Cutting Loose Ch. 01

She bolted upright in the bed.

Dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, Roy Lee sat at the small desk, a Rand McNally atlas spread in front of him. He seemed to be making notes on a pad of paper.

He must have heard her stirring, because he turned to her with a lopsided smile. "Good morning."

Blushing as red as a beet, Eileen looked down at her lap. "I'm sorry."

"Well, you should be," he scolded with a grin. "What the hell were you thinking? You get a man all worked up, make him give you a first-rate orgasm, and then fall asleep? Shame on you, Aunt Eileen. I thought better of you than that."

"Stop it!" she begged, her cheeks flaming. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to. I just felt so good. So safe, and warm, and loved..." She trailed off. "For the first time in years I didn't feel afraid in bed."

His face solemn, Roy Lee sat on the bed and gave her a hug. She returned it fiercely, letting the bedclothes fall down around her so her naked breasts pressed against his chest.

"I'll be here for you," he said, kissing her cheek. "As long as you need me.

"But what say you get cleaned up and we grab some breakfast? We've got a long way to go and all the time in the world to get there."

*****

The Waffle Hut served the sort of food that made cardiologists rich and their wives drive Mercedes.

Eileen watched with a sort of horrified fascination as Roy Lee methodically plowed through a breakfast of waffles, hash browns, bacon, and sausage.

Catching her glance, he grinned. "If you eat ten of these, they kick in a free triple bypass for free," he said.

She laughed and picked up her own fork, cutting off a piece of her ham omelet. "So what are our plans today?" she asked.

"Well, first of all, we need to find me some luggage," he said. "I'm not going to drive across the country, hauling cardboard boxes in and out of the car every time we stop for the night. And you need to get a cell, right?"

She nodded. "I should have got my own years ago, not depended on Bobby." She looked out the window at the brilliant Saturday morning. "But we shouldn't go to a store for the luggage. Too expensive." With a wave, she beckoned the waitress over. In a few minutes, she had the location of the nearest cell phone outlet and a thrift store. She raised her eyebrows at Roy Lee's surprised expression.

"If you want to find out what is going on in a town, baby, just go to the nearest diner. They know everyone and everything, because everyone comes through sooner or later." Eileen looked at her hands, resting in her lap. "And after that, I have one more stop to make."

*****

Eileen helped Roy Lee pick out three pieces of used but sturdy black luggage at the thrift store before going to the cell phone outlet and buying a new phone, getting the best data plan she could afford.

"This is going to be my phone and computer and e-mail for the foreseeable future," she said to him. "No reason not to get the best." She looked at the clerk, who was filling out the paperwork. "What else do you need?" she asked.

"Home and billing address?"

For the first time, she hesitated. "I'm moving, and I don't know what my new address is going to be," she said.

"We really do need a current address," the young woman said politely.

"But I don't..." Her old phone rang, making them all jump. She looked at the display and her eyes narrowed.

"Bobby Ray?" Roy Lee asked. She nodded, biting her lip.

"Here," he said, taking it from her and putting it on the store counter. He answered it and put it on speaker, nodding to Eileen.

"Hello?" she said.

"You fucking bitch! Where the fuck are you, you fucking cunt? When I get my hands on you you're going to wish you'd never been born!!"

Eileen's face went white, but she answered, her voice merry and mocking. "Hi, honey! I'm in Birmingham right now, getting a new phone. If I'm lucky, this is the last time I'll ever hear your voice, you disgusting pig.

"I've found a lover," she said, darting a glance at Roy Lee, and he fought to keep from laughing out loud. "I haven't screwed him yet, but he is already way better in the sack than you ever were."

If anything, the screaming through the phone became even more unhinged. "You God-damn motherless whore! Who is he? Who the fuck is he? I'll kill you bo-"

Eileen disconnected the call and met the clerk's gaze steadily. "That was my husband, who I am running away from. Now," she said, iron in her voice. "Are you going to hook me up with a new phone, or am I going to leave and find someone who will?"

Twenty minutes later they walked out of the store, a newly activated phone with a Montana area code in hand, with all of the rebates the furious clerk could put on there.

"I'll make sure to change the address as soon as I have a permanent residence," Eileen assured her.

"Don't worry about it, honey," the clerk said. "We women have got to look out for each other. Just be safe, okay?"

*****

They repacked the car, able to get most of Roy Lee's clothes in the new luggage, throwing the cardboard boxes into a dumpster behind the hotel. As they checked out, Eileen managed to sweet-talk the clerk (a different one) into giving them some empty trash bags for dirty laundry. All in all, it was a much better-organized Dodge which hit the highway shortly before eleven in the morning.

"So," she said, thumbing through the atlas as he pulled back onto the interstate. "How are we getting to Promise, Montana?"

"Well, there's good news and bad news," he replied, cracking his window. The day promised to be much warmer than the one before, the weather forecast calling for highs in the middle seventies. "The bad news is it's damn near two thousand miles from here to there. And it ain't exactly a straight line.

"My plan is to get us to Kansas City tonight. We'll take 65 north to Nashville. Once we get there, we'll hop on Interstate 24 to around Hopkinsville, Kentucky. Then we'll get on something they call the Breathitt Parkway to just north of Evansville, Indiana."

"Indiana? Are you sure you're going the right way?"

Roy Lee grimaced. "The problem is that there just isn't any easy way to get from Nashville to St. Louis. We could take 24 further west, but then we'd have to dick around on Interstate 57 or 55.

"The good news is that once we hit Evansville, we're in good shape. We can take 64 across to St. Louis, then I-70 to KC. And then we have to make a choice."

He helped her flip the atlas to the page for Montana. He pointed at the western part of the state. "Promise is there. Not too far from Interstate 15, which runs all the way from California to Canada.

"Kansas City is an interstate hub. One of the biggest in the United States. We can take one of three routes across the western US.

"We can stay on 70. That takes us across Kansas, Colorado, and Utah, and we jump onto 15 south of Salt Lake City.

"Or we can go north and hit Interstate 80 at Council Bluffs, Iowa. That'll take us across Nebraska, Wyoming, and we hit 15 north of Salt Lake City."

"And what's behind door number three?" she asked, lips curving in an admiring smile.

"We take I-29 all the way up to Sioux Falls, South Dakota," he answered, pulling around a tractor-trailer. "That takes us across South Dakota, northern Wyoming, and Montana. We'll jump onto 15 at Butte and take it south to Promise."

"And what's your opinion? Unless you're unlike every other man I've ever known, you're going to want to drive the whole way yourself."

"Well, it is my car," her nephew said, eyes twinkling.

"Of course."

"To be honest, the northern routes scare the crap out of me. It's getting on towards November, and this car isn't equipped for winter driving. I've hardly ever driven in the snow. I don't want to start practicing now, with you and all our stuff in the car. Especially if we're driving through the mountains.

"So I'm thinking the southern route is best. We can stop in KC tonight. Then Denver the next night. Then Salt Lake City or maybe Pocatello, Idaho. Then Promise."

"And your momma," Eileen said softly.

"And my momma," he repeated. "Do you know how to find her?" he asked.

She shook her head. "She would send me a postcard at the salon a few times a year, always postmarked Promise. But she never gave me her home address. Just a few lines to let me know she was OK."

"Well," he sighed. "It's not a very big town. It can't be that hard to find her."

She nodded and lifted her purse into her lap. Digging out her wallet, she started going through it methodically, removing everything that could connect her with Bobby Ray. In a few moments she had a handful of plastic in her hand, credit cards and debit cards and the detritus of seventeen years of a mostly loveless marriage. Pulling a pair of scissors out of her purse, she cut the cards into pieces, then wrapped them in paper napkins from the glove compartment, ready to throw them away at the next rest stop.

"Scissors?" Roy Lee asked.

"You would not believe the places where people have asked me to look at their hair," she replied. "It just got easier to start carrying them around."

"So," he said quietly. "You and Bobby Ray."

Eileen sighed. "It was a mistake. The whole Goddamned thing. And by the time I was smart enough to know it, it was too late to get out.

"Your daddy and Bobby were best friends in high school. And when your daddy started sniffing around after your momma, he brought Bobby along with him sometimes.

"I was just twelve years old and Jillian was seventeen when they started dating. Lord, Roy Lee, I worshiped the ground she walked on. My beautiful big sister, going out with the handsome young football stud. It could not have been any more cliched. They got married when I was a freshman in high school, and I was the maid of honor. Bobby was the best man.

"Afterward, he went into the army. He had watched too many of those action movies in high school, and he was going to beat the commies all by himself. But by the time he joined up, all the commies were gone, and places like East Germany and Poland were our friends, for the love of God.

"So instead of saving the world from Russia, he got sent to Yugoslavia when it started to fall apart, back in the mid-nineties. Do you remember anything about that?"

Roy Lee shook his head. "I would only have been two or three years old."

She hissed in frustration. "Not personally. But from school, baby." She flipped a hand, dismissing the subject.

"He came back home on leave, when he'd been in for about six months. I was sixteen, sophomore in high school, and just starting to fill out," she said, cupping her breasts for emphasis. "He came over to visit your momma and daddy when I was there one night.

"You were still just a baby, and I kept you to myself for most of the evening," she said, with a reminiscent smile. "Your daddy and Bobby sat around the table and drank beer all night, bullshitting about high school. But I could feel Bobby watching me.

"And when it was time for me to go back home, he walked me to his car and gave me his military address and asked me to write to him. And then he kissed me.

"Well, I was a stupid little idiot, and I thought the whole thing was romantic. Private Harris in his snazzy uniform, asking me to wait for him, for when he got out of the army.

"So I waited. All through high school. I went on a few dates, but I made sure the boys kept their hands to themselves. And I wrote to him, and he wrote back. And then he got sent to Kosovo when Yugoslavia started to fall apart.

"He saw some terrible things there, Roy Lee," she said, her voice soft. "I think...I think he must have done some terrible things. There were three different religions and about a dozen different ethnic groups, all fighting each other when the government collapsed. Old hatreds die hard."

"You don't need to tell me that," Roy Lee said as he negotiated the tangle of roads leading around Nashville. He turned onto the exit ramp for Interstate 24. "Some people back home are still fighting the Civil War, and that's been over for a century and a half."

"Exactly," she said, pleased with his insight. "Well, just imagine what some of the boys back home might do if they knew there wouldn't be any consequences.

"That's what Kosovo was like. Bobby talked to me about it once or twice, when he first came home. Before we stopped talking to each other. So much hate there was nothing anyone could do but try to stay alive.

"Then he came home my senior year. At the homecoming game, for God's sweet sake. I was part of the homecoming court, and we were standing there on the fifty-yard line at halftime, and the announcer said that they had a surprise for me.

"And Bobby Ray Harris came out in his dress uniform, bright and shiny, and opened a box and asked me to marry him there in front of the whole damn town. And I said yes.

"Worst decision of my entire life. I didn't know him. He didn't know me. All I knew was the idea of him, like my life was some silly-ass romance book.

"But Momma was dead and Daddy was sick, and I was scared and I thought I was in love. So I said yes.

"By the time we were done with our honeymoon, I thought I had made a mistake. After a year, I was sure of it. He was short-tempered and mean and bad in bed, and he never listened to anything I had to say.

"He got hired on at the police department, and once he had made deputy sheriff he started acting like some tin-pot dictator at home.

"I remember the first time he hit me," she said, fists clenching in her lap. "I'd had a bad day at the salon, and dinner was late. He came into the kitchen, and when I told him it would be another thirty minutes, he slapped me right across the face." Her hand went up to her left cheek in memory. "And then he stood over me as I cried on the floor, screaming at me to get up.

"Well, I said I'd go to the police, and he just laughed. I am the police, he said."

"You tried to get away," Roy Lee said quietly. It wasn't a question.

Eileen nodded. "Twice. I guess three times is the charm," she said with a lopsided smile. "He paid off the police in towns around Deer Creek. As soon as they saw my car they pulled me over, took me in, and called Bobby. I never had a chance.

"After the second time, I learned not to try anymore. Until God took pity on me and sent you my way last night, baby," she said.

Roy Lee sat silent as the white stripes of the highway flashed past. He had always respected Eileen as his aunt, but a vast upwelling of sympathy and pity overtook him as he heard her sad story.

"I'm sorry," he said. "If I had known..."

"If you had known, Roy Lee, what could you have possibly done?" Eileen said grimly. She rubbed the spot on her finger where her wedding ring used to lie. The clerk at the pawn shop had offered her two hundred dollars, but she had bargained him up to six. With that added to the money she had cleaned out of her business account earlier in the day, she felt less of a burden on her nephew.

"All you could have done would be to get hurt, too." She sighed, leaning back in her seat, her eyes on the softly rolling hills of central Tennessee, but her mind miles and years away.

*****

As their trip continued through the afternoon, Roy Lee found that Eileen was a different person from the one he had thought he had known. As they drove and talked, she showed him a side of her he had never seen. One that, perhaps, she had not shown to anyone for years, for fear of her husband and the pain he could give her. Her bright, brittle cheer, shallow as a pan of water, was gone. It its place was a wiser, sadder, deeper woman; one who had been hurt, but who now had room to grow as well. Roy Lee thought the change looked very good on her.

They ate lunch at a barbeque place in Clarksville, and crossed into Kentucky in the afternoon, the purring Dodge smoothly merging onto the Honorable Edward T. Breathitt Pennyrile Parkway.

"So an hour on this?" Eileen asked. Roy Lee nodded.

"Not even that much. We'll hop onto US 41 right before we cross the Ohio River and into Indiana. We'll take that up to Interstate 64 and turn west. That'll take us across southern Indiana and southern Illinois to St. Louis. Then 70 across Missouri to KC."

"Sounds good, baby. If you need to take a break, I can drive."

"It's not a break I want," he said, eyes glinting. "It's you." He put his hand on the smooth flesh of her thigh, where her skirt had ridden up.

"Roy Lee McCoy! Shame on you! Feeling up your aunt in your car! You should be ashamed of yourself." In defiance of her scolding words, she moved sensuously under his touch, spreading her legs in wanton abandon.

"I'm sorry, Aunt Eileen." His words were contrite, but his voice was low, husky, and full of desire. "But the woman I wanted to sleep with last night fell asleep before we could make love, and I'm so horny right now, especially seeing your legs and your wonderful chest."

"And what did you do after she fell asleep last night, baby?" she inquired as his loving fingers crept higher on her leg, approaching her moist cleft. "I think I saw a charge on the credit card when we checked out this morning." She turned in the seat, leaning towards him, lips dotting kisses along his jawline, her hand unerringly finding his erect cock. "Did you watch a naughty movie? Watch some hot slut take a big, hard dick and pretend you were fucking me?"

"No," he groaned.

"No? Really?" she asked, surprise plain in her voice.

"I meant to," Roy Lee said softly. His hands clenched around the steering wheel as her hand stroked him through his jeans. "But when the movie came on, the girl wasn't nearly as beautiful as you are."

He turned his head in time to catch a searing kiss on his lips, and was barely able to tear himself away and look back at the road. "I turned the lights down and watched you. Imagined what we might do tonight, do together, if you were happy with...with what I did for you last night, and wanted to do it again."

His hand reached the junction of her thighs, and he hissed in disappointment as his fingers found a barrier of damp cotton.

"I watched you, Aunt Eileen, while I masturbated." At the word, Eileen bit her lip, the rising heat in her belly redoubling. "Watched your gorgeous legs and your bare pussy. Watched your beautiful breasts and your gentle face. Watched and stroked myself until I came in a wad of tissue.

"And then I did it again. And again. Until I was finally tired enough to go to sleep."

Eileen moaned at the thought of her hot nephew, sitting in a chair, pumping his thick cock until he burst, eying her sleeping form. She shifted in her seat, lifting her hips until she could slide her soaked panties down her legs to the floor. Roy Lee's hand eagerly dove towards her aching sex, but she pulled his hand away.

"No way, buddy. Two hands on the wheel." She smiled to take some of the sting out of the words. Unbuckling the seat belt, she pulled her shirt off, exposing her jiggling breasts to his view. She cupped one in her hand, thumb rubbing the erect nipple.

"Do you know when I decided I would sleep with you, baby?" she asked, reaching over to undo his jeans. "Raise up," she whispered, then pulled them down to his knees.

"Can you still drive?" she asked. He tested briefly, then nodded.

"It was when I made my offer yesterday at the salon," she continued, her voice far-off, not believing so much had occurred in less than a day. "I pulled your pants down and kissed your lovely cock."

"I remember," he said. "I thought I was losing my mind. Or you were," he finished with a rueful grin.

"And you were so gentle," she said, in tones of wonder.