Cherrylog Road

Although the young adolescent amuses himself by jumping in and out of the cars in the junkyard and imagining their histories, he is in the yard for one purpose only: to have sex with Doris Holbrook, the girl from the farm. Given the joy and wonder of his newfound power and sexual awareness, this is really all he thinks about. His anticipation of Doris begins in stanza 3, when he hopes that she will “escape from her father” (Line 18) at noon and come to the junkyard. When he thinks he hears her arriving, he breaks out into a sweat (stanza 9). He wants her so badly that he is “Praying” (Line 65) that she will come. There is an urgency and intensity about his desire for Doris. Not that he thinks especially highly of her, or even regards her at all as a person in her own right. In fact, he compares her to a mouse, which conveys the single-mindedness and ferocity both of his lust and his perception of her: she is prey to be hunted down. He has already likened himself to a “kingsnake” (Line 31), and a kingsnake’s diet includes rodents. He does not, to put it mildly, underestimate his sexual abilities, and he imagines that his kisses will excite Doris so much that her lips will be “trembling” with the thrill of it (Line 61), although there is no evidence that satisfying Doris is high on his list of priorities or even on it at all.