Chapter 3

Speaking of "communication problems", nobody thought to tell me not to do any more good deeds for Gloria Wilson. I imagine, now that I'm older, that my mother assumed that, during our "talk", I'd be told not to go back. Dad didn't say that, and I doubt that he reported to her that he didn't say that.

But, let's be honest, since a good Scout is honest. Even if they had forbidden me from going back to her house, I'd have probably thought it was so unfair that I'd have done it anyway. I mean, in one sense, she was the only person around who'd LET me do a good deed. Nobody else trusted me.

Somehow, she knew I had been asked about her. I found this out the next time I was walking by her house. She was lying in a hammock that was strung between two of the posts that held her porch roof up.

"Hi, Bobby," she called out. There was something different in her voice, like she was worried about something.

"What's up?" I asked.

"You're still talking to me?" she asked.

"I guess so," I answered.

She got out of the hammock. She was wearing a tank top, and she looked really good in it. She looked up and down the street.

"Got time for a good deed?" she asked, hesitantly.

"Sure, if it doesn't take too long," I said. "I have to be home for supper in half an hour."

She didn't come out to the gate to meet me, like she usually did, but just turned around and went in the house, leaving the door open. I went in. She was in the kitchen, under the ceiling fan, looking up.

"Can you get that bulb out for me?" she asked, pointing to one that wasn't lit. "I'm not tall enough."

There was a step stool between the refrigerator and pantry wall. I knew that. She could have used that. This is a good example of one of those times I thought she was just lonely, and wanted someone to talk to.

I went over and reached up and unscrewed the bulb. She already had another one in her hand, and gave it to me.

"Your parents talked to you about the things you do for me... didn't they?" she asked.

"How'd you know?" I asked.

"That awful Mrs. Abernathy came up to me in the store the other day, and told me that she'd fixed me good," said Gloria.

"Fixed you? Good?" I asked.

"Yes, she said she told your parents that she'd seen you going into my house, and that they were going to... do something about it."

"They talked to me about it," I said, screwing the bulb in. "My mom was mad, for some reason."

"She was, was she?" Gloria's voice sounded weird, like she was mad too.

"She wanted to know what people would think," I said.

"And what did you tell her?"

"She never gave me a chance to say anything." I smiled. "Parents are like that. They ask all kinds of questions that they don't really let you answer."

"So... what do you think people will think?" She had "that look" on her face again.

"How am I supposed to know?" I asked. "Why would people think anything at all?"

She cocked her head at me, like the muscles in her neck went weak all of a sudden, and her head just fell over. I knew that wasn't true - about the muscles, I mean - but that's what she did.

"Why do you come over here?" she asked me.

Now there was a pretty stupid question. Why is it adults ask questions like that, that they KNOW the answer to.

"Come on, Gloria," I said. "Don't play that stupid game with me. You know why I come over here," I said.

"I do?" she asked.

"Are ALL adults like this?" I asked, exasperated. "You know I do good deeds for you, and we talk sometimes. What's the big deal about that? Why would my parents be upset about that? Why would my dad tell me to be careful? Why would you ask why I come over here when you ASK me to come over here?"

"Your father told you to be careful?" she asked, ignoring all the other stuff I'd said.

"Yes," I muttered. "Like I was going to be all wild and dangerous, all of a sudden." I threw up my hands. "I just don't get it!"

"No, you don't," she said, with "that look" still on her face. She smiled suddenly. "You are just the sweetest thing."

Now what was THAT all about?

I didn't have time to think about it before she said something else.

"Bobby, did your parents tell you to stop coming over here?"

"No," I said. "Dad just said he was glad we had our talk, and for me to be careful."

She didn't have anything else for me to do, and I needed to get home for supper, so I went to the door.

"Bobby?" she called out.

"Yes?"

"Why don't you go out the back door tonight," she said.

"How come?" I asked.

"So nobody can see you leaving my house," she said patiently. "Like Mrs. Abernathy. We wouldn't want her to bother your parents any more, would we?"

She had that right. The fewer suppers I had like the one I told you about, the better I'd like it. So I went to the back door. Her back yard had this tall board fence all the way around it, so tall you couldn't see anything in the neighbor's yard, and just the roofs of the houses next door. There was a gate that led into the back alley. Hardly anybody ever went back there, except to take out the trash. The woods were two doors down from there, and trees and brush had grown up all along the alley. I guess people spent so much time on their lawns that they didn't have time to do anything in the alley. But she was right. Nobody would see me, and all I had to do was walk two doors down and I'd be home.

"Bobby?" came her soft voice from behind me.

"Yeah?"

"From now on, when you come over to do good deeds for me, why don't you come in the back way too."

Anything to make life easier was fine with me.

"Sure," I said.

The rest of that summer, whenever I went over to Gloria's, I went in the back gate, from the alley. Nobody else reported me to my parents, or thought whatever the heck my mother was wondering what they'd think... at least as far as I know.

It got to be kind of a habit, that summer. She almost always had some little thing that needed doing, so I went over there two or three times a week. Sometimes she didn't have anything for me to do, and we'd just sit around and talk. She told me all about growing up in a town about forty miles away from Clinton, where we lived, and when I asked her why she moved to Clinton when she got divorced, she said she wanted a fresh start, in a new place, where nobody knew her, and she could make new friends. That didn't turn out all that well, as far as I could see, because nobody talked to her, at least nobody I knew. That's part of why I thought she was lonely.

I asked her why she didn't get a job, just to meet some new people, and she said she'd done that when she first got there, but her boss "wasn't a gentleman", so she quit. It turned out she bought and sold stuff on Ebay, just for fun. It was mostly collectibles, and she had a whole room full of them. She showed it to me one day. It looked like half of the Antiques Road Show had visited her, and just left all their stuff at her house. There was some pretty neat stuff in there too. That room was actually supposed to be a bedroom, but there was no bed in it. It was full of tables that were crammed with everything imaginable. There were toys, and dishes and statues and lamps and pictures of various kinds and sizes.

She could tell I was fascinated by all this junk, and we stayed in there while she told me about some of it. She'd buy something and then do research on the internet, like who the painter was and stuff like that. It was while she was gone to go get us some Cokes that I stumbled on the painting.

There was a stack of paintings, fairly big ones, that were stacked on edge between the end of a table and one wall, and I started pulling them out to look at them. I got to this one, and my eyes about popped out. It was of a woman, lying on her side on one of those funny couches that don't have any ends, and look like a wavy line from the front. The woman in the painting was naked as a jaybird, and she was gorgeous.

She was also... Gloria Wilson.

There was no doubt about it. It was a painting of Gloria. It had her face, so finely detailed it almost looked like a photograph, instead of a painting. It had her hair, which was brown and was swept back in the painting, held by a gold clip. But the thing that made it undeniably her, was that the woman in the painting had "that look" on her face.

You've seen cartoons, where a light bulb lights up over a character's head. This was like that. Looking at the face in that painting, on a naked woman, made "that look" come to life in a patently sexual way that was just obvious. I'd gotten "that look" countless times, while we talked, but I'd never attached anything sexual to it. I'd even given up trying to figure out what it meant. It was just "that look".

On the painting, it was obvious. My eyes strayed to the breasts I had tried to imagine, but couldn't. They were gorgeous too, round and firm looking, with dark, almost maroon nipples on them. My eyes had strayed just a bit further to the left, to stare at a thin line of pubic hair that went from the shadows where her legs met, up, like a line pointing at her belly button, which was also gorgeous, when she came back in with the cokes.

I heard her, and my head swiveled. I realized I was hard as a rock, in my pants, and I distinctly remember swallowing, because there was some kind of lump in my throat.

She looked at me, and her eyes went to the painting. They got bigger for just a second.

"Well, it looks like you've been snooping," she said calmly.

"I'm sorry," I said. My voice wasn't working too well.

"I wondered where I'd put that thing," she said. "I didn't realize it was in here."

"I'm really sorry," I said, thinking about my boner, and how mad she'd be if she found out I got it while looking at her picture.

"My husband had that painted, right after we got married," she said casually. "I decided I'd take it with me when I left. I should have just thrown it out."

"WHY?" I gasped. The idea of the painting in my hands being in the garbage seemed just horrible, right then.

"I'd think that would be obvious," she said. "It makes me look like a slut."

I looked at the painting again. Then I looked away, because she was right there, in the room, and I was embarrassed. I held the painting against my chest.

"Don't you think so?"

She could have gone all day long without asking that question, and I'd have been a happy, happy boy. I swallowed again. Whatever was stuck in my throat wouldn't go down.

"Bobby?"

It was obvious she expected me to answer her. When you're a kid, you don't face away from an adult and talk, so the natural inclination was to turn and face her. But I had this mondo boner, which I knew was about to burst out of my pants, so, when I turned, I lowered the painting to cover it up.

Bad idea.

Imagine yourself as a young man, seventeen for a whole month, who has just seen the naked woman he'd give a finger and two toes to see, and now that naked woman (OK, the picture of that naked woman) is pressed against his boner. Oh, yeah... you have to add that the REAL woman, wearing a tank top and terrycloth shorts, is right there in front of you, wearing exactly the same look on her face as the one in the painting pressed against your manhood.

Don't forget she just called herself a slut.

Kids don't have strokes, like old people do. Or maybe they do, but it just manifests itself differently. When I had my stroke, it all happened in my penis.

Yup, I shot off in my pants.

I remember leaning forward slightly, so that the painting wouldn't touch my pants as my penis spewed, and I remember making a sound. Something along the lines of "Ooooooooo" It wasn't very manly.

"Bobby?" came her voice again. She was walking toward me, going around tables. "That look" was gone, and had been replaced by a look of concern.

"I have to go," I choked out.

"Bobby, honey, it's OK," she said soothingly. "I'm not mad at you."

"OK," I said stupidly. "But I have to go."

She was blocking my way, and I couldn't get past her, especially with the painting in my hands, but I didn't want to give it up, because that was all that was covering what I knew had to be a huge wet spot on the front of my pants.

"BOBBY!" her voice came sternly. My head jerked up and those dark green eyes were staring right at me. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing," I squeaked, sounding like a twelve-year-old, whose voice is changing.

"Give me the painting, Bobby," she said, her voice still stern.

"I don't want to," I whined.

"Bobby!" she barked. "You can't keep that painting!"

"I know," I moaned.

"Then give it to me."

"Please?" I panted. When did I get so out of breath?

"OK..." she said. "Please give me the painting."

The ridiculousness of her misunderstanding of what I had said was what broke the grip of the terror that held me. That an adult could be put into a situation where she would say something like that, when she had every right to demand that I unhand her painting instantly... just seemed so bizarre that my mind kind of went into shut-down mode. I felt her take the painting from my limp fingers. She turned to lay it on a table, but was still in my way. My hands went to cover my groin. Yup, there was a wet spot.

She turned back to me, and her eyes went to my hands.

Now that I'm older, I'm quite sure that, if I had just bluffed my way past her, she would never have noticed the wet spot. It wasn't all that big, as it turned out... maybe the size of a nickel. My underwear had caught, and absorbed, most of it, but I was a healthy young fellow, and I produced a lot of semen in those days. A little of it leaked through, and the cotton shorts I was wearing soaked it up nicely.

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