Church in the Wildwood

by Hunter James

At the top of the stairs the long day gathered itself into an eerie twilight. Voices far off from "the old Negro hollow" hung heavily in the dusk, with latent foreboding and terror, as though after all this time nobody had ever learned to feel quite at ease on nights when the black people gathered to hold their prayer-meetings in the old Piney Grove church.

Looking back on it in later years, Ryerson Hezakiah Moffit Goode realized that everybody on his side of the Great Ravine was doomed never to think of those mournful chants as anything other than sinister growls coming from the darkest reaches of the forest, from some dark part of a primordial backwater no white man had ever dared penetrate, where none would ever think of going; mournful cries threatening their world as nothing before had ever threatened it, wild, mysterious, implacable.

Not even the forced laughter of those who gathered at that hour on his front porch and pretended to look with scorn on "the nigger heaven and hell" could speak with ease of what was actually meant by those strange voices.

It was as if all of what they were hearing went back to ages now lost to memory, back to ages and eternities without light or laughter, a kind of doom that hung over them all, as if their own lives had been swallowed up and lost in the vast darkness of the summer evening, with only the sighs of men and women long dead and the cry of nightbirds far out in the pines to see them through the difficult hours till bedtime.

Ryerson would often sit there and listen as the old people sat rocking and talking of a forgotten era when laughter and song came far more easily to their kind, his own father remembering and retelling all the stories once told by far more elderly men who seemed always to remember when life was good in America.

Ryerson was had just turned thirteen and his cousin Tess, who lived nearby and often came to sit with him on Sunday afternoons, was barely a year older, a pretty thing, blonde, an exquisite flirt, and already looking like the most seductive streetwalker in all of Old Winston.

In those early days, when he first began thinking of her in that way, he just couldn't figure it. What was that strange new power had come bursting in on him without any warning at all? He sure didn't know what to call it, but it struck with such destructive force that forever after that he could recall the very moment he felt its impact. All he could think of was one of those love potions his teachers had read about in English class: two drops on your eyelids while asleep and you dote on the first girl that crosses your path of vision when you awake.

Yes, and who might it be but his favorite cousin Tess, who lived nearby and often came to sit with him on Sunday afternoons. His good fortune was that she had been smitten by the same dark force as he, and had begun to hint at intimacies unbecoming for a girl her age—and to whom other than her own cousin! Yes, it was certainly true: he was a lot luckier than he thought. When he tried to explain how he felt he found her far more receptive than he had expected, so receptive indeed that she had begun to show a whole new side of herself, though not until the growups had piled into his dad’s new Olds and went roaring off for their Sunday afternoon pleasure drive. That was before the war had come and with it gas rationing, making it impossible to keep up the old ways.

What forced him out of all reason to kiss his cousin he was never sure. He was certain even before he did so that she would not return the favor. Absolutely unthinkable, he told himself, as he abruptly placed his lips on hers. Then everything really went all crazy.

“Not bad, Ry. I don’t suppose you need to practice, but let’s try it again.”

This time he felt her tongue in his mouth, but she held back his hand as it began to slither up her thigh.

“Wondered when you were going to get around to that,” she said.

“How far can we go?”

“Don’t know, sweetheart. Let me think about it.”

“Well, I understand it’s gonna get right expensive if that damned Roosevelt gets back in office.”

“What on earth are you talking about.”

“Well, it looks like he’s gonna be taxing us for even thinking about . . . well, you know.”

“Not sure I do know.”

This time he went for her breast and again she held him back.

“We’re cousins, Ry. When are you gonna try to remember that.”

“Well, if both of us were to forget, that’s when that old tax is gonna come down on us. Heard Mom talking about it to Aunt Sarah—how Roosevelt has it right at the top of the list if he wins another term. She thinks he’s the Antichrist anyway.”

“Tax it how, sweetheart, as though I had any idea what you’re talking about? And you know as well as I that your mother would never talk out loud about anything of the sort. I suppose this is just one of your jokes. Like who’s gonna know?”

“Well, the old fart has his spies everywhere.”

“I declare, Ry, I do wish you would stop that kind of talk.”

He went for her breast again, but she again held him back. “Will you stop it? Didn’t you even go to Sunday School this morning.”

“Sunday School Church, too. Boring.”

“Why do you keep trying to kiss me then . . . and do all those other things.”

“Why’d you let me.”

“I didn’t go—to Sunday School I mean.”

“All I can say is that that old Secretary of Pussy Alerts is gonna be mighty busy. I guess some kind of alarm will go off when you really get down to it.”

“Oh, shut up, Ry. I don’t want hear anymore of your silly talk.”

“Kiss you again?”

“You know very well that you cannot. Are you drunk? You are, aren’t you? Don’t deny it. You’ve been sneaking into your dad’s popskull again.”

“Relieves the pain in my knee. Now they say I’ve gotta have another operation. Damn me.”

He got up and went back inside, feeling himself all sticky and wet inside.

“Come back here. Where are you going?”

“Back in a second sweetheart. Need to dry myself off, some clean jeans.” He did so and this time brought back the bottle of popskull.

“Here ‘tis. Wanta little snort?”

“Oh, my god. Well, why not. I’ll be a sure enough depraved creature before I get away from here this afternoon.”

She downed two long gulps. Then made a face. “God, that stuff is nasty.”

“But you already knew that, didn’t you. I reckon you’ve been sneaking into your own old man’s supply.”

“Not so, Ry. And I don’t want you getting dependent on that stuff either. You hear me? I know you have your football knee for an excuse. But that’s not good enough. That’s not excuse enough for you to go off and be a regular drunkard.”

He felt her hand again lying salaciously close to his phallus.

“Wanta have a look? Might as well have a good understanding of what you know only as a blind man might know it.”

“Better not. Not right out here on the porch.”

“You know nobody’s here.”

“Ry, you just keep that thing where it belongs.”

They both watched it swell in his trousers. She left the swing and went down to sit on the porch steps.

He had gone off again. “Back in a minute, Tess. Gotta chance again” Then half to himself: “My god!. Mama will know for sure what that stuff is. Lord help me, I hope I can get it washed and ironed before she catches on.”

He came back just as she returned to the swing. Sure is big, isn’t it. My lord, bigger than a nigger dick.”

“How would you know about that? You been screwing those folks over in Piney Grove.”

“Are you crazy? Even if it held the vaguest interest you think I would risk getting all those germs?”

“What germs?”

“What germs do you think?

“Don’t know about any germs.”

“Well, let’s talk about something more pleasant, shall we?”

She pretended to study the cars going by in the road, acting as if she had no interest at all in his dirty talk. He had known or suspected for a long time that she was not exactly new at dirty talk and maybe a whole lot more than just dirty talk. There was no talk at school. She kept her little secrets very carefully guarded. Yet it wasn’t what he suspected that gave him a hard-on almost every time he looked at her. Something far more subtle. Something that he would have felt even he did not realize she was already practicing to be the queen of New Orleans whorehouses. Still, he would not have been so anxious perhaps, would not have feared that he was passing up a chance of greatness if he did not know there was someone else, if weren’t for all those sly innuendos she slipped into her speech.

Along toward dark, he again turned to his cousin, who watched him with a sly

look of promise. He slid his hands around her, going for her breasts until she again held him back. She tensed momentarily and then relaxed. He drew back and began to undo his jeans, watching her expression. She gave a slight shudder of delight as his member sprang out of his britches.

“At least eight inches, Tess, maybe nine. Don’tcha at least wanta feel?”

She gently removed his arm from around her neck. “I just don’t know, R.H. Maybe we’d better not. Not yet. I just don’t know how I feel about that.”

-*-

The next Sunday it was much the same. He truly did dote on her and maybe that was the day he understood that she had some of the same feeling for him. He sneaked a flask out of his jacket pocket, having filled it with his father’s expensive whisky and hoping the occasion would soon arise for him to introduce Tess to some of the most potent drink known to man, not counting white mountain liquor.

“Oh, you’re at it again, are you?”

“Good stuff. Store bought. Small batches of Knob Creek. Nothing else like it on the market anywhere. Just doesn’t get any better than that.”

As always, they waited discreetly in the porch swing until the grownups had all piled into his father’s new Olds and went off for their Sunday afternoon drive. They swapped drinks and he began to feel her hand creeping up his thigh again.

She took another stiff swallow and now he could see that she was really beginning to feel it. He knew she was ready now.

Her hand went all the way to his groin and she began to massage him gently.

“You’re done this before, haven’t you. Don’t deny it. I can tell.”

“How? Somebody else been messing with you?”

“Wanta have a look?”

She waited a moment longer, looking out at the road. “Okay, gimmie another drink first.”

She took two big ones and then fondled his cock like a jeweler evaluating the value of a diamond, counting off the inches with her finger.

“Well, maybe you’re right. Eight inches for sure. Maybe nine.”

“Closer to nine.”

She began to massage it again.

“Honey,” he said, putting one arm around her neck and leaving her hand as it was. He put his hand on top of hers. “Maybe we should wait. Ry, you know we have to wait. It doesn’t matter what we want. We have to wait.”

“Why, Tess. Give me a reason. It’s always wait, wait, wait.”

“You know cousins don’t do that. Not if they have any kind of decent upbringing. Wait until school starts. I will find you somebody.”

“I may not be in love with your ‘somebody.’ Anyway, you know I’ve never had trouble finding girls. It just isn’t the same. I mean, the way I feel about you. Just isn’t the same.”

“I can’t talk about this anymore right now. Now you just keep your hands where they belong. And tell me, will you, just tell when was the last time you ever even saw the inside of a church. You sure do keep wanting to get into terribly dangerous territory, sweetheart”

“Tell me all about those black people over in Piney Grove.”

“Are you crazy? Sounds like more in your line. You aren’t afraid of germs?”

“To hell with the germs.”

He stood up with the same great swelling inside his trousers.

“Ready for a little action now?”

“Let’s just talk about that later, shall we? Anyway, how do you propose to pay Roosevelt’s new tax?”

-*-

In those days a Great Depression hung over the land, and a threat of war. Each year brought closer the dread that awaited them all. As children they had listened closely to the grownups as they talked gloomily of the coming hard days. Now they were teenagers, almost grown themselves, and soon drawn into the real world of their parents. Until now they had given little thought to politics or to that "devil Roosevelt" who, as his mother always said, was "working night and day to draw us into a European war that is absolutely none of our business." Or to set up his Department of Pussy Affairs.

Then the war did come, and there were no more chocolate bars in the school cafeteria. No Camels in the stores, no Lucky Strike Greens. Only brand names he had never heard of. Often while the others talked of olden times when “life was good”, or went off for a ride in the Olds, he and Tess gradually found themselves bored with just sitting fondling each other in the porch swing and so got in the habit of wandering off through the deepening dusk far down the old, smoky trail that led past the pine and sweet gum thickets that bordered the good Felton pastureland. Sometimes even farther, on down across another pasture to the timber where he had built a treehouse that summer as a good hiding place to smoke cigarettes.

Then the war did come, and there were no more chocolate bars in the school cafeteria. No Camels in the stores, no Lucky Strike Greens. Only brand names he had never heard of. Often while the others talked of olden times when “life was good”, or went off for a ride in the Olds, he and Tess gradually found themselves bored with just sitting playing with each other in the porch swing and had got in the habit of wandering off through the deepening dusk far down the old, smoky trail that led past the pine and sweet gum thickets that bordered the good Felton pastureland. Sometimes even farther, on down across another pasture to the timber where he had built a treehouse that summer as a good hiding place to smoke cigarettes.

Those early evening hours when Tess was with him were the best times of the whole day, the scent of the honeysuckle intolerably sweet at that hour, mingling with the cry of the doves and whippoorwills. Once they did not stop at the tree-house to talk their own private talk away from the grownups. Some of the older boys would almost always be there, but only he and his cousin were alone.

He and Tess talked their own private talk on the path that led on down through the big timber toward a steep embankment overlooking the great hollow that divided the white community from the black. It was there that the Feltons got most of their help during the cotton harvesting season. He flung himself down atop the embankment and then drew Tess down beside him. She looked at him with a sly look of promise. Sliding his hands around her, he traced the round curves of her breasts, feeling her tits harden beneath his fingertips. He drew back and began to undo his jeans, watching her expression. She gave a slight shudder of delight as his member spring full blown out of his britches.

“Come on, Tess. Just one feel. What can it hurt?”

She gently removed his hand from her breast. “I’m just not ready for that, Ry. Besides, I don’t wanta spend good money paying Roosevelt’s new value-added tax.”

“I guess that would be a burden. I don’t mean you couldn’t afford—only that why should we give that character anything.” She looked at him again as he began to get himself off.

“Phenomenal. I can see why Evalina can’t wait to get over here and do her cleaning.”

“What do you mean? Where did you ever get that idea?”

“Ah, you think I don’t have my sources.”

-*-

A week—maybe two weeks later--he did manage at last to kiss her again, a good full kiss this time, with her clinging to him as thought she had at last made up her mind. He felt it on his lips, on his tongue, burning, rapturous, unforgettable as she again pushed him away.

“Just listen to me for a moment, Ry, old chum. We are cousins, you know. First cousins at that. How many times have I had to remind you of that? Reckon we’re supposed to be doing this at all? How do you really feel about it? Aren’t you a little worried even a little bit?”

“Of course not. It ancient times it was almost expected—required.”

“What ancient times?”

“When times were good in America. Wanta go back up to the treehouse? More privacy up there.”

“I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that,” she said in a voice grown slightly husky, maybe a little hesitant, maybe because she, too, had felt—and she had almost said as much—the fiery pulsations of desire. Yet she did not at once move away. He slowly reached around her began to undo her dress from the back. He could see with the undoing of the first two buttons that she wore no bra. Probably nothing more than panties. “Ry, we really haveta stop. Please. Just button me back up. Do you want me running back to the house like this?”

All he knew was what Tess was always hinting at, what he had learned from Evalina, The married girl who came three times a week and had begun to work a blow job regularly into her schedule. He had come up behind her once, innocently enough, and her hand went instantly to the swelling in his trousers. After that she had always sought him out if he had not found her first. He had actually got inside her only once—well, actually three times though all in a single afternoon, one of those rare days when he had been left at the house alone.’

Lord, child, I aint got no cleaning done today. Your mamma gon have my tail.

I”ll tell you her your phoned and said you were feeling poorly.

Better tell her something. Cause I sho aint got nothing done.

One more time, Evalina. One more time before you go.

Gotta go, honey. My old man he always comes home drunk on Friday w and wants a piece right off. I spect it’’ be hell to pay if I ain’t there waitin’ on him..

“Getting kinda late,” Tess said, after their kissing got a little too hot and heavy. “Reckon we ought to be heading on back?”

“Maybe. I don’t know. Sun’s still above the pines. Why don’t we walk on a ways.”

He could feel himself getting hard again as they paused momentarily at the edge of the great ravine that separated their white world from the black village. The chants and the great wild noises of the church seemed to draw them on even though they had often been warned never to go into the village alone.

“Ry. I want to ask you something. Have you ever really slept with a nigger? Besides Evalina, I mean.”

“Not exactly.”

“What does that mean? “Not exactly.’”

“You know Evalina?”

“Sure, she’s nice.”

“A real nice looker. Sometimes she’ll go down on me and, boy, does she really give me the works. I guess I ought to say: ‘Every chance she gets.’” Hard to get a real opportunity with mother always around, working her half to death. Besides, I know you’ve had plenty of guys in your life. Maybe every night in the back seat of that old schoolbus they park near your house. Don’t deny it.”

She slipped silently down the cleft of the hill, over some rocks, and finally into the grassy bottom near a stream.

“Who were they, Tess. You can tell me.”

“Don’t be a perfect dunce, Ry.”

“Who then?”

She stopped and looked at him with steel in her eyes. “Uncle Howard.” She paused to wait for his response. He stood with his mouth open, shaking, suddenly angry.

“Did you hear me. I said ‘Uncle Howard. That lascivious old bastard. I could kill him easy, and may do so yet!”

“Uncle Howard? Your mother’s brother?” He grabbed her and shook her violently. “You let that bastard do that to you and all you is push me away. Damn you, Tess.” She shook free. “Stop it, goddammit. He raped me! Don’t you understand that? He raped me? I’ll see him dead or in the chair for it. I’ll see him in hell!”

“Been keeping it might quiet. You think anybody’s gonna listen to you now? If you really want the bastard dead, as I do, I think I can arrange a hit and run”.

“I should never have mentioned it at all. But you don’t realize how young I was. Only seven or eight. How did I know what he was doing?. He hurt me plenty and seemed to enjoy that more than the actual act. But he also taught me a lot and for just a brief time there it got so I was sorta looking forward to his coming, but I tell you this: That little old thing of his sure ain’t nothing to brag about.”

“I’ll cut the goddamn thing off. Catch him out by the road some night and . . . I knew there was something about him I didn’t like besides his politics. He’s always talking up that damn Roosevelt, you know.

He wondered if he should attempt just once more to get her down in the grass before they reached the top of the next hill, but she kept going on ahead of him. That goddamn Howard! Yet she was right. It wasn’t the same. It wasn’t as though she might fall in love with the old lecher. Or had she already fallen in love with him?. He began to feel a little sad and remembered a fragment of poem he had read in school:

What though the radiance which was once so bright

Be now forever taken from my sight,

Though nothing can bring back the hour

-*-

Sometimes in those first days after his treehouse took shape the older boys came too. Mostly to bum cigarettes and to stand around and laugh and hold circle jerks.. Always wanting him to join in. Jesus. A disgusting sight to be sure. Handling each other, jacking each other off. He just hadn’t realized that there were so many queers in the world, if, in fact, that is what they were. Some of them had taught him how to smoke cigarettes. They took a fancy to Tess, and perhaps to Ry as well, for he was already well on the way to becoming the best quarterback in Old Fork history—alas, all before the injury that had played havoc with the future he had carved out for himself.

Soon the infamous bastards of those earlier years would no longer be welcome in his private tree-grown alcove, for now that he was emerging as the next great quarterback of the New World he no longer went out of his way to befriend them. So it was that he had begun to think of treehouse as his own private lasciviously decorated bordello.

“Just too many goddamn queers in the world?”

“Why do you say so?”

“All those guys I thought were perfectly normal started coming down here to play around. You know, play with each other.”

“Yes, I’ve seen them, though I would never in the world let them know what I had seen. And to me reassuring that you find it as revolting as I do.”

His breath came hard as he put his arm around Tess and drew her closer to his secret hideaway.

Then, as always, that stubborn resistance. “No, Ry. Not now. Not alone with you up there.”

“When then?”

“Dunno. You’ve gotta give me a little time to think.

So on they went. He could never remember exactly what it was on that July evening that led them so far away from their enchanting grove and on down through the big timber toward the old Negro hollow. As they drew closer, crossing the deep ravine, the moans and chants emerging from the Negro church that sat atop the little hill seemed almost to draw them on. How many times had they been warned never to go alone into that dark village!

Yet on we went, with hardly a thought of any danger that might intrude upon our path, unmindful that in some future age we would mock our innocence and curse those who made each day seem a simple and joyous thing, when life, as the grownups always said, was still good in America.

When was that time? When was there ever true contentment in the lives of their parents or grandparents or even in the lives of all those old people, long dead, whose portraits hung on the walls of their houses? How many were able to screw their own kin?. A past-time for decadent Southerners only. How many of the women had turned out to be sluts. He knew that at least one aunt, possibly illegitimate, though the family was always quiet about that, had gone off to Detroit City and become one of the great streetwalkers of her time. Or so that talk went when the grownups sat on the front porch, dropping their voices whenever they talked deliciously of their relative’s renown.

The good times? The lovely times when all was right in America? When were they? Where were they? He never did find out; but on this evening they looked into a part of that life they had never seen and would never forget. They suddenly found themselves far beyond the old hollow, beyond the pinewoods, almost in front of the church, with the afternoon fast dying, dusk so thick you could feel it on your skin, in your eyes, and the tremulous voices of prayer-meeting night filling all the world with a melodic and mournful chant.

Just as they were about to turn away, fearful of their daring trespass, a big deacon late for the service snared them by the shoulders and dragged them up the steps of the decrepit, pine-boarded church, where now the chant grew more eerie and threatening still.

They stood in the door, he and his cousin, anguished and yet a little bewildered as the church momentarily fell silent. The deacon, his big hands almost touching the ceiling, held sway over the whole congregation, hushing the voices, hushing the preacher himself.

"Why," says he. "Dese hyah chilluns come all de way 'cross de big hollow, come all de way from whar de white folks lives. Deys all good folks, de chosen uv de Lawd, so de good book say."

All smiles, the good old preacher came down from the pulpit and led them to the place of honor: right up front onto the mourning bench, where now they were esteemed as guests more exalted than any who had ever dared cross their threshold, proud to have been chosen of "de Lawd." The good book also spoke of a time when there were giants in the earth, and Ry could not help thinking of that time, whenever it was, as he and Tess sat in the seat where only the most worthy could sit, and found themselves praised no less than those mighty men who first brought fire down from heaven, emissaries of a higher civilization, just as they themselves were at this very moment, glorified and set on their throne of honor by the very black worshippers of whom they had heard so many tales of horror.

Esteemed as they were, as guests more exalted than any who had ever dared cross the threshold of the tiny church, proud to have been chosen of "de Lawd," Ry could not forget that now the full night had come, with only the light of a failing lantern to guide the preacher back up the steps to the pulpit.

The lantern failed at last, leaving them in a darkness relieved only by the late sun and a faint light from the dirt street. Now the tumult rose higher still, and never once did the old preacher cease uttering his eerie chant, not even when he fell backwards upside down across the steps and lay as dead, eyes staring at the ceiling, sorrowfully repeating the frightful moan of which only these few words could Ry recognize:

Chosen uv de lawd

dat's whut de good book say;

O yea my brethren dat's whut

de good book say!

Always grinning and nodding, the old preacher would come down from the pulpit or rise from wherever he had stumbled and fallen and deliver his mysterious chant to them alone. Giants in the earth they might have been, as in olden times, but the hour had grown late, and now the congregation rose with a new voice of thunder and emitted another terrifying moan of good and evil, the same dark, mystifying cry they had so often heard from way across the hollow on Sunday mornings or on prayer-meeting nights.

Honored, yes, —but now everything seemed to change. He felt his cousin beginning to shiver, sobbing softly as she seized his arm with new fright. He put his arm around her and let his hand rest on her breast.

"Ry? Listen to me. I wanta go. Be dark soon and I'm so cold."

"Cold? In August. My lord, it must be a hundred and fifty degrees in here.”

"Just know how I feel, sweetheart. Cold, Ry, terribly, terribly cold. And the germs, my sweet. Don't you remember?"

"Germs again?"

"You know what they say. How easy it is to catch their germs."

“Who says?”

“Well, I hear a lot of talk about it.”

Now she was actually crying and shouting out her fear. No great matter. Simply one more crazy voice lost amid the thunderous moan that now pervaded the church and all the world outside.

"I can feel them, Ry. On my skin. The germs. We don't know what they are. We don't know they’ll do to us."

Ry couldn't say anything to get her mind off the "germs." He even imagined that he had begun to feel them himself. Like a thousand black ants crawling on the inside of your skin. The slow, insidious coming of the Black Death.

"I can feel them all over me, sweetheart. I just wanta go."

"Stop it, Tess. Evalina comes every day to cook and clean and nothing is every said about any 'germs.' You think I would let here suck me off if I was scared of germs?”

"That's different."

"How different?”

Even as he said it he could feel again the strange, creepy sensation beneath his flesh. He knew it was nothing. Yet he knew they couldn't get up and just walk out without any kind of explanation—they had come too far—and he knew he could never admit to Tess that he'd felt something crawling all over him, exactly as she had, and that it might be germs, or even the Black Death, or maybe ants that had come out of the dead wood, which was about the only kind of wood that kept the church still standing.

He could not let her know that he, too, had been thinking of nothing else but escape. He could not help feeling, even now, that he was being prepared for some primordial orgiastic rite. And his cousin’s naked body would almost certainly be a part of it. And just as surely they would cut off his throbbing penis and feed it to her as a roast’n’ear. In some such way were all those old Aztecs honored, he had always heard, before getting their heads lopped off.

Even as he said it he could feel again the odd sensation beneath his flesh. He drew her closer, massaging her breast gently at first and then grasping it with new fervor, and now her curvaceous buttocks as well. Her voice grew less strained. It was as far as he had ever got with him. Except for the kiss. But at last she took his hand away, hanging on to with a deathly fear.

"I still feel them, darling. And it's so dreadfully, deathly cold."

"It's nothing, Tess," he said as he sat back down, kissing her and beginning to massage her breast even more passionately. "I tell you it's nothing.”

He said no more, trying to convince himself that there really was nothing to it at all. They stood again, with the congregation, and now he reached down and found the channel between her buttocks, his fingers moving gently along the fringe as he leaned her with the great swelling in his jeans. He placed her hand on top of it.

“No, Ry! Don’t think this is the time or place.”

“Maybe you’d rather have uncle Howard.”

“Shut the hell up.”

“Well, at least you can’t pretend I haven’t been in church today.”

She fell almost violently against him, still trembling with her head buried in his chest and crying out breathlessly just as a lone woman in back of the church rose to sing a powerful, stirring rendition of Amazing Grace. The congregation fell still.

His muscular hard-on had gone away during the woman’s solo. Now he could feel it coming back. Now he, too, only wanted to get out, hoping to find the way, if indeed it could be found, that would lead them once more down through the old hollow and up the unseen woodland paths, back to the safety of his treehouse and later, much later, he hoped, to their own front porches, where the old people would still be talking, as always, of a time when life was good in America.

So he said no more, trying to convince himself in silence that there was really nothing to it at all. He knew they couldn't get up and walk out without any kind of explanation—they had come too far—and he knew he could never admit to Tess that he'd felt something crawling all over him as well, exactly as she had, and that it might be germs, or even the Black Death, or maybe ants that had come out of the dead wood, which was about the only kind of wood that kept the church still standing.

He could not let her know that he, too, had been thinking of nothing else but escape. He could not help feeling, even now, that he was being prepared for some primordial orgiastic rite. He couldn't help feeling uneasy even when the old preacher had led them to the seat of honor. In some such way were all those old Aztecs honored, he had always heard, down in old Mexico, before getting their heads lopped off.

Now he only wanted to get out, hoping to find the way, if indeed it could be found, that would lead us once more down through the old hollow and up the unseen woodland paths, back to the safety of their own front porches, where the old people would still be talking, as always, of a time when life was good in America.

-*-

Once they got to the other side of the ravine she clung to him more warmly, vowing neer to go back to the old Negro church. “The treehouse,” she muttered. “Maybe a smoke before we go back.” She went up first and lay back as though she knew what to expect. Ry went for his package of Spuds, one of the crazy false cigarettes that had come on the market after Pearl Harbor, and at the same time for her silken thigh. Her hand barred the way. “Where is this leading, Ry? What if I should get pregnant? You just simply have got to stop acting this way.”

“You mean Howard is good enough, but I am not.”

“I will take care of that old goat in my own good time. You will see. I think I would be horribly at fault if I didn’t.”

He smoked his tasteless Spud. She let hers die without ever taking a puff. If only he could get one bare peek at her small blondish cunt! He kept thinking of the first clover in springtime, wanting to kiss her again, wanting to get his mouth onto her most secret clit, something he had never done or even thought of doing, even to his cousin. The thought of the rape only made her seem more enticing. He watched her as she took up the smelly Spud, savoring the thought of the ripe musky smell of secret parts. Oh, how hot and sweet they would be!

“Yes,” he said. “We must go on. Otherwise, our salvation would not be complete. At least let me have a little taste.”

“Taste of what?”

“You know.”

“And that is all?”

“I swear.”

She slowly spread and pulled her panties to one side.”

“No, just take them off.”

She took them off. “You said only a taste. You know it can’t be any more than that.”

The scent was lest like spring clover than he thought, but the taste was savory enough. He went after her madly. She began to push him back, telling him “No” between her soft moans, and then no more pushing at all, no more anything, until she cried out the final ecstatic moan for which he had been waiting.

She fell back limply, breathless, as did he, and they both sat silent till she said.

“Well, sweetheart, I guess you want me to repay you in kind.”

“Don’t believe I’ve got anything left. All wet and sticky inside my jeans. I guess Mom will know exactly what that old dried up smell is when she starts to wash them.”

“You want add blasphemy to all of your other trashy thoughts?”

The day had been long gone, and they both knew panic would have set out at the Big House, as their parents began to fret about where they were. He watched her as she wadded up her panties and threw them away. “Could you cum again?”

“We’d better say no more than that.”

His afternoons with Evalina had gone far toward transforming him into a Grand Master, but apparently Tess had not had the same sort of luck with Uncle Howard. That filthy bastard.

“Well, I can see you are going to be difficult right till the bloody end,” she said. “Still, I imagine you’ve learned a lot for only seventeen.”

“And you a lot more for only eighteen.”

Can we have just one more smoke now? Those damned Spuds aren’t worth a damn.”

He had to guess that she was satisfied enough. She resisted every other attempt at whole- sale seduction, thought their kissing was now hot and heavy.

“Better go, Ry,” she said in that husky voice that always drove him half wild. “Gotta go. My god, dad will kill me. He may guess everything.”

“What everything?”

“Everything we did and didn’t do. Come. Hurry. Help me down these steps, will you?” It was past ten o’clock before they found their way home, with only a half moon to light their way through the weeds and honeysuckle back up the long path toward home, where Tess could feel safe again. “Though god only knows what I will say to him parents.”

For all his success he could never count on her going with him alone to the old tree-house or to any other part of the property from which she could see the great hollow that lay between her and the most terrifying experience of her young life. He would always remember her almost hysterical cries even after the old deacon had come with his lantern to show them the way back to the footpath, even after they had met their own parents coming with flashlights from the other side of the hollow.

"What a shame that this had to happen," his mother said as they came up the back steps. "How could you do this, son, with none of us knowing where you were and what might have happened to you? Tess's parents are absolutely frantic. Did you not know that? How often have I told you never to cross into that village alone? And certainly I would never have expected you to do so when Tess was with you and looking to you for protection."

"Nobody needed any protecting."

"How can you know that, son? Tell me, how can you be sure? How can you know what might have happened in a place like that, when those people get to hooting and hollering the way they do?"

"Shame, son! Shame!"

He explained that they had been honored guests at the First Baptist Church of Piney Grove and that they had fought off all the germs and disease and that just when they thought they were lost and doomed to be slaughtered as innocents the good old deacon who first led them there had come to show them the way back to their own part of the world.

"Shame, Ry! This is really unfortunate. This is really a thing you surely should be ashamed of.”

He did not tell her how frightened his cousin had been—the fright he himself had felt—before the old deacon had come with his lantern. He had tried to hide his feelings from Tess as well, not very successfully, because she knew, or guessed, that they had got themselves lost in a landscape he had known almost as well as he knew his own house, almost before he knew it himself; and there really would have been a lot of explaining to do if the old deacon had not come to their rescue.

"Who was that man? Do you know his name? Never mind. It makes no difference. It changes nothing. The fact is that anything can happen in a place like that. Don't you know that? What on earth possessed you?"

He wasn't sure. When Tess's parents came to drive her home she was still shivering in spite of the hot August evening and wiping tears from her eyes. Did she now hate it that she had let him go so far?

“What are the tears for Tess?”

“It’s nothing, sweetheart. It’s really nothing at all.”

“You beginning to have regrets?”

“No! Oh my god, no. It was simply wonderful, Ry.”

“When can I see you again.”

“Let me think about it. I’m not sure. I think we’re supposed to go to Mobile sometime next week to visit my grandparents.”

“We’ve got an old Plymouth that still runs pretty good. I could come and pick you up. Just let me know when.”

“Darling, please just give me a little time to find out when it will be possible. A little time to think. Sometimes I think I have already committed the Unpardonable Sin.””

“I guess if that’s the case it won’t hurt to commit it again.”

“Oh, shut up. You have an answer for everything.’

When Tess's parents came to drive her home she was still shivering in spite of the hot August evening and beginning to cry again. Ry held her arm all the way out to the car.

"She thinks she caught something—some kind of germ," he told her father."

"Who is to say that she did not? You should look at yourself long and hard in the mirror, Ry. You should certainly pray to your god about the shame you have brought on this family. Taking our little girl into that filth. I’m afraid this will have to be the last of her visits for a while. You need to understand that the colored are different. I

think you should have learned that by now.”

Different, the color, yes, but maybe different in a better way, knowing how to take care of themselves, knowing how to enjoy life. He had never seen his own people get as much joy out of a church service as had those black field workers on that same night. He thought his uncle’s language a little overwrought for the occasion, but he sure wasn’t about to ask him out of the care for a fair fist fight. Yet he surely he did not feel ashamed, only a great joy of having committed a sin so magnificent that he would never possibly be able to describe in the book he planned to write someday.

Tell that goddamn Howard to keep his hands off her, you prick. How would you like toknow about that?

Shame indeed!

He had wanted to say all that and more, but he knew there would certainly be an awful lot of explaining to—to say nothing what it would do to Tess—if he flew back at him with that kind of information.

He did not any of them how frightened his cousin had been—the fright he himself had felt—before the old deacon had followed them out with his lantern, leaving them with just enough time to complete their act of “salvation” in his treehouse.

"Shame, Ry! Shame!"

Her father stuck his head out of the window while revving up his engine. “A lesson I hope you won’t soon forget.” Shame, indeed, and how much shame her old man could never have guessed. He would not understand about the “salvation.”

"Sure hope she won't be long getting her strength back. Them old germs ain't nothing to worry about nohow."

Shame, my boy! Shame!

He watched them back out from under the maples and turn south toward town, the tasy of her smelly savory cunt still in his mouth. Brush his teeth before church. He watched till the taillights went out of sight, then went back up to the porch and listened as the grownups talked again about the war and thank god for men like George Patton and what a fine thing it was on those long ago days when times were good in America.

-*-

Only two days later the people of old Winston read in the Evening Sentinel a story about a body found in a ditch not far from Bethabara and from Littleton’s home. “Police have identified the body as that of Howard Littleton, a 49-year-old banker who has been mentioned as possibly the next president of Wachovia Bank & Trust Company. As yet there are no suspects.”

“Reckon they’ll just put it down as an accident?” a reporter would ask

“Reckon so. No clues, no witnesses, nothing to go on—no indication that anyone wanted him dead.” the police chief would say.

“Maybe a rival for the bank presidency?”

“Don’t seem likely. We’ll look into it, to see if there’s anything there. Sho don’t look likely that we’ll find anything though.”