Chapter 11
The next morning Winnie Jo and I called on Bonnie Ringgold at the hotel. She was fairly sober but shaky with a hangover, taking pills. I'd seen her in the movies but couldn't remember her very well. Win had seen her on TV and whispered, "She's aged fifty years since last Wednesday " We both felt sorry for her.
According to Win, the Ringgold voice had come over soft and sweet on TV but there in the shabby room of the Bindale Commercial Hotel it sounded furry, rasping.
"I'll never get over this, kids," she told us. "Never. I keep feeling sorry and sorrier until I'm cold in my bones, believe me. Between us, while there are no shysters around, I'll admit frankly I was plastered, really zonked. But I believe I was driving all right, I felt sure of it then and I do now. Tell me something honestly - Carol is it? Say, I'd give a hundred thousand bucks to look as young and pretty as you. Tell me honestly, did your father ever had strange notions, like maybe of suicide?"
"Of course not!" Winnie Jo defended our family name. "Daddy was one of the finest men in Bindale County."
The big star tactfully refrained from disputing that, but her large brown eyes momentarily raised ceilingward. She must have discussed my father's reputation with local people already and heard that he had been a heavy drinker and subject to what were vaguely called "dizzy spells."
Bonnie was a perfectly figured, handsome woman, with smiling charm, I could see that. With the proper make-up she could look young and full of life, even though she must be forty or older. Her real hair was streaked with gray but she'd set two beautiful wigs out on stands, one a long platinum and the other a shorter lustrous black. She was an actress, she'd deliberately let us see her at her worst because she intended us to sympathize with her.
And she succeeded. Win and I wanted to let her know we didn't hate her for what had happened and we weren't money-mad like Mel Blossom.
"You did see my father on the highway?" I asked.
"Yes I saw him plainly, Carol. And listen carefully kids, because this is the absolute truth, I swear on my own father's grave. Unless I was absolutely blind he deliberately walked front of my car so I couldn't miss him at the speed I was traveling, it took all my strength and skill at the wheel to keep from smashing up entirely."
"I don't feel well!" Win said, and I pulled her head down into my lap.
"I know, I know," Bonnie Ringgold soothed her. "I've had grief in my own life, the most savage disappointments." Her voice had actually turned soft and tender. "My lawyer flew in to Kansas City he'll be here before long. I wish to hell somebody had witnessed the tragedy but apparently nobody did and there's no evidence except that I was driving under the influence. The terrible thing happened just as I told you, I only hope you believe me, Carol?"
"Sounds like the truth."
"So we don't want to drag the horror through the courts for months and years do we? Lay ourselves out for the hungry lawyers to pick our bones?"
Winnie Jo was tugging at my arm but I agreed with the star. "No we don't want to go to court. You won't find us hard to get along with. One thing, I've been notified some of this must go through the juvenile court."
"Mmm trust the legal boys to smell any money in the air. And speaking of money -" She rose, took the few steps to her bureau to get her purse, and she was not quite steady on her feet. "Oh shit, look at me! I'll never drink another snort! How often have I said that?"
She counted out some bills, handed them to me. I saw there were twenty hundreds.
"Here's an advance, dear, so you can pay for the funeral and other things, not be dependent on those neighbors who've been more or less nosing into your affairs, they tell me. What's their name?"
"The county assessor, J. Melville Blossom and his wife."
"Blossom? What a name! Pardon me kids if I seem presumptuous but I don't like the sound of that pair, and I'm an old hand at the game, I've been beset by leeches, phonies, schmos, operators and sexies most of my life."
Winnie Jo raised her head to give the star a curious inspection. "How would Mel and Miz Blossom fit in?"
"Offhand I'd slug the county assessor as a slick operator and his wife as a bulldozing sexy. I could be wrong?"
"But you're not!" Winnie Jo warned to her. "That's the old Blossoms all right. And how would Carol and I fit?" She put her arm around me as we sat on the edge of the star's bed.
"A sister act for a natural. You're a pretty pair. You've learned about life the hard way perhaps, been touched by adverse experience?"
"Carol's been touched. I'm still a virgin "
"My Lord, I should hope so. You can't be over fifteen." She stopped to answer the telephone. Her lawyer had arrived. "Excuse me but I must make myself presentable to come before the official eye. Stay friends with me kids, please? I'll help you with your future plans, you'll need a change after this is over. Why don't you come to San Francisco, be my guests?"
After we'd left Win said, "I like her lots, but in the hotel room she sure looked different from on TV, not nearly so sexy."
"As usual, sex is about all you think of."
"No, I'm beginning to think of money. You and I could do exciting things in the city, huh Carol? I'm darned tired of Bindale and the Blossoms. Oh I'll let you handle the cash hon, but you'd better mark everything down that you spend or I'll paddle you with a bed slat."
We were surprised at the large number of people who came to Daddy's funeral. Strange women that nobody knew filed by the coffin then quietly departed. "Must be rape victims," Miz Blossom guessed. "They can't forget Todd Weaver's big prick. Jeez, I can't forget it either, a whanger like that. I'll bet they wish they could reach down inside the coffin and give it a feel, I get itchy fingers just envisioning it. The saddest part of all is that it lies flat now. If it were sticking up the way I've seen it they could never have closed down the lid of the coffin " Winnie Jo and I cried when they lowered Daddy's body into the ground forever. We saw Bonnie Ringgold openly shedding tears too.
Bonnie drove to Kansas City that same day in her rented Corvette. Before she left I went alone to her hotel room and helped her pack as she and I had become quite friendly in just a day or so.
I was feeling low-blue about Daddy and wanted to unburden my mind. Win loved me but she was so young, giggly with no mind for the future, I yearned to spill it all to Bonnie Ringgold who'd had experience with all kinds of people and was pretty wise I thought.
"I'm sure my father did walk right in front of your car, Bonnie. I'd heard Daddy say a number of times, 'They ought to take me out and hang me.' He was the best man in the world at his natural self, but he drank heavily as you must have heard. He went off on drunks only after he'd started getting these crazy urges, to rape women you see and then he was clear out of his mind and nothing could stop him."
Having pulled that main plug, it all poured out, how Winnie Jo and I had explored and kissed each other's body in bed at night, how Mel Blossom had put it to me and Miz Blossom had claimed her licks, how I'd accepted money for it, how Miz Blossom had gotten to Winnie Jo too, and the teacher, Miss Pauline Barlow had butched Win and embraced with me in sixty-nines. And how Daddy had raped me, aroused me so deeply I'd had orgasms and wanted more.
"That's really the living end, honey," the Ringgold star said. "From one to sixty nine! I guess I've had a hundred lovers at one time or another, but nothing in the incest style and lesbians have never tempted me.
"Oh I don't blame you at all, Carol. Sex is a delight beyond compare. Between you and me that's why I happened to be over here in Missouri, for a night with a certain man. We both drink quite a bit and then we do everything. Elliott fucked me in bed, on the floor, in the bathtub, even out in the yard under the hedge. I know his penis like the back of my hand."
She laughed, got a piece of paper and drew a detailed picture of it and his testicles. Big erection of course. "I've put my mouth to every bit of that sweet stick, had it in me front and back."
"You mean Greek style? Doesn't it hurt like fire?"
"That's just what I mean dear, and it hurts lovely It would surprise you how many of the jet-set indulge. Quite a thrill if handled right, with lubricant you know. Still I suppose Elliott would be too exhausting as a steady partner. I know various men in various places, lots of loving is what makes life worth living, love silences that voice of doom, 'You are growing old, Bonnie Ringgold.' "But my advice to you and Winnie Jo is lay off that Blossom sex-stuff, you're young -God, how I wish I were! I mean if you're smart you'll settle down to normal sex with a man, yes and preferably a husband.
"The only chance you kids have to straighten yourselves out is get clean away from the Bindale associations of rape, incest, and those baby fucking crunchers. Come on to San Francisco, let me know and I'll have you picked up at the airport, I have a big house in Burlingame where you can stay as long as you wish."
Miz Blossom wanted Win and me to come out to the house with her that night. "You shouldn't be alone after burying your father." But I told her we Weavers would stay family down to two now.
We had to be alone to make love. That night Winnie Jo screwed me with the dildo Miz Blossom had left in the apartment. "Just for once," she said, giving me a poke up my brownie that made me double up and yelp. "Aw-w I didn't mean to. Now I'll put it into your cunny and I'll be kissing my sweetheart on the mouth while she's getting good and peckered."
She made me come several times, I went down on her and then she butched me, lying on top with her little mound rubbing against mine. It was a hope-renewing comfort. "Tell me you love me, Carol. You don't say it often enough any more." I said it and we kissed good night.
"Sometimes you make me so mad I could swing you by your hair like a yo yo but you're my sweetheart. We're married aren't we? Not legally of course because I'm only fifteen."
We found a will Daddy had made out just two days before his death He left everything to Winnie Jo and me. And as "everything" was next to nothing, the county administrator and the lawyers let us sell the stuff without any fuss, there wouldn't be enough loot in it for them to drag out a long probate.
An insurance adjuster offered to settle the drunk-driver liability for my father's death for forty thousand dollars, plus the two thousand Bonnie had given me, plus funeral expenses. And was he ever surprised when Win and I accepted that without putting up an argument! Mel Blossom was so furious he tried to use his influence with the court judge to upset the deal, wanting to hook the rich star for more money and take his cut.
So I had to reveal to Judge Mapes in confidence that even though Bonnie Ringgold had driven into Daddy while she was drunk we fully believed Daddy had deliberately walked in front of her car, wanting to end his life because his urges to rape women had gotten beyond his control.
Else why had Daddy make his will just two days before?
Win and I didn't let Miz Blossom touch us any more, I installed a new lock on the door of our apartment to keep her out. When everything was settled we telegraphed Bonnie Ringgold that we would be flying out to San Francisco the next day. The reply was signed by a man, Rudy Mather, secretary, and read "Bonnie is on tour but has asked me to pick you up at San Francisco Airport at one PM. Carry red handkerchiefs to identify yourselves.
Have a good flight."
I wondered what Rudy Mather would be like. "How'd you picture him in your ESP, speedo?"
"I ignore the bullgut! Life would be a lot less frazzled around here if you'd stop forever drooling over men."
"He might be an old fusspot or impossible otherwise. Still I kinda have a notion If we stay at Bonnie's house we'll probably see a lot of him."
Such thoughts stirred my mind I wanted to get married and settle down. Winnie Jo insisted she was my spouse but we simply had to grow up out of that dodge.