In Search of Satisfaction

by J. California Cooper

  Hosanna was too full of her own life to notice that Lettie was either very happy or very sad. More marks and bruises appeared on her body, more tears were shed. On other days, Lettie would be laughing and so happy her face shone. Lettie had a secret new man. Boyd knew it and beat her lightly because he didn’t want no truck with Hosanna and Luke. Lettie took her beatings and kept running back out to the new man.

  Lovey sat on her bed in the now often empty house, looking into her mirror. Several of the men had told her she was beautiful. Now she painted her face, posed, combed and posed. Dreamed again, but only of Lincoln, again.

  One day Lettie come running over to the house. One of her eyes was black, her arm was broken, hanging down from her shoulder. She carried one child in her good arm, the others stumbling behind, holding on to the hem of her dress. “I’m not going back there!” she screamed through her snot and tears.

  Hosanna was enraged. She wanted to go have it out with Boyd. Lettie stopped her, “No use in that, cause I ain’t going back. I can work. I can work for Miz Sally, she always askin me. And I can work for you.” Her broken arm hurt, her tears started again. “I ain’t goin back to that man!”

  Hosanna said, “Well, he can’t keep that house and live in it! It belongs to you! He gonna have to get his cheating ass out of there!” She turned to Lovey, “Send for Luke! Tell him his family needs him, now!” Then she took Lettie to a doctor to see about that arm.

  When Luke came, leaving his peace behind, they went to Lettie’s house. Boyd was gone. There was a note to Hosanna, saying, “This here is my wife and my biznes, you stay out of it!” To Lettie, “You betta have your behind back here when I come home. And cok me som dinner.” They threw the notes out with his clothes, changed the locks and left him a note pinned to his clothes: “Boyd, don’t come in my house again. Get your own or stay with your women! Stay anywhere you want to, but you can’t stay here.” Signed by Hosanna and Luke and Lettie. Then Hosanna went home, taking Lettie and the children with her. Luke left saying he would check on them in the morning. Lettie was smiling. She had a family who looked out for her!

  Hosanna didn’t really want Lettie working for her. Lettie was sometimes lazy and slow. She helped her get the job with Sally. Lettie was anxious to return to her own home, so Hosanna moved her back into her own house.

  Things worked out for Lettie, for a little while.

  But Hosanna was miserable. Billy Bowlegs was a traveling man. He liked other women. He fought against marriage though he loved Hosanna. He knew she was not like his other women. She had been a virgin and she did not fool around. He knew that. But he couldn’t help himself. “This is just me, Hosanna. Me! I ain’t never promised you nothin! Just a good time.”

  Billy lied to her about most everything. Promised to come to her after his work many times, but didn’t. At two or three o’clock in the morning, she would get up and go out in the dark, cold, scary nights, trying to find him. Sometimes she found him, sometimes she didn’t. It was always another woman, and the woman always smirked, thinking herself the better woman, until he did the same thing to her.

  Hosanna, more than once, went to the house where he roomed. His landlady, an old, toothless woman, laughed and said, “He ain’t not home, honey. Which one is you?” Later, Hosanna climbed into his window to make sure. He really was not home. She would go through all his things, read all his notes and letters from other women writing misspelled words of love. Turn his pockets out, looking for she knew not what. Then she cleaned his room up and took some of his clothes home to wash for him. It was pathetic, but she could not let go of the promise of “almost” in her thoughts, “He almost makes me feel good, have orgasms, when he makes love to me. Almost.” Billy did not completely satisfy Hosanna’s body sexually. But once begun, she could not stop her pathetic actions to keep him. To keep those “almost” feelings.

  Hosanna bought him clothes. Gave him some of her little money. Tried to set him up giving lessons to youngsters wanting to learn music. “Your own business,” she told him. He spent the money on liquor and other women. Hosanna would not let him go; she was trying to hold on to her cherry (as it is sometimes called) Bowlegs now had, because she wanted to marry the first man she had made love to, given her virginity to.

  Hosanna hated herself for the things she did in regard to Bowlegs. “I don’t want to be the kind of woman he is making me! Jealous. A shrew! Nagging. Sneaking. I don’t want that to be me!” But she was. He didn’t bring out the best in her, he brought out the worst. If he hadn’t loved her, it might have been smart of him to have everything his way. But he loved her, so it was very stupid of him not to look into the future and guard his love. Satan was very pleased with the whole thing.

  These things went on a long time. These things didn’t work out so well at all.

  then … Lincoln came home to visit again. Creed saw that his son was a sad, dejected man. Creed had his own little life, visiting Aunt Ellen. He was thinking about marrying her. His thoughts were, “She is clean, a good cook, honest and—heh, heh—nice little kisses now and then.” He did not want to have to sit sadly and watch his son grieve for his lost leg.

  Creed thought some company, another lame person, might make Lincoln open up some and not be so sad if he could see somebody worse off. That is why he told Lovey, as he was passing on his way to see Ellen, “Lincoln’s home. You ought to go by and see him in that little wagon he sent you.”

  Lincoln still had a place on Phillip’s estate and the same important job that he handled very well. Lincoln could have bought himself a lovely home at any time with the money he earned and had saved. But he didn’t. He wanted to farm on his father’s land. He spent much money on farm equipment he wouldn’t operate. He hired workmen to do the work. Lincoln was just too sad to be interested in anything but the job he had to do for Phillip. He was satisfied to dream of his farm and let other men run it.

  Lincoln would not go out much when he was home in Yoville. He would sometimes sit at Choke’s juke joint, drink and drink and drink. He seldom went with the women. He thought they laughed about his leg or felt sorry for him. He most always went alone and left alone. He knew his father was thinking of marrying Ellen. He was glad for his father. But he wanted nothing for himself. “Show a woman my leg!? My leg that is not there!? Hell, no!”

  Lovey thought about Lincoln a great deal. She loved him. One day soon after Creed had told her Lincoln was home, she bought some rum and gin from the bootlegger and some ginger ale to make herself a Singapore Sling. Mixed a huge drink, sat in her wagon, looking out the open front door and drank it slowly, just thinking.

  Hosanna was out for the night. She would not let Bowlegs sleep in the house she shared with Lovey. “I’m the oldest sister, I have to be an example of what’s right.”

  Bowlegs laughed, “She know what you doin!”

  Hosanna didn’t laugh. “She THINK, maybe, but she don’t know!” Lettie was at her own home, entertaining her new man, peeping through the windows looking for Boyd sneaking around outside.

  Lovey sat in her wagon and thought and drank her liquor, thought and drank. Finally, she said to herself, “I know what I want. I’m a grown woman. And I ain’t gonna stay alone this way forever. I want him. I want Lincoln.” She drank some more. Then she bathed, combed and patted on powder and perfume. Dressed. Then she got in that wagon and pushed herself down the little ramp Homer had built for her with Luke’s help. She pointed herself in the direction of Lincoln’s house. “Here I come! (hic!) If all you get is all you give, then I’m going to give all I got. This is my life. I want some love in it.”

  She rolled along in the wagon, pushing steadily. “Now, I got my own dream. Time going by. I’m getting old and I’m …” She laughed out loud, “I’m still a virgin. A virgin! I ain’t even got no memories to hold in my heart at night. I ain’t got nothin! I don’t know nothin bout life. I don’t care nothing bout what tomorrow brings! I’m in this here game of life and I want to play!”

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nbsp; She passed people on the road but paid no attention to them. They looked after her, the woman-child, talking to herself. Some of them smiling, some frowning, thinking she was going crazy maybe. She gave them no thought, just passed them by.

  She kept talking to herself, “I want what’s mine. It must be mine or why do I keep thinking bout that man? Nothin I do can make it no worser.” She pushed and prodded her way to Creed’s house. When she got there, she stopped at the door and sat looking at it for long moments, her good sense catching up with her liquor. “Will I embarrass myself? Will he be away … or be with some other woman?” Lovey threw that out of her mind, but, “How will he be? We was close for a minute once. He’s lonely. I know how that feels. I’m goin in.”

  She crept out of the wagon onto the large porch. She walked on her knees to the door and pushed it open. She stood there a minute. Finally, saying a wary, “Creed? Mr. Creed? Lincoln?” She heard no answer, so she went in further. She moved softly and slowly through the house. It was a nice house, very nice and clean, even with no women there. She looked in two of the rooms, … nothing. Then … in the third room … was Lincoln. His face to the wall. A bottle of bourbon, hardly used, and a turned-over glass on the table beside the bed. She moved in so close she could see him breathing, smell his breath. Then, even closer. Said, “Lincoln, I’m here. Your woman, Lovey is here.” He didn’t answer, but she knew he was awake.

  Lincoln had been lying in bed thinking of how much he wanted to be loved, thinking that he never would be loved now.

  Lovey leaned closer over and against him, she felt the heat of his body. She knew her breath smelled clean so she spoke right into his ear, her head near his face. “I want to be your woman, Lincoln. I want to be loved by you. I have waited and waited and waited. For you. I want me somebody. Ain’t no use of you thinkin of my legs, I don’t need em. I am a full one hundred percent woman. I know it. Cause I know what’s in my heart wouldn’t be there if I couldn’t use it.” She leaned even closer and was silent a long moment, feeling the beat of her heart, feeling the heat and life of his body.

  “I’m so happy to be just this much near to you, Lincoln.” She sighed. “I’m here.” She lay her head on the back of his shoulder and sighed again. Lincoln’s heart heard the sighs, his shoulder felt the warmth, but he thought of Lovey as a child.

  She spoke more, “I rode all the way over here in that wagon you made me so I could come to you.” She sighed one of those low-down hurting sighs. His heart felt for her. “My love is so big for you, you got to feel it. When you look at me or I think of you touchin me, I hear music I ain’t never heard before, way off in the night and deep inside me all at the same time. You make my nerves hurt.”

  She raised herself up on the bed, sitting and leaning over him. “I am hungry for you. Satisfy my hungriness.” She was taking off her clothes, he knew it, but he did not stop her. She talked as she removed each piece.

  “I can’t handle my love for you anymore. I know girls ain’t sposed to do things like speak up to a man, but, I can’t help myself. You are everything to me, Lincoln. I can’t hold up in this world if you don’t hold me in your arms.” Her clothes were all off now, except a little silk slip. (She had worn those types of clothes easy to remove.) When she gently pulled on his shoulder, he turned his body a little toward her, but he turned his face all the way to look at her. She smiled a sad, serious, little smile. Lovey had not been lying to him. She loved her some Lincoln. He felt her breath on his face as she spoke softly, “You got to feel it! You got to feel my love I been carrying for you all these years. My love is like a fire. It is burning me up.” She helped him turn his body around to her, she caressed his face with her little, gentle, tender hand. She gently moved herself down and almost under him and pulled him even closer to her.

  Lincoln pulled gently away. “Lovey, you don’t understand. I am not all man anymore. I have lost a leg, my body is not a full man. I only have one leg.” His voice broke as if he would sob. Lovey moved further under him and wrapped her arms around him. She was strong. She kissed his lips, softly, her first kiss in her life of twenty-three years. “I love you, Lincoln. What I care bout a leg? I don’t have any. I don’t need em for the most important things. And you …? They might’a took one of your legs, but they didn’t take the best one.”

  Lincoln buried his head in her full, soft breasts. She closed her eyes and barely breathed. She wrapped her thighs around him, cupping his body. Their breaths mingled, the heat of their bodies met. They lay that way for a long time, Lovey kissing any of his skin near her lips. Then Lincoln slowly raised himself up and kissed her very tenderly. “Little Lovey.” Lovey whispered against his lips, “I’m a woman now … and I’ve always been your woman.” He raised himself to look down at her and then, slowly, moved his body to accommodate hers, and this time, when he slowly lowered his body down, he buried himself in her body. He raised up once more to look down into her face when he discovered she was a virgin. He thought, “She has brought this precious gift to me.” Then he slowly began to make love to Lovey. A long, tender, loving time. She cried, not from the pain, though it hurt. She cried from joy. During their lovemaking, he proved he was her man and she proved she was his woman. It was more than an orgasm of the body, it was an orgasm of the minds. He made love to her soul. They were both satisfied. Mentally, physically and spiritually.

  Later, much later, under the starry sky of early morning, when he was walking her home, him limping on a crutch, her in the wagon, he laughed softly. “What?” asked Lovey, looking up to him with eyes as full of stars as the sky. He smiled down at her. “I am going to have to get a wooden leg so I can walk with you, and I am going to have to fix it so I can pull your wagon with you beside me.”

  Lovey’s heart opened up and the sweetest feelings spread out through her body. She had been wondering if she had gone too far with him and if he would ever see her again. You know, the usual things. Now she knew he planned to see her, let her in his life. But he had been wondering if he had really pleased her, if she would still love him. They were silent until they reached her door. Lovey hadn’t planned to ask, but it just came out of her mouth when it was time to let him go. To be alone again. “What are we goin to do, Lincoln?”

  “Well, Lovey, you have always been in part of my mind. I never imagined it would be like this, together. You were a child to me. And being like you … are, I might never have attempted to get to know your mind … and heart better. But now I have. And what have legs got to do with how you feel? You have many things to love, Lovey. And I have learned, when your mind tells you something and your body agrees, you better go with it!” They laughed together. Both of them happy.

  A week later, when Lincoln left to go back to his job at Phillip’s mansion, Lovey went with him, as his wife. Pap, the old dog, was taken, too. Lovey was almost speaking Chinese she was so happy. They were both happy. Satisfied with life.

  hosanna saw their happiness. She knew Lovey had been a virgin for Lincoln. “I have two legs and I am still lonely and unloved. Billy Bow is going to have to go. I can’t take anymore of his kind of life. I’m NOT going to take it! I deserve better and it’s up to me to carry myself like I believe it!” So she decided to leave Bowlegs alone and told him. He didn’t believe her so he didn’t even worry. He told his friends, “I love her, I’m gonna get to her someday. Get married and all that stuff.” And like the grasshopper, he kept laughing and playing his life away. He either thought he was satisfied or he thought satisfaction and opportunity would wait for him to make up his mind.

  chapter

  44

  now … Luke and Richlene had a pleasent kind of love and life. It was slow, easygoing and, for the most part, satisfying. Their lovemaking was gentle and complete. But Luke had done all the building, was keeping up the vegetable and flower gardens, yet was still growing restless. He was a man used to working and did not like just doing nothing. He was young.

  One day while Luke and Richlene were workin
g in the flower garden, he said to her, “Richlene … I’m going to find me a job. I want a job. I think I got a few plans I want to do.”

  Richlene smiled indulgently, “Luke you … don’t have to … work. I have … more than enough … for us.”

  Luke stopped digging and looked at her. “Richlene, you ever think of the fact that if I die first, you’ll be alright cause your family can take care of you and you got money.”

  “I never … think of … that … but, it’s … true.”

  Luke knelt close to her. “Well, if you die first, I’ll have to start out all over again, and I maybe might be a old man cause I hope you live a long time.”

  Richlene was silent, thinking.

  Luke continued as he placed a hand on her arm, “I want me somethin of my own. A business, a store, grocery or somethin. If I go to work, I can get me a piece of land and build me a store.”

  Richlene looked at his earnest face and laughed, “I’ll … buy you … a store!”

  Luke hugged her shoulder. “I reckon I betta do it all myself. Cause some people think it’s your money I love.”

  “But … you never … ask me … for anything for … yourself.”

  “We know that, but everybody else don’t.”

  Satan almost smiled, but it wasn’t important enough.

  So Luke found little jobs on both sides of the river and began saving his money. When he had enough to purchase a couple of acres of land across from his old home near the river, he did. He did not know that Richlene had bargained with the owner and paid most of the money while Luke was given a sale price much lower than it would have been. He thought it was just good luck.