Down past the old abandoned Speedway, twenty miles outside of town, there’s a road that’s just a dirt rut; a weaving ribbon on the ground. It doesn’t lead to nowhere. It just snakes up to a ruin. Once an old man lived there, but he died before I was born. My daddy says he was a Speedway clown. He got killed in some old crash. Nobody here wanted his place. They just let it stand or fall.

Weekends and some school nights, kids with cars sneak out up there. They go out to the old Speedway to mess around and probably fuck. I never went before myself. Not until that strange dry night. The air was still and chilling, made your skin feel like a stick, hard and almost brittle on your bones. I guess I got a little drunk. It’s not hard to do around here. There’s nothing much going on. I guess there never was. Daddy says there used to be or so his Daddy said. Back before the war or so, there was a factory for planes. But now those folks have moved away and this town couldn’t follow. Some people I know left awhile ago. Up to Houston or Fort Worth. They were looking for a dream or work and they just never came back.

This night was late Fall. I’d been working late and hard. I was dizzy from the library air, dusty books and shelves and such. I locked up and just sat there, in my car parked on the street. People shuffled on the sidewalks, like blind folks move their feet. Then a car of kids drove past me. They sounded loud and drunk and wild; music blaring from the windows; laughter drowned in engine’s roar. I watched them without smiling. They were all I wanted to be. Having fun and doing something; living life without a care. I drove out to the liquor store. I bought a bottle of red wine. I guess I was thinking what the hell there’s no one to tell me no.

I drove home but didn’t go in. Daddy’s getting kinda old. His mind is growing feeble but he still shouts like he’s mad. He don’t understand my feelings; I guess I can’t see his point of view. He just sits and watches TV or wants to talk about when he was young. I leaned against my Chevy, beneath the carport roof and drank. Smoking cigarettes and drinking as an hour passed and more. I kept thinking about them kids. Out at the Speedway and what they did. Some Tommy kissing some Brenda, slipping his hand inside her bra. Some Jimmy and some Judy with her panties sliding down. I shivered in the chill, lit another cigarette. There was still a little wine left, but I’d finish it off yet.

I can’t recall the moment. It was like something in me died. Like a house that can’t be lived in or a tear that can’t be cried. I climbed in the car and drove out. I was driving like a fool. Out past the corner grocery, the mortician’s, and the school. Sometime’s the road’s the answer. You just feel the need to drive. I was leaving town forever. But I didn’t know that then.

Twenty miles of lonely blacktop in the Texas neverland; miles and miles of mostly nothing. You wonder will this never end. Then I came up on the Speedway, like a giant on the flats. Cars were parked every which way, their radios were on and loud. I could see some bodies dancing in the headlights and the dark. I could see some cars were shaking; some people fucking, I’ve no doubt. I wanted so to be there. I wanted to be part. But you’ve got to have a lover and not just an empty heart.

So I drove on past the Speedway, down the road I’d heard about. The one that leads to nowhere, well, to the ruined old dead man’s house. I was caught up in a feeling, I can’t describe it to this day. Partly lonesome, partly drunken, partly confusion, partly mad. It was silent out there. Alone with the just night, I parked and walked around. I poked my head inside the doorway and was shocked down to my bones.

A little candle guttered, flickering light upon the walls. A woman stood there watching, a bottle of wine within her hand. It was like looking in a mirror when you know no mirror’s there. She was tall and in the darkness looked as pretty as a saint. She was weaving on her legs. Her shirt was all undone. She had a tattoo on her left breast and another above her belt. She wasn’t surprised to see me. Instead she smiled like some old friend. And I think now maybe she was. The kind of friend that comes from dreaming when you’re a child all scared and lonely. She waved me in and started laughing, then she took another drink. I stumbled in the doorway. I never stopped to think.

“I was driving up to Dallas. Got tired so I stopped,” her voice was awful quiet. “This ain’t your place is it?”

I guess I mumbled something. She leaned closer, trying to hear. Then she shook her head and grinned at me. She clinked our bottles like in a toast. “To the strangers in the night,” she said. “Well, come on and drink with me.”

I wanted to back out of there, stunned and shocked and scared and all. But she seemed so damned familiar, like an angel answering a call. “My name is Ginny Bobrick. I’m a little drunk, I guess.” My voice sounded kinda funny but she didn’t laugh and that was good.

“They call me Daddy T,” she said. “Those that call me anything at all. Are you lonely Ginny Bobrick. Are you alone at night, like me?”

I must have nodded before crying. I could feel a rush of tears. I had wanted to for so long. I had wanted to for years.

She stood close to me and held me. “Hush, now, it’ll be all right. It’ll be all right.”

We danced without no music. Just the heartbeat and the breath. I’d never felt such closeness; I’d never felt so free. Just her and me. Folks round here don’t talk much about sexuality. Oh, the old men in the bars brag of pussy they have had, but the wives look at you shifty when you mention anything. Everybody knows, I guess, but no one says a word. The love of woman for a woman is just something too crazy for them. Except for the wild kids, no one really shows much love in town. Aw, you’ll see it at some wedding that dissolves into a kiss upon the cheek. As the years roll past you, the living seems so bleak. Just an arm around a waist or a look between him and her. Maybe that’s what it all becomes, but that night in late summer…that was something else again.

Maybe if I hadn’t been drunk, but I can’t blame it on the wine. Maybe if the men in town had found me pretty or if I’d have left a long time ago. There were so many reasons, so many forks in the road. So many nights of longing. No matter. It was just what it was and that’s all right.

“We’ll have a good time, Ginny,” Daddy T said in my ear. I wanted to believe her. Let her lead me someplace new inside myself. “It’ll be all right,” she said again.

She kissed my mouth with soft fire. I guess we both tasted of the wine. She touched my hair so lightly and I felt the touch in my mind. She seemed to know my skin so well, every touch built up my desire. I was shaking like a tree in a storm when her lips kissed my neck.

“You feel so cold,” I whispered. “I want you to be warm.”

Our fingers danced in darkness as the candle finally died. I felt so godamned happy, I could have laid right down and died. There was nothing to see. The night was so black. I could feel her wanting me and there was no turning back. We took off our clothes and moved naked in the darkness there.

The coldness of her nipples met the warmness of mine. We kissed what seemed for hours, trailing tongues along the line and curve of each other. I’d never felt a kiss there before. Just my own fingers, when my eyes were closed in a bath or shower or under the covers at night. But this wasn’t dreaming now. This was Daddy T loving me.

I must have whimpered when I came. It seemed to make her go wild. She didn’t stop her licking and I thought I felt her fingernails rake along my thighs. I’d never felt a lover’s hunger, never felt such want as she showed for me. I was lost inside my body.

She showed me how to do it. How to give her pleasure, too. I kissed all down her cool belly until I tasted the slick lips of her. It was like licking in a pool of flowers. I guess some poets might be able to describe it. I was never much for rhymes. Or the songwriters on the radio, but they’d never catch the sound. Like a rhythm in my head, loud as laughter in the sky, was the sound of licking Daddy T and the lyrics of her sighs. The tip of my tongue lay lightly on the throbbing taut skin of her clit and we pulsed back and forth.

She screamed when she came. Like a woman being killed. And clamped her thighs tight against my head. I felt the shudder in my body. And I came without a touch. To give that kind of pleasure was a joy I’d never known. It scared and made me happy. I finally felt not so alone. She pulled me up beside her, cradled me within her arms. She kissed my lips with hers then put her fingers on my mouth.

“Ginny Bobrick,” she whispered. “We shared a secret. I have another. Want to know it?”

I guess I could have said no. But who would at such a time? Lovers share their secrets, their triumphs and their crimes. I nodded against her, looked in her eyes. They were deep and dark and I felt I was falling there. Then she bit my neck and drank my blood.

© 2000 – William S. Dean. All rights reserved.