“Then say it,” she said.
“I jist did,” he said. “Boy howdy, do I want want want ye!”
“No, I mean, say you want me to marry you. Ask me to.”
“Tenny, babe, would you keer to be my wife?”
“Cassie Whitter said my husband would be a two-headed monstrosity. I reckon she must’ve been thinkin about them.” And she reached out and touched one of the prongs of his V. Her touch drove him wild, although he was already as wild as he’d ever been in his life. “So I reckon if I caint never marry Colvin Swain, then you are it. Have you got a four-poster in this house?” Mulciber’s house had some fancy headboards and footboards on the beds, but none of them was a four-poster. Russ took her upstairs to the bedrooms and showed her what they had. “Any extry quilts?” she asked. “Have you got a Garden Butterfly pattern?” They looked through the quilt chests, but the best they could find was a kind of homely Double Chain. “Have you got any slow music for the Victrola?” she asked. They searched through the platters, and tried out a few, but the only thing even fairly slow was something called “The Sheik of Araby,” with some suggestive words about “At night when you’re asleep, into your tent I’ll creep.” Russ began to wonder if he was going to have to wait until she was asleep before he could try to creep his peckers into her.
But since Mulciber never did come home that night, they had the house to themselves and went to bed together. He asked her if she wouldn’t at least care to try a swallow of some cough syrup or at least a glass of water for her cough, but she still wasn’t thirsty. She asked him if he had any white nightshirts with flouncy sleeves such as swashbucklers wear, but he’d never heard of them. She said, “There’s a couple of things you ought to know,” and she began to sound like a schoolteacher, telling him how what they were fixing to do would cause the rupture of something called the hymenal membrane, and it would get blood on the sheets. She took his hand and guided his finger to feel the thing she was talking about, and the touch of her down there excited him so much that his peckers started doing the Charleston together. Then she raised his finger to another place, and he could have sworn it was Doc Swain talking, instructing him in the existence of a tubercle at the top of her vulvar groove which was homologous with the penis(es) and ought to be respected as the seat of the woman’s pleasure just as the penis(es) was/were the man’s, and she asked him if he remembered page 620 of their hygiene textbook, wherein the clitoris is identified. He’d made a better grade in hygiene than any of his other courses, and like everybody else had been fascinated with that chapter on reproduction, but had been so intent on finding the word diphallus that he had not noticed clitoris, and so disappointed in not finding the former that he didn’t really care about the latter, which seemed useless anyhow.
He tried to pay attention to Tenny’s little lecture, but he wasn’t sure how it was supposed to help him in any way. He was going to have to get blood on the sheets and that was all there was to it, so he might as well get started. Rather clumsily he got her to lie on her back and spread her legs, and he took his two dancing peckers in his hand and held them tight together to make them quit dancing, and then he tried to get them to go into Tenny’s hole and rip that hymenal membrane. It wasn’t much of a fit. He gave a shove, but they wouldn’t go in, and Tenny said, “Ow!” like he was hurting her. He attempted to put just one at a time into her, but with both of them so stiff he couldn’t get one to go in without bending and hurting the other one. He attempted several different positions, atop her, beside her, and even behind her, and raising her two legs one way or another, and finally lifting both of her legs to put over his shoulders. Nothing worked. He decided the only thing to do was see if he couldn’t get one of his peckers to use that other tunnel while the other pecker went where it was supposed to, a kind of complicated position that required him to lie perpendicular to her from behind, and he tried that, using both of his hands to try to guide his peckers into their respective holes, until finally it dawned on him that there just wasn’t enough lubrication. Her parts were all dry, and his parts were each oozing just a drop or two, not enough. “‘Scuse me,” he said, getting up. “I’ll be right back.” And he ran downstairs and looked for something oily or greasy, finally finding a bottle of his father’s Wildroot cream hair oil, and he grabbed that and took it back upstairs. Tenny was sound asleep. She had a smile on her face like she was only pretending, but he shook her and discovered she really was in deep sleep, and maybe having a lovely dream which accounted for the smile on her face. The Victrola was playing “…at night when you’re asleep, into your tent I’ll creep…” so he took advantage of her sleeping to smear some of the Wildroot over both of her holes and both of his poles, and then he tried to make entry into her sleeping body. He tried and he tried, and wore himself plumb out, and had just enough strength left before falling asleep himself to smear some of the Wildroot on his two hands and make love to himself.
The next day, he could think of only two things: one was that he was going to catch holy hell from his mother, who was going to have a conniption fit, see red and sizzle, hit the ceiling, and jump down his throat. The other thing, a more disturbing thing, was that even though the love potion had sort of worn off, he was still in love with Tenny. It must be true that whoever touched a drop of that love potion would fall madly in love with the first person they laid eyes on, but Russ hadn’t realized that it meant you had to love them forever. He sure didn’t mind being in love with Tenny, because she was not only the most well-favored and sightly person in the world, next to his mother, but she was also the nicest, possibly even nicer than his mother, who wasn’t going to be very nice at all, from now on.
The sheriff, Sam Hudson, knocked at the door and told Russ that his daddy was being held at the jail and Russ could come and get him and take him home. Charges had not been pressed, but Mulciber was jailed for disorderly conduct, trying to molest a tourist-lady staying at the Commercial Hotel, where Mulciber had spent most of the night and was arrested in the wee hours. So Russ told Tenny to make herself at home, eat anything she took a notion to, and play the Victrola, and he’d be right back. He brought his father home, and then was obliged to work with his father in the blacksmith shop and make sure Mulciber didn’t try to go back to the Commercial Hotel. All of this activity gave Russ time to think about what he was going to say to his mother.
That afternoon, he asked Tenny if she would go with him to his mother’s house and tell his mother the “truth”: that the sight of gruesome Mulciber had made her so pukey that she couldn’t possibly marry the old geezer.
“I tole you, I don’t want to see your momma,” Tenny said. “That would make me even pukier.”
“But you don’t need to hate her no more for coming between you and Doc Swain, since it’s me you’re gonna marry, and when me and you git married, she’ll be your mother-in-law, so you’ll have to see her.”
Tenny seemed to be thinking about that, and whatever thoughts she was having were making her very sad. Russ wondered if she really did want to marry him, and, even if she did marry him, would she always be carrying a torch for Doc Swain?
Neither Russ nor Tenny had the slightest notion that they’d find Doc Swain at Venda’s house. When they went in the door, and heard the sounds coming from the bedroom, it took Russ awhile to remember that such sounds are the cries and grunts not of people being hurt but of people enjoying that supreme act which he himself had never yet known. Just as he had done so many times in his childhood when his mother was entertaining a lover, he crept silently toward the noise. Tenny followed. When they saw who was in bed with Venda, Tenny gasped, but her sound was drowned beneath those coming from the bed. The couple in the bed were having such a splendid time of it that they did not notice Russ arranging a couple of chairs so that he and Tenny could take a load off their feet while they studied the spectacle. Russ had seen this sort of thing many times before, but Tenny hadn’t, so he figured it might further her sex education and maybe put her
in the mood for it. She was obviously awestruck, and her mouth was fixed into that almost holy O. The bed partners switched positions, with Russ’s mother on top, allowing her freedom of movements which, Russ hoped, would suggest to Tenny that perhaps she and Russ could more successfully manage their hookup if Tenny was on top doing the connecting.
Russ hoped that whatever feeling Tenny still had for Doc Swain would be wiped out by watching this. As for himself, he had all the proof he needed that his mother was dishonest and hateful: she had promised him that she wouldn’t let any other man stick his pecker into her until Russ had a chance to reap his reward for fixing up Tenny with Mulciber, and even though that effort had failed, Venda was going ahead and breaking her promise without even waiting to find out the results of the attempt.
Now Doc Swain had turned his head and detected that Russ and Tenny were watching, but that didn’t stop him. He just kept on. Russ thought that was funny, and he grinned at the doctor, and the doctor grinned back at him and kept on thrusting beneath the wild bounces of Venda. All those times that Russ had spied on his momma with her lovers, he had never actually seen a simultaneous coming, but now he was watching one, and not only that but the bed was coming apart too, and when it did and they and the mattress crashed to the floor, his mother looked over and saw him and cried, “Russ!” in such a way that he knew she knew that he had been spying on her all those years.
He was so impressed with the performance that he spontaneously began to applaud, the same way he’d clapped his hands in joy when his mother had brought him a present as a little boy, only it wasn’t joy now, but a kind of sarcastic admiration. Tenny caught the spirit of his applause and did some herself. Then he and she looked at each other, and her eyes said to him, “I’ve done seen enough to make me hate him and her both for the rest of my life,” and his eyes replied to her eyes, “So you and me don’t have nobody in this whole world excepting each other, and we might as well git out of here and go live happy ever after.”
They got out of there, and rode Marengo straight to the courthouse. It all happened so fast that he couldn’t even remember afterwards if he and Tenny had actually said anything, until they were both standing there saying, “I do,” and then the man said, “I now pernounce y’uns man’n wife and you kids air shore gonna git wet as dogs if you try to go out in that!” and he indicated through the window the growing thunderstorm.
Now it was drowning geese and strangling toads. He and his bride could only huddle in the doorway of the courthouse and wait for it to stop. “Are you okay?” he thought to ask her.
“‘Happy is the bride the sun shines on,’” she said.
“But the sun aint shining,” he observed.
“And I aint too awful happy,” she said.
Well, here come Doc Swain in his buggy, acting as if he hadn’t just been caught bare-assed with his red hand in the cookie jar. Now the fool was just sitting there in the deluge, sobby as a dog, and liable to get hit by a thunderbolt any second now. He just sat there with all that water running down his sad wistful face and he didn’t wave howdy or nothing. Tenny just glared at him. Russ didn’t personally have anything against Doc Swain, and still greatly admired him, even though he had once been the chief object of his bride’s affections, and therefore a rival. But Russ had never forgotten how kind Doc Swain had been to him, and how Doc had even offered to excise his extra pecker if necessary, and Russ was beginning to wonder if it might not be necessary.
“I reckon I’d better have a word with him,” Russ told Tenny.
“Don’t you dare!” she said. “Just ignore him, and maybe he’ll go away.”
But Doc did not go away. Even the horse looked miserable. The thunder was slamming back and forth all down the mountainsides, and the wind was blowing the hard rain into the courthouse doorway so that Russ and Tenny were getting wet anyway.
“Maybe you ought to go have a word with him,” Russ suggested.
“Huh?” Tenny said indignantly. “Have you taken leave of your senses? I don’t have ary thing to say to him!”
So they just waited for him to go away or for the rain to go away, but neither Doc nor the rain would leave. It commenced getting on to dark, and they both knew that it was too late to make it back up to Brushy Mountain for the shivaree and infare and all. Russ decided there was nothing to do but go on back to Mulciber’s house for their wedding night. “Let’s make a dash for it!” he said, and they ran out into the rain and hopped on Marengo and headed for Mulciber’s. Russ looked over his shoulder at one point and saw that Doc was following in his buggy, and Russ spurred Marengo to try to outrun him.
They arrived at Mulciber’s. Russ didn’t know the concept of déjà vu, but he thought there was something awfully familiar about walking in and discovering a naked couple fucking, only in this case it was not the bedroom but the living room, on the sofa. Russ’s Victrola was up as loud as it would go, and Russ’s jazz music was playing, and there was Mulciber a-humping some stranger-lady, who, Russ recognized by her bobbed hair, was the same lady who’d stopped at the blacksmith shop yesterday. Once again Russ and Tenny pulled up some chairs and sat watching, although Russ couldn’t help noticing that this couple weren’t nearly so spectacular as Venda and Doc had been. Nor did they come simultaneously. When they were all done, Russ didn’t feel like applauding. He told them that all in all, he’d seen much better, but they’d done tolerable. Then he told his father that he and Tenny had just gotten theirselves married down at the courthouse. His father and the lady were hastily putting their clothes back on, and his father said the lady’s name was Edna. Although Russ didn’t think that Edna looked very much like a stump fence, Mulciber declared that Edna was “going to stay awhile,” so he’d appreciate it if Russ and Tenny would get lost. “But where can we go?” Russ whined.
“I was you, I’d jist take her to your mother’s,” Mulciber suggested.
Russ counted his money. He had once had six quarters, but he’d paid two of them for the marriage license, and two more to the justice of the peace, leaving him with only two, not enough for even a cheap hotel room. Tenny didn’t have a cent. So the only way to avoid sleeping somewheres out in the rain was for them to go on back to his mother’s and throw themselves at her mercy, and maybe if he told her how sorry he was and all, she might even forgive him.
On the way to Venda’s, they couldn’t help noticing that they were still being followed by Doc in his buggy. Tenny was still determined not to see Venda, but she was tired, and soaked through by the rain, and a bit chilled, and her cough was getting worse, and she told Russ she hoped maybe there was some way she could have a bed at Venda’s without having to face the woman.
“Wait on the porch while I talk to her,” he told her, and then he boldly stepped into the house to face the music, make the best of a bad job, pay the fiddler, and lay down and roll over. But he could stand up and take it. “Maw,” he said, “I shore am the sorriest feller on airth, and I don’t know how to tell ye this, but I’ve done went and fell in love with Tenny myself, and we’re fresh-married.”
“Sweetheart, that’s only fair-to-middlin funny,” Venda said. “I’ve had a real hard day, and if you’re trying to cheer me up with some jokes, you laid an egg.”
“It’s the honest to gosh truth,” he said. “Paw didn’t want her, and she didn’t want him, and I accidental-like drank some of that love potion myself, and then we seen you and Doc a-fuckin like a pair of minks, so we jist skipped on over to the courthouse and got ourselfs hitched.”
Venda didn’t say anything for a while, but she didn’t get red in the face or clench her fists or start steaming out the ears. Finally she just said, “Go to your room.” He tried to protest, but she made it clear that she was still boss, so he did like he always did when she told him to go to his room. He went to his room. He sat on his bed and put on his baseball glove and slammed his fist into it, and he felt twelve years old. By-and-by, she came into the room and closed the door behind her. First, she as
ked him a question: “Do you honestly think that I could tolerate my competition as a daughter-in-law?” He figured it was one of those questions that are just said for the sake of making a point, and didn’t have any answer to them, so he didn’t try to make one. Then she asked him another question: “Don’t you think it’s bad enough that I have to watch Colvin falling for her without watching my own son doing it too?” He decided this was another unanswerable question made for show, so he didn’t try to answer it either. “Do you know what you are?” she asked, and it must’ve been the same kind of question, because she answered it herself: “You’re a motherfucker!” He winced because that was truly an awful word, even though it described exactly what he aspired to be. “You’re not only a motherfucker but a motherkiller, and you’re killing me with what you’ve done!” Her face turned red, her fists clenched, and steam came out of her ears. “Oh Jesus H. Fucking Christ! I guess I didn’t bring you up proper. You never learned to tell right from wrong, or even up from down, and you never learned to obey me! You stupid wretch, I sent you out to ruin Tennessee Tennison, I mean totally wreck her life, I mean make her so miserable that she would be sorry she was ever born, let alone was such a knockout and built like a brick shithouse! I wanted you to dilapidate her to where she’d think she was a corncrib made of corncobs! And what did you do? Not only did you fail to destroy her, you led her down the aisle!”
“Hit weren’t no aisle,” he protested feebly. “Hit was jist the hallway at the courthouse.” But that cut no ice with his mother, who begin to pick things up and throw them against the walls. “Maw, look at it this way,” he tried to reason with her. “I’ve done went and removed your competition. You don’t need to worry about her stealin Doc’s heart away from you, because now she’s a married woman and Doc has to leave her alone.”
Venda stopped throwing things against the wall. She stared at Russ in such a way that he realized he’d made a good point. She thought about that, and then she said, “Now, why didn’t I think of that?” It was one more of those questions that don’t have any answers, so he didn’t tell her why she didn’t think of that. Then she finally asked a question that was answerable: “Speakin of whom, jist where is this blushin bride of your’n?”
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