his being a deserter was to hand him a full book of blank pass forms. “There’s plenty more where these come from. And you’re welcome to stay here as long as you like.”
But of course that didn’t solve anything. The problem was somewhere else. Whenever Landers thought of Captain Mayhew and his fucking telephone, and what he had done to the 3516th, he went into a rage that was murderous, and which he carefully hid, and he swore he would never go back.
But the sworn oath was always followed by a monstrously deep, black depression, which drove him out to wherever there was whiskey. He had not been there more than a week when he knew he would not be able to stay.
When Landers woke that first morning at noon, it was to the smell of bacon frying. When he could get dressed and downstairs, he found Loucine in her winter nightgown and a not very sexy robe, cooking and eating her own breakfast. She did not seem surprised to see him. She was enormously pregnant. She was a small, slender girl, but she literally waddled around the kitchen. It was a big, comfortable kitchen, sunny at the end where the table was, on a sunny day. The plate of yellow scrambled eggs laced with red-brown strips of bacon and tan squares of toast she placed before him looked and tasted delicious, in the winter sunshine. Then she went off to get dressed.
Landers had to grin sourly two days later, when Annie’s prediction about how long it would take for him to end up in bed with Loucine came true, a day ahead of schedule.
It happened suddenly. The second noon at breakfast she was not in the flannel nightie and unsexy robe, and instead wore a thin shorty nightgown and a knee-length negligee, also thin. When Landers went into the living room after he’d eaten, and sat down with the papers, she sat silent on a windowseat near him and looked out over the town, which was under a thin snow, granular and sifting like flour. The next afternoon she was suddenly in his lap, between him and the papers, crushing the Louisville Courier-Journal, although Landers never quite knew how she arrived there. Charlie seemed to make it a point of not coming home at this time of day.
So Loucine was added to Landers’ daily life pattern in Barleyville. Her time was the early afternoon, or the early and late afternoon, depending. Loucine would screw him as many times each afternoon as he felt he was capable of screwing. The record was ten, in four hours of one afternoon. Landers wanted to see just how far she would go, and what her limit was, and also whether he could get her to talk, besides just saying hello and good-by. Besides, he had nothing much else to do. But he never found out. And afterward she had to make him a big raw-eggs-and-milkshake drink, to help his shaky legs, before he went out for his daily walk down the street and a half of business establishments and pool halls.
Charlie introduced him to lots of other available women, during the nights. Almost all were married, or at least engaged, to guys who were away overseas, or at least off somewhere in the Army. All of them were lonely, and hungry for a cock.
Landers had a sneaking feeling that Charlie already had made out with each of the ones he himself went off with. But Charlie never talked about it, or about women. The women never talked about it, either. Any more than Loucine did. It was as if the women all felt that if they did not talk about it, it would seem not to have happened. And they all would still be getting the release they all needed.
So there were plenty of women. But Landers began to resent being the out-of-town stud for all the juke joint ladies. Besides, he got tired. Serving as stud to a pregnant lady was not all that easy. After the first couple of times the novelty wore off. Especially if like Loucine she didn’t talk. He discovered it required an enormous amount of physical energy, because you had to be careful to keep yourself up off her stomach. What it amounted to, finally, was a sort of series of unlimited push-ups, until either you came or your arms gave out, whichever happened first. But Landers felt he owed it to Loucine. He certainly owed them