Chapter 15

There was no interaction between any of the young people in Flossie’s ‘sexual education’ class that night.

Jesse’s parents were going to a neighbor’s for supper and to visit that night, so he couldn’t dally on the way home. Because the blood brothers always did everything together, it was inconceivable to Johnnie Sue and Luthor to do anything without him being there. Neither of them even thought about it.

At the Wilson house, there were television programs on that night that both parents wanted to see, and they stayed up late enough that their children could not experiment further.

Sexual tension built, during the hiatus of experimentation.

True to her word, Flossie did not revisit health class the next day. When the older children stayed, she worked on Geometry, using a textbook printed in 1918, that had been donated to the college by a white high school that had bought new ones in 1932. The old ones had sat around in storage until someone thought to offer them to the college. No one had thought it was a slap in the face of the institution of higher learning to receive high school hand-me-down textbooks that had been out of print for decades. She was allowed to keep it when she finished the class. It had cost her fifty cents.

Her students saw the application for Geometry almost instantly, in terms of how it could apply to farming. They eagerly soaked up the information.

For the next two weeks, the population of Catfish Hollow enjoyed the brief break between harvest and the new planting cycle. It was the one time of the year when people got together to chat, and share meals, and swap news, or stories, without having to hurry off home because there was work that had to be done. The children were always taken along on visits between families. Parents stayed up later in the evening.

And, while the Wilsons were not invited to share in this social splurge, the Wilson children were likewise denied the opportunity to further explore the new sexuality they had discovered. That’s because Harvey and Marian’s sex life was, perhaps not oddly, tied to stress in their lives. When things were difficult, they sought release together, in the bedroom. When things went more or less smoothly, they were satisfied to sit and watch TV. Basically, the only time they went to bed early, was when Marian knew her husband needed some relief from whatever stress was causing him to get ugly. Music is not all that soothes the savage beast.

And sexual tension continued to build.

To be sure, there was the odd opportunity to masturbate. Bernadette and Hilda Mae now did so whenever the mood struck them, which was almost nightly. Quite often one would start, and the other would join her sister, inflamed by what she heard in the bed next to her. If they heard their brother through the wall, it was the same.

But, for them and the others, the sharing of sexual feelings seemed so much better when a member of the opposite sex was involved. They had sweet orgasms, but those orgasms didn’t quite quell the urge, quite often leaving them still excited. Where once a night had been enough in the past, the desire to feel that sweet release became stronger, and more frequent. In the case of Jesse, his mother came to his bed to see if he was sick, because he was tossing and turning so much in the night. At least that’s what she thought it was. The squeaking of his bed springs couldn’t be anything else, after all.

And each day, at school, the girls got to see the boys, and the boys got to see the girls. There were long, lingering looks between some of them, some noticed by the other, and some not. The unfortunate part was that Flossie didn’t recognize what her eyes didn’t try to see.

Perhaps “unfortunate” isn’t exactly the right word. It all depends on how we look at things from our own vantage point these days. Integration, outside the Catfish Hollow Public School, was still years away, court ordered or not. There was trouble about it in the larger towns and cities, and that trouble was getting more and more visible. The NAACP was testing more cases of what, until now, had been lawfully mandated segregation, and people of color were beginning to demand their rights as they saw them described in the Constitution. That whites interpreted the same words differently was, back then, simply a matter of habit. Colored people were inferior. They weren’t “men” in terms of all men having been created equal. Of course these days we know that a man is a man, regardless of his skin color. A white life can be saved by the transplant of a vital organ from a black donor. DNA research indicates there is less than .0000001 percent difference between the DNA of a black person, and that of a white person. The genetic differences are about the same as those of the animal commonly called “dog”. They look vastly different, but they’re all the same beast, on a genetic level.

And, while whites couldn’t explain it, “separate, but equal” didn’t mean “equal”. Not in the South. The mixture of races was still taboo, and the strongest taboo of all was sexual mixture of the races. That was the other reason people resisted integration. It was assumed that, if colored and white children mixed, they would mix in all ways, including sexual, and that was not to be tolerated.

They were right, even though they didn’t have any proof of it.

That was something that also had strange rules, though. Ever since the Negro had been purchased and brought to the U.S., white men had looked on black women as sexual partners. While a white man would never think of sharing food with a nigger, fucking one, perhaps the most intimate kind of contact imaginable, was commonly accepted. And, it was accepted by both white men and white women. True, it wasn’t talked about. But white women knew it happened, and they made no bones about it, because, as they saw it, black women weren’t really ... women. They were sub-human ... little more than animals. No one thought it strange that a white woman who would flay her husband alive, if caught fucking a sheep, would turn a blind eye to him impregnating a young, shapely slave. And, men who were willing to take a black woman against her will, were also the kind of men that white women weren’t enthusiastic about being in bed with either. If the Master spent his lust on the slave women, that meant less time that the Mistress had to endure him in her own bed.

This incomprehensible (to us) and complex social structure began when the first slaves were bought, though the folks in America in the 1950s probably didn’t know that. The slave traders bought their black slaves ... those sub-humans ... from other black men. Tribes in Africa raided each other for slaves routinely, and when the white man happened by, and saw the advantages of slave labor, he ignored the fact that the seller was exactly like the product. White men would do business with sub-humans, somehow seeing them as business partners. The product they purchased, however, was not seen as human at all.

None of it made any sense. That’s because it was all based on emotion and greed, rather than intellect. Emotion often leads us astray. Greed always does.

At any rate, while desegregation was years away in most of America, it had a jump start that would probably equal twenty years in Flossie’s little classroom. Her students, as hundreds of thousands would in the next twenty years, found that, once you looked past that .0000001 percent genetic difference, what you were left with was just another kid, who had the same interests, dreams and desires that you did. For those children, it was relatively simple. The tooth fairy was a myth. So was Santa Claus. Toads didn’t really give a person warts. Lots of people didn’t live happily ever after. Parents and other adults lied, and were found to be fallible. They hid things from children, and some of the things they hid, like sex, were very important, once they were discovered. Why, then, should they believe what those parents and adults said about race?

Racism wasn’t dead in the Catfish Hollow Public School, but it had been dealt a mortal blow. Had it taken twenty years to deal that blow, things might have been much better. There would be innocent bystanders caught in the storm that was to follow, and, had it been twenty years later, it might not have been so painful.

Then again, there are those who say everything happens for a reason. What would soon happen to the students of the Catfish Hollow Public School would have far reaching effects on hundreds, perhaps thousands of people, some day. And those effects would include more good ones than bad.

The first thing that happened was that Nathan got a letter in the mail. It was completely unexpected, primarily because it was from the Kansas City Metropolitan Police Department. Nathan hadn’t written to them. He had written, he thought, to the “Casey” Police Department, in Georgia, a town just outside of Atlanta. He had chosen that one because Atlanta now seemed too big a place to be a policeman in, at least in the beginning.

He had heard people talk about Casey while he lived in Atlanta, but didn’t know how to spell it. “KC” seemed reasonable to him, and in those days before zip codes were the rule, mail got sent wherever a postal clerk thought it should go. His letter happened to be handled by a man who had lived in Kansas City before the war, and then moved to Atlanta after the war, where a buddy lived who had saved his life. That man threw the letter in the bag going to Missouri, and when it got there, it went to the “KC” Police Department.

It was the first letter that had ever been received in the Wilson household that was not addressed to either Harvey or Marian, and it caused a sensation. Marian presented it to her son, with great fanfare when supper was done, calling it “dessert”.

“It looks all official,” she said excitedly. “Though I don’t for all the tea in China know what ‘KCMOPD’ stands for.” She peered closely at the return address. The clerk that had sent the letter had typed only part of the return address on the envelope before being distracted by another task. The rest, including the city and state, was left off. That was to turn out to be a fortuitous event, at least as far as Nathan went. Had his mother known what was in the letter, it would never have been given to him.

Nathan looked at it. PD had to mean Police Department. He felt a thrill go down his spine. He tore it open and read.

The letter explained that, upon receipt of a bonafide High School diploma, they would happily consider his application for employment as a police officer in the metropolis of Kansas City, Missouri. It went on to say that, if his grade point average was 3.5 or above, his acceptance was merely a formality. When they had the diploma, along with a letter certifying his grade point average, he could fill out an application, take the necessary tests, and attend the academy.

Marian almost collapsed while contemplating that her baby might go what seemed like thousands of miles away, clear up in hated Yankee country. If he did, she’d never get to see her son again, or any grandbabies he sired, because there was no way in the world she could find her way, and she doubted that Harvey would even think about driving her all the way there. She basically lived the next twenty years of her AND Nathan’s lives in her imagination, and it wasn’t pretty.

Harvey, still on barely speaking terms with his son, didn’t know what to say or do. The thought that his disappointing and uppity son might disappear and leave him in peace wasn’t all that unpleasant. At the same time, he recognized something in his wife’s behavior that warned him this was serious. He knew, somehow, that he would not be able to dictate to Nathan what would happen ... or not happen, as it were ... and that left him more or less helpless. Harvey didn’t like feeling helpless.

That his daughters were also distressed by this news also bothered him. He would have thought they’d be happy to see him go too, seeing as how he had embarrassed the entire family, but that was decidedly not the response they displayed. They, in fact, started crying in their cups, along with their mother!

For Nathan, the electricity of getting a job offer that would take him away from “all this”, caused a surge of emotion that left him grinning inanely. Then his mother fell to pieces, and he didn’t know how to feel. His sisters joined her, and he suddenly felt guilty somehow.

Everyone went to their bedrooms early that night.

Only Harvey and Marian stayed there, though, easing the pain in each other as was their habit.

When Marian was upset, she liked sex that was rough enough to take her mind off her troubles. She was troubled enough, that she wanted very rough sex this night, and she was troubled enough that she forgot to send the children away somewhere while she got it. And get it she did. Harvey gave it to her rough ... and loud.

The children didn’t even have to leave their rooms to hear it this night.

“How about that, bitch!” came Harvey’s rough voice, through the walls.

“You bastard. You know I love that!” screamed his wife.

“You want me to fuck another brat in your belly tonight?” he raged. “To take the place of that worthless son you worked so hard to raise?”

“He’s not worthless!” she screamed. “Yes ... fuck me pregnant you cocksucker!” she howled.

“I’m not the cocksucker in this house, you whore!” growled Harvey. “You want to suck it now?”

“No, just fuck me harder, Baby.”

“They can probably hear us, cunt! You want them to hear us?”

“No! I don’t care. Just pound me, you bastard!”

It was shocking in an almost unbelievable way. Had they not been through health class, Nathan would have beaten down the door to save his mother. But, health class, while it had not approached covering this kind of sex, had expanded their consciousness about sex, at least a little, and they, themselves, had done things that would have been unthinkable just a short time earlier. That other unthinkable things might be done voluntarily ... intentionally even ... was no longer outside the realm of possibility.

The girls tears over Nathan dried, as they sat, pale and frightened, until they heard, in their mother’s voice, that the words didn’t really mean what they sounded like. It was clear, incomprehensible as it seemed, that this was some game they played ... something they did out of some kind of twisted need. The girls calmed, and then their own ... need ... manifested itself.

Nathan, too, heard the words. He recognized them for what they were, as well, but the effect on him was different. That his mother ... his staid, proper, dignified, gentle mother, whom he had lusted after until his sisters took her place in his dreams ... that she could use that kind of language ... could abide being called a whore and a cocksucker ... made her into a stranger to him. That his father could treat her like that made his blood run cold. The first thing he thought about was his father treating his sisters like that too. He got up and left his room, opening their door and walking into their room as if he owned the place.

“Nathan!” squeaked Hilda Mae. She was sitting ramrod straight on the edge of her bed.

“Come on,” he said. “We’re getting out of here.”

“What?” asked Bernadette. His voice sounded like he meant forever.

“There’s no call for you to have to listen to that,” he said tersely.

“Where will we go?” she asked.

“I don’t know ... just out ... at least until they finish.”

“Oh,” she said, relieved. “Okay.”

They crept through the house, as though they were making an escape, stepping past squeaky boards they knew about, and cringing when they hit one they didn’t. When they got outside they were still so stunned that they just walked down the street together, no clear destination in mind.

Nathan was so agitated that he stopped, his fists clenched as he faced his sisters.

“If any man ever treats you like that I’ll kill him.” he said, his voice intense, but quiet. It was clear that he meant it.

The girls stared back at him, wide-eyed, and then followed as he started off again. Both stared at his back, a strange warmth creeping into them. What they had heard through the walls scared them, because they, too, couldn’t reconcile the words, and imagined actions, as being any part of their parents. They felt threatened in a vague, unspoken kind of way. Nathan’s vitriolic threat, though, made that fear quail. They believed him ... knew, somehow, that he would protect them, and that knowledge let loose a flood of love and affection for their protector. Danger or fear, they say, can unleash passion, and the rush of gratitude each of them felt for this boy they had grown up with, but who seemed like a new person to them now, gave that passion an outlet. At the same time, the contents of the letter, and the implicit assumption that Nathan would leave them alone with ... what was back at the house ... made Bernadette feel an almost uncontrollable urge to clasp her brother in her arms and never let him go. Her “breeding”, however, prevented that display of public affection.

“Nathan,” said Bernadette, her voice low and husky. “Let’s go to the fire Barn.”

He whirled, his jaw slack. “How can you even think about doing that now?” he asked, his voice still intense.

She was taken aback, and stopped.

“I’m afraid,” she said helplessly, unable to fully communicate that complicated fear.

“I don’t understand,” he said, looking puzzled.

“I just want to be somewhere safe ... with you.” she tried again. Her mind was in turmoil. She was thinking of what she wanted to do with him, but it was still too new to speak of plainly, casually. Had she ever been on dates, and faced that moment when each person wants to kiss the other, but is unsure about whether they should, she might have recognized what she was feeling.

Nathan looked at Hilda Mae, whose emotions were just as fragmented and tumultuous. There was a single tear drop running down her cheek, and she looked at him with something strange in her eyes.

“Okay,” he said.

They walked quickly, then, unaware that, while their earlier meandering might have drawn attention, the sure stride that they now exhibited suggested people with a place to go, and a task to complete. That kind of stride is almost invisible to the average person. It served them well, because people were still out and about in the town, and might have noticed three youths “sneaking” into the fire barn. Now, though, no one noticed them.

Once inside the building, the girls breeding lost sway, and they both rushed to hug the man they most loved at that point in their young lives. He didn’t even have time to light the lamp before his arms were full of soft girls, who sobbed quietly into the front of his shirt. His natural instinct was to stroke their hair, and murmur that everything would be all right. That led to light kisses on that hair, and his hands stroked their backs. He was not aware, at first, that both girls, in clasping him, had straddled each of his thighs. It was unconscious, to give the girls their due. They were simply venting emotion and passion, and the fact that they ended up pressing their genitals against his hard thighs was simply a function of both of them trying to hug him at the same time. But the pressure applied there communicated itself to subconscious minds, which told the girls’ bodies to “increase that pressure please”, and, without realizing it, they began to ... rub.

Passion flamed brighter, pushing the fear back. Now the passion sought the kind of release that would banish that fear, at least for the moment. Bernadette raised her face, to ask him to light the lamp, and his lips, which had been aimed at her hair, met, instead, her own lips. The feel of lips on lips was almost electric. They had kissed each other in the past, and, in the Southern tradition, it had often been on the lips. But those were quick pecks of duty, perhaps tinged with affection of some sort. This was something that was infused with passion so quickly that it resembled lightning striking.

Neither had kissed a lover before, and one would have thought it would be awkward and stiff. But their lips remained soft, and the urgency of the almost electric shock caused a natural rubbing of those lips together, lightly at first, and then with crushing force. Wet, sucking sounds were produced, and Hilda Mae looked up. Nathan felt her head move in the darkness, and sensed her lips were exposed, and the sudden wrench in his gut from kissing Bernadette demanded that he kiss his younger sister too. She was unprepared for that, but her passion was at high burn too, and she went limp, surrendering to something she had never thought about doing before.

For perhaps five full minutes, the girls kissed their brother, alternating, somehow sharing him without impatience, but eagerly looking forward to their next turn with his soft lips. Their loins rubbed eagerly against his hard thighs. That level of passion demanded something else, though, and when that didn’t happen, the passion cooled fractionally, unhappy at being disappointed. Nathan finally pulled back.

“Let me light the lantern,” he whispered.

They let him go, but their touch was lingering in that way that communicates it doesn’t want to stop. Nathan realized his penis was fully hard. He hadn’t even felt it happen. With the flare of the match, both girls disappeared around the fire truck. By the time he got to the tiny living area, two shirts and bras were already on the cot, the girls’ bare breasts gleaming in the light. Rushing away from something troubling, and toward something exciting and pleasurable, even though it was brand new, was an unthinking response to the situation. Bernadette looked at him as he came around the front of the truck, her fingers at the button on her jeans. Staring at him, she undid it, and then pushed the zipper down. It was loud in the silence.

“Bernie?” husked Nathan.

“I want to be naked this time,” she said, passion in her voice. Hilda Mae didn’t say anything. She hadn’t waited and was already pushing her jeans to her ankles, her panties tangled with them. One shoe flew through the air as she kicked it wildly off. She was so excited that, as soon as her pants were off, she flopped onto the cot, making it creak, and her hand went immediately between her legs.

“You can’t hog the cot,” said Bernadette, shoving out of her own shoes more gently and pulling her pants off. She looked back at Nathan through her eyelashes, coquettish without even knowing it, and slowly pushed her panties to her knees, bending over. She stepped out of them almost daintily. Her hand drifted to the auburn fluff on her mons, and tickled it absently, roughing it up. Hilda Mae was already rubbing furiously, while Nathan goggled at them both. “You can’t hog the cot!” Bernadette repeated. “Make some room for me.”

“Ohhhhh,” moaned Hilda Mae, frustrated that she had to stop. She already felt like an orgasm was near. She did stop, though, throwing a dark look at her sister, and sat up, then stood. She saw Nathan, standing frozen and went to him, reaching for the buttons on his shirt.

“Hildy?” he whined. He couldn’t believe how beautiful she looked with her mass of hair, uncut for as long as he could remember, tumbling around her naked shoulders. Her nipples looked huge and swollen.

“I want to see you,” she panted. “I want to touch you.”

He stood, as Bernadette joined her sister in stripping him. They knelt together to pull his underwear down, pulling hard on it to get it to clear his erect phallus. Both sighed as they saw it. Bernadette’s hand reached, grasped and stroked, slowly, languidly, uncovering his knob and then hiding it again. His pants and underwear were left, abandoned, clinging to his thighs.

“It’s so beautiful,” she sighed.

Hilda Mae stood up and hugged her brother again, this time pushing her wet pussy against his thigh intentionally, and using him to get the pressure she wanted. She lifted her face to his for more kisses, but he ignored her, staring at Bernadette’s hand, slowly sliding back and forth on his rod. Impatient, Hilda Mae reached for his cheek with one hand and turned his head, standing on her tiptoes to reach his lips. Her breasts pushed into his side as she burrowed under his arm and he felt the heat of them on his flesh.