Chapter 5
Seven cars passed him without slowing or making a sign. No passenger screamed or looked peculiar in any way. No driver honked his horn. It was as if, by being stripped out of his clothing, he had become totally and completely invisible. It was as if he actually didn't exist despite the fact that he was standing totally naked beside the highway waving frantically each time a car came in sight.
The eighth car screeched to a halt on the shoulder about twenty yards beyond him. He turned and started limping toward it on the graveled surface beside the road.
A young girl of perhaps eighteen or nineteen years of age leaned out the passenger side.
"Ooooh," she purred. "Ain't you the biggest one."
He stopped.
"Don't you want a ride, honey?" she cooed.
"I've been robbed," was all he could say.
"You sure ain't been robbed of what counts most," she said.
He started limping toward the car again.
"Hey, Ellen," the girl said, apparently to the car's driver. "Take a look at how it swings when he walks. Ain't that just the biggest little ole happy stick you ever did see?"
He could hear a giggle from within the car and noticed the face of another girl leaning over the front seat and peering through the back window.
At first he felt humiliated, then decided he really deserved the ribbing. After all, he was something of a unique sight. Stark naked beside a highway, was hardly what these people were used to.
"My, you are a pretty one," the passenger said. "Glad you like it," he said. "Only I hope it don't get too cold before I find me some new clothes."
"'Fraid you'll freeze your big old noodle off?"
"I sure wouldn't want to do that."
She giggled.
He was within about two yards of the car before it accelerated spattering a painful shower of pebbles over his shins and knees. As it roared off toward the west, he heard the girl scream, "Fuck you!" to him. As the car drove into the distance, she sounded as though she were falling off a cliff.
Somehow he wished she were--a nice high cliff where she would spatter all over the rocks at the bottom and never giggle at anyone any more.
He stopped.
"Shit!" he said. "Shit, shit, shit!"
He probably would have continued mumbling the same word again and again had he not heard the approach of another car behind him.
He turned around, this time waving both hands frantically to attract the driver's attention. As the car neared, he saw that the man driving in was dressed in black and wore the plain white collar of a priest or minister. He also saw the man wave to him in a friendly way as he deliberately drove past.
"Hey!" Billy Joe called. "I've been robbed. Can't you see I'm naked, you goddamned hypocrite son-of-a-bitch."
He stood beside the highway, now staring into the setting run, screaming all the invective he knew into the distance where the car had long ago disappeared. Then, exhausted physically, mentally and spiritually, he collapsed on the pebbled gravel.
"Fuck 'em," he said aloud. "Fuck all the sons-of-bitches in this whole rotten, stinking mother fucking state. I hope they all get a hot poker slammed up their ass."
He was still sitting there just at twilight, his head pressed down on his knees, his arms wrapped about his shins when the car stopped. This time, he didn't even bother to look up.
"Well, well, well...." He heard a voice in front of him.
"Go ahead, you son-of-a-bitch," Billy Joe said. "Take a good look and have a good laugh."
"Hey, Boy, you look at me now!"
"Fuck you."
The hard crash of pain along the side of his head sent him sprawling into a pink and black world spattered with exploding shells and murderous agony. This was the last and final straw. He had put up with enough agony and humiliation for one day--for one lifetime.
He shook his head, rose to his knees and then with all the strength he had, leapt to his feet and started toward his attacker determined to beat whoever it was into nothing more or less than pulsating jelly.
"I wouldn't do that, boy."
The blur of his anger cleared. Slowly, he unclenched his fists. He was looking directly into the muzzle of a .45 caliber service automatic held in the pudgy hand of a short man dressed in khaki and wearing a six-pointed badge.
"Gosh," he managed to say after several heart-beats. "I didn't...."
"Sure you didn't, boy," the man said. "I know. You was just having yourself some fun out here, playing jaybird and frightening folks ... "
"No ... I ... "
"I'm talking to you, Boy."
"But, I was robbed ... I was ... well, I was robbed...."
"Just you get your hands on the car, Jasper. I'll say you was robbed. Robbed of your reason."
Billy Joe closed his eyes in an agony of frustration. When he opened them, his wrists were handcuffed together. The man had holstered his pistol and was standing beside the official car with his fists on his hips. He looked at Billy Joe and shook his head sarcastically.
"I'll tell you, Boy, rye seen one hell of a lot of flip-assed ninnies in my time--real loonie two shoes--but for sheer gall you really do take all. I just can't feature a young fellow standing way out here trying to attract attention thataway--"
"I told you I" Billy Joe insisted. "I was robbed. They raped me and then took everything I had ... almost three hundred dollars and all my clothes too."
"They raped you, y'said?"
"Yes." He finally thought he was getting through to the fat man.
"Who raped you, boy?"
"Couple of guys in a Chevy pickup. Named Bo and Fred and their girls, too. Nora. She's called Big Mamu and the other one's Sissy."
"No shit!"
"I'm telling you the truth. I swear it."
"That why you stood out here jerking off in front of Clara Jean Darrow and her cousin, is that it?"
"Jerking off! Hell, I don't even know any Clara Jean Darrow! Besides, I'm so sexed out I wouldn't be jerking off for anybody."
"That ain't what I heard."
"Listen, I don't give a shit what you heard. I'm telling you--"
"Hey, boy ... You ain't telling me anything. You are under arrest."
"Under arrest! You can't--"
"I can't. Hell, boy, you are more full of shit than I ever imagined. Hell, I'm the sheriff of this whole county, boy. If I can't arrest you, no one can. And I sure as shit can, believe me, boy."
"But, what for?"
"'What for? Why, you dumb shitkicking son-of-a-bitch, I just told you. Jacking off on Interstate I-14, for one thing. Standing nude and disturbing the peace for another. Offending the decency of Clara Jean Darrow for another. On top of that, insulting her cousin Ellen and, what's really going to stick is telling a lawfully constituted elected and sworn in peace officer to perform an act of indecency upon himself..
"A what?"
"Boy ... you did tell me to go and fuck myself, now didn't you?"
"I wasn't looking. I didn't know who--"
"No matter, boy. I am the sheriff and you did say it. Besides, I can't do that. It's indecent and besides that, I'm sick of jawing with you. Get in that car, boy. We're going for a little ride."
Handcuffed, humiliated, frustrated and angry, Billy Joe stepped into the car. He didn't speak on the entire trip to the sheriff's office. He remained docile, beaten and humiliated as, still naked, he was booked for a series of offenses and told he could post bail of two hundred and fifty dollars or spend the next thirty days in jail.
The idea was ridiculous. He tried again to explain that he had been robbed, but the end result was only that he was pushed into a small cell and a bundle of clothes was tossed in after him. He heard the door clang shut behind him and watched the sheriff walk away.
Still naked, exhausted and angry, he sat down on the single cot and stared unseeing at the scrawled graffiti that adorned the far wall of his cell.
He had been sitting there for some time, feeling desperately sorry for himself when he heard the clang of an outer door being opened and the shuffle of feet on the concrete floor. A moment later, he heard a gasp and a female voice, only partially indignant in tone, saying, "Well I"
He looked up.
The woman standing outside his cell door was perhaps thirty-eight or forty years old. She had once probably been somewhat slimmer but the few pounds the years had added to her figure were complimentary, falling on hips and bust to enlarge and form rather than mar or sag. Her dark hair fell loosely around a face that was still almost pretty. She was wearing a one piece dress made of faded calico and held before her a tray on which was a single plate.
"Well, what?" he demanded.
"Well, I hardly think it's gentlemanly to sit there naked as a jaybird when a lady comes to feed you." Her eyes never left his groin. He knew the minute he looked up to her what she was thinking.
He smiled his best boyish smile and let his eyes rove greedily but innocently over the lush curves of her body. Sex itself was the farthest thing from his mind, but the idea of thirty days in a small and stinking county jail was so oppressive, he was willing to do anything for acquittal.
"Gosh, ma'am," he drawled. "I'm sorry. I never thought I'd see a lady in here...."
Making sure he offered her the longest and most detailed view of his genitals, he rose from the bunk and lazily reached for the crumpled shirt and jeans the sheriff had thrown there when he had first been confined. He bent over and slipped first one leg into the faded trousers and then the other, noticing all the while that her brown eyes seemed quite literally riveted to his groin.
"My," she managed to say as he finally pulled the jeans over his exposed flesh and tried to hold them around his waist any way he could, "you're a handsome young fellow. Whatever are you in here for?"
"I was robbed!"
"Robbed?"
"Yeah, that son-of-a-bitching sheriff wouldn't listen to me."
She leaned over and slid the tray through a narrow slot at the bottom of the bars of his cell. He looked down and saw it contained what looked like lumpy mashed potatoes and two thin slices of fried baloney. He was no longer hungry.
"That son-of-a-bitching sheriff," the woman said, "just happens to be my husband."
He'd stepped in so much trouble in the last few hours, he no longer cared what he said. "Well," he drawled. "He may have some taste, but you sure as hell don't. He's a prime asshole."
"I know," she said.
At first he wasn't sure he had heard what he had. Then he was. He looked at the well-built brunette and realized she was quite literally his key to freedom.
"Gosh," he said. "You sure are a pretty lady. What's your name?"
"Mae," she told him. "Mae Snorlin."
He looked down to the greasy tray and plate on the cell's floor. "Bet a woman like you could cook up a real storm."
She giggled like a teenaged girl. The sound made him feel almost as sick as the vision of fried baloney on the plate. Then she too looked at the plate. "If I'd known what a handsome young boy you was, I'd have done a little better," she finally said.
"I am mighty hungry."
"You just wait here," she turned away. "I'll be back directly."
A moment later she had passed through the outer door. Billy Joe snarled to himself, "Where the hell else would I wait, you dumb bitch."
But twenty minutes later his sarcasm and bitterness had changed to gratitude. She returned to the one cell block carrying another tray, this one supported a plate laden with succulent ribs, grits and beans. He could smell the enticing savory aroma long before she opened his cell, walked in and placed the tray on his knees.
As he wolfed the huge meal he found out that her husband, the sheriff, had been called out to break up a fight at a nearby honkey tonk, that she often guarded the jail in his absence and, most important that she was a very unhappy, dissatisfied woman.
"I've never been out of this county," she said as she sat on the cot beside him.
He licked his fingers.
"Never seen nothing of city life. Been married to Martin all my life and he's ... he's--"
"He's what?"
She didn't answer. Instead she turned to him. "D'you think I'm sexy?"
"Sure, I--"
"I don't mean like some movie star, but I'm no freak either. I mean I'm a woman. I got all a woman's parts--"
He looked at her large breasts. "You sure have, ma'am."
"And all a woman's wants. Now, a man's supposed to want a woman ... I mean, isn't he? 'Specially the one she married. I mean, at night, in bed, he's supposed to get ... well, you know ... "
"You mean he don't fuck you?"
"Hell," she snapped, "he don't even touch me. You know how long it's been since he laid a hand on me?"
Billy Joe shook his head. "Nearly eight years." "Eight years!"
"It's terrible."
"What the hell do you do?" he asked.
"Nothing."
"Bullshit."
"Well," she smiled. "Almost nothing."
"Bet you got yourself one of them fancy vibrating things."
"Like hell."
"Finger then?"
She looked up at him and shook her head. "Nope. Oh, hell, sometimes, but it ain't right without a man."
"Where you going to find a man around with your husband the sheriff?"
"He don't mind." She laid the palm of one hand gently but with unmistakable determination on his groin. "Sometimes he even helps me."
"You mean he picked me up just to--"
She squeezed his genitals and smiled. "No. Nothing like that. He don't know when he's doing me a favor. Only he sure did with you."
"You like that, don't you?"
"Playing with my cock?"
"Sure," she said. "Don't you?" "It's okay, I guess. Here...." He unbuttoned his fly and let her reach within the denim jeans to grasp eager fingers around the flesh of his penis. As she did so, she sighed in contentment and eagerness.
"That's better," she said.
He leaned back against the cold wall of the cell as her fingers massaged and manipulated the delicate flesh of his penis. "You do this to all the prisoners?" he asked.
"No, only sometimes."
"Sometimes?" Absently he slipped his hand through the opening of her calico dress and over one side of her brassiere. "What d'you mean, sometimes?"
"I mean, when I like a guy, you know...."
"I know. You got nice titties."
She sighed in lusty but quiet appreciation. "You like 'em?"
"Yeah."
"I got more."
"Two's my limit."
She giggled. "I mean more than just titties."
"I know," he said. "I got more, too."
"What d'you mean?" "I mean, honey, I can give you one hell of a lot more than just a hunk of meat to play with in your hand."
"Oh, yes," she sighed. Her hand gripped him almost brutally as he squeezed her breast.
"Course," he drawled, "it's not going to be too much fun here in this crummy old jail cell."
She turned to stare at him. There was suspicion in her eyes for the first time. "What do you mean?"
"I mean if I was to give you some loving, some real good hard loving for a long time, it'd sure be nice if I could get out of this cell and this town and this whole state."
"You're telling me to free you?"
"It could look like an accident--"
She grabbed his member even more tightly and stared deliberately into his eyes. "Listen, buster," she said between clenched teeth. "You was arrested this afternoon for being a pervert. For showing your thing to Clara Jean Darrow and her cousin Ellen. You was naked out on Interstate I-14, pestering folks and you want me to help you escape. No way. I'm going to tell you something, Mr. Billy Joe whatever your name is, you're going to be here for thirty days and thirty nights, Boy. You can play with yourself during the days, but I want the nights. Y'hear that, boy? I want thirty nights of very hard, very young and very good joint and if I don't get it you might just be in here for thirty more days for resisting a sheriff's wife."
"C'mon, lady," he said. "All I have to do is tell your husband and--"
"And shit," she snapped. "You even try something like that and you'll be over to the state pen for rape."
"Rape?"
"Rape, honey. That's right. Now what's it going to be, Billy Joe? You going to give little ole Mae some fun and loving or you going to weight down the wrong end of a rope over to the state pen?"
"Why, Mae," he smiled as he leaned closer to her and almost touched his lips to hers, "you know I couldn't resist you the first time I laid eyes on you."
Then, slowly at first but with increasing demand, their lips were on each other. Under his, he felt her mouth open to receive the darting caress of his tongue. He felt the hot desire of her embrace as her arms snaked around his muscular body and his own fingers felt for the buttons on her flimsy dress and the snap of her brassiere.
Still with lips together and hands playing over the flesh of each other's bodies they eased out of their clothing as they grunted and sighed in pleasurable abandon. Then, almost as if it had happened suddenly, she was totally naked. She was standing by the cot pulling his issue jeans down his legs baring his body so that she could feast her eyes on his erectile manhood.
"Oh, you do have a pretty pecker," she said.
"You like it?" He reached up and fondled the naked flesh of her large breasts and she leaned lower to look at him. "I'm going to like everything about you for the next month, honey. Everything...."
She knelt down on the cell floor before him and took an almost vicious hold of his genitals in both her hands. "Oh, yes," she purred. "you and me, we are going to have us some loving and sucking to make up for all the lean years ... You like getting yourself sucked off?"
"Sure," he said.
"I'm pretty good at it, you know." She continued teasing his member with her hands as she stared at it. "I mean when Martin first started to turn off on sex and all, I sent away for a book on how to make him hot. Lots of big fancy words in it like fala-something or something like that. Only what it said was if a woman took hold of a man's joint in her mouth he'd really come unglued."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. Only it didn't work with him. Shit, I must have sucked him off a dozen times without him ever getting hard. You know what a woman likes? I mean really likes?"
"What?"
"When it's hard. That's the main thing. When a guy's hard. I mean really hard, then she knows he's hot for her. I mean like you are now, like a bone. That's when I begin to feel good."
He looked down to her still kneeling before him, wondering why she was talking so much as she fondled his member. Then he decided she might be the kind of woman who liked to talk her own self into arousal. It made little difference to him. He was not particularly excited after his ordeal of that morning. His main thought was to get her what she wanted and enough of it so that somehow, some way he could free himself of the horrors of this tiny county jail as soon as humanly possible.
"I'm real good at this, you know," she said.
"Yeah?"
"Yeah, only I don't like you to come."
"Don't, huh?"
"Nope, I just want to show you how good I am ... see...." She leaned forward with her tongue extended and holding his erect member as if it were nothing more or less than an ice cream stick placed her tongue at the very base of his penis by the scrotum and, with a great slurping sound licked slowly along the entire underside of his penis. "Like it?" she asked.
"Yeah." "I can do other things."
"What?"
"Oh, I learned a lot from some of the fellows in here."
"What?"
"Well, every now and then we get some yankee put up for a few days or some city boy. I tell you I don't know who's taught me more about sucking cock, the New Yorkers or them boys from California." Again she extended her tongue and ran it along the entire length of the underside of his penis, only this time when she reached the very knob of his shaft, she stopped, paused a moment, then rolled her tongue around the end for a maddening moment of eternity before letting her head slide slowly, ever so slowly down and down the length of his shaft until he thought for a moment she might take the entire length of it into her eager and gaping mouth.
She had not lied to him. The sensations that surged through his body as a result of her hot and pliable mouth were almost maddening, almost sufficient in themselves to spin him away from the reality of the cold cell into a world of perfect euphoria.
He let his torso relax and fell back on the hard cot. He felt her lifting one of his legs up on the canvas of the cot and her mouth again sliding down, down the hard shaft of his manhood.
And then it was pleasure ... pure pleasure....