Cindy Lou’s daddy didn’t know she put out. He thought she was pure as the driven snow; he had no idea she’d drifted, in the seventh grade. And he sure as hell didn’t know she and her brother Lyle used to do it together, either. She was thirteen and he was eighteen. Not often. Just now and then, when Daddy was out of the house, till she missed her period once and got scared about having a Mongoloid. It was a false alarm, but she and Lyle got the fear of God put into them, or as near to it as possible for two kids raised to believe in nothing.
Lyle was a great lover; he made her come like a four-alarm fire. One time they made love in a rainstorm, with the water running down the window next to them all streaky, throwing spooky shadows on their naked bodies, with thunder cracking out there. Daddy was home, that time. It made it real dangerous and real exciting. But eventually the fear was stronger than the love of danger and excitement and even of her brother Lyle’s long lovely pecker, and now she and Lyle didn’t even mention it. Didn’t even talk about it. It was like it never happened, except for an occasional glance between them that said it did.
She never thought of it as incest, exactly, at least not till that month her period was late, and she didn’t believe in sin, but she did believe, vaguely, in right and wrong. That much had crept in through her schooling. She sometimes lay awake at night thinking about the stealing her daddy and Lyle did, which she sometimes helped them with, like the food stamp deal she quit school to pitch in on. She wondered if that was any kind of way to make a living.
Her daddy had always treated her like a princess, and had never been mean, except to spank her bare butt when she was bad. Daddy defined “bad” as disobeying, and she’d learned not to do that early on. She hadn’t had her bare butt spanked (by Daddy) since the seventh grade — coincidentally, it stopped about the time she started putting out.
Once, about three years ago, she had sat in Daddy’s lap and, reverting to the manner of a child, which always charmed him, asked: “Is stealing wrong, Daddy?”
“You shouldn’t steal from your kin, darlin’.”
“People go to jail for stealing.”
“People go to jail for getting caught. Everybody steals, darlin’. The government steals from the public, and the public steals from the government. What goes around comes around.”
“Do you hurt people when you steal from them?”
“Your daddy has to make a living in a cruel, cold, hard world. And sometimes that takes being cruel, cold and hard.”
“Does that mean you hurt people?”
“If I have to. Only if I have to. I could lie to you, darlin’, but it wouldn’t be right of me to. You got to be true to your family. That’s all there is in this old world that can be trusted; that’s all there is that’s worth holding on to. Family.”
“I love you, Daddy.”
“I love you, darlin’,” he’d said, and gave her a big old sloppy kiss.
She thought her daddy was handsome; she’d seen the pictures of him and her mom, before his hair turned white, and he and her mom — who looked a lot like Cindy Lou, so much so it was spooky — looked so happy together. Such a handsome, happy couple. Sometimes she felt guilty for coming between them. Sometimes she cried herself to sleep over it, holding her mother’s picture in her hands. Usually during her period, this was.
But sometimes Daddy scared her. When he drank, he got “handsy.” He would put his hands on her and want a kiss. It didn’t go any further than that, but she sometimes went to bed early and slid the dresser across the door. He’d never tried to come in the room, but she’d grown afraid, lately, that he would someday. Some night.
Ever since she quit school and was around the house more, she noticed Daddy looking at her. Looking at her in that way she knew so well. She figured the only thing keeping him off of her was his foolish mistaken notion she was still a virgin. She was afraid of what he’d do if he found out she wasn’t.
He had his foolish old head in the sand, Daddy did. What did he think she did, when she went out on the weekends and didn’t get home till three in the morning? He bawled her out about it sometimes, and threatened (just threatened) to “whack” her if she didn’t mind. She could always sweet-talk him out of his mood, though.
“Daddy,” she’d say, archly, “I’m just a poor country girl all cooped up on the farm all week, doin’ chores. You gotta let me raise a little hell weekends!”
He’d laugh at that, and let her get away with it. But that was because she’d never had a regular guy, that he knew of — she’d never (except once) had a guy call for her at the house, she always met him (and there was quite a succession of hims) at a movie or a dance hall or bar or maybe motel. She had followed this route because the one time she did have a guy pick her up, back when she was in the ninth grade, Daddy had given the guy such a hard time, it spoiled the whole night. And the next day her daddy had been in a foul mood and snapped her head off at every turn.
So she’d decided to keep her private life her own. And she’d continue to sit in her daddy’s lap and baby-talk him when she wanted something, and that would be that.
And it was — until last night.
She was staying in this motel room with him, a nice room at a Holiday Inn, just her and Daddy, with two double beds, one for each of them. He’d had some business meeting real late, way after midnight, and didn’t get back till after four in the morning. He stripped to his longjohns and climbed in bed — with her. He started cuddling up to her. She could smell liquor on him, but she didn’t think he was drunk. She turned her back to him and he started bumping up against her. And he started saying things.
Things like how she was going to be a woman soon. Something about educating her to the ways of the world, about ushering her into the glory of womanhood.
And she knew what he meant: fucking.
“I gotta pee, Daddy,” she’d said, and got up and scurried into the bathroom and sat on the toilet, seat down, feet up on the cold seat and hugging her legs to her, shaking like to have the palsy, staring at the locked door, afraid of her own father. Her own daddy.
She’d sat there like that a long time. He never knocked on the door or tried to open it or anything. She just knew he was in bed on the other side of that door, thinking about her, in that way. But finally she heard him snoring out there, and peeked out, and he was dead asleep, mouth open, sawing away at those logs.
She slipped into the cool sheets of the other bed and waited to see if anything was going to happen. Nothing did, except over in that other bed her father kept on snoring, and pretty soon so was she.
Today, Daddy had slept in till ten. She was awake at eight, and was all showered and made up and dressed and ready for a day of shopping when he woke. But when Daddy got up, he informed her he wanted her to stay right here, in the room and around the Holiday Inn; no shopping spree for her, this trip. She’d asked him why.
“I got to keep an eye on you,” he said.
“What do you mean, Daddy?”
“There’s some terrible people in this world. A lot of girls your age just disappear and never get seen again.”
She could tell from the tone of his voice there’d be no arguing with him; so she’d let it pass, and joined him for a late breakfast in the coffee shop. The rest of the day Daddy and his friends the Leech brothers — creepy people — sat in the room and talked business, while she either watched TV (she had a couple soap operas and game shows she’d started following since quitting school) or walked around the motel, snooping. She spent a couple of hours in the video arcade room playing Galaga and Donkey Kong Jr. A day dull as spit.
They had supper in the motel restaurant (those yucky Leeches, too), and Daddy bought her a filet mignon, her favorite, and said, “I miss your mother, sometimes.”