She looked at me and brought her hands up her body, as if to say This-Rusty-is-my-body-and-I-have-a-void-in-it-that-needs-to-be-filled-by-you-by-your-flesh.
"My mind is full, Rusty; but my body needs completion. There is an absence that starts here in my head and is expanded down my throat passed my heart into the emptiness of my belly. The only place where you can reach me to fill my carnal being is here."
She fanned her fingers out before her crotch.
"Gee, Meredith. Such poetry."
"Make love to me. Ball me as though we will never ball together again or see each other after this hour."
"Don't talk like that. We're staying together. We'll be with each' other when the sun rises tomorrow and after that as well. Unless something happens to separate us."
"Look in my eyes!"
I looked into her eyes and held her. Of course, Meredith was just a woman, and woman-no, no, no. She wasn't like the others. What are these words? I must make a sound, but there is no sound to say the happiness I feel gazing upon you.
"Have me!"
Getting there is half the fun But being there is what matters.
* * *
PART ONE
CHAPTER ONE
Pa was in town getting horse feed and getting fucked by Ginger, the waitress at the grill. Jackson was still in school. Collie was here with me, wagging her tail, waiting on another jack rabbit to chase. Ma was dead. I was here on the porch, rocking on the swing, shelling peas for the fifteenth straight day-full naked and tanned.
I was always naked when Pa was in town. No way else to get horny on a farm but run around naked and feel your balls filling up between your legs throughout the day, seeing how big you can make your cock swell up from time to time.
Sometimes if Pa was still in town when Jackson got home from school, I would fuck Jackson's ass-pretending he was a girl and grabbing the pillow under him like they were big teats. Jackson had long hair like a girl, too. I always told him, if you get fucked in your ass, it'll make your cock bigger when you grow up-which is true. It would have been nice if Ma left me a sister before she died, though.
I checked the sun. Jackson would be home fore too long. Pa wouldn't be home at all, to come to think on it, on account of he swore that after he fucked Ginger he would beat the shit out of old man Tyler, for selling him hamster meat which Tyler said was venison. That meant Pa wouldn't be home this afternoon nor tonight neither tomorrow nor no time at all. Till I went down to town and got him out of jail.
Sweat, which was chilling, dripped down my chest. I smacked a mosquito on my neck and scooted farther down the swing into sunlight. There was a tall row of pea-pods all along the porch where I had been scooting down into sunlight since daybreak.
"Come here, Collie. Here girl. Come on, Collie." She came over and knelt between my legs. I flopped my cock up and down and held the big juicy thing out for her. She licked it and knocked it back and forth with her nose.
"Good Collie." Smart dog. Learned tricks real fast once she knew what you was after. I patted her, and she licked up that clear juice that drips out when ever you get all hot and bothered.
She loved it and licked some up off the porch, too. "Taste good, Collie? Now get out of here and get yourself a rabbit or gopher." I kicked her on her way.
I figured, I shell an average of fifty pea-pods per every fifteen minutes. Which was a hundred pea-pods per hour. Times ten hours, which I averaged a day, is close to a million pea-pods, right off hand. I had been doing this since fifteen days ago, so I reckoned I shelled roughly a trillion and a half pea-pods. Which is a lot of pea-pods for room and board.
Damn cock wouldn't go down. That was the trouble with the farm. I had everything in the world out there but pussy. Not a single cunt, except in town, which cost five dollars and ten dollars for the penicillin shot afterwards. That's fifteen dollars plus money for candy or brandy if you felt like giving her something else to make it friendly-so she'd suck you and let you bang her full force like in rape.
You could always pick flowers for her from someone's garden-if you could without getting buckshot in your head, fired off by some of those townswomen who could handle a gun like Davy Crocket back in the Civil War.
I had every luxury in life but a pussy, besides Jackson, my brother. I had a television. I had things to keep me busy. I had adventure when I went to town for whoring and drinking and stealing stuff and fist-fighting. I had the pond to cool off in when I got hot and my cock wouldn't go down-like right then. That was where I decided to go.
I ran down the slope to the pond-balls bouncing all over the place, and ran out on the pier away from all the green, foamy shit and dove in head first.
First time in four hours that I wasn't thinking about pea-pods. Pea-pods can drive a man crazy. Especially two trillion of them. A farm can drive a man crazy. Anything can drive a man crazy, if he lets it. Especially sex-or the absence of it.
I splashed around the cool pond, feeling much better. I dove to the very bottom and groped around for the Portugese Coin Treasury. I did that every time I was in the pond. The Treasury was a bunch of coins from Portugal which the second previous owner of our farm dumped into the pond, according to history, back in the eighteenth century during the War Between the States, rather than let the Yanks take his coins from him when they pillaged and plundered our area.
I came up for air and dove down again. Today Pa and me could retire if we could ever find them Portuguese coins and sell them in Birmingham. We would have been rich as senators and would have had money to have us some real good times and throw parties and have ourselves a fancy woman or two around the house to do whatever we liked. Jackson could have quit school, too.
I came up for air again, but no coins. That Portuguese Coin Treasury could drive a man crazy, too, if he let it.
Holy shit.
Madison Leroy's hay truck was coming over the hill aways. That meant one of three things. Either he would make the turn down Cricket Creek Road toward his own place, which was where he belonged. Or he would stop by our place and drink up all of Pa's beer except one bottle-which he always left un-drunk out of what he thought was courtesy. If he stopped by our place, he would drink and bullshit until he couldn't tell the hour hand from the minute hand from the second hand on the wall. If you gave him enough time, he would soon be swearing that our walls would be the first things to fall apart during the Second Coming-which was always due, according to Madison Leroy, before the next election.
Don't pull that fucking truck in here, you lying bastard. I hated talking to that man because of his daughter, Anna Lee Mae. Always after the sixth beer, he would be apt to say to me, "I don't like you, Rusty Thomas. You're a bad scar around these parts. You screwed my daughter Anna Lee Mae once back in 1965 and almost made her become pregnant."
Once back in 1965? Dumb shit. I had screwed her a hundred dozen times since.
"I never touched your daughter, Madison Leroy," I would usually say. "I have too much fond respect for her and her family name to do such a thing as that."
"Shut up before I smash this beer over your head."
My beer, not his. He would be apt to chug it instead of hitting me with it, though. Then demand another.
You pull that fucking hay truck of yours in here today, and I will tell you all my times with Anna Lee Mae, I thought. I'll tell you true how red and raw I've made her over the years. How she loves to sit up and down real fast on my prick. How we gang-banged her in your own bedroom with your own vaseline when you was in Savannah last month. You stop here and drink me and Pa's beer, and I'll tell you all you want to know about Anna Lee Mae. Hit me! Go on! So I can tear you apart and feed your ripped-up carcass to my animals. While I watch and finish your beer.
I was thinking all that, while I got out of the pond and watched Madison Leroy's old truck getting closer and closer to the turn-off that leads to his own place where he belongs.
I walked over to one of our horses to ride. Collie was here now, probably wanting to chew my peter some more.
"Go on, you silly bitch. Get yourself a jack rabbit to kill." My tool was refreshed and relaxed after being in the water.
"Steady boy. Easy now. I'm getting on you, so be steady, you hear?" I swung upon the horse and rode him around the pond where I could see the truck better.
The motherfucker didn't turn down Cricket Creek Road like he was supposed to. Of course, that still meant one of two things. Either he was coming to my place, as I explained, or he would be cutting through the woods. The road by our place cut through the woods to the new super-highway that the Governor built that leads straight up to Nashville or straight down to Birmingham nonstop, except for food, gas, and lodging.
"Steady now, boy." The horse waited and I waited. Something real funny was going on suddenly, 'cause Madison Leroy stopped halfway betwixt Cricket Creek Road and our place. He stopped there for some odd reason.
Then I saw everything. Someone jumped out of the back of the truck, carrying some stuff like suitcases. He ran around the truck and waved goodbye to Madison Leroy. A goddam hitchhiker, I reckoned.
Leroy made a U-turn, swung his old shitty truck around and headed down Cricket Creek Road to his own place where he belonged.
He left the hitchhiker alone on the road. I still couldn't make him out at this distance. He started walking with his bags down our road through the woods to the new super-highway.
"Come on, boy! Getty-up! We got a visitor!"
Huey galloped around the pond back to the house. Collie chased after us, barking.
We got things to learn. We're going to find out just who this hitchhiker is and where's he going and where's he from and just where he thinks he's headed and who's after him.
At the house I gave Huey some sugar and Collie a kick in the ass. I went inside. The screen door slammed behind me. I shaved myself real fast, pulled on some jeans, tucked my nudie magazines under the mattress, and checked to see if Pa's shotgun was loaded. It was.
Fucking pea-pods. I scooted farther down the porch into the changing sunlight. I swacked another mosquito on my leg. Six trillion pea-pods and one billion varmints. Already I was drenched with sweat.
I saw the hitchhiker coming behind the willows and maples along our drive.
I'll be a sonofabitch!
It wasn't a he hitchhiker at all, but a girl. An actual girl my age or thereabouts. A pussy with her suitcase and sleeping bag.
Shit, I'd never seen such a thing.
"Collie, you make one move or one goddam bark, and I'll kick your brainless head from here to the pond."
I went on shelling peas, pretending to pay no attention to the girl hitchhiker coming right this way. I couldn't believe it.
Pea-pod six trillion-and-two, six trillion-and-three, six trillion-
"Good afternoon," she called out.
I paid no attention. Six trillion-and-seven.
"Good afternoon, I say," she said.
"Oh! Good afternoon. Pleased to meet you. I didn't hear you before. Come on up, if you like."
Collie growled and barked aggressively upon that pretty thing with long hair.
"I warned you, Collie." I threw down the pods and ran down the steps after the ignorant mutt. I ran him around the yard till I could kick him good and strong. That sent him whimpering to the barn. "Can't you behave yourself like decent folk?" I hollered after him.
Now what do I do?
The girl hitchhiker was waiting on me at the steps, sort of smiling, having just seen the way Collie acted like a darn fool sometimes.
"My name's Rusty. If you want to know anything about hitchhiking through these parts, I might be able to help you. Or if you want some historical facts about the township or some information or some beer."
Shit, I didn't know what to say. I guess, I was excited about having some appealing, clean company like her suddenly showing up out of nowhere. She was a hitchhiker, at that.
"Want to sit down for a spell, or you in too much of a hurry to get wherever it is you're going?"
"I'm in no hurry. I can sit with you for a short while."
She had on an Army shirt, for chrissake, and it weren't buttoned up all the way. Believe me, I saw enough of them healthy boobs to know she wasn't supporting them underneath with anything.
I said, "Set your personal belongings down, and we can rest ourselves up here on the swing. It's shady."
"All right."
She kind of leaned her head to the side for a moment and smiled.
"Here. Let me help you off with that bed roll," I suggested.
"I can manage it." She wriggled her arms from the straps, without realizing she was shaking her naked luscious teats back and forth underneath the wide open Army shirt.
We sat down on opposite ends of the swing. I didn't want to start swinging. That'd be corny as hell. I wanted her to start the swinging.
"Now about that beer," I offered. "You must be quite hot and irritated after riding in Madison Leroy's crummy old truck. Would you like one?"
"Yes please, if it's no bother. By the way, my name's Meredith.""
"Hi. I'm Rusty. Don't mind these pea-pods along the porch here. I'll clean them up before long."
I went inside. Fucking noisy screen door slammed. My hair was a mess, so I kind of combed it back with my fingers. Then I gargled with Pa's stuff and got two beers from the ice box. I got a glass for Meredith.
"Thank you." She sipped it. "Oh, it's freezing cold and good after being on the road all day."
"Pa says beer's important. He says that everyone should have a beer or two this time of day in case you have to chase mad dogs out of the yard during the night, or in case the barn catches fire and you have to run back and forth from the water pump to the barn. Beer helps, Pa says."
The sun was down to the four o'clock position. Please, Jackson. Do something wrong at school so they keep you there for a while longer, I pleaded inwardly.
Meredith said, "You have a nice spread of acreage here." She reclined in the seat.
"Lots of work, though. Generally, the same old thing every day. That's Pa's land over there too, across the road you came up on. Those woods."
"It's beautiful. It's so good to be out of the city and into deep country again."
"What city do you live in?" I queried.
"Until the day before yesterday, I lived in Biloxi."
"You leave home for good, you mean? Just like that?"
She nodded and smiled. "I've got to see new places, I guess, and do things. There's so much happening today."
"Where you headed, unless I'm prying?" Polite sexy broad had more guts than me-just packing up and setting out like that.
"I'm not sure yet where I'm headed. Depends on how things go. Illinois maybe. Or Ohio. Or New York. Or Canada."
"Canada! Way up there out of the country?" I gulped some more beer. I had never seen anything like it.
"Perhaps."
"Sister Meredith, you got nerve, baby. How you going to get along? You have kinfolk up there? Or friends? They speak a different language up there in New York or wherever you said, you know."
"Don't get excited, Rusty. I'll be all right. I can take care of myself. Good things have started to happen already."
She smiled and slid closer to me. She pressed her palm against my face and pushed some hair from my forehead.
"Now how can I not get excited if you do that. You're beautiful, Meredith. You're one of the most well-constructed, clear thinking girls I've ever had the pleasure to meet. I feel real fond of you. Believe me, I do. I can't help worrying about all that can happen to a nice young girl like you hitchhiking alone to strange places."
She held my shoulder with both hands, massaging my neck, shoulder, and arm muscles. Her skirt wasn't real short, but she crossed her legs. Oh, to run my hand up that slender leg under her skirt to twat around. I want it. I want it. I could barely sit still. I was breathing harder. I couldn't take my eyes off the opening in her Army shirt. I kept watching because she was leaning to me, and her full breasts were about to plop right out. I was anxious to catch them in my bare hands any second.
She pressed, her hands on my naked chest and back. Her arms squeezed against her body, and a nipple was exposed. Right out there in full view-pointed and hard. I could tie her hair around my neck and then cram my hungry, itchy hardon smack up her cunt and....
"Everything is waiting for me down that road, Rusty. All kinds of happiness and dreams and love. They're there for you too, Rusty."
"What do you mean, for me too?"
"Look around you. Think about five years from now when you'll be five years older. Will things be any different?"
'What are you talking about, Meredith? I can't leave here no matter what's down that road. This is home." What was she trying to do to me?
"Well, if you can't make it, I know I can. I must be on my way."
"Wait a minute." My cock had climbed straight up my fly and was bulging big and about to protrude out the top of my pants. "You can't run off, thinking I'm a coward. I got responsibility here. I ain't afraid of traveling or doing new things."
Meredith bent over the pea-pods. She let a handful trickle through her fingers.
"Now what's that suppose to mean?" I said.
"Nothing."
"It does so. It means boredom. It means, you reckon that me being here on an old farm with seldom a visitor except Pa and Jackson, who live here themselves, is downright boredom. Is that what you mean? You wait here 'cause you started something, Meredith, and I'm going inside for another beer."
Motherfucking screen door slammed behind me. I slammed my fist on the table.
Just who did this pretty girl from Biloxi with gigantic teats heading to who-knows-where think she was? Pa, I'm telling you, she had got me plenty upset. She was making believe that I was wasting my time here. She was more of an independent man than me. I never seen ... such a thing.
That hardon was about to burst wide open any minute, as if I didn't have enough troubles already. I had been feeling my balls roll around fiercely for the past fifteen minutes.
I guzzled one beer before the open icebox and went outside for another.
Meredith had her bed roll on over her back again.
The screen door banged shut, and we stared at each other. Collie was between us, looking up from one to the other.
She had a high, hard, strong ass you could stand glasses on. Full, round, high-sitting breasts like in the comic books. A gentle, clear smiling face-so warm and honest. Blue eyes that saw right past mine into my head. Waiting for me. Inviting me. Daring me. Welcoming me.
I could feel my pounding pulse in my throbbing tool. I could rape her one-two-three right then with no one ever finding out.
Meredith looked down at the ground, kicked aside a rock, and looked back up to me quizzically. She tossed her long, college-type hair behind her back.
I chugged down more of the beer. Some beer ran down my chin and down my chest. The whole thing gave me goosebumps.
"What if I did go with you? How far would I make it on forty-seven dollars and some odd change? That's all I got that isn't Pa's or Jackson's. Just how long you figure I'd last out there with no resources?"
"But Rusty, you do have resources. You got a strong back. You're looking grand. You can talk to people. You can work. There's no trouble in that. Unless you're lazy, of course."
"I ain't lazy, Meredith, so you just stop that clever college talk. I can do most anything I set my mind on.
Someday I'll even find those Portuguese coins out there in the pond. Never mind."
Before I knew it, I had moved closer and closer to her till we were almost teat against teat. She looked up at me and closed her blue eyes, smiling.
"You're so pretty and soft and wild." I stood rigid, fighting myself from clutching and raping her. I trembled. I kissed her and realized I was quivering all over.
She kissed back real gentle. Her tongue circled my lips, and I kissed her hotter and harder. My rod was up against her. She rubbed back and forth against it.
I'm going to make it with you, Meredith, I thought. You aren't leaving till I get even. I've never seen no one so beautiful.
My hands slid up her rounded thighs along her thin waist. My sweat dampened her face, but she didn't mind. I'm going to fuck you, I thought-long and hard. I'm going to fill you, baby of mine. Roll you around like you never saw.
I was just about to grab them fleshy boobs, when out of nowhere comes this fucking loud truck horn blowing its head off. Startled, Meredith and I let go of each other and looked toward the road.
"Well I'll be a hefton-swalic-ploosh," says I. It was Madison Leroy again in his broken down truck by our drive.
He hollers out, "Come on, Missy! I'll run across the woods to the new highway!" She and I look at each other.
"Boy, I love you," I said. "You're all right, Meredith."
Madison Leroy hollers again. "Come on, Missy! I ain't got all day and neither do you if you want to make the state fine by night-fall!"
"You shut up, Madison Leroy!" I holler back. I held her hands. She was smiling again. "You wait right here, Meredith. Don't you move one inch. 'Cause I got a hunch that you know exactly what you're doing. You're going to make it all work out. I got this further feeling that you're smarter than most girls and a whole lot braver than most men. I got this other feeling inside me when I look at you like I've never had before. You make me want to prove something to myself before it's too late. I want to see if there's more to my life than what I've been living." He blew the horn again.
"You noisy bastard!" I yelled at him. "You keep that truck right where you are for two minutes!" Then I jumped around and around as I shouted as loud as I could: "I'm going to Canada!"
I ran up the porch steps and tripped. We laughed and laughed.
What I done inside happened so fast, I barely knew what I was doing myself. I left Pa and Jackson a note explaining the situation in terms they would understand, maybe. I got my money.
I kicked a hole in the screen door I was in such a hurry. I ran down the porch steps again with my old beat-up suitcase I took every Christmas to Aunt Florice in Shreveport.
"I got everything I own right here in this suitcase," I told Meredith. "Plus Pa's fifth of bourbon as a going-away present. So I reckon I'm ready. Boy! Your eyes sure are blue."
I looked around the old place. I saw the house, the porch swing, the pea-pods, the chimney, the water pump, the barn, the chicken coop, the fields, the pond, the horses, and the countryside I had seen practically every day of my fife.
"I seen this countryside change colors season after season, year after year since I was born."
That damn old Collie came running up to me. She sat down right afore me and Meredith, whining and whimpering. "Oh, be quiet, you beautiful old mutt. Go find yourself a jack rabbit or something." I patted her head. "I'm going to miss you, Collie. You been good to me all this time. You been my only friend. I guess you know that by now." I dropped down and sort of hugged her real tight. She knew what was happening. I was afraid of that. 'You going to miss me, Collie? You going to take care of Pa and Jackson for me?" I got up on my feet. "You live to be a hundred, you hear? I'll be thinking about you from time to time. Now get! Go on! Shoo, Collie, before I kick your damn head from here to the river!" She ran off.
We started walking toward the truck. Meredith put her arm around me. I did the same. I mean, I put my arm around her, not around me.
"Just where do you think you're going, young Rusty Thomas?" asked Madison Leroy in his crummy old jalopy. "With that suitcase and this missy?"
"Now where does it look like I'm going? I'm off to see the world and find me a job and get me a wife."
Madison Leroy says, "You lost your mind, and I'm glad of it-for my sake, for your Pa's sake, for my daughter's sake, and for the whole world. Climb up in back, both of you, so I can be home for dinner. Hang on 'cause I ain't got all day. I ain't one for wasting time."
Meredith and I climbed aboard, and Madison Leroy jolted us on our way, up the road toward Canada.
I waited till the house was out of view and then the farm. I lay down with Meredith on the truck and felt kind of funny. There was nothing to say because the wind and truck made too much noise.
Meredith understood, though. She unbuttoned my shirt and kissed my chest up and down from' my neck to my belly button.
I closed my eyes, bouncing around on the truck. She undid my buckle and zipper and slipped off my pants. My cock snapped up and slapped my belly. I shivered. I felt her lick my loaded balls, juggling them up and down.
The call was mighty urgent. I wanted to come so bad and my dong itched so much that the wind almost jerked me off.
Goodbye, Pa. Goodbye, Jackson.
I took Meredith in my arms. She lay over me.
I opened my eyes. Her huge melons were hanging right over my face. She lowered them, and they smothered my face-so rich and solid. I hugged her tightly. She slid down aways right on my rod and let it tickle and tease her cunt. That tickled and teased me even more.
We both had juices dripping wet already.
"Oh, baby."
We kissed and tongued each other madly.
I couldn't see her loveplace, but the bulbous head of my stick snuggled in nice and warmly. The truck bounced and curved which made me penetrate with uneven rhythm.
I grabbed her ample teats in my hands and pinched her hardened nipples. She pulled my hair and struggled.
We rolled over so I was on top. I went as deep into her as I thought she could enjoy. I shivered with excitement and appetite.
I felt chills and joy and wanted to fuck like this all day.
Suddenly, she squeezed my ass and stiffened her whole body. Her hips thrust upward. I plunged my cock all the way in and out. Then our hips were mashed together against each other and I fucked her with short quick jerks all the way up.
We laid flat against each other from cheek to toe. Instantly, I was wild with urgency. Wait for me, baby. I'm coming, too. Our orgasms erupted full blast with ultimate spasm after spasm. All our energy shot into each other and out into all eternity. We rocked back and forth with each thrill and each explosion of passionate joy and completion.
I had never known anything like it before. I was drained. Pleased. Happy.
Meredith rested on my chest, and we looked up at the sky. The wind made too much noise for conversation. Tree tops on our right and tree tops on our left whizzed by.
How do you like that: falling in love and getting the best piece of ass of my life right there on the back of Madison Leroy's old truck.
I tried to figure out how long it would take us to hit Canada, but then I gave up.
Hell, I had never been up to the state line yet.
CHAPTER TWO
I was looking back yonder at the hilly, woodsy road where Madison Leroy's truck had just been, standing on the back edge of the truck bed. Meredith and me had this hide-and-seek game going on our merry way to the super-highway.
"Twenty-two," I call out, as the truck bounces along. "Twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five!" I swirl around and see only the truck with hay piled high in front of me. You, Meredith, my sweet heavenly fucking angel in your goddam Army shirt, are buried somewheres in all this straw crap.
"I'm going to get you, Sergeant, you hear?" I dove into the hay and scrambled around in search of Meredith. I tossed straw all over tarnation and crawled around like a mole.
This damn hide-and-seek game was her idea. Not mine.
I had one minute to find her or else. We never did decide what the "or else" was. Maybe if I couldn't find her, I'd have to forfeit one fuck or something.
"I ain't forfeiting nothing, Meredith! I almost got you, Sergeant!" You couldn't understand a word I said 'cause my head was smothered in straw.
Then I grabbed an ankle and came up for air. I slowly pulled her out of the straw. Meredith was too dignified and clean to yank right out of the hay, although I wanted her to fight and struggle 'cause I was a man after her. I unzipped and was ready to pounce upon her when suddenly the damn truck swerved to the roadside and squealed to a halt-catching me off balance which forced me to fall on my ass. Meredith laughed. I sort of laughed, too.
"It isn't one damn bit funny," I commented.
"All right, you two," hollered out Madison Leroy from his junky old cab.
Meredith and me jumped down with our belongings.
I set about for the last time to watch his old crate make its U-turn and vanish through the forest toward Cricket Creek Road forever. That truck was the last thing about my lifelong stomping grounds that-
"I don't see why you're standing there, Rusty. We have to cross the highway and catch one of these cars before dusk. I already saw a firefly."
She sat on our suitcases with her untanned teats almost falling out of her unbuttoned Army shirt facing the oncoming traffic. I was out there thumbing us a ride to the state line. Before any cars came by, I had a chance to practice how I should stand.
"You're too stiff," she said. "Relax and rest on one leg and don't have your hand between your legs like that."
So I relaxed like you do when you have to stand up at church early in the morning.
Three cars zoomed up, squealed, honked, skidded, and dodged each other. I jumped back.
"Goddam, Meredith Sergeant! You trying to get me killed? Button that thing up before one of these cars knocks me from here to the Gulf of Mexico."
"Please get the suitcases. We have our first ride."
Sure enough. This big brand new car was backing up for us, and Meredith was running to it. She got in the front seat, and I hopped in the back.
Fore I knew it, the car lurched forward, and I was suddenly sitting betwixt two of the richest, sweetest smelling, broadest bedecked broads I ever imagined. The car wasn't a car, either. It was more like a living room. Or a hotel lobby.
They were inches taller than me, too, so I didn't have much time to relax back in the seat, trying to sit upright and everything. They were really fancy. They gave me a hardon in two seconds flat. I was afraid to talk to such respectable ladies, so I pretended I was looking for a map in my pockets. I just had no idea what to say. They knew it, too, 'cause one blew cigarette smoke in my face and the other popped her chewing gum at me.
I sat with my legs real tight together so as to not touch their knees, for which I could have been thrown out of the car. I didn't know if to whistle or say something or pretend to fall asleep.
Both ladies were done up in bright, tight, shiny, sparkling dresses. They each had pounds of jewels and trimmings all over them. Things dangled from their ears and arms, too. They were probably famous and rich 'cause they could afford lots and lots of colorful makeup.
Finally, I spoke. "I never seen eyelashes as long and curly and pretty as yours, ma'am." I said that 'cause eyes are the most important thing about a person-besides his heart and brain and breathing and a few other things, I reckon. "Eyes are very important, and yours are right pretty."
"Yea? Is that so? You got a thing about eyelashes, junior?"
I gasped. It was her voice. It was deep as a radio announcer. Deeper than mine. Almost as deep as a man's. I mean, I'm a man, but my voice wasn't real deep and hoarse yet. Hers was. Not that she was a man.
I oughtn't to have talked without thinking first. "I don't mean no harm about your eyelashes, ma'am. They were just the first thing I noticed about you. Well, actually the second thing." Those big teats were the first.
"They're fake."
"Tour bosoms are fake?"
"My eyelashes. Who said anything about my-Dod-son, pull over and let him walk. Did you hear what he said?"
The driver said, "Relax, Honey Dew. Smoke a cigarette or sand your nails."
Meredith looked at the driver and laughed, and then he laughed. He was a real young guy like me and Meredith. Only he was dressed real fancy and frappy and looked official.
"Where you headed?" he pondered to Meredith.
"Canada."
"Is that right? How quixotic. Honey Dew?" he said to one of these two social women back here sandwiching me in. "These two people are going to Canada."
"Tea?" said the one chewing gum. "What's the matter, boy? Uncle Sam after you, and you don't want to be a soldier boy and shoot off your big gun all the time?"
Then the other one adds, "Maybe, Honey Dew, he's afraid of running out of ammunition!"
Them two broads cackled and frolicked and leaned over me to slap each other's knees or something. Then they were squashing me even more. They each had lots of room between them and their door.
The driver asked Meredith, "What will you do when you get up to Canada?"
She looked around at me, and I sort of smiled the best I could being squooshed. 'We're going to live and have a good time, aren't we Rusty? And do whatever we want."
"Is he with you?" Meaning me.
"We're hitchhiking together for a while. Till we make different plans."
He said, "By the way, I'm Dodson. That's Honey Dew and Royal Gorge in the back seat."
Honey Dew and Royal Gorge? They sound like movie stars sitting next to me.
"I'm Meredith."
"This here's Rusty," I said.
Then nobody said anything, and we drove on a little ways.
Royal Gorge said, 'What's taking so long, Dodson? I got ants in my pants."
"Easy lovely. It won't be long." He said to Meredith, "We're going as far as Chattanooga."
"Chattanooga's fine. It'll put us into the next state."
I smiled at the prominent woman named Royal Gorge. "We're going to travel a lot, me and Meredith. It's a big world, Miss Gorge."
"Yea, and you're going first class, ain't you?"
The driver Dodson said, "How long you plan to reside up north?"
Meredith: "Can't say yet."
"Well, you won't have any difficulty getting around. I wish I wasn't committed so I could travel. You'll have lots of stories and adventures to tell about when you return home."
"I'm not going back home."
"Neither am I," I said. "No reason for a man to stay put when there's so much going on in the world today. Isn't that right, Meredith Sergeant?"
"He's right."
"We're pals," I told Honey Dew. "We're pals?"
"Not you. Me and Meredith."
"You mean, I'm not your pal, junior?"
"You're my pal, too." How do I get myself in trouble like this? She blew smoke in my face.
The other one-Royal Gorge-chomped her chewing gum and wadded up another piece to chew. They must be rich. She had to be plenty rich to afford chewing four gums that I knew about at one time.
"You got money?" said Miss Gorge.
"Sure I got money. I got forty-something dollars. Meredith's got some, too."
"Forty lousy bucks and you're going to Canada? You expect to rob innocent virgins like us along the way?"
"Oh no, ma'am. I don't rob virgins. I mean, I don't rob anybody except Pa. 'Course, Pa robs everybody hisself. He's a fine man, though. You should meet him."
"Shit."
I thought at first Miss Gorge said "shit."
"Did you say 'shit'?"
She said, "Hush your mouth, boy. Dodson, he's back here cursing at us."
That done it. "Get your knee away from me. You too." They weren't prominent movie-pitcher stars or nothing. These over-busted broads were bled-flekkled zooks. "Meredith, I want to walk. This is righteous ridiculous. Every time I say something-"
"It's all right, Rusty," Sergeant said. "We'll talk about it later."
Fuck these froppy zooks. I leaned back as far as the seat went and spread open my legs and drove along the countryside nice and easy. They was worse than zooks. They was plum plotzy.
" Honey Dew proclaimed, "So you don't have money. You hear that, Dodson? They need money. What will you do to earn money?"
Now they're trying to be friendly.
"You deaf?"
"I'll do anything for money. There's nothing I can't do, and Meredith knows it, too, so you just leave me alone." )
'You'd be surprised where you can pick up a few extra bucks for doing things you like to do."
Dodson said, "Later, Honey Dew. Later."
Then the worse thing that could happen happened. Miss Gorge gets kind of romantic and starts adjusting my unbuttoned shirt. Then she rubs my chest here and there and leans on me.
"I kind of like you, boy."
I was fuming and steaming and feeling loathsome. "I kind of like you, too, Miss Gorge."
"Oh my. Look what I found here," said Honey Dew.
They were looking down at my lap. Well, not actually at my lap but at my cock erection. My meaty sconce was stretching straight up-and sticking out over my pants a little ways under my belt. You could actually look down and see the head of my cock against my belly. It was bluish purplish pinkish. It was wide and oval because it was being squashed. I was being squashed. Again.
"Isn't that pretty?" said Miss Gorge, sounding sincere for the first time.
Suddenly, this glass window goes up betwixt the front seat and the back seat. Soundproof and peculiar. Dodson started saying things to Meredith that made her laugh and twinkle her eyes at him. He said something about her hair. I read his lips. "You all have pretty hair," I saw him say. Meredith, I love you, I thought.
"Got a hankerchief, junior?" pondered Honey Dew melons.
I looked down where they were looking. Clear juice was oozing from my dynamite. I wiped it with my shirttail which made it quiver and throb and itch even more.
Honey Dew put another cigarette in her holder and lit it. Royal Gorge poked another gum stick in her mouth. What a zatzle. Spit dripped from her lips which made them both scream and bellow. They swayed back and forth, cackling and screaming-mashing me to death.
Fore I could say get-your-bodies-off-me, Honey Dew's face was in my lap, snuggling up to my bulky crotch equipment. She kissed and licked my prick something terrible.
I was swollen with sex. My eyelids were heavy and so was my breathing and heart rate. Blow it, you bitchy witch.
Dodson was giving Meredith a proposition.
Somehow, my hand was drifting toward Miss Gorge's leg and under her tight, sparkling dress and up to her gorge. Gorgel Royal Gorge! Now I knew about her name. Royal Gorge was like Great Cunt. I shoved in three fingers after fiddling around.
"Now I know about your name, Miss Gorge."
She giggled and coughed and groaned because I squeezed in my two other fingers. Royal Gorge had a royal gorge. They weren't so bad as zooks, after all. They was just honest whores.
Honey Dew was blowing and sucking and splashing all over the place. I was shivering with delight and licking my lips, waiting to come any moment. Miss Gorge knocked on the window betwixt the seats. I leaned forward to see what was happening. Dodson turned on a miniature television under the dashboard.
Holy praises. Who was on the little screen up there but me and Honey Dew, who was getting my cock ready to explode, and Royal Gorge, who was squirming with apparent pleasure with my hand in her opening up to my wrist. The camera was on the car ceiling. I never seen such a thing.
I looked down at Honey Dew and-
Praise the holy! That hair wasn't her hair at all. I mean, with her bent over like that, I saw short black hair around her neck underneath her blonde wig. I decided again that they was zooks, indeed. All of them. Who ever heard of a woman with a deep, husky, raspy voice like that having short black hair covered up with fake wigs.
I was more confused than a November thunderstorm.
"I don't want to come," I announced. I was going to pull her up by her wig, but thought better. She wouldn't stop. I was closer. My cock was flaming with passion and hungry for the hot, super-tingling eruption, which was upon me. I squirted full deep into her. I quaked with tumultuous joy and relief. Ooh.
Simultaneously, the car swerved off the highway and bounced onto a driveway, but I didn't know what the hell was going on. The bouncing made my rod shove itself down Honey Dew's throat, which caused her uncomfortable coughing and convulsions.
At last me and Meredith could get out of that place and catch us a better ride.
Dodson said, "Everybody get out. We're having a beer before we progress."
Miss Gorge from whose cunt I slowly removed my hand said, "You deaf, Dodson? You hear me say that I got ants in my pants? I want to get to Chattanooga so's I can nap some before the performance. You're right, Honey Dew, honey. He is a worm."
"Worse than that. Worse than that."
"Let's go," he said. Then he looked back at me and grinned. "We got business to discuss."
Business?
He looked at Meredith, who said, "It's up to him." Meaning me-but meaning what, I had no idea.
At least they stopped at a decent, classy place. At least Dodson had some taste and cultivation. He chose to stop at Steve and Nicky's Bar and Restaurant: beer, pinball, pool, and shuffleboard.
"You shoot pool, Rusty?" Dodson inquired.
I done gave up trying to comprehend all this. I didn't know if to say yes or no or why. I looked at Meredith Sergeant. She winked at me so's no one else could see and very slightly nodded her head.
"Sure, I play pool."
We disembarked from the car. Honey Dew spat out gobs and gobs of my you-know-what. Miss Gorge wiped her hand on her dress and sort of limped.
Meredith took my hand and squeezed it. "Don't worry, Rusty. We're going to be together. We've got things to learn."
CHAPTER THREE
Dodson said, "Three ball in the side pocket."
We'll see, I thought. He's aiming too low. He struck the cue ball, and it wobbled somewheres else.
"Damn," he snarled and gulped beer. Men at the bar were watching us from their stools. "Let me pay you now, Rusty. I'm humiliated and you'll win this game, I'm certain."
"Six ball." I pointed the cue stick at a pocket and lined her up. Rusty Thomas don't forfeit to no man for no thing. No man forfeits to Rusty Thomas. They just sometimes lose their ass.
The cue stick slid freely betwix my finger knuckles. I aimed a little to the right. Got to make this point. An extra dollar now can buy Meredith a magazine to read or a beer when we get to Canada.
The cue stick slid freely betwixt my finger knuckles. Lined up straight. Getting ready. Lining her up. Holding steady. Breathe in. Stroke back. Stroke forward.
Click.
Cue ball knocked the six ball smack where she belonged. Another dollar. I walked around the table. Dodson said something.
"Four ball," I said. I squinted and measured distances. Come here, Meredith, I thought. I want you to see this. I aimed the cue stick. Easy easy. Breathe in. Stroke.
Click.
The cue ball bounced off the side cushion, kissed the eight ball; the eight ball kicked the number four ball into bed. Another dollar.
"I'm no competition for you," said Dodson.
"I don't shoot for competition," I said. "Just for fun."
The eight ball was out there so lonesome on the table. You'll be with your friends in a moment. I'll see to that. You'll earn me another dollar. Easy shot.
Click.
"Your game," said Dodson, "but I enjoyed it. I like your style."
Honey Dew called us from the booth. "Hey, you two! Fill my beer, and set your ass down over here."
"Barkeep," said Dodson. "Fill the ladies' beers and keep them quiet." Dodson said to me, "It's not the beer we stopped for. It's an intermission from Honey Dew and Royal Gorge that I need. We're driving up from Savannah. Can you imagine driving four hundred miles with those two pestering, rambunctious females behind me in the back seat? I'm glad I saw you and your girlfriend. Another beer?"
"Thank you."
Dodson didn't know how pestering they could be. At least they couldn't pester his cock up there while he was driving like they done mine in the back seat. Unless of course, Honey Dew jacked-knifed herself over the front seat-with her ass over the front seat-her legs hanging in the back and her face flung over the front onto Dodson. Then all Dodson would have to do was wait till Honey Dew was flung over the seat-half in back, half in front-and then roll up the window real fast between the front seat and the back seat. The window would clamp Honey Dew steadfast, and she'd be wiggling there as harmless as a codfish on a boat deck pulling into harbor till they pulled into Chattanooga.
The barman put money in the jukebox and played his favorite: Caterpillar Gravy Wont Leave You Hungry When I Cook Dinner for You Tonight, Princess.
Then the barman took beer to Meredith, Honey Dew, and Royal Gorge at their booth. It appeared that Honey Dew was shredding up napkins. Miss Gorge was peeling off beer bottle labels. Meredith was a lady. Maybe with this new money I could buy her a Navy shirt.
Where did Dodson make money to buy everyone beers and bet on pool, which he couldn't play too well, and take us to a fancy place like this with music and colored lights and tablecloths and everything?
"Here's your fifteen," said Dodson, paying me for the last pool game. "That's a lot of money so please afford me an opportunity to earn it back. Play again?"
"I can't play again with you, Dodson. It ain't fair. I can't take your money like this. You're doing me and Meredith a favor. It ain't right for me to win pool games off you."
Pa raised me not to hustle pool bets. Pa says: He who hustles anything covets thy neighbor's name in vain. Pa made that up one day while talking to Pastor Roberts about the collection box. Pa claimed that Pastor Robert's collection box was a covet.
Dodson said, "Then we'll shoot for fifty cents more per ball. I pay you a dollar-fifty for every ball you sink. You pay me a dollar-fifty for every ball I sink. I'm warming up."
"No Dodson. I can't take your money." How much money did he have? I ought to get in business, too, maybe.
"Then we'll play for two dollars per ball."
I said, "Be sensible." Two dollars of mine to one of yours." He was sure making fun difficult. "No."
"Three dollars per bal!"
"Be sensible, Dodson. I mean it."
"Three dollars per ball-twenty for the game."
"What if I should lose? I don't have that much money."
"Twenty dollars per ball-thirty for the game."
Twenty dollars per ball? I could buy Meredith a Navy shirt and a submarine to go with it. Dodson had lost his bearings. He was plainly beyond Our Maker's help. If Our Maker couldn't help him, I'll be damned if I could.
"You're on," I said and handed him his cue stick.
Which was a mistake and I knew it. What was probably happening wasn't me hustling Dodson-but Dodson was hustling me! It was too late. He broke the balls and one was pocketed. I watched his next shot with grave anticipation. Make a good shot, Dodson, and show me what a fool I was to be hustled. Make a bad shot, Dodson, 'cause Meredith is sitting over there-trusting me to make , good judgements, which I weren't.
Praises be sung. Dodson's next ball bounced plum off the table and scared the shit out of an alley cat snoring on the floor.
I looked at Dodson. Why-do-you-bet-if-you-can't-win? He shrugged his shoulders. I shrugged mine. I took the next shot, and the next and the next and the next.
I sank the eight ball, reached my arms in the air, broke the cue stick in half, and yelped, "Give me one Navy shirt and a submarine with atomic power!" I won the game.
Honey Dew hollered out, "I'll give you an atomic power knee if you's don't set your ass down over here!"
I wanted to dance and shout, but that would make Dodson sadder, but he was actually smiling-almost satisfied somehow.
What happened was we drank another beer and played more games: pinball, dice-rolling, table'bowling, and we made one final bet on "The Cowgirl Gets Ready for Beddy-bye." That was a machine you put a quarter into and turn a crank and see cards flip around that show a cowgirl doing a strip like a little movie. Dodson bet she would show her cunt. I said that this was a fancy barroom with tablecloths and everything, and they wouldn't allow such a thing. I was right. She went to bed wearing panties and a garter belt. Dodson loaded my head with the idea of driving Meredith into Canada in a new used Ford.
Dodson went to the restroom. Meredith came up and hugged me.
"Rusty, you're a winner. This will help you buy food and lodging."
'It's yours also, Sergeant. What I have is yours equally. I don't feel right about this, though, and there's something funny. I done our driver wrong somehow. Dodson didn't deserve to lose. He didn't have education on these games like me."
"You played honestly."
"But he was unfairly, unduly, unevenly competed against. I should have done the right thing and stopped him from betting with me-who was the champion pinball shooter in 1966 in our township till Howy Alameda came along and beat me, the sonofa-bitch. Dodson been to school, but not for pinball and pool like me. These here places are my classrooms. I should have stopped him."
"Why didn't you?"
"Why didn't I? Here's why I didn't. Lookie here." I pulled out some of the bills. "Did you ever see anything like it? I couldn't pass this up. Only a fool doesn't bend to pick up a penny. This here's more than a one-cent penny, Meredith. Count it, 'cause I sure can't."
"Astounding." She looked around, presumably for Dodson.
"This here's more loot than Preston McDonald and me stole from the movie house last week and from the petty cash at the American Legion Hall the week before put together. Put this money in your pockets, Meredith-fore an angel from above swoops down, strikes me dead, and snatches it away from us forever."
Meredith smiled up at me like she was proud and happy. She pressed her face to my chest.
"Preston McDonald was my partner in looting. He'd get hisself a job at the quarry if he saw all this finance I won legally. He'd give up looting forever if he could see how much a man can make legitimately."
It was almost dark outside. Me, Meredith, Honey Dew, and Royal Gorge all walked outdoors to continue our ride. Dodson stayed behind to pay the barman. I looked at a menu taped on the window outside.
I was reading that pork chops cost seventy-five cents when all of a sudden I glimpsed Dodson on the other side of the window inside with a cue stick in his hand.
"He's still trying to make a good shot," I said to myself. "If he can't make a good shot for money, then he can't make one at all."
Polka-dotted, fourteen carat shit!
Was I in disunified error. Dodson loosened his necktie, bent over that pool table, kissed the cue tip and shot those billiards frantic. Balls kicked each other north, south, east, and west. He sunk two on the first shot, three on the second, and hit a perfect flying-Nelly with a double rebound on the next.
I saw him laugh and pay the barman while the men at the barstools applauded.
I got myself away from that window and back to the car as quick but inconspicuously as possible. Something mighty erroneous was transpiring. Somehow I knew me and Meredith was going to be the last to know what. Dodson was able to shoot pool better than me, and yet he made hisself lose every time. There was a time bomb in the library, and I didn't like it.
No man gives money away except in church-unless he's like Pa, who don't give money away in church or nowhere unless it's in the form of beer.
"Sergeant Meredith," I reported to her at the car. "Something mighty erroneous is transpiring about that pool game."
'What do you mean?"
"I mean about Dodson."
"I don't fully understand, Rusty."
"Nor I. But we'll find out before this chapter of our journey is ended. That boy knows pool better than me. He could have won or pork chops don't cost seventy-five cents in there. And they do. Check the menu over there on the window. Meredith, there's a watermelon growing on the cotton vine, and I don't like it."
"Let's not worry about it, Rusty. We're safe as long as we're together."
Conspiracy or not, we all piled back in the car for Chattanooga. There was some rangling, though. I wanted Meredith to sit in back with me, but Honey Dew kept saying that she wanted to sit by the winner. I kept saying. "That's all right, ma'am. That's nice of you, but you can see the road better up there." Although there was no road to see since it was dark or thereabouts.
We drove on to Chattanooga with hardly a word spoken except for the radio which was mostly music. When we got to Chattanooga, everyone was asleep-except Dodson, of course, who was driving, and me, of course, or how else would I know that we were in Chattanooga?
I just couldn't figure out Dodson. Folks are all different lands, I surmised. There are the Honey Dews and the Dodsons and Meredith and the Preston McDonalds. All kinds.
Preston McDonald was my friend in looting. I'll miss you, Preston, you onry cheat. We met six years ago when we were both breaking into Widow Hampton's mansion one night when she was off in Osage for her stepdaughter's wedding.
"No, I won't leave my house unguarded to see my one and only stepdaughter married off in Osage," Widow Hampton kept telling everyone. "She'll marry off here where I live or not at all. I won't leave my house except at Judgment Day."
The stepdaughter, though, wrote Widow Hampton a letter that said if the wedding had to happen where Widow Hampton lived instead of in Osage, then Widow Hampton, her stepmother, just simply wouldn't be invited.
I waited tooth and nail to see if the house would be empty. Finally, the old woman decided her decision.
I'll go to Osage and hate every minute of it," she told everyone. The house would be empty and unguarded 'cause no one wanted the responsibility.
"My stepdaughter will marry off in Osage and like it-Marry off in Osage and I'll like it, she meant. Not me like it, but her like it-Widow Hampton. 'Course I liked it, too. I penetrated the back door the night she left for Osage. I liked that abundantly. All them Civil War statues and trinkets and what-have-you to haul off in a laundry bag which weren't big enough.
I groped around the house and up the stairs, fearful for my life because the place stunk and who knows what lurked behind any corner or in any room.
I'll tell you what lurked: Preston McDonald lurked. We bumped into each other in the third floor sitting room. He had a laundry bag, too. He was from the next town over and came to Widow Hampton's mansion with the same objective as mine on the very same night-except he came in the fire escape. So me and Preston McDonald hit it off as friends there in the dark real fast once we knew each other weren't police or ghosts.
We used to pull off a burglary and then get ourselves a whore.
Dodson stopped the auto in the woods. We were at some kind of big house that was all lit up. Cars were parked all around. Where were we? There was no highway for me and Meredith. It was dark.
Dodson turned off the auto and said, "We're here."
"We're here?" I said. "Where are we here?"
"This is my special private nightclub, Rusty. I would like for you and Meredith to see it. Come inside, and then I'll drive you down to the highway or to a hotel."
I'm not one for nightclubs, Dodson, but thank you."
"This place is quite different. I think you'll see what I mean if we go inside. You have a long trip ahead of you. This might be some fun to start you off right on your first night on the road."
"How did you know this was our first night on the road?"
"Meredith."
I held Meredith a little tighter. She was sleeping in my lap all curled up with my hand under her Army shirt. "Wake up, Meredith honey. Meredith baby? Come on Sergeant. I need you."
Dodson said, "Get your eyes open" to Royal Gorge and Honey Dew. "Time for the performance."
Meredith moved and opened her eyes. 'What time is it, Rusty? Where are we?" She sat up and looked outside and looked at me.
"This is Dodson's place, baby. He's inviting us in."
This was mighty bashful business. Here he'd driven us all this way, paid out large sums for pool games and beer, and now he was inviting us inside to a special nightclub or whatever. I was beginning to feel that I owed Dodson something. I had thanks to show him.
We all got out of the car.
The big house was all lit up with colorful stained glass windows like I never seen.
"Look, Meredith, at those beautiful windows." There was something about those windows. I thought everyone should have stained glass colored windows like that. Not just churches and special places. Maybe they could be made out of special material instead of expensive glass. If lots of windows could be made cheaply, lots of people could buy them. Like on an assembly line. I could go in business if I could figure out a way to do it. I decided that I would contemplate ideas on it later because someday I would have to go in business. I was happy we stopped here. The idea about the stained glass windows made the stop worthwhile already.
As we walked too the big carved door, I couldn't put my arm around Meredith because Honey Dew and Royal Gorge were squeezing me from both sides.
"Come on, junior. You're going to like this," said Honey Dew.
"And so will we," said Miss Gorge.
"And so will they," said Honey Dew.
Dodson was explaining things to Meredith behind us.
CHAPTER FOUR
Dodson's place.
A lovely naked boy and girl were tang-Mopped in a maddening sexual quandary. They were naked and facing each other and ready for fucking, all right, but his inflamed rapier simply couldn't for the life of him reach her hungry opening. 'Cause the quandary was that chains held down their feet spread apart, and straps held their arms in the air. They couldn't touch. They couldn't touch.
They faced each other naked with gurgling lust, but they couldn't budge closer together no matter how much wiggling, humping, stretching, twisting, and craving they fought.
My balls ached to see them tortured and unfucked. I clenched my fists and socked them into each other. Bang her, you poor bastard. I wanted to cry. They were mesmerized in fighting and squirming to make their parts plunge together. Their heads rolled around. Them poor naked souls wriggled though nary a thing could be done 'cause of those chains. Tears rolled from their eyes. Spit from their lips. Juice from the boy's cock.
Dodson said, "They'll be all right unless they faint. We'll unlock the straps later. Anyway, we pay them well."
I never heard of people being paid not to fuck.
"Good evening, Your Honor," Dodson said to a man passing. "Nice to see you, Senator," to another. "Hello, Carlyle. How's the airline?"
"Lots of trouble in Washington, son. People up there still think we airlines are a gift to the general public. Damn the public, that's what I say, but keep them happy and out of Washington. People don't belong in Washington. Just the politicians."
Men were going up and looking at the tortured boy and girl carefully. I'm telling you, that was unfair. I had thought Dodson was schooled. These men looked schooled, too. I didn't understand it. I just didn't understand it.
He was talking to me: the airline man.
"Who're your charming friends, Dodson? I haven't had the delight of meeting them yet." He puffed cigar smoke rings. "Do you two believe we airlines should fly the public as a gift, for chrissake, on a break-even basis?"
"Hell no," I said. "You got rights just the same as us.
Meredith said, "Most air traffic is for professional purposes anyway. One magazine said over fifty percent. I'm sure that corporations can afford higher fares."
"I agree, lassy," the airline man spoke.
"I agree, too," I said. "Even though I don't know one fact about airplanes except that they're dangerous as a cyclone." He quite smoking and looked at me, so's I figured to continued. " 'Course, I never been on a airplane except the one in front of the grocery market when I was a kid about yea high, and Ma gave me a dime, but it only went up so far." I showed him fourteen inches between my hands. "That's a rattlesnake's leap from a real airplane."
Dodson said, "My two friends are hitchhiking to Canada. I met them 'cross the state line."
"Canada?"
"Yessir. Me and Meredith figure that's the place to be." I snuggled my arm around her. "My name's Carlyle. You going north after the show?"
"Yes," said Meredith.
"Fine. I'll give you a ride up to Columbus. Him too."
"Thank you, sir," I said. Meredith thanked him by leaning her face to the side and smiling.
"Come this way," said Dodson. "I have a table for you. The show's about to begin."
I said to Meredith, "Nice fellow, the airplane man. Nice to give us a ride."
Our table couldn't have been closer to the little stage, or to the panting naked boy and girl. Still wriggling on their leashes in vain attempt to fuck in public which they probably wasn't paying no mind to being all worked up and going berserk. Poor poor anguished lovers. Poor heated bastards of beauty. Poor frenzied dripping cock all swollen. Poor unfilled juicy love-place! My skinning knife could cut loose those forsaken straps and set them free, alas. He could then harpoon the living come out of her. Or rather, out of him. He had the come. She had the means.
"Rusty, you may be seated. I'll bring you drinks."
I sat down next to Meredith. "Why, Sergeant? Why is Dodson being so folksy with us? Giving us transport, giving us dollars for pool games he could have cinched, giving us drinks and this place and a table right up front? I'm befrappled."
'You're what?"
"Befrappled. And look at them up there. Those poor lovers all aglow with the urge to you-guessed-it. Look at their faces."
But suddenly, there were two other faces to watch now. There they were again: Honey Dew, who sucked my dick, and Royal Gorge, who spoke for itself. Up on the stage, they were. With the band putting out a loud fanfare, and the two of them frops crossing back and forth taking curtsies and bows with crumpled up fake flowers in their arms-blowing kisses every whichaway. Honey Dew's short black hair under her blonde wig showed up more worse than ever. All the rich men clapped and whistled and cheered like they were queens.
I secretly laughed out loud at what those two ballerinas did to me in Dodson's back seat. Then Honey Dew saw me and Meredith eye to eye, and I was instantly in fright. She pranced up to us, bent over the stage, laid a mildewed kiss on my forehead just where Ma used to do, and whispered: "You lazy, big-cocked, lovely farmboy hitchhiker."
Then the show began.
"Meredith, I never seen anything like this. The farther North you get, the crazier folks become."
Royal Gorge was first, and she waited on all the stimulated men to settle down.
Her song and dance was called "Bootlegging my Love"-all about Royal Gorge putting her love in a whiskey bottle and going from town to town till she could pour some out. Them words weren't vital, because who could pay mind to them, what with Miss Gorge taking off all her clothes. Those men were carrying on like it was a revival.
Every time she took off a jewelry piece, the drum went bang! and I budged just a wee bit in my seat. "Hot damn, she's got talent, Meredith. Don't you think?" Meredith was still stirring her drink round and round with the little stick. "Here, Meredith. Sip mine. It's all stirred up."
After that, she took off her shoes and lifted her dress to show her panties which I saw with uninterrupted horizon from where we were seated. Much more of this, and I wasn't going to be seated at all.
Come on, Gorge. Get that thing unbuttoned. She was taking forever in getting off that needless dress. Then she whipped off the top part and tossed it to the men who spilled drinks and bumped each other, scrambling on the floor.
Gorge was doing it right but taking forever, goddam-it. We ain't got all day. Get them clothes off, you limelight frop.
Suddenly, I got scared again.
Miss Gorge was heading this way. To our table. Looking on me. I looked at Meredith, but that was no help. Meredith was resting her chin on her hand, looking on me too. She pantomimed a slow motion kiss.
I was getting it from all sides.
Royal Gorge stood right over me, dropped her panties, dropped a tiny panty under that, and holy shit, she was stark raving naked. Worse than that.
You know where that bottle of bootleg love she sung about was? Smack up her cunt! She spread her legs, reached up her crack and cringed, and pulled out a half-pint bottle from her hole.
What should I do? What should I do?
I didn't know if to slouch down like nothing was happening or if to stay rigid and erect. If to look real droozy and sexed or if to stay smiling and wide-eyed. If to watch her pussy or her eyes or Meredith or look around for Dodson or tie my shoelace. Or if to yell like I found oil.
Miss Gorge tried to unscrew the bottle of love, but couldn't. So what did she do? She handed it to me.
The cap came off real easily, and suddenly, out popped this gigantic cock that flew out of the bottle and nearly knocked me off my chair.
The men screamed with humor, and the band did a finale. Miss Gorge pranced around, blew me a kiss which she didn't have to do on my account, that was certain. Off the stage she went. We could all see that she had wrinkles on her ass, too.
"Damn frop," I said to Meredith. "See if I fuck her now."
The music band started up again. This time it was Honey Dew all bedecked in a white uniform with blood stains. She sang like a radio announcer with tonsilitis. A song called "When I come home from packing meat at the store, there's one more piece of meat in store for me to pack."
Honey Dew did the same thing just about-strip, except she acted real onry like Pastor Robert's wife, wagging her big ass all over. She kept blinking her eyes real fast, too, and flipping her wrists and puckering up her lips and showing her tongue.
Here we go again.
Honey Dew saw me and Meredith and pointed our way for the benefit of the other men. The music had tom-tom drums going with a tambourine. Honey Dew was droozy-eyed and heading right this way. This time I would fight back.
She was down to her panties and bra thing, and she stood right over me up on the stage. Teasing and tempting me too far with her hips going round in circles and bending over for me to snatch them teats from under the bra.
Barefoot, she wiggled her toes in my hair. You frop! And with her toes under my chin she pulled me up out of my chair and laughed when I was standing.
This I was not going to stand for. I was hot now, to say nothing about my hardon just beating and groaning for a good fuck. I was sweating worse, too. And agitated. And horny, baby.
You want me to ball you, Honey Dew, I tried to show her with my face? You want Rusty's peter right here in public? You pushing me to that? I started to climb up on that goddam stage. You want Rusty to come up there after you? You like to get raped? You like to get a cock in your cunt and a fist up your ass?
I was up there with her now, paying no attention to all the hollering and laughing and clapping from the audience. This was more vital right now. My reputation had to be defended.
"Defend yourself," I told her.
She just backed off a little ways. More yelling from the men. Honey Dew wrinkled up her nose at me. I was standing tall and powerful. Walking to her gradually. Till I reached out and grabbed her arm and pulled her against me and suffocated her with kisses and caresses in my arms.
My rod rubbed against her, twitching and tingling with drive. I was going to fill my body with her. I was going to get delirious.
"Delirious delirious!"
Her ass felt good and sturdy. I pressed her twat against me and dry humped in slow motion. A good fuck was imminent. I looked at her face, and she twittered those stupid eyelashes at me.
"You oughtn't to do that."
It was too late for her. I needed love. I needed sex. I needed it now.
I reached down and ripped off her panties which sent her off balance, running across the stage where she threw up her arms and presented her naked self to-
Naked self!
Naked naked self!
Fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck.
Her naked self was none other than a man.
A man a man a man.
I swirled in circles. All a blur. All loud noises. Somewhere to go. A man a man a man. They laughed. Run! Stop. Cry. Shout. Gag. Pray. Run.
Stop. The naked boy and girl in chains.
"Be free and do it! Be free, be free, be free!" I braced myself between them, hugged both their asses, and pulled them together till his cock squeezed into her cunt-and they knew the time had come, at last. I pulled their asses in and out while they screamed, awakened with it actually happening. A final cry from each of them and I knew they had orgasm, the most beautiful thing in the world. I released them, and they passed out, hanging from the straps.
Now where to go. I fought my way through the crowd, knocking, kicking, swinging, hollering fiercely. All a blur. All a swirl. At last, I found the door and staggered outside and tripped and fell on the ground and pounded my fists on the earth.
"A man, a man, a man. Honey Dew is a man." Oh Pa, I must go on. I must leave and continue and search and search. And learn whatever-it-is. Learn not to meddle with frops or big cars or front row seats.
I lay still on the earth. Maybe I ought to turn back and go home in time for milking the Guernseys before breakfast. I rolled over and saw the stars. They're always there with you. You can see the same stars every clear night no matter where on earth you are.
It was Meredith standing over me. "Are you all right?"
"Why Meredith? Why did that happen? Why did Royal Gorge come at me with that bottle, so everyone could laugh at me? Why did Honey Dew-oh my, I can't say another word about it."
"I'm sorry, Rusty."
"Why did Dodson even bring us out here to this place?"
"He asked me in the car if you were a good sport, and I said yes. He asked me if you wanted to have fun, and I said of course. So he brought us here. It was my fault, Rusty. Forgive me. I didn't know this would happen. Please believe me. I didn't know that about Honey Dew."
"A girl with a penis. I never heard of-that's why Dodson afforded all that pool game money. To get us friendly and drunk and out here to make me a fool." I was still flat on the earth looking up. It's a lonesome night to be leaving home and starting a new life by being tricked. "I don't appreciate it, Meredith, how I was tricked. I don't appreciate how you kept saying everything was all right, everything is all right, and trust, either. If Pa saw me in there, he'd have me baptized and killed the same day."
I got up on my feet and-wouldn't let her touch me. I went to Dodson's car and got my damn old suitcase.
"Rusty, what are you doing?"
"What's it look like?"
"Without me?"
"You'll be okay. You have a ride in there-the airplane man. You seem to trust him. I'm not taking chances."
"I want to go with you."
Oh hell, why couldn't I be alone? "If you go with me, Sergeant, there ain't going to be any more of this trust-and-be-tricked bullshit. From now on, if someone asks you if I want to have fun, you let me do the answering. And henceforth, any man who plants garlic in my clover patch will pay double when I catch him."
There came Dodson, followed by the airline man. Someone was in for it.
"How's everyone out here?" he inquired.
"Simply dandy, Dodson," I spoke up. "We're just out here smelling the persimmon trees, but I do detect a bitter scent of garlic in the air now. Don't you, Meredith? Come closer, Dodson. I have a question to ponder." He stepped within arm swing. He was more unschooled than I bartered. "The truth is that you shoot pool real sharp and complicated, don't you? You lost those bets with me back there-and gave us enough money to buy a submarine-'cause you wanted to get us caught out here, didn't you?" The airline man blew smoke rings at the sky. "Speak up, Dodson, you hear? I have places to go tonight."
"Yes and no. Yes, I shoot fairly good pool and lost deliberately. But no, I didn't bribe you out here. If you weren't sitting at that table, someone else would have been."
Should I hit him under his chin or in his belly where the liquor was. "Then why? Why did you throw away that cash to us?" i
"Because the truth is that I wanted to help you two. I liked you both when I saw you standing on the highway. I liked what you're doing. All my life, Rusty, I've wanted to just pack up and move about from place to place like you all are doing. But I never have. Too committed where I was. Not brave enough. You all're doing it, so I wanted to help you whereas I couldn't help myself in doing it."
"You understand all this talk, Meredith?"
"I think so."
"'Cause I don't."
Dodson said, "I gave you support to help you travel and discover and learn. Won't it help you? Won't a few bucks make getting food a little easier? Or a room somewhere if it rains?"
I reckoned so. I reckoned Dodson truly wanted to help us secretly in his own fashion. The boy had money to spare, too. I could tell by those funny things on his shirt cuffs.
"All right, Dodson," I said. "You got strange ways, but that's the way you are. But tell me about them two frops. Didn't you plan that Miss Gorge and Honey Dew would shame me afore all those personages in there?"
That perplexed him. He weren't certain.
I shook his hand. "Thank you, Dodson, for the pool game bets which will help us travel, discover, and learn. But I don't thank you for the entertainment at my expense. If Pa saw me, he'd kill us both." I leaned back, asked for forgiveness, and swung my fist into his belly. He buckled over and choked and gasped, grovelling around for a tree to lean against-wheezing and about to vomit. Shit, I didn't hit him that hard.
Meredith ran a few feet away and covered her hands on her face. The airline man was astonished.
"Well," said I. "Are you driving us up north or aren't you?"
He looked at me. "I suppose. If you want a ride, I suppose-"
"Well, get your car. Meredith and me are ready to leave."
"I don't have a car. I'm parked in the pasture around back."
"We'll be right there. You go on." I came up behind Meredith. "I'm sorry, honey. It was something I had to do. Dodson is two men in one. If he wanted to help us, he should have left us off in town with the money he let me win. He oughtn't to have brung us out here. I don't like people getting along with me whilst they have other ideas ticking in their heads. It ain't honest. Nobody ever gave me money before except when I stole it. Dodson was indeed good about that."
She turned around to me. I wiped some tears off her pretty, embarrassed face with my shirttail. "Come on, Sergeant. Everything's all right. Now I'm starting to say 'everything's all right.' Dodson ain't hurt any more than he's hurt me. A man's got to stand up for what he believes in this world, I believe. Come on, baby. Our ride's waiting around back. The airline man will drive us onward."
So arm in arm we meandered to the pasture around back. All around there were blue lights along the ground. I looked for the car but couldn't find a car at all. Off in the distance there was this little airplane. A cute little thing.
"Over here, you two!" called out a voice.
Me and Meredith stopped and looked at each other. An airplane, for chrissake. He had an airplane. Then somehow, Meredith started to laugh, and I laughed a little. Then she laughed more which made me laugh even more than that.
I never saw anything like it. Me and Meredith was going to fly! I ran back to the car and fetched our things. Dodson was dizzy, but he would come to pretty soon. I ran back to the pasture and grabbed Meredith's hand, and we skipped and ran out to the little plane.
CHAPTER FIVE
My eyes were still closed. I heard Pa in the next room yelling on the phone about the watered down beer at the Magnolia Blossom Bar. Then he carried on about me running away from home. And how before I left I kicked a hole in the screen door that the front yard ducks found, waddled through, and set up home in Pa's bedroom. He cursed me, my generation, the ducks, and the crooks in the State Capital.
I reached over my brother Jackson for the alarm clock-before surprising myself that I wasn't at home next to Jackson at all. But in a cozy sleeping bag in the outdoors with Meredith, who kept my cock warm between her legs.
Our arms were around each other. The sky was orange at the rising dawn. The grass was wet with the new morning dew.
We cuddled each other. The bedroll was downy and warm, and so was Meredith. I smelled the earth. I smelled the forest air. Light shined behind the wet leaves, making them bright.
My hand sculptured the curve from her soft back, down the slope of her thin waist, and over her hilly ass-so rounded, so right. My fingers glided smoothly down the crack and under between her legs. I crushed her hips against mine. She squeezed my cock tighter between her legs, and I rubbed my face in her hair.
"Oh baby Meredith. I welcome this new day. The morning is in motion. The dew has been rinsing the flowers. The orange sun has been making his way up over the hills, and soon he'll light up the earth and dry the green leaves and colored petals. Forest critters around us are waking up. too. We awaken together, and we are here in it all."
We kissed gently and kept our kiss together. Today I awaken to the new day, and Meredith is here with me.
"I thank this new day which I breathe into my body." I took a deep breath of the forest air and let it out. "This new day is special, 'cause we have this new day with each other. It is ours. Meredith and Rusty are together this new day. Tomorrow we will have tomorrow. And the next day."
Meredith said, "But most nice is that we have today, this moment in this bedroll, which is now."
"How right you are. Oh, how right you are. Now is all there is."
"Rusty Thomas, you're a poet."
"I'm a lover, too. I can't read except the advertisements, but I sure can whollop a good fuck."
We laughed 'cause that was funny but true.
I adjusted my hips which brought the tip of my cock against her opening. I pressed it harder against her. Her arms held me more tightly.
Carefully, I fumbled around the sleeping bag for the oil. Where are you, goddamit. I scooped some out and greased my cock good and slippery. Meredith said my name like in a dream. I moved my hand-around front and cupped my palm over one young, firm breast. We kissed real tightly.
Slowly I penetrated my cock inward. Easily and a little at a time. She pressed against it, gradually filling herself with it. More of it. I felt so good and so happy. Oh baby, I do love you so.
We started fucking, and every stroke was more and more wonderful and musical. I was rocking with delight and pleasure. Perspiring and rolling with her in the bedroll. Feeling so good in my cock and so good all over. Such splendor.
I kissed her neck and felt her hips undulate. She squirmed and helped my rhythm. Our legs intertwined. She clutched my shoulders. My chest massaged her breasts.
My hot swollen piston drove closer to the moment.
I shivered and quaked with the ecstasy till I couldn't feel it rubbing anymore-only the supreme joy all up and down my cock, spreading and electrifying my whole body like a blinding hurricane of sweet flowers.
Loving, fucking body and soul. I laughed out loud and awed the joy. Tingling. Anxious. Rejoice! Rejoice!
We jerked with tremulous spasms-and fell through space.
Buckets of come shot from my cock again and again-exciting, delicious, and ecstatic. Hallelujah, praises, and the blessed.
We fell limp, exhausted, and relaxed.
"Oh Meredith. Oh my love."
She said umm like she just tasted a Key lime pie.
I didn't want to withdraw it. I wanted to stay snuggled with her and fuck gently all day. The good feeling was still there. I don't never want to leave you, Meredith, I thought. Not for all the flat lands of cotton.
"Come on, Colonel," she said. We have places to go."
That we did indeed. So we dressed-after I un-fucked my organ from her-rolled up the bedroll, and hiked through the woods to the highway. Arm in arm, hauling our suitcases.
We walked a little ways more down the road where this broken down old school bus was left abandoned in a ditch. We figured to hitchhike from there by this abandoned bus, 'cause cars would be apt to see us there for sure. Not cars see us, but the drivers. They don't make cars that see yet Least that I know of. 'Course they don't make people with wheels yet neither.
The big orange sun was off to our side. "What's that billboard sign across the way say, Meredith?"
"Happy Napping Motel. Come as you are. Hot water. Lights that work. Six miles. Cheap."
"I'll bet they don't have the new morning dew when they wake up."
Meredith sat on the suitcases with her Army shirt wide open again, and I waited and waited. Then came a speeding car.
"You dumb prick!" I hollered after him cause he wouldn't stop for us. "Quebec. His plates said Quebec. I never heard of that state. Must be out nowhere like near California."
"No, no, Rusty. That's right where we're going. That's Canada."
"Canada?" That dumb prick could have taken us all-"Here comes another, Meredith. Spread them legs and look hopeful."
But he zoomed past.
"You dumb fly-festering shit!" There'd be another in a moment. "We didn't want to ride in that old model car noway."
That abandoned, collapsed school bus was sure a fanciful sight It had all these colorful designs and shapes and curly-cues all over it from head to toe. And words like Peace, Love, Freedom, and Pot painted on it, too. Looked like someone's funny circus wagon. Come all this way and broke down here which is close to nowhere.
"Ain't that school bus a pretty sightly ornament, Meredith? What is pot? Oh lookie, here comes another car. Push your hair in back so it don't cover your bosom."
The car sped closer. Come on, you precious beautiful stallion. Stop when you get here. It was one without a roof, too. Stop your lovely self for me and Meredith.
"He's stopping, Meredith!"
Sure enough, he was slowing down. But he came right up to us, threw out a beer can, honked; and all them friends in the front seat started laughing their balls off. The tires burned rubber. The horn honked again. The car drove away. Going from one lane to the other down the road.
"You shit-covered bitch whore's tooth!" I recollected myself. "Now why'd he do a thing like that? Don't they know the best way to start a new day is by giving us hitchhikers a ride as far as they're going?"
Meredith said, "Let's check a map soon. I'd like to know where we are."
"Let's check a menu soon, too. I'm hungry and getting onry for some steaming blueberry flapjacks and hash browns. And a hot dog."
"Rusty, a hot dog for breakfast?"
"Sure. A hot dog for last night's dinner and today's breakfast merged. Meredith Sergeant, it ain't that funny. Why, Pa eats turnips and pork chops for breakfast most of the time. 'Course breakfast for Pa is mid-afternoon after I get all the work done why he sleeps. Mid-afternoon on account of beer and the late movie and talking to hisself till he puts hisself to sleep. I like waking up early like this better. Meredith, I notice you don't use crap on your face. I regard you for that. You look right pretty just the way you are."
She did too. Meredith was one of the best-"I see a car down yonder, Meredith. Sun's coming up faster. Sure am hungry. Come on, friendly beautiful car. Stop your dirty ass. Me and Meredith ain't going to-"
Holy shit-burgers and onions! The dead was rising!
What I mean is, that old painted up, broken down school bus left abandoned in the ditch nearby us-started its engine a-going with blue smoke pouring out the ass and showed signs of life after all.
Fore I could ask Meredith what to do, the pretty old school bus was rocking back and forth, backing up toward me and Meredith with due haste.
We jumped aside after grabbing our suitcases out of the way. She backed up right passed us with all them colorful designs painted on it. The front door stopped smack before me and Meredith.
We looked at each other.
Then those narrow double doors opened themselves. They truly didn't open themselves. They was opened by the girl inside who was driving.
"Going somewhere?" she said and smiled and started yawning. , "Hell yes," I said. "Me and Meredith are headed straight to Canada with a few detours inbetwixt."
That bus had me marvelled.
The girl driver finished her yawn. "Excuse me. Come aboard." So we did.
Then I see that it weren't a girl at all, but a pretty boy with his hair uncut since the day he was born. And wearing a vest and jewelry beads, of all things.
She was a he. Not this again.
"Peace."
CHAPTER SIX
"We're going to the next major city." He pulled the handle to close the narrow double doors and stepped on the gas. "I lose track of what they are. You're welcome to ride that far. I'm Brian." He shifted gears. He was barefoot and had a sheet of music propped up there on the dashboard.
"I'm Meredith, and this is Rusty."
'Wow, hello. Meet the others. They're in the living room." The bus was rolling faster now. I held apart the curtain, and Meredith and me walked to the back.
A living room it were indeed. Tiny and cramped it were, too. A glass chandelier rattled to and fro on the orange ceiling. There was posters and signs and this-and-that hanging and swaying on the walls. Actual furniture, too. And mattresses on which most were still sleeping. And a built-in kitchen with dishes that slid and rattled back and forth with the bumpy bus. A heavy girl was stewing up stuff at the hot plates and trying to stand on her feet at the same time. She was fat and naked. She smiled at us, and I smiled back at her uncovered, hefty jugs with big brown nipples that you could have wrestled and sucked on all night. She leaned forward 'cause the bus leaned, and one teat almost flopped in the stuff she was mixing.
Musical instruments and magazines and a camera and tidbits and crumpled up cigarette packs and candles and pipes and something that was smoking in the ashtray that smelled like lilacs, Naked boys sleeping with girls. Naked boys sleeping with boys. They bounced around a little 'cause of the bus.
A Home Sweet Home sign which tilted and swung as we rode along. And bamboo curtains on the windows flapped around, too. There weren't a thing that weren't in motion. Including my cock, what with all those naked bodies on the floor.
One boy sat playing guitar in some overstuffed armchair with feathers popping out. His hair was more rampant than the driver's. A girl sat on the floor between his legs, sleeping on his knee and holding his enlarged verticalized prong in her hand.
"Hi," he said. "Come on in. What are your signs? It doesn't really matter. Hitchhiking? Where to?"
Say something, Meredith. This pageant has got me trapsed, I thought.
"Canada."
"Groovy, man. My name's Randal." He sipped coffee. To me he said, "Expresso?"
"No," says I. "We'll be making stops betwixt here and there."
"Right, man. Lots to see between here and Canada."
Meredith was laughing. That bus were a sightly sight.
He asked, "How about some coffee?"
Naked bodies tossed a little. The chandelier clinked. The dishes rattled. The big girl cook nearly toppled asunder. A built-in closet door with necklaces wiggling on it swung open and closed.
A boy stretched out on the floor, sat up, and looked behind a fluttering bamboo window curtain at the new morning sun-which blinded his eyes.
"Howdy, boy," I said.
He didn't pay no mind atall. Just lit this funny looking homemade cigarette, took two deep puffs, sucked in air, closed his eyes, and fell back asleep again-smiling like there wasn't a thing wrong in the entire solar system.
Meredith was looking at a photograph on the wall. It was that place where the heads of four Presidents was carved out of a mountain. Five naked boys were standing in the snow frontground.
"What's it say, Meredith. Those words underneath."
"They're dead-We're not. New times. New hope."
"Is that Sam Jackson and President Robert E. Lee?"
"Rusty Thomas, Robert E. Lee was never President."
"Ought to have been-after what all he did for us during the war even without machine guns 'cause we didn't know about them yet."
"They weren't invented yet. They never should have been."
"Right you are, Sergeant. Let's not talk on it no further. Let's leave that for them what can't get it hard anymore. You and me got better things."
Meredith put her arm around me.
The wobbling bus woke up two other boys. They kissed each other on the lips, and that ain't exaggerating. One of them unfolded a road map which they both leaned over, shoulder to shoulder, and consulted while fiddling each other's asses. Like I use to do to my brother Jackson.
Randal, the guitar player, handed me and Meredith coffee-which took a fuss to keep from spilling all over their clothes on the floor and phonograph record albums and sheets of homemade music. 'Twas a fuss to keep smiling at the same time, also. Damn extra-over-congested funny school bus.
She at the hot plates slapped a lid on the stew, walked over nudified bodies, and rolled up the bamboo curtains around the bus. One more thing about the living room bus. They had that colored glass on one window that I'd seen heretofore, and still had flavor for that stuff being so nice.
We were bouncing along through the greenest, hill-iest, prettiest sunny countryside as could be in these parts.
Me and Meredith sat down at last. A girl awoke. "Hi. Take off your clothes." To Meredith: "Be a groupie." I said, "Be a groupie what?"
Randal, the guitar player, said, "Are you two from around here?"
The map-reader said, "I can't navigate until someone tells me where we are."
"What good is your navigating," said his buddy, "if we have to tell you where to navigate?"
"Randal, Clarence is teasing me."
"Navigate my buns."
The breakfast cook fell against the cupboard. "Damn this boat." She dished up the stew.
A girl awoke and looked quickly curious about me and Meredith. She took off my shoes and socks and played toesy.
"She's Marcy," someone spoke. "To Marcy everything's a fetish."
Well, she could just fetish up my cock, if n she hankered to.
Another boy woke on the floor. "Where are we, asked the ontologist?"
"Ontology leads away from the spirit," said a girl picking up record albums and dropping them.
The jittering chandelier nearly fell.
"I have an Army shirt like that. Had one, that is. Till they tore off the one stripe and set me free at last, oh at last. What's your name?"
"Meredith," said Meredith.
The dishes rattled. The closet door slammed.
"Would you two care for some breakfast mush?" asked the breakfast cook.
We said, we'd love some.
"What'll you do in Canada?"
Meredith said, "Probably paint or something. Just do my thing."
"Groovy."
The breakfast mush was mush at that. But delicious since I were so hungry and unfed till now. I said, "Umm, this shit is good."
Some boy started reading and smoking. "Ontology sure beats plain rumination or picking up record albums."
The scenery outside was going by nicely. The scenery inside was nice, too, especially the nudiness.
Meredith said, "I like your bus."
"We're a pop-rock band. We're on tour."
Musicians! Now that explained it all. The girl Marcy was kissing my ankles something silly.
The breakfast cook was giving out bowls of breakfast mush to everyone.
"What band?" asked Meredith.
"The Inner Coarse Caliope."
"Really?" she said. I never heard of them, and no wonder if they did rock-and-roll which weren't allowed back home except on the radio if Pa didn't catch you. "That's fantastic," she said. "Rusty, this is a famous group which invented so many new electronic sounds."
"That so? I'd write Pa about this-if I could write."
"Are you bound for Canada, too?" someone queried.
"Sure is," I says. "Ain't never going back there, either. Alfalfa's ready for picking soon, and I don't want no part of it."
That got the book reader to look up. He was wearing his grandma's specs. "Alfalfa? Where are you from?"
"Ah, you never heard of it unless you lived there. Or unless you lived in Osage, the next one over. That's where Preston McDonald lives. That clever old cuss."
"Really? Preston McDonald. Have you read anything by him?"
"You might of. He's my friend in looting."
The chandelier was crashing back and forth now like the pendulum on Aunt Flora's grandfather clock. But making noise more like the glasses and bottles being thrown aloof at the old Magnolia Blossom Bar during the Saturday night fights between enemies settling out differences.
"Don't watch the chandelier," someone said. "It'll fall if you do."
"Oh, I wasn't watching the chandelier," I replied. "I was just noticing what a pretty sound all the glass on it was making."
They all started smoking on homemade cigarettes-and laughing each time like it was the happiest thing in the world to do. The smoke smelled rather good, too. Like hickory mixed with burning autumn leaves.
"This book postulates that man contemplates God, so therefore, God exists."
"According to this gasoline station map, we're fifteen miles northeast of Columbus, Ohio. That's where we're at."
"That's where you're at."
Marcy was up to my knees now, playing with them like they was her long puppy dog.
"Breakfast mush any good?" asked the breakfast cook.
"Yes ma'am," I said. "This mush is downright filling me up fast." That it was. That it was.
"I wish everyone would put records back in their respective jackets. Breakfast is good, Pierre. I'll taste some in a moment."
"I'll give you some friends to look up in Quebec," Randal told us. "Hip kids. They'll give you a sleeping pad and turn you on for a while."
Turn us on, he said. He meant, turn on us. But that wouldn't be too proper to turn on us. My head was getting swirly.
I proclaimed, "I didn't know you smoke cigarettes, Sergeant." There she was, puffing slow and long on one of them homemade cigarette things. But 'course then, in public it's important to be sociable and get along. Then she passed it to me.
"Hell no. Why Meredith Sergeant, you know full certain I don't smoke. If Pa-"
"One tote. It won't hurt, Rusty baby."
All right, I figured. Just to be sociable. The devil won again. I inhaled it deep. Goddam, that was chok-able. I had to fight for breath. I didn't cough, though, or beller. Hell, when you been around horseshit, pigs, arid the cunts of whores all your life, you can breathe in anything.
I gave it to the next one who was a newly awoken boy reading a magazine. "This magazine is truly neoteric. They say that soon there won't be any lights that illuminate the same color. Every light will be changing colors every second."
"Record jackets spread all over the place," she said over there. "He's beginning to feel it."
"One room will be a multitude of colors. One room will be a multitude of rooms."
Marcy wouldn't let go of my leg. My hardon seemed to reach all the way down to my feet. Oh heavens, I was beginning to get dizzy. Real swirly in the head. And wanting to laugh at nothing.
"He's starting to feel it."
Randal strummed his guitar. Open-minded, how he could play music and know what's happening in the bus simultaneously. The sun was well up now. Our bus was going through real hilly country, all covered with trees. With that pretty guitar music he was making.
Someone said, "There's lots of room in Canada. You'll have ample room to do whatever it is you want."
I said, "Canada's a whole 'nother country. 'Course she had lots of room for a feller to bust out and run free. But once I get there, I ain't fully resolute what it is that I'll hanker to do. Meaning, if I were there this afternoon, I wouldn't know resolutely what to do-besides stick with Meredith here."
One said, "You'll know more about yourself by the time you get there."
Another said, "And you have quite a ways to travel yet."
Still another said, "That is, of course, unless you came from Bolivia. Then you'd be relatively near."
"Don't confuse him."
Meredith spoke next. "Rusty doesn't have to decide right away what he wants to do in his new home. We'll stay together as long as necessary till we're both secure in our directions. He won't have to worry excessively. We'll manage."
Those words I couldn't understand, but they surely sounded like they was heaped with comfort.
Our bus windows were covered with the windows of a Greyhound bus. We were driving past them. People looked through their Greyhound windows into our windows. We were going faster.
"The closet door is secure," she said after banging a few nails.
Randal said, "Incidentally, let's not have any wanton and salacious debauchery at tonight's concert. We're back in conservative territory now. Where laws still mean something."
"What? No lascivious and lewd concupiscence?"
"Or phalhcism?"
"Or insalubrious, licentious pantomine?"
"Words words."
"Or fucking?"
"Or freedom?"
"We want freedom! We can't sing without freedom!"
"The body must be liberated."
"I want my dildo."
"All cops fuck holes in bricks."
"I'm going to jerk off tonight-on an usher's flash-light."
"And I'm going to twiddle my guitar up your cavernous, naked-"
"Oh such talk. Where's your background and decency? A young lady like me-"
"Ought to ball more often, so that you don't need a cigarette halfway through."
"I never stopped for a cigarette, man. How dare you."
"You did last night."
"That testimony is false."
"Then maybe it was someone else."
My legs were stretched out, and that girl Marcy was resting her naked boobs right on my toes. So I wiggled them, and didn't she think that was cute. So I clamped my feet around one teat and pulled her up my legs where, smiling and humored, she laid her face on my cement hardon-biting it through my pants.
It was my turn for the homemade smoke again, dammit. My head was so swirly, and I was going in and out of focus so-much, and the countryside and guitar music and talk talk talk, and Meredith was salvation, and Marcy was having a good old time trying to tear the cloth off my pants to bite my balls.
After praying, or thinking on praying, that an angel's double barrel shotgun wouldn't strike me dead: I puffed in the cigarette.
Wattle-lee-hoop! My mind was swirlier than swirly could ever be. Worse than that. Worse than that. That orange ceiling was the prettiest thing I ever. Marcy took the cigarette from my fingers with her lips.
"We ought to make a headline one of these days. The last news we created was a week ago. The Mount Rushmore thing."
"The papers are still inculpating us for that."
"Good. Great. I want to fill my whole scrapbook on this tour. Let's do something else. We have a responsibility."
"Did you see our nude photo taken at Mount Rush-more last week?" Meredith said, "Yes."
She reads books and literature things most likely.
"Did you see that picture, Rusty?"
"Picture picture, what picture, Meredith? Pleading your passion, but I couldn't keep up with all them words. Besides my head being tickled." I bellered out a laugh which proved everything. "Marcy, you cut that out." She was trying to unzip my pants with her teeth.
Someone said, "How many people live where you're from, Rusty?"
"Marcy dammit. Meredith, tell her to quit this. Four hundred thirty-seven. Not counting the Neanderthal."
The book reader looked up and said, "Did you say 'Neanderthal'?"
"They don't count him in the official registry 'cause no one's suppose to know he's alive."
"Do you know him? The Neanderthal?"
"Sure do. He fives up there in the mountains with nothing but a ugly shrivelled up dog that'll kill you and then bark."
"How fantastic. What's the Neanderthal like?"
I pondered why they suddenly turned curious about that. "There ain't nothing particular about the Neanderthal. Except that he's a hermit and can't talk except to grunt and burp and kills all his own food and never sees other folks and's over a hundred years old and the closest thing he ever had to normal sex was taking a piss."
"How'd you meet him?"
"By risking our life, that's how. After we got drunk one night someone dared us to go up and find him and take his picture as living proof."
"Did you get his picture?"
"Sure did. Good shot, too. There was the Neanderthal beating a black metal kettle atop Hudson Greene's skull. We got paid for that picture, too, which covered Hudson Greene's damages. Marcy, what in the world are you doing?"
She were doing my cock real wet and slippery. That's what she were doing. Gulping and sucking like she didn't have enough breakfast.
"What population did you say was in your town?"
"Four hundred thirty-seven. 'Course it might have changed since yesterday."
"Might have?"
"Like if crazy old Mr. Barstow kicked off like was suppose to happen any day now for the last fourteen years. I tell you folks, when Barstow meets his judgment, there'll be the biggest auction anywhere, 'cause he don't have no next of kin. No next of kin for all that stuff in his place. No next of kin except the flower plants in the window. And hell, even I got sense to know them flowers can't uproot themselves and march down to the notary's to have that will read to them. A lot of good it would do anyway. They ain't got ears."
Marcy had my peter all swollen and fixing to blow up a typhoon. My balls felt plump and activated to her finger touch. It all felt so good, so ticklish and healthy and powerful with lust and the torment to erupt in full all-hail ecstasy.
A girl sewing balanced herself on her feet and stepped around to the curtain and chatted with the driver. "Where's Brian taking us?"
Our bus was off the main highway. We were headed into deeper woodsier landscape. The road was narrow. The bus made sharp turns going up and down hills and over bumps. All of us were rolling into each other, having a good old time with genitals being crushed and teats flattened and praying to the chandelier.
I hollered out, "This here's like a ride at the County Fair."
The girl sewing returned. "We need gasoline. Brian says we're stopping in a town called Fayetteville."
"Fayetteville?" summoned the map reader, checking his map, agitating from side to side. "Population eight hundred."
"Points of interest," his bosom buddy was reading. "Historical marker commemorating sight of the worse railroad accident in the state. Gee."
By this time, I was at the window out of plain nosiness. And Marcy was behind me nosying around my ass.
Our bus dipped into a creek that had no bridge and splashed. Then we meandered past a farmhouse. The woman in a sun bonnet stopped raking leaves and watched us drive past. The man saw us and ran inside the cottage. Turkeys were hurrying every whichaway. Tree branches scrapped the bus.
FRIENDLY BUZZ WHITEY FOR SHERIFF the sign said. FOR A DECENT FAYETTEVILLE ON THE GO.
"Maybe we ought to drop the curtains," someone suggested.
"No. Brian's cool. There won't be trouble."
"Headlines."
"But we ought to be safe and lock up the grass."
"We ought to be safe and lock up the bus."
"The dishes!"
The breakfast cook turned around and caught the mush bowls in the nick of time.
They all started dressing themselves, holding onto each other in the jolty bus-all but Marcy, who was still at my behind and flapping my tool around like she was stirring soup.
I'm going outside when we stop to call New York."
"We need cigarettes, too."
"Maybe there's a cafe near the gasoline station. Small town women bake the best blueberry pie."
"I'm stepping out of this bus for air."
"And me to walk around and dump our trash."
"Remember though. No trouble. No headlines."
A row of homes and then our painted up bus was squeezing her way down Main Street. Ella's Washe-teria. Jim and Marthy's Confection and Grocery. Post Office. Good-Time Bar and Pool. Tables for Ladies. A sign said SPEED LIMIT: FIFTEEN. RADAR PATROLLED. KEEP FAYETTEVILLE CLEAN. KEEP LITTER IN YOUR POCKET. RE-ELECT HAPPY BUZZ WHITEY FOR SHERIFF.
No doubt about it. Then folks on the sidewalks and poking out their heads from windows was a heap conspicuous about this painted up bus. Further no doubt about it. These folks in this bus was a heap conspicuous about them out there.
"Cut it out, Marcy. You're making me about to come in public, and I ain't interested in doing so just this moment."
Someone said, "Wow. This is the year eighteen hundred."
"And I'm stoned."
We halted in the gasoline station. Well, not exactly. The bus wouldn't fit exactly all the way in the little driveway.
The chandelier stopped shaking. Everything stood still. We all land of looked at each other. Already, folks outside was gathering about the bus without a word to each other 'cause of the shock. Gradually, we started filing outside in good conduct. All but me, that is, 'cause Marcy wouldn't let go of my cock.
"Get clothed, Marcy, and let me pull up my trousers." She shook her head and smiled like Aunt Flora's niece who was my first cousin who refused to cough out that half dollar she nearly swallowed two Christmas' ago in Shreveport. We sure was a long ways from Shreveport. "Marcy, what do you mean no?" Lookie here, Marcy. Everyone's out the bus including Meredith but us. My head's swirly as a runaway Ferris wheel. I want air and words with Meredith."
"I want to get plugged."
Them were the very first words she spoken! She yanked my prong like she was raising the flag. "You get plugged elsewhere."
"Guess you never met a groupie. Guess you never got accustomed to us real females back where you all come from. I guess, you do it with goats."
"My brother Jackson is no goat." Marcy was an onry, feuding thing. But she did have bursting sugar-loaf boobies that was perturbing me into a gusty, rampaging, greedy fidget for fucking. My big old hard cock was kicking with convulsions. Marcy's face concluded fuck your inflammed cock Up my hot blooded zealous flesh.
Outside I seen our group friends go this way and that amongst the townsfolk on separate errands. The townsfolk were watching and waiting and making mental notes. But no, me and Marcy were still cooped up in this bus.
I pushed by her, and I don't know where she got it, but suddenly my meat was sloshy with screwing gook and dripping from her fingers. I looked at her. She was piped down now and steadfast. My move.
"What is it, Marcy? Why you looking on me like that? Why you grease me up? Wipe youself with this here shirt. You're wet with sweat like a rainbow trout on a rowboat."
But she opened her legs apart, crushed her hands on her whoppy squashable milkbags, and opened her arms for Rusty and his mushroomed slick peter. Yeppy yippy yop.
I grabbed Marcy's hand and yanked her fluttering sturdy bust against my chest. I clamped my arm around her back, crushing her to me.
She waited a moment and then jerked my shirt open, popping off all the buttons which rolled around on the floor. No sir, I didn't like that one bit since it takes me twenty minutes and lots of rage to sew them damn things on. So I politely moseyed my hand around on her bare ass till she's relaxed-and then, surprised her by quickly wiggling two fingers up there with due haste.
Marcy cringed like a beheaded turkey and fell against me for support, which weren't the right thing for her to do, since my twitching cock is all set to drive into her loveplace, which it did when she would collapse upon me. It swelled up inside even bigger and better and hotter and itchier.
Marcy shivered and gasped for air and mashed her face on my shoulder. She was plugged at both ends. She regrouped her thinking together and relaxed a little. Rusty, you're quite a stud she seemed to say.
But that weren't what she was thinking neither. 'Cause with no warning she pinches my teats with sharpened fingernails till I couldn't hold back a holler no longer. I start pounding my greasy wrought iron pecker all the way in and all the way out her. I was getting that happy I-can't-wait-to-come explosive feeling all over. Marcy about fainted, but I hold her up in my arms while my cock throbbed fitfully and my whole being rippled with ecstasy. I keep ramming.
Marcy struggled and beat her fists on my chest and on my head and tried to strangle me and kicked my shins. We fell against the built-in kitchen, and the mush bowls toppled and crashed onto the floor. She tried to scratch my face but didn't really want to. We knocked over a little table, and record albums and glasses fell-still balling, refusing to stop the rhythm now that we're both going strong. She squirmed and writhed and jerked. We're stumbling and fucking all over the bus-spilling books, falling against the bamboo curtains, pushing over a guitar, and ripping apart magazines with our feet.
The Home Sweet Home sign dropped off the wall and hit a potted plant which tumbled and broke an ashtray. The chandelier started clinking again from all the commotion. Marcy grabbed the wall behind her with me still balling her, but she ended up tearing off a poster. I tripped on my pants which had dropped down to my ankles. We fell over an armchair and coiled over onto the mattress and rolled around on the wrinkled-up road map.
I threshed my cock insatiably. Our bodies and boiling urges collided with gust and tempest. We fucked delirious. We fucked delicious. We lay on our sides toward each other and did it. Everything was hot and fiery and exhilarating.
Marcy rolled her head around. Her twat was tight. I took the last plunges for the final feverous paroxysm. Our torque fused us into one. My cock ripped open and seized pleasure upon pleasure. We groaned. We were soaked. Come splattered out like cannon-balls. I was furious with volcanic ecstasy. My body erupted repeatedly, and she soaked it up and froze. In a moment after more pangs and spasms-there was another twitter of a satisfied itch-and then we began to mellow and feel tender and replenished. The cyclone blew away into space. The trees stopped bending. The leaves stopped swirling. Sparrows returned to the land.
Marcy and I stayed in each other's arms, and I stroked her hair. We kissed gently with apology and thanks and approval.
Real softly I said, "That was real good, Marcy. You made me fly through the air, turning head over heel." Then I said wee and started to catch my breath again. Her face seemed to say I'm happy you're happy.
After a moment my hardon returned, but I wanted to go outdoors with the others. Then I had a perfect excuse to leave the bus. Meredith came through the curtain with the driver holding her hand. I'm sure they wanted to be alone. We all smiled. Marcy and I slowly started dressing. Meredith and the driver started doing the opposite.
CHAPTER SEVEN
There ain't nothing like pinball to unjamble your nerves and regroup your brain. Pinball is medicine.
I was propelled that way to the pool parlor; them folks of Fayetteville was propelled this way to the bus. Townsmen were closing up shop to venture what our painted up bus was all about. Open signs were flipped over to Closed. They was filing out the cafe munching sandwiches, out the haircut shop wearing the white sheet, down the street carrying babies, out from betwixt buildings with aprons and a gardening hoe-all to the gasoline station, investigating what this painted up bus was doing here in town out of nowhere, and what the trouble were, and what we were with all this long hair and funny clothes. They all gathered about. Roosters, dogs, and a pony were represented, too.
The old bus Weren't little enough to fit in the driveway. So the gasman was carrying buckets of fuel from the pump to the bus, one at a time, till it would be full.
At the pool parlor men observed the bus from the window. They observed me, too. When the door opened, bells rang. The men gave me the once-over-waiting on me to be up to something, which, of course, I weren't unless someone started it. So I smiled a greeting to them all, which made them all grunt and raise their beer bottles and drink in unison.
Reno Girls-that was the pinball game name. Them lights were flashing in girlie boobies and flappers flipping and bells ringing.
I worked the machine real easy like you do most women. Be gentle and you can score. I was scoring all right. With girlies, that was true. But with the pinball as well. Four-thousand five-hundred thirty-seven the tally read. I pulled back the knob and shot another ball around.
Go easy, beautiful baby. Win me this game. Knock them holes. Be good, you lovely silver ball. When abruptly, the plastic thing went dead. The fights went out, you wreckless wretched silver turd.
But it weren't the turd's fault at all. The barman was beside me-holding the plug.
"I don't understand," I said.
"We're closing."
"But I haven't finished my game."
"You're finished. Now let's be good and go outside with the rest of them."
"That's not fair."
"We'll let Buzz Whitey decide what's fair. If he says everything's okay, then you come back in here and do your game as long as you want, so long as you buy beer to go with it. If Buzz Whitey says no, then that bus better be on its way out."
He didn't understand about us needing gasoline. He walked behind me out the pool parlor back on Main Street. The bells on the door chimed.
The map reader from our bus was stalked out of the cafe by the cafe waitress to the bus. The breakfast cook was stalked from the post office by the postal clerk to the bus. The book reader was stalked by the pharmacist from Andy's Discount Drug and Cosmetics to the bus. Marcy was stalked by two studs to the bus. Meredith was stalked by the driver out of the bus to the bus. Assuredly, he had just stalked her cunt.
Others were stalked elsewhere.
The congregation about the bus was called to order by a motor scooter for whom the townsfolk cleared an aisle through the crowd to the bus.
A huge man dismounted the scooter. The motor backfired three times for which he kicked it twice and mumbled once. He had a red face. On them bluejean coveralls he wore a silver star.
"I'm Buzz Whitey," he said. "Who's running this entourage?"
Canada would just have to wait a little more. We weren't going just yet. There was a fly in the buttermilk here in Fayetteville.
Randal stepped forward. His Indian beads were bosom to bosom with Sheriff Buzz Whitey's shiny star on his coveralls. "I'm Randal."
"And I'm Sheriff Buzz Whitey in these parts."
They shook hands.
Sheriff Buzz Whitey gave the bus the once-over, showing his manifold displeasure with the words Love, Peace, Freedom, and Pot. He hooked his thumbs in his suspenders and pulled up the coveralls. Then he stepped back and laughed at the painted up bus as a whole.
"Who painted this bus?"
"We all did," Randal said.
"Well, you oughtn't to of mixed red with blue. Anyone in the second grade knows they don't go. How long you fixing to reside in Fayetteville?"
"Till we get gas."
The gasman was still carrying individual buckets from the pump to the bus. "Till you get gas. What's you standing around for, Morton Stampler?" He was the gasman. "Fill up this bus. The rest of you friends go on home or back to work. There's no trouble and no need to piddle around the middle of the street-case the fire truck needs passage." No one moved.
"Randal, you and your friends and me need a convention, so gather them. Donaldson, you give Morton Stampler a hand with the pump. McQuinnel, Parsons, and Burg stay behind. Now the remainder better scat. Don't make me have to tell Mayor Jennings that you good folks don't pay mind to the law when he's off in the South Seas, don't ask me where, on a well-earned vacation. Back to your places now. The churches have meetings tonight, so get your chores done so you don't be late."
No one moved. In fact, others were still newly arriving. Young people our age or thereabouts took the strongest fancy to our bus. Barefoot, they were.
So there we all were. Gathered about big Sheriff Buzz Whitey.
"Now," he said. "Tell me who you are." Randal was about to introduce us proper, but Sheriff Buzz Whitey said, "Not who you are, but what."
"What we are is a rock band. We create music."
I thought better than to say me and Meredith were just hitchhiking a ride with them. It weren't important. It'd just spotlight a ghost in the Governor's mansion.
'You kids all sing songs?"
"Yessir. We're on a concert tour across the country."
"I see. Where's your kinfolk?"
"Kinfolk?"
"Parents."
"Oh, they decided to stay at home. They do their thing; we do ours. They're not too interested in our music. Besides, the bus would be too crowded probably."
Too dull, he probably meant.
"Well, you ought to drop a postcard to them now and then so's they don't worry. We have a few left in the post office across the street by that American flag. What manner of songs?"
He saw the townspeople still frozen in tableau.
Sheriff Buzz Whitey continued. "I thought I told you folks-nevermind." To us: "I can't be too stern with them what with elections drawing near. What manner of songs?"
"Songs for young people," Randal said. "Rock and roll."
"Well, that's all right now. I don't hold that against you. Everyone needs a living somehow nowadays. We even have two young ones here in Fayetteville who play clarinet and viola."
An airplane flew over. He was pulling a long sign through the air behind the plane. I whispered to Meredith, "What's it say up there, Sergeant? I can't read that far."
She looked up. "Count calories. Eat wholesome Hoferd Bread." , , "Hoferd Bread. Let's try some soon. Hoferd."
Sheriff Buzz Whitey was figuring thing out. "Randal, these folks will think the devil sent this bus in here and me in cahoots with the both of you unless we do something. That's what they're waiting on. They probably never seen the likes of you kids except on television. They're worried."
I figured it were time I said a thing or two. "Now Sheriff Buzz, there ain't no need to hasten and pull in the laundry just 'cause there's one cloud forming in the sky. These folks are my friends, and they're wholesome as Hoferd Bread."
"You from these parts, son?"
"No," I said, "but just as worse."
"Where's that?"
"You never heard of it unless you lived there. Or in Osage, the next one over. But I'm not talking about me. I'm referring to them. They have right ideas, Sheriff Buzz. Like they save wear and tear on their clothes by not wearing anything when we're inside the bus. And they save pennies by rolling their own homemade cigarettes. They take pills too. I seen one take a pill that made him full of pep this morning. And they use words that you or I-" I cut short, 'cause Meredith was pinching my ass.
Randal said, "What we can do, Sheriff, is show these folks we can play good music by setting up and playing some."
"Against war?"
"No, about love and expansion of the mind."
"'Cause we got veterans out there, you know."
"Our songs are happy and positive."
"We get enough of that other stuff over the television. We get two channels, though, so we can switch it off. Are you people famous?"
That humored Randal. He were embarrassed. I pinched Meredith.
She said, "Not famous, but a great deal popular." ' I put my arm around her.
Sheriff Buzz Whitey said, "Well enough of this pitter-patter. If we're doing something, let's do it. I got Sarah Johnston taking messages for me at the switchboard, but it's her lunch break, so I shouldn't be away long. Set up your instruments, and I'll make the announcement. Sometimes the funniest things happen on days you least suspect."
He turned to the townsfolk. "Parsons, I thought I told you to help Morton Stampler at the pump. Now get. All right, you friends. Buzz Whitey has something to say. These young ones are from out of town, and they come to Fayetteville 'cause they need gas and other things to get wherever it is they're going. They play music. The-nice sort. They're famous or popular, one or the other. And they support themselves, and they travel around and entertain folks, and they have their musical things here with them, and they've offered to entertain us here in Fayetteville, right here, right now, today. For free, so what do you say about that? I think we ought to be downright appreciative, I do."
"Whatever you say, Buzz," someone called out.
"So long as it's fit for the women."
They all stirred and showed agreement.
"All right then," said Sheriff Buzz Whitey. "Let's all relax and give them room. These are good kids, and there's no sign of roughness or Communists or belligerence. What do you say. Let's welcome them with a big hand."
So they all clapped and smiled at each other.
"Hey Buzz!" yelled a woman. "I'm going back and fetching some chicken I fried up this morning. They might have a hunger later."
"That's right decent of you, Pat."
"I got some salad," said another woman. "And some garden fruits."
"Do you kids like Key lime pie?"
I called back, "Sure do, ma'am. It's my favorite."
Sheriff Buzz Whitey spoke, "Parsons, since you won't refuse to help Morton Stampler at the pump, you go get these kids soda pop from the grocery. They might be thirsty before singing to us. All right, you kids. Set up your instruments."
Sheriff Buzz Whitey meandered over to the gas pump where a couple men were still carrying buckets from the pump to the bus.
Two handsfull of womenfolk bustled off home to fetch food grub. Them friends of me and Meredith started gathering preparations for the hoedown. Other folks wandered and rambled around or went off to call neighbors. Young people of Fayetteville befriended us around the bus.
"It's beautiful. This shows what's happening today."
A pretty little barefoot girl with straggly hair and good tight bluejeans was talking to me. "Aren't you helping set up?"
"No," I said. "I reckon, you ought to know the truth, you lovely barefoot girl. Me and Meredith-this here's Meredith-just met these musicians down the road. Meredith here's not really an Army man."
"Hi."
"I'm Mary Beth."
"Meredith just wears this shirt for hitchhiking purposes. Bight, Sergeant?"
Mary Beth said, "Then you two are hitchhiking with these people?"
I said. "That don't mean that they ain't our friends, 'cause they are. All you folks around here are our friends."
Those bluejeans was so tight, you could make out the crack of her pussy. And that nice tight-fisted, rounded ass was something I wanted to nibble on like a carmel-pecan-chocolate covered candy bar. Yep, my dong knew something was happening 'cause he started to leaven and sprout-getting puffed up beneath my trousers and varicose. Good and hefty and stiff.
HelL what's the matter with me? What was I thinking on? Here I just got done raping the marrow out of Marcy in the bus and the same to Meredith in the morning real good. Rusty, you ain't going to have an eye-dropper full of decency or enough come to glue on a postage stamp-both-for middle age. Now stop this. Quit watching Mary Beth's billowy boobs. There's nipples under there, you screwbrained cock-peddler. And get your thoughts off your mushroomed cock before you wet your pants.
Meredith said, "Excuse me. I'll help them with the drums over there, Rusty. Don't wander off too far."
Then there was just me and Mary Beth in bluejeans standing there.
"Shit," I said. Which was the wrong word to start off a friendship. "Holy angels's blessing, I wish there was a place around here to get a fancy candy bar."
Mary Beth said, "Over there, there is."
"Will you walk with me?"
Which she did, but we got to talking about this and that, and we walked straight past the confectionery. On down the road a piece, off the road betwixt two homes, across a backyard, over a fence into woods, over a walking bridge to where she was taking me-to the railroad depot.
"This is the old railroad depot," she said. "H you like to talk, this is my favorite place."
"Mine too, but we oughtn't be too long. I would prefer to watch the hoedown."
We wouldn't have need to stay long for what I wanted to do. Down, you nervous, puttering cock. Behave yourself if you want dinner. That ripe ass had me famished for some good finning fiery fucking.
Mary Beth drew a heart in the dirt with her toes.
I've been ignorant not to hitchhike sooner. "Why don't we just hitchhike ourselves right over here up on that loading platform by those big boxes."
She held me back. "I don't even know your name."
"Rusty. I'm Rusty and you're Mary Beth, so what's the difference? You don't need to fret, Mary Beth. I'm healthy and better than that. I do lots of sex, and something would surely have happened by now if it ever."
She was the shyest, gentlest little thing. Not too shy, albeit, 'cause she decided to journey with me to the boxes on the loading zone. That's where we settled ourselves down where no one could spy on us.
We lay on our sides. My overblown steaming dong lurched against her hip. I kissed Mary Beth's thin, smooth lips and felt the rims of her lips against mine, and we kissed harder till our teeth touched-while undoing each other's shirts. My hand roamed under her shirt, and I molded it around and around her small bare rigid teaties. They were only little hard hills 'cause she were so young, but she knew what she were doing. She begun to squirm some.
I rolled over on top of her and ran my fingers through her hair. Clumsy fingers got caught which pained her. But she only undulated her hips and squeezed me madly like we had already started balling with my palpitating rod pressing against her hip and rubbing.
Enough of this. I had palsy of the balls.
I sat up and stripped off my shirt. Mary Beth got a hankering for my chest and reached up for it. Not yet. I undone my pants. That bursting, blue-headed frank of mine flapped up and down like a flagpole in an earthquake. Her cunt was the ground about to split wide open. Rusty got greedy. i sat on her with each knee on each side of her-being careful not to sit too heavy. Mary Beth adored my body and wanted it closer. I scooted my ass up her belly closer to her face. Those knees of mine were under her armpits. That ticking bubbling dick was stretching out and standing up right in front of her face.
She looked at it, then at me. My hands held her face. She took my member in her hands and caressed it-tightening her fist around it, stretching the skin, making the head swell and balloon something intolerable. She licked it. Wetted it. Slurped it.
Her lips puckered around the mushroomed cap of my peter and sucked it nice while masturbating the rest of my restless prong-a-long. Her tongue sponged the full length from where my balls joined my rod up to where clear lubricating juices were oozing out.
I squeezed her boobs and pinched her nipples till they were hard and tight, surrounded by goosebumps.
Mary Beth propped herself up, sitting with her legs stretched out.
Kama Sutra.
I sat with my legs stretched out facing her up real close with my meat next to her. I've-never-done-it-this-way, she seemed to say. Neither-have-I, I seemed to say.
I dampened my tool with more spit and hugged her and pressed her face next to my chest. Slowly I penetrated. Carefully since I was so oversized for her.
She gradually welcomed more and more into her and started sliding up and down. Till she started into a rampage of jumping up and down-hpllering with the frantic pleasure of good lovemaking.
"How does it feel up there?" I asked.
"Fabulous!"
Her arms flew in the air and she laughed and moaned beautifully.
Till at last I climaxed, having three or four or five or six spasms of sheer joy and tumultuous gratification.
CHAPTER EIGHT
We jumped off the boxcar and ran to Main Street.
Twas right what you'd call a factual hoedown there in Fayetteville. There was no fiddles, no square dancing, no fried chicken, no potato-bag races, no crepe paper wound around the barn rafters. Weren't no barn atall.
There was fried chicken, to come to think on it. The womenfolk brung fried chicken, garden fruits, hoi baked bread, and two-thirds of a Key lime pie.
Our friends from the painted up bus played their dance music and moved their bodies around like they was jerking themselves off in front of a mirror with a corncob up their ass-and trying to shoot their wad from here to Ella's Washeteria. Other than that, the music was fun and dance-able, if you were one to dance. I don't believe in that, though.
Sheriff Buzz Whitey milled about socializing since elections being near off. Some townsfolk did dance-the best they could with the circumstance of the music type. Them what refused to dance did bounce up and down on their toes or snapped their fingers or stomped their feet or pretending they knew the words. Even an older aged woman without teeth or meat on her bones or the strength to drink her beer without someone pouring it down her mouth-even she was nodding her head to the music. And the young kids. Hell, the young kids carried on like we did when we pushed the Yanks out of Saratoga."
"Nothing but happiness," I told Meredith. "Nothing but folks feeling good and young and forgetting themselves and happy."
Meredith just smiled and kept on dancing-waving her arms in the air and eager all over the place.
After the music everyone mingled. The band packed up and loaded the instruments back on the bus. I hugged Mary Beth goodbye.
"We'll never see each other again," I said., "But we lived our few moments, twenty minutes or so together, the best we knew how. That's all that's important."
She turned her head away being shy again. We kissed.
Our friends from the bus, Meredith, and me all went back inside. The narrow double doors closed. We were off. Our old painted up bus backed out of the gas station driveway and rolled back down Main Street. The townspeople of Fayetteville were waving after us.
We bounced passed the hardware store and passed the pool parlor-where I never did finish that pinball game. We rocked back and forth down the hilly, curvy woodsy road back to the major highway.
We had gasoline to continue, to further ourselves, to get along. To get me and Meredith closer to Canada.
The map reader was back at his map again. Only this time it were all wrinkled up 'cause me and Marcy rucked on it. He played with his camera a while, saying over and over how he got real good shots of the happening in Fayetteville. I guess, he meant the music and the frolic. He said he. would send the pictures into the newspapers 'cause they needed more headlines. Good, human interest pictures, he kept saying. I didn't know what he was saying;
The chandelier glass was rattling again. Stuff all over was agitating all over again. The sounds of moving on.
We all fasted upon the food the Fayetteville women brung us. Not fasted. Shit, what's wrong with my language? Feasted. We feasted upon the food.
More handmade cigarettes were passed around.
Meredith and I stayed on that bus to the next major city. I don't recollect its name. Meredith'd have to report that. We bid sad farewell to our friends in that old painted up bus and felt happy and better for meeting them. Sure funny to think that we figured the bus was broken down and left abandoned in that ditch a few hundred miles back. Funnier yet to add up just how alive it really were. Not it-they. Our friends. Those naked cusses.
We thanked them for the company, the breakfast mush, the hoedown back in Fayetteville, the picnic provided by the womenfolk back there, the hand-rolled cigarettes, and for just letting us hop aboard for a little bit of friendship.
Randal gave us names of more friends yet to call upon on our continuation to Canada.
I whispered thanks to Marcy for the surplus harvest of ripe fucking when we did it all over the bus. Meredith kissed the driver just before we went back outside.
The narrow doors closed, and we watched them rock and bounce further and further away down the sideroad into town. They had a concert or something to do tonight. They turned a corner, and I couldn't see them anymore-except the sound of that chandelier tinkling behind my thoughts.
Me and Meredith were standing on a highway, waiting again.
"Rusty?" I looked up and smiled. "What."
"Your Pa would hang you from the water tower where you lived if he could see those."
"See what. What do you see?" She pointed at my pocket. I looked. Beads.
I had beads in my pocket. I looked down the road. The bus was gone. "How did these get here." I pulled them carefully out and looked at them. There was apple seeds on it and berry seeds and colored beads and teeth that belonged to something or another. "It's pretty." I put it around my neck, and that sure took a moment to get aware of. But it looked pretty and I felt downright pleased that someone on the bus-
"They do something for you, Rusty."
"I like them. I think I'll wear them. I wonder who put them-here comes a car." Meredith stood before me. We thumbed. He drove past.
"Meredith, did that chandelier worry you?"
"Only when Brian and I had a pillow fight, and a pillow just missed hitting it."
"A pillow fight? What did you all do in that bus when me and Marcy went outdoors with the others?"
Meredith sat down on the suitcases and then unbuttoned her Army shirt. "Why Rusty Thomas, what on earth do you mean?"
"You know what I mean, Sergeant. Was he good to you? I mean, did he treat you right. 'Cause if someone don't, you let me-"
"Oh, Rusty, quit talking foolish. When you were in the bus with Marcy, the gasoline station attendant could barely pour the gas in because you two were shaking the bus so much."
"Where are we, Meredith? What state are we in?"
We looked around us. Neither of us knew where we were.
Across the highway were two other kids hitchhiking-the other way, but we were all doing the same thing.
They waved to us.
We waved back.
"Where you going?" I called out.
"Los Angeles," the boy called back. "And you?"
"Canada. Me and Meredith here are on our way there."
"Good luck," the girl called out.
Me and Meredith said good luck to them, and then we all waved again.
"How do you like travelling, Rusty?"
"I'm enjoying it better than a silo full of raspberries." A silo full of girlie magazines, is what I meant. "Did you do much hitchhiking before I met you?"
"No, I was in school, and there wasn't much time for travelling."
"This is more fun than school, isn't it?"
"Indeed."
The kids across the highway got a ride and drove off.
The beads around my neck were looking nicer and nicer. Pa would be crazy to laugh at me receiving a gift like this. Pa was crazy anyhow. I heard about him trying on Ginger's, the waitress at the grill, earrings one night at the Magnolia Blossom. Earrings are worse than a necklace of beads that someone gives you.
We got a ride before too long. In fact, we got lots of rides. Each one took us a little ways; then we would join up with another car.
We rode with a high school teacher who taught us what he called "the new math." Taught Meredith, that is. I didn't understand a word of it. Truthfully, I told him, I don't even know the old math yet.
We rode with an ex-con who scared Meredith with his tales of yore-but made me keep asking him to tell more. Tell more. All except about the part when he got caught.
Then Frank, he was a newspaperman, he told us all about the local area where we were driving. It was most interesting. I could have sat on the porch swing and talked with him all day till Meredith would get tired. He educated us about the early Indians, the Ohio riverboats, and the government that paid farmers to settle out here. We told him we came from Fayetteville, and he knew Sheriff Buzz Whitey and told us what a good man he was, and we said yes to that and told him about Sheriff Buzz letting them do a hoedown.
Meredith and me had other rides, too. A vegetable salesman who drove us a little ways said he never heard of okra.
"You never heard of okra?" I queried.
"Never."
'We have okra all the time back home. It grows all over."
"Never heard of it."
'I'm surprised you never have since you sell vegetables." He had some in the back seat. I turned around and picked up a big red tomato. "What's this?" I asked him.
'What? You never seen a tomato before?"
Sure I had, but I said, "Looks like an ordinary apple to me." I nudged Meredith, and she sort of smiled, and we drove on. The vegetable man wanted us to take a few tomatoes with us, and the last thing he said was about someday tasting okra.
We drove on through country and watched mountains in the background. A man who collected fountain pens took us from one town to the next. He gave us a pen with his name and address on it in case we found a special pen, we could mail it to him.
A nympho drove us from there-but I wanted no part of that.
More rides.
We drove with more drivers in more kinds of cars. We journeyed through valleys, hills, mountains, woods, farms, sunshine, clouds, two lanes, three lanes, small towns, larger towns, billboards, motels, telephone poles, bicycle riders, railroad crossings, bridges.
Fifteen miles to Groverton. Ten miles to Groverton. Groverton city limits. Groverton Feed and Hardware. Thank you for visiting Groverton. Return soon. Resume speed. Fifteen miles to Carlton.
CHAPTER NINE
Carlton Honest Pharmacy. Thank you for visiting Carlton. Return soon. Resume speed.
My mind wandered off to stained glass windows. The first time in my life that I seen colored glass windows was, of course, back in the days when I was going to church. They had them there, and then they had them at the Good South Funeral Home and Mortuary. I saw them when they buried Auburn Brupple. I weren't invited out there to the funeral, but it was the same day that me and Preston McDonald chose to loot the chapel. They all went out to the graveyard with Auburn Bruupple's dead body, and me and Preston McDonald went in the chapel and came out with two floor lamps, the sign-in table, and a bushel of flowers. Our brains were in a vault at the bottom of the ocean when we thought up that one. One of these days, crazy Preston McDonald is going to get hisself caught doing a three-teat thing like that.
But I weren't thinking on that. It was about the stained glass windows. I seen and marvelled at them before in my life, and now I just seen them again a few more times. At that nightclub way back across the state line. Again at a bar. And then once more in the bus.
Everyone ought to be able to have stained glass. A man could open a business if he could learn a trick or two how to make them windows so they don't cost so much. Like out of plastic or something. There could be stained glass prettying up the whole country. We entered Pennsylvania.
Cora was driving. Meredith sat in the middle. I figured Cora was twenty-something, but she said she were thirty-eight. She looked better than that. She looked young. I'd never have guessed thirty-eight in ten years. 'Course by then she'd be forty-eight, so a lot of good it'd do anyway.
"Age in years don't mean a thing," I said. "Here I've been with Meredith for some few days now, and I couldn't tell you how old she is any better than I could tell you why General Lee did what he did a Appomattox."
Drive it there; leave it there. That's what the trailer hooked up to the back of Cora's car said. Rather, the trailer didn't say it. Trailers don't have a voice. The sign on it said it.
The back seat was packed with boxes and a bird cage.
"Where are you moving to?" I asked. "Pittsburg. You two are welcome to ride that far. That might help you somewhat." Meredith said, "Thank you."
I said, "You're doing just what we're doing-moving to a new home and new everything. Only we don't quite know exactly where that will be except in the vicinity of Canada."
"Canada's one place I've always wanted to visit," Cora said. "I hope you two are patient driving this slowly. I'm being cautious with the trailer behind us."
"We're going faster now than we were standing back there."
"Is it safe to enter that lane?"
I looked over my shoulder. "Sure is."
Cora nodded. "I grew up hitchhiking. Those were different times, though, and I was quite younger."
"I bet an acre of strawberries that you got lots of rides." I smiled real big and wide to show I didn't mean no harm. Cora knew that. Any boy riding with a clean, pretty, polite, voluptuous kitten like Meredith simply couldn't be up to no harm.
Cora offered us a cigarette.
"No thank you," said Meredith.
"Me either. To me those things are deadly and they're bothersome. I snuck a cigar one time which is just like those but worse; and I couldn't think right, see right, taste right for a whole day. You oughtn't smoke them either. Except to be social."
"You're so right." She put back the cigarettes.
"I did smoke a homemade cigarette not long ago. That one did funny things to my head."
Meredith nudged me to be quiet.
Cora turned on the windshield wiper to see if it worked or something, even though the sun was full bright. Cora said, "I hope they turned on the gas in my new apartment, so I can take a long solemn nap in the bathtub tonight. After all this driving."
Meredith said, "I hope they turned on the hot water for you, too. Our dormitory at college always ran out of hot water around eight o'clock."
"We had no hot water to run out of." That was me who said that, of course. "We had to boil water for a bath in kettles on top of Jacobs."
'Who's Jacobs?" Cora and Meredith wanted to know.
'It don't matter, but Jacobs was Pa's pot-bellied stove. Called Jacobs 'cause Judge Jacobs in those parts had a pot-belly, and we always linked him up with the stove somehow." That weren't too interesting, so I asked Cora, "Is Pitts a very large burg?"
They laughed. They both laughed.
"Now what's so damn funny about that? I never heard of Pitts, Meredith, so I want to know what kind of place Cora's moving into."
Meredith said, "The place is called Pittsburg. It's one word. So it isn't a burg. In fact, it's quite a large city from what I know about it."
Cora said, "There's lots of industry there, so I'm hoping employment won't be too difficult to find."
Cora was nice and gentle and good to look at. She won't have no trouble finding work.
I glanced at the mirror and saw a turd-on-wheels police car. His light weren't going, so I didn't say anything.
Cora said, "Oh dear, we have the highway patrol behind us. What does he want."
"He's probably trying to figure out what all you have back there in the trailer."
"All I've got back there, aside from some albums, books, and films, is furniture. What little of it that I saved. Most pieces I sold, so I can start over with new things."
That's the best way to do," I said. "It's best to begin again with newness. Except your name, unless someone's after you. And except who you are, unless you want to be someone else."
"Which is impossible," said Meredith.
"It ain't impossible either, Meredith." The police were still behind us. "We had an ugly woman from town go clear over to Montgomery and came back as someone completely different. She had a new face. She was still ugly, but you couldn't make out that she was the same ugly woman. You're right though, I guess. She still had the same name and still sat in the park every afternoon. She weren't completely different."
The police pulled around and passed us and sped on down the highway. Good to get him out of the way. Cora relaxed a little. She was pretty, no matter how old she was. I thought about us getting out. of the car and hugging each other when we got to Pittsburg.
We drove on some. Moving ahead.
Meredith said, "How many rooms do you have?"
"Four. That's all I really need."
I said, "I wonder what kind of homes they have up in Canada?"
"Ordinary ones."
"Well, just so long as they aren't igloos or grass huts. Igloos would melt in the summer, and grass huts would dry up in the winter. You two can laugh at that one. That's suppose to get a chuckle out of you or at least a snort."
Meredith said, "Ladies are not suppose to snort."
Meredith was sure getting mighty smart. "Men ain't suppose to cry, and I seen them cry on television. If a person wants to snort, it's best he snorts and get it out of the way. Pennsylvania is pretty."
I rubbed my fingers across the wood on the glove compartment Cora pushed some hair behind her ear. Meredith put her arm closer around me.
"We appreciate you letting us ride with you," I said.
When we got a short ways from Pittsburgh and we could see real tall buildings as high as a balloon would get if you would let it go before you couldn't see it anymore-when we got a short ways from Pittsburgh, Cora said, "I don't have anything in this apartment yet, but you kids are welcome to come in and have a cup of coffee before you go on. I do have a hotplate."
I could help her carry in some of her things, too. "All right," I said. "We'd love to."
Meredith nodded.
Whales flying in the sky! Pittsburg was sixty-hundred zillion times bigger than anywhere I ever seen. Better than that. We drove down a street, and I had no imagination that there was so many people in the world. And this was just a small slice of pie compared to the rest of the United States or to this continent or to our whole world or to the whole everything.
I carried in fourteen trips of Cora's things to her new place. Meredith staying inside and helped Cora hang things in the closet while I loaded in boxes, packages, cartons, and a bird in a cage. I worked up a good sweat, got in some healthy exercise, and helped Cora get set up.
"Here's a towel and soap, if you want to shower, Rusty. I'm happy to say that they did turn on the hot water."
I looked at Meredith in such a way as to ask shall we shower together? Neither of us had showered up in a few days.
"I think I'll shower too," she said.
Cora approved. "There's not room for three, is there?"
"I don't know," I said. "It's your shower." I sized up the bathroom and called them in. "This shower's bigger than a meat freezer. There's room for ten of us." I got the water going and stripped when they came in.
Meredith scrubbed my back and under my arms and over my shoulders. Cora knelt on the floor and did my legs and feet. She oughtn't to have been kneeling before me like that. I helped her up on her feet, and my hands curved in and out up the form of her body. Cora was shy, but there weren't a thing to be shy about. Don't be so timid I looked at her.
Meredith was sudsing her hair. Cora took the washcloth and wiped her boob, but then turned a little away from me like she weren't suppose to see me. I held her arm and turned her back around, stood a little closer, and bowed to look in her eyes 'cause her face was bowed. She looked up. I smiled and got her to hold her head up. I smiled more and then realized we were peering into each other's eyes with our faces telling each other that we felt glad and good together.
Cora leaned back to let the water splash all over her face. She wiggled and laughed, refreshed.
I took Meredith and Cora in both of my arms and squeezed the three of us together, feeling our heads and bodies touch.
Then I started acting up. "It's starting to rain." I made noises that were suppose to be thunder. They snuggled closer. Yippy-dappy! First time in my life that I had two naked girls under my arms at the same time.
Out of the shower we went. Trouble was there at the bathroom door. Each of us wanted the other to go into tke bedroom first. I took a step out the door, then invited Meredith to go. She took a step, then offered passage to Cora, who took one step and motioned for me to go in. After a few more steps and a few more invitations, we all held hands and skipped into the bedroom and flopped, still wet, on the mattress.
We tumbled and tickled each other.
"Defend yourselves," I forewarned and rocked back and forth, swinging my bloated cock at their busts. Meredith leaned over me and swayed her boobs, knocking my expanded pecker. Lots of hot, nervous, anxious energy beat between my legs. Heat spread all over my body and carried sweat to my face. I was drunked with sex, knowing I had enough come being churned up for two cocks, which would have been handy at that time.
Cora kissed me all over my face. I heard loud crashing kisses in my ear and felt her mouth on my neck and cheeks.
I didn't remember where I was.
I was forgetting where I am.
I screwed Meredith first while Cora -rimmed my ass. Then I screwed Cora while I -rimmed Meredith's.
* * *
PART TWO
CHAPTER TEN
Me and Meredith walked and walked through downtown Pittsburg. We saw sights up here in the North that t'would of made our Confederates retreat all the way to the Gulf and hop aboard boats to South America.
We looked in a store window displaying little cannons.
"Goddam, Meredith. It's no wonder they won the war-what with every mother and child able to walk around town toting their own pocket-sized cannon."
"That's not a real cannon. It's a bookend. I thought we promised each other not to discuss war anymore."
"I ain't discussing war, Meredith Sergeant. I'm discussing ammunition."
"Ammunition is war, Rusty."
She was right again. You can't have havoc without the things that make havoc. "The more we discuss this, Meredith, the further we get from our agreement not to discuss these matters."
"Rusty, we have to get you some shoes."
It just occurred to both of us that there I was barefoot, and some of these good folks were taking notice in various manners of that.
The Pittsburg Telegram was at my feet. I picked it up.
"Look how big their newspaper is, Meredith? With all these pictures and writing? Look at all these words."
There was not only lots to look at in the newspaper-but all around. Buildings to see that must have taken a thousand men a hundred years to build that high. And colorful store windows that I wanted to see everything in them-and have fun with Meredith figuring out what some of these new modern gadgets were and what for.
And also lots of folks to see.
More folks going places on that one street than there was in our whole town, Osage, and Creevorport put together.
We stopped and bought me shoes with some of that pool game money we earned in one way or another back before Chattanooga. The shoe man told us his name and asked about us. And I apologized while we were talking about coming in there with my feet so dirty. He sold us seven pairs of sox, too. I really didn't need that many, but he kept showing us all these colors that he said would go real good with the shoes I bought-or would go with Meredith's Army shirt, if she decided to wear them.
We walked down the street further.
Folks up here in Pittsburg were sure different from us down there. Different in what they did while walking amongst each other, at least. Back home the main thing about walking along the sidewalk was smiling and saying something to everyone. Good morning, Mrs. Brupple. Have you heard from Willie in the Marines this week? Or-howdy, Elwood Simpsons. Where you going in such a scurry?
"Up here," I said to Meredith, "the main thing seems to be trying their best not to look at each other. Except long as it takes a fly to die when you swat him."
"People in Biloxi were the very same, though.
There were about a million people in Biloxi, and yet there was very little awareness."
"You don't say very much about Biloxi."
"I don't think very much about it. A big hurricane blew through there in August of 1969 and really tore the city apart. It was one of the worse disasters, so far as disasters go, in the history of the country."
"I hope no one was hurt."
"They were, but that was because they wouldn't evacuate as advised. They wouldn't leave their homes. But that hurricane-to me-was a negative force that convinced me to leave Biloxi, the Old South and the New South, and all that shit, and correct a few things."
We passed a huge store that sold nothing but plates and glasses.
"Meredith Sergeant, I never heard you say 'shit' before."
We laughed and walked with our arms around each other. It didn't matter none what words she used. Crap, the way I use words together is worse than anyone.
"Rusty, look in this window."
They were 'selling radios and televisions that were turned on. Some sets were in real color. Some sets were big as a corn crib. One was tiny as a cigar box. Then I seen why Meredith had us stop and look.
Me and Meredith was being photographed, and our picture was right there before us in the window on one of them live televisions.
"Meredith, we're on television! Look at our pictures! Do you see that?"
I didn't know what to do, so I waved and laughed. Meredith thought it was fun and funny, too. Her eyes and smile were all lit up and enjoying this.
"What's this about?" I asked. "Why do they have us on television? Is it to get us to buy a television? I wonder if Pa can see this."
She laughed and explained about closed-circus.
"Closed circuit," she corrected me.
"Is there anything you want to buy, Meredith? We still can afford some things."
"Body lotion, my love. I believe we need some."
That's what we used in fucking.
"Well, if we need body lotion, we better halt soon and fetch some. I hope they don't have us on closed circuit T.V. there. I'll be embarrassed." , Now that I was wearing shoes, absolutely nobody looked at us. Shit, I didn't give a damn. I had Meredith, and Meredith sure noticed me. I wouldn't care if we were walking across the desert burning. Or through snow and ice. Or on the tops of railroad cars from one to the other being chased by bandits.
Meredith looked at me when we waited for a stoplight. She said, "Let's go to New York."
"New YorkF' Sure.
"That far north?"
"New York's no further north than Pittsburg. Just more east."
"I never thought of ever being in New York. No matter how much you hear about it. New York's the biggest and busiest city in this whole world. I don't care, Meredith. Wherever you think best. If you want to see New York, there ain't a thing to stop us. I don't mind seeing New York, if that's where you want to go"
"We'll see."
"Hell, we can go anywhere. We can do anything. New York, Hong Kong, Madrid."
"Now you're getting into it." The light turned green. We crossed that street. "We can go anywhere," I said. "We're free. You know that? This here's our world. This is our life. We're free."
"Say that again."
"We're free free free!" I spun myself round and round right there on the sidewalk. Free! Wild! Grateful! I stopped spinning and brought my sweetheart into my arms against my body and felt her next to me. She rubbed her face next to my chest under my chin and wound my beads around her fingers. God, I thank you. God, I thank you. God, I thank you. Then we walked again. But not far. I thought we had cause to stop. I whispered, "Look Meredith." I whispered 'cause he oughtn't really be hearing what I was about to say. We stopped-but didn't look right at him. Him was a cripple. He was a cripple.
He had no legs and only one of the two arms he was born with. He couldn't walk and had only the one hand that was holding out a cup. And on top of that, oh God, oh God, there wasn't a thing in the world that he could see. He was blind. There wasn't a thing in Pittsburg he could see. Nothing. Anywhere.
"Oh Meredith, I could sit right down and-"
I don't know what.
He was sad to see, but there wasn't a thing we could do. We poked a dollar in his cup and walked onward. Couldn't say "have a good day' or anything-'cause you know he couldn't-no matter how much he wanted.
"I wished we had one of those homemade cigarettes that makes your brain somersault."
"Well, we'll score some later. New York's hip. I have more to tell you about those homemade cigarettes."
Marijuana.
Somehow in the depths and seclusion of my mind-I just knew somehow that Meredith was referring to marijuana.
"There's the library," she said.
We were passing the library. It was big as the Taj Mahal-not that I've ever been to Japan to see the Taj Mahal. But hell, you knew that without me saying it. Hell, I ain't even seen cannons that are book-ends till we got here to Pittsburg.
I ain't never seen so much smoke from smokestacks till now either. When we walked further down to where two big rivers formed up to make the Ohio River, we seen more smoke and shit pouring into the air than there was in the burning of Atlanta back in the War Between-I weren't suppose to discuss war. I could barely see the blue in the sky. Breathing all that stuff in was like swallowing pine cones.
"Are you tired of walking?" I asked.
"A little."
"Then let's set our buns down a spell."
Which we did in a park. Trees, grass, pretty flowers, and waterlife again. Away from all the hurry and scurry.
"Do you like museums?"
"I do. I like looking at the things and appreciating how life must have been back in 1850." The museum about 1850 in Creevorport was the only one I ever seen. The museum was really about The War Between the States, but I figured Meredith would prefer if I didn't mention it. They had lots of war things and uniforms and papers in it.
"Oh, a Civil War museum," she said.
"Meredith, I thought we weren't to discuss war?"
"We're not. I thought we were discussing museums. Back around home most of the museums were about the same thing over and over. But up here, I under-stnad, there's a museum for everything there is." Let s see one.
"Right now?"
"No reason why we can't."
"All right."
"I want to see a fish zoo, also."
"An aquarium."
"And where they have stars on the ceiling and tell you all about it."
"A planetarium."
"Meredith, you know names for everything." She laughed. "No I don't."
"Yes you do."
"I don't have a name for what that is right-over there."
I looked in the direction Meredith was watching. There was no name for it, except a group of people. Holding up signs and someone was atop a box rousing everybody up. But we couldn't see too much more.
"What is all going on over there aways?"
She squinted her eyes. "Looks like some of them are naked."
"Wish I could see through your eyes, 'cause I don't see no teats or cocks this far away. Let's move up closer.
Which, of course, we did. Teats and cocks are better than museums, fish, and stars put together. The closer we got, the more we saw.
They were all dancing around to music and agitating their bodies against each other. It was an orgy almost, except only one cock and a couple teats showed.
"Meredith, what have we stumbled into?"
"Their signs say Free Unashamed Copulation for Karma."
"A demonstration, is that it? The first letter of each word of their organization spelled out FUCK. Well, if this ain't a sight and then some."
The speaker on the box was praying, raising the dead, asking for rain-or something.
He yelled, "Fuck as though your life depended upon it! The body is the body. It is flesh for flesh's sake. Join bodies and rejoice in your souls! FUCK for Karma."
Some lads rolled in the grass. The others did a war-hoop. They waved their arms and felt each others balls or pussies or whatever there was. They fell on their knees and gyrated around like it was a revival.
I was opening my mouth to ask Meredith if there was anything we should do, when I saw plenty of cause coming from across the park this way to make us do something. Headed toward us were three cop cars from three directions. Sirens wailing. Lights flashing.
"Grab the teargas!" the speaker hollered. "It's a bust! Fight for your freedom. Defend your thoughts and rights."
Me and Meredith weren't to discuss war, and here we were in the middle of one. The Fuck demonstrators picked up gadgets and weapons to fend off the police who were skidding their tires on the park grass, drawing nearer, making folks at a picnic over yonder scatter with their baskets.
"Rusty, this looks like trouble."
Indeed it did. Worse than that. Worse than that. Except for the two boys in underpants and the girl with her naked boobs juggling up and down-running to me and Meredith.
"Want to join an orgy?" one boy asked.
"Looks like the Battle of Bull Run to me," I said.
"Not that," the girl said pointing to the squad cars. "There," she said pointing to the woods.
"Oh, that's different. What do you want to do Meredith?"
The woods were our only escape. To run anywheres else would mean capture and fate worse than that. "Let's go with them," she said.
So off we trotted-Meredith, the half-nudie girl, the two lads in shorties, and me. Into the woods and bushes we fled. Good thing we had the fresh bottle of screwing grease. We pushed aside vines and branches. We were laughing, running down the forest path and heard sirens, police whistles, and hollering behind us.
"Faster!" I shouted. "Beauregard is out of munitions. We must make it to the river or surrender to the Yanks!"
We all climbed over a fallen tree across the path. Ran down and up a little valley. Walked along a ridge. Crossed a little clearing covered with green moss and leaves. We gathered together.
"I guess we're far enough away." That's what one boy said, and it's no wonder he figured on stopping. He had a hardon about two inches thick.
The girl said, "Let's walk a little more to make certain."
So we did. The path split, and we went deeper into woods. Down and up a little ditch. Along a dried up brook. Passed a waterfall.
Our path led to a cave that went into the hillside. But we could see light through the other end.
Passage Forbidden. Positively No Trespassing.
I weren't sure what we were getting ourselves into, but all of us filed into the pitch black, chilly cave. The walls were wet We walked with real tiny steps, holding on to the person in front of us, and talking to make sure we were all together.
Coming out the other side was better than it was inside. We gathered together again and everyone hugged together.
"They'll never find us here."
So one and all undressed.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
I don't know what I was doing in Pittsburg. Or on the other side of the cave in the clearing. Or at this typewriter. I am a long way from home now, and I probably don't have any home to return back to at all-Pa most likely chalked me up as being out on my own now not ever to return for some time now. I'm fixing on writing him a letter one of these days to let him, my brother Jackson, and that good-for-nothing collie named Collie that we had-all know that I was all right and that I could take care of myself because there was some decent people around who don't mind helping you out and taking you with them for a while and getting along with you. Pittsburg was too soon, though. I'd feel better for dropping Pa and them a letter soon as I got steadfast in Canada.
Unless, of course, I never became steadfast and turned accidentally into a rambler or a wanderer. And spent the rest of my days settling down, knowing folks, packing up, and being off on my own again. By myself.
That could happen. Anything could happen. Anything I want to happen can happen.
There are advantages to being a rambler. Unattached and unobligated. There are advantages to being a home man, too. Shit, there are advantages to anything.
I was plenty steadfast right now, where I was standing with Meredith behind me and her arm reaching around me with her hands holding onto the fronts of my shoulders. I leaned my face to the side and rubbed my cheek upon her hand.
I couldn't be steadfast too much longer, though. I felt lovey-dovey as a purring, furry kitten and hot as a Boston baked bean.
Everything seems okay to me.
I mean, I see one interesting thing after another going from place to place and from friend to friend on this little trip getting us to Canada. I imagine, there's enough buildings, enough people, all forging forward like our ancestors-that if you scooped them all up together-it would take a whole 'nother world just like this one to put everything into. That is, if anyone would ever want to do that. An of course, a body couldn't do it anyway, wanting to or not.
So here's the earth. The earth here. We are here of the earth. Take it or leave it. And I ain't fixing on leaving it just yet. And who would be anyone to take it. I'm just satisfied to be here, happy to have eyes, and happier than you-name-your-favorite-thing to have arms to move about and words to speak.
Or words to write. 'Cause, when I write, sometimes I never know quite what to say first. Like it is sometimes in talking.
If you're thinking fast-or paying any attention to any of this since there's no fucking so far on this page-you'll probably remember me asking Meredith a while's back what words they was on a billboard we seen. That's 'cause I can't read but a few words, and if a man can't read, how's anybody suppose to believe that he can write. But here I am writing.
Figure that one out. .
I can't read or write, but the words are here, black on white. Unless someone comes along and drops an orange soda in the ink barrel. Then it might turn out dark orange on white. And so forth. Love like your life depended upon it. And shine one.
But that's there. Me and Meredith are here. By this cave entrance with the others.
Up here in this part of the country the leaves were starting on changing colors. Down where we came from and been, the leaves was all one color: green or shades of green. But these were dark green, ordinary green, brown, tan, red, orange, bright green, and yellow.
I didn't see much sense in dwelling on the colors of leaves, and I'd be a fool to do so. A fool would even go into the shapes of the leaves and how they felt-then start in about the lands of bark and the shapes of trees, and the shapes of trees, and the woods all put together into one.
Only someone who's in a galloping, blind hurry wouldn't go back and cross out and unthink all those words about trees-which were there, true enough, but so was other life. Namely, Meredith, Olya, Greg, Todd, and me.
So here we go.
My baby Meredith sure knew how to put her body against yours to make her feet touch your feet, and your legs touch hers, chest against bosom, heads together-all up and down, one body in contact with another. It's enough to make your eyes close and squeeze and touch and hold. And what was even more pleasure was that Meredith had form.
Greg and Olya held each other in their arms. Greg rubbed his hands over Olya's back in circular motions. Squeezing his hands around her waist, fanning out his fingers over her shoulder blades, and holding her neck while he kissed her for a long, steady moment. Their feet moved closer to each other. He held her more firmly.
Her kisses left his lips, and her mouth touched all over his face, including his eyes. His fingers wove through her hair, pushing it way back so he could see all her face. She closed her eyes and let him hold her up with his strength, which he did for a moment, but then relaxed with her to the ground. On top of Todd, the other boy who now had his underpants off and cock and ball action on.
Olya slid on top of Todd. Greg slid on top of Olya. All were lying down.
Meredith was standing behind me and undid my belt in front.
Olya's face rested next to Todd's while Greg kissed her. Todd felt her breasts. Olya's fingers played with the elastic on Greg's undershorts. He quivered, and his whole body hung over her. He was elevated on his hands and toes like a push-up, allowing his intolerant cock to fidget between his legs. Olya bubbled with want. Then Greg and Todd sandwiched Olya while they gradually rolled over each other till all three heads were together, kissing. Their bodies were stretched out with legs spread open-like a star.
Meredith had my pants halfway down my hips. Enough to show some hair and enough for my perspiring rocks to feel the cool air making them contract and then drop down, relaxed. A couple of her fingers felt a blood vein on my rod. It wasn't a furnace yet, but it wanted touching and holding and a woman's grip. I started unbuttoning my shirt, and Meredith undid the bottom two. Then she massaged my chest and stomach.
She looked at me and brought her hands up her body, as if to say This-Rusty-is-my-body-and-I-have-avoid-in-it-that-needs-to-be-filled-by-you-by-your-flesh.
"My mind is full, Rusty; but my body needs completion. There is an absence that starts here in my head and is expanded down my throat passed my heart into the emptiness of my belly. The only place where you can reach me to fill my carnal being is here."
She fanned out her fingers before her loveplace.
"Gee, Meredith. Such poetry."
"Make love to me as though it were our first time ever. Ball me as though we will never ball together again or see each other after this hour."
"Don't talk like that. We're staying together. We'll be with each other when the sun rises tomorrow and after that as well. Unless something happens to separate us."
"Look in my eyes!"
I looked. She was crying. Not actually crying with pain, but there was tears pouring out her watering eyes and she was smiling. I couldn't tell if she was crying or laughing. I couldn't-
"Tears, Rusty. For you. Tears of joy that we have met. Tears of meeting someone who will not harm me. Who gives me hope, but you musrit stand there and let me stand here."
I was going to hold her till she started talking on like that. 'Course Meredith was just a woman, and woman-no no no. She wasn't like the others. What are these words? I must make a sound, but there is no sound to say the happiness I feel gazing upon you.
"Have me."
We stood together and bent our knees at the same time. Holding hands, and stooping toward the earth. Till we were on the ground and till she was on me as we kissed. I rolled over on top of her. We hugged but relaxed. We rolled on the earth, and Meredith was over me, her face right over mine, smiling at me. Her long hair, so clean, so thick, so long, hung alongside my cheeks. I rubbed it against my skin. Her hair had fallen upon my shoulders and had curled and gathered upon my chest.
I looked in her left eye, then her right eye. Not at the blue, but at the black spot right in the center of her eye. That's where you see from. That's where Meredith sees all that she sees from. I tried to look past her eye's black spot, or through it, 'cause somewhere there is a tiny lens that opens and closes. I think I actually saw inside Meredith's head for a moment. Inside where her mind is. Where her love is. Where my love was going. I felt what I saw, but I couldn't see it. I couldn't see it.
We backed our heads away from each other just a little. I felt her boobs press and wiggle on my chest. I felt more beautiful and felt I had more love to give now than ever before in my life.
"Meredith?"
"What?" she wondered. She wriggled her hips and all, and made thinking nigh impossible. If I talked anymore, my cock would probably up and whack me in the face a couple of times and then screw her without me giving the go-ahead.
I saw behind her eyes. That's all I wanted to say. I couldn't help but laugh. I was so embarrassed and happy. It was a silly wonderful thing to see through her eyes, and I couldn't just come out with the words. I've never really looked into anyone's eyes before.
"Rusty, what are you laughing about?"
"Ah, nothing."
"Why are you hee-hawing and carrying on like a fool farmboy flunky? Can you stop laughing long enough to tell me what is funny, so that I may laugh also?"
I caught my breath. Darn, I was acting like a farm hick with no background or manners. I cleared my throat and looked again into Meredith's eyes.
"It's just this," I said. "And I know you ain't going to think it very funny. It ain't enough even to turn up the volume for."
"Isn't."
"What?"
"Isn't. You said ain't. Didn't you say ain't?"
"'Course I said ain't. I always say ain't when I use the word."
"Well, go on and use it, but there is no such word. That is accepted. That those speaking English have in common."
What was she figuring up now? No such word?
"What do you mean, Meredith?"
"There is a word called isn't. A contraction for negation. When you say ain't, you mean isn't-or is not. There isn't a word called ain't."
"Now just one moment, Professor Meredith Encyclopedia. I been saying ain't. Pa been saying ain't. Preacher Turner been saying ain't. The turnips in Madison Leroy's turnip patch been saying ain't-and so it is with everyone I ever talked with my entire fife of talking down there, up to the time I met you in the front yard whiles I were shelling pea-pods or whatever. You're the only one who says isn't-or whatever the right word is."
She lay on her back, and cupped her hands on her breasts. That's where my hands should be. I weren't doing the right thing. I were (kinking soup with a fork. Be quiet, Rusty, you idiot.
"Maybe I should go to school and learn the basics."
"You just learned a basic. It's not important anyway. Sounds are more important than words. It's not important." She smiled.
"I know it isn't. But just-wait a minute! Meredith, did you hear what word I just said?"
She was laughing already and repeated isn't out loud and laughed even more.
"Meredith, here you learned me a pointer that might keep folks from laughing at me for using wrong word, and now you're laughing 'cause I use the correct word."
"I'm pleased with you."
"I'm gratified. Every time in my life from now on when I do something right, I'll remember you."
'Oh, Rusty, my love, do kiss me."
"I'll do worse than that if we don't get you a new shirt."
"A new shirt?"
"Meredith, I been looking at you in that same used Army shirt since the first day we met up. Unless you're nudified."
"Oh."
"I'm not tending to be insulting. My only invisionment is that you might look prettier on the outside if you had a nicer shirt. And you can save that one for hitchhiking." Which I almost forgot about. "Really, Meredith, that shirt is perfect. Actually, there ain't or isn't, whichever you prefer, a thing nelly about it. Wear what you want to wear." Or nothing at all.
"Don't apologize, Rusty. You're quite right. I have not had my mind on my appearance very much lately. What am I doing in a war shirt anyway?" She was on her knees. "Actually, at this very moment I don't want to see-" She was unbuttoning it. "This-" Pop pop pop went off the top three buttons. "Shirt-" She pulled her arms from the sleeves. "Ever again!" And she threw it behind her in the air.
Olya, Greg and Todd applauded over there aways.
Being all at once bare and nice skin and-good form like her natural body really was. There was Meredith: free and happy every time she gets off clothes. And me too, when she did. Or when I did, if someone was around to watch. Like now.
There was Meredith, Olya, Greg, and Todd. They was having one hot fuck after another 'cause I heard them groaning a little whiles back and the sound of release when a boy comes-while I was wasting time talking.
I took Meredith in my arms and loved her with my face all up and down her beautiful body. I crushed my cheek against her teats and felt their massiveness and firmness. I squeezed her waist. She tossed in my arms, freeing herself to wave her arms in the air like there was music. I kissed her hungrily under her chin. And then my knees went soft, and I knelt before her and breathed heavily between her legs, feeling the softness of her hair in my face and licking my tongue into her clit, adoring her for being a woman. She was-is-beautiful, and I adored her. I wanted to fuck her with gusto and force, but her feelings were too gentle and warm for that.
I held her in my arms while we lay on the earth. We kissed and smiled, and I felt her rotund boobs on my chest, and her hands grab my hair. She mashed her lips to mine. I held her feet between mine. Our hips, cock, and cunt pressed together while she readied herself with appetite for penetration, for the completion of her body which she wanted. Which I want. Because we were made for it. Because we loved it. Because we were good at it. Oh, my ass drove my rod to her brain, and we did not think.
Her arms lay by her sides, eyes closed, and she waited. And wanted. I balled over her, and she took my driving force and overburdened bursting peter with all her welcoming strength. Till we were both pleased. We cuddled each other and watch the three of them go at it like they would never stop.
Until we realized it was getting chilly up here in the North, and it was time to continue on. To whatever we would find. To Canada.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Dear Pa, Jackson, Collie, and anybody else of you critters who might get a hold of this letter that Meredith is helping me write down:
I ain't sure exactly where we're at, but I have nearly good idea. But before I go on, I got to correct myself and you all at the same time and say that the word ain't (which you all use all the time) don't exist. Except in your head and when you speak it. The word you mean to say is isn't. So I ought to start this part over again.
I isn't sure exactly where we're at.
Here we go again. Me and Meredith just had another go-round about the word isn't being the right word which it isn't. Damn all this! I make a vow right here and now to say any bappered blammered thing I want and how. Meredith agrees. I'm glad you agree, Meredith, 'cause that's what I'm going to do. Shit, if I i stopped and figured up exactly what I want to say so it makes sense to them who's been to college, I'd never say nothing. You ain't been to college anyway, Pa, so what's the fuss. Or Jackson. 'Course you, Jackson, are planning to, I hope, 'cause you might someday be able to come up here and do something with an education. But it don't take that. It takes caring about the person you're doing something with, special or not, education or not. Collie ain't been to college either. I'll use my own language. 'Course, you Collie, probably can't understand this letter in no way-since you're a canine who only understands tone of voice. Why am I wasting my time saying this to you for anyway then? Pa, you read this letter to Collie, and maybe she can understand something out of it by your tone of voice. No, I think, you Jackson, better read it to her since Pa's probably drunk and losing his good tone of voice that he saves for talking to Pastor Roberts with.
Meredith just got honked at by some truck driver passing us on the highway while we're waiting on a ride. That's what we're doing. Hitchhiking. And writing this letter in the meantime.
Another car just zoomed passed. We didn't see him coming soon enough 'cause we're bent over the suitcase and bedroll, working on this letter to you. Before this, we had real good luck fetching rides-or rather, rides fetching us. If you want to get a ride real fast, you have to think hard about the driver stopping his car for you, and usually thinking real hard about it works. So don't worry none about me. I'm not alone, and I can take care of myself.
I took a rest just now and thought about what I want to write, and Meredith went off into the field and brung back some pretty flowers to set on our suitcase. It's that old beat up one I take down the way to Shreveport at Christmas to visit Aunt what's-her-name. Aunt Florice. I'll learn her address somewheres and send her a Christmas card from Canada.
Meredith reminded me to tell you that's where we think we'll end up. In Canada. Now don't you get excited, Pa, and start throwing things in the kitchen and beating up on Jackson and cursing the Yankees just 'cause I said Canada. You know it and I know it how you feel about other countries, but folks has told us all along the way so far that Canada's a nice place and friendly. One boy in this big old painted up bus gave us folks to look up up there. I'm in good hands, Pa. We're all in good hands. So go fetch a beer, cool off about Canada, and come back to read on. Or give this letter over to Jackson, if you won't let me reason with you.
Well, you have the whole bed to yourself, brother Jackson. You don't have me no longer to pester and poke you. Meredith does. You'd like her, and I'm not saying that just 'cause she's helping me write this. You would love her more than anyone 'cause she's got magic in her eyes and puts up with lots of bullshit from folks like us who are still looking for the right way to live. She likes everybody, even you, Jackson. Unless you started in about how you kids gang up on the teachers at school over in Osage. Or if you started in about the Portuguese Coin Treasury at the bottom of our pond. She might not like you for that.
Meredith just stopped writing to ask me about that, so I told her how that man threw his coin collection in our pond so the troops from the North wouldn't take them. I told her how we always dive for them but never found anything yet except crap down there. Lots of hours we spent looking for them Portuguese coins, right Jackson? Lots of hard work and hard hoping and hard patience. I never once was in that pond without swimming to the bottom to get a feel, thinking I might fumble across them coins. You worked, too, for them, Jackson. I hasn't said you ain't. But if you find them while I'm up there in Canada, you better have a long talk with yourself and let me share the profits with you like brothers should do, anyway. 'Cause if you don't let me in on it, I'll always love you, but there will always be that question if I can ever again trust you. But I do trust you. I ain't worried about you not letting me in on the coins if you find them. Truth of the matter is-now that I've just walked around the suitcase once or twice and am now back here writing with Meredith-truth of the matter is, I don't rightly plan on any of us ever finding them Portuguese coins. I wasted hours in church praying about them, and nothing has happened yet, but I don't want to say no more about it. Except good luck, if you still want to look for them. You'll just have to learn for yourself. It's good exercise diving down there, anyway. Meredith says, I shouldn't discourage you. I'm not doing that, Meredith. I even wished him good luck, but there's just something that's starting to tell me them coins are not down there or anywhere. I'll bet somebody in that crazy town of ours-theirs-made that whole story up in their head. I don't care. It don't make no difference to me. A little more money ain't going to make Rusty a different man. I'll be what I am regardless.
We just saw a car whiz by us with eight doors! Meredith calls it an airport limousine. That car was long enough for a bowling alley. We got rides so far in all kinds of cars with all kinds of folks, and none of them treated us wrong except once yet.
I'm wearing beads that someone gave me around my neck, too. They look real nice and make me proud.
Meredith is ten times better built than any girl or woman in that town of yours, Osage, and Creevorport put together. "Built like a brick shithouse," she just said and wrote. She can come up with better things to say to you than that though.
Okay, you all. Me and Meredith got a ride. We'll do more of this letter later. So I ain't going to sign my name yet.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
We grabbed our stuff and jumped aboard, putting the letter to Pa, Jackson, and Collie out of my mind for a little while. Which I was glad of 'cause I didn't really know what to write them about.
So to get going again-Let us say, we were in the country again. Good as a place as any, and if this chapter's to go anywhere, we have to be somewhere. So let us say, riding along through the country on the front seat of a beer truck.
Me on the right end of the seat, looking past the bugs splattered on the cracked windshield at the blacktop road ahead of us which dips and rolls through a forest of young, straight pines and cedars. Cedars 'cause their redwood is the perfume of the outdoors. Pines, of course, 'cause of Christmas.
Notice that I didn't say, "There was forests on both sides of us in the beer truck." 'Cause the forest on our right is the same forest as on our left. That's how it is. Just because man came along and ripped out pines and cedars for a road-never-mind.
I was sitting by the right door. Meredith, who I stopped calling Sergeant and other silly names because I felt about her more akin to being a brother or a wife or something, was next to me in the middle 'cause the driver, as you can guess faster than I can say it, was in the driver's seat on the left.
And all that good beer was following right behind us. It was drinkable as the falling rain, if you face the sky and let the drops wet your tongue. Cruising at forty-something miles per hour. I don't know how many miles from Pittsburg, which was some time ago. As was getting that first ride in Madison Leroy's truck. Everything was some time ago. Including this writing. Or when you bought this book. Or stole it. I would probably have stolen it, if I wanted it bad enough. No I wouldn't. I might have use to. But not now. It ain't right. It ain't worth it. It ain't worth money, actually, either, but that's too late now. It's started, and it's got to be finished. I don't know quite what to tell them, however. I know, Pa and them will be happy to get this letter from me, though. I held it handwriting. She writes fast, too. Fast as I can talk. Which is more than I can say for myself.
Where was I? Oh yes. The beer truck driver, Meredith, and....
And I quote.
'In three years my wife and I will be married." The beer truck driver said that.
I said, "I always reckoned, a wife was someone you already married."
"In legal law, she is. But in common law if a man and a woman live together for ten years, they automatically become husband and wife."
"Well now," I said. "That makes more sense than marrying the other way. What do you call it?"
"Common law."
I was confused already but kept talking. "It makes very little sense to say, 'I'm going to marry you, so we can be together happily ever after.' Sometimes happily ever after is two different things to two different people. We all change, too. It makes lots of common sense to be together happily and then be pronounced married. 'Cause you already was married for seven, eight, or ten years-whether you say so or not. Not you, but anyone."
"It's all legal arrangements," Meredith said. "For a relationship that would or would not exist whether there were laws or papers or diamond rings anyway."
"Love is in the head."
"And in bed."
"And at the kitchen table, being together or window shopping."
"Actually, my wife and I don't even think about it. Except when I look for a job and check the box, you know, where they ask if you're single or married. I must check single which isn't honest. We've been together seven years. I'm not single. I do claim her as a dependent for tax purposes. But again, as you said," he said to Meredith, "that's all on paper."
"Me and Meredith been married for a little while then by common law sense."
"Common sense."
"Law sense puts people against each other, or at least, which is even worse, draws a pictures of their relationship pros and cons, who owes what to whom-which is bullshit."
Meredith said, "There ought to be a way for the three of us in this truck to all marry together, if we wanted. Who's to say how a man should find happiness and how not to?"
Then I said, "Someday there ain't going to be these silly laws for silly things. So I'm not pestering myself by learning what they are now. In a few years it'll all be different."
"Let's not talk about it."
"He has a thicker accent than you, but I can tell you're both from the South somewhere."
"We are."
"Or were."
"We're headed to Canada."
"For a permanent move."
Then out the corner of my eye, I glimpsed the beer truck driver getting a pinch at Meredith's leg. She didn't say nothing, and neither did I. I was getting horny, though, sitting there bouncing up and down, having my balls juggled around and a hardon coming up.
We stopped at a filling station where Meredith and I continued a little with my letter to Pa, Jackson, and Collie.
Here I am again, you all, carrying on with this letter where I left off. I was telling you about Meredith. She's my strength and confidence on this trip 'cause she knows about things, and I feel manly to walk with her into strange places and associate with new people. Meredith has got me out of a closet and into the world. Pa, you'll be happy to learn that the ride we're in the middle of right now is on a beer truck! There's more beer than a hundred of your kind could swallow in a year. That's just one bit about what's happened . since I left home and said goodbye to farm life forever. There's as many lands of men and women as there are vegetables that grow in the soil. When I have an address, I'll write again. Love, Rusty.
The beer truck driver was ready to move on. I folded up the letter and prepared to board the truck when suddenly three things started to happen all at once.
I saw a man inside the filling station working on colored glass windows like I had seen several times before and was so very interested in.
My eyes met the eyes of a girl who had more fuck to her than a wall-to-wall bed.
Meredith and I parted ways.
This is how those three things happened.
When I folded up the letter, I walked past the garage door of the filling station. Inside was an old man cementing a square of blue glass onto a stained glass window pane. I froze. Here was a man who knew how to make those things that I had seen so often before. He worked slowly and carefully, chipping the glass exactly to fit the space on the pane and cementing it in place with delicate, precise care-like he was a doctor doing an operation or something. I couldn't see nothing else in the world except that window and that man studying and working on it so carefully, so skillfully.
"Mighty pretty work of art that you got there," I said.
He didn't look up, but said, "Thanks." He examined both sides of the stained glass and touched up the blue square that he had just set in place.
"Sure must have taken you a long time in learning that." '
"Been doing it since I was sixteen."
"Do you make those things for yourself?"
"I make them for myself, but others buy them."
If I asked too many questions, he'd boot me out so he could concentrate. He could make lots of profit, though, if he could make those so's lots of folks could afford them. Which would mean conjuring up a way to do lots of them at once-like Mrs. Maple did each year with her strawberry preserves. She'd hire out lots of kids and spread them over her house and give each one a job to do in making and bottling the strawberry preserves. Each kid would do something and then pass his work down to the next. Until the last kid licked the label and pasted it on the finished jar. Which wasn't the end of it yet. 'Cause then Mrs. Maple would sign her name to each label, and someone would pack the jars in boxes. Someone else would cart the boxes to her cellar and pray that he didn't fall through the steps going down since there was some missing. I say that 'cause I did that once or twice.
"I got some money with me, and I'm just passing through. I like that glass you got there. How much you sell it to me for?"
The old man gently set down the stained glass pane took off his glasses, wiped his eyes, and squinted at me. "Depends what you want it for. If it's for a church, that's one cost. If it's for a kitchen, that's another, and so forth." I see.
Trust me, mister, I thought.
"I need about two or three hundred of them to start with."
"Two or three hundred?" he hollered. "Get out of here, young man. Be on your way. And damn you for mocking my work."
"I ain't doing that, sir. I love your work, and I want hundreds of them so's others can love your work as well."
"Get out."
"Mrs. Maple needs but a few jars of strawberry preserves for all winter, but she makes up lots of it for all the folks there and in Osage and in Creevorport-and she's become very rich and respected in those parts because of it."
The old man steadied himself along the bench as he approached me. "It takes me three weeks, one month, sometimes longer to create one of these windows.
That's because I make them perfectly. That's because my Judgment depends upon it. You're asking me for three hundred months of work which is twenty-five years which is probably more time than you spent on this earth up to this moment."
I said, "But I'm telling you the truth, mister. If those windows could be made, those windows could be sold. And fast. And three hundred of them-"
"Eighteen thousand dollars. That's roughly what I'd earn from them. But it ain't possible because I might not live long enough to finish them. You might not live long enough to get out that garage door, if you don't start walking backwards right now."
"There's gin in your bathtub, and you're pulling out the stopper."
"Get out."
"We could become-"
"I'm warning you."
"All right. Okay, I'll leave. There's other folks who are doing the same thing you are, and I don't have all day to waste here. I want to see a few more window makers today, but you're all alike. All except one. I aim to find him and make him a wealthy man for his talents in making windows."
"Well, when you find him, you tell him Bruckner wishes him luck."
"I'm Rusty. Bruckner's your name?"
"That's right."
I shook his hand, although he didn't want to. "A pleasure meeting you, Bruckner. I apologize for interrupting you. Incidentally, you ever hear of Tatem and Totem?"
"Who?"
"Tatem and Totem."
"No."
"Good day."
I started to leave, but I knowed right off he'd want to solve the Tatem and Totem puzzle before letting me go.
"Come back here."
Which I did.
"What's a Tatem and Totem?"
"You don't understand, Bruckner. You're a good man doing good works, but you just don't understand."
"What are you talking about?"
Just then, the cement on his little stove on the bench started to boil over, and Bruckner ran-or hobbled-to it. Then across the shop, a little piece of orange glass he was heating up suddenly cracked.
"Damn it!" he proclaimed. "Are you going to tell me what is a Tatem and Totem, or do I have to call someone to get you out of here?"
That's when Part Two started.
In walked a black haired girl with a band around her head. Black hair and blue blue blue eyes that met mine instantly. She wore a dirty suede skirt and wrinkled shirt with no shoes-carrying a wooden bowl. We smiled broadly at each other, and both of us were embarrassed and knew we shouldn't say anything with Bruckner there, since he might be kin to her. Which he was.
"Daddy, taste some pudding?"
"Yes, darling. Bring it over here." He was piddling with the broken piece of orange glass.
She watched me while she crossed the garage with her wooden bowl of pudding.
"Watch the hose," I said 'cause she was about to hit her head on it hanging from the ceiling since she was watching me instead of where she was going.
She smiled a thank-you at me and let her Pa sample her dessert.
"That's very good, darling. My sweetheart will make some handsome man a good wife one of these days."
Bruckner returned to his orange glass and put on his glasses. The black haired girl brought her pudding to me, and I didn't know if tasting her pudding was worth having hot cement thrown at me from across the garage. Quickly I sampled it, approved it, and approved her-all in one glance. She blushed, stretched her shoulders back; and I saw them teats, oh, I saw them teats. Big and bursting and ripe as a luscious squash.
I-love-you, I mouthed with my lips, so Bruckner couldn't hear. She gave me a slight slap on my balls with her hand for fun. I licked the pudding off my lips with my tongue, but I pretended it was her ass I was licking.
"Quantas," she whispered.
And I whispered, "Rusty."
Quantas. Quantas.
She milled about the garage, so's not to leave just yet, and so's I could see the wiggle of her ass and the slenderness of her beautiful body. I could fuck her if I were seventy years old.
Bruckner turned around. "Totem and Tatem," he said.
I said, 'Tatem and Totem."
"Well, what the hell is it!" he hollered.
"Daddy, please," said Quantas. "Don't raise your voice. You know what the doctor said."
"Young man, I think you have a dragon under your skin."
"No sir, Bruckner," I said. "Under my skin are ideas to make you wealthy, to make me wealthy, and to spread the word of stained glass across the countryside."
The horn honked on the beer truck outside. I started to the garage door.
"Sit down," said Bruckner. "Let's talk."
"Too late. My ride is ready to leave. I'll have to take my information about Tatem and Totem else-wheres."
"We'll talk and then I'll drive you myself where you're going."
"I'm going to Canada."
Quantas turned around. "That's where I am from." Bruckner said, "I can't drive you to Canada; it's too far."
The horn honked again. I didn't really want to leave. Them ideas about stained glass windows could start into action right here and now. Also, them ideas I have of balling Quantas might turn into something if I stuck around. I went outdoors to Meredith. She was waiting in the truck.
"Bruckner there inside and me have business to plan up, Meredith."
She smiled. "Business?" Meredith looked behind me. Quantas was standing in the garage doorway.
"Not her, dear Meredith. Stained glass."
"Perhaps I should go, Rusty, and you stay."
The truck engine snarled, and the driver meshed the gears into drive. The truck rolled a foot and stopped.
"What did you say?" I said to her.
"Perhaps you should stay here, Rusty, and do whatever it is you want to do-I don't know what it is-maybe talk to these people or whatever. Maybe I should continue."
"Meredith, I can't believe you said that." That ugly beer truck started coasting. "Do you want to leave without me?" I had to walk alongside her to keep up with the truck.
"You should do what you want, dear baby."
"I don't know the roads to Canada."
"More than one road leads out of the country."
"Do you want to leave me?"
"We have our own ways to go."
I jumped on the running-board and hung onto the door while the truck picked up speed. "What do I do, Meredith?"
"Follow your instincts."
"My instincts tell me I love you." I was looking again through the opening in her eyes, and she was looking past my eyes, more this way.
"Don't worry about me. Don't worry about yourself either, Rusty. You're up here now. Free."
"But we shouldn't leave each other so suddenly."
"Climb in. Stay if you're interested."
"I don't know what to do!" The truck was speeding faster now, and hanging onto the door was becoming dangerous.
"New York City," she said. "We'll meet at Washington Square one week from today. Can you remember that?"
"Washington Square in New York City one week-"
"Okay?"
"I'll be there."
"And I'll be there with you."
"Promise you won't wear that Army shirt."
"I promise."
The truck jumped a dip in the road, and I nearly-
"Be careful, Meredith."
"Happily yours, Rusty. One week."
I held my breath and jumped off the running board and almost fell down when I hit the pavement, but stood up and waved at her as the beer truck sped on down the road.
"One week," I said.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
"Washington Square? It's too far to walk. Take the I.R.T. to Grand Central and then shuttle over to Times Square on the B.M.T. and then get on the Lexington Avenue Local going south and get off at Astor Square. It's just a short walk from there. You ask someone down there for more directions. Of course, a faster way would be the Broadway line from here, but you're better off the other way. All right? Hello?"
"Yes sir, thank you," I said. Off he went into the crowd crossing the street.
Then I nearly got run over by an all yellow car. The driver yelled at me to move, which I did 'cause someone bumped me with a little suitcase. I was turning in a circle. When I stopped, I weren't sure no more if Washington Square was off to the right or off to the left. I weren't sure if the human race was having a convention on the street where I was. I weren't sure if anybody saw me standing there. Until someone came up and said, "Can you spare a dime?"
"A dime?"
"For the subway. Why you looking at me like that? You crazy or something?" And off he went into the crowd.
A boy with blond hair about as long as mine was dragging two big mail bags behind him this way. He wore white pants and a white tee-shirt, and he dropped the bags next to a mailbox next to me. I saw him open one up and take out some packages of coffee.
"Excuse me," I said.
He looked up and smiled. Right friendly, he was.
"I been here for about an hour, bent on learning the where-abouts of Washington Square. You ever hear of that?"
"Yes, do you know the subways?"
"I don't know nothing, and you might say that I'm lost."
"Not lost. Just misplaced for a moment or two. Come over here away from the traffic." Which we did. "Do you have bread for the taxi?"
"No, but I can fetch some if there's a grocery or a confection."
He laughed at that one and then just smiled at me with a twinkle in his eye. "I meant money. Young people around here call money bread-like a nickname."
"Well, I got some bread from a pool game in Chattanooga."
"It'll probably cost about two dollars or so, but I'm taking the subway in that direction. Come on, I'll show you the way. I like your beads."
"You do!"
We started walking.
"You're not going to live in New York, I hope."
"No. Canada."
"There's lots to see here, though. Good heads and lots to do. Where you from?"
"You never heard of it-unless you lived in Osage or Creevorport, the next town over."
"South?"
"But I ain't never going back. You can bet your forty acres on that. Too much to see and do elsewheres."
"That's positive. That's very positive."
That damn old subway train nearly blew me against the wall when it thundered into the station, and I thought for sure I was going to be deaf after it started up with all that racket and people pushing and shoving. But the blond boy kept smiling at me like it was all a joke. That it were. Worse than that.
"What do you think of the Village?"
"What village?" I queried.
"Oh, you've never been to Washington Square yet?"
"No, I'm supposed to meet Meredith there."
"At least you know someone here."
I felt I knew him, too. "What's your name. I'm Rusty." The train did a tricky turn, and I nearly bumped into him. "Sorry."
"Kean."
"Pleased to meet you." He was the only one in the whole train who was all in white with blond hair. His clothes was clean too. From head to foot. And every time I looked at him, he smiled as if to say be-pa-tient-we'll-be-off-this-train-shortly.
I followed him around the crowd of people and up the stairs into sunshine again. If you can call it sunshine.
"Washington Square's right down the block that way. See, you're not lost. You'll find her there."
"Thank you."
"Chow."
And off he went down the street, looking at things and folks around him. And folks around him looking at him. He liked my beads. Chow.
A girl down the block was trying to cart out a chair from a store and didn't want to scratch it, but it was too heavy for her, but no one seemed to be stopping to-
"I'll carry this for you," I said. "I know what it's like hauling a crate of corn single-handed." The chair weren't heavy for a man, anyway. She was sexy, too.
Her apartment was small, but it looked real nice, it did. She had all kinds of things to catch my interest. Especially the painting she was working on.
"I call myself a painter, but I work in a donut shop. For the bread."
The boy who showed me how to get here learned me what bread is."
Tea?"
"All right." She went off into the little kitchen with bright colorful utensils hanging on the wall and candles on the table with fresh fruit. "Your apartment is nice."
She had me take a shower and came in herself.
Then we fucked, and I squeezed her body all over, and I felt she was a work of art. I shivered when she kissed me under the arm and under my belly-button. She sat up on top of me and greased my cock so it slid in smoothly, filling itself up inside her. I was on my back, and I reached my arms up and played with her teats and pinched her nipples and laid still while she gracefully raised and lowered her bottom on my rod, which she squeezed with her fingers.
She bent herself over, and we kissed, her lips being so soft and moist and her little tongue feeling my teeth till I couldn't bear it any longer. I rolled her over so I was on top. She clung to me, and I humped slowly, and she smiled all the while.
Suddenly, she snapped something and held it to my nose and whispered with yearning in her voice to inhale deeply-which I did and got dizzier than flying through purple space. And wanting only to fuck her and feel our sweat and hear our deep breathing and her hands always flat on my skin, rotating all over, as was my hips. My itching, happy cock searching all through the insides of her body. I felt her pussy tighten and that whole area rigid. My piston drove in and out till I couldn't feel our bodies any longer-only a fabulous joy and an excitement beyond the beyond all through my mind. We groaned and I came over and over, quivering like we were in hot snow. Like we exploded into a million sparkling, colored specs shooting through the universe together.
It was the middle of the afternoon.
There was a long row of park benches. Every seat sat in. Meredith was under a tree, listening to several young people singing with guitars and books beside them.
I watched her for a few moments. She was relaxed and pleased. She had on a white shirt with lace around her wrists and collar. Slowly, I walked up and sat beside her and crossed my legs.
Meredith and me smiled, glad to see each other again. We were both here at the same time under the same tree, listening to the guitars, and feeling happy just to be with our arms around each other-without saying one word.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The horse pulled the wagon with his head held high and proud. Me and Meredith sat up front-Pa, Jackson my brother, and Collie sat in back, all dressed up and excited for the first time in their lives. I held the reins; Meredith held my hand.
"Rusty, Rusty, Rusty," she whispered in my ear and kissed my cheek. She was waking me up by kissing my cheek.
"I was dreaming you were kissing me."
"No you weren't. I was. Orange juice?"
"This is funny looking orange juice."
"I used their blender downstairs to chop ice into snow like you see it, and I mixed it with orange juice-fresh from real oranges, if you please-and I promise, when we're married I'll never prepare frozen foods."
The orange snow woke me up fast. "It's delicious. What time is it?"
"Still early. We have time. The minister will be here soon."
"Never thought I'd see the day when I'd be married by the Ethical Society. Are you sure you want to go through with this, Meredith. Are you sure I'll be a good husband? I never pictured myself as a husband. Never pictured myself as anything, and now I'll be married, starting up a business of stained glass windows 'cross the countryside, and more than that, more than that."
Meredith brought me a rose in a soda bottle. "Happy Anniversary."
"We isn't hitched up yet. Not for another hour."
"It's our anniversary since we've been back together in New York-for two weeks."
"Thank you, my love."
Might as well get married. It will make a happy ending. It'll leave everything on a good note. Besides, between you and me, this chapter has to go somewhere. Something has to happen. That's how it is at this point.
So we got done up in fancy clothes, had a bowl of shredded wheat and strawberries, listened to a radio station called F.M. and looked outside the window a couple of times for the wagon.
"Want a smoke before we go?" Meredith said.
"Yes, yes."
She brought out the smokes, and we relaxed on the couch, smoking. Music on F.M. was better than I ever heard 'cause they sang about love and how it is between folks. This isn't the time to rap about that. I don't know what to rap about. Smoking makes me want to not even use words. I was relaxed there on the couch with her, but I was nervous at the same time.
"Meredith?"
She turned her head to me slowly. "What are you thinking?"
"I don't have a ring for you."
"Silly boy."
"Or bread for a honeymoon." What's the sense in this, Meredith. What's the sense of dense intense-hence-fenced in torque from such mundane emptiness that Rusty and Meredith feel about this whole' marriage bit. Or don't feel, as it were-is. Or how I feel. And possibly you.
So I've just decided that Rusty and Meredith will have to find a different ending for this adventure than marriage-by the Ethical Society or anyone.
So what happens that morning is this.
I walked quickly with hands in pockets, realizing that I need more warmth than a sweater since the weather's been getting cold recently. Autumn in New York hasn't been very inspirational yet. Leaves still might turn more colors before November. If they don't turn colors-the rent still will be paid, my lover will still be my lover, we'll still be working on our loft, and there will still be music.
The gray overcast does depress me, however. I still cannot watch the sky while in New York without discomfort. About four days ago the pollution was almost invisible, but while driving up Sixth Avenue (Avenue of the Americas) we saw billowing black smoke being exhaled from a smokestack into the air, which was blue, and being inhaled by us, and other things on earth including plants.
This part of Grenwich Village, the Chealea area, is my favorite. It's nice just tripping down the sidewalk. If you want to skip, no one will harm you, except the bounty hunters from the precinct. I love my friends. I love this part of the Village. I love this wrought-iron fence I am passing. This would go well in our loft, my lover would say. Wrought iron harmonizes with the old brick wall with timber inset along the west wall. Not along the west wall, you zippy, plipped frappy, as Rusty would say. That brick wall is the west wall. Rusty and Meredith will make it all right in New York. They have lots to learn about living in this city, but they experience all the time, so they'll learn. Maybe some day I'll learn, too. All of us.
But this is a new day. Good morning, young man. Hello, little lady. A new day in the middle of the week-with places to go and things to do. Today there is a wedding. I can't wait to see what will happen.
I climbed the steps two at a time. I rang the bell. The buzzer buzzed. I opened the door and climbed the steps, two at a time, to the second floor. And noticed the magazine pictures taped beside the door.
Meredith answered, smiling cheerfully, motioning me in. Rusty was slouched on the couch, stoned out of his mind again, smiling at how wonderful life in general really is. We all talked a while and had two cups of Jasmine tea that they bought when we went to Chinatown yesterday. They both nearly freaked out on me, thinking they were really in China or somewhere, having more fun than a first visit to Disneyland. Which isn't quite the same thing. We bought some prongs for supper last night.
What we talked about (so you don't think I'm skipping dialogue because that's more difficult to write than narrative or because my imagination has run out-which is true, it has about this book).
What we talked about was the repairman who fixed our telephone finally, the possibility of Rusty and Meredith drawing unemployment-and Rusty said his Pa would whip him with a belt while sleeping if he ever found that out. His Pa sounds like quite a character, terror of the Magnolia Blossom Bar. I haven't yet been able to get Rusty to tell me where he's from-not that it matters one damn bit-but it would be interesting. All he keeps saying is, "Ah, you never heard of it unless you lived there or in Osage" or something of that sort. Every time Rusty would slip in something about his farm days, Meredith always says, "And look at you now." And Rusty always says, "All because I was out there shelling peas from their pods when you rambled by in Madison Leroy's old beat-up truck."
Good sounds on the radio, too.
Then the minister from the Ethical Society came by, and we all went downstairs. Outside was the horse-drawn wagon. We are riding on the wagon up Sixth Avenue to Central Park for an outdoor wedding ceremony.
I don't know if you can lead a horse up Sixth Avenue, or maybe you can with a certain license. It takes a license to do almost anything.
"We have a paper saying we can go uptown by horse," said Rusty. "This wagon makes me feel proper, I want you all to know."
"I think it's rather fun," said Meredith. "And different."
"Getty-up, boy," Rusty said.
The minister and I sat behind them. They leaned next to each other and kissed, always smiling, always glad. I wished I had a camera. They are beautiful. This wagon is beautiful. This is a nice way to spend a day in a week. I hope they'll dig my wedding present, if you can call it a present. Present doesn't sound good. Nor does gift. What I'm trying to say is, I got them tickets to fly around Manhattan in a helicopter. Maybe I should have gotten them something physical. I don't know. I just don't know. Rusty and Meredith look beautiful together.
Meredith turned around. "Are you all right?"
"Yes, yes," we said.
I said, "Everything is all right. All is right. All is everything."
Rusty turned around. "Keep him quiet, Minister. You talk too much, Eric."
"I know I do. I'd rather touch someone than say anything. But what would you say if I patted the back of your head?"
"I don't care if you pat the back of my head. I'd care if you patted the back of Meredith's head. No I wouldn't. Pat us all you want."
We all laughed. We all smiled. We all felt pleased. Just trotting up Sixth Avenue in a horse-drawn wagon. Persons all around us were happy and laughing, too-at us, or about us. Some who looked at our faces laughed with us for what we were doing. Actually, they didn't know about us going to a wedding, so some persons started following us, tagging along behind the wagon, and a Puerto Rican boy tried climbing aboard, but Rusty wouldn't let him, saying more people would make the horse fret.
"We have a license," Rusty said to cops now and then, so they wouldn't detain us, waving a piece of paper.
Our wagon was starting quite a thing. Lots of pedestrians were following us. People watched from their windows. A beautiful thing was that nobody honked their horns, so everything was really peaceful. I've never seen anything like it.
"This is groovy," I said.
Rusty said, "I'll bet you never saw anything like this."
"I love you."
"We've got to do what we want to do, you know. This wouldn't be me riding to the park if we weren't all in this wagon. This makes me feel that me and Meredith are on top of the world."
"You are, baby."
"We all are."
Meredith spread her arms encompassing a whole wide periphery. "We all are."
Rusty said, "What's that Bernard always says? One is one."
"Yes, yes," I said. "This is my life." Meredith laughed. "Will Bernard be in the park?"
"That's a surprise." To the minister, I said, 'You'll like our friends." I m sure I-
"Look," said Meredith. "Newspaper photographers."
The minister reached behind us and brought out a cardboard box and leaned forward. "I brought some flower petals."
"Wow."
"Color for New York autumn."
Meredith tossed them toward the people. There was lots of amusement, conversation, milling about. There were more people following us and asking questions. Heads appeared from windows in the buildings.
So we paraded uptown into Central Park to the origin of the music we heard. The rock band was doing its thing with kids already dancing. Food stuffs and champagne were spread over tables. Our friends were all there. All this was a surprise to Rusty and Meredith. They were delighted.
I backed away and found Dean.
"They're having fun," I said. "This was a good idea."
"It's one way of having a happy ending. Letting everybody get together and carry on."
"You'll be happy when this is over, though."
"Eric, you've made plans and worked on this much longer than you had to. You've wasted most of your time."
"Let's not get into that."
"You ought to produce more."
"Patience, Dean. It's almost over."
"I'm tired of it. It was all right at first, but it's just going on and on."
"All right. The next one will go faster."
"Just do it; don't tell me about it."
"Meredith is beautiful today."
"She always is-except that first day we met them when they first got to New York," he said smiling. "After hitchhiking."
"Are they going to be happy here?"
"They can meet friends here. I thought you told me Rusty was starting a business of something."
"He is, and she's going to check out some schools. They don't know what they're going to do for certain. I don't understand why they're getting married, though. It isn't necessary."
"That's their concern. This is no time to bring in conflict. All you're interested in is doing what they asked and making this part happy."
"Where's K.P.? I want to take her in the bushes and ball her."
"Her boobs are too small," Dean said. "Her hair is fabulous. It tickles me all over."
"Why don't you have her five with us?"
"You silly thing. That would have to be a good trick."
"Eric, the way you talk."
"I learned it all-"
Dean was walking away to some chick.
The partying went on and on. The rock band was good. The camaraderie was festive. There's a word we don't hear very often in this country camaraderie.
I think that K.P. would like some good camaraderie. Sexy kitten. I love her. That's the truth, but what am I doing besides just filling in a few pages? The main thing here is Rusty and Meredith.
Bernard did an interpretive dance.
Everyone danced and talked till sundown. Then we all piled into the rock band's bus-the bus that's all painted up real trippy. They're friends of mine. They're the ones who gave Rusty and Meredith our number so they could know someone when they got to New York. They gave them friends in Canada, but I don't know what they're going to do; stay here a while or move on. I think they'll stay. We're going to take them skiing this winter and on short trips now and then.
(That's not true. After this page or the next one, I ain't thinking on them ever again. You know what I mean.)
So the bus brought us all here to our loft. Randy met them, and the kids from downstairs came up, and things just happened. Music, dance, smoke, laughter, sangria, dim lights, body lotion, clothes in a pile, bodies naked, good-time fucking. All night.
Around dawn, Rusty was telling us that he and Meredith were tripping out so beautifully in the park that they left without getting married. Now how do you like that?
"We're just going to go on like we always were," Rusty said.
Dean said, "What would your Pa say about that?"
Rusty laughed. "You're teasing me how I carry on about Pa and all them. Well, Pa can't say nothing about nothing cause he's down there, and we're up here, so there."
Rusty and Meredith kissed.
I was being groped by someone from behind. I felt sensuous lips on the back of my neck. Everything was groovy. The loft was; is warm with love. Complete honesty. All positive. I ride the same subways as you, my friend, she says on the stereo. All together. All together.
