a load of him this morning. He's quite a hot number. I imagine you've been making it with him, too.”
“You fucking cocksucker!” I screamed. “You can't get away with that! I still remember the night you snuck into my room and tried to suck me off when I was a little kid. You're a fucking child molester, you bastard!”
He growled like a wild beast and lunged at me drunkenly. I was quick enough to dart out of his way, and he went staggering into the armchair. I reached out for the first thing I could find and picked up an ashtray stand, which I smashed into the back of his skull. He went limp, slumped in the chair, and slid face downwards on the floor.
I ran around in a panic like a chicken with his head cut off until I managed to pull myself together and call Sandy. My hands were trembling so much I could hardly dial the number. After three unsuccessful attempts, wrong numbers, no numbers, I finally got the right one. Sandy answered the phone. I started babbling gibberish, totally incoherent, until she managed to calm me down and get me to start from the beginning. I told her everything that had happened.
“I think he may be dead,” I said.
“What are you going to do?”
“I don't know.”
“You better call the police.”
“What for? That's not going to do any good. I want to see you.”
“But it's an eight-hour drive up here. How would you…”
“I'll take his car now. I'll leave right now. I'll meet you out in the woods, on that rock we used to go to, as soon as you can get out. Right after breakfast.. Tell them you're going for a walk.”
When I had hung up the phone I went back to Father's body and rolled him over onto his back. I was afraid to check whether or not he was dead. I reached inside his jacket for his wallet. He had five hundred dollars in cash. I got the car keys from his room, put on my coat, and left.
SIXTEEN
With the adrenaline shooting through my bloodstream, bug-eyed, I drove all night with only one stop for gas and hardly a blink, arriving within shooting distance of the house by six in the morning. I stepped at a diner and had breakfast; then headed for the woods.
Parking the car off the road, behind some trees, I walked the mile and a half down to the stream with the frozen ground crunching and crackling under my feet. The stream was frozen, too, and the moss on the rock was a yellowish brown. I waited for perhaps an hour before I saw Sandy running down the frozen stream.
I dashed up to meet her, and the force of our embrace knocked us both off our feet onto the ice. When the heat of our kisses threatened to melt the ice we got up and made our way back to the rock.
“You look tired, Terry.”
“I feel it.”
“I didn't get any sleep either. I couldn't. I was worrying so much about you. What happened to Daddy? Is he dead?”
“I don't know. I was afraid to check. I just took his wallet and left.”
“What did he say to you that started the fight? You never told me on the phone.”
“A lot of things. For one, he implied that Mother told him about us, and it was part of the settlement that we were never to see each other again. He wanted me to go to Europe with him for a year or two. That was part of the bargain, too, I think.”
“The bastards!”
“Yeah. Did the old bitch tell you anything?”
“Nothing like that. She wants me to go to a college on the West Coast next year. Oh, Terry, what are we going to do now?”
“Let's run, Sandy, as fast and as far as we can.”
“What good would that do? They'd only catch us in the end.”
“Maybe not. At least we have a chance this way. Do you want to give up so easily?”
“I'm so weak,” she said. “I don't know what to think. If we were older…”
“In other words, you don't feel secure with me because I'm a kid-is that it?”
“Don't put it that way, Terry. It's just that- what kind of a life could we have together? There's no place we could go, no place we could live. We'd just be outcasts. And criminals.”
“We could go live with the hippies in San Francisco. They'd take us in. We've got enough money to last a year out there. They wouldn't care if we're brother and sister.”
“But what kind of a future…
“Future, future, future, that's all you ever talk about. I don't give a damn about the future. I don't have a future, except whatever minutes or days or weeks I have left with you. After that, I just don't give a shit.”
“Oh, Terry, we do have so little time left. Let's not argue.”
“We have to argue. We disagree. How else are we going to settle it. Flip a coin?”
“Hold me Terry, tighter. I didn't wear any panties down here, can you feel?”
I could feel.
“Unbutton my blouse,” she said, and I did. ''No bra, either. Feel them, Terry, kiss them. Your pants-I can't undo the buckle. Help me.”
I pulled the buckle free and, kneeling, pulled down my pants. Then I lay back down on her and locked my hard, hungry prick into her undulating cunt.
We made love for an hour in the freezing air, on the hard, crackling moss, and when it couldn't be prolonged any further and we exploded into each other, I asked her to come with me.
“I wish you'd have gone before we had that. Now I can't leave you.”
“Let's go.”
SEVENTEEN
I started the car, pulled it out of the woods and with Sandy's warm body pressed against mine, we hit the open road.
It was a bright, clear, winter day, and we were free. We were leaving behind the parents, the schools, the future, the past, the society that made our love a criminal act. We were heading west for the Golden Gate.
We played the radio loud and didn't say much, didn't have to; for the time being at least we understood each other perfectly, were with each other completely, we were totally happy.
After sundown I began to get a little tired from the thousand or so miles I'd driven since last night and suggested to Sandy we stop at a motel.
“I'd love to,” she said. “I've been waiting for an hour for you to say that.”
“I wish you'd spoken up sooner.”
“You know,” she went on, “after all we've been through we've only spent the whole night together once.”
“That'll change, though.”
The first place I stopped, the clerk took one look at me and said he was all filled up, even though the “vacancy” light was on.
The next clerk wanted to know if I had a girl with me. I told him I did, but that she was my sister.
“That makes it kind of worse, doesn't it?” he said.
I stormed out.
I asked the next clerk for two rooms.
“You over eighteen?”
“Yes.”
