Cold Beer, Boiled Shrimp, New Love

This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance by any character or situation to any actual person or event is purely coincidental. All characters presented in this narrative are over the age of 18.

1976: Cold Beer, Boiled Shrimp, New Love

By Royce F. Houton

It has been decades since I sat here on the deep, cool spring grass covering the earthen dam that holds back the Sardis Reservoir in northern Mississippi. This is my spoken recollection of what happened on this spot on a cloudless, balmy April evening 48 years earlier.

Γ Γ Γ

We were young then, college sophomores, when I spread a cotton-polyester blanket I once lifted from a cheap motel in Biloxi and nestled a Styrofoam cooler filled with iced cans of Stroh's Beer next to it.

A good 40 feet lower, the dam sloped gradually to the waterline of the vast lake it created among the flooded red clay piney hills. Nearby, a water thundered through a spillway that maintained the lake at prescribed levels, creating a soothing white noise.

Above us, a crescent moon dominated the heavens with the Milky Way on resplendent display behind it. A gentle breeze kissed skin already mildly pink from an afternoon in the sun where shorts, t-shirts or swimwear didn't cover it -- an ever-present reminder of how lucky and alive we were.

"Another?" I asked Cindy as we settled in on the beige blanket as the last of sunset's golden rays on the western horizon dimmed into indigo to the east as dusk concluded Shrimp & Beer Day on the second Wednesday in April of 1976. It had been the capstone event of a weeklong revelry then known as Rebel Romp at Ole Miss. The Sardis Lake event was sanctioned and staged by the university in an era before insurers and university lawyers realized the staggering potential legal liability of hundreds of students negotiating the miles of serpentine backroads to campus after consuming scores of university-supplied alcohol.

"I don't know, Rodge. I'm still a little buzzed from this afternoon down on the beach," she said, reluctantly taking the cold aluminum can.

Cindy Fortunato was no shrinking sorority debutante. She had grown up in the suburbs of St. Louis, the lone girl in a big Catholic family with four brothers. She could be sassy and independent, able to hold her own with any guy, whether it be arguing about baseball or holding her beer. She was a biology major whom I had first noticed the fall semester of my freshman year in some shared introductory chemistry classes. We struck up a casual, respectful and unthreatening friendship. Since then, I had watched her in amazement at some of Oxford's favored watering holes where she turned the heads of frat boys and jocks alike and then shot them down like clay pigeons when they came on to her.

She had little patience for more prissy members of her sorority, Gamma Alpha Sigma, many of whom were quite candid that their primary goal of their collegiate years was not so much in earning a bachelor's degree as ending their bachelorhood with an engagement ring from a wealthy frat kid from an affluent, well-connected family.

Maybe that's why, unlike most sorority members, she would give the time of day to someone like me, a slightly bookish guy who had been the high school valedictorian back in Bay Minette, Alabama, and came to Ole Miss on a full academic scholarship in engineering, lacking the money for fraternity membership and the need for the shallow, transactional friendships it provided.

I'd be lying if I said I hadn't nurtured fantasies about Cindy. What healthy, straight guy wouldn't? Her dark, curly hair naturally spilled onto her shoulders in a loosely tamed mop that somehow always looked better than coifs other girls paid small fortunes for only to see them wilt or frizz in Mississippi's morbid heat and humidity. She stood just over five feet, eight inches tall with long, lean legs topped by a shapely but not ostentatious butt, a narrow waist and modest breasts that rode proudly high on her chest.

It was her face and manner, though, that captured me. Her lips were often drawn into a knowing, skeptical smirk that seemed to say I know what you're about to tell me is bullshit but I'll do you the courtesy of listening anyway. That good-natured smirk could transition instantly into a bright smile that could stop traffic. And when that smile escalated into laughter, she would clench her eyes shut, throw her head back and chortle unreservedly. And she loved to laugh: even at the start of her twenties, laugh lines were forming at the corners of her eyes.

And those eyes: a deep shade of brown that, when they made contact with mine, seized control, held my full attention and made it impossible for me to look away. I don't know if she had that effect on everyone, but I was certain that those eyes could unnerve and expose even the most skillful liar. I'd have hated to take her on in poker.

We had developed an extraordinary friendship that we both treasured because it was safe, bound by mutual admiration and proven trust. We would take day trips together, go shopping and to restaurants, shops and the movies together. Often we'd meet each other at a specific venue around town. We sat together at football and basketball games. We even went fishing a few times together. Most of the time, we hung out with our select gang of good friends. We would confide in each other secrets we told no one else and support each other when those secrets were troublesome.

Those who didn't know us well believed we were in a romantic relationship because of the time we spent together. We didn't think of it that way, but we didn't go out of our way to dispel the notion, particularly Cindy, because it warded off some unwanted suitors.

We got an early start to Shrimp & Beer Day 1976.

I picked Cindy up just before 11 that morning, after her 10 o'clock invertebrate zoology class. We were among the first to park near the beach and meander the quarter of a mile to the event area on a grassy expanse abutting the beach to the south and a large grove of pines to the west.

All afternoon, we had lost ourselves in the freedom of early spring, part of the teeming throng of carefree, half-naked youth howling and playing and drinking and singing along with rock, outlaw country and R&B songs blaring from massive speakers trucked to Sardis Park for the occasion.

"You don't have to call me darlin',... darlin'. You never even call me by my naaaame," most every guy seemed to bellow along with David Allan Coe.

And minutes later, the girls, in time with Aretha: "You make me feel... you make me feel... you make me feel like a natural wo-maaaan! Woman!"

By three in the afternoon, the kegs had all been drained, and the shrimp had all been boiled and consumed. Much of the crowd had begun to head back to Oxford and the bars that would be packed until the law required them to close at 1 a.m. Others, who had brought their own stash of brew and booze, migrated toward the beach, risking citations or arrest for possessing alcohol in that area. Cindy and a half-dozen of our friends retreated into the pines where we had brought our own music on cassette tapes and boom boxes, our own food in plastic tubs of shredded pork barbecue, slaw and buns purchased from a cinderblock pitmaster just off the main road to Sardis who would only accept cash payments, and an iced-down case of Schlitz beer.

The impromptu picnic on the soft bed of pine dry pine needles had lasted for nearly three hours until the beer was gone. We cleaned up our cans and other debris to stay on the good side of the park rangers, packed up and prepared to drive back to Oxford.

"Damn shame a day like this has to end," Cindy said as I cranked my five-year-old Olds Cutlass.

I shrugged. "Doesn't have to."

"You got to be back at a certain time?" she asked.

"Nope. Tomorrow's Thursday. First class isn't until 10:30. I ain't got a hot date or anything tonight," I said, flashing a wry grin in her direction. "I'm game if you want to take in the sunset. I got my own stash of brew and I know just the place."

She thought for a few seconds and nodded.

"Sure! What the hell," she said.

So I drove around to a parking area atop the spillway of the dam -- essentially, a tall, massive levee nearly a mile long -- with a commanding view from the top across the water to the north and the state park to the south. Other than the rare night when some lonely souls might try some night fishing, it was peaceful and solitary here on turf owned by the federal government -- the Army Corps of Engineers -- and outside the watch of state park rangers.

I grabbed the beer cooler from the back seat floorboard and the blanket from my trunk.

"Follow me, but take your time," I cautioned Cindy as we slowly negotiated the sometimes slippery downward grade, a task complicated by the fact that we were both wearing flip-flops intended for the beach.

About midway down the slope, I spotted an area that afforded a superb view of the lake and the sky, put down the cooler and then spread the blanket.

"Reservations for two," I said, taking Cindy's hand and gesturing grandly at the blanket.

"Why thank you, kind sir," she said, doing a faux curtsy while regarding me with mirthful eyes.

So here we were, at the twilight's last gleaming, popping the top of two Stroh's Bohemian Style Pilsners. We tapped the cans together before the first sip, as was our custom. "Cheers."

"Great idea, Cindy. To me, this is the best part of the day so far," I said.

She exhaled languidly as her eyes scanned the heavens.

"I gotta say it's a damn sight better than the ceiling of my room back at the GAS house," she said, taking another sip. The reference was to the commonly used Anglicized, unfortunate acronym for her sorority's Greek letters, ΓΑΣ.

We lay there for long minutes in silence, sipping our Pilsners, just relishing the moment, the freedom, the brief chance to put aside college and just fully relax. It was Cindy who finally broke the silence.

"Rodge, what do you think all of that is," she said, her hand sweeping the sky along the Milky Way. "I mean, it just looks like sort of a glowing, outer space cloud, but I know it's more than that. All kinds of other stars and worlds are out there, all of it very intricate just like Earth and the sun and the moon, all in perfect orbits and such. Maybe there's people out there light years away looking up like we are and wondering if anybody else is out there wondering the same thing."

She rolled over onto her left side, facing me as I lay on my back, still staring skyward.

"You're kind of a numbers geek -- no offense. What do you make of it all? There's astronomy that tells us what's in the heavens, and then there's astrology, and people who study it and believe it say that how stuff up there is aligned guides our lives, determines our fates. You understand how things are engineered and fit together. Do you think there really is something in the grand design of the universe that can decide what happens to you and me?"

I sat up enough to take another swig of Stroh's and give the question a bit of thought.

"Cindy, I'm just hoping to get good enough to one day maybe design a bridge or maybe a high rise or a freeway. What we're looking at up there -- light that's traveled thousands, even millions of years to reach us right now on this night at Sardis Dam -- that's way beyond anything any human or any billion humans could ever figure out."

"The architect or engineer or designer who created that? Nobody will ever figure out all that he or she did, much less how it was done. Sure as hell not me," I said with a chuckle, turning to Cindy's smiling face. "Whether our fates are in those stars and planets? I can't prove it or disprove it. But whatever it is, I'm glad it put us here together in this time and place."

I leaned back again, this time hooking my right arm behind my head, using my forearm as something of a pillow. Cindy, feeling the encroaching evening chill, snuggled closer and rested her head on my chest and draped her right arm across my flat belly.

"Me too, Rodge," she said. "I haven't felt this relaxed, this at peace for a long time. I could doze right off."

And within three minutes, she had. Her breathing became slower, deeper, measured. I dared not move other than to extract my forearm from behind my head and let it come to rest along her shoulder and upper back, as if it were holding her sleeping form to me. I gazed at her sweet face, now in placid slumber. Eventually, I used my other hand to gently brush away some of the dark curls that had blown across her cheek and now tickled her nose.

I don't know how long it was before I, too, fell asleep. Could have been 15 minutes. Could have been 30. I wasn't checking my watch. I was just thankful for this moment of silent communion with this beautiful, sleeping soul who was also my best friend.

A A A

We had been asleep under the cloudless, starry sky for more than two hours when I awoke feeling weight along my ribs and my thighs. I looked down and Cindy, in her sleep, had pressed more of herself against the right side of my body and crooked her right leg over my legs, subconsciously seeking as much of my body warmth as possible.

Cindy wasn't shivering, but her bare legs, arms and midriff exposed between her crop top and her powder blue gym shorts were cool to the touch and she had the goosebumps to prove it. I checked my watch: 10 p.m.

For a moment I debated whether to wake her and head back to Oxford or try to warm her. I lacked the heart to interrupt her slumber, so I decided to slowly roll myself enough to my left to extricate the blanket from beneath me without disturbing her, then wrapping her, burrito style, entirely in the portion that had been beneath me. Once that was done, I scrunched back against her, again restoring her head to its proper place on my right shoulder as my arm, again, looped behind her and more securely pressed her to me.

That's when I did something I had never done before: I pressed a soft kiss against the top of her forehead, just beneath her hairline, hoping against hope that it wouldn't wake her. It didn't, but she shifted slightly, leaning more heavily into me, her warm breath against my neck. And that was enough for me to drift off again.

I woke about an hour later to a gentle, intermittent, almost tickling sensation along my neck, ranging from the collar of my t-shirt nearly to my right ear. I raised my head slightly, interrupting Cindy as she strung together a soft trail of kisses along my neck.

"There you are," she whispered. "I was wondering the best way to wake you, and this seemed good."

"I'll say," I responded in an equally soft voice. "I'm good with that anytime."

She raised her head slightly so that she was looking slightly down at me, her face framed darkly by her wild mane of curls. She smiled.

"Some nice person wrapped me up in this entire blanket while I was sleeping to keep me warm. Any idea who that was," she asked, her hand coursing softly over my chest.

I allowed my right hand to reciprocate by gently stroking along her back over the blanket that still protecting her against the chill. "I'll ask around," I murmured back to her.

"Also, I can't be sure if this happened or if I dreamed it, but it felt like someone pressed the softest, sweetest little kiss right here," she said, her index finger touching the exact spot on her forehead that I had kissed, "after I was safe and warm in this blanket."

"Hmmm," I said, using my left hand to brush a rebellious strand of curls from her face, now just inches from mine. "The mystery deepens."

"Liar," she whispered.

Her hand moved from my chest to caress my cheek just before her face moved slowly, tentatively lower, toward mine until our lips brushed softly, sweetly together in a moment that felt like no other kiss in my young life. It was as though an electrical current passed between us.

She pulled backward for a moment, her eyes searching mine and mine searching hers, before our lips met again, this time with force and passion and longing. My arms encircled her and held her tightly as our mouths opened and, for the first time, our tongues met.

Soon, Cindy was fully atop my supine form, pinning me, her chest pressed onto mine, as we kissed with unreserved abandon. The blanket, draped across her back, now fell across both of us as she straddled my hips.

In those magical minutes, what we had suppressed and filed away as a Platonic friendship, deceiving even our own conscious selves, burst free of its confines and declared itself loudly for what it was: romantic love, the dearest product of the human heart. We couldn't have controlled it if we wanted to.

Of their own volition, her hips rocked and drove her covered cleft into me, particularly after she isolated the prominent, hard ridge that had formed inside my cutoff blue jeans. My hands meandered from her bottom, encased in those silky gym shorts that covered white bikini bottoms underneath, up her bare flanks to her breasts hidden beneath a matching white bikini top and a red cotton crop top over that. She had worn only the bikini during the afternoon frolic on the beach and covered it with the outer garments later, before our picnic in the pines with our friends.

She groaned softly as my hands, for the first time, kneaded her covered tits, elevating her arousal and hastening the tempo of her hips as her mound sought contact and pressure. Before long, she sat upright, unhooked her bikini top and pulled it off along with her crop top. In the pale moonlight, I saw her modest but well-proportioned breasts with nipples the size of thimbles, already bloated and naturally upturned.

"You're so... so beautiful, Cindy," I said as she placed her hand behind my neck and pressed my hungry mouth to her tits, emitting a deep moan at the instant of contact.

Her hips pistoned faster and harder against the tormented erection trapped in my shorts. My hand snaked beneath the elastic waistband of Cindy's gym shorts and kneaded her ass as her gluteal muscles flexed and relaxed rhythmically, grinding her womanhood into me. My fingers explored further, into the crevice of her ass, parting it as they progressed, almost reaching her puckered star and driving Cindy further into her frenzy.

My right hand retreated from her posterior, leaving her shorts and bikini bottoms halfway down her ass, and moved instead to her anterior, sliding down the taut flesh of her lean lower abdomen, beneath her shorts, beneath the low-cut bikini, through her dampened tuft and into her wet slit, evoking a shuddering gasp from Cindy.

"Oh... Rodge. Yes, right there," she hissed.

She ground into my fingers and upturned palm, insinuating them deeper against her inner lips, her opening, and the shrouded, erect bud that stood sentry at their forward apex. Her movements gained tempo as the last vestiges of control abandoned her. Now she grunted with each powerful thrust into my hand, a proxy for the swollen cock still in its denim prison just beneath it. Each movement produced an alluring wet, sticky sound as musky arousal oozed from her sex.

Momentarily, she locked both arms around my neck, buried her face against my neck and began moaning in earnest.

"Hold me, Rodge... I'm... there," she wailed just before her torso stiffened and her legs began trembling. I held her with both arms and suckled her tits as her climax crashed over her, the first time I had beheld anything so stimulating. I could feel the muscles around her pussy contract and relax, as if it were trying to swallow my hand. It was all I could do not to jizz my underwear.