“Is that a fact?” Every asked him. “Have you left your family?”
Dolph, hanging his head, nodded.
“Why?” Every asked.
Dolph raised his head. “Why?” he said. “Why, because I aim to marry her, that’s why.”
“Has she given you any cause to think that she would marry you?” Every asked.
Dolph nodded.
Every looked at her and asked, “Have you said you’d marry him?”
“No,” she said.
Every asked her, “Have you led him on, at all?”
“No,” she said,
“That’s a durn lie!” Dolph said to her. “Have you forgot about that time me’n you—”
“Hush,” she said.
“I won’t hush!” he said. “I don’t keer if he knows it whether he’s a preacher or yore husband or who he is. Me and you laid together lak husband and wife, and that’s the whole truth, so help me, and if he’s gonna kill me for it because yo’re his wife then lak I said before let him kill me ’cause I don’t keer to live without you!”
Every stared at her, and she had to turn her eyes away. Damn Dolph for telling on her!
“Maybe,” Every said in a sort of choked voice, “maybe I better go off and let the two of you talk this out between yourselves.”
“Don’t go, Every,” she said. “I don’t have anything else to say to him. I won’t marry him, and that’s that.”
Every laughed, rather hollowly, and said, “You know, this whole situation has a kind of painful familiarity for me. I recall when I was a young fellow I had a mighty powerful crush on a certain gal, and I kept asking her to marry me, but she said ‘no’ every time. I was stubborn as all get out, too, and I wouldn’t take ‘no’ for an answer.”
“Just like me,” Dolph said. “That’s the exact same way I feel, preacher. So what did you finally do?”
“I never finally did anything. I reckon I’m still trying.”
“You mean you been a bachelor all your life, on account of that girl sayin ‘no’?”
“That’s right, my friend.”
“Did she get married to somebody else?”
“Not that I know of.”
“But she still says ‘no’ when you ask her?”
“I’ve not had much of a chance lately to ask her. Too much excitement going on.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, just recently when I was getting ready to ask her I found out she’d been laying in fornication with some other fellow. What would you do if you were in my shoes?”
“Why, I’d kill that—” Dolph started, but stopped, and stared back and forth between Every and Latha.
“Yes,” Every went on “that’s what I was thinking. In fact, I had already come pretty darn close to killing him even before I found out what he’d done.” Every re-opened the jar of liniment and began smearing some of it on his own face. “But, you know,” he went on, “since I’ve been thinking about it, I’ve decided she wouldn’t have laid with him if she didn’t want to.”
“That doesn’t follow,” Latha put in. “She’d been raped once before in her life.”
“I didn’t rape her!” Dolph said.
“We understand that,” Every said, and with sarcasm in his voice he said, “After all, you can’t begrudge a spinster needing it ever once in a while.”
“Every!” she said.
“Well,” he said, standing up, “I’ve got to go look over my sermon notes or something,” He shook hands with Dolph and said, “Hope you’ll come to the meeting too. Looks like me and you are rivals, but I’ve had rivals before, and if this rivalry ends in disappointment for me, why, I’ve had many a disappointment before, including some recent ones.” He turned and walked down off the porch and began walking away.
“Every!” she called after him. “You come back here and stop acting like a hurt child.”
He pointed one finger heavenward and said, “The Voice of God is calling me to Meditation. See you later.”
He walked on away.
“Now see what you’ve done!” she said to Dolph.
“Hell’s bells,” he said, “if you really keer for him so darn much why do you keep saying ‘no’ to him?”
“I haven’t said ‘no’ to him for nearly twenty years. Like he said, he hasn’t had a chance to ask me lately because of the trouble you’re making.”
“You mean today’s the first you’ve seen of him in twenty years?”
“Pretty nearly.”
“And you mean you been waitin all this time for him to show up again?”
“Maybe I have, now that you mention it.”
“Snakes alive, gal! Why didn’t you just say ‘yes’ the first time he asked ye?”
“Now that is a long, long story.”
“Shoot, I got all kinds of time to listen to it. Why, I got scads of time on my hands! Aint a blessit thing on earth for me to do no more except wait and see if I caint out-spark that preacher.”
“Then you’re wasting your time. I’d marry him the minute he asked me.”
“What’s he got I aint got?” he asked. “—Other’n quicker fists.”
“Well,” she said, thinking, “a job, for one thing.”
“A job?” he asked. “Heck fire, you call preachin a job? Why, I bet he don’t make enough money to pay for his shoe leather. And me—anybody kin tell ye that Dolph Rivett’s one of the hardest-workin farmers in Newton County!”
“Except when he’s out stirring up trouble,” she said.
“Why, I’ve got one of the purtiest spreads a land y’ever laid eyes on, eighty acres of good bottom and a hundred twenty acres of upland, and a herd of fifty Angus and—”
“Who’s been feeding those cattle lately?” she asked.
“They’re out to pasture,” he declared. “If you mean who’s been milkin em and other chores, my boys is big enough for that.”
“Do you plan on taking me to that place?” she asked.
“Sure do.”
“Do you think your other wife would stand for it?”
He mulled that one over for a while, and finally he said, “I’ll work out somethin.”
“I can’t see how you could work out anything that wouldn’t leave somebody pretty badly hurt.”
“Latha, I’ve already been hurt pretty bad myself,” he said. “By her. I reckon you of all people kin understand what’s it like to be desperate to…to…you know, to get together with somebody ever once in a while. Now I aint one of these twichet-struck tomcats who’s got it on his mind day in and day out, but I’m a man, goddammit, and you showed me what it’s like for the first time to enjoy bein a man. That’s the honest truth. That time in that cave on Banty Creek—that was the highest old goluptious time I ever had. Why, it was lak barbercued sidemeat to a man dyin a hunger, lak ice-cold sarsprilla to a man dyin a thirst, lak a easy chur to set in after plowin all day, lak Christmas mornin after a good year, hell, they aint no words for such a hunkydory jubilation. I feel lak clawin myself just thinkin about it.”
“Oh, Dolph—” she protested, sighing, but she felt like clawing herself too, and she wished he had not reminded her of the exhilaration of it with such rapturous terms. Now there were stirrings in her which she didn’t want.
He suddenly asked, “Why’d you do it to me?”
She said, “It was more like you doing it to me.”
“All right. Darn. Why’d we do it, then?”
“Craziness, I guess,” she said, and reflected upon the truth of that answer. It had been crazy of him to do something that would lead him into abandoning his family. It had been crazy of her to think that the situation was a foolproof escape for her. But despite the trouble that had come of it, she realized that she was actually a little pleased to find herself in such a situation. It’s passing strange, she thought, that I’ve been sitting on this porch for eight years, and now all of a sudden two men are fighting over me. I feel like Sonora. Maybe this was all happening because of
a configuration of those signs that morning: the redbird flying downward, the white cat in the road, singing before breakfast, the shirt on wrong side out, sneezing on Saturday, the coffeepot rattling on the stove…And Every home again! And making a preacher of himself! And saying he’d been converted in that same room where I woke up? What was he doing there? What was she doing there? Oh, there was plenty of time for plenty of answers; she was not impatient; she was curious, and expectant: something, good or bad but something, was finally going to happen to her. It was good to be fought over again, and Dolph even reminded her in a way of Raymond. And for that matter, was Every any better than him? Getting peeved and insulting, like that, just because she’d made love with another man four weeks before he had suddenly shown up again. The preacher in him, she thought. Any sex is sin. More than likely his religion had half-castrated him. More than likely, if she married him, he could only do it once a month with his pants on after asking the Lord’s blessing. I could never be a preacher’s wife, she decided.
“Latha,” Dolph asked softly, “have you got the heebie jeebies over that preacher?”
“I’ve barely had a chance to talk to him,” she said. “It’s been so long since I saw him, and way back then I sure didn’t have the heebie-jeebies over him.”
“You turned him down because you were struck on somebody else?”
“Yes.”
“What became of the other feller?”
“He was killed in the war.”
“And even after that you still turned him down?”
“I didn’t believe the other one was dead. I thought he might come back.”
“You mentioned somethin about bein…bein took against your will. Was it the preacher who done it?”
“He wasn’t any preacher back then.”
“But he done it?”
“Yes.”
“And you’re still glad to see him, after that?”
“I guess…I don’t know…it’s been so long.”
“Would you really and truly marry him the minute he asked ye?”
“Maybe not the same minute.”
“Latha, have I got even a ghost of a chance? If you say I’ve got at least a ghost of a chance, I will tear down mountains to persuade you to have me. But if I aint got even a fighting chance, I will just go off and find me a good spot to lay down and die.”
“I don’t want you to die, Dolph.”
“Then give me a chance!”
“All right, Dolph, I will give you a chance.”
He grabbed her head with both hands and kissed her.
It made her head swim, and her heart pound.
When he released her, she said, “You didn’t even kiss me, before, that other time….”
“I know, goshdarnit, and I been cussin myself for it ever since. I reckon I just got so carried away I plumb fergot how to act. But I’ll shore make it up to ye!” And he kissed her again.
She felt herself melting away, but she pushed him off and said, “That’s enough, now. Somebody might come along.”
“Aint nobody come along yet but me,” he said. “On a dull Saturday afternoon like this, why, me’n you could take our clothes off and do it right here on the porch for the next three hours, and nobody’d ever see us!”
She laughed at that image. “I think Sonora’s in the house,” she said.
“Who’s Sonora?”
“My daughter.—I mean, my niece. You met her.”
“Oh,” he said. He got up and walked over to the door and yelled through the screen, “Sonora, honey, you in there?”
There was no answer. He opened the door and went in. “Oh, cut that out!” she called after him, but he wouldn’t mind her. A little later he came back.
“Not a soul in sight,” he said, and came and gave her a third kiss.
That third kiss nearly undid her, but she said, “Stop it, now.”
“Let’s go inside,” he said.
“Heavens, no, Dolph! I’ve got to mind the store.”
“Mind the store?” he said. “Who’s been comin to the store lately? Any fool in his right mind wouldn’t come out of the shade this time of day.”
“Somebody might come,” she said lamely.
“Aw, if they did, you could git up and go tend to them,” he said.
All right, all right! she said and grabbed his hand and led him to her bedroom and closed the door and didn’t bother to take off her dress but just got her panties down and lay back on the bed in the hot room not as hot as she was and all soaked in the hairs of her crotch so that he flowed right easily into her and although it had been pent up in him since that last time he’d had her he managed to last and last and thrust and thrust so she could nearly feel him in her womb and she knew if she fainted this time there’d be nobody to mind the store Every O Every. Every?
He was kissing her neck, like a lover, and whispering into herear.
“You’re ruining me,” she said. “You’re making me into a bad woman.”
“You don’t really think it’s bad,” he said. “Do you?”
“No, but everybody else does.”
“Not me,” he said. “Come on. It’ll just take a minute.”
“I don’t want for it to take just a minute.”
“Then three hours if you want. Come on.”
“No.”
Uncannily he seemed to sense what was on her mind. “If you…if you were to pass out again, I’d just mind the store for you and tell anybody you’d gone visiting and would be back directly.”
That wilted her resolve.
She looked up the road in each direction and then she pointed and said, “That room.”
He lost no time going into it, and she followed and latched both doors from inside. She climbed onto the fourposter and lay back and arched her hips to remove her panties. He unbuttoned his fly and came after her.
“Take off your pants,” she said.
“But what if somebody comes,” he said.
“Indeed, what if somebody comes,” she said, and began putting her panties back on.
He lay his hands on hers and stopped her. “Okay,” he said, and quickly removed his trousers and hung them on the bed post.
She was very warm and very open and very wet, and he went right in and began his mechanical ramming.
“You’re like a machine,” she told him.
He stopped plunging. “How do you want me to do it?” he asked.
“Hold still, and I’ll show you,” she said.
He held still. She showed him.
Then for a long time they were a team of grindings and flexings and kneadings and smackings, and his heavy breathing in her ear began to groan “Goody goody go—”
“Don’t say that,” she sighed in his ear.
He hushed, but kept groaning.
“Now,” she said. “Be your machine. Quick.”
And he became again his repetitious pounding machine, and she pounded with him and no longer tried to keep from even thinking about fainting.
“Latha?” a small voice said.
She started so hard she jerked clean off his end, and scrambled out from under him, and got up and smoothed her dress and smoothed her hair and opened the door a crack and looked out. It was Donny.
“Hi,” he said and held out his palm to reveal a coin in it. “I got a nickel for some soda pop.”
“Just help yourself, Dawny,” she said. “I’ll be right out.”
“Gee,” he said, “you’re sure all sweaty. Are you doing some hard work in there that I could help you with?”
She laughed. “I’m all finished, thank you. I’ll be right out.”
“Okay.” he said, and headed for the soda pop cooler.
She closed the door and turned to Dolph. “Listen,” she whispered, “you go out that back door quiet as you can. I don’t want him to see you.”
“Aw,” he said, “it’s just a kid. Come on and let’s finish.”
“No,” she said. “You go on now.”
&
nbsp; “But he’s just a little bitty sprat, and I’m so close to lettin off that just one or two more pokes would do it for me!”
“Shh, hold your voice down.”
He got up off the bed and came to her and wrapped one arm around her back and lifted her dress with his other hand, and jammed himself between her legs. “Please,” he pled.
“No. Get on out of here now, Dolph.”
“Just one or two pokes,” he pled, poking.
“I mean it!” she said, and shoved him away from her.
He turned toward the rear door, buttoning his pants, and grumbling, “I’ll fix that durn kid.”
“You touch a hair on his head and that’s the last of you, buster,” she said.
He stared at her for a moment. Then he turned and walked out, slamming the door behind him.
She went to the dresser and brushed her hair, then waited a while longer and went back out on the porch. Donny was sitting in the swing, drinking his soda pop. She sat down in the swing beside him.
“Who were you talking to?” he asked.
“Why, nobody, child,” she said.
“I heard voices,” he said.
“Must’ve just been me, talking to myself.”
“I heard a door slam,” he said.
“That was just me, going to the kitchen.”
“Why’d you slam it? Are you mad at somebody?”
“No, just careless, I guess.” I am indeed right careless.
“Are you mad at me?”
“’Course not, Dawny.” She rumpled his hair.
He sipped a sip of soda. “You smell kind of funny,” he said.
“You mean like I need to take a bath?”
“No, not a bad smell. Like…sort of like creek water with fish.”
“Oh,” She said, “I’ll go put on some rose water.”
“No,” he said. “I like the way you smell.”
“Thank you,” she said. “I like the way you smell too.”
“How do I smell?”
“Like a five-year-old boy,” she said. “Milk and honey and grasshoppers and skinny skin skin.”
Donny laughed, and she laughed with him. A mad thought seized her. She was still feeling wild, and frustrated, after that interrupted tumble with Dolph. She’d already made such a mess of things. She would take Donny into the bedroom and let him take up where Dolph left off. Would it scare him, or would it tickle him pink? Would his little thing be able to rise up? Maybe it wasn’t so little. She’d like to look. Maybe it was big, and could even shoot his juice. Wouldn’t that be fun? And if he went and told his aunt and they came and ran her out of town it would serve her right. She’d already made such a mess of things.
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