Chapter 3

I found nobody home and felt glad of that. Winnie Jo had ridden off on some errand on her bicycle and Daddy was in the field, working, or maybe just squatting between the corn rows drinking from his jug. The way I felt, I wished I could take my sister, leave the farm and my father and never come back. Of course, that was impossible practically for lack of money.

Up until that time I'd earned only piddling amounts at odd jobs. Winnie Jo and I worked around the house and on the farm but nobody ever thought of paying us for it. Now the Blossoms had paid me sixty dollars for nookying with them and I wondered whether I could ever put by enough from that source to run away with Winnie Jo so we could live by ourselves. Prospects looked dismal from any angle. I didn't want to fall into the habit of loving up any woman's pussy besides my sister's.

When she came home, I told her all that happened, whereupon her small face pinched in a fighting glare that was mostly fright. "You're right, Carol. We've got to get out of here before the sky caves in on us. Mel as good as raping you, and I don't even want to think about Dad's wallowing in sex with Miz Blossom-yes and the crazy way he's stared at me sometimes! If Mel or Daddy tries it with me; I'll fight 'em off with rocks as big as pumpkins."

She grabbed a handful of my right tit as though it were a rock.

"Hey, you nut, but don't worry. I won't let them touch my little sweetie."

"Mmm, big Sis. But where can we ever find the money to live on in Bindale or some city?

Of course, that sixty bucks is a starter, huh? Would Miz Blossom pay you extra if I went with you next time? I'd never in the world lay it for Mel, but maybe I wouldn't mind so much fooling around naked with you and Miz Blossom."

"You little sexenheimer!"

"So are you!"

We wrestled and pushed each other around in the kitchen but didn't really meant it. Daddy came in for supper but could hardly eat the chicken I'd fried. He had a good talking-to coming from me but when he was so glazed with moonshine his conscience was beyond my reach.

Monday, I came home from school early and we had it out. I was in my senior year and would graduate in a few weeks. "If you haven't thought of the future," I told Daddy, "I have.

I'm going to get a job, and as soon as I can earn enough money, I'm going to live in town and take Winnie Jo with me. It isn't safe for Win so near the Blossoms' bawdy house."

Daddy was sullen. "You'll have to get along with what we have, Carol. You can't leave the farm. I won't allow it. Also, do you have to talk raw like that, dear?" We were in our tiny living room, sitting on the edges of oak chairs, I trying to get him to look at him, and Daddy staring down at the worn carpet.

"Daddy, while you were supposed to be in Kansas City the other day, you were really at an Independence motel, weren't you? Putting the prod to Miz Blossom?"

There was an instant's meeting of our eyes and he winced at the shock of my knowing all about his weakness. He turned away from me and the legs of the chair scraped the floor.

He half-rose, would have gone for a drink if I hadn't told him, "No, you just sit right there and listen to me." He sat down again, held his head in his hands. It was as though I were the parent and he the child.

He'd been working, wore an old pair of pants, and as it was hot his tanned chest bulged out big. I still had on the mini outfit and pantyhose I'd worn to school. Miz Blossom found Daddy very good-looking at forty-two, she'd said, and for all his hangups, I wanted him to be strong and manly He had sandy hair and blue eyes, was clean-shaven with a round, smooth face, heavy in the jowls from drinking so much.

"While you were gone that day," I said, "Mel Blossom tricked, me into the house and got me down in the bedroom. He gave me my choice of laying it for him or he'd knock me unconscious and then rape me anyhow. So I had to let him."

My father sprang up blustering. "I'll horsewhip the rotten bugger!"

Physically he could slap down Mel Blossom all right, but he lacked the will. I didn't say anything but I had to bite my lip not to burst out crying, Daddy was just trying to bluff it out.

We both knew he'd gone off on that date with Miz Blossom, leaving the way clear for Mel to take me.

Then he stopped pretending. "N-n-n-" he was stammering. "Nothing happened to Winnie Jo, did it?"

"No, and I won't let it, for you or the Blossoms or anybody else. Daddy, what's the hold they have over you? Did they catch you stealing or something?"

"Worse." He bolted for his own room and his liquor jug. I heard him downing a snort but he came right back. "You think I'm a bad man, Carol, not fit to be a father?"

"We'll work it out." I mashed my lips together.

"You don't know the half of it. Sure I get drunk, but that's because I don't care any more whether I live or die. I ought to be taken out and hanged."

"It's sex stuff, isn't it? You'll just have to get over it like a sickness." I came over and sat on his lap and he held me tight. "What is it you do that's so frightful?"

At first he wouldn't tell me. Then his hand was patting the inside of my leg. It got too far up my panthose and I whacked it away.

"Daddy, for heaven's sake!"

"So you see?" he shouted. "I can't leave any woman alone. I'm a fucking rapist!"

His voice was hoarse, and he broke down, crying. My heart went out to him but he made me plenty exasperated, too, especially as he couldn't hold me on his lap without his hands itching to take feels of my tits and bottom. I got off his knees when beneath my thigh I felt his virile member rising hard enough to poke into me.

I touched his cheek so he'd have to look at me. "If you could only stop drinking you wouldn't have those notions any more, would you?"

"Damn the drinking! Carol, you don't understand." He shook his head, bowed it. "It's the thinking of what I've done that makes me drink. But it's no use. I keep wanting a woman.

When Miz Blossom gives me whisky and we tear off a hot one and then some more, I forget my troubles for a while. But after a bit, the old craving comes over me again."

I remembered the two Blossom kids, Curtis and Dee, both very lazy and spoiled. They had fooled around as they pleased, much too good to do farm work. Curtis had moved out to Los Angeles and Dee to Kansas City. The girl's departure had been sudden, I recalled, and I asked Daddy, "Was Dee the one you raped? She was no virgin. I'll bet there'd been a dozen ahead of you."

"Dee, yes. I caught her alone in the woodshed one afternoon and piled onto her. She fought me like a mountain lion the first time, but later she couldn't get her fill of it. She'd even drop her pants for me out in the field. Then Miz Blossom caught us, made me sign a confession that she still holds, could use against me with the sheriff at any time. Shipped out Dee, but whenever I'm in KC, Dee still takes me on if she can possibly work it.

"She and her husband live in a beautiful four-bedroom house and she's usually dolled up like a pink poodle. I come in my old clothes so she makes me pretend I'm a serviceman, but our clothes are soon off and we got to it, maybe even while she has guests in another room of the house."

The pride and color went out of me. I felt as cold as leftover coffee. Daddy and that snip, Dee Blossom. She'd treated Winnie Jo and me like dirt. We were the poor cottage folks of course, but she was no bargain. "You sure don't need to go out and hang yourself over that twist, Daddy." But then I realized there must have been others. "How many more girls have you raped?"

"I don't rightly know, Carol." His acts of violence were nothing he wanted to remember, but from the way he told it there must have been twenty or so incidents. In our old Rambler car, he'd pick up a girl hitchhiker at the edge of some town. You'd think she'd have better sense but she'd get right in. One time he gave a lift to three co-eds and diddled them all.

"Don't they fight and scream?"

"Not so much. They've all put out before. They don't want to get hurt. That's how they excuse it, thinking it would take only one crack of my big fist to knock them out. There've been times-true, of course. Then in some out-of-the-way spot I take them, either in the car or out on the grass. I don't break any bones. Sometimes I've torn their pants off; and a girdle is a nuisance when a man is in a hurry to have it, but otherwise the women get by all right."

I hated to believe what he was saying, but I had to. "What happens afterwards? Don't the girls report you?"

"Mostly they don't report me, so far as I know. We just get back in the car and go on our way. In KC about a month ago I got reported, not by name, only a vague description. I'd climbed in through a window of a ground floor flat. There was this middle-aged woman and her daughter. Then a man came home, caught us at it. I'd had the girl and was taking on the older woman, had her spread out on the floor with her clothes all up, not really crying because I screwed her, just sort of moaning. I left off long enough to sock this man a couple. The woman didn't say a word, just lay there exposed with her legs sort of jiggling. I got back down on her, pounded it into her till she got it good. As soon as I'd finished her off, I got up and ran, but later the man reported me, it was in the KC paper."

"Daddy, you've just got to stop all that!" So powerful with his big fits, yet so weak in his self-control. 'Taking girls in the car that way, climbing through people's windows-it's a wonder you aren't in jail right now "

"I know that right well, honey. They'll get me. Somebody will kill me."

"How long have you been this way?"

"For years. Lately it's been much worse than ever before. I catted around even while your mother was home and it made her pretty mad. I reckon the wanting a woman has been in my blood ever since I was grown enough to raise it."

Yes and he could raise it like a ball bat. I recalled the pictures of him .Miz Blossom had shown me, with that towering erection. I could see the form of his penis right now, as though a kitten were stretching itself inside the crotch of his pants, arching its back.

"That wicked old rod jerks up, Daddy, and then you just have to go?"

"Yeah, there's that. But mostly-I don't know what triggers the action but the lust comes over me so bad that I absolutely have to have the woman. And when I go so hot for her, she feels it, too. She knows it has to be, like it's nature's way. Some have offered to go down on me, then they'd stay faithful to their husbands or lovers. That's how they figure it, but a blow job wouldn't do for me. I have to put that old rod into the crotch pocket where it belongs."

"I guess Miz Blossoms has sucked you off?" I shut my eyes, imagining the urpy scene.

"Well, yeah, but that's different. She pays me so we do everything." He frowned. "I don't want to think about it. And that's pretty raw talk from my daughter."

"Is it? You should have thought of that before you let Mel Blossom screw me." I stood up, hugging my tits. I thought of Winnie Jo's warning the other night, "We've got to get out of here before the sky caves in on us." But I had to help Daddy if I possibly could. For sure, nobody else was going to.

"You've got to see a doctor, Daddy. Don't admit to him you've gone around raping women.

He might snitch to the sheriff. Tell him only that you have desires that you can't resist, then maybe he can give you medicine or gland treatments that will cool you down. If he can't fix you any other way, you'll have to let them operate, you can see that."

"You're right, Carol. I must see the doctor." But from the way he said it, I doubted he'd get the nerve to go. He was afraid he'd be castrated.

"Daddy, you've got to. If I make an appointment for you with Dr. Johnson, will you keep it?"

"Well, no, leave it to me. I'll handle it."

Whatever his good intentions, Daddy was weak, scared that a medical examination would lead to the cutting out of his testicles. I guess no man wants that. But women didn't want to be raped, either. Or maybe some of them did want it? According to him they'd put up only dilly-dallying resistance. But whether they wanted his big tool in them or not, he could be sent to prison for criminal assault.

I was scolding him when I saw through the window Winnie Jo coming on her bicycle. We'd have to knock it off. I'd tell Win the bad news later. It was shock enough for Daddy that I'd seen him break down crying, without Win gaping at him, too.

He took me by the shoulders and his eyes were pleading. "Don't let me do it, Carol."

"I'll try." But physically how could I ever stop him? He could knock me cold with one swat.

"If you'll only go to Dr. Johnson?"

"Uh, I reckon. Been worrying about the little one. Don't ever let me put it to Winnie Jo."

I stared at him, shuddering, as I recalled his doggie looks at the kid. "Daddy, if you can't even control your hot nuts for Win, she and I are moving out."

"No, please, don't leave me. I need you here. Just help me, don't let me do it. I've tried my hardest to keep off her but sometimes it's been a near thing."