Flossie's Revenge

by Lubrican

Chapters : Foreword | 1-2 | 3-4 | 5-6 | 7-8 | 9-10 | 11-12 | 13-14 | 15-16 | 17-18 | 19-20 | 21-22
23-24 | 25-26 | 27-28 | 29-30 | 31-32 | 33-34 | 35-36 | 37-38 | 39-40 | 41-42 | 43-44

Chapter 17

The next day was Saturday. Harvey spent most of Saturday mornings with the papers he hadn't had time to read during the week. Sometimes he made appointments on Saturdays, with people who didn't want to miss work during the week to do banking business. Marian did some baking on Saturdays, and on this day insisted that the girls begin learning that craft.

Nathan announced that Luthor was finally going to teach him how to fish. His father snorted, but didn't say anything. His mother made him wait long enough so that she could make him some peanut butter sandwiches to take with him. She put those, an apple and a banana in an old flour sack and handed them to him.

"Remember, I don't clean fish," she reminded him, smiling.

He picked up his 'painting clothes' from out back, and stuffed them into the bag on top of the victuals, and headed off down the street in the opposite direction of Flossie's house. Once he turned the corner, he simply pedaled around the block, approaching from the other direction.

She answered the door with a smile. She had already been painting, and the smell wafted out the doorway.

"I brought my painting clothes," he said. "I need to change into them."

She took him to her room, and left him there, closing the door. As he got undressed he looked around. This room looked more like a home. There was a beautifully worked quilt on the mattress, which was supported by a sturdy metal frame. The walls had been covered over with wallpaper. It was cracked where the boards underneath joined, but the light floral pattern still made the room seem much brighter than it was outside in the living area. There was no closet. The single window was actually just a fixed frame with four panes of glass in it, that had been fastened to the wall, covering a hole. It didn't open, but it let in some light. Shelves had been nailed to the walls, and her clothing was neatly arranged in piles. There was a bra hanging from a nail, and as he looked at it he thought of his sister's bras, which looked exactly like this one. He stared at the cups, knowing they had held breasts, and felt his penis twitch. For the first time he thought of Flossie as a woman first. He tried to imagine Flossie, standing in this room, wearing that white bra. She would obviously look different than his sisters when they were naked, but he could only think of black skin, without any detail.

He realized he was lollygagging, and got dressed quickly. He had to shove his penis up and to one side so that it didn't bulge so clearly.

The images stayed in his mind when he went outside and began to paint. He found himself darting looks at Flossie, seeing her as a woman in ways he never had before. He realized that, even though she was his teacher and much older than he was, her small stature, and smooth lines made her look more like she was nineteen, rather than ...

"How old are you?" he asked, not thinking the question might be inappropriate.

"I beg your pardon?" she asked, looking over at him strangely.

"Um ... sorry ... I was just thinking that you don't look much older than Ruth Ann." he fumbled vocally.

"Why thank you." She grinned. "Let's just say I'm older than twenty-five."

"Wow," said Nathan. "That's a quarter of a century."

She gave him a mock glare. "You don't have to put it that way!"

"That's not what I mean," he said, flushing. "You just don't look that old, that's all."

She laughed. "I can see I'm going to have to give a class on tact. If you go off to college and say things like that to the women you meet, you'll never get a date."

That reminded him of the letter he'd gotten from the Kansas City Police Department, and he told her about it. She was elated.

"Well, the grades won't be a problem if you keep on the way you are. You're a very good student when you put your mind to it. I'm so happy for you." She looked and saw the uncertainty on his face. "It is good news ... isn't it?"

Then he told her about the reaction to the letter at home.

"Well, I know that mothers never want their children to leave the nest," she said, "but it's a wonderful opportunity for you to find a life of your own ... and help others too. You're almost a man now. She can't expect you to stay home forever."

"This becoming a man thing isn't as easy as I thought it would be," he said, morosely.

"Being an adult isn't easy," she agreed. "It's the challenge that makes it interesting."

They painted for a while, and she announced it was time for lunch. That reminded him of the sandwiches in his bag. He admitted that he had told his parents he was going fishing.

"What are you going to do when you come home with no fish?" she asked.

"I don't know. I guess I'll just say I didn't catch anything."

She laughed. "They'll never believe that. Fishing is very good in these parts."

"Oh, they'll believe me," he said confidently. "I've never been fishing in my life. You could fill a book with what I don't know about fishing."

"You're kidding," she said. "You've never been fishing?"

"Nope," he said.

"Well, you can't lie to your parents," she said firmly. "That's not right. You'll just have to go fishing, like you said."

"I don't even have a pole," he said helplessly.

"Then you'll have to use mine," she said.

"You have a fishing pole?" he asked, incredulous.

"I have two!" She grinned. "And I ... am going to teach you how to fish!"

There was a creek not far away. It was, in fact, Foster's creek, the same creek that Johnnie Sue, Jesse, and Luthor were, at the moment, skinny dipping in. The three had arranged to go fishing too, and were in the process of getting the more serious business they planned out of the way before they fished.

This time there was much less horseplay, and much more sex play. They had gone to a good fishing spot, rather than the usual swimming spot, because they didn't want anyone else to come along with the idea of swimming and either catch them or interrupt their sexual mission.

Johnnie Sue was, at the moment, the "meat" in a sandwich, with Luthor in front of her, and Jesse behind her. Both boys were rubbing their naked bodies against her, and she had two hands full of hard pricks, jacking them erratically.

"Can I kiss you, Johnnie Sue?" asked Luthor.

"Why do you want to do that?" asked the girl, who was a complicated mixture of experience and innocence.

"Daddy and Mamma do it all the time, and they seem to like it a lot," he said.

"That's true," she said, thinking of her own parents.

Their first attempt was both tentative, and left them feeling vaguely unsatisfied. They tried it again, bumping noses, and learned to tilt their heads. Then Johnnie Sue turned around.

"Now you," she said to Jesse.

"I can't kiss you, Johnnie Sue," said the boy who was fondling one of her titties.

"I want to see if you feel different," she insisted. "Your lips are bigger."

Then, instead of waiting, she pressed her lips to his. It took him by surprise and, rather than tensing up, like Luthor had, his whole face went slack. Johnnie Sue decided his lips did feel different ... softer ... with more give in them. When she pulled back his eyes were wide open.

Then she tried to explain the differences she had felt to Luthor, and kissed him again, telling him how to loosen his lips to approximate what Jesse's had felt like. Then she kissed Jesse again. This time he did tighten up, and she scolded him, telling him to kiss her that other way again. He didn't know what she was talking about, so she had to tutor him too. It would have made for good comedy.

But, within ten minutes, they had decided that this kissing part was a good thing. Now, as she stroked them in the water, she kissed one, and then the other.

She was leading them out of the water, a stiff rod firmly in each hand, as Flossie was leading Nathan along the bank of the creek, toward the fishing spot she remembered from her childhood. The three youths they stumbled upon, weren't making much noise at that point.

Flossie did, however, hear something that sounded like a moan, almost of pain, and stopped short, causing Nathan to run into her from behind. His hands went to her waist automatically to keep them both from falling. Flossie had been carrying both poles in her left hand. With her right she reached out and moved a thickly leafed elm branch down. Both she and Nathan, looking over her shoulder, could see into the clearing on the other side.

Johnnie Sue was on her knees, stroking Jesse first, while Luthor stood by watching, his own hand squeezing his cock.

"Don't you do it," said Johnnie Sue, glancing up at Luthor. Jesse went up on his tiptoes, about ready to get his orgasm. "I want to make you spurt."

Flossie watched in horror as Johnnie Sue, stark naked and on her knees, masturbated Jesse to what was obviously a powerful orgasm. He leaned back and moaned, his hand going to Johnnie Sue's head to keep his balance. Flossie was so flabbergasted that she was frozen in time, her eyes watching as Johnnie Sue lovingly milked Jesse's prick, even though nothing was coming out. Jesse sat down on the grass, and Johnnie Sue turned to reach for Luthor's penis. He jutted his hips, obviously offering himself and she started stroking him too.

"I'm gonna squirt real fast this time, Johnnie Sue," he gasped.

"Good," said the girl. "I love making you squirt."

For Nathan, seeing this happen evoked complex emotions in his mind. These were other students, in the same school as he was, and, while he knew them well, he had never thought of them in this scenario. That part was strange and exciting. Seeing a girl, doing to them what his sisters had done to him, somehow validated his own behavior, even though these classmates were not related by blood. That was exciting too. Having his hands on a woman's waist, and watching this erotic scene was also exciting. It was probably because of the combination of all that, that when Flossie did begin to move, with the obvious intent of making their presence known, and no doubt stopping what was going on, that Nathan's grip on her waist tightened. He leaned in close to her, the front of his body touching her back, and whispered in her ear.

"Wait!"

Had he had the time to think things through, he wouldn't have said that, of course. If he had allowed his social indoctrination to steer his actions, he would have been subservient, the student, in the presence of the teacher, while she corrected inappropriate behavior being conducted by other students. But his reaction was emotional, rather than that of a thinking mind.

She froze.

Had Flossie had the time to think things through, her reactions to the situation probably would have been different as well. She would have been the teacher, correcting the inappropriate behavior. But her own emotions were in a turmoil too. While she was quite aware that the situation needed to be addressed, seeing Johnnie Sue and the boys, doing something they had obviously done before and were very comfortable with, was a way of looking at her students she had never dreamed of. The ease and skill with which Johnnie Sue had manipulated Jesse was erotic in a way that drove straight to Flossie's loins. Then there were the strong hands on her waist, which she had felt unconsciously, at first, and the feel of a hard body pressed into her back ... a male body ... touching her like she hadn't been touched before. While there was nothing sexual about Nathan's body pressing against hers, there was a feeling of intimacy about it that made that erotic too, somehow. When his hot breath whispered in her ear, she felt her nipples crinkle and tingle. In short, part of her wanted to wait ... and peek ... voyeuristically participating in the behavior she was observing.

What complicated things in her own mind was that she paused.

Had she ignored Nathan's command, she could have barged into the clearing, stopping what happened, and their proper roles would have been re-established. But the hesitancy she displayed, robbed her of having the high ground. It also gave Luthor's prick time to spurt semen all over Johnnie Sue's naked breasts.

When Johnnie Sue had gotten Luthor's semen on her shoulder, the time before, she had washed it off, feeling the slippery texture. Later on she had thought about that texture, and how smoothly it had spread along her shoulder as she went under the water to wash it off. Now that she was going to produce another batch of the stuff, she wanted to experiment with it, which is why she aimed his spurting penis at her chest when it went off. Once Luthor was dry, she let go of him, and rubbed her hands across her chest, feeling the slipper warm fluid spread. It was only natural to dip a hand to her honey pot, to rub there too. She didn't think about the fact that her hand was messy with his sperm, or that her fingers, as they penetrated her sex to rub her button transferred that sperm into her pussy. It just felt good.

Soon she was on her back, legs splayed, both hands digging into her pussy as she sought her own orgasm while two tired boys lay in the grass and watched.

"They're just playing," whispered Nathan in Flossie's ear. She shuddered as jolts like electricity shot down her spine.

She had delayed. It was too late to stop things now. The boys didn't seem intent on going any further, and Johnnie Sue seemed to be taking care of her own needs.

She turned, Nathan's hands sliding on her waist. She had to look up at him, and his face was only inches from hers. She could smell the peanut butter on his breath.

"I should have stopped them," she whispered into his face.

"They're just releasing tension," he whispered back.

"They're having sex!" she whispered, more loudly than she intended. She turned her head to see if the three youths had heard her, but the tree limb was in the way again and she couldn't see them. She turned her head back and realized how close she was to Nathan. She felt jittery inside. She pushed at his chest, and his hands slipped from her waist. She felt much calmer immediately.

But Nathan reached for her hand, and pulled at her, leading her away from the young people, to where they could talk about it without anyone hearing them. She pulled at his hand, but he held tightly, pulling her carefully through the woods until they'd gone a hundred yards or more.

"They weren't having sex," he said, his voice still soft. "They were just masturbating. Didn't you say it's normal?"

Flossie looked at the boy in front of her. Her mind knew he was a boy, but her emotions saw him as a man. His sister had indicated she heard him ... masturbating. He had a penis. It got hard, and he stroked it. She remembered Luthor's penis spurting. It was the first time she had seen either an erect phallus, or what that would produce. Knowing those things existed was different than actually seeing them. Now her mind screamed at her that the man in front of her had a penis very much like that, which spurted as well. She closed her eyes hard, but the mental image wouldn’t go away. Finally she turned around, and opened her eyes, looking at the forest. That helped a little.

Nathan just stood there, much more uncertain than he acted. Flossie was obviously agitated, and might do anything at all. He had no idea why he had stopped her from breaking up the party ... why he had defended them.

Finally she turned around, taking a deep breath.

"You masturbate by yourself," she said evenly. "When you do that together it's part of having sex. I should have stopped them."

Her attitude brought about just enough change in the atmosphere that the social structure was reestablished. She was the teacher. She was a figure of authority. Nathan looked down.

"I guess so," he agreed. "I guess you still can. I'm sorry."

Flossie looked at the fishing poles still gripped in her hand.

"Come on. We're going fishing," she said. This time, as they approached, she moved purposefully, almost stalking. She didn't pause to peek, but just pushed aside the thick vegetation and walked into the clearing. She expected the children, as she was trying to think of them, to still be naked, still touching each other ... maybe even copulating!

She was thoroughly unprepared, therefore, when she found all three kids, not only fully dressed, but actively fishing. They had gotten dressed as soon as more important things were taken care of, and had immediately gone on to the other objective of their outing together. Johnnie Sue had a fish on the line and had just pulled it up to hang in front of her eyes when Flossie pushed aside the bushes and walked onto the grass.

"Miss Flossie!" squealed Johnnie Sue, a big grin on her face. "I just caught one, and it's bigger than the one Luthor caught a minute ago!"

Luthor held his fish up on a stringer.

"I don't think so," he said ardently.

"Got one!" yelped Jesse, jerking his cane pole upward. He grabbed the line and hauled in a fish as Nathan emerged into the clearing. He had held back a bit, peeking into the clearing.

"Nathan!" squealed Johnnie Sue again. "What are you doing here?"

"Um ... Miss Flossie said she'd teach me how to catch a fish," he said, feeling foolish. He had just seen two fish caught. Apparently there wasn't all that much to it. The fish seemed to attach themselves to the line, and all you did was lift them out of the water.

"You two came out here? Together? Alone?" asked Johnnie Sue, her eyes wide. While she and her blood brothers did things like this together, she still had the unconscious bias that adults - and she saw Nathan as basically a white man - wouldn't mix in the same way.

Flossie felt a tremor in her backbone. She hadn't given even one thought to what people might think if she and Nathan were out in the woods together ... alone. Johnnie Sue's reaction, though, brought that flooding into her mind. Was she crazy? Why in the world had she thought to bring a white man out in to the woods like that? She chastised herself for not thinking about that. Then her conscience chastised her for expecting herself to act in a racist manner. Then she got confused, not knowing what to think. History won out in the end, and she finally decided that, while she should of at least thought about possible consequences, there was nothing wrong with some simple fishing.

"I notice," she said tensely, "that you are out here alone with two boys, one of whom is just as black as I am. What would people think?"

Johnnie Sue went pale. Luthor looked nervous, and Jesse froze.

"That's different," gasped Johnnie Sue. "I can explain!"

"Well, then, let's hear the explanation," said Flossie, feeling more in control.

Johnnie Sue's face went blank for a second. "We're fishing," she said weakly.

"And is that all you're doing?" asked Flossie.

Nathan took a step and touched her elbow with his finger. That's all it was ... just a touch ... but it shot a shiver through Flossie and she pulled away.

"Yes ..." said Johnnie Sue, her face showing the lie as if she had shouted "No! "What else would we be doing?" she added weakly.

"What else indeed?" asked Flossie, her voice tight.

Nathan, most probably because he knew how it felt to get caught ... and then get away with it ... stepped forward again.

"They have fish," he said softly. "We came here to get some too ... didn't we?"

Flossie turned her head to look at him. He had an almost earnest look on his face, a vaguely pleading look. She stumbled, mentally, once again, remembering what she had seen ... the pure joy of youthful exuberance as the girl pleasured the boys, and then herself. And, here they were, fishing, as if nothing had happened. Nathan had said they were playing, and her mind, seeing them now, still holding fish up ... not coupling like she had expected ...

She took a breath, but held it, not knowing what to say. Seeing them like they were now ... looking completely normal ... made it seem like it was all some frenzied dream. Her breath gushed out. She felt frustrated.

"I suppose so," she finally said, her voice defeated.

It took a while, but the tense atmosphere eventually evaporated, and fish were caught. Nathan was amazed at how often his bobber went under, but when he pulled in the line nothing was on it. His worm was gone, but there was no fish. The others, by comparison, gathered in fish like they were just reaching into the water to pick them up. All four natives tried to teach him how to produce that special little jerk that set the hook just so. The only fish he caught was so firmly hooked that he couldn't get the hook out. No one had brought any pliers, and he got finned in the process of trying to handle the slippery thing. They laughed, but it wasn't cruel laughter, and he didn't really mind. In the end, Luthor used a knife to cut the hook out, but Nathan just sat on the bank and watched after that. The ease of movement that he saw in Flossie was mirrored in the others. They belonged here ... fit in as though they were part of the forest. It was almost beautiful.

On the way back home, neither Nathan nor Flossie spoke. There was a subtle tension between them. Flossie never had "done anything" about what they had seen. She had submerged herself in the normalcy of fishing, and while fishing, things had seemed normal.

Now, though, as they walked back to her house, it all came back to her. The sights ... the feel of Nathan pressing against her back, the nervous tension that she now recognized as her own unfulfilled needs. She found herself almost resenting Nathan for being her student ... and white. Then she chastised herself for feeling that. It wasn't his fault. He was just a nice young man, who had offered to help her. It was HER fault for feeling things she shouldn't feel.

Back home, she showed him how to clean the fish, watching carefully as his strong hands manipulated the knife. His fish looked pitiful when he was done, and she gave him three of hers, making him clean them as well. She looked at his face, intent on his job. He was a handsome man. There was no doubt about that. And good at heart.

"Why did you stop me?" she asked suddenly.

He looked up at her, that pleading look back on his face.

"I don't know," he said. "I guess because I know what I'd feel like if you caught me." He looked confused. "I mean ... if I got caught ... I'd feel all embarrassed and everything ..." Now he looked agonized. "I mean I don't do anything to get caught doing, or anything, but ..."

He was beet red, and plainly mortified. His face showed the screaming lie just as plainly as it had screamed from Johnnie Sue's face. The little boy embarrassment in a big strong man's body was something delightfully innocent somehow, and it warmed Flossie's loins. After all, she rubbed herself frantically sometimes too. She held up a hand.

"As you said, I suppose it's normal. Maybe they were just playing."

"I just didn't want them to be embarrassed, I guess." said Nathan weakly, trying to recover.

"That's sweet," she said. "But that kind of play can lead to things that are much more serious."

"I know!" said Nathan, so explosively that he blushed again and turned his face away.

His vociferous affirmation shocked Flossie to her core. It was almost an admission that he had done something just as dangerous as what they had seen. She tried to think of who he might have dallied with in that way, but there was no one. He was years older than Johnnie Sue and her ... playmates. Had he done something back in Atlanta?

She never thought once of his sisters.

Chapter 18

One of his sisters, Bernadette, to be exact, was also away from the house that Saturday. She went to the library. That was because she already knew how to make biscuits, while Hilda Mae was in the process of learning that time honored craft, along with the mysteries of making the gravy that went with them sometimes.

Miz Hopkins was just leaving when Bernadette stepped up on the porch. She explained she was going to town, to do her marketing, but that Bernadette was welcome to go on in and dig through the books to her heart's content. It was while she was engaged in that activity that Curtis Lee came in the back door, as was his habit, to spend some time of his own digging through books. He stepped into the room and Bernadette looked up. Her eyes widened. Both of them were thinking of the exact same moment in time ... a moment in the past, when she had been naked.

"Curtis Lee!" she squeaked.

"Miss Bernadette," said Curtis Lee softly.

The honorific he put before her name was something almost habitual for Curtis Lee. He had been taught that by his mother, to be applied to everyone, and not just his 'betters' as she called them. It was just manners, pure and simple.

But to Bernadette, the honorific implied something more. It was manners, true, but it was much more. It was something that suggested approval ... acceptance ... even admiration. Coming from this boy's mouth, it suggested something more intimate than that. He had held her fate in his hands, and had, for whatever reason, chosen to handle her fate gently. She had always thought about that incident in terms of the danger it represented for her and her siblings. Now, she suddenly thought about the fact that a male ... an adult male ... had seen her naked, pleading on her knees, in a patently sexual situation. Her eyes widened even more as she felt the flutter in her stomach that she now recognized easily as ardor. And she was feeling it in the presence of, if not actually for a Negro male!

Had Bernadette known some rarely discussed history of the South a little better, she would have known that the sex between plantation owners and nubile slaves wasn't the only interracial sex that went on during those tumultuous times. White women, neglected by their husbands, who elected to bestow their hard pricks on those slaves, instead of on their wives, often found themselves sexually frustrated. While it was much more dangerous for them to dally with a big buck slave, the buck's silence was guaranteed, and many a proud white woman found out that a stiff prick is a stiff prick, regardless of what color it was. Bernadette wasn't the first woman to be attracted to a black man, regardless of what she thought.

Had it happened a year or two earlier, her reaction might have been entirely different. Bernadette, however, had already dabbled in the taboo, and looked forward to dabbling many more times. She was quite aware of the 'wrongness' of that little flutter in her belly, but 'wrongness' didn't have the terror that it had in the past.

"Miz Hopkins went to do her marketing," said Bernadette, unsure of what to say, and feeling shy.

Curtis Lee stared at her. She looked so ... normal. She had looked that way the day after, in school. He had been amazed that she didn't look any different than she ever had. He had always thought she was pretty, in a safe, uninvolved kind of way. But he had never been able to get the image of her naked out of his brain. Every time he saw her he remembered that. He remembered it now.

"I should leave," said Curtis Lee.

"No!" she said, unable to keep her mouth silent.

"It's not proper," he said, feeling what he knew would soon make his pants tent outward.

"I don't care," she surprised herself by saying. "I never got to thank you."

Both of them knew what she was referring to.

"White people's business isn't my business," he said automatically.

"I know. That's what you told Nathan too. He told us." She looked away. "But you don't understand! What you did for us ... keeping silent like that ... you may as well have saved my life, Curtis Lee."

Curtis Lee remained silent. He was well practiced at that.

"I owe you my life, Curtis Lee," said Bernadette emotionally.

"It wasn't that bad," he said tentatively. "They wouldn't have actually killed you."

"It would have been the same as if they did," she said, her eyes misty. "They would have sent Nathan away, or maybe me, to a boarding school or something like that. My Mamma would have hated me forever. Who knows what Daddy would have done!"

"Can I ask you a question?" he asked suddenly.

"Yes."

"If you knew you could get in that kind of trouble ... why would you ..." He didn't finish.

Bernadette looked up at the ceiling, and then at him. Her eyes were shiny with tears.

"I don't know!" she said, almost sobbing. "It just ... happened. We had that class, and Hildy and I were curious. There were things going on at home too ... things I can't talk about ... but something just happened and all of a sudden we were doing things, and I was so horny and it was so much fun and if felt so good ..."

He looked at her steadily.

"Haven't you ever done anything like that?" she asked, hoping he would have his own experiences that would help him understand how she had felt.

"I don't have a sister," he said, as he had said it to Nathan.

"No! With some other girl!" she moaned. "Haven't you felt horny with a girl?"

"Not like that," said Curtis Lee. "I've never even seen a girl naked. Except for ..." he didn't finish.

Bernadette blushed.

"If I'd have known I wouldn't have looked," he said. He'd wished he hadn't looked each time he had stroked his long, hard prick, thinking about what he'd seen. Hilda Mae, with her back arched and a cry of pure pleasure coming from her mouth as her white breasts strained upwards ... Nathan's head between her thighs ... Bernadette, so slim, with her own bulging white breasts, watching avidly, her hand between her legs ... Why his memories centered on Bernadette, he didn't know, but her memory was seared into his brain, as if it were branded there.

"You're a real gentleman," said Bernadette suddenly, feeling that she had just found the perfect categorization to put him into. "You know that, Curtis Lee? You are a real gentleman." It was the highest compliment she knew.

"But I did see you," he moaned. "And I can't forget that. I'm no gentleman, that's for sure!" His own frustration bubbled up.

"You think about me?" her voice was high.

"No!" he tried to deny it.

"Yes you do!" she said, seeing it in his eyes.

"I'm sorry," he moaned. "I can't help it. You were so ...."

"Naked," she said.

"No ... yes ... that's not what I mean!" he pleaded. "I have to go!"

"No you don't!" she said forcefully. He cringed, and she moderated her voice. "You don't have to go. We're just talking. We're just friends talking."

"But we can't be friends," he cried mournfully.

"Can't I choose my own friends?" she asked.

"How can you want to be friends with me when I saw you like that?" he groaned.

"How can I ask you to be my friend when you saw me with Nathan?" she shot back.

"I don't care about that!" he mumbled. "That's your business."

"Isn't it my business to decide who is my friend and who isn't? You could have ruined my life, Curtis Lee, and you didn't. You were nice to me when you saw me doing something most folks would horse whip me for. You were nice to all of us."

"But I'm a nigger!" he said explosively.

"No, you are not," said Bernadette, staring steadily at him. "I like you, and I've never liked a nigger in my whole life." She looked confused. "You are just Curtis Lee, to me," she said. "You're colored, but I don't care. I like you."

"I can't stop thinking about you that way," he moaned.

"Okay, then, so you'll have to think about me that way. Since you actually saw me, I suppose I can live with that."

"Really?" he said weakly. "You'd do that for me?"

She laughed. The whole situation seemed completely ludicrous to her. Here she was, a white girl, telling a black boy that he could think about her naked if he wanted to, and he was thanking her. That after he saw her doing something that would have ruined her whole life if he'd have spoken a single word about it to anyone. Come to think of it, considering what she was willing to do with her own brother, the fact that she wasn't horrified about a black boy thinking about her naked didn't seem so crazy.

"Yes," she giggled, as he stared at her like she'd gone mad. She thought about Nathan, and what he looked like when he saw her naked.

Her laughing calmed. She went to stand in front of him. He leaned back at the hips and she almost looked down.

"I bet I know what happens to you when you think about me naked," she whispered. His eyes got huge and he started to step back. She reached out and grabbed his sleeve. "I know what happens to Nathan when he thinks about me that way. It happens to you too, I bet."

"Miss Bernadette .... please," he begged.

"You listen to me, Mister Curtis Lee ... what's your last name, anyhow?"

"Waggoner," he gasped. "Curtis Lee Waggoner the Third." His response was both automatic and an attempt to recover his dignity.

"You listen to me, Mister Curtis Lee Waggoner the Third," she said calmly. "You are a gentleman, regardless of what you may think, and as far as I'm concerned, there is nothing a gentleman can think of ... or do ... when he thinks about me naked ... that I can't live with."

Then, on impulse, she got up on her tiptoes and planted a very quick, very sterile kiss on Curtis Lee Waggoner the Third's fleshy lips.

Curtis Lee Waggoner the Third fled, his dignity in tatters. But, since he had permission, he only fled about a quarter mile. Then he stepped behind a tree and unzipped his pants. He beat his meat like it owed him money, painted the tree bark with four strong streams of thick white spunk, and then went home. When he got there, he felt unaccountably light on his feet. Having been granted the freedom to dream had caused a fundamental change in his whole outlook on life.

Nathan came home, dressed in the same clothes he had been in when he left that morning, and triumphantly presented his mother with supper. She promptly called her daughters into the kitchen to teach them how to bread and fry fish.

At supper, the answer to what Bernadette perceived as "her problem" came to her.

"This is so good," she said enthusiastically. "I wish there were more. Why did you only stop with four?" she asked her brother.

"Actually," said Nathan, "I wasn't all that good at it, at first." He remembered to name Luthor. "Luthor gave me a couple of his. I'll do better next time."

"Hildy and I could go with you next time," said Bernadette, smacking her lips. "Then we could catch some too, and we'd have enough. I could eat two. These are so good."

"Girls don't fish!" snorted Harvey.

"I'll have you know I went fishing with my daddy and my brother lots of times when I was a little girl," said Marian archly. She had, too, when she was ten. By the time she hit puberty, she gave all that up to learn to tat, and knit, and needlepoint. She had hated it so much she hadn't made her daughters learn that little bit of feminine culture. "Fish always taste better when you catch them yourself." she added.

Bernadette couldn't believe she had pulled it off. By the time supper was over, she and a less than enthusiastic Hilda Mae were invited to go fishing with Nathan at an unspecified date in the future.

After supper she explained it to Hilda Mae, reminding her that they would be out in the woods ... alone with Nathan. Hilda Mae got much more enthusiastic immediately.

The hardest part for Bernadette was waiting. She had been more or less constantly horny since her meeting with Curtis Lee. She had felt guilty, at first, as she rubbed her cunny, as her brother's thick white penis was suddenly substituted by another one that looked exactly like it, except that it was black as coal. They fought for dominance in her mind, changing back and forth. As she had an orgasm one time, the imaginary prick in her mouth, spurting its lovely cream down her throat, was the black one. It had bothered her, initially. Later, she gave up, thinking that dreaming wasn't nearly the same thing as doing. Dreaming was harmless ... right?

She talked to Nathan about going fishing at school. He suggested that it was too soon, and that if they caught too many fish, too often, the taste for fish would wear out, and they would be told not to go.

Seeing Curtis Lee in school didn't help any. His shy smile made her think about what he was thinking, which didn't help her emotional state at all. She had to rub every single night, even more often than Hilda Mae. They were so used to each other's lightly bouncing bed springs, though, that neither one mentioned it.

The holes in the plan - at least from Nathan's point of view - began to become apparent the next Friday night, when Bernadette was finally able to excitedly remind everyone that Saturday would be a good day for fishing. Nathan had planned on going, but was going to spend half the day at Flossie's. He didn't analyze the strange attraction she held for him. He just knew he liked being around her in a more relaxed, less formal kind of way than it was in school.

But now his sisters would be with him.

Bernadette knew about the painting, at least that initial time. As far as he knew, Hilda Mae didn't. He had no idea how they would react if he took them to Flossie's, and asked them to wait while he helped paint. It never occurred to him to just skip Flossie's and simply go fishing with his sisters.

Another problem was poles. He could probably borrow Flossie's, but he had no other source. He had seen fishing poles in the General Store, but didn't want to spend his hard-earned cash on that. If he was going to Kansas City after school was out, he'd like to take a little cash with him.

A third problem was that he had been watching the sway of Flossie's jeans-clad hips so closely, as he followed her through the woods, instead of watching where they were going, that he wasn't at all sure he could find the fishing hole again. He was pretty sure Flossie would take them there, if he asked her to, but then ... Flossie would be there. He was perfectly aware of exactly why Bernadette wanted to go fishing ... with her brother.

For the first problem, he suggested to his sisters that they bring a book, since, he said, fishing involved a lot of sitting and waiting. That hadn't been true the last time, but it sounded reasonable to him. When, on the way out, his mother asked him what he would do for poles, he said "I borrowed one from Luthor last time."

"Well, Luthor won't have two more, no doubt," she said. She got her pocketbook and pulled out a ten dollar bill. "Stop by the store and get three," she said, handing him the money. "If there's any left, get yourselves a treat." The teens left grinning.

"Ten dollars would buy a lot of fish," commented Harvey, dryly.

"Our children will be gone for hours, you old goat," she said, standing regally and cupping her breasts wantonly. "Would you rather we had to spend it on a hotel room?" There had been a time or two in the past when Marian needed some of her 'special' loving, and they had had to manufacture a reason to be gone for a few hours. Those few hours had been spent in the anonymity of a hotel room, where their children couldn't hear them.

"I reckon not, at that," said Harvey, grinning as he stood up.

"Why do you think I sent them off in the first place?" said his wife, unbuttoning her dress right in the kitchen. "If we like fish enough, we can get a few hours every week."

"I purely love fish," said Harvey, beginning to pant. Seeing her like this, in the kitchen of all places, had his heart racing.

"You're joshing me!" squealed Hilda Mae when she found out where they were going, and why. "But, last week, you came back with fish!"

"I said Luthor gave me some," said Nathan, relieved that she wasn't shouting at him in anger. "Actually, it was Miss Flossie. She took me fishing so I'd have some."

"Miss Flossie took you out into the woods by yourselves?" said Hilda Mae, squealing again.

"Er ... uh ... Johnnie Sue and Luthor and Jesse were there fishing too," he said.

"Oh," said Hilda Mae, relaxing. "Why didn't you say so?"

"I did! Just now," he said, sounding hurt. "Anyway, what if she did take me fishing. It's just fishing."

"I know that," snapped Hilda Mae. "Is that all we're going to do today? Just fish?"

"What are you yelling at me for?" he whined.

"I'm not sure I want to share you with some other woman," said Hilda Mae.

"Hilda Mae!" It was Bernadette that squealed this time.

"Well?" Hilda Mae tossed her head. "He's horny, and she's a woman. Look what happened to us!"

This was striking perilously close to feelings that neither Nathan OR Bernadette wanted to disclose. They were only lucky that Hilda Mae didn't notice that neither of them raised the racial objection.

"She's a real woman," scoffed Nathan nervously. "She'd never do that to a boy like me. And she's our teacher. She just taught me to fish, that's all."

Hilda Mae stopped in her tracks. "What if she wants to go with us today? I'm so horny I could suck a tree branch."

"Hilda Mae Wilson, you slut!" screeched Bernadette.

Hilda Mae wasn't fazed. "If I know you, I'll never get to suck Nathan's. You always hog it. And if Miss Flossie goes with us, you won't get to suck it either! How's about them apples?"

Nathan was looking around anxiously. No one was around, but Hildy was getting awfully loud. "You'll get your chance, I promise!" he said urgently.

"I'd better!" she snorted.

They stopped at the store first. In addition to poles, line and bobbers, they got six Hershey bars to go in the picnic basket, along with the sandwiches and other things their mother had packed for them. She had suggested that they should bring back a big batch of fish, and that it might cause them to run into supper time, so she had packed extra food, "Just in case," she said. They were about to walk out when Nathan remembered that he'd had to carry his fish home in the sack, because Flossie kept her stringer. They were out of money, but the storekeeper gave them a length of cord and told Nathan to tie it to a stick that could be inserted through the gills of the fish they caught. He gave them another length of cord to tie the poles to the luggage carrier on the back of Nathan's bike.

Then Nathan led them to Flossie's house. He forgot to warn them about the appearance of the place. When they saw it they didn't believe, at first, that he was telling the truth.

Flossie was pleasantly surprised to see the girls. A little of the pleasantness was because she, too, had been having turbid dreams, more than one which involved Nathan, and left her feeling troubled and ... horny. She had never had to worry about being alone with a man before, because the things that were on her mind now ... weren't, back then. At least not as vividly as she now pictured them. So, having the girls there made her feel a little better. It would also allay any suspicions of anyone who saw them arrive. People might take notice of a tall white boy visiting a small black woman's house ... repeatedly ... but a group of kids ... at the teacher's house ... that was different.

Still, something inside her was sad too. She liked being with this boy, and talking about anything and everything, or nothing at all. And, the thing they had seen the younger kids doing ... that shared intimacy of knowing something very secret ... had brought them closer together than either of them knew at that point. She felt some of that on an unconscious level.

The girls weren't interested in painting, though, and sat reading through Flossie's private collection of books. Soon they were ignoring the painters.

They painted for two hours, talking softly about this and that, mechanically dipping brushes into a can of paint and swabbing it carefully on the wall, side by side. In the process, Nathan told her that his sister's knew about who had taken him fishing the week before. When she looked at him intently, with one raised eyebrow, he shook his head. She felt a strange comfort that ... the other ... was still their secret.

The third problem, that of Flossie having to be with them, turned out not to be a problem at all. She said she had other things to do this day, and gave them simple instructions on how to find the spot on Foster's creek where they had been before. It was only a quarter mile downstream from a bridge that crossed the creek, and they could follow the road outside her house the mile that it was to the bridge.

"I only took you through the woods because that's a little shorter," said Flossie. "There may be some others there fishing too," she reminded Nathan. "You might want to call out when you get near. If there's anybody there, they can help guide you on in."

Nathan just grinned at her.

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