Chapter 3
Our first child was born two months after Grandfather passed away. Hortence was twenty and unmarried. Twice, women in the township had met him with obvious intent. One was nearly my age and reeked of desperation, for alcohol not a husband. The other was a cute fireball who expected men to jump when she snapped her fingers. I can’t say who disappointed my son more. He rejected both, simply by not inviting them again.
I had kept my pregnancy a secret. A backwoods church is the center of community events and religious services. I received comments about gaining weight, but I never encouraged that falsehood. My past lies weighed heavily. About the time of my third month, an incredible series of rumors crisscrossed communities for fifty miles. Every third week or so, news came of a miracle baby. Folk assumed the nonsense regarded a particular baby, born to an unwed mother. With successive tales giving details of births to different mothers who were solid members of society, a pattern formed, a pattern who’s familiarity terrified me. The women, their husbands all casualties in the war, had born sons in recent months. My peers suggested the reality of lonely women succumbing to temptation. Consistent rumors over the next three months, from different communities, inspired a truth of faith, especially when the rumors claimed the miracle sons resembled the lost fathers! Pastors began to laud the “Danlick Blessings.” God was giving sons to devout Christian widows. Locals attending church nearly doubled. Hope and pride, devastated by the war, swelled in their hearts.
Mentioned more casually in the rumors, the women had children already, daughters sometimes, but always sons who had survived or were too young to have been recruited. I suspected women who bore girls were not as news worthy. As the number of stories increased, doubtlessly many added out of sheer religious enthusiasm, my fear changed. I prayed that a son lie in my womb.
Our Reverend Hannity, dismissed the stories as wishful thinking. He lauded the spirit of fellow holy men, but simply disagreed. “One miracle is all heaven requires, to prove God’s love for mankind.” A week later, his message changed. “I am humbled, dear Lord, by your majesty and magnanimity. Two nights ago, a suffering widow, whom we all know to be beyond reproach, Mrs. Eleanor Tuttle, bore a son. Lord please forgive the unchristian judgement I harbored when your good servant woman refrained from my services for the last several months, but truly your blessing has made me a better sheep and shepherd, as it will every flock who hears of it. Let us sing, Praise to Glory. Let our song welcome mother and son to our hearts.”
I sang with more zeal and less piety than I had ever sung in church. After the service, the community bubbled with spirited amazement. I sought quietness, a place to rest my feet and to think. I found a log by the creek that ran nearby. It’s soft gurgling soothed. Eleanor Tuttle lived to the west, farther into the woods. She was a thin, young woman with three boys too young to be soldiers and too young to mention here. Her husband was killed near war’s end. More devout than I, she never missed a service, and she had farther to walk with three sons of wild temperament. I did not know her well. We spoke rarely. They lived hand to mouth from the woods, with a garden and chickens assisting. Church folk were especially charitable towards her. I had given her a mateable pair of piglets from different sows, a year ago. She did not seek attention, though. Like me, we spoke when spoken to.
With the sun setting behind me, I stood and arched my aching back.
“Sweet Jesus, it is another miracle!”
The shout turned my head, heart racing anew. On the lawn, Ann-marie Smith, a sweet twelve year old stared at me and fell to her knees. Her mother ran to her and saw my belly protruding. She knelt instantly and with her daughter, prayed. The congregation surrounded.
I was given no choice but to confess I was with child. However, I warned that I might bear a girl, and that I was unworthy of a miracle. My caution provoked suspicions of impropriety. I was saved that humiliation when Reverend Hannity took my hand and proclaimed that all of god’s children were miracles.
The morning after my news reached home, Hory found his great-grandfather had died in the night. Grandpa had reacted uncharacteristically quiet, when I confronted him with my pregnancy. Hory had never seen me pregnant, and had not asked about my increasing belly. Humans look very different than pigs with full wombs.
At his simple burial, the reverend said, “The lord taketh away. The lord provides.”
Though I was not happy for it, Grandfather’s passing returned a measure of solemnity to my life. Neighbors spoke to me as a friend again, instead of an incarnation of The Virgin. Trade for our meat and sucklings doubled. The young, firebrand of a girl, came calling for Hortense. I encouraged him, “She is strong and looks to bear strong children.”
“Her tongue is stronger, Ma. And she came because of you, not me.” Hory did not seem troubled by that fact. It merely helped him to ignore the girl’s later request to visit.
His other change, suited me well. My son chose to spare his child further intrusions of his manhood. Thereafter, come morning he commanded me to suck it until his seed flowed into my mouth. In the evenings, after a long day, he allowed me to wrestle it with my hand, which was easier for me. As my breasts grew, he took to sucking on them. Only in my last month, did my son taste the milk destined for his child. He disliked it but did not stop his perverse use of his mother’s teats. He took to spitting it into a jar, while I pulled on his cock. Afterwards he would add it to the pigs’ slop bucket.
I get ahead of myself. I spent a week mourning my grandfather’s passing. Afterwards I told Hortense that I must see a neighbor. He might have guessed it regarded my pregnancy, but the lie I told was, to check on two pigs.
My belly was great, but another month would pass before it grew ponderous. My work at home hardly slowed for the first six months. Since learning of my condition, Hory spared me moments to catch my breath and gave lighter tasks while he managed strenuous ones.
Several miles into the woods tired me little more than usual. I sought the home of Mrs. Tuttle. Word spread before me, as I asked directions. Many times I was offered a guide, but I took only their kindness. To hear neighbors tell it, days later, I sought to commune with my fellow miracle mother. I had told them only that I would check on the pigs I had gifted a year earlier.
The kind of pigs I encountered near my destination did not hear me approach. The trees here grew well apart, allowing brambles and underbrush to carpet the woods. Paths were maintained by monthly pruning. New ones were formed by widening deer trails. Every inch of the woods was alive. Birdsong and scuttling varmints surrounded me. The crunch of my footsteps carried no farther than my toes. A girl’s laughter rang through the woods. It was almost a shriek, but if you have raised children, you know the difference. Her laughter sparked similar cackling. Mischief was certain. As I approached, other voices tittered and giggled. When I could understand their words between their exclamations, I paused, accepting the sin of eavesdropping.
“I win!” The girl declared. “Took all three of you to hold me down.”
“Yeah, but WE win ’cause, um-” Another young girl argued. I guessed from her shrill tone.
“Now we can tickle you.” I guessed a younger boy said.
“MAY-be we will tuck you, too!” He cracked. It was the changing voice of a young man.
“How, my naughty raccoons? If you let go, I will escape.” She laughed.
A silent moment ended with a wail. “I wanna tuck Mama!”
“Hush, Ken, your Ma needs to be with baby Joe. Don’t you want to play with me?”
“You got no teats, Sheel, not worth suck’n.”
“And you fight too much.” I imagined the young boy pouting.
“Mama, she comPLAIN, but she don’t fight.”
“Mama Ellie, loves you all. But you listen to me. You don’t go tucking her until I say so. She was hurt from d’liver’n.
My shock surprised me. I expected what I would find here. I knew none of the details, but hearing words that confirmed my guesses, shook my heart like when Hory shamed me for the first time. I could not bear to hear more.
“Hello!” I called. “I’m looking for the Tuttle family.”
“Hush!” the girl called low. Speaking louder, she answered. “Howdy! Wait a bit, while I get there.”
She appeared, pushing through low brush to the path before me. My heart wrenched a second time. Though her dress was just a loose, bushel sack, cut for arms and legs and a head, the bulge in her belly was unmistakeable. She was maybe thirteen, carrying the responsibility of a woman. Not an unknown event but rare.
“I’m Sheila, and the Tuttles live just that way. Follow me.” Her spirit was bright, a bonfire keeping the forest safe, it seemed.
Other than my name, words failed me. I followed, as if a man had told me to.
Ahead of our slow pace, crashing brush kept its distance. Sheila dawdled, maybe to respect my condition, but more certain to give the Tuttle children time.
Reaching the clearing around a lean-to, a tiny shed of a home, three naked boys fidgeted beside their door, like wooden soldiers rocked by the wind. Caked in dirt and decayed leaves, they brandished crooked teeth. If I had to guess, they were eight, nine, and twelve.
“You get to a bath, Ken, John, and Grady.” Sheila scolded them. “This here is God’s other miracle, Mrs-“
“Aw, we know t-HAINT, no miracle.” Grady’s voice cracked.
“I’ll fetch a switch!”
The boys scattered. When Sheila had greeted me, she’d given me no reverence for the miracle she threatened the Tuttle boys with.
“Do come inside, Ma-am.” She bent a knee to me, pretending to be impressed, and opened the door.
The coals in the small fireplace hardly pushed out the room’s darkness, compared to the shade in woods on a bright day. On a stump, hewn into a seat, Eleanor Tuttle rocked with her baby at her breast. Her skirt was also sack cloth, but hand sewn well enough. Skinny, except for her mother breasts, the woman looked sad but content. The baby, Joe, sucked greedily.
She looked up, and a fright overtook her soft face. “Are y-you, Besha?” Eyes like saucers worried over me.
“I am Ma-am, but-” I wanted to reassure her of my good will.
“Sh-shiela, I-I need to talk alone with her.”
“Um, okay, Mama Ellie. I’ll see the boys get their bath.” The girl regarded me again, a bit more impressed, or did I imagine it?
“Lord o mercy, I fear you be reckoning come, Besha.” Eleanor gasp the moment the girl left us.
“No, Mrs. Tuttle, I-“
“You got a son, right? He didn’t go to war and git killed?”
“It’s true.” I hung my head. This would be my reckoning, perhaps. “My husband and oldest boy are gone, though.”
“Now you got another son in your belly.”
“It may be a girl.”
“Maybe.” She switched baby Joe to her other breast. Looking back up at me, her eyes were tear filled. “But I pray it be a boy, or wicked rumors will send hell your way.”
“The preacher said-“
“The preacher be a good man, but he is only one of, too few, true lights in a forest teaming with foolish will-o-wisps.”
I was amazed by the woman’s heart. At church, she was more meek than church mice. Had she been deceitful?
Then Eleanor sighed. “Lord, be my strength, for I am worn tired.”
“Mrs. Tuttle.”
“Eleanor, please.” The church mouse returned. Her thin face lost it’s halo. “Did you come to lay my sin before me?”
“No. Eleanor, I came bearing mine. I suffer it still. I once found a moment of rescue, and for that I would cross mountains.” I fell upon my knees before the madonna and let my tears flow. “Will you hear me?”
I wailed and cried, telling my story, until noon. Sheila knocked and said the boys were hungry.
I had brought a basket for the family. There was bread, and a pot of jam. There was a pie, ham hocks, beets, and crock of butter. We ate outside, on burlap squares of different sizes sewn into a sheet.
Eleanor put her baby to bed. Unlike it’s older brothers, Joe lay peaceful inside. They could not sit still for a minute. Bathed and in the linen pants that Sheila forced them to wear, they tugged at them as if suffering unbearable itches. The oldest, Grady restrained himself best, but his look worried me. At one point, Ken escaped his pants and ran, shaking his bud like a rooster’s crown. Sheila chased him down and bound him back into his breeches.
“I tuck good, Ma-am.” Grady whispered, while his mother watched the chase. “Even with child, Sheila says I’m good. I got her and Ma good, she said.”
My blush spoke for me.
Alerted to her son’s whispers, Eleanor intervened. “Don’t listen to the boy, Honey. He is wicked, not like your son. Grady be wild wicked. Yours’ just sad and lonely sinful.” She told her son, “God will punish you, I promised. That’s why you boys go hungry more now. You got me with baby Joe, and now I can’t fend much in a day. I gotta eat to make sure Joe gets fed.”
“Aw, Ma, I can tuck Mrs- Besha, if I wanna, I bet.” Pie crumbs dotted his face.
Like an angel, Sheila, fresh from depositing Ken back to his ham hock, grabbed Grady’s shoulders. She heaved him up like an amazon and dragged him down the trail, out of sight.
After stuffing themselves until their bellies poked out, Ken and John grinned at each other, laughed, and ran into the woods after their kin.
“She’s a wild thing, too, poor dear.”
“I didn’t know you had a daughter.”
“Ain’t my daughter. She’s got a grandpa who live in a cabin a day from here.” Eleanor wiped her lips with a corner of the sheet. “She works here to feed him. He still hunts, and can bleed and butcher but small critters only. Someday, maybe not soon, she gonna be my daughter when he die. She’ll be Grady’s woman then.”
“I’m sorry.” I had to ask. “Can you tell me now- I mean, you are so strong compared to me. How did your boys-?” I had no more words.
A fear darkened her eyes. “I wasn’t, Honey. I lost my man. I lost my heart. That baby in the house, he is my strength. It was Sheila who told them about tucking, a couple years prior. She learn it from her Grandpa. At first she teased them, cuz they were too young. She didn’t mean harm. She has real strength. She kept me alive and working for the sake of my sons. I spared time only for the Lord’s day, to worship Him and to love my neighbors.
“But the boys, once they figured Sheila’s game, they came to me. It was John at first. Ken was too sweet then, and Grady he was stuck on Sheila. I hollered at them, and I cursed them with the almighty’s wrath, and drove them from me, but they come back time and time again. After a year of it, my threats proved hollow. They got older, wore me down faster, and Grady reached the burning age. Sheila stayed just out of reach. When Grady found John with me, he demanded me the next day.”
Sheila and the boys reeking of humus, found us hugging over an empty basket. Eleanor and I dried our eyes. I noted white dotting Sheila’s sun tanned cheeks. Her sack was worn opposite the way it had faced earlier. The boys sat nearly still and devoured every scrap remaining in my basket.
Before I left, Eleanor told her boys she wanted a last moment alone with me.
“Bear your child private, Besha. I’ll send Sheila to you to help with the birth. If you bear a girl, she’ll bring it to me, and I will give you baby Joe for it.” One would be justified to be stunned, hearing that, but I knew poor folk. Giving a child to a willing, rich family was a godsend. I knew she meant well for me and her baby. Realistically, three months would pass between Joe’s birth and my baby’s day to come. The deception would never be believed.
I walked away from the Tuttles, without spending one thought for the pigs I’d gifted. They’d been eaten months ago. I would return home well before sundown. I plodded there with inner peace.
“How were the pigs, Mother?” My son had figured out they were not the reason for my visit.
“Poor, Hory. Poor but happy.” I explained. That night, when my son told me to suck on him, I undressed without complaint. Instead of kneeling before him, I turned around and settled on my hands and knees. My belly hung nearly to the floorboards. My breasts swatted my face when, my son took me from behind, for the first time. Secretly, I fingered myself to the most wicked sensation I had ever experienced.
It was not the last time I tracked down Danlick’s Blessings. The farm and sty had to be worked, though. I was great with child and bore a son. Luke would be christened with my husband’s middle name. Despite my soreness, Hory, who had resumed abstinence from intercourse after our night as beasts, could no longer restrain himself. He fell on me the moment I woke the next day. He did not let me feed our baby before crawling up my nightshirt, but he left my breasts alone, tight though they were with milk, and saved them for his son and brother. After I relieved my son of his pent up seed, Luke relieved the pressure in my teats.
There was a hullabaloo, of course. Neighbors flocked to gift Luke with toys and charms. However, the stories of miracle babies had dulled, and I was regarded well below sainthood, thank the lord. Eleanor returned to attending services a few weeks before Luke was born. The Sunday after my delivery, hours after Luke’s baptism, she congratulated me on his sex, and prayed for his soul with me. When we returned to the congregation, she was asked why her sons remained at home, a snoop’s jibe.
I stepped up when it was clear that my sister, lost sheep could not answer. “Shirley Johnson, be more Christian, now. If you had sons living in the woods, you would know that God speaks with them there, like in the old book. They would wither in civilized society.” I indulged a sin similar to hers. “If you live in your neighbor’s house for one night, you will better understand God’s commandment.”
I said it loudly, a dare before our congregation. Shirley was recently married to a veteran with all of his limbs, but word everywhere told of his drinking. At eighteen, she was hardly in a position to be picky. For his drink, he worked as hard as any, but come night, it was said their bed reeked but remained un-blooded.
Months passed. The news to mention was heavy with sorry. Sheila died in childbirth. Eleanor told me in confidence, at church. I longed to visit her home again and console her at length, but she warned me away. “Grady went on a rampage. I fear Sheila’s grandfather. If the two meet, Grady will be the one without a gun. My oldest sulks in the woods and yells at me and his brothers, even the baby. Starving, he will steal into the house and eat everything he finds. Then he flees like a fox. John has taken to tell Ken, their brother is mad.”
She spoke to me in private. Not finished, she led me farther from the church. “Once, I went into the woods.” She wept. “Like Lilith I went to seduce my boy to bring him home. God saw my sin and sent punishment. Grady cursed me with the same words of the Lord I once repelled him with.”
Another month passed, and two stories found me at church, one during the service, and one after. Reverend Hannity announced that Shirley Johnson had disappeared. Details surfaced over the next few days. She’d had words with her husband, left her home, and was never seen again, according to her husband. He was sober when the sheriff questioned him. Neighbors had heard her yelling foul words blaming him for not giving her a child. One rumor that only men told each other, came to me by my son. Their marriage may never have been consummated.
The second story, Eleanor told to me after the service. Shirley Johnson had appeared at the Tuttle door. She was in a frightful state. She beseeched God with a temper. Why was a beggar from the woods given a fourth son, when she, a proud Christian, generous to the church and to her neighbors, had none! She yelled at the hovel but never announced herself. Eleanor swore that Shirley fled with her tears. My lost sheep was steeped in the worst of sins, but unlike me, Eleanor was no liar. It was news we could never tell the sheriff, not even risk anonymously. I asked her about Grady. She brightened then. His madness had ended, but he continued to live in the woods. She suspected that Sheila’s grandfather had had something to do with the boy’s change of heart.
After that tale, my friend warned me not to ask if she had escaped her other two sons. I told her, whenever she felt a burden too great, I would always listen. I promised never to judge her.
By then, the congregation accepted our private moments outside the church. Impolite as it was for godly women to exclude Christian brothers and sisters, they exempted us for holy reasons. The reverend once sought us to offer guidance, but we begged him to pray for us, to understand our situation. We promised, if God ever revealed our stories to him, we would welcome his wisdom.
Privately, we realized that we would have to end our separation from our neighbors. Yet our heart to heart talks were morphine that killed our pain. It’s addiction was strong.
I set a goal to find a solution. Eleanor and I must continue to meet. We must cease to alienate our neighbors, yet we must work hard to keep our families fed. My friend never asked for assistance. I did give gifts appropriate to my means without injuring her pride. There was little time in the world to travel far just to talk for an hour or two.
When next I went to church, she did not appear. Certainly, her absence disheartened me, but I assured myself it was doubtless a story she would tell the following Sunday. I returned home slower than when I left. Along the way, John Tuttle scampered before me, and put his finger to his lips. He led me a hundred yards from anywhere others might travel.
“Mama said to find you.”
“Oh, Honey, what’s the matter? How can I help?”
He paused for a second, and blinked at me. “Um, maybe.” He shook his head. “Ma said to tell you Sheila’s grandfather showed. He told her Grady lived with him now and not to worry.”
“That is good news, John. Thank you for coming all this way.” I patted his head.
He smiled and surprised me. He took my hand and kissed it. “Mama can’t come to chursh ever again. She said, she had to promise him.”
My heart fell, and I partially stumbled. John was a little boy no longer. He caught me with rough hands, strong from fighting the land to survive. They held me longer than was polite. Then his hands roamed with purpose. “You said you might help.” He reminded me.
If the boy had voiced more authority, I may have fallen another rung from God’s grace. I leaped back, wanting to excuse the young man’s habits ingrained by his mother’s weak authority. I shook a finger at him. “Shame on you, John Tuttle.”
For a moment, John’s face looked as if he were considering a stronger attempt on my honor. He shrugged. “Sheila’s grandpa told ma, he would ruin her if she ever went back to your house of idle wurshop.” He turned and started home. He called behind him. “Come by, Mizus Besha. You can talk at our place, and I will be sure to tuck you, before and after.”
It was likely the grandfather had been a lay pastor in his life. Many attuned to God’s wilderness, who heard his call, foreswore the trappings of society, denounced it even. He was no holy man, I told myself. He had been the one to teach Sheila the way of Jezebel. It meant he was most to blame for her death.
Hory greeted me by taking off my clothes and bedding me. He claimed it was his time for honoring the day of rest. Years ago, after my foot had fully healed, he moved into the loft with me. I met his lust with a smattering of my own, which proved to heighten our pleasure.
The church house was just close enough, that I could leave little Luke at home and return to feed him before my breasts wept with milk. Hory had taken a fondness to his child in a manner his father had never expressed to him. My husband loved Hortense as much as his hard shell allowed. His son’s shell, halfway through being raised, lost the man who would have hardened it. On rare occasions, when his mood was up, I caught him playing with Luke, hoisting our baby into the air like he was hanging a ham in the smokehouse. Luke invariable gurgled with delight.
As my son and I discovered greater pleasure with each other, my heart darkened in the times I was free of his command. I dared to not go to Eleanors, but I wished sorely to unburden the darkness. It oppressed me terribly, until it affected Hory’s pleasure.
“I don’t care, Ma, if you lie there, limp like you used to. I will bed you and prick your puss until I fill it with my seed. You will suck me when I require it, and use your hands when I feel they would please me most.” He took me harshly sometimes, as if the heights of our delights languished also for him. I remembered his father’s vicious thrusting. The memory unnerved me. Even a fallen woman should not deny her husband his marriage right.
I shivered when Hory’s hot seed erupted inside me. For most of the night I lay awake, cold in my son’s arms, repeating the long word in my mind. Neighbors had never questioned my son’s right to support his mother and live with her, even unmarried. By all reason, foul its conclusions reached, we were husband and wife.
I worked myself the next day until I fell unconscious. Hory brought me to, after carrying me to the low bed. He was sucking milk from my breasts and spitting it into a jar. This aroused him, and he fucked me upon seeing that I was awake. I felt my soul spiraling closer to hell.
I had no solution to the dilemmas that kept Eleanor and I apart. The only way to escape the torment I caused to myself, was to start fresh. I told Hory that I would be at church all day the next Sunday. I would take Luke with me and a sack lunch.
I had not trod the miles to Danlick with my newborn in a sling. He had grown fat from my milk, but I managed a good pace despite Luke’s healthy size. Weary upon reaching the town, I took water from the well and many minutes to refresh myself. Directly, I launched myself to the town church. I remembered meeting it’s pastor, years before. He greeted me with greater recall.
“How may I serve you, Blessed Besha?” He knew my story.
I coughed and complained. “Too much has been said that is untrue, grateful that I am for my new son and God’s blessing. Please, Reverend Onager, I am a simple woman.”
“In this town, God has revealed to me, there are no simple women.” A shadow crossed his face. I worried his initial greeting had been less than genuine.
“I came to ask about the rumored miracles. Are there records of these women? May I speak with them?”
“No records, Ma-am, I spoke against documenting them. Miracles must never leave evidence. That would compromise the faithful.”
“I would like to meet with them, to compare our experiences. From your words, will you hinder me? Would you help, if I promised never to reveal what I learn?”
This tore the man’s expression. He wanted something, yet he also feared something.
“I can give you a couple names, of women I believe were blessed, nothing else. I do not know more than them, I would sin myself, by swearing to heaven that I speak true, if you require. But I will not repeat rumors of others.”
My hope renewed. “Is there anything that a humble Baptist can do for Danlick’s spiritual leader?” I ventured, daring to turn over the larger stone between us.
He nodded slowly. “When you are satisfied by my information, leave town. If you return, do not stay long.”
“I see.” I did not. “Very well, yes. I promise to keep my business here brief, whenever I visit.”
“So help us, God.” He added.
“So help us god.” I confirmed.
I had hoped to return home by nightfall, but the preacher had made it clear. I must not linger. I did stop to eat and feed Luke.
The first woman, Rebecca Dunlop, lived in town, just off of the main square. Her son was nearly nineteen. She also had a four year old daughter – I imagined her conceived on the night Rebecca’s husband departed into the gray ranks. Approaching the lovely house constructed of mill sawed planks, my heart jolted. What was I doing? What would I say? I had to lean against a neighbor’s front fence and sort my thoughts.
Each time I encountered the boys who dominated their mothers, I risked my safety, my position, everything. The sins I needed to share were demons of destruction. Only in strict confidence and safely away from our boys and outsiders, could women like myself open our souls enough to unburden them. I could never knock on Mrs. Dunlop’s door.
I left, wandering without a destination, but found myself headed to the next woman’s home. It was on the outskirts, newly built by her two grown sons and a daughter. One had married recently and had moved to another part of Danlick. The other remained, to support their mother as I claimed to my neighbors regarding Hory. Her name was Rose Orchard. I imagined her a sprite of beauty and poise yet voluptuous like a painting.
Once more I dithered outside a blessed woman’s home. I dared not approach. I turned to wander once more. Behind me a door opened. I did not peek. I stepped faster while maintaining a dignified air. Twenty steps further, I turned my head. Rose Orchard strode behind me in the same direction. We were roughly the same age. She was not voluptuous. Her body was large, shaped like a pear. Her steps nearly thudded on solid ground. I swallowed my uncharitable thoughts and took Luke into my arms. “Hush, Luke.” He had not cried.
Smiling, Mrs. Orchard greeted me. “She is a lovely child.” Her voice lilted like a singer’s. But it lacked breath. Inside this large body, a quiet person lived her life.
“Luke, Ma-am.” I pretended to sputter.
“Oh dear, please forgive me!” She acted as if she had crushed a child’s favorite toy.
“Of course. Please.” I hefted Luke into the crook of one arm and offered a hand to Rose. “I am Besha.” It was over familiar of me, if not vain, to announce my christian name.
She did not quaver. She took my hand and held it gently. “Rose.” Her touch electrified me. Later, she confessed to a similar experience. Only in the rapture of singing in God’s house, and pushing against my son’s pumping manhood, had I experienced that shock.
“Where do you-” We uttered and halted in unison.
I tried and succeeded. “I was looking for a present for my other son. We live out of town, and I cannot stay long. Can you suggest something?
She expanded like a balloon from inspiration. Before answering, she looked over her shoulder, at her home. “Please, allow me to show you.” She resumed walking, stepping quicker this time. I stayed with her. When we were a good six buildings away, she slowed. “There are no shops near my home, good lady, did you know that?”
I nodded. “Please, hear me. I have come very far this day. By the blessing of god I have come, I swear.”
“I know, Besha. When you said other son, I knew.”
“Am I not a threat to you?”
“No. I instantly discounted that. You are here for another reason, but I know not what.”
“My story will take a long while. I may not have the time myself, let alone interrupt your purpose.”
“I was just out for a walk.” She promised.
“Is there anywhere we can speak in private?”
“Yes, but you do not mean my home.” Rose smiled. She had a pretty face.
“No.” I cast my eyes down.
“Are you up for an adventure?”
“Hmm?” I looked to her again.
“Not five houses from here is an abandoned stable.” She spoke quietly.
“Is it safe?”
“Possibly.” Her smile returned.
I followed her without question. The land surrounding the remaining structure sported a rock outline where a house had stood. Two horses would hardly fit, but inside, after brushing cobwebs aside, we found it warmer than it looked from the outside. We sat on our petticoats ignoring the history of the ground supporting us.
“Besha, here you can tell me whatever you like.”
It would have been impossible to blurt all that I was feeling from the very start of my story. I warmed up by recounting my original lie, a sin I had confessed to Eleanor much later in our relationship. By starting at the very beginning, I could study her reactions. Her smile never left her face. If she was disturbed by my increasingly lurid tale, she bore no sign of it, until I was nearly finished. I stopped when Rose Orchard began bawling like Luke. Luke joined her. I used my breast to quiet him. I waited for Rose.
She spilled tears for a while. I switched Luke to my other breast.
“Please. Please. Tell me that god sent you.” She snuffled.
“I-I cannot. I am too deep in sin for the Almighty to use me as his instrument.”
“Not true, my new and miraculous friend. In the eyes of god, you are free of sin.”
“No.”
“I have experienced it.”
My story unfinished, I no longer needed to if this woman could explain.
“I was unmarried and with child, living in the county seat. God forsook me, but the church helped, as did my parents. In all eyes, I was the lowest of women. I was sixteen. Shunned by society and reviled by my parents, I had to accept their terms, or be thrust into an unforgiving world. I became a maid to my parents. They ceased to call me, Daughter. They took my son and raised him as their own. They used me for a wet nurse, but let me have no other time with my child. A year later, when the man in canvas trousers broke into our home, he hurt me for his pleasure, and I was again punished with a son. This time my parents did not blame me, as the man stole most of their valuables. My father and mother restored me to their family bosom. I thought it first a blessing, but my curse increased.
“For another sixteen years, my father would lead me into the night away from the town I lived in then, to the training camp, nearby. We were a united nation at that time, and he welcomed recruits from any county to buy pleasure from me.
The war rescued me. My father was called to serve, and my mother died of sickness from the training camp. With two bastard sons and a daughter born from sin purchased, the neighbors reviled me, yet they publicly mourned my loss. I believe they collected money from every person in town, to buy my parent’s house and a train ticket away from civilization. They could have burned me from my home and driven me out of the county. I was surely blessed.
“My father had been generous to my sons, with the money I earned. He hired tutors to help their studies. They would have gone to college, had not the their false parents passed. They used the money to buy a shop here, and to build a house for me.”
“They believed you were their sister?”
“At first, but children in their hometown knew the truth. Fists flew between my sons and their schoolmates until they could not deny it.
Theirs, however, was an understanding kept secret from me. My daughter is an imbecile, thank the lord’s mercy. She has never suffered for my curse.”
“Incredible.” I exclaimed! I believed her entire story, while disagreeing with her assessment of our lord’s intentions.
“Ah, but that was but the backdrop for the story you came to hear.” Rose’s face burned then with deep red.
“It was the day money was offered to buy us out of town. The town’s representative offered it not to me, but to my sons. Once again, I had no control over my life. My sons own everything. Not until we had settled, and their business was established in the community, did they come to me and confess knowing I was their true mother. They professed their Christian honor for me. We invented a tale of a hero husband, a hero in the sense that he served.
“Were your boys not recruited?”
Rose drew herself up. “They purchased their futures clear of draft notices, long enough to skip the war. It was money sorely needed by the army. They did not dishonor themselves.”
“That does sound honorable.” I allowed, but my instincts knotted over the matter.
“After both of them professed to honor me on that sunny day, that night, my oldest, Samuel, crawled into my bed. He reminded me of my wickedness and demanded to cleave unto him. It was how I would continue to earn my keep. What was my option? To claim God’s commandment? I would have been honorably ejected from my sons’ home. The church may be kind to fallen women, but my story would leave me begging in the streets until sickness took my life.
“You cleaved.”
“Besha, I earned my keep!” Rose shouted. Every night, I took one of my sons to bed and drained cum from their successful business cocks until their eyes crossed. I told them randy tales and doused their bodies with sensations known only to the canniest of whores. I raised their cackles and spread goosebumps everywhere I touched. I am a large woman, unsightly to some, erotic to many, but I was no simple lay for a nickel. I learned. A few of the men knew strange practices. Most put their dicks in my hole and spilled their seed in less than a minute. I talked to other whores. I experimented. Sometimes my pa beat me for driving a customer away. As often, my victim paid twice in one night, begging Father let them buy me again. On the night before Father was recruited, I earned nearly one hundred dollars. It was my farewell present. He lost most of it in a card game on the first night in his barracks.
“I am helpless without my sons’ support. Yet in my bedroom, I made them my slaves.”
“Then you are not ashamed?”
Her face blustered like a bullfrog. “I said I was without sin. Do I have to cry again, to make you understand?”
Did she? I felt lost in front of this powerful, yet helpless mother. The unfamiliar word, “cum” revealed it’s meaning as I pondered her story.
Her anguish eased. “All women are shamed by men who use them without regard for their souls.” She did not cry, but her head bowed.
“Which of them married?” I tried to change the tone.
“Samuel. Richard keeps me. But I know that he sells me to Samuel, sometimes. His wife knows nothing about pleasuring men.” Her tone did not change. “Samuel returns home, pretending to favor me with his attentions and his big cock. In their ledger, numbers change between two columns the next day. Richard commands my skills day and night, when he is not at work. I practice all that I learned and try new techniques with him. He is insatiable. They are not evil men. They protect my idiot daughter as if she were their porcelain doll of a sister. She will never be wronged, unless my boys are killed. They give me a generous allowance to run the household and ensure they never want for a good meal and a better fuck.”
“Do you mind my questions?”
“Honey, you are the best person I have met in this town. I would marry you if God’s laws allowed it. The more you ask, the more I can prove the purity of my spirit.”
Her response discomforted me, however I tried to believe it an example.
“What pleasures have you experienced when you, um, wh-whore.” I did not have to pretend to stutter.
Her face turned to stone. “None.” When I failed to ask another question, her gravity hardened. “A woman’s pleasure in fornication is a lie told by men to other men.”
Finally, I understood. Rose Orchard was as pure as midwinter snow. Having been forced through the worst of hell, this woman swam in blood but never fell to temptation at the promise of safe shore. She never would feel pleasure from the act, only from the love her sons truly held in their hearts for her. The god she believed in was not my god, yet the good book claims they are the same. For the first time in my life, I doubted.
We were two women, as different as love and hate, but the bond between was certain. What God would make of us, I could not say.
Each of us stood without further word. We left the stable and followed separate paths.
I had promised the reverend to tarry no longer than necessary. Hours had passed, but now I knew how to proceed. I returned to the first woman’s home. I asked a passer-by about the builder. It was a question meant to spark discussion. The spark caught tinder, and I learned more about Rebecca Dunlop than I had a right to know.
She was a saint.
to be continued