Father's Keeper (2 page)

“I don’t love him, Gil. He’s just
along for the ride. Figuratively and literally,” I said with a vibrant bite of
anger in my voice.

“Hey, now. I don’t want to know that
stuff,” he said and turned from me before I could really see his face.

“Yes, Gil, I’m a virgin,” I laughed.

“Can we pretend?” he asked over his
shoulder. That time we both laughed.

“Whatever floats your boat,” I said.
His hand rested on my crown once more, but only for a heartbeat, and then he
was out of the kitchen, pulling a cold beer from a cooler on the back porch. I
watched him sit in a chair near Carl who was still plucking away on his guitar.
Gil looked both forlorn and at peace.

For that moment in time, I hated my
mother for leaving him. But I envied her for ever having him at all.

* * * *

“Anywhere around here I can get a job
picking and grinning, Mr. Russell?” Carl asked. I thought it was sweet that he
called Gil Mister. Gil lit a cigarette and I briefly wanted one. That first
dark smell of burning paper and tobacco always made me lusty for a smoke, but
I’d gone through hell and back to quit, so I wasn’t about to ask for one.

“The Garnet up by the highway might
take you on. They don’t pay much, I hear. And they’ll make you wash dishes and
tend bar and mop the floor too.”

Carl shrugged, picking out the opening
chords to a Pink Floyd song that always made me feel homesick even when I was
at home. “I can do all that,” he said.

“So I figured,” Gil said, dropping me
a subtle wink in the orange light. The fire popped and cracked and grumbled
like a fourth person in the conversation. Gil pushed out of his lawn chair and
bent to kiss my head.

“I’m off to bed, kids. Long day
tomorrow and it’s coming fast. Plus I’m getting old.”

“Sh-yeah, right,” I said. “Truth be
told, you could run circles around me.”

He grinned. “Truth be told, you’re
right, but I am tired and I am trying to leave you two be. I’ll call out to
Mike Branch at the Garnet tomorrow and ask if he’s shopping for some talent. Or
maybe John at The Tavern‘s looking,” Gil said to Carl and Carl reached out a
hand to shake. After a moment of considering that hand, Gil took it and shook.
“You be good to her,” he said. There was a hint of malice in his voice that
made me look up and made Carl blink.

“Yes, sir. I will.”

Gil nodded. “Be sure you do.”

The screen door slammed on its rusty
hinges when he went in and I jumped a little.

“What the fuck was that about?” Carl
asked, dropping back into his chair and strumming absentmindedly.

I wished upon a star for a smoke, got
nothing. “I have no idea. But I’d listen if I were you.’ I smiled. Something in
me feeling warm and loved from that low key warning to the man I was sleeping
with.

Carl snorted. “Yeah. No shit.”

“So come on,” I said, draining my beer
and setting the empty in a bushel basket of other dead soldiers for recycling.
I had to shake my head that recycling had come to Pleasant Parks.

“What?” He looked up, giving me that
slightly stupid look that made me pity him and go out with him in the first
place.

“Come on and take care of me. Come
upstairs and fuck me good.” I took his hand to help him up and he slammed into
me.

“In your bed? From when you were a
teeny bopper? Dreaming of boys touching you in the bad places. Boys putting
their lips on your pussy and their fingers deep inside of you?”

My pulse jumped in my throat and I
could only nod. God, he could be so dirty. It was one of the things that made
me stay with him. When other things made me want to toss Carl to the curb, that
dirty streak of his, how he seemed to innately understand me, kept me coming
back for more. “Yes, yes. Now come on. Take me upstairs, you beast.”

He did, softly humming something by
Ozzie Osborne as I led him to the top floor that had always been one big loft
room. Mine. And it still was. My posters were there, some of my furniture.
Hell, even some cheap plastic beads hung along the sides of my oversized mirror.

I dropped onto my double bed, the
royal purple canopy on my bed shivered lasciviously. “What a room. Man. I had a
room the size of a small closet and a twin bed. No sheets!” Carl set his guitar
on an overstuffed chair and stripped off his concert tee. He dropped it on the
throw rug and shucked his busted up jeans.

“Sorry, baby,” I said. I knew he’d had
no money growing up, which is why he was so comfortable working for beer money
and eating noodles. That wasn’t distressing to Carl. And at first it hadn’t been
to me. But I wanted to settle down. Eat a steak once and again. Have a
permanent place to call home, not just hang out somewhere.

“It’s fine. Fine by me, because
girly’s got sheets,” he whispered with a  lupine smile and then he came at me,
running like a wolf in a forest, pouncing, hitting my bed with a muffled thump
and a muted squeal on my part. “Girly’s got lots of good stuff,” Carl said and
pushed my legs wide, forcing his narrow hips between my thighs. His mouth
smashed hot to mine, his teeth skittering across mine for just an instant while
his tongue dove in and then the kiss was urgent and warm and eating up my
thoughts.

“Easy, wolf boy,” I laughed, but
didn’t meant it. My legs locking behind his back. His cock, hard and long
nudged me between the legs, brushing over my clit under all its insulation of
fabric.

“What is all this stuff?” Carl said
quietly. He tugged at my skirt, at my panties. I heard something in the hall
but felt the quick and distracting burn of a fingertip to my tender flesh. I
wiggled under him.

“Us humans call them clothes,” I
joked. I stopped joking when he tugged my tiny skirt off and whipped it over
his head like a war flag before promptly launching it across the room.

“Fuck that,” Carl growled and took my
panties in his teeth, tugging briskly so I rolled like a wave under him to help
him work them down my thighs.

“Not fuck that,” I sighed. “Fuck me.”

Hours and hours and hours piloting my
piece of shit down a blacktop highway. Hours of listening to Carl ponder guitar
riffs and how much pot any given band smoked. Hours of picking at the still raw
wound of my mother’s abandonment. The confused feelings of relief and peace of
being home to the restless crawl of small town stifle already settling over me.
I was a wounded nerve, a throbbing tooth, a fucking breathing tortured
oxymoron. I wanted the swirling and twirling and tilting in my head to just
stop for a moment.

“I can do that,” Carl said.

“Good. Do that, Carl. Do it really,
really well.” I spread my legs for him, now bare and flushed. I felt my sex,
blushing and tender, exposed to him. Carl -- in true Carl fashion --dove in
head first. Pushing his hot lips and slick tongue to my slit, my ass, my clit.
He ate me like I was a mirage that might disappear with his next inhalation.

“I will, girly. I will do it really,
really well.” His long, cool fingers pressed into me. The talented digits that
plucked at and cajoled guitar strings played me like a fine instrument and
under his fingers and his lips and his tongue, I shook and shuddered out an
orgasm for him. “One,” said Carl.

He liked to keep track.

That distant, furtive sound again and
I wondered about the ancient oak outside my bedroom window. It’s branches
spanned the whole left side of the house and it seemed to be welcoming me home
but scratching and licking at the siding.

Carl sank into me one inch at a time.
His hand holding my lush hips flat to my pink bedding. He watched his cock
drive into me, watched the fat pink petals of my cunt close over him and take
him in. “You’re so pretty, Jen,” he said with bald faced honesty and I nearly
cried.

I nodded at him and touched his
scraggly stubble. His strawberry blond hair shining like an angel in the subtle
overhead light. I pushed up to meet him, feeling the rush of his cock over my
G-spot. I tilted just a bit more until he nudged and bumped and stroked it with
each graceless but lusty thrust. “Good,” I said softly.

“You make me crazy, Jen,” he said,
kissing me. “Your body. It’s sick. It makes me nuts. I can’t even get a good
rhythm with you,” he laughed. “I get too flustered.”

I pulled at him with my fingers,
yanked his hot skin close to mine as if he could smother the crawling, worried,
anxious feeling in my chest. “It’s a good non-rhythm,” I said, hooking my
ankles behind his waist, tugging him deeper into me with my legs and my hands.
My fingernails scraped along his freckled arms but he didn’t complain. He
pushed his tongue into my mouth and sucked my tongue hard enough to make my
cunt flex.

“Come for me, Jen. I can feel it
there. I can feel your wet pussy tight around me. I can feel that you want to.
That you can. Come for me,” he demanded. His fingers threaded through mine and
he held my hands down to the mattress, pressing them so tight it hurt a bit.
Hurt just enough to make me come, make me shiver under him with the force of my
release. “Good girl. Two,” he said.

My cheeks blossomed with warmth at his
praise and Carl flipped me. Lanky arms turning me with incredible strength.
Carl was like a snake. You couldn’t let the size of him fool you. Appearances
could be deceiving. A man who hauled gear and worked bars, built stages and
broke down sets and could still pluck out
I’m On Fire
by Bruce
Springsteen with ease after a long day was not to be trifled with. “I am good.
A good, good girl,” I grunted.

And I thought for a second, finding my
balance on my hands and knees as Carl wrapped my golden brown hair round and
round his ruddy hand, that my mother should love me. I was a good girl.

“Yes. Yes, you are, baby cakes. You are
good. In more ways than one.” Carl ran the tip of his cock to the tight star of
my ass and when I shivered he laughed. “Don’t worry. Not tonight. But maybe
tomorrow.” The threat and promise made my body hum. The possibility of that
darker sex we had. Where he played with my pain and my pleasure. Where he
walked that line that made me beg him, only I didn’t know if I was begging him
to keep going or begging him to stop. That loomed over me in a deliciously
frightening way.

Carl pushed deep and held me by my
hair and by my hip. My head stayed high and true like a horse because he had me
there, my long mane coiled around his talented hand. In my head I heard
Hey,
little girl is your daddy home?
…
Bruce’s shattered
whisky rough voice hissing in my mind as Carl sank deep and started to fuck me
hard, tugging at my hair so I held my breath.

My eyes found the cracked bedroom door
and a thrill worked through my stomach like a ball of fire. It looked like
someone was watching us. Standing in the hall, buried in the shadows. Partially
hidden but there. I held my breath as Carl surged into me, slamming into me so
fast and so hard that I moved across the bed in little millimeters of movement.
I sighed out, the excitement of someone--
it could only be Gil
--watching
me, watching us. My skin grew tight with goose bumps, my cunt wetter still with
urgency and excitement. Lush and full and teetering on another slippery peak, I
shook under Carl and he fucked me. Hard. Harder than I could remember.

The shadow seemed to shift and move
and I didn’t stare at it full on. Afraid it was there, afraid that it wasn’t.
Afraid that if Gil was really watching us, that he would be mortified at being
caught. Or I would be or
we
would be or
…
maybe
I was more afraid that we wouldn’t.

“Jesus Christ, Jenny Girl,” Carl said
and yanked my hair so hard I cried out, but his long, lanky arm snaked under me
and he pinched my slick clit in his strong fingers and then rubbed me slippery
fast and we came together, him hunched over me, shuddering like a dying man
while I cried out softly, eyes glued to the narrow black ribbon of open door.

Nothing moved. From what I could see.
Which wasn’t much when Carl dropped on top of me, forcing me face down flat on
the bad, big callused hands palming my ass.

“Wow,” he said.

“Yeah, wow,” I echoed, raising my head
real fast to check that door. And saw nothing. Nothing at all.

Chapter
3

When I was in middle school we’d been
assigned to grow something for Science class. We were to start in the spring
and tend our crop until the end of school. I’d tried strawberries. I’d seen
them growing small and wild all over our property and figured it would be an
easy A. The strawberry plants I planted were barren and dry. A dry rotted,
churlish yellowish green color that made me pucker my mouth in a frown whenever
I saw them. My “crop” had been two hard berries, small as marbles and just as
hard. A sickly whitish green color, I had received a C- on my project. And I
think the teacher was being nice.

I dreamt that night, after possibly
seeing Gil spy on us, of standing in a field of strawberries. Lush and red, as
brazen and whorish as the brightest red lipstick they made me just as happy. I
filled my sweater, that I had scooped up to form a makeshift apron.