book to look at in your declining years.”
“Stop interrupting,” I said.
Jane drank some of her coffee. When she lifted her arm her coat came open in folds, and I leaned over and looked down at her tits, and Ruth slid her hand up over my leg and felt my prick. It was hard, and she nodded as much as to say that she had expected it to be like that. She wanted to take it out, but I pushed her hand away.
“He made me look at his prick and feel of it,” Jane said. “And when he had me looking at it he would try to push my head down suddenly and get my face against it, and he kept his finger in my cunt most of the time. Then he made me say that I had to have him fuck me or I would die, or something like that, and he made me say it over and over-and finally he did it. I made him shoot in me, and I did whatever you call it that girls do instead of jisming, and that was the nice part I said there was.”
“You're going to let him screw you again, aren't you?” Ruth said. “You can have him come here to the house some time and Bill and I will go out on those nights or be upstairs, and you can fuck in a better place than behind a log pile.”
“I don't know,” Jane said. “I thought that I would, but the part that wasn't so nice made me change my mind. That happened right out in front of the house, when he brought me home. He had my dress up and was feeling of me, and I thought that before I came in I would-well, I bent across him and put his prick in my mouth and sucked it. He jiggled up and down on the seat and kept pushing my head down, and then-”
“Go on,” Ruth said. “I know what happened, but tell us anyway.”
“It was an awful thing,” Jane said. “I couldn't get the taste out of my mouth until I got in the house and brushed my teeth, and even this morning I thought I could taste it.”
She drank some coffee very quickly, as though she were tasting the jism then and was trying to wash away the memory. Ruth watched her drink the coffee; watched her throat.
“Did you have to swallow it?”
It was a whisper.
Jane sat with her fists clenched on her breasts. Then she moved one hand away and picked at the tablecloth.
“He called me-what you called me,” she said. “He called me a cocksucker.”
“Did you have to swallow it?”
Jane looked down into her hands and then brought them slowly up to cover her face. Her head nodded like a mechanical thing that was not a part of her, stiffly, like the sprung head of some toy.
“Yes,” she whispered. “I had to swallow some of it.”
Chapter VI
The car slowed and stopped. It was a Buick. A man got out and read the name on the mail box and then walked up to the house.
I had been working upstairs by the window, and when I saw the man coming up the walk I started down. He was raising the knocker when I opened the door. He was no one I had ever seen, and the car had out of state plates. We stood in the doorway looking at each other.
He said his name.
It was Ruth's name.
“Come in,” I said.
I took him into the front room and we sat down. He looked around the room. “Are you her husband?” he said. “No.”
“Have a cigar,” he said.
I took the cigar and laid it on the table. I do not like cigars very much, and it is not very often that I really like the men who smoke them.
“I understand that you're a writer,” he said. “The people in the village mentioned it.”
“Yes,” I said. “What are you?”
He swore, and threw the cigar he had just lighted.
“Fine,” I said. “I can see that we are going to get along fine. I'd offer you a drink, but it's pretty nice Scotch, and I don't like it to be thrown away.”
I handed back the cigar he had just given me.
“Are you her father?” I said.
“Yes.”
“Have a drink.”
I put the bottle on the table where it would be handy for either of us if the going got too bad. We drank.
“You understand my position,” he said.
“I understand that it isn't everything that might be desired.”
“Perhaps I shouldn't have come,” he said.
“I think she'll be glad to see you.”
“Do you mean that?” he said. “Do you?”
“I guess so,” I said.
“Is she here with you now?”
“She's around someplace.”
“I suppose that I'm not in a position to tell you-improper-all that sort of thing-”.
“You certainly are not,” I said.
I was beginning to feel better toward him. He was acting the way I might have acted if I had been in the spot that he was in.
“Do you think that she will be glad to see me?” he said. “I haven't been much of a father, as you probably know all too goddamned well.”
“Well, you might have done better,” I said, “but I guess she'll want to see what you're like, if for no other reason than that you were such a stinker of an old man.”
“I won't stay a minute if she doesn't want me to. I'll let her think that I was just going through this way.”
“Weren't you?” I said.
“I'm trying to be reasonable about this,” he said. “It wasn't easy to come here.”
“Then why did you?” was what came to my mind, but I didn't say it, and I poured us both another Scotch. I looked at him and wondered what kind of a man he would be when you got to know him. I knew that he wasn't showing up well just then. And I kept wondering what his business was. He acted like someone who has been around and knows what it is all about.
I heard a door open.
“You still have time to be just another insurance man.”
He gave me a dirty look for that. Ruth and Jane came into the room together. He looked at them and then at me. I nodded toward Ruth.
“The tall one,” I said.
He and Ruth stood looking at each other. I knew that whatever he said now would sound silly as all hell, and it did.
“Ruth,” he said, “I am your father.”
She studied his face.
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, I guess you are my father. I'm glad to see you.”
Jane turned and walked out of the room. I remember that well: how she just turned and went out then. I picked up my drink and started to go.
“You don't have to go,” Ruth said. “I don't have anything to say to him that you can't hear. I don't have anything at all to say.”
“That's just the idea,” I said.
