by Pamela Morsi
Henry Lee considered lying, but decided that it didn't matter enough to lie about.
"She doesn't know."
"She don't know you're a moonshiner?" Her voice was disbelieving.
"That's right," he answered, smiling. "Nobody's told her and she hasn't asked, so I guess she'll just go on not knowing how I manage to put meat on her table."
Zanola shook her head. "You ain't going to be able to keep it from her. Somebody's going to tell her and then what are you going to do?"
"She won't be running my life," he assured Zanola. "She's got herself one lucky deal with me, and she won't be trying to do anything to mess that up."
"Good Lord, Henry Lee," she laughed. "You must think yourself some kind of man, doing the little white girl such a big favor!"
Henry Lee had been thinking about the baby in her belly, but he wasn't about to tell anyone about that.
"As you said yourself, Zanola, she's plain and past her prime and she's not so straight-laced as you think. Them church women got needs, too."
"Oh, Lordy! Don't I know it," she exclaimed laughing loudly, "I'm a churchgoer myself, and if I was twenty years younger, I might give you a long look or two myself."
Henry Lee laughed in reply. "Forget that twenty years, Zanola," he teased. "You start giving me long looks and I'll be looking right back!" This flirty, light conversation came so easy to him with Zanola and with other women, and for a moment made him wonder why he had never really tried his charm out on Hannah. Somehow she seemed different from other women, but he couldn't understand why.
He shrugged. "It's time I had a woman to clean and cook and do for me. She'll serve well enough for that."
"What about your bed?" Zanola nearly cackled. "Ain't it time you had a woman in your bed, too?"
"I've always had that," he teased mischievously.
"Ain't that the truth," she said joining him in laughter. "But now that you're a married man, you'd best keep your eyes off our pretty girls tonight."
"Now, Zanola, you know there ain't a one of them wedding vows that says you can't look!"
* * *
Hannah spent her evening alone not very differently than she did her day. She continued working outside until nearly dark. Fixed herself a bit of supper, cleaned everything that she could think to clean in the house. Still she found herself with time on her hands.
She decided that being alone would give her an opportunity to take an all-over warm bath in the kitchen. It was, after all, Saturday night and she wanted to look her best for church tomorrow, especially if Henry Lee was going to take her.
As she trooped back and forth to the creek to fetch water to heat she imagined herself in church beside him. They would hold the hymnbook together and their voices would blend as they sang. Everyone would be surprised to see that he attended with his new wife. And all the unmarried girls in town would be envious of the new bride, whose handsome husband obviously doted on her.
It was a wonderful fantasy, but as she sank her tired body into the gloriously warm water reality intruded.
The reality was he did not dote on her. In fact he had moved to the workroom. He'd taken all his tools and wood out to the shed and set up his bed. He'd brought in a small table to hold his wash pan and his lamp and he'd nailed hooks up on one wall to keep his clothes. Hannah had stuffed him a tick for a mattress and he seemed quite content to take up residence in the next room.
She knew that married people slept together. Her parents always had, it was a part of being married, the part that all the girls giggled about. Why Henry Lee had decided not to share her bed was a mystery to her.
They didn't know each other very well and perhaps he was shy. She certainly must have frightened him with her behavior the first night. She still didn't understand how she could have acted that way and felt embarrassed and humiliated that it had happened. At the same time, she secretly wanted it to happen again. Just thinking about it made her feel strange. Her stomach seemed to have little swarms of butterflies in it, and she had to try harder to breathe. Her breasts tingled with the memory of his hands upon them. And in the hollow of her womanhood, she felt an emptiness that was inexplicable.
She closed her eyes and imagined him coming home right now. He would walk in the back door with that same look he had had that night. He would see her here in the bathtub, slick and wet, and would kneel down beside her. He would grab her hair and twist it around his hand, forcing her mouth into his control. He would kiss her lips and then her neck and her throat. Then his lips would touch her breast.
Abruptly she sat up in the tub. What would happen after that she didn't know. And suddenly the idea that he might come home and find her here in the tub was very frightening. She quickly finished scrubbing herself, washed her long hair, standing up to rinse it with a bucket of clean water, and climbed out to dry off.
After dressing for bed, throwing out the bath water and braiding her still damp hair into one long braid, she put out the lamp and went to bed. She had no idea what was happening in her marriage, but she wished that Henry Lee would come home. She felt safer when he was there. She wasn't really afraid, she assured herself, she just liked having him around. She slipped off to sleep dreaming that he was lying beside her.
* * *
The man of Hannah's dreams was at that moment sitting in a dark corner of Zanola's barn listening to strange soulful music that was unique to the Negroes. He had always liked this music, it had made him want to laugh and love and put his arms around the pretty available girls. Tonight it was having an unusual effect on him. It seemed almost sad and he wanted only to sit in the corner alone. So he sat quietly drinking his own whiskey, something Henry Lee rarely did.
He didn't indulge himself often. Occasionally, out with friends, he would drink a bit, but rarely to excess. Living with his father had shown him what whiskey could do, and he had little tolerance, and no sympathy, for drunks. He liked to be in control. But, as he sat in the corner at Zanola's, he was slowly, steadily drinking himself beyond restraint.
Several Sandy Creek residents had stopped by his table to congratulate him on his recent marriage. Everyone wished him well, yet it was clear they were curious about the details. The pretty young girls who always flirted and danced with him tried to tease him about his newfound marital status, but his distant attitude, mixed with his alcohol consumption, discouraged any further approach and fueled rumor that he was not completely happy with his shotgun wedding.
Toward midnight, with the help of Zanola's right-hand man, Jones, he got back into his buggy and headed toward home. He gave the horse its head and let him find his own way. Zanola wasn't too worried about him, thinking that the distance to be traveled and the night air would clear the whiskey vapors from his brain. She would have been more concerned if she'd known that he had stowed a jug of moonshine under the buggy seat and before he was even out of sight he had continued imbibing.
Henry Lee was not exactly sure why he was drinking. The situation with Hannah really shouldn't bother him so much. It wasn't as if he was in love with her. She would make a good wife and would give him a respectable position in a community that did not hold whiskey men in great respect. He would see that she didn't shame him with other men and once she'd birthed her current burden, he would have no problem bedding her. The passion he had unexpectedly discovered in her was pleasant to contemplate.
He wanted her to be happy, too. He had traded the whiskey for bushels of corn, beans, peas, and potatoes instead of his usual cash. He wanted to please her and let her do for him the way she felt a wife should. He didn't think that she deserved to be punished forever. He wanted to let her be a real wife and have a husband that would take care of her. He was not like Skut, he reminded himself. He was strong enough to appreciate a good woman. And there was time for him to have children of his own.
What Zanola had said, about him giving up the whiskey business for her, bothered him more than he cared to admit.
He was proud of his business and proud of the whi
skey he made. The idea that a woman, any woman, could make him give that up was ridiculous. Or was it? She had already managed to force him, a man she hardly knew, to marry her and to agree to give her bastard child his name. If she could do that, getting him to become a full-time farmer might be easy.
That angered him. By God, he had never let any woman run his life; he had always set the rules. Women were convenient and warm and eager to please him, or he didn't bother to give them the time of day. He had never had any patience with men who allowed females to control them by holding back or giving favors, to get what they wanted. If Hannah could control him, then he was less a man than he had thought.
With that in mind, he drank deeply of the fiery liquid in the earthenware jug. It was strange to think of Hannah as one of those cold, calculating women. Those women always seemed overtly sexy and used their bodies like weapons.
And yet, although he knew Hannah was experienced, she did not seem to be very aware of her body. Perhaps it was just more of her subterfuge.
He gazed down the road into the darkness, but in his mind he looked at her. He imagined her face, soft and smiling, but with a strength that made her seem more womanly than girlish. Her hair, its curls forced into the severe style she always wore, could be evidence that she was not all that she seemed. And her body. He imagined that lush, bountiful body and it flamed his imagination. That fire quickly spread to his groin. In his mind's eye he saw her again before the fire, the light shining through her gown, leaving no doubt about the generous warmth of her thighs and the shapely curve of her legs. He saw himself pulling her down onto the table, as he had wanted to that night. Resting himself between the soft strength of those thighs as her legs wrapped around his back, urging and begging him closer.
Adjusting himself on the ungiving buggy seat, he shook the lustful images out of his brain. He told himself that his train of thought could lead only to frustration or self-debasement. He drank deeply and thought that the next several months couldn't possibly pass quickly enough.
* * *
Hannah awakened to the sound of someone falling in the back door. The clamor of someone tripping over the milk buckets, knocking over a chair, and falling onto the floor was followed by a familiar voice uttering a very unfamiliar expletive.
Quickly lighting a lamp, Hannah went to investigate.
Henry Lee lay sprawled, facedown in the middle of the room, moaning. A stab of fear ran through Hannah's heart. He'd injured himself. Hurrying to his side, she set the lamp on the table and dropped to her knees beside him.
"Henry Lee! What happened? Are you all right? Can you move?"
Henry Lee, who was not precisely sure what evil monster had thrown a bunch of buckets and a chair at him, moaned a little, feeling the pain in his shoulder where it had hit the table.
As Hannah stood above him, her eyes were huge with worry and her face reflected a tender concern Henry Lee had never seen before. Her hair lay in a long honey-colored rope beside her sensitive throat, past the darkened nipple clearly visible through the thin cotton gown, to her surprisingly narrow waist. Henry Lee wanted to climb that rope, leaving a trail of kisses along the way. Her anxious breathing drew his attention back to the rise and fall of her breasts. Unbound and pointing impudently upward, he tried to compare them to something familiar. They were definitely bigger than peaches, but not like melons. With a sigh of contentment, he decided no plant or tree could produce a fruit so desirable to taste. The light from the lamp framed her face and gave her a kind of halo. That was who she was, an angel, he thought. But not one of the psalm-singing ones, a flesh and blood one that made fire run in his veins.
"Oh, my Hannah," he said, his voice slurred. "Are you an angel of mercy or a hot-blooded wench come to tempt me into your flame?"
The undeniable odor of drunkenness assailed Hannah's nostrils and made her both angry and afraid. She was angry that he had left on business and had obviously decided to get himself drunk instead. And she was frightened also. She had seen men drunk on the street in Ingalls, but she had never actually been close to one. She wasn't sure what to expect. She'd read tracts from the Temperance Society where women described in detail how their drunken husbands would rage at them and beat them.
She decided it was best to treat him as she would a wild animal. Show no fear and take charge of the situation.
"You are drunk."
Henry Lee's smile deepened. "That I am, Miss Hannah, a drunker man I have never seen. Well, maybe I have, but I can't seem to remember it right now."
Because he didn't seem angry or vicious, Hannah relaxed somewhat and took courage.
"Do you need me to help you up? You seem to have fallen."
"Damn furniture, ought to have enough sense to get out of the way, that's what I think," he replied.
"Let me help you up." She moved her arms under his shoulders to lift him, but to her surprise he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close.
"I'm not so sure I want to get up. This seems like a pretty good position to me." He pressed her delicious bosom against his chest, feeling the hard tips of her nipples like twin peaks of fire, searing his flesh.
Frightened by his sudden movement, Hannah tried to pull back; instead she found herself held firmly against him. The closeness of his body was having the same embarrassing effect she had suffered the other night, and she knew she must stop this before he became disgusted with her again.
"Let me go, Henry Lee, I want to get up," she demanded.
"In a minute," he replied lazily. "I just want to feel you against me for a minute. Just want to share a little heat." His mouth wandered to the throat he found so tempting. "I just want a little taste of what it would be like to husband you."
When his lips made contact with the sensitive flesh beneath her ear, a sharp cry escaped from her lips. It was happening again, he was touching her and making her feel all liquid and molten inside. His mouth was firm and insistent against her skin, and blazed a path from her neck to her lips.
His kiss was not gentle, but hot and demanding. With a gentle sucking pressure on her mouth he forced it open and then his tongue was inside, exploring the depths of that hot cavern, as if to show her how he would like to explore another.
His tongue so shocked Hannah, that she squirmed in fright. Her squirm only pressed her more closely against him, and in answer he moved slightly, pulling her down full length on top of him. With a groan he slid his hand down her back to cup her much admired bottom.
He pressed her against his rock solid erection and the feeling it evoked in Hannah took her breath away. She was quickly losing touch with reality and could no longer think about what she should be doing, getting away. Instead she found herself doing what she wanted to be doing, kissing him back.
Her lips sought his with the same hunger he had felt and experimentally she pushed her own tongue into his mouth. The surge of fire that action brought to her body caused her to squirm toward him again. Not to get away but to get as close as she possibly could.
As he pressed her bottom firmly down, matching her hot aching pit with his correspondingly heated member, Hannah could not stifle the cry of pleasure that blended in their mouths. Her breasts seemed to swell and burn and she sought his hand to comfort them.
When she brought his hand to her breast and pressed it against her, Henry Lee shuddered at his lack of control. Groaning, he quickly rolled her over on her back. Spreading her legs with his, he was only restricted by the tangle of her nightgown. His mouth left hers and in a chain of fiery kisses he headed determinedly to the breast she had so generously offered.
Freed of the glorious wonder of his mouth on hers, Hannah began to hear strange whimpers of pleasure that were barely recognizable as her own. As Henry Lee fastened his wonderful mouth on the aching peak of her breast, she cried out in passion and confusion.
"Oh, Henry Lee, my God! What are you doing to me!" Arching her back to give him more access, she pressed her womanhood more firmly against the long leng
th of his manhood. "Just don't stop!" she begged, "please, don't ever stop."
Her hot pleading fired Henry Lee beyond tenderness as a red haze of lust filled his eyes. He could no longer bear the thin sheath of cotton between his mouth and her breast. Grabbing the modest cotton gown at the neck, he ripped it open, laying Hannah bare to his gaze.
The jerk of the resistant material and the wild sound of it tearing its way to her nakedness was deafeningly loud, drowning out the moans and breathing of a moment before.
Their eyes met as if they were just realizing what was happening. In Henry Lee's, Hannah saw a strength, a drive, that she didn't understand or know. In Hannah's, Henry Lee saw passion mixed with confusion and fear. In that instant the confusion and fear seemed to overtake the passion and to blot it out completely.
His eyes dropped to the view he had ripped her gown open to see. Her beautiful breasts lay bare, heaving with her labored breathing, and damp from the attention he had lavished upon them. She flushed with embarrassment and he realized that in his drunken lust he had treated her roughly, like a common tramp, and she had refused him nothing.
Cold-sober now, Henry Lee pulled the torn remnants of her gown together to cover her.
"Hannah," his voice was a hoarse whisper, "have I hurt you?"
"No," she answered a little shakily, not quite able to look him in the eye, "I don't think so."
He rolled off her and sat up. She too sat, crossing her arms against her torn bodice. As their breathing returned to normal, they both stared straight ahead not daring to look at each other.
"Hannah," he said finally, "as you said yourself, I'm drunk. I don't usually drink and I swear I won't again. I would never do anything to hurt you. I hope you know that."
"It didn't hurt exactly," Hannah told him, trying to understand just exactly what she was feeling.
He looked at her quickly, but she could not meet his glance.
"I want to have you as my wife, Hannah. I want you to take my body, like you've taken my name. But I want you in my bed and willing, not on the floor where I've dragged you."
