Chapter 12
Voices came drifting to her as if from a fog. Her mind was asleep, yet some part of it was awake and hearing words being bandied back and forth.
"Well, what'd ah tell you?" she heard her father's voice saying.
"She sucks real good, Jack," the sheriff was telling him. "But in the future you tell that little bitch not to be so uppity. Ah like havin' mah cock sucked to completion, and ah don't care for her attitude. The next time, iffn ah'm late, you make the others wait. Ah don't like havin' to fuck her mouth smellin' that scum from all t'others on her. Ah want her nice and clean."
"Yessuh, sheriff, yessuh, thass the way you'll git her," Jack was saying, and Rachel felt disgusted with the way he was toadying to the bloated bullfrog of a man who knew how to count well enough to skim lots of money from everyone, but who knew nothing about reading and writing. He was totally inhuman, and Rachel knew if she was forced to have anything more to do with him, she'd stick a knife in him.
"Ah ain't agonna wait till next Wednesday," the sheriff was saying. "Ah figger by Friday ah'll be recovered enough. You send Rachel to me out on the west side of the swamp. Thet girl needs a lesson, and ah'm gonna show her what happens to people who don't do what they're told 'round here, 'specially when ah'm the one doin' the tellin'. "
"Gotcha, sheriff," Jack nodded. "Don't worry none. Rachel'll be there. Y'll see."
"Oh, ah know she'll be there," the sheriff muttered. "Cus we both know what'll happen to you iffn she ain't."
That was all Rachel heard. Her mind totally drifted off to sleep at that point, and she was unaware of her father coming into the room and lying on the bed beside her, wallowing in other men's sperm.
Rachel slept through most of Thursday, and when she did awaken, there was no one in the shack, so instead of rushing down to the creek, she heated water on the wood-burning stone then poured it all into what had once been a horse trough at the rear of the shack. Then she immersed her sore body into it, washing the stench and the crusts from her face and her body, taking special care to clean out her twin lower holes.
Later than evening, she went to the doctor, who after examining her, assured her she wasn't incubating any venereal diseases. By the time she returned to the shack and prepared supper, her pa was back. He had gotten himself liquored up again, because sober he hadn't the courage to tell her what the sheriff had said to him. Underneath it all, Jack Kane was one of the most craven men in the county.
After supper, when Rachel had tucked her younger brothers into bed, she returned to her pa's bedroom, and he made her undress and get into bed where he gave her a quick, satisfying fuck that pleased both of them, After, he told her what the sheriff had said to him.
"Why in the swamp?" she wanted to know.
"Shucks, ah don' know," the man replied. "He jes' said be there, so ah reckon y'gotta be there. It don't pay to argue with the sheriff."
No, it didn't pay to argue with the one man in the county even more piggish-looking than Jack Kane. She had considered going to Luke Kelly about it, but Kane was Luke's man, and Luke Kelly wasn't about to upset things for the sake of some dumb little twat, no matter how much he wanted into her. Luke was the kind of man who would get into her, too.
Sighing, Rachel turned over and went to sleep, knowing that for the moment, she would do as she was told. But soon, her turn would come.