Penn's Woodland

by David Connor

  But now I had some access to the outdoors back. The peeling wallpaper had amused me at first. A man with the brain of a child with nothing more to do than wonder how far I could pull it without it tearing, the challenge captured and held my attention. Once the plaster started to crack, I worked that too, until I had made a space no bigger than my hand. The lathing behind it was warped and displaced. I started poking at the soft wood as well, until I found the brickwork behind it.

  Beyond becoming the route for my journaling entries doomed to the abyss—I’d stuffed several down it the very first day, relieved to have them gone from tangibility—the spot behind the wallpaper had become a source of further intrigue when one day I saw a glimmer of light. Though certainly welcome, daylight, no matter how small its entrée, I’d had all along. Though I had a fan which moved the stale indoor oxygen around, fresh air was what I craved. Upon my first sense of it, too magnificent not to want more, I’d worked the mortar between the bricks where it had already started to crumble. I’d shimmied one from its proper place and inhaled the cold purity of winter as I had the breath from Judah’s lungs that last time I had kissed him.

  Fearful someone would notice, I had put the clay block back quickly, and had gone about my business, which actually amounted to naught. Within an hour, I’d been back at the wall, the air, like the urgings in my body, too enticing to abandon. I’d removed that single brick once more and within days, I’d pulled out several more. One or two minutes were all I’d allowed myself at first. But then, as happens with many things once done again and again, I grew less reluctant, less paranoid, and bolder. No one was back there often, but I fretted someone, someday, might have been. Eventually, I’d forgotten to care, and now here I was, right next to my wall of disobedience with someone right on the other side—Georgia and Ewan Parish.

  There was a time Georgia and I would spend an hour together each morning and one in the afternoon, seated in the backyard where she and Ewan now stood. That had stopped. For a while, we sat in the parlor with the record player before dinner. That ceased as well. Sometimes she would come into my room at night while I slept. As lonely as I was, I did not much care for that. The more I was left to my own devices—some reading materials, some writing accoutrements, and my slow and senseless mind—the bigger the open space behind the wallpaper grew. It was now as big as the width of my shoulders, the widest part of me. It could be that large, if I removed all the bricks at once. I never had. I often fantasized I about doing so. I would pull every brick and squeeze right through. But where would I go? What would I do once gone? Who might I hurt?

  It was almost like a screened window now. I’d placed every third or fourth brick on its side, random ones, as not to damage the structure of the rest. At least that was what I hoped. It was enough to allow in a cool breeze or a cold draft, and also the scents, and sounds of nature. I often slept beneath it on the floor, and oh, how I enjoyed the fulfillment of each of those senses involved. I would soon find out, it seemed, if the irregularity of design could be easily detected from the other side. Fortunately, the argument Ewan and Georgia still engaged in might be a good distraction. Plus, a short-but-wide evergreen grew in front of it. I could see through its fronds quite easily from inside—not that there was much to see previous to Ewan’s arrival—but it had to hide my handy work, I figured. Since Georgia and I no longer sat back there with our awkwardness and sweet tea, I had no way of knowing for sure.

  Down on my knees, as I finally summoned the courage or else succumbed to stupidity, I decided to peer out toward the yard. Overly conscious of my posterior, now in the same position that Ewan’s had been moments ago, my genitalia warmed and pulsed with a force I tried to ignore. I could not in the end and I quickly became aroused.

  I pulled back the wallpaper and shivered involuntarily. In all of the time I’d had access, no human had ever been there to be seen. In fact, the only human I had seen at all, as close as I now saw two, had been my sister, Georgia. My vision was so distinct. Through an opening so narrow, I was surprised by the clarity of Georgia’s behind and Ewan’s…front.

  “You should not be here, Mr. Parish, because you agreed not to be. Are you not a man of your word?” Georgia asked him.

  “I am checking the edifice, Miss Dupree. It is necessary to know exactly what I will encounter when time comes to attach the new structure to the old.”

  “Do not remove one brick! Not one, without telling me first.”

  I gasped at the mention of the word “brick,” and then covered my mouth, certain I’d been heard.

  “I shall cease all work at your whim, Miss Dupree.” Ewan shifted his weight to the opposite hip with the retort. The protrusion in his trousers moved about as well.

  “Your hostility is unwarranted, Mr. Parish. I am not a well woman.”

  Georgia not well? I wondered how so. I pondered for the first time ever what would become of me if…? What would become of me when…?

  “I will not be around to take care of my brother forever. This is one final gift I can offer him, while we are both alive and well. While he is still able to enjoy it.”

  I was hardly certain I would enjoy it at all.

  “I apologize, ma’am,” Ewan said.

  He did not sound the least bit sincere. Then again, neither did Georgia when she spoke of sudden frailties.

  “Thank you, Mr. Parish.”

  “I insist that you call me Ewan.”

  He wiped at his brow with the palm of his hand. I’d been forced to twist myself into to quite an odd position to see it. Ewan then deposited the moisture on the front of his cream-colored pant leg. The mark he left reminded me of something I’d thought of yesterday, a similar stain on mine one time.

  “And I certainly do not wish to shorten your lifespan,” Ewan continued with a pat on Georgia’s upper arm which made it jiggle. “Now get yourself inside, dear woman, and tend to your fragilities.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Parish.” Georgia ignored the sarcasm as she rubbed the key on a string between her thumb and index finger. “I think I shall. Now please try not to disturb me, Mr. Parish. Ewan, I mean. Should you need water or facilities, there is a stream in the woods behind the estate good for both.”

  As Georgia walked away, I watched Ewan fiddle in his pocket, shifting the contents behind his zipper, not just whatever was inside it. He came up with lighter and a cigarette box, from which he took one out and brought it to his still-smirking lips. I had to lie on my back and look upward to see. When Ewan took a few steps closer, I lost sight of those lips and found myself staring straight at his crotch. I breathed in the scent of his smoke, and his arm fell limp at his side. I had always wanted to smoke, like a grown man should. I wished I could see what he looked like doing it. I wanted to watch him bring the cigarette to his mouth, put it between his teeth, and suck in deeply with grand satisfaction. Suddenly he sat, and my whim was fulfilled. I could see the whole of him then, and that which I thought would be so sensual did not disappoint. I closed my eyes and touched myself, feeling concupiscent, inappropriate, and the slightest bit afraid. I allowed myself to wallow in intense sensuality unfelt to such a degree for oh-so-long. I rolled over twice, ending up on my back again a fair distance away from where I had started. I knew I would bring myself quickly, in my hand and over it, with a handsome man such as Ewan nearly close enough to know or perhaps participate if more of wishes came true.

  He must have noticed the not-quite-right brickwork as I was too preoccupied with a fistful of manhood to note that he’d done so.

  “What in bloody hell?”

  The sound of his words, their meaning immaterial to me at the time, egged me on, and my hand became sticky. It was not until I heard the gritty slide I immediately recognized for what it was that my heart raced with fear and not just prelude to ejaculation. I looked over then, and saw Ewan’s little finger appear where a finger should not fit. I heard him huff and puff, a sound of straining, which I took as an accompaniment to him switching positions. />
  What should I do? What could I? I heard the yew scrape the façade of the house and figured he was shoving it aside. It all took less time to happen than to tell, and though I went to stand, to hide, I stumbled on legs weak and prickly from arousal and being bent in odd positions. I fell to my knees, my buttocks once again pointed high, this time bare, with my breeches, the only garment I had put on so far that day, more than partway down my legs. I inhaled short and deeply as I imagined for the most fleeting moment Ewan’s bare, positioned just the same. I shook my head wildly, something needed to focus, and when I stopped, when I opened my eyes, there were Ewan’s, staring straight at me.

  I held his gaze barely half a second and then I fell backwards, clanging against a porcelain bowl and pitcher, the sound loud enough, I was certain, to be heard throughout the house. The cold of it stayed on my bare back even as I scuttled to rest against the foot of my bed.

  “Do not be afraid,” Ewan said.

  He was actually in my room, though only from the neck up. It looked rather odd and was also quite terrifying, despite his warm smile. “Are you…? You must be.” Ewan’s head nodded. “Hello, Pennsylvania.”

  His words came with the vapor from his cigarette. Back against the silky, quilted coverlet, my heart thumped. I could feel it pound, and I bet he could see it. Rather than the detumescence one would expect anxiety to trigger, my sexual organ engorged to a painful stiffness. I had been caught too quickly off guard to cover myself, even as I considered hiding the whole of me within the confines of my cell. And when I finally thought of it, I found myself too paralyzed with fright to move to do it.

  “Do not be embarrassed,” Ewan said, “for doing in privacy, that which I’ve invaded, something so natural and enjoyable.”

  I flexed my hard appendage at his words and stared at the opening, where a clear, thick droplet emerged. In my mind, Ewan took it; he lapped it with his tongue. He touched me, and I him in return. Sensibility nudged me—it slapped me, in fact—and drew me away from my sensual secretion. I grabbed my hair in both hands and pulled at it hard, daring the sensation down below to override the pain. Touching Judah had been a mistake. Touching Judah had ended in tragedy, and also my imprisonment. “If you choose to give into desire and ever attempt your escape from here again,” Georgia had warned when we’d discussed ‘the final incident’ to its fullest extent, “you will find out what imprisonment really is. You are only safe behind these walls. You are only safe when your urges are suppressed. The law will catch up with you outside of here,” she’d cried. “The penalties for what you’ve done will be severe. People like Virginia will be certain that you hang.”

  “I cannot imagine hurting Judah,” I had told her without voice. “I never would,” I had written in total desperation, even while a part of me had believed myself capable. “Is this more because my cravings are sinful, Georgia? Depraved?” I’d asked her in ink.

  “What is right or wrong, proper or immoral is no longer all that matters. I am not like Virginia. I still love you unconditionally,” she’d promised. “And forever I shall, even if…”

  “If what? If what!” I had pleaded with her eyes to finish her thought. I’d begged with a shake of my head, a wringing of hands for explanation. I finally wrote it. “You love me even if…I am a murderer?”

  “Where have the clothes gone, those you had on that night? Where are the rags with which you cleaned yourself afterward?” Georgia had inquired just as frantically.

  I had nodded toward the accumulation of things for the laundry, and Georgia, like a shot, was at them. She had quickly come up with the remnants unmistakably involved, covered with grass stains, mud, and probably the bodily secretions of a pair of men engaged in a sexual act. Georgia had held them to her face an extra-long while, I recalled, while sitting across from Ewan’s floating head. I had thought at the time, and even still as I’d written of her doing it, it was a tactic to hide flowing tears. As I thought at that moment, the reason seemed otherwise.

  “We shall burn these at once,” she’d said through them. “And last night and Judah shall never be spoken of again.”

  “Judah?” I had scrawled.

  “Judah is gone.”

  Gone? The query came silently, not from voice or my pen, but with knitted brows.

  “If only you had accepted your lot, Pennsylvania. If only you could have been satisfied with my arms and my affection. Now shame fills you,” my sister had told me.

  I’d hung my head in sorrow and regret as she’d left with my laundry. I did again in front of Ewan, and closed my eyes too, to think of Judah, the man from my past, in an attempt to ignore the one inside my room. Though in my heart, I had given Judah up, in my head, I still wondered what became of him.

  My thoughts were interrupted and suddenly Judah was gone as quickly as the white cloud from Ewan’s cigarette. When I looked, he had disappeared too, and his actions were at once the sole thing on my mind. Was he still on the property? The notion titillated me. The terror had waned and was now tempered with the prickling heat of my still-aroused state. If I was to be labeled some sort of simpleton with amoral proclivities, why, I inquired within, should I not relish them?

  The sensation in the tip of my erection intensified at the notion of coupling with Ewan Parish, at the pipedream. I decided, though maybe not so mindfully, to return to satisfying myself with the image of Ewan’s ample organ and muscular buttocks in my mind. Having a man of his beauty and evident virility so close, and, oh, so long it had been since I had felt the erotic, tender touch of warm hands on my body—a man’s hands—not since Judah’s, I had no choice but to act upon the want.

  Thump. Thump. Thump.

  It was almost like a signal, not an accidental effect of checking the flooring above. Ewan was in the basement and the vibration of his tap—thump, thump, thump—the deliberate nature tantalized rather than worried me, as I was confident I could not be seen. Knowing from whose hand the provocation came, imagining the fat, rounded end of the rake’s long, hard handle with which he likely made it—its girth in Ewan’s grasp a metaphorical representation to my thickness in mine—I was incited to abandon all but the thought of my completion. I expelled a pre-orgasmic trickle of male juices on the paper I’d started recording the musings of the day upon and then left beside the bed. That day’s journal page, what would be a make-believe note to Ewan, had somehow ended up between my legs. Seeing my mark as it mingled with the ink brought me closer and another crystalline ribbon came forth from my genitals.

  “Can you hear me, Pennsylvania?”

  I held my breath, even as my body shuddered and my rock-hard appendage twitched involuntarily, expelling the viscous nectar so it dribbled from my glans to the page, the one on which I had written tawdry details of imaginary intercourse.

  “Pennsylvania? Are you up there?”

  A silly question, I thought. Where else would I ever be?

  Thump. Thump. Thump.

  The tapping directly below me, the beat against my bottom, it reminded me of Judah once more. We’d only been together in that way a single time, and what we did, it was not a stretch of one’s fancy for the current goings-on to resonate. I rather envisaged, in my truly ribald narrative, that Ewan and I would take turns entering one another, though now I imagined the breadth of the rake’s wood inside me, only supple, and human, and his. I moaned as the rhythm continued. If only he knew where he was bringing me. Simply by grinding into the floor, contracting my groin muscles and letting my phallus rub against the paper as I held it near, I felt myself ready to burst.

  “Can you not speak?” Ewan asked. “Perhaps you cannot hear?”

  I was slightly surprised by the clearness of his voice. Outside noises could be heard through the walls sometimes, I supposed, how would this be different? Why couldn’t Georgia hear, though? Why didn’t she stop it? She had to be home; I never knew her to leave. It was truly an enigma, though one I happily shoved aside.

  “Are you cared for? Are you happy, Pen
nsylvania?”

  Happy? How in heaven’s name could one in my situation be happy? I wanted to ask.

  “Tap back if you can hear me, if you can understand, but cannot respond.”

  I lifted my fist, ready to pound. Instead of doing so, however, I brought it to my engorgement and pumped. Fear and arousal, I had discovered, could sometimes be kissing cousins, and this, for certain, was one of those times. I brought myself ever-closer to the edge of climax, wishing Ewan would once again start banging against my bare, open buttocks.

  “I’m going to get in there. I cannot do this for you,” he said, “to its fullest potential, unless I know who you are. Each project is special to the one for whom it is made, Pennsylvania. And this, if you want it, will be yours and only yours.”

  I released to Ewan’s voice, expelling staccato breaths along with my seed even after both my lungs and my scrotum felt empty.

  Oh! To look in your eyes next time whilst I come, I wrote amongst my biological deposit. Those eyes with flecks of gray that dance and sparkle like pave when you squint, to touch the little lines in the corner that fan out in tan skin, both handsome and indicative of wisdom. I shall send you this parchment, branded with my amorous, lustful inscription. Once you see and feel it, maybe chance bring it to your mouth, you will know to come and watch me bathe myself clean, through the displaced bricks where maybe I can bring myself again.

  Alas, with those words, what little sense I possessed returned. I realized once spent that Ewan’s wisdom, as described, would most definitely prevent any attraction being mutual. He was an older man, worldly and sophisticated, no doubt intelligent, far more so than some daft fancy locked in his chamber for his own good. Even were he to explore that section of the cellar where my paper landed, the sludge would have immediately rendered my message a smear of wetness and ink, just as the release of my essence had already rendered some words illegible. I wrote two more, as all noise from below, all sign of Ewan’s presence ceased. I folded the fanciful, prurient scribing, as I had all the others, and stuck it in the wall.