“Yeah, sure,” he teased.
“I remember that secret place in the bushes,” she said, smiling. “We could slip inside the bushes and sit in a leafy cave. We could see the playground, but nobody could see us."
“Yeah,” he grinned. “We used to hide in there to avoid being chosen last in whatever game was being played during recess."
“I may have let the other guys play with my boobs when they became noticeable, but you were the first to ever see them."
“I remember,” Bo laughed. “But that doesn't count. They were just little knobs then."
Betty looked at him, her eyes dancing. “I wanted you to kiss them, but as soon as your lips touched one you peed in your pants."
“Hell, Betty,” Bo chuckled, his humor changing abruptly. “I didn't pee in my pants. I ejaculated.” He felt his face coloring. “I didn't know what it was. It scared the shit out of me."
Betty looked in all directions with a gleam in her eye and stepped off the trail behind a large tree trunk. Bo followed curiously. Quickly she unbuttoned her blouse and pushed the bra up over her breasts. “Does this make up for me slighting you in the seventh grade?” she asked in the most sensuous voice she could muster while pulling her blouse open even wider.
He could not speak. His eyes locked onto the milky white softball sized mammary glands tipped with ripe strawberries. Slowly he leaned forward. She did not retreat. He kissed her left nipple, then her right nipple and gently drew it into his mouth. He moaned. “Shit!” he exclaimed.
“Don't tell me you did it again,” she laughed.
He wheeled around and rushed back to the trail. She quickly reassembled her clothing and joined him.
They paused and pretended interest in a yellow and white flower, which neither could identify.
“You had your day in the sun, too,” she said.
“Me? When?"
“Don't pretend you've forgotten the credenza."
“Yeah,” he smiled. “I'll never forget that."
Again they fell silent as each recalled the story. On another Saturday, just over a year ago, the concert band gathered on a charter bus on the way to Greensboro and the district band contest. All band members were present except the first chair clarinetist, Ned Griffith. Ned was a good musician and was scheduled to play a forty-two bar credenza in one of the pieces they were to perform. The director told the band that Ned woke up that morning with an abscessed tooth and could not play. They would have to drop the piece from their repertoire. Betty let the band director know that Bo could play the difficult passage. The director was skeptical, but as soon as the band reached the Greensboro practice room he gave Bo a chance and Bo played it with just a few mistakes. When the band performed the piece on stage, only Bo knew that he missed one note. When the curtain closed, his fellow musicians gave him a standing ovation.
“Let's go that way,” Betty said pointing to the left.
“That's not a part of the trail."
“Oh, where's your spirit of adventure?” she laughed as she pushed into the bushes.
Bo followed.
Soon she located a dry, leaf carpeted drainage culvert and they followed it down the long hill.
“How's your dad and his new bride?” she asked.
“He's the happiest I've ever seen him,” Bo replied with no enthusiasm. “He's not a garbage collector anymore you know."
“No, I didn't know."
“Yeah, they finally made him a supervisor a couple of weeks ago. He calls himself a sanitation engineer now."
“And his wife?"
“She hates my guts. The feeling is mutual. God I wish my mom hadn't died when I was born.” Immediately he regretted the comment.
They came to a grassy clearing and Betty sat down, her back to a tree, softly crying. Not knowing how to comfort her, he squatted at the opposite end of the clearing. He remembered the day Betty's mom died as if it were yesterday.
Her father disappeared shortly after the last of his four children was born. He was never heard from again. There was no choice for Betty's mom. She accepted welfare in order to survive, which to her was a humiliating disgrace. One morning towards the end of the seventh grade, Betty's year of popularity with her male schoolmates, the loud speaker in the classroom crackled and the principle's voice boomed into the room. “Betty Elizabeth Hensley, come to the office please.” Betty gathered up her books and left the room. Bo did not see her again until the start of the new school year, but he learned what happened when he picked up the afternoon newspapers for delivery on his route. After Betty left for school that morning, her mom took the other three children, including the baby, to rain-swollen Salem Creek and somehow drug them into the raging water. They all drowned. Betty wound up in a foster home.
“Betty, I'm sorry,” he finally said.
“Me too,” she replied. She hugged her knees and rested her chin on them. Several minutes passed before she looked up and asked, “What are you going to do after graduation?” She was still hugging her knees. Her short skirt had ridden backwards, revealing most of her shapely legs and dingy white panties.
“Get a job and a place of my own,” he replied instantly, sneaking a peek at her crotch while trying to go unobserved. “I can't wait to get away from that witch Dad married."
“I wouldn't mind staying with the Williams. As foster parents go, they're okay. However, the county won't give them any more money for my support after I graduate, so they say I have to move out. I've interviewed for several jobs, but the only offer I've gotten so far is from Reynolds Tobacco Company as a maid in one of the making rooms, whatever that is."
“I've asked around too. Dad says I can get on as a garbage collector, so that's probably what I'll do."
Betty nodded, looked to her left and froze, her face contorted in terror.
“Don't make a fuckin’ sound,” a sinister sounding voice commanded.
Herks, the denim clad gang who watched the band get off the bus, surrounded them. The voice came from a blond with a crew cut who was holding a pistol pointed directly at Bo. One other Herk was waving a pistol and the rest threatened the frightened couple with two-foot lengths of iron pipe.
Betty watched in horror as they gagged and mercilessly beat Bo. When he was half conscious they stripped him down to his jockey shorts and one of the Herks stomped his groin. He lurched forward and lapsed into oblivion.
They forced Betty to the middle of the clearing.
“Get your damned clothes off,” the blond demanded.
“Please don't do this,” she begged. She felt the iron bar slam into her back. She stumbled forward and someone kicked her feet. She fell to her hands and knees and the toe of a shoe sank into her stomach. She rolled on the ground clutching her belly. They dragged her to her unconscious companion. She watched in disbelief as a switchblade was popped open and Bo's underwear was cut away. She felt a hand under her skirt, probing her buttocks. When the sharp blade touched the bottom of Bo's scrotum, she blurted, “Okay! Okay! I'll do it."
The blond Herk dragged her by the hair back to the center of the clearing. “Give us a fuckin’ good show,” he demanded.
She tried to make her mind go blank as she unbuttoned her blouse and pulled it from her skirt. She pushed down the skirt and stumbled to her knees as she tried to step out of it.
She felt an openhanded slap to her cheek and heard the command, “Get up, you bucktoothed cunt.” She scrambled back to her feet and kicked off her shoes.
“Rip those nasty panties off, bitch. I want to see pussy."
She tried, but the fabric would not give. She froze as the dull edge of the switchblade touched her skin and the blade slid under the crotch of her panties. She heard the sound of the knife slicing cloth. Someone ripped off her shirt from behind. The switchblade ran under her panties at her right hip and the cotton rag dropped, hanging from her left knee. With a sneer on his face, the knife wielding Herk said, “It's tittie time,” and he severed each bra strap. The boy behind her unfas
tened the hooks and the white undergarment fell to the ground. She felt the edge of the knife lightly scrape the flesh of her left breast from top to nipple. She tightly clenched her eyes in embarrassment when she realized that her nipples were rock hard. She tightened her buttocks as the Herk behind her ran his hands over her buns and slipped a finger between her labia.
On command, she dropped to her knees. She watched the boy unzip his pants and produce his small penis. Without instruction she opened her mouth and allowed him to push his jerking appendage into it. She felt his hands cruelly crushing her breasts.
With semen glistening on her lips the switchblade wielder twisted her hair in his hand. “You have the ugliest hair I ever saw,” he sneered.
Bo opened his eyes and struggled to remember where he was. It took several minutes for his blurred vision to clear. The sight filled him with white-hot rage. Betty was sitting on a log in the center of the clearing, her legs elevated and spread obscenely apart. Her hair was gone. Two denim-clad Herks were behind her, squeezing her breasts which were already turning purple from the bruises inflicted on them. The blond-headed kid was on his knees in front of her, shaving her pubic hair. She was not resisting.
Without moving his body he rolled his eyes around and determined that no one was watching him. The Herk finished his project, put the knife in his pocket and lowered his pants. Summoning all his courage Bo flung himself at the blond, knocking him away from Betty. The Herks responded furiously, iron pipes flashing and fists crashing. A shot was fired and an iron bar against his temple again knocked Bo unconscious.
This time when he awoke, the Herks were gone. He felt Betty's naked body pressed close to his and heard her crying softly.
He touched her bald head. “You okay?"
“Yeah. You?"
“I think so,” he moaned as he placed his hands on his bloody scalp.
They dressed and somehow slowly retraced their steps back to the trail, to the parking lot and finally to the bus where the band director found them. A park employee carried them to Forsyth Memorial Hospital. They, along with a sniveling youth with a gunshot wound in his shoulder, were treated and released. A police officer questioned them at the hospital, but both Betty and Bo knew there would be no arrests, no trial, and no conviction. The Herks were sons of prominent Winston-Salem families. The whole thing would be hushed up.
While they were sitting in the emergency room, waiting for a Social Services Counselor to bring Betty a wig, Bo asked, “Did they..."
“No,” she interrupted. “Thanks to you."
He smiled gently with a mixture of pride and satisfaction.
She did not tell him that she tasted the seminal fluid of every gang member. She did not tell him that the attack excited her. She did not tell him that she tried without success to have intercourse with his unconscious body after the gang members fled. She did not tell him that twice since arriving at the hospital she had gone to the bathroom to masturbate.
Chapter Two
Bo snapped off a foot-long twig from the huge, flowing Weeping Willow tree and tossed it into the slowly moving red water of Peter's Creek. The little stream held fond memories for both Betty and him. As children they spent numerous summer days wading in its water, overturning rocks as they searched for crawfish, and digging clay from its banks from which Betty would mold cartoon characters. He remembered her one and only effort to mold a bust of his head. It didn't look anything like him, but he said it did. She knew he was lying.
He hated the finishing plant upstream that from time to time dumped its dye waste into the otherwise beautiful little brook. He smiled as he glanced to his right at the concrete bridge carrying Glade Street over the creek. It was under that bridge that Betty showed him how to masturbate.
“Hi there."
He turned and smiled at his approaching only friend.
“Hi there, yourself. You're late."
“I walked. My bicycle has a flat tire. You sounded so excited when you called. What's the surprise you couldn't tell me about over the phone?"
“It's not that I couldn't tell you on the phone. Dad's bitch was listening and it's none of her business."
Betty sat down under the massive tree, grateful for the cool shade it provided. Bo liked the new wig he bought her. It fit so much better than the one provided by Social Services, and it looked almost natural. He also liked the way her sweat-soaked shirt clung to her breasts.
“Why don't you take your shirt and pants off until you cool down a bit?” he invited.
“I'm not wearing a bra,” she replied.
“I know,” he grinned.
She laughed. “I do believe you're beginning to develop a sexual interest in me, Bo Nading. I take it as a compliment. I wish now I had showed you my boobs back in the seventh grade."
“I was just thinking of the sex education you gave me under the bridge."
She continued her laughter. “I still can't believe a twelve year old boy didn't know how to play with himself."
“I've often wondered who taught you?"
“I think I must have read about it in a book or magazine."
“Yeah, sure. Come on, who taught you?"
Her eyes narrowed to small slits and she replied in measured cadence, “I just told you."
Bo tossed a pebble into the water. “Are you as glad it's over as I am?” he asked, changing the subject.
“What, High School?"
“Yeah."
“Not really. I'm a little frightened, having to go out on my own."
“Have you found a job yet?"
“I don't have much choice. I start working at Reynolds on Monday."
“Betty, I'm sorry. This has never happened to me before,” he said as he sat down close beside her. “This isn't the way ... I mean ... damn. I was thinking about the bridge and then you showed up with your nipples pressing against your shirt, and...” He reached for her hand and placed it firmly in his lap. “Please show me how to masturbate again."
She removed her hand from his lap, but put both hands on the sides of his face, drew his lips to hers, and thrust her tongue deep inside his mouth.
He instantly forgot about her protruding teeth. The new sensation of her tongue dancing inside his mouth set him on fire. He pressed his groin against her leg and without thinking began to massage her breasts.
Her tongue remained alive, pulsating between his lips, as she unbuttoned her shirt, allowing him to caress her naked flesh. He moaned and rubbed his groin against her with increasing intensity. He found her nipples and squeezed them roughly. She did not complain.
“Oh, God,” he cried out.
She started laughing again and, as he flopped onto his back, she asked, “Are you going to take off your shorts or put up with the sticky mess you just created? This is getting to be a habit you know."
“Where the hell did you learn to kiss like that?"
“I read romance novels."
“You must have practiced on someone."
She snuggled in his arms, leaving his question unanswered. Several minutes passed before he softly said, “Let's get married."
She quickly rolled to her side, propping on an elbow and, as he stared at her naked breasts, said, “Look, just because I..."
“No, no,” he interrupted, gently caressing her right breast. “That's one of my secrets I wanted to talk with you about. That's what I didn't want to discuss on the telephone with Dad's bitch listening."
He drew her back down into his arms and stroked her back. “After graduation last Monday night I was ready to take the job as a garbage collector, but I really didn't want to work for my dad. Tuesday morning there was a new ad in the newspaper classifieds. Tanglewood Park was looking for some grounds-crew workers. I drove out there and filled out an application. You ever been to Tanglewood?"
“Lord, no. It's too expensive and too far away."
“Not really. It's a public park now, you know. They charge two bucks to get in, but then many of its features are free.
It's only fifteen miles from Winston—just on the western side of Clemmons—but I guess you do need a car to get there."
“Get on with your story."
“Well, I filled out the application and was waiting to be interviewed when this big black fella came in chewing on a cigar. He must have been close to seven feet tall and a little on the chubby side. Don't get me wrong. He's not fat. Looks strong as a weightlifter and I sure as hell wouldn't want him to get angry with me. The best part is, he is as ugly as I am."
She reflected his smile while tugging on a willow branch, causing her breasts to jiggle like a bowl of Jell-O. “Is there a point to this story?"
“Oh, be a little patient with me. I'm getting there. This guy, his name is Big Willie, asked me if I was looking for work and when I said I was he picked up my application and read it. He asked me if I knew anything about golf. I thought about lying, but decided I'd better tell the truth. Turned out he was glad I didn't know anything."
“We climbed into his pickup and drove all over the three courses they have out there. He's the greens-keeper and needs some help. He has a crew of five, but says he can't seem to keep more than three working at a time."
“This Big Willie—do you think you could work for him?” Betty asked.
“Yeah, I really liked him. He said he liked me too ‘cause I was as ugly as he is."
They both laughed.
“Big Willie wanted to be a pro golfer. He got his ticket, whatever that is, but wasn't good enough to finish in the money on the tour so he started looking for a job as a club pro. He says club professionals are a dime a dozen. Because he worked on a golf course as a boy he was able to come up with a job as an assistant greens-keeper down in Pinehurst and then moved to the job at Tanglewood."
“So what would your job be?"
“A little of everything—lots of mowing involved, fertilizing, watering, tree and bush pruning, machinery repair, cleaning and repairing golf carts—stuff like that."
“Does it pay anything?"
“The starting salary is seven dollars an hour, plus overtime, and during most of the year there is lots of overtime. Big Willie said that because I am so ugly he is willing to pay me eight dollars an hour and, if I will move within walking distance of the park, he'll pay me ten."
Sintown Chronicles I: Behind Closed Doors Page 28
