Wild Things

If you asked anyone in Senoia County about the Pritchett girls, bet anything they’d start with the story of Billy Madison.

Billy Madison was a PIG!

Not the farm kind, the human kind. The kind what swaggered about town, like someone owed him something; who smiled easy, and lied easier, leaving a trail of damage and hard lessons learned, behind him. The kind that misjudged possession for devotion and never thought twice about trampling over the warm and tender parts of a woman foolish enough to care for him. The kind Hadley Rae had tried her hardest to love properly, until the effort left her with a swollen face, and shame that scarred deeper than any physical thing could.

It shrunk Rae into something fragile and quiet, something not at all like herself.

And it was that crime- the attempted assassination of her cousin’s spirit- that had found Lee in Harvey’s bar that night...

Leanne had strolled into Harvey’s place, that Friday night, dressed with bad intentions; in something clinging, and low cut. A silky, red number that accentuated all the finer slopes and bends of her womanly curves, but that it wouldn’t be too much trouble getting her out of. With enough of her bared, the colored lights had glowed against her cinnamon skin, making her as brilliant as anything to be worshipped, and she glided across the bar— the rumors of her mama’s cavorting with a native confirmed by her quietly graceful stride.

She threaded through the haze of cigarette smoke, past clinking bottles, excited whispers, and the off-key jukebox crooning, before she settled herself on the barstool beside Billy, and ordered a whiskey. Neat.

The room noticed her in layers. First came surprise that she was there at all. Uncle Luther and Harvey kept a close hand on the nights Lee was permitted into the bar, only on the nights she sang; neither man was known to let her linger in the dingy debauchery of the rundown bar without a reason. Then came the greater shock: she was not headed for the stage, the kitchen, or Harvey’s back office, not in a dress like that. No, she had decidedly pointed herself at a man!

That alone was enough to stop talk. Leanne Pritchett had made a local art of refusing men. She turned them away sweetly when she could, sharply when she had to, and left enough cracked hearts behind her that folks had quit mistaking her beauty for availability. But the man she crossed the room for was Billy Madison—Hadley Rae’s Billy—and by the time Lee settled onto the stool beside him and ordered her whiskey, every soul in Harvey’s had decided it was witnessing either the makings of a scandal or the opening act of a murder.

“Look here, Leanne, I don’t want no trouble,” Billy started, not bothering to turn on his stool. Instead, he looked down into his glass and intently considered the opaque, brown liquid with a frown; he gave it a swirl and took another hearty sip and then winced from the pain that tore through his mouth.

Leanne made an amused sound and turned her stool to face him. “Seems to me like trouble is exactly what you’re always looking for, Billy.”

Billy snorted.

“Nah, but it lands on my doorstep all the same,” He sighed and rubbed at an itch on his bristled chin with his knuckle. “I can only suppose you’re here at these hours, risking your uncle Luther’s temper, to give me what-for about that nonsense with Rae.”

“And if I am?” Lee asked. She leaned in, slow and deliberate, and the room leaned with her. Talk thinned beneath scraping chairs and the jukebox’s low, staticky tune. More heads turned. More mouths bent close to whisper.

Folks always noticed Leanne; Billy knew that much. It wasn’t that she went hunting after the attention either; most times, she looked burdened by it. But beauty like hers was only half the trouble. There was something else about Lee—a stillness with teeth in it, some dark, banked heat that made a man wonder what she knew, that drove men mad with the need to unravel her mystery. It was only after he’d stumbled into the small miracle of winning Rae’s attentions, after he’d spent enough afternoons in the coveted presence of the Pritchett sisters, that Billy had realized it was an unintended invitation on Lee’s part. He’d even resented how easy she made it look, drawing a whole room without so much as lifting her voice, while he had to grin and swagger and keep himself forever performing.

But tonight she was performing too.

She had come through Harvey’s door with purpose in her walk and danger tucked quiet behind her eyes, taking in every face until her gaze found his. Then she had crossed the room as if all those watching people were only shadows in her way. That was what unsettled him. Lee never reached for attention. But tonight, she had taken hold of it with both hands—and laid a good share of it at Billy’s feet.

He gave his whiskey another lazy turn, pretending the sight of her this close had not knocked something loose in him. Still, pride warmed his chest. Let them stare and let them wonder what it was about him that had Leanne Pritchett so far outside of her nature. He told himself that was why his pulse had quickened, all the excitement. But when Lee’s hazel eyes settled on him and held, he felt the same helpless pull as every other fool in the room. He shook his head, trying to rattle some sense back into himself.

“I’d tell you not to waste your breath,” he said, bitterly. After all, she knew how Rae could be, didn’t she? And Rae, well, she’d certainly given as good as she’d got. He finally turned to face Leanne completely, demonstrating the swollen split in his lip. “I ain’t give that girl nothing she ain’t gave me back.”

Lee pouted in exaggerated sympathy, before tossing back her shot of whiskey. Once the smooth liquor had cleared her throat, she’d leaned forward again, allowing the strap of her dress down over the curve of one shoulder.

“Oh, you poor thing,” Lee cooed. She reached across the scant space between them and ran her thumb over the sore split in his lip. Billy’s eyes widened to comical proportions, and she laughed low in her throat. “But that’s what comes of fooling with young girls, when what you needed was a woman, Billy.”

His gaze followed the fallen strap, frank, and hungry. It traveled over all the delicious curves of Lee’s figure and the warm sheen of her skin, lingering in a way that would have made another woman blush.

Lee did not.

Billy’s fingers tingled with wanting, and a soft breath slipped out of him before he could swallow it back.

A horn blared from behind them, followed by the frantic tempo of an upbeat jazz number. Glass struck glass behind the bar, and the excited voices of Harvey’s patrons stacked one on top of the other. Even through all that sound, Lee heard the whispers rise from a few tables back, sharp and clear; the way hurtful words tended to be.

“Looks like Billy’s got himself another one.”

Somebody snorted. “Yup, another one of em Pritchett gals. That man’s gonna be the death of himself.”

“Ain’t that Rae’s own cousin?” a woman asked, followed by a hard little humph. “That’s Daisy’s girl alright, through and through.”

The words found the old bruise in Lee—the one all of Senoia kept prodding just to see if it still hurt. For half a breath, she was nothing more than Daisy’s daughter and the product of her mother’s sins, tried and sentenced by women who had never cared to learn what those sins had actually been. Heat climbed Lee’s neck, and her hand twitched, in an attempted retreat to her own lap. Instead, she slid it farther along Billy’s thigh, until she felt the muscle stiffen beneath her touch. Keeping her eyes fixed on him, she held on until the whispers melded into the jukebox’s clunky, clanging tune and were lost.

She lifted her eyes through the dark cluster of her lashes, allowing the colored lights to dance in the hazel pair, more green than anything else, and smiled, before calling for another round.

The faceless barback set down two fresh shots. Billy snatched his up before the liquor had quit trembling in the glass and poured it down, spilling a bright thread over his knuckles. Lee lifted hers with measured ease, let the rim shine wet beneath the colored bulbs, and touched it to her mouth. When she set it beside the others, hardly a swallow was missing.

Billy would have liked to believe he could have resisted her, if he were clear-headed. But the combination of Harvey’s whiskey and Leanne’s nearness... well, that was powerful, a kind of intoxication Billy hadn’t ever experienced. Certainly nothing he could be expected to withstand! And truthfully, it wasn’t like he hadn’t thought about it before. Hell! He’d thought about each of the Pritchett girls at some time or other. Separately, and together! He didn’t think he’d met the man who hadn’t. It didn’t mean he cared for Rae any less. At least… he didn’t think so.

That thought ought to have stopped him. But it came with only a pinch of guilt, not even enough to sour his whiskey.

Lee was Rae’s cousin.

Rae was the nearest Billy had ever come to loving a woman. She had simply suited him: she was just the right amount of soft when he needed, just the right amount of charming, never in an overpowering way. She had a way of knowing just what he needed to hear and she always looked so fine on his arm, always in the perfect dress. Even then, as Billy sat on that stool pondering the entirety of his relationship, he did not realize how much of that rightness Rae had stitched onto herself, for him; one surrendered opinion and swallowed complaint at a time. To him, she had simply been perfect. Well almost, aside from her temper. Each time she had learned about a new woman, she had flown into a rage, not at all like herself. In her fits, she was beyond all reason.

Rae would fling his apology flowers against the wall, then anything else within reach, her pretty face drawn as near to ugly as it would ever get, in her fury. Billy called it carrying on. He had never learned what a man should do with a woman past hearing; every husband he’d known had settled such storms with a hand, a belt, or the hard wall of his body. So when Rae accused him of not loving her right, his shame, any that did manage to slip through his cracks, turned mean inside him and Billy answered the only way he understood.

Of course he loved her. Why else would he keep coming back? A man had urges; everybody knew that. If Billy strayed, it was only because his nature had cornered him again. But that didn’t mean he didn’t care for Rae.

He expected her back. Mostly because she had always come back before. Only a small, slightly sober part of him worried that messing around with Lee might change things. But Harvey’s whiskey assured Billy it would only add a few crooked miles to his and Rae’s journey back together; it loosened the floorboards in Billy’s thinking and let Lee, who sat close enough he could feel the heat coming off her skin, slip through the gaps.

He reached for the next shot. Down it went. The burn came softer now, distant and almost friendly, while the bar tilted a little beneath his stool. Across from him, Lee rested two steady fingers against the stem of her glass and touched the rim to her mouth again. The whiskey line did not move. She counted his swallows; Billy was past counting anything.

By then the three Pritchett girls had begun to merge in Billy’s thoughts with the room’s colored light. He had wanted Rae partly because every man in town knew her name. He wanted Lee now for the same rotten reason, sharpened by drink: possessing a legend made a man feel legendary.

A sober Billy might’ve recognized touching Rae’s cousin as a low and ugly thing to do. Maybe. But this Billy reached for another shot, clipped the rim with his fingers, and laughed when whiskey jumped over the side. His tongue had gone thick, and the bar’s floor breathed beneath him. This Billy was beginning to wonder how the story would sound when it reached his good friend Merv: Billy Madison, the only man to bed two of the three Pritchett girls. By morning the tale would grow legs. By Sunday, there would be songs about him.

“Where’d you go, Sugar?” Lee asked, drawing him back with one finger beneath his chin.

She leaned near enough for him to catch the scent of vanilla, and a few other sweet things meant to muddle a man’s mind. He had been so hypnotized by it, that he hadn’t registered where Leanne’s other hand had gotten to. But then he felt it. He felt her! She was stroking the outer part of his leg, kneading his thigh. Even through his britches, he could feel the rake of her nails against his skin, and he felt his body’s eager response, straining against his fly. The room had begun to sag at the edges and the image of people, dark corners and colored lights bled into each other in an illegible swirl of shapes and colors.

Lee smiled with an innocence so clean it ought to have warned him. She did not take her eyes from his when she called over her shoulder for another round. Billy’s focus had gone damp and slow, his grin arriving a beat behind his thoughts. But he could picture it clear as day; folks telling the same story years from now, how Billy Madison had seduced two of the Pritchett girls. Maybe one day folks would swear it had been all three.

At just the thought, a limp smile leaked onto his face, and he tossed his head back and howled.

Yup. He was a goner.