V.N. Ebert

Betty Johnson’s problem was that all the boys wanted to hump her. That sure included me, because Betty Johnson had a body that put dirty thoughts in any boy’s head. Girl looked like she had walked out of a pinup into our little flyspecked part of nowhere Georgia. Should not have had a problem because she ought to have just let me screw her, this when all the other girls of a certain age and plenty of girls well-past the age wanted me to screw them, me being a football hero at the peak of my high school glory and going off to play college ball at the end of the summer. Donors had put a new truck in my driveway weekend after I signed and got my daddy a new job and I was going to be set for life because the old boys protect their football studs, least the ones who got sense in their head and will do honest work after the game ends. And I was handsome, football conditioned and with a good face without acne, and I slicked my hair and grew a short beard and donors told me I looked distinguished enough I could sell a stick-shift to a man without a driver’s license.

The hell of it was that Betty Johnson was a Primitive Baptist.

Girl would not touch a boy anymore outside of marriage than she would accept that a Catholic could get to heaven, or a Methodist for that measure. That was what she told me once, that I as a Methodist was going to burn in Hell alongside the Papists and then she served me my cheeseburger and chocolate milkshake. She worked as a waitress because her family was poor even for that county and I had been talking her up some, talking about going off to the city and being somebody. She had taken my order and gone off and come back with it and she knew I was a Methodist because there weren’t many folks in our part of the county or all the county entirely and so we all knew more about each other than you might expect in a big city, and she was holding that tray like it had somebody’s head on it. Looked at me with the hardest blue eyes, I have had football coaches shouting at me loud enough to bust their lungs that I could go fuck myself or get moving and those communications were positively kind-hearted and relaxed compared with how Betty Johnson was looking at me then. Put my order on the table and told me that I was going to burn for my Arminianism and I said that I wasn’t a German and she said that Methodists and Papists both burnt in Hell. Left me to my cheeseburger and milkshake and damnation.   

Talked that over with my reverend, Mr. Brownlow who was an old boy with a goatee and a good head of hair who liked drinking with the football team after games and kept me going to church even after I discovered chasing pussy and for that I am still grateful to him. Had told him after I popped my cherry because I had wondered if that meant I couldn’t still go to church on Sunday and he had bought me a beer and explained to me about wearing a rubber. Told him that I was chasing after Betty Johnson and that she had told me I was going to Hell, not because of me chasing after her but because I was a Methodist.

“Well, there is a chance that she is right,” Mr. Brownlow told me. “In which case I will get there first and save you a place.”

“Ain’t you concerned about your soul?”

“Sure am, and I have been redeemed in Christ. Only I have placed my bet on how to affect my redemption in Christ on John Wesley instead of John Calvin.”

Knew who the first one was because he came up often enough in church and figured the second was a Primitive Baptist, and Mr. Brownlow was kind of enough not to explain the theology or biography to me. Gave me another beer and asked me about getting him season tickets for my college season and I told him sure would.

“Can’t do nothing without some spiritual counseling,” I said.

“Sure can’t. And, being your spiritual counsel, I’m going to tell you to lay off of Betty Johnson because she is a hard woman for being a young girl. But, being that if I was your age I wouldn’t be able to follow that advice myself, I’m going to also tell you that, if you do keep chasing her, be careful of her, and try not to get yourself baptized in the creek. Getting baptized to get laid is begging for a lightning bolt to come out of the sky and strike the water same time your head goes under.”

I had some of that beer which he took out of his icebox and it was pleasantly cold.

“Think that’d work,” I asked.

“You wouldn’t be the first to try,” Mr. Brownlow said. “But you wouldn’t take well to being a Primitive Baptist, and you’d still have to marry her.”

Was right that I ought to have laid off of Betty Johnson and was equally right that I wasn’t going to stop chasing her. Was the summer before I left and she was about all I had left to chase, having without modesty laid every other girl that was worth laying and probably plenty of others that were regrettable. And she kept waitressing and I kept having an appetite and money in my pocket.

Now, there was a boy named Billy Lee and Billy wasn’t what you’d call a stud. Billy was a little twerpy thing like he had a half-inch pecker, having seen him in the locker-room shower I ain’t lying by much when I tell you that, and coke-bottle glasses that he had to hold together with tape that always managed to have something caught in it so there’d be dirt or hairs or once even a little fly caught in the tape that you could see on the broken bridge of the glasses. But Billy was a Primitive Baptist, and he was hanging around the diner that summer and was obvious as a hard-on in a wrestler’s singlet that he was going after Betty Johnson.

Would sit at the bar that was a long metal sheet on top of plywood with some stools pulled up to it. Betty Johnson would be behind the bar in the area between the bar and the serving window to the kitchen, and Billy would take his time placing his order and asking her all what was good and what anything special they had that day. They hadn’t never had a damn special in all the time that diner had been standing and was something he must’ve heard the one time he allowed himself to watch a picture or listen to the radio to something wasn’t on a religious theme, and Betty Johnson would tell him that customers ordered the cheeseburger or the bologna sandwich or something else if it suited them.

“But what do you like,” Billy would ask.

“I don’t like anything here,” Betty Johnson would answer. “I don’t much concern myself with food, except to eat it.”

Billy would order the bologna sandwich and a glass of milk and when Betty Johnson put them in front of him, he would ask her some more questions. This particular day, he asked about her brother who was a preacher even though he had not gone to bible college or even high school, and who was preaching in a swampy part of Arkansas. Betty Johnson said that was preaching still and was a better man than what passed for a preacher around here.

“Brownlow who is little better than a pederast for how he goes around the football team,” she said. “He plies them with liquor and has designs on them.”

“Lucky me, I ain’t on the football team,” Billy Lee said. “Those boys ain’t such hot shots as they think they are, if you’ll pardon the expression.”

I ain’t a man who walks around being pissed-off all the time like I make a sport of it, but I’m not afraid of being angry either. So, I was sitting in my regular booth that had a good view of where Betty Johnson would stand behind the bar and that was within hearing, and I was getting pissed-off, tell the truth of it. Didn’t like her talking bad about my reverend who was like enough why I was not going to go straight to Hell when I died if Hell wasn’t full of Methodists and really didn’t like him talking bad about the football team.

Then, Billy Lee asked Betty Johnson if she had would like living on a farm, and that was what did it because it put a real good mean son-bitch of an idea in my head. Billy Lee was a farm boy, though it hadn’t done more for his physique than give him a permanent sunburn, and you know what they say about farm boys and how they learn the facts of life. Didn’t even need to think the plan or the story over, because was like seeing a receiver wide-open far downfield no cornerback in sight and make the throw because you know it will be a thing of beauty.   

I got out of my booth and I was dressed better than James Dean because my white t-shirt was tighter on me for being muscled-up and my letterman jacket with the Rebel flag across the back and high-polished boots and wearing that get-up was like open season for pussy. Excepting Betty Johnson’s, which if you’ll pardon my expression was getting wet for Billy Lee because he was also a Primitive Baptist and hated the football team. Was leaning over the counter now and had her hair behind her head that she didn’t do work on and still was long and soft and blonde and made you wonder what her pussy looked like, and her skin didn’t have a mark on it and her teeth that were straight even though there weren’t enough money for braces if you put her whole family together, and those mean blue eyes looking at Billy Lee with the nearest to kindness I ever seen.

So, I put my hand on Billy Lee’s shoulder and wiped that kindness off of Betty Johnson like running a wash-cloth over a mirror.

“Billy boy,” I said and really drawled it out. “I wanted to extend my sympathy.”

“What are you talking about,” Billy Lee asked me.

“Why,” I said, “I heard y’all found hoof-and-mouth in your cattle, and knowing about your proclivities I just knew I ought to tell you how bad I got to feeling for you. Could not imagine what you facing.”

“We don’t got hoof-and-mouth,” Billy Lee said.

Betty Johnson’s ears had pricked up like radar installations at the word proclivities.

“Hope not, for your farm’s sake and your sake too. Ms. Johnson,” I said affecting formality like a Southern trial lawyer, “you know what could happen to this boy if they found hoof-and-mouth, beyond having to cull that whole herd, but for this here boy it is something worse than bankruptcy for him.”

“Shut the he—,” Billy Lee caught himself before he finished saying hell and I knew I had him hard by the balls, “heck up.”

“I have got it on first-hand testimony that this boy could be facing something much worse. See, one of my buddies on the football team has worked on Billy Lee’s farm baling hay and other such things that take a strong pair of hands that Billy ain’t got the muscle to do, and he has had the opportunity from this vantage to observe Billy boy here and notice some of his, peculiarities.”

“What’s peculiar about him,” Betty Johnson said. Sounded like she was talking about a car on the lot being sold for less than you would expect from the book value.

“Well, see here Miss Johnson, my good buddy one evening was returning to the barn they got, the one that leans a little to one side, because he had left something or other, and the barn door was half-closed and so he had to open it on up. And when he did, well, Billy boy, I hear you was having some fun.”

“Be quiet, you, goddamn you,” Billy Lee said, quiet and defeated. I slapped his back friendly and hard like, shooting the shit and boys being boys. Sounded like I had punched him.

“Now, I have screwed plenty of heifers in my day,” I said, “but every one of them was a human female. Can’t say the same for old Billy boy here.”

Whether Billy Lee had actually fucked cattle was a point of contention in the county, but given that he did not threaten to kick my ass and instead stared into his milk with red on his cheeks, I suspect that he actually had lost his virginity to a farm animal. Betty Johnson was looking at him now like she had gotten up the hood of the car and checked the engine and found it was full of sawdust and thinking, here I am, an idiot almost bought something that was worthless after the first impression. Then, well, I was feeling real good how a boy does after he’s bitched somebody, how you feel after you put a boy like Billy Lee’s head in a toilet after you and the rest of the football team have pissed in it, and I was still horny and itchy for Betty Johnson who was the last girl I wanted to mount up before I left the county for better things and a higher class of co-ed college pussy. So, kept on and that was when the thing happened. 

“Now, Miss Johnson,” I said, “if you interested in a man that has some experience but ain’t quiet so exotic an experience as Billy Lee here, I’d be real happy to buy you dinner. Got a new truck can take a spin in, even go to the city for something fancy on the dime of some old boys who are fanatical about college football.”

“There is only one thing to be fanatical about, and that is Jesus,” Betty Johnson said.

“Sure enough,” I said. “And I believe in Jesus, but I got time for pretty girls too.”

Thought Betty Johnson was going to slap me and wish that was what she had done. Wouldn’t be the first time a girl did, and if she had screwed me after slapping me across the face wouldn’t be the first or even the second time that had happened either. Instead, she got a look on her face like a very old painting in a shuttered church might have, or an illustration in a book that nobody has checked out of the library. Went through the door into the kitchen and I watched her through the serving window and she knew I was watching her because she moved like she was being watched like a reverend distributing the wafer at Communion. She walked to the deep fryer and the negro cook asked Miss Johnson, what you doing, and she didn’t answer him. Pulled a generous sheet of white parchment paper used for baking the week’s pie and yellow cake and pressed it against the sides of one of the frying baskets. Then she took the basket with the parchment paper by the handle and put it deep into the frying oil and put her head over the fryer like she wanted to confirm a plan would work. Negro cook said again and higher now, Ms. Johnson what are you doing and I jumped the bar like I was clearing hurdles at a track-meet. Got through the kitchen door and she took the frying basket out of the frying oil with the parchment paper holding the hot oil in it instead of sieving out through the holes, and I had half the distance between us before she got the frying basket over her head and dumped the oil on herself.

Cook screamed and Betty Johnson didn’t. Ain’t sure what I did, to be honest. Billy Lee said later I did and the cook said I did not, but I do know that the worst smell I ever knew hit me. Cook ran towards me or better said ran away from her and grabbed hold of me and said she is too hot to touch for the grease. I could’ve broken his grip but I was too afraid of burning and Betty Johnson.

Was a burning slick like a tar pit of grease in front of the deep-fryer from where some sloshed out while Betty Johnson had lifted the frying basket. Lakes in hell must be like that. Smell and look and got heat like it. Frying basket next to from where Betty Johnson dropped it after it had served her purpose.

Betty Johnson was still standing then and was like she was being held up by Jesus because no way could somebody keep on their feet on their own after that. Like being hit by a linebacker weighs three-hundred pounds and staying up. Turned around and the top of her apron was burnt to her skin through the layer of plain homespun she wore. Hair was burnt away and some was burnt into the top of her head. Didn’t have much of her face left, or her eyes which were like angry holes in her face but somehow someway she knew where I was standing because those angry holes were pointed in my direction but for being blinded. Lips were burnt away and she raised her hands which were the parts of her above her waist that were undamaged for having had to lift the basket of oil, only had a little burn from where some of the oil had slushed through the bottom and onto her hand. Was pointing straight at me for being blind. Barely had lips left and she spoke with strange tones and pitch.

“I burnt on earth for a moment and you are going to burn down there forever,” Betty Johnson said.

“I been redeemed, and you ain’t,” Betty Johnson said.

Betty Johnson was smiling with what was left of her face. Then I started running.