Dark River Road

by Virginia Brown

  “Chantry,” she moaned when he finally pulled back, and he had to remind himself that this was Cinda and he couldn’t do what his body wanted. What he wanted.

  She had her arms around his neck, holding on, and he tried to focus on something else for a minute until he could think right. It wasn’t easy. Her breasts pressed against him, round and firm beneath the white silk blouse she wore, and her short pink skirt had hiked up to nearly her waist while they were kissing. All that bare skin provided a dangerous distraction, and he looked away.

  “God, Cinda, you gotta stop,” he muttered when she undid two of the buttons on his shirt and slipped her hand inside. “If you don’t—”

  “If I don’t, what?” she whispered when he didn’t finish, and slid her hand lower across his chest and down to let her fingers graze his bare belly. His muscles contracted. He went to grab her hand and got her breast instead, silk-covered, the nipple tight against his palm. Rational thought went out the door.

  He hadn’t meant to, but before he knew it he had her blouse undone, her bra unsnapped, and his mouth on her soft white skin. It was crazy and dangerous and stupid, but it all seemed right somehow, too. All his good intentions evaporated. All he could think was that this was Cinda and he’d wanted to be with her forever, and now she was here with him, kissing him and rubbing him, and making those whimpering little noises in the back of her throat that girls made when they got all excited. It may be cool outside, but here in the gazebo on the cushions, heat rose up so high and hot they got rid of most of their clothes and never felt a chill.

  Cinda wore just her panties, those thin bikini things made of white lace, and while he kept his pants on because he knew if he took them off it’d be too late, they were unzipped and partly down. He lay on top of her, his knee between her thighs, his hand sliding beneath the edge of her panties to touch her. He couldn’t stand much more. He had to stop. It just felt so good, her hand on him, stroking him, and her all soft and damp and hot against his fingers.

  “Please,” she moaned against his mouth when he took his hand away, “please, Chantry . . .”

  “I can’t.” He didn’t know how he got that much out. The breath was so tight in his lungs he could hardly breathe. “We can’t.”

  “I want to.” She arched up into him, hips pushing hard against him until he thought he’d explode. He tried to think but all he could do was feel, her hand searching and finding him again, fingers tightening. Finally he grabbed her wrist and held it still.

  “Have you . . .Cinda, have you ever done it before?” It was the craziest thing. He wanted her to say yes, and at the same time he wanted her to say no.

  “You mean go all the way?”

  He felt stupid for even asking. It wasn’t any of his business, but on the other hand, maybe it was. “Yeah.”

  “No. I want you to be my first.”

  He was disappointed and elated at the same time. She’d waited. He should feel really good about that, but all he could feel at the moment was the driving urgency of his body to finish what had been started. He’d have to get this under control fast if he wanted to do the right thing. And with Cinda, it had to be right.

  He kissed her, but not like before. This time he just held her face between his hands and kissed the corners of her mouth, then lightly on the lips before he let go.

  “If you want me to be your first, we have to do it right. Not like this. Not out here where just anybody might come up and find us.”

  “I locked the screen door.”

  “That should slow ’em down for about five seconds. Not tonight. Not here.”

  She sat up, and in the candle light he saw the incredulous expression on her face followed by something else. Disappointment? Anger?

  “You’re turning me down?”

  “Not because I want to. Believe me. I’ve wanted to be with you like this for longer than you know. I just . . .I don’t have any protection with me. And I don’t want your first time to be out here. Okay?”

  “So, if we were in the back seat of Cathy Chandler’s car, that’d be okay?”

  He looked away. Past sins were catching up pretty fast. He’d known she had to hear about it, but now he wished she hadn’t. When he didn’t say anything, she grabbed for her blouse.

  “Dammit, Chantry, I never thought you’d be such a jerk.”

  “I care too much about you to do things wrong again,” he said without looking at her, and heard the silk of her blouse swish as she pulled it on.

  After a minute she said, “This is embarrassing.”

  He looked at her. “Don’t be embarrassed. You haven’t done anything wrong. It’s me. I’ve made a lot of mistakes. I don’t want you to be on that list again.”

  He’d thought he’d ruined it all, but to his surprise she smiled at him. Leaning forward, she put her hands up to his face and held him between her palms, then kissed him very lightly and with such sweetness he thought he’d never be able to move.

  “I’ve never,” she whispered, “met anyone like you.”

  “Is that good?”

  “Oh yes. That’s the best.”

  Some of the awkwardness eased, and by the time they got dressed and blew out the candle they were laughing. Cinda’s hair had come down into a tangle, and she’d lost the glittery thing that held it up. Her makeup was smeared, and he did his best to help repair it with his shirttail.

  “How’s that?” she asked finally, and he looked at her and shook his head.

  “You still look like a raccoon. What the hell is that stuff you girls wear?”

  “Mascara and eye shadow, and don’t complain. We do it for boys. Well, if anyone says anything, you can just give them one of your dangerous looks and they’ll shut up. Come on.”

  He wasn’t at all sure about the “dangerous look” part, but didn’t want anyone saying anything bad to or about her, either. He shook his head.

  “Look, why don’t you go back to the house by yourself and put some more of that goop on your face. That way, no one will know we were out here together. You know what I mean.”

  She smiled, dimples cutting deep on each side of her mouth. “Find me inside.”

  He watched her walk back across the yard, short skirt swinging against her bare legs, and thought he must have lost his mind completely. Only an idiot would have stopped like he had.

  He stood with his hands shoved deep in his pockets, wondering if he’d screwed up, when a voice behind jerked him around.

  “So, you finally got her, huh.” Chris Quinton stood in the shadows, hair a pale blur barely visible in the light that came from the house. He took a few steps forward, then stopped. “Don’t worry about me saying anything. You’ve kept my secret, I’ll keep yours.”

  Chantry’s mouth went flat. “Nothing happened.”

  “Right. That’s why Cinda looks like she’s been mud-wrestling. Like I said, I won’t tell.”

  He thought about what Rainey had said about Chris’s grandfather, how he sat like a toad waiting for careless flies to happen by. Chris was a chip off the old man’s pecker, it looked like, collecting his own set of secrets.

  “We didn’t do anything but mess around a little.”

  “Yeah, I’ve heard how you mess around a little.” Chris shrugged. “Just be careful. If she gets knocked up, you’ll be turtle food. Granddad gets serious about things like family honor. Trust me on that. I should know.”

  Chris turned around and walked off before he could think of anything to say, and Chantry blew out a heavy breath. This could get really out of control. He didn’t trust Chris Quinton for one minute. Not with anyone else’s secrets.

  He slept late the next morning. When he woke, Mama and Mikey had gone to church and he was alone in the bedroom except for Shadow. The dog laid his head on the edge of the bed to stare at him with those light, clear eyes, intense and conveying the message that he wanted to go outside. He got up and put on his pants, and went barefoot through the kitchen to open the door. It was a pretty day,
warm already, sunshine lying on the fields already tilled and planted.

  Mama had given up trying to get him back to church after she had a conversation with Reverend Hale. He could only imagine how that had gone, but the result satisfied him. No more counseling, no more Hale-fire. Mama had seemed perplexed, but said that God worked in mysterious ways. It was certainly true in this case.

  Shadow sniffed around the yard, then lifted his head, staring off into the distance at some unseen prey. He had his head up to catch the wind and scent, his body going rigid. Then he let out a deep bay and took off on three legs with his hurt leg held up, moving faster than Chantry had ever thought possible. Startled, he took off after him, bare feet churning through freshly-plowed furrows, trying to whistle the dog back before he got too far.

  But Shadow had the scent now, and nothing would deter him. He cleared the field and the road, flew past Dempsey’s house and down the field road that led into the woods and all the way to the river. If he got that far, Chantry may never catch him, not in bare feet. He hollered for him again.

  His shouts brought Dempsey out of the house, and he stood on his front porch watching as they ran past, Shadow way ahead and Chantry trying to keep up on the side of the road where the gravel didn’t reach. Dempsey added his shouts, but it sounded more like he was cheering them on than trying to stop the dog.

  Chantry cussed under his breath. He’d stopped expecting anything from Shadow. That was obviously a mistake. Now the dog did what he wanted. Okay, once he got him back, training would resume.

  It took nearly an hour. Shadow had treed the big yellow tomcat that Tansy had adopted, and it hunched on a tree branch watching the dog below with an air of bored indifference.

  “A cat?” Chantry muttered, grabbing Shadow’s collar. His feet were cut, he was winded, and mud splattered his Levi’s. “I’m not impressed. Maybe it’s time to put you back to work.”

  Shadow’s tongue hung out one side of his open jaws and his eyes gleamed. He didn’t seem at all abashed. But the chase had taken all his energy, and he flopped down on the ground and didn’t seem inclined to move at all. Chantry stared down at him. Carrying an eighty pound dog back to the house held no allure. He squatted beside him, stroked a soft floppy ear, and weighed his options.

  Finally, because he’d be out there all day if he didn’t, he ended up hefting Shadow up in his arms and trudging back home. Dempsey still sat out on his porch, and when he saw them, he laughed.

  “Mornin’ to you, Chantry. Taken up runnin’?”

  “Not by choice.”

  “Maybe that dog’s tryin’ to tell you somethin’.”

  “Yeah, looks like.” Chantry kept going, and when he got to the house he took the water hose first to Shadow, then to his feet. He put Shadow in the pen, where the dog settled quite happily in front of the dog house, and went into the house.

  Rainey sat at the kitchen table, a cup of coffee in one hand. It was the first time he’d been alone with him since Beau and Rafe were arrested, and Chantry skirted the table and headed for the hallway. If Rainey was up this early, he wouldn’t be in a good mood.

  “You gonna leave this damn mess on the floor?” Rainey snarled.

  Chantry kept going. “I’ll come back and clean it up in a minute.”

  “Hell no, you won’t. Get back here and clean it up now.”

  He came to a halt, tension thumping in his belly. Not now. He didn’t want a confrontation now, not when he was still winded from lugging eighty pounds of Catahoula well over a mile. He turned to look at Rainey, mouth tight.

  “Fine. But my feet are muddy. I’ll just get the floor dirty again if I try to clean it now.”

  Rainey stood up. His shirt was open over his bare chest, his pants unbuttoned, a couple of days beard darkened his jaw. Hell looked out from his eyes.

  “Always got a smart mouth, gotta argue with me ev’ry time I tell you to do somethin’. It ain’t changed since the first day I seen you.”

  He didn’t remember that, but he didn’t doubt it either. It’d probably been hate at first sight on both their sides. He’d resent anyone who tried to take away his mama, and Rainey resented the constant reminder of Chantry’s father. He must have known he could never measure up, just like he’d said. Remembering that made it a little easier. He sucked in a deep breath and swallowed his pride.

  “Yessir. I’ll clean it now.”

  He got a bucket and a mop, squirted some cleaning stuff in water, and set to work on the floor. Like he’d told Rainey, he left his own muddy prints on it even when he backed toward the hallway. Finally, he managed to get the mud up without leaving more, and stood in the doorway looking in at Rainey, who’d sat back down and hadn’t moved from his chair at the kitchen table the entire time.

  “Is that better?”

  Rainey’s eyes narrowed. Then he stuck out his foot and kicked over the bucket so that dirty water ran all over the cleaned floor. “Naw, that ain’t better. Get it clean this time.”

  He looked down at the mess. “No. You want it clean, you do it.”

  Rainey stood back up. “Oh, you’ll do it, boy. Or I’ll wipe the floor with your ass.”

  It was obvious he wanted a fight. With Mama gone, he figured he’d have free rein. And he would if Chantry let him. In the space of a few seconds he thought about how much he hated him, then about how close they were to getting away. Mama intended to leave Rainey, he just knew she did. If he could only keep his temper, it wouldn’t make things worse. He clamped his mouth shut and set to work again with the mop and a clean bucket of water.

  He was sweating when he got through despite the cool air coming in through the screened door. Rainey looked smug, watching him while he drank another cup of coffee. Like he’d won at last. Like he’d got Chantry where he wanted him. He told himself that it didn’t matter. It was just Rainey, and what he thought didn’t count anyway.

  “Miss that little yellow gal much? Bet you do,” Rainey said softly as Chantry lifted the bucket of dirty water to dump it outside. “Used to meet her all the time over at the Hamburger Shack, didn’t ya? Yeah, it got back. Heard it down at the Tap Room, how she’s meetin’ up with some skinny white boy all the time. Knew it was you. Thought you was so smart goin’ all the way over to the county line to meet your little nigger gal, but you wasn’t so smart after all.”

  Chantry looked up at him. “Don’t ever use that word again. Never.”

  “What word—oh, you mean that word? You don’t like me calling her a nig—”

  Chantry hit him with the wet end of the mop, slapping it across his face, too mad to think about anything but how much he hated him and how much he hated that word. It wasn’t just the word but the history of it, what it meant to thousands of people who’d lived and died before he was ever born, and what it meant to those he knew. It was a hateful word meant to hurt, just as powerful as a bullet sometimes. Wars had started with words like that one, and war started with it now.

  They fought like two dogs, no holds barred, each set on tearing the other one apart. Rage lent him a reserve of strength, and hatred made Rainey bent on destruction, too. Neither of them would have quit until the other was down or dead or both.

  Chantry never knew quite how it happened, but suddenly Mama was there, flinging open the screened door and grabbing for him, her voice raised like he’d never heard it before as she demanded that they stop this instant. He hesitated, let her push him aside, saw her turn to Rainey. It was over so quick, the floor slick, Rainey shouting and giving Mama a hard shove that sent her flying backward, and then she just lay there on the kitchen floor so still, not moving at all, while Mikey watched from the door with eyes wide and mouth hanging open.

  Then he looked up at Rainey and Chantry, who stood immobile, frozen in shock, and his voice was clear as doom as he said, “Papa, God’s gonna burn you in hell for that.”

  CHAPTER 19

  Ugly green tiles covered the hospital walls. Chantry stared at them, ignoring the efforts of nurse
s or visitors to convince him to put on a shirt or even talk to him. After a little while, no one tried anymore, just left him alone. Mrs. Rowan had come to get Mikey finally, and took him home with her. Dempsey sat on one side of Chantry, and across the waiting room, Rainey stood staring out the window at the parking lot.

  The police had just left. Chantry had heard Rainey say Mama slipped on the wet floor and hit her head, that it was an accident, but that wasn’t the truth. He knew it. And he knew Rainey knew better, too. It’d been no accident. He’d shoved her, hard, shouting something at her when he did, but for some reason Chantry couldn’t remember what right now. All he could remember was Mama lying so still, blood seeping out onto the newly cleaned floor, spreading beneath her in a dark red pool. He couldn’t believe all the blood.

  One of the medics had mentioned the sharp corner of the stove. They’d gotten there pretty quick, but wouldn’t let Chantry ride to the hospital with Mama. He’d stood in the front yard just staring after the ambulance with Mikey huddled against him until Dempsey stopped his truck in front of the house and told them to get in. It’d been Dempsey who’d brought him to the hospital, who sat beside him now.

  As if he knew Chantry was watching him, Rainey turned away from the window to look at him, and there was something wild in his face, something like—fear. Chantry’s eyes narrowed. It hit him then that Rainey expected him to tell what he’d done. Maybe he would, if Mama didn’t. That’d end it all, that’d get Rainey out of their lives quick enough. All he had to do was tell the police that Rainey had shoved her hard, and they’d take it from there. They had laws about that.

  But he didn’t tell. Not yet. He’d give Mama first chance at it.