When Bull came by the home place to get her when he was leaving to return home, there was one hell of a row. Jewel’s brothers and Bull argued and almost came to blows, with the brothers telling Bull that he wasn’t taking their little sister nowhere and he’d better get off their land. Jewel screamed and begged right there in the front yard, wanting so bad to go with Bull, and when he saw he was getting absolutely nowhere with Clive and Clay, he pushed Clive back with his hand, taking him by surprise with Clive running into Clay who stood behind him. Grabbing Jewel by the arm, he practically threw her in the car, and took off down the road with that big Chrysler fishtailing all over the place, until the car was almost obscured by the dust flying up in the air.
They sure couldn’t give chase without a car, and the son of a bitch was betting on that, but Clive could stop him from taking Jewel, by God! He ran in the house, grabbed his rifle and was gonna blow out one of Bull’s tires, but Dorie grabbed the barrel of the gun and pointed it up in the air. She told Clive he might hit Jewel since they couldn’t see good, to just let her go, that she’d find a way to get with Bull, anyhow. They just hated it because Bull was so old and Jewel wasn’t nothing but a young’un yet. That poor child couldn’t know what she was letting herself in for. Besides, they didn’t like Bull nohow and it was no telling how he’d treat their little sister.
Bull drove over to Charleston with Jewel so keyed up she was practically jumping up and down on the seat. This was the biggest doings of her life! Why, she’d never been this far from home before! Everything was new and exciting and when Bull pulled her over next to him on the seat and put his arm around her, she let him, although she was a little leery of what he might do. She’d never sat that close to any man except Clive and Clay.
Then Bull started in on her brothers and cussed them to hell and back with Jewel sitting there not saying nothing because she was scared to. But all of a sudden, he changed and started laughing and telling her what all he was gonna buy her when they got to town, just like Clive and Clay had gone out of his mind completely. And he did buy her all kinds of clothes, filling the trunk of the car with packages like it was nothing. Bull picked out dresses, skirts and blouses, sweaters and shoes and lingerie, the likes of which Jewel had never even seen before except in the catalog. All those shoes fascinated Jewel. She’d only owned one pair at a time and she wore those everywhere she went, when she didn’t go barefoot, cleaning and polishing them up for church. When her shoes would get too small and they couldn’t afford another pair right then, Clive would cut slits in the tops of them until he could come up with the money to order her another pair from the Sears & Roebuck, Montgomery Ward, or the Alden’s catalog. And she always got the cheapest pair Clive could find, no matter whether she liked them or not. It was going to take some getting used to, having all those different shoes to go with different dresses.
She appreciated everything Bull bought for her, but she wished he’d a let her pick out some stuff. Jewel liked the frilly dresses and blouses, but Bull picked out things like her school teacher would wear. Jewel didn’t like suits that much, but Bull bought her quite a few of those, when all she wanted was that red and white polka dotted dress with all the ruffles in the skirt. With red shoes. That woulda been real pretty. But he wouldn’t let her get them. When he said he’d buy her clothes, she never thought he’d be the one picking them out. Heck, Clive had done that her whole life. But when it come to the night clothes, he bought things that downright made her blush. While she liked the feel of the pretty filmy lingerie, some of them looked downright indecent.
The last thing Bull bought was a wedding band. It had diamonds all across it, real ones, not rhinestones, and Jewel had been so busy admiring that ring that she didn’t hear the price of it. If she had, she’d have been afraid to wear it. They’d found a Justice of the Peace who agreed to marry them, and Jewel put down that she was eighteen because you had to be eighteen to get married. She was so nervous that the fountain pen shook and that old justice just sat there and looked suspiciously at the odd looking couple. Him fifty-five and her fifteen but the justice didn’t know that, since Bull looked younger than his years and Jewel looked older in that fancy lace dress and hat that Bull made her wear. She’d changed clothes in a filling station bathroom and when she got up enough nerve to come out, Bull’s eyes teared up, and she wondered about that. He musta thought she looked real pretty.
When they got to the hotel, Jewel was having second thoughts, and was asking herself if the Chrysler and the clothes was worth having to kiss that old man. So far, she’d only kissed him on the cheek and Dorie had told her some stories about men and women that had her scared to death and she was hoping that Dorie was lying. Bull wouldn’t try to stick his thing in her toosie. She was too little and he was too big. But Dorie had told her not to let nobody do that till he was her husband. Sounded downright nasty to her and Bull just wouldn’t do a thing like that.
All of that went out of her mind like a smooth stone from a slingshot when she got a look at the hotel room. Jewel was all excited about the pretty furnishings in the room, going all around, touching everything and examining the bathroom that totally captured her attention. She understood the bathtub, but when Bull explained the shower to her, she wanted to get in it right then. Why, it’d be like being under the waterfall down under the hill on the farm that was too little to get under, only this one was warm. And it was and she didn’t want to get out, but Bull hollered for her. She put on one of her new gowns and robes that Bull had got her, and came out of the bathroom a little hesitant because it was so thin you could see almost everything right through it. Bull had already changed into a funny looking robe and he didn’t have no pants on because she could see his bare legs shining. Understanding that she had to sleep in the same bed with Bull, since Clive and Dorie did and they was married, she was uncertain and didn’t quite know what she was supposed to do.
To her horror, Jewel soon found out that Dorie wasn’t lying when she’d told her what husbands and wives did in the bed. Running her hand over the soft cotton chenille of the bedspread, she wasn’t aware when Bull locked the door. Coming up from behind her, he grabbed her around the waist and threw her down on the bed, ripping her new nightgown right off before she even knew what he was doing. When he pulled her panties down and off her feet, she thought she’d die of shame. He fell on top of her and was putting his slobbery mouth all over her face and she was struggling, kicking her legs, and beating him on the back, trying to get him off of her. She was scared within an inch of her life!
“Stop it, Bull! Yer hurtin’ me! Yer heavier ’an lead.” Grabbing at her tit, she thought Bull was gonna tear it off and she couldn’t scream because every time she tried, he’d put his big old mouth over hers again and durn near smother her.
Jewel felt the hard thing between her legs, trying to push into her toosie and it hurt something fierce and she was trying to hold her legs together so he couldn’t do what Dorie had told her. She begged him to stop, that it was killing her, but Bull wouldn’t, just brought his knee up and spread her legs apart. She cried, she pleaded, but nothing worked. Felt like he was breaking through bones and she bit her fist to keep from screaming. But he finally broke through the barrier that was hurting her so bad, and then it didn’t hurt that bad anymore. He grunted like an old pig going up and down on top of her with that big ole thing pushing in and out till finally, she felt something warm gushing up inside of her and he collapsed right down on her and quit pushing. Jewel was never so glad of anything in her life. She couldn’t understand what happened to Bull, because one minute his thing was hard as a rock and the next minute it wasn’t nothing but soft and mushy like a old dead snake and he was breathing real hard in her ear.
Was this what women traded for room and board? Had she traded a life of pain for a car and some new clothes? She thought of all the wives sitting in church and couldn’t imagine them ever doing nothing like what she just done. Evidently Clive and Dorie did because she was the one who told her about it. Why would they want to do it for? And then she remembered that Dorie told her it was how you got a baby growing in yer belly. Did Bull want her to get a baby? He must, awful bad, or he wouldn’t a done nothing like that.
Why didn’t her brothers try harder to keep her from going with Bull? If Dorie knew all about this nasty and painful