“I will. Cheers.”
Jerry started down the flag walk just as the air raid siren began to blare. He halted and looked up into the sky. Overhead, the silver-grey barrage balloons drooped in limp silhouette, the conical searchlights that would soon animate them not yet switched to full power.
Maggie looked at him for a moment through the spot where she’d pulled the paper away and where the light from inside seemed, she thought, to be escaping with such brilliance as to target her house for a made-to-order bomb drop from an approaching Heinkel or Messerschmitt.
Then she went to the door. Reluctantly, she opened it. “Come inside. We’ll go round back and you can wait out the raid in my Anderson.”
Jerry nodded and followed Maggie through the empty house and out to the backyard. “Where’s your mother?”
Maggie spoke to Jerry over her shoulder. “It’s a sad but interesting story. You know part of it already. We’ll have plenty of time for me to tell you the rest once we put ourselves beneath the corrugated.”
This particular air raid lasted over an hour. With the bombs falling frightfully close and the two feeling that copping it right then and there was a palpable possibility, Jerry took Maggie in his arms and held her closely and protectively. Maggie didn’t resist. She had, like Jerry, become a helpless victim to the peril of their circumstances. She was frightened. She was also exhilarated.
Soon Jerry was kissing Maggie and undressing her with ravenous paws. Maggie forgave him for every hateful, stupid, boorish thing he’d said, and even forgave his participation in “the game,” for which he blamed Tom Katz, who “had a way of forcing people to do things that were against their generally good natures.” And whereas Pat and Molly had been like two adolescents, exploring one another with tender and curious innocence; and whereas Will and Carrie had delighted at the Hammersmith Palais in all the possibilities inherent in “that which could very well be”; and whereas Ruth and Cain had melded minds and joined their two hearts to the extent that their settled penchants permitted them; and whereas Jane had submitted to a seduction that was less seduction and more a brutal conquest of body, mind, and spirit; Maggie and Jerry found in their present situation the opportunity for union of a different species, enhanced by an aphrodisiac of immense potency. They reeled over the possibility that the climax of their spirited animalistic coupling might be death itself in the form of either an advertent or inadvertent gift from Adolf Hitler and Hermann Goering.
It did not end thusly but it did end with feelings of receding rapture that Maggie would have been hard-pressed to describe in words.
No. Maggie hadn’t danced a dervish with the devil, but there was still the distinct smell of cordite and sulphur in the air.
And it made her wonder…
Chapter Twenty
Bellevenue, Mississippi, February 1997
“Where are my panties?”
“Is that them hanging on that rake?”
“That isn’t a rake. It’s a yard broom.”
Jerry was sitting on an upturned wheelbarrow. He was enjoying the scene of a totally naked Maggie Barton searching the tool shed for all the clothes she had flung off before having impromptu, devil-may-care sex with him. “I’m kind of out of my, um, element,” said Jerry teasingly. “I’ve never had sex in a tool shed before.”
“Well, neither have I. In fact, I’ve never had sex anywhere before. That is, if you don’t count the times my sick bastard incestor father put his hands inside my underwear.” Maggie stepped into her panties. “How can you just sit there naked and freezing your ass off?”
“I’m not cold. I think you really got my blood to flowing.”
“Yes. I can see one spot where it’s still flowing.”
Jerry looked down. “Oh yeah.” Maggie handed Jerry his undershirt. “Thanks. Is that why your mom kicked your dad out?”
“That and the fact that he clipped his toenails in front of the television and ate whole boxes of Cheetos while sitting on the toilet. Would you please get dressed so we can go inside and get warmed up? Are these your underpants?”
“Nope. Not mine.”
“What?”
“I’m kidding. You seem to have a healthy attitude for somebody whose father did that to her.”
“Oh, you think so?” Maggie pulled her blouse over her head. “I was a virgin until this very afternoon. That’s right, Mr. Castle. I lost my virginity in that thunderstorm. And the other half of my dirty little secret is that I’d been thinking about going the rest of my life without sex until you had to go and look so sexy in the rain.”
“You looked pretty sexy yourself. You looked like you were in a wet T-shirt contest.” Jerry jumped up and started to get dressed.
“I knew you weren’t really an asshole,” teased Maggie.
Jerry smiled. “Oh I’m an asshole, all right. But every now and then I like to take a little vacation.”
“I’m glad you took your little vacation with me. I’m not ashamed of what we did. I’ve been very tense lately and very depressed. I really needed this.” Maggie, fully dressed now, busied herself by folding up the tarpaulin she’d thrown down on the shed floor. “I know I’m acting like my father didn’t mess me up big time. He actually did. I was really afraid of boys all through junior high and high school. And that just carried over into adulthood. The whole idea of sex scared me to death. I went through a long period of time worrying that if I let a guy do it with me, he might accidentally pee inside of me.”
“I’m not sure that’s possible.”
“I didn’t know that. I didn’t know anything, except that sometimes fathers come into their little girls’ rooms and do things you’re not supposed to tell anybody about.” Maggie chuckled to herself. “Of course, I wasn’t one of those little girls who did what they’re supposed to do. I went straight to my mother and told her everything. Maybe this is why I put up with all her weirdness. She believed me—just when I really needed her to. She sent him packing that very night. From what I understand, most mothers in situations like that would become like the ‘Queen of Denial.’”
“I don’t know why we put on these wet clothes. We should have just run into the house naked and then thrown everything in the dryer.”
Maggie shook her head. “Not a good idea to go streaking across the backyard in the middle of the day. I have nosy neighbors, and you never know when somebody might be looking over the fence. Didn’t you put your nosy nose over that fence looking for me about an hour ago?”
Jerry nodded. “Let’s go inside and get naked again and put all these clothes in the dryer.”
“I like it when you aren’t acting like a dick. Can you keep on not acting like a dick for a little while longer?”
“Okay.”
Maggie and Jerry went inside through the back door off the patio. The second they opened the door, they heard voices. Turning the corner from the mud/laundry room into the kitchen, they saw Clara Barton and Lucille Mobry sitting at the kitchen table. The room was filled with the smell of freshly brewed coffee.
“There you are!” Clara cried.
“Don’t hug me. I’m all wet.”
“It looks like the two of you got caught in that thunderstorm,” said Lucille. “I nearly did, but luckily your mother had come home and she gave me shelter. Isn’t this nice, Maggie? Your mother’s come home.”
“Are you okay, Mama?”
“I’m fine, honey.”
“Oh, this is Jerry. He works at the casino. Well, he worked at the casino; they fired him today.”