Read Nether Regions Online

Authors: Nat Burns

Tags: #LGBT, #Fiction, #Lesbian, #Romance, #(v5.0), #Healing the Past

Nether Regions (3 page)

BOOK: Nether Regions
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“Of course. Parked around the corner, though.”

“I can’t blame him,” Sophie said quietly.

“Why?” Beulah asked.

“Cancer. Lung. I thought you knew.”

Beulah looked at the cigarette glowing between her fingers. “No. No one told me. How far’s he gone?” She took one more pull, then flicked the cigarette into the water.

“About two months in. I saw him last week.”

“Does Fritzie know, you reckon?” Clary asked. She had remained by the doorway, one hand resting on the jamb.

“Hell, he won’t even talk to Alice about it.”

“He won’t tell his wife? I can’t believe that. They have a lot of business to take care of before he passes.” Beulah moved to rise from her chair and Clary stepped to help her. “You need to talk with him, Sophia.”

“That’s too much meddling for me, Grandam. Let the man die in peace.”

Beulah eyed her granddaughter. “You know there’s no peace after if you don’t leave your family in order. I’m tucking in for the night. You comin’?”

Sophie nodded. “After a swim.”

Grandam blew her a kiss, using her mouth alone. “Mind the gators. Lord mind you,” she said as she and Clary moved into the house.

Sophie felt the reverberation of the slapping screen door as much as heard it. The soft murmur of the two women’s voices carried to her as she stood and absently removed her jeans, T-shirt and underclothing. Naked, her arms and legs glowing ghostlike in the dusk, she made her way along the plank steps and down to the lower landing. Her favorite otter, Astute, chattered to her as he floated by on her left. It was a good thing he was there; it meant no gators were close. It wasn’t likely one would bother her anyway. The bayou fed them well and it wasn’t her bleeding time.

The shock of the cold water after the heat of the day almost took her breath as she slipped into the shallows by the landing. Moving deeper in, she encountered random warm pockets that comforted her. Tucking her head under, she looked for the fairy villages, trying to follow the light trails as they descended. Though she was diligent, the trails dispersed as she closed in on them and she found only sand and muck. Surfacing, she felt Astute’s hand-like claw against her shoulder, so she turned and made cooing noises at the adolescent creature. He backed off, his prattle giggling at her and she laughed and turned to float on her back. The stars seemed to mock her as they danced in the night sky. She wondered suddenly where the bayou ended and the sky began.

Chapter Three

Delora stirred restlessly. She turned and curled onto her side, her right palm automatically coming to rest protectively against the blanket of scar tissue that covered her body from waist to thigh.

She could feel a cool trickle of fluid sledding against the outer lips of her vagina and falling to pool on the sheet under her thighs. It felt pleasant at first, with the same pleasurable release felt when she’d wet the bed as a child. But this wetness was too cold, too foreign so she stirred toward wakefulness, sighing in irritation. She tried to orient herself: naked, in bed, the musty scent of Louie on her. Where was he? Another odor penetrated her dream state, this one harsh and oily, and she felt a stinging sensation as the cool wetness penetrated deep into the tender tissues folded against her groin.

The headache brought about by last night’s case of beer throbbed as she opened her eyes to dawn’s encroachment. Her husband Louie was there, above her, smiling down as if knowing he was finally going to have the last word. His eyes were sorrowful as he watched her, as if he regretted that he was victor. As if he felt sorry for her defeat.

The stick match bloomed in his right hand as his thumb strummed it. He pressed his other hand against her forehead—a benediction crafted to hold her to the bed because he knew that in seconds she would realize the origin of the petroleum smell that was compounding the aching inside her skull. She realized then that it was lighter fluid and knew there was no escape.

The match descended and the final shreds of her hard-won complacency streamed heavenward in an inferno of yellow and blue. At first there was no pain, only amazement that the years of fighting and violence would end in this one act. But as the fire moved inside, discomfort grew into a frenzied pain that snatched her breath away. She knew she would never feel this agony again, and as she thought this thought, the river of fire worked its way deeper inside her body.

Remembered pain seared through Delora’s body, fierce and real. She awakened with a jolt and leapt from the narrow bed, breath rasping harshly from her lungs. She stood in the center of the room, arms hanging loosely at her sides, her hands shaking as she tried to breathe. After a short time, after she had calmed and the sweat had begun evaporating and cooling her body, she made her way into the bathroom. She opened the cabinet under the basin and reached way into the back. There, nestled against the cold water intake, she found a half-full bottle of vodka. She held it pressed to the front of her T-shirt for a few seconds. Without taking her eyes off her reflection in the shadowed mirror, she lifted the bottle of cool vodka to her lips and took a deep pull. She stared into her own eyes for a moment longer thinking how very much like a shark’s eyes they were, dim and lifeless and focused on survival.

* * *

He answered on the first ring. Delora was glad. It meant he was awake and she wasn’t disturbing him. The hoarse whisper of his voice comforted her immediately, irrationally.

She tucked the top sheet tightly around her body and settled onto the bed, the cell phone held delicately in her right hand. “Hey, Bucky.”

“Hey, doll, what’s new?”

“I’m having a bad night,” she said, trying to keep her voice steady.

“Can’t sleep?” His words were slurred, the letters half-pronounced, but Delora could understand him easier than most. In the beginning, she’d had a hard time listening to the distorted words rambling from a mouth that could no longer contain its saliva. There’d been time enough to get used to Bucky Clyde Thorpe’s speech during the months of healing at the Wallace Burn Unit in Mobile, however. They’d become close very quickly and within a few days she could discern his meaning. After just a few weeks she looked forward to hearing his words of comfort and encouragement.

She often wondered what it was about Bucky that drew her. Did his one bright blue eye mesmerize her, peering hawk-like from his pink, shiny face, guessing her every thought even as she thought it? His face was gruesome, actually, with tiny suture scars scattered amid patches of red, raw skin. The eye, though blue and quizzical, always appeared bloodshot, the edges of the eyelid inflamed. His other eye was gone, burned away by the fiery car crash that had taken just about everything else from him. An oval patch of skin sutured over the eye socket tried to provide a type of cosmetic protection but actually imparted an evil asymmetry to his features.

No, there was nothing beautiful about Bucky Clyde, yet she was held spellbound by him, captured by his labored existence and his no-nonsense reality checks. The spell was inescapable, even after two years back at home. She called him almost every day. He was psychologist, mentor and friend. Perhaps the amazing pain he had suffered during his two-year recovery, so much more extreme than her own, had catapulted him into a place both godlike and hellish, a place of supreme knowledge in a mind held captive by a crippled, half-functioning body.

“Sleep? Now, what’s that?” She pulled at short tufts of blond hair with fretful fingers. “Sometimes I still have bad dreams when I sleep.”

“Dreams. Me too.”

She could hear the rasp of his breath as they collectively mulled over the mutual horrors that had changed their lives in just a few short moments. She leaned and pushed a finger against the toenail of her left big toe.

“Is Louie acting up again?”

“No, he’s been pretty calm lately.” She sighed and shifted on the bed. “Rosalie and I had a fight though.”

“You and Rosalie? What about?”

“Stupid shit. The groceries. I hate her so much.”

“I don’t know why you stay there, Del. You need to get away from her. She’s only a foster mom to you.” Anger crept into his voice, making his speech even harsher.

“Yeah. I know.” There was nothing more to say about this. They’d gone over this ground a hundred times. He knew of her Southern Baptist sense of duty. He knew she was still afraid of what Louie might do to her. In fact, Bucky Clyde was the only one she’d told the truth about the fire. How it had been Louie who’d started it by pouring lighter fluid on her.

They calmed again into a companionable silence. An owl called somewhere outside her window and was answered by a low mating warble from deeper inland.

“How are you, Bucky? Did that last surgery give you much relief?”

“Umhmm. They lengthened some of the skin behind my knee. It had drawn up right tight.” He paused. “You know…”

“What?” She drew her palm across the smooth surface of the sheet. It was soothing.

“I still feel my other leg sometimes. They said all the nerves were gone. I think they grew back.”

“How can you feel something that isn’t there? That’s kind of weird, isn’t it?”

“No, I read that it’s possible. Phantom pain. I really think I have that.”

“So what’s it feel like?”

“Like throbbing. Like blood going through it.”

“I wonder if I could feel my womb,” she mused. “I don’t feel much of anything there anymore.”

“Yeah, all my stuff is gone too.” He laughed ruefully, and Delora blushed, sorry she had brought the subject up.

“I’m sorry, Buck.”

“Me too. I used to like sex.”

“It was okay. I just wish I had the choice again, that’s all.”

“How’s everything at the Blossom?”

Delora thought of the diner where she worked. She thought first about the bright linoleum floor, then about the coffee smell. The fresh-brewed smell, not that sour, old coffee smell. She didn’t much care for that. Or for the bleach smell of the kitchen.

Her co-worker Marina’s face appeared in her mind’s eye. Marina. She was beautiful, exotic, with soft Latin features and a lithe, tanned body.

“Delora?”

“It’s fine. I’m fine.” She spent some time telling him about how the sun rose in iridescent stages that morning as she watched it through the eastern-facing kitchen windows. She didn’t mention Marina.

“That sounds good,” he said. “I wish I could have seen it.”

“Me too. I really miss you.”

“I’m sure you don’t miss seeing me every day.”

She heard him rise and hop, carrying his cell phone. “It’s true, you’re not very pretty, but then neither am I.”

“Don’t say that. Hey, Bonnie came to see me today. She brought me chocolates.”

“Sounds like things are getting serious.”

Bucky laughed. “Nah, she ate most of them.”

“You said she was a healthy girl.” Delora lifted one of her own slim legs and stared at it.

“She is. Fleshy.”

“What?” She couldn’t understand this word as it wasn’t one he used often.

“Fleshy. To make up for what I lost.”

“Oh, flesh. I get it.” She yawned and tried to muffle it. “I guess I better get some sleep if I can. I have Blossom’s in the morning and the club tomorrow night.”

“How late?”

“You mean the French Club? Usually about two in the morning.”

“Then you get up again?”

She laughed. “Yep. Opening Blossom’s at six.”

“I don’t get it, Delora. You could move away from there and do something sane.”

“Sane?”

“Yeah, sane. Like work one job. Like finding someone who really cares about you.”

“I know.”

The silence grew and Delora began to feel like she could breathe again.

“You know the door here is always open.”

She thought of the little two-room apartment in Myrtle Beach that he’d described to her and the sudden love she felt for him made her heart pound. “Thank you, honey. I’ll remember that.”

“Goodnight, Delora. Love you bunches.”

“You too. Sleep. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

Peeper frogs called loudly to one another and the sound seemed to swell and fill the room when his voice no longer sounded in Delora’s ear. Reaching up, she switched off the light and let their arrhythmic song lull her to sleep.

Chapter Four

Father Snake slithered off like mercury spills, and Sophie sat down hard, one cheek of her denim-covered bottom sliding into the wet marsh surrounding Bayou Lisse. She swore a host of colorful invectives and, using a nearby sapling, pulled herself to her feet. She swiped at her jeans with both hands and swore again when she saw the amount of duckweed and silt that muddied her hands. Irritated at her bad luck, she wiped the back of one hand across her forehead and swung her thick blond braid behind one shoulder. Stepping carefully, she bent and dipped her hands into a calm pool, spreading sawgrass and duckweed until she had created a small water-filled basin for herself. Rinsing her hands repeatedly, she scooped the odorous muck from her jeans. Then, relatively clean, she rinsed her hands one final time and stamped her foot at the contrary snake, surely long gone by now.

“I only wanted some of your juice, you blasted fool,” she said. “I don’t know why you got to be so selfish with it.”

Satisfied to have spoken her piece, she retrieved the worn gathering basket that always accompanied her on these jaunts and proceeded along the bank toward home. On the way she paused to dig spicy cattail roots and to pull a couple strips of pine bark, thanking each plant for the gift as she accepted it.

The bayou was unusually noisy today. Sophie paused a moment to listen to the insistent message. Nothing much was conveyed beyond the usual getting-on-with-life messages. She moved onward.

The water stretched lazily to her left. There was a sluggish current dead center, but the edges today were as still and smelly as a sickroom. New summer green framed the water on both sides, and the verdant growth extended down along the riverbank, the nodding heads of the plants sipping daintily at the water.

BOOK: Nether Regions
3.59Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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