The Last of the Dogteam Read online

  "Implying that I gave it away wholesale? Or perhaps inferring is a gentler word. Either way, you're right. You see, Terry, in the Village, in my group, sex is not considered dirty. It's fun, healthy. A dozen or more men and women together is not unknown. Oh, I've narrowed it down to four or five men, for whatever good it will do." She sighed. "Maybe our philosophy is all wrong—was all wrong in the Village. Look at me: when I got in trouble, who did I turn to? Hell, I came running straight back to Bishop."

  "How far along are you?*

  "Three months, I think."

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  "Did you consider ... ah ... doing away with it?"

  "Abortion? Sure, most definitely. But those crumby back rooms and that coat-hanger routine scared the hell out of me." She shuddered, shook her head, then started to speak, abruptly changing her mind.

  "I'm glad you didn't go through with it. Does Joe know?"

  "Yes, I've leveled with him." Her eyes widened. "Would you believe the man still loves me? After all I've done, all I've been, he still loves me. Joe is quite a man, Terry."

  The brother wondered what it was like to be in love. Wondered if he would ever experience the sensation. "Do you love him?"

  "I like him," she stated honestly. "And I believe that's a better basis for a marriage. I've been in love; and it's not all that wonderful. I prefer not to go through that again. Besides, there is an old Arab proverb that reads: It is better for a woman to marry a man she likes and a man to many a woman he loves."

  Terry thought about that for a moment. "Ginny, you've been in college for four years—off and on. How about your education? You shouldn't waste all you've done."

  "You're very wise to be so young, brother. I don't understand how you reached that plateau this quickly. But, you're right. Joe and I have discussed it. After the baby is born, I'll go back to school—I guess here in Georgia. I can take my bar in about eighteen months. She

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  touched her brother's hand, hard and calloused for one so young. She knew he had done odd jobs and worked at hard physical labor for years. The work ethic was deeply instilled in the Kovak boys.

  "I've put my troubles on your young shoulders, Terry. Is there anything you'd like to tell me?"

  The killing came to him, moving about in his mind, but not as vivid as before, gradually becoming, over the months, a cloudy thing, hazy and surrealistic. Terry had accepted the killing and knew he could live with it. It was rapidly becoming no big deal to him. If he was to be a professional soldier, in a top unit, he was certain there would be more killings on various battlefields. He could live with those, too.

  "No, sis, I just feel a little lost, a little confused at times, that's all."

  Ginny didn't believe him; didn't believe there was nothing wrong, but she didn't push it. "Okay, Terry, and thank you for listening to me. A sister couldn't ask for a better brother."

  Carolyn touched her mouth to Terry's bare stomach, her tongue tracing wet designs on his flesh. Outside the bedroom window, the signs of late spring were evident, with green leaves and bright blooms and puffs of warm air blowing gently through the North Georgia hills and valleys.

  "Tell me how you like this, Terry," she said,

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  then opened her mouth and took him.

  Disjointed words and half phrases floated through his mind, but his reply was to groan aloud and tangle his fingers in her hair.

  Both the young man and the woman sensed that this day was the beginning of the end for them. Terry had been making up excuses not to see her. He felt very real pangs of guilt making love to Bess after making love to Bess's mother the day before. The last time the woman and the young man had made love, Carolyn had cried and told him she was in love with him, quickly adding that she knew nothing could come of it. She was growing increasingly more jealous of her daughter's relationship with Terry. This day, Terry was going to tell her it was over between them.

  She brought him to near climax, pulled away, then mounted him. When completion drained them to a sweaty truce, they lay side by side in the bed, smoking.

  She seemed to be reading his thoughts. "Go ahead and tell me what's on your mind, Terry."

  "I don't think we'd better see each other after this, Carolyn," Terry said, putting into words the unspoken Thing that had been building between them for weeks. He felt much better after saying it.

  She abruptly snubbed out her cigarette and knocked back a half-full tumbler of warm whiskey and water. She sat the glass on the night stand with a Bang! "Well, if that's the

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  way you want it, lover-boy, you can damn well stay the hell away from my daughter."

  The dark humor of it all hit Terry. Unintentionally, the laughter bubbled out of his mouth, uncontrolled. "Excuse me," he said.

  "What's so goddamn funny?!" she de-.manded, up on one elbow, her breasts swinging just above Terry's nose.

  "You! Jealous of your own daughter. Come on, now, it is funny. You have to admit that."

  She lay back on the bed and pulled the sheet up to her chin. Her eyes were dark with fury. She adjusted the sheet to fully cover her body. A moment of sudden propriety had swept over her. "I know you've been making love to Bess. I want it to stop."

  "What do I tell her?"

  "Tell her any goddman thing you like! Just stay away from her and this house."

  "Sure, I will, Carolyn, but not because of any threats from you. What would you do? Tell Lee I've been screwing his wife and his daughter? I've got a mental picture of you doing that."

  "You sorry punk!" she hissed at him. Then she began to cry.

  "Carolyn," Terry sat on the edge of the bed, swinging his feet to the thick carpet. He pulled on his pants. "This . . . affair has been going on for months. Look, I'm seventeen and you're thirty-five." He was feeling her age and sensing that, for a few moments, she had regressed to his. "You knew all that when we

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  started. How did you think it would end? Just One Big Happy Family?"

  She turned her face from him, her tears staining the pillow. "Put your clothes on and get out. Don't look at me, don't touch me. Just get your ass out of here and don't ever come back."

  "Whatever you say, Mrs. Skelton, ma'am. Just please let me find my socks."

  "Smart-ass!" she mumbled into the pillow.

  "That's not true," he challenged. "I just don't understand why you feel this way. It had to end—we both knew that. Why do you hate me?"

  "Get out!" she yelled.

  "Yes, ma'am, Mrs. Skelton. I gonna steady be shuckin' and jivin' out of your fine house."

  She threw her empty highball glass at him as he was moving out the bedroom door, hitting him in the back. "Goddamn you!" she squalled. "I love you. Don't you realize that. I need you! Get out!"

  He could hear her screaming and throwing things about as he hit the back porch, into the yard, moving swiftly. Shuckin* and jivin'.

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  BOOK TWO

  SIX

  i-

  "Terrance Samuel Kovak," the Principal called out his name and Terry walked across the stage to receive his high school diploma while his family sat in the audience, grinning and punching each other in the ribs.

  Superintendent White breathed a slow sigh of relief, very glad, most happy, in fact, to see this senior go. He still had memories of that night in the Armory, watching that disgusting man eat raw rabbit and rattlesnake.

  Later that night, stretched out on a blanket by the lake, Terry stroked the skin of Bishop High's Home EC teacher, a twenty-three year old, red-haired, green-eyed Kentucky girl in her first year of teaching.' They were both drunk, the sweat from their love-making not yet dried on their bodies.

  Stretching in front off them, the lake shimmered under the moonlight, alive in the night:

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  a fish jumping, smacking the water, a bird calling out, insects in the woods humming. From across the lake drifted the faint sounds of laughter from a graduation party in full swing. The
young High Society of Bishop in their parent's expensive lakefront resorts were whooping it up.

  "Having fun," Terry muttered. "Well, if they're having more fun than I'm having, I don't see how they're standing it."

  Ruby softly laughed her agreement.

  But the thought rushed through his mind: Am I having fun? How long since I've had a good old fashioned belly laugh? Really, how long since I've laughed and meant it, enjoying the humor?

  "What am I going to do next year, Terry?" Ruby asked. "You won't be in school."

  He lit a Lucky and they shared it, along with the last few swallows of whiskey from the pint bottle, chasing the booze with Coke. Terry had no answer to her question, and really didn't much care what she did the next year—or the rest of her life, as far as he was concerned. He knew she was leaving town.

  Their affair was based on sexual need, nothing more. Neither of them really liked the other.

  The wind of the lake grew chilly in the May night, and Ruby snuggled deeper into the warmth of the blanket and Terry. With her head on his naked shoulder, she dozed, while Terry listened to the sounds of young people

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  having fun across the lake.

  "Dare ya to go skmny-dippin'!"

  Then the shrill laughter of a girl caught up in the challenge.

  Terry forced the sounds out of his head and thought of things past and present.

  Bess had put the word out oH him at school after her mother poisoned her mind against him. Terry couldn't get a date with anyone at Bishop High. The girls refused to speak to him. All that summer and into fall he had been ostracized by his peers. Terry accepted it stoically, withdrawing into himself. J. A. flexed his muscles and strutted about, puffing hot air about what he was going to do to Terry ... if he ever caught him out. But nothing came of the threats: J. A. had tasted Terry's cold method of fighting once—that was quite enough.

  Then Terry met Ruby.

  Friday, and Terry sat on the steps of the high school, wondering what he would do with his weekend. He did not look around as the door behind him hissed open and closed.

  "Ah," a female voice said. "Mr. Terry Kovak. The baaad boy of Bishop High School. Are you doing penitence for all your whispered sins?" She sat beside him on the steps.

  "I don't know. What does that mean?"

  "It means," she smiled at him, green eyes sparkling with mischief, "are you sorry for

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  what you've done—or are rumored to have done?"

  Terry shrugged. "I haven't done anything that I know of." He lit a cigarette, offering it to her. She took it, inhaling deeply, then handed the cigarette to Terry.

  "Rumor is," her smile broadened, "you not only jazz all the girls, you also jazz their mothers as well. My, my. Any truth in that, young man?"

  "No comment."

  She took the cigarette from his lips and smoked it, leaving a trace of lipstick on the end. She put it back between his lips. The paper tasted slightly of peppermint.

  "My car's in the garage," she said. "For a valve job. Whatever the hell that is. Will you give me a lift home?"

  Terry grinned. "Aren't you taking a chance? I might assault you ... or something."

  She huffed out smoke and said, "The assault I could handle. 'Or something' intrigues me."

  "What's your name?"

  "Miss Mathews."

  "Bullshitl"

  She laughed at him. "Okay, how about Ruby?"

  "That's better. Come on, Ruby, let's go."

  She had expected him to make a pass at her. Terry had not. She had invited him in for a Coke and he accepted. He drank the soft

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  drink, chatted with her, then left without touching her or making any kind of proposition. He left Ruby wondering if her lipstick was smeared, her breath bad, of if she had B.O.?

  On Saturdays Terry worked at a local service station from seven in the morning until five in the afternoon. At noon, Ruby strolled in to buy a package of cigarettes. Kools. Terry was handling the front by himself while the owner went to lunch. Ruby had a Coke and chatted with him, while the small radio played softly.

  "You don't live up to your reputation, Terry," she said, plopping her soft rump on the Coke case. "I felt insulted when you left the other day."

  "What'd you expect me to do? Rape you?"

  There was a spot of grease on his cheek and she wiped it off with a Kleenex from her purse. "If you're the stud you're rumored to be, I expected you to ask if you could come back sometime."

  "Okay."

  "Okay? Okay, what?" His answer irritated her and she almost walked out on him. She thought: what am I doing fooling around with this boy? But she did not leave. "Don't be flip with me, Terry."

  He smiled, but his eyes remained noncommittal, cool, almost knowing in their wiseness. "Can I come back and see you?"

  "May I come back?" she corrected

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  automatically, and they both laughed.

  "Yes, teacher," he said.

  "I'll be home tonight. Anytime after seven. park in the back so no one will see you."

  "Yeah," his smile faded, "I'm getting used to back doors."

  She sat her Coke bottle on the cooler a bit harder than she intended. "I don't think I like you very much, Terry."

  "Your privilege," he said, then walked into the back to fix a flat tire.

  "Bring a bottle," she called after him. "Scotch."

  "I hate Scotch," he said, not turning around.

  "Then bring whatever the hell you like!"

  He acknowledged her remark with a careless wave of his hand.

  "Got a date tonight, Terry?" his father asked at the supper table.

  "Maybe," Terry grinned at him. "Thought I'd drive over to Westfield. There's a girl over there who land of likes me." He was amazed at how quickly the lies came once a person began living one.

  "A nice girl?" his mother looked up.

  "Sure, Momma."

  Terry did not see the look that passed between his parents. "Be careful, Terry," his father said.

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  "Where are you from?" he asked Ruby. "You don't have a Georgia accent."

  Her apartment was small and very neat. Private, with a back entrance that was convenient for any kind of midnight tete-a-tete. The door to her bedroom was closed and Terry hid a smile at that.

  "Kentucky," she said, and a faint wistful look passed quickly over her face. "The Western part of the state."

  "You're a long way from home. Why Bishop, Georgia?"

  "They needed a teacher and I needed a job. It's a nice little town." She handed him a drink and sat beside him on the couch, close, but not touching.

  "This town stinks and you know it," Terry said, after taking a sip of his drink.

  "It's quiet and no one bothers me here," Ruby said, with a finality that signaled the end of conversation as to why she settled in Bishop, Georgia.

  He placed his drink in a coaster on the coffee table and kissed her. Her mouth moved on his. She abruptly pushed him away and brushed back a strand of hair from her forehead.

  She stared hard at him. "I guess the rumors are true, after all."

  "I just kissed you," he picked up his drink. "There's no harm in a loss, is there?"

  "Maybe. When one takes into consideration some hard facts: I'm twenty-three and you're

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  w

  not quite eighteen. I'm a teacher and you're a senior in high school."

  "Come on, Rubyl You didn't invite me over here to help me with homework."

  "Maybe I made a mistake?"

  "Maybe you did at that." Terry stood up to leave and she grabbed at his arm.

  "Stay, Terry." Her eyes were soft as she looked up at him. 'Td like to get to know you; understand you. And I need someone to understand me. I ... ah ... have special needs.from time to time."

  "What needs?"

  "In time, Terry."

  "I'm getting used to hearing that, too. You feel sorry for me?"
/>
  "Yes, in a way, I do."

  "Interesting," he said.

  "We've got to keep this quiet," she warned him. It was late, and they were in bed in her apartment. "I'd lose my job if the school board were to discover I was dating a student— espcially you, Terry. You have got to be the most disliked young man I've ever heard of."

  "Thanks a lot," Terry said, snubbing out his cigarette, chuckling.

  She stiffened beside him, leaned over him, and clicked on the bed lamp. "I fail'to see the humor in being disliked."

  "Lately, I fail to see the humor in anything," he retorted.

  She lay back on the pillows and rubbed his flat, hard stomach with her hand. "Terry, you don't behave as a high school senior should. You act more like a grown man. What is it with you?"

  "Nothing," he said, his tone hplding no feeling.

  She felt his mood shift. The boy/man beside her fascinated the worn an, yet somehow frightened her as well. Both repelling and appealing to her, as a swaying, silent Cobra is to its fabled hypnotic victim, held enthralled until the final darting strike.

  There were whispers around Bishop High. Talk that Miss Mathews was seeing Terry Kovak on the QT. The school board quietly looked into the matter and decided it was just talk, though Miss Mathews dated no one openly. Superintendent White played the story down; he wanted it over and done with and forgotten as quickly as possible. He could not get the memory of that evening at the Armory out of his mind.

  "Let the kids talk," he told the school board. "It's just talk, nothing more."

  The subject was closed.

  The laughter from across the lake had faded and died into silence. Ruby dozed beside him while Terry inspected the stars far above him.

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  The woman stirred, and he felt her hand moving on his body.

  "Terry?" Ruby spoke against his skin, her breath warm, her hand busy at his groin.

  "Uh-huh?"

  "I'm leaving town in a few weeks. I won't be back."

  "Yeah, I heard. I'm glad for you if that's what you want."

  "What will become of you, Terry? Despite the way I know you feel—and I know you don't like me—I do worry about you."

  "I'll make out, and who said I didn't like you?"

  "Don't lie, Terry. A woman can sense some things that a man cannot."