Chapter 11
Sweat cooled on Cederick's back, the night air cloying at his sheened flesh with an intensity equal to the vague apprehension and dread swimming in his confused brain.
Blood pounded in his chest and his nostrils flared. His ears sang but not from the chirp of cicadas. A strange feeling, depthless and haunting, shuddered through him. For the first time he realized he did not trust his black brothers any more than the violent murderer of Atlanta. An emptiness and longing for truth made him dizzy. He balled up his fists, cursing under his breath Sammie and Stokley for accepting so cheap a bribe from Rose.
Two blocks away from Miss Osgood's apartment complex, he skirted the hedges cautiously, creeping like a jungle cat, eyes dilated and predatory leveled on the yellow Toyota parked haphazardly outside the stucco apartment building. Hunkering down, he watched a tall blond haired man throw himself behind the wheel and streak tire burns as he tore off to disappear around the corner. Only then did Cederick creep up the steps of Carrie's apartment building, scurrying the last five as a patrol car pulled up to the curb.
Five trembling knuckles rose to hammer on the door when he noticed a stream of light under the door. Cautiously, eyes peeled on the door to the outside, he shouldered open Carrie's door and stepped inside. From the bedroom wafted low wailings of misery.
Closing the door behind him, he neared the bedroom and peeked into see his high school teacher laying naked in a rumpled bed, the smell of sex heavy in the air, fairly steaming from the soiled white sheets haphazardly pulled about her white limbs as if in haste to cover her nudity.
Carrie's tear stained face lifted from the pillow. Her eyes were swollen and puffy.
"Miz Osgood?"
Carrie emitted a long cry that accompanies the shock of revelation. A tiny fist flew to her mouth, frightened eyes darting deer-like over her students' face, sheened with sweat and concern.
"It be all right, Miz Osgood. I know what my brothers done to ya... Rose tol' me..." Clumsily, he shifted his weight from left foot to right and back again. He scratched his curly black head, searching for the right words, the explanation to set right an ill situation that was not his responsibility. He squinted at her, studying the red welts and when his eyes fell on the silver barrel of the abandoned gun, his heart pounded and his thoughts straightened.
"Should I call the cops... are ya hurt bad?" He swallowed down the bile of hatred, yet a tingle of nerve wracking tightening in his lower belly betrayed better, more holy intentions as his dark eyes riveted on the rich, swollen swells of her melonous breasts dangling temptingly from her slender ribcage. His mind fled back to the episode in the yellow Toyota when first he'd seen the spherical perfection of her body. He regretted that now, wishing he could erase the lusty ugliness with a more tender concern for her womanhood.
"No... no, I'm okay... " Carrie swept back the damp strands of honey hair from her forehead with a trembling hand. "I'll be all right... " She didn't shiver or scream with dread when his tennis shoes made soundless imprints on the thick bedroom carpeting. His weight descended upon the bed and yet she did not cower. A warm arm slipped about her naked shoulders, pulling her down supine on the rumpled bed, damp with sweat and sperm. Lips, warm and soft, tender pressed against her clammy forehead. Dark fingers pressed into her flesh, drawing her close to his chest. She could hear his heart pound behind the tight cotton T-shirt.
"I'm sorry they did that to ya... God, I'm sorry," he choked boyishly with manly concern. He was speaking for himself and half of Atlanta when he confessed: "I can't undo what they done... I can only say we don' all feel like that... we don't all hate ya." He stroked her forehead tenderly. "I don' want ya to leave, Miz Osgood... down deep inside ain' nobody in tha' class wants ya to leave Washington 'cept for Rose and that's because she be a ghetto bitch... "
The unexpected tenderness made Carrie's eyes sting with tears. "I don't want to leave either, Cederick... " she choked.
"Then don'... don't go... You taught us somethin' in the soc'ology class we ain' never heard before." Reaching into his back pocket, he pulled out a tattered paperback novel and flopped "The Destruction of Violence" on the rumpled bed. "Too bad we ain' taught you nothin' cause you taught us hope and trust."
Carrie blinked back hot, salty tears. She sniffled and wiped her nose on the back of her hand. Between her silken thighs the nest of her swollen vaginal lips throbbed needfully.
Her hand clamped over his thickly muscled knee and she pressed her cheek to his chest, stretching upward to press her swollen naked breasts against the strength of his muscles. "You've taught me about me, Cederick, what I need as a woman... what I need to give and what I need to receive," she whispered thickly, easing him down on her bed and opening the palms of her hands to run up the sinewy length of his arms to squeeze the bulging mounds of his youthful biceps. Her lips pressed against his. She knew what she needed and she would take it, if only from a fourteen year-old boy.