Chapter 7
He looked like a real nebbish. Just the sort of boy Leslie Bodant might go for. But he was her last, best hope. Whatever Amos Burd or Beem or Baylee-she could never tell one from another-made her do, she hoped it wasn't really icky.
She hoped the information itself would be enough to incur his wrath. She hoped he would jump to her aid without any sexual prompting from her. However, Jerri Hall was prepared to offer whatever promises or favors she needed to offer in order to get Leslie Bodant kicked off the varsity cheerleading squad. Ideally, this is how she hoped their encounter would run. "You're Amos, Leslie's old boyfriend," she would say. Amos would grunt, "Uh huh."
"Leslie is regularly balling the quarterback of the Lockwood High football team," she would say. "How can I help you kill her?" Amos would say. He stood in front of the New Haana General Store, affectionately referred to as Rambo's, after its late owner. Rambo's was a two story building, with a basement. The store was on the first floor and the owners live above it.
All the very old timers in New Haana hung out in front of Rambo's. It was their version of the bridge, where Amos hung out. Three men stood in front of Rambo's. They wore overalls and straw hats. One of them chewed on a bit of straw. They babbled at each other and no one listened. No one ever had to listen, in New Haana. It was always the same, old story. Jerri saw Amos standing among the men in front of Rambo's. She did not know much about the social structure of the inner town. She did not know how the pecking order ran among the few remaining original families. She barely understood that the town had a past. So she could not have known how significant it was that Amos was standing in front of Rambo's, talking with three old farmers.
When a boy stopped hanging out on the bridge, it was for one of two reasons: he was in jail, or he had graduated to the front stoop of Rambo's General Store.
Amos was not in jail. After Leslie abandoned him, he went into hiding for quite awhile and a few people did actually think that he might have been picked up one night for vagrancy and sent off to jail.
Then he re-emerged and his coming out took place on the front porch of Rambo's. It was his signal to the people of New Haana that he had matured and was now ready to enter a man's world, where weeners were not held and rarely referred to.
He stopped holding his weener and he no longer pissed off the side of the bridge and he wore clean overalls and got himself a job on the biggest farm nearby, as the foreman. He tended hogs and he baled hay and he milked cows. He stood on the porch of Rambo's and talked to the older men.
He had matured. Jerri Hall hardly understood any of this and she walked right over to Amos, in full view of the other men and asked to speak to him.
She did not understand that women were distinctly excluded from the front porch gatherings. She did not understand that her advances made sense to Amos and the other men only in sexual terms. The only women who ever went up to men on the porch of Rambo's were professional women, or they were women scorned, or, sometimes, they were women come to claim a man's renegade hand in marriage. The women had to do all the work in New Haana. The men were just too stupid and too lazy. Amos of course was baffled. He had kept his word, his parting promise to Leslie, that he would remain celibate until the day he died, unless she wanted him back.
He had no idea who Jerri Hall was. He had never even seen her around. He could not imagine what she wanted from him, an attractive, rich looking girl like her. Jerri studied Amos as she walked towards him. She too had heard the rumors that the Beems and the Burds and the Baylees had all their smarts between their legs and she could not help but wonder what his smarts were like. He was not bad looking. As if to spite Leslie, Amos had in fact grown quite moderately handsome since the two of them broke up.
His acne cleared up and he kept himself cleaner. For days and weeks after the tragedy of their breakup, he had gone over and over his every action towards her. He did not really believe she would have abandoned him and Little Amos for God if he had only been desirable enough.
He kept himself very clean. He moved out of his family's house and no longer had to share a bed with three brothers. He got the job on the farm and made good money. He gave up drinking. He even gave up beating off. He was clean and good and he tried to be polite and he called his weener a "dick," when he referred to it at all and he got "dick" a Vega.
No more fifty seven Chevys for him. He was a new man. Jerri looked at him. He had on overalls, and no shirt. He was hot and he looked very strong. He had a big, rounded nose and big biceps and clean, glistening hair. She could see a lot of his chest under the overalls. His muscles were big and smooth and nice. And he had that native New Haana bulge in his pants. Jerri was stunned that she could find such a man so attractive. But then again, not long ago it would never have occurred to her that she would walk in the door of her home one day and find her father in the laundry room with the Avon Lady.
Adolescence is a time of changes, Jerri thought. She tried to ignore the changes that were going on inside her, right between her legs, as she eyed the bulge in Amos's crotch.
"Hi," she said, as she walked up to the porch. "I'm Jerri Hall. Are you Amos?" The three men who stood with Amos eyed Jerri with suspicion and surprise. They were not used to things that appeared to be out of the ordinary. And for a girl like that to walk up to Amos and introduce herself, well, that was pretty out of the ordinary. "Uh huh," he drawled. His eyes ran up and down her body. She sure was pretty. "I'm a friend of Leslie Bodant's. Can we talk." He looked as if he had been shot. "Excuse me, gentlemen," he said to the men on the porch. Confused, they decided on an attitude. They winked at him as he made his way down the steps with Jerri. He did not appreciate that and he hoped that Jerri had not seen them do it. "What can I do for you, Miss?" he said as they reached the bottom of the steps. "Come on over here," she said. They walked across the street and stood in front of the Post Office, where they were afforded a little more privacy. Jerri did not want to inform the entire population of New Haana, New Jersey that Leslie Bodant was balling Anse Newton.
"Yes?" Amos said. His eyes were wide and he appealed to her. She could tell that he must have been very much in love with Leslie. For that matter, she could tell that he still was very much in love with Leslie Bodant. You poor sucker, she thought to herself. If only you knew.
Yet, that was the point, wasn't it. He was going to know. He was going to know and she was going to be the one to tell him. Jerri looked into his eyes and she didn't know if she would be able to do it.
He had deep, soft brown eyes. They were pretty eyes and he had very long lashes. They were girl's eyes, on a man and she liked him for them. She liked him for his pretty girl's eyes and his clean smell and his farm smell.
"You work up on Route 512, don't you, near the Fairmount Church." He said, "Uh huh."
"You like it up there?"
"Pretty, this time of year. The leaves are changing and all and you can see the hills. Plus, I like the animals, the cows and the horses and even the hogs. Even like the hogs. Yeah, guess you could say I like it. What did you want to tell me about Leslie?" She looked at him and she thought about him out in the fields with all the hay bales, with his big muscles rippling.
She thought about the bulge in his crotch. She looked into his eyes. He looked like a romantic hero. One of Jerri's favorite plays was "Romeo and Juliet." She read the play for one of her classes, but she read it again on her own. She guessed she had read it about a half a dozen times and she liked it more and more with each re-reading.
She thought that if Romeo lived in the twentieth century, he would look like Amos. Romeo was kind of like that, he was kind of awkward in his way. That was why she liked him. Romeo was not at all like his friend, Mercutio. Mercutio was a clever wag who made good jokes and he was about Romeo's age and he could really fight well with a sword and he was very funny and spirited, but he got killed really early in the play.
That was sad, but it just went to prove what you get for showing off and for being too slick and too smooth. But Romeo was not slick and he was not smooth. He was just lovesick. He was cute, that way. Of course, Romeo died in the end, too, but he didn't die because he was too proud, or too slick. He died because the people close to him deceived him. He was a victim. Poor Romeo was a victim. She thought about poor Romeo and how he was victimized by his friends and she decided that she had better not get involved. She looked deep into Amos's brown eyes. She suddenly found herself seriously wondering what his cock was like. It couldn't be all that great if Leslie gave it up. Leslie was one for cocks. But then, Anse Newton was rumored to have the biggest schlong in the history of man and she supposed that it was understandable that she would give up Amos for Anse.
Anse was not only big, so they said, but he was also the quarterback of the football team and he had a Trans Am and an unlimited allowance. She could see that someone like Amos was not going to be competition for the Anse Newton's of the world. At least, she was certain that a girl as shallow as Leslie Bodant would prefer Anse. As for Jerri, she thought she rather liked poor Amos.
He had such nice eyes. And such a prominent bulge. She didn't think she could go through with it. She had been prepared to tell him the truth about Leslie. She had been prepared to degrade herself for him if he demanded something in exchange for his cooperation.
But, looking into his eyes, she could see that the information would simply shatter him.
She did not want to shatter Amos.
She thought he might possible begin to cry if she told him about Leslie and Anse.
No, Jerri saw that she was going to have to deal with this on her own. She would have to take care of Leslie on her own. She could not involve Amos. "Miss?" Amos said. "Miss? Did you have something to say to me about Leslie?" Jerri had almost forgotten that he was waiting to hear what she had to say. She fumbled around for an answer. "Oh," she said, "nothing important." She thought about something harmless she could tell him. "Leslie just wanted me to see of you were alright. She didn't want to see you, but she just wanted to make sure you were getting along alright and she wanted me to tell you that she is getting along fine, too." She said it very fast and she almost laughed. You bet she's getting along just fine, she thought to herself. Anse Newton will see to that. "That's all. Just that she's getting along fine," she said and she turned and ran away. Amos stared after her, deeply puzzled.
Leslie Bodant was getting along fine. She was making it with the hungest stud she had ever known. "You're the hungest stud I have ever known," she would say to him, between slurps on his cock. "Oh," he would moan. "You're the stackedest chick who ever took Little Anse," he would reply. She loved his dick and he loved what she could do to it and they were terribly happy. He ate her out in his Trans Am at drive-in movies and she licked out his asshole and sucked his cock. They were deliriously happy with one another.
Like all men, he wanted to share his happiness with his buddies. He wanted to share Leslie with all the guys on the football team. Lucky for him she was only too anxious to be communal property. "Oh, baby," she said. "I bet they all have nice, thick cocks." He thought about all their cocks. He had never thought about all their cocks before. It took him awhile to remember what they all looked like. She forced him to describe them to her in great detail. Every single cock. He had to make some of it up. He could not remember what the linebacker's cock looked like and he did not even know for sure that the defensive end even had a cock. But he told her. And he stressed one thing. "None of them are as big as Little Anse."
"Honey," she said, "the Sears Building in Chicago is not as big as Little Anse."
"Well," he returned the compliment, "I bet you could get your mouth around the Sears Building if you really wanted to." They made plans. Leslie was not allowed to engage in any public displays of affection-PDA's-when she was in uniform, so she and Anse ruled out the possibility that she might ream the team during the halftime of the big Thanksgiving game. For that matter, she was strictly forbidden to engage in any kind of illicit activities and if anyone caught her smoking tobacco, or dope, or blowing the quarterback, she could be kicked off the team.
They had to find a way for her to enjoy the team without letting anyone on to it.
Then Anse remembered the big party the boys always had the night before the big Thanksgiving game.
Every year they invited one of the very loosest girls on the cheerleading squad to help them prep for the game. More often than not, the loosest a cheerleader ever was was to shove a finger up one guy's ass, or hold another's dick. Leslie would be a special treat. No one ever knew about the party except the cheerleaders and the football team and none of them would rat on one of their own, so he knew that it was cool. Leslie was bubbling over with excitement. She could not wait to get her mouth around all those fine, big cocks.
At the last minute, Jerri Hall remembered the pre Thanksgiving game party.
It was a tradition at Lockwood Gorge High. As a cheerleader, she had never attended, but she had heard a few horror stories about the goings on from some of the girls who had gone. She was certain that they would invite Leslie. She was just the sort of girl who would do anything they asked.
It wasn't very hard for Jerri to find out. She hung out around her ex friends, around Chrissy and the others and she eavesdropped on their conversations and she learned that Leslie had indeed been asked to go to the party.
She heard the girls talking about it in the library.
"Guess who's been invited to the pre game party?" one of them said.
"Who?" another whispered.
"You'll never guess."
"Who?" chimed in a third.
"Leslie Bodant," the girl said, triumphantly.
"Well, I'm not at all surprised," one of the other girls said. "After all, she's Anse Newton's girl."
"And anyone can see," another said, "just what it is she has that the boys might just want to rub for good luck."
"Oh," another said, "I think it's just awful the way they trade us around like that, as if we belonged to them."
"Did you hear what happened last year?" one of the girls said. "What?"
"With Cynthia Rivell?"
"Was it Cynthia Rivell last year? No. I don't believe it."
"Cindy told me all about it," the girl insisted. "Well, what?" one of the girls demanded. "Well, they had they party in George Parkhill's barn."
"He's so cute," one of the girls said. "And Cindy got there and they led her up to the loft."
"I heard George Parkhill got a disease in Virginia," one of the girls said, "and he can't... you know...
function."
"George Parkhill was drunk that night," one of the girls corrected. "Missy Bender never did know how to tell the truth about things. He was drunk, that's all. They can't do it when they're drunk."
"Do you want to hear about Cindy Rivell, or not?" the girl who was telling the story demanded.
"Oh, yeah!" the girls shouted. "Well," she said, "they led her up to the loft and Randy Bartnett pulled out this harness-"
"No!"
"Yes. And-" Jerri never hear the end of the story, because at that moment the fussy old librarian shushed them. She had wanted to hear the end of the story. Still, she at least had the information she had wanted. She was certain now that Leslie would be at the party. Through other sources, she learned the location and the time of the bash. She was going to be there, too. She was going to be the uninvited guest, the gate crasher. She was going to catch Leslie in action and get her kicked off the squad. That would surely satisfy her. Jerri made plans all week. She could think of nothing else. She was blood thirsty. She wanted revenge. Amos was thoroughly puzzled. What would make a girl he did not even know walk up to him in the middle of Rambo's porch one day and start to tell him something about Leslie? He had not heard from Leslie at all since they last time they saw each other. He thought perhaps Jerri was her messenger and her way of telling him that she was ready to get back together with him. Yet he could not be sure. Something about the encounter had struck him rather funny. He decided to scout out Leslie's house. Every night for a week, he sat in the bushes across from Leslie's house. He found out a great deal more than he had bargained for. On the fifth night that he waited outside her house, a bright blue Trams Am pulled up to her door. A big stud got out of the driver's side and walked around to the passenger side. Leslie got out of the passenger side! They embraced. She kissed the stud more passionately than she had ever kissed him. Amos ran to his Vega, which he had parked down the street and he got in. He followed the Trans Am after Leslie left her lover and he found out where the Trans Am stud lived. He wrote out the last name on a piece of paper.
Within a few days, he had all the information about Anse Newton that he cared to have.
Clearly, he had lost Leslie to this dude, but he was not going to go down without a fight. All week long, he sat home at night and polished his Daddy's shotgun. And on the night of the pre game party, he got in his Vega and headed for Anse Newton's house. The party was at Anse Newton's house. And so was Anse and Leslie and so would be Jerri Hall, with a vengeance and so would be Amos, with a shotgun. They were all going to the party. It was going to be one hell of a bash.