Chapter 3

I can safely say that any moral reservations that I might have been harboring regarding the seeking of mutual sexual pleasure between first cousins pretty much went “POOF” that day. For the next few days, the thought that most occupied my mind was picking up where we had left off. And yes, I’ll admit it was entirely selfish on my part. I had no interest in Laurie as a girlfriend or anything like that - hell I still didn’t even like her all that much because she acted so weird, yet I was obsessed with her.

Nooo, it’s more accurate to say that I was obsessed with her girl parts. I wanted to see those nice titties again and do things to them! I wanted her warm, soft hand to finish jacking me off! I wanted to further explore that hot, aromatic, soppy wet pussy. I wanted to fuck her so bad that my balls ached just thinking about it! And then I wanted to write down every last detail in my journal so that I could re-live it over and over again. The fact that I’m describing my feelings in such rough, crude language reflects level of my cravings. There was no romance involved, just a raw, primitive animal NEED!

But did Laurie want what I wanted? I had no way of knowing if she was even interested in finishing what she started. She was so unpredictable, so limited in attention span that, for all I knew, the whole scrabble incident might have been just a passing whim. It might have been a mere hint of an idea that popped into her brain thirty seconds before she came up the stairs. She was that volatile.

But it wasn’t happening. Day to day, I grew increasingly frustrated because unrelated events, the hustle and bustle of the end of the school year, the thousand things that always needed doing on the farm, and the close proximity of bodies in the overcrowded house conspired to prevent Laurie and me from getting that close to each other again. Although the vivid memory and the anticipation provided plenty of fodder for masturbation, at least for me, it wasn’t anywhere close to the real experience.

I wondered idly if Laurie masturbated thinking about it. I didn’t know if she even did stuff like that. I mean, I was pretty sure she must, but I didn’t know for sure, and I wasn’t about to ask. My brain didn’t work that way, and me being the social dud that I was, I wasn’t inclined to initiate further action on my own. It would have to be completely up to her, but she never even dropped a hint of any further desire on her part. At least, I don’t think she did. Or maybe she did and I just missed it. That was a distinct possibility, given how clueless I could be in picking up subtle human signals.

Then our, um, “relationship” turned in a sharply different direction. On the last day of school, we were on the way home on the bus, Laurie sitting next to me as usual and rattling on about who-knows-what, when, out of the blue, she peremptorily dumped me as her chosen one. She grabbed my arm and said, “Oh, by the way, you should know that you’re not my boyfriend anymore. I’ve decided Ronny Barns is who I’m going to marry.”

Ronny? Marry?

I just looked at her, unable to prevent a smirk from spreading across my face.

She looked hurt. “What’s so darn funny?”

I just shrugged and said, “Oh, nothing. Except, um, does Ronny know anything about your wedding plans, or is that just our little secret?”

Laurie scowled and spat out, “He knows!!” She leaned close and whispered, “I let him touch my breasts under the bleachers in the gym last Friday.” Looking around conspiratorially, she added, “And some other stuff, too. He told me he loved me, which is more than you ever said. Anyhow, he’s a lot better looking than you are.”

I guess she could see by the absence of any reaction on my part that I wasn’t going to be emotionally devastated by her revelation. To me, jealousy was irrational.

Apparently needing to heap on another layer of insult, she casually tossed in, “And he’s not a little shrimp like you, either. His thing is bigger than yours.”

With that, she got up and went looking for an empty seat farther back on the bus.

I admit I was mildly irked by the term “little shrimp”, but I wasn’t about to let her know that. Then it struck me that she was probably just playing her silly games again, throwing out random zingers to get my attention and make me beg for her attentions.

“Fine,” I thought, “Let’s see how she likes being totally ignored. I’m going to enjoy all the peace and quiet.”

Well there was so much to do that summer that I didn’t have to worry about ignoring Laurie because I didn’t have time for her. The next day, Papa had me cleaning the barn, then Mama had me trudging up and down the county road digging up asparagus along the fencerows, then helping her weed and water her giant vegetable garden. Papa decided it was time to paint the house, and that meant I was up on a ladder scraping old paint for four or five hours a day for several days (and cleaning gutters and nailing down loose clapboards as I went). By the time Mama called us in for dinner, I was so tired, all I wanted to do was go to my cubby hole and read until I fell asleep. Then I’d be up at the crack of dawn to start all over again.

And it stayed like that all through July and the wheat harvest. I had long since given up any thoughts of ever doing anything with Laurie’s body again, because, for one thing, she’d obviously given up on me, and for another, working out some kind of a plan to maneuver her into it was more than I had the energy for. We hardly saw each other except during meals. Mama and Aunt Maxine kept her so busy with this and that, at the end of the day, she was probably as tire as I was. I never heard another word about Ronny Barns, so I figured my guess was right and the story was made up.

One day in early August, Mama and Aunt Maxine were busy in the kitchen putting up jars of pickles, canning tomatoes and okra and making gooseberry jam. All of us kids, including Richard and Larry were out in the garden selecting the right sized cucumbers for pickles, as well as squash to be boiled, spiced, mashed up and canned for winter. Laurie and I probably hadn’t spoken a dozen sentences to each other since our school bus conversation. I don’t even know why the thought popped into my mind except that she was right next to me and it seemed like a convenient opportunity to slide a little barb into her smart-ass self. I stood up stretching my aching back and casually asked, “So how is it going with you and Ronny?”

“Who?” she asked, looking puzzled.

“Ronald Barns, your boyfriend.”

“Ronald isn’t my boyfriend. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Well you told me he was.” I looked around to see if her brothers were anywhere close. They weren’t. “You told me you let him touch your, uh, breasts. And you said you were going to marry him, too. And then you said he had a big dick.”

Laurie blushed, so I was pretty sure she remembered, but she wasn’t about to admit it. She just kind of snorted and turned to walk away, saying, “You’re making that up, Eric! I never did or said any such thing!”

I just chuckled to myself and let it drop.

As we headed back to the house with our baskets of cucumbers and squash, I wondered if teasing her about Ronny Barns might have stirred up new thoughts of mischief in Laurie’s brain. In my bid to score a cheap point, had I foolishly tugged on the tiger’s tail? What made me do that? She’ll no doubt be looking for a chance to get even.