How many times had I heard that old saying: A brave man dies only once, but a coward dies a thousand times? I can’t claim bravery or cowardice because I didn’t even die once. But I went to hell. The old saying didn’t warn me about that. Since that unfortunate business in the Garden of Eden, God doesn’t do serpents, so what happened next could only have happened in hell.

The only parts of my body still capable of movement, my eyeballs, were fixed to the eyes of the serpent. The snake’s convex irises filled me with terror like a pitcher pouring lemonade into a glass. Time and light and darkness were no more. My only awareness was of that big snake.

A pale, blue-veined foot descended between me and the serpent. Gently the foot brushed against the serpent’s head, and the reptile bent obediently backwards and away from me. From above my head came a coarse but firm voice, “Go on now.”

Without so much as a departing hiss, a fine specimen of the most notoriously bad-tempered and feared species of viper in Southern Illinois dropped its scaly head to the ground and slithered out of sight around the other side of the log. The snake was gone, but I could still feel it all through me.

The foot twisted sideways just a little. “Rail? Rail Henry.” There was nothing coarse or raspy about the voice now. It was more of a purr with a fearful tone rising. “Rail, talk to me! It’s gone. You’re all right.”

My shoulder smoldered as she rested her hand there, and from that point the thaw began. When the sea ice in Alaska breaks up, it makes a hell of a noise: thundering, cracking, crashing, colliding and grinding. I had watched a show about it once on TV. The panic chilling me to my core was breaking up as well. If only I could have made the sounds of dying sea ice rather than the ones I made. If not breaking ice, even breaking wind would have been better. I can only blame Lady Chatterley’s Lover.

The thaw must have reached my neck before it reached my brain. I was able to lift my head before I could think. Her legs were spread because she had pushed the serpent aside with her foot. Her knees were bent because she had leaned forward while laying a hand upon my shoulder. As my eyes came up, I looked right into that place that every boy dreams of seeing just the way I was seeing it. She had told me to speak. I couldn’t fail again. I had to make some noise, a belch, a squeak, something. Unfortunately what came out of my cracked brain was what I had just been reading in passages most prurient. “There thou shits, and there thou pisses.”

She gasped a little squeak, straightened up quickly, and stepped back; leaving me praying silently for a merciful death. Why had I said that? Those weren’t even my words. How could some other man’s words have seized control of my mouth? How could I have botched it so badly? I couldn’t face her, not now. But once the thaw begins, it does not let up. It reached my legs. I rose up on my knees: the proper position for ripping open my shirt and screaming, Shoot me! Just shoot me!

Turned out there was no need for that shout. On my knees, I could take in her face. There were no eyes wide with horror, not even a scowl of disapproval. Rather than angry, she looked relieved and somewhat amused. Her mouth was pursed in a thin-lipped combination of smile and pout. When our eyes met, she finished where I had left off. “And I wouldna want a woman who didna shit nor piss.”

We, she standing, I kneeling, stared in wonder at each other. She, looking pleased with herself. I feeling pleased with her—after all, she had spoken her line with a Cornish accent like in the book—until smiles erupted simultaneously across both our faces, and we sighed together as one.

“LAWRENCE.”

So God still liked me. Suddenly I was at ease. “You read D. H. Lawrence.”

“In English and Italian.”

In Italian. There was certainly more to this Sunday Tice than met the eye. And all of her was meeting my eye. I knew I had to ignore her nakedness and just act naturally. Calm down…Big naked-assed white girl right in front you… Just act naturally… It seemed an apology was in order. Apologizing would be acting naturally. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I said that. I must have been hysterical or something. What I wanted... I mean what I... I wanted to ask you to meet me in the library.”

“Well, since we’re in the middle of the woods, ten miles away from the nearest library, what you said was probably just as appropriate.”

“No-oo. I was going to ask you yesterday, but you weren’t in school.”

“Why did you want me in the library?”

Here it was, the moment of truth, and I wasn’t the least bit embarrassed. Note to self: It helps if the girl is already naked. “I was going to ask you if you liked me.”

“Of course I like you... Wait... Rail... Are you asking me to be your girlfriend?”

This was probably going to be awful. I girded my loins for rejection. “Uh huh”

Sunday stretched her arms out to the side and turned in a complete circle. “Well, here’s three hundred and sixty degrees of not the prettiest girl in school. Why would you want me when there are so many of your own kind prettier than me, and who like you?”

My body was still trying to absorb that turn: tits-silhouette-butt crack-silhouette-dark triangle. My penis staged a coup. It was painful. All my poor brain could do was mark time. “My own kind?”

“Black girls. Lots of black girls like you.”

That was news to me. “How do you know that?”

“I got my head bitten off by a couple of them in civics class.”

The old third leg still felt more like a third rail, but I was getting it back under control. “Yeah, I heard about that. You took up for me. How come?”

“I already said I like you too. But it’s impossible.”

After all my suffering, the thought that nothing was going to happen between Sunday and me was more than I could bear, but I understood where she was coming from. “Because your old man is in the Klan?”

“Actually, he’s a grand giant in the Klan.” Sunday paused while something forced its way to the surface. “I HATE him!” Sometimes an emotion is so strong that it pollutes the atmosphere. For a moment I forgot about the nipples, the belly button, and the eye patch between her legs. I had never before met a person who hated their father. Seeing that depth of emotion raging across somebody’s face made me uncomfortable. I knew better than to speak.

With all the hate and anger radiating out of Sunday’s face, we had to wait for the air to clear. Fortunately, it took only a few seconds for her tranquility to return. “You know, Rail, we really don’t even know each other. I’ve seen you around school and from what little I’ve heard about you, you have a sense of honor. I trust you. Here’s the deal. If you promise not to tell anyone about the deer or the water moccasin, I will do something with you right now that will feel really good. You can go back to school and tell your friends about it. It will be a big feather in your cap, and you will have humiliated my old man.”

She was going to do something that would make me feel really good. Obviously, that would be sex. FINALLY. But she had said some other things that I just couldn’t ignore. At the moment, I was too horny to care about the deer or the snake anyway. I truly liked Sunday. As much as I wanted her to do whatever she had in mind, I knew that if I traded silence for sex, it would ruin something even more wonderful. “Will you be humiliated too?”

“I suppose so. If you tell people.”

“A guy doesn’t humiliate his girlfriend.”

“How do you know that?”

“I just do.”

“If that is true, then you could be my first real boyfriend.”

“Are you my girlfriend then?”

“Oh my! Well this is awkward. First you have to take your clothes off too. Then we’ll see if you really want me for your girl.”

My embarrassment flared up again. I had never been in the nude with a girl before. If this was heaven, then heaven was scary. I had already been to hell that afternoon, so I had a good reference point for scary. Since I was on my knees, I pulled one foot at a time forward and untied my shoe laces. I must have been moving slowly because when I stood up, Sunday came forward and helped me with the zipper of my jacket and the buttons of my shirt. When we were both in our birthday suits, she took control of my hands, positioned them on her sides just above her hips, and kissed me.

This was no casual peck. Her arms encircled me and all her warmth and softness was pressed against me. I followed her lead, but I was worried about poking her in the belly. I couldn’t just switch from high beam to low. She didn’t seem to mind, and after a while I sort of forgot about it too. As much as I had seen kissing on TV, I had never even thought about exploring someone else’s mouth and face with my mouth and face. If Sunday had told me that this was sex, I would have believed her. However long we kissed, it wasn’t long enough.

She pulled back gently and said, “I’m going to run away now. If you can catch me, I’m your girl.”

I didn’t see that coming. I knew we were supposed to engage in something called foreplay before sex, but that’s what I thought the kissing was. Sunday obviously took this foreplay stuff pretty seriously, but by now I was game for anything. “Run where?”

“Through the forest.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s what I do. If you want me, you’ll catch me. I think it’s only fair to warn you, I’m pretty fast.”

“Is this some kind of Brunhilde and Siegfried thing? I think it’s fair to warn you, now that I’ve got you; I have no intention of letting you get away. Besides these are my woods. I’ll catch you before you can get across this little clearing.” Even as I spoke, I was finding the idea of running her down quite appealing.

“So, Mr. Henry, you think these are your woods.”

“My woods.”

“Then you won’t mind giving me a little head start to the other side of the clearing.”

I didn’t know what to make of her. I had a nightmare vision of a raccoon stealing my clothes while she and I were running through the woods, but being outside naked felt great, especially with her. And somehow, on some visceral level, I knew I could trust her. She had just said she trusted me. “OK, but what happens if I don’t catch you?”

“Then, Mr. Henry, I shall be very disappointed.” Sunday stepped into me again and kissed me long and hard with her hands pressing my hands into the flesh of her flanks. Then she turned away and walked to the other side of the clearing where I had seen her with the deer. And just like a deer she was gone.

Or so she thought. I hunted as much with my ears as my eyes. Instead of running out of the meadow right behind her, I listened carefully, anticipated her course, and ran an intercept course. She looked surprised when I almost came up beside her and she veered toward the river. I could have caught her before she reached the river, but we were playing her game in my woods. Great game! I didn’t want it over so quickly. Watching the delightful jiggle of her body as she ran was almost as much fun as kissing her.

Also for me, it really was some sort of Brunhilde and Siegfried thing. I had read about them from a book in the library. Brunhilde had been a super woman until Siegfried defeated her in a duel. Then she was just a regular woman. So far in our relationship, Sunday had been in control. I was unsettled by her power over the deer and the serpent. That was not normal. Now I would best her and she would just be a—no my—normal girl.

At the riverbank, I expected her to stop and surrender. My understanding of witches was that they were sort of like oil in that they burned hot and didn’t mix well with water. Besides, the river was so cold this time of year. We were both panting and sweaty. She was panting harder than I, but there was no surrender. She went right over the bank and into the Cache. The river was low and we were both naked, so why not. I followed, easily splashing across in calf-deep water. At the far bank, she grabbed a vine and started hauling herself out. I grabbed her ankle, pulled her back down the muddy bank, got my arms around her, and spun her around. She was beautiful: hair plastered to her head with sweat; her breasts heaving with hard breathing, belly and thighs slick and slimed with black gooey river mud; her eyes wild with exertion, her grin broad with the joy of running—Slap! She hit me hard across the face. The blow stunned me. I was more shocked than hurt, but I let go, tripped over my own feet, and sat down in frigid muddy water. She scrambled up the bank while I spat out the gritty, rancid river mud and vine bark that had been stuck to her hands.

I recovered and crawled out after her. Now the pursuit was serious. We were on her side of the river, where the fields were closer. I didn’t want to be seen chasing a fully-clothed white girl, let alone a naked one. Suddenly I was uncertain. I couldn’t give her up though and I closed on her again. Sunday knew how to keep cover as she ran, and I felt a little better about the situation. Where the forest narrowed, she bent low, always staying under the level of the tall weeds and bushes, and somehow finding trails through stickers and nettles that would have given a rabbit pause. Those varmint trails didn’t give me pause though. I could have caught her, but we had been sprinting all out for some distance, and I was about all in. If I grabbed her, it would be an admission that she had more stamina than I.

On my side of the river, the forest closed in upon the old logging bridge. On Sunday’s side the bridge met a dirt road. At the road, she turned hard and dashed across the bridge. I hesitated before following. For a few yards, we were both exposed until the woods sheltered us again. I could only hope that she had some sixth sense telling her that we were alone because all five of my senses were for her only, rather like that stag when it trotted right by me. If other people had been out there, I would have run right into them.

We were traveling in a circle, and she was having trouble. Her breathing lost rhythm. Now she held her side as she ran. We were coming back to our meadow. Just in case that was the de facto finish line, I was just about to grab her, when she went sprawling and writhing onto the leaves.

Twisting and rolling from side to side, she grabbed her belly and arched her back trying to breathe. “Side-uh-stitch-uh. Side-uh-uh-stitch-uh.”

There was nothing I could do except kneel over her and suffer because she suffered. My sweat dripped onto her and joined her sweat in carving rivulets into the mud and dirt coating her front. I knew the side stitch would pass, but in the meantime, I had run her into the ground. Could there be anything more perfect than to have this girl grunting and contorting into all kinds of sexy positions on the ground before me? It all just seemed too perfect.

After the worst of the pain passed, Sunday lay quietly on her back with her knees drawn up. Finally she smiled up at me. “Well, you’ve got me down, Mr. Henry.”

In her voice was a quality that I simply did not know, but instinctively understood I should not ignore. Be it the timbre of desire or submission, now was the time. I didn’t know exactly what to do, but I was confident she could help out with the procedural details. And yet… I did nothing. Not because I was afraid, but because she was my girl. I didn’t want to have her down. I sat beside her with my hands on her hands and we enjoyed whatever could flow between us like that. Before we moved, a long time had passed. And we only moved then because we were sweaty and we got cold. We greased our way back to our clearing with our arms around each other. Two smelly, dirty teens. We couldn’t have been happier.

Seeing my clothing and my shotgun jolted me out of what had become a reverie. A thought occurred to me. “Where are your clothes?”

Sunday laughed. “Tell you what. You kick the shell out of your shotgun, and I’ll carry it. You bring your clothes and your big gun, and I’ll take you to a secret place.”

“You mean the spring under the hackberry tree.”

“You know about the spring?”

“Oz and I found it and built a fort there. We used to slide down the gully the spring cut to the river and pretend we were river pirates. But the spring is only fun when the river is low like it is now. We haven’t been back to it for years and years.”

Once we gathered my stuff and headed for the spring, Sunday seemed under a little cloud. “This really is your forest, isn’t it?”

“It’s my special place.”

“Can I be the witch of the river then?” She had used the ‘w’ word. When she said it, she didn’t lower her eyes. “You’ve been thinking it, even if you’re too much of a gentleman to say it.”

“Until today, I didn’t believe in witches. Are you a good witch or a bad witch?”

“What do you think?”

“I think you’re a good person.”

Sunday shrugged. “Oh, what? Is that like having good hair?”

Now I was all off balance. “I don’t understand.”

“If you say that to a black person, they act like you’re paying them some big compliment when you’ve said absolutely nothing.”

I couldn’t have said it better. The grand giant’s daughter knew obviously knew more about black people than I knew about witches. “I only know that I like you. I have to trust my instincts, and my instincts tell me that you’re a good person.”

“Thank you, Rail, for not trying to lay some line on me. You may as well know I’m not the kind of girl boys like for long. It’s fair to say that I’m somewhat odd.”

“Well, I’m a boy and I’ve liked you all afternoon. Besides, don’t odd and unique mean the same thing?”

We had reached the tangle of blackberry bushes and wild grape vines that kept the hidden spring hidden. The entrance Oz and I had made by beating down this protective vegetation was long overgrown, but Sunday had created a less conspicuous way in. Instead of knocking down brambles and bushes, she made a low tunnel by just parting them. We had to bend a bush to one side and then crawl in on our hands and knees.

I was impressed. She had made other improvement to the small space where the shade from the branches of the tree and the umbrella of vines suppressed vegetation. For warmth, there was a big pile of leaves. She had put a tarp over the leaves so they would stay dry and she had built a low dam across the spring’s path to the river. The spring easily overflowed the barrier, but the effect was to create a shallow, but rather long, tub behind the dam.

The spot was perfect for bathing. It occurred to me that for Sunday, this might not be a mere play area. My family’s house didn’t have running water and it was possible that Sunday’s house didn’t either. It didn’t much matter with my family. We had plenty of people to share the load of keeping clean. For Sunday, pumping water represented a lot of work, especially if she used a hand pump. During the winter, we could simply shower at school after PE, but during the summer, having a nature-filled tub in her own private bathroom was probably a godsend. I looked around for shampoo and soap and didn’t see any. Her clothes were there though.

Sunday had followed my eyes and read my thoughts. “I would never put poison like store-bought soap into my river. I wash with the plants from the forest.” I was a little hesitant and she laughed at me. “You know, we’re the same really. I use the plants just like you hunt the animals.”

“But a lot of weeds and stuff are poisonous.”

“You don’t have to worry. I know my forest flora.” She grabbed a handful of wilted weeds and hopped into her tub.

I picked up some plant matter from the same pile she had pulled from and sniffed it. Whatever the mixture was, it smelled pretty good: a mixture of sassafras and rabbit grass and honeysuckle. I got in with her. The water was freezing and we had no sun, so I scrubbed fiercely until my nature’s wash cloth was worn away. Sunday got out with me and wrung out her hair by twisting it round and round. We burrowed into the leaves, hugging each other more for warmth than romance.

Once I warmed up, I began exploring her in earnest. She seemed to understand my need to roam her body with my eyes and hands. She didn’t interfere except when I got a little too rough. Then she would coo, “Gently, gently.”

And she smelled so good up close: all grassy and sassafrassy interleaved with her own feminine allure. Time had stopped for me, but she must have been aware. Or maybe she got bored because she began moving with purpose. Somehow, despite all my exploring, she got around to keeping her word to me. Twice actually. I knew what we were doing wasn’t quite having sex, but when she was done, there was no way I would ever tell about the deer or the serpent. That was the best part.

The second best part was when I followed her lead and made her feel good. She ran her fingers through my hair and cooed, “You have GOOD hair.” Her voice was all funny.

Actually she was wrong about that. I have a full head of kinky hair, but I learned a lot about girls in one afternoon. Girls go all spastic and pull your ears when they feel good. Who knew? And they holler like they’re hurt, which scared me until she yelled “No! Don’t stop!” That must be what they mean by a good hurt.

When we finally left the spring, my girl’s scent was all over my face, and I didn’t want to wash her off. On the way home, I bagged three rabbits without much effort. But I always had a successful hunt. I couldn’t trust my mother not to think something was up. She had some kind of female intuition, rather like a witch when I thought about it. I wasn’t going to give her any help. I wore Sunday as long as I could. After skinning and rinsing my rabbits, I washed my face outside at the pump before going into the house.