Enduring

by Donald Harington

  And sure enough, the floorboards of the vestibule weren’t nearly as neatly joined as those in the schoolroom, and there was one place where, if one squatted carefully over it, one could probably pee through it. “Close the door,” she told him. He pushed the door shut. “With you on the other side of it!” she corrected him. Then while he was out of sight, she decided to go ahead and try the vestibule’s inside-outhouse, and squatted over the crack with her panties down. It took her a bit of shuffling to get in exactly the right spot, and she wetted the edges of the crack and part of the floor. But it worked, and she reflected it was too bad they couldn’t do that when school was actually in session.

  When she finished and went back into the schoolroom, Every said, “Well, I reckon I’ll give it a try too,” and he went out and peed through the same crack, his missing mingling with hers. There was something awfully passionate about that. She found herself remembering the time back in the first grade when Every had wanted to watch her when she put her panties back on after she’d hung them out to dry, and the remark he’d made, You aint got nothing there. She still had nothing there, but if Every wanted to see it, she didn’t mind.

  Was he reading her mind? He suggested, “Why don’t we stop playing teacher and pupil and start playing something else? We could even try playing husband and wife.”

  Now, although Latha was nearly eleven, nobody (not even Rindy) had ever told her that husbands and wives “do it.” She would have been genuinely shocked to learn that her own mother had ever done it with her own father. She knew that it was something boys and girls did, sometimes, but only when they were young and naughty. When they grew up and got married, they didn’t do it. So when she said to Every, “I don’t want to be your wife,” she was only referring to that misconception of hers. If he had said, “Let’s play like we’re sweethearts and do some fooling around,” she might have nodded her head.

  “That’s a shame,” Every said, crestfallen. “As long as I’ve known ye, I’ve meant to make ye my bride.”

  “That’s real sweet,” she said, and kissed him on his cheek.

  He looked terribly pleased. “My first kiss,” he said, and turning the other cheek, “Do this here side too.” When she did, he asked, “Have you never been kissed before?” She shook her head, and he kissed her on the cheek, then on the other cheek. She smiled in pleasure and stared deep into his eyes, so he kissed her on the mouth. That was the most fun.

  “I never dreamt school would be like this,” she observed. She returned his mouth-kiss, trying hard not to remember the odor of asafœtida.

  He put one of his hands on her chest and felt her breast, which was just beginning to swell, although the nipple was already firm. His finger touched it, and she trembled all over.

  She knew that if he kept that up, and they kept kissing, she would really want to lie down with him beside the stove and see if his thing could possibly get inside of her thing. They were completely alone. Nobody else had come to school. They moved nearer to the stove and he mashed himself up against her; she could feel the hardness of his thing through his overalls pressing against the spot where only the playhouse pillow had pressed. This was much better than the playhouse pillow, and she felt herself rising against gravity as if she had no weight, and she wondered would he be offended if she bawled like a calf? Together the two of them began to sink toward the floor.

  The schoolhouse door opened, and there was Every’s father. “What in Sam Hill?” said Mr. Dill. “If this don’t beat all. Are you’uns trying to dance or to wrassle or what?” They had separated the instant they heard the door open, but they were both still flushed and flustered. “Don’t look to me like Miss Blankinship is anywheres near-abouts,” Mr. Dill observed. “Nor nobody else for that matter. So what are you’uns doing here?”

  “We’re just a-playing school, Paw,” Every said.

  “I don’t rightly know about nowadays,” his father said, “but when I went to school, boys and girls never hugged each other.” He moved to the stove and closed its damper, then opened the grate and peered inside. “Got a good fire going there. We’ll have to put it out afore we can leave.” He fetched the water bucket, which was empty, and took it outside to the water pump but returned with a bucket full of snow and reported that the pump was frozen and they’d just have to try to melt some snow to make water. He set the bucket of snow on top of the stove. Then he just sat down at one of the desks, so Latha and Every sat too, but separately. “This ole place aint changed a bit since I was a pupil,” Mr. Dill observed. “I hated it back then, and I don’t much care for it now. So I don’t see why you’uns wanted to spend the time here by yourselfs. Unless you really are stuck on one another, but you didn’t need to come all the way over here through the snow just to cuddle.”

  While the snow in the bucket melted—and it took three buckets of snow to make enough water to put the stove’s fire out—Mr. Dill ran on and on about their motives for being there, and the fact that one of them was a female and the other one was a male, and the peril involved in being alone together, although he personally didn’t believe that they were old enough to make babies or even to know how to do whatever had to be done to make babies, but in any case it was a good thing he’d come along right at the moment he did, because there was just no telling what they might have tried to do if he hadn’t shown up.

  Latha, who couldn’t say a word, wished he would just hush up. But at last the fire was out, and Mr. Dill took them out into the yard, where he had left his horse and sleigh. He was probably the only man in Stay More who had a sleigh, but after all he was a wagon-maker by trade, and making a one-horse open sleigh for very occasional use wasn’t any problem for him. It had no bells, and the horse didn’t have a bobtail, but oh what fun it was to ride in it. Mr. Dill sat up front in the driver’s seat, and Every and Latha sat in back beneath some kind of fur blankets (Every said they were bear), so Latha’s going home from school was a lot better than her coming to school, although Mr. Dill decided not to take her straight home but for a ride up the main street of Stay More and a good ways toward Parthenon. At one point Mr. Dill turned his head and winked at her.

  She spent a good bit of time trying to figure out what a wink means.

  Chapter nine

  Latha’s mother had never lost an opportunity to belittle the Dills. “Thank the Lord for them,” she often said. “Iffen it weren’t for them, we’d be the porest family hereabouts.” Her disfavor toward them was despite the fact that she and Every’s mother were second or third cousins. Every’s grandmother on his mother’s side was a Swain, and Latha’s grandfather on her mother’s side was also a Swain, so they were kinfolks, and Latha had learned at an early age that kinfolks are the most important thing in the world, that family is foremost, and that we should always think a lot of those who have blood similar to our own. The only time Latha had ever gone outside of Stay More was once when her Grandma Bourne wanted to go to Parthenon to attend the wedding of a girl named Belle Bellah. Grandma Bourne was a Bellah. The bride’s brother, Jim Bellah, had brought a wagon from Parthenon to transport the Bournes, all six of them, on one beautiful day in June. Latha and her sisters had taken baths in the washtub (Latha always was last and had to bathe in water that had been used by both her sisters) and put on their best dresses, such as they were. Jim Bellah told Latha she was the prettiest little lady he’d ever seen or imagined. They had a fine ride up to Parthenon, about six miles from Stay More, and the wedding was in a church. There were no churches in Stay More. Parthenon wasn’t much bigger, but it had two churches. Grandma Bourne and Latha’s mother both cried during the wedding ceremony, and Latha didn’t understand why.

  The summer that Latha was eleven years old her mother opened her mail one morning and announced that she had received word that her father, Ezra Swain, who was Latha’s grandfather she had never met, was gravely ill at his home in Swain, which had not been named after him but after his grandfather. Swain, Arkansas is down in the southwestern part o
f Newton County, a considerable distance from Stay More. Latha’s mother wanted very much to go there and be with her father in his last hours and, if he passed on, to attend his funeral. But how to get there?

  As it turned out, Every’s mother, whose mother was very close to Ezra Swain and also lived near Swain, wanted to visit with her mother and to attend Ezra Swain’s funeral if it should come to pass, so she, Mrs. Dill, persuaded her husband the wagon-maker to hitch up his largest wagon and make the trip to Swain. He had to borrow an extra horse to pull the covered double tree wagon, but there was room for all the Bournes if they wanted to go. But by the time the wagon was loaded, with provisions for the trip and changes of clothes, etc. it was discovered there wouldn’t be room for the youngest, Latha, so she would have to stay home. Every, unbeknownst to her, volunteered to give up his seat to her, and he stayed home. But when they were getting ready to depart, Latha saw that she still couldn’t be comfortably squeezed in aboard the wagon. She could sit on her father’s lap, but she was too big for that, and it was a bumpy ride over the mountains all the way to Swain. So Latha declared that she had just as lief stay home. She had a spirit of adventure that looked forward to such a long trip, but like Every she had no interest in a funeral.

  Her father allowed as how that was just as well, because Latha could milk the cow and feed the pigs and chickens and keep an eye on the place. She was old enough at eleven to be by herself.

  Latha did not watch the wagon leave (one of the first things her grandmother had taught her is that it is very bad luck to watch someone leaving; you may never see them again), and thus she did not know that Every was not on the wagon. And Every did not know that Latha was staying behind. The grown-ups decided it was best to keep it that way, so that the two of them might not be tempted into any sort of wicked mischief.

  For a good part of the day that the wagon had departed, Latha went up to the playhouse and spent some time with Rindy. They were almost too old to play with their dolls, but they could play like they were having a tea party and entertaining friends. Latha wished she had asked her mother for permission to sleep over at Rindy’s house, but her mother probably wouldn’t have granted it because there were so many boys at the Whitter place. All of her previous requests to sleep over at Rindy’s had been denied. Rindy had never slept over at Latha’s, but only because there wasn’t a spare bed. Now, however, Latha’s whole family was gone, so Latha asked Rindy to sleep over. Rindy said she’d have to go ask her mother, and an hour later returned to report that her mother needed a lot of help in the kitchen, and since Rindy was the only girl left in that big family of boys, she’d have to stay.

  So Latha was alone. She went home and did her chores, milking the cow, etc., then made herself a small supper, mostly leftovers, and then sat on the porch for a while and whistled a few tunes, and hummed some others. There was still lots of daylight, and she had a notion she’d like to see what Every’s house looked like. She had walked past it a few times and seen it from the outside, but she’d never been inside, and she wanted to see where Every slept and what belongings he had. So with Rouser tagging along, she strolled on over to Every’s, taking the shortcut, the cowpath that went through the woods.

  Now it just so happened that Every at almost the same time had taken into his head a notion to visit Latha’s house and spy on her bed and her belongings, and he took his dog Fancher along with him, but he stayed on the road and didn’t take the cowpath shortcut, and thus they missed each other.

  As she approached the house, Latha wondered why their dog Fancher wasn’t barking at her. She couldn’t see the dog anywhere abouts. Had they taken the dog in the wagon? The Dill’s house was made of logs, a common two-pen dogtrot, so-called because dogs (or cats, or people) can trot (or walk, or sit) in the breezeway separating the two sides. It didn’t have as much total space as the Bourne’s house did, if you didn’t count that breezeway. Latha had no problem getting in, because nobody in the Ozarks ever had locks on their doors, not even when they went away on trips. In the “house” on the right, Latha saw, was the kitchen and the living room, while the left “house” contained the two bedrooms, one for Every and one for his parents. His was pretty small, just big enough to contain a bed too large for him, covered with a pretty homemade crazy quilt, and a small table and a chest which, she discovered, contained his shirts and socks and underclothes. One of the drawers contained odds and ends and play-pretties: a spy glass, a harmonica, a rabbit’s foot, a compass, one small book, True Manhood: The Secret of Power, a spinning top, a corncob pipe, a small pair of scissors, and, taped to a board with a drawn heart surrounding it, a lock of dark hair. Latha fingered the lock of hair and placed it alongside her own hair and saw that they were identical. But when and how had Every managed to cut off a lock of her hair?

  Every at that same moment was rummaging among what few belongings of Latha’s he could find. There wasn’t a chest or a closet, just pegs along the wall from which garments were hung. The largest clothes apparently were Barbara’s, the lesser ones Mandy’s, and the least one’s Latha’s, although there was no longer much difference between the size of Mandy’s and the size of Latha’s. There was a kind of dressing table that had three drawers in it. The bottom drawer was Latha’s and contained some of her underclothes folded neatly, as well as her hairbrush, a comb, some hair ribbons and barrettes. Every wondered if he could get away with stealing a pair of her panties. He held them to his face for a moment. Then he stuffed them into a pocket of his overalls.

  There was only one bed in the room, and Every assumed rightly that all three sisters slept together in that bed. He attempted to determine which spot was Latha’s. He sniffed the three pillows, and the one nearest the wall definitely smelled like Latha. So he lay down on the bed in that spot, his body feeling and fitting the indentations of hers. He closed his eyes and imagined that Latha was beside him. Pretty soon he was fast asleep.

  Eventually Latha came home. She washed and dried the few dishes she had used for supper. It was getting dark now. She felt a little lonesome, but she was looking forward to having the bed all to herself without her sisters, who still whispered only to each other. So in the dim remaining light she climbed up to the sleeping loft and as was her custom on summer nights took off all her clothes. Then she discovered that there was somebody in her bed! Her head spun and she thought she might faint, and all that kept her from screaming was the realization that no one would hear her if she did.

  Whoever was in her spot in the bed was sound asleep, and even snoring a little. She was reminded of the Goldilocks story: somebody’s been sleeping in my bed, and there he is! She could tell it wasn’t a full-growed man. Was it maybe one of Rindy’s brothers who had learned from Rindy that Latha was alone?

  She heard thunder in the distance, and soon there was a flash of lightning, long enough to illuminate the sleeping person. It was Every! What was he doing, sleeping in her spot of her bed? She realized she was naked, and took up one of the bed’s coverlets and wrapped it around herself, and then she said, “Every.” Outside the rain was coming down hard and she could hear the steady splatter of it on the roof of the house. She said “Every!” a little louder but he didn’t wake. A bolt of lightning flashed nearby and then a huge boom of thunder, and that woke him up. He rubbed his eyes and sat up. The lightning was coming in steady flares, so they could see each other clearly.

  “Latha?” he said. “They’s too much of you there to be just a dream.”

  “I’m here,” she said, sitting on the edge of the bed. “But why are you? I thought you’d gone to Swain with them.”

  “I thought you’d gone with them,” he said.

  “I thought you’d gone with them,” she said.

  “I gave up my seat for you,” he said.

  “That was nice of ye,” she said. “But I decided to stay home, because I don’t care much for funerals.”

  “Me neither,” he said.

  For a long minute they couldn’t think of anythin
g further to say. The lightning continued to flash and the thunder to boom.

  “That’s sure some storm out there,” Latha observed. “I hope they all got to Swain before it started.”

  “Cozy in here,” he observed. “Listening to the rain on the roof.”

  “Of course you can’t go home in this,” she said.

  “Course not,” he said. “You reckon Mandy would mind if I just had her spot in the bed?”

  Latha laughed. “How would she know? I don’t plan to tell her.”

  That almost sounded like an invitation for him to stay. It was really all that either of them needed to say. Without another word, Every unfastened his overalls, and then took off his shirt. In just his shorts, he scooted over to Mandy’s spot, and Latha reclaimed her own spot, which was still warm from Every’s body. Too warm, so she unwrapped the coverlet that was around herself.

  For a while, they just lay holding hands. By and by the rain stopped pounding on the roof, although there was still a flash of lightning and a peal of thunder now and again. Eventually with his other hand Every reached over and felt of her breast, his fingertips playing with her tiny but hard nipple. Latha shivered from the thrill of it but did not know for sure what to do in return so he took her free hand and felt of his breast. She was sorry she had decided never to ask questions again, because she wanted to ask him, “Why do boys have nipples?” She knew why girls have them. In fact there was more than one reason, and right now she was enjoying one of the other reasons.

  Before long, his nipple-twiddling fingers had moved on down her body to her navel and then below it. She was just beginning to grow a kind of dark peach fuzz in the place where Mandy and Barbara already had hair like the hair on their heads. Every’s fingers glided through that and reached the blister which Rindy had told her was the girl’s equal of the boy’s dinger although it’s just a fraction the size and you don’t pee through it. Every’s touch there caused her whole body to quake, but he just dawdled there an instant before going on down to the opening of her notch, which was already seeping and then sopping. She didn’t know if Every would be bothered by that. But apparently not; he got his fingers thoroughly wet. She again felt the need to match his maneuvers, so she reached down for his dinger, but he was still wearing his shorts. She gave the waistband a tug and pulled them down his legs, and he finished the job by pulling them off. A flicker of lightning revealed his dinger as it stood pointing at the ceiling and her hand discovered how very stiff it was. He squirmed beneath her touch but she held on and took pleasure in the feel of it. She knew that smooth taut skin would feel even better if there were some way to get it inside herself.