Lucky's Girl (11 page)

Mary Kennedy was a stunning girl despite never looking up or speaking without being spoken to. Like Kenny had said, she was a product of her environment. When she did speak, it was barely more than a whisper, as if she was afraid the unbidden sound of her own voice would cause her tiny life to crack and break away from her.

That the one thing she had would leave her.

Kenny, Mary, and Lucky were in the tiny living room of her dad’s trailer. Her mom had died two years ago from drinking and smoking, as well as not taking her insulin. Her toes went first, with rest of her following shortly after.

Dan, Mary’s dad, was one of the lucky ones in Elton Township. The state got him a job in the copper mine a few towns over, so he was never around. Even when he was, the fact that a boy had started fucking his daughter in grade-school seemed strangely invisible to him. Mary had a part-time job cleaning the rooms in the little motel constituting one of the few businesses in the town.

They were sitting around the little TV and VCR she’d saved up to buy. Lucky had told her to do this. She was a member of a mail-in movie club, receiving a new one every Friday. Up until now Lucky’s favorite was
Hellraiser
, one and two, but they’d just watched Blue Velvet and he was on fire for Dennis Hopper’s character Frank.

“Man, Isabella Rosellini’s tits are fucking fantastic! Do you think that Mary should cut her hair like that?”

Kenny looked at Mary out of the corner of his eye. She was sitting as always, hands in her lap, looking at her feet. She didn’t even look up when her name was spoken. She had long straight brown hair, parted down the middle. She ordinarily wore the long straight denim skirts that were
de rigeur
in the Pentecostal church, but Lucky hates those, so she was wearing tight jeans like the girls in the magazines. She really was beautiful.

“It would be a shame to cut her hair, she’ll be a Crystal Gail lookalike one of these days.”

Kenny was hiding his confusion. His life was normal. His life was good, but a few short words from his uncle had brought a doubt he’d never experienced.

His best friend wasn’t who he thought he was.

Lucky had showed up like always, just after dinner time. He’d brought beer and even dope tonight, courtesy of Fat Sally’s brother, Walter Weed.

In a small town, nicknames stick.

He was effusive, he was horny, and he couldn’t wait to get over to Mary’s to watch the new movie she’d ordered. This one was supposed to be completely fucking nuts.

So they’d driven to Mary’s, Lucky spinning the bald tires of the old pickup every which way. He’d sprinted up the stairs of the trailer, yanked open the door and run in. Kenny carried the twelve of Hamm’s. Mary was still in her motel maid outfit, she hadn’t been expecting them so early so Lucky had told her to change.

Neither Kenny nor Lucky were regular pot smokers so it would take them three tries to roll a passable joint, Kenny trying first, then Lucky insisting he could do it right, because
didn’t Kenny know anything
, then Lucky suggesting Kenny roll the joint because Mary had come back into the room.

Lucky signaled to Mary. “Hold up. Stop right there.”

He handed the mutilated half-rolled joint to Kenny and spun his hand around, commanding Mary to show them her ass in the jeans. She didn’t speak, just obeyed.

“Kenny, is there a finer ass in Elton?”

Kenny attempted to occupy himself with the joint, but this conversation wasn’t sitting right with him. Not after the flood of thoughts, understandings and remembrances about his life growing up with Lucky. The blinders were off, and he wished they were still on.

But he was a seventeen year-old boy, and he knew where this would go even though he felt like shit every time.

He tried to stall.

“Hold that thought, Lucky-luck, we’re almost in business with this here joint.”

He made an exaggerated face of effort rolling the weed in the crinkly paper he’d filched from Uncle Frank.

“No way. Look at that ass! I think these are her best jeans.”

He couldn’t help himself. He looked up. Mary’s perfect ass was just a few feet in front of him. She glanced over her shoulder, her gorgeous dark hair framing her face. She’d put on lipstick and eyeliner when she’d changed. Her expression was both blank and hopeful at the same time. She wanted to do well, she wanted Lucky to be happy, because if Lucky was happy, then she was happy.

Kenny was hypnotized.

Lucky snatched the joint from Kenny and sparked it.

“Now, Mary, why don’t you go grab some beers for me and Kenny and then come sit in between us, because I think Kenny needs some help with a few things, and god knows… seriously,
My God knows
; this is something that I want to see.”

Kenny was mesmerized and paralyzed. Lucky handed him the joint. “Don’t just sit there all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. Hit it!”

His hand brought the joint up to his lips and inhaled. Sharp, pungent.

Mary sat between them and opened the beers.

She looked to Mason and smiled.

He pointed to Kenny.

She turned to Kenny with a different smile. She shifted from the couch onto the floor in front of Kenny and slid between his legs. She pushed his shoulders gently so he was sitting back.

Kenny’s mind was swimming. She unzipped his pants, pulling them down around his knees and took him into her mouth.

Lucky hit the joint. “That’s right, Mary, all the way up and all the way down.”

Kenny had lost his virginity to Mary in the tenth grade. It was one of the first times he’d ever been drunk. Lucky had managed to get some beer somehow and they’d rowed out to Grove Island and had sat on a blanket beneath the Big Tree while the campfire burned in front of them.

Kenny was spooked because it had been a full moon and this was allegedly where the bad kids worshipped the devil, listened to heavy metal and smoked pot. There was a blackened patch where campfires had been used, but no signs of bad kids or devil worship, and no heavy metal soundtrack. Lucky did have a little portable tape-deck and Rush’s excellent Signals album.
The Analog Kid
sang out as they drank their beer and Lucky told them the scary history of Grove Island.

This was where the founders of Elton had sacrificed a virgin, and every full moon you could hear her screams if you put your head up to the trunk of the Big Tree. Then so-and-so related to so-and-so hung themselves from its branches. Over and over, people had hung themselves from this very tree as well. It would always happen on a full moon. They were totally normal and… wham! They had to hang themselves. Kenny cracked up at Lucky’s BS. Mary was her usual mute self.

But then something strange had happened. Mary and Lucky had started making out, and were taking off their clothes. Kenny stared drunkenly. He really couldn’t move. He wanted to but couldn’t. Ever since they’d been little kids it had been obvious that Lucky had fucked Mary. Kenny knew it was wrong and they weren’t supposed to be doing that. Kids weren’t supposed to do that, only married people. It was fundamentally wrong except for one thing; it was Lucky.

That made it okay.

Every time they were together, there would be an unspoken cue and the two of them would go off together. They would come back a little while later, their hair and clothes disheveled.

But now it was happening right there in front of him. Mary was naked: her beautiful tits, the thatch of dark hair between her legs; completely naked right in front of him. Right next to him on the blanket in front of the fire.

Lucky pulled away from her kiss and looked over to Kenny. Mary’s hands were around Lucky’s cock doing the kind of things Kenny had only dreamt about while jerking off, praying that no one would catch him. Then Lucky patted her on the ass and she climbed atop Kenny and wrapped her mouth around his. She stuck her tongue in his mouth and her hands went to his belt.

Since that time two years previously, this had happened every few months. He didn’t know how to process this kind of exchange, so he just let it happen. He’d kissed other high-school girls, had engaged in some clumsy fumbling with bra straps and jeans buttons but those had never actually come off. The whole of his real sexual experience had been with Mary, at the instruction of Lucky… while he watched.

There was shame and guilt, but like everything else about his relationship with Lucky, it remained unresolved. The guilt towards Mary, the shame that she was being ordered to endure by the boy she loved, that Lucky got off on watching. All of this was walled off and compartmentalized in his mind. But now, with Mary’s mouth around his cock and Lucky watching with a kind of pride, handing him a joint, Kenny felt disgusted, but his traitorous flesh erupted anyways.

***

It was a full house, and not a pretty one either, but Christie Tellefsen didn’t care. She was the valedictorian of her class, the leader of the cheerleading squad, and heading to Columbia University with a full scholarship. Her father was The Managing Director of the Tellefsen Brothers Holding Company, a fancy way of saying that he owned the local sawmill.

She was tall, blonde and well dressed, articulate and ambitious. When she was five years-old her father had taken her to New York to show her the world of the haves so she would know that she came from the world of the have-nots. Even though she was heir to the largest fortune in this forgotten part of the world, that simple amount of money made her little more than comfortably upper middle-class in the rest of the country.

But here, that was filthy rich.

The part of her mind which used to be in control was screaming to her; get out, just get out. You are not stupid. You are not poor. You are not illiterate. You are not a loser. You are not a small-town bad girl. You are not a slut. You are not trailer-trash.

Then why, why are you here?

None of these questions could quite take form, existing only as smoldering slow burns in a part of her mind which had been locked away. These questions kept coming like
déjà vu
, a flash of a vivid dream remembered weeks later. But they were fleeting, coming apart like smoke in the breeze.

She was here because Mason,
Lucky,
was going to be giving a sermon.

She used to abhor the very idea of this place, this “dirty barn full of inbred welfare bums” as her father had called it, but she was here to hear him speak, to watch his face, to see his eyes and his lips and his hair…

She wasn’t from here, she was from the town down the road: the town with jobs, houses, and the high-school where she reigned supreme. The Elton kids would ride the school bus twenty miles to get there. She had been elected prom queen and he the prom king. She’d always known he was there, that the Elton kids worshiped the ground he walked on, but she wasn’t like those kids. She was in the honors society and the debate team. She was revered from a respectful distance. Both students and teachers would give her a wide berth. Pimple-faced boys did not ask her out. That just did not happen. Silly girls would not engage her in petty rivalries because she had no rivals. Not even close. She drove an Acura and bought her clothes in Chicago.

He’d never spoken to her or looked her way until last summer between their junior and senior years. He had come to her front door and she’d lost her virginity on her bedroom floor while her parents watched the U.M. game downstairs.

Although it was impolite to say so, she didn’t believe in God. Her dad had laughingly referred to them as Christmas Christians. They would go to the Lutheran Church at Easter and Christmas, for big civic events and write checks for all the right blah blah blah. But really it was superstition for the natives. If Jesus really gave a hoot about the poor he would have given them jobs.

But Mason,
Lucky
, was something different.

She felt a warm glow in her heart.

She felt a deep, pulsing heat down below.

Mason,
Lucky
, was a
Prophet
.

She knew that other women were owned by Mason in a way she didn’t understand or know how to question. But she was different from those lesser women. Yes, she belonged to him, but he belonged to her as well.

They were meant to be together.

There was no other explanation.

Her eyes were opened and she’d been shown the truth. There was a God, Mason had told her so. His very existence proved it. She hadn’t known how small and shallow her world had been until he’d come into it. He said that people had got God all wrong. His God was
here
, his God was
now
. He said it with such conviction.

His
God.

She knew this was no mistake.

They were meant to be together and she was willing to do her part. She didn’t need to go to college. She didn’t need to go away. Mason was here, right here in this place, she just needed to make it right. She needed to show him he didn’t need that little trailer park tramp or the other women who coveted what could never be theirs. She was worthy. She just needed to be willing to wait until he was ready. She knew that this world judged you by what you do, not what you intend, and she just hadn’t gone far enough, she hadn’t truly
proven
herself worthy.

He was on the dais, to the left of the pulpit with his mother, while his father gave the first reading. His father was a handsome man with a giant voice radiating warmth and compassion. His mother was a sweet, pretty lady. It was easy to see how they’d created the largest church in this part of the state. Their clothes were cheap and worn but taken care of thoughtfully.

The rest of the rabble was a different story, but she was beginning to see even those people differently. They just needed help. They just needed to be shown the way – shown the way by men like Mason.

But Mason was
beautiful
.

She’d realized he was handsome,
really
handsome, ever since they’d been freshmen. She just hadn’t seen how wonderful and pure he was until he’d stood on her porch that day. She’d heard the knock from her bedroom, and had looked down from her window, seeing his truck. It was
him
, the preacher’s son from Elton, the one the trailer-trash thought was the second coming. Well, she wasn’t like those small-town sheep. She walked straight down the stairs to send him packing. Who did he think he was? Did a small-town rube like him really have the effrontery to come calling like that? Just show up in his beat-up old pickup?