Chapter 2
Boy-O Carter hooked his thumbs in the hip pockets of his too-tight dungarees. He cocked his head to one side and through half-closed eyes scrutinized the main drag of his home town. "Uh-huh," he said softly. "I knew it wouldn't change."
He set his limber stride going down the street and whistled an accompaniment. He was home, Boy-O Carter, home for a while, hide your daughter, Mother Machree. Women go for Boy-O and he likes that.
Some men can write great books, some men can build great buildings. Boy-O Carter makes the women happy-all the women. He carried no suitcase. Carter roamed the world wide without an extra pair of pants. That's what women are for-to take care of the details.
He sauntered down the street and the women noticed him. They watched him from the corners of their happily married eyes hoping he wouldn't notice them surveying his lean hard body Boy-O noticed all right but he made no sign of recognition. He was used to it.
Young girls giggled nervously when they caught sight of him, not knowing, what it was about the walk of Boy-O Carter that set their blood a-tingle, but wanting, everyone of them, wanting to find out.
Boy-O paused at the only traffic signal in town, at the junction of two highways going nowhere. He slid his hand into his pocket and caressed the twenty that was his whole fortune. For the moment. Across the street was Sam Revere's drug store.
He remembered Sam Revere. He'd carried him around for a long time, that mental portrait of nice upstanding Sam Revere. Revere had seen to it that Mrs. Carter wasted away on cheap medicines because their bill was overdue, and he was too good a businessman to let death come between him and his fifty cent cigars. Well, the world was that way. He had roamed enough to know that the world didn't give a tinker's damn for those who couldn't pay their own way. The world didn't care and neither did Boy-O Carter.
How old was Sam Revere's daughter, Sarah, Boy-O wondered. That crooked Smile plagued the corners of his mouth. Old enough by now, that was certain. Yah, he would go in and have a cup of coffee with twinkly-eyed Sammy. Revere would get all excited to know that Boy-O was back, especially when he found out why.
The drug store had been remodeled since Boy-O had last been there. The smell of aspirins and talcum powder had been traded for cool Formica and help-yourself cosmetic displays.
Boy-O eased his body onto one of the round backless stools at the fountain. '"Coffee," he said, and, "Black."
The seventy-year-old counter boy shuffled off to fetch the fetid black liquid, set on to boil at eight that morning and simmering until now, three o'clock. Boy-O recognized Gus, the fountain boy. Not changed in the thirteen years since Boy-O's uncle had come to take Boy-O away from lonely Swanik's Landing. But Boy-O didn't call out a greeting or acknowledge the pleasantries that Gus tried to exchange with him. There would be time for Gus to remember the Carter family, to remember the tears that had streamed down Boy-O's face that early June morning that (hey had buried his mother, and he, alone, had wept at her grave.
Boy-O Carter, made a man at ten, had been making everyone in sight since.
Boy-O reached into the pocket of his shirt and extracted his last cigarette from the crumpled pack. He hung the cigarette in the corner of his mouth and lit it. Then holding the cigarette in tight lips, his eyes screwed up to narrow slits, he rolled the empty package into a ball and aimed it at the basket at the far end of the fountain. It sailed right in. Boy-O smiled with satisfaction. He liked things to go right. He drew deeply on his cigarette, inhaling with pleasure the strong tobacco smoke and looked around for some sign of good old Sam Revere.
Boy-O realized he would have to lure the pharmacist out from his peppermint laboratory at the rear of the store. He sipped his coffee just a little, then went over to the cigarette counter on the other side of the store. He stood a while at the counter, but no signs of life responded to him. Boy-O didn't like to be thwarted.
"Hey," he shouted angrily. "Cigarettes!"
His eyes were glued to the door of the alcove where Sam Revere mixed his prescriptions. Boy-O heard old Sam climb down off his high druggist's stool, heard the stool being pushed back, out of the way. But it was no old man coming through the doorway. It was no old man walking briskly to the counter.
It was a tall, statuesque babe, whose blonde hair waved around her head like a halo, a sleek well-brushed halo. Boy-O watched her with pleasure. As far as women were concerned he had vision and not even her stiff white sexless smock could hide "those firm high-rising breasts from his gaze. Boy-O Carter smiled his crooked smile. He wished she would turn around so he could professionally assess her rear proportions as well. She had a cat-like walk, a long-legged slinking walk that fluttered even her stiff uniform, and she didn't know it. This was a chick who had definitely not been awakened to her own charms.
Boy-O was pleased. He would enjoy his return to Swanik's Landing.
"Yes, what is it?" Ah, thought Boy-O. The lady didn't like me shouting. Well, she'l! learn to. In time.
He indicated his brand. "A pack of those," he said. He took his time digging in his pocket for his money. Part of Boy-O Carter's charm was based on how irritating he was. It served as a proclamation of his independence: Boy-O Carter would do what he damned well pleased and people could take him or leave him as he was.
"Old Sam Revere," he said casually. "What happened to him?"
"He died last year. Why? What was Sam Revere to you?" She was more interested in Boy-O now. What did a drifter know about....
"What was he to you?" Boy-O like to turn questions around, so that they faced in another direction and bit at somebody's past besides his. Boy-O didn't like to answer questions.
"My father. Sam Revere was my father. So if you have any business with him, you'll have to take it up with me."
"Well," Boy-O said. "Well now. I think I'd like that."
She blushed at the tone of his voice. It was decidedly not business-like.
The silence that fell between them now irritated the efficient Miss Revere as much as it amused Boy-O Carter.
"Well, if you don't wish to state the business you had with my father, I shall go back to my work," she turned away abruptly. What is this, said Boy-O to himself. Am I right? Is the young lady nervous? Maybe Sam Revere got into trouble, maybe trouble with the law. Why else should she be putting up with all the lip I am giving her?
"I want to state my business, all right." Boy-O kept his voice ominously soft. "But not here. Not in a public place."
Her eyes are so blue, thought Boy-O Carter. She is pretending with me now. She doesn't want to commit herself without finding more out. What do you think I want from you, Miss Sarah? Can you guess that I want to undress you? Can you?
"All right," she sighed grievously, the weight of some burden on her shoulders. "Gus, I'm stepping out for a minute. Take care of things will you?"
"Uh-huh, Miss Sarah. Don't you worry." Boy-O could tell Gus was used to visitors like him, and didn't like them, either.
"This way." Miss Sarah, her hands shoved clinically in the front pockets of her white costume led the way out of the back of the store, and down the long alley to County Lane. It all looked familiar to Boy-O. No matter where you go, after you leave the place where you played as a boy, every town, big or small, looks like your home town, he thought. It doesn't even-matter if you hate the place that raised you. They all remind you of it.
The Revere's lived in a big white frame Victorian house, Boy-O remembered. It was set back from the street and practically hid itself behind a hundred green trees. At the end of the alley, if you turned left your eyes would just hit it-the Revere forest.
Miss Sarah turned left at the end of the alley. Boy-O carefully hissed his smile secretly. It was all there. It hadn't changed in thirteen years. But he didn't want Sarah to know he was familiar with the town, or the streets of the town. Not until he found out what had happened to Sam, until he found out what had spoiled his revenge.
They walked up the path to the cool porch of the Revere house. Sarah had been casting sidelong glances at Boy-O all the way. He had pretended not to notice. Boy-O carefully hissed his smile secretly. It was all there.
She motioned him to sit on one of the rocking chairs on the porch. But Boy-O smiled and shook his head. Then he held the screen door open and she silently walked into the house, into the shadowy wicker-furnished living room. She turned to confront him and gasped a little in surprise at the closeness of him.
Sarah Revere realized that she was fighting a battle with this strange man, a mock battle of strength. He had won the first two rounds-she had taken him to her house and into her house and now he was going to try to kiss her.
She looked at his mouth. That was a fine mouth, a strong fine mouth. Her gaze wandered over his face, until their eyes met. His eyes were smiling at her, no, more than that, they were laughing at her. He had won round three, too. He had made her want to be kissed.
Sarah blushed in spite of herself. But she didn't turn away.
She couldn't.
"Now." Her voice, practically a whisper, surprised her. "What exactly is your business with my father?"
Boy-O Carter didn't answer. His flashing eyes smiled at the easiness of this all. Women were so simple to understand and control. Someday he would write a book about them. If he ever stayed in one lousy place long enough. Were all the women in Swanik's Landing as lonely and easy to subdue as Sarah Revere was going to be? he mused. Sarah stood there, waiting for him to gather her up, without even knowing she was waiting Boy-O didn't stop smiling, didn't change his expression one bit. He fastened her gaze with his. Then gently his hands unbuttoned the top button of her thick starched smock.
"No, stop that." Her voice was quivering and the blood, coursing through her body, throbbed in her throat. Boy-O unbuttoned the second button and then the third.
Her hands grabbed at his wrists, making an ineffectual attempt to stop him from undressing her. Oh, she wanted to be naked with him. She held his wrists as Boy-O Carter unfastened the rest of her crisp white buttons.
"My father, what was your business with my father?" Her voice was shaking with fear and anticipation. Sarah shut her eyes. She could not meet his gaze, because she knew that if she let her eyes run loose, she knew they would careen over his body. She didn't know what that was that she was feeling, didn't know what to' expect, but she wanted him. Her arms fell helplessly to her sides.
How could this be true of her? What was he waiting for?
Boy-O didn't answer, but slipped the uniform over her shoulders and watched that slide down her arms to the floor. He unhooked her bra and took that off. Then he stepped back to survey her body. She had a fine body, full in all the right places, and fat and tapered in all the proper ones. And he would be the first to kiss this naked body, he would teach her what life was all about.
He moved closer to her, still not quite touching her and ran his finger lightly down her spine. A tiny frown creased her forehead, a frown of effort-to keep the dream, to keep from pulling him close to her. She wanted to press against him, to be lost with the pleasure of his body.
With the pleasure of her own.
His fingers danced around her ears, her neck. He seemed to be avoiding any real contact with her. This was all a game, teasing her like that. Sarah tried to grasp some of her Swanik's Landing propriety, tried to pull away from him, but her arms didn't push him away. They circled his neck, they pulled his head down to meet her mouth and she moved against his body.
Boy-O laughed with pleasure. He liked to make his women ask for what they wanted, and then give that to them good.
Lightly, provokingly he kissed her neck, her face, urging her on in her demands. She wrestled with his clothing, pulling at his shirt to feel his rugged tanned body against hers without any obstruction whatsoever.
Then, wrapping his hand in her thick golden hair, hr pulled her head back. Her mouth opened slightly and she murmured with, pain. She surged for his lips. She greeted his kiss, lips and fire and wanting him.
She pulled back.
Boy-O smiled again; he had expected that too. That was part of the challenge. He had toyed with her, he had pushed her to demand his body against hers, and now she played with rejecting him. This was a babe who didn't try to back out halfway through.
Boy-O laughed out loud. She was good, she looked good. Good enough to enjoy.
This was not a game to Sarah. She had never felt like this, had never felt her body screaming for another. Love to Sarah was a Saturday night drive down the darkest lane in Swanik's Landing with some frightened kisses at the third bend in the road, and Ben Johnson's soft hesitant caresses. No one had ever made her throb with wanting, wanting something ... what? And this stranger, this mad beautiful young man, was turning her into a shameless tramp, who begged and pleaded and moved against his body.
"Go away," she sobbed. "I'm not like this. I never want to see you again."
He stood there, watching her. His eyes were laughing and he didn't move. Sarah was suddenly embarrassed. The mid-day sun slanting through the parlor shutters slashed ribs of light across her body. She crossed her arms over her full breasts to hide them from his teasing eyes. Still he said nothing. Still he stood there, his mouth curved into a smile that said everything for him.
She knelt, gathering up her clothing and he too knelt. She looked at him, crumpling her white uniform against her breasts, rubbing a little against the starched roughness of the material.
Boy-O moved suddenly. He grabbed the uniform out of her arms and tossed that over his shoulder out of reach. "Go on. Get that."
She paused for a second and then began to move just a little. But he was quicker He moved his'hand to her and pressed.
Sarah gasped and pushed away from him, but she lost her balance and fell backward onto the polished floor. His lips followed his hands, and his teeth, biting and touching and teasing. All that warmth and all that want bounced through her body. She adjusted herself more and more in answer to that desire to help his lips and his teeth and his hands, she let her body go as if she knew, as if she had traveled that road before.
He stopped.
"No, please don't stop, don't stop."
"Don't you want to know my name? Huh, sweetheart?"
Then his face was close to hers and she was kissing him, whispering to him in a language she had never heard, a language that was filled with please and now and sighs as deep as night.
Then sensation was there quickly-ebbing and growing, alternately Sarah gasped with surprise, and then not surprise but anticipation, and sighs and gasps and again crying. "Yes, yes, and yes."
He lay there, on the floor, on his back watching her wander disconsolately about the room, searching for her clothing.
"Get me a cigarette from my shirt pocket, will you, honey?"
She didn't look at him but did as he asked. She drew a cigarette from the pack, and searched his trouser pockets for a match. Then she brought them to him and kneeling beside him offered them to him.
Boy-O smiled. Better start teaching her the score now, he thought, save a lot of trouble later. "No." he said, his hands still resting beneath his head. "You light that for me."
Sarah kept her eyes averted. He was humilating her on purpose. Well, let him. She deserved that. She had never smoked before; her lips clutched the cigarette awkwardly as she brought the match to it with concentration. She coughed a little in surprise at an unexpected intake of smoke. Then she handed the cigarette to him.
Boy-O pulled her to him and kissed her. She moved her lips against his, explored the rim of his mouth. Boy-O pushed her away, and dragged deeply on his cigarette.
"Thanks, hon."
He sat up arid looked around the room. "Yeah, I guess I knew it would look like this."
Sarah got up and began to dress, slowly. Her body had taken on new meaning for her. She didn't feel the same as she had before he, whoever he was, had touched her. "No, don't get dressed yet. I want to look at you."
"Well, I want to get dressed and go back to work. At least in the laboratory I know the names of things and what will happen when I mix the two chemicals together. Besides I don't reallv care what you want."
"Don't you?"
Sarah looked at him. She put her clothes down and stood there before him, naked, desiring him again. "Yes, I care. I care."
"I'm hungry," said Boy-O pulling on his pants. "First you'll cook me a nice hot saucy Swanik's Landing dinner and then I think we'll take a nice hot shower. Together. Then, when the sun goes down and it begins to cool off, you can show me the town." He walked toward her. She opened her arms to receive him and kissed his chest, kissed the rippling muscles in his arms. "You're a good kid," he said. "Now how about some food."
Sarah darted around the rooms, pulling down the shades so that only Boy-O could see her body and not the neighbors. Boy-O watched her sweet breasts bobbing as she rain. She seemed happy. He liked to make people happy. Especially people whose last name was Revere.
Sarah had never been a very good cook. She was inclined to treat the kitchen as if it were a druggist's laboratory. For the first time in her life she was sorry about that; for Boy-O she would have liked to prepare a lavish banquet, to whip up a womanly feast and be complimented for it.
Boy-O never complimented women. Sarah didn't know his name but she sensed that about him. He would accept everything a woman offered him as if it were due him. And indeed it was. So even' woman would outdo herself trying to please him, and never know if she succeeded. Sarah wondered if Boy-O Carter ever stopped smiling. Sarah wondered how she could find out hjs name. She cooked him eggs and ham and toasted his bread and poured his coffee. She wondered if he really had had business with her father.
The phone rang. Boy-O didn't react to it. It was as though he hadn't heard it ring. Sarah thought, watching him. She would learn something else about Boy-O soon-she would learn that no change ever surprised him, no sudden knock at the door would startle him, because at every minute he expected it.
Everything in the world seemed possible to Boy-O Carter-poverty, wealth, sun and rain, change in city or country, change in size or shape, and change of feelings. Nothing ever changed his life, because change was the basis of it.
"Yes, Gus? Oh no I can't now. Tell them I'll fill the prescription first thing in the morning."
Boy-O put down his fork. "No, you won't. You'll go there and do your job now."
Sarah stared at him. Was he always going to surprise her? "On second thought, Gus, I'll be right there." She hung up the phone. "I don't understand. I only said no because you said...."
"But it's not nice to keep people waiting for their medicines," Boy-O-said. He went on eating as if nothing had happened. "Get dressed."
"But, it wasn't an important medicine. I mean I could tell if it was a matter of life and death."
Boy-O didn't answer for a long while. He finished eating while Sarah dressed. They were leaving the house when he said, "Where sickness is concerned, any kind of sickness, it's always a matter of life and death. Even a kid with measles needs to know that he can get his medicine."
He turned and began to walk in the opposite direction from the store.
"Hey." Sarah wished she knew his name so she didn't have to feel she had slept with a stranger. Nothing fit in her life unless she could attach a name to it. He'd sensed that; maybe that was why he hadn't told her.
Boy-O stopped and waited for her to catch up. "Will I see you tonight?"
Boy-O was silent as if pondering the possibility of seeing her again.
"Do you," Sarah began self-consciously, "need any money?" She didn't know why she said that. Perhaps, she thought, I am trying to buy his attention, trying to obligate him to me. Boy-O shook his head.
"I think," he. said slowly, "I think I would Like to explore the town a little I don't know. Maybe I'll see you tonight. Maybe tomorrow. I don't know." You have no hold on me, he was really saying. But saying that gently.
"Well, you'll need a place to sleep." Sarah wanted to hold him, wanted to keep the other women away from him, wanted to make him hers and happy with her. And she would do anything to accomplish that.
Boy-O shrugged and smiled, this time impatiently. He patted her cheek consolingly. "Don't keep those popeyes waiting for their medicine. I'll see you sometime. Don't worry about that." He turned her around and faced her in the direction of the drug store. "Now go on."
Sarah obediently walked away. She was afraid to turn and look back. It seemed to her that if she did, Boy-O would not be there and her whole afternoon and this whole new feeling of her body would be another dream she had acted out in the quiet of her own bedroom.
Boy-O watched her go. Too bad she was Sam's daughter. He almost liked her. But she was her father's daughter. Her wispy golden hair was like her father's. She probably spent hours brushing it, shining it. Her even complexion with a few freckles on the nose was like her father's. And if Sam Revere had had to die before Boy-O Carter could get his revenge, he would just have to take his price from Sam's little girl. There was no helping it, in view of his memory of Revere's face, and his thin moist lips saying, "Sorry sonny, this Will have to do. You already owe me money, more than she'll ever be able to pay." Sam Revere had haunted his mind for too long. He had come a long way to even things up, and he was going to. For his sake. To hell with her.
Boy-O lost himself in thought, but his feet remembered the streets. They took him in the direction of his old home, without even asking his mind if it was interested in a little auld lang syne. The houses got less and less prosperous looking and the shrubbery thinner and less landscaped as the real estate values dropped. Poor folk spend their time working on other's gardens and don't have time to toy with their own weeds. An almost-forgotten accent slipped into Boy-O's reflections.
What had Sam Revere done anyway? That coy old louse. Had he gotten himself mixed up with woman trouble? Not likely. Boy-O laughed lightly to himself. Well, women didn't make the world go round-he would think of that first.
Very well, what else? Cheating on his taxes, that could be it. He'd have liked to cheat uncle Sam out of a little tax, Revere would. What else? It would have to have something to do with drugs and stuff. Two other opportunities danced in Boy-O's head.
Prescriptions. Revere might have liked to do a little doctoring, and he might have known something about that too. Just one or two mistakes, and people would begin to gossip. But what would that have to do with strangers?
Sarah had been taken in, there was no doubt about that. Sam's troubles would have to had something to do with rough trade. Boy-O lit a cigarette and stared at the burning match. It came to Mm. Dope.
That had to be it. Just Sam's speed. Dope. Of course. Swanik's Landing wasn't that far from Chicago and the pushers wouldn't have minded the trip. And a druggist could keep has hands on all the narcotics he wanted-certain kinds anyway. So Revere had helped the junkies. The needle and pop-off to never-never land and everything is fine. And everything gets very expensive and who takes most of the bread? Old Sam Revere.
It was just too good. Boy-O burst out laughing. The thought of all those, poor junkies hooked on their dreamlands was just too funny.
Nothing was too good, was too kind for the daughter of that man.
Boy-O lifted his eyes from the sidewalk to find himself staring at his mother's house. "God! How'd I get here?"
He turned on his heel and headed for another part of town. All of Swanik's Landing is Memory Lane, he thought. I don't need to turn the damned knife in my inwards. Why'd I come back to that house? Walk faster, buddy. Cross back to the right side of town. Where the sitting ducks grow.
As he walked, he planned the ways of his revenge. He was Boy-O Carter full of hate. And the whole town would know it before he was through.