Chapter 7
"Hey!" Jim screamed from the bank. "That there was a whole quarter . . . " He ran into the pool, taking the water in a flat dive, heading for the shiny disc visible on the sandy bottom. Twice he had to surface dive, his skinny rump humped up and then disappearing before he came up, shouting in triumph, "I got it. She throwed it away, so it's mine. It's mine." He appealed to Myra, "It's mine, ain't it?" As if someone had disputed his claim.
Myra nodded wearily. "It's yours. Keep it."
Now that he was the legitimate owner of a whole quarter, Jim squealed with delight, half swimming, half wading ashore. "I'm gonna buy me five lickery sticks and some gum bubble gum and the chew kind and a soda and . . . "
He raced up the bank, headed for town and a candy shop before some disaster overtook that quarter, like his father learning he had it. He turned back and grabbed up his jeans, struggling into them and attempting to run at the same time. It ended in his sprawling, feet in the air, an advantageous position for scrambling into jeans. He thrust flailing legs into them, leapt to his feet, clutching the grimy shirt and scooted off toward town, yelping excitedly, adding to an already improbable list of things he was going to buy.
Myra sank back in the water, floating, enjoying the comfort of its swish and support, the only comfort she had known since she came to this horrible place. Until Connie came back to stand on the bank, pudgy hands on fat hips, bawling across the water. "He didn't wanna screw again. Ain't you through bathing? Seems like you been there forever. Come on. Let's go spend that there quarter. I oughta git some thin', seem as I brang him here."
Myra turned lazily in the water. "I gave it to Jim."
"You what?" Connie stood open-mouthed in astonishment for a moment and then whirled, scrambling into her dress. "Gotta catch me that boy 'fore he spends it all. Cotta get my fair share, seem as I brang Joe down here. By rights the whole quarter oughta be mine, seems like." Making last adjustments to her dress she sped off down the path. "Kain't let that boy eat hisself sick," she added virtuously.
The nights that followed were a continuous I nightmare to Myra. Lem used her whenever he felt like it, which was far too often to suit either Myra or Connie, who resented his neglect of her flabby body in, favor of Myra's slender, developing figure. And yet, if Myra tried to avoid Lem's attentions, Connie would side with her brother and hold Myra until, in weariness and constant betrayal of her body with its own physical response, she yielded, letting him ram his shaft up her.
She no longer suffered the surging pangs of shame. Shame was forgotten, swamped in the miseries of trying to live, just live in this house of rapacious horror, of not enough food and that sloppily prepared of callous indifference to normal human response.
There were no more long, sweet night talk, with Mommie seated on the side of her clean, narrow bed, talking about The Escape Hatch and how they would live in sunshine and cleanliness and flowers. Mommie had loved flowers, and dreamed of them surrounding this "Escape Hatch" from the cruel realities of her life.
Instead, every now and then Uncle Ben called her to his bed, feeling roughly across her breasts, ramming a horny finger up her little cunt. She thought of it now as a cunt instead of her childish word for it, pee-hole, that had somehow been clean and, the way Monunie said it, faintly funny. She resented the way her body responded to Uncle Ben's coarse, crude seductions, hands coursing over her little rump, along her inner thighs, the finger corkscrewing into her cunt, a hand pinching her titties she had come to that word too from the sweeter, truer word, breasts, that Mommie had used.
She'd had to repeat the seemingly endless ritual of sitting astraddle Uncle Ben's gross, hairy legs and letting him pull her, none too gently, up on his shaft, sliding it into her cunt lubricated with juices she despised herself for creating. And hated herself more for the rich excitement she experienced each time he shot his load into her as she sat, writhing and moaning.
So she welcomed Connie's suggestion that they go down and hang around the soda shop where the boys congregated, surveying the crop of, females with cynical appraisal of their potentials as screwing partners. The whispered, giggly conversations with other girls was a relief from the whining contentions of Aunt Louisa's kitchen, even though the subject matter was neither girlish nor gay. They eyed the boys and whispered and giggled over the sizes of peckers and ability to keep going, to "hold back" on shooting their come, or the rougliness or suavity of their preliminaries.
Joe Butler brought Myra her first real commercial customer, the first she actually accepted on monetary terms. Joe had carefully briefed his prospect, Eddie Wanger. "She's practically cherry. Feels like cherry, honest With a real hot little box. And all the wiggling and humping you could ask for. A real hot screw. And only a quarter."
"Two bits ! " Eddie had been mildly shocked. "Mostly I get it for maybe a soda. Lotsa times for free. Or a ride in my dad's car, when I can sneak it out. Girls around here put out easy."
"Not Myra." Jim was stout in defending Myra's standing. "Not her. She don't wants put out, but puttin' out is aorta built in, like. Like she can't help it once she's got started. But it takes a quarter to get her started." That was the way Joe saw it, only vaguely aware of Myra's revulsion and her constant battle with her own body against its strange demands.
So Joe swaggered up to Myra and Connie huddled with two other girls, giggling. "Hi, Myra! Want you to meet a friend, Eddie. Eddie, this here is Myra. Eddie wants to talk to you."
Myra nodded, keeping her eyes down, aware of the surreptitious study of her body, of the glances of the other girls. And, off a little way, a huddle of boys appraising Myra and watching Eddie's approach.
"Wanta go for a walk? We can go by the cemetery." He palmed a coin and showed it to her secretively. "I got a quarter."
Myra had been coached by Connie on "the cemetery," an old, abandoned graveyard hidden by trees and bushes, where the flat slabs made hard but acceptable couches for screwing. It was the customary rendezvous for couples set upon fucking.
She understood the gambit. Eddie was being by his standards courteous. And cautious. The soda fountain operator, a bald, paunchy man in a dingy apron, was aware of the assignations made in front of his shop but if he didn't know, specifically, that such-and such a boy had laid a certain girl, he couldn't talk.
He knew, all right. And cynically waited until the couples straggled back, straightening clothes, looking flushed and flustered, to buy sodas. In this little community, business was bad enough without chasing away his longtime customers by being too aware of their secret assignations.
Besides, he was able to keep tabs on the girls, noting the likely and desirable ones who might be persuaded to share, briefly, the cot in his back room. He also had another source of income, sporadic but pleasantly large, from a group of young men who came down occasionally to spot new talent for what he was sure a chain of whorehouses up North.
He didn't let himself know for sure that was their purpose, for he was a squeamish man. And be didn't like to think of himself as a recruiting station for prostitutes. He sometimes clucked dolefully over the girls, so young! To know so young the delights and dangers of screwing. They had oughta wait. But since they obviously hadn't, he saw no reason in not making a little side money introducing the best and most likely candidates to the boys from up north. What happened after that was no affair of his.
He knew Myra as a new girl in town and saw her at his shop with Connie, who was well established as a willing lay, if not exactly to his taste. Now that Myra, slim, just developing bubbies, with a cute, round little ass that waggled when she walked, that was a girl to keep an eye on. Did she or didn't she screw? He'd soon know. So he watched surreptitiously as Eddie made his approach, noting the secretive display of the coin. If Myra went off with him, that clinched it. She'd screw. And so she was a candidate for the couch in the back room. After that, he'd see. A possibility for the boys from the north?
Myra glanced aside at the secretively-displayed coin and back to Eddie Wanger's suddenly eager face. It was a clean face, not like the grimy masks Jim and Uncle Ben wore. His shirt was clean, too, and his trousers . . . Myra's eyes shied away from looking at his crotch. She half turned away and saw Connie there, avidly watching, making shooing motions with one fat hand, whispering hoarsely, "Joe and I will go along."
Connie linked arms with a surprised Joe and all but swept Myra ahead to walk with Eddie.
Myra could scarcely believe she was deliberately setting out to be screwed, knowingly, willingly. But it didn't really make any difference now. Lem had had her many nights, repeatedly. And Uncle Ben whenever he felt the urge. And Joe Butler for that quarter she had thrown away. Her little pee-hole was no longer clean and unsullied. It had been used. Used so often now there was no pun the stabbing of a pecker up her insides. And there was the memory of the excitement that stirred in her, excitement that alleviated somewhat the drabness of living at Uncle Ben's.
The very idea of what happened inside when a pecker rammed up her started new excitement in her, and a fire was already kindling down in her little cunt. She thought she could already feel the moisture there, lubricating her, making even her walk a little easier, as if her legs slid over one another on wetness she created.
Eddie wasn't bad-looking. A little pimply, maybe, but he had nice eyes that cut toward her, reminding her of a spaniel she had known who begged outrageously. He caught her hand, dropped it, then caught it again as they swung down the road, making an attractive picture, though she didn't know it. And Connie and Joe plodded on behind, talking in husky whispers, arguing price. Connie wanted a quarter, same as Myra; and Joe was holding out for a free ride such as he had often had, with, he promised, a soda at the end. Well, all right, a fifteen cent soda with a scoop of ice cream.
Having boosted her price simply by association with Myra, Connie was satisfied. She would have gone on by the old standards if Joe had insisted. She wasn't about to miss a good screw outside the family. It was a point of pride. But the new status, assurance of a soda with a scoop of ice cream, was much more satisfactory. She didn't even begrudge Myra the quarter, confident she'd share it later.
In that she was mistaken. Myra was already planning to hoard it, saving toward that "Escape Hatch" Mommie had struggled for so valiantly.
Myra was embarrassed at the blatancy of the rendezvous. The ancient stone slabs seemed a row of cots arranged for just such activities as fucking. And around them lay evidence of past assignations, condums withered, dirty handkerchiefs, and even a mildewed bra.
She stood there, looking down, seeing the gravel of the old path and desiccated leaves ground into it and Eddie's shoes twisting in acute misery of indecision. She looked up, sliding her eyes quickly past his crotch, to his face. A smile wavered and she dropped her eyes "What do we do now? I mean . . . how?"
For answer Eddie motioned to the granite slab. Her knees were suddenly, unaccountably weak, and Myra sat, bracing her hands against the gritty slab. She had no particular feeling of desecrating this ground. The body beneath the slab had long since crumbled to dust, gone as surely and forever as Mommie was gone.
The pose into which she had unconsciously dropped accentuated her breasts and stretched her slim legs into entrancing view. Eddie stood above her, gulping uneasily as he lowered himself beside her. He slid an arm tentatively around her, laying a hand on one breast "I ain't never had no girl as pretty as you. Most ain't."
Myra understood it as a compliment but nevertheless shivered at his touch. His arm turned her toward him, one breast brushing his shirt. And they kissed awkwardly, shyly. Then Eddie pressed her close, fastening his mouth on hers. This was new. Lem had never kissed her. He didn't bother with preliminaries. Nor had Uncle Ben. It was a refinement Myra wasn't sure she liked. Yet she savored it and found she did enjoy the act. Kissing was interesting. It sent delicious shivers down her front, knotting her stomach, warming her groin. His hand still held her breast pumping rhythmically. And his free hand slid along her leg, up the inner side of her thigh, to her cunt. The kiss grew warmer, more exciting. Eddie thrust his tongue into her mouth. For a moment she wanted to reject it and then found herself liking it She explored his mouth with her tongue.
Her cunt was opening. She could feel it heat and swell, getting wetter. Her legs were weakening, slowly falling apart, giving his hand freer range, letting his finger slide into her cunt. Myra moaned with the excitement it created and slowly lay back on the slab, her legs dangling over the edge, so that stomach and thigh muscles were tautened and sensation heightened.
She felt Eddie's hand tugging at her panties and humped up to free them. They slid off and were discarded. Now Eddie could play with her little cunt. He did, with both hands spreading the lips, exploring the hole with exciting fingers.
Now he was between her legs, his trousers and shorts dropped, his pecker, hard and long, poked at her cunt, sending new, exciting shivers up through her, quivering the muscles of thighs and stomach. He spread her weakened legs farther apart, stretching her cunt, pulling at her muscles.
She could see his pecker and the mound of cunt and the top edge of her little slit. His pecker had a huge bulb on it, shiny with his own juices, and it was rubbing up and down along her slit, knocking at her little knob, that curious little knob where so much of the excitement lay.
Then he was in, pumping hard to drive far up her tunnel. Myra moaned with the wild titillation that surged through her, moving her little pelvis so that feeling was. intensified, emotions heightened. And they worked in a frenzied rhythm until his pecker swelled and pulsed. He rammed hard, driving for the last tiny bit of space up her tunnel, and she drove with her pelvis, helping him.
Once more it happened. His pecker exploded warm, creamy juices far up her and something within her answered, in a screaming silence, bright with unseen lights. Then they both went limp. Eddie bowed over her, bracing himself with both hands, his head hanging slackly as he heaved for breath.
Myra lay back, exhausted, her nerves twanging with the ebbing excitement. She closed her eyes, to intensify the sensation of his pecker sliding out of her hole, seeking one last iota of emotion from the moment.
With an effort, Eddie moved away sand retrieved his trousers, donning them in sudden, odd modesty. He dug down in a pocket and came up with a quarter, pressing it into one of Myra's hands, a little baffled when she murmured, "Escape Hatch," clutching the quarter tight in her small fist Myra lay there a moment longer, her dress hiked above her navel, her whole bottom exposed.
Joe, who had finished with Connie long since, strode over, standing above her. "Hey, I want a piece of that!"
Myra opened her eyes, focusing slowly on his flushed, greedy face and then slid down to glance at his pecker, wet and gleaming but limp, though it was quivering into a second erection. "Can you? It'll cost you a quarter."
Myra was learning the rudiments of her game.