Free Clara Callan by Richard B. Wright Page B

could feel his racing heartbeat. He had shifted his weight and so my cheek no longer hurt. But my insides were burning and I wondered if I now had some unspeakable disease swimming within me. Or perhaps I had become impregnated. It is indeed something to worry about, for I believe I am about in the middle of my month. When I opened my eyes, he was standing over me, buttoning himself. He looked out of sorts now. Ill-tempered. He called to the youth. “Come over here and have some too. You’ll never have a better chance than this.” I watched him buckling the straps of his overalls and looking for the coat he had flung aside in the grass. How I longed to set that grass on fire! Consume all three of us in a sudden flaring burst of flame. A field of fiery grass that would scour everything and leave the earth blackened and cleansed.
    The tramp now seemed hurried and vexed with the boy. “Come on now, hurry it up! Get that thing out of your pants and give it to her. She’s never going to see anything like that again.”
    The boy had come across from the tracks and was looking down at me. Fumbling with his buttons. His member was grotesque. A huge red thing and I said to myself he will tear me apart with it. Then the boy fell to his knees between my legs and I closed my eyes, for I could not bear to look at that vacant, ruined face. Almost at once I felt him spilling himself across my legs. I could feel it pouring over me as he worked it out of himself with his own hands. And so I was spared that. The tramp was now laughing. Calling the boy a damn fool.
    They left then. The man scolding the boy as they went away. I heard his voice fading, and when I turned on my side, I could see his long legs moving through the grass and the boy’s too climbing to the railway tracks. I knelt and watched them walking along the tracks towards Trestle Bridge. The boy was hurrying and at one point the man stopped to cuff him across the back of the head. Then he hurried on, the boy endeavouring to keep up, and then they disappeared around the bend in the tracks. I lay down again, for I felt sick to my stomach and I was bleeding. After a few minutes I cleaned myself again with my torn bloomers, and I wondered how I would get home. What I wanted to do was sit in a hot bath and clean myself properly. Yet that seemed like such an undertaking, such an impossibly complicated and far-off task, that I began to weep and beat the ground with the palms of my hands. I also kicked my feet. I had a little spell there lying in the grass. A tantrum such as an hysterical child might have. It left
me panting and exhausted in the sunlight. From time to time I had to clean myself again and then I would wonder what to do if my insides were swimming in disease or if I were pregnant with the tramp’s child. I could not bear the idea of facing a doctor over in Linden. I would have to go down to Toronto and find someone to help me. But where would I look and what would I say to him? I could not bring myself to tell anyone about this. I got myself into another state thinking about all that, and then I thought how grateful I would be if only I could turn back time and now be walking home with a copy of the Herald , looking forward to my supper, dealing as we all do with the fuss and worries of everyday life. Grumbling about them. When what we should do, if we could only be reminded, is to be grateful for the small routine difficulties of our days and nights.
    I thought about all that as the sun moved through the pine woods and the air and ground cooled. I would have to wait until dark before making my way home. I imagined myself looking wild-eyed and distraught (perhaps I didn’t look that way at all), but I was afraid Imight burst into tears or say something outrageous at a simple greeting on the street. And the aftermath of such a display?
    “What is it, Miss Callan? What’s the trouble?”
    There would be talk and talk and more talk.
    “She started crying right there