Chapter 2

Claire hurt between her legs, but it was a dull hurt and had a good feel to it, not like the awful way her behind and back hurt after the beating. She stretched under the blanket, liking the way the rough wool rubbed across her bare nipples. They also hurt from his pinching them, but it had a good feel to it too. She smelled coffee and opened her eyes.

Inside the deckhouse was dark, but she could see the grey light of early morning under the cowhide that hung over the door. She heard whistling from somewhere outside and felt the floor underneath sway slightly to one side.

Bart pushed the hide away and came in. Inside the deckhouse was a little lighter from the morning light coming in, then plunged again into shadow when the opening closed again. Claire sat up onthe quilt pallet on the floor, pulling the blanket up to cover her breasts.

"Morning," Bart said. "I brung you some coffee."

Claire reached for the enamel cup, but he held it away from her and turned it so she could take it by the handle.

"Careful," he said, "It's hot. I don't want you to burn yourself."

"Thank you," Claire said, smiling at him as he sat down next to her on the pallet.

Bart was barefoot and naked from the waist up, wearing only trousers. He was a lot older than her, maybe as old as her papa, but he was big muscled and hard – hard all over she remembered, hard belly and butt, big hard thighs covered with brown hair that looked wiry but felt soft as down rubbing between her legs with the hard thing between them. She had known a man had a thing – which is all she knew to call it – but she had not known a man's thing got hard and as big as Bart's. She had seen one on a baby boy changing diapers in the church nursery, but the boy thing was little and soft and looked like a fat pink worm.

Without thinking about it, Claire reached out and touched Bart's chest. It was hard under the mat of brown hair. She remembered how he felt tight against her in the dark. Another feeling, like she had felt last night replaced the dull hurt between her legs.

Bart frowned at her. "Careful, you'll spill your coffee," he said.

Claire pulled back her hand, puzzled by the frown.

Bart sipped from his coffee.

"Why didn't you say nothing last night?" he asked.

"What do you mean? About what?"

"You know. That you hadn't ever been with a man before."

"I don't know. I started to, but after a while – just before you. . . just before we started doing it, it didn't seem to matter. Nothing seemed to matter. I mean, did it matter to you?"

Bart did not answer right away, but sat looking down into his coffee cup.

"I would have been easier at first and tried not to hurt you. Maybe I wouldn't have done it at all."

"But I wanted you to, and you didn't hurt me, at least not much, and it only hurt a little at first."

"Still, the first time for a woman . . .” he said. “Well it ought to be special, not on a pallet in the deckhouse of a river barge."

Claire did not answer. She let the blanket drop and set the enamel cup on the floor beside the pallet.

"It was special enough,” she said. “Do you think a pallet is special enough for the second time?" she asked.

*****

Claire sat on deck in her shift and watched the dense green river banks move by on either side of the barge. Thick willows hung over the water and brushed the sides of the boat when Bart took it close to the muddy red bank. Once a snake, green like the willows, dropped aboard from an overhanging branch, then looking like a tiny green river itself , twisted across the deck and over the side into the red-brown river.

Bart walked the deck back and forth with a pole keeping the barge in the center on the stream, except from time to time going closer to one side than the other or pushing clear of half sunken logs that blocked the channel. Claire asked why sometimes he steered away from the middle and he told her because that was not always where the deepest water was, but he did not say how he knew. He was still barefoot, but wore his shirt unbuttoned and loose, not tucked into his pants.

In mid-morning, the river widened out and he came to sit by her while the barge drifted with the downriver current.

"The river was what made Shreveport a port, but there's not much traffic now. It keeps getting choked up with logs, and most of the freight goes by railroad now anyway,” he told her.

"My grandparents, Mama's mother and father, came up the river when they settled first settled western Louisiana," Claire said. "Granna used to tell me about it. They came from Tennessee down the Mississippi to New Orleans on a barge, maybe like yours, then took a paddlewheel boat up the Mississippi to where the Red River joins it, then to Shreveport. Grandpa bought a farm outside town and that's where they lived until Grandpa died in 1900. Mama sold it after Gramma died. That was in '03."

The log raft’s built up too much on the river for paddle boats now. Big ones never could get past Alexandria most of the time."

"I like the river better than the train," Claire said. "I rode the train to see Papa's folks in Nacogdoches, Texas one time."

"Your paw's the preacher, ain't he?" Bart asked. His voice was soft and gentle.

Clair nodded.

"He the one that beat you?"

She nodded again.

The beating was how they got started making love the night before. Her back and butt hurt too bad to lie down except on her side and she had to sit down and get up slowly. Bart saw tears in her eyes and asked her what was wrong and she told him her husband had got drunk and beat her and that was why she had to get out of Shreveport or he might do it again.

"I thought you was a widow. Who's your husband?" he asked.

"You don't know him. We live over in Bossier City."

He looked at her like he had another question – probably about how she knew Aunt Elizabeth – Betty – but he did not say anything else except to tell her to stay out of sight in the deckhouse until they left Shreveport.

Later, when they stopped for the night and Bart tied the barge to a tree on the bank, he asked her if she wanted him to rub witch hazel on her back again, and she said yes. That is how it got started the night before. Now of course, he knew she had never been married because she was a virgin when they first made love.

"Why'd your paw beat you?"

"He wanted me to marry somebody and I said no."

"Who?"

"Isaiah Birder."

"Why didn't you want to marry him? He's got a business and a big house on Maple Street."

"I don't love him. Besides, he's too old and fat."

"He's younger than me. A lot younger."

"But he's soft and fat. You're . . .”

"Any way,” Bart interrupted. Don’t get any ideas about marrying me.

“Well, not especially, but I know one thing. I loved what you did last night."

"Hush," he said. "You shouldn't talk like that." He sounded gruff, but Claire could see he was trying not to laugh.

"Why not?"

"You know just as well as I do why not. Decent folks don't talk about it – not decent women anyway – and men just talk dirty with whores and other men."

Claire knew he was right, but she was not ready to be quiet about it yet.

"What's it called?"

"What?"

"What we did."

"Ain't decent to say."

"Bart, you tell me now. If you've done it with me, I at least have the right to know what we did."

"We made love."

"That's just kid stuff, like kissing and holding hands. It's got to have another name when a man puts his thing in a woman."

"Fornicating."

"That’s an awful thing to call it. Fornicating is supposed to be bad. It says so in the Bible.”

"I guess some folks think it is bad.”

“Isn’t there some other word, besides the one from the Bible. I don’t like that one.”

Yeah, but it’s not decent to say it.”

“Tell me.”

“It’s called fucking.”

“Fucking? I like that better. It sounds exciting.”

Yeah, we been fucking, and I guess it is exciting, but they'd skin me alive in Shreveport if anybody every found out I been fucking the eighteen-year-old virgin daughter of the Baptist preacher."

"Seventeen."

"God Almighty damn!"

"What's a thing called?"

"What thing?"

"A man's thing. The thing between your legs. I know it's called something besides a thing. Claire could see he was trying not to laugh.

“It’s not a word you ought to know.”

"Why not?"

"You know just as well as I do why not. Like I said before, decent folks don't talk about it – not decent women anyway – and, like I told you, men just talk dirty with whores and other men."

Again, Claire was not ready to be quiet about getting the answer to her question.

"What's it called?"

"Depends.”

"Depends on what?"

"I don't know. Who you're talking to. What you're going to do with it. If you talk to a doctor about it, you call it a paynus."

"Paynus?"

"Yeah. And sometimes you call it a peter and sometimes a prick. Sometimes a dick. It just depends."

"Peter and Dick? Why not Tom or Harry?" She laughed.

"I don't know. I guess you could call it that if you wanted to."

"What about the sack thing under? What’s that called?"

"The doctor word is testicles. There's two of them in the sack. The dirty words are nuts or balls. They're what holds a man's seed. When the seed shoots out, it's called coming. When you shoot seed in a woman, it's what gets her with a baby."

"Baby? Did you put seed in me? Am I going to have a baby?"

"No. I pulled out and shot on your belly. I knew you was a virgin and probably didn't know nothing, but if you get come in you, you might get a baby. Sometimes you do and sometimes you don't. You have to be careful. It depends on your time of the month – when you bleed. If you get your period and bleed after you do it, you won't have a baby."

"How do I be careful?"

Bart shrugged. "I don't know. You need to ask a woman. You need to find you an old black woman in the Quarter in New Orleans when we get there and ask her.

Claire was quiet, thinking about what Bart had said. She was disappointed. Something she had thought was pure pleasure had a risky side to it.

*****

Late in the afternoon, Bart tied the barge to the shore again for the night and built a fire to cook their supper. He put potatoes under the fire and left it a while to burn down into coals.

As Claire watched from the barge, the man stripped off his shirt and trousers and dove into the water. For the brief moment he stood on the bank before diving, Claire saw for the first time in the light a fully naked man. He was hairy on the chest and legs and had a narrow trail of hair that traced a path from his chest to a thick patch between his legs. His – what had he called them? – his dick and balls hung pendulous between his legs from the nest of hair. The hair on his chest like his beard, was sprinkled with grey.

He stayed under the water for a long time, but not long enough for her to be concerned, then came to the surface, blowing water and air from his mouth like an animal.

"Come on in," he called. "It feels wonderful after being in the sun all day.”

"I don't know how to swim," she called back disappointed. The water looked wonderfully cool and refreshing. "I'll drown."

"No you won't," he said. "It's shallow. Look, I can stand on the bottom."

He lifted both arms over his head and stood dripping water from his beard. The hair on his head was wet and plastered down. He looked young, except for the beard almost like a boy.

Clair got up and pulled the shift over her head. She stood for a moment naked for the first time in her life in the open air. At first she was shy, afraid without the protection of clothes that the man would not like the way she looked, but then she saw admiration in Bart's face and tossed her head back for him to look at her.

"Come on in, love," he coaxed and clapped his hands on his chest.

She stood for a moment longer on the deck, then jumped toward him.

The water took her, smooth and cool on her skin like silk sheets. Her head went under for a moment, then she felt his arms take her and draw her to him. She kept her eyes shut and let them fondle her; Bart's gentle hands and the cool smooth water. She put her head back and felt his lips on hers, first gentle, then harder, more insistent.

******

She held him tight and lifting her legs she wrapped them around his waist. She buried her face in the soft wet hair of his chest, then slowly she slid her body downward slowly until she stopped resting on the the stiff jutting shaft of his dick which was now hard and hidden under the water. She held tight and buried her face in the soft hair of his chest.

"Fuck me again, Bart," she said. "Fuck me here in the water."


*****

Claire washed out her shift in the river and while Bart fried ham and made coffee over the fire, she lay naked on the blanket Bart had spread for her on the grass. After they ate, Bart rubbed witch hazel on her back and butt again. The redness and swelling were going away, he told her, except for the places where the strap had cut into her skin, but they were healing too, he said and probably would not leave scars.

"I got a woman in New Orleans," Bart said as he packed the witchhazel away in a wooden medicine chest.

Claire turned onto her side and propped herself up on her elbow. "What do you mean?" she asked.

"Just that I already got a woman in New Orleans. I won't be able to keep you once we get there."

"I didn't plan on anybody keeping me. I don't plan to belong to anybody."

"It ain't easy for a woman if she don't have a man to take care of her."

"I don't want a man owning me. That's why I didn't want to get married to Mr. Birder. I don't want to belong to anyone but myself."

"It's hard for a woman to be on her own. Not anywhere, but especially not in New Orleans."

"I got the name of somebody to look up," Claire said.

Bart looked relieved. Claire was uncertain whether it was because she already had plans for when they got to the city or because he was not expected to figure out something for her himself. Either way, Claire was annoyed at him for some reason she could not exactly put her finger on.

"Anyway, I plan to look after myself. I don't want to belong to anybody," she said again.

"Not many women can get by on their own except whoring. Even then, most times, they live in a whorehouse with someone taking care of the business side."

"I don't plan on being a whore either."

"I just brung it up so you'd know what you was up against when we get to New Orleans."

Claire was quiet while Bart cleaned up the frying pan and put out the fire with water he dipped from the river with an old leather bucket. When the fire was out, he dipped a second bucket full and put it aside to let the silt settle out overnight to make coffee with in the morning.

"How long before we get to New Orleans?" Claire asked.

"About two weeks from Shreveport this time of year. Maybe a little less if it's been raining upriver and the current picks up."

"How do you get the barge back to Shreveport once you get to New Orleans? You don't have an engine on it."

"I pay a steam tug to pull me back up along with maybe five or six others. Used to, before they had the tugs, you just sold the whole barge for lumber once you got there. Most of the houses in parts of New Orleans were built out of barge boards."

"Will we go through any towns?"

"We get to Alexandria tomorrow, but I don't aim to stop.”

“Why?”

“Nothing to stop for. They ship a little cotton on the river still, but I got a full load from Shreveport. Anyway, lots of folks know me there. Your paw may have sent word out to be on the lookout for you. If somebody saw you with me with a young woman like you, they might put two and two together."

“Do we go through Baton Rouge?"

“Yes, middle of next week probably."

“Can we stop in Baton Rouge?"

"Why?"

"It's the state capital and I'd like to see it."

"People know me down there too."

"But it's a big place. Surely we wouldn't stick out too much."

"If my woman in New Orleans heard about us being together, there'd be hell to pay."

"Just tell her the truth; that I was running away from being beat by my paw."

"That wouldn't prove nothing to her."

"Would she really think we'd been fucking all the say down ther river?"

Bart laughed. "You act like you're the only woman I could pleasure. My woman knows me pretty well."

"Even if I'm only seventeen and a virgin."

"You ain't a virgin no more."

Claire looked back at him angry, but she did not know exactly why. Something about her was still virgin, she thought, even if a she had slept with a man. She let the subject drop for the time being.

"She won't know you fucked me unless you tell her. I won't."

"Well, it would give me some talking space if it came up, I reckon."

"Then we can stop in Baton Rouge?"

“Well, maybe. Most of the folks that know me are river folks anyway. None of them is likely to know my woman. Probably don't even know I got one."

"Oh, then we can stop."

"I'll think about it."