The Nearly Complete Works, Volume 3

by Donald Harington

  They watched for a while as some of the kids played a game of “washers,” which involved trying to pitch large metal rings into one of three holes, the nearest hole worth five points, the middle hole ten, and the fartherest fifteen points. Other kids were playing the classic mumble-de-peg with their jackknifes, a game Hoppy had played as a kid, and he took the trouble to explain to Sharline how the game got its name, from the penalty suffered by the loser of the game, who was required to kneel down and pull a matchstick out of the ground with his teeth, or “mumble the peg.”

  Promptly at noon the ladies of the town began arriving with covered platters and dishes for the dinner-on-the-grounds, and quite a number of the ladies of the campground also offered various plates and pails of food. All of these were spread out right on the ground, on top of tablecloths or coverings of some sort, and the older boys were appointed the task of shooing away any dogs, cats or pigs who tried to get into the food. But the boys had their hands full with the animals and couldn’t do anything about the human freeloaders, nearly all of them furriners, who helped themselves freely to the dinner without having contributed any dishes of their own. These spongers were voracious and they fought among themselves and even the townspeople, crowding and jostling to get first helpings of the meats and pies.

  Art Bedwell remarked to Hoppy, “My old womarn was up at the crack of dawn to start fixing food for this here dinner, and I shore do hate to see these peckerwood leeches jist a-helping theirselfs.”

  In fact, the freeloaders had pretty much cleaned off the food before Hoppy and Sharline could get their turn at it, and Hoppy was particularly irritated to discover that Sharline’s platter of fried apple pies was empty. He had been looking forward to having one for dessert. He was going to remember what most of these deadbeats looked like, and he was going to refuse them all admission to that night’s shows unless they had money to pay.

  The camp was steadily growing in population, with new people coming in their wagons, on horseback, on foot, and a few cars. The brush arbor wouldn’t hold a fraction of them for that afternoon’s services. Fortunately for Sharline, among the new arrivals was a woman who Binns introduced as “the unbeatable pianer player of these parts,” who knew all the hymns by heart and would relieve Sharline of her thankless stint at the keyboard.

  Hoppy and Sharline decided they didn’t want to sit through another sermon by Binns anyway. They returned to Topper, but the yard around Topper was filled with people, and there were folks sitting on Topper’s steps and running boards. “Let’s get away from here,” Sharline said to him. “But I want to get something first.” She went up into Topper’s rear end and came back with fistfuls of some gauzy stuff.

  When they had hiked a distance up the mountainside, she showed him what she had. “Last night a woman swapped me these for admission to the show for her whole family. I’ve got an idee for using them but I need to try them out and see what you think.” She showed him the scarves, if that’s what they were: soft sheer lengths of see-through fabric that were light as gossamer. She threw one of them up into the air and it floated around before she caught it. Then she threw two of them up, and three of them, and got the first and re-threw it before the others came down. “If I can just learn to throw all six of them, it will be a kind of juggling.”

  She led him to a glade in the forest where, she said, her fairies dwelt…but only by night. And there, with the grace and lightness of a fairy she began to practice with the gossamer scarves…or “fascinators,” as Sharline said they were called. They sure did fascinate, and he wished he could mention their colors, of which each was a different one. He was envious of the dexterity and the light rhythm with which she whipped the chiffon fascinators around, sent them tossing in the air this way and that, and eventually reached the point where she could keep all six of them afloat and adrift and whirling and spinning. Her whole body swayed and pitched with the movements of her plucking at the fascinators. Hoppy had the notion that her dancing was being watched admiringly by her fairies.

  She practiced for a full hour. “You’ve got my balls licked,” he commented, then realized the double meaning and said, “I mean, I could never juggle them balls the way you’re a-juggling them scarfs. It’s going to be a real hit with the crowd tonight.”

  She draped the chiffon around his neck and gave him a big long kiss. She was pressed tight against him and whispered in his ear, “Everbody’s down there, and we’re up here, and nobody would see us if we commenced to be jined.”

  “Your fairy friends are probably watching,” he pointed out.

  “If they are, they’re admiring us,” she said.

  So they did it right there in the broad daylight on the leaves of the forest floor, removing just enough of their clothes—his pants and her panties—to make it possible. This was practically the same spot where they had first kissed the other night. But then they had returned to the comfort of the bunk in Topper to actually jine theirselfs together. Now, when he felt their jinedness beneath him, he forgot to remember what she had said her fairy friends had told her about his living inside of his penis, and he made the mistake of living there again, living in such luxury and wonderfulness that in consequence, partly also because of being right out in the open air in this glade, he became too powerfully transported with the pleasure of being inside of her, and that finished him off in no time, although with the greatest coming he’d ever felt, so mighty that it took everything out of him and he could only collapse on his back and lie there panting for breath. His only thoughts were two: he hated himself again for not being able to give her the all-overs, and he wondered how much danger there was that his jism inside of her might leave her in a family way. “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “That’s okay,” she said. She snuggled her head into his neck, but after just a moment she rolled the rest of her body up on top of him, and before his tallywhacker had a chance to shrink and sleep she had got it inside herself again. He had never heard of a woman being on top, although it had happened in his private pitcher show, “Assortment.” Somehow it seemed unnatural, even perverse, like some of the other goings-on in “Assortment.” But as she began to move, moving in a way she couldn’t have moved on the bottom, he began to understand that maybe it was even better this way. And it also made it easier for him to step outside of his penis and not live in it for a while, and to enjoy completely what was going on without worrying about coming too soon. Now she was moving very fast. He began to move himself, as much as being beneath would allow him to do, and pretty soon they were both really smacking against each other, and he was surprised to discover that for the first time in his life he was on the verge of coming again. He had never heard of such a thing, but somehow it didn’t seem unnatural, and he decided that if it was going to happen he might as well just let go and get the most out of it. When her all-overs finally arrived, truly all-overing her everywhere, he all-overed himself, with a force he would never forget.

  A long while later, as they still lay in a tight embrace, their sweat beginning to cool and dry in the late afternoon as a breeze began to waft through their glade, she commented, “Boy howdy, that was the nicest. That was just too nice.”

  When they were finally ready to leave, they discovered that the breeze had scattered her gossamer fascinators, and they spent a while tracking them down and gathering them up. One was hung on a tree limb he couldn’t reach, and he was afraid of heights, so she scampered up that tree like a squirrel and fetched it for herself.

  Making their way back to the camp, they came upon no less than three other couples, teenagers, hither and yon, who were also using the woods for acts of lovemaking. They were tempted to pause and watch but realized that these kids weren’t doing anything that they themselves hadn’t just done.

  That night, Sharline performed the juggling of the fascinators while the audience arrived and after Hoppy had done his own juggling. Her nimble tossing and catching of the scarves caused everyone to say Ooh! and Ahh! almost as if she
were doing stunts on a daring trapeze. He stood back and admired the otherworldly gracefulness of her movements without being able to resist the thought that such beauty actually belonged to him. It was almost enough to make a man believe in God.

  “Makes you want to thank the Almighty, don’t it?” a voice said at his ear, and he turned to see Emmett Binns. The preacher was leering. “I tell ye, Brother Boyd, if you don’t want to marry her, I’d be mighty proud to make her into Mrs. Binns.”

  Chapter eleven

  He was to discover that Emmett Binns had not just been making polite chitchat when he made that remark. Binns began to tail Sharline, keeping it sly at first but eventually right out in the open, like a puppy dog attaching itself to a new master. There would even come a time, once when Binns was nigh on to drooling as he sought to help Sharline gather up her fascinators, when Hoppy would be moved to say, “Down, boy.”

  And for the remaining two days of their run in that town, the preacher seemed to look for every chance to be in Sharline’s company. Binns declared his disappointment that she was no longer attending the brush arbor services, and he invited her back to play the piano for the hymns, saying he’d get rid of “the unbeatable pianer player of these parts” and restore Sharline to the position of accompanist. But Sharline wasn’t interested, although for want of anything better to do she and Hoppy sometimes attended the services, not sitting in the brush arbor because it was packed full but standing in the shade of a tree within earshot of Binns’ sermons. Binns always glanced in their direction whenever he railed against fornication. He never lost a chance, in his orations, to put in a word or two about the supreme sin of unchastity outside the sacred bonds of marriage, and he never lost a chance whenever he was with Sharline to hint that he sure would like to go for a little walk in the woods with her.

  But his greatest hypocrisy continued to be his attack on the evils of pitcher shows despite the fact that he himself continued to watch them, although he went to great lengths to avoid being seen, and even appeared in disguise, wearing a fake beard and mustache that he had obtained god-knows-where.

  Pitcher shows, he declared from the pulpit, were a violation of Psalms 101:3: “I will set no wicked thing before mine eyes: I hate the work of them that turn aside; it shall not cleave to me.” That simple verse was good for an hour or so of oratory. Furthermore, we are told in the fifth chapter of Ephesians, verses 3–7: “But fornication, and all uncleanness, or covetousness, let it not be once named among you, as becometh saints; Neither filthiness, nor foolish talking, nor jesting, which are not convenient: but rather giving of thanks. For this ye know, that no whoremonger, nor unclean person, nor covetous man, who is an idolater, hath any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God. Let no man deceive you with vain words: for because of these things cometh the wrath of God upon the children of disobedience. Be not ye therefore partakers with them.” All of these things, Binns pointed out, are found in pitcher shows, and we are clearly asked not to partake of them.

  Hoppy couldn’t recall a single scene in any of the Hopalong Cassidy movies, or in all the episodes of “The Painted Stallion,” which would fit that description…except possibly some of the foolish talking and jesting. But he supposed that you could find something somewhere in the Bible that would condemn just about anything, which was one reason he’d never had much use for reading that particular book. Come to think of it, the only books he had read, apart from his schoolbooks years ago, were a few paperbacks by Clarence Mulford upon which the Hopalong Cassidy pitcher shows were based—Heart of the West, Three on a Trail, and Call of the Prairie. Comparing the novels with the film versions, which had been in his repertoire the previous year, had been an unsettling experience for Hoppy. The experience of actually watching on the screen what he had created in his own way upon the screen inside his head while reading the novels convinced him that there was either something terribly wrong with pitcher shows or else something terribly wrong with novels, and he had decided that since he owed his livelihood to pitcher shows he had better take sides with them, so he had given up reading.

  For three nights now, following each show, when the campers had returned to their tents and the townsfolk to their homes, Emmett Binns had come to Topper, had taken unbidden the one sitting-chair, had removed his beard and mustache, and had accepted, because it would have been rude of Hoppy not to offer it him, a glass of Chism’s Dew. Hoppy wasn’t able to determine whether Binns really liked the whisky that much, or was just using this conviviality as an excuse for being near to Sharline, but in any case, Sharline usually found a good excuse for absenting herself from the two men. Hoppy guessed that she might be going up the dark mountainside to join her fairy friends. But in any case he was left to make conversation with Binns, not too difficult as long as he let Binns do the talking, and Binns hardly ever shut up. Hoppy decided there was one thing Binns craved more than Sharline, or Chism’s Dew, and that was the sound of his own voice.

  Binns’ favorite topic was the possibility that he and Hoppy would become partners and combine their enterprises in the future, and he was full of ideas about the project, such as riding on ahead (he owned not a mule like most circuit riders but a fairly recent-model Ford coupe) in order to “set up” certain towns and post public notices of their coming. He was convinced that together he and Hoppy could draw crowds such as had never been seen in these parts before.

  Hoppy didn’t mind listening to Binns run on and on about this grand scheme, and there were even times when he was tempted to tell Binns that he’d be willing to give it a try. The only time he spoke up himself was to remark, “Preacher, it seems to me that if this here particular crowd we’ve got at this camp meeting is anything at all like what we’d expect down the road, I aint so sure I’d want to see any more of such.”

  “Don’t worry,” Binns said. “I reckon most of these folks are poor appleknockers and peckerwoods from the furthest backwoods, and the towns I’ve got in mind for us are a little more civilized.”

  Sharline was gone a long time. At least Hoppy didn’t have to worry about her being in the company of Emmett Binns, because he was right here. Although it was close to midnight, the camp was still alive, and they could hear the sounds of folks talking all over the place, and even somebody playing a mournful harmonica. Hoppy poured the preacher another drink, and realized he might have to revisit Stay More sometime soon in order to replenish his supply of Chism’s Dew.

  Both men got more mellow than was good for them, even to the point of swapping some bawdy tales. Since Hoppy wasn’t good at narration, he kept his joke short, and in return got a complicated yarn from the preacher about a wicked feller that died and went to Hell but discovered that it was a real nice and pretty place with flowers and pretty girls, and he was even able to talk them into the bushes. But, as the preacher’s punch line put it, “Goddamn it, the girls here aint got no cunts!”

  Binns and Hoppy had a good laugh and helped themselves to the Dew. After a while, Hoppy invited, “Preacher, would you care to see a real pitcher show?” He led the preacher up inside of Topper, and turned the projector to the wall to project upon it his “Assortment.”

  The preacher sure was flabbergasted with what he saw in that particular pitcher show, and he grunted his appreciation and moaned his approval throughout. They were both so absorbed in the scenes of “Assortment” that they didn’t notice Sharline returning. She stood in the door and watched the two men, her lover and the preacher who had wanted to be her lover, both of them drunk and enjoying a very wicked pitcher show. “Jesus God,” Emmett Binns was remarking, “I never even knew that a feller could put it in that hole!”

  Hoppy spied Sharline but gestured for her to remain quiet. She fixed herself a glass of Chism’s Dew and resumed watching the men watching the spicy antics on the wall. Hoppy caught her eye and gestured at the preacher’s groin, where an enormous bulge rose in his britches.

  At length the preacher said, “This is driving me nuts! The trouble wit
h most pitcher shows is that they make you want to be in them. The trouble with this pitcher show is it makes you want to be in a gal, any gal, Goddammit!” He stood up, making no effort to conceal the huge swelling in his pants. He turned, and caught sight of Sharline. He stared at her, and then at Hoppy. “I’m a-dying,” he declared, whining. “I’ve just got to have me some cunt!”

  “It’s Hell, aint it?” Hoppy observed.

  “Couldn’t I do nothing or say nothing?” Binns asked of Sharline. “Give ye anything? Promise ye anything? Couldn’t ye have mercy on me? Out of friendship?”

  “I think you’re drunk,” she said to him. “And you,” she said to Hoppy, “are bad.” And she walked down from Topper and disappeared into the night, taking her drink with her.

  Hoppy turned off the projector and killed the delco. “Well,” he said, “surely they’s other gals in this camp who’d love to lay down with the minister.”

  Binns finished his drink in one swallow and said, “Thanks for the stupendous show.” Then he too disappeared into the night. Hoppy hoped that he wouldn’t be reappearing in the same place that Sharline went.

  When Sharline eventually returned, she was upset with Hoppy. “You didn’t have no call to be a-showing your private reel to the preacher,” she said.

  “Heck, he’s always preaching about how sinful pitcher shows are,” Hoppy said. “I wanted him to see a real sinful pitcher show. And he sure did relish it!”

  It was very late. They took off their clothes and went to bed and relished each other.