Chapter 4 – Chapter 4

The very last weekend of the summer of 1956 at Spirit Lake arrived. I had driven from Buckhead to the lake in my '54 two-seater Thunderbird. Danny, Maggie, and Thad had come from Athens, where Thad already was into week-day football practice, in the Alexander family Cadillac. I'd made one stop on the way down from Atlanta, and what I'd gotten was burning a hole in the floor under the driver's seat of my Thunderbird. By agreement we were hooking up at the Main Street Café in Woodland before going out to the house. Chas and June, their time totally free of any obligations, had stayed on at the lake house during the week to bring some semblance of order back into the house before one last shove over the edge of debauchery this weekend. Chas had her MG Sprite, so they were good to go for transportation.

"One more weekend," Danny said as we were sitting in the booth at the café. "Then it's back to school." All four of us nodded; it was the four us, the remnants of the Buckhead Wild Ones who were starting back at the University of Georgia in Athens next week.

"You got a letter from the basketball coach yet?" Thad asked, turning to Danny.

Danny looked away, gave a sigh, and then said, "God, I miss David."

"So do I," Maggie said in a small voice. I looked at her. It was obvious she did miss David, at least in comparison to Danny. In other circumstances, when we got back to school, I'd take her aside and tell her she needed to get on with her life—that Danny never was going to be David. That, in fact, she should stop trying to live in the shadow of any jock. That being a groupie for horny jocks was so high school. She had a good head for figures. She could make something of herself in her own right. Maybe I'd write that to her instead.

Thad looked at me then. "I'm team captain again, so I'm in solid on the football team. How about you, Lee? You heard from Coach Tomlin yet?"

Coach Tomlin. I sure had heard from Coach Tomlin, the swim team coach. He'd written about how anxious he was to have me back at school. How much his balls ached from not having me there. How hard he was going to fuck me when he could get me under him again. As if Coach Tomlin of the "not so much cock and even less stamina" knew what hard fucking was. Yeah he wanted me back. Pretty stupid of him to put it in writing like that, though. Not that I'd do anything about it, other than ensure he wrote me good letters. "Yeah," I answered. "Coach Tomlin's written me. I'm good to go for the year."

"Just one more weekend here this summer," Maggie said in a small voice. "It just hasn't been the same this year."

Each of the other three of us chimed in agreement in our own way and then each sank into his or her own thoughts, thoughts that were interrupted by commotion at the door and the sobbing, half hysterical exclamations of the woman standing inside the door, clothes in disarray, face puffy and bleeding.

All of the men in the café rose from where they sat, suddenly warriors, avenging knights in white armor. All the women shrank away from the sight, taking faint. It so easily could have been them. Every face in the café was white, of course, and steeped in avenging anger.

The waitress behind the lunch counter was the first one to react, moving quickly to Chas and putting an arm around her. "What is it, sweetie? What's happened? Who's done this to you?"

"That big black man over in Coon Town. The one that pumps gas at the Texaco station over there," Chas burst out. "He beat me when I said I wouldn't. And then he . . . he . . . he was too strong. See the bruises on my arms . . . my legs? Then he . . ."

All four of us came shooting out of our booth—Maggie, Danny, and Thad moving toward Chas, who took a couple of steps in their direction as well—me going around them, to the door, into my Thunderbird, and roaring toward the north end of Spirit Lake.

Sam was calmly standing at the gas pumps at the Coon Town Texaco station, clipboard in hand, and checking the meters when I drove up.

"Nice ride," he said, as pulled the Thunderbird to a stop next to him. "Very nice ride. Don't see Thunderbirds on this side of the lake often. Maybe you'll give me a ride in it someday. I'll ride you and then you can ride me in that car maybe." He laughed at his own joke but then could clearly see that I wasn't laughing.

"Get into the car, Sam." I said.

"Want to give me a ride now?" he asked. "Want to go somewhere on our last weekend together and fuck like bunnies and ride around in your fancy Thunderbird between fuckings?"

"Stop that, Sam. Just get into the car. They'll be here any minute, I'm sure. We got to get out of here."

"Why? Out of here to where?"

"Does it matter, Sam? Just get in the fucking car."

He got in the car.

I took a road straight east, not a main route north toward Atlanta or south toward Macon and Athens. I'd turn north when we got closer to the coast.

"What's this all about, Lee?" Sam asked.

I told him.

He was quiet for a moment. I had expected to hear a denial from him. But I didn't.

"Sure I fucked that woman," he finally said. "She wanted it bad. Came pestering me. Pestered me every day since you came riding in with the pipsqueak at the wheel of his daddy's Caddie that day. I finally gave her what she wanted. Every day this week. You weren't here. But I didn't beat that woman. I didn't have anything to do with that. She wanted it and I wore rubbers. You weren't here and I wasn't in the best frame of mind. All you rich whites got to me. She wanted it again this weekend and I told her I was finished, that she clung too much, demanded and expected too much. But I didn't beat on the woman. I don't beat women. I don't have to beat white women to get it from them."

I keyed in on him saying he wore rubbers—at about the same level as hearing his disclaimers that he'd beaten Chas. I believed him. But Chas had been beaten. She was crazy, but not crazy enough to do that to herself. Then I remembered that LeRoy hadn't worn a condom when he fucked Chas last weekend. If there were repercussions and Chas pushed her case of vindictiveness by producing a black baby, Sam would be in even more trouble—if he hadn't already been hung from a tree by then. This was Georgia in 1956. LeRoy certainly wasn't going to step up to admit that he'd barebacked Chas, that was for sure. And I couldn't blame LeRoy for that—not even for spiking Chas. She went with any and every man, of whatever color. That was on her.

I also didn't see LeRoy as a woman beater. No, Chas had picked up one too many casual fucks and had gotten more than she'd bargained for—and then decided that Sam was her most-likely scapegoat.

Not that the Georgia boys in white sheets, passing for armor, would choose to believe that.

"It's OK, Sam," I said. "We'll be OK. I'm heading north. We can blend in in the North. I got enough under my seat to get us started and there's more where that came from."

"You got to be at college next week," Sam said.

"They have swim teams and classes in business at good colleges in the North too," I said. "I'll have no trouble getting letters of referral from Georgia U. As long as you are willing to be with me, we can make this work. And even if you don't want to be with me for long, I can give you a new start. If you want to be with—"

"What do you think?" he murmured, turning toward me, reaching a hand over and unzipping me, finding me hard. "You had planned this anyway, hadn't you? The white woman had nothing to do with this."

"Only the urgency of getting you out of town, out of Georgia," I answered. "Yes, I hoped you'd let me take you away—or take money from me to get a better start in life if you wouldn't go with me. Does that make you angry?"

There was silence for a few minutes and then, "Not at you. No, that's all good where you—we—are concerned. It's better than thinkin' you just don't want to see me lynched for fuckin' a white woman. But how far do you think we'll get in the South, a white boy with a black man in his car?"

"We'll find a lay-by somewhere to hole up until dark—when we're well away from the lake. A couple of days, driving at night, and we'll be across the Mason Dixon line. Then nobody will care. I'm not running from anybody. I have nobody to run from. I can get us through this. I only have you to run to, to run with, if I'm not being too presumptuous, too pushy."

"No, course you're not. Maybe for this daytime lay-by—I like the sound of the word 'lay'—you can find someplace quiet and real private, maybe next to a river. I like fuckin' you next to water."

"If you don't stop beating me off, I'll run this car off the road," I said, but then, quickly, I added, "not that I want you to stop."

"I think I can do one better," he said, with a laugh. "I put my head down, maybe no one will notice that you have a black man riding with you in a fancy Thunderbird in the South." With that, he leaned over, pulled my shorts and briefs down to my knees, took my cock in his mouth, and ran a finger down between my thighs and up to—and into—my puckering asshole.

We went for miles and miles without anyone seeing a black man in my passenger seat.

One thing was for sure, though, I was going to have to find a private turnoff real fast. And the other thing that hit me was that, though I'd been thinking this was the worst end to summer at Spirit Lake, I, in fact, was going to remember it as the best summer's ending I could ever wish for.