Chapter 1
The battered Ford pickup rolled to a silent stop beside the trailer parked on the outskirts of town. Old Ned picked up the bag of groceries from the seat beside him and shuffled through the powdery dirt to the door, squinting in the afternoon sun as he paused to peer through the window. Cassie was sitting just as she had been when he left, wearing her bathrobe, her feet propped up on the kitchen table, her hair in pincurlers and reading a movie magazine. He spat, the spit immediately balling up on contact with the dust, and went inside.
"Anything happen while I was out?" he asked.
She seemed not to have heard him, her eyes darting to the end of the line she was reading as she popped a bubble in her gum before looking up at him and saying, "No, Daddy."
"Answer me when I speak to you, girl!"
"Yes, Daddy," she said, her eyes nervous as she glanced up at him. Old Ned was sixty-seven, but he still had a commanding voice and an uncertain temper.
"Put the grub away," he said.
"As soon as I finish this story," she said. "It's about that actor we saw-"
"I don't care what it's about. Do it now!"
"Yes, Daddy," she said, jumping up and taking the grocery bag from his arms.
Willful child, Ned thought, as he went into the bathroom. All she'd done since he'd taken her out of school two years ago was sit on her fanny and read motion picture magazines. And she didn't read them just once, she seemed to read them over and over. Every Wednesday he drove her over to Fort Sill and took her to a motion picture show. Afterwards, they went to the drugstore where he allowed her to pick out TV news magazines. She always chose movie magazines. These concessions he made to her only because it kept her out of mischief. It gave her something to do.
It was better this way than the other, he reminded himself.
He'd gotten a glimpse of the "other" right after the girl's mother had died, when the girl had been eleven and suddenly sprouted. On her skinny child's frame developing nipples had become, in a scant year and a half, honest-to-god woman's breasts. And while she hadn't added an inch to her waist, her hips and buttocks had filled out something fierce.
Old Ned didn't have much of an eye for what was happening to her, not at first-but everyone else did, and that was what brought it to his attention, what made him focus his mind on it. Boys wouldn't leave her alone. Boys her own age had been knocked aside, supplanted by high school kids from clear across town, kids who leered and had pimples. And then there'd been the sailor home on leave.
Old Ned had awakened one night hearing scratching sounds, and had looked out the window to see the man in his sailor suit, rubbing the window screen with a stick. Ned noiselessly fetched his shotgun from under the bed and loaded it with sixteen-gauge birdshot. The unlucky sailor took off at a run when Ned opened the door, but didn't get out of range before Ned emptied a barrel of shot into his ass. His yelps were heard for a mile.
The blast woke up Cassie, as well as most of the neighborhood. Ned strode into her room, holding the smoking shotgun in one hand and a wide leather belt with his other, his cowering daughter's fate at that moment foreordained.
"All right. Who was he?" he asked.
"Who?" asked the trembling girl.
"Your sailor boy."
"What sailor boy?"
"Your sailor boy trying to wake you up."
"I don't know no sailor boy."
"What did he want to wake you up for?"
"I don't know! I don't know any sailor!"
"You don't know, eh? Well, he must have known. He must have heard it was pretty good stuff."
"What stuff?" she asked, exasperated, knowing full well that it was always a mistake to let this tone creep into her voice when it was her Daddy she was talking to.
"Whatever it is you been passing out," he said, voice full of disgust, "Now turn over. I'm going to give you a licking you won't forget."
Eyes full of fright, she did. He'd made her say, "I'll never let a boy touch me!" over and over, and hadn't stopped beating her until she sounded pretty damn sincere.
She hadn't forgotten, either. If she neglected her chores or complained that she wanted to go out or didn't jump when he said "jump," all he had to do was shake his belt and she was docile as a kitten.
Ned hadn't taken any chances, though. He knew women. He had retired that spring, having turned sixty-five, and as soon as she finished up eighth grade and graduated from grammar school, he'd sold the house and moved twenty miles out of Fort Sill to the trailer half a mile from anywhere. "Anywhere" being the gas station, general store, feed store, and cluster of houses known as Springtown. The only time Cassie left the trailer was Wednesday night when he went with her to the picture show.
Now Ned poked his head out of the bathroom and saw Cassie standing in front of the refrigerator with the door hanging open, looking at a bunch of carrots. That's all, standing still and looking at them like she didn't know what they were.
"They're carrots," he called.
"What?"
"What you got in your hand."
"Oh," she said, looking at them as if seeing them for the first time, "I know that."
"Then put 'em away and get a move on."
"Yes, Daddy."
Cassie quickly put the hamburger and milk away and the bread in the breadbox, her flimsy housecoat swishing as she moved. Old Ned wished she would dress regular, but she told him her clothes were too small, excepting her special dress she wore Wednesday nights. Ned allowed as how maybe they were too small now, the way she wouldn't stop filling out. So she wore her housecoat most the time. As he sat down to read the newspaper, Ned guessed he was going to have to get a new Sears Roebuck catalogue and order her some.
Cassie took her small standup mirror from the dresser and set it in front of her on the table, sitting on the edge of the couch as she began to take the pincurlers out of her hair. She put curls in her hair twice a week, and this in itself aroused the demon in Old Ned's soul. It made him figure she expected somebody to come a-calling on her. Well, if anyone did, there was a surprise in store.
Cassie stuck the tip of each bobby pin into her mouth when she removed it and dropped the wire curler into her lap. Her lips puckered around the pins as she filled her mouth with them, and she spread her knees to make more lap space as she had to accommodate more and more curlers. As she dropped the last curler into her lap, she shook her head, picked up her hairbrush, and bent forward slightly to look into the mirror.
At that moment Ned lowered his newspaper in order to turn the page, and his mouth fell open. Why, there his daughter was, her knees spread and exposing herself to him most shamelessly. "Why ... why ... why," he sputtered, waggling his forefinger at her, madder than hell that, careful as he'd been, his daughter could carry on like a whore. She paid him no mind; she had begun to brush out her hair.
"You're showing me your cunt!" he screamed, the veins in his neck standing out as they sent blood roaring to his brain.
Cassie looked up in fright. Taken by surprise, she hadn't heard what he said, but knew something must be bad wrong. She saw him pointing and couldn't see what he was pointing at, but guessed he must want something off the floor. Accordingly, she grabbed the hem of her housecoat, lifting it and her lapful of curlers with both hands, holding them tightly against her tummy. She couldn't see what was being pointed at and spread her already-spread legs way wide to get a better look at the floor.
Old Ned was seeing all too well, though, be cause the sparse strands of blond hair in the hollows between her legs did nothing to hide the wrinkled rubied lips of her cunt. Her outer lips were pulled tight, and what Ned pointed at were the pouting lips of her inner cunt, which were glistening now in the late afternoon sun streaming in through the window.
Cassie didn't know what had gotten into her father. He had stood up now, still pointing madly, and was yelling something in her ear. It sounded like, "Cunt! Cunt! Your cunt! Your cunt!"
She didn't know what he was hollering about and was frightened half to death, knowing that if he didn't choke first he was going to hit her any minute now. Desperate, and wanting him to get whatever he was after and shut up, she braced herself with one hand and lifted her feet high off the floor. This made her cunt lips pout even more-the slit between them widening and her clitoris peeping out-and had the further effect of drawing apart her ample white buttocks, revealing to her father her little anus, puckered and hairless.
"Your cunt! Your cunt! You're showing me your cunt!" he screamed, red in the face, about to swallow his tongue.
"Where? Where?" she cried, on the verge of tears and so scared she thought she might pee.
"Right there, stupid!" he yelled, catching his breath. "Right there between your legs where it always is!" And he stooped to point better, his yellowed fingernail stopping not an inch short of her clitoris.
It finally dawned on the child that he was pointing at her, that she had provoked him into a fit and caused his eyes to fill with hate. Breaking into tears, unmindful of her curlers falling to the floor, she jumped up and ran into the bathroom, where she sobbed for a good ten minutes.
She didn't emerge from the bathroom until she had composed herself and washed her face with cold water. All at once she knew she hated this mean old man who was supposed to be her father but who made her life one continual torment. Why, he hadn't said one kind word to her and hadn't held her on his lap or hugged her for as long as she could remember. She wondered if he ever had. He'd been nice to her sometimes when she was young, and she had liked him okay then. But ever since her mother died he'd gotten meaner and meaner. Why, she'd do anything, she'd give up anything-even the movies!-if only he'd change and be nice sometimes.
Neither of them spoke all through dinner. Cassie didn't have anything to say to this old man. She prepared dinner and went through the motions of eating without thinking about him, her mind on some far-off dream, a hazy yet vivid place she'd find someday, as soon as her real life began. Old Ned ate without comment and saw nothing new to scold her for. To tell the truth, he was sorry he'd yelled like that, since the girl hadn't known what she was doing ... but still, no daughter of his was going to act like a whore, and she'd better find that out for herself damn quick. He saw nothing to apologize for.
Shortly after she finished the dishes, he got up to go to bed. The sun was just disappearing down into the heart of the dustbowl, the Oklahoma plains. "Don't stay up too late now," he said, going into the trailer's one bedroom and shutting the door.
Cassie knew he'd remain awake until she'd lowered the couch to make up her bed and turned out the light. She hated to go to bed so early. The summer days weren't bearable until the sun had gone down and she could take a shower. The thought of cool water sent her scurrying into the bathroom. A moment later she was standing under the stream. She hummed a toneless tune.
After her shower, she toweled dry and stood for a moment, still humming, in front of the mirror before putting on her nightie. She wondered if her body was nice. When she looked at herself in the mirror over the sink, her eyes always went first to her nipples, which were pinkish-red until she touched them, when they stiffened and became crimson, as if blushing because it felt so nice. Her breasts had no sag at all, yet sloped downward. She liked to put her hands under them and lift slightly to feel their weight. If she tried to squeeze her hand around them, her thumb and middle finger would almost touch before it hurt her. And if she held a thumb-tip on her rib cage, she could almost reach her nipple with the tip of her forefinger. Pointing out like they did, and being so wobbly, they always made her feel vulnerable. She wondered if a man might think they were beautiful someday and be nice to her.
Wide awake, breathing quietly and touching her nipples until they were so swollen that they had begun to ache, she lay in bed half an hour before she heard the old man's snoring, and no sooner than his first wheezing snorts filled the trailer did one of her hands creep between her legs, as if it had been waiting for a signal. Her fingertips traced the folds of skin and her middle finger strayed into the slit. She thought it was funny how, after she'd played with her nipples, she became wet and puffy down there. She ran her finger up and down the slick slit. It felt good, and she was especially conscious of the ball of her knuckle brushing the puffy ridge with its sensitive little button. A tingling warmth spread through her, and it had nothing to do with the Oklahoma heat. She sighed.
Her eyes had adjusted to the night and there was an early moon. Moving silently, she crept to the dresser for her mirror, and lay back down where the moonlight streamed in brightest. She pulled her nightie up about her waist and propped the mirror up between her thighs, seeing in the oval her shadowy fur-lined crack running from front to back, widening with the folds of skin in front. She spread her legs and watched her gleaming inner lips become more prominent. Now the point of the clitoris became visible as her legs spread to their utmost with one foot touching the wall, the other clear off the bed and resting on a chair. A forefinger on either side of the cleft, she stretched the skin in opposite directions. The puffy inner lips were now in a ring from where they joined at her button to where they rejoined just above her anus. There were so many wrinkles and folds that she could never tell where the hole was until she felt it with her finger. Her finger somehow knew just where to go, possibly guided by her slick juices and the heat at her center.
Her father had pointed here when he said "cunt." She guessed that was what it must be called. Her cunt! She repeated the word silently. Cassie thought it ought to have a fancier name, rising out of the hollow between her legs as it did, with downy yellow fluff all around it and being so red and soft and creamy in the middle. Why, when she buried a finger in it, she could feel the tingle clear out to the tips of her toes.
Her eyelids fluttered shut and her breath left her as she poked one finger in-all the way to the second joint in one lunge. She then relaxed for a moment, getting used to the feel of it inside her before pushing it in to the hilt and wiggling it around, surprised as always at how slick and ripply the little ridges were and beginning to tingle all over. It suddenly occurred to her, considering how her father had acted, that this must be sinful. Could it be a sin to play with your own cunt? the girl asked herself with trepidation.
But fear of sin passed from consciousness as she concentrated on the hunger at the other end of her body where her little cunt-mouth now gobbled at two fingers which pumped anxiously in and out. Cassie began to feel weak in the pit of her stomach. She moved her pelvis up and down without thinking about it-jerking up to meet the fingers, then relaxing. Tense, untense.
Without stopping, she began to grope with her free hand beneath the pillow. When she didn't immediately find what she sought, she lifted her head and knocked the pillow aside in her search. When her groping hand remained empty, she withdrew her pumping fingers and sat up.
What she looked for in vain was a carrot which she'd scrubbed and put under her pillow to warm it up. She needn't have been frightened that her father had found it, because it had fallen to the floor earlier while she squirmed trying to see into the core of her cunt in the mirror. She had first tried a carrot about two weeks before, when she wanted among other things to find out how deep her hole was. She had inadvertently broken something and had bled. It had scared her more than it hurt her, though, and whatever it was that broke was broken now and today she had dared to pick out a thicker one. After her first moments of sinful guilt, her intuition told her that if her father had found her carrot he would most likely think only that she was hungry. She stood up to go get another when she spotted it on the floor, looking yellow-orange in the moonlight.
Cassie lay back down, folded her pillow double, and placed it under her hips. She drew her knees back until they were within inches of the bed on either side of her shoulders.
She could almost see into her cleft. Tentatively, she began massaging her buttocks, marveling at the soft, cool smoothness of her skin; then both hands found their way to her cunt. Her fingers strummed, all drawn one after another, through the slick rubbery flesh of her slit; each fingertip brushed against her clitoris, making her quiver all over. Using the fingers of one hand, she spread the moisture around, wanting to saturate and soften the entire area with it. The pleasure her fingers were bringing her caused the tip of her little pink tongue to creep obscenely out of the corner of her mouth. She dug one finger into the hot flesh of her cunt-mouth as far as it would go-and while she couldn't reach the end of her vaginal tunnel, in this position she could really feel the delightfully wicked sensations. After several moments of sensuously exploring, she discovered a hard little knob deep in the heart of her cunt. She had no way of knowing this was her cervix, all she knew was it felt good to brush it.
Almost frantically now, she picked up the carrot, and quickly pinched off its thin little point and root with her thumbnail. Gingerly, cautiously, remembering the blood the last time, she inserted it and gasped audibly as its hard tip entered her slippery throbbing passage. "Oh ... ohh ... ooohh...." she breathed. The insertion was made no more than an inch at a time; she gasped with each further probing of her channel, each widening of its hungry mouth as it sought to devour the thick eight-inch carrot. If her father were awake, he would have heard nine or ten distinct gasps breaking into the night. This was the most daring thing Cassie had yet done; the sensations rolled over her like a warm billowing cloud. This felt so good, it just had to be wicked. Her heart had begun beating so fast that she thought she was about to faint.
With trembling hands, she pulled the carrot out and then thrust it back in again with such force that she would have screeched in ecstasy from its wonderful hardness and thickness. She continued her motions-parting with it unwillingly and then, as if its absence were more painful than its presence, jamming it home again. As warmth built up in her body, perspiration gathered on her brow and her nightie soon became soaked.
Had someone peered in the window behind her, they would have seen the violently quartered halves of her, ghost white with a touch of yellow in the moonlight. They would have seen her stab at the center of herself with both hands, the carrot glistening from her body's natural liquid each time she withdrew it, and her legs jerk at the knees each time she rammed it home into her depths, as if she plumbed clear to her spine.
And this stranger, whoever would be wandering the Oklahoma prairie at night, might have felt lucky to be able to witness such a rare animal sight. He might have tried to enter the trailer and replace her homey instrument with a more proper tool. Cassie would have instinctively welcomed him. Cassie, in whose body heat and sensation had now accumulated until they became almost screamingly unendurable, began to whip her head from side to side.
Low moans bubbled out of her lust-constricted throat as she held the carrot deep inside her suddenly erupting cunt. She jerked the thick vegetable from side to side with one hand as her hips bucked up at it and her legs twitched. Her other hand played with the fevered clitoris which jumped like a speared worm. Then, moaning softly in exhaustion and relief, she lay still-breathing giant gasps of air into her tortured lungs.
After a long still moment, Cassie shoved the pillow onto the floor and her legs flopped back onto the couch. Suddenly aware that her nightie was drenched and was sticking uncomfortably to her, she pulled it loose from her breasts and armpits to let it dry for a moment. The cool night air on her skin created a delicious sensation. She felt pleased with herself. Totally spent, she hadn't been this relaxed in several days. Her mind was numb and groggy, ready for sleep. She lay in silence for a moment, listening to the crickets beat out their woeful message on the hot Oklahoma night, feeling lonely-still wanting something, not sure what. A body beside her, perhaps. A kiss-like in the movies.
In the other room, Old Ned stirred. He thought he heard a stranger's boots tromping away from the trailer. Every so often the old man's sleep was troubled by sounds-like a wounded coyote or something-that he could never remember well enough in the morning to identify properly. Now, in his mind, he heard the same sounds and, having turned in a bit too early, was not sleeping as soundly as usual. His eyes popped open. He realized that his throat was dry. Groaning, he climbed out of bed and went into the bathroom, where he stood by the sink for a moment, scratching his ass hole through his undershorts, wondering if he wanted warm tap water plain out of the faucet or if he was thirsty enough to bother with an ice cube. "Sure would be nice to have some nice cold ice water," he mumbled, then moved into the front room.
Cassie lay in a semi-swoon, her arms thrown to the side, her drenched nightie bunched up about her waist, her legs at a relaxed spread, and knees slightly raised. Her cunt lips were still blood-filled, and even in the semi-darkness they shone all crimson as they ringed the carrot; only the green toppart of which was showing. It looked as if she had a patch of green pubic hair between her legs. Her blond triangle itself was fluffy, but the hairs between her legs were stuck together and matted down with her own cum juice. All this Old Ned took in at a glance when he entered the room. Without removing his disbelieving eyes, he groped for the light switch behind him.
The sudden flood of light was almost painful to Cassie, but not as painful as the sight of her father standing at the foot of the bed, staring for the second time today at that area between her legs. Her muscles twitched as she remembered the damning evidence, and her stomach muscles involuntarily clenched, causing the carrot to begin sliding out of her vaginal cavity. Faster, faster it slid-shining with her cum-until with a slight plopping noise it shot from her cunt and lay there like a disembodied orange prick on the sheet between her legs. Cassie went weak with fear and shame. She was afraid to think. She dared not breathe.
After a long, endless minute with the only sound being the grinding of Old Ned's teeth, he said in an icy voice, "Okay, whore, you turn over flat on your belly, and then you lie real still."
He went into his bedroom.
A voice in Cassie's mind screamed for her to run, for at this moment she realized that it would be impossible to stay any longer under this roof after what she had done-that her life was going to be unbearable and she had no choice but to run-but at the same time a calm voice of reason whispered, "No, not now. Take your whipping. You need clothes and money."
Taking a breath of air for the first time since the light went on, and having broken into a cold sweat, Cassie did exactly what she was told to do; she flopped onto her belly. Then, for some reason, as if for reassurance, she tucked her nightie tightly about her waist and folded her hands behind her neck. She took a last look at the near wall and shut her eyes, her body paralyzed.
Ned fished for his pants at the foot of his bed and grabbed his belt, thinking, Whore! After all I've tried to do she's still got the nature of a whore. I've got to learn her ... I've got to learn her to deny her whore's nature. This may be the last chance God will give me to do my duty. I better do it real good.
A man grimly intent, he pulled the belt out of its loops and folded it double, holding it in one hand as he went into the bathroom for a long warm drink from the faucet. Then he went back into the front room.
The masses of Cassie's pale white buttocks seemed spread out as she lay flat with her knees tight together. "Whore," he shouted. The first lash, well aimed and with great force, raked both quivering globes just above where they joined her thighs. Cassie screamed in agony, then continued screaming as the lash began taking bites out of her flesh-hitting from waist to the backs of her knees. Her legs jerked and danced from the spine with each horrible bite of the wide leather belt. She writhed from side to side, clenching her buttocks and rubbing her thighs together in agony.
Aware that his blows were not always falling where intended, Ned pinioned her, placing one hand in the small of her back and putting his weight on it, gasping for breath, sweat running down his neck as he flailed. Held down, her mouth open in a continuous wail, Cassie involuntarily arched her back, bringing her pubic region into the air. As her knees slid apart on the mattress, the carrot once again came into view.
Seeing it, Ned, stopped in mid-stroke as he lifted his arm. The shock stunned him only momentarily before it goaded his nearly spent hatred and fury. In blind vengeance, he lashed out at it. He was so mad that he couldn't see straight; the lash fell weakly on the insides of her upper thighs and in the cleft between her legs.
The agony of the belt hitting her sensitive cuntal lips almost made Cassie faint. The pain was so excruciating that she couldn't even scream. Now Old Ned was tottering as the last of his strength left him. In the fifteen weak seconds remaining to him before he collapsed, in the one long cleareyed instant left to him before his overexertion caught up with him, he managed to place a dozen well-aimed blows at his daughter's area of wickedness and evil. The lash struck Cassie time and time again on that region still dripping with lacteous cuntal fluid, and the silver-tipped end of the leather brought blood gushing to the surface. Cassie screamed once, then pitched forward unconscious.
It took Ned almost an hour to catch his breath and to regain enough energy to get out of the chair he had stumbled into, and by this time Cassie had regained consciousness and was sobbing and moaning, with huge shudders wracking her body as the waves of pain flowed over her.
Ned felt bad about it, sure. Sometimes a man has to do his duty, though, even if it makes him feel bad. This is what he thought in his nearly passed-out state, as his mind reeled. When he stood and saw the blood seeping from her legs and buttocks, he couldn't help admitting that he had hurt her awful bad, and was once again thankful they didn't have any nosy neighbors. As he listened to her sobs, he began to think that maybe he had gone overboard. After all, he did hit her there; no man hit his daughter there, no matter what she had done. Some might want to call it child abuse. Men had probably been put away in the state penitentiary for lesser crimes. By the time he managed to lurch out of the chair, guilt budding deep in his soul, he had begun to fear that maybe he had done permanent damage to her.
He stumbled over to the couch, peered down at her reddened eyes, tear-stained face and disheveled hair, and wondered what he should do. He stroked her cheek and whispered, "I'm sorry," but she refused to look at him.
He moved to the other end of the couch to inspect the damage, his eyes roving over the crisscrossing red stripes. She had huge bloody welts from the back of her knees to her waist; in areas it looked as if someone had taken a dull knife to her. Ned shook his head sadly, and went to the bathroom. He pissed first, then went to the medicine cabinet. When he came back into the front room, he was carrying a large can of salve the family had had for ten years: Doctor McGee's Cure-all Ointment, Good for Cuts, Nicks, Bruises, Running Sores, and Festers. He set to, rubbing it lightly over the entire area he'd scored with his belt. When he came to her widespread crevice, he peered closely for a passionless moment, detecting no blood on the cunt-oh, she was red there, all right, but from what he knew, they was always red right there-and he suddenly saw that the Almighty had seen to it that his anger was so righteously strong at that moment that it had sapped his strength. He daubed a piece of cotton into the salve and rubbed it up and down in her crease as Cassie sought to push her tortured body into the couch, as if she couldn't stand to be touched, and certainly not by him.
Ned dropped the cotton wad to the floor and buried his face in his hand for a moment before placing his hand on the shoulder of his still-sobbing daughter and forced himself to say, "I'm sorry, girl. Right sorry. I'll never do you that way again," knowing in the pit of his stomach that he might be losing his hold on her. His hand lay on her shoulder for several more minutes before he gave her a final squeeze and went to bed.
Cassie lay like that throughout the night and all the next day, her bare sore hindquarters a sorry reminder to Ned whenever he forgot and looked in that corner of the room. In the hottest part of the afternoon, she rose briefly to her knees, pulled her soiled nightie off over her head and dropped it to the floor, her breasts flopping as she lay back down. She refused all offers of food and drink, except for a glass of orange juice when she woke up at noon and a bowl of chicken noodle soup at nightfall. When he brought her the soup, she turned over on her side, and propped up on an elbow to spoon it from the bowl, first scratching her breasts where they suddenly itched from having been lain on so long.
She knew she tortured her father. She knew that for some inexplicable reason he hated the sight if not the very existence of her pure young body. But she knew a couple of days would go by before he dared to say anything-her intuition told her. And a bit longer would go by before he yelled at her.
The next day she could move without hurting. The redness had left her; only the welts remained. She awoke early and washed herself thoroughly in the shower, then changed her bed and climbed back in, pulling a fresh sheet over herself.
About noon, her father said, "Why don't you get up and get dressed, hon. If you feel up to it, we can go to the picture show tonight." It was Wednesday.
"No, Daddy," she said. "I don't want to go tonight. I don't think I could bear to sit down that long."
"Whatever you say."
"There's something you could do for me, though, if you've a mind to."
"What's that, child?" he asked, "You could go over to Fort Sill this afternoon and buy me a new dress."
"Oh," he said, considering it for a moment. "What sort of dress do you fancy?"
"I don't care," she said. "A summer dress. Nothing too fancy."
"Sure," he said. "I guess I'll mosey along then."
She told him size eight, and as soon as he left she began to make plans. She dared to think aloud about the plans that had been running through her head since he said "Okay, girl, you turn over flat on your belly...."
Only after the moon had risen high that night and her father's snorts had filled the trailer a good long time did she rise from bed like a ghost and put on her new dress. It was pale green with a high bodice and pleated skirt and fit her real nice.
She knew she could stay around for a while, and now that she had a small hold over her father life would be better. But she knew it would not last, was bound not to. The first time she dared look at a boy, or a boy at her, it would be the same thing all over again. And what did it mean that her father bought her a new dress every two years? No, her horizons were wider than that. Her horizons were wider than this dreary little trailer set out in the middle of the Oklahoma nowhere.
She crept into her father's bedroom, opening the door without a squeak. She moved slowly, cautiously, not because she was nervous, but because she had a plan and it had to work, would work if she were meticulous. At the foot of her father's bed, she knelt, breathing quietly until her eyes adjusted to that darkened corner of the room where she detected the outline of his pants on the floor. She studied them for a minute, picked the back of them up no more than necessary to extract his wallet from his hippocket, then set them back down without a rustle. By the light of the refrigerator she opened the billfold and saw that, just as she anticipated, he had gone to the bank while in town today. His wallet contained nearly fifty-five dollars folding money.
She put ten dollars back in-all he would need to get him back to the bank in Fort Sill, or to wait for his retirement check, which he would get on the first, a week away. She put the wallet in the refrigerator, behind the orange juice, so he would see it when he got up in the morning. This was part of her plan: if he awoke in the middle of the night and saw her gone, he'd put on his pants and chase after her-he'd get only as far as his gas tank would take him, with no way of getting any more. In the morning, all the credit cards in the world would do him no good. She would be beyond his reach.
She sewed twenty dollars into the hem of her dress, hid twenty beneath the ripped lining at the bottom of her purse, and put five in her billfold. She packed a change of underwear, an old sweater and an old skirt, her hair curlers, and the two new movie magazines her father had brought back this afternoon, putting it all in a battered overnight bag.
She moved quietly until she was out of sight of the trailer, then hurried down the road to the highway a mile and a half away, her heart soaring. She stood in the gravel at the side of the highway and stuck out her thumb.
The first motor vehicle to catch her in its high beams as it came down the road squealed to a halt thirty yards beyond her, and the driver let the motor idle while she ran down the road to climb in, free at last.
It was a gas tanker, the logo on its side recognizable as that of a minor brand. The driver, whose hair was slicked down, who had a smear of grease on his temple and thick black grease under all ten fingernails, said, "What say, baby? Where ya heading?"
"L.A.," she answered unhesitatingly.
"Oh yeah? What part of L.A.?" he asked.
"Hollywood."
"You don't say," he said. "Well, I'm only going as far as the West Texas border." And after a moment he grinned and continued, "Well, you never know who you're going to run into, do ya? The night's still young."
Y-yes, it is," she stammered, not quite sure what to say.