Chapter 28: Helen

I had one more side trip on my way north, again a pleasurable one although it involved a lot of hard work and very little killing. A woman stopped me from beside the road just after I had topped a rise. She held up her hand and smiled at me, sharing a fine and gracious look. I dismounted. I always had a thing for redheads, and this woman had a rich, dark, auburn mane that flowed well down her back. She was handsome and she knew it. There was pride in her stance.

"Need some help," the big woman said. "Got us a hired man that's causing trouble, won't leave and won't work. Been looking for somebody 'bout your size if y'got the time." Her smile would have convinced me to take on the Cyclops.

I followed her down a side hill, leading my horse, watching her hips swing, and we introduced ourselves. She was Helen, Mrs. R--. originally from the hills of Virginia, whose absent husband had been in Gates' no-longer-existent army. She had no idea where he was or whether or not he still lived.

"He was a good man," she said proudly, "not jus' a gentleman farmer. He worked this land, and we never owned slaves, always hired. I'm raising his four children, our children."

The home she led me to was square and plain. Smoke trickled from the brick chimney and ducks and chickens scattered in the backyard as we walked past the outbuildings to the stable. Several children of various sizes were playing in the side yard.

"Lazy no-good's probably asleep or drunk. All he wants to do is drink and swive, and wont any of us have anything to do with him so he goes off to be with common women or abuses himself. Friend of my husband, he was." Helen shook her head in disgust. "No more."

We found the hired man behind the barn with a jug of corn liquor, taking his ease, his waistband undone, a pipe in his mouth.

"Aren't you supposed to be plowing?" asked Mrs. R--.

"Too wet," he said without looking up. "Tomorrow, maybe." He lifted the jug to his shoulder, and I kicked it out of his hands and pulled him to his feet. I hit him hard in the belly, driving him back to the barn wall looking very surprised. He gaped at me as if he had seen a ghost. "Who the hell are you?" he gasped, trying to get his feet under him.

"Don't matter," I said, "you are discharged, like the lady said. Get your things and go, right now."

"They owes me," he said, "ain't paid me."

I looked at the woman. "I stopped paying when he stopped working," she admitted, standing with feet well apart, hands on hips, the picture of fury.

I dug out my fat purse and gave the man two shillings. "Now go," I growled. "And don't come back, not ever unless you want to stay here permanent like." I showed him my big bayonet and he stumbled away, mumbling. "You got two minutes," I yelled after him as the woman grabbed my arm.

She pulled down my head and kissed my mouth soundly, and I put my free hand in the middle of her back, returned her kiss and enjoyed the feel of her big, warm body. "You should've seen his face when you got his jug," she laughed. "Surprised, hell, shocked is more like it, scared blue." She hugged me again. "Damn, that was fun," she said. "I sure picked the right man. Come on in, we'll feed ye."

I followed her to the back door, watching her hired man mount a shaggy horse, make a rude gesture and leave, slowly.

"Don't think he'll be back," I said, stepping into the neat, fresh-smelling house. Two women were at the gate-leafed table, shelling peas. "This is my sister, Louisa," Helen said, waving at a striking, dark-eyed woman with white streaks in her black hair. She looked up and raised an eyebrow at me, measuring me. "She an' her five heathens live with us, and Cousin Nan, who's just come to stay. Her husband deserted her, poor girl, ran off. We don' know where he's gone, wasn't much use anyhow. Louisa's a widow, has been for almost two years. Her man was with Morgan, then set out with his own with a band. Tarleton got him and most of his, took no prisoners."

I sat where Helen indicated, and she produced some corn bread and thick slices of ham and then a jar of pickle relish. She brought me a glass of water, and I ate and drank while Helen told the other women about the short fight behind the barn.

"Doesn't solve the problem," Louisa said, tossing back her streaked hair, pushing it behind her big ears. Nan continued to shell peas, eyes down. She was, in comparison to the other two women, a small girl with mousy hair and a quiet mien, but she was undoubtedly womanly as well, rounded in the proper places. Her clothes appeared more pricey than those of the others who both wore which looked to be homespun as well as homemade.

"What's the problem?" I asked, foolishly.

"Work," said Helen. "There are some jobs we can't do or do not know how to do."

"You can probably rent slaves or hire men, good men, if you ask about," I suggested, putting another slab of ham on some crumbly, yellow bread. "Hope you're on good terms with the neighbors."

"Then money's the problem," Louisa said calmly. "None of us have any. We live off this farm. And we have nine children between us."

"Any tobacco?" I asked.

Helen shook her head. "Wore out the land. We gave it up. Michael, my husband, was going to start raising cattle when the war came, beef cattle."

"How much land do you have?"

"Nearly a hundred and twenty acres, but only forty's plowed, mostly corn and fodder," Louisa said. "Big woodlot, some pastures, a lot of stumps."

"That's the biggest problem right now, breaking new ground. We got a brace of mules, but no one to do the plowing," Helen looked at me and smiled again. Redheads seem to expect men to do whatever they want. Most men do. I counted myself in that group. If a pretty redhead asked me to stand on my head and spit out nails, I'd ask what size.

They showed me around, introduced me in an offhand way to a number of children, and in less than an hour I was riding off to a neighbor's place to see about hiring his span of oxen and a slave plowman. We settled on a fair price for the brute animals, but he could not spare the highly skilled slave just then. So by the time the sun went down, I had repaired their steel tipped plow, figured out the ox harness, pastured the rented oxen and was ready for a good meal since I had missed the dinner hour somehow in my peregrinations.

Helen sat with me in the lamp light and watched me eat more ham, enjoy some pickled pears and drink cider. We discussed how much they could afford to get done, settled on the work for the next day, and then she cocked an eyebrow at me and pulled at her ear lobe.

"Hope this won't offend you," she said, very quietly since the other two women in the house was already abed as were all the young ones, "but I could use a bit of male companionship. I'm sure you're not interested in how women in my straits try to cope with being alone; let's just say none of them work." She smiled.

I wiped my mouth with my hand and looked at her more closely. Thirty maybe, probably not, freckled rather than tanned from her work out in the sun, that unruly mop of dark hair tumbling over her shoulders, a good ten stone well arranged on some heavy bones, she was an altogether attractive and desirable woman, especially for anyone close to my size who tended to have problems with bedding delicate females who had trouble breathing under him while he tried to pleasure them on their backs.

"We likely to give scandal?" I asked.

She chuckled. "You stick around a day or two more, and you'll find out that's a funny question. All three of us here are in the same manless boat, and we've been looking for someone competent to row us ashore. Just, well, let's try not to wake the children."

"Not sure I get the reference," I said, "but I'll do my best, ma'am. You sure don't have to ask me twice." I stood and took her hand. She rose and came into my arms easily, a good fit, as our mouths joined and our hands held us together and explored a bit at the same time. She clawed at the back of my head, and I kneaded her butt. She blew out the lamp and led me to her room at the back of the house.

"Sister and Nan sleep upstairs, girls are in one room up there, the five boys in another, a wild bunch sometimes," she said. "This was my husband's office and library." We kissed some more and helped each other undress, eager to get started. She tossed back the covers, and we nearly jumped into the narrow, heavy-framed rope bed, laughing quietly at our mutual desire.

I held her, kissed her and entered her as if we had been swiving half the night already and had been lovers for years. Our bodies melded together as if molded for the purpose, and we soon were arched into each other and bouncing with passion, hearing the rope knots complain and humping to a shuddering, jaw-clenched climax that left us both shushing each other and wanting much more.

"Oh damn," she sighed, as we paused to get our breath, and lay with hands on each others steaming genitals, "I've missed that, just having a big, hairy man between my legs."

The big, hairy man took a deep breath or two, recovered a bit of his senses and abilities and got back to plunging into this big, luscious woman with her heavy thighs, hard breasts, mounded cunny and muscular pelvis. We rogered without mercy, asking no quarter and giving none, seeking only pleasure and release.

She locked me in, rolled from side to side under me, and matched my every effort with an equally strong heave of her own lush body. She set the pace. We moaned and grunted at each other, soon sweat slippery. When she came again, well after I was thoroughly spent, her contractions nearly unmanned me, but I managed to keep my poise and satisfy her while fearing for my future love-life. She made no sound louder than an open-mouthed "ah."

Our breathing eventually slowed, and we slept for a while, then, in an hour or so, roused each other, eyes glittering in the dark, and did it again. I grabbed the creaking headboard while she clamped her legs about my waist, and we heaved at each other as if we had never joined or spent ourselves before, on and on, gasping with fulfillment until we could do no more and fell back into the darkness of sated sleep.

It was barely dawn when the woman awoke me, her mouth at mine and her hand stroking the over-heated shaft lying atop my belly. "Now," she said, throwing a leg over mine, still holding my massive member, "we will need to be a bit quieter." She raised my rampant pike and mounted me with barely a sigh. I watched it disappear into her, fascinated with her capacity, but then I had seldom bedded a woman with so many children.

"Nan and my sister are both early risers" she whispered, wriggling hard as she lowered herself on my acorn-headed spike, "but, ohmigawd, damn and hellfire." She shuddered as she got her knees up to my arm pits. I held her hips and enjoyed her, thrusting almost straight up into her trembling body, her hands on my ribs, her breasts jutting out between her arms, her chin up and dark red hair flopping from side to side.

She was a lot bigger than Trenton's mature and randy Felicity, but equally eager to please and be pleased, more like redheaded Ginny I suppose, indulgent was the word that came to mind. Tireless might well have been another. Curse all the redheads, a wonderful creation if you can survive them.

She rode me hard, bucking up and down mercilessly until she came, shaking and groaning, and then flopped on my chest, legs sliding down beside mine while I patted her shaking back. "Never, never, never," she moaned, licking me.

Satisfied but still erect, and still well in her, shaking with lust, I rolled her over and had her again despite the relative limpness of her wonderful body and the emptied condition of my weapon. She let her legs stay down and one arm hung off the slide of the bed while I pumped into her, spending myself completely, teeth clamped together and arms fully extended into fists at her ears as I bent my back and dug in my toes while she smiled up at me, eyes closed.

I only stopped when a muscle in my thigh spasmed and by then my spine ached to the point of throbbing pain. For a while we lay side by side, grinning at each other, finally satisfied, still tangled together in the narrow bed.

After breakfast, during which the other two women avoided my eyes, I hitched up the span of oxen and set out to open as much new land as I could. The refastened moldboard dug into the long-fallow soil and turned up rich, black dirt as well as a large collection of rocks and stones. By the time the sun was high the plodding oxen and I had done about five acres, and all three of us deserved a rest. I fetched water for the grazing animals and Helen brought me some food and drink. We sat in the shade and ate, looking at the long, mounded rows of fresh soil.