Untamed Lust

by Orrie Hitt

  “Perhaps I could help,” she suggested.

  “I don’t see how.”

  “You could show me where the traps are and when you’re off I could look at them. I could shoot anything that you had caught but I wouldn’t be able to take the things out of the traps. You’d have to do that the next day.”

  “Roger might not like it.”

  “I don’t see why not. It would be only one day a week and it would give us something to do.”

  “It’s up to you,” Eddie said. “I’d be grateful.”

  She moved her legs back and forth and adjusted the top part of the suit, cupping her hands beneath her breasts and pushing the material upward.

  “I could go with you tomorrow,” she said. “Roger is going away early in the morning for a couple of days, maybe a week, and I think it might be fun. We could pack a lunch — I guess you do that, anyway, don’t you? — and we could have a picnic along the way.”

  The thought of being alone with her for most of the day was exciting. He knew a place where the grass was deep and thick, soft as an expensive carpet. They could eat there. Now that he knew what she was, the urge inside of him to have her became an overpowering force. He assured himself that it had nothing to do with his love for Kitty. It was simply the male animal in him searching for the female. Lots of men who were married did a little playing on the side and it didn’t break up their marriages.

  “I’ll have Mary pack a big lunch,” he said.

  “You don’t mind?”

  “Not at all. If you’re willing to do the work I’d like to get away for a day.”

  Mary came out and rang the bell for supper and Carole left him, promising to meet him in the morning. He sat on the sand, smoking, and considered the situation. She didn’t seem to be a bad sort, really. Not many girls would have offered to do such a thing for him. Of course she didn’t have much to do, and it might be fun for her. Eddie doubted that Roger would appreciate the idea, but he didn’t care about Roger. He was getting his, and he would go with Carole wherever he could get it.

  After dark he moved up to the back steps and sat down, still waiting. Once Joan came out to dump some garbage into one of the cans.

  “Half an hour,” she said. “Did they say you could have the station wagon?”

  “She didn’t say I couldn’t.”

  “You asked Mrs. Jennings?”

  “Yeah, Mrs. Jennings.”

  “That figures.”

  Joan re-entered the house. He was sorry now that he had to have anything to do with her. They had been lovers for a long time, but now it was gone and the relationship was finished, buried. He didn’t have the faintest idea why she wanted to see him. Probably she had been without a man too long and she was getting anxious. Well, it wouldn’t do her any good. They would have a few beers and talk, and that would be the end of it.

  Somewhat more than a half an hour later she came out, smelling fresh and clean, the odor of her bath powder swirling around her.

  They walked toward the station wagon and she breathed deeply of the night air.

  “My God, Jennings was drunk,” she said. “He couldn’t even eat his dinner. He was complaining about missing a woodchuck with his shotgun this afternoon and he seemed to blame everybody sitting at the table.”

  “That’s our employer.”

  They got into the station wagon and Eddie started it. She said nothing as he guided the car along the driveway, the headlights knifing through the darkness.

  “We don’t have to go to The Ferns,” she said when they reached the highway.

  He shrugged.

  “It’s as good a place as any. And it’s close.”

  It didn’t take long to get to The Ferns. The usual crowd was there, girls down from the hills and the college boys who were home for vacation dating them. They found a table away from the juke box and had a few beers. He tried to talk to her, asking her about her work and how she liked it, but she didn’t have much to say. She seemed lost within herself, as though she had grown a shell and pulled into it, hiding from the world.

  “You’ve got something on your mind,” Eddie said finally, forcing the issue. “What the hell is it?”

  She toyed with her glass and then lifted her eyes to his face. They were wet with tears and the tear streaks ran down either cheek.

  “Us,” she replied simply. “It’s us that’s bothering me.”

  “You know about us. We talked about it before. I thought we had settled it and we’d just let the matter drop.”

  “Because you’ve lost your head over a married woman?”

  “Maybe I love her,” Eddie defended himself.

  “Maybe you think you do but how could she love you? A woman with everything and a man with nothing? You don’t think she’s going to give up the life she has, just because she likes to go to bed with you, do you?”

  “Let me run my own life, won’t you?”

  She leaned forward, her elbows on the top of the table.

  “Not if it’s going to hurt you. I love you, Eddie. I loved you when I was in school and I still do.”

  “Yet you got married, didn’t you?”

  “You know about that. It was a mistake. There isn’t one of us who doesn’t make a mistake now and then, even to such an important thing as marriage. Look around you and you’ll see that a lot of marriages are mistakes.”

  “What makes you think it would be different for us?”

  “Because it would be. Because I would want you and need you and love you. Because I can see why you do the things you do and I can forgive you for them. Because — ” she hesitated. “Eddie, I think I’m that way. I think — ”

  He gulped the beer and his hand shook. His guts felt as though they had been ripped open by a knife, as though some giant hand was in there twisting hard, pushing up so hard that he couldn’t get the air down into his lungs, the air just catching in his throat and being forced outside again.

  Stunned, he picked up their glasses and walked to the bar for more beer. When you sat at a table in The Ferns you had to wait on yourself. Before he hadn’t liked the idea much but now he thought it was a good thing. It gave him a few moments alone, a chance to think — if he could think. His mind seemed to be a wall, a dense wall through which nothing could penetrate.

  “Two beers,” he told the bartender. He dropped a quarter on the bar and rubbed his forehead with one hand. His forehead was numb, as though he had been slugged with a club, and his skin was beaded with sweat.

  Eddie carried the beer back to the table and sat down heavily. He opened his mouth to say something, but the words died before he could find them.

  “You heard me, didn’t you?” Joan asked him.

  He sipped the beer and nodded. Christ, yes, he had heard her.

  “Say something, Eddie,” she begged.

  “I was thinking,” he mumbled.

  “That it might not have been you?”

  “No, not that. If you’re pregnant I’m sure it was me.”

  He tried to tell himself that he had to face this sensibly, that he had to accept it, that no matter what you did there was always a price that had to be paid.

  “We’ve got to think this thing over,” Eddie said.

  “There isn’t much to think about, Eddie. I’ll get my divorce and we’ll get married. The baby may come a little soon after marriage, but we can go away where we aren’t known and it won’t matter.”

  “You want this kid?” he asked, seriously.

  “I want any baby of yours, Eddie. I felt that way before and I mean it more now than ever. I guess we shouldn’t have gone as far as we did, but what’s done is done.”

  “I’ve heard of some pills that you can take.”

  “I’d never take them, Eddie. Did you ask to be born? Did I? Does anybody? No. A girl gets pregnant and it’s her duty to bear the child. I know about the pills, but I don’t think anyone has a right to use them, unless it’s because her health doesn’t permit her to give a safe birth.
I’m not afraid of that. I’m healthy. What I’m afraid of right now is you, Eddie.”

  “Me?”

  “Yes. Of you doing the right thing by me. I think the first thing we should do is to quit working for the Jennings family and get other jobs. I can work for a few months yet and that’ll pay for my divorce. If you get down near the county seat you’ll get more on a farm than you would here, and you can save. We won’t have much to start off with but we’ll have each other.”

  Eddie felt a wave of despair sweep through him. Here he was, in love with Kitty Jennings. It was a hell of a mess. If he married Joan he would have to give up Kitty and a possible fortune. The more he thought about the money that would come Kitty’s way the more it appealed to him. The money also presented a means of solving his most immediate difficulty. If he told Kitty the truth about Joan he felt that she would overlook it, and when the money was in her hands she would give him enough to take care of Joan. It wasn’t the most honorable thing in the world, but it was more than some men would do. In time Joan would find somebody else, someone who would love both her and the baby. The only trouble was that Kitty didn’t have the money, and it might be a long time before she did.

  “I’ll think of something,” Eddie said.

  “It’s serious, Eddie.”

  “You don’t have to tell me that. I know it.”

  “We’ve done wrong. It’s up to us to make it as right as we can.”

  “We’ll work it out.”

  “Don’t lie to me, Eddie.”

  “You think I’d lie to you at a time like this?” he demanded furiously. “What do you take me for, anyway? If you’re going to have a kid you’re going to have a kid, and it’s our job to make the best of it.”

  “I wish I had my divorce.”

  “Well, you don’t.”

  “We’ll only be married two or three months when the baby is born.”

  “That can’t be helped.”

  They stayed at the bar until after midnight. On the way back to the estate she wanted to park. He didn’t, not that she was any less appealing but only because he couldn’t think of her in that way just then. He wanted to stretch out on his bed, to lose himself in the darkness, to make believe that nothing was wrong and that everything was just as it should be.

  But after he left her and crawled into his bed he couldn’t forget.

  He had made a mess of his life.

  10

  HE OVERSLEPT the next morning — not that he had gotten much sleep — and he was awakened by pounding on his door.

  “Come in,” he called. He assumed it was Wilson, who had called him once before when he had been late.

  The door opened and it was Carole Jennings.

  He was lying naked on the bed.

  “Golly, you could have warned me,” she said, retreating into the hall and closing the door behind her. “It’s eight-thirty.”

  He dressed in a hurry, not bothering to shave, and found her waiting at the foot of the stairs.

  “I’m sorry,” he apologized. “I had no idea it was you. But you must see more than that in a nudist camp.”

  “Yes, but it’s different.”

  “How different?”

  “I don’t know, but there’s nothing more embarrassing than seeing a person stripped and having your own clothes on.”

  That wasn’t the way Eddie felt, but he didn’t pursue the issue. Together they walked to the main house and entered the kitchen.

  “No breakfast,” Mary told Eddie sternly. “This isn’t a hotel. You can have coffee though.”

  “Thanks but I don’t even want that. I’m not hungry.”

  Mary had packed a big lunch for them, and Eddie carried the basket. The first stop was the shed, to pick up the pack basket, hatchet, rifle and extra traps. He handled the traps with gloves and put everything, lunch included, in the pack basket, then swung into the harness. It rode high and comfortably on his broad shoulders.

  “Going to be a scorcher,” Carole said as they approached the woods.

  She was walking beside him and he glanced at her. Today she wore white shorts and a white halter that contrasted sharply with her tanned skin. The halter was the full type, concealing all of her breasts, but he could see them bounce up and down as she walked.

  “What did your father say about your going with me?” he wanted to know.

  “I didn’t tell him.”

  “Do you think that was wise?”

  “He won’t care. I usually sleep half the morning, and in the afternoon he’s drunk. It’s too bad that he drinks so much, don’t you think?”

  “It can’t do him any good,” Eddie replied evasively.

  “I think Kitty drives him to it. I think he knows what he married, but he won’t admit it.”

  “People who drink heavily usually blame somebody else. I think your father just can’t seem to meet life as it is, and he uses the liquor as an escape. It’s the same as his wanting to have every animal and bird in sight killed. If you ask me — and you haven’t — I think he needs help, not from a medical doctor but one of those doctors who deals with the mind.”

  “Don’t you dare say my father is crazy!” Carole flared.

  Well, he thought, she has a temper.

  “I didn’t say that, and I don’t think that he is crazy, but I do think he has a twisted sense of values. And — at the risk of offending you — I will say that he isn’t normal. Not by a long shot.”

  “Let’s not talk about it, Eddie.”

  “Suits me.”

  He was sorry to leave the field. The flies didn’t bother you much in the field, but they were fierce in the woods.

  “Joan was sick this morning,” Carole said. “I heard her in the bathroom.”

  Eddie thought he would have to sit down, he was so weak.

  “Was she?”

  “Right away I thought she might be going to have a baby.”

  “Why don’t you ask her?”

  “Because I can ask you. If she is going to have one you’re probably the father.”

  A fly bit him on the back of the neck and he brushed it away, digging with the ends of his fingers at the spot where his skin stung. The night before had been carved out of hell. He had tossed fitfully on the bed and cursed himself and their lousy luck. It was little wonder he had overslept.

  “Have you heard the latest?” Carole inquired. “Kitty wants a baby.”

  “She may have trouble getting one.”

  “She can get one from a doctor. And the worst part of it is that my father says it’s all right. He says every woman wants to have a child of her own, even if half of it doesn’t belong to her husband.”

  “I’d think that’s his business. And hers.”

  “But don’t you see what she’s trying to do? She’s trying to tie him tight, and a baby would help her. If something happened to him, her baby would get just as much as I would, even if they were divorced. Kitty wouldn’t have to work again for the rest of her life.”

  “Don’t you think of anything besides money?”

  “Yes, but you have to be practical. If I thought she loved him I wouldn’t object, but I’m sure that she doesn’t. She married for money and she’s hanging on for money. She doesn’t deserve anything at all. That’s why I’m willing to pay five thousand dollars to show him what she is. You have to get with it, Eddie. I don’t care if you get her drunk and rape her, but I want the proof.”

  “It isn’t easy to get.”

  “She gave it to Jim and there’s no reason why she won’t give it to you. The only difficulty was that Jim wouldn’t work with me. So he lost his job. You want that to happen to you?”

  The first set was in a small stream that ran down to the lake, but there wasn’t anything in it. Eddie scratched his head and frowned. The set was a good one, but so far it had produced nothing. The moss was still on the pan of the trap, right where he had placed it, and any foxes crossing the stream would have used it so that they didn’t have to get their feet
wet. But it just went to show that what might look right to a man didn’t always appear in the same light to an animal.

  “How are you going to remember where all the traps are?” Eddie asked her. “There are about two hundred.”

  “I’ve got a good memory.”

  “Either that or you aren’t going to look at them. If I thought you weren’t going to keep your word I wouldn’t even think of taking a day off.”

  “Let your mind rest easy. I told you I would.”

  They moved on and he taught her how to approach the sets, going just close enough to tell if anything was in the trap.

  “You know how to use a gun, Carole?”

  “Very well. I went with a boy in college who was a bug on target practice. I learned from him.”

  He decided that the boy had probably scored on another target, but he didn’t say anything. What he had seen at the beach at Goose Lake the previous afternoon was still fresh in his mind. He was glad he hadn’t been seen, because it hadn’t been deliberate on his part. That was one time when a man and a girl should be left alone.

  The sun grew higher in the sky as they continued through the woods, and the day grew hotter. He had some luck, a couple of foxes and an otter that had wandered into a trap not meant for him, and he let her shoot the animals. She was a good shot, all right As the pack basket began to fill up, he had to carry the lunch.

  “Too bad you can’t skin them right out here in the woods,” she said. “Then you wouldn’t have so much to lug.”

  “It takes the better part of three hours to skin an otter.”

  “Honest?”

  “Unless your father would settle for the skin without the tail. Down around the rump, another skin is glued on. It’s bad enough on the rest of the body, because there are muscles going in all directions and you have to cut them loose.”

  “Jim used to skin his animals, and he’d bring the same skins back two or three days in a row. He was lazy. All he wanted was his pay and Kitty. He got both while it lasted.”

  They continued on, crossing a hill and then moving up a small valley. He added two more foxes to his catch and he was beginning to feel the weight of the pack basket. In one set he had a beaver.

  “I can’t kill that,” Eddie said.