Chapter 4

Despite the myth of roosters being a farm’s alarm clock, we got lucky with them. Roosters crow just about all day and all night, with no care for the time of day, but this morning a particularly loud rooster crow roused us from our slumber.

Rubbing my eyes, I snuggled closer to Danny and tried to sleep again. He was half-awake too and not wanting to be, and pulled me up against him, burying his face in my shoulder.

‘Your skin feels so nice,’ I muttered sleepily to my brother. He made a sound that indicated he’d heard me, if not one that said he felt the same way or was grateful for my enjoyment. It’s hard to tell with grunts sometimes exactly what the depth of their meanings are.

Now that the blasted rooster had woken us, I couldn’t fall back into sleep. Goodness knows how I wanted to, but that darned bird had woken me good and proper!

Besides. Parts of Danny were starting to wake up, if not all of him. I felt his penis begin to lengthen and get hot and swollen against my thigh, and it made me feel all funny inside again, hungry for him to be inside me.

One more time. I’d try to sleep one more time. Danny seemed to have been successful at it, and for his sake I wouldn’t bother him and would try again myself. I turned over in our hay bed, so the back of me was pressed into his front, stacked all close and neat like cutlery is.

This pressed his penis into my backside. It was starting to throb again, and pulse, and that only intensified the warmth inside me.

Danny was well and truly waking up now. His arm came around me and gently caressed the closest breast.

‘Mmm,’ he breathed deeply and sleepily. ‘Sorry. I didn’t do it on purpose.’

He was talking about his penis getting all excited, I knew that.

‘I know you didn’t,’ I said. ‘I reckon it does that all on its own, don’t it?’

‘Mm-hm. Sure does. Can I have a kiss, Sally?’

‘Sure you can.’

I twisted my neck around to reach his mouth, not wanting to move my whole self. Our warm mouths met and lingered a while pleasantly, unhurried.

‘I think I could get inside you like this,’ Danny murmured thoughtfully, breaking away from my mouth. ‘Cows ‘n’ horses ‘n’ cats do it this way. I don’t see why we can’t.’

‘Well, try it then,’ I urged. ‘I do want you inside me again.’

Danny grinned. ‘All right then.’

He felt around for the way to get inside me, and then held onto his penis with the other hand and guided it where it needed to go. Even so, he missed a little bit the first time, but on the second try, notched the head of his penis inside me. The next moment he slid in smoothly, and I moaned just a little, quietly, and so did he.

‘That feels so good, doesn’t it?’ He breathed. ‘I think maybe that’s the best part, sliding in the first time after a while.’

‘It’s all the best part,’ I corrected him breathily, enthusiastically, and Danny laughed.

‘Yeah,’ he agreed. ‘It’s all the best part.’

Then he started to move inside me slowly, going in and out, and holding my body back flush against himself firmly.

Just then we heard a voice.

‘Danny! Sally!’ It was our mother, calling from the back porch of the house.

‘Yeah?’ Danny called out, his voice suprprisingly even despite the fact he hadn’t stopped moving in me to reply.

‘You up? Come down now. It’s time for chores!’ She shouted out to us.

‘In a minute!’ We replied at the same time.

‘No, no minutes!’ Our mother insisted. ‘I need you now. I need Sally in the kitchen and I need you to chop some wood for our stove, Daniel Jensin.’

‘Okay,’ he agreed reluctantly, and groaned unhappily.

I moved so he came out of me and then turned over to kiss him.

‘It’s okay, Danny. We’ll finish this later. It just has to be put back a little bit.’

He smiled tentatively at me. ‘Sure we will, Sally. That sounds good. It’s just hard to stop when it feels so nice.’

‘I know,’ I agreed, and we kissed again and resigned ourselves to doing it later, and got up to dress.

‘Eggs, please,’ Mama asked calmly, but didn’t look my way, intent on the pancakes she was frying.

‘Yes, Mama.’ I brought her all our eggs in a bowl and she deftly cracked half a dozen onto the griddle, placing the shells in my waiting palms.

‘Thank you, Sally. You want to bring the sausage out to the table?’

‘Sure.’

When we were done in the kitchen--I noticed Pru didn’t come down once from the loft to help us--the menfolk materialized and we all sat around the long, worn table. Danny sat next to me, as he always did, and when we sat he slipped his hand into mine.

Daddy said grace. ‘God, thank You for this food. May You bless it to our bodies and our hearts to thine service.’

Denver commandeered the sausage platter immediately and took more than his fair share in one fell swoop. Pru picked at her eggs, barely trying to hide her distaste at the light seasoning of pepper on them.

Danny and I had to give up holding hands when eating started. We’re both right handed, so one of us would be hindered in eating if we’d continued.

Mama spoke up. ‘Did you sleep well last night?’ She asked of Pru and Denver politely.

‘Yes’m,’ Denver said, through a mouthful of toast.

‘Thank you,’ Pru agreed.

‘Good to hear. It’s nice to have you staying with us.’

I do declare, my Mama could say nice things to the devil himself and mean every word of it.

Then she turned to Danny and me.

‘Sally, Danny.’

We looked up at her. ‘Yes?’

‘I’d like you to head up the mountain a ways today, to the blackberry patch. It’s their time, and I promised Pru I’d teach her to make blackberry pies, and promised the Hodgson sisters I’d bring them at least two this Sunday at church.’

‘And jam?’ Danny suggested hopefully. Blackberry jam was his favourite.

‘Yes, of course we’ll make jam too. I’ll pack the both of you a hamper for lunch, after morning chores are finished, and you can fill it with berries to bring back when you’re done eating. Yes?’

‘Yes,’ we agreed, happy for an almost-day-off to go berry picking.

Denver was taking a long draught from his milk-glass.

‘As long as you finish with the bees, you needn’t worry ‘bout today, Sally,’ Mama said. ‘And Danny, Denver will help your daddy finish up any chores you might have the rest of the day.’

Denver almost snorted milk out of his nose at that.

Today, the bee-keeping went off without a hitch. I harvested the honey I’d not gotten round to yesterday--what with bathing--jarred it, put it in the cellar, and went off to collect the eggs.

Danny was waiting for me.

‘Ready to go?’ He was practically bouncing from foot to foot with excitement at our excursion. In his left hand he held our hamper.

‘Sure I’m ready.’

We followed the stream up the mountain in companionable silence for a while, Danny swinging the picnic basket slightly as he walked. Then without a word I grabbed his other hand. We smiled at each other, shyly, and went on.

It was a hot day, sweltering with summer, and the sun beat down on our backs. The wind swelled slightly in a tantalizing summer breeze and lifted sweaty hair from our necks as we walked. The going got harder when the mountain slanted up suddenly, and for a while we had to crouch to climb up a ways and let go of our hands.

The trees all around us, balsams and aspens, swayed and danced in the wind, the percussion of their leaves a calm music to us, along with the nuthatch’s tunes.

‘Wanna go swimming?’ I asked Danny, gazing at the stream running beside us wistfully.

‘When we’re done pickin’,’he said. ‘We’ll be close to the lake by then. Let’s swim there, how’s about?’

‘That’s a great idea.’

The blackberry patch, when we got there, was swollen with the purple-black fruit, protected by its brambles. Besides that, and a few pokes here and there, Danny and I would be very successful. Mira was too young yet to go berry-picking, and Mama too busy to come with her. But when we were small, Danny and I had picked here with Mama and Daddy lots of times, and knew our way around the pokey bits. We were practically experts by now.

‘Whoa,’ Danny breathed. It was a very good year for berries, you bet your bottom dollar.

I smiled at him. ‘Let’s eat, Danny. Then we can fill up the basket and then we can swim.’

Mama had packed us cold chicken sandwiches on her homemade bread, one hardboiled egg apiece, some of the Hodgson sisters’ fat juicy plums, and a slice of her lemon cake. To drink she’d sent along a thermos of cold, freshly collected milk.

The fairly long walk uphill on the hot sun after our morning chores had hungered us, and we found some shade under a few tall aspen, laid out our picnic blanket, and started to eat with a fearsome hunger.

Nothing much was said until the last crumb of Mama’s cake was swallowed, and the last dregs of milk from the thermos was gone.

‘Whoo whee,’ Danny said. ‘That was some lunch. I needed that.’

‘Me too,’ I agreed. We sat for a while quietly, feeling full and content like recently nursed puppies, and just as the puppies would have, we felt the urge, when full and warm, to sleep. The summer sun urged on us a siesta, but I groaned and yawned and stood up before the temptation could grip me any tighter.

‘Come on, Danny,’ I urged him, and stooped down to pick up our basket and head to the brambles.

He joined me, with some reluctance at abandoning sleep, and we set to work. It was his idea to sing songs while we picked, something we hadn’t done in a long time.

We sang endless verses of ‘The Quarter Master’s Store,’ and ‘Down by the Bay,’ laughing harder at the ridiculous combinations we came up with. Then we sang some church songs--they were some of the only other songs we knew.

In no time at all our basket was full of fat, sun-warmed, sweet blackberries. Despite having eaten nearly as much as we’d picked, the basket had been filled very quickly. We set the hamper in the shade, on our blanket, and shared a look.

There was a mischievous glint in Danny’s smile. He unbuckled his dungarees in a flash and let them fall and took off at a gallop.

‘Hey!’ I shouted after him. ‘No fair!’

For a few minutes we were children again. I careered after him as fast as I could go, trying to remove my dungarees at the same time, as he unbuttoned his shirt like magic and flung it off just before diving headlong into the lake. I stood at the water’s edge, desperately pushing my buttons open, and when the darned thing was finally loose I waded in inelegantly, splashing water every which way, and did a shorter dive than my brother had.