Chapter 2

Ellen and I started dating and spending time together in the whirlwind surrounding our separate graduations. I had been accepted at several universities in California, but had decided, for a combination of reasons, to sit out a year before continuing with my studies. Ellen declared that she was finished with her education, and had no desire to traipse off to some university, giving herself with lustful abandon, to an army of drunken fraternity strangers, when she could stay right at home and attend to the carnal needs of hard working, heavy drinking, bath hating, boat builders and fishermen.

I felt that I was now too old to continue caddying, and being an escort over at the Griswold Hotel dances didn't hold much allure for me either. I had to do something to earn money though, and I accidently stumbled across the solution to that particular problem through my Cousin Billy. Billy had quit his job cutting firewood for John Gracia's father after the two of them had disagreed over the amount of money Billy and his crew had coming to them after clearing a stand of wood for the state fire service. Mr. Gracia had seriously miscalculated his expenses when he had made his bid for the work and had decided that Billy and his crew would have to share in the losses he'd incurred. Billy came over to see my father about helping him get work over at the Sub base. He said he was getting desperate and had used up most of his savings taking care of his crew's back pay. My father told him he'd see if he could get Billy and his crew some work as casual laborers out at the base, but that that would only carry through until the end of summer. Billy said he'd be grateful for any work since he wanted to keep his crew together and try to bid some small jobs himself in the Fall.

The next week Billy and his whole crew started work out at the base, cleaning up the woods around Rock Lake, and making sure some of the paths got cleared of sumac and poison ivy. The work actually paid pretty well and Billy told my father he thought he wouldn't have to give up his farm right away. Billy had put a lot of work into fixing the place up and he and Theresa loved living out there in the boonies.

Something Billy had said about bidding on small jobs had started me thinking. New England had a lot of good wood growing, most of it growing too close together, and in too small of total numbers per stand, for easy transit through the woods. You had birch, hickory, maple, mountain ash and a whole host of good woods that were being mostly harvested and sold as firewoods. Mr. Gracia's problem, and it would soon be Billy's, was that firewood was so plentiful and easy to come by that they were selling into a buyer's market. There were areas, fairly close by, where the same cord of firewood, slow burning hardwoods at least, would command two and a half times as much as they did around south east Connecticut.

My Uncle Donald had a big two and a half ton army surplus truck he'd gotten at a government auction, very cheaply. It had eight foot side rails and back locking rails with an open top. I figured it would hold at least ten cords of stacked hardwood firewood. My Uncle had fixed the truck up so that it ran in tip top condition, but then found he had no use for it. He had talked with my father recently, about him finding a buyer for the truck. He wanted $400.00 for the truck and would throw in extra rails and several canvas tops for covers. I bought the truck, borrowing $100.00 from my father. I got the truck and took it over to Billy's farm and told him to fill it with birch that he had cut and stacked on his property and was selling for a real good price. He managed to fit twelve cords into the truck. I figured I was a tad over the legal weight limit, but I wasn't worried too much about that. I took off in the early evening and pulled into New Haven two and a half hours later.

My grandfather, on my mother's, side was a conductor on the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad. He and my grandmother had separated thirty years before and he liked to keep at least ninety miles between the two of them. When he left, he not only left a wife, but ten children as well. He did send money from time to time, but if you wanted to hear world class swearing, all you had to do was mention his name in front of my grandmother. I went to his apartment in New Haven and slept on his sofa. The next morning he took me over to a poker buddy of his and I sold my load of wood to him for a $160.00 profit. We made a deal that I'd bring him another twelve cords in two weeks at the same price. I got back in the truck, took my grandfather back to his place and then drove home. After I paid my father back the money I'd borrowed for the truck, and gave Billy his payment for the wood, I still had sixty earned dollars remaining. I took Ellen out that night and we celebrated by having two huge lobster tails in a restaurant by the River. These tails weighed over two pounds each, having been stuffed with mushroom stuffing and then baked just like my mother did it. We had drawn butter with baked potatoes and corn on the cob. With the two Cokes we each had, the bill came to $11.00. I didn't care though, I'd had my first taste of business success and was well on my way to creating a lifestyle that would bring me pleasure, if not wealth.

This was my third date with Ellen and we had found out a lot of information about each other. I was her very first real date, or boyfriend, whatever. In her mind though she was this woman of a thousand experiences. She freely admitted that she had participated in literally hundreds of torrid one sided fantasy affairs with boys and men that she had seen over the years. She told me that she began masturbating at the age of nine, and hadn't missed a single day of giving herself pleasure and gratification in all those intervening years. She maintained that her sex life was probably the best of all her family and acquaintances and that she had never disappointed herself, given the time, sufficient privacy, and the reading material necessary. She and I quickly made a pact that we could speak to each other of anything, but that I would defer to her judgment about any actual physical contact other than the hugs and innocent kisses that we'd already shared.

She had the most active imagination of anyone I'd ever known, and nothing was too outrageous for her to have thought about or considered doing. She could swear like a sailor home on leave, and would play different roles while out in public with me.

On this particular date, she was pretending that she was my wife and was explaining why she had been unfaithful to me. She did this just loud enough so that the older couple just being seated in the booth next to ours could get themselves an earful.

"Howie, I know we both promised that we'd never stray from our wedding vows, but you know things haven't been the same for us since your unfortunate accident, have they? Don has a whole one, bigger than yours ever was, and his wasn't circumsized like yours. And, another thing, it started out so innocent, not like we planned it or anything. I had mentioned to him at work, you know, about your problem, and how it just didn't seem like it was worth all the trouble and all. I guess I must have started crying, because he started hugging me and patting me on the back, you know, sort of comforting me? I think for just a minute he reminded me of how we used to be, before your dick got cut off and all? So when he was hugging me, I felt this huge, hard thing poking into my side and I thought, for just a minute that Don was carrying a gun. So, when I reached down to stop it from poking at me, and well, I found out that it wasn't a gun after all."

I'm going crazy, trying not to laugh or smile, and she justs keeps blathering on about this other guy while the couple sitting next to us are getting more and more uncomfortable. The man is glaring over at me, obviously hoping that I'll get Ellen to shut up about such private things so that they can relax and maybe order and enjoy their dinner. I felt really embarrassed, but I was enjoying it a whole lot too. Things were getting a little out of control though when the woman leaned over to Ellen and told her that maybe a restaurant wasn't a very good place to be having a talk like we were having.

"I know that, you're right about that, and I wanted to talk to him at our apartment, but I didn't want to wake up Don, who's asleep in our bed, and thimble dick here wasn't comfortable going out in the living room to talk about it, not with his parents sitting there, right on our sofa, all pissed off, after coming over to visit us unannounced, and finding me in a very compromising position, so to speak. So this is the only place I could think of to come to." She then cupped her hand in front if her face and moved forward like she was sharing a secret with the woman. "Besides, screwing always makes a woman so hungry, doesn't it? You should try the lobster here, it's really good!" Having finally finished the last mouthful on her plate, Ellen picked up her napkin and daintily patted her lips and stood up. I grabbed the check and left a two dollar tip for our waitress.

As I walked quickly up to the register to pay and get out of there, I heard Ellen saying to the woman. "We're kind of in a hurry because Don's working the night shift tonight and he always likes a quicky before heading out to the plant. Nice to have met you both." I looked back and watched as Ellen shook first her hand and then the husband's. He actually got up out of the booth when he shook her hand.

I don't think I ever had as much fun or embarrassment on any date or other outing in my life. She was outrageous, funny and witty. When we got up in my big old truck and drove over to her house, we couldn't control the laughter. First she'd start and then I'd start and the two of could hardly stop laughing long enough to draw in a decent breath. "Please stop it Ellen, I'm about to bust a gut, and it's starting to hurt me."

"Lucky you, Jackie, 'cause I just went and peed myself." I thought she was kidding at first, but she wasn't, and soon the two of us were rolling down our windows and laughing even harder. I could tell that she was real embarrassed about doing that, so I didn't make any fun of her for it. When we got to her house, I parked out in front and she told me to wait right there and ran into her house. She lived out off of Poquonnock Road, about two miles north of my house. Her father was a chemist or something at Pfizer's, and they lived pretty well. Her mother didn't work outside the home at all. Ellen had three sisters, all younger than her. She'd had a brother two years older than her, but he'd died of a fever when he was nine years old. Her house had a big piano in the parlor, and the lid was always down, and it had at least thirty pictures of her brother on top of it, from the time of his being an infant until just before he took sick and died. Ellen always referred to it as "Eddie's Shrine".

She came running out about fifteen minutes later, all cleaned up and changed into a summer dress. she brought out some disinfectant cleaner and a towel and washed off the truck's seat where she'd sat. After it was clean, she hopped back in and sat down again, after putting the towel and disinfectant out on the lawn first.