Date: Mon, 15 Jul 2002 23:24:56 -0500
From: Tom Emerson <thomas@btl.net>
Subject: STONINGTON STORIES - MARGARET
STONINGTON STORIES -- MARGARET
by R. Forbes Emerson
To Samantha, who made it all come true.
Numb? Well, maybe half-numb.
Cars and pickup trucks still hissed over the asphalt and
fishing boats still gunned around the harbor. Every wife and mother knew
the value of nutrition and so stole time to cook for their broods. The
shops were open, the one filling station, Owen's Corner Garage, still
pumped gas. Going through the motions, that was Stonington: half alive,
half lost in a forest of imagery -- wandering as zombies through
functional routines with minds a million miles away.
Not so far away, some odd thousands of miles, began, in
1958, the chain of events which put Stonington off its feed in that summer
of1960; turned a town quite used to a certain deviance in its community
affairs into something Ms. Shelly or Mr. Stoker would have recognized
verily and forthwith -- not a chain dragger, in a corporal sense, but a
pervasive psychosis worn like a shroud by all ages over eight, and, not to
put too fine a point on it, by one eight year old, too.
Shroud? Miasma? Curse? Pall? These would be good
adjectives as far as delineating pervasiveness went but not suited to the
color of the thing. The color would have been bright, fetching and
alluring.
The dichotomy is not easy for me to explain, even today;
imagine my trying to get a handle on it when I was fourteen years old.
Wish me luck, in fact, because if you've been a fellow traveler over other
tales of my first year in the small Maine fishing town, half-way up the
coast at the tip of Deer Isle, for sure, you're not going anywhere real
soon, leaving it up to me to forge ahead wearing my own shroud, which is
thousands of readers now, and probably millions over the years. Sure, my
ego is off-putting, but I think of it as a saving grace, for, be it that I
was a humble soul -- the epitome of the Jimmy Stewart, Bob Hope, nice guy
-- what then? Every human on the planet would read my stories, and what
is today supreme conceit and unbridled arrogance at being the best ever at
something that's so hard rocket scientists and brain surgeons have never
succeeded in rendering a single worthy page, would swell so alarmingly that
even if we had 911 in Belize, or 922, which would be more likely in a
country where the electricity board has been shut down for the last week
because they ran out of receipt books, the emergency services could not be
held responsible for knowing how to cope with a head the size of a temple
to myself.
Mercy of mercies, I was granted a tiresome side, along
with talent and genius, so I get real left alone and am thus able to go
about my business in such a manner as to increase my legendary status, thus
filling my own mind, which, in turn, prohibits social distractions,
allowing more time to work. You get to read the proof of the pudding,
however convoluted, so I end up with a, no friends, and, b, no critics,
gaining for me, the artist, the very perpetual motion I attributed to the
clergy in the previous chapter. If I hadn't just read Dostoyevsky none of
this would have occurred to me, and we'd be where we belonged in the first
place, setting the wheels in motion, and on the somewhat convoluted trail
which leads the 240 pound Tip McCorison to the forty-three pound Margaret
Weed.
It happened in rural India. Radda was taking the battery
out of his truck, when Sundra came along on his bicycle.
"Stop a minute and help me," the twenty-year-old Hindu
drivers said to the thirteen-year-old boy.
Sundra brought his two wheeler to a stop at the fender of
the ancient Ford.
"You are a gift from the gods, Sundra," Radda said,
looking down at the boy from his perch in the engine compartment, "for no
one has been along in an hour, and this battery is too awkward for me to
lift by myself."
The boy smiled up, leaned his bike against the front
bumper of the old truck, and climbed up beside Radda. In a few minutes
they'd muscled the heavy truck battery out of its bracket and to the rear
of the truck, where they hoisted it onto the bales of rubber for transport
to town.
"Stay for tea," Radda said, "there will be a new battery
along before sunset, you can help me put it in."
"Then I could ride with you?" the boy asked.
"Of course," Radda assured him, "and I'll owe you a
future trip or two, in addition."
"And a lesson in the clutch?" the boy asked, grinning.
"So you can have my job when you turn fifteen? I guess
it must be." Radda sighed melodramatically.
"There is not more to it than operating the clutch
pedal?" the boy asked, using a touch of irony to comfort his older friend.
"The truth is," Radda said, playing along, "any boy, and
of course, it could be a girl, who survives even one year in the mountains,
riding a bicycle with no brakes, cannot fail to adapt himself to the ways
of the Ford, which has enough brakes to halt the progress of at least
one-thousand bicycles."
"Also enough forces to kill an elephant or any number of
sacred cows," the boy noted, not toadying but just being friendly. Sundra
knew Radda from their village, now ten miles distant. He was the tallest
man of a thousand, a leading school athlete, and still avidly involved in
football and cricket. He was married to Nindra, a beauty who'd fattened
and soured after the birth of their daughter, Kimma, his little angel, now
four years old. It was generally assumed that Radda had chosen his job
driving the truck in order to spend a few nights a week away from his home.
"Perhaps it is a lack of speed, in the first place, which
gets one through," Sundra observed.
"Well, that's what we have now, isn't it?" Radda laughed,
"a very great lack of speed, and great safety for even the ant and the
cricket who might wish to share the macadam."
Sundra laughed. He knew Radda by mere acquaintance as
the young man lived at the far end of the village. They had never really
spoken before.
"Yes, but such a life for the machine would feed very
few," Sundra said.
"In certain safety is certain death," Radda acknowledged.
"And if one were to lie still enough, long enough," the
boy said, "his position at some time must become one and the same with the
cobra, so what is certain in our land?"
"Death and taxes," Radda replied, "the same as the world
over."
They talked for a few minutes about the truck, the
twenty-year-old driver explaining he'd nursed it under a kapok tree as the
fuel pump failed, then found the dying battery had gone the way taxes would
never go.
"Is it lonely on the road?" the boy asked.
"It is for me," Radda acknowledged, "but I see many
trucks carry boys like you in the right seat; I think those drivers are not
so lonely."
"It must be very fine for the boys," Sundra responded.
"During the day, it is," Radda said, "but at night, with
the drivers away from their wives, and so many diseases to be had from, and
so much money to be spent for the ladies along side the road, things can be
different. Some boys enjoy what must pass under such circumstances, but
for other boys, it would be worse than eating beef."
"Why is it this way?" Sundra asked.
"It's not, it's the way it's been made; if all boys were
brought up bathing with young men, all boys would enjoy what happens --
it would be unnatural in the extreme, not too. That would be natural.
"Regrettably, it would also be very boring; of no more
interest than answering nature's daily calls. Making it semi-forbidden, in
the first place, keeps it from happening too often, and, in the second
place, raises the excitement associated with the fruit."
"Why have you no boy to keep YOU company?" Sundra asked.
"It is many hours together, many days together," Radda
replied, "so the fit must be very good, otherwise, great stress would be
attached.
"I'm looking for a boy, if I'm looking at all, who likes
to read. He needn't quoth the bard, but it would be nice if he'd read John
Masters."
"I don't want to read him," Sundra said, "for once I
have, I'll never be able to do it again.
"I like John D. MacDonald."
"How about Hemingway?" Radda quizzed.
"In my opinion," the boy said, "he died before he was
born."
"Yes," Radda agreed with a happy smile, "he molders so a
breath of Calcutta's ripest air would come, by comparison, as a fresh
breeze from a valley of flowers."
"One stool in the sewer," Sundra added, delighting his
new friend, not with the spoutings of the iconoclast, but with a literarily
justified acuteness and that which is most valuable in any human, the
ability to discern truth from po-bah. The boy didn't need to add the pipe
away from the latrine also housed Fitzgerald, Faulkner and a long list of
other drunks and hacks -- Stellllla!!! -- with John O'Hara, the only
one who had the faintest glimmer of what being a writer was all about.
As a writer, myself, I crow with considerable authority;
let your kids read the referenced filth and they will not be the same after
as they were before. I look at it this way. I smoke pot every day.
Chronic use of marijuana lessens the IQ by four or five percent, every
year. I started with three or four hundred, as measured by Mensa (aced the
test, maximum possible score, two-hundred, in half the allotted time).
Since I am exceedingly poor at mathematics, and especially anticipatory
statistics, I don't know whether the `half-the-time' thing yields three
hundred, or doubles the nominal maximum to four hundred. I rather think
the latter, for even with the years of pot smoking, I'm still not dumb
enough to read Sallinger (or write for Hollywood).
"Thus Uncle Milty," Radda said.
"And Lucy," Sundra agreed.
America the friend maker. Promulgate something banal and
dimwitted enough, and a hatred of moronic sleaze could end up the very
catalyst of a new relationship. You were, after all, neither what you ate,
nor what you smoked, but what you read. Of course, that didn't mean you
couldn't be a damn nice peasant, without a page to your credit, but from
Radda's point of view, there was more to the world than monkeys, snakes,
and gods, so he was captivated by the boy from across town. Nor had the
child flinched at the mention of long nights inevitably spent in each
others' company.
The massive tree provided cave-like shade, the road was
such that a vehicle could be seen and heard from five miles or more in each
direction; the battery was perched for its ride, help would be along in an
hour or two. They ate bread with avocado and olive oil and drank tea heated
on a small fire at the roadside. A silence, which they both liked.
"Have you a pair of brown eyes of your own?" Radda
finally asked, breaking the contented peace.
"They were taken from me by Tanhab," Sundra replied
glumly.
"I'm sorry," the young man said to the boy. "That is the
most terrible of things."
"I ride to forget, or at least to try and forget," Sundra
responded. "Perhaps by the time I've made my was to Ashantibo and returned
to our village I will sleep tonight. That is a little something."
"Very little," Radda said, sympathetically, lapsing again
into a silence in commiseration with the young boy's loss. For both the
feelings were the same. What crime could a young man commit in order to
earn such a sentence from the harshest court administered by the most
despotic magistrate and executed by sadists? A girl who gave you her eyes
and became the clay and kiln of every thought and every dream, sentenced
you not to death at her change of heart, but to life everlasting not just
without her, but with knowing moment by moment for a million moments
another would wake to her soft warmth, her breath on his cheek, her belly
swollen or flat, against his belly, and the reach of the small hand and the
sighs and cries in the night for him, not for you, and the first million
moments would be followed by a million more until you were ancient, until
you were sightless, until you were toothless and almost nothing but that
one dream of that one laugh, one that smile, all one smoke up one chimney
and all gone forever. All.
"All so poets can write songs on our hearts," Sundra
observed, breaking the silence of commune, "and not have their penmanship
shaken by annoying beating and throbbing."
"I don't know what Tanhab offered the young lady to whom
you allude," Radda whispered, considerable awe evident in his voice, "but
she has made a poor bargain for herself."
"He's friendly," the boy replied. "Not me. I'm glum.
Introspective. Pessimistic. Tanhab thinks it is a fine turn of events
that India is free; has thrown off the colonial yoke. I feel the opposite;
that it is an unrequited tragedy that gets worse with each passing year.
That Gandhi was a self-serving, race-baiting, empire-building monster, and
nothing but; that we were one million times better off in our marriage with
England -- the greatest chapter in both our very long histories -- that
we should beg to once again be reunited and included in the family of our
natural spouse for her sake as well as our own.
"This brings much laughter, and I'm probably lucky it's
mockery and derision and not sticks and stones.."
"That's just because of you tender age," Radda supplied,
helpfully; "they'll undoubtedly come with a few more years of maturity."
The boy couldn't help giggling at the absurd point of
view. "A broken bone or two might be a relief, at that," he replied, "any
pain could not help being less than knowing Darleela beckons him and not
me."
"How do you think she does it?" Radda whispered.
Sundra froze at the sudden change in his new companion's
voice. For long moments he was repulsed to a degree that he almost jumped
to his feet, reclaimed his bicycle, and pedaled furiously on toward
Ashantibo. Then he calmed, sighed, and settled back against the warm tire
of the big truck. Radda exhaled in an overt sight of relief.
"I though you were going to be as the wind down the
valley," he said to the boy, "and, though I have been where you have been,
I do have an occasional thump and bump under my ribs, which you would have
carried with you, though you never meant to."
"You have been kind to me, listening to such an old story
from one of my age," the boy explained in his beautifully articulated
English. "I didn't mean to imply rudeness or disrespect." He didn't know
what else to say. Half of him was repelled by the intimacy of Radda's
intensely personal question concerning Darleela and Tanhab, but a larger
half -- and he couldn't help grinning to himself at the imprecise notion
-- seemed, without any conscious bidding on his part, to realize that the
only cure to the disease which seemed to engulf him more virulently as time
passed, might be to wallow. Wallow in it; in the friendly, easygoing
athlete, sixteen years of age, and -- mindless though he surely was --
his delicate classmate, just showing the first signs of leaving off being a
child and becoming at least a girl if not quite yet a woman. To wallow in
it -- them -- to dwell, moment by moment on what they would do, alone,
together, in whatever dark and private place they chose for their first
time -- probably this very approaching night.
His new friend seemed to able to read both his heart and
mind at will. Perhaps he really had been there and done that, as they said
on television, and thus knew what he was talking about. Sundra released
his thoughts of vanishing from the scene and resuming his lonely odyssey,
his travail of private agony that made an irony of the old tires and worn
chain of his bicycle -- (for it seemed everything must be new to fit in
his new world of edgy, ragged, festering torment, but, then again, Radda
actually was new-to-him, so how did that fit?).
"It's hard -- very hard -- being a genius," the young
man was saying, "and if you read a lot, that makes the difficult,
impossible, or the very, very next thing to it. You know what's good for
others far better than they know themselves, which is not likely to make
you popular.
"And, is if that weren't bad enough," the truck driver
went on, "you know how important it is to live not just for Tomorrow, but
to a large extent, actually in Tomorrow -- at least to the extent one can
live `in' a day: the prepositions are a little vague on the subject; in
other words, how trivial in inconsequential Today is and how it merits
respect only in that it must be gotten through to get to Tomorrow, being,
of and by itself, little more than a nuisance."
"Today was more than that," Sundra observed.
"But you are surviving it," Radda responded. "There's
nothing mystic or transcendent about it. We treat our priests and
soothsayers with respect simply out of tradition; their reincarnation,
their various planes and plateaus of existence in the here-and-now and
ever-after are no more relevant -- and in fact are far less so -- than
what is happening in the mud at the deepest point of the deepest ocean five
thousand miles away. Their talk, though voluminous beyond comprehension,
it as worthless as the weeds that choke our fields or the starlings that
eat our grain. And so is Today. It's nothing more than a waypoint to a
Real Day. If your girl, Darleela, had said Yes to you, today might have
been a Real Day -- would have been, almost certainly unless she was a
harrier or a shrew -- but, since she eschewed her handsome, young genius
who sees through Ghandi like an eagle sees through its own cornea, it turns
out, at the very least for you, and in all probability for her, to be yet
another No Day; one of what will be tens of thousands, should the two of
you fulfill most of your life spans.
"Now," Radda went on, "it's a rare thing to hear that
which is salient and germane; that which happens to be true and unequivocal
delivered in the roundabout patois of the Seek or Brahmin; that is, with
the how of the saying more important than the what of the saying, but, if
you'll stop and think about it for a few moments, and, since you're already
stopped, and sitting with me nearly motionless beside the road, just think
about it for a few moments, you will soon enough see for yourself that now
that a great hole has been rent in the fabric of your existence, the only
thing with which to fill the void is conversation.
"This, in spite of the fact that most advisors instruct a
person in your position -- that is, someone who has suffered a great
personal loss and tragedy - to throw themselves into work as an analgesic
to their pain.
"No, indeed. In the first place, the advice is
fundamentally wrong. Wrong for everybody in all situations. One who
suffers should indulge himself in and saturate himself with his misery --
to what extent? To the extent he enjoys it, or, more accurately, since it
would he the very definition of wasteful to say so much without being
highly accurate, evolves to enjoying it. While it would be an
oversimplification to disregard the wise man who claims it is better to
have loved and lost than to have never loved at all, and say, instead, it
his better to have loved and lost, than to have loved and not lost, it
still follows that to have loved and lost gives one far more to talk about
than if one is happily following the path of brightest lights and all
delights, and thus rendered moot by a commonality of feelings beyond
words."
Sundra thought and thought. Reviewed and thought some
more. Considered. Contemplated. He started at the beginning, and worked
chronologically; started in the middle, working forward and backward, and,
having run low on options, started at the end and worked back to the
beginning of Radda's speech. Massage it though he might he could neither
get it to make perfect sense, nor dismiss it as nonsense. The
self-fulfilling prophecy is a nebulous concept; glibly used, rarely
relevant, yet the more he thought, the more he questioned and reviewed, the
less acute became the howl of loss. What he would have objectively
dismissed as self-indulgent and mawkish, became, sure, with a little
trial-and-error, a palliative of substance; more than a pebble in his river
of sorrow, but enough pebbles -- and stones -- and boulders -- to dam
the river, to make it deepen and swell; to hold it still so instead of just
flowing forever on, untouched and untrammeled, it now, as a lake rather
than a torrent, could be identified then actually dipped into and shared;
bathed in and splashed about.
Yes, it made Sundra's head swim, but by this very fact,
gave dimension and seeming substance to what had, even just some minutes
before, been intangible and ethereal; in a word, frustrating.
"You can't pluck love," Radda intoned. "You can't scale
it, filet it, launder it nor hang it out to dry. All you can do is talk
about it. Worry it with word and phrase and sentence and paragraph and
page and chapter and book and library. Talk the clock around. Talk the
pages from the calendar. Talk the years from your life, then talk the
lives of other into centuries. It gets you nowhere, of course, but therein
is the secret, because one of the place it fails to get you is back to the
heart of your own grief and loneliness."
"And this fellow is driving a truck?" Sundra wondered to
himself. He thought with a measure of dismay of all the fingernails worn
to bleeding nubs as those searchers and seekers of wisdom and clarity had
hauled themselves up over the rocks and crags of Nepal, when all they'd had
to do was stick out their thumbs and hitchhike a ride in an old Ford. What
a waste.
"And it is not all metaphysical and abstract," Radda was
saying now. "Much of the talk is anything but. In fact, if it is to do
you any good, much of it must be all-too specific, exhaustive, fulsomely
detailed and uncomfortably explicit. Were we riding, instead of sitting
waiting for Tash and a new fuel pump and battery, such a talk as we'd need
to have would last until the city, then, well, let's say far into the
night. It would take the place of food, good for the heart; take the place
of cigarettes, good for the lungs; take the place of women, good for the
pocket book; take the place of sleep, not good for anything, but not to be
avoided if it is to take the place of dreams, and that, my young friend, is
the whole point."
At this point the trucking philosopher renewed the
question with which he'd started the principal portion of his discourse.
"How do you think Darleela will beckon Tanhab?" he asked.
Again, Sundra stiffened.
"Okay," said the maestro, "let's start at a more basic
level. To do that, it might be best to describe the girl and your
replacement as her lover."
This didn't seem to help.
"Then," Radda said, kindly, "let me start. I was just a
year older than you. Fourteen. Kareel was twelve. A year younger than
your Darleela. She was, for the most part, black eyes. I say `for the
most part', because her hair, black as a raven at a moonless, stormy
midnight, hung to her waist. Her cheekbones were high, her neck was long,
and they were lost from view -- the all; the eyes, the hair, the oval
face, the swan's neck, the moment you eyes met her mouth. It was wide, her
lips were rich and lush, her teeth just ever so slightly imperfect, yet
brilliant white -- large and friendly, if teeth can be said to be large
and friendly."
Sundra giggled in spite of himself. The hushed intimacy
of Radda's voice still alarmed him rendering him unconsciously uneasy, but,
also aware. When it came to philosophy and religion -- things like that
-- he almost deliberately fostered a manner making him appear, at least
superficially, fuller of manure than a Christmas goose, as the English
said, but in spite of this, his conversation seemed directed, reasoned and
going somewhere rather than just being talk for the sake of hearing his own
rather warm voice pontificate on conundrums, paradoxes and enigmas in their
various loops, mazes and labyrinths boasting no beginning and less
conclusion. (He was, after all, holding forth on Love -- and few had ever
writ short on the subject.)
"Yes," Radda continued, "she was of song, story, poem and
tear; as slim as a gazelle, bright as a monkey, gentle as a lamb, and mine,
all mine, since she was eight years old. She should be with me now,
holding the map if I travel on strange roads, making tea beside the road if
the machine bears ill will, laughing at me when I rush on with a thousand
words to tell of an elephant emerging from the morning fog, calms for my
soul, balms for my lips, all while hoarding alms for our days of blind
age."
"And?..." Sundra whispered, having shed enough tears for
one day.
"Keetal," Radda said. "Your Tanhab. Lively,
effervescent, half a foot taller than myself, thinner than the wanest moon,
but brighter than all the stars, I'll have to say it; empty, yes, but loud
and free with his father's money, where I was saving, even from age twelve,
for some little industry of my own, for her, for the children we used to
talk of when we'd dare the tiger and walk hand in hand far from the
village, far out into the fields, even into the forest to the north --
giving each other courage -- two half-children seeming to define both
infinity and forever against the world to the very last cat, snake and
scorpion."
Since he'd tried to avoid tears by getting his new friend
to advance his story, and it hadn't worked, Sundra sat in silence trying to
be surreptitious in applying the back of his hands to his cheeks; right,
left, right...
So much for convention; where the routine ended up in
seven or eight out of ten cases. Loving, losing, no medicine, salve, balm
or potion worth a dab. Yet there was a cure.
Keetal checked his wallet, plenty of rupees, for once no
need to bother his father for more, what with the girl being so young;
she'd not have developed expensive tastes nor would she boast a large
appetite. Feed a sparrow for a song, he chuckled to himself. Ah, a light.
That's what he really needed for the evening. Mature girls, those he
usually dated, were all very much the same once you had them free of their
blouses and bras; some a little larger, some a little smaller, didn't an
orange and a grapefruit feel much the same in the dark? But berries? Now
they could be very different. From the size of the tip of one's pinky, to
ten times that size; and each, different, or so it was said. Yes, not just
a light, but several candles. A magnifying glass? There was one in the
study for the stamp collection. ? No, but maybe next time, you know, just
for fun, especially if a couple of guys from the squad were along.
Eighteen was so GREAT. Keetal checked the mirror to be
sure. His Anglo blood showed especially at night; he could all but pass
for white. A proper Viking, that's who looked back, but better what with
the raven eyes under jet black, bushy brows. Girls liked that even down to
kids. He grinned his white chops at the spotless glass; they helped.
Kareel tonight, then for whom the package? Nine, eight, seven? There must
be a limit somewhere, especially for his eight and a half inch wonder
child. How great to be eighteen, to have the car, to explore the borders
(snicker) starting with the little hand-holder, barely twelve. And she
thought she loved him now!
Ah, the law. Tsk-tsk. What if it was this way? A kid
didn't know what was up. Okay, that was the basic premise. Then mightn't
it follow, in half the cases, that the ignorant kid did not in fact know
what was good for her? What, in the long run, would make her happy?
Further, shouldn't this half have rights to explore and experiment equal to
the rights of the other half to protection? Wasn't a girl denied the
potential happiness of an illegal relationship that might turn out to be a
source of lifelong happiness as severely damaged as a girl seduced into a
destructive relationship? Or was equal jeopardy attached? The rape
victim, assuming a non-violent encounter, and underlying mental health,
would resume a normal life, both physical and emotional in a matter of
hours or days, within a week or two at the outside -- much like a
sprained ankle or case of the flu. The girl denied, on the other hand,
would continue to suffer until she was allowed to be with the partner of
her choice, and in most cases would lose him, permanently, simply because
he would find someone else.
The mirror didn't argue; never had. Rather it grinned
wisely as Keetal combed his jet black hair carefully across his brow,
letting six strands droop, if anything, more dramatically than the American
Dean. Cool was just coming in, and cool, o, cool was here to stay. (Maybe
he should slip the magnifying glass into his blazer pocket, after all; how
cool would that be?)
Sundra was beginning to think Radda had defined asshole
as well as needs be when the philosophizing trucker cut past the chase to
the final scene where the fellow had the gal firmly in his grasp. The
setting was exquisite: the silk room of the Carlson Bros., Ltd's, export
warehouse. Pillows, scarves, shawls, saris, and an array of mirrors so
buyers could view the expensive merchandise any way they wished. The
evening air was perfumed with the scent of spices stored elsewhere in the
building, and Keetal ignored the powerful overhead lighting in favor of
half a dozen candles that he mounted in a semicircle surrounding a divan in
the corner of the loft. Cooing over the beauty of his seventy-pound date,
the six-two athlete wheeled mirrors close to the love seat and arranged the
bower to a high standard.
Sundra didn't know whether or not he was glad the
set-decorating segment of Radda's story was over. He assumed, using a mere
fraction of his mental capacity, that if he continued to listen he'd be
able to make up his mind. On a higher plane of import, and several onion
layers into the sphere of confluence, was the handsome young driver's right
hand gently massaging the back of his neck while his slim philosopher's
fingers toyed with his ears.
"I have numerous magazines -- some American -- on
sports, hunting, photography, and radio and electronics, " Radda said. "If
you prefer, you can find a roost amongst the bales of rubber and read until
we resume our journey, or, of course, you can proceed on your own two
wheels."
"Nice of him," the boy thought. He definitely felt
uncomfortable with, a, the story line which could hardly help but have
graphic elements, and, b, the gentle fondling. So? When did a thirteen
year old ever enter into something new, be it an unfamiliar street in town,
a first day of school, or even a new pair of trousers without feeling at
least a bit ill at ease? To be blasé at his age, the boy knew, would be
a sure sign of early decrepitude and could hardly help leading to a
half-zombie state of indifference and premature apathetic detachment. If
it was worth anything didn't it follow it must be worth a few goose bumps
and irregular heartbeats? To all and sundry conundrums and questions the
boy knew answers were in the offing; not only that, but that he had the
nicest and most thoughtful imaginable guide.
The grass at the verge was soft; the twenty-four inch
tires of the truck made good backrests; the shade was deep, the breeze half
cool. Sundra's head lolled to his left, Radda's to the right. The stream
was dammed, the lake was filling, and the night was so young it wouldn't be
born for several hours.
Keetal loosened Kareel's hair in front of the tallest
mirror. "Have you been with a man?" he whispered.
"Radda wants to wait," the tiny girl replied, her eyes
huge with fright and wonder.
"He's how old?" the tall teen asked.
"Fourteen," Kareel whispered.
"Has he ever kissed you?" the male quizzed.
"We've tried," the girl acknowledged.
"Was it like this?" Keetal Carson asked, tilting the tiny
oval face with its huge eyes and wide, boyish mouth to him and gently at
first crushing his lips to hers.
"No," she whispered a minute later, her tongue
subconsciously wiping her bruises as she stared into his eyes like a fawn
in the powerful battery light of a hunter.
"Do you know what I'm going to do with you on the couch?"
Keetal whispered.
"You wish to leave a child in me," Kareel replied simply.
"Do you know how that's done?" the tall athlete
whispered.
"I know a girl will hold a boy very tightly and that he
will kiss her wildly when what you wish is happening within her," the girl
said.
"Do you wish it?"
"It is natural," Kareel observed quietly, adding: "you
will have no trouble for my body is ready to meet your needs."
"You're wet?" the male whispered into Kareel's slim neck.
"It is natural," the girl repeated.
She fit. Tall for her age, the top of her exquisite head
came within inches of his chin. She moved back against him as he moved
forward against her, his hands around her waist and massaging her flat,
childish belly under the silk kimono she'd slipped into. "You are like a
tree," she whispered as she swayed slowly, openly accepting his tentative
thrust against the small of her back.
Keetal's hands rose slowly on the immature body, worked
the few buttons and slid under the lapels of her silk. "You're like a rose
bush," he sighed into her neck, "just coming into bloom."
"It is said by the girls of my school," Kareel whispered,
"that if a tall, strong boy gives freely of himself where you are touching
me that a girl will bloom the more readily."
"That may be," Keetal responded, "but the same seed given
freely and deep within will grow a fine melon in the young belly, and this
will also cause the buds to mature and flower."
"Oh, please," the girl moaned softly.
"Yes," the male groaned.
"No," the girl responded. "That's for Radda..."
"He's a mouse," the male growled, "snake food. He
wouldn't know what to do with a beauty like you, Kareel, and even if he
did, feel how I am. You said it yourself, like a tree. I will flood you,
where he would only spit a little, then dribble like an old man or a baby
on his bib."
"Better an ounce of gold than a ton of dirt," the girl
thought to herself. She was in over her head. Diner, wine and charm had
swept her ahead of herself, topped off with the opulence and luxury of the
Carlson show rooms; the incense, the soft candle light... And where were
all her school friends that had so encouraged her, now? "Oh, the car,"
they'd said. and "oh, he's so tall... blue eyes... the captain of the
squad... twenty goals last season... boat... horses... lucky... "
Talk about half the story. Fruit of the ranch, fruit of
the vine, true enough, he could be viewed that way, and if one were to saw
the bottoms off a pair of Coke bottles, and wire them in place over one's
nose, it is how Master Carlson might appear. At the same time, a better
pair of spectacles could not help but change the view, and, very
charitably, he might be viewed as fruit of the loom.
The vapors of drink were rapidly dissipating; the sweet,
urgent talk of his handsome lust was chilling as rapidly as it had heated
her moments before. He was going to rape her -- since there were
numerous witnesses to their being together, gently, leaving no obvious
mark, but fully and repeatedly. Have his way. Take from Radda. Take from
her. Take.
Or? Could two play? She did rather hope so, since only
two of them were to occupy the Show Room until...
A mouse, eh? Let's play a few hands of mice and men and
see where the evening leaves us. This she thought. This she said:
"I think you may be the most virile of all men in our
town, Keetal," Kareel said, sighing dramatically at his touch to her
immature chest, "but I have seen another lose control while making love to
a child; indeed, he lost all control of himself at the urging of the
youngster and he was so mighty -- so wild and like a tiger -- with her
that my head still swims at the vision of what they shared."
"Who are you talking about," Keetal breathed into her
neck, falling neatly into her very tender trap.
"You would know him better than I," Kareel replied. "He
was a member of a visiting squad late last season."
"Who?" the athlete said, painting himself neatly into his
corner.
"The girl was Sakii," Kareel answered, temporizing with
more than a bit of skill, for the girl in question was a tiny nymph of
eleven and legendary throughout the region since age eight for her
porcelain-doll delicacy. "She wanted to be with you, but you were going
out with Meleema at the time, so she ended up taking a walk with the
Norwegian offensive captain, Thor Jacobs."
"Him?" the buffoon practically choked. It hadn't been
him. It hadn't been anybody. She'd spent the evening playing cards with
the winsome Sakii, and as for the mighty Thor, who knew?
"It wasn't her choice," Kareel repeated softly,
coaxingly. If there hadn't been so much at stake, she might actually begin
enjoying playing mahout to this attractive but particularly dump
elephant... in fact, the very beast who had twice skirmished with the
opposing offensive captain in the last quarter of the semi-finals.
(Temper, temper.)
"What did you see?"
"Keetal," the child whispered, actually producing tears,
"it was very private. I should never have been where I was, and I should
never have followed. I am very ashamed. You must promise never to tell.
I'd die of embarrassment if anyone -- anyone -- ever found out." The
tears had been a problem. She played bedsheet theatrics with her friends,
but puddling up was out of her range as an occasional amateur.
Fortunately, she'd managed, just in the nick of time, to conjure up an
image of Sakii and the other girls giggling helplessly, perhaps even
dangerously, the moment she had them alone and was able to tell of her date
with the Mighty Carlson. Quaking is quaking, tears of shame, tears of joy
-- it made no difference as long as one maintained a certain control, and
she was enough scared of the two-hundred-twenty pounder, and enough in love
with her Radda, not to laugh out loud.
"Never mind about that," said the tiger of privilege,
"tell me what he did with her."
"She was pretending it was you... she told me later,
because we're great friends and I couldn't hide from Sakii what I'd seen."
"Tell me!" the male repeated, his hands now boldly on her
juvenile nipples, his false tenderness quickly fading.
"It was what she did with him, not he with her," she
managed to choke out, in actuality only half play-acting. Table stakes
were one thing; being alone with a galoot, quite something else.
"Okay, her with him..."
"It's what I said before," Kareel half-sobbed. "You're
taller than Thor, more strongly built; I believe in my heart you could be
more of a man than he was, but I won't know if it happens where I can't
see.
"I want to know. All the girls say you are the best."
More tears. "But that's girls just talking; they can say anything. For a
girl to know. That's different. To know her wild animal is the
king... know it, not just think it, or feel it, or want it, or guess it;
know it. That's what lasts. That's what a girl can bring to her man's bed
a thousand times... the knowledge that he is the best of thousands of men,
perhaps of all men, for those thousands of nights. With such knowledge, a
girl can give herself totally and completely; can forgive her man anything,
because he's the best and deserves anything he wants, even other girls."
Here she sighed deeply and half collapsed against his
powerful athlete's chest. Hook, line and sinker, Keetal pivoted on his
nimble dancer's feet and lowered the tiny female to the silk-covered sofa.
"Tell me," he half sobbed.
"Oh, yes, my darling," she quaked, "everything. The moon
was nearly full. The dow was lighted by torches celebrating the victory of
Thor's team. Needless to say, these burned well out of town. Other
couples were in other boats, so everyone was minding their own business.
The atmosphere was of freedom and enthusiasm, with wildness in the air and
a keen edge to the lights dancing over the water, to the clouds scudding
under the brilliant moon, and to the sighs and breathless whispers to be
heard from every quarter."
(Maybe she should go in for the literary side of the
theater, although acting certainly had its rewards: right time, right
place, right audience.)
"The passions so stirred me," the girl continued, "I
slipped from my sari and waded out until I was deep enough in the water,
then I glided silently between the dows and sampans. Since Sakii is one of
my best friends, naturally I chose her boat."
"Weren't you afraid of crocodiles?" the young male asked.
He'd taken a few moments to adjust the various candle sconces and was now
kneeling at her side,
"You don't know very much about girls," she cooed. "The
male animal is, for all our pretended modesty and demure embarrassment,
what we long to see, to know for ourselves. If you think what we
experience and risk giving them their children, you will understand that
the slight risk of being attacked by a river beast is acceptable, or at
least it was to me, under the circumstances.
"Of course, I was also a little jealous of Sakii; wanting
you and knowing she had you... I guess that wasn't very ladylike."
"You're making up for lost time in that department,"
quoth the pride of the galaxy.
"Soon..." she whispered in response... "as soon as you
replace the image of him, wild with her, with your needs of a girl... of
how you can treat a girl who wants to be a woman... to learn it all... to
feel it... experience it... not just see it... I'll be the lady you want,
any time you want."
By now he was coming along just fine; had her kimono
fully unbuttoned and peeled down to her tiny waist. Kareel linked her
fingers behind her neck and lolled her head side-to-side, the better to
disguise her true feelings as the male ran his fingers over her chest and
budding nipples. She was thankful her body reacted automatically to his
fondling. He was a handsome devil. Lord what hell it must be to be done
over by a coot, a codger, or the fat, wheezing merchant of legend and
story. Of course, boys had to serve in the army, march and fight in the
frigid wilderness and roasting desert. Sometimes it just sucked being
human, with only the linguistic exports of America providing succinct
vernacular.
Now the challenge was to shed no tears. Bite her cheeks
to divert her soul from the pain in her heart at cheating on Radda, falling
for the smooth pitch -- just dinner to talk about chess, their `thing' in
common, his innocent reason for her -- and, of course, the tour of the
warehouse, the biggest business operation in their small city and thus a
place of a certain mystery and legendary status.
His plans.
Her plans.
One campaign deserved another, did it not? In any event,
a bit of conjuring and scheming was just what the doctor ordered to keep
her dry-eyed. Crucial. She couldn't cry; couldn't vent, there's be time
for that later. Planning was the thing. Her plan.
Now he was after her lips. What was he thinking? Even
the wizened pros in the district called The Curve didn't let their
customers kiss them. By the saints, this master of toads made the river
look good by comparison, any day, any night, any season. Weaving without
overtly resisting Kareel spoke.
"Wait," she said, hoping her fear sounded sexy.
"What?" he hissed, obviously wanting what he wanted.
"It will be our first," she replied, voice shaking; "I
came up out of the water just in time to see Sakii's first kiss with Thor."
"So what?" the male retorted.
"So, it was the most special thing you ever saw," she
said, not panting with lust.
"We've got two hours before I have to pretend to get you
home the way I found you," the glorious hunk said, "so go ahead and tell
me."
"You are way, way overdressed," Kareel said.
"There we agree," the teenager granted, displaying
uncharacteristic generosity. Fitting action to words, he shrugged his
blazer from his broad, athletic shoulders and continued stripping until he
was standing over Kareel wearing only his white briefs which did little to
hide the mature-ear-of-corn bulge of his erection. The girl took advantage
of the diversion to review frantically, quickly turning over in her razor
sharp mind every scrap of locker room talk, gossip, suggestion, innuendo or
rumor of her five years in school. The chase was on, the game afoot, as
Sherlock Holmes might have said. Chips down. All the marbles. Wheat from
chaff. First day of the rest of her life, actually, night. The clichés
and adages actually helped, slowing her extreme mind so it could function
effectively in the here and now. It functioned.
"Now guess who's all dressed up with no place to go." she
quipped, hoping she struck the right note of coyness in her borderline
flippant delivery. While he wasn't an ox, he was neither smart much, so
she raised her hips off the silk of the small chaise lounge.
Predictably, he right-away forgot the wide mouth. While
this would have been obtuse under any circumstances, it was the more
remarkable because he knew her... had already kissed her... already
sampled, albeit not with his naked chest against her pubescent nipples,
that for which there was no earthly equal. If the engaged observer were to
point out the fact there were mitigating circumstances, the most specific
of which was that she wished him, rather than kissing her, to strip off her
kimono and remove her panties, well, that might just have the unintended
result of making the writer look like something of a fool and could go a
long way toward spoiling the rest of his story. You pays you money and
youze take your chances.
"O-O-o-o-o oh," the eighteen year old murmured, and,
indeed, stripping a raven-haired female child completely naked is not an
activity the average red-blooded male is able to perform, especially for
his first time, with detachment.
"Now you," Kareel hissed.
If she'd hollered at him, her lightning quick, if not
always entirely sober-sided mind realized, she'd have been saved by the
yell. Whatever. It worked. His pride appealed to directly, his manliness
subtly brought to the fore, then cheered on, he stood, dropped his briefs,
and arched his back, emulating the sprite on the settee by lacing his
fingers behind his neck and arching his back in rank, raw display.
"Yes!" Kareel exclaimed, panting openly. We know it was
with relief, and it's a measure of the diabolical nature of the evening's
activities in the offing that levity can be injected at this particular
moment, and, not only that, but a military personage can be paraphrased by
pointing out that a certain twelve-year-old beauty had not yet begun to
fight.
Our dauntless fool took the girl's spontaneous outcry
exactly as she intended. He was ready for the gaff, no doubt, but, on the
other hand, her plan locked and loaded, her precious Radda safe as houses,
perhaps now was the time to play her big, dumb fish; maybe learn a thing or
two in the process.
"My god, yes," she repeated breathlessly, "how did you
know?" It was paint-by-numbers, his puzzled look hardly reaching the
standard of art to be found on bargain-basement wallpaper. "Thor!" she
squealed. "That's just what he did for Sakii; she's going to be sooo
jealous; she wanted to be first with you. We'll never be friends again."
To paint Kareel accurately, it is necessary to admit to
the fact that her manipulation of her rapist was not entirely original.
The famous detective story writer, Agatha Christie, sometimes pricks holes
in the unbridled conceit, usually closely allied to utter stupidity, of the
adult male. Her touch may be light, but one nonetheless comes away with
the uncomfortable feeling that she is, in no way, kidding. Kareel, in
backhanding and forehanding the fatuous swinging dick standing hardly a
foot away from her naked young body, and now utterly within her grasp, was
hewing to the mold of the legendary creator of Hercule Poirot and Miss
Marple, and not only that, she was about to add a sublimely original touch
of her own. It would be blatant foreshadowing to allude to her pricking
the ego of her assailant, but, since this is in no way a whodunit, perhaps
we'll be allowed to borrow just one motif for use in the tale at hand
without tipping our hand.
"He stood like this?" Keetal managed to squeak,
expression chasing one after the other across his bland, pretty-boy face
like clowns entering a circus spotlight.
"Not for long," the girl cooed. Was she beginning to
pity him, just an iota? Nonsense. An adult, of any age, who aggressively
pursued a minor deserved anything and everything that could be dished up in
the name of causing him distress. While children could be legitimate
lovers, the ball had to remain in their court, their control, when it came
to what was happening in the show room, had to be absolute and
unquestioned. No pressure, no demands, not when it came to sex.
Complicated almost to the point of impossibility, because the adult in such
relationships had, in the name of safety, if for no other reasons, to
maintain control in most other fields, just as a parent. These were odd
thoughts to be swimming so feely amongst Kareel's (her last name was
Najaba) little gray cells, seeing as how she was about to dominate her
adult abductor to points right of the decimal. Yes, he was tall, he looked
about as if he could strut sitting down -- but -- not for long.
"Don't move," the girl commanded, rising to her knees,
her mass of raven hair falling over her shoulders as she came to a position
kneeling before the half giant standing, hands still behind his neck.
Here she had to wing it. Locker room tales were one
thing, a throbbing eight-inch erection, circumcised, bent slightly to the
male's left, almost as thick as her wrist, was another thing. Logic did
come into play, at least a little. It must be wet for a reason, and, the
purple tip looked extremely sensitive so it further stood to reason that
the fluid oozing almost to the point of flowing from it must be harmless.
All-in-all, it seemed a likely place to start.
"Oops," the child gasped to herself at the harsh rasp if
Keetal's breath coinciding with her first tentative touch.
Sundra gasped too. Hardly oops, more like aah.
Intriguing as Radda's story was, the boy had not been unaware of being
gently disrobed nor was he blind to the fact that his new twenty-year-old
friend had also stripped to his underwear. The first probing touch inside
his underpants had been what it took to break the spell of Radda's musical
voice as he played out his narrative.
"There's a good bit more to my story," the philosophical
roadrunner explained to the coltish stripling now lying beside him, "so we
can avail ourselves of an interlude, and another when you have been
appraised of the surprise ending, if that meets with your approval."
Well, he had a way with words, no doubt about it
and... with... aah.
"Have you spent with a partner before?" the older male
quizzed the boy.
"No," Sundra managed to squeak.
"It will feel as if you're about to make water as the end
approaches," the young man coached, "but that won't be the case. Rather,
you will lose control and your seed will spill over my hand and on your
thighs."
"'Lose control'?" Sundra thought to himself, not
remembering having had any in the first place. But it turned out the more
experienced male knew what he was talking about. His hand, wet with the
same copious flow of fluid Darleela must have found with Keetal, was
stirring as if his fingers were planted directly in the center of his lower
spine. Oh, no, then he stopped. Oh, no, don't do that. Sundra didn't
know if the words came out of his mouth because his mind was so inflamed
with issuing commands and imperatives.
But Radda did stop. "This will take just moments," he
whispered kindly, first peeling down his own briefs, and emulating the
males Thor and Keetal of his story by standing before his partner, fingers
joined behind his neck, chest arched outwards, legs widely spread, huge
penis, uncircumcised, slightly bent to his right, jutting what looked like
seven full inches from his slim, boyish waist. "It is a tradition with us
who drive to shave as I have," he whispered, causing Sundra to notice that
indeed he, except for his massiveness, looked like a child -- down there.
What was past sublime? the boy wondered. From the
sublime to the ridiculous, the old saw went; but there was nothing
ridiculous even about the long story, and now this; now the very embodiment
of legend; myth come a cropping right here in river city, to quote the
popular American musical recently imported to India. And yes, you heard it
here first, the very first contemporary usage and therefore fresh and
novel: sublime; past sublime: awesome. Oh so awesome, just the sight of
him standing there in the shade of the great tree, proud, massive, free
male, and that was less than the half for now he was kneeling; less than
the quarter of it, for now his hands were on the child's waist, pulling
free the white underpants; now braced over the naked boy, his wetness
smearing the birdlike chest of the boy; now touching him like the girl had
touched the young man in the story; now experimenting with the same
wetness; using it to wet the steaming heat; finding movement of the taught
sheath covering him; finding the one direction the tight skin moved; moving
it to the hissing gasp of the mature male.
Two pictures and reality. The dow on the firelit river;
the settee in the opulent warehouse, and here, lying almost flat with the
tall, boyish driver stretched and braced above him, his penis huge and hot
and ready to spray on his young bare chest. Sundra remembered a joke: when
all else fails, read the instructions. How about: when in doubt, make up
your own? Buoyed by a feeling that anything he did would probably be
right, the child grasped Radda low with his left hand and used his right
hand high on the straining stallion. His lover spread his legs as widely
as possible and thrust his hips toward the boy. In moments they had
synchronized in a resonance that carried them both to the very heart of the
essential defect of carnality; its irreducible flaw. While it's not the
time to play guessing games, especially as, as had been already
acknowledged, this is not a whodunit, perhaps the reader would like to
hazard a guess as to the nature of the fundamental enigma under discussion.
The only prerequisite for venturing an opinion is a firm grasp of the
obvious, so you really might want to try, especially when you've been told
that the very divergence offered by this apparently senseless quiz is a
pretty fair hint.
Imagine if you'd paid for this book. Little doubt by now
it would be airborne, headed for the nearest wall. The only book, of the
three thousand I've read, I ever shied (to quote Henry Higgins) was the
Hobbit -- very satisfying to hear the spine split as it met the solid
surface. (In the name of common sense, I do hope you're not jamming the
leg of your chair through the face of your monitor -- mine has about
twenty thousand hours on it and still performs well, so that would be an
expensive acting out of pique.) Again, I'm not teasing -- I'm providing
a lush hint as to the one all-but fatal flaw always to be found in
passionate sexual activity.
Many readers will obviously be too distracted to even
attempt a deduction. For them, let's try an example.
Sundra was torn. Looking at Radda in a whole new light,
he half wanted to look at the handsome, boyish face, the tall, lithe,
muscular body, and half at the man-sized erection he was masturbating with
hotter skill with each passing moment.
"O -- yes -- child," the youthful man gasped, "that's
so perfect -- don't stop -- O -- so perfect -- so good -- yes
-- yes -- don't stop -- perfect!"
If only he could see everything at once; the handsome
face surrounded by tawny arms braced against the truck, and the big thick
log of a penis, even still swelling with its own life and feral needs.
"Soon child, if you want -- do you want?" the young man
hissed.
"Yes!" Sundra gasped.
"It's -- going -- to -- be
very
messy!" the man warned the boy. "Don't be scared when it
starts; keep doing exactly what you are no matter how shocking it is... it
will be natural... it will be the same as happened with Kareel... so don't
stop... you won't be hurting me... it's what all good gods want... it's so
perfect.... you must ride with me... we must be together tonight so we can
talk... so I can explain... O Sundra... I love you..."
"I love you too," the boy gasped, thrilled to be giving
so; thrilled to know that soon the gift would be returned.... that there
was so much in the world... that agony and ecstasy could hold hands and
dance so closely... that in it all there was but a single flaw...
"I'm cumming," Radda whispered.
But what a flaw! The young man's seed began as a watery
splash that flew in all directions. Instinctively, Sundra zipped the palm
of his right hand over the tip of his lover, wetting himself thoroughly,
then resumed his fast hard pumping, now slick and slippery as a river eel,
and with, it seemed at least, nearly as much voltage. He seemed to be
shocking the athlete above him to the core, rendering him incoherent,
driving him half-mad judging by the sweat and the half-convulsions shaking
his tall, muscular frame as he seemed to really lay into the business of
spurting one long cord of hot, white sperm after another all over Sundra's
face, neck, shoulders and chest.
"O babe, o-yes, o-yes," he sang softly to the boy, his
fury undiminished in spite of the softness of his voice and the looks of
slack peace when ever Sundra chanced to shift his eyes from the hard,
ejaculating penis to the soft loving eyes.
But a flaw is a flaw is a flaw and in less than two
minutes the marriage of steam and fire began to wane; the long, hard jets
to subside into lesser spurts and finally to a soft, gentle flow that
pulsed slightly to Sundra's best efforts at achieving eternity. He was
soaked from the young man, and now the man, half-exhausted, lay to him,
sweating, panting, gasping into his mouth as he kissed the boy while
half-laughing and whispering promises of what was to come.
"I wanted to wet you first -- that is tradition, for
the man to spill for the boy before the boy spills for the man," Radda
explained as he began to regain his breath and the world once again slipped
slowly into focus.
The focus didn't last. Nothing of the earth, wind and
sky lasted. For as soon as the older male half-regained his composure, he
assumed a position kneeling between the long, slim leg's of the young
bicyclist, spreading them gently and wide, and wetting his hands in the
pools of semen on the boy's slim belly, found him with his right and left
hands.
Does the flaw, repeated, become flawless? No time for
metaphysics, because as he began masturbating the boy, Radda took him back
to the room of silk and candles.
"No, baby, it's okay... it's good!" Keetal corrected
himself, hiding his chagrin that he'd flustered the twelve year old by his
exclamation.
"I thought I'd hurt you," the girl murmured. One can
always hope.
"Just don't stop," the eighteen year old white said, more
than an edge of command in his voice.
Kareel's plan was so completely hatched by this time she
was able to relax enough to mentally assure her studly fellow that it would
not be anything like eternity before he was not only commanding her not to
start, but not be within a thousand yards of him.
"Just don't stop," he repeated, forcing the girl to bite
her cheeks to keep from giggling.
She did well by him, for that was half of the plot unto
itself. She played in his seminal fluid with her tiny fingers, cooed over
its quantity and slickness while spreading it back over his swollen, purple
glans which made him buck his hips and grunt with pleasure.
"I won't stop," she promised breathily, "because you're
bigger than Thor and I know when the time comes you will prove not only to
be the better male, but a much better male."
"Oh, yes," Keetal Carlson said, repeating himself several
times and nodding vigorously in agreement.
Her hands worked together. They fondled, they wrapped,
they stroked sometimes together, sometimes in opposition; mostly, they
pumped him, fast, slow and medium; hard, softly and medium.
He was something of a beauty, she had to admit. His
hands were still locked together behind his neck; he'd walked his feet
apart so his strong athletic legs were widely spread, the powerful muscles
of his abdomen clenched and flexed dramatically as he thrust his big,
circumcised boner in response to her masturbation. He began to pant
wildly, to sweat freely, to groan openly and wantonly. To grunt hard and
fast.
"My nipples ache so for you," she whispered dramatically,
adding hoarsely: "spray me, spray me, teach me, show me what it will be
later when our needs are fully joined." She'd heard the word `cum' several
times in her discreet research into girlish things but didn't dare use it
for fear it would indicated a level of sophistication that might dampen the
animal's ardor.
Keetal was by this time all but inchoate: "It's
never... it's never... it's never..." were his only decipherable words.
"And it never will be," the girl mused to herself: "never." She was right
about that.
We've already had the text so can suffer just a brief
review. Yes, it's that one great Flaw again. `Nuff said.
He was just conscious enough to warn her and just
perverse enough not to. Instead he came-off a-capella; just started
spraying willy-nilly all over her raven hair, her long neck, her slim
shoulders, and, as she guided him with deft hands, for the most part on her
tenderly swollen breasts.
"If I could ever love you, I'd love you now," Kareel
thought with disdain. The emotion was conscious because he was a
spectacular beast and the raw carnality of what he was doing all over her
was headily exotic and almost surreal in its candle-lit beauty. And he
went on so. She hadn't known what to expect; a few drops, a trickle;
something delicate and mercurial; but not this athlete. He went on and on,
howling, and cumming; cumming and howling, a wolf, a tiger, half an
elephant. The though of it happening deep within her belly made her just a
little dizzy, and when she thought of what that act would be like with
Radda she couldn't help letting a groan of pleasure escape her lips.
"Oh, yeah," Keetal responded: "Oh, yeah, babe!"
Plan your work and work your plan. Every school child is
familiar with the adage. Nor does time wait for anyone...
As his hard, fast spurting began to ebb, the girl
transitioned seamlessly into Phase II of her plot with a gentle attack of
her wide, boyish mouth. Her lips found his massiveness, instantly
thereafter, her tongue. Her delight at the salty gush was vicarious: "Oh,
Radda!" she almost squealed out loud in delirious anticipation of what this
wild act would be like with her lover. Cool customer. She bottled her cry
of joy for another day, and went on with her attack, using her hands on
Keetal's waist to pivot him and lie him back on the silk of the chaise
lounge, the while taking his flaring, pulsing hugeness deep in her mouth
while laving him fast and hard with her tongue.
Obviously unable to speak, she nonetheless shouted with
glee: "The bigger they are, the harder they fall!" and her heart beat like
thunder as she climbed beside him, her head throbbing on the teen's huge
penis like a pump for gold operated by India's grand miser.
Keetal was far gone, anything coherent a vague memory.
The feeling of her, the vision of her raven hair as she tore wildly at him,
his depth, his essence, his soul, his pride, everything was, ever had been
or could ever hope to be. Up and down, twice in a single second; oh saints
he'd cum so hard in her hand, soaked her so in his thick whiteness... and
it had just been the overture... now... now... oh, ever-loving,
ever-living... forever... now... absolutely... now.
Again? No way. Oh, he couldn't. Vaguely, like an event
that might have occurred when he was two years old he remembered Ramisha,
completing twice with her in the backseat before he'd handed her back at
evening's end, half-glowing with pride in his virility, his overweening
vitality... but twice... and so utterly... in a row? Now... Oh so much
wine at dinner... that must be it... oh... now... now... now.
Phase III.
Kareel was as quick and decisive in her motions as the
girl in the bazaar who operated the cash register at her mother's favorite
shop. "It could have been worse," she thought to herself as she parted
from the snoring male now passed out on the settee. The rich salty taste
of his final agonizing jets of hot sperm lingered in her mouth and she
half-pitied Radda, for, from him, she very well might not be satisfied with
just lingering hints of his flavor, but want more and evermore. "Pity,
indeed," she giggled aloud.
The display room had plenty of everything and her wants
were simple. A lipstick, the boldest red possible, and a needle. Ah, both
were readily to hand. A bonus made her chuckle -- a phial of ammonia.
The models who displayed the silks and satins for the buyers seldom ate
-- what a life that must be, she thought, dismissing glamour for its own
sake as the province of idiots, morons and the intellectually
disenfranchised, in general -- and so often fainted. Smelling salts. It
was beyond her to grin wickedly, but no one would be likely to mistake her
smile as that of a mother for a precious babe.
Inventory complete, she returned to the richly endowed
male. Several times he half woke, but a few moments with her now
experienced lips and tongue and he again lolled back into his half-drunken
stupor. The hands of a nearby clock described their arcs, measuring off
half an hour. At eleven o'clock her ministrations were complete and her
patient was resting comfortably. That wouldn't last. To add insult to
injury, she slipped back into her street clothes, hanging the kimono neatly
on the rack where she'd found it, and left him naked. Playing out her hand
-- this was the very definition of a once-in-a-lifetime thing, so she
might as well maximize it -- she sidled onto the settee next to Keetal
Carson and broke open the vial of ammonia, holding it at some distance from
the sleeping champion's nose.
"Arg, arf," he sputtered at the wafting chemical.
"Wake up," she whispered.
"Waa, ugh, ining," he tried.
"Oh," she replied, "nothing's really happening. You
drank too much... how do you feel?"
"Oh, babe," he said in a half --recognizable voice.
"You don't even remember my name, do you?" she cooed.
"Sure I do," he replied looking so stupid she would not
have bet a rupee on his remembering his own.
"Never mind," she said, "it couldn't matter much less
than it does."
He looked confused and the little judge always active in
her mind suggested she rephrase the statement. This she did at some
length.
"What do you remember?" she began, trying not to giggle
-- yet -- at his expression.
"You were lying here..." he puzzled, "and I was
standing..."
"Yes?" she prompted, a girl mildly taken with Hollywood
pictures and fan magazines, wishing there were someone on hand to call for
lights and a camera to capture the parade of moronicitie marching
ponderously clear of his subconscious.
"Oh," he groaned, "oh, wow, was that you?"
Kareel tried not to overplay her sight of relief.
"Now you must listen very carefully," she said, "because
it couldn't possibly be more important."
"What?" he interrupted.
"It is impossible to ask questions and listen at the same
time," she said firmly. "Do you understand? Answer yes or no."
The ice in her voice must not have been very welcome in
his semi-conscious state, but, as a squadsman, he'd been frequently berated
by coach and referee, so he did respond. "Yes," he said.
"What happened," she said, "is that you brought me here
to either seduce or rape me, depending on how the evening went. Do you
remember that much?"
"What's your name?" he asked, foggily.
"One you will never forget if you live to be a hundred
and ten," she said calmly.
"What are you talking about?" he sputtered.
"If you keep talking," she replied, "I'll stop talking
about anything, and, at that precise moment, your life will turn into
absolute and unmitigated hell and it will last until you kill yourself. So
do silence yourself and listen with all the care in the world."
She did sound like one of his coaches, most particularly,
like the one who had hauled off and cold-cocked him not once, but twice.
Thus, he listened.
"My name is Kareel Najaba," she said. "I am twelve years
old. You met me through my father who runs the launch at the yacht club.
You assured him we'd have dinner and conduct our entire date in public and
with decorum. Half of it was my mistake, because I have a boy very much,
but my girlfriends talked me into going out with you, and girls will be
girls -- especially immature girls.
"You brought me here, and made it obvious I wasn't
leaving until you were will satisfied."
Kareel had, as we all did in school, seen a stupid grin
or two in her time and the mother of them all spread across the white's
handsome face. He punctuated it with a "Yeah!"
"I'm so glad you remember," she went on with a look in
her black eyes that effectively blocked any further utterance from the joy
boy.
"Cherish those memories," the girl then suggested, "every
feeling you had as I rose your passions by doing that which you never
dreamed of; as I took you higher and stronger so you soared above the
highest mountains and screamed out with the mightiest eagles; each moment
of the memory, each tendril, each flicker, each gleam, each second as the
seconds added one to the other until like Thor, himself, the thunder of
your loins became bolt after bolt of the whitest lightning and the gale and
blizzard of very peaks of Mt. Everest."
"Oooo," Keetal sighed, now becoming fully conscious --
a good thing -- and aware enough of his situation to begin to breath
raggedly, half-panting in anticipation..
"No," the girl echoed, "there's so much more." Absolute
fear, for one thing, but, gracious to a fault, she decided to save the bad
news for a little bit later.
"Impossible," he grinned, wasting a little of his
considerable charm, "nothing could be more than you."
Apparently he hadn't been listening. She could easily
picture a sheaf of report cards, each reading: "Inattentive, easily
distracted, fails to pay attention in class". It wasn't imperious of her,
though he did tend to bring out that characteristic, but just realistic.
(Her father was poor, she didn't have other options.)
It's sad to disabuse optimism for the world needs more of
it, but if the shoe fits...
"It's time for you to get me safely home," she said,
hoping there would be enough cold water in the change of subject to keep
his panting to a dull roar.
"Oh, that can wait," he grinned. Yes, the death of an
optimist is no fun for anybody, but sadder and wiser is simply part of
life. (How nice that once in awhile it's earned, rather than being
bestowed.)
"We've got to talk," the girl said. "You need to wake
your father immediately on your arrival back at the ranch, so to speak, and
have him wake his banker. You need to have the equivalent of two hundred
thousand U.S. dollars deposited in my father's name at Barclays Bank. If
it is not there by nine o'clock tomorrow, I'm going to the police and
report you for raping me."
"You're crazy," the teen spat, his eyes suddenly glowing
with that which any woman fool enough to marry him would undoubtedly see
time and again. "You need evidence."
"My news is so incredibly bad," the girl said, enough ice
in her voice to freeze half the Ganges, "I doubt you'll ever be old enough
to hear it, but, since it concerns the evidence you speak of, we'd better
have a go, what do you say?"
"I say..." but something in her eyes shut his trap.
"Look," she whispered, and he obeyed, following her
flaming black eyes as they swept slowly down his manly torso to his groin.
She'd decided on just a light flourish in the name of showmanship, and in
furtherance, had draped his waist with an elegant scarf of rich, blue silk.
She plucked it from him unable to refrain from thinking of one her
brother's books on the recent war, the submarines with their command of
Fire One. She supposed it was the imagery of torpedoes that stimulated the
ridiculous though. Fire One, and she lifted the silk.
Noting the wild look in Keetal's eyes, Kareel Najaba
said: "There's a problem you'll not be wanting to compound."
Right as a whole monsoon of rain. He stared plenty, but
he didn't move, not even an inch.
"If the money is not in the bank, the whole city will
know," she explained quietly, and I think, to be honest, that's the kind of
reading material one would only want to share with one very tolerant and
forgiving woman to whom one was married and to whom one was utterly
faithful."
Who could possibly disagree? Neatly tattooed on Keetal
Carlson's eight inch penis, in boldly contrasting red, was a single word:
"LUCKY."
"You're lucky to have it at all," she observed. "I've
been reading magazines on the new American styles and it would have been so
easy to bob it.
Unnecessary for her to explain to the male what a
magistrate, much less a jury, would conclude about the post coital
motivations, vis a vee consent, of a girl who would so emblazon her lover.
Also unnecessary was an explanation of how little an amount of luck the
swain had experienced; no point in spelling it out and having the
explanation interpreted, by one suddenly rendered overly sensitive, as
somehow derisive. The girl knew she had trailed the male not only to, but
along the very brink of invoking a fatal rage. It was a thrill of a
lifetime and she half-sighed at the fact that it was over at such a tender
age, speaking of herself. Well, the degree in pharmacology she yearned
for, and Radda, in the years to come would simply have to fill any void.
Kareel smiled softly to herself, rose from the divan, and
tossed Keetal his trousers.
Sundra's legs were widely spread. He lay on his back
with his knees around Radda's waist. The handsome young driver braced his
left arm against the truck's tire, and used his right hand to slowly
masturbate the thirteen-year-old boy. Sundra's head lolled from side to
side. He panted gently as he surged his hips to the touch of his mature
lover.
"Do you know what a palliative is?" Radda asked.
"No," the boy said.
"A comfort-providing substitute," the athletic young man
explained; "beer instead of champagne, or being with me rather than being
with Darleela."
"Did Keetal get one?" the boy asked, earning himself a
thousand points with his new friend as a good listener.
"Oddly enough, " Radda replied, "he did. He ended up
with Sakii, after all: devoted, loyal, it's almost pathetic. He's even
become friends with Kareel; treats her as a human, though I strongly
suspect he feels she is a god come-to-earth."
"Takes one to know one," Sundra observed winking at Radda
with a friendly giggle.
"Well, we'll have lots of time to find out," the older
male said.
"I don't know about that," the boy replied, his voice
becoming ragged while his thrusting hips took on a fresh urgency.
His spray came minutes later, hot, hard and copious. The
males spent half an hour licking each other clean amidst flurries of salty
kisses. In due time Tash arrived with the fuel pump and fresh battery.
Sundra's bicycle was hoisted into the bed of the truck where it rested
amongst the bales of rubber. Radda let the boy sit in his lap and help
with the driving. The child was inexpert with the clutch, causing the
vehicle to lurch forward as it pulled out from underneath the big tree.
In the rear, the spent battery tipped from its perch,
coming to rest on its side. It's chemical gurgled from a loose cap,
puddling unseen in a cave in a bale of rubber. The bale would on the
morrow be unloaded and shipped half way around the world where it would
join others at a factory. Machinery would heat and process it, converting
it into a thousand tire tubes for bicycles. These, in turn, would be
shipped to various wholesalers and retailers, and, while most would serve
admirably, a few would prove to be contaminated and would fail prematurely.
Margaret Weed was five miles from home when with a
business-like pop, the front tire on her bicycle went flat. She cussed her
luck with girlish modesty, but almost immediately brightened. There came
the mailman. He'd help.
Very brief commentary to ease us apart. There is today
on the planet one man who knows exactly -- exactly -- how Ludwig von
Beethoven felt as he penned the closing notes of his Choral Ode. Not by
half. Oh, no.
As evidence of my status as the greatest artist ever to
live, this chapter of Stonington Stories is almost absurd overkill, but I
do want to add a qualifying point. There is one who in the fairly recent
past has equaled me in quality if not in quantity. An absolute and
unutterably pure genius. He entertained and inspired me terrifically, as
he has for years, while writing this chapter and others. If I remind you
that I'm a passionate resident of the Caribbean, many a fan will nod
sagely, knowing of whom I speak. For the rest of you I'll spell it out.
Lucky Duby.
Posted by Thomas@btl.net
xxx