Макс Коллинз - Spree

“You don’t know how glad I am to see a friendly young face,” she said.

“Oh?”

“Yeah.” She shrugged. “I been having some family trouble. Nothing serious.”

“Oh?”

“I’m getting too old to live at home, anyway.”

“How old are you?”

“Seventeen.”

He smiled, a cute little smile on half his face making a dimple. “I didn’t think you were of drinking age.”

“Seventeen’s old enough.”

“For what?”

“Anything I want.”

“What are you, a senior, Cindy Lou?”

“Naw. I stopped going to high school.”

“Why?”

“Daddy didn’t want me to go.”

“Why?”

“Needed some help in the family business. Needs me to run the house. My mom’s dead.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. I never knew her.” She sighed. “I sorta killed her.”

“You... what do you mean?”

“She died having me.”

That seemed to bum Jon out; she touched his face.

“Don’t be blue,” she said. “You got any drugs?”

“No. Sorry.”

“It’s okay. That gets old after while, anyway. Boy, I sure do miss your band. Why’d you break up?”

“We weren’t getting anywhere, I guess.”

“What are you doing now? You playing with a new band?”

“I was. Mostly I’m working as an artist. Cartoonist.”

“You draw cartoons?”

“Yes.” He smiled; seemed a little proud of himself.

“Like on TV, you mean. G.I. Joe, He-Man, those things? They’re awful violent. You think little kids should watch those things?”

“I don’t work on animated cartoons, Cindy Lou. I draw a comic book.”

“Oh, like Archie or Batman.”

“Something like that.”

“Are you good?”

“Yeah. I’ll draw your picture sometime.”

“In the nude?”

“If you like.”

“It’s getting warmer in here.” She pulled off her T-shirt; it was still cold enough to make her nips stand out. She looked at his face; looked at his eyes on her boobs. She knew she didn’t have the biggest boobs around, but they were real firm and had a nice shape and pretty pink nips. She liked the expression they put on his face — like he was struck dumb by her beauty. She’d seen that expression many times, and relished it.

Then she leaned back on her elbow and started making small talk again, pretending to be matter of fact about her nudity but knowing she was making him crazy. It was a sort of teasing, although she was no tease: Cindy Lou liked sex. She had put out since she was twelve. Screwing was fun, and besides, it put a guy in your back pocket, for as long as you wanted him there. And she’d had “encounters,” as she liked to think of them, with a lot of guys who played in bands.

“Your band played a lot of your own songs, didn’t you?”

“Yeah,” he said. “About a third of what we carried was original material.”

“Who wrote it?”

“Mostly Toni. I did some of it. We made a record, you know.”

“No! Really? Can you get me one?”

“Sure. How long are you going to be in town?”

“Just till Friday. We’re leaving real early Friday morning.”

“You and your dad.”

“Well, and Lyle. He’s my brother.”

“He’s staying at the motel with you?”

“No, he’s over on the Illinois side somewhere, looking after business for Daddy.”

“I could drop an album off at your motel tomorrow.”

“You best not stop by the room. Daddy’s funny about boys. He doesn’t know, uh...”

“What?”

“Nothing,” she said.

Cindy Lou’s daddy didn’t know she put out. He thought she was pure as the driven snow; he had no idea she’d drifted, in the seventh grade. And he sure as hell didn’t know she and her brother Lyle used to do it together, either. She was thirteen and he was eighteen. Not often. Just now and then, when Daddy was out of the house, till she missed her period once and got scared about having a Mongoloid. It was a false alarm, but she and Lyle got the fear of God put into them, or as near to it as possible for two kids raised to believe in nothing.

Lyle was a great lover; he made her come like a four-alarm fire. One time they made love in a rainstorm, with the water running down the window next to them all streaky, throwing spooky shadows on their naked bodies, with thunder cracking out there. Daddy was home, that time. It made it real dangerous and real exciting. But eventually the fear was stronger than the love of danger and excitement and even of her brother Lyle’s long lovely pecker, and now she and Lyle didn’t even mention it. Didn’t even talk about it. It was like it never happened, except for an occasional glance between them that said it did.

She never thought of it as incest, exactly, at least not till that month her period was late, and she didn’t believe in sin, but she did believe, vaguely, in right and wrong. That much had crept in through her schooling. She sometimes lay awake at night thinking about the stealing her daddy and Lyle did, which she sometimes helped them with, like the food stamp deal she quit school to pitch in on. She wondered if that was any kind of way to make a living.

Her daddy had always treated her like a princess, and had never been mean, except to spank her bare butt when she was bad. Daddy defined “bad” as disobeying, and she’d learned not to do that early on. She hadn’t had her bare butt spanked (by Daddy) since the seventh grade — coincidentally, it stopped about the time she started putting out.

Once, about three years ago, she had sat in Daddy’s lap and, reverting to the manner of a child, which always charmed him, asked: “Is stealing wrong, Daddy?”

“You shouldn’t steal from your kin, darlin’.”

“People go to jail for stealing.”

“People go to jail for getting caught. Everybody steals, darlin’. The government steals from the public, and the public steals from the government. What goes around comes around.”

“Do you hurt people when you steal from them?”

“Your daddy has to make a living in a cruel, cold, hard world. And sometimes that takes being cruel, cold and hard.”

“Does that mean you hurt people?”

“If I have to. Only if I have to. I could lie to you, darlin’, but it wouldn’t be right of me to. You got to be true to your family. That’s all there is in this old world that can be trusted; that’s all there is that’s worth holding on to. Family.”

“I love you, Daddy.”

“I love you, darlin’,” he’d said, and gave her a big old sloppy kiss.

She thought her daddy was handsome; she’d seen the pictures of him and her mom, before his hair turned white, and he and her mom — who looked a lot like Cindy Lou, so much so it was spooky — looked so happy together. Such a handsome, happy couple. Sometimes she felt guilty for coming between them. Sometimes she cried herself to sleep over it, holding her mother’s picture in her hands. Usually during her period, this was.

But sometimes Daddy scared her. When he drank, he got “handsy.” He would put his hands on her and want a kiss. It didn’t go any further than that, but she sometimes went to bed early and slid the dresser across the door. He’d never tried to come in the room, but she’d grown afraid, lately, that he would someday. Some night.

Ever since she quit school and was around the house more, she noticed Daddy looking at her. Looking at her in that way she knew so well. She figured the only thing keeping him off of her was his foolish mistaken notion she was still a virgin. She was afraid of what he’d do if he found out she wasn’t.

He had his foolish old head in the sand, Daddy did. What did he think she did, when she went out on the weekends and didn’t get home till three in the morning? He bawled her out about it sometimes, and threatened (just threatened) to “whack” her if she didn’t mind. She could always sweet-talk him out of his mood, though.