Sharing
By Michael Bracken
Country Noir
Jessie and Billy were deer hunting when they spotted a captivating blonde carelessly and noisily tromping up the wooded path in her blue Nikes, a green backpack improperly balanced on her rounded shoulders, her unrestrained breasts bouncing up and down under a navy-blue t-shirt. The blonde's long, tanned legs extended shapely from a pair of designer jeans cut off ragged just a pinch lower than her crotch.
Billy elbowed his taller companion and pointed through the trees. "You see that?" he asked quietly.
Jessie stared in the direction Billy pointed and nodded silently.
"Where in hell did she come from?" Billy asked. The nearest road threaded through the mountains nearly six miles from where they stood.
Jessie shook his head. "Don't know."
Without noticing the two men, the blonde walked past their hiding place and continued up the gentle slope of the path. She whistled the tune of a popular rock song, but neither of the mountain men recognized it; they rarely listened to the radio and never listened to rock-and-roll.
Cautiously, without either of them expressing the desire, they followed her. They had spent so many years in the woods that stealth came second nature to them, and they stalked her the same way they stalked their dinner.
Jessie and Billy had sealed their friendship in Vietnam when they were the only survivors of a gook night attack on their position in the delta. They'd endured a lot of ribbing from the city boys when they'd first enlisted, but their mountain upbringing had helped them become the only men in their squad to walk away when the fighting became a real life-or-death struggle.
After their discharge in '71, they returned to the Ozark mountains of southern Missouri to live the way their fathers had taught them, as a pair of the few true Ridgerunners left in the Ozarks. They had both been born and raised in the backwoods and, except for their voluntary stint in the Army removing communism from the rice paddies of Southeast Asia, they had spent their entire lives living off the land and swapping deer hides and bear steak to the craftsmen in town for the money to buy what they couldn't make themselves.
"You think she's alone?" Billy whispered to his companion.
"Must be," Jessie replied. He scanned the path back along the way the blonde had come. "I don't see nobody else."
Jessie clicked on his rifle's safety, a bullet already in the chamber, and cradled the gun in his big hands as he followed Billy from tree to tree.
A gentle breeze blew down the long slope of the mountain and caught the blonde's shoulder-length hair in its grasp, flinging fine strands of ash-blonde hair over her backpack. She ran her thin fingers through her hair and tucked it behind her ears.
Jessie and Billy paused when she came to a small clearing. They waited until she had crossed before they continued following her trail.
"She's headed for the lake," Billy said. He had always been the most vocal of the pair, able to keep both ends of a conversation going during some long winters when Jessie had let him do just that.
When they caught up to the blonde, she was whistling another unfamiliar tune between bites of a chocolate bar she'd taken from her backpack. When she finished the last bite of melted chocolate, she licked the tips of her chocolate-stained fingers and dropped the brown and white wrapper on the dirt path.
Jessie picked the wrapper up a moment later and stuffed it into the front pocket of his tight-fitting jeans. He didn't litter on the mountain and he wouldn't allow anyone else to either. Jessie understood the mountain. He'd never understood Vietnam and he'd relied on Billy for everything while they were there. When they returned home, he'd continued to rely on Billy.
Billy slapped a small hand against Jessie's shoulder and whispered, "Damn, look at that ass on her." He looked up at Jessie. "How'd you like to have her, Jessie? Get your big hands on her and give her a good squeezin'?"
Jessie smiled at the shorter man, the grin almost hidden by the thick brown curls of his beard. "She ain't gonna let us."
Billy's tight, thin-lipped grin was wicked, and the glint in his eye was one that Jessie didn't like. It reminded him of the night in 'Nam when they'd stolen the colonel's Jeep for a joyride into a rice paddy. They'd had to leave it stuck in the mud and walk six miles back to camp.
"Just you wait and see, Jessie," Billy assured him. "She's going to beg us for it. I guarantee it."
Jessie smiled, but he didn't understand what was going through his smaller friend's mind.
A half mile further along, the path turned at the lake's edge and followed the shoreline for nearly three miles before it began a steep assent up the mountain and then down the other side. The blonde finally stopped walking after she'd been following the lake's edge for nearly a mile.
A wide grassy patch ran almost to the lake's edge and the lake itself was still and clear. The blonde dropped her backpack onto the grass and kicked her Nikes off. She dipped one toe into the cool water, then waded in up to her ankles. A moment later she walked back to her pack and stripped off her clothes.
Billy whistled softly from his hiding place in the trees as he watched her.
Within moments the blonde was swimming easily with long, overhand strokes that carried her along the water's smooth surface. After half an hour, she swam in close to the shore, then stood in waist-deep water and rinsed her hair.
"It won't be much longer," Billy assured his large friend as they peered through the trees.
Finally the blonde left the water and took a red and white beach towel from her backpack. She spread it across the grass and positioned herself on it to dry. First she lay on her stomach, then rolled over and tucked her hands under her head. Within moments she fell asleep, snoring lightly as the cool breeze off the lake massaged her smooth skin.
"Now's the time," Billy whispered as he nudged Jessie with his elbow. He led Jessie from their hiding place in the trees and quietly moved the blonde's clothes and her backpack far from her reach. Loudly, Billy said, "What are you doing up here, ma'am?"
The blonde awoke with a start and reached for something with which to cover herself. The only thing within reach was the beach towel under her buttocks and she struggled to pull it around her body.
"Ain't no call to be doing that," Billy told her as a grin crossed his face. "My friend and I just thought you might be likin' some company, see'n as how you're so far from home."
"No," she said uneasily. "No, thank you. I'm fine."
"I was just thinking we could be sociable, maybe offer you something you don't have," Billy said. The wave of his arm indicated the backpack and the clothes that they'd removed from within her reach. "And maybe we could get a little something in return."
She held the towel tightly around her torso and scrambled to her feet. She shook her head negatively, her gaze shifting quickly from one man to the other and back again.
Billy's hand lashed out and slapped her face, the force of it sending the blonde to her knees in the grass.
"Now there's no need to be gettin' unfriendly," Billy told her. "We wasn't planning on hurting you none. We just wanted to share the wealth, you understand. You've got something we want, and we've got something you want. Ain't that right?"
Billy motioned with the barrel of his rifle and said, "You just lay that blanket out there and maybe we can get started."
When she didn't move, Billy grabbed the beach towel from her grasp and threw it on the ground beside her.
"Straighten it," he insisted.
She turned her back to him as she carefully adjusted the towel.
Jessie watched as Billy laid his rifle aside and stripped off his plaid shirt and faded jeans. He remembered the time he'd stood watching for M.P.s while Billy had a slant-eyed hooker in Da Nang and left without paying. It had served Billy right when he'd come up with a case of the clap a few days later.
"I want you to beg me for it," Billy instructed.
The blonde shook her head again, the ash-blonde hair swinging wetly behind her. He slapped her face a second time, leaving red welts.
Jessie laid a meaty fist on Billy's bare shoulder. "There's no need to be hurting her, Billy," he said patiently.
The blonde looked up at the big man.
"Shut up," Billy commanded Jessie. He turned back to the blonde. "You hear me? I want you to beg for it, 'cause you're going to get it one way or another."
She cleared her throat, sucking on a few drops of saliva to loosen the dryness.
Billy stepped away and grabbed his hunting rifle. He pulled the bolt back and slammed a cartridge into place. "You better beg now. You ain't going to get a second chance."
The blonde's voice cracked, but she began to beg.
"That's more like it," Billy interrupted her as he returned the rifle to the ground beside Jessie. "Keep begging." He glanced over his shoulder. "See, Jessie, I told you she'd be beggin' for it."
Then Billy pushed the blonde over on her back, half on the beach towel, half on the damp grass. He knelt between her legs.
Billy ran his hands across the blonde's stomach, her abdomen, then up her rib cage to her breasts. His thumbs stroked her stiff nipples. She squirmed under him.
"That's enough of that," Billy said. He pinned her wrists to the ground, then pressed his mouth against hers, forcing his tongue between her teeth.
He released one of her wrists and reached down between them. He forced her thighs apart.
"You're gonna like this," he said. Then he moved up and onto her and into her. He pulled back and pushed forward, straining against her, again, and again, and again, until suddenly he cried out. He lay still for a moment, breathing heavily, and then he rolled off of the blonde.
Jessie stood over them, his rifle still cradled in his thick arms, watching wordlessly, his thoughts returning to Vietnam and all the things he'd done because Billy had insisted.
The blonde found the bile in her throat and spit in Billy's face. Billy wiped it off with the back of his left hand and slapped her again with his right.
The blonde raked her clawed hand across his cheek. Skin and hair peeled off under her sharp nails and Billy reeled backward from the unexpected blow. Blood trickled between his fingers as he reached up to touch the four long, thin wounds.
He screamed at her, his voice echoing faintly across the lake. "You're never leaving this mountain." He scrambled away and turned to Jessie. "Shoot her," he demanded. "She's going to leave here and tell the whole world what you tried to do."
Jessie stood with his rifle in his meaty hands, a silent mountain of a man. His eyelids narrowed to slits as he considered what had happened and what Billy was telling him.
The blonde tried to slowly back away, fear glazing her pale blue eyes.
"Shoot her and get it over with, Jessie," Billy demanded. "We're done with her. Shoot her quick and we'll dump her body in the lake so nobody'll ever find out it was us."
Jessie unsnapped the safety on his rifle, aimed the barrel at the blonde, and considered. A single bullet sat in the chamber, waiting.
Jessie said slowly, the words coming as hard as the thoughts behind them, "I shared a lot with you Billy. And sometimes I done wrong 'cause I shared." He still had nightmares about the time he'd shot a shoeshine boy because Billy had told him the boy was a Viet Cong come to slit his throat. He would wake in a cold sweat, the expression on the boy's face etched in his mind, the sound of Billy's laughter echoing in his ears.
Billy looked at him wildly, not comprehending what his big friend was saying. "Shoot her, damn it," he screamed at Jessie. "You done everything I ever told you to do. What are you waiting for?"
Jessie knew Billy was right. He had followed the weasel-faced Ridgerunner through the rice paddies of 'Nam and he'd come back to the mountain when it was over because of Billy. But he wasn't in 'Nam anymore. He was home now--home on the mountain where he understood how things were supposed to be.
"Damn it, you ape, shoot!"
Jessie swung the rifle a few degrees to the right and pulled the trigger. The butt of the rifle slammed into his shoulder as the hammer snapped down. The bullet entered Billy's hairless chest just above his heart and blew away the back of his rib cage as it came hurling out the other side. Blood and shards of bone splattered the blonde's chest and Billy's dead body jerked with spasms as it fell to the carpet of grass.
Jessie lowered the rifle and looked at the frightened blonde. She shivered despite the heat.
"You better wash up," Jessie told her as he laid the rifle aside. He kicked her clothes and her backpack across the grass toward her. "I'm done sharing with Billy."
The End

Michael Bracken is the author of All White Girls, Bad Girls, Deadly Campaign, Even Roses Bleed, In the Town of Dreams Unborn and Memories Dying, Just in Time for Love, Tequila Sunrise, Psi Cops, and more than 700 shorter works.