The principal said, “Then I must ask for your resignation.”
“No way,” Dallas said strongly, surprising himself a little. “If you want me out of here, you’ll have to fire me-so I can take you to court.”
Blinking through his glasses, Kingston said primly: “You would stay where you’re obviously not wanted?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Dallas said. “I guess a few people want me.”
Like a sixteen year old chick with the most fabulous cunt I ever got into, he thought; like this red haired little princess who gave me a blow job last night that melted my backbone so she could draw it out through the head of my prick.
Kathy Collins wants me, if nobody else does.
“You’re making this very difficult,” Kingston complained.
“I mean to make it difficult,” Dallas said. “Will that be all for now, Mr.
Kingston?”
“I suppose so,” the principal said. “But you’re going to find, that I can also be stubborn, Bradburn. I suggest you catch up on all your personal business, because I imagine that you will be very busy from now on-in your off time, that is. There are many little jobs that need doing around a school of this size.”
Dallas nodded. “Of course. But just remember that you have to keep me out of the public eye. The community may not like seeing a teacher with hair as long as his students.”
He heard a grunt behind him as he left the office, and the squeaking of the tall, chair as Kingston rocked to and fro in its leathered protection. Down the hall Dallas went, nodding to the football players heading for the gym, saying hi to kids that had never talked to him before.
Word got around school swiftly; everyone who was at all interested would soon know about his trip to Kingston’s office, and the reason why. The kids would back him-but how far? And was that what he really wanted, their approval, their identification? Maybe he was feeling old, and was somehow clutching at the young to keep himself n the mainstream of life instead of stagnating in its backwaters.
When he went downstairs and crossed the parking lot to his bug, she was sitting in the car next to it. “Hi, teach.”
Dallas glanced around guiltily “Kathy-it’s not smart to be seen like this, right out in the open.”
Her purple eyes smiled up at him, across at him as he ducked down into his VW, and she said, “Man, man-you look good enough to eat. To eat again, that is.
Wow! What a flue night that was, darling.”
“Kathy,” he said, more softly, “Kathy…”
“Did old Kingston give you a bad time? Are you going to cut all that gorgeous hair and shave your cute mustache?”
“Answering your questions in order,” Dallas said, “yes, no and hell no.”
“Good for you,” she grinned. “I told the kids you wouldn’t back down. I’m waiting here for Marty Brooke. This is his car; you know Marty.”
Dallas also knew an unreasoning stab of jealousy. Marty Brooke was a senior, a long and lanky kid who drew girls like freaks to a rock concert. But of course, Kathy hadn’t been a cherry when he got into her; she had been at a party that was turning into an orgy when they left together. And probably, if she had been a virgin, he’d never gotten the chance to screw her.
“Marty drives me around a lot,” she said then. “This afternoon, he’s taking me to a place on Ivy Street-1128. That’s away out on the edge of town, on a dead-end road, almost. There’s a way out, but not many people know about it.
It’s rented in this phony name, and we all chip in to pay for it. Nothing fancy, but a groovy pad where people can go when they want to swing. We keep it quiet there, even if it is a long way from any other houses, and we usually drive in the sneaky way, from the back and across the field. Remember the number, darling-1128. Here comes Marty now.”
Dallas tried again. “Kathy-look, I can’t just go out there…”
“Hi, Mr. Bradburn,” Marty Brooke said.
“Hi,” Dallas answered, and frowned when Kathy said, “See you-soon.”
He watched the clunker drive from the school lot, and caught a flash of red hair as it turned into the street. It was the damndest thing, but he felt his pecker rising, felt it pushing against his pant leg. The kids had a hideout pad, a place to swing. If he was ever caught in it, he’d be sent to jail on however many charges and outraged community could trump up.
Driving away, Dallas found himself weighing the question, as if he really had a choice. Admitting that there had never been, not since he let the girl fondle his cock in the dark of the party, he moved the bug through light traffic and pointed it to the hamburger stand where he, often had dinner.
Parked there, he gave the kid his order and watched her ripe hips swing away, wondering if he’d turned into an ass freak. He had been turned on, that was for sure; his entire body felt more alive than it had been since he left Nam, and that in itself had been a second birth. Only the marriage he’d had with Wanda didn’t get reborn, and it wasn’t that she had been shacking with some other guy while he was dodging Cong bullets.
Dallas could have accepted that; he’d swung with Viet whores whenever he got a chance, any time the outfit pulled back to a rest area. Which wasn’t all that often, he recalled, being a grunt Marine had its drawbacks, the main one seeming to be staying where the shit was flying until you got a sack of it in the head.
“Your goodies, Mr. Bradburn,” the carhop purred, intimating that her own goodies were much, much richer. He didn’t doubt that, and returned her grin, but no more. When she hesitated at the car door, he bit into his sandwich and busied himself until she turned away. He had enough girl troubles.
His ex-wife just didn’t dig hanging around until he completed his master’s on the GI bill. She wanted fun and kicks and whatever else the other guy could give her, so Wanda simply split. She didn’t even leave a note saying she was sorry.
And that, he conceded as he wolfed clown the hamburger and chased it with milk, was enough to give any man a solid kick in the balls. It had taken him damned near six months to reach out and try again with a chick. Mostly, that had been because he was tired of wet dreams and not all that eager to prove he was a stud again.
Besides, there had been the studies-tough, heavy going that he had to wade through in order to get his teaching credentials. His luck, of course, that there had been a plethora of English masters, and no junior college slots open anywhere on this coast. Therefore, the high school job, at a hell of a lot less pay than Dallas had been looking forward to.
But there was Kathy Collins; oh yes-a fringe benefit that far outweighed the affair he had been carrying on, more or less desultorily, with Selena Johnstone, science teacher. The trouble with Selena was that she approached sex with the same clinical outlook as she dissected frogs in her biology class. It made Dallas uneasy, as if his cock was being examined through a microscope, as if some giant scalpel might dart out of the ceiling and whack him off at the balls.
“Come back soon, Mr. Bradburn,” the cute carhop said, and thanked him for the usual tip. He assured her he would, and turned the VW for the far side of town, as he’d always known he would.
He found Ivy Street, a gravel lane with a scattering of small houses along its winding way, and drove slowly past clumps of trees. Number 1128 sat at the very end, off the road.
Turning into the bush-guarded driveway, he passed the front entrance of the secluded house and parked where the bug couldn’t be seen from the road. There was no other car nearby, and by looking around as he climbed from his, he could see the track across the field, the getaway outlet set up by the kids, in case their hideaway pad was discovered. He hoped it was a good exit; he’d hate like hell to slam the bug into a fence or some big, hard tree, should the fuzz spring a raid.