Best of the Best Lesbian Erotica (5 page)

 

I remembered the time Harry took one of these butter knives to my waist-length hair, blood red in those days courtesy of Lady Clairol, sawing away like a logger I'd seen one time on a trip up Highway 5 past Mt. Shasta into Oregon. Nothing came of it of course, Harry too loaded to make good on his threat. I cut it off myself a couple days later while Harry was cleaning one of his guns, tied it up in a pink ribbon and left it for him on his red plaid pillow with a note that said “To Harry, Love always, Mother.”

 

 

I lit up a Parliament and took a good hard drag. I was getting hot. I took off my orange flower print apron, removed my cotton nightgown and put the apron back on. I lit the oven.

I put the ball of dough, just enough for a single crust, onto a big piece of wax paper and whacked it hard with the old wooden rolling pin. I took another drag of my cigarette and began to push the rolling pin back and forth across the white pulp until it flattened into a near perfect circle. I unloaded the dough onto the metal pie tin I had located miraculously in the far corner of the cupboard under the sink and used my thumb and forefinger to make a pretty-as-a-picture Betty Crocker crust. I even remembered to poke holes in the bottom with a fork so it wouldn't puff up like it did that Thanksgiving when Harry jerked off into the turkey before I stuffed it.

 

 

I dumped the cans of Libby's brand pureed pumpkin and Borden's sweetened condensed milk into the bowl where I'd mixed the dough. Out the screen door I lit another Parliament and stood on the back porch while the hot desert wind blew electric on my naked flesh, making my skin vibrate all over to its touch. I rubbed my bush lightly up against the wiry euphorbia plant next to the steps, pocketing the hand-like branch that snapped off before it hit the ground. I let the heat carry me to the metal storage shed Harry had won from old man Martin in a crap game. The steamy air continued licking me as I bent to search for an egg from the prize chicken that had come with the shed.

 

 

Back in the house, I cracked the shell sharp against the porcelain and dropped the still warm insides into the bowl. Legs spread, I inserted the handle of the rolling pin up my cunt and worked it as far up as it would go. Then I fucked myself, letting my cum drip from between my legs into the bowl of filling. I stirred the mixture with my fingers, dumped it into the crust and shoved the pie in the oven.

The heat was nearly unbearable. But I like it that way. I lit another Parliament and turned the oven up.

 

 

I went back outside where there was nothing. I scanned the sky for turkey vultures but those old buzzards had gone to find death elsewhere. I could imagine the sequoias across the barren space past the trailer at the edge of the world. Pumpkins wouldn't grow here, they need too much love. Harry had bought the seed packet for the color of orange on the backside, said he could picture that color painted in targets around my nipples. I read somewhere orange was the color of insanity. My mother wore orange every day of her life.

After the sacrifice, everyone seemed to be wearing orange. Harry came around the day it happened, just in time to clean the knife. I had seen him all the way down the beach, Pismo it was, a scrawny figure vomiting on the sand, and I said to my father, “Daddy, see that guy. That's the man I'm going to marry.” I had an instinct for these things.

The ocean smelled especially fishy that day in a beautiful way that hurts to remember. It was red tide, or the grunion were running silver, or the seaweed floated black on the waves. Everything combined in a way I didn't understand so that the perfect thing to do was take that blade to Daddy's long pink body as he lay naked there, eyes closed kissing the wind. I needed to see the blood, the color of life, on the sand, and to feel that life run out in pretty little red rivers down to the sea. The ocean was Daddy's favorite place so it was fitting that he should die there.

 

 

I forgot all about Harry until he showed up beside me painted blue wielding a knife. Except I realized it was my knife. I recognized it as the one I'd used to carve Daddy's flank like I'd carved the roast pig each year at Lent. Daddy lay face down in the fire pit I'd clawed in the sand with my nails, a MacIntosh apple in his mouth. I had looked for a Red Delicious but all I could find was the MacIntosh. It barely fit in his mouth especially since rigor mortis had already set in and his jaw was clamped shut. That's where Harry found me, trying to jam that apple in where it didn't want to go. I asked him for lighter fluid and banana fronds.

Harry always did have great timing and with Daddy dead now, I needed a man. Of course Harry wasn't a man but he did such a damn good imitation of one, he was a better man than most of the men I knew. Harry knew when to keep his mouth shut and that's something I respect in a man. He knew better than to ask questions about women's business.

 

 

Daddy tasted good that night, after I cooked up the marinade according to his favorite recipe—ketchup, honey, dry mustard and a shot of tabasco. I ate the dick and balls just like Daddy would've wanted me to. Harry kept the fire burning and ate only the toes. I didn't tell Harry Daddy had athlete's foot. By the time I found Harry sucking on those knuckles, it was too late for warnings and besides Harry looked so happy blue in the moonlight with his tits on end.

Harry slept on a wicker bed by the back door of the trailer. I picked that bed up at Polly's Poodle Parlor on Halcyon Street that first night after we finished eating Daddy. I liked the one with the red plaid cushion. Harry promised not to pee on it so I bought it with the tenspot I'd found in Daddy's old chinos before I burned them. It was an extravagance, I know, but I had an expansive feeling that night about Harry and about destiny so I sprung for it. Even spent the change on a pint of Old Overholt that I used to wash Harry down by the side of the road behind the Coulterville 7-Eleven.

I applied Daddy's old razor blade to make my mark on Harry's left tit then poured that whiskey on until Harry screamed at the moon. That's when I knew I'd been right about Harry and about destiny. We hunted through the dumpster for Three Musketeers and Parliaments and Harry licked my pussy clean better even than the Caldwell's old Rotweiller that used to visit me in the night with his tongue hanging out and spit on his chops. Fuck, the world looked great that night under that green and red light of the 7-Eleven.

In the morning, Harry called me “pumpkin” and I kicked him in the face. I'd already started seeing orange and I didn't like him rubbing it in. He couldn't help it though. I was so good to him he kept on calling “pumpkin, pumpkin” until I broke his nose and the taste of blood made him happy and quiet at last.

 

 

On trash day we headed east into the desert. I needed the sand but the ocean made me weep. I kept my back to it and let the dry places, the Mojave and the San Joaquin, be my sea. Harry turned out to be a good provider. He managed to eke food and shelter out of the driest, dustiest places in the state. Harry played it for what it was worth, just like he used to play the slots every weekend up at the gas station on Lone Pine Road. He'd set himself up first thing in the AM with his Milwaukee brew and Camels at his favorite machine, and I could find him there working most every Saturday and Sunday.

 

 

Lately though things have changed. He's gone for long periods of time saying he has to take care of his mother.

 

 

Last week I caught sight of his old Dodge pickup filled with the prettiest pumpkins I'd ever seen and it not the season. I waited at home for him to bring them to me but they never showed. Not the pumpkins, not Harry. I found him the next morning curled up in his wicker bed out in old man Martin's shed, the truck's flatbed empty as the place in my chest where my heart had been.