He touched the, warm roundness of her arm where it rested upon the rolled-down window. “Thank you Dee. I don’t think I’ll need your testimony, but it’s a nice gesture, and I’m grateful.”
Tears leaped into her hazel eyes, and she said, “I-I mean it Dallas: If you and I-if I hadn’t screwed it all up-oh!” And, she fled toward the kitchen, her gloriously modeled ass jouncing with every step.
He drove out of that parking lot and halfway across town to a hamburger stand where the waitress didn’t know who he was, and didn’t care.
The next day, the last day before he could split to the woods, was hectic. The lads were after him to meet them, and Kathy Cohn’s eyes were the most reproachful of all. After class, she hung back taking a chance on being found out, her expression telling him that she obviously needed to talk with him. She covered her real motives by pretending to be interested in a book she held out to him across the desk.
Smiling coyly, she said in a whisper, “You fink!”
She was so damned cute, her purple eyes direct, her lips soft and appealing. He stared at her damp, tender lips and remembered how they had felt wrapped around his stiff cock, recalled how she had worked her mouth up and down on the head of his prick and swallowed his semen when it erupted.
He said, “Kathy-I have to get my head straight.”
“You’re thinking about quitting,” she said. “Don’t be so fucking noble. Because even if you do cop out, the kids aren’t about to stand for that. They might burn down the school, and I mean literally. Maybe not so much because of you personally, but because they don’t like to see that kind of heavy pressure applied to anybody.”
“I don’t know,” he said. “If I do quit, it will be because I’m not afraid of the bastards, but for you guys-and all the kids that will come after you here.
How the hell can you learn anything about literature if the school is going to cut the guts out of the English program?”
Placing her small forefinger on the open book, Kathy, nodded as if he was dispensing pearls of great wisdom, but she murmured, “How the hell can we let them do this? And listen-my daddy fired the detective, but he’s trailing you himself; he thinks he can do a better job.”
“He’ll have to backpack then,” Dallas said. “I’ll see you when you get back Kathy.”
Relenting, she smiled at him and said, “That may be sooner than you think.”
He watched her go; his eyes falling to the sexy wiggle of her small, trim ass and the fluid movement of her legs. She exaggerated soles and high heels the girls were wearing accentuated the symmetry of their legs he thought He would miss that kid, the fiery passions that boiled unchecked through that sleek and practiced body.
Would she be screwing the other guys on the class picnic? Probably; Miss Enid Snow, chaperone with an “e” was a quiet lush. The kids had chosen her because she would sit somewhere and sneak shots of bourbon until she fell asleep. If she woke up, she’d flutter and say my, my, weren’t the days getting soporific.
She would then trot o the ladies room and get smashed all over again.
So the kids could slip around in the woods and ball, have a regular Roman orgy out of doors. Dallas frowned as he gathered papers on his desk; or was that the Greeks, who went m big for screwing in the bushes?
In the parking lot coach Roger Parnell was just climbing into his station wagon, and his quick glance at Dallas carried pure, virulent poison. Farther down the line, Selena Johnstone was backing out her Datsun. Enid Snow didn’t have a car, she shared gas with the math teacher Mr. Kingston hadn’t come down yet; he liked to leave the impression that he stayed longer in his office each day because he had work to finish.
Dallas had already locked up the house, and the camp gear was stuffed into the bug. All he had to do was change clothes, but he had jeans, a rough shirt in the car, with boots and an outdoors jacket. He’d put them on when be got to where he was going.
He drove up the coast highway, looking out once when he passed the spot where the four men had tried to clobber him, turning on music as the, road began to climb. He was into the mountains soon, the VW purring along as if it was also happy to get out of town for awhile.
At the turnoff he had in mind, Dallas nosed the car in and parked it a hundred yards or so off the road. He didn’t like to get too far from the sea, as he’d told Kathy, and here the climb was steep. He wouldn’t be bothered by other campers. When he got to the top of the wooded grade, he was sweating and wishing be hadn’t brought so many rations.
That night, he didn’t pitch the tent, but snugged into his sleeping bag and watched the stars until he fell asleep.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Surf fishing was lousy, but the ocean air cleared his head and made him ravenous. Climbing the slope wasn’t nearly as bad this time, and when he got to his campsite, he stopped short, listening.
There was noise beyond, over where loggers had left a clearing, and it was too much noise to be caused by one or two people. The logging road, he thought, the one that can around behind the mountain. Some dumdum and his party had come over in four-wheel drive vehicle, and now they were busy ruining the hell out of his day.
Dallas popped open a can of beans and set them on the camp stove, trying to think where he could split to, some other idyllic spot where he wouldn’t be hassled by people.
“That smells good,” she said from behind him, “but my egg salad sandwiches are better.”
He whirled. “Son of a bitch!”
“Wrong gender darling.” Eyes twinkling, Kathy Collins skipped away from him.
“We looked all over the mountain before we found your stuff. You said you’d be close to the ocean, and you said a national forest, and you wouldn’t come to the picnic and so the picnic came to you”
He could only stare; Kathy said, “Too bad you slept alone last night, The fresh air is doing wonders for the kids, they re planning quite an orgy and dear, weird Miss Snow has already zonked.”
“Kathy…”
“I’d give you egg salad if I can have some beans,” she said, and settled in beside him. Hell, he was glad to see her, as always. He was damned glad to see her, and appreciated the sensuous pressure of her thigh, the impudent provocation of her eyes Little Kathy Collins was a whole lot of female.
They ate, and he made hobo coffee, which she made a face at. They sat listening to the horseplay in the clearing just a few yards off, and held hands. He felt no older than sixteen, no older than this superb little woman because he was so at peace and so young, he didn’t turn his head when the brush snapped behind him.
“You sneaky bastard, the rough voice said.
“You rotten, child molesting son of a bitch.”
Dallas spun around, coming to his knees and staring. Kathy said in a squeak, “D-daddy!”
And Craig Collins said, “I’m going to kill you, you dirty bastard.”
Kathy screamed, and the impact of the sound probably saved Dallas’s life. Just as the rifle went off, he threw himself to one side and rolled. The coffee, pot went clang in the echo of the shot and jumped crazily from the folding stove.
“No!” Kathy shrieked. “No-no-NO!”
Collins fired again, but high. Rolling in the brush, Dallas heard the bullet slap a tree trunk.
“Dallas-Dallas!”
He came up groggy, uncertain of direction, but combat reflexes had put a tree between him and the man who was trying to shoot him. He saw Kathy clawing at her father, saw the big man sweep her aside effortlessly.
Then Dallas saw something else. He watched the two kids slip out of the brush like the polished athletes they were, and Collins didn’t know they were there until too late. Joey hit him low and Eric hit him high, Craig Collins grunted in shock and the rifle flew out of his hand into the bushes when he went down hard.