Scram

by William T. Hathaway

"Yeah, nightie-night," I said.

"Nightie."

"Yeah."

"Need my nightie."

I wasn't sure what she meant until she pointed at the closet. "Oh, your nightgown."

"Nightie."

I opened the closet and saw something silken hanging from a hook on the other side of the door. I brought it back while mom was trying to get out of her clothes. She wasn't doing too well, so I helped her, first the blouse, then the skirt, then I stopped. I was getting so turned on looking at her. I wanted to keep going but I thought I better not. Mom couldn't keep her eyes open, I don't think she really knew I was there anymore. She reached around and undid her bra. I'd seen her breasts once or twice, but that was years ago. Now I just stared ... got totally excited. They looked so great. It was like I could remember being there as a baby and now needed more than anything to be back, like I hadn't had any food all those years, now starving and found this delicious feast right there in front of me.

Mom slumped over on the bed and fell asleep again. I felt so sorry for her. I got in with her, just to hold her and make her feel better. I lay right up against her. She rolled a little, and her tit was right in my face. I snuggled into it and kissed it. A voice inside said this was weird and wrong, but I got to thinking about all the really wrong, weird things in the world — bombs, torture, starvation — and this seemed pretty good in comparison. I sucked mom's tits a long time. She was still asleep, but they got firm and the nipples hard.

I got so hard it hurt. I took off my clothes. Then I took off her underpants. As soon as I saw her bush, I knew I had to go back there, knew I'd been missing it all those years. I started to rub it, and it got wet ... and mom woke up.

I had one hand on her breast and the other on her pussy. She gaped at me and mumbled something, then closed her eyes but left her mouth open. I kissed it and she kissed me back. She didn't open her eyes again and seemed half asleep. She opened her legs, though, and let me keep rubbing. The sounds she made weren't snores but moans.

When I put my root in her, mom raised her hips and twisted around it, gasped and bit her lip, but kept her eyes closed. When I came inside her plunging and pumping, she opened her eyes and looked at me with wide helpless eyes and clutched her arms and legs around me. When I sucked her clit afterwards, she closed her eyes and came with wild buckings and thrashings and a shout of glory.

I've had quite a few girls and this was the best ever. No comparison.

We started in doing it regularly. She stopped drinking as much, and that made it even better. She seemed happy, and that made me feel great.

We talked about dad's cheating. She'd known about it a long time, felt terrible, but now suddenly it didn't bother her anymore. She said it was worth it because it meant we didn't have to feel bad about what we were doing.

And what we were doing kept getting better. We always looked forward to his weekends away. We did it all sorts of ways. It gave me a tremendous sense of power to see my mother turn into a submissive woman under my hands, offering herself up to be kissed and fondled. Once I sucked her for a hour, loving every minute of it, and she came three times.

One night after we fucked mom wanted me in her again, so she was sucking me to get it hard. We were both in heaven until the door banged open and a voice shouted, "Freeze!" It was dad. He had a gun. He ran at us holding it with both hands, pointing it first at mom, then at me, swearing at us.

Mom screamed and fell back on the bed. I just sort of withered. Having a cocked pistol pointed at it tends to be hard on hard-ons.

The gun was shaking in dad's hands. His face was sweaty. "You were blowin' him, well, I'm gonna blow it off ... blow both of you away."

"No!" mom cried.

He slapped her and his lips curled back from his teeth. "Killing's too easy for you ... too quick. Prison! Both of you! Everybody's going to know ... sick twisted freaks! Rest of your life in a cage!"

He called the police from the bedroom phone, waving the revolver at us. He didn't even let us get dressed. The cops came in with disgusted looks on their faces, but at least they let us get dressed before putting us in two separate cars and driving us away.

At the station three cops made me pull down my pants. One held my arms behind my back, another grabbed my legs. The third grabbed my dick. I thought he was going to castrate me, but he jabbed a cotton swab up it, hurt like hell.

Mom told me later they stuck a swab up her too, but at least it was police women and they weren't so mean.

The cops put me in a cell with three thugs and told them what I'd done. They beat the hell out of me.

Next day the cops said they had positive DNA evidence, an open and shut case of felony incest. With dad's testimony we were sure to go to prison, separate men's and women's. The sentence would probably be five years, but if we had good behavior we might get out in four, but there was no way we'd have good behavior because when the other cons found out what we'd done, they'd beat us up all the time, so we'd get a sheet as troublemakers. Way prisons are, we might never get out. The cops did their best to scare us, and they succeeded. Our lives seemed ruined right after they'd become their happiest.

Then this button-down collar from the district attorney's told us if we just signed confessions and pleaded guilty, he could recommend three year sentences. When we were paroled afterwards, though, we couldn't see each other again or we'd go back to prison. Either way, our lives seemed over.

By now we had a lawyer, a public defender, and he advised us not to sign. This made the cops mad. They took me into a little room. I thought they were going to beat a confession out of me. But instead they brought in a preacher. He gave me a friendly, concerned smile like he really cared about me, then told me mom and I would burn in hell for the rest of eternity unless we confessed and begged Jesus for forgiveness. He told me what hell was like for people who do incest. I won't tell you about it — even the Nazis weren't that cruel. But he said Jesus would forgive us if we confessed.

By now I was so scared I was getting mad and wanted to fight back. I refused to confess. He said sternly at least get down on your knees and pray for forgiveness. I said no. He said then God can't help me.

As he was leaving, the older cop said, "Sorry, Reverend, but I'm not surprised. I seen cases like this before. Once a mother and son get started on incest, there's no way to stop 'em. They're not sorry. They'll find some way to keep doin' it. You just have to shoot 'em ... keep it from spreading." He gave me a murderous scowl.

The Memphis paper ran an article with our names, jail mugshots, and a quote from the district attorney that we were "guilty of a spree of incestuous copulation." After that there were lots of hate letters to the editor about what should happen to us.

Finally the lawyer got us out on bail. Mom had to put up her half ownership of the house as collateral. We had to sign a paper saying we wouldn't see each other except when our attorney was there. I got put in a foster home, but they wouldn't let me back in school — I might contaminate the others. Mom rented a hotel room. She got fired from her waitress job.

Neither one of us saw dad, but we got a message from him saying he'd be in the front row at our trial. He said he got suspicious when he saw hickeys on both of our necks. To trap us, he waited outside the house until he saw lights on only in her bedroom.

Mom and I met with the lawyer to talk about the case. He said it looked bad. It was great to see mom again, even though both of us cried and we couldn't hold each other. As we were leaving, she pushed a note into my pocket.

I waited until I rode my bike around the corner to read it: "Meet me 9 tonight at the Rock-Around-the-Clock Truck Stop." (There's lots of things named after rock 'n' roll in Memphis since it's Elvis's home.)

I was worried we'd get into worse trouble, but I knew it was important. At the foster home I wasn't allowed out after dark, so I had to sneak out a back window.

As I rode up to the truck stop, mom was standing outside. She motioned me to follow her around the corner where it was darker. The first thing she did was throw her arms around me and give me a big kiss on the lips. Suddenly I felt a lot better. Then she said we were leaving, scramming, beating it, jumping bail, getting out right now.

I saw she'd dyed her hair blonde. She gave me a can of blonde spray and told me how to use it. She fed a bunch of quarters into the door of one of those little rooms where the truckers shower and clean up. She didn't go in with me, though — we were taking enough risks as it was.

I came out sneezing from the dye fumes but blonde. She looked me over and told me to go back in and do the eyebrows.

Then she went into the restaurant and found a trucker who'd take us as far as St. Louis. It was a long ride up the river. We were both tired but too hyped up to sleep and worried if there was news about us on the radio and the trucker got suspicious, we might have to get out fast. If we got caught now, we'd go to prison a lot longer. But the news was about other things, war overseas, murder at home.

The trucker turned out to be a nice guy. He didn't ask too many questions, and he let us out before dawn in downtown St. Louis. Glad to be just the two of us again, we kissed and hugged, then walked down to the river, afraid, happy, excited. As if following the flowing water, our thoughts returned to Memphis and the life we'd left behind — friends, school, job, dad. We cried awhile but were relieved to be free, at least for now, and knew we had to keep moving against the current.

St. Louis has this huge tall Gateway Arch by the river, a monument to the pioneers, and as the sky was starting to get pale, we saw the first light of the oncoming sun glinting the top, making the metal glow. The light slowly spread down it until the whole arch shone silver as the sun crossed the horizon. Then the river started to glow, and all this beauty filled us with hope. Maybe we could get away, stay out of prison, stay together. We were pioneers too, in a way, blazing new trails, new ways of people being together.

We had breakfast in an all-night place at Laclede's Landing overlooking the Mississippi. As we were eating, four cops came in and walked towards us. Suddenly all our hopes were smashed. How did they find us? The trucker? They were too near for us to run. All we could do was stare at each other like we'd never see each other again.

The cops sat down at another table and ordered their first donut of the day. They didn't even notice us. We relaxed ... a little.

We walked into the business district as the stores were starting to open. All we had were the clothes on our backs and mom's credit cards. We charged a whole bunch of stuff — not just clothes but suitcases, soap, food, everything we'd need. The credit card slips meant they could trace us to St. Louis, so we lugged the stuff down to the Greyhound station and got tickets for the next bus to Chicago, leaving in an hour. Yesterday in Memphis mom had taken the maximum cash advance on all her cards and wanted to try it again here, maybe we were far enough away that it would work again, they wouldn't be alerted so soon. While I watched the stuff, she went out to a bank. We knew this was taking a chance but we needed the cash and didn't want to use the plastic in Chicago. She let me hold all the cash we had. In case she didn't come back, I was supposed to get on the bus without her so they wouldn't arrest me too. If they gave her some story in the bank that she was supposed to wait there, she was going to run out. I was worried the whole time she was gone. All I could do was watch the door. When she walked back through it half an hour later smiling, I nearly cried with relief.

By now we were both totally knocked out. As soon as we got on the bus, we fell asleep hugging and didn't wake up until Chicago.

We got two cheap rooms in separate hotels, took a hot bath together at her place, then went to bed but not to sleep. Making love to her this time was different. We were now closer than ever before. It was us against the world, and we had to stay together.

Mom dyed her hair blonde for real, not just the spray. I kidded her that she looked like a Barbie doll, and she said if that was true then I was Ken. We laughed about it but then got to thinking we were going to need new names anyway. She said she'd always liked Barbara and would keep it. I didn't want to be Ken, though — too obvious. Kent sounded better.

What about last names? she asked.

I thought about it for a while, then took her hand. We should have the same name, I told her. I loved her and wanted to be married to her. It'd be easier to live together as a married couple. She looked so young anyway.

She cried but she was happy.

We looked through the phone book like it was a catalogue of last names until we found one we both liked (I don't want to tell you). We decided to take seven years off mom's age to make her twenty-nine and add three years to mine to make me twenty-one.

I didn't like my blonde hair, so I washed it out and grew a beard instead.

Mom got a waitress job at a big restaurant down by the Loop, then got me hired there as a dishwasher. We rented a furnished apartment — it wasn't much, but it was our first very own home.

We started to feel that the worst might be over, that we'd swum across the deep part of the river and could finally feel the ground of the other shore under our feet. We might make it. We began to enjoy life and each other.

Wages in the kitchen were sub-minimum, so lots of the workers were illegal aliens, from all sorts of countries. I got to know some of them well enough so that we trusted each other and started asking about ways of getting identity papers. It wasn't easy now with all the Homeland Security surveillance, but before long I had the name of a guy who ran a photo studio and made fake IDs on the side. It cost a fortune, a stack of dishes as high as the Sears Tower, but mom and I got birth certificates, driver licenses, Social Security cards, and a marriage certificate.

We decided to move once more, as kind of a cut-out in case we got traced from St. Louis. We got back on the bus and rode a long time (I don't want to say where). The bus was interesting because you not only see the country but you ride with a group of Americans you never see on TV — poor people, lots of them.

Mom and I like our new town. It's smaller than Memphis and Chicago, but big enough so that newcomers don't stand out, not a lot of crime, not a lot of cops.

Mom taught me how to be a waiter, and we both got jobs at different restaurants. I'm making more than she is because the fancy places like to have men waiters. I can't get over it — she's been doing the job for fifteen years and taught me everything I know about it and my check's bigger than hers because I'm a man. Talk about not right!

I don't want to be a waiter all my life, so I took the GED test and got a high school diploma and now I'm going part time to the junior college.

Last month we got married — a beautiful church service (we never could believe God hated us for loving each other). We told the minister we were married before by a justice of the peace but now wanted to do it right. We've made a lot of friends at church.

For our honeymoon we rented a cabin on a lake. We paddled canoes like Indians, sang songs, made love, and laughed. We did a ritual where we both forgave dad and thanked him in our hearts for being such an adulterous jerk and cheating on her.

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William T. Hathaway's first novel, A World of Hurt, won a Rinehart Foundation Award. His new one, Lila, the Revolutionary, is the story of an eight-year-old Indian girl who sparks a world revolution for social justice. Chapters are posted at www.amazon.com/dp/1897455844. He was a Fulbright professor of creative writing at universities in Germany, where he currently lives. A selection of his writing is available at www.peacewriter.org.

Scram © 2018 by William T. Hathaway