Chapter 4

It only took Dr. Lambert Keen a couple of hours on Monday to complete the work on Corrie’s ears, reducing their size and pulling them more tightly to her head. The slant of her eyes was almost an afterthought—just taking a tuck on the outside corners of her lids. Though the eyelids were minor he reasoned that he might as well do them with the ears. It would take the best part of the week ‘til the soreness would be barely recognizable. But within the week he would do the nose. A couple of days with Percodan would take care of her pain for that. It would take a few days to take care of the process for her name change, just registering the forms and pictures. So, within three weeks she would be ready to get back on the road again.

Calley Metcalf hadn’t heard from Chet McClean in three months. She had been friends of Chet and his wife since the beginning of their marriage. Chet and MaryAnne’s daughter was her Goddaughter. She knew that the McClean’s marriage was in trouble even before Chrissie was born. Being a trucker’s wife, she knew that MaryAnne didn’t have what it took to be happy as a long-distance trucker’s wife. That takes a special kind of woman: fiercely independent, extremely open-minded, and free in her attitudes about sex. A long-distance trucker’s wife knows that her man is a sexual being who, most likely is not going to save it for a month at a time. She knows that she needs to do the lion’s share of kid-raising. Quite often, just like her husband her attitude on sex is that she won’t suffer without it either.

MaryAnne toughed it out for 15 years and was finally swept away by the minister of her church of all things, having carried on with him for three years. When Chrissie was killed in an auto accident the marriage fell apart. They divorced and MaryAnne married the minister.

Chet met Chuck Metcalf the first year he was on the road. They became friends when they were hauling for Consolidated Mattress out of Utica, New York, which was Chuck’s home. They made several convoys together all the way to California. But mostly they went in different directions. Chet was picking up loads at Consolidated about every two weeks. Once, while they were on the road, they had dinner together at a Pilot Flying J Travel Center restaurant—this is before they had the sleepers in the cabs. He had met Calley once when he and Chuck were picking up at Consolidated. Then, when they both stopped at Pilot on the way back into Utica Chuck invited him to dinner and asked him to stay the night. He did and when he left the next morning both Chuck and Calley told him that he could stay anytime that he was picking up in Utica. It was the kind of invitation Chet had heard about before from other truckers. It was obvious that Chuck was trying to level the playing field for Calley, to have someone who Chuck felt good about spending some worthwhile time with his wife while he was gone.

Chuck was on a run with a load of mattresses to California when he lost his brakes just as he passed the truck escape ramp going down the long grade in the Cajon Pass. He was going over a hundred miles an hour when he reached the turn onto Rte. 138 toward Wrightwood and slammed into the berm abutment there. It happened on one of those convoys. Chet was right behind him, knowing that Chuck was headed for disaster. After he dropped his load in L.A. Chet deadheaded back to Utica to be with Calley. It was tragic for her although she had lived with such a threat for so long. For Chet it was bittersweet. He had lost his best friend, but he was there to comfort his wife.

Though a situation like this might seem strange to the reader Chet was no stranger in Calley’s bed. They had comforted and thrilled each other numerous times over the years when he had stayed there, and Chuck was gone. For Calley, during this time Chet’s body being close was comforting for her. His penis inside her body was like an extension of Chuck’s. The other sexual things he was doing with her helped to heal her grief in this strange kind of relationship.

When Chet called this time Calley was thrilled. But she could tell in his voice on the phone that he was more troubled than he had been since Chrissie’s death than Chuck’s. While he was there, he hadn’t breathed a word to her about Corrie Jeffords. But she knew that whatever it was that was bothering him had to do with a woman. She thought it might have something to do with Freddie Krause. Calley was the only person outside of the Wheelin Warriors who knew about Billie-Jo Hadley becoming Freddie. At the time, when it was Chet’s turn to be toting Freddie during her odyssey, he and Freddie stayed with her for two days when Freddie came down with the flu. Before they left, when Freddie was on the mend, Calley enjoyed a threesome with Chet and Freddie.

This time, when Chet got to her house before picking up his load at Consolidated, they had dinner before going to bed. It troubled her that he was not the man that she knew. In bed that night, where he was usually a most active and attentive lover, he brought her to three orgasms and fucked her but couldn’t even come.

“Okay baby,” she said as she sat up and made him snuggle in her arms, “We’re both too important to each other for this to go on without you telling me what’s on your mind.” When he just clammed up further, she said, “God damn it, Chet, I’m the woman you fucked for two weeks after my husband died. Cut out this BULLSHIT.”

It was the wedge she needed to open him up. Surprised and relieved that it wasn’t trouble with Freddie she became enrapt by the story of what had gone on with the Mormon girl Corrie Jeffords. “Sounds like a woman with an awful lot of courage and resolve,” she said. “And you say she’s 15?”

When she found out that Chet was in love with her, she wanted to beat the shit out of him for being a horny trophy hunter. She wanted to beat him up verbally but knew him well enough that this cultish stranger was serving as a surrogate for his deceased daughter. “Jesus.” she said, “You Warriors sure seem to be able to get yourself into some strange situations. I thought Freddie was a dilly but this one even tops that. She was so well-versed in the affairs of the Wheeling Warriors because her late husband was an honorary member. The rule was that a trucker could only be a Warrior if he weren’t married. But Chuck was in on everything from the beginning and was the only honorary Warrior. As far as Calley went she was sleeping with Chet even before his divorce. Since her husband had been killed, she was an unofficial way station for the Wheelin Warriors and was fucking half of them.

“Well,” she said to Chet, “This girl’s only fifteen and you’re gonna come to the realization that you are in your fifties. I know you, Chester McNeal; you’ve got ladies all over the country. That’s not going to fly with this young chickee; you’ll get over her, you dumb cluck, before you know it.”

With Calley’s arms wrapped around him and his head resting between her ample breasts, he felt like he’d been counseled by his mother. “You’re probably right Calley,” he said. “But it’s the strangest feeling. And you’re right, Chrissie is involved. But this girl makes me feel like I’m with Tinkerbell. And it feels like she has me by the nuts”

“Ha-ha-ha,” Calley laughed, “Tinkerbell. “You Warriors are such a strange fucking lot and I love every one of you.” She sandwiched his face between her hands and slapped his face with them gently. “And speaking of nuts I think it’s time for me to empty yours, they’re just chocked too full of sperm. I’ll not have my men walking around like a kid with blue balls.” Since the time he had been nestling in her breasts, she had been gently stroking him to a mild erection. “Lay back and let Mama relieve your pressure.”

She went down on him and sucked him to a stiff rod then straddled him and slid her wet pussy over its length to lube it. Taking him inside she tightened the muscles of her well-used pocket and furiously jockeyed him until he filled her with gushers from his distended balls. Exhausted, she fell on his body.

“You surely have a calming effect upon me, Calley,” he said.

“I’m just here for my boys,” she responded. “I know it sounds like a serious case of incest Chet. But you’re all brothers to me.”

Corrie was surprised that the surgery on her ears and nose went easily. She expected a long, uncomfortable time in the clean room in the basement that acted as a surgery. It seemed strange that an Inn like the Wayfarer’s would have such a room. But she later found out that it was used quite a bit. Since the number of girls who came through the Inn with the drivers who were acting as scouts for Freddie’s business, there was the occasional pregnancy. Not only was it a necessary procedure there, but it also acted as a recruiting tool for the brothel. There was the occasional Wayfarer’s girl who got careless with her birth control and needed to be “touched up.” The girls were inspected at least once a month for STDs. Some had gotten sloppy on the safe sex regimen and treatment was needed. And, with so many girls who engaged in sex on such a regular basis, “female problems” cropped up.

But for Corrie, her initial plastic surgery went so smoothly that she was free from pain in two days of each procedure. By the end of the second week, she was completely healed. The nose job gave Lambert more trouble than he expected. The gristle on her nose was harder and less pliable than the doctor thought it would be and there was trouble getting her right septum lined up correctly. Other than that, she was pain-free in three days, and by the time her ears had completely healed her nose was just puffy. But the bruises around her eyes persisted for almost two weeks.

When both Lambert Keen and Freddie agreed that she was ready for public exposure they had an unveiling party that all the girls attended, along with Houston Caffrey, Freddie’s brother, and Lane Moncrief, another of the Wheelin Warriors. The party was held in the Rec Room in the basement where the surgery was. The Rec Room provided a secure room that was not even known of by others other than the girls, the Warriors, and of course Keen Lambert. When the coverings came off Corrie’s face all the girls clapped and cheered. Each, like sisters, gave Corrie a hug and told her how beautiful she was.

As she studied the mirror, she couldn’t tell that there was something different about her face, her controlled memory wouldn’t let her see that it was different. Before the procedures, Freddie had told Corrie that she wouldn’t notice the difference for a while. At the same time, she wouldn’t realize that people who knew her before the surgery wouldn’t even recognize that she was the same girl. “Mine was more severe than yours,” Freddie said. “And it was a hell of a lot more painful. But a year later I walked through the town where I grew up and not a soul recognized me, not even my best cousin.” She shrugged her shoulders and assured her, “You’ll be the same. All you have to do is walk with your shoulders back and look like a woman of purpose and even your husband (Zeb is his name?) won’t have a clue. And do you know what? Those new lips of yours are the sexiest things. They make you look like a movie star.”