Chapter 6
I got stuck in the mud and had to borrow a farmer's tractor to get my car out. I got stuck in the sand and had to borrow a farmer's pickup truck to pull me out. I got high-centered on a rock and had to borrow a farmer's lift truck to get my car off it. I tromped through weeds and sagebrush and wild asparagus ferns. I scratched my shins on thistles and was attacked twice by rattlesnakes and also several times by domestic animals. Little kids stood outside farmhouses while I dickered with their fathers. Old women raised their hands to shield their eyes from the sun as they told me where I might find their husbands out in the orchards.
I bought a lot of pears.
The Exchange was paying $95 a ton that year. The year before the farmers had gotten only $30 and had considered themselves lucky to get that. But this year was different. The combination of an especially light crop in California with a blossom-time freeze up north in Washington put these Tongue River farmers, sitting pretty with almost full crops, good-sized fruit and a ready market, right in the banker's office with smiles on their faces.
I was popular whenever I pulled into a yard, because they all were ready to go cannery. I punched pears to test the degree of maturity, gave advice on when to start picking and what end of the orchard should come off first, and bought entire crops. My second two weeks in Tongue River would be busy as hell I thought, with the fruit coming to the warehouse where I'd grade it and send it into Carson's cold storage where it would wait until the Exchange plants in California were ready to can it, then trucks would pull up, load up, and head south.
I was so busy that first week I almost forgot about Lisa. I enjoyed the work and did my best to do a good job for the company and also be fair to the farmers. Being the son of one of them gave me an added insight that often college graduates from the Exchange did not have.
And at the same time I wondered about Mrs. Davis' guest, the queer, and what he meant when he called me a country cherry. I thought I knew, and I did not like thinking of myself as naive sexually, as an innocent in a land of plenty, but I did not have much evidence to present on my own behalf. I did not think my having screwed only two girls and three whores and almost screwing a virgin who I thought I might be in love with would really make me sexually experienced. I thought the queer was probably right. I was a country cherry. If I had to fuck him to get experience though, I thought I would-have to remain cherry.
Each morning when I woke up my prick was looking me in the face, letting me know by its hardness that it did not consider itself naive. I was faced with the truth I had always known: it was up to me to find someplace to put it, and my clenched fist was not the place.
Early in the second week I started slowing down. I had visited most of the farms and later in the week the fruit would be ready to come off. I had only a few outlying farmers to see. One of the last ones was the Perkins ranch.
Mr. Perkins stood by the tool shed as I drove into his yard. "How you doing, bub?" he asked, before I even got out of the car. "I been expecting you."
I brought the contract papers out of the car with me. Without a word, I laid them on the warm hood of my Ford and handed him a ballpoint pen.
He leaned over them, made sure they read $95 a ton, and signed.
"Now that business is out of the way," he said, "nice to meet you."
"Same here," I said, grinning.
"You know, we got over a hundred dollars during the war."
"War's over."
"Yes it is, bub. I'll take the ninety-five and be glad to get it."
I liked him right away. He led me into his orchard and showed me the fruit hanging heavy on the limbs. He figured, and I agreed, that he ought to pick out about a hundred tons, just about all profit to him. "Be a nice year, for a change," he said.
When we got back to the yard he asked, "I was supposed to take the wife to town today."
Then I knew what was going to happen. I just knew it. I felt it coming.
"If you're going that way, would you mind giving her a lift? Save me a trip, and I've got some things to do around here."
T wouldn't mind at all," I said. I felt it coming.
Mrs. Perkins was ready to go.
She was taller than her husband. She wore country-style capris that ended mid-calf, a soft blue blouse, and a red bandana around her hair. She was about forty, I judged. like I said, I just knew what was going to happen.
Mr. Perkins held the door of my car for his wife to climb inside. I started the engine without looking at her.
She said, "Thanks, Ed," as he closed the door. He was about ten years older than she was.
He came around to my side of the car. "I'll be picking pears next week. See you then."
I waved to him. Backing around so I would miss his tractor, I pulled out of the yard and up over a small rise that cut his house off from any view except that of pear trees, and headed down the road.
Mrs. Perkins had a plain face, but her sldn was smooth, soft, and her mouth was not a harsh straight line like the mouths of most of the women around Tongue River. Her mouth curved, her lips seemed full and ripe, and she turned them toward me and said, "Can I call you Giff?"
"Yes, Mrs. Perkins. I'd be glad if you did."
"Call me Lillian."
We drove along the river for awhile, not saying anything. The paved road, to avoid a high steep cliff that had intimidated the highway department, rose up a steep bluff. On top, a dirt road led away from the highway.
Mrs. Perkins said, "Turn in here."
I didn't play any games. I didn't ask if she wasn't going to town, or wasn't she going to visit Aunt Mathilda. I turned where she said to turn.
We drove in more silence until the road made a fork and she said, "Go right."
I bore right.
The road petered out to nothing. It seemed that there had been an old mine here once and the road used to go to it, carrying the diggers in but never getting much of an opportunity to carry whatever was being mined out, since there obviously turned out to be precious little of it, whatever it was. I parked not far from what appeared to be the remains of the gaping hole in the ground, the caved-in entrance to the old mine. All traces of man's energy expended were gone except for the hole, and nature had worked hard itself trying to close that. Brush had almost overgrown what was left of the road and the car, where I parked it, was shielded by the brush even though probably nobody ever came here anymore and there wasn't even a jet in the sky flying from Seattle to LA. Just me and Mrs. Perkins.
"Let's get in the back seat," she said. We each got out of our respective sides and climbed in the back.
"Take off your pants," she said.
I looked at her, having expected her at least to hem and haw a little bit. She was unbuttoning her blouse. "Take off your pants," she repeated. "Not a virgin, are you?"
I couldn't let her think that, not her too, so I said, "No," probably weakly. Oh Christ, I thought. She's a real fucker. She'll want to fuck all day and what I'll do is come when she first touches me and it'll stay soft the rest of the afternoon. I thought it was going to be a painful, very long drive the rest of the way to town.
I unbuckled my belt. It was funny to be undressing sitting down. I pushed the front seat forward so it would lay over the wheel and give us more room. I pushed my pants down around my knees and sat there in my shorts, my prick hidden among the white folds of jockies, keeping its head down.
Lillian was reaching behind her back to unfasten her brassiere. She thought about it, whether it was worth it or not, and asked, "You want some tits too, or just cunt?"
"Oh, I don't know." I felt like a fool. "Whatever you want to give me."
She decided against the bother of unfastening her brassiere and let her breasts stay in the tight clasps of white on her chest. They might have sagged a little and embarrassed her. She kicked her shoes off with the toes of her feet, unzipped the side of her capris, and pushed them off, stripping her panties down with them. She dropped it all on the floor of the car.
She turned toward me, sliding her ass on the seat. Between her legs, a fist of dark hair was like a little furry animal caught there.
She saw my shorts and said, "What the hell is that?"
I reached down to take off my shoes so I could get my pants off. I tried to brush my penis so it might get hard, but nothing happened. I got my shoes off, then folded my pants and lay them in the front seat.
I kept my shorts on, not wanting her to see my cock laying limp and useless over my sagging balls.
She looked at me peculiarly, then slid down on the seat and swung one leg up over the back rest, stretching the other over my lap. I saw all over her black bush, and just below it the opening of her cunt, her red lips, just before it sank down to the seat.
She slid her hand inside my jockies and took hold of me. I felt my cock coming up.
"Here it is," she said. "You're a big boy, Giff, and I know what will make you feel bigger."
I pushed my shorts down, wiggled my feet out of them. She held my balls in one hand, pulled on my cock with the other. I got on my knees between her legs. "Lillian," I said, "I thought I'd get to know you better before we got to this."
"You're nice," she said. "But all I want is a fuck. Then maybe I'll get to know you." Her head fell back against the car seat. "All I want is a fuck," she said again.
My cock grew in her hand until it was long enough for her to stroke. She raised both knees to my armpits and eased my body into position where she could aim my cock right between her legs. She touched it with the ends of her fingers, around the now huge head, its slope on top back to where my foreskin had been removed, around its circumference and back along the stiff, hard shaft to where it was attached to my body. My cock was exactly how it should be, and how I saw it just about every morning. Thanks to Mrs. Perkins' desires, it was going to go where it ought to go for a change.
Without any more pleasantries, she brought me to her and I slipped right inside like a grape being sucked into a mouth and she accepted the shaft that followed with eager pleasure, grunting once when I got all the way in her.
'That's a nice cock," she said, "never be shy about your cock, it's a nice cock, it's a long one and thick and nice and big. Oh it's so big, and hot, and hard. Never be shy about your cock."
That itself was enough to turn me on pretty good. I started fucking, slid out of her and pushed back in, and she pushed her hips up meeting me. I don't know if it was the combination of surprise and the speed with which we had stripped and started fucking, or if I was sensitive about fucking someone so much like all the women in my mother's sewing club, but my cock kept pumping into her and did not feel much like coming yet.
She squeezed my balls, felt them drawing up in their sack as my cock grew even inside her. Her hands ran all the way over my back, hugged me to her, grasped my ass. Her legs wrapped my waist in a scissors hug but my ass kept rising and falling, my prick rising and falling with it, humping in and out of her. She moaned a few times, wriggled her ass on the seat, then, to my surprise, pushed me away a little and brought both her legs up to her own chest.
My cock stayed in her, but she seemed to go off on her own, grabbed her legs around the knees and pressed against her breasts with her thighs. Her eyes closed and her head rolled from side to side.
Holding onto the back seat with one hand, I got a grip on the back of the front seat with the other. Kneeling at Lillian's bottom, I leaned my shoulders back, pushed my hips forward, and let her have the only thing she seemed to want, plunged it in as far as I could, our pubic hair clutching like lovers, my prick plunging deep into her steaming hole, her thick black forest.
My balls banged against her ass. I felt on the verge of my orgasm but also, peculiarly, seemed to be able to hold it, something I had never experienced before. The touch of her cunt was exquisite as my prick slid up it, but it wasn't like making love to Lisa. It wasn't like trying to fuck somebody I loved, or even knew.
And Mrs. Perkins only wanted a young prick. Who it was attached to did not matter.
And the queer at Mrs. Davis' motel was right, too. My prick didn't care where it was, it was simply enjoying the fuck.
So I gave it to Mrs. Perkins, right in her forty-year-old cunt, and she held onto her knees with her ass-end wide open for me and I pumped as hard as I could into it, in and out, in and out. My prick swelled, got thicker, and God but it was good not coming like this. I tried to reach the top of her snatch but each time I thought I might hit it she seemed to grow deeper, as if she was leading me further and further into a bottomless cave.
She started coming. She did. She started coming, squeezed her legs until she lay curled almost in a fetal position, almost perfectly still, her legs quivering and her body beginning to shake. She gasped through her open mouth and I knew what was happening to her. It was the first time a woman ever came with my prick in her. She got even wetter around her cunt than she had been before and she squeezed my cock with her muscles.
Her legs flew apart and I plunged onto her, grasping at the car seat with my knees, pushing hard against the wall with my feet, holding my cock far into her, thrusting even more if I could, and it was like all my blood vessels in my legs closed, sealed tight, and suddenly opened up when I started to come, blood shooting through my body, pump after pump of my heart thrusting the blood through my tightened veins, like my semen bursting out of the head of my prick as hard as a twenty-year-old can shoot.
"Aaaahhhh," Mrs. Perkins cried, "aaaahhhh, that's it, I feel it, come in me, pump me," and her ass raised for me, her hands held my ass firmly between her thighs.
I held onto her, my arms around her neck, until I was finished.
Her body gave another involuntary shudder, and her legs flopped to the sides of my hips.
I began to think that Mrs. Perkins was the reason why her husband looked so old. I didn't know if fucking like that would make a young man old or an old man young. "Do you do your husband like that?"
T never fucked him. We make love. We don't fuck like that. I just fucked you. And you fucked me. I like that more." She pulled away from me, sat up, and started mopping her crotch with a tissue from her pocket book. "You better clean yourself up. We have to be on the way, I have to be in town before long."
I wiped myself with the tail of my shirt and started pulling on my pants.
"It's strangers," she said.
"What?"
"Strangers. I can only fuck like that with strangers.
I can't do it with anybody I know, not even my husband. Especially my husband."
"Why not?"
"How do I know. I'm not a psychiatrist. I just like strangers."
I kissed the side of her face, but she turned away. It was as if she wanted no tenderness, just the fuck. As if she reserved all her tenderness for her husband, while refusing at the same time to show him just how much she liked, needed, and wanted a big prick ramming up her cunt.
We climbed into the front seat. Everything was cleaned up and we looked very presentable, as if nothing at all had occurred except that the Exchange man had kindly given Mrs. Perkins a ride into town.
I dropped her in front of the emporium. It was about two o'clock.
"I'll need a ride home," she said.
My heart skipped a beat. I wanted to give her another ride, since we would have to pass the same turn-off to the old mine and I suspected that she would be unable to resist another dip into the sexuality of life. I was pleased that I was in the right place at the right time to give it to her, and was beginning to shed' some of my burden of being a country cherry. But at the same time I did not want to drive her home where I would have to face Mr. Perkins waiting beside the tool shed again. I had liked him and did not really want to boldly drive into his yard after fucking his wife, with him knowing exactly what I had done, had not been able not to do.
"Couldn't you catch a ride with a friend?" I asked, not meaning it.
"Don't be silly," she said. "Be here at three thirty." She walked into the store.
I was weak. I thought I might find the strength to face Mr. Perkins, if I was able to screw, his wife again.
Maybe he wouldn't be outside anyway, maybe he'd be on the far side of the orchard when I got her home.
So I went back to Mrs. Davis' motel to rest. The logger's wife watched me park the car and I toyed with the image of knocking on her door, screwing her without a word, until three thirty, but instead of marching straight to her and sticking it in I only waved and went to my own cottage.
I thought I saw her own hand go up in a little wave. I thought I was making headway, if after five or six days of waving to her she had finally acknowledged my presence. Her logger must have had a real tree, between his legs, because she did nothing all day as far as I could tell except sit there beside that window and wait for him to bring it home to her.
When I went back to the emporium at three thirty Mrs. Perkins was not alone.
Oh Jesus, she had a friend with her who was about thirty five.
They both saved their tendernesses for their husbands. Their fucking they had saved for me.