For some time, as I watched, she brushed her hair, moving the hairbrush up and down, those huge, luxurious breasts flowing up and town, as her arms bent to the task. I fumbled with my shorts, pressing my hands between my legs to still the aching that grew more unbearable with each passing moment.
She began to hum a little tune under her breath and placed the hairbrush on the dresser. She-sat there for a moment, unmoving, and then looked down at her breasts thrusting out toward her reflection in the mirror. She then reached up and fondled one, almost lovingly, as I had fondled them so many times, and lifted it up to peer at the big brown nipple, squeezing it exploratively, as if it were the first time she ever realized she had such a strange and beautiful thing. It was almost as if she knew I was watching, tearing my heart out at the scene. Almost as if ... and then she swung toward the light and crossed her legs, cutting off the view I had been waiting hopefully to see, shutting off from my avid eyes the sight of that which Judy with the little bare mound was so lacking-that dark, mysterious, forbidden triangle.
Then, looking up toward the light that illuminated the room, she slowly uncrossed her legs and slid them apart. She sat immobile for a moment, as if fighting an inner battle, and then, with a sigh, ran her hands slowly down the sides of her waist and over her smooth belly, and down between her legs. Wider and farther apart she spread her lovely legs and pressed her right hand exploratorily between her parted thighs, running her slim fingers through the curly brown hair. Unbelieving, breathless, I watched as she bent over, looking down as her fingers curled down beneath and disappeared from my intent view. Her left hand she placed back on the end of the dresser stool and leaned back slightly.
Slowly, she worked to gratify herself, and I was choking with stifled emotions. Tears almost came to my eyes. I could stand it no more....
CHAPTER ONE
I knew I was going to like Aunt Joan, from the very first moment I saw her. Up until that moment, I had always thought aunts were just old women with only one thought in mind-to spoil a guy's fun. All of my other aunts were that way. It was always a pain the way all you could hear was:
"Don't do this, and you can't do that."
But my Aunt Joan was different. Boy, was she different!
She didn't seem like an aunt at all. Not even like a relative, even, really. She was young and beautiful in a way that left me dazzled from the first moment I saw her. It was that evening, just after my daddy had died and Mother had gone off and left me all alone in this world. We were all at this place in the country with some people I'd never seen before. I just stood there, the confusing adult conversation buzzing around my twelve-year-old head, feeling totally lost and very much alone. Everybody was trying to decide just what to do with me. They all pretended to be anxious for me to come stay with them, but I knew not a damn one of them really meant it. Of the whole bunch, only Aunt Joan really looked at me with any real feeling at all, if you know what I mean. She was the only one who paid any attention to what I wanted and felt about the whole thing.
I remember when she first came in. Everybody greeted her, and she glanced around the room, and when her eyes caught mine, I could almost feel the sympathy flowing from her, like water out of a faucet. From that first moment, I hoped, almost prayed, that it would be decided that I would go to live with her and Uncle John and Aunt Mary.
They all talked real low and quiet every time my father's name was mentioned. I hadn't cried yet, but every now and then I could feel the tears come welling up from down deep inside, somewhere in my chest or stomach, when I thought about it all. The funeral ... the smell of flowers ... the preacher ... the rain.... It had rained all day long that day. The preacher had been sickening. All he could say was:
"Forever and ever, Amen!"
He said it over and over, every time he could work it in.
The funeral was bad and all, and Daddy was gone for good; I knew that. But the thing that really got me down was Mother going off like she did. That really left me an orphan. She had just left a note, telling me she couldn't help it, and for me to have somebody get in touch with Uncle John, and that he would look out after me. The note she'd left for me had been signed:
"Love, Mother."
It had been stuck on the top of a piece of chocolate cake with a toothpick stuck right through the letter "o" in the word "love." What a blow!
And now, here I was standing in this big strange house, awaiting my fate. I knew they all felt sorry for me and all that, and at times I had to fight to keep the tears back. Aunt Joan especially seemed sympathetic. She looked sometimes like she might bust out crying.
It seemed like they were going to talk on forever. They kept stuffing me with goodies, like candy and cake and milk and stuff, but as the night grew on, I kept getting sleepier and sleepier. Finally Aunt Joan came over to me and rubbed my head.
"Would you like to come live with us, Skippy?" she asked, smiling down at my upturned face.
I was so happy, and yet so tired and sleepy at the same time, that I could only manage a nod.
"Then it's all settled," Aunt Mary burst out. "The boy will come and stay with us, until some other arrangements are made, or until his mother comes back, or something."
Everyone seemed relieved that the problem had been solved, and, although some of them had been hinting at how late it was and how they had to go, the gathering took on an almost party atmosphere then, and no one seemed in a hurry to go home.
They began roasting pecans in the fireplace and laughing and talking and really whooping it up. My eyes were burning like fire, and I could hardly hold my head up. Finally, Aunt Joan asked me did I want to lay my head in her lap and rest. I nodded and let her pull me down into her lap. But then for some strange reason I didn't seem sleepy at all. But I lay there and felt a little bit better about it all.
After what seemed like forever, Uncle John and Aunt Mary began dropping hints about how late it really was getting, but by that time I was feeling so comfortable snuggling down in Aunt Joan's lap that I really didn't much care whether we left right away or not. Aunt Joan was stroking my head and the back of my neck, absently, as she listened casually to the conversation. She hardly ever spoke herself. She didn't seem to be in too big of a hurry to go, either. She seemed willing to just let things go as they would. Aunt Mary, though, was as fidgety as an old tom-cat with a sore tail. She kept hinting all over the place about how late it was. I think it was really because Uncle John was drinking hard cider and getting louder and louder as things went on. Aunt Mary was death on drinking, I'd heard, but she couldn't about stop Uncle John, when he was of a mind to take a little snort.
Aunt Mary was real religious, if you've ever run into that kind before. She was sort of hard to take sometimes. The way she tried to cram it down your throat, the way I'd heard. But Uncle John was really a character. I don't mean he was real witty or anything like that, or even real bright, even. He was just funny sometimes without even trying to be.
Aunt Mary finally began edging for the door and succeeded in getting us all up on our feet. The tree frogs and crickets were screaming like mad out in the dark, as we all poured out onto the front porch, saying goodbye. Uncle John lingered behind for a minute, taking a brown paper bag from the man who was the owner of the farm where we were. I guess that was when he got the jar of moonshine.
In the back seat of the car, Aunt Joan took me in her lap again, cradling my head and shoulders in her arms. Uncle John started the car, and off we went toward my new life.
It was pitch black in the back seat of the car, almost like a dark dream we were moving through. Aunt Mary sat stonily silent, while Uncle John's booming voice, laughing and singing, rang in my ears. I could've sworn I heard the liquor jar lid going off and on several times, but it was hard to tell for sure without raising up, and I was much too comfortable in Aunt Joan's lap to do that.
Uncle John began to sing a church song:
"Bringing in the sheaves ... bringing in the sheaves ... we shall come rejoicing ... bringing in the sheaves...."
Aunt Mary maintained her silence. I could feel Aunt Joan's stomach, so soft and warm and comforting beneath my head. I snuggled closer, burrowing deeper into the hollow, where her legs met her curving stomach. I didn't realize what I was doing at first. It was all perfectly innocent. Aunt Joan began to squirm around beneath my face a little, and, as she moved, I began to feel funny. I glanced up once at her face, and she seemed to be sleeping. Her , hands were caressing my head and the back of my of my neck, and every once in awhile the touch of her fingers in a certain spot would send a hot tingle down my back.
I moved restlessly, and her arms tightened about my head. My face grazed one of her luxurious brea ts, as she pressed me close, and I felt my face grow hot. I put my arms around her waist and felt her drawing me inexorably closer and closer to her bosom. I felt certain she was not asleep, as I nuzzled my face closely between her soft breasts. Then carefully, I moved my arm up, as if doing so unconsciously, and let it come to rest gently in what I breathlessly thought might be a natural position. Ever so softly and gently, I began to caress and fondle her breast, feeling it give liquidly, as I squeezed, beneath the downy sweater and thin cloth brassiere she wore. After what seemed like hours of floating along on a cloud, my mouth pressed close to her warm form, my hand hardly daring to move, I finally dropped off to sleep. I slept as I'd never slept before.
I awoke with a start, as we came to a sudden stop, and car doors began opening and slamming around my head. I raised up from Aunt Joan's lap, she giving me a last squeeze as I did so, and I rubbed my face irritably. Then slowly and sleepily, I began to recall where I was, and I felt better. By the time I was headed up the front steps, into the house, I had a big grin on my face.
I was home, my new home, and did I ever have something to think about! Aunt Joan. Boy, what a lucky guy I was. No one ever had an aunt like her. Aunt Mary was flicking up the wicks and lighting the kerosene lamps. Uncle John went into the kitchen to light the stove and put on a pot of coffee. Aunt Joan showed me to my room. It was the nicest room I'd ever seen. It had belonged to Aunt Mary and Uncle John's son who had been killed in the war. I could hardly believe that this room was really to be mine.
My first few days at my new home were a turmoil of indecision and confusion. It took quite some time before I began to learn just what was expected of me. With my parents I had no particular chores to do and had received an allowance every Saturday. Here, I soon found, I was expected to accomplish certain set, routine jobs, such as making beds, carrying out the trash and garbage, and even sweeping the floors. It didn't take me long to find out that an allowance was a thing of the past. Money was scarce in my new home, but I felt there were certain compensations which helped to make up for those things lost. For instance, Aunt Joan often wandered around the house with only a slip and panties on. Once or twice I even glimpsed her in her room with only her underthings on.
Of all my new chores, the only one I was enthusiastic about was cleaning up Aunt Joan's room. There was a Grandfather clock in a corner of her room which had belonged to her father who was then dead. There was a cuckoo clock, also, which fascinated me no end. Pictures dotted the walls, and Aunt Joan had several bright, hand-made bed covers which transformed an otherwise drab bed into a flaming mass of color. I would sweep her floor, always being very thorough, and dust and pick up after her with great enthusiasm. She often left her brassieres, panties, slips, and nylons scattered about the room. I was fascinated by her brassieres, especially. Inevitably, I felt stirred, as I stared amazedly at the size of it, remembering that first night.
One day I could no longer resist the demanding impulses her underthings roused inside me. The house was empty and soundless, so I felt relatively safe. I left the bedroom door ajar, so I could hear if anyone entered the house. I stretched out across the bed and unfolded her soiled bra and panties beside me. I gazed breathlessly at them and imagined the way they would swell and bulge here and there if she were in them.
I found myself becoming more and more excited at the thought. The longings I felt I could only vaguely define, but I knew there was something I wanted, something I had to know. I began to squirm and fidget on the bed. I pressed my hand down between my legs, to control myself. Suddenly I felt uneasy for some reason, and on impulse I glanced up into the dresser mirror across the room.
There, reflected in the glass, I saw Aunt Joan watching me, breathlessly. Her lips were parted slightly and her knuckles looked white where her hand gripped the door jamb. I hadn't moved my head when I'd glanced up, only my eyes, and she didn't know I had seen her. She must've been watching for some time, for I realized that the thing that had made me uneasy must've been the growing sound of her ragged breathing.
I froze for an instant, terrified, but then I realized that she had no intention of letting me know she was there. She kept looking around nervously toward the front door, as if she too were on the lookout for unwelcome intrusions. Keeping my hand where it was, I bent and placed my lips to the tip of her bra. I heard the muffled intake of her breath. I rolled over on top of her panties and laid my head between the out-thrusting cups of her brassiere. As I lay there, silently, I heard her slip quietly out of the house.
The day was a bright sunshiny day. It was Saturday, the best day there ever was for a growing boy. After I had finished my chores I went out to play around the barn. I kept a sharp lookout, but I didn't see Aunt Joan anywhere around.
In the late afternoon Grandma Copley arrived from New York. Grandma was getting very old and tired-looking these days. Each time I saw her I was reminded that the day would come when she would be with us no more. Grandma was always all smiles and laughter, though, and she hugged me close, when I came running up from the barnyard.
"Skippy, Skippy," she said, "my great big, little man!"
I felt greatly embarrassed. Maybe it was because she was such a confident, prepossessing old woman what made me always feel helpless in her arms. I'd always heard she had a lot of money, though it seemed to me she never spent much of it. She most always wore dresses she made herself, and the only outward side of her affluence was the fact that she had a new car and a man who drove her around wherever she wanted to go.
The grownups sat around all afternoon, talking and laughing about things which I paid little attention to. Once, passing through the house, I heard Uncle John laughing.
"You mean to tell me you still take a drink every now and then, Grandma?" he roared.
Grandma's cackle rang through the house.
"'Course I do, John. Are you getting religious in your old age? You never was overly religious before, if I recall right."
""Course not, Grandma. I was just thinking of your health."
"This white likker is the prime secret of my good health, John, and you remember I tole you that, you hear?"
It was Uncle John's turn to bellow with laughter. That kind of conversation I understood.
As the night wore on I was ordered into the house, and we all sat in the living room, some knitting and some roasting pecans, and Uncle John read the paper. The talk inevitably got around to where Grandma was going to sleep. I guess they wanted to butter her up, in hopes of being better remembered in her will, because they insisted that she should have a room by herself. My room. Her hired man was to sleep on a pallet in the living room, and he seemed tickled at the prospect. He said he'd heard about pallets, but had never actually seen one. While they were verbally tossing everyone around to different beds, Aunt Joan broke in with her contribution.
"Skippy can sleep with me," she suggested. "Oh, that's all right," she continued in reply to their objections. "You know yourself, Grandma, that my bed's big enough for two. It's not quite as big as a regular double bed, but it's much larger than a single bed."
I held my breath. Since that first night I had hoped that such an opportunity might present itself. I could almost smell her heady perfume welling up in my nostrils. I prayed that no one would object too strenuously, and finally it was decided. I would sleep with Aunt Joan.
As I removed my clothes in preparation for bed, I was trembling with excitement and happy anticipation. I heard footsteps coming down the hall, and I covered myself, thinking it was Aunt Joan. Grandma Copley, however, opened the door and came in to sit beside me on the bed.
"Oh, pshaw, don't bother to try to cover it up," she said. "I've seen more little boys' thangs than you ever will. They're all about the same," she said, "some a little larger than others, that's all."
I found myself grinning, in spite of my embarrassment.
"How are you liking school?" she asked.
"Strangely enough, I like it," I replied.
"My! You talk real good for a boy so young," Grandma said. "Tell me something else, Skippy. Do you like to go to church?"
I looked carefully at her. A strange light was gleaming in her cold, clear eyes.
"No, I don't, if you want to know the truth about it."
Grandma looked closely at me and then stared ahead at the wall for a long while. Then she turned to look at me again.
"Do you believe in God?" she asked, looking me in the eye.
"Well, Daddy talked to me about it," I replied. "He said I didn't have to go to church if I didn't want to. He read me a book about evolution once, and about how religions grew from the superstitions of prehistoric man. I don't know if there's a God or not," I told her, gravely.
Grandma took me in her arms and drew me close.
"I'm a strange old woman, I guess," she said. I looked up; tears were in her eyes. "Most people would feel the opposite, but I like your answer," she continued. "It's time more people were facing up to reality."
She sat there holding me in her arms, looking down at me. Then she did a strange thing. She drew the bedspread back from over my legs.
"Good," she said, "I just wanted to see if your father did have you circumcised. I was always going to ask him, but I always forgot to."
Oddly, though I thought it strange, I felt not in the least embarrassed at her actions. It was unreal, dream-like in a way. With a final pat on my fanny, she tucked me in bed. I snuggled down under the spread and lay there after she had gone, watching the moonlight make dancing patterns on the windowpanes, as the wind rustled through the shrubbery outside.
The wind was coming up strong now. I'd heard Uncle John say the hurricane season was coming soon. The wind was high now, making moaning noises, as it swept around the corners of the big, old, weather-beaten house.
I fought hard to stay awake, as my eyes grew heavier by the moment, burning as I blinked and wiped at the lids. I just had to stay awake. If I slipped off to sleep I knew I'd never forgive myself. From the next room I could hear the low murmur of voices, then finally the scraping of chairs on the rough wooden floorboards, as the grownups arose to say good night to each other. Again I heard footsteps down the hallway, and I was suddenly wide awake. My mind was suddenly razor sharp.
"I knew I'd have no more difficulty staying awake. I could feel the blood racing through my veins. The best plan I thought was to pretend to be asleep. Chances are I'd see more that way. When the door opened, throwing a flood of light over my face, my eyes were gently closed. I heard her come into the room, closing the door behind her, and I opened my eyes, as the room was plunged into dimness again.
I watched as Aunt Joan leaned over the dresser and began plucking pins from her bound-up hair. Sharp little clicks shot through the room, as it rained bobby pins on the dresser. Slowly her long tresses billowed down over her shoulders. Her back was to me, as she began to remove her clothes. Quickly she stripped to her bra and panties, then went to the closet door and opened it.
She withdrew a thin, translucent nightgown. Illuminated for an instant, I could see her, clearly, as she reached behind her back to unhook the bra. I was terribly disappointed, when she turned to the dresser again before actually removing it. I rubbed my now-moist, sweaty palms together, watching intently. Her bare back, curved beautifully in the moonlight, rippled excitingly, as she dropped the gown over her head and pulled it down over her body. Then she came to the bed. The springs creaked alarmingly, as she squirmed around, settling down comfortably to rest.
I waited, very quiet and still, minute after long minute. Once she moved slightly, her long, warm thigh coming to rest for a moment, barely touching my own. I caught my breath, thrilled at the touch, then she turned again, moving this time in the other direction. Hesitantly I moved closer to her. I waited patiently until no sounds came from any part of the house.
Aunt Joan's breathing grew gradually softer and more regular, and I felt certain she had sunk into sleep. So finally I got up the nerve to put my arm up over her waist and let my hand rest lightly over her stomach. Her breathing never changed, and, greatly encouraged, I cautiously inched my hand up until it nudged her breast. I could feel the soft flesh nestling beneath the filmy material of the nightgown. As time passed and nothing happened, I became emboldened, and, throwing caution to the winds, I slipped my palm swiftly over the thrusting point of her breast, caressing it gently. It felt so wonderful to have her near-naked breast in my hand at last, that I impulsively pressed my lips to her skin, between her shoulder blades.
The nightgown was cut wide around the neck, and the elastic was loose around the front and back. As I squeezed gently at her breast, my fingertips rested lightly on her bare skin. Overcome by a growing desire, I kissed her back with increasing fervor and slid my hand down to the other breast. After a few seconds of moulding it gently with my fingers, I felt the already large nipple grow turgid and erect in the center of my palm. I knew almost nothing about a woman's reaction, but I began to suspect that perhaps Aunt Joan was not really asleep at all. A slow, pounding beat grew in my temples at the thought. I felt that warm wave rushing over me as it had that night in the back seat of the car.
I continued to caress her breast, partly through the silky gown, and I pressed my body closer to hers. Gradually I noticed a subtle change in her breathing, and she began to move her hips slightly, almost imperceptibly, as if to some inaudible beat, some rhythm of her own. It startled me almost out of my skin, when, suddenly, without warning, she turned over and faced me. She was not, however, ready to admit she was awake, for she lay there after turning over, unmoving, settling down with her slow, deep breathing once more.
I felt certain of my ground now, and so I pressed close to her body again. She moved then, falling back, almost face up, sliding her legs slowly down, letting them drift apart. I moved over, letting my leg fall between the warm softness of hers, moving my head to her breast. I fumbled around until I found the bottom of her nightgown and slid my hand up over her panties, up over her firm, flat stomach, and to her breasts.
Her breasts were like two young mountains with smooth valleys between, and my whole being ached for them. I could stand it no longer. I jerked my hand abruptly from under her gown and pulled the top of it down from her shoulders, exposing both her breasts to my avid, hungry eyes. Eagerly I took her huge, soft, yet firm breast in my hands. I pressed my lips to the-soft white skin, then gently kissed the turgid nipple. I opened my lips and took the warm, soft nipple into my mouth. Gently I began to worry the tip of her breast with my tongue. And so I lay, feeding insatiably, long after she had really dropped off to sleep, until the first glow of dawn broke through the windowpane.
I was very sleepy the next morning, and I heard Grandma tell Uncle John to let me sleep. Grandma, I later realized, was nobody's fool.
CHAPTER TWO
When I awoke it was after eleven. Sounds of dinner in the making wafted through the cracks and chinks of the rough board walls of the room. I lay there for a while, vaguely uneasy, though at first awakening I didn't realize why. Then I remembered the night before. I thought about it for a moment. My uneasiness grew as I lay there.
Anxiously pondering the situation, I had the feeling that somehow something had gone wrong. Somehow I felt someone knew. I had the guilty feeling you get, when you've experienced great pleasures you feel you don't deserve. Everybody seems to have that uncomfortable feeling that you must pay for any joy you get in life. Nothing, we feel, can be for free. If it's good you must suffer for it.
I fought hard against my groundless fears and finally got up enough courage to put my clothes on, lace up my shoes, and venture forth in the house. Aunt Mary was at the stove, as I came through the kitchen doorway. Through the window I saw Uncle John hitching up the mule. Aunt Joan was nowhere to be seen.
"Where's Grandma?" I asked.
"I think she's out on the front porch," Aunt Mary replied.
I walked through the house to the front door. The bright sunlight blinded me for an instant, like a flash bulb going off. I hesitated before opening the screen door. Grandma welcomed me with a broad grin. Her man was polishing her car with an old pair of overalls.
"Watch out those buckles don't scratch my new paint job," Grandma called out gleefully. "I'll have your hide on a platter."
We grinned at each other.
"Did you sleep good, Skippy?" she asked, turning to me.
"Yes, ma'am," I replied.
"Good, good ... growing boy needs his sleep."
I had the uneasy feeling she knew. She couldn't, though, and even if she did, after her actions last night, I felt I had no reason to fear her. But I didn't ask her where Aunt Joan was, though I'd planned to. Instead, I strolled casually off down the steps and to the far corner of the house. I found Aunt Joan behind the barn, throwing corn to the chickens. I ventured a smile. She smiled back and said very primly:
"Good morning, Skippy."
That was all. I don't know what I expected, but I expected something more than that.
The day went on like any other day. It was dull, ordinary, dreary, boring, nothing exciting at all, until supper time. There, around the table, we ate in silence at first, then the talk began and grew more boisterous, as we ate. Aunt Joan laughed and chatted, telling small jokes, until Aunt Mary caught her mood and was affected by it.
"Don't be so stern, John," she told him, referring to his scowl. "You like to have fun at the table sometimes yourself."
After a while Uncle John's frown was replaced by a twinkle, and he told us a hilarious joke about an old maid that turned out to be so off-color that I didn't know whether to laugh or not. It was so funny I couldn't help it, though. Aunt Mary pretended to be incensed.
"No reflection on you, Joan," Uncle John hastened to add. "Really, I like old maids very much, and I don't say all of them are like that."
"Oh, I'm not so old," said Aunt Joan. "Twenty-eight's not so very old. After all, didn't I have a man in my bed last night?"
"That's right, you shore did," Uncle John roared with laughter.
I glanced at Aunt Joan in apprehension. What was she doing? No one gave any indication that it was more than an absurd, witty remark, naturally, so I realized that perhaps she either knew what she was doing, or she really had been asleep.
"I'll bet you'll be sorry to see me go home, won't you, Skippy?" Grandma cackled.
"Oh, Grandma, you're awful," Aunt Mary wailed.
My lips by now were drawn a little tight, and I felt very uneasy. It seemed to me that things were getting out of hand. If this kept up, I was afraid I wouldn't be sleeping with Aunt Joan tonight.
We all got up and retired to the living room, leaving the dishes for later, and to my great relief the conversation switched to ghost stories and tales of witches.
There was a story, a legend almost, of a witch who used to live right nearby Uncle John's place, down in a swampy area by the river. Her name had been Feed Flowers, a queer name to me that I couldn't figure out. No one knew who she was, really, or where she'd come from, but everybody had agreed that she was a witch. She had appeared one year, way back when Aunt Mary had been a little girl, and had built a brush shack down on the river bank.
The most acceptable explanation to me was that she was a victim of unrequited love, and had left home, made a pact with the devil, and had eventually ended up down there in the river bottom to suffer out her days. That appealed to me. It was rumored she had once climbed on a man's back and ridden him, as if he were a horse, for five miles through the swamp and briar patches, until he had collapsed on the river bank, where he was eventually found by two Negro boys, with his clothes torn, his hair almost pulled out, and mud and scratches all over his body.
Uncle John said that it was more likely that the man, who had been a disreputable local moon shiner, had attempted to take advantage of Feed Flowers down in her lonely shack, and she'd beat the hell out of him. Feed Flowers, you see, unlike the fairy tale witches, had been a fine-looking young woman with a full, buxom young body, except for unkempt ways. The only terrifying aspects of her appearance apparently was her scraggly hair, her tattered clothing, which she made herself out of feed sacks, and her skin and teeth which she never washed.
I asked Uncle John what she'd lived on down there in the river bottom, and was told she'd eaten wild things and caught fish and traded charms, herbs, and potions, in return for snuff and bits of jewelry, which she was very fond of.
As it grew dark in the evening, I went out on the porch and joined Grandma who sat in an old rocking chair.
"Tell me what you know about Feed Flowers, Grandma," I pleaded.
"Well, it's a strange story. Some folks say she's not dead, yet," she whispered, waiting for my reaction.
"Not dead?" I asked. "What do you think?"
"She's dead, all right," she stated firmly. "I saw her put in the grave myself."
"Tell me about it," I begged.
"Well, it began in the summer time. There was a man named Cy Hawkins, who said he'd been losing his livestock at a terrible rate. He blamed Feed Flowers. Said she'd put the old evil eye on him. They found him one morning dead in his bed. His wife, who was a mite sickly and slept in another room, said she'd heard him make a strange noise in his bed, around midnight, and that right after that she'd seen a big gray cat come stalking out of his room and out through the cat hole in the door." Grandma paused to spit off the porch. "The next morning the sheriff found gray cat hairs in the cat hole."
"But couldn't they've rubbed off any old cat?"
"Well, they didn't have no cat then," Grandma said. "Warn't no gray cats anywheres near their place, so it's said."
"What happened then?"
"Well, Missus Katy, the schoolteacher, felt real sorry for Feed Flowers, everybody taking on so. She set out to reform her. She talked her into bathing and getting herself all fixed up, and all. Even invited her up to her house to help can peaches. I was there that day. Several of the women folks from near 'bouts had come over to help out. They all brung their kids and their parry knives and aprons, and we sat around on the front porch in the evening, 'long about the time it is now, peeling peaches and tossing the peeling and the peach pits in a wash tub, so as to make brandy later on. Every now and then we'd all eat a peach or two, if the fancy took us. The chilluns was all took up on Feed Flowers and just stood around leaning against the porch posts, staring at her. Well, sir, Feed Flowers sees us eating peaches, so she decides she'll eat one too. When she drew back her hand to throw the pit in the wash tub, one of the boys thought she was reaching out to grab him, and he jumped off the high end of the porch and broke his arm."
I gazed open mouthed at Grandma.
"That was the end of it all for Feed Flowers. Folks kept on talking, and she wouldn't listen to Missus Katy the schoolteacher no more. Folks started talking about killing her to be rid of her and her spell after a while. It was about this time that Cy Hawkins said she rode him like a horse all night long. Then there was this traveling pot-mender came along who said if you fired a ten-cent piece from a shotgun at a picture of a witch it would kill her. So they did."
"What happened then?" I asked breathlessly.
"She was buried the very next day, after they done it."
"You mean it really worked?" I asked, not really wanting to doubt her word.
"No. I saw her body. It was a real shotgun shell that put her out of her misery. Fired at close range."
We sat there in silence for a long time, watching the occasional cars pass by on the dusty road. There was a revival just starting in a tent down at Jason's Corners. Otherwise the road would've been deserted.
"She was buried in a hog pen," Grandma said reflectively.
"But they were wrong about her, weren't they?"
"I 'spect so," Grandma said.
Tears almost came to my eyes as I thought about it. A pretty girl who'd lived and died so sorrowfully. When we went in the house I started to tell Aunt Joan about it, but she said she already knew.
When bedtime came I was ordered off to bed early. I went happily, glad that the time had finally come. Again Aunt Joan waited until I was already undressed and in bed, before she came in. She left the light off, and, much as the night before, she undressed rapidly, taking her time getting out of her dress. Down to panties and bra, finally, she went over to the closet. I saw the nightgown in her hand. Then to my disappointment, she went to the window and lowered the shade, plunging the room into impenetrable darkness.
I strained to hear every rustling sound of her clothing, as she moved about the room. Eventually she came to the bed, and I felt the weight, as she felt on the bed with her hands. Then she slipped under the spread, pulling it up over her shoulders. From her breathing I could tell she had her back to me. I felt I had to play the waiting game again. I knew I must never risk losing the ground I had gained.
I wavered in the twilight of half sleep. I was still feeling the after effect of lost sleep from the night before. It was in the half conscious state, almost on the verge of total oblivion, that I was suddenly roused out of my lethargy into a heightened sense of awareness.
Aunt Joan had begun fidgeting restlessly on her side of the bed. I swam back to reality and lay there, wondering. Was she hinting for me to act, or was it mere sleepy tossing and turning? I decided to wait it out, being careful not to slip off to sleep again.
The twisting continued, and I began to hope she'd soon settle down. What I really wanted, I began to scheme, was for her to really drop off to sleep. I'd been thinking all day of some things I'd like to do, if she was really fast asleep. My reverie was interrupted, as Aunt Joan gave a lunge and turned over, facing me. I felt her warm breath on my face. She lay still now, her breath rhythmical, full and slow. She wasn't asleep; I could sense it. She, like I, was waiting. I got a strange thrill out of the knowledge that she too was lying awake beside me in an excited state, wanting something so easily within her grasp.
I began to tease a little. I moved, as if I too were only restless, letting my leg brush hers. I felt her leg move impulsively in response, then lie still again, as if she were teasing me. I made a few slight twitches, then let my arm slide over to touch her. I jerked it back, as if I'd caught hold of a live wire. My hand had fallen across a naked, bare, silky breast. I realized, stunned, that she hadn't put the nightgown on, after having taken it out of the closet. I could almost feel her amusement at my reaction, but I felt certain I still had the upper hand. All I had to do was wait with patience. Sure enough, soon she slipped quietly over against me, her warm breath on my neck, and placed her arm across my hips. I shivered at the thrill of her touch.
"Skippy...." she whispered softly.
I didn't answer.
"Skippy...." she repeated huskily, " ... are you awake?"
I gave no indication I'd heard. I continued to let my chest rise and fall slowly, though I felt as if my lungs would burst with the effort.
She moved still closer. Then she slid a little way down in the bed. Then, after a moment, she slid down still farther. She pulled the bedspread over her head. I seemed to be swimming in a sea of lights. My open eyes saw blackness punctuated by tiny spots that came and went in the darkness of the room. I felt her lips, unbelievably warm and moist, just below my navel. Her hand moved caressingly over my hips, fluttering like the wings of a butterfly. Laboriously, she tugged at my shorts and finally succeeded in pulling them down to my knees. I felt her lips on my thighs, her breath growing furious in its intensity. Her hips squirmed and twisted beneath the covers. Then, suddenly, I felt her warm mouth close around me. It was indescribable: the warm wetness, the rake of her teeth, the unbelievable softness of her lips, the caress of her tongue....
The night, for me, exploded in a spinning array, a pinwheel of stars gone crazy. I clutched her flowing locks of hair in my hands and pulled her head closer to me; all pretense of being asleep was forgotten in my ecstasy. As her hair billowed over my hips, her tongue went mad, and both of us along with it. I reached down, searching for her warm, full breasts, and let her have her way.
Long after I was spent and exhausted, she lay as she had, her lips still around me, occasionally making whimpering noises, as she fed greedily. It was as if there had been something she had been eternally seeking and had finally found. As I was almost dropping off to sleep, she moved away, back up to her pillow, and pulled my head down to her bare breasts. First one, then the other she proffered, feverishly. It was now my turn to play the role of the infant, and hers the part of the caressed....
In the cold, gray light of the morning, she woke me gently, like a wife or mother, and kissed me tenderly, lips parted, on the mouth. I smiled, awakening, blinking my eyes, and sat up. She had not yet put on any clothes, and there on that bed, in the light of a new day, I got my first real look at the body of an angel.
CHAPTER THREE
All the world seemed brighter that day. The trees seemed to sparkle, the chickens sounded happy, and I caught myself grinning idiotically, every now and then. The night that followed was a blissful repeat performance of the previous one. And so it went.
When Grandma left, nothing was said about my moving back to my room. The days were ordinary days with each of us being careful not to betray our secret. Night after night we surrendered ourselves to tender embraces and passionate caresses, until gradually I began to note a subtle change in Aunt Joan's attitude.
She no longer seemed so carefree, so sure and certain, as she took me into her arms. It was more than mere boredom or sleepiness, as she tried to pretend. It was, I realized at last, feelings of guilt. Her conscience was beginning to bother her. She'd sit for an hour or more at the dresser, at times, before she finally came to bed and awakened me in her own special way. I lay there and anxiously watched her some nights, as she sat staring at her reflection in the mirror. Once when she thought I was asleep, she buried her face in her arms and cried silently. I felt awful, but what could I do?
Although we'd done everything else, we'd never really gone all the way, as I'd heard the other kids talk about. It was very strange. I had lain on top of her, completely nude, innumerable times, and once or twice had tried to make her receptive to my longings, but she always managed skillfully to avoid the issue. Eventually she grew angry at my clumsy attempts, and though frustrated and hurt by her refusal, I finally gave up. Then one night, after I had teased and pleaded in vain, she suddenly turned over, facing me, and began haltingly:
"Skippy, I'm sorry. It was all wrong, very wrong, from the beginning. It's all my fault, not yours, but you have to try to understand. We can't go on like this. We can't. I'm going away for a while."
I said nothing. I felt it must be a joke.
"I'm going away," she repeated. "I'm going to stay with my sister in Kingston for a while. You'll probably go back to your old room."
My eyes began to fill with tears, as I realized that she meant what she was saying.
"You'll soon forget all about it, Skippy. You're young, and I'm much too old for this, and besides that, I'm your aunt, and it's all very wrong...." She was talking more to herself, it seemed, than for my benefit. "I've got to break away from this thing. I don't know how I ever let us get in this mess in the first place."
She turned over quickly. I felt her shaking with sobs. I hadn't realized it was hurting her so. I moved over in the bed and put my arm around her, my hand instinctively reaching for her full breasts. I jerked my hand back, remembering that this was what had led to her tears now.
"No, don't take your hand away. It's all right. It really feels wonderful. It should be wonderful. I don't know why I'm so weak. One minute it seems it's your right, and my right, to do as we please. It's good and wonderful, and there's nothing wrong with it. But then I feel so guilty ... but hold me tight now ... that's it!
Oh, Skippy, my little darling, I'm so sorry...."
I was bawling my heart out by this time. She turned over and tenderly kissed my wet eyelids, cradling my face close to her full breasts. I put my arms around her and held her close, knowing that it was perhaps the last time I'd ever have the opportunity. Finally she let me kiss her breasts and feel of her in all the old familiar places, before we dropped off to sleep in each other's arms.
She hadn't changed her mind, however, about going. In late evening of the following day, I stood on the front porch and waved goodbye, my heart breaking, as she got into the car. The last thing I saw was her skirt riding high over those long, slim, brown legs I'd loved so dearly. Then the car door shut me off from the most beautiful thing I'd ever known. I ran to the gate to open it and watched as the car sped away in a cloud of red dust. I stood watching, until it was out of sight, blinded by my tears.
With Aunt Joan gone away, perhaps forever, there was nothing to look forward to. Life seemed suddenly empty and meaningless. I was glad after a few days of moping around the farm that school would soon be starting up again. At least then I'd have some place to go and might meet some new friends who might help to ease the empty longings of my heart. There was a family across the road who had two boys about my age-twins-and a girl a little younger, but I was forbidden to play with them.
I began sneaking off, whenever I got the chance, to visit them. Twice in a row I got caught in the act, and I got two terrific beatings with Uncle John's leather belt. The Chiltons, as they were called, were a family that was looked down upon by almost everyone in the community. Their father made an effective concoction of corn liquor, and, while Uncle John thought nothing of buying his weekly supply of corn from Ben Chilton, I was much too pure and unspoiled to play with the Chilton kids. Nothing infuriated me so much as the desirable and unobtainable, so naturally I continued to sneak off and play with them and argue my side of it with vigor, whenever I got caught. Finally I got my way.
From then on I almost lived over there-until school began, anyway. I made friends with the boys easily and became the third rider of the little pony they owned. The girl was harder to get to know. She wore short, dull-colored dresses beneath which, occasionally, tantalizing glimpses of pink panties could be seen. But unlike the boys, she wasn't friendly; she wouldn't talk. She stared; she giggled; she ran and played hopscotch all by herself on the hard-packed ground, and she hummed strange little tunes to herself, as she would stand and stare out across the far-stretching fields of tobacco and corn.
So I let the matter drop and learned to ride the fiery little pony without a saddle, and pretended to let Bobby and Don Chilton show me how to masturbate, watching intently, as they instructed me in the art, although I was amused by the irony of the situation. We roamed the fields around, picking up arrowheads and round, smooth pebbles to be fired in our slingshots at the jet-black crows that cruised the corn fields at dusk.
Carefully one day I broached the subject of sex, leading up eventually to the point of their relations with Judy, their sister. There was nothing to tell, it seemed. However, I was informed that they had seen the mysteries of just what lay beneath those pink panties that was so different from what boys had. I was all ears.
"We look at her while she's on the johnny-house seat," Donald snickered to me. "She sits there and we look at her," he laughed uproariously.
"How do you manage that?" I inquired. "The back of the johnny-house is out, and we look up through the hole at her hiney-big, bright, and shiny," Bobby said, practically snickering himself to death.
I expressed my admiration at their resourcefulness.
"But what does it look like?" I asked. I wasn't just playing dumb entirely. I knew all about Aunt Joan, of course, but could I be certain that all were the same?
"It's ... uh ... well ... you'll just have to see for yourself. Tell you what ... she usually goes right after dinner every day. Why don't you come over then, and we'll show you."
I was right on time, for just as I came around the tall corn that blocked the corner of their house, I saw Judy strolling, baby doll in hand, toward the outhouse. I met Bobby and Donald behind the shed, as we had agreed. We heard the wooden door slam shut and the scrape of the inside hook that made you feel so safe and secure-all locked in and the world locked out-and my heart pounded madly in my chest.
We crept stealthily to the rear of the outhouse, and, with Bobby as lookout, Don and I stuck our heads under the edge of the ripped-out place. The smell wasn't the most pleasant in the world, but the view revitalized my morale. It was an experience of which I am not too intensely proud, but one I wouldn't trade for a lot of my more respectable memories.
Donald and Bobby had long ago lost any real interest; after all she was only their sister, but I became an addict. The thought of spying on someone entirely unknown to them intrigued me. I was there, lying flat on my back, gazing up just about every day. I even got up enouth courage, unknown to Donald and Bobby, to peer at their mother, on several memorable occasions. The rear of the outhouse was conveniently shielded by a growth of tall weeds, and one could feel relatively secure, even without a lookout.
One day, when the twins were off to town with their father to get back-to-school supplies, I was in the yard, trying vainly to engage Judy in conversation. It was just no use, it seemed. She'd listen, but she wouldn't answer at all. Finally, without a word or a backward look, she turned and went around the corner of the house. I went around the other side, and, keeping a sharp lookout for her mother, I reached the trampled-down space in back of the outhouse, before she reached the front. I waited until I heard the boards creak, as she sat down, before I stuck my head underneath. I was so engrossed in the experience that, when she stood up, I stretched my neck, trying to see even more.
Suddenly I found myself staring into her tiny, open-mouthed face, our eyes locked together in the cold shock of realization. I jerked my head out like a man freed from the guillotine and ran crashing through the tall weeds and corn and tobacco, not stopping until I paused for breath. I had to find out what she'd do. If she ran to tell her mother, I had to get back to our house and establish some sort of alibi.
My mind was working like a hive of confused bees. I was frankly terrified. Judy came strolling up the path as innocently and carefree as if from a Sunday school picnic. The only indication that she knew anything, was a curious, searching look on her face and the way she flicked her tongue over her lips, as she searched the tobacco rows for some sign of me. I realized then that what I'd mistaken for stupidity in her was really a calm, bright, agile mind. A slow grin spread over my face, in spite of the cold terror that still lingered there. I watched as she resumed her endless game of solitary hopscotch. She was really very good at it.
"You're very good at that," I said softly, as I came up from behind her.
It startled her almost out of her wits. She obviously hadn't expected to see me again for a long, long time. She said nothing at all, however-just stared.
I must've talked for an hour with her, saying nothing at all. I joked, teased, cajoled, promised and, in short, did everything I could possibly conceive of to break into the small world she lived in. I exhausted my resources, all to no avail. When it was growing almost dusky dark and her mother had begun to light lamps inside the old weather-beaten house, and as I was growing more and more afraid that her father would be coming home, she suddenly stopped her garr, s of hopscotch. I had the quick, horrifying thought that perhaps she was only waiting to tell her father, that she just wanted to tell him instead of her mother what had happened. As she stood silently looking me in the eye, she threw the doll and bits of glass aside in the dirt.
"Come on," she said.
It was the first time she'd ever spoken to me. She walked to the corner of the house and turned to look at me, impatiently, as I stood there, dumbfounded.
"Come on!" she said exasperatedly.
Dumbly I followed her down the path toward the outhouse. She walked knowingly, directly to our secret pathway that led to the trampled-down spot that had been the twins and my most carefully guarded secret. I stood on the outer edge and watched, astounded, as she knelt down in the grass. She held out her arms to me.
"Come over here," she said.
She pulled me over and began unbuckling my belt. I could only stand there, stupefied. When she'd finished she said:
"I wanted to know what you looked like too."
Then she lay down upon the rough, bent and broken twigs and carefully removed her panties and pulled her dress up to her neck. I gazed at the slim, white, girlish legs stretched out invitingly in the twilight; her arms outstretched toward me, a smile on her lips, and what could I do? After all, who could blackmail who?
"Come on!" she said joyously. "I know what boys and girls do." What could I do? I went.
Again I had something to look forward to, but I soon found that it wasn't exactly the same. There was the tremendous excitement of doing something forbidden, and forbidden fruit always tastes good. It was different from what it was with Aunt Joan, though. There was no real comparison. Aunt Joan was big, warm, full-breasted and really sexy. Judy was just too young. I found that it really wasn't worth all the trouble. Judy discovered that she leaned more toward baby dolls and hopscotch as permanent pastimes, and gradually we resumed our distant relationship.
It was almost time for school to begin. School in the country, I found out, was much easier than the city had been. Once it started, I enjoyed it. I got in more fights the first week there than I'd ever got into in my life. It seemed all the country boys wanted to try out the city slicker. The girls I mostly ignored. Those who whispered to each other that I was their boy friend really made me laugh. I had no time for such small fry. Day by day I found myself wishing that Aunt Joan would come back, but since I'd heard nothing from her, and it seemed she was gone forever from my life, I couldn't help noticing the teachers. There was one in particular, Miss Kate Meadows, an old maid, so Uncle John said, about thirty. She was quite a looker, with perfectly fabulous hips and breasts that were even bigger than Aunt Joan's. No loose, plain dress could hide her charms, although she seemed to try.
One day she made me stay after school to dust the erasers and wash the blackboard. It was punishment, she thought, but the thought of being alone with her left me breathless. I'd have volunteered to stay, just to be near her.
When I'd finished with my punishment, she called me to her desk and pointed to a drawing I'd made of a nude woman lying in bed.
"Skippy, I just don't know what I'm going to do with you-honestly! You're about the brightest boy I've got, in some ways, but in some things you're insane. Skippy, your mind's dwelling on things that a boy your age shouldn't even know about. Just look at this picture," she raved. "It's shocking. Just look at those-those-her chest!"
I was standing beside her, looking over her arm at the crayon drawing.
"It looks just like a lady to me," I said.
She unsuccessfully repressed a smile.
"Oh, no, young man," she grinned, "no lady ever dressed like that, where you could see her. Not a lady."
I pretended ignorance, pressing my face closer to hers.
"Aw, Miss Kate, I just like to draw pretty things. Do you know who I had in mind, when I drew that picture?"
"Who?" she asked, a strange look coming over her face.
"You," I replied, my face not smiling now.
My arm was brushing gently against her left breast, sending my mind reeling. She noticed it too, and my reply with the soft nudge against her breast made her color a beautiful crimson, and I noticed she was beginning to breathe more rapidly, just as Aunt Joan had done, when I got close to her. She made no attempt to move herself away.
"I've caused you to miss the last school bus, haven't I?" she changed the subject. "I guess I'll have to take you home. I think I should have a little talk with your aunt and uncle about you, anyway."
"Aw, Miss Kate, you wouldn't do that, would you?" I pleaded. "I'm trying hard to do as good in school as I possibly can. I study terribly hard."
"Well, you might study, but what do you study?" she replied, picking up her things from the desk. "How to beat up the other boys? How to bend over and pick up a pencil to look up my dress? Oh, don't think I haven't been watching you."
I was very gratified to discover she had. We went out to her old battered Ford. It smelled clean and fresh inside, with the characteristic odor of old cars. It was a startling combination of the smell of the gray-brown felt upholstery and the enticing fragrance of her perfume that filled my nostrils, as we got in. As she started the engine, I racked my brain for something to say. I'd noticed she always wore the same brightly jeweled pin just above her left breast. Obviously it was a favorite of hers, probably handed down through her family. It was the image of a butterfly hovering over a flower. Here, I figured, was my excuse.
As we bounced along down the dusty, bumpy roads, we chatted absently, both of us, I think, very glad to be done with school for another day.
"That's a pretty pin you're wearing," I said, sliding over close to her, peering closely at her swelling breasts. "I've noticed you always wear it. Must be worth a lot, huh?"
"Why, yes, Skippy, as a matter-of-fact it is. It was my grandmother's favorite piece of jewelry. She gave it to me."
"Could I see it for just a second?" I asked.
Not waiting for her reply, I reached over with both hands, fumbling at the catch that held it to her dress.
Miss Kate stared down, startled, as my fingers brushed over her breasts. Then she returned her eyes to the road, blushing, as I took my own good time in removing it.
"Sure, go right ahead," she replied huskily.
I examined it a moment and then turned again, staring at her heaving bosom. "I'll try to put it back on. You tell me if I stick you, okay?"
"Don't worry, I'll let you know," she laughed.
I fastened it back carefully, giving it a little pat, when I was done. I was highly excited now, and there was evidence to prove it.
"That's the prettiest thing I ever saw," I said, "and you wear the softest dresses." I leaned over close to her. "What kind of material is that dress made of?" I placed my hand gently on the top of her huge, firm and yet soft, breast.
"So soft...." I said, as I slipped my palm down to cover the tip, cupping the pointed mound of liquid flesh and cloth, "and yet so firm, too."
"Stop that now," she giggled, "we're coming to your house now; stop it!"
I withdrew my hand and slid back over to the other side of the car.
"Are you still going to talk to Uncle John?" I asked, as I stepped out of the car.
"No, I guess not. That is, if you promise to be a good boy from now on...."
"I promise faithfully!" I said, raising my right hand.
She was grinning as broadly as I.
"Thanks," I said.
"For what, Skippy?"
"For the ride home," I said.
She smiled again and drove off.
I walked down the lane, slinging my books up on the fence post, when I came to the gate. I lifted the heavy bar and swung it open, stopping suddenly to stare open-mouthed at what I saw. Out on the front porch strolled a familiar figure that set my head spinning all over again. I began to run to the house. Aunt Joan was back!
CHAPTER FOUR
The big question in my mind that first evening of Aunt Joan's return was where would she decide to sleep. Would she still feel the same as she had when she went away, or did her return mean that she'd changed her mind again? The only thing to do was just sit tight and hope for the best.
I was overjoyed to see her again. I was glad she was back, even if only in the capacity of an aunt. Everyone seemed very quiet and restrained during supper. Nothing at all was said about her trip, other than Aunt Mary asking her how Uncle Jack and Aunt Rosie were getting along. Aunt Joan had replied "Just fine!" in a light-hearted manner and let it go at that.
In the living room after supper the conversation picked up somewhat.
"Looks like there's going to be a storm," Uncle John said, looking up from his evening paper. "Hurricane, looks to be. Going to be quite a blow, looks like. Coming up our way, so the paper says. Named it Hurricane Hanna; paper says it might hit us in a day or so."
Uncle John dropped his paper and looked at us over his reading glasses, as if expecting some reaction. Uncle John seemed to be staring at me in particular.
Rack my brain as hard as I could, I couldn't think of anything to say. He continued to look over his glasses at me with an expectant smile frozen on his face. Finally, for lack of anything better, I said:
"A hurricane? Boy, they're dangerous, aren't they, Uncle John?"
"Nah!" Uncle John replied swaggeringly. "Nothing at all to worry about. All you have to do is take the proper precautions. Hurricanes? Hah! Nothing at all to be worried about."
"Want me to go around and shut all the windows?"
"Yeah, I guess we better, Skippy. Shut 'er up good and tight, and this old house can stand anything. You know, me and my pa, we built this house from the ground up. With our own two hands, we did, with the help of the good Lord!"
"Did you?" I asked, actually surprised. I had no idea that it wasn't just a house that he and Aunt Mary bought.
"Yep, shore did. Took us more'n a year from start to finish, didn't it, Mary? Mary was just a sprout then, lived over where the Chiltons live now-not in their house, of course-it was a big log cabin then. Mary used to come over and stand and watch me, didn't you, Mary?"
"Yep, shore did. They'd saw them timbers and drive them nails. Why, this here's one of the first houses in these parts put up with nails 'stead of pegs."
"Pegs?" I questioned. I'd heard of pegs being used for building houses, but I knew it would flatter them to pretend ignorance. Besides, I didn't know exactly how it was done.
"Yep," Uncle John roared, "wooden pegs. They shore did use 'em in those days. This house was the first one here'bouts to be put together real solid like. Stronger'n a mountain, this house-" he pounded on one of the rough-hewn walls, "-stood the flood better than the Ark did," said Uncle John, guffawing uproariously.
"Now, John, don't be sacrilegious," said Aunt Mary.
I looked over at Aunt Joan. She was smiling, musing dreamily, lost in some fantasy of her own.
"It's the truth, so help me if it ain't," said Uncle John. "Built to last till the cows come home, this house is."
"It's a good, strong house," agreed Aunt Joan enthusiastically, coming out of her reverie.
"By God, it is," pounded Uncle John. "Hurricanes, pshaw. Let 'em come; they've come before, and we'll still be here when this'n's long gone too."
"Well, I 'spect we better be getting on to bed purty soon, don'cha reckon, John?" Aunt Mary said, spitting her gump of snuff out in the fireplace.
I reflected for a moment on this old-time jargon or mannerism of speech that Uncle John and Aunt Mary slipped into whenever they spoke of old times or visited some of the old folks. It was interesting and colorful to hear.
"'Spect so," replied Uncle John. "How'bout you, Joan; you ready to hit the sack?"
"I suppose so; I'm pretty tired. That's a long trip to make in one day."
"Looks like your bed-fellow is ready fur bed too!" said Uncle John, grinning, seeing me rubbing my eyes. "It's going to be nice having somebody to warm up to on a chilly, windy night like tonight, ain't it, Skippy?" he continued.
I mumbled something undecipherable, rubbing my eyes vigorously, pretending to be very sleepy.
"I'm so tired tonight I just don't know what to do," said Aunt Joan. "Maybe I'd sleep better if I slept in the back room by myself."
I was suddenly jarred wide awake. I was sure if I could just get Aunt Joan in the bed with me again I could overcome her objections; anyway, at the least I could snuggle up to those warm, soft buttocks of hers and put my arms around her shoulders and across her nice, rounded hips. At least that way I could talk to her and feel her close to me. And now she was denying my only opportunity. I felt suddenly sick at my stomach. Just when everthing seemed to be going so good.
"Uh-oh, looks like a cold bed again tonight. Too bad, Skippy," laughed Uncle John.
It began to rain heavily outside on the metal rooftop, the first soft pattering rising swiftly to a crescendo of roaring sound.
"It suits me," I said, as nonchalantly as I could manage. "She kicks in her sleep, sometimes, anyway," I finished.
Uncle John roared at that. The whole family laughed like they thought it was the funniest thing they'd ever heard. I was embarrassed.
"Oh, so I kick, do I?" Aunt Joan laughed. "Well, just for saying that I'm good of mind to kick your behind right now!"
She came prancing over to my chair and tilted it back, shaking it from side to side.
"And I haven't even said hello to you since I came back, have I, Skippy?"
It made me sick. This wasn't the old Aunt Joan I knew. She was a total stranger. Making fun of me like that. Well, I'd show her, wait and see. My time would come. I rose up out of the chair and dodged her grasp, as she started to kiss me on the cheek.
"I'm going outside and get a drink of water," I said.
"Why, I do declare! Why, I think you're bashful, Skippy," she said, with a little nervous laugh.
Outside, the rain was slacking off a little, as I stood at the pump on the back porch. I primed the old pump and jacked the rusty pump handle furiously and then let the last dribble run into the old enamel dipper.
"Tastes like shit!" I said to no one in particular, and threw the remaining half-dipperful on the cat that was lying on the dirty clothes bag. Old Tom stalked off with a protesting hiss, and I tried to kick him, but he got away. "You old bastard cat," I said, "what right have you got to be happy, anyway?"
I stomped back inside. Almost all the lamps were off and everyone was getting ready for bed. I groped my way down the hall and opened the door to my bedroom. It was pitch dark, as I felt for the bed and sat down on the edge of it. I felt to make sure, but it was empty and cold. I shucked my shirt and shoes and socks and started to unbuckle my belt. There was a noise and a sudden flare of light that came in from the adjoining doorway.
"Are you decent, Skippy?" came Aunt Joan's voice.
I heard the door from her room open wider and footsteps coming through the little hallway that separated the back room from mine. My hands left my belt buckle, as first Aunt Joan and then Aunt Mary came into my room.
"I think I have an old hair net in this dresser somewhere," Aunt Joan said, bending to open a drawer.
Aunt Mary went on out of the room and down the hall. Before she closed the door, plunging the room again in darkness, I got a good look at Aunt Joan, standing beside the dresser. She was wearing a white slip, and beneath it I could see the outline of her bra and the ridges made by her panties at the waist and legs. Her familiar perfume wafted across the room on the night air.
"Goodnight, Skippy," she said, turning again to the door.
She went out, leaving the door slightly ajar. I watched as she crossed the hallway to her room and went to her dresser. I went around to the other side of the room and sat down on the bed again. Through the doorway I could see Aunt Joan peeling the white slip over her head. She tossed it on the dresser and picked up her hair brush. She began to brush her hair deftly and peer in the mirror by the dim lamp light. Her big beautiful breasts swung beneath her upraised arms, seemingly threatening to burst from the constraining brassiere so white against her skin. Then, arching her back and thrusting herself forward, she reached back to unsnap the strap of the bra. Seeming to have trouble with one fastener, she finally parted the strap and peeled the bra off. As each breast bounded free it swung down, bouncing and jiggling liquidly, like things with a life all their own. They swung back and forth as she struggled, one side at a time, to pull her pink panties down off each hip, and then turning toward my door she stepped out of them, one dainty foot at a time.
My loins were beginning to ache with the old familiar longing, and she scratched herself where the red marks of the bra had cut into her sides. She sat down then at the dresser, those maddening breasts shuddering like brown-tipped cones of jelly, and began to brush her long flowing hair again. For some time, as I watched, she brushed her hair, moving the hair brush up and down, those huge, luxurious breasts flowing up and down, as her arms bent to the task. I fumbled with my shorts, pressing my hands between my legs to still the aching that grew more unbearable with each passing moment.
She began to hum a little tune under her breath and placed the hair brush on the dresser. She sat there for a moment, unmoving, and then looked down at her breasts thrusting out toward her reflection in the mirror. She then reached up and fondled one, almost lovingly, as I'd fondled them so many times, and lifted it up to peer at the big brown nipple, squeezing it exploratively, as if it were the first time she ever realized she had such a strange and beautiful thing. It was almost as if she knew I was watching, tearing my heart out at the scene. Almost as if ... and then she swung around toward the light and crossed her legs, cutting off the view I had been waiting hopefully to see, shutting off from my avid eyes the sight of that which Judy with the little bare mound was so lacking-that dark, mysterious, forbidden triangle.
Then, looking up toward the light that illuminated the room, she slowly uncrossed her legs and slid them apart. She sat immobile for a moment, as if fighting an inner battle, and then, with a sigh, ran her hands slowly down the sides of her waist and over her smooth belly, and down between her legs. Wider and farther apart she spread her lovely legs and pressed her right hand exploratorily between her parted thighs, running her slim fingers through the curly brown hair. Unbelieving, breathless, I watched as she bent over, looking down as her fingers curled down beneath and disappeared from my intent view. Her left hand she placed back on the end of the dresser stool and leaned back slightly. Slowly she worked to gratify herself, and I was choking with stifled emotions. Tears almost came to my eyes. I could stand it no more. I turned over, raging, face down on the bed.
"The bitch! She's trying to make me suffer. On purpose, I'll bet, just to hurt me. Why?" Raging, I lay for a long time, and then I said to myself that to hell with her-I'd show her. I turned over facing the wall and slid my shorts off. I began to think of the woman. The woman of my dreams. Her. Not yet seen, nor touched, but real for tonight. Not brown of hair, like Aunt Joan, but blonde. Not large and soft-breasted, like her, but her with those unbelievably long, sharp-pointed, firm breasts, with fiery-red nipples and fair tender skin, and blood-red lips, and that smile. ... And blue of eyes and shining white teeth with red moist tongue that darted out when she laughed as I moved on top of her, and arms and hands that clutched and dug into my back as I-
And all of a sudden I knew who she was, this woman of my dreams. As it happened I stiffened in sweet ecstasy-I knew who she would be-Miss Kate, of course, she was like that, almost. Big, sharp-pointed breasts-they must be like that-released from their confining cups. She was blonde, had red lips, rouged cheeks, white teeth when she smiled that smile of hers. She would be it. She would be next. Somehow, tomorrow I would begin it. But how? There had to be a way; there just had to be! After all, she hadn't acted like a prude in the car, when she'd driven me home, had she? There had to be a way.
I turned over just in time to see it. There in the other room I saw Aunt Joan in the throes of passionate release. She, if this was all on purpose, had forgotten herself. She sprawled there, head flung back, her breasts thrust upward, sweat pouring down her body, legs thrust apart, eyes rolled back in her head. She was working madly, transporting herself into that world that lies just beyond this. I watched, transfixed, as she gasped and convulsed and clutched at herself. Suddenly she breathed a sigh of release and stood up shakily and stumbled across the room, out of my sight.
I could hear the groaning of the springs as she collapsed across the bed. I turned over, confused beyond words. Now I was not sure. Maybe she hadn't left the door ajar on purpose. Now I didn't know. But it really didn't make much difference, anyway. She'd made the decision herself. And now I'd made mine. I lay down to sleep with plans racing through my head for the morrow.
I awoke the next morning to hear birds chirping in the trees out front. I lay for awhile in that half-awake, half-protesting state, between night and day, wishing it were still night.
After a while I heard sounds from Aunt Joan's room, and it all came back. I sat up to face her doorway. The door, I saw, was still ajar. I lay back and closed my eyes to appear still asleep. Soon Aunt Joan was up and moving about. Then I could almost have sworn I heard her startled gasp, but I couldn't be sure. I heard her footsteps on the floor, and then her door softly closed.
Shortly afterward she opened the door, and hesitantly it seemed, came through the doorway. She had a robe on and she paused at the doorway, looking questioningly at my half-covered face. She looked shocked and perhaps guilty, like I imagined I looked when I got caught in mischief at school. She went back to her room after a moment, and soon thereafter I arose and dressed for school. I ate breakfast silently and left for school in the car with Uncle John, without seeing Aunt Joan again that morning.
CHAPTER FIVE
At school I stood waiting for the bell to ring. It rang finally, and we drifted in, one by one, and took our seats. In walked Miss Kate, dressed in a green woolen skirt with a thick, soft-looking cashmere-type sweater to match.
She had her little butterfly pin perched saucily just above her left breast, as usual. It glittered and twinkled above her breast, as she moved about her desk. This, I thought, would really be something if I could pull it off.
"Good morning, class!" she greeted us cheerfully. "We're going to get lots and lots accomplished today, aren't we?"
I sure hoped we would.
I opened my book as directed by Miss Kate and began to half listen, half daydream along with the rest of the kids. Marcelene, who sat to the right and slightly behind me, had let her legs part slightly, and her dress was up above her knees. Glancing out of the corner of my eyes I could feel her eyes on me. She kind of had the hots for me, I knew, and it wasn't the first time I'd had a chance to "shoot her squirrel," as the kids put it. I knew she did it deliberately, but this morning I turned away and buried my head in the reading book. I had bigger game in mind than a little snip like her, and what's more, if I wanted juvenile talent there was always Judy across the road.
So, pretending to study, I began to rack my brain for ideas. How, exactly, was I to bring this miracle about? First, I had to get Miss Kate off alone somewhere. Some place where the safety and seclusion of the surroundings would provide a certain security. A setting was indicated where she would feel safe from unwelcome intrusion. If I could just arrange to get her off to ourselves in such a place I felt sure that the idea of being flattered and made up to by her favorite student might appeal to her.
I needed the same kind of setup that I had with Aunt Joan-complete privacy, without prying eyes, but you just don't spend the night with your country teacher, and sleep with her in the same bed, like you can with your aunt. It would take a lot of planning and more than a little luck to pull it off.
Looking across the desk at Miss Kate, at that soft, green sweater thrust so provocatively forward by those magnificent breasts, I knew that if I did ever succeed in pulling up that sweater and unsnapping that bra from behind, and....
I was lost in reverie now, a wild fantasy of Miss Kate and me. Boy, it sure would be worth the effort, no matter how hard it was, to obtain a prize such as her.
Now, where was I? Oh, yes ... I was just pulling her bra up and over her ... and then making her turn around and lie back across the bed ... and look at that big, lovely breast sticking up there just like a big ice-cream cone ... and taking it in my hand, the other under her hips, and lowering my lips to her....
"Skippy!"
I looked up, startled and confused, flushing furiously, as I heard her voice calling my name, and realized that she had asked me a question and had called my name twice before, and I had failed to answer.
"Yes, ma'am?" I straightened to attention in my seat and tried to grin off the snickers that were running around the room, at my expense.
"I'll ask the question again, Skippy. What does it mean here where it says-"
The question was something about some boy and girl in our reading book. It took me a minute to come up with an answer. I hadn't read the assignment, and the question was a tough one. I could feel the relief flooding through the room that I had been called on rather than some of the others.
I could vaguely see what it was about, so I started talking, making it up as I went, and surprisingly enough it came out pretty good.
"That's very good, Skippy," Miss Kate said, "but I don't think you were paying attention to the class discussion, although you did apparently study your assignment last night. I recommend that you perk up a little bit, okay?" She smiled sweetly and understanding at me.
"Yes, ma'am," I replied and buried my head in the book again.
"Johnny, please read the next page," said Miss Kate.
As Johnny began droning the words I caught Miss Kate's eyes on me, still, and as Hooked into her eyes she didn't avert her gaze at all. I was wide awake now, as I would've been if I'd been peppered with a load of buckshot.
What's with you? her eyes seemed to say, and I asked right back, What's the story with you?
As she continued to gaze into my eyes, I took a chance and winked one eye at her. She flushed and looked back down at the lesson before her in the reading book.
It was a long hard struggle, but I finally had to stay in after school. I'd tried everything I could think of. I'd pulled Susan Baker's hair-she'd only laughed and kept giggling afterward, like I'd asked her to marry me. I'd got in a fight with a new kid in school, bloodied his nose, but he'd taken it in stride and even showed me a good way to stop a nose bleed. What's more, when Miss Kate made him team captain for a softball game, he had chosen me first for his side. I couldn't win for losing, or, more accurately, I couldn't lose for winning. Here I was wanting to get in trouble and be kept after school, and everything kept working out all wrong.
So finally, during the softball game, one kid who hadn't been chosen to play and was watching from the sidelines began to razz me, as I pitched, saying, "Ah, ya couldn't hit the barn door," and things like that. Actually I'd been pitching a pretty good game up to then, but I got so I couldn't get one across the plate, in my anger. I walked two guys in a row. So when my heckler said, "You big nut, you couldn't pitch my Granny," I turned around and hauled off and beaned him one in the back of the head, as he turned to duck, and down he went.
Miss Kate and all the girls rushed over to administer first aid to him, and they all oohed and aahed at me as I stood there, not knowing whether to spit or eat grasshoppers, and finally Miss Kate came over and grabbed me by the arm and marched me off to the principal's office. She was really mad as hell. The little puke I'd hit was still out cold, and she was probably afraid I'd cooled him. The principal, Mr. Darby, was out for lunch, when she hauled me into his office, so she told me to wait for him, while she went back out to see about little-boy-out-of-it.
I was pretty sure he wasn't seriously hurt. I was surprised he hadn't been able to duck in time. The ball hadn't been thrown that hard. I hadn't meant to hurt the dumb kid; he was one of the little guys that always get left out of everything, you know, but then again he was the type that really gets under your skin-obnoxious as hell. So I didn't feel too bad about it. I was afraid, however, that I'd gone just a little bit too far. Unless I was able to do some tall explaining, I was liable to get expelled instead of being kept after school.
Then Miss Kate came back into the principal's office.
"How could you do a thing like that, Skippy?" she began angrily.
"But you don't understand, Miss Kate," I began. "He was needling me, saying awful things about me."
"No matter what he said, it was no excuse for you to try to kill him. I know he was ribbing you; everybody always taunts the pitcher. It's part of baseball, but what you did was just bad sportsmanship. You're nothing but an evil-tempered, spoiled brat!"
Obviously this thing was getting way out of hand, so I had to think fast.
"But you don't understand, Miss Kate. I don't mind somebody needling me, but nobody is going to call me a sonofabitch and get away with it, if I can help it."
"A what? He called you a what? Well, I didn't hear what he said, just before you hit him. Why, Skippy, I had no idea that that was what it was all about." She paused, deep in thought, biting her lips in consternation. "I wish Mr. Darby would get back, so we could get this all over with," she said.
"Miss Kate, it was a terrible, stupid thing for me to do, no matter what he said, and I'm sorry about it," I said. "And I'm really sorry I hurt him."
"Well, now, Skippy, if he called you that awful name I can understand your forgetting yourself for a moment. You're right, you shouldn't have lost your temper like that, but if he really called you such an awful name I can understand a little better. Are you sure that's what he said?"
"Yes, ma'am, that's what he said; you can ask any of the other guys; they heard it." It wasn't such a big lie as it sounded like. He'd called me that a day or so before, but I'd got him for that; that was one reason he was taunting me during the ball game.
A girl came in breathlessly, telling Miss Kate that the boy was all right. Miss Kate seemed relieved.
"Well, maybe we won't have to bother Mr. Darby with this, after all. If he used such language, he was just as much at fault as you were, but, Skippy, I'm going to have to punish you for your part in this. I can't let it seem to the other kids that I'm letting you get away with such a display of poor sportsmanship. I'm afraid you're going to have to stay in after school this afternoon, Skippy."
As you can imagine, I was very upset by this terrible news.
"Skippy's very sorry about what happened this afternoon, class, and he's going to stay after school and write on the blackboard one hundred times, 'I will not be a poor sport and lose my temper', and as for Charlie Hoffman, well, I'm sure he's suffered enough already for his part in this," Miss Kate explained, her last statement confusing the rest of the kids in the class no end. I wasn't about to enlighten them. Only one of the kids in the class had enough brains to sense that something was fishy. As the last bell rang, he came up to me and, with a sly smirk on his face, asked me what I had told Miss Kate.
"Nothing," I said, "and you'd better mind your own business about it," I said, grinning back at him and punching him playfully on the shoulder.
He laughed like hell, and said he bet it was nothing.
I went up to Miss Kate to start my assignment, feeling pretty cocky about the whole thing. It'd be forgotten in a couple of days, anyway.
"I'm ready to dust the erasers, Miss Kate," I said.
"Oh, no, you don't, young man, none of your sly evasions. You're going to write on the blackboard, just like I said, so the class can see it, when they come in tomorrow. So get busy right now."
"Aw, you can't mean it, Miss Kate," I pleaded.
"Oh, but I do, so get busy. I'll have you dust the erasers afterward, since you bring the subject up."
While Miss Kate's back was turned I tried that old one about writing the one sentence:
"I will not be a poor sport and lose my temper, one hundred times," on the board, but it didn't work, of course. When I sat down, she looked at the board and laughed and then came at me with a ruler. I finally had to write the whole thing out one hundred times.
When it was done and I stood there rubbing my cramped fingers and stiffened wrists, Miss Kate looked up from her work.
"Well, I hope this has been a good lesson to you, Skippy," she said, surveying my handiwork.
"Yes, ma'am, it sure has," I replied, looking her over from head to toe. I'd been steadily going out of my mind watching her move about the room in between writing sentences. Those unbelievable breasts of hers, balanced by her slim torso, and flaring, undulating hips were driving me crazy. I felt like just rushing over and grabbing her from behind and pulling that maddening body up to mine, but that wasn't the way I knew. Some things you just can't rush.
"Well, I guess we'd better call it a day," said Miss Kate. "There was so much more I wanted to get done, but I suppose I should drop you by your home now. You've paid your debt to society." She grinned at me.
"Don't worry about me, Miss Kate," I said. "I don't mind staying on and helping you."
"No, we'd better quit for the day. I'll get the rest of the decorations together tomorrow."
"Decorations?"
"Yes, I volunteered to decorate the gym for the Hallowe'en party Saturday night, and I still have to get a lot of dead leaves and stuff together."
"Where're you going to get the decorations from?"
"Well, I thought I'd get most of them from the woods right around the school here. What I haven't already got, I'm sure can be found out back."
The thought of going out into the woods out back with Miss Kate somehow appealed to me.
"I'd be glad to help you gather it up, Miss Kate," I volunteered. "We could get it all, probably, before it gets dark."
"No, not this evening. I think I'll go into town and get the crepe paper and a few other things I need to work with tomorrow. I'll go out and get the foliage we need tomorrow evening after school. It'll be fresher that way."
"Can I help you gather it up?" I asked.
"Well, if you really want to, you can, Skippy, but it'll mean staying after school again."
"I don't mind a bit," I said.
"Good, we'll go out tomorrow evening then and get lots of goodies," she said.
"We sure will," I agreed enthusiastically.
Miss Kate gathered up her papers and stuff, and I helped turn off all the lights, and together we walked out to the parking lot. It was already growing dusky dark. I opened the car door for Miss Kate, and she exclaimed:
"Why, Skippy, you're a regular little gentleman, when you want to be!"
"Yep," I said, "I am when I'm with a lady like you."
"Oh, ho ho!" she teased.
She slid in, giving me a tantalizing glimpse of tan, nylon-sheathed knees and tapering calves below.
I even had a fleeting glimpse of her milky thighs above the tops of her nylons. I decided I didn't mind holding the door open for her at all. In fact I was reluctant to close it. I went around to the other side of the car and got in. An idea suddenly struck me, brought on, no doubt, by the glimpse of her beautiful legs.
"How 'bout letting me drive a little bit?" I asked abruptly.
"You drive? Why, I can't let you drive a car, Skippy. You're too young. You're a big boy for your age, but not that big. Why, your feet wouldn't even reach the brakes."
"No, I don't mean like that. I mean just how 'bout letting me steer the steering wheel a little bit?"
"How do you mean?" She seemed intrigued. "I don't understand."
"Here, I'll show you," I said, sliding over next to her and grabbing the right hand side of the wheel. "See," I laughed, turning it first one way and then the other, "I'm a good driver."
"Have you ever done it before?" she asked.
"Oh, sure," I lied. "Uncle John lets me drive that way all the time. He mashes the accelerator and I guide the car. It's lots of fun."
"Well, if you're sure you won't cause us to have a wreck." She paused a moment. "Of course, I guess I could always straighten us out if we were going wrong, couldn't I?"
"Sure," I said, hoping she was right.
"Okay," she shrugged, starting the old car up. "Here we go!"
We started across the gravel lot and headed for the road. On turning right onto the road, I purposely steered too far to the right.
"My God, Skippy, you almost ran us into the ditch," she gasped.
"I'm sorry," I said. "I can't hardly see right, sitting way over in the middle like this."
"I thought you said you drove like this with your Uncle John."
"I do," I said, "but Uncle John lets me sit in his lap; here, let me show you...." I raised up her right arm and ducked under, clambering up on her lap. It felt heavenly, having those soft, yielding thighs under my legs, and the soft little mound in her crotch where it formed a big "Y" with her legs. I squirmed around comfortably and steered the car like hell.
"What in the world are you trying to do, Skippy, kill us both?" But she got used to the idea right fast and leaned her head around, just to the left of mine and snuggled up close, her soft hair pillowing the side of my head, tickling my ear.
I leaned back, experimentally, and just let my back sink luxuriously between those unresisting, out-jutting breasts of hers. God, it was out of this world. I moved first to the right a little and could feel the little tip nudging the crevice of my armpit, and then the other way and feel the other one, like somebody had two guns sticking in my back. I laughed aloud at the thought.
"What's so funny?" Miss Kate inquired.
Taking my hands completely off the wheel for an instant, I stuck them up in the air.
"Don't shoot," I said, "I give up!"
She threw back her head and laughed uproariously.
"That's the funniest one I've ever heard, Skippy," she said. "So that's why you wanted to get up in my lap, is it?"
"Oh, no, Miss Kate, I just love to drive cars, that's all," I said, reapplying my attentions to the steering of the car. "I don't know what made me say that. It just came to me, and I blurted it out before I realized how much it would embarrass you."
"Oh, don't bother apologizing, Skippy. I don't mind. I think it was cute. Really, it's quite flattering, quite a compliment, in fact."
I felt better immediately. I leaned back again against her waiting breasts.
"Oh, that feels good," she said. "It's kind of like a support for them, you know; it gets kind of tiresome, carrying those things out in front of you all day."
It was my turn to get hysterical then. I began laughing, and the more I giggled and snickered, the harder it was to stop. It was just so unexpected. I never hoped at all that everything would go so well, "Stop laughing so hard; you're bruising me," she: laug led, taking her hands completely off the steering wheel and putting them around my chest. "Are you ticklish?" she asked, touching my armpits with a probing finger.
"Hell, yes!" I said, almost in hysterics.
"Are you sure you're ticklish?" she asked, sliding one hand over each of my nipples. "You don't mind, do you?" she whispered. "After all, turn about is fair play, you know."
Suddenly, instead of laughing so much, I flushed with pleasure of a different sort. I felt a familiar feeling begin to creep over me. Manipulating my nipples teasingly with the tips of her fingers, she was beginning to get me hot as hell.
Although I was enjoying the feeling of her beneath me and her hands on me, I had the full job of guiding the car now, and the road down which I lived was rapidly coming into view. Somebody would have to make the turn.
"Miss Kate, we're going to have to turn right down here," I said.
"Okay," she said nonchalantly.
"No, I mean don't you think you'd better help me steer?" I asked, beginning to get a little frantic.
"You're doing just fine, Skippy baby," she said, her voice strangely dreamy and distant.
"I think you'd better help me," I said.
"No, you go ahead and drive; I'll slow us down and you steer."
Grimly I hung onto the wheel, leaning to the right in the direction of the turn. With a sudden shock of realization I felt her hands fumbling below my belt in front. Her fingers were caressing me gently.
Goddam, I thought to myself, I sure hope we make this turn, because I don't want to miss out on this.
The road came up, and Miss Kate lifted her right foot off the accelerator, braking to about twenty miles an hour, as we neared the turn. I swung the steering wheel and the car sloughed into the turn. We skidded on the sandy road, almost piling over into the ditch on the left side, but Miss Kate didn't even seem to notice.
"I knew you could do it, Skippy," she said dreamily. "You're such a good driver."
Her hands were busy at the opening of my trousers.
The buttons were very tight and hard to undo, and she was having problems. Suddenly I felt one of them give, and her fingers were probing around inside my trousers, touching my shorts. Icy little chills began shooting down between my legs, as she touched my stomach. She withdrew her finger and began tugging anew at my buttons. She was becoming very impatient and a couple of times I thought she'd pop a button or two right off. I steered the old car straight down the middle of the road, boiling up a cloud of dust behind. Then another button gave and it was enough-she feverishly reached in and groped blindly at the opening of my cotton shorts. I raised myself slightly up, by pulling up on the steering wheel and helped position things right. She found the opening and my breath caught up in my throat as her chilly fingers touched my heated flesh. Clumsily she manipulated it out through the opening and began to caress me tenderly, slowly, around and around. Her breath in my ear sounded like a raging torrent, a windstorm of passion and desire. I began to move and twist involuntarily in her lap, and I suddenly realized that we were nearing my house, and I knew I couldn't let it end like that. I couldn't stop now. I had to have my way. After this much she must want it as badly as I. She wouldn't go this far-this fast-and let it end just like that.
"Miss Kate...." I started haltingly.
"Skippy ... Skippy...." she breathed in my ear and breathed a wet kiss in my ear. She leaned way forward suddenly, and looked down at me in her hands.
"Skippy," she said huskily, braking abruptly to a skidding halt, as her hands left me to steer the car over to the side of the road.
It was getting pretty dark now and I peered carefully at the roadside as we guided the barely moving car to a halt. Neither of us had bothered at all about putting on the headlights. Without a thought as to the emergency brake or anything, Miss Kate pushed me off her lap and over to the side of the seat. I started to reach for her skirt to help her pull it up. I'd been dying to get my hands under her dress and feel those silky legs I had such a tempting glimpse of when she'd got in the car. I longed to tug at those lacy panties I just knew were cradling that soft downy mound at her thighs. But to my amazement she brushed my hands away and pushed me up. Then as I stared open mouthed at her, with a muffled little cry she plunged her face down on my lap. My heart pounding in my chest, I felt her warm lips close around me. She began moving her head up and down and ran her tongue over me madly. Lying halfway across the seat this way wasn't enough for her; she wanted more. She crawled down off the seat into the floorboard and pushed back the flaps of my trousers and brought her mouth down on me again. Closing her mouth hungrily around me, I could feel the rake of her teeth and her tongue on the sensitive underside. Then she began to literally devour me. She went down as far as she could and I could actually feel myself going down her throat. Her tongue was teasing as her head bobbed up and down. She made a passionate sound as she went at me like a piglet at its mother's breast. Suddenly the bottom fell out, and I slumped down in the seat. I grabbed her hair in both hands and pulled her to me. Still she would not stop. I reached down across her back and around each side and grabbed a hanging tit in each hand. This is the most fantastic thing that ever happened to me in my life, I found myself thinking. I'd better enjoy it while I could. My heart was threatening to burst. It was beginning to hurt a little and I tried to pull her head up, but she paid me no heed. I let her alone, and concentrated my efforts toward getting her bra off. I pulled up her sweater and tugged at the straps and snaps until finally it popped undone. It was amazing. Her breasts spilled down, hitting my legs like two great weights suddenly out free. I tugged the sweater up in front and pulled the bra up out of the way. Again I was amazed. I'd never in my wildest dreams imagined there could be two breasts like this in the world. I'd dreamed of big luscious breasts, but I was totally unprepared for anything like this. In the position she was in, they fell straight down. I took her nipples one in each hand. I was beside myself at the touch of them. They were long and blunted, swollen to a size as long, almost, as my little finger. I was frantic. I had to get one of those breasts into my mouth. Desperately I grabbed one of her nipples in each fingertip and began to pull at them, squeezing and tugging at them alternately, one at a time. As I hoped, it didn't take long at this before she came up off of me with a soft moan.
She slumped back across the car seat and pulled my head down to the crimson tips of her breasts. I pretended not to understand what she wanted for a moment, driving her wild. I fumbled beneath her skirt. My hand slipped easily up along her smooth, nylon-clad legs to where I expected to find the silken barrier of her panties. I was shocked as my hand slipped right between her legs, and I do mean between her legs. She wasn't wearing any pants, only a garter belt. I buried my hand inside her full, warm wetness, and allowed her to guide my lips to her bared breasts. She was gasping and clutching at me like an animal. I closed my mouth around her upthrust nipple and gently began to nibble at it. She went completely wild at that. Her nipples were abnormally sensitive, apparently, and she pressed my head to her, frantically, moaning and tossing her huge breasts around. I allowed my teeth to grate at the base of her nipple as the fingers of my hand beneath her skirt drove her mad. Her breast and nipple got larger and larger in my mouth until I was afraid it would burst.
Just when she was at the height of her passion, and her breasts were as swollen as melons and her nipples were as big, almost, in my mouth as I had been in hers, she exploded from within and, clutching and grasping at my head and my hand, I could actually feel her down there grasping and squeezing, unbelievably clutching at my fingers inside her ... and then it was all over and she lay back like a great, spent, soft dishrag, and I caressed her breast lazily.
"Skippy...." she began dreamily.
Just then car lights suddenly flashed over the hill from behind us.
CHAPTER SIX
We both sat bolt upright and frantically began adjusting our clothes. I struggled for agonizing seconds with the snaps of her bra.
"Oh, my God, Skippy. What did you do to me, to make me do all those things?"
"Me?" I grinned. "Me, do to you? What did you do to me?"
A slow grin spread over her face. "Yeah," she breathed, "I guess it was both of us. You sit up now and let's get going."
She started the engine quickly and we were moving before the car coming up from behind caught up with us. As it passed I saw, with my heart in my throat, that it was Uncle John, Aunt Mary, and Aunt Joan. They tooted the horn at us and we waved and tooted back. Miss Kate laughed aloud after they had passed.
"If they only knew, huh?" I asked. "Was that what you were thinking?"
"Uh huh, that's what I was thinking about all right," she said, and we both laughed like crazy. I laughed with relief more than anything else. I moved over next to her and found her breasts in the darkness of the car.
"Careful, Skippy," she murmured, "don't let's get started all over again."
I caressed her, tenderly, as we followed the tail lights in front of us all the way home.
Uncle John, Aunt Mary, and Aunt Joan were getting out of the car when Miss Kate and I pulled up beside the house.
"What are you doing out this way, Miss Kate?" Uncle John boomed out.
"Oh, Skippy has been a bad boy again, so I had to keep him in after school again. He missed the last bus, of course, so I'm dropping him off to you."
"What's the rascal been up to now?" Uncle John asked.
"Oh, it wasn't much really; he just lost his temper during a ball game and threw a ball at one of the other boys."
"Sounds like Skippy, all right," said Aunt Mary.
"The reason we're so late this evening is that I was getting up some foliage for Hallowe'en decorations and Skippy volunteered to stay and help."
Aunt Mary seemed relieved. I watched Aunt Joan's reaction closely. She had a curious look in her eyes, almost like she suspected the truth.
"Skippy has even volunteered to stay again tomorrow evening to help me finish up," Miss Kate continued. "That is, if you folks don't mind."
"Nah, of course we don't mind, Miss Kate. Anybody as can get any work out of anybody as lazy as Skippy is shore welcome to try," guffawed Uncle John.
"Won't you come in the house for a little while, Miss Kate?" asked Aunt Mary.
"No, I'd better be getting on down the road."
"Well, how 'bout a piece of gum for the road 'fore you run off?" asked Uncle John, proffering an opened pack of chewing gum from his pocket. "It's mighty good gum. It'll clear the dust out of your craw."
"Don't mind if I do, Mr. Woodward. You make it sound so inviting."
"I'll have a piece too, Uncle John, if you have enough," I said.
"Shore, Skippy, there's plenty for all. Have some, Joan?"
Aunt Joan shook her head haughtily and turned away, starting for the back door. "No, thanks," she spat back. "I have to go start supper."
"Now what's got into her, you reckon?" asked Uncle John.
"Why, I can't imagine," said Aunt Mary.
"She did seem a little huffy," said Miss Kate.
"I can't figure it out," said Uncle John.
But I could.
During supper, I was ravenously hungry and it didn't go unnoticed.
"You sure are hungry tonight for some reason, Skippy," Aunt Mary observed.
"I guess gathering up branches for the Hallowe'en Festival gave me a good appetite," I replied.
"I imagine going out in the woods with Miss Kate would give me quite an appetite, too," chuckled Uncle John.
"You better hush your mouth, John Woodward," fumed Aunt Mary, and though she said it laughingly, you could tell she wasn't entirely pleased by his remark.
Abruptly Aunt Joan pushed back from the table and got up to leave the room.
"I do declare Joan is acting mighty huffy tonight," observed Uncle John, watching her leave the room.
I finished drinking my milk and went out to do my chores. I had some homework I was supposed to do, but I didn't think I'd bother doing it. In fact I didn't think I'd bother much with homework at all from now on.
After my work was done I went back into the house and joined the grownups who were roasting peanuts by the fire.
"Ah," said Uncle John, as I pulled up a chair, "here's the teacher's pet."
It bothered me the way he kept harping on the subject. "What did you buy in town today, Uncle John?"
"Oh, nothing much, 'cept some groceries. Ordered a new plow."
"How's your school work coming along now, Skippy? Are you making good grades?" Aunt Mary cut in.
"Yes, ma'am, I'm doing pretty good, I guess. This school seems a lot easier than the one I used to go to in town. Miss Kate is sure a swell teacher," I added.
"She shore is-real nice!" Uncle John boomed out. "She's got the biggest set of-"
"John!" Aunt Mary admonished.
"-encyclopedias I've ever seen in a country school-house. Now, what's wrong with talking about her encyclopedias, Mary? What did you think I was going to say? See, you always think the worst of me."
"Yes, and I'm never wrong in thinking it, either."
"Well, she has, anyway," said Uncle John. "She's about the most woman I've ever seen under one skin."
"She's a well-developed person," admitted Aunt Mary a bit pompously. "She's not near as pretty in the face as our Joan, though."
"No, she's not," said Uncle John. "You know, it's funny; here Joan and Miss Kate are two of the prettiest women here 'bouts, and from the looks of things, both of them will die old maids. Just think of it, Mary; neither of them's ever had a man. 'Course I really don't know about Miss Kate, now."
"You don't know about me, either!" Aunt Joan burst out. She'd been sitting quietly all the while, not entering in the conversation at all. She threw her handful of peanuts into the fireplace and rushed out of the room, through my bedroom and into her own.
"Well, I declare," said Aunt Mary.
"What did I do?" asked Uncle John. "She never got upset over my kidding her about being an old maid before."
"I don't know. She's been upset for some reason since we got back from town," said Aunt Mary.
"Well, she'll get over it, I guess," Uncle John said, frowning absently. "Let's hit the sack."
"Time to go to bed, Skippy," said Aunt Mary.
"Yes, ma'am," I replied. I really was tired. All I wanted to do was get undressed and hit the sack, like Uncle John said. Oh, for those cool sheets and rest ... rest ... rest. As I slipped out of my clothes I noticed Aunt Joan's door was slightly ajar. I could see the dresser and she was not at it. I knew I could probably get a good peek if I wanted to, but I'd had enough excitement for one day. For once I had no desire to peek.
I stretched out under the covers and snuggled down, luxuriously, enjoying the opportunity to unwind. It grew warm under the covers very quickly and I felt I'd be more comfortable without them, so I kicked them down to the foot of the bed.
Before long I heard a stirring in Aunt Joan's room, and then Aunt Joan came through the door into my room, wearing only a thin cotton nightgown. It was obvious, as she passed through the lighted doorway, that she had nothing whatsoever on underneath the nightgown. I had to agree with Uncle John and Aunt Mary. Aunt Joan was prettier in the face and she was really almost as shapely as Miss Kate. The only difference was that Miss Kate had bigger breasts. But Aunt Joan's, dimly seen through the thin cotton gown, left little to be desired.
"Skippy, are you asleep?"
"No," I answered sleepily, "not yet."
"Good. I was wondering if you could help me get this knot out of this ribbon-you're so good at getting knots undone-I just can't seem to get it. All I'm doing is pulling it tighter." The knot she was indicating was a ribbon tie-string at the throat of her nightgown.
"I'll give it a try," I said.
She came over to the bed and sat down on the edge, leaning over toward me. "Skippy...."
"Yes?"
"I have a question to ask you."
"Okay, shoot."
"What were you and Miss Kate doing stopped on the side of the road as we came back from town?"
Her question caught me completely off guard, and I guess my face showed it. "Uh ... uh, why Miss Kate thought the car was acting funny," I thought fast, "like we might be getting a flat tire or something. She stopped the car to get out and take a look."
"Oh, was that all?"
"Yeah, that was it. Wasn't nothing wrong though-it was probably just the sandy road."
"Oh, I see."
"Why, what did you think?"
"Well, I'll tell you what I was thinking; I was thinking you might've stopped for something else, but you wouldn't do anything like that with somebody else, would you, Skippy?"
"Like what?" I asked innocently.
"Oh, never mind. I'm still not sure, but it's not important."
"There," I said, "the knot is undone."
"Oh, thank you very much, Skippy."
"You're welcome, Aunt Joan."
"Well, I guess I'll go hit the sack," she said, fastening the ribbon together at her throat.
"Yeah, I'm pretty sleepy myself," I said, yawning.
"Goodnight." Quickly Aunt Joan bent and kissed me on the lips. For an instant her breasts brushed against my chest and then were gone.
Momentarily I was stirred, tempted to lift my hands and touch her, pull her back. But it just wasn't worth it. I was too tired. Besides, she might resist. If it hadn't been for Miss Kate I would've doubtless
CHAPTER SEVEN
Early the next morning I awoke, feeling like a new man. The world felt like a great place to be in. All the world's a big strawberry patch, I thought to myself, just waiting for the right guy to come along and pick a basketful. The thought of facing a long, drawn-out classroom day was not nearly so dreary with the prospect of an interesting evening of staying after school.
I hardly heard the chatter of the rest of the kids outside the school, waiting for the bell. When I walked into the classroom I had been wondering just how Miss Kate would react when our eyes met for the first time in the cold light of the day after. I took my seat, with some misgivings, and stacked my books on the shelf underneath the seat of my desk. I was sitting there, elbows on the desk top, when Miss Kate entered the room. Our eyes met, then parted with never an outward sign of recognition or guilt. She was a cool customer. There was no flinch, tremor, nor furtive glance to indicate that anything out of the ordinary had ever transpired between us. In a few moments she called the class to order and began the day's lessons.
All morning long I mentally bridged the gulf between us and stared in silent, almost skeptical memory at her. Her body, so beautiful; her breasts, swaying provocatively in another clinging sweater, blue this time. I took in longingly the flare of her hips as she walked about the room, and the curve of her long, slim, sun-browned legs and trim ankles above the tops of her low-heeled slippers, as she sat cross-legged at her desk. Her lips, petulant at times, as she talked, stirred sweet longings anew. Ahhh, last jumped at the chance. As it was I just wasn't in the mood for cat and mouse games. And I wasn't exactly sure who would be the cat and who the mouse, anyway. Aunt Joan, somewhat reluctantly it seemed, turned and left the room. night.
Twice that morning she called on me to answer questions and both times as I answered she stared at me thoughtfully, as if pondering some deep, unresolved question. At recess, as we chose sides for a game of football, I caught her eyes on me, a penetrating glance, but soon in the all-engrossing excitement of the game I forgot all about her and about the night before, and even for a while forgot about the delights that lay before me in the afternoon. After all, in the heady excitement of passing and blocking and tackling and the yelling of a football game, such mundane, everyday considerations as seducing one's teacher hardly enters one's head.
It wasn't until we were filing back into the classroom and I was mentally kicking myself in the can for letting my man catch a pass in the end zone, scoring the tying touchdown, that I thought of Miss Kate again. It was then, while feeling so low and dejected over the whole damn thing, that I barely felt a slight nudge at the side of my head. I turned and almost got a mouthful of sharp-pointed, sweatered breast. Miss Kate was walking right beside me, her left breast almost in my face-that lovely creation being what, as her arm went around my shoulders, had nudged me in the ear. The wind was blowing up, increasing in its fury. Paper was swirling about the school courtyard, as we entered the building.
"Don't look so forlorn, Skippy," she said huskily in a low undertone at my ear. "Missing that one play doesn't mean the end of the world, you know. There will be brighter days ahead."
"Aw, it just makes me mad to be so stupid sometimes," I replied. I knew she was right-so I'd lost a minor battle-so what? I could still win the war.
"It looks like the hurricane is really going to come up our way," she said.
That wasn't very encouraging.
Finally the afternoon was over, and the kids began leaving, one by one, for the school busses. I lingered patiently at my desk, messing around with my books and papers, until the last little girl had adjusted her socks, zippered up her notebook, combed her golden curls, and pranced haughtily out of the classroom, ready to conquer the world. I had visions of conquest in mind too, and the odds were very good that my victory, if realized, would be more momentuous than hers.
"Are we still going to finish gathering the stuff for the carnival, Miss Kate?" I asked, approaching her desk, behind which she sat, writing last-minute notes furiously in a blue covered notebook. She was a good teacher.
"No, Skippy, I don't think I'll go out this evening, after all."
So there I stood, like an idiot, still trying not to let the smile fall from my strained face, and not having much luck at controlling my feelings. Miss Kate looked up, and seeing my inward struggle said:
"Oh, don't look so disappointed, you little devil; I was just kidding. Actually I'm looking forward to it very much. Almost as much as you are, you imp of Satan."
I was overcome. "Not half as much, I'll bet," I choked.
"Oh, I wouldn't bet too much on that," she rejoined. "Maybe you don't know me as well as you think." She took out her compact and began applying lipstick to her lips.
I was half out of my mind in exultant anticipation. I moved to help her gather up her belongings. After assembling all our books and stuff, we turned off the lights and closed the classroom door and went to the gym. Most of the work had been completed already; the remainder of the group effort was to come on Saturday morning, or so Miss Kate informed me. She and the other teachers and some of the older students in other classes were to put the finishing touches on the exhibits.
"I promised to bring oodles of dead leaves, and some pine needles and branches and stuff-we won't need too much," said Miss Kate.
We laid our books and stuff on the small stage, erected for the occasion, and went out to her car, where from out of the trunk she extracted two bushel baskets and a small hatchet.
"You look so ferocious with that, Skippy," she laughed, as I brandished the hatchet experimentally in one hand, "are you sure you intend me no harm?"
"My name is George Washington," I replied, "and I cannot tell a lie; therefore, I shall confess; The answer to your question is a most emphatic yes-yes, I do. Beyond reasonable doubt, I have bad things in my mind, and I'll do all I can to see that you don't get out of my evil clutches," I intoned somberly.
Miss Kate giggled gratifyingly.
"Oh, Skippy, you do express yourself wonderfully for such a boy, but rest assured, nevertheless, that I shall do my best to avoid your 'evil clutches', as you put it."
"To the woods, and no more stalling," I replied, brandishing the hatchet, and off we went down the path into the undergrowth.
We soon came to a small, grassy clearing, around the perimeter of which grew numerous, tall, majestic, long-needled pines. Here Miss Kate set the baskets down and reached up to brush back the damp hair from her forehead. The evening was becoming strangely warm and sticky, for autumn, causing the clothes to tend to stick to the body and fine beads of perspiration to well up on our foreheads and upper lips. I wiped the sweat off with the back of my hand and stepped closer to her.
"Oh, no, you don't; don't you come near me with that hatchet, you potential axe-murderer. We came out here to gather decorations, remember?"
"You're the prettiest decoration I see around," I replied, laying the hatchet down and encircling her hips with both arms. "Why don't I gather you in?" I leaned against her and let my head come to rest, nestled between her heaving breasts. From the short brisk walk, and perhaps something else, her heart was beating madly, and so was mine. The walk had little to do with mine, however. I pulled her close and pressed my face down deep into one huge, yielding breast.
"Wait, Skippy, we should-"
I cut her off in mid-sentence by suddenly pulling her down, throwing her to the ground almost, on the soft grassy carpet at my side. I rolled over, half on top of her, and kissed her full, parted lips, touching her tongue with mine. She struggled for a moment as my hands went to her full breasts, hungrily, and my knee sought the yielding cleft between her thighs, her skirt climbing up her smooth, silky legs to her hips. Miss Kate giggled, somewhat spoiling my mood.
"What's the matter?" I asked.
The wind was coming up strong now.
"Nothing," she giggled, "I just got tickled; it was so sudden and all, that's all, but what I was trying to say, before you so rudely interrupted me, was that we ought to gather the stuff up first, before we get carried away. It really looks like a storm is coming up."
I could see the logic in that.
"What's the matter, afraid you won't have the strength, afterwards?" I teased.
"No," she replied with a beautiful, mischievous grin on her lovely, radiant face, "I'm afraid you won't."
With that I just had to laugh. We both began giggling, ridiculously, and I replied:
"I'm afraid you might be right."
We arose and brushed each other off a little, and as I got a little too personal in my brushing, she slapped at my hands playfully, and, laughing, I grabbed my bushel basket and went to fill it with the dark-brown pine needles covering the hillside nearby.
She picked up the hatchet and went across the field to a flaming red maple tree and began hacking off the crimson, leaf-laden branches.
Soon we had enough pine needles and leafy boughs, and we scampered off in search of a basket of dead leaves and a few dry limbs. With a little search we found what we were looking for, and we began our short journey back to where we'd left the other basket.
As soon as I set the basket down beside the other I turned and this time she needed no coaxing. Breathlessly, she came to my side and sank to the soft, matted grass, almost jerking me down beside her. I sprawled clumsily at her side, and we found each other as if in a dream. I could smell the heady scent of her sweaty body and she smelled like a woman should smell. I felt the soft hollows, the ripeness of her breasts, and she felt like a woman should feel.
I tasted the fruit of her mouth, like lips should taste, and felt her hands on my belt buckle, as they should be, and heard the clink as it came unfastened. As I tugged at her sweater, she said:
"Wait a minute," and pulled it over her head and stripped it from her slim, browned arms. She sat up and turned for me to unsnap her bra. I could hardly keep my hands to the task.
"Don't be so impatient," she laughed, and then she slid the bra down the route the sweater had gone, and I was again breathless, in wonder. Those magnificent breasts swinging free in the twilight-I felt I could've died right then and my life would've been well lived.
I took her breast into my hand and gazed at the fiery nipples, swelling at my touch. I shuddered, unbelieving, for never had I dreamed of such a moment.
"Wait," she said, and stood, unbuttoning her skirt at the side, pushing it down, her panties along with it, to her knees in one entrancing motion. She wiggled her hips and legs until they dropped to the ground around her ankles; I could've died on the spot, my heart was pounding so. The heady aroma from her loins swept my nostrils as she turned to me. She knelt before me.
"I wanted to be naked for you," she breathed with a little cry as she bent forward.
I was speechless, but she wanted to do as she'd done the night before, but I didn't want that-not that. I pulled her to the ground beside me. I'd never, for all my good fortune, had what I really wanted: a woman the way she was meant to be had. A girl, yes, but not a woman. And this was a woman and I yearned for her the way I'd never yearned for Aunt Joan. It must be this way; it must.
I forced her onto her back and put my hand between her thighs. She pulled my head to her breast and I worked my trousers down and melted between her parted legs. She heaved under me, searching as I sought, and suddenly I was there ... oh, God, there it was. I was there and I could feel her so soft like the petals of a flower. Finally I knew what I'd been seeking all my life. I breathed the smell of her, felt the softness of her, the warmth, the clinging, dew-drop wetness of her, and she cried softly:
"Oh, oh, oh, oh...." like she'd never stop.
And then I heard it-we both heard it at once. We paused.
"What was that?" she asked. Then there was no doubt as the voice came again. "Who is it, Skippy?" she pleaded in my ear.
The voice. came again and I recognized it, calling my name from a distance.
"It's Aunt Joan," I said worriedly.
"Hurry, quick, you must," she whispered in my ear. "Go on!" she urged.
Eagerly I took her nipple between my lips again and pressed to her thrusting hips, her out-flung thighs. She clutched my head to her breast as she moved urgently beneath me. I could hold back no longer; the breath left me as I spun down the long tunnel of ecstatic release, my head dizzy with her intoxicating odor.
"Oh, my God!" Miss Kate said, pushing me from her, grabbing frantically for her clothes, as Aunt Joan's voice came again, much nearer this time.
I almost tripped as I tried to stand up, also tugging at my clothes. I quickly helped her fasten her bra, as she struggled into her skirt. She pulled the sweater over her head. Aunt Joan called my name again.
"What about your panties?" I asked.
"No time now," she said breathlessly. "Later."
She stuffed the balled-up nylon panties deep into her basketful of dead leaves. She straightened up her skirt and sweater, as I attempted to brush her off. Then she brushed me off as best she could, and we picked up the baskets, and I the hatchet, just in time, as Aunt Joan came into view down the narrow, winding path. The wind was really whipping the tree tops now.
"Well, hi!" greeted Miss Kate bravely, although somewhat breathless.
"Hello, yourself. I thought you two must be somewhere down here, when I saw your car still in the parking lot," said Aunt Joan.
"Oh, yes, we were just finishing up when we heard you calling," Miss Kate replied with strained gaiety. "All we have to do now is drop this stuff off in the gym."
"Well, if you're ready to call it quits for the night, I guess I can take Skippy home-that way you won't have to go out of your way," said Aunt Joan.
"Oh, it's no trouble at all, but I guess since you're here, it would be the sensible thing to do, wouldn't it?"
"Certainly." Aunt Joan looked somewhat puzzled at me. "That's one reason I stopped by on the way back from town. The other is that the radio says the hurricane is due to hit us tonight, and I wasn't sure you'd heard about it."
"Why, no, we hadn't heard anything at all about it. I'm certainly glad you did stop by. We were just about finished up here, but we might've puttered around and got caught out in it on the way home."
"Oh, it'll be several hours before it hits in full force," Aunt Joan said.
We reached the back steps of the schoolhouse, and I dropped my basket on the concrete steps. Miss Kate started to do the same. The basket slipped out of her grasp and we both gazed, stunned, as the brown leaves slid slowly down the steps, revealing a pair of pink, lacy panties-step-ins, as Aunt Mary called them-that had been obviously stepped-out-of and then not-stepped-back-into. Frozen, rooted to the spot, we stared helplessly at the startling display of guilt, as Aunt Joan drew in a deep sigh and slowly, carefully said:
"Yes, I can see that you were, uh, all finished."
"Well, I declare," said Miss Kate haltingly, "that would have to happen. I found those lying out there in the clearing and stuffed them in the basket and covered them up, so as not to embarrass Skippy."
"Embarrass Skippy!" Aunt Joan laughed ironically. "Oh, I see."
"Yes, some little floosie must've left them out there some time, or perhaps the kids stole them from a clothes line...." she trailed off weakly, as her eyes caught Aunt Joan's look. She averted her eyes, flustered.
"Yes, and she also forgot to zip her skirt all the way up!" said Aunt Joan, snorting and giving a toss of her head.
Horrified, Miss Kate and I looked down at the side of her skirt. The two buttons were securely fastened, but, sure enough, there it was, the unmistakable evidence, the crowning accusation-her flared zipper, open wide like a petulant mouth, gaping like the snicker of an imp in a vertical grin.
Miss Kate turned away in shame, her face burning red, and began to run stumblingly toward her car. She made no sound, but I could tell from her actions that she was on the verge of tears.
"Oh, don't take on so now, Kate," Aunt Joan called after her. She ran after her and overtook her at the car. Aunt Joan took her arm in one hand and put the other around her shoulder, consolingly. "So he got to you, too, huh?"
It was an accusation, actually flung back at me, as I stood there still, unable to move. I hung my head, too stunned to see the funny side of the whole thing.
"Don't get so upset, now," Aunt Joan soothed. "Look at me, Kate." She took Miss Kate's chin in her hand, looking into her tear-stained eyes. "Look, Kate, look at me; you know what? Me too!"
Miss Kate's mouth dropped open as she slowly got the message.
"You mean," she gasped, "you too?"
"Yes! That's what I'm telling you, me too!" Aunt Joan burst into laughter at the change in Miss Kate's expression. "I really shouldn't have embarrassed you like that; I'm more guilty than you are, but you'll have to admit it was really very funny-those panties slithering out like that, and then your zipper-" Aunt Joan burst out laughing again, and this time Miss Kate managed a smile.
"But you too, Joan? Why, I never would've dreamed...." She looked over at me. "Why, that little devil!" she said.
"Isn't he though?" laughed Aunt Joan. "You know, I suspected something when you were stopped at the side of the road last night, but, of course, I wasn't sure. Skippy's very clever about such things as this."
"Yes, isn't he, though?" mused Miss Kate, shaking her head slightly from side to side in contemplation of this fact.
"But you see," Aunt Joan continued, "you don't have to worry about me knowing your little secret; after all, you know mine, and I'm his aunt!"
"What I'm wondering, then," said Miss Kate, as they both started walking arm in arm back toward me, "is who else?"
"Yes, that's right!" laughed Aunt Joan. "Tell us, oh great seducer of innocent young virgins, who else has succumbed to your evil blandishments?"
"Nobody," I mumbled sheepishly, hanging my head. I was really got away with by now. It was no laughing matter for me-to have these two grown women, chatting so casually now, about me, like I was a piece of shared property or something that had turned up from out of nowhere for their amusement.
"Aw, come on now, 'fess up, Skippy," said Miss Kate. "If you got to your aunt and to your schoolteacher, then you must be active in other fields."
"Come clean now," Aunt Joan joined in.
"You're both crazy," I fought back; I was so nervous at that moment that I wasn't too far from tears, myself.
"Oh, now, don't feel bad about us teasing you a little, you little imp; we really know you just love the two of us, and you couldn't resist us, and, of course, you wouldn't even dream of looking at any other girls," said Aunt Joan with mock sincerity.
"You're crazy," I repeated doggedly, although I was beginning to feel somewhat better about the whole matter as things went on.
Aunt Joan helped Miss Kate put the baskets inside the gym door, and Miss Kate locked it back up. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that I was lucky Aunt Joan had taken this amused attitude toward everything. After all, she could've gotten pretty nasty about it, just as easily.
They were giggling at something they'd whispered together about at the gym door, as they came down the steps. I was feeling pretty left out by that time, and I started for the car.
"Don't you think you might just as well put your pants back on now, Kate-as long as the cat's already out of the bag, so to speak?" laughed Aunt Joan loudly, and, I was sure, for my benefit.
I turned to see, not daring to believe my eyes, Miss Kate pulling up her skirt and wriggling into her panties, right out in the open courtyard.
"We've decided that we'll just share you evenly between us, Skippy," Aunt Joan called.
My ears were burning, and I was never so embarrassed in my life, as they caught up with me, giggling like school girls, and each put an arm about me. I decided that all I could do was just play along with them, although I couldn't understand how they could take the matter so lightly. I put an arm about each of their waists.
God-a'-mighty, I breathed to myself, if this is for real, what a deal!
I shook my head in silent disbelief. Why, I must be just a natural-born world-banger, that's what. What a deal. I began to chuckle to myself. You're in the money, boy, I told myself-you got it made at the head of the parade.
CHAPTER EIGHT
"Why don't you come on over to our house for supper tonight, Kate?" Aunt Joan asked, as we reached the cars. "Better yet, why don't you just come on and spend the night with me? You haven't done that in a long, long time. Remember how much fun we used to have taking turns at each other's houses?"
"You know, it almost sounds like a lot of fun," Miss Kate reflected.
"Sure. It'll be even more fun now-we got Skippy!"
They both seemed very amused at this, but I felt a little uncomfortable.
"Where would I sleep?" asked Miss Kate.
"Oh. Well, you see, Skippy and I have adjoining bedrooms away from the other part of the house, where John and Mary sleep. It would be perfect. We'll kill Skippy."
I didn't know whether to laugh or run.
"I accept your invitation; I don't particularly like to ride out a hurricane all alone in that big house of mine, anyway," Miss Kate decided.
"Why don't you leave your car parked here and come with us in mine?" Aunt Joan offered. "There're no trees nearby, like there are at your house and at our place. Your car will be safer here. I'll drive you down here to pick it up tomorrow, after the storm's past."
"Sounds like a good idea. I accept again," Miss Kate agreed, sounding more enthusiastic by the moment.
On the way home they began teasing me again, wanting to know who else I'd been playing around with. I insisted, of course, that nothing of the sort had ever entered my mind, but they wouldn't accept it.
"Why, I'll bet he's been after half the little girls in the county," Miss Kate teased, "and probably their mothers too!"
"I don't like little girls," I retorted.
"Then you must've tried them," said Aunt Joan, triumphantly.
"You're nuts," I said.
"Why, I'll bet he's even been loving up Mary," Miss Kate said.
"Who? Our Mary? Don't kid yourself!" Aunt Joan said vehemently. "That sanctimonious hypocrite? Never happen, not that girl. Why, if she had any idea about any of this, she'd die of apoplexy. She'd have a fit and just pass away on the spot. No, not her. She'll tell a little off-color joke herself once in a while, and laugh at John when he's drinking and says something a little shady, but anybody else and it's a mortal sin. No, old buddy, not that old biddy. You tell her, Skippy."
"Nah, she never appealed to me very much for some reason," I said. They both laughed raucously at my statement. I continued in the same vein, "Nope, not Aunt Mary. She's one I missed; however, I'm pretty sure she's hot to trot, though," I said as seriously as I could manage. "She's trying to tempt me, but so far I've been strong enough to fight off her almost great attraction."
"Oh, Skippy, you are a mess," Aunt Joan laughed.
"We better quiet down now; we're among the uniniated," Miss Kate said, as we pulled up beside the house.
We were just in time for supper. After eating, as I got up to leave the table, the four grownups were discussing sleeping arrangements. Uncle John was willing to give up his and Aunt Mary's bed so Miss Kate could have a bed to herself.
"No, she'll sleep in my room with me," Aunt Joan insisted. "It's already been decided. It'll be like old times."
"Sure," Miss Kate agreed, "I'd prefer not to be alone during the storm, anyway. That was one reason I accepted Joan's invitation."
"We're going to get up early tomorrow morning, if the storm's over by then, that is, and go get Kate's car at the school. I might even volunteer to help you decorate the gym for the carnival, Kate," Aunt Joan said.
Later, Aunt Joan came out to the barn, where I was pumping water in the trough for the animals. She ruffled my hair and said:
"Don't get too tired and sleepy tonight, Skippy, you little rascal. Kate and I've been talking it over; we've got plans for you."
Sounded better all the time.
Around the fireplace, just before bedtime, we were roasting buttered pecans, and Uncle John got out a jug of hard cider. It wasn't very long before a party atmosphere prevailed, and everyone was laughing and talking a mile a minute. Uncle John then suggested we play games. He and I got out the checkerboard and played a couple of games, winning one apiece. Uncle John had taught me to play checkers during my stay with them, and I'd become really better than he was. He tended to fall into traps easily.
The women folks began to complain that they were left out, and wanted to play group games, so no one would be left out. We decided to play the thinking game. Aunt Mary then got coy and backed out, saying she really didn't feel too well, and thought she'd sit and watch and sew a little.
We decided to play teams, and there was much ado about who would stand who. Finally Uncle John said why not flip a coin to decide. Aunt Mary chimed in with her contribution that that would be gambling, and a sin. But Uncle John overruled her and flipped a coin, anyway. It ended up that Miss Kate and I'd stand Uncle John and Aunt Joan.
The great part of this game was that Miss Kate and I had to step out into the hall, while Uncle John and Aunt Joan decided upon what they were going to think about. The object of the game, of course, was to try and guess in twenty questions what they were thinking about. It had to be some object in the living room. Aunt Mary was elected impartial referee by unanimous vote on the very first ballot. She was to remain in the room while the decision was made as to subject and assure that no changing horses in midstream went on. She seemed overjoyed by her role. It fit her personality beautifully.
I followed Miss Kate out into the hallway, and we closed the door behind us, shutting out the murmur of voices in the living room. It was dark in the hallway.
"Is this your room across here?" she asked.
"Yes, Aunt Joan's is just beyond mine."
Miss Kate smiled and slid in close, as my hands went impulsively to her breasts. She urged me even closer and we embraced, longingly. Still holding her close, I slid one hand down her legs and lifted the hem of her skirt. She caught her breath, as I slid my hand beneath, caressing the insides of her smooth, satiny legs.
I nuzzled at her soft breasts, as she squirmed excitedly in response to my urgings. Things were just getting good, when Uncle John called out loudly that they were ready. Personally, I preferred our game better, but there would be plenty of time for all of that, later. We separated, straightening up her disarranged clothing and went back into the living room.
It took us almost the limit before we guessed their first subject-a scrap of cloth hanging from the edge of Aunt Mary's sewing basket. Pink had been the color clue, and I had received a good laugh on the fifteenth guess, when I'd blurted out:
"Aunt Joan's slip?"
Everybody had looked at Aunt Joan and she'd blushed. Her slip was showing about an inch of lacy pink hemline below her skirt.
Aunt Mary had been enraged, or perhaps incensed would be a better word, by my remark, and threatened to wash out my mouth with soap, until Uncle John intervened and quieted her down. Aunt Joan had helped ease Aunt Mary's outrage by laughing hardest of all, and by saying that it was really her slip that needed washing-not my mouth.
I think Aunt Mary was worried about the hurricane warnings and, therefore, was more touchy than usual. The game got underway again, eventually, and I remember how funny it was-Aunt Mary so upset by such a triviality, when so much more was going on underneath her very nose, almost.
Aunt Joan preceded Uncle John out into the hall, and it was our turn to pick a subject. We chose to think of a cobweb in the far corner of the room, our color being gray. We called them back in the room, and they proceeded to rattle off virtually every gray item in the room. Once they came very close, when Aunt Joan looked up in that particular corner, but her guess had been the ceiling itself, which had been white once, having turned a dirty gray with age and the accumulation of grime. They failed to guess our subject, making us the undisputed champions, with two victories.
Aunt Joan suggested changing partners. Uncle John concurred enthusiastically, so it was decided. Aunt Joan and I left the room, closing the door carefully behind. This was the moment I'd been waiting for-to be alone in an intimate situation with Aunt Joan again. As soon as the door clicked shut I embraced her, pulling her close, moulding her yielding buttocks with my fingertips. She came, breathless, standing still, willingly letting me have my way with her. She leaned forward and down, kissing me passionately, as I worked my fingers beneath her dress.
She wore a loose, flaring skirt, making my goal easier to attain with her than it had been with Miss Kate. I soon had her panties down to her knees, as she leaned back against the closed door, making certain no one opened it too quickly on us. She moaned a soft, low sigh of pleasure as she let me do with her as I willed. I could hardly contain my pleasure at her response. She was ready for anything right then and there. By the time the tap came on the door, her hands were actively seeking pleasures of their own.
It was with obvious reluctance that she pulled her panties back up and struggled to regain her composure, as we had to return to the living room. Whatever had been her feelings of guilt, causing her to go away, it was gone now.
I had two unbelievably sensual women, eager and anxious to abandon themselves to pleasures such as I chose. It promised, more and more, to be a night to remember. We went back to the anticlimactic games in the living room, and guessed their subject, the red in the shepherd's robe, in the religious picture hanging on the wall, on the seventh guess.
Aunt Mary was very pleased with that game; she brightened considerably, when it was I who made the right guess.
Uncle John then escorted Miss Kate into the hall, and, as Aunt Joan and I discussed possibilities, I could've sworn I heard suppressed giggles from the hallway. I couldn't be sure, however, and even if I could there were a lot of innocent things you could giggle about, I guess.
They guessed our subject quite easily this time, and all of us seemed to be getting a little tired of the game. We decided to quit. We drank the rest of the cider, I getting a little bit this time on the sly, with a wink from Uncle John. We finished off the roasted, buttered pecans, while Uncle John, as he became merrier with each swallow, regaled us with wild stories of his boyhood.
One story in particular, I recall, impressed me very much. It was the story of how, when he'd had to trudge to school, barefoot, over three miles in deep snow one morning, he told us, the pain had become so bad he'd stopped and pee'd in the snow and stood in it, warming his feet, before he could continue on to school, running the rest of the way.
Somehow, that struck me as a huge thing to be able to claim. That you had gone through times that hard, and had survived it all and come out on top. Uncle John really went up a couple of notches in my estimation with that. Even more so, after Aunt Mary left the room to prepare for bed, when he told us a hilarious story about a little girl who'd once watched a boy courting her big sister. According to Uncle John, the little girl had run from the room and told her mother that the boy had taken a snake from his pocket and was trying to make it bite her sister on the legs, and what the mother had said when she burst into the parlor and caught the two lovers in the act.
Miss Kate seemed to get a big kick out of it too. Aunt Joan had, naturally, heard the same story many times before, but she gave Uncle John a funny look when he popped Miss Kate on the fanny with the back of his hand, as she left the room, laughing.
Aunt Joan followed Miss Kate from the room. Uncle John stayed to polish off what was left of the cider, while I put the checkerboard and stuff away and straightened up the living room a little. Then I went across the hall to my room, leaving Uncle John to turn out the lamps and lock the front door.
I could hear Aunt Joan and Miss Kate bumping around in the next room, their voices hushed, murmuring. I hurriedly got undressed and jumped in bed, shaking with excitement and anxious anticipation. Before long the house settled down into darkened silence, save for the slit of light and whisper of feminine voices coming from the room next to mine. The wind was rising to an angry pitch, the rain beating thunderously on the tin roof above the ceiling, adding a final measure of dangerous anticipation of what might happen.
There was a timid tapping at my door.
"Come in," I chuckled joyously. "I'm decent."
"If you're decent we won't bother coming in," whispered Aunt Joan, slipping into the room, followed closely by Miss Kate. I sat bolt upright in the bed. Both of them were completely naked, except for panties. Miss Kate had on her pink, lacy panties that I'd already seen in the evening, and Aunt Joan had on a pair of thin, plain white ones. It was a breathtaking display of raw beauty-these two indescribably beautiful shapes-stealing ghost-like into the dark room, illuminated from behind by the lamp in Aunt Joan's room. Seeing them both together, side by side in all their glory, had a paralyzing effect on me.
Aunt Joan hesitated beside my bed, her full breasts swaying bouncily, large nipples, excited, out-thrust. Truly these were morsels for the gods. Miss Kate, a little hesitant and embarrassed, stood at her shoulder, a ripe contrast to the slim, seductive elegance of Aunt Joan. Her great breasts hung down and out, firm and taut, crested with bright red, berry-colored nipples from which surely wine could be pressed to serve along with the other morsels for the gods beside which they so proudly thrust.
"Go around to the other side of the bed, Kate," Aunt Joan whispered. "We'll surround him."
Miss Kate laughed and ran around to my right side. They bent over me, placing their hands on the mattress, and I had two lovely breasts on each side to choose between. To show my impartiality, I took one on each side into my hands. As my fingers closed over each soft globe of flesh, I felt a chill race through me. They felt like two cones of warm, shivering jello. This was going to be an earth-shaking night, not only due to the churning fury of the rising wind outside, but because of the torrid forces building here within the room.
Aunt Joan's smooth, familiar breast nestled provocatively within my palm, setting my head reeling. I knew, suddenly, what it was I wanted to do. I let go of Miss Kate and turned both hands to Aunt Joan. I grabbed her soft, milky breast and pulled her down to me. Eagerly I fastened my lips to her feverish nipple. She flung herself willingly onto the bed, leaning over me. She lowered first one and then the other breast to my hungry mouth.
As I toyed thusly with Aunt Joan, I felt the touch of fingers at my shorts. Thrilled beyond words, I realized that it was Miss Kate getting into the act. The scent of their combined perfumes, Aunt Joan's breasts at my mercy, and the touch of fingers tugging at my shorts, left me breathless with giddy delight.
I began to toy with the elastic of Aunt Joan's panties. I knew what I wanted to do now, but first I might just as well enjoy this while it lasted. I attacked Aunt Joan's lovely breasts with renewed attention, as I felt those lips of Miss Kate close around me there. My heart raced at the sensation that thrilled through my very being.
Soon I could hardly keep still at the overpowering ecstasy of a woman's breasts and that greedy mouth on me as my mouth was on a woman's breasts. I could contain myself no longer. I began to tug at Aunt Joan's panties in earnest. This was thrilling me to the core, but still I wanted more. Aunt Joan was the one I wanted more than anything else in the world. I wanted to lay her, outspread across this bed and naked before me, at my command. I must get between her lovely legs, as I had done with Miss Kate earlier in the evening. I wanted Aunt Joan, and I wanted her badly.
I let go of her breasts and rolled from the warm delight of Miss Kate's mouth. I pulled Aunt Joan over in the middle of the bed and stripped her filmy panties down to her knees. She helped by lifting her legs and withdrawing her feet from the openings. Insistently I forced her legs apart, spreading the silken thighs. I rolled over on top of her and gazed into her eyes. She spread herself beneath me, yielding now. She smiled. She was ready, ready at last, for anything.
She raised her knees slightly, and her hands moved down to help. She guided with one hand and pressed my hips with the other. I found the opening and was immersed again in that heavenly, soft, wet, yielding delight. The bed creaked protestingly, as Miss Kate crawled in bed beside us. She snuggled up close to us, and, as I looked down in complete amazement, Miss Kate moved her hands up, caressingly along Aunt Joan's thighs, waist, and to her breast.
She then took the breast in one hand and pressed her lips to the tender nipple, lovingly. Shocked at this sudden turn of events, I realized that Aunt Joan, looking down with a sensual smile on her lips, didn't seem startled at all. In fact, she seemed to enjoy the prospect immensely. Miss Kate kissed the rosebud tip several times, and then took the coy little nipple into her mouth.
I remembered well the eagerness of those lips on me, and wasn't surprised at all when Aunt Joan began to squirm and churn her hips beneath me at this new assault upon her senses. She was vulnerable and being attacked on several fronts. Not to be outdone, I directed my attentions to the trembling, quivering crest of her other breast. I took the nipple in my lips, rolling it gently with my tongue, teasing the sensitive tip with my teeth, as Aunt Joan moaned beneath us.
I pounded her tossing form as a ship might pound the foaming ocean in a raging storm, plunging and thrusting at the raging torrent beneath. After each plunging thrust, however, there was never a mark to show where the thrust had been made. There was only the raging, unsoothed, deep, implacable clutching, snarling at the invader, grasping at the insignificant interloper who'd dared challenge the mighty, raging deep.
I took her engorged nipple deep into my mouth and buried my face in her flowing breast. That soft, luxurious breast, and those warm, yielding loins were the world for me for that moment in time. Nothing else existed, not the wind, the storm outside, not the shuddering, old, broken-down house, nor the lips on the other breast near my head, not the hair licking my ear and flowing over my shoulders; nothing else in the world mattered. Nothing else existed at all.
My world was there in my eager lips on this wonderful breast, my mouth on her and the hungry mouth that enfolded me. The fact that I was between those golden, plunging thighs, warm legs, spread knees, on the dark mound, soft and sweet. This was life, these arms enfolding my head, pressing me close-my world-my universe, this goddess, this, my love.
And then I was gone, suddenly torn from my being and flung, spinning off into the void, the firmament of burning stars, wheeling before my eyes on the screen of my tightly shut eyelids. I was lost in an unreal world, lost as to time and place and self. I'd lost myself, my soul; it was sinking into that of my beloved. Incoherent, disjointed words and phrases reeled maddeningly through my mind ... how beautiful thy feet without shoes ... how lovely thy limbs of brown gold ... how heady the fragrance of thy thighs ... how soft the caress of thy breasts upon my loins ... how soft thy hair upon my knees....
How did we get in this tangle? Oh, Joan ... Oh, Kate ... My God ... Whose lips are those ... whose legs? Whose hands on me ... my breasts ... my young boy's nipples hard like a girl's budding rosebuds? Those lips enfolding me ... whose? Whose mouth upon the surging throb of my boyhood, while the storm rages within and without? Who stokes the fires within, while the world blows cold from without? What the mighty poundings on the roof above my head, drowning out the sounds, those sounds, I would hear?
What is that pounding on the windowpane? The rain.
What is that calling from without? The wind's shout.
Who is that here I see, nestled close, so close, to me?
This lovely creature-my schoolteacher....
What's the pounding at the door? The wind no more.
What the frenzied calling from the hall? We're having a ball.
Who's the face I see aghast, framed in doorway, looking past?
Who's the wildly disbelieving eyes, looking down into mine, between who's thighs?
There we were-Miss Kate kneeling upon the bed, her hands on our entwined bodies. Aunt Joan, face down over me on her hands and knees, her face between my thighs. She was the last to realize. And there I was, peering up between Aunt Joan's legs, looking up into the unbelieving eyes of none other than Aunt Mary, seeing her upside down, her wild face framed in the open doorway. Hearing the startled gasp of Miss Kate as the door slammed again. Hearing the sharp sound as the contact was broken, as Aunt Joan heard the door slam and looked up into Miss Kate's face and knew when she saw her face something was wrong-bad wrong. Terribly wrong. Heard the low moan, as Aunt Mary, no doubt clutching at her breast, stumbled down the hall. What in the hell was going on?
"What happened?" moaned Aunt Joan, dazed.
"I hear the radio playing down the hall," Miss Kate cried breathlessly. "She probably came to tell us something about the storm."
We were all three getting untangled from the cover and each other and scrambling off the bed, when there came the heavy, uneven footsteps of Uncle John lurching down the hall. We all tried to cover ourselves, the two women turning for the other bedroom door, as Uncle John staggered to the doorway. It took him a few seconds before full impact of what he saw hit him. He'd been stoned, really drunk, I think, when he opened the door. He sobered up fast. His eyes bulged out of their sockets, but he was speechless.
We didn't wait to find out what he had to say when he recovered. There was only one thing for the three of us to do: Get the hell out of there!
We got. I grabbed my pants and shirt, as Aunt Joan and Miss Kate fled from the room. The door to their room had time to bounce only once before I went through it right after them. They were throwing clothes on like you never saw people throw clothes on before. I followed suit.
"What're we going to do?" I asked.
"We're getting out of here, that's what," said Miss Kate. "You want to come?"
"You just try and leave me here," I said, struggling hurriedly into my pants.
"Oh, God, oh, God," Aunt Joan was repeating.
"Hurry, hurry," Miss Kate urged.
We went out the window. Outside, on the front porch, we could hardly stand against the blast of the wind and rain. The moment the icy sheet of rain hit me I wished to hell I had a coat. Huddled together, holding onto the rails for dear life, we struggled down the steps to the yard. The ground was a slimy sheet of slithering mud and water.
Holding tight to one another, we navigated the treacherous expanse of mud to Aunt Joan's car, the pitch blackness illuminated occasionally by lightning flashes. Aunt Joan was wringing her hands and crying. She was afraid the car wouldn't start. We made it and piled in, drenched through and through, but we made it. The car ground a little, and coughed and sputtered, but finally we heard the welcome sound of the engine as it choked into life above the roar of the storm. Amid the grinding of gears and the flailing and spinning of the tires and slewing, flying mud, we made our flight. We made it down the lane and turned onto the mud-slick road.
CHAPTER NINE
Looking back on it now, that was probably the most confusing, bewildering night of my life. None of us knew what to do. We couldn't go back, that was certain. Ahead, out in the storm, who knew what lay ahead? The trees looked like grass in a strong wind. Everything was all wet and windy.
We rolled down the muddy road, slewing hither and thither, trying to miss the tree limbs and monstrous puddles, just barely illuminated by the yellow, dirty-looking headlight beams. Once we saw a huge black-snake, probably driven out of his lair by the torrential floods. It slithered wickedly across the low bottom, a real prehistoric-looking blacksnake from some ungodly hole in the deep swamp bottom.
Soon we were out, miraculously unscathed, on the main highway. We headed west, away from the coast, away, we hoped, from the worst of the storm. Miss Kate had finally decided that we should go to her house. We were wondering if the news Aunt Mary had been so anxious to tell us had been a possible evacuation warning for our area. I'd never been to Miss Kate's house, so it was all strange country to me.
"How far is it?" I asked.
"Not far now, just around the bend," she replied.
Then I could see a big clump of trees looming around the turn. We made the skidding turn into the drive, narrowly missing the mailbox. Halfway up the lane, Miss Kate let out a choked gasp. The car abruptly stalled, the motor expiring with a spluttering gurgle. Miss Kate sat staring in stunned disbelief.
"It's gone," she gasped.
"What? I don't see anything," I said.
"No, that's just it-it's gone-my house is gone!"
"My God," said Aunt Joan and I together. "Gone?"
Miss Kate recovered enough to grind the engine to life. We pulled slowly up into the yard. The rain was slowing down somewhat for the moment. We rolled the car windows down a little and surveyed the dismal scene. There'd once been a house here, but no more. Hardly a brick of the old foundation, even, stood intact. Only a few boards and shingles littered the ground and cluttered the shrubbery and trees, to hint at the sudden fury that had blasted the place, or swallowed it up. Shaken, all of us, to the core, we clambered back into the car.
"You drive now, Joan," Miss Kate implored shakily, "I don't think I feel quite up to it. You know I was almost in that, just think of it! I'd be gone like the house."
"Where to now?" Aunt Joan asked.
"Let's go by the school and see if my car's still there," said Miss Kate. "I almost forgot about it. If it's okay, I think I'll take it with us, wherever it is we're going."
We backed up and inched cautiously down the drive. In spite of taking it very slowly and carefully, we almost got stuck in a deep rut near the road. In spinning out, Aunt Joan almost lost control and ended up in the ditch at the road. We made it safely onto the roadway, however, but not without mishap. We got the mail box that we'd missed on the way in.
When we reached the school we were relieved to find it still intact. It looked like it was a shambles. About half the windows were gone and the flagpole was broken off near the base. Miss Kate's car seemed to have weathered the storm. It felt reassuring to have the solid crunch of the gravel parking lot underneath our wheels.
It took several minutes, but Miss Kate at last managed to get her car started. We pulled out of the lot, heading for town, with Miss Kate following behind, her headlights a creamy blur in the rear window, as I kept an eye on her car.
When we arrived on the outskirts of town it seemed completely deserted. It was a strange scene that greeted our eyes. Here would be a building shattered beyond recognition. There would be a row of stores untouched to all outward appearances. Then a sign dangling from a post, then an empty lot where the courthouse had stood. The courthouse had been one of the strongest-looking buildings in town. It was gone.
In front of the courthouse square the flagpole was twisted almost into a neat treble-cleft sign, part ol the metal pole near the base looking like a twisted peppermint stick. Finally, near the far end of the main street, we saw life. A man came out of a store carrying a suitcase. It was he who confirmed our suspicions of an evacuation warning. All residents had been advised to move to higher ground, he told us, flooding was expected. We thanked him for the information and pulled on out of town. He looked like he was glad we were going. Aunt Joan said he was probably looting some of the stores.
We headed away from the coast. As the long, bleak, wet, dreary miles sped by, I began to feel very drowsy, but I fought the feeling. It wasn't that I was avid for excitement or more adventure at all. In fact, I felt I'd had about enough to last me for a long, long time. It was hard to define exactly what I was feeling. It was more like a growing sense of doom than anything else. I felt danger, loss, maybe even a little fear. I felt I had to see what went on as long as we were driving, until we were safe. Where safety would be, I had no idea.
We were driving out of the worst of the storm. Gradually the rain abated and the wind was no longer of hurricane force. As we traversed a lonely stretch of desolate tree-lined road, we suddenly heard Miss Kate's horn from behind. She seemed to want to say something, so Aunt Joan slowed to a crawl and let her come abreast of us. Miss Kate leaned over and managed to roll her far window part way down.
"I'm getting so sleepy I can hardly hold my eyes open, Joan," she said. "Let's pull over and rest a little."
"Don't you want to try to make it into the next town and find a hotel, or something?" Aunt Joan asked.
"I don't think I can make it. I'm liable to run off the road, or bump into you. Really, I'm tired."
"Well, I guess we'll be as safe here as anywhere. I'll pull up there on that level spot, and you can park just behind us. Are you going to lie down in your car, or do you want to come up and stretch out in our back seat?"
"Either way is okay, just as long as I can rest a little. There won't be room for all three of us in your car, will there?"
"I'm not very sleepy," Aunt Joan replied. "Skippy can stretch out here on the front seat and put his head in my lap. You're welcome to the back seat, if you want it."
"I think I will then," decided Miss Kate.
We parked well off the highway, and Miss Kate soon joined us, stretching out luxuriously across the back seat, and was soon asleep. At first I sat up with Aunt Joan, talking in low tones about the seriousness of our plight and about the storm damage. Then I too began to grow sleepy. I offered to let Aunt Joan lie down for a while and I would hold her head on my lap, but she refused, saying she wasn't at all sleepy.
I took her up on her offer to let me pillow my head on her thighs. I settled down as comfortably as possible across the front seat. My hand came to rest upon her lovely smooth knees. They felt so good, so tender and soothing to feel as drowsiness claimed me. The last waking thought I remember was of Aunt Joan smoothing and caressing my hair, while I slid my fingers hypnotically over the satiny skin of her legs, parted beneath my head.
I don't know how long I'd slept before I awoke, a little uncomfortable in the position I was in, and turned over. Aunt Joan moved and licked her lips in her sleep as I raised up to turn over, facing her. I glanced back at Miss Kate. She was fast asleep, lying on her back, with one arm beneath her head for a cushion, the other sprawled out. Her dress was in a tempting state of disarray. In her sleep she'd tossed and turned, moving her legs until her skirt was up above her knees.
I couldn't resist leaning over the seat and caressing her in several interesting spots, causing her to squirm in her sleep. It was still very dark outside, although I had the feeling it wouldn't be too very long before daylight would be streaking the horizon again.
There seemed to be absolutely no traffic along the highway. Aunt Joan was fast asleep, her head resting against the window. As I looked back again at Miss Kate in the back seat I felt a little stirred by the softness and warmth of her legs spread so invitingly open before me. I leaned farther over the seat and let my fingers creep up to the elastic of her panty legs. I slipped my fingers underneath and allowed them to run lightly through the delicate flowing mound. Then I let my finger slip between the warm outer folds and into the hot dry cleft.
In a moment I felt the folds become warmer and wet. I urged my fingers farther, and Miss Kate moved. Her hand, which'd been hanging off the seat, moved to cover my own. She began to move her hips in an undulating, fascinating rhythm. Her eyes opened and a sultry, insinuating smile crept across her lips.
"Skippy," she breathed huskily, withdrawing her arm from beneath her head and holding both hands out to me, "come back here with me. Please, hurry!" she whispered, as I hesitated.
I hesitated only a moment, thinking about the possibility of chance passersby upon the highway. I'd had enough of being surprised in a bad situation. Her charms were just too much to resist, however, so I clambered over the seat into her waiting arms.
She was really excited. I realized it as soon as I was on the seat with her. She moved passionately beneath me as I lay between her updrawn legs, pressing herself to me, rubbing her soft mound against my trousers. In a moment she was struggling to get her panties down from her hips and off her legs and feet so that we could get down to business. Her hot breath upon my lips melted any reticence I may've had.
I cooperated by slipping my trousers down and opening my shorts. Then we lay close together again and began to move together as I teased her and also myself into a state of great anticipation. She struggled and urged me to go ahead and make the necessary movement, but I continued to tease her by lightly rubbing her moist lips and tender little button with the tip of my sex. At last, when it seemed she'd explode beneath me, I allowed a partial penetration. She gasped and moaned under her breath and tried desperately to press me to her will, but still I held back, moving gently in and out, but never fully allowing either of us the ultimate pleasure of full penetration we were bursting for.
In this way we were both soon in the throes of an all-consuming longing, and at once I could restrain myself no longer. I relaxed my body and allowed her to guide me to her, her hips plunging beneath my thighs. She clutched my head to her bosom and gave vent to her pent-up passions.
She was a warm sea of dewy-wet desire. The moans and breathless sighs she gave way to were a spur to my own joyous pleasures taken from her yielding thighs. In an incredibly short span she expired into a storm of short gasps, clutchings, and wet, hot kisses, placed upon my ears and neck. Just afterward I too found relief in the sweep, clinging folds of her lovely sheath, and allowed myself to collapse, peaceful and satiated upon her full round form.
We lay together, contented and happy for a while, almost falling asleep. We came to our senses at the same time and looked into each other's eyes, smiling, knowing we must get dressed and make ourselves presentable again.
We parted somewhat reluctantly, and I returned to the front seat. I was exhausted then, but not really sleepy. I sat to one side, away from Aunt Joan, and looked around in the darkness. There wasn't much to see. There wasn't much light to see by, even if there had been. Miss Kate seemed to be settling back to resume her interrupted sleep. I envied her her calm and self possession. She seemed perfectly confident that everything was going to work out okay in the end. I was beginning to have my doubts.
I was understanding more and more how Aunt Joan had felt when she'd gone away. I began to know what doubts, fears, and guilt could do to you inside. They could turn your stomach to jelly if you dwelled on them. The only answer was to blank them completely out of mind, and that wasn't easy.
The sky seemed to be getting a little lighter in the East. I had no idea what time it actually was. I decided to try to see if I could see the hands on Aunt Joan's watch. She seemed to be sleeping, although she'd moved restlessly as I'd climbed back over into the front seat.
I moved over next to her and took her arm, turning it toward me. It was too dark to make out the time. She stirred irritably in her sleepy state. I moved carefully away to my side. As I settled down again, my head leaning against the window, I felt, unexpectedly, a touch. Aunt Joan had sat up and turned toward me, Her hand rested lightly upon my legs as she turned around, facing me, swinging her legs up on the seat, She leaned her lips close and whispered to me:
"Is she asleep?"
"I think so," I whispered back.
"Well, I'm not," she whispered, laughing a little.
"So I can see," I said with a touch of irony. "Did you get any sleep at all?"
"Well, I slept pretty good until you two began making so much fuss back there in the back seat."
I was glad she couldn't see my crimson face. What made me blush was the fact that I thought we'd gone unheard. I felt her hands on me down there.
"Come on, Skippy, how about me?"
Oh, God, I thought, here we go again. She heard us and got all excited herself. Well, nothing to do but go along with the game.
In truth, her hands were beginning to evoke a response in me, despite the fact that I should've been spent beyond repair. There's just something different about a different woman, even moments apart. I turned to her, running my hand up under her skirt. No useI in being halfway about a thing. If you have to face the inevitable you might just as well enjoy it and go all the way.
I was surprised, when we finally got situated; she was bare from the waist down, and opened to receive me. I thought Miss Kate had been big, and open, and wet, but Aunt Joan was really something. She was quite a woman. Quite a woman, indeed.
Eventually we settled down to sleep again. I had! trouble dropping off to slumberland this time, and when I did sleep I dreamed a horrifying dream of being chased by the cops and by Uncle John, and finally a whole bunch of guys chasing me near the edge of a high cliff. Obviously my conscience was preying j more and more on my mind.
I was the first to awaken, just as it was beginning to grow light, and my fidgeting woke up Aunt Joan. She smiled languorously. Apparently she had suffered no bad dreams and wasn't greatly disturbed by our situation. We awakened Miss Kate and got back on the road. Miss Kate winked at me as she got out of the bar. She didn't know Aunt Joan had heard everything that went on between us, it was obvious.
We were over a hundred miles from home now, and the effects of the storm on the countryside through which we were passing were negligible. We'd decided to stop in the next town and get a place to stay for a while. Miss Kate and Aunt Joan were talking about getting a job. I was feeling confused. Everything was just happening too fast to keep up with. Nothing to do but just float with the tide and see where it would take me in the end. I settled back in my seat and tried to relax and not worry about it all. It was out of my hands.
CHAPTER TEN
We reached the outskirts of Vanceboro about nine o'clock in the morning. It wasn't a really big town, although it was bigger than any of us were used to. We found a hotel that looked respectable but not too expensive. We took a room, actually a room and a half, with bath, at a very reasonable rate.
It had one large room with a big bed and several chairs and a dresser, and there was a little alcove attached with a single bed and an easy chair. The alcove overlooked the main street of town. I was excited by the hotel, although somewhat awed by the elegance of the furnishings, as we entered the room. I was excited by the prospect of living in such a nice hotel and by the fact that we'd be eating out at restaurants and the like. I felt I'd aged far beyond my years in the last few months. We went down to find a place to eat breakfast. There seemed to be others that had driven this far, fleeing the storm. The restaurant was crowded, and there was much talk of the hurricane. I remained silent as Aunt Joan discussed the possibility of finding work with Miss Kate. Aunt Joan was more optimistic about the prospects than was Miss Kate.
"In a town this size there must be jobs available."
"Sure, if you want to work for nothing as a waitress or a salesgirl in some country store. There's even a hosiery mill that makes stockings, if you want to start at the bottom and work your way up in a few years," agreed Miss Kate. "Actually," she continued, "we don't have to get a job right away, if we don't want to. I've got over a thousand dollars in the bank that I've saved from my teaching salary."
"Oh, I've got a little saved up for a rainy day too," Aunt Joan said. "It's part of the money I inherited when Daddy died. You know, I never thought much about it, but half of the farm and all is mine, too. I could make John buy me out," she laughed.
"Do you think you will, or will you end up going back?"
"I don't know. I'm tired of the farm, and yet I'm not really very adventuresome at heart. What about you and your teaching job?"
"I haven't thought much about it. I suppose I should call Mr. Darby and tell him I'm staying with friends a while, so they can get a substitute teacher. They won't know what happened to me. They'll think I went with the house, I guess, if I don't call."
"I can see the papers now, can't you?" Aunt Joan laughed.
"Do you think John and Mary will keep quiet about what happened?" asked Miss Kate.
"You couldn't get it out of them with a hot poker. They wouldn't dream of letting anybody outside the family know."
"I guess you're right, knowing them."
"There's one thing we haven't mentioned, though," said Aunt Joan reflectively.
"What's that?" frowned Miss Kate.
"Skippy's schooling. He has to continue going to school."
"Of course, but he can start here, if we decide not to go back."
"Sure, I'd rather go here," I joined in clumsily, not certain actually if I had or not. I was so confused now that I wasn't sure of anything any more.
"Well, let's us go out and see what jobs are available and then we'll know more about what we want to do. What do you want to do, Skippy? Do you want to go back to the hotel?"
"I guess so," I answered dejectedly. I was really feeling low and I wasn't sure why. My conscience was really catching up with me, I suppose.
They left me at the hotel entrance, and I debated going up to the room or not. I really felt lost. I wanted to run after them and plead to go along, but I knew I'd be out of place. I decided to walk around town for a while, just look around, see what it was like. I'd never been on my own in town before. Perhaps I could regain some of my old self confidence and enthusiasm for adventure.
I strolled around for quite some time, looking in shop windows and exploring side streets. You couldn't get lost in the town, because everything branched off the main street. All you had to do was walk back up the main street and you could see the hotel. Down one small street I could see a lot of kids playing. Since it was Saturday and there was no school, I was curious.
As I approached I could see that it was a park with a playground in the center. Everybody seemed to be having a great time, and for a while I stood on the outskirts and watched. There was a softball game in progress, but they had too many players already. Some girls were playing jump-rope and hopscotch. The swings and seesaws were taken.
I wandered by the swings and noticed a table constructed of two-by-fours on which a couple of checker games were in progress. I watched for a while but soon lost interest. Three boys and one girl were playing, but they were such amateurs that it wouldn't be any fun to ask for winners. I noticed a girl about twenty or so years old, who seemed to be a sort of supervisor. She was teaching several girls to knit, of all things.
I watched, amused for a long while, as she struggled with her young charges. She was very pretty in her unsophisticated way. She had a nice smile. She left them to their own ends after a while and stood up, brushing her skirt down over her legs. She walked around observing the activities much as I'd been doing. In time she noticed me standing around with my hands in my pockets and finally came over to me with that ingratiating smile of hers.
"Why aren't you playing softball with the other fellows?" she inquired, smiling charmingly. "You look like you'd be good at it." That was her job, I guess-to be a friendly go-getter.
"There's too many playing already," I replied.
"Yes," she agreed, "there always is, but you can play anyway. They don't limit themselves to the usual nine."
"Takes too long to come up to bat when there's so many," I said.
"Well, how about checkers? Do you play checkers?" You had to admit she really worked at it.
"Yeah," I replied indifferently, "but they're such kids at it. They don't even know how to play."
"Oh, I see. You're a checker champion, is that it?" She nodded her head knowingly.
"Oh, I wouldn't say I'm a checker champion, exactly, but it's no fun playing with somebody you can beat every time. No competition," I said, as snottily as her last observation.
"Are you new around here? I haven't seen you around before, have I?" she asked.
"Just visiting," I replied.
"Well, perhaps I can provide a little competition for you," she said saucily. "I play checkers a little. Would you like to try a game?"
I had the feeling that I'd been suckered into a game with an expert, but I agreed to play, for lack of anything better to do.
She dug a third board out of a box of games beneath a tree, and we set the board up on the grass. I moved into my usual defensive wedge, but she began swapping men off, right and left, until suddenly I found myself in a blocked game. Any move I made would prove disastrous. I looked up into her merry, twinkling eyes. She had me and she knew it. I felt like a fool.
"Okay, you win," I said.
"Don't you want to play it on out?" she asked.
"Why prolong the agony?" I replied. "You've got me this game. Let's try another."
She agreed, and we set the board up again. I set up the same wedge defense with the exception of my side men on the right wing. She began the same tactics of swapping off men. I was ready for her this time, however, and always took my jumps toward the center, controlling the middle of the board and dividing her forces. Soon I had her set up for a two-for-three jump. She fell into it, and with my one-man advantage I kinged easily and slaughtered her from the rear. This time it was she who set up the board with renewed respect, her eyes searching mine furtively.
In the third and rubber game, she abandoned her indiscriminate swapping and employed much the same system I used. It was a tight game down to the last, a struggle for kings. Finally I managed to get a one-man advantage, and we ended up with her two kings to my three. She ran for the corners, putting one man in each double corner, and triumphantly declared that it was a draw, that I couldn't win the game. I argued vehemently that I could and finally convinced her to play it out. I agreed that if I didn't get her within five minutes I'd concede the draw.
I lined my three kings up diagonally across the center and, as Uncle John had shown me, easily forced her into a swap of one for one, and then forced the other man out and trapped him against the side. She was amazed at this turn of events, although it was really not that much to brag about. She claimed, however, that it wasn't fair to swap off like that. I laughed at her anger and replied that all was fair in love and war, including checkers. She was piqued, however, and wouldn't play any more.
I left her, still fuming, and started back to the hotel, laughing to myself and feeling much better. Nothing like a triumph over a woman to make a boy feel like a man.
Around five o'clock Aunt Joan and Miss Kate came in. Failure was written all over their faces. No luck. The only jobs that were available were of the slave labor type that paid little for a lot of hard work. I got the impression that they really hadn't been too anxious to get jobs anyway. I think they'd just tried it for kicks.
"Kate called Mr. Darby up, and he's anxious for her to come right back," Aunt Joan informed me ominously. "He had driven out to her house, when she didn't show up to help finish decorating the gym for the festival. He was worried to death."
"Are you going back?" I asked.
"I don't know. I told him I had no place to stay and had driven up here to Vanceboro to stay with friends. I told him I'd call him tomorrow and let him know if I'd be back to school on Monday."
"What're we going to do this evening?" Aunt Joan asked cheerfully. "After all, this is a sort of vacation; we ought to enjoy it while we can."
"I saw a movie theatre down the street," I joined in. "There's a double feature playing." I hadn't been to a movie since before Daddy died. Uncle John and Aunt Mary didn't believe in going to see movies.
"That sounds like a good idea, Skippy," agreed Aunt Joan. "What do you think, Kate?"
"Okay with me. What did you do all day, Skippy, run all over town?"
"Yeah, I wandered around a little. It's a pretty big place. I played with the kids in the park for a while. There's a big park with a playground a few blocks away."
"Leave it to you to find out where the little girls hang out, huh?" Aunt Joan grinned.
I hoped they weren't going to start that all over. "Oh, sure," I said.
"Well, let's go to the movies then," said Miss Kate. "I'm going to shower and change clothes. How about you, Joan?"
"I'm for that," replied Aunt Joan, beginning to shrug out of her sweater.
Miss Kate gathered up the package she had dropped on the bed when she came in.
"Wait till you see our new outfits, Skippy," she said happily.
"I thought you were job hunting today, not shopping," I kidded.
"Don't forget, we came off without any clothes to spare. As a matter-of-fact, I don't even have any at all, unless they're strewn out in the woods somewhere," she retorted.
She went into the bathroom with her package. Soon the sound of water running came from within and Aunt Joan went into the bathroom also.
I stretched out across the single bed in the little alcove and stared out the window. The town was coming alive, as all the farmers and their families began to drift into town for the big Saturday night. There's an atmosphere about a farm town on Saturday nights that is found nowhere else in the world. A sort of hick enthusiasm and corn-fed laughter, foreign to an industrial city. A hundred drugstore cowboys dressed up in their best Sunday-go-to-meeting blue jeans, their hair slicked down with lard, and money jingling in their pockets. Minor league kings of the world. Their counterparts were big, raw-boned country girls in limp, flowery dresses, swishing up and down the main drag, licking an ice-cream cone with enormous tongues, heads tilted sharply at the best licking angle.
The little kids were the funny ones, though. Seldom coming to the big city, they were wide eyed at the noise, the lights and the activity. They reminded me of frightened jackrabbits, cowering behind their mothers' loose skirts, as they rolled their big eyes around and begged timidly for a peppermint stick or lollipop. It was an interesting spectacle if you studied the people closely. I rolled over face up on the bed and stared t the grimy ceiling. What a life.
The shower was turned off and I heard giggles from the bathroom. Probably they were towelling each other off. I considered bursting in on them, but I decided not to. I didn't have the strength. In a few minutes Miss Kate emerged, wearing a beautiful light-blue suit. She was lovely beyond words. Aunt Joan followed soon after, while I was still complimenting Miss Kate on her beautiful outfit, and I was astounded to see her wearing a duplicate of Miss Kate's suit.
"How do you like mine?" she asked coquettishly.
"Why, they're the same!" I exclaimed, grinning from ear to ear.
They almost looked like twins, standing side by side.
"Yes, we both fell in love with the same suit and neither would give in to the other, so we ended up both buying the same outfits."
"You both look beautiful; it's amazing," I exclaimed.
"New nylons, too," said Miss Kate, lifting her skirt above her knees and pivoting slowly around, her calves glistening enticingly above her black high heels. "And new shoes," she finished.
Aunt Joan just stood there, smiling sheepishly.
"So I see," I said. "They're pretty. Must've cost a fortune."
"No, these were all on sale. We got the suits and shoes dirt cheap," bubbled Miss Kate happily.
"I feel out of place now, to walk down the street with you two, me in my old shirt and pants."
"Nonsense, Skippy darling, we love you just like you are," reassured Miss Kate. "Come on now," she insisted, taking me by the hand, "let's go to see your double feature."
Off we went, all three of us, just like we had good sense.
It was late when we got back to the hotel room after the movie. The town was quiet as it had been all day. That's another thing about country towns: Late at night the streets are deserted. Everybody either goes to bed early or hits the barn dances and gets drunk in the back seats of cars. I was tired when we reached the room. I began to pull off my shoes immediately and sat down on the single bed to undress. I was about to fall asleep. I guess I wasn't the man of the world I thought myself to be at times.
Aunt Joan slipped out of her suit and sat down at the dresser to begin her ritual of combing her hair. Miss Kate disappeared into the bathroom. I undressed and crawled between the sheets. I felt content to let things go as they may. If anybody was in a playful mood, fine. If not, I was content to go to sleep. The bed felt wonderful. The movies had been colorful and exciting, but they'd left me spent, drained of energy.
Miss Kate came out of the bathroom and began undressing for bed. I watched with sleepy interest as she stripped down to her panties, facing away from me, and put on a sheer blue nightgown. Apparently she'd bought several new items.
"Do you want me to hand you in your gown, Joan?" she called softly into the bathroom.
"If you don't mind, I'd appreciate it."
"Looks like Skippy's gone to sleep on us," she laughed, whispering quietly as she handed another small package in through the door. ' 'We' II have to see about that, won't we?"
"He's probably all tuckered out, playing with the little girls in the park all day, you know," she laughed back.
"I think I'll wake him up, the little rascal," Miss Kate continued.
I could hardly restrain a grin as I lay there, my eyes barely slitted open. It was funny pretending to be asleep.
"Oh, let him sleep; I'm tired myself."
"But I'm not," Miss Kate said. "Actually I feel horny myself," she chuckled.
"Oh, Kate, women don't get horny; that's a characteristic of the male."
"You want to bet?" laughed Miss Kate. "Really, I feel like doing something exciting. Who knows? I'll probably be back posing as an old-maid teacher on Monday. What fun will that be?"
"Do you think you should go back?" Aunt Joan questioned, still from the bathroom.
"I think it's probably best, don't you think?"
Aunt Joan came into the bedroom. She was wearing a nighty exactly like the one Miss Kate had on.
"I suppose we all should go back and face the music," Aunt Joan replied thoughtfully. "Aren't these gowns lovely?"
"You look ravishing," Miss Kate said, her eyes growing soft, a peculiar look on her face. "You know, it's been a long time since we spent the night together, hasn't it? Aside from last night, I mean. You remember how much we used to love to spend the night together, when we were growing up?" A dreamy look came over Miss Kate as she gazed at Aunt Joan.
"Uhhm," nodded Aunt Joan. "We used to have a lot of fun, didn't we? Where does youth go?"
She seemed to be lost in thought also. This was getting more interesting by the minute.
"Let's wake Skippy up," insisted Miss Kate, standing up. "I fe'eli-like having some fun."
"Well, I think I'll hit the pad. You two do as you like."
"Aw, don't be a party-pooper, Joan. Let's turn off the lights and go crawl in bed with him." Miss Kate reached for the switch and plunged the room into darkness.
"You certainly are in a sexy mood tonight, aren't you?" Aunt Joan laughed.
"I am," Miss Kate breathed. "I really am. I'm actually just aching all over. I've been thinking about things ever since we came back from shopping. All through the movie."
"What kind of things?" laughed Aunt Joan.
"Oh, you know ... things...." Miss Kate replied teasingly. "I'm excited. My nipple's are aching, even," her voice trailed off, as I heard the springs squeak on the other bed. "Don't you think we ought to wake Skippy up?" she pleaded.
"Oh, let him sleep; he needs his rest. Come on to bed; it's not all that bad," whispered Aunt Joan. "You know," she continued, "I'll bet Skippy would be surprised if he knew how much fun we used to have in bed when we were girls, wouldn't he?"
"Oh, yes, I suppose he would, at that. But you're not suggesting that we...."
"Oh, heaven forbid. I'm not suggesting anything at all," Aunt Joan whispered in a low, soft voice. "Where did you say you ached?"
"All over," breathed Miss Kate, the bed jiggling a little, "I ache all over."
"But where did you say a moment ago?"
"My breasts ... my nipples...."
"Here?"
"Oh ... oh...."
"And how about here?"
"Ohhh ... yes...."
The blood was pounding in my temples. I was burning up. Aunt Joan was on one elbow, bending over Miss Kate's supine form in the dim light from the street. I watched, breathless, as Aunt Joan pulled the covers back slowly from the upper part of Miss Kate's body. Her hands passed lightly over the tips of those two upthrust mounds beneath the top of the nightgown. The full mounds trembled at her touch. I was wide awake now.
Aunt Joan reverently slid the lacy strap of one side of the gown down off the shoulder, revealing a creamy breast, bare in the half light, the dark tip aroused and erect.
"Mmmm, you are horny, aren't you?" Aunt Joan murmured, her voice barely audible, then lowered her head, pressing her lips to the eager, waiting, dark tip.
"Is that where it aches?" she whispered. "Oh, Joan...."
"And here?" She bared the other breast to the light and to her lips.
"Ohhh, Joan ... ohhh, please, please, don't stop...." She pressed the soft, flowing hair close to her breast, as Aunt Joan began to make love to her in earnest.
The bed protested loudly as Aunt Joan slid her hand down along the body outspread beneath her. She fumbled beneath the nighty. Miss Kate's hips began to move.
"Oh, Kate, it's been so long...." breathed Aunt Joan, coming up for air. "I'd almost forgotten."
Aunt Joan raised up and then, looking deep into Miss Kate's eyes, she lowered her face to hers, kissing her full on the lips. Miss Kate responded by throwing her arms around Aunt Joan's neck and pulling her on her, on top, her legs outspread.
"Oh, Joan...." groaned Miss Kate loudly, gasping without restraint.
"Shhh, quiet. Here. You'll wake up Skippy."
"Oh, I don't care," Miss Kate groaned passionately. "Don't stop, please ... Take off your nighty too. Ohhh, that's better, much better ... Let me touch you there ... Oh, Joan, you're lovely. How lovely you are!"
"What are you doing? Oh, Kate, oh, my darling, oh, Kate ... Yes ... oh, yes, yes, yes...."
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The turmoil upon our return to the farm was even more furious than the hurricane had been. Miss Kate had decided to return to school the next day, and Aunt Joan had agreed that it was best to go back. Miss Kate felt she must attend to the necessary details of insurance on her house, and Aunt Joan wanted to get her clothes and belongings from Uncle John's.
I'd also have to buy a lot of stuff if we didn't go back, of course. We finally decided that, what the hell, they couldn't do a thing, really. It was just tough luck, if they didn't like our style. Miss Kate and Aunt Joan had just about decided to rent a place and move in together. From what I'd observed the night before, it sounded like they'd get on pretty good together. The only question was what would happen to me?
Miss Kate left first, driving alone late Sunday evening, toward home. She planned to rent a hotel room in town until they could find a place they liked, later. We all had a good laugh when Aunt Joan teasingly asked her if she wouldn't like to come home with us and spend the night. She wasn't too enthused about facing Aunt Mary and Uncle John as was our lot. Then Aunt Joan and I paid the hotel bill for the last day, and we started for the last roundup. It was going to be a pain, we knew.
It was late at night when we pulled up to the gate of the farmyard. We saw a curtain drawn back by a disembodied hand at the side window, as we pulled up to the house. No one came out. We sat there in the car, hesitantly. Now that we were here it didn't seem as simple as it had. Neither of us wanted to walk up to that front door. The curtains quivered again.
"God, I hate this," said Aunt Joan.
"Well, they can't eat us," I said. "That would be cannibalism, and that's surely a sin."
As we sat there staring at the house, the front door opened and Uncle John walked out on the porch. He came over to the end, near the railing, and looked down at us.
"Well, come on in," he bellowed. "What were you going to do, sit there all night?"
With a glance of dismay at each other, we opened our respective doors and got out. We followed Uncle John into the house.
Aunt Mary was sitting in her favorite easy chair, waiting for us. She had her Bible open in her lap. She began to read what she considered an appropriate passage and finished off with:...." be sure your sins will find you out."
"Let us bow our heads and pray...." she said. As soon as the praying was done, all hell broke loose.
Uncle John began roaring and yelling, waving his hand and squealing at times like a stuck pig.
Aunt Mary cried and wrung her hands like she was dying. You'd've thought the world was coming to an end. It got to Aunt Joan. She began to cry, softly. That almost made me cry, but I'd promised myself that night long ago that I'd never let anybody make me cry. Never again. I held on. There was little I could do but let their wrath run its course. I sat, dumbly, trying to look as contrite as I could manage.
Once, after a particularly vitriolic tirade, Uncle John roared:
"Where is that other Jezebel, our school marm?"
" 'Hiding her head in shame, most likely, in her own house, where she belongs," said Aunt Mary, answering his question for us.
We were amazed that they didn't know about Miss Kate's house being destroyed. We explained.
That seemed to quiet them down a little. Aunt Mary made some remark under her breath about:
"Ye shall reap what ye sow," and about, "Infidels reaping the whirlwind." She was pretty good at that sort of thing.
After the air was cleared out a little and everybody sat down, the subject of what was to be done about the situation came up for discussion.
"This has been a dark day in my life, Skippy," Aunt Mary intoned. I wondered if she meant the other day, or tonight, when I came back. "But what's done is done, and there's no changing it."
The main idea as things developed was that Aunt Mary was right well sure that she wasn't going to let us two sinners sleep under the same roof that night. Not her roof, at least. Aunt Joan replied that she'd just come back for her clothes and money. Uncle John suddenly became very forgiving in respect to her. He pleaded with her to stay on and think things over. You could see that he was afraid he might have to sell the farm or really go in debt, or something.
It was finally decided that I was to be packed off to my Aunt Hatty's place. Aunt Hatty, I vaguely recalled, was another old maid aunt, of which we seemed to be amply endowed with as a family, who owned a farm over in Sandy Bottom. Sandy Bottom was a lowlands area near the swamp, about forty miles from Uncle John's place.
Aunt Joan reluctantly agreed to stay on with Uncle John and Aunt Mary for a few days, until she decided what she was going to do.
I dreaded the thought of going to stay with Aunt Hatty. I'd heard a lot about her in the dim past, and as far as I could remember it hadn't sounded too good. I had the impression that she was the dried-up-looking kind of old maid, though I couldn't recall ever having seen her. She was supposed to be an unholy terror as far as temper went. The only ray of hope that shone through the whole thing was that she wasn't supposed to be a religious fanatic, anyway. I felt I could use a rest from that.
While I was gathering up my clothes and belongings in a suitcase, Aunt Mary cornered me in my room:
"Skippy ... Skippy ... this has been a dark, dark day in my life," she repeated mournfully.
After that I was ready to go. I put on a coat and left with Uncle John. What can you say about a thing like that?
It seemed we'd never reach our destination that night. The roads were still muddy, and Uncle John alternated between driving like a maniac on the better portions of the road and careful picking of his way on the rutted, soupy clay roads. Not knowing what to say to him, I wisely kept my mouth shut. Mile after mile went by, but it seemed the journey would never end. Finally, as I'd given up looking out the window and was dozing, my head lolled against the window, I was awakened by a rough tossing about as we turned up a deeply rutted lane.
"We're here," Uncle John muttered gruffly.
I struggled up, my neck a little stiff and sore, and looked, out the window. It was pretty dark, but the moon was out, and, from what I could see of Aunt Hatty's place, it was much nicer than Uncle John's. The farmhouse itself seemed to be a well-painted white, in vivid contrast to the weather-beaten gray, natural wood color of Uncle John's place.
We got out of the car and walked up on the front porch, Uncle John toting my suitcase. He pounded on the door and eventually footsteps sounded within. The shade covering the window to the front door was cautiously drawn back about an inch on one side, and I saw this big, wild eye staring at us. The shade flapped back and about three locks, it sounded like, were unbolted. The door opened about six inches, still restrained by a chain-type night latch, and I got my first look at Aunt Hatty.
I'm here to tell you it was an awesome sight. What have I got myself into? I remember thinking, staring at her, open mouthed. Her face was covered with some kind of creamy goop; her hair was up in vicious-looking curlers, with a heavy white net covering the top of her head; her eyes were sunken with half sleep, I suppose; and her mouth was twisted, partly open, with a look of stunned disbelief at what she saw. She was clutching a ragged, stained, yellowing bathrobe of some sort around her throat, and she kind of snorted and breathed hard as she peered, blinking her pig eyes at us.
"What is it? Whadda ya want?" She acted as if she didn't recognize Uncle John-didn't know it was he who came to deliver me to her evil clutches.
"Why, goddammit, Hatty, what in God's name do you think it is? It's me-John, goddammit. Undo that log chain and let us inside."
"Why, of course, I knowed it was you, John, but what on God's earth are you doing standing on my porch at this time of night?"
"Don't you remember? You agreed to take Skippy to live with you here at your place for a while. Have you forgotten already?"
"'Course I remember. I recall that, but I shore didn't have no idea you'd brang him at two in the morning."
"Well, you know how Mary is about a thing like this. She just had to get Skippy packed off tonight. Mary couldn't bear the thought of Joan and this little devil 'sleeping under the same roof, as she puts it, in our house. You know how she is about things like that?" he finished lamely. "Joan's staying at our place, but I 'spect she'll be moving out soon. Now, will you open that door and let us in? I couldn't help waking you up-they just came back a couple hours ago. You know how Mary is."
"Yes, yes, yes, John," groaned Aunt Hatty, unlatching the door and turning her back on us. "I know how Mary is about everything. She's my sister, ain't she?" She sighed a long, exasperated sigh, turning again to stare at me, that old robe clutched tightly around her neck. "Well, he's here now-I guess there's nothing I can do about that," she continued, really rolling out the welcome mat for me. "Might just as well put him to bed and let you get on back. 'Les, of course, you want to lay down yourself and rest a spell."
She gave Uncle John a look that seemed to imply that she didn't think the latter was too good of an idea.
"No, no, Hatty. I think I'll be gettin' on back. I've been up this long-no use to go to bed now. I'll just get on back home and get some sleep later on."
"Drive carefully, John," encouraged Aunt Hatty, as she closed the door on him.
Then she very carefully bolted the three locks and engaged the chain-type night latch. She turned to face me again. She stood there looking me over from head to foot, as if pondering just what kind of bug I was, and after a while I began to wither under her insistent stare. I began to feel uneasy, and fidgeted, as I recall, with the buttons on my coat.
I looked her over somewhat apprehensively, and I was quite taken aback by what met my eyes. Aunt Hatty was really a huge, forbidding woman. She was at least as tall as Uncle John, and she was built big on her frame. The robe she continued to clutch to her throat did nothing to hide the fact that she was endowed with a huge, matronly bosom and big, broad hips. Her legs and ankles, below the robe, looked smooth and well tanned-almost shapely, in fact-as if she were young from the waist down; the juices slowly drying up within starting from her head down.
Finally I could meet her stare no longer and averted my eyes. When I did this she suddenly let out this godawful bellowing laugh that almost made me jump out of my skin. I jerked my head back like a shot rabbit. She had her head thrown back and was laughing at the top of her lungs. She laughed and choked, and laughed some more, and then she went over to a chair and sat down and gasped some more. She reminded me of Uncle John, when he laughed, only louder. In addition to everything else big about her, she had big, healthy lungs also, it was apparent.
Finally she stopped laughing and sat there looking at me, her eyes streaming with tears. She swiped at her eyes with the corner of her robe, revealing her right leg to mid-thigh. Confused and uncertain as I was, I remember geing surprised at how attractive her legs were in comparison to her hollow face. The difference was amazing.
"So you're the great Skippy, huh?"
I said nothing. What could I say?
"Well, speak up. What'sa matter-cat got your tongue?" she bellowed, uproariously, as if she just invented the phrase.
"No, ma'am, yes, ma'am, I'm Skippy, and I guess, like you say, you got stuck with me."
"The great Skippy, the terrible Skippy." She said it amusedly, like it was a big joke. "Well, I do declare. Yes, and it looks like you're stuck with me too, don't it?"
"I like your farm," I said stupidly. "What I could see of it in the moonlight, at least."
"Well, now ain't that nice? He likes my farm," she burst out laughing once more. "You are a little devil, aren't you now?"
"So everybody says," I replied.
"Well, I think we're going to make quite a pair, the two of us." She got up from her chair. "I'm a big devil, myself," she laughed. "Come on, buster, you'll sleep down here." She grabbed me by the arm and half dragged me down the hall. "This'll be your room. Take off your clothes and jump in bed," she said, beginning a string of orders. "The bathroom's at the end of the hall. The kitchen's off to the right from the bathroom; you'll be able to tell the difference by the size." She laughed. "You stay outen my bedroom-you hear me?"
I shook my head up and down vigorously.
"My name ain't Aunt Joan; it's Aunt Hatty, and don't you forget it." She paused for breath. "Now you get your behind off to bed, and I don't want to hear a whimper out of you the rest of the night-you understand?"
I nodded my understanding.
She stomped out of the room, closing the door behind her, and leaving me astounded. Whew! I said to myself. What a mess she was. I could see that I'd better tread the straight-and-narrow with her, at least for a while, until I got the lay of the land. I'd hate to really tangle with her. She seemed like she could make it mighty rough if she wanted to.
I got undressed and pulled down the covers of the big bed. I was about to crawl in, when I realized that I had to go to the bathroom. I had to pee, bad. This was one thing she hadn't specifically touched on. I hesitated. She'd mentioned where the bathroom was, indicating that she realized that I would occasionally have to go. But, on the other hand, she'd emphatically stated that she didn't want to hear a peep out of me the rest of the night. Now the question arose: Is to go pee a peep? I decided to try and forget it. Maybe I'd drop off to sleep and forget it. I crawled into bed and snuggled way down between the covers.
I couldn't forget it.
No matter how hard I tried.
It wouldn't go away-I just had to go pee.
I got up out of bed and pulled back on my trousers. I cracked the door. No sight of Aunt Hatty; no sound from the big, darkened house. She'd said her room was down the hall, near the end, on the left. From my doorway I could see that her door was open. A faint glow came from her room. The door to her room seemed to be wide open, not just slightly ajar. I waited hesitantly. Not a sound. I had to go. Slowly, quietly as I could, I stole from my doorway, down the hall on tiptoes. Not a board creaked.
The house was built solidly. I crept down the hall, keeping close to the left wall. I sneaked noiselessly up to her doorway. As I drew near I heard a barely audible sound-a strange sound-as if heavy labored breathing. It seemed to be coming from her room. She snores, I thought to myself. Very, very cautiously I leaned my head over and peeped around her door-jamb. It took a second or two to register. Once it did register I jerked my head back as if I'd been shot. I'm in trouble, I thought. Aunt Hatty was not asleep at all. She was standing there, half facing the doorway, and she was-it slowly dawned on me-doing exercises! Exercising, no less, at three in the morning! And, what's more, she was as naked as a jaybird, and twice as sassy. I could understand now why she held that robe so tightly around her all the time. She probably had been naked underneath. Maybe she slept in the nude.
And so I'd seen her thus, for an instant-her feet planted wide apart, bending over to touch first one, then the other toe-naked as the day she was born. Luckily she had kept her eyes rooted on her toes as she'd straightened up, or she'd've seen me as I'd looked, dumbfounded, upon her huge, outrageously huge, pendulant breasts, bobbing up and down (like basketballs almost) her breath going:
"Sweew-whoosh ... Sweew-whoosh ... " as she breathed deeply and steadily.
I realized with dread certainty that I'd never, never in this world, ever get up enough nerve to walk past that door tonight. Not if I flooded the whole godblessed house. I fled, carefully, silently, but very swiftly, back to the safety of my room.
I crawled back into bed. I lay there. I listened to the night sounds outside. There came the low, mournful call of a distant train, coming to a crossing.
I tried to forget and drop off to sleep. I tried to ignore the urgent, strident pangs within me by lying on my stomach and holding my hand tight between my legs. But it just wouldn't go away.
I couldn't forget about it, and, by God, I couldn't hold it back any longer, either.
I got up and went to the door. I snapped the inside lock on the door. It would be hell if she caught me at it. I searched the room for some likely looking container. I looked high and low and found nothing. No luck. I was getting desperate.
Finally, I just went over to the window and raised it about six inches. To hell with everything anyway. I pissed right out the window. I must've done it right on top of a roosting chicken, for there was an awful squawking racket out below, and I heard the frantic beating of wings, making it out of the heavy sounding bushes below, but I didn't give a happy hoot in hell, because I was finally getting rid of all of this. And, by God, that old chicken better just look out for his own self, 'cause, boy, does it feel good! And, boy, do I feel better now, and, oh, my aching bones, can I use some good, good sleep! Boy, is this bed soft and warm ... and, God, is that Aunt Hatty a big, big woman, and I do mean big in every way ... and I wonder what this new school I'll be going to will be like ... and I wonder ... I wonder ... if I should lock ... I mean unlock ... that door, before I just drop ... off ... to ... sleep....
CHAPTER TWELVE
Aunt Hatty proved to be a veritable whirlwind of efficiency the next morning. She roused me roughly out of my deep, restful slumber, and hustled me out before daybreak to feed the chickens and slop the hogs-long before any self-respecting hog or chicken should be up and about.
I was pitching hay to the sleepy cows and drowsy-eyed mules, that looked as if they could barely stand up, let alone eat, and I soon-worked up some sharp hunger pangs of my own. Aunt Hatty had everybody trained to fit her schedule, it seemed, and it was easy to see that I'd be no exception to the rule.
When I'd finished the work she'd ordered me to do she at last let me back in the house, and I staggered over to the breakfast table. You couldn't complain about a breakfast like that. She set before me enough sausage, eggs, and pancakes to feed an army. Still wearing the same robe. Aunt Hatty moved about the house as I ate, accomplishing quite a lot of hard work herself.
On close inspection I could tell that she had nothing on underneath the robe. Not at the top, at least. The barest outline of her nipples could be seen straining at th thin cloth. In between trips to make up the beds, and sweeping the floors, she busied herself energetically at pouring me milk and urging me to eat more eggs and pancakes. I didn't care much for pancakes. She said there were some grits on the stove and asked me if I wanted some. She brought a pot full over to the table and sat down to eat with me.
She showed me how she liked hers. The eggs were fried, with the yolks all runny, and the way she did it was to mix the fried eggs in with the soupy grits, with plenty of butter, and chop it all up together. It looked sickening, but she said it was delicious. I'd never seen anybody eat that way. She insisted that I try mine that way. I wasn't very happy about it, but I finally gave in and hesitantly tried a spoonful. To my surprise I found the mixture very tasty and finished off the whole plateful with much enthusiasm.
"Stick with me, Skippy boy," Aunt Hatty said exuberantly, "and I'll make a man out of you yet."
I nodded, my mouth full, and reflected to myself that I didn't have much choice in the matter.
When the time came she packed me off to school. I was to ride a school bus back and forth, but this first day at the new school she wanted to personally "get me started." It was quite a change from my old school. The teacher was a dried-up, old-bag type, a far cry from Miss Kate, and the kids all stared at me curiously, as if marveling at the strange bug that'd been brought in for their amusement.
Aunt Hatty was very loud and much in command at the registration ceremonies. I was given a seat and a couple of books, and Aunt Hatty informed the teacher loudly, for my benefit, that if I didn't behave myself to just let her know and she'd take good care of me. With a start like that, how could a guy go wrong?
The school bus I was to ride was number forty-three. On the way home that evening I discovered I had some interesting bus companions. There was this one kid named Tommy who was fascinated by cuss words. When he talked, which was any time he could get anyone to listen, he used some cuss word about every other word he uttered. With him it was goddamn this and goddamn that, and hellfire, sonofabitch, or some other such word sprinkled generously in among many other lesser expletives and a good many somewhat stronger, more offensive ones.
The strangest thing about it, however, was the fact that no one seemed to notice anything so unusual about it. None of the girls turned to stare at him. No one seemed to care. They were used to it, I guess. He was poorly dressed, much more ragged than the Chil-tons'd ever been, and he looked like he'd never seen a bathtub.
I noticed that he exerted a certain fascination over a group of the younger boys. A few of them hovered about him, hanging on every word. He had his own little gang of followers who thought he was pretty hot stuff. Of course, he himself had no doubt that he was it. You could tell that. He yanked at the girls' pigtails and punched his disciples on the shoulder with the impunity of a self-proclaimed lord of the earth. He was a pretty fascinating character in his own way.
I just leaned back in my seat and took it all in. It seemed he had an opinion on everything, and an answer for all ills. Just before I got off the bus he was brashly asking a cute little girl in a blue velvet dress if she'd give him some poontang-that was his word for it.
"Come on," he teased, "all I want is a little piece of poontang!"
The little girl did not seem sure of just what the word meant, but it was apparent she knew Tommy all too well. She kept shrugging his hand off her shoulder and telling him to shut up and leave her alone.
Finally, when she threatened to tell her big brother on him, he left her alone and went back to the rear of the bus to pester some other victim. The bus stopped then at Aunt Hatty's mail box and I jumped off. I had the feeling that I wasn't going to get along too well with Tommy. He seemed to be king of the roost, and it would only be a matter of time before we butted heads, I was sure. He was just that type of kid.
Aunt Hatty was waiting for me at the front door with a mile-long list of chores to do. I put on some old clothes and set in to work. It was sunset before I was finished, and I was hungry as a bear. We had a guest for supper. A fellow by the name of Jenkins.
M . Jenkins, I soon gathered, was Aunt Hatty's boy friend. Mr. Jenkins-or Cyrus, as Aunt Hatty called him-was the mailman on our route, and I was informed by Aunt Hatty that we'd be privileged to have Mr. Jenkins as a guest, frequently, and that she was sure that he and I'd grow to be great friends. Of that there was some doubt. An uglier, loud-mouthed, clumsier man of a more sour disposition would be hard to imagine. I'd thought that Aunt Hatty was a character, but Mr. Jenkins took the cake. After supper he went into the living room-they called it the parlor-and, taking off his shoes, revealing a pair of holey socks, propped his feet upon the center table. All the time Aunt Hatty was washing up the supper dishes, he smoked the stinkingest pipe lever smelled, and just stared at me as he sat there, sizing up this new, young interloper, I suppose, in an effort to figure out just how much of a threat I was to the relationship he enjoyed with Aunt Hatty.
I tried a couple of times to engage him in conversation, but it was no use at all. All he wanted to do was give me the third degree. So I soon clammed up and went out to finish my chores.
When I came back in after dark he was still hanging around. All he did was sit silently and puff on that foul pipe. I couldn't see what use Aunt Hatty had for him. At nine o'clock I was reminded that it was my bedtime. So off I went. Mr. Jenkins stayed on. I could hear them talking now, occasionally, in the living room. I lay awake for a while, speculating about them. After a while I fell asleep. What happened after that I couldn't say. I wondered the next day in school if Aunt Hatty had gotten her exercise that night, as she was accustomed.
It seemed as the days rolled on by that my new life was going to be all work and very little play. Things were rough both at school and on the farm. I was an outsider, on the fringe of the little cliques of the school, and, what's more, the teacher didn't like me at all. I didn't cotton much to her, either. Her middle name was homework. She piled homework on us kids like it was going out of style, and she was the retail outlet for the last batch.
The only bright spots so far were a couple of minor fights I got into at school. This was a tougher bunch of kids than the old gang'd been. These kids'd had it tough all their lives. Even the girls, some of them, were tough scrappers. Tommy was the leader of most of the guys of my own age. He was the key to the situation, but I'd had no trouble with him as yet. I found myself agreeing with him on the basic issues that arose. It was true that he was loud and vulgar, obscene even, but he had his own sense of justice and fair play. Tommy pulled girls' hair and whispered naughty things in their ears, but only to the ugly and the fat ones. The pretty little girls he seemed to hold in slight awe. How can you not like a guy like that? We got along pretty well, each keeping at a wary distance.
It got so, after a while, that I looked forward to school days more than the weekends on the farm. Aunt Hatty was a bug for work. She worked all day without letting up herself, cleaning, working in her flower garden, picking fruit from the small orchard and preparing things for canning, which she was a great believer in.
She had a couple of hired field hands who worked the corn and cotton and tobacco fields for her. She didn't have to worry too much about them, for since they worked on shares, they were as interested in turning a good profit as she was. But naturally since she worked hard herself she expected a lot of me. I never got time to play any more. As a matter-of-fact there was no one nearby to play with. It got pretty lonely pn the farm over the long weekends, and I was always nosing around for something to relieve the boredom.
Often I'd recall the first night I came to Aunt Hatty's and had chanced upon her naked in her room, doing her exercises. She always kept her door shut, thereafter, although I didn't think she was aware that I'd ever seen her.
As I'd watch her in the mornings, moving about the house in the thin robe, or in the evenings in skimpy house dresses she wore, she'd evoke vivid recollections of the way she'd looked that night, naked in the wan lamplight of her room. I began to wonder idly if there were a chance that I might work up to her as I had with Aunt Joan and Miss Kate. It seemed I improbable, but worth a try. If I could possibly swing it, I could very likely make life a lot easier and definitely more interesting for myself here on the farm.
So I embarked on a campaign of little hints in the casual conversation-sly references here and there, guarded teasing about her and Mr. Jenkins. Aunt Hatty took it all in stride, offering no encouragement in return. Once I playfully attempted to give her a goodnight kiss on the cheek and got a cool reception.
"Get off to bed now and act your age," she said.
Sheepishly I went, my ears burning. It appeared to be no use. There was no way to get on the good side of her. She was cold, calculating, wise, and quite cynical. In short, she had me figured out right down the line. I couldn't get anywhere with her using that approach. Nevertheless, I still felt strongly stirred by the remembrance of the way her enormous breasts had looked that night, and of the rest of her. I racked my brain for an answer. There's always an answer, a solution for every problem. There had to be a way.
One evening, when Aunt Hatty had gone off to visit a sick neighbor, I began snooping around the house a bit. Aunt Hatty never went out without locking her room, and she took the key with her when she left the house. I nosed around a bit and noticed that there was a small pantry adjoining the rear of her bedroom. It opened up from the back porch and was in use as a storage pantry for bags of salt, sugar, dry beans, and other stuff like that.
I peered in and searched the wall for cracks. If I could find a space between the boards I figured I could get an eyeful every now and then. I searched high and low, moving the bags of salt and sugar around, but to no avail. There just weren't any cracks. I could tell, though, that the wall was a single board wall, because the two-by-four studs extended, uncovered, on the pantry side of the wall.
I remembered from the few glimpses I'd had of Aunt Hatty's room that there was no wallpaper covering her room. The walls were just bare pine board walls. I was just about to give up in dismay, when I discovered the answer to my quest. Moving aside the last bag of salt, there in the center of one of the rough pine boards, was a knothole about the size of a quarter, shaped like a football, lying on its side. The knot was just about perfectly at eye level. Only part of the knot itself had become dislodged, but I felt sure I could remedy that.
I went to the kitchen and procured a paring knife. I set to work, keeping an ear out for the sound of Aunt Hatty's car coming back, and soon I had the knot loose. With a little prying on all sides the knot finally plopped out on the shelf of the pantry. A more perfect knothole for my purpose you never dreamed of.
The hole tapered away from my eyes like the view down a short tunnel. Eagerly I pressed my face to the rough-hewn board. It was perfect. The hole narrowed just enough at the far end so as to be virtually unnoticeable from the far side, but still large enough on this side to give an unobstructed view of the room. I could see the great, big bed with its four posts sticking up from each corner. By moving to the right I could see right into the mirror of Aunt Hatty's dresser, and also the closed door that led out into the hallway.
I was beside myself with excitement. I was so enthused, in fact, that I didn't hear the car drive up in the back yard until it was coming to a halt. Luckily for me, Aunt went out to her flower garden for a moment, giving me time to put everything back in place and scurry back into the living room before she came into the house.
Somewhat shaken by my near discovery, I was, nevertheless, excited by the prospect of future adventures in store. What's a little risk in view of the prize. I could hardly wait for nightfall.
Aunt Hatty came in the back door and busied herself with supper. It seemed bedtime would never come. Mr. Jenkins came for supper and stayed until after I was sent off to bed. Finally, about a half-hour or so after I was supposedly fast asleep, I heard them at the door.
"Drive carefully, now, Cyrus," came Aunt Hatty's unmistakable good night admonition. She never failed to say it.
I heard her close and begin bolting up the door for the night. Then she went into her room and closed the door. I waited patiently until I heard the thump of her heavy work shoes on the floor.
Shortly afterward I got up to go to the bathroom, pausing for a moment at her door. Not a sound could be heard. Probably she was at her dresser applying that cold cream of hers. I continued on to the bathroom and, while there, I tried to think it all out carefully. She'd never come into my room to check on me at night, so I was probably safe there. I'd never known her to get up and go to the toilet or for a drink of water. She was like a camel in that respect. It would be dark in the pantry and light in her room. That was in my favor. Even is she chanced to look directly at the knothole, she'd not notice anything. If I made no noise I should be safe. If I took care I should never be found out.
In case I should make a noise accidentally I needed an excuse for why I was up. I decided that I'd say I'd gotten up to get an apple out of the pantry, since Aunt Hatty always kept a basketful there and had told me I could help myself. So, figuring I had myself pretty well covered on all counts, I quietly left the bathroom and made my way to the back porch.
Very carefully I opened the pantry door and, with bated breath, hopefully removed the bag of salt from in front of the knothole. I was at once gratified to see a pencil-thin shaft of light beam into the pantry. Eagerly I pressed my eye to the board, and there she was. She was seated at her dresser, clad only in white step-ins and a huge white cloth bra. She was combing her long black hair patiently, as she studied her reflection from every angle in the mirror.
This alone was worth it, I thought to myself. What a thrilling view it was. The proverbial forbidden fruit that always tastes the best. Soon she was finished with her hair and laid down the comb and brush. She began binding the long, flowing tresses up into knots on top and back of her head and pinning them down. Next she put a white net over her head and got out several jars of different kinds of cold cream. She wasn't taking any chances with one being better than the others-she believed in using them all. She studiously began applying layer after layer of the various creams generously over her face, rubbing it in good in places, and piling it on thick in others.
At last she seemed satisfied with the results and admired herself one last time, as she rose from the vanity and deftly unsnapped the hooks at the back of her bra. Almost as if in slow motion the great liquid globes came tumbling out, free from all restraint. The rosy red tips seemed very tiny perched atop the large, brown aureoles that were her nipples, and the nipples themselves were insignificant compared with those great white mounds of flesh, her breasts. She really was quite a woman.
Unhurriedly she removed her lacy step-ins and laid them carefully on the dresser top. Facing the mirror, spreading her legs, she began to do her waist bends, touching first one toe and then the other. She began to breathe hard at once, in that rhythmical controled way I'd heard that first night.
Viewing her from head to toe, as she ran smoothly through her exercises, I became aware that really she had a nicely proportioned body, as big as she was in places. Her waist was trim and firm. Her tremendous breasts sagged a little, but in some way became even more provocative by this characteristic. Her stomach was flat and taut, and her legs-though long and fully fleshed in the thighs-tapered beautifully downward, and her calves and ankles were lovely to behold, as she raised up on tiptoes. The saucy cheeks of her buttocks were smooth and firm looking, moving, it seemed, with a joyous sensual life of their own.
There was no denying it-she was quite a remarkable woman, and it was apparent that her routine of nightly exercises hadn't been in vain. For what must've been a full half-hour I watched intently through the knothole as she exercised, first standing up and then lying in various positions upon her bed.
At last she seemed exhausted and lay outstretched upon the bed, relaxing for a moment. She roused herself in a bit and got laboriously out of bed and returned to the dresser. She rubbed herself briskly all over with a towel, paying particular attention to her breasts and buttocks. Suddenly, as she finished, she seemed to be heading for the door, as if she were coming out of her room, but she was only going for the light switch and the room was abruptly plunged into darkness. I had been so used to kerosene lamps I'd forgotten Aunt Hatty had electricity.
Relieved beyond words, I waited until I heard the springs creak as she lay down, apparently still in the nude, although I could no longer see a thing in her room. Carefully, I stepped back and pulled the bag of salt back over the knothole, by feel, and left the pantry. I breathed a sigh of relief when I made it safely to my room without a sound from Aunt Hatty's room. That night for the first time in weeks I slept like a log.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Things rolled along quietly, it seemed, for weeks after that. It was a regular pastime and very exciting to watch Aunt Hatty perform her nightly ritual, unknowingly displaying her charms so provocatively to my eager eyes. It was very frustrating after a while, though, to be able to see but to keep my distance. All that "forbidden fruit" so close and yet so far away. Within reach, and yet I couldn't reach out and touch a morsel of it.
After a long while I began to admit to myself that I was getting a little bored by it all. Something had to give. I got a letter from Miss Kate and Aunt Joan, and after it'd been screened by Aunty Hatty, was allowed to read it. It said, briefly, that they'd found an apartment and were living together until Miss Kate's new house was finished, at which time they were going to move to it. The letter ended:
"Be a good boy and mind Aunt Hatty. She's a grand person, and I know she's taking good care of you. Maybe we'll be seeing you sometime before too long. Love, Aunt Joan and Kate."
A ray of sunlight streaming into a dismal world, the letter, short as it was, made me feel better. Always on the lookout for new diversions, I risked looking through the knothole one evening while it was still light, because Aunt Hatty and Mr. Jenkins had both gone in together into her bedroom. But if I'd hoped to see something exciting I was sadly disappointed. Instead it was all very amusing.
Aunt Hatty stretched out across her bed, and Mr. Jenkins sat in a rocker alongside and read poetry to her from a thin little book. Aunt Hatty, as she lay sprawled upon the bed, sighed and purred like a kitten, telling him how beautiful it was and how it relaxed her nerves and made her feel so funny and wild and helpless, and dumb-bunny Cyrus never seeming to catch on that she was as good as throwing it in his face. His reading on and on in that dull voice, while she squirmed and twisted on the bed, and finally his standing up and stretching, like he'd really gone and done something great, and saying those immortal words:
"Well, when do we eat?"
It really cracked me up. Aunt Hatty seemed to take it all in stride. He gave her a chaste little peck on the cheek at the doorway, and I thought for a moment she was going to grab him and drag him back to the bed. She was bigger than he was and probably could have had him hollering uncle if she'd wanted to, but she just gave him this coy, innocent little girl look and said:
"Supper'll be ready in just a few minutes, Cyrus dearest," flapping her lashes at him, wide eyed. It was a scream, I'm here to tell you.
But all of life wasn't full of disappointments. When I despaired of anything happening to brighten up my life which seemed to be going nowhere, it happened. Something I'd've never dreamed of. Julie came.
You could've knocked me over with a feather the first time I walked into the living room and saw her. She was sitting there, demurely, her hands folded neatly in her lap, a living, breathing angel in a white, lacy dress. I think I fell in love with her right then and there in a moment.
I'd never felt anything like it. No girl so near my own age had ever made such an impression on me. Julie was older than I, true, but only by a few months. But no one, not even Aunt Joan or Miss Kate, had made my heart go pounding so madly, the first time we met. When I first saw Julie I knew my life would never be the same again. It happened like this:
I'd just come home from school, and, after getting off the school bus, coming up the lane from the highway, I noticed there were two cars in our yard. A second look told me that the car that was not Aunt Hatty's looked very much like Aunt Joan's. Unable to really believe it, I hurried on toward the house. Restraining my eagerness to make certain, I opened the front door and walked into the living room. Aunt Joan was indeed sitting there in the living room, in a rocker, but as my eyes traveled past her, I saw Julie.
"Well, if it isn't Skippy. Fancy meeting you here," laughed Aunt Joan facetiously.
I smiled back and made some inane reply, but my eyes and mind were on Julie. She looked up and our eyes met and held for a moment, and then she looked back down at her hands. I moved, dopily, to put my books away, and joined the circle around the fireplace. I was cold and chilly from the winter wind, for there was snow on the ground, but there was a warmth of feeling engulfing me in Julie's presence as I'd never before known. She had that effect on me from the very start.
In the course of the evening I found out, bit by bit, that Julie was Miss Kate's niece, and I discovered that she was staying with her and Aunt Joan. There seemed to be something very mysterious about it-something about it that Aunt Joan and Aunt Hatty seemed to carefully avoid mentioning in Julie's presence. It disturbed me greatly, but I sensed that I must follow their lead, though I was anxious to talk to Aunt Joan alone and find out what it was.
"Julie will be going to school with you, Skippy," Aunt Joan informed me. "Your school is closer to our place than the school you went to before, where Kate teaches."
"Really?" I responded delightedly.
Julie's eyes seemed to light up a little for the first time that evening. I was strangely happy at the thought that I'd be seeing her every day. Julie lapsed back, almost immediately, into her reverie. She seemed to be troubled or sad about something. The lost, almost scared look on her face reminded me of the way I'd felt that first night, when everybody had been trying to decide what to do with me, after Mother had gone off and left me all alone in the world. I found myself wondering why she had come to stay with Miss Kate. I restrained myself from asking the question that burdened my mind, for I felt that this must be the thing that Aunt Joan and Aunt Hatty so carefully steered the conversation away from.
After a while of small talk, Aunt Hatty rose from her chair, announcing that she must attend to supper. Aunt Joan offered to help her out in the kitchen, and I was a little surprised when Aunt Hatty accepted her offer. I'd have thought that she'd treat Aunt Joan more coldly. They went on back to the kitchen, leaving me alone with Julie.
"Where did you go to school before, Julie?" I asked, trying to make her feel as much at ease as Aunt Joan had made me feel when I first met her.
"A school not far from Carolina Beach," she replied.
"Oh, you lived down near the coast, then?" I asked.
"Uh huh," she nodded, saying no more.
I felt from the look in her eyes that I was evoking painful memories, and I thought suddenly that it was possible her home had been damaged or perhaps even destroyed, like Miss Kate's had, and she felt badly about it. That would explain, perhaps, why she was staying for a while with Miss Kate. I decided that I'd better find out before I went on talking to her.
"I have to go out and do a few chores before supper's ready, Julie. Would you like to come out and see our place with me, while I work?" I asked.
She seemed interested, but she didn't reply immediately.
"Look," I continued, "you wait here for a moment while I change into my work clothes, and you can come outside with me. We've got the biggest old sow you ever saw, and a whole bunch of little pigs. I'll bet you'd like to see them."
Julie smiled and nodded her head, timidly.
"I'll be right back," I said.
I left her alone and went down the hall into the kitchen, where Aunt Hatty and Aunt Joan were busily fixing supper.
"Julie said she'd like to come outside with me, while I do my chores, and see the pigs and other animals," I said, approaching Aunt Hatty. "Is it okay?"
"Sure," Aunt Joan answered, before Aunt Hatty could utter a word. "But, Skippy, let me tell you something, so you know not to start her crying all over again. We've been through all that too many times already. You see, Julie has just lost both her mother and father in the hurricane."
I was stunned by the sudden shock of her words. Aunt Joan, noticing the look on my face, continued:
"Yes, just like you lost your father. They were trying to tie up some small boats, at a dock, down at the beach, when the storm hit without ample warning. Their house was badly damaged, too. That's why she's staying with Kate and me for a while."
"So you be careful what you say, okay?" Aunt Hatty joined in, sounding somewhat concerned.
I nodded my head dumbly and went to my room to change clothes.
As I got ready to go outside, I considered these newly discovered facts. Julie was even more of an orphan than I was. I still had a mother, I supposed, although I had no idea where she might be. Julie was all alone in the world. I could really understand how badly she felt now. And I could see why. I hurriedly dressed, even more anxious to take her outside. Perhaps I could help her take her mind off her sorrow. Forget her loneliness.
She was still sitting there, looking as forlorn as ever, in the same chair, when I returned to her in the living room.
"Come on," I said brightly. "Let's go see our menagerie."
"Your what?" she asked, rising from her chair.
"Our menagerie. It means collections of animals. I read it in a book somewhere. It's sort of like a zoo, I think. Anyway, come and see ours; you'll like them."
We went out the front door. I paused to admire her, once more, as-I held the screen door open wide for her. She was a lovely little girl. She was soft spoken and endearingly sweet, and she carried herself bravely and proud. She had a nice tan, too. It set her face and limbs off, prettily, against the crisp, lacy whiteness of her flaring, spotlessly clean dress. She was a vision come true and looked much out of place, walking at my side across our barnyard, among the chickens flocking out to be fed.
They knew that I was coming out to feed them, and they flocked around us as we reached the barn. Julie was scared of them at first. She must've been afraid they were after her, the way they pecked at our feet. It didn't take her long though to get used to them.
Soon she was trying to rub off the dry corn from the tough cobs, in an effort to help feed them. It was nice to see her laughing. It made me feel good. It seemed the chores were over and done with all too soon for the first time in my life. She had never seen a pump before, and really got a kick out of washing up for supper at ours, on the back porch. She really seemed to be enjoying the farm now, and I was enjoying her, just being near her. She was a doll. We went in to supper all smiles. Aunt Joan later said it was the first time she'd seen Julie laugh since she'd come to stay with them.
After supper was over we went back into the living room. Aunt Joan insisted that they had to be going and couldn't stay on a while longer. She invited us to come over and see them sometime soon. Aunt Hatty replied that sure, we would, soon, but I got the feeling that she had no intention of doing so.
I said goodbye to Aunt Joan and Julie, regretfully. At least I'd be seeing Julie in school on Monday. Julie waved goodbye again from the car.
"Poor little thang," was Aunt Hatty's comment. She sounded almost human when she said it, though.
I lay awake for a long time that night, thinking about Julie, before I fell asleep. She stirred a tenderness, an almost protective feeling that I'd never felt before. There was no selfish motive involved at all. It was just there. I felt for her. We were like two pieces of driftwood, afloat on the tide. At the mercy of the currents, we swam through life. Ah, Julie, I thought to myself, it's almost as if I've lost half of me, and gained half of you. I'll never be the same. I remembered that little hurt, lost look that'd been in her eyes a couple of times. It almost brought a tear to mine, before I went to sleep.
On Monday I was really looking forward to seeing Julie in school. She came to school in a different bus than I did. My bus was the first to pull in the lot that morning, and I waited, sitting up on the big stone wall in front of the school, books in hand, until bus after bus came in. I finally saw Julie getting off number thirty-four. I waited until she came even with me, before I spoke. She'b been looking around, wide eyed, at the new surroundings, but she hadn't spotted me yet.
"Hi, Julie," I laughed. "I wondered if you'd come by yourself on the bus, or if Aunt Joan or Miss Kate would bring you the first day."
"Hi, Skippy. Yes, I'm all alone. Aunt Kate took care of all the arrangements last Friday. She says I'm to be in your class, so all I have to do is follow you around everywhere you go."
"Great," I exulted, jumping down from off the wall. "Let's get started."
"It's a big school, isn't it?" she asked, looking up.
"You mean it's bigger than the one you left?"
"Oh, yes, it looks much bigger."
"That's surprising; I would've thought your school, being in town, would be bigger. But it's probably because we go all the way through junior high school here, in this one school."
"Oh, you do? We go through the same at our school, but it's still smaller." She laughed. "That sounds funny saying 'our school'. This is our school now. I may never go back to the other one."
"You don't sound sad about it," I said happily.
"No, I'm really looking forward to all this. It's fun riding a school bus, isn't it?"
"Yes," I replied, "it is."
As we walked through the doorway, into the hall, I found myself wondering if there were kids like Johnny on her bus-hair pullers and filthy mouths. I wished that we rode the same bus. But at least I could see that nothing happened to hurt her during the day.
I watched as she stopped to get a drink of water. She was wearing a blue velvet dress. It shone with a soft light in places and was dark in others. She was so pretty it broke my heart just to look at her. You're sick, Skippy, I said to myself. You've got it bad, whatever it is.
School took on a new meaning that week. On Wednesday, in the afternoon reading lesson, the teacher had some of us boys sitting down on the semicircular benches in front of the classroom. Then she called some of the brighter girls up to stand behind us and read over our shoulders from a play that alternated boy and girl speaking parts. It was childish, and I couldn't figure out why she didn't have the boys stand and let the girls sit down. But this stupid teacher we had was always doing something like that, out of the clear blue sky.
I hadn't noticed who'd taken the place behind me, but as the reading progressed around the circle, toward me in the middle, I felt a touch on my shoulder. A moment later there was the wispy tickle of hair brushing my ear.
"Boo," someone whispered softly in my ear.
It was Julie. I turned my head slightly and looked into her merry eyes. There was something almost electric in the way they sparkled when she smiled.
As it was almost my turn to read a line from the play, I was electrified by her fingers trailing lightly up the back of my neck. I knew I was turning crimson, and I felt like an absolute fool. Her fingertips ran, lightly and carelessly, up and down the little hairs at the nape of my neck, sending chill after chill up and down my spine. It was both wonderful and embarrassing at the same time. I felt like half the people in the room must be looking at us, but she absently went on, like she didn't have a care in the world.
I was in a trance, almost. It was my turn to read, and I blew the whole line. And what's more, suddenly, I didn't give a damn, either. I was full of love for her, and as far as I was concerned she could go on forever. On and on, shivers of joy.
I knew sooner or later that I'd get into it with Tommy. That evening, after school, it happened. Julie and I were walking out to the school bus-I was carrying both our books-when I noticed Johnny coming up behind us with a couple of his pals. He'd been eyeing Julie several times during the week, I'd noticed, especially during recess, when she played with the other girls. Till now he'd said nothing out of the way within my hearing. They were feeling pretty cocky now, you could tell-the way you often felt after school was over for another day. They were snickering about something and talking low among themselves, behind us.
"Pretty good, huh?" I heard Johnny say.
"Yeah," breathed one of his pals, insinuatingly.
"Shall I ask her?" Johnny asked, sounding amused.
"I dare you," replied another.
We'd reached Julie's bus. I turned and shot the trio a warning glance.
"Your bus is number thirty-four," I said to Julie. "Mine is number forty-three. That makes them easy to remember, doesn't it?"
"Yes," she answered, thinking about it, and laughed.
"Oh, isn't that cute?" mimicked Johnny. "Say, Julie, what kind of material is that?" he continued, motioning toward her velvet dress. "Is that wool, or cotton, or could it be felt?"
On the last word he laughed aloud, and his two buddies burst out laughing also.
"That's enough, Johnny," I said, breathing hard. Even as I said it, I handed both sets of books to Julie, who'd turned also at the first step inside the bus doorway.
"I was just going to ask for a little bit of poontang, now, Skippy...."
As he spoke, I wheeled, not giving it a second thought, and punched him one as hard as I could, square in the snot-locker. It took him a second to recover from the shock. I'd never seen anyone hit Johnny first in a fight. He always started things himself. I imagine it came as quite a surprise. He lunged back and began to fight back, both snot and blood running from his nose, as he began to cry a little, as I caught him a couple of good ones on the side of the head. He got in a couple of pretty good blows to the top of my head and shoulders as I ducked, bobbed and weaved, but he was too confused and hurt to be effective.
The whole thing had lasted only a minute or two, when a couple of the bus drivers pulled us apart. After breaking it up they insisted on our shaking hands. Johnny was somewhat reluctant, out of humiliation and smothered rage, I suppose, as Pd've felt under the same circumstances. Finally, under their prodding, we executed a desultory gesture and he went off, alone.
Julie was still standing at the step of the bus, holding all the books, and I reached for mine, looking into her eyes. They were hard to read; mostly she looked bewildered by it all.
"Skippy," I heard a low, feminine voice say from nearby. "I came by to drive Julie home."
I spun around, surprised to see Aunt Joan standing there a few feet away.
"Aunt Joan!" Julie exclaimed happily, looking up at her.
"Would you like a lift to your house?" Aunt Joan continued.
"Sure," I said. I was now feeling that proud, puffed up, after effect that always comes to a guy after a successful fight. You feel proud as all hell, for the time being, although you may not've really done so much, and it may not be the end of the war. At least you've won a battle.
"Come on, you two; the car's over here." Aunt Joan took Julie by the hand.
I walked alongside Julie, glad I'd not have to ride home this evening on the bus. It would be a strain with Johnny on it.
"That was quite a scrap you put on there. What was that all about?" questioned Aunt Joan to neither of us in particular.
"Oh, that's Johnny; he just got a little smart, that's all," I said, hoping to shrug it off.
"It was over something he said to me," Julie added.
"What did he say?" Aunt Joan inquired.
"He said something bad about my dress, and something else that I don't know what he meant, but the way he said it, it sounded nasty," Julie replied, grimacing at the last word.
"What was it?" Aunt Joan turned to me, as she reached the car.
"It was that old one about 'Can that material be wool, or cotton, or can it be felt?' " I imitated Johnny's manner. "Then he said he was only going to ask her for a piece of poontang," I added.
"A little bit of poontang," Julie corrected.
"Excuse me," I said. I looked at Julie. "I thought you didn't know what he said." I grinned.
"I said I didn't know exactly what he meant," she said, with a wry look.
"Well, I think you were justified in hitting him first," Aunt Joan said.
I was happy that she'd seen the whole thing.
"I caught him a good one, right in the snot-locker, didn't I?" I exclaimed, getting carried away with myself.
"Yeah, you did, didn't you?" Aunt Joan nodded her head up and down, but admonishingly at the term I used.
Julie thought it was funny. Daddy had taught me that term for the nose. He'd served in the Navy. We piled in the car and headed for Aunt Hatty's.
I sat on the far right-riding shotgun, as the kids say-with Julie in the middle, between Aunt Joan and me. Aunt Joan seemed to be in a happy mood.
"Our new house is coming along beautifully, Skippy. Have you seen it yet?" she asked.
"No, I haven't. We never go anywhere. At least I never get to go any place, except school, that is. Aunt Hatty goes to town, occasionally, and off to visit the neighbors, mostly when one is sick. I'm a prisoner, almost," I said glumly.
"Well, we'll have to see what we can do about that. I'll talk to Hatty when I drop you by. Maybe we can arrange for you to come over and visit us sometime. Perhaps this weekend."
I was overjoyed at the thought, but, on reflection, I was pretty sure Aunt Hatty would balk at the idea. After all, the main idea of packing me off to Aunt Hatty in the first place was to keep me away from Aunt Joan and Miss Kate. She probably wouldn't even cotton to the idea of Aunt Joan bringing me home. But if it were only possible!
When we got to the farm, Aunt Hatty was out at the back pump, drawing water to sprinkle her flower beds. She shaded her eyes with one grimy palm for a good look, and then went on with her work. Julie stayed in the car, while Aunt Joan and I approached her.
"Good evening, Hatty," greeted Aunt Joan.
"'Evening," muttered Aunt Hatty, not looking up.
"I was at the school to pick up Julie, so I gave Skippy a lift home." She paused. "I hope you don't mind."
"No, 'course not. Gets him home that much quicker for his chores. I got lots for him to do this evening, as it happens, anyways."
"Uh oh," I laughed.
"We wanted to ask you, Hatty, if Skippy might come over to spend a day with us sometime soon. He and Julie get on so well together, it would be nice if they could play sometime together, away from school, I mean."
"Uhhh," Aunt Hatty gave a grunt, inspiring a flash of hope in me for an instant. Then she straightened up from her bent position, rubbing her back and giving us a quizzical look.
"Spend the day?" she mused. "I don't think I can spare him from the farm. Weekends is when we really get done the big jobs that need doing." She paused, a smirk betraying her words. " 'Sides, that's quite a piece to drive the worthless rascal."
"Oh, I'd come and pick him up sometime in the morning and bring him back in the evening," Aunt Joan hastened to add.
"Uhhh. Well, maybe sometime. We'll see." Aunt Hatty bent to her watering again, drenching the sandy soil with her can full of holes.
"How about this weekend?" I asked plaintively. "We don't have too much lined up for Sunday."
"Sure," Aunt Joan agree. "You don't work too much on Sundays, do you?"
"I'm going to a gospel sing this Sunday," Aunt Hatty replied, somewhat sheepishly, I thought. "I need Skippy to stay here and sorta keep an eye on the place for me."
"What did you do before he came?" Aunt Joan retorted.
"""hat's beside the point, Joan. He's my responsibility now, and I can use him here. He does a little useful work, now and then."
"I didn't know you were interested in gospel singing," Aunt Joan persisted. "For some strange reason that just doesn't sound like you, Hatty."
"Cyrus Jenkins has invited me to accompany him, and I've accepted," Aunt Hatty replied proudly. "He's singing in one of the quartets, you know."
"No, I didn't," said Aunt Joan, with more than a little irony in her tone. "Well, Skippy, it looks like that's it. Maybe sometime later on, okay?"
"Okay," I agreed disappointedly. I knew it would be this way, but still I'd dared to hope.
"Looks like you're going to have your usual lovely flower garden this year, Hatty," finished Aunt Joan. "You sure have a knack for growing flowers, although your heart is hard as a rock." She laughed to add a kidding note to the last. "You must really not be all bad."
To my surprise, something in the last remarks by Aunt Joan evoked a smug, self-satisfied grin from Aunt Hatty. Probably, I reflected, it was the compliment on her flower-growing talents.
"Y'all come back when you can," said Aunt Hatty, dismissal in her tone.
"Okay, and you and Skippy come to see us, now, sometime soon. You promised you would, you know."
"Wal, we don't get around too much, I guess," said Aunt Hatty. "We keep pretty busy 'round here."
"Yes, I can see you do. Well, bye." Aunt Joan turned to the car.
"Go change clothes and come on out and help me," Aunt Hatty said gruffly. "I got a lot for you to do this evening."
"Okay," I gave in regretfully. "See you in school tomorrow," I said to Julie, as I passed the car.
"Okay," Julie rejoined, "and thanks."
"For what?"
"For defending me this afternoon."
"My pleasure," I laughed. "He's been asking for trouble for a long time."
I'd almost forgotten about the fight. I'd have to watch out for Johnny, I thought. He wasn't the kind to take a setback lying down. He'd try to get even, one way or another.
"Bye...." Julie whispered, and waved her fingers. "So long," I said.
She was a doll. I sure wished I could go stay with them for all day. But with Aunt Hatty the way she was, it seemed un-likely. I turned toward the house.
"From now on you ride the bus, like you're supposed to," Aunt Hatty called sternly from the garden.
"Yes, ma'am," I said.
You old bitch, I added, but under my breath, mind you, way under my breath, you may be sure. You can't win 'em all, but you just got to keep trying, or else it's no fun.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Time passed rather swiftly that winter. The winter was cold, and the going was hard at times. It was the worst winter eastern North Carolina had seen for a long while. In fact, counting the hurricane, it was the worst year for weather, in general. It snowed a lot, and when it snowed, it really came down.
The snow itself wasn't bad. It was kinda fun, actually. Fun to see coming down, blanketing the red clay, the gray-brown sand, the trees and houses with a dazzling, white, downy topping. There was snow-cream, made with milk and eggs, raw, and sugar, with vanilla flavoring to make it melt in your mouth, or chocolate, occasionally, for variety.
The bad part was when it grew warmer for just a little while, and the ground turned to slush around your shoes, and the world was wet and runny, and everything was cold, but not the pure white of the snow cold. It was the dirty white of the snow and frozen ground, decaying, it seemed, before your very eyes.
Aunt Hatty seemed to be getting more and more enraptured with Mr. Jenkins as the winter wore on. Their romance was getting serious, it seemed. Several times, when we got snowed in, he stayed overnight, sleeping on the couch. They still hadn't grown very intimate, physically, as far as I knew-and, believe me, I made it my business to try to know-but were still in the poetry, gospel sings, and light pecks-on-the-cheeks stages.
One thing was certain, though: Aunt Hatty was really gone on him. She melted at his name. She grew moon-eyed and girlish as the hour grew near for his dashing arrival for an evening's visit. I noted a gradual, subtle change in Cyrus also. He seemed to be slowly becoming aware that he was a man, and she a woman. I caught him looking at her, in unguarded moments, with a look that, for him, was purely lustful.
In other words, his eyes grew bigger when she'd bounce her breasts a little, or cross her legs, sitting down on the couch across from him. They both seemed to be paying more attention to their dress on such momentous occasions, too. Cyrus took to wearing unwrinkled shirts, and Aunt Hatty adopted perfume, no less. Actually it wasn't really perfume, I guess, more likely toilet water, but it did smell attractive, and it seemed to be effective to a certain degree.
But they were both so hesitant where the other was concerned, and so totally different when alone-brusk and sure of themselves-that it was somewhat comical to watch, as a distant observer.
I was totally unprepared, therefore, for what transpired before my eyes, or I should say eye, singular, one afternoon in early spring. It must be true that "a young man's fancy...." and an old geezer's too. I had no idea the old codger had it in him to suddenly metamorphose in an instant, almost, and turn into a tiger toward the more bold Aunt Hatty. He even surprised her, and left her a little breathless.
The only explanation I can give for his abrupt transformation into a veritable Don Juan is that he must've gotten hold of a good book-perhaps poetry-on the subject, or come into an earful of bold advice, perhaps from some more dashing crony-perhaps not a member of the quartet. At any rate, he surprised us all, perhaps even himself.
The evening seemed usual enough all through supper, though I did note a furtive, it seemed to me, gleam in his eyes, as he glanced more than usual at Aunt Hatty, as she moved about the kitchen, obtaining more helpings of food from the stove and pouring us more milk and coffee. It is all too possible that I may've missed some maniacal, lustful look, while buttering my corn, or cutting up a porkchop; for, after all, I love to eat-Aunt Hatty is a great cook-and I never was particularly entranced by the personality of Mr. Cyrus Jenkins before this night in question.
After supper we retired to the living room. Something different happened right away, then. Unusual, you might say. Cyrus, it seemed, was out of pipe tobacco. He asked me, very warmly, I might add, if I'd mind very much to trot down to the store and get him some. I was puzzled by his unexpected request. He had his car parked in the side yard, and could've easily made a five-minute trip to the store. It never occurred to me that he wanted to get me out of the house, for he had had numerous golden opportunities to be-as far as he knew-alone and unobserved with Aunt Hatty, in her bedroom. The only thought I had was that he'd slipped his rocker, or was trying to be nice to me for some reason. Buddies, you know.
But it was a long way down the road to the little country store, kept by old Tom, who was blind. It was growing dark outside, too, a fact which was noted and protested by Aunt Hatty. It was the quarter he offered in grateful payment for the errand that swayed me, and took all suspicion from my mind. From then on I was on his side, because I thought of what I could buy at the store with a whole quarter of my own to spend. Julie's birthday was coming up, and with a quarter I could get her a real present, in addition to the cradle for her doll I had whittled myself. Excitedly I brainstormed that I could buy some satiny cloth and make a little mattress to go in the cradle. Boy, would that knock her eyes out! I could just see her face as I handed it to her.
So, I enthusiastically supported Mr. Jenkins' contentions that I was a big boy now, that I could certainly run right down that short little piece to the store. That the moon was coming up and it was going to be bright as day outside. In the end, we convinced her, and with two quarters clutched in my sweaty palm-one of which was breathlessly mine, all mine.
I put on my sweater and went out the front door. It is possible that Aunt Hatty didn't exactly rebel at the idea of being alone in the parlor with her Cyrus, and considered this fact heavily in her acquiescence to my night journey. At any rate, I would've liked to know just what transpired between the two of them, during my lengthy absence.
It was a long trip to the store and back, and I made it even longer by my self-debate over exactly what to purchase with my quarter. When I did return, the lamps were low, and as I passed the window on my way to the front door, I was more than mildly surprised to see their two heads together on the couch, cheek to cheek, it looked like through the unshaded window; then amused by the thought. I thought to myself that this was something. Maybe I should leave them alone in the parlor more often. Who am I to stand in the way of cupid's feathered barbs?
When I turned the doorknob, slowly, and then pushed open the door, making sure the screen door squeaked wide, first, they were ten feet apart. I chuckled inwardly. Aunt Hatty? Feeling guilty? Well, well, things were looking up.
Mr. Jenkins hungrily took the pouch of tobacco from me and lit up his foul pipe. Aunt Hatty breathed the first clouds in, sighing, and cooed:
"I knew something has been missing all evening, Cyrus. It's your pipe. It smells simply divine," proving that love can cast a deceptive aura over any aspect of human existence.
As bedtime approached, I was covertly observing the subtle outward difference in their conversation. Something had happened in their manner. There was an expectancy in the air. Emotion hung heavily in the smoky air. Perhaps, I thought to myself, it's only my over-active imagination, but there was something. Something new had been added.
I was sent off to bed with a friendly suggestion that was incriminating in itself. Something, I felt, was afoot. I retired, thoughtfully. I'd keep a sharp ear out this night, I knew. I undressed rapidly and crawled into bed.
It seemed they'd never leave the parlor. I knew the first sound I'd hear should be that of Aunt Hatty letting Cyrus out the front door, and saying: "Goodnight; drive carefully."
Impatiently I lay awake listening and waiting. I had not visited the knothole for some time, but I had the sneaky suspicion that tonight might offer some new incentive.
When I was despairing of my vigil, there came the sound of activity in the living room. I perked up attentively. I listened closely, interpreting the sounds as they came. I could hear a low, almost inaudible murmur of conversation. That meant they were not at the front door, as yet. When I heard footsteps in the hall I gained new hope. They were being very quiet as they came down the hall. In fact, I couldn't tell if it was one person or two. There was no conversation.
After the footsteps had passed my room, I heard the door to Aunt Hatty's room quietly open and then shut. I waited in consternation for what seemed forever. There was no more audible activity anywhere in the house. After a while I was faced with a real dilemma. Had they both gone into Aunt Hatty's bedroom? They never had, to my knowledge, in the past this late at night. Or, was Aunt Hatty in there for some reason and Mr. Jenkins cooling his heels, silently, in the parlor? That, I judged un-likely, but how could I be sure? It was almost impossible that Mr. Jenkins had gone. It would be hard to miss the sound of all Aunt Hatty's locks on the front door.
After pondering the situation some time, and deathly afraid I was missing something I'd hate myself for, I decided to take a chance and get up and put my pants on and go to the bathroom. I did so, opening my door soundlessly, and ventured into the hall.
As I looked toward the living room, I could see that at least a table lamp was burning, which told me only one thing: Mr. Jenkins hadn't gone yet, or Aunt Hatty would've cut that light out. That gave me no clue, still, as to where who was. I continued on to the bathroom. I didn't go in. I decided that really there was no more risk in this situation than normally. I might as well go ahead and peep into Aunt Hatty's room and settle the question once and for all.
I crept to the pantry and pulled aside the bag of salt. I pressed my eye to the hole. The room was dark. At first I could make out nothing, but the darkness itself made my heart pound, and my eyes strain to their utmost. If Aunt Hatty was in her bedroom, in the dark, then that was an indication in itself that she wasn't alone. I damned the darkness, silently, peering intently through the hole. It was just too dark. I drew back and stood erect, for a moment, thinking. What had happened to that big bright moon? Then I realized that Aunt Hatty must've drawn the shade, a thing she'd never done before.
I heard a sound from beyond the wall. It was muffled and indistinct, but I hurriedly pressed my eye to the hole, which I could dimly make out, as I looked down. I'd had to feel for it at first in the pitch blackness of the pantry. As I looked through I breathlessly found that I could make out the dim outline of the four-poster bed. My eyes must've become more accustomed to the darkness, while I stood in the pantry.
"Ohhh," I heard the soft sigh escape from someone's lips.
I wasn't sure if it'd been male or female. I could sense, rather than truly see, a slight movement on the bed. There was the dim flutter of an arm or leg, barely discernible in the air. Then I heard the creak of springs.
"Oh, Cyrus...." came the heavily breathed, barely heard words. "Hatty...." Silence.
The sound of movement then came. Irregular. No pattern to the sounds. Then a sound very much like the finish of a kiss. I knew beyond doubt, now, that history was being made. Ancient history, I thought with an inward, silent laugh, although they were neither too very old. Not too old, obviously, in their own opinions, anyway.
"Let me," I heard, recognizing Aunt Hatty's lowered voice, almost a whisper, as there was a flurry of movement.
"Hatty, Hatty...."
I could see her as she sat up in the bed, just barely. There was an infinitesimal slot of dim light lined upon her face and chest, that must've come from the side edge of the window, between it and the shade. It was too high to cast light above the waist. Aunt Hatty was still fully dressed, with the exception that her blouse was unbuttoned from top to bottom. She was heaving, her bosom constrained in the bra, rising and falling, breathlessly. I watched in awe, as she slipped the blouse from her shoulder and thrust her chest forward, arching her back, to unsnap the bra.
As it popped undone she fell back to the bed without actually removing it. I heard a suppressed gasp, as the springs creaked, tellingly, once more, and I could barely make out Mr. Jenkins rolling over beside her. He bent to her form, almost undiscernible, sunken in the bed beneath him, and I heard his fevered breathing.
I saw the flash of the bra as it was tossed aside. I witnessed the slow, hesitant progression from one intense step to the next. Their progress was accompanied by innumerable sighs, gasps, sobs, and whispered endearments. At last it seemed they must both be completely undressed. They were squirming together, entwined, and I could see a little better at the last. I could see one of Aunt Hatty's knees, the left one, drawn up in the air, and spread toward the window. Mr. Jenkins I could barely make out as he fell upon her. With many short, breathless starts and stops of their whispered exchange, I at last heard a long, drawn-out sigh of ecstasy, as there was a loud creak of the bed, and then the slow, steady, rhythmical sound of love filled the room.
It was the best thing I'd ever seen. Finally I figured I'd better head back for the safety of my room, as I heard low conversation. Almost normal conversation. That could only mean one thing. I left, and made it back to my room without mishap.
When the weekend drew near, I thought once more of the prospect of going to spend the day with Aunt Joan, Miss Kate, and, of course, Julie. In all the months since it had been first mentioned by Aunt Joan, I'd pleaded, without success, with Aunt Hatty to let me do it. Aunt Joan had come over to visit us several times, bringing Julie, but both of our efforts to soften up Aunt Hatty had gone without success.
I had a sneaking suspicion now, however, that I might change all of that. I weighed the possibilities in my head. It was nothing short of blackmail, but what did I care? I was tired of her tyrannical bullying. I was determined to pressure her into a more reasonable frame of mind, now that I had proof that she wasn't as pure as the driven snow, herself, as she'd like all to believe.
I approached her the next day, since it was Thursday, and I wanted to tell Julie on Friday morning whether or not I'd be able to spend the weekend with them. I waited until after all the chores were done and Aunt Hatty and I were in the living room. I was working on my homework, and she was sewing, sitting on the couch. Mr. Jenkins wasn't coming over this evening, it seemed.
"Aunt Hatty," I began. She looked up from her work without speaking. "Aunt Hatty, I was wondering if I could go over to see Julie this weekend," I said, watching her reaction closely.
"You got too much work around here to do," she replied, dismissal in her tone.
"But I can have everything caught up by tomorrow night, except for a few little jobs that you can get one of the field hands to do," I insisted.
"You cain't go, and that's that."
"But, Aunt Hatty," I paused as she gave me a frown, "I want to see Julie and see their new place."
"Is it Julie you want to see, or Joan and Miss Kate?" she snorted, with a toss of her head.
"Julie," I insisted, "and their new apartment."
"I promised your Uncle John and Aunt Mary I'd keep a close watch on you, Skippy, and I cain't do it, when you're off gallivanting around the country."
"You can't keep an eye on me when I'm in school, either," I retorted. "I want to go visit Julie this weekend," I repeated again.
"You see Julie every day in school," she replied, amused.
"But it's not the same," I pleaded.
"Look, Skippy, everybody in the family knows what went on between you and Joan. How would it look for me to let you go over to their place now? Yore tomfoolery is common knowledge now."
"But yours and Mr. Jenkins is not, huh?" I interjected.
She almost swallowed a button she had in her mouth.
"What did you say?" she roared. "Not yet," I said. "Not yet what?"
"Not yet common knowledge," I looked her steadily in the eye.
"What's not yet common knowledge?" she repeated, staring hard at me.
"Yours and Mr. Jenkins' tom-foolery," I said.
She slowly put down her sewing basket and removed the button from her lips. She rose from the couch and started toward me.
"I wouldn't do that if I were you," I said coldly.
"Oh, you wouldn't, huh?" she raged, hauling back her hand.
"No," I repeated venomously, "because if you do, I'll pick up something and try my best to kill you, and what's more I'll tell everybody in the family what you and Mr. Jenkins did for two hours in your room last night."
"You little monster! You evil, lying little devil," she exploded, but she held her hand poised in mid-air.
"Not lying," I said. "I saw you; I know."
"You saw what? So Cyrus was in my room for a while; you know nothing more."
Even as she said it, guilt, doubt, and fear were written all over her face.
"Come back here with me and I'll show you," I said. I started for the back porch, but she still had hold of my arm.
"Wait just a minute, you," she breathed.
"Just come with me one minute, and then if you still want to lay into me, okay. All right?"
She let go of my arm.
I led her down the hall, or I might say she was right on my heels down the hall, through the kitchen, out onto the back porch, and to the pantry door. I opened it and stepped inside. I removed the bag of salt. I peeped through the hole, quickly, and then stepped back. The moon was shining brightly through her window, illuminating the room. Her shade was up tonight.
"There, look and see for yourself," I offered, stepping back from the pantry and to one side.
With her lower jaw hung slightly open, she stepped in and bent to the hole. I've often wondered just how she felt when she saw her big, four-post bed framed in that aperture. She made not a sound, not a movement for a long while. It was as if she were frozen to the spot. Rooted in that cramped position. Perhaps it all was running through her mind, like a newsreel, the happenings of last night. At last she straightened up and turned toward me. I'll confess I didn't know what to expect at that moment. For all I knew I might not have had long to live. There was no telling how she'd react.
She looked at me, blankly, her eyes absent, almost unseeing, it seemed. Her face looked blanched, ashen in the moonlight that flooded the back porch. Without a word she moved past me as if in a dream, into the kitchen, and, as I followed, she went on down the hall toward the living room. I followed in a moment. I got a drink of water to soothe my parched throat first.
As I came through the doorway I saw she'd resumed her sewing. I went back to the chair and the table on which my books and papers rested. I waited a while, pretending to work on homework, to see if she'd say anything. When it seemed that she wasn't, I put down my pencil.
"Do I get to go see them this weekend?" I asked, with some misgivings, I'll admit.
"All right, you can go Sunday."
"Saturday," I corrected, "and for the whole weekend."
She looked up from her work at me.
"All right, you win," she said resignedly. "But, Skippy, about what you saw...." she left the sentence unfinished.
"I won't rock the boat if you don't," I said. I gathered up my books and stuck the loose papers in my notebook. I left them lying there on the table. I walked over to Aunt Hatty. "And, Aunt Hatty," I said, pausing for a second. I bent over and slipped my palm over the tip of one of her enormous breasts, cupping the flesh, gently. "Aunt Hatty, you're a very beautiful woman. That wasn't the first time I peeped through that knothole." I jumped back, as she slapped at my wrist.
"Get away from me, you little devil," she said, looking up at me, almost playfully.
"You do some interesting exercises," I added. "Well, I'm going to hit the sack now," I finished.
I swear she was blushing as I left the room. Aunt Hatty, blushing.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Julie was tremendously excited when I told her on Friday that I'd be spending the whole weekend with them. I told her when we went out on the playground after lunch. She danced up and down, looking very delightful in a yellow dress, with lace trim. She was all I could see on the whole playground.
"But why didn't you tell me this morning? You meanie," she laughed.
I ignored the question, smiling at her.
"So, you can tell Aunt Joan to come over and pick me up about nine o'clock tomorrow morning," I said, ignoring her mock anger. "I promised Aunt Hatty I'd do my morning chores first, before I left."
"What made her change her mind and decide to let you go? I thought she never would." Julie looked inquisitively at me.
"She just had a change of heart," I replied. "I guess she thinks I've been working too hard and need a rest. Eye strain, mostly, I guess."
"Eye strain?" queried Julie, puzzled.
"It's a joke," I said.
"Oh." She tossed it off as unimportant. "I don't get it, but the important thing is that you can come."
"Yes, isn't it great?"
Saturday morning at nine sharp Aunt Joan pulled into our drive. I ran down to open the gate for the car. Julie was in the front seat beside her. I was ready to go. Aunt Hatty was standing at the back door.
Aunt Joan turned the car around in the side yard.
"I'm all ready to go," I said excitedly, climbing in the front seat beside Julie. "Let's get out of here."
"What's the matter, Hatty about to change her mind and not let you go?" Aunt Joan asked.
"No, I just want to get away from this place."
"Well, here we go," she laughed.
Their new apartment, as I still thought of it, was four rooms and a bath, upstairs, in a great big house on the outskirts of town. They had a private entrance on the side, and the whole apartment was beautiful inside. Out back was a big yard with a beautifully kept lawn. The elderly couple who lived downstairs had a dog they kept on a chain out back. Other than the dog's house and a clothesline, there was only one huge oak tree in the center of the enormous, fenced-in lawn to mar the flat expanse of vividly green, close-cropped grass. In the summertime, I imagined, the tree would make it perfect. A shady, cool haven.
Out in the yard, with the dog, her toys, and our own childish enthusiasm, we had a ball until Miss Kate called down to us from a back window that lunch was ready. We ascended the stairs, hand in hand, and got washed up. After dinner we all went to a movie. Julie had told me she often got to go to movies, but it had been a long time since I'd had a chance.
We ate supper in town, after the movie and a little shopping. Miss Kate arranged for me to take Julie to a movie all by ourselves, when her birthday came around, which was only a couple of weeks off. She found out from the owner of the movie house that they'd have a bunch of cartoons on at noon on that particular Saturday, which Julie loved, and then talked Aunt Joan into letting me take her all by myself.
Later, as bedtime drew near, I found myself wondering what arrangements would be made. There were two bedrooms, but only one double bed in each. I found out, when Aunt Joan went over to the couch and began unfolding it, asking me to help her pull it open. It was the first time I'd ever seen or even heard of a couch that made into a bed.
"This's where you're going to sleep, Skippy," she told me, laughing at my consternation. "It's very comfortable, you'll find. Julie likes to sleep on it.
She's always wanting us to make it up for her, even though she has her own bed in there." She motioned toward the far bedroom. I said nothing, but rather let things go along as they would.
Julie and I sat up listening to the radio, while Aunt Joan and Miss Kate got ready for bed. There was a real spooky show on, and it both terrified and fascinated Julie at the same time. She was as cute as she could be, shivering and trembling at the scary parts. I'd figured Aunt Joan and Miss Kate must sleep in the same bed. I bet they really had the times, though.
I thought of Julie, innocent as a little lamb, and I wanted her to stay that way. She'd find out soon enough what it was like to grow up. She'd had enough trauma for her young life already.
After the program she went off, at Miss Kate's command, to put on her pajamas, and then came back out to show them to me. They were very modest, and she looked even more like a little girl in them than she did in frilly dresses.
It was time to go to bed, and the lights were soon out and the house settled down into darkness. I lay thinking how lucky I was, really, in spite of having no mother or father. I still had a pretty nice family, all told.
I was asleep, much later, and was awakened by a hand on my shoulder, bare, sticking out from under the light cover. I raised up and looked into Aunt Joan's eyes.
"Shhh," she whispered, and slipped in under the spread with me.
On Julie's birthday I finished all the little odd jobs that Aunt Hatty had lined up for me early Saturday morning. I'd been looking forward to this day for a long time. I had the cradle all finished, hand carved and varnished, with a soft, satiny mattress made. Aunt Hatty had cut and stitched it for me, and stuffed it with the feathers I had gathered up from the hen house. It was a real professional-looking job. Aunt Joan and Miss Kate had seen it on a visit to our place and said they didn't believe I'd made it, which made me proud as a little bantam rooster.
Miss Kate drove over to pick me up early in the morning, by herself. She said Aunt Joan had taken Julie downtown to buy her a new dress with some money Julie's grandmother had mailed her from Chicago. Julie's grandmother had written that she wanted to buy her a dress but didn't know the size. Miss Kate and I were to have all the presents out and the birthday cake on the table, candles lit, by ten o'clock.
We heard them coming up the stairs just after ten. We hurriedly lit the candles and stood, waiting. You should've seen Julie's face. She came running over and hugged Miss Kate, excitedly.
"Blow out the candles, quick," she said, "before they drop tallow all over the icing."
The presents came next. I had my gift, the cradle, wrapped in brown paper. The brighter wrapped and ribboned packages attracted her attention first. She tore into them one by one, exclaiming with joy. We three interested spectators stood around in utter contentment at her pleasure. When she finally did get to my present, I waited breathlessly. I knew she'd like it, because she'd mentioned her wish that she had a great big one, that really rocked like a real one. But even I was surprised at her reaction. She was overcome by it. All the hard work had not been for nothing. It was worth it all to see her face. When Aunt Joan told her I'd made it with my own hands, there were tears in her eyes when she looked up at me. Tears of joy. And in my own.
When she'd finished examining and playing with all the many presents over and over again, Miss Kate managed to persuade her to try on her new dress for us. She slipped into her bedroom and emerged soon wearing a wine-colored, velvet dress. She said, timidly, that I'd said I liked her blue velvet dress so much she'd decided on this one, because it was so much like it.
And, wearing her new dress, we set off together down the street to the cartoon festival at the movie house. I was very proud of her as she walked at my side, holding onto my hand. Aunt Joan and Miss Kate waved to us from the front windows up above. I felt very proud.
I could tell something had happened, when we first came into the room, after the movie. I looked first at Miss Kate and then at Aunt Joan. Her eyes were a little red, as if she might've been crying.
I said nothing, as I walked over to the couch and sat down beside her. I waited.
"Grandma Copley is sick, Skippy," she said softly. "We just got word from Uncle John and Aunt Mary. They got a telegram a little while ago. She's had a stroke. It's what they call a cerebral hemorrhage. She's in the hospital."
"How is she?" I asked.
"Not too good. John and Mary are driving up tomorrow."
"Are you going with them?" I inquired. "I think I will. She's not expected to live too long."
"I'm going too," I said firmly.
"We were talking about that a while ago. We think you ought to stay here and continue your schooling. The year is almost out."
"I'm going too," I repeated. "She's my grandmother too, you know, as well as anybody else's. She's my daddy's mother."
"Yes, I know, Skippy, but there's no telling how long we might have to stay up there. She may recover almost completely. You never can tell."
Aunt Joan took my head against her bosom, comfortingly. She'd been crying, I knew, and I felt tears welling up inside me.
"You stay here with Julie and Kate. I'll write you every day to tell you how she's getting along."
"What if she dies? There won't be anybody to take me to the funeral."
"Honey," Aunt Joan said, "if she passes away, you'll be at the funeral. She's always insisted on being buried beside your grandfather in the old family plot."
I felt somewhat better at that.
"Now don't you worry. I've got to finish packing my things."
Aunt Joan got up and went into her bedroom.
"You must've been very close to your grandmother, Skippy," said Miss Kate.
"I only met her a couple of times," I said. "She used to help take care of me when I was a baby, though."
Julie was sitting on the couch beside me, looking like she didn't know what to say. Remembering, I guess. "She always made a big fuss over me when she came to visit us," I continued. "She said I was the cryingest baby she'd ever seen. Said she had so much time and energy invested in me, that she was going to see that I made something of myself." I laughed. "She can tell the funniest stories. She can make you laugh, or make you cry, almost." I thought of her last visit. The thought of never seeing her again broke my heart.
Late in the evening Uncle John and Aunt Mary came, and Aunt Joan went with them, off to New York.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
A few days later, we received a call from Aunt Joan that Grandma was doing better. Grandma was insisting that she wanted to come back home to die, she said. Aunt Joan laughed, as I spoke to her for a moment. The doctors can't do a thing with her. She's been used to having her way so long, she can't think of it any other way. She's bound and determined to get out of the hospital and fly down.
"Are they going to let her?" I asked.
"Personally I don't think they're going to be able to stop her. She's getting better, though they say she could have another stroke at any time. That's what makes her so mad. She says New York is a great place for business but a 'helluva place to die', in her own words." Aunt Joan laughed. "So we may be seeing you soon; if not, I'll write. Let me speak to Kate again."
That sure sounded like Grandma Copley, all right. I could just picture her in her hospital bed, raging at the doctors and nurses. I recalled how Daddy had looked lying in the bed in the hospital. They had only let me see him once before he died. I was sure Grandma would come zooming down if she lived long enough and was strong enough to use that tongue of hers. I smiled to myself. Maybe she'd get better down here in the open country she loved and where she was born and raised. Miss Kate hung up the phone.
Two days later Grandma flew in. Aunt Joan had called again and said that there was no stopping her, so she was going to fly down with her. Her man was coming on the plane, also. Her "man," as Grandma called him, was her combination chauffeur, gardener, and all around handyman. He had almost never left her side for over twenty years, since Grandpa had died. That seemed like a lifetime to me. I marveled at it.
We were to drive over to meet the plane. The airport was over seventy miles away. Grandma was to be transferred to a nearby hospital for a few days, while she continued her recovery, and then after Uncle John and Aunt Mary had driven back down from New York, if she was well enough, she planned to go to their place for a while. I was tickled to death by all of this. I was very glad that I'd see Grandma again.
The night before we were to meet the plane we had all been in high spirits, cheered, I suppose, by the good news. We had gone out to a movie, even, that night. It'd been late, when the three of us arrived back at the house. Julie had gone immediately to bed, and Miss Kate had lingered up a moment, while I pulled back the covers of my hide-a-bed and got ready for sleep.
"Skippy, there's something I've been meaning to talk to you about. Now is as good a time as any, I guess. It's about you and Julie. Now don't get me wrong. I'm as happy as I can be that you and Julie get along so well together. She really likes you, and I'm glad. But...."
"But you don't quite trust me, is that it?" I helped her out.
"No, it's not that, exactly. It's not that I don't trust you, you see. It's just that I feel responsible for Julie, and you don't know how it is for a young girl. It's different with boys. It's different with you."
"Look," I said, "there's nothing at all to worry about. You remember I told you and Aunt Joan once that I didn't care for young girls? Well, that's only partially true now. There's one young girl I'm just crazy about, but not in the way you're thinking. I love Julie, don't you see? It's different. I wouldn't dream of hurting her. I can't even stand to think of anybody even saying anything to her. Did Aunt Joan tell you about the fight I got into when she first started coming to our school?"
"Both Julie and Joan told me about it. It was all I heard for days around here. It made me very glad that Julie had someone to look out for her."
"Well, I'm always going to look out for her, as long as she wants me to. As far as the other goes, what do you think I've got you and Aunt Joan for?"
I squeezed her, intimately, as I said the last.
"I'm glad you feel that way-about Julie, that is," she smiled.
"And about the other?" I grinned at her.
"Well...."
"Well?"
"Well, I think it's time I get out of here and let you get some sleep."
I watched her move from the room with mixed emotions. Resignedly I began undressing for bed. In a few moments Miss Kate stuck her head out of her bedroom door.
"Would you help me a moment, Skippy?" she whispered.
I crawled out of bed and went to her door. She stepped back to let me enter and swept her arm across the room. The bedcovers were turned back and the room was dim.
"What is it?" I asked.
She closed the door, then turned to face me. She had nothing on, not a stitch.
"I seem to have misplaced my nighty," she said teasingly. "Do you think you might help me find it?"
"Not a chance," I said, as she crossed the room and stretched out across the bed.
Later I was curious. I rolled up on one elbow and looked into her eyes. "Kate," I began.
"Uh hummm?"
"Tell me something."
"Okay."
"It's not just something, really. It's a lot of things. For instance, what does it feel like to you?"
"Nice," she replied dreamily. "But how? Describe it to me."
"Oh, no, I can't."
"But why?"
"You're being a little too personal."
"Well, tell me what part feels the best. I mean-does this feel good?" I touched her nipple with a fingertip.
"Uhmmm."
"That's no answer," I laughed.
"If you don't know the answer, it's not my fault."
"You're just being difficult. Which feels better-this?" I pulled gently at her nipple with my fingers. "Or this?" I placed a fingertip on the tip of her nipple and pressed it inward, indenting it until it disappeared. Then I moved it around, buried in the soft depth of her breast.
"Ohhh...." she moaned, squirming under my touch at the last. "Ohhhhh ... that. Don't stop."
I began doing the same thing to the tip of her other breast. She lay still then, a smile of ecstasy on her lips.
"Mmmmmm," she breathed.
I let the nipples pop back out, and then began pulling them gently, toying around the darker circles of the tip.
" 'Ohhh, now that feels better. The other got me all excited, and now that relieves the pressure."
"What about this?" I bent and took the tip of each nipple between my lips, with a gentle suction on each, for a moment, in turn.
"Uhmmm, that's more satisfying."
"Oh, I don't want to do that," I said, drawing away. "Not just now. I want to find out more about you."
"Nosy, aren't you?" she grinned.
"Well, I gotta find out sometime, haven't I?"
"Oh, sure. Something every boy your age should know," she said. "Come back here," she added.
I-oiled over to her, once more, and kissed her nipple.
"Tell me something else," I said, "since you brought it up."
"What's that?"
"How do you feel about that? About my being so young and all?"
"Well, it has its advantages," she stated, matter-of-factly.
"How do you mean?"
"Well, for instance, people don't talk about you. I mean, if the neighbors see you coming in the door with us late at night, they think nothing of it. Who'd suspect a boy your age, with women our age? Twelve or thirteen?"
"I'm not quite thirteen yet," I reminded her, laughing.
"Well, be that as it may; it's the same thing. Even more so. And ... there's the fact that I won't get pregnant. We don't have to bother with anything."
"Tell me about that," I begged.
"Oh, no. No, indeed. Not me. You want too much. Ask your Aunt Joan about that. Maybe she'll do it."
"Well," I went on, "how about the way it feels to you? I mean me being so young, and all?"
"No problem. You see, you don't know all there is to know about women. It's not how old you are; it's what you do with what your age gives you."
I laughed; she paused a moment and then went on:
"It's like a joke Joan told me the other night. It ends with this guy saying:
"'I can do more with a three-inch stump, than a monkey can do with a mile-long grapevine'."
I burst out laughing.
"I wonder where she heard that?" I said.
"Your Uncle John, who else?" Miss Kate laughed.
"Well," I continued, "answer me some more questions. Do you like this?"
"No, not so much. I like to do that to you, though," she replied.
"Why?"
"Don't get so personal," she said. "I just do, that's all." She turned to me. "You like the other better than that, too, don't you?" she asked, questioning me for a change.
"Both," I said, running my fingers lightly along the skin of her thighs.
"That tickles," she said, wrinkling her nose at me. "Good?"
"Yeah, good. But this is better," she said, pulling my head to her breast. "Come up here on top. That's it. Now, move down." She pulled me to her, opening. "Harder," she whispered. "Harder, don't be afraid." She lifted her knees a little. "Uhmmm," she moaned in my ear. She sounded like a little puppy dog getting his ears scratched. "Harder," she pleaded, "please, harder...."
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
We met Aunt Joan at the terminal gate. I didn't get to see Grandma at the airport. They took her by ambulance directly from the plane to the hospital. Grandma's man was walking with Aunt Joan, when we spotted them coming up the ramp.
"How is she?" I asked anxiously.
"Spry as a cricket," laughed Aunt Joan. "Personally I think it was all a big fake. I've never seen her looking better."
We all laughed.
"Seriously," she continued, "she's doing pretty good. She had a bad stroke, the doctors say. She could get better or worse very quickly. I don't know if the excitement of the trip was too much for her or not. It must've cost her a fortune to come by plane."
"Well, she's got enough fortunes to throw away one or two, hasn't she?" said Miss Kate. "I think she's right. When you have enough money to do as you please, you should. If she doesn't spend it, somebody else will spend it, when she's gone."
"Don't let John and Mary hear you talking like that," Aunt Joan laughed, as we reached the outside steps of the airport.
"Well, it's true. Rather than just wasting away in a hospital bed, I'd rather be among friends and doing what I wanted to do, even if it meant I wouldn't live as long. It's a question of what you call living, you see."
"Personally, I agree with you," said Aunt Joan. "I think Grandma and you'd get along tremendously."
"When can we go see her?" I asked.
"I don't know," Aunt Joan said, musing to herself. "We'll have to call the hospital and find out what time visiting hours are."
"It won't be like it was with Daddy," I said hopefully, "will it?"
"What do you mean, Skippy?" Aunt Joan turned to me.
"They only let me see him once, just before he died."
" 'Oh, I imagine Grandma' II have a thing or two to say about' that. She'll have a private room if she's going to spend any time at all in the hospital. I think those rules about children under a certain age not permitted are for open wards, not private rooms. Anyway, the way Grandma's been talking on and on about wanting to see you, don't you worry. She'll fix it up."
We reached the car and all got in. I got in the back seat with Julie. Aunt Joan indicated for Charlie, Grandma's man, to get in the back with us. He was all smiles and very friendly. He seemed like a nice guy. Aunt Joan got in the front with Miss Kate. We set out for home. Once, on the way, we stopped and Charlie bought Julie and me a banana split. I'd never had one before. Julie had, but she said she'd never had one like this one. It had so much stuff on it, that it nearly made you full just to look at it.
We checked Charlie in at a hotel in town. He seemed very anxious about Grandma. Uncle John would've probably said it was because she was his meal ticket, but I knew it wasn't that at all. Charlie, like the rest of us, loved Grandma, as much for her ornery ways and friendly insults, as we did for her good-heartedness. He was really worried about her.
We drove on home, after dropping him off, and called the hospital from home. They told us that Grandma was safely in their hands and doing as well as could be expected. She would not be allowed visitors, we were informed, until the next day. They said they were running a series of tests. All evening, and all day the following day, there were only two phrases the hospital had for her condition. They were:
"Doing as well as can be expected," and "Her condition is satisfactory."
That told us nothing, really. We were all looking forward to that evening, when we could visit her. Aunt Mary and Uncle John had returned and were planning to go out to see her, also. I knew Aunt Hatty would be there, too. It promised to be quite a gathering.
Visiting hours were from six to nine in the evening for Grandma's particular case. The four of us-Aunt Joan, Kate, Julie, and I-ascended the broad steps and entered the lobby. It wasn't a really big hospital, but it seemed imposing. We stopped at the information desk and asked directions. Grandma was up on the second floor, and we had to use the stairway. As we walked down the corridor and neared Grandma's room, we could hear her unmistakable voice, clear out in the hall.
"I don't give a damn what these fool doctors say, John Woodward," she was raving. "They're nothing but a bunch of pin-rolling, blood-sucking quacks, anyways. Ain't none of them worth the powder it'd take to blow them to hell. Everyone tells me something different."
It was the same old Grandma, all right. She may be ill, but she hadn't changed much. We knocked on the door and entered, in response to Grandma's shout:
"Come in, dammit!"
Her eyes grew big, as we entered. Uncle John was standing near the window, and Aunt Mary and Aunt Hatty were seated in metal chairs, near the foot of her bed.
"Well, it's about time!" she roared. "I thought maybe I had something contagious, or something."
Aunt Joan, smiling knowingly, as if she'd heard all this before, went to her bedside.
"Now, Grandma," she soothed, "we came as soon as they'd let us; you know that."
"No, you didn't, either; John and Mary, and Hatty, beat you to it," Grandma snapped.
"Well, it's just now six o'clock. They said we wouldn't be allowed in before six," Aunt Joan smiled.
"See what I mean?" Grandma said, shaking her head up and down. "They're all a bunch of nincompoops. Idiots, every last one of them. Well, don't just stand there like a little lost dog, Skippy; come here to me!" She held out her withered, bony hand. I edged toward the bed. "Don't let all this damn fool stuff scare you," she said, waving at the oxygen machine, the tent which wasn't in use, and the intravenous stands, one of which was in use, dripping a yellowish fluid into her arm.
"They may have me down, but I ain't out of it yet," she cackled. "Come here, boy. I've seen all these other folks till I'm sick and tired of their faces. It's you I been wanting to see."
I approached her and submitted to her one-armed hug, somewhat abashed. I hugged her neck, happily, though, and then took her hand, as she reached for mine. It almost made me cry to see her so thin and hollow of cheek. Her grip felt weak, not firm and vise-like as I'd remembered her.
"Hello, Grandma," I managed.
"You're growin' up, Skippy," she said. "John and Mary must be feeding you pretty good, huh?"
"Sure," I replied, "just fine."
She obviously didn't know about my being packed off to Aunt Hatty for the last few months. Or did she? I wondered. On second thought, she might, and it would be just like her to get a dig in like that.
"You're filling out," she observed, in that rasping, throaty voice of hers. "You're going to be a big one, aren't you?"
"I guess so," I smiled.
"Now you just pull up a chair right here 'long side yore old Grandma and tell me all about what's happened since I saw you last," she commanded, motioning to some empty chairs along the wall.
I did as she asked, thinking to myself that that would make quite a story, if I really did tell her, and I almost wished I could. She'd be the only person I knew who might understand it, and just probably approve. Uncle John and Aunt Mary were exchanging worried looks, with Aunt Hatty just looking puzzled and a little left out. So, instead of talking about myself, I introduced Julie to Grandma, and explained who she was.
There was a positive atmosphere of relief that came into the room, as the conversation settled down to less discomforting topics. Julie sure looked surprised and bewildered by everything that'd happened so far, and I sympathized with her. If I'd been in her place I think I would've run.
We visited with Grandma for the entire three hours. We kept saying that she might be getting tired, but she wouldn't hear of our going until they ran us out. Had it been up to her, I think she would've made pallets on the floor and had us sleep there. It was only the promise that we'd come back the following evening, and our expressed hope that she'd be allowed to come home soon, so we could do as we pleased, that mollified her somewhat, and finally permitted us to back out gracefully. I waved, as I closed the door, the last to leave. She'd held my arm as I got up, and pulled me to the bed.
"Don't never let 'em push you around, Skippy. There are only two kinds of people in this world: the pushers and the pushed," she laughed, talking low to me. "Go to New York some day and ride the subway during the rush hour, and you'll know what I mean."
She squeezed my arm with the old iron grip, and ruffled my hair. She grinned at me, as I grinned back, nodding, and then hollered over my shoulder at Uncle John:
"Don't you forget to brang me my little present tomorrow when you come, John-you hear?"
"Okay, Grandma, I won't," he laughed back in reply.
"What's she talking about?" Aunt Joan asked, out in the corridor.
"She wants me to buy her a bottle of port wine. It's okay; I asked the doctor about it. He said it would be good for her." He guffawed, then. "You know what else he said?" We all looked at him expectantly. "Dr. Thompson is her doctor, and he said the best thing in the world for her would be for her to have a bottle hid away in her bedside locker, that she could take a nip from now and then, and think she was pulling a fast one on him." We laughed. "He's been her doctor for a long time. From way back, when she used to live down here. He shore knows her, don't he?" he laughed, ushering us to the stairs.
I took Julie's hand at the top of the stairs. I sure felt a lot better than I had before I'd seen Grandma. It was nice to have her back.
The next day she was dead. She died just before dinnertime.
It had been a long time since I'd cried. I didn't cry, then, at first, when I heard it. I guess I really didn't believe it. It couldn't be, I first said to myself. I just saw her-just last night. When it finally did get to me, it hit me hard. When you haven't cried for a long, long time, when you've tried to be hard, and cold, and let nothing get to you-that's when it really hurts you, when things get so bad you break down and just bawl-that's when you find out what crying is all about.
It wasn't until after the funeral that it really got to me; after I'd seen them wheel the casket out of Uncle John's house, seen them put her in the hearse, seen them drive her to the cemetery, her man, Charles, bawling in the car, like a baby. Seen them open the casket above the grave, during the final services. Seen them lower her, slowly, into the grave with the flat straps. Heard the dirt clunk on the top of the box. Smelled the flowers, as everybody broke down and sobbed around me. It was only after all that, and after I'd gone back with Aunt Hatty to her house, and had gone to my room and locked the door, lain down across the bed, my face in my pillow, that I finally felt what it is you feel, when you suddenly realize that you've lost.
You have lost something that you can never regain. You are powerless. You are helpless before the forces and events that shape your life, your destiny, beyond control. You are nothing in the big shapeless blur they call reality. Nothing. You don't count. Not a thing you can say, or feel, or do, ever, can roll back the dark cloud. Nothing can bring her back. She will never clutch your arm till it hurts. Never shout her rage in the teeth of fate. Never again make Uncle John fidget in his chair, silence Aunt Mary with a look. She'll never even get her bottle of port wine.
She did come home to Uncle John's place, but not to die. She came only to lie cold and dead in a padded, fancy, silken-lined casket, surrounded by two hearse-loads of flowers and a bunch of hymn-singing, word-mumbling people she never knew and wouldn't give two cents for, if she did. I think what hurt me most of all was that she hadn't got her port wine.
Uncle John had bought it and was going to bring it to her that evening, during visiting hours. But visiting hours was too late for her. The thing that broke me down, finally, was what Uncle John had told me. He had said the doctor told him that one of the last things she'd said, before she lost consciousness was:
"Tell Skippy, don't forget what I tole him."
There was a lot more she'd said. She'd talked about all of us, it seemed, in the last few minutes. But that really got to me. I didn't know what she meant by it. There was a lot she'd said. But just the thought that she had considered that so important, so vital to say, like she knew she was dying, and wanted to stretch a hand across the void to me. To touch me after death. It must be what she'd said, low, to me, just before I left that night. About not letting them push you around, and the crowds in the subways in New York. Either that, or she was dredging something up from the time just after Daddy died, and Mother left, when she'd come down to see us at Uncle John's that time.
I thought of the stories she'd told. The way she'd cared for me, stayed up with me when I'd been sick with meningitis, as a baby. The way I'd last seen her, hollering about her port wine. When I finally did bust down and cry, I cried like a damn baby. I bawled like Charlie had. I sobbed like Uncle John had. I racked something up from deep down inside me that'd been buried there for a long time and had grown bigger each day, each week, each month.
It was senseless to cry; I kept saying that over and over to myself. But I couldn't help it. It was all bottled up inside and the lid was off. It all came pouring out. Remorse. Shame. Guilt. Sorrow. Pain. Anguish. Most of all, a sense of loss. I'd lost Daddy. I'd lost Mother. And now Grandma was lying in the cemetery. They'd kept me away from the grave, when Daddy had been lowered into the grave. Now I knew everything that'd happened to him.
When I finally stopped crying, I felt better. I felt empty, devoid of all conscious thought about anything. I felt like a blank record on the top. Like I had one-half of the record grooved and filled with the memories of the past, and like the other half had been flipped over to be cut. A new, blank record. I finally fell asleep.
Aunt Joan and Uncle John had to go back to New York soon after the funeral to help settle Grandma's estate. There was much talk about Grandma's business affairs, her home and furnishings, and, of course, her will. Relatives I never knew we had came from all over the county for the funeral. Some didn't hear of the funeral in time, or were too far away to make it in time. But they kept coming in.
"The vultures gathering for the feast," was the way Aunt Joan put it.
Everyone seemed to know just exactly what should be done with everything. The only thing was that everybody said something different. No one knew whom Grandma had left her money to, but they all had hopes.
You could see the gleam in their eyes, sometimes. Hear whispers out around the cars, in the living room at Uncle John's, and out on Aunt Hatty's front porch. It wasn't Uncle John, or Aunt Mary, nor Aunt Hatty who were the furtive ones. It was the ones you never would've seen, had Grandma not died. The unfamiliar strangers with the strange voices and the hearty handshakes and back-slapping phony friendliness.
It made me sick to my stomach. I was glad to hear that Grandma had a bunch of good attorneys who handled all her affairs in New York. They, along with Aunt Joan and Uncle John, would see to it that her wishes were fulfilled.
Soon the flock of hopeful vultures began fading out, one by one. They were heading for New York for the reading of the will, I was told. School let out for summer vacation, while Aunt Joan and Uncle John were still in New York.
I was staying with Miss Kate and Julie, still. Aunt Hatty had resigned herself to it, finally. I'd stayed at her place for a few days after the funeral, but had gradually moved my things over to Aunt Joan's and Miss Kate's place.
It was the only bright spot in what looked like a dismal world to me then. Julie and Miss Kate made life bearable.
One day, when it seemed as if Aunt Joan had been gone forever, almost, we got a letter from her. In it she said that Grandma had left some of her estate to several charities, foundations, and projects in New York. She told of how some of the vultures were contesting the will. She also said that there were ten relatives mentioned in her will. They were to receive varying amounts of money. Among them were Uncle John and Aunt Mary, Aunt Hatty, Aunt Joan, and myself. She wrote that what tickled her was the fact that I was to receive the most.
The will specified that a trust fund was to be set up for me. She said that even after taxes and all I'd be a rich man, when I reached the age of twenty-one. She ended the letter by saying she'd be back down as soon as they'd beaten the vultures off.
It really made me mad to think about it. All those leeches hanging on, trying to profit by Grandma's death. They'd never done anything for her, when she was alive, not that she needed them, of course. But, now that she was gone, they wanted in on the loot. They didn't care anything about her at all-just her money.
Later on I found out that Aunt Hatty and Aunt Mary had received the details from Uncle John, by phone and by letters. They too, it seemed, weren't too happy with the will. They didn't like the idea of all that money going to charities and the like. Although they were worthy causes, they seemed to think that they, her dear relatives, were the most worthy cause of all. They'd hoped to be rich. Now it seemed they were to be just merely well off. It was really a shame. I really felt for them. They'd worked so hard for it, too.
Miss Kate said I was being unreasonably bitter about it.
"You've got to understand," she said, "that that's the way people are, and there's nothing you can do about it."
She suggested that we go to the beach for a while and try to forget about all of it. It sounded like a good idea to me. Julie was excited by the prospect of spending a few days on the coast. The beach was home for her, and the way she described it she made it sound wonderful. I'd never seen the ocean. I tried to imagine what it would be like from what I'd read, and from the pictures I'd seen. I'd read somewhere that there is always something deep down inside us all, that calls us, eventually, back down to the sea.
We left one Friday morning so we'd be there for the weekend.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
On the last evening of our stay at the beach I walked with Julie along the shore. We felt together the sand, still warm from the sun, between our bare toes. We stood together, hand in hand, and watched the sun setting, the cool wind in our hair. We looked out over the ocean, that cool green, mighty ocean rolling deep. We listened together to the pleasant lap of the breakers washing up upon the North Carolina shore. Laughed at the cries of the gulls, wheeling above the foam.
From somewhere in the distance came laughter, and the beat of rock and roll. I thought of the diversity that could be found in any two hundred square miles of coast. Here you could range from the quiet, peaceful shore, to the dance pavilions, loud with juke-box and the shuffle of feet. You could see the poor living in shacks in the shadows of the millionaire playboys' mansions and yachts. Inland, you could stroll through the towns and cities, all bright lights, and a few miles away there would be old folks reading by kerosene lamps.
Big, mechanized farms, sprawling on either side of the road, and small little plots tucked away out in the brush with the young boy behind the mule and plow. In the mountains the moonshiners played with their copper coils and still shot at the revenuers and their cousins. The preachers, in little orange tents with sawdust on the ground, still moved from town to town, sweating the sins from the pores of the country folk, to the rhythm of the nickels and dimes tinkling in the collection plates.
The big factories could be toured so that any who cared could see filter-tipped cancer being made. I thought of football games and hopscotch played in the dust. Corn fields and outhouses and country schools and kids far from the cities.
But here on the sandy shores it all seemed far away.
Here, as night came, the lights began to twinkle and wink in the distance. A ship went by off the coast.
Julie smiled, looking up at me, her eyes bright.
"I knew you'd like it," she said.
"Do you want to go back to the motel?" I asked.
"No, let's walk down to the pier and see if they are catching any fish," she said.
"Okay, let's tell Kate where we're going. She might like to come too."
It's a big, big world, I thought, as we walked along, hand in hand. It's all out there waiting, just waiting for something to happen. It's all out there-anything you want-waiting. Enough joy and enough sorrow for us all. For some reason I found myself wondering if I'd ever run into my mother. Now, isn't that crazy? The things you think of when you walk in the night!
