Chapter 9

It was incredible. Patsy and Mrs. Perkins had been rather apologetic about not sucking my prick. Evelyn had nearly collapsed after she sucked it, from shame. Crazy damn women. Couldn't they just suck it and like it, like I liked it?

We got busy as hell at the warehouse, as Lou had said we would be. Everybody seemed to think his pears had to come off right now, as if the Exchange would renege on the $95 now that we had everybody signed up. But when the loads came in I saw that the pears were all ready to come off, nobody was getting ahead of his fruit, they were fully mature, so I just let them roll and the bins stacked up in the cold storage room and within just a few days I no longer knew which bins I had been leaning against when Lou's wife did her business on me.

I drove into the hills to find the last two farmers, hoping while I drove that I'd run into Mrs. Perkins and Patsy again. It seemed strange to me that they would have come on so strong just for an afternoon, then drop completely out of sight. Maybe extra-curricular screwing was more dangerous in a town like Tongue River than I thought. Maybe the aberration was that I'd gotten to screw them at all, and that Lou's wife had been bold enough to do what she had done. I decided I should not expect more from just one visit to a town like Tongue River. I thought I had done all right and I should be satisfied.

But I wasn't. I wanted more. I thought there should be a lot more lurking in the timber around town if only I could flush it out and I wanted to get all I could before harvest was over and I was back on the road to California. If Lisa wasn't waiting for me at home, I knew there would be very little chance of me getting anything from my other neighbors and I would be facing myself in the mirror again until I got back to the whores at school. I did not face that prospect with any delightful anticipation. None at all.

I ate only at the Evergreen Drive-In. I left the Blue Sky waitress to the loggers. Melanie reminded me more and more of Lisa and she seemed truly happy at having a young stranger paying so much attention to her. I thought if I was lucky we might get something going but each time I asked to drive her home she refused, cheerfully, and waved gaily, like a young girl, when I backed my Ford out of the drive-in to go back to the warehouse for the three or four loads that usually came in after supper.

Then one afternoon she took me up on my offer to visit me at the warehouse. She drove in, in an old pickup truck with two other girls to protect her from her, the long-haired sisters from the river, Mary and Marty.

Melanie was in her uniform since she was on her way to work, but the sisters wore the same red bikinis they had been wearing when I saw them in the river so long ago.

Naturally I stopped grading pears. I wrote the farmer out a clear ticket, no culls or 2s, and leaned against the grading table to explain my job to the girls.

Lou almost had a fit when he saw them. He had known them all since they were born and he thought it was a travesty of some kind for them all to have piled into a pickup to visit me at his warehouse. And wearing those damn bikinis while they did it too. And Melanie in that short-skirted uniform. Damn kids anyway.

The sisters had nice mouths, like Melanie's. While I talked, I couldn't help my eyes keep from wandering down the front of one or the other, cross lovingly the thin red material that covered the blossoming breasts, the nipples just visible through the cloth. My eyes went down further to their belly buttons, the tight stomachs where equal little dots were like punctuation marks in each of their middles, and down further, light glistening on the very fine hairs that covered them like peach fuzz, down further to where the tanned skin disappeared into the red crotch covering, their pubic mounds rising into the cloth. I could almost see the curly pubic hair in a fist against their panties, and everything ended abruptly where the material tucked between the legs. But my eyes kept on down the smooth, trim legs to the ankles and feet where each girl stood in identical sandals.

One of them turned while my eyes were on that downward plunge and her ass was a fully-formed handful, tight in the bikini bottom, just a suggestion of the crack at the base of her spine, and my tongue nearly got mixed up with my teeth while I explained that No. I pears are larger than No. 2s.

The older sister was Mary. She was eighteen. Her sister, Marty, was only a year younger, seventeen. Mary was slightly taller, and except for that there would have been almost no way to tell the girls apart. I wondered if they were both virgins, and if only one was, that would be a way to tell them apart; except that to find out if it was true or not you'd have to take both those bikini bottoms off and I knew that if I was successful in doing that, they would both very shortly be the same down there too.

Melanie had told them about me, she said, and the sisters had wanted to see me to make sure I was what I was telling Melanie I was.

"What's the verdict?" I asked.

All three of the girls smiled. "You're here inspecting pears, that's for sure," said Mary.

"Am I as nice as Melanie said I was?" I asked grinning.

"Maybe. It's hard to tell," Marty said, "just seeing you once."

The sisters stood there in their almost naked glory, smiling, and Melanie beamed as if she had found the lode star.

Lou stomped off his lift truck and told the girls to get lost. They all seemed to get younger as he spoke, as if he was of their parent's generation and had the same authority over them. "Sorry to spoil your fun, girls, but it's pear harvest. You did know that, didn't you?"

We all laughed, and the girls piled back into Melanie's pickup and with Melanie at the wheel, sitting three abreast, a sight that almost took my breath away, they drove off toward the Evergreen.

"My God," Lou said, shaking his head. "Everybody in Tongue River knew we had our hands full when those girls were only ten and eleven. Don't think it's just you, Giff. They put everybody through the wringer."

'"Do they wear anything except those bikinis?" I asked.

"Since school let out last June, that is all I've seen them in. My God, they drive the town crazy."

"Do they have parents?"

"Sure. Nicest couple you'd want to meet. Nothing wrong with the girls either.. They're not wild at all, they just look like they could be wild. That's what drives everybody crazy, waiting for those two to bust loose. And nobody can touch them, because they know everybody. And everybody knows everybody else wants them, and nobody can have them."

We got a load of pears then, and after that Perkins came in with his first load. Perkins stood and talked with me at the grading table as if he knew nothing about me and his wife, and I was sure he knew all about it. He was a real gentleman.

Lou and I didn't get back to our conversation about the bikini twins until that evening as we were sitting around Evelyn's supper table.

Evelyn had kept her promise not to serve me stew. She set a dish on the table that made both Lou and I sit up and take notice, chicken breasts cooked in a wine sauce. Lou said he had never seen her cook like that. "Well," he said when Evelyn was in the kitchen, "we don't get company very often."

We got back to the subject of the sisters and Lou said, "That's one of the things right with a little town like this. You can have a pair of girls running loose like that, damn near naked all summer, and nobody will touch them. Everybody respects the girls' parents too much for that, because everybody grew up together and the girls are free to grow and develop as they want to, without being bothered by every man in town chasing after them. We trust each other here." He added with a grin, "Have to, since everybody knows what happens, about ten minutes after it happens. There's not much that's allowed to happen, because of that."

"Not always," Evelyn said, dabbing a napkin on the very same lips that had nibbled, kissed, and accepted my cock.

"Do you know something I don't?" Lou asked. "Maybe. If I did, I might not tell you."

"You'D tell me all right. Sometime over the winter, you'll tell me. You see, Giff, the winters are awfully long up here and sooner or later just about everything that anybody knows gets told one time or another, sooner or later, just to make conversation."

Evelyn looked at me and said, "I don't think everything gets said. Not everything. You keep some things back."

"I don't know what they are," Lou said.

"The reason you don't know," Evelyn told him, "is because you just aren't told."

About nine thirty I got up to go. Both Lou and Evelyn walked me to the car. It was another of the warm nights we had had since I arrived. I shook hands with them both and said thanks for supper, it was delicious Lou said I'd have to come back for stew some night, that Evelyn made delicious stew as well as chicken. He added that he didn't know how good Evelyn was at this French stuff. Both Evelyn and I looked at him, but he seemed not to know what he was talking about so we both took his comment to mean the chicken breasts in wine sauce and not our secret adventure in the cold storage room. Evelyn squeezed my hand when we touched.

I drove right to the Evergreen Drive-in. It was only five days now and I'd be back on the road to California and Lisa, carrying home to her all my new experience for the ritual of her cherry-giving if she still had it to give. I trusted Lisa, but I also knew deep down that there was absolutely no reason why she should save it for me since I was sure as hell not saving anything for her. I knew that I would not pass up any opportunities for nooky, that I would take it wherever I found it whether in a car or cold storage or wherever and that I'd take any more that I stumbled across. I supposed I would be unhappy for awhile if I got home and found Lisa was no longer a virgin, but I thought I could get over it if she would take me anyway. It was a hell of a way to think of a girl who I professed to be in love with.

So it was almost ten o'clock, time for Melanie to get off work, and I thought there was no use not to take another pass at her. If she refused me tonight, I was going to ask her to fix me up with the bikini sisters. Since nobody who lived in Tongue River dared touch them, I hoped they might be anxious for the touch of a stranger.

Melanie brought me a cup of coffee.

"If I can't take you home," I said, "will you come on a drive with me?"

"Yes," she said, smiling her virgin smile.

Well, hell. Probably my mistake earlier had been in asking to drive her home. I had never simply asked her to go on a drive with me. Or maybe the bikini sisters, who seemed to have had a little more experience than Melanie, had told her I seemed like a straight shooter.

I had become familiar with back roads through the valley, rattling around them searching out stray pear orchards, and I drove Melanie straight to one that dead-ended at a docking ramp on the river, surrounded by tall pines, lighted only by the moonbeam playing across the still water.

I turned to her in the dark and she suddenly folded into my arms, pressed herself against my body, buried her face against my chest, and circled me with her arms.

Lifting her chin with my right hand, I kissed her on the mouth. Her breath was sweet and soft, full of whispers, and she put her arms around my neck, held my face on hers. Her mouth opened for my lass. Melanie, so sweetly pure, so innocent-looking, seemed about to rape me. Well, God, here I was, willing.

My tongue slid along her lips, eased just a little between her teeth, and she accepted it. Her own tongue came after mine, hesitantly, shyly like she had been when I first saw her on the river, but she seemed to like the taste of my lips and she touched them with the tip of her tongue, beginning to lick as a kitten takes to her milk. It was like no one had ever kissed her decently before, and she had been waiting.

I knew by now that there was no use wasting time with Tongue River women, so I slid my hand quickly over her little breasts, across her stomach, pressed once at her crotch. She drew back a little, but I thought only because she had that shyness. My hand traced along her leg and began to work up under her little dress.

She caught it and said, "No, not yet, Giff, please."

I took my hand away from her snatch. With my other hand still holding her head, my mouth leaving kisses all over her face, I opened my pants so I could rise up into the night air. And rise up I did, and up and up and up, my cock as stiff as iron.

I caught her right hand and drew it cautiously down through the dark air until she gasped and her fingers went around it, shyly of course. They traveled once to the root, to my hair and balls, up again, up and up almost driving me crazy, to the head, her fingers almost kissing the very tip. Then her hand went away and she wouldn't bring it back.

"Giff, I've never touched anybody before. I've never gone this far at all."

"Where did you learn to kiss like you do?"

"From you. Right now. Tonight."

We kissed for another fifteen or twenty minutes but she wouldn't let me get my hand back on her tits or in her snatch or even on her legs. She said I set her on fire. And only once did she bring her lovely fingers to my cock again. She barely touched its sensitive skin, brushed the ends of her fingers longingly against its length as if she wanted to take it all in her hand and squeeze it but couldn't. Her soft fingers traced again around the head where I had been circumcised, around the mushroom cap, to the tip, then down again, the fingers a little bolder as if she was a blind girl feeling someone for the very first and last time. My mind almost went crazy.

Goddam virgins, I thought. Goddam them to hell. I put my cock back in my pants and drove her back to the drive-in where she hopped gaily out of my car.

"See you tomorrow?" she asked.

"I don't know."

"Anyway, have a good sleep." She jumped into her pickup truck and started down the road in it.

Now what in hell did she mean by that, I thought. I drove up to Mrs. Davis' motel. The logger's wife watched me cross the yard to my own porch. I considered going to her and asking if she would let me fuck her and if not that then would she please go down on me, anything so I wouldn't have to jack off in the bathtub. I dreaded taking my clothes off, because I knew I would find my friend still as stiff as iron, waiting down there in my crotch for me to put it somewhere, and I knew I had nowhere to put it except into my own soapy fist

I opened my door and went inside. When I turned on the lights, I found the very nicest pair of surprises I could ever have found.

Mary said, "Come in," and Marty added, "and shut the door please."

They were lying on my bed, on my bed, on my very own bed. I didn't know which was Mary and which Marty. I closed the door, being at least alert enough to follow instructions.

I believed Lou Carson now. They were still in their red bikinis.

"I'm Mary," said the one on the right.

"I'm Marty," said the other one. "How did you get in here? Not that I'll kick you out."

"You didn't lock your door. Nobody ever does." The one I thought was Mary sat up and asked, "Do you have any grass?"

I shook my head. Standing at the foot of the bed, I looked up along their legs, smooth, long things, their thighs inviting me to crawl onto the bed with them. One of them stretched her body, her stomach tightening, her breasts rising under the thin red strap.

"I don't smoke," I said absently.

"Do you have any bad habits, like drinking booze?"

"Yes, but I don't have any of that either."

"Well, Mr. Stranger, we thought you might not have any booze either so we brought our own. If we'd had any grass, we'd have brought you some."

She gestured toward my kitchen and I saw a quart Mason jar half-filled with an amber liquid. "It belongs to Daddy," one said. "We took it out of his bottle and filled the rest with water so he wouldn't know we took it. Pretty slick, huh?"

I grinned at them both. "Very slick."

Then up they jumped, their breasts bouncing, their thighs pumping, and they hugged and kissed me on both cheeks. I blushed, because I'd never kissed a girl in front of another girl before, unless I could count Mrs. Perkins and Patsy and I didn't think either of them had watched me fuck the other. I hugged them both, kissed one, then the other, getting used to it fast. I sucked each of their tongues. "Hey," I said when I stopped for breath. "How am I going to know one of you from the other. I can't tell you apart."

"We'll fix that," one of them said.

She went into the kitchen and poured three drinks from the jar, topped the glasses off with cold water from the tap. While she was carrying all three glasses to the table by the bed, the other girl, either Mary or Marty, I don't know which, reached down to her own hip and started untying one side of her bikini.

The other placed the glasses carefully on the table and stood up, turned toward me, reached behind her back and untied her bikini top. Down it came, slowly, and her nipples stood firm on her perfect little breasts, little girl breasts, her nipples stood on perfectly round lakes of brown puckered skin. She was all skin from her head to her stomach where just a faint suggestion of hair showed over her bottoms. Below were her legs, waiting to squeeze me.

My God, I thought, if Lou Carson or any of the other neighbors knew what I had in my room right now they would go berserk, they might blow up the world, they would do anything to get inside my door with me.

The other sister finished with her knot and opened that side of her bikini like unwrapping a Christmas present from a favored lover. Her cunt hairs burst into view like a dark bush suddenly flaming with light, and she let her bikini hang from her crotch while she untied the other side. Then she pulled it from between her legs and stood with nothing on in front of me except the thin red line over her breasts.

"Now can you tell us apart?" asked the one with the naked tits. "I'm Top and she's Bottom."

I walked into their arms like falling into the warmest, coolest, deepest, most welcoming lake of gentle fire.