I slept through breakfast the next morning. Jack had already left for the office when Helen appeared in the bedroom quite excited.
"Someone's found Clyde," she announced.
I opened one eye and looked at my sister. She was holding a slip of paper in one hand and begging for my attention.
"Where?" I managed to ask.
"It's some kennel north of the city. The police picked him up running along the highway and brought him there." She was elated. "Isn't it grand? I'll be so glad to see him again."
I stepped out of bed and put my robe on. My sister was reading off the name of the kennel from the slip of paper.
"Are you certain it's Clyde?" I wanted to know.
"It must be," she assured me. "I just talked with the man who runs the place, and his description was uncanny. It could not be any other dog."
"I'm glad," I said, coming up to her and giving her a kiss on the cheek. "You're very fond of Clyde."
Her bosom heaved slightly and pushed gently against my own.
"Quick!" she said, grabbing both my arms. "I'll fry you an egg while you get dressed. I want to go over there this morning." She turned and ran in the direction of the kitchen.
I stepped across the hall into the bathroom. Removing my robe I sat on the toilet and reached for the hand mirror behind me. I was curious as to my condition and spread my legs.
Spreading the lips with the first two fingers of my right hand, I moved the fingers down two or three times more, separating the folds as much as I could to get a good look inside.
The soreness seemed to have disappeared. I ran the tip of one finger inside. The opening seemed normal. I tried two, and then three fingers. It stretched easily but was elastic enough to offer some resistance to being opened.
I breathed a sigh of relief. Everything was returning to a state of normalcy.
Spreading my legs a little wider, I held the mirror a foot away from it and tried to get an idea of its overall appearance. The outer lips didn't exactly close over everything. Well, I wasn't sixteen anymore either, I told myself.
The amount of hair growing around that region of me always struck me as excessive. Except for my head and under my arms I was not a hairy person, and could never understand why I had such growth down there.
I held the mirror closer to examine it. Hair grew thickly on both sides and down under. Rising slightly, I looked further on down and saw it growing around my asshole, although much more sparsely.
Sighing, I put the mirror down and stood all the way up. With two fingers, I gently tried to squeeze the outer lips shut. They mushed together nicely, but pouted open again immediately when I let go.
Helen was calling me that breakfast was about ready, and I turned to other matters.
She sat and watched me eating. Her conversation was very animated. I knew she was impatient to get out to the kennel and tried not to appear uninterested. She was planning a bath for Clyde the minute he got home, she told me.
As she knew the way, I let her drive although she offered the chore to me. While I listened to her talk I kept doing a little exercise I had been taught once which was supposed to strengthen the muscles around the opening to the vagina. It must have seemed to Helen that I was not paying attention.
"You're miles away, aren't you?" she was asking me.
I took notice and blushed.
"What are you thinking about, Bea?" she queried.
"I was thinking about a man having one the size of that pony's." Actually I had just come up with the thought in reply to her question.
"How would you ever find him?" Helen wondered. "Even if you did, he might be too hard to live with. You know? What kind of a husband would he make? Every girl around would be chasing him." She was thinking of Jack.
"I wonder though, does a man ever have one that big? Is it possible?"
We were passing a farm where some horses were grazing.
"Maybe you should move up to a horse," Helen suggested. "They're even bigger!"
The thought of something even bigger yet stuffing into me was a randy idea but frightening.
"Come on," I said. "I thought I was going to be killed." She was getting me excited talking about it that way. "Were you able to see? Did he finally get it all in?" I asked.
"I," she paused, "I think so. I couldn't believe it."
"Where did it all go?" I asked, amazed. I held up my hands in the manner of a fisherman. "It must have been this long," I said, looking at the distance between them. "Now, if you take that same length and lay it across me here," I explained, moving my hands to my body, "the end of it is way up here."
She shot a glance at where my hand rested. It was almost exactly between my breasts.
"It can't possibly go all the way up there, or can it?" I wanted to know.
"It stretches nice," Helen giggled.
"Let's see how you do when your turn comes," I said to her.
She giggled some more. We came to a crossroads, and Helen turned the car to the right. About two miles down the road we saw the sign indicating the kennel and turned into it. Pens were all around us filled with dogs of many different breeds, and the animals collectively made one great racket as we got out.
The noise brought a man running out of what must have been a private house at one time, but had been converted to an office and other facilities for the kennel.
"You the ladies for the collie?" he asked immediately. At our acknowledgment he motioned us to follow him, and we walked back along the pens to a small brick structure that looked of recent construction. A number of bricks that had not been used were still piled off to the left.
The man was tall, about six feet five or six inches, but had an enormous pot belly that hung out over his trouser belt. In profile the trouser belt made a diagonal line up to where it clung to the small of his back. His trousers were rather floppy, he had no ass to speak of, and were too long.
He yanked out a mess of keys from one pocket and looked through them until finding the right one.
"Here we go," he said, unlocking the door.
We followed him inside. About six stalls lined each side of the wall. They were very clean and seemed to incorporate every convenience available to the up-to-date kennel operator.
"We keep the real good dogs here," he informed us. "Your collie is in this one." He pointed to one marked number nine.
Helen walked over and called out Clyde's name. The big collie came up to the gate, wagging it tail, but I knew instantly Helen was looking at a dog other than her own.
"Oh, Bea," she said, disappointed. "It isn't him."
I came over and reached through the bars, patting the dog's head. "You could fool me, Sis. It's an amazing likeness," I told her.
"It's the eyes," she said, "and the coloring on the nose. See that pink splotch just at the beginning of the nose? Clyde has no pink on his nose. This isn't as good a dog as Clyde," she concluded.
He was a beautiful dog nonetheless.
"Too bad!" the man said. "Make a nice pet. You have kids?" he asked Helen and then fixing his eyes on me as if to ask the same question.
We shook our heads.
"Be good pet anyway," he went on. "Cops found this poor guy running along the interstate. Well," he declared, "somebody's going to claim him. Too good a dog."
We walked outside to the car. Helen was dejected and had little to say. The man wished her luck, and we drove off.
About a mile along the road her thoughts had absorbed her attention a little too much, and she failed to notice a wide truck coming in the opposite direction.
"Yipe!" I shouted, pointing.
She reacted instantly, swerving to the right, but overcompensated, and the car's right side went off the shoulder into a deep gully.
The car was not damaged, nor were we hurt, but Helen could not get enough traction to move the car either forward or backward.
"You try it, Bea," she suggested.
We exchanged places, but I had no better luck. The weight of the car needed both rear wheels to drive it, and one wheel just spun uselessly, barely touching the ground.
"We'll need a tow," I said. "You belong to the Automobile Club?" I asked her.
"Yes," she sighed, going through her purse. She found the card in her wallet and showed it to me. Something in her expression made me feel sorry for her. I patted her head.
"I'll go, Helen," I assured her. "It can't be more than a mile back there. You stay here."
She smiled at me. The warm smile of our childhood when we had just shared a candy bar, or when pushing little dolls around inside a doll house, our hands had accidentally bumped.
She leaned over and gave me a hug, and I could feel her heart beating through her skin.
Out on the road I was wishing I hadn't chosen to wear heels that day. I thought back to myself sitting in the bedroom that morning and making the choice. The road was level but at the pace I was trying to maintain, the walking was giving my muscles a workout.
As cars came up behind me, I tried slowing down to prevent too much of a bounce and swing to my butt. I would have welcomed a ride, but wasn't in the mood for offering myself as payment, even in jest.
Some cars slowed and went by. I noticed they contained couples, a not likely source for a hitch for someone like me. So many women, having once surrendered their names and identities to a man, are naturally insecure. Having an unperson then for a partner, the man will often seek a real individual elsewhere.
I thought of those guys as they went by. From the way one's face lighted up, I knew he would have offered me a lift if the wife had not been along. If women had anything approaching real freedom in the country, she would have been happy for him to stop.
An old black panel truck with white peace signs sloppily painted on it slowed down as it passed. A number of older teenage boys inside did some whistling and hooting. I waved at them good-naturedly.
It was a deserted section of the road. I could not recall any buildings between the kennel and where we had gone into the ditch. It was a cool day, and I was in no danger of working up a sweat.
The black panel truck had turned around and was slowly coming back the other way. As it came up abreast of me, it came to a stop. The driver, a young kid about twenty asked if I wanted a ride.
Some pleasant tone in his voice temporarily disarmed me and I said okay.
"I'm just going to the kennel," I said.
"Get in," he said in a matter of fact tone. "I'll turn around up ahead."
I walked around to the other side of the vehicle. A short, fat boy of seventeen or eighteen was already out of the truck and held the door open for me. I stepped up in, and the boy doing the driving told me to find a seat inside.
A curtain separated the body of the truck from the driving area, and as I stepped through, it took me a moment to become accustomed to the dimness inside. I soon noticed there were no seats. Two boys were seated on the floor near the rear. The floor was covered with blankets and sleeping bags.
The truck started up, and I sat down on one of the bags to keep from falling.
The boy who had been driving came through the curtain, and I concluded the fat boy must obviously be at the wheel. The boy sat down next to me.
"Peace!" he said, chewing on what must have been gum.
He had moved a little too close to me, and I grew apprehensive. "Whatever you say," I told him, shifting my position so as to let him know I didn't welcome any funny business.
"Know," he chewed. "A woman gets in a gig like this, I read she's hoping one thing." He was seated Indian-style and leaning slightly forward, his head nodding slightly as his jaws worked on the gum.
"You better go back to school and learn how to read," I said, getting up. "When's your kid brother going to turn this thing around?" Looking through the curtains, I got a glimpse of Helen standing alongside the car as we drove by. I was positive she had seen me, too.
Recovering from his initial surprise, the gum-chewing kid stood up and, grabbing my arm, spun me around. I lost my balance and fell, landing hard on my bottom. He flung himself on top of me immediately, pressing the bulge in his trousers into my crotch as hard as he could.
"You ain't gonna act so uppity, lady, when you find out there's real cock on board here," he snarled.
I pushed at him. He was actually hurting me with his weight and knew it. The two boys at the rear moved forward to watch. He wasn't about to budge, and just lay there. He began pressing the bulge rhythmically against me. I got the impression he was trying to work it up as it in no way felt hard.
"Real cock, lady," he said again.
I reached up with my mouth and bit him hard on the nose.
He rolled off, screaming and holding his nose. Coming back, he whacked me across the face with the back of his hand.
"I'll bite your tit off for that," he swore. "Hank! Bijou! Sit on her arms," he commanded the other two.
The two boys got on either side of me and sat with all their weight on the insides of my elbows. I could feel the circulation in my arms being cut off almost right away.
"We, got her good, Macho," one of them told the gum chewer. It was true. I couldn't do much more than move my shoulders.
"Now, let's see what kind of a cunt this one's got," the one called Macho said. He pushed my thighs aside violently, pulling the tendons. I cried out in pain. My legs had never been spread apart that wide before.
Grabbing hold of my panties, he tore them off in one quick yank. All three of them started to laugh at once.
"Look at that," Macho leered.
"All hair," snorted one of the others.
"Lady, you have got one hairy ass," Macho said to me. "Feel on it, Hank," he urged.
The kid on my left reached down and ran his fingers roughly into my vulva as if he were fingering gravel.
"That's enough," Macho said suddenly, irritation in his voice. "Now, lick 'em off," he commanded.
"Aw, Mach," Hank protested. "I ain't one to eat no pussy."
"That's why you got to lick 'em off," he said, smiling through clenched teeth. "You got to learn what these dumb cunts are made of."
Hank stuck the fingers in his mouth quickly, pulling them out almost immediately. Macho and Bijou roared and kept up the teasing. I shut my eyes hard.
"You know, Beej," Macho declared, "I've heard it said, a man who will eat cunt will eat cock, too."
"I've heard that, yeah, yeah," said Bijou, agreeing.
Hank tried to change the subject. "You gonna fuck her?" he asked, nodding in my direction.
"Maybe she's gonna eat a little cock first, then we'll talk about ass," Macho answered. He unhooked his belt buckle with one hand. Sucking in his stomach, he reached down with both hands and slowly unbuttoned his fly. Standing straight on his knees, he pushed his levi's and undershorts down below his groin.
The meat flopped out. He had no erection, but the penis appeared to have the potential of being quite large when hard. The testicles clung close to the base and had very long hairs growing out from the sac that contained them. There were not too many of them, but they were quite long.
The skin covering his penis grew down over the head, encapsulating it. I took this to mean that he was uncircumcised though I had never seen one like it before. I stiffened.
"How 'bout it, lady?" Macho urged, taking the penis in his hand and lolling it at me. "Getting hungry?" he grinned. "You want to be fucked, you're gonna have to work on it a little," he informed me, moving it closer.
"I'll bite it off, so help me," I seethed out at him through clenched teeth. Probably remembering his nose he changed expression as if he were convinced I meant it. He backed away. I felt I had won some kind of a victory.
"She don't eat, Mach," Hank said.
"Shit she don't eat!" Macho exclaimed. "They all eat. There ain't a woman around don't want it. What do you think makes the dumb cunts so dumb? It's cock, man, cock," he bellowed.
Spitting into my vulva suddenly, he rubbed the spittle into the lips with his fingers. Leaning forward, he tried to run the spongy organ into my vagina in its flaccid state. The exercises I had been doing all morning evidently had made it possible to thwart him. He got nowhere.
I was afraid his continued frustration might lead to further violence so I relaxed. At one point in his struggles then, he succeeded, by careful tamping, in getting the hooded tip just inside the entrance. For some reason he could not feel the degree of success he had thus achieved and allowed it to fall right out again.
Hank and Bijou remained breathless, apparently afraid to make any comment. The truck slowed down to a stop, and I heard the motor turn off. The fat boy appeared through the curtain, combing his hair and staring at me.
"Tony, you fuck her," Macho said, getting off me. "I ain't ready yet." He sat back against the wall looking dazedly at his penis.
Tony unbuttoned his fly and pulled out a penis that quickly hardened. It had a long, thin look to it. He broke into a smile and knelt down between my legs.
He didn't quite know where to put it, but jabbed away at me anyway. He poked a few places that really hurt and I howled. Both he and Macho interpreted my cries as sexual. Macho crawled back over to me.
"You like that, huh? Fuck her good, Tony. She's loving every minute of it." He began to laugh softly.
Tony finally found the right spot, but got only two good strokes inside when I felt him come. Then, instead of leaving it there to pump the full load into me, he yanked it out. The stuff flew all over. Everybody backed away and I felt the pressure come off my arms. They, had fallen asleep.
"You some nut, Tony?" Macho yelled.
"He's crazy, Mach," Hank volunteered. "I keep tellin' you."
"Yeah," piped in Bijou.
"What did you take it out for?" Macho was still yelling at him, totally amazed. "You leave it in, dummy, 'til it's all dumped inside," he emphasized. "Ain't you never fucked?"
Macho had a lot of the come on his levi's and undershorts, and was daubing disgustedly at himself with a corner of one of the blankets.
I used my torn underpants to wipe it out of my pubic hair where most of it had lodged. Some of it was oozing out my vagina. I rolled the panties into a ball and stuffed them between my legs. Getting up, I smoothed down my dress, adjusted my shoulder bag, and made a move for the curtain.
Tony was standing closest to the partition. I winked at the inexperienced kid as I went by. He had seemed sheepish and ashamed of himself during the heap of abuse they had piled on him, and blushed at my wink, turning his face from me.
"Hey, Tony, grab her," Macho yelled, getting up from the floor and pulling up his pants.
I dashed past Tony who for some reason sought not to hold me, slid across the front seat and jumped out onto the ground. The truck had pulled into a wooded area off the road. The macadam was visible about fifty yards away, and I struck out for it, first taking off my shoes.
There was shouting and sounds of a scuffle inside the panel truck, then the back end opened, and looking back, I saw three of them pile out.
They were soon right behind me and closing fast. They caught me about five yards from the road, but I fought furiously now, with a shoe in each hand, screaming my head off.
I heard the brakes of a truck, and just as quickly as they had caught me, they let me go and ran back into the woods. I reeled out onto the road in the direction of the truck. A man was getting out. He was tall, slight, and fortyish.
"Am I glad to see a new face," I cried. "The last four were getting stale."
He came up to me and held me steady for a minute.
"I saw three. Were they kids?" he asked.
I nodded. "And consider ourselves lucky we're not school teachers." I was very much out of breath. I showed him my shoes, and he held me while I put them back on. "How do I look?" I asked. "If you say like a gang-bang, mister, you are batting two-fifty."
He laughed in a compassionate way that appealed to me and told me to get in the truck. It was a small pick-up, and I noticed he was only carrying a pair of tires in the truck bed.
"Snow tires," he said, noticing my curiosity.
"In Texas?"
"Mostly for mud," he smiled. "Where to?"
I explained what had happened to Helen and me, and described the road. He said it was about six miles from where we were but that he would be glad to take me. He put the truck in gear and drove off.
"I think some man must have invented heels," I said. I had turned the rearview mirror in such a way that I could use it for grooming. "If you only knew how hard it is to run in them." I was busily combing my hair. "All those movies when the girl runs away from some man in the woods. She always gets caught."
"Heels," he said.
"Heels."
"Did it ever occur to you," he began, "that maybe a woman might have invented them to make sure the man caught her."
"So what?" I said. "Either way it's a case of an equal human being handicapped to make another human took superior. It doesn't matter who did it, except if it was a woman as you suggest, that might mean women are more clever."
"I predict a long, enjoyable friendship," he said.
"Why not?" I asked. "Here's your mirror back." I turned it back a little, and he adjusted it to where he wanted it.
"By the way, don't you think you should report that little episode to the police?"
"And make folk heroes out of that bunch?" I blurted out.
"I feel a pun coming on," he chuckled.
"Exactly," I said. "I don't want to see that crew again in court or out of it. I'm leaving Texas in a few days, anyway. It's just a business trip."
"What do you do?" he asked.
"Write," I said.
"Don't tell me. Human interest stories. Our embattled youth, et cetera. Am I right?"
"Right!" I exclaimed. "And I want to find out first hand just how depraved they are on account of they're deprived. Actually, I work for a big tire company and go places where it doesn't snow looking for people who buy snow tires."
"It snows in Texas," he said.
"Not much, I'll bet."
"I told you they were for mud. I live off the highway on a winding dirt road," he told me.
"Alone?" I asked.
"When you're not there, yes," he answered.
"You're not a hermit or something like that, are you?" I asked.
"Would you rather I had said I lived with my mother?" he wanted to know.
"Well, I know a man who lives alone, that is, not quite," I added. "There's a little mare pony he keeps around the house, and the two of them are like an old married couple."
"No ponies," he said. "Just me and myself."
"Interesting arrangement," I remarked. "How long has this been going on?"
"Oh!" he pronounced. "It was love at first sight."
"You mean, when you passed that first mirror it hit you all of a sudden like."
"Yes," he said, "but now you've come along and broken us up." He brought the truck to a stop, reached over and embraced me.
It was a long, low-keyed kiss that said, let's take our time about this. He was filled with the strength of unhurried passion. I hadn't been kissed like that in a long time and savored the moment.
We broke, and I clung to him, wanting to forget somehow his maleness, his hardness of body for a brief time, and it was easy to pretend with him. He had that rare quality that blurs the sexes. Deep down inside me was a gnawing sadness that I was weaving fantasies again.
"Know something?" I murmured.
"What?"
"I'm not wearing any underpants." I stared ahead out the windshield at the roadway. He was kissing along the bone behind my ear, and it tickled gently.
"Know something else?" he came back. "I don't even know your name."
"When is a good time to find out?" I asked, moving my body around so that I could kneel on the seat facing him, my bottom on his lap. Apparently, I had lost the panties in the woods, and felt my hairs crinkling against his fly. My hands were clasped behind his neck, and our noses touched.
A car came up behind us and went on around.
"What does it look like we're doing?" I asked him. I could feel the flesh underneath me swelling upward in his pants.
"A little noontime smooching, maybe," he replied. "Please tell me your name." He asked the question seriously.
"It's Bea," I said, doing a little shaking action with my butt as if to settle more comfortably in the seat I had chosen. "And yours?"
"John." He was becoming cramped, and grunted. "Lift up a minute," he begged, tapping me lightly on the hip.
I raised my rear end, and he quickly undid his belt, pushing his trousers and undershorts down as far as he could reach. His stiff penis, freed at last, swelled out further and stood at attention. It had a slight lean to the left.
I lowered my bottom again and covered his erection with my dress. I felt it tamping against my belly and reached down under the dress to bend it downward slightly.
The thing felt like a stiff, warm handle, and resisted being bent. I had to throw out my chest and jut my rear end upward in order to point the fat thing correctly, and could not relax until it had started to go in.
It went nicely. I could feel the ripple of pleasure running through his body, and worked my knees back father on the seat so that it could go all the way in.
"Oh, that's nice," he said, his breath shuddering. He lurched his bottom forward, and I felt the last of it sock up in. He began a grinding motion with his rear with an occasional good hard up-thrust as the moment suited him.
We had to stop the furious squirming frequently as cars passed, but as the feeling grew more intense inside me, I found myself little caring who or what was outside the truck.
It felt good getting it this way. The hard meat worked in and around more. It rotated and dug at the sides, and I was conscious of the thick base up against my clitoris pushing and massaging.
He was going to come before I did, and I began some hard grinding myself to try to catch up. He had stopped fooling around and was trying to make deeper thrusts, though it must have been difficult in that position.
The thrusts increased rapidly. He leaned forward suddenly, and I felt the jolts inside as he pumped out the hot sperm in four or five successive spasms.
A warm glow enveloped my entire body knowing his come had filled me. He lay back against the seat exhausted, his eyes closed. I kissed his wet brow and ran the fingers of one hand through his hair. He was taking long, deep breaths.
His organ shrank slowly while still inside me. I could feel it retreating into itself. The warm come, shot straight up into me, was slowly running back down along the sides of his organ and covering the balls.
We sat there like that enjoying the warmth between us. His come was like a balm cementing our union, and I hesitated to move.
He was the first to break the spell.
"Let's do that again, very soon," he said, opening his eyes.
I lifted my dress as I moved off him, looking down to see how much had run out of me. I was soaking wet but nothing compared to what was all over his lap.
"I have some Kleenex in my bag," I said, half standing while reaching into it and fishing out the bunch I had suddenly remembered putting there that morning.
I offered about half of them to him, and used the rest on myself.
"Do you always travel without panties?" he asked me as he sopped away at the goo. It had run down underneath his balls, too, and he was busily wiping while holding his scrotum up over his belly.
"Aren't you glad?" I asked. "One less obstacle to our pleasure." He was looking me as if I were probably telling him the truth. "Silly," I said, laughing, "the peace freaks wanted a souvenir. It's probably flying proudly this second from the truck's radio antenna."
He laughed at that. "What do you write about, anyway, Bea?" he asked, tightening his belt.
"Pets." I said. "Stories about people and their pets."
"If I went out and bought a pet, would you write me up?" he wondered. He started the truck and we moved off.
"If it were unusual in some way," I told him. "The animal wouldn't have to be unusual. It could be your relationship with it, or an adventure it had gone through. If you had a pet, John, what would it be?" I asked him abruptly.
"A twenty-five year old brunette female, about five-six, a hundred and twenty pounds."
I interrupted his little whimsy. "Seriously, John, what would you own?"
"I don't know," he said. "Give me a couple of days to think about it and I might have an answer." He turned and flashed a smile at me. "I've never thought about owning an animal."
We drove the rest of the way in silence. It wasn't far. I recognized the spot where Helen had gone off the road. Tracks indicated she had been pulled out already, and as we approached the kennel, I recognized her car in the parking area.
Helen came bursting out of the office when she saw me get out of the truck.
"Holy smokes, Bea," she shouted. "I called the cops on you. What happened to that other truck?" She looked at John and smiled. "It doesn't look to me like you were in any trouble exactly."
"Wait until I tell you," I said. "You're just looking at the happy ending. This is John, Sis. John, this is my sister, Helen."
The introductions over, Helen started in about having a "goody" to tell me. It couldn't be any more interesting than the one I had for her, I said. She went back inside to telephone the police that I had been found, and I talked with John.
"If you want to heat things up, it's all right with me," I told him, "but it will have to be without strings." I explained about my job, my love of New York, my desire for independence.
"After you know me awhile," I went on, "you'll see that I value friendships highly. I'm independent," I said, "but I need people, also. Even men."
"An independent women can't hope to be any man's pet," he said. "I'll take what I get. What do I have to lose?"
"Why, you lose me, John," I said.
"On your terms I never really have you in the first place," he came back.
"Materially, no!" I exclaimed. "But why is material possession the only way to think about your relationship with a woman. Are we really just property? A man's daughter leaves home, he doesn't have her materially and, yet he still has her in other ways, still loves her, and she him."
"A man wants to feel he's important to a woman," he stated.
"You don't think the father is important to the daughter?" I asked.
"It's a special relationship of diminishing importance in his everyday life. Anyway, Bea, you're comparing apples to oranges," he said. "Granted, the pair bond between a man and a woman should not be an owner-possession thing, I don't think you can compare a daughter to a wife."
"I guess what I was trying to say was that you speak of your daughter as yours all of your life, whether she's there at home with you or not, or whether she's had ten husbands in Timbuktu, she's still yours, your daughter." I insisted.
"Go on," he said, calmly.
"Why then, the moment a woman ceases to act as if she were an indentured servant, or what is the term, having left my bed and board, does she cease to be your wife? You've had a more intense relationship with her than you've had with any other woman, yet you'll put up with less."
"It must be," he said, "that people have a low regard for the objects that have satisfied their sexual appetites, and a high one for those who have not. If we all could fuck our mothers and our daughters, our sisters and our aunts, we might see a little more clearly."
Helen interrupted our discussion by her return. "They want to talk to you, Bea," she said.
I stepped into the office. There was no one inside, but I noticed the telephone off the hook and picked it up. Since Helen had brought them into it, I decided to tell the police the entire story. I told them I would not sign a complaint. I was in Texas only a few days, I said, and didn't want to stay.
They settled for a description of the truck, and the names of the boys involved. They would pick them up for questioning, and perhaps put a scare into them.
Just as I was hanging up, the tall, pot-bellied man who ran the place came into the room from a rear doorway.
"Glad to see you back, Miss," he said. "Your sister was plumb worried about you." He fumbled in a shirt pocket for a cigarette. "Did she mention my cheetah?"
"You have a cheetah?" I asked him.
"Most beautiful cat in the world," he asserted, lighting the weed, and blowing out the match with his first puff.
"I promise to ask her," I said, turning to go. He was leaning on the counter with both hands. The sleeves of his shirt were rolled up past his elbows, and I noticed the arms were quite hairy.
"You all come back, now," he waved. He had a look about him, the kind of an expression on his face I used to think belonged only to old torn cats.
Helen was suggesting the four of us, Jack, herself, John, and I, get together that evening. She suggested her place, but John came in with a good pitch for his place in the woods.
As I rejoined them I said we might have to wear hip boots. John laughed.
"I told your sister I lived on a muddy road," he said to Helen, "but it's actually quite dry at the moment."
"Well," said Helen, "let's hope it doesn't rain then. His place all right with you, Bea?" she asked.
"Well, those aren't exactly the conditions I had anticipated," I put forward. "John told me he lived alone."
"I see," said Helen, catching my meaning. She looked from one of us to the other, savoring the thoughts she must have been thinking.
"But let's see what develops," I continued, smiling up at John. "Well have to postpone our debate," I said to him.
We parted then. As we were driving off, John pulled the pickup alongside my window. He was holding something tightly in his fist and extending it outward.
"Present for you," he said. "Compliments of John Young."
I reached up and took it. It was my torn underpants. I looked at him in complete surprise. "How did you?"
"Wedged down between the door and the seat," he said. "See you later," he waved, and drove off.
I held the torn, stained reminder of the morning's adventure up for Helen to see.
"Come to think of it, Sis," she observed, "I'd like to hear your story first."