Chapter 25: Fast Cars, Fast Women, Part II

July 1982, Dawsonville, Georgia

On Saturday morning, I woke up early as usual and ran the same route I had the previous day. It wasn’t as far as I would have liked to have run, but at least it was some exercise. I showered and ate a hearty breakfast of bacon, eggs, and hash browns. Stephie showed up in the kitchen a few minutes after I started eating and had her usual biscuits and gravy. When we finished, we went to sit on the swing with coffee and wait for Stephie’s cousin Emily to arrive.

“You’re really OK with what Emily wants?” I asked.

“Remember, I told you back in Chicago that there were some girls here who’d want it? That I’d hire you out for stud?” she smirked. “Well, Emily was one of them. She’s been itchin’ like I was the Summer before tenth grade when Red and I decided we’d do it before he got together with Rose. Emily ain’t got no friend like Jason, and she’s heard me talk a lot about you. I show’d her your picture at Christmas and she ‘bout died.”

“I’m not that good looking, Stephie!” I protested.

“No, you ain’t no movie star nor model, but you clean up real nice and those eyes of yours are to die for! Emily got the idea back then that she’d put out for you if’n you asked, but she thought we was a couple. I didn’t tell her otherwise, and that’s kind of what my parents think, too.”

“Peaches, have you been telling people we’re going steady?” I asked.

“Not ‘xactly. I been sayin’ you’s my boyfriend. I guess that’s ‘bout the same thing, isn’t it?”

“It is. But I guess I really don’t see what else you could do. Telling your mom I’m your lover probably would have been a bad idea, and she probably wouldn’t have let me stay at your house.”

“Yeah, she’d be upset if she know’d the real situation. And Daddy would be even more upset. I can’t tell them. Red and Rose know, ‘course, and now Emily knows, but they won’t say nuthin’. You remember I told Red about you way back when I was decidin’ what to do ‘bout that idiot Daryl!”

“Yep, and I know how it is. A friend of mine more or less did the same thing with her guy, but she forgot to tell HIM that they weren’t a couple.”

“Oops. How badly did that go?”

“Pretty badly. I’m not sure what’s up with her right now. Peaches, you’re not thinking you’re going to steal me away from Kara, are you?”

“No way! I mean, well, in all honesty, I wish I could, but like I said, me calling you my boyfriend was just to keep the peace with my parents.”

We chatted a bit more, then heard the sound of an engine slowing down.

“Here comes Emily now!”

The pickup truck stopped at the end of the driveway and Emily got out. She was wearing a pale blue and white sundress, brown sandals, and she had her long hair tied back with a matching ribbon. She was pretty in a ‘girl next door’ kind of way, and, as Jason had said, cute as a button. She waved as she walked down the driveway. I saw she was carrying a small jug.

“I’m going to pack us a picnic lunch,” Stephie said. “You two can sit on the swing and get to know each other before you do the dirty deed!”

Stephie gave us a huge smile and went into the house.

“Hey,” Emily said, sitting down.

“Good morning! How are you this morning?”

“Excited and a bit nervous, but I ain’t changing my mind. I brought you this to try today,” she said, holding up the jug.

I nodded to acknowledge what she said, and she continued.

“You just can’t drink too much your first time or you’ll likely get sick. Anyway, I want to know more about you.”

I told her about my family, my business, school, and the stuff I liked to do. She told me about High School, her family, her friends and her interests.

“I want to go to college in three years and after what I hear from Stephie, I think I’m going to go to school out west, maybe in Colorado, Arizona, or California. I want to get away from Dawsonville, at least for a time. My family’s been here for nearly two hundred years. My daddy’s kin come over from Scotland just after the First War for Independence. My great-great-granddaddy was Clement Evans. He was a general and fought you Damnyankees, then later became a preacher.”

“You know,” I grinned, “that war was 120 years ago.”

“Yeah, and y’all still can’t leave us be! You’ll see tomorrow at Talladega how many Confederate battle flags there are and all the good ol’ boys. You’ll be one of the few Damnyankees there!”

“Didn’t you say you wanted to go to school out west?” I grinned.

She laughed, “Yeah, I did. I’m mostly just yankin’ your chain because Stephie told me you was a good sport about it.”

“Why me?” I asked, turning more serious.

“Stephie talked a lot about you and she show’d me your picture back in December and I told her if’n I was in her position, I’d put out for you if’n you asked. She told me she was goin’ to when she got back to Chicago and I was jealous. I know’d that her and Red almost did the deed before Red and Rose started goin’ together. I’d have asked Red, but Rose would kill me! When I found out you weren’t goin’ with Stephie permanent-like, then I decided I wanted to. I’ve done lots of kissin’ but mostly with guys who ain’t got no more experience than me,” she said. “Are you really as good as Stephie says?”

The door to the house opened just as she asked the question and Stephie came onto the porch with a picnic basket and two blankets.

“He is! You’ll see! I got the basket and two cokes for each of us — Dr Pepper for me and Steve and Root Beer for you, Emily.”

“Dr Pepper and Root Beer are not ‘Coke’, Peaches!” I objected.

“For a guy who gets straight A’s in school, you are dumber than a box of rocks at times, Yankee! They call it ‘pop’ in Chicago. You call it ‘soda’ like them Yankees up in New York! We call it ‘coke’ no matter what flavor it is.”

I chuckled, “My dad’s from New York City, so I probably call it ‘soda’ because he does.”

“See, Emily, told ya’ he was a Yankee through and through. With a daddy from New York, you IS a Yankee, Yankee. Didn’t you tell me that your mom is from Ohio, just like General Grant?”

I chuckled again. “Yes, and you go to school in Illinois, the land of Lincoln!” I teased.

“Don’t remind me! I ain’t stayin’ there when I get done with school.”

“Not even if something happens between me and Kara and that’s where I work?” I asked lightly.

“Nah, I’ll drag your butt down South where the real folks live!”

Both girls laughed, and we took the T-tops off the Trans Am and drove out some country roads to what Emily had called Old Man Jenkins’ place. We parked along a small dirt road, closed up the car and locked it, then I followed the girls along the road carrying the picnic basket. Stephie carried the blankets, and Emily had her jug. They turned off on a path that led through a stand of poplar trees and I saw a large, red barn standing atop a small rise.

“That’s the barn,” Stephie said. “This time o’ year, nobody from the farm is coming out here. And neither Old Man Jenkins nor his sons mind us being here, neither. His wife’s an old biddy who goes to the Baptist church, and she’s always complainin’ about us kids even when we’re not doin’ nothin’ wrong.”

Stephie pulled a peg from the latch on a side door and we went inside. It was warm and musty smelling, but not oppressively so. There were tractors and some stalls that looked like they could be used for horses or cows, or some other animal, along with a rack of tools and some storage bins. She led us over to a ladder that looked like it went up at least twenty-five feet before it went through an opening in the ceiling. She took the basket from me and pointed to the ladder.

“Climb up. There’s a rope with a hook on it. Lower it down so you can pull the basket up. You don’t want to try to climb with it. Red almost killed hisself doing that when he was thirteen. Broke his arm and cracked his head open when he fell.”

I carefully climbed the long wooden ladder up into the loft. I found the rope on top of a bale of hay and lowered it down to Stephie, who hung the picnic basket in the hook, set the blankets on top of it and then called for me to pull it up. I slowly raised it up and set it on the bale of hay, then lowered it down for the jug. When I’d pulled that up, I coiled the rope while the girls climbed up the ladder. I noticed it was a bit cooler in the loft and saw that there were several screened windows that were open.

As I looked around, I saw dozens of bales of hay, and was suddenly glad I didn’t suffer from allergies to stuff like that! I saw a hoist system that I suspected was used to get the bales up from the outside. There were several openings in the floor with 4x4’s lining them. I walked over to one and looked down and saw it was right over some of the stalls. There was a pitchfork against the wall to my right and I guessed this was how they got the hay down into the barn.

“It’s a barn, Yankee!” Stephie said, watching me as I looked around. “You act like you never seen one before!”

“I haven’t, really,” I chuckled. “I’m mostly a city boy, even if my parents have seven acres of land with woods. Sure, there are farms by me, but none of my friends are from farm families.”

“This farm is about 500 acres, roughly. Old Man Jenkins kind of switches crops, but he always has some cows and usually some sheep. He used to keep a few horses and his wife would teach kids how to ride, but now she’s too old to do that, so he sold them off a few years ago. Now git yerself over here and help me spread the blankets.”

I helped Stephie spread the blankets over some loose hay and the three of us sat down. Emily handed me the jug of moonshine and said I should try it. I pulled the cork, passed it under my nose, and then took a tentative sip. I thought my brain was going to explode out of my head. It was like drinking liquid fire compared to the bourbon I usually drank. I almost spit it out in reaction, but managed to swallow it and it burned all the way down and took my breath away.

Both girls fell over, laughing hysterically. I re-corked the jug and sat it down and took very shallow breaths, trying to keep from vomiting all over the blanket and stay upright when my head was spinning. When Stephie and Emily regained their composure, they sat up. I saw they both had tears in their eyes from laughing so hard.

“Yep, a city boy, for sure!” Emily grinned.

“He looks green, Emily!” Stephie giggled.

“What the hell was in that jug?” I sputtered, finally able to talk. “Kerosine?”

“Daddy’s ‘shine. I told ya’. And Red told ya’ to be careful or you might get sick. I don’t think he meant from one sip though!” Emily giggled.

“I don’t see either of you drinking any?” I said.

Emily laughed and took the jug, pulled the cork, and smoothly took a swig. She passed it to Stephie, who did the same thing, then handed it back for Emily to put the cork back in.

“Two little girls can out-drink you, Yankee,” Stephie teased. “That’s not sayin’ much for you!”

“Let me guess, you’ve been getting sips of that since you were little,” I said. “Just like my friend Joyce with wine, because she’s Italian.”

“Yeah. I think I first tasted it when I was four or so,” Emily said. “One of daddy’s friends thought it would be funny to see my face. I think I looked like you did just now. But I’d get sips all the time growin’ up, so now I’m used to it. I think Stephie had her first sip around the same age. It’s just somethin’ we do here. ‘Shine and racin’ go together. Junior Johnson spent a year in jail up in Ohio for havin’ a still, and his pappy was in jail for about half his adult life for bootleggin’. The damn revenuers would never leave him alone.

“That’s how the races got started. All the guys runnin’ ‘shine had to be able to high-tail it from the federals. Pretty soon they was arguing about who had the fastest car, just like men argue ‘bout everythin’ from who’s got the fastest car to the best ‘shine recipe, to who’s got the biggest dick,” she giggled. “So they started to have races on dirt tracks on some of the farms around the South. Then they started buildin’ these asphalt tracks, and eventually they built places like Daytona and Talladega and even you Yankees know about NASCAR. Junior is a car owner now, and he won twelve races last year with Darrell Waltrip driving. But they started as a bunch of bootleggers runnin’ from the federals, like I said.”

“Let me try again,” I said, holding out my hand for the jug.

Emily smirked and handed it to me. I pulled the cork and carefully took a swig. I was better prepared this time and kept my breath as I felt the warmth spread down to my stomach. I re-corked the jug and handed it back with a smirk of my own.

“Not bad, Yankee,” Stephie said, nodding her approval. “If you two want to be alone now, I can go for a walk.”

Emily looked at me and I nodded.

“Yeah, I think so,” Emily said to Stephie.

“Steve, let me have the keys to your Trans Am. I ain’t goin’ to drive it, but I can listen to the radio. It’s about 10:30am now so I’ll come back around noon for lunch. I can always take another walk if Emily decides she likes it enough to do it again!” she added with a smirk.

I handed Stephie the keys to the car, and she shoved them in her pocket and climbed down the ladder. When we heard the door open and close, Emily got up and they sat down very close to me. I put my arm around her and she turned and offered me her ruby-red lips. Our lips touched, and I got a slight taste of wax. I realized that I’d never kissed a girl who wore lipstick before. Every single girl I’d been with either used lip gloss or nothing! In fact, most of the girls I went with didn’t use makeup at all, or if they did, it was sparingly — a bit of eye shadow or mascara. I quickly put that thought aside.

Emily parted her lips and our tongues sought each other, gently probing, then touching. Her kiss was gentle and soft, and I loved the feel of her full lips on mine. We kissed for several minutes, our tongues exploring and slowly twirling around each other. I lay back and pulled Emily with me so she was half lying on me. I wrapped both arms around her and held her tight as we continued to kiss. Eventually, she broke the kiss and rolled onto her back.

“You kiss real nice, Steve.”

“It gets better!” I smirked.