When Father Gaul sat back down next to me, he leaned over and whispered, “I’ll talk to him later. He’s not taking this well.”
“I gathered,” I said, understanding. I knew it had to be hard for Zach to leave the only home he probably remembered.
I took another bite of alligator and chewed it thoughtfully while I watched Zach and Paraila talk. Whatever the old man was saying to his adopted son was being met with resistant ears because I watched Zach shake his head back and forth with dismay on his face, which then took on a hardened look. He said something more to Paraila, and then turned to point at me with a scathing look, clearly not happy with my presence. Finally, he surged to his feet as he said something more to Paraila, who just shook his head sadly at Zach.
It was with great interest that I observed Zach forsake the food laid out on clay platters, as he walked around the fire to one of the singing women. She was young… I guessed eighteen or nineteen by the looks of her, and very pretty. She was wearing a headband of black vulture feathers, which Father Gaul told me represented that she had reached puberty, had her first menses, but was not yet married. This was a rarity in the tribe because most women had a husband, and he wasn’t sure what this woman’s story was. If a woman took a husband, she no longer wore a headband of feathers. If she was innocent and hadn’t reached her first menstruation, she wore a headband of white, downy feathers. As far as I could see, this woman was the only one that wore a black headband.
Zach walked up to her as she sat on a petrified log, and she looked up at him with an open smile. He held his hand out to her and, with no hesitation, she placed hers in his outstretched palm. Zach helped her to stand, her breasts swaying gently with the motion. I wondered if they were off to have a secret moment together, and I remembered thinking that maybe she was Zach’s Caraican lover.
My hand was raised to my mouth to take another bite of food, but it froze when Zach turned his head over his shoulder to look at me. His eyes pinned me hard with a menacing look, and I saw something else in there as well.
Maybe challenge?
Then, to my utter astonishment, he pushed the woman down by her shoulder to the ground, where she knelt before him. I was completely stunned when I watched his cock start to swell, while the woman stared with adoring eyes up at the large man standing over her. Zach raised his arm and, with his finger pointed, made a circular motion in the air. The woman immediately turned around on her knees and lowered her cheek to the ground, both of her palms pressed into the dirt by her breasts.
Zach dropped to his knees behind her, his erection now at full mast and tilted proudly upward. He took a hand, stroked himself once, twice, and then released his hold. I was mesmerized as he reached out with one hand and laid it gently on the woman’s lower spine. He leaned forward as his other hand reached out and circled it around the back of her neck, pinning her to the ground. Pushing his hips inward, he brought the tip of his shaft to her backside and started to push into her.
I was utterly captivated that he was doing this in full view of the entire tribe, and I was powerless to turn away, be damned that I was sitting next to a priest. I told myself it would be an interesting study for a paper I would publish one day, and that gave me the permission I needed to continue to watch.
“Zach… não aqui. Não na frente dos nossos hóspedes,” I heard Paraila bellow, and I saw Zach’s entire body stiffen at what I thought must be a rebuke. My gaze slid to Paraila, who was looking at Zach with fond exasperation. A sly smile overtook Zach’s face, and he nodded at the old man in deference.
“I apologize,” Father Gaul said beside me, and I turned to look at him. “You’re getting a look at one of their social norms that’s completely antithetical to the modern world’s. Here… in this culture, the man is the dominant and has a right to take one of the available women whenever and wherever he wants. The Caraica view sex as a reward for the way that the man provides for the village. They are completely open in their sexuality, and privacy isn’t required. In fact, it’s a source of a man’s pride to make a woman submit for all to see.”
“I understand,” I told him, but I didn’t understand at all. It was fascinating to consider the differences in our cultures. My mind spun with how I was going to eventually teach Zach the difference between the world as he knew it, and the world he was getting ready to enter. I turned my attention back to my food, while Father Gaul turned to talk to Ramon on his other side.
But the woman in me—no, the scientist I mean—was completely helpless in my curiosity. My eyes peeped back up to watch what Zach did. He merely lifted himself up from the ground and reached his hand back down to the woman. She took it and he helped her to stand, then he led her toward the nearest longhouse, for what I assumed must be some measure of privacy. But when he was no more than twenty yards from the fire, he pushed her back down again to her knees. She didn’t even wait for him to tell her what to do because she immediately pushed her chest to the ground, tipping her butt toward him. The woman rested her cheek in the dirt as Zach knelt behind her, pinning her down by the back of her neck once more. The look on her face as she faced the fire was pleasant… almost serene, which I couldn’t imagine, because if I were getting ready to be impaled by the huge length sticking out from Zach’s pelvis, I’d be a hot, squirming mess.