No Matter How Much You Promise Read online

  But looking at Billy sitting on the porch of Buck’s house after he came back from living with that Spanish girl in Manhattan made him think that perhaps Billy’s involvement with her had left him more injured than he was willing to admit. He could always talk to his grandson, but he waited until they were coming back from Shea Stadium after watching the Mets beat the Cubs, or maybe Philadelphia, at the beginning of the 1973 season. The seats were down the right-field line but it was great sitting in the late-afternoon spring sunlight and watching the young men daring time, oblivious to the ravages that awaited their bodies. God, it was a grand game. After women and music, baseball was his third love. On the way home, riding the train from Flushing Meadow, it dawned on him that perhaps he ought to try to find Billy a wife. He said nothing until they were on the commuter train at Grand Central Station and it was moving out of the tunnel on Park Avenue, the light of the afternoon fading behind them.

  “How’d you like to take a longer train ride?” he’d said.

  “Where to?”

  “Tennessee?”

  “What for?”

  “Get you a wife.”

  “I don’t need a wife, Grandpa,” he said, looking out the window as the train began to cross the Harlem River. “I’m okay.”

  “Think about it.”

  “Okay.”

  Two weeks later Buck was reading the newspaper after supper when Billy asked him if he was serious about taking him to Tennessee. He looked at him and said he sure was serious and all he needed to do is give the word and he’d write to his brother Frazier down home and they’d start lining up those fine country gals for him to take a peek at, but if truth be told there was a distant cousin of his, maybe third or fourth, that was very anxious to meet him.

  “Bright girl who plays the fiddle, so anytime you’re ready we can just hop on the train and ride on down there.”

  “It can’t hurt any, I guess,” he said, “but …” and his voice trailed off as it always did when he didn’t want to mention his hand.

  “Whyn’tcha let her decide all that, Billy?” Buck said. “If she can’t handle it, then that’s that, but it don’t do any good worrying about it, does it?”

  “No, I guess it doesn’t,” he had said. “I got a little money saved up so maybe I could get an apartment. I was thinking about moving into the city anyway.”

  “That’d be fine, although your grandma and I will sure miss you,” he said. “But if that’s what you want to do, that’s fine with us.”

  “Yeah, I think I’d better,” Billy said. “Maybe being on my own won’t be so bad.”

  “I can talk to Brendan Cavanaugh’s son about a job with the Transit Authority if you want. You can do track work or even be a conductor and open and close doors.”

  “No, that’s all right. I’ll make do, Grandpa.”

  “Then I’ll write to Frazier and see what he says. I believe the girl finished college.”

  “She went to college?” Billy said, momentarily startled.

  “Now wait a minute,” he told him. “Don’t you go getting spooked by the fact that she’s got some schooling. You may not have gone to college, but you’ve read considerably and you’re a very smart young man. I’m sure it’ll be just fine. You’ve been through too much to let a college education make you run in the other direction.”

  “You’re right,” Billy’d said. “I’m cool with it. I can handle it.”

  At the beginning of May, after he had rented an apartment on the Lower East Side, they had gone to Pennsylvania Station and taken the train to Cincinnati, then to Louisville and then a bus to Chattanooga and then on to Wilkins, where they were picked up by Bobby McAlister, a grandson of Buck Sanderson’s sister, Sadie. They rode his pickup into the hills to meet Lurleen Meekins and everything had turned out all right.

  Riding the train one night with Billy dozing off as they traveled through the flat land of Ohio after crossing the Pennsylvania border, Buck thought again of his youth, wondering how much time he had left on Earth. Whenever he thought of death, thoughts of women entered his mind. He recalled that first true light of love in his life and the passion that had almost driven him crazy. Charlotte Randall had been like a sweet elixir he’d drink and drink from until, intoxicated, he’d drag himself back to the rooming house. But leading up to making love to Charlotte had been pure torture. Day and night his mind turned to images of her, so that he appeared to his coworkers to be distracted. One afternoon at the mill a roll of paper came dangerously close to crushing his foot, making his erection shrink.

  Consummation of his love finally took place about two months later. So obsessed was he that he’d taken to going by Charlotte Randall’s house after work and then returning every evening after he finished eating his supper. Rain or shine, rather than staying in and reading the newspaper or a magazine or maybe a book at Mrs. Cooper’s house, he’d cross the square with General Claymore’s statue and walk by Charlotte’s house again. Most days she was busy inside, preparing lesson plans. On the days when she happened to be outside, she’d smile or wave and he would wave stupidly back, his heart breaking as he looked at her. The evenings when she wasn’t sitting out on the porch or standing by the picket fence, he went back to the rooming house and sat in his room, forlorn, until well into the night, and then, after tossing and turning in disturbed sleep, he would rise reluctantly to face another loveless day. His breakfast, something which he had looked forward to each morning, now tasted like ashes and he hated himself for being so driven to want Charlotte Randall, a married woman. Playing his banjo became a joyless exercise, and rather than go along and play whenever there was an opportunity, he made excuses and turned the invitations down. He thought prayer might help, but all he could think about when he closed his eyes was Charlotte Randall and he’d end up going to the outhouse, always determining that it would be the last time he spilled his seed.

  One evening when the air was cold and there was snow on the ground, he was walking with his head down on his way home from work. As he neared her house, Charlotte was crossing the street carrying a great big package and a suitcase. He rushed forward immediately to help her, taking both the package and the suitcase.

  “Oh, my,” she said, in her sweet voice. “How thoughtful. I was nearly exhausted. Thank you, Harley.”

  “It’s nothing, ma’am,” he said as she held the fence gate open, wondering at how she had chosen to call him Harley, as his mother did, and not Buck. How had she remembered his name when he had only spoken it that one time?

  She ran daintily ahead, up the porch steps and opened the door for him, motioning for him to follow her into the house. He went in, began to make excuses, about having to go somewhere, about being sweaty and dusty from work, but then, looking at her smiling face, he silently put down the suitcase near a hat tree and placed the package on a small table in front of a mirror with gilded edges and an ornate frame. To the right and left of the mirror were several small portraits, of relatives, he surmised, all of them very stern and handsome, the men as well as the women. He’d never been in a house such as this one, and she later told him he’d stood staring at everything with his mouth open.

  “Have you eaten?”

  “Well, no, I haven’t,” he said. “But I was on my way to Mrs. Cooper’s, where I live.”

  “Do you think she’d mind if you had supper here this evening?”

  “I reckon she wouldn’t.”

  “Well, good. Please sit down. I’ve made some meat loaf, mashed potatoes, and fresh peas. It would last me all week. I’ll grow tired of it and have to feed it to the neighbor’s dogs. I’ve also baked a pie. All I need to do is heat them up.”

  “That’s sounds fine, ma’am,” he said, taking off his hat and sitting down on the edge of a stuffed chair in the living room, worried that he’d brought wood chips or pulp on his clothing. “Thank you. I thought maybe you’d been off on a trip and was coming home,” he added, later feeling stupid, since the bus station was the other way.
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br />   “No, I took the suitcase to school to bring some things home from the classroom. The package is some fabric I ordered. I had to go to the post office to pick it up. I should’ve known it would all be too heavy. Come into the kitchen and tell me about work at the mill.”

  He was awed by his surroundings. The furniture, the curtains, the wallpaper, the pictures of landscapes on the walls, the light fixtures, and the oriental carpet on the floor were all so grand that he imagined that Charlotte must be a very wealthy woman. And then it dawned on him that perhaps her husband was the wealthy one.

  At supper she talked about Memphis and her family and asked him about his own family and what life was like up in the hills. He was circumspect, but as always praised his mother and father, who worked very hard to raise their children. Charlotte smiled sweetly at him and urged him to have seconds. The food was delicious. When he was finished with his pie she asked him if he wanted another piece. He nodded. When she returned and reached over his shoulder to put the pie on the table, the front of her dress brushed his shoulder and he took in her fragrance, a mixture of soap, perfume, and her own body, and he closed his eyes in an ecstasy of desperation. She returned to the other end of the table, and when he looked up from his second forkful of pie, she was staring at him. She asked him his age and if he had a girlfriend and what he did with her. He found himself answering Charlotte Randall’s questions as if he had no true volition. It was as if anything she wanted he would do. At one point she suggested he go upstairs and take a bath, she’d scrub his back.

  “I’d like that a whole lot, but I don’t know, ma’am. You being a married lady and all.”

  “Harley Sanderson, if it will make you feel better I will take my rings off. And please do not worry about my husband. He is right now in the capital, curled up snug as a bug with his mistress. He is the famous Parker Randall, State Senator, with aspirations to the Governor’s Mansion. Do you know what a mistress is, Harley?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Well, a mistress is a woman who serves as a wife when a man is far from his legally wedded wife, or tired of her. Do you think women should have something similar?”

  “I reckon they should, ma’am. Although I couldn’t be sure.”

  “Well, finish your pie, I’ll clear the table, begin filling the tub, and we can continue this discussion in a more relaxed setting.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  She went upstairs, returned shortly to the dining room, and began carrying dishes into the kitchen. He offered to help but she rebuked him playfully, insisting that he was her guest.

  “You could put another log in the fire, however,” she said and he got up immediately and did as she asked, banking the fire and making sure no embers escaped before putting the screen back up. He returned to his seat at the table and watched her every movement.

  She worked rapidly, looking at him and smiling as she went back and forth. Outside, darkness had taken over and he could hear the wind whipping up the branches of the tree outside the window of the dining room. A few moments later Charlotte came out of the kitchen and motioned for him to follow her upstairs. He picked up his hat and climbed the stairs after her, watching her fine figure and legs as he fought the desire in him. The upstairs of the house was equally beautiful, the walls on the staircase and halls covered with delicate, light-yellow wallpaper with tiny bluebells on it and family photographs in their neat wooden frames.

  Charlotte pointed to a door and he went in. The bathroom was so large and bright that he stood frozen for a moment, wondering how he had managed to walk into this place. There was a large tub with little feet like an animal, nothing like the tin tub at Mrs. Cooper’s or at home. There was also a basin for washing and a toilet bowl like he’d seen in the magazines. The tub was almost filled, so he turned off the water and stuck his hand in it. The water was comfortably warm. It smelled as if some sort of perfume had been added to it. From outside the bathroom he heard Charlotte ask him if he was in the tub yet. He said he was about to get in and hurried to take off his clothes. He climbed into the tub and minutes later she came in dressed in a bathrobe. He immediately dropped his hands to cover himself and she laughed. She knelt on the floor and began scrubbing his back, not saying anything but touching him gently. And then she asked him if he wanted to touch her, and he was immediately erect.

  “I’m really sorry,” he said.

  She laughed and took his wet hand and placed it inside her bathrobe, and with her right hand reached down into the water and began manipulating him in the most delicious way until his back arched and he came and the stuff was hitting him in the face and she was kissing him and licking it off his eyes and cheeks. When she was done, she kissed his mouth, forcing it open with her tongue, searching for his. When she was finished scrubbing him, he got out of the tub, his organ practically erect again. After wrapping him in a plush bathrobe, she emptied the tub and scrubbed it, then led him to her bedroom. Every curtain had been drawn in the halls as well as in her bedroom. The bedroom was, again, like nothing he’d ever seen except in magazines. The wallpaper, the curtains, the rug on the floor, the four-poster canopied bed, the lamps and furniture bespoke elegance. She asked him if he could wait while she bathed and she would return shortly. He nodded and then she was gone. No more than five minutes later she returned, dressed now in a red silk gown with yellow thread in intricate geometric patterns. He was sitting in an easy chair.

  “Take off your robe and lie on the bed. I want to look at you, Harley.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said and lay down, looking back at her in the dim yellow light in the room.

  She let her robe fall off her shoulders to reveal the magnificence of her body. He almost gasped, and then she said that what she wanted to do might seem a little strange but that she was offering it as a sign of her admiration for him and his boyish beauty and she hoped he wouldn’t misunderstand or judge her too harshly, but had he ever heard of a woman taking a man in her mouth? He said that his uncle talked about it once in a while when telling stories about New Orleans. She said the French were very good at that type of thing, but that she wasn’t French and just wanted him to experience its pleasure and then tell her if it was something he enjoyed.

  “Whatever you feel like, please don’t worry,” she said. “It will be fine.”

  “What if I … like it happened in the tub?” he said.

  “Then go right ahead,” she said, understanding. “I won’t mind one bit. It will be a new experience for me. I have imagined it and I’ve always wondered what it would be like.”

  He nodded and she came to the bed and bent over him and put the head of his organ in her mouth and began to probe with the tip of her tongue up underneath the skin so that he could feel the very tip trying to get into the slit and eventually with her lips she peeled the skin back and began running her tongue around the head and with her right hand she had a hold of him and he couldn’t help himself and brought his hands up and grabbed her head and at the same time arched his back and came and could feel her suddenly stiffen and she took his stuff and swallowed it and then she was licking everything off of him and his organ wouldn’t go down, so she came up and lay next to him and took his head and made him suck at her nipples, whispering in his ear that he should suck hard and then she put her leg over his thigh and he could feel her wiry hair there and with her hand she began to jack him off until about five minutes later he came and the stuff squirted off and was all over him and her and then she was breathing hard and she was sticking her tongue in his mouth and humping against him and then she sat up in bed and her eyes looked glazed and she asked him if he ever jacked off, except that she said masturbate, and he didn’t understand so she took his hand and closed it over his organ as he lay there half hard and made the motion and he blushed and said he sometimes did and she asked him if he would do it in front of her because she had never seen a boy do it and she was just wondering what it was like. He’d shrugged his shoulders and went at it, watching her
as she touched herself with her finger down there, the two of them pleasuring themselves, with her sitting on the bed watching until he finally came again and she was next to him grabbing him so that he was surprised at how strong she was, or maybe he was just weakened by all the jacking off, because that’s what people said it did, except when he did it he felt stronger and like all the evil in his life was leaving him.

  They lay there for about twenty minutes. He was dozing off when he felt her hand on him again. No more than two minutes later he was hard again. This time she climbed up on him like she was on a horse and began moving against him. Ten minutes later she was totally lost in the whole thing and moaning and throwing herself on him and her thing clutching at him so that in later years when he was in Memphis and damn near fucked his brains out he understood that Charlotte Randall had been one of those women who not only enjoyed sex with a man, but loved the enjoyment of a man as much as she enjoyed her own.

  The entire matter with Charlotte lasted a little over two months with three weekend interruptions when Parker Randall returned to Claymore. Buck was no longer obsessed with Charlotte and waited patiently until her husband left town once more to visit her, gorging himself, but at the same time learning to control himself so that her pleasure would be prolonged. One evening after they made love and she was lying snuggled up against him under the comforter, he said that someone had made a remark at work.

  “What did they say?” she asked, sitting up suddenly.

  “That I was sure taking school seriously,” he said.

  “Well, it is like going to school,” she said, sweetly. “I’m learning a lot. Aren’t you?”

  “Sure, but …”

  “But what?”

  “I think people know what’s going on.”