In Tall Cotton

by Charles G. Hulse

  “Tots,” Dad called again roughly. “Get your ass over here and go get us some mix. We run out of 7-Up and ginger ale.” He was scrabbling around in his pockets and brought out a wadded dollar bill which he tossed onto the table. “There’s that little store Junior went in, remember. Just down there around that corner.”

  “Oh, Tots, if you’re going out …” Mom turned away from me. “Dell, where’s a drug store? I want to get some more aspirin for Junior. Is there one close by? He’s getting that awful headache again.”

  Uncle Roy was on his feet gathering up the empty bottles in his arms. “Come on, Tots. I’ll take you.” I glanced around the room frantically. I hadn’t been alone with him since the lecture on the care and feeding of Levis. Didn’t anybody know that I didn’t want to go anywhere with him? Junior would’ve got my message and come with us. “That little store, Woody, won’t be open now. Tots don’t know the way. I’ll show him where the drug store is, Milly.”

  “Oh, thank you, Roy.”

  “Here, Tots, get your finger outta your butt … take some of them bottles there and help Roy.” Dad’s head of steam was more apparent than anybody else’s. I glanced toward Sister for help, but she just flashed her magnificent smile encouragingly leaving me to fill my arms with bottles and follow Roy out the back door.

  Backing the car down the sloping drive took all Roy’s concentration and once out onto the street in front of the house, he turned in the opposite direction we’d come on arrival. I had the feeling that the town was back in the other direction. I scooted over near the door and sat forward on the seat, peering out with exaggerated interest at the passing houses.

  “They’s a little store down here, just on the outskirts that’s open pert’ near all the time,” Roy said in his even voice.

  “Oh. I thought town was back the other way.”

  “Yep. It is.” Within five or six blocks, the houses dwindled into vacant lots, the street lamps became farther and farther apart until there weren’t any. I glanced at Roy. “Just down here to the end—it’s a dead end—then we cut over to the right to Caliente Road going out of town in the other way than you all come in on.” He came to the dead end and turned left, pulled over to the dark curb and stopped the car. He sat back and sighed and looked at me with a slight grin. “Well, have you?”

  My heart was pounding. “Have I what?”

  “Gone to root?” He saw the confused look on my face. “Here,” he said, putting his hand on my crotch. It was so sudden and unexpected that I could do nothing but bend over slightly to protect myself. “Relax,” he chuckled. “I just want to see if Dell was right. See how much your root has grown …”

  “Oh, I see. That’s what the joke …”

  “ ‘Go to root’ means when all your growth goes … well,” he squeezed the lump under his hand which was getting hard in spite of itself, “here. Like a turnip, say, that ain’t growing very much greens, but once the root is pulled out, well, you got the best part.” He was expertly unearthing my turnip. His left hand was still on the steering wheel, the fingers of his right hand worked faster than Grandma Idy’s when she was crocheting. In seconds I was exposed and he was feeling the length of it. I was still bent over glancing around to see if we were being watched. The streets were deserted. His hand eased up to the top of my cock and continued up my belly where it exerted pressure to ease me back in the seat. Not much pressure was needed, I was feeling faint in the way he’d made me feel the first time. Because there had been a first time apparently gave him free access to my body. I leaned back as I felt his left hand take over the task of undoing my belt and top button and then lifting out my balls as I raised my bottom to make it easier for him. As I pushed my hips forward, I heard a little groan of pleasure in his throat as he leaned over gently and took me in his mouth. I think I did faint. This hadn’t happened since Victor. My God, how long ago was that? But this mouth was expert. I hadn’t felt anything like it since … well, since Roy. The little noises of purring pleasure continued in his throat but not for long. I came with a shudder that started into my groin from my toes and I bit my fist to keep from shouting as his devouring mouth worked on me with experienced facility.

  I lay limp, drained and tingling deliciously and he slowly licked me clean and put me back into my shorts and trousers, murmuring like a child finishing off an ice-cream cone. “Yeah-up,” he whispered. “That’s been growin’ just about right.

  Uuuummm-mmuuummm. You are turnin’ into somethin’ …” he muttered under his breath.

  My hand was shaking as I handed Mom the aspirin after I’d almost dropped several bottles I’d carried into the kitchen from the car. “We had a little trouble finding an open drug store.”

  “Just never know in this town.” Roy was taking over again as host, opening bottles, offering drinks and pouring them. “They’s two or three drug stores, but they take turns stayin’ open after eight. Never know which one it’s goin’ to be.” He got the ice pick and hacked away at the block of ice in the top of the icebox. “Who needs more ice? Milly? What are you having?”

  Everything back to normal. Roy hadn’t sucked my cock in the car. I apparently hadn’t changed enough physically since this last knee-melting experience for anybody to take particular notice. My certainty that it showed all over me was just imagination fired by guilt. Why was there always so much guilt. I hadn’t done anything but have an orgasm. Just another biological function. The only problem was that I hadn’t precipitated it. That was the problem. God knows there’s enough guilt attached to a simple lonely hand-job but the guilt with Roy weighed on me too heavily. It was all out of proportion. After all, coming was coming, wasn’t it? No matter how? The truth was beginning to penetrate; the guilt was magnified in direct proportion to the amount of enjoyment I’d had. The guilt, consequently, was overwhelming.

  I’d known deep down from that first time with Ronnie that it was wrong. Wrong and sinful. As Junior said, unnatural and sick. Was considered wrong. By everybody. Particularly wrong for a man and a boy. And sin, as we all know, is always punished. Some how, sometime. Would I eventually be punished? If so how?

  A thought suddenly struck me that sent a shiver so powerful through me that my whole body reverberated like the taut wire twanged on a bow when an arrow has been shot: Had Ronnie been punished? By death? For sucking my cock? I glanced around at the members of the Woods’ Pow-wow with alarm. Had anybody noticed my shivering convulsive movement? I could have sworn the chair danced under me. There were some whose eyes were so bleary they wouldn’t have noticed any movement short of a cartwheel. Why was I so sure that Roy was so experienced at it? Just because he was so good at it? If he’d been doing this for—how old was he? forty-five? fifty?—several years, surely he’d have been punished some way or another by now. After all, he was a grown man, he knew what he was doing. Ronnie had been an accident. Ronnie and I together had been an accident. He’d said he was sorry. He apologized with all his heart. We were just two boys who love each other—loved each other—surely God didn’t think that was punishable. Even if He did, it wouldn’t, couldn’t deserve a death penalty.

  The conversation at the table ranged over all the well-known subjects. Grandpa’s marriage, Dell’s marriage, Mavis’ successful marriage to her successful lawyer who was handling a case this very minute for Sister. When questioned, Sister pooh-poohed it as some silly technicality about a permit or license for working in a bar. Then hard times, harder times and hardest times were gone into in depth. By the time it was going full circle for the third time I caught Mom’s eye and she nodded, wishing me a silent goodnight.

  I had a bath and got into the bed with Junior. It was an inferno. He was an inferno, giving off enough heat to burn. I felt his forehead and his cheeks as I had with Becky when we thought she might have a temperature. This was more than a temperature, this was red-hot burning flesh. I was afraid to turn on the light for fear I’d see him covered with blisters. He was moaning softly and gasping for breath as thoug
h he were being choked. I ran down the hall and eased the kitchen door open a crack. Mom was facing the door. My wriggling fingers caught her attention and she got up quickly and came to the door and out into the hall, closing the door behind her.

  “It’s Junior,” I whispered. “He’s on fire. He’s so hot …” Mom was running down the hall and was in the room and on her knees on the mattress beside him before I came through the door.

  “Oh God, oh God,” she murmured, feeling him all over, holding his hands in hers and rubbing them and then she put her hand on his heart and snapped it back as though that were the central hot point, where the fire in his body was coming from. “Doctor. We’ve got to get a doctor …”

  She was out in the hall again headed for the kitchen. When she opened the door I heard Dad saying for the umpteenth time, “… that kinda’ shit from nobody …”

  I stayed just inside the door of our room, not wanting to leave Junior and yet feeling that I ought to do something. Aunt Dell flashed past me down the hall on the run and out the front door. I could see her in the light from the front porch, running across the street, surprisingly sure on her feet. Mom came back into the room, brushing past me with a glass of water and a pan of water with a cloth in it. She was back on her knees on the mattress, speaking softly to Junior, “It’s me, son, Mom.” She had her arm under his shoulders trying to lift him up. I ran over and jumped across him to the other side and fell on my knees and pulled him up into a semi-sitting position. “There,” Mom said. “Better. Can you hear me?”

  “I … can’t… get any … air … he let the last word out with a gasp.

  “Here, honey. Take a sip of this.” She held the glass to his mouth and he drank thirstily. “Good. Good. Now … just wait a minute. Take it easy. Breathe deeply.”

  His eyes fluttered open and he pulled himself upright and put both hands on his head. “Whoooeee!” He shook his head slightly and looked around him. “Wow! Is this house on fire? I’ve never been so hot in …”

  “Here, take these.” She held up her hand with two aspirins on her palm. “It’s just a temperature. These’ll knock it out.” He took them and put them on his tongue and tilted his head back as she put the glass to his mouth again. “Drink. Drink it all down. There. Totsy, are all the windows open?” She glanced around her at the draperies that covered the three windows that created the bay. I ran to them and jerked at the curtains. The windows were open a bit, but I pushed them up further. As I did, I saw Aunt Dell coming back across the street with a man in a dressing gown carrying a little black bag following her. She was talking animatedly at him over her shoulder.

  “Here comes Aunt Dell,” I told Mom. “She’s got somebody with her.”

  “She said there was a doctor across the street.” She stood up and opened the door fully and made little gestures of straightening her hair and her dress as the front door banged against the wall and Aunt Dell ushered in the doctor.

  “… in here, Dr. Hillsbury … my nephew … they all just come down from California today … and then… oh, this is his mother, Milly Woods. Milly, Dr. Hillsbury … We don’t know what it could be …”

  “Excuse me, Mrs. Woods,” the doctor said. “He’s in here?” Mom backed away from the door as the doctor entered. She shot me a look and I left the room and closed the door on the three of them, bringing myself face to face with Aunt Dell. She grabbed me by the shoulder and we walked back down the hall to the kitchen.

  “Where’n hell’d everybody go …” Dad was as drunk as I’d ever seen him. “We’as all just asittin’ here and …”

  “Shush, Woody,” Aunt Dell ordered. “Lower your voice. The doctor’s here.”

  “Doctor?” he tried to stand up, but got his leg tangled up with his chair and dropped back into it. “Did you say doctor? What the fuck … who needs a doctor, for Christ’s sake …”

  “Woody, for God’s sake.” Aunt Dell was in total command and seemed totally sober. Roy was looking bleary, but not quite as out of control as Dad. Sister was nowhere to be seen. “Junior’s sick. Got a ragin’ fever. I jest been acrost the street … Dr. Hillsbury. Nice man. I don’t know how good a doctor he is …” she was whispering now and looking over her shoulder at the door. “But he’s good enough for a fever …”

  “What the hell do you mean? Junior ain’t sick.” Dad was having trouble focusing his eyes. “He’s the healthiest goddamned kid in California … his coach says so. Why he’s goin’ to be the biggest goddamned baseball player …”

  “Woody, will you hush up, dammit.” Dell slapped the table with the flat of her hand. Dad pulled back in his chair. “Now just hush up. I’m goin’ to make some coffee …” She turned toward the stove. “Tots, would you help …”

  Hot coffee was steaming on the table where the glasses and bottles had been. All was tidy and neat. Dad looked stunned— stunned or shocked into silence. We all kept watching the door. They’d been in there for ages. I risked tiptoeing out into the hall on the pretext of checking on Becky. I listened at our door and could only make out a soft rumble of a male’s voice and occasionally Mom’s with short concise sentences. Her voice didn’t sound right. I went back to the kitchen.

  By the wind-up alarm clock near the ice-box, I saw that it was after twelve. The doctor had come at eleven. We heard Mom’s voice out in the hall. I ran to the door and opened it in time to hear Mom saying, . . so sorry to have disturbed you this late, Doctor. We certainly appreciate everything you’ve done. Thank you again. We can settle all this …”

  “Oh, my dear Mrs. Woods …” he made a deprecatory noise, half laugh, half cough. “I’ll drop back in the morning.”

  “I’m sure he’ll be better. Why don’t we just leave it for the time being? We’ll let you know.”

  “Fine, Mrs. Woods. He’s a fine boy. He’ll be all right. Good night.”

  “Good night to you, sir. Should we have somebody go along with you?”

  “Oh, dear me no.” He chuckled down the stairs. “I at least know my way home.”

  Mom stood at the door, watching him go, her back stiff and straight. When he’d got to the sidewalk, she closed the door with a slight slam. “Stupid man!” she muttered as she turned and walked toward the kitchen where all of us waited for news. “A quack!” she said when she got into the kitchen. She noticed a frown on Aunt Dell’s face and put an arm around her shoulder. “Oh Dell, it’s not your fault that he made me nervous. I’d just like to get somebody else’s opinion. Who’s the best doctor in town?”

  “There’s two new young’uns at the new hospital. Just opened a couple of months ago. Most modern equipment. Everything.” She sounded as though she could hardly wait to be in it.

  “We’ll take Junior up there tomorrow morning …”

  “Now, just a minute,” Dad was on his feet. “What was wrong with … whatever his name was? You don’t know him. How come you up and call him a quack? Dell’s been here long enough …”

  “I called him a quack, because he is,” Mom snapped. I’d never seen her eyes blaze like this before. The brown had turned black and glittered. “For one thing he said Junior had a heart condition. The most idiotic thing I ever heard.”

  “You know better’n a doctor?”

  “I know my own kids, Woody,” she was blazing with fury. “There’s nothing wrong with Junior’s heart. But there’s something wrong. The temperature and the racing pulse …” she stopped and shook her head. “Must be some sort of infection.”

  “Dr. Milly …” Dad started sarcastically.

  “You bet your ass I’m Dr. Milly.” She spat out each word through clenched teeth. “Where my kids are concerned I’m in charge. I used that stupid expression so that perhaps even you’d understand. It’s the only language you seem to be able to speak.” She turned and left the room trembling with rage and went into the room with Junior. I followed her. I stood just outside the door and saw her slump down to the mattress on her knees again and then slowly she leaned her head over into her lap and
her shoulders shook with silent sobs that seemed to be fighting each other for release. I waited for what seemed hours at the door for her to calm down, but she continued to be racked with a bottomless well of sorrow. Her curved silently heaving back was the saddest thing I’d ever seen. I couldn’t stand it. She looked broken, defeated. No, she looked crushed. Crushed by a weight at once invisible but real, resting on her bent and trembling shoulders. I was horrified at the spectacle of her iron control deserting her. I turned and closed my eyes and realized that tears were streaming down my cheeks. I could hear Aunt Dell trying to calm Dad who’d finally realized that his wife had given him a taste of his own medicine. He was not taking it well. I doubt if he’d taken her sharp words well even if he’d been sober. His unimpeachable position as head of house had been questioned—she was perfectly capable of taking care of her family without him and he knew it. That was what hurt the most. Perhaps it was time he got hurt. He’d been inflicting the pain long enough.

  I darted out the front door onto the front porch, turning off the light as I did so. I heard Aunt Dell guiding Dad across the hall into the living room where Becky was sleeping. I only hoped his drunken roaring wouldn’t wake her. I knew Mom wanted to be alone with Junior and her sorrow. I went to the porch swing and got as comfortable as I could and was asleep in seconds.

  The desert sun, a red ball of fire at dawn burned through my eyelids, leaving sharp blue flashes like echoes of acetylene torches glanced at without a protective mask. I turned my back, falling into a second deeper sleep.

  Becky woke me the next time, standing beside the couch in the living room pulling on my nose and hair and gurgling with delight. I vaguely remember being carried down the hall and deposited on the opened-out couch. By who? Whom. Miss Widmer’s voice was one thing from Clovis that I’d have with me always.

  I remembered now. It had been Dad, smelling of shaving soap mingled with stale whisky, who had picked me up from the porch swing. I sat up quickly and hugged Becky to me. Uuuggh! Her diaper was a study in what diapers were for—in full technicolor. I pushed her back from me and she grinned beguilingly “Becky,” she pointed to herself and wrinkled her nose, “phew …”