Enduring (12 page)

For a good part of the day that the wagon had departed, Latha went up to the playhouse and spent some time with Rindy. They were almost too old to play with their dolls, but they could play like they were having a tea party and entertaining friends. Latha wished she had asked her mother for permission to sleep over at Rindy’s house, but her mother probably wouldn’t have granted it because there were so many boys at the Whitter place. All of her previous requests to sleep over at Rindy’s had been denied. Rindy had never slept over at Latha’s, but only because there wasn’t a spare bed. Now, however, Latha’s whole family was gone, so Latha asked Rindy to sleep over. Rindy said she’d have to go ask her mother, and an hour later returned to report that her mother needed a lot of help in the kitchen, and since Rindy was the only girl left in that big family of boys, she’d have to stay.

So Latha was alone. She went home and did her chores, milking the cow, etc., then made herself a small supper, mostly leftovers, and then sat on the porch for a while and whistled a few tunes, and hummed some others. There was still lots of daylight, and she had a notion she’d like to see what Every’s house looked like. She had walked past it a few times and seen it from the outside, but she’d never been inside, and she wanted to see where Every slept and what belongings he had. So with Rouser tagging along, she strolled on over to Every’s, taking the shortcut, the cowpath that went through the woods.

Now it just so happened that Every at almost the same time had taken into his head a notion to visit Latha’s house and spy on her bed and her belongings, and he took his dog Fancher along with him, but he stayed on the road and didn’t take the cowpath shortcut, and thus they missed each other.

As she approached the house, Latha wondered why their dog Fancher wasn’t barking at her. She couldn’t see the dog anywhere abouts. Had they taken the dog in the wagon? The Dill’s house was made of logs, a common two-pen dogtrot, so-called because dogs (or cats, or people) can trot (or walk, or sit) in the breezeway separating the two sides. It didn’t have as much total space as the Bourne’s house did, if you didn’t count that breezeway. Latha had no problem getting in, because nobody in the Ozarks ever had locks on their doors, not even when they went away on trips. In the “house” on the right, Latha saw, was the kitchen and the living room, while the left “house” contained the two bedrooms, one for Every and one for his parents. His was pretty small, just big enough to contain a bed too large for him, covered with a pretty homemade crazy quilt, and a small table and a chest which, she discovered, contained his shirts and socks and underclothes. One of the drawers contained odds and ends and play-pretties: a spy glass, a harmonica, a rabbit’s foot, a compass, one small book,
True Manhood: The Secret of Power
, a spinning top, a corncob pipe, a small pair of scissors, and, taped to a board with a drawn heart surrounding it, a lock of dark hair. Latha fingered the lock of hair and placed it alongside her own hair and saw that they were identical. But when and how had Every managed to cut off a lock of her hair?

Every at that same moment was rummaging among what few belongings of Latha’s he could find. There wasn’t a chest or a closet, just pegs along the wall from which garments were hung. The largest clothes apparently were Barbara’s, the lesser ones Mandy’s, and the least one’s Latha’s, although there was no longer much difference between the size of Mandy’s and the size of Latha’s. There was a kind of dressing table that had three drawers in it. The bottom drawer was Latha’s and contained some of her underclothes folded neatly, as well as her hairbrush, a comb, some hair ribbons and barrettes. Every wondered if he could get away with stealing a pair of her panties. He held them to his face for a moment. Then he stuffed them into a pocket of his overalls.

There was only one bed in the room, and Every assumed rightly that all three sisters slept together in that bed. He attempted to determine which spot was Latha’s. He sniffed the three pillows, and the one nearest the wall definitely smelled like Latha. So he lay down on the bed in that spot, his body feeling and fitting the indentations of hers. He closed his eyes and imagined that Latha was beside him. Pretty soon he was fast asleep.

Eventually Latha came home. She washed and dried the few dishes she had used for supper. It was getting dark now. She felt a little lonesome, but she was looking forward to having the bed all to herself without her sisters, who still whispered only to each other. So in the dim remaining light she climbed up to the sleeping loft and as was her custom on summer nights took off all her clothes. Then she discovered that there was somebody in her bed! Her head spun and she thought she might faint, and all that kept her from screaming was the realization that no one would hear her if she did.

Whoever was in her spot in the bed was sound asleep, and even snoring a little. She was reminded of the Goldilocks story: somebody’s been sleeping in my bed, and there he is! She could tell it wasn’t a full-growed man. Was it maybe one of Rindy’s brothers who had learned from Rindy that Latha was alone?

She heard thunder in the distance, and soon there was a flash of lightning, long enough to illuminate the sleeping person. It was Every! What was he doing, sleeping in her spot of her bed? She realized she was naked, and took up one of the bed’s coverlets and wrapped it around herself, and then she said, “Every.” Outside the rain was coming down hard and she could hear the steady splatter of it on the roof of the house. She said “Every!” a little louder but he didn’t wake. A bolt of lightning flashed nearby and then a huge boom of thunder, and that woke him up. He rubbed his eyes and sat up. The lightning was coming in steady flares, so they could see each other clearly.

“Latha?” he said. “They’s too much of you there to be just a dream.”

“I’m here,” she said, sitting on the edge of the bed. “But why are you? I thought you’d gone to Swain with them.”

“I thought you’d gone with them,” he said.

“I thought you’d gone with them,” she said.

“I gave up my seat for you,” he said.

“That was nice of ye,” she said. “But I decided to stay home, because I don’t care much for funerals.”

“Me neither,” he said.

For a long minute they couldn’t think of anything further to say. The lightning continued to flash and the thunder to boom.

“That’s sure some storm out there,” Latha observed. “I hope they all got to Swain before it started.”

“Cozy in here,” he observed. “Listening to the rain on the roof.”

“Of course you can’t go home in this,” she said.

“Course not,” he said. “You reckon Mandy would mind if I just had her spot in the bed?”

Latha laughed. “How would she know? I don’t plan to tell her.”

That almost sounded like an invitation for him to stay. It was really all that either of them needed to say. Without another word, Every unfastened his overalls, and then took off his shirt. In just his shorts, he scooted over to Mandy’s spot, and Latha reclaimed her own spot, which was still warm from Every’s body. Too warm, so she unwrapped the coverlet that was around herself.

For a while, they just lay holding hands. By and by the rain stopped pounding on the roof, although there was still a flash of lightning and a peal of thunder now and again. Eventually with his other hand Every reached over and felt of her breast, his fingertips playing with her tiny but hard nipple. Latha shivered from the thrill of it but did not know for sure what to do in return so he took her free hand and felt of
his
breast. She was sorry she had decided never to ask questions again, because she wanted to ask him, “Why do boys have nipples?” She knew why girls have them. In fact there was more than one reason, and right now she was enjoying one of the other reasons.

Before long, his nipple-twiddling fingers had moved on down her body to her navel and then below it. She was just beginning to grow a kind of dark peach fuzz in the place where Mandy and Barbara already had hair like the hair on their heads. Every’s fingers glided through that and reached the blister which Rindy had told her was the girl’s equal of the boy’s dinger although it’s just a fraction the size and you don’t pee through it. Every’s touch there caused her whole body to quake, but he just dawdled there an instant before going on down to the opening of her notch, which was already seeping and then sopping. She didn’t know if Every would be bothered by that. But apparently not; he got his fingers thoroughly wet. She again felt the need to match his maneuvers, so she reached down for his dinger, but he was still wearing his shorts. She gave the waistband a tug and pulled them down his legs, and he finished the job by pulling them off. A flicker of lightning revealed his dinger as it stood pointing at the ceiling and her hand discovered how very stiff it was. He squirmed beneath her touch but she held on and took pleasure in the feel of it. She knew that smooth taut skin would feel even better if there were some way to get it inside herself.

She turned her head and kissed him a big one on his cheek. He turned his head and kissed her a big one on the mouth. Then he threw a leg over her leg, knelt, and rose above her. She spread her legs. He tried to line up his dinger with her notch. In the dark (it had stopped lightning) he could not see where he was going, and had to try it by feel, and neither his dinger nor her notch possessed sufficient feelings. She put a hand on his dinger and tried to steer him, despite being so nervous with a mixture of thoughts: she wanted him inside her very much but would it hurt? What was she supposed to do? Was it going to be like some kind of dance? What would happen if he made her come over the mountain? Would she bawl like a calf? Would she pass out?

After much trial and error he got the tip of his dinger, which seemed to be shaped for that purpose, inside the vestibule of her notch, and he pressed and pressed but could not get the dinger in. She was trembling with uncertainty, and he was trembling with effort and frustration and desire. Suddenly her vestibule was thoroughly coated with something thick and warm and wet, and Every collapsed beside her. Rindy, who didn’t know, had never explained to her what happens when boys come over the mountain, but Latha was smart enough to figure it out. She and he each produced a lot of liquid, but hers was at the beginning and his was at the end. She sighed.

He lay on his back panting, and she wondered if it was all over. For a moment there she had felt herself rising against gravity as if she had no weight, and it was wonderful, but now it seemed to be all over. She reached over to feel his dinger, which was still very taut and very stiff. She climbed up over him and placed her notch down on top of that firm dinger, and lowered her bottom so that his dinger went through the vestibule to the place where it could go no further. Rindy, who still had hers, had explained to Latha what a “maidenhead” is, and Latha figured out that was what was keeping Every from going any deeper. Latha took a deep breath and bit her lip and dropped her weight down upon the dinger, and abruptly it was all the way inside of her, up to the hilt, and Every gasped and grabbed both her hips with his hands and began thrusting upward, his buttocks rising from the bed. Latha was in pain, but she was also in paradise, with an overwhelming sense of lust and urgency, and she rose and fell with Every’s movements until she felt that sense of the loss of gravity flooding over her, and the most incredible frenzy from top to toe.

She woke in the early dawn to see that Every was sound asleep but had one arm and one leg draped over her. Gently she rolled out from under his limbs and got out of bed. There was a good bit of blood on the sheets and also some starchy stains. She would have to do some laundry today. But first there was breakfast. She put on a nice dress, not her dress-up dress but a pretty one, and went downstairs to the kitchen. There was a dull ache, not truly painful, in her groin. She let her mind live over again what they had done. She wondered if Every drank coffee. She didn’t, herself. But she put the pot on the stove, and then the skillet, and put a few chunks of wood into the stove and lit it. Then she took the butcher knife and went out to the smokehouse and carved off some bacon. There were already eggs that she had gathered in the eggbasket. And her mother had left behind several days worth of biscuits, too many in fact, so she threw one to Rouser and then threw another one to Fancher. She took a wet washcloth with her to the outhouse and after peeing she wiped the blood from her legs.

When he came downstairs, Every was blushing, as if he had done something terribly wicked. Well, come to think of it, he had, hadn’t he? They both had. “Good morning,” she said happily. “Did you sleep good?”

“I aint a virgin no more,” he declared.

“Me neither,” she said.

“Are you okay? They’s a right smart of blood on the sheet.”

“I’ve got to wash it,” she said.

After breakfast she built a fire under the black iron wash-kettle, and Every filled it and a tin rinsing tub with water, and she got out the scrub-board, and they really worked on that sheet, taking turns, but they never could get all the pink out. She should have soaked it in cold water for a while, but it was too late now. She hung it on the clothesline.

Naturally Every wanted to do it again as soon as possible, and so did Latha, but she was too sore down there, and told him they’d have to wait. And besides, there was only that one bottom sheet for that bed, and it had to dry first. Every suggested they go to his house and use his bed.

Chapter ten

B
ut she was still too sore at bedtime to contemplate another go at it. She hoped Every would understand, and she told him so. At least they slept together, and he was able to come before sleep by thrusting his dinger between her clinched legs, not once but twice, and the second time he did the play-like sex, the rubbing of his dinger on her notch made her come too and they both slept in each other’s arms until dawn. Latha fixed breakfast in Every’s mother’s kitchen, and cleaned up afterwards. They spent the day together, she helping him with his chores, he helping with hers. They decided to go down to Swains Creek for a swim. They didn’t dare swim naked in broad daylight since it was bold enough for a boy and girl to swim together fully clothed. She ran home and fetched a swimsuit that belonged to Barbara and covered her whole body, arms and legs included, in the fashion of those days, and Every’s swimsuit covered his torso. They changed in front of each other in his room. So the whole day was still daring and a lot of fun. Apparently nobody saw them together in the creek. In the water, they hugged and rubbed together and by late afternoon had a great desire to get home and get out of those wet swimsuits and frolic in their birthday suits. They were almost home when a covered wagon came up the road behind them.