Chapter 4: Secrets

The first week passed in an organized chaos of digging, diving, and dirt displacement. By its end the cabin had been made generally livable. Doug had patched the leaks in the clay tile roof, ending the drips that accompanied the daily afternoon showers. All had cleaned the grime from its interior. The shutters were functional, thanks to new nylon rope hinges, and could be closed in case of another storm. The mosquito netting had been repaired and draped over the bed. Doug had used the nylon rope to weave a mattress support over the bed frame. The old mattresses were relegated to the pile of flammables that would be the signal fire. He had made a new mattress from the small ones in the sunken boat. Since the repaired netting wasn't large enough to cover both the bed and the cot, they all slept in the bed. Doug insisted that Mary sleep in the middle.

He had dug a new privy pit and moved the outhouse over it. He also fastened a plastic toilet seat from the boat into place to preclude the discomfort of finding another protruding splinter. Alyson, of course, was unhappy that the only toilet paper found had been on the spindle and had dissolved into a soggy mess. Mary's joke about having no Sears and Roebuck catalog went completely over Alyson's head, resulting in the standard Weirdo Parents Contemplating Their Ages while Shaking Their Heads at the Uncomprehending Daughter situation.

The outhouse was a source of philosophical diversion for Doug. Welch had put no door in the opening between the bedroom and the rest of the cabin, indicating not only that he lived alone but also that he didn't have visitors. Yet he'd put a door on the outhouse. What did that say about the mind of Man?

Doug had made a raft from limbs and small tree trunks to aid in the salvage operation. The second day of diving he'd used the raft to carry a crowbar from the generator shed out to the wreck and had pried open the emergency locker. He had two inflatable life rafts and the wooden raft to complete the salvage operation. His timing was excellent: the second lung ran out of air as he was bringing up the final load.

He had salvaged the remaining canned food from the wreck. Mary had already found bananas, coconuts, papayas, breadfruit, yams, and taro root. That plus what they caught from the sea would easily sustain them for two or three months. By then Mary would have identified more edible plants, if they were still stranded. He didn't want to think about that possibility, but he was a pragmatist.

All had deck shoes to wear now, making exploring of the forest easier. All salvaged clothing had been washed free of the saltwater in the stream, dried, and packed away in three plastic or nylon suitcases for later use. Doug had found his medical bag and one first aid kit. The other kit had broken loose and floated away. Mary commented that if Alyson had to be stranded on a tropical island, she could do worse than be stranded with a botanist and a pediatrician. Doug laughed for Alyson's sake, but privately he worried that he wouldn't have adequate medications for any of them when the need arose.

Early in the morning of the fifth day a small plane had passed a few miles north of the island. That was when Doug discovered that using a signal mirror wasn't as easy as it seemed. He practiced with it for several hours until it became as easy as tying his shoes. Nobody had thought of the signal fire, the pile of flammables inside a wooden stockade and covered by a nylon tarp, until over an hour after the plane had passed. The plane had not been equipped with pontoons, indicating among other things that it did not belong to Search and Rescue.

A squall arose on the ninth night. Doug guessed that it was after midnight when the thunder awakened him. Alyson was terrified. Doug couldn't blame her. During the last storm she'd avoided death by mere seconds, only to be nearly drowned moments later. She wanted to move between them where she would be safe. Mary looked at him as if she thought he would protest, but he merely nodded, then got up to close the shutters to keep out the blowing rain.

When he returned to bed, Mary was spooned around Alyson, who was shivering. "Honey, would you get a sheet for us?" Mary asked. They hadn't needed any cover until now, but the breeze drifting through the cabin had a chill to it. He grabbed a sheet from the wardrobe, ducked under the mosquito netting, and spread it over the bed before slipping under it.

Alyson was crying softly. A second "G'night, Pixie" helped calm her, and she soon drifted off to sleep as the storm waned. He reached over her to wrap his arm behind Mary for a hug, pulling himself into a temporary full-frontal squeeze with Alyson. Mary whispered, "I love you."

"I love you, too, Mare." He relaxed his hug and began sliding back.

Mary's arm clamped down on his forearm, halting him after only a few inches of withdrawal, leaving Alyson room enough to breathe, but little more. "I need your touch, too," she whispered.

He was a long time returning to sleep.

A full bladder half-awoke him shortly after dawn, as usual. It had caused an erection, as usual. As he slowly stretched his way to consciousness and tried to work the kinks out of his muscles without awakening the others, he felt his boner slip into the indentation between the cheeks of Mary's ass. He slowly humped her crack twice and decided to see if he could slide it into her while she slept.

That was one of the great things about Mary. Even sound asleep it took only a little stimulation to get her wet enough for a man to enter her. Frequently she awoke in time to cum and then drifted back to sleep with a satisfied purr, sometimes before his own orgasm. It was a delightful mix of intercourse and masturbation that he found strangely appealing.

He humped upward one more time until his balls were against her lower cheeks and reached for her treasure box. There was a sheet in the way. That was curious because they rarely ever...

His eyes slammed open. In the dimness of the shuttered room he remembered. Alyson had turned over in the night and was now backed up to him. It was his thirteen-year-old daughter's ass he was humping, not his wife's. He shoved himself backward and landed on the floor. The impact stung but caused no physical injury.

The noise awakened Mary and Alyson. Mary accepted his explanation that he'd rolled out of bed. She got up to open the shutters on her side of the bed. Alyson repeatedly asked if he was okay and if she had pushed him out of bed. He had to quiet her instead of stopping Mary. He tried to hide his erection, as if his betrayal would be erased if nobody saw the physical evidence.

Alyson had seen his morning piss-hards many times, and it took a few moments before he realized she thought he was holding it in pain rather than trying to hide it in embarrassment. It was then that he noticed Mary standing there trying to control a smirk. He felt the heat as his face flush deep crimson and saw Mary lose her struggle with the smirk that grew into a grin. Does she know?

"Go on," she said. "Go pee."

As he slipped out the back door he heard Alyson ask in a quiet, worried voice, "Is he hurt?"

"Only his pride," Mary said in a normal voice before she opened the other shutters.

It's not my pride, it's my honor, he thought. He worried that concept all the way to the outhouse and halfway back, when Alyson stepped out the back door to go relieve herself. She hadn't been aware what had happened. He forced himself to act natural. It's hard to be natural when you're trying to appear so, he realized.

"I didn't get a chance to say good morning," she said, standing on tiptoes, tilting her face up, and holding her arms out.

"Good morning." He puckered his lips as he bent down. They had no "G'morning, Pixie" routine, but occasionally, in odd situations such as these, they did the four-second humming kiss. "Now," he said as they broke apart. "The day's finally off to a good start."

She frowned and rubbed his cheek with her hand. "Shaving day," she announced.

Doug smiled at her no-nonsense command tone. "Just for you," he said The number of disposable razors was limited. He was trying to stretch the supply by shaving every third or fourth day and reusing them, since he had no idea how long they'd be stranded. He'd been beardless for so long that he found even the idea of a beard uncomfortable now. "Want to explore today?" He jerked his head toward the forest beyond the outhouse.

Her brown eyes brightened. "Yes! I'm tired of cleaning and fishing." She grabbed his shoulders and pulled him down for a quick kiss. "Thank you."

He tousled her hair. "We all need a break."

He took two steps toward the cabin before she stopped him. With her head down she spoke in a soft, hesitant voice. "I love you, Daddy. I'm sorry I made you fall out of bed." Before he could think of a response she turned toward the privy, her head still down.

He moved quickly to the cabin and through the small bedroom. His wife was cutting up the fruit for their breakfast. "Mary! What did you tell her?" His tone was accusatory.

She looked up, down long enough to slice another banana into four sections, and back to him. "I told her you'd awakened in an amorous mood and forgotten who was lying next to you until it was too late."

"You didn't!"

She put the banana pieces on the platter and turned to place it on the table. "No, I didn't. I told her you weren't hurt except for your pride." With the platter in place she looked back at him, fingertips poised on her hips. "I thought you heard that."

He pointed toward the rear, his hand showing a slight tremor. "Alyson ... She just said ... You must have said something else to her. What was it?"

Mary shook her head and looked as if she were trying not to laugh. "Oh, Doug." She stepped around the table and squeezed him tightly. "She's thirteen years old, Doug. She's not a baby any more."

His body stiffened in her arms. "So what was it you said?" he asked with a quiet voice cloaked in suspicion.

He felt a small chuckle ripple through her as she rubbed her cheek against his shoulder. "That's my point. Nothing. She's quite capable of thinking for herself. She's been blessed with intelligence genes from both of us, and she knows how to use them. You certainly gave her enough clues."

"Clues?" He gently took her shoulders in his hands and pushed her upper body back until he could look her in the eye. "What clues?"

She gave him the standard Patient Wife Dealing with Clueless Husband look and shook her head. "Maybe she got those genes only from me. I tell you what." Her right arm relaxed, and she brought that hand around to grasp his flaccid love tool and stroke it. "You get this thing up again because I need it. Right now, right here."

"What clues?"

Alyson sat with her nose wrinkled. Even with the gaps between the rough, gray boards providing ventilation, the outhouse smelled worse than the bathroom at the Cleft of Venus bookstore. Alyson knew how that one smelled because Annette Grolsch was doing one of the attendants there, and he'd let them in the back door to look around before it opened one morning. The bathroom had been so filthy she'd been afraid to sit on the toilet seat. Instead she'd hovered above it to pee. But at least it had toilet paper and not plant leaves.

She was glad Daddy had picked fresh leaves from the bushes behind the drafty little building. She could just imagine using half-dried leaves and them crumbling and her getting poop on her fingers. Yuk!

She wiped the best she could and then left for a quick cleansing dip in the lagoon. As she stepped out the door her mind drifted back to her father. She still wasn't over the hurt of being relegated to the far side of the bed. They used to play a game to see which of them would sleep in the middle until she got her own room. Occasionally there were times, such as camping trips, when they'd all sleep together in one tent and they'd play odd/even, or rock/scissors/paper, or some other quick game to see who got the middle.

As she passed by the kitchen window she heard her mother exhaling in short, explosive bursts, a sound that could mean only one thing. She glanced inside. Mom was facing the bedroom and leaning forward with her head down, resting her hands on top of the table. Daddy was standing behind Mom, his head tilted back, grasping her by the hips and slamming his long, rigid pole up into her, over and over in almost a blur. Alyson got an occasional momentary glimpse of the glistening tanned shaft.

Mom's head snapped back, her eyes squeezed shut and face pulled together in a grimace as a sound tried to fight its way out of her throat. When it finally rushed out, Mom's eyes popped open. They seemed to move sideways toward her, but then her head dropped again and they vanished behind a curtain of fallen hair.

Maybe Mom had seen her? She started for the water again and discovered that she had to remove her fingers from her crotch to walk. She didn't remember reaching for her clitty, wasn't even aware that she was rubbing it with a fingertip, but did realize that she'd been enjoying the feelings spreading out from it.

Maybe that was it! Maybe Daddy wanted Mom in the middle of the bed so they could do it while she was asleep. They never had any time alone together. Maybe if she'd disappear for a while every day, give them time to do it in privacy, then she could sleep in the middle once in a while. Or Daddy could. She always felt comfortable and safe when he was next to her, protecting her from ghosts and animals in the dark, even if they were just lying back-to-back. Just his touch made her feel safe and loved. She missed that feeling. She missed it even more than she missed all of her things back home put together.

She waded into the blue water south of the dock until she was thigh deep and then lowered herself into the water. She washed her butt and then scooped sand to scrub her hands and fingers clean. She washed her body, arms, and legs, spending a few extra seconds on her clitty, then dipped her head under and scrubbed her hair. After she was finished, she would wade to where the stream flowed into the lagoon and rinse the salt water out of her hair.