Small Town

This old town is caving in

Too many preachers

And preacher’s kids

What you are is what you do

And the Gospels are a-watchin’ you.

Cecily leaned her guitar against the doorfacing of her trailer and reached down for her toke. She flipped the ash and took a drag and held it. Writing a new song was a bitch. Dangerous. How to tell the truth. How to avoid getting thumped by everybody who heard the truth as you saw it.

She was thinking about Granger, the preacher’s kid, how she let him kiss her out behind the Boy Scout hut when they were kids. It’s the PK’s you have to watch out for. Always up to something. Then all that stuff when they were older. Never did love her, she thought. Just wanted to explore her body, use it like classroom for teen-age curiosities then cast it aside. Now he’s off to college down at Tuscaloosa State and left without apology. Jerk. Too bad for him. Too bad he forgot she was a country singer song-writer. Too bad she can get him back any time she wants and he won’t even know the difference.

She picked up her guitar again.

You can’t know what you got

Until it’s gettin’

Hold a you.

To late then to change the flavor,

Sourgrass in my mouth.

“Must be creating again.”

A voice off to the side broke in to her concentration. That would be Burt, the drummer in her band, a little older than she, maybe by 6, 7 years, married once. Wife ran off with the body shop guy saying she didn’t like his drummin’ anyway and at least the new guy stayed home once and a while. Worst part. She took the little boy with her.

Burt was a complex guy. Sad sometimes. Some of his ideas made it into her songs. She hadn’t quite thanked him yet.

“Go away,” she said.

“Whazamatter? Can’t concentrate with handsome around.”

Burt was always flirting. She couldn’t tell if he meant it or it was just part of the universal repertoire of a drummer in a country band. In any case, she let it slide, thinking it might not be wise to mix it up with a member of her own band.

“You are exactly of no use to me right now. I’m in the middle.”

“Well, you’re the one,” he said, then stole her toke and slinked away.

She put her mind back to the roots of her song. Wouldn’t Granger be surprised if this became a huge hit? She imagined him hearing it for the first time. Would he recognize himself? Would he love it? Would she?

The First Methodist was two miles away from the trailer park. It was in the nicer part of town a long way away from the river and those who lived there. It was summer. They were 18, just graduated from High School with nothing to do but walk around town on hot days, trying to stir up a little breeze.

He was at the town square, blue jeans and tee shirt, a flop of blond hair across his face, Lucky Strikes rolled up in his sleeve. Being a preacher’s kid didn’t slow him down none. Sped him up, maybe. He had cigarettes. He had guns. She remembered his kiss.

She was coming out of Isom’s Ice Cream Delights and almost ran into him.

“Didn’t see you comin’,” he said.

“I’m invisible,” she said.

He looked her over, girlish face, wild ringlets, small mouth with a slight overbite, freckles, fresh young breasts pressing against her blouse, perfect legs below short, really short cutoffs. Sandals.

“Not invisible,” he said. “I see ya.”

She laughed. “I can tell.”

He leaned against the side of the building, just under the shade of the awning. Lit a cigarette. Offered. She refused.

“I was about to get some target practice,” he said.

“Whatsamatter. Can’t hit the side of a barn?”

He looked at her cockeyed. “I’m good. Real good. I’ll show ya.”

The church was three blocks away. Parsonage next door.

She followed him, watching him walk from behind, his jeans sliding down over the crest of his hips as they shuffled side to side, his shoulders rocking, spine twisting. He didn’t speak, just moved forward like he had planned this since Christmas.

“Come on in. Nobody’s home,” he said.

She thought to ask but decided not. The preacher and his wife were always away at church functions, or visiting someone in the hospital. Funny how so much religion flying around this preacher’s kid seemed to have no effect whatsoever. Granger was always the sassy one in class, always the first to buy illegal firecrackers around Christmas and blow up somebody’s mailbox. He smoked. He collected guns, deer rifles with names like Winchester, Browning, Thirty-Aught-Six.

He was leading her upstairs. The house was darker than the brilliant summer sun stomping down outside it, cooler too, as if there might be a pile of iceblocks hidden away in the basement. He took her hand.

In his room, leaning against the wall, was his collection of guns. They looked ominous and masculine standing there all lined up like that. She looked around the room: unmade bed, Notre Dame Football pendant, poster of James Dean. Whoa! What was that next to the poster?

Granger was sorting through his guns for the choice he wanted. A pellet gun. Something for in-town shooting. Cecily walked up to the collection of colors and shapes on the wall. At the bottom was a June calendar. Up top was a picture of a woman, probably 25 years old, lying beside a swimming pool, her Bikini bathing suit spread over the large beach towel she was lying on. She was next to her bathing suit. No clothes on.

“How do you, the preacher’s son, get to have a Playboy Calendar?”

“’Cause I want it.”

“Didn’t your mother say no.”

“She did.”

“You did it anyway.”

“She took it down and threw it away. Twice. I just went to Kretchy’s News Stand and bought another one.”

“And put it back up?”

“And put it back up.”

“She let you do it?”

“She didn’t have a choice.”

Cecily found herself curiously transfixed. She looked at the beautiful face, the curly blond hair streaming down, the sunglasses, the tilt of her shoulders, the round succulent breasts fully exposed. How did this good-looking woman feel showing herself like that? Cecily believed that she herself, looking at her, could feel the emotions streaming from this playmate: a sense of pride, maybe, a sense of generosity giving herself this way, maybe even a thrill creeping up her spine as she imagined thousands, maybe millions of men staring at her through her picture frame. Did she see their faces peering into her centerfold? Did she feel their arousal as they imagined themselves touching her, playing with her...

“I see you find Miss June fetching.”

Cecily blushed but couldn’t turn away.

Granger saw her heating up. He reached up and with one finger stroked the hair of the model. “She likes it,” he said. “I’m pretty sure she’s purring about now.”

He looked at Cecily and saw a little moisture collecting at the corner of her mouth.

“Try it yourself,” he said. He took her hand, pointed one finger and made her stroke the model’s hair. Cecily took in a short breath. He directed her hand over and over along the margin of her hair, then lightly touching her lips, her cheek, down the curve of her neck.

She drew her hand away,

“Chicken,” he said.

“Am not.”

“Then show your courage, girl.”

Determined not to be a wuss in front of Granger she lifted her finger to the model once more, without Granger this time, raising it to her shoulder, down her upper arm then... then, hesitating a moment, across to her breast.

“You like that, I see.”

Cecily said nothing but did not withdraw her hand nor stop the circular motion she was making around first one breast then the other.

He watched her for a moment, feeling a rise in his loins. The wetness at the corner of her mouth became a drop which she licked away. “Real ones feel better,” he said and took her other hand and placed it on her own breast and held it there, massaging her through her hand.

When she didn’t faint or turn away, his hand left hers for the other breast, holding it, rubbing it. At first she clamped her arm tight against him as if to resist but soon she relaxed. He slipped under her bra.

Her head fell to his shoulder. He pulled her to him. She collapsed and he moved her to the bed. Mixed with what felt like arousal was now something quite different. It was fear. She was afraid, yet knew she wanted nothing more but what was to come.

His hands were all over her, under her bra down between her breasts, lifting her blouse to expose her tummy, riding the arc of her thighs where they joined with the heat of the body. She was losing herself and glad to be doing it.

“Have you seen a hard on? He said.

She didn’t answer.

He took her hand and placed it between his legs. She gasped but didn’t turn loose, feeling his hardness under his jeans.

He reached down and unbuttoned himself, thrusting her hand in the gap in his boxers, wrapping her fingers around him.

He returned to his task undressing her, slowly, her grip on his dick firmly in place. He removed her blouse. He watched her breasts rise over the lip of her bra as she in breathed deeply. He lifted her shoulder and reached around to unclasp her. He fumbled. Neither minded the extra time it took.

He got it! He slipped the brastraps down her shoulders and lifted it from her. She was far better than the Playmate on his wall, he thought. Not only was she real flesh and blood she was perfect, small, pointy breasts, nipples the pink of the young girl, small, rosey and inviting.

He licked one. It erected, immediately. She giggled, then put a serious look on her face. “Well, try the other one. It’s lonely.”

He plunged the other breast deep in his mouth. She arched against him, reaching her hand to the outside of her breast and pushing it deeper into his sucking. Her head went light and woozy, the room seemed hazy. She was still holing on to him.

He pulled her shorts and panties down. A sense of freedom washed over her as she turned and twisted her naked body in the bed, long past the restrictions of clothing, of the town folk and their laws of behavior, of religion. His hand went between her legs, rubbing her. She felt her pelvis automatically push and flare under his advances.

“Okay,’ he said. “Now you get to undress me.”

He stood on his knees on the bed, and with her hand still on his rigid cock, she pulled his tee over his head, shoved his beltline down to his knees then using his unit as a handle threw him on the bed, finishing the job of pulling off his pants.

Now she had him, she thought. Or did he have her?

She liked what she saw, Granger lying on his back, the excitement for her registering in his penis as it bobbed, speaking its language to her.

“Poor fellow,” she said. “He needs company.”

And she mounted him. He thrust against her opening.

“Slowly,” she said. “Slow-ly.”

He stopped, then started again.

She felt herself stretch. She put her hand flat on his chest and pushed there. He slowed. She rested a moment then she lifted her pelvis and brought it down directly on him.

What she felt then has tried to become the subject of several of her songs, never quite finding its way into language. Never surfacing from the mysteries of the body to the mechanics of the mind.

It was pain she felt. But only partly that. It was also ecstasy. What she realized was she had never felt this close to a man, so inside his realm of privacy, so part of his consciousness. He was tender somehow, infantile, all the manly bullshit dissolved away. It was an agreement that no matter what comes at them down the road they will, after this intimacy, always share a bond together.

He moaned as she descended on him, one stairstep at a time, watching his pleasure read across his face. It was she who had him after all, notwithstanding his bravado, his tough exterior, his rebellious thrash against the culture of the land. She had him.

“Finish me,” he said.

She didn’t know what he meant.

In one quick jerk he threw her off him and wrapped her hand around his dick, slippery with her mucous all over. “Jack it,’ he said. “Jack it,” almost screaming.

She squeezed tighter, moved his skin up and down, felt him throb and thrust against her. And then in one powerful seizing motion, white stuff shot out of him onto her shoulder and past her to the bed beside them.

She watched him come and lurch and then recover, coming slowly back into himself, reclaiming his old personality.

She took the gism in her hand, rubbing her fingers, imagining the spiritual meaning of this amazing sticky fluid.

“What do you want?” he said.

“Nothing.”

He put his hand on her clit. “Don’t you want me to finish you?”

She thought for a moment. She was asking that question of herself, reaching down inside her being to see what it wanted. She waited for an answer. Then without saying anything she leaned back on the bed, his hand still in place on her sex and closed her eyes.

What happened then she could not recall because she seemed to be in some outside place far away from the bed, the house, the town, even from Granger himself. What she remembered she felt was her whole world coming to a rising peak, hovering there as if not knowing where to go, then from the remembering she had in her sinews and muscles and the flowing rivers of the body, she knew exactly where to go.

She shook and groped, and grunted lightly, and curled finally in the fetal position, pulling his hand away from her vibrating loins.

He watched her a moment and when the tidal wave receded, slapped her on the bottom. “Time for the real world,” he said.

“What happens if I don’t want to go there?”

Cecily pulled her guitar into her arms and rested it there. She turned her head to one side. A rocking motion began in her body that extended slowly into her fingers strumming across the strings.

What happens if I don’t want to go there?

What is the world

If I won’t go with it?

Who are the people there?

How will they do what they do

Without me?

She set the guitar aside. Needs a refrain, she thought. What was this song about, anyway? Started out to be about the town, ended up talking about Granger. Maybe both? Will it make up its freaking mind?

She started humming to herself.

You wanted me on the great green bed,

The upstairs room

With your guns in a row

You wanted the animal inside of me

But you didn’t want my soul.

That was the heart of it, she thought. She laughed. Always the broken heart.

She leaned back and propped her feet up on the stoop. Something about humiliations that made good fodder for songs. Had to be worth something.

The sun was drifting down into the trees, playing dodge-ball patterns on the walk. The toke was gone. Should she roll another?

The song played itself in the recording studio of the mind. She could see the band, the crowds, the lights pressing hard against her as she stood at the mic. But it still needs a bridge.

She picked up the guitar and decided to let her questions come forth.

A girl walks down the street

The sounds of the town

Talking at her

Talking at her

Deacons in their pews

Ladies at their garden club.

Talking talking talking

She says to herself

What am I doing here?

Why am I out of my element?

This is my home town

A song in my head

And my lover off lovin’

Without me.

Every song a message, she thought. It’s a privilege to be a songwriter, creating something that someone out there is going to hear and respond to: a piece of wisdom if we’re lucky, some authentic human action, kind or unkind. It’s about telling hard truths.

What was the hard truth of Granger and her? What did she want that truth to be?

She couldn’t figure it. But in her head the refrain came back to her.

You wanted me on the great green bed,

The upstairs room

With your guns in a row

You wanted the animal inside of me

But you didn’t want my soul.

Bert came back. “Finished that song, hot lady?”

“You know better.”

“Songs don’t come easy.”

“What does?”

“Don’t cost fifty-cents.”

Bert moved her legs away and sat next to her on the stoop. “One thing more,” he said. “When you are writing those hard things to say, you lose five pounds.”

“I lost five pounds just since you got here.”

Cecily did roll another toke. They shared it in the liberating rise of their spirits and watched the trees sway back and forth.

“Maybe you can help me,” she said after a while.

“Help you what?”

“Help me finish the goddamned song, you dolt.”

He raised an eyebrow and shrugged one shoulder. “You know I’ll do what I can.”

To his everlasting surprise, she reached over and kissed him, then drug him indoors. She pushed him into her bed.

It was a lot different than it was with Granger. He caressed her like she was a treasure unwrapped, layer by layer. She kept her eyes closed and was imagining the faces of Burt and Granger mixed together, Burt morphing to Granger then back again, speaking softly, kissing her neck, running his fingers through her hair. She opened her eyes and pulled him to her, hungrily gulping his mouth, his tongue.

Her clothes were gone. Here was that freedom once again, only now there was no fear, no worry, only anticipation.

He must have known, for he moved his hands slowly down her shoulders to her breasts, encircling them with his fingertips, lifting them, squeezing them, his hands diving down the narrow thinness of her abdomen to the rise above her sex where he paused.

She waited, not knowing what was to come.

She felt something moving against her labia. Something wet, a little rough. She looked. God! It was his tongue. Jesus, how excruciatingly rich. She let herself go and felt her loins fill with the fluid rush the goddess of sexual pleasure designed for her, lubrication for the love fuck.

She was ready. Beyond ready.

She was about to reach up, grab him by the dick and put him inside her but he was already guiding himself at her opening, which he now pressed against, asking and demanding. She reached down and with two fingers, spread her labia and arched her pelvis against him. He entered and swam inside her like a fish in a bowl.

She was at peace, completely. She could leave what was to come to the wisdom of the body and the good graces of a friendly man. This might be a piece of the richness she’d been looking for.

He was quickening his pace. She felt herself rocking the bed, a small boat in a large sea. She would let him come inside her. It would be safe. She hoped.

How different this was. So much more . . intimate.

She grabbed hold of his buttock and clenched him to her. He arched his back and burst loose. When the throbbing ceased and he withdrew, he curled up beside her. She sat up then and reached for pencil and paper. She wrote these words:

You never really loved me

You ran

You sorry dog.

But you taught me how to love...

Someone new.

The sun was down. That quality of angular light at the end of the day filled with color had faded. A southerly breeze cooled the window above them, the curtain drifting over them like a papal blessing.

She looked back at Burt. Wasn’t this strange? He was curled away from her in the bed, eyes closed.

She nestled in behind him, played with a lock of his hair and put her arms around him.

This was going to be an interesting road tour.