Tura and Lorelei were delighted with the news. They longed to leave home. They dreamed of Las Vegas-the neon kingdom that lay to the east. But Eden was frightened by the idea of leaving Hell’s Half Acre. She read books and magazines and watched television, but there was much she didn’t know about the ways of men.
The three sisters walked through the desert, following those forty miles of bad dirt road that led to the highway. Tura and Lorelei looked like a couple of innocent flower children from Daddy’s day-their complexions a dark nutty brown, the soles of their bare feet toughened from years of desert living.
But Eden was not so tough. She had always clung to the safety of the bunker. Her skin was the whitest shade of pale.
And she could not travel the desert unshod. On her feet she wore a pair of Mama’s old white go-go boots. It was, in fact, the same pair Mama had worn on the night she met Daddy back in 1966.
Soon Tura and Lorelei left Eden behind. She stumbled along, all alone, feet kicking up feeble dust devils that were no stronger than a dying man’s cough. The sun burned down, and her skin turned red, and the wind stuttered through the dry leaves of the yucca trees with a sound like wild castanets.
The first night had nearly passed by the time Eden found the highway. Sunburned and thirsty, her white go-go boots dusted with white Mojave earth, she put out her thumb.
A trucker stopped almost immediately. Eden said she was headed for Las Vegas. The trucker smiled genially and told her to climb aboard.
Eden did. She felt comfortable around truckers. She’d helped her sisters hijack enough big rigs to know what they were like.
This one liked to sing. Cowboy songs, the ones from TV shows. He knew all the words. “Bonanza,” “The Ballad of Paladin,” “Rawhide”-he sang them all as the big truck headed east.
The trucker drove toward Vegas and through it. He didn’t so much as pull over until he reached an empty valley of towering red sandstone. He parked near a trailer. To Eden it seemed incredibly fragile and somehow tragic, nothing like the concrete-and-lead pillbox in which she’d spent her life.
The trucker dragged Eden inside by her black hair. He didn’t even give her a glass of water. He stripped her of everything save her go-go boots and beat her. Eden didn’t know why he did that. He didn’t have to hit her to hurt her. Her sunburned skin was so raw that the slightest touch was agony.
He took her virginity with his fingers, promising that he would do far worse, and do it very soon.
Eden could not bear the sight of him. Mama had told her about the serpents men carried between their legs and the pleasures that they could give a woman, pleasures as gratifying as a rattlesnake bite. But this man was not like the men Mama had described. The serpent between his legs was weak. Eden soon realized that she had not a thing to fear from it. The trucker’s snake cared not a whit for his threats or promises. It did not strike; nor did it bite, no matter how much he coaxed it, no matter how hard he cried.
The trucker tied Eden to a bed that stank of loneliness and despair. He coaxed his serpent through the long night, but it only nestled small and defeated in his big hand.
In the morning he untied Eden’s hands and ankles. He gave her an olive-colored work shirt with randy stitched over one pocket. She washed herself and dressed. He opened the door when she was ready to go, and when she was gone he shot himself in the head.
She walked to the highway and stuck out her thumb.
It was early and there weren’t many cars on the road. She had to wait a while. She sang some cowboy songs. “The Rebel-Johnny Yuma.” “Maverick.” “Davy Crockett.”
She was singing “Happy Trails” when an old Chevy pulled over.
The car belonged to Harold Ticks. He took her to Las Vegas. He put lotion on her sunburn and bought her clothes and let her eat anything she wanted.
He did not show her his serpent. Not at first. But he taught her to satisfy the serpents of other men. He took money from those men, and sometimes he watched the things they did with Eden.
Sometimes Harold filmed the men with a video camera. Other times he would take Eden to a warehouse owned by another man, and the other man would make movies while Eden handled serpents of every description.
Once her sisters joined her for a movie. Eden was happy to see them. It was good to have family around.
But mostly she was on her own. Eden tried to enjoy the other men. She wanted to revel in carnal pleasure to please Daddy and Mama and Satan. But this she could not do.
Eden knew it was wrong to want only one man. It went against everything her parents believed. But she only wanted Harold. She only wanted his serpent.
One night Harold charged a wizened gambler an especially high sum to enjoy Eden’s company. When the old man was gone, she confessed her secret desires to Harold. She did not tell him about Daddy and Mama or Satan, because she never spoke of these things with anyone.
Harold gave her his serpent that night, and for the first time Eden understood what Mama had meant when she spoke of pleasures as gratifying as a rattlesnake bite. Eden surrendered to those pleasures, and it was not at all like it had been with the other men.
Harold said it was the same for him. No woman had ever taken him to the places he visited with Eden. He promised that he would never again sell her to another man.
“I have another plan,” he said. “A way we can make a lot of money.”
“I’ll do anything,” Eden said, “as long as I can do it with you.”
Eden knew it was wrong. Mama and Daddy would not approve. The lone desire that coursed through her veins went against the laws of nature and the drives of the flesh and the teachings of the Dark Lord.
One man and one woman. . together. . forever.
It was horrible.
Eden was in love.
EIGHT
The baddest man on the planet stood on a terra-cotta patio outside a palatial mansion. A scarlet towel was wrapped around his trim middle, as was the heavyweight championship belt once owned by Evander Holyfield, Mike Tyson, Larry Holmes, and Muhammad Ali.
The champ’s name was Tony Katt, but he always thought of himself as the Tiger. In fact, he often referred to himself as such when speaking with the press. “The Tiger trained for this fight with unparalleled ferocity,” he’d say, or “The Tiger sprang upon his opponent in an effort to devour the motherfucker like a jungle beast.”
While incarcerated in Corcoran State Prison, the Tiger’s favorite book had been
The Tiger didn’t know about any third person, though. After all, he was just one guy.
The champ eased a pair of Ray-Ban sunglasses high on his nose and checked out the action on the neighboring golf course. The ninth tee was approximately a hundred yards from the Tiger’s outdoor Jacuzzi. A group of duffers approached the tee in little white carts while the Tiger studied them with the unbridled intensity of a starved predator.
The golfers tottered out of the carts-a cackle of old chicks, scurrying about, busying themselves with clubs and balls and other accouterments of pasture pool. Four of them, dressed in sprightly outfits that spoke of eternal spring.
These were gold card predators. The Tiger despised them and their kind. Country clubs habitues, they had suckled too long upon the teat of indulgence and grown weak.
No, not weak. Puny. That was a better word. They had suckled too long upon the teat of indulgence and grown
One of the women noticed the Tiger’s presence. Whispers were exchanged. The Tiger relished such attention. Fingers dared not point in his direction as the women examined him with furtive glances and puny disapproving peeps that registered awestruck disapproval.
