Pulaski Square

And she didn't leave me to take care of myself after she was done. Oh my, oh my, no. She did for me twice with that big dick of hers before finishing herself off.

Two men in one day. Neither seein' me as Jaivon, really, but just as relief and release from their own tensions. Neither one of them caring a bit about me until they want that release. Knowin' that, fool that I am, I'll give them whatever they want. But, fool that I am, I'm stuck with that. I'm no better than that. And the scary thing is that if either one of them asked me what I really wanted, I'd probably answer that the man I really wanted inside me was Caleb Freeman—but that either one of them would do too—if only while they were poking me, they'd say my name. Let me know that I'm Jaivon Johnson and that I count for something.

Chapter Two: Caleb Freeman

Guess I told them. Any of them could have marched over to the hotel and asked Muriel Roberts what ailed her. I don't know if she would have told them, but they could have noticed something was wrong, just like I did. Of course I was told. Buddy told me why he had to go to Memphis. They needed more money, and they needed it fast. He told me Muriel was ill and needed work, but he didn't tell me what she was ill from. Ever since, I've been putting money aside too. But I know none of this will be enough.

I've been worried like hell ever since. Buddy was a good friend, but he was too trusting. He didn't seem to know how much I wanted Muriel. I wouldn't touch her, of course. And not just because of Buddy. Muriel was something else. A good woman. A woman to be put up on a pedestal. And nicer than anyone else on the square.

One of the only people on the square to see me as one of them, one of the people of Pulaski Square. But I am one of them. It don't matter that I'm black and a laborer and most of the rest of them work at the art college—or were forever rich and forever here like Emily Goodwin and Terrence Rowland—or at least half acceptable, because he's half white, like Leo Tinley over at the café. I know about Leo and who he is at night. He isn't a bit better than I am.

Gardening is an honest job, and, in my opinion, Pulaski Square is the most beautiful one in Savannah—and all because of what I do here day in and day out. I'm as much a part of the square as any of them. No reason for them to lift their noses at me. I live and work here too and I bring out as much beauty as any of them do at that art college. Wouldn't they all bust a gut if I dangled my own SCAD degree under their noses? They and I have more in common than they'd be comfortable knowing. Not a one of them look beyond my blackness and me being "just" a gardener to see that I already have what some of them are working their asses off to get.

But I get my own on them too. I have something that most women want more than they want a college degree. Not Tracy Patten, of course. Ain't no man gonna get in her pants. But the one she wants, I can get. I know I can spike that nice little piece, Donna Davis. Just the way she looked at me at the café just now. She would take me. So would most of the others. Even the men want what I got, what I have swinging between my legs. Well, fat chance of that.

But what I want, fool that I am, is the wife of one of my best friends—and a woman who I don't deserve. But one who is ill and needs something. I'd give her the world if I could. But I can't. No matter how much money I can lay my hands on, it's not going to be enough. Leo just now said there could be something but that he had to find out more about what the problem was. He promised to tell me, though, and to let me help, if I could.

That helped—or will help. It didn't help right now, though. Right now I was so keyed up of wanting it and needing it—and wanting it from someone too high on the pedestal for me, that I couldn't help but look around.

I saw that nervous librarian, Olive Odom, getting up from the group at the café, turning to look toward me where I sat—isolated inside the café from the rest just because I was a black laborer of the soil—and I knew that look. She'd given me that look when I'd come into the café and overheard them talking about Muriel, causing me to mouth off as I knew I shouldn't. She had gone too long without it. She needed it bad. If there ever was a woman who needed to be fucked, it was Olive Odom.

Sort of a revelation at seeing the look from the librarian. As far as I'd ever seen, she'd only had eyes for Terrence Rowland. She was a fool in that. Rowland was as queer as they came. I knew that. He was constantly throwing come-ons to me. Not a chance of that, not even if I was interested in doing men. We were both tops. No way I was going to lie under an old geezer from one of the first families of Savannah. No way I was going back two centuries from these white fuckers—at least in the ways of Terrence Rowland. If he wasn't a top, I might have taken him for a ride, just for the laugh of who was dominating who in the new Savannah. If he only knew.

I followed her—the librarian—out of the café. She walked into the square rather than next door to the apartment house where I knew she lived on the first floor. At the center of the square, she turned and saw that I was on the street, ready to enter the square as well. She turned and walked over to the inn, but stopped there, not going in. By then I was standing in the center of the square. Not going back to work in the flower beds, but watching her, reeling her in, just like I always was able to do.

I took off my shirt, letting her see what I had to offer—at least on top. We'd see whether she fantasized about black bulls. Mousey little darlin's like her usually did, I had found. I'd fucked me a whole lot of mousey little white women and none had left me dissatisfied. I could see her shudder, even from this distance. I wonder what she would have done if I'd taken my pants off. That was enough to make women swoon. I even was as hard as a rock, thinking of getting pussy. Not hard exactly for her, but I couldn't have what I wanted, so she would do now—if she was game.

And she obviously was game. The mouse was ready to come out to play. She walked all around the sides to the square getting back to her apartment. I stood there, in the center of the square, in my world, following her with my eyes, turning full front to her all the way around. She couldn't take her eyes off me either.

I started to walk back toward the north side of the square as she rounded from the west to the north and approached her apartment.

She left the door to the street open. Obviously open for me. She couldn't signal any better that she was open to me.

I ached. I ached both from worry for and want of Muriel Roberts. I had to do something about this ache. I needed to get me some pussy.

At her door, I put an arm around her shoulder, the heel of my hand pressed into the wall next to her cheek.

"You gonna let me come in, little darlin'?" I whispered. "You ready for me?"

She didn't answer, but I could hear her breathing real heavy like and trembling. She lay her cheek against my arm.

"You gonna let me come inside you, sweetheart? I got somethin' big for you. I got something you need bad."

She collapsed back into me. I gathered her up, pushed my way into the apartment, slammed the door behind me, and went lookin' for the bedroom. She was no help, lying there in my arms, already moaning and trembling. But she was no hindrance either.

In her neat little bedroom, I swept the teddy bears off the frilly bedspread and laid her down on her back. She groaned and moaned as I sank down between her spread thighs, pushed her skirt up, slipped her panties off, and gave her pussy the attention I knew women liked.

Then I fucked her hard. I would have done it differently, slower and more gently, if I'd known for sure she was a virgin.

But all and all, she enjoyed it. I knew she did. And I know it was as much a release for her as it was for me.

With her glasses off and her hair down, she was downright pretty. A dynamite body under those dowdy clothes. Fresh and yielding. Once the first-time unpleasantness was over for her, holding me close, clawing at my ass cheeks to hold me deep inside her pussy, while I grabbed and squeezed and separated her thighs to get her open enough to take all of what I had for her. Watching her eyes flash and roll up into her head when I gave her all of it.

The timid side of her all gone—crying out in a passion no one would know a librarian would have, moving her ass for me, meeting my thrusts with counterthrusts of her own. A ripe peach. Knockers as big as melons. Uptight and whimpery at first but all open and pulling me inside and holding me there—a delight—after I popped her cherry. All tits and ass. I used them, and she loved it. Not letting me out of her until I'd hardened and fucked her again. I'd be thinkin' of ripe fruit, of hard melons and bursting cherries, all night. And of fresh pussy.

For those moments I didn't think about Muriel Roberts at all. And I'd like to think that the librarian didn't think of the old queer, Terrence Rowland, either. What she had needed was a hard body like mine rather than a withered prune like him, sniffing after something other than her. I almost told her what he was, but I think she should figure that out for herself—if she didn't stop thinking about him and thinking now only about me and my hard body and what was swinging between my legs.

When I left her, she thanked me. Another fully satisfied little white darlin. Fucked her real good, I did. We both knew we'd be doing it again. She'd beg me for it again.

But damn, when I got back that evening to where I was staying and the old lady who was using me instead of charging me rent, all I could think of was Muriel Roberts and how I didn't want her to be sick—even if I couldn't have her the way I wanted her.

Chapter Three: Emily Goodwin

I made no bones with Leo that I was seething. I saw him talking about Muriel Roberts with Caleb Freeman inside the café yesterday. I knew they were sharing information of some sort. It hadn't escaped my attention—nothing happening in Pulaski Square escapes my attention—that something was amiss with Muriel.

I had intended in pursuing that directly with her, but I'd been so busy that I hadn't gotten around to it yet.

And I could see that Caleb was upset about her somehow. He better not have carried through with the desires I knew he had for her. I knew about Caleb and women. I knew them quite well. Muriel would have been the last one to have succumbed to his particular . . . charms . . . I would have thought. It was time for Buddy Roberts to come home—and, perhaps for me to bring Muriel's husband to account. What was this about needing more money than he could make in Savannah? He made perfectly good money here. Was there something amiss between Muriel and Buddy? If so, why didn't I know what it was?

I expected Leo to come to me immediately after Caleb talked to him. But he didn't come yesterday. He was forcing me to go to him today on the matter. I was not pleased in the least about that.

I would have accosted him at the café yesterday, but I was nonplused and if I'd broken away from those with me at the table in the café, they would have known something was amiss. They already were all atwitter that Terry had come to the café while we were there. It was the first time in years that Terry and I had been there at the same time. He had become such a recluse in later years. I was just an old fool. I shouldn't let him affect me as he does whenever I see him. But, dammit, I still love the man—despite everything. Despite his men. Not that I'd let anyone see that—especially him.

I knew about his men for several years before the issue came to a head. I should have known before we were married. Our two families have lived on opposite sides of Pulaski Square for more than two centuries. Not each living comfortably here with the other, of course. My father had told me not to marry Terrence Rowland—that nothing good could come of such a match. I believe he knew even then why I shouldn't marry Terry. But he hadn't whispered a word of it to me. Proper Savannah families didn't speak of such things in those days—certainly not to their daughters. I had just assumed it was because of how cold our families were to each other.

The elite set in Savannah did such things, of course—that and worse. They just didn't speak of them.

Our match had started off so promisingly—one could almost say cast favorably in the stars. Terry and I hadn't met here on the square. Even though both families were here, we hadn't had a thing to do with each other for generations. The Rowlands had been in Savannah forever and were into publishing one of the city's newspapers before branching out into other forms of advertising as well. My family hadn't arrived until mid way through in the eighteenth century and were into liquor and the places that served it, so, though we were richer than the Rowlands, we certainly weren't in their set. I'm not sure I could have said whether the Rowlands even had children, not to mention a son a year younger than I was, before I went off to college.

It therefore only seemed slightly coincidental that I met and was attracted to a handsome, dark-haired, Byronesque-type young man at Vanderbilt University over the mountains in Nashville. We were both in the creative writing program there, me a year ahead of him. I suspect we both had been shunted off there by our families because we were so rebellious closer to home. He was a brilliant writer—almost as good as I was. And we both kept up with our writing. Even now I write southern mysteries of the first caliber and I occasionally see in the press that Terry also is writing still—the war adventure novels he became obsessed with because his family wouldn't let him go on any actual adventures that included any semblance of danger.

Of course I seduced him. I found him to be quite a proficient lover, admirably equipped, and as beautiful of body as he was handsome of face. Granted I had to take the lead, that he was an innocent in those days. But it was the combination of innocence and sultry that had attracted me to him in the first place—that and his yielding to my lead. Little did I know then that at the same time our male creative writing professor was indoctrinating Terry into another form of sensuality altogether.

I asked Terry why he went ahead with a marriage to me when he was learning even then that he preferred men.

"That we were to marry was kismet," he had said. "Meeting, as we did, at Vanderbilt rather than on the square where we both lived in Savannah obviously was fate," he said. "Besides, I both was trapped in convention and, at the same time, wanted to stick it to my parents."

I suspect the real reasons he married me were because my family was richer than his and for camouflage purposes. Still the explanations he gave me seemed reasonable to me—almost poetical. But I divorced him anyway. Quietly, of course, never giving his homosexuality as a reason. I didn't want to embarrass him or add fuel to the family feuding. But, more than that, I didn't want to be embarrassed myself. And who knows? Perhaps I can be more honest about it after the passage of the years. I was addled enough to hope that he could be cured of his homosexuality and would come back to me.

Having divorced him doesn't mean I haven't carried a torch for him all these years. We are both fools—me for still caring for him; Terrence for choosing men over me.

I didn't want to encounter Terrence again at the café today, so I sent Sadie, the downstairs maid, out to check. He wasn't there. So I sailed ahead. Leo saw me coming and pulled me inside the shadows of the café's interior to give us privacy. Of course he knew why I'd come.

"What exactly did Caleb Freeman tell you was wrong with Muriel?" I asked straightaway.

"He doesn't know. He knows that something is wrong, but he doesn't know exactly what. Buddy Roberts told him. That's why Buddy went to Memphis. He needs to make more money faster."

"He should have come to me," I said. "I could have gotten him all the work he could handle right here in Savannah—and at the price he needed. I've always taken care of anyone living in the square who needed it."

"I know," Leo said. He didn't add to that. I looked sharply at him to discern whether he questioned my capabilities or intent, but I saw no indication that he did.

"So, we must find out what—"

"I know what the problem is," Leo said. "Caleb didn't know, but Jaivon did."

"Who?"

"Jaivon Johnson, who works with Muriel at the inn."

"Oh, him." I didn't see how such as the Johnson youth would know anything of importance, and I said so. I also didn't really want to talk about him, because I knew what he was to Terry.

"Muriel confides in him, Jaivon says. Muriel needs a kidney replacement. That's what Buddy is trying to raise money for."

"Oh, Lord, the poor woman. There's no way Buddy could raise enough money for such an operation. We will have to take this into our own hands."

"I fear you're right."

"Does Martin know?"

"I have no idea. Martin and I haven't spoken for years."

"Are you two in that silly family feud still? We never had this trouble in the old days. The leading men of Savannah society always had a darkie mistress or two—and thus half-breed children. Old man Rowland treated all of his children well, no matter what side of the color barrier or blanket they were born on. You, of all people should know that."

"Yes, of course I do. It's Martin you need to talk to."

"At the moment, it's Martin you need to talk to, Leo. If he doesn't know about Muriel already, he needs to know about her now. You go to him immediately and then we will start to plan."

"Yes, ma'am."

"Whatever we decide to do, we'll have to find someone to be the public face of it. You can't do it, because Martin would resent that. Martin can't do it, because he's Muriel's brother and seeking money for one's sister in Savannah would be seen as tacky, no matter how charitable the cause. And I certainly can't. I haven't created this crusty persona as a barrier between me and every Tom, Dick, and Harry with his hand out for a free ride just to let it down now, at my age."

"I'm sure, Emily, that everyone who matters knows how generous you are."

"Tut, tut. You're too young to live with lies and I'm too old to be fooled by them, Leo. So, I think I know what we can do—at least to provide a veneer—but we'll have to think of someone to front this."

"Yes, ma'am."

That was what I wanted to hear—yes ma'ams. It makes everything much easier and faster just to "yes ma'am" me from the beginning. I turned and returned to my home. Darkness was descending. He should be home by now—now that the sun was fully down—and he should be waiting for me upstairs, in my bedroom.

He was, stretched out on my bed, naked, his body magnificent. I took my time undressing, savoring every moment that he was under my command and control. When I too was naked, I climbed up on the bed, straddled his hips, impaled myself on his prodigious staff, and rode him to orgasm.

Afterward, I sat, in my robe, at my dressing table, removing my makeup, while Caleb continued to lie on his back on the bed, his muscular arms bent behind his neck, smoking a cigarette, and watching me, his handsome black face graced with a small smile.

"It seems to take you more time each day than the last to take your war paint off," he said, teasingly.

Only Caleb could get away with saying that to me. I knew he was too wild to tame. That was probably the major reason I turned to him. I'd always wanted my men a bit wild. But I also knew that I wanted him in my bed for as long as I could hold him. To do so, though, I had to tolerate his roving eye.