Recurrence Page 5

  John didn’t waste any time following his advice. Later he said, “Shit, I forgot to cut off its rattles.”

  They both laughed at that and the friendship grew.

  The following summer Burl let John shoot both his shotgun, and a .22 rifle. The manufacturer’s name, model number, and gauge or caliber were all stamped into each of them.

  The single-shot was a Stevens Model 94 .410 gauge, and the rifle was a Remington-Model 241A .22 caliber semi-automatic. It had a tubular feed up through the stock. John quickly became proficient with both of them and was a better shot than Burl.

  “Man, I wish you could come down here and go deer hunting with me. You’d knock em dead.”

  “Me too,” John replied.

  Burl had shown him the elevated deer stands at the intersections of open fire lanes. All of the surrounding forests were leased to a large hunting club, which Burl and his dad belonged to. Hunters alternated as drivers and shooters. A spaced-out group of drivers would work their way noisily through a square of forest, driving the deer across the open fire lanes. The shooters would fire at them from the twenty-foot-high stands mounted atop poles similar to telephone poles. John liked the idea of hunting but didn’t consider this very sporting and said so.

  “Hah! It’s not as easy as it looks, and you can only shoot into the open space,” Burl stated.

  The next summer Burl sneaked out with his dad’s Smith & Wesson-Model 20-.38 Special revolver. It had a five-inch barrel and felt really good in John’s hand.

  After a few shots Burl took it back saying, “You don’t need any practice man, you’re a natural.”

  They were shooting into a private trash dump at cans and bottles. It wasn’t long before John could shoot the twist-caps off of the bottles and hit specific pictures on the cans, from forty to fifty feet.

  John was reading at the kitchen table one morning about three weeks after arriving at his grandfather’s, when he heard voices from outside. He walked out through the open kitchen door and looked through the screen door on the porch. Tilman and a lanky sheriff’s deputy about thirty years old were standing a few feet apart near the front corner of a patrol car, talking. Curious about what was going on, John went out and sat on the bottom step.

  “Is that your whelp’s boy?” he heard the deputy ask.

  In a single move, Tilman straightened and hit the deputy a solid blow to the side of the jaw with his right fist. The deputy’s knees buckled. He spun sideways and reeled back against the fender of the patrol car. His Smokey-the-Bear hat landed upright on the hood and then slid off the front of the car and onto the ground, landing upside down. The deputy had dropped to one knee by then and was supporting himself with his right arm and hand on top of the fender.

  Tilman removed his cigar with his left hand and said, “Get your sorry ass gone before I kick it good!”

  “Jeez, Til, I didn’t mean nothing,” the deputy said as he staggered to his feet. His lank, oily black hair was hanging over one side of his forehead covering one eye. His face was already starting to swell.

  Tilman stepped toward him, “Git!”

  The deputy jumped into his car and started to back away. After he’d gone a few yards, he noticed his hat on the ground for the first time. He stopped the car and got back out to retrieve it, keeping an eye on Tilman without meeting his gaze.

  The suddenness and violence of the whole thing, and the force of the blow, had paralyzed John with fear. He wondered at first why the deputy didn’t shoot him or arrest him and then realized that the man was afraid of his grandfather. He recalled the image and that his grandfather seemed to pivot slightly with the blow. The sound of it was like hitting a softball with a bat. Never before had he seen one grown man strike another. It was nothing like kids hitting each other, or even like when he’d broken Donald’s arm with the stick.

  Tilman walked back to the house and as he climbed the steps John asked, “Why did you hit him?”

  Tilman cuffed him on the side of the head with the back of his hand as he passed. “Don’t ask about it again.”

  He didn’t talk the rest of the day, and John kept out of his way. He was never struck again but was apprehensive for a long time. He thought that there must have been some kind of issue about his dad and wondered what it might have been, but he never asked. That evening before he went to bed, John noticed Tilman sitting at the table with a bottle of Old Crow and a half-full jelly-jar glass. Tilman sat as if in a trance, just staring toward the door.

  Later John swore Burl to secrecy and told him about it.

  “Hells-fire man, that’s your granddad’s stepson from his second or third wife. His mom divorced your granddad for drinking, but they’re still close and he’s tight with all the rest of her family. Elmer, that deputy, is a shit-bird. I’m glad he got smacked.”

  “Just don’t spread it around,” John said, wondering what else he didn’t know about his family.

  CHAPTER 5

  John continued to alternate between Michigan and Virginia throughout his school years. In Michigan, he completed his years at the one room schoolhouse and moved on to a consolidated school system, along with Wayne. The school bus exchange point for this was a quarter-mile beyond the one room school and he had never noticed it before. He was surprised to find Ronald, Ben, Suzanne, and Gwen on the bus. He had not seen them in over a year.

  Harold, already sixteen, had quit school and was working in a gas station. Students in the upper grades of the consolidated school were even bigger, and just as mean. There were more of them too, some as old as eighteen. Ronald, Ben, Wayne, Suzanne, and Gwen were targets of their abuse as well.

  This school had a larger library, but it too was laid out in a staggered maze of bookshelves with blind ends. Early in the first semester, John was looking at books and had worked his way to the back of the library. He walked around an end of shelving and found a boy and girl against the far wall. They were in a passionate embrace and the boy had his hand up under the girl’s skirt, working his hand up and down in her crotch. She had one leg raised and hooked behind his thigh, and John could see her fleshy bare hip and underpants.

  Before he could turn and retreat he was grabbed around the throat from behind by a larger boy named Bob Hemp. Bob reached in front of John with his right hand and grabbed John’s left, pinning him to his body. John struggled to pull free, but Hemp was much bigger. The other boy spun around and grabbed his hair. He was bigger too and John recognized him as Kendle, a tenth grader.

  Kendle cocked his other fist back and said, “Stop moving or I’ll knock your God-damned teeth out.”

  John relaxed and was yanked forward by the hair, while Bob Hemp pushed him from behind. He stumbled over an outstretched foot but didn’t fall. He found himself face to face with the girl at the end of the aisle. She was also bigger than John and had coal black hair, black eyes, and pasty white skin. She was still breathing hard and her large breasts rose and fell under the white blouse. One front tail of it had pulled free and hung over her skirt.

  She faced him with a mean straight-mouthed glare. He was grabbed from behind again, this time with an arm lock and by the hair. “Squeeze her tit!” One of them growled in his ear.

  “Go to hell!” John responded. An open palm smacked his ear, making his head ring.

  “You heard me, squeeze her tit.”

  The girl glared directly into his face as if she wanted to kill him.

  The arm lock tightened and John thought that the girl might slap him or hit him if he did, but the boys certainly would if he didn’t. He wanted too anyway, so he reached out with his free hand and squeezed, expecting her to smack him.

  She stood mute, still glaring, and a second voice behind him said, “Give it a good one.”

  John liked what he’d felt so he reached out again and felt first one and then the other, palming them as he squeezed. Something changed in her eyes a
nd the glare started to melt.

  He was yanked backwards and spun around but bumped into Kendle, who gave him a short punch in the ribs. “Keep your mouth shut twerp, and don’t get any ideas.”

  He was pushed forward and released; then left without looking back at them. Rather than being afraid or mad, John felt something new: reliving the feel of the big breasts and the look in the girl’s eyes. Later he learned that her name was Diane Foley. Whenever she passed him, she tried to bump against him, sometimes with her boobs. Once, in a tightly packed crowd, she sidled past with her back to him and fondled his crotch. He put his hand between them and felt of her rump as she passed.

  During his second year at the consolidated school Donald, Wayne, and Kenny joined them. John had grown bigger than all three of them. He was as big as Ben, but not as big as Ronald. He was also bigger than Suzanne and Gwen from his previous school, and bigger than Diane Foley. Donald was still hostile but stayed clear of him. John, Wayne and Kenny became closer friends and banded together against the bullies from other schools.

  When school resumed after New Year’s Day, neither Donald nor Ronald was on the bus.

  Kenny made a smaller kid move so he could sit next to John. “Hey, did you hear about Donald?” he asked excitedly.

  John turned toward him in surprise, “No, what about him?”

  “He fell through the ice on the Pigeon River Saturday and drownded!”

  “You mean drowned,” John said without thinking.

  “That’s what I said. You know how he was always taking dares? Ronald and Harold dared him to cross the river, and he fell through. The current pushed him down and they couldn’t get him out. They could see him under the ice and Ronald stuck his head and arms through the hole and almost drownded too. Harold tried to hook him and pull him out with a tree limb, but it didn’t work.”

  “Well, did they get him out?” John asked.

  “Not until Sunday afternoon when some firemen slid a boat out and chopped a hole in the ice.”

  “Wow, that’s crazy,” said John.

  The funeral wasn’t until Wednesday and students who had a note from their parents were excused to go. John went with Kenny and his parents but spent very little time in the viewing room. It reminded him too much of his own family.

  School continued, and Ronald stayed out for the remainder of the week. He was lethargic for the rest of the year and nearly failed.

  John’s grandparents bought him a used rifle for Christmas. It was stamped Winchester Model 61 .22 caliber. His grandfather called it a pump, but in books at school John saw it referred to as a ‘slide action’ rifle. Ben also had a .22 rifle. In the spring, he invited John over to go plinking and target shooting. The boys were getting along pretty well now and Ben’s crony, Harold, was working full time and practically out of their lives.

  The two boys made a tour through the woods, trudging through the leftover snow and shooting at everything from sparrows to knotholes. Afterwards they went back to the barnyard and tacked hand-drawn paper targets to a board. They balanced the board on an old milk can beyond the barnyard fence. Ben wanted to see who the best shot was.

  While they were doing this, his sister, Suzanne, came out to watch and later asked if she could try. Ben just looked at her disgustedly, so John explained how his rifle operated and how to aim it. In less than twenty minutes she was consistently outshooting Ben but could not beat John. By their previous mutual agreement, the loser had to repair targets. Ben soon tired of this and handed his Remington Model 552A over to Suzanne.

  “You two hotshots can shoot it out yourselves, I’ve got work to do,” he said with a scowl.

  John had never really talked to Suzanne and hadn’t forgotten the time her and Gwen had tried to humiliate him by the outhouse. He had later found out that she and Ben were non-identical twins. Now she seemed like a very different person as she glanced his way. It was the same look he remembered her giving him several times since the original incident.

  They continued to shoot with very little talk for a few minutes. When the next turn was hers she looked over at him and said, “Let’s go over to the pump-house and get a drink.”

  “Sounds good to me,” he replied, while clearing his rifle and propping it against the fence.

  “Why’d you do that?” She asked.

  He explained about clearing your gun when you were done firing, and then watched as she cleared hers. Afterwards she tilted her head toward the pump-house and started walking that way. He was enjoying his role as a teacher and added some gun safety tips he’d been taught by his grandfathers and Burl, throwing in a few more things about guns that he’d read from books and magazines.

  The pump-house was the farthest back of the farm’s outbuildings and the door was on the back side. She seemed to be paying no attention to where they were, but when they got to the back of the pump-house she smiled at him and swung the door open. John had just become aware of something different happening and stopped talking.

  “You first master,” she said.

  Now it dawned on him that she was no longer the tall skinny, shapeless girl from four years back. She had stopped growing in height, and at sixteen or seventeen she was no longer shapeless. His face started to redden, and she pushed gently at his shoulder, steering him into the pump-house. He had to step over the concrete doorsill and duck slightly to clear the three-quarter-sized doorway.

  It was noisy inside with an electric motor turning a belt-driven reciprocating pump. There was also a maze of plumbing and a tall galvanized tank. A tin cup hung from a piece of wire next to a spigot. With all of this in the small building, there was barely enough room for the two of them to stand upright.

  Once they were both inside, she closed the door and latched it with a screen-door hook. The eaves were open, and light was filtering in from above and through cracks between the boards where some of the red-brick siding had been torn away long ago. Flickering shadows from a huge leafless maple outside added to the effect, giving the space a hypnotic aura.

  “Why’d you lock the door?” John asked as he reached for the cup.

  She placed her hand on his outstretched arm. “I hear you squeezed Diane Foley’s boobs.”

  Surprised, he said, “So what, it wasn’t my idea.”

  “I heard you liked it too, didn’t you?”

  John didn’t know if that was a question or a statement, so he said nothing. Without letting go of his arm, she gently pulled it toward her, guiding his hand toward her chest.

  “I know you liked it, don’t you want to feel mine too?”

  Realizing that no wasn’t a good answer, he said “Sure.” He followed her lead and squeezed, tentatively at first, and then eagerly.

  She reached around his waist with one hand and around his neck with the other and pulled him close. It was his first real kiss and in moments he felt dizzy from it. There was a roaring in his ears and his palms and armpits felt sweaty. He pulled back slightly for air and she pulled him even tighter. It was a struggle to maintain the passionate embrace and keep their balance in the tight space. He could feel himself swelling between them, and it only seemed to inflame her as she worked her tongue into his mouth.

  She pulled her arm from around his neck and pushed back against his shoulder just enough to break the kiss.

  “Still rather kiss a hog?”

  Her tilted amber eyes had a hypnotic eerie glow in the flickering light. She still had one arm around his waist and he had one around hers, while his other hand was still on her breast.

  “No. Hell no,” He panted.

  “We’ve got to find a place to do it,” she whispered.

  “Yes,” he hissed as he pulled her tighter.

  She complied, and again they were in a fierce struggle to stay upright.

  “Bam, Bam, Bam!” A pounding against the door nearly made his heart stop.

&nb
sp; “What’re you two doing in there?” Ben’s voice mocked them through the door.

  “Go to hell!” she shouted back. Then at a more normal voice level, “What do you think?”

  They could hear Ben’s laughter receding as he walked away. John knew he couldn’t stay another moment with his face beet-red and his pants bulging in front of him. He didn’t know what he would have done if Ben had yanked the door open and caught him like that. He nearly tore off a fingernail trying to unfasten the flimsy hook.

  “Think about a place,” she said as he scrambled out the door.

  He looked back at her standing in the doorway. With her throat flushed and her breast rising and falling. He saw a grown woman.

  “I will,” he promised.

  Within a week John had found a way into the school building they had once attended. It became their main place of rendezvous whenever they could get together on weekends. It had a cellar originally used to store firewood. Later, it was used for coal until the heating system was changed to fuel oil. Now it was a seldom-used storage place with a large fuel-oil tank toward the back.

  He found enough clean cardboard among the stored items to provide them a pallet, which was easily hidden. They used it behind a partition that was backing for shelves. Suzanne said that the cellar was creepy but that didn’t stop them from using it.

  He was surprised at how compliant she was and how natural it seemed to be for her. He had expected more fumbling and possibly flinching or moaning with pain: maybe even some blood the first time.

  They were able to meet at least once on the weekends and sometimes on weekdays in the late afternoon, once the days grew longer.

  Both of them had fat-tired bicycles. They were hard to pedal on the gravel roads, but they provided transportation and an excuse to get out together. They pulled them from the road and hid them in the bushes when they were in the schoolhouse. One Saturday afternoon when they were in the basement, they heard voices and footsteps above them.