Chapter 6

Joanne and Joee kissed several times. Joanne would prepare to get behind the wheel of the Mustang, then they’d kiss in parting. She’d see Joee’s sad face just as she was about to close the car door and she would have to get out the car and they’d kiss again. Then she rolled down the car window and they kissed again.

Finally, Joee turned her back and dashed out of the garage. Joanne hit the button for the garage door and backed out of the garage. She wiped at her eyes as she watched the garage door quietly slide down again.

The Mustang was a powerful car and chewed up the miles. Several times, Joanne had to ease her foot off the accelerator. Outside of Alexandria, Louisiana, she pulled into a gas station to fill up.

“Shit, hope I have…” Joanne suddenly thought and looked into her purse.

“Joee Katherine Breaux!” she shrilled when she saw a bank envelope inside of her purse.

Inside the envelope was several one hundred dollar bills. Angrily, Joanne dug her cell phone out and hit the number ‘5’ on the screen.

“Hello?” Joee’s voice cut through the speakers of the car.

“I am so mad at you!” Joanne declared loudly.

“Me? Why? What’d I do?” Joee asked, genuinely surprised.

“The money?” Joanne accused.

“Uh, no one said you had to spend it, huh?” Joee defended.

“Yeah, but still,” Joanne huffed.

The Mustang whizzed along and soon Joanne turned left onto Highway 467, heading north. In no time, she was speeding past the small grocery store and the Stepping Stone Diner.

“Hey,” Joee’s voice cut through the Mustang’s speakers a second time as Joanne was pulling up to her mother’s trailer.

“Hey, I’m home,” Joanne said. “Just got off four sixty seven.”

“Wow, that was good time,” Joee said. “But I thought you said it was five, six hours.”

“By bus,” Joanne said, parking the car. “By Mustang? It’s a whole lot faster.”

“I love you so much,” Joee admitted.

“Love you too,” Joanne said, smiling as she could see her mother’s face peering through the trailer’s living room curtain.

“I miss you,” Joee admitted.

“Miss you too,” Joanne agreed.

With another ‘I love you’ apiece, they ended their phone call. Joanne got out of the car and scrambled up the steps of her mother’s trailer. Mother and daughter squealed and hugged each other fiercely.

“Come on, I’ll help you get your stuff; thought you was taking the bus?” Patty Pierce babbled as they stepped out of the trailer. “Who’s car is this? I know you didn’t run out and buy this. Did you? You didn’t. Did you?”

“It’s Joee’s. Friend of mine’s,” Joanne said, popping the trunk open.

“Oh? It serious? You know, that Bobby’s going be broken-hearted,” Patty teased.

Joanne looked at her mother for a long moment, then shrugged her shoulders. Truthfully, she’d not thought of Bobby Bordelon, her former boyfriend since the first moment she’d stepped off the Greyhound bus in front of the DeGarde Inn in DeGarde, Louisiana.

After putting her suitcases in her bedroom, Joanne called April Lacombe, called a group of her high school friends. Her last call was made to Bobby. His loutish, possessive and petulant behavior made Joanne remember how and why she had forgotten her long-time boyfriend so easily.

All agreed to get together, meet at the Vend the following evening. She hung up in the middle of one of Bobby’s far-fetched tales of grandeur, some exploits he’d gotten up to in her absence. She was sure she’d hear more of his immature hijinks when they met at the Bend the next evening.

The Bend was simply a bend in a small creek. The creek fed into a slightly larger creek that wound its way to the Mississippi River. The Vend had a nice grassy area where a blanket could be spread out, where ice chests could be plopped down, where couples could kiss, where friends could throw a Frisbee around. There were no house trailers for a few hundred yards, so it was rare that anyone called the police.

Over the years, many children had been conceived at the Vend. Many fist fights had broken out between lifelong friends, many hearts had been broken and mended at the Vend.

The next evening, Joanne was the third one to arrive. Bobby was there and demanded to be allowed to drive the Mustang. He whined and wheedled and begged but Joanne stuck to her guns; it was not her car to give him permission to drive it. She did pop the hood so he could see the V-6 engine. And, in front of the two males there, Bobby proved himself to be ignorant of mechanical engineering.

Bobby also attempted to put his arm around Joanne’s waist, to claim ownership of her, especially in front of Adam, who had an undisguised crush on Joanne Pierce. Joanne deftly avoided Bobby’s clutches by being in constant motion, talking to Angela or Sue Lynn or Angela and Sue Lynn and Angela and Angela’s long-time boyfriend Nicholas.

“Woo hoo!” Angela and Sue Lynn whooped when April’s 1991 Chevy Nova coughed and sputtered to a stop.

The attractive red head got out of the car, smiling triumphantly. From the bench seat of her car, April produced three plastic grocery sacks.

“Five bucks,” April demanded, holding the three bags aloft.

“April, how’d you get these?” Adam asked, producing his five dollar bill.

“Five bucks?” Sue Lynn cried out. “I, I’ll owe you, hear?”

“Uh huh, and I’ll owe you the booze,” April said.

“Aw, come on, you, you know I’m good for it,” Bobby wheedled.

“Uh, yeah, I know you not good for it,” April sneered at Bobby.

“Damn, Bordelon, you ain’t got no luck tonight, huh?” Nicholas laughed, giving April a ten dollar bill for himself and Angela.

“Joanne handed April a ten dollar bill, five for her and five for Sue Lynn. Bobby became outraged; in his mind, Joanne should have been paying for his portion.

“And, uh, hey, ain’t like you had pay nothing for it, huh?” Bobby snarled hatefully as the bottle of Boone’s Farm Strawberry Hill went one way around the circle and the fifth of Iron Barrel Whiskey went in the opposite direction.

“Ain’t had to…fucker, you suck Old Man Jensen’s dick tell me it ain’t nothing,” April retorted.

“So, girl, what you ben up to?” April asked Joanne as the second bottle of Boone’s Farm Strawberry Hill began to make the rounds.

Nearly two hours into their gathering, the wine and whiskey was demanding release. The four girls made their way behind a cluster of sweet gum trees and the boys simply walked up to the creek and aimed to see who could piss farther.

“Joanne got pierced nipples, Angela drunkenly giggled to Nicholas when they returned.

“I, oh yeah?” Nicholas asked, now squinting to see if he could see Joanne’s nipples through blouse and bra.

“Quit,” Angela demanded, elbowing her boyfriend.

“I, hey, uh, y’all, where’s my purse?” Joanne suddenly asked.

Six of the seven attendees looked around. Bobby smirked as he pretended to search for the missing purse. Joanne was close to tears; the key for Joee’s car was in her purse. Thankfully, she’d removed the envelope with Joee’s money; that was sitting on her nightstand in her old bedroom.

“Adam, you got your phone with you?” Joanne asked.

“I yeah,” Adam agreed, fishing out an old flip phone.

“Wow, they still make these?” Joanne asked and rapidly punched in her cell phone number.

“I, I hear something!” April called out as she searched around the line of vehicles.

It took three calls; the call when to voice mail the first two times; but they located the purse in Bobby’s pickup truck. Bobby refused to unlock the truck, refused to give Joanne her purse.

Seeing that Nicholas was about to intervene, something that would not end well for anyone, Joanne took action. She made Angela take Nicholas away, take him behind the line of sweet gum trees. Joanne then put the flip phone to her ear.

“Hi, yes, I, I’m at the Bend, yes ma’am. My dumbass ex-boyfriend’s got my purse locked up in his truck,” Joanne said.

“Bumps, who you on the phone with?” Sue Lynn asked, glaring hatefully at the smirking Bobby.

“Police. Taking someone’s purse is theft. Refusing to give it back is aggravated theft,” Joanne said. “Yes ma’am, the Bend. You will? Oh, okay, thank you.”

“Here, God damned bitch,” Bobby screamed, unlocking his truck’s door and grabbing Joanne’s purse.

He flung the cheap purse at her; fortunately it was securely zipped. However, the purse did strike her in her chest and Joanne gasped out in pain when the purse struck her squarely on her nipple. Adam retrieved the purse and handed it to Joanne. She checked and everything was still in it. Joanne then handed Adam his flip phone.

“You, you ain’t going call them back, let them know they don’t got to come?” Bobby whined.

“What? Never called them,” Joanne smirked. “But knew you too stupid figure that out.”

“Hey, Bobby, uh, maybe you got to be going, huh?” April said.

“Yeah, Adam and Nicholas backed up April’s words.

In a show of machismo, Bobby attempted to spin his tires. All he managed to do was get himself stuck in the soft earth. No one was inclined to help him when their party broke up. Bobby even attempted to stand behind Joanne, attempted to prevent her from backing out. He wisely jumped out of the way when Joanne showed no sign of stopping her progress.

Joanne did not know, nor did she care how Bobby managed to get himself unstuck. He called her mother’s trailer the next day and attempted to apologize. He blamed it on the booze and Joanne reminded him, he’d not had any booze.

“Know what Bobby? Your biggest problem is you got too much time on your hands. Why you not at work? Huh? Why you not in school?” Joanne asked.

“Oh. Uh, so, it’s like that. You all better than us just ’cause you in college now?” Bobby sneered.

“No. Just better than you,” Joanne said and hung up.

On her third day home, Joanne met with Joe Pierce and Julie, his Asian-American wife at the Stepping Stone Diner. Joe was all false cheerfulness and Julie was her usual meek self as they sat in the uncomfortable, sagging and peeling vinyl benches. The food was substandard fare but the three managed to choke it down.

“Man! This uh, this Joey, uh, what’s he do for a living?” Joe asked, admiring Joee’s Mustang.

“Joee’s a student, just like me,” Joanne said.

“So, his family’s got some bucks?” Joe deduced.

Joanne wondered why she hesitated, why she couldn’t admit that Joee was a girl. Joanne felt ashamed of herself for being too cowardly to say anything about her relationship with the beautiful, happy, loving Joee.

“I’m sorry, Joee,” Joanne said, even as she was punching the number for Joee’s phone.

Twice more, the old gang from high school met down at the Bend. Twice more, April Lacombe gave Old Man Jensen a blow job for some cheap wine and a bottle of cheap whiskey. Though no one would admit to calling him, somehow Bobby found out about the gathering and showed up. The second time, he managed to have five bucks and made damned sure he grabbed ten dollars’ worth of the booze. Both times, he begged, whined and pleaded with Joanne to forgive him, to go for a ride with him.

“Ain’t high school no more, Bobby,” Joanne said, taking a hefty gulp of the Iron Barrel Whiskey. “Going have find yourself someone else to fuck.”

“Don’t look at me,” April hooted.

“Nope,” Sue Lynn giggled.

The next morning, Joanne and Patty hugged tightly. Joanne tearfully got into the Mustang and left the trailer park. At the Dairy Queen, she hugged her father and promised she would do her best during the summer semester. Then she called Joee wen Stepping Stone, Louisiana was in her rear view mirror.

“On my way,” Joanne said, even as a tear slid down her face.

“Yay!” Joee whooped and Joanne giggled.

Joanne figured out how to set the cruise control and kept the sleek automobile locked in at four miles above the speed limit.

While Joanne traversed the lonely stretches of 467, then 54, Joee sifted together the ingredients for shortbread cookies. She stirred in a goodly amount of marijuana, then rolled out the dough. She used her large cookie cutter to form twenty four cookies of three inch diameter circles.

While the cookies baked, in a double boiler Joee mixed together some dark chocolate, some peppermint oil, and an obscene amount of cannabis oil. After the cookies cooled, Joee dredged each cookie through the still quite hot chocolate, then set them onto wire racks to cool.

“Two and a half hours later, Joee answered her phone. She giggled happily when Joanne informed her that she was pulling up to the house.

“Yay!” Joee screamed when she heard her garage door groaning.

“”Joee?” Joanne called out, entering the hallway.

“Hi, Mith Pierth, you buy my cookieth?” Joee lisped, standing in a ridiculously short Girl Scout uniform.

“OMG, I, yes, I, how much?” Joanne breathed, feeling her panties become soaking wet.

“Hmm, I, I don’t know,” Joee said, swiveling from foot to foot.

“But you need to hurry up; you’re two cookies behind me,” Joee whispered, kissing Joanne.

“Joanne Katherine Breaux!” Joanne declared, feeling Joee’s bare ass underneath the obscene uniform.

“God I missed you so much,” Joee hissed, kissing Joanne again.

Joanne pulled Joee to the living room and pushed her onto the couch. When Joee sat, the green skirt rose up, revealing Joee’s bare crotch. Joanne knelt on the floor and pushed Joee’s thick thighs apart. Joee moaned out as Joanne glued her mouth to Joee’s crotch.