Chapter 7

Sue Ellen called me in to supper after a while. Charlie got home about the same time with a mess of bass and catfish. We wasn't gonna have 'em for supper so I made him clean 'em and salt 'em down and put 'em in the icebox fer the next day.

No more was said between me n' Sue Ellen all that evenin' about our little talk but it was as plain as day she wasn't near as bothered about it as I was. And as far as I could tell, it hadn't changed what she was doin' one little bit. She'd still run her hand across my shoulders when she walked by me and kiss me on the cheek whenever she got the chance. It's like she had in mind she was gonna have her way whether I wanted it or not.

Well, I guess you could see it was all gonna come to somethin' sooner or later and it surely did - that very night. After supper, Charlie went to his room to listen to the radio (he built his own crystal set) and Sue Ellen was curled up on the sofa readin' a book. I took a hot bath, brushed my teeth and went on to bed 'cause it'd been such a tirin' day. I was still frettin' over what to do about Sue Ellen, but I wasn't gettin' nowhere so I figured a good night's rest might bring some fresh ideas in the mornin'.

Well, I lay there in my bed but I couldn't get to sleep from worryin'. You know how it is; you turn on one side and then the other and then on your back and then on your belly and nothin' feels comfortable. Sometime in the middle of the night, I got up and went into the kitchen to pour me a little slug of whiskey, thinkin' it might help me relax enough to sleep. I stood there in my drawers lookin' out the kitchen window at the distillery in the bright moonlight and thinkin' how much things had changed since Cassie n' the kids found me sleepin' in the hay a little over eight years back.

I thought about how much I'd come to love Cassie and how much I still missed her since she died carryin' our baby. I could see her white gravestone almost shinin' in the moonlight a little ways up the hill near the woods. I thought about all these years of raisin' her kids, and how well they were doin' in spite of the hard life that had been handed to 'em. I thought about the feelin' of loneliness I got sometimes, in spite of the kids and the business keepin' me busy all the time. I sure wasn't the same boy that jumped off that train.

O' course I missed havin' the company of a woman, but I just couldn't bring myself to court another after Cassie. Oh, I pleasured myself a lot and even snuck into town to visit a lady of the evenin' ever once in a while, but the thought of another woman livin' in Cassie's house with Cassie's kids was too much for me.

I tossed down the rest of my drink and headed back to bed. I sat on the edge fer a minute tryin' to relax my mind then I crawled under the blanket - and rolled over against a warm body.

"What the hell!" I said as I sat up and threw the covers back. The moonlight was bright enough fer me to recognize Sue Ellen layin' there with nothin' on but a smile.

"Sue Ellen, what in god's name do you think you're doin'?! Jesus, girl, you're bare-ass naked!" I was talkin' in a loud whisper, hopin' I wouldn't wake up Charlie. Course he slept like the dead so there wasn't too much chance of that.

Sue Ellen reached over to put her hand on my bare leg and said, "I'm takin' Mama's place. It's time you had another woman in your life and I aim to be that woman."

I shook my head in exasperation. "Honey, we talked about this. You know it ain't right!"

She raised up on one elbow and looked at me. I gotta say she was a sight to behold with her long, black hair hangin' loose around her shoulders, her tits so nice and ripe, her hips so round and the black patch of hair between her legs. Her hand started slidin' up my leg towards my drawers as she said, "Well I don't see what's so wrong about it, Willem. It's not like we're blood relatives or anything. When Mama died, you stayed to be a daddy to us and you did it better than anybody else could have. Charlie and I love you for that, but I also love you in a different way. And it's not like you're too old for me, no more than Mama was older than you. Come on, Willem, I can tell by the way you look at me sometimes that you want me. Well, I want you too. I want you to be my man and to love me like you loved Mama."

I felt myself weakening. I already had stiff one from lookin' at that beautiful woman layin' there, and I reached down to stop Sue Ellen's hand before she found it. "Honey, think about this! How would I explain to folks about havin' sex with my own girl? Why they'd ride me out o' town on a rail! Hell, they'd probably just hang me on the spot!"

"You're just making up excuses, Willem. First of all, who's gonna know? Are you planning to post a notice in the newspaper? You keep your mouth shut and I'll keep my mouth shut and nobody's gonna know. We live almost a mile from the next house so there's nobody gonna be peeking in our windows. After I graduate from high school, we can get married. Course folks might talk for a while but that won't last long. We wouldn't be doing anything against the law and I don't even think it'd be sinful. I'll bet there's folks that already think we sleep together."

"Well, but what about Charlie? What's he gonna think?"

"Willem, I told Charlie I was going to take Mama's place some day after she died. For the last eight years, he's grown up expecting me to take her place in your bed some day. In fact he keeps asking me when I'm goning do it because he wants my room. He says his is too small for all his stuff."

Well that caught me flat-footed! "You and Charlie been talkin' about this fer all this time and I didn't know about it? That don't even seem possible!"

"Well it is possible and it's the truth. Come on, Willem, you're running out of excuses. I know you want me and I want you, so get out of your drawers and make love to me! I want you to make me a real woman right now, right this minute."

I'll be damned if she didn't sound just like her mama that first night we had sex! It was about then that I knew I was beat so I took a deep breath, pulled my drawers down and did just that.