Chapter 5

The town of Danlick stayed out of reach for many days. The roads were too muddy, the weather too inclement. We huddled in the loft with Luke and kept to ourselves. Outside, downpours could not slow rumors of my miraculous recovery. Hory’s manhood found strength again. He used me gently, but spilled his seed outside of my puss. Milk returned to my breasts. He told me, it was all his sucking that made them spring back to life. Laughter came easily between us during those rains.

We did not work. Leaks sprang from the roof. The pigs fouled themselves. Some starved. When we heard their desperate cries, we sprang to rescue them. Five days and nights in the rain flushed our sweat from us. We managed to save most of them.

I had two visitors in the eight days of rain that followed. Reverend Hannity pulled off his muddy boots at the door before entering. I held it open. Hory invited him in. We lunched and prayed together, thanking the lord for another miracle and future good health.

On the eighth day, John Tuttle knocked. The boy was soaked. Sackcloth clung to his now pale skin. Hory greeted him with a shout, “Scurrilous RAT! Don’t you come begging here!”

“Mama tole me to come for penance, Mister. She heard from the preacher about your ma. He tole her what happened, and she looked hard at me after he went away. She knew when I came here last time. She beat me until I ‘fessed up that I tole you lies.”

“What lies?” Hory angered. “My ma confessed to going into town, like you said.”

“She never did tell on you. What you do to her, what I do to my ma. I don’t right know what she tole him. I lied to myself, thinking she betray us.”

“How did you know she was there?” My son barked. A tremor in his arm caused the door to shudder.

“Grady. He told me after he come back from getting married. He saw your ma in the church, but she didn’t see him.”

“I ought to send you away with a wallop! Git!”

“NO! I rushed to the door. Hory, you give this boy every bit of travel food he can carry. You load him down with forty-, fifty pounds. It was a hard winter, Hory. Look at his bones! Him and his ma and brothers must be starving, living on tree bark and grubs. I’ll feed him now, and we let him rest overnight.”

Hory made the boy sleep on the porch, but I gave him a thick blanket. I asked about who Grady married, but he swore he couldn’t tell me.

John Tuttle left us after a full breakfast, balancing a pole across his shoulders with sixty pounds from our sheds. I thanked Hory, hugging my son to me. I remembered then, when we felt pleasure at the same time. I wished we could share it at that moment. My puss got wet at my thoughts. I did not mention it, and he let me go, to resume our chores.

No many days after John’s visit, the rains scattered. The sky kept clear for one and two days at a time. Mud on the roads thinned. “Ma, you can go into town, whenever. Luke’s too big to carry and too small to walk. I’ll be sure he’s safe.”

I realized, I had no reason to go. My life with Hory didn’t trouble me any more. I put it out of my mind. What replaced the thought did trouble me, my son’s future. In a few years, I would be old. The farm would suffer, and my boy mustn’t desire a wrinkled, gray woman for his lover, until his hair was white.

“I’m going into town, Hory. It’s time I found you a wife.”

“I will never marry, Ma. You find that saint woman. You tell her, I wronged you, and you listen to what she tells you.”

I was not the only matchmaker that season. Now that I was cured from being a crazy woman, people visited again, sought my blessings, even, but I only wished them well. I never took God’s name in vanity.

Ann-marie Smith visited at her ma’s behest. She wore her Sunday dress. She told Hory that she wasn’t too young anymore. That he was the closest good man of means. She said that, and I kept my laugh inside of me. Her ma must have made her memorize the speech. If Hory thought at all that she was pretty, her ma wanted to talk with him. Ann-marie had turned all of fourteen just ahead of winter. Before the war, girls her age were not ruled out for marrying. Now, with few men and women taking charge of more things, seventeen year olds competed for fifteen year old boys. Older women, widows mostly, had to make do with cripples and men who returned with only a touch of madness. Even a wild man like Grady Tuttle could find a wife.

I cautioned Hory to tell the girl, that he would think about it. “Don’t you hurt her feelings. You can ignore her ma, but you let that innocent child leave without rejection.”

He took my advice to heart, and walked the child half way home. The door shut behind them, and I sat at the table and stared out the window. It came to me, who Grady had married.

I left for town the next morning. The thought of me talking with Rebecca Dunlop inspired a randiness in my son that infected me. I left later than planned, with a warm heart and twice cleaned breasts.

Mud wearied my legs and slowed my steps. It rained twice for half an hour. We owned an umbrella, though. I arrived mostly dry but my boots were caked with twice their size of mud.

My instinct to go to Rebecca’s home had to be throttled. Instead I went where I did not want to visit, as I guessed what awaited me there, fire and brimstone. To my relief, the Reverend Onager offered only a sulfurous glare.

“Blessed Besha, I heard of your recovery.” His feet shuffled uncomfortably. “May god’s love never leave. What may his grateful servant do for you?”

“Thank you, Pastor.” I knelt with a curtsey. Last year, I promised not to trouble you or the town with my presence.”

He coughed then.

“But I do need your help.” I ended my coy voice. “Go and tell Rebecca Dunlop the same that you told her last fall.”

The man was afraid. “Yes, Mrs-” He cut his answer and exited his church. I returned to the homeward road and waited.

An hour later, Danlick’s saint walked out of town to where I stood. “Besha, you are a whore and a cunt!”

“Yes.” I nodded and smiled. “And how is your son fucking cunt, today, Mrs. Dunlop?”

“Well. Please follow my bitch cunt to where we can speak more freely.”

We laughed.

A mile farther out of town, we stopped at a drover’s hut. That it kept the rain out was the best one could say, but for us, it’s solitude was more important.

I learned to my surprise that Mrs. Dunlop had never met Mrs. Orchard. Despite her sainthood, Rebecca feared compromising the other miracle woman in town. I knew that Rose would never have sought Rebecca’s company, as she felt no sin in her heart. Yet she had been grateful for my story. I told everything to Mrs. Dunlop, even the other women’s stories. I do regret that. The code I wrote up formal, years later, required women to tell their own and no one else’s.

“Besha,” Rebecca spoke after hearing my story. “I will keep my story for later. Do you mind?”

“No.” I was disappointed, but no one should be required to talk. That also became part of our code.

For now it’s more important to talk about your son.

“He thinks he has weathered his nightmares, but worse can come. Do you know?”

“Yes, but his redemption is a strong one, I’m sure. Worse may come, but you both will survive.” She smiled. “But I am no oracle. I follow the words of my heart.”

“The town believes they are the words of god.”

“They are not!” She emphasized. “Remember your forsaken pigs?”

I was confused. “Yes. Why?”

I am not here to preach to you. That would be a sin in my mind. I ask only that you bear in mind, that god did not rescue them.”

Her meaning failed me that day and many following. It would grace me, one day in the future.

“About your son. You have found love together, as I have with my own.”

“I am forever grateful to the lord.” I wept for a moment.

“It will not be forever, Besha. It must not, or a terrible thing will happen.” Rebecca warned. “You will come to hate him.”

She challenged what I believed, but I had yet dared to think that Hory and I were mated for life. “How? Never!” I refuted. “I have only love in my heart for my sons. Does my story not prove it? I suffered-”

“You did, Besha, and you believe your suffering has earned your son’s love, but that is a LIE!”

“No. God’s mercy,” I began. “ ... will save-.” I stopped. My heart burst with pain. I did not understand, but I knew then that Rebecca Dunlop was a true saint, cursed by god. The story of Job would not be her story. Her suffering would never end. It was not coin to purchase mercy. It was a balance against too much pleasure. This woman had found pleasure and love that would sustain until she died. She had no thought for an afterlife. This was the life that she could plant her feet in. Rebecca would suffer joyously until she was dead.

She was asking me to choose how much suffering I desired, to obtain pleasure enough to satisfy me. She offered sainthood. I resisted temptation.

“I disagree, Rebecca. It’s true that my son’s redemption was his own struggle, but I was a part of it. However small a part, we are worlds in collision. Every woman will have a different story, take different paths. Their pains and joys will run at odds with those of another. Yet we must collide, or we will shrivel like plums on a dead branch. We have no one, not even god, to turn to.”

My mentor leaped upon me, hugging and kissing me like a lonely grandmother. I grasp her as I would a young neice who’d received my birthday present. “Thank you!” We said.

I wished that god had sent sunshine or flood upon my journey home. The skies changed only in the same way they had that morning. My mood was contentious, wanton, apostate.

Arriving home, I wanted to rush into my son’s arms. We cleaved pleasure upon and from each other. I smiled evilly and told him, “I spoke with two women in the town, one was a widow who has a cow and a daughter. They are not quite poor. The other was a whore during the war, who now works as a surveyor. Hory, you will go tomorrow, to meet one of them. You decide who.” I had returned to town after embracing Mrs. Dunlop. I went to the ladies aid society and ingratiated myself upon their members. In less than an hour, I had half a dozen names. I spoke with five of them and chose two that might suit my son best.

A twenty one year old throws a marvelous spectacle of a tantrum. “I will not, Mother. I have you, and I will keep you!” Was the gist of his half hour rant. He stopped when he saw my face. I meant to inflame his wrath.

He grabbed me and sank to the floor. We both tore at my clothes. Upon entering me, we swooned. I felt my son’s seed burn into my womb for the first time in ages. His first release did not slow him. He fucked my eager cunt for five minutes before unloading hot cum into me again. We kissed and wrestled. I found myself on top of him, riding his still hard cock like I would The Villain. His third release took longer. He rolled to his right, unbalancing me. I fell but caught myself. He escaped my sucking cunt and stood. Grabbing my hair, he turned my face to his angry bulb. Whereupon, it spit boiling seed across my face.

“You have forgotten your mark of obedience, Pig!” He cried victorious.

The next day I reminded him to pick a bride and go to them. He tied me to a pillar and ravished me.

I wrote letters, in my son’s name, cordially inviting them to our farm, on different weeks. After mailing them, I told my son. He beat me, and I cried tears of joy from his invasions that followed.

The poor woman visited first. She was good looking for a widow. Her daughter was ten, old enough to tend their cow and gardens for a day. Hortense remained polite, answering her questions. I asked some to keep her talking, then excused myself. I went to the far corner opposite them and sewed a panel into Luke’s shorts too small for him. I pricked myself when the widow mentioned that her daughter was a lovely thing who needed a firm father’s attentions.

Hortense wished her well, to find a husband more suited than he. She took the rejection like a woman experienced with it. I sent her off with a basket of hard sausages and young zucchini.

Disgust pushed my son and I together like a vice. We repeated the woman’s implication about her lovely daughter and spat in unison. Pleasure from our union did not falter until Luke demanded his milk.

I had asked the second woman to write of when she could visit. She would need time away from her work. I had offered a range of dates. When the fated letter arrived, I threatened to burn it in front of Hory, before learning the day she would visit. He thrashed me like a naughty school girl.

A week passed, and the woman surveyor arrived. She was broad, as wide as our doorway, but she had pluck. She wore a bustle and a very tight corset. Hory could not help but first gape at the woman’s immense bust. She did not speak of her past, but her movements were calculated to seduce. Her voice was sweet oil. She claimed she could be happy as pig farmer’s wife. Her current work was easier, but it did not suit her. She mentioned disappointing her mentor, another woman who took to figures as easily as breathing.

We’d been sitting together during her brief history. I decided to leave these two alone. I made my excuse and stood. She stopped me. “Please, stay, Besha.” A smile crossed her face. “You wrote those letters, didn’t you?”