Edge of the Rain

by Beverley Harper

  It didn’t take long. With no movement from Annie he pumped erratically. He felt his climax start, gather momentum, and then the jerking release. It took him by surprise. He had masturbated a few times. This was quicker, more intense. As soon as his breathing returned to normal he wanted to move away from her. She made no attempt to hold him back. ‘Did you like that?’

  He didn’t want to discuss it. ‘Yeah.’ Suddenly he was embarrassed.

  ‘Have you ever done it before?’

  ‘Course. Plenty of times.’

  ‘Who with?’

  Now he was stuck. He had enough of the gentleman in him not to want to name names and get some innocent girl into trouble. But, on the other hand he could not admit he had lied. Inspiration was slow, but it did come to him. ‘I promised not to tell.’

  She tossed her head. Alex watched her. ‘Did you like it?’

  She was pulling on her skirt. ‘It was okay I guess.’

  It was 1960. The explosion of sexual freedom of that decade was on a roll around the world but in Francistown, it was a long way off. Alex’s knowledge of girls had come from a well-thumbed, dog-eared book which someone at school had loaned him.

  Some of the stuff he had read hadn’t made much sense. Other things were almost unbelievable. But he decided to give it a go. Besides, apart from his fledgling male ego wanting to turn her indifference into moaning, writhing ecstasy like the heroine in the book, he had a lot of exploring to do. And there was also the money from the bet. ‘Wait.’

  She stopped in the act of pulling on her blouse.

  ‘Take it off.’

  Shrugging, she took off her blouse.

  ‘The skirt too.’ His heart was hammering again.

  He parted her legs and then the secret lips encased in dark red hair. There it was, just like in the book. A little bud. The book called it a manikin. He lowered his face between her legs. ‘What are you doing?’ She sounded scared.

  Then his tongue touched the manikin. ‘Oh, oh God, oh yes, yes, yes.’ It was working. He licked all around. She had a pleasant yeasty smell. He hadn’t expected that. ‘Yes, oh God, yes.’ She was breathing hard.

  He went back to the bud. ‘Oh Christ, oh Jesus.’

  He felt her legs around him stiffen.

  ‘Oh my God, yes.’

  Then she was shuddering and jumping and yelling. ‘Fuck me, oh my God, fuck me.’ This time she was not watching the sky.

  She lay for a long time afterwards, eyes closed, languid, not covering herself. Alex moved away slightly but he was grinning. The book had been right: girls liked it just as much as boys, you just had to turn the right key. She rolled her head sideways and looked at him through half-closed eyes. ‘I’ve never felt like that before.’

  ‘Did you like it this time?’

  ‘God, yes.’

  ‘Want to do it again some time?’

  ‘I want to do it again now.’

  Now! He wasn’t sure he could. His penis hung limply, ravaged and sore.

  ‘We don’t have to do it all. You could just . . . you know . . . do that to me again.’

  He moved over to her. The book said something about nipples too.

  Walking back into town an hour later Annie asked him to go steady.

  ‘I’m leaving Francistown next week,’ he reminded her.

  ‘Where are you planning to live?’ She was not about to let him go.

  ‘Home I guess. For a while anyway.’ He had no idea what he wanted to do other than have fun and make money. Without Annie.

  They reached her gate. ‘We will do it again before you leave won’t we?’

  ‘You bet, Annie.’

  She grinned at him. ‘See ya.’ She turned and ran down the path.

  ‘See ya, Annie.’ He waved guiltily at her mother at the front door. ‘Hello, Mrs Carter.’

  ‘Hello, young Alex. I heard you scored!’

  The others were waiting for him just around the corner. ‘Jesus, man, what did you do to her?’

  Suddenly he felt ashamed. Annie had no idea the others had been hiding. She might be easy but she was a nice girl at heart. ‘Uh, nothing much.’

  ‘C’mon, man, we heard her.’

  ‘Yeah, man, cough up.’

  ‘Uh, look fellas I don’t want to say.’

  They watched him in disbelief.

  He dived into his school bag and tossed the well-thumbed book to one of them. ‘Read that.’ Then he was off and running with the others whooping after him. They chased him to the Bakers’ front gate.

  ‘I’ve read this.’ Colin Tigg, the captain of the rugby team, waved the book high. ‘You didn’t really do that stuff did you?’

  He was a new man. The wisdom in that little book gave him more knowledge than he had learned in ten years of school. ‘What do you think?’ he drawled, before turning to saunter, in a manner he hoped was superior, into the house.

  Paulie was at the kitchen table doing his homework. ‘I hear you saved the game.’

  ‘S’right, little brother.’

  ‘So? How was she?’

  Alex cuffed him hard. ‘Save a game yourself, brat.’

  Aunty Dorie looked up and smiled, having no idea what they were talking about. ‘Are you going to the dance tonight, Alex?’

  ‘Sure am.’ It was the senior dance. Most of the sixteen-year-olds would be leaving school. With university an option only for the very bright or the very rich, not many went the extra two years of senior school.

  ‘I hear the club looks really good. Some of the mothers have been decorating it today. There’s a band coming up from Gabs, too. It’s a new African band and they say they’re excellent.’ Aunty Dorie was shredding cheese as she spoke.

  ‘I wish I could go,’ Paulie said.

  ‘All in good time, youngster.’ Doris Baker was like a second mother. No, better. She wasn’t religious. Alex and Paulie adored her.

  ‘I’ll run you up if you like.’ The club was on the edge of town.

  ‘No need.’ Alex swiped a piece of cheese from where she was working and dodged a crack on the knuckles with the cheese grater. ‘A few of us are meeting in town and going together.’

  ‘Don’t go getting drunk now.’ It was a yearly ritual—drink-affected school leavers roaring around town after midnight, driving anything they could get their hands on. Francistown was a frontier town, created during the goldrush days. It had not lost its pioneering spirit. The kids were allowed this one night of the year while the adults and the police turned a blind eye.

  ‘Would I do that, Aunty Dorie?’

  She smiled, wiping her hands on a cloth. ‘Don’t go sweet-talking me, mister. Besides, if you didn’t I’d bloody disown you.’

  Paulie guffawed.

  ‘Get out of here.’ She waved them away shaking her head.

  She was not their real aunt. She was a friend of their parents and the boys had known her reasonably well before coming to stay in Francis-town. She had no children of her own and had taken first Alex, then Paulie under her wing. Alex had always liked her but, when Michael-John finally succumbed to his Paget’s disease at the age of five, she had been like a rock, supporting and loving.

  He and Paulie went outside so he could show his younger brother how he had scored the try. Despite the age gap, the boys were close, Paulie nearly as big as Alex and just entering puberty.

  ‘Did you do it?’ Paulie asked, as soon as they were out of earshot.

  Alex was dying to tell someone. Although he had balked at boasting about it earlier, Paulie was closer to him than anyone. He held nothing back. Paulie’s eyes grew wider and wider.

  ‘You mean you actually put your tongue down there?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Yuck!’

  At 8.30 he met five of his friends outside the local hotel. One of the boys had borrowed his dad’s old truck. Colin Tigg, who was seventeen, had been chosen to buy the liquor. Beer would be available at the dance but a few teachers would be present, watching the intake. Acting
on advice from the previous year’s school leavers, they intended to have some hard stuff stashed outside. The barman, knowing full well Colin’s age, sold him a bottle of whisky and a bottle of gin.

  Alex had never tasted hard liquor before. ‘What’ll it be, guys—gin or scotch?’ Colin held up the bottles. ‘Let’s get lubricated before the dance.’

  No-one knew what to choose so Colin opened the gin and passed it around. Alex did not much like the smell but he took a large sip and swallowed, shuddering as the neat alcohol scorched his throat and set fire to his gut. ‘Jesus!’ His eyes were swimming with tears as he passed the bottle on.

  Annie was at the dance. So were all the other girls. Normally he would have had eyes only for them. But when he walked into the clubhouse he felt as though he had been lifted up and swirled around by a hurricane. He stopped dead, staring. From the ceiling, turning slowly, was a ball of light. It flashed red and green and blue, shards of colour which lit up everything they touched. The hairs on his arms stood out and he had goose bumps all over his body. His stomach churned with excitement, a nameless excitement which he could not understand. He found it hard to breathe. Something tugged at his memory but what? The ball of light was so very familiar. But he had never seen anything like it before, of that he was sure.

  ‘C’mon Alex, let’s get a beer.’

  ‘In a minute,’ he mumbled.

  He was in a trance. He could not take his eyes off the light. His mind escaped momentarily into memory and he could smell a pleasant tangy smell but it was gone as quickly as it came. He shook his head to clear it but the gin kept it foggy. The light drew him in, drew him back in time and sent him spinning out again.

  What? What? Where had he seen that light? Shadows seemed to dance. Murmurs. Strange clicking language. Memory swirled in his head but it was too far off for him to capture and examine it.

  ‘Hey, Alex, d’you want a beer or not?’

  ‘Coming.’

  The light was everywhere. Filling the room. Filling his head. It transfixed him. Wherever he was, dancing on the floor, sitting at one of the tables, talking, drinking beer, he could not get his mind or his eyes off the light.

  Around midnight, with the gin wearing off, three of the boys went outside to try the scotch. Some of the girls joined them. ‘Coming, Alex?’

  ‘You go ahead.’ He was at a table, staring, staring at the light. The beautiful colours made him want to hold them in his hand. They filled him with longing for something he could not identify and yet knew so well. His eyelids felt heavy. A campfire and a wrinkled old child. Warm sand. It was just out of reach, so close and yet so unattainable. His memory stretched towards his past but there was nothing there.

  ‘He’s drunk,’ one of them laughed. And they left him where he was.

  At 2.30 Doris Baker shook him awake. ‘Alex, thank God.’

  ‘Aunty Dorie!’ He looked for the light but it had gone. He was alone in the clubhouse. Then he saw that she was crying. ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘There’s been an accident. Down by the river. The police called us. We thought . . . oh Alex, thank God you weren’t with them.’

  ‘With who? What? What accident?’ Where had the beautiful light gone? The clubhouse lights hurt his eyes in their plain brightness. The deep warmth of blue and green and red now overtaken by flat yellow. As flat as Aunty Dorie’s voice. As sober as her words. As loud and brash as the clanging in his head. As terrible as the sudden fear in his heart.

  ‘Kevin, Colin Tigg, the Davidson boy, Annie Carter and two other girls. The truck overturned. It’s a dreadful accident.’

  Alex struggled to his feet. ‘Are they okay?’ It didn’t seem possible. They had all been laughing and joking earlier. What did she mean?

  Tears flowed down her face. ‘Annie and Kevin are dead. Two of the others are critical. The police say they’ll be flown to South Africa as soon as it’s light. Colin and one of the girls are in hospital here. Colin is in a serious condition. He might lose his sight. Oh Alex, we thought you were with them.’

  He was trying to take it in. Annie dead! Kevin, his best friend! They’d been alive a few short hours ago. The truth hit him as hard as the flat yellow light. Again he heard briefly the murmured clicking. Again, the face of a wrinkled child. He had a sense of safety. It was not the first time. He’d felt it before. Safety. He was safe. The light had saved his life. Just as it had done once before.

  School was out of the question. For their final week the entire senior class stayed away, in shock. The teachers understood. Exams were over anyway. Jamie Davidson died during the night, before he could be airlifted to Johannesburg. People whispered it was just as well. The girl survived but was still in a coma by the time she reached South Africa. Wild rumours flew around the town about drunken orgies and drink-crazed teenagers. A man came up to him in the street and said, ‘Jesus, kid, I heard you were dead.’ Uncle Hugh, well into his cups, muttered, ‘Bloody kids always have to overdo it.’ Elderly ladies shook their heads in disapproval.

  Aunty Dorie had the facts from the police. Colin Tigg and one of the girls had been in the cab. The other four were in the open back of the truck. Colin had one arm around the girl with him and, on a sandy corner of the road, they encountered a donkey. With only one hand on the steering wheel he swerved too wildly. The truck lost it on the soft sand, skidded and flipped over before rolling down the grassy verge. Kevin and Annie died instantly, crushed under the vehicle. Glass from the shattered windscreen showered the two in the cab. Colin had shards of glass in both eyes. The girl with him had escaped remarkably unscathed.

  Kevin and Jamie were buried in a sad joint ceremony two days later. The following morning, Alex went to Annie’s funeral. Listening to the Minister yet again, seeing another coffin lowered into the ground, he realised it might have been his coffin. It was a sobering lesson for a boy poised on the edge of manhood.

  The wake was similar to the day before. Stunned and heartbroken parents, traumatised and bewildered siblings, shocked friends and relatives sitting around trying to be natural, trying not to cry. Alex found himself next to a silently morose man who savaged his whisky glass constantly and curtly refused food.

  ‘What a fucking waste,’ he muttered, to no-one in particular.

  ‘What?’ Alex didn’t think the man was talking to him.

  The man turned his head and looked at him. He had faded blue eyes under unruly eyebrows, a long nose and a wide mouth. Dressed in jeans and a brand new chequered shirt, he looked as though he were attending a party. ‘I said, it’s a waste. A young life gone. For what?’

  Alex didn’t know the man. ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Friends of yours were they?’

  ‘Yeah.’ A lump of misery rose in his throat.

  ‘She was my niece.’

  ‘Oh. Sorry.’

  ‘Not a bad kid. Bit wild.’ He gave a humourless laugh. ‘What the hell, she was only sixteen, she was entitled to be wild.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  The man’s voice was slurring slightly and he sounded aggressive, a bit like Uncle Hugh after a session at the pub. Alex wanted to move away.

  ‘You in her class?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So you’re leaving school?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Don’t say much do you?’

  Good manners prevailed. ‘Sorry, sir.’

  ‘Ah that’s okay, kid. I guess you’re upset too.’

  Again the misery and the tears which threatened. Alex bit them back. ‘They were friends, sir, all of them. Kevin was my best friend.’

  ‘Kevin? One of them kids from yesterday?’

  Alex nodded. He lost his battle with the tears and brushed them off his cheeks impatiently.

  ‘It’s okay to cry, son.’

  Alex took a deep breath. The man watched him silently. Then, ‘My name’s Jeff. Jeff Carter. Annie was my brother’s kid.’

  ‘Pleased to meet you, sir. I’m Alex Theron.’ Alex put out his hand and found it
gripped by a strong rough brown one. ‘I’m from Shakawe,’ he added, his voice shaking as Jeff Carter pumped his hand up and down.

  ‘Shakawe! That’s the back of nowhere.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Folks with Wenela out there are they?’

  ‘No, sir. We have a farm.’

  ‘A farm?’ Jeff Carter looked surprised. ‘I didn’t think there were farms out there.’

  ‘We’re the only ones. My dad likes it there.’

  The man laughed. ‘What do you farm?’

  ‘Cattle.’

  He laughed again. ‘What do they eat? Fish?’

  Alex heard the sarcasm but was too young to know how to deal with it so remained silent.

  Jeff Carter sensed he had embarrassed the boy. ‘Shakawe, huh?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘So you’re going to work on the farm?’

  He didn’t know. Working for Pa was an easy option. He wanted to get out into the world, experience life. Pa had encouraged him to do just that. ‘Learn what the world is all about, son,’ his father had told him. ‘If you want to work on the farm you can do it later. It’s not going anywhere.’

  ‘I might,’ he told Jeff Carter. ‘But first I want to . . .’ he stopped. Just what did he want to do? He shrugged his shoulders. ‘I don’t know, sir, first I want to just . . .’

  Jeff smiled. ‘Experience life? Lose your cherry?’

  He’d done that a couple of days ago. With Annie. But he was warming to the gruff man at his side. ‘I guess.’

  Jeff was watching him. ‘How old are you, son?’

  ‘Sixteen.’

  ‘I can use an extra hand. Care to work for me for a while?’

  ‘Doing what, sir?’

  ‘Driving cattle. Can you ride, son?’

  ‘Yes, sir. I’ve helped Pa drive cattle.’

  ‘Where to?’

  ‘South West, sir.’

  Jeff put out his hand. ‘Well then, whaddya say?’

  Alex hesitated. He never doubted that what he wanted to do was own a farm like Pa. Mum had implored him to come home when he left school. ‘Your father could do with help around here,’ she had said. ‘The Good Lord gave us sons so they could help out. It’s your duty to come home.’