Chapter 6

Becky woke. It was still dark, but her mother was moving around. She had a hazy thought that she had awakened a few minutes ago, but wasn't sure it had happened. Her mother seemed agitated. It reminded her of the dog she'd spun the tale of lice about to the soldier. There really had been a stray dog, but it had been back home. She'd known her father wouldn't let her keep it, so she'd made a bed for it behind the shed, where no one would see the old box with a tattered blanket in it. She'd sat there, stroking the dog for hours. It was quite content to let her. And when it had slept, sometimes its legs moved and it yipped, like it was running ... chasing a rabbit ... in its sleep.

She heard the sound of her mother gasping, and raised her head. It had been completely dark in the wagon when they went to bed, but the canvas cover of the wagon seemed to glow with an eerie dim light. She realized the moon must be up, its light making the glow she saw.

There was a wet, smacking sound, and Becky raised her head higher. She could barely see that AJ's face was pressed to her mother's. In a moment of shock she realized they were kissing! She thought she knew everything there was to know about her mother. But in all her life she had never seen her mother kiss a man. She had some vague idea of what happened when her father dragged her mother into their bedroom and slammed the door. The noises that came from the room had scared her sometimes. And, later, when her mother came out of the bedroom, her eyes were often red, as if she'd been crying.

But the noises her mother was making right now didn't sound like she was in pain or sad in the least. They were tiny noises, but they were happy noises.

Bella somehow knew what she needed, even though she had only rarely had that in her life, back when she was first married. She also knew she couldn't have it ... not in this crowded wagon, with her children sleeping right next to her. That knowledge brought the first sound to her throat that Becky recognized as frustration.

"I ache," she whined, pressing her loins to AJ's.

AJ was also aware that what should happen naturally had to give way to the circumstances. In a strange way he didn't really mind, because her willingness to do what they had already done was obviously and gloriously consenting. That suggested that it could occur again, in a more private setting.

He remembered a saloon girl he'd spent a night with, blowing almost all his pay one time. She'd been an active and enthusiastic participant in their tryst, and had taught him how to use his fingers to delight her. She'd needed to be delighted a lot, and what men usually delighted a woman with hadn't been up to it, even as young as he was. And so, that night, he had learned another way to make a woman go limp.

He tugged at the dress that covered Bella's legs and then used that knowledge now with Bella.

Becky's eyes jerked as her mother's leg suddenly raised in the air. The pale of the skin on her leg made it obvious that it was no longer covered by her dress. Her mother's sudden hiccupping moans suggested that something was going on that excited her a great deal.

There was a sudden odor in the confined air inside the wagon, a musky odor, and Becky's nostrils flared open to test it with her senses. Her mother's head lurched forward and suddenly AJ's face was visible. She realized her mother had buried her face in his neck as the gasping moans were suddenly, but not completely stifled.

Then her mother's entire body stiffened and everything went silent for long seconds, until the silence was broken by a muffled sobbing whine that lasted for fifteen seconds or longer before her mother's body went limp again. The sobs stopped, and was replaced with panting breathing, as if her mother had run from far away and collapsed in this wagon, magically somehow.

Then there was a subtle movement of the wagon bed. Becky heard the big springs under the wagon squeak softly and rhythmically, along with the sound of skin rubbing against fabric in the same rhythmic pattern. She had no experience that could identify what she was hearing as AJ's hand stroking his stiff prick rapidly. And, when the movement suddenly stopped, and there was one muted groan, followed by more heavy breathing, she didn't know what that meant either.

Eventually there was silence again. There were a few more of those wet sounds that Becky now knew meant kissing, but nothing more.

She lay there, thinking about what had just happened, until the breathing noises she heard suggested that both of them were asleep again.

It was long moments before her own eyes closed, and she drifted off to sleep again herself.

Reveille jerked them all awake. Bella sat up and saw her naked legs. She hastily covered them as both AJ and Becky struggled up. Frank Jr. stayed down. He was notorious for being hard to get up in the morning. It was crowded, until AJ lurched to his feet. He started to get out of the wagon and Bella grabbed the dress he was wearing. Wordlessly she handed him the bonnet he'd forgotten. He grimaced and put it on.

For lack of any trees, the women went to the off side of the wagon to relieve themselves. AJ went with them, again tugged by Bella's fingers. When he saw what they were doing he faced away. The noise of liquid hitting the ground couldn't be concealed, though, and when they said they were done and he turned back around both had red faces. As they walked away he lifted the front of the dress and went himself. His fingers found the still moist evidence of his relief, the night before, but there wasn't anything he could do about it.

Bella handed out jerked meat and got the oxen ready to go. She told Becky and AJ to take the wagon seat. When Becky yelled at the oxen and shook the reins the oxen lumbered off. The soldiers were still packing up their tents.

Bella was quite sure the men would catch up to them soon enough. She wanted it to appear as though she was, in fact, in a hurry to get to a town. She had no idea what she'd do when they got there, but she'd face that problem when it was more immediate.

In the meantime she reflected on what had happened in the wagon the night before. Her conscious mind told her to be ashamed, but she didn't feel that way. What had happened had been gentle and wonderfully relaxing in a tense kind of way. It was the first time in her life that a man had made her find that special feeling that, always before, only her own fingers could coax from her body. She somehow knew that what had happened last night was the way it was always supposed to be. She had been robbed of that genuine intimacy for her entire adult life ... until last night. It was impossible to feel bad that it had happened.

She looked over at the wagon. AJ and Becky seemed to be chatting. She made a conscious decision not to feel guilty. That included the fact that she had never really mourned for Frank. She had already decided not to feel guilty about resuming intimacy with a man long before the requisite year of mourning had passed. It was relatively easy for her to ignore the problem that she wasn't married to the man she had been intimate with.

That conviction was easier made than kept, however. As she walked she argued that, in one sense, they hadn't really been intimate. They hadn't actually had sex. Another part of her mind laughed at that. His fingers had been where only hers and Frank's had ever touched her, and the feelings those fingers brought only whetted her appetite for more.

That made her think about what might happen in the future. He'd been ready to fulfill the role of the man. There had been no doubt about that. She hadn't known what he was doing at first, as she caught her breath, but as his hand bumped her thighs and her mind supplied an image of something very near to what a man did in a woman, she realized that, as her own fingers had brought her release in the past, his fingers might be doing the same thing for him.

That hadn't bothered her at all. She only wished that she might have some part in it the next time ... should there be a next time.

She thought there might be.

She hoped there might be.

Becky's mind was seething with emotion as she sat next to AJ and the wagon started moving. That emotion was responsible for her loud "Hiyah!" when she got the oxen moving, but it didn't lessen the turmoil inside her. Part of it was the memory of what she'd seen them doing the night before. Part of it was the fact that, for the first time in her life, she'd relieved herself right there next to a man, squatting with her dress raised, and the grass tickling her bottom. Her mother had too, and she was quite sure that her mother had never done anything like this before either.

The fact that her mother was acting so strange, and that AJ was part of that strangeness, was both troubling and exciting. She was at an age where the hormones science hadn't discovered yet were coursing through her body, causing sensations and feelings she didn't know how to react to.

As the wagon rumbled forward, she glanced at the bonnet that covered AJ's head. She knew what he looked like. She often thought of him as she'd seen him when her mother dressed his wound, shirtless and handsome. That made her wonder if her mother thought he was handsome too. She must, to kiss him like that in the dark.

And that made Becky wonder what it would be like to kiss him herself. That caused a surge of emotion inside her that demanded to be expressed somehow.

"I saw you," she blurted.

He turned his head. "What?"

"Last night. I saw you. I saw what you and Mamma were doing."

She said it triumphantly, but she didn't feel triumphant. She felt miserable, for some reason.

"Oh," he said. In fact, AJ had never been in this situation before. When he went upstairs with a woman in a saloon, everybody knew what was going to happen, but nobody ever said anything about it. He actually felt a little embarrassed, but didn't understand why.

Becky felt compelled to say something else, but for the life of her couldn't think of anything to say. She was saved from her conundrum when AJ, feeling exactly the same way, said: "I'm sure you've done that before with some boy." Actually, he wasn't sure of that at all, but he hoped it would deflect attention from him.

"I most certainly have not!" she squeaked, sitting up rigidly. "I'm a good girl!"

That hadn't gone at all like he'd hoped, and AJ wished he'd just sat there, quiet instead. But he'd hurt her feelings, so he tried to mend that.

"I'm sure you are."

"A minute ago you were sure I wasn't!" she snapped.

"Look," he sighed. "Sometimes that kind of thing happens between a man and a woman, okay?" He fiddled with his hands. "There's nothing wrong with it. People do it all the time."

"When they're married, maybe," she argued.

"It just happened," he groaned. "I woke up and she was kissing me, so I kissed her back."

"Don't you blame this on my mother!" she growled.

"I'm not blaming it on anybody," he objected. "That's what men and women do, sometimes. Sometimes they just need to do it. I can't explain it to somebody who's never done it."

They rode on in silence for a long time.

"What's it like?" she asked. Her voice was soft now, like she was asking him to tell her a secret.

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