The Wedding Gift by Kathleen McKenna

sacrifice thing.
    So it wasn’t like George
defiled my innocence or nothing. But there was one thing; even
though. I was drunk, well I had been drunk last time too, and I
specifically remembered Billy messing around for what seemed like
an hour with his damn condom, and George hadn’t done none of that.
Right before I passed out, I remember thinking that maybe he had
put one on ahead of time knowing this was going to
happen.
    After that first time,
George and I started meeting up at his daddy’s hunting cabin,
mostly on Saturday afternoons but sometimes after I got out of
school too. The hunting cabin was the one place that Miz Willets
hadn’t gotten her nasty French manicured nails into. It was just a
little one room place with a pot bellied stove and two old camp
beds that we would push together to make one.
    I liked it though … the
little place sat right at the edge of Lake Injun. The lake wasn’t
really named that. It had some long Native American name that none
of us could pronounce worth a damn. Lake Injun was just what we
called it. I have always loved being at that lake more than
anyplace in the world. I used to come out with my daddy and fish
for wide mouth bass sometimes. It’s kind of funny, but back when I
was still planning out my life with Donny, I would see us out there
in a boat a lot of times in my head.
    That sort of thinking
didn’t help me much now that I was with George. What helped with
George was the Wild Turkey we would drink, and sometimes the line
or two of coke which George almost always had on him.
    George, he was different
too at the cabin, more relaxed, happier. He acted more like a guy
my age than his when we were out there. He told me it was his
favorite place in the world and said it had been his daddy’s
favorite place too. His daddy and his brother Roger used to come up
there all the time to fish and shoot at grouse.
    George said his daddy had
hardly come up here at all in all the years since his Uncle Roger
got killed, but that it was “ sacred ” to him, and that the cabin
was the one thing he said no to Miz Bethany about changing; her
having wanted to turn it into an A frame house and put up a dock so
she could have parties out there, but George said his daddy and
George, too, had overruled her. I didn’t say anything when he told
me that story, but I thought that the little house must have been
something real special to both of them for them to ever say no to
Miz Willets.

Chapter 10

    Last February, right before
Valentine’s Day, I met George behind the Piggly Wiggly store like
usual and climbed into the Humvee. It was real cold that night and
I was shivering. George reached behind him and put this huge white
Neiman's box on my lap. I acted all like, oh you shouldn’t have and
everything but, to be strictly honest, by that time I almost
expected something real nice whenever he saw me.
    I already had a pile of
clothes stashed at Jessie’s, though I could not resist wearing my
new True Religion jeans even at the house, figuring rightly that
Mama and Daddy wouldn’t notice the difference between them and my
501’s to save their lives.
    But the girls at school
noticed and I loved it. The present that night was a three quarter
length Persian lamb coat dyed pale pink. I started screaming and
jumping around in my seat. I nearly put my elbow in poor George's
eye because I was struggling so hard to get my ratty old puffa
jacket off and that beautiful pink coat on. When I got it on, I
preened at him and asked how I looked. George, he got him that real
intense look on his face that he sometimes had when he was staring
at me. He said all serious like “ Leeann,
you look just like an angel. Girl, you are too pretty to be real. I
want you to wear pink for me all the time. You know, don’t you,
Leeann, that I just want to give you the world, and this ain't all
there is neither. I got your big Valentine's gift out at the cabin
You just wait, Sugar .”
    Well, to be strictly
honest, I