Spring Fire Read Online Free PDF Page A

with Leda?"
    She was glad that he was going to talk. She felt better and less restless as he lay back, his arms behind his head, his legs crossed lazily.
    "I like her," she said. "She's been wonderful to me."
    "She tell you much about Jake and her?"
    "What would she tell me? Just that she likes him."
    "Likes!" He hooted and then he said, "Yeah —yeah," slow, and then, "Yeah, maybe she does only like him. Funny girl. She always has eyes."
    "What?"
    "She's always looking around. You know."
    "Yes," Mitch said, not knowing at all.
    "Drink some more of that beer," he said. "We're wasting good iced beer."
    "You know, I like beer O.K. now," Mitch said with a frail semblance of excitement. "It's not bad at all."
    "Good. Here —rest your head."
    He raised himself to a sitting position and spread his legs apart. He patted his chest lightly and said, "Here, baby —rest your head here. We'll talk."
    Mitch moved over and put her head on his chest, a hand resting on either knee.
    "I'm glad you're so tall," she confided. "I’m so tall myself."
    "Yeah," he said. "You're a long-legged gal, all right"
    "Why didn't you talk coming up in the car? I was afraid you'd lost your tongue."
    "I didn't," he said. "I just wanted to think."
    "About what?" Mitch began to feel comfortable and easy with him. "What did you think about?"
    His hands reached up and cupped her breasts quickly, and his knees held her in. "About this," he said, reaching one hand up to the blouse and down to her slip and inside touching her flesh. She grasped his arm as she wiggled to be free.
    Mitch whimpered slowly and softly and she could feel him moving around and forcing her back on the blanket and the tears came fast then. She was dizzy and exhausted and she could not pull herself up. Fighting desperately with him, she could not stop his hands from pulling her skirt up. A thin wail escaped from her mouth and she began to heighten it to a loud moaning sound.
    "Shut up," he snapped. "Shut up!"
    Her moaning increased and some of the lost strength returned so that she kicked him and sent him back away from her. He stood up and glared down. "Mamma tell you not to?" he said angrily. "Mamma tell you sex is dirty?"
    She began to cry hard, and sitting there sobbing, she did not listen to his words. For a long time she stayed like that, listening to him take the caps off the bottles, light cigarettes, and mumble dull words to her. She could hear him say that he was sorry and she had better not cry because Jake and Leda would be back, and then she could hear him curse and swallow the beer and whistle the way he whistled.
    There were voices in the distance, ringing laughter, and the sound of them coming. She put her coat on and got up while Bud began folding the blanket.
    Leda came down the fields ahead of Jake, running happily while he followed. "Mitch and Bud," she shouted, "how goes the mad twosome?"
    Mitch said, "Hi, Leda."
    Bud reverted to his old mood of sullen silence as he loaded the blankets in the car and gathered the empty bottles together. Jake helped him and Leda jumped in the front seat, yawning and saying sleepily, "Better hurry. We'll be out after hours."
    On the way home, after they had come off the dirt road and gone onto the highway, Jake stopped the car. Leda stood beside Mitch while she vomited.
    "You'll be O. K.," she promised. "I used to get sick on beer myself. You'll get used to it, honey."
    * * *
    The next morning, after breakfast, Mitch waited for Marsha Holmes, as she had been told to do. The president's suite consisted of three rooms. There was the bedroom, the study room, and the meeting room, all of them attractively furnished with low couches and triangular lamps and small square tables. Mitch sat in the meeting room, thumbing through the magazines on the table in front of her. She stopped at one tided "The Epsilon." Inside, the columns were devoted to news from chapters of Tri Epsilon throughout the country. Mitch's eye caught the printing, "Gamma Pi