Chapter 2
It was broad daylight when the girl awoke. Sunlight streamed through the cracks in the walls of the shack. On either side of her, the two black men still slept soundly, their bodies crowded against her. She waited patiently for them to wake up.
Her naked white form ached and burned from the beating it had been subjected to the night before.
After a while, Ace roused up and got out of bed. He saw the naked white girl was awake and motioned for her to get up. The big black man slipped on his pants and went out on the porch and lit a cigarette. The girl followed him.
"Fix me some coffee," he told her. "Let Stoney sleep a while. He's probably done in from last night."
The girl used the switches and some old newspapers to build a fire in the stove and then put on a pot of coffee. She went back to the porch and sat down. Ace looked at her welted form.
"We'll have to put some salt on you," he said. "That really wasn't much of a whipping, though, was it?"
"Not as bad as some," she agreed.
"Old Stoney enjoyed it though," Ace said, his voice low. "He ain't seen nothing like that, I bet, in a long time. I told you about the time him and me and Old Dude whipped that little white girl back home. She had been mean-mouthing us and one Sunday her old man was gone and her mother was stone drunk and we took her down on a creek bank and stripped her and wore her out with some switches and then we screwed her 'til she could hardly walk. And then we had to high-tail it out of there." He grinned, remembering.
"But it was worth it," Ace went on. "I guess that was when I learned to like that kind of thing. When Old Dude was here, though, he couldn't take time to whip you, could he?"
"He usually was in a big hurry," the white girl agreed. "He mostly just wants to fuck my cootchie."
They heard movement in the shack and Stoney, rubbing his eyes, came to the door. He d slipped on his pants. The white girl got up and Stoney slumped into the chair and lit a cigarette.
"Man," he said, "I'm done in."
"You'll be all right when you get a cup of coffee," Ace told him. "It ought to be ready." He got up and went inside, followed by Stoney and the girl. The two men sat at the table and drank the coffee and ate some bread and jelly the girl fixed for them. When they had finished, they went back to the porch while the girl ate the scraps of bread and the unfinished crusts, from their plates.
"How do you get by in these hills?" Stoney asked. "You working some place?"
"Naw," Ace told him. "I don't need much. This shack was here and so I moved in. Every now and then I get over to Spencerville or go to Carleton and get in a poker game and usually I can come back with enough to do me awhile. It don't take much."
"You always was a damn good black jack player," Stoney said, "but looks to me like it would get kinda boring just laying around here, even with that sweet white kid to play with."
"Well," Ace grinned, "when I need something different I got this fine yellow gal at Fitchburg. Greenie. And she is something else, man. And sometimes I have a little fun over at Spencerville. I ain't too hard to please." He puffed on his cigarette.
"Ain't nobody around to bother us," Ace went on. "When the mines quit most folks took off north to find work. Fitchburg ain't half as big as it used to be. And Slateville is empty, not a soul. Used to be a big place. Now it's falling apart."
"Yeah, I noticed that," Stoney said.
"I was just about ready to get out of this place," Ace told him, "but then this woman - the kid's mother - started coming by here and leaving the girl if I'd let her have some money for some moonshine. And then the woman - her name is Rosie - got into that trouble with the law and had to take off and she left the kid here with me. I have fun."
"I know you do," Stoney said, chuckling. He sobered. "But I got to get moving. I need to be in Atlanta by tomorrow."
The white girl came back to the porch and leaned back against the rail. Stoney leered hungrily at her naked form.
"I do hate to go, though," he said.
"No reason why you can't come back," Ace told him. "Tell you what. Since you're going through Carleton, I might as well go with you. I need to get over there for a couple of days or so." Stoney continued to stare at the naked white girl.
Ace grinned, seeing the hungry look on the other Negro's face.
"You want to get at her one more time before you leave?" he asked.
"Well, now," Stoney grinned, "I don't mind if I do." Ace got up and went into the shack and the other two followed him. Stoney slipped off his pants.
"I'll get her warmed up a bit," Ace said. He motioned for the other man to sit down in one of the chairs. Taking the white girl by the wrist, Ace led her to the bed. Sitting down on the edge of the bed, he pulled her toward him. She stood between his legs while he ran his big black hands over her bare body. Bending forward, the black man closed his lips over one erect pink nipple and sucked gently, his hands continuing their wandering caresses down her back, over her pale white buttocks, between her legs.
The white girl moaned, her eyes closed, arms hanging at her sides.
Ace shifted his lips to her other breast and continued the kissing, sucking. The girl shivered with delight. Stoney sat in the chair, slumping down slightly, his big penis erect, his eyes wide with excitement.
Ace suddenly stopped and turned the white girl around and gave her a sudden shove toward the other black man. She moved quickly to Stoney and straddled him as he sat in the chair. Her pink toes barely touched the floor on either side she reached down and directed Stoney's big black shaft upward and inward. He groaned as she eased down. Ace laughed.
"Ride him, white girl," he ordered. "Give him a good one."
The girl moved up and down easily and at the same time began to expertly wiggle her hips slightly from side to side. Stoney gave a series of sharp grunts.
He laid his big hands on the girl's shapely white thighs and helped her shove downward. Suddenly he gave a sharp squeal of pleasure and reached around her and crushed her to him. He shook violently and the girl clung to him, the chair almost falling backward.
The girl eased away from him and Stoney sat in the chair, arms dangling at his sides, his breath short and rapid.
"Damnation," he mumbled. "How about that!"
Ace laughed. "Get hold of yourself, man," he said. "She done cleaned your plow good."
The girl looked at Ace questioningly.
"No," he told her. "I don't need none." He got up from the bed. "But before we go I better fix you up. Get us a pan of clean water." The naked white girl took the tin pan from the table and left the shack. Wearily, Stoney got up from the chair and put on his clothes.
"She sure is something," he said. "She sure is."
The girl came back with the pan half full of water and set it on the floor. She took a box of table salt from the shelf behind the stove and poured some in the water, mixing with her hand.
"What's that for?" Stoney asked.
"When I stripe her up some," Ace explained, "I always wash her down good with salt water. It stings the hell out of her, but it keeps down infection, and softens her skin too."
The white girl was standing beside the pan of salt water, legs wide apart, hands clenched white-knuckled together and raised over her head. Ace scooped up some the water in his hands and rubbed it over the girl's shapely body.
She whimpered and gritted her teeth and shivered, tears easing freely down her face as the salt bit and burned into the welts. But she obediently kept her hands above her head.
Ace continued rubbing her with the salt water leisurely, whistling, and seemingly oblivious to how the girl's face was turning red in her agony, beginning to sob softly as the pain grew worse and worse for her. He didn't stop until every inch of her was soaked and she was dripping from the salt water.
And then he stopped and put on his shoes and shirt.
"I'll be gone, three, four days," he told the white girl. "There's plenty of groceries to last 'til I get back. Clean the place up good." He beckoned for Stoney to follow and the two men left.
The girl stood for a few moments longer and then went out on the porch and sat down. Her naked body still stung from the salt bath. The air was heavy and far away there was a faint rumble of thunder.
After a while she got up and went back in the shack and lay down on the bed. A mid-summer shower began, the drops beating steadily on the tin roof. To the beat of the rain, she went to sleep.
It was late afternoon when she woke. The rain had stopped. She got up and went to the table and made herself a sandwich of cheese and bologna. Remembering the dog, she took two pieces of the bologna and dropped them through a crack in the floor to the ground below. The dog wolfed them down greedily. For once it wasn't her eating the scraps, it was the dog.
The girl took a small piece of soap from the shelf behind the stove and left the shack. She went down the creek a few yards to a deep place and bathed in the cool water and then sat on a rock and let the sun dry her bare body. She went back to the shack and sat on the porch until dark.
The next morning, after making herself a breakfast of coffee and bread and jelly, she sat on the porch again. She wondered about where her mother and her uncle, Sugar Pete were. She felt tears running down her face, and was sad they had left her behind. She had remembered how her mother had told her she would enjoy staying with Ace, that he would take good care of her, and then her mother just left her with the black man when Rosie and Sugar Pete had to leave to get away from the law. Her mother had never been very kind to her, and Uncle Sugar Pete was worse, but still, it was the only family she had.
She suddenly decided she would go across the ridge to the shack where she and her mother had lived. It would be something to do to pass the day.
Going back into the shack she found the ragged shirt that was her only piece of clothing in the world. The shirt was ragged and threadbare, torn in several places so that her flesh showed through in places, and a couple of sizes too big, but she slipped it on and fastened it in front with a safety pin. She left the shack and went up the path that led across the ridge. The woods were still and quiet except for small insect sounds and an occasional darting flight of birds.
Weeds had grown up around the shack where she and her mother used to live. She went into the small building and looked around. The only furnishings were a bed, a sagging couch, a couple of chairs, and a stove. The stove pipe had fallen, scattering soot over the floor. Still, the place had more furniture than the shack she lived in with Ace. There were only a few chairs, and when Ace had company, she wasn't allowed to sit on anything but the floor, or on the bed if they were going to be using her.
She went outside and sat down in a chair on the porch. She remembered her uncle raping her and her mother laughing about the whole thing. "I was wondering," Her mother had told Sugar Pete, "just how long it would finally take you to get around to it."
She remembered the apple tree behind the house and wondered if any of the apples were ripe. She got up and went around the building.
She stopped dead in her tracks when a man, dressed in dirty gray pants and a dirty gray jacket, stepped from around the corner of the shack. She stared. The man grinned.
"Hello, girlie," he said.
She whirled and started to dash back around the building, but ran into another man, dressed like the other, in gray pants and a gray jacket. The second man grabbed her, pinning her arms to her sides.
"Hold on, kid," he told her, pressing his grimy face close to hers. "What's the hurry?"
Suddenly she kicked upward and crashed her knee into his groin. The man turned sickly white and turned her loose, but the other man grabbed by the hair and jerked her back before she could run. He gave her a stunning slap with his palm across the side of the head. She reeled groggily.
Dimly, she was aware of a third man, also wearing grimy gray pants and a gray jacket. Vaguely, she knew that the safety pin had been unsnapped and the shirt had been removed and she was naked again. She shook her head to clear away thee dizziness. The three men came into focus. One had her arm twisted behind her and all three were grinning broadly.
"The little bitch almost put me out," the one she had kicked growled. "You better watch her, Pork."
The other man was a huge fellow with a black stubble of beard. "Hold her a few minutes, Pork," he ordered, "and I'll fix her so she won't be any more trouble."
The naked girl glared at the men. The one called Pork - the one holding her - was short, rather old, perhaps fifty-five. The one she had kicked was a lean, ugly man with a deep, whitish scar running from just below his left eye to his chin line. The big man with the stubble of beard was apparently the boss of the trio.
He took a knife from his pocket and started cutting some stakes from a bush at the side of the shack.
"Hammer," he told the one that had been kicked, "go around back and you'll find an old clothes line back there. If it ain't rotten, bring the rope here."
The girl twisted and squirmed and tried to get loose. Pork twisted her arm up higher and she squealed and became still.
"Dammit, Tom," Pork grumbled, "get a move on. She's liable to kick me like she did Hammer."
The one called Hammer returned with the rope.
"It looks all right," he said. Tom had cut four stakes and with a large rock was driving them in the ground near the shack.
"We'll just stake her out here where she can't do no mischief," he said. "Bring her here, Pork. Dammit, Hammer! Help him."
The two men forced the naked girl to the ground on her back and while they held her down, Tom tied her ankles to two of the stakes, legs stretched wide, and then secured her wrists the other two.
She lay spread-eagle on the ground, glaring sullenly at the three men. The hard earth ground into her bare back.
"Hey, now," Hammer said. "This is going to fun. I ain't had none for over four years now."
The one called Tom ran his hand over the naked girl's welted thighs.
"What happened, kid?" he asked. "Your old man take a switch to you?"
"Reckon she's a virgin?" Pork asked, grinning.
"Probably not," Tom said. "You know what they say about virgins around these parts. A virgin in these hills is a twelve-year-old girl that can run faster than her brother."
"I don't give a damn if she is or ain't," Hammer said. "She won't be one for long."
"Let's make it fast," Tom said. "We got to get moving. Once we get to Carleton, I can get us some other clothes and a car."
"She probably lives close to here," Pork said. "Her folks might come looking for her. Let's get a move on."
Tom was first. He kicked off his shoes and slipped off his pants and sprawled forward on top of the naked girl. She closed her eyes and turned her head to one side.
Tom rammed his big penis in and gave her a dozen or so fast, furious jabs and then gushed forth in a speedy climax.
Hammer was on top of her as soon as Tom was out of the way. He was through almost a quickly and leaned back against the side of the shack, panting wearily.
Pork took his turn and swiftly reached a shuddering conclusion. He fell forward on the girl, breathing heavily.
"Come on, come on," Tom told him. "Let's get a move on."
"Give me that knife," Hammer said, "and I'll slit her throat."
The girl's eyes flew open in sudden terror. A frightened whimper quivered from between her lips.
"You some kind of goddamn idiot!" Tom growled at Hammer. "What they get you for? Robbery! Same as me and Pork. You add killing to that and you never will get out if they get you again. We'll leave her here just like she is. Now come on."
The three men left. The girl could see them file into the woods across a field from the shack.
She strained at the ropes that held her. They held fast. The sun rose higher and higher and hotter and hotter. Her naked body dripped sweat onto the dusty ground beneath her.
She tugged more at the ropes and imagined her right arm gave a bit. She pulled harder with that arm and was sure the stake was loosening.
After resting a while, she tugged some more and the stake moved. Tugging harder, she pulled stake from the ground and then untied the rope with her teeth. In a few minutes she had freed herself and sat up weakly.
She recovered her shirt and put it on and then and sat in the shade of the porch for a few minutes. She went to the creek near the shack and bent down for a long, cool drink of the mountain water. Then she went back up and over the ridge to Jamaal's place.
She sat on the porch for a long time and then took off the shirt and went down the creek to deep hole and took a bath. With nothing else to do, she lay on the bed and presently she slept.
...Ace was gone for four days. He came back in mid-morning and found the white girl, naked, sitting on the porch. He grinned at her.
"I had me a nice trip," he said, sitting down. "I got in a real poker game the last two nights." He slapped his bulging shirt pocket. "I got enough to keep us for a while." He looked admiringly at the white girl. "Old Stoney said to tell you he'd be sure to get back as soon as he could."
With him he had brought a sack of groceries and a couple of six-packs of beer. He had the girl fetch him a can of the beer and sat drinking it contentedly.
"The day I left Carleton," he said, "they caught three convicts that had got away from the state pen. Got 'em at a girlfriend's house."
He looked at the naked white girl, his eyes gleaming.
"Me and you are going to have some fun in a little while," he promised. "How about that?"
"It'll be all right," the girl said, smiling sadly. "I'm ready."
The big black man grinned.