the track.
Guess I was cussing pretty good by then, but finally I just tuckered out, and Dave squatted down beside me and took a penlight out of his pocket and turned it on and pointed it in my face and said, “You’re about to get a big rush. Biggest y Ksh. ft'ou’ve ever had.”
He reached in his pocket and got out a piece of paper and said, “I know a guy works over at the train depot. He gave me a train schedule for all the tracks around here. All the trains moving on them. And guess what? Thirty minutes from now, you’ll get to say howdy to one of those trains, a la The Perils of Pauline.”
He showed me the schedule then, and to tell the truth, I couldn’t make heads or tails out of it. I was too scared to try. I kept telling myself he was funning me, but deep in my heart I knew I was in some serious deep doodoo.
Sharon stood between my feet, smiling down at me. Carrie brought a boom box over and turned it on. Sharon started stripping off her clothes, slow-like, to this tune that was playing, and I tell you, even under the circumstances, I was getting a boner. I’m not talking battering ram material here, but there was some action going on down there at a time you wouldn’t think it.
Pretty soon she got it all off except her panties, and the panties were wet, man. I could see that with just the moonlight to show me. She’d worked herself up big time, lubricating all over the place. She was twisting around like she was part snake or something. And the moonlight loved her, flowed all over her. I mean, that woman was something.
The others were taking turns watching Sharon and my face, and after a while, Dave looked at his watch and nodded at Sharon. She eased out of her panties and used her fingers to spread herself and show the pink. Then she was bending down and pulling my shorts to my knees and taking me in her mouth.
Honestly, now, I like a little kink, but my idea of good sex isn’t being tied down to a railroad track with some gal swallowing my goober to boom boom music while an audience lurks over me with a video camera. Not to mention all that gravel grinding into my ass and my neck getting a crick and my legs starting to ache. Still, I was beginning to forget about the crowd and the camera and the tracks. That tongue of hers was driving me crazy and her pussy was calling my name in sweet falsetto.
Then, off in the distance, I heard the cold, hard voice of the train. That whistle jerked the iron right out of my Johnson, I kid you not. I went limp as a noodle and came out of her mouth. I began to feel the vibration of the rails on the back of my neck and legs. Dave moved Bob aside and took the camera off the tripod and bent down next to me and smiled and poked the camera in my face and said, “Hey, you hear something, Billy? Like a train?”
“Goddamn right,” I said. “Get me off here.”
“That’s the midnight whistle at the Highway 59 crossing up a ways. Sound carries good from there. Comes down between the pine stands like they’re canyon walls. That ole choo choo is fifteen minutes away.”
I started cussing him right and left, but he didn’t pay me any mind. He stood up and looked around at everyone and pointed the camera and moved it about slowly, getting us all in. I had the sensation he was pulling our souls into that video box, locking us away until he needed us later.
He finished up, said, “You want off these tracks in time, you want to get Sharon off these tracks in time, ’cause, man, she just don’t care, you got to do the job. Got to get off, and you got to get Sharon off before tha Kff imet ole choo choo gets here. You don’t, they find you tomorrow, or a week from now, they’re gonna discover you got this locomotive and a string of boxcars stuck up your ass. Hear me? You do this right, though, we can all watch this on the set later, eat a few chips, drink some beer, cheer you on.”
Any idea they were kidding was gone. I knew they meant it. And Sharon was lost. She was caught up in the idea of death, and she was loving it. She was trying to get me hard again and inside her, but there wasn’t anything fearfully frantic about it. She just wanted it.
That cold rail throbbed against my neck, vibrated my legs, and I could hear crickets in the weeds, playing their fiddles, and in the distance, down near the creek, I could hear a big bullfrog croaking. I could hear better than ever before. Cars off in a distance, racing along the highway. A dog barking.
The sky was rich and black above me and the stars were brilliant and the moon was shining bright through the tops of some tall pines. I could smell those pines and the sour weeds that grew along the track, the bittersweet aroma of Sharon’s pussy.
Everything. Sight and smell and sound were magnified. I realize this more thinking back on it, because at the time I was terrified, but it was being scared that heightened everything. Made it hot. Made it glow.
And God, Sharon was beautiful. Her breasts goose bumped. Her nipples dark and hard like chocolate drops. Her knees straddling me, my rod in her hand, trying to get me inside her, doing all this with her eyes closed, maybe thinking about the train coming, like it was entering her instead of me, maybe just thinking about death. I don’t know.
When that goddamn train tooted the next time, I closed my eyes and got down to business, started working my hips and thinking about one thing and one thing only, popping my cork, and Lord, but Sharon was working me, helping me, and that train and Dave and Bob and Carrie and the video camera went away, and there was only me and Sharon, and after a while, just me, working for the moment.
I came out of it when Sharon screamed. I opened my eyes to see her with her head thrown toward the sky, mouth open as if to suck in the dark, her teeth wet and white as piano keys. Her body trembling, starting to go weak. And then it was my turn. I let my load fly and the train blew again and its headlights bobbed over us.
Then Sharon was pulled away and Bob was slamming the spikes with the sledge, loosening them. He and Dave jerked me off the tracks. The train roared by, blowing its whistle, tossing gravel, nearly knocking us down with the wind from its rush. Sharon was left standing on the other side of the track, the train between us.
I lay on the ground quivering. Dave and Bob laughed, bent to untie me.
When they finished, I stood up, and it was like my knees were made of yogurt. I pulled up my shorts and pants and fastened myself, watched the train scream by. Another second or two, and Sharon and I would have been just so much goo.
Dave said, “Wasn’t that something,” and I hauled off and hit him with all I had. Caught him one on the side of the jaw and knocked him backwards down the embankment, bloodying his nose. I was all over him then. Had him pinned on the ground with my knees, punching him, and he wasn’t doing much to keep it f K to bloodyirom happening. He was enjoying it. I realized suddenly Bob and Carrie were standing over me, watching, Bob with video camera, filming every bit of it.
That took the fight out of me.
The train roared on by.
I got up slowly, pulled in some deep breaths. When I straightened up, Sharon, holding her hands out to her sides as if she had just missed hugging the locomotive, came across the track smiling. She kissed me on the cheek, like there had been nothing to it. Just an everyday good old-fashioned roll in the hay. Her eyes were huge, filled with the night. Her body was quivering. Her breath was dry and sour, copper smelling. Her thighs were wet in the moonlight; looked to have been coated with salve.
Carrie brought Sharon’s clothes to her and Sharon slipped them on and Dave and Bob patted me on the back and Carrie almost grinned, which was high humor for her. We got in Dave’s car and drove away from there, Sharon tight beside me, trembling all the way home.
4
Bill paused his story, took a deep breath. He looked clammy, like a man coming down with the flu. He glanced at the tattered carpet and dropped the butt of his cigarette there and put his heel to it. He had been doing that all through his story. The odor of smoke and burned carpet floated up, touched my nostrils, and went away.
He shook his cigarette pack. It was empty. He wadded it up and tossed it on the floor. He looked at me. “I’m gonna talk some more, I’m going to need some wine. My throat’s getting dry.”
I got the wine bottle and gave it to him. He took a drink from it, made a face like it was vinegar, set the bottle on the carpet next to the pile of cigarette butts.
“I tell you, Uncle Hank, whole thing was over, and I got to thinking on it, I began to feel good about it. Not mad anymore. Don’t get me wrong. I didn’t want to do it again. But I wasn’t mad. We went over to Dave’s place
