The Executioner's Song - The Executioner's Song Part 8
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The Executioner's Song Part 8

On the other hand, even if she didn't like Hampton's personality, or couldn't be impressed much with his intelligence, she thought he was awfully good looking. Moreover, her dad kept telling her she didn't have to go back to the loonies if she was married. Then Hampton asked Charley for permission, and her father just said, "Let's go." Never did ask Nicole.

He got in the car with Jim Hampton like they were old buddies-her dad wasn't even thirty and Jim was over twenty-put her in the back seat, and the car took off. Nicole knew damn well she wasn't gaining any freedom by marrying Jim Hampton. They drove along, drinking it up in front, and Nicole told herself she'd gotten into this and might as well give it a good try.

Sitting in the back seat, Nicole remembered a time when she was 12 years old and her dad took her to a bar. She thought he was showing her off, but soon found out he had a girl friend in there he wanted to show off, and knew she wouldn't tell her mother. Only, at the door, she stopped. NO ONE UNDER 21 ADMITTED was what the sign read.

Her father pointed to the 2 and the 1 and he said, It says no one under 12. You're old enough. She never was all sure when she was reading numbers backwards and so thought 21 was 12 that day. Now that she had become 14, it was all she could do to keep from laughing about it.

Charley sure made a sight drinking with Hampton. In fact her father looked a little like her husband-to-be. She began to think they both looked like Uncle Lee, damn him!

Well, the trip turned out to be not too bad. They picked up a friend of hers named Cheryl Kumer, and she drove with them to Elko, Nevada, where Nicole and Jim Hampton got married.

Jim was never rough with her, but kind of sweet, and treated her like she was a precious doll. He was always saying to the rest of his friends who weren't married, Hey, look what I got. You know? He didn't have a job so they were living on unemployment. He wouldn't go to work, but really knew how to use a fingernail file on Coke machines. Even if she didn't wholly like living on dimes and quarters, Nicole thought they were having fun.

After a few months, she was still faithful to him, which wasn't a bad trip. She was trying to unsort her sex hang-ups. They went from too little to too much. She could never come in those days which she knew wasn't all Hampton's fault. Besides Uncle Lee, she had one other big secret in her past she never told Hampton about. It happened the first time she left the nuthouse on a weekend pass and stayed at the party for two days and two nights. That was months before she'd even met Hampton.

The guy that talked her into coming over from her grandmother's house on that occasion was about 28, and there had been booze and dope to smoke. She really liked that dude. He babied her, and paid a lot of attention, and kept her close by. When he made love, it left her feeling kind of mellow. Then he told his buddies there was a sweet little thing in the bedroom, go talk to her. Nicole was really hung up on the guy even when he began to hint to her that she would be befriending him if she would fuck his friends, you know.

Nicole felt a lot of things as it was going on. She took herself off to a distance and watched herself. It was a way to think about things. Think out problems.

Bottom of all, she was proud. Even if, to some degree, the fellows were fucking her over, yet she was into the kind of party her friends would be too chicken to go along on. That was exciting. So she got a little wasted and ended up with just about every guy in the house. Maybe she was there for three days. She just never went out.

In the middle of it, she met Barrett for the first time. He came walking into the bedroom, a skinny little guy she'd never seen before. There she was all alone in bed on the second day, feeling spacey, and he walked in, and spoke to her from the hallway. He said, You know you don't have to do this. You're better than this. Yes, he said, you don't have to waste it all. That was her first memory of her second husband, Jim Barrett. He was only there a few minutes, but she always remembered the way his face looked then.

She didn't see Barrett again until a month later when she was back in the nuthouse, and they threw him in, too. He wasn't the least bit crazy. He had, however, gone AWOL from the Army, so his father signed papers to have him committed. The nuthouse was better than the Stockade. Barrett's father had been a State Trooper, he told her, before he became an insurance agent, so from the point of view of the authorities, the son had to be kind of crazy.

She really fell in love with Barrett in the nuthouse. They were almost the same two people. He was so cunning looking, so really sweet, a real pussycat. All smiles and all sweet, wearing cowboy boots, navy pants, tight shirts, well combed, well groomed, just a little guy. Then they took him back in the Army, and for the longest time she never heard from him. So she went AWOL, and married the other Jim, Hampton.

Months later, Barrett showed up one day. Was waiting for her in the parking lot of the supermarket. They were so happy to see each other. How could she get married on him? Didn't she love him? Hadn't they talked of living in a house of their own where nobody could hassle them? If she was happy with the guy she had married, then he, Barrett, would bow out. He loved her enough to wish her love and luck. But if she wasn't happy . . . it was a beautiful head game he played. After thirty minutes, she just said goodbye in her heart to Hampton, and ran away with Barrett.

They headed for Denver. It was a cold trip. They visited for a week with a friend of his, then came back to Utah and stayed with his folks. Nicole kept trying to say Jim, but that was also Hampton's first name, so she was more comfortable calling him Barrett.

When they got back to Utah, however, Marie Barrett, his mother, was real nice, and took them in every way. Except she wouldn't let them sleep in the house. Get married if you want to stay here, was the way she drew the line. Nicole didn't care. The happiest she'd ever been in her life was when she ran away and slept in an orchard, so she didn't mind spending her nights on the back seat of a Volkswagen. It was Barrett who felt exposed in the street. He found out from his father that while they'd been in Denver, Jim Hampton was over looking for them with Charley Baker. Nicole thought it was stupid how Hampton and her father couldn't mind their own business, but, as Barrett explained to Nicole, he wasn't built to be confronted with a physical challenge. So they found themselves a better hideout.

They found a scrungy little apartment on the main street in Lehi. The stairway leading up to their door was really bad with winos who had staggered out of the bar below. At the end of the street was the desert and the wind whistled in. Their window looked out on that street. Nicole could stand there, and watch her dad enter the bar below.

Then one day Charley showed up at the door. Everybody had been looking, but it took her dad to find out they were not only in the state, not only in town, but, in fact, right above his favorite hangout. Her dad walked right in and gave this shitty smile, asked how she was. Barrett came over, and Charley said, "Boy, I'm gonna cut your goddamn balls off. I'm going to tear them out." He sounded like Clark Gable. Barrett said something kind of mild like "Can we talk about it first?" Then he told her dad that he wasn't evil and loved Nicole very much. Nicole just kept looking Charley in the eye. Before it was all over, her dad broke down and went home peacefully. She could hardly believe it.

A couple of days later, the cops came and busted Barrett for being an improper person. That was the term for poor Jim-Improper Person. She figured her mother learned about it from her father and blew the whistle. Anyway, the guy who supplied Barrett with dope to sell came along and bailed him out. Then it was Nicole's turn. She crashed. She and Barrett sat up one night in a friend's van, eating orange sunshine out of a matchbox. The next day went by all burned out but the next night they all took another hit. Nicole freaked. They were parked on Center Street in Provo, radio on, and Grand Funk came in, the song with the sirens. Suddenly everybody's vibes in the van kind of went in and out. Wham! Nicole felt herself winging down the road, just running, you know. Jim took after her, caught her, dragged her back, but he was feeling too loose himself. Nicole was blowing it and screaming. Barrett took her to the hospital, but even they couldn't handle her. She began to run around telling the nurses they were ugly. She was seeing lions and tigers. So they took her to the Youth Home.

Kathryne wouldn't let her out. She told Barrett that if he wanted to marry Nicole, he had to pay the hospital expense first. Otherwise, she'd be sent on to Reform School. Barrett had to say to his folks, "Just let me marry her. That's all I ever wanted," and he talked them into putting up the $180 that was necessary.

Her mother gave her a black dress to be married in. It was short and slit at the sides. That really affected Nicole. She didn't feel it was appropriate to get married in a black dress at 15. She didn't say anything to her mother, but it bothered Nicole that no one would even take a picture of them. She kept thinking, they must have a camera in the place somewhere, they might want a picture of us getting married. Nobody would take a snap. A couple of weeks later her family disappeared on her. Charley and Kathryne took off with the kids for his new station on Midway.

Living with Barrett, sex was pretty much the same as with Hampton. She was a novice in those days. Wouldn't feel nearly so good as she would make believe. Like she never got her rocks off until a month after she was married. Of course, she would no more start with Barrett than she would flash to that first time with Uncle Lee. In fact, whenever sex went on too long with Jim and she felt sore and burning, or her breasts were tender from a mauling, it would feel the same as when she'd been a child. Still, she was crazy about Barrett. He was a sweet and kindred soul. They swore to be poor but happy all their married lives.

At the onset, however, they just couldn't get that happy. Barrett had one big worry leaning over him. He finally came in with this heavy rap to his father, real dramatic, like a television series. Barrett's father, being an ex-cop, tended to buy it. "Look," Jim told him, "some guys fronted me a little dope, and I blew it all. Now, I can't pay. They're coming down on me and I gotta get out of town." With that, he talked his father into getting a used van, put a mattress in back, and took off. Only a long time later did Nicole decide Barrett had run a line on his father and wasn't in that kind of trouble at all.

They ended up in San Diego in an old wooden hotel called the Commodore, and she found a plump black kitten about to get run over in the middle of the road and went out and got it, only it wasn't a kitten but a little pregnant cat, and had kittens itself in a couple of weeks. She thought that was pretty neat.

It was a funny time. They were happy and miserable at once. She had started to come with Barrett and he started to play with the idea of selling her. It wasn't her so much as that he was a born salesman and needed something to sell. He liked to experiment. So did she. It opened her to a lot of crazy feelings that she couldn't get around to telling Gary about. They were too rough somehow, and besides, she never did get into selling herself. On consideration, she decided she better not mess with Barrett's ego. He was such a jealous person.

Then they gave the cats away and drove back to Utah. When they reached Orem, they left the car parked right near an entrance to the Interstate. Barrett didn't even stop at his folks' house, just mailed them a card telling where he'd hid the keys to the van, and apologized for being unable to keep up the payments. He felt funny, he kept telling Nicole, that his folks would get their card postmarked Orem when they thought their son was in California.

Then they hitchhiked up to Modesto where a weird guy with one eye all screwed up rented them a $50-a-month tiny cabin. It had cockroaches. They would turn off the lights, then turn them on, and kill the cockroaches. She discovered she was pregnant there.

They had a fight about the baby to come. It wouldn't work, he argued. Later, back in Utah, Nicole decided it was a fork in the river. Because she had wanted him to get a job, and he kept promising he would. Saying it and doing it hadn't worked out equal, however. Barrett showed his true talents and talked a woman who was selling a thirteen-room house into renting to them for $80 a month, because that way, she could show it to buyers when she wanted. After they moved in, Barrett didn't work but had his friends over, and began to party, and got back into dealing. By the time Nicole was six months into pregnancy, the party didn't let up.

One day the Chief of Police came over with the landlady, who returned Barrett half a month's rent and the cop evicted him on the spot. He wanted to stay, but they put the money in his hand, told him to go. Nicole was upset at having to live pregnant at her grandmother's while he stayed with his folks. Not only did they owe a lot of money, but Barrett did nothing all day but get stoned with his friends. Life had become a drag.

At that point, her dad came in from Midway on some business. Just joking, he said, "Want to come back with me? See the Islands?" She said, "Damn right!"

That was how she left Barrett the first time. Just took off in her seventh month as suddenly as she had left Hampton. On the airplane she kept thinking of early days with Jim when there was so much love she could even feel the things Barrett was feeling. Of course, such thoughts came only after she was able to get on the plane. The onset of the trip didn't go that smoothly. She and Charley spent hours trying to get a military flight to Hawaii, and kept getting bumped. One of the problems was that Charley didn't have her birth certificate, so Nicole couldn't go on his military card as a daughter. Being pregnant, she looked considerably older than usual. Charley, standing next to her, appeared more like a boy friend or husband than a father. That got her thinking about Uncle Lee like crazy. Come to think of it, her dad always treated her with the special courtesy you give a sexy lady.

Maybe her thoughts were tickling his ear because Charley certainly got upset now at the idea of them being stuck overnight. "If I don't get my daughter on this goddamn plane," he swore, "I'm going to hijack the son of a bitch."

He walked out to the Mess Hall, and next thing they knew, four MPs were saying, Would you come with us, Mr. Baker? Took them right outside, and spread-eagled Charley against the wall, shook him down, led him off to the Brig. Left Nicole sitting in the Mess Hall with eighty horny sailors. When she went to look for her father, she saw the largest cockroach ever. Looked as big as a mouse, and it came running out into the lobby where Nicole was waiting. She followed it down the steps, and around the building. With her big belly, she had nothing better to do than run along following that big old cockroach.

Then her dad came out grinning from ear to ear. He had everything all straightened out. Because of the mistake, they were now treating him and Nicole like king and queen. Red carpet was out. She got to Midway in style.

When she walked in the house, Kathryne's eyes almost fell out of her head. Nicole remembered how skinny she was, and how as she hugged her, there was something hollow looking about Kathryne, as if it was all getting too much for her. The teenagers, April and Mike, who had just been kids, were now getting wild. It made Nicole feel so bad she didn't even like to smoke in front of her mother for a couple of days.

When Barrett found where she was, he ran up his old man's phone bill. Got so emotionally worked up, felt so much in love all over again, that he had gone to work. He had, he told her, even started a checking account. Was going to come see her.

Nicole gave her love on the phone. She said not to come. It would get her father in trouble. To save on the fare, Charley had brought her over as his dependent, so everybody thought she was an unwed mother.

Damn if Barrett didn't show up anyway. In Salt Lake, at the airport, he wrote a check which his dad later had to make good, flew over, went to the hospital, found the maternity ward, and sat outside her window. As soon as Kathryne left the room, he was in. Nicole was happy he had come and it made a difference, but not a big one. She couldn't forgive him everything. In a couple of days she made him go home.

Chapter 6.

NICOLE ON THE RIVER.

By now, Nicole wanted to hear about Gary's life. Only he didn't want to talk about himself. Preferred to listen to her. It took a while for Nicole to realize that having spent his adolescence in jail and just about every year since, he was more interested to learn what went on in her little mind. He just hadn't grown up with sweet things like herself.

In fact, if he did tell a story it was usually about when he was a kid. Then she would enjoy the way he talked. It was like his drawing. Very definite. He gave it in a few words. A happened, then B and C. Conclusion had to be D.

A. His seventh-grade class voted on whether they should send Valentines to each other. He thought they were too old. He was the only one to vote against it, When he lost, he bought Valentines to mail to everybody. Nobody sent him one. After a couple of days he got tired of going to the mailbox.

B. One night, he was passing a store that had guns in the window. Found a brick and broke the window. Cut his hand, but stole the gun he wanted. It was a Winchester semiautomatic that cost $125 back in 1953. Later he got a box of shells and went plinking. "I had these two friends," Gary told her, "Charley and Jim. They really loved that .22. And I got tired of hiding it from my old man-when I can't have something the way I want it, then I don't really want it. So I said, 'I'm throwing the gun in the creek, if you guys have the guts to dive for it, it's yours.' They thought I was bullshitting until they heard the splash. Then Jim jumped and hurt his knee on a big old sharp rock. Never got the gun. The creek was too deep. I laughed my ass off."

C. On his thirteenth birthday his mother let him pick between having a party or getting a $20 bill. He chose the party and invited just Charley and Jim. They took the money their folks gave them for Gary and spent it on themselves. Then they told him.

D. He had a fight with Jim, Got angry and beat him half to death. Jim's father, a rough-and-tumble fucker, pulled Gary off. Told him, "Don't come around here again." Soon after, Gary got in trouble for something else and was sent to Reform School.

When his stories got too boiled down, when it got like listening to some old cowboy cutting a piece of dried meat into small chunks and chewing on them, why then he would take a swallow of beer and speak of his Celestial Guitar. He could play music on it while he slept. "Just a big old guitar," he would tell Nicole, "but it has a ship's wheel with hand spokes, and in my dreams, music comes out as I turn the wheel. I can play any tune in the world."

Then Gary told her about his Guardian Angel. Once when he was 3, and his brother was 4, his father and mother stopped to have dinner in a restaurant in Santa Barbara. Then his father said he had to get some change. He'd be right back. He didn't come back for three months. His mother was alone with no money and two little boys. So she started hitchhiking to Provo.

They got stuck on the Humboldt Sink in Nevada. Could have died in the desert. They had no money and had not eaten for the second day in a row. Then a man came walking down the road with a brown sack in his hand, and he said, Well, my wife has fixed a lunch for me, but it's more than I can eat. Would you like some? His mother said, Well, yes, we'd be very grateful. The man gave her the sack and walked on. They stopped and sat down by the side of the road, and there were three sandwiches in the bag, three oranges, and three cookies. Bessie turned to thank him but the man had disappeared. This was on a long flat stretch of Nevada highway.

Gary said that was his Guardian Angel. Came around when you needed him. One winter night of his childhood, standing in a parking lot, snow was all over the ground and Gary's hands hurt from cold. It was then he found new fur-lined mittens on top of the snow. They fit his hands exactly.

Yes, he had a Guardian Angel. Only it left a long time ago. But on the night Nicole walked into Sterling Baker's place, he found his angel again. He liked to tell Nicole this when her legs were up on the dashboard of the car and her panties were off, and they were driving down State Street.

It didn't bother her if somebody looked over. A big truck, for instance, pulled alongside at the light, and the guy up in his cab looked down into their car, but Gary and Nicole both laughed because they didn't give a fat fuck. Gary lit a stick of pot and said it was going to be the best lid ever. As they took a toke, Gary said, "God created it all, you know."

One night they went to the drive-in early and discovered they were the first ones there. Just for the fun of it, Gary began to ride over the bumps between each row. Damn if this fellow from the management didn't come chasing out with a truck and tell them in a rude voice to quit riding around like that. Gary stopped, got out, walked over to the guy and told him off so bad, the fellow whined, "Well, you don't need to get that mad."

But Gary was. After dark, he took his pliers and clipped off a couple of speakers. Made a point of picking up a couple more next time they went to the drive-in. Those speakers were good things to have around. You could hook one up in every room, and they would give you music throughout your house. They never got around, however, to installing them. Just left them in the trunk of her car.

Sometimes they went wandering in the grass between the nuthouse and the mountains. The idea of being up on the big hill behind the loony bin gave Nicole a charge. What the hell. This was the same nuthouse where they put her six years ago.

Sunny and Peabody didn't always like it too much, and would get scared at night when a funny chill would swoop in like a wind, and the mountains above looked cold as ice. She and Gary would go there alone then.

Once she was running around the place and he called to her. Something in his voice made her tear all the way down and she couldn't stop and banged into him, hitting her knee so hard it really hurt. Gary picked her up then. She had her legs wrapped around his waist, and her arms over his neck. With her eyes closed, she had the odd feeling of an evil presence near her that came from Gary. She found it kind of half agreeable, Said to herself, Well, if he is the devil, maybe I want to get closer.

It wasn't a terrifying sensation so much as a strong and strange feeling, like Gary was a magnet and had brought down a lot of spirits on himself. Of course, those psychos behind all those screened windows could call up anything out of the night ground in back of the nuthouse.

In the dark, she asked: "Are you the devil?"

At that point, Gary set her down and didn't say anything. It really got cold around them. He told Nicole he had a friend named Ward White who once asked him the same question.

Years ago, when Gary was in Reform School, he walked into a room unexpectedly and Ward White was being butt-fucked by another kid. Gary never said a thing about it. He and Ward White were separated for years, and then ran into each other again in jail. They still never spoke of it. One day, though, Gary came into the prison hobby shop and Ward told him he had just received some silver from a mail house and asked Gary to turn it into a ring. Out of a book of Egyptian designs called The Ring of Osiris, Gary copied something called the Eye of Horus. When it was done, Gary said it was a magical ring and he wanted it for himself. Never mentioned the old memory. He didn't have to. Ward White just gave him the Eye of Horus.

Nicole always thought of that ring as being taken from the kid who got butt-fucked.

Now Gary wanted to give it to her. He told her that the Hindus believed you had an invisible eye in the middle of your forehead. The ring might help you to see through it. When they got home, he had her lie on the floor. He said she should wait for the third eye to appear in the space between her closed eyes. She had to concentrate until it opened. If it did, she would be able to look through.

Nothing happened that night. She was laughing too much. She kept expecting a pyramid, and saw nothing.

But on another night, she believed she did see something open. Maybe it was the good pot. She could see her life coming back to her through that eye, and remembered things she had forgotten, but they were so far inside she wasn't sure she wanted to tell him all of it. She felt afraid it would bring down more spooks.

So she kept telling him about herself but it wasn't as straight. More and more, she put old boy friends down and made believe they were nothing in her life, and began to keep the best part for herself. After that night at the nuthouse, a lot of her past stayed inside her. It was like seeing a movie of herself floating down the river, and seeing it mostly for herself and just telling him a couple of the sights.

Before Sunny was even ten weeks old, Nicole got into a new thing. She began to date guys on Midway that never had been laid right. In part that was because Barrett had convinced her she wasn't any good in bed. Maybe she preferred therefore to go with somebody who didn't know what good was. Of course, Barrett had his own hang-up-he couldn't bet on getting it up with any girl but her. So, in a quiet way, he could get jealous as a maniac. Sometimes they'd be walking through town and a guy would smile at her, and Barrett would be convinced she had fucked the fellow. Only he would hold it to himself. Three or four days later, it would come out. He'd treat her like a slut. Make a point of the number of times she had been tooled before she ever met him. Said the cruelest things about how big she was. She always wanted to reply it wouldn't be so bad if he had something thicker than a finger's worth of dick. So she figured she needed a period where she was just making it with guys who were absolutely grateful.

Before too long, however, Nicole decided to come back from Midway. She had done lots of exercise and was feeling real good and slim, and the baby was beautiful. It was summer and Barrett was there to greet her at the airport. He was moving a couple of pounds a day of the best grass, and looking prosperous himself, wanted her back with him. She had a new rap, however. "I'm not your old lady," she told him. "You're not my old man. I can do what I want." Still, she moved in. That was a summer when they got high all the time on the best THC and Cannabinol. She really felt like sex.

That's when Barrett became the guy she could get her rocks off with consistently. She wondered if that meant he was the guy she was supposed to work it out with. Maybe it was conditioned reflex, but Barrett could turn her on by walking into a room. The THC had mellowed her out and she felt like dancing all the time. (Except she started getting headaches whenever she was straight, and her teeth began to hurt, and her kidneys. Powerful stuff.) Still, it made for some awful good sex.

It was lonely, however. Barrett knew nothing about her head. Just liked to be the big man. Enjoyed walking around like the dealer that people were watching. Karma was a blank to him. Nicole gave him A World Beyond by Ruth Montgomery Ford. Later, he said he read it, but that's all he told her. Wasn't much comment for a man as smart as he was. It certainly did no good for Nicole, since she was getting kind of suicidal with the Cannabinol. There was one dream where she thought she'd died, and laid down in a grave dug in the desert. In her last seconds, a soft black night came over all of her, and said, "Come to me."

She was so shook up she told Barrett death had spoken, and she would welcome it. Hey, look, he said, you're much too valuable. He didn't have anything to give on the subject.

They began to have personal troubles, too. He had a partner, Stoney, that she liked, who was staying with them. One night, feeling as horny as the hot summer night, she went up to Barrett in a sweet little way and said, "Why don't you sleep on the couch and give Stoney a break." It freaked Barrett out, but he had made the deal that she wasn't his old lady no more, so he lay down on the couch, and Stoney got in with her. Barrett was so pissed, he took off in his car, then came back about twenty minutes later and told his partner to get out. That seemed to be the end of that.

A couple of nights later, however, Barrett must have started figuring this is what she really wants, you know, because he took her to a party up the Canyon and went out of his way to share her with a couple of buddies. Then he kind of broke down. They had a big fight and Nicole threw a machete at him which went through the screen door. Then she threw a hammer through the kitchen window. Then they broke it off. She took Sunny, and went to live with Rikki and Sue at her great-grandmother's house.

That substituted one misery for another. She never got along worse with Sue, who was always leaving shitty diapers around. The house stank.

Then Rikki and Sue found Nicole in her great-grandmother's bed with Tom Fong, a Chinaman. He was nice, and made good money ripping off his boss in a Chinese restaurant, and he wanted to marry her. Just another man in her life who wanted to marry. She'd taken Tom up to that room for some privacy-he was giving massages, his specialty, and Rikki and Sue just happened to walk in when she had her top off. After Tom Fong left, though, there was a terrible argument and she gave a lot of lip, and Rikki promised to knock her on her ass if she ever talked that bad again. Then an aunt and uncle came over, and got so mad she'd been in that bed, they wouldn't listen to anything said. Called her a whore. Her uncle actually hit her across the face. She threw a bunch of stuff into a pillowcase, diapers, baby food, bottles, found a backpack, took Sunny, took off.

She was crying. Her great-grandmother was okay, but an active Mormon. It brought back Nicole's childhood when this same great-grandmother would get out of the tub, dry off, and immediately put on her religious garment next to her flesh. A lumpy thing that kept her clothes from looking good. You had to wear the garment next to your skin if you were married in the temple.

Her great-grandmother used to take her to Sunday School. It was kind of boring. They taught outer darkness was your lot if you sinned, and disharmony. If you were a good girl, you would sit at God's knee.

Only trouble was all the good girls didn't like her, and made nasty remarks about Nicole and the boys. They would walk by and sneer. It was all coming back to her now after that scene in the bedroom. Even as she walked down the highway, she was trying not to cry.

A fellow with a stutter who was driving to Pennsylvania picked her up. She didn't care where she was going. Nicole didn't know if she liked him or not, but he sure needed somebody and she didn't care where she was going. So she took off with him and they ended up living together in Devon, Pennsylvania, where he made a pretty good living in his leathercraft shop. They even talked of getting married. He was a real performer in bed. Worked very hard to please her.

This fellow, whose name was Kip Eberhardt, proved difficult to live with, however. He had a lot of paranoia and she made the mistake of telling him about herself. As soon as he went out to work, he would worry that Nicole was with a guy in their very trailer. Nobody ever was, but she couldn't convince him. It really messed her up. What bothered her head was that she did have secret thoughts of bringing in some sweet guy to while away an afternoon. Kip could make love like a fiend, but sometimes he left her feeling like one.

He went to ridiculous lengths. Kip even accused her of going to bed with a fat old man whose face was black from dirt. Occasionally, Kip would beat her up. Oh, Jesus, she loved him, and he was such an asshole. That hurt more than all the other guys put together.

Considering she gave a year of her life to him, and he almost took her mind away, Nicole got to despise him for hitting her. He was only a little guy, small and wiry and stoop-shouldered, so they had some pretty mean fights. She even came close to winning a couple.

Nicole was 17 when she found out she was pregnant again. The moment Kip heard he was so happy for himself, and so happy for both of them. They were going to have a baby he kept saying. She felt disgusted. She didn't want to spend the rest of her life with this guy.

She had never known how to keep from getting pregnant. In fact, she only found out this time in the Planned Parenthood Association building near Devon where she'd gone to get an IUD. Nicole never took pills, or watched the calendar. She read how at certain times of the month you could get pregnant more than other times, but didn't know when. She'd read about it but they seemed to mention different days in different places. Besides she somehow knew she wasn't going to get pregnant.

This time, though, there was a student nurse who lived next door and she kept after Nicole to make an appointment at Planned Parenthood. When she finally did put in an appearance, they said she was sure carrying something.

Telling Kip made it worse. He sat there with his beautiful black beard and curly hair and loved her enough for both of them. He'd start to say something and get so emotional it would take hours for him to get two words out. She'd have to sit with a smile on her face, wanting to say, I'm not a mind reader, you know. But when she knew what he was going to say, he would still drag it out. That made her want to escape as much as anything.

Plus the paranoia. Every so often he would say somebody was following him, or weird messes were waiting, Trouble ahead. He'd say, See, you know? She couldn't see.

She said goodbye and took the Greyhound to Utah. Twenty-four hours later, she was in bed with a nice guy she met on the bus. No big deal, but she relaxed, and laughed and talked. After all, she wasn't in no big hurry to get back to anything.

She thought about having an abortion. But she couldn't bring herself to kill a baby, She couldn't stand Barrett anymore, but she loved Sunny. So she couldn't see killing a new baby she might also love.

The day after Jeremy was born, Barrett was at the hospital. She couldn't believe the games he played with her. Said that when he saw Jeremy, he felt like it was his son.

Then after she got out, Barrett kept coming around. Jeremy had been so premature, she had to leave him in an incubator and thumb a ride over to the hospital every other day.

Barrett would hitch along. Carried on over the baby. Told her how he really wanted her, new baby and all. It was very emotional for Barrett but just everyday for her. She said, Well, I'll live with you for a while. She had to admit that Barrett really seemed to like going to the hospital, putting on the white shirt and mask, looking at the baby. He had never had that with Sunny.

Up to the time Jeremy was born, Nicole had been working full hours in a motel, changing linen and scrubbing bathrooms. That was about all she'd command, considering she had only finished the seventh grade. Anyway, she finally called Kip. Wanted someone besides Barrett to relate to the fact she had a son. Kip couldn't believe the news. Thought it was still weeks away. Anyway, he didn't stammer a bit, and was so nice on the phone she decided to try again.

For those first few days, it was her best honeymoon with Kip. Lasted until he was back at work in the leathercraft shop. That afternoon she was rushing back and forth, picking things up, sticking them under the couch. He really liked the house clean. If it didn't look right, he always thought she'd been goofing off with some guy-that's how he'd been before. So she was trying to pick up when he came in the door.

She was standing there waiting to kiss him, but he didn't look at her. Instead he began to squint. She had seen that look before.

He kept prowling around the house. Went into the bathroom. When she strolled by, Kip was in the hamper looking her underwear over for gunk. Really gross. She kept trying to find out what made him so suspicious. Finally he told her that just as he drove up, he saw two people walk in front of the window. Since there are two windows to look through, the storm window and the inside window, he probably saw two shadows, she said, but he wouldn't believe it. Swore to God it was two people. Enough to get her screaming.