Suddenly, he let out a cry like a wild animal and fell on top of her, smothering her with his big body. Sissy tried to breathe under his heavy chest and wondered, is this it? Is this what all the fuss is about? The black-and-gray bitch circled them, sniffing and licking Bourrée’s face. He knocked the bitch away and pulled out.
Sissy started to get up, to cover herself, disappointed and confused. But Bourrée stopped her. “I’m not through with you yet, little sugar.”
He pushed her back down into the grass and sand and began kissing and biting her breasts. Leaning on one elbow, he pinched her nipples until she began to moan. He rubbed her chest, and when he came to her nipple again, she couldn’t help arching her hips up toward him. Slowly, he brought his hand down over her body and into those crevices Sissy had no name for. She twisted and pushed against his slow hand.
She moaned. She felt like the next flick of his finger would make her crazy, and she wanted to be driven crazy more than anything else in the world; at that very moment, he took his hand away. She arched again, her eyes squeezed tight, trying to find him with her body.
But he wouldn’t give her what she wanted. He rubbed her stomach and her thighs and played all around the spot until she was moving with his hand to the left and right, up and down. She opened her eyes and saw him grin as he watched her dancing to the rhythms he set. When she was ready to burst, he eased up to a light tickle. She grabbed for him. He bore down finally, sending deep shudders through her body. She lay back, panting, but he wouldn’t let her relax.
She reached for him, kissing him, and felt him playing with her body until she came again and again. He wouldn’t let her rest until he decided it was time.
When he was finished, Sissy knew she’d had it. That was definitely something to carry on about.
“Don’t you ever let some young boy get away without finishing you off, you hear?” He was caressing her cheek. She saw the tips of his fingers were stained with her blood. She wasn’t a virgin anymore.
He led her down to the creek and washed her off in the icy water. She let him do anything he wanted. She kissed the back of his neck as he leaned over her, loving its weathered creases. She ran her hand through his black hair and decided it was beautiful. And when he held her head in his hands and she looked into those pale eyes in that dark Cajun face, she knew she’d never meet a more beautiful man.
Only when he took back his jacket did she feel cold. She hugged the black-and-gray bitch and watched Bourrée gather up his shotgun, ammunition, and game bag. He whistled for the dogs and the bitch left her for her master.
Sissy stood on the running board and kissed Bourrée’s rough cheek as the sky darkened and it began to drizzle. He turned and kissed her, surprising her with his force, and told her to come back. “I’ll give you another lesson in duck hunting.” Then he switched on the ignition. The old truck bucked. Sissy had to jump off.
She stayed in the woods until his taillights disappeared. This is the most important day of my life, she thought as she made her way up the embankment. “I’m a woman,” she said out loud, testing how it sounded in the air. “A woman.”
She opened the door of the car and found herself thinking about Parker. But she hadn’t done anything he hadn’t done, had she? He had it coming to him. She slid into the car and slammed the door.
Bourrée pulled on his crotch as he bounced over the dirt road. He’d sure bagged his limit today. He grinned as he thought about the cute little girl in her cheerleading outfit. Let one of those horny kids try to satisfy her now. Just let him try to poke that little girl and run. She’d never forget old Bourrée LeBlanc. As he turned onto the blacktop and headed into town, he couldn’t remember if she’d ever told him her first name.
THE NEXT DAY, Bourrée was loading his shotgun when he saw Sissy in her saddle shoes and plaid skirt walking toward him through the pine trees. She must have come straight from school. Left all those young bucks behind. He licked his lips. “Hey, little girl. I was afraid you was giving me a one-day special.”
She blushed and said, “It was special to me.” The wind was blowing her hair around. She brushed it out of her face. “You said you’d teach me some more about duck hunting. I’ll bet you know all the ins and outs.”
Bourrée whooped and unbuttoned his plaid hunting jacket. “Nobody knows the ins and outs better than I do, little girl.”
“That’s what I figured.”
They were standing a couple of feet apart. A red dog was trying to sniff under her skirt. She pulled it tight around her legs. Bourrée hated to see any animal sniffing around a woman, especially his woman. “Come here!” he ordered. But the girl came right along with the dog. She stepped right up to him, just like one of his dogs. The blood was pumping through his body now.
He looked around. No car. She must have hoofed it all the way from town. Just to be with him. He wondered how he’d got so lucky.
“You think you can teach me how to shoot?” She brushed her hair away and looked at him out of the corner of her eye.
He pulled on the collar of his shirt. “That depends on how bad you want it.”
“I want it,” she assured him, delighted that Rule Number Five worked on men as well as boys. All she had to do was toss her head, look at him out of the corner of her eye. How about that!
Since yesterday, she’d been haunted by him. She didn’t feel happy, the way she had when Parker gave her his class ring. This was entirely different. The attraction was dark, but insistent. It was as if he’d followed her home. Slept with her in her bed. Tied a golden cord around her most private part and was gently pulling on it. There hadn’t been a second when she didn’t feel its pressure.
Bourrée carefully laid down the gun and carelessly laid the girl. The autumn sun was still warm when he unbuttoned her blouse and pulled down her skirt and pulled up her slip. He spread her out naked on the sand with its tufts of grass. He’d forgotten the pleasures of tight young skin and a willing, indefatigable body. He’d forgotten, but he remembered fast when she wrapped those long cheerleader legs around him.
HE BEGAN PICKING her up after school. Every day after cheerleading practice she’d wait for him in the cemetery. Everyone thought she was going there to visit her brother’s grave, so they respected her need to be alone. Sissy felt guilty about using Norman’s memory like that. She knew he wouldn’t have liked it if he’d ever caught his little sister with a man like Bourrée. Well, he can’t catch me, she reminded herself as she waited among the dead for her lover.
Bourrée began bringing a few comforts out to the woods with them. An old red wool blanket to spread over the rocky ground and a heavy leather jacket to wrap her up in afterward when her teeth began to chatter.
Bourrée unbuttoned his jeans but he always kept them on. He didn’t want to get naked in front of that smooth young body. Besides, it had turned cold. He marveled that the little girl was still so amenable to letting him take off all her clothes. She’d sit on top of him, working that round little butt, grinding it into him, naked to the wind and the world. A bitch in heat will do anything, he thought.
He always brought along a flask of dark, warm moonshine, which they’d drink after having sex, before he took up his shotgun. Because in spite of the pleasures Sissy afforded him, Bourrée was not one to let a mere girl interfere with duck-hunting season. It was too short. And he always had a fresh supply of condoms. As many as it took. He felt they had lucked out the first time and he had no intention of getting a sixteen-year-old girl in trouble. Although if he did, he doubted that father of hers, Hugh Thompson, would have the guts to come after him. Still, Bourrée hated scenes. He had enough trouble at home, with Peewee whining at him all the time.
“But it’s my turn! Senior year, you always take the boys duck hunting.”
“Not this year,” said Bourrée, pouring himself a cup of coffee, wishing his wife weren’t so dead set against liquor in the house.
“But I’m a senior. Last year you took Tommy Lee and two years before tha
t you took Bert.”
“This year’s different.”
“Why?” But Peewee already knew. He was different. His father had never paid attention to him. He wasn’t big like Tommy Lee or smart like Bert. He was always just Peewee. Hand-me-downs were good enough for Peewee, the runt of the litter.
He’d thought things would change once they were out in the woods together, man to man. He’d show his daddy what he was made of. He’d secretly taught himself how to load a gun and he was sure he’d shoot more ducks than either of his brothers. He’d make his daddy proud of him.
“You’ll just have to wait, that’s all.”
“But I might not be here next year! What with the war in Europe and all!”
“Oh, for heaven’s sakes,” said Miss Lily, cutting herself a third helping of yellow cake with chocolate icing. “Have pity on the boy, Bourrée. Take him hunting.”
Peewee saw his father looking at her. Saw his father’s lip curl. “I don’t want pity, Mama! If Daddy doesn’t want to teach me to shoot, then he doesn’t. I can learn without him.” Peewee was fighting tears.
Bourrée pushed away from the table. “Jesus H. Christ! Can’t a man get some peace and quiet in his own home!”
“Bourrée, you know I will not have the Lord profaned in my house.”
Bourrée grunted, “Don’t worry, woman. I won’t bother you or the Almighty in this house again tonight.” He grabbed his coat and stormed toward the front room, wishing he’d listened to his parents and married a Catholic. But he’d wanted to escape the strictures of his upbringing. Lily Moffat, fat and sassy and just seventeen, looked like a great escape.
But a couple of years of marriage had driven her to religion. And when she took Jesus Christ into her heart, she threw her husband’s liquor out the door.
“And just where do you think you’re going?” Lily called after him.
“Out!” he yelled, slamming the door.
Miss Lily pursed her lips and all her chins trembled into her ruffled shirtwaist. She turned to Peewee. “See what you’ve done now? See what happens when you get your daddy all upset.”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Peewee. “I see.”
He never said another word about hunting, but every afternoon he’d see his father coming home with his guns and his dogs and his game bags not nearly as full as in previous years. That’s because he’s hunting alone, thought Peewee. If I was with him, we’d fill those game bags. He pretended to be immersed in the short-wave radio he was building. He’d show his father yet. But inside something that had been warm and eager just shriveled up.
BOURRÉE COULDN’T STAND to see his son’s mute suffering. Its very presence began to interfere with his daily pleasure in Sissy’s young body. Besides as the novelty wore off, she was taking up less and less of his thoughts and energy. He wanted to spend more of his precious time in the woods hunting, especially now the birds were thinning out. But Sissy was always there, every damn day, waiting for him with those adoring puppy eyes, eager as a dog and just as demanding. Bourrée was getting real tired of teenagers.
Chapter 14
Boys are easy.
Rule Number Forty-one
THE SOUTHERN BELLE'S HANDBOOK
SISSY LOOKED AT her watch. Ten more minutes and cheerleading practice would be over. Twenty more minutes and she’d be sitting next to Bourrée bouncing out to the creek with his fingers sliding under her skirt. She felt the pull of that golden cord. Mondays were always the best. She hadn’t seen him since Friday. It was going to be so exquisitely hard to wait until they got to the woods, especially now that hunting season was officially over and they wouldn’t have any other distractions.
It was too cold to make love outside on the ground, but they could fool around in the cab of his truck. There was plenty of room.
She’d been seeing Bourrée five days a week for a month. It seemed like her whole life. She was besotted with him. Her limbs felt languid. She was so marvelously sated.
Her notebooks were covered with Parker’s initials in big fluid script. But underneath she’d drawn BLB in a tortured cryptic code that seemed to fit their relationship. Parker was sunlight. Bourrée was shade. Parker was bright and healthy. Bourrée was like a sinful addiction.
She imagined herself straddling him in the truck, right in the cemetery, her back pressing into the horn. Pushing herself into him as her back arched and the horn honked and a crowd came out to see what was going on.
“Sissy, will you please face the squad!” said Miss Robbie. “I should think you—especially—would want to get this right.”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Sissy.
Parker had run ninety-five yards for the winning touchdown in the game against Hammond last week. Now Coach wanted a special cheer to spur him on to further victories. And he wanted it ready for the next week’s game. It wasn’t enough that Sissy jump up in the air, throw her legs apart, and come down in the splits. She’d worked on that for weeks last spring and it almost killed her. But then it seemed so much more important to make Parker proud of her. Before he’d found solace in his “cousins.”
Now Coach wanted the girls to do a series of squats and leaps, waving their pompoms around and yelling, “Go, Davidson, go!” while Sissy did back flips front of them.
But Sissy was voted head cheerleader because she was popular, not because she was a tumbling champ. And when her first back flip turned into a back flop, she refused to try again.
“You’ll get the hang of it,” insisted Miss Robbie.
“No, I won’t,” Sissy assured her and then suggested they let Betty Ruth do her Twirl of Fire. Everyone was horrified.
“You can’t do that, Sissy!” said Doreen McAlister. It was the head cheerleader’s privilege to stand in front of the squad. No one had ever heard of a head voluntarily giving up that privilege. “Beside, what would Parker think?” Sissy didn’t know. The only time she’d seen him in the last six weeks was at school. And she’d heard there had been a series of “cousins.”
Coach was pissed. The girl wouldn’t even do a simple back flip when his boys were breaking their arms and legs for the team. But she was adamant. He suggested she start with a graceful back bend and finish with a nice slow kick-over. But Miss Robbie pointed out that Sissy might still be upside down while Parker completed a touchdown, and no one would see him, because every man and boy in the stadium would be straining to peek up Sissy’s pants.
Sissy said she was willing to do a series of quick cartwheels. Coach didn’t think that would look so good.
“It would look a heck of a lot better than me back flopping in front of the whole school.”
Coach left shaking his head.
“Just watch the other girls and count,” said Miss Robbie.
Sissy watched as the girls squatted, twisted, jumped, and screamed, “Go, Davidson, go,” and then dissolved into giggles as she found herself hanging upside down and backward over Parker’s shoulders.
“Parker Davidson, you put me down, right now.” He had tackled her from behind, and was holding on to her by her ankles, her knees draped over his shoulders. Sissy yelled and tried to beat on his back from the indignity of her position.
“Coach said you wanted to learn to do a back flip.” He was careful to keep his hands on her knees and not on some indecent place on her thighs.
“Parker, you put me down now, or say your prayers!”
“Ow-wee,” said Parker, laughing to the other girls. “This gal’s tough.” He set her back on the ground and touched her shoulder. Sissy jerked away from him, but Parker just laughed again.
Miss Robbie announced the end of practice. It was beginning to rain.
Parker put his arm around Sissy protectively as they walked over to their coats. “Harlan’s parents are in Baton Rouge today, so a bunch of us are going over to his house and listen to records. What do you say?” He leaned into her as if to tell her a secret and kissed her hair. A shiver went through her. “Our parents won’t know.”
&nb
sp; A biting, wet wind hit her in the face. Sissy imagined herself in Harlan’s knotty-pine living room with a fire in the fireplace, horsing around and dancing to Coleman Hawkins and Duke Ellington. She could almost smell the fresh popcorn and cocoa. “I wish I could.” A longing swept through her. It would be like old times.
“Well, if you’re real nice to me, I’ll see if I can swing an invitation.”
“I have to go to the cemetery,” she said, and for the first time, she almost wished she didn’t have to.
“Dammit, Sissy.” And then, recovering himself, Parker apologized. “I’m sorry, babe, I didn’t mean to swear, but I hate to see you standing out there in the rain. I know what Norman meant to you. He meant a lot to all of us, but he wouldn’t want you to catch pneumonia at his graveside. What do you say? We haven’t been together in weeks.”
“I know, but I can’t. Not today.”
“But these afternoons are all we have. Don’t you miss me?”
“What do you think?” Sissy asked. She did miss him. She still wanted to be Parker’s girl.
Parker cast around for an alternative. “Okay, if visiting Norm is so important to you, I’ll have Harlan give us a lift and we’ll wait for you in the cemetery.”
“No!”
Parker looked mystified. He put his hands on her shoulders. “Hey, we don’t have to go to Harlan’s if you don’t want to.”
A shiver went through her. She’d always loved it when Parker touched her. But now she was in love with Bourrée, so Parker’s touch couldn’t mean as much. It would be immoral if it did. She would be immoral. She was so confused.
She hadn’t thought Parker wanted her anymore. Not with all his “cousins.”
She had to put Parker out of her mind. She’d made her choice the afternoon she’d first made love to Bourrée. It was a hard choice. And she couldn’t go on making it day after day, not and keep her sanity. She pulled away from Parker.
“What if I borrowed Harlan’s car and we go out to the creek, just the two of us?”
The Scandalous Summer of Sissy LeBlanc Page 20
