In Tall Cotton

by Charles G. Hulse

  I hung there limp, like a sack of flour over Roy’s shoulder, shuddering and trembling. He soothed me with his mouth and hands, gently stroking me back to consciousness and as consciousness came, a deep black self-knowledge came with it—a knowledge I closed my mind to but my body had already accepted.

  Roy eased me back on my feet and straightened me up as though stroking a piece of clay into a shape that would eventually stand balanced on its own. He was murmuring something I couldn’t understand, just sweet soothing noises of encouragement and reassurance. I still held onto his shoulders, my elbows locked, my head thrown back, gasping for air.

  “Sweet,” I thought I heard him whisper. “Sweet. You can come. Funny. I’d have thought you were a bit young …”

  “Huummm?” My head was still back.

  “Was it the first time?” I forced myself to look down at him. I was terrified at what I’d see. My body couldn’t have gone through that without us both changing. He looked the same. He hadn’t changed. Perhaps I was the only one who had but I didn’t want to see. I didn’t know how I’d changed, but I was sure it would show somehow. “For you to come?” he said, slowly moving the back of his hand across his lips.

  “I don’t know …” I was stunned that I could speak and that my voice sounded all right. Or at least recognizable. “Maybe one other time like that.”

  He was suddenly all business. “Well, that ought to fit where it’s supposed to go now.” He eased my pants up and with great care put me into them, easing them into place with one hand while holding the fly away from my body. “There. That’s where that goes. Put your shirttail in and let’s get all this locked away.” He patted and smoothed me until I felt I was going to get hard again. “Whoa, now, baby.” He looked up at me and laughed as he buttoned my fly from the bottom, meeting my hands coming down from the top. He squeezed my hands and patted my cock once more. “Locked away.” He looked up with a raised eyebrow, “Until next time?”

  I looked away from his as I buckled the stiff new leather belt and patted it against my stomach. “Am I OK? A proper cowboy?”

  “You got the makin’s …”

  Pure fake bronco-bustin’ bravado got me through the evening. Everybody made so much noise and such a fuss over me that I don’t think they noticed that I was in a state of shock, drowning in shame and guilt. If I’d done what Roy said—come—then my body had changed. And the change must show. Mom would be bound to notice it. Either she or Junior. I found myself sitting with my hands folded over my crotch, hiding it as though some strange essence might still be oozing from me.

  “All you need now, Totsy,” Aunt Dell bellowed, “is a pair a boots—like them of Roy’s—and you’d be a real cow-puncher.”

  And look really tacky, I thought. That’s what Ronnie would have said. “Hillbilly tacky. Cowboy tacky. Both the same.” I could hear his voice. If my body had changed something else had changed too. I suddenly looked down at the cowboy shirt with the smiling pockets that frowned from this angle and knew that it bordered on being tacky. Imitation anything was tacky. Boys got up to look like something they aren’t or ever will be was basically silly. Like those men who leaned against the Court House in Galena in railroad engineers caps when they’d probably never been on a train. Little girls done up in long dresses like their mothers, wearing lipstick before they wore bras, the boots and ten-gallon hats on men who drove convertibles and worked in offices, all fake and tacky. But how should I be dressed then, I wondered? Who was I? What was I? I was getting hair and I could come. OK. But where was I going?

  After dinner, I danced, showing off something awful, but I knew it was expected of me. Dad and Mom danced around the room with everybody saying how Woody was the best dancer any of them had ever seen. Sister did her famous Charleston and Roy took off his shirt, flexing his muscles and did his sixty-five—count ’em—pushups. The whisky bottle on the table in the kitchen where we all sat around had only a bit left in the bottom and everybody’s eyes were glittering except Mom’s. Hers were clouded with concern.

  “We’d better get back, Woody. We’re not in our own car.” It wasn’t nagging, just a statement of fact.

  Dad’s eyes flashed dangerously and his voice was unnaturally hard, but low. “I think I got a pretty good idea of what kind of car I’m drivin’, Milly.” He reached for the bottle and drained it into his glass.

  Junior headed for the door with me on his heels. “Where are you goin’?” Dad called with the same edge in his voice.

  “Pee,” Junior said without turning around.

  I followed him to the back hedge where it was the darkest. We peed in silence. My cock felt different in my hand—bigger and slightly bruised. There was a strange stinging sensation. Maybe from rubbing against the rough Levi material. The buttons were difficult to close.

  “They take time to loosen up,” Junior said, noticing my efforts to close my fly.

  “Yeah. How do you like my shirt?”

  “It’s nice.”

  “You don’t think the pockets are kinda’ tack …” For some reason using Ronnie’s word seemed like a confession of sorts. Why was Ronnie on my mind this evening? Because of what he and Roy had done? I guessed that must be it. But had Roy done it to Junior too when he showed him how to wear his Levis? “… kinda’ silly?”

  “You put some pencils in them and they’ll be smiling with teeth.”

  It was so dark I couldn’t see his face, but I knew his brown eyes were sparkling with mischief. I punched him on the shoulder. “Come on. Be serious. Tell me for sure.”

  “It’s fine. It’s very nice. Really.”

  I tried to believe him. “Did … ah …” I wasn’t sure I could bring up the subject. Then I blurted it out. “Did Roy … Uncle Roy show you how to wear Levis?”

  “Tried to.”

  “What do you mean ‘tried’?”

  “Said I had to wear them without underwear.”

  “Well, what did you do?” I tried to keep my voice calm and low, but sometimes getting something out of Junior was like squeezing a stone.

  “I just said I couldn’t.”

  “Why?” My voice was getting out of control.

  “Why?” He took my elbow and headed us back to the house. “To keep my underpants on.”

  “I meant,” I said carefully, “why couldn’t you. What did you mean when you said you couldn’t? Couldn’t take off your underpants, I mean.”

  “Oh. I said I had a heat rash down there and the new pants would irritate it.”

  “Well?” I stopped in exasperation. “Did you?”

  “Did I what?”

  “You know you’re going to drive me crazy one day, don’t you? You know that?” My voice sounded not unlike Dad’s a few minutes ago. I took a deep breath. “Did … you … have … a … rash, for Lord’s sake?”

  He walked straight on toward the back door. “Of course not,” he said.

  Then why me, I kept wondering as I tossed and turned in our bed that night while Junior breathed deeply and evenly next to me. Sleeping the sleep of the innocent? What was there about me that allowed things like that to happen? First Ronnie and now Un … no, just Roy. The word “uncle” was a lie to begin with and now I simply choked on it when I thought of what he’d done. My hands slid down between my legs. I was hard. Junior’s hands were both on top of the covers.

  Chapter Nine

  IT ISN’T HOARDING,” Captain J explained rather defensively as we carried the endless cartons of canned goods up from the basement-storeroom. “It’s just part of my eccentricity.” His eyes shone. “Oh, I admit it. I’m an eccentric. But of the best possible sort. I’m just thinking ahead. I was in the last war and I know what can happen. That crazy little shit in Germany. Hitler or Hate1er, well, you just mark my words. He’s going to raise one large amount of hell.”

  His wheeled bed had recently been rigged out with a little chrome arm that swung out from the side of the metal frame with a ring to hold his glass. He was seldom without the
bourbon and water now. His nervous energy spawned project after project. He’d recently come up with a new method of fertilizing. A truck load of manure was dumped at the north gate and Dad simply shovelled it into the main irrigation ditch and the water would carry the floating fertilizer all through the property and all Dad had to do was lift it back out of the water when he wanted to spread it around. It was a brilliant time-saver—no hauling with wheel-barrows—and Captain J was fascinated by his innovation and ordered more and more horseshit.

  Now the project was repainting the basement with a new product he’d ordered—a rubber-based paint that was designed for swimming pools that would be just the thing to keep the underground room dry and clean. Junior and I, free from school for Easter, were to be the painters along with Brad. The basement could double as a bomb shelter, the captain said. “The next war will be fought in the sky. You wait and see. And you won’t have to wait long. They’ll bomb the bee-Jesus out of everybody. Why anybody would bother to bomb Phoenix, I have no idea, but better safe than sorry.”

  There were strict rules about using the spray gun and working with the new paint. It was highly toxic and none of us was supposed to work down in the airless room for more than fifteen minutes and then only with an elaborate mask. There was a delicate filter in the mask that had to be changed after every hour’s use. Bradford had been checked out on all the rules as we all were and was the first down in the cellar. He was back up in less than ten minutes complaining that it burned his eyes.

  “I can breathe OK,” he said, “but my eyes water so, I can hardly see.”

  “Is the filter properly seated?” the captain asked. He checked it carefully. “Seems all right. How about you, Woody-Two, are you feeling up to it?”

  “Sure.” Junior fitted on the mask and went down the stairs. I had to call him when his fifteen minutes was up. “It works fine. Boy, does it ever go fast. I got one wall almost done. The underneath part of the shelves is a bit difficult to see in the mask, but I just lay down on my back and shot the spray up at them. Great fun!”

  The mask gave me claus … close … Well, that feeling you get when you’re in tight places like under the floorboards of a house and you can’t move front or back and you get the knotted feeling in the stomach of … I guess it’s fear. Anyway the mask gave me that feeling but I wasn’t going to let anybody know it. My fifteen minutes seemed endless. They were. They turned out to be over thirty. I finally staggered up feeling quite peculiar—light-headed and not so much dizzy as uncertain on my feet. I had difficulty getting out of the mask because my hands and arms didn’t take orders very well. I almost fell over as I ripped the thing off my face. My balance was all off. I blinked to focus my eyes which brought Junior into view.

  “It’s almost time for my turn … Hey, Tots, what’s the matter with you. You look funny.” He grabbed me and seated me on a carton of wine. “You all right? You looked like you were going to faint.”

  “Faint…” I couldn’t hear my own voice. The thought of fainting seemed nice.

  “Where’s Brad?” He picked up the mask. “Have you been down there all this time?” He was shaking me as though he were trying to wake me up—like he did sometimes in the morning—but I wasn’t asleep, just floating. “Tots!” He was screaming and shaking me. “BRADFORD! Where are you? MOM. MOOOOOMMMM.”

  “What’s the matter?” Dad’s voice called. I could vaguely see him pushing the bed with the captain on it.

  “It’s Totsy,” Junior called. “I think he’s poisoned by the paint.”

  Everybody arrived at the same time. Brad sauntering lazily from inside the house. Captain J gave orders for somebody to bring the oxygen tank he kept for his coughing fits. Mom dashed into the house and was back lugging the cylinder in a flash. Another mask for the pure oxygen was fitted over my face and I was ordered to breathe deeply and evenly. “Just keep taking it all down. As far down as you can, Carlton,” Captain J said quietly. “In, waaay in. Now let it out slowly. That’s it.”

  I was stretched out on my back on the porch floor feeling perfectly all right. I sat up, looking dazed, Junior said later and he added that if I’d dared say, “Where am I?” he’d have slapped me. He was that scared.

  He was nearly as scared as Bradford was when his father went at him. He called him every name in the book—many I didn’t know. “… stupid little son-of-a-bitch,” the captain screamed. “Do you understand what could have happened? Oh, Jesus, if you ever understood anything, it’d be the surprise of my life.” He took a steadying breath of the oxygen himself. “That can cause brain damage, for one thing. Do you understand that? You ought to, you’re one of the most severely brain-damaged people I’ve ever known. Or you could have killed the poor kid.” Bradford stood, looking as dazed as I had earlier, not seeming to hear his father’s tirade. “You’re eighteen years old, for Christ’s sake. When are you going to act like it? You practically kill this ten-year-old kid …”

  “Eleven,” I corrected.

  “Well, you’ll be lucky to see twelve if you have anything more to do with this silly shit.”

  Dad often thought the captain was a bit rough on Bradford and tried to ease it off now, “Well, Tots seems OK now. It was just an accident. He’ll be all right.”

  “I gave you firm instructions. Nobody was to be down there more than fifteen minutes. You send this kid down there and just … just disappear. Where’d you go, for Christ’s sake? Wanking off, again. If you’d learn to keep your hands off your cock …”

  Bradford suddenly bolted. In one movement he had his father by the throat, screaming at the top of his lungs, “I’ll kill you, you son-of-a-bitch! I’ll kill what’s left of you. You deserve to die. You’re more dead than alive any …” Dad was on him from behind and had his arms locked behind him but he was kicking out at the bed and its occupant and still screaming hysterically. Junior moved in quickly to pull the bed out of range and help the captain get back straight on his pillow. He was choking and I grabbed the oxygen mask and put it over his nose and mouth and turned on the cylinder—reversing our recent roles, telling him to breathe deeply.

  Mrs. Jones appeared at the door leading into the living room, looking calm and unruffled. “Let him go, Woody. He’s all right now.” Everybody was still. All I could hear was breathing, all of it heavy. Dad slowly released Bradford and took a cautious step back but still looking ready to spring. Nobody moved. We seemed frozen to our spots all looking toward Mrs. Jones. She put both her hands out toward Bradford, “Come, my darling. Come here.” There was a long moment before he dropped his head and dragged his feet toward his mother’s waiting arms. She held him to her breast for a moment, patting him soothingly on the back and then led him quietly into the house.

  We all stood silently, not looking at each other—not knowing where to look I guess—when Captain J spoke so quietly that I wasn’t certain that I’d heard correctly.

  “He’s mad, you know,” and we turned toward him. He was looking down into his empty glass. He sighed heavily and lifted the glass to Mom. “Miz Milly … dear Miz Milly would you please do the honors?”

  The incident was treated as a trifling—nothing more than a loss of temper, a momentary lapse of control. Just a silly family quarrel. Of course, the fact that I might actually have suffered brain damage was referred to frequently when I misbehaved or did something stupid.

  I didn’t need an over-exposure to a toxic paint to behave stupidly. I’d been doing that unaided for months. I’d fallen helplessly in love with Queen Isabella. Well, she was Queen Isabella in a sketch I wrote, directed and starred in as Columbus in a Thanksgiving School Program. I had chosen her—Rosalind Rawlings—as the queen because she was the prettiest and the smartest girl in the fifth grade and judging from the palatial house I passed every morning on my new route to school to avoid the Mexican Marauders, rich. Just which of these sterling qualities carried the most weight in my abject fawning devotion to her is difficult to say. Combined, they made me reel. I have to
admit that when I put the girl and the Southern Mansion type house together, my adoration knew no bounds. I was besotted by this elegant little figure—not the cutesy Shirley Temple idol type of the time, but a slick pint-sized Katharine Hepburn—and made a complete ass of myself at every opportunity. I was a puppy dog, a panting, slathering slave to this haughty beauty who behaved in life as though she really were Queen Isabella. I was her knave and I prayed that nobody in the family—Junior, particularly—saw me in this embarrassing role of fool and toady. I was so far gone that I was hanging around Rosalind at school, on the way home from school, outside her house on the way to school. That is, until I learned that she was leaving home early. It never occurred to me that she was doing so to avoid me. I suppose what kept me going in the face of mountainous odds was the unconfirmed—not to mention shaky—conviction that I was basically irresistible.

  God knows there were plenty of rivals. She was as popular at school as her beauty warranted. She made no bones about who my main rival was and there was nothing I could do to eliminate him short of poisoning his hay. Stormy, her pony, was the love of her life.

  The Rawlings’s property touched the Joneses’ only at the southeasterly corner. Both lots were the same size, but were of different worlds. Instead of filling their three acres with greenhouses and irrigations ditches, they opted for a miniature Kentucky blue-grass stud farm—a manicured green oasis smack in the middle of the Arizona desert. Through the white-washed fences and under the legs of stunning horses, the line of stables and riding ring could be seen through trees and lawns filling what area was left over from the superb house. There was even a large bronze statue of a handsome stallion bolted to the top of their mailbox that matched the one on the radiator of Mr. Rawlings’s Packard. Horses reigned supreme in Queen Isabella’s realm. Even their discarded shoes were worshiped and were tacked or hung precariously over doors, gates, entrances and exits of all kinds causing me to flinch instinctively, half expecting a sharp metallic rap on the head from a falling “good-luck” token.