you bad, bad boy?' You see, my penis had got stiff. That can happen, even when a boy is too young to... well, too young to know what's happening. And from that night on, for the next couple of years, she'd make me stiff, and that would drive her wild, and she'd suck me hard while she played with herself, and she'd say I was a bad boy because I wanted it. I wouldn't get stiff if I didn't want it, she'd say, and she'd suck me until it hurt down in my testicles. Then this one night... this one night the hurt didn't go away after she stopped. It got worse and worse. And the next morning I couldn't go to school because it hurt so bad. She told me it was nothing. The pain would go away pretty soon. But I could tell she was scared. She said that if anyone found out what we did, they'd put me in that deep black hole and leave me there forever and ever. And everyone would know it was all my fault, because I got stiff, and that meant I wanted it, and they'd know I was a naughty, bad boy. By the time night came, my side was swollen and I had a fever. All night long I tossed in my bed with pain. The next morning, I found myself all alone in the house. My mother had gone. I had to pee real bad, but I couldn't because it hurt too much. I was afraid I was going to die. So I called the emergency number I found on the back of the phone book. It was the first time I ever used a phone. An ambulance came and took me to the hospital. I had ruptures. Two ruptures. There was an operation, and they kept me in the hospital for a long time. When I was feeling better, a social worker visited me in the children's ward. They couldn't find my mother anywhere. She'd run away. Abandoned me.'
She turned onto her side and looked at his profile. He could feel her eyes on him, could feel the weight of her pity, and it felt good. 'What about your father?' she asked. 'Why didn't he stop your mother from... Why didn't he do something?'
'There was no father.'
'Oh.' After a silence, she asked, 'Did you tell the doctors what your mother had done to you?'
He shook his head.
'Why not?'
'Because I didn't want to get her into trouble. After all... she was my mom.' His jaw muscles worked, and she could hear the grinding of his teeth.
'It isn't fair!' she said.
'No, ma'am, it's not,' his Gary Cooper voice agreed. 'Not even a little bit fair.' Then his own voice continued, 'The doctor told the social worker that I had damaged myself by masturbating, and she told me I'd done a terrible thing and I would hurt myself badly if I didn't stop.'
'So... what happened then?'
'They put me into an orphanage run by Catholic brothers. I got long lectures about how sinful masturbation was, and my earlobes would burn with embarrassment... and rage... at the injustice of it. Kids have a painfully keen sense of injustice. The brothers made me take cold showers, even in winter. They said it would keep me from abusing myself. The cold showers gave me an ear infection that put me back in the hospital, and that was the end of the cold showers. But not of the lectures.' He fell silent, and he lightly rubbed his stomach to quell the gnawing. Then he used his Bela Lugosi voice. 'And there you have it, my dear. The bloodcurdling tale of... The Limp Penis!'
'I'm awful sorry.'
Something in the depth of the silence outside told him they had reached that last dead hour before dawn. He'd have to leave soon.
'You must have been a real smart kid. I mean, you got into college and all.' She was determined to find a silver lining in all his troubles: a Hollywood happy ending.
'Yes, I was smart. A bad boy, but a smart one. But I quit college and joined the army. Then I quit the army to become a full-time drifter.'
'But a person can't just quit the army, can they?'
'Oh, the army wasn't all that happy about my taking off. They're out there looking for me even as we lie here, sharing secrets.'
'Aren't you afraid they'll catch you?'
'I'm afraid of all sorts of things.'
She drew a sympathetic sigh and said, 'Gosh.'
'Gosh, indeed. While I was in the army, I sort of went wild this one night. I ended up sobbing and screaming and beating up this Coke machine. I might have gotten away with it if it had been a Pepsi machine, but Coca-Cola
'And now you can't feel any pleasure? Like the kind you made me feel?'
'Yes, I can feel pleasure. And sometimes I need it very badly. But it's not easy for me to get pleasure. It's difficult and... sort of complicated.'
'Is there anything I can do? To help you, I mean?' Her voice was thin and so sincere.
'Do you really want to help me?'
'I do. Honest and truly, I do.'
'Cross your heart and hope to die?' He sighed and closed his eyes. 'All right.' He sat up on the edge of the bed. 'You scoot over here and turn your back to me. And I'll bring myself pleasure. Is that all right?'
She slid over to the edge of the bed, awkward and uncertain. 'Will it hurt me?'
'Yes,' he told her softly. 'But not for long.'
She was silent.
'Is that all right? The hurt and all?' he asked. 'I won't do it, if you don't want me to.'
She swallowed and answered in a small voice, 'No, it's all right.'
He reached down and trickled his fingers up her spine to the nape of her neck and up into her hair. She hummed, and he felt her skin get goose-bumpy with thrill. His hands slipped under her hair and he stroked the sides of her neck up to the ears, then he reached around and gently cradled her throat between his hands. She swallowed, and he felt the cartilage of her windpipe ripple beneath his fingers. He bared his teeth and he closed his eyes and squeezed, and pleasure overwhelmed him.
After covering her with the sheet carefully, tenderly, he sat on the edge of the bed and looked up at the distorted trapezoid of bright light on the ceiling. In her struggle, she had clawed her pillow away, revealing her snowstorm paperweight. He held it up to the light and shook it, and the snow swirled around the carrot-nosed snowman... black snow in silhouette, and a black snowman. When his breathing returned to normal, he went to the sink and washed himself off. He looked back at the bed and was overwhelmed with pity for her. She had been so trusting... so vulnerable. The gnawing within him was gone, maybe forever. Maybe he'd never again have to...
But he knew better. It had eventually come back after each of the others, and it would come back after June Allyson.
He dressed and tiptoed down the creaking stairs and out into the empty street where the predawn air was damp and almost cool. He walked slowly back towards downtown, hands in pockets. He would go to the public market and pick up a day's stoop labor, then he'd get his bindle from the bus station and hit the freight yards to catch a boxcar. Maybe the West Coast this time.
Over the city, the first milky tints of dawn began to thin the sky, and the morning air already felt stale and dusty in his nostrils.
It was going to be another scorcher.
MINUTES OF A VILLAGE MEETING
Ours is a small village in the Basque province of Xiberoa perched on a hillside above the sparkling Uhaitz- handia, which floods the low pastures each spring, making the earth rich again. We are neither rich nor poor; God provides enough for those who work hard and tend their flocks closely, but He protects us from the temptations of wealth by giving us land that is not excessively bountiful.
Without meaning to brag, I can say that we celebrate three traditional Basque festivals each year, while our neighboring village of Licq celebrates only one, and that only because they want to attract people to their cheese fair run by greedy merchants in direct competition to our own cheese fair, which offers far better—but enough! This is neither the time nor the place to reveal the low greed of those grasping Licquois, nor do I intend to condemn
