by David Wiltse
'Course, if you want me to make you howl, that's even better."
"Uh-huh," Cooper had said.
"Are you going to remember me at all, Cooper?"
"Sure," he said.
"I'll bet. If you do, you'll be one of the first. Anyway, here," and she had tucked the paper with her name on it into his wallet and slipped the wallet back into his pocket, pausing back there long enough to give him a squeeze.
"Ooohhh," she said, pretending that just touching him made her shiver.
Cooper found the paper in the little plastic pouch where some people carried pictures. Mayvis Tway, it said, then underneath it, a telephone number. Cooper left the shade and crossed to the restaurant to make a phone call.
"I'll be goddamned," she said. "Sure I remember you.
I never thought I'd hear from you again, though."
"You said to call you," Cooper said.
"I know I did, honey, but not everybody pays real close attention to what I say the way you do. They're mostly shitheads."
"Uh-huh," Cooper said. "Shitheads."
"This going to be kind of a one-sided conversation, ain't it?" she asked and Cooper did not answer because he wasn't sure what she meant.
"Well, where the hell are you?" she asked, her voice tinkling into his ear. She was pleased to hear from him, just as she had said she would be. Cooper decided he liked her.
"I'm at the restaurant," he said.
"Which one?… The one where I found you?"
"Yeah. But not there."
"What does that mean?"
"I'm at the one in…" He struggled to remember the name of the town that the preacher had told him. "Wycliffe," he said at last.
.,sugar, that's sixty miles from here. How'd you get over to Wycliffe?"
"I walked," he said.
"Walked? You couldn'ta walked all the way to Wycliffe."
Cooper didn't answer.
"Well, never mind," she said. "What did you want?"
"You said to call," Cooper said.
"Well, that was nice of you."
She sounded like she was going to hang up. Cooper hated the telephone.
"They give me another paper," Cooper said.
"What do you mean, honey?"
He struggled to say it right.
"Let's have some fun," he said.
She laughed again, sounding the way she did when she was with him in person. "Well, why didn't you say so?
Do you want me to come get you?":'Uh-huh," he said.
'In Wycliffe?"
"Uh-huh."
"It'll take me an hour, you know. You think you can wait that long for Mayvis?"
"Uh-huh."
"I don't want you to think this means I don't have an active social life now," she said. "Wouldn't want you to take me for granted or anything."
She laughed again, so merrily that Cooper laughed too.
"Now, tell me again, what's your name?"
"Cooper."
"That's right," she said. "And, Cooper… you're which one? The one that howls?"
Cooper howled into the phone. She was still laughing when she hung up.
It's not that I'm hard up, Mayvis said to herself, I'm just sentimental.
She told herself a lot of shit like that, and amused herself most times with it. It had taken her more than an hour to get to Wycliffe and she wasn't sure that Cooper would be there when she finally arrived. She wasn't sure he had been there in the first place-he might have been playing a trick on her. They did that often enough, taking advantage of her good nature and her willingness to go halfway to accommodate a man.
Cooper, if she remembered him clearly, didn't seem the type for cruel jokes, but you could never be sure with a man, cruelty was always just a scratch or two under the surface.
She didn't recall ever driving sixty miles for a man before, at least not for one with whom she had no relationship other than one rather active and sweaty afternoon, but she'd done dumber things for sex, there was no question about that; even if Cooper turned out not to be there, she'd engaged in wilder goose chases and had exposed herself to greater humiliation just to get laid. She did have that little problem of wanting it. Wanting it a lot. Often. And with new partners, if partnership was the right concept for the way most men went about it. It seemed a pretty solitary pursuit for most of them, something they did for themselves with Mayvis just happening to be conveniently in the way.
She had to do something about her sexual habits, of course, she knew that. She had promised she would, promised her friends and her parents and even herself. She should start going to those meetings again, but frankly, what no one had ever explained to her satisfaction was why it was okay for all the men to fuck everything they possibly could and nobody telling them they needed help, and why it wasn't okay for her to do the same. If nothing else, it was a kind of interesting activity. You met all kinds of people that way. If she acted coy and waited until the men made a move on her, first of all the shy ones never would and consequently she would only get to meet the aggressive ones, which would drastically reduce her experience. Mayvis saw no reason to limit herself to just one kind of man. She had tried being faithful to just one man, tried pretty hard for a while, but it just hadn't worked out for her.
She was too gregarious. She was too friendly. He became too boring. The truth was, it wasn't really the sex Mayvis was after, it was the attention. And in seeking the attention she had also become addicted to the excitement. All of this had been explained to her in the group her parents had sent her to. She wasn't really having fun at all with all those men, they told her. She was se eking something which she could never find from strangers, and in the process she was exposing herself to great dangers. One didn't have to be a genius to know what those dangers were, but Mayvis was getting a thrill out of her own peril, they had explained. The people at the meetings had been very educational, they had loved explaining things, they knew so much jargon that it was as if they didn't even have to think about what they said, they just kept repeating key phrases, expecting her to agree with them. After a while it had seemed easier to agree than to argue.
Roger, one of the men in the group, spent part of every meeting talking about how his sexual fantasies had ruined his life. He read pornography, he confessed. He sought women other than his wife. He masturbated daily.
Although he announced his failings in the prescribed manner, bewailing his misery and praising his higher power for allowing him to attend the meetings and take charge of his life, he always sounded a little proud to Mayvis.
Roger sounded as if he were determined to make his sexual hyperfunction a bit more hyper than anyone else's. At the last meeting she had attended, Mayvis had called him on it.
"If pounding your pud makes you so unhappy, why don't you just quit it?" she asked.
He had smirked at her with the superiority born of true understanding.
"And why don't you quit balling guys you pick up in convenience stores?" he demanded.
"Because it doesn't make me unhappy," she said. "I like it."
"You are in denial," he said. They always said that to anyone who didn't agree with them.
"Maybe," Mayvis replied. "But I'm not whacking off in gas station toilets."
He managed to look pained and smug at the same time.
After the meeting, when Mayvis apologized for her comments, Roger asked if she wanted to sleep with him to see what she had been missing. She had not been back to the meetings since.
She wasn't certain that she would recognize him-there had been an awful lot of faces to remember-but when she saw him standing outside the restaurant, looking like a tree with muscles, she remembered, all right.
He was standing there holding a piece of paper in his huge hand.
He was wearing a candy-striped uniform jacket that looked as if it had been slept in for weeks. His face and arms were covered with dust and streaked with sweat trails. He looked at Mayvis as if he really had walked the sixty miles from Hazard.
It's come to this, she thought. I'm picking up goons.
I'm sleeping with halfwits. Maybe I should go back to those meetings after all. I could sleep with the jerk-off Roger, who isn't very nice but changes his clothes once a week.
Then Cooper saw her and smiled hugely and she remembered that he really was kind of cute, in a mammoth sort of way, the way a bear can be cute.
Mayvis consoled herself with the thought that if nothing else, she could spot the loonies, the really dangerous ones, from a mile off. Cooper looked menacing because of his size-his great size was also part of his attractionbut she knew from experience that he was as malleable as mud.
She knew how to handle him.
Cooper didn't volunteer why he had left Hazard and walked sixty miles to find the same job again, and Mayvis didn't ask. In all honesty, she didn't care. She wasn't planning to adopt the big guy-she doubted very much that she would ever see him again after today-or that she would want to. She had just been so touched that he had called. Men in Hazard seldom called her; only strangers did. Men who had been given her name or read it scrawled on a wall somewhere, they called. She knew why they were calling, of course. Sometimes, if she felt like it, she went out with them, but she always made them take her somewhere first, out to eat or to a movie, somewhere they would be seen with her. It was the price she made them pay for calling her. If she selected them, that was different-no charge, and the front seat of the car was good enough.
She wasn't about to make Cooper take her out to dinner, however, even assuming he could pay for it in the first place. She didn't particularly want to be seen with him, not even in a town where no one knew her. She wasn't going to do anything with him, either, not even in her car, until he got cleaned up.
"Now pay attention this time," she said, filling out the application.
"Next time you'll be able to do it for yourself."
"You do it," Cooper said.
"I am doing it, but I'm not always going to be around for you."
"I'll call you," Cooper said.
"Listen, sugar, I'm not your traveling secretary. Just watch and learn."
"Let me drive," Cooper said. Mayvis was still behind the wheel, resting the application form on the horn button.
"Just hold on."
"Let me," Cooper said.
He reached across the seat and lifted and dragged her to the passenger side, then slid behind the wheel himself.
The speed and ease with which he accomplished it startled Mayvis. She had never been handled with such strength.
"Hey, now, listen. You go on in that washroom and clean up first."
"No."
"I mean it. You don't clean up, that's it, I'm going home." She returned her attention to the application, deliberately not looking at him. If you acted as if you expected to be obeyed, you usually got your way, she had found. When they were horny, they'd do whatever you said. It was only afterward that they got difficult. She could feel him staring at her but she kept her eyes on the paper.
"Go on now, honey, while I finish this for you. Then you can drive, okay?" She patted his leg for encouragement, still averting her eyes.
Cooper took hold of her wrist. She turned to look at him for the first time. His eyes were flat and expressionless. Big and brown but unreadable, like the eyes in a mask. Mayvis realized suddenly that she was very frightened.
She tried very gently to pull her hand away; she didn't want to make it a contest of strength.
"The sooner you go, the sooner you'll get to drive," she said. He kept looking at her, nothing showing in his face. Mayvis smiled as friendly as she could make it, while her eyes flicked rapidly around her. They were in a fast-food-restaurant parking lot, for God's sake. There were people everywhere. Nothing could happen here, she thought. Relax, relax and talk to him. "You want me to finish your application, don't you, honI can't do that with just one hand."
She waited, looking for some flicker of recognition in his eyes. They looked like two buttons sewn on a doll's face. For the first time she realized how stupid the man was. She had thought he was reticent, like most men she knew, uncommunicative and clearly a little slow, but not really stupid. She had assumed he had a reading disability which accounted for his application problems, not that he was too dumb to understand the words.:'Coop?" she said softly.
'What?"
"Why don't you let go of my arm now?"
Cooper looked down at her arm as if seeing it for the first time, as if puzzled to find it clasped in his hand. He studied it for a moment.
"Did you want to let it go, hon?" Mayvis asked.
Cooper released her and she pulled her arm back slowly, as calmly as she could.
"Wasn't you going to wash up now, Coop?"
"Huh?"
"Remember, you said you was going to go into the washroom in there and clean up so we could take a ride together. With you driving. And here, sugar, you can give them the application form, too. All done up good so you'll get that job again."
"Okay," Cooper said. He got out of the car, and Mayvis breathed deeply in relief, but then he reached back in and took the keys from the ignition.
She watched him walk across the parking lot, the keys dangling from his massive hand. Her instinct was to run, to abandon the car, give it up, and run to safety, wherever that might be. There was no denying her fear, she had been flat scared there for a minute, and if a man made you feel like that, then get the hell away from him.
Then reason took over. First of all, nothing had happened, she told herself. She had handled him, controlled him very easily, as a matter of fact, once she realized the situation. He was stupid, not dangerous.
Secondly, she wasn't about to give up her car. For what? It wasn't the first time a man had held on to her too long. She trusted him a whole lot more where she could see and control him than she did driving her car around alone. If nothing else, he was apt to get lost. Was she so scared that she was going to give a man a possession worth thousands of dollars and just walk away? Nothing could scare her that much. The idea of calling the police came to her and was dismissed in a second. She knew how the police would treat her. With her reputation, they would assume the worst, always. It was like a hooker calling rape. Who would believe her? And about what? He held my wrist?
I was scared? What's a cop going to do for me? Haven't you already fucked this man, Mayvis? they would ask.
Now he can't touch your arm? It wouldn't be any better reporting a stolen car to them, either. It would just be giving them an opportunity for all the dirty-minded comments they could come up with. It would be even worse back home in Hazard. She had slept with two of the cops on the force there, and three others were mad at her that hadn't done her, too. She could just see herself call the cops.
Cooper returned to the car and they drove off. The front of his face had been splashed with water, but Mayvis could still see the dust on his neck and his ears. His wrists were speckled like a dirt patch after a brief shower.
"I'm going fast," he said when they hit the highway.
"Well, slow down," she said.
He turned to face her, looking away from the road entirely.
"Come on," he said. "I'm going fast."
When Mayvis didn't move he grabbed her hair and yanked her face into his lap. She got the idea then.
Cooper howled and pulled the car off the road onto an access path not much wider than the car. Pine boughs whipped at the windshield, and dust rose up behind them in a reddish-brown cloud.:'Now put your foot here," Cooper said.
"What?"
"Put your foot here and play with yourself like before," he said. He grabbed her leg and dropped it into his lap. "Put your hand in your shirt," he said.
"Coop, let's just give it a rest for a minute, okay?"
"Put your hand in your shirt," he said, reaching for her arm. He slapped her hand against her breast to remind her of what to do. "Like last time," he said.
"It doesn't have to be just like last t
ime," she said.
"Let's be spontaneous."
"Do it like last time," Cooper said.
He pulled the car off the path and onto a ridge of weeds and scrub brush.
She put her hand under her blouse, moving slowly, keeping her eyes fixed on his.
"Now, listen, honey, I think you forgot something about last time that was different."
"No," he said.
"Yes, you did. Don't you remember what was different last time?… I told you what to do last time. Remember?
That way you didn't have to think about it, you just got all the fun."
"Then we got out," Cooper said as if he didn't hear her. Grabbing the foot that rested in his crotch, Cooper got out of the car and dragged Mayvis across the seat and stood her up. "In there," he said, pointing to the woods.
He held her by the arm and walked into the woods.
Mayvis told herself to stay calm. All she had to do was try to repeat the sequence of their last time together and everything would be all right. Nothing was going to happen to her that hadn't happened before.
In a wider opening among the trees Cooper pushed her down and undid his belt while standing over her.
"Like last time," he said.
"Sugar, I don't really recall exactly-"
"No," Cooper said, shaking his head impatiently. "Not like that." He maneuvered her until he had her where he wanted her then entered her with a grunt.
"I could kill you," he said, his breath coming faster.
"No, sugar."
"I could pop your head right off."
He put his hand on her throat, but it was no good with her looking at him. He didn't like anybody looking at him, even though she had done so last time. But last time was different because it was so surprising; this time he could have his way. Cooper turned her over and pulled her back to him to take her the way he had taken the punk.
"No, sugar," she said. "Not that way. That will hurt.
No, sugar."
"Time for your nightlies," he said.
Cooper pulled her back firmly against him and drove into her. She screamed and Cooper smiled, expecting to hear the encouraging calls from the other prisoners, but the only sounds were made by Mayvis.
