The tarp had been spread out from Topper beforehand, and most folks crowded under it for the duration of the downpour, happily munching their popcorn et cetera through the showing of “Hopalong Rides Again.” Inside of Topper, dry and cozy, Hoppy shook Carl’s hand in congratulation. After the movie, the various men who had made bets with Hoppy were only too glad to pay up, because the rain would benefit their crops and their fields of hay.
And Carl proved his usefulness in another regard: whenever the girls flocked around Hoppy, as they did now, and one or more of them attempted to jine him, or kids came by who would ordinarily have wished to jine him, Carl pointed out to all of them that the position was already filled. So Hoppy was spared having to repeat his usual reasons for not accepting them, and thus was also spared that small but significant bit of self-hatred. In time, everybody in town knew that Hoppy the pitcher shower already had a perfectly capable sidekick who was a darn good juggler and a first-rate popcorn maker.
That night of the rain, the tarp had got too wet to be folded up and used as Carl’s mattress, and Hoppy would not hear of Carl’s request to sleep in the damp woods among his fairy friends. Despite the rain, the temperature was still very hot and the humidity was awful, so Hoppy, as was his custom on the hottest summer nights, decided to sleep without his clothes, and he offered Carl the use of his cot, saying he could just sleep naked atop a blanket or two on the floor. A nightcap of Chism’s Dew made that all the easier. But even after Hoppy had undressed and put out the light, Carl wouldn’t take off his own clothes.
The next day, when Hoppy suggested that they go down to the creek with a bar of soap for a dip that might be called a bath, Carl claimed that he just wasn’t ready to be taking a bath. “I aint done nothing to work up a sweat,” Carl said. In that case, Hoppy decided, he’d give him something to make him sweat. Hoppy went into the village and rounded up the necessary hardware, the loan of the tools, and the lumber to construct an upper bunk over his cot in Topper. He was a good carpenter, and he let Carl do some of the sawing, enough to work up a sweat, and between them they finished the job in a couple of hours. Now Topper had double-decker bunks, and Hoppy also found a mattress and pillow to put over the cords in the upper one. “Now you need a bath, boy,” Hoppy pointed out to him. “Let’s head for the creek.” Carl dutifully followed him as he hiked along the creek until he found a secluded spot hidden amongst willows, but after Hoppy had stripped to the skin and jumped in, Carl said, “I’m sorry, I just caint. I’m just too shy, I reckon. Maybe when I get to know ye better, I could.”
“Know me better?” Hoppy said, spreading his arms wide. “Here I am in my birthday suit, hiding nothing.” But he understood. He went ahead and soaped himself all over and even washed his hair, while Carl just watched. Then he climbed out, toweled off, and handed the bar of soap to Carl. “I’ll mosey on back to the truck, and you can rench off your sweat secretly.” Hoppy dressed and walked away from the creek, but waited to give Carl time to undress or leastways to take off that hat, and then Hoppy crept back to spy upon him. But he was not there. He must have moved on down the creek a ways.
That night they showed “Borderland,” one of the better Hopalong movies, and at eighty-two minutes the longest of them all. In it, Hopalong goes undercover in order to infiltrate a gang of outlaws, and the role allows him, usually a teetotaler, to belly up to the bar and toss back a few, and even to be mean to children, a sacrilege. Of course he redeems himself in the end. After the show was over, Hoppy brought out the demijohn of Chism’s Dew, and invited Carl to join him, and after tossing back a few (to Carl’s one) he opened up and decided that if Carl wanted to get to know him better he would tell Carl all about himself. So in the space of an hour before a late bedtime, Hoppy gave Carl a rundown of the key events of his wretched life, the roots of his self-loathing, the disappointments with women, the whole woebegone works. “Have you ever done it?” Hoppy asked him. But Carl wanted to know what he was to have done. “Gone to bed with a girl,” Hoppy explained. Oh no, Carl said, he hadn’t never done nothing like that. “Well, you aint missed anything, I can tell ye,” Hoppy said. “You know, the first time I ever tried it, and I wasn’t but maybe ten years old and she was the same, I thought I was supposed to put it into her belly-button!” Hoppy laughed. “And I tried and I tried. It took me the longest time to figure out where it was supposed to go.” Carl joined Hoppy in his laughter and they drank their drinks and Hoppy was happy. Unlike the real Hopalong Cassidy, who was laughing all the time when he wasn’t busy shooting an outlaw, Hoppy never laughed, and his laugh lacked the robust heartiness of his namesake’s. “To tell you the truth,” Hoppy confessed, “it wasn’t until after I had left a couple of gals downright frustrated that I managed to figure out, all on my own, without any help from them, that gals is supposed to enjoy the whole business theirselfs and even have some kind of little fit at the end of it. Did you know that? Did you know that gals have fits in the last part of doing it?”
Carl gave his head a modest nod. “I’ve heared tell of it,” he admitted.
“Let me show you something,” Hoppy said. He got out his special reel called “Assortment,” and turned the projector to face the wall, the part of the bare wall he had painted white with alabastine to make a small screen. He ran the reel through the projector until he found the place he was looking for, then fired up the delco and turned on the projector, and there on the screen was a scene that was one of his favorites because, unlike so many of the displays of sexual activity, it seemed to record the female’s blissful reaction, mounting pleasure, and the throes of her fit. Of course the film was silent but you could tell from the woman’s face and mouth that she was hollering her head off. Her back arched up and her whole body shook like an earthquake.
For the longest time Carl couldn’t say a word, maybe because his mouth was too far open. Then he finally said, “Well I never.” He sucked in a deep breath and said, “Boy. Gracious to heavens. Where on earth did you get this pitcher show?”
“A feller in Memphis sold it to me,” Hoppy said, “for my own personal use. And now for yours, too, if you’d keer to watch more of it.”
Hoppy showed a few more scenes, including the one with the German shepherd. He stole a glance towards Carl’s crotch, to see if perhaps he was getting him a bulge in his britches, but it was too dark to tell. Hoppy himself, perhaps because of the effect of watching “Assortment” in the company of another feller, was feeling aroused.
Finally he was moved to ask, “What does watching this do to ye? Are you het up? Or does it bother ye some?”
“Never in my born days,” Carl said, “did I ever imagine there was such things.”
“Tell ye what,” Hoppy suggested, “next time some of them gals comes flocking around, why, you just take your pick, and have your way with her.”
“It’s you they’re after,” Carl said. “Not me.”
“We’ll have to get you a hat like mine. And some new clothes. Let’s us run down to Clarksville tomorrow. It aint but twenty mile or so, and they’ve got stores. And we’ve got money.”
“Hoppy,” Carl wanted to know, “do folks really do all them things? And with dogs even? And with their mouths and all? And all those positions?”
“If it’s on the screen, you have to believe it,” Hoppy said. It was getting on well past bedtime, so Hoppy finally yawned and asked, “Do you want the bottom? Or do you want to get on top?”
Carl giggled when he realized that Hoppy was talking about their bunks.
Chapter seven
It’s all downhill to Clarksville but the road twists and turns like crazy, with such switchbacks as would make you think you’re going the way you came. Hoppy had taken the precaution of removing the projector’s exciting lamps, just so they wouldn’t get jostled all to hell.
He was in a good mood. Carl had fixed pancakes for their breakfast, with blueberries in ’em, and Hoppy had eaten a whole stack. All was right with the world…except Hoppy had to grip the
steering wheel tightly with both hands, and he wanted a cigarette but couldn’t stop to roll one, let alone put it in and out of his mouth. “Could you roll me a cigarette?” he asked his companion.
The little poke of Bugler had its tab dangling from his breast pocket, and Carl reached over to pluck it out and get the papers that was under its band. “I never rolled one afore,” he declared, “but I reckon I’ve seen you do it so many times that I can probably do it myself.”
And sure enough, Carl did a pretty fair job of cradling a paper in his fingers, sprinkling the Bugler all along it, rolling it and licking it and twisting the end. The boy sure was handy. He even lit the cigarette for Hoppy and placed it in his mouth so he could get a good draw on it.
“You ort to try one yourself,” Hoppy suggested. “Won’t kill ye, and I reckon you’re old enough.”
“One time I dipped some snuff,” Carl declared, “but I just don’t hanker after the taste of terbacker.”
Hoppy was content to let the cigarette dangle from his lip as he drove, but whenever he wanted it taken out, like when the ashes needed to be tapped off, all he had to do was nod his head and Carl would pluck it from his mouth. Hoppy reflected that he wanted to learn Carl how to drive ole Topper, but not on this terrible dirt road. Besides the hairpin curves, there were some mean chuckholes and ruts that were jouncing the hell out of Topper, and wrenching the steering wheel beneath Hoppy’s tight two-handed grip.
In fact, they weren’t halfway to Clarksville when Topper hit a chuckhole so bad it knocked Hoppy’s cigarette right smack out of his mouth. The cigarette landed on the seat between him and Carl. Hoppy had to keep his eyes on the crazy road to keep Topper from shooting off of it, and he couldn’t make out what happened, but apparently that damn cigarette burned right through the leatherette seat and ignited the stuffing of the seat, and before they knew it there was a blaze a-flaming up.
“Godalmighty!” Hoppy exclaimed, struggling to bring Topper to a halt. “Piss on it, Carl! Piss on it!”
But Carl disobeyed him. Carl did not piss on the fire, which was starting to rage. Topper’s rear wheels, locked tight, were clawing into the dirt. “Did you hear me?” Hoppy demanded. “Yank out your pecker and piss on the fucking fire!”
Carl burst into such tears as would have doused the fire if it were not out of control. “I don’t have nothing to piss with!” he cried. “I don’t have no pecker.”
Hoppy at last had the truck motionless, and pulled up the handbrake, then stood on the running board and started in to pissing on the fire himself, and soon had it put out, but became suddenly and curiously very self-conscious. Was he maybe exposing his member to a member of the opposite sex? His member wasn’t anything to be ashamed of, but it was a member, after all, even though Carl had seen it on a number of occasions, like yesterday’s dip at the creek. But was this Carl?
When the fire was completely out, although the stink of his piss was magnified by being mixed with smoldering seat-stuffing, Hoppy sat and stared at Carl for a little while longer, long enough to ask, “What happened to your pecker? Did it get hacked off or something?”
Carl was still sobbing. “I never had none to start out with.” His voice had changed from alto to soprano.
Hoppy reached over and grabbed Carl’s hat and yanked it off, and her hair cascaded down her neck. “What’s your real name, gal?” he asked, gently.
“Sharline,” she said.
Even her eyes, out from under the shadow of the hat’s brim, were suddenly more feminine, and sort of pert. “How come you’ve been deceiving me?” Hoppy wanted to know.
She was still weeping but not sobbing. “You wouldn’t never of kept me if you’d known I was a gal. Ila Fay’s much better than me, but you turned her away.”
“Ila Fay aint near as pretty as you,” Hoppy said.
“Thank ye kindly, sir. But you know you wouldn’t have let me jine ye iffen ye’d thought I was a gal, now would ye?”
She was sure right about that. But now that she was revealed for the young lady she actually was, after all these days and nights they’d spent together, and all her usefulness to him, how was he going to get rid of her? Hoppy found himself blushing, thinking of what he had done in her presence, exposed his naked body, exposed his private reel “Assortment,” belched and farted too maybe, and even cussed words that one doesn’t speak in the presence of a female. And last night he had slept with her beneath him! Or, that is, after going to all that trouble making that double-deck bunk, he had taken the upper bunk because it was hotter up there and he slept naked and she didn’t. How could he possibly go on sleeping that way? What was he going to do with her? Her toesack with all her meager belongings was still back there in the house part of Topper, and maybe he could get it and just put her out right here and now beside the road. No, that would be unkind, and he’d really hate himself for it. Maybe he ought to take her on to Clarksville and turn her over to the sheriff…but he could get himself in trouble if it looked like he had abducted her or something.
He was in a hell of a tight spot. Driving on down the road, he remarked, “I was a-fixing to buy ye a new pair of overalls. But it looks like maybe I’d better buy ye a dress instead, don’t it?”
“You aint obliged to buy me nothing,” she said.
“Oh yeah I am too,” he said. “All the money you’ve earned, selling that candy and popcorn and such. All the work and help you’ve done for me.”
“I’d just as soon have overalls,” she declared. “You’d best be saving every cent to pay for that other projector.”
Hoppy was touched at her thoughtfulness, and reckoned that she might be worth keeping. He wondered what other lies she’d told him, and on the rest of the drive into Clarksville, easier and smoother once they were down out of the mountains, he asked her to lay her soul bare and correct whatever other misconceptions he’d formed of her. For one thing, she wasn’t sixteen, as Carl had supposedly been, but seventeen going-on-eighteen in another month or so. For another thing, Clemmie Whitlow wasn’t her aunt but her mother, although they had hardly been on speaking terms with each other. Ila Fay wasn’t exactly her friend, but she had agreed, in the event that Sharline was able to leave town with Hoppy, to break the news to Sharline’s mother, not telling her however who Sharline had left town with but just saying that she had run away from home and would be all right. “She really don’t give a damn where I went or who I went with,” Sharline declared. “She rued the day I was born.” All that stuff about fairies was true. Sharline really did have a lot of woodfolk little people who were her only friends. Until now. Hoppy was the first real friend she’d ever had.
“How come I never saw you when I was playing that town?” Hoppy wanted to know.
“You did. You looked right at me several times, and once you even smiled real big at me. But of course I was wearing a dress.”
As it turned out, Clarksville had only one store that was big enough to carry a line of ladies’ dresses, but that was good enough. To watch Sharline looking at Clarksville, you’d think he had taken her to St. Louis or even Chicago. She had never dreamed there would be a place with so many buildings in one spot, and that big courthouse, and railroad tracks with a real train on ’em! Before he took her into the store he just drove around town for a while, letting her soak it all in, getting a taste of urban life.
The little department store where he took her also filled her with such awe he had to nudge her to close her mouth. She couldn’t believe that there were racks of store-boughten ready-made apparel, and the ladies’ dresses was so lovely she never could make up her mind. The store clerk kind of sneered at Sharline’s overalls, and Hoppy decided to get her an everyday dress too, one that she could put on right here and now to get out of those overalls, which she did, in the dressing room. When she came back from the dressing room with the old overalls folded up, she also had a stretch of a tire’s inner-tube, which, she explained in a whisper to him, she had been wearing wrapped around her bosom in order t
o flatten her breasts, which, now freed, bulged against the calico cotton of her new dress. Then he also let her pick out another everyday dress for good measure before picking out her dress-up dress. Then he got her some nice shoes, and a purse. As well as some unmentionables, while he turned his back. Hoppy suddenly realized that it wouldn’t do when they got back to the town they were playing for him to try to explain that he’d left town with a feller and returned with a gal, so he decided they’d best keep ole Carl around for the rest of the week until they got to a new town, and he bought the poor kid some good overalls. Sharline, protesting the expense, picked out a pair, and a work shirt to go with the overalls. The last thing he bought her was a ten-gallon hat like his own to keep her hair up in and eventually to wear as a complement to his Hopalong Cassidy hat. The whole works came to nearly sixty dollars. Sharline grabbed his arm and said, “I don’t know how to thank you.” You already have, he said.
Before heading on back up the road, he treated her to lunch at a real café on the town square. It was the first time she’d ever held a menu. He suggested the steak, and had one himself. They barely had room for the cream pie afterwards.
After lunch he drove her around the square and they parked to take a look at The Logan, a genuine pitcher show theater. It wasn’t open this early in the day, but they could see through the big door’s round windows into the lobby, and they could read the posters for the current attraction, “Lost Horizon” with Ronald Colman and Jane Wyatt, and the coming attractions, including a comedy called “Topper” with Cary Grant. Hoppy wished he could take Sharline to the real pitcher show, just so’s she could find out there were pitcher shows that didn’t have horses in them, and in which you could sit with back support and a roof over your head.
She smiled all the way home, or, not really home but just the place where they’d be showing pitcher shows for a couple more nights. She really looked pretty in that dress. Were her good looks tying his tongue? He found himself unable to think of things to say to her. He stole glances at her whenever he could take his eyes off the road. There was something so out of this world about the fact that she was a female. Also it was out of this world that his good friend Carl no longer existed, almost as if he had died, and that made Hoppy a bit sad.
The Nearly Complete Works, Volume 3 Page 8
