Author's note: This revision corrects some bad editing in the first version of the story.
Willin'
The trucker's wife was fifty-ish. She had a broad, kind face, though it bore signs of a life that had not been exceptionally kind to her. The first thing Magdalena noticed about her was her hair. Lots and lots of blond hair. She mused to herself, "kinda like Dolly Partons's, only there's more of it."
The trucker was a wiry, muscular guy in his mid-thirties, with a dark, scruffy beard and a ponytail, just beginning to show flecks of gray. The latter was generally seen sticking out of a well-worn Houston Astros cap.
Jolene had gone to nursing school like her mother, then enlisted and went to Vietnam, making her military father very proud. After five tours, having seen enough war for several lifetimes, she left the Army for a quieter life in a small town. By chance, she met a former soldier, whom she had once cared for during the war, at a gas station. Totally smitten, she moved in with him almost immediately. This did not make her family happy. He was Black.
Childless and widowed in her 30s, Jolene had remarried later in life, after "finding religion" (and AA), and meeting Jackson at a church social.
*****
What's Love Got to Do with It
It all started with one of her favorite "ol' school classic flicks." One rainy night, about a year into our relationship (also known as "the rug burn era"), we watched
North By Northwest,
snuggled under a blanket on the old couch.
By the time Hitchcock's vulgar little sight gag signaled the end of the movie, we laughed hysterically. Because--having long since shed the blanket, and our clothes--we had just finished doing what the couple on the train had, presumably, just started.
As the tape began to rewind, I asked, semi-jokingly (in reality, knowing no more about Calliope then Roger Thornhill knew about Eve Kendall),
"How
DOES
a girl like you, get to be a girl like you?"
"Ah'm not gonna say 'Just lucky, I guess,'" she declared, suddenly stern, "if that's what y'all were lookin' for."
"OK, but..."
"And no, mah parents didn't call me Calliope, neither."
"How did you know--?" [Truthfully, I already knew that; she had once told me that she'd legally changed her name after running away from home.]
"An' Ah s'pose," she said, now in a deeply sarcastic tone, "you wanna hear about mah quote-unquote first time? How Ah lost mah precious verrr-ginity?"
"Well [I really was curious, though not sure I would like what I heard], kinda."
"So, Ah ran away from home, couple days after Ah turned 18."
"Yeah, I think you told me that, but--"
"'Cause mah daddy woulda beat me up, like he did to mah older sister."
"Your sister? He--?"
"Maria Teresa."
"That's her name?"
"An' he prob'ly woulda raped me, too."
"Oh my god, Cal--"
"Like he did to her."
"Cal--"
"He musta said somethin', so she warned me. Ah just packed some clothes an' stuff in mah backpack, and never went home from school that day."
"Cal, I--"
"It was in the back of a eighteen-wheeler. Somewhere in Tennessee, Ah think."
"Cal, I didn't--"
"Yeah, he had a big one, an' yeah, it hurt the first couple times. Happy?"
"Dunno." [I was beginning to regret starting this conversation, as it felt like I was pushing Callie to a very dark place.]
"Oh, don't start gettin' your poor li'l masculinity all in a twist an' whatnot. It wasn't nothin' like that freakin' thing
you're
hidin' in your pants. Feel better, now?" she asked, a bit sardonically, as I smiled sheepishly. "But Ah can tell ya it was way bigger than any of those high school boys's pathetic wieners!"
"But I thought you were--"
"Did Ah say Ah never
SAW
a dick before?"
"No, I guess not."
"Tha's right. Ah just never got
fucked