Chapter 14

Most of an hour later the women were standing back at their cars. Doug had bid them goodbye and closed the door.

“I so want to live here,” said Julie.

“I so, so agree with you,” said Sarah.

“Of course,” said Cathy. “We would all love to live here.”

“We need to pay him more than a thousand a month,” said Trudy. “If he were forty years younger I’d think he was trying to lure women into his lair, where he could seduce and molest them.”

“I think he’s kind of cute,” said Sarah. “I wouldn’t mind giving him a hug.”

“He said he still gets erections,” said Cathy.

“So? We all know what to do with those.” Sarah giggled.

“We are not going to come live here to do naughty things with a man like him,” said Cathy.

“There’s room for everybody plus some,” said Trudy, ignoring Sarah’s comment. “It’s secluded. There are gardens. I love gardening.”

“I’ll find this Charlie Rivers person and ask how much it will cost us for him to look the contract over,” said Cathy. “We’ll all have to share the cost of that.”

They agreed, got in their cars, and left.

“Why did you mention marriage out loud?” asked Julie. “Do you want to tell me what that was about?”

“It was just a question. I love you and I know you love me. You know I want to marry you but while I badgered you into accepting my proposal I know you’re not ready to process all that. You have a baby to have and that’s going to complicate your life plenty without you having to worry about me. But – and this is a big but - there may be a time when you decide you can think about that, and if things turn out the way I hope they do, either you’ll have to leave what sounds like paradise or I’ll have to move into paradise. So I asked the question. That’s all.”

“You’re right,” she said. “I’m not even used to thinking I have a boyfriend, yet. This is all like a dream to me and it’s a beautiful dream but I keep worrying that I’ll wake up and it will all be gone.”

He reached over to rest his hand on her baby bump.

“This is no dream,” he said.

“That’s completely different. That is the result of something I do understand. I was horny all the time, with no outlet. The guys were ... well ... guys! They were horny all the time, too. There was no talk about boyfriends and certainly no talk about marriage. We just made each other feel good and went on with our day.”

“And all I want to do is the same thing, but with the love in there, too. I just want us to make each other feel good and go on with our day. The only difference is I want to do it every day. I assume you didn’t go to bed with them every day.”

“No,” said Julie. “The only one who did that was Betty. She felt like she was running out of time so she asked both boys to put their sperm in her at the same time.”

“Okay. Here’s the deal. When they came and kissed you goodbye it was obvious you were more than just fuck-buddies. We had talked about that, but seeing it was different. I’m not pulling back from what we talked about. When they come home next summer I will still be okay with you having some kind of relationship with them, especially the father of Junior, in there. I am like Dan in that I want you to be as happy as possible and I know being with them has made you happy.

“What I want you to understand, though, is that I love you, Julie Tipper. I knew it since we had dinner at Giorgio’s. I thought it was my natural fascination with pregnant women, but by the time dinner was over I knew I had to spend more time with you, and I knew it was because of who you were, and not just because of the baby. I still love the baby, but only because it’s your baby. It’s like if you had been married and had children and then we met and got married and they were my step-children. I’d try to give them as much love and care as if they were my own, but it would only be because you were their mother. I don’t know any other way to explain it. I just love you. It’s not a dream or a fad and I’ll wait until you know whether or not you can ever love me, because I’m a glass-half-full kind of guy. I just want to know as much about you as I can, because I want to get as close to you as I can. Does any of this make sense?”

“You’ve been inside me!” she gasped. “That’s pretty close.”

“I’ve been inside you because I love you, not because I’m just your stud horse. What we do is completely different than what you did with them. That’s how I feel.”

“I do love you, too,” Julie whispered. “I’m scared to death because I love you, too. I’ve never felt like this about any man. I thought I loved them, but now I understand that was only a profound thankfulness that they took me like I was and gave me what I needed. I loved them, in a way, but I’m in love with you. And if you dumped me I’m pretty sure I’d never talk to another man ever again. I’d still have my baby, so I’d survive. And I’d pour all my love into her ... or him ... and I wouldn’t care what anybody thought. But then you come along and bounce off the back of my car and worm your way into my life and now the thought of you leaving just makes my heart hurt.” He started to speak but she went on, cutting him off. “And I know you say you won’t do that and I believe you, but I have twenty-five years of rejection to get over and that’s a little like someone showing up and saying they made a mistake on the birth certificate and I’m actually a boy instead of a girl.”

“You’re most definitely a girl,” said Gene. “How about this? How about we love each other as much as is comfortable and let that seed grow. How about that?”

“Did you actually imagine us married?” she asked.

“I did, but that’s just the author in me.”

“So you don’t really want to marry me,” she said.

“I didn’t say that. I just don’t want to put pressure on you.”

“So you do think you could marry me?” Her voice was high and breathy. She sounded like she might be ten years old.

“Of course I do,” he said, flippantly. “I’m a hell of a catch, you know. Gwyneth Paltrow might snatch me up so it’s not difficult at all to imagine being married to her.”

“Don’t tease me,” she said. “I’m having a hard enough time with all this as it is.”

“Okay. I’ll just put it this way,” he said. “When I think of us as married, I think of us as happy. I think of us with a house full of kids and a dog and maybe a cat and it looks very domestic and normal in my head. And, just so you know, when I try to imagine myself like that with Gwyneth, it’s just a hazy blur of somebody yelling for me to get a real life.”

“I want you to love me,” she said.

“Can I show you how much I love you when I get you home?”

“No. I want to sleep in your bed, tonight.”

“All night?”

“All night,” she replied.

“Wow. I think I just set the record for the world’s fastest boner.”

“That’s good,” she said. “Because I’m going to need a nice, long boner as soon as we get to your house.”

“Ohhhh, baby I love this,” said Gene. He was deep inside Julie, who was lying sideways on his bed with her butt right on the edge of the mattress. Her heels were cradled in his elbows, which were holding her legs apart. In this position, if he arched his back, he could go in deep and rub, something she had taught him to do. She felt tight and hot and she looked gorgeous, spread out in front of him with a swollen belly and big, soft breasts that would feed the baby soon. “I wish I could just be like this twenty-four hours a day.”

“I’d let you,” she said, “except we both have to go to work or there won’t be any food or house or a bed to do this on.”

“True,” he said. “If you keep milking me like that I’m going to spurt.”

“I want you to spurt,” she said. “You know that. I practically beg you to spurt every time you get inside me.”

“Do not call yourself the S word,” warned Gene. Julie had described herself as being sluttish in the past, when she was begging for some kind of physical love.

“I won’t, but I want you to shoot in me like I was. If I wasn’t pregnant I’d let you knock me up.”

“That’s not fair,” groaned Gene. “You’re cheating. You’re not supposed to cheat.”

“I get to if it gets me what I want,” she said, “and right now I want you to put some of you inside some of me, where it will stay when I have to leave here in the morning.”

“You won’t have to worry about that,” he said. “I’m going to mount you all night long like I was the stallion and you’re my favorite mare.”

“You talk big,” she teased. “Remember, the alpha mare leads the herd. All the stallion does is hang around waiting to service one of the females. That means if you’re my stallion I get to call the shots.”

“Call them all you want, but you’re also going to have to call in sick tomorrow because you’ll be too exhausted to get out of bed,” he warned.

“You talk big, and you feel big. I’ll take my chances.”

The trust had been created and the contract for the sale of Doug Fallwell’s house had been signed, but the closing hadn’t taken place when Sarah went into labor. Everyone else thought that wasn’t fair because she had been the last to succumb to having sexual delight at the hands (and penises) of Bobby and Russell. Sarah had moved in with Cathy when her husband kicked her out. It had been the plan for Trudy to do something like that, too, but she and Jerry had actually agreed to an amicable divorce and she had stayed in their house with him until Cathy sent her bigamous husband packing. Jerry had only brought one woman home and Trudy stayed the night in Betty’s spare bedroom when Jerry’s fling stayed over. Trudy had gotten serviced elsewhere, usually at Julie’s house. If Jerry was gone on a road trip, she made love in her own bed.

Sarah called Betty when she went into labor and a preplanned series of events kicked into gear. Doug Fallwell came and picked up Reggie and Emily, who loved to run around in the big house while it also gave him the opportunity to spoil them. He also dropped Sarah off at the hospital, which was on that side of town. When he got back to the house he got a bedroom ready for Sarah so she had a “home” to bring the baby to. He offered to hire someone to get her clothes and other belongings and transport them to the house, but Sarah said Cathy was going to do that.

Trudy’s employer had sent her on maternity leave just two days earlier, when her due date was a month away. She had agreed to coach Sarah and met her at the hospital. The nurses thought it was appropriate for one pregnant woman to coach another.

After roughly seven hours of labor, Sarah Cunningham, whom very few people in Pine Bluffs even knew, started the tremor that shook the whole town when the doctor said, “It’s a boy!” There was a four second pause and he added, “He has very dark skin but looks healthy so far. Let’s you and I finish up while they clean him up. Have you thought of a name, yet?”

“Justin,” panted Sarah. “Justin Cunningham is his name.”

Ten minutes later Sarah was holding her new, very dark-skinned baby in her arms.

“Look at his hair,” she said to Trudy. “Look how it’s already kinky and he’s just out of my womb!”

“He’s a handsome young man,” said Trudy.

“Yes, just like his father.”

“Shall we put the father’s name on the birth certificate?” asked a nurse who was in the room.

“No. We’ll just use my last name. I went dancing at the Hi Spot once too often. He won’t get to see his father very often.”

The tremor had started.

It would spread outward, away from the hospital.

A week later Cathy was holding Justin when her water broke. All the women were on maternity leave now, and Trudy said she’d go and coach Cathy, too. No rumors were started when she delivered a little girl. Emily Brown was Caucasian, just like her mother.

It was a small town, but not the kind where everybody knew everybody else and all about them. The women had been seen, here and there. That they were pregnant had been noted but not with any avid interest. Sarah’s “little brown baby” had made tongues wag but everything seemed to be back to normal when, eleven days later, Trudy delivered a white boy she named Christopher.

A nurse did make one comment, out of hearing of the mother.

“There sure are a lot of divorced women having babies. Remind me not to get a divorce.”

The two other nurses she was with chuckled.

They did not chuckle, however, when Betty came to the hospital with her husband of more than twenty years, who coached her as she pushed out a completely normal looking boy baby who was whisked away to be tended while his mother pushed his twin sibling out. When that happened there were gasps and four people in the room, including the doctor, looked at Dan, who all the medical staff knew was Betty’s husband.

“Is it a boy or girl?” asked the man who had just witnessed proof of his own obvious cuckolding.

“Girl,” said the doctor, his voice tight.

“Wow, Honey, one of each! I love you so much!”

Betty was in no shape to be lovey dovey but she raised a hand.

“I love you, too, but don’t ask me to do this again. Stick a fork in me. I’m done.”

“One of each,” sighed Dan. “It’s incredible! Doctor, how could this have happened?”

The doctor, sensing no distress of any kind coming from the man who had worked with his wife for seven hours and obviously loved her. That was puzzling, but it was better than rage, accusations and/or trying to hurt the child.

“Well, she dropped two eggs at once, instead of just one,” said the doctor. “Then in this case, each egg was fertilized by a ... um ... different man.”

“Well how about that,” said Dan. “It’s a kind of miracle, isn’t it.”

“It’s extremely rare,” said the doctor. “It’s even rarer for different sources of sperm to fertilize each egg. You do not sound distressed by this.”

“Not at all! I’m delighted! This worked out perfectly.”

“I can tell you, it’s going to generate some discussion around town. You won’t be able to keep this a secret.”

“I don’t care what other people say. This is what we wanted.” Dan looked around. The nurses were all gone, dealing with babies while the doctor dealt with the afterbirth and sewed up the incision he’d made in the perineum to make delivery safer for Betty. “Doc, I’ll tell you. I have ED and we wanted another child. I couldn’t give it to her without science, which was too expensive for us. But we knew and respected two other men and asked them to help. They both live out of town, but they did help and you just delivered the evidence.”

“Danny!” barked Betty, who had been dozing. “Do not drag our dirty laundry through public!”

“I won’t say anything,” said the doctor. “It’s obvious these babies were created out of love and will be loved. I want every baby I deliver to be loved, so I’m happy.”

“We have a cover story but I don’t think it will work now,” said Dan. “This two different men thing is going to make us have to get creative.”

“Two men,” said the doctor. “This whole thing is unusual from start to finish. Well, I wish you well. I have birth certificates to sign. Did you have names in mind?”

“The boy is Curtis and his sister is Elizabeth,” said Betty.

Dan went on.

“We had names planned for two girls or two boys, but one of each came up the winner.”

The doctor looked at Dan.

“Let the nurses help her feel presentable and move her to another room. Go get something to eat. You were here longer than I was. You can visit your family in about half an hour.”

Dan called everyone, of course. He would later be denied blow jobs for an entire week for stealing Betty’s chance to break the news herself. She was angry to begin with because Dan had blurted out how this had happened, to the doctor. Later she would change her mind about that because the medical community was the only place she got any respect.

Meanwhile, what had settled down fired up again. Another white women had delivered a black baby and the “cover story” Sarah had “let slip” was that she and some friends went to Oberlin to have some fun and let their hair down. She had let her hair too far down and had gotten pregnant as a result. That story was believable. For Betty to say the same thing would not hold any chance of credibility. Half the citizens in Pine Bluffs got a little medical education as the obvious question was asked. If Betty said she kicked up her heels with two men, while cuckolding her husband, nobody would believe it. So they said nothing to anyone outside their card club circle. People found out how this could happen, and they all imagined the woman, who was undeniably good looking, had fooled around on her husband with a black man and then slept with her husband, too.

There was one more burp before things settled down again. Somehow the media found out about a woman having twins, one white and one black and they thought the whole world deserved to know how that happened. Three bunches of them showed up over the next two weeks, trying to get an interview with Betty or her husband. When that failed, they took video of the house and did a “human interest story” about how such a thing could happen. They didn’t try to be salacious, but it came off that way. Because of those stories, and the fact that Betty was identified, they got some hate mail from people who were obviously racist. When the twins were just shy of a month old there was a death threat, which Dan called the police department about.

That was fortuitous, in a way, because the threat was evaluated by the Chief of Police, himself.

Who happened to be the only black man under seventy in Pine Bluffs.

“Come in,” said Dan, looking past the big, black man to see if there was anyone else out there, lurking around. “I’m sorry you have to spend your time seeing about this. I think the person is probably a crank. Most of them are, aren’t they?”

“Statistically, yes,” said Beaufort. “I prefer not to take any chances, though. You said it was a letter?”

“Yes. Once I read it I put it down and haven’t touched it since. I watch CSI all the time but you never know what is real and what isn’t.”

“Not touching it is real,” said the Chief.

Dan led him to the dining room, where an envelope and a tri-folded eight by ten sheet of paper lay. Putting on gloves, Beaufort picked up the letter and read it.
As threatening letters go, it was right up there at the top. It said Betty was a harlot worse than Eve, herself, and that both she and her bastard black baby should be killed and the pieces of their body spread all over town as a warning to others.

“I noticed you have a dead bolt on the front door,” said Beaufort. “Is the door jamb reinforced?”

“No. I don’t know how to do that,” said Dan.

“I’ll show you before I leave. Has your wife read this?”

“When I got upset and wouldn’t let her touch it she made me tell her what was in it. She didn’t actually read it, herself.”

“Would it be possible to speak with her?”

“Of course.”

Dan led the way to their adult son’s old room, which had been turned into a nursery. Betty was in a rocking chair and both babies were nursing from exposed breasts.

“Oops! Sorry!” yipped Dan. He turned and found that the chief had also turned away. Over his shoulder he said, “The police are here and wanted to talk to you. I didn’t know you were feeding them.”

“I’m always feeding them,” said Betty. “They’re almost finished. Give me five minutes and you can come in.”

“I can come back later,” said Beaufort. “I haven’t decided if the threat is credible or not. The letter needs to be examined by expert document people, who can tell all kinds of things from the way it was written. Your husband and I need to have a chat about security, though, just in case.”

Dan and Beaufort went to the doors and windows in the house. The windows were made of fiberglass, which is sturdier than other materials, and had good locks. If anyone tried to come in through one of those it would be noisy and alert the occupants. Beaufort showed Dan how to install metal strips on the inside of the door jamb so that someone trying to push the deadbolt through the wood would fail.

“I’ll have the patrols swing by here on their rounds. Do you own a gun?”

“I have a shotgun I used to hunt birds with. It’s a Remington 1100, semi-automatic.”

“Get yourself some double aught rounds and anybody who breaches the exterior of the house will be very sorry they did so.”

“I’ve shot a lot of birds, but no people,” said Dan.

“I suppose you could stand by and let them do what they said in the letter,” said Beaufort.

“I’m sorry,” said Dan. “Of course I’ll defend us from harm.”

“I apologize, too,” said Beaufort. “I shouldn’t have been flippant like that. Let’s hope you never have to use that buckshot.”

“I’ll get the doors fixed today or tomorrow and drop by the hardware store to get some shells.”

“I’ll come back to interview your wife sometime tomorrow,” said Beaufort.

“I took some parental leave from work,” said Dan. “If I’m out getting things done just call her to let her know you’re there. She won’t answer the door if she doesn’t know who’s there.”

“Smart woman,” said Beaufort. “I’ll be on my way, then. Thank you for your cooperation.”

“Thank you for being here to help,” said Dan. He struck his hand out and Beaufort shook it.

On his way back to the station, Beaufort wondered if Dan had also shaken the hand of the black man who was responsible for her mixed-race baby. He had no right to ask about that, except that it was affecting him. As the only logical black man in town, people – especially people who didn’t like him – would think all sorts of things.

Perhaps he could get her cooperation in quelling those kinds of rumors.

Beaufort waited until ten-thirty the next morning to go interview Betty Wilshire. He knew from experience that she would have been awake much earlier. With twins it could be she got no sleep at all. But he wanted her to have had time to eat, shower, or whatever else a woman with newborn twins wanted to do to feel comfortable going into a new day. He hoped she was prepared for his visit. It turned out he was the one who was unprepared. When Betty opened the door he was taken aback by her appearance.

He had expected a woman who looked her age, that being forty-one in this case. Having had twins a month earlier she would still be carrying some extra weight. She would shuffle when she walked and would be wearing comfortable clothing. The woman who opened the door was dressed in stylish slacks and a colorful blouse that folded across the front like a robe, showing a lot of cleavage. She was full-bodied, but only in the chest. Her hair was dark brown, and fell to her shoulders, having been styled. She had on a little makeup, but only a little because she didn’t need makeup. She was so beautiful he felt it in his groin.

“Chief Jackson,” she said, her low voice just as sexy as the rest of her. “Please come in.”

He shook off his natural male reaction and followed her to the kitchen.

“Coffee?” she said. “It’s two hours old but I imagine you fellas drink a lot of strong coffee.”

“You are correct, but I’ll pass. My stomach doesn’t like coffee these days.”

“Dan said you had questions about this death threat. Fire away.”

“Have you had any direct involvement with anyone who was hostile toward you?”

“Other than people assuming I’m a slut and disregarding me as having any worth, no. But most people try to mask their negative feelings. That’s why such an overt threat seemed unusual. I haven’t gone back to work, yet. I’m a teller at the bank and all sorts of people will see me during the day. I’m assuming my boss will let me go back to work.”

“He will or he’ll be in trouble with the law. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. I’ve sent the letter to the state crime lab. They have people there who can tell you what the author had for breakfast when they examine a document.” He smiled. “Well, maybe not what he ate, but they’ll be able to deduce things like height and weight. The amount of pressure used in various places tells them which parts of the document are most important to the author on an emotional level. The choice of what to use to write with is important. They’ll even try to get a DNA sample from the envelope or paper. Obviously they’ll try to lift fingerprints. There’s more, and profilers are involved. I just wanted you to know we’re taking this seriously.”

“What happens if you catch the person?”

“That depends. If the person’s physical environs have tools and equipment that make it look like he was prepared, or was preparing to carry out the threat, then it will probably go to trial. If it turns out to be an eighty-year-old man in assisted living who wants to re-fight the civil war, then probably nothing.”

“I see. There isn’t anything I can think of that would help you, but thank you for not just dismissing it. Is there anything else?”

The way she asked the question provided Beaufort with the perfect opening for what he’d really come to see her about. His as yet unasked questions were sensitive, though, and she could very well tell him to go pound sand.

“Actually, there is,” he said. “I have my thumb on the pulse of things in Pine Bluffs and there isn’t a whole lot my men don’t see. I’m not saying we do surveillance on the citizens, but when you’re out and about, talking to people, you just get a sense of what’s going on. We hear rumors, too. We don’t necessarily investigate them, but we pay attention to them. There is usually a kernel of truth in every rumor. Does that make sense?”

“Yes.” She sipped her coffee.

“I’m going to be straight with you because I hope you’ll be straight with me,” he said. “I know who does and does not go over to Oberlin to get likkered up and into trouble. Sometimes the trouble is there and sometimes they bring it home with them and my boys have to deal with it. There have been rumors lately about some women going over there and getting into trouble in a pregnancy sort of way.”

“You mean because Sarah Cunningham and I had mixed-race babies?”

“Yes,” he said, simply.

“Well, we don’t care,” said Betty.

“I don’t either,” he said. “Not in terms of what people think. My interest is in a completely different direction.”

“Go on.”

“Well, I’m going to just spitball a little, you know, throw things out there to see what they look like outside of my head?”

She nodded.

“Okay, suppose a woman was married and, to all appearances had a happy marriage. Then suppose that woman has a baby who is not of the same race. This assumes the couple are both, say, Caucasian. And when that woman has this mixed race baby, the husband does not cause a ruckus. Rumor might have it that he was right there in the delivery room and sounded purely joyful.” He stood up and took a few steps. “And, say another woman in the same town also had a mixed race baby and she expressed only joy. People might want to know who the fathers of those babies are.”

“You said you don’t care what other people think. It sounds like you want me to care about what you think.”

“I’ll stop beating around the bush,” he said. “You don’t have to answer this question, but I wish you would. I’ll keep anything you say private. I’d like to know who the father of the mixed race baby you had is.”

“Why?” asked Betty.

“I know you don’t go kick up your heels at the Hi Spot, which is the story that somehow got passed around. The other woman was recently divorced so that story might work, there. But not for you. My razor sharp police mind then casts about for a potential father here, in Pine Bluffs. I just naturally count out septuagenarians and I know it wasn’t me. If it was...” He paused. “I’ll just be plain. I’m not stupid. My wife isn’t stupid, either. Our son was almost never home after he turned seventeen. He told us he was hanging out with his best friend but now I wonder about that. I’m not upset, exactly, and that is because there was no ruckus when the children were born. That also suggests that this eventuality was not an unhappy surprise. So just call me intensely curious.”

Crying was heard from another room and Betty said, “A moment, please?”

“Of course,” said Beaufort.

She returned with Elizabeth on one hip and Curtis on the other. She turned the side with Elizabeth towards the law officer and said, “Would you mind holding her for a moment? I need to put them in the play pen while I feed them. I prefer to only manage one at a time. I wasn’t expecting twins.”

Beaufort reached for the baby and cradled her in his arms. He stared at her brown face and tight, kinky black hair.

“Her name is Elizabeth,” she said.

“Elizabeth,” he repeated. “Hello, Elizabeth. I’m pleased to meet you.”

“Nothing illegal took place in the creation of that child,” she said, as she laid Curtis on his back. He cooed and kicked.

“I thought about that and came to the same conclusion,” said Beaufort, as he handed the little girl back to Betty. “Still, the only scenario I can come up with seems unlikely. And that doesn’t even take into consideration that your husband has not kicked up a ruckus. You had to have known people would be curious about all this and I really don’t want that curiosity to affect Elizabeth’s father.”