Chapter 12 - Was That So Hard?

The young man smiled at his aunt.  She frowned back.  His uncle had wisely held his face in the same neutral position one would expect to find at a funeral or a child's baptism or a perfunctory bowel movement.  He did not get the scolding look that the boy did and somehow seemed smug about it without ever showing it.  The young man walked with his elders into the old wooden house with the screen door eeeeeek and bammm! signaling their entrance.

They had come here to see a dead man.  Well.  A dying man.  They, the older two, had known the old man in his youth and vitality.  He was old then too.  One of those who frowned at everything.  Color photography was wasted on this misery of existence.  He never saw the vibrancy in life.  And viewed those that saw the reds and blues and yellows and greens of the world as frivolous.  They knew his first wife.  And his second.  And his third.  They had not yet met his fourth.  

The young man child walked into the old wooden house with the door banging behind him and felt the hairs on the back of his neck standing up.  He had no knowledge.  No awareness.  No experience.  But.  His body knew.  His body was aware.  His body contracted every follicle across every inch of skin.  Hair, everywhere, stood at attention.  Only on his neck, did he notice.

They walked through the house silently.  A young voice, not tired or ironic, we are back here.  

The older ones greeted the husk in the bed.  They ignored the young voice.  His fourth.  They paid her no mind.  He saw her.  He never quite realized that he stared.  He closed his mouth quickly when he found himself wondering how long it had been open.  He saw her eyes - green.  He saw her lips - pink, red.  He saw her shoulders - soft and round.  He saw her neck - graceful.

He shook himself back to the world when he realized that he had forgotten his uncle and his aunt and the corpse in waiting.  They had disappeared.  They had not existed while he stared at that spot where her neck disappeared into the shadows of her brown hair.  He knew he had to leave.  He had no control here.  How long had he been here?  How long had his eyes been on her neck?  Her legs?  Her breasts?  Her eyes?

How long has she been looking at him?  What is that look on her face?  Why are the old ones still talking at the corpse in waiting?  How are they not aware of this?

He got up.  He walked away.   Eeeeeeeeeek and Bammmm! goes the screen door.  He is walking down the the dirt road.  He is walking away.  The hair on the back of his neck is not going down.   Behind him, without looking,  he hears the announcement:  Eeeeeeeeeek and Bammmmm!

He keeps walking.  Down the road.  Down the dirt road.  The pines are towering erect on either side of the road.  The ditches run with water trailing from the hills.  He walks on.  

He sees the straw raked up in a pile.  The straw fallen from the towering pines raked into a pile in the ditch, just above the water running down from the hills.  He stops there and waits.  He has no experience.  None.  But he waits.  By the straw.  Under the pines.  With the sounds of the rushing water like hushed whispers.

She finds him quickly enough.  She is older.  Experienced as much as the old man could teach before his old age and cold nature could subdue him.  She kisses him first.

He lays her down in the ditch, in the straw, just above the water and under the shade of the pines.  They strip each other of the clothes they have and hands and mouths find the most vulnerable with care and tenderness that neither of them have known before.  They grow hungrier and bolder.  More daring in their desire.  They are experienced together in moments.  Desire does not have to spoken or even fully thought.  An inhalation.  A look.  A fingernail trailing...and a muscle tightens.   She pulls his hair and it hurts in all the best ways.   He holds her down and she knows she is powerless except in the most important of ways.

It is over.  She is tucking her shirt back into her skirt and walking back to the house owned by the soon to be corpse.  He stands in the middle of the road thoroughly ...  untucked.   He has a certainty that he has not had before.  His aunt will not be able to cower him with a look ever again.  He knows who his wife will be once the corpse is finally a corpse.  His is going to marry this Wetta who he first loved in a straw bed in a ditch on the side of a dirt road.  He is going to marry her.  And he is going to remind her every day of the passion shared this day on the side of a dirt road.  He is going to marry her. 

He smiles to himself.  He smiles as a man with confidence.  She thought this was just a small pleasure in her life.  A sideline.  A brief respite from the horror of her ancient husband leaving this world.  But he knows.  This moment was special.  This moment was life changing.  This moment was larger than she could have ever imagined.

EEEeeeeekkkkk.    and   Bammmmmmm!