A Lonely Way To Die - Art Bourgeau Read online

  "I'm not going to take that kind of talk from a shithead like you," he said to F.T.

  I have heard F.T. insulted by professionals, and believe me, that was a weak opener, but it was enough.

  F.T. had one foot planted on the floor and the other on the rung of the stool. The seat of the stool swiveled, and F.T. swung without getting up. He hit the man squarely in the crotch with a short right. The heavyset man let out a wail that ended in puke as his lunch came up and splattered the front of his gray shirt. He grabbed his crotch as he fell to the floor, landing with the side of his face in a puddle of vomit, all the fight gone out of him.

  As we left, I wondered if tonight had been the night when Lawrence Welk finally got his tits

  caught in his accordion.

  Chapter 9

  By Monday I was beginning to tire of fishing, so I took the day off. Four or five straight days of fishing is more than enough to suit me, but F.T. wanted to fish for trout. I gave him the directions, and after breakfast he set out alone.

  I finished the coffee left in the pot, did the dishes, and went for a swim. The water was warm and clear. There had been no recent rain to muddy it. I swam upstream for about a quarter mile. The exercise felt good, and I could feel my back muscles loosen with every stroke. At a bend in the river, I rolled onto my back and floated. The current slowly took me back downstream toward camp.

  Overhead, the trees formed an arch like the ceiling in a rich man's church. Floating in the warm water dulled my sense of time. The return trip might have taken five minutes or a half hour, but whichever, it was over too soon. I climbed out of the water and stretched out on my mattress. The sun felt hot as it dried the water on my shoulders.

  It seemed like I had only been asleep for a minute or two when Truman's pickup rattled into the clearing. Truman was impressive in his choice of clothes. He was wearing old tennis shoes, cutoffs, and a black T-shirt with a luminous palm tree and the words "Daytona Beach, Fla." in Day-Glo orange. On a good day, Truman could make Beau Brummel look like he shopped at Robert Hall.

  Truman wanted us to go to his place and listen to music, but I did not think my ears could take it, so we had lunch instead. After lunch I broke out a deck of cards and told Truman that I thought he needed a lesson in the fine art of gin rummy.

  "You've got about an ice cube's chance in hell of teaching me anything about gin rummy," he said. We set the game limit high enough to take all afternoon, and I shuffled and dealt.

  When F.T. returned from fishing, we were still playing, and I was ahead. That ice cube's chances were looking better and better with each hand. I only needed two or three good hands to win the game. F .T. opened a beer and sat down to watch. From the way he was not saying much I could tell something was on his mind.

  After the next hand Truman got up to get himself another beer, and F.T. leaned over to me and in a low voice said, "Snake, see if you can get rid of Truman. I've got something important to tell you."

  "As soon as we finish the game, I'll do what I can," I said.

  "Make it snappy. You'll really like this," he said.

  Getting that beer must have changed Truman's luck, because he started to win. None of his scores were big, but they were consistent, and he started to close the gap. I still only needed a few good hands to finish it, but the cards never came. The game seemed like it was taking forever to finish. About sundown I decided to hell with the ice cube's chances and started trying to throw the game, but even that took time, and we could barely see our cards when Truman laid down the winning hand.

  I told Truman that we would probably see him later at the First National Bar & Grill. He took the hint and left.

  After he had gone, F.T. said, "You sure took your own sweet time about it."

  "You saw the cards. There wasn't much else I could do. Now, what's on your mind?" I said.

  "When I left this morning I headed upstream looking for the pools we talked about. I'd gone

  about three miles, like you said, when I found them. Just as I got to the clearing a car pulled up with two women in it. Nobody else was around.

  They looked sorta like mother and daughter. One was in her forties, but well preserved, and the other was in her twenties. They got out of the car and started towards one of the cabins. The older one I held out her hand, and the younger one took it.

  When they got to the door of the cabin the older one turned and kissed the younger one right on the mouth. That stopped me dead in my tracks. I kept quiet until they got inside, and then I eased up to the window and peeped in. Before long, they were going at it hot and heavy. Snake, they were a couple of lesbians. I couldn't believe it. It was the greatest thing I have ever seen. We've got to go back there tomorrow," he said.

  "Fine, but there are a couple of things we need to get first," I said.

  "Like what?" he asked.

  "You'll see," I said.

  Chapter 10

  The next few days were boring as hell. We set up our stakeout near the cabin and waited for the women to return, but no one showed. We played gin rummy, drank beer, and twiddled our thumbs to kill time. It was dull work.

  Truman had turned into a royal pain in the ass. F .T. and I had kept the business of the cabin to ourselves. Less partners meant less ways to split the pie. But Truman did not see it that way. He knew we were up to something, and he was curious.

  Curiosity is a strange thing. It has been said that it killed the cat. If the truth were known, it has also probably killed a lot of people. In small doses curiosity is not bad, but in larger doses it is a torment which drives people to tread where they are not wanted. The torment is not fatal, but sometimes the treading is. Truman's curiosity had passed the tormenting stage.

  Thursday morning, as I was walking back to the goat shed from the men's room at the Little League field, I noticed a truck parked behind some bushes. Naturally, I stopped to investigate. It was Truman's truck, but he was nowhere around. I went back to camp to get F.T., and together we started to search. It did not take us long to find him. Truman was in a group of thickets, slowly working his way toward the goat shed. He was so intent on sneaking up on the camp that he did not see us watching him. The day was already getting hot, and he was wearing a camouflage hunting jacket and hat. I could imagine how hot he was. It seemed like a hard way to make a point.

  About a hundred yards from camp, Truman started to crawl on his belly. F.T. said that it was the stupidest damn thing he had ever seen a grown man do. I agreed. Crawling on your belly is hard work. F.T. and I are as qualified to speak about it as any two men in this world. The marines are great believers in crawling, and believe me, we have crawled with some experts.

  We watched for a while and then headed back to camp. Truman was making admirable progress for an amateur, but he was not in danger of breaking any land speed records. I estimated that at about the fifty-yard point, the skin on the inside of his knees would wear away, and he would start to bleed, which is nothing serious, but it would slow him down. The elbows are tougher, and they probably would not wear out until about sixty or seventy yards, depending, of course, on terrain. By the time he finished the whole hundred yards, he was going to be dirty, tired, and sore, and it was all going to be for nothing, because F.T. and I were not going to be there.

  We gathered our stakeout gear and started up stream to the cabin. The walk took about forty-five minutes. Our hiding place was beside the stream and about fifty yards from the house. We had chosen it because it offered three important things: concealment from view, a place to keep the Old Blue cold, and a fishing alibi if we were caught. I drank a beer and stretched out for a nap while F .T. finished John D. MacDona1d's latest Travis McGee novel. About an hour later he woke me and whispered, "Don't make any noise. They're here."

  He was right.

  A Ford station wagon with imitation wood paneling on the sides had pulled up in front of the cabin. Two women got out and walked toward the house. Like F.T. had said, one was in her forties, and the other wa
s in her twenties.

  The older one wore a plaid, short-sleeved dress belted at the waist. Her shoes added enough height to make her look taller than average. Her hair was brown. She wore it parted on the side in what hair-dressers call a modified pageboy.

  The younger one wore yellow pants and a sleeveless knit top. From the whiteness of her arms, it was obvious she did not spend much time outdoors. Her hair was short, and she wore glasses with an old-fashioned cat-eye type of frame. She would have been pretty with a newer style of glasses.

  After they had gone inside the cabin, F.T. and I opened a fresh beer and followed them. We peeped in the bedroom window where F.T. had seen them before, but this time they were not there. The other bedroom was empty, too. We found them in the living room, right where we should have looked first. Nothing was happening. They were just sit ting on the couch, having a drink. While I unpacked our gear, F.T. went back to the stream for more beer. Stakeouts are thirsty work.

  "What's happening?" he whispered when he returned.

  "Nothing. I wish they would cut the small talk and get naked," I whispered.

  I was excited, really excited. I had never seen two women together before. This seemed like the perfect way to watch, peeping through the window like a horny twelve-year-old watching his sister take a bath.

  "Do you know them?" whispered F.T.

  "Yeah, I know them," I said.

  "The young one's got a good body. She's the one I want," whispered F.T. F.T. likes women who wear glasses. He says glasses make them more intelligent, more exciting.

  The older one picked up the empty glasses and went into the kitchen.

  "She's going to make another drink. What is she, some sort of goddam alcoholic?" I whispered. F.T. did not reply.

  The older one returned with the drinks and sat down on the couch again.

  "They're sure as shit taking their own sweet time about things. At this rate, they'll probably decide to watch a couple of goddam game shows on television before they do anything," I said.

  "Patience, jackass, patience," said F.T.

  They clicked their glasses together, and each took a sip. I could not tell what they were toasting. The older one put down her glass and kissed the younger one lightly on the lips. It was a gentle kiss with no hurry in it, not at all what I had expected.

  I had expected more urgency, more passion. This looked too natural.

  "All right, we're rolling now. Get the camera ready," said F.T.

  "Good, I'm so horny I could fuck a wet snake on a hot rock," I said.

  The younger one took off her glasses and laid them on the coffee table. Glasses can be a real hazard in lovemaking, especially if your partner should decide to cross her legs.

  They began to undress each other, taking their time kissing and touching as each piece came off. I was beginning to see, aside from the obvious difference, that sex between two women was entirely different from sex between a man and a woman. With these women, it was less of a straight-line affair. Each part of the act was more equal in importance. It was an interesting lesson in two people making each other feel good. I was a little disappointed. It was not at all dirty.

  I had used up two of our four packs of sixty-second self-developing film by the time the older one was nude, and the younger one had had her top pulled up and her pants and panties pushed down to midthigh. They both had good bodies. The younger one was soft, white, and trim. The older one was larger and not so trim. Age and good living had added a small roll to her middle. She had a surgical scar near her navel. It was probably an appendix scar. Her breasts had some stretchmarks. Her face had some lines, which were not noticeable from a distance. If I had seen a picture of her, I probably would not have given it a second look, but seeing her in the flesh, I realized what a damn fine-looking woman she was.

  The younger one gently pushed her to a sitting position on the couch, knelt between her legs, and began to do some very interesting things. From where I stood I could tell that this was not the first or second time she had been through this routine. She knew all the older woman's hot buttons, and before long, the tempo really picked up. I was no longer disappointed. There was plenty of action in that living room, and it was raunchy as hell.

  After I finished taking the last of the pictures, we crept onto the front porch. Very carefully we opened the screen door, turned the knob on the inside door, and swung it open with a bang. The two women jumped like they had been shot. F.T. and I stepped into the room, and I said, "Now is this any way for the next mayor of Cannibal Springs to be acting?"

  Chapter 11

  We could not have timed our entrance any better. We literally caught the ladies with their pants down. The noise of the door banging against the wall and the surprise of being caught caused chaos, but I'll have to hand it to them, scared as they were, they kept their poise, and neither of them screamed.

  F.T. closed the door. The ladies were trying to cover themselves which from our standpoint would never do. Once they were dressed, it would be doubly difficult to get them undressed again.

  "Don't anyone move," I said. I know it was corny, but it was the only thing I could think to say. For some reason, it worked. All action stopped. I walked to the coffee table, every bit as scared as the ladies, and picked up the younger one's glasses. Being naked while everyone else is dressed makes you vulnerable, but being naked and unable to see at the same time is much worse. I know, I wear glasses, too.

  Jessie, the candidate for mayor, was covering herself with her dress. I reached over and gently tugged at it. She did not let go.

  "Leave me alone, and get out of here," she said. There was no real force behind her words.

  "Now what kind of hospitality is that? Scarlett O'Hara would turn over in her grave if she could hear you now. Where are your manners, your Southern upbringing? Why, the least you could do is to offer us a drink," I said.

  "What do you want?" said Jessie.

  I knew she was not talking about a drink, but I wanted to keep things light so I said, "Bourbon and water will be fine. Don't get up, we'll fix them."

  While F.T. was gone, no one said a word. The younger woman, whose name was Cindy, still sat on the floor, and stared into space. Jessie looked at me with a thoughtful expression. I could not think of anything to say. F.T. returned with the drinks, and I took a long sip of mine. It was plenty strong.

  "You've got your drinks. Now what do you want from us?" said Jessie. I could swear I heard a note of hope in her voice.

  It was time to lay our cards on the table. I was so nervous I didn't know if I could say it, but finally I blurted out, "I want you."

  Neither of them said a word, which made me more nervous than ever, so I chattered away like a goddam magpie.

  "Last week F.T. came up here fishing, and by accident discovered your little pastime. We've been here every day since, waiting for you to come back, and I have to say, it was worth the wait. Watching you two has really been something, but we didn't come here just to watch. We came here to play.

  "F.T. and I are only going to be here for another week or so, then we're heading out. All we want from you ladies is the pleasure of your company, occasionally, for the next week or so, and then we'll be gone, out of your hair for good. We have no intention of hurting you in any way. All we want to do is love you a little. What do you say . . ." I said.

  "Not a chance," said Jessie.

  "Why not?" I asked.

  "Because I said not, and if you touch either of us, we'll have you in jail for rape so fast it will

  make your head spin," said Jessie.

  I could see they needed a little more convincing.

  "We were afraid you might feel that way. Rape is a serious charge. That's why we took the pictures," I said.

  "What pictures?" she asked. She looked like someone had just hit her in the stomach.

  "These," I said, taking one out of my pocket and handing it to her. It was a great action shot with clarity and good color, especially the flesh to
nes. Not bad for a cheap camera.

  "Now, why don't y'all pick things up where you were before you were so rudely interrupted. F.T. and I will just sit here and watch for a while, and then maybe we'll join in on the chorus," I said.

  "I guess we don't have any other choice," she said as she tossed her dress on the coffee table and reached for Cindy.

  Chapter 12

  We spent the next few hours rolling around in each other's arms, changing positions more often than a high school marching band at halftime. It was fun. Finally, about midafternoon, Jessie and I retired to one of the bedrooms, leaving Cindy and F.T. the choice of the living room or the other bedroom.

  There must be some truth to that old chestnut about experience being the best teacher, because there seemed to be no limit to what Jessie could do well. A couple of times I actually felt she was enjoying herself. Afterward, we talked for a while.

  "Tell me something. What's a woman like you doing spending her afternoons up here messing around with Cindy? I mean, you've got a daughter, you were married," I said.

  "It's a long story," she said.

  "I've got time," I said.

  "I was married, but it didn't work out. Things happen like that sometimes. I had a daughter to raise and a beauty parlor to run, so I stayed here. It's a good town to raise a family or run a beauty parlor in, but it isn't a good town as far as manhood goes. What little there is around here is either married or drives a truck, and neither of them can do a woman much good. A woman has needs just like a man, maybe even stronger, and there's just not enough around here to handle those needs," she said.

  "What about going to Nashville or Chattanooga? Things ought to be better around there," I said.

  "Things are better around there, but they are too far away. You can't just pick up and go to Nashville or Chattanooga every time the mood moves you," she said.

  "So you took up with Cindy," I said.

  "So I took up with Cindy," she said.