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."

Chapter 1

Clarinda Roemyrtle Crump sat on the front porch of the Baptist parsonage and frowned at Mr. Birder while she waited for her younger sister, Cordelia, to bring out the pitcher of lemonade for her and her suitor. At least the lemonade it would have ice in it. Their papa, the preacher of the River Street Baptist Church, had told Mama to buy some ice so Mr. Birder could have his lemonade cold.

She hoped drinking iced lemonade would make him sick. She had heard that ice cold drinks made old people get the cramps, and Mr. Birder was close to forty, which might not be old if you were forty, but it was old if you were seventeen. That is how old Myrtle was, seventeen, and Papa told her last Sunday night she had to marry Mr. Birder. She hoped he would get sick from the lemonade and have to go home.

They were sitting in straight chairs she had dragged out on the porch from the dining room before he got there. She had put one in the late afternoon sun near the railing, and one in the shade, which is where she sat until he got there, but he dragged the other one out of the sun into the shade too, up close to hers instead of sitting in the sun across from her.

"Don't you want to sit in the swing?" he asked smiling. He had a crooked incisor on the upper right side and it lapped over the tooth next to it. Long hairs grew from his nostrils and he had black tufts in his ears.

"Makes me sick to swing," she said.

"You was swinging last Sunday when I was here."

"Makes me sick today."

Behind them the screen door banged shut as Cordelia came out carrying a tray with a pitcher of lemonade, two glasses, and a plate of raisin oatmeal cookies. Chunks of ice rattled in the pitcher when she put the tray down on the wicker table under the living room window.

"Mama said you-all might like some lemonade to cool off with," she said.

"Thank you kindly, Miss Dee," the man said.

Myrtle set her jaw tight and said nothing.

"You're welcome, Mr. Birder," Dee said and smiled at him all sweetness and light. She put the tray down on a table between the two straight chairs and went back in the house.

Myrtle hated her sister for being nice to the man. She was fifteen and thought marrying Mr. Birder would be wonderful. He owned a hardware store on First Street and had a big house with two bay windows on the front and a maid to cook and clean up and mind the three kids he had by the wife that died in childbirth a year ago the fourth of July.

Well, Myrtle thought, Dee is welcome to him, but Myrtle was not ready to marry any body, especially an old man with three kids already, no matter how many bay windows he had, including the one pushing out his trousers behind his belt.

"Arguing won't do you any good," Papa had said, but she argued anyway and he sent her to her bedroom to cool off.

"I didn't ask you if you wanted to get married," he said. "Mr. Birder is a good Christian man and he'll make you a good living. Be thankful to God Almighty he wants to marry you when he could have any woman in Shreveport. Me and your mama have seen you through school. You can't spend the rest of your life sitting around the house doing nothing but eating three meals a day off my table.

“What do you expect in life anyway? Women get married off if they're lucky enough for somebody to want them. You want to be an old maid like your Aunt Elizabeth, eating off your sister's husband and sleeping on the parlor sofa with no place of your own?"

Aunt Elizabeth got up and left the table without finishing supper, but her brother-in-law pretended not to notice.

"What do you think you'll do if you don’t get married?”

"Teach school."

"For the rest of your life? Women teach if they can't find someone to marry them.”

"I'm not an old lady. I'm just seventeen. If I do decide to get married someday, somebody else will come along and want to marry me then."

"Somebody has already come along. Myrtle."

"But Papa, folks don't tell their kids who to marry like they used to do. People marry who they want to nowadays. It's 1916."

"And that's what's wrong with the world. There's people going to Hell all over because they've lost all sense of morality. Christians don't do something just because the world does it, young lady. ‘Be in the world, not of it,’ the Bible says."

"But, papa, I don't love Mr. Birder. He's old and he's got a pot belly and hair in his nose."

"Myrtle, you stop that kind of talk. It's no kind of talk for a lady. You’ll learn to love what's good for you. Now stop talking back to me and make up your mind to do what I say. I'm your Father and I know what's best for you. ‘Honor your father, the Bible says.’"

That was when he sent her up to the bedroom she shared with Dee and that was the last he said to her about it. Her mama was the one who came to tell her Mr. Birder was coming over on Wednesday after supper to sit on the front porch with her and drink iced lemonade.

Mr. Birder cleared his throat. Lemonade sure looks good," he said looking at the pitcher on the table between them.

Myrtle nodded with her teeth clenched tight but did not speak.

“Sure would like some," he said.

"Then get some," she said and did not move to get it for him.

The man's face turned red and the hairs in his nostrils stood out straight, but he did not say anthing. Myrtle glanced at him after a moment and saw that his face was not as red, but he was staring at her with a hurt look on his face. He saw her look in his direction and cleared his throat again, then he spoke.

"Miss Myrtle," he said, "I hate for us to get started off wrong. I admire you very much and, like I told your Paw, I can make you a good living–give you just about anything you'd want."

“Nobody’s paid any attention to what I want yet.”

She looked at him when she spoke and saw his face get red again. By now the sun had moved far enough for the whole porch to be in the shade. She go up and moved her chair away from him to the railing. His face looked red enough now for him to get sick without drinking the iced lemonade, but being mad had made her mouth dry as powder and she got up to pour a glass for both of them.

She handed him the glass and sat down again.

"Thank you, Miss Myrtle," hje said and drank a big swallow.

She nodded but said nothing, watching his Adam's apple jerk up and down. After a moment, he spoke again.

"Is there somebody else you got your head set on? Somebody maybe your Paw don't know nothing about?"

It was none of Isaiah Birder's business, but she answered anyway, telling him the truth.

"No."

"Then I guess I just don't understand, Miss Myrtle. I thought you liked me."

"I like you all right, Mr. Birder. I just don't want to marry you. I don't want to marry anybody. Not now."

"But, I can make you a better living than most any man in Shreveport.”

"Shreveport's not the whole world."

"I got my hardware business and the house, and. . ."

"And three kids already."

"They're good kids."

"I guess so, but I'm not ready to be a mother yet–not for kids that aren't mine."

"That's not a very Christian way to talk. A good Christian woman ought to want to look after three motherless children."

"Looking after them and being their stepmother's not the same thing."

"I don't know what's different about it."

"Teddy is thirteen, almost as old as I am. I don't even remember before he was born. I was too young."

"I don't know what difference that makes."

"Sleeping with his paw for one thing. I'd rather sleep with Teddy."

There. She'd said it and damn him. She did not want him and his bay window wallowing all over her.

"Miss Myrtle! That's... That's not a decent thing for a lady, particularly a young lady like yourself to be talking about. You shouldn't even be thinking about things like that, much less saying anything like that. What do you know about that sort of thing anyway? It's not fitting to say to a man on you're paw's front porch, him being a preacher and all."

"You did intend to sleep with me didn't you? If I married you?"

Mr. Birder's face went purple-red now, but he did not look like he would be sick. He was just mad.

"That's not something a Christian woman talks about."

"Why?"

"You of all people ought to know better, being a preacher's daughter. Thank you for the lemonade. Go on in the house now and tell your paw I want to talk to him out here on the porch."

Now she was scared and her hands trembled a little as she picked up the lemonade tray, but her voice did not quaver when she spoke.

"Will you hold the door open for me, Mr. Birder," she said, and walked past him into the house.

Her papa was sitting at the dining room table reading the paper. Her mama and Dee were crocheting near the window, taking advantage of the light. She did not see Aunt Elizabeth. She was probably sitting in the kitchen by herself. That is what she usually did after cleaning up the supper dishes.

"Mr. Birder wants to see you on the porch, Papa," Myrtle siad, then she turned and went straight up to the bedroom.

She pulled the stool out from under the dressing table and looed at herself in the mirror. She was pretty with dark blue eyes and chestnut hair and she had a good figure. She knew she was pretty, but right now she wished she was homely, like her sister Dee, then maybe Isaiah Birder would leave her alone.

She turned away from the mirror and looked out the back window at the vegetable garden in the yard. Her mother and father had the front bedroom above the porch so she could not overhear what Mr. Birder had to say to her father.

After a while, she heard her father's footsteps climbing the stairs and turned on the stool to face the door. He did not knock when he came in. For a moment, he just stood without speaking, breathing hard from climbing the steps.

She heard her mother below, calling up from the foot of the stairs.

"Abner? Abner, what is it? What's happened?"

"Girl," her papa said, "I’m mortified and ashamed of you for what you said to Mr. Birder. I’ll not stand for talk like that from my own daughter.”

She nodded. She held her hands tight together in her lap. A beating would be worth it to get out of marrying Isaiah Birder.

"You've done a very wicked thing, Myrtle, a sinful thing for a woman, talking like that to the man who's going to be your husband."

His voice was low and unsteady. She could not tell if he was angry or grieved, but he could barely control himself.

“I don’t want to be his husband. I don’t want to be anybody’s husband.”

"You can thank the grace of God he's still willing to marry you," he said.

"No. I wish to God he didn’t."

Myrtle spoke the quick denial like a pistol shot.

"Abner? Answer me," Mrs. Crump cried from the foot of the stairs. "What's going on up there? Answer me for the love of God. "

Myrtle heard her climbing the stairs. She was a fat woman and climbing the stairs was hard work for her.

"Now you hush your mouth, Myrtle," Her papa said. "You're asking for a beating and I’ve a good mind to give it to you for your own good–for the good of your soul. I won't have you going to hell for sassing me and taking vulgar to the man who wants to marry you."

"Abner!"

Myrtle heard her mother's heavy footsteps on the stairs.

"Beat me if you want to, papa," she said. She thought she could stand a beating from him better than she could marry Mr. Birder. "–but I'll willingly go to hell before I marry Isaiah Birder. Beat me to death if you want to and you can go to hell too."

Her mother stood behind her father in the door.

"Abner! What are you doing? Myrtle, what have you done?"

"Sarah, bring me my strap."

“Abner, no.”

"Do as I say."

Her mother was crying. "No, Abner. Please, no."

Dee was outside in the hall too now and she was also crying.

"Go ahead, Mama," Myrtle said. “Get him his strap. I don’t care.” She felt calm, like she was watching it all happen in a dream. "Get the strap. I don't care if he beats me to death. That's all he can do, beat me to death, but he can't make me marry Isaiah Birder if he takes me to church tied up and gagged or in a coffin."

"Hush, Myrtle," her mother said, then, "Abner, let me talk to her. I can talk some sense into her."

"Get me my strap, Sarah."

"Please, Abner, no."

"Get the strap."

“Let me talk to her."

"Mama, Papa, let me marry him. I want to marry him." It was Dee.

"Get downstairs. Dee," her father shouted at her.

"But Papa. . ."

"Go get the strap, Sarah, or I'll beat all three of you. Get it. Now!"

"I'll get it, Papa," Dee cried. "Don't beat me, Papa. I'll get the strap." And she did.

*****

Myrtle hurt all over. Not just her behind and her back hurt, but all over. She had been determined when he beat her not to cry, but it hurt too much and she had to. He made her take off her dress and leave on her shift, but it still hurt bad. After the first few strokes of the strap she started to cry.

When she started to cry, he stopped and asked her if she was ready to marry Isaiah Birder, and she said no, and he started to beat her again. She screamed and begged him to stop, but each time he asked her if she was ready to marry Birder and she said
"No! Never!" and he would start beating her again.

Her mama stayed outside in the hall for a while, then she went back in the bedroom and begged him to stop too, but he kept swinging the strap, breathing hard, gasping for breath, like he was running up a hill. Outside in the hall, Dee was crying, then she started screaming too.

Finally, Myrtle did not know how long it lasted, but she heard a man's voice in the room besides her father.

"Stop it, Brother Crump. Stop it," he shouted. It was Isaiah Birder. He must have caught her papa's arm, for Myrtle felt the wind from a final blow that did not land.

"I don't want her anymore, for God's sake," Birder shouted. "God Almighty, you can hear her screaming all over Shreveport. And Mrs. Crump too, and Miss Dee. You can hear them screaming all over town for God's sake. I don't want her anymore and, God Almighty, everybody in Shreveport knows she won't have me either."

*****

Aunt Elizabeth came up to the bedroom after it was over and helped Myrtle out of the shift and put witchhazel on the welts and held her while she vomited, and she must have slept for a while, maybe an hour or two, but now she was awake. Outside the moon was white on the vegetable garden in back of the house.

She listened to the quiet house. Mama was in bed. Myrtle could hear her soft crying from across the hall. And Papa was sitting in the swing on the porch. Myrtle could hear the chain creak with his weight clear upstairs in the back of the house. Dee had cried herself to sleep in the bed next to her. Myrtle got up and started packing.

She did not have a valise, but she got a pasteboard box out of the attic and stuffed everything that would not fit in the box into a pillow case. She had a little money, about two dollars in change and she put that in her purse, and carrying the box with the pillow case on top, she went downstairs, avoiding the step that creaked near the bottom.

She went quietly into the kitchen, heading for the back door, but stopped terrified. Someone was sitting in the dark at the kitchen table. She was afraid that her papa had come in from the front porch. She could see the dark form of a body framed by the white moonlit doorway. She saw the glint of a butcher knife lying on the kitchen counter.

“Myrtle?”

She recognized Aunt Elizabeth's whispered voice.

"I'm leaving," Myrtle said. "I’m running away. Don't try to stop me."

"Don't worry about that. I should have told you to run off last Sunday night after they hatched up your marrying Isaiah Birder. Here, I just wanted to give you something."

She pressed money into Myrtle's hand. Some bills and change.

"It's not much. I wish I had more. God keep you. Try to get word to me how you are. Your mother will worry, but maybe she'll understand too."

Myrtle's hand closed on the money and she took it without regret.

"Where will you go?" Aunt Elizabeth asked.

The reality of what Myrtle was doing struck her. She had no idea where she could run to. She had not thought of anything yet but escaping from the house.

"I... I don't know, Aunt Elizabeth. I haven't thought..." Suddenly she felt trapped.

Where did she have to run to?" She fought to hold back the panic. "Take the train to Houston, I guess, if I've got enough money for the ticket."

"Won't do. The train doesn't come through till 10 in the morning. Your paw will be down at the station looking for you."

"What should I do, Aunt Elizabeth. I can't stay here."

"Go down to the river. And don't let anybody see you between here and there. Go to the wharf at the end of Pine Street and hide in one of the sheds until daylight. There's a man named Bart Dillon who has a barge tied up at the wharf. He stays on it. When you see him come up out on deck, go down to the barge and tell him Betty sent you. Make sure nobody sees you.

"Who's Betty?"

"That's the name he knows me by."

Myrtle looked closely at her aunt in the moonlit kitchen. She realized suddenly how little she really knew the woman. She had always been there, but in the background without much to say, cleaning up and cooking for her mother, but not saying much about what she did or thought. She was gone sometimes in the afternoon, but she just said visiting friends. Myrtle had always thought she went to see Miss Sims, who lived upstairs from the drugstore and sewed for people. It was strange to think that Aunt Elizabeth knew other people and one of them was a man named Bart Dillon. It was strange to think of her as Betty.

"What then?"

"Tell him you want to go down river with him to New Orleans."

"On the river?"

"They'll be watching the railroad station."

"I didn't think anybody traveled on the river anymore."

"Not many still do. That's why you may get away without getting caught.”

Myrtle nodded.

"When you get to New Orleans, go to 234 Prytania Street in the Garden District. I wrote the address down. It’s with the money I gave you. It's a girl's school. Ask for Miss Ophelia Juttison. Sheand her sisters own the school. Tell her I sent you. Tell her I know your mother or something. Don't tell her you're my niece. She might feel like she had to contact your mama and papa if she thought you had run away.

Don't give her your right name either. And don't tell Bart your right name either. He may know who you are, but he won't let on like he does. That's the best I can do for you."

"Thank you, Aunt Elizabeth. I don't know how to thank you, but I won't forget you helped me."

"I won't forget you helped me either," Elizabeth said. Myrtle did not know what her aunt meant, but she put the words away to think about later and slipped through the door into the moonlight.

When she got to the river and found the barge Elizabeth had described to her, the man Bart was sitting on deck smoking a pipe in the moonlight, so she did not hide like Elizabeth had told her, but walked to the edge of the pier and spoke to him.

“Are you Bart Dillon?” she asked.

“I am,” he said looking for the voice that spoke out of the night. “Who are you girl?”

“My name’s Claire. My friend Betty said I might could go down to New Orleans with you on the river.”

He looked at her for a long minute before the spoke, trying to see her better in the moonlight.

You got a last name, Claire.”

“Beauvoir.” It was the last name of her French teacher at school.

“You a Cajun?”

“No, but my husband was. He’s dead. I’m a widow.”

“You look mighty young to be a widow.”

“No law says a widow’s got to be old.”

“I guess not. When you want to leave.”

“I’m ready to go now,” she said.

“Can you wait ‘til daylight? He laughed.

“If I can spend the rest of the night on board ,” she said. I haven’t got anyplace else to go.

“Sure. Come aboard, widow Beauvoir, and welcome.”

Introduction

Welcome to the on-going creation of Red River Woman,an entry in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo.org.) The story chronicles the adventures of Clair Leblanc, a woman who dared to face life on her own terms at a time when a woman alone in the world was a rare thing. Claire's story is a work of fiction. Names,characters, places and incidents are the product of the author's imaginagion or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons (living or dead,) events, or locales is entirely coincidental.