Buster & Holly Ch. 01

Martha had made good on her promise of no unchaperoned dates until I began attending church with her. What had been an occasional holiday became every Sunday and after proposing, Wednesday nights as well. She was blonde, my height, mildly slender and reasonably buxom. She was modest in her dress and strict in her 'do not touch' policy. She was a fantastic kisser and could sit in the car making out with me for hours on end. Her parents were even more fanatic about the church thing than she was. It took them a long time to accept me but upon producing an engagement ring while at the same time signing my life away on one of those new cracker box ranch houses that were springing up all over town, they began to leave us alone in the house while they were out shopping or more often than not, over at the church.

So imagine my surprise when Martha, on honeymoon night, let her dress fall on the floor as soon as I closed the front door behind us. My immediate thought was that mild mannered Martha was really a hell cat in disguise. With a coy, mischievous smile, she reached around her back and unhooked her bra.

Almost always having worn tight white pull-overs, I had guessed my bride-to-be to be at least a 34C cup. Having caught glimpses of them while bending over with looser fitting tops, she excited my imagination. Of course, they had always hidden in rigid, fantasize quenching, Playtex bras, always white with an abundance of stitching and always combined with the strictly enforced 'do not touch' rule.

So imagine my surprise when she let that plain white double-cup garment fall to the floor as I stood there just inside the door, mouth agape. Not satisfied with merely revealing her deceit to me, she did so with mocking smile and a devil-may-care laugh. For there my bride stood, flat chested, complete with inverted nipples!

I had been played for a fool when I bought that used motorcycle right out of high school. I had been swindled by so called friends who need a twenty here and there, always with the promise that they'd pay me back as soon as payday rolled around. I had even been swindled by the pastor who during marriage counseling requiring a paycheck stub to guarantee that I was truly tithing my ten percent before agreeing to marry us. But this deceit was the proverbial straw that broke the proverbial camel's back.

The smile quickly vanished from her face as I rushed at her to throw her down the hall and on to the bed. I had every intension of rap*ing my new wife then and there. However, sprawled across the bed, that menacing smile came crawling back across her face before that snidely snicker again mocked me. Baiting me, she asked why I thought she hadn't taken off her panties. Standing back and looking down, the large maxi pad was evident to even my naïve eyes.

"Buster, did you really think you were going to get to have me whenever you want just because now I'm your wife? Mother was right. You're just a simple country boy who has a lot of growing up to do." The Cheshire cat smile turned into a mocking sneer as I slammed the door behind me rushing out into the night, losing myself on some country road after downing half a bottle of Jack.

*****************

"Hey, you okay in there?" I heard the deep resonating female voice inquire as she thumped on the window.

Waking with one eye open and the other still closed, I rubbed it and sat up, suddenly to lay back down again across the front seat as the world spun around me.

Mine was an old Ford F-100 pick-up complete with the mandatory gun rack in the back window. The door creaked on rusty hinges as she opened the door and asked if I was alright one more time.

"Hey there feller, looks like you had one too many last night," the sweet voice sang to me as its owner gently removed the bottle from my hand. "Can't say I'm surprised though. You didn't know Martha as well as you thought you did, did you Buster?"

The world stopped spinning long enough for me to turn over on the seat and look up at the upside down girl leaning in the passenger side door. Holly Bloomquist! I thought I had recognized the voice.

Holly was known in high school as the "sure thing." We had graduated together just a few years prior. I confess I never gave her a second thought after that. Now the question pierced my mind as to whatever had happened to the lass. Back then there were different grade schools even though the school district was small. The town was even smaller. However, Holly lived far enough out to be carted off to our neighboring grade school rivals. It wasn't until sometime late in my high school years that I had had her pointed out to me in reference to her being the "sure thing." Like the conniving bitch I had wed the day before, Holly too had been born blonde. She too had large bumps on her chest but obviously as I tried to focus, Holly's were real and hanging freely in a tattered sleeveless shirt.

Continuing to lay there, the world still spinning around me, I remembered high-school-Holly as a gay, mischievous thing who bounced on her toes as she walked and flirted with any boy who looked her way. The girls had, for the most part, kept her outside of their flock. A different feather I guess. She hadn't been anything to look at back then, pimple faced, a bit on the plump side and blanched skin as white as one of mother's bed sheets on laundry day hanging out on the line.

"Come on Buster, get up and slide over. Let me drive you back to the house. Maybe a couple of cups of hard coffee will bring you back into the land of the living."

Holly drove the truck a hundred yards across country gravel before turning my swirling world up into a steep climbing drive lined with old over-grown lilacs now in full spring time bloom. Their scent, which previous to that moment I had found magically enjoyable, now made me nauseous. If I hadn't already lost everything inside me the night before, I probably would have then. Holly pulled on around the back of a house that looked as if it had never had a coat of paint on it in its entire existence.

Coming to a stop, parking on a blend of short broadleaf weeds, country grass and assorted pea gravel, my nurse helped me out of the truck before guiding me over to a rusty, equally squeaky screened door which led into an old country kitchen complete with a stainless steel legged, faded yellow linoleum topped table with three matching chairs.

How I made it through bacon and eggs and two slices of Wonder Bread toast, all topped off with a half a pot of coffee without throwing it all back up outside the kitchen door, I will never know. All I remember is waking up on her tossed-blanket couch later that afternoon. Holly was humming as whiff's of baked apples flowed pass me and on out through the open front door.

Raising myself up from the prone position, I remained sitting on the couch about as erect as a single slice of bread after being soaked in milk and egg. I was feeling better but nowhere close to good. My head felt like someone had been overly enthusiastic in their placing a steel tourniquet across my forehead.

Slowly the room came into view. Except for the couch, there was only an equally squalid, fabric-covered chair sitting in the corner next to the five by four foot front window. I could see the swing just on the other side of it on the front porch. There were no pictures on the walls, no TV with rabbit ears slid off in the corner, no books, no end tables, not even a rug. There was just one other thing in the room, an old brown three foot square gas furnace. The décor was early redneck.

"Hey there, look at who's up. I was beginning to wonder if I'd have to drive down to Thompson's farm and call the county ambulance to come all the way out here take you in to doc Wallen for emergency repair." Apparently the house didn't have a phone either.

I must have given the woman one of those looks which gave her permission to ramble, for off she went as if she hadn't seen a friendly face in a coon's age. Eventually she came back around to talk about Martha, filling me in on all sorts of seeded details about things I hadn't known or even guessed at. Holly then disappeared to return with refreshed cold facecloth to place on my brow as she told me about Jimmy Dunn. It seemed that somewhere, somehow, Jimmy Dunn and Martha had had a thing going on ever since sophomore high school "daze", as Holly phrased it.

Of course, I knew Jimmy Dunn. His parents owned one of the biggest acreage farms in the county besides owning the Massey Ferguson tractor & implement dealership out on Route 4. They lived in a large field-stone house with a manicured lawn complete with an in-ground pool in the back. They were snobs —and I didn't need Holly to inform me of that fact. Jimmy had been sent off to college right out of high school, returning summers to work on daddy's farm. "And that was when I caught them fooling around parked out back behind that corn crib just behind the barns my dad was renting at the time. Remember it? The fire departments from two counties came and played 'burning down the barns' and then conveniently shortly thereafter built that fancy gas station because of that new state clover leaf over on 251."

My head was clearing.

"You feel like trying to put something else in that stomach?" Waving her off, I tried standing. "I'd better be getting back."

"Whoa there horse. You'd better sit a while longer. There's no need to rush, least ways not on my part. And don't worry, there's no one out this way to tell that pretty new wife of yours where you spent your morning. The only people who ever drive down this lane is Gus, my mailman and the Thompson's, though they usually go the other way back to town. No body else out here but me. So no rush!" She smiled. "I just baked an apple cake but it really needs to cool a spell before eating. I could rustle you up a hamburger plus there's some two day old potato salad in the fridge. But I suppose that doesn't sound so good to you now."

Holly tried to be the gracious host, but all I could think of was how I had been played the fool and how the hell I was going to get out of the mistake.

"I need to get back. I need to get back and take her and all her things and dump them back at her folks place."

"Buster, Jimmy's married now himself so I don't think he and Martha are doing anything on the side any more. I mean I don't know as I'm almost never in town. But still, I hear things every now and then."

I wasn't about to confess to Holly what had happened to send me off into the night on my first ever drunken binge. She had guessed enough already. My head was clearing.

"Let me see if that cake has cooled enough to eat and I'll pour you another cup of coffee. We can go sit out on the front porch and get some fresh air. Maybe that will help clear your head up a bit more."

We ended up doing just that. Her cake was delicious even to a recovering drunk while her coffee was strong but not bitter. And the sitting out on the front porch swing which remained stationary for my sake, did succeed in helping me feel almost human again.

"I'd divorce the bitch!" Holly suddenly offered without any apology. "Yep, that's what I'd do. Do it on grounds of incompatibility and before consummation. I KNOW," she emphasized in a slow slur, "you two didn't do anything last night. You were way too wasted for that."

"Holly, please. God love ya for getting me out that ditch and getting a couple of mugs of coffee down me. But please, nothing more about Martha."

And with that Martha never again came up in conversation. Eventually we had those hamburgers with skillet fried potato pancakes. We had switched from coffee to lemonade before it came time for me to find my way back into town. "Home before dark," as mother use to say.

Holly saw me to my truck, keys still in it. Why lock anything this far out? Then it happened. Leaning in the open window just before I put the old truck in reverse, heading myself back down her drive, Holly kissed the side of my face assuring me that her door was always open if I should ever need sobering up again.

What followed turned out to be an interesting summer. I had done my best to make a go of the marriage, never bringing up the fact that I knew about of Jimmy Dunn -despite the fact that by the time I had made it back to that cracker box on Elm street after spending the day sobering up at Holly's, having found that Martha had moved all her things into the master bedroom while moving all mine out, dumping them in one large pile in the room next to hers. "We aint have'n no sex except when I say and when I'm ready to have kids," the once shy and innocent girl had informed me. It hadn't taken long for the anger to build again. I stopped going to church and let her know that she and her church weren't going to see another cent from my paycheck. It wasn't a good way to start a marriage but then she had no one to blame but herself for it being that way. And though it is self-serving, I don't hold any guilt for rap*eing her from time to time. At least at first, it had managed to wipe that shit eat'n grin off her face. But it didn't take long before she mocked me even for that. Why she had ever bothered to let me marry her, I never did figure out.

It was ungodly hot that summer and unusually dry. Then came August. I had begun to make it a habit of pulling the fuse for the whole house air conditioner in the mornings before leaving for work. Martha had quit her job, preferring to sit at home, drinking coffee all day, talking on the phone and eating whatever her darling mother brought over as they sat together watching soap operas on tv. Driving home after work, I always knew what was waiting for me back home.

My foot hadn't stepped inside the house before the rant began about how embarrassed she was that mother and June, the church's organist, had to leave because the house was so hot. "Good," I told her before asking why she hadn't left with them.

"Well maybe I should. That would make you happy wouldn't it. I bet you'd be right over there at Hunt's office filing divorce proceedings due my deserting you too, wouldn't you. Buster, don't ever fool yourself into thinking I don't know how the game is played."

I suppose the coup de grace was the slap in the face that came with it. Before she could do it again I had her arm behind her, pushing her back down the hall before shoving her onto her all-frills-and-lace, pink and white, four-poster canopy bed that had been her grandmothers.

"Pack your bags, girl. You're not staying in my house another night." I'm sure the neighbors had grown somewhat use to the shouting. Ben, who lived next door, a kindly middle aged man, had once given me a pat on the back to let me know that at least he knew what was going on and if I ever needed some place to sit a spell, well his screened in garage was always open to me.

There were times when Martha knew I was serious as opposed to when I was merely shouting threats to let off a little pent up steam. She knew this time that there wasn't any doubt that I was serious in my threat.

"You wouldn't dare! You're not man enough. You're a loser and always have been. If my dad hadn't gotten you that job with the county, you'd still be making minimum wage down working at Dunn's."

I had one last raw nerve and with that she had gone and touched it.

"Martha, do you think I'm so stupid as not to know about you and Jimmy? Hu?"

Martha never had much color about her but what she did have she lost immediately when at deaths door I threw Jimmy Dunn in her face. Finally, I had said something to shut her up. Finally, she who always had a comment about everyone and everything was tongue tied, trying give answer but nothing was registering on that pretty little face of hers.

"So pack your bags and get out. I'll call your dad to come over and get you. I'm serious, you're not spending another night in the house."

Only able to amount anything much more than a squeak, I heard her cry, "It's my house too!" before I turned away, slamming the bedroom door, leaving her to pack as I called her father. Both parents came over almost immediately. Like her daughter, the Mrs. was loaded for bear, walking more like forced military, arms swinging, legs kicking, shouting all those Jesus-loves-you four letter words at me while father tried to reason with me. But it did them no good. It didn't take all that long before they realized my resolve. It took longer than it should have but eventually they all left together with their whimpering princess of a daughter.

"Don't worry about coming back either. I'll drop the rest of the stuff off in the morning," I angrily shouted as pallid faced father pulled back out of the drive. Turning round in the circle to drive, his two bitter faced women sat next to him as he headed them all back to his place. I almost felt sorry for the man.

Perhaps it was the neighbors all standing out side. Perhaps it was the empty house awaiting me inside. For whatever reason, I knew I wouldn't spend the night in that house either. Other than the stereo and tv, there wasn't anything in the house that I was worried about her coming back and stealing if I wasn't there to stand guard over it.

And so I found myself in my truck, out driving the countryside when I realized that it all looked vaguely familiar. Turning up the steep drive with brown, sun-baked shrubs lining it, I pulled around back of the house next to the equally old and rusted Chevy pick-up —complete with gun rack in the back. And there she was standing just outside the back door with both hands tucked down in front of a faded pair of men's boxer shorts.

"I was wondering if I'd ever see you again," her crisp, energetic voice sang to me.

"I was in the neighborhood so I thought I might take the chance," I apologized.

"Kinda late for country sight see'n isn't it?"

The sun was setting amidst the noise of locus, crickets, chirping swallows flying overhead and a dusty horizon. I only answered with a sheepish grin and a half hearted, " 'suppose so."

I don't know why I had never really looked at her the last time I had been there. Sure, the alcohol haze played a part in it, but it didn't account for all of it, or even most of it. With shoulder length sun bleached hair, wearing the same faded thread bare, sleeveless checker-board shirt as last time, Holly remained standing barefoot at the screen door. The left side of her mouth was slightly turned upward. I was suddenly recognizing the little things about her.

Third from the top, Holly's blouse had only one button fastened. Judging by the swaying movement, she had nothing on underneath it. Her arms were deeply tanned and covered with sun bleached white hair. Her eyebrows were almost non-existent as if lost in a fire. Her cheekbones were pronounced and her jaw line was clean. A slender gleaming gold necklace peeked out just inches above the breasts that danced sirens for me as she turned to invite me in her house.

"So how are you and the misses doing? Did she drive you out here again?"

"I guess you could say that. I threw her out of the house tonight."

"Really! Good for you. Wanna beer?"

"I thought you knew."

"Knew what dear?"

"Knew that I didn't drink."

"Well, stupid me. I suppose I should have gleaned that after your last visit. You didn't handle it all that well then, did you? However," she raised her voice in a bit of delight, "I've got fresh squeezed lemonade. Just add sugar to your liking."

"Hmmm, now that sounds good."

Once inside, I sat down at her yellow linoleum table and watched as Holly stretched to retrieve an old aluminum glass from the shelf above the stove. I also noted that there wasn't anything on under her seat-worn shorts either. Still itemizing, I noted that her ass and her calves were as hard and sculptured as any gym jockey.