Don’t think about it, he cut off the thought. Be a man. Do the right thing. Take care of your wife, because you know goddamn well if it was you who was sick, she’d be bending over backwards to take care of you.
That was about all it took.
He was about to take the turnoff, then, when he saw the flashing red and blue lights up in Cotter’s Field...
........
Travis lay back in bed, sighin’ yet wide-eyed. Moonlight hung in the winder, and throwed light like purdy ribbons on the wood floor, and there were a ruckus of crickets and peepers.
Headers, he thought.
Yessir, he’d had hisself a mighty fine header tonight.
Grandpap had showed him how ta do it. A’corse, he’d hadda snatch hisself a splittail first, but that were easy. “Make shore it’s from a family who done us wrong,” Grandpap had instructed from his wheelchair.
Well, in the past, back when his maw and daddy was still livin’. it weren’t just the Caudills who’d have ‘em a bad time, jackin’ their sheep an’ all. One time, he remembered, a coupla Reid’s dirty rube kids’d plucked all the apples offa one of Daddy’s Golden Delcious trees, all ‘cos a few branches had growed over the fence and were hangin’ over the Reid line. Daddy’d about had a fit. But Travis remembert that well, and when he were drivin’ the pickup ‘round, lookin’ fer a splittail ta snatch, thar she was. He recalled fairly well, Iree Reid was her name, and though she’d been a might younger last time Travis eyed her, there weren’t no foolin’ him now, not with that shiny blonde hair or them big milkers stickin’ out the front of her peached-colored halter. She were lopin’ barefoot down the Old Governor’s Bridge Road, and a’corse, bein’ the gentleman he was, Travis pulled over an’ offered her a ride home.
“Why’s, you’re Travis Clyde Tuckton, ain;t ya!” she drawled her verbal celebration once she slid her purdy cut-offed jeaned backside inta the truck. “Why’s I remember ya from way back when.” Her purdy freckly face blushed a bit. “Don’t mind tellin’ ya now, I kinda had a fixin’ for ya.”
“Well I gots ta be honest, Iree,” Travis admitted, “Fore I got my butt throwed inta the county poky, I hadda mighty fixin’ on you too!”
“Ya did!”
Travis slammed his big knuckly fist fight smack-dab inta her forehead, and her little lights went right out. then, pickup still rumblin’, he tied her up but good, gagged her, and stuffed her curvy skinny body down inta the footwell. Next thing he knowed, he was carryin’ her in like a sack of farm feed inta Grandpap’s work room, and took ta settin’ her down on the big cherrywood table Grandpap made boots on.
“One of them dirt-eatin’ blondie Reids!” Grandpap exalted. “Good job, Travis! Now tie her down on the table and git them silly, whory clothes off her.”
Travis saw and didn’t even have ta be tolt, ‘cos there was eye-hooks screwed inta each corner’a the table. Little Iree was still out fer the count, so Travis cut her ropes and tied her right back down to the table, on her back, and her head hangin’ over the table edge.
“What I do next, Grandpap?”
Grandpap tittered, stroked his whiskers, and wheeled right up ta the table. In one crabbed hand, though, he gripped the power drill, which were fitted with a 3-inch hole saw.
“Travis, it’s sorta like anything, anything takes practice, ya know. Like Thomas down the roadside bar? that ol’ coot kin play the washboard just as pretty as you please, and Conga Powers, boy, he kin git ta pickin’ the banja like nobody’s business. Know why, son?”
The calculative powerhouse that was Travis’ mind ticked right away. “Practice?” he guessed.
“S’right, boy. Practice. And as far as cuttin’ open a splittail’s coconut goes, I gots a lotta practice, I kin tell ya. Me an’ yer daddy, see — and God rest his soul — we’se got ta be the best head-humpers from here ta New Orleens.”
And with that fine testimony Grandpap squeezed the drill’s trigger, paused, then applied it to the top of Iree Reid’s purdy blond head.
Made quite a racket, it did, an’ travis’ nose twitched at the smell’a burnin’ hair’n bone, but it weren’t another few more seconds ‘fore Grandpap set down the drill.
“Yessir, a good ‘un,” he declared, and wheeled right up, inspectin’ his job. “See that, Travis? What I done, see, is I cut me a perfect hole in the top’a her noggin. See?”
Travis leaned over, squinting. “Yeah, Grandpap. I see.” And he also seed the perfect circle’a bone still wedged in the hole-saw. “So what’s now?”
“Just ya watch.”
Travis, curious as he were, just clammed up and watched Grandpap, very adroitly now, push Iree’s blonde hair back, to show the fresh-cut hole more clear. Blood was drippin’ a little onta the floor.
Then Grandpap picked up a knife.
“What’cha — what’cha gonna do with that, Grandpap?”
Watch, boy. Gotta make a slit, fer yer pecker.”
Later it would occur to Travis that this made sense. The knife was just yer typical steak knife, ‘bout eight inches long an’ one inch wide, and Grandpap, with the same surprise expertise, stuck that baby right inta that hole in Iree’s skull, slittin’ hisself a nice li’l slot. But, boy, once that knife were retracted, out gushed the blood mixed with somethin’ that looked watery — CSF or cerebral spinal fluid, but a big dumb animal like Travis wouldn’t know nothin’ ‘bout that - and it was then that Travis seed just how the floor at the base of the work table got ta be so rotted. All that blood over the years, pumpin’ outa gals’ heads, and the stuff just lay there, turned the wood soft, an’ went ta rot.
“Get’cher bone up, boy,” Grandpap said, wheeling back to watch and unfastening his trousers hisself. “Get ‘er up and stick it in. Have yerself yer first head-humpin’.”
Travis didn't knowed quite what he thought about this at first. Fuckin' a gal's brain? He dropped trow and jacked hisself a tad, thinkin' 'bout some of the honeys he seed in the girlie mags in the joint. An' once his dog was up an' barkin' he stepped up to Iree's motionless head at the edge of the table and paused.
"Come on, boy. What's wrong witch' ya? Ya got yerself a header here, boy. Better'n any pussy ya ever stuck yer bone in."
The implication was clear, a'corse: Travis were meant to put his hard dick inta Iree Reid's head an' hump it. Relucterant at first, he did so, but it weren't long 'fore he got the feelin's.
"Aw. shee-it, Grandpap," his throat gusted. "This is mighty fine, mighty fine, indeedy."
Travis held her dead head, humpin' it, his dog-stiff plumbin' in an out Iree Reid's still-warm brain. At first he thought it might be like jackin', in that he'd have ta think 'bout the girlie mags, and the gals he poled 'fore he went ta the joint, or some of the butts he slammed whiles he was in stir. No, Travis weren't queer, but when ya pulled 11 years in the county slam, ya made considerations. Ever so often, Travis'd get ta thinkin' and suddenly he'd be hornier'n a field dog. So he'd find hisself one of the bitches (Bitches, fer those'a ya that don't know, were what skinny boys was called in the slam, and they was mostly always ready, willin', an able ta spread their cheeks fer a pack of smokes or a li'l protection. And anyways, Travis helped hisself many a time, not that he were queer, mind ya, as has already been preevcrissly stated. He'd just think about Kari Ann Wells' slick hot box whiles he's was doin' it, er some other gal he dicked was back when, an' he'd come just dandy.) But there weren't no need fer this now. I'se havin' me a header! I'se humpin' a gal's brain, he thought. An' it feels GOOD...
"Hump that head, boy. Hump it!" Grandpap goaded on from his wheelchair. "Give her brains a good squirt of yer jizz!"