One evening, Minnie was waiting in the road when I came home. She raised her arms and I swooped her up and sat her astride behind me on old Job; she held my shoulders. As we cantered home, she giggled with the rocking motion in that elation of young girls who don’t know what to do with their new juices, disguising her pleasure by simpering her news into my ear.
For some time now, she confided, that darned Sammy Tolen had overlooked no chance to tickle her. I explained that this was his loutish way of reconnoitering a young girl’s person. Well, she squeaked, Cousin Laura, though twenty-nine years Sam’s senior, had seemed very happy to be tickled, and at one point had become, well, overexcited. “Oh, you horrid boy!” she shrieked, rassling Sammy to the ground and seating herself on what would have been his lap if he’d sat up. Two nights later, Ninny said (daring this topic only because she rode behind me where I couldn’t see her face), investigating a racket in the barn, Aunt Tab had caught the Widow Laura seated astride Sammy with her nightshirt up and naked as a lily the rest of the way down, and this morning she had whipped those cringing sinners into the buggy and bounced them eight miles to Lake City, where they were united in “unholy wedlock,” as our mama called it.
“Oh, sweet Jesus!” I burst out, incensed. Thrilled, my sister cried, “Edgar, that’s blasphemy!” I brooded the rest of the way home. “Shifty Jim’s plan,” I concluded finally. “Sammy had made a rumpus, got caught screwing that old simpleton, knowing Aunt Tab would act just as she did. Tolens want some kind of claim on our plantation, don’t you see that, Ninny?” Shocked by that angry language, the girl protested that Aunt Laura was not a simpleton, she loved dear sweet Aunt Laura very, very much and I was being vile as well as most unkind, and anyway, it wasn’t “our” plantation! Minnie had understood nothing, as usual. At the gate, I swung her roughly off the horse and she ran inside in tears.
Sammy had already moved in. He dined with us that evening, sitting beside that sweet coy fool too old to be his mother. His disgusting table manners made our ladies shrivel; they hardly knew where to look or what to say. “Well, nobody can’t call me no cradle robber!” he guffawed, spraying food. And damned if this manure-flecked feller didn’t wink at me, as if this outrage were the best joke in the world. I’m the Master of Ichetucknee, that wink said. And you? He even offered me a cheap cigar.
When the ladies protested our cigars, we went outside, where Sam let go a self-congratulatory belch. “Looks like you’re fucked pretty good now, don’t it, Edgar? You and my hot pantaloons old widow.” Sam always enjoyed that ugly way of talking.