between the breast and the confining fabric of her bra cup.
She raised a hand half-heartedly, as if to stop him, but she didn't go that far. She seemed immobilized, caught up as she was in an excitement which, combined with the liquor, had washed away all thoughts of right-and-wrong and all the instructions she ever had received.
She felt Allen's warm breath strike her cheek as his fingers worked their way along an area of her flesh which no boy ever had touched before. Increased warmth spread through her body, settling at her loins and turning them to molten lava. She twisted involuntarily against the seat of the car, and this motion of her body gave Allen exactly the advantage he needed in order to make added progress into the left cup of her bra. His fingertips felt the corrugated flesh of her aureole, then touched her nipple itself. It was standing, full and hard.
This contact sent a jolt through Ellie-a pleasurable jolt, far stronger and more intimate than any she had felt before. She let out a little cry. Allen quickly withdrew his hand, because he couldn't accomplish anything else in that direction unless he wanted to tear her clothes. He ran his arm around her and pulled her to him for a kiss that was even more passionate than their first one.
This time Ellie participated as fully as he did. She wasn't thinking about what was happening or what was going to happen next. She couldn't think at all. She didn't want to. She wanted only to feel and thrill and ride the glorious tide of pleasure which was sweeping her along.
Joey proceeded more quickly with Rolanda. He had her skirt pushed above her stocking tops, and her bra unhooked and hanging limp in front of his working hand, by the time Allen was only running his fingertips along the tops of Ellie's hose. The kissing of Joey and Rolanda had become more an exercise of tongue and lip sucking than kissing in the politely accepted sense.
In the back seat, Ellie made wild little sounds as Allen's caressing of her legs caused her knees to fall farther apart. Involuntarily she scootched forward. His fingertips worked along, over velvet skin that grew warmer.
His hand was up between her legs now, nearly as high as it could go. He extended a finger and touched the sleek crotch of her panties. This was like a charge of electricity striking at Ellie's soul. He caressed the nylon up and down.
Suddenly a single word came through the warm rosy swirl of Ellie's mind and registered over and over: No ... no ... no . ...
She twisted her hips, pulling back on the seat, and clamped her thighs closed on Allen's hand.
She began to push at his arms and shoulders.
"Baby, what's the matter?" he whispered.
"We can't. It's not right. We're going too far."
Allen chuckled.
"We're just fooling around a little. There's nothing wrong with that. Don't tell me you never did that with your boy friend."
All they could see in front of them was the back of Joey's head as he bent over Rolanda who had scootched very low at the corner of the seat. Then her hand came into view, caressing his head and continuing along his back and out of sight.
"There's a simple solution for that," Allen said with smooth assurance.' 'We' ll take it off."
"I couldn't!" she exclaimed in panic.
"Sure, you can," Allen told her with a grin. "It's easy."
He drew her forward and his fingers fumbled at the back of her neck.
"Don't do that!" She pushed ineffectually at his arms while he made progress with the snaps, then with the zipper. He began to work the pink organdy away from her shoulders.
"Allen! No-o-o!"
Joey's voice, half-muffled and half-dreamy, came from the front seat:
"Havin' troubles back there?"
"Let's let the girls step outside and take their dresses off," Allen suggested. "They're going to get all mussed up this way."
What he had in mind was that if Ellie had a few moments with Rolanda alone, it would do some good. The black-haired girl was ready to go all the way. There hadn't been a murmur of protest from the front seat.
"I don't want to take my dress off!" Ellie protested, but her tone revealed more confusion than anything else.
Joey sat up and Rolanda's head appeared, her hair disarrayed.
"It's a good idea," she said. "Come, El."
"But I don't ... "
"Oh, shut up and get out."
Stunned, Ellie sat open-mouthed for a moment. Allen reached across her and opened the car door. She stepped outside, holding the top of her dress in place.
Rolanda held her dress and limp bra in front of her as she got out at her side. The girls met at the back of the car.
"We'll only let them go so far," Rolanda whispered.
"How far?" Ellie wanted to know. She reached to steady herself against the car. The world seemed to be tipping.
"Just petting. That's all. All the kids do it. Just because that clunk you've been going with never got up the nerve ... "
"Carl's not a clunk," Ellie maintained as stoutly as she could.
Rolanda dropped the front of her dress forward and slipped her loose bra down her arms.
"You let him do that?" Ellie murmured, shocked.
"So?" She brought her dress upward in a flurry of pale blue. It came over her head, leaving her in a short straight slip. "Hurry up," she told Ellie.
"Ohhh ... Rolanda ... "
" Will you quit sniveling? It's going to be fun."
Ellie stared down at her dress, then slowly slid the tab of her zipper the rest of the way along her back. She lifted her dress up and over her head. Her half-slip was stiff and bouffant. She didn't want that to get all crushed out of shape, either. Feeling that she was doing wrong, but not having the strength to stand up against the boys and Rolanda as well (to say nothing of her own physical desire), she stretched the slip elastic and let it down. Bracing herself against the back of the car, she stepped free.
"I'd better do that, too," Rolanda said and shucked her straight slip away.
In white panties, garter belt, stockings and high heels, Rolanda picked her way through the weeds as she walked back to the right-hand front door of the car.
Ellie-her pants and bra a matching pale-pink, her garter belt white, her hose a sheer nude tone-returned to her side of the car. Her heart beat wildly as Allen opened the door for her and she slid quickly in, crossing her arms in front of her half-exposed chest.
Looking at her that way, her young curves so breathtaking, her cheeks flushed from sexual excitement and alcohol, Allen was seized with the kind of brute desire which could not be denied.
As Rolanda nestled down beside the eager Joey, she felt and watched his big hand move back and forth across her exposed bosom. He finally grasped and squeezed a tender breast, sending a hot burst of passion all the way through her.
She knew full well what was going to happen. She was going to let this big man have her just the way he wanted, without protection if he didn't have any along. She had studied her cycle and had concluded that she was safe. Anyway, even if she wasn't, lots of girls took chances and few girls got themselves knocked up.
This was going to be her night for the full experience. Then she would have a little better idea of where she stood in life and what the future held. Everyone should know those things about themselves, she believed. And how else could a person learn the answers unless they tried what life had to offer?
This, at least, was Rolanda's rationalization. And it worked remarkably well.
Drew Michaelson pulled his jalopy to the side of the street after driving the length of town a couple of times and catching no glimpse of the girls or the bridge men who were with them. He cursed dismally to Carl.
"I still think we ought to call their homes," Carl said, "and see if they've showed up there."
"You dink! That'd tip their folks that something's wrong. All we need is for the parents to get messed up in this thing, then there'd be a stink you could smell all the way to Lewiston. It'd ruin Rollie and El, too. Did you happen to think of that?"
"Yeah," Carl said, staring in front of him. "I guess it would."
"If you'd kept your eye on them at the dance, the way you should have, this wouldn't have happened."
"Yeah, and if you'd been there in the first place, with Rollie, it wouldn't have happened, either."
"Okay. Okay." Drew ran his hand nervously over his uncombed black hair.
"What do you think they're doing?" Carl asked slowly, as if he was reluctant to talk about it but felt he had to.
"How the hell should I know? But I know good and well what those bridge bastards are after."
"I guess so," Carl unhappily agreed.
There was silence in the car for a moment. Another car, loaded with kids going home from the dance, passed them on the street and somebody yelled their way. Neither Drew nor Carl paid any attention.
"You think the girls will give in?" Carl asked in a barely audible tone.
Drew knew the answer to that one, at least as far as Rolanda was concerned. She had given in to him, hadn't she? And she probably had given in to a bridge guy the other night, even though she had put up a little resistance to make it look good. The guy was probably the same one who was with her now-that Joey whatever-his-last-name-was.
"What do you think, Drew?" Carl Jennings persisted.
Drew turned to him.
"You know what I think, man?" he said in a harsh and bitter tone. "I think ... yeah! That's what I think. I think the minute those bridge guys start fingerin' their titties and get to feel-in' up between their legs, our chicks are gonna open like two halves of a peach."
"Gosh, Drew!"
"Yeah." Drew laughed bitterly. "Too bad you held off so long with Ellie. Now you're gonna lose that first big thrill."
"Well, how about you and Rolanda? You're just as bad off as I am."
"Like hell!" Drew exclaimed, letting down the bars. "I've had Rolanda fifty times."
This was an exaggeration, but he had laid her enough times to make the statement true in substance.
"No kidding?" Carl was surprised, and otherwise impressed.
"Hell, yes. That's why I'm so sure she'll give in to somebody else. Once a guy's gotten to them, they've got nothing to save."
"But, Ellie ... she's a virgin, I'm sure."
"Ellie's along, though. How's she gonna hold off when Rollie's giving it to the guy who's with her?"
"You think they're all four together?"
"Sure. That's the way those guys operate. They may even work a trade before the night's over."
"Hell."
"Yeah." Drew laughed bitterly again. "See what you got us into?"
"Jeez, Drew, I didn't know. I mean, how did I know our chicks would sneak off with them?" He was silent for a moment. "It must have been the booze those guys slipped into their drinks."
"What?"
Carl looked at his friend.
"Yeah. Ted Okrand, at the pop bar, told me. He saw one of the guys pour whiskey into the girls' cups of Seven-Up."
"Sonofabitch," Drew said slowly, with great feeling.
At that moment, a firm resolution took shape in Drew's mind: He would get those bastards if it was the last thing he did. He would get them and get them good. There would be a rumble the-likes of which River Glen had never seen, and when it was over the goddamned bridge might never get built at all.
CHAPTER EIGHT
"Oh, noooo ... don't dooo that," Ellie whimpered in deep passion, her sweet breath mingling with Allen's as his middle finger lifted a leg elastic of her panties.
But she didn't fight him. She didn't even jam her legs closed to keep his hand from moving.
She hadn't fought him when he'd taken off her bra, baring as fine a pair of breasts as Allen had ever seen or felt. They had all the size and round plumpness that a man could ask for, but still they were firm and stood right out. There was nothing like the fresh young ones for that.
He had twiddled her pink nipples to full erection. They were firm and tall, with neat ridged rings around them. When Allen had bent his head and gone at them with his lips and tongue, Ellie had nearly gone wild.
Now he was working on the final phase of the make-out, teasing her between the legs until she would let him take her pants off. Pantsless, a girl was without defenses.
Joey and Rolanda had left the car. Her bare buttocks had twinkled as she and Joey had disappeared between the trees. Fuzzy as Ellie's mental processes were, she knew what was going to happen off there in the weeds. Rolanda had said she and Ellie would let the boys only pet them and nothing more, but now Rolanda was going all the way. Though Ellie was afraid and dimly aware that what was going to happen was wrong, she could feel her own defenses crumbling-what meager defenses she had managed to erect.
Joey had passed the bottle around once more before he had begun the final phase with Rolanda, and Ellie now was quite drunk. Allen, who had taken a good deal more, had reached about the same level of intoxication, relatively speaking.
As he caressed Ellie intimately, he watched her face portray the effects which his skillful finger was producing. When the moment was exactly right, he slipped both hands to the top of her pink panties and whisked them down and out from under her rump. He pulled them along her legs. He bent quickly to lift her feet, one at a time, and to take off her shoes and pants. She wore nothing now but a garter belt and stockings, and these garments wouldn't stop a man. As far as Allen was concerned, she could keep them on.
He held her nylon-sheathed legs with one hand on each of them and bent to nibble her smooth warm flesh above a stocking top. She moaned. He skipped up to the navel which barely peeped above her garter belt, riding a small roll of baby fat. He dipped his tongue-tip there. He brought his mouth back to her nipples again-first to one large bud and then to the other. She petted the back of his head.
He raised his face so that he could look her in the eyes. He said:
"Let's get out."
"Oh, Allen, it's not right. We ... "
He nipped her loose lips with quick kisses as his fingers rhythmically contracted on a warm, round, pliant breast. Its rigid nipple pricked his palm.
"I'll have a baby," she gasped, pulling her mouth away.
"No, you won't." He dug into his pocket and came up with a small metal box which looked like the kind of pocket pack aspirins come in. He showed her.
In her condition, she couldn't make out the lettering on the box top. Even if she had, she wouldn't have known what the word "prophylactic" meant.
"I'll use one of these," Allen said. "It'll be safe. Nothing can happen."
"I'm ... I mean, I've never ... "
"I know," he whispered, petting her. "I'll be gentle."
But he didn't feel gentle in the least. It was all he could do to hold himself back. The feel of Ellie's breasts-their nipples in his hands and at his lips-had made Allen wild with desire. The exploration of the grassy pasture between her legs had produced an even stronger effect. For many minutes he had maintained a throbbing erection which now literally ached with need.
"Come on, honey," he whispered, and reached past her to open the car door.
Under the urging of his hands, Ellie stepped outside. Her round, white, outthrust breasts quivered, and her stockings gleamed in the moonlight. She half-turned away from the car, and Allen gazed at her buttocks as he climbed out. They were plump and firm and close-set, topping thighs which were pleasingly full and smooth.
Everything about this girl was delectable. She was, Allen now realized, the choicest he'd ever had.
He tore at his clothes as they stood there. The situation was awkward, but Allen wasn't the sort who could just pull a zipper and take a girl like that. Anyway, he was wearing good clothes.
His tie came off, then his jacket. He quickly opened the buttons down the front of his shirt.
Ellie turned and watched him in a kind of daze. She knew what was happening, and she knew she shouldn't let it happen, but she was in no condition to call a halt. She didn't really want to, not the way she felt now.
Shirtless, Allen stepped out of his trousers. After removing the packet of rubbers from his pocket, he tossed the pants through the open rear window of the car to join his other clothes. He stretched the top of his shorts and hauled them down, hopping ridiculously from one foot to the other as he brought them over his shoes and socks. These he left on.
The sight of his massive-appearing penis, standing thick and rigid, touched Ellie with sudden terror which managed to get through the haze in her brain and give her the strength to resist. She had never before seen the male member, erect or otherwise, and she hadn't expected anything so large. It would hurt her terribly, she feared.
She gasped, then turned as if to run away. Allen lunged after her, grasped her, and turned her around. Her body bumped the side of his rigid organ and she recoiled, looking down.
"It'll be all right," Allen said, exerting every bit of control he possessed in order to keep from jumping her then and there.
"But you're so big!"
"So is every man. And every woman takes it."
"How?" Ellie demanded in her innocence.
"Your body changes. If a baby can come out, this can get in."
"Oh, God ... " Ellie murmured.
He urged her down to the grass. He adjusted her legs, running his hands along the inner sides of them, on and off her sleek nylons. He kneeled in front of her and opened the box of rubbers.
Ellie was staring at his penis.
"No!" she cried. "I can't! Oh, God, no!"
He dropped the metal box, spilling the three rubbers in the grass, and fell forward on top of the girl.
"I'll just rub it around the outside," he said. "You'll like that, and it can't hurt you."
"Well ... " She was breathing hard. She was nearly as excited as he was.
Rub it around he did, rotating his hips slowly. The sensation was maddening to both of them. Finally he began to move up and back across her clitoris. She gasped and whimpered and clutched him around the body.
She's ready, he assured himself. He decided to start her this way, then put on the sheath.
Leaning on his opposite elbow, he used a hand to rub the head of his penis round and round on the lips of her vulva. Gradually he positioned himself until he was exactly right. With a firm thrust, he went in, making Ellie cry out as he destroyed her maidenhead. He didn't try to go all the way at first.
She was crying and twisting and turning her head from side to side in the grass, but she wasn't trying to push him away. Her suffering was as much in desire, it seemed, as in physical discomfort.
Actually the hurt was over. It had been sharp but brief. Now she felt his fullness. Ashe made slight motions back and forth, she felt more and more of him. And she could feel her own body accommodating its guest. She knew a sense of voluptuousness such as she'd never experienced-voluptuousness and hunger for more. She had to have more of him.
Without consciously instructing her body to do so, she surged to him as he thrust. She could hear herself crying in her joy.
He had just a little bit further to go. He rotated and drew back, then thrust himself as far as he could. Now he possessed her to the hilt. There was a wild, sweet beating in his brain as he began to hunch.
He remembered the rubber and stopped just in time to put it on.
Ellie whimpered, waiting impatiently. Then he was with her again, and they strove to completion together.
They had just separated and were lying side by side, clasped in each other's arms, when there was a rustling in the bushes next to them. Ellie turned her head. Her eyes, still smoky with passion, widened at the sight of Joey Foss standing there. He was pantsless, and his flaccid penis hung from the front of his shorts.
He looked very different from Allen a little while ago. Not only was his member soft, but it was covered with skin. Ellie made a startled sound and turned anxiously to Allen.
Allen sat up.
Joey Foss's eyes had been licking over Ellie's nudity. Now she had an arm hugging her breasts and her legs were clamped together. But he already had seen virtually everything.
"Hey, man, let's swing, what do you say?" He grinned blearily at Allen. "Change off. You know."
"Nothing doing," Allen told him. "Get dressed. We've got to get the girls home."
"Home? Are you nuts? We can make a night of it. Say, that Rollie's a free-wheelin'. . . "
"Shut up!" Allen snapped. "Get your goddamned pants on."
Joey's mouth fell open.
"Hurry up!" Allen insisted.
"But I don't want to go back yet," Joey whined.
"I don't give a crap what you want," Allen told him. "We're going back. Now get away from here so Ellie can put on her clothes."
"Listen, buddy ... "
Allen sprang to his feet.
"I mean it."
"Okay ... okay. Jesus Christ, man, you don't have to get teed off."
Joey turned and lurched back to where Rolanda and the rest of his clothes were. Naked, Allen gave his hand to Ellie and lifted her from the ground.
"Ohhh, darling ... " she murmured and leaned against him, her arms snaking around his hard torso. She felt the press of his thick but non-erect penis as they embraced, and Allen enjoyed the thrust of her resilient breasts, which were like air pillows.
He held her very close and, just before their lips merged, he heard her impassioned whisper:
"I love you."
Drew Michaelson had been angry enough, and determined enough, to do something right away about the bridge-builders named Allen and Joey. Their first names were all he knew about them, outside of the flimsy descriptions which Carl Jennings had provided.
He had thought of what could be done. Since the guys would have to bring Rolanda and Ellie home, he and a bunch of his friends could hang around near the girls' homes and jump the bastards when they were about to get back in their car. Drew and his friends could teach them a lesson they wouldn't forget and which might mean something to the other guys on the bridge crew, as well.
The trouble was that all of Drew's friends, except for Carl, were either home in bed or making out with the girls they had taken to the dance. Drew couldn't round them up at that hour. And he wasn't about to jump a couple of husky construction men, who were older and stronger than himself, with only Carl Jennings to help.
As for Carl, he didn't look as if he had much stomach for a fight, anyway.
So Drew dropped Carl off and went home. His parents hadn't gotten in yet, and the house was dark. He let himself in, went up to his room, undressed, and crawled into bed.
He lay on his back in the darkness and "watched" Rolanda's slim white body writhing on the ground as a husky, broad-backed guy hunched over her. Drew doubled his fists and cursed.
Gradually he became aroused. After he had solved this problem, he was more relaxed. Sleep took him.
In the morning, he left the house right after breakfast and drove to Rolanda's place. Her mother informed him that Rolanda wasn't up yet. He wasn't invited to wait in the house, so he went back to his car.
He drove to a gas station, since he needed gas anyway, fooled around there for awhile, then returned to Rolanda's home. He parked in front and remained behind the wheel.
After a few minutes, Rolanda came out. She was wearing pink Bermudas and a sleeveless blouse in a flowery design. She walked straight, unsmiling, and didn't look directly at Drew as she approached the car.
He felt a sympathetic lurch at the sight of her, but this was followed quickly by a twinge of anger. She had cut him yesterday and had taken up with another guy-a guy who not only wasn't part of their crowd but didn't even live in town. He was a ass who moved from place to place. And she had behaved this way after all she and Drew had meant to one another. Girls!
"What are you doing here?" she demanded.
Unsmiling, Drew replied:
"Get in. I want to talk to you."
"I don't want to talk. I don't have anything to say. The only reason I came out was to ask you to move along. You look ridiculous sitting there."
"Dammit, Rollie!"
"Don't swear at me."
"I suppose your new boy doesn't use those kind'a words. I suppose he's a perfect gentleman."
"You're being childish," she sniffed. He leaned closer.
"Where'd they take you and Ellie last night."
"Who are you talking about."
"You know. Those bastards, Allen and Joey." Her head tilted upward. "That's none of your affair, I'm sure."
"They took you out and laid you, didn't they? And Ellie lost her cherry."
"You're vulgar."
"I'm vulgar? Me?"
"Will you kindly keep your voice down?" she snapped.
"Okay. Okay. So get in the blasted car."
"No, Drew."
"You won't even go for a drive with me any more?"
"I don't want to."
"Then tell me what happened, right now."
"Why should I? Anyone would think you were my big brother or something. How square can you get!"
"Okay. So I'll go and see Ellie. I'll bet I can get some answers out of her."
"Don't you dare!" Rolanda leaned forward, her hand on the car's window ledge. "Ellie's upset as it is."
"I bet! But I have a right to know what happened. Those guys are outsiders and ... "
She cut in to say:
"Oh, don't be so provincial."
"What the hell does that mean?"
"Look it up." She turned as if to go, then faced him once more. "And don't go bugging Ellie. I'm going to call her right now and tell her not to answer any questions. She'll do what I say."
"Rollie ... goddamn it!"
"Run along, Drew. See if you can get up a baseball game or something."
He sat and stared, anger boiling inside him, as she marched back to the door of her house. The silly damned fool, he thought. She doesn't know what she's doing. An older guy has played up to her and made her feel like Queen Elizabeth; now she can't see me at all. Well, we'll find out who comes out ahead!
He started his car and roared away from the curb, rubber screaming. There was no point in calling on Ellie. Rolanda most likely would call the other girl as she had threatened, and Ellie usually did what Rolanda told her. Anyway, Rolanda hadn't denied that the bridge-builders had laid her and Ellie last night, and she would have denied it if it weren't true. So Drew had his answer.
He would start right now to get in touch with the guys who belonged to his crowd. They would figure out something and get themselves organized. Then, when the time was right, those bridge bastards would think they had run smack into a tornado.
CHAPTER NINE
Allen spent that morning lounging in the bunk-house. He read for awhile and listened to an Eastern baseball game which one of the other men had turned on. He thought, most of the time, about Ellie Stewart. And he decided that he didn't dare see her again.
Joey Foss had disappeared early. He hadn't told anyone where he was going, least of all Allen. He and Allen had been scarcely on speaking terms when the two of them had returned last night to the place where Allen's car was parked.
The fact that Joey had wanted to get at Ellie wasn't so much the cause of their trouble. If Ellie had been just an ordinary girl, Allen would probably have been happy to switch partners and go for another romp. He would most likely have helped Joey talk the girls into it, as he had helped talk and feel them into putting out to begin with.
But Ellie meant more to Allen than just a quick lay. He had been aware of this feeling almost from the first and, before they had finished making love on the grass, the feeling was strongly confirmed.
Allen had never felt this way about a girl before. Not just this way. He knew what the feeling was. Ellie was the kind of girl a man had most to fear. She was the kind of girl a man could marry.
That was why he had reached the decision never to see her again.
Now Ellie's face kept appearing in his consciousness, wearing the lovely radiant smile she had, or the look of passionate intensity she had assumed when he was inside her. He saw her body, too. Of all the girls and women he ever had seen in the nude, there wasn't a one of them who could compare with her.
Her breasts, her backside, her legs, her middle-she was sweet perfection all over, creamy perfection that could make a guy lose his head and do something foolish.
Allen even felt a little sorry now that he had taken her cherry. He was sorry in one way, yet in another he wouldn't have missed the experience for anything.
Staying away from her was going to be difficult.
He wondered what she was thinking right then. Was she sorry for what had happened? Was she waiting for him to call?
Ellie Stewart had awakened early, in spite of the fact that it had been late when she finally had fallen asleep. She had taken a long time bathing, with her baby sister hammering on the door and yelling at her to get out.
Finally her mother had come and threatened to unlock the bathroom from the outside and invade her privacy if she didn't relinquish that vital portion of the house.
Half-wet, she had slipped into her robe and had taken refuge in her own bedroom. She had finished her drying there, and had examined herself at some length in front of the mirror before she began to put her clothes on.
She looked the same, she concluded.
This fact was surprising, considering that she didn't feel anything like the way she had felt twenty-four hours ago. Going by her feelings alone, she could have been a different person.
Responsible for the difference was a boy she hadn't known-had never even seen-at this time yesterday. But he wasn't a boy. She couldn't think of him in that way. He was a man-a wonderful man who could have stepped out of a movie or a television play. He was like no one she ever had met before. And he had treated her as no one else ever had.
That was why she was in love with him.
That she was truly in love, Ellie Stewart had not the slightest doubt. She'd never been in love before, and she didn't know anything about the sensation other than what she had learned from writers of movies, TV dramas, songs and the few books she'd read. Still, she was sure this was love. It had to be. Feeling as she did, it couldn't be anything else.
Her thoughts were full of Allen and the two of them together. She relived what they had done as nearly as she could remember. Outside of a difficulty in recalling precise details, and a peculiar sense of physical dullness in the midst of joy, Ellie experienced no after-effects from her drinking the night before.
She remembered that Allen had taken a precaution, and this eliminated the greatest potential worry. She felt no regret over her loss of virginity. If it had happened in a different way with anyone else-even Carl-she might have regretted it, but there was no regret with Allen. She was filled with gratitude for the fact that she had met him, and for the great new happiness he had given her.
She laughed to herself when she thought of how she had worried and fussed just before he had taken her. He had seemed so huge and almost vicious. But once the initial penetration had been made, once he was really inside her, there wasn't any hurt. There was pure pleasure, and the pleasure had gotten better and better, until she had thought she wouldn't be able to stand it. Then something within her had given way, and the sensation at that moment was like nothing she ever had felt or imagined.
She was certain that her love for Allen was not merely physical, though. He was gentle and sweet and all the other things she had dreamed her lover would be. He knew about life and the world. He was strong. A girl could lean on him and follow his lead, because he would always know what to do.
Would he call her today?
After breakfast she had gone back to her room, had played some records, and had tidied up a bit. Now she was lying on her back on the bed wondering what he would say when he called, when she would see him, where he would take her, and what they would do.
She knew one thing for certain that they would do, and that was make love.
She wanted to make love with him until she was exhausted.
She wanted to hold him to her breasts and let him lick and suck them.
She wanted to feel his lips on her legs.
She wanted to feel the full, fierce power of him. Everything they had done, every time he had touched her, had given her such sweet pleasure that she wanted to repeat all of it, over and over again.
And she wanted to lie beside Allen somewhere and be still, just the two of them alone in all creation.
She glanced at her clock, as she already had done many times that morning. He would call her today, she felt certain. He liked her very much. Perhaps he was not in love, but he certainly must have felt something for her. If he had not, he wouldn't have protected her from his friend Joey, the way he had. He had been ready to fight to keep Joey from taking her.
She shuddered at the thought of submitting to anyone else-even Carl, now. She wanted only Allen. Now and always. And as she thought this, she marveled at how swiftly love had come and how firmly it had taken hold of her. But she couldn't doubt that it was real and that it would last. She knew. When a person knew, there was no room for doubt, no reason for asking questions.
Joey Foss was at a bar, his big hand wrapped around a cold, sweating glass of beer. This was his second. The first one, already working, had eased the dull headache which had nagged him all morning. Now the world seemed better. His natural optimism was coming back.
Whereas previously he had been staring at the back-bar display without seeing it, and feeling mean without forming any rational thoughts, now his thinking apparatus was beginning to perk. And sunshine was threatening to break through the haze.
He started reviewing, as best he could remember, what had happened the previous night. He thought about Rolanda ... and Allen ... and Ellie. He thought about Ellie the most of all.
That chick had the prettiest damn titties he'd ever seen.
And the titties weren't all, either. She had everything a man could want. That Al Sullender was lucky as hell to have gotten into her last night. Joey would have gone after her himself, instead of Rolanda, except for the fact that he had started with the slim, dark-haired girl before, and she was unfinished business.
But that business was finished now. Rolanda had been a pretty good lay, but not good enough to make him come back for more unless he was hard up.
That big-titted blonde Ellie was the one he wanted now. He would beat Al Sullender's time with her and have her all to himself. She'd be his steady piece for as long as he was in River Glen. Then he'd give her back to the kid she'd gone to the dance with ... or somebody.
The kid would owe him something, Joey thought with a smile. By the time he was through with Ellie, she would be a real hip chick. Too hip for the-likes of that hayseed, if he didn't shape up. She most probably would take off for the city, once Joey dropped her.
He finished his second beer and stood.
Joey was not the sort to cogitate over an idea. If it sounded good, he acted on it right away, provided he could do so. This one he could act on. All he had to do was walk to the telephone at the rear of the bar.
There were three Stewarts listed in the local phone book, but only one of them had a street address in town. The others were on rural routes. He placed his call to the Stewart on Maple Street and immediately recognized the voice that answered. It was Ellie.
"Hi, there!" he sang with a big grin. "How ya doin'? "
"Wh-who is this?"
He laughed.
"Say, don't tell me I didn't make any more of an impression on you than that. Man, that don't do much for a guy's ego. Y'know?"
Ellie hesitated, then asked:
"Joey?"
"Sure. What you got set for today, honey."
"Well, nothing. Not yet. I mean...."
"Al ain't called you, huh?" Her disappointment was plain when she admitted: "No."
"Probably won't, either," Joey said in a matter-of-fact tone. "What do you mean?"
"Oh ... you know. He's an older guy and ... well, when a guy gets to that age, he's mostly just interested in racking up scores."
"Scores?"
"Sure. A new girl is a challenge to him until he's had her, and then he goes on to someone else."
Ellie felt a strangeness closing on her throat. "Did he tell you that?"
"Not in so many words, but ... well, guys get to know one another."
"I see."
Suddenly she felt desolate.
"Now, me-I'm different. When I meet a girl who really means somethin' to me, I don't drop her after one date. No, sir."
"What about Rolanda?" Ellie asked. "Didn't she ... mean anything?"
"Oh, she was all right. But she ain't exactly my type. If you wanta know it, honey, I had my eye on you right from the start. I didn't want to crowd old Al, 'cause he saw you first."
Anger rose suddenly within Ellie and she snapped:
"So now that he had me, you figure it's your turn, hm?"
"Honey! No. It ain't like that at all. I told you-I fell for you right at the beginning."
"Well, I don't feel that way. I'm sorry."
There was silence for a few moments, then Joey said:
"You're hung up on Allen, ain't you?"
"I didn't say that. Last night I didn't have a very clear idea of how I felt or what I was doing, after all those drinks."
"That's all the more reason why you should go out with me today. We can get acquainted. I'm really not such a bad guy, Ellie. We can have fun together."
"I don't think so," she said. "I don't want to go out with anybody. I ... I don't feel so good."
"Oh. I'm sorry."
"Goodbye," Ellie said.
"I'll call you some other time," Joey returned quickly. "When you're feelin' better, huh?"
He heard her release a half-choked sob, and the telephone clicked in his ear without another word being said.
Joey muttered an obscenity and swung the receiver onto the hook, hard. He ambled back to the bar. She had fallen for Sullender, all right. That was what was the matter with her. That lucky sonofabitch! It was going to take longer to break her down than Joey had thought. But he would do it. Joey Foss didn't give up when he was on the trail of something that good.
Ellie lay face-downward on her bed for quite awhile, sobbing. Then finally she sat up, dried her eyes, and picked up the phone. She called her girl friend's number.
Rolanda's mother answered, and Ellie waited while Rolanda was called to the phone.
"Hi, Rollie, it's me," she said.
"Hi. Hear anything?"
"Yes. That's why I called. Joey just phoned me."
"Joey?"
"What sort of a person do you think Allen is? Tell me, Rollie. You know more about people than I do."
Rolanda was more interested in something else:
"Why did Joey call you?"
Ellie suddenly realized that she probably shouldn't have told her friend about the call. But, after what Joey had said, she simply had to talk with someone.
"El?" Rolanda prodded. "Why did he call you?"
"He ... asked me for a date." Rolanda was silent. "I told him no."
Rolanda still didn't say anything.
"He said some things about Allen ... "
"Like what?" There was a new note in Rolanda's voice.
"Oh, that he didn't really care for girls except to make out. You know. That he only went out with a girl until he got what he wanted."
"Sure. I think they're a pair of bums, both of them."
"Not Allen. I can't believe that about Allen." Her voice was about to break.
"Well, you believe what you want. But I'll tell you they're both tramps, and the less we have to do with them, the better."
Ellie hesitated, then asked:
"Has Joey called you?"
"No. And he hadn't better, either."
"I wish Allen would call. If he'd call me, I'd go out with him in a minute."
"Yeah, and you'd get yourself rolled on the grass again. Big kick that is!"
"It was a kick, Rol. It really was. I know I shouldn't say this, but I thought last night was wonderful!"
Rolanda changed the subject:
"Did Drew call you since I told you he might?"
"No. I haven't heard from him ... or Carl, either "
"Well, I'll see you."
"Okay, Rollie. 'Bye."
Rolanda did not hang up the telephone. She depressed the switch-button with her finger and leaned to look through the living room archway. Her mother wasn't near enough to overhear, and the rest of the family was out.
She released the phone button and placed a call.
"Drew," she purred coquettishly when he was on the line, "I was mean this morning. I shouldn't have talked to you the way I did."
Drew all but fell over. He started to stammer something, but Rollie choked him off:
"Ellie and I acted like dopes last night, I guess. But, you know, those guys put whiskey in our drinks. We wouldn't ever have gone with them otherwise."
"Gosh, Rollie, I ... "
"I'd like to see you, Drew. I really would. You want to stop by and pick me up."
"Sure, Rollie. Gee!"
Having her talk this way to him, after the way she had been a little while ago, was like the sun breaking through at the height of a storm.
"I think something ought to be done about those bridge-builders. They're finks."
"That's for sure!"
"One of them called Ellie a little while ago. He wants another date. She stalled him, but he'll be calling again."
"The lousy rat," Drew snarled.
"If you, and maybe some of the other boys, want to do something about those 'outsiders', as you called them, maybe I can help. I can keep you posted and ... well, let's talk about it. Come right over, huh?"
"As soon as I can get there, honey."
After she had hung up the phone, Rolanda smiled to herself. She would teach that Joey Foss that he couldn't treat her like some floozie. Rolling her around in the leaves was bad enough, but ignoring her afterwards and trying to date her girl friend-that was too much.
He wasn't a very good lover, anyway. He was too quick and not as attentive as Drew. She had trained Drew pretty well, she reflected with satisfaction.
Last night, with Joey, she almost hadn't made it when she felt him making it. If she hadn't happened to be at a safe time of the month, he would have given her a baby, too. And he didn't care about that.
He was a ass, all right. She should never have gotten mixed up with him. But now maybe she could make up for that ... if she could get Drew to help her.
And Drew would.
Drew would do anything she asked.
CHAPTER TEN
Allen was alone in the bunkhouse late that afternoon when Joey ambled in. As for the other men, those who hadn't left that morning or the night before for a big weekend in Boise or Lewiston had gone to River Glen.
Allen looked up from his book and grinned. He didn't want to keep the unpleasantness going between Joey and himself, if for no other reason than that it wasn't safe to work on the high steel with a man who hated your guts.
He'd heard about a feuding pair on the Mackinac Bridge several years ago. One of them had fallen from the catwalk at the north tower, and the only man near him at the time had been his bitter enemy. There hadn't been an accusation, since no one had seen what happened, but to this day none of the men who'd worked that job were sure that the dead man hadn't been pushed.
Allen said:
"I didn't figure to see you around here at this hour. I thought you'd probably line yourself up a week-end shack job."
"Hell," said Joey and dropped to the edge of his bunk.
It was plain that he'd been drinking.
"How about Rolanda? Isn't she good for a follow-up?"
"Once was enough with her," Joey replied and swung his legs onto the bunk to stretch out. After remaining silent for a moment, he said, "Chrissake, Al, that wasn't very nice of you to hog that cute blonde the way you did."
"She's just a kid," Allen said. "Last night was her first time. I didn't want to make it rough for her."
"Hell, it don't hurt 'em to take on two guys. Down home we used to do that way all the time."
Allen didn't say anything and there was silence in the bunkhouse for awhile. Joey broke in with:
"How do you feel about that big-tits, Al? I mean, really-man to man."
"Ellie."
"Yeah."
"I told you. She's a good kid. Sweet. I don't want to see her get hurt."
"You gonna date her again?"
"I don't know. Probably not. She's pretty young for me."
Joey sat up.
"Well, hell, man, if you don't want her for yourself, why'd you set up such a fuss last night?"
"I told you. She's just a kid." Joey sat and stared at him for a few moments. He said:
"You got no objections if I move in now, I suppose-long as you don't want her any more."
"Dammit, Joe, why don't you screw around with somebody a little wiser? Ellie's not the sort."
"With a pair'a bongoes like she's got?" Joey laughed derisively. "Man, she's made for it, if I ever seen one!"
Allen's tone hardened:
"Yeah? Well, leave her alone."
"You tellin' me I can't make a play for her?"
"I'm asking you not to."
Joey laughed again, more bitterly this time.
"I ain't never seen the like. I swear, I ain't. You don't want her, but you don't want anybody else to have her, either. What the hell you think you are, her damned old man or somethin'? "
"I told you how I feel."
"You just want'a protect her, huh?"
"That's about it."
"Well, I got a word for you, buddy." He hesitated for emphasis and then said, "Balls!"
The two men glared at one another in silence, after which Allen flopped onto his back again and picked up his book. He was boiling, but there seemed nothing else he could say.
Joey had a point in his favor-Allen had to admit this to himself. A guy really had no right to keep other studs away from a girl unless he was claiming her as his own.
Allen didn't want to do that with Ellie.
She wasn't just a summertime's fun and then glad-to-have-met-you. He'd treated lots of them that way. That had been his style. But he couldn't treat Ellie like that. And the hell of it was that he couldn't stand by and let another guy treat her like that, either.
But it looked as if he would have to.
He clamped his jaws hard together and tried to concentrate on the little black words in front of him.
Joey was on his feet now, stomping back and forth. Tension charged the warm room where the daylight was growing dim.
Allen put down his book and watched the younger man. He searched his mind for something appropriate to say, something that would, if possible, protect Ellie, yet wouldn't make him out to be unreasonable.
There was a thing called compassion. Even a wild young stud with a stiff jock ought to be able to appreciate that. What if Ellie Stewart were his sister?
"Look," Allen said. Joey kept walking, his expression ugly. "She needs a break, that's all I'm saying. She's too trusting for her own good. I shouldn't have treated her the way I did last night. I feel bad about it now. She deserves to get engaged to some local boy, get married, and have babies. That was what she was cut out for, not screwing around with every drifter that comes along. Some girls-most girls, in fact-deserve to get pronged and it doesn't hurt them. But Ellie's different. She's really different, Joe."
The younger man turned on him.
"Yeah! So, she's different. You know what's different about her? You're in love with her, that's what. But you don't want to get hooked, so you ain't gonna see her any more. Well, you can't have it both ways, daddy. Far as I'm concerned, I got a clear field, whether you like it or not."
Allen jumped to his feet.
"Goddamn it, leave her alone! You've had your warning."
They were eyeball-to-eyeball for several seconds before Joey turned away with a laugh.
"Hell," he said and flopped onto his bunk.
Allen believed he had won a point, in spite of the other man's derisive attitude. He remembered last night and how Joey had backed down. The Georgia boy, for all his big talk ... and big size, too ... didn't have much spine.
Allen lay on his bunk and picked up the book he'd been reading. There was no more conversation for some time, and when the silence was finally broken, a new subject was taken up. Allen was relieved.
But the understanding he seemed to have reached with Joey didn't solve the conflict in his own mind. He never had felt like this before, and the wonder of the new experience was almost overwhelming. He couldn't give in to it. Ellie was sweet and good, sure. She had a terrific body, and she was passionate with a man. Loving her last night had been the greatest thrill he'd ever had.
But even the best and most desirable girl represented a chain around the neck of any man who fell for her.
It would mean giving up everything that had ever mattered to him-his freedom, his entire way of life with all the kicks. That was too much to lose, even for the-likes of Ellie.
So he couldn't see her again.
But he wasn't going to let a sonofabitch like Joey Foss ruin her, either.
Even as he resolved these matters, somewhere in the back of his mind there was a small voice that told him: She's the one. She's the only one. You aren't going to be young forever. You pass her up, and you'll spend your later years looking for a substitute that you'll never find.
Allen didn't believe this. Funny, then, that he couldn't quiet the voice.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
After church the next morning, Wesley Safford unlocked the glass-paneled door at the front of the small building on Main Street which housed the town's weekly newspaper. It was called the "River Glen Guardian," and Safford was its editor, publisher, and owner, en toto.
He didn't usually come to the office on Sundays. But this was not a usual Sunday. Things had happened in River Glen late the preceding night-things that Safford had heard about from Police Chief Clarence Bone, who had gotten him out of bed at a little after seven o'clock that morning.
Bone himself had been roused by his night officer at one-thirty, and he had promptly roused the other two men on the force.
Luckily the four of them had managed to restore order at the Idahoan Tavern.
Now, with the town's small jail packed to the walls, and with most of River Glen buzzing over what had happened, Chief Bone and Editor Safford had an appointment to discuss what should be done. They, along with Mayor Robertson, were the leading members of the community's power structure. Bone and Safford were the movers, with Robertson usually going along.
Safford, a short man with bushy gray hair, glasses, and a pot belly, adjusted the dusty Venetian blinds at the front of the office to deflect the brilliance of the mid-morning sun. He passed between the littered desks in the outer office, entered his small partitioned sanctum, and turned on the air conditioner at the window.
The top of his desk was heaped with loose sheets of copy, ad layouts, proofs, and page mock-ups for next Wednesday's edition. Standing in front of his chair, he began shifting papers, putting the desk in some semblance of order.
In the midst of this, he heard the front door open.
"That you, Clarence?" he called. "Yeah, Wes."
Safford sat down and began filling his pipe from the humidor at the far corner of his desk.
Police Chief Bone came into view in the doorway. He was a tall man with black hair, weathered face, prominent nose, and a stern expression which was the product of twenty years spent behind a badge. He wore a tan uniform, open at the throat, and no cap.
"Sit down," Safford said, motioning at the visitors' chairs across the desk from him.
Bone sat.
Safford lit his pipe, took two or three puffs, and settled back.
"Now, what the hell you think we ought to do about this thing, Clarence,-build us a great big issue or play it down?"
Bone scowled and leaned forward.
"This is the first week end for that bridge crew in town, Wes. The goddamn construction hasn't even started yet, and already they're raisin' hell. I think we ought to roast the company."
"The company isn't to blame because a few guys got boisterous."
"That's a matter of opinion. The company brought 'em here and turned 'em loose on us. The way I see it, the company's got an obligation to keep 'em in line."
"How many you got in jail?"
"Eleven."
"Holy Pete." Safford chuckled. "That's more'n that jail of yours has ever held before."
"That's about all it'll hold, too. Otherwise, I've have booked several more. They practically broke up The Idahoan. You been down there to have a look?"
Safford shook his head and let a curl of smoke rise from his pipe.
"I've got Dick Chesney coming over in a little while. He'll write the story and take some pictures."
"Well, it's one hell of a mess, I'll tell you. Couple of people were hurt, too. And Rosie damn near had her dress torn off right in front of everybody."
"If I know Rosie, she probably caused it. You know the way she kids with the guys when she serves 'em."
"Rosie's all right. There just ain't enough action in a town like this for those boomers. They were spoilin' for trouble, and after they'd had a few belts, troubles just naturally broke out."
"We want the damn bridge, Clarence. If we want the bridge, we've damn well got to have men to build it. Anyway, they're going to be spending their pay checks aground here. Hal, at The Idahoan, probably turned a pretty penny last night. Far as the damage goes, insurance will cover that, won't it? Vandalism and malicious mischief?"
"I suppose," Chief Bone admitted. "But that don't excuse what happened. The people are gonna be up in arms, Wes. Either we take the lead in seein' something's done, or they'll make it hot for us."
Safford took the pipe from his mouth, swallowed, and squinted.
"You know Hank Griggs' number in Boise?"
Bone nodded toward the telephone.
"You can get it easy enough."
"His home phone may not be listed."
"Then call out to the bridge site. There ought to be somebody there who can tell you."
Safford took a thoughtful puff on his pipe and removed it again.
"I think we ought to call Griggs, set up a meeting here, and play that up in the next issue of the paper. I'll emphasize what the company's going to do to see that this kind of trouble doesn't happen again. Then, if trouble does break out again, we'll start a full-fledged campaign."
Bone made a face which indicated acquiescence.
"Far as the charges against the men are concerned, I wouldn't go too rough on 'em, Clarence."
"That's not exactly up to me. Hal's hoppin' mad. And Rosie claims she's gonna file charges against the guy who tried to strip her. While she was fightin' with him, one of her tits popped out."
"That must've given some of the old customers a kick," Safford said. "Maybe it'll teach Rosie to wear a brassiere."
Bone permitted himself a slight smile.
"If she did that, Hal'd lose half his business right off."
"Sure. That's just what I was saying. She's a tease, and that's probably what started the trouble."
"The preacher have anything to say about what happened?"
"Not yet. You got to give old Elton some time. He writes his sermons two weeks in advance."
"Well, plenty of people are havin' a lot to say in their homes, you can be sure of that. And I'll bet the phone lines are humming. If we don't get some action started, our friends are gonna be on our backs."
"Okay," Safford grunted and reached for his phone. "I'll see what I can do. Sit tight here. Maybe Griggs will want to talk to you about his men."
Joey Foss left the construction camp before word was passed that the men were to stay around. Everyone knew about the brawl at The Idahoan, and they expected to get a chewing out. But no one was trembling. The men who had been at the tavern the night before were recounting their individual versions of what had happened, with abundant reference to the impromptu tit show put on by the buxom waitress name Rosie.
They chortled over the plight of the men who were jailed and the fact that they-the free ones-had lucked out.
Joey hadn't been interested in hearing about the fun. He had fun of his own in mind and it was going to be better than kidding and ogling an exhibitionist bar girl, to say nothing of just sitting around and hearing about it.
As far as Rosie was concerned, he had watched her flopping around braless in a low-cut dress the afternoon before. Each time she had put down a glass of beer, she'd all but dunked her bosom in it.
Rosie was a beast compared to Ellie Stewart. Her tits weren't half as shapely as Ellie's. And Ellie was the girl he was going after today.
He made his call from a telephone pay station outside of town.
Ellie was at home.
"Hi," he said cheerfully. "This is Joey. Now before you bang up that phone in my ear, let me explain. I had a talk with Al."
"Y-you did?" Ellie was immediately intent.
"Can you talk?"
"Yes. I'm in my room."
"Well, look-I told him kind of how you feel. I mean, I said I called you for a date and you turned me down but asked about him. I guess I was wrong about him, Ellie. He-likes you a lot. But he's a little worried."
"What about?"
"Your age, and his age, and what people might think."
"That's silly. A few years don't make that much difference."
"That's what I told him. And when he realized you would like to see him again ... well, I got a date set up for you two."
Ellie hesitated.
"Why didn't Allen call me himself?"
"That was my fault, I guess. I offered to make the arrangements. I wanted to set things right between us. I figure I was kind of out of line yesterday in what I said."
"That's okay," Ellie replied, immensely relieved now. Her mental outlook had changed as from night to day.
"I hear tell there's an island in the middle of a lake a little ways north of here. Y'ever been there?"
"Sure. All the kids go. It's Lake Chandler."
"That's right. Well, look ... Al's gonna meet you there."
"He's not picking me up?"
"I'll tell you, honey. like I said, he's worried about what people will say, 'specially after that big fuss some of the guys had in town last night. You heard about that, I suppose."
"Yes. It was terrible."
"Sure was. So Al figured it would be less embarrasin' for you if he was to meet you at the island. Then you two could have a long talk and sort of figure things out. He wants to be sure you know what you're doin' before you start goin' steady with him ... I mean, so all your friends know about it."
"It sounds sort of funny," Ellie said. "Like Miles Standish and John Alden." She started to laugh, then stopped. It really wasn't anything to laugh at.
"I know it probably does," Joey admitted. "But at least this'll give you two a chance to get together. You want to meet him, don't you?"
"Well, sure."
"Okay, then. Now, I don't think I'd better pick you up, either, 'cause even though I'm younger, everybody knows I'm not a local guy."
"Well, how am I going to get to Lake Chandler? That's over twenty miles."
"Sure, sure. I know. I can meet you somewhere in town. You name the place. I'll drive you from there."
"Why doesn't Allen drive me?" Joey hesitated.
"He could, I guess. If you'd rather."
"Well, there's no reason for you to go all the way up there, unless we're going to have a double date."
She was about to suggest that he call Rolanda, but she remembered what the other girl had said. She had called Joey and Allen a pair of bums, and she had seemed pretty firm about not going out with them again.
"Okay," Joe said. "I'll have Allen pick you up, if he hasn't already left. How long'll it take you to get ready?"
"Ohhh ... half an hour, maybe." She could have made it in five minutes or less, if need be.
"Good. I'll call Al right away. Now, where'll he meet you?"
"The corner's all right-Main and Maple."
"He'll be headed north. That'll be the east side of the street, then."
"That's right."
"Half an hour?"
"Yes. And ... thanks, Joey. Thanks an awful lot for talking to him." Joey chuckled.
"It's nothin', honey. I figured I owed you that, after what I said before."
"Well, goodbye."
"Goodbye, Ellie."
A broad smile split Joey Foss's face as he hung up the phone. She'd gone for it real good. When Al had said she was the trusting kind, he'd sure hit the nail on the head.
Joey climbed into his car and decided to pick up a couple of six-packs of beer. He'd have one can while he was waiting to meet Ellie, and they'd drink the rest when they were on the island. With that much brew in her, she'd be a cooperative girl.
He'd have to do some imagine talking to explain why Al wasn't there, but that didn't worry him. He had talked his way in and out of fancier deals than this.
But not fancier girls.
A quiver touched his loins at the thought of being with Ellie alone on the island, or at least on their part of it. He'd heard that the island, which was heavily wooded, was the favorite Sunday screwing spot around River Glen. A guy he'd been talking with yesterday in the bar had mentioned it. Right then Joey had figured he could make some use of the information, but he hadn't thought of the angle to use with Ellie. That happened later, after Al Sullender had gotten so damned hard-nosed.
The nerve of that clown, telling him he couldn't go out with Ellie even though Al himself didn't intend to see her again.
What a dope Sullender was, passing up stuff like that, when the girl was just crying for another chance to spread her pretty legs for him.
Well, she would spread her legs today, all right. But not for Al Sullender. She'd be spreading them for Joey.
His penis thickened as he thought about what he had in store. Down, boy! he silently ordered. Behave yourself until you get her out there, then you can get as stiff as you like-as stiff as a goddamned steel girder.
The thought of that pleased him, and he grinned.
As she hurriedly got ready for the date, Ellie Stewart was troubled. At first she'd been overjoyed at the prospect of seeing Allen again, and there hadn't been room for any other thought or feeling. But after she'd hung up the phone, she began to wonder about what Joey Foss had said.
The whole thing really did seem odd, especially after the way Joey had tried to date her yesterday. It was almost as if he was just using Allen's name to get her to go somewhere with him.
But he hadn't objected when she'd said she wanted Allen to drive her.
Oh, it was all right, she supposed. Joey was kind of a funny one, that was all. He was pushy and so cocksure of himself.
Ellie guessed she would call Rolanda and tell her what was up. As long as it was Allen and not Joey that she was going out with, there was no reason to keep matters to herself.
She took time out from getting ready for her date to pick up the phone.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Joey had twenty minutes to kill as he lounged in his car on the parking lot of the market where he had purchased the beer. As he sipped from one of the cans, the urge struck him to call the construction camp and see how the boys had come through the tongue-lashing they had expected from the super.
In the back of his mind there was the desire to do some bragging, also. The truth was that he was feeling pretty good right then.
He would talk to Pete Burgos, he decided. Old Pete was a close-mouthed man. And Joey got a sense of pleasure from the thought of showing off to a guy who was older.
He got out of the car and ambled across the sun-drenched lot, carrying his beer. Two middle-aged women, who had just alighted from their car, stopped and gazed critically at him. One turned to the other and they conversed in solemn tones while following Joey with their eyes.
He was blissfully unaware of the ladies' interest. He had, in fact, given no thought to the impression he might make by a public display of beer-swigging. And if he had thought about it, he wouldn't have altered his conduct.
While Joey was talking and joking on the telephone, Drew Michaelson was getting together with his friends. Drew now had exactly the opportunity he'd been looking for. Lake Chandler was the perfect spot to teach one of the swaggering bridge men a lesson.
Drew was just as glad only one of them would be on hand. They were big guys, and they probably knew how to take care of themselves in a brawl. But Drew and three of his buddies could handle one of them without much trouble, and what would happen to that one should serve as an example to the others.
One thing was for sure-there wouldn't be any criticism from the grown-ups in town about what Drew and his friends had in mind. After the brawl last night at The Idahoan, the town was worked up.
Drew's father had received three or four phone calls that morning from friends who were concerned over "what could be done to protect the community."
What Drew had in mind would help, he believed.
Not only that, but it was going to be a hell of a lot of fun.
Drew knew the island in Chandler Lake like he knew the palm of his hand. He had spent many an afternoon there with the guys, fishing or hiking or goofing around. In recent years, he had taken girls there-even Rolanda a couple of times. He knew the hidden little spots.
With him, as he set out from town behind the wheel of his jalopy, were a reluctant Carl Jennings and two of the heavier members of Central High's football team.
Drew didn't choose them because they were football players, or even because they were big. He chose them because they were good buddies of his and because they had the guts for a fight.
He chose Carl for the first reason only. Carl was a little lacking in the guts department, but he was Drew's best friend, in spite of that. Or perhaps because of that. Carl was a good follower.
The other two seventeen-year-olds were Ralph Zuck and Howie Harper. The former was a beefy lineman with shoulders like an ox and long straight hair that fell in front of his face when he was in motion; the latter was more on the lanky side, with muscles taut as a drawn bow. Either one of these might have been a match all by himself for one of the bridge builders. The two of them, plus Drew and Carl, would remove any element of doubt from the encounter.
Drew wasn't concerned about the four-to-one odds being unsportsmanlike. He didn't see any reason why he should give a bridge bastard a break. Did you give a sporting chance to a rattlesnake or a wildcat? Or to an escaped convict when the cops were on his tail? To Drew's way of thinking, the bridge builders fell somewhere in the same broad category.
Today Drew wasn't motivated entirely by the thirst for revenge, or the need to protect what he regarded as his own. He also needed to impress Rolanda. She had told him about Ellie's date on the island, and she was rooting for him and his buddies to succeed. If he failed, she would never forgive him. And they would never go steady again. So he had to prove to her what he could do ... with just a little help.
When the time had arrived to pick up Ellie, Joey was slumped in his Grand Prix on Main Street facing the intersection with Maple. Her appearance at the corner caused him to straighten his posture and put on his most ingratiating smile.
She looked very appealing in a loose flower-print skirt and white blouse. Her legs were bare, and she was wearing flat shoes. Her sunshine-colored hair fell gracefully at her shoulders. She had debated whether to-wear a skirt or capris, and had decided in favor of the more feminine look, even though she and Allen would be hiking around in the woods. This date was important to her and she wanted to give herself every advantage. The flat shoes would make walking easy, and a skirt was all right so long as she wasn't going to climb trees.
Now she came to a dead stop as she saw that the man who sat behind the wheel of the sparkling car, which she recognized from the other night, was not Allen but Joey Foss.
Joey leaned to the right-hand window and grinned at her.
"Hi. You look as pretty as a mockin' bird on a willow limb."
Slowly she advanced to the car, unsmiling. She made no move to get in.
"Where's Allen?"
"I couldn't catch him in time, honey. He'd already taken off for the lake. So it looks like you're gonna have to ride up there with me." He grinned again. "But that won't be too awful unpleasant, will it?"
"Joey ... " She was very serious. "You aren't fooling me, are you?"
"Foolin' you! Me? Why, honey, that's the last thing in the world I'd do, 'specially since I want'a make up for the bonehead way I talked to you yesterday morning."
She continued to stand her ground.
"But you don't want to drive all the way up to Lake Chandler for nothing."
"Won't be for nothin', " he replied. "I'll have a chance to talk to you, and I'll see some of the country." His grin kept coming on, almost with the regularity of a neon sign. "Who knows? I might even get to meet somebody when I'm up there. You're talkin' to a guy who's pretty good at pickin' himself up a date."
"Well. . . "
"Al's gonna be mighty disappointed if you don't show up." "All right."
She reached for the handle of the door.-As soon as she made the move, Joey pulled the handle on his side.
She slid onto the seat beside him. After lavishing an admiring look on her, he tromped the Pontiac's accelerator and the car surged into life. They were off. Joey felt so good, his spirits were figuratively soaring ahead of the car.
During the half-hour drive, on a two-lane paved road which wound its way into the mountain range that flanked River Glen, Joey kept the conversation light. He talked about the construction jobs he'd worked on, and the places he had been, shunning lurid episodes. He asked Ellie about herself, but her life seemed so pale in comparison with his that she didn't talk very much.
Anyway, she was still uneasy about the circumstances. Though she didn't place any stock in the "feminine intuition" her mother was always talking about, a secret voice seemed to be speaking to her now. And what the voice said wasn't good. It was with a growing sense of apprehension that she watched the trees and telephone poles speed past, and the miles roll up on the Pontiac's odometer.
What if Allen wasn't waiting for them at the lake?
What if, when they got there, she found that she was alone with this husky, smooth-talking fellow who had made such a bold and insulting play for her yesterday?
If that proved to be the case, the only thing she could do would be to appeal to somebody for help. There was a refreshment stand at the lake which operated on Saturdays and Sundays, and they had a telephone. She could wait there while her father drove up to get her. As embarrassing as that would be, it would be better than remaining with Joey ... or going with him to the island.
They found the resort uncrowded. The fact was, that there were so few people in this part of Idaho that it would have been impossible to have formed a real crowd anywhere in the area.
The lake was a brilliant blue and it spread in an uneven oval across four or five hundred acres. Trees grew down to the edge of it on all sides except where the road widened out to form a parking area next to the refreshment stand and boathouse.
There were about two dozen cars parked there. Some of their occupants lolled on the narrow beach, and others were out on the lake in boats or were splashing about. A flimsy looking pier jutted over the water, and a number of idle boats were tied to that, while some were beached on the sand.
A crudely painted sign proclaimed that boat rentals were available.
The island near the center of the lake was long, narrow, and thickly wooded. The woods gave privacy, and this appealed to Joey. Considering the small size of the crowd, there wouldn't be many people visiting the island, anyway. He had picked a good spot.
As soon as they stepped out of the car, Ellie looked around.
"Where's Allen?" she wanted to know.
"Over on the island, I expect," Joey replied matter-of-factly. "He probably rented a boat."
Doubt was plainly etched on Ellie's face as she stared at him.
He grinned.
"That's Al's car over there," he said, pointing to a pale-blue Chewy. "He's gotta be around somewhere."
Ellie looked at the car, back at Joey, and decided that she had been worried for nothing. It was Rolanda's fault, she suddenly decided. Rolanda had made such a point of telling her that neither Joey nor Allen was any good, that this had caused Ellie to be suspicious when there was no cause to be.
She smiled now.
"Let's look around, shall we?"
"Good idea," Joey agreed.
When they didn't find Allen on the beach or at the refreshment stand, there remained only one place where he could be. Joey arranged for a boat and returned to his car to get the beer he had brought from town.
"Al told me to pick up some," he explained as he placed the two six-packs in the boat.
Ellie didn't like this, but she didn't say anything. There was no use starting a fuss. Pretty soon Joey would be out of the way, and she and Allen would be alone. As for the beer, she wouldn't have to drink any if she didn't want to.
She climbed into the boat with Joey.
At the construction camp, Allen walked into the barracks. He'd been down the line where a crap game was going on. After losing ten bucks he had dropped out. He had yet to draw a check on the job, and what money he had was dwindling. Anyway, his luck had been bad ever since he'd arrived at the camp.
Pete Burgos was stretched out on his bunk. Several of the other men were lounging or milling about. Word had been handed down at the meeting to stay out of River Glen today. The company couldn't insist upon this, but it could make things hard for the man who didn't comply. Most of the men who were unlucky enough to have been stuck in Camp at the time of the meeting were complying.
Allen, headed for his own bunk, glanced Pete's way to give him a nod of greeting. The older man motioned him over, and Allen complied.
"What's up?" he asked.
"Sit down." Pete made room on the side of his bunk and drew himself to a sitting position.
"I guess you know me pretty good, Al," he began. "When a guy tells me something in confidence, he can usually be sure it won't go any further."
"So?"
"So Joey phoned up a little while ago. I took the call at the booth out there. The kid's all right, I suppose, but he's not the kind I'd care to get very close to. On the other hand, you and I have known each other for awhile, and I'd like to think that we're friends."
"Hell yes, Pete. What's all this leading up to?"
Pete's eyes narrowed.
"Joey told me something that I figure you have a right to know. He didn't ask me to keep it quiet. If he had before he'd spilled it, I probably would've told him not to tell me."
"Sonofabitch, Pete! What are you talking about?"
"He was about to bust his britches over a deal he figured he was pulling on you."
"What kind of deal?"
"With a girl. He says you and him double-dated the other night. Is that right?"
"Yeah." Allen had an inkling, and rage was beginning to build inside him. "What about it?"
"The girl you were with, young blonde with big tits-Joey's beatin' your time today."
Allen leaped up.
"Is this straight?"
"Sure as hell, Al. I don't know where he's going with her, but they've got a date. He said you'd piss your pants if you were to find out."
"I'm pissing!" Allen roared. "See me, Pete? I'm pissing like hell!"
Most everyone in the room turned to look. Allen flew for the door and was gone before anyone could say a thing. Pete sat open-mouthed, staring after him.
"What was that all about?" one of the other fellows wanted to know.
"The start of trouble, I'm afraid," Pete said, more to himself than to the questioner. "I probably shouldn't have told him. But I didn't want to sit by and see a good guy get the shaft."
"Who's shafting who?" somebody asked.
"I don't know yet," Pete said, and then his tone hardened. "Okay, you pricks, mind your own business, huh?"
"Sheee! Get him."
The room lapsed back to normal.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
A call to Ellie Stewart's home availed Allen nothing. Ellie's mother told him that she had gone out-with Carl Jennings, she guessed, but she wasn't sure. And no, she had no idea where they had gone.
Allen looked up the number of the Peters residence, next door to Ellie's, and called there. Rolanda was at home.
"But she said she was going out with you,? ' Rolanda told him. "What kind of a deal are you guys trying to pull, anyway?"
"That's what I'd like to know," Allen retorted. "Did Joey call her?"
"Yes. He said he was calling for you."
"That dirty son of a ... " Allen stopped himself.
Rolanda chuckled.
"You can finish it, Al. I'm a big girl."
"Where was he taking her? Do you know."
"Why worry about them?" Rolanda asked. "Why not look out for yourself."
"What do you mean?"
"Turn about's fair play-if your best friend steals your girl, you can try to steal his, can't you?"
"Maybe," Allen said, having no interest in her bold suggestion. "Right now I have to look out for Ellie."
Rolanda laughed again.
"I don't think she needs protection. Not really."
"Well, I do. Tell me where Joey took her, will you?"
Rolanda hesitated.
"Maybe she wouldn't appreciate my meddling."
"You know better than that. She wouldn't have gone with Joey if he hadn't told her she was going to meet me."
"You think a lot of yourself, huh?"
"Goddammit, Rollie! There isn't any time to waste. Will you tell me where they are?"
"Oh, all right." She had decided that it wouldn't hurt for Allen to get in on the fun. Joey couldn't catch too much hell as far as she was concerned. "They've gone to the lake. Lake Chandler. You take the road to Cranville and keep going. It's about twenty miles."
"Thanks," Allen said abruptly and hung up the phone.
He raced back to his car.
As he rowed their boat to the island, Joey enjoyed the opportunity of looking Ellie over. She was seated in the prow facing him, and the light breeze that was skimming over the surface of the lake toyed with the hem of her skirt, lifting it teasingly from time to time so that he could catch brief glimpses of her cream-white thighs. The glimpses excited him.
More exciting than what he saw was the realization that once they reached the island, she would be his. He would have some trouble with her at first, no doubt, but he would be able to take care of that. After he'd gotten a couple of beers into her, she would come his way.
Though he knew she was thinking of Allen now, Joey was confident that he had more appeal. When he started to make his play for her, she'd fall onto her back like a kitten wanting to be scratched.
His arms were tired by the time they reached the island, since he hadn't paused to rest on the way. He took off his shoes and socks, rolled up his pants legs, and lifted Ellie ashore, liking the firm feel of the warm bare thigh he clutched in his palm. After he set her on dry land, he hauled the boat up. Then he lifted out the six-packs of beer and placed them in the water between some rocks. They would get cool there and be just right by the time he and Ellie were ready to tap them.
On the way over, Joey had noticed some people moving about on the island, and he had picked a landing place as far removed from them as possible. Now he and Ellie could see and hear no one.
"Nice spot," Joey remarked, looking around. They were alone with the birds, a pleasant breeze, a few flitting insects, and a lot of clear sunshine.
"Where do you suppose Allen is?" Ellie asked. "You'd think he'd have been watching for us."
Joey grinned.
"Maybe he found himself another playmate, honey."
Ellie looked at him hard. There was something about Joey's manner which set off her mental alarm again.
"He has to be here," she said firmly. "We saw his car."
"Yeah, we did. 'Course, there are a lot of Chevvies that look just about like that."
"Joey. Have you been lying to me all this time?"
"Lying! Me? Baby doll, Joey Foss is the most honest guy you could ever want'a meet." He moved close to her. "And one of the nicest in other ways, too. Y'know, I just can't understand how you could get so hung up on that Sullender character with me around."
Grinning, he took hold of her bare arms and brought her against him. The resilient thrust of her large, firm breasts started his sex machine working.
"Why don't you give you and me a chance, baby?" he said. "You ain't never had any guy but Al, so you don't know. You can't be sure until you've ... "
The sudden flash of her hand to his cheek shut off the sentence. The collision of flesh with flesh was loud ... and painful for a moment. Joey released the girl and touched the side of his face.
"Now you can take me back," she demanded. "Take me back or I'll start to scream. Somebody will hear me and they'll come."
Joey forced half a smile.
"Wait a minute. Let's think, huh? If you scream, somebody shows up, and we have a fuss. Then later your daddy and mommy hear all about it. If you don't tell'em, somebody else is bound to. You want that to happen?"
"I don't care," she said, but in a tone that lacked conviction.
"Be smart," Joey said. "Be grownup. A grownup girl don't yell for help just because a guy smiles at her."
"But you lied to me." She now seemed to be on the verge of tears.
"There you go with that mean and ugly word again. I didn't lie, honey. I don't lie. Al was supposed to meet us here, all right."
She looked at Joey for several seconds. Finally she said:
"Then let's find him."
"I got a better idea," he said. "Let's wait here and let ol' Al find us. like you said, he oughta be lookin' for us. If he's here, he probably is."
"You keep talking as if he isn't here," Ellie accused.
"Honey. Baby doll." Again he grasped her arms and drew her close to him. "I just plain don't know if he's here or not. I know what he told me, but sometimes a guy changes his mind. 'Specially a guy like Al."
"You're talking against him again."
"I ain't talkin' against him. It's just that I know the guy, that's all."
"All right." Ellie turned around and sat on a log. "We'll wait."
"How 'bout a beer while we're waitin'? It won't be very cold yet, but ... "
"No, thanks."
"Aw now, honey! Come on. Loosen up a little. I ain't some mean old ogre, y'know. Anyway, beer's nothin' at all like whiskey. You can drink beer all day and not hardly feel it. It's just good for the thirst, that's all."
As Joey coaxed her, Drew and his friends stood in the bushes about thirty feet away. They had a perfect view of the little grassy spot near the water's edge where the couple was, and they could catch most of their conversation.
Howie Harper whispered:
"Come on, let's get him."
Drew grasped the other boy's arm.
"Not yet. He's gotta do something first. I want to catch him good."
"He brought Ellie out here, didn't he?" Howie shot back. "Isn't that enough?"
"Unh-uh. I want'a really get the goods on that sonofabitch."
Ralph Zuck sniggered.
"You gonna wait until he starts in to hump her?"
Carl Jennings protested: "He isn't gonna hump Ellie. She won't let him."
"Yeah, yeah," Ralph said and sniggered some more.
"Listen, Ralph ... " Carl grasped his arm angrily.
"Shut up, you guys!" Drew whispered sharply. "You want 'em to find out we're here? Just cool it. We're gonna wait and watch for awhile. We got all the time in the world. When we jump that bastard, it's gotta be good."
For awhile, there wasn't much to see except two young people engaged in earnest conversation, the youth persuading and the girl turning him down. Gradually, however, Joey began to make headway. Ellie's resistance to having a drink of beer didn't prove very effective. She was thirsty, and she didn't see how a few sips could hurt her. Anyway, if Allen had asked Joey to bring the beer, he must have expected her to take some. So he wouldn't be angry about it.
She clung to the hope that he would come along, in spite of the sense of apprehension she also felt. She wasn't really afraid, because she always could fulfill her threat and scream if Joey made it necessary. At least, this was what she told herself.
Joey got two cans of beer from the water and opened them. He and Ellie drank. He watched her and made light conversation. To a person unaccustomed to alcohol, as Joey well knew, even one beer could have potent effects. One of the effects he counted on was the lowering of Ellie's resistance to a second drink.
The strategy worked.
When he brought the second beer, Joey sat on the grass near Ellie's legs. Too near, she thought immediately. But she didn't move or ask him to do so. The good feeling of the other night was seeping through her once more. Anyway, Joey wasn't really so bad.
When they were halfway through their second cans of beer, Joey said:
"It's more comfortable here on the grass, unless you think I might bite you or something."
"All right," she replied and settled down beside him. But not too close.
"Oh, when is Allen going to show up?" she said, her speech slightly slurred.
Her nearness, the beer he had consumed, and his natural male confidence combined to get the better of Joey's patience. He said:
"Face it, baby. Al ain't gonna show. So it looks as if you're gonna have to be nice to me instead."
As he spoke, he closed in on her, taking the beer can from her hand and tipping her at the same time until her shoulders were against the ground. She cried out as he bore down to her with parted lips.
Her mouth was open and twisting as she exerted to push him away from her, and that was the way Joey caught her lips. He suctioned, his tongue shooting between her teeth, while one of his hands immediately went to the outside of her leg. He slid his hand upward, pushing her skirt and slip along.
"Come on," Howie Harper breathed to the other boys in the bushes.
Drew gripped his arm.
"No. Wait. They haven't gone far enough yet."
"What the hell," Howie said, as Ellie's skirt was pushed high on her legs and Joey was eagerly caressing her flesh. "How much do you want'a see?"
Ralph Zuck answered for himself and Drew both:
"More than that, man. I wanta see him stick it in her."
"I'm no peeper," Howie protested, almost loud enough for the couple on the grass to hear, had they been alert to sounds around them.
"None of us are," Drew said. "But we've got to know how far the bastard's gonna go."
So they waited and watched as Ellie tried to struggle with the man who pressed against her, sandwiching her between his muscular body and the ground. She could accomplish nothing. His hand was roaming with maddening effect along the satin slopes of her thighs. Her breasts, nipples hardening, were squeezed against his rib cage. His tongue was pistoning in her mouth.
All this was having its effect. Even as she struggled, she became excited, too. She no longer was certain what she wanted. She didn't care for Joey-or at least she didn't think she did-and she thought she was in love with Allen. But her body seemed to have a mind of its own. Her nipples were like bullets, and there was moisture between her legs.
Joey tore his mouth from hers and slid his wet parted lips around to her ear. He said huskily:
"Don't scream, you little witch! Don't you dare! I'm gonna have you and you're gonna love it. And you're gonna forget all about old Al. I guarantee it, baby."
He slid his mouth to the neckline of her blouse, while one of his hands groped back and forth across her bosom. The other hand was at the silken crotch of her panties, fingering the elastic aside.
Ellie's brain was reeling. This had all happened so fast. One minute they'd just been sitting there and she'd been feeling the pleasant effects of the beer; the next, he was all over her, his lips bruising hers, his tongue plunging, his hand sliding up her legs.
And now his finger was working at her much as his tongue had worked before. She wanted to fight. She had to fight. But....
"Jesus, man, look at that!" Ralph Zuck exulted huskily.
"She's gonna let him have it, sure as hell," replied Howie Harper, who now was less than anxious to break up the show.
"She won't let him have it," Carl Jennings insisted. "She'll make him stop."
"Yeah?" For the last couple of minutes, Drew had been wanting an excuse to change the plan. Now he had it. "We'll see," he told Carl. "It'll be good for you to find out the way a girl acts when a guy starts goin' after her. You never believed me when I told you Ellie would put out. Okay. So watch."
Ellie's blouse buttoned at the back, and Joey didn't want to roll her to get at the buttons. He had a good firm hold the way it was, and his moving finger was going to have her ready for him in just a minute, so he didn't want to stop that. He decided to try to liberate her breasts from the front.
He slid his left hand, fingers extended, under the left side of her blouse. To do this, he had to lessen his pressure against her and support himself on his elbow. But this was all right because she wasn't trying to get up now. She was coming along just fine.
His fingers pressed the soft firm mound of flesh which nestled in the left cup of her bra. He inched along, deeper into the cup. Christ, she was hung! He hadn't touched a titty as plump and firm as that one since he'd first started titty-touching way back in grade school. But the hell of it was, her goddamned bra was too tight. He couldn't go any further. She filled every bit of the cup.
He pulled his hand away.
Ellie was gasping and twisting, her face a mask of passion. She wasn't trying to fight him at the moment. She looked as if she were trying to fight herself, and not succeeding.
"Sit up!" Joey rasped. "I've gotta get your damned blouse off."
"No ... no ... " she breathed. "Yes!"
He pulled his other hand away from her vagina and took a double grip on her shoulders. He sat her up. Her mouth hung open and she lolled to the side, as if she were a rag doll. He had to support her while he wrestled with her buttons.
But he got the buttons free, andhepulled the blouse off her shoulders and down her arms. He twisted at the hooks of her pink brassiere.
Then something happened to Ellie. The impending removal of her bra brought her to her senses. She didn't want to bare her breasts to this man. She didn't want him to see and touch them.
She flailed her arms at him.
"Goddammit!" he snarled. "Let me get this damned thing off."
"No. You can't! I won't let you! I'll scream!"
She was struggling fiercely now, and the blasted hooks on her bra wouldn't come. He wrapped his fingers around the strap and gave a vicious yank. Ellie cried out as the edges of the bra cut cruelly into tender flesh.
The bra popped, spilling its contents into the open as Joey pulled one side of it down her arm and off.
"Jesus!" he exclaimed. He bowled her over and bore down with his mouth to the tossing cream-white shapes of her bosom. Even when she was on her back, her breasts had thrust and fullness. They were gelatinously responsive, too. He closed on a ruddy crisp nipple.
Ellie's clawing fingers, which had been contracting on his arms, released their hold and hung motionless in midair for a moment. Then they fell to the grass. She couldn't fight. Oh, God, she couldn't fight him now!
As he sucked on her high firm nipple, his hand found its way to her loins again. She was his. She knew it. She didn't want to be his, but there was nothing she could do. He was going to get into her the way Allen had done the other night, and then she wouldn't be Allen's girl any more.
But she wasn't Allen's girl, anyway. Allen didn't want her. She seemed to know this as Joey went at her and as she prepared herself to accept what was going to happen.
The boys in the bushes weren't talking now. They were staring with bug eyes at the scene being enacted on the grass just a few feet away, their mouths and throats dry and their breathing virtually halted. None of them had ever watched anything like this before, and Carl and Ralph had never done it.
There was guilt in Carl's mind, along with the erotic excitement. That was his girl on the grass with another guy, and he felt as if he ought to help her. But he wasn't at all sure that she wanted help. Anyway, he couldn't go after that big bridge-builder alone.
She moaned and twisted as Joey let one rosy tall nipple bob free and went to the other one. She had lifted her hands to his back now, but not to fight. She was holding and petting him.
Now she was ready, Joey knew. And if he didn't get into her pretty soon, he was going to come the way he was. He sat up and used both hands to pull her silken pink pants down. She had worn her best ones, expecting Allen to be the one to remove them.
Now she didn't care. She just wanted to get them off.
The boys in the bushes stood transfixed as Joey tore open his jeans and mounted her. He went all the way in a single thrust, and started feverishly to pump. She pumped with him. She cried and whimpered.
"She-likes it, she-likes it," Ralph Zuck croaked, his throat as dry as sandpaper. He wasn't dry elsewhere. None of the boys were.
"They all like it, you dink," Drew retorted, not being careful about his voice now. The pair on the grass wouldn't hear.
Carl Jennings stared and, without thinking, his hand went to the tent-like formation at the front of his clothes.
The action on the grass didn't last long. Joey wasn't good for more than two or three minutes, but Ellie needed even less. The finger-loving he had given her had brought her nearly to the point of release before he'd entered with his penis.
She climaxed tumultuously, and Joey came in the midst of her storm. He shuddered and groaned as he made the grade. He fell forward.
They were quiet.
"Oh, Jesus ... Jesus ... Jesus ... " Ralph Zuck hissed.
"Yeah!" croaked Howie Harper.
"Well?" Drew rasped to Carl. "What'd I tell you? See how she went for it when he put it to her?"
Carl couldn't say a thing. He was hanging at the brink of release himself. If Joey and Ellie had kept going for just a few seconds longer . ...
"Good, huh, baby?" Joey asked. "Really good for you, wasn't it?"
"Yes," she replied breathlessly. "Ohhh, yesss."
"You're glad you had it, huh."
"Yes, honey."
"I was just as good as Al, wasn't I? Even better."
"Yesss."
Joey felt more thoroughly satisfied than ever before in his life.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
No one had seen Allen Sullender fight his way through the clump of bushes at the lower edge of the grassy plot where Joe and Ellie lay. The couple on the ground weren't looking for anyone, and the high school boys continued to stare at the unmoving but still-entwined couple.
Allen had struggled half the length of the island. Boats had been beached at several points along the way, and he hadn't known which was Joey's. He had come upon two couples petting, and one in the full throes of love, plus several gangs of boys and girls. In his frantic rush, he had skinned his legs on the thorny bushes, and a branch had scratched his face.
Now he could see that he had found Joe and Ellie too late.
Not only had he seen, but he had heard, too.
He had heard what Joey had asked her and what Ellie's answers had been.
He stood with fists clenched and stared, as if he were rooted to the spot.
"Man ... man, let's get some of that for ourselves," Ralph Zuck whispered hoarsely to the boys gathered with him in the bushes. "What do you say?"
"We came here to get the bridge guy," Howie Harper argued mildly.
"What the hell," Ralph retorted. "I'm too horny for a fight. And that chick's luscious! Man, the tits on her!"
Carl Jennings was still gaping, not saying a thing. Drew Michaelson's face was a dark inscrutable mask. The four boys stood immobile.
Then suddenly they leaped and surged from their hiding spot, rushing Joey, pushing him away from the girl. As he tumbled in the sand with a couple of the boys on top of him, big Ralph Zuck stared down at the shocked, stunned Ellie. He tore at the front of his clothes.
"No!" Drew hollered from a hands-and-knees position, where he was helping Howie Harper restrain Joey. "She's Carl's girl. Carl gets first go."
"Awww, hell, Drew!"
"Go to it, Carl!" Drew ordered.
Carl stood over Ellie. He stared at the young femaleness of her, which she hadn't made a move to cover. His impassioned look met her dazed one.
He fell to his knees.
He came after only half a dozen strokes. Ralph quickly replaced him at her loins. Ellie didn't move. She didn't protest. She didn't cry out. The expression on her face hardly changed.
After Ralph, there was Drew, with the big youth joining Howie Harper in holding Joey against the ground. Then Howie took his turn.
Allen watched it all. Though he wasn't concealed by the bushes, he was at the edge of the clearing and none of the boys had looked that way.
He was surprised at himself for having stood there and let this happen. But he hadn't been able to do anything else. It was as if all of it were part of an incredibly candid movie, and he was a member of the audience.
In his mind he kept seeing Ellie as she had been with Joey a little while before, and he kept hearing what she had said to him. That was the reality. What had followed was like light and shadow playing on a screen.
Now Joey was free and sitting up, all the boys having satisfied themselves. They backed off in a wary semi-circle, watching Joey as they would have watched a cornered animal, waiting for it to make the first move, wondering which way it would jump.
Allen rushed forward.
"He's mine!" he yelled.
The high school boys whirled to face him. Startled and in no mood to fight, they made way.
Joey, sitting on the sand with his pants still open, blinked at Allen in surprise. He blubbered:
"They jumped us, Al-these bastard kids. They ... "
Allen hauled him to his feet and, without waiting for him to gain his balance, sent him sprawling with a left and right to the middle. Joey moaned, coughed, rolled over, and got onto his hands and knees. Allen waited. When the younger man was on his feet again, Allen waded in. He punished Joey about the face and body, took an ineffectual blow to the side of his own head, and dropped Joey with a murderous right to the jaw.
Allen stood over him, fists clenched, breathing hard.
"Get up you sonofabitch! Get up and take the rest of it."
"No ... no," Joey moaned. He began to cry like a baby, his face in his hands, his body curled fetus-like on the soft ground.
Allen turned to face the high school boys. None of them made a move, but their eyes showed they were ready to do something-fight or run. It was hard to tell which.
"Get out of here," he said evenly. "Get the hell back to your homes."
They looked from one to the other. Drew said:
"Come on, guys." They ambled toward the edge of the brush.
Allen knelt beside Ellie and helped her sit up. She had been gazing vacantly at him. Now she looked down. She didn't say anything.
"Get your clothes together," he said. He reached for her pink panties which were balled up on the sand. He dropped them in her naked lap. He stretched in the other direction to reach her bra. She began slowly to get dressed.
In the rowboat, and later in Allen's car, they spoke very little. Ellie sat at her edge of the car seat. She didn't cry. She gazed most of the time through the window with eyes that didn't see the trees or poles or summer cabins flashing past.
If this hadn't happened, he would have asked her to marry him, Allen thought, in spite of the resolution he had made. He would have quit his job and taken off with her for some place. It would have changed his life.
Now the whole thing had been just an episode. When the high steel started to rise over the Snake, he would be up there with Joey and they would laugh about the blonde with the big tits and how Allen had gotten so teed off.
Yeah. It was a laugh.
And deep down inside of him, Allen Sullender was glad. Ellie would have cost him too much, and she wasn't worth it. None of them were.
"It was rough," he said finally. "But those guys who screwed you-they aren't going to talk, except among themselves. They've got nothing to brag about."
"I'm ... going to ... have a baby," she murmured tonelessly.
"Not if you're smart. You'll go to a doctor. One in Boise or some place away from here. I'll drive you, if you want. He won't tell your parents if you explain what happened. You'll have to do that."
"I can't," she protested.
"Then have your love child," he said.
She started to cry again.
"Of course, you might luck out. You could wait a month."
"Am ... I going to see you?"
"I'll be around town. The damn bridge is just getting started. The thing is, though-the boss has told us no more screwing around in River Glen. From now on, any man who makes trouble will be fired."
"Oh."
"But for the doctor, you can get in touch with me. Ring the number at the construction office and leave a call-back."
"Allen. . . "
He glanced at her tortured face. "I was in love with you. I really was. I thought that maybe ... "
"I know."
"Why didn't you call me?"
He remained silent for awhile, watching the curling ribbon of pavement in front of him.
"It wouldn't have been any good, for you or for me. Not in the long haul."
"But you came to the island."
"Because I found out what Joey was up to."
"You would've done that for any girl?"
"Not for the girl," he said. "For myself. It was between Joey and me."
Her expression hardened and she turned toward the front. She bit her lip to hold back more sobs.
"As far as you're concerned, Ellie, this is the day you grew up-not the other night, as you may have thought. The way it happened was rough, but sometimes that's for the best. It puts a person on guard for what's coming, and they can avoid a lot of grief. The growing-up happens with all of us sooner or later. Some day we've all got to get the stars out of our eyes."
In the silence which followed his speech, Allen told himself that the dime-store philosophy he had just spouted applied to himself as well as to her. The stars in his eyes had been faint, but they had been there. No more.
He began to wonder what luck he would have finding a comfortable whore in Boise.
