She turned her head and kissed him a big one on his cheek. He turned his head and kissed her a big one on the mouth. Then he threw a leg over her leg, knelt, and rose above her. She spread her legs. He tried to line up his dinger with her notch. In the dark (it had stopped lightning) he could not see where he was going, and had to try it by feel, and neither his dinger nor her notch possessed sufficient feelings. She put a hand on his dinger and tried to steer him, despite being so nervous with a mixture of thoughts: she wanted him inside her very much but would it hurt? What was she supposed to do? Was it going to be like some kind of dance? What would happen if he made her come over the mountain? Would she bawl like a calf? Would she pass out?
After much trial and error he got the tip of his dinger, which seemed to be shaped for that purpose, inside the vestibule of her notch, and he pressed and pressed but could not get the dinger in. She was trembling with uncertainty, and he was trembling with effort and frustration and desire. Suddenly her vestibule was thoroughly coated with something thick and warm and wet, and Every collapsed beside her. Rindy, who didn’t know, had never explained to her what happens when boys come over the mountain, but Latha was smart enough to figure it out. She and he each produced a lot of liquid, but hers was at the beginning and his was at the end. She sighed.
He lay on his back panting, and she wondered if it was all over. For a moment there she had felt herself rising against gravity as if she had no weight, and it was wonderful, but now it seemed to be all over. She reached over to feel his dinger, which was still very taut and very stiff. She climbed up over him and placed her notch down on top of that firm dinger, and lowered her bottom so that his dinger went through the vestibule to the place where it could go no further. Rindy, who still had hers, had explained to Latha what a “maidenhead” is, and Latha figured out that was what was keeping Every from going any deeper. Latha took a deep breath and bit her lip and dropped her weight down upon the dinger, and abruptly it was all the way inside of her, up to the hilt, and Every gasped and grabbed both her hips with his hands and began thrusting upward, his buttocks rising from the bed. Latha was in pain, but she was also in paradise, with an overwhelming sense of lust and urgency, and she rose and fell with Every’s movements until she felt that sense of the loss of gravity flooding over her, and the most incredible frenzy from top to toe.
She woke in the early dawn to see that Every was sound asleep but had one arm and one leg draped over her. Gently she rolled out from under his limbs and got out of bed. There was a good bit of blood on the sheets and also some starchy stains. She would have to do some laundry today. But first there was breakfast. She put on a nice dress, not her dress-up dress but a pretty one, and went downstairs to the kitchen. There was a dull ache, not truly painful, in her groin. She let her mind live over again what they had done. She wondered if Every drank coffee. She didn’t, herself. But she put the pot on the stove, and then the skillet, and put a few chunks of wood into the stove and lit it. Then she took the butcher knife and went out to the smokehouse and carved off some bacon. There were already eggs that she had gathered in the eggbasket. And her mother had left behind several days worth of biscuits, too many in fact, so she threw one to Rouser and then threw another one to Fancher. She took a wet washcloth with her to the outhouse and after peeing she wiped the blood from her legs.
When he came downstairs, Every was blushing, as if he had done something terribly wicked. Well, come to think of it, he had, hadn’t he? They both had. “Good morning,” she said happily. “Did you sleep good?”
“I aint a virgin no more,” he declared.
“Me neither,” she said.
“Are you okay? They’s a right smart of blood on the sheet.”
“I’ve got to wash it,” she said.
After breakfast she built a fire under the black iron wash-kettle, and Every filled it and a tin rinsing tub with water, and she got out the scrub-board, and they really worked on that sheet, taking turns, but they never could get all the pink out. She should have soaked it in cold water for a while, but it was too late now. She hung it on the clothesline.
Naturally Every wanted to do it again as soon as possible, and so did Latha, but she was too sore down there, and told him they’d have to wait. And besides, there was only that one bottom sheet for that bed, and it had to dry first. Every suggested they go to his house and use his bed.
Chapter ten
But she was still too sore at bedtime to contemplate another go at it. She hoped Every would understand, and she told him so. At least they slept together, and he was able to come before sleep by thrusting his dinger between her clinched legs, not once but twice, and the second time he did the play-like sex, the rubbing of his dinger on her notch made her come too and they both slept in each other’s arms until dawn. Latha fixed breakfast in Every’s mother’s kitchen, and cleaned up afterwards. They spent the day together, she helping him with his chores, he helping with hers. They decided to go down to Swains Creek for a swim. They didn’t dare swim naked in broad daylight since it was bold enough for a boy and girl to swim together fully clothed. She ran home and fetched a swimsuit that belonged to Barbara and covered her whole body, arms and legs included, in the fashion of those days, and Every’s swimsuit covered his torso. They changed in front of each other in his room. So the whole day was still daring and a lot of fun. Apparently nobody saw them together in the creek. In the water, they hugged and rubbed together and by late afternoon had a great desire to get home and get out of those wet swimsuits and frolic in their birthday suits. They were almost home when a covered wagon came up the road behind them.
“How’s the water?” Every’s dad remarked.
“Is that my bathing suit you’re a-wearing?” Barbara asked her sister.
“Why, I never!” exclaimed Latha’s mother.
Latha’s dad said, “I figgered you’uns would find some way to git together.”
Mandy pointed at the conspicuous bulge in the crotch of Every’s swimsuit. “Looks like you caught a fish.” Several of them thought this was funny and laughed, but the general mood was of anger.
When they got to the Dill’s cabin, Latha’s mother said, “Where’s your clothes, girl?”
“In Every’s room,” Latha said.
Mrs. Bourne marched with Latha into the room, where Latha’s clothes and Every’s were jumbled together on the floor. The bed had not been made, and those starchy stains which were probably from what came out of Every were all over the sheets, and Latha’s mother scowled at them. “Did you sleep here?” she asked.
“No, I didn’t,” Latha said.
“Don’t you fib to me!” her mother hollered.
Mr. Dill drove them the rest of the way to Latha’s house, where he said, “My boy is going to get his hide tanned.” Latha’s mother saw the sheet still hanging on the clothesline. She might never have noticed the faint bloodstain that didn’t wash out unless she was looking for it. But now she was looking for it.
Latha did not see Every again. Mandy reported that she was a witness when Mr. Dill took a leather strop for sharpening razors and clobbered Every with it until the blood was running down his legs. Latha’s father took a common hickory switch and sliced up Latha’s legs until she begged for mercy. Her mother said, “I don’t want ye to even look at that boy ever again!”
Latha washed the blood from her legs and put some mercurochrome on the worst places. For three days she couldn’t walk, but then she managed to limp off up to her playhouse. Rindy was there, pouting because she hadn’t seen Latha for days and also in a foul mood because of the favoritism her mother always showed to her younger brother Lewis, giving him extra dessert and pampering him. She paused from listing her grievances against Lewis to notice Latha’s legs, and asked, “What happened to you?”
So Latha began at the beginning and told Rindy the whole story. Latha wanted to avoid boasting but she couldn’t help noticing the expression of awe and envy on Rindy’s face when Latha described how she
had lost her virginity, and then Rindy was full of questions about the whole thing. At length Rindy observed, “S’funny, but you don’t look no different…except for them cuts on yore legs.”
From then on, there were two major topics of talk at the playhouse: the thrill of sex and the botheration of Rindy’s kid brother, Lewis. One day, out of the blue, Rindy said to her, “I double-dawg dare ye to do it with Lewis, just to prove you aint a virgin no more.”
Latha had always accepted Rindy’s dares. Her experience with Every was becoming a distant memory, of which she dreamed at night and daydreamed about too frequently. This challenge struck her as a chance to have some sexual pleasure again, so she accepted it. Lewis was only ten, but being one of the Whitter boys he probably had a really useful dinger. One Saturday afternoon Rindy asked her brother if he’d like to stick his thing into a girl’s twitchet, and he was more than willing, practically drooling, so she brought him up to the playhouse, blindfolding him with a bandanna for the last quarter of a mile so he wouldn’t know the route to their secret hideaway. Latha was waiting for this first male ever to be in their playhouse. She was eager to do it, and impatient, and they lost no time in getting Lewis to take off his overalls. He might not be capable of coming but he sure had an erection. Latha lifted her dress and pulled down her panties and lay on the pallet, and Lewis climbed atop her. But during the time he fumbled and fidgeted and poked and prodded without managing to enter her, the thought struck her that in a way she was being unfaithful to Every, even if she had been forbidden ever to see him again. So she squirmed out from under Lewis and declared, “I’m sure sorry, but I reckon I just caint do it.” Lewis threw a tantrum and called her a whore, and threatened to go tell his mother. Rindy stopped him and said, “Oh, hush, Brother. If all you want is a hole, you can have mine.” And she took Latha’s place on the pallet, and they were both unmindful that Latha just sat watching them. Latha was fascinated, and reflected that maybe watching it is more of a delight than doing it. She wondered if she and Every had made the noises that these two were making. Once again Lewis was probing and poking and prodding without getting it in, and Latha was about to suggest that Rindy should get on top, but at that instant Lewis grunted hard and Rindy hollered and he was in.
Of course he couldn’t come, at that age, but he sure tried, although the pallet was getting bloody and Rindy came more than once. Lewis could have kept it up for the rest of the afternoon, but Rindy pushed him away, saying he was commencing to hurt her. Lewis wanted to try Latha again, and she had become so heated up just watching them do it that she almost consented, but thoughts of Every entered her mind again and kept her from it.
Rindy asked Latha to come with her and back her up when she went home and showed her mother the blood on her legs and told her mother that Lewis had raped her. Latha wasn’t going to tell a lie even for her best friend but Mrs. Whitter never came right out and asked her. Maybe her presence was enough. Mrs. Whitter said, “I just knew it was bound to happen, but I’m right sorrow it was Lewis.” Simon Whitter, Rindy’s dad, took a strop and clobbered Lewis senseless although the boy yelled his head off, protesting that Rindy had put him up to it.
Rindy reported to Latha that Lewis wasn’t able to do anything for a week. Latha learned a new word from Rindy: revenge. That is when you get back at someone for something they did to you. It was a fearsome word, and Latha spent some time wondering how she might get revenge on her father and mother.
There was at this time a young man from Jasper named Sewell Jerram who had been born and raised in Stay More but went off to the county seat to seek his fortune. He came home to Stay More every chance he got, and he eventually took to wife a Stay More girl, Irene Chism. Nobody knew for sure just what Sewell (everybody pronounced it “Sull”) did for a living, but whatever it was, he owned one of the first automobiles to travel these backroads. Sull became friends with the Whitter boys, Rindy’s older brothers, brothers of Ike Whitter, the only villain in the history of Stay More and one day he offered to put them all in his auto and take them off to see the sights of Jasper.
Rindy threw a fit because she wanted to go too, but of course her mother wouldn’t allow her to ride off with a married man even if she had her brothers for chaperones. Latha remembered the day at the playhouse almost as well as she remembered the seduction of Lewis because Rindy came to the playhouse seething with rage and began throwing things around and breaking up some of the stuff in the playhouse, all the while swearing the worst dirty words that she knew. Latha couldn’t calm her down. She just had to let the rant run its course.
Thus, when much later—months maybe—Rindy remarked that she was determined to get into Sull’s bed, Latha’s first reaction was to ask, “What’s he done to ye that ye want to git back at him for?” Since it wasn’t Sull’s fault that Rindy’s mother wouldn’t let her go on the excursion to Jasper, a motive of revenge wouldn’t apply. Rindy laughed and said no, she just had a huge desire for Sull because he was a big grown man and would really know how to do it and make her feel real good. “Rindy,” Latha said in exasperation, “he’s married to Irene Chism, and has been for years and years, and besides he’s nearly old enough to be your father.” But Rindy didn’t care, she was determined to have sex with him, and he had said certain things to her that made her think he wanted her as much as she wanted him, even if she was only thirteen years old.
Rindy’s brothers were spending all their time in Jasper, never allowing Rindy to go along. It turned out they were involved in nothing illegal, but in something called politics. Latha had learned in the “civics segment” of her class at school that politics involves getting certain men elected to office. Sull Jerram had decided to be a candidate for county judge, which is not a man who presides in a courtroom with lawyers and all that but just a kind of manager who handles all the business of the county. Rindy’s brothers had gone to work for him, traveling to all corners of the county to drum up votes for him, and to get folks ready for the election, which Sull won, despite the fact that everybody in Stay More voted for his opponent because they thought Sull Jerram was dishonest and disreputable.
If Sull really was a bad man, Rindy refused to believe it, and she hung around him whenever he came to the Whitter place, and he took notice of her and made compliments and kept telling her that one of these days he’d just take her away. Latha began to be jealous, because Rindy wasn’t spending much of her time at the playhouse any more. Rindy was a very good-looking girl, not nearly as beautiful as Latha, but in her own way she was “cuter” than Latha. There had been times in their growing-up together when they would constantly badger each other: “You’re purtier than me.” “No, you’re purtier than me.” “No, you’re the purtiest’un.” “Am not. You’re the purtiest’un.” Now, when Rindy was almost fourteen and Latha was still thirteen, Rindy had filled out more than Latha, with a shapelier figure and much larger breasts.
Judge Sull Jerram became just about the most powerful man in the county, and the base of his wealth was moonshine whiskey. His wife’s family, the Chisms, for many years, ever since the first Chism came from Tennessee in 1839, had been making a really superior kind of sour mash whiskey that was known far and wide as “Chism’s Dew.” There was a kind of jape that Chism’s Dew was so good you could smell the feet of the boys who ploughed the corn. Latha herself had tasted it, when Rindy brought a small Mason jar of it to the playhouse and claimed that drinking it would make you forget all your troubles and sorrows and poverty. It was fiery, and Latha gagged on a tiny sip and spit it out, but eventually managed to swallow some, and then to swallow enough of it to discover that it actually made her feel light-headed and no longer aware of her troubles and sorrows and poverty.
The Chisms who made the whiskey lived right over the ridge from the Whitters and the Bournes, and the sheep who made such a pretty picture as they grazed in one of the hillside pastures were the property of Nail Chism, one of the brothers. Latha and Rindy had seen him several times, a tall, fair-hair
ed, rugged, well-favored but shy young man who played a sweet harmonica. He would have preferred spending all of his time tending his large flock of sheep, but the Chisms needed him at the still, and he was especially needed now that the market for Chism’s Dew had suddenly taken off, because all the politicians down in Little Rock had learned of its excellence and magic. According to the story, there was such a demand for it that all the stoneware jugs and demijohns of Newton County had been used up and they had to resort to bean pots, cream pitchers, wash pitchers, chicken fountains, soup tureens, punchbowls, compotes, gravy boats, even slop jars or thundermugs—anything that would contain the liquid.
And then the Chisms ran out of corn. For a while the Ingledew gristmill down by Swains Creek continued to grind out cornmeal from whatever corn they could find, and Latha’s father made a little cash money for the first time in ages by selling all the hard-dent corn in his corncrib, although there would be nothing to feed the pig in the brunt of winter. Then all of the available corn in Stay More valley had been used up. It was sheep-shearing time, and Nail Chism took the wool to market at Harrison in the Chism’s big wagon (the wagon had been constructed by Every’s father). Nail’s father, in cahoots with Sull Jerram, persuaded Nail to conceal under the wool a load of Chism’s Dew to deliver to Sull’s agent in Harrison, and then to bring back from Harrison whatever corn or cornmeal he could find. Although it was going to take Nail several trips to get all of his fleece to Harrison because of the extra room taken up by the Chism’s Dew, he was the salvation of the bootlegging operation, and he didn’t mind. He took his kid brother Luther for company.
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