Chapter 1
"Onward Chris-stian so-hol-diers, mar-ching as to war...!" From the nineteen people sitting on cold steel folding chairs in the First Baptist Church basement, one bellowed out like a cat in heat. That belonged to Mildred Bates, a hefty woman with a bustline for each of her fifty-two years and a nasal twang that whined from her nose as if somebody was pinching her nostrils shut. Now, with the dying crescendo of the hymn's last stanza, Mildred was breathless and the restless sounds of clearing throats and aching buttocks wriggling on the hard folding chairs unspokenly signalled the end to Thursday night choir practice.
The dimpled, blonde haired, amber eyed girl at the piano bench let out a whistle of relief. Ruth Monson never complained about playing the piano for church choir practice. Those mystical sounds created from the fluttering of fingers over the keys echoed of tramping horses hooves and courageous riders bearing the cross of Christiendom, pillaging villages, claiming the ground sacred soil in the name of the Holy Crusades, and that brought a sparkle of excitement into her gloomy existence. Ruth was a minister's daughter.
Though she didn't look like one ... Ruth possessed that rare femininity that whispered of ripe sexuality without the mask of makeup. But then makeup wasn't allowed anyway ... or dates, or high school dances ... nothing spontaneous. To laugh and forget cares was sinful in the Reverend's eyes, a concept that had been drilled into Ruth's pretty head for seventeen dull years, creating a starvation for laughter and experience that ate away at her insides, sometimes so painfully that she grew claustrophobic in her own company ... a dreary make believe world of movie magazines and romantic novels. With each year, Ruth's need for freedom grew more convulsive; it couldn't be called rebellion. She was fighting for emotional survival.
That was the Reverend's fault. Predictably, every Sunday as she sat in the front pew of the church, staring up into her father's angry face as he pounded his fists on the pulpit in the name of God and waved the Bible before the fear-stricken congregation proclaiming eternal damnation for sin- ners, that same vacuously venomous feeling engulfed the daughter. She forgot about her fantasies and desires, as if there was no Ruth Monson. Locked up in that five foot five inch frame of creamy flesh was an obedient girl with impeccable manners, some musical talent, and a lot of good-but useless-looks.
Naturally, that bothered Ruth. Anything as personal as a boy's second glance raised little goosebumps of shame all over her lushly curved body, from the puffy half-dollar sized nipples down to her twenty-two inch waist, over her smooth belly and down her modelishly slim legs. Her hair, soft and the color of corn silk, hung straight down her back, clipped into impish little girl bangs that grazed her moody almond-shaped amber eyes ... eyes with a distant, excitable luster that bespoke of invisible heroes riding white stallions, rescuing frail young women from dragons' claws. The very weak and the very strong... like right and wrong, were imprinted in her genes.
Music was her only escape and she played expressively ... compulsively, her imagination singing its own tunes, working up ripe sensations in her womanly body, imagining the hot touch of a man's lips on hers, his fingers tracing the outline of her heavy breasts, his tongue bathing her ear. Often after choir practice she would sneak up to the church's choir loft and play the organ until the chimes sounded ten times.
But not tonight. She had her eye on a real live fan- tasy, and he was folding up his chair right now and setting it against the wall.
Ricky Morgan was his name, and he recognized from the start that camouflaged in angelicism, deep down inside Ruth Monson was the devil's mistress.
Ricky's credentials were not what one would expect a minister's daughter to fall wont to, for nothing about him appeared fit for piety... not the way he shuffled when he walked, hands thrust deep in the pockets of his tight, faded levis, strutting like a cock in a hen house ... not the style of his long, shaggy hair ... or the masked, cocky expression that seemed too confident, too self-assured.
And tonight, the insouciant Ruth had fallen to pieces during practice when, lifting her intensive gaze from the sheet music, she caught Ricky winking at her, flustering her so wildly that her slender, practiced fingers struck the wrong keys. But with Mildred's voice destroying all sense of harmony, nobody had noticed.
Now, as she fumbled with the sheet music, she spied Ricky's restlessness and knew that he was bursting to get out of the huddle of chattering women and men crowding the church basement. Clearly, Ricky would have looked more at home in a pool hall.
One Saturday morning two months ago, Ricky had sat in a hungover torpor at the breakfast table, the empty bottle of last night's Southern Comfort perched ominously on his plate. Livid with rage, Ricky's father had paced the kitchen, bellowing in a voice that could drive nails, which only added to his son's gut-tearing misery. Mr. Morgan had turned on his heel. "Goddamned kid! Good for nothing sonofabitch!" He wagged a finger in Ricky's ashen face. "Give me them car keys!" Ricky had refused. "Okay, if that's the way you want it... from now on you sing in the church choir. That oughta quiet you down ..." Every Thursday evening found Ricky shamefaced as he sat between Chester Mathews and Mildred Bates ...
Now he slipped on his wrestler's letter jacket and elbowed his way through the mish-mash of cackling women, charging for the piano where Ruth stood conscientiously arranging the sheet music in chronological order for the Sunday morning service. Her soft, baby fine hair hung like glimmering strands of silk over the shoulders of her black turtle neck sweater that molded her bosom to show off the perfect, succulent mounds, fleshy and heavy as ripe can talopes. She gasped, intuitively sensing his avid stare behind her back where he stood with his hands plunged in his pockets, his head cocked to the side, eyes tirelessly watching, motionlessly undressing her rosey flesh. A tingle of something naughty prickled between her slim thighs.
To her own surprise, she spoke first. "Hi!" Her rosebud mouth opened into full bloom, her perfect white teeth that had never known a cavity, looking even whiter, accented by the natural rouge of her lips.
He stood behind her, poised like a movie poster come to life, weight shifted on one foot, blue eyes mischievous. Ricky Morgan was on the make. "Hey, girl, what are you doing tonight?" He inched closer, resting one elbow on the piano, scanning the huddle of women close by, then lowered his voice showing a sensitivity for privacy that Ruth appreciated. "Would ya like to go for a little spin? I got my car outside..."
Ruth-drawn like a magnet to a pin, peachy cheeks flushed the color of autumn apples-flung her golden tresses over her shoulder and stood up straight, keeping one eye suspiciously rooted on the town's grapevine-Mildred Bates. For a moment, her forehead wrinkled with indecision, then smoothed tight as satin. After seventeen years of hell, fire and brimstone... why not? To heck with you. Daddy! "Yeah, I would!" Haphazardly, she stuffed the sheet music into the piano bench, then grabbing her coat and purse, shot him a naughty-but-nice smile and tromped out of the church basement after him, her knees jellied with excitement.
The timing was perfect, the setting ripe. The Reverend, off addressing a women's charity organization, was due home Saturday. Her sister didn't live at home any longer, and for ten years there had been no Mrs. Monson to keep a motherly vigil.
Ruth's black boots crunched on the gravel as she hastened after Ricky, Somerville's champion wrestler, to the church parking lot and under a clump of trees where Ricky's car stuck out like a thistle in a rose bouquet! A metallic purple Mustang shimmered in the patchy lights of the church basement windows. A pang of guilt-ridden apprehension tore through Ruth's ripe body as she glanced over her shoulder, feeling thievish, stealing away undetected against her father's will. Gosh, Ricky's so cute and the moon so full, but if Daddy ever finds out, they'll be singing hymns over my dead body!
"Pretty, isn't she?" burst out Ricky in a soft, tilted grin, digging his car keys out of his pocket. Ruth hesitantly slid in and slammed the door shut; the sneezy smell of cigarette smoke stung her perky nostrils, making her feel tingly all the way down to her toes knowing she was in the company of a true sinner. She thought she was getting away with something naughty, when to her horror, the basement door swung open and a throng of choir members paraded toward their cars.
The temptation was too great and Ricky revved up the eight cylinder engine, his foot pumping the accelerator to the floorboards and smirked defiantly as billows of foul-smelling exhaust spewed from where the muffler should have been, blowing the parking lot clear of gravel.
Gosh! now somebody's sure to tell Daddy! winced the preacher's daughter. Right she was. Ruth hunkered down in the seat, cheeks burning, heart thumping so loudly she was certain Ricky could hear it above the blaring tape deck. Heads turned, eye brows raised, jaws dropped as the church members watched the Reverend's pious daughter, accompanied by the smart aleck rowdy wrestler of Somerville High, spin out of the parking lot, spitting gravel behind the mag wheels.
They headed for the main street of town. "What's hot stuff like you doin' in a place like that, heh?" he asked in a friendly voice that attempted to draw a beautiful butterfly out of a common cocoon. Defenses up, Ruth sensed a thread of mockery there, an accusation really: Yon 're a minister's kid. you can't be any fun.
"I... I'm Reverend Monson's daughter, so I get stuck doing a lot of things I don't want to ... but..." she shrugged her shoulders, ending that conversation. Darn it. I've got to quit thinking like a preacher's kid and more like a woman. The main street of Somerville flashed by the car window ... the pool hall, the post office, the bars at the end of the street where she was never allowed a peek into the ordinary life of ordinary people who drank beer, smoked cigarettes and laughed.
"Hey, hon .. ?" the arm of Ricky's prickly wool letter jacket slung around her neck, pulling her close enough for her to smell his spearmint gun. "Let's not be cold," he chuckled, his fingers entwined in her baby fine hair. Ruth held her breath, feeling his hot break close as he kissed her bangs. "Thought we'd have a few sips, if that's okay with you. You don't have to be home early ... I hope."
"Ah ... yes ... I mean no!" Sip? What did that mean? "Ah, sure, Ricky," she smiled lopsided, glancing up into his handsome face for the first time since she'd slid into that purple machine, and seeing, too, the garish interior that reeked of male dominance. Her almond eyes fell-first on the red satin garter belt dangling from the mirror like a flag of surrender. Whose leg had that come off of, she wondered, her eyes trailing over the ceiling covered in a soft baby blue fuzz that sinfully reminded her of the fleece between her own gracefully slender legs. And ... Oh Gosh! She grew two inches with a gasp. That thing on the dashboard. Leaning forward as inconspicuously as her slack-jawed shock would allow, she gaped at the plastic naked woman with oversized breasts and eyes where the nipples should have been, her balloonish breasts jiggling on two loose springs making the eyes cross and wiggle.
Something akin to resentment loosened up Ruth's untapped libido, knowing her father would take a whip to her backside if he found her in a boy's car . . a boy who was one hundred percent masculine and proud of it. Well damn him anyway! I'm tired of his crumby church socials and two hour dinner prayers . . . I want to have fun like everybody else!
Ricky had followed her gaze, a wicked grin breaking over his face as he felt her loosening up. The iceberg was thawing. "Like it, huh?"
"It... it's different..." she giggled.
By now the purple bullet was headed for the hilly countryside west of Somerville and Ruth's breathing was coming more evenly, and her heart pounded with less fear ... slowly the strings of attachment were tearing away.
"Hey, Ruthie... reach down under your seat and find the bottle."
Ruth ... he'd called her Ruth! The thought that she was a real live woman to him sparked off the flesh and blood female in her, and she didn't protest when his right hand slinked down over her full right breasts to let his fingers trace the outline of her hardening nipples. His tweaking fingers were right back on that spikey nub when she leaned back into his shoulder, the bottle of Southern Comfort in her hand.
"You got nice tits, you know that?" He whispered in her ear, then gave it a tentative lick, swathing her ear lobe.
Ruth wriggled her buttocks down in the seat, feeling a tingle of something tickly between her creamy thighs.
The cap unscrewed easily, once the seal was broken, and hesitantly, Ruth raised the bottle to her lips, feeling the fires of hell break loose as it burned down her throat, anesthetizing her gullet, numbing her lips and everything in its path.
"Like it?" Ricky reached for the bottle propped now between her thighs.
"Yeah ... it's good." It's not milk, but then I'm not in church either, she thought with a mischievous giggle. The second sip didn't burn as badly; the third smoothed down almost tastelessly; and by the fourth one it could have been water.
Dreamily, she closed her heavy eyelids, her long dark lashes shadowing her cheek bones. This was Ruth Monson ... the real one ... feeling loose and snuggling into a boy's protective arm, swooning at the touch of his exploring fingertips, allowing him to guide her hand to the bulge under his levis zipper. Yes, she liked being cast as the frail woman entrusting her soul to the virile rider of the white stallion.
Then reality seemed to slip away and she slunk down, resting her head in Ricky's lap her slender fingers playing over his swollen penis like the keys of a piano.