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A Father's Dream

By: MSTarot



(Brian)

I wish I could stop tapping my foot.

I've tried about a dozen times to stop but every time my thoughts drift for a moment I look down and it's going a mile a minute.

For the hundredth time I look up at the arrival departure board.

Every flight has left or arrived right on time, except for hers.

Looking up I watch when a young girl walks past, her face buried in her phone. Chewing gum going between her teeth like a road grader. 

She's about my daughter's age is the first thought, but no...

Chanel is a blond like her mother.

I watch the girl as she walks by.

If anything her fingers are trying to out do my foot in taps per second. I watch her walk across to the carousel and grab up a bag and head for the door, all without ever looking up from her phone.

Texting, tweeting, Twittering?

"I'll take things that birds do for a thousand, Alex." I mutter under my breath.

I stop myself before I look back to the board again. Instead I make my eyes roam around the terminal.

God I hate places like this now. Not that I ever loved them all that much to begin with. 

Cluttered, congested, masses of humanity, walking around with all the lifeless of a Zombie hoard!

Sighing, I try to relax.

My thoughts go back to the phone call two nights ago.

The one that told me my ex-wife was dead. Dead and already buried in fact.

Crystal's smiling, laughing face comes back to me then. The way she was when we first met all those years ago. A lifetime ago.

Our daughters lifetime to be exact.

There had been so much love then. So many dreams.

Then the dreams had clashed and they turned darker...became nightmares.

The fights, the screaming accusations, the endless days of us not really talking till we reach a point were the words came out only with tears. Bitter tears.

Tears that tasted of divorce.

I think back to the last time I saw my daughter, all those years ago. 

The day the judge told me I couldn't see her again.

The day he gave full custody to Crystal. No visitations, due to domestic violence I never did but was nearly convicted of.

My leg is going again.

With a sigh I put it all away, all the old thoughts, all the old memories of times when I was young and stupid. A better lawyer could have torn her story apart on the stand. I could have given more testimony that would have scandalized her to the point the judge wouldn't have let her have Chanel.

But I had been young and dumb and still very much in love with the woman that was trying to destroy my life.

All because I dreamed of something she couldn't see as worth doing.

My dream...her dream. The two did not match up when put next to each other.

"Flight 417 from Los Angeles now arriving at gate 4."

I get to my feet when I hear the announcement. Making my way through the people I go to where they will let me wait. I remember back to the days when you could walk all the way to the plane but now if you're not flying you're not getting close.

I know my daughter the moment she comes walking around the corner of the hall. She looks almost like her mom did when I first met Crystal.

Blond hair, the color of wheat burnt by the sun. More golden that yellow.

I watch her tug at her clothes when she walks past a group of young guys.

They don't even look her way.

I can see the way her face sinks a bit at that. It's a small thing but I see it.

She begins to look around, then her eyes come to rest on me.

Smiling I give a nod.

She sighs and walks over to me.

I hold out my hand towards her bag but she shakes her head.

"I've got it." She stops and gives my face a good look. "So you're my dad?"

Such a question should have been expected but it still hits me hard. To hear it spoken like that, hurts. No father should have to hear those words.

"Yea... I'm your dad, Chanel." I look at her slightly plump face and try to find any part of myself there then. Maybe a bit around the eyes?

She nods.

"I saw an old picture of you once. You had more hair then."

Chuckling I reach up. My hand slicks back the few remaining soldiers in the lost campaign.

"Yea I had one too many birds want nesting material over the years. They have just about plucked me bald." Leaning in a bit I whisper "If you look at my head in the right light I'm getting a bit thin."

She gives her lips a little quirk.

In the right light I look like a bird's egg.

She lets the smile slide away.

"Mom told me one thing when I was younger, then something different about a year ago. I need to know which was the true story." She lets her teeth bite her lips for a second then starts to ask. "Did you ever..."

"No."

She pauses for a second, then looks me hard in the eyes.

"How can I tell if you're telling me the truth?"

"Because my lips are moving." I say with an even tone. "I know what your mom told you. That I got drunk and beat the hell out of her. Did she tell you that she was having an affair behind my back those last months?"

I see my daughter's eyes go wide. She shakes her head.

"That he was a drug using prick that tried to..." I let the words die unspoken. With a sigh I look up and let my blood settle back down and then look down at her. "The guy she was with got stoned and beat her up, really badly. She used the bruises to get full custody of you."

I see the story go to war behind her eyes. It nearly boils out into screams of denial, then her teeth click together.

"I wont talk bad about your mom." I tell her, then pause to let that sink in. "But if you ask I will tell you the truth. She was a human just like all the rest of us. Good and bad, nice and...not nice, all in one package. Believe it or not I still loved her with all my heart. Even after she ripped it out and tore it to shreds."

I again hold out my hand for her bag.

With a hesitancy that hurts me she hands it over.

"Well I'm glad to see you're the type that plans ahead." I say as I turn and gesture towards the doors.

"What do you mean?" she asks.

"Well with you moving in we might have to expand the house a bit. I see you planned ahead and brought some bricks along." I give the heavy bag a lift like it's a strain. "Damn, did you pack the mortar mixer too?'

She again gives me that half smile. It slides away just as quickly.

As I walk in silence beside her I think back to when my mom passed.

I wouldn't have found jokes all that funny then either.

The hike to the truck has her panting a bit, but...She has her phone out before we are even clear the terminal doors. 

Her head doesn't come up till she's almost at my truck. When it does she stops and her jaw drops open a bit. She slowly turns and gives me a disgusted look.

"Do you have a problem with things from this millennium?" she asks with a shake of her head.

"She may not look like much, but she's got it where it counts." I say with a wink and a grin ."I've made a few special modifications myself."

She rolls her eyes and gives her head a shake.

Back go the thousand mile an hour thumbs.

The door, popping when she opens it startles her for a second, and then the way the springs in the front seat kind of bounce when you sit down does the same.

"This thing runs on coal right?" she asks with a disgusted look.

I pat the gas and turn the key. My fingers pull out the choke knob and the old beast wakes up.

"Don't be ridiculous. It steam powered."

Depressing the clutch I shift the column shifter and pull out.

A car blows it's horn at me less than a second latter!

"Dad!"

I give a shrug and press the gas harder.

"I had the right of way. Beside he doesn't want to hit this truck."

After a bit she looks back over at me.

"Why not? He wouldn't want to damage an antique?" She asks her fingers held in position over the little micro keyboard.

"Nope. That bit of plastic and foam he's driving would disintegrate if he did." I shift the truck into a higher gear and hold my arm out the window to signal a turn. 

The look she gives me is so similar to one her mom gave me once long ago that I feel a terrible sensation of Deja Vu.

The twenty miles up to my place passes in silence. Well silence except for.

Texting, texting, texting, texting, texting...Chirp!

I glance over at her and see a sudden look of panic sweep her face.

"Lost signal?" I ask trying to not give away that fact that I knew she was going to.

She looks over at me and nods. She looks stunned. I wonder then if she has ever been out in the country at all.

"Well it might come back as the sun sets. Atmospheric ionization and all that." I shift down and again signal my turn with my left arm.

My daughter looks at me then down at her phone. Then at the dashboard of the truck with it's real wood and brass rimmed dials.

"I'm in a Twilight Zone episode aren't I?" she asks after a moment.

I chuckle a bit and shake my head.

"I don't think so but if you start to hear Rod Serling, running might be a good idea."

She gives a little breath of a laugh.

When I look back over at her, after a few more miles, she has her head against the glass window and is silently crying as she watches the growing wilderness. The tears down her face leave clear tracks on her skin then drop to disappear in a darker spot on her shirt.

I wish I had the words to give her comfort. I wish I knew what to say or do, that would take some of the pain away.

My own heart feels empty at the moment as well. I realize why as I take the turn up the winding gravel road onto my place.

It's the spot I kept the memory of my love for Crystal. I feel myself accepting that she really is gone, not just from my life now, but from the entire world.

A tear runs down my face but gets caught in my bristle.

** ** ** ** ** ** ** 

(Chanel)

I see them coming down the road towards the truck. Three large dark coated German shepherds! They come at a run, tails wagging, tongues hanging out their open mouths. With a hundred barks and yelps they give chase to this old relic of a truck. I start to look ahead of us for the house. I'm figuring I'll be seeing something that would be right at home in an Amish reality show.

When my dad pulls the truck up under a tree and shuts it off I still don't see the house!

There is a lot of wooden fences, a large divided field, a few hundred chickens and a large barn sitting in the middle of the field but no house.

His door opens with a pop that startles me.

I start to open my door but stop when a large black muzzle appears just outside the window! The scenes from Kujo come back to me with horrifying clarity.

"Don't worry. She wont bite." He tells me as he steps out. I watch him get my bag from the back of the truck and holds it out the way of the jumping dogs that are trying to circle or trip him with every step.

Slowly hesitantly I open the door. The dog hops down then backs up as the door pops.

Her nose is cold when she comes back in. She gives my arm a sniff, then my leg. Half-panting I sit not knowing if I can move or not.

"Smokey?" he calls out. The dog perks up her head and runs around the front of the truck to join the other two in trying to trip him.

As I slide out the seat I feel gravel crunch under my shoes. When the truck door closes it gives one of those pops that scares me again. With a sigh of frustration I walk away from the damn thing and wonder just how far we are going to have to hike now to get to what ever shanty shack this...'boy that never grew up'...as mom described him lives in.

That I live in.

The memories of the funeral are a raw nerve, I shy away from them when they come to me. Then the lady from the family court telling me that till I reached my eighteenth birthday I was going to have to go live with my dad. This mountain man reject, another of mom's descriptions.

Four more months? God why? What the hell kinds of difference will that little of a time make? I have access to the money mom put away for me. I have my trust fund that will come to me when I hit twenty-one. I can get a job with my friend Shirley's computer repair shop. I don't know all that much yet but I could watch and learn. Answer the phone.

I pause when the dog comes back to me. She? I think he said it was a she, wags it's long tail at me.

Looking up I notice then that he has disappeared!

"Dad?" I say softly suddenly terrified that I'm out here in the middle of no where, all alone. Well alone except for this damn dog that wants to sniff at me. 

When she nudges my hand with her nose I hesitantly lift my hand to her ears.

Soft as velvet, comes the though. It calms me for a second, then I look back up. I let my eyes follow the path he was on. I see the dark opening beside the leafless tree.

"He lives in a fucking cave?" I say under my breath.

I see him stick his head out the opening. In the growing dark I see lights come on next to the... doorway? Windows framed in light show themselves.

He gestures for me to follow.

"Come on in."

Hesitantly I step into the... cave?

"Oh my god you live in a Hobbit hole!" I say looking around in wonder.

He laughs.

"Not the first one to tell me that. Come on, follow me. I'll show you where your room is."

Lines from Tolkien come to mind as I follow him. A long hall going into the hill with the best rooms on the left hand side. Deep round set windows.

For a moment I wonder that I'm not feeling claustrophobic but I guess the high ceilings and the lights are keeping that feeling at bay.

The place is primitive is the first thought that come to mind. I do notice that it's clean though. There is a smell of pine-sol cleaner that tells me he gave it a good scrubbing just recently.

Dressing up the hole for his daughter.

"Here you go."

The bedroom is not huge but is a bit bigger that say half of the apartment back home...

The word hits me then. Home. That I don't live there anymore. That Mom's things and most of mine have been put into storage till I turn eighteen and can move back. 

Four months? Why the fuck couldn't they have just left me be till April? Like I will somehow become more able to see to myself after that short time has passed.

"You can put your clothes in that wardrobe. I didn't build in a lot of closets when I designed the place. Sorry."

He again runs his hand across the top of his head. I can see it's a nervous gesture.

I nod and move past him into the room.

The bedroom is large. It has to be to make the furniture look this small. The bed is at least a queen and the heavy wood head and foot boards are intricately carved. The rest of the furniture is a mixture of styles but it's all the same color wood. There is a nightstand, a roll-top desk, and the big wooden wardrobe to Narnia.

"Ah...there is no TV?" I look around trying to find where he might have stashed it. Although given the truck as a guide to his taste it's probably black and white.

He rubs at the back of his neck then grimaces.

"Sorry I don't own one."

I pause then to listen for...what did he say the guy's name was. Rod something another.

"You don't own a TV?" I ask unable to believe I'm saying that. Then something else comes to me. "Please tell me you have a Wi-Fi connection up here."

He gives his head a shake.

"DSL? Dish Network?...a phone modem maybe? You at least have dial up right? There is a telephone in this hole right?" I demand.

"Sorry. I don't have a computer. Yea there is a phone. It's on the wall by the kitchen."

"Oh my god in heaven." I say under my breath.

That was all it took. One little nudge and I feel myself slip back off into the land of tears. I sit down on the edge of the bed and bury my face in my hands.

When his arms come around me it startles me something terrible. I want to pull away.

But instead I lean my head into his chest. The open collar of his button up shirt by my cheek, my ear against the soft hair under his chin, the stiff bristle a rough feeling on my temple.

I just hold on to this man that I have never known. This man that says he still loved my Mom... Oh Mom why? Why did you leave me? Why? WHY!

"Shhh, baby. Daddy's here." I hear him say softly.

A memory so distant I can not even give it shape comes then, of me being held like this. I remember that I was crying then as well. The smell of him, a mixture of several things not all of them pleasant, comes to me then. That smell was in the memory as well.

It's the scent of my dad. Some past part of me has clung to that long ago memory.

Just as I cling to him now.

The cold nose and velvet ears under my hand also gives me a comfort I wouldn't have credited them with giving.

** ** ** ** ** ** **

(Brian)

I shut the door but don't close it fully so that Smokey can come out if she wants. The old mother dog had laid herself on the foot of Chanel's bed, given me a look and a wag of her tail.

I could hear her thoughts as clear as day.

"I've got this. You go feed the cows or something."

As I step out onto the porch I pick up my pipe from beside the door. I pack it full of my vanilla Cavendish tobacco and give it a light.

The sweet smoke calms my spirit, if not my whole self.

Trailing smoke, I shake my head and start across the yard towards the fields.

Pepper and Blackie come with me to see to things. Hell half the time I think the two of them, with their mother, could probably manage this place better than I can. It's them that, four times a year, help me get the cattle to shift to the next field. That makes the pigs move in some kind of squealing group.

The two shepherds bounce through the knee high winter rye grass. They leave winding paths that the morning sun will set back to right.

My eyes take a head count of my herd. The word sounds silly even to me. Four cows and four half grown calves do not a herd make.

I hop up onto the wooden rail of my fence and relight my pipe. I just sit and listen to the sounds of my place. The grunting of my dozen squealers, the honking of the ducks and geese as they argue over the best scraps and bugs with the pigs. The clucking of the chickens as they gossip over the quality of the worms and ticks they can find to eat.

As the hot smoke fills my lungs I think back to this place, as it was when I first bought it. Little more than a flat spot in a sea of trees. Maybe a lighting strike caused the trees to burn off. Maybe a careless match. It had looked a blackened mess when I first walked it. The burned stumps rotting and falling apart.

I had seen it for what it was going to become.

Crystal hadn't. She has seen something she wanted no part of. The hard work, the years when the struggle was almost more than any person could take.

Then the job offer in LA. The opportunity for her to go after her dream. The time away...apart. Looking back I should have noticed that when she didn't want to leave Chanel with me but would take her to her mom and dads before she would leave each time. She was already then trying to put a distance between my daughter and me.

The old memory of her carrying a crying Chanel away from me. My young daughters tear still soaking into my shirt.

The last time I had gotten to see my child.

Till today.

My hand comes up to brush at the wet place on my shirt.

I puff my pipe and remember...or in some cases try not to.

"So what do I do now Crystal?" I ask the stars, hoping my wife may hear.

Only the two dogs seem to answer. They wag their tails at my words and come bounding over to me again.

With a smile I get down and pocket my pipe. I have work to do before the sunsets.

At their tongue lolling smiles I amend that.

We have work to do.

** ** ** ** ** ** ** 

(Chanel)

I awaken when the dog by my feet hops down. She walks towards the door for a second then comes back. She lays her head on the bed right in front of my face. She gives her tail a swish.


A Father's Dream



" I take it I need to get up?" I ask her.

She wags her tail again.

Sitting up I fish my feet around till I find my shoes. They are a bit cold as they slip on. I stand up and looking over at the mirror I start to straighten my clothes.

Good I hate how I look.

The thought comes to me and settles into it's customary spot. I give the shirt a tug trying to make the roll of my stomach not be so visible. When I do that though I see all I did was make my butt look bigger.

I notice the fat girl in the mirror shrug. I have to agree with her.

"What the fuck difference does it make. No ones here but my dad."

My dad? What a strange pair of words to say. I always wanted to be able to say them. Once or twice I even thought that I might get to say them when one of Mom's boyfriends became more and more a steady feature. 

Then she would dump him and move on to the next 'conquest' as she called it.

Probably would have been silly to be calling some of them dad anyway. More than a few were hardly even ten years older then I was.

As I follow the brown and black dog out the door I smell food.

Oh my God it smells wonderful I think. Then I hate myself for thinking that. Food and I are not really on speaking terms. Not since I hit fourteen and started my climb towards my current weight...

I flinch away from even thinking about that number.

I follow my nose to the kitchen. The smell of meat cooking is soon accompanied by the sound of it. That wonderful sizzle that makes the mouth water.

I also notice the smell of bread? Maybe he's heating up some dinner rolls or something I think as I step into the kitchen.

My dad is standing by the stove. I see two large cast iron pans on the top of it. As I watch he opens the oven door and with a rag pulls out a pan with a large loaf of bread on it.

Is that homemade, I wonder? Nah.

I just watch him, my shoulder coming to lean against the side of the door frame.

He moves with the confidence of a person that knows what they are doing in the kitchen. He turns the loaf of bread and slides it off onto a wire rack. The pan he then sits back in the oven.

Then he's back dealing with the sizzling meat. I feel my mouth water when I see him turn the steak. The grill lines must be coming from inside the pan. It hits the cast iron with an even louder sound of searing.

Then he, with the rag in hand again, moves the skillet off the stove and over to a plate next to him. I see flames come a foot out the top of the stove!

"Your stove is on fire!" I yell.

"Yaa!" he turns suddenly with a jump. Seeing me he brings his hand to his chest. "Girl you just scared me out of two years of my life." He tells me panting.

"But your stove is on fire!" I say pointing to the flames.

He calmly looks over at the fire. He takes a round flat metal plate and covers the place on the stove and the flames disappear.

"That's because it's a wood burning stove." He turns back to the pan and slides out the steak onto the plate. "It's suppose to be on fire. Now how do you like your steak? They're at medium rare right now." He stops and looks at me then. "Please tell me you're not a vegetarian?"

I give my head a shake.

He gives a relived sigh then gestures to the pan still on the stove.

"Medium rare, medium well? Well done if we wait too much longer?"

"Pink in the middle." I say softly.

He nods and turns back to the stove. His hand goes to a shelf above it and I see him turn a small hourglass.

"Give it about a minute more." He says with a look in the pan. "The glasses are in the cabinet to your right. There is tea or water." He gestures to a very ancient looking refrigerator. "Fix me a glass of tea, please while I get your steak done."

Nodding I find the right cabinet and get down two glasses. The door to the refrigerator open with a pull up handle I'm sure hasn't been used since the 1970s Inside I notice that the top of it is a freezer box made of metal. The metal has a thick coating of frost around it.

"Where are we eating?" I ask. When he points the big metal fork towards the table in the corner I realize the fact that he doesn't have a TV means this may be the first meal I've had when I didn't watch something in a long while. At least one where I wasn't eating dinner out anyway. Hell not even all of those.

I move when he comes over carrying the plates. Then I just watch him. I pull out one of the chairs and watch him.

He slices the bread and butters every piece. I think it is homemade! Then he puts a large pat of butter onto a bowl of mash potatoes.

By the time he bring everything to the table I'm ready to gnaw my own arm off.

** ** ** ** ** ** ** 

(Brian)

"I don't stand on Grace so dig in." I tell her as I pull out my chair. As I sit down I close my eyes for a second and thank the calf I raised for his life. When I open my eyes and start to eat she looking at me with her fork half way to her mouth.

"I thought you said you didn't say Grace?" she asks putting it back down, the bite of food uneaten.

"I wasn't thanking God." I tell her as I pick up my knife. The blade parts the streak easily, the meat incredibly tender. I confirm it with the first bite.

"Who...I mean what were you doing then?" she asks confused.

Chewing I pick up my glass and take a sip.

"I was thanking the cow."

"The cow?" she asks. She suddenly looks down at the piece of meat on her fork. "You raised this...meat?"

I smile.

"No... I raise a white faced Angus cow. I was thanking him for his life that his meat will sustain me."

She pauses for a second then slowly brings the piece of steak to her mouth. She holds it just from her lips. 

"That's a strange thing to thank him for."

I grin and pick up a piece of the bread.

"I don't really think so."

"You had him killed for his meat?" she says more than asks.

I nod.

"Yes I did. I helped his mother deliver him. I cleaned him with a blanket, guided him to his first meal, feed him for a year on the finest grass this farm can grow and when it was time I took him to the processing plant and...well... yes I had him killed for his meat." I cut a second piece. "He dress out at enough meat to feed one person for eight months. I sold some of it to a local steak house. I sold his hide to a leather maker for the cost of the processing. Everything else I sold to cover the vet bills. So I have a total investment of a year of my life looking out for him in exchange for a half year of food for myself. So I was thanking him for his life."

She moves the fork back away from her mouth.

"That makes him sound almost like a pet." She looks at the steak with a bit of distaste. "Okay that story may make me a vegetarian."

I shake my head.

"He wasn't a pet. Smokey, Pepper and Blackie are pets. The cows, chickens, pigs, rabbits and ducks are either food or make the food that sustains me. I give my life to see to it that they have the best life they can. I give them the best quality feed, be it the grass I feed the cows on, the garden scraps the pigs eat, or the endless supplies of bugs that the bird take care of for me. They live well and eat well. I live well and eat well."

I point to her steak.

"It's an insult to the memory of his life to let him go to waste."

Slowly hesitantly she takes a bite. I smile when I see her roll her eyes up and moan.

"Oh god, that's delicious." I hear her say around the piece of meat.

I nod and dig in.

** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** 

(Chanel)

I walk with him out to the fields carrying a flashlight. He has a big bucket with the potato peelings and I'm guessing scraps from other things.

I know there is none of my steak in it. I devoured the whole thing! Along with a pile of mash potatoes and three slices of the bread.

I feel like one of the pigs that comes over towards him squealing.

"You let them just roam lose out here?" I ask him with a bit a fear coming to my voice as I notice that they are surrounding us. "Isn't that dangerous?"

I shiver a bit in the cold January air. When a pig brushes my leg I'm not as sure that's what caused it.

He takes a deep breath that makes his chest expand. I notice that the bucket he's carrying is full but he totes it easily.

"Pig are meant to run free like this. Not be cooped up in a pen. This field was my garden about a month ago. I had it full of cabbages, broccoli, or about a dozen other things. Some of it I canned, some of it I traded for things I don't grow or make. The rest I sold to a Farmers Co-op. I use the money to buy scraps from a few of the local supermarkets, and from a dozen or so farmers around here. I moved the pigs in here when the garden played out. They till it all up for me with their digging for roots, I give them all the scraps I produce and the others I buy from what the garden provides. They eat very well."

He looks down at the fat things and smiles.

When something runs across my foot I jump!

"What the hell was that?" I move over closer to him quickly. "Something ran across my foot."

He chuckles.

"Blackie! Birds out!"

A shadow detaches itself from the darkness and I see the coal black German shepherd sprint off after something.

I grin when I hear the chicken squawking. I watch the dog chase the bird back over to a little boxy looking house near the middle of the field.

I watch him pour out his bucket into a metal trough. I notice that only the top half was scraps, the rest looks like...

"What did you just feed them?" I ask. I can't see into the trough as it's suddenly covered with a dozen pig heads.

"Grass seed" he gives the bucket a tap on the ground and starts towards another field. When we reach the fence he shines his light out onto the thick tall grass. "They eat the seed. Dig up the ground. Plant and manure it into place."

"Where do you get the money for the seed?" I ask, then suddenly decide I'm being nosy.

"From selling pigs." He says with a grin.

I follow him back to the house. He takes a seat in a large rocking chair on the porch and pulls a pipe from his pocket.

I take the chair next to him. The gentle rocking of the thing is far more comfortable than I would have guessed.

Expecting a cigarette smoke smell I'm pleasantly surprised when he lights his pipe.

"You put a lot of thought into this place." I say after a moment of silence. "You have everything pretty much taking care of itself."

He laughs.

"God I wish that was the case. No there is still a lot of work to running things here." He takes a pull on the pipe. "But yea I had a lot of long talks with a lot of people to figure out how to set this up. It took a lot of time. Lot of effort to get everything in balance. You couldn't see most of it because it's dark but I have fruit trees all around the fields they drop their fruits at different times. I harvest right before I move the pigs in. So the pigs get all the rotten fruit to eat. That took five years to get timed right."

"Why did Mom leave this?" 

That I ask him that hits me like a finger thump between the eyes.

He shrugs then chuckles. He runs his hand across his head.

"Well, when your mom was here it didn't look like it does now. It was a mess in fact. She didn't see what I wanted to do here. Then she got a chance to go do what she wanted to do. A chance at her dream. This was my dream. She didn't want my dream. She wanted just one thing from me then...you."

"Why didn't you fight her?" I ask. I hear the sudden accusation I've put into my words.

He sighs.

"It was a different time. Seventeen years... hell almost eighteen years ago. They were almost always giving the custody of children to the mother, exclusively. The father was doing good if he got monthly visitation rights back then. Had to pay through the nose for the right to have those."

"So you avoided having to pay child support by just letting her have me?" I ask with some heat. I feel an anger rising then.

He looks over at me sharply and pulls out the pipe. He cradles it in his hand.

"Did she tell you that?"

I shake my head after a moment.

"I paid. I send two hundred a month to that law firm. They put it away in a trust fund for you. I bargained for that. Figured I might not be there for you but maybe my hard work could give you a good education at least."

As what he says sinks in I realize that in all the years I've known about it I've never once asked where that trust fund I have was coming from.

Smokey comes up onto the porch and sits down in front of me. She lays her head on my lap.

I scratch the big shepherd's ears and slowly a smile comes to my lips.

"I think she likes me." I tell him.

** ** ** ** ** ** ** 

(Brian)

As I watch Smokey follow my daughter off to bed I feel suddenly so very alone. It's a strange feeling. I've lived here by myself for sixteen years.

Why am I suddenly feeling alone?

I realize it's because I've finally put away the long held onto hope that Crystal would one day come back to me. That she would ask me to forgive her the harsh words and the betrayal. 

That I would beg her to forgive me.

Forgive me for being so greedy to have my dream I wasn't willing to give it up so she could have hers.

I could have gone with her. Gone to Los Angeles. Gotten a job out there... doing something. I could have been there when she needed someone and only another man was there for her. 

I could have kept our marriage together but would I have been happy? I glance towards the door. Would I have been a good enough father? Suddenly my happiness is something to be ashamed of. I should have done it. I should have given up this place and been there for my daughter. More of a presence in her life than a check she never saw.

I rub a chill out my arms and get to my feet. The two dogs get up and follow me inside.

As I walk past the fireplace Blackie settles into his favorite spot in front of it.

Pepper follows me to my bedroom door. He goes to the rug in front of the small fireplace in my room. The bed of coals I brought into here from the living room takes almost no effort to get going into a nice fire.

Leaving Pepper to sleep I walk down the hall to the bathroom.

As I walk past the half open door to her room I hear her crying.

Smokey looks up at me with a look that says "okay your turn."

Her hip is soft under my hand. 

"I'm sorry," she says quietly.

"For what?" I ask.

"For...for all these tears." She answers with a sniffle.

I caress her side from mid back to hip.

"Don't be. Your mom's worthy of more than a few. Believe me I cried for several hours when I got the phone call."

Chanel turns over in the bed to face me. I lift my hand but feel several parts of her brush under my fingers as she moves. As she settles I let my hand come back to rest on her hip.

"How could you still love her? She left you, cheated on you...took me away?" she brushes tears from her face.

I look down at this near image to my memories.

"When I met your Mom she was about your age. I didn't fall for her... I jumped off the cliff for her! And without a bungee cord. My god, she was so beautiful."

"But...I've seen picture of mom when she was my age. She was ...fat."

I can hear the unspoken 'like me'

Smiling down at my daughter I caress her side, feeling the soft skin under her t-shirt.

"Your mom was a bit on the plump side yes." I say with a chuckle. "But she was also very sexy. She had a beautiful face, a wonderful laugh. Her eyes twinkled when she smiled. Man, she could fill out a pair of tight jeans!"

"Dad!"

I chuckle at her scandalized tone.

"Yes your Mom was hot!" I say with a laugh. The smile slips a bit. I sigh. "And I loved her from the moment I saw her."

"She lost the weight though?" Chanel asks more than says.

"Oh yes. Right after you were born. She put on the customary weight of a woman with child and hated the way she looked in the mirror so much she went on a diet. A very harsh diet. She put her fool ass in the hospital more than once by not eating."

"She looked much better when she got slimmer though right?" she asks sure of the answer.

I shrug.

"She thought so. Apparently so did a few others. I know about the long string of boyfriends after she left me. I have a few people that have kept an eye out on her and you for that matter over the years."

"You've had people spying on me?"

I laugh at the expression her face.

"Yes I have a whole secret organization, that works out of a building in London, keeping track of you. There this old guy...goes by a single initial...he does some truly scary things with technology. I've had humming birds with cameras following you for years."

I love the way her eyes light up when she laughs.

"Your Mom's parents kept track of you while they were alive. I would talk to them every few months or so. Then your uncle did. Least ways till he moved over to... where was it New Zealand?"

"Tasmania." She says with a huff of laugh. "I told him to mind the devils."

"That's right. I told him the same thing. I always wanted to meet his wife. I always wondered if she looked like Bugs Bunny in drag."

Chanel laughs again. I feel her quiver under my hand.

"She doesn't."

I give a shrug.

As the silence grow I fish for questions to ask but none seem important now.

"So you don't have a TV? Really?" she asks me after a few moments.

"Really, really. I got rid of it about ten years back."

"Why?"

I can hear it in her voice that to her it's like I said I cut off my own arm for some obscure reason.

"There was nothing on it that meant anything to me. The old shows I grew up with might be worth a look at again; I might sometimes like to see the odd football game but really? There was nothing on there to keep my attention."

"What about the weather?" she asks. "You grow crops doesn't knowing what's about to happen seem important?"

"I can go outside and look at the sky and learn the same thing."

"World news?"

"I get the newspaper delivered." I counter. "The rabbits love the Hollywood gossip pages."

"What about entertainment?" she asks propping her head on her hand. "Why not get a computer? Then you could get a Facebook account and be able to talk to people you know in other places.

"The telephone lets me do that." I stop my hand on her hip. "For entertainment I read, play my guitar...I have more than a few friends that come over. We catch up on local news and laugh about all the rest we hear."

"What are you Amish?"

I chuckle.

"No...but I do know some people who are. They live about twenty miles north of here. Good people. They know how to live well. I wouldn't necessarily mind living in one of their places but the preaching gets on my nerves after a bit."

"Not a man of God?" she asks.

I slowly shrug.

"I believe in God...I just don't like his fan clubs." She gives a huffing laugh. "No, I figure that God gave us everything we needed when he made the world. To be constantly asking him to do everything for us is wrong. To watch after this person, bless that person. Make my lottery ticket the winning number. Seems rude."

She laughs. 

Smokey comes back in from checking out the house and hops up onto the foot of the bed.

I can read her look. 

"Okay girl I'll get to bed." I tell my nanny.

The old mother dog lies down and just looks at me. With a 'I'm waiting' look.

When I look back to Chanel she's just watching my face.

"She mothers me to death. I swear she thinks I'm one of her pups that grew up weird."

My daughter smiles.

"Snuggle in under the blankets. The house can get a bit chilly before morning. If you can't sleep there is a bookcase in the hallway. The bathroom is next door to you here." I point to the wall. I stop about to get up. "It's a composting toilet...you probably don't know how to use one."

"A what?" she asks




A Father's Dream



"Composting toilet. It has a mixture of peat moss and sawdust in it. When you use the bathroom there is a bucket next to it with a metal scoop in it. It works like a regular toilet except there is nothing to flush Just toss in a scoop when you're done." 

"That sounds...gross" she says with a look of distaste.

I chuckle.

"I lived with your mom for four years. I know she had a cat. Yes?"

** ** ** ** ** ** ** 

(Chanel)

Looking down at the massive dog laying by my feet I suddenly wish I had, Bootsy, here. Any little bit of familiar.

"Yea she had one." I tell him.

"Well it's not that much different than a cat's litter box, only the composting toilet doesn't smell."

He gives my hip a pat as he stands up. I feel the sudden removal of his hand with a sense of lose.

I realize I was enjoying it being on my hip.

"I'll leave the power on for the night." He tells me over his shoulder.

As he walks towards the door what he just said come to me.

"Leave the power on?" I ask. "You turn off the power at night?"

He gives a nod.

"Why?" I ask. I seem to be asking that question of him a lot.

"I don't like to run the batteries all the way down."

Oh well that explains it.

"Batteries?"

He smiles one of those laughing grins that make his eyes merry.

"Yes batteries. The house is off the grid. I use solar panels, a small turbine in a creek over the hill and a little wind turbine to power the house and charge up a bank of storage batteries during the day. The turbines can't really handle the load by themselves so the batteries kick in when the sun goes down."

"The house isn't hooked to the power grid?" I ask unable to believe him for some reason. "What happens when the sun doesn't shine? Or the wind doesn't blow."

"Or the creek don't rise?" he asks with a smile. "I have a diesel generator I can kick in for about five hours that will charge up the batteries should such happen. Can't say it does that more than once or twice a year though. Anyway get some sleep. I'll show you around tomorrow."

He walks out and then sticks his head back in the door.

"Good night.'

"Good night." I look at the dog lying on the foot of the bed. "Will she sleep there?"

He gives a nod.

"Unless you want me to make her leave?" he asks.

I look at the brown dog. She thumps her tail on the bed. For some reason she's a comfort.

"No."

"Well if she get to be a pest just shoo her off. She'll never forgive you for doing it but she will obey. Night, night."

"Goodnight...Dad."

The last word is soft. I wonder for a second if he heard, then I see his smile.

** ** ** ** ** ** ** 

(Brian)

Sitting on the side of the bed I unlace my boots with a sigh.

Pepper looks over at me from by my fireplace.

"Been a long day boy."

He thumps his tail in agreement.

I strip to my skin and then pull a pair of sweat pants from the drawer. They are still new enough to feel too soft inside.

As I curl up under the blanket I close my eyes. It doesn't take long though for me to realize that sleep isn't going to be coming to me quickly tonight.

Far too much on my mind.

As I lay there I listen to the silence of the house. The solid construction, and several feet of soil that bury it, keep any sound from outside coming in so all I hear are the little noises. The thumping in the living room as Blackie chaises a flee. The popping of my fire.

After a bit I smile when I hear Chanel softly singing to herself. Probably listen to music to help her get to sleep.

My hand drifts down and I shift myself around in the two soft sweat pants. Been a long time since I slept with anything on. I figure that when I, inevitable, have to get up to go pee in the middle of the night, I might just forget that she's here at first. I imagine the embarrassment of her looking out her bedroom door and seeing her naked father walk by, might just do us both in.

I shift myself again then give up and take my cock in hand. I let my mind drift back to the last time I had sex. Silvia, a lady friend of mine. What do they call it now? Friend with benefits? Silly name. But then 'Horny people having a good time together without strings attached' it too long. Besides FWB sounds better than HPHAGTTWSA.

I chuckle as I try to pronounce it out and can't.

Moaning a little at the wonderful feeling that starts to build I remember the last time she and I were together. She was soft and warms and so very wet. We had gotten drunk together on my blackberry wine and ended up tumbled into the bed.

As I picture her face it suddenly shifts and I'm imagining Chanel.

I stop and blink. No, it was Crystal's face! Just an old memory of the years when we were happy.

I think back to the first time I was with her. Then to the many times after that.

As I stroke myself harder I wonder if she's in heaven laughing her ass off that I still get turned on by these old memories of us together.

That she's gone hits me then. Hard enough that I stop.

My erection fading I turn over into the bed and hug a pillow to my chest. Distant memories of her just as soft against me come back to me then.

A I slowly drift my way into sleep I realize just how much a part of me always had been carrying the idea that she would one day come back.

Come back to my dream.

Come back to me.

How soft her hip had been under my hand...

** ** ** ** ** ** ** 

(Chanel)

The house is too quiet.

I finally have to get up and dig my MP3 player out the bag and stick in the ear buds.

The sounds of Gaga and Adele soon take me back to a more familiar place. I let little things like compost toilets and storage batteries vanish. I think of school, my friends. The idea that I will have to enroll in some hick county school out here Monday comes to me then. I'll probably be taking cow-tipping 101.

"Rolling in the deep...you had my heart in hand..."

I squeeze the tears from my eyes as I remember my Mom telling me that I looked like Adele to comfort me when my one and only boy friend Todd broke up with me to go date a skinny tramp named Lesley.

"But you played it..."

I open my eyes and look down to see the dog thumping her tail with the music. I chuckle.

"So you're a fan as well girl?" I ask her smiling.

The big dog belly crawls up to next to me. I hesitantly let my hands come to rest on her soft fur. I've had cats my whole life. She much bigger than any cat and she still scares me a little.

I very soon have my face buried in her fur. A farm dog she should stink I think but all she smells of is grass.

"... we could have had it all."

Crying, holding onto her, I fall asleep listening to the songs as they shuffle through my favorites.

** ** ** ** ** ** ** 

(Brian)

Standing in the doorway I look in at the sleeping form of my daughter. The shadowed head of Smokey lifts to look at me but at my waved hand lays back down.

I take a deep breath and smell her in the air in the room. It's so unfamiliar a scent in the house I can pick it up without any trouble.

A woman living here? Living under my roof for more than one night...or two. Four months at least. Then what? Will I have to watch her leave to go back to the West Coast?

What will she do there?

As I head into the bathroom I worry about my child. I worry about what life will do to her. I know I've done all that I could do, under the constraints the law put on me, when she was little but now? Can I help her more?

I have enough for her to go to the collage of her choice saved away in her trust fund. Well, maybe not an Ivy League school but a nice college anyway. That check almost bankrupted me at times.

I switch on the light and look at myself in the mirror. Like most times my eyes go to the shining top of my head. The last few hairs up there are waving at me. I slick them back down and then run my hand over the stubble on my chin.

"Time for a shave." I tell myself.

My bladder tells me it has priority.

When I look at the raised lid I smile.

"Guess I need to go back to the old habits." I think as I pull my cock out of my sweats.

Lowering toilet lids. No towels on the floor. Pick up my socks. I chuckle as I think of all the dozens of other little changes a woman in your life can make.

I dump a cup of the absorbent into the tank. I lean down after I put my cock away and check the date I marked on a piece of duct tape.

"Time to change the tank. With two of us it will need to be done more often." I say to myself. When I stand up I look in the mirror. "And stop talking to yourself, you old fool. She'll think you're a nut case."

I chuckle as I get out my razor and shaving soap.

"Like she probably doesn't think that already"

I look at my face as I shave. Ruggedly handsome, that's what I've been called. I can't see it. To me I just see a boy that got sunburned too many times making his skin look brown no matter the time of the year and then his hair all fell out.

Rinsing my face I put away my razor and nearly turn off the light when I see the stubble filled foam in the sink.

Smiling I turn on the water and wash it clean. 

"Lot of changes, old man." I say to my reflection. I can't tell if it agrees as I turn off the light before it can.

I head to the kitchen to get breakfast going.

** ** ** ** ** ** ** 

(Chanel)

"I'm going to murder that rooster!" I say as I hear him crowing for the hundredth time.

"So we're going to have chicken for dinner?"

I look at my dad standing the doorway one hand on the frame.

"Breakfast is ready." He tells me.

I pull back the sheet when he leaves and swing my legs off the bed.

"Fuck!" I say, then pop my hand over my mouth.

"I heard that." He calls from down the hall. "The floor are really cold in the morning aren't they? Smokey, outside."

My bed warmer lifts her head, wags her tail and hops down. She looks back at me, gives a shake and leaves me.

I find my shoes and walk to the door. I can smell the food he's made. The scent of it fills the hall.

Going to my bag I dig out something warm. I strip down and start to dress I stop when I see that there is a full-length mirror on the back of the door.

"God I hate your fat ass." I tell her. I see her turn away from me. I dress, as quickly as I can but still I'm a shivering mess of goose bumps.

I look back in the mirror for long enough to run my brush through my hair. I just put it back in a ponytail. It's the best I can do till I get a shower.

"God I hope this place has a shower." I say as I open the door.

He's standing just the other side of it about to knock. He smiles at my words.

"It does but you have to heat the water on the stove and carry it up to the roof in buckets."

"What?" I ask my jaw dropping.

He laughs.

"I'm kidding." He says laughing. "There is a very hot tank of water. I have a Geothermal well to help with the heating when it gets really cold and to warm the water for the house and the barn. It also heats the barn but that put a lot of strain on the pump so I don't use it for that often."

I just look at this incomprehensible man speaking in tongues. He laughs at the look on my face.

"Food on stove. Plates in cabinet. Milk in pitcher. Eat." He says slowly.

I give his chest a pop.

I see his face fall for a second then his grin comes back.

"Come on."

I realize as I follow him that I must have done something that mom used to do to him. It's a habit I picked up from her. Little admonishing pops to naughty people.

As I step into the hall I see that there is a side door, that it is open and that the Motherless son of an egg is still crowing! As I pass it I look out and see the three dogs go running across the fields.

I walk into the kitchen.

Eying the large pan of biscuits, the plate full of bacon, a skillet full of gravy I give a shake of my head. Damn, there is even a smaller pan with scrambled eggs!

"I'm going to gain twenty pound a week living here." I say softly under my breath.

"Doubtful. Very doubtful." He goes to the stove and starts to put together a plate. When he goes to sit down I realize it was for himself.

Okay, I guess the waiter service of last night was a one-time thing.

I decide that two of the fluffy biscuits and a spoon full of gravy with a few pieces of the bacon will do. Eggs? Well maybe just a little.

He eyes my plate with a slow growing smile.

"You might want to eat a bit more. It's along time till dinner and lunches are a simple affair. Some cheese and bread. Maybe call it a sandwich if you're feeling generous."

I nod but make no plans to go back and get more.

Those plans start to change as soon as I take the first bite.

"You're a good cook." I tell him. I reach for the glass of milk he poured for me. 

"Well thank you but I have good ingredients to start with."

The milk is like heavy cream.

"So how much of this came from here?" I ask between pleasure moans. I hold up a piece of bacon. "I'm assuming this at least did."

He nods. I see him look at the table as he chews. After a moment with his head tilted he swallows.

"Everything but the salt and pepper. At least in one way, shape, or form. I grew corn that I had milled into corn meal. I then traded some if it for the flour. The milk and butter came from Brownie. The bacon is my pigs. Same for the eggs, my chickens."

"Brownie?"

"My Jersey cow." 

"I thought the cows weren't pets? Why name them then?'

"I don't name my Angus cows which are the ones I sell or have turned into meat. But the Jersey cows are for milking. I have two of them Brownie and Brownie two. Speaking of which I have to go separate the calves from them soon."

He starts eating a bit faster.

I look down and see that I have nearly cleaned my plate. I look back over to the stove and give in. I make me an egg and bacon biscuit.

He finishes his food and goes back for a second helping. He also gets a biscuit with just butter. I watch him pour honey on top of it after he eat everything else.

"Do you normally eat like this?" I have to ask.

He nods.

"And you look like that?" I ask envious.

He looks down at himself and quirks an eyebrow.

"Like what?' he asks after swallowing the bite of honey biscuit with a sip of milk.

"Like you just walked out a gym."

He chuckles and put a hand on his flat stomach.

"My dally work out keeps me trim. Want to come help?" he asks as he gets

up. "Not that you really have a lot of options. I'll need your help given that it will take a bit more work to let two people live here."

I nod and take my plate to the sink.

I notice then that there is no dishwasher. I'm guessing that will be my job. I watch him put up the leftovers. There's a lot less of them that I thought there would be given the amount of food I first saw. My stomach's telling me where far too much of it went.

** ** ** ** ** ** ** 

(Brian)

I figure to take it easy on her for the first hour, let her food settle a bit. I make the trip round the rabbit's pen. I smile at her sounds of delight when they come hopping over to get fed.

"Do we eat these?" she asks holding onto one of the squirmy things. I show her how to pick him up so he's not doing the 'Thumper' impression on her breast.

"I sell them. They are meant to be eaten but other that the odd one now or then... no. I don't really care for rabbit meat except in stew." I toss out handfuls of the last of my wrinkled carrots. The crop had a good yield, but the winter supply has about done it's time in cold storage. These were the ones I culled out yesterday. "Pour the feed in the trough there."

She nods and takes the gallon bucket from the back of the wheelbarrow.

I smile at her giggles when they come pouring over her feet like a hopping hoard.

Taking the empty bucket from her I place a rag in the bottom. 

"Think you can do something without me showing you how?"

"What?" she asks.

"Gather eggs." I point out to the chicken coup. "There is a door in the back that flips open. You will see the birds with eggs sitting. Some of them may have hidden their eggs under the straw though so take a stick and look through it. Gently."

She gives a nod.

"I can do that."

"Good girl. Take any eggs back to the kitchen and wash them off, then place them in the basket in the refrigerator."

"Got it." she says.

I watch her walk off towards the field with the pigs and the coop. Smokey walks along with her then looks back at me to see if that okay. I give the dog a nod and she wags her tail and follows Chanel.

I look down to my two tongue lowing companions.

"Come on boys time to go wake up some cows."

The two dogs take off for the right pasture with out another word needed.

I follow them chuckling. They know the job better than I do some times.

My eyes go back to her walking away from me.

"Nice ass."

I stop and give my head a shake at my words.

"Come on, Brian, no evil thoughts."

I give her one last look.

Well I might not be able to find much of me in her face but I sure found part of her mom.

I leave off such thoughts and go to argue with a quartet of stubborn calves.

** ** ** ** ** ** ** 

(Chanel)

My enjoyment of the eggs at breakfast fades as I have to reach into the boxes and dig them out from under piles of chicken dropping covered hay. 

Being pecked twice doesn't help matters much either.

When the big rooster, who life I'm guessing I was threatening, comes strutting over at me Smoky walk between me and him and give a bark that sends birds scattering in every direction.

"Thank you." I tell her when she comes back to sit by my feet.

My shoes are starting to look sad by the time the frost starts to thaw and the contents of the fields start to become warm again. The collection of pig and bird droppings is a bit ripe under the growing morning sun.

I slip out my shoes at the door and walk to the sink. I wash the eggs, never knew how much effort it takes to get little feathers stuck in bird poop off an egg. I then fill the sink and get the breakfast dishes.

Smokey leaves me and I see her running across the field to where her son's are helping my dad do something with the smaller cows in the field.

I watch my Dad. I notice that he moves as well or better than most of the guys I went to high school with. He carries a confidence in action about him that none of them had.

I smile when I see his head shining in the morning light as he uses his hat to pop the side of a little cow. The little white-faced thing goes off like it's been stung.

When he walks behind the barn I step away from the window. I look around me then. I see how the place is laid out with a lot of attention to detail. Except for the fact that there is grass just outside the window I would never know I'm underground.

I see a picture of my mom then. The photo is yellowed and has a bad line across the face of it. The kind of things I would dress up in photo shop.

There is a photo of him and her next to it.

Picking up the picture I smile when I see the ridiculous head of hair that he had. Nearly hippie length with long bangs. I can't help but wonder what cause such thickness to fall away to the shiny top he has now.

Then I see the golden wedding bands on their hands.

Maybe that had something to do with it?

Suddenly feeling very much an intruder I put down the picture and go out the door and walk towards where I saw him last.

The black dog comes to meet me and guides me in.

"Oh, they are cute." I say as I step into the barn and see the four baby cows. "They look different?

"Two different breeds." He tells me looking over his shoulder. "Come here."

The smell of hay makes me sneeze.

I notice then he's mixing something in a bin with what looks like shredded hay and I don't know what all.

"More grass seed?" I ask seeing one of the bags.




A Father's Dream



"Wheat. Winter rye. It's my cover crop for this time of the year. I don't get a huge yield of wheat from it but it helps the ground stay put through the spring storms."

"So your cows and pigs do your planting for you?"

He nods.

"Most of it. I do spread in a bit extra every few weeks so it grows in nice and thick."

"Why did you separate them from their mother's?" I ask pointing at the calves as the thought comes to mind.

He stops and takes a deep breath.

"Okay, cows milk 101. The cow has to have a calf or there isn't any milk to be had. She will dry up. Now if I leave him with her he will drink all day long and I would get less milk. Also she gives off a hormone when he does that that makes the milk kind of bitter tasting." "He shrugs. "I think it's to help him to start eating grass more often and not nurse as much. Either way it's not a nice taste in your morning milk. I separate them every morning and give them extra feed here in the barn. I will sometimes let them go play and eat in the field I have pasturing out right now. When it's warmer anyway. They can't do much damage by themselves and the new grass is better for them. I milk the mother cows every night and turn the calves back out."

"So you rotate everything around the barn? Bringing them through the barn to switch fields?"

He looks at me and smiles.

"Very good. I've had even long time farmers not catch that. Yes. I can open two of the barn doors and pass the cows through the middle to the next fields. Not having but one gate into my fields I lesson the changes animals will get out." He reaches into a pocket and pulls out an apple. I catch it when he tosses it to me. "You earned an apple."

My stomach feeling still terribly full the thought of more food doesn't sit well. Plus the apple is wrinkly.

"Winter stored. It's fine to eat just sweeter if anything." He tells me after a second of watching my face.

I nod and seeing a good place sit down on an up turned watering trough. I watch him working with the calves.

"What got you started in all this? Were you born on a farm?" I ask.

He looks over at me and shakes his head. He takes his hat off and wipes sweat from his brow.

"Nope I was a city boy. Born and bread in the suburbia."

"Why all this then?"

He takes a long deep breath

"Do you believe in signs?" he asks then.

I blink and ponder the question for a moment.

"Like in omen's?" I ask.

"Yea."

"I don't know. Maybe." I say.

He nods. "Your mother was the same way. Well I do. Very much so in fact. I was given a sign that this was the life I should be living."

I just sit watching him for a second.

"What was it?"

He turns smiling and leans on the fence rail.

"My daughter was born on April 22. Earth Day."

"My birthday told you that you needed to be a farmer?" I give my lips a quirk. "I can't see it?"

He chuckles.

"Well I was off in the woods one day walking, hiking. The whole, getting back to nature thing. I stumbled across this place where the trees were all burned to nothing but stumps. It was a mess of blackened ground and rotting stumps really. Well standing there in the exact center of the place...about four feet from where you are now in fact, was a little mother deer. I didn't see her till I was far closer than I should have been able to walk. I stopped dead in my tracks and her head came up. She just stood there chewing a mouth full of grass. From around her came prancing the cutest little fawn you have ever would see. Like Bambi make flesh and blood. Well he saw me and came at me at a run. Stopped a couple of feet off and reared up, like he was the king stag of the whole world."

I smile seeing the look on his face as he remembers the little deer.

"Well anyway his mom gives this little cuffing sound and off he goes. She walks with him to the edge of the burn and stops to look back at Me." he pauses and takes long breath. "I just stood there for awhile and looked around. Then I headed home. When I got back to the little suburban ranch house your mom and I had, Crystal, met me at the door... to tell me she was pregnant with you. I took it as a sign. When you were born on Earth Day I took that as confirmation and went to found out how owned the land. I bought it for a fair price and started to work it on the weekends."

"Mom thought you were nuts didn't she?" I ask.

"Yep. Off my rocker, bananas, two cards short of a full deck and a lot of others. She came up here all of once and hated the place. I tried to tell her what I wanted to do here and she thought it was a silly idea. A waste of time. Why not just go to the grocery store and get your eggs? Your milk and meat? Why work so hard just to live?"

"So why? Why work so hard just to live?" I ask him.

"Well does this make sense to you. I was working in the savings and loan industry. Just getting started but I was doing okay. Now I was making money... good money, 40 hours plus a week most times. I would take that paycheck to a supermarket and buy the food we ate. I would take some of it to the Mortgage Company that owned the deed to the house and pay them, I was paying some of it to the Car Company for our two cars. I had a half dozen other bills as well that took the rest. I was then working all weekend long to maintain a yard in the required green carpet perfection, with the perfectly sculpted hedges and the sharp edged sidewalks."

He stops working and leans on the gate.

" The tomatoes had no taste, the food was bland and I hated every day I woke up. I would end every day sitting in front of the TV watching the most mindless drivel, night after night, so tired I couldn't make the effort to find something worth watching." 

I watch my father close the gate behind him. He comes over to me. He squats down till he's on eye level with me.

"Now I have a place that's paid for, a truck that's paid for, almost all of my utilities are free, with the exception of the solar panels I'm still paying for. And the occasional tank full of diesel for the generator I almost never use." He puts a knee to the barn floor. "As you have seen I eat very well, of food that tastes great." he takes the apple from me and splits it with his knife. I see the juices run down his chin when he bites into his half. "So you tell me. Who's working harder? Me or the guy in suburbia?"

When I bite into my half of the apple it tastes like a piece of heaven.

I ponder his words as I chew.

"I think you are but I think your having a better life."

"Exactly." He says with a grin. " Now come on this farm doesn't work itself." He stands up and offers me his hand.

I love how hard and strong his hand is in mine. I hang onto it for a bit then step forward and give him a hug.

The smell of my dad is a comfort. His strong arms are as well.

** ** ** ** ** ** ** 

(Brian)

"Poor little thing." I say to her when she moans as she sits down in the kitchen chair.

I smile at the look she gives me.

"It gets easier over time." I tell her as I go to the stove and open the lid on the cast iron pot. It's still incredibly hot from the day spent over the fireplace in the living room. I ladle her a bowl full of beans and then get out the loaf of corn bread from the stove. I turn it over into a plate, cut it, and butter it for her. When I get back to the table she's half-asleep. I pass the bowl under her nose. Her eyes pop open.

"Food?"

"Yes sleepy. Pinto beans with all that bacon that was left from breakfast." I tell her sitting the bowl in front of her.

"Smells good." She say picking up a spoon.

She blinks as I sit a tall glass in front of her. She gives it a sniff.

"Apple juice?"

"Hard cider. You're close enough to eighteen to be able to drink alcohol in my book."

"You do know they moved the legal drinking age up to twenty one right?" She asks me then takes a sip. I can see she likes it after her second try.

"Yes I do. It was one of the dumbest things this country ever did." I go get my food. "Made a whole generation of people believe that they were too young to really be responsible for their actions. The government said they weren't responsible enough to drink after all. I've heard talk of moving the driving age up to eighteen. It will do the same thing."

"So you think a eighteen year old should be able to drink? Buy cigarettes?" she asks me after a moment. Can see the hoped for question.

"Yes. I do hope you don't decide to smoke though. I don't think there anything wrong with it. If you're making the choice to do it your accepting the consequences of your actions after all. But the cost of them is ridiculous."

"But you smoke?" she says with a bit of protest.

"Yes I do. A pipe. If you watch I light it about four times a day. I buy my tobacco from an old Amish farmer I know and we both tell the government tax guy to piss off."

She smiles at me.

"Once a hippie always a hippie?" she asks.

"I was not a hippie! Now my Mom, your grandmother, she was a hippie." He chuckles. "Hell... I think I was conceived at Woodstock."

"I saw your picture." She say pointing at the old wedding photo. I look over at it. "Yous was a hippie."

"Long hair doth not a hippie make my daughter dear." I say to her with my best Shakespearean voice.

She laughs. We finish dinner in a comfortable silence.

That's because she's falling asleep.

I get her to her feet and set her on the path to the bathroom with her yawning the whole time.

I listen to the shower running a few minutes after she goes in.

"Damn it, a naked seventeen year old woman is in your shower and she has to be your daughter." I walk out onto the patio and sit down "Fuck that sucks."

** ** ** ** ** ** ** 

(Chanel)

Turning under the shower head I let it find all the places that hurt and ease away the pain. I just soak my head then enjoying the pounding.

The soap is homemade I think as I take the strange looking bar and start to lather up. I lift my breast and scrub the hay dust, barn dust, pasture dust and about forty other types of dust from under them and then from every other nook and cranny.

And it got everywhere!

When I finally turn off the shower head I'm waterlogged and falling asleep standing up.

He was right though. I didn't run out the hot water.

I think for a moment to go find him and wish him a good night. But then sleep says no and I follow its direction to my bed.

I wake only long enough to feel him kiss my cheek.

"Good night baby." He says next to my ear.

"Night, night." I mumble back.

Smokey takes up her place at the foot of the bed. Not even the too quiet house will keep me awake tonight though.

I feel myself all but fall into sleep. Like the mattress dropped out from under me and dreams caught me before I could fall.

I don't remember them but I wake myself in the middle of them blushing which may mean something.

When I am woke up for breakfast in the morning I feel like the dead. 

That he means to do the same thing today as yesterday is a horrible shock.

That I have to get most of it done before seven o'clock so we can go enroll me in school is an even bigger one.

The first week is a hell that I can only half remember. I wake with the stars still in the sky, eat twice as much as I would normally eat, then help him for two hours. He then drives me to where the only school bus in the area picks up at and drops me off. I almost feel bad that I'm going to go sit in a classroom till, 3:00 while I know he will keep working all day long.

He's there to pick me up every afternoon when the bus arrives. I come to look forward to his happy to see me face.

The school sucks. Oh it's nice enough. Far more modern than I would have given it credit for but the people? The boys are farmers sons and they are dumb as a bag of hammers. They are invariably cute and they all want to talk to me the new girl from the West Coast.

Even if I am chubby.

Their girlfriends are jealous, cliquish, little tramps that turns my stomach.

The only ones that really likes me there are the teachers. They like that I get top grades and don't say much. Makes their day easier.

Then I find out, on Friday afternoon on the bus ride home, that I'm suddenly the school slut! Apparently a few of the football players started the rumor that I let them do 'city girl shit' to me. Whatever the fuck that means!

"Bunch of backwoods, inbreed, cousin fucking, sons of bitches." I mutter under my breath as I walk to the truck. Dad leans over and opened the door for me. I hop in and tone down the monologue to a grumbling mumble.

"Problems?" he asks with that head tilted lean of his that always reminds me of Smokey. That little half smile.

"Boys!"

"Ah." He says nodding his head sagely. "Well that's why I never dated them. That and the fact that girls smell a whole lot better."

He puts the truck into gear and pulls away. From the gravel lot where the other school kids are still unloading. I notice that several of the girl's watch us drive away. That they are whispering to each other proves my point.

"Stupid hillbilly sons of..." I hide the rest in a mumble.

He starts laughing.

"It's not funny!"

He laughs all the harder.

"They have been spreading shit, saying I'm sleeping my way through the football team!

He looks over at me and grins.

"What do you find funny about that?" I demand with some heat.

"That those girls think my daughter is beautiful enough to steal all their boyfriends from them." He says with a grin. "I know what your mom would say."

I pause and a grim starts to make my lips twitch.

"A jealous girlfriend is the finest compliment you can be paid." He says. I hear her say it in echoed memory. I give a nod. Suddenly I don't feel so bad.

When I get to the farm, I go change out into some older clothes. I fall in next to him helping him get a fence fixed.

The first week drops away into memory then the first month follows.

I manage to make a few friends when the rumor mill runs dry finally. No one has seen me so much as even talking to a boy so that's that.

So then I'm the school lesbian.

"Please April get here soon." I'm constantly muttering under my breath.

I drop my brush in the bathroom and have to get down on my knees to fish it out from behind the little vanity cabinet. That when I see the scale under it. I pull the old thing out and look at it for a second.

Given all the rich food I've been filling up on I suddenly want to put it back under the vanity. Or maybe take it out and bury it in pig shit.

Drying my feet on the towel in front of the tub I step up onto the scale.

"It can't be?" I say looking at it. I step off and then back on. "This thing has to be broken!"

"I'm twenty pounds lighter!" I say to the girl in mirror. She looks at me and grins.

I grab up my towel and wrap it around me. When it knots I give a cheer. It's been a long time since I could do that!

"Yes, yes, yes, yes!"

I open the door and go all but skipping to my room next door. I grab up my phone and flip it I hit the ring tone and start dancing as it plays.

"Baby I was born this way..."

Turning I stop seeing my Dad standing in the doorway with a grin. He tosses a yellow dishtowel onto the floor by my feet.

"Penalty for excessive celebration."

I rush over and throw my arms around his neck

"I've lost twenty pounds!"

"Congratulations."

He gives me a tight hug. When he turns me lose I skip back, hold up my arms and cheer the fact I'm losing weight.

As my towel drops to the floor I also get another benefit. An almost instant suntan as I blush from head to toe so crimson I look blistered!

** ** ** ** ** ** ** 

(Brian)

My knees in the black soil I pull the bud ends off. The little flowers dropping to the ground to be pressed into the soil as I knee walk.

I sit up, massage my back for a second, and look to the house. The hillside is covered in little spring blooms, yellow daffodils that almost give it the look of a thatched cottage from a distance. All the windows are open and the front and side doors are as well. From inside I head the stereo playing.

Her music.

Well I'll be generous and call some of it music. I chuckle thinking back to my mom's reaction to the stuff I listened to when I was seventeen.

Looking up at the sky I let my eyes wander. The gray clouds are promising rain but so far all we have gotten is a good strong wind.

I look over to Blackie. His game of hold down the cricket seems to be going well. He looks up at me with his tail wagging.

"Beware the ides of March." I tell him.

The cricket forgotten he belly crawls over to me. I give his dark fur a ruffle. He rolls over and I scratch his belly.

"More like April shower bring May flowers time." I say sadly.

He starts to try and scratch a flea on his back. I smile as he wiggles under my hand.

"Oh knock it off you clown."

Looking to the east I notice the flash of lightning.

"Blackie, get you brother."

The dog rolls over and goes to play his very favorite game. Brother hunting! Then Pepper knowing he's wanted comes running to me with his darker sibling right on his tail.

As we walk through the stubble of the just harvest rye I thank everything I got it harvested this past weekend. I climb the fence and head toward the coop.

"Bird out!" 

Both dogs take off at a sprint and start to bark and chase the chickens back into their coup. By the time I reach it only the rooster is still running around determined to show that he's not afraid of a couple of dogs.

Then Smokey, hearing her sons, comes in at a run.

Seeing the odds get ridiculous the silly bird decides he is a chicken and runs up the ramp and into the coup.

I close and latch the doors.

The flashes of lightning are getting even more intensive by the time I have the cows herded down to the small enclosure by the barn. With their calves already inside the mothers go a lot easier than the chickens did.

I look across the farm as I walk towards the house. The pigs will be fine I think then do a rethink. I turn back and walk over to the barn. I open the door that lead to the stubble field and then the one that leads to the field with the pigs. The other two field doors are closed

"Chase the pigs!"

Off go all three dogs, they run with all the enthusiasm of the hunter boys from the Lord of the Flies.

I will say this for them, these pigs are smart. Far smarter then the cows that I have to persuade to go through the barn three times a year. Once the dogs get them moving they know what's up and that there is a fields full of goodies just through and out the other side.

I close the gate behind them as the first drops start to fall.

"Inside!"

Off go the dogs towards the house. I hurry but know I'm doomed for a soaking long before I get there as I see the squall line come through trees just behind the house.

The boys and their mom go through the front door and I hear Chanel screaming "Stop" to them. Then she's cussing Blackie.

I chuckle as I hurry.

"My daughter the sewer mouth." I think as I hit the porch with just seconds to spare. I use both hands to wipe the rain back off my head into the line of hair around my ears. I let the slowly growing length of my new ponytail take up the rest and dry my hands.

"Why are they...?" she asks stepping out onto the porch with her broom/dancing partner.

Flash!........Boom.

"Oh! That's why they are in the house." she steps back inside. I see her shiver.

"Scared of storms?" I ask remembering that her mom was.

She gives a tight nod.

"Close up the house and you wont even hardly hear it."

She nods and goes to close windows.

Moving over to the wall next to the side door I open it up. I hit the switch telling my turbine to gear down. Outside the small turbine begins to slow. I guess in a way I lied when I said I didn't have a computer since this is, in a way a, small one. It monitors the amount of power the turbine brings in. It's been doing very well all day. I can see that the batteries are nearly full despite the fact that it's been cloudy all day.




A Father's Dream



When I close that panel I open the one next to it and start turning off breakers.

"Hey!"

I smile when I hear her call out from on of the backrooms.

"What happen to the lights?" she asks sticking her head out the doorway.

"Since the suns not coming out today I thought it might be wise to save power. Once the storm passes and I don't have to worry about gusts I can turn the turbine back on and we'll be fine."

She gives her head a shake.

"The house has no power lines running to it but still we have to sit in the dark when it rains."

I laugh at her indignation..

Going to the living room I light the four oil lamps that hang in their brackets around the room.

I pick up my guitar from the corner and grab a chair. I sit on the edge and start to play.

Tapping my foot to give the heavy beat I pick my way through cords.

Looking up I smile as I see the astonishment on her face as she steps into the room.

"That's Rolling in the Deep!"

I nod and play on. She drifts into the room and leans against the top of the chair.

"...we could have had it all! Rolling in the deep...you had my heart in hand..."

I grin as she sings. She has a very good voice if a bit throaty. But then for this song it sounds great.

Playing my way through that song, I then give a try at two others that I have been picking through in my head. I can't quiet manage the sounds of some of her favorites but I give it a good try.

She is beaming at me.

I stop playing as she leans down and wraps my neck in a hug.

Feeling the warm heat of her I have to force an image from my mind.

"Thank you." She says softly.

I shrug.

"Phil and Jennifer are coming over tomorrow to play and I didn't want you to feel left out this time. I know 'Our' normal songs aren't much to your taste so I though I would learn a few or yours." I pick a few cord of the song by the singer, Pink, I know she likes. "Who knows maybe we will even get you to sing."

She blushes and then gives small shake of her head.

"Come on! You have a very good voice. Beside this isn't American Idol. You're not going to get judged."

"How do you know about that show?" she ask giving her hand a little wave. "No TV?"

"Just because I don't have a TV doesn't mean I'm living under a rock." I smile when she looks up at the ceiling with its two foot of soil roof. "Okay maybe there are a few rocks up there but they are small ones."

Chanel sits down and I play softly. It's one of my songs. Something I have been fiddling with for years. I fell in love with the sound of the slide guitar and with Spanish guitar. I'm trying to get them to blend.

I look up from my fingers to find her just looking at me. There is a soft look in her eyes and a smile. I smile back and give her a wink. She blushes.

Since the incident with the towel that's been all it takes to get her to blush.

With the storm outside raging I play for my daughter. Songs from my day or older. The ones that she likes and I know.

I stop when Smokey lifts her head followed a second later by both of the boys.

I get up and walk to the door.

"What is it?"

I try as hard as I can to hear over the thunder outside.

"Is that a siren?" she asks.

Her younger ears catch what mine can not.

"Yep. The one on top of the school." I say with a nod. I close the door and turn to her.

"We can hear it all the way out here?" she asks looking a little scared.

"Well I can't but they can.

Blackie lifts his chin and hives a little howl.

I get the little radio and turn it on.

"...there is a definite hook on the radar in the Morris and Kimberly area. People in the Brandon and Centerville areas should be seeking immediate shelter. Those in the Kimberly and Morris area should already be in their safe place. ..."

We listen to the weather alert together.

"Don't we need to get into a shelter?" she asks.

I look up at her and smile.

"The whole house is a tornado shelter."

She looks around then nods.

"Didn't think about that. But then we don't get tornadoes in LA."

"No out there you just shake and bake." I say grinning.

"Ha, ha, hardy, ha, ha." she relies sarcastically.

I chuckle

Over the next half-hour we listen to the growing report of bad weather over the whole region.

Then reports of damage start to get added to the endless repeat of the weather.

Then it starts to drift to the east more.

"Get your boots on." I tell her as I get up.

"Where are we going? Oh, to check on everything, Duh!" she pop herself in the forehead and goes to get her boots.

Together we walk out to the barn. The cows are huddled by the side of the barn seeking the shelter from the rain. Their calves inside are lowing but fine. The pigs are playing in the mud of their new field.

I grab the chainsaw from the barn.

"Come on lets go see if we can help."

She nods and walks with me to the truck.

Seeing her hair getting wet in the sprinkle I hand her one of my hats as we get in. I crank the old truck on the second try. It grumbles like any one that age would but heads off with good grace.

Twice between my farm and the next two I stop and use the saw to clear small trees from the road.

** ** ** ** ** ** ** 

(Chanel)

As we start to see the damage the storm has caused I have never in my life been so afraid. Road signs tore out the ground and tosses like they were made of paper. Trees down everywhere. 

I watch my dad negotiate the roads with a calm skill that I envy. He stops and together we get a tree out the road.

We do it again a mile down the road.

The old truck putters on till we get to the first house close to our land.

Our land? That rings in my head for a second.

Dad pulls the truck into the long driveway. I see out neighbor look up from cutting a tree off his fence. Dad leans out the window.

"Hey, Michael." He calls out.

"Howdy, Brian. Y'all come through it okay?" he asks dad.

"Yea I don't have any damage. Thought I would drive into town and see if I could help out anywhere. I hear on the radio there was some damage."

The man nods and set down his chainsaw. 

"Yea the TV showed a lot of trees down, power lines and that kind of thing. Then the power went out. You know on days like these I sure envy you. That underground house and your own power. You did it the right way up there. Anyway this tree is the only thing I've got down. I'll get it cleared so my cows don't go wandering. Thanks for stopping."

"No problem Michael. That's what neighbors are for after all."

Dad waves and rolls up the window. I just look at him as he drives us down, turns us around, and we head back out. The guy waves to me as we go past him and back out onto the main road.

As we ride into town Dad will twice more stop to check on people. One was fine except for a damaged roof. Dad offers to come help but the guy says he's got it.

The other wasn't at home but dad checked their place out. He told me to stay in the truck while he did.

I watch him through the glass.

Without being asked...without any thought of being paid he uses his saw and his muscles to cut limbs out the way so this person...this neighbor can get back into his drive way.

"How could you have left his man, Mom?" I ask as I see him walking back towards me. 

When he hops in he takes off his hat and wipes his head. Then settles it back down.

"Their car wasn't there so let's hope they found a safe place." He says clearly worried.

I nod.

The miles that follow are a nightmare. Power trucks, telephone trucks, ambulances and county sheriffs. We drive between trees too big for us to cut out the way. We drive around pieces of someone's roof.

"My god." I say softly when we start to see the damages to houses. 

"And this was a small one, F2 maybe F3." He says as we pass a large oak tree that smashed through a parked car.

Dad sees someone he knows and we stop. They are trying to get their driveway clear so they can get their car out. We help move several small trees out the way, cutting and rolling logs. That done I sit on a porch, dead tired, holding a crying child while his dad and my dad round up several terrified horses.

Their house behind me has no roof.

I hear dad promise to help them nail their tarps down. When the guy says he doesn't have any, Dad offers to go get some from the hardware store.

All the years without this man in my life burn.

** ** ** ** ** ** ** 

(Brian)

Further and further into town I drive us. The roads getting worse till at last I have to pull us into the parking lot of a fast food place. I see the manager start to walk over to me.

"You know we're closed right? No power." He says when I stop beside him..

"I know this is just a close to the hardware store as I could get. I need to go get some big tarps to help out a neighbor. Can I leave my truck here till I can walk over there and carry them back?"

The guy nods and points me to the side of the lot.

I'm feeling badly now that I brought, Chanel, into town. I didn't know it was going to be this bad. She grew up in a place where this kind of thing doesn't happen about every six months, so to her it's all impossible.

The manager gets two of his people to follow me over to the hardware store. He needs a few things as well. My friend, Philip, is there working.

"Brian! How are you and Chanel?"

"We came through fine. Jackson, down the road has part of his roof torn off though. I told him I would try to get some tarps from you."

"Yea. I'm going to have to make it first come first serve and cash only till they get me power back up. I think half the town has roof damage. I'm going to run out of tarps quickly."

Nodding I grab out my wallet. I pull the folded hundred I keep there out and hand it to him.

"Here. I need two of them. The forty by fifty ones if you have them. Use the rest for anyone that doesn't have the cash. Tell them to pay me back come harvest time."

I see the two guys with me just give me a look. 

Philip, comes back with the tarps in a wheel barrel.

"Bring it back when you can, Brian."

I promise to do so.

I stop. Seeing the two guys with me gives me an idea.

"Do you have one of those rolling generators? I saw you had four in here last week."

"Yea they are here for now. I have no doubt they will fly out of here in the next hour though." Philip, says with a nod.

"Let these two guy's borrow one. I cover it with my credit. They work at the McD's. If their boss can get that place powered up, there will be at least somewhere were people can come get a hot meal."

Philip nods and the two guys follow his flashlight to the back, then they come pushing the little generator by its handles.

I see that Chanel is across the street helping with some people. I smile seeing that.

She looks up at me with her beautiful face. The terror I saw there before has faded. 

God she is so beautiful. I think as I head for the truck with the wheel barrel.

The manager thanks me for thinking about him. He hands Chanel a bag full of food.

I've never been prouder of her than when she gives the bag to the Jackson family when we show up to help with their roof.

We work first there, then at another house down the street. Then on to a third, cutting a tree branch out of this lady's living room.

As I finally turn the truck towards the house the night has well and truly set in. So has exhaustion. That I'm not twenty anymore is letting itself be known. I look over at my daughter. She's asleep against the door. I reach over and catch her arm. I give her a pull and she leans over into my side.

"Be home soon baby." I whisper to her.

She nods her head and snuggles into me.

The dogs run out to greet us as I pull into the driveway.

I carry Chanel into her room and lay her down. I sit her up long enough to pull off her jacket and get her boots off her feet. I tuck her in wishing I could make her more comfortable. But I can't...

Not after the towel thing.

I leave my daughter to sleep and go have a seat before the fire. I absently pick up the guitar and pluck my way through the song she likes the most. 

Looking up I see the circled day on the calendar.

The twenty second is come up so very soon.

Smokey comes over to comfort me. She knows.

She knows and doesn't judge...

I scratch her ears and play for her till sleep takes me.

** ** ** ** ** ** ** 

(Chanel)

The wood under my cheek is cool as I lean against the hall paneling. I just stand there looking at him asleep in his chair. The three dogs at his feet.

I feel a tear slip from my eye to soak into the wood.

My eyes go to the calendar.

Five days. My god where did the months go?

I slowly move over to him. 

This man. 

My father.

My dad.

I kneel down next to him. Smokey looks up at me. I let my hand come to rest on her head.

She knows.

She knows and doesn't judge me.

Doesn't judge me for having fallen in love with my own...

I cover him with a warm blanket.

Crying because of the impossible I leave the room and flee back to my bed. The pillow is very damp before I finally fall to sleep.

** ** ** ** ** ** ** 

(Brian)

"So you just need the transfer slip, right?" 

I look to the school secretary and I nod. She goes back to shuffling paper. The lack of power has things in a mess everywhere but a school without its computers suddenly has to remember how to do things the old way.

I thank the heavens she's old enough to know how to do it.

Or curse them.

I watch as the gray haired secretary gets together the necessary paper work to let Chanel transfer back to her old school.

"Here you go. It was really silly of them to not let her say out there and finish in the first place." She tells me handing me the form. "This late in her Senior year? I'm glad She will get to walk with the rest of her old friends."

I nod. Not in agreement just because she expects it.

"Well, tell her we will miss her and to have a safe trip"

"I will." I promise.

I make my way out the school and past the people coming to pick up class work so their kids don't get behind till power is brought back up. They say the school will be back open by Monday. A few people who see me wave. In the last four days they and a lot of others have seen me.

And Chanel. 

We have been all over town with groups helping out. Cutting limbs, clearing fallen trees. Helping feed people whose homes are damaged. People without power.

People without hope. That's harder to give out than a ham sandwich but we try.

Trying to bring a bit of hope.

And a sandwich.

The old truck passes the piles of fallen trees that line the roads. They reach up like wood canyons of branches. In some cases a dozen feet higher than my truck's roof.

The chainsaw in the back and its tanks of fuel has hardly been left to sit for more than a few minutes all week.

I've cut and stored more fire wood than I will use in the next two years.

Only the arrival of this day has them idle.

As I pass the Red Cross station I see the lines of people there for food. I also see a sign asking for blood donations.

I shrug as I think that maybe one should help the other but I guess I'm the only one that thinks that.

I glance down at the sore spot on my arm. It still itches.

The long drive home, with the delay for power trucks rehanging lines, has me on edge. Here on this last day I want to spend as much of it with her as I can.

And I seem to be doing the exact opposite.

First that run to the store, then the hardware store to return the wheel barrel. Then the school to get the paperwork.

I should really have gone and picked up her tickets at the airport so as to save a delay later tonight.

Sitting watching the flagman I wish he would keep me here for too long. So long I'm late getting home. So long that we would be too late getting to the airport and she would miss her plane. Maybe would have to stay another night?

Then maybe another night after that.

I glance down at the cake under its plastic cover. Sitting like an explosion of color in the drab seat next to me it's beautiful. The icing is pink, teal green and a light blue. Her favorite colors. It's a spring garden of flowers with bright blue lettering across the front.

'Happy 18 Chanel'

And I want her to be. Happy. I want her to be happy, not depressed as she has been for the last few days. The terrible damages we have seen, the people we have talked to that have lost everything.

"It's brought her down more every day." I say softly to myself.

I have been slipping into depression myself as well...but for a different reason.

Gripping the wheel I drive around the flagman and past the quickly forming line of cars going the other direction.

It's a surprise to me when the dogs don't come out to meet the truck on the driveway.

Parking next to the house I grab the cake out the passenger side seat. Looking across the fields I see Chanel wave at me from beside the barn. I smile and leaning the cake against my chest I wave back. I grin when I see she has one of the rabbits tucked in her arms.

Carrying the cake inside I see her bag sitting in the hall by the wall. I'm grabbing out some plates, when I notice her come walking towards the house.

** ** ** ** ** ** ** 

(Chanel)

Sitting the bundle of fluffy fur back in his cage I let my hand linger on his silky long ears. He hold still till I turn him loses.

I wish I could steady my heart as easily. It began to hammer the moment I saw the truck.

Hearing a yelp I look out over the field to where Smokey, Blackie and Pepper are still casing after each other. They have been doing it all morning. Several times I've seen Smokey give her sons little bites.

I leave the barn and walk to the house. I smile when I see the cake sitting on the counter. I watch my dad pull out two plates. Walking over to the refrigerator I grab out the glass pitcher of milk.

That I have to take a cloth, held on with a rubber band, off the top of something that holds milk no longer feels strange.

The smell of frosted cake fills the kitchen when he takes off the plastic cover.

Looking at it I, glancing around, realize it's probably one of the few things in the house that's made of plastic.

I wonder then what he will do with it?

Everything else this house makes seems to make a place somewhere on the farm. Paper and wood gets shredded and tossed into the field with pigs to compost.

Metal gets loaded and hauled off for scrap. 

But plastic?

When he lifts a piece of cake onto the plates using the knife he cut it with I see a small piece drop back onto the cake pan. Feeling mischievous I pick it up.

My dad smiles at me when I lift it to his mouth.

He looks down at the tray and pinches off a piece and brings it to my lips.

The cake is light and buttery, the icing incredibly rich.

His fingers?

I think when my mouth closes around one of them and I pull the icing from his skin ...I think I like that taste most of all.

"So all packed" he steps away and carries his plate over to the table. "By the way where are the dogs? I was going to cut them all a piece of the cake as well. They didn't meet me which is strange."

"They are out playing in the fields. I don't know... I think something may be wrong with Smokey though. She's been snapping and biting at the two boys all morning."

He stops with his fork half way to his mouth.

He sits it down and gets to his feet.

"Let me go take a look." He gets up.

I sit my plate down and go to follow him.

"Go ahead and finish your cake birthday girl!" he says.

"I will. I want to walk out there with you."

He nods understanding.

My eyes go to my bag in the hall as I follow him out. I think of all my friends that think I've been sold on the black market for my organs. Least way that was what one of them said when we were in town and I sent her a text.




A Father's Dream



"Where did you see them?" he asks as we cross over into the high grass field. 

"Out this way. They were running under the fence between the cows and this field.

"Smokey! Blackie! Pepper!" 

His voice seems to ring off the sky.

Like the velociraptor in Lost World they come through the grass leaving a trail. Then I see Smokey's head pop up above the grass. 

"Come on ya bunch of jackrabbits!" he calls to them.

I giggle as all three start the hopping thing.

He kneels down as Smokey comes and circles his feet. She turns and looks back at the other two. She gives a little snap when Blackie comes in to close to my dad.

"See what I mean?"

He nods. I watch him look down on the dog fondly. His hand brushes her head and she licks his fingers.

"Stand up girl." He tells her. When she does he turns her a little and leans over a little.

"Yep." He looks back over his shoulder at me. "She's in heat." He pats her side, stands up and she looks up at him for a moment. Then with a burst of speed she's off running for the pig field.

The other two are right after her.

"They'll be following her around for the next few weeks."

"What are they...." I stop when I realize the answer. I turn to him in shock. "But they are 'her' puppies?"

He smiles and shrugs.

"Nature doesn't seem to have a rule about that." He watches the dogs scatter the pigs, then Smokey leads her sons on a loop around the chicken coop that has fathers flying. "Only man..."

I see the look on his face then. A sad smile that's directed inward.

I realize what it means with a sudden hard pounding of my heart.

He loves me... he feels the same way that I do.

Moving forward with hesitant steps, I reach out and take my dad's hand. He looks down at me and smiles.

"Will they catch her?" I ask softly.

He gives his head a tilt.

"If she lets them."

I step into his arms and lean my head in against his chest. Under my ear I hear his heart start pounding harder in his chest.

I'm causing that I think. Me in his arms. Me holding him.

I all but want to purr as he wraps me up in his strong arms. I nuzzle my cheek into the V of hair where his shirt is open. I feel the slight bristle of his cheek by my temple.

I feel myself shudder then. The back of his shirt crumples in my hands as I pull him tight to me. 

"Chanel? Baby?"

"I don't want to leave." I say between sobs.

He holds me tighter. After a moment he gives a little chuckle.

"I wish you had told me that earlier. It would have saved me a trip to your school."

I give my head a shake.

"I had to see a couple of 'signs' to make my decision." I smile at the look on his face.

"I thought you didn't believe in signs?" he says softly brushing a tear from my cheek..

"I said maybe...I didn't believe in them as much when I got here as I do now."

I clutch tighter to him. I smile into his chest when I feel a hardening bulge growing against my stomach.

"What signs did you see?' he asks with a tilt of his head. "I must have missed them."

I let myself lean back just a bit and I look up into his face.

"The way we tasted the cake was the first. Then the dogs were the second. Then I saw in your face, that was the third and now there is a fourth."

"Wow." He says softly "That many?" looking into my eyes he gives me a smile. "Are you sure they were signs?"

I nod.

"What did you see in my face?"

"That you love me."

He smiles.

"Well of course I love you, you're my daughter..."

I place a finger on his lips stilling the truth that is also a half lie.

"Not like that. Like this."

Moving my finger I lift myself and our lips meet. I feel him try to pull back for a half second but by then I have him by the back of his head and I pull his mouth into mine.

Then he's kissing me back.

I feel myself all but melt into his chest as his strong arms come round me holding me tight to him as we kiss with growing need.

I let my hand come to rest on the center of his chest and after a million year of kissing his wonderful lips I give a light push.

We are both breathing heavily of each other as our lips part.

I look for and find the lust hiding behind his eyes.

"I love you." I tell him softly. "As a daughter loves her father but...also as a woman loves a man." I look over towards the fields where the three dogs are running around. "I didn't think it was possible but Smokey and the boys showed me it is. If nature doesn't care why should I?"

"Because it's a crime. One with a pretty serious amount if jail time." He tells me soberly. "Nature may not care but the government sure seem to make it their business."

I step back into my dad's arms and lean into his chest.

"I don't care. I don't care what anyone thinks about it. I love you. I love you and I want you." I snuggle into him deeper. "I don't want to go back. There is nothing for me there."

"There is the life you had." He says softly. "Your friends."

I nod.

"Yea. I have a few. But I can always call them. I'll make new friends. Some of the girls I go to school with have been actually nice to me these last few days.'

"That's because we've been helping their parents rebuild."

"Yes. True." I give my head a shake. "I don't care if I have friends. I just need you."

"I love to hear you say that Chanel. I really do. But..." 

I look up into his eyes.

"I want you to have a good life. To go places and do things. I want you to have the best education that you can. I spent all these years working to get you that trust fund so you could go to college and make a better life for yourself than what I could offer. I love you. I love you as your father and ...yes as a man. I've been falling for you for the last few weeks. But my darling... I'm your father! I can't be your lover."

"Why not?"

"Because it's wrong." He says in a soft voice.

"Smokey doesn't think so. Neither do the two boys."

"They're dogs hon. They are just following their instincts."

"So am I!"

I grab him and pull him back to my mouth. My breasts press so hard into his chest they ache but it's a good pain, one I want more of. I moan when I feel his hands suddenly drop down and take hold of me by the cheeks of my ass.

How we ended up lying in the tall cool grass with me on my back I don't know. I also don't care. His mouth on my neck kissing, nibbling. His hand filled with my breast my hands undoing the buttons of his shirt. I get impatient and pull a few lose. Then his hand's on my bare stomach. It pushes up my shirt. His fingers pull down the top of the bra cup.

I moan as he cups my bare breast in his hand.

** ** ** ** ** ** ** 

(Brian)

I give in. 

I give into what she is asking and what I am feeling. I give into my need, my desire. The one that's been growing in me. 

Her lips are sweet. I taste the icing from the cake upon her mouth as I let my tongue meet hers. As I give her breast a squeeze I'm so hard it's uncomfortable.

Then her hand is at my belt unhooking it undoing the snap zipping down the zipper.

Her hand is so very soft, so very warm.

So very much my daughter's.

Opening my eyes I look down into her face. I see ghosts of Crystal looking back at me through her eyes. 

For some reason I don't think she would be laughing to see this. 

Guilt begins to rack me but I can not make myself stop kissing her. Sucking at the sweet skin of her neck. Holding her by the soft warmth of her bare breast. 

Her fingers are soft, and then a hard grip makes me groan. She lets her finger run up the length of me then.

Measuring me, exploring me. 

Blinking I sit up and look down at her.

I can see it in her face. Need is driving her but there is a lingering fear just behind her eyes. A nervous quiver of her lips.

"Chanel...are you a virgin?" I ask the question no father ever should. Especially one that's about to do what we are about to do.

Her hand gives my cock a squeeze.

"I want this." She says in response.

Not the way that an experienced woman would... but how someone unsure but trying to play the part would say it.

I smile down at my daughter.

"You are, aren't you?"

"Daddy please..." I see a star at the corner of her eye. "I love you."

"Shhh... I love you too. I'm not asking because I'm not going to do this if you are. You have me. I'm yours for better or worse. I just...I don't want to hurt you."

Slowly she nods.

I move myself, her fingers try to hold on but I pull out her grip. I see her about to cry then I settle myself down next to her in the grass.

"Kiss me." I tell her looking into her eyes.

She looks puzzled for a second then leans into my lips.

"Have you ever seen a man naked?"

"On line. I've watched videos of people ...doing it. I know what to do."

I smile at her. No she doesn't

"I want us to take it slow. Okay?"

She gives me a nod.

"Look down at what you've been handling."

I know that I'm standing up hard as sin. When she softly runs a finger across me I smile.

"I have seen you without your clothes on once. I want to see it again." I tell her then.

I see the blushing hesitancy. Then she takes a deep breath and start to undress.

"Would you be more comfortable in the house?" I ask.

She stops and looks around the farm. After a moment she shakes her head and a smile appears

"No this is perfect." She says then looks at me. "I want it to be here."

I nod and sitting up I reach for my boots. They unlace and I toss them aside. The pants slide down and the underwear follows.

I feel myself breathing harder when she looks down and see me naked.

My daughter is looking at me and I have on not a single stitch. That thought hits home as she reaches around and unhooks her bra.

"My god you're beautiful." I say as her sits up a bit and her breast swing.

She looks pleased for a second then looks away.

"I'm fat." She says softly.

"You are absolutely gorgeous just the way you are. I love the way you look." I roll up onto my knees in front of her and pull her to me. The soft heavy weight of her breast press into my chest.

I breathe the scent of her hair.

"You are beautiful. You are sensuous, you are sexy."

She gives a sniffle against my chest.

"Only you seem to think so. I'm the only girl that's a virgin in both of the school I've been at."

"Oh bullshit."

She looks up at me blinking. Then she grins.

"Sewer mouth." She says smiling.

"Yes I've been hanging around one lately. There is no way you are the only virgin."

"I am! I've talked to them. The other girls have done it dozens of times. Even Emily Williams and she about a pretty as a dog's butt."

Chuckling I reach over and let my fingers softly caress her skin.

"At your age there is a lot of pressure to have had sex. For a guy it's a... your not a real man if you haven't ...hell maybe your even gay if you haven't by the time your eighteen. For a girl? It's kind of the same. Like you have to prove your womanhood. Tell me...when they said they had, did you admit to being a virgin?"

She shakes her head.

"So if you weren't willing to tell... what make you think that they were telling the truth?" When I let my hand brush her nipple I smile as I see her eyes widen. "It's all bullshit. The world has made this huge thing out of it. It's one of the most natural and simple thing yet everyone stresses out about it till they ...have done it." I roll her nipple between my fingers. "Then they finally manage to have their first time and their left with this felling of...was that it?"

I see her eyes looking me over.

"Will I feel that way?" she asks me. Slowly hesitantly she reaches over and runs a hand up my chest. I can see she is no longer playing the part of a skilled lover. The nervousness of a virgin is there now. Her hands explore my chest, then up to my neck. When she pulls me towards her I lean in. I stop just before out lips would touch.

"Not if I can help it." I tell her softly.

The feeling of her lips is so very different from any woman I've ever kissed before...and yet the same. All the old familiar tricks come back to me as I pull her closer. My hands find the places that make her arch like a cat. My lips the places that make her squirm.

"Oh that feels good." She says with breath.

I chuckle.

"It's suppose to." I let my lips tighten around her nipple and flick the tip with my tongue. Then I do my best to take all of the large dark skin into my mouth. I can't quite manage but I still try.

"Oh...oh yes."

"Yes?" I ask grinning.

She nods biting at her lip.

With a chuckle I sit up and look down at her.

My eyes take in what I have seen but once before and that at only a glance. Her skin is a pale white; her fear of being laughed at probably keeps her out of bathing suits. I let my hand drift where my eyes are following. Down her neck across her breast. The warm soft skin gives under my hand as I let my hand drift past her navel.

I see her start to pant. I let my fingers just brush the top of her pale curls.

I brush deeper into the wiry hair with each pass till I feel her lift up to meet my hand. I cup the soft pillow and smile thinking that I would love to sleep with my head on something this soft.

She gives a small gasp as I brush the puffy lips.

"Like?" I ask knowing that she does.

"Yes." She whispers.

When I run a finger down the length she opens her legs a bit wider.

I'm fingering my daughter! Comes the thought. I look at her face. Her eyes closes lips parted nose flaring open with every breath. Her teeth giving little nips to her bottom lip 

When I lean forward her eyes pop open. She smiles at me.

"You're wet." I tell her. "The question is...are you sweet?" 

Her eyes widen at my grin. They go wider still when I bring a finger to my mouth.

Oh my god the taste of her! Sweet and bitter like perfect coffee. Not to much sugar, not to little. 

As I suck the thick taste from my finger I smile thinking "and just the perfect amount of cream."

Leaning down I place kisses upon her nipple then start to kiss lower.

"Dad?"

I grin as my nose presses into the soft skin of her belly. Then I circle her belly button with my tongue. I grin and blow a cool breath across her wet skin. I grin as I kiss lower and my chin brushes her thick curls.

"Dad?"

I slip even further down and place a kiss in those soft hairs. I can smell her now the heady mixture of scents that is a woman's most intimate of places.

I snuggle my face into her feeling the warmth of her against my cheek. Then against my nose. Then against my mouth.

"Dad!"

"What?" I look up and grin at the wide-eyed look to her face. "Can't you see I'm eating?" I keep eye contact as I lower my mouth down and place a kiss on the slick puffy lips. 

** ** ** ** ** ** ** 

(Chanel)

I feel his mouth touch me!

Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my GOD!

I lean my head back into the thick grass as his tongue is suddenly licking at me.

My father...my dad...a man! Is going down on me!

Ever brush of his mouth is like a new level of pleasure. I wonder just how many levels there are but very quickly stop caring, as I know he will take me to all of them.

I claw at the grass pulling out handfuls of the stuff as I let my legs open wide. He slips his shoulder between them and I open even wider.

Opening my eyes I moan as the most wonderful feeling I've ever known takes hold of me and builds second by second. I know that it will never stop.

The clouds drift by far above. I notice little things then, mindless things, as I try to find focus. The clouds are in separate layers running in different directions. Some East some Southeast. 

I watch the contrail of a lone jet so far over head, it's nothing but a speck of silvery light.

As I moan under his skillful devouring of me I wonder if it might be my plane. The one I was to take back to the place where I lived. Where I lived so long. Where I lived a life that now looking back on it was so very empty. Hollow. 

His hands are under me his strong fingers cupping my ass. His nose has me parted and his tongue is circling the little opening. I worry then that he might break my hymen with his tongue. Then I wonder if that is even possible. I wonder what it will feel like when he does... when he places that hard cock I was gripping into me. What will that feel like?

Will it hurt? How bad will it hurt?

Will I scream? Will I ...Oh Fuck!

"Oh daddy!"

I feel him chucking into me.

"I take it you're enjoying this?" he asks.

"Oh my god yes."

"Want me to stop?" he asks teasingly.

"Never!"

As he goes back to licking I let my head roll to the side, my face pressing the grass down, it's like a soft green pillow under my cheek.

Then his hands leave my ass and go to my breast. Oh my, how hard his fingers can squeeze. I moan as her pinches both nipples and he sucks at my clit at the same time.

I feel myself start to thrust against his mouth, driving more of me into his nose, into his lips, into that tongue that's driving me insane.

His head is smooth under my fingers as I reach down. I let my hand caress him brushing back the fine hairs till I hit the longer thicker parts. I lean up a bit as I feel a quiver shake me. I take hold of him then, at first to make him stop then to pull him in closer.

It builds, it builds, and I feel it growing by leaps and bounds. The nights of soft fingerings, the little moans that I gave when I though that I knew what pleasure was. When I thought I understood what an orgasm felt like. That all fall away as I curl my toes into the grass and lift my hips up into his face. I open my eyes wide and arch my head back as first one then two then a dozen bolts of lightning set me to quivering! I cry out towards that plane so far over head. I want them to hear my scream I want to see the little contrail skip as the pilot laughs to hear me.

I turn lose his head and grab at the grass again as I scream out for him to stop and hope to god he never will. Flash bang, flash bang! Like lightning and thunder I'm racked over and over against. Driven past the point of speech, past the point of thought. I hover then like a bird on an updraft. No need for motion just held aloft on wings of pleasure.

Will it never end I think as I feel my throat hurting from the screams. I turn lose the grass and dig into the rich dark earth under me. I feel the crumbly stuff. My mind drifts with thoughts then to places that I wouldn't send it if I had choice. Thoughts of what this dark earth is made of. Of all the animals and other things that gave it life, gave it this richness.

This crumbly moisture that will feed the plants that feed us. I want then to give something of myself to it. Some part of me to this land.

I do.

I open my eyes as I feel his weight come down on top of me. I look up into his face. That wonderful masculine face. The face of my father, the face of my dad. The face of my man. My man! My MAN!

And with a thrust that robes me of breath and virginity my man takes me!

I whimper as the length of him drives into me. I clutch at my dad as he pushes himself in. I know he wants to be gentle but his own needs are driving him now. I'm sure he will tell me he's sorry that he hurt me but at the moment I know he's enjoying my cries of pain.

I open myself to him. My thighs I widen to the point my hip hurts then I bring them up. I watch his face to give me something to focus on other than the sharp stab of pain I get with each thrust.

His face is worn with time but strong. The lines that time and age have carved give his face a ruggedness to it that's like this land. It's beautiful and giving yet can be hard when needed.

Hard! Oh my god yes so very hard. I clutch at him his bare skin the hairs on his chest brushing my nipples till they start to feel raw from the friction. I dig my fingers into the thick strong back. His skin grows wet with sweat as he takes me.




A Father's Dream



Plows me I think with a ghost of a chuckle then. I feel myself give my first thrust up onto a man's hardness then. It hurts but feels good at the same time. I wonder what I must look like down there to any passing eye. Am I opened? Is there blood? I'm sure there is, but how much? 

"OH Dad." I moan next to his ear as I feel a second shiver start to build. I feel him really starting to sweat. The spring sun breaks through the clouds to warm his back and my knees with its heat. I give a moan as he catches my thighs in his hands. His strong fingers under my knees. I feel myself being lifted, bent upwards till I open even more to him.

Deep inside me there is a new pain then. A feeling of him hitting something. I realize then that he is as deep as I go. I claw at his back then as I feel him starting to pant. I know that I will very soon be feeling a man cumming inside me.

I get a moment's panic then...but I just as suddenly don't care.

"Oh baby." He groans as with thrust after thrust he starts to go faster.

I can't keep silence as I feel his cock pushing me in then pulling me out. I feel the little nub of my clit being battered against him but I wouldn't stop it for anything. I want more I need more I crave more like a drunk for alcohol or a junky for his fix.

That's what he is I think as I hear him start to gasp for breath on top of me.

"Cum for me." I whisper in his ear. 

The sound he makes as it starts to cum is almost frightening. A deep throated cry that sounds more of pain than pleasure. I clutch him to me as I feel myself join him in orgasmic shivers.

When he turns lose of my legs they drop like wet pasta to the sides. I flinch now at each of his little thrusts. The sore feelings growing stronger as I feel him getting softer.

Then he collapses on top of me.

God he's heavy is the first thought. Then I find that I don't mind it too much. He's warm. Almost like having too many blankets on top of you, the weight just pushes me down into the warm grass.

As we lay there panting I look up past his thin hair to the sky. The jet is long gone. Taking its passengers to where ever they will go to try and find some purpose, some meaning to their lives.

I know then that I don't need a plane to find that. I know it with a feeling that's so strong I hope it never fades.

"How...How you doing under there?" he asks without breath to speak. "You're going to have to give me a... second then I can... move."

I give my head a little shake.

"You don't have to." I hold him to me all warm and wet. "I don't ever want you to move."

Very slowly he lifts himself up a bit and looks down at my face.

"Why would I want to move ...when I'm already in heaven?" he asks with a growing grin.

I smile at my dad and caress his sweaty face. Then I see his eyes look up and he starts to laugh. When I turn my head I give a blush and then giggle.

Smokey, Pepper and Blackie are sitting side by side looking at us. Smoky tilts her head to the side like she can't figure out what we are doing.

"Go on guys. Birds out!" he calls to them.

I laugh as all three go running off to chase the chickens back into their coup.

When he moves and I feel him pull out of me I wince. I know I will be sore as hell later but for the moment I don't really care. I curl up against the side of him.

I smile when he plucks a piece of grass and start to tickle my nose with it.

I lean my head into his chest. His skin smells of the land, of me and of his own scent. As I listen to his heart I think then that there is nothing in the whole world I would rather smell.

"I love you Daddy." I tell him softly.

"I love you." He tells me his strong hands pulling me in tighter.

Tighter into him, tighter into his dream.