Some birds are not meant to be caged, that’s all.
Their feathers are too bright, their songs too sweet and wild. – Stephen King
Her cry sliced through the crisp winter air like a dart through tavern smoke.
Hello, she called.
He had been watching a flight of croaking ravens wreak havoc in a nearby Douglas fir, flocking noisily and at first he didn’t recognize the sound as his own language, but then he turned.
Hell.
Oh.
She was standing up on her porch. I’M WITH STUPID was what it said on her t-shirt which didn’t quite reach her knees. Broad daylight. Holding open the glass storm-door with one hand and a long filtered cigarette in the other hand, a couple of minutes to kill between Oprah and Donahue.
He imagined he could see her nipples hardening with the change in temperature and he wondered what color they were. He liked pink ones the best, like berries ripening. Brown nipples, liked them, too.
That’s some big dog you got there, she said with a sly smile disguising sharp edges in her husky voice, a hook somehow glinting in the noon light. He noticed she was looking at the crotch of his jeans, swelling at the mere sight of her.
He tried to think up some wry reply but all he could think to say was, I bet you tell that to all the guys, and he knew that would sound lame, so he gave her his quick shy laconic cowboy smile, like she’d surprised him.
Which she had.
She resembled Farah Fawcett in one of those made-for-television movies where you don’t know right away if she is the heroic victim or the satanic serial killer. She was slender with big blonde bangs and pert breasts and a slim waist and narrow hips with an overbite and high cheekbones. Pale.
Probable ballbuster, thought Barker.
Her nipples were probably pink.
Is he friendly, she asked.
Would you like to pet him?
Pink.
And blonde all over.
She was sitting on top of him, eyes closed, her head rolled back, trying to will one more orgasm out into the open, working like a hungry hunter after elusive quarry.
He was looking out the window, at a red-breasted sapsucker, a woodpecker, pounding his head into a tasty tree. Unlike most woodpeckers, the sapsucker likes his trees healthy and firm. Pounding pounding pounding. His head pecking and pecking. Peck, peck, peck. Sapsuckers hammer on hollow or metal surfaces to attract a mate or defend their territory against rivals. As a child, Barker had wondered if the pecker could hurt himself with all that pecking. Pecking.
Turns out the bird is especially designed for just such a purpose.
Barker was using the little pecker to keep his own large woody at full staff. Thinking about birds always took his mind off what his body was doing. The mystery of flight.
They shifted positions. He licked the sweat of her back and entered her from behind. Barker had been living here long enough to fret about being mistaken for a redneck. They say you’re not a redneck if you sleep with your sister no more than once or twice.
Hate to be mistook for a redneck. Truth is, he hadn’t slept with anybody since he’d moved to this tiny town in a hollow out back somewheres you’ve never been to. Never seen this woman before.
You married, he asked.
No, she said, rolling to face him, but my husband thinks he is.
Your husband, where is he now.
The mill, he’s crew chief.
Expect him home anytime soon?
When the siren blows, she purred.
When the siren blows, Barker learned, a man has exactly eight minutes to haul his ass out the house and down the road before her husband gets home from the morning shift at the mill.
Her name was Candy and she claimed she’d been sexually abused by her brothers, cousins, uncles, her father and his father, her step-father, the church group youth minister and a couple of U.P.S. deliverymen. At first Barker didn’t believe her. After all, everybody knows most U.P.S. deliverymen are lesbians.
Abuse was hereditary, she said. Same thing happened to my Mom.
Then she should have known to protect you, he told her.
Life don’t work that way. Here it’s normal.
May be usual, routine even, but it surely is not normal. He sucked her left nipple. You could have run away.
Where would I run?
Anywhere.
That’s a laugh. End up waiting tables in some truckstop, selling it to strangers instead of giving it away to relatives.
Sucked her right nipple.
Late morning. Almost lunch time.
The room softly lit by a bright sun shining through dusty curtains. A window cracked open kept the room sufficiently cool for hot sex, yet plenty warm enough for nudity.
Man and woman, they lay atop a plush comforter on a large bed in a small room, smoking an exquisite bowl or two of homegrown and told short stories, some true, about their lives after a few days apart. She didn’t have much to say, never been away, and he, leaving soon, had even less he was willing to share.
So they lie quiet, peaceful. Although Barker was always listening for that lone whistle sound.
They’d given each other long and effective massages. Fondling with a purpose. Grown accustomed to their hands on their lover’s body, yet everything still fresh between them.
Candy initiated the lovemaking.
They’d played around a little after her massage. After massaging his back, she rolled him over, and started kissing and licking his stomach, his thighs, eventually taking his tumescent penis into her mouth.
She acts like this is the first cock she’s ever had in her mouth, like she was born to perform fellatio, like she has crawled out of a desert and his dick is the first water she’s come to.
She likes it.
He could see varied thrushes, called Alaskan Robins, forage among the fallen leaves in her backyard. Looks like a robin with a black bandit’s mask and a black breast band over bright orange. The females are not so vividly colored as the males.
He gently turned her around and over, buried his face in her crotch, so they’re sixty-nineing, until she’s wet and ready and his cock was so hard he felt like Superman. The Man of Steel, sure. Or maybe John Holmes.
Her pussy was trimmed as carefully as a sportscaster’s moustache, shaped like a valentine’s heart.
I get bored watching TV all the time with nothing to do, was her explanation. You can only do so many nails, you know.
They moved face to face, they kissed, his tongue in her mouth, her tongue in his mouth, their lips syrupy with sex juices. He entered her in a single, slow, powerful thrust, like she was a uppity bitch in heat.
He imagined her eyes bugged out, impaled, but she was all smiles and moans. She held him tightly vised, his buttocks handles, she pulled hard, as if trying to bring him all the way through until he was behind her.
He slowly pulled back.
Thrusts.
She pushed.
Moans.
Moan.
Varied thrushes forage mostly on the ground and they are especially fond of fallen apples. Like Adam and Eve.
Thrust.
Push.
In and out.
Faster.
Harder.
Deeper.
These thrushes are songbirds who feel particularly expressive in gloomy weather. What better time to sing? Their call is a single twerp, the song shrill, whistled notes of various high pitches.
Until they both exploded.
He gushed inside her deepness, and they played an unspoken game, to see who can yell the loudest.
She yelled the loudest, she wins. Him silent. He lay atop her, and they both felt his dick shrink, fade away, spent.
She said, I love you more than anybody ever, you are one hell of a man, how could I ever exist without you, you are a giant among lovers, nobody has ever been this magnificent to me, and….
Shhh, he quieted her. I like you, too.
After a brief dozing nap, they hopped into a hot shower together giggling and soaped breasts and butts until slick suds bubbled and the giggling stopped.
Then they got back into bed, this time in between crisp, clean sheets, and, again, they fucked their brains out, like two high school kids, the football captain and the head cheerleader, like two youngsters still exploring foreign territory.
Like sex was brand new and this moment together was forever.
And just this once they did not hear the siren blow.