Martha had made good on her promise of no unchaperoned dates until I began attending church with her. What had been an occasional holiday became every Sunday and after proposing, Wednesday nights as well. She was blonde, my height, mildly slender and reasonably buxom. She was modest in her dress and strict in her 'do not touch' policy. She was a fantastic kisser and could sit in the car making out with me for hours on end. Her parents were even more fanatic about the church thing than she was. It took them a long time to accept me but upon producing an engagement ring while at the same time signing my life away on one of those new cracker box ranch houses that were springing up all over town, they began to leave us alone in the house while they were out shopping or more often than not, over at the church.
So imagine my surprise when Martha, on honeymoon night, let her dress fall on the floor as soon as I closed the front door behind us. My immediate thought was that mild mannered Martha was really a hell cat in disguise. With a coy, mischievous smile, she reached around her back and unhooked her bra.
Almost always having worn tight white pull-overs, I had guessed my bride-to-be to be at least a 34C cup. Having caught glimpses of them while bending over with looser fitting tops, she excited my imagination. Of course, they had always hidden in rigid, fantasize quenching, Playtex bras, always white with an abundance of stitching and always combined with the strictly enforced 'do not touch' rule.
So imagine my surprise when she let that plain white double-cup garment fall to the floor as I stood there just inside the door, mouth agape. Not satisfied with merely revealing her deceit to me, she did so with mocking smile and a devil-may-care laugh. For there my bride stood, flat chested, complete with inverted nipples!
I had been played for a fool when I bought that used motorcycle right out of high school. I had been swindled by so called friends who need a twenty here and there, always with the promise that they'd pay me back as soon as payday rolled around. I had even been swindled by the pastor who during marriage counseling requiring a paycheck stub to guarantee that I was truly tithing my ten percent before agreeing to marry us. But this deceit was the proverbial straw that broke the proverbial camel's back.
The smile quickly vanished from her face as I rushed at her to throw her down the hall and on to the bed. I had every intension of rap*ing my new wife then and there. However, sprawled across the bed, that menacing smile came crawling back across her face before that snidely snicker again mocked me. Baiting me, she asked why I thought she hadn't taken off her panties. Standing back and looking down, the large maxi pad was evident to even my naïve eyes.
"Buster, did you really think you were going to get to have me whenever you want just because now I'm your wife? Mother was right. You're just a simple country boy who has a lot of growing up to do." The Cheshire cat smile turned into a mocking sneer as I slammed the door behind me rushing out into the night, losing myself on some country road after downing half a bottle of Jack.
*****************
"Hey, you okay in there?" I heard the deep resonating female voice inquire as she thumped on the window.
Waking with one eye open and the other still closed, I rubbed it and sat up, suddenly to lay back down again across the front seat as the world spun around me.
Mine was an old Ford F-100 pick-up complete with the mandatory gun rack in the back window. The door creaked on rusty hinges as she opened the door and asked if I was alright one more time.
"Hey there feller, looks like you had one too many last night," the sweet voice sang to me as its owner gently removed the bottle from my hand. "Can't say I'm surprised though. You didn't know Martha as well as you thought you did, did you Buster?"
The world stopped spinning long enough for me to turn over on the seat and look up at the upside down girl leaning in the passenger side door. Holly Bloomquist! I thought I had recognized the voice.
Holly was known in high school as the "sure thing." We had graduated together just a few years prior. I confess I never gave her a second thought after that. Now the question pierced my mind as to whatever had happened to the lass. Back then there were different grade schools even though the school district was small. The town was even smaller. However, Holly lived far enough out to be carted off to our neighboring grade school rivals. It wasn't until sometime late in my high school years that I had had her pointed out to me in reference to her being the "sure thing." Like the conniving bitch I had wed the day before, Holly too had been born blonde. She too had large bumps on her chest but obviously as I tried to focus, Holly's were real and hanging freely in a tattered sleeveless shirt.
Continuing to lay there, the world still spinning around me, I remembered high-school-Holly as a gay, mischievous thing who bounced on her toes as she walked and flirted with any boy who looked her way. The girls had, for the most part, kept her outside of their flock. A different feather I guess. She hadn't been anything to look at back then, pimple faced, a bit on the plump side and blanched skin as white as one of mother's bed sheets on laundry day hanging out on the line.
"Come on Buster, get up and slide over. Let me drive you back to the house. Maybe a couple of cups of hard coffee will bring you back into the land of the living."
Holly drove the truck a hundred yards across country gravel before turning my swirling world up into a steep climbing drive lined with old over-grown lilacs now in full spring time bloom. Their scent, which previous to that moment I had found magically enjoyable, now made me nauseous. If I hadn't already lost everything inside me the night before, I probably would have then. Holly pulled on around the back of a house that looked as if it had never had a coat of paint on it in its entire existence.
Coming to a stop, parking on a blend of short broadleaf weeds, country grass and assorted pea gravel, my nurse helped me out of the truck before guiding me over to a rusty, equally squeaky screened door which led into an old country kitchen complete with a stainless steel legged, faded yellow linoleum topped table with three matching chairs.
How I made it through bacon and eggs and two slices of Wonder Bread toast, all topped off with a half a pot of coffee without throwing it all back up outside the kitchen door, I will never know. All I remember is waking up on her tossed-blanket couch later that afternoon. Holly was humming as whiff's of baked apples flowed pass me and on out through the open front door.
Raising myself up from the prone position, I remained sitting on the couch about as erect as a single slice of bread after being soaked in milk and egg. I was feeling better but nowhere close to good. My head felt like someone had been overly enthusiastic in their placing a steel tourniquet across my forehead.
Slowly the room came into view. Except for the couch, there was only an equally squalid, fabric-covered chair sitting in the corner next to the five by four foot front window. I could see the swing just on the other side of it on the front porch. There were no pictures on the walls, no TV with rabbit ears slid off in the corner, no books, no end tables, not even a rug. There was just one other thing in the room, an old brown three foot square gas furnace. The décor was early redneck.
"Hey there, look at who's up. I was beginning to wonder if I'd have to drive down to Thompson's farm and call the county ambulance to come all the way out here take you in to doc Wallen for emergency repair." Apparently the house didn't have a phone either.
