Chapter 13
The church ladies had labored all day baking pies and cakes and cookies for the First Baptist Church ice cream social, a yearly event that netted enough cash to send three deserving children to summer camp.
Mildred Bates, honorary chairman of the committee stood on a folded chair fastening a line of lights from a tree bough while the Reverend balanced the creaking chair, waiting for all backs to turn so that he could listen to her giggle as he ran his hand up her skirt.
By seven o'clock the mosquitoes buzzed around the lights and the cars rolled in. Dusk had fallen and a titter of protest arose as Mildred rounded up the choir members for opening hymn to commemorate the event. Somebody muttered a blasphemous remark, saying it was punishment enough to listen to Mildred once a week. Mildred waved her flabby arms before the choir and let her strained soprano voice rise into the night air, mingling compatibly with the crickets' chirps. They were half way through Rock of Ages when the sound of hell descended upon them and everything stopped.
Some women started to whimper and hold handkerchiefs to their noses while children tugged at their mother's skirts as a band of motorcycle riders such as Somerville had never conceived of, roared up in front of the church, choking the crowd in a gust of blue exhaust, gravel spitting, beer cans flying.
All wore denim vests bearing skull and cross-bones and each had a good looking woman on the back of his cycle. But the girl on the lead bike looked familiar as she bounced off in her cut-off denims so short they revealed a hint of a tattoo on her left buttocks. Her blonde hair was still mussed from the all day ride and the dark eye liner and mascara encircling her eyes gave her a hardened look.
Mildred slapped her hand to her breast, her eyes popping open as she recognized Ruth Monson the preacher's daughter. "R-Ruth ... ?!" she sobbed, her jowls flouncing.
"That's right," spoke Ruth with a haughty air that seemed too confident, too self-assured. Nobody dared breathe as the seventeen year old girl sashayed up to her father, her braless breasts bouncing with each step, and she gave his necktie a disrespectful little tug. "Hello, Daddy. I've got somebody I want you to meet..."