Butterfly Weed (30 page)

Although he hated his classes at Newton County Academy, and would flunk Latin and barely pass English and math, he would achieve a C in hygiene because the subject interested him and because he liked his teacher, Doc Swain, and would never forget the little talk he’d had with Doc Swain on the first day of school, when the doctor was examining everybody and Doc Swain did not act surprised to discover that Russ had two penises. Doc Swain admitted that it was exceptional, quite rare in fact, but he didn’t tell Russ that he was abnormal, let alone a freak. “They call it diphallus,” Doc Swain had told him, making it sound not like a disease but a way of life, and said that some ignorant scientists refer to these cases as
diphallic terata,
implying that they are monstrosities, but, while they are certainly curiosities, they are nothing to be ashamed of. Doc Swain told of some other known diphallic young men in faraway places with names like Cuba and Scotland and New Jersey, and he said that the prevalence of the condition was about one case in five million, meaning that there were at least twenty other fellers in the United States with the same condition. Russ was thrilled to learn this. Doc Swain asked him several questions of a personal nature, such as whether he was able to urinate through both (he was), and whether erections occurred simultaneously (they did), and if there was bilateral ejaculation (Russ didn’t understand what this meant, but after Doc Swain rephrased it in plain English, without implicating Russ’s mother, Russ admitted that, yes, generally he bilaterally ejaculated). Doc Swain clapped him on the shoulder and said, “Wal, son, I wouldn’t worry about having an extry one, if I was you, but if it ever causes you too much trouble I could always cut one of ’em off fer ye.” Doc had laughed to let him know that he might’ve been just kidding, but Russ wasn’t too sure, and every time he saw Doc Swain in hygiene class, he remembered the suggestion and brooded about the possibility of having himself unilaterally emasculated. He kept wondering why it might be necessary, especially after they got to the chapter on reproduction and the pictures including some poor girl’s whole cut-away bottom end with all those tunnels and tubes and cavities up in there, making it clear that there were plenty of places he could stick both of his peckers.

He wasn’t the only one who liked Doc Swain. Russ’s momma talked about Doc Swain all the time. Russ had to listen to her, during the daily ride to and from school on Marengo, and at the supper table, and even at bedtime. If Russ had begun to bore his mother with his constant talk about wanting to stick his peckers into her, she had begun to bore him with her constant hints that the only pecker she ever again wanted into her was Doc Swain’s, and Russ thought Doc Swain must have a colossal pecker or an awfully handsome one, because Doc Swain himself wasn’t especially good-looking. To hear his mother tell it, Doc Swain was the greatest man who ever lived, and if his momma had her way about it—and she usually had her way about everything—Doc Swain was going to become her next lover, if not her husband for life, the latter possibility hampered by the fact that Doc Swain already had a wife somewhere, not that he ever mentioned her. It embarrassed Russ to watch his momma flirting with Doc Swain, more even than he had been embarrassed watching her fucking with various other men. And his momma was becoming so preoccupied with Doc Swain that she was beginning to neglect Russ again. Sometimes she might go for a whole week before remembering that he had not one but two hard-ons that needed attention.

His mother’s unrequited absorption with Doc Swain became matched eventually by the vehemence of her jealousy toward Tenny Tennison, the prettiest of all Russ’s classmates and the one girl whose very presence, even from a distance of a hundred yards, would give Russ hard-ons. It took Russ a while to realize that his mother was so madly jealous of Tenny not because Tenny gave Russ hard-ons but because Tenny was somehow preventing Doc Swain from reciprocating his mother’s lust for him. Russ didn’t understand why Doc Swain would want Tenny, who was probably a virgin and didn’t know anything, when Doc could have the beautiful, experienced, and most desirable Venda just for the asking, and this gave Russ an ambivalent feeling toward his much-admired physician/teacher: while he couldn’t help envying Doc Swain because of his mother’s lust for him, he also resented Doc Swain because Doc was not making Russ’s mother happy.

Even after school had let out for the summer, his mother got worse instead of better. “You and me have got to find us some way to ruin that gal Tenny,” she told him one summer’s day. “And I mean
ruin
her.” She studied Russ’s face intently while an idea slowly crept into her mind, and then she grabbed Russ and gave him a kiss on the mouth. Russ had succeeded in achieving mouth-kisses with Olga and Orva and Orlena and Ohio, but those Baptist girls had always kept their lips tight together and considered the kiss finished in not more than three seconds. Now Russ’s momma parted her lips and brought her tongue out and stuck it into his mouth and wrapped it around his own tongue, and his two peckers swole so much they commenced bumping into each other. After a long while, she broke the kiss and said, “Do ye like that? Russ honey dearest, if you really like me and want a bunch more kisses like that, I want you to go up to Brushy Mountain and git Tenny Tennison and bring her down to meet your father, and I want you to git ’em together and
keep
’em together. Git the idee?” Russ said he knew his father wasn’t much of a looker, in fact, he didn’t mind saying that Mulciber was the ugliest wretch he’d ever laid eyes on, and he wasn’t very confident that such a pretty young thing like Tenny would want to take up with him. His mother gave him another, longer one of those open-mouthed kisses, and whispered in his ear, “I promise I’ll let you have what you’ve always wanted. If you will do this thing for me, I’ll let you stick
both
of your hard-ons in me.” That was a proposition that Russ couldn’t refuse, but he wanted her to promise that she wouldn’t let anybody else stick any peckers into her before he got his chance to do it, and she promised. And he wanted to know if the offer would be null and void if by chance Tenny and his father weren’t attracted to each other, which didn’t seem likely anyhow. So his mother pressed into his hand a little purple vial with a cork stopper in it, and gave him an eyedropper to go along with it, and explained that it was a love potion, and to put not more than six drops into Tenny’s drink, and, if needed, not more than four drops into Mulciber’s. That way, they’d be irresistible to each other. Whoever touched a drop of that special love potion would fall madly in love with the first person they laid eyes on. Russ had just one more question: how was he supposed to persuade Tenny to go off with him, and to let her folks know that it was above-board and all? “Just tell ’em,” Venda said, “that because she has such a sweet singing voice and lots of possibilities for being a great singer, I am offering to put her up here at my house and give her free voice lessons.”

His mother had a little map, that she had acquired somehow from the county judge, Frank Criner, showing how to get up to Brushy Mountain, and she gave it to Russ and told him to wear his Sunday-school shirt, and comb his hair good, and all. Then he climbed atop Marengo and took off. Even with the help of the map, it was hard to find and took him nearly all day, and when he got there Tenny wasn’t at home. Her folks, her mother and granny and a couple of older sisters named Oriole and Redbird, fell upon him like he was the first male creature they’d been able to lay hands on in ages, and they made a big fuss over his horse and even over his Sunday-school shirt, as if they’d never seen a white shirt before. Oriole kept saying, “Why, you aint no monster, after all!” and Redbird kept saying, “Couldn’t no horse git no paler than that’un,” and Russ began to get the notion that somehow he had been expected. It was a right peculiar family. The father didn’t get a chance to say much, and when he did, Russ couldn’t make out exactly what he was trying to say.

Finally they told him that Tenny was waiting for him, but she was waiting up on the top of the mountain. He didn’t understand. He didn’t know how she knew he was coming, and he didn’t know why she was waiting in an inconvenient place like the mountaintop. But he followed their directions and went on up there. It was a hard climb, and he had to leave Marengo tethered to a tree while he made the last part of the climb. When he got up there, she was just sitting on a rock with her head in her hands, and she was dressed all in black, which made her look somehow a lot older, although the black was a fine background for her long light-brown hair. As usual, whenever he so much as glimpsed her, both of his peckers expanded to their full size and caused a pair of great bulges in his britches, which he had to cover with his hat as best he could. He stood there with his hat over his groin, realizing that he didn’t have the nerve to ask her if she’d like to fuck, and he said bashfully, “Howdy, Tenny.”

She raised her face and gazed at him without surprise. The blue sky of her eyes was rainy. “Howdy, Russ,” she said. Then she observed, “That’s a purty white shirt.” She asked, “Did you bring Marengo with you?” and when he nodded, she said, “I guessed it might be you. But you’ve got only one head.” He didn’t know what she was talking about, so she had to back up and tell him all about the prophecy of Cassie Whitter.

He was embarrassed. “Wal, heck, I shore wouldn’t mind being yore bridegroom, but it aint me. It’s my daddy. I mean, I wasn’t supposed to tell ye until you’d had a chance to meet him, but that’s who you’re supposed to marry,”

“Is he a freak?” Tenny asked.

“Most folks think so,” Russ said. “He’s in purty bad shape, what with his crippled legs and all. But he’s a good man, and he’d treat you real nice and keep you happy.”

“Nothing will ever keep me happy again,” Tenny said, sadly. Then she stood up. “Well, if I caint marry Colvin Swain, I might as well marry yore daddy or anybody. Let’s go.” Russ helped her down off the mountaintop. The west wind was beginning to blow real hard, and it was getting a mite too airish up there, and was turning dark, too. He helped her climb up on Marengo, sidesaddle the way his momma had ridden to school with him so often, and he explained to her that they could tell her family that she was going to Jasper to live with Venda Breedlove and take voice lessons, until school started. “But that aint true, is it?” Tenny said. “I don’t want to live with your momma. I hate her guts.” Russ assured her that he himself sometimes hated Venda’s guts, and that it was just an excuse to persuade Tenny’s folks to allow her to come to Jasper.

It was dark by the time they reached the cabin, and of course the Tennisons insisted that Russ spend the night. They gave him a big supper, with five kinds of dessert, and treated him like he really had proposed to Tenny and was planning the nuptials. It wasn’t a big cabin, and both beds was all full up, what with the sisters visiting, so they had to fix Russ a pallet on the kitchen floor, and that’s where he slept. It was a real hot August night, without any kitchen windows to let in the night air, and Russ stripped down to his underpants to keep cool, and, once everybody else had gone to bed, he left the sheet off, although just the thought of sleeping in the same house with Tenny gave him a pair of all-night erections, and he realized he’d better try to wake up in the morning before the women came in to fix breakfast.

Way along in the night, he was awakened by something like a bee sting on his thigh, and looking up from his pallet, he beheld Tenny standing over him with a candle. A drop of the hot candle wax had fallen on his leg and stung him. Tenny’s mouth was open in that O which distinguished her from all the O-girls at school, and she was staring transfixed at his peckers, both of which had escaped through the fly of his underpants. Nobody except his momma and Doc Swain had ever seen his peckers before, and he was somewhat embarrassed, and grabbed the sheet to cover himself. It occurred to him that Tenny had been meaning to slip into bed with him, but why did she have the candle? Now she blew the candle out and said to him in the dark, “So you are the one, after all. My sisters said you were, and they told me to come in here and look at you to find out if maybe you are a freak, but I didn’t believe them.” He waited breathlessly for her to lie down beside him, and he waited, and waited, and after a while he realized that she was no longer in the room.

At the crack of dawn, he dressed and went out to sit on the front porch and think about what had happened. He felt somewhat humiliated, that she had discovered his secret and thought of him as a freak, and that she hadn’t been attracted enough to want to get in bed with him. He was tempted to saddle Marengo and go on back to Jasper without her, but if he did that his mother would be angry and wouldn’t keep her promise, and he could hardly wait for his mother to keep her promise. After a while, Tenny came out and sat on the porch too, but she didn’t say a word to him, so he didn’t speak to her. They just sat there together silently, as if they both understood something that didn’t need any discussion. At breakfast, the Tennisons and the grandmother and the two older sisters all talked about the wedding and the shivaree and the infare dinner as if it was all set, and they wanted to discuss who to invite and what cakes and pies to make, and all that. Russ tried to remind them that his job was only to transport Tenny into Jasper so his mother could give her voice lessons, and that they’d both be going back to school in the fall at
N.C.A
. But Tenny’s family just smiled and winked at each other, and went on making a big fuss over him.

Finally Tenny got her gunnysack with her clothes and stuff, and they climbed up on Marengo and said their good-byes. Tenny’s sisters kept saying to Russ that if he changed his mind about Tenny, either one of them, Oriole or Redbird, would be awfully glad to have him, but Russ figured that was just insincere politeness, like when you ask somebody to come go home with you but you don’t really mean it. Besides, there was no question of changing his mind about Tenny, because his mind was not his own, but his mother’s; if it had been left up to him, he would have gladly made the Tennisons happy by becoming Tenny’s man.