These Golden Pleasures

by Valerie Sherwood

  In panic now they turned and ran at right angles again, as, relentlessly, the tall black pillar pursued them, bearing down to annihilate them.

  “In—the—ditch!” yelled Buck, his voice barely audible above the terrible roar of the advancing monster. He flung Roxanne into a low depression in the ground. In falling, she rolled and landed on her back. Buck threw himself on top of her, shielding her with his body. She could feel his strong chest thudding against her breasts, his heavy-muscled legs pinning down her hips. The breath almost knocked out of her, Roxanne lay still on her back and stared with with terrified eyes over Buck’s shoulder at the menacing whirlwind that approached now from the southwest.

  On it came, roaring like a thousand thunders, chewing up the ground as it came. The noise grew so intense that it seemed to merge with her very being and she clutched Buck in terror. When the funnel was almost on them she screamed but could not hear her own voice in the fiendish din. They were going to die she thought and clung to Buck as if she were drowning.

  Then just as the sound peaked, it stopped. Abruptly. Some vagary of the landscape had caused the inky funnel to lift a little. As the great vortex—some four hundred feet wide—hung poised over their heads, Roxanne felt the air being sucked from her lungs, and she choked on the strong sulphurous odor. She was looking straight up the inside of the great black funnel.

  Above them was a scene from hell itself.

  Rotating cloud masses whirled above her, seeming to boil in fury about a great void, their wild gyrations horribly illuminated by a constant vivid electrical display of jagged bolts of blue lightning. Thick, powerful brutal bolts that made an intricate devil’s lacework through that great cavern of air that reached skyward. The rippling lightning was punctuated by hissing screaming sounds that blasted down at her from the end of the funnel. And at its ragged base the writhing tails of little tornadoes spewed out, hissing, formed and broken away and reformed on the swirling rim of the huge vortex like giant snakes from some unthinkable nightmare.

  She lay rigid and wide-eyed as this hollow tower of fire wavered overhead. Then it passed, and as the sobbing breath came back to her straining lungs again, the moving black wind slammed down farther on with a hammer blow that shook the earth and dug a ditch five feet deep across the Kansas prairie. As it touched down, the tremendous shattering noise engulfed them again in a torrent of sound that ripped and tore the senses.

  Roxanne was screaming, but she couldn’t hear her own voice in the infernal din. She felt Buck’s body jerk as the noise came back. Head down, clutching her, he lay on top of her, effectively pinning her down. Had she been on her feet, her panic might have caused her to run madly in any direction to escape the colossal noise. Instead, she lay immobile, stunned by the avalanche of sound that howled over them, through them. In violent reaction she clung to Buck, shaking, clung to those arms she had just forsworn as if her very life depended on it.

  Suddenly it was borne in on her consciousness that her legs were being wrenched apart, that her clothes were being pulled from her body, and that Buck—a new ungentle Buck—was straining above her, deaf to her cries—which indeed in the mighty holocaust of sound around them he could not have heard. He was—

  “No!” she screamed. She was sure she uttered it even though she could not hear it, as she twisted violently in his grasp.

  But he held her fast, with a desperate urgency. His hot breath blew into her ear, his lips closed down on hers—demanding lips that took without asking. His weight shifted on her, so that she felt his body pressed intimately close, her legs against his legs. Unable to move, she felt a sudden savage thrust within her and a sharp pain that seemed to burst inside, making her weak. A terrible lassitude claimed her, a heaviness of the limbs, an unwillingness to move. Suddenly it was all part of the storm—the terror, the pain. And the turmoil within became one with the turmoil without, and her own wild scream mingled with and was lost in the nightmare of sound around her. There was another deeper thrust, and she screamed again, but the sound was torn away. Buck paid no attention to her agonized writhing but held her in a steely grip, working his will upon her, moving rhythmically.

  In Roxanne’s trembling body something savage and tumultuous awakened. Something elemental and fierce—born of the storm and of new desires that raced unchecked through her being, something wild and free and wonderful. Inhibitions gone, passions suddenly unleashed, she was borne upward and skyward or heightened senses into an utterly new sweet passion that overbore the thrusting pain and the terror of that black doomsday cloud roaring down the prairie. Her feelings roiled until she felt inside her a vortex not unlike the twister, lit by flashing savage responses. Her fingers dug into Buck’s back, and she surged upward toward him, feeling a groan quiver through her even though she could not hear it.

  In the fury of the elements there on the great wild prairie, they were like mad things, clutching each other, moaning, gasping. A recklessness had engulfed Roxanne. Perhaps it was a reaction to the storm, the horrible rush of sound that had dimmed her brain and rubbed her nerves raw. Perhaps she was only clutching at life. They had been so near destruction, Buck and she. Death’s dark, chill wings had brushed them—and now they found themselves snatched from death . . . and they were in each other arms, young and alive and bursting with emotion. So they lay clasped, straining together in a frenzy of passion as if to make up for time lost, for days that had never been and might never be again.

  When their fury was spent, Buck slid away from her and lay silent beside her. Roxanne lay on her back in the deep summer grass and looked up at the sky and marveled. Her whole body knew a new languidness, a warm yielding. In pain and terror and yes, wild desire and splendor too, she had become a woman. And prone beside her in the sweet summer grasses lay her lover.

  Her thoughts moved dreamily. This had changed everything, hadn’t it? She and Buck . . . she was his now. He had taken her virginity. True, he had done it under the lashing of powerful emotions, but . . . wasn’t it always like that? Hadn’t the storm just heightened it?

  As she lay there dreamily, her mind filled with intoxicating fantasies, she was aware suddenly that Buck had sat up. Her gaze swung toward him, and she saw that his face was averted from her, and his head was in his hands.

  “Roxanne, I’m sorry,” he choked.

  She didn’t grasp that at first. Her world was singing and Buck was . . . was sorry?

  “Sorry?” she repeated stupidly.

  “I never meant to—I don’t know what came over me, Roxanne. It was the storm, I guess. I thought we were done for and all of a sudden I couldn’t stop myself. I—I just had to have someone, that’s all.”

  Had to have someone. Not her . . . just someone. Her singing world crashed down around her with a cruel thud.

  “You’re saying you love Julie,” she said in a dull voice. “That I just—happened.”

  There was a long silence while, one by one, her illusions fled.

  “I’m—sorry,” he repeated again, as if the words were torn from his very depths.

  Roxanne heard that anguished note in his voice, and deep inside her something quivered and wept. This was the first time any man had held her—really held her—in his arms. And it had to be someone who was sorry! Oh, why, cried her heart, couldn’t it have been different? Why couldn’t this first time have been someone who truly loved her, not just wanted her out of the need of the moment! Feeling almost sick with the intensity of her emotion, she leaned forward and put her hot face in her hands. Buck saw that and his tone changed.

  “I—I didn’t mean—” he stammered. “Roxanne, I'd do anything to make it up to you.”

  Next, oh God, he was going to say, I’ll even marry you, she thought wildly.

  “You don’t have to do anything,” she choked. “I guess I could have fought you off if I’d tried hard enough.” It wasn’t true, but somehow it saved her pride. And she hadn’t really fought as hard as she could. Death had seemed so near, a vivid reality, and out o
f the terrible void of her loneliness she’d wanted— just once—to hold someone in her arms. It just happened to be Buck, that was all. That was what she told herself.

  “I’d give anything not to have done it,” he said intensely.

  She looked away, not able to face him at that moment. He’d give anything not to have done it. What a thing to hear from the man who’d just taken your virginity!

  “I never meant—” He was whispering now, and the twister that had spawned this cyclone within them had disappeared, snaked back into the clouds from whence it came.

  “I know you didn’t,” said Roxanne unsteadily. She struggled to sit up.

  “I’ll carry you back,” he cried in an agony of effort to make it up to her.

  “No, thanks, I’m not hurt,” she said, wincing.

  “Oh, God, I’ve torn your dress!”

  “I can hold it together until I get a needle and thread.”

  Slowly, they made their way back to the Smiths They didn’t talk, didn’t look at each other. A great embarrassment had sprung up between them, composed of shame and guilt and—on her part at least—bewilderment.

  When they reached the Smiths’ yard gate, Nadine came running to meet them. “We hid in the cyclone cellar while the storm passed over,” she informed them importantly. Then she saw Roxanne’s torn dress and stared. “Where were you? We thought you’d be hiding in the storm cellar at the Old Hatter Place.”

  “There isn’t any Old Hatter Place any more,” said Buck grimly. “Twister tore it all up.”

  Nadine’s eyes widened. “Golly!” she whispered. “Golly!”

  Roxanne stumbled onto the porch unaided and Julie opened the front door. Her steady gray eyes took in Buck’s worried look and Roxanne’s tom, bloodied dress.

  “I fell,” said Roxanne in a flat voice.

  “We tried to make the Old Hatter Place,” explained Buck briefly. “But the tornado hit it dead center, and we veered off to the right of its path—and then it turned.”

  “Golly,” thrilled Nadine again in a reverent whisper.

  “It came right at us no matter which way we went, but we tumbled into a ditch, and it lifted up and went right over us. I thought sure we were goners.” He had a haunted look.

  “It was awful.” Roxanne shuddered. She looked wan and her legs felt wobbly.

  “Come upstairs with me, Roxanne,” said Julie quietly. “I’ll mend your dress for you.”

  Roxanne could hardly meet Julie’s eyes. She hadn’t known it would be so hard. But she followed along, thinking fervently, thank God, Julie doesn’t know what happened out there!

  Upstairs Julie shut the bedroom door and leaned against it. “I brought you up here so we could have some privacy,” she said. “You don’t have to tell me what happened—I can guess. It’s on both your faces.”

  “No,” said Roxanne, confused. “You don’t know. You couldn’t—”

  Julie’s upper lip trembled. “What I’m trying to tell you is that it’s all right,” she said. Roxanne saw her hands were clenched, the knuckles white. “You see, I—I know I’m not going to make it. I’m engaged to Buck, but I’m not ever going to wear his wedding ring. And I want him to be happy. That’s why I sent you two over to the Old Hatter Place. That’s why I’ve been throwing you together so much. Because”—her finger clenched—“I want Buck to be happy when—when I’m gone.”

  Roxanne’s head spun. She had expected recriminations and was prepared for them. But this! The anguish in Julie’s gray eyes, the expression on her thin pale face with its bright spots of color on each cheek, the quiet renunciation in her tone—it wasn’t fair that any one person should go through this!

  Roxanne’s head went up. “Julie,” she said in the most convincing tone she could muster, “absolutely nothing happened. Buck was pointing out the sodhouse when the tornado swooped down. He grabbed me and we started running this way and that. I fell once and he dragged me to my feet—that must be how my dress got torn; I was so frightened I don’t even remember. And then we tumbled into a ditch and it passed right over us. I’ve never been so terrified in my life. The noise just stunned us both. And then we got up, scared out of our wits, and staggered back here. But Buck loves you, Julie. He’s not interested in me. He’s just nice to me because I’m your friend.”

  Wisps of hope sprang up in Julie’s eyes. “You aren’t just saying that, are you?” she asked, her tone ragged.

  “Of course not,” said Roxanne sturdily. “Buck doesn’t care a thing for me or I for him.” Her voice rang with sincerity; she could almost believe it herself. Julie slumped against the door. Roxanne was afraid she might collapse and slide to the floor.

  “I meant to be so brave about it,” Julie whispered “But—but I’m so happy you don’t care for each other! Tears spilled over her lashes. “Oh, Roxanne, it’s terrible for Buck having me like this.”

  “There, there.” Roxanne steadied her friend. And any ideas she might have entertained about Buck and the life of a farmer’s wife on the prairie went right out the window. It would be like murder. Frail, generous Julie couldn’t stand another blow.

  Julie twisted her fingers together, and her voice was anxious, apologetic. “I’m—sorry for what I thought, Roxanne,” she said humbly. “It’s just that Buck’s been so restless lately with me sick. After all, he’d expected us to be married almost a year ago. It’s hard for a man to wait.”

  You knew he was looking around, thought Roxanne, surprised.

  “And you’re so pretty. And so nice,” whispered Julie. “I thought if—if it was going to happen, I wanted the best for him.”

  Tears welled up in Roxanne’s eyes and her throat closed. If she’d ever had any thoughts about taking Buck from Julie, they were gone forever. She would always see Julie’s earnest face with its brave sad eyes, and there would be an unbridgeable gulf between herself and Buck.

  Julie turned away, hiding her face, her shoulders shaking with dry, wracking sobs.

  “I’ll go home now, Julie,” mumbled Roxanne. “I’ll wait for Uncle Josh downstairs.”

  “No,” sniffled Julie. “Your dress—I’ll have to mend it first.”

  Roxanne checked herself in horror.

  She couldn’t go home! She had a clear conception of what Aunt Ada would think if she turned up with a torn dress and underwear and spots of blood on her skirt. And an ever clearer conception of what Aunt Ada would say. She’d rail at Roxanne, she’d call her damaged goods, but she’d make her marry fat old Mr. Witherspoon anyway! Aunt Ada would lock her in her room and starve her until she was so hungry she’d agree to anything! Hadn’t she said so? And if Aunt Ada decided Roxanne might be pregnant, she’d want to get her married even sooner.

  “I—can’t go home,” she choked.

  Julie reached out and took her hand. Somehow that frail grasp was infinitely comforting. It said Julie understood. Now Julie’s face was determined, and she straightened her shoulders so that she looked taller.

  “Roxanne,” she said quietly, “I don't know what happened out there and”—she held up her hand to silence the other girl—“I don’t want to know. Whatever happened was my fault. I threw you together because I thought that I could bear to give Buck up. But I can’t. I know that now. And I’ve made up my mind. Whatever happens, I’m going to marry him. If I die the next day, I’ll have had that anyway. This living in limbo, I can’t stand it any more. No more can Buck. I don’t blame him if he—if you and he . . .” Her voice trailed off and she gave Roxanne a wild look. “We’re going to help you get out of here, Roxanne. We owe you that. When your Uncle Josh comes by, we’ll say you fell and hurt your back and that the doctor said it was all right except maybe you shouldn’t bounce around in a buckboard for a couple of days. Then we’ll put you on a train. Wherever you want to go. Buck has some money saved—enough for a ticket. And you won’t have to marry Ned Witherspoon!”

  And she wouldn’t have to stay and watch with anguish as Buck and Julie got married. She would
n’t have to watch Julie die. . . .

  Having made up her mind, Julie went promptly about it. She dried her eyes and matter-of-factly mended Roxanne’s dress. Then she poured some water in the big ironstone washbowl on the marble-top wash-stand, so Roxanne could wash the spots out of it.

  “Nance can iron it dry,” Julie said, as Roxanne soberly washed the blood out of her worn yellow calico dress. “Besides,” she added, “you won’t be wearing it. I’ve got something better for train travel.”

  She opened the pine hope chest Buck had given her. As Roxanne watched, she pulled out a gray linen suit with wide lapels and a long bell-shaped skirt, a suit carefully folded in tissue paper and smelling of lavender, and laid it gently, lovingly, on the bed.

  “I had more figure then, and besides it has deep seams. We can let them out.” Julie considered the suit wistfully. “It’s part of my trousseau. It was to be my going-away suit.”

  “But I can’t take that,” protested Roxanne. “You’ll want to have it when you marry Buck.”

  Julie sighed. “I’m not going away now. I’m going to marry Buck and stay right here—move right into the little house he fixed up for us on his pa’s place. I’ll ride there from the church in my white dress and wedding veil.” She smiled at Roxanne. “It will be very romantic.”

  Roxanne smiled back. It would be romantic, she thought. More romantic, certainly, than being ravished in a cyclone.

  When Uncle Josh came to pick her up, they told him that Roxanne had hurt her back. He believed every word—after all, who had ever known Julie Smith to lie? Especially with Roxanne looking wan in Julie’s bed under the green and yellow quilt while they all fussed over her.

  That very evening, Roxanne put on Julie’s going-away linen suit and a pert gray hat that matched it, and a hat that sprouted pink ribbons and gray feathers, and gray kid gloves.