Take your clothes off, she said. For christsakes.
He kicked his shoes off and unbuckled his belt and dropped his pants and underwear, and from outside the house they watched him now, and they could see he had hair too. The one he had was bigger and it was swollen-looking, sticking straight up, and without saying any word at all to her he stretched out on her, lying between her legs while she had her knees up, spread again, adjusting under his weight. He started moving on her at once. They could see his pale ass cheeks rising and falling. Then quicker and then beginning to pound and after a brief time he shouted something wild and unintelligible as if he were in pain, crying some kind of words into her neck and he jerked and shivered and then he stopped, and all the time she lay wordlessly and still, looking at the ceiling with her arms flat at her sides as if she were in some other place and he was not in her life at all.
Get off, she said.
The big boy raised up and looked in her face and rolled from her body and lay on his back on the blanket. In a little while he said, Hey.
She took up her cigarette from the jar lid where she had placed it when he had come in and she puffed on the cigarette but it had gone out. She leaned toward the candle flame and lit it again.
Hey, he said again. Sharlene?
What?
You’re good.
Well, you’re not.
He lifted up onto his elbow on the mattress to look at her. Why is that?
She didn’t look at him. She was lying back again, smoking, looking straight up toward the spot where the candlelight was flickering on the filthy ceiling. Why don’t you get the hell out of here.
What’d I do that was so bad? he said.
Will you just get the hell out of here. She was almost shouting now.
He stood up and put his clothes on, looking down at her all the time. Then he went out of the room.
The first boy came back in, fully dressed. He was wearing a high school jacket now.
The girl looked at him from the mattress.
How was it? he said.
Don’t be ridiculous. You could at least come here and kiss me.
He squatted down and kissed her on the mouth and fondled her breast and put his hand in the hair between her legs.
Quit, she said. Don’t. Let’s get out of here. It’s starting to give me the creeps in here.
From beyond the window the two boys watched the big high school boy leave the room. Then they watched the girl step into her underpants and pull them up and fasten her white brassiere, her elbows pointed out from her body, her hands working behind her back, then she shook the brassiere, and then she stepped into her jeans and pulled a shirt over her head, and lastly she bent and blew out the two candles. Instantly the room went dark and they heard only her footsteps going out across the bare pinewood floor. Outside they slid forward toward the front of the house and hid in the dark against the cold clapboards and watched without a word when the girl and the two big boys came out into the overgrown lot and crossed under the trees and got into the car and then drove away in the dark on Railroad Street, leaving only the red eyes of the taillights diminishing in the faint dust above the road as the car rushed away toward Main Street and downtown.
That son of a bitch, Ike said.
That other one too, Bobby said. What about him.
They stepped out into the ragweed and dry sunflowers and started home.