3 comments/  4904 views/  0 favorites

By Air Mail Ch.03

By: TaLtos6



***
This is a sort of split chapter in terms of locales, since a lot is going on in more than one place.

Amelia still struggles a little to try to plan something for when Craig gets home - while Craig himself tries to urge his mechanical steed faster, hopefully without him needing to die for it.

Later on in the afternoon, I'll reveal another pair of characters altogether. I wanted to take the reader out of Cascade for a little while as well.

0_o

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

Craig woke in the morning and wasted no time, other than over one cup of coffee – and he shaved while drinking it - spitting occasionally when he didn't look beforehand and got half a mouthful of frothy shaving cream from the mug left there from his previous sip, before almost scrambling to get done and over with on Iron Mountain. 

He tried not to run up the 105 steps and he closed up the tower, grabbed the logbooks and locked up before heading back down.

As he rushed carefully so as not to forget anything, he found himself hoping again.

Hoping that Amelia had missed him a little and hoping that he might be able to tell her how he felt at last and hoping ...

Praying that Tad was alright and had made his way back home at last.

Craig only had very slight expectations about Amelia, but he knew that his trip would go better with a hope – if not a song – in his heart.

He filed his fantasies of Tad away again, where they'd stay safe until he was in his room again that night. He wondered if they would even recognise each other after so much time.

Finally, he'd loaded up his old Indian warhorse as best he could and turning on the headlight momentarily, he saw that the bulb came on yellow after a week of being idle up here. Craig wasn't fazed. He was more concerned over making it into Fairfield with it running – since it was already just on the top end of being on reserve.

He manoeuvered the machine to the top of the trail down and looking back one last time to think of anything forgotten, he said goodbye to his annual prison for the last time.

He rocked forward and back a little, enough to put the machine into high gear and then turning the ignition on – but leaving the headlight off – he held the clutch in and pushed off down the hill with only one foot. That hadn't been easy to do, none of it. 

Inside of forty feet, he let out the clutch and the motor was turning over from the mechanical advantage of the weight and inertia and the beast fired twice, coughed once and it was running.

Craig was grinning as he began his long ride home. He only gave in to doing the 'yahoo' thing once.

He had to force himself to stay slow and gentle after almost missing a turn – which would have meant a long, cushy soft ride through the air as he plummeted to the extremely hard landing of his death in one case, and whacking into a tree in another.

But after a rather spectacular (if he did say so himself) speedway-style sliding turn at full throttle and dragging his inside foot, because there was no way to brake without throwing him and his dependable Indian into a solid granite wall at in excess of 'Holy Shit' velocity, he did finally manage to slow to a more civilized and less life-threatening pace.

He did still have the odd and occasional moments of pulse quickening:

Once when he saw a black bear sort of sitting very near to the edge of the trail and once when he realized that the wooden bridge which spanned the last creek in his trip ended with a chain strung across it to keep innocent people from being killed by frenzied fire lookouts on their way back home.

He cheated death in the first instance by grabbing the clutch and rolling off the throttle so that by the time that the bruin realized that something was coming and spun to look uphill, Craig had already coasted well past it and was back on the throttle.

Though as he breezed by, Craig was finally able to come to a definitive answer about whether bears shit in the woods or not. 

They do apparently, though at least a few are somewhat partial to using trails for that biological function.

And he'd ridden right through the steaming heap, too. 

He guessed that the bottom of the frame, the front of the engine crankcase, both crash bars and his boots and pant legs had been adorned, and as he rode on and the mess soaked into things ... He decided that he'd been right.

The second was more a test of Craig's steely nerves as he realized his error while almost already on the bridge. 

The morning dew was still there on the planking and even with both brakes locked and the rider (which would be Craig) doing an admirable job in making some death-defying, leaned-over gyrations to hopefully keep the beast a little upright, he slid along to just about the point where he'd have to decide to lay it down and pray that he slid underneath the chain cleanly.

That didn't happen. 

Craig mis-timed his lay-down moment and the whole show came to a stop with the bike sideways on the bridge and the chain not six inches from his leg.

Craig was proud of himself for NOT having an asthmatic episode over it, but the whole deal reminded him of what he'd forgotten to do in his hurry to leave and ...

Well he shut the bike off and walked into the woods a few paces and crapped there instead.

Back in business or so he thought, several minutes later, Craig started the bike and it died inside of two hundred feet, just as he was about to make the road into Fairfield. He re-started, but it died on him again. Looking into the tank, he got his little jiffy can out and poured in all that was there, which came to maybe a large cupful.

With it running again at last, Craig did his best to guess the most economical rate of travel and he actually laughed as he turned into the gas station and had to grab the clutch in a hurry as he ran out of the last of his cupful just in time.

He coasted up beside the pump silently.

The one with the sign on it saying that it was out of order.

He thought that it was just stupid, since it was the old kind and he could see the gas in the glass reservoir. For that kind, you told the attendant how much you wanted and he pumped it up there so you could see that it was all honest and aboveboard, the cylinder level showing what you'd get when he squeezed the nozzle valve. Then he saw that the hose was cracked right through.

A little huffing and pushing his 580 pound (and that was unloaded) beast later, he was next to the other pump and having his tank filled by an ancient-looking geezer.

"Nice day," Craig offered.

"Didja hit a bear?" the old codger asked, waving his hand as if to disperse the cloud.

"Not exactly," Craig replied, almost dying to get to at least some velocity faster than the Speed of Smell. He wanted to skip it, but he remembered that he also needed his little 'just in case' can filled.

Just in ah, case.

----------------------

Amelia woke up and realized that she'd slept longer than she'd wanted to and almost jumped right out of Craig's bed, which catapulted the old teddy bear onto the floor. She picked him up and set him onto Tad's bed while she stripped the bed to get new sheets on it first thing before she'd even put on a stitch of clothing.

As she hustled to the linen closet, she found that she could see right into the bedroom where she'd left her mothers and saw that, of course, they were up and gone long before, since no matter what happened, the café had to be gotten started for the day and that was likely why she'd awoken alone. Rosa would be down there working too. 

She was almost in the bathroom when she walked back and picked up the teddy bear to put him back on Craig's bed where he belonged.

She settled for a fast shower so that she could wash her hair in case the hot water ran out and pulling on some pants and a flannel shirt, she headed off downstairs.

Remembering for the second time that this was a day off for her, she answered that she'd have breakfast whenever there was a chance to get one or if they were too busy, she'd make her own from the extra eggs, pancakes and sausages or whatever was handy.

Five minutes later, Amelia was already most of the way through her first cup of coffee when Rosa slid her breakfast over to her and she sat back to look through the patrons sitting there before looking out and deciding that Cascade, Idaho on a sunny September morning might be a little small and homey, but it was a nice place to be from anyhow.

"What's the plan, Missy?" Marjorie asked as she sat down across from Amelia to have her own coffee, "Is there anything that I can do to help matters along in your nefarious plan today?"

Amelia chuckled and had to set her cup down before she spilled any of it, "I don't know, to be honest. I think I'll need another cup of go-juice, since I've got the time for it today."

She raised her nose at a sniffy angle and said, "I shall have to ruminate on it and see. Why, I might even require that a list be drawn up."

She laughed at herself, "I dunno yet, Mom. I'll need to do some washing for myself and I've already changed Craig's bed. I'm gonna need one of those big old paper bags like they hand out over at the grocery store and –"

"What for?" Marjorie asked.

"Well unless I miss my guess, Craig would have taken a couple of those meter things with him in the spring to do a few of the practical lessons for his course while he was up there, just the small stuff that he could pack and that wouldn't get damaged on the road. 

So he'll be bringing them back and they'll have to go ... in the shop that Uncle Deke and Rosa built for him inside Uncle Deke's hangar all ready for him to start his business – that Craig doesn't know about yet. I already took all of his other stuff there, though I didn't set it up or anything 'cause I don't know squat about it all. I just know that it's delicate.

I plan to wait for him to get here and then I'm gonna – if I can, that is - spirit him away to the hangar. I've already got an old sheet over the passenger seat in my car for him to sit on and –"

Marjorie held up her hand, "Wait up, cutie. What's all that about now? Why does he have to be sitting on a sheet?"

Amelia looked at the redhead a little blankly, "Well because he'll have ridden his old motorcycle all the way over from Iron Mountain, that's why. Think a minute, Mom. Ever since he got that thing, has he ever once come back from there clean?"

Marjorie thought for a minute and then shook her head, "Well no, not exactly."

"Right," Amelia nodded. "He's gotta ride down the mountain and then head over to Fairfield to gas up and get on the road to Boise. Unless they've repaved - well even paved it all, he'll be on at least a couple of sections of forest road before it gets a little better heading into Boise. I know that from hearing him talk about it.

He'll stop off there to hand in his stuff and get paid and then he'll probably hunt a little for something to wolf down, knowing how bad his tail's on fire to get home every year by then. And then he'll be off again with a full tank of gas and riding hell for leather back here. He hates it if he gets here after dark.

But in all of that riding, he'll just HAVE to get covered in pine needles, a few maple leaves and a ton of road dirt and dust before he even looks down at himself – and that's IF it don't rain – and you know that won't even slow him down, 'long as that old machine of his keeps going.

Why last year, his riding jacket was all covered with mud and it had burrs on the right side of it – shoulder to elbow and then some."

Marjorie's eyebrows rose, "Oh, imagine that."

"Uh-huh," Amelia nodded, "So when he finally hauls up here, who knows what's gonna be stuck to him, see? So I'm gonna get his meters and junk out of his saddlebags and into my car and - "

"Isn't he going to come in here to see us first, or isn't there some sort of allowance made for that in the master plan?" Her other mother asked rather innocently, "And what are you going to do? Just wave him into a reserved parking spot out front with a flashlight, and then ... take those things from him without even saying hello?"

"Well no ..." Amelia said, slowing down a little, "I'll probably ... uh, ... hug him near to death, likely."

"Wait a second," Marjorie said, "You said that he'll probably be filthy from his ride up here all the damn day long."

"Well yeah," Amelia said, "At least. 

And that's if it don't -"

"If it doesn't rain, I know," Marjorie smiled, "I heard that part. So ... if you don't let him in here to see us first – which would be a big mistake, by the way, and then you take his delicate meters and junk and put them in your car ... isn't there a point somewhere in this that you'll get pretty dirty yourself? 

Just from ... oh, hugging him near to death and all – like you told me. What then?"

Amelia nodded, "I know. I've thought of that too. I've got another old sheet over the driver's seat in my car for that."

Marjorie sat back and sipped her coffee a little thoughtfully.

Which made Amelia just a little nervous and she sat trying not to squirm in the blue glare of Marjorie's eyes.

The redhead nodded at last, looking a little satisfied, "I'm thinking that the answer to my second question – about a mile or two back on the road from where we are now, is that the big paper bag – like they hand out over at the grocery store will have a clean change of clothes for both you and Craig to wear back here.

And that will happen oh, ... sometime after the shower that you plan to share with him – you know, the other thing that Rosa and Uncle Deke put in this summer up there in the hangar to um ... go with the surplus army cot that he bought for those times when he gets into town after a long flight round about mid-winter when the road is crap and not plowed yet. 

It all goes with the telephone that Deke also had put in so that he can call me when he gets in late to let me know that I can stop worrying because the other hazard to his life –AFTER the flying over all the wild country up here will be the two mile crappy road that doesn't get plowed but twice a winter if we're lucky."

She sipped the last of her coffee, tilting the mug up to drain the last drop and then she smiled over at Amelia, "You've just got to fix that little part where the OTHER two women – who RAISED Craig from a six year-old boy, I have to add – don't get their chance to hug him near to death."

She raised her finger and jabbed it toward Amelia, "Because THEN, I'd say that it's a not bad plan, Honey.

In fact, since you're one of the women in the family now and all, I think that we can speak a little plainly here, you and me. If you think that you can manage it, why even go to the hangar at all? There's nobody here now at all but Rebecca, me, Rosa, you and Craig, whenever he gets here.

I know what you want to do, Baby. And you know that I'm on your side. Why not just drag him upstairs and wash yourselves off right here? Unless he gets in real late, Rebecca and I can take Rosa to the theater and watch a movie together so that you've got the time to talk to Craig and then fuck his brains out like you're both a pair of bunnies."

And that reminds me – " Marjorie began, "About those rabbits – "

"Thanks, Mom" Amelia smiled a little shyly, "And I haven't forgotten the rabbits for old Bonny. My plan was to take Craig with me tomorrow to hunt them up for you, just like we always used to do."

She leaned forward on one elbow as she lifted her mug, "I just don't know if it might be better to still take him out to the hangar, since it's neutral ground and all. I might just get further with him there in less time – not that I'm exactly trying to rush him or anything. Do you think I'm being a little too ... "

Marjorie beamed, "Why hell no. Why would I think such a thing? Me? Come on, girl. 

Get outta there and take your plate to the kitchen. I'll make you another mug of coffee while you do that and you can come right back here to daydre – I uh, mean ... plot and scheme some more.

And I really like that shirt on you. Though you ought to tie your hair back while you go about all your nasty preparation work. Let him come home, kiss the lips right off him and all with it tied back, so your hair doesn't get near those nasty burrs, shoulder to elbow and on down."

She smiled warmly, "You want a tip? Keep it tied back and if you can, and it works out alright, ride him like a cowgirl and untie your hair just before you get going. Men love that, just sayin'."

--------------------------------

Craig was making good time, whenever he had the time and the reasonably straight and smooth road to look at his watch. He just didn't need the way that half of the wildlife in the state seemed to need to think about jumping out in front of him the way that it had been going. Where he didn't have a reasonably clear view for a distance on either side of the roadway, he slowed a little to give himself at least a fighting chance at seeing what was in front of him out there contemplating suicide.

The worst was the time that he came around a bend and slowed out of no other reason than he felt a little odd there – like something was about to happen. He saw a cow elk then, not far off the road, so he slowed even more.

That was when all seven other cows chose to step out into the sunshine, since it was such a fine day for it and all. Craig stopped, not quite believing the whole thing, and when he did, they all came over slowly to get a look at him – which was something not only unexpected, but also very strange.

It was almost hunting season, he reasoned, so if nothing else, these girls ought to be just a mite shy and nervous – yet they weren't, or at least, they didn't seem to be. Craig sat on his idling machine thinking that he must have been star-crossed somehow. He might not be worth much of a look to a human girl, but hell, Clementine and her friends here were looking a little interested.

She – that is, Clementine herself, was slowly stepping up on his right side with her neck out and her nose extended. Craig wanted to laugh and apologize that he couldn't help her, having forgotten his little elk-mating stepladder.

Because first impressions could count for so much with females this big and all.

That was the moment when he heard the snort from over on his left side and at that instant; Craig knew that cow elk can be such fickle things, since it was the bull over there which really had their attention – the one who was just beginning to paw the turf under him.

He beeped the horn – which seemed to impress the girls to a minor degree to see their ears swing forward – but the big boy seemed to take it as the rough equivalent to Craig questioning his ancestry or something of that nature.

He shouted and the cows all stepped back when he told them that he really wasn't a large pile of bear shit – he just smelled that way. He heard the commotion from over on his left and decided not to look and that the time might be better spent in getting the hell out of Elktown.

He pulled some revs out of the engine and took off hoping that his Indian could out-accelerate what he knew was now pissed at how he'd dared to blunder into the midst of his hopeful-looking harem.

Holy jumpin...

He reached Boise – eventually, and headed for the National Forest offices to turn in his logbooks and keys. Normally, this could have taken him up to an hour, but he steadfastly refused the requests of everybody in the place that he leave. 

"Hey," he smiled, his own sinuses now impervious to his cachet, "pay me out, and I'm gone."

He was gone in under ten minutes – which he took as a gain, though he lost some while trying to find someplace where he could buy something to eat. He had to settle for a bottle of Coca-Cola out in the sunshine of a parking lot just a little happy that vending machines as a species lack a developed sense of smell, since no human could stand being closer than twenty-five feet from him, depending on the direction of any breeze present.


By Air Mail Ch.03



He thought the whole concept was a little amazing. It looked like a food freezer, though it was painted up red with the Coca-Cola advertising on it. You didn't even need anybody. You just put your nickel in (which was a bit stiff for a price in his opinion), and that unlocked the lid. 

Then all you had to do was to reach in and move one of the many bottles – which hung by their necks in cold water – along a narrow track to the end where it was wider, enough to get that one bottle out. As soon as you pulled your bottle out, the racks would lock – as would the lid as soon as you let go so that it fell closed again.

He thought the whole thing was pretty neat – except that he hadn't been that thirsty to begin with and he still hadn't had anything to eat.

He hit another gas station and after filling up, he pulled off his prescription riding goggles and dipped them in the windshield washing bucket there by the pump for a moment and was a little amazed at how bright the day looked without them. From that, he sighed, figuring that he must be wearing quite a bit of grime, so he filled up and pretended that he always looked this way.

He noted that his intriguing aroma must be dissipating at least a little, if the diminished cloud of autumn yellowjackets buzzing around himself and his metal horse was anything to go by. He hoped that at this rate, he might be free of most of the smell by the time that he got to Horseshoe Bend.

Then he worked his way out of Boise, headed for the way north to Meridian, Horseshoe Bend, and then he'd be still hungry, but home-free all the way after that.

Craig thought about things and decided that with his stops for fuel, to get paid off, the low speed limit within the city of Boise, coupled with his rather careful passage of the forestry roads swarming with everything from arrogant skunks to love-sick elk, he was probably averaging only thirty miles an hour, overall.

He needed to pick up the pace, he decided. So he ditched the half-bottle of cola and started up again. He knew that his machine had a top speed five miles per hour faster than the Harley that it had been up against in the army competition way back when. He could make seventy miles an hour, assuming a clean, unloaded bike and probably a flyweight rider.

Well he figured that he had one part of the equation anyway, near enough. He tied everything down a little tighter and rode off, leaning forward to make what difference he could to the wind.

----------------------------

Amelia got what she'd wanted to do finished up and rather uncharacteristically for her, she decided on a late lunch as a bit if a treat since she was feeling a little peckish and it was even better for her because Rebecca was about to have hers as well, so they ate together.

"This is a heck of a way to go out for lunch," Amelia grinned, "by not going out, but I like it."

Rebecca nodded and they chatted about little to nothing for a few minutes before Rebecca looked over, "About last night,"

Amelia didn't know what might be coming so she tried to prepare herself. Her mother saw it and grinned a little, "Stop looking like you'll need to run for your life. I only wanted to say that ... well though I was nervous and felt a little strange, I came to like you there with us. Now it is a circle. I wanted to do more for you, but it was late enough already. I just want to say that it was something special, though I wanted to show you more."

Amelia smiled softly and reached out for Rebecca's arm, "It was very special thing for me too. For the first time in my life, I didn't feel like a dog's toy. I felt the love of you both and that's enough for me. It always has been, even without us doing something that nice."

Rebecca smiled and nodded as she ate and then she began to look a little thoughtful, "There is more, if you want to learn enough to ... I want to say 'impress', the girl, whoever she is and if it gets that far. It's the wrong word."

Amelia nodded, "I think I know what you mean."

"I saw her again, you know," her mother smiled, "Just as I was waking up and again, it was only a thin, quick look."

Amelia pushed her plate away and leaned forward with her chin on her crossed forearms "You have? Tell me what you can remember? Please? I want to know if this might turn into something for Tad. 

Who knows what he's had all this time or how lonely he's been, more likely. I don't know if that side of things could ever work for me at all. I think I'd be doing amazingly well if I can have Craig – well, if I can even kiss him right after all that time alone on that damn mountain. I bet he'd have one of his fits right there on the spot if I tried too hard."

She squeezed her mother's arm just a little, "Tell me?"

Rebecca's face turned a little serious as she thought back, trying to remember one of the things that might come to her and be gone so quickly that one might not know that it had been there at all.

"I saw her where she lives. She is very unhappy there. Most people there don't like her. No one does, really, because no one there wants to know her. She is used to that most times. 

She has no family – not like what you know for the word," Rebecca said quietly. "She had some people shouting at her as I saw her, but I don't know what was said. I know that she looked like the words hurt her as though they were whips – though she is the type who can hide it well – though not from my sight.

As I saw her, she was cold and wet to the skin from cold rain – and she was becoming frightened."

Rebecca stopped there and decided out loud that she wanted a cup of coffee and Amelia took the hint, almost jumping up to clear away the plates and cutlery. Then she was gone and back within a minute, loaded up with two steaming mugs of coffee and two pieces of apple-rhubarb pie with whipped cream on a serving tray.

"What the hell is this?" Marjorie asked in barely-masked and false outrage, as she appeared almost like magic.

But Amelia only smiled at her, "I'm paying for our lunches – AND the deserts, if you need to know."

"Well don't I get any?" the redhead asked, looking incredulous.

Amelia laughed, "Why do you think there's two pieces here? You know I don't like rhubarb. You'll just have to bring your own coffee over."

Marjorie laughed a little, "I think we should have rotated the kids out more when they were younger. They all catch on way too fast to me."

She was back in a minute, sliding in next to Amelia, "So, she's getting you to pay hoping that she'll tell you about seeing Miss Horseface again when she woke up? I wouldn't spend anything on that. I'd rather go see a gypsy woman, just sayin'."

Rebecca shrugged with a little smile, "Then you do that, Marjorie. Just make sure that you fill up the tank before you go. I'm sure that you'll be driving a long way to find just a woman who only TELLS you that she's a gypsy."

A customer sat down at a nearby table then and Marjorie got up to get her a menu, since she seemed to be looking for one, "Well, I'm sure that she'd at least have a crystal ball – unlike you."

It might have been intended to sound like a light-hearted rebuttal, but by the time that the words were on her lips, Rebecca's expression was more neutral. "You don't need a crystal ball, Marjorie. I can see just fine in only a little liquid – the darker the better. I can see – if there is anything TO see – using a cup of coffee if that is all that I have to use. 

It comes from the heart and the mind – not from what it used."

Marjorie smiled a little as she stepped away, "I know all that. I was just trying to get a rise out of you is all."

Amelia looked at her mug of black coffee, "Why didn't you ever teach me to do that? Is it 'cause I'm half-white?"

Rebecca nodded a little in a careful way, "Yes and no, and that's the wrong way to think about it for this. I wanted to teach you. Your heart is there, ready. But your mind ... your mind is like mine in many ways, but it is also like your father's. When you were a child it was even more like his – fast, especially when seeking something like an opportunity."

She raised her finger, "And that is a good thing, Amelia. But for this, you need to put that part in the back seat and use slower ... ways of seeing. You need to learn to let things come to you, and not demand that they do. Wait here a minute."

She left and Amelia looked at the surface of her coffee and after a shrug, she took a long sip from it before it got too much cooler.

Rebecca came back with a curious thing, a china bowl, coal-black and full of steaming hot water. Marjorie looked over as she passed and smiled, "Well, it's the last one. If you manage to teach her a little, Amelia can have that." 

She smiled at Amelia, "Old Polly gave me that – though she intended for it to be used for food."

Amelia looked at the bowl and she loved it immediately – even if this didn't work. There had been a ring of gilding right around the lip, but a lot of it was worn off now and the thing looked very old. Just inside of the lip maybe half an inch, a trio of gilded Chinese dragons chased each other's tails around the bowl.

Rebecca looked at the light fixture above the table and she moved the bowl a little. "Tell me if you can see just a little of the reflection of the inside of the lightshade up above – and not any part of the bulb at all."

Amelia looked and moved herself sideways just a bit and then she nodded.

"Look through the steam – and the steam is not the most important part. It only helps. Look at the surface, but not right at it. Let your sight see into the water at the same time. Maybe now, you are old enough to control which part of your mind is used. Tell me when it is right for you."

Amelia looked at the water for a few minutes, and gradually, she saw what her mother meant and she nodded, "Now, I think."

Rebecca sat down as carefully as she could so as not to put ripples into the water. "The one is a little taller than you. She has a good figure, but she is thicker than you as well, not fat ... solid.

She wears dark clothing and it is not fine. That one is a poor girl and she wears what might keep her warm on a cold wet day. I have seen her in a wool dress before, dark brown, almost black. Very plain."

She paused there while her daughter stared into the bowl. She thought that she saw something – someone, but the vision was intermittent, fading in and out as Amelia tried to control the way that she looked through the rising steam. It was hard to do. Very hard. 

And it didn't help things any when a large man squeaked his chair back from the table to get up and almost stomp toward the cash register to pay.

Tom Forbes was just a large man and that was just the way that he walked, but Amelia didn't need any of it right then.

"The one's hair is blacker than that bowl and it shines more than mine," Rebecca said, "since she is only months younger than you – two months, I think. She has had a hard life, but she would say that she is not usually as unhappy as she is now. Something has happened to her lately, only days ago. Mostly, what she feels now is hopelessness, some despair and she regrets her actions – because she has been betrayed."

Amelia kept staring, seeing someone now more than something, but it was more of a shape than anything else.

"Her eyes," Rebecca said, "There is a stone which Polly said is valued in China. It is green and not clear."

"Jade?" Amelia asked in a whispered far-away tone as she thought that she saw something more definite.

Rebecca nodded, but said nothing for the moment. Amelia wasn't looking at her at all, but she knew that her mother had nodded – and she knew it as a certainty. She tried not to be surprised, not wanting to upset things at the moment.

"Her eyes are like that stone, though a dark shade of it. She can look with them to see when her mind questions something or someone. 

She can look – in her eyes – like I can – like you can, Amelia. It makes people nervous."

Amelia gasped almost silently, seeing those eyes almost clearly for an instant.

She gasped again, a little louder this time as more came to her mind, "I see her, I think. She's ... she's very ..."

Rebecca nodded again, "Very not like a horse."

"No," Amelia nodded as much as she dared to, "Her skin ..."

"There lies my trouble," Rebecca whispered, "Her face says one thing, her skin another, though a little of her face fits the skin. It tells me something, but ... 

Inside her ... it is another thing."

Amelia watched, hardly daring to breathe, but in a little while, what she saw faded and she saw the underside of the lamp shade once more.

"I don't think that I've seen anyone ever who looked like that," she said as she looked up. She reached for her mug and sipped a little. "And Jesus, that girl sure isn't ugly. But what the heck is she?"

"And where is she? It looked to me like she was packing a worn-out suitcase or something, but then it was gone. And I could see that she's poor and it made me sad for her. I don't know how I know it, but she has twenty-seven bucks to her name. She'd have more, but her mother drinks it as fast as she can save it.

And wait a minute," Amelia said as she looked back into the bowl, though she saw nothing this time, "Who's Polly?"

"An old Chinese woman," Marjorie smiled from next to Rebecca this time, "She was a friend to my parents - and to me, I'd have to say a little proudly. The last time that I saw her, she was almost seventy and hopelessly in love with Tad, who was just a toddler then. That was back in Warren – and it's a ghost town now. Not one single living soul."

Amelia's mouth began to fall open, "A Chinese woman – in Idaho ... Tad told me once that Warren was a mining town."

"It was. I was born there," Marjorie nodded, "and Polly was smuggled into the country to be a slave girl to a rich Chinese man in San Francisco. But she ran away and made her living as a whore when she had to and she ended up there, deliriously happily married to a miner. That's all gone now and Polly's long dead. Tad rode back there while he was hunting alone one time and when he knew where he was, he looked around and found old Polly's gravestone. She died at eighty-one.

And she gave me that bowl. It's yours now if you think that it's good for something. It was part of a set of four, but over time, the rest all broke."

She sat back and saw Rebecca's slightly cautious look, "Don't worry. If that's the one who shows up here, I won't hate her just because. I'll admit that I might have been a little inclined to be that way, but I heard the part about her being poor and in a bad way. She gets points from me just for that just as Rosa did when she showed up here. I know how it feels to have nothing, the same as you, Rebecca.

And I don't care what kind of skin she has."

Marjorie sipped her own coffee and sat back with a grin for a moment before she heaved a very exaggerated sigh, "So she's not ugly, huh?"

Amelia was just finishing her coffee and she set the mug back down. She didn't say anything at first. She just shook her head.

"I don't think I can imagine anyone more lovely, though her skin is what gives a lot of people some trouble."

"A lot of people are idiots," Marjorie nodded.

"Especially where she is," Rebecca agreed, "She does not live in a very good part of that place – wherever it is."

"So," Marjorie smiled over at Amelia, "Is she good enough for you to look at?"

"The more that I think about it," Amelia said, "The more that I doubt that I could ever make my fantasy work." 

She sighed, silently deciding that she'd like to be alone - with another cup of Marjorie's coffee, "I'm almost of the mind that if it turns into something between that girl and Tad, well I think that I could get to like her. She might be poor and she might not have alabaster skin but –"

'Alabaster skin?" Marjorie echoed, tilting her head at the turn of phrase.

"Aw jeepers," Amelia moaned as dramatically as possible, "I'll quit reading those novels, alright?"

Some time later, Amelia sat at her table with Rosa, sipping her last coffee of the day and admiring her bowl, so pleased just to have a treasure like that, never mind that she'd been successful at something that her mother just called seeing and that European people – mostly the kind known as witches, called scrying.

She was almost sure now that she could like the mystery girl just because, and she turned the now-empty and carefully dried bowl over to stare at the Chinese characters there in the maker's mark, wondering how far that bowl had traveled in it's time.

"I really like that look on your face, "Rosa whispered as she reached for Amelia's hand to hold under the table, "I see you getting better so fast now. I almost can't believe the change in you."

She leaned against Amelia just a little, "When I first got here, you helped me a lot to get settled and you became the best friend that I've ever had. Then Bobby tore you up so bad and ever since, I've been trying to get you to feel better.

You're not the same as me," she said, "I see you coming back and it's because of Craig. I don't want guys around me much, but now I want to get to know him better just because of this. I knew he was a great guy before just from watching as he tried to help you too."

She chuckled, "Of course, I'd be happy just to make and keep a friend who's male, but I've never met any since I've been on my own who are worth more than a dirty thought – that I'd never turn into anything more."

She finished her coffee and moved to get up, "Don't worry too much about Marjorie's rabbits. If you're not up til late tomorrow morning, I'll load up and cover for you until you show up. I promise not to scare them off."

Amelia thanked Rosa and they smiled at each other, "And thanks for holding my hand the way we used to."

When Rosa walked away, Amelia picked up the bowl to look at it again for a minute.

Then she set it down very carefully and thought about Craig once more.

---------------------------------

Kansas, 20 September, 1946

The place was living up to it's legend today, she thought.

Dodge City, Kansas has always had the reputation for being the windiest town in the United States. 

Emmy-Lyn Parker knew this. She could cite the figures that said that the mean windspeed at any given time on any given day was just less than 14 miles per hour. The place was prone to blizzards in the winter and for thirteen days a year on average when the ambient temperature reached 100 Fahrenheit or higher during the summer, well, it wasn't exactly the nicest place to be – given all of the cattle yards around. 

Oh, and if there was a cold front then within about a hundred miles and heading in, it was also a little famous for its tornadoes. They could blow you right out of Kansas if you were a girl with the right sort of shoes.

Right now, it was autumn, and that meant shitty weather a lot of the time, drizzling rain – when it wasn't pouring – and when the sun did choose to peek out of the heavy clouds, well ...

It didn't make you feel very warm at all.

Emmy-Lyn was nobody in Dodge City, Kansas. She came from a long line of nobodies. The word was that she was descended from one of the thousands of whores who'd come to Dodge City back when it had been one of the wildest towns on the western frontier. Of course, statistically to Emmy-Lyn, there was a better than even chance that a lot of the stupid bunch who'd shouted at her over the last week came from the same stock.

If she was in fact the great-great- granddaughter of a whore, it was her preference to want to believe that her unknown relation had been working at the famous China Doll, which was about the epitome of the many, many brothels here back then. It was only small comfort right now, but to her mind the forebears of these self-proclaimed toughs had probably made their livings on their backs lying in between cattle troughs.




By Air Mail Ch.03



And of course to most of the folks around town back then, that was the good part of her background.

Her mother was trash and her father ...

She'd only had her father in her life for a couple of years at most, an interlude which most might find strange, but to Emmy, a lot of it had been profound. She'd never seen her parents together in one place and she'd always had such trouble even imagining it. 

As far as Emmy knew, her mother had been out on the street and needing to do something to get some money after all, and the one whose seed had taken had been the man that she'd liked the most, but it didn't last long before he figured out that he didn't want a crude, loud bitch in his life for very long.

That was the surmisal that Emmy used herself a lot of the time, though she knew that it wasn't correct. From knowing what she did about both of the individuals involved, her mother had likely driven her father out with her almost constant and usually mean-spirited shrilling.

What she'd learned of it years later was something that still haunted Emmy to this day.

But Emmy-Lyn bore the signs of that ancestry as well. Her eyes might be a thoughtful and subdued jade color, but her long, shining, coal-black hair and a few of her facial features along with the color of her skin said all that needed saying.

Yessir, cattleyards, all kinds of bars and saloons, a shit-ton of gunslingers roaming it's streets working on BOTH sides of the law oftentimes, gunfights, knifings and Longhorn fever. What a place.

And that had been the high point, long ago.

Who couldn't want to come here eighty years ago? Who wouldn't want to grow up and live right here?

Emmy-Lyn was trying to leave it. 

And she had more than a few good reasons to want to.

About all that she might have been truly guilty of was being in possession of a set of slightly confused hormones to her mind, a little curiosity, and far too much trust in an old schoolyard friend.

Well, those things hadn't happened all at once.

She was barely twenty-one now, but back when she was nine, she'd met Janey Carver, just moved in from Wichita, since her father worked for the railroad. Janey had been shy and unsettled and had been picked on a lot by the other kids at school.

Emmy-Lyn was nobody – even back then, but she didn't see it as right. So she's stood up for Janey many times until the bullies finally figured out that it was just easier to leave her alone. But they had long memories and now that they were all pretty much grown, Emmy-Lyn no longer possessed the edge that she'd had back then. She'd been able to put up with the garbage, for the most part anyway.

But starting a friendship with Janey hadn't been top of mind to her especially back then. It had been Janey who'd begun that and after a little time, Emmy-Lyn found her existence as a loner and an independent one at that overtaken by Janey's persistent offerings of friendship.

It got her a few visits to the Carver home and there, Emmy-Lyn grew to know how the better folks lived. At least the ones a few levels above her family in the pecking order around this shit heap.

Emmy-Lyn wasn't a beauty and never had been, to her mind. She dressed in clothing that would stand up and wasn't necessarily made to compliment her looks. People in her class tended not to own the finer things. As a kid, she'd been a bit chunky and that was still on her to a degree – though Emmy-Lyn herself could see that it was fading slowly, now that she was staring adulthood in the eye. She just wondered how far that would go before the rest of her blood drew the line.

There'd been a few birthday party visits and due to the distance separating their homes ...

Well, it might be more accurate to say that stepping across the wide gap in class structure separating Janey's pristine life as the daughter of a railway section superintendent and Emmy-Lyn's much poorer way of life wasn't a trip that even Janey's father was willing to make well after dark. And there was nobody coming at all to walk Emmy-Lyn home. There never had been.

Emmy-Lyn had never known much about her father until she'd turned twelve and he was out of her life by the time that she was thirteen and a half. Her mother – when she worked – was a rather alcoholic short-order cook and waitress in a working man's diner on the other side of the many, many tracks. The rest of the time, her mother – when she wasn't working – was just a drunk.

Over time, and as the two girls grew older, it had been Janey who had professed a desire in her for Emmy in ways which had surprised the hell out of the taller girl. And by the time that they'd gotten out of high school, Emmy-Lyn Parker was in the love of her life.

She might have been confused as hell about it until she came to accept it for the way that it felt to her heart, but that had been the first love of her life.

But girls from families even a little better off never think of things like that as they begin to think that it was getting to the time when a girl finds herself a young man. With a little help, it had happened and Janey was engaged, just after the end of the war and now that the economy was ready to boom without the drain of the war effort dragging it down any longer.

The boy worked for the railroad too, thanks to Janey's father and his future as well as Janey's looked rather bright indeed.

It had bothered Emmy-Lyn, sure, but what do a pair of girls from a cow town in the middle of nowhere do? What sort of opportunities are there then? None that either one of them could see for damn sure.

The second blow to Emmy-Lyn's heart had come when she'd proposed leaving Dodge City together and Janey had refused – which, no matter how Emmy-Lyn looked at it, was Janey choosing life with someone else over love with her.

That led to a long period of darkness for Emmy-Lyn Parker.

She'd withdrawn and was just getting over it when she'd run into Janey one day.

Emmy-Lyn hadn't known of Janey's impending wedding the next weekend and Janey hadn't said a word. She'd acted like they could be together again, though she'd been a little foggy about just how.

They'd ended up going for a walk out in a vacant field full of scrub brush out behind Janey's house and well, one thing led to another , since they hadn't seen each other in a while and Emmy-Lyn had just been so relieved and happy and ...

They'd been caught by Janey's younger sister who'd been sent to bring her older sibling back so that they could leave for the wedding rehearsal if she got changed right then.

The sister had come along with their eighteen year-old weasel-faced cousin and ...

Janey had instantly made it all Emmy-Lyn's doing, as though none of it had been her idea at all.

Emmy-Lyn could remember standing in shock and a considerable amount of hurt as Janey had accused her directly when the whole thing had turned into a screaming match.

Now, Emmy-Lyn's own mother wouldn't even speak to her and - not that she'd ever had much of a reputation in Dodge City before that point or anything.

But she sure had one now. The things that she'd been called and ...

The only thing they hadn't accused her of was molesting the kitchen sink.

She'd gotten out her small amount of money; all that she'd saved over her life thus far and been able to hide from her alcoholic mother. It was a little more than what she'd had when she'd suggested leaving town to Janey.

Now, she supposed, it might get her a little farther away. Maybe twice as far.

So with a small suitcase filled with a very few clothes and things, she'd been trying to get to the train station, hoping against hope that Janey's father or her beau wouldn't see her. She'd thought to go about as far as a train ticket might get her and then try to ride her thumb, which wasn't a thrilling prospect either.

But it was all that she could think of.

She'd gotten to the near side of Wright Park and could see the station, already wet to the skin from a sudden cold downpour which she took as Dodge City's send-off to one of it's lesser daughters when she'd been set upon by this bunch of quarter-wits, who were shouting and threatening her.

They'd tried to pull her grip out of her hand and she'd already been kicked a few times. Janey's cousin had some friends just as dim-witted as he was apparently.

Emmy-Lyn could handle herself most times and she wasn't either terribly small or weak, but she had to defend her suitcase because they kept trying to get it away from her and so she was limited in what she could do. She wanted to swing it as a defensive weapon, but the handle was on the verge of giving up and one of the latches was already iffy to start with.

Things were about at their lowest for Emmy-Lyn by then and in spite of herself, she was almost in tears. She'd never in her life thought of herself as what they were yelling at her. The truth be told, it had been Janey leading her descent into whatever it had been. Emmy-Lyn sure hadn't had the imagination for a lot of those things. 

She'd just been hit with a fist against her cheek and it had rattled her pretty badly, more so because the way that it looked to her now, it had been the crossing of a barrier and she feared – with good reason as far as she could tell – being on the receiving end of a beating at the hands of six young pricks. Janey's cousin stepped up to get his licks in for all sorts of reasons which made no sense as he almost screamed them out at her. In fact, the thin little bastard did hit her once and drew his fist back again.

And then he was gone.

He was reeling and falling over into the rain-slicked grass holding his face. At that point, he instantly reverted to more of a boy for the way that he sounded and he began to cry as he found two teeth loose in his bloodied mouth.

The biggest one who had connected with Emmy's cheek was shocked to find a gloved hand clamped down on his shoulder. He winced as that hand closed like a bear trap, taking secure hold of his jacket, his shirt and even his skin very painfully before he could think to try to squirm away.

He looked and saw that the grip of that hand was so tight that rainwater was being squeezed out of the wet leather of the glove. No wonder that he had trouble drawing a breath for the pain. 

He had the chance at a look under the brim of a dripping Stetson hat and the cold, steel-gray eyes that he saw there frightened him; the thriil of that sudden fear leaping right through his body like an electric shock.

Emmy-Lyn watched as he was hit twice, fast as anything – once in the gut fit to lift him onto his toes and once with a vicious right cross that spun him around pretty good to land on his face already beginning to puke.

"You should run," a low and deadly-calm voice came to him out of the rain.

The rest stood in shock and were taking a step back from somebody. Emmy-Lyn tried for a good look at him and saw a man there that she didn't recognize, even sure after a moment that she'd never seen him before. 

He wore a long cattleman's coat, the sort that very few men now wore – except the odd cattleman on a shitty fall day as he rode herd into town the way that it was still done a little by some groups who drove their herds up from the south to sell into the stockyards. But she didn't see those things behind him, no cattle and no horse. Just an old Ford farm truck fifty feet away.

He wore a dark Stetson pulled down low against the rain and she could only make out the line of his strong jaw and the twinkling of a few day's growth of blonde stubble on his chin and cheek.

He told the others to leave while they could and then he stepped over to Emmy-Lyn.

She looked up at the gloved hand, as dark and wet as everything else on him, "Take my hand, Miss. I'll get you out of here, but we have to go now."

Emmy-Lyn was hurt emotionally as well as physically. She was shaken and afraid, confused, and flat-out struggling now. 

But she took his hand.

As he helped her up, the other goons had gotten over their shock and were regrouping if it could be called anything like that, though the stranger didn't appear to be bothered by it very much. To him, they were just clumping together in uncertainty – which is what it was, of course.

As he straightened up to help Emmy-Lyn onto her feet, his long coat fell back on his right side and the boys who could stared and took off running. They left their companions where they'd fallen.

Emmy-Lyn wanted to look up into his face to at least thank him, but she'd seen their expressions and the direction that they'd been looking so her eye slid along only about halfway up on him and stopped. 

Not that she knew all that much about it, but to Emmy-Lyn's mind, Dodge City couldn't exactly be easily confused with any place that might have been termed a cultural center. Even so, not many men there walked around with a six-gun strapped to their legs.

Not in this day and age, anyway.

He looked down and then back up. The upper part of his face was still hidden by his hat, but she could see the frown all the same. "Now I've got even more of a want to leave this shitpile," he said in a low and even tone. 

He pointed at the old Ford truck idling nearby, "Where are you going? I can maybe give you a lift if it's not too far – that is, if you're alright. I saw a couple of them clip you, so I stopped."

He sighed, "I was already trying to stop as it was. I couldn't think of a single good reason for a pile of assholes to be threatening a girl like what they were doing to you."

Emmy looked over her shoulder, "I was tryin' to get to the station so I could buy a ticket and get out of town. But I can see the stationmaster from here and those guys are already heading over to him."

"More reason to go now," the stranger said, "Come on if you want a ride. I can't stick around here much longer. Train stations have telephones and even this place just has to have some kind of cops."

Emmy picked up her small suitcase and began to walk with him. It wasn't as easy as it might have seemed at first glance. Emmy had a pair of legs on her, but he was some lean and tall. And he walked with long strides.

"Why are you carrying a gun?" she asked.

He shrugged, "It's not the kind of thing that I can exactly leave lying around loose, so I took it with me. It's illegal to carry in a lot of places a lot prouder than this one pretends to be, but I don't know if it is here. Put your bag in the cab on the floor if you can see a spot for it and get in."

She nodded and as he got the old truck into gear and began to drive off, she asked him where he was going.

The cowboy smiled a little, "That's what I was gonna ask you. 

Can you think of a place you'd want to go? I'd kind of appreciate it if you could decide a little quick. I was headed out of town on that road there. It leads to the airfield. That's where I'm headed."

Emmy looked over and saw that he had a handsome face, half-hidden under his hat and inside the turned-up collar and ... well, this wasn't maybe the best place to be in, looking at a man that she didn't know from Adam – who carried a gun, she reminded herself.

"I just have to get out of town, but the train's off the list for sure now and without being able to buy a ticket to somewhere, I don't have any other way out of here besides my feet," she said, "And not that it makes much of a difference anymore, but I'm soaked."

He nodded, "If you go on foot – even if it doesn't rain a drop anymore today, which I kind of doubt, you'll be freezing cold in about a half-hour or less. Well, if you want, I'm headed out of town too. But you oughta know that I'm not coming back for a good long while – if ever, now. Why do you want to buy a ticket at all? You could catch a freight from here. They don't pick up much speed until they're out of town."

"I've lived here all my life," she said, "I've seen what's left of the hobos that the railway cops drag in – and those are only the ones that they didn't beat half to death first and then throw them off the train - and they don't exactly stop for that.

Try to think of the fun that they'd have with me. Nobody even listens to me over the way that I look – and that was before."

"Before what?" he asked her.

Emmy-Lyn just shook her head, "Never mind. Just leave it alone."

She sighed, "Where are you headed, Mister? I don't know which way to go. I just want to get away from here. Right now, I can say that I've never been anywhere, but if it's the name of a town where they don't hate me and I can get a job, then Anywhere, USA sounds just fine to me."

He smiled thinly as he tried to peer through a sudden downpour that overwhelmed the single windshield wiper on the old farm truck, "I'm headed west and then north. You can come along if you want to and you think you can trust me a little. But I have to tell you, if you do decide to come along, the next place that you'll even have a chance to start walking will be Pueblo."

Emmy-Lyn blinked at him for a moment, "You mean Pueblo, Colorado?"

He nodded, "You know of another place with that name? I want to get to the field and if you wouldn't mind, I'd like it if you could give me a hand to get the things from the back of the truck into my plane. 

Emmy-Lyn almost gaped, "Your plane?"

He nodded, "Yeah. I have to return the truck then. It's only borrowed, but it's only a hundred yards or so from the plane. After that I'm gone – with or without you, uh ...

You've got a name, don't you?"

She'd been looking out of the windshield in shock over what he'd said about an airplane. She'd seen aircraft lots of times up in the sky, but she'd never met anyone who could fly one. That made them like unmanned things to her – at least a little.

When she looked, he was smiling at her, "Well?"

"Emily," she said.

He accepted that, but only for a moment, "Just Emily?"

"No," she shook her head with an impatient expression, "Not just Emily. My name's Emily-Lyn Parker – sometimes, and Emily-Lyn Looking Cloud some others, since you're so nosy."

"Which one am I supposed to know you as?" He asked, "Which one do you want me to use for you?"

"It depends," she said looking upwards and a little sideways at him, "A lot of people treat me a certain way if they hear one. A few treat me a little better if they hear the other one, depending."

She touched her cheek a little gingerly over her cheekbone where she'd been hit the hardest. She asked herself who she thought she was kidding. Most people took one look and ...

They always had.

"I'm sorry," she said quietly, "You can take your pick if you like. My momma gave me Parker. The other one is my father's. Use whatever one you want."

He was silent for a few seconds, "Was your birth registered?"

She nodded, "Momma told them to use Parker. I only found out about my other name later. My mother's name doesn't get me spit, most often. I don't use Looking Cloud much, but it makes me think of my father when I do and it feels good to me." She looked at her feet for a moment, "Sometimes that one gets me spit at."

Have YOU got a name, Mister?"

He almost laughed, but he nodded, "Thaddeus Quinton Fairbairn if you please, Miss Emily-Lyn Looking Cloud Parker – and I really like your name." 

She looked startled, "You do? Whydja put it together that way?"

He shrugged, "Parker is your registered name. I like Looking Cloud better myself, but you seem reluctant to push it out far enough to let yourself be known by it. I don't care all that much, Emily. I was just curious. And I put it together that way only because it sounds nicer to me that way, more powerful and I like the way that it rolls off my tongue. You might want to keep it that way, you know."

She didn't know whether to laugh or what. She cranked her head around, "Thaddeus? Did you say –"




By Air Mail Ch.03



He nodded, "Tad to my friends. But you won't get on that list if you even snicker. You won't even get on the plane out of here if you laugh right now."

Emmy-Lyn sat looking out of the window and doing her level best not to laugh her head off – just because he'd said it that way.

"What the hell kind of ten-dollar last name is that you've got?" she asked.

"Gaelic, or partway there," he smiled. After seeing her expression, he said, "A kind of Scottish with some Irish thrown in."

"I'll bet," she said, "Is it s'posed to mean something?"

He nodded, "As a literal translation, it means 'beautiful baby'.

"Do tell," she said, trying to keep her face at a slightly bemused expression. 

"Can I call you Quinton?" she asked with her smile covered by her hand as she pretended to look out of the window some more.

"I think you'd better," he sighed as he drove, "It 'll probably save you from having to walk in the rain."

"What are you doing in this dump?" she asked after almost a minute.

"Business," he said enigmatically.

Emmy-Lyn forgot about his name for a moment, "Business? What the hell kind of business? 

Look, you offered me a lift. I ain't never been up in an airplane before. I've never been to the airfield, either. All's I know is what I can see from the main road and that's nothing but high grass.

And you're wearing a gun, you know.

You won't tell me what you're doing here, but for what you call 'business', and I need to know a bit more before I go with you, ok? How do I know what you'll do to me once you get me out of sight of the road?"

He frowned then and looked out of the window for a moment before he turned. "I understand your uh, concern, Emily. But it's raining fit to beat the band. 

You think what you said is at the top of my list in the cold, pouring rain? You think I got it that hard just to get laid?"

He shook his head, "I'm pretty sure that I can do better than hurting a girl in the rain. And just so you know, I don't DO that with anyone who isn't at least willing."

Or getting paid for it, he admitted to himself silently in his thoughts. Where he'd been the past few years, there hadn't exactly been many chances for romance. The best that he'd done was a little fucking with a few nurses and those times hadn't exactly happened more than once in a blue moon, either. Other than that, he'd had whores twice. 

You just had to close your eyes and imagine that they were nurses.

He began to slow down, looking for a place to pull over next to the road and still be a little clear of the ditch so that she wouldn't fall into it as she got out. 

"Here's your stop if you want to get out."

"Drive," Emmy-Lyn said flatly, "Please.

I was just asking. If I gotta fly out of this hole, then I guess I'll just have to learn to keep my big mouth shut. I've got twenty-seven bucks and change. It's all that I've ever been able to save in my life so far. Will that be good enough to take me to Pueblo?"

He downshifted and began to accelerate once more. He shook his head, "You don't have to pay me a thing. I'm going there anyway. And I'm sorry."

Emmy was looking out of the window at the tall green wall of grass going by through the rain-streaked glass, "I'm sorry too, Quinton."

She looked over, "Thank you for what you did for me. 

You helped me back there and I'm pretty sure that not even the cops would have, so I'm sorry for saying what I did and I'm sorry that I didn't say thank you sooner. I'm a little upset."

"I can see that," he said.

"Look, let's just forget it. I'll take you with me at least as far as Pueblo for nothing. We'll have some time to talk and I'll tell you whatever you want to know then. Would that be alright?"

Emmy-Lyn smiled in a careful way and she nodded, "It's a deal then."

"I just need to know one thing," he said, looking very uncomfortable, "and I'm real sorry that I even have to ask, but ... well, how old are you, Emily? 

I have to know, because if you're underage, then taking you anywhere could be thought of as kidnapping by the same cops who you said wouldn't help you. Between here and Pueblo there's a state line. Kidnapping a minor and taking them across a state line is a federal offense, so ..."

There was silence for a moment as Emmy-Lyn looked out of the window again. Quinton heard something, but she'd mumbled it.

"Pardon me, Emily," he said, "but –"

She turned her head, "I said twenty-one, though I haven't exactly got any papers or nuthin' to prove it. You're not gonna leave me here, are you?"

He shook his head, "No, that'll be good enough, I reckon."

He sighed to himself, "It'll have to be. Now that I've been thinking about it, I don't think that I could just leave you here anyway. You haven't told me why exactly, but I can see that you're a little hell-bent to leave.

It makes me want to know why – not out of being nosy, but it's two hundred and fifty miles between here and Pueblo, Colorado. At the speed that my plane flies, that'll take us a little less than two hours at an easy cruise.

If you tell me your story while we're on the way, well, I'll tell you about anything that you'd ever want to know about me and my 'business'."

Emmy-Lyn didn't answer right away. They'd come around a big left bend in the main road and were off on a thin rut in between solid walls of grass then as he turned off.

"Ok," she nodded, "but you gotta stop calling me Emily, if you wouldn't mind too much. I think I'd prefer just Emmy ".

He nodded smiling, "Done. Then you can call me Tad, if you like."

"So ..." she began with a smile, "I made the list?"

He nodded and for some reason, Emmy liked how it felt.

But she still decided to call him Quinton.

Then the walls of grass parted and even through the streaked windshield, she stared. The rain stopped as abruptly as it had begun. 

Emmy was staring at the airplanes.

There weren't all that many, maybe only a dozen or less. But if you've never really seen one sitting on the ground before...

He drove along the flightline – which was a little easy, since there were no aircraft there which were running at the time.

"What's in the back?" she asked and when he looked over, she hooked her thumb back over her shoulder.

He shrugged, "Clothes – some anyway, blankets, sleeping bags, some food, something to drink, a medical kit, some flashlights with a box of batteries and right there under your feet are some flares in a waterproof package – I hope. A lot of it is army surplus and it's in good shape. You never know when you might need stuff like that in my business."

She threw up her hands, "There you go with your business again. "

She peered at him for a moment, "You ain't a spy are you?

'Cause if you are, you gotta be the dumbest one in the world to want to find out anything here. It's all assholes and cowshit for as far as you can see.

Anyway, all that stuff's probably pretty well ruined now, in this rain," she guessed, but he shook his head, still chuckling over what she'd said and the way that it had come out of her, "Most of it is in two footlockers, I packed them myself and I tied the tarp pretty good too. I think it'll be alright."

He pulled up at a rather large plane – to Emmy's way of thinking, where he got out and stepped over to pull out a pair of pins which allowed him to open the single door twice as wide.

"Get in, Emmy," he smiled as he picked up her suitcase, "Your chariot awaits and I need you to take what I hand you and set it inside in at least a little order. We'll set it right later, but first, I want to get everything out of the rain before it starts again."

She nodded and got out to step up with his help. The tail of the plane was lower than the front, so the floor tilted at a strange angle to her and it took some getting used to. She was amazed to be actually standing inside of an aircraft. Most of the ones that she'd ever seen, you sat in them looking out over the top.

The interior of the thing was a sight in itself. Everywhere that she could see, it was covered by a kind of darkish-green quilted cloth, like it was a little padded or something. She set her grip aside and began to help him. 

He handed her a knapsack, "Be really careful with this, alright? Don't drop it or bang it, whatever you do."

Emmy reached out and took the weight of it carefully, "What's in it? Is it a bomb or something?"

He stopped and stared at her for a moment.

"Sandwiches and two thermos bottles of black coffee."

She apologized for the remark and it only took a minute or two for the rest, though she had to jump out and help him with the large ones since they were heavy and then he closed the wide part of the door and replaced the pins.

"I'll leave this open for now," he said, "but if it starts to pour again, close it until I get back."

She nodded and he was back in the truck and gone.

The wait for him to return seemed to take about a half-hour, but Emmy knew that it had been only about seven minutes before she saw him come trotting back through the rain which had started again. It was near to teeming down and she held the door almost closed as he'd asked. Even so, she wondered about him. The sky just peed down and still he came on, doing little to prevent getting more wet than just holding the brim of his Stetson. Emmy's jaw almost opened of it's own accord.

A crummy day turned worse, and he somehow managed to look more at ease and comfortable as he came on ... He wasn't even grimacing. Not that he was exactly smiling, she told herself before she told the more female part of her mind to just park and wait before she developed an interest or something stupid like that.

"What took you so long?" she asked.

He shrugged," I had to file a flight plan of some sort and I wanted to see what I could find out about the weather, the way that we're gonna be headed."

She tried not to stare, "But I'da thought that we'd be staying somewhere here for the night. You can't fly in this, can you, Quinton?"

He grinned and nodded, "I can and I will. They're not reporting anything too bad up ahead of us, but we gotta leave within a half an hour – minus about three minutes of me running back. I've flown in some shitstorms, I can tell you, though not in this aircraft, though this'll handle it. This here is nothing and there's no worse in the reports up ahead. We can do this standing on our heads."

Emmy looked down and lifted a handful of her wet dress a little, "Yeah well, I'd like it if you could avoid us having to do that if you please, Quinton."

"Of course, Emmy," He smiled, "It's only a figure of speech."They got to work with the rest. They only needed about five minutes to square everything away before Emmy started looking around. "Is there a washroom in here?"

"What do you need to do?" he asked, "Just pee, or ..."

He rolled his eyes at that point, "There's a reason why I'm asking. This isn't an airliner. 

If you just gotta pee, you can run around to the other side of the plane and do it under the wing – or I can take you to the washroom in the tower if that's not it. While we're on the ground, you can't even pee inside, though there is a way once we're airborne."

Emmy was a little stuck, but then she made her admission and he closed up after them and led her to the single tallest building in sight. She was somewhat embarrassed.

"Don't worry about it, he said, "That's how I got here earlier today. I only came from over Witchita way."

She looked at him, "But ... that's not that far for a plane is it? Its' only about a hundred –"

He nodded, "I know, about an hour, but when you gotta go ... 

There's no way to do that if I'm alone while I'm flying and like you, I uh ... I had to make a deposit."

Emmy wrinkled her nose, but she felt a little better if she could do what she needed now and not have to worry about asking him to ...

"Glad it's now," he smiled, "Once we're up, we keep flying until we get there."

Emmy's eyes widened but she said nothing.

When she stepped out of the washroom, she found him just coming back. "I got a fresher weather report while you were busy and re-filed our plan."

Back inside the plane, he took off his Stetson as well as his long coat and hung them up. Emmy looked around. There were five single leather-covered seats spread out over the length of the interior. 

"Where do you want me to sit?" She was having a little trouble trying not to look at him.

Quinton was – to Emmy and probably most women who possessed a living heart and the will to listen to it at least a little bit – he was strikingly attractive, she thought.

He motioned her forward, "Over here. Are your clothes still really wet?"

Emmy checked with her palm, "Kinda damp, mostly. Why?"

She was still having trouble not staring at him. Tall, fairly rugged-looking, blonde ...

And drop-dead gorgeous.

Damp, she thought.

Sure.

She'd been forced to her knees at the end of her struggle with her tormenters, but before that, she'd fallen twice and gotten back up quickly in the rain but the thick, wet grass had soaked her right through and the pouring rain had gotten through her thin cloth coat. She was still soaked through and trying to force herself not to shiver.

He grabbed a large blanket and laid it over the seat that he'd pointed to, "Because I've just had most of these seats re-covered. This one is covered with canvas, so I'd rather that it didn't get too wet." He looked away in thought for a moment.

She looked away too in the other direction, just to trying to give her head something of a figurative shake. This was stupid, she thought as she forced her first impressions down. There were all kinds of things coming up in her. Her treatment at the hands of others very recently for one thing, and the way that she'd been treated by many others over all of her life to this point, for another. 

The hurt that she still felt over what Janey had said and the downright cruel things that she'd been called ... 

No male, man nor boy, had ever given her the time of day out of kindness other than her father.

"Look Emmy," he began, unknowingly tearing her attention out of her thoughts, "It's a little clear to me that you don't have much going for you right now. What are you gonna do when you get far enough away from Dodge City? Have you thought about that yet?"

She nodded with a bit of a shrug, "That's when the hard part starts," she said, "I'd need to find a job and a place to live, and before the last of my money runs out, if I'm really lucky." She looked down, "That part, where I run out of money ought to take about at least eighteen minutes, I reckon."

"What are you good at?" he asked.

"I can cook and do pretty much any kind of work," she said. 

"I ain't afraid of work, Quinton. I was scared to death of the kind of work that my mother does when she's sober enough for it. She's a cook in a lousy place to be that. I didn't want to work there for anything."

She looked down with a slightly angry expression, "Only I couldn't find much work in Dodge City. People there take one look at me and decide that I'm not what they want. People decide they know all about me with just one look a lot of the time."

He looked at her a little searchingly, "Can you read? Can you do fairly simple sums in your head?"

Emmy looked at him like he was nuts, "Yeah I can read, and ... I guess so, why?"

"My business," he said, "I'm going to need help – and you need a job. You can start working for me right on the next flight when we leave to head north. "I'll pay you ..."

He stood thinking about it and working things out in his head for a moment, "I'll pay you seven-fifty a day to start because I'm just starting out myself. You have from now until I leave Pueblo to decide. You'll have to be able to fly along with me and I can already see that you can probably do the work. I'll teach you about everything that you'd need to know."

Emmy stared at him, just trying to digest what he was saying. "What do I have to do?"

He chuckled a little, "A little bit of everything, just like me. And I won't ask you to cook, either."

She looked at him a little carefully, "You mean work for you – in here?"

He shook his head, "Only a little and only sometimes at first. Mostly, the work is when we're on the ground helping me. Same thing happens at the other end. You'll help me load and unload. In the air, mostly, you'll just be here for the ride."

"But what about ... I've heard from some people that you can get airsick in the sky," she said, "I knew a girl whose little sister went up for a sightseeing ride at the fair one time. She was sick all over her dress, herself, the inside of the plane and everything."

He shrugged, "That's the job. I'd say that it's about like any job, you can get used to it if you try hard. It might not happen to you at all. Don't decide yet. Get a bit of air time under your belt first on this trip."

Emmy grinned at him, "For seven dollars and fifty cents a day, Quinton. I accept right now."

He looked at her a little hard, "Are you sure? We haven't even taken off yet."

She raised her hand, "I won't do nothing that's against the law and nothing ... dirty between you and me, right?"

He looked a little sad then. "You wound me, Miss Emmy."

She shook her head. "I'm not saying that I'd think that you'd try anything," she said a little apologetically, "I don't mean to insult you or anything like that, Quinton. I just wanted to get it said."

She looked at him a little curiously, hoping that she hadn't said the wrong thing out of wanting to get it straight and ... 

He was smiling just a little bit.

DAMN him, she thought.

"I know," he said, the little smile turning into a grin, "I'm sorry, I just couldn't help it. You're a little .. I dunno, sweet-looking when you're so serious and laying down the law and like that."

"You can go sit on a cowpie," she said.

AND it made him laugh. GOD damn him.

He let it hang there and he didn't have long to wait before she began to frown.

He just laughed at her expression, "Never mind. I'm sure that when you get settled, you'll have loads of men hanging around you, Emmy. I was just pulling your leg there."

She suddenly looked to him to be having a bit of a hard time standing up on the incline of the flooring right then, but she recovered quickly – and she was smiling. "Seven and a half a day," she said a little to herself, "You sure that you don't want me to start right now?"

"What I want," he said, "is that you see if you think you can handle it – and I'll do my best to explain it all as we go. But right now, I want to get out of here within the next ten minutes.

I'll tell you what. I'll pay you the seven-fifty for today if we can just get going before those idiots manage to point the cops here over my pistol – and you'll have to wear one too, later on – AND I'll tell you why once we're in the air."

He stepped past her and beckoned her to follow him with his hand.

He opened one of the footlockers, "If you really want to start right now Emmy, well ok. 

But the very first thing that you're gonna do – and right quick so that we can leave – is to take off your wet clothes, hang them up over here on those hangers next to my coat, and put on this set of overalls so that you'll be warm and dry for the flight. I'll tell you when you can put your other stuff back on as we get near Pueblo. There's a warm air duct right there, so I'm sure that your clothes will be at least a little dry by then." 

He reached into the footlocker again and tossed her a folded towel, "This is clean. I just bought it. Dry your hair, too. Bring the towel forward with you when you're ready. Now get moving, Miss Emmy. Hear?"

She stared at him, but he'd already passed her and was on his way back to the front of the plane, "When you're ready – and I mean hurry – come back up front and I'll get you strapped in for the trip."




By Air Mail Ch.03



"But ..." she looked behind herself at the closed door, "There's a window in the door back here."

"So what?" he asked over his shoulder as he walked, "Nobody can see in unless they've got their faces pressed up against the glass. And if that happens, I'll shoot them. I don't think there are that many Peeping Toms in Dodge City that there'd be one out there right now in the rain. Get moving."

"I'll bet they prolly got binoculars up in that tower," she objected.

"They do," he said, "for sure. 

But they don't use them to look for pretty women changing in aircraft on dark, rainy days. They only do that on the sunny days and every other Thursday unless it's Christmas. 

Do you want the money or not? I'm the only one who can even see you and I'm not looking. Let's go."

Emmy stood there in disbelief, but he was already gone. She turned and almost shouted.

"You promise not to –"

He nodded, still walking, "Think about it. If I looked and you saw me, would that get us off the ground any sooner? I doubt it." He disappeared through the open space onto the flight deck.

"Do you know what I am?" she hollered in his direction as she took off her wet coat.

There was a pause then.

"I dunno," he replied, sounding a little like he was in a tunnel as he replied from the other end of the aircraft, "Beautiful? 

What do I win if I get it right?"

Emmy could have been knocked down by a feather as she gaped for a moment, but she recovered quickly.

"I'm one-half white trash," she called out. "The rest of me is Kiowa. You so much as try to peek at me Quinton, and I swear that I'll scalp you – and without the right training for it, I just might get mixed up and start at the wrong end before I guess my mistake!"

"Ouch," he said with a chuckle, "Fair enough, Emmy."

"Hey, there's no warm air coming out of this thing up here!" she called out to him as she hung her clothes.

"And there won't be," he called back over his shoulder, "until I get the engines started. I can't run the heater until then without flattening the batteries. The longer you take, the colder you get, alright? 

Let's go Emmy, chop-chop! Just hurry the hell up, willya?"

--------------------------------

He glanced at the wind-up chronometer on the instrument panel and shook his head.

"I don't want to have to file our flight plan three times over for the same trip, Emmy! CAN WE GET GOING PLEA-"

"I'm right here," she said, facing away from him as she stood with her back to the flight deck, "I can't get it on. My back is too wet, my hair gets in the way, and ... Could you help me a little?"

Quinton was up and turned around in a heartbeat, "Sure. Uh, sorry for the yelling, but we gotta go. Hold still, and I'm NOT looking, alright?"

He could see from her shoulders down her bare back to the swell of her bare hips, but he said nothing.

Emmy nodded and held still as he lifted her hair and grabbed the overalls by the shoulders. It was little effort, but he knew how it could be to shuck them on sometimes and he also knew that she wasn't used to them. As she began to do the buttons up at the front, he moved her hair again.

She turned around and thanked him as she began to do up the buttons in more of a hurry. 

"I wish that I'd known that this would happen, you flying with me today. I'd have gotten you a warmer set –with a long zipper. Why aren't you wearing anything under that?" he asked, looking serious.

"I thought you said that you weren't looking," she said, with the same expression.

"I wasn't," he said, "until that moment. Then I noticed how you are in there. I didn't see anything but your back. I was just wondering, that's all."

"I ... I don't have much for underwear," she said, "and what I had on was all wet from sitting on my ass in the wet grass in the park, not that it was my idea. I don't have money for a proper brassiere. All I got is a long cloth to use for that – and it's wet too. Sorry for saying it if it's wrong or anything, but there's almost nothing worse to a girl than cold bosoms."

He still looked serious as he reached for something over the back of his seat, "It can get cold in aircraft sometimes, like now. You said you're in for the job, so that makes you aircrew as of now. I won't have you catching cold if I can help it. This job can get cold enough sometimes as it is. Here, put this on. I don't want you even the slightest bit cold until you're at least dry."

"I already am cold," she said with a shrug.

"I know it," he said with a little concern evident on his face, "I hope this will help." 

"Don't you ever get cold, Quinton?" she asked, looking up, "I think that I could believe that you're a real cowboy if you told me yes."

His expression turned very questioning for a moment, "You can believe what you like, Emmy. Have you got some idea that cowboys are so used to living outside that they don't feel cold or something like that?"

"Something like that – I think," she nodded, "I think that maybe I have that impression from seeing cowboys sometimes .They never complain about feeling cold."

"They don't complain because for one, what the hell good would it do if you lose some of your body heat telling somebody else who's just as cold as you are and two, if there's nobody else to complain to, then you're complaining to a horse. Neither pursuit is exactly what I'd call a constructive use of your time, which could be better put to use shivering," he said.

He turned away and she heard him say to himself that this was the coldest place that he'd been at this time of year for a long while. She wondered what he meant by that. She looked down.

She was holding a leather flight jacket. It was a little scuffed and weathered and had probably seen better times in it's day. But it was a sight better than sitting naked in too-large overalls, so she smiled and thanked him as she pulled it on, noticing that the sleeves of the overalls were too long on her, so she rolled them over the cuffs of the similarly over-long jacket sleeves. She sat down and he began to fasten the belts while telling her how to undo them when she wanted to. He closed a few of the snaps on the jacket and Emmy asked why.

"I can see your cold bosoms fairly well through the gaps in your overalls, and Emmy, I hear there's not much worse than that. Why, it's gotta be a crime at least some damn place in the world today for that to happen."

She looked at him in a little shock, but he wasn't smiling, "I didn't have anything to do with you getting wet and cold. The least that I can do is try to help you warm up a bit."

Then he was gone, getting himself situated in the pilot's seat.

Emmy looked at the jacket, seeing some patches sewn on and she tried to read the bigger ones, though they were upside down, since she was wearing it.

"7th Fighter Wing" one of them read.

"6th Night Fighter Squadron" another, larger one said under a spinning propeller and a human skull. On the other side, there was another one. She saw that it was a fairly new one and it read, "Pacific Air Command."

He leaned out of his seat and handed her a set of headphones, "Put these on so we can hear each other. The little blob on the cord there gets clipped to your collar or you can just let it lie against your throat. I clip it because it bugs me against my neck."

As she got it done, he set a few switches and cranked one of the engines over. It caught with a roar and then he settled it down some and began to work at doing the same thing on the other side. She watched him work from a list very thoroughly and then he began to set other selectors and even more switches. 

She felt a little heat beginning near her feet, and then a few moments later, she watched as the area under the wing on her side lit up and then the glow moved forward mysteriously over the grass and away toward the front. She looked over at him.

"Landing lights," he said, "They light up and swing down into place."

"But we already are landed. I thought we were gonna be taking off," Emmy said, looking confused.

"Same thing," he smiled," I've only got one set for both things. I had to cut a few corners somewhere. I couldn't afford landing AND take-off lights."

Emmy thought about that for a second. Then she noticed his expression.

She stuck her tongue out at him and he laughed.

When he looked to be at least a little satisfied in going through his list, he said, "This is gonna be a part of your job. There are times when it's really important that you read from this list and others like it for me so we don't forget something important."

She nodded as he began to tune the radios. Emmy looked straight ahead. 

In front of Quinton's seat, there was a dashboard like there was in a car, only with lots more stuff on it. But in front of her seat, all that there was appeared to be a strange kind of steering wheel hanging out in space somehow. Beyond that, there seemed to be a small passageway or something toward the nose of the plane. She pointed when he looked as though he had a moment.

"What's down there?"

He grinned, "Oh that? It's the root cellar."

She made a slightly annoyed-looking expression to him and he held up one hand, "I'll tell you in about ten minutes. Then he spoke to the windshield for a moment.

Emmy could hear the controller in the tower giving Quinton permission for something.

A moment later, the engines began to roar before they settled back down.

They were moving.

"Next to your seat," he said," Between it and the wall, you'll find a couple of folded-up, thick paper bags just about lunch-sized. I'm going to be busy for the next little while. If you feel sick, throw up in the bag, alright?"

She reached for a bag and took it out. Looking from it to him, Emmy nodded.

Things looked a little unreal to her as she sat in the moving aircraft. They weren't going very quickly and she tried to watch what he did closely. At length, they slowed to a stop where he made first one engine almost howl for a few moments and then he did it to the other one. They moved forward again, just as slowly and with an ungodly roar from the engines, he turned them to face the long runway. Quinton consulted another card with another list. 

He made a few adjustments to things, seeming to reach all over everywhere to get it all done.

He turned to her, "Last chance to back out. You ready?"

She nodded, feeling a little odd about it and he smiled back at her. "Say goodbye to Dodge City, then."

He called the tower again and they told him that he could take off. Quinton pushed some levers forward and the engines roared even louder.

They seemed to be stuck on something for a few seconds and then she saw him lift his heels a little and they were rolling. The ground just outside began to grow a little blurry and they were moving fast in seconds, and they were still accelerating.

Emmy was a little startled to feel the tail of the plane lifting. It hung in space for a moment and then the ground began to fall away under them. She looked at the gray horizon ahead of her and saw it shifting in height as she looked. 

She heard and felt three distinct thumping sounds and looked over.

"Landing gear," he smiled, "Just like the birds, we pick our feet up and tuck them in once we don't need them to hold us up."

Then the horizon tilted and they were turning left. Emmy looked down at just a sliver of the outskirts of Dodge City as she'd never seen it before in her life.

It looked a lot smaller to her suddenly, and before she could really process that thought, it was gone and she was looking at sky, pretty much.

The turn continued until they were facing west. They were still climbing and Quinton was making some adjustments here and there. As they climbed still higher into the sky, she saw the sun peek out at her from a little crack in the clouds and Emmy-Lyn began to feel a bit of trepidation, uncertainty and even a small thrill of fear in her.

Overall however, she felt free.



By Air Mail Ch.04



Craig is a little disgusted as he seems to have to almost fight his way home with seemingly everything set in his way to detain him.

Meanwhile, Amelia almost can't sit still as she waits nervously for him to get home at last and this time, she's determined, feeling like it's now or never, and she's not prepared to accept never.

She doesn't know it...

But neither is Rosa.

And in the skies over Kansas, Emmy wonders what's wrong with her, though she does get to know some of the life and times of the strange cowboy that she's flying with. 0_o

*****

20 September, 1946 - a paved old road somewhere north of Eagle, Idaho

Craig was a little disgusted.

He'd been doing alright for a time on his way to Horseshoe Bend and beyond, but as he went, he'd been watching a low bank of dark gray cloud moving in and sure enough, it had begun to rain. 

And not just rain, it teemed down, soaking him faster than he knew that he'd have been able to stop and pull on his rain slicker before being soaked. Not that it would have helped all that much. All that Craig had was a regular raincoat. He'd never found anything made yet to wear while riding a motorcycle in the rain.

Oddly, he'd found himself thinking about Rosa for a little while to keep himself from muttering the bad words which kept coming up in him over this awful ride home. He smiled once too, because he just liked her. He'd gotten used to her voice being loud when she didn't mean for it to be. He just accepted that - and he did like being able to talk to her or Amelia while signing. It felt almost like a secret code or something - though he knew that for a lot of people who lived with impaired hearing, there was no game to it because it was vital to them as a means to make themselves understood.

He'd surprised himself a little later on when he'd found himself thinking about her body. She'd seemed rail-thin to him when he'd first met her, but once you got her out of her cowboy boots, she seemed a little more proportionate. And anyway, on her, it looked good.

He'd sighed to himself, hoping a little that Rosa might have found someone for herself. He'd asked her about it once after he'd gotten to know her a little and she'd told him that it probably wouldn't ever happen due to her deafness and her looks.

Craig had felt a little of the sadness which came through the frank way that she'd said it and he thought that for a lot of men, it might be correct, but he didn't think that everybody wouldn't like a girl like her. The concept just seemed so wrong to him. A woman like her, slightly on the small side, with long, black hair and warm-toned skin who rode a Harley three-wheeler and could shoot the eyes out of a snake with a pistol.

He chuckled, what in hell wasn't there to like about a girl like that? He'd even seen her breasts once and liked them. They were small, but he didn't care. He thought they were sweet.

Then he remembered the way that so many guys that he knew seemed to be stuck on huge tits and he wondered what was wrong with them - and that was the way that he saw it too.

Then it got stupid - when he suddenly felt himself stiffening and not being able to find a way to sit on the saddle without at least a little discomfort. He'd just gone through one of those episodes not long after getting onto this ratty road. He'd been thinking of Amelia then and now he wondered if he was just some kind of hound or what.

He shook his head at himself and just motored on doggedly through the rain.

Then the pavement had given out and he was on what should have been a dry and fast gravel road, wide as anything and just waiting to be paved over.

But not after a deluge. 

After that point, the rain had stopped as quickly as it had begun but he was trying not to skitter around in the mud while he kept to some kind of speed where he could at least drive in fourth gear to save fuel. A few miles further on, the road was dry but dusty, never rained on at all by the fast-moving squall.

So now he was a bit annoyed since he was sitting on his parked motorcycle and finding that all of the rain had not only re-coated him with mud, oh no.

It had just freshened up what he'd been wearing all day.

He looked in the mirror, wiping it a little with his glove so that he could watch the state trooper get out of his cruiser to walk over. Craig didn't know just how long he'd been back there, but it couldn't have been too long, since the cherry on the top of the car still looked clean. 

The front of the cruiser was another matter entirely.

The cop's face looked grim as he came up.

"Do you know how fast you were goi - Sweet Jesus!" trooper exclaimed as he reeled backwards a little bit.

Craig shook his head, "No officer, I didn't hit a bear. I just drove through what he was hunkered down next to my trail to leave for me. I'm on my way home to Cascade after spending the spring and summer on fire watch."

"Gawd," the cop said, out past where his elbow was holding his jacket sleeve over his nose, "Well that explains why you were going so fast - if you were trying to leave that smell behind."

"Something like that, "Craig said, while trying not to smile, "I've been wearing this since nine this morning. How do you think I feel?"

The cop looked a little sympathetic, "All the same, I want you to slow down some, son. I'd hate it if I had to be the one to come see where you died from going off the road - though I guess that finding you wouldn't be too hard - even in the dark."

"Do you want to see my license?" Craig asked a he pulled off his thinly mud-covered gloves.

"Oh hell no, "the trooper groaned, "I want to see you and that smell gone up the road from here - and soon. 

Just take it easy from here on out. I've been trying to stop you before you get to the next big bend in the road up there, maybe three more miles. They tore it up this summer and the gravel is some soft and deep. You hit that at the seventy-three that you were doing and you'd be dead sure as anything."

He turned to walk away, "So slow down, hear?"

Craig promised that he would and he felt a little thankful for the man's efforts as well as his warning. He yelled out his thanks as the man got back into the car.

Craig swung out the kickstarter and with just one kick, the Indian was idling, seeming almost to want to tempt him into rolling it on some more. 

He wondered for a moment if it was just happy to be away from the wilderness and wanting to forget all about being parked for months with only weekly runs as a little exercise. And all the while quietly aching to get back to the more civilized place that it held in Cascade. Maybe it was just trying to be helpful, having sensed that it's master wanted to be home so much. He smiled to himself. Maybe it was a little of both.

"You hear that?" Craig grinned as he pulled his goggles back down over his eyes and began the chore of pulling wet gloves on, "With a tail wind - or a bad smell, you're a little faster than the book says you are.

I know!" he chuckled as a thought came to him, "You just want to see Rosa's sweet Harley again. I never thought of motorbikes having love lives before. Bet you can't wait to see her, huh? She's got that nice swell to her back end and all... As trikes go, I do have to say that she's got a nice, wide butt on her. I just never thought that my bike was an ass man."

He shook his head with a laugh at his thoughts, but he made a mental note to himself to try to sketch out the comic little cartoon that he had in his mind at the moment.

As he clicked into first gear to pull away, Craig asked himself if he was finally crazy for riding that hard, and he was a lot more judicious after that.

A few minutes later and there it was. The trooper hadn't been lying. The road was soft as butter in some places and he had to stand up on the foot boards to lean this way and that to help the bike get him through.

Worse, he'd seen no sign warning of the conditions as he'd approached. He saw the sign lying there in the dirt of the shoulder as he'd crawled carefully past.

Horseshoe Bend was a small place and he was through it before any of it left an impression on him. All that he had now was forty miles - and nearly all of that was paved. He thought of Tad and Amelia, the two women who had been mothers to him, Deke, Harry - and Rosa too, and how bad he wanted to see them again.

Then he did the right thing and kept it at fifty and no more. 

-------

Amelia heard him coming before there was any sound of it in her ears from inside of the café. She looked up from the big sink where she was just finishing the last plate and then she was hurrying through the place as fast as she could go, her dishwashing apron still on as she wiped her hands on it.

The intense glow of her bright smile was almost blinding the patrons who were in her way as she rushed to the door.

Before she was even halfway there, she could hear the beat of that motorcycle clearly. The engine was a V-twin, but unlike most Indians and almost all Harley's, to Amelia, that sound was singular, and she'd never heard any other bike make that noise.

"HE'S HOME!" she yelled, not giving a damn who might not care. Her mothers would and she knew it.

Craig slowed and signalled with his hand, just before he made an illegal U-turn to pull into an open spot outside of the café.

Amelia stood just inside the door, knowing that he had things to do before he could just walk away from the machine. She watched closely as he found neutral and swung out the stand to lean the bike on. She wondered how he could even see where he was going for all of the mud on him, and when he pulled the goggles up to rest on his forehead, he looked like a racoon in reverse.

But it was Craig and there was no possibility of any mistake to Amelia.

He looked tired - just as she expected him to. On top of that, he was clearly filthy, caked with dried and not so dry mud here and there. She watched him sit for a moment with the bike just idling contentedly, thumping softly under him as he reached to turn off the headlight, as well as the blackout slit-light that the machine still wore from it's days as a test vehicle for the army.

His hand eased back from the switch and he sat for a moment, looking down at the lovable old thing that had brought him home once again and then he smiled, obviously glad to be home.

And dirty or not, Amelia sighed as she looked at him, he looked so good to her.

She was out of the door in a flash, fully meaning to sweep him right out of the saddle with her very first hug. She watched his eyes come up and she saw that instant of warm and happy recognition there in that face.

But then the eyes widened as he realized what she wanted to do and he held up his hands as though in fear of his life from her, "No Amelia, NO!"

She was already beside him, her arms already held out to hug the daylights out of him as she so needed to do. But then everything changed.

"Craig! Whats the mat - HOLY JUMPIN..." She stepped back, looking as though she wanted to throw up. 

"You smell like - AAAHH!"

"I know," he said with a disgusted frown, "And a bear's ass at that."

"You wait here," she said after a moment of thinking, "You know everybody's dying to see you just like I am. But you can't walk in there looking and especially smelling like you do. There's a lot of paying customers in there. I've got a better idea. I just gotta tell our mothers and I'll be right back."

"That won't change the way that I smell," he groaned, "Christ, I can't wash this out. I'll probably have to burn these clothes."

"Just stay put, Handsome," Amelia smiled, "You give me a chance and I'll save the day for you."

The way that it worked out was that Rebecca and Marjorie both tried to go see Craig, but while the smell seemed to be just the thing for flies and wasps to want to be near, it repelled people like nobody's business.

"You ran through a pile of bear crap?" Marjorie asked as she almost choked, "What did he eat for dinner the night before, a whole family of skunks?"

Rebecca stood with a grimace on her face, but Marjorie could see that it was a thoughtful grimace all the same. She grabbed Rebecca's hand and pulled her away, "I don't need to hear your opinion about what it might have been. Come on!"

Amelia tapped Rosa on the shoulder and she began to sign to her, asking her to follow them and Rosa nodded.

"Rosa's gonna follow us so that, while Craig gets clean, she'll hose his bike down."

She walked up to Craig, though she kept her distance a little, "Just head out to your dad's hangar and we'll meet you there and open it up for you."

"I need to get clean, Amelia," Craig sighed, "I can't stand the way I smell a minute longer."

She nodded, "And that's what we're gonna do. Rosa and your dad put in a shower there over the summer. I've got a change of clothes in my car for you. I was a little prepared for you this year, since you never come off the long road back home clean. You seem to attract bad weather and things.

I just wasn't prepared for you to be this stinky," she giggled.

"Whyja call me handsome?" he asked and Amelia's face took on a taciturn look. If she could throw away what had bothered her so much, then she wasn't prepared to let him slip back into his shell either.

"Because you are, Craig. You always were to me, and now, even wearing bear shit and mud, you've made it into 'gorgeous' in my book. So don't you try to give me any trouble, or I'll just tell Rosa that I'll gently wash your motorcycle and she can hose you off.

Your choice - and the hose is cold water only- pumped straight outta the Cascade reservoir and not heated at all - not like the shower would be."

Craig tilted his head, trying to figure it out, "So... if I do this right... then it'll be you gently washing me off, I'm hoping?"

He'd said it that way as a small joke, just so happy to see Amelia looking so much more like the girl that he grew up with. He didn't actually mean it of course, bu-

"See, that's what I love about you," Amelia smiled softly, "Handsome AND smart.

I'll meet you there."

By the time that he'd gotten turned around and ridden up the road, they were waiting for him, both of them heaving to open the large hangar doors. He would have pulled in, but Rosa directed him to park not all that far from her trike. He asked why, forgetting about her hearing for the moment, so she told him, trying not to be too loud that she really would hose his bike off, but before that happened, she intended to take all of his things and put them into the box at the back of her trike.

"That way, I can just haul it for you, and I won't have to worry about wrecking stuff because of the hose."

He nodded and said thank you by signing it to her, wanting her to see that he was remembering and Rosa smiled warmly with a nod.

He walked into the hangar, but Amelia called him over toward the shower, "Don't look there yet," she said, "That's a surprise that you can't see just yet, though I'm dying to show you."

He turned back to look at her with a bewildered look.

"And anyway," Amelia smiled, "I think that's for Rosa to show you. I just helped some with the planning and after it was done."

"You're sounding kind of intriguing, Amelia," Craig smiled. "I don't know what all this is about, but now I feel kind of like we're kids again and you've got a surprise for me."

She waved her hand in front of his face, "Well that's nice, but you're not smelling much better, Craig. So get a move on and let's get you clean."

She led him - at a very long arm's length to the bathroom that he'd never seen yet and he stared for a long moment before he began to grin, "This is really nice. You mean that Dad and Rosa did this?"

Amelia nodded, "Rosa's kind of a Jill of all trades, you know. Ok, she never worked in a café or a diner before she got to us, but she did work at a lot of jobs and she'd no stranger to building stuff. Your dad was amazed and once they got going, he didn't want to stop, so they put in other things after that."

She sighed a little, 'Course Rosa hasn't exactly done a whole lot of this interior decorating stuff, otherwise she'd have probably put in another shower with girly colors, you know?"

"Uh,..." he began, "Why are there... two showers in here?"

"Oh that," Amelia chuckled, "Well, that was because they went into town and ordered it all together and then they had to wait a few days for everything to show up and one day, Rosa was here and she saw that it had all arrived and was on the truck with the driver waiting and so she checked it all against the list that she'd made and it was all here. They unloaded it all, and the guy drove off.

Then since she knew that your dad was gonna be coming in that night and might need the hangar, she moved it all inside, but out of the way right at the back, behind the oil drums for the heater in the winter. Well she had a couple of days off from the café to work on this, so she just went to my house and stayed in the spare room that night since it wouldn't be that far to walk to get started in the morning.

Your dad came home that night and he didn't see anything of what they'd ordered, so he went home all mad that nothing had been delivered yet. Your mom hadn't talked to Rosa because Rosa can't really hear well enough over a phone, so she didn't know a thing about it."

Amelia grinned, "So in the morning, Rosa came here to get started, while your dad was down at the building wholesaler's tearing anybody that he saw a new asshole. They tried to look up if it had been delivered, but he was on a tear by that time and I can just see him roaring at them all that it hadn't been delivered and that was that.

But the store had ordered several of everything, since they saw that it looked kind of nice and they know that there's gonna be a couple of new houses built in town soon, so..."

Craig began to chuckle, "So, they delivered it again?"

Amelia nodded, "Right. When the two of them met up, Rosa showed him what had come in and where she'd put it all and she was a little scared that she'd done something wrong, but Uncle Deke said no.

They took a good, long look at everything and then he said that he'd never liked little bitty showers like the one at the house anyway because he's kind of a big man, so they scratched their heads and figured out a way to make a bigger wider shower with all of the tiles they had, and if you want to, you can turn them both on. 

The thing that he did do was to take back the water heater that he'd bought for a bigger one and he apologized to everyone for his mistake and settled up with them. You know how he is about things like that. So that's how it got this big."

She pointed with a serious expression, "Now you check your pockets and take out what you don't want ruined, and then you get over there and take your clothes off carefully and get into the shower to start scrubbing. I'll move the clothes outside and tomorrow, we'll see what all we can save, if anything. If we do find something, we'll need to wash it in the tub here the hard way. Neither one of our mothers will let us live for long if we try to use their wringer washers."

He looked at her, "You mean you want me to just strip off there and walk over here to get into the shower?"

Amelia rolled her eyes as she held up her hand to start counting fingers, "One - I have seen you buck naked before when you and Tad swept out the hangars for my dad and Uncle Deke. It was hot as hell that day with no hint of a breeze and the two of you had your shirts off. 

But sweeping that dust just moves it around if you don't have any of that sweeping compound stuff which you used up before you got even one swept out and it's an all-day job for two men to do that. The two of you didn't get done until it was getting dark. 




By Air Mail Ch.04



So you went down to the river right over there, not two hundred yards from here and washed off."

"Yeah," Craig said, "I remember. So?"

"So," Amelia said, "You remember that I was waiting for you back in this hangar with our picnic style supper when you came back?"

Craig thought back and he nodded again, "So? What can you see at two hundred yards?"

She smiled, "So, I got here but you and Tad weren't here anywhere. I set everything down and ran to the other hangar. You weren't there either. So then I got to thinking about what I'd do, so I went to the river. I didn't get very close because it's open on the near side with no trees to hide behind. All I saw was enough to know that you were naked - that's it. I swear."

Craig knew Amelia - at least the way that she'd been back then. He looked hard at her, "You swear?"

She rolled her eyes again "Jeepers, would you just die right now if I DID see anything? That was six years ago."

"No," he nodded.

"Good," she smiled, showing him her crossed fingers and they both laughed again. 

"How close did you get?" he asked her.

"Just to the other side of the taxiway. I'd planned to use the binoculars in here from there, but it was too dark to see anything through them by then, and you looked like you were about ready to come back, getting your clothes on, so I ran all the way here and never said a word about it.

And anyway," she said, "It's not like it was exactly educational. I wasn't close enough to really see much of anything anyway, though I thought that you had a cute bum, if it means anything to you. That was all that I'd really wanted to see anyhow."

"Really?" he asked in surprise, "I'd have thought that - "

She shook her head, "The river's really cold, remember? I'd have probably needed the binoculars to see ANYTHING from ten feet or less! " She smiled and they both laughed. 

"And if you really want the truth, I was so happy that I was hanging around here all that day before I hiked off to get our supper. I got to see you and Tad with no shirts on all day and I liked that, just because I did and I was a little proud to have two guys like you around. I just wasn't all adoring and everything about it. That kind of thing just gets you tossed into rivers when you don't have the smarts to keep your mouth shut like I do.

And the best part to me was after you got your shirts back on and we all sat together and ate our dinner. I've always loved just hanging around with you.

Two - "she held up a second finger as her expression grew serious, "You smell like shit - bad shit. You smell worse than outhouse shit, to be honest. I mean, you almost knocked Marjorie over, and she comes from a mining town where all they HAD was outhouses, for Pete's sake. 

I'm hoping that most of it is in your clothes. You ought to be thankful that I'll move them out of here for you, but I can tell you right now that I'm gonna do that with a stick and not touch them if I can help it. I won't look, if you're all squirmy about it.

Though personally, I think that I'm a little entitled to at least a look seeing as how I had spare clothes all packed for you.

Three - "Another finger came up, "You'd better get a move on and stop fussing about something unimportant - at least as unimportant as that, when you could be in there under that hot shower right now getting clean - and you'd better hurry, Miss September Morn, 'cause the longer we stand here arguing about me seeing your cute bum, the less that I'll even want to, AND..."

She drew a breath and held up her last finger on that hand, "The longer that you take being all Craigishly-shy, the bigger the risk that Rosa will get done doing you a favor like she's doing. She'll come in here and you'll still be fidgeting and then she'll want a look too. 

I know her, ok?"

Craig nodded and began to take his clothes off. Whenever he did look at Amelia, she just looked like she wasn't trying to look - even though she was - and was making a lousy attempt at hiding it on purpose. Craig actually had the damndest time even beginning to feel shy for the way that she held her hands up in front of her face and then peeked through her fingers. It was like the old Amelia to him. When he took his pants and all off, she just made sounds like she was going to faint in happiness.

"What the hell now?" he asked over his shoulder.

Amelia giggled, "I don't know. I didn't think it was possible, but your bum is even cuter now. Oh, I want to just..."

Craig hurried to the shower curtains.

Just after he got into the shower, groaning at how good it felt, he heard Amelia through the shower curtains.

"Craig?"

He stopped washing for a second, "Yeah?"

"I forgot and there's... well there's another finger to hold up - only I ran out of them and using my thumb to make a counting-your-fingers point just doesn't feel right. Can I tell you anyway?"

"Amelia," he sighed audibly even through the shower curtains, "I'd always want to hear anything that you've got to say to me. I always have and I probably always will. This... 

I've wanted to say something to you for a long time - years, really. But it was never the right time - I mean, before you got married and then afterwards, well, I just wanted you to feel better, and..."

He drew a long breath, "And I was afraid to make it worse, so I didn't say anything. I've always felt like I was paying the price for not saying what I've felt like a lot sooner - when I had the chance, but..."

He just... stopped then.

Even through the translucent, heavily-PVC-scented new shower curtains, Amelia saw that he was hanging his head under the shower.

Amelia knew Craig and she felt her heart plummet inside of her chest. This was the point - that same God-cursed point where they'd been before already. This was the point where Craig would swallow what he'd wanted to say and turn into a silent and sad young man.

"Craig?"

His voice was quiet and very subdued, "Uh, never mind. It's not really important."

Amelia was almost terrified, yet she did feel some determination that it wasn't going to happen this time. She just needed to be close to him and looking into his eyes. 

But he was in there and she wasn't. 

"Craig, you just said that you've wanted to tell me how you felt for a long time. That makes it very important to me. I always want to hear what you have to say too. Because I've had a lot of time to wish that I'd get to hear what it is that you've lugged around inside you for so long. 

Craig, please don't get shy now. I haven't seen you one-tenth as much as I've wanted to for years. I've always felt bad that I got married at all, because I know that it was stupid. Craig, it's not your fault, ok? It's mine. Only I just kept waiting and you never said anything." 

She took a deep breath, "So I'm going to say it now.

Craig, I love you. 

I've always loved you since we got locked into the shed with a sack of onions. That day, I knew that I wanted to be more than the little girl who always tagged along whenever I could. I just made a huge mistake later and thought that you'd never see things the way that a stupid girl might want to see them."

"You're not stupid," he said, "I am.

And," he sighed, "I'm still a little asthmatic sometimes and Bobby wasn't. I understood it, even back then. "I'm near-sighted, and I can't see more than ten feet without my glasses. He wasn't any of those things."

"Stop," Amelia said, her voice beginning to quaver a little, "Just stop, Craig. You've always done this to yourself when you shouldn't. You don't even know why you do this, but I do. You've never gotten over how somebody didn't want you. It's always been that inside of you. I know it, because..."

She sobbed, and he heard it, and when she began to talk again, she sounded rough. It was a sound that he hated to hear, because he'd heard it at the worst of times. When Tad had gone, leaving a hole in both of them that you could drive a truck through. When a little twisted shit of a man had hurt her and he'd had no idea. It always tore him in two just to hear that sound.

She croaked out what she had to say, "Because I've even caused it once when I chose somebody else when I should have chosen you. Well I did choose you long before that happened. I just didn't know that you needed to be told.

You think that I wanted Bobby because of the things you said? He wasn't a lot of things - like human, mostly. Most of all, he wasn't you, not even a pale shadow of the man that I've always ached for. You couldn't be more wrong, though I understand how you've always felt. You're wrong, dead wrong. I'd take you over any thousand men. I want you. 

Me, Craig. You hear me? Amelia Potter wants you!

Craig? Craig, do you still love me?

I need to hear it if you do, because I love you so much. I always have.

I'm holding your glasses in my hand because you put them on your dirty clothes so I picked them up. I like the way that you look with them on. You look so good without them and I know that because I've watched you sleep. You look good with them on because they tell the world that you're no dummy and then you open your mouth and amaze everybody.

I was about to get into a fight a long time ago at school. It was the first day of grade eleven, Craig. You were on that mountain for the first time and you weren't home yet. I was in a lousy mood because I missed you so much. A girl started to shove me around and I was just about to lose my temper and let her have it. But it didn't happen.

One of her friends pulled her away and said, 'Don't you know who she is? She's one of those Fairbairns only she's got her father's name. But sure as hell, she's a Fairbairn and they fight like animals, not people. You won't hit her more than one time, and they never stop. They don't even slow down. They're all the same. Her brother - the one with glasses, he almost put my brother in the hospital for picking on him. I saw it myself. They can fight so fast, like it's not even real.

She won't stop until she's knocked the teeth right out of your head and she's counting on none of the teachers seeing it, because that'll just give her more time. That's what they do.'

The girl who wanted to fight said she didn't care and her friend said, 'Well you'd better. They're half-wild, that bunch, and there's three of them, her and her brothers. Leave her alone.'

So I just went home mad that day, and the next, nobody came near me at all. The girl apologized and said that she just wanted to pick on somebody who was a loner. I guess I must have fit. But it didn't matter to me. I knew what we were then, all three of us. Nobody ever wanted to try me again, probably because we were getting a little old for that stuff anyway.

I want the Fairbairn that she was talking about. I want you - more than anything.

Craig, are you still listening?"

She watched his outline nod once before she heard his quiet voice, "Yeah, I'm listening."

"Well Craig, do you love me - even after... after everything?"

She saw the head motion again, though she had to strain to hear him. "Yes. I always have loved you, Amelia. I just didn't know if it was right. I thought that everybody wanted you to be with somebody else. But I think I've loved you since you gave me your teddy bear. Nobody ever did anything like that where I was from. I... I just didn't know if it was right to feel the way that I always have."

He felt the air change as she opened the shower curtains to step in with him. She was naked. "What are you doing?" he asked.

Amelia smiled softly, "I heard that you can see well for ten feet. I'm not going to need that much. So you still love me? Even though I sometimes feel a little like a used car?"

Craig smiled a little, "Yes, I still love you and that's not the way you look to me, glasses or not."

She put her arms around his neck and began to kiss him the way that she'd always dreamed of doing. Amelia couldn't have held in her happy sigh when he put his arms around her and his kisses threatened to make her float just because he kissed her the way that she'd always known that he could.

"I thought that you always liked Tad better than me," he said quietly and then he sighed, "I just never knew what to do - so I did nothing."

Amelia looked up and nodded, "I like Tad too, I always have, but I like you better - and I've always liked you better because I've always loved it whenever we did anything together, anything at all. We've always been for each other, the three of us, but Tad's always never had time and I've never felt like I was much more than his sister to him. 

If you want to hear the woman in me tell of what's in her heart, then yes, Tad's close to me in there, but you're even closer. I've never felt that way about you, like you're somebody that I shouldn't have thoughts of. I've always felt like you're the one that I should have had close to me for years now.

When I knew what I wanted, from that day - and that was a long time ago now, I've wanted this. I don't ever want to let you go again. You're the one that I've always needed. Every time that you left to go on watch for the summer, I cried all over again, because it was like Tad leaving both of us.

But it was worse than that, Craig. It was the boy who should have been mine for so long already and every year, we'd end up in the same place, not once saying what was so important with me left to go on all alone.

She looked as though she was going to start to cry for a moment, and then she fought it down and looked up, "Please Craig,... please don't ever leave me behind again.

Rosa wants to try to be your friend - and that's a lot coming from a girl like her. Without you, all we've had is each other, but she wants to know you really well and I need this - just what we're doing now. I've never needed anything more than to be against you, but I love her too now and that's not the same thing."

She laid her head against the front of his shoulder and she kissed his throat, "I need to be yours like I need to breathe. I know it sounds stupid, but there it is and it never changes inside of me."

Craig held her tightly and she pulled herself against him as much as she could. Craig was astounded - and also a little relieved that the spray of the shower would hide his tears. He cursed himself for always being so self-absorbed that he'd never been able to see what was so obvious to him now.

"I don't understand about Rosa yet, "he said very quietly, "but I finally understand Amelia. I can't even say how I feel. I just know that I love you. What happens when Tad gets home - if he ever does? I'm sorry to ask it, I've always had thoughts of you and I - but I've also -"

Amelia lifted her head, "I know that. I've known that forever. None of us know what Tad's even like anymore. But whether he comes home or not, I want you. We can decide about Tad later and that's gonna need time if he ever gets here."

She looked up the two inches of height difference between them, "Let's just try to get ourselves figured out. I want to be your girl, solid. Don't even think of me any other way. No matter what, we need us first. I have a feeling that Rosa doesn't know it yet, but I think she'd feel safe with you too and I'd let that happen if it does. Everything else... we don't know enough to even talk about."

She reached for Craig's face and she looked right into his eyes, "But if you love me, then I love you and we need that, otherwise it's all just like a junkyard with wrecked people lying around like old cars - and I already feel like last year's model because of my mistake."

"Don't think about that at all," Craig whispered, "I want you to forget about it. I've never thought that what happened made you any less to me. I'd do anything for you, Amelia. That's never changed in me either."

He kissed her then and Amelia felt her tears as they came. She was prepared at that point to be whatever Craig wanted - even if that meant that it was only them, though she hoped very much that he could get to really feel something for Rosa. 

Rosa came back inside and walked over to the shower stall, trying to see though the haze of the curtains to judge how Amelia's efforts were going. She'd been thinking all day, a little worried at the thought of losing Amelia, though she was feeling hopeful for her all the same.

She thought about it for a moment, remembering what Amelia had said about sharing him. Well, if it worked, she thought, then it would make Amelia really happy again, but she was a little worried that her friend had only had a boorish, mean bastard's cruelty to learn from in her time. If that was so, she'd have very limited experience - not that things looked to be going too badly here at the moment, though she couldn't see to know and she couldn't hear what she guessed was being said.

But she knew what Amelia wanted and that included her.

And if Craig didn't think that she was too bad-looking, Rosa knew that between the three of them, she had more experience in bed than anything in their lives combined. So she could help easily, no matter what the trouble. She asked herself if that was what she wanted, since it involved a man and she remembered Amelia's thoughts.

Rosa hesitated only a little and then she began to take off her clothes.

Amelia was still holding Craig and she was talking to him too quietly for Rosa to hear, "We'll have to hurry a little so that I can get you back to the café. Our mothers know that we might have been apart for long enough this time for something like this to happen, so I'm banking on their patience, if it's ok with you. Is it, Craig?"

He blinked at her, "They... they know?"

She nodded as she pulled back, "Your mother told me that she's always known that you were for me. I don't think that I'd have believed her any time in the last few years over the way that I hurt you, and I'm very sorry."

He kissed her again and after a few minutes, she let him go and slid down against him, all the way down to where she squatted before him, "I just want to let you know how I've felt about you for so long. All I've wanted to be for years now is your girl."

With that, she reached for him and opened her mouth. 

Just as Craig was getting over it and really enjoying what Amelia was doing, the other shower curtains opened and Rosa stepped in, turning on the shower and trying to get the temperature right without either scalding or freezing the others.

She looked over and their eyes met. 

"Oooh, nice!" she smiled, in that loud voice of hers, "Amelia didn't lie. You're pretty fine, Craig."

Then she wasn't looking at all as she soaped her hands and began to wash, "I didn't notice until it was too late. I got the shit off your bike," she said, still not looking, "But I got a little of it on myself too, since it's all I can smell. Now I just hope that I can get clean before the hot water runs out. That's why I'm not waiting for my turn."

Craig looked down, running his hands over Amelia's hair and looking into her eyes, but after a little time, he saw that she wasn't hurrying this at all - not that he minded especially, and the way that she was looking up at him...

He didn't notice it right away as Rosa slowly turned off the other shower.

What he minded - or thought that he did - was when he felt Rosa's hands on him, though the feeling passed instantly because he'd always liked Rosa and her hands felt so good on his skin.

She moved closer and he could have groaned when he heard her loud whisper in his ear, "She kisses so well, I'll bet that she's making this feel pretty good, huh?"

Rosa soaped her hands, "Turn around, Craig. I know what a man wants - even if he doesn't know it himself. Amelia didn't ask me, but I want to help you both if you'll let me. I can't help my voice, though."




By Air Mail Ch.04



Craig was in a mild state of shock, but Amelia was gradually moving in a bit of a circle, leading him gently and she was moving so that her back would be to the wall. She never stopped what she was doing, moaning a little as she sucked and licked. 

Rosa told him to lean a little and when he put his hands against the wall of the shower, he felt her hands slip in between his cheeks and the way that she did it was something that he'd never felt before in quite that way. Before he knew it, he was leaning just a little more as she guided him a little sideways.

"Let the water run down your back, Baby," she whispered into his ear, "I want you extra clean for this.

Ohh, that's a really sweet little bum. I know what she's been talking about now. Did you know that she just dreams about chewing on that?" 

She chuckled then, down deep in her throat. "I want a daydream like that."

He felt her wash the soap away and then her hands were gliding downward as she sank to her knees. The next thing that he knew, he felt one of Amelia's hands slide in between his legs to reach for Rosa, but he had little time to think about it as he felt Rosa push her face into his cheeks and then her tongue was someplace where he'd only felt something like that once in his life and it hadn't been all that long ago.

The only difference was that Rosa was slow and very, very good at it. Much better than Chance had been, and then he felt the gentle way that she reached through his legs to hold his balls in her hand.

He groaned and both of them took it as a bit of a signpost and went at him a lot more and then Craig cried out as he came harder than he could remember.

Before he was done, Rosa's hand had left his scrotum as she got up quickly and she was hugging him, slipping her fingers between his cheeks to press right against his anus, wiggling her thumb in quick, insistent little circles as she pressed inward. Her fingers were pressing against his perineum.

Rosa stood on her toes and held herself against him, off to one side so that she had the room for what her hand was doing to him. His body was tensed in that long moment as he pumped into Amelia's mouth and she took all that she could from him with a pleased-sounding moan.

Craig yelled and felt like he was going to come again, though really, it was still the same orgasm. 

"Give her everything, Baby, "Rosa groaned in that brash voice of hers, "She's wanted you there for an awful long time.

I know that," she husked in a heavy whisper against his ear as his contractions began to fade, "because she's told me forever. Promise me that you won't ever hurt her and... " 

She looked down for just a second before she looked into his eyes as he looked over, "And you can have me too. We're kind of a set, Amelia and me. That is... if you think that you'd want me."

Her thumb was withdrawn gently and though he didn't see it, he knew that she wet her middle finger with her own juices by the way that she leaned against him for a moment and he realized that she was kissing his back. 

Then she slid it into him and she held him a little transfixed. Her free arm was around him and she was running her fingertips lightly down over his abdomen, skipping over his abdominal muscles so that he knew that she knew they were there and that she liked them.

"As long as you're together and you never make her cry anymore by leaving her behind, I'll do my best to try to love you too. You just have to promise."

Craig was still shocked, but he had a strong sense that her words weren't only for Amelia, so he nodded, "I promise you both not to leave you behind, but are you sure that you want me, Rosa?"

She smiled as she began to fuck him very gently with her finger, her smile widening to hear his soft moans, "I wouldn't be doing any of this if I didn't like you an awful lot. I'm like you, Craig. For me, something like this is even more personal."

He watched as she licked and then kissed his shoulder, "To me, you're kind of a special kind of man. I like your heart - the way that you try to hide it in some ways, but you can't. Not from me, anyhow. Even out front of the café, I knew that you were ready to hear whatever she said before I got in here, and I was happy just to see that in you.

And I knew that you'd like this. That makes you even more special, because I'm also not afraid to like how this feels to me when the right person wants to do me like this. It's never, ever been a man, that's all. I've been fucked back there, but only by men and not one of them is anything like the way that I know that you'd be about it. They never gave me a chance to get to like it - so I didn't. The thing is, that I already know that you'd give me that chance. It tells me so much."

She kissed him softly, "So we're the same, aren't we? And we both love the same beautiful girl. Imagine that. 

He looked over and saw her resting her cheek on his shoulder, looking at him.

"I really hope that you don't mind it too much. Amelia told me that I can trust you - when I've never trusted any man since I was a kid. But I trust Amelia and so I'm ready to trust you, Craig. I know I'm not pretty, but if it gives you trouble, how I look, I'll just stay in the shadows for you."

As Rosa slowly withdrew her finger, she smiled wider as she moved her head and looked down past his arm, "Well, Princess? Is the prince what you wanted?"

Amelia looked up as she wiped her chin and she nodded. She rose then and kissed Craig so that he thought that she'd vacuum out his tongue for him.

"I love you," she smiled, "I just didn't think that Rosa would try this now. And don't you buy her noise about being ugly. She's trying to hide behind it like I hide behind my troubles and you hide behind things too. I was offering you a girl, but..." she chuckled, "I guess that I'm offering you two - to make up for all the time that we've all been lonely. Is it alright?"

Craig looked at them both, side by side and holding on to him. He nodded. He couldn't help it. Never mind the hearts involved in it. He thought they were both so lovely. Especially like this. He thought that he knew a little of it from their side as they both slid one arm around his neck and stretched up to share a three-sided kiss with him.

"I'm not sure, "Rosa whispered heavily, "but I think this is the fantasy of a lot of men, no? Too bad that almost all of them aren't worth it."

Craig had to laugh a little bit, "I don't know, but it makes sense in a crazy way, Rosa. But if there's only one of me..."

"We'll share," Amelia smiled.

"As long as we all try, since there's three of us," Rosa whispered, "and if I try not to talk at the wrong time, we can make do until it's our turn. Did you like what I was doing for you?"

Craig nodded, "That was unbelievable, Rosa."

"It's something that a lot of people don't even think about but everybody loves to have it done for them - unless they're stupid. I've just never done it before when I've really wanted to, and now I like it more. I just thought of it too late. The right way to do it would have been to be fingering you from almost the start."

She chuckled, "But you'd have probably knocked Amelia clean over then. And with her back to the wall, well she might have hit her head and besides, I just finished putting those tiles up there. I'll do better next time. And I can teach you," she chuckled. "We'll use Amelia, ok?"

She kissed the parts of his body that she could reach in a little bit of a tour, "Can we share? Us three? I don't want to hear you doubting yourself, Craig. I already know that we'll be pleased, Amelia and me."

"Then I don't want to hear you talk yourself down either, if that's the deal," he said.

"You tell her, Craig," Amelia said, and the sound of her voice in Rosa's ear made her laugh along with them.

The hot water ran out rather suddenly at that point and they all moaned, getting out to towel themselves and each other off before getting dressed.

"Let's get the bikes inside for the night," Craig signed to Rosa, hoping that he didn't botch it too badly.

He made two errors, but she got it and nodded, signing her agreement as well. They each kicked their machines over and with them running, they idled them forward into the cavernous hangar where they shut them off. Amelia was carrying the last of Craig's dirty and foul-smelling clothes outside and true to her word, she'd found a short length of electrical conduit to use as a stick. Rosa was watching her progress with a smile as she left some behind and started pushing the lot along the floor instead.

Craig looked at her trike and then at his bike before stepping over to her, "It might be a little late for this year, " he said into her 'good' ear, "but I'm thinking that we should put footpegs on your trike and my bike. That way, we can take Amelia anywhere with us.

Rosa spun to look at the machines for a moment and then she nodded emphatically, "I'd LOVE that! What made you think of it?"

"I just had the thought." He shrugged, "I think the only other option is for me to hang a sidecar on mine and I don't want to do that for anything."

She nodded, "But I don't think that Amelia would like that. She's a little bit... girly."

Craig laughed, "Have you ever seen her with her shotgun when she's out hunting? Ever seen her skin a rabbit?"

Rosa remembered the rabbits for Bonny Tait then and she told Craig that they all had to go out hunting the next day. 

He nodded, remembering her. "I'd do that for her no problem at all. She used to hand out the best homemade candy at Halloween. I feel like I still owe her."

Rosa tilted her head as she looked up at him and then she asked what that was.

"Shit," she muttered when she heard about it, "Now I wish I was here when I was a kid."

"I wish you were too," Amelia chuckled as she walked up, "But what are we talking about?"

They told her and she smiled, "I used to have it so good then. Tad and Craig would take me out trick or treating and no matter how much we all got, they'd only be able to eat so much before they felt sick. That would make them not eat the rest of their stuff and In a couple of days, maybe two if I could wait that long, Tad wouldn't want his, so then I'd pick my moment and ask him if he had any to spare and he'd give it all to me!

Then I'd run off like a little mouse and sit gnawing taffy and roasted peanuts slowly until I saw Craig and then I'd share with him fifty-fifty. He'd always have some left over too and then our mothers would wonder why we didn't feel like eating out dinners."

"Shit!" Rosa said again.

Craig looked over to the far wall, "That' new," he said as he pointed towards a walled room with a single door.

"Take him for the tour," Amelia smiled, "while I clean the shower."

Craig walked with Rosa and he felt her take his hand as they went, "I used to try to get work at construction sites," she said, "because the money's better. I'd work really hard at it because a lot of the men said they knew that I couldn't do it. Well I could, but sometimes I'd go to wherever I was staying at night and just cry because it hurt so much. I'm not built for that and I know it, but I needed the money. 

I usually got hired on as casual labor and then I'd do my best to learn and work hard. But I did manage to pick up a few things so after getting done with the showers, Deke told me about you and what you wanted to do. 

I thought about it and I said that the best place for that was near an airport. Deke nodded and said that he had the same idea, so we planned out something and made this for you."

She opened the door and Craig stared at a long room with a test bench already there and all of the equipment that he'd bought or used as part of his course there on it, including what Rosa must have taken out of his saddlebags after they'd gotten here.

He noticed that his mouth was hanging open so he shut it, "Are all of those outlets live?"

Rosa nodded, "That's the only part that I didn't have a hand in. Deke paid for the materials and he brought in an electrician to wire them and the lights and everything and run it from extra fuseblocks in the panel. What's left is to tile the floor and put in a small furnace or space heater for the winter. Oh, and I'll need your help to put in a better outside door with better locks, since this in on the back side away from most of the outside lights."

"You did all this just for the work?" he asked but Rosa was shaking her head.

"I did it because Deke said it needed doing and I did it for you and for Amelia. I had Amelia to help me sometimes and with nobody here, we... well we fooled around some in here when we could. 

She told me so much about you that it felt like I knew you already and not one thing in all of it made me think that you're like most of the men that I've ever known. When I first met you, you were just like Amelia and your mothers - and Deke and Harry too. None of you made a big deal out of my being deaf. You just started trying to know my limits. And your father was the one who hired me a tutor to learn to sign. I won't ever forget that."

"Thank you so much, Rosa,... but... it sounds like you're going to leave," Craig said, "That's what I felt in what you said."

She shrugged, "It depends on how you make out with Amelia. If there's no room for me in it, I'll just be on my way, though probably not til the spring. The way that I feel about her, it's not something that I'd ever want to do. I'll just have to see."

Craig shook his head, "Don't, Rosa. You belong here now. I think that you're looking for it not working and I can't say as I know that it will, exactly, but I wasn't just nodding at you because you had your finger..."

She laughed then and he pulled her to him, "Please stay here. Amelia needs you and I know that I will too. Tell me if you start to feel that you're being left out. Please tell me that if it happens. I've screwed up enough things in two lives already. Besides, you made me promise."

"The first thing that you ought to learn about me is that I've heard all kinds of promises," Rosa said, "Between men and women in my experience, I've learned not to believe a thing." 

She looked up at him for a moment, "but Amelia says you're different and I want to believe her. It's a lousy way to think of it, but if she hadn't gone through having her heart broke so bad, I wouldn't believe her either, not that I'd doubt her intentions.

You look and sound like you want to live your words." She put her arms around Craig's waist and smiled up, "So you'll get your chance to try to break my heart, if you want. I'm just hoping that you're the real deal."

She stood on her toes for a second and she kissed his cheek, "I'm really hoping that you are."

Rosa shook her head, "I wasn't trying to threaten you. I want to be here. I just take a shitty outlook sometimes. I want to love you, Craig, I really do, and I even think we just might be able do it. I just get... dark thoughts sometimes and this is just the day that we said it. There's lots of time for us all to ruin it. I just want to believe that we won't. Nothing in my life has ever been this good, the way that I've been just pulled in here, like I belonged here and just didn't know it yet."

She kissed him again softly, "I don't need much, I don't think. But Amelia, she needs more than I do. If this works Craig, you ought to marry her. That would settle a lot of things for her because she needs that. She needs to make kids with you someday. She doesn't walk around all day telling herself that, but I think that's her happy ending. 

Not every girl's like me. I don't believe in that. But I know that she still does - at least just a little bit - and whether you want the job or not, Craig, well you're the prince in it."

He tilted his head a little as he looked at her.

"What?" she asked.

"So you're saying that you don't think that you could be happy at all in your life?" he asked, trying to imagine living that way.

"I never said that," Rosa grinned a little, "Like most people, I go by what's gone before in my life. This here," she smiled turning in a circle and sweeping her hand along as she went, "This IS a happy ending for me already. I've never had something like this.

So prove it to me, Craig. Make Amelia happy and you've got me more than halfway there. Then try to show me that you mean it for more than a little while, and you know what? Maybe then I'll find myself believing too. But if that happens, then you'll find someone in me who'd do about anything for the other people in it.

Just look at what I did for only me when I saw my chance to walk away from my prison. It was either what I did - or just walk into the Pacific Ocean until I drowned."

Craig looked over, "I never heard your life story, Rosa - other than you walked a long, long way to be free."

Rosa threw her head back and laughed for a moment, "Nobody was gonna just let me walk, Craig. I'd already tried running away a few times. I stopped when my rewards for that got to the point where I was pissing blood for a few days. That's how hard he reinforced his lessons. I quit trying before he broke my skull.

But even if I played nice, I knew that there was an end to the road coming for me. He already owned me. But he wanted children - and he was getting tired of the way that he thought I was doing something to prevent it. That fucking stupid cabron, he liked using women sure enough, but not a clue about their plumbing.

I found a piece of my own identification from when I was a girl and then I noticed that he was drinking already at two in the afternoon. So I let him drink but I made sure that I wasn't near enough for him to think about and when he yelled at me to get him another, I did, but I took long enough with it for him to curse me every time. 

So he'd yell and after a while, I asked him what he wanted, a clean house with dinner on the table or for me to stand next to him so that I could pour quicker.

He knocked me right across the room. It hurt some, but then he'd never have the thought that I was trying to get him drunker. He did that all himself.

When he was sleeping lie a tree, I walked over and took his gun away.

He woke up then."

She just stood there smiling at the thought.

When he'd grown curious enough, Craig asked what happened then. 

Rosa just shrugged, "Then I started to use it. 

After the last shot, there was no one to stop me when I walked away."

"So now tell me, Craig," she smiled sweetly. "Do you think that you'd want to make kids with me?"

His reply was only couched in two things. 

"Yeah, yeah," she said, "but take those out. I think that I can assume that you'd want to have a home for a family and something that pays for everything. Who wouldn't? No smoke in the air here. Just tell me. Let's just assume that you love me a little too, ok?"

His answer made her mouth fall open - which he felt a little proud to be able to do looking back on it afterwards. Well, he'd only asked a question.

"Why not?" Rosa repeated as she walked up to him looking annoyed that he'd toy with her in answer to a simple question - or maybe that she didn't like that he didn't look nervous at all.

"Because I was whore. 

Because later, I was just a girl at the end of an invisible leash, kept naked enough to be used whenever he wanted me.

Because I was a piece of furniture. 

A couch, you use to sit on," she said, "A toilet - if you've got one where you are - you use to shit in.

A woman you use anyway that you want. Make her do this. Make her do that. Make her get your supper. Make her hold still while you fuck her any way you want. That's what I was." 

She walked up to him and glared up, "And I'm just a little loco from it - THAT'S why!"

She looked past incredulous when he put his arms around her waist. He'd thought to calm her down. 




By Air Mail Ch.04



Rosa thought she'd about explode.

Craig said, "Maybe I'm dumb enough to want to try - without all the things you said," he smiled. "Look, this is a little dumb anyway, isn't it? You two were talking about love in three directions.

He looked down at her with an open expression and she could tell that this was a straight talk moment so she turned her head a little to hear a little better.

"If she'd never met me, but she did meet you," he said, "I think that Amelia could live like that. Her own mothers, including my aunt who is like my mother are like that. Us kids have always known. If she'd never met you but she knew me, that would be fine with her too, now that I know that she wants me.

But Rosa, on the way here today, I was thinking about you as well. I'm pretty sure that if I'd never known Amelia but I met you, I'd have been more than interested. I just don't think that you'd have Amelia's patience while I got up my nerve. This... today had been then best surprise of my life for what's happened. I feel so humbled."

She tilted her head again, "Did you say humbled? I don't understand. I'd have thought that you'd feel a little proud. I know I'm not much, but Craig, two women who want you - and they each even know about the other one and like it." She poked him in the chest lightly with a smile, "That's not doing too bad, in my book."

He shook his head a little, "I'm a little afraid that I'll screw that up like I - "

She shook her head and seemed to be talking to herself in some language that he didn't understand a word of, but when she stopped she hugged him tightly before looking up at him as though she was seeing him for the first time in a new light.

Rosa held her hand up with her fingers against his lips and she was shaking her head a little, "We won't let you. 

Don't you understand that we want this? Amelia and I want this with you. You need to stop thinking of yourself as a man inside of us three. In there, we're three people, Craig. Any two of us can fuck each other. With there being three - not two women and one man - any of us can fuck any other one of us. And we can all help. You liked what I did for you. I'll do even better if I can because you're worth it to me - since you're sweetly innocent enough to think that you want me.

That's what makes you such a special man to me - well aside from emotionally. Most men who REALLY like that don't want a woman at all. We're like... potted plants to them or we might as well be. I know that you could like it with another man, but Amelia and I think that mostly, you'd like a woman more, and I'm the kind of girl who can make you very happy - even if I have to use a fake dick to do it, I would and between the three of us, I'd be very proud of myself for it."

She looked away for a moment, off someplace far away over his shoulder, "But you can forget about kids with me - even if we all get that far.

You can't make kids with me. I'm not fertile. I never have been. I think that's why I never grew more than this and why I don't have much in the way of hips or tits. I've never had a period in my life, Craig. This is the way that I was since before my mother was killed, so I've been like this since I was eleven. I only grew about four more inches, filled out a tiny little bit and then I stopped."

Rosa looked down, "I don't ever get any periods, so no egg ever comes down. I never have to worry about getting knocked up - even if I found a man that I'd want that with."

She shrugged, "Another reason why I told you what I did when you asked before you left last spring. So if there's going to be any marrying between us three, it should be you and Amelia."

She brightened a little and smiled at him, "But unless you think that it'll be a problem, or you don't want me because of it, I'll be happy if you'd like to use me for target practice."

But Craig wasn't smiling. He leaned in and he kissed Rosa in several places and he kept on kissing her as he spoke, "Nothing that you've said makes me think any less of you. I just want you so stop talking yourself down. I can see why Amelia is drawn to you because I feel it too.

I know that you can do all kinds of things, Rosa - probably far better than I can. Everything that you've said just makes me want you more. What you've told me doesn't put me off. If anything, it means that I want to take care of you just like I want to do that for Amelia. I just haven't learned how to do that for either one of you yet. 

But I mean to try.

Thank you again for everything that you've done in here and for before. I'm just starting to realize how special you both are."

He stared softly for a moment "And I've just made it all worse because I can see that you're about to cry. I don't know what I've said wrong, but I'm sorry. I never meant -"

She hugged him very tightly and sobbed into his ear, "You didn't. I'm just happy. It doesn't happen often."

Amelia wandered in at that point, but she'd heard Rosa's side of the conversation from outside the room so she knew what it had been about. She stood for a moment and Craig looked up and saw her there, so she just walked over and hugged Rosa as well. It finished Rosa and she bawled for a little while. Nobody moved, they just kissed her wherever they could.

When she felt better, she sniffled and whispered, "We'd better get going before they send out search teams. But I'll show you how I feel about you both as soon as I get the chance."

-----------

"Think this'll work?" Amelia asked as she drove into town slowly with Rosa sitting on Craig's lap.

He nodded, still in some happy shock, "As long as we're honest with each other."

Amelia didn't look over. She was signing what he'd said to Rosa.

When she saw it, Rosa hugged Craig and whispered loud enough for them both to hear, "You've got two girls, Craig, as long as you know that we love each other, I'll try to trust you and now I want to love you both."

"Crap," He said, "I've just thought of the first roadblock."

They looked at him, Rosa struggling a little more because of the problems of communicating equally, so she grew determined that they all sign better.

"We'll need to get Amelia a bike."

Amelia shook her head, "Oh no."

"Oh yes!" Rosa laughed, "What's wrong with that?"

"Nothing," Craig nodded with a little smile as they both ignored Amelia's protests, "But what kind should she get?"

"A Harley," Rosa said when she understood it.

"See?" Craig asked, looking a little sad, "There's our trouble now. I think she ought to get an Indian."

"I'll tell my mothers on you both!" Amelia almost shouted as she pulled up in front of the café, "They won't go for this."

"You see?" Craig asked, signing to Rosa, "It just won't work. I'm sorry."

Amelia saw it and she didn't know what to think or how to fix what she hoped wasn't really a problem.

"You're right." Rosa said out loud, "Let's ditch her."

"HEY!" Amelia squawked and Rosa almost cried with laughter.

-------

Kansas, west of Dodge City, in an airplane climbing slowly and headed west.

"How's your stomach?" Quinton asked a little later, "Any sign of the dreaded air sickness?"

Emmy shook her head, "No. I feel fine - well, for a girl with no place to go, hardly any money -"

"And plenty of reasons to want to leave where she was?" He asked and she nodded in agreement a little glumly.

He made a radio call as she looked around, still trying not to look at him.

And still failing to manage it completely in spite of herself. With his hat and that coat off, it was a little like looking at an almost completely different man - who was even more attractive and it was beginning to annoy her. 

He wore a denim shirt and a pair of jeans over his cowboy boots. Those clothes where she was from might have marked him as a working man and she unconsciously zoomed her gaze in to see if it was so, since his name sure sounded a little high-dollar to her and he had an airplane and all.

The clothes were clean, though she could see that they were at about the midway point of their lives though they fit his lean frame pretty well. Her gaze narrowed to see that his sleeves were rolled up a fair bit and she could plainly see the golden hair on his arm from where she sat - and he was tanned, so she knew that he'd spent some time outside that summer.

He turned toward her once, but she saw after a second that he was trying to hang up the cardboard sheets that he used as his checklists and for just an instant, she saw that his shirt was open a little, though not far - and that he had a little hair on his chest. 

It had been more the angle of the sunbeam through the windshield and the timing of it piercing the clouds for only a few seconds than anything, but in that time, Emmy saw that he was just a little furry there, and what she saw was fine and golden.

Just what she needed to see, she scowled as she turned toward the side window again. She'd never even known a man with chest hair that didn't look like there was an animal trying to crawl up out of his shirt, and the very first man that she was even close to who had that was disGUSTINGly adorable without even trying.

AND that made it worse, that he wasn't even aware of it. She wanted to groan. It wasn't supposed to be like this. Why couldn't he understand that she needed for him to be all clipped, tight speech and ignoring her - at best?

Emmy shook her head slightly, more to herself than anything. For a long time now, she'd had it in her mind that while she'd never have thought of it without Janey, she'd come to think of herself as a girl who liked other girls. So that made a very difficult thing infinitely harder to her mind. Most men didn't even look at her and the ones who did tended to look at her as some sort of other species, if they didn't just scowl at her unconsciously and the worst were the ones who cast very hungry eyes in her direction.

But Emmy-Lyn's surmisal had been at least a little incorrect. Something which was still a painfully bittersweet period to her was the short time that she'd lived with her father. And in learning how to actually have a father who really did love her as a slightly awkward parent for a role model, she'd gotten to know and understand the machinery of the human male's body a lot better and she'd found that the two genders were the same species after all. There had been nothing even remotely sexual there, but two people living in the close proximity of bare-bones poverty can make privacy a bit of a challenge sometimes.

Emmy-Lyn would never in her life find a female who had a chest thinly covered in golden hair attractive. And yet catching a glimpse of Quinton's chest hair peeking over the open neck of his shirt seemed to have something of an effect on her at a visceral level. She really couldn't understand it and it bothered her because it was distracting.

His hair was a rather light blonde and it was more than a touch on the long side, even for a place in the middle of Kansas. He had a long curl that was almost in his eyes and she could see that the rest of his hair was long enough everywhere else for him to have to push it back behind his ears a little bit. Now that he'd taken that coat of his off, she could see that it went over the collar a ways too. As he was dressed earlier, it all fit on with a man who lived outside a lot of the time and rode herd to the stockpens at Dodge City maybe twice a year to deliver cattle, though mostly, it was done by truck nowadays.

But even most of the men in town didn't keep their hair this long, she said to herself. Of course, whenever she'd seen any troops on their way to and from the army bases to the northeast, she'd seen what truly short hair looked like on men. And it didn't exactly make her want to melt.

But Quinton seemed to have a rather surprising effect on her somehow, not that he appeared to be aware of it at all.

She looked around the interior of the plane for a moment and then glanced over at Quinton, who didn't notice it.

Something didn't add up here, to her mind.

Alright, she thought that she could handle the way that he looked so good, but she didn't understand what it was about him that had the effect on her.

He was tall, broad-shouldered, narrow-waisted, now that she could see it on him, and in some need of a shave. No man that she'd ever met had made her harbor a secret desire within herself to see how it felt if she kissed a cheek like that.

And where had that notion come from? That's what was so stupid to her. 

Where she was from, men like this didn't just spring up out of the weeds - well, other than those cattle wranglers every now and then. But even they didn't look this good most times and even if they did, they tended to just look through her. Compared to Quinton, there wasn't a good-looking man that she could recall even knowing or having seen in that place.

And he appeared to be supremely pleased to have made her acquaintance - AND he'd called her pretty and beautiful - one time each, she reminded herself.

Just where do they grow men like him, anyway?

She saw him begin to turn his head toward her and she began to inspect the interior of the plane again, looking out at the scenery that she could see now the moment after that. She was surprised to find that it looked quite pretty.

Then she guessed that you had to be right down there for it's natural ugliness to show through - at least where she was from, anyway.

"Whadja call me beautiful for?" she asked the window next to her quietly, more her wondering out loud than anything.

She heard him chuckle, "Well my eyes work, I guess. I'm a pilot and you gotta have good eyes to be a pilot."

His reply surprised her for a few reasons. She'd forgotten the throat microphone and hadn't realized that he'd be able to hear her spoken thoughts - which she then resolved not to speak any more of.

She began to doubt his claim, however. She'd been called a lot of things, more lately for damn sure. But nobody had ever called her that before, not ever. Not even once in her life to this point by anyone other than her father.

"I thought that you were a cowboy back there in the park." She looked around some more, wondering about the place at her feet, the upholstered seat with no back to it on the floor, and also wondering if there were any steps down into the small passageway that she saw a little farther away.

"I can't say as I've ever seen a cowboy driving a truck before - leastways one that I knew was a cowboy," she said as she looked up and swiveled her head around at the panel full of buttons up there over her head, "I sure never expected something like this."

She was trying to get it all to fit with him somehow and she was failing at it. That annoyed her as well. She'd never met a pilot before, but she sure hadn't expected a man wearing a Stetson and a duster coat that hid the cannon strapped to his leg. Which she could now see plainly.

He gave her perhaps the worst answer possible for somebody like her who was curious and still a little nervous at the same time, though it hadn't been his intent.

"Well I used to be one," he said, "Only I didn't ride in a truck. I used a horse like everybody else."

Emmy sat for maybe five minutes, a little lost in thought.

Finally, she threw up her hands with an exasperated expression.

Quinton looked over with a small smile which perhaps betrayed his humor at her gesture, "What?"

"I dunno," Emmy began, "None of this makes any sense to me. 

You show up and pull me away from a really bad time back there. 

Which I'm really happy about, don't get me wrong or anything.

So I looked at you and I saw a cowboy, when every day there are less and less of them, what with the trains and with trucks to haul cattle and all. And you're wearing a six-gun - which is just a mite rare to see these days out on the streets of Dodge City, Kansas, if you follow me.

So you offer to give me a ride out of my mess all the way over to Pueblo in your AIRPLANE, but oh no, we don't even take off and you offer me work, like a real job.

Which I'm also really happy about, if you put yourself in my place for a minute.

But we're flying in an airplane at the moment, Quinton - which is just a li-i-i-ittle bit out of the everyday ordinary for me, as far as transportation goes, you understand. Which -I'm also told - is to be my new workplace.

So ok."

She looked at him, "So alright. 

But there's this other stuff, like I STILL don't know what your mysterious 'business' is all about. I don't know barn swallow bottoms about airplanes, but this looks pretty strange to me in here, just saying.

I'm feeling a lot better, now that I'm warming up here, sitting bare-naked inside this huge suit, but..."

Quinton was chuckling then, thoroughly entertained by her manner of speaking.

"But - what? He asked with an innocent boyish grin that made her want to throw something at him.

She heaved a sigh and decided to forge ahead. "Why is most of this thing padded in quilts?

And why do these things on this old jacket say the things that they do? 

And why are you STILL wearing that gun?

Where do you come from, the moon or something? I've never seen a man like you in my life."

She wound down then, gradually speaking a little more quietly, "And I still don't know why you said that I'm beautiful. Nobody's ever said that to me. I - I mean to me. About me." 

She gave her head a shake, "You know what I mean. That's a compliment, I don't ever get any." She sighed heavily, "I just know what they are."

She ground to a stop then and sat looking over at him just a little sullenly, tiny unconscious pout and all.

There was silence for a moment and then Quinton began to laugh, though Emmy could see that he was trying to force it down, so as not to upset her more.

"Which one am I supposed to answer first?" he smiled.

He watched her eyes slide over in his direction and when he saw her expression, he almost laughed again at the way that she looked over rather coolly and said, "Well, you might think about starting at the beginning, though I for sure don't want to hear about no once upon a times.

That's how fairy-tales start, but they often end suddenly with a POOF.

We're a little high up at the moment for me to entertain the thought of a poof - even if you keep a different kind of paper bag in here for that."

She looked around for a moment as far as she could see, "Are there any parachutes in here at all?"

He looked ahead for a moment to scan the sky around them, along with his instruments. It gave him the time to ride down the laughter that he felt coming to him yet again. He knew then that he liked her, if for no other reason that she could make him feel good while she was wondering about things.

"Have you ever heard of the Spanish flu?" he asked.

She nodded, "Yeah, who hasn't? I learned in school that it was really bad over in Fort Riley and Camp Funston. A lot of soldiers got sick and died."

He nodded, "Along with a lot of people all around the world. My father was a doctor. He studied medicine and learned out in Portland, Oregon. Then he decided to move east and ended up in a mining town in the mountains of Idaho for a while.

That's where he met my mother. They fell in love and got married."

He looked at her for a moment, "I hope you don't mind that I'm giving you the cut-down version of it."

She shook her head, "No. Not at all, Quinton. You go on ahead and tell it any way you want."

He nodded, "Well, they moved east to Kansas before Christmas 1917. My father began a rural practise, but it wasn't long before influenza of a really nasty sort began to go around. Flu usually hits the young, the weak, and the infirm the hardest. It makes everybody else feel like a cowpie for a while. But this one hit a lot of people in the prime of their lives and killed a good many.




By Air Mail Ch.04



It ran all around the world. There wasn't a single place on Earth that you could go to hide from it. I'm sure that World War I did nothing but make it worse.

My father treated a few people for it and I don't think that any of his patients died. He was relieved about them getting better, my mother told me once, but at the same time, he knew that there were a lot more victims of it dying every day, and out where they were, he didn't feel like he was doing all the good that he could to help. So he volunteered with the American Red Cross.

They sent him to Fort Riley where he spent the rest of the year and onward. By then, it was late spring of 1918 and the flu had died down some, so things looked to be getting better. My father told my mother in his letters to her that he guessed that if it kept on that way, he'd be coming back to her soon.

They were very much in love and my mother missed him very much. So she shut up the house and went to Fort Riley and rented a flat in a building not far away. They saw each other a lot and of course, they did what people do. By the beginning of August, my mother knew that she was pregnant.

But by the end of August, a new strain of that damned influenza had come out - and this one was worse and even more deadly. My father didn't come home to her one day and the next morning, she went to ask and found out that he'd gone from a headache the afternoon before to being violently ill in hours. He was worse by that morning and they refused to let her see him.

He was dead the following afternoon.

My mother was grief-stricken as you might imagine," Quinton said, "but she knew enough from being a doctor's wife to know that she didn't want to die there like him. She wrote out her wishes for the way that he'd be seen to and left town as fast as she could go, praying that she hadn't already been exposed to it."

He looked over and Emmy was sitting with her mouth open in shock. "But didn't she want to stay to go to his funeral?"

He shook his head, "Emmy, my mother's giving them her instructions was all just because she was struggling in grief and not thinking. My father had told her so often that at it's worst, they were just opening up the ground with bulldozers and filling the holes with bodies. She only remembered that later.

My mother wasn't from a fancy, rich family like he was. She was from the backwoods of Idaho and she just packed up real light and bought herself the best horse and rifle that she could find, and she rode hell for leather back west, usually avoiding the bigger roads if she could and riding cross-country if she had to.

She didn't stop until she got to the Snake River Plain in Idaho, but winter was fixing to overtake her and she holed up in an abandoned house in a ghost town called Webb Springs at Big Southern Butte. There's a town called Arco not more than a few miles off. It was farther at one point - at the place where two stagecoach lines met years before. The stage lines were moved to Webb Springs, and so the whole town moved there too. But when the railroad came through later in a different place, the town moved again to be near that, and that's where it still is to this day.

My mother didn't want to live near people until the flu was finally gone, so she lived in a ghost town all alone for a while and I was born on the first day in May..."

He looked at his instruments for a moment and then checked his charts. After that, he looked out of the windshield for a few seconds. 

"Big Southern Butte is a strange place," he said. "It's the remains of a pair of lava domes that grew together out of a volcano and partially collapsed a long time ago. It's a crater about four miles across and even though that was like a million years ago, there's still a lot of warmth under the ground there, though it's all forest and grassland inside. In that little place, it's not quite so cold and the ground isn't as deeply covered in snow. My mother liked to hunt there, though it's pretty open so you have to be really good at stalking your game. That's where Mother was hunting when I decided to show up and she had me there in the sunshine by a grove of trees. As far as I know, I'm the only person ever born there.

We stayed there until well into the late spring when the ground had firmed up from the spring melt. Then we went to Warren, Idaho, where she's from. But Warren was a miner's town and it was already in decline by the time that my mother herself was born. My mother's parents had gone the year before to Cascade, a ways farther west.

We stayed there for a couple of years though, and I can just barely remember being fussed over by an old Chinese lady named Polly. She was really old even then, but she thought I was some kind of gift to my mother. It was about ten years later that they standardized the price of gold in 1932, I think. That finally killed off Warren and it's a ghost town now too. I have been back once, and I found old Polly's grave."

Quinton looked a little lost for a few moments and said nothing more until Emmy prompted him. He smiled and apologized. After another check of his charts, he began to speak again.

"Mother moved us to Cascade and I got to know my family some, from my mother's side. My grandmother fell for me on sight and could have loved me to death if she got the chance, but my grandfather began to really raise me.

They had a store, pretty much started out as a café out on Main Street. It's still there - at least it is as far as I know by Mother's letters, though my grandparents have both passed on. Grampa died when his horse threw him while he was out hunting. We'd planned that trip for a while, but I didn't take into account the length of the school year that well, and I had to stay for another two weeks, so Grampa went without me for the first time in a few years. I was eight then. Grammy died some years later, but I don't know what it was that took her for sure. I was away by then.

Mom kept running the store, but she had a hard time getting ahead until she took up with Deke Potter. They were together before Grampa died. Deke's a man's man in a lot of ways and he just took up where Grampa left off with raising me. Deke had about only a half-dozen jobs here and there going on at the same time. He worked for the Idaho National Forest, him and his brother. They also ran cattle all along the Snake River Plain, besides them both being bush pilots, so whenever I could and when either one needed the help," he smiled over at Emmy, "I was a cowboy.

Of course, at first, I was more of a cowBOY who needed watching about as much as the cattle we were herding, But I guess that I sort of grew into it.

Both Deke and his brother Harry are pilots like I said, so I had something to dream about even then. I was flying a bushplane when I was fourteen, but I had to wait until I was sixteen to take my solo flight - in the same old bushplane, but they'd taken the floats off and had it back on wheels for that.

Deke and Harry wanted to help Momma with her store, so they added to it and it became something of a variety store as well as being a café and diner. It... well, if everything's gone right, it'll fit with the secret business of mine that you keep on about. 

Both men also had some pretty amazing friends. It was nothing for me to walk up to one or the other or both standing there out in the street just jawin' with another man or two. I was a bit older before they'd actually introduce me then. I guess that I'd gotten to a point where they felt a little safe that no childish stuff would come out of my mouth. One time I walked over and they just introduced me and when they introduced the other men, I found out that one was the state representative in Congress and the other was the governor!

Anyway, it was things like that, them knowing who they did that earned me at least a look by the Army Air Force as a pilot candidate. Deke warned me really sternly that all that I'd been given was a chance. Whether I was accepted was up to me and whoever made those decisions. Then he wished me luck and walked off to get a haircut because we were outside of the barbershop and he'd noticed that there was a chair open."

Quinton fell silent again, but this time, he sat with a slightly expectant air about him.

When at last she prodded him to continue, Quinton shook his head slowly and just said, "Your turn."

----------

Emmy didn't really know where to begin but once she did, she was brutally honest and forthright about everything. "I think that my mother loved me, at least sometimes. She never said it though, not even once that I can remember.

I got a lot of my looks from my father, though it's never helped me none. A lot of the people and kids where I was didn't want to have any truck with an Indian kid, even though it was never how I saw myself then. So none of it ever exactly made me feel wanted or even liked by anyone.

I grew up pretty much because I had to. I didn't have anyone to look up to. My mother was just my mother. If I took something away from that, most often it was me resolving what not to be and how not to be toward other people. I saw what it got my mother. In my book, she often - if not usually - made things harder for us instead of easier.

Until I was about twelve, I didn't know my father at all. I'd never met him and my mother never said a word about him other than that he was an Indian. If I asked her what he was like, she just told me that it didn't matter. The only reason that I got to know him at all was because my mother got thrown in jail for getting into a big fight.

I woke up one day and she wasn't home. That wasn't all that unusual. So I got up and went to school like every other day. But the cops came to school and pulled me out to take me someplace and I ended up in a courtroom. 

I didn't know what it was all about, but the judge fined my mother a whole pile of money and she just stuck her jaw out and told him that she didn't have any money to pay the fine. Sometimes I wonder if she could have gotten off a little lighter by just acting like she was sorry. But that was something that she just never had any of inside of her. I know that now.

Well, it hadn't been the first time that she'd had to stand in front of that judge and he sentenced her to a year and some. It was only because of me that he didn't send her to prison. They took her away and she never even looked at me.

They didn't have anywhere to put me and they couldn't leave me all alone for a year, so they put me into the women's cells at the courthouse and not the jail. I had a cell of my own and I hadn't done a thing to anybody. They just didn't have anything else. At least I got to eat a little better. 

See, if I only looked a little... whiter, they could have put me in with the other poor kids like me. But on account of how I looked, they didn't want me and told the cops that there were places for people like me, they said. I don't think that I'll ever forget hearing it said that way about me - while I was right there to hear it. The two cops said that I wouldn't know how to live where they were talking about but it didn't change anything.

See, the cops there that day, they were in my part of town every day, since it was their beat and they knew me and a little about me, I guess. Three days later, there was somebody there to see me and when I walked outside, I suddenly knew that I wasn't in jail anymore. 

There was a truck out by the curb and I saw a man standing next to it looking at me. I think now that I even knew who he was before he'd said a word. His skin was the same as mine - even darker because he spent so much time outdoors. I could see a lot of myself in his face and to me; he was a very handsome man. As confused and unsure of everything as I was then, I remember being glad only to meet him and I couldn't tear my eyes off him for very long.

I'd always wondered what he looked like - and it was always a mystery to me how my mother had even let him get close to her, the way that she was whenever she talked about Indian people. But I learned more about my mother later, and I think that what happened was that he was good for her and treated here as well as he could. I never once saw him being even slightly discourteous to anyone ever. But I guess that she couldn't see that or something. My mother could screw up the Lord's prayer and just out of being in a nasty mood, since it happened more than any other mood that I ever saw her in.

I'm miles away now and I hope I never set eyes on her again for the way that she treated me, not even listening as I tried to tell her my side. My own mother treated me just like the rest of them. So I can say this - she was a foul-tempered, mean, low-down bitch, if you'll pardon my saying it. It was just my father's bad luck to think that it might have been something for him to love her. It might not have been the first thing to come to his mind, but I know that he's have tried to do well for her."

Emmy smiled then and it turned into a grin, "Lucky for me, I guess. But I only needed one look at him to know the answer to my mystery. Sure he was a poor man, but he was proud in his own way and unless he knew that doing it would get him trouble, he had no fear of anyone and I saw that a lot of people had trouble when they found him trying to look them in the eye. He meant nothing by it, he was just honest.

That's when I knew that he was my father for sure because I'm the same way. I try to learn what I can from people when I talk to them and a lot of people won't hold my gaze. I just never knew why before that day.

He told me who he was and that he'd been trying to get to see me for years, but my mother wouldn't let him. He packed me up in that truck with him and drove me out to the reservation. Out there, I wasn't somebody to ignore or look down on. All the same, I knew that I didn't really fit in there either. But I was with my father and he tried to make us a home.

I remember that nothing was ever a huge problem to him. He might not have the perfect answer, but most often, he had an answer all the same. I wasn't there three days and I got my first period. I didn't know anybody else, so I told him. He nodded and took me to a woman who gave me washed, clean and dried moss and taught me how to get some for myself. She taught me how to chew a certain bark for the cramps or how to make a kind of tea out of it for later and it worked.

Dad took me to places where it grew and we also collected some moss and prepared it together. There wasn't anything unpleasant about it to him. It was what women were and have always been. That was just what they did when that happened.

He taught me how to be what I was. Mostly, that meant that I was his daughter and that in his way, he loved me - or he was trying really hard to learn how to love me. The easy part was that he just did. The hard part was that I was useless to start with because I didn't know a thing. I failed at everything - the simplest things. But he always told me that it wasn't my fault.

He lived on the reservation when it suited him to. He worked at any job that he could find. But from the time that he'd discovered that working got him money; he also learned that the money could get him drunk. He stopped drinking once he knew about me he said, and that helped him. Now he wanted to help me.

That was how he'd met my mother, back when he'd been drinking. After finding out that there wasn't a single person in the world who could live with her, she ran him off and he stayed gone and drank more.

But one day, he learned that he had a daughter and then he'd try to come to see me, but my mother wouldn't allow it. Through her stupid actions, he was finally getting his chance.

So he taught me... not how to be a girl among those people - I was already too old to begin to learn that, plus I had no patience to learn to bead or do women things other than prepare food. I didn't even have any women like that in my family. I just had my father. 

I had a chance to look around and I was a little worried over the way that the women there seemed to tend to look. This wasn't all John Smith and lovely Pocahontas. They tended to look a little... different to me somehow, but I remembered that I was from a different place and I was seeing things in that way. I learned some of the language too.

The people there are Osage and once they were bitter enemies of the Kiowa and many others, but that was then. What I got out of it was that I can almost fumble my way through two languages.

I don't know if my blood had anything to do with it, but I found that I could pick it up after a while. But I never learned enough to do much more than carry on a simple conversation - well, not without the other person looking at me like they thought I was a little touched or something, but I got enough to get by, I guess. I made a couple of kinda friends among the other girls my age, but we didn't have much in common. A couple of them did try, though, so it was alright. But I never liked the way that a lot of the boys looked at me and it just told me that even there, I was from the outside. None of the women there had any familial ties to me, so few of them taught me anything. 

So I stuck with my father and he taught me things that he knew about, like how to work, to ride a horse, how to fish, how to run a trapline and how to shoot a rifle and hunt. And most of all, what to do with the things that I got from that.

We talked a lot and he told me the way that it is for us, meaning him and me. I could be accepted into that band, but he wasn't from that band. He was just there. He told me that I could live there, but that it was a different kind of life and a lot of Indian people have trouble living like that, because no matter how you live and try to live up to the old ways, you stay mostly poor and hungry. Only so much land to hunt and fish on, and you can't just go do that somewhere else if you don't like the crummy white people food they hand out at the agency office. I can say that because I grew up on better stuff than I saw there.

I'd have trouble living like that and he knew that about me. I was poor where I was, but I didn't have to live right off the land like they did. He didn't want that either, because that isn't being free, not if you stay on the reservation. I don't know, maybe it wasn't as hard for the people who came from the more foresty places. For the plains people - any of them, I'd guess, it's probably like the difference between fencing in a dog and a wolf. A dog will sit there and wait a long time for you to come back, sometimes even if he doesn't really know you, before he tries to find a way out.

A wolf will need to get out as soon as he hears the gate clang shut because he needs to be out. He wasn't made to be in there and he knows that. 

But if you leave that place, then you have to live in another world, and in that world, the other people see you as nothing, just something else to have to step around on the street. He told me that if he had learned that lesson when he was younger, he'd have left the reservation and never come back. But by then, he was stuck kind of in-between. 

It ain't much, but if you stay on the reservation in a tribal band, you can get a monthly allotment of food and a little money from the agency there, but it's not what you can live on right or even well. My father, he found that even though a lot of white people didn't like him or trust him much - so the work could be hard to find - well, he could do a lot better just working off the reservation. Plus, then he felt as free as anybody. He told me that it was a trade that he could live with but he knew that a lot of others couldn't. It's harder to keep to the old ways there, since you leave a lot of what you grew up with behind you.




By Air Mail Ch.05



********* 

Just who ARE the strangers in town? 

Meanwhile, back in the Beechcraft, Emmy finds other things to love.

0_o

**********

Bea's Café, 6:35PM, Cascade. Idaho

They walked into the café and it was packed with many of the people that they all knew, so it turned into a bit of a party where nobody could get anything because Marjorie and Rebecca wouldn't let Craig go for a long while. Rosa and Amelia looked at each other and started serving just to keep everybody at least a little happy.

It took a little while, but Amelia and Rosa noticed a group of strangers sitting in a booth alone, talking to each other as they looked around. What caught their eye was that they seemed to be pretty friendly with each other somehow, and that they were a bit of a mix.

The one who Rosa noticed first was the man with the long black braids in the denim jacket, but she saw the others, the hauntingly beautiful blonde woman and the man, as well as black couple there - which to her mind was just a slightly more unusual sight than the man with the braids, since more than anything, Cascade was home to far more Caucasians than any other type, not that anyone cared particularly. 

She didn't care especially; she thought they were all really attractive to her. It was just a little unusual to see three different kinds of people in the same group. She grabbed Amelia when she saw that she had a moment and they walked over to ask.

There was a bit of looking around between them and they came up with a request for a couple of pieces of pie and some more coffee and one tea between them.

"Just passin' through?" Amelia asked in a friendly tone.

They shook their heads, "No, this is where we were headed," one of the men said, "We wanted to get a look at the airfield and maybe talk to whoever runs the post office around here. We've got an idea to maybe set up here for business."

That remark got them Marjorie and Rebecca standing next to the booth and they explained what they had in mind - which both surprised and amazed the pair.

Marjorie explained that their husbands happened to run flight service in and out of town - and that they were sitting in the post office at the moment, though Marjorie said that they were waiting on their better sign from the postal service.

"With Rebecca's man running air mail on one of the main routes, and my husband doing about sixteen other jobs, it can get a little tough to get mail to some of the harder to reach places around here where it's a fair hike to come into town just to get your mail."

"What is a heli-... what you said?" Rebecca asked with a smile.

"My name's Terry Hatchett, Ma'am," the man with the blondish hair smiled, "and these are my associates, Hunter Youngblood, my wife, Molly, and this is Judith Hatchett and her husband, Isaiah."

"You're related?" Marjorie asked in surprise.

"In a way," Isaiah nodded, "Terry's family owned slaves long ago on a plantation. It's not unusual for some of the families to have taken the name of the plantation owner, though that was a long time ago." 

He reached into his jacket pocket and handed over a small photograph, "And this is a helicopter."

The two woman looked at it for a moment, "It looks like a big dragonfly," Rebecca smiled.

Terry nodded, "That's a good approximation for what it is, Ma'am. 

Like a dragonfly, a helicopter can fly and go nowhere at all, just hovering in place. It can also fly forward and backward if it has to - even sideways. More importantly for what we have in mind, they don't need much space to land and take off in, since - just like a dragonfly, they can land by stopping in midair and then just settling straight down, as long as the ground where they're landing is at least a little level.

At present, we have two helicopters, one like the one in that picture and another one for lighter duty. For the local mail outside of town, maybe your husbands might be interested in us flying the mail, so that they can concentrate on the other things fully. We exist as a business at the moment, but we're looking for a home. Once we're set up, we can offer other services as well, like flying crane service - up to about two hundred and fifty pounds presently. And we'll be expanding that if we find that there's enough demand."

"What do you mean?" Amelia said, immediately apologizing for interrupting.

"Not at all, Miss," Terry smiled, "that's a fair question."

"What Terry meant was that we can carry a load outside of the helicopter hung from slings," Hunter said with a smile and then found himself looking at Rosa, who'd stood there the whole time trying to listen while holding their order.

"Pardon me," she said in an almost normal voice, since she was trying hard, "Here's your order."

They all thanked her, though she missed it as she set everything out.

Amelia nudged her arm afterwards and she signed their thanks to Rosa.

Rosa smiled, "I'm sorry, I'm pretty much deaf. You're very welcome, of course."

She stared then as Hunter began to sign to her and it turned into a short conversation for a moment with Rosa looking very surprised and pleased.

"Hey, where did you pick that up?" Molly asked.

Hunter shrugged, "My aunt was born not being able to hear."

Marjorie wrote out the phone numbers for the two Potter businesses and she also wrote the number for the Café, "If you can't get anybody at these numbers Terry, then you just call me here. One way or the other, Rebecca and I will make it so that you can talk to at least one of them, since they can be hard to catch sometimes."

She smiled then, "I hope you might find a home here, just sayin', I can't think that I've met anyone with such good manners in a long time. Where are you from?"

I'm from Oklahoma," Hunter said, "and my friends are all from Alabama. I just do my best to try to keep up with their manners."

---------

As the group left a while later, Rebecca watched them go with Amelia, "It might work, what they said."

"Well I hope that it does," Amelia smiled, "I found them kind of charming - and really polite. But that's not the only reason."

Rebecca looked over, "What is, then?"

Amelia didn't make a big thing of it, she just pointed in a hidden way at Rosa, who stood watching as well, and it was a little clear which one of them she was looking at as they all got into a large panel truck, the five of them.

When Amelia tapped Rosa on the shoulder and held up her hands in a questioning gesture, Rosa looked a little abashed for a moment before she grinned, "Man, that Hunter's something, isn't he?"

They nodded with big smiles and got back to the celebration.

----------

In an airplane just crossing the Kansas/Colorado border at 180 knots - 12,000 feet above sea level.

Quinton looked over at Emmy and he told her that they were about to begin their descent within the next twenty minutes or so. 

"That means that I'll take us down to a lower level where we can begin our approach to land. You ought to go and see how dry your clothes are and think about maybe getting changed."

She nodded and unfastened her seat harness to head back. But she was next to him only a little later. "Why do I gotta get changed, anyway?" she asked, holding her headset next to her ear to hear him better, "Where are we gonna be going once we get there?" 

"We have to land and get the plane squared away once we park it," he said, "The way that the weather looks to me, it might be a windy night if this gets worse. I'd like to see if Harry's around, but one way or the other, we'll be in here. 

We ought to be fine in here for the night, and I don't want to have to go find us hotel rooms. I don't have that kind of money to do that all the time, since we haven't started hauling any mail yet. I think we'll be ok in here.

You don't mind sleeping in here, do you, Emmy?"

She shook her head, "No, as long as we don't freeze in here with no heat on. I was only asking because my clothes are only half dry - the top half. I'd be fine in what I've got on, I think. I don't want to have to get changed if I don't gotta. What do I have to do right away once we land?"

"We have to tie the plane down," he smiled.

"There is a minimum speed that this thing can fly at. Below that, it stalls and falls down. On the other side of it, if the wind goes above that speed while it's parked, well ... then it can try to fly without us. That's why we'll park it facing away from the wind and we'll tie it to the ground. I'll need you to help me with that, that's all."

She nodded, "Then I'm staying like this."

She walked back and then came over again to pick up her headset once more and hold the mike to her throat, "Quinton, I've found a couple of thick sweaters in one of those trunks, would it be ok if I put one on under this?"

He looked over and nodded, "I think that's a great idea. Go ahead and put one on, either one, your choice. They might be -"

Emmy nodded, "A little big on me, I know. That'll be fine with me, Quinton. I just want to be warm if I've gotta run around outside with you to tie the plane down or what you said."

He nodded and she was gone, leaving the headset on her seat.

Quinton looked back for just a second as he watched Emmy walk back and he realized that she was too far away to really yell at her effectively over the sound of the engines. Besides, he knew that he ought to be setting up for their approach.

He looked at his landing checklist as he smiled to himself, "I was gonna tell you to take the heavy cotton one since it's got a soft flannel lining.

Oh well, "he smiled to himself, "I hope you get it right anyway. That other one is coarse wool. I guess that warm bosoms are good for girls, no matter what."

He smiled to himself, "I wouldn't wear the wool one myself, not without something under it."

He chuckled then, "Though I guess that warm bosoms are the best thing - even in an itchy wool sweater."

She was back a minute later, holding up the overalls with one hand while she was tugging the bottom of the wool sweater down. He looked again for a second and admired her skin, deciding that he liked pretty much anything of hers.

She looked up and over at him as she kept tugging, "What are you looking at? I already got it past my tits."

He had to laugh a little, "You'd better sit down. It might get a little bumpier soon."

Emmy managed to pull her overalls up over the sweater without requiring his intervention at all. It was the damndest thing to her as she realized that for some inexplicable reason, she was almost a little sorry about it.

She was just sitting down as they hit a bit of wind and the aircraft nudged upward a little so that Emmy landed in her seat a little harder than she'd intended. She reached for the seat harness and began to fasten everything a little hurriedly.

"Me?" Quinton smiled, "I was still looking at beautiful."

Emmy frowned as she tried to remember just what he might have seen then. As far as she could tell ...

"That was just my stomach," she said looking down for a second.

He nodded, "I know."

"Then what are you talking about?" she demanded.

"Emmy," he said, still smiling as he scanned his instruments and went back to guiding their approach to the field, "No matter what you might think, I am entitled to my opinion. If I say it enough times, I'm hoping that I might teach you something that hasn't got a thing to do with flying."

She was looking out of the side window again, fastening the little microphone onto her collar, "You just keep saying that I'm -"

"Right," he nodded, not looking over, "Sooner or later, I'm hoping that just a little of it might stick. In case you're not aware of it, you're not in Dodge City anymore. Forget about the way that they made you feel there. In case you never saw the movie about the great and powerful Oz, we're not in Kansas anymore."

The ride in got a little rougher and the actual landing approach was pretty bouncy for the gusts involved.

"I can't see anything out there that even looks like an airfield," Emmy said as she sat forward, trying to catch a glimpse, "Are you sure it's even out there?"

She looked over at Quinton who was smiling a little, "My charts say it's out there, I'm on the right heading and ..." he changed the pitch on the propellers and it sounded different to Emmy as she looked out of the window. What she saw out there was the very same engine which had always been there.

As she looked, she saw a portion of the rear of the wing swivel downward. She looked back over at Quinton who looked over and winked, "And this," he said as he reached out to tap one of the instruments, "This says that it's out there."

Emmy felt some pressure on her eardrums and shook her head.

"Here," Quinton smiled as he held something out to her, "have a piece of chewing gum. It'll help your ears, if that look on your face is what I think it is."

She reached and took the pack from him, working to get a piece unwrapped and into her mouth, "Woo bewieve vat fing?"

Quinton nodded, "Just watch me." He pointed, "See there? That line?"

Emmy stared, realizing that she just didn't really know what to look for, so she stared harder, wishing to make whatever it was appear.

She started as she heard and felt the gear going down underneath them. The things on the wing moved again as Quinton pulled back a little power. She could feel that they were flying slower now and she kept trying to make an airport appear as though by her silent command.

"How do you even know that you'll land the right way?" she asked, "What happens if you land crosswise?"

Quinton pointed to whatever the magic thing was that he held so much faith in, "This tells me the right way in."

He looked back out through the windshield for a moment, "And if we land crossways, then I guess that I'll just have to stand on the brakes even harder. You land on them the wrong way, you tend to find that they're real short like that."

He winked at her again, "But they're really, really wide that way, just saying."

She saw it then and wondered how a thing like that could have remained hidden from her sight for so long.

"It's all in the way that you look," Quinton explained, "It's really not that hard to see, it just looks different from a ways off - if you're trying to see what you would from the ground."

He got on the radio again and Emmy heard that he was number one to land.

"What in the hell does that mean, that you're number one?"

Quinton chuckled, "Oh Emmy, I'd just love to tell you right now that it means that they like me an awful lot. I'll explain it to you later if I remember."

The runway stretched out before them now, taking up a significant portion of their view through the windshield and it kept getting bigger and longer the closer that they got to it. Emmy looked all over around the interior of the plane again and Quinton noticed it. "Too late for parachutes, Emmy," he grinned.

Emmy watched his grin and it stayed on his face even as the gusty wind bobbled them around a little. Emmy wanted to curse him for the way that he just seemed so ... so damned confident like there was nothing ...

She felt it as one wheel kissed the runway, followed immediately by the one on the other side. The hum of the tires filled the flight deck, though the sound was droning lower and getting quieter. Emmy remembered the tail and noted that it was still up there, still flying even though the plane was on the ground. Then all of a sudden, she felt it lower gently until it was down as well.

Emmy found that she had a whole lot of questions for him, but Quinton appeared to be a little busy making adjustments and talking on the radio, and listening intently to get whatever instructions they had for him. When he turned right off the runway onto what looked more like a road to her, she noticed that she'd been holding onto the paper bag the whole time since she'd sat back down. Right then, it looked a little ludicrous in her hand, so she stuck it in between her seat and the wall once more.

She was a little surprised. This whole trip and she hadn't needed her 'barf bag', and all things considered, they managed it just fine. He taxied over to the general parking area, but it meant that he had to be at pretty much the far end of it from the terminal.

And that meant a long walk.

He shut the engines off and set a lot of switches again in what looked to Emmy to be the reverse for what he'd done back in Dodge City. After that, he got up and led her back. He opened the other trunk and handed her a bright yellow rain slicker. 

Together, they went out and he taught her how to lash the aircraft down and he put other ties on the wing control surfaces so that they pointed downward a little so that, if anything, the wind from behind would push the aircraft down. Then Quinton walked away toward the terminal and Emmy got back inside and thought that it hadn't gone too badly, since she wasn't any wetter than she'd been when they got out.

She waited for a time, going to look out of the windows at the terminal some distance away. Then, growing bored and wanting to do something useful, she opened both of the trunks and began to rearrange things. She looked at the gun for a moment, guessing that he'd taken it off at last. It was there in it's holster and the belt was there as well.

Then she went back to waiting, listening as the wind gusted once in a while and caused the plane to groan a little in response. She even felt it move just a bit now and then when there was a particularly strong gust going by. She remembered that the plane was lashed down from rings for that in certain places and then she thought that though they were parked on concrete, they were all the way at the end of it and there was grass not five feet from where they were and under the wing on the side away from everything.

She looked into the knapsack and found a few paper napkins, so with a thought to everything here, she stepped out and walked around out there without the yellow raincoat. Taking a look around herself in the deepening gloom, she finally shrugged and peed, using the napkins to wipe with. After that, she almost ran around to the other side where the door was and she climbed in, almost wanting to laugh a little. 

People could now fly around almost wherever they wanted or their paths took them, she thought, but you still had to piss in the grass sometimes. Since it was now early evening, the sky was darkening quickly and the inside of the aircraft looked rather gloomy to her, though the overhead clear dome helped a lot for now. 

Finally, Emmy thought that she could see him off in front of the terminal. He seemed to stop for a moment and she wondered what he was doing. He had a package and it looked something like the sort of paper bag that you might get at a grocery store. He held it under one arm for a moment and she wondered what he was doing again.

There was a flare of light then and she watched as he lit a thin cigar. He puffed on it a moment and then he began to walk, the hem of his duster being blown up in the wind every so often as he walked holding on to his hat with one hand and the bag with the other.

Emmy sighed. She now knew that Quinton had been a cowboy, but oh, she'd never laid eyes on one like him. 

He seemed like a really nice man to her. She had a little trouble reconciling the man that she knew with his talk of being a pilot who'd sometimes shot down other pilots and their crews. It seemed like another time to her, not that it had been all that long ago. 

But there was still that gun, even though he didn't wear it now.

It was an uncertainty to her. It even bothered her to a degree. And Emmy wasn't the kind of girl who was particularly bothered by things like that.

She was waiting for him as he got near to the door, opening it with a little bow. "Welcome home."




By Air Mail Ch.05



He laughed about it and Emmy suddenly felt an urge to hug him for nothing.

"Well, I've learned a few things," he said, "I called and found out that Harry's route joins with mine and he has a part of Route 18 going from Elko, Nevada to San Francisco, sharing a little of the load with another fellow. I've got pretty much all of Route 5 from Elko to Pasco in the state of Washington. We're going to do him a little favor and pick up his mail load in Cheyenne to drop off in Elko, so that he can get an early start the next time that he comes through there. We'll get our own mail load there and fly the first route in to Pasco as soon as we're able.

Harry's not here. He wanted a day off and didn't know that we were coming today, since I didn't exactly make a big deal out of announcing it or anything.

"What's in the bag, Quinton?" she asked, and he smiled, "This is still mostly an Air Force base, but they allow some of us lowly civilians in here. I found out that the diner over there is thought of pretty highly and they're a little famous for their chili. 

Well I wanted to come right back here to get you so we could have a proper meal together and all. But I thought about it and finally decided that we'd have a day to square ourselves away and I want to get you something proper to wear, if you'll let me, so that's what I want to do tomorrow. For tonight, they're still calling for gusty conditions so I thought that we'd stay out here to ride it out.

I still had the problem of dinner and the gift shop was just about to close, so I bought a couple of wide-mouthed thermos jars and I had the waitress wash them out and fill them up with chili. I bought a loaf of bread too and I even have some spoons in here in camping sets."

"You wanted to get me to take me to dinner?" Emmy asked.

"Is that such a strange thing?" he smiled, "I don't always want to hide you away inside of an airplane."

Emmy didn't know what to say. "But I've got my hair braided like ... I'd look like a -"

He nodded, "A really pretty woman, I know."

"I was gonna say squaw," she said and he nodded, "I know and I don't care. You're you and I like you."

His expression changed to one of uncertainty, "Or would that have been presumptuous of me?"

She tilted her head, "Presumpt- what? What do you mean?"

"I dunno," he said, "Maybe you wouldn't want to be seen with me. I look like a -"

"A really good-looking cowboy," Emmy laughed, "I know. I think that I could get past it."

She held the back of her hand up to her forehead as she raised her face with her eyes closed tightly as though she was suffering, "Oh woe is me," she wailed a little, "How will I bear the shame of being seen with the best-looking man in the state?"

As she lowered her hand, chuckling a little, she saw that he wasn't laughing; "Now you're making fun of me."

She shook her head, still chucking, "Oh. You're embarrassed to be handsome? Jeez, tough ride there, Quinton."

"Wait a minute," he said, "so we can go for breakfast?" he asked and then Emmy was lost, so she hugged him, just happy that he didn't seem to care a fig over how she looked to anyone. She pressed her cheek to his; not giving a damn that it was a little prickly and she kissed him there too just because.

"Whoa," he smiled.

"What? "She asked, "I'm not supposed to do that?"

He shook his head, "No, I just think that I must have done something right there and I want to know what it was - so that I can do it again, if I get hugs and kisses out of it."

She shrugged, "I'm usually prepared for when people don't want me around. I thought that you didn't take me with you because of that. I mean, it's alright, Quinton, I just -"

"No," he said, looking slightly annoyed, "If this was a car and not something that I have a lot of money into, I'd have wanted to take you with me. I wanted to take you along anyway, but I left my gun in the footlocker and I didn't have a lock for it. I bought one of those too, just now, so that I CAN walk away from it, seeing as it seems to make you so nervous.

I know that the war is over, but this is still a military place and they tend not to have a lot of humor to them, being so important and all. That's the difference between here stateside and where I was. Here, they pretend they're important. There, we actually looked for something to laugh about. 

Otherwise, I wanted you along. We're friends, just starting out and working together and everything, but I don't want to go and leave you behind over ..." 

He looked at her, "Who wouldn't want ...?"

He seemed to sag a little then, "Emmy, I wish now that I knew how you felt and all. Look, for the record, I said that you were beautiful because it's true. I'd love to be seen anywhere with you."

He looked annoyed again for a moment, "Look, if something like that ever comes up in you again, I want you to tell me, alright? Where in the world did that come from, anyway?" 

Emmy shrugged, "Sometimes, when she needed to get something, like from the bakery trying to get day-old stuff for nothing, Momma would tell me to wait outside, or if she saw somebody that she might have wanted for the night to get some money from, she'd tell me to scat and come home real quiet later. I'm just ... I'm pretty used to that."

Quinton looked horrified, but he shook his head at last, "Well forget all of that, Emmy. Right now, forget it all. I can't imagine that I'd ever be ashamed to be in your company. Come on, let's eat, alright?"

He opened the footlockers and stared at the neat order of things and she handed him the camping sets of cutlery. After that, he pulled out a couple of military-style olive drab flashlights with their heads at ninety degrees to the rest of them, telling her that they were for clipping onto clothing or things while you worked. He opened the case of D-cells and loaded them up to turn them on and hang them from things so that they could see.

It was only a rustic meal for a pair of people in some slightly basic conditions, but to Emmy, it was a feast. She knew what thermos bottles were, but the hot coffee that they'd shared earlier had been her first actual experience with the devices. Watching Quinton open the larger ones to pour their hot chili into the plastic bowls amazed her and she learned then, looking back on everything, that he could sometimes be given to a little bit of understatement now and then.

He'd told her that he'd bought a loaf of bread to go with the chili. Well that was so, but he'd said nothing about the entire loaf's slices being buttered before being re-assembled and put back in the bag. And there were two pats of butter sandwiched in squares of waxed paper.

"How many planes do you have to shoot down to be an ace?" she asked out of the blue as they began to eat, "Five? I think that I read someplace that it was five."

"Where did that come from?" he asked, looking a little bewildered.

"Yup," she nodded, remembering for certain, "It's five. How many did you shoot down, Quinton?"

He looked uncomfortable, going on about damaged ones and all, but she shushed him after a minute. "I don't really care. I'm just trying to figure something out about you. So how many? I don't mean damaged that could still fly and got away from you. Just tell me how many you shot down."

"I didn't say it to make me look -" 

He stopped when she put her fingers against his lips.

"How many, Quinton?"

"Seven."

"Thanks, and I'm right," she smiled, "You're not the kind of man who blows his own horn. Now eat some more and forget about my dumb questions. I didn't ask you so that you'd feel stupid."

He nodded and they began in silence.

"Why did you want to know that about me?" Quinton asked.

Emmy looked over, "Girls ask things for their own reasons. You never told me about the gun. Why am I gonna have to wear one?"

"You'll be dealing with the US Mail," he said.

"So?" she asked, "I've never seen a mailman with one."

He sighed and looked down for a moment. "When I was flying in the war, there was always the possibility of being forced down someplace in the middle of nowhere through anything from battle damage to mechanical failure. They wouldn't let us carry rifles in our planes, but they encouraged us to carry a revolver. I wouldn't have a .38. They're better as hammers than pistols. I went out on leave before we shipped out and I bought that colt and some ammunition for it. I might be able to at least hunt something with that.

Where we're going to be flying - a lot of it - is wilderness. True, it's American wilderness, but that doesn't mean anything. I've seen packs of wolves, lynx, bears, moose, wolverines, and lots of mountain lions back in the woods where I come from. I landed on a lake once in a float plane and was just tying up the plane at the dock when I looked up and there was a bear walking toward me right on the dock."

"What did you do?" Emmy asked him.

He chuckled, "I untied the plane and I pushed off as fast as I could, is what I did."

"I don't think that your gun would have done any more than make the bear mad at you," Emmy smiled, "But I get what you mean." 

Quinton grinned, "If I'd have known that that six-gun was going to cause us both to waste body heat talking about it so much, I'd have put it in the footlocker a lot sooner. I just thought of it too late. I didn't mean that we'd walk around with six-guns, either. I just want to have them a little handy when we're working, just in case."

The wind gusted again and it carried a little rain with it. They listened for it long after it had gone. "This is a little unusual for Pueblo," he said, "They don't often get this much rain. It's pretty dry here."

"Do you think that it'll get cold tonight?" she asked and he shrugged, "It's a little cold right now for this time of year. 

We'll be ok, Emmy. I didn't know that I've have you along on this trip. I thought that I'd be alone in here and talking to myself. I bought good rugged gear for cheap and in with the rest - the blankets and the parkas, I bought four sleeping bags, two of them for really cold places."

"I uh ... I know that, Quinton," she smiled pointing; "I've got them all out and zipped open to let them breathe a bit. Go on."

He looked over and he smiled, because she'd done what he'd wanted to and forgotten.

"The seats are mounted in rails along the floor. I haven't decided just where to put them, so I had the people at Beechcraft leave them loose in the rails. They won't go anywhere, but they can be moved. We can move them out of the way to give us room. 

We'll split up the bedding and one of us can sleep over here and the other one can sleep -"

"Over here too," she said, chuckling and pointing again, "The way that this thing is tilted, we're both gonna end up there sooner or later. We may as well just accept it.

I want to ask you something, Quinton. You can think of it as me asking you for a favor, if you want. 

I've had to put up with listening to all kinds of insults over getting caught with Janey with my pants down and everything. I've never been with a man."

She looked away while trying to shore up her nerve, "A little funny I think, coming from the daughter of a low-down slut like I am. I never had a boy who even liked me. All the same, if there was one thing that Momma actually taught me - on purpose, that is, it's how to please a man. I just never got the chance to use any of it before."

She looked up at him from where she sat cross-legged on a folded-up blanket there on the floor and leaning back against the quilted padding of the wall, "You helped me today, and not just by getting me out of a jam. I don't care about anything that I have to do or learn, Quinton. I'm going to have that job, no matter what."

He looked at her across the dimly lit cabin in some surprise, "Emmy ... Emmy, I ..."

She shook her head, "This hasn't got anything to do with that, Quinton. I'm feeling better about a lot of things and I've been in here with you all day and learning about something that I never knew that I liked, and ..." 

She smiled a little hopefully, "I like you and I want to do something good for both of us. I've never been with a man, like I said, and ..."

She looked at him and he watched her hanging onto her courage, just by the nervous way that she bit her lower lip.

She took a breath and Quinton knew right then that it had been to push herself. He waited and then she let it out in a very soft sigh, knowing that what she wanted to say to him was still there unspoken in her chest.

"I've finally met a man that I'd want to be my first. I want to do that so that I know what it is to hold a man really close that I find feelings for in me. I'm not asking for more than that. I want to know how that feels, Quinton, like I wanted to know how it felt to kiss your cheek earlier. 

I'm a virgin, but if you've got any rubbers ..." 

There was a pause where Emmy swore that she heard her breath, his breath, and she couldn't tell whose pulse she heard, guessing that it just had to be hers.

He shook his head, while she tilted hers, "Weren't you ever a boy scout or nothin'? I thought that they taught everybody to be prepared and like that. Ok, fine. I still want to sleep with you. You'll just have to let me use some other things that Momma taught me."

"You're serious ... "he asked more in the way of a very quiet statement - almost a whisper in the quiet aluminum cocoon which they were in.

Emmy drew another one of those breaths and she nodded while letting it out, "You've helped me more in an afternoon than anyone ever did for me but my father."

She rolled her eyes, "Not that anything like this ever came up in his teachings to me, you understand. Now, I want to do something good for you and myself. I still want to be your girl Saturday in the morning and all. But I think that I care enough about you even as a friend for this."

"Don't you mean my girl Friday?" he smiled.

"No," she smiled back, "I've always liked Saturdays better than Fridays."

He shook his head, "I don't like the term, not for this and not for you. I know where it comes from. I've read the book. This isn't a desert island and you're not my servant."

"I've read it too, in the library at school," she said, "And I think that I'm gonna have to be that while I'm learning everything. I don't mind, Quinton, and ..."

She looked down, "And if you find that you still think that I'm a little beautiful to you in the morning, then I think that I'd really like it if you could explain that to me a little bit - so that I can get it nailed down in my mind how that can be and then maybe I can shut up about it in my head."

He sat leaning back against the opposite wall, "Did your mother really teach you things like you were talking about?"

She nodded, smiling a little, "She told me I was useless at anything else, so I'd better learn at least one thing so I could make my way. Then she'd tell me how everything went, like it was some holy secret or something. The hardest part for me was not telling her that I already knew most of it, just not the whys and what was behind what she did, when she did it and why she did it then."

She smiled a little shyly, "I used to watch her with the men she brought home. She never knew because by then, she'd be drunked-up enough for it. I knew that I just had to be real careful that the man didn't find out. I watched from the time that that I was eighteen or so, since I figured that I'd have to know something sometime. It didn't do anything for me, I just couldn't sleep sometimes and I was curious.

Though my fascination didn't last more than once or twice. I mean, if you've seen dogs do it and cattle do it, then people just look like something in between, right?

I used to have the hardest time not laughing my head off if I imagined people getting stuck together like dogs."

She could see that he didn't like the images in his mind from what she'd said, so before she'd lost the moment, she shrugged, "Do you still think that I'm beautiful? I - I mean after what I just said?"

He nodded as he set his empty bowl aside, "Come here, Emmy. I'll try to explain it to you right now, if you want to hear it."

She shook her head with a sheepish little grin, "I'm not finished eating yet. I've never had enough food that I thought I could waste any. I've been talking all this time. I'll come sit with you in a minute, though I think that I'd prefer to hear about it while I'm lying down, if it's all the same to you."

Some distance away, another aircraft had been starting up it's engines, getting ready to leave, just like a featureless bus in Emmy's mind, bound for somewhere far away. As it taxied along to reach the end of the runway, it's navigation lights flashed at regular intervals and the glow of it came into the space where they sat looking at each other. 

Quinton stared at Emmy as she set her bowl aside for a moment to rise up on her knees a short distance away from him. As he watched her appearing and then disappearing in the glow of the lights from outside, she slipped his jacket from her shoulders and let it fall behind her as she began to undo the buttons on her overalls, peeling it off her shoulders before she pulled the wool sweater over her head.

"I can show you one of the things that I learned, if you'd like," she smiled, running her hand over one of her breasts slowly. It was cool inside where they were and Emmy made use of it this way, knowing that his eyes would lock onto that hard nipple and stay there. The lights on the slowly passing aircraft outside winked off at that moment and a second later when they blinked back on the next time, Quinton was staring as though in disbelief.

She'd switched both her hands and her nipples and was now running her left hand over her other breast.

She smiled, "I love that old sweater for how warm it is, but right now, I want to just ... well, never mind. I'd just ruin the mood if I said it by making you laugh the way that you do - that I like so much. I can show you something else I learned. Watch now."

She picked up her bowl and her piece of bread and he watched her swab the unbuttered side around the bowl slowly for a moment before she held it up and slowly brought her tongue out to lick the chili and then put the crust into her mouth. It was only her not wasting food, but it was also about the most sensual thing that he'd ever seen a woman do anywhere.

Nurses in the South Pacific couldn't hold a candle to Emmy right now in his mind. He'd been truthful to her when he'd expressed his opinion that she was lovely. Right now, beautiful Emmy was demonstrating that she could turn that into erotic without a thought.

Quinton sat transfixed as she looked at him, her mouth just a little full as she chewed the bread and swallowed, still smiling softly. Her eyes slid down him momentarily and then she was looking at his eyes again, her smile never leaving.

She'd seen what she'd wanted to see in the straining bulge of his jeans.

Emmy leaned forward and began to crawl toward him slowly on all fours, her overalls getting a little tangled up as she went and her not seeming to notice.

"Open your shirt for me, Quinton," she sighed, "I need to feel you against me. And while you're at it, you'd better undo your pants and let that thing out before it breaks or something."

It all involved a little fumbling on both their parts, but at last he sat, still transfixed on the edge of the seat with his shirt open and his pants around his ankles. Emmy was on her knees and then she was in his arms trying to melt into Quinton as though she was the rain that he needed.

Her first kisses were soft and a little tentative, but that passed in seconds as she realized that she'd been right to want him, right to dare to have her thoughts of this and so fucking damned right in her knowing that it would be this good. 




By Air Mail Ch.05



Emmy felt that she had a chance here and her kisses, as needful as they were, kept him prisoner. Her hands ran everywhere on him that she could reach and his hands began to glide over her skin, sliding over her softness and slowing as he felt some of her strength and musculature. It seemed to do something to him and he groaned then, before those hands of his found the sides of her breasts and one moved on, though the other one stayed and wandered inward.

She gave him the room for it, not having the choice or the want in her to do anything different and after a moment, she reached down, slipping her fingers against and then past his warm masculinity.

She took a breath when she could and eased her hand down to slide carefully, with only slightly trembling fingers curling around to cup that wonderful male sac. Emmy wasn't a little thing and her hands weren't willow-girl hands as they squeezed just a tiny bit before she made him groan again when she rolled those stones around in there so cautiously.

Her hand came back up a little to grasp the pulsing rod that she found there and she began to stroke him a little, almost lost as she kissed his neck and jaw.

"You smell so good," she whispered hungrily, "I've never ... ohhh, Quinton." 

She pressed herself against him even more, drinking in his warmth along with his strength as she kissed him again, just as hungrily.

She broke the kiss and moved back to look into his eyes, "Is this good?" she asked and his reply was the barest nod. What she saw in his eyes was hunger. He lunged for her and she wanted to fall down as he kissed her throat. His arm went around her neck to hold her and he kissed and sometimes nipped, working from under her ear to her clavicle and back.

She moaned a little and to Quinton, it sounded a little sad. 

"My skin is too dark for me to be any kind of white girl," she said. "Other than my cheekbones and how dark I am, my face looks like I'm white. But I'm not. 

My hair ... I've never seen a girl where I was who had hair like mine, this heavy and thick."

She took his hand and guided it down over her belly, losing it once because she was going faster than he wanted to feel. When she had it against her mound, she dragged herself away from his shoulder and looked him in the eye.

"What's there is sleek and thick enough to make a throw rug. Quinton listen to me, I've been my own worst nightmare for all of my life, stuck in here as I am. I don't fit with either bunch and I never have."

She sighed, "I don't belong anywhere.

For God's sake, tell me why you said I'm beautiful. I'm sorry that I keep bringing it up, but I just can't understand. I'll do what you want, and tonight I'll take care of you, but please tell me so that I can know if you mean it or you're just lying to me.

Look, it doesn't matter to me if you are, I just ... I ... please?"

He stopped, frozen in place and Emmy's heart froze with him, thinking that she'd just ruined things.

"I didn't lie," he whispered, "I meant it Emmy. You are beautiful; don't ever tell me you're not. I can see your eyes and I know what's in there. You put up fences, thinking that I can't see past them. If there's one thing that you do like your father's people - that's it. You look out impassively - like nothing affects you, but you're hiding how you feel.

Well I've lived in a place where they do that better than anybody in the world Emmy, and I can see right through it, believe me."

He exhaled heavily, "Trust me, alright? You want to be my friend, then you have to let me in past those eyes. You want this, then you can't just hide inside yourself and make all the right noises, like Momma taught you, maybe.

I don't want that. Look, I don't even need this, though I want it pretty bad."

"What do you want then?" Emmy asked, in the softest whispered sigh.

He reached for her face and he stared into her eyes until she gave up and looked back into his.

"I want to make love to you. I want to be beside you, Emmy. Neither one of us knows what this is, other than the obvious, but I know that I'd go anywhere and be seen with you, if you'll just let me hold your hand."

The next moment, Quinton had the thought that their moment was ending, but he hoped that she might understand, at least a litt -

Emmy was against him again, happy and hungry for him once more, her moment of doubt gone. She lunged for his neck herself and she wouldn't let go as she tried to drink him in through her pores. She felt the scruff of his beard against her neck and shoulder and she didn't care.

She'd found what she never knew that she'd wanted so badly, someone who would let her out of her hard shell. Nothing had ever felt this good, the way that Quinton's chest felt against hers. That soft fur that he had, it felt amazing and her tits had never been happier to be crushed up against that.

"I can give you a choice," she groaned into his ear, one hand against his back, pulling him against her and the fingers of her other hand deep into his soft blonde hair, "I'll suck you if you want me to, but there's no way that I'll let you chew my rug after that, because I can't stop kissing you and I know it - if that's what you think you might want to do." 

She sighed, "I know that's what I'd want some of, but ...

Or, you can rub your prick in between my thighs until you come, and then for sure I won't let you chew on me - and I won't suck you after that, not without a shower first. They have that here, don't they?"

He nodded, "They do and I don't care, Emmy. Do what you want."

She got up, struggling with her fallen-down overalls, "Come on then," she smiled, "I want to get warm and this is freezing my ass." She went to the very back of the cabin and just shrugged at what she was looking at.

The plane was a kind that is most often referred to as a 'tail-dragger', for the way that it faced upward slightly at rest on the ground. The rear end of it sat lower on the tailwheel. That meant that the interior, when parked, sloped back. Actually sleeping might prove to be a challenge, she thought, but they weren't there yet.

Emmy had her shoes and overalls off and was on her back as Quinton pulled the other bedding closer and turned it so that the inside faced down and he covered her with it. The whole operation had been a little amazing in the dark, away from the hanging flashlights, since he was holding his pants up with one hand at some points. She giggled and he asked her what was so funny.

She giggled some more and pointed, "You look like a weathervane."

He looked down and nodded with a smile, "Well don't put any faith in this, just sayin'."

"Just tell me that it can bring me the storm that I'm wanting so bad," she smiled up.

"Well for that," he grinned, "I'm at least a little sure that it's accurate."

Emmy almost squealed when she laughed because it felt so good to feel this way.

Quinton moved and eased himself over Emmy to hold her and they moaned a little at each other as they kissed slowly and deeply. He reached and pulled up the sleeping bag. She asked him why.

He looked at her as though it was obvious, or it ought to be, "I don't want to get arrested for letting your bosoms get cold. I'm headed downstairs a little slowly. I'll be back sooner or later though, so while I'm gone use this to stay warm."

"Why, Quinton? I don't get it. Where are you going?

Oh ... ohhh, I get it now... That feels so nice. Mmm. My bosoms are in love, I'm pretty sure."

He began to squeeze whichever nipple that he wasn't loving with his mouth. For all of her nervous silliness, Quinton was quickly finding that he had feelings for this one girl. He'd have done this anyway, but like this, he'd made her shut up before she'd be able to feel foolish over it later. He knew that about women. They were all too quick in his opinion to feel foolish at times like this. 

And just like cold bosoms, Quinton decided that it ought to be a crime. 

Emmy was as skittish as a colt until he realized that his beard was tickling her as he nosed his way down her stomach, keeping at least one finger and thumb set working a nipple on his way down south.

And she'd been right, though for some reason, he didn't mind. There was enough down here for a throw rug. To him, it felt luxurious, too.

By then, Emmy's hips were already bucking and he was surprised, but he decided that like a lot of things about her, there were surprises and he just grew to like them as he settled in a little lower to really try to do this part of her justice. He was, he told himself, trying to supersede the efforts of another female, who'd been here before him, only to fuck up something this nice. 

Emmy was clutching the sleeping bag to herself and Quinton regretted that, but he could accept it. He promised himself to do this again for Emmy if he could, because frankly, he's have paid money only for the view up over her mound to watch the rest of her feeling this good.

Her head was moving restlessly and her wonderful tits just had to be worth a look from this angle if she was having this much fun, he decided. And these thighs, he thought to himself as he looked over and reached for one to hold her so that she could feel him being appreciative, what he'd give right now to feel these strong legs wrapped around him.

Emmy kept bucking and she cried out once and he knew it right away as she clamped her mouth shut. He stopped and waited for her head to lift up.

He got to a count of four and then he saw her looking at him.

"You like what I was doing at all?"

She nodded nervously.

"Well then you just let it out if it wants to come out of you. I swear - " he stopped to lay a very affectionate kiss onto her outer lips, just for being as puffy and nice to feel like this "- there is nothing, Miss Emmy, no sweeter sound in the world to me than a beautiful woman who's feeling a little joy."

Her head fell back with a soft thump and Emmy groaned for a second. "You did it again."

"I know, "he chuckled, "I can't help it."

"Jesus Quinton," she groaned, "you're three inches from my asshole and you called me that again."

"You want me to -"

"No," she sighed, "though it is a nice thought, the way that you say it to me."

He grew a little determined at that point, so he lifted his knees and brought them forward to plant them one at a time. While Emmy tried to figure out what he was doing, Quinton seized her hips in his hands and lifted her bottom end clean off the sleeping bag up to his mouth.

Emmy squawked in surprise for a moment until it became a little clear to her and she was amazed as she looked up at how he was holding her partly in the air like she was a little thing. His breath came out of him in hot blasts every time that he exhaled from the effort of holding her there as Emmy came to find something else about him that just blew her away.

But after a moment, she did come to the thoughts that he wanted her to. 

If he thought enough of her to want her like this, taking her as though she was his and so obviously liking to do it, then she found that she could feel either stupid or just give in to revel in the way that he really wanted to do this for her - to her - whichever.

Her hips moved once more, though not as much now for the way that she felt a little delightfully restrained by him.

She didn't care anymore and it felt great.

The rest of her trip wasn't a long one. Before long she was wailing, the squeezing her own breasts, not giving a damn kind of wailing. 

The rolling her head on the matting and not even noticing the cold kind of wailing.

The calling his name like she meant it kind. The 'o - o-OH OH fuuck, Oh, god-DAMN and hellfire' wailing kind. 

And just a little yelling out that she loved him too.

-------

"Quinton?" her voice came to him sounding small and uncertain out of the pile of sleeping bags that he'd put onto her to keep her from getting cold as he watched her chest heaving under them all.

"Quinton, when I said that -"

She saw him slowly look up from her covered hips the entire long road along the sleeping bags to her face.

"When I said -"

"Are you going to take it back now?" he asked as more of a voice out in the darkness, "What you said? I wouldn't recommend it. 

If you do that, then I'll never do anything like that for you again."

"You were wonderful," she said quietly, "I don't even have words for how you made me feel. I just said someth-"

"Were you," he growled a little coolly, "for just maybe an instant back there, in heaven? Like it felt so good that for just one sliver of time - and not forever or even probably the very next sliver of time right after that - in love with me where it felt good enough to say to me that it just got out of you?"

"Well, yeah," she said, "I've never felt anything - "

"But now it's over and you want to take away from my moment in it," he said quietly, "I was good enough for Emmy Looking Cloud one time, and it made her forget herself and feel good enough just once so that she could say anything to me with complete abandon."

She looked up and saw him still crouched and shivering a little in the cool air.

"Why aren't you covered up?" she asked.

"I wanted you to be warm," he said.

Emmy was stunned. She couldn't tell if he was serious or not.

"Come here," she said, "Please."

He eased himself down stiffly and she covered him and pressed herself against him, ignoring the way that his body now felt cold to hers. She nosed up against him, seeking his face to look into his eyes. "What's wrong?"

He took a minute to answer her, "Emmy, why would you ever think that I'd be anything but happy once I worked at something just for you until you felt good enough to say that you love me? Do you really think that I'm fool enough to have heard that and want to hold you to it?

I was happy that you felt so good. You can look all you like, but you won't find a courthouse stenographer in here typing away what you said in a moment of joy so that I can use it against you. You were happy. I was happy that I could make you get that way for once. I heard that and thought that I did good for you."

"You did, Quinton." 

"Then let me enjoy what I did. If I can make you feel that good, then if it's what you want, you can tell me that you love me, or that you'll name all of your children and your pet dog after me, whatever you want to say. I won't mind. But don't worry about it afterward as the feeling passes by you and try to take it back like you think I'm a thief who can't be trusted."

He turned onto his back and looked up in the darkness, "All of you are the same - every single one. As soon as you calm down a little bit, then you think back to check in case you made an admission like that. Then you try to retract it, like it wasn't meant.

But you still get to keep the memory that someone did something good for you until you said what you felt right then - at that instant - when it was true because that was how you felt then just long enough to say it. Most men know that it's just a moment and nothing more and it doesn't mean anything but that the man in it did something good for you."

He sighed, "But you want to deny it, like it was a mistake. And you never think that you're the real thief in it. You get to think that it was pretty nice, but the man gets to think something different - if he's got a heart at all."

"I don't understand," Emmy said, "How did I take anything? I just said something that I didn't -"

"You didn't mean it," Quinton said, "I know. You didn't mean it, so it didn't really happen, so you're telling me that the moment when you said that four times, you were lying, because you didn't really mean it.

That means that what I got out of it didn't really happen - that I made you feel good enough to say what you felt right then, even if that's all that it was - you telling me that you love me for just that short length of time. It means that you didn't have that moment, so I did what I did for nothing, because it didn't mean what I thought that it did. It really means that you didn't enjoy what I did."

He looked over at her and she was a little shocked at what she saw in his eyes. "It was a moment, Emmy.

That's all that it was and you said how you felt for that moment. If you mean to tell me that it was nothing, then that's what it was. Nothing.

I won't waste my time again."

He moved to get up and she tried to hold him, "Where are you going?"

He didn't look at her, "I'm gonna get dressed and go outside to have a smoke. After that, I'll take one of these sleeping bags and go sleep in my seat up front."

Emmy threw herself onto him, forcing him back down. She knew that she had only a second before he just tossed her off of him, like she was nothing.

"Don't go, Quinton," she whispered, "not if you meant what you did for me at all. I think I get it now and I didn't think."

"It's alright," he said in a dead-sounding tone, "Just forget it and let me up."

"No I won't," Emmy said, "I'm not as dumb as I look, and I need to know something first, no matter what happens now."

He shook his head, "You've still got the job. Now let me up."

But she didn't. Before he tried really hard to get free, Emmy took the wind right out of his sails.

"That's not what I was asking for," she said, "How many women have done that to you?"

He looked at her as though he was a kid who'd been surprised to be found in a game of hide and seek.

"How many, Quinton? I might be a little new at this, but I can see that what I said hurt you from someplace long ago before me."

She kissed his cheek and reached to pull his face toward her, "I did love you when I said it. I just didn't think it was the right thing to say to you, like you might not want to hear that and I was just showing you that I'm a beginner at this kind of thing. 

You were really hurt before, weren't you? So how many? I need to know what I'm working against, because you were my friend for at least a little while."

"Four," he said, "the last three wouldn't have bothered me, but I really meant it with the first one. She told me that it was nothing, just something that she said, and then she told me that she didn't love me at all and never had, though that was a new tune for her, since we'd been seeing each other for a while. From that I learned that I'd been an idiot. I just never got over that, I guess. I'd put a lot of myself into anything that I did for her."

"It wasn't like this with her, was it?" she asked, "You were trying to tell her something that time, weren't you?"

"I never do that unless I'm feeling something," he said to the ceiling.

Emmy was a little surprised, "You - you're feeling just like me, aren't you? You care."

Quinton didn't answer and she knew that he wouldn't. She moved her leg over one of his and she pulled him so that she could find the fit half on him. Looking down at him, she smiled and kissed him very slowly, very gently, but with as much feeling as she could put into it until he began to respond. 

Once that happened, Emmy shifted herself so that she was on top of Quinton. With a little fumbling around, she had his hardness held captive between her thighs and she began to hump on him a little experimentally.

"I'm not trying to take anything right now," she smiled down at him. "This is for us."

Quinton was a little confused, though he didn't say anything about it. But Emmy knew it and she just kissed him for a little while, "'I learned this and some other stuff from my Momma," she smiled after a minute, "but I learned a little from the women on the reservation, the two who I could understand. This really old one would speak to me and another would translate it into English.

I was trying to learn to bead things and to them, it's a woman thing, where the women of a family and maybe a few of their friends and even some daughters sit around and talk a lot while they're working at an old craft. I listened hard, because they didn't speak to me much or often. They were giving me advice for later on, because they knew that I'd had my period and that changes a few things to them. I just didn't get it right away that they were talking about later.




By Air Mail Ch.05



And I have a feeling that later is now. 

They told me that if I had a man I came to care about, then if it got there, the best thing to do was to give him something every night, if I could. They told me that it's good for a man to have that and if you've made a good choice and he's the one, then he'll have a brain too and want to do you right in return. 

She told me that a pair of people can get through most anything if they have that, even if they just start out as friends. It made the old woman laugh a little and she said that was how she came to have her man, and then they were married and she ran out of fingers showing me how many grandchildren and great-grandchildren that she had. I think she lost count in it somewhere, because they all laughed at her.

I was too young to get it all back then, but I know what they were trying to tell me now."

She kissed his ear very softly and whispered, "That's my evil plan, anyway."

Quinton chuckled at that, "So far, so good."

"You feel better now?" she asked, "Because I really want you to and I promise not to hold anything back if it comes to me, so I might tell you some pretty stupid stuff, but you seem to want to hear it from me and I like that."

He nodded and she saw the little smile return to him when he thanked her because it looked to him like she cared. "What kind of stupid stuff?"

She chuckled, "Well if you're gonna test me; you know what I'd want from you sometime? Momma used to tell me that a man's juice can get in some pretty surprising places - like it's got a mind of it's own or something. She says it can get just everywhere. I've never even seen it, so I think this'll sound funny, but it's how I feel. Sometime, I'd want you to get me messy with it.

I don't even know where that thought comes from in me. I just know that I'd want that one time at least. Momma said that it doesn't stain clothes and it washes out easy after, but she says it's what a man makes and it's sticky and gooey and ... 

And it sounds pretty nice to me, if I do it right for a man. Some people might not like the thought but I do. I don't even know how much I'd get, but Momma told me that it can surprise a girl, how much there is and all."

Emmy found herself moving from his gentle laughter underneath her, so she smiled and asked if that was stupid enough for him.

Quinton smiled up at her, "Miss Emmy, if I ever do fall in love with you, I think at least some of it will be over the way that you talk to me now and then. You can call what you just said stupid, but I don't think it is at all, since I can see that you mean it."

Emmy nodded and she humped a little harder, "I do, Quinton. I know this is just us fooling around some, but the way that I see it, for right here inside an airplane in a cold place, we've got each other and to me, that's a sight better than trying to sleep alone on a hill like we've got in here right now. For right now, you're my man, and that's what I wanted - to find out how it feels to do something with a man I care about.

I'm not too heavy for you am I?" Emmy looked a little uncertain for a moment, "Quinton, I'm not a willow-girl. Ok, you're a lot bigger than me, but I'm not exactly as light as a feather. Are you sure that -"

"I want to feel your magnificent ass, Emmy," he chuckled with a huge grin as he looked up at her, "There, I've admitted it and everything, ok?"

She stopped and looked at him, "I've got a magnificent ass now?"

He nodded happily as she humped onto him a little harder, "Oh Emmy, you just don't know."

"Well, I like the way that your hands make it feel like this," she smiled, "What's the difference between big and magnificent?"

"Big is big," he shrugged, squeezing her flank, "You're just right to fit with the rest of your figure. Notice that I didn't say amazing, though it is to me."

"Then why didn't you say that?" Emmy asked.

Quinton shrugged, "I didn't think that you'd believe me, that's all."

"You can say amazing," she giggled, "I'm thrilled that you like my body."

He chuckled, "Ok, then you have an amazing body, alright? I didn't say fat. This is solid, like the rest of you as well. You just don't like being what you are. I love your eyes and your hair, the color you hate so much in your skin when you're not feeling like you belong. I love your face and your nose and -"

He stopped suddenly, though she felt that he was still thrusting in the limited way that the position allowed him to as he matched her movements against him, "What, Quinton? What were you going to say?"

"I was going to say that you were all wrong when you said that you were a nightmare."

She smiled as she humped on him, "Well if you don't want me to turn into one right now, tell me what's going on in your head."

"Think of the picture, Emmy," he said quietly.

She didn't know what he was talking about and she was about to tell him that - as well as how dangerous it was to be talking to a girl about her body if she wasn't exactly in love with herself over it.

Then she thought of the photographs that she'd seen earlier. She tossed the image of the one taken from above, since it made no sense and she threw away the one with them all lined up proudly in front of the plane. That left only one.

The horse-girl.

"You're saying that you think I'm -"

He shook his head, "No, think about her. Think about her as though she was real and not a cartoon. What Eddie painted was a shapely girl, but she wasn't what you called a willow-girl, was she?"

Emmy shook her head. The girl in the picture was beautiful in her cartoon-ish way, but she wasn't ...

"You like that?" she asked and he nodded.

"You think that I'm ..."

Quinton sighed with a grin, "You're her in the flesh, built like a dream and hard enough to just make me want to ..."

He slammed his head back down gently, "Fine. I want to kiss your legs - all the way up from your ankles, and I want to just chew ..."

"On my magnificent ass?" she prompted and he nodded, "But that's only from the back. If I was starting from the front - "

He rolled his eyes and his hands fell to the floor, "I don't even know where I'd end up, Emmy."

Emmy grinned all of a sudden and she picked up the pace and worked them about as fast as she could go, loving the feeling of it even more now. Her breaths became a little ragged as she fought to get her thoughts out, but she was grinning to beat the band. 

"Quinton," she huffed, "you delicio-usly fine smel-ling stud, there's still the two pats of butter l-left. I'll scrape them off the paper a-and if y-you give me uhh, a chance and some ... some ohhh, patience ... hon-ey, I - I'll let you p-pound my ass all y-you want tonight.

I'll be yo- your night - Night Mare."

---------

They were careful and Quinton was slow and as gentle as he could be, but they were both in just a little bit of a hurry by that point, wanting to know what it was like and overall, the change in Emmy was remarkable. She wanted this now; a little low on her knees and holding herself so that he had the angle.

When they were together and the shivering from other than the coolness of the air was past her, Emmy nudged back a little once and then again.

"It takes some getting used to, she said, "No doubt about that, but Momma used to like to do this a lot. I think that I'm starting to know why, too. 

Let's go, Quinton. Try it a little and then see if I can stand it when you get going."

He was still slow with it, but he got there over time, and not long after that, he was banging Emmy as hard as he could, and she wanted it even harder and faster.

The sound of his hips slapping her ass just seemed to spur Emmy on and he had to ask her not to shout out quite so loudly as she implored him to fuck her harder.

"Well, I n-nev-er kn-ew that it-it could fe-el this go-od, "she said with a delicious grin. A thought came to her and she wanted to laugh.

She didn't and instead, she just said it - since he seemed to like these moments so much. "I love this," she groaned, "I love how you f-fuuck me - and I love you Quinton!

For ri-ight no -o -ow, I just love you - uh, uhh, t-to de-ath!"

He seized her hips and plowed her like the devil himself and she looked back at him happily. When she could manage it, she reached back and toyed with herself and it wasn't long before he felt her clench on him as she came with one sleeve of her overalls jammed against her mouth while she howled out to him how good he was for her.

He came then, feeling like he'd never come this hard in his life, which was a surprise to him, since there was little for the sensitive tip of him to feel inside of her. But it didn't matter. He gave her everything that he had and she had to bite down again and cry out from the feeling of him hardening to that impossible degree.

They eased forward and down with Quinton struggling to stay in her. The afterglow felt wonderful to Emmy as he caressed her skin.

"Ok, I'm trying not to tell you that I'm in love with you, Quinton," she sighed, "It wants to come out of me so much right now even though we're finished."

He nodded from over her shoulder as he kissed it, "I'm feeling something like that too. I don't think we need to be shy when we're like this."

When he'd softened enough to ease out of her, she was all over him again, though a lot more tenderly. "I feel like I've just stepped into a whole new me somehow," she whispered, "I never knew that I had something like that inside of me."

She sighed, "But it's sure out now, if you'll let me be this new kind of girl that I've become. I don't expect anything, Quinton. I know that I'm still the same girl. I just felt so ... free and ... I don't even know a word for how I felt but I liked it."

"You be whoever you want to be, Emmy," he smiled a little wearily, "I'm sure that I'll like her too."

"Even if she's got a sore ass now?" she asked with a smile.

"Even if she makes about every muscle in my body cramp while I'm fucking her as hard as she wants me to," he nodded, "you sure were something.

I don't know what this is yet," he grinned, "though it feels pretty good to me. I think that we'd better try to see if we can get along in everything else before you and I decide just what."

She nodded, "But I think that this is what I want, so I'm gonna try for that too.

I kind of like being a Night Mare now."

She felt a little funny and reached back for a moment. Her hand came away with a little butter on it, but there was something more. When she looked up, Quinton was looking at her curiously.

"Oh don't mind me," she chuckled, "I just didn't think about feeling like hot buttered popcorn at the movies. I just felt something and as messy as this is, I have to say that I like it.

I must have done it right, since you squirted inside me so much." She chuckled, not being able to help it, "Momma would think I'm nuts, but I really like that thought."

She sighed with a smile, "This is really messy. Just what I had in mind, too."

Quinton brought her all of the paper napkins that he could find and after them getting her cleaned up, he covered them both as much as he could and held her close to him for the rest of the night. That was the final new feeling for Emmy after a long day full of newness. She decided that she liked it there against him, and she pressed up against him a little more for a few moments before she closed her eyes with her head against his chest.



By Air Mail Ch.06



The strangers are headed off to check out another airfield in another small place. 

As he drives through the long night, Terry's thinking about a lot of things, like oh ... just how lucky he is.

Try to bear in mind that the sums of money mentioned in this are in 1946 dollars. A buck went a whole lot farther than it does these days.

There's a sex scene in this that I actually "wrote around" a little on purpose. Given the people involved in it and that there are a few of them, I originally tried hard to write what happened in detail. 

I hate to say it, but even for me as a writer, I had to struggle to keep my internal screen saver from coming on and if I had trouble, then I didn't want the reader to as well. I found that it's not bad if you use a little imagination since the discussions at that time are important to the characters and, because for what it is, it's more of a celebration than an orgy. I'll cover that off later. ~grin~

The vehicle in a lot of this is something you don't see anymore. One-ton panel trucks were popular as commercial vehicles then. The one in this is spacious and has seats that you can place in or take out, depending.

0_o

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

On a piece of two lane blacktop south of Cascade, Idaho.

Terry drove through the night thinking back to the events of a Saturday evening a while ago. He was the ... 

Well, not really the last shining scion of a slowly-fallen southern family due to the circumstances, he supposed. But he knew that he was pretty much all that there was left. 

He was the one who'd taken all that remained to try to make a small handful of lives better along with his own if he could. He was almost at the critical part of getting his venture together, if it could indeed be termed that. If they were successful, it would be the closing of a lot of circles, gates which now stood - as they had for years -open on long rusted hinges.

With the start of America's involvement in the war, Terry had seen what he thought might be an opportunity to get something of a better, more practical education - since he already knew that what his forebears had done forever was little more now than the last glimmer of the sun shining on what had gone before.

It had torn them all apart, but he'd gone to enlist and with the education that he'd been given along with what he already had, he'd succeeded in some measure.

Though he did have to survive basic training, the same as anyone. He'd felt some trepidation over it to begin with, but in the event, it had just been the same old thing where you had to establish yourself.

As he thought back to the day when he'd realized that he'd found the way forward, he remembered his time in basic training for a few moments.

He was just average, he guessed, or maybe a hair under that. But he was solid, quick, remarkably strong for his size and thanks to his growing up where he had and having to show enough people enough times that there just might be a little more to him than they were able to see, what they'd put him through in the beginning days of his army career had turned into more of a walk in the park.

Terry was a little underweight for the infantry the day that he showed up, but then, they didn't need to work any fat off of him in training like they did for a lot of guys. It didn't matter much anyway to Terry and the basic training for that was common so he'd had to endure it. 

He remembered standing with everyone else, crowded together trying to read his new assignment along with the rest after everything had been posted up on the bulletin board on the barracks wall.

"Looks like somebody's seen that you're no dummy Terry," one man said though another man finished the thought a little differently - "even if you are from the backwoods of Alabama."

Terry smiled good-naturedly - just before he knocked the second man to the floor with one punch, just for old time's sake. 

It would have started something if it had happened at the beginning of their time together, but now most of them knew that Terry would answer it every time - just usually in a more covert manner later on when it was unexpected. 

He could live off the land better than most if he had to and he could read a trail well, no matter who or what had made it. He'd learned those things from running with the other boys where he'd grown up - the sons of the men who were the sons of the men who'd worked for his family long before.

He might have been right on the median height in his outfit, but he'd spent a little time in the stockade on a couple of occasions for having proved to a few of the bigger, louder types why it was best that he be left alone.

It was one thing to feel a little proud of the muscles that nature had given you. It was a thing to realize it as a boy grew up to be a man. Terry could understand that, though he tended to be quiet and that led some other, more brash young men to assume that he was fearful of them.

It was a little different if you'd gotten what muscles you had in the first place out of a need to work hard to stay alive and didn't pay them much mind as a result, unless they were hurting because they were a little sore and even then you never made a sound about it. Terry had grown up learning to hunt if he had to - indeed, do anything that he had to - if he had to. Where he was from, you looked at the cards you were dealt and you played them as best you could.

You just didn't waste a lot of time thinking it over.

The rest of his training hadn't been quite what he'd had in mind, since up to that point, he'd never even seen the things that he'd have to operate in his life. But it had taken Terry only a heartbeat to see the uses for the things.

Though he'd thought that he'd end up somewhere dodging bullets or worse, it hadn't happened. He'd not only gotten through everything that they'd thrown at him, he'd excelled beyond anyone's expectations. Considering that what he'd mastered was considered leading edge technology in a time long before the phrase had been coined, he'd been sent to the manufacturer to learn even more and he'd met the designer personally.

Then he'd come back to be an instructor, whereas most of the others there were civilians. His slow and careful way of speaking was just the thing to hear as you tried to master one of the most complex machines that man had invented to that point.

Pilots of fixed-wing aircraft had the benefit of built-in stability to rely on.

What Terry could fly as though it was an extension of himself had more control inputs than a regular airplane and there was no inherent stability to it - none at all. You needed to be on the thing every moment, using all of the controls, and to cause a change in any one of them meant that you had to adjust or correct in all of the others as you did it.

But Hell, he thought, you could fly sideways or even backward.

Terry wasn't a linebacker type. He would have been called good-looking if he ever thought of it and he never did. With reddish-blonde hair and a complexion that tanned well after a slight burn the first time, he'd made out well with a few of the girls back in his home town, but it hadn't been what he'd really wanted in retrospect. He'd wanted only one.

It had just been what they'd wanted, until they knew a little about him, since he carried the family curse of being attached to something rather unpopular in the current day and age - even if it hadn't been his choice to be born to it.

You see, once upon a time, Terry's family had owned a plantation.

With the abolition of slavery, it had fallen onto a long slow decline for a few rather obvious reasons. The crops had changed some as they'd had to, with the price of cotton no longer being what it once had been long ago. 

Also, the switch from manual labor to very costly machinery hadn't gone well on balance long ago. There'd been a much smaller number of workers kept on for as long as possible out of long gratitude by the landholders for many years after slavery had been done away with, mostly because the landholders themselves had changed as the years had rolled past. It was still the same family, but their viewpoints had changed over the years with each successive generation to the point where there were no bosses who longed for the return of the old ways, only employers with a long history.

The owner when Terry had left to go into the army had been his maternal grandmother, Eunice Hatchett. 

Born with the same drive to make something of the place again in the modern day as her father, she'd been doing that and slowly losing ground for all of her adult life. Many of her friends and (few) employees were the descendants of the slaves who had once worked the plantation long ago. She did her best to keep them employed and there was nobody more frugal with her slowly-dwindling fortune than Eunice. She wouldn't part with a dollar unless there was a good reason and even then, the likeness of old George Washington on each bill looked just a little red-eyed from crying after having been in her tight-fisted grip before she'd let it go.

She was the last of the line - almost. Well the last one worth speaking of in her time, especially once her older brother Todd had died of ... well, alcoholism, mostly, helped along by his recurrent and many bouts with the malaria which had coursed through his veins since long before he'd come home. 

She'd taken up the task from her elderly father's failing hands, but she'd made one mistake, and that was to think that the handsome buck who'd come to court her wanted her for her looks and heart and to love her.

He'd been after her money, so it didn't last much longer than it took for Eunice to find herself running a huge farm while she was pregnant. She'd done her best to raise her daughter alone, but once the girl was about grown, she'd tried to find any job that placed her a little close to men since she was the female equivalent of her long-gone father. 

Eunice's daughter wanted only to rope a man who might keep her and then she planned never to be near the old place where she'd grown up ever again.

But not before leaving Terry with Eunice when he was just a toddler.

And just when Eunice had faced the facts and taken on the job of raising Terry properly when he was two and a half, little Molly had landed on her doorstep - quite literally, since she was a foundling.

Eunice had taken one look at that little face and decided that somehow, she'd been given another chance to raise somebody right and that was what she did. 

Since no one had heard from his mother in quite a while, Terry assumed that she'd done found her fool and he couldn't have cared less regardless. He'd only met her once afterward; back when he was ten or so. They'd looked at each other across the doorstep and Terry had called out to Eunice who the woman said that she was and could he close the door.

Eunice had said yes and so Terry closed the door - in his mother's face - and she was never spoken of between them again.

It wasn't like Eunice was an unattractive woman or anything - she'd been a fair looker in her day. She'd just never allowed anyone to sidetrack her again from her desire to try to restore the old place a little by turning it into a proper large and working farm. And if she couldn't do that, she reasoned, then she saw it as her job to hang onto it for as long as she could, since it still employed a few people. 

But she did have a man friend. He was a lawyer and they were together for many years. They'd just never gotten married. Tom Wingham had done what he could so that the little baby girl who'd come to Eunice in a basket one night had a home and a proper mother who'd assumed legal guardianship over her and given that Eunice Hatchett was a well-known member of the old aristocracy in the area, it was done in the blink of an eye with the proper signatures of the relevant authorities.

Molly's background had always been a mystery to them all. Molly was so fair of skin and her hair shimmered over it's unfashionably long length, almost white-blonde. Her eyes were ice-blue and Eunice had often remarked that somehow, she'd been given some form of Nordic elf-girl to raise. Nobody even knew anyone in all of Talledega County who looked even a little bit like her. Without meaning to - since she rarely meant to - Molly was a dream walking who could cast a spell before you were even aware of it.

So Terry had a sister named Molly and they'd always been close.

Though it was a little more complicated than only that for a lot of reasons which made perfect sense to the parties involved.

Eunice had a brother who'd by his own admission, wasted much of his youth as well as a lot of the family's money traveling the world and seeking some form of adventure as a cure for being young, privileged and bored.

In a land known then as French Sudan, he'd spent a fair bit of time running guns to sell to a local warlord with aspirations and who was desperate to secure a larger piece of the pie, which was the same old story that was, and is, and probably always will be the backstory to what goes on in a lot of places around the globe.

They'd become good friends and that chieftain had saved his white-skinned friend's life multiple times.

But no matter what, the other players had been able to curry the favor of the French local government who sought an end to the inter-tribal hostilities, and the end when it came was quick.

The warlord had come to his friend to call in the favors which were owed, since the end was obvious to him. He'd brought the two small children of his two favorite wives and pleaded that they be gotten out of the mess and given better lives when the man went home. In exchange for Todd's word, the chieftain would provide the means to get to the three of them to the coast.

That was how the children, now renamed Judith and Isaiah, came to live and grow up at Hatchett Harrow. They looked a little different, having more aquiline noses and tending toward long, gently curling black hair, though only Judith wore hers that way. 

It was a trait that they'd both gotten from their father as well as a few of his other facial features. They could both remember their mothers, but picturing their father's face gave them a little trouble until they'd begun to grow up and after that, they often sat together alone, staring into each others faces to remember their long-dead father and what he'd done for them.

But they weren't the last additions to Eunice Hatchett's "collection of mongrels" and she sometimes referred to them all affectionately.

Tom Wingham had been married before - just as Eunice had. In fact he'd had a son, who'd also married and that son - until the night that he and his wife were run off the bridge to end up in Logan Martin Lake on the way home from a trip to Pell City - had been the father of a four year-old girl who was being babysat that same evening by Eunice herself.

The young Tom Wingham Junior's wife had no known next of kin and so the frightened and forlorn little thing was taken in by Tom Wingham Senior.

But lawyers, Southern or otherwise, who have lived as bachelors for most of their adult lives can't put in the hours required to raise another young'un, especially alone. Luckily for all involved - especially Tom's little granddaughter, his girlfriend Eunice had the solution. The little girl came to stay with the Hatchetts and she grew to know and love her grandfather in that role, which was one that both of them felt comfortable with.

Her name, which she was quick to trot out whenever she had 'an official' chance - as she termed it, was Ruth-Ann Chantale LaFayette-Wingham. The hyphenated surname was coined by Eunice since, as she'd told Tom in explanation after having it changed at the child's request, "she sure didn't get anything else from her poor parents."

To Ruth-Ann herself, Eunice said that she'd agreed so that she'd always have something to remember her mother by.

And so Ruth-Ann became known as Ruthie to the others in the family and on some level always felt a little like a poor cousin - which she was in a way, though she was never treated any differently at all. It was just something which she carried within herself.

Sometimes, of course, children who feel a little ... 'second-best' tend to grow up having a front to present to the world, and Ruthie was no different. She always showed that front to the world at large, but she showed it only sometimes to her adoptive family and she never, ever showed it to Terry or Molly.

All of them had raised her, but Terry and Molly had taken up the largest roles for her and though she grew up idolizing the four of them, Ruthie lionized the oldest two.

For all of her childhood, she'd looked something like a loud, animated, red-topped mop, though she finished up looking like a real sweetheart. But that front remained oftentimes even so. She never grew more than 'five foot-nuthin', but Ruthie was a true Alabama cannonball to most people - the kind shot from loose cannons, since she sometimes came to regret her words now and then, though as she grew into a young lady, she'd learned how to be the silent and mysterious type when she wanted to be - that is, when she wasn't being just herself.

And which one of those that she was at any moment could sometime be a problem, though seldom for Ruthie. It confounded a lot of people at times, and it stemmed ...

Well, from a few things.

It stemmed from Ruthie being able to speak French well, though it was the sort of mastery which a child of her age at the time of her parents death could manage. Two years after taking her in, Tom had found a tutor and she'd been given lessons, though they always happened in one particular room unless she went for a walk with the woman teaching her as happened sometimes. The lessons had stopped when Ruthie turned fourteen , since the woman no longer wished to remain in Renfroe.

It stemmed from Tom Wingham's taking her into his office one day when she was about fourteen the week after the tutor had gone. It was late into the evening and he locked the outer door and guided her into one of the back offices in his practice - the same one where the lessons had been given. He even bolted the door to that room once they were inside and he produced a small case, not much larger than a thin attaché case by modern standards, though it was made of soft and supple leather.

"Something that's always bothered me, Ruth-Ann," he'd said, "My son never told me much about my daughter in response to my questions. Nobody knew where she came from and on one or two occasions, I've heard her speaking French.

Not the rough, backwater patois that the Cajuns speak, either. That's a type of peasant French dialect that's long gone now in old France itself. What I heard was what Madame Montclaire told me was pure Parisian French, the kind they sure don't speak here. 

She wasn't aware that I'd overheard her either time, but she was muttering something to herself while she was trying to clean up a room in a bit of a hurry since I'd come to call one day and she wasn't expecting anyone. We passed a pleasant afternoon both times until Jeffrey came home from work and I took them out for a nice meal in a good place, since they were struggling so hard and all.

Ever since your parents died, I've been bothered by a few things more and more, so as I was getting you set up in your home there up at Hatchett Harrow, I cleaned out your parent's belonging with the help of one man that I've used for years when I needed answers that the law couldn't or wouldn't provide to me.

Now I know just enough to be even more curious."

He opened the case and Ruthie stared. There was a dark cloak of an indeterminate color and wrapped in it, there was a light breastplate of metal, just the one piece with some light straps and there were three thin, bladed weapons of a type whose purpose couldn't be immediately guessed, other than they were weapons. The longest one was too short to be even a child's fencing sword. There were other blades - a small selection of different sorts and there were two handwritten journals. The words in them were written in a thin, almost spidery feminine hand and as she stared, Tom placed a folder next to the case.




By Air Mail Ch.06



"I've had it translated by Madame Montclair, your tutor," he smiled, "though your lessons will no doubt stand you in good stead as you read your mother' own words, if you wish.

What I've found was that Chantale LaFayette was not related at all to any of the LaFayettes around here and though she could carry herself in a French conversation if she had to hereabout with any of the few who can speak a word or two of it, she came from France, having been born there."

He held up a third book. "This isn't a book of her memoirs. It's her teachings - as they were intended to be given to her daughter one day. They're quite detailed and I couldn't even begin to do one of the exercises that she outlines here."

It's my personal belief after all this time that your mother was a spy of some kind, though not employed in that sort of thing here. I believe that this is just where she chose to leave her craft in trade to hide and make herself a new life with the man who she'd come to love. It makes me wonder now if their being run off the road just when they happened to be traversing that bridge was really the accident that it had been made out to be. I doubt that we'd be able to find out the truth now."

He leaned down and kissed her forehead, "But after puzzling over it all for these past years, I've decided to give these things to you so that you might know a little about your mother anyhow. No matter what she might have been in her past, there was no hiding the love that she had for you.

Now, in exchange for my giving you these things, I want you to keep them safe and out of the hands of anyone else - anyone. Learn what you wish and what you can from it. I've come to the end of the road that I was following. To go one step further would be most unwise. If someone wanted your mother dead, then it is perhaps best that this be left as it is - a mystery - so that whomever it was who brought her doom to her - and my son, believes that there is no daughter.

Now, do you understand?"

Ruthie stood there, uncertain for a time, but at last she nodded and thanked Tom. 

She took everything home and whenever she could, she learned what secrets and treasures that her mother had left for her.

Eunice found the money somehow to have her brood tutored along with Terry "so that you don't all sound like you fell off the back end of a mule. I won't have any of you going to any school where the teachers don't know any more about diction and pronunciation than the custodians. It costs me the dickens to have to pay school taxes as well as what the tutor costs, but you'll thank me for it when you're all grown, you'll see."

As he drove on, Terry recalled the moment when how he was going to move what family that he had forward became clear to him, thanks to his friend, Hunter.

He remembered that it began as he stood out in the late afternoon sunshine surrounded by what looked like miles of flat concrete as he sucked on a cigarette. Of course, that was only from standing the way that he was. Behind him, there were a few buildings and aircraft hangars. Being a Saturday and at that time of day, there was little to nothing going on. 

Actually, it was nothing at all that was visible, but he was the officer on duty so he had to be there - even though he was really a warrant officer, standing out in the Oklahoma sunshine, watching as the shadows grew longer.

He was restless and that was an understatement. Restless, wanting something to happen in his otherwise plain and ordinary existence and bored almost to tears looking out at the featureless panorama which surrounded him.

Worse, there was an aircraft overdue now by well over an hour. 

He took another puff and looked at the horizon. It happened sometimes.

The only issue was the health and condition of the pilot and the present state of the machine. He sighed to himself. Like a lot of training facilities, where he was tended to get men from everywhere and anywhere - and some of them had no business being even close to moving machinery.

Looking out toward the sun to gauge the distance to the horizon, Terry figured that if nobody heard anything in the next minute and a half until the time that he ground out the smoke, he'd have to act and that meant chasing up people to get a proper search started.

From what he knew, it was Peterssen again. Terry just couldn't understand why the army didn't just cut it's losses and make the kid into something useful like a potato peeler in the mess kitchen instead of waiting until he totaled what was at that time a rather limited training resource.

Then he remembered that peeling potatoes involved the use of a sharp implement, so that eliminated the only use that Terry could imagine for the guy.

He shook his head. They'd even given Peterssen a sunny afternoon to fly a simple navigational exercise on a fucking Saturday so that the air around Fort Sill wasn't as full of aircraft as it normally was. That guy could fuck up the Lord's Prayer, Terry thought.

It was just a standard solo mission, part of the curriculum, because the graduates of that school tended to be assigned to postings where you had to be able to know the terrain you were over and where you were and the relationship between where you were, where the enemy was, and where the artillery assets that you'd be directing were located. And that meant that you had to be able to think, fly, use a radio, and work a map with no spare hands.

If you even had a map.

Most half-assed talented guys took to that flight like a duck to water. To most, once you knew what you were doing, it was piece of cake and you could enjoy the flight without an instructor pilot droning in your ear and without his weight influencing things as well.

But not Peterssen, he thought. If there was a way to fuck up something simple, he'd manage it.

Terry ground out his butt, annoyed now that he'd have to act and commit resources to finding an idiot.

As far as he was concerned, his goal was to hopefully find an undamaged aircraft which had managed the impossible - to toss out it's witless pilot and crush him under a main landing gear over being annoyed.

That was what Terry wanted to see.

He knew the aircraft involved and it was 380, the hangar queen. There were more numbers to it's identification, but like many personnel there, he tended to know the aircraft by the last three digits most of the time.

That one was reviled for being the one used uncommonly often by chance or coincidence when a pilot trainee washed out. Early in it's career, it had been damaged in the hard landing of a fool. Even though it had been repaired, ever since, it had been the scapegoat, the one that everybody said wasn't right.

Terry chuckled, he'd even heard one waste of skin tell him that it was haunted.

To his face. He still couldn't believe it.

The truth was that 380 happened to be his personal favorite, though he knew that the army was about done with it, out of tracking how much idle time it spent in the maintenance hangar. What usually happened was that a pilot would find that he'd been assigned to 380 and then he'd make up something - anything which was good enough to get 380 off the flightline as U/S - unserviceable.

She'd get hauled into maintenance once again and eventually, no one would find anything wrong with her. But she'd look bad on her preparedness evaluations all the same.

As Terry was turning around, he heard a truck coming along the back side of the nearest hangar and as it rounded the corner to come toward him, Terry saw that it was Hunter driving a recovery panel truck and he smiled.

Hunter Youngblood was a civilian who worked at Henry Post Army Airfield as a sort of everything - though he was an aircraft mechanic by trade, sometimes pitching in when the enlisted guys were swamped. Henry Post field was a part of Fort Sill and it was located right next to the town of Lawton, Oklahoma. There were many Comanche people living and working all around and there were more than a few who worked as Hunter did on the base. More importantly to Terry, he and Hunter were friends who liked to hike and fish whenever they had the chance and their days off coincided on rare occasions, once Hunter had managed to pry Terry loose from spending his infrequent free time being a quiet loner.

Being that Terry was from Alabama, he tended to get kidded about his accent being damn-near indecipherable at times whenever he needed to speak quickly. It wasn't actually true, but was just something with which others tried to annoy him with at times. When he wasn't speaking quickly, they all told him that he spoke too slowly - though in fact, that tendency had proven useful many, many times in his role as a flight instructor.

Hunter would listen whenever Terry groused about it. 

"You don't seem to have any trouble understanding me at all," Terry said to Hunter once and it had been a bit of a moment as Hunter had looked down at his workboots with a grin. 

"Terry," he'd said, "I'm Comanche - and you know they use us as code-talkers, right?"

They'd stared at each other and laughed their asses off that time.

Hunter pulled up next to Terry with a wide grin, "They've gone to get Peterssen. The CO sent me to get you."

"What the hell happened?" Terry asked as he got in on the passenger side.

"Well it's Peterssen," Hunter sighed dramatically, "You're not honestly expecting anything simple are ya? I'm not even in the army and even I've heard about that guy. He called in over a telephone line from the first farm that he came to walking back here."

Terry groaned, "Don't tell me that he actually hurt that bird that he was in. Christ, I'll fucking kill him myself. There's not a thing wrong with that one."

But Hunter was shaking his head, "No, not at all. I didn't talk to him, but they told me that he said that he lost power and had to set it down, out by Lake Lawtonka."

Terry grimaced, "So he's proven once again that he shouldn't be trusted with something more complicated than a butter knife. The first waypoint in his mission was to fly to Lake Waurika. From here that's pretty much in the opposite direction. Nothing like making the oldest goof in the book by not knowing how to read a compass. 

Fuck, his flightplan has the headings to fly for every leg anyway. I made him write it all out himself to let me check it. There were no errors in the headings. I guess he can read a map, but can't get it right with the engine running."

"Or," Hunter offered hopefully, "he was holding the map upside-down when he tried to check his position."

Terry nodded sadly, "Could be you're right. I wouldn't put anything past him."

He looked over, "You said he called on a telephone. The radio was out?"

Hunter shrugged, "Damned if I know. I've just got a feeling that the CO wants us to go get the bird, so it can't be too busted or anything."

When they walked into the orderly room, they found the unit's commanding officer, a full bird colonel fit to be tied and looking like he wanted to shoot somebody.

"He left the aircraft," the colonel sputtered, in a state of near-apoplexy, "He left the GOD-damned aircraft and walked away from it out in the middle of nowhere. A full tank of fuel and a working helicopter and he walked away. When I get done with him, I'll have him saluting his own balls before dark.

Because they'll be up on the flagpole out by the parade square - right up there underneath the Stars and Stripes.

How the Sam Hill am I going to explain this when I write my report? Those things are still rated as military secrets - even though probably every little baby in Lawton has seen them flying around since we have to train pilots SOME damn place."

Peterssen walked in looking very uncomfortable a few minutes later. "I've tried to tell these MPs that I can manage to report to my own commanding officer, but they insisted on coming with me."

"Those were their orders and they came directly from me," the colonel barked, "I told them to bring you - by the hair if necessary - right to me. Explain yourself and your actions - briefly if you like breathing, Peterssen. All I want to hear about is what happened in concise English. Save the horseshit for your fitness hearing."

Peterssen turned white but then he began. 

When all of the things which the man said had happened had been stripped away by two bird colonels - one of them an infantry type with even less patience and understanding, since the base commander was in attendance by that time - Terry and the others were standing in some amazement. It sounded, no matter how Peterssen tried to make mountains out of nothing, as though he'd compounded one simple thing and turned it into what might have easily ended in a near-fatality or worse, a bent airframe.

"You're off flight status as of now," the CO growled in disgust, "There'll be a hearing and if I have my way - unless you come up with something definite that says otherwise - I'll see to it that this man's army puts you into the infantry where you'll be of some use - out front attracting bullets." 

He turned to the meatheads, "He's confined to quarters, but I want him kept under some kind of supervision. If he can walk away from an aircraft with a perfectly good radio in it because he's a little 'shaken up' as he says, then I sure don't want him wandering with idiotic thoughts about running away. Christ, he'd probably get run over by a bus and I'd have to write something in my report that sounds like I'm saddened.

Get him out of my sight."

He turned to Hunter and Terry, "I've brought in Harrington to take over your officer of the day duties, since it's almost that time anyway. What I need you to do - if Peterssen's directions make any sense to you - is to go find that bird. 

I need you to make an assessment to determine if it's flyable and if it is, then I want you to bring it back to the barn for the night. I'm not holding out any hope that you can fly it back here though, given the time of day. The final decision is yours, Hatchett.

If you find that you can't fly it - or in your opinion it would be more prudent to wait til morning, then you are to remain there and do that. That's a sensitive piece of government property sitting intact - I'd hope - on open land, so I expect you to keep it safe. You ought to maybe take a sidearm with you as well as a portable radio in case the one in the bird is inoperable in spite of what that fool said. Be prepared to need to spend the night, but if you can get it going and back here before dark, I'd appreciate it.

No matter what happens, I want you to call in to let me know your assessment. Get going. You're wasting daylight."

They drove out and by Peterssen's description, it wasn't all that difficult to find 380 sitting on it's wheels, thankfully. Where it was sitting made it hard to spot from the road unless you were on the other side of the lake and they wondered if they could get the truck in close enough to use the start cart that Hunter had mounted in the back, a gas-powered one. There were two issues that they could see as Hunter idled in between the trees as best he could.

One was if Hunter could get close enough to allow him to hook up and the other was how he was going to back out of there once they'd managed it. Terry thought that he'd have to climb out of the window to walk the last little bit to the edge of the trees, but there turned out to be enough space right at the end.

"How did he get it in here, if he auto-rotated down like he said?" Hunter asked.

Terry shook his head, "He didn't. 

He figured out that he was going the wrong way and turned around before he got to the Canadian border. But I'll just bet that he flew further out than this. Knowing that he wasted time, I'll bet he chose to have one of his emergencies, hoping that it would divert everybody from making the obvious deduction - that he doesn't know what he's doing.

Most of what he said was a fairy-tale, the way that it sounded to me, and now that I'm looking right at everything, he couldn't have auto-rotated in here. This bit of muddy beach isn't wide enough to have screwed down and then flared. He came in from the water side and turned it around."

He pointed down, "Look at the marks that the gear left. He was moving forward the last foot or so." He turned around and pointed to the trees, "No way he came over those trees engine-out and set it down as neat as that. It's not that easy to manage the last of the kinetic energy you'd have left for any fancy footwork. You just try to gauge the last couple of feet of air that you've got and hope like hell that the controlled crash doesn't bust something - like the pilot. He must have come in from over the lake and stopped to turn around and set her down. From what I see, he came in here under power and landed."

He looked out over the water, "Still, I guess that we're lucky that he didn't set it down in the water."

He walked over, careful not to make too many tracks as he looked up, "I just need to be sure that he didn't actually do as he said. There's not enough light to be able to tell if he clipped anything with the main rotors. If he did, she'll try to shake herself apart when I try to get up to a hover."

He inspected the tail rotor blades for a moment, "He didn't have a tail strike as far as I can tell. What's the ground look like to you, Hunter? Think she'll sink into this any further if we leave her here for the night?"

Hunter shook his head, "It's a little soft, but I think she'll stay put."

Terry pointed to the nose gear. "She's sitting too heavy on the nose wheel in the sand because of the slope toward the water. That's gonna make it a bitch to get loose in the morning." He looked around for a moment, "'Cause it's too dark to even start much now."

Hunter trotted off to the truck and came back with a coil of rope. "I'll tie this to the tailboom and then to a tree back there." He pointed, "Then we'll lay that log on the rope and that'll pull the tail downward so she sits on her tail wheel the way she's supposed to."

With that done, Terry opened the door and climbed inside. "There's lots of juice left in the battery," he said, "probably more than I'd need for a start just as she is.

And right here's the rest of the story," he nodded before he turned the power off again, "He used up over half of his fuel. So that means that he flew about thirty - forty miles going in the wrong direction before he turned around to come back. Christ, we're lucky that he even got this close before he -"

He sighed, "I just wish that I could understand that guy. Most people, when they get something wrong, just see if they can still pull it off. He might have gotten a bit of a blast for wasting fuel, but I've never liked how he tries to make everything other than himself the cause for his troubles. Most of all, I hate how he lies like a dog to cover his goof-ups. Everybody makes mistakes. I just have no time and little patience for the ones who try to look perfect by getting it wrong and then covering their tracks every time."

He got out and checked the switches on everything before he closed the door. "Let's see if we can raise the base with the small radio."

After making contact and telling them to get a message to the CO that they were spending the night in place and would make an attempt to start in the morning, Terry signed off and joined Hunter in looking for a little firewood while they still had the chance without resorting to needing to use flashlights in the quickly darkening gloom. 

"I've still got my sandwiches from lunch and I grabbed us a few things from the mess before they turned everybody loose for supper," Hunter smiled, "Told them all that we were going on safari or whatever it's called. Now I'm glad that I told you to draw a sleeping bag out of Stores. I keep one in the truck for times like -"




By Air Mail Ch.06



"No you don't," Terry laughed, "Don't hand me that."

But Hunter just chuckled, "What I was going to say was that I keep it for those times in the winter when I gotta sit and wait. I wasn't talking about now."

By the time that they got the fire going a little, all of the mosquitoes in Comanche County had found them - and called all of their hungry relations over. Hunter seemed to be able to abide them somehow, just as he often did when they were out someplace together, but they were driving Terry a little nuts.

"I thought you told me that you were from a little place that had these bugs too," Hunter said as he looked over, "You keep asking and I keep telling you that the more fuss you make by swatting them before they're even on you just aggravates the little bastards more. My big secret is to just keep still and they all head over to you since you seem to inspire them by giving them a challenge."

He shrugged, "Maybe they 're partial to white meat, I dunno."

"You're full of it, Hunter," Terry grinned, "The way that I see it is that there's no breeze or wind at all tonight to keep them off us - and unless that happens, I'm gonna sit and eat in the truck so you can stay here and test your theory."

In the truck together that night, they'd shared what they had to eat and drink before they spoke about what to do once the war was over.

Terry had spoken of a pair of girls and a guy that he knew well - even explaining the slightly odd relationship that he had with them. Hunter just said that he had no one and that there was no one that he wanted particularly at the moment. "This war just has to end someday," he'd said, "When that happens, they're not going to be needing as many instructor pilots and without a war on, they'll need a lot fewer people like me.

And I don't want to have to go back to just being a wrench for my uncle who gets his money cash under the table. That's why I'm trying to think ahead if I can."

"What I'd really like," Terry said, "is for the army to decide that 380's gotten a little too expensive, maintenance-wise for the maybe two hours that she spends in the air every month. If they'd write her off and I could only find a way, I'd love to buy her and see what sort of business I could think up."

"They already have decided that," Hunter said, "I know it from talking to the maintenance sergeant and his boss the captain. They've had a request in for five new ones, knowing that they might get just two if they're lucky. I also know that at least a part of that request has been signed off - at least the part that needs signing here at the base. Who knows if and when the rest will happen.

But you know that they won't sell it to a serviceman. They'll scrap her out to the highest bidder. I've seen them do that before with some of the old fixed wing planes and they do that right here, not like most places where they fly the old planes over and then leave them for the scrapper to cut up and sell for the metal. 

I can use some of my uncle's hangar over at the regional field south of town and I could set up a salvage company so that I could bid on 380 if they shake her loose, but I'm not a pilot and I'd need some money to bid with, more than I've got, anyway. I won't have enough to bid on even one after I lay out the green for the business."

Terry thought about his grandmother and decided to ask if he could before they just got up and moved their sleeping bags into the back of the truck and before long - after waiting a little while to listen for and then hunt down the few mosquitoes who'd managed to sneak in while the doors were open, they tried to get some sleep.

Terry heard Hunter as he fooled with himself inside the sleeping bag.

"Are you doing what I think you are?" Terry snickered.

"Hell yes," Hunter admitted, "Listening to you talk and thinking about women ... I just know I'm gonna have a time falling asleep if I don't do something. Go ahead and tell me that you never need to help yourself, so I can say that you're not human. I won't have a friend who's a machine."

Terry began then and soon, he was annoyed with the limited range of motion possible inside a zipped-up sleeping bag. Hunter agreed and pretty soon they'd solved the trouble by opening the bags up since it was pitch black in the truck anyway.

"You know this is stupid," Hunter groaned, "the pair of us doing this like we were kids who'd just discovered that we could. Doesn't it feel dumb to you?"

"Maybe it does," Terry said quietly, "But I've got an idea to maybe make it a little better. Hold still."

Hunter didn't know what Terry was on about, but he got a clue in a few seconds as he felt Terry's hand and it felt far better than just using his own. But friends are friends, he decided.

"You want me to do the same to you so we're helping each other?" he asked.

To his surprise, Terry said no very quietly and then Hunter heard him move a little.

Right after that, he felt warm wetness and sagged down as though helpless all of a sudden. "God, that's good," he whispered, "Why, Terry?"

Terry stopped for a moment, "You're my best friend out here and that means by definition, you can't be an idiot."

"Why - what?" Hunter groaned.

Terry kissed the tip of Hunter's hardness out of just wanting to and he said, "Because only an idiot would find something to complain about if I try to do something good for him."

It changed things between them ever so slightly, but only until Terry's efforts had brought Hunter off.

Friends are friends, he told himself again so he did the same for Terry and after that, they had something else to share between them before they fell asleep.

As it happened, they woke up just in time the next morning, maybe ten minutes before the colonel showed up. When he walked through the trees, Terry showed him the short grooves in the sand and told the CO his guess, noting that if Peterssen had flown over the trees behind them, he'd have left long, deeper grooves and likely a damaged airframe. 

"If he really had come in the way that he said, he'd have hit the lake for sure and been dead. Helicopters, if they're going to beat themselves to death, do a really bad job of it in water," Terry observed.

The colonel nodded and asked if Terry thought that he could get 380 into the air from there.

Terry nodded, "Yeah, I reckon I could. But a lot depends on that very temperamental girl stuck in the sand right there."

As it turned out, 380 didn't much like sitting in the sand at the water's edge and she started rather easily. Once she was a little warm, Terry strapped in and began to try to get her to lift in little stages, even rocking her back and forth using the cyclic pitch to alternate having her weight on first the back wheel and then the front while using the main gear as the pivot point. Every so often, he pulled a little collective pitch as he rolled on a bit of throttle. 380 got the hint and began to free herself from the sucking soft sand.

When he finally had her free, lifting up to hold it in a four foot hover, he grinned over at the colonel, who smiled back before he motioned Terry to head off, hoping that the rest was just a short flight to the hangar, since it would save him from having to dream up an even longer essay explaining things.

Terry flew back to the base with a smile on his face, liking this one bird even more for some reason that sunny morning and he got there well in time to still scrounge two late breakfasts out of the mess hall cooks, holding one in reserve for when Hunter showed up .

Terry managed to reach his grandmother Eunice by telephone not long afterward and she wired him the money that he said he'd need to make a start. As soon as they could, Terry and Hunter formed a business partnership.

Not two months later, the war ended and all of America was jubilant. Terry might have been more willing to celebrate along with everybody else, but he'd gotten the word that his grandmother had died suddenly, so that cast a pall over everything for him.

As everyone had been celebrating the end of the war, Terry had been alone. He'd wanted it that way because he needed to mourn and to remember everything about his grandmother and what she'd done for all of them. The day that peace had been announced, he'd been sitting alone, writing a letter home while lying on his bunk when he'd been given the bad news.

With the war obviously winding down lately, he'd been hopeful to return to his small family. His first thought after the shock had passed was to try to reach Molly to find out what he could.

He looked at the row of overworked payphones where he was and doubted that he'd be able to get through for days.

An infantry master sergeant found him leaning against the wall, about the only person in the outfit with a long face. When he'd heard what lay behind it, he'd taken Terry into the orderly room offices and sat him down, pushing a phone over to him. "Make your call Terry," the senior NCO said, "Nobody around here will even question me for suggesting this.

I'll keep everybody away and I'll tell the colonel if I see him so that he doesn't give you what for without knowing that I've done this and why."

Terry never forgot how hard it was to get through America's overloaded telephone system that evening. It took him over an hour before he heard the correct phone ringing. He'd given up trying to make a straight call.

He dialled 'O' and told the operator that it was an emergency. She'd told him that everybody had told her that since noon. Finally, he'd sighed, desperate now to get through.

"Ma'am, I don't care if you believe me, but while everybody's celebrating, I've just been given the news that my grandmother has passed on. I need to get through to my younger sister, so if it's not too much trouble, I'd like to place a collect call to Eunice Hatchett's phone over in Renfroe, Alabama. It's just a little west of Talledega."

She asked him if he knew the exchange number and he gave her the whole telephone number also explaining that the line was his dead grandmother's but that since she was dead, he hoped to speak to one of his sisters or his brother.

There was a pause after he'd wound down and the operator, who was a southern girl herself, asked if he was joking after hearing the name and he told her no, that the name that he'd given her was correct.

The phone rang five times before Terry heard his sister's shaky voice. He knew that he wouldn't be able to speak to her until she accepted the charges.

"Hello?"

"Good evening Miss, this is the long distance operator. Is this the Hatchett residence?"

There was a pause and then Terry heard her voice more clearly, sounding rough from weeping and terribly uncertain. "Yes, Ma'am," she said, "Only if this call is for Eunice Hatchett, she's passed away a half a week ago now."

The operator said, "I'm truly sorry to call you in your time of grief, but I have a collect call waiting from a Mister Terry Hatchett for a Miss Molly ..."

"That's me," Molly began before she hesitated, "I mean, ... this is she."

Terry thought that he could hear the smile in the operator's voice and for the thousandth time, he wondered why his grandmother had been insistent to name Molly the way that she had. He didn't care personally, but ...

"So you are Molly Hatchett?"

"Yes Ma'am," Molly said softly, "I surely am. May I speak to Terry please?"

"Will you accept the charges, Molly?" the operator asked, obviously trying to hold back whatever humor the mental image evoked of a murderous prostitute as a folk tale.

"Yes Ma'am," Molly said and they were connected.

Molly burst into tears as soon as she heard Terry's voice. He'd almost started to cry himself, but he waited for her to ease up a little and they began to make the first of their plans.

It would have taken Terry a month to be discharged, but due to his circumstances he was let go in less than a week. He walked out of the door with his belongings stowed in two olive-drab heavy canvas grips straight over to Hunter's own one-ton panel truck. As he tossed his bags in the back and climbed in, Hunter welcomed him back to civilian life and told him what he'd heard through the grapevine.

"There's a place in Idaho where they need someone to deliver the mail. From what I've heard, it's really rough out there, all mountains and lakes and like that. Sounds to me like the perfect place for a helicopter."

A month later, Hunter was able to bid on 380 when she was taken off-strength at the base. Terry was there, but he stayed in the background. It worked out even better by the end of the day.

380 was a Sikorsky R-6, but that type wasn't the first that had been flown there. There were still a few of the previous R-4s in service and aside from one that was kept mostly as the CO's hack and for running errands around, there were two up for bids that day alongside 380. One was sold off as scrap and the other was flyable. 

For just under seven thousand dollars, the two partners were able to buy them all, the scrap one intended to be a parts donor to the working one and one after another over three trips, they were all loaded up on the big old heavyweight flatbed trailer that Hunter's uncle used to haul scrap aircraft with and taken the four miles to the other airfield where they set about getting the working ones registered.

And it hadn't been easy, either.

An inspector had come out from the FAA to look the birds over and he shook his head, "I can't register these," he told them both, "There are no civilly registered helicopters in all of the United States at the moment."

"What's the problem?" Hunter asked, "We've got all the paperwork and Terry is a helicopter pilot. He's flown both of them."

"Can't," the man said, "No precedents. I'm not gonna sign my name to the first ones."

Terry produced a letter of recommendation written and singed by the designer of both of the types of helicopter that they now wanted registered. "Hellfire man, look here. Igor Sikorsky himself signed this."

But the inspector wasn't moved and refused.

"Well," Terry had smiled, "while you're dithering about it, there are over a hundred of these flying for the army and the navy as well, and they've shipped a bunch to Britain, too. How many examples do you need?"

"I'm not dithering," the inspector said with a tone of annoyance in his voice, "I flat-out won't do it."

"Yes you will," Terry grinned, "You just change the paperwork to read 'EXPERIMENTAL' or we'll file a complaint - along with the owner of this hangar for other times when you've held things up out of what you said was your not wanting to appear hasty. If you'd been around at Kitty Hawk back in 03, the Wright brothers would still be bicycle mechanics and we'd have lost the war a long time ago."

As the now-angry civil servant began to make his changes, he asked what the experimental rating would get them and Terry told the man to mind his business because there's be no rules or laws broken.

When the man had driven off, Hunter wanted to know the same thing.

Terry just smiled, "Sooner or later - and likely any day now, Mr. Sikorsky or another guy who makes helicopters will sell one to a civil buyer and somebody other than a man who wants to do the safe thing for his pension will approve it. It's just gotta happen, Hunter.

The day after that, we'll file again and make sure that we get a different inspector."

That took a little time to happen, though it did, just as Terry had predicted.

When the time came for the last of the Hatchetts to leave their ancestral home, Molly hadn't given it a thought. She'd brought the immigrant pair with her on her journey to rejoin Terry since to them both, Judith and Isaiah were their siblings and it had all been planned since Christ was a corporal. Ruthie came along as something of a last-minute change of plans because Tom had finally come to a very reluctant decision and asked Molly to mention his granddaughter to Terry when they made plans over the telephone.

It had come as a huge relief to all of them, because until then, old Tom had been adamant that Ruthie remain with him. Somewhat true to form for her, Ruthie had reminded Tom that she was of an age where she could make her own decisions, and he'd said that she could go on ahead, but without anything from him.

When Molly mentioned it, Terry had said that it was an unfortunate way to go for the hard feelings caused, but if Ruthie really wanted to come along, he'd find money to give her a head start somehow. Molly signalled her approval by weeping in relief over the long-distance line and it was a done deal.

For his part, Terry doubted that he'd ever forget the way that it had gone. Seeing Molly as she stepped off the train, looking as though she knew what she was doing, he'd felt his heart swell. But if there was anyone who knew her really well, it was him - and he saw that she was filled with uncertainty and doubts which couldn't be helped. 

He saw her get down and look back as first Judith and then Isaiah followed her, both of them clearly out of their element, a trio of young people far from home on their first time away and all of them knowing that they could never go back.

But Judith saw Terry then and everything changed once he stood with them holding him because they needed to for only a moment until they remembered what they assumed was their place - even here, hundreds of miles from those places.

But they'd all wanted to leave as the last of the Hatchett fortune was dissolved, despite the knowledge that it would take them out of their element.

Terry took Molly in his arms and just held her for a moment as she'd kissed his cheek softly, whispering that she loved him so and how happy that she was to be with him at last.

To Terry, Molly was somebody who was more like the compliment to him in so many ways. Sometimes, other people seemed to think that they knew each other' thoughts, though really, it came from being who they'd always been to each other. 

She could be soft-spoken when she thought that it was what the situation required of her, but oftentimes one could see that the girl wasn't without a sharp mind. As he put his arms around her again, closing his eyes at how it felt to hold her to him after over two years away, he inhaled and smelled her soft scent and it reminded him of yellow jasmine blossoms smelled on the night breeze from a distance.

As he held Molly, Terry could still remember going upstairs one evening as a boy to look in on her since had been down with a fever and chills for a few days. He found her in her bed with Eunice sitting beside her and brushing her long hair for her and it was the first time in a few days that he'd seen her smile.

The soft smile on that particular nine year-old girl was something that Terry had held inside of himself forever.

"What's got you both grinning and laughing?" he'd asked and it set them off again, though it made him feel a little funny and nervous, the way that they were looking at him.

"We've been playing a girl's game that I used to play back when I was one and didn't really have a care in the world," his grandmother said, "My cousins and I would sit for hours with our friends, telling each other features about our true loves - who were expected to make their appearance at the correct time in our lives.

But there were always a few who liked a boy even then when we were all just young'uns. Those were always the most entertaining for us all, since we knew that they were telling of some of the features or habits of the boy they liked. Well since we more than likely knew the boys they were mooning over, we had to guess who it was, though only a fool of a girl would ever tell.

Terry," she smiled, "I'd imagine that a boy sitting in that room would about want to throw up - or shoot himself -just to hear the end of it, but it kept a passle of girls entertained forever.




By Air Mail Ch.06



Molly and I were just playing that old game, since she's stuck in her bed here and all."

Molly smiled, "Ruthie was playing too, but ..." she held out her hand toward where six year-old Ruthie was curled up in the bed next to Molly asleep.

Terry never forgot the way that Eunice smiled then, "And the hardest thing for me this past while has been to pretend that I DON"T know who she favors. I just keep playing dumb to let her think of something else to tell me about as hints."

"Well who is this guy?" Terry growled as meanly as he could - at eleven years of age.

It set them both off laughing to each other for a minute.

"There's no guy - as you called him, for you to want to have to pummel," his grandmother smiled, "Molly's only got eyes for you.

No matter what I say about you being as good as blood kin - since that's how you've both been raised here - Molly's just as firmly adamant that she wants to marry you, though I keep telling her that you're both only young yet and that kind of thing can change by the time you're both grown."

Molly and Terry were closer than most brothers and sisters as well as being Confederate pirates and world-traveling adventurers together with Judith and Isaiah back then and Ruthie always found a place for herself in whatever they did. But though the other trappings of their young lives had fallen by the wayside over the years, there had always been their knowledge that they planned - with no conscious thought whatsoever - to remain together. Molly never spoke of it other than to Ruthie in a quiet moment, but she promised the youngest member of the group and she'd sneak her away with them if she really did have to stuff her into a suitcase.

Terry held Molly while she hugged him almost desperately - all while fighting off the want in her to burst into happy tears that he really was in her arms at last. "I'd tell you how good it is to see you again, she whispered with the slightest sniffle, "but that would be the end of me and I'd just weep over how good it feels to hold you again."

The whole time, Judith and Isaiah tried not to stare at Hunter until Terry apologized for his lapse and introduced him. 

"We've heard so much about you," Isaiah smiled a little shyly as he shook Hunter's hand, "It's good to put a face to the man."

Judith nodded, though she was taken with the way that Hunter kept his hair in two long braids, "I've never been away from home before - not since Isaiah and I came here when we were very small, and we can't even remember that now, but I find that you look to me to be exactly the way that Molly told me that you must be like, from her talking to Terry and you on the telephone."

Hunter just shrugged self-consciously, "I hope that none of it was bad, what you heard - at least not any more than was necessary."

"No," Judith said shaking her head with a smile, "none of it was. Why?"

"Because he's not always this polite and civilized-looking," Terry grinned, "He does know how to cuss me out every once in a while - probably when I need it badly."

"Oh, I don't think so," Molly laughed, "You've always been so proper and polite the few times that we've spoken, Hunter."

Hunter looked down, a little more self-consciously than the first time, "I wanted to be careful," he admitted, "Terry told me how special you all are to him. That made it important to me to start off on the right foot. I'm sure that you'll all change your opinion soon enough."

"Just don't ever touch his catch when he's been fishing," Terry smiled, "That's how I found out that he can curse me out better than anybody, and all just because I dropped his two trout in the dirt."

"The only things that we'd caught all day," Hunter reminded him, "and that was just as they were cooked up right. Some things go beyond friendship."

Molly and the others laughed as she said, "Like trout! 

Oh, I'm so happy to be here at last."

Terry looked around and noticed someone missing. "Where's Ruthie?" he'd asked, "Didn't she come, or did you lock her into her suitcase?"

"It almost came to that," Molly smiled, "You know how she can get sometimes."

Judith looked up at the sky wearily, "Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Well shouldn't we be there by now? Are we there yet? Are we gonna be there soon, and what's the matter with this old train? Can't it go any faster? We ought to be there by now. Do you think we'll be there soon?"

Molly laughed, "And that was about the way the song went, too. But I think she's maybe having a little trouble -"

"HEY!" a voice called out from the steps of the coach, "I can't get my suitcase out of the rack!" 

As soon as she'd said it, Ruthie saw Terry and she groaned out of wanting to run to him, but she didn't dare leave her grip out of her sight.

"Who's that?" Hunter asked and Terry smiled, "That's Ruthie. Can you give her a hand with her bag? 

Be a little careful though, she can bite unless she knows you. Though she's eighteen now so you can have her charged if she does." 

He turned to Molly and asked as Hunter began to walk over, "Did you make sure to get her a rabies shot before you left?"

It caused Molly and the others to chuckle, but Hunter turned and walked backwards for a moment looking as though he wondered if there was any truth to it. As he turned around to step onto the coach, Ruthie came barreling out, her suitcase in hand and almost flying behind her and the she ended up crashing into Hunter.

Hunter didn't move much as a result, but Ruthie sure did. She was knocked backward to land on her little ass half on top of her suitcase.

Hunter reached and picked her up so quickly that Ruthie still hadn't quite finished choosing suitable words as her reaction to the collision.

"Why don'tcha watch where yer go -whOA!" was as far as she got before she found herself in Hunter's arms.

He did his best to look nonchalant as he turned just a little, still holding Ruthie with one arm, "Are you alright, Miss?"

"I ... I ... uh, ... think .. .so," she said as though in a daze, her eyes taking in Hunter's face under the worn, white Stetson. 

Her eyes flicked down to catch the long braids and she smiled, "In fact, I think I'm even better than I was before, thank you very much for asking, Sir. I'm very sorry that I didn't look where I was going," she said as she tore her gaze from his face to look over her shoulder. 

And then she gasped, "M-My suitcase!"

"Right here," Hunter said with a smile as he held it up to let her take it, "I think your family's waiting for you."

Ruthie was looking at him again, trying to take in what she could in case she never saw anyone this incredible to her again. A little hidden in the collar of his shirt, she just caught sight of the leather thong low down around his neck and the bear claw with carved wooden emblems on either side of it.

And as she stepped away a pace, she saw a very lean man who looked amazing to her in slim blue jeans over honest-to-God snakeskin cowboy boots.

"Ruthie!" Molly called out and Ruthie turned her head a little, "Coming,"

"I have to go," she said regretfully.

"I know," Hunter smiled with a nod, sure that he'd never liked freckles on a girl until just that moment, "You'd best head on over, Miss. They're waiting on you."

She nodded, "Forgive my asking, but ... are you ... a real -"

"Cowboy?" he asked, his smile growing, "Nope. I just dress this way for the tourists."

She smiled shyly, "That wasn't what I was ..."

"I know," he chuckled.

"RUTHIE!" Molly yelled and Ruthie said goodbye just before she turned and ran off like a shot, her suitcase flying once more, never even slowing down until she collided with Terry and hugged him so that the joints in her shoulders and armed almost popped. 

Molly was a little pleased that Ruthie was wearing dungarees, for the completely unladylike way that she jumped up and hugged Terry.

"I was so afraid that I'd never see you again," she croaked as she fought back her sob.

"It's alright Ruthie," Terry whispered as he kissed her cheek, "I was out here all the time, just like my letters said. I was here teaching people."

Ruthie felt his chest expand as he drew a deep breath and let it out, "It's so good to see you all again. And I missed you so much too, Ruthie. I used to worry for you an awful lot."

He looked past Ruthie at the others and he saw Hunter standing there with a look on his face that he'd never quite seen the like of before.

"That man," she whispered, "the one that I crashed into because I was rushing, he's really good-looking and he's an ..." 

"I know," Terry whispered back, "but you know back home there were-"

He felt her shake her head and it felt so good to him to be whispering with her like this again. It was one of the things that he'd missed the most and it had begun back when she was just a little girl and he was a boy who was like her older brother to her. They'd always shared this, even when she didn't need it anymore, once she'd found her self-confidence. 

Right then though, she'd needed it again and so did he. The others just knew that and waited for them.

"No," she whispered, "I mean yes, but not like that man. I really liked him right off, like I could trust him. I wish I could have met him properly."

"Well I'm glad that you find him that trustworthy," Terry chuckled, "because he's my friend and business partner. And he's waiting for us to finish hugging Ruthie, because I can see that he'd like to meet you properly too."

Ruthie froze against him; her cheek-rubbing stopped instantly as she gulped, "He is? Oh my goodness."

She eased herself down and turned around with her cheeks and ears blazing while Terry tried to give her some cover by making the introductions.

She couldn't explain it, but Ruthie stood listening as it went on and from that, she learned that his name was Hunter Youngblood and to her - on him - it seemed to be about the most perfect name that she could imagine. Ruthie gave up whatever pretense she tried to hide behind eventually and just stared.

"I'm sorry for the way that I acted earlier," she said still somewhat abashed to the well-hidden mirth of the rest of her family, "I'm not usually half as silly as that."

"No," Molly grinned over at Hunter, "most of the time, she's a lot closer to deadly. 

This past year, I've come close to having to go to the sheriff's office for the way that a man expresses perhaps a desire to make her acquaintance and she almost always flies at him like a hellcat as though he was questioning her heritage or upbringing."

"Those boys were making rude remarks Molly," she protested quietly, "It's not like it was for you when you were younger. Everybody there knows who I am - but they also knew that Terry wasn't at home anymore, since he'd gone to the army.

And anyway," she said, a little imperiously, "I was only doing the same things that you and Terry taught me to."

"That was for when you were little," Molly said dryly, "It's not the same thing. You're grown up now, Ruthie. You did the things that we taught you and I had to stand at the door listening to a deputy tell me that you loosened a man's teeth for him and broke his nose - even though I thought you must have done well, myself."

Ruthie looked up, "Wasn't hard. I hit him where Terry told me to a long time ago."

"How did that hurt his mouth?" Judith asked with a curious smile.

"It didn't," Ruthie said, "He bent over sudden-like and I'd already grabbed a stool to hit him across the knees with. He smacked his face against the stool."

She smiled a little, "Cracked the stool too."

Hunter began to chuckle as he held out his hand, "I'm happy to meet you Ruthie," he grinned, "I think I can admire a girl with that kind of spirit. You don't take crap from anybody, I'd guess. I like that a lot."

Ruthie was still willing her blush away, but she did smile, "I'm sorry if I was going to ask you something impolite. I didn't mean anything by it, Hunter."

He just laughed as he asked to carry her bag and maybe one of Judith's or Molly's too, "I knew that, and I didn't take it as impolite. And if it helps you to know or anything, I'm Comanche. You'll see and get to meet a few more where we're headed."

As they walked to where Hunter's truck was waiting, Ruthie looked around at some of the other people, "So, is this the Wild West or something like that? I see a few men -" 

She looked a little harder in one direction, " - there's a lady over there wearing a hat like yours."

"I don't know about wild," Hunter smiled as he shifted her suitcase up to take the one of Molly's that he had in his other hand over to take off his Stetson, "but it's where we live."

He set his hat on Ruthie's head and she looked up with a sudden grin, pleased as anything at the gesture.

Hunter found himself looking into eyes as startlingly green as spring grassland and it stopped his breath for an instant. "You know what? I have a feeling that you're gonna fit right in."

As Terry drove on, looking carefully as he went in case some nocturnal animal chose this moment to dash out in front of him, he was careful not to think of how he'd been blessed, since now wasn't the time. 

His family now consisted of one girl who'd been adamant that she'd be his woman from almost the time that she knew that she could one day, and as she'd prepared to leave to join him, she'd been faced with the other two who loved her and the girl that Eunice had also raised. They had two different shades of skin between them all, but they were his family and they all loved each other fiercely.

As they drove off to get to Lawton, Molly explained how she'd made use of Tom Wingham's help and together, they'd liquidated as much of Hatchett Harrow as they could. Tom took a bit as reimbursement for helping Eunice through a bad crop the year before, and Terry agreed that it was fair.

He suggested to Hunter that they stop off for dinner someplace, since the travelers had been on a train, and not an especially fast one, for almost a day. Hunter nodded and they went off to have a meal. 

Isaiah and Judith got a few looks, but for the most part, they were a little surprised that the color of their skin wasn't the issue that it could have been back in Renfroe. Ruthie sat quietly trying not to appear foolish as she tried to observe Hunter covertly. After dropping them off and getting the luggage out and inside of the door, Hunter said goodnight and drove home.

With everyone tired from the trip and but not wanting to sleep just yet in the furnished house that Terry had rented for the five of them to stay in as he and Hunter set about engineering the move to wherever Hunter said that the place was, Molly presented her brother with everything that she'd been able to cobble together from the dissolution and sell-off of their old home; land, equipment, mansion and all, right down to the rich curtains from Eunice's bedroom.

On the table, she set down a bank draft drawn from the estate account in the amount of forty-eight thousand, four hundred, ninety-eight 1946 dollars.

And seventy-three cents.

Considering that you could fill a grocery cart so that you had to hold the things on top of the pile as you went for ten or eleven dollars, it was a sum of money.

Molly then set the letter from Tom as the executor down next to it and Terry saw that it was a statement of what had been sold, who to, and for how much. All that it required from Terry was his signature, accepting receipt of it.

As Terry stared at it all and then at the others, Ruthie stood up and pulled the curtains closed as Isaiah went to make sure that the doors were locked.

"The way that Eunice thought of it," Molly said as Terry noticed the four of them begin to get undressed a little slowly, "this was what you'd get one day as the last, true Hatchett when she passed on and you settled everything up. 

I know that she spoke to you about seeing that I was given something and that you disagreed on the amount. I also know that she didn't leave the rest of us much at all because she hoped that the lion's share would be kept to keep the place going.

And I know that she left Ruthie nothing."

She sat down on another chair and Terry had a perfect view right up her skirt as she lifted it up at each side to unfasten the toggles holding her stockings before she rolled them off her long legs as she looked at him.

"And lastly, I know something that the rest of us don't, Terry. 

I know that you lied to her.

You lied to her so that she'd agree to leave everything to you, since you promised her that you'd keep Hatchett Harrow going for as long as you could while giving us: Judith, Isaiah and I some small money."

She turned to look at the shocked faces of the rest, "I think that a lot of people something like us - who aren't related to each other by blood - who find themselves in a struggle to challenge the will and probably never would speak civilly to one another ever again.

But I knew the plan that Terry was working to. Because we planned it together back when that will was made out, when I was sixteen and Terry was nineteen."

She sighed as she stepped out of her skirt, "Terry, Tom told me how you argued that it didn't matter, that if it happened, then you'd deal it equally between us four because you said that it didn't matter to you that Judith and Isaiah weren't blood kin, that I wasn't blood kin either, but that you'd never leave any of us with less than the others."

Terry nodded, "I remember. It was maybe the only time that Grandmother and I fought over anything once I'd grown up. I could see that she thought that I was being a little idealistic and she took it as maybe an aspect left over from childhood."

He sighed, "I can understand her point of view better now.

Though it still doesn't make what she wanted right to me.

But I know that she was stuck on the notion that I'd keep Hatchett Harrow and try to go on. Even then, I disagreed with her - at first. I just wasn't loud about it. 

It doesn't take a genius to see that there's no way anymore. The way that I saw it, she was fixed on the same old notion which didn't and couldn't ever work. 

What I can't understand even now is how she raised us all to love each other and take care of each other always - and yet I was supposed to forget all of that and keep an old ruin going until we all walked away in poverty.

Tom and I spoke of it and you know how he loved her. He told me in a private moment that the best thing that I could ever do was to sell out for as much as I could get and then take us -"

He looked directly at Isaiah and Judith and then over at Ruthie, "all of us, and go west to try to make lives of our own instead of working ourselves to death trying to keep something alive which should have died over fifty years ago with my great-grandfather. My grandmother saw herself as someone who was still a little respected because of the family name.

I saw us as five young people trapped in an old mansion that we hardly ever got to leave and I didn't want to watch while it ate our souls as it did hers and Uncle Todd's and everyone else's. Even Tom said that it had trapped him because he loved her so much. 

Like the rest of you, I didn't grow up in a huge rich mansion with paid servants seeing to my needs.

Like all of you, I grew up in a leaky old run-down plantation house that kept going out of it's own inertia and by sucking the lives out of the people trapped inside of it."

He pointed at the bank draft on the table, "That's ours, the way that I see it. It belongs to us all and if y'all don't mind too much, I'd much rather share it equally between us. I'll split it up right now if y'all want. It works out to ... twelve thousand, one hundred and twenty-four dollars and sixty-eight and one quarter cents each. You can have my quarter of a penny, if you want it. 




By Air Mail Ch.06



I can add to it a little since Grandmother sent me ten thousand to buy at least one surplus helicopter with. I've got a little under two thousand of that left, since Hunter and I bought two good ones and one for parts. I'll need some of my share to get the business going, and I'd like it if we could all see our way to providing for Ruthie as we go ahead."

He looked around at the others and they were all shaking their heads.

"The money should go to what you try to do with Hunter," Isaiah said, "and we all want to work to make it grow, not just ride along." As soon as he'd said it, they all began to nod - except for Ruthie who had no voice in it.

Terry smiled with a nod, "Thank you for that. Bell Helicopters has a design that they're going to offer on the civil market soon, so that's the next step, once we get going. I intend for you all to be joint owners with us, Hunter and me."

"I want you to remember something," Molly said quietly as she lifted Judith's long, bound ponytail of black hair to unbutton Judith's dress for her, since the buttons ran up her back. 

"A long time ago, when we were all just kids Terry, you and I would spend time down by the creek together, most often with our younger siblings here, if you'll recall. I remember that we made a pretty fearsome gang of young pirates.

Back then, you and I agreed out loud that we'd always try to stay together. The second time that we did that, Judith asked Isaiah and with his agreement, they asked if they could be with us too. Ruthie never said anything, but we've always included her.

We all agreed Terry. All of us. 

Well now is that time. 

When I turned eighteen, not all that long before you left, I decided that it was time that I committed to the decision that we all made together. It was my birthday, but that night I gave myself to one of the two men I wanted to stand beside for the rest of my life."

She looked Terry in the eye and held his gaze, "And unless anything has changed in you since you've been gone, then I'm here to say that I'm still your woman Terry. I still love you with all my heart, just as I know that our brother and sisters do."

Terry felt humbled, but he returned her unwavering gaze with one of those soft smiles that Molly had always loved to see from him, "I still love you all, Molly. I've never changed."

He grinned a little, "So I'd guess that we can now put the rest of our plan together?"

Molly was behind Judith, nodding her agreement with him and unfastening Judith's brassiere. With that done, she pointed at Terry and Judith nodded. 

Judith came forward, holding her brother's hand and together they knelt next to the chair that Terry was in. Both of them were naked as was Molly.

"We know the story of how we came to be here," she said. "We can barely remember a little of the way that we first learned to speak. Your great uncle brought us here to safety and your grandmother raised us together as though we are all brothers and sisters, and she never cared a whit about our skin being different from yours.

She never spoke of it, but I know from asking old Todd as a young girl that the customary way to win in war where we come from is to take the wives of the defeated chieftain and then kill what children that you can find. You can always get more wives if the defeated one's women do not like their new roles as lower wives to you. It is the way that lions do it when they defeat another and take his females. The children are killed and quickly, so that none might escape and grow up to return in vengeance one day.

By this, Isaiah and I know that our lives were saved.

None of you have ever treated my brother and I as any less than you are, but you are the oldest pair and so we follow you.

Now, after speaking with Molly for years while you were gone, we have decided that all of us should remain together just as we planned it when we were children. Isaiah and I wish to give ourselves to you both in the same way - as we have been old enough now for some time. You would share what money was given to you with us. We would share what we have always wanted to. Molly and I have dreamed forever of having our brothers to love us at night - either and both, always."

Terry looked at them all, and then he looked from one to the next and so on. Not one of them looked away and all of them smiled.

"Let us be as lions between us," Judith said, "as we dreamed together by the creek long ago. We were children then and of course, we didn't know what might come to us or what it meant after the nights begin, but we know that you and Molly would still have us, now that we are old enough to make our family together. 

We all still love each other, so my brother and I offer ourselves to our brother and sisters. You and our Molly are older so you will be our leaders. Isaiah and I will always follow you because we know your love.

It is what we have all wanted to do, Terry. We only waited for you to come back to us. Now, we are all here and we spoke in whispers to each other on the train. Molly and I have spoken of it for years. If it happens, we will try to bear the children of our males, but even so, I would bear your children just as Molly would bear Isaiah's."

She smiled softly at her brother for a moment, "Isaiah could not bear you any children, but he still wants to have you put some of your seed in him, if you wish it."

Terry looked at Isaiah a little curiously. "You'd want that?"

Isaiah looked embarrassed, but he nodded, "I've always wanted that with you."

"I tried to be a little prepared," Molly smiled as she held something up. 

"I bought more rubbers on the way to the train station in Renfroe. I never thought I'd stop blushing - the way that the folks in there stared at me for buying so danged many at one time, but I thought that we'd need a few, anyway. Judith and I kept using them up with Isaiah once he was of age. Now we're so happy that we're all together again and we want to start burning them up with you. 

With us all here, we want to start going by the rules that we agreed on - each one of us as we came of age. I taught them all, since you weren't there to do it with me like we'd planned it.

At least that was what we've all been hoping as we sat together whispering on that long train trip to get here." 

Their attention was drawn by Ruthie who sat as naked as the others, curled up in a chair a little demurely as she cleared her throat and looked at Molly.

"I didn't forget," she smiled, "Ruthie has something that she wants to say. I promised not to say a word."

Ruthie looked down for a moment, "I never thought about things much when I was little and I came to live with you all. Now that I'm grown - well, as much as I guess I'm going to - I see us all as a bunch of people who each have their own troubles behind them. None of us is what we were supposed to have been.

But back then, I didn't know any of that. I just saw that I went from being an only child to somebody luckier than anybody, because I had you four. Nobody I knew loved the other kids in their family the way that we always have. At first, I didn't think that I belonged, but every one of you made me see that I did from the moment that I stopped being a little girl who visited sometimes and started to live in that big old house with you.

I have some trouble remembering my parents now, but back then, I cried and cried because even though they didn't mean to die, I felt like they left me all alone in the world. It took me years to finally get over losing them.

But I wasn't alone in the world. Y'all never let me feel that way for long. If I felt bad and began to cry sometimes, at least one of you would find me and hug me, no matter how sad I felt or how much that I cried.

Grandfather wasn't around very much unless he came to stay for a few days and anyway, he was never the kind to really show his feelings. Grandmother was so often busy running things on the farm, telling people what needed to be done or even doing it herself. So at first, I didn't think that anyone had much time for me.

After a while though, I saw that there had always been four people who had time because they made the time to be with me, even if we just sat together and talked. Grandmother didn't have any more in her to raise young'uns by herself by the time that I showed up and made the job impossible. But each one of you had a hand in raising me - even if all I needed was a hug and a kiss and to be told that everything was gonna be alright."

She rolled her eyes, "Never mind how much I needed help with my school learning. You all helped me there too.

Molly's my biggest sister - but she's also a lot more like a mother to me. And you Terry, you're my biggest brother, yet you knew right off when I needed to be talked to by somebody who could be more like my father.

Then I saw something else inside of that as I got older. I've always been the kid, though really, there aren't all that many years between me and you, Terry.

In spite of that, and the way that I'm not even really blood to you, just like none of us are, we're still a family. I have Judith and Isaiah as my brother and sister and I know that I see it differently to the way that you all do. And I have Molly and Terry as my Momma and Daddy in a lot of ways because you just always were those things to me. 

But I had it even better than that because we were all kids together.

Right until the end as we were getting ready to leave, I didn't think that Grandfather was going to let me go and I didn't know how I was gonna go on. Now I understand that he was trying to hold onto at least something. 

He came to me on the morning that we left and he told me that I ought to pack something if I really wanted to go, since he was going to let me go after all.

I've been sitting here as quiet as a mouse watching as you laid out the money that you have. I didn't say anything because it wasn't my place to say a word about it."

She sighed, "Nobody said a word about me, but I saw how you were all looking at me, and I know my family. I know how you all love me and I know how you all think.

With what Molly got from Grandfather for selling off Hatchett Harrow for you and with what you have left, my family has just over fifty thousand dollars. My name isn't on any of it, but I know that somehow, you'd all take care of me because you always have."

She got up and walked over to her suitcase, bending over as she opened it and slid her fingers into a pocket in the lining at the back. When she straightened and turned around, she held a manila envelope. Reaching inside, she drew out a letter as she stepped over to the chair where Terry sat and she climbed up to sit on his leg, leaning back against him the way that she'd done so often growing up.

But they all knew why she'd done it while completely naked like the others. 

The youngest of the Confederate pirates had come of age almost exactly one month before.

"Nobody's said anything about Grandfather," she said, "like it's the thing that we all don't want to speak about, since he never said a word about it himself. But while I was fighting and arguing with him these last few weeks, I've learned that he has a few things that he'd like to see and do before he dies - and don't worry, he's fine as far as I know.

He's going to leave Renfroe and move to Florida, to a place where he used to go with Grandmother. He told me that he hopes that he's still living by the time that he gets her out of his system at least a little and then he's going to come to see what the band of Confederate pirates have done out west.

Those were his words to me.

He's retiring now and he gave me some money so that I wouldn't be too much of a drain on your fortune. He says that I get what he set aside for his son and daughter for when they had enough to buy themselves a little house."

She looked down for a moment at the envelope in her hand, "Only ... only they were killed one night, so the money just sat in a bank mostly, unless he saw a place to put some of it so it would grow quicker for a while before he put it back in there. After I came to live at Hatchett Harrow, he put some money aside for me and didn't tell anyone about it, me especially. He did the same thing to it that he did with the other money. That money is all here in this envelope, from both places.

What I want - if you'll all let me - is to put my money in along with the rest and what I want is to finally be the same as you - even though I know that it's what you were going to talk about tonight. I hope that I can put enough into the pot to be able to buy a vote in the decisions of my family and not just be little Ruthie along for the ride anymore.

For the things that I'd like, not that I think that I'd need to buy them, I'm offering a few cents more than twenty-one thousand dollars.

Molly and Terry, Judith and Isaiah, I want to be in the next part of this adventure - just like we always seemed to have them. I don't have a man - well at least not yet, but I'm old enough and I want to be another woman in our family.

I'm just not really a woman yet, so I'm asking for that tonight."

She kissed Terry's cheek softly, "And until I find a man, Molly said that I can be yours with her."

"And what about us?" Judith grinned, "Isaiah and I've dreamed together of you."

Ruthie rolled her eyes, "We're all going straight to Hell one day Judith. Why did you think that I always asked you what it was like?"

Isaiah laughed, "You don't need any money for that, Ruthie. Judith and I would whisper about this night."

"Don't mind him," Judith smiled, "He's right, but thank you for what you've added. Do you know the rules?"

Ruthie nodded, "A girl can have anybody, any night, as long as the man wears a rubber if she's with a man.

Nobody who sucks a man can lick or kiss another woman. A man who's been sucked can't kiss the one who sucked him and then lick a woman.

Any woman who is in the 'clear' few days of her month can play wild and have anybody, no holds barred.

What do you think I've been chanting under my breath as I counted the days until my birthday? I'm a month past that, but I knew we were coming out here by then so I waited while I fought like hell with Grandfather to let me come with you. Tonight, I want you all, but I want Molly and Terry first."

The others shook their heads, "Molly and Judith first," Isaiah said and she saw that Terry nodded. 

"Well okay," Ruthie smiled, "but they already had me from when I turned eighteen. You must have known that I'd demand that from them that night, Isaiah. I just want Terry first and THEN I want you a lot."

Molly said, "I've watched and taught Ruthie how to count her days because I knew this was coming and we taught her, Judith and me. You boys need to know something about her. 

It might not come as much of a surprise, but try to remember something. Ruthie's a little small down there, so there'll be no hard fucking her unless she give you the word."

She looked at Ruthie, "And Isaiah's right. You need us first so you'll be plenty wet before you start your first night with our men - even though you're lucky enough to get to play wild your very first time.

Just remember that Isaiah and Judith are giving you their turns with Terry first. And so am I - and I've been missing my man for over two years, you lucky little fox."

Ruthie smiled and she didn't mind, whatever they said. She'd always felt like she belonged and it was only the occasional words of Eunice or Tom that reminded her that she was more like a cousin to them than a real sibling - even in the way that they all counted it. She was conveniently forgetting that they all thought of her that way anyway, but it did remind them all to let her have her say in family matters from that point on.

After learning from Judith and Molly over the past month, there was no uncertainty to Ruthie that night and before she got up from the bed, she asked her sisters of they could make up a little chain and it had been a lot of fun as well as really sexy.

Her time with Terry was a little more like making love with Molly as well, since she couldn't stay away and once she settled in with Terry in a slow and very gentle first fucking, she tried to spur them a little by calling them Momma and Daddy.

It felt a little nice to them all, but it didn't get her much of any increase in speed. 

The one time that she'd tried, rolling Terry over on his back, Ruthie found out her limits pretty quickly.

She was a woman now, true enough - but though what she had could be made to accommodate Terry's size - she was pretty much at her limit, never mind that she couldn't take the full length of them if they tried to do it as hard as she wanted them to. Anything fast for very long didn't seem to feel quite as good as when Terry stroked long and slow and they just looked into each other's eyes. Ruthie got there all the same, and she decided that she liked it more that way for how her feelings could overcome her so quickly, coming to her as though out of nowhere.

That was when she found that she was more likely to weep a little, just over how good it felt to be Terry's for a little while.

When she tried Isaiah, it was much the same thing, but by then, Ruthie was getting to know things a little better.

What she really liked - best of all, since it could push her over the edge most times was when either of them came and she knew it by them holding her tight as they came in her. That felt even better just because and for the way that it could take her from a warm and happy idle to crying out and bucking - still slowly as she milked that moment and for as long as she could.

Once Molly knew what to look for, she could see it on it's way when it began to happen and she told Judith. After that, if they could, they'd offer Ruthie a breast to suck on, since she seemed to need it then for the way that she looked at either one of them a little hungrily.

Wild sex for Ruthie was when she was feeling loved and free with her sisters instead. What she'd always remember was learning something about Judith that she'd never known. Judith liked to be just a little restrained but that wasn't the big thing to Ruthie's mind.

She never forgot the way that the night had ended with Molly kissing her while Judith had her face as far into Ruthie's crotch as she could get it, lapping the semen that dribbled out and rubbing her face so that it was all over her from almost forehead to chin.

Ruthie had been quick to see it and she held Judith's head gently and moved her hips against her face. "Come on, Judith," she whispered, "Come and eat my little kitty."

Judith heard those words and she was rooting around all over again until Ruthie eventually had to plead with her to stop, holding her head and crooning that she loved her so much.

-------

Sitting in the second row seat in the one-ton panel truck while Terry drove, Hunter was thinking back after a short glance at Ruthie was she sat a little curled up not far away from him.

When they'd gotten started working, Ruthie found that she wanted to do something to help and not knowing just what, she went to see what it was all about the day after Terry had taken them each up for a bit of a scenic flight in 380 - who now flew with new registration numbers. Never mind that she'd loved it, but Ruthie began to think of how much work there must be involved to keep a machine like that flying.

Hunter hadn't really known what to do about Ruthie as she hung around watching him work. She offered to help, but he was a little stuck finding her jobs to do and she asked enough questions - mostly 'why' to drive a man a little loopy.

By the third day, he'd snapped at her one time without meaning to and he regretted it instantly, but by then it was too late and she was gone. He'd gone to look for her and apologized but he could see that it didn't change anything and so he'd sighed and gone back to work.




By Air Mail Ch.07



***Looking back, it's been a busy night here and there.

In this, Craig, Amelia and Rosa get happy, Rebecca and Marjorie wonder that the Hell is going on, and Emmy learns about flying and trapped air. 0_o

***

------------

Cascade, Idaho.

The house was still and three people stood looking at each other. Earlier, Marjorie and Rebecca had waited for the strange group of young people to leave and after a while, the place thinned out and settled back to what was normal for a regular evening at Bea's Café. In the kitchen, they suggested to Rosa that they all walk across the street to go see a movie together to give Amelia and Craig a little privacy, but Rosa had declined with her thanks for the offer.

"Watching a movie is a thing that bugs me a little," she'd smiled, "I like to watch them 'cause they're so big, but unless I can see the face of whoever is speaking, I miss a lot of what's said. So I get more jumps and parts where I don't know why somebody might be laughing or crying than I do when I'm someplace with real people - and I can only eat so much of that fantastic popcorn.

You go on ahead without me," she smiled with a little wink, "I'm sure that I won't hear whatever it is that Craig and Amelia get up to. I'm a little tired anyway. I might even just walk on over to your house Rebecca, and sleep there tonight."

And so Rebecca and Marjorie left to watch whatever was playing at the cinema.

And after about twenty minutes where three people sat at a booth together sharing hot chocolate and smiles, they stood up and walked up the stairs.

Now they stood, like three points of a triangle, naked. Each one was wondering just how to begin, but after some shared kisses, Rosa sank to her knees and began to wet Craig's hardness while the others kept on trading kisses.

It had been Rosa's intent to prepare Craig for Amelia, but Amelia had other ideas, so she surprised Rosa when she knelt next to her and whispered loudly into her "good" ear.

Amelia got onto the bed and leaned back to lie down, beckoning Rosa forward and when she had Rosa standing bent over her, she wrapped her arms and legs around her and told Craig to go ahead. He stepped forward and slipped inside of Rosa, careful to do it slowly, since he was mindful of what he knew regarding the way that Rosa had been taken by men that she wouldn't have wanted all of her life.

He was wrong where her thoughts of him were concerned, and Rosa relaxed and looked back with a look that spoke volumes. When she looked down, she saw Amelia looking up at her with a very happy expression and they kissed while Craig fucked Rosa slowly until she said that she wanted more and could he please do it harder as well.

The remark surprised the others for the soft way that it had come out of Rosa. She'd whispered it and her whispers were like the way that she often spoke - much louder than she'd have intended. But they knew that about her and they could easily see the way that she'd meant to say it as well.

Rosa was a little lost to her feelings and as she struggled, Amelia gave up her kissing to tilt her head just enough to be able to see Craig over Rosa's shoulder.

"Give it to her, Craig," she smiled up at him as she gently tightened her grip with her legs and arms around Rosa, "She's our girl, yours as much as mine."

Rosa began to moan very softly, not quite aware that she was doing it at all and Amelia pulled her head down against her shoulder as she ran her fingers deeply into that long dark hair which spilled over her. She looked at Craig and whispered at a level that she was fairly confident that Rosa wouldn't catch, "I love her like I love you and she's meant the world to me while you were gone. Tonight, we're finally together, so I want her to come first."

Craig nodded and did his best without being insane about it, so as not to upset the mood that he felt and he took Rosa by her slender hips and caressed them as he went on for her.

He didn't have long to wait before Rosa's head lifted from Amelia's shoulder and for perhaps the first time in her life when she'd had a man in her, Rosa came in a quiet, very personal way, trembling and whimpering as Amelia looked at her, so taken with the rapture that she was looking at.

Amelia, between her and Craig, perhaps best understood Rosa in this way. She knew that very likely, Rosa had experienced orgasms at the hands of the men who'd possessed her. She also knew because Rosa had told her that if it had actually felt good for her those times, she'd held herself still and silent, not wanting those men to derive any satisfaction from any enjoyment that she'd experienced. It was a subtle way to her to spit at their feet.

That didn't apply here and now at all. For once, Rosa was like a little girl who felt happy and Amelia knew it as something which Rosa had felt so very little of in her life. She found herself looking into Rosa's open eyes then and she smiled.

"You come so sweetly. That was so good to see."

For an instant, Rosa didn't know what to say or do, but Amelia had been expecting that and she kissed Rosa happily until Rosa responded with a look of surprise.

"Oh fuck," she grinned, "That hit the spot.

Now you, before he comes in me. I can tell he's got a way to go yet."

Amelia was perhaps a little taller and she stood bent over clutching two pillows, waiting for Craig to mount her. Rosa tried her best to be in two places at the same time and Craig stood while Rosa stroked him slowly while at the same time, she buried her face against Amelia's sex, licking and kissing for a couple of minutes.

Then Rosa moved back and rolled a rubber over Craig with such skill that he was a little amazed.

"Give it to her, Honey," she whispered coarsely, grinning as she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.

But Craig stopped her, "Come here, Rosa. I want to kiss you while I do this."

She nodded, "Just a second, I've got warm watermelon face."

He smiled, but he didn't laugh. "I know that," he said slowly so that she would get it, "I want to kiss you even more because of that."

Rosa looked at him in an odd way and then she stood up and helped to guide him into Amelia and with that done, she turned and threw her arms around Craig, kissing him for all she was worth while he began to fuck Amelia slowly.

Amelia loved it and she came too quickly - far too quickly, though she could admit to herself that it had been so good. Her trouble was that she sometimes became sensitive afterward and right now, it was something that she most definitely didn't want.

But Rosa knew Amelia and she'd given it a little thought, so she broke off from Craig for a little while so that she could bend down and begin to kiss and caress Amelia's hips and bottom, moving around, a little to the side as she began to drool saliva down the valley between those cheeks. She carefully reached to try to grasp what she could of Craig's hipbone, turning her head to look up at him as best she could, while at the same time reaching with her other hand to pet Amelia where they were joined as softly as she could.

"Stay in her," she said a little too loudly, "Just give me a little room if you can. I'm gonna get her ready for you. I want you to fuck her ass. 

I know her. I know what she wants. Besides what you've just given to her, what she wants most of all is for you to put some of your juice inside of her. She'd love it in her pussy for what it would mean to her just like I would but even more.

But I also know that it would do her a world of good to have you in her pretty ass tonight. You just have to do it like you mean for her to have it, even nice and slow all the way if that's what it takes."

Amelia's eyes flew open at that. The memories of what Bobby had done to her weren't pleasant to her in the least. But before she could do or even say anything, Rosa's hand was on her back, between her shoulder blades, caressing and stroking. Her voice when it came out of her was as low and soft as she could possibly make it without being able to hear it well. It came out smoky and rough in a soft way all the same and to both Craig and especially Amelia it was as erotic as it was gentle.

"If you can't trust this one, Sweet Pea, then there's no man alive in the world that you can. I won't let him hurt you."

She stopped speaking so that she could force her face downwards between them, all the while worrying about trying not to push them apart. She pressed down on the middle of Amelia's back to get her to bend down more and then she began to tongue Amelia's little hole as best she could and in spite of herself, Amelia groaned and began to relax. 

"He's your man," Rosa hissed, "and I know that he wants you so bad - even right here. Let him try, Honey. He's not stupid."

Amelia looked down over the top of the pillows that she clutched to herself. She saw nothing but the blankets, but she nodded.

Rosa pushed Craig gently until he was out and she told him to lose the condom, "This is gonna be you trying to make Amelia feel great and I'm gonna help. This isn't for you this time, understand? We have to get her to know how much you care about her - by feel.

The payoff will come later, when she's not afraid to let you in right here. If I'm right, then those times, she'll want to try it fast at the end and she'll probably choke on her pillows to hear this right now, but if you get this right, she'll want it hard enough later on to make her think that there must be an earthquake going on for the way that the room moves around from her point of view.

Look at this right here, Craig," she smiled with her cheek against Amelia's hip and flank, "This little ass was just made to be fucked just right. I'm going to teach you how a girl needs to feel that too, if it's done the right way by the right man - and you know who that is, right?"

She moved her head back above and drooled as much as she could, while toying with Amelia's asshole in little circles.

"Now Craig," she smiled up after spitting on the tip of him and gliding her fingers over as much as she could, "You just put it here and wiggle a little like it wants to make a new friend, ok?"

Amelia began to laugh and she pushed back a little as she felt a bit of courage come to her and after the gasping moment where everyone froze, she moaned loudly as she felt Craig slide in slowly until she felt his balls up against her mound.

As he fucked her - basically to Rosa's detailed instructions - Rosa reached under again and played a little for a time until she spoke to Amelia and took her hand so that she could do it for herself. Then she got on her back on the bed and used her fingers on herself so that Craig could watch while she squeezed first one and then the other of Amelia's nipples the way that she knew that Amelia liked.

She looked over at Amelia, who gasped and sighed at every breath. Rosa smiled and moved some of Amelia's long hair up and over her neck.

"I just love watching you getting fucked," she said, "I think it's my new hobby. You just look so good like this."

------------

Much later, after the shower, they were back on the bed - well to some degree. Amelia was on her back holding Craig's head while he held her hips and licked her. She was trying not to make a sound, but her soft sighs came out of her anyway.

Craig was on the bed, but his hips were turned because Rosa had commanded it, for lack of a better term.

When Rosa wanted something from them, she sure wasn't shy to say it.

Not in the least.

Not wanting to crush anyone, Rosa sat on the floor now, her bottom feeling a little sore, but otherwise just as pleasantly loved as Amelia's as it leaked Craig's semen into a wad of toilet paper that she held against it. She was facing away from them, looking as Craig's really nice prick as it stood out, almost begging for a little attention.

Rosa smiled. This had gone so well for them and it was only the first time. What she really wanted - the naughty little film which was playing through her mind, was for the night when Amelia could play without Craig needing to use a condom. What she was fantasizing about as she looked at that downright lovely dick there in the air before her, was to help as Craig fucked Amelia - just as she was coming to believe that she always wanted to - and then she wanted Amelia to help while she looked up into their faces, Amelia's and Craigs, while he fucked her.

Rosa knew what she also wanted and it would entail the three of them finding the kind of dildo that you could wear. She knew something about Craig. He was the man that she wanted to fuck too. She thought that she could probably come just from seeing his face as he looked back at her then.

But for now, there was that hard thing there out in the breeze.

And that just wasn't right to Rosa somehow.

She smiled again, reaching for it and opening her mouth as she leaned against the edge of the bed, the fingers of her other hand reaching for her lips down there.

She sighed very softly, not really knowing that she was making any sound at all as she took it in and began to try to express the way that she felt about him. Her eyes closed slowly and Rosa became aware that she was actually happy.

What she'd missed seeing was the line at the edge of the door. If she had seen it, she'd have noticed that it would have appeared just a little darker to her at this very low level of light.

That was because it was just very slightly ajar, held where it was by Marjorie as she peeked through.

She didn't really know what to make of what she was looking at as she watched the three of them, though they seemed to be having a great time.

A few minutes later, Rebecca stood at the door, peeking in because Marjorie had come to her and taken her by the hand, breathing into her ear not to make a sound.

She wasn't sure what to make of it all either, but she loved the way that Marjorie's fingers felt while she stood bent over to peek.

----------------

Pueblo, Colorado.

The next morning, Quinton found Emily up before him, trying not to be annoying over how chipper she felt, since it was a new thing to her. Her ass hurt a little in a constant sort of way, but she didn't care about that much.

It might have been an 'around the corner and in the back door' sort of thing, but she knew now that she could please Quinton easily and best of all, that she loved doing it. She looked up when she noticed that he was awake.

"What are you uh, doing, Emmy? Good morning by the way,"

She smiled a little as she worked with the small scissors that she'd found in a cosmetic set in one of the footlockers, "I'm trimming the hedge a little is what I'm doing, Quinton. Good morning back." 

She brushed off the trimmings very carefully and got down to gather them, "The coffee in the thermos bottle that we didn't open is still pretty warm, considering. I haven't had any because I wanted to have it with you."

He didn't reply and she looked back.

He was looking at her ass.

"That's off-limits today," she said, "Did you want some coffee with me or not?"

"You missed a spot," he smiled helpfully.

She rolled her eyes, "I left you a little stripe to aim at on the way in. I'm holding scissors, Quinton. Why is it that we're having two conversations? If you want, I'll trim you - and I won't miss anything."

She got to her feet and began to get dressed as Quinton poured them each a cup of still-warm coffee and he counted out eight dollars and set it on one of the seats as she looked at him.

"Have you decided?" he asked, "I'd really like it if you'd keep going with me, but the final decision is yours Emmy." 

"I want to go with you," she said, "I want to learn this and I think that it's better than anything that I might be able to find for myself. Lord knows I haven't done well so far and I know that I'd miss you if I stayed here."

He got up and hugged her, "Then I'm very happy not to leave a friend behind. You ought to know that there's a bit of risk to this kind of flying, but I don't think that it's much above flying a passenger plane. At some point, we may end up doing a little bush flying and that's a little more adventure as well as risk."

It caused Emmy to laugh a little, "Well it's a good thing that I trimmed the bush, huh?"

He nodded and smiled, "But I don't want to die, Emmy, so that's why I'm always careful with the risks, and I never skip using a checklist ever. I just wanted to get it said, that's all. I think that in terms of numbers, most people die in the home, slipping in the bathtub and stuff."

Emmy nodded, "I kind of thought that all out, Quinton. I still want to go."

He nodded and sat down on one of the seats, reaching for the thermos as Emmy walked over and sat on his leg to put her arm around him, "Wanted: Young, skinny, wiry fellows not over eighteen. Must be expert riders, willing to risk death daily. Orphans preferred."

"What the hell is that?" she asked with a curious smile.

"It used to be the want ad put on posters and in newspapers by the Pony Express when they needed riders. Now that job entailed a lot of risk."

"I dunno, Quinton, "Emmy chuckled, "From what I read, about the biggest risk to those boys was the Indians. I might have made out ok back then."

She kissed him and leaned back to sip her coffee, "I don't make friends easy - and I've never in my life made one like you."

She smiled, "I think I ought to go with you just for that."

----------------

Cascade, Idaho.

Rosa was up before the others and she dressed as quickly and quietly as she could to slip off to the bathroom before she tiptoed down the stairs. She was a little relieved to see that she seemed to have gotten there before Rebecca and Marjorie for once.

She was about to fill the large percolator when her world spun around and she found herself up against the wall, staring into Marjorie's eyes.

-------------

Amelia woke with a little start, looking around to find Rosa already gone. She had to work at it a little, but she did manage to finally free herself very reluctantly from Craig's embrace. She got out of the bed and left him with a little kiss on his cheek.

"Welcome home," she smiled as she whispered to him, "you're so beautiful when you're asleep."

She pulled her clothes on and opened the door to head out.

The next thing that she knew, her mother had her up against the doorframe, staring holes through her.

"I ... I have to pee," Amelia said.

----------------

When Craig woke up, he was already hungry. He saw that he was alone in the bed and he got up, remembering something about having to go hunt rabbits. He padded off to the bathroom and after brushing his teeth, he took a look at himself and decided against shaving for the day.

He headed back to his room and opened the closet, wanting to take out his rifle.

But it wasn't there, where it was supposed to be.

Curious now, he went downstairs a little gingerly, since the long ride home the day before hadn't left his bones yet and he wandered into the kitchen. After saying good morning, he was about to ask Marjorie if she knew where his rifle was, since he wanted to get her some rabbits for when Bonny came over the next day, but he didn't get the question out.

He saw Amelia and Rosa sitting at the table there in the corner of the kitchen.

"Sit down," Marjorie said.

He sat and Rebecca put a cup of coffee in front of him.

Marjorie looked over her shoulder at the three customers who had already been served. They looked reasonably happy and she thought that it might be a few minutes before she was needed again, so she stood next to the table with her arms crossed while Rebecca sat in a chair which blocked the only other means of escape.

"We want to know something," Marjorie said, quietly enough so that her voice wouldn't carry beyond the kitchen.




By Air Mail Ch.07



Rebecca leaned forward with an intent look in her eye, "We saw you last night. We came home from the movie and we saw you in bed together."

Amelia and Rosa both seemed just about ready to speak up, so she shushed them.

"What is there between you?" she asked.

Marjorie put her hand on Rosa's shoulder as she leaned forward, still aware of the need for quiet. "What Rebecca means is - was what we saw just for a little fun, or are there feelings there between you? I say this so that you might think for a minute before you blurt out anything stupid. I don't think I need to tell you that the Oracle of Cascade didn't even see this coming - so you know how thin the ice is that you're all sitting on just for that."

She leaned a little more, "So make a couple of crazy ladies feel a little better and tell us. Then, if we like your answer, we'll give you a good breakfast and send you three out to hunt up Bonny's rabbits. Your rifles are waiting for you upstairs in my bedroom. We were so surprised and a little put out that we couldn't sleep, so we cleaned them for you."

"How?" Craig asked.,"I've always kept it in the closet of my room, in a rack above the door on the inside. You'd have to have -"

Rebecca grinned and Marjorie nodded, "Well, if you need details, Amelia was a little busy holding Rosa's legs up for her and kissing her to keep her a little quiet while you were on Rosa, fucking her. It was just before Rosa asked her to sit on her face.  

I was just sneaking in because I thought that it was a good time, but when I saw that, I just gave up - so Rebecca had to do it.

All we want to know is that it was meant - that what we saw is something that you want to do for a while. We'd like that, since you looked almost in love or something - and if that's the way it is, Deke and Harry will need to know, that's all."

"Why?" Rosa asked.

Because it'll make them happy to know that," Marjorie smiled, "They think of you and hope that you'll stay - especially Deke. He's been wracking his brains wanting to think of somebody for you, Rosa. To his mind, it's not right for somebody like you not to have anybody."

Rosa sat in shock of a moment, her eyes a little wide. She thought that she must have finally gotten somewhere - if people who knew her thought of her like that. It was a very new thing to think of.

"You got here a little late, is all," Marjorie smiled, "But to hear him talk about you to anybody, you're as good as a daughter to him. Harry's about the same. He's just quieter, asking Rebecca to find you somebody."

-------------

Pueblo, Colorado.

"It feels a little weird," Quinton said quietly as they walked through the sunshine toward the terminal to find the showers in the transitory crew facilities. The lack of pubic hair was a bit of a strange feeling for him to come to grips with.

Emmy laughed quietly, "Well I like it," she smiled, "I thought it looked big before. Now with your fur off, it looks huge. I feel proud of you. I just can't yell out why."

She sighed, "People just never understand."

In the diner afterward, Emmy felt a little awkward and Quinton suddenly thought that he knew why. It was hard to imagine not having ever gone to a place like a diner ... 

"I've been to a diner," Emmy hissed at him with a surprised smile that he'd think that she hadn't, "I've just never been to one that was this nice ... and clean and so empty of ... people I didn't want close to me."

"Well, I must be getting used to your trim job," he smiled, "I'm starting to feel a little ... naughty there."

Emmy smiled back a little, so he knew that she didn't feel too uncomfortable. "I felt a little bad, you know? It looked like I cut a hole in a really nice rug or something. I'll try to even it up a little better next time.

Do I look alright?" she asked him and he smiled. She was wearing the sweater under her overalls and he was there in his, so that she wouldn't feel out of place. In a place like that, it wasn't unusual to see people dressed as they were at all and he knew that.

"Yeah, you look really nice. Here comes our waitress, I think."

Emmy looked as though she wanted to hide for a minute, but that all changed when she saw the waitress. Other than Emmy's dark green eyes, they could have been sisters and they chatted for a bit before the waitress had to go. Emmy sat looking pleased and still surprised.

"What?" He asked, lifting his coffee for a sip.

"You," she smiled, "You introduced me by my name - my father's name. Thanks."

"Don't mention it," he nodded.

"What does that word mean that you called me when you introduced us?" she asked.

"Associate? It means that we work together or we're in some kind of venture together. Around here, I'd guess that it means that we're aircrew together," he said.

"Ok," she replied with a bit of an uncertain look, "It sounded like we were doctors or something."

---------------------

A meadow outside the community of Cascade, Idaho in the mid-morning sunshine.

They walked, the three of them, headed off to Farmer Thorpe's place. His eyes weren't what they'd been for a while and he found that he needed a little help from Amelia to keep the population of rabbits culled every now and again, so it seemed a logical place to start.

"What is there between you?" Rosa mimicked Rebecca's voice as best she could, "I guess that I must be softening up or something."

She scowled as she drew her pistol and checked to see that there were cartridges in all of the cylinder chambers but one, "I would have wrecked everything by telling them to fuck off and mind their business." 

She looked around for a moment, "And it's too late to just saddle up and move on now." 

She thought about the three of them and smiled over, "Not that I even could anymore.

But I still almost told them."

She sighed, "But I couldn't. I love them - as nosy as they are sometimes."

"They gave us the nod," Amelia said with a smile, looking over so that Rosa could read her lips easily, "They love us too, all of us. I think that they were just concerned and wanted to hear it from us.

Me? I'm really happy today. I got fucked pretty much everyplace last night and I slept really well between two people who love me."

She chuckled, "They didn't even kick me out of the club."

"What club?" Rosa asked.

"The Women of the Family Club," Amelia chuckled, "You better prepare yourself, Rosa. I can tell that they'll pull you in too. I just know that they think of you as family now anyway by the way that they spoke to you the same way that they spoke to us."

What are you taking about?" Craig asked.

Amelia laughed and walked on with a grin across her face that just wouldn't go away. "It's like getting to sit with the elders and being involved in family things. You'd probably fall asleep and I wouldn't blame you a bit. 

But you gotta be a girl to join. It's not open to boys. It's for when the women of the family talk about things that only women care about, mostly.

Besides, you're probably not missing much, and anyway, you've got two women to talk the ears right off your head any time you want."

Craig walked on, his eyebrows up about as far as they could go. Amelia saw that he wasn't looking at more than his own feet, so she waved her hand subtly to Rosa, who looked over.

Amelia's fingers were signing to her and Rosa began to grin.

She liked the idea after a minute. Being in a bed naked with three other women seemed like a nice thought to her all of a sudden. She'd always admired Rebecca and Marjorie.

She just hoped that the discussion part didn't go on for long - or she'd be like Craig, sound asleep.

-------------

Downtown Pueblo, Colorado.

Even though they took a cab into town, they were back in ninety minutes with clothes for Emmy and she felt a lot better.

"You can keep the seven-fifty for yesterday," she said in the back of the cab on the way back, "I'll need to work a little while for nothing to pay for what you did for me today. I can't remember having clothes this nice."

Quinton wanted to argue, but she told him no; that was how she wanted it. The way that she sat there holding onto the things that he'd bought said that she wasn't exaggerating even a little, so he let it go before she thanked him for the bra.

They cleaned up in the plane and Emmy did most of the loading of Harry's mail load on board. When Quinton went to the terminal to get them food for the flight, she put on some of her new clothes while she was alone and when Quinton came back from the diner, he stood in the doorway and whistled in a low tone.

"You like?" she asked and he nodded, deciding that he was thoroughly astounded to see how good she looked in boots, jeans and a checked cotton shirt under her denim jacket.

"Please, Miss Emmy," he whined a little, "If you care for me at all, please put on your hat."

She shook her head, though she was smiling, "If you're a good boy, then um ... later on, I'll wear my hat for you, but nothing else."

Her façade fell away as she hugged him and laughed, "Would you like that?"

He looked dazed, but he managed a weak nod, standing with an expression that told her that he was already imagining it.

He'd called for a fuel truck and they waited while it filled them. Emmy climbed up on the wing to see how it was done. "That took a little time and some running around," Emmy said, "I was surprised."

"Five tanks," Quinton sighed, "275 gallons, but with that, we can fly over a thousand miles, more like twelve hundred. With Harry's mail load aboard, we'll fly right past Colorado Springs and Denver. They're normal mail stops, but they're not our route, so we won't stop until we hit Cheyenne for the night. It's a little under two hundred miles, but it'll be a bit more for us, since we have to jog a little. 

By the way, whenever you order up a fuel bowser, you be sure to specify that this takes 100 LL avgas, Ok? You get the wrong grade, it won't like you much, you get the wrong kind and we'll know when the engines stop on us in midair. That will be the loudest silence that you'll ever want to hear.

I want to get you started on going through the checklists with me on this flight and also, I'll want you to fly it a little, just to get the feel. Before that, I'm gonna bore you to tears with a little flight theory. It's no good teaching you to fly if you don't know how it happens."

He smiled, "After that, we're staying in a hotel tonight. No waiting for a five minute shower for us."

Emmy's eyes lit up, "Wait a second, there'll be a bathtub, right?"

He nodded and she looked happy, "Then you have a shower. I'm having a bath, a long ladies' kind of bath."

"What?" he asked, a little surprised, "You mean with scented bath oils or those poofy bubbles?"

"Yeah!" she laughed, her head thrown back as she did, "That's what I want. Can I? Do you have to pay extra for that?"

He smiled and shook his head, "No - at least, I don't think so. I'm just a little surprised that you'd want that so much. Is it for the scents or what?"

She walked up to him and looked around as she put her arms around him, "I don't know if you can understand it ... or ... or maybe it's just something a little childish in me. I don't think that I really know myself, Quinton.

I ... I feel a little like I'm in a new life, somehow. It's like a fairy-tale to me. Everything feels so new and there's so much for me to learn. I don't mind that. I even want it.

But I feel like I need a good wash to fit in that life, like I have to scrub off the dirt from where I've been. Maybe I have to do that so I can put on the new dirt of where I am now."

She smiled, "I sure don't know. I just know that if I have the chance at a real ladies' poofy bath for once in my life, I'd like to have it."

He nodded and kissed her forehead just before he pulled her to him a little more, "Then I think that you need a poofy bath. Try to remind me if I forget when we get there. I want to make sure that you've got that bubble bath stuff, and then, I'm gonna make sure that you get time for a long one, even if you come out of there with your fingers and feet all shriveled up like you're a prune.

In fact," he chuckled, "I'm not going to take even the slightest chance that you don't get complimentary bubble bath in that hotel, because I've stayed in hotels before where you don't find out that the maid or the room service person didn't bother to set out the complimentary soap in your bathroom until AFTER you've turned on the shower and gotten into it."

"What are you gonna do?" Emmy asked, with a mystified expression as Quinton began to walk away, "Are you going to call them to make sure or something? Won't that cost money for a call like that from here to Cheyenne? Two hundred miles, you said. Gotta be long distance and even I know that they charge more for that kind of call."

He stopped for a second, looking thoughtful, "You're right, and even if I call, there's no guarantee that it still doesn't happen anyway." He looked up, "I'm gonna go over to the gift shop right now before I forget and buy you a bottle. What kind of scent would you want?"

There were thirty feet separating them by this point. He watched as Emmy looked down and began to walk toward him.

"What?" he asked and she shook her head as she came up and took his hand, "I can't tell you what kind I'd like, because I won't know myself until I smell them. We'll go together."

They walked along parallel to the long taxiway, well away from it in case some large aircraft rumbled along as they walked. 

"I also want you to go into the smoke shop," she said, "You can get more of those little cigars that I see you sneaking a smoke from now and then. I'm a little amazed at myself, but I find that I don't mind them and they suit you. I was gonna ask you if I could try one sometime."

"You smoke?" he asked as his head came around.

Emmy nodded, "Less often than you shave. 

I just never buy any. Sometimes there was nothing to eat where I lived. Tobacco takes away some of the hunger and Momma always has smokes and booze. I can't eat booze and I won't drink it, but I'll steal a cigar where I can."

He nodded and they walked along holding hands.

"You forgot the rubbers, didn't you?" she asked quietly after a minute or two while looking out across the airfield.

"Uh-huh," he mumbled, "Thanks."

"Don't mention it," she smiled and then she kissed his cheek.

"You were gonna get me bubble bath so that I could have what I wanted - and you were gonna go into the smoke shop anyway because you suddenly remembered the rubbers. I'm not as dumb as I look, Quinton.

"You don't look dumb," he said and she grinned as she looked ahead, "Now you've got it. Next time, just tell me that you forgot and you're gonna go now. That was a real fairy-tale you had me on for a minute there."

She stepped closer to walk with her arm around him, "But I did see that you wanted me to have something nice, so thanks."

-----------------

He began to teach her from the time that they began preparations to leave. He showed her basic ground maintenance and she soaked it up, making notes to herself in a notebook that she'd pointed out to him in the smoke shop. 

She read from the checklists carefully so that she didn't miss a single step as she did it and Quinton told her why it was important and what it was for.

When they were airborne, he spoke of basic aerodynamics and why airplanes could fly, the common elements of aircraft, and how they managed to extend the envelope which they could fly in by the use of flaps to be able to fly slower in their approaches to land.

He even let her fly the plane a little.

Emmy found that she liked it, as nervous as she was at first. She sat in her seat afterwards, making notes to herself in the little notebook, but after a while, she looked at Quinton whenever she was reasonably certain that he might not notice it.

They were a good way off before beginning their descent going into Cheyenne when he looked over for a minute to find her scribbling in her notebook again, looking studious.

"You're really digging into this, huh?" He smiled.

She looked up, "I don't know if you can see it my way," she said, "but you're teaching me something. I've always loved to learn things. I just never got much of a chance to, that's all. You teaching me is something that I take as a gift, Quinton.

One day, I might be able to use it to make a better living than I ever would have gotten the chance at in Dodge."

She thought of something then and looked at him carefully as he sat looking straight ahead. "You don't just teach people things like this do you? I mean, if you'd picked up somebody else back in Dodge or someplace, you wouldn't be making an effort to show them things, would you?"

He shook his head, "Probably not. Why do you ask?"

"I just wondered, that's all."

She looked out of the window at the mountains sliding past her view for a minute or two.

"So why are you teaching me?" she asked, "It can't all be to pass the time."

"I'm teaching you for a couple of reasons, "he said, "I do need some help. I might be God's gift to aviation, but I can't do everything. Also, I think that I knew that you're not a dummy from about the second moment and I liked that. It told me that maybe you'd be the one that I'd need.

I'm coming to believe that now more than ever. And I really like you, not that I think I ever really had a choice.

So tell me Emmy, do you want learn how to fly properly?"

Emmy considered for a moment and then she said, "Right now? No. I got too much on my plate to learn about more than flying. But I think that once this mail thing gets going, then yes. I think that I'd like to learn how to fly more than anything. Do they have women pilots?"

Quinton chuckled and nodded, "Oh yeah, just not many. Yet.

Take a look around the flight deck here. I'm hanging on to a control yoke. Just like the one that you were hanging onto in a death grip earlier. The only joystick in this thing is attached to me - and it sure isn't needed to make this thing fly.

I don't know any female pilots personally, but I have seen a few. The P-61 Black Widows that we got were picked up at the Northrop factory and flown to a naval field where they were hoisted onto a carrier for the trip across, and then they were lifted off by crane and set on a pier when they got to Fiji. From there, they were dragged behind tractors to an airfield less than half a mile from the docks and flown to where we were. The pilots in every case were women."

He smiled, "And now that I think about it, I'm kicking myself that I didn't get a chance to talk to at least one of them."

"Why?" she asked, "Would you have tried for a date?"

He laughed and shook his head, "Nope, probably not. I'd have asked them what they do when they gotta pee."

While Emmy laughed, Quinton smiled over, "I'm just Mr. Practical and I'm sure that I'd have been curious.

To be a good pilot, you gotta have a brain and enough common sense to listen to it. That old flying by the seat or your pants thing has been proven wrong over and over.

That's why God created flight instruments in the first place. Only a fool, man or woman, won't heed what they're telling him or her and doggedly try to fly without a horizon in sight and any time that you want me to prove it, you just tell me.

I'll put this thing into a crazy attitude slowly while you've got your eyes closed and you'll swear to me that I'm flying straight and level. You'll about fill your pants when I tell you to open your eyes."

"I'll just pass, thanks," she said, "Hey, can you fly us upside down in this?"

He shook his head, "Not in this. It's not rated for inverted flight. The engines are fed from carburetors. You turn then over and the gas inside runs out, the engines starve and quit. Back to silent flying again. The technical term for that is gliding and this would make a lousy glider."




By Air Mail Ch.07



"What happens if one of the engines ... breaks down?" she asked, suddenly concerned.

He shrugged, "We save fuel. 

Really, I'd configure this thing for endurance flight to stay up longer. We'd slow down without both engines and we couldn't fly as high. Could be trouble in the mountains. If we were loaded more than a third capacity or so, we might not be able to keep flying at all, so we'd have to look for a place to set it down."

"Could be trouble in the mountains," Emmy said while looking out of the window.

"Amen." Quinton nodded.

She went back to her surreptitious glances at Quinton for a time, arguing with herself in her head. After all of that had settled, she looked over once more and what she'd told herself flew right on out the window. 

She gave up then.

She knew that she could do whatever she wanted, make all the fuss and noise that she thought that she might need to make to keep her feelings at bay for a little while, anything.

But she couldn't help the way that she felt.

Quinton likely never thought of it and she knew that. He'd smile at her and want genuinely to understand why she was fussing - though he likely never could see it from her side. 

Emmy didn't feel equipped to be feeling the things that she was. She knew that and she also knew what had happened the last time that she'd let her heart get loose and the way that it felt to be treated the way that she'd been as a direct result.

But no matter what she did or told herself...

She knew that she was falling.

The realization hit her a little hard and she had to look out of her old friend, the other window for a while, until she thought that she had that feeling put about where she needed for it to be.

She didn't make a big show of it as she took off her headset. Then she pressed the releases to her seat restraints and got up to step over to Quinton.

He looked up in curiosity, but she smiled at him and knelt beside him, reaching for the buttons which held his overalls closed.

"What -" he began, but Emmy put a lot into her expression as she tried to root around in there gently.

"I want to," she said as she stroked him, happy to feel that he was hardening, leaning down to kiss it and leave little licks there as well.

"Don't crash us, Quinton," she said, just loud enough so that he could hear her.

When she had that part of him stiff and standing there just in front of her face, she held it and opened her mouth. 

She reasoned that she had a bit of time for this, so she leaned the side of her head against him and just sucked softly for a time, so that he might know the way that she felt.

-------------

She watched from the bed in the hotel room as Quinton rolled on the condom. 

"Hey you've done this before, right?"

He looked up, "Done what?"

"Oh, you know," she sighed a little airily for effect, "Turn willing virgins into doubly-willing women and like that."

Quinton burst out laughing, "You've really got a way about you, Emmy. I'm coming to love that about you more and more."

"Yeah well," she began, not sounding quite so airy anymore, "I'm just trying to put a good face on me feeling nervous, though I don't really know why I am. I mean, this is something that we were made to do, so it shouldn't be ... " 

She looked up. "Well, have you?"

"You mean do it, or do it to a virgin, and a hopefully willing one at that?" 

He saw her expression and then he shook his head, "Hey Emmy, if you're not sure about this, we don't have to do this, alright? I've done it lots of times, I've just never had a virgin before, that's all. That I was aware of, I mean. It doesn't mean that you have to worry about me not caring about how it might feel to you."

"So ... so then you're a virgin at ... what do they call this anyway, virgin-busting?" She asked.

"I think they call it deflowering or despoiling and I don't like them any better than virgin-busting, if you want my honest opinion," he said quietly.

Emmy looked down in a little uncertainty, "This is the part where almost all girls but the brides who have idiots for grooms don't ever say anything to their first guy. Most men probably never know it at all. From what I've heard, a lot of girls might feel a stab of pain for a second and that's it. Smooth sailing from there - unless there's some other problem."

Mm-hmm," he nodded, still not sure if he ought to abandon the attempt out of consideration for her. The way that he felt now, he'd lose his erection soon, so it looked like that was the way that it was going to be. He found that he didn't mind because he cared for Emmy quite a lot by then, a little surprising to him, the way that she could make him feel.

"Like there were these two people in the back seat of a car on a date," Emmy said, "and the man had been doing his damndest to break on through. They were making out like nuts there, grunting, really going at it like animals, you know? Then all of a sudden, he was in and he said to the girl, 'My god, Ethel, if I'd known that you were a virgin, I'd have taken more time.'

And she said, 'Mortimer, if I knew that you had more time, I'd have taken off my underdrawers!'

She looked up and Quinton was chuckling so she grinned over at him and said, "Come on over here, honey. Make me a woman or whatever you he-men say at a time like this. The suspense is killing me."

He climbed onto the bed, shaking his head again at the wonderful kind of girl that he'd found, "He-men?" he chuckled, "Where did you get that?"

She gasped and he froze as she looked up and said that she needed a second. 

He nodded, "Sorry."

Emmy shook her head, "It's ok, and it's starting to feel pretty good and you're not even moving, either.

I uh, ... I got that out of a dime store novel that I found in the park in the trash can. I read two chapters and put it right back and - ohh, this ... feels so ... Quinton...

If you really care for ohh ... me at ahhhlll, you'll ignore mee ... ohh, when I tell you-wHOO ... that I LOVE you!"

It felt pretty damn good to Quinton, but he was still a little slow with her until she gave him the word. He'd never thought about it in this way before, but he had a feeling that she'd tell -

He guessed that her invoking the names of the son of God, his mother and three saints in rapid succession (though not in that order) was about all the word that he needed, so he began to speed up, and if the way that she dragged her fingertips into his back was any indication, she was good to go and he began to rail her for all that he was worth, wanting nothing more out of this than to make it good for Emmy's first time.

He supposed that it was a natural thing for a man involved in a coital act with someone to want that, but she'd suddenly begun to really get to him and he did his very best. Being a man, of course, the biology and the plumbing worked just fine, so he came whether he wanted it to last longer or not.

Emmy was coming, and it seemed that he must have gotten it more right than ever, because she did it over and over and he still wanted to fuck her into the mattress for hours, just to hear her voice, whether she was trying not to howl the door off or whether she was just mewling softly in her pleasure. Quinton didn't care. This was for Emmy. 

That was all that he needed.

It took him a little while, but he actually had to think for a second a few minutes later. He checked the logbook in his mind, and yes he remembered coming. But he hadn't softened yet and it was a bit of a moment for him. The way that he felt to himself was that he felt a little ... well, not as thick, somehow and yet harder too. He didn't know for sure, that was just the way that it felt to him and even that didn't matter. Emmy was having a ball. 

And that was all that was important to Quinton right then.

She told him that she loved him and it made him feel just a little sad in light of what she'd said earlier. Then she told him again and before he could push that aside, she reached for him frantically and he came just from seeing that look on her face. He slid his arms under her and he lifted her up a little, guessing that she wanted to be against him. His gushes went on right through that as she hung onto him desperately and keened how she loved him so. 

For the first time in his adult life, Quinton Fairbairn answered the woman that he was mating with at the time, and what was so singular about it to him was that well ... he meant it, even though he knew that she likely didn't. What mattered was that he'd done all right for Emmy, all things considered.

He waited until the moment had passed and he eased Emmy down to look at her.

She was genuinely happy, to judge from her expression. He pulled out of her slowly to remove the condom and she was waving her arms and hands at him, imploring him so softly to hold her. "I had no idea just how full of shit I'd be, Baby. Remember what I told you?"

She sighed happily and she grinned, "I was so wrong, Quinton."

She pulled him close and wrapped herself around him, kissing his cheek and straining a little to whisper right into his ear, "As of right now, I officially love you to death, Thaddeus Quinton Fairbairn."

She had a thought then and asked as she looked up at him, "Are you sure there's no number in there, like the second or the third or something?"

He shook his head, "No. Who the hell would name - What did you say?"

Emmy laughed and giggled as she nodded, "I thought that it would feel good and then I'd say nonsensical stupid things like how I love you.

But instead, what came out was what I've had in me for a little while anyway - like I love you."

She looked away for a moment with a troubled depression, "That must sound really dumb."

Then she smiled up brightly, "But I do love you Quinton and I don't care if you think I'm not being genuine, because I am - or ... don't you want to hear that right now?"

He nodded, "Sure I want to hear it. I just hope that we can make it stick because I've never felt like this before."

"Well then, you're just gonna have to pump me up enough with that thing so that I've got enough feeling in me to tell you when you're NOT doing it to me."

They smiled at each other until she sat up to think about checking for blood. That was when the motion caused some of the trapped air inside of her to bleed out in a pussy fart. Emmy was shocked and absolutely mortified.

"It's ok," Quinton smiled, "There's nothing you can do to stop that and -"

"Is it ... "Emmy began, "Am I supposed to be doing that? Will that happen every time?"

He shook his head, "I dunno, I don't have one of those." She was still sitting up a little and he put his arm around her to hug her, "It just happens. Some air gets trapped inside and then it comes out later, that's all. I guess that now you want to take back what you said about pumping you up, huh?"

Emmy nodded, still feeling a bit foolish as she hugged Quinton back. The motion caused the last of the air to escape, and Emmy winced, "Just how much more is there gonna come out?"

"I dunno, Quinton chuckled, "but I hope that's the end of it. Neither one of us is dressed enough for me to chase you while you fly around like a balloon that a kid let go of at the fair."

Emmy looked at him and by the time that she was finished laughing, her eyes were wet and her ribs hurt. She wrapped her arms around him and hung on, determined to weather the part that she was scared to death would come next.

"Do you think that you might love me sometime, Quinton?"

He looked down at her with a smile, "Emmy, that's already old news. I think that I started falling for you when you told me that they probably had binoculars to stare at you through the window in the rain back in Dodge City. That's why I walked away like I did, I mean other than to give you some privacy.

Maybe it started even before that."

"When, Quinton?" Emmy asked, "A girl likes to know these things for future whatcha-ma-call-its."

I'm not too sure," he chuckled, "I think that you might have had me from 'Have YOU got a name, Mister?'

I don't know how we're going to do this now, that's all."

She looked at his face, from one feature to the next, "You can go on paying me. Seven-fifty every time. I'll have all your money before we even know it. 

Then I'll pay you - seven-fifty every time. We could go on forever."

"That's a terrible business plan," he smiled, "but it sure sounds good to me when I hear you say it."