Delivering Virtue Page 4

  In the time it took Boob to pull his boat across the river, unload, and then return to dock for another round, Delight, having streamlined her own homegrown trade, could transport a man from the edge of animal lust to that far shore of a pleasurable and spasmodic offloading of his virile burden. And all for a dollar. At such a bargain, even if he had no real need of riding Boob’s ferryboat, how could a man pass up a stop at Delight’s?

  I, for one, never could.

  Now, even under the questionable circumstances, I felt a growing need to pay a visit. It only got worse the closer we drew to the landing, until at last we arrived.

  *****

  “We will only be stopping here for a respite,” I told Virtue. “Then we will be on our way.”

  I will not say that her expression was censorious, as that may only have been a coloring from my own conscience, but she did not seem for one instant to buy my subterfuge. As I have said, little Virtue was astute. Her steady gaze gave me to know she was not one to be hoodwinked by a simpleton like myself.

  “Didier!”

  Delight stepped from her house and strode forward, twirling a parasol over her shoulder as if it were an enormous rose. It was good to see her. I felt an anticipatory trembling in my most sequestered regions, and a fondness in my heart. For Delight Tuttles was many things to me, but she was second of all a friend.

  Boob was down at the shore with his barge, lashing a wagon’s wheels to the deck, and securing a pair of oxen for the next crossing. Upon hearing his wife’s enthusiastic warble, he stood up.

  “Look, Avin. It’s our dear friend, Mister Rain.”

  I tipped my hat to Tuttles, and, in taciturn fashion, he returned the gesture before squatting down and continuing with his task. He said nothing. Tuttles was a man of limited verbosity.

  Carefully, so as not to bump Virtue on the saddle horn, I climbed down off of Brownie. When Delight came near, her mouth dropped open. “Why!” she gasped. She glanced at me, then the goat, then, reaching out, she laid her fingers on Virtue’s tummy, and laughed. “Why, Didier! I didn’t even know you were expecting!”

  “Hardy-har,” I sighed. “It is to laugh.”

  “What on earth?”

  “A delivery,” I said. “And one I fear, in my current condition, I am unable to explain sufficiently without a stammer.”

  She flashed me a whore’s knowing smile, and turned to Boob. “Avin, Darling,” she called. “Mister Rain has offered to give me another quick lesson in Latin. Do you need me to do anything else for a while?”

  This ruse was one Delight and I had devised over the course of our relationship, a clever amusement between us. And Tuttles, with his pride out-wresting his brainpower, considered these so called Latin lessons yet another gift of highbrowed culture to bestow upon his lovely wife. He even went so far as to pay me a dollar for my services, which I, in turn, would slip to Delight before riding away into the happy sunset.

  Boob raised a calloused hand, waving his approval at our scholastic endeavors. A freight man waiting on the barge behind him was rigorously stroking the neck of an ox and wearing a grin as wide and stupid as his face was able to contain. He seemed ready to burst with his want to spoil our secret joke by giving away the punch line. I suppose that should have put me on my guard, but then I was not thinking only with my brain.

  Delight dropped her pink sunshade to the ground and relieved me of Virtue while I tied the horses and the goat.

  “She surely is a seraph,” said Delight. Her come-hither smile melted to one more wistful and strange. She held Virtue pressed to her heart. “I never could have one myself, you know.” Delight peered at me with sorrowful eyes and patted her own midriff. “Barren,” she whispered sadly.

  This put me off a bit, I must confess, as my mind was not on Delight’s deficiencies, but rather her soft-cornered bounties. I did not know how to respond. She appeared to be truly remorseful, so I endeavored to readjust my attitude accordingly. “Oh, Delight,” I said. “I am sorry. I was ignorant of your misfortune.”

  Delight rocked Virtue in her arms, her neck bending in that awkward sideways-style one so often sees in old paintings of the Madonna and Child.

  “However,” I said, as consolation, “at least that makes it easier for you to ply your trade.”

  Delight stared at me, her green eyes blinking vacuously.

  “I mean, not having to worry about the consequences.” I shifted from one foot to the other. “I simply mean, not having always to be concerned about begetting a child, especially one that does not look like Boob’s.” I swallowed. “I mean Avin’s.”

  She nodded slowly, as if she were hearing my minced and burbling words from under three feet of water, and I felt it necessary to change the subject before it got any more personal and unwieldy.

  Tuttles was just leaving the shore, heaving on a cable, and pulling his well-loaded ferryboat out into the river. The entire craft creaked under the strain of its burden. A man and woman sat with their wagon and a pair of sway-backed mules, awaiting the ferry’s return so that they might take their turn to cross to the other side. The boy accompanying them was languidly tossing green apples into the water. An old man with a skinny white dog sat in the shade of the apple tree, sucking on a pipe. A sweet and sulfurous suggestion of smoke could be detected on the sallow air.

  I turned to Delight. “Latin?” I suggested.

  Delight handed me her parasol and cuddled Virtue. She forced a smile, as if she were switching masks. But alas, although she led me willingly into her domicile, I could not help but sense that our stolen adjournment into the pleasurable throes of transitory amorousness had been slightly compromised by this passing conversation on the subject of her fruitless womb.

  THE VISITOR’S ROOM, AS it was so aptly called, smelled, predictably, of mannish exudate and bottled lilacs. A warren of a variety of which I was all too familiar. Such quarters, be they kept in hotels or houses or tents or caves or barns, all issue forth the same telltale redolence belying their bawdy purpose. I can only surmise that Avin Tuttles had never visited such a room, as a regular to these chambers could mistake it for nothing else. That he unwittingly sheltered such a boudoir under his own roof beam was proof enough that Tuttles was an innocent, and a passing visitor almost felt a big brotherly affection for him and his naïveté.

  I have often contemplated my own ignorance of the corresponding fragrance permeating the connubial quarters occupied solely by a man and his faithful, tender wife. Surely such a monogamous idyll is perfumed with the breath of paradise.

  I imagine the patter of a small rain on the roof.

  I imagine a cool, damp breeze wafting through the curtains of the western window.

  But then paradise is such a well-hidden part of this world in which we reside, and so I have come to conclude that such couches of bliss are only for fairytales and lonely midnight dreams.

  Thus the need for consolatory accommodations.

  Delight was more interested in Virtue than in me. A fact for which I struggled not to begrudge her. But the Platte was running low, and Boob would be returning soon, so our time was fast ticking away. Business, after all, was business.

  “May I help you out of that dress?”

  “Oh,” said Delight, and she glanced back at me from where she was mooning over Virtue on the foot of the bed. “Sure you can.”

  I stepped behind her, unlatching the clasp at her neck, and peeled the dress from her creamy shoulders. My breath left me at first view of her alabaster flesh.

  She slipped the dress off the rest of the way and let it drop to the floor, stepping out of it and then hooking it expertly with a toe and kicking it to the side while I tended to the subject of my own disrobing. Delight then removed her lace undergarments, without ever turning away from Virtue the whole time.

  I was soon naked myself, except for my socks, my member already at attention and poised for its spelunkulatory adventures.

  Delight bent with her back to me – a pure delight t
o behold. “Let there be delight,” I murmured. But I must say, at that particular moment, I felt more like I was viewing a marble statue in a museum than an actual woman I was about to embrace. She was only a few feet across the floor, but she seemed much farther away, in another world and time entirely, playing pata-cake with little Virtue.

  As a gentle reminder that she had company to attend to, I cleared my throat.

  Delight spun around with a look of glee flushing her face, and I stepped one step forward, anticipating our encounter. But then she surprised me by saying, “I think the little doll needs a fresh diaper.”

  “Truly?”

  “I’ll just change it quick.”

  I shrugged. “Can it not wait?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “But,” I whined, “I will have to don my clothes and go get her kit from the horses – an enterprise most consumptive of our valuable and fleeting time.”

  Delight brightened. “Don’t worry,” she said. “I have just what we need in my other room. You look after the child while I go and get it. I’ll be back in a snap. We don’t want the little thing to be uncomfortable.”

  Uncomfortable was the fulcrum word here. I was. Delight swept out of the room, leaving Virtue on the bed, and me in my condition of pending resolution. I suppose it would have been a funny picture to see. I felt a sudden embarrassment as Virtue gazed upon me in my undress. My hands involuntarily moved to cover myself.

  “Oh, Virtue,” I said. “Will we never cease to find ourselves in these comic charades?”

  She giggled at my question, and then kicked her legs. I had to laugh, too.

  The little girl was stretching out fast, growing like a flower who was getting plenty of water and sunshine. I had not noticed her yellow hair when we first met, but already it was growing long and lovely and I thought to myself that I should take up the habit of combing it at end of day so that it would not get tangled. A paternal thought which greatly surprised me. I found myself for the first time in my life wondering about the rate of a child’s growth pattern. Fawns are born and can walk all in the same day. Ducklings swim as soon as they break out of the egg. I knew humans generally took a little more time to mature. They are born, one might say, underdone. But Virtue seemed to be developing extra quickly, and I gave myself credit for taking such good care and keeping her well fed from the no-name goat’s rich supply of nourishing milk.

  “You are a natural, Rain,” I muttered to myself. “A born guardian and deliverer.”

  “What?” Delight came back into the room.

  “Oh,” I said. “Virtue and I were just discussing the bewildering dilemma of Oedipus.”

  “Virtue? Is that her name?”

  “Yes,” I said. “It is.”

  This pleased Delight enormously as she set about changing the little girl’s diaper. “You just sit down and rest yourself,” she told me. “This won’t take long.”

  Inelegantly, I sat in the room’s only chair. It was brushed velvet and felt peculiar to my backside, as if I were making contact with the plush fur of some strange breed of exotic beast. I leaned back, waiting my turn for Delight’s attentions. But although I sat, my phallus, blessed as it was with a mind of its own, preferred to remain standing.

  “Little Virtue,” cooed Delight. “Good to meet you, darling. I’m Dee. I’m going to be your friend.”

  As I waited, I marveled at the slim difference between the parlance used by a mother to sooth a baby as compared to the same used by a whore to stimulate a customer. To my mind, at that moment at least, there really seemed no difference at all. This epiphany made me at once discomfited and further excited. I felt like a boy lost somewhere in the wilderness limbo between babyhood and manhood. But as yet, that wilderness is where I would remain, as Delight was occupied with caring for Virtue, and singing her a lullaby.

  Little birdy up so high,

  What keeps you up there in the sky?

  Little birdy on the ground,

  Where is blue heaven to be found?

  As she sang, a weird tremor crept through my being, and I recalled my own mother singing that selfsame cradlesong to me when I was very small. I had not thought of that for many years, and it was very like finding an old dream hidden away in the dusty attic of the brain. Petit Oiseau, she sang, for she was French, and knew very little English. In the next instant, a sadness leapt up and gripped my heart – a confusing mix of nostalgia and regret. I peered down at the raindrop tattooed on my chest. I found myself wondering if my mother was still alive, and if so, would I ever see her again before I left this earthly life? It was a most mystifying moment. And one that might have been prolonged, and plunged me ever deeper into melancholic introspection, had it not been for the primal yawp that right then ushered forth from the river’s shore.

  “Dheeeee!”

  Vaguely, although it was greatly twisted with anguish and fury, I recognized the booming and foreboding voice of none other than Boob Tuttles.

  MY ERECTION WILTED IN a wink and plopped over onto my belly like a dead daisy.

  Instantaneous panic, it turns out, has that effect.

  I jumped up and lurched to the window, parting the curtain with a thumb so that I might peek out clandestinely and understand what was the trouble.

  I did not like what I saw.

  The barge was at the near bank of the river, cocked sideways and abandoned, unmoored. A single terrified ox was tugging fiercely at the tether securing it to a post on the deck. The other ox was just climbing out onto the far shore; even with the distance the animal displayed an attitude of distress that was unambiguous. The wagon that had been strapped to the barge was now cut loose and floating downstream in the middle of the river, surrounded by the bobbing flotsam of a dozen crates and barrels. Atop that sinking ship was the freight man, cowering and holding on for his life as he swept away into the torrents of his uncertain fate.

  “Damn!” I said.

  It did not take much to comprehend that the bastard had told all to Tuttles. I should have suspected it of him from the start. The lout! He just could not keep his yap shut. And Tuttles, with what must have been a revelation burdened with the sum of all of Delight’s suspicious activities over the years, reacted in pure animal fashion.

  This, he must have understood, with no small measure of shame, is why they call me Boob!

  And now the man was stalking straight toward the house, fists swinging at his sides, rage boiling over inside of him like a pan of milk left a smidge too long on the flame.

  “Dheeeeee!”

  What a horrible voice!

  And what a beast of a man!

  A life of pulling a weighted ferry back and forth across the river had developed Tuttles to a state of muscular abnormality. He looked to be carved from a hickory stump. No one – especially gunless – stood a chance in a fight with the ferryman.

  I spun back to the room, scrambling for a suitable action. Delight had scooped Virtue up into her arms, and was squeezing the little girl to her breast. This seemed inappropriate considering the circumstances. The woman’s dress and underthings were strewn asunder. I picked up a shoe and handed it to her.

  “Get your clothes on!”

  But she only held tighter to the little girl, as if she felt somehow her salvation depended upon it.

  Virtue remained unnervingly calm.

  I instinctively pulled on both of my boots, but realized, upon peering down at each of my bare knees, that my trousers would then have to go on over my head. Not possible!

  The old man’s white dog was barking in the distance.

  The distressed ox was bucking and lowing on the barge.

  Tuttles was close now; I could feel his stomping steps through the floorboards as he drew up to the front door.

  I glimpsed a premonition of the most embarrassing case of righteous manslaughter ever to splash the front covers of the St. Louis newspapers, one in which a naked trespasser – myself – is throttled by an enraged cuckold in a room wit
h a baby, a whore, and a grimy diaper. It would be an inglorious end. But then, searching frantically for escape, I came upon a desperate plan of action. I gathered up my clothes in a bundle, and attempted to pry Virtue from Delight’s hold.

  “Give her to me,” I whispered forcefully. “Virtue and I will hide in the wardrobe.”

  Delight was hesitant. She peered into Virtue’s blue eyes like a mother unwilling to sacrifice her child to some arcane rite. Tears glistened in her own bright green eyes. But then, resolute, she nodded once, and handed over the babe.

  Virtue and I stepped into the closet and had just pulled the door closed behind us when Tuttles fairly exploded into the room.

  “Avin!” said Delight. “What on earth!”

  It was dark in the wardrobe, with only the slightest sliver of light leaking in along the door, but I detected the huffing, infuriated bulk of Tuttles only an arm’s length away. He surveyed the room, seeking me out. I tensed my legs, preparing to spring upon him and pummel him with my fists if he should open the door, but then I realized that I had a child in my arms. Foremost, I must secure Virtue’s safety. Only then could I defend myself. Although I suspected that such a delay in my slim advantage of surprise would most certainly spell my doom. It was a quandary of a most vexing variation.

  But apparently it did not even occur to Tuttles to investigate the wardrobe. I imagine he thought that such a hiding place was just too obvious and silly and unbefitting of even the most lowly excuse for a man to ever be considered, so he stepped across to the window, ripping the curtain from the rod. He seemed to think I had escaped by way of that open portal. Would that I had!

  “Avin!” cried Delight. “Heaven’s sakes!”