“So where did you go?”
“Did ye know,” she asked, “that all them fairies in the pitcher show look nearly just like my fairies? They’re bigger, and most of ’em look like females when fairies aint neither gals nor boys, and them shimmies they wear are not the same fabric, they’re more like the thin stuff my fascinators are made of, but they move pretty much the same way, that dancing and all. I think whoever made that pitcher show must’ve seen some of our Ozark fairies.”
“Not if I aint never seen ’em myself,” Hoppy remarked. “Not if they really aint no such of a thing to begin with, except in your peculiar imagination. Binns was right when he said you don’t live in this world, you just live in your imagination.”
“I should have taken you with me,” she said. “To meet the fairies. Tonight after the show I’ll take you with me.”
“I aint too certain I’ll still be around tonight.”
“What? How come? Where are you going?”
“Well, for one thing, I’d better find another town where I can put up these posters you’ve had made.”
“But won’t you show at least one more show here in this town? After Arlis has done put up so many posters already…”
“Maybe not. Maybe I’d best hit the road directly.”
“I caint just up and leave like that!” she said.
“Who’s asking you to leave?”
She stared at him. He almost felt a little sorry for her, the stricken look on her face. Real soft she asked, “You’re not taking me with you?”
“You’re not my woman no more,” he said.
“I never was your woman, and I never will be until I’ve become Mrs. Landon Boyd, if that ever happens.”
“Don’t worry. It won’t.”
“I figured not,” she said and gave him back the cold look he was giving her. “But just kindly tell me, what has got into you? Why have you turned off so harsh?”
“You and Arlis carrying on.”
“‘Carrying on?’ Now what does that mean?”
“Fucking, for one thing.”
“That’s a ugly word. What makes you think we’re carrying on and fucking?”
“I seen you,” he said.
“Where?”
“When you and Arlis was working in his garden patch yesterday morning, I took a notion to go fishing at that place where the Little Buffalo begins, right out west of town yonder. I didn’t catch any fish but by and by I caught a good look at you and Arlis jumping nekkid into that hole of water and then fucking like a pair of wildcats, except it takes wildcats just a minute or two to finish, and you and Arlis went on and on and on!”
It was the longest speech he’d ever made, and she just looked at him open-mouthed for nearly as long as it took a pair of wildcats to finish, and then she let out a big sigh and said, “My oh my.” And then she commenced shaking her head. “So I guess you think he ruint me?” she asked.
“Naw, I had done already ruint you, but he done a pretty good job of doing ye better than I ever done.” He added, “Or ever could do!”
“So now you know why I had to go out last night, for the whole night. Not to be with him, no, but to talk to my fairy friends about what I had done and whether I had spiled the whole notion of you and me. And do you know what they said to me?”
“Yeah, they said, ‘Sharline, you just fuck anybody you care to, anytime you want.’”
“No, they never. They didn’t give me permission to do that, to make it with him or with you or nobody. They just explained to me why I’d done it with him. You know, you were the first and only one, for me. They said that I was so thrilled to pieces to find out how good it was with you, how I was enjoying myself so much with you especially after you learnt to quit living inside your penis, how it was all so wonderful that I couldn’t hardly believe it, couldn’t hardly stand it, it was so fine, and I begun to doubt that there was another soul on this earth who could make me feel as good as you did. So just out of curiosity I had to find out if there was another feller who could make me feel like that.”
“And sure enough, it turns out that ole Arlis with his huge pecker could even make you come three times!”
“They also said that numbers don’t count, that it’s not the repetition that matters, and it’s sure not the size that matters. All that matters is that you have to feel like you and the one you’re with are just one. That’s it. It don’t even matter how mighty you come, all that matters is that you become a part of the one you’re with, and they a part of you.” Sharline had begun to weep. She wasn’t sobbing or nothing, but the tears were a-streaming down her cheeks. “And I never felt that way with him, not the way I do with you.”
Hoppy was touched, not because of her tears but because of what the fairies had told her, assuming that they really had told her that, and although he found it nearly impossible to believe in fairies he found it even harder to believe that she could have made up that stuff all by herself. Still, even though he was ready and willing to believe, he was terrible mad at her. “But goddammit, Sharline,” he tried to ask calmly, “didn’t you give a thought to how it might make me feel?”
“I had no idee you’d ever know.”
“And I don’t reckon you’d ever intended to tell me. Wasn’t you thinking of me at all when you done it?”
“I was only thinking of how I loved ye so much better.”
“How can you say that when he made ye come three times with that big tallywhacker of his?”
“Like my fairy friends said—”
“Fuck your fairy friends!” Hoppy said, feeling really bitter, and then found himself inwardly laughing at what he’d just said, as if he were suggesting that she get her sexual satisfaction from the fairies, who didn’t even possess any tallywhackers, to hear her tell it. It was all he could do to keep from laughing out loud. But just as he was able to keep the guffaws of laughter bottled up silently within himself, he was also able to keep his bawls of crying gagged too. “Get in the truck,” he said to her. She misunderstood him and started to climb up the steps into Topper’s rear end. “Up front,” he said, and folded up and latched the steps to the back end. Then he got behind the wheel and started off.
She looked at him with panic. “Where are we going?” she asked. “I caint just up and leave. I’d have to say goodbye.”
“You can wave goodbye,” he said, just as they were passing Faught’s store. “But we aint leaving town. Just going out for a little recreation.”
They didn’t even see Arlis, nor he them. Hoppy drove on, a little over a mile, to where the road turned off to reach the source of the Little Buffalo. He drove as far as Topper could go, and then stopped, and got out.
Sharline was smiling. “I think I know what you’re up to,” she said.
He led her down to the hole of water. “I reckon we could stand a dip,” he remarked, and took off his clothes. His tallywhacker was already at full attention, stiffer than he’d ever known it to be, and he wondered at himself, that he was hankering after her so much despite her transgression. Or was it because of her transgression? There’s no understanding the human heart, let alone the human tallywhacker.
Sharline was looking around for a good place to hang her fancy dress. She stepped out of her fancy shoes, which Arlis must have given her, and then took off her underthings. She wasn’t doing it as fast as she had when she’d been with Arlis, as if she wasn’t so eager. “That water is awful cold,” she said, as if she’d know, and she didn’t just jump right in like she’d done before. She stuck her toe in and squealed, and then very slowly walked down into the water, holding herself and shivering. It seemed as if her whole way of doing it was different: before, she had just plunged right in, without a thought or regard for the consequences. And she didn’t want Hoppy to splash her, and she wasn’t splashing him. She wanted him to hold her and try to warm her up.
And when he led her out of the water and tried to take her to the spot where she and Arlis had fucked, where the leaves an
d moss and twigs and fronds were all stirred up and mashed, she protested, “Couldn’t we do it somewheres else?”
“No, it’s got to be right here,” he said, and pushed her down to the ground, and got himself between her legs and tried to get into her.
“Aren’t you going to kiss me?” she asked. “You might’ve noticed he never did even kiss me.”
Hoppy thought back and realized that she was right. So he gave her a good kiss. The kissing seemed to loosen her up some. She reached her fingers down to help guide him in.
“Don’t ye think mine’s nearly as noble as his’n?” he asked.
“Yes, but don’t live inside it,” she warned, reminding him again.
He was an old hand at that now, trying not to think of his tallywhacker regardless of how wonderful it felt. So he did manage to hold off at least past the point where he would hate himself. He had hoped to be able to step so far outside himself that not only would he be able to last as long as Arlis had but also that he would be able to view himself with her as if he were watching them in a pitcher show or better yet as he had watched her with Arlis. That did help. As long as he could pretend that he was outside himself watching himself he could hold out indefinitely, and keep on pounding away just as Arlis had done.
“What are you thinking about?” she wanted to know, as if she could read his mind and see that he was thinking about being outside himself watching them do it.
“I don’t recollect you and Arlis doing any talking while you was fucking,” he said.
“Because we weren’t one,” she said.
He realized he wasn’t one, neither. That is, that he was so far outside himself that he couldn’t possibly be her too, or be one with her. It was complicated. But he gave it a try: as he went on thrusting into her he tried letting himself feel that he and Sharline were just one animal, a beast with two backs, and the snug hot place where they were joined together was all of a piece, like a heart beating. A heart doesn’t beat because there’s two separate things working together; it’s all just one big muscle beating and throbbing and pulsing and pounding. Yes, he could almost see what she meant by that idea of being one with him. “Are you one with me?” he asked, panting.
“Oh, I’m nothing but one with you!” she said, panting too. And then she came, although not with the racket she’d made with Arlis, no, not a howl of ecstasy but just a little strangled cry. Maybe she’d be louder the second time around, if he could hold out for that. But he was so busy watching and listening to her come and comparing it with the way she had come with Arlis that he forgot to avoid thinking of his penis, and when he thought of it again he realized it was part of her, and he began to pant harder and groan. Her hips were lifting his off the ground again and again as he began to shake. He could not utter any clear words but he made plenty of noise, lots more than she had made. It was the first time she had ever come before he did. But he hated himself because he could only make her come once, and after he came his darned tallywhacker went soft on him. They lay snuggled together for a while, too long maybe, because it gave him a chance to think about all the differences between the way it had happened with Arlis and the way it had happened with him. Finally he had to ask her, “How come you just jumped right into the water when you came down here with him? How come you just couldn’t seem to wait?”
“Hon,” she said, “you’ll recollect that me and him had been working hard in his garden and we were both all hot and sweaty, and it’s easy to jump into cold water when you’re covered with sweat.”
He let it go. They returned to Topper and drove back toward town. Hoppy noticed something and wondered why he hadn’t noticed it on the way out of town: the posters for the pitcher show had been put up everywhere—on every store, on most of the houses, and on barns, smokehouses, corncribs, even outhouses. After they’d parked Topper back at the place they’d come from, only then did it occur to them that they hadn’t had any dinner. Sharline started in to fix a dinner for him, but he told her he’d make do with a can of Vienna sausages and some crackers. While they were having their lunch she asked if she could have just a drop of Chism’s Dew, and he had to point out that he’d poured the last of it into his breakfast coffee. “I’ve been thinking,” he said, “that the first town I’ll post them posters in might as well be Stay More, and while I’m there I can get me another jug or two.”
“You keep saying ‘I,’” she pointed out. “Not ‘we’ or ‘us.’”
“Did I?” he said. “Well, I wasn’t thinking.”
After their light lunch, Sharline said she wanted to take a little nap. It was too hot inside of Topper, so she took a blanket to lie on under a big shady maple tree off to one side of the field. Hoppy discovered that he was out of tobacco, so he couldn’t roll himself a cigarette. He moseyed over to the store to buy another poke of Bugler. Actually there were two other general mercantile stores in town besides Faught’s, but he chose Faught’s. That’s where most of the loafers were gathered on the porch out of the hot sun, whittling and chewing and telling their dirty stories to each other. He sat with them a while, taking out his Barlow and shaving a stick of cedar. Arlis wasn’t there, he must’ve been inside the store. After a while, Hoppy said, “I need the makings of a smoke,” and went inside the store.
“Howdy, Hop,” Arlis said.
Hoppy tried to say, “Howdy, Arlis,” but there must’ve been a frog in his throat. He did manage to croak out that he needed a poke of Bugler and some papers, and he paid for them and then rolled himself a cigarette right there on the spot and lit it and exchanged glances with Arlis. Arlis had a real neat new haircut, and of course Hoppy didn’t have to ask him who his barber was.
“Thanks for all them posters you helped Sharline get made,” Hoppy said.
“Glad to help,” Arlis said. He gestured toward the road out front. “You may have noticed, I’ve done put a few of ’em up.”
“Yeah, they’re all over town. And Sharline says you’re fixing to bring a tub of sody pop for her to sell at the show tonight.”
“That’s right. Would you care for a sample?” He led Hoppy over to the pop cooler and opened it. There were two fifty-pound blocks of ice inside. Arlis fished out of the water an ice-cold Grapette, opened it at the opener on the side of the cooler, and handed it to Hoppy. “On the house,” he said. Then he produced a contraption with a hand crank unlike any gizmo that Hoppy had ever seen. “This here makes snow cones,” Arlis said. “Have you ever had a snow cone?” When Hoppy shook his head, Arlis proceeded to make him one, taking an ice pick and hacking off part of one of the blocks of ice and putting it in the contraption and grinding it up and putting the tiny bits of ice rounded off into a paper cone. Arlis asked, “What’s your preference? Raspberry, strawberry, or grape?” Hoppy allowed as how since he was drinking a Grapette sody pop he might as well stick with the same flavor. So Arlis poured some syrup over the snow cone, and Hoppy commenced eating it, which, on a hot day like this, was a real treat. “Now I tell ye,” Arlis went on, “I think Sharline could stand to sell a right smart of these snow cones along with the popcorn and candy and sody pop.”
“You’re being awful good to us,” Hoppy said. “The posters. The sody pop. The snow cones. No telling what you’ll come up with next.”
“Well, I’ve got a few other idees for you’uns to consider.”
“How come you’re doing all this for us?”
“You and Sharline are my two favoritest folks in all the earth,” Arlis declared. He let that sink in, and then he said, “You could do a little favor for me, if you aint too busy tomorrow. I’m fixing to drive out into the back country to put up more of these posters for your show, to let folks know that you’ll be showing that pitcher for the rest of the week. Do you think you could just watch the store for me while I’m gone? You wouldn’t have to do much, just make change whenever a customer wants to buy something. Pump gas if need be.”
“I reckon I could handle it,” Hoppy allowed.
“Thank ye
kindly. And would you have any real big objection if Sharline rode along with me?”
“What would you need her for?” Hoppy asked.
Chapter seventeen
Well, it had to be opined that those posters Arlis and Sharline were putting up (maybe she held the tacks while he hammered them, or something), way out in the furthest backwoods of the country just might fill the seats for the next pitcher show. Hoppy had no experience whatever as a storekeeper but he got the hang of it pretty quick. It wasn’t all that complicated, just taking folks’ money and making change from the change drawer. He had a little trouble locating some items—sewing needles and baking powders and certain medicinal remedies—and he sometimes had to tell the customer that he was just minding the store while Arlis was out, but sometimes the customer knew the location of whatever it was they wanted. There wasn’t all that much business. In fact, Hoppy was idle enough to have nothing to think about other than the possible danger of letting Sharline ride off with Arlis to God knows where or what. But he had said to her as she was leaving, “Be good,” and she had winked at him and said, “Oh, I surely will be.” And he had to trust her. He couldn’t just go on through life, or however long he planned to keep her, being suspicious and keeping a close watch over her.
Minding the store was easy and almost fun, and Hoppy decided that if he and Sharline ever had to give up showing pitchers and go to work for a living, he might do worse than to find himself a little store somewheres. One big advantage of owning a store is that you get wholesale prices on everything you need. Yes, if Hoppy decided to run a store somewhere and Sharline could get work as a teacher or a barber or a sign painter, they could probably do a right fair job of supporting themselves.
That afternoon while he was minding the store, a young farmer and his wife and kids stopped their team and wagon and came in and asked if this was the place where the pitcher show was going to be shown. Hoppy told them that sure enough, the pitcher show would be shown right out yonder in that meader behind the store. “Has it done already started?” asked the feller, whose name was Goodfeller. Why, no, Hoppy said, it wouldn’t start until dark. “How can ye see it in the dark?” puckish Goodfeller wanted to know. Hoppy had a tough time explaining the idea of pitcher shows, how they have to be shown in the dark, and Goodfeller never did seem to get it acceptable. But later Hoppy saw that they’d parked their wagon near Topper and were just waiting patiently for it to get dark. Hoppy figured that Sharline would have to hand-letter some extra words on all the posters so they would say something like “Commencing at dark.”
The Nearly Complete Works, Volume 3 Page 18