Chapter 2 – Caleb Freeman

Guess I told them. Any of them could have marched over to the hotel and asked Muriel Roberts what ailed her. I don't know if she would have told them, but they could have noticed something was wrong, just like I did. Of course I was told. Buddy told me why he had to go to Memphis. They needed more money, and they needed it fast. He told me Muriel was ill and needed work, but he didn't tell me what she was ill from. Ever since, I've been putting money aside too. But I know none of this will be enough.

I've been worried like hell ever since. Buddy was a good friend, but he was too trusting. He didn't seem to know how much I wanted Muriel. I wouldn't touch her, of course. And not just because of Buddy. Muriel was something else. A good woman. A woman to be put up on a pedestal. And nicer than anyone else on the square.

One of the only people on the square to see me as one of them, one of the people of Pulaski Square. But I am one of them. It don't matter that I'm black and a laborer and most of the rest of them work at the art college—or were forever rich and forever here like Emily Goodwin and Terrence Rowland—or at least half acceptable, because he's half white, like Leo Tinley over at the café. I know about Leo and who he is at night. He isn't a bit better than I am.

Gardening is an honest job, and, in my opinion, Pulaski Square is the most beautiful one in Savannah—and all because of what I do here day in and day out. I'm as much a part of the square as any of them. No reason for them to lift their noses at me. I live and work here too and I bring out as much beauty as any of them do at that art college. Wouldn't they all bust a gut if I dangled my own SCAD degree under their noses? They and I have more in common than they'd be comfortable knowing. Not a one of them look beyond my blackness and me being "just" a gardener to see that I already have what some of them are working their asses off to get.

But I get my own on them too. I have something that most women want more than they want a college degree. Not Tracy Patten, of course. Ain't no man gonna get in her pants. But the one she wants, I can get. I know I can spike that nice little piece, Donna Davis. Just the way she looked at me at the café just now. She would take me. So would most of the others. Even the men want what I got, what I have swinging between my legs. Well, fat chance of that.

But what I want, fool that I am, is the wife of one of my best friends—and a woman who I don't deserve. But one who is ill and needs something. I'd give her the world if I could. But I can't. No matter how much money I can lay my hands on, it's not going to be enough. Leo just now said there could be something but that he had to find out more about what the problem was. He promised to tell me, though, and to let me help, if I could.

That helped—or will help. It didn't help right now, though. Right now I was so keyed up of wanting it and needing it—and wanting it from someone too high on the pedestal for me, that I couldn't help but look around.

I saw that nervous librarian, Olive Odom, getting up from the group at the café, turning to look toward me where I sat—isolated inside the café from the rest just because I was a black laborer of the soil—and I knew that look. She'd given me that look when I'd come into the café and overheard them talking about Muriel, causing me to mouth off as I knew I shouldn't. She had gone too long without it. She needed it bad. If there ever was a woman who needed to be fucked, it was Olive Odom.

Sort of a revelation at seeing the look from the librarian. As far as I'd ever seen, she'd only had eyes for Terrence Rowland. She was a fool in that. Rowland was as queer as they came. I knew that. He was constantly throwing come-ons to me. Not a chance of that, not even if I was interested in doing men. We were both tops. No way I was going to lie under an old geezer from one of the first families of Savannah. No way I was going back two centuries from these white fuckers—at least in the ways of Terrence Rowland. If he wasn't a top, I might have taken him for a ride, just for the laugh of who was dominating who in the new Savannah. If he only knew.

I followed her—the librarian—out of the café. She walked into the square rather than next door to the apartment house where I knew she lived on the first floor. At the center of the square, she turned and saw that I was on the street, ready to enter the square as well. She turned and walked over to the inn, but stopped there, not going in. By then I was standing in the center of the square. Not going back to work in the flower beds, but watching her, reeling her in, just like I always was able to do.

I took off my shirt, letting her see what I had to offer—at least on top. We'd see whether she fantasized about black bulls. Mousey little darlin's like her usually did, I had found. I'd fucked me a whole lot of mousey little white women and none had left me dissatisfied. I could see her shudder, even from this distance. I wonder what she would have done if I'd taken my pants off. That was enough to make women swoon. I even was as hard as a rock, thinking of getting pussy. Not hard exactly for her, but I couldn't have what I wanted, so she would do now—if she was game.

And she obviously was game. The mouse was ready to come out to play. She walked all around the sides to the square getting back to her apartment. I stood there, in the center of the square, in my world, following her with my eyes, turning full front to her all the way around. She couldn't take her eyes off me either.

I started to walk back toward the north side of the square as she rounded from the west to the north and approached her apartment.

She left the door to the street open. Obviously open for me. She couldn't signal any better that she was open to me.

I ached. I ached both from worry for and want of Muriel Roberts. I had to do something about this ache. I needed to get me some pussy.

At her door, I put an arm around her shoulder, the heel of my hand pressed into the wall next to her cheek.

"You gonna let me come in, little darlin'?" I whispered. "You ready for me?"

She didn't answer, but I could hear her breathing real heavy like and trembling. She lay her cheek against my arm.

"You gonna let me come inside you, sweetheart? I got somethin' big for you. I got something you need bad."

She collapsed back into me. I gathered her up, pushed my way into the apartment, slammed the door behind me, and went lookin' for the bedroom. She was no help, lying there in my arms, already moaning and trembling. But she was no hindrance either.

In her neat little bedroom, I swept the teddy bears off the frilly bedspread and laid her down on her back. She groaned and moaned as I sank down between her spread thighs, pushed her skirt up, slipped her panties off, and gave her pussy the attention I knew women liked.

Then I fucked her hard. I would have done it differently, slower and more gently, if I'd known for sure she was a virgin.

But all and all, she enjoyed it. I knew she did. And I know it was as much a release for her as it was for me.

With her glasses off and her hair down, she was downright pretty. A dynamite body under those dowdy clothes. Fresh and yielding. Once the first-time unpleasantness was over for her, holding me close, clawing at my ass cheeks to hold me deep inside her pussy, while I grabbed and squeezed and separated her thighs to get her open enough to take all of what I had for her. Watching her eyes flash and roll up into her head when I gave her all of it.

The timid side of her all gone—crying out in a passion no one would know a librarian would have, moving her ass for me, meeting my thrusts with counterthrusts of her own. A ripe peach. Knockers as big as melons. Uptight and whimpery at first but all open and pulling me inside and holding me there—a delight—after I popped her cherry. All tits and ass. I used them, and she loved it. Not letting me out of her until I'd hardened and fucked her again. I'd be thinkin' of ripe fruit, of hard melons and bursting cherries, all night. And of fresh pussy.

For those moments I didn't think about Muriel Roberts at all. And I'd like to think that the librarian didn't think of the old queer, Terrence Rowland, either. What she had needed was a hard body like mine rather than a withered prune like him, sniffing after something other than her. I almost told her what he was, but I think she should figure that out for herself—if she didn't stop thinking about him and thinking now only about me and my hard body and what was swinging between my legs.

When I left her, she thanked me. Another fully satisfied little white darlin. Fucked her real good, I did. We both knew we'd be doing it again. She'd beg me for it again.

But damn, when I got back that evening to where I was staying and the old lady who was using me instead of charging me rent, all I could think of was Muriel Roberts and how I didn't want her to be sick—even if I couldn't have her the way I wanted her.