Jenny Be Fair Ch. 02

Jack brushed aside the sharp earthy fragments. He rolled himself and Shelly off the bed; they high-crawled across the floor while Jenny lobbed more bombs at them. A potted cereus cactus caught his left buttock just before he reached the door, and safety. Ouch.

So much for her first option, screaming. Jenny exercised her second option, crying, as she motored away. Whimpering and enduring were no longer options.

Gonna go home, she thought. Gonna take a nice long shower. Gonna wash that asshole right out of my hair, out of my life. Gonna get beyond this. Gonna get a new guy, a steady guy. Maybe Denny. Maybe not.

Jenny was a methodical girl. Only a week after graduation, she was holding tryouts, auditions for the love of her life. She methodically auditioned Lenny and Kenny and Benny and Penny, and Kerry and Mary (but not Sherry) and Barry (her own brother!), and Harry and Jerry and Larry and Perry and Terry and... she lost count. She also lost track of who was who.

But Denny kept coming back to her. No, not TO her; FOR her.

The recent graduates who stayed in town were pairing-off, or tripling-off for some. Damn that Jack! He had both Sue Reed and Shelly Lane! Jenny had nothing to do with them, or their friends. Traitors deserved to be hanged!

Sexual partners gathered and joined. Ralph and Sally. Rick and Sara. Perry and Rosa. Barry and Kerry and Clara. Mary and... whoever would beat her properly. Even weird little Ronny was with Helen a lot.

Jenny knew: Denny was hers! Denny would be loyal! Denny WAS loyal, as far as she knew. She would make him love her! Sure, she had to train him a little, so that he used his tongue right. Fuck, she had Jack trained just right, and now he used that tongue on Sue and Shelly! Damn them!

*****

Doctor Casey knew everything.

He was Young Doctor Casey when he first came to town, a rough, freewheeling iconoclast with a no-nonsense approach to family medicine and a thick carpet of black chest hair. Now he was Old Doctor Casey, gray and grizzled, still rough and ready, but with better anger management and few moral illusions.

He knew them all, this cohort of kids. Knew them... had delivered most of them, and innoculated them, thumped their chests, poked his fingers up their butts (for sound medical reasons, of course), clipped their tonsils and appendices, treated their fevers and infections, set their fractures, and analyzed their lab results.

(He had also liposuctioned their mothers, and gotten a bit of suction in return; but that is beyond the scope of this story.)

He knew who was hooking up, and what their relationships were. He debated with himself - what was the right thing to do? To tell them what he knew, and destroy their lives? Or to not tell them, and let the wreckage happen anyway? The impending disaster almost made his decision easy.

Jenny Field was surprised to receive a note from her family doctor. Not merely a note - a summons. She WOULD be at his office at a specified time!

Jenny rode her baby-blue Lambretta scooter to the ivy-covered brick private medical clinic. She nervously approached the receptionist.

"Errr, hi Ms Kildare, I'm a little early, Dr Casey wanted to see me..."

"Good afternoon, Miss Field. Yes, the doctor is waiting for you. His office is just down the hall. You can go right in."

Jenny's heart fluttered as she stepped down the narrow beige corridor. Why would the doctor have demanded her presence? Had he discovered some medical emergency? Did it affect only her, or was there an epidemic, or what? How long did she have to live? Oh no, she was too young to die!

The office door creaked as she pushed it open. Old Doctor Casey sat at his desk, reviewing medical files, or maybe only scanning them while fantasizing about his toenail fetish... no, we won't go there. He looked up at Jenny.

"Have a seat, Jenny. Relax. No, you are not dying." Jenny thought, he's a mind-reader! "And no, I didn't read your mind. I know what people think by now, that's all. You're afraid. You don't need to be, but you DO need to be worried, and careful."

"Worried and careful? About what, doctor?"

"In the course of my work, I have taken blood and tissue samples from almost everybody in this town and county. I have subjected those samples to many types of analysis - including genetic. New, cheap, fast, reliable methods of DNA analysis have been developed."

He thumped a stack of folders piled on his desk. "I have DNA charts of most of the local population here. I know your family trees better than you do." He peered at Jenny. "Who is your father?"

Jenny was startled. "Why, that's a silly question! You know my dad is Fred Fields. You know him very well. He sold you your car!" Uh oh, Jenny thought. I think I know where this is going.

Old Doctor Casey was grim. "Jenny, Fred Fields may be your dad, but he's not your father. Jim Jameson is your father."

Jenny wilted. "Oh, no! Jack told me about this. That was his reason for breaking up with me. I didn't know whether to believe him. I told him it didn't matter, that I loved him anyway, but..." She started crying.

"Calm down, Jenny. Jim Jameson is indeed your biological father. But he is not Jack Jameson's father. Dave Reed is."

Jenny was stunned. "What? Then you mean that Jack ISN'T my brother?"

He thumped the folders again. "Jenny, I've observed you and your classmates and I know who mixes with who. You and your friends and enemies are all in a little cluster of families, aren't you? A dozen families, like the rulers of ancient Rome and Venice. Do you want me to name them? Craig, Edwards, Field, Hall, Hughes, Ing, Jameson, Lane, Laughlin, Reed, Simons, Todd. Two or three kids in each family.

"You think the dads of those families are the fathers. They are not. Only two men fathered those twenty-eight children. Dave Reed is the father of the Hall, Jameson, Lane, and Reed families. And Jim Jameson is the father of the Craig, Edwards, Field, Hughes, Ing, Laughlin, Simons, and Todd families.

"Do you know the old folksong JENNY BE FAIR? No? It's about a boy whose father tells him that he's fathered all the girls in town and the kid can't marry them. Then his mother tells him it's okay, he's not his dad's son. That's where you are right now.

"Jim Jameson fathered most of the kids in your cohort, but not those bearing his own name. Jenny, you are perfectly safe to have children with Jack Jameson, or Rick or Ralph Reed, or Perry Lane, or Harry or Jerry Hall. But all the other boys in these familes are your brothers."

Jenny wailed. "But I've already had sex with... ummm, let me see... with..."

"With all of them," Dr Casey interrupted. "You've fucked them all, haven't you? All your half-brothers, even Barry, who you knew came from the same womb as you, and who is your full brother. I know you're on The Pill - I prescribed it, after all - but it's not perfect. You are an incestuous bitch and you know it. You need to be ready to face the consequences. Everything has consequences. Everything."

He sat there, stone-faced. She sat there, discombobulated.

"You can leave now," Old Doctor Casey said after a long silence.

Jenny stood wordlessly and turned toward the office door. "Send in the next one," she heard him tell his intercom. She passed Linda Edwards in the corridor. Oh shit, this is all real, she thought. Ms Kildare handed her an envelope as she left. Oh shit, it's all on paper.

Word spread.

Well duh, yeah, word spread. All the kids in the cohort were called into Dr Casey's office for 'counseling'. Each received a printed family tree chart. Copies were passed to other townsfolk and eventually reached the supposed 'parents' of each of the dozen families. Before long, everybody knew.

And what do you think happened? Were there angry confrontations, beatings, divorces, abandonments, murders, suicides, all the juicy stuff of human life? Did the local news business suddenly boom?

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Yet another bump here, folks. Another fork in the road. Once again, Gentle Readers, you can decide which of these you like best. I await your comments.

DECISION POINT #3: Do the townsfolk react with A) cohesion, B) separation, or C) nonchalance?

- (alternative A)

A private meeting was called by Howie Hughes, husband to Helen and 'dad' to Sara and Denny. He summoned all the married couples in the cohort to the Hughes home's large party room. The Jamesons and Reeds chose not to attend. The others talked seriously about their joys and woes of married life, the ups and downs, pleasures and pains. They realized that their relationships, although riddled with doubts and delusions, were still basically strong. They all pledged to maintain and strengthen their family ties.

They also noticed certain... attractions... between various of them, beyond their marriage pairings. They noticed that they tended to gather into small clusters who sat or stood close together and touched when they talked. Wine was consumed, and pot cookies. Talking and touching became more intimate. Temperatures rose. Superfluous clothes were shed.

Twenty naked human adults can form interesting combinations of gerbil piles, daisychains, and cluster fucks. It's too bad the scene was not captured on video. Or was it? Maybe it's on YouTube with SALMON somewhere in the title.

A new stability formed in the community. The Jameson and Reed adults were not included; they had chosen their isolation from the town, even moving in together and conducting most of their business transactions in other coastal towns. The rest of Timber Cove ignored them, and wove its own tender web.

- (alternative B) (BTB)

The lawyers in town had a field day. So did the medics, and not just Old Doctor Casey. Officers and deputies were also busy.

The cohort 'parents' were mostly bitter and vindictive. Husbands beat and shot cheating wives and bulls; Jim Jameson did not survive to be divorced, nor did Dorothy Field nor Helen Hughes. Yes, both Jenny and Denny were left motherless, with their fathers jailed for homicide. They had only each other, step-siblings or not. They clung together as the best of a lousy deal.

The Reed family stayed together; Donna forgave Dave his philandering. The Lane family adhered also; Louis was glad Dave Reed was screwing his wife Penny so he would not have to. The same held with Ervin and Jeanne Hall. (Ervin and Louis soon hooked up.) And with her husband dead, Jill Jameson had only her lover Dave Reed to turn to. The Jameson, Lane and Hall families effectively merged with the Reeds, giving Dave a large, mostly happy harem, with a dozen horny kids underfoot, all fucking each other.

But the families the late Jim Jameson had fucked just fell apart. Jim really was only a lazy poon hound. The courts stayed busy. Besides the state versus various criminal defendants, they also tended to Todd vs Todd, Ing vs Ing, Laughlin vs Laughlin, and Edwards vs Edwards. Only the Craigs and the Simons remained undissolved, uneasily, untrustingly.

The kids were left in disarray. Those who could, left town, haunted by shame and doubt. The heart of the community itself died. If Timber Cove could have dried up and blown away, it could have. Instead, it staggered along, a town without a soul, kept busy by shipping fish and timber and fleecing tourists.

BTB triumphed: All the bitches and bastards were burnt. The End.

- (alternative C)

The parents and kids of the cohort only shrugged and went on with life as usual. The philanderings of two decades had not exactly been the best-kept secret in town. Old Doctor Casey was not the only observer of interactions.

And life requires more than sex, after all, even faithful sex. Individuals, families, and groups had business and social relationships: expectations to meet; contracts to fulfill; money to transfer; gatherings and meetings. The town was a living machine. Sex was only one lubricant.

Jim Jameson and Dave Reed kept fucking their harems, who also fucked their own husbands occasionally, when those husbands were not fucking some other wives, the same as they had been for the past two decades. The great Wheel of Time rolled inexorably onward, as it ever had and ever will, amen.

The kids were not unobservant. Those in the cohort, and outside it, hooked-up according to their whims and biochemistries. Someone shares your DNA? That falls into the category of BFD, which does not mean Bad Frog Day. (Hint: try Big Fucking Deal.)

Yes, a few pairings and triplings formed. Jack and Sue and Shelly. Ralph and Sally. Rick and Sara. Perry and Rosa. Barry and Kerry and Clara. Ronny and Helen. Mary and... whoever she could get. Sisters Debby and Dizzy Jameson, when they were not screwing their brother Jack (when he was not busy with Sue and/or Shelly), were often engaged with brothers Ralph and Rick Reed, all four of them mixing the bisexual incestuous stewpot, yum!

But the rest? Just a merry, shifting fuckfest of siblings, half-siblings, might-be-siblings-or-cousins, definite cousins, and kids who were not even related, imagine that! Everybody dived into the gene pool for a nice swim.

- (end of alternatives)

Back to the story.

Wait - there IS no more story, not in this episode. So there you have it: A perfect story with many possible storylines. But I forgot something, right? I left out the parts where Dave and Jim screw their own kids, or maybe the kids screw their bio-dads, as well as mixing in some mothers. Ah well, it's for the next episode, which may or may not contain I'M MY OWN GRANDPA.

NEXT: I'm My Own Grandpa, and/or Jenny The Pirate, and/or Jenny Be Damned, and/or The Jenster, and probably more salmonburgers.