'Thai sticks?' Betty said. 'Whatever are you talking about?'
'Don't tell me you don't smoke either, Betts,' Barbara Jean said. 'What do you do around here all the day alone, sing hymns?'
'No,' Betty Sue said, and laughed, 'especially not now, not after the new preacher took over the church.'
'Oh, what's wrong with him?' Barbara Jean asked.
'He's black, for God's sakes, Babs,' Betty said.
'Why, Johan won't even step inside the church any more. I swear half the congregation's resigned. I only go occasionally myself, for appearance's sake.'
'Imagine that,' Barbara Jean said, lighting a brown-paper hand-rolled cigarette and dragging deeply, holding the smoke down deep in her lungs, 'your own black preacher. Bet he's got rhythm. Wonder, how many of the ladies of the congregation have already sacrificed their virginity on his spear of righteousness?'
'Oh, Babs,' Betty Sue said, 'you are awful! Things like that just don't happen, especially around here.'
Babs slowly exhaled, her grin growing broader, more knowing. 'Here, Betts,' she said, handing the cigarette over to her sister. 'Just take a deep drag on this cigarette. You saw what I did. Hold it in and let it fill your lungs good. How's he hung, the black preacher? I've never made it with one of them, but I hear they're real tigers in the sack.'
Betty blushed and took the cigarette from Barbara Jean. She really didn't want to smoke it. She never smoked anything and never had, certainly not. What did she call it – Thai weed? – that's dope. Disgusting. Still, if I don't smoke it, she'll keep asking embarrassing questions about the Reverend Billy Dean Donaldson.
Betty did exactly what she thought she had seen Barbara Jean do, sucking heavily on the cigarette and drawing it down into her lungs, holding it there. He is big, and handsome actually, in a chocolate sort of way, she thought. I never really actually thought about… his thing, but I've also heard they have real big bites.
The dope in Betty Sue's lungs expanded radically, filling them to overflowing and she started coughing, forcing the smoke out in great hawking gusts, heaving with sharp little pains.
Barbara Jean took the number back from her. 'No,' she said, 'watch me again. You just take little tokes, so they don't expand so big inside you. Like this.' She sucked deep again and Betty Sue watched the end of the cigarette grow fiery red as she did.
'Now here,' Barbara Jean said, through tight lips, retaining the smoke, 'try it again, only gentler.'
Holding the number in her hand, Betty Sue looked down at it peculiarly, examining it. It was smaller than a regular cigarette, and wrapped in that funny colored paper. It smelled strong, too, the smoke quickly filling the room with a heady odor. Betty quickly took a swallow of her beer, washing away the last bit of pain in her lungs, preparing them for another trial at satisfying her pushy sister.
'Go ahead, do it,' Barbara said, expelling the smoke almost in Betty Sue's face, her long red hair falling provocatively over her shoulders as she shook her head from side, to side.
Betty Sue took a second hit off the cigarette and immediately handed it back to her sister. 'No more,' she said, feeling the peculiar lethargy start to creep over her already from the high-grade marijuana. 'I think I've had enough. I'll stick to beer if you don't mind.'
'Well, okay for now,' Barbara Jean said, finishing the Thai weed herself. 'But I bet Erik wouldn't refuse any of this. Say, how old is he now… hmmm… he must be…'
'He's eighteen, Babs,' Betty Sue said with considerable pride. 'And he's so big. Why already he's almost as tall as his father, and so handsome.'
'Got a big dick, huh?' Barbara Jean asked, the weed clouding her senses and sharpening the feeling seeping throughout her cuntal walls. The flow of her juices seemed to gather just inside the fine smooth lips of her cuntal opening, waiting to lubricate them.
'Damn it, Babs,' Betty Sue said. 'You do say the crudest things!'
'Bet he does, anyway,' she said, 'even if you pretend not to know it. Tell me about him.'
'He's already six feet tall. His hair's a little lighter than Johan's, almost platinum, and his eyes are a deeper blue. He weighs… oh, it must be almost a hundred-and-seventy now. Makes him look so long and lean, stretched out on his tall frame.'
'Don't worry, he'll fill out as soon as he starts fucking and eating regularly,' Barbara said.
Betty Sue tried to ignore her sister's obscene sense of humor. Betty Sue was positive that no one really thought, much less talked, the way Barbara Jean did.
'He's got a girlfriend already,' Betty said. 'At least I think he has. Her name's. Denise St. James and she lives two streets over.'
'Now, Babs,' Betty Sue began, but they were both interrupted.
Erik Swensen, rushed into the room. He was shirtless and barefoot, wearing only a very tight pair of cut- offs, the frayed edges of the legs unraveling all around. The sunlight seemed to be gathered in his hair, giving it sparkling highlights and his bright blue eyes shimmered with youth and boundless energy.
'Jesus Christ!' Barbara Jean said, butting out her Thai roach and taking a quick sip of her beer, her eyes riveted to the massive bulge of the teen's crotch. The cut-offs were many times washed and faded thin, the fabric clearly outlining a most generous cockshaft and balls.
'Oh,' the teen said, coming, to a quick halt. 'I didn't know you had company, Mom. I was just going to remind you it's almost time to go to the hospital.'
'Yes, dear,' Betty Sue said, 'I'm keeping my eye on the time. But tell me, Erik, don't you recognize your Aunt Barbara?'
'Aunt Barbara?' the teen said, 'is it really you? I haven't seen you in years. You're much prettier than I remember you being.'
'And you, my pet,' Barbara Jean said, 'are too. Come, give me a big tight hug.'
Betty Sue watched her sister pull her son in for a close embrace, making very sure it was chaste all the way. Surely she wouldn't, Betty thought, not with her own nephew!
Breaking the hug, rushing off to get something to eat, Erik told Barbara that he'd talk to her later.
'See,' Betty Sue said, 'didn't I tell you? And he's right, too, I do have to get ready to go to the hospital. Do you think you can handle fixing dinner alone? The things are all ready in the kitchen, all you have to do is throw them together.'
'Betts,' Barbara Jean said, 'just get ready and leave. I can take care of cooking. Perhaps Erik can help, if he stays around long enough, that is.'
Laughing, Betty Sue went to her room to change into her best dress. After all, she wanted to look real good for Johan when she saw him in the hospital.
Betty Sue arrived on time, parking in the hospital lot and going up the stairs to the second floor. Johan's room was just down the corridor in the special observation wing, a room he shared with one other person. Betty Sue was anxious to see him, so she hurried past the nurses and interns, almost ignoring them. Then, just two doors away from her destination, some peculiar groaning sounds brought her to an abrupt halt.
Perhaps someone's dying, or needs a doctor, she thought, freezing in her tracks and turning toward the partly opened door leading to someone's room.
Looking through the crack, making sure there wasn't something she could do to help the poor unfortunate patient out, Betty Sue was appalled at what she saw inside the room.
'Oh,' she said, unable to say anything more. The woman inside the room already had a doctor, giving her what she needed in abundance.
Betty Sue had never even imagined such a disgusting spectacle in her entire life. Certainly nothing she had ever done with her Johan had ever led her to suspect that people actually did vile things like this to each other. Still, as disgusting as it was to her, she found herself helpless to turn away, to avoid seeing the groveling, sex- rutting people in the room.
There was a pretty woman, tiny and dark, her long black hair falling well over her shoulders and her black eyes flashing sparks of her passion across the room, so passion-fogged that Betty Sue could have walked right up to her and tapped her on the shoulder and she still wouldn't have noticed her. She was a patient, obviously, and it was her bed. The other bed in the room was unoccupied, probably because the doctor had deliberately arranged it that way, so he could get at her all alone.
The petite black-haired woman was wearing a hospital gown of the type that opened all the way up the
