Read Online Honey is Sweeter than Blood by Jeffrey Thomas - Free Book Online Page B

breathed.  
    “Yeah.  But the tree’s so old…you shouldn’t hurt it.”
    “Oh, I wouldn’t, I’m just saying.  The best thing would be if they were both buried right here.”
    “Mm,” Jen grunted, slapping at a mosquito that nuzzled the back of her neck.  She wanted to go.  It was near dusk, too, and she sure didn’t want to be in a graveyard in the dark.  
    “I can picture them.”
    Jen looked to Diane with a big grin.  “Oh? Doing it right here where we stand, huh?”
    “No.  Right here where the tree stands.”
    “Yeah, with mosquitoes all over Dave’s rear.” Slap.  
    “How is it, Jen…with you and Kevin?”
    “Don’t feel bad about it, Diane, you’re only eighteen…you aren’t a crone .  It can be excellent and it can be blah and usually it’s somewhere in-between.  You aren’t any less alive than me, Di, believe  me.”
    Diane was staring blankly down into the grass.  An ant crawled across a mushroom.  “My mind knows that.  My body says different.  Sometimes it hits me so strong.  Like right now.” She swallowed.  “I don’t mean to embarrass you and spill my guts on your feet, but just thinking about that couple on this very spot seventy years ago…doing it in the open air… a huge dark storm gathering above.  Then a lightning bolt hits them…”
    Jen chuckled uncomfortably.
    “I know,” Diane smiled, “but it does grab you, doesn’t it?”
    “I guess.  The analogy or whatever.  But it isn’t always thunder and lightning, Diane…sometimes it’s just a breeze.  I don’t want you to be disappointed later, and build it up now into some dynamic fantasy experience.”
    “I know better than to do that,” Diane murmured softly.  When she lifted her gaze she realized Jen was watching her run her flattened palm up and down the darkly glistening dinosaur hide of the oak tree.  
    A rustling sound above, maybe a scurrying stirring.  Diane looked up.  A darting form.  Blur of fast-moving life.  A squirrel.  Branches shook.  A small rain of loosed drops pattered across her face.  
    *     *     *
    The next time Diane was alone, and had her book.  She came several days a week during the remainder of that summer.  Once in a while a few boys on bikes would sail past on the paved paths and she would feel embarrassed…guilty, even, as if she’d been caught arousing herself.  
    In a way, she had.  And soon, she did.  
    She would sometimes lay the book in her lap, one hand under it, and rest her shoulders and head back against the tree with eyes closed.  She wore a halter top several times so as to feel the bark directly on her pale skin.  Once she even went around behind the giant tree, hidden from the paths, and lowered her halter to embrace the tree, its hard furrows impressing her shy soft breasts and her pimpled cheek.  Afterwards she was shaken, confused, ashamed, and didn’t do that again.  
    Autumn came.  She sat in the gold, let it shower her…but with the fall and the first year of college, her thoughts of David McKay and Marie Barnes had begun to dwindle like the leaves.  In the snow she came just once, and stayed under the barren tree on the skull-like mound only a few moments.  She felt nothing.  
    Her pimples didn’t leave, only changed location like stars with the passage of time.
    She didn’t think to return to the tree until late May.
    It was a humid afternoon, advance notice of summer.  The cemetery was not yet burned yellow.  The grass was long already even after last week’s trim for Memorial Day, so full of life and vitality was it.  It was especially lush in the shadows crowning the mound.  
    Diane stood a little apart from the tree, hugging herself.  The shade was cool, as if she were in a forest hollow.  She wore shorts and a t-shirt, and much flesh was open to the air.  She actually felt gooseflesh rise on her forearms and rubbed at it.  She neared the tree.  Reached delicately to it.  
    It was so cool she