Chapter 5
It was nearing dusk and the rose garden was a jigsaw puzzle of dark shadows and golden light from the angling setting sun filtering down from towering trees, their leaves softly stirring in the August breeze. Two figures hovered in the shadows, barely noticeable to anything but the searching eye.
Rover leaned against his rake, pushed back his billed hat and wiped his forehead clean of perspiration. "Whatcha doin', kid, out here in Doc Henshaw's back yard?" He was feeling a bit out of sorts after the run-in with Mrs. Henshaw whose backyard was one of the few shaded ones in the compound. It got awfully hot under the blazing summer skies and an afternoon snooze under the willow tree was always a fine reward after grubbing around in the rose bushes. Rover's snappy dark eyes leveled on his fellow inmate's, his voice gravelly with irritation.
"I j-just c-came from her house . . . " he beamed proudly, thrusting his hands in his pockets and swaying from side to side like a proud child.
"You jes' what?"
"I c-came f-from her house . . . "
"You ain' kiddin' me, kid. You tha' white bitch's house boy?" Rover threw back his head and laughed mirthlessly. "Now don' that jes' take the cake! Johnnie boy's Miz Henshaw's puppy dog!"
A hurt expression faded the joy on John's face. "N N-No . . . sh-she -likes m-me . . . "
"She -likes ya? What she do? Letcha clean 'er toilets . . . that make ya think she -likes ya?" he chortled sardonically. "Don' be a fool, kid. Tha' cunt's one uptight bitch!" Rover lifted his arm and scratched under one armpit with long black fingers.
"N-no . . . sh-she's a nice l-lady . . . and pretty too . . . " He paused, the expression on his face one o dubious trust. His conscience toyed with him for a moment, but the denigrating sneer on Rover's face was not to be accepted after the jubilation of having sunk his penis into Doctor Henshaw's wife's belly Didn't he deserve respect for such a powerful feat? I s-saw her n-naked."
"Naked? Kid, you fantasizin' now." Rover's black eyes snapped with incredulity. "You don't 'spect me to believe you done fucked that broad. I ain' no fool!"
"I did!" Chin set arrogantly, John nodded affirmatively, hurt by his friend's rebuke.
"Only one way to prove that. Lemme sniff 'dem fingers." A powerful black hand clamped John's white fingers and raised them to twitching black nostrils. A waft of female cuntal juices was yet heady and warm on the digits. "You ain' kiddin' me. Holy shit!" A lewd sneer grew across Rover's heavily-lined face. "Wha's Doc gonna say when he find you, you been rammin' his ol' lady? You thin' o' tha, kid?"
"B-but h-how will he f-find out?" The corners of
John's mouth drooped and began to twitch from the threat of sadness.
Rover slunk one arm around John's shoulders. "Tell ya what . . . you let Rover fin' out for hisself wha' kinda lady lives in dat house and Doc Henshaw don't have to hear none of that!"
"No! Sh-she's mine . . . she -liked me!"
"-likes you'. ' She jes' playin' wif ya. Teasin' ya like Nurse Blackson done in dat broom closet. You 'member tha? Tha' Miz Hensahw, she jus' usin' you, kid. She treatin' you like a puppy dog. She ain' got no feelin's . . . no white cunt's got no feelin's. You be nothin' to her but dirt. . . somebody to fill 'er cunt. Don' you think she gonna turn right 'round and tell her ol' doc man what you done this afernoon?"
Hurt and anguish welled up in John's heaving chest; the breath hissed from his flaring nostrils. Betrayal and anger was all he could feel. Rover was right. Rover was a man like himself, knew the life inside the institution, therefore he could be trusted. Mrs. Henshaw, pretty as she was, was a foreign being to him, possessed of dubious emotions he could not read and her motives direct as he'd wished them to be, were indeed most -likely as nasty and shallow as Nurse Blackson's. It hurt with an intensity that made him want to destroy the cause of these bad feelings knotting his gut.
"There, kid. It's all righ', " assured Rover cunningly, reading the symptoms of emotional distress on the man's angry face. "You go righ' back there tomorra and le' tha' woman know who be boss . . . " Rover ran his thick pink tongue over the fullness of his lips. "I be there to he'p ya . . . Lemme tell ya how to handle women."