The Opiate, Fall Vol. 15
Hooks Teresa Burns Murphy
T
he day was a scorcher. Sherry blamed the heat for what happened later. Had it not been so hot, she and Denise would never have taken the dirt access road that ran along a wooded area adjacent to the sandbar. They would have parked in their usual spot—a grassy hill overlooking the dam that stretched across the Childress River in their hometown of Kennerly, Arkansas. It was the summer of 1974, and the girls were set to begin their senior year of high school in two weeks. They were co-captains of the drill team. Neither girl had any intention of performing at the first pep rally without a tan. Denise parked her brand new silver blue Mustang in the shade on the left side of the road, angling the car close to the ditch. Sherry, slender as a sylph, her skin smooth and gingersnap-brown, was stronger than she looked. Still, she had to push hard on the passenger side
38.
door to get out. While Denise pulled a couple of aluminum chaise lawn chairs from the trunk, Sherry picked up a jelly jar from the floorboard where she’d held it between her feet. She gripped the slippery jar, half-filled with the mixture of baby oil and iodine the girls used as suntan oil, by its lid and slung a canvas bag with beach towels inside over her shoulder. Gravel dug into the soles of her feet as she made her way into the ditch and back up the slope, but she was careful to step over the broken beer bottles that littered the ground. Sherry used her free hand to push aside the leggy branches of trees so Denise could get through. In a clearing, a man with shoulder-length orange-red hair and a sunburned back stood facing the river. His bare thighs and buttocks were so pale Sherry thought he was wearing a pair of white swim trunks. She gasped when he turned around. His penis was stiff and seemed out of place on his slight frame. Sherry had never seen a naked man before.
