He plowed every inch of his cock into her. God how he slammed that meat muscle into her, that lovely, that beautiful, that fantastic, that cock-teasing Iowa farm bitch, Grace Abernathy.
Where the hell did she get off wearing those form fitting sweaters ... those sheer blouses ... those mini skirts which rode high and tight on her rounded little ass; where at times, when the swing was just right, the crotch of her panties could be seen ... always tempting the guys with her youthful, feminine attributes, but never putting out?
Sure. She'd kiss the guys ... even hot, French kiss them ... and sometimes she'd go so far, when the mood struck her, to let them feel her up ... those luscious titties ... even the mound of pubic hairs through her panties ... through her panties ... never under them or permit the sneaking of a finger through the legs so they could feel the warm moistness of that love nest.
Grace Abernathy was considered the cock-tease of all time ... and something had to be done about her.
Bob Sterling decided to take that advantage upon himself.
She'd cock-teased him once too often ... there wasn't going to be anymore of that shit ... that was for damned sure....
She wore a long-sleeved yellow cardigan, smooth on the outside and woolly, fuzzy on the inside ... it matched her brown miniskirt, the hem of the sweater falling down almost to the bottom of her skirt ... yellow boots topped off her curvaceous legs ... her brunette hair fell in waves, several inches below her shoulders and it contrasted exquisitely with the yellow of the sweater. Her red lips seemed to ooze sex ... they did ... only she wasn't giving any.
To hell she wasn't.
Grace was in one of her rare, more interesting moods ... a picnic ... fun and games ... cool fall weather after such a hot summer ... lots of kissing with other guys ... but she was Bob's date and he wasn't going to be cock-teased any longer ... he led her off into the woods, away from all the others ... she felt like laying, stretching out on the cool grass and she liked Bob's hot kisses ... his tongue buried deep in the warm, wet confines of her mouth ... she didn't mind at all when his hands cupped her .covered, but excitingly protruding breasts ... his hands cupping them through the thick sweater ... she wiggled as any other girl might when the sexual heats, the need for release, came. She didn't mind it when his hand slowly went down the buttons on the front of her sweater ... he'd like to have opened each button ever so slowly so that the excitement within him would build and build and build. Then, later, his hand rested on the mound of her crotch, through the material of her panties.
He had pressed his luck and won again.
She let his hand go up under her skirt ... first the soft, tender skin of her inner thighs ... then further and across until it captured the soft mound through her panties ... he rubbed it ever so lightly, feeling the heat and the dampness rising through the soft nylon material ... she moaned a little and her tongue flicked lightly, slowly over the redness of her lower lip, her breath came a bit faster and those succulent titties pushed the wool up and down a bit more rapidly ... her inner thighs quivered while her entire fanny rotated slowly while the mound itself seemed to be breathing in a rhythm of its own under the palm of his hand and the investigation of his fingers ... but each time one of his fingers came close to the edge of her panty leg, to barely touch the hairs, she squeezed her legs together, still quivering; still pulsating ... and Bob was doing a bit of pulsating himself ... the bulge at his fly could no longer be controlled by mind over matter ... it had to be taken care of ... and the pain he felt far back in his nuts told him the same thing ... there was no doubt he would cream in his jocky shorts if he had to take much more of the girl sexing herself beneath him ... he made the move suddenly, in one swift attack ... one hand tore out the crotch of her panties while the other unzipped his fly and he dove it into her, his arrow hitting the target dead center ... he shoved it deep into her guts ... deep, deep, right up to the hilt, and his lips and tongue cut off the scream before she could raise it out of her breasts and up through her throat.
That was when he plowed every inch of his cock into Grace Abernathy ... again and again ... he ripped the first four buttons from the yellow cardigan and her naked titties popped into view ... the first time he had ever seen them ... the first time he had realized she didn't wear a brassiere ... what modern girl, with globes like those, would desecrate them ... confine them into a brassiere?
He sucked them ... he bit them ... not hard ... a nibble ... a tongue lashing, a lip sucking ... she wasn't screaming any longer. She moaned with the pleasure which all the girls had done when he took them, and her inner thighs quivered violent, her breasts tottered forward and back, in and out of his mouth with an ever increasing tempo ... her ass bobbed up and down on the grass, matching his every thrust ... then her arms were tight around his back ... her fingers clawed their way through his shirt; her legs came up and around his back, they threatened to crush the life from his entire frame, but all her legs did was to crush the ejaculation from his nuts, through the shaft and out to splatter the walls inside the girl, and her delightful, exotic, erotic scream told him that she had also climaxed ... but she continued to pump and to shake, and to pump and to shake, over and over again as she experienced climax after climax ... as if she was experiencing all the climaxes she had missed during her cock-teasing life.
Then she tensed ... a look of surprise crossed her face ... her eyes rolled into the whites ... there was pure terror in them; pure horror written suddenly in every tense muscle of her face ... she screamed and the breath which accompanied the scream was scorching hot ... it was no longer a scream of sexual pleasure ... it was of pain, fright, a terrified realization.
Bob spun off the girl and saw the reason for that sudden change of events, and with his cock still hanging through the front of his pants he raced off into the woods; back toward the distant picnic grounds ... he screamed for help at the top of his lungs.
The rattlesnake had bitten in deep, the fangs cut through skin, muscle, vein and broke off at the ankle bone ... a hand reached in, strangled the snake, threw it into the brush and then strangled the ankle ... until the other hand came in with a handkerchief to tie off the artery. A sharp knife made its appearance; it sank deep around the fang punctures. It did not make the usual "X" mark. The fangs were embedded deep. They had to come out. The knife made a complete circle, then lifted out skin, meat, gristle and fangs.
Grace Abernathy would have a tell-tale circular scar on her ankle for the rest of her life ... but she would live ... she fainted.
CHAPTER TWO
Bob Sterling hadn't stolen Grace Abernathy's cherry. He might have found that out if the circumstances had been different and he had stayed around to find out. There was none of the aftermath which usually accompanied such a break-in g-in action.
She had been thirteen at the time of her baptism into the world of sexual delights. But there had been no delight, no enjoyment, no thrill to the occasion, only pain, torture, embarrassment and degradation in the entire affair. She had cried a long time ... nearly the whole night, until troubled sleep had overtook her frame. The boy had been sixteen. Grace budded early in life. She loved sweaters and what they did for her. She was much older looking; developed, so much more beautiful in the eyes of the boys than her girlfriends of the same age.
"Sure," she said as any grown-up might have said under the circumstances. "Why not?" And that's how she came to be riding with the tall sixteen year old boy who took her in the back seat of his car.
It hurt like hell!
She cried!
She screamed!
The boy was not to be put off once he was inside of her ... not until he had finished ... gotten his jollies ... flushed his nuts.
They buried her bloody panties, used to clean off with, along the roadside. Because Grace was carrying on so, the boy let her out two blocks from her house ... she had to walk the rest of the way ... a tortured walk ... two blocks seemed like a thousand miles ... she felt her legs had suddenly become bow-legged. She was sworn to secrecy under the threat of terrible things happening to her ... what terrible things?-What more terrible than she had already been through? But she knew the boy, Freddie, had friends and they might gang up on her ... she almost retched as she thought about all those boys taking her like Freddie had ... it was better that she remained silent. She would not tell her parents anything ... she would sneak in the back door and would be in her tub before anyone even knew she was home ... she had come in late many nights that way ... and her parents always thought she had got in much earlier than she had ... they never really did check up on her ... she was a good girl ... one who certainly wasn't going to get into trouble ... and a good girl is always in bed, safe, early.
Everything about her hurt. She hadn't at that point, completely sworn off boys ... the thought hadn't crossed her mind ... the excruciating pain kept all other thoughts from her mind save one ... that one thought didn't occur completely to her until the following Sunday.
Preacher Taiompkin stood on the stone steps of the aged old wooden, pointed roof chapel ... steps worn in the center by hundreds of thousands of feet passing over them during the hundred or more years of their existence.
He stood there with his black cut-a-way suit, the Good Book gripped tightly in one hand, held close to his breast. There he was with the smile of welcome which never changed over the years ... eyes which seemed to linger on the pretty girls of his congregation longer than at the more homely ones or the older women or the men. He had never married, even though many of his congregation, especially the long-standing married members, would have liked to see their preacher married ... preachers should always be married ... it was part of being a preacher ... a member of the God-fearing society ... but Preacher Taiompkin hadn't seen eye to eye on that subject ... and no one actually came right out and said they would rather have a married man around the church ... they only thought about it in his presence and spoke aloud of it behind their own locked doors ... never on the telephone ... everybody was on that party line, even the preacher ... people gossip in small Townships ... news got around ... that was one subject to be spoken of only between husband and wife ... never in polite company.
The Preacher shifted his feet as he gripped each hand in welcome ... his eyes darting away to Mary Smith or Tully Stevens; even as he spoke the words of welcome to the face which accompanied the hand he shook ... they held a long time on Grace Abernathy that Sunday. It seemed to him that she had suddenly grown into such a lovely young lady; such a luscious front she held beneath the pink organdy dress with the short skirt. And being a virile man and having carefully studied the legs of the girls in the larger cities where he wouldn't be noticed, he could tell that Grace Abernathy had about as beautiful a set of limbs as had ever come down the female trail.
He touched her hand lightly; his fingers barely touching the top of her hand, a cream puff he did not want to squash. "You are looking so ... lovely ... this glorious Sunday morning, my dear child."
Grace avoided his eyes. She was positive he could see what was buried deep in her mind ... she could tell no one ... never must she ever breathe a word ... she must never even think about what had happened between she and Freddie ... some people could read minds ... Preachers were pretty good at reading peoples' minds ... get right down into their souls; no matter who liked it or not ... and come right out in words about what the other person was thinking ... Preachers were the most difficult to put anything over on ... even more than parents.
"Thank you, Preacher Taiompkin." Then she lowered her hand from his fingers and moved on into the church where she would sit with the younger girls in the choir ... she could see the entire congregation from her seat ... her mother and father; so reverent on Sunday; in the fourth pew from the front; the sixteen year old Freddie didn't show that Sunday ... she knew he wouldn't ... he wouldn't have been able to face her ... doing a thing like that to her ... even though she said he could ... he was older ... he should have known better ... he should have said, "No, let's wait awhile;" She would have had respect for a fellow like that ... he probably never would show up any place she ever appeared again; that's the kind of boy he was ... all boys like that never go to church where the girl is ... if they even went to church at all.
The lead-in hymn ... a long one ... Preacher Taiompkin announced the number and the title, and the choir started it off so that the congregation had time to stand up and find the page and then begin opening their mouths to let the words dribble out ... wide mouths ... skinny mouths ... slobbering mouths ... dry mouths ... pointed mouths ... cracked lips ... wet lips ... everybody attempting to out-sing the person next to him ... none of them making the grade ... only one getting louder than the other and that made the first try even harder to reach more depths of the soul ... perhaps the belly ... if God wanted shouters in his Heaven then every person in that congregation was going to make it through the pearly Gates ... especially Preacher Taiompkin who was the loudest of all ... and he could wave his arms to what he thought was in rhythm with the music ... he would have first place at the Pearly Gates.
Then the sermon ... just as loud as he attempted singing..."The Son of Man is coming to seek and to save that which was lost . ... "
What was that he said? She had fallen into the deep wide-eyed sleep which usually took over her spirit about halfway through the sermon. But Preacher Taiompkin had said something which brought her entire conscience to full wakefulness. What had she missed after that? " ... save that which was lost ... ? " She had lost something.
She felt lost.
"There is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed, neither hid, that shall not be known...." Preacher Taiompkin's voice trailed off as her own thoughts took over her brain once more.
He knew something!
It was for sure he knew something. He had read her mind out there on the front steps.
"Whoremongers, and adulterers, God will judge!"
He was directing his words to her. She was behind him with the choir and looking at the back of his head, but he was looking at her through the back of his head. She could feel his eyes burning into her. She wanted to hide behind the chair. She wanted to hide behind the organ. She wanted out of that place. She began to feel ill; to perspire; her hands dug deep into her pubic region over the organdy dress ... tightly ... as if holding her very guts in, which threatened to pour through her violated vagina.
"There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth, when ye shall see Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and all the prophets, in the Kingdom of God, and you yourselves thrust out."
He didn't say "Yourself . ... " He had said "Yourselves." Perhaps he wasn't speaking to her? Perhaps it was just a sermon he had picked?
Preacher Taiompkin was always hitting at the good and evil of the world and of men and women, most of the kids didn't understand the depth of the subjects he was always talking about ... but she did ... she knew about sex ... she knew about sex even before she had been violated ... by that sixteen year old Freddie . ...
Preacher Taiompkin raising his voice, again broke her spell. He had raised his hands to the heavens and shouted at the top of his lungs. "Why sleep ye? Rise and pray, lest ye enter into temptation." And the congregation was on their feet, and there was the last prayer and while Grace and the others sang the final hymn of the holy day, Preacher Taiompkin made his way back to the steps at the front of the church where he would once more bid "good-bye" to each and wish them well for the coming week and to give words of comfort to some of the more aged who had barely hobbled their way to the church; they always did, and to send word to the ill who had not been able to attend ... he was such a good man ... such a pious hypocrite ... Grace didn't know it at that time ... she would learn..."Lest ye enter into temptation."
"Hypocrite ... hypocrite ... hypocrite..." her brain would scream before that day was finished ... but she would keep quiet ... she would say nothing ... he was the preacher ... the man with the word of God under his thumb.
She waited for him in the church, half hidden by the altar. She knew he would return. He always returned to close the large, over-sized Bible on the pulpit ... when he read from the big book he carried the small Bible in his pocket ... he only took that out when he was greeting and dismissing the congregation at the front of the church ... he would return when the last of his "flock" had gone on their way; when the last of the automobile motors were started and the gears shifted to put the vehicles into motion; after he had waved to the last, and then sighed in the fact that another Sunday was over and he could close himself off in his bedroom at the Rectory where he kept his bottle of corn whiskey, smuggled in to him by a couple of whores who knew what the score was ... no one ever saw the Preacher after Sunday services, until he appeared at the local General Store on Tuesdays when he would stock up on his weeks supplies of necessities.
Preacher Taiompkin hadn't expected to find the lovely Grace Abernathy behind the altar. Actually he didn't see her until he had gone behind the stand and almost bumped into her. "My dear child ... what in the world are you doing here?"
There was a momentary irritation to his voice ... after preaching his fire and brimstone, screaming those sermons on Sunday for more than an hour, all he wanted to do was get to his rooms, lock the doors and drink himself into oblivion ... but that would have to wait for the moment.
"All the others have gone. You are the last. Was there something you wanted child?"
"I know Pm the last. I waited. I had to see you alone. I had to see you." She lowered her eyes after the rush of words. All other thoughts were wrong. She knew that he had suspected ... his words had come so directly at her during the sermon. She knew that he knew. She wanted to get into Heaven. Sinners never get into Heaven. She was sure she was a sinner ... the worst sinner of all. Every time the Preacher preached about what men and women did together when they aren't married, he called " ... a damnable sin . ... " She had committed that damnable sin with that sixteen year old Boy ... what was his name? ... Freddie ... how could she ever forget Freddie? She hadn't before. She never would again.
But Preacher Taiompkin also said that if you confessed your sins, held them up for God to plainly see, and not hold anything back, then God would forgive you and you could be " ... whole again in the sight of HIS eyes..." and she wanted to be whole again. She wanted that torment out of her mind. She didn't want the stink of her bloody panties to remain in her nostrils for all time ... the smell of the stuff Freddie had shot into her and all over her pubic hairs ... she had to get away from that smell.
"Speak up child ... you know me to be your friend. Is it some secret? Something you must confess?" He had put his hand lightly on the shoulder of her puff sleeved, organdy dress ... her Sunday best ... a hot hand that steamed directly through the material and seemed to sear her skin. She didn't pull away because she felt he was pulling that hot, sulfa-stinking devil right out of her body ... right out of her soul ... he was the man that could make her whole again.
"I did something awful bad."
He had a grin ... a leer ... she wouldn't have noticed the difference ... known the difference ... he was her preacher and he was already pulling the devil right out of her, even though she hadn't told him anything yet ... the heat going into his hand proved his powers.
"Now, now, dear girl, one as young as you couldn't possibly have done some unredeemable thing."
"I have sinned ... sinned awful bad."
He pulled his great chair up closer to the altar; the chair he used when at those few times during the services he sat down.
He sat down.
He pulled the lovely, young girl onto his lap and he received an immediate reaction in his groin at the touch of the girl, although the shaft didn't fully accept the challenge ... yet. "Then perhaps you should tell me all about it ... how old are you now Grace Abernathy?"
"Thirteen."
"I should have guessed more ... you do look more than thirteen years, you know ... you are getting the appearance of a lovely young lady.
You are well into the bloom of your sweet young life."
"Some ... some of the boys have told me that."
"Some of the boys, is it?"
"Yes ... and one ... one...."
The Preacher licked his lips expectantly. He was quite sure what he was about to hear. "Yes ... yes ... go on child."
"This must be our very own secret."
"Yes ... yes ... yes...."
"No one must ever know ... not even my parents."
"If that is your wish ... Go on now."
"Well I only know one word to use."
"Then you must use it." Preacher Taiompkin felt he knew the general theme of what she would tell, but he wasn't ready for what he really was about to hear ... it would shock him ... he had hoped ... but he thought it to be a futile hope ... but he hoped she would say what he thought she might say. "This boy, he fucked me."
The Preacher's eyes flew open. "He what? No! Don't say it again ... Oh, dear child, you must never use that word ever again. It is not a word which should be uttered through such delicate lips, over such a sweet, lovely, pink tongue, from the mouth of such a gracious, lovely young girl as yourself."
"It's the only word I know that tells what that boy did to me. You said I should use the word I knew. That's what all the boys say they are doing when they have pulled a girl's panties down and put her on the ground and have taken their own pants off and gotten hard all over and stuck their thing ... cock . ... "
"Dear, God . ... " His erection grew quickly....
" ... into you?"
The Preacher thought carefully over the girl's words and when she became silent, he remained silent for a long time but he held the girl tightly to his lap. She had felt the sudden jab in the crack of her fanny, but she could only think that the Preacher had changed positions and something he had in his pocket had invaded her rectum area.
"You must tell me all ... how it happened ... everything. You must not leave out one bit of detail ... do you understand that girl?"
She told him she did, and she told him the entire happening in all the details she could remember and the good Preacher began to sweat and tremble ... quiver and shake ... wet his lips and suck his tongue and the hot breath came steaming through his lips ... the heat seared
Grace Abernathy's neck ... more of the devil was coming out of her with every word he spoke ... not only because of the heat coming through her skin, but with those words ... she felt more relaxed ... more at ease ... the more he spoke, the more she wanted to tell.
Preacher Taiompkin was such a fine listener ... he was swallowing every single word she uttered with such savor ... and the more of the devil he pulled out of her the more his body shook and the more that thing in his pocket invaded her lower region ... it wasn't unpleasant ... his body was accepting all of the heat of the devil that came out of her ... she could feel it through his hand ... his arm which had lowered to encircle her waist ... the palm of his hand rested at the base of the mound which was her left breast ... so youthful, so firm, so delightfully exciting to an old man ... she could also feel it through his other hand which rested on her nylons at knee level ... she could feel it in his body when it pressed close and the left side of his chest crushed her budding breast ... oh, yes, the devil was coming out of her ... she would no longer be possessed by that filthy creature.
She would later know that the devil had gone from her and fully entered into the body of the preacher . ...
That poor, dear, God-fearing preacher. What was it he had asked her to do? Oh, yes.
He lifted her from his lap and stood her on her feet and told her to show him exactly what position she had taken with Freddie ... and she stretched out on the floor ... and then he asked her if she was laying there with her skirt pulled down when Freddie took her and she said, "No..." and pulled the skirt up and removed her panties which she put beside her so she could show the preacher how she used them to clean off when the blood began to flow from her ... and the old Preacher took his mammoth thing out of his trousers and told her to take it in her hand and show him exactly how Freddie had shoved it into her ... it would be the only way that he could be sure how it happened and then he could be exact in his prayers and she did take his tool and it hurt worse than Freddie's had ... it was so much bigger ... but she took it and the more he stabbed back and forth into her and the more that happened, the hotter the fires came through her, and she knew those fires were hurting him because he moaned and groaned ... and then he did the same thing Freddie had done ... he shot something sticky and hot deep into her ... more of the devil must have been forced back into her again ... she didn't like that ... she would think that the devil had gone again when she cooled down ... after her little fanny stopped bouncing up and down on the floor of the church and her inner thighs stopped quivering with that fantastic feeling, and the cool air cooled her.
The Preacher didn't speak to her after he rolled off and lay on his back with his eyes closed and his hands crossed over his chest. . .she knew he was praying ... she wished he would put that thing back into his pants, that wilted worm ... that's what it looked like ... that thing which had been so hard before ... so active ... then so wilted and shriveled looking ... but he was praying for her ... she was sure of that ... he was so still ... the only thing he could be doing was silently praying ... for her.
She slipped her panties on and picked up the small hymn book from the choir chair where she sat during the services, then went out into the late summer morning. It was a long walk home. But she didn't mind. The devil had been taken from her so completely that she felt like an entirely new girl. She felt that once more she could look everybody in the face and no one would ever know that she had been ... so bad ... with Freddie ... Preacher Taiompkin had taken care of all that ... he had made her confess and had done everything as Freddie had done so that the Lord, right there in the house of God, would know exactly what steps were to be taken in seeing that she was saved and that she was a good girl again ... and that some far off day she would enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.
Preacher Taiompkin was found in the same position on Monday when the janitors came to clean up the Sunday mess which was always left in the church after those services.
One of the ladies had the foresight to replace the lifeless worm into his pants and zip him up before calling the authorities.
Preacher Taiompkin had died of a heart attack . ... but Grace Abernathy would know differently ... the devil had been so strong in her that it took all the strength Preacher Taiompkin could muster to pull the beast from her ... the devil had killed him ... taken him in her place ... she would never do with another man as she had done with Freddie ... no other devil would get inside of her so that it could come out and kill somebody else.
She was thirteen!
She knew exactly what had happened! She would never tell another living soul. She really believed that ... that Monday morning.
CHAPTER THREE
Preacher Taiompkin had been dead a long time when Bob Sterling got into her panties. She had been thirteen with the good Preacher ... she was sixteen with Bob. She was seventeen before she dated another boy, and she only did then, because her father had demanded over and over again. ... It became like a broken record.
"You're becoming a god damned wallflower, that's what you are little lady. Look. You're a beautiful young lady now. It ain't because of your looks that the boys don't come around like they did when you were younger ... it's got to be of your own choosing. Now baby that ain't at all natural." Henry Abernathy always used ain't even though he was quite schooled. Isn't, to him was sissy talk. "A beautiful girl like you should be getting ready for the outside world-meet men of the world-someday get married and have kids."
The thought of both appalled her.
"You keep going on like you are and your body will respond with your brains ... it'll start looking like a wallflower. Now you take that riding date with Jimmy Ellison and your other friends Saturday. That's what's good for you little missy."
"You know about that?" Grace Abernathy was truly surprised that her father knew about Jimmy Ellison asking her to go for a ride in his new convertible with two other couples.
"Just figure I know. I also know you ain't liked going out to the country ever since that snake bit you on the leg. Good Lord that was one shot in a thousand. There ain't many snakes around this time of year. It'll soon be winter. The snakes are beginning to hibernate. They ain't something to worry about. Besides-there will be six of you."
"Snakes don't worry me."
"Then what in hell does?"
"Nothing-I just like to ... well ... read, watch television. I like to be alone, that's all."
"You damned well do that alright." He seldom did it, but this time he stuck his finger straight out, pointing it; held it an inch from her chin. "You listen to this." He sounded like some sailor in the movies giving an order to his men. At another time Grace Abernathy might have thought it funny. But her father's mood wasn't a funny one. He was dead serious, and when he was that way, Grace knew she was going to do what he wanted.
"Jimmy Ellison is a fine boy. Playing the game right his father could do a lot for this family, putting his words in the right places for me. And he'd sure do that if he thought Jimmy was sweet on a beauty like you. I say you are going on that ride Saturday and there is not going to be any more said about it."
And there wasn't.
Of course she could have continued to refuse. After all she was seventeen and she could probably do what she wanted. But Henry Abernathy was still supporting her, giving her a good allowance, which he could cut off at anytime he wanted. Grace might have given up boys, but she'd never consider giving up her allowance.
She had just finished adjusting her blue angora sweater set evenly over a pink mini skirt when she heard the horn and a chorus of voices calling to her from the street below her window. "So," she thought silently. "I can keep them away from me. Guess it won't be all that bad. Jimmy is a nice looking boy. But if he lays one hand on me . ... " She didn't finish her thought. She tucked a light pink coat over her arm and went down stairs to the front hall; said goodbye to her mother than dashed out to the car where she put on all the happy airs of a young girl about to enjoy herself on a Saturday afternoon on a ride with friends.
Grace Abernathy was bored right from the start. She wasn't a girl who could hide her emotions for very long and Jimmy as well as the others knew she wasn't enjoying herself. But they also knew she had been a loner for sometime and attributed her mood to that reason. She could be brought out of it. All the others had to do was keep up their masks of joviality ... she would come around to the fun and games of their mission.
How wrong they were.
Jimmy parked the car on the crest of Look Out Peak. Betty and Frank started making the scene in the back seat without even taking their clothes off. Betty had simply slipped her panties down and lifted her skirt. Frank unzipped his pants, took out his tool and had her suck at it hard while he unbuttoned her sweater front and flopped out her lovely breasts ... then he stuck his thing deep into her.
Paul and Donna went off into the brush, and for a short time Grace could see a trail of discarded clothing. The trail ended at the first growth of thick brush. She knew what they would be doing even though she couldn't see them ... then she could hear the sounds of their discordant sexual responses.
Jimmy turned on and he showed how turned on he was when he took his pants and shorts off and stood beside the car with his fully developed tool sticking out in front of him.
"It's our turn," he grinned and stretched his hands toward her angora covered front. She slapped his face a stinging blow which shocked him backwards several steps.
Her eyes narrowed as she glared at the startled boy, but for the moment she didn't get out of the car.
"Now why in hell did you do a thing like that to me?"
"Don't you ever try to put a hand on me ever again Jimmy Ellison."
He moved back closer to the open car door. He glared at her in disbelief. "You must be some kind of a kook."
"Because I won't let you use that thing in me-that makes me some kind of a kook."
"Why in hell do you think we came out here. Look at the others! That's the fun of being alone and doing what comes naturally."
"All you creepy boys have the same line. Is that all you think a girl is worth?"
"Well you don't think we come all the way out here just for the ride, or to look at the scenery, do you? You got to be kidding. Come on girl, get with it. The world is all around you. The guys are for the girls and the girls are supposed to be for the guys. That's the way God intended it...."
Her face reddened. Saliva spittled from her mouth as she spit out her words into his face. "You dare speak of God. What do you know about God? God didn't make you. You crawled around and out from under a rock, that's how you came to be here ... you and that worm you got in your pants there. Don't you ever talk of God to me."
"Shit girl. Don't make out like some kind of virgin. That's one thing you're not ... a virgin. Everybody knows that."
"As far as you're concerned, or anybody else is concerned ... that's just what I am ... I'm a virgin, and I'm going to stay that way ... only you'll never be the one to find out."
He softened at her words and harsh tones. After all he didn't want to lose a piece of ass if he could help it ... do anything about it.
"Look Grace ... everybody else is doing it."
Perhaps Paul and Donna were still doing it out in the brush, but Frank and Betty had stopped at the sound of the slap and were sitting silently in the back seat, taking it all in, sometimes wide-eyed, sometimes open-mouthed, but always silent.
"You won't get anywhere with the boys being the way you are."
"Did you ever think I might not want to get anywhere with any boy ... not you ... not him ... not anybody."
Jimmy's dick had long since wilted. It looked like a longing worm ... quite silly if the situation were on a different basis. "And I thought we were all going to have a far out trip today."
"We're far enough out. Just leave me alone."
He slapped his dick. "You gotta fix this thing up. That's what girls are for."
"You got a hand. Fix it up yourself."
Jimmy doubled up his fist. She slapped him again. He stepped back and let his hand go flat. A moment later he might have taken her head off with his powerful hand. But he didn't follow through. His features grimaced into hard features of total anger. "That did it! Get the fuck out of my car ... hike it back to town if that's the way you're going to shit through your teeth."
Grace Abernathy didn't respond; said nothing. Her features determined, she took her pink coat from the back of the front seat, opened the door and stepped out onto the soft grass. She didn't look around as she made her way to the old dirt road which led back to the highway, even though she could hear Jimmy cursing in the background and Frank and Betty attempting to calm him down. Betty was even remarking that she would take care of him as well as Frank ... he wouldn't go back to town still wanting for some sexual activity.
What the hell did she care.
She was well rid of them. And if her father came up with any more of his static she'd tell him where to get off also. Nobody was ever going to tell her what she should do with her own body ... of course her father hadn't told her anything like that and he'd be as mad as hell, probably tear Jimmy's head off with his bare hands, if she told him what had happened ... but, in a way, he had set her up for the inevitable.
If he came at her with that finger again, she'd tell him just what had happened.
It would be three miles along the old dirt road to the main highway where she could hitch a ride. She knew it would be a long three miles. She could take her time ... walk slowly ... she would have no trouble hitching a ride once she got to the highway ... pretty girls never had trouble getting a ride ... the trouble only came once they were in a car ... she had a hand well trained in the stinging slap ... she'd be home in a couple of hours.
She wouldn't be home in a couple of hours.
She wouldn't be home until the next morning . ... and home wouldn't be home any longer.
CHAPTER FOUR
As she walked along the road, kicking up the dry dust which drifted out behind her, Grace Abernathy thought of something she had heard in church, a long time ago. It was from Proverbs she was sure. "A naughty person, a wicked man, walketh with a forward mouth. He winketh with his eyes, he speaketh with his feet, he teacheth with his fingers." She suddenly found herself saying the words aloud and she stopped dead in her tracks as a voice came from the brush beside the road.
"Forwardness is in his heart, he deviseth mischief continually; he soweth discord.
"Therefore shall his calamity come suddenly; suddenly shall he be broken without remedy."
The young, bearded character who came out of the brush to confront Grace was a tough looking man. He tried for somewhat of a comforting smile. However Grace wasn't having any. Her eyes traveled up and down his frame-a scowl--. He was dressed like a Gypsy, silk blouse of gold, baggy blue trousers tied with a hemp rope which dangled down his right side. His brown moccasins were well worn, beyond repair at the point where one of his toes stuck out, in full view.
"I frightened you." His soft voice belied his appearance.
"I didn't think anyone was around to hear me.
"Never apologize when spouting the words of the Almighty. More of this world should do so. It is the only salvation. His words are the law. It is his words which should be revered. It is his words which must be adhered to or all else is doomed." He came down from his imaginary platform and his smile broke loose again. There was a pace change in his speech. "You were quoting Proverbs. I finished the chapters of your thoughts for you dear young lady."
"You're a preacher of some kind?"
"I minister the word of God"
"So you say."
"I am called Jeremiah." He reached over to pick up her pink coat which she had dropped when he had startled her from the brush. She took the coat from his hands.
"You look more like some kind of a gypsy freak to me . ... " She blinked. "Even if you don't talk like one."
"The heart of him that hath understanding seeketh knowledge: but the mouth of fools feedeth on foolishness . ... That too is from Proverbs ... fifteen: fourteen."
"You sure talk like a preacher." She blinked again and began to soften a bit in her tones. "Do you have a church around here? I never saw you before."
"My temple ... my church is wherever I am. God knows no roof tops when the wisdom of His words are to be distributed to His flocks. The open sky can be as much of a church as a building with its crosses and pointed beams. The words of His teaching is all that is important."
"Now that's silly. A preacher has got to have a church ... all churches have preachers ... no church ... no preacher. That's the way it always is, always has been around here."
"I can readily see why the Lord has sent myself and my flock to this heathen, backward, Godless place in the wilderness."
"Flock? There are more like you?"
"Oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings...."
Jeremiah walked around the lovely girl. His eyes sized her up appraisingly. Behind her, his appraising glances were not those of a man of the cloth. Grace's eyes followed him as far as her wide vision permitted, but she didn't turn around. He stayed behind her for what she thought was a fantastically long time. It embarrassed her ... then complete annoyance stepped in.
"What are you doing?" She still didn't turn around.
"God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise."
A shiver went along her spine. She stammered. "What's that supposed to mean?"
He came around to face her again. There was a slight grin of self esteem sneaking to the foreground through his beard. "Nothing!"
"Nothing?"
"Nothing!"
"Then why did you say it?"
"It seemed like the appropriate quotation to speak at that precise moment. God speaks through me in many ways. His views are always my own. When He commands I speak. When He commands me to act, I act....." Again the preacher-like qualities left his tones. "You do have a fantastic body you know." She blushed.
"Why do you blush. I'm sure you've looked into a mirror from time to time. You know I'm saying nothing you haven't said to yourself at such times. At the moment I am only reflecting your image the same as the mirror ... I speak only the truth as does your mirror."
"Why you insulting . ... " Not only did he cut off the rest of her words but he grabbed her wrist in the middle of its arch swing as her open hand headed for his bearded cheek.
"Bitches, no matter how beautiful, never strike their masters." He let her wrist go. "The earnest expectations of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the son of God."
The motor of Jimmy Ellison's car was heard heading toward a blind turn in the old dirt road.
"Friends of yours?" He grinned what Grace felt was an evil leer. "The ones you were running away from dear girl?"
"I don't want to see them."
"You don't have to. Come on!" He took her dainty hand in his and raced her to a hiding place behind some thick brush beside the road.
They laid flat on their stomachs, extremely close to each other. It was Jeremiah's idea more than hers. It needn't have been either of their ideas. The car passed their position with the occupants laughing up a storm, looking neither left nor right, only having eyes for themselves and their selfish activities.
Jeremiah was the first to sit up. He crossed his legs beneath him. "It's alright now. They are gone along satan's pathway, heading for an unknown eternity of their own making."
She rolled over to look at him, then slowly got her body into a half-assed sitting position. "I wasn't running from them, and I wasn't hiding from them. I simply didn't want to see them any more. They're all a bunch of juvenile jerks. I hate them. I hate them all with all the feeling I have in my heart and soul."
"Ah yes, the soul. Now you are coming deep into my backyard ... it is what I know the most about." He grinned broadly and the tip of his beard seemed to become more pointed as his beaming features pulled the hairs in several directions at the same time. "So one of them made a pass at you."
She turned her head away from him and stared out in the direction of the road ... more so in the direction Jimmy's car had gone.
"Is that so surprising? A girl like you must expect such things. A man has his sexuality. A virile man could hardly contain himself when confronted by the vision of loveliness such as you present. Our God in all his words has always expounded his love of beauty and the beautiful. It is nothing bad to be beautiful. And there is no evil in the man who appreciates beauty and wishes to possess a part of that beauty."
"I don't go for that stuff."
"What ... stuff?" He was putting her on.
"I don't want to talk about it."
"Ah, and there is the rub. You possibly should talk about it ... or at least investigate the charms of what such affairs might bring to you. I suppose there are some people who talk about it continually, but most people act it out rather than waste a lot of time on words, which aren't as much fun as the real physical contact." He laughed and Grace Abernathy thought it was rather musical suddenly ... sinisterly musical ... as if there was more to the sounds than reached her ears.
The laugh ended abruptly and his hand went swiftly behind her head. It was a strong, big hand. It had been strong on her wrist, but behind her head it felt even stronger ... much more powerful. The pressure she forced to her head for release was no match to the gigantic pressure of his hand. Her head was forced toward his, face to face, then their lips met ... his tongue shot into her mouth as her lips were forced open, captured her tongue, her head twisted and turned violently, trying to get away from his masterful grasp, to get his smashing, slashing tongue out of her mouth, to rid herself of his heated nostrils blowing first on one cheek then the other.
She fought a losing battle.
He wasn't about to let her go. He bent her back on the soft grass which was mingled with the tall rough weeds surrounding them ... he still didn't remove his lips from hers ... they were like cemented ... a full treatment of Elmer's glue all . ...
The tip of his tongue touched her palate then snapped directly back to the tip of her own tongue. Her hands flailed at him but her blows were as effective as fly wings striking the tough hide of an elephant. His body alone was enough to hold her, pinned, to the ground, thus leaving his own hands and arms free to . ...
... move slowly, tenderly, lovingly, appreciatively over the angora fur covered breasts ... an enchantment he felt he rightfully deserved ... he'd waited a long time to feel those luscious, youthful, so well formed breasts which he had seen ... once before ... only once, but the thought had remained solidly embedded in his brain ... that part which controlled his sexual urges ... only once and that had' been enough to control his emotions in that one day he would capture them in his hands and that he would capture her body with his and there would be an end to what could be an everlasting torment.
His right hand went up under her sweater and took her brassiere-less breast ... naked and beautiful to the touch. His left hand trailed up under her skirt and his finger sought out and entered the panty leg to first test the softness of her silk-like golden hair which protected her pubic region and hid the opening of her vagina canal.
The soft, moist canal didn't stay hidden from his probing fingers very long. He inserted his middle finger deep into the juicing tunnel.
Suddenly Grace Abernathy wasn't flailing her arms and hands so violently, so determined, so rejectingly. Then they weren't fighting him at all. Her fingers traveled up and down his back and as her thighs began to tremble in building sexual excitement her nails tore at the thin silk blouse which covered his back.
Jeremiah appreciated his conquest. His left hand pulled free through the leg of her nylon panties. He unzipped the fly of his baggy blue pants. His dong, hard as a rock, arched like a bow, the head like a large purple plumb, shot into view.
Grace Abernathy didn't see it. Her eyes were closed. She remembered the thrill she had gotten so long ago from Preacher Taiompkin and her minds-eye also reflected the horror of the time before that with Freddie and horrors again when Bob Sterling attempted to rape her and had succeeded.
But there with Jeremiah, it was hot, enchanting, delightful. All she could think of was "more ... more ... more ... deeper ... oh don't stop now," and she said the words through and over her tongue and into his hot mouth where his tongue continually moved, up and down, sideways, in and out ... the same as what was happening to the lower regions of her moving body ... Jeremiah had made his insertion.
It had been a long time for her. But after that first, quick, plunging stab of pain the worst was over, only heavy, pure enjoyable sex captured her from that point on.
Their rhythm matched as if they were truly made for each other. Her thighs in the upward thrust met his downward plunge in a tender yet violently matching of sexual moans and groans of ecstasy.
Grace Abernathy no longer felt trapped by his lips cemented to hers ... horrified by his twisting tongue, terrified by his plunging manhood. She knew she was captured but this time she knew she was delightfully captured.
She opened her eyes only once and looked to the bright blue of the sky. She saw the little puff clouds which were as white as new snow ... but she only saw them in soft pink. She was drifting along on those pink clouds and the fires within her body, although extremely hot and electrifying, were the most pleasant sensation she had ever witnessed in her whole life. She finally realized what they had been so long ago with Preach Taiompkin which, at that time she couldn't understand.
Jeremiah was teaching her.
Jeremiah would be all the love of all the world for her and she would trust him. She didn't want to come down from those pink clouds. She didn't want that at all. She wanted to remain on that high plane for the rest of her life. She wanted to be in those high, lofty places where the electricity filled her body with all the enjoyments and the delicacies of life her body was demanding.
Her hands dug deeper into his back and she heard him grunting, panting more rapidly. Then she felt the sweat rivering from his face and dropping to her own, where it trailed off into the grass beneath her head. It felt good. So hot! like the heat she felt in her own body, it added to it.
He pumped into her harder, deeper, faster as his excitement mounted. And the more the pressure he forced into her, the higher her pink cloud seemed to drift. It was such a long way back to earth. She didn't want to fall off that cloud. It might hurt ... the drop was so great ... no she wanted to stay up there forever. Her hands drifted down to his rump and she captured a cheek with each hand. She was going to hold him into her for as long as she could, because she knew once he stopped pumping it would be all over, the sensation would rise to a crescendo then drop suddenly and she would drop suddenly from that soft, delicious cloud of hers ... that could not happen ... she had to stay up there ... his pumping, his thrusting was her only salvation ... and again as she had felt that one time with Preacher Taiompkin, Jeremiah was pulling all the devils out of the very soul deep within her being.
Jeremiah was all that was good in the world.
Oh, how she had longed for someone that good. She realized that while still on her pink cloud. She knew then that that was all she had been looking for, why she couldn't satisfy herself with any run-of-the-mill boys who were always chasing her. She couldn't fully realize why she had teased them with her body and her brassiere-less titties under the tight sweaters and the sheer blouses ... but then perhaps she could understand a bit of it now ... she had been looking for Jeremiah all along ... at least since the time Preacher Taiompkin had taken the original devil out of her ... that must be it ... she didn't know ... but that was the only logical conclusion ... all the others had been preliminaries to the final encounter ... How she hated those others with their prying hands ... the false kisses ... the hands over the crotch of her panties ... the fingers attempting to probe up under the leg of her panties ... the slaps she had given them when a finger actually touched her soft golden mound ... how she hated them when she remembered straightening her clothes ... how she hated them when they made her walk home from an uncompleted affair of their own making.
The cloud drifted across the sky ... she had had her eyes open only a moment, but the hated sex acts, the attempted sex acts had all passed through her vision in that one fleeting moment ... then she closed them tight as she felt the juices within her surging violently through her guts and spurting, hot, over the walls of her vagina.
Her vulva snapped hard against his throbbing dick. He was nearly ready. She knew that much. But she also knew that when he finally shot his load it would all be ended. She wanted more.
She couldn't see her pink cloud anymore. But that was alright because there were bright shooting stars, pinwheels, rockets blasting off in the darkness. She realized a second gigantic sensation which overshadowed the first. She had shot off a full charge of electricity that burned with a pride due to Angels . ...
Then his manhood swelled to an enormous size within her and she felt the warm juice hit all the soft, wet walls within her tunnel ... it mixed with her own and at the steaming hot feeling of the ejaculation her eyes snapped open. The sky rockets, the stars, the pinwheels were all gone, and the pink cloud drifted on without her but it mattered little ... there was no great fall ... no sudden dropping through space ... rather she drifted ... a long way, but she drifted slowly, softly back to earth, and Jeremiah had rolled from her to lay with his hands behind his head, on the grass beside her.
Neither of them spoke for a long time. It would take a long time for both of them to come back to the realities of having been completely satisfied ... but from the moment of disengagement, Grace knew that she had been had and she had loved every second of the encounter.
She rolled over to look at him. But he did not look to her. She wanted to speak to him. But he looked so serene she felt she should not disturb him and whatever thoughts and or sensations that he permitted to drift through his brain. She would wait for him to speak first, but she would lay there and look down into his bearded face ... so very plain now with his eyes closed.
"I want you to come with me," he finally said softly to her, not opening his eyes, or turning toward her, his hands still behind his head forming a flesh pillow, his lips hardly moving.
"Where?"
'It is not for you to ask where." He rolled over to face her and his hard eyes became as they had previously been when they first met on the road, sparkling, determined, demanding, powerful, yet almost hypnotic at that point. "You will follow wherever I decide for us to go ... You will be a member of my flock. We will preach God's word. And God's words to me have very definite meanings, and God has not left any of us paupers. He has treated us very well when the understanding is put across to those who are new to my faith. I will explain and you will heed, and you will do all that I say to do. There is no other word than my own because God speaks through me, and there is no denying anything which God demands. I am his reincarnated soul, that is how I can hear Him and speak his words for Him."
"I-I-, " she stammered. She didn't know quite what to say. She didn't have to, he spoke up again.
"There is no other answer for you but 'yes' because I have deemed it that you join with me in the teachings I must give. There is no other answer since I command it to be such. We will travel ... and we will preach, and we of our commune will speak only of love ... of our fellow man and of ourselves ... and you will earn your keep as do all the others of our flock.
"Once many years ago I traveled through the South Pacific Islands. The natives there have learned the way of God ... the right way of God's teachings. There is the King ... such as I am with my flock. Those natives work the full year for their King. At various times they bring all their goods to the King and they stack those goods and other valuables in a community storeroom ... a fala thatched for that reason. And it is the King who distributes to each what he thinks is fitting.
"This is as our commune is designed. All of my flock work for me and I see that all are rewarded ... Does this appeal to your sense of inner values?"
Grace Abernathy forgot all of her upbringing, her previous training. His words and his eyes had hypnotised every fibre of her body . ...
"I-I-" She still could not form the words ... they would not flow over her tongue although they had already formed in her mind ... her lips quivered, but not in a way that she might break out into sad tears at any given moment. If the tears that might be there were to flow they would be tears of complete happiness.
He continued. "No one is a stranger to each other in my commune. "The lips of a strange woman drop as a honeycomb, and her mouth is smoother than oil: But her end is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword. Her feet go down to death; her steps take hold on hell.' " He rolled over on his back again.
CHAPTER FIVE
Grace Abernathy was sure she had made the final and the right decision as she was seated in the flower-painted Volkswagen van that Jeremiah and his flock traveled in. There was very little room for the twelve of them ... twelve in lieu of the twelve disciples of Christ ... Jeremiah the Christ figure ... Grace making a fourteenth ... she wondered how he would justify the added disciple ... but then he didn't have .to justify any move he might take, even though he generally did ... seven lovely young girls ... seven beatnik young men ... but then the girls looked as much the beatnik as the boys with the exception of beards...
The van was parked in a neat grove near the lake where Grace Abernathy had spent many youthful hours swimming. She loved to swim.
She would soon find out that cleanliness was next to Godliness because Jeremiah insisted all his flock swim at least once a day ... later on the road, wherever they could find ample amounts of water for that duty. Grace always had bathed in the morning and at night, therefore Jeremiah's cleanliness orders were no challenge to her.
There had been a moment or two of apprehension when she met the others. The girls seemed pretty enough but she thought, hard. The men were all bearded in keeping with the bible characters. She had seen pictures in certain books which had not been permitted around her father's house where she had seen pictures of such religious beings, but most of them wore long sheets. Jeremiah's flock were different. If it wasn't leather jackets it was clothing which resembled the gypsy movement ... the girls' blouses, flowing skirts and the like.
But the moments of apprehension were soon lost to oblivion. The master, Jeremiah, had brought her to their camp, and his word was complete law. He wanted Grace Abernathy among them, and they had to like it without question. However that didn't stop them from sizing her up both with word and sight.
They took to her. She took to them ... Then she was frightened that Jeremiah might not permit her to stay with them after all. There was a certain initiation which she must accept. All the others had gone through it, and so must she.
No one joined Jeremiah's flock without bringing the wealth of their worldly goods ... plus . ...
"All who have joined me have done the same in their turn. You could not expect to reap that which is good for all of us without contributing."
"But ... but ... money ... I ... I only have about fifty dollars of my own at home."
"Your father could help you."
"You don't know my father."
"We will be leaving before the sun rises in the morning. You will return to your home. You will consider all I have to offer. And you will find a way. Let your trust be in the Lord. Trust in Him and you will find that there is nothing which cannot be accomplished." He sipped from a glass containing a deep red wine. He had given her a glass of wine also, but she had not touched it except for a single pressing of her lips to the rim of the glass. The liquid had been much too bitter for her to take. "However. Not all who come in contact with myself and my flock are of the mind you are. Many do not believe in my direction of the Lord's words.
"It is therefore my suggestion that when you approach your father ... it is best that you do not tell him what the money is for."
"You would have me lie Jeremiah?"
"It would not be lying in the sight of the Lord, since you would be helping His cause. If we are hindered in any way from preaching His word, then that is more disastrous than some small diversion of the truth. Do you see my meaning?"
"I think so."
"Then brush the dried grass from the rump of your skirt and go on your way."
"You will be here in the morning?"
"My vehicle will be on the very edge of town. You shall not have to walk far."
"No. Unless it's across town. I live near the East edge."
He nodded his head. He knew he had her won. He had never failed. There had been many before. There would be many after. There would be many more who would disappear ... in one way or another. "It had been my decision for the East end. The sun rises only in the East. What better place to start the day's activity with the Lord. It is He who has given us the morning, the sun, the sun rise, the light of day. "The Lord is my light my salvation.' "The entrance of thy words giveth light; it giveth understanding unto the simple.' "The Lord shall be thine everlasting light.' 'God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.' 'Ye were sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord; walk as children of light.' Thus, go my sister and seek out all the right words and you will be successful in your mission ... then and only then will you be respected in the light of His words, and then and only then will you be prepared to undertake His demands upon your human being."
The weather had not warmed any even though the sun was noon high in the sky. But Grace Abernathy hardly felt the cold as she made her way down the rutted road from the lake, making her way to the old dirt road which had started her on this new, strange adventure, a something she could never have conceived before her Jeremiah meeting ... none of the warmth of his words left her body as she turned again onto the old road, but absently she slipped the pink coat on over the angora sweater set. It was a complete absent movement and if her mind was not still buzzing around with the events of the past hours she might have wondered how her coat had gotten on in the first place.
She had started out early that Saturday morning ... expecting, she knew not what, and before the sun was noon high in the sky she found herself converted to a religion she still didn't understand.
All she did understand was the love and the sex Jeremiah had given her. And she had felt his words going, traveling deeper within her being each time he uttered new phrases. She found herself wishing she didn't have to leave the commune for a single second.
"All who have joined me have done the same in their turn," his words echoed in her mind, almost a shouting echo, a demand. "You could not expect to reap that which is good for all of us without contributing."
"Of course. It's only fair," she spoke aloud. She might have been trying to convince herself, but she meant every thought of it.
And as she thought she let her hand go through the open coat and her tightly pressed fingers rubbed softly through the front of her skirt, directly over her pubic mound ... softly at first ... and she didn't realize it but the hand worked a bit faster with each step, almost in rhythm with the step, and the pressure gained with the renewed tingles that zipped up and down her spine ... zipped from her abdomen around to her spine, shot to the base of her brain then with the speed of a prairie fire shot back to her love nest between her legs.
The first fire like sensation almost made her stumble. But again she had not realized she had stumbled ... automatically she regained her footing, never having taken her hand from her crotch or missing a stroke of her rubbing motion.
She was completely entranced as all the thoughts of Jeremiah pressing his body, his thing, into her. She couldn't erase those thoughts from her mind. She didn't want to. She felt him so hard, so thick inside her. It was happening all over again. She wanted to close her eyes. But there was the road ... and there was the highway perhaps a hundred yards ahead of her. She realized the cars on the highway ... and she realized the flame in her crotch ... and she realized she didn't want to arrive at the highway ... not just yet ... there was some unfinished satisfaction which she had to accomplish first ... she had to please Jeremiah, even though it was only a pleasant memory ... she wanted to please herself. Was that wrong? It was a thought she could separate from the rest of her confused mind.
But if it was wrong. Why then did it feel so good? Why did she want to complete the action. Why did she want to satisfy herself with her hand, remembering all the time what Jeremiah had done to her?
The thought was more than overpowering. But that was the only thought she could bring to the foreground. It was overpowering, and there was nothing she could do but heed the call for her own satisfaction, for her own lust.
She had done such things as a little girl. But at that time she thought it was all bad. She had done it after the Preacher Taiompkin affair and she still felt, possibly knew it was bad .--. .but she had done it and there was a great release of tension both from the nerves of her body and the waves of torment from her brain.
After the child-like actions and climax she had always felt guilty, but it had not stopped her from using her fingers again. She had hated the boys. But she hadn't hated her finger. She tried to conjure up what mind's-eye pictures she had witnessed at those times, but the pictures eluded all possibility of forming.
There was no eluding this time. Jeremiah was there and he was in her, and he was pushing up and down on her front, and one hand was up under her angora sweater and the nipples of her breasts were harder than she had ever had them before. It had all been the loving making of Jeremiah, and even though he was a far off dream, he was right there with her and his great tool was inside her.
She spun quickly off the dirt road and into the brush just twenty feet from the main highway and the noise of the zipping cars.
The highway was not realized. She heard no cars. She didn't hear the screeching of brakes and the resounding crash of fenders crumbling against rear end bumpers. They were out there in another world. They were not of her world ... her world of self indulgence. She didn't know when she sat down on the old log and pulled up her pink mini skirt and pulled aside her panty leg ... she didn't know when she felt the panty leg was too tight and she couldn't do what she had to do properly, thus she removed the restricting panties and put them on the log beside her.
Her finger found the vulva ... the vulva first, then a deep insertion, then the vulva ... the insertion ... the vulva ... the insertion ... over and over, slowly, moderately ... then faster ... her upper teeth pressed hard over her lower lip ... her eyes closed tightly, forced as she tried desperately to bring Jeremiah's picture in more clearly ... the faster, the deeper she inserted her long finger into herself the plainer his picture became.
She bent as far backwards as she could without falling off the log ... as far as she could and still keep the finger in the place where it had to be ... as far as she could so that the finger, then two, then three fingers, could go in the full distance ... touch what she thought was the rear walls of her vagina canal ... retrace the inward movement to the outside, wiggle at the vulva then return.
The strain on her back would tell in time, when she had finished. But at that moment there was no pain, except the delicious pain of sexual contact, sexual enjoyment with fingers and memory pictures.
God how she loved Jeremiah.
A chance meeting? Was it a chance meeting? Something had brought them together. Something had put her at that spot at the same time he was there. Had he been watching all the time. Had he seen her with the others in Jimmy's car? She would think these thoughts later. But for the moment there was only her moving, her twitching, her sliding, her investigating fingers, and the loving pictures of the man she knew she loved.
There would never be anything she would not do for him. She knew that. And in the heat of her sexual manipulations she swore that aloud. The words were nearly a scream. Those on the road could have heard her distinctly were it not for the sound of the overpowering motors. She swore it as if she were swearing her complete allegiance to her God. And indeed she was swearing her allegiance to her God. "Let no man put any other before Me." Those lines crossed her mind as the electrical fires bounced around in her groin. But she was putting everything out front. Jeremiah was her God. Had he not said that he was the reincarnation of the soul of Christ? Then he was God. Had he not said that God spoke to him, put the words into his vocal chords so that they might be repeated for all to hear, for all to be more wise, to learn from? This was so. Jeremiah was her God.
Her eyes looked to the heavens and the puff clouds were still pink. Not quite as bright a pink as they had been when Jeremiah had laid, pressed his body on top of hers. But they were pink and they were cotton, soft, softer than cotton, they were pink angora like the blue angora sweater set she wore. That was soft. Angora was the softest of all. She loved angora sweaters. She had several. She wondered if she might be permitted to take them with her when she joined the block ... her mind wandered, but it was all beneath the flame of sexual needs burning her body.
She felt the climax coming rapidly. She didn't want that to happen ... not just yet ... it was the same feeling as when she didn't want Jeremiah to complete his sex act because she would fall from the pink clouds back, that long distance to earth, the reason she had clung so desperately to the both cheeks of his rump ... tried to cause him some measure of pain in an attempt at holding him back. Eventually it had to come ... she had to climax, but not yet ... "God," she screamed aloud. "Not yet. Don't let him finish before me ... only with me ... at the same time. This time together. He and me. Together ... Help me in your divine light. Let us together mingle our juices ... make me his and his alone. Make me a baby by him. I am the Mary and he is the Christ. There will be the reincarnation of bodies and souls alike. I've got to have it all with him. My mouth is his to do as he wills. My breasts are for him to suck as a baby. My cunt is his for the taking. His juices shall be mine in any way he will give them to me. I have not lived until this very day. I have not had a mind of my own ... even though it is in his complete control, but it is because of owning my own mind that I can give it to him ... give myself willingly to any advances he wants . ... "
She snapped forward with the first surges of her climax. Her fingers stopped suddenly, pressed, held tightly against the far inner walls of her canal . ... Her legs froze, stuck straight out in front of her. Her thighs had tightened first, but as her legs shot out, suspended in thin air, her thighs froze in that state of suspended animation which preceded the wet, the juicy, the thick climax. ... Then came the surging release. Her thighs jumped, bumped, wiggled around on the log. There would be red streaks, scrapes, bruises from the rough, hard wood of the log, but she could care less. She was having thrill after thrill as she performed, realized, enjoyed, climax after climax ... eight in all, before her legs slowly became alive again and lowered to the ground.
She was panting, gasping for air as her eyes opened and closed several times to blink back the tears of joy, the tears of relief, the tears of pure satisfaction came streaming down her cheeks.
She took deep breaths, deep into her lungs. The cool air, mixing with the searing hot steam which had stored up hurt, caused her to choke several times before the cool air became the conqueror and eased the pain until it was gone. She really didn't mind that kind of pain. It had come from all that pleasure ... but then how would one know pleasure if there had not been some point of pain to measure it by?
Grace Abernathy knew both for the second time in so short a period of time on that Saturday afternoon. It was something she knew would never escape her again. She would be Jeremiah's slave in whatever he wanted ... whatever he wanted her to do ... to accomplish ... she could challenge the world as long as she could come home to his world.
She reached beside her and lifted up her panties from the log. They were still damp from the perspiration which had drenched them ... perspiration caused by her actions on the road ... the rubbing ... the body heats ... the lubrication juices which had been overworked in the fury of her preliminary to the actual sexual attack ... they were cold, but she put them on anyway. The cold disappeared ... the heat in that area had not dispersed as quickly as had the heat in her lungs.
She sighed, then made her way out of the brush which had hidden her from the road and the main highway. She opened the front of her coat so that her luscious figure could be seen and studied by the passersby, the lovely rounded fanny in the tight skirt, the luscious, exotic breasts sticking the fuzzy wool forward and upward to prove further attributes. She knew it was a come on ... and she also knew it was the quickest way to attract some driver.
"Why me? Why did he choose me? He never knew me before? Why me? Why did Jeremiah choose me?" She would ask that question over and over in the days to come.
It would be answered ... one day.
CHAPTER SIX
Grace Abernathy took a long shower before the evening meal. She thought that might be the best time to approach her father about getting some money. She still hadn't thought of a good reason for why she wanted the money. But something had to come to her. It was the most important mind searching she would ever have to do.
But then as the soap cleansed the golden hairs of her love nest a verse from her own reading of the Bible came to her. It was in her own voice, the voice, the silent voice of her mind. But it was as strong as if she were speaking to herself aloud. It was a verse which she remembered because she thought it was so bad when she had played with herself in her youth. She had come across it and it stuck with her, but then had gotten lost in those dusty files of an ever active brain ... the new things over-shadowing the old, the seemingly unimportant which might suddenly become the all-important due to some sudden surge of activity in that specific direction.
"Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers; nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God."
She stood paralyzed with the luke warm water pouring over her. She hadn't meant to get her hair wet but the paralysis didn't take that into consideration. She simply stood there frozen, her hand and soap still at her crotch, her eyes, wide eyes, staring straight to the blue tile of the shower stall.
She had taken of herself. Would she not be welcome in the kingdom of God? Impossible! She was with he who spoke only the words of God. He would intercede for her. She would tell him what she had done and he would be with her. He would take her by the hand and enter her into the kingdom of God. Jeremiah was a prophet, the same as Christ and his followers who went on in his work after him. Jeremiah was the modern follower. He would know what she should do. "Repent," she said half aloud. "I'm sure there is some repentance I can do to cleanse my soul the same as soap cleanses my body. Jeremiah will tell me. He will show me the way ... I know he will."
And with that she put the punishment thoughts from her mind. She had to keep it clear for what was yet to come. Jeremiah certainly couldn't help her if she was not with him ... if she let him down ... if she didn't come forth with her contribution to the commune. Now more than ever she had to think up some idea to have her father open his wallet.
It was cold in the bathroom even though the electric heat was going full turn. She dried herself off between shivers and made an attempt at drying her hair but even at the outset she knew that was impossible. It was going to remain wet, then damp for most of the night.
Naked she stood in front of the full length mirror and tied a light towel around her hair when she got most of the water out of it.
Yes ... she was a lovely girl. She lifted her breasts one at a time. They were full. The rose bud tips cried out for admiration. "I am beautiful," she said half to herself. And she smiled when she remembered Jeremiah's words about what she thought when she looked into the mirror. The only thing he didn't know, she mused, was just how many times she had admired her figure, both aloud and silently when she looked into a mirror, naked or clothes. She knew what she had. She knew she wasn't going to have it defiled by the low-life creeps she knew at school.
School! The thought hit her like a ton of bricks. There was still a year before she finished high school. Her father would go into a ranting rage when he was told that she was leaving for parts unknown. It was of the utmost importance to him that she graduate. He'd certainly spouted off about it enough. That rage might lead to real violence if she insisted. No! He couldn't know she wanted the money for the purpose of leaving, and leaving was the only thought she had toward the process of getting to him and his wallet.
There had to be something else!
She found that something else!
It was quite unexpected! And when that something else came she didn't have to think any longer. It had all been laid out for her. He could afford it. She wouldn't be leaving her mother and father penniless. But there was enough which would put her in the right light for her master Jeremiah, and it would probably be more than he or the others expected her to bring.
It was wrong to steal, even from your own parents. But she didn't feel that it was really stealing. Perhaps borrowing, but not stealing. Sometime in the future she could return what she had borrowed from them.
"What would Jeremiah say in a case like this. Perhaps he would think about Corinthians. Now what was that?" It was the silent thought waves which caused her to seek out the old, the great family Bible in her mother's room. She thumbed through the pages and read through the verses until she came to the one she had remembered and she softly read it aloud. "God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able;" she frowned in disappointment, but then the roses came back to her cheeks as she continued verse 10:13. "but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it."
She was tempted. She would escape. And she could above all bear it ... Jeremiah would be there to help her. If she lied, he knew it was all for the good. If she took, she also knew it would be for the good of all ... the commune ... and the God she loved ... and the man who could justify her every action ... there would always be Jeremiah above all.
Henry Abernathy and his wife were in the living room, a pleasant room with a large color television set which was generally turned on when the father was home from work. He liked the western shows, Bonanza, Big Valley, and all the others which came on during the early evening hours ... re-runs to be sure ... but shows which had been missed during the prime time hours because his wife Lita and of course Grace liked to watch the major movies presented at those times. Getting right down under his skin he too appreciated the major movies ... after all ... there would be re-runs, and they would come on before the movies. He felt he could always wait out the seasons. Time was the healer of all missed television programs.
But the set was not turned on.
"No television?" Grace remarked casually as she entered the room in a swirl of the ruffled skirt she wore, topped with a frilly blouse; not really proper for that time of the year, but once she had dried off and the cold fell away from her body she realized just how warm the house was. Much too hot for sweaters and skirts or slacks.
Henry Abernathy looked up from the stack of money he had on the coffee table in front of he and his wife. "Not for a while yet sis," he said softly. "Why don't you watch the one in your bedroom for a while ... until supper time anyway. There ain't no color this time of the day anyway, except the commercials. We are quite busy right now."
Her eyes fairly bugged at the sight of the money on the coffee table in front of her mother and father. The eye-bugging was not caught by her father's quick glance.
"Alright," she said softly, and went back into the hall which led to the upstairs bedrooms. She didn't mount the stairs. Instead she stationed herself at the partition which separated the living room from the hall. She couldn't see them, and by the same token they couldn't see her, but she could hear every word that was spoken.
"Well, honey," she heard her father say. "What do you think?"
"You've already made up your mind, haven't you Henry?"
"I guess I have. What the hell I've always wanted the damned thing and now that we have the money, what the hell, it's time to do a few of the things we've always wanted to do. Look, honey, we're not getting any younger ... and besides, this grand is only a down payment. It's substantial so that the rest of the payments are within reason, within our budget ... we'll really enjoy a house car."
"I suppose you really are right." She linked her arm through his and laid her head on his shoulder. "Of course I'm all for it. Grace will like it too ... getting out and seeing some of the country. And then too there is always this house to come back to when we want."
"That's the spirit." He flushed the bills out fan like. He admired them longingly, lovingly. "Took a long time to save this. Kind of good to see it all at once. Now listen to me talk. Loving a thousand dollars. We could match a few more like it if we had to."
"Of course you could. But every one of them took just as long for you to earn ... and save. It's not easy saving these days."
Grace felt a bit of apathy from that remark. But her mind was made up. She had to go through with it ... her plans for that money didn't include a house car ... a Volkswagen yes ... but not a house car.
"When are you going for it?"
"First thing in the morning."
"You always like to sleep late on Sunday."
"So this is one Sunday I won't. We'll watch the late night commercials ... and the very early ones in the morning ... take our pick and get to it. I don't want any of us changing our mind."
Lita laughed lightly. "I don't think there's any chance of that. When you make up your mind ... well you've made up your mind." She looked at the bills and sighed. "But I do wish you'd have gotten a bank draft. I don't like having that much cash around the house, even for one night. If someone on the outside heard about it we could ... well ... actually be murdered in our beds."
It was Henry Abernathy's turn to laugh ... it was a booming laugh. "Now who is going to hear about it. There's only the three of us in the house. You've seen too many mystery shows on television."
"But it does happen."
"Sure. But not here. Tell you what. I'll go right now to the study and lock it in my desk."
"Anybody could open that lock on your desk with an Emory board."
"So, that's the way the cookie crumbles."
Grace heard her father get up from the couch, and the shuffling of the money and she knew it was time she got out of there. She had heard all she needed. From there on, it was all down hill. She moved swiftly, silently down the hall toward the kitchen. It was a swinging door, but she made sure the door didn't swing back and forth as it usually did after she entered. She went to the refrigerator and took out a tomato which she was cutting when her mother came in.
"You'll spoil your dinner."
"Not with a little tomato. After all, mom, I'm a growing girl." She knew she wasn't going to tell either of them that it would be the last meal she would have in that house.
Dinner was a quiet affair. Grace tried to show all the overtures of appreciation about the new house car which would soon become an intricate part of the family's entertainment activities. She raised their hopes about the interest she would have in traveling ... the new things they could do during the summer months and school was out "Why we might even make a trip to California," advanced Lita as she turned full on Grace. "Grace has always wanted to see Hollywood and some of those big stars..." She grinned to match Grace's grin. "You'd like that, wouldn't you dear?"
It was the farthest thought from her mind. But Grace kept up the pretext. Then the dinner was over. The movie on television was a good one, but Grace didn't see or hear it even though she faced the set directly. Her mind was out by the lake, and her mind was still concentrating heavily on the muscle in the crotch of her lover's trousers, and of the Volkswagen that would be at the edge of town, the East edge, just as the sun came up ... and of the thousand dollars locked, insecurely, in her father's old roll top desk ... a legacy from his great grandfather, a something which was treasured above all else by her father.
Then the movie was over. Grace went upstairs and got ready for bed. It was a good disguise. No one would know that there would soon be a changing of the clothes.
She knew that both her father and mother would watch the late news, and then some of the car commercials he had indicated, and she used that time to good advantage. She packed some of her clothes in a small suit case. She did ponder over her collection of angora sweaters, as she knew she would. But she only took three of them. Two slipovers. One in white and one in black, and a cardigan, black because it would match both of the others. Then a few other things which would be the necessities of living life without going stark naked.
She didn't take the fur coat out of the closet because she knew her mother would look in on her before she went to her room ... and she put the filled suitcase back into the closet, then tucked herself into bed.
Her mind raced a mile a minute there in the darkness of her room, but even with all the anticipation and her thoughts of the future there was no holding back the sleep. When her mother looked in more than two hours later she was sound asleep. Had it not been for the creaking of the old door Grace would never have made the sun rise meeting.
But there was the creaking of the door, and Grace snapped bolt upright on the bed. She rubbed her eyes and caught the last inch of the hall light as the door closed securely behind her mother.
Grace knew she didn't dare to lay back. She would be asleep again. She got up and went to her window, opened it, and breathed in some of the deep, cold air ... it would soon be snowing ... it was that kind of weather. "I wonder what kind of weather it will be where Jeremiah will be taking me?" It was a silent question, but one which made her beam with anticipation and curve her arms around her front as she hugged herself tightly.
"Anyplace will be fine weather as long as I'm with him. Nothing bad can come my way as long as I'm with him. It just couldn't. God protects his own, that's what he said ... God protects his own."
She crossed to the closet, dressed quickly in a heavy sweater and slacks, high boots and her beige fur coat. She lifted the suitcase and put it beside the door. She wanted the minutes to fly.
How long had it been since her mother had opened the door then gone to bed? Ten minutes? Fifteen minutes? She had to wait for them to sleep. Her father usually dropped right off, but her mother, sometimes didn't sleep very well.
She could hear the slightest pin drop any where in the house. Grace hoped that this was not going to be one of those nights. There wouldn't be much noise in opening the desk, she had done it before, as a lark, just to see if she could do it, she did it with a thin fingernail file ... but there would be a little noise ... and mother did have sharp ears.
She'd known it earlier and she knew it even more strongly at that point. There really was no turning back even if she wanted to.
She thanked her father dearly half an hour later for putting the heavy carpeting on the staircase. There wasn't a sound. There was no sound as she opened the door to the study.
She didn't dare to turn on a light. Even with the drapes over the window some of the light might shine out into the night, and such a beam could be seen from the window above, her parent's bedroom ... winter or summer her father always had the window drapes pulled open and the window itself open a few inches ... he couldn't sleep in a stuffy room. "Air was meant to be breathed ... and the good air is all outside ... so the windows should be open," he had often opinioned..."More people keep their windows open, no matter what season and you'd sure as hell see the percentages of colds drop off in a sharp nose dive."
She wondered why such far off speeches came to her mind ... they meant nothing. The past was the past ... there was only the future ahead of her. She wanted that future. She hated most of her past. She didn't hate her parents. But she had had enough of them. She didn't want her father telling her what to do. He wasn't her God. Jeremiah was her God now ... along with his great God.
She took the fingernail file from her pocket, where she had put it when she lifted it from her dressing table. She cautioned her way through the darkness and quickly found the desk. She ran her long fingernail under the roll top and the desk proper until she found the lock catch. She held her finger there and inserted the file. There was a slight click and the lock was open. She rose up and listened carefully for any sound which might come from above.
There was none.
Carefully she rolled up the top. The money lay in an even pile. There was no paper around it. It was stuffed in no envelope. Just those lovely bills all piled right out there for her ... dark she couldn't read the figures, or even see the color. But it was money ... it felt like money ... it smelled like money ... and it was her future.
She crammed the bills into her pocket, rolled the top down and heard the lock snap. That was a second snap she hadn't counted on. It was a bit louder than when she had opened it. She froze. Her ear cocked toward the ceiling ... it stayed that way for several long moments.
It was not one of her mother's sleepless nights. There was no sound.
Again, holding all her caution with all the skill of a night stalker, she crossed the study and went out into the hall. She left the door open. She didn't want to take the chance of the door latch making any sound. She would do the same with the front door. She would not leave it wide open. The cold would surely bring her father down stairs long before she wanted him ... just an inch ... just so there would be no sound of the door closing...
It was cold outside. Perhaps it wasn't far to the Eastern end of the town ... six or eight blocks, but from the outset she knew it would be the longest blocks she had ever walked ... walked she did ... walked she had done so many times in previous years ... but never such a walk as that blistering cold morning.
She had difficulty holding her fur coat collar up around her neck with one hand, the other being occupied with the almost heavy suit case ... but it had to be done ... she would suffer more for her God, she was sure of that ... but she didn't like to suffer until it meant something. But then she calmed herself in the realization, her realization, that she was really suffering for her god, already suffering, because she was going to him. Then it was there.
The bus stop loomed up before her. She would wait patiently on the bus bench. That way she couldn't miss Jeremiah and the wagon, and on the other hand he couldn't miss her.
Her hand drifted into the pocket of her fur coat and found the money secure ... intact. She beamed and felt her nearly frozen features crack, so from then on she kept the facial muscles as quiet as possible ... she had put the small suitcase on the bench behind her, therefore she used both hands to pull the collar up as far as it would go and she buried her face into the soft warm fur.
She only released that hold for a brief instant an hour later to look at the dainty watch on her left wrist, a present from her mother and father when she graduated grade school ... an expensive present ... it had four diamonds instead of numerals at the fifteen minute points...
There was four hours until sunup...
It would be a long wait.
She would wait ... she would think and she would plan ... but then what could she plan?
How could she plan when she didn't know what was in the future ... what the plans her God, Jeremiah, had in store for her. She would wait.
CHAPTER SEVEN
"He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me." Jeremiah quoted the verse ten-thirty-seven from Matthew when he saw the first tears welling up in Grace Abernathy's eyes. He knew from the few sketches of dialogue she had advanced, why the tears had come. And there was another verse he felt appropriate for the occasion. It came from 12 Corinthians. "The children ought not to lay up for the parents, but the parents for the children."
Jeremiah had not taken his eyes from the road ahead but as he spoke, Grace turned to look at his profile from the seat beside him. She dabbed at her eyes with the back of her hand ... the back of the hand was quickly changed by a near-dirty handkerchief handed to her by one of the girls who sat on the floor in the back of the van.
"You'll soon get over it, honey," said one of the girls ... named Kiki ... red head . . luscious body ... her breasts nearly popping over the top of her low cut blouse. None of them had anything heavy on; Jeremiah had the car heater going full blast.
Grace didn't indicate a "thanks," simply because she didn't think of it, but then again Kiki didn't expect one ... she had gone through the same thing many times before ... she had even had her turn once ... also in the front seat beside the lord and master, Jeremiah ... she turned back to a horror comic book she had begun reading as soon as the daylight permitted.
The dabbing at her eyes didn't last long. Of course there had been tears, but she tried to fight them back from the very outset and with all her might she kept them down to a minimum. She had turned her head back to look at the road ahead as soon as the handkerchief had been given to her. It seemed the only thing to do. Jeremiah had ended what he had to say and was quiet. For the moment there simply seemed nothing to say. All the others were quiet also, although Grace had the queer feeling at the nap of her neck that eyes were staring at her ... that inner sixth sense. She fought continually from turning around. She would like to have some conversation with some one, any one. But since they didnt appear in the same frame of mind she decided to keep quiet and let the events fall as they may.
Jeremiah was a punctual man, there was no doubt about that. When he said sunrise, he meant sunrise.
The hours on the bus bench had been long ... rather, the minutes seemed like hours and the hours like dark days ... and it was cold ... she almost thought, "cold as hell", but hell wasn't cold, was it?
There had been a great threat of rain during those hours. The clouds had come up suddenly during the early evening. But again the Lord was with her. The rain held off until just after she had entered Jeremiah's colorful van ... then it really came down. At that time she had wondered what she would have done had the rain started. There was nothing she could have gotten under. She'd have been wet to the skin. The fur coat certainly wouldn't have repelled a drizzle let alone a real rain ... a. heavy downpour which she looked at through the windshield and the sweeping wipers.
However, it was inevitable. The sun peeked over the far eastern horizon and with its coming, so came Jeremiah's van.
He had pulled it to a stop very close to her, on the wrong side of the street. He got out and confronted her as she stood, picking up her suitcase at the same time.
Jeremiah wasn't about to help her with her suitcase. He never helped anyone with their luggage. He never had.
"Our soul waiteth for the Lord: he is our help and our Shield." He put his hand on her shoulder. "You have decided to become a follower!" It was a statement of fact, not a question.
"I've been here all night." She shivered against the cold which had settled in her bones ... a cold much more intense then the air around her. "I thought the dawn would never come."
He turned on his full preacher tactics. "I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life."
Her face didn't crack against the cold when she beamed that time. Instead a sudden warmth resided there. "I'm tingling all over. You're really here. Everything is alright now."
His eyes narrowed. "Everything?"
She didn't understand what he meant. "Well ... sure ... You're here! I'm here! I'm going with you. I want to go with you ... learn your teachings ... find those in the world who need the word, just like you said ... My..." She faltered, but quickly regained her speech, but through trembling lips. "My parents ... I'll miss them." Jeremiah let that one pass for the moment.
"There was certain arrangements which you were to make ... before we proceed with your training period,"
She got it. "Oh ... Oh, yes..." She dug her hand into the pocket of her fur coat and came out with the wad of bills. She didn't look to the money, but simply stretched it out and he hungrily took it into his meaty hand.
His eyes swelled, then sparkled as he thumbed through a few of the bills. He looked to her twice and the same amount to the bills. Then on the third time he looked to the girl he spoke and his tone held a sparkle of amazement. "How much is there here?"
"A thousand dollars." She had spoken softly as if she felt she might be over heard by some nearby, hidden adversary.
"A thousand..." He cut himself off. But he hadn't held down his tones.
She nodded.
"My dear sister Grace Abernathy. You have done yourself up proud. You have made yourself radiant in the eyes of your Lord ... You are more beautiful to me, then I had ever dreamed."
He took the suitcase from her hand, that something he had never done for anyone before. "A thousand dollars," he mused, this time nearly under his breath, then he spoke up. "Come ... come ... your ordeal in this cold must have been a terror. Get into the van. It is warm there. You must not catch cold, become sick, you have so much ahead of you ... things you have never dreamed of doing, performances designed by the divine, issued by myself. Come ... come ... quickly ... there is a long road ahead of us this day."
The headlights of the van sought out only a few yards in front of them through the torrential rain. Jeremiah was not a man who liked to drive his vehicle very slowly. But he had no choice. It was a state highway alright, but one of the most winding ones in the entire state, with, at times, cliffs on both sides of the road. He wasn't about to drop that van over the edge, so he was forced to keep his foot lightly on the gas pedal ... time was dragging at his senses.
"Son-of-a-bitch'n rain," he suddenly screamed and Grace snapped her head quickly in his direction.
Those words had come from the mouth of the leader, the master. She had heard them before, at other times, from other people, but not from such a holy man. It seemed inconceivable. The words didn't fit his character. Just another man with a beard, certainly. But not the modern day prophet, Jeremiah. As fast as her head had turned in his direction she changed her glance to look back at the twleve others in the van. None of them had bothered to look in Jeremiah's direction. They remained as they were, doing whatever they had been doing. They didn't seem to care. It was as if the wordage was nothing new to them.
Grace was to be shocked further.
"Cock-sucking rain. Fuck-ass bad for business." He meant what he said. He could care less if Grace Abernathy liked his feelings or his words. Fact of the matter was that he didn't even give her a thought at that time. The rain was messing up his schedule. He didn't like things messing up his plans. Saturday had been such a glorious day. How in hell could the blue sky turn to rain clouds in such a short time.
"Fuck this Iowa. I knew we should never have come here in the first place. Fuck the corn. Fuck the fields. Fuck the cunts. Fuck the whole fucking place."
Grace's eyes were wide. Her mouth dropped open. She was speechless ... amazed ... shocked ... terrified ... astounded.
A chubby boy, Tensite, sitting in the far rear of the van looked up only briefly from a mystery-sex magazine-with pictures-and spoke matter-of-factly. "Ah, Jeremiah, it wasn't all that bad."
Jeremiah swung his head around, snapped out his words, then snapped his head back toward the road ahead again. It was quite apparent he was beyond anger. He could have killed in the anger of that moment. "What the fuck ain't so bad?" He choked over his words, then regained his angered voice. "We could be in the big town by tonight. Sioux City. And there never was a riper town. Right on the border of the Dakotas. Ripe I tell you. A mint there. I could have you all on the street by eight ... now this fucking rain. We ain't going to see it before daylight ... a whole day and a night wasted."
Grace was taking it all in even though she didn't understand what it meant. But the words Jeremiah had used. That troubled her deeply. And why was he so violent because they would be arriving in Sioux City a little later? The people would still be there. Those in the van had the words of God. So they just got out on the street ... she figured that's what Jeremiah had meant when he said "out on the street" ... to preach a little later. Why was he so angry.
Tensite didn't bother to look up. He stroked his gray red beard ... he'd gotten a bit gray before he was nineteen ... he was only twenty-three presently. "You got a new convert, didn't you? Don't get one like that everyday." There was more to the word convert which all but Grace realized ... and Jeremiah softened as he touched the right side of his black leather jacket and felt the bulge of the money which rested in the inside pocket there.
He suddenly laughed. "This morning we'll have ham and eggs for breakfast." It was an inside joke. He reached over and put his right hand on Grace's left knee And squeezed it hard. She winced but said nothing. The simple feeling of his hand brought much of her confidence back. The words he had used before were those used in anger. He shouldn't have used them ... a man of God like he was ... but who is to say what a God might do or say in the heat of anger. "You'd like some ham and eggs, wouldn't you doll."
"Doll?" She questioned that silently also. "Yes ... Yes ... I would like that," she finally said aloud. "I'm starved after that long wait."
"Of course you are." He then cocked his head toward the rear of the van, but didn't take his eyes from the road. "Tensite ... you're all heart. You know that ma'an ... you're all heart."
Tensite feigned a preacher attitude. "He that worketh deceit shall not dwell within my house: he that telleth lies shall not tarry in my sight. Psalms one O one point seven." Then they all laughed. And all that Grace could think was that it must be another of their inside jokes. Strange how they could make a joke from the powerful words from the good book. There was more to it.
The heaviest of the girls, dressed in boys Levis and blue work shirt who was known as Tom Boy chuckled deeply. "A naughty person, a wicked man, walketh with a forward mouth. He winketh with his eyes, he speaketh with his feet, he teacheth with his fingers. Proverbs six; placements twelve and thirteen. Go ahead creeps. Top that one if you can." Tom Boy brushed her purple hair ... purple hair?
Grace had turned her body fully around so that she could see those in the rear of the van. "It must be some kind of a game they play," she mused silently.
The tall man, named Ranee, who appeared to have been sleeping, sitting up in his chair with folded arms, didn't open his eyes as he spoke. "Bread of deceit is sweet to man; but afterwards his mouth shall be filled with gravel. Proverbs twenty and put the seventeen after it." Then he feigned a loud snore and made himself more comfortable.
The others laughed, and it was the first time since she had been picked up at the bus stop that Grace heard Jeremiah laugh that strange musical laugh of his, as if he knew something that no one else knew, something that only his brain in its infinite wisdom could comprehend.
"Come on, you can do better than that," slid in Esther, the lovely figured girl with the bright green hair.
"So screw it to us cunt," demanded a black-haired fellow known as Pecker. "Where in the world had he gotten a name like Pecker?" was Grace's reaction the first time she had been introduced to him back at the lake the day before.
"You like Proverbs, so let's try twenty-six tried up to the eighteen and nineteen. As a mad man who casteth firebrands, arrows, and death, So is the man that deceiveth his neighbour, and saith, Am I not in sport?"
There was more laughter and Grace Abernathy became more confused than ever.
Sheila, the loveliest of all the girls, even prettier than Grace herself, shook back her long brunette hair. Her pearl-like white teeth added even more to her beauty as she spoke. "In salute to your conquest our faithful Jeremiah!" He indicated her remark with a salute touching two fingers of his left hand to his forehead ... his right hand still held tightly to Grace's knee. The left hand went immediately back to the wheel as Sheila went on.
"If I have walked with vanity, or if my foot hath hasted to deceit; Let me be weighed in an even balance, that God may know mine integrity." She beat out a Lawrence Welk-like rhythm with her foot and her words came out in the same tempo. "Like a Job, like a thirty a one, like a five and a six."
"Leave it to you and vanity, Sheila," replied Jeremiah.
Sheila feigned mental injury. "Be not a witness against thy neighbour without cause; and deceive not with thy lips."
"Proverbs twenty-four, twenty-eight," helped Smoothy, an extremely tall man with a lean face hidden by a dyed silver beard which seemed completely out of place with the background, the frame work of his solid black hair.
Grace finally decided to get into what she thought was their fun and games ... the words of the good book. She had been wondering just how she might approach that point of joining and just what she might add. She had listened carefully. There seemed to be a center point of deceit. And then when Jeremiah had gotten angry earlier he had been so violent because they would lose time on the street because they would lose the night. Perhaps she could make him happy, and show that she was quite willing to utter the words of the Lord in the day as well. There was a passage in the bible she remembered that fitted such a situation. Jeremiah certainly would be happy with her selection. She put her best grin forward, and when the first moment of lull came she spit the words into the air ... her best voice ... her best round tones. "I must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day: the night cometh, when no man can work. I think that's John nine, four, if I'm not too mistaken."
With the exception of Jeremiah, all eyes turned to her. There was a silence so thick it could not even be overshadowed by passing traffic.
Jeremiah's tones were tense. "What made you say that."
Grace didn't get his tenseness. She still held her self-pleased smile. "It seemed the right thing for me to say. All the others were, I think, in one vein. But the one, the one I just said ... I thought ... well." Her smile started to quickly disappear as she saw the right side of his face tense. "Well ... you were so angry about missing the night ... there is always the day ... couldn't we disperse the words of the Lord in the day as well ... I mean other churches do ... mornings ... sometimes afternoons ... they are in the day time and they get through just the same as night ... and generally, there are more people at the day time services than there ever was at night. I only went to a couple of night time services in all my life ... I thought..." Jeremiah cut her off.
The anger raced through Jeremiah. It started with a hot tingling in his toes, traveled up his entire frame and spit so violently out through his lips that a great glob of saliva smashed against the windshield in front of him. "You're not supposed to think. I do all the thinking around here. I do all the thinking for all of us and you God damned well better believe it ... I mean God damned well right now. You don't think. You don't ever think. You do what you're told and you do that without question. You don't think when you get an order. You just do it. And you don't think, you just God damned well do it. Now you hear that bitch broad."
She was startled beyond belief.
"When I tell you shit, you squat and strain ... you get that. Squat and strain."
Ranee, a powerful young blonde man, reached over and touched Jeremiah lightly on the shoulder. Ranee had been the man who Grace had felt looking at her earlier, but she couldn't know that. "Take it easy Jeremiah. She's new. She'll learn."
"When I want your opinion, I'll damned, fucking well ask for it." Jeremiah roughly brushed the man's hand from his shoulder. "You don't ever talk when I am talking. You fucking well 'A' she'll learn, and right now is as good a time as any that she fucking well 'A' gets her start."
Grace wet her panties, she was so frightened of him in his tirade. At that moment she could hardly control her bowels. She wanted to get out, get out anywhere and take her panties off, to have her bowel movement before they exploded also. But there was no open space between the words of his tirade for her to inform him. She couldn't interrupt him. In his fit of rage he might strike out. She had seen some of the boys in rages like that in the school play yard, and they always ended with tremendous blows ... she didn't want that powerful hand hitting her in the face. He could kill her ... Jeremiah, the prophet kiss? Impossible.
But what had she said to make him so angry? She had told him that she would do anything he wanted and do it without question. What had she said when she quoted the verse? What harm was there in it? There couldn't be any. But there had been ... his face was as red as fire.
What kind of a game had the others been playing, having so much fun with, that she couldn't join in?
CHAPTER EIGHT
Their campsite a mile out of town wasn't as picturesque as the one back at the lake, but there was a small stream and overhead electrical wires which a fellow named Klak spliced their own electrical wires into. There was some soft grass, but most of the area was deep brown top soil, and there were a grove of trees. It was under the trees that the van finally rested...
It was still raining, and it was four in the morning.
Grace couldn't figure how the others could sleep in their cramped positions, but they had been asleep for some time. And further, she couldn't figure how Jeremiah could have kept driving so long without taking a break ... only the one at a cheap roadside cafe where they got shoe-leather ham with stale eggs, and sandwiches of cheese and salami to take with them ... no mustard ... no mayonnaise ... the joint didn't have any ... stale bread ... they ate it on the run down the highway ... the metal container, part of the van's standard equipment, had been filled with some mud mixture called coffee, and was as cold as the weather outside by the time they used it with the sandwiches.
Then it was all road as far as the eye could see ... it stretched farther than the eye could see because the eye could only see the same few yards ahead because of the rain, and that distance became even shorter when darkness fell and the van's lights were turned on, and the beams reflected back into the eyes. But it was all straight road by that time, and Jeremiah could put his foot heavier on the gas pedal.
His tirade had lasted more than an hour in which no one spoke, tried to interrupt him, no one dared to interrupt him. Grace suffered through her growling bowels and conquered them, until they got to the miserable cafe where she used an old fashioned outhouse, a two holer, worn with the years, splintered wood ... the stink was over-powering, but she fought back the nausea, gritted her teeth through the painful constipation brought on by the forced holding of her waste, then wiped off with the pages of a New York City telephone book.
She didn't throw her panties away when she changed them. She had a strong feeling she was going to need every bit of the few pieces of clothing she had brought with her.
Jeremiah's silence ended when he parked the van under the trees near the stream. It appeared he knew exactly where he was going. He hadn't looked to the left or the right on the highway. He just, all of a sudden, turned the wheel and there they were.
The others did not awaken.
They stirred a bit when the van came to a full stop and the rhythm of the motor was gone. But none of the others opened their eyes. Grace had thought many times during the previous hours about going to sleep, she was certainly tired enough. But she was more frightened of the weather and the slippery road ahead, and of the previous tirade Jeremiah had had, then she was sleepy.
Other than the silence, and the movements of Jeremiah steering the car there was only one other major movement. Jeremiah had reached, without looking, for the coffee container, found it and began pulling it toward him. Grace saw the move and his difficulty. She reached over and gripped the handle, touching his hand, tried to grip it, aid him. He slapped her hand away, took up the container and drank from it ... after which he did hand it over to her.
Jeremiah seemed his-likeable self as he set the hand brake and turned to face her. Although he was talking directly to Grace his eyes looked out over the darkness where nothing could be seen on a normal dark night, let alone with the added torrential rain ... he could have been talking to thin air.
"There's a little creek out there. They tell me that a hundred miles or so back in that direction," he pointed, "that creek swells into a river that's a mile or more across ... all clear sweet water that creek ... yes God works his miracles in strange ways ... yes, indeed he does. When you take your bath in the morning, you go down stream. You go upstream and your pollution comes right down here where we get our drinking water."
"I think I know that." It was a simple statement. But the man's eyes narrowed at it.
He didn't go into a tirade, and it didn't seem that he was angry again but there was still the sternness in his voice. "There you go thinking again. What did I tell you about thinking?"
"I'm sorry, I just..." She caught herself before she said the word thought. "I've gone camping with my father a few times. He taught me that."
"I'm glad he taught you something." He changed his pace again. "You'll see it all in the morning. It's a beautiful piece of countryside out there. Even if it's still raining this hard, you'll see it. Nothing except the dark of night can hide the beauty of this part of the country, just before you get into the Dakotas."
"Will we be going into the Dakotas?"
"If I have a mind to."
"I think you have a mind to."
"You some kind of a mind reader?" The anger had gone and he was grinning again. Grace liked that. She had gotten so angry with him she wanted to leave the van and his commune when he had become violent. But when he spoke like that her whole vagina tingled, the nipples of her breasts became hard and stretched against the wool of her thick sweater ... her tongue grew hot in her mouth ... all the love she had felt for this brute of a wonderful man came back to her, and all in the past was just that ... in the past.
"Oh, no, nothing like that. It's just that you're so close to the border, and you ... when you talk about the Dakotas you seem to go into a glowing trance."
"Glowing trance! Hey little girl. I like that."
"I like that too."
"What?"
"When you called me, little girl." She sighed broadly, and put her head against the back rest of her seat. "My father called me that a lot ... when he wasn't angry with me about something or other."
"Your father get angry with you a lot?"
"Not too often. But sometimes."
"Like I did this morning?"
"You frightened me."
"I was supposed to frighten the hell out of you. That's what it was all about. Do I frighten you now? "
"No ... not really. I just don't always know what to say ... so that I won't make you angry. I don't like it when you're angry. Then I am really frightened of you."
"Always stay frightened of me. It'll keep you out of trouble."
"I don't want to be frightened of you. I want to love you like I did from the minute we met on the road. And when I left the van out there by the lake I couldn't wait to get back to you ... every minute ... it seemed like forever, an eternity ... and when I didn't know how to get to my dad for some money I knew you wouldn't take me with you and I felt I was headed for oblivion ... I want to love you, give you all of my love ... I don't want to be frightened of you."
"Stay frightened of me. Believe me. Stay frightened of me. At times when I command you wili be frightened, but you will obey. There is only one boss, one leader and he should always be a frightening figure. Try to remember your Deuteronomy, chapter ten, verse seventeen. "The Lord your God is God of gods, and Lord of lords, a great God, a mighty, and a terrible, which regardeth not persons, nor taketh reward.' Remember that?" He took her hand in his across the car seats. "He's saying it right there. Mighty and terrible. That's the way it's got to be dear girl. I give no quarter, as God gives no quarter."
"I don't like to think about God like that. I like to..." The pressure of his hand on hers cut her off short.
"Think? I think! I speak! I know! God speaks through me. He is as I say." The pressure dropped from his hand. He took his hand away from hers. "You said you didn't know how to get the money from your father. How did you get it ... and so much?" He grabbed her embarrassed look even in the darkness of the van, the dash lights having been turned off earlier, before they had begun their talk. "Did you steal it?"
She lifted her face slowly and looked at him. "Is it ... am I a sinner?"
"Then you did steal it."
She took a long time, but finally, without words, she nodded.
"And it troubles you?"
She nodded again. "My father took the money out of the bank yesterday. He's wanted a house car for ever so long. It was to be a down payment. I took it when they were asleep ... just before I left."
He put his hand priest-like on the top of her head, and immediately she felt she should be on her knees. His eyes had closed and he cast those closed eyes heavenward.
"If thou draw out thy soul to the hungry, and satisfy the afflicted soul; then shall thy light rise in obscurity, and thy darkness be as the noon day." He opened his eyes again, held them heavenward another moment, then lowered them to look at the girl. He took his hand from her head and she looked up to gaze into his eyes.
"Then you don't hate me?"
"Hate you!" He reached over and planted a wet, but quick, kiss fully on her lips. "Are we of my flock classed with those of the hungry, afflicted with the scorn of outsiders? Then what have you done but to draw out your own soul to us. You are like a chosen one. 'Walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye were called, With all lowliness and meekness, with long-suffering, forbearing one another in love.' Do I make myself clear?"
"I-I ... think so."
"Don't think ... know so."
"I'm sorry."
"And neither be sorry. Only the very weak are sorry. You are not weak. I knew that from the very first. You are not weak. Had you been weak you would still be in your father's house and not here in thy father's house. No my girl, you are not weak."
Then he turned his legs toward her so that his knees touched hers. She hadn't even seen the movement but suddenly she knew his fly had been unzipped and his dork stood straight and tall in front of her. He stretched back so that his head rested on the left window.
"It has been such a long tiring journey. I want you to take some of this. It is to relax me. We have such a busy day, and this frightful weather has upset me the whole trip. I want you to relax me."
She looked at his stiff meat, then sneaked a look back at the others sleeping. "What if they wake up?"
"So what. They would do the same thing. You are with a commune. They would do the same thing and not worry if you were around ... or I ... or any of the others."
She took him at his word. She stripped off pink nylon panties. He watched her as she tried to figure out how to mount him in such a posi-
"Not that way."
"But ... but ... we can't go outside. There's no room in the back?"
"Not that way in any place. Use your lips, your tongue. Take it in your mouth. Suck it you damned little fool." He was tensing up in anger again.
"I-I-" She didn't know what he was talking about.
"Don't tell me your mouth is a virgin."
"I never ... I don't know what you want of me.
He showed her quick enough. His strong hand reached up behind her head as it did that first time back in the brush beside the old dirt road. He pulled it down and because her mouth was still open his dong went directly between her lips and hit the palate at the back.
She choked. She gagged. She gulped back saliva which had raced to the injured spot. She choked again and tried to spit, but all the saliva could do was river down the length of his shaft and soak his thick pubic hairs. She was, however, able to move her head half an inch backward so that the head of his cock was no longer pressing the life out of her palate, but the blood was streaming to her head, pounding at her ears so loudly she almost didn't hear his sharp demands.
"Now go up and down ... slow at first, then faster ... the same as when I put it in you and I do the work. Your mouth is now your cunt, get it? And you suck at the same time and you work your tongue all up and down it, and around it, and you keep moving all the time."
Tears streamed in her eyes. She had never before been so degraded. But then how could it be degrading. Her god, her master had demanded it. He wouldn't make her do anything wrong. It was the same as when she thought she had stolen from her father, but Jeremiah showed her so easily how it wasn't really stealing. If that's what Jeremiah wanted then she must be willing to accomplish the act, even though she didn't know quite how to go about it.
She was a rational girl. If he wanted it then it must have been done before, by others. It couldn't be anything new, except to her.
She didn't like the smell of sweat coming up around the opening of his fly, the sweat which had poured forth and became rancid there during that long ride, the sweat which had become stale, dried and turned into putrid vapors.
She tried to think of perfume. It was hard to make that smell into perfume, but she concentrated with all her might, and soon she had a bit of a measure of success and all the time she had been concentrating her head bobbed slowly, her lips trembled in their up and down movement, and the taste of his manhood was strong over her tongue, the taste buds.
She closed her eyes. She hadn't mind seeing his thing sticking out in front of him. She didn't mind when she saw it being pulled out of there back in the brush, but for some reason she couldn't bring herself to look at it while she was lip-jobing it.
Then the inevitable happened. It came full out of her mouth as his thighs began to slowly rotate. He shouted at her. "Put your hand on it dummy." She heard a giggle from the rear of the van but she didn't open her eyes. She put out her right hand and found the shaft and secured the purple plumb back between her lips and continued the required operation.
"Come on Herb," she heard Mirinda say from the rear of the van. "Wake up. I want to do you." Then a moment of silence while Grace worked at her objective. Mirinda spoke again. "Okay ... I know how to wake you up." Then the sound of trousers being unzipped, a bit of slurping, and Herb's final awakening and enjoyment. "Harder, harder," he moaned, "bite it ... bite the hell out of it. You bitch Mirinda I'll kill you if you woke me and don't bite the hell out of it." And he screamed and moaned and made one hell of a fuss, until his final climax and he groaned with a waning ecstasy, and Mirinda finally giggled. "Good Lord dessert before breakfast."
Grace knew what the girl meant and she knew what had happened. Herb had done into her mouth what Jeremiah had done into her canal ... into her mouth ... that's what was going to happen to her. She was going to get all that stuff into her mouth. She wanted to throw up. Why did she want to throw up? She didn't even know what it taste like. Was it good? Was it bad? She remembered the bitter medicines that had been forced on her when she was very young, especially Castor Oil when it was a steady Saturday night diet before bedtime. Would it be like that? When she had cleaned off those times she had played with herself and that time with Jeremiah it had felt oily, sticky. Would it be like that. If it were she knew she would vomit. She did vomit most of the time when the Castor Oil was forced on her. She didn't want to vomit all over Jeremiah. That surely would send him into a rage ... she was sure of that. She would swallow her the bitter medicine. She would not spit it out. She would take it, and she would like it even if she didn't.
His excited blast off found the purple plum again pressing against the far roof of her mouth, touching the base of her palate. She couldn't do nothing but gulp the sticky goo down. His load shot so violently she almost didn't have time to swallow. It came and came and came ... And she gasped, choked and took it down. Some drained out between her lips and down his shaft. She went far down the shaft to capture it before it stained his trousers and his under shorts. She couldn't get it all.
It wasn't bitter ... salty, but not bitter ... thank God for small favors...
He took the soiled handkerchief from the floor, the one that Grace had used the morning before to wipe away her tears and he cleaned himself off before putting his thing away and zipping up his pants. He rolled the window down a bit and tossed the useless rag out onto the ground, then after winding the window up again he wiped the rain from his face to the back of his hand.
"For virgin lips you did pretty well little chickie."
Grace wanted to make him feel happy by saying thanks. But her mouth felt strange and she couldn't form the words. However, she heard them from the back of the van. "Thanks Jeremiah." It was Herb.
"I always take care of my people, Herb." Jeremiah lifted his head from the window and came to a sitting position again. He looked to the back when Mirinda's voice came to him.
"Was she any good at it O' Leader?"
Grace thought she was about to hear Jeremiah go off his rocker. But instead she heard a laugh. She felt that if she had asked such a thing he would have spit in her face and probably pushed her over a cliff. But Jeremiah was laughing.
When he stopped he said. "No man putteth new wine into old bottles; else the new wine doth burst the bottles, and the wine is spilled, and the bottles will be marred: but new wine must be put in new bottles. Learn your book of Mark dear girl, it could help you on the street."
And there was the street business again. She reminded herself that she must read the book of Mark to see what she could learn. If Jeremiah thought the book of Mark was something which could help Mirinda out on the street then it most certainly would help her. She'd read it that very day. She didn't know how much time she would have, if there were other duties to perform, but since Jeremiah had more than indicated they would be working at night, then there must be some leisure time which she could utilize to study her bible ... well their bible, she didn't have one ... and if it was to be Mark first ... that's the way it would be. She would like to have asked Jeremiah just which portions were the most important, but decided against it. First he had his eyes closed and she felt he was dozing off, "the poor dear has had such a long drive, such a long day," and for a second reason, her questions seemed to irk him into tirades.
She loved him, but she really was very frightened of him. Then she remembered, "I will very gladly spend and be spent for you; though the more abundantly I love you, the less I be loved." And she followed her thoughts of Corinthians 2, verse 15 chapter 12 with Jonah, chapter 2 verse 7. She was thinking of his fury, his tirade, his terrible language, all which frightened her. "When my soul fainted within me I remembered the Lord."
CHAPTER NINE
Although the rain had temporarily stopped the sky was still black with the threatening clouds. There was no doubt that the downpour would come soon again. But that didn't stop the morning's activities. There was first the bath in the small stream, in which the flock had to stretch out in order for the shallow water to completely encase their bodies ... cold, icy waters that within a few short weeks undoubtedly would be covered thick with ice.
None of them stayed in the water very long. It was more like the dipping for the baptismal dunking. No soap was used. None of them could have stood that cold water long enough to soap down then rub it off.
It was a shivering bunch of completely naked followers of Jeremiah who iced their way back to the van where towels had been left and a wood fire built for them by Jeremiah who had not gone to the water. He always said he would take his alone ... later. No one had ever seen him go into the water ... although there were those times he disappeared from their camp and was gone for hours at a time.
Undoubtedly that's when he took his own dousing. After all he was the King, the Leader, their Jehovah, their Jeremiah. He could do just as he damned well pleased without question.
"God how he hates questions," Tonya confided in Grace as they went about cooking the morning coffee and were away from the others.
The van always held instant coffee and a few tins of canned goods for those emergency times when they could not stop along the road. But other than the coffee there was nothing available that they could call a substantial breakfast.
Jeremiah tagged Klak, a gangling youth who looked like he might fall apart in the first strong breeze but who was strong to the point of believing his size and stature.
"Take the van into town ... to the first store you see and pick us something for breakfast, like bacon, and maybe some rolls and eggs ... and get some bread and stuff for lunch. Get me a steak for my supper."
Grace had overheard the conversation and she took, paid special attention about the steak. "Get me a steak for my supper." What were the rest of them going to eat? She ventured the question to Tonya as she gave the coffee in the open pot a last twirl.
"We'll be working in town," she informed.
"Me too?"
"You above all."
"Oh."
"Sure ... You're new. You look like a virgin. You'll go over big."
"Virgin? What's a virgin got to do with it?"
Tonya held a knowing smile. But it wasn't her place to give out that kind of information unless she was directed, commanded, chosen to be her guide in her life. That distinction had to be directed by the commander, Jeremiah. "You'll go out with someone. Somebody Jeremiah decides upon to teach you the ropes. But I can tell you this much. The younger the girl. The better the pickings."
Grace thought she saw through the parable. "Oh, I see. like when they take up the collection in the churches. Because I look younger, maybe I'll get the word across in good order."
"Something like that." She then banged her heavy wooden spoon on the metal coffee container. "Better get the coffee while it's hot ... breakfast won't be until Klak gets back."
Klak was rapidly dressing at the side door of the van and Jeremiah had taken the stack of bills Grace had given him from his pocket. It was the first time he had gone through the entire stack, bill for bill, and he frowned, evened the stack again and shoved them back to his inside pocket. He looked up at Klak.
"Better take a ten or twenty from the kitty ... make it a twenty, I want a big steak. There's only hundreds in this wad. You couldn't get change this time of the morning ... not this far out of town."
"Shit ma'am. I could lift 'em quicker than wait for the change of even a ten or a twenty," squinted the lean man.
"Another time my boy ... another time ... no trouble this early in the game."
"Whatever you say."
"Did I give you a choice."
"Sorry ma'am."
"And get your ass back here on the double. We ain't had nothing since yesterday noon."
"My ass-hole tells me that." He swung up into the truck.
"Fill the tank too."
Klak only waved a hand in acceptance of the order, turned the key, the motor hummed ... it was a good motor, tended carefully by Ranee the mechanic of the commune ... the gears slid into place and the van back to the highway and a moment later was gone.
"You been with the commune very long?"
"You sure are one for questions, ain't you?" squinted Tonya at Grace's renewed effort to learn what she could, and to make honest friends of her new surroundings. "Yeah. I guess you'd call it long. Long enough to get fucked, sucked, tattooed, and blowed."
Grace was again shocked at the language. She had heard boys talk like that, but never the girls, not where she came from, not in the fine schools of her town, any girl would be shocked to hear another girl talk like that. But Grace also knew that undoubtedly it wasn't the first time Tonya had said the words ... she wouldn't just pull them out of the air for her benefit, to shock her. Therefore she'd let them pass over her head, ignore them.
"Two years," Tonya concluded.
"That is a long time."
"Naw ... it seems only like yesterday. Now I got a question, and if you repeat it so Jeremiah hears it I'll slit your tongue out and jam it up your pussy."
"I don't want to hold anything back from Jeremiah. Maybe you'd better not ask it."
"Well I'm going to ask it anyway, and you just remember what I said. You keep your mouth shut. It ain't that the question is so bad, its just that like I said before Jeremiah gets a hard on about questions. He goes ape shit. I've seen him climb the walls. All the newcomers like to ask questions. They go about it too many times and they don't travel with us anymore. They're just gone. They don't go ... they just stay behind. Jeremiah don't go very long with them that keep asking and asking all the time."
"I've learned that."
"Then you're one of the smarter ones. Maybe you'll be with us ... like the others he's got now."
"I thought you'd all been together all the time."
"Honey, there's replacements all the time. Especially replacements for Jeremiah ... until he gets tired of them."
"Tired of them."
"Sure. When his girl Friday gets to think she's the queen of the roost..." She drew a finger under her throat ... the finger indicating a knife. "Just watch you don't get to thinking you're better than us."
"Oh, I wouldn't do anything like that."
"See that you don't. None of us would like it any. Get that straight."
"I never thought."
"Jeremiah has liked each of us girls better than the other at one time or another. We've all been with him at one time or another."
"But you're all still with him."
"Good Christ, you really are a honky. I mean we've all been fucked by him, that is all except Tom Boy, she's a lez..."
The part about all the girls giving themselves to Jeremiah bothered her enough. She felt she hadn't been the first. He had been so experienced in his love making. But to have it laid right out there in the open for her, that changed the heat in her panty crotch to ice ... that was bad enough, but ... she asked it aloud. "Lez? What's a Lez?"
"You don't know what a Lez is?"
She shook her head. "No."
"Lesbian ... ring a bell?"
She shook her head again. "No."
"Wow! What kind of a virgin creep did our fearless leader pick up this time. Where were you brought up fruit cake ... in a convent."
"Is lesbian, I mean does being a lesbian have something to do with sex?"
Tonya sighed. "Now what in the fucking world ever gave you that idea?"
Grace was serious. "Well. I do know that in a convent, the girls don't have any sex. So I suppose your remark to me about being brought up in a convent meant I didn't know anything about sex."
"You got it honey, you hit it right on the head ... and I bet that was your first blow job in the car this morning."
"You saw it? I thought everybody was asleep except Mirinda and Herb. They did it too."
"Nobody knows when I'm asleep or I'm awake. You sure can slurp ... that I'll give you credit..." She eyed Grace carefully. "You mean you fucking well sure as hell don't know what a lesbian is ... you ain't putting me on?"
There was the shaking of her head again.
"A lesbian is the kind of girl that don't like to make the scene with men ... they only go for girls ... and you can bet your ass she's got her eye right on your tits right now, and her tongue is curling in tortured pain just waiting for the right minute when she can stick it right through your love nest and drive it straight through your cunt."
Grace stepped back in horror. "But ... but she's a girl ... why would she..."
"Don't fret your mind about it fluff ... she's a dyke, a butch ... she's the man in the girl to girl operation ... and she ain't easy with her girls ... she can beat the hell out of another broad and love every minute of it ... but you're safe from her as long as you're Jeremiah's favorite ... but we'll see how long that lasts. Let's see how long it is before he sends you out onto the street. That's when the beginning of the end starts. That's when you become just one of the flock ... he's out for new territories to conquer. But then, you might be lucky. I've seen him keep a bitch around for as long as a month one time. That was the longest. Then they either become one of the flock, like the six of us ... I should say five, because Tom Boy is just around for kicks ... she's been with him from the beginning ... or they are left behind. Maybe, sometime, some of us will be left behind. If he wants you bad enough for the flock and he finds somebody new, then sure as fucking hell one of us will simply disappear ... it's his way, and we all know it.
"There's more to it, but it ain't my place to put my foot in where the bear trap is set. You find out for yourself. Only hope that it's not your night for the street."
"But he ordered only one steak, and, you said he would be giving me a guide."
"He hasn't yet, has he?"
"You know he hasn't."
"Then don't worry until he does. Besides, he may share his steak with you. It will be big enough. And if he don't, do like one of the other girls did who was around for awhile ... there's some canned goods in the van. You won't starve. Just hope it's not tonight."
"Wow, Tonya. You're giving me goose pimples."
"Don't let it throw you."
"I can't help it."
"Give him what he wants."
"I have."
"Kiss his ass ... ream him if he wants it ... it won't kill you!"
"You're getting me all confused. You use words I don't even know, never heard before."
"Ream?"
"Yes."
"Suck his ass hole out, honey, suck his ass hole out, just like you sucked his cock."
"I'll do no such thing."
"Want to bet?"
Grace felt that gnawing in her stomach again. The bit of coffee she had gotten down wanted to come up as she visualized her face, her nose, her tongue buried in ... in the rectum.
"Your tongue will search, and glide, and suck, and you'll have a surprising dinner. He-likes it that way. That's one of the best ways he does like it. He'll command, and you'll go to him. You'll see ... Where did you get a grand to give him?"
Grace's mind was still tied up with the previous revelation, but the words finally broke through her dense fog.
"My father."
"Your father?"
"Yes."
"He must be rich."
"He's not. He worked hard ... saved..."
"Then he sure must like you one hell of a lot princess to shell out that kind of loot ... you an only daughter or something like that?"
"I'm an only daughter. He didn't give me the money. I took it."
"Good girl! Parents were meant to be taken. I wish mine had something I could have taken. I had to work my way in here. But a grand. That's the best haul old Jeremiah ever got. Can you get more?"
"No!"
"Too bad."
"Huh? Why too bad?"
"If there was more to be had, it would put your chances of survival way up cloud high."
"I just don't understand what you're talking about ... you really have me all confused. I want somebody to tell it to me straight. I want to find out what really is going on. What are we supposed to do. How do we pass out the word? I want to know these things."
Tonya's face screwed into vicious hatred. She reached across and took Graces' left breast tightly between her fingers and squeezed with all her might. The pain was terrible. Grace wanted to scream out, but the viciousness of Tonya's tone stopped the scream before it was started.
"Bitch, you just remember what I told you. You keep that fucking mouth of yours closed about what we been talking about. You don't and both them tits of yours are going to be ripped off by my bare hands, and I'll put the bloody end of one in your mouth like an apple in a cooking pig, and the other will go up your ass with your tongue ... get me?"
She didn't wait for any kind of an answer. She threw the wooden spoon into the coffee pot and stormed off.
Grace still couldn't believe all she had heard. Of course she couldn't. The girl must have been out of her mind. Girls with girls. Sucking people's ass. Who ever heard of such things? Things like that weren't done. Why the degradation of it. If Jeremiah ever heard her talking such lies, such filth, he'd kick her right out of the commune.
But the thought of having her tits cut off and her tongue ripped out ... she'd keep her mouth shut.
The others had completed their dressing and were moving toward the coffee. She filled her cup again then moved off to sit under a tree, there was much to ponder ... there was much she had to find out ... The rain started again.
There was no van to cover her ... she stood up under the tree, close to the trunk.
CHAPTER TEN
They huddled in the van just after the sun drifted behind the distant mountains and the darkness had settled in. Of course most of them had spent the day inside because the rain increased and continued. Grace had studied Mark, but she couldn't figure out why that was so important ... including the paragraph verse Jeremiah had seemed so interested in when Sheila had said it. But she continued to search for some clue ... right up until the time Jeremiah stepped into the van, took off his drenched leather jacket and picked up the largest bible from the floor beneath one of the front chairs.
All the others put down whatever they were doing and looked to him. They knew what was about to happen. Grace followed their lead.
Pecker whispered into Grace's ear as she watched Jeremiah thumbing through the pages of the bible. "It's that time of the day when we begin the night duties ... the time of the day, the beginning of the night when everything is in dead earnest ... seriousness."
Grace whispered back, but didn't take her eyes from Jeremiah. "What's he going to do?"
"Pray."
"You mean like in church."
"Exactly like in church."
"What is he going to pray for ... us?"
"Us ... the street ... our activities ... our accomplishments ... make our bodies strong ... our peckers wild and lucid ... the girl's cunts juicy and inviting ... and he prays directly for himself."
"Peckers ... cunts?" She didn't get it and the two words were only spoken in silence to the questions of her own mind. Pecker had leaned back in his own seat, folded his arms and waited.
Jeremiah surveyed them for a long silent moment. Then he spoke.
"We are in Sioux City for the first time, that is all but myself. It is a rich town. It is a town waiting for us ... waiting for the word ... and they must be hit over the head with our meaning of the word. Let none of you fail yourself, or your brothers and sisters ... but more than any, lest you fail me. That is the complete unforgivable. To fail yourself is one thing. To fail me ... another, and if you should fail yourself then you most assuredly are failing me and I will send the wrath of God down upon thee ... and who of you wish to be left behind?"
"A loud chorus of "No's" filled the van, and Grace realized she must join in ... but she was too late for the chorus ... her voice alone was heard. No one laughed. No one snickered. Jeremiah didn't even give her special note. She felt embarrassed ... but the excitement of the others brought her back to their telepathy. v
Jeremiah held his hand on an open page of the good book, but he did not look to the pages. When he was not looking at his flock, his eyes would dart heavenward. He made much use of his arms, flailing, waving, pointing accusing fingers ... but all the words came from his direct memory, and there was no preacher in the world who could have out-preached him. He was the master and the world was his pulpit.
"Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."
The chorus ... the flock ... the followers ... the multitudes of the van ... the trapped ... the vanquished..."Amen brother..."
"Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth."
Again the chorus of "Amen's."
And Jeremiah continued with Matthew five, three through ten. "Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled. Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God. Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake: for there's is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall try all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake."
He stopped and his steel gray eyes cut deep into each of the others. "And that we are ... persecuted ... persecuted because of our ways, our thoughts, our desires to live as we all propose to live. Evil will be used against you this night. But you are all well schooled in the handling of the evil makers ... the righteous bastards who would rather strike you then share their riches with you. They will share their riches with you as you will share the riches with me.
"Let no man strike out lest you strike back. We do not turn the other cheek, we do not turn ass and run as the evil doer attempts to fend his tortures upon you. We are the strongest. We are the most powerful. It is we who will come to the top, the foam on the beer, the top of the best wine. Let no man ... let no cunt stand in your way."
Grace flinched each time those strange words entered into the otherwise strong sermon. But what was he telling ... trying to say? The others seemed to know. She searched for the clue.
"Beat them back, with fists, with clubs, and if they have swords, knives, guns, remove them from their hands and grasp them firmly in your own, lest you forget the thoughts of being left behind, as so many weaklings have been left behind, along the road to become the clay of the earth, a clay not worthy of moulding ever again. It is in all of your hands to pit fight against fight ... love against love ... and with the taking, leave no traces behind, joy in the knowledge that you and your commune are at all times safe, protected by the Almighty, He who even now speaks through me, through my very vocal chords.
"There is no law beyond your law except my law which is the law of God. It is the earth which is evil, and the evil must pay those who have the right to put it down. You are that right. You are my right." Once more he turned the pages, and again put his hand on the open pages but did not look to them.
"The heart of this people is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes have they closed; lest they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them." He slammed the book closed. His hard, steel-like eyes surveyed them for an even longer period of silence. All were attentive, but the feeling of excitement was as overpowering as had been the silence in the van at another time.
"It is a cold night. There will be few on the streets. But there are the bars, the cocktail lounges ... and there are the lonely houses, on the lonely streets ... all are waiting for you, and the words you must deliver. As always I have designated areas. The van will be driven to such areas, by me ... but also as always you will make your way to the east end of town, this end, and gather, secreting yourselves, until I bring the van to you ... It is now time for you to ready yourselves."
Jeremiah was exhausted after his lengthy speech. It seemed that he fairly collapsed in his seat behind the steering wheel and closed his eyes, shading them with the palm of his hand.
For only a moment the hard rain could be heard on the metal roof of the van, then there was the hustle and bustle of the flock gathering up their rain clothes and getting into them. Tonya, slipping into a sexy violet rain coat which she put on over a violet mohair sweater and matching slacks sidled up beside Grace and whispered into her ear.
"Looks like you are the chosen one."
"I am."
"You won't be going with us tonight."
"How do you know."
"He didn't designate anyone to take you out on a training cruise."
"You mean?"
She nodded. "You'll probably be sharing his steak within an hour."
Grace blinked. She felt her heart jump into her throat, but it was a jump of of happiness, of joy, of exalted appreciation.
"You hit it lucky." Then she sneered. "At least for tonight. But there is always tomorrow night ... and the night after, and the night after ... need I go on?" She turned away and went to the back of the van where Grace saw her snap open a switch blade knife she had taken from beneath a far chair. She then closed the blade and put it into her purse, but before closing the knife she sneaked a look back toward Grace and pulled the knife softly, slowly under her own tit. Grace gasped, and grabbed her own breast.
Tonya needed no words to get her point fully across.
"Grace." It was Jeremiah calling her softly, his eyes still closed and his eyes shaded with his hand.
Grace swallowed back the terror she felt of Tonya and turned to move in close to Jeremiah.
"Yes, Jeremiah."
"I am so tired little girl."
"You have been working so hard ... speaking so long and so well."
"Yes. I do speak well, don't I."
"No one in the world could out-speak you."
"Yes, I know..." He paused, then opened his eyes to look at her but kept his eyes shaded. "When we drop them off in town, you shall ride with me, we shall return here. We will share my steak," Grace was elated, "and then I must have you."
"I will not be going on," she had to use the word even though she had become frightened of it, "the street with the others?"
"Of course not. There is so much for you to learn ... and you have been with me such a short time ... so much to learn ... don't be in a hurry to get to the street."
"I'm not, Jeremiah ... I'm not!" She breathed a sigh of relief even though she didn't really understand, relief from what?
CHAPTER ELEVEN
There wasn't much to the ride, it was a short one, the only long part being that when the van searched out-likely looking neighborhoods and one at a time the twelve disciples of Jeremiah were dropped off, to make their way out into the rain to do whatever it was they had to do.
Then Jeremiah turned back to the highway and soon they were parked in approximately the same spot by the creek side.
Jeremiah sighed as the motor was turned off then he stretched his arms high in the air over his head ... he groaned aloud in apparent release and relief ... it was a animalistic type of growl..."Like what you see so far?" he offered through the tight stretch. "I haven't seen very much."
"Yeah ... this fucking rain."
She winced. "Yes, the rain."
"Well ... it's that time of the year for these parts, I guess. Don't hurt our work too much though ... only time I get pissed-off is when I have to drive in it and meet my appointed deadlines. I hate to change plans in the middle, of the stream. Things go wrong when plans have to be changed. Did you know that?"
"I don't know. Most of my life has been planned out ahead of time for me."
"Then you'll be right at home. That's the way it's going to be around here. ... Know how to cook a steak Grace Abernathy?"
"I'm not much of a cook, but I'll try."
"Nope! Not much of a cook puts the lid on it but right now. You can't cook. Then you don't fry my steak."
"I don't want to let you down."
"You won't. You'll learn to cook ... in time."
She looked around the van puzzled. "Where in the world can you cook it in here?"
"Not in here." He pointed out into the rain which had become heavy again. "Out there."
"In the rain?"
"Why not?" Then he laughed. "Out there but not in the rain. Come on." He tossed a white rain coat to her, which she immediately put on and they stepped out into the storm. It was cold, and very wet.
Without any words of indication as to what he had in mind, Jeremiah reached up to an indentation at the edge of the roof of the van. He grabbed a hook and pulled. A thick tarpaulin extended itself on telescopic braces. It stretched out a full six feet. Next he reached under the van and brought out a portable barbeque.
"All the comforts of home, huh."
"I've never ceased to be amazed at what you can cram into that little van ... along with fourteen people."
"You can bet on it." He began working at the portable barbeque and coals he took from another source. It didn't take him long to put the thing together, and the extended tarpaulin did a fantastic job of keeping the rain off them. "I had a bus once. Too much to handle. We don't carry much with us. Just our emergency gear. There's always someplace along the road where we can stop ... get what we need day by day." He disappeared back into the van for a brief moment, then returned with an overly large steak.
She had given him a few light questions and he didn't seem to anger. She felt that one more wouldn't be out of line.
"How did you ever decide to become a preacher?"
"Never even thought about it until some five years ago. Just seemed to come natural. You see, nobody in this world gives you something for nothing. Well I was getting all the nothings." He indicated the storm and the sky with the cooking form ... the steak was buzzing. "Night just like this. Cold! Wet! Not fit night for man or beast.
"Well I was down in one of those small southern villages. They got religion down there alright. I mean right up to their eye-balls, and down to their ass they got religion." He laughed. "They got it coming right out the end of their dicks. Why I saw some of those bastard preachers screwing the broads right behind the altar."
Grace winced.
"And it don't matter none. The old folks, like the mommas and the pappas, they love to have their young daughters getting screwed by the preachers. It puts the fear of God into them. You know....
"There's times when the folks take the kids right to the preacher so he can break them in, tell them the facts of life. Now if a preacher does it to the young cunt it's better than a doctor because a doctor is all clinical about the approach but those preachers..." he laughed even louder. "They got it made. They play it up hard and preach to the kids at the same time ... and they get a fee for their stud service on top of all the fun they had. And sometimes, when the preachers grab hold of a pussy they really like, they have them come back over a long period of time. And you know the excuse they use?"
Grace shook her head, but she couldn't help thinking of Preacher Taiompkin.
"The kids just aren't learning quickly enough ... in the right way ... so he's got to keep their training going ... saw one of them old characters, long bearded, white, he was, get his ass shot off by a father who finally saw through him. Come about later that the father wasn't so interested in his daughter's welfare as he was about the money he was laying out for those services rendered.
"Saw an old nigger preacher get his balls nailed to a tree once while half a dozen white men shot rock salt into his ass. You don't take much of that rock salt before you start running ... the old nigger preacher did just that ... his balls were still nailed to the tree the next morning." He laughed louder as a thought crossed his mind.
"I didn't know the verse at that time but there is one in Matthew. It's nineteen, twelve. "There are some eunuchs, which were so born from their mother's womb; and there are some eunuchs which were made eunuchs of men: and there be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake.' Now what kind of eunuch do you suppose that old nigger preacher was?" He didn't expect an answer.
"Anyway, like I said the rain was coming down in sheets and the cold was even colder than here right now and this is pretty damned cold. I didn't have any money, no room, no place to go, and then walking along one of those back roads they got so many of down south ways, I heard all this singing, ranting and raging, goings on you wouldn't believe.
"Well it was a revival meeting. A white congregation. But they were making up just as much noise, maybe even more, than any nigger revival I ever did see or hear.
"It looked warm in there ... an old pot belly stove ... and it sure as hell was dry. So I went in and watched the commotion. A real fire and brimstone preacher that old duffer was ... and he put his pitch right square on the line in his sermon. You put up or shut up, and if you didn't put up you just wasn't going to see the pearly gates. He didn't want any coins in the collection. If they were going to see God in his heavens and not that old red devil down below, then they had to pay for it ... in currency of the realm ... good old American green backs ... after all what would money be to them after they are six foot under. God don't charge in that great amphitheatre in the sky, so the Preacher had to collect it at the box office.
"I liked what I saw and I got to thinking.
"Why the hell not.
"All I had to do was learn some of the book and then go to work. It don't take much of the bible learning to get started. Then with a mind like mine, what I read is retained ... I read more, and more and then I had the whole thing licked.
"But going around alone didn't pay off so I got this idea ... my commune ... it's paying off ... and it don't take much preaching ... but preaching is a great introduction to strangers. You can bet your sweet ass they're going to fear the word of God when me and my flock get through with them...
"Broads. I get all I want. And I don't mean just the ones that I bring in here..." He caught her sideways glance as she looked away from him. "Now come on little baby. You didn't think you were the only one, did you. You'd have to be off your rocker if you did. I'm a virile man. I need a lot of broads, a lot of fucking and sucking, and I need variety."
"So someday soon, you'll tire of me." She looked directly at him. "I'll be left behind."
"Who's been talking to you about being left behind?"
"Nobody! I mean not directly. I just overheard."
"Well you start keeping your ears plugged up. Stop listening to things."
"But ... some have been left behind."
"Can't keep them all around."
"And I could be one of them."
"You could but you won't You got too much of a body ... too beautiful a face to be left behind. You're with me, broadie ... just as long as you play my game ... my game, you understand me?"
"I wish I really could understand you."
"I'll go along with your thoughts there. I really am a difficult man to understand. But then why try understanding me. Just do what I tell you to do and there won't be any troubling your mind with trying to out-think me or my orders."
"I will never disobey you."
"I don't think you will." Grinned. "Say, how do you like my love making."
"You're the greatest."
"Had lots of them, did you."
"You know I didn't."
"That's right, cutie. You're just my little amateur ... I like that. How old are you Grace Abernathy? Thirteen ... fourteen."
She huffed up for her own defense. "I'm past seventeen."
"You look thirteen or fourteen."
"Well, I'm not."
"Good. For awhile there I thought I might have left myself open for a jail bait complaint."
"Jail bait?"
"Skip it."
"You people have some of the strangest words."
He laughed. "Words are our business."
"You can say that again." She marveled at the two distinctly different personalities ... maybe three ... that Jeremiah possessed. The angered Jeremiah when it looked like he could destroy anything within reach. Then the passive, all loving person who was then putting the finishing touches to a barbequed steak ... and the preacher who was all powerful, the untouchable, the man with the memory of an elephant.
The preacher role enthralled her. The passive role brought love and tenderness to every working nerve in her body, and just as powerful as was the love was the fright he caused her when the angry Jeremiah took over his mortal being.
She hoped she would never have to witness the angry Jeremiah again. But at the same time she knew that was impossible. She never knew, none of the flock ever knew when some word, some gesture would set him off and there would be hell to pay.
Grace wondered if he ever really struck any of his people ... it was something she would have to find out. She didn't want him striking her with that big ham hock of a fist of his.
"Can I ask you something that is very important to me, Jeremiah?"
"Do you have to ask, to ask me something? Are you afraid of me?"
"I have been afraid of you."
"Good. As I said before. Always be afraid of me ... day or night ... alone or in a group ... ask away."
"I've been studying the bible."
"Good! No better book in the world for our purposes ... but don't try to study it all at one time ... there's too much to store away."
"I've been studying Mark all day."
"Good chapters."
"In the car this morning ... You seemed to have some special reason for quoting from Mark."
"Did I."
"Something you said to Sheila about how Mark would help her when she went out on the street."
"Did I?"
"Yes..."
Then he remembered what it was all about. He absently felt the money in his pocket, and looked to the girl. "Oh yes. I did say something, didn't I." He knew very well what he had said, and he knew the pointed verse remarks from the others ... the lifting of the thousand dollars from Grace Abernathy ... a sly way of getting around, making a point without letting the victim know what it was all about.
"It really was nothing. There's nothing I can answer your question with. Mark is as good a reading as any of the others. All the books have something which fit most any situation. Read, study them all, and you will float through all of eternity in radiant contentment."
"But I...."
The anger hit. "Shut your fucking mouth." She did!
He calmed again. "I dislike to be questioned. I will not be questioned." He threw, more than turned the steak over...
The rain hit hard on the tarpaulin over them. Grace felt she might break out into tears. Each time he became angry she wondered if she had done the right thing. Had it been right that she leave the comfort of her father's house? Perhaps there would have been much fun with the new house car ... certainly her father wouldn't buy one now, he couldn't spare another thousand dollars ... they would be denied what they had always wanted, because of her ... But Jeremiah had said ... he had explained all those thoughts to her ... but that wasn't an angry Jeremiah ... it had been both of the other ones.
How they must hate her. She wondered if by this time the police had been notified. Would the police be after her? Would they come with their guns and their handcuffs and take her away, right out of the camp, right in front of all the others, in front of Jeremiah? She knew she'd just die if anything like that would happen.
But how could they find her? She left no trail. No one knew of her meeting with the commune. That couldn't be traced, and if the police ever came around there like Jeremiah had said they did at times, to investigate, to harass, she'd hide, they'd never see her, and Jeremiah and the others wouldn't give away her hiding place.
She decided to tell Jeremiah of those particular fears as soon as he calmed down ... probably during the time when they would split the steak.
He didn't split the steak with her. His anger was unabated. He ate silently, alone, sitting in the side doorway of the van.
Grace Abernathy opened a can of tuna fish.
CHAPTER TWELVE
It was almost dawn before Jeremiah shook her awake without speaking, and as she yawned she thought momentarily that she was getting out of her own bed. That thought didn't remain long. The rain beat hard on the metal roof, and the starting of the van motor brought her back to the reality of the present.
She got up from the tight aisle between the seats and placed her rump in the seat beside Jeremiah. There were no words as they drove to the pick up spot. There was also no one there, or so it appeared. But once he had stopped the van, they came from their places of hiding and piled into the van.
Again there was no talking. Grace wanted to hear all about it and her ass felt like pins and needles in her excitement as to what had happened. How had they preached the word? How many converts did they make during those long dark hours?
That which Jeremiah hated the most, questions, raced through Grace Abernathy's mind, over and over during the short ride back to the creek.
But they didn't park in the same spot. This time they drove deeper into the grove of trees, to a place which could not be seen from the road.
When the motor was turned off Jeremiah turned around to them and put his arm on the back of his seat.
"Any trouble?"
"Not a bit," replied one of them which Grace didn't distinguish. "Not with me anyway."
"Old bat woke up when I was going through a night stand beside her bed," replied Esther.
Jeremiah was furious with her. "How many the fucking times in hell have I told you not to take night stands near beds."
"So what the fuck," replied the girl with the green hair. "I was in the damned joint, and there was nothing downstairs at all ... Look what I got." She reached into her raincoat pocket and pulled out a diamond pin, necklace and bracelet. She took them to Jeremiah under the glare of the wide-eyed Grace. "They were all tucked away carefully in a little velvet box with a lock. A hairpin took care of the lock ... I took care of the old bat."
Grace gasped, but not aloud, nor were her thoughts. "What did she mean ... she used a hairpin on the lock? What did she mean, she took care of the old b ... lady? What is going on around here? All that jewelry ... What?" Her thoughts were quickly interrupted as her wide eyes watched the procession of the twelve disciples putting the gains of their night's work into a large chest.
There were watches ... wallets ... jewelry ... most anything of value. There was always cash in the wallets, and there was much more straight cash which was handed over by the girls.
"I scored six converts tonight O' leader," grinned Sheila.
Jeremiah didn't grin but his words held a reflection of humor. "Remember what I told you about vanity."
"I remember. I love it."
Then the offerings had all been received and the box was closed and the disciples found seats wherever they could, as they always did.
"Looks pretty good for a night's work," said Jeremiah. "We'll fence the important stuff in Sioux Falls on the South Dakota side in a couple of days. I can make a better deal up there than here ... too close to home." His mood changed and he grinned again. "Have any fun?"
"I always have fun," replied Mirinda. "Figure I converted a couple of dudes and then along comes this old codger who I start giving the word, and he's right there with me screaming, 'give me more sister, give me more...' and sure as hell I do. I took him off the street behind one of those ground up sign boards ... a little dark, but I lifted my skirt and my old snatch is snatching at him and winking for all it's worth, and when I bent backwards against the board it's looking him right in the eye and he's drooling and before I can shout praise the Lord he's shoving a wad of bills into my hand and going at me with his tongue like all cunts are going out of style.
"A couple of minutes of that and I make like I pop my nuts and he's sucking and licking like he's not going to miss a drop ... do I put on the act again, and bang out my thighs so hard his face goes sour and he falls over backward ... knocked colder than a mackerel." She pointed to the chest. "His wallet's got more than a hundred more in it. Good for him though. The lousy bastard handed me a wad of bills alright ... seven ones..." The others laughed.
Grace couldn't believe her ears.
Jeremiah turned back to Esther. "Is the old bat dead?"
"Couldn't tell. It was too dark. Even if she ain't she couldn't tell me from anybody else. It was too dark."
"How were the beer bars Tom Boy?"
"Like any of the others. Not much pickings, but I got what I could."
"Looks like you did alright Kiki, by the size of your contribution." Jeremiah tapped the treasure chest on the floor beside him.
"I always do alright. I sucked seven of the bastards into conversion the first hour. After that I lost count. You think I should take a ledger along with me to keep count?" All got the point of the joke except the thoroughly confused Grace Abernathy who looked more often to the treasure chest than to those in the van.
"And you guys?"
Herb and Klak moved forward and each took a hand gun from their pockets. They handed them across to their leader.
Herb twisted his over and over first. "Damned good model. None of them Saturday night specials."
"Neither is this," remarked Herb when he had given a German Luger into Jeremiah's hands.
"Yeah. They are a good piece of workmanship. Keep a sharp eye out for these. Forget the Saturday night specials. You get any see if you can't fence them to some of the wild juveniles you run into, or throw them in a well or something ... get rid of them ... sell first if you can ... but get rid of them."
"Got you," remarked Klak as he and Herb went to the rear of the van once more.
"Okay. It looks like you all did real good."
"We sticking around here Jeremiah?" Tensite had finally decided to take off his raincoat which he put with others in the proper storage space.
"I don't know if it's worth the trouble for another night or not. I'll go look the place over tomorrow. Lots have changed, I'm sure since I was here before. But if we do we'll work the west end. I'll have it all mapped out for you by night fall."
"You're the boss," said the man.
"I believe it."
Ranee, still wearing his raincoat ambled up the aisle between the seats and lowered his lips to whisper into Jeremiah's ear. Grace could hear them, but the others, further back couldn't.
"Can I see you outside a minute Jeremiah?"
"Out in that fucking rain, you got to be out of your mind Ranee." Jeremiah hadn't held his voice down but the others in the rear paid little attention to them ... with the exception of Tonya who suddenly appeared to be a bit nervous.
Where, a moment before, she had been laughing with the others about their good fortunes of the evening and of the events leading up to the fortunes, she suddenly went silent. She put her raincoat with the others and although she kept her back to the front end of the van, her eyes darted to the farthest of her wide vision as if trying to see what was going on without making it apparent. She also cocked her ear in that direction attempting to catch any words ... there were no sounds loud enough after Jeremiah's first outburst.
" It's important," prodded Ranee.
"Okay, but make it quick."
"It will be." Jeremiah got up and started for the side door of the van. "What's it all about?"
"I'll tell you outside, then you judge for yourself."
"I generally judge for myself."
Grace tried to over hear their conversation which was just outside her window. But the sound of the rain on the roof and the low voices they used only came across to her as a confused mumble ... nothing which could be distinguished ... until....
"The dirty fucking bitch ... that cunt bitch ... that about does it ... it's been coming a fucking long time ... the dirty fucking cunt bitch
. . . " Jeremiah had screamed his words far above the sound of the storm.
Violently he pushed Ranee away ... so violent that Ranee lost his footing and found himself ass down in the mud.
Jeremiah swung back into the van. "Tom Boy!"
Tonya was visibly shaken. From the rear view her whole body was shaking.
"Yes sir," answered Tom Boy.
"You want to go outside like you are or do you want to put on your raincoat?"
"What's up."
Jeremiah reached under the driver's seat of the van and produced a stiff, long, black snake whip. "This is what's up."
Tom Boy's mouth began to drool. Her tongue traveled with anticipation over her lower lips. Her eyes glared, glazed with eagerness. Her hands trembled in some fantastic excitement.
"Who?" she said through a steaming hot breath, and Grace could see the big lesbian's thighs twitch and her legs tremble.
"The thieving bitch standing next to you." Grace had never heard Jeremiah scream so loudly or so angrily in all his previous tirades.
There were a couple of the girls standing near Tom Boy, but it was only Tonya who trembled and had not looked around.
"The eyes of the wicked shall fail," screamed Jeremiah, "and they shall not escape, and their hope shall be as the giving up of the ghost."
He snapped the whip dangerously close to Klak who ducked. "How oft is the candle of the wicked put out! and how oft cometh their destruction upon them!"
He snapped the whip again. It came closer to the far rear of the van. "In the hand of the Lord there is a cup, and the wine is old; it is full of mixture; and he poureth out the same: but the dregs thereof, all the wicked of the earth shall wring them out, and drink them."
The whip snapped directly in front of Tom Boy, but Jeremiah's eyes traveled from one of their faces to the other. No one was completely sure who his wrath was about to be taken out on. "The Lord knoweth the way of the righteous: but the way of the ungodly shall perish."
He brought back the whip and began to curl it in his hand. "The light of the wicked shall be put out, and the spark of his fire shall not shine."
He finished curling the whip. "The righteous shall never be removed: but the wicked shall not inhabit the earth."
"Come here, Tom Boy."
Tom Boy moved close to Jeremiah, and there was a leer of complete evilness the-likes of which Grace Abernathy had never before seen.
Jeremiah handed the lesbian the whip. "The righteousness of the perfect shall direct his way: but the wicked shall fall by his own wickedness."
Tonya suddenly let go with an ear piercing scream of terror as she spun around. "I didn't mean it ... I didn't mean it. I'll give it all to you. I wasn't going to keep it. I'll give it to you." She started clawing at the buttons down the front of her sweater. "Save me ... Oh Lord God save me ... forgive me..."
"Shove her forward," screamed Jeremiah, and she was shoved forward to fall at his feet. "Pick her up so that I can look into the face of treachery."
Tensite and Smoothie grabbed the girl roughly by the arms and dragged her up. They had to hold her in position because her legs could no longer support her ... she kept screaming and pleading, the tears falling freely down her cheeks, the snot coming out of her nose, thick saliva falling over her lips to be caught and soaked into the sweater just where the breasts stuck so far out through the soft wool.
Jeremiah reached over and ripped the buttons from the sweater in one great tug. And when the sweater was destroyed he pulled apart the connecting center of her ample brassiere ... a garment several sizes too big for the breasts she possessed ... she had no more screams ... only eyes of terror as the brassiere tore and the money, some couple of hundred dollars spilled to the floor.
Jeremiah grabbed a hand full of her hair and yanked her away from Tensite and Smoothie. Her legs crumpled under her. Jeremiah dragged her to the door on the van and then flung her, using her hair, out into the rain. She landed with a dull thud on the rain soaked mud.
Tom Boy uncurled the whip, then ripped the shirt from her body. She wore nothing under it and her enormous globes flopped around her flabby belly. "I don't need no raincoat and I don't need no shirt," she tore off the Levi pants, "and I don't need no pants for this."
She started to step out of the van but turned viciously as Smoothie made what he thought was a practical joke. "Have some fun with her first, it'll be her last."
She cracked the whip. Smoothie would have a lasting scar under his beard, after the bleeding stopped and the scar healed up.
Tom Boy jumped down from the van doorway and Grace tried to tear her eyes away from the window but she couldn't. She was visibly horrified at the-sight, but she also was captured with morbid curiosity.
Tom Boy ripped the remaining clothes from the screaming girl until she was naked, then she grabbed the girl up from the ground and slammed her down again, picked her up and sent her right fist several times ... the nose broke ... teeth came out and fluttered into the dark mud ... she broke an ear drum with the palm of her hand ... then she broke the other one in the same manner. The girl was desperately-trying to scream but the blood clotted in her throat and there was only bubbling gurgles that came forth ... Tom Boy knead her first in the crotch, then hit the same place with her hob nail boots, the only piece of clothing she had permitted to remain intact.
Tanya was in excruciating pain before, but it increased at that point. As she fell to the ground and rolled over and over she tried to protect her mid and lower sections with her arms and hands.
Tom Boy was an expert at her job.
The whip snapped. The gurgling blood sounds came more frequent and more horrible ... the blood from the cutting lash couldn't be obscured by the mud Tanya picked up in her rolling over and over on the ground. The rain attempted to cleanse her, but the blood was pouring much too profusely from the ever biting lash ... the left ear flew away from the side of the girl's head ... blood spurted out like a forced fountain ... the nipple of her right breast fell with a sucking sound into the mud and was lost ... the right ear was sliced and fell, held to the side of her head, momentarily by a single tendon ... it too was severed with the next lash, as was her left nipple.
The snapping, cracking whip cut time and time again ... her breasts were sliced in half ... her abdomen was stripped of skin up the middle, the muscle of both her arms and legs were cut in a jagged line . ...
Grace Abernathy screamed. "Stop it ... stop it ... this is murder ... cold blooded murder ... stop that fucking queer beast...."
She realized the words she had suddenly shouted. But she realized it only for a brief instance. She found out that Jeremiah most certainly did hit his flock. He hit her straight in the mouth, and all she realized before she passed out was the blood spurting from her mouth . ...
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Grace Abernathy blinked open her eyes, slowly, ever so slowly. They felt irritated, swollen. There was a sharp pain in her lips where a tooth had gone through. The bright afternoon sun hurt her eyes.
Afternoon!
Had she been unconscious all that time?
She sized that up to be fact immediately. Slowly she got up on one elbow and realized that she was laying in the aisle between the seats where she had fallen from Jeremiah's blow ... she looked around and there were all the others, reading or doing whatever just as if nothing had happened ... and there was a jabbering, the voice of a young girl she had never heard before, coming from the front.
She looked forward, and indeed there was a new face ... in the seat she had previously occupied ... a girl in a well worn, short sleeved nylon blouse, a heavy jacket lay over the back of her seat.
"It was so nice of you, Reverend Jeremiah to pick me up back there."
"We are always in tune to the weary traveler, myself and my companions."
"You do talk so nice."
"Yes I do ... don't I?"
Grace Abernathy could hear the same words issuing in an echo from some long distant past ... when they were said to her.
The preacher in Jeremiah spoke again, "How long, ye simple ones, will ye love simplicity? And the scorners delight in their scorning, and fools hate knowledge?"
The girl wiggled all over and squealed. "I never heard no preacher sound so good."
"There are no other Gods before me."
"I buy that . ... " She put her hand out to touch his knee. "You know, my daddy is going to be so happy you picked me up when I was so lost like that. I wouldn't doubt but what he will reward you. He's a rich man, you know."
"I didn't know ... but I am happy for him. Glory, honor, and peace, to every man that worketh good."
Grace began to cringe all over. The cringing even took precedent over the pain in her lip. She had to get out of there. She knew she had to escape them. She knew that Tanya had been beaten to death. They wouldn't leave her behind, and alive, torn as she was. Is that what leaving them behind meant? How Tanya had said they just disappeared?
There was no other meaning.
Jeremiah was not a man of the cloth. She knew that now. The only mantle he wore was that of the devil, and the others were the devil's disciples. They were criminals of the foulest kind.
She had to get away from them. They were killers.
Not only of their own, but those out on the street ... the old lady ... how many others ... the man who took Mirinda behind the sign board ... was he dead too ... and how many others were there? They had traveled the country. They had told her that. How many others were there.
"Who's the girl in the back?" It was the voice of the young girl from the front seat.
"Which one?"
"The one on the floor. She looks hurt."
"She is hurt."
"How did it happen?"
Would he slug this new one right from the start for asking questions?
"She was chasing butterflies and fell."
What a silly answer ... but that was Jeremiah. Where were they? Were they in the Dakotas yet?
The young girl mirrored those reflections. It answered Grace's question. "How long will it take us to get to Sioux Falls?" She sighed. "My daddy is a worrier . ... "
"He better be worried," Grace opinioned silently.
"He's probably worried out of his skull right now ... me being gone six days, because of that darned car folding up on me, and me not daring to tell him about it."
"Due to business I had to take the long way around. We will reach the border later tonight."
How sweet he was to the new girl. But then Jeremiah didn't have her father's money yet ... but he still had hers ... in that right hand inner pocket of his jacket.
"Hungry?"
"Starved," she answered him.
"We'll pull off up the road a bit. I know of a nice place."
"Oh, then you've been around here before."
"I have ... a long time ago. The country don't change much ... only the cities." Then he started the steering wheel into the turn which took them off the road and into a grove of trees not unlike the one of the previous night. There was even a stream. Grace couldn't see that from her position on the floor, but she would shortly.
When the motor stopped the young girl was the first to alight ... almost like a young kid she raced across the space of green grass to the swiftly running stream, somewhat wider than the last creek.
Jeremiah picked up the purse she had left behind and went through it. There was more than three hundred dollars in it.
"Now what in hell would she be doing hitchhiking with this kind of bread? Fool kids ... take her Tom Boy."
"You ain't keeping her."
"Giddy bitch! All she's worth is right here in my hand."
"Mind if I suck a little pussy first."
"Be my guest."
"Yeah, that young stuff gets me every time." She formed her hands as if strangling someone. "Just as she shoots her wad ... shoot her way right into ... whichever way she's going."
Tom Boy left the van, and the others followed suit ... stepping over Grace. Then there was only Grace and Jeremiah left in the van.
Painfully she lifted herself up on one elbow and looked to him. He took a long time in turning around. He only did then because he felt her eyes drilling holes into the back of his neck.
"So you've finally come back to the world of the living."
"Why didn't you kill me too?"
"Now why would I want to kill you?"
"I know too much, that's why. You killed Tanya back there."
"I didn't kill anyone."
"Tom Boy did. You told her to."
"Tom Boy gets her kicks in strange ways."
The scream of the young girl was piercing.
"Like now. Young kid. Picked her up on the road a piece back." He slapped the money. "Paid for her ride though."
"What are you going to do with me?"
"Nothing ... as long as you're a good little girl. Of course I can't have you riding front seat any longer ... but there is a place for a young one like you ... soon's your lip heals."
"What do you want of me?"
"It's simple. Tanya is gone. There must be the twelfth disciple. Her place is open."
"You and your kind tortured that girl to death."
"Tanya stole from me. No one steals from me. It was not the first time ... although I never let it go beyond a first time when I am informed. Her little suitcase had more money in it than clothes. Tanya was not one of us. She was selfish. 'He that giveth unto the poor shall not lack: but he that hideth his eyes shall have many a curse."
"You hypocrite."
"Girl you certainly are looking for some tell-tale scars, aren't you. And I'd hate to mess up that pretty face of yours. It's worth much too much to me out there on the street with the others."
"You know what you can do with your street."
"My you do learn the vernacular of my people fast, don't you."
"I'm not one of your people, and I never will be, you beast."
The girl's scream came again, but much fainter from the brush. None of the others on the outside were paying any attention to it. It was better that they mind their own business. It had been pointed out to them through the many series of accidents which had befallen girls along the way, those left behind ... and never more prominent than the one the night before.
Grace, painfully got up from the floor of the van and deposited herself heavily in the nearest seat.
"I want you to give me back my father's money and let me go home."
"That of course is impossible."
"I want to go home. I demand that."
"You ... demand ... You've got to be kidding."
"I swear, at the first chance, I'll get away and when I do I'm going to tell everything I know about you and your whole gang."
"Now there's something you shouldn't have said little girl."
"How could I ever thought I loved you?"
"Others have thought the same thing."
"You're a beast."
"Perhaps ... perhaps not ... tell me ... did you ever suck ass."
"Beast ... beast ... beast . ... "
"I'm going to make you eat a pound of shit for every one of those beasts . ... " He walked to her and slapped her a resounding smack across the cheek.
"I really thought you had something. You know, you could have been my Mary if you'd have played your cards right ... yes, sir, I really thought I had something in you."
"Mary was Christ's mother ... I'm not your mother."
"You're nothing. Just nothing. No, I don't think you will make a disciple, at that."
"And I'm to be left behind."
He nodded. "You're to be left behind." He looked around. "But not here. We'll take a ride, just you and I ... there's a very deep lake up in the mountains farther, maybe ten miles, and I think you will remain safely on the bottom while the ice freezes. Even if you did come to the surface it wouldn't be until next spring. Now where will I be next spring?"
"Just another young girl, gone astray who ended up at the bottom of a lake."
There was no doubt that Grace was frightened. Perhaps she did speak out of turn. She should have kept her plans secret ... gone along with what he had in mind for her. She could have escaped so easily once she was on the street alone ... it would have been so easy.
Tom Boy, none the worse for her ordeal, appeared in the doorway. "What do you want me to do with her Jeremiah?"
"Finished?"
Tom Boy nodded and the purple hair never looked more stupid to Grace.
"Bring her in here. Get some rocks out there and stuff them into a laundry bag."
"No bag around here big enough to cram her into Jeremiah."
"Not necessary. Just fill one of the bags and I'll tie it around her feet."
"You got someplace deeper than that stream to dump her?"
"Yeah, I'm going up there now."
"He's going to kill me too."
"Happy landings kid," remarked Tom Boy. "I thought maybe I'd like to have taken you on too ... but now I just figure after your performance last night, that I'm too good for you ... get my meaning ... happy landings." Tom Boy turned from the doorway and was gone.
"Those who are loyal to me reap the greatest rewards of all."
"Death!"
"That too, when and if it becomes necessary."
"Can't you please let me go. You must have had a mother, a sister at one time. You must have been kind and considerate at one time...."
"I was born under the cross of my own making. I live by the cross."
"And you'll probably die pinned to a cross."
"If that is God's wish."
"You talk of God. God should strike you dead."
"He will never strike me dead ... not when I speak his words."
"You speak his words as they fit your own need."
"My o' my how our little girl is becoming learned."
She changed her plot. After all it was worth the chance. "Supposing I change my mind ... I come with you. I work on the street for you, whoring, that's the word for it, isn't it? whoring, in the name of God, and through the use of His words ... stealing, robbing, killing, all in the name of God and His words ... supposing I swear to you I will do all those things ... can I go on with you. I don't want to die ... please don't kill me ... please have mercy on me Jeremiah. I've done everything you wanted ... Yes, I'll even suck out your ass if that's what you want. But please don't kill me." No matter what. There would be the street and her time for revenge.
Jeremiah wasn't having any.
"Too late now."
"Why?"
"Your previous words have told it all." He sighed. "I could no longer trust you."
"I don't want to die."
"No one wants to die ... but all men must. "There the wicked cease from troubling; and there the weary be at rest. There the prisoners rest together; they hear not the voices of the oppressor. The small and great are there; and the servant is free from his master.' Lovely sentiment, isn't it? No dear little girl ... breathe while you may ... you have so few short breaths left."
Tom Boy brought in the heavy bag of stones and slammed them heavily on the floor of the van while Ranee and Klak carried the body of the young girl into the van and to the back where they tied the bag of stones around her ankles ... the young girl, reflected Grace, who so short a time ago had been so full of life ... looking forward to going home.
She also felt she would never see home again either.
Grace didn't look to the doors of the van as they were shut. Her eyes were on the staring, dead, open eyes of the young girl. Her limp tongue lay over the edge of her mouth where it had popped as she strangled to death. She was naked except for the nylon blouse which had been pushed up around her neck. Her nipples had been bitten off.
"Shall we go?"
Grace turned to face Jeremiah. He didn't care for an answer. He just wanted something to say. He spun around in the chair, turned the key in the ignition and the motors hummed. He backed out onto the highway, straightened and sped on.
"Yes, I did have such great plans for you. Such very great plans ... ever since the very first time I saw you."
"I loved you. How could you have done this to me?"
"I didn't want to. It was all of your own making, Grace Abernathy."
"A thousand dollars worth of making."
"You should have seen yourself, that first time ... the very first time."
"I know what I looked like. I was angry then, but never so mortified, angry as I am now. Kill me, but you can't stop me from hating you."
"Dear girl, that day on the old road was not the very first time I saw you ... touched you ... I would have fucked you right then if I had had the chance ... all laid out there in your fuzzy yellow sweater and brown skirt. See I remember ... Of course, you don't. You were unconscious."
Grace was really puzzled.
"What are you getting at."
"I thought about you over and over again."
"We met on the dirt road."
"We met on a grassy spot in a park."
"You're crazy, I'd have remembered. You, you are crazy, that much I know."
"I said you were unconscious."
"I wish I were unconscious now."
"You will be soon ... for all of eternity."
"Kill me then, and get it over with. But for the good God, and I said the good God's sake stop torturing me with your stinking voice."
"From that first moment I tried to find you. I walked your town over time and time again. I don't think I missed a street. I'd bet I passed your house more than a dozen times but didn't know it. I could never find you ... until that wonderful day on the old road. Who would think it would lead to this."
"Stop talking."
"Look at your leg."
She looked down, then snapped back up to him. "What about my leg."
He freed his left hand from the steering wheel and lifted the leg of her slacks. There was the telltale scar where the rattler had bitten her and the mysterious way it had been cut....
"I did that just after the rattler struck." Grace Abernathy gasped.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Neither of the two living occupants of the van could realize that the old man Mirinda had taken on did not die. He came across with a concussion and was out until the late morning. But when he told of the girl who preached at him while she robbed him, it didn't take much for the authorities to put the pieces together ... the roving hands of phony evangelists hit the countryside year after year and most of them ended up committing the ultimate of crimes.
Roadblocks took a while to set up because units had to be pulled into renewed service from outlaying communities ... and others from prearranged patrols.
But those roadblocks were set up Jeremiah couldn't know he was heading directly into one until he saw it some distance ahead of him.
Quickly he pulled one of the pistols the boys had given him the night before from under the seat. He capped it in his lap and glanced from time to time at Grace. "You make one sound and you're dead right here and now."
"You said I'm dead anyway."
"But as long as you're alive, you can have the thought that you might escape, or that I might change my mind. After all. You did love me once ... and I was very fond of you.
"They're not looking for us, I'm sure of that. There is nothing to link us to anything. So I'll greet them most politely and we'll be on our way. Be a good girl and you might not get hurt ... ever."
He pulled the van to a careful stop between the two police cars. Guns were not drawn by the officers but all four of them approached the vehicle.
"Driver's license!" It was an order. "Certainly officer."
Jeremiah reached into the front pocket of his jacket and produced his driver's license. He handed it to the officer.
"Something must be pretty far out to have roadblocks around the place, huh?"
The officer didn't answer him. "What's your occupation?"
"Huh?"
"What do you do for a living?"
"Why do you want to know?"
"Maybe I'm just inquisitive."
"Answer the man," chimed in a second man who came up to stand by the first, his hand dangerously close to his service revolver which was free and unhooked in the holster.
"Well ... sure ... I don't want any trouble. What's this all about."
"Maybe we'd better have a look in this wagon Jerry."
"You got my thoughts."
"Hey, now ... wait. I guess I was just curious. I'm a preacher ... a man of the cloth ... I preach the word of God. We ... my flock and I are camped at the grove of trees back down the road a couple of miles ... simple hard working people of the Lord ... never out to harm anyone...." All Grace could think of was for the officers to search the van ... the body of the young girl with the sack of rocks tied to her ankles.
"Down in the grove, you said?" reflected the second officer.
"You'd better get down out of there mister," said the first officer menacingly, then added. "And stop that motor...."
The man had gotten the words out, but it would be the last for him to speak. Jeremiah's gun was up and he fired the bullet through the man's head and put the gears home in the same instant. The van leaped ahead.
The officers left behind fired shot after shot but none hit, then they were more than safe ... for the moment ... around a bend. With the blind bend protecting them Jeremiah slammed the wheel to the right and took off along a rough mountain road. He increased the van speed to its fullest. Dirt shot up behind them.
Jeremiah knew that the police were already after him, but perhaps he had made the right turn, it had been so close to them, and they might miss it ... if so he had a clear shot at getting out.
"They know where the others are!"
"Fuck the others, let them take care of themselves bitch."
"They'll let the authorities know who you are ... you're as good as dead."
"Not as dead as you're going to be."
He hit a curve with full steam. The tires squealed ... the dirt cloud went up ... Far in the distance the police sirens screamed through the bright day.
"You'll kill us both!"
"The Lord is with me. You saw me prove that when I shot that shit-head in the head and got away."
He hit another curve . ... The wagon wobbled from side to side . . .but jt held the road . ... The road was getting thinner and thinner, and the dirt seemed to be more loosely packed, and the cliff on the right hand side looked down into the infinity of rocks and holders and an endless darkness.
The next curve the tire blew. The wheel flew out of his hands.
The car careened ... , Then she remembered it going over and over and then there was the blackout . ...
There was nothing more until she heard the voices ... her eyes opened and she came back to her senses ... she looked into the faces of the three police officers.
"Is he ... dead?"
"Yes, ma'am ... that's the way we look at it. You his girlfriend?"
"I hated him."
"You'll have to come with us."
"I know."
"There's an ambulance on the way."
"Where is he."
"Over there."
She insisted, and with the help of one of the officers she crossed to look down at the body of her one time lover ... broken ... beaten ... bloodied beyond recognition.
"What a horrible way to die," she said. She wouldn't have wished that on anyone....
"But that ain't the way he died," said another.
"But ... but ... look at him."
"We figure he might have lived ... but ... look...." He pointed to the ground beside Jeremiah's body.
The rattlesnake with its head shot off lay crumpled over Jeremiah's left hand side.
"It must have bit him a dozen times...."
And Grace Abernathy reached into his pocket and took out the thousand dollars which she handed to an officer. "I'll explain this later." She looked back to Jeremiah. "Is this the death of a Lord."
