Chapter 4

Baptists refute canonical sainthood, but their stories survive. Many are regarded as important thinkers or heroes of the faith. Pastors de-emphasize their supposed miracles but quote their works.

The folk of Danlick believed in Saint Dunlop. I would need time to prepare myself to reach her. A month was not enough time. Fortified by Mrs. Orchard’s community, though her christian name came difficult to my tongue, I suffered Hory’s forcefulness without lapsing into despair. I neither felt nor sought pleasure from his manhood. Working farm and sty centered my emotions, lifted me above the darkness that tugged at my soul. My love for Luke increased every day. He was a blessing, if not in the way my neighbors imagined. A month after returning from Danlick, I was gathering eggs from our small hen house. Turning I shook feathers and dung from my apron. I looked up. Hortense had been enlarging one of the pens. His tools stood against a rail. I saw John Tuttle leading my son away.

I dropped the egg basket, ignored the lost, and scurried after them. I reached them at the edge of the copse north of our farm. John sat on a stump, smiling up at Hory. Before I could holler, Hortense slapped the young man. John fell but bounced up, only to receive an angry kick. Following blow with blows, yelling, “You motherfucking tree rat, I’ll kill you!” Hory drove John off our land.

The sight of me did not surprise my son, it angered him. “Whore!” he shouted.

“Hory! What did he tell you?”

“You recognized him!” He stomped close and grabbed my arms. He lifted as if to throw me into the dirt.”

“Break me in half, if I have wronged you, but tell me why!” I pleaded.

Hory pushed and released me. I landed unbalanced but caught myself. He screamed “I do not care with what animals you lay, but if you should ever risk my son again, I will banish you from him and me.”

“No!” I wailed. “I am with you only! I swear!”

“Into the house, Mother!” He raised an arm. I fled inside.

He did not appear immediately behind me. I cowered, standing in the middle of the house, fretting over the unfathomable.

The door opened. He rolled inside like a juggernaut, a wooden pail in his hand. Slamming us shut within, he told me, “Strip.” The air that swirled from the door sent vile fumes out of the bucket and unto my nostrils. I gagged. “What is this?” I recoiled in horror.

“Strip, you pig of a bitch!” Raising the pail, he threatened, leaving no recourse open to me.

I began by untying the knotted apron strings. A river of hatred flooded from him. “I have always known your lying ways.

“I will tell you true, whatever the accusation!” The apron fell and I pulled toggles from loops as fast as I could, down my dress.

“You took Luke into the town, a month ago!” He raged. “You told me the church.”

“I-I did, son. But there was no harm.” My dress peeled away from my undergarments. “I would never endanger our child!”

“Your judgement is as corrupt as your tongue!” Hortense accused with a finger at my undershirt and bloomers. “I will peel away your lies. Strip!”

The air grew rank and I felt my stomach roil. “I went to town, to see the other miracle women.”

“You admit it!” Enraged beyond reason, he scooped a handful of the bucket’s foulness and threw it at my feet.”

“I spoke with one, and I returned. That is all!” I pulled my shirt off revealing my milk engorged teats.

“LIAR!” He sent another handful of stinking muck at my underwear. The impacted my left knee, and I nearly vomited.

I pushed them down and jumped naked, away from his brown missiles. “I swear, my son!”

He grabbed a third glob. “Lying BITCH!” He raised it. “You went to the pastor there. You confessed about me and Luke. You sought to save your soul by sacrificing our family!” His arm shook indecisively.

“NO! I wanted only to know who the women were. He was the one person certain to know. May god strike me dead!”

“AAARRRRGGGG!!” He raged and flung his third missile into my fallen dress. It spattered across pleats and hems and loops and toggles. It soaked in to the sturdy muslin. Hortense scooped and hurled every clod of pig shit into my clothes.

I fell naked to my knees and prayed to my son. “I would leap into hell’s fires to save you and Luke!”

Hory dropped his bucket, eyes cooling. His clean hand opened his trousers. His other grabbed my hair and pulled my head to his cock. I sucked him until he was hard. “From now on, I will treat you like the animal you have become.” Pushing my shoulder, he spun me around. He greased his cock with pig shit and ordered me to raise my ass. I felt his messy, turgid bulb press my bung.

That my son would do this to his faithful and devoted mother, stunned me. Surely devils danced on our roof and under the floorboards. He grabbed my hips and pressed his manhood into my rear. I screamed and shook desperately to escape. “AAAOOOWWW!!! No, Son! NO!!” Satan has entered you.

He humped his cock inside my bottom. He reared and plunged. “I have entered him, Mother, and I will purge the beast from you!”

My next punishment from God began. Hory pulled and thrust. His fucking was swift and agonizing. I wailed like a fallen banshee broken against a mountain peak.

“Greatgran was right. You are slattern and whore. You seduce your son and lay with snakes in the woods.” Cock speared my behind again and again, swiping pig foulness upon my bum. The scraping that drove my cries, he must also have felt, but anger hurt worse. “I found your devil’s idol!” He accused.

“Vile villainy, Greatgran called it. You lay limp at my desire but secretly fornicate with a totem of evil.” He thrust hard into me and walloped my buttocks!

I shrieked! His tirade spewed my sins against my back. My ears burned, and my face drained of blood. His cock never faltered, rutting inside Sodom like an avenging army.

“I l-loved you, Mother.” His voice trembled. “I did.” He pushed inside my bowels one last time and spilled his his cum into my cesspit.

In my puss, he would have stayed, savoring his release. I sensed my son’s release had disgusted him. He pulled out and forsook me to clense himself.

I collapsed to the floor, reeking. “Hory, I am ruined.” I called weakly.

Minutes or hours passed. Hortense returned and threw a damp cloth over my nakedness. He set a pail of fresh water beside me. “Wash, bitch of pigs. You must feed my son.” Leaving, to fetch Luke, he swore, “I will never seed you again.”

He returned Luke to the crib, after his child fell asleep at my breast. I was left to clean the place where I had been defiled. I sneaked out, still naked, to burn my dress, the wash cloths, and fouled under things. I scrubbed the floor until my hands bled upon the brush. Finished, I dared to seek my son’s forgiveness. He had taken to the loft.

“Hory?” The moment my hand touched a rung, he tossed my remaining clothes at me. “Sleep next to the stove. I gave the low mattress to the mule. Sleep with it, if you find the floor too hard. I’m sure it would fuck you as much as you like, but it won’t git you another child neither.

I slept upon my clean clothes.

In the days that followed I was forced into and imprisoned by a life reconstructed by my son. I could wear no clothes except to church or if I needed protection from a task around the farm. I washed myself outside. I was allowed inside to fix meals and at night to sleep. I could only feed Luke on the porch, always in Hory’s sight.

Hortense visited all of our neighbors, hat in hand with terrible news. “The burden of God’s blessing has broke my mother’s mind. Like her grandfather, she wanders naked in the yard and attempts to defile herself. She ain’t a danger, not even to her newborn I swear upon my father’s grave - rest his soul. Please keep her in your prayers. I will bring her to church, to every sermon, in the hope that her soul, the Lord saw fit to bless, will return to her family.

None of my friends and acquaintances spoke with me. Some visited to ask about my health, most came to trade or buy from my son. When he took me to church, he bade me to keep silent, or he would destroy me. I became the idiot of the township. A few times, young, unmarried women sought his attention. He ignored them. The trap he had made for me ensnared him as well.

Reverend Hannity tried three times to interview me. I acted as stupid and empty as I felt. The third time, he wept.

Hortense continued to use me. He flooded my bowels with his spend. I was thankful only for the bacon grease he used to ease his manhood’s thrusting. He sometimes let me suck out his seed, but on the instances when he could no longer refrain from my puss, he withdrew his raging cock from me and spewed cum across my flesh. My son’s releases and pleasure seemed to increase at his greater control over me and my greater shame.

He even took to punishing me with the wooden rod he dubbed, The Villain. After coating my belly and breasts with his spend, he would cry. “Now, Pig, the wicked lover, you would have cuckold me with, will use you by my hand.” He stuffed my puss and fucked me with the rod, daring me to release. My venus wept every time he bedded it, enabling him to plunge my wooden cock. After taking my bottom, my baby hole was too dry for it. “If The Villain pleasures you, it means you truly would have sold me to the devil for it.”

Having fallen as low as I imagined possible, the darkness surrounding me sought to breech my soul and devour it. I did cry out at times, from my son’s rampant manhood plundering my puss, but I never responded to his use of my selfish substitue.

There came a day when I discovered another pit to fall further into. Hory had dropped his tools to take me in the front yard. My son kept grease in a leather pouch at his belt, for sudden urges. After surveying the trail leading to our house, he bent me over a fence rail and pounded his cock into his mother’s behind. I groaned with sorrow. I had long since cried all of my tears for this punishment. He was half done with me when I believed I spied a figure lurking at the edge of the north copse. I blinked, and it was gone, but the image of that person stayed in mind, and the greatest shame I had ever known drowned me. Without warning, a thick tangle of sensations escaped my pummeled innards and washed over my soul. The eruption of pleasure flooded my every thought, and I cried out in joy. “Ooooohhhhh, Son!!”

My intense release shocked Hory, angered him. “You are become a whore of a beast, Slattern!” His balls erupted to his surprise and peaked delight. He joined my shouts. For the first time in our lives, we had released together. The moment he pulled himself out of me, I hugged and kissed my son without thinking. He pushed me away and called me worse names. I understood his insults then. He used the words to protect himself. Out of sympathy I went to the well and washed with cold water.

For a week, he did not use me. The nights grew colder. Autumn is the busiest time for farmers. Harvest and culling pigs for market, slaughtering and butchering and smoking and pickling, and ensuring the house and other structures would withstand winter, those efforts consumed our waking hours.

Perhaps it was merely exhaustion that sapped his lechery. A week after we shared a brief moment of joy, he forced me to my knees and took his pleasure from my mouth. He deprived my stomach of his seed, to pull out and spray my face with cum. “This will be your new mark of obedience, Pig.”

“Thank you, Son.” I said before I realized the words I’d spoken.

His hand raised, but he did not slap. Only in his worst rages, which came every few years until recently, had Hory beaten me. “You will call me “Farmer” from now on, or I will slice you open and smoke your guts.” He spit on the ground next to me and walked heavily away.

The traumatic changes in my life became routine, and I began wondering frequently about the events that had changed them.

What had John said, exactly? He must have learned of my visit to Danlick with Luke, but that was impossible. There was no way he could have seen me enter the church without arousing suspicion from the townsfolk. Someone, possibly the preacher had told of my visit, and that telling eventually found John. At the time, Reverend Onager seemed to want to erase my visit from his thoughts. It made no sense. There was a way I could learn the whole story, with certainty, but my imprisonment denied my ever speaking with Eleanor Tuttle.

I worked another month of autumn, suffering my son’s baptisms of sperm. One day, a stranger approached. I spied the tall, well dressed man in time to scurry into hiding. Hortense greeted him at the far end of our land. They spoke for an hour. At one point my son scratched his head before shaking it, no. The stranger shrugged and returned the way he had arrived.

While I could speak freely of matters concerning Luke and the farm, Hortense allowed me to speak only of those things. What the stranger had wanted or offered, I could not ask.

My son used my mouth frequently for a few days after the visitor’s hour, but he seemed less pleased with his releases. One day he pulled from my mouth without spending and simply walked away.

The next day, he told me to dress. It was not Sunday. He hitched the mule to the cart and we loaded our accumulated goods destined to sell in Danlick. I wanted to carry Luke, but Hory made a cradle for him among the sacks and casks. Our son cried immediately upon embarking, loud and long, until Hory relinquished Luke to my lonely arms. He had taken to chewing tobacco. He spit next to my foot when the joy of motherhood returned to me.

Luke gurgled and spoke, “Mawma.”

My tears lasted for twenty minutes.

“Pig!” Hory startled me when we approached the town. “You may speak freely, today. But I will be listening.”

“Yes, Farmer.”

He took the lead and we spent the rest of the morning bargaining with our goods. After a quick, filling lunch. We returned to the shops and stores, this time to spend some of the money we’d earned. An aging woman, a solid man, and a baby in my arms made a strange looking family. The clerk welcomed us, gaily. Strange families had become the norm in Danlick.

“Greetings, Madam and Sir. How may I serve you? Our tools are the finest crafted items in town, if not the state. I am your humble servant, Samuel.”

I gasped. The four eyes that darted to me were half curious and half threatening.

“My last bite of lunch, sir, caught me by surprise.”

Samuel smiled, nodded pleasantly.”

“Perhaps, you should find water.” Hory indicated the door.

I shuffled outside, leaving Luke with my son.

My full breath didn’t come for a minute. This might well be the shop run by Mrs. Orchard’s son. I dared not ask Samuel’s family name.