On Highway 17

by B. Z. R. Vukovina

  Over time, the bands of Winnie’s hair began to come apart, to blend, the guitar strings frayed, but it made no difference. Cob’s fingers still twirled and flew. And, as they did, his other hand began to add a beat — first tapping on Winnie’s stomach, then slapping against her thigh — while the familiar youthful shapes of rock-and-roll spread out across her breasts.

  And as the music became wilder, less refined, so did Cob’s motions. His fingers pressed harder, his fingernails dug deeper. On some notes he pinched. On others he vibrated. And on others still he slid gracefully from the top of the neck to its bottom, pointer finger barring, ring finger rhythmically repeating. Winnie’s breath quickened, her pulse doubled. Cob experimented, recalled and improvised. He tapped and he counted, treble-clefed and quarter-noted, and composed until, closing his eyes, he forgot and felt and finally knew that the music he was creating was as real as any he had ever made.

  Winnie’s moans grew louder.

  More passionate.

  Uncontrolled.

  Cob’s right hand crawled between her quivering legs.

  His cock tick-tocked, a metronome.

  The bands of hair across Winnie’s body were a ruffled mess. The hair between her thighs was wet. Over the former, like chord shapes he floated; into the latter he greedily descended. His fingertips dipped and moistened. He pushed those fingertips, those whole fingers, inside Winnie’s pussy. She moaned in Dm. He removed them; Winnie quivered, a perfectly realised F.

  He petted. He teased. He penetrated. He….

  Strummed.

  And she reacted and murmured. She blubbered, moaned, groaned, grunted and — finger-fucked beyond all measure of decency — exploding and screaming, unwilling, unable to stop herself, she came.

  Cob’s hands stopped moving.

  Winnie’s body vibrated to stillness in the murky sunlight.

  Particles of dust drifted through the air.

  And yet music reverberated between the walls even as Edward the Bear’s expressionlessness persisted and Cob fixed the raccoon hat, resting dangerously crooked, on his head while Winnie rolled off his legs, onto her stomach, onto the black fur.

  The music was louder than the silence.

  Outside, somewhere in the world beyond, lightning flashed, followed by the faint crash of distant thunder. Cob realised there were no clocks in the room. Theirs was a time out of mind, a secret place. He slapped his erect cock to the side and watched it rebound to attention. Never had he made a woman cum — at least not like today, not for certain.

  He picked up his cup and drank the rest of the lukewarm coffee, exposing the stone, which he let fall into his palm before placing it back into the cup:

  Rattle.

  Winnie stirred. She got to her knees; then, slowly, rose to her feet. She swayed to the music. Cob watched her sway and felt jealous of Edward the Bear and Arnold the Cook and Dull the Mechanic and anyone else who’d ever seen Winnie or fantasised about her. He even felt jealous of John the President, because who could say he’d never, in his dreams, imagined Winnie swaying to the music just like so. “Cob Augo,” she said, slipping easily out of her blue dress. “You are not really from 1961 and neither am I.”

  He tried to speak.

  “Shh,” she said. She swayed, she neared, she put a finger to his lips. “Don’t say words, for this is the best part. This is the part where I fuck you.”

  And she pushed his chest.

  He let himself fall backward onto black fur.

  The racoon hat dropped off his head.

  When he was as defenceless as an overturned beetle and his cock was the tallest part of his body, she squatted over him with her legs spread and, slowly, began to descend. Cob understood the masculine fascination with rockets. Winnie’s pussy touched the head of his penis — its hairs raked his delicate skin, the soft surplus of flesh took him between its lips like her hands had taken his cheeks. He growled. Or Edward growled. As much as he wanted to let off his boosters and explode upward, he also wanted — wanted more — to make this moment last for eternity.

  The head of his cock disappeared inside Winnie.

  The veins entangling its shaft pulsated with hot blood. Caffeine swam inside. He wanted more coffee, more liquid. Her pussy squished and squelched like a bowl of chocolate pudding devoured by a greedy child with a silver spoon. He felt the pussy devouring him. He felt her weight and her wetness arrive at the root — his thighs, his belly. He was in her completely. He had her; she had him. If she were a moon, he would have planted a flag in her lunar soil, ripped off his oxygen mask, cast his radio equipment into the coldness of space and breathed in whatever atmosphere she had, hoping for, but oblivious to, his life lasting for no more than a few indescribable seconds.

  She leaned forward. Her hair fell onto his face, his chest. She started moving her hips. He felt the various angles of her mass. His cock slid in, slid out. He opened his mouth with no intention of saying anything — just to breathe. She licked the row of his upper teeth. He locked his knees and grabbed her upper body, taking hold of her breasts. She bounced; he squeezed. She squeezed; he thrust — past the constricting, grasping tightness of her pussy.

  The pale handprints on her chest dissolved into the colour of honey.

  She stroked his face with a snake’s tongue.

  He kneaded her ass with needy hands.

  And when he couldn’t take it anymore, when his grip was possessive, breath savage and mind devolved past primitive man’s invention of fire, she let up — slowed, lightened and then rose; suddenly massless, she floated up and his cock felt as wet and cool as his nose had once, a long, long time ago by a roughly running, loudly buzzing river.

  She left the room.

  His cock punctuated the sentence.

  He pictured her crying, overcome with emotion. He wanted to comfort her like a friend. He pictured her laughing, and wanted to choke her like an enemy. He imagined her as she was and as she had been and as she would be till death do us part and all he wanted was to fuck her again, to keep fucking her….

  He pulled the racoon hat back onto his head.

  “What’s your favourite berry?”

  Her voice was muffled. The question sounded sincere. “I’m all out of strawberry, but blackcurrant is delicious on summer evenings.”

  She reappeared carrying a pair of glass jars filled with two different colours of jam. “I recommend this one,” she said, and held up the darker of the two. “It’s less sweet, more tart, goes well with most anything. But it’s up to you.” Naked, she looked less girlish, more womanly than she had clothed. “Which do you prefer to taste like, musician?”

  “I agree with expert opinion,” he said.

  She lay the other jar on a shelf, between two hunting knives and an antique silver bracelet, and sat beside him. “Open it,” she said. He untwisted the lid with a thump. The fruity aroma escaped up into his nostrils. Winnie took back the jar, stuck her hand inside — her wrist was just small enough to fit — and scooped out a handful of black currant jam; which she proceeded to rub on Cob’s nude, sweating chest. Before he could react, she rubbed trails across his face, then his thighs, then licked up the taste from all three parts of his body. She stuck out a stained tongue. “Try some.” He set loose his tongue on hers. She wrapped her fingers around his hard cock, which, when their kiss was finished, she covered in an entire second helping of black currants until it glistened and dripped, gooey, over his testicles.

  When she leaned down to clean up, he made sure her head stayed below. She kissed her way up the shaft of his cock. He gathered her hair and held it away from her face because he wanted to see. Her teeth pressing into his skin, her eyes staring into his. Her tongue became a pillow for his cock. He felt the ribbing on the roof of her mouth, felt her saliva thicken, bubble and, delicately, burst. She was swallowing the jam. She was sucking him. He tightened the fi
st squeezing her hair. A few streaks of rain slashed at the windows. His muscles contracted and toes curled. The raccoon hat fell forward off his head, onto Winnie’s. He pressed down on it — the hat, the head — until dark purple spit flowed out from between lips-and-cock. Winnie gasped. Cob pushed deeper, further, harder.

  And orgasmed.

  His semen mixed with the black currant jam and, together, the salty-sweet concoction went down Winnie’s throat.

  Cob let go of hat, hair and head.

  More tiny fists of drizzle tapped at the windowpanes.

  “Your guitar,” Winnie said and thunder rolled and Cob realised that by this time tomorrow he’d be gone, would be another six hundred miles along Highway 17, six hundred closer to Berkeley and six hundred further away from Black Bear Portage. “It’s still on the porch. You should bring it in. The grey clouds are coming. The storm will be here before nightfall.”

  “It’s not dark yet,” he said.

  She said, “But it’s getting there.”

  ♦♦♦♦

  Outside, the warm air was stagnant and the atmosphere had turned to early evening pale. A damp wind hung like a towel that wouldn’t dry. Cob looked around. The forest revealed nothing; there was nothing to see but the forest. But he knew that beyond lay fog and fame, Berkeley and all the days still to come, so he picked up his guitar and went into the living room, where Winnie was lying naked on her back, big eyes forced open, a question forming on their glassy surfaces. “Tell me,” she whispered to the ceiling, “what’s so special about that guitar?”

  Cob put the guitar down and laid himself on the floor beside her. “It’s the guitar I saw,” he said, “when I pictured myself famous. It’s one of the clear details.”

  She finished the thought for him. “And now you have to create the picture with reality.”

  He put his palm on her forehead. “You think I’m naïve.”

  She said, “I’m afraid you’ll get hurt.” He felt the muscles on her head move. “Do you know why I brought you out here — what I wanted to show you?”

  He didn’t say anything.

  She said, “I wanted you to see the house that my grandfather died in, that my father died in, and that one day I will die in.” The distant thunder rolled closer.

  “After a long and happy life, unlike the horse,” he said but she didn’t hear.

  “I’m afraid fate is not what you think it is, Cob Augo. To you, fate is hope. To me, it’s knowing that there’s not going to be anything else.”

  He turned on his side and hugged her but she felt far away.

  After a few minutes, the glaze disappeared from her eyes, she smiled and said, “I’m babbling like an old woman.”

  She stood up, leaving Cob alone on the floor. “I’m also not being a good hostess. The darkness is getting inside. Forgive me, I’ll get a lantern going.” She took her blue dress from the floor and walked out of the room — out of his life, Cob felt; and the feeling twisted his heart. He stood too, touched his guitar and imagined all the music they would make together, how good it would make him feel. She was wrong about fate. He wasn’t wrong about anything.

  She came back carrying his clothes. “They’re dry,” she said. He took them without wanting to put them on. His nakedness didn’t embarrass him anymore. “I’m out of oil.” She held up an empty paraffin lamp. “But there’s more in the shed. I won’t be long.”

  “Do you want me to go with you?” he asked.

  “No,” she said.

  “It’s raining,” he said.

  But she was already out the door.

  He waited for a minute, several. Rain pitter-pattered harder. Ink dripped down the windows. Lightning turned the sky on, turned the sky off. He waited for several more minutes, opened the door and walked outside.

  Raindrops splattered on the porch railing.

  Cob’s clothes got wet again.

  Barefoot, he marched over wet grass and soft soil in no particular direction, squinting through the gloom and precipitation, searching for a shed — searching for Winnie — as mud cushioned his heels and surrounded his toes. Streams of water fell from overflowing leaves. Already, it was gathering in shallow puddles. He looked for footprints in the ground around them, but found none. The gap between lightning and thunder was closing.

  “Cob.”

  Winnie’s voice.

  He wiped his face and stared ahead. Through the haze, he saw a bobbing light. On the other side of the mist, she was holding the lit paraffin lamp and waving to him. “Come on, Cob!”

  He ran toward her.

  He touched the bend of her elbow.

  Together, they skipped over the surface of the wet grass and through the clinging mud, her lamp lighting their way, both of them starting to laugh, both slipping and sliding until, finally, they fell into the shelter of the shed.

  ♦♦♦♦

  The shed was aluminium, large and filled with crates and other old things. Winnie hung the paraffin lamp on a hook. Its unstable light flowed across the walls, the floor and their laughing faces. It flowed across Winnie’s body and Cob wanted to feel the joy again, as thunder roared above and the rain beating against the roof of the shed was so loud he could barely hear her speak: “It’s raining,” she said. “Don’t leave me.”

  He remembered the first time he’d heard her voice and couldn’t believe it was less than half-a-day ago. Back then, before, in the Tasty Totem where John F. Kennedy was reassuring about fallout shelters and he was hungry and saw her smiling from behind a table full of glass jars:

  There was a horrible crash —

  Of lightning.

  They’d broken one of the jars. The wild blueberry spread had stained the tile floor and he shook her hand. “Winnie Youngblood,” she’d introduced herself. It was a name that twelve hours ago he didn’t know. It was a name that in twelve lifetimes he wouldn’t forget.

  They stepped toward each other.

  “The forest is coming down,” he said, as she said, “I hope the dry trees don’t catch fire.” This morning, the lake had burned and for a few seconds he’d been driving into its flames. “It’s not a fire,” he said. From above, the rain pounded on the brittle, echoing aluminium. The shed bent and creaked. “It’s nuclear war,” he whispered, grabbing her hips and holding them tightly against himself. Her body squirmed, struggled against his grip. “I want to see — I want to look outside!” But she couldn’t break through. “It’s better if you don’t. We should stay inside until it’s over.” Tears were streaming down her face. “So this is how it ends?” she said. The paraffin lamp spun; Winnie cast a monstrous shadow on the wall. Cob dug his fingers into her dress, her flesh. “I don’t know. Tomorrow we’ll wake up and if the world still exists, then….” She shoved a fist deep into his mouth.

  “Tonight is the last night.”

  Cob’s mouth feasted on the shapes of her knuckles. His heart pounded in tune with her ragged, sobbing breath. “So, let me go outside,” she syncopated.

  He didn’t want to let her go anywhere. He wanted to keep her close, to tell her something, anything; but her fingers depressed his tongue, distorting his intention into a gurgle.

  “No more words.”

  She reached back. Metal clanged against metal.

  For a second, his mouth was empty, “Winnie,” he managed to say — before tasting the flavour of leather. Her hands moved quickly, the knot tightened against the lump on the back of his skull, the buckle jangled. He was dumbfounded. She’d gagged him with an old utility belt. He felt the metal rings and hooks where the tools should have been, resting on his wet shirt.

  She petted his hair.

  She massaged his shoulders.

  He let his arms drop from the sides of her hips.

  She moved toward the closed shed door. The blue dress stuck to her body like paint.

  �
�Fated,” she said, and reached for the outside.

  Cob reached for her.

  But around them was too much noise. He couldn’t focus. He saw an old leash, shears, tin cans, the busted body of an acoustic guitar. He smelled leather and Winnie and moist wood. The cotton of her dress escaped from between his fingertips. He bit down on the work belt until leathery juice leaked into his gums. To catch her and to keep her. Truncated: To catch and to keep. Repeated: to catch and to keep, to catch and to keep. His mind rolled numb. He wanted to rub his knuckles into his eyes, into his brain. He’d been driving for too long. The next place he came to, he would stop and drink coffee and eat scrambled eggs every morning with Winnie….

  He leapt.

  His chest crashed into Winnie’s back. Hers crashed into the door. Together, they fell; Cob on top of Winnie, they wrestled. Her face: stone carved determination; his: overheating. Grunting, she bit at the veins of his exposed wrist. He separated her wrists and pinned them to the shed floor, tore the leash from its place on the wall, and wound it round one wrist, tightened, followed by the other, tightened, followed by the sight of her twitching lips. “Cob Augo,” she said — he ripped the belt gag from his mouth, it dropped to his neck. The rest of her sentence dissolved into his mouth as he attacked and consumed her, exhaling hot breath, passionately kissed her.

  He kissed her until his lungs hurt.

  He kissed her until the blood pulsing through his ears drowned out every other sound.

  And then he broke his lips away and stood.

  Winnie sat up, holding her bound wrists in front of her.

  “Stand up.”

  She did and he picked up the pair of shears that, for decades probably, had been waiting in the corner of the shed.

  “Turn around.”

  When she had, he forced the shears open and slid their metal along her calf, more slowly up her thigh, slicing, carefully down the other thigh, slicing, until the back of her blue dress fell away from between her legs, away from the twin, ready blades. Cob repositioned the tool, and the downside of the shears burrowed in the crevice of her buttocks.