Chapter 4

Jerry Donavan was in a good mood Saturday morning. As he walked home after his visit to Ida’s house, he was on top of the world. He was afraid that the grin on his face was plastered there permanently.

Back down Chaney Hollow Road, Ida Flood was all smiles as well as she lay naked in her bed under a chenille bedspread. She sighed contentedly, stretched like a cat and rolled onto her side to snuggle against the pillow that still smelled like her new young lover. Next to marrying Charlie, seducing Jericho Donavan was the best decision she had ever made.

Life tottered along for the Donavans. March came, and an early spring descended upon them. Ester took advantage of Jerry being around more by having him expand the size of her vegetable garden. It took a hard ten days of work for the pair of them to turn and till by hand the ambitious plot Ester laid out. They fertilized the plot with four pickup truck loads of cow manure Jerry mucked out of Ben Chaney’s barns. Ester had a knack for gardening and now she had over an acre of cultivated land on which to work her magic.

After the garden was prepared, Ester set Jerry to work on expanding their chicken coop. Ester had always had a dozen or so chickens for eggs and the occasional chicken dinner. Now however, she wanted enough layers so that she could have eggs to sell and enough pullets for at least one meal a week.

Ester took twenty dollars out of the emergency money she kept in a coffee can in the kitchen to pay for three pounds of ten-penny nails and a couple of six by one-hundred foot rolls of chicken wire. Jerry salvaged the wood from an old falling-down barn Mister Purnell paid him to tear down and haul off.

Getting chickens was the easiest part of the activity, because every spring Coker Feed and Seed threw in a dozen chicks for every fifty-pound bag of cracked corn anyone bought. For fewer than eleven dollars, Ester picked up five dozen Rhode Island Red chicks and two-hundred and fifty pounds of feed for them. The chick give away was sponsored by the Purina Feed Company, with the knowledge that the recipient of the chicks would need more feed for them in the future.

Ester was expanding her garden and chicken coop because March was the last month she would receive money for Jerry in her Widow’s Pension. In just three months, they would lose sixty percent of Jerry’s income (Jerry’s unemployment would run out in May) plus a third of her pension. Once again the Donavans tightened their belts.

Jerry worked for Ben Chaney, and some of the neighboring farmers during April as spring planting happened. Hoke Purnell also starting using him two half days a week. Jerry only made a dollar an hour working for Purnell, but the older man was helping him restore his father’s old truck and he never charged Jerry for parts.

Hoke Purnell was a tall gaunt man, with shaggy gray hair and a long tangled beard the same color. He had the reputation for being a mean-spirited and irascible old coot, but that was mostly an act to keep nosy people out of his business.

It was a glorious spring for Jerry. He was finding just enough work to support his family and his love life was impossibly full and satisfying. He was dating Lisa Bass most weekends, and he was seeing Ida at least three times a week.

Lisa became the recipient of all he was learning from Ida. Lisa was a willing student ... up to a point. She wasn’t ready to go all the way, but she was eager to try anything else at least once. It seemed as if Lisa’s entire body was an erogenous zone. She was a pretty, soft and cuddly orgasm machine.

By contrast, Ida was petite with a firm body. She kept in shape with a daily hour of yoga. Because of the yoga, Ida’s supple body was as flexible as an Olympic gymnast’s. Once Jerry became the assertive lover she needed, she unleashed on him the passionate nature she had repressed for four years. Ida wasn’t as young, pretty or curvy as Lisa; yet Jerry preferred her company, anyway. He got along with Lisa just fine, but he and Ida seemed to fit together like mated puzzle pieces.

On Tuesdays and Thursdays, Jerry and Ida managed to keep their hands off each other long enough to fit in an hour preparing Jerry for the GED test. In addition, Ida was bringing him books from the library to read at home. The books were an eclectic mix of biographies, history, popular novels and self-help manuals. The common themes of the books were leadership and influence.

She explained it to Jerry with the first book.

“As I told you before, Charles Flood was an officer in the Army and then a football coach. Anyone who ever met Charlie, knew he was a leader. He believed that some men are born leaders, but really good leaders apply skills they learn from studying great leaders. You, Jericho Donavan, are a natural leader and I want you to learn how to be a good or great leader.”

Jerry didn’t know if Ida’s assessment was true or not, but he found most of the books enjoyable reading anyway.

Saturday was Jerry’s favorite day of the week. He was up bright and early Saturday mornings and hard at work at Ben Chaney’s farm by the crack of dawn. By starting early, he usually finished Chaney’s chores by mid-morning. He would then hustle over to Ida’s and do whatever was on her task list. Ida usually worked at his side which made the chores quicker and much more fun. Ida loved to laugh and Jerry had the knack for tickling her funny-bone.

After chores they showered together, and then tumbled into Ida’s queen size bed. Making love on Saturday afternoons was much less hurried so Ida could be much more creative. Jericho never knew what or who (Ida loved to dress up in different disguises) to expect. One Saturday the Genie from I Dream of Jeannie belly danced into the room ready to be tied to the bed and ravished. On another Saturday, a sexy Nurse Chapel from Star Trek treated him for an abnormally large growth on his groin.

When she was not trying to wear him out in the bedroom, Ida treated Jerry as if he was the King of England returning from the Crusades. How could you not love a woman like that?

At the end of April, The Donavans received a windfall when Jerry’s income tax refund check of one hundred and twenty dollars arrived. Lisa’s father, Henry Bass, had helped him prepare and file the form 1040 in February. Jerry was amazed to discover that he could claim his sisters as dependents. The money was especially welcomed since much of the work Jerry had been getting dried up when spring planting was completed. It became a good week if he could bring home twenty-five dollars.

The family’s finances became even bleaker when Jerry’s unemployment benefits expired in the middle of May. The poverty line was two hundred seventy five dollars a month, and the Donavan family of four was now living on fewer than two-fifty. Jerry was embarrassed that they were poor enough to qualify for government food assistance. Jerry also fretted about his sisters. Rachel and Ruth would both be in high school that fall, and Jerry wanted them to at least graduate and have a chance for going on to college. He did not want them marrying the first boy who might be able to support them.

Jerry was thinking about his family’s plight when he went to work his half day at Purnell’s junkyard. Hoke noticed his distracted frown.

“What’s got you a frownin’ like that, Jericho? Got woman trouble?” Purnell asked.

Jerry gave the old man a wan smile.

“Nope, that’s the only problem I don’t seem to have, Mister Purnell. What I got is money problems. My unemployment ran out and there isn’t a job for me within fifty miles of here.”

Purnell nodded in understanding and looked thoughtfully off into space. Jerry returned his attention to the carburetor he was removing from a newly crashed Buick. Purnell came to a decision after a couple of minutes.

“Could be as how I might have something for you, boy,” Purnell said. “It ain’t full time, but I figure you could make near as much as you did over at the mine.”

Jerry looked up quickly, a hopeful smile on his face.

“That would be great Mister Purnell!” Jerry exclaimed. “What would I be doing?”

Purnell stroked his gnarled and dirty fingers through his beard and replied.

“Well, boy, that’s gonna take some explainin’. See, my eyes are going dim on me, especially at night. I cain’t hardly drive to make deliveries no more. So I figure you can make my deliveries for me. I’ll pay you extra for using your truck.”

Jerry’s smile faltered as Purnell spoke.

“Mister Purnell, you only make a couple of deliveries a week. How am I going to earn enough just on that?”

Purnell peered all around as if he was expecting to catch someone eavesdropping there in the middle of five acres of junk. Then he leaned in close to Jerry.

“I got me another bidness asides salvage, boy-o. It’s not exactly legal, but it ain’t immoral either,” Purnell whispered.

Jerry looked at Purnell blankly and shook his head. Sometimes the old man’s convoluted ramblings were beyond Jerry’s deciphering ability.

“What in the world are you talking about, Mister Purnell?” Jerry asked.

Purnell looked around once more then spoke again just above a whisper, “Me and Miz Lottie are right partial to you. Heck, you’re the closest thing to a grandson we’re as like to ever have, so I’m trusting you to keep this to yerself. See, I make me a little ‘shine onest and a while. It’s the best in the state, so there’s a lots of folks what wants a little taste.”

Jerry finally grasped at least part of what Purnell was saying so he nodded his head. The grandson part was easiest to understand because the Purnell’s two sons had seven daughters between them but no sons.

“Well,” Purnell continued, “ain’t nothing in the good book says a man cain’t make himself a dab of corn squeezins.” Hoke Purnell paused, looked reverently skyward for a second, and then shifted his gaze back to Jerry. “And didn’t our Lord and Savior hisself, turn water into wine?”

Jerry nodded in agreement, fascinated with Purnell’s reasoning.

“Danged right he did,” Purnell snorted emphatically, “and the good Lord didn’t render anything to Caesar when he did it, neither. Now whose example is a man supposed to follow? Some Yankee lawyer over in Washington or the Most High Creator of the Universe?”

Jerry was agog that a man who hadn’t even driven by a church in decades, could propound such a seamless theological argument.

“When do I start?” Jerry asked.

He started the next day, and of course his truck blew a head gasket on his first trip. Luckily, all he was delivering was the transfer case for a Farmall 560 tractor. Jerry was embarrassed when Mister Purnell pulled up with his tow truck. Purnell, however, laughed it off.

“Better it happened now, than later, lad. It’s time to replace that tired old Pontiac V8 with something better, anyway. I have a 327 Chevy motor out of a sixty-three Impala that we can put in, real quick like.”