Chapter 1

September, 1971

It is generally a sad thing, when a woman cheats on her husband. Or when a man sinks so low as to seek solace in the arms of another woman, while his wife waits for him at home.

True, there are those couples who don’t mind sharing their spouse with others, but, on the whole, they are rare. More often, there is a schism that separates the husband and wife, and drives one ... or both of them ... to seek what they crave, but cannot get from their mate.

Such was the case with Christy and Sergeant Richard Brown. Sergeant Brown joined the Army because he needed a job and, in the small town of Buxton, where he was from, there were no jobs. At least there were no jobs that appealed to him. He wanted adventure, and thrills.

But, he had recently married the girl he’d met at a 4-H event, and courted from afar. They’d had to live with his parents, at first, and that was cramping his style. His draft number was also pretty low. So, when an Army recruiter told him he would almost surely get the chance to jump out of airplanes, and become one of the famed Green Berets, he jumped at the chance. The recruiter also told him he wouldn’t have to go to Vietnam.

The recruiter got it half right, and half wrong. Richard Brown did go to Airborne school, and did jump out of airplanes. He did get accepted into the ranks of the men who wore the coveted Green Beret. He also went to Vietnam, though, where his status was interesting.

As a sergeant, Richard would normally have had access only to a ... lower class ... of Vietnamese women, assuming he would get much time to be with one at all. But, as a Green Beret, his status was much higher, and the sloe-eyed women, who rubbed up against him in the bars, even though some of them were only fourteen or fifteen, were trained to put stars in his eyes. They did, and Richard missed his wife. He couldn’t have her, but he did not go without burying his prick in a hot, willing woman.

Christy, the wife he was missing, was in much more sober straits. Her in-laws had driven her crazy, and she’d moved back home, to Granger, with her mother and father, both of whom worked and were out of the house all day. She’d tried to resurrect friendships with the girls she’d gone to high school with, but they had scattered, getting married, like her, or getting jobs, or going to college. Some of them had moved to bigger towns and cities, looking for the excitement that Granger just didn’t offer. She loved her parents, but they were parents, and still treated her like she was in highschool, which did not match her own self image as a confident, capable, married young woman. As a result, she spent a lot of time in the evenings going for long walks in the woods, and exploring abandoned farm houses, which were cropping up in larger and larger numbers in the Midwest as conglomerates bought the land to farm, but had no use for the fifty, or sixty, or eighty-year-old-house in which generations of farmers had been raised.

She felt perfectly safe, out exploring like this. Very often she saw no one at all, once she got off the main roads. Those people she did see knew her, or knew of her, and just waved as they drove by. Once in a while someone would ask her if she needed a ride somewhere, but she never accepted.

She didn’t need to work. She had no expenses, really, living with her parents. And she got twenty-five dollars a month in an allotment check from the Army. Richard had said he needed the other two hundred dollars each month. He said he had “miscellaneous expenses”, whatever that meant. In any case, work seemed like school to her anyway, and she was glad to be out of school. Basically, she had nothing to do.

Christy Brown was bored.

Now, as Fall faded the few colorful leaves there were in Granger, and winter loomed in her mind, Christy sat in her old room. It looked just like it had when she’d left it, to go become a woman. She’d left her childhood in this room ... and here she was ... right back in it. She looked at the walls, which were pink, and the bevy of stuffed animals she’d scorned taking with her to her marriage bed. Her dolls were still lined up on top of the dresser.

Quite suddenly, she realized she wasn’t happy ... wasn’t happy at all. Marriage wasn’t like she’d dreamed it would be. Her life wasn’t like she’d dreamed it would be. Richard was off in a war, where he might be killed any day. Thousands of men were being killed over there. What was worse was that she couldn’t even be proud of him for fighting for America. The news was full of hate and disgust for the soldiers. People spat when they talked about the war, and became cold and distant to her if she told them what her husband did, and where he was. And he’d quit writing. He said he was too busy to write more than once a month. At first, the letters had come almost every day.

She thought about the wedding. That made her feel better. It was one of the few things that had been everything she hoped it would be. She had been beautiful in her gown, and Richard had been handsome in his tux. Everyone had smiled and wished her well. People had winked, telling her to have a great honeymoon.

That led to less happy thoughts.

They hadn’t had the money for a real honeymoon. Richard had already taken her virginity in the back seat of his car. Being in a bed seemed to make less difference than she’d thought it would. That was probably because his parents didn’t even let them have the house to themselves on their wedding night. They had been on the other side of the wall, and Richard’s lusty thrusting had made the bed hit against the wall, embarrassing her. She’d tried to get him to stop, but he wouldn’t ... couldn’t, he said, grinning down at her as his sweat dripped on her chest and neck.

Richard had been happy. He had climbed on her three times, that night, setting up that knocking sound all three times. Her father-in-law, the next morning, had leered at her and bragged about the masculinity of the Brown men.

She had endured it six more months. It was always the same. With little or no prelude, Richard climbed on top of her, thrust and humped until he came, and then rolled over to sleep, until he woke up to do it again. Then he had joined the Army and, like that, he was gone. She’d seen him twice, since then. The only difference between those two times and all the times before, was that she had strained and tugged to get the big bed far enough away from the wall that it didn’t bang against it while he was home on leave.

A tear rolled down her cheek, and she wiped at it absently, looking helplessly at the little girl room she was stuck in, for who knew how long.

Silently, she let herself cry, until it was out of her system.

Then, she put on tennis shoes, shorts, and a tank top, grabbed her walking stick and the pocket knife Richard had left behind, and went for a hike.

It was on her walk, where she did her best thinking, that a partial solution came to her. She could redecorate her room! She didn’t know why she hadn’t thought of that already. Some paint, a little wall paper ... maybe some new posters or pictures, and her room would be updated. Then, maybe, she would feel updated.

She altered her path, to bring her back into town where the hardware store was. She was sweating, even though it was September and the air was cool. Her lithe, tanned legs rippled with muscles she hadn’t had as a teenager. Walking five or ten miles a day had reduced her to a slim, muscled young woman who, at nineteen, was in the peak of health and vitality.

She was proud of that, though a little disappointed that her breasts had gotten smaller. Her B cup bras were loose now, when she wore them at all. Her small, tight breasts didn’t move unless she ran, and then only bounced, pulling at the flesh on her upper chest. Her nipples had stayed the same, though, which also didn’t impress her. They were comprised of puffy dark pink areolas, which stood up above her breast flesh half an inch, like a little hill. From there, at least when she was aroused, darker nipples perched on top of those hills. She thought she looked like an ice cream Sunday, with her breasts as the ice cream, her areolas as the whipped cream, and her nipples as cherries on top. The most horrible thing, though, was that on her right areola, there was a single hair, dark like the hair on her head, that sprouted from the pink skin. That hair was at least two inches long, and had been there as long as she could remember. When she was fifteen, she had pulled it, trying to jerk it out. The pain had been indescribable, and tears had flooded her eyes so quickly, and in such numbers, that she couldn’t even see if it had come out, until she stopped crying, and wiped her eyes with the heels of her hands.

The hair was still there then, and it was still there as she walked into the hardware store. Richard hadn’t paid much attention to her breasts, other than to squeeze them and rub them. Eventually, she had grown resigned to that flaw.

She looked around curiously. She’d never been in this hardware store, or any hardware store, for that matter. She had no idea where to go, or how to find what she wanted. In reality, she didn’t even know what she wanted yet.

There was a young girl of about sixteen at the register. She was chewing gum, and looked bored.

“Where’s the paint?” asked Christy.

“Aisle six,” droned the girl, not moving.

Aisle six did, indeed, contain paint ... what looked like thousands of cans of it, in all sizes, colors and brands. She was immediately lost in information overload as she stared at the rows of colorful products.

There was a man, a little older than herself, standing further down the aisle, holding a can of paint. He put it on the shelf.

“Excuse me,” she said, timidly, walking towards him. He looked over at her. “Do you work here?”

He grinned. “I feel like I do sometimes, but no, I don’t work here.”

“Oh,” she said, disappointed. “I need help. I haven’t the faintest idea what to do.”

“What are you looking for?” he asked.

“I want to paint my room,” she said. “But look at all this! How do I choose?”

“Well,” he said. “I can probably help you with that. What kind of finish do you want?”

“Finish?” she asked.

“Flat, satin or semi-gloss,” he said. “I don’t recommend gloss paint for interior walls.”

“I’ve never even heard of any of those,” she said helplessly. “Isn’t paint ... paint?”

“Not at all,” he said patiently. “Let me show you.”

For the next forty-five minutes, Christy got an education in paint. It wasn’t limited to that, though, because, as the man got more and more information out of her about what she might want, she found out about products that could put texture on the walls, and how wallpaper, cut into strips, could be used as a border, to accent paint. She learned that in addition to whatever went on the walls, different paint would be needed for the molding, something she hadn’t even thought about. Then there were the tools that could be used for painting. Brushes of all kinds, each used for a specific kind of painting, such as up next to the ceiling, or around the molding, and rollers, and different kinds of roller covers. She was fascinated by it all, and by his seemingly inexhaustible supply of information.

“That’s the basics,” he finally said.

“I can’t do this,” she moaned. “It’s too complicated!”

“Nonsense,” he said.

“No it’s not nonsense,” she insisted. “I remember the difference between flat, semi-gloss and ... what’s that other one?”

“Satin,” he said patiently.

“Yes, satin. I remember that, and I think I remember about the difference between thick rollers and thin ones ... but that’s about it. I’ll have to hire somebody to do this.”

“Well,” he said. “I’m in the business, but it can be expensive.”

“How expensive?” she asked.

“How big is your room?” he asked.

“How would I know?” she moaned.

He stepped away from her, several steps.

“You are standing at one wall. Is the other wall about here?”

“Maybe a little further,” she said, not sure. He stepped back another step. “There,” she said, sounding more confident than she was.

He looked at the floor and seemed to be counting.

“Is it square, or rectangular?” he asked.

“Rectangular, I guess,” she said.

“And that distance we just did,” he said. “Is it the long way, or the short way?”

“Short,” she said.

“How many windows?” he asked.

“Two.”

“Is the trim ... that molding we were talking about ... is that wood colored, or painted?”

“It’s kind of a dark pink, or maybe maroon,” she said.

“Do you want to leave it that color?” he asked.

“I guess so,” she said. “I don’t know.”

He sighed. “Okay, I’d guess it would end up costing you a hundred dollars or so. That’s an estimate, but it’s probably pretty close.”

“A hundred dollars?!“ she moaned.

“Labor is expensive,” he said. He glanced at her left hand. “Can your husband do some of the work?”

“He’s not here,” she said, uncomfortably.

“Well, when he gets back, can he do it? I can supervise, and it would take less of my time, and cost you less.”

“He’s in the Army,” she said, and then bit her lip, wishing she hadn’t said it.

“Oh,” he said. “Nam?”

She nodded, and looked down, to avoid seeing his derision.

“That’s too bad,” he said. “I hope he makes it back okay.”

Her head snapped up. He wasn’t frowning, and didn’t act disgusted.

“You could do some of the work,” he said. “I could teach you, and, once you get started, I could go on to my other jobs.”

“I’ll have to talk to my parents,” she said. She didn’t have a hundred dollars. She only got that twenty-five dollars a month, from the Army, which was enough for what her parents didn’t supply her with, but she used that up on clothes, and other little things she wanted.

“I thought you were married,” he said.

“I live with them,” she said, feeling like a little girl. “Just for while he’s gone,” she said, trying to rationalize living with her parents at her age.

“Really?” He smiled. “I live with my mother too.”

“You’re kidding,” she said. When she’d gotten closer to him, she’d confirmed he was older than she was, maybe by several years. “You’re not married?”

“Not yet,” he said, smiling.

“Well I’ll talk to them and see if it’s all right,” she said. “How can I contact you?”

He picked up a card that had ten colors of paint on one side, and flipped it over to write on the back with a pen he took from his pocket.

“Just call me,” he said.

“Bobby Dalton,” she read out loud. “Well, Bobby Dalton, I’m so glad I met you. I feel much better about things now.”

Christy Brown had no way of knowing it, but that wouldn’t be the last time she made that statement to Bobby.

Bobby watched the girl walk away. He thought of her as a girl, even though she was married. He watched as her buttocks rose and fell in her shorts, which clung tightly to them. There had been sweat stains on the tank top, under her arms, and around the neck, as if she’d been running. That didn’t bother him. She was a cute one.

He shook his head and grinned. The last thing he needed was another sexual entanglement. Just a month ago, Tilly had met him at the door, ecstatic that he had gotten her pregnant again. He’d gone there to fuck her, but had had dinner with her and Jake instead.

From there, he had gone to see Jill, a divorced woman who was now intent on having a child ... his child. She had welcomed him with open arms, and taken him to bed, where she lay moaning under him as he inseminated her for, perhaps, the fiftieth time since he’d started fucking her in July, just three months ago. He was, in fact, due at her house after he picked up the paint he needed for another job.

Prudence, a widow who was hugely pregnant with his baby, was due in a month. To top that off, his sister, Mary, had, just a few days after she’d returned from her honeymoon, announced that she had missed her period too. Her baby could be his, but it could also be her husband Fred’s.

He was in the middle of something that hadn’t taken full shape yet, with three of his other sisters. Bev, who was about to turn eighteen, had been getting orgasms from him for over a year. He hadn’t fucked her yet, but they’d come close a time or two. Now Flo, who was nineteen, and Linda, who had just turned sixteen, had dipped a toe into the sexual sea around Bobby, and might decide to get much wetter than that. To top it off, Constance, who was Prudence’s daughter, and a senior in high school, like Bev, had been brushing up against him lately, when he was over at Prudence’s helping her. Prudence was so huge, now, that she was exhausted much of the time. Bobby and Constance picked up the slack, so she could rest. Constance had had a crush on him for over a year, and had actually seen him making love to her mother a little over six months ago. At seventeen, she was allowed to date, but hadn’t gone out except for a couple of double dates with Bev, who was now her best friend. Bobby suspected she was horny, and looking for some way to explore that, but she was Prudence’s daughter, so he resisted the urge to explore it with her.

So, Bobby put the young woman, whose name he didn’t even know, out of his mind, and picked up the paint he’d come there to get, so he could go meet Jill, who would happily relieve him of the pressure that cute girl had produced in his groin.

Jill’s eyes were smoky when she met him at the door. Her blouse was already unbuttoned, and she wasn’t wearing anything under it.

“I just got back from the doctor,” she said, licking her lips.

“I didn’t know you were sick,” he said.

“I’m not,” she said. “My little friend didn’t come to visit me last month. I didn’t say anything then, because I wanted to be sure. You, my handsome young man, are going to be a father.”

Of all the women Bobby had gotten pregnant, Jill was the one who pulled at his heart strings the hardest. She was bright, beautiful, and only a few years older than he was. The thought of coming home to her every night was attractive. But Jill didn’t want to be married. Her first marriage had gone very ugly, and she still hadn’t recovered from those ugly feelings. She loved Bobby ... in a way. He made her feel fulfilled, and truly a woman, in ways no other man ever had. She was delighted that she was pregnant with his baby, but she preferred to have her time alone ... after she’d had time with Bobby.

“I want to celebrate,” she said, her voice husky.