Spit and Grit

by Jeanie P Johnson

  Now I am insulted that he wasn’t even tempted to touch me, but I just glare at him.

  “You’re lying,” I say. “I never done that.”

  “Why you think your shirt was all twisted, then?” he asks.

  “You probably did it so you could look at me,” I accuse.

  “You’re too skinny to even bother with and those tits of yours aren’t even a handful. Why would I want to look at them?”

  “You were looking at them,” I point out.

  “Cause there was nothing else to look at,” he tells me. “Put your pants on and stop hacking on me! You got a choice here. We can go back out in the rain and get all wet again, looking for your cows, or we can sit here until the rain lets up.”

  He lets his eyes roam over me as I bend over to pull my pants up.

  “No way I’m sitting in here with you any longer,” I tell him.

  “Well, if we go out and get all wet, we are going to have to do this all over again if we don’t find them cows before it lets up,” he reminds me and I can see a grin stretching across his face, making his lips actually look a little appealing.

  “Something for you to look forward to, for sure,” I sneer.

  “It’s up to you. I don’t mind looking at you in a wet undershirt again, even if your tits are small.”

  I know he is saying it just to rile me because I, for one, know my tits are not that small.

  “I’m going to find my cows,” I say and I start braiding my hair in one long braid at the back of my neck.

  When I get to the end of my braid, I don’t have anything to tie it with.

  “Here,” Granger says and he tears a piece off the hem of his shirt and hands it to me.

  For a moment I just stand there and don’t reach out for it so he grabs my hand and puts the tie in my palm.

  “Apparently, no one ever taught you any manners. I didn’t have to come out here to help you, you know.”

  “I didn’t ask you to, either,” I remind him as I start to tie my braid.

  “One of these days, you are going to discover you can’t hold the world upon your shoulders all by yourself,” he says. “Don’t go storming out! We should fix something to eat before we take off.”

  He grabs my arm because I was heading for the door, and he pulls me back and sort of pushes me down on the bed.

  “I’ll fix it, if you want.”

  “Can you actually cook?” I ask. “I thought all you and your brothers ever did was play cards and terrorize women.”

  “You have some low opinion of us, I can see,” he says, and he goes over and gets a skillet that is hanging on a hook, and puts it on a rack over the fire, which is built into the fireplace for the very purpose of cooking.

  Then he rummages around in the shelves and finds a tin of flower, baking powder, some canned milk, and lard. He makes up a batter, puts some lard in the skillet and then pours the batter in. It starts to sizzle, and he takes a fork and turns it over, after a bit, and I have to admit it smells pretty good.

  When it’s through cooking, Granger takes the skillet off the rack, sets it on the table and cuts the bread up with a knife, he takes from his belt and hands me a piece. It’s warm and I have to blow on it to cool it off enough for me to even eat it, but when I taste it, I am surprised that it tastes as good as it does.

  “You gonna say anything, miss spit, and grit?”

  “Okay, so you know how to cook,” I say, and he starts laughing.

  “No thank you or anything?” he prods.

  “It wasn’t your food,” I say.

  “But I cooked it,” he points out.

  “I could have cooked it,” I respond.

  “Holy Moses! You sure can’t bring yourself to say one kind word, can ya?” he spouts.

  “I’m going out to look for my cows,” I say, and I head towards the door.

  I feel a little guilty for being so mean to Granger after he cooked the bread, but I just can’t bring myself to find anything nice about him. I have hated the Snider brothers for the last two years, ever since they let my father’s horse lose, and he ended up dying. I refuse to allow him to wheedle his way past my mistrust and hatred of them. I never think of them as individuals. They are just the Snider brothers, like one entity with a single focus. And that is to make my life miserable, ever since my father died. Nothing they can do now will ever change that in my mind.

  I go out and climb up on Rocket and Granger comes out of the door and gets on his horse.

  “Which way do you think they went?” he asks.

  I just shake my head. The rain is still coming down and it has washed out any tracks we might have been able to follow. It feels hopeless, but I can’t give up hope, I tell myself.

  As soon as I ride out from under the shelter of the porch, I am soaked all over again, but I try to block it out and kick Rocket, heading to higher ground. Maybe the cows went to find shelter up in the hills where there are caves and overhanging ridges to huddle against, I reason. Granger follows along side of me. He doesn’t say anything to me or makes any comments about the direction I have decided to go. We are both looking down in the mud for tracks.

  We ride for about an hour through scrub brush and cactus plants. There are not very many trees up by the rocks, and when it is not raining like this, it can get pretty hot up there.

  “I don’t think they’re up here,” Granger says after a bit and I wipe the rain out of my face and look at him.

  “There’s a cave up ahead, they might have gone there to get out of the rain,” I say.

  “Cows don’t mind rain,” Granger informs me.

  “But they don’t like thunder and lightning,” I point out. “They may have hidden to get away from it.”

  “Well, I suppose you won’t be happy until you look,” he says, and heads up the rise and his Roan is sort of hopping trying to get footing up the hill.

  As it is struggling in the loose rocks and mud, a small rock slide, starts coming down the hill and his horse sidesteps to miss a rolling boulder, The next thing I know, Granger is being thrown from the horses back and he lands right in the middle of a cactus patch.

  Granger starts yelling and swearing and I jump down from my horse to pull him out. He limps out of the patch and is slinging his head back and forth in pain.

  “Are you all right?” I ask.

  “Hell no!” he bellows, “I got thorns all over me! I can barely walk!”

  “What are we going to do?” I ask.

  “Well, until these thorns are out of me, I am not going to be able to ride,” he tells me. “Let’s walk up to the cave and maybe we can get them out,” he says, as he limps beside me.

  The cave is within view, but it is up above us so I lead the horses and Granger puts his hand on my shoulder for support as he limps up the hill beside me.

  “Man this smarts!” he groans.

  When we get to the cave, I can see there are no cows in it and we lead the horses inside, to get out of the rain.

  “See if you can pull the thorns out of my britches,” he says, as he turns his back to me. “I got some pliers in my saddle bag.”

  I look in the saddle bag and find the pliers, then start pulling out all the thorns I can see.

  “They’re inside,” he says. “I’m gonna have to take off my trousers so you can take the thorns out of my skin,” he informs me.

  “No, you’re not,” I say.

  “I can’t ride, until the thorns are gone, and I can barely walk, so I don’t care how squeamish you feel about looking at a man’s behind, but you better just use some of that spit and grit of yours and buck up, girl!”

  He kicks his boots off and starts pulling his trousers down, tosses them aside, and then begins to take off his long johns while I avert my eyes.

  “You are going to have to look,” he says. “How are you going to find the thorns, unless you look, Mazy?”

  “I don’t want to do this,” I complain.

  “Well, yer gonna have to, whether you
like it or not! Now get to it, I’m standing here all hanging out and I’m not putting those trousers back on until the thorns are gone. You gonna make me stand like this all day?”

  I open my eyes and look down at his backside. I sort of hold my breath for a moment.

  “I can’t see any thorns,” I tell him after glancing over his well-shaped posterior.

  “You have to put your hand on me and feel for them,” he says. “They are so thin, it’s hard to see them.”

  He takes my hand and places it on his bottom and I can feel the prick of the thorns against my hand. Timidly I begin to feel for the thorns, and as I find them, I use the pliers to pull them out. It is a slow process though and Granger groans a little sometimes when I pull one out that had gone in pretty deep.

  “There’s some on the inside of my legs and the back of my private parts,” he tells me, as he spreads his legs a little.

  “I’m not touching your private parts,” I tell him.

  “You’re gonna have to, Mazy. It is not going to kill you. Nothing’s going to happen from you just touching me, to take the thorns out.”

  “I might hurt you,” I say.

  “It’s gonna hurt worse if you don’t do it,” he informs me.

  Slowly, I start feeling the inner part of his legs and as my hand runs across the thorns, I pull them out. Finally, I have to look at him and search for more thorns in his sack and steel myself as I reach out and take it in my hand, running my thumb across it to feel for the thorns. There are all kinds of very small thin thorns in it and I am having a hard time reaching them.

  “You’re going to have to bend over,” I tell him.

  “Why don’t you sit down on a rock and I will bend over your lap,” he suggests, so I find a rock and sit down.

  Granger lays over my lap and spreads his legs so I can get to that part of him and I run my fingertips over his skin, seeking out small thorns. I have seen my little brother in the nude before when he was a toddler, but this does not compare. Every time I touch him I feel nervous, but eventually, I start to get used to the feel of him under my fingers and I try to be as gentle as I can.

  “I think I found them all,” I say.

  “Just check again to make sure,” he says, and I run my fingers over him, down the inside of his legs and against his bottom, very slowly, feeling for more thorns.

  “You have a nice touch,” he sort of whispers, as I run my hand across his skin.

  I don’t say anything as I finish feeling for more thorns.

  “Maybe you should check the front too, just in case,” he says, as he stands up and turns towards me, his private parts right at eye level.

  “How could they get in front?” I ask. “You landed on your backside.

  “But my legs were open and there was a cactus that went right between my legs,” he tells me. “So you had better look.”

  “Why don’t you look yourself?” I ask.

  “Cause it is easier for you to do it, seeing as how you can look closer than I can,” he tells me. “Well, don’t just sit there admiring me, start looking,” he says.

  “I’ve already touched you as much as I am going to do,” I hiss. “You can either look for yourself or suffer, for all I care! You have humiliated me enough for one day! The look of you is turning my stomach!”

  “Is that so?” he sneers. “Haven’t you ever been with a man before?” he asks with a chuckle.

  “Of course not! Who do you take me for?” I say, starting to feel a little insulted by him suggesting it.

  “I bet you’ve watched your pa bread his stallion with the mares, haven’t you?” he asks me?

  “He never let me watch,” I tell him.

  “Aren’t you the innocent one?” he smiles. “You don’t know a thing about what to expect on your wedding night, then, do you?”

  “Of course not! I shouldn’t even be touching you like this, and if it weren’t for the fact that you have thorns all over you, I wouldn’t be.” I say.

  “Only I was getting to like the way you were touching me,” he says, eying me mischievously.

  “Yeah, that’s because you and your brothers are nothing but womanizers,” I spit.

  “Now, I haven’t laid a hand on you, have I? Why would you accuse me of such a thing?” he bellows back.

  “You are just trying to trick me into doing something I shouldn’t be doing, so you might as well pull your long johns back on and get dressed. We got cows to look for.”

  “You’re no fun! You don’t have one nice thing to say to me, even though I have gone out of my way to help you! I don’t have to be out here, falling in cactus, and getting soaked to the skin, but I happen to like you, so I offered my help!” he complains.

  “Well, you can just stop liking me, and I never asked you to help. You forced it on me!”

  “Hell, I should just go back home then,” he sneers, as he begins pulling his wet clothes back on.

  “You probably weren’t hurting as bad as you made out,” I accuse. “You can go if you want,” I hiss.

  I have this feeling that what happened was something that Granger wanted to happen, and he tricked me into touching him.

  “Yeah, maybe I should,” he says, and he sort of limps over to his horse. “I’m not going to be able to ride for very long though. So we better go back to the shack until the pain wears off. Then I will decide if I will stay and help you or not.”

  “Don’t you dare tell anyone what I did,” I say. “Don’t even let them know I saw you with your trousers off, or my mother will have my hide!”

  “Okay, it will be our little secret. Thanks for doing that for me, Mazy. I’m starting to feel better already!”

  It is still raining, and we ride back slowly towards the shack. I keep my eyes peeled for the cows, but I don’t see them. The whole time I am thinking about what happened with Granger in the cave and something inside of me knows that Granger had manipulated me into doing that, even if he was in pain.

  The more I think of it, the angrier I get, and when we get to the shack, I jump down from Rockets back and storm into the house, and when Granger walks in I haul off and slug him. He sort of staggers back a little and looks at me like I have lost my mind.

  “What in the hell are you doing, Mazy?” he yells as he rubs his chin.

  “You dirty minded no account downright womanizing, bastard!” I scream in his face, and I lunge at him. Our clothes are all wet and we are sort of slipping on the dirt floor that is starting to turn to mud as we drip on it.

  “Hold off there,” Granger says as he grabs my wrists and pushes me off of him. “What has gotten into you?”

  “You tricked me! I was trying to help you and you tricked me into touching you like that! You wanted me to touch your front part too! All you wanted was for me to touch you! You wanted to humiliate me and act all smug about it! I hate you, Granger Snider!”

  “Don’t get all upset, Mazy. It was just fun and games! And I did need you to pull the thorns out!” he excuses it.

  “No, it wasn’t! You humiliated me, and I am so stupid, I didn’t even know I was being humiliated! I should have made you ride back home with those thorns in your behind! You are exactly like I thought you were!”

  “I’m sorry, Mazy. I didn’t think you would get this angry. It was nothing. You were only touching me to look for the thorns.”

  “I was touching you indecently! I was touching you the way only a wife should touch her husband! And you thought it was all fun and games and funny! If my Pa was still alive he would shoot you full of Buckshot! But my Pa is dead because of you!” I scream in his face.

  Then I lunge for the door, and I run out and jump on Rocket and start tearing off through the rain and wind and I don’t even know which way I am riding. I just want to get as far away from Granger as I can.

  Rocket’s hooves are slipping and sliding in the wet grass but I don’t slow him. Then suddenly I am being knocked off my horse and I find Granger on top of me.

  “You s
tupid crazy woman! You trying to kill yourself and your horse too?” he yells at me as he straddles me and holds my hands over my head. “You are overreacting to this, Mazy. It’s not worth killing yourself over!”

  “Get off of me!” I scream and I start wriggling and thrashing, trying to get away from him. We are rolling in the mud and I am trying to slug him, while he is trying to hold my wrists. Only the slippery mud makes his hands slip and I get a swipe in every so often, before he grabs my wrists again.

  “I swear, Mazy! If it upsets you so much for touching me, I’ll marry you if you want!” he gasps between breaths.

  “I wouldn’t marry you if you were the last man on earth! I hate you, Granger! You hear me? I never want to see your face again!” I growl, and we roll over and I am straddling him now and I start pounding on his chest.

  Suddenly, Granger stops struggling with me.

  “Go ahead, Mazy, give it all you got. Beat the crap out of me if you want to. I probably deserve it.”

  He just lays there as I am pounding on him, merely looking up at me, mud all over his face, his blue eyes, blinking away the muddy water. I stop pounding him and just dissolve into tears, falling against his chest.

  “Why’d you do that? Why’d you do that?” I sob.

  “I shouldn’t have, Mazy. It was mean of me but your hands felt so good on me, I just couldn’t resist. I didn’t want to humiliate you. I just wanted to feel you touching me is all, and I guess I got carried away. Forgive me, Mazy. Will you forgive me?”

  He brings his arms around me and holds me against him as I lay there sobbing while the rain pelts down on us. We are totally covered in mud and the tie had come out of my braid while we were wrestling, causing my hair to get plastered over my body. It is covered in mud as well.

  After a while, Granger sits up with me in his arms.

  “We can’t sit out here like this, Mazy, we gotta get these wet muddy clothes off, and get dry.”

  He pulls me up and grabs the reins of his horse and I whistle for Rocket who is not very far off. Granger helps me up on Rocket.

  “Don’t run off, Mazy. I will just knock you off your horse again if you do.”

  To make sure I don’t run off, he holds onto my reins and leads Rocket behind his horse. When we get to the shack, he pulls me down from the horse.