Home On The Range free porn video

Home on the Range Not long before the first, cloud-like fringe of mountains rise above the plain, the train -- it hasn't run for years -- used to curve south, following the easy line of the coulee and, a 'ways on up, letting you catch, amongst the rolling sweep of grey-green grassland, the fastest glimpse of cottonwood and aspen by silver water, tucked in among the hills. Sometimes, the train might stop, and, if you'd picked a seat on the right-hand side, you'd have a chance to set aside your book or magazine and watch the sunlight flicker on a wide and shallow river, the horses running, black against the sky. And so it stopped one afternoon. And so I wondered, as we will do when we are riding through an unfamiliar country, what it'd be like to stay a while; how might the sun feel, say if you sat down by the water, what kind of blue the snow would paint the hills, how would they flower in the spring. Just where the river curved behind the western hill, I could make out the roof line and the porch posts of a house: the shingles weathered gray, the way folks let them do out there. If I'd been just a few seats up, I'd not have seen it. I saw a woman step up to the porch rail, rest a hand on the pillar. Looking at the train, I figured. You live out here, the train is an event. Dream of where a train can take you; even the twice-a-week to where I was headed. The name doesn't matter. She'd let her long hair down, the breeze played with it, strands floating, falling, floating again; the skirt of her dark, old fashioned dress fluttering, a slower dance, below. What was she looking at? I tried to follow her line of sight: the shallow, interwoven channels of the river, silver water, yellow sand? The horses running, as if wild, as if free. I asked myself, perhaps a little smug, a traveling man who's seen his share and maybe more of the wide, wide world, I asked myself: how many times had she seen these trees, that river? How long before you tire of looking? How do you fill a life, in all this wide-open space? What on earth must her days be like, her nights? I wondered what there was for her look at, wondered until: What she was gazing at, it struck me at that instant, was me. And at that instant, as if surprised, as surprised as I was, the train lurched forward. Once, twice. The train lurched forward. Once, twice. Gathered speed. I watched it slip behind the hill. I watched the horses dancing on the hills, the rills of sparkling water where the river split around the sandbank, catching the sun, the sun now slanting low, so that the hills glowed more green than grey, as if a morning rain had washed them, the trembling aspen leaves backlit, almost transparent. It seemed my ticket had been punched. The breeze was chilly now. I saw a shawl left draped over the rocking chair; thrown around my shoulders, it trapped my hair -- the dancing strands had tickled, part of why I'd shivered just then, maybe. But it was getting cold, it gets cold fast out there. It was time to head inside. Clumsy, in this unfamiliar place, this unfamiliar body. The steps steeper than I thought; I tripped, and nearly fell, heard a tiny sound of tearing cloth before I realized I had to hold my skirt clear of my feet. The house was not so small, so rough as you might think. There was still light enough to pick my way through the front room, light a lamp. A hallway, plain, no pictures, led back to the kitchen. From there, a dining room, snug, a table with two chairs. A young girl's picture on the sideboard, a mirror on the wall. The lamplight from across the hall was just enough to let me see. Long dark hair, oval face. A straight nose, long enough to not quite be pretty to people who the films had schooled to see an upturned nose and pouting lips as cute. To gaze at the train and dream of Hollywood was not, I thought, what I would do, if this were me. If this were me. I touched my face, but felt the disconnection, a dissonance of who I thought knew I was with what I'd seen in the mirror, the fragments of what I'd felt, tickling of hair caught in a breeze, a hem of skirt swirling round feet, rustle of cloth on cloth, shiver of silk on skin. It was if I stepped outside of myself, almost as if I was watching from across the room, even as I looked out straight ahead and saw who I saw in the mirror. You've seen, no doubt, a woman gazing in a mirror, as if to pull herself together, to draw the bright and colored bits of self that maybe had been thrown across the ground, her intent, focused gaze the heat melding the broken glass shards into a whole again. Sometimes, they're more resilient than their men. But the mirror didn't help this time, the bits of me were scattered, still. Still in that haze of disconnect, I wandered on. Steep, narrow stairs led from the hallway to a second floor. Two bedrooms, a bath: an indoors bath. No so rough, then. Beds neatly made. In both, stacks of books on bedside table; I'd seen, without quite registering, shelves crammed with more down in the front room. A wardrobe full of clothes. Her clothes. Dresses. Shirts, skirts. The dresser, bottles of color, scent; drawers layered with the thin, delicate fabric of secret clothing, some soft to touch, some the slick smooth of silk and satin. Another mirror on the wall. And still, the face, the long dark hair, more familiar now, more like - - me? I sat down on the bed, to think. To try to think. No point in worrying about my business in, wherever. Out of my hands. And what was in my hands now? I ran my fingers through my hair and down my face, around my breasts. My breasts. Through the cloth, but still I felt them. I ran my hands down my belly, down. What my fingers touched, felt touched. Where my palm rested, I felt its weight, its warmth. Hard as it was to let myself know, I started to. Started to. Darker now. I lit the upstairs lamp, one hand trailing on the wall, the other holding skirt clear of feet, picked my way carefully down the stairs. If I took smaller, slower steps, I found, I seemed steadier. I wasn't ready for the mirror again, so I didn't light the lamp in the dining room. That's where he found me. xxxxx He's going to be important here, so I want to tell things right. I'm not sure that mentioning the smack of the back door banging shut, which startled me after all the quiet, the sound of heavy boots, the muttered: "No supper, eh?" quite does it, though they all are what happened then. Don't read too much in here, just yet. He was, he is, a big guy. He looks like ... Well, he looks like him. You know the countryside, or what I've told you: he wasn't wearing a banker's suit. A denim jacket, jeans and boots; makes sense to dress like that, so that's what he wore. Face brown from sun, hair -- older than me, let's let him have a bit of gray, and lines around his eyes. Make him handsome, make him not, I wasn't in the frame of mind to say just then. He slumped down in a chair, just looking beat. In the dim light, he was a shadow, barely more. We sat, no more than a moment, perhaps, two shadows in darkening room. Then he sighed, and stood, and stepped back into the kitchen. A clunk of pan on stove, hiss of butter melting. Creak of icebox door. It wasn't like the way you sometimes let things clatter, make them clatter, on a chore you do not want to do, to make sure that someone else has got the message. It was just the sound of supper coming. Nothing more. He laid a plate before me, set his own down, and turned to relight the lamp. I couldn't meet his eyes. "Fresh caught," he said. Or maybe asked. I stared down at the pink-fleshed fish, the green of wild onions on my plate. "Fresh caught," he said again. "I know. Eat up, it'll get cold. Don't worry." I ate, at first just picking at the trout. I was hungrier, though, than I knew; or it was better than I feared. I felt another scattered bit or two draw closer, as if the not-quite-sweet fish, tang of the fresh- picked greens rekindled something deep inside. Sometimes, maybe, you just need to eat. Silently, he watched me. When I finished, he took my plate, started towards the kitchen, stopped, sat down again and sighed. "Feeling strange?" I nodded. "Mmm," he said. "Again. I can always tell." "I .." It was hard to start, I tried again. "I think, I think I'm not quite who you think I am." "Ah," he replied, a tiny smile. Pained? Maybe a bit sarcastic. "Like they say, twas ever so. And who this time? The dancing girl? The school-teacher?" He held up his hand, like a cop stopping traffic at the corner. "Don't tell me." I waited for the clues I needed. "Watching the train, again, of course," he said. "I guess it was past time. O.K., I know my part, let's play the play: Your name is Ottilie, I'm William, but you call me Bill. I wish you wouldn't make me go though this." I'm sure I looked as bewildered as I felt. "Like that?" he said. "That far gone this time, too? O.K., we take it slow. This is our place. A half-section, free and clear. Town's that way, 30 miles" pointing, naming, I'm not going to tell you where. "I've heard often enough about THAT. Open range all around. Near busted on the wheat, ran cattle for a bit. Horses, now. It goes O.K., if you want to know. Me and the hand can manage fine, his missus helps here, if you want." "Look," I said, my voice a shock. "You really need to know. Things aren't right here. Maybe we can do something." "Shh." he said. "You want make a run on up the line. We'll spy 'er, switch. Everything goes back to normal." He sighed. "We've tried, remember, back when the doc' said I should give you your head, you'd figure it out. Doesn't work. No..." He waved a hand to cut me off. "Don't tell me who you think you are. Don't tell me how. I've heard it. I've heard it all. You want to know, I'm tired of it." "So." I told myself. I thought I told myself. "So. Trapped. Or just a dream." He must have heard me though, the way he grimaced. "Here's this," he said, "I'll save you, maybe, a little time. Me, a little... never mind. Anyway, you'll decide, in a day or you, you snagged someone. Caught 'em somehow. Like me." He nodded at the fish- bones on our plates. "And them. So, you'll end up watching for the train again. You'll watch, days maybe. Weeks. Months, one time. Then, I don't know why, it all goes back to normal, once again." He stood, looming over the table, leaning towards me, perhaps. Perhaps not, but I flinched anyway. "And don't worry. Don't even ask. Upstairs, your room is to the left. Mine's the other. Like I said. I don't know who, or what, you think you were, who you want now to tell me that you are. But I don't force myself on ... your guests. Our guests, I guess. I know who I married. For better or for worse." xxxx Perhaps you've wondered, what it's like, on the other side. Can you feel it -- the different shape of body, how often do you sense the weight of breasts, the way they move? The wider hips, a center of gravity closer, appropriately perhaps, to the Earth? The channel inwards? What is the first thing that you feel? When I woke the next morning, it was, I am afraid, just a strand of hair my lips had caught, as I had tossed and turned. I brought my hand up to pluck it free, felt my breast shift, nipple brush against cloth. It's hard to describe, much more the press of outward things, the tightness of clothing on skin, a texture, more those things than any inward sense of feeling radiating out to reach the new boundaries of you -- though there was, somehow, far too elusive for a word, that inward feeling, too. You feel your heart, because you feel it thump, but somehow also the rest of what is deep inside you? I had tossed and turned, wrapping the dress tight as a shroud around me, with all the dreaming. Dreaming -- the books can say whatever they will, and do, but I'm sure I'd been dreaming someone else's dreams, nothing from my mind, nothing I remembered seeing, dreaming from somewhere deep, somewhere beyond the knowing of things; maybe not all of our dreaming all of the time is like that, true, but some, yes. A body's memories. Its fears. Its hopes. Fearful dreams, some of them. Dreams of dark streets, unstated threats. Dreams of a big man, greying. In the dark. A big man wanting. Knowing, in dreaming, what that must be. Afraid of it somehow. Maybe ... desiring it. Dreams of possibilities.. Such possibilities. But dreams I knew I should not dream, her dreams that no man should dream, dreams that made me turn, now this way, that, trying, vainly, to find the way to fall into a darkness that would let me simply sleep in peace. Dreams I wanted to blink away and make vanish. But that I couldn't. Because, muzzy, half awake I was, half aware of what my hands told me, of what I sensed from deep within, there still remained the disconnection: this world I was immersed in -- me, here, it was me who swam, or tried to, in this strange sea, it was me who was at risk of drowning here.. Me, I was still here. Me, what I liked, what I desired, what I thought. The faintest smell of frying meat -- me, me, I liked that. The cool pale light of morning, that was what I liked. Me. I lay there, soft and tiny in bed, still scattered in a million pieces, as scattered as the memories I riffled through -- a game of baseball in the hot sun; the Boardwalk by the ocean, her on my arm -- memories seized desperately, seized to tell myself I was not who, I was not what, my hands told me lay there in this bed, what my eyes saw when I turned my head to the mirror. I reached for memories as hard, as tough, as ... male, as cartoon male, as I could. Worried that I could not find enough -- for there had been the dreams. The dreams I couldn't blink away. Dreams of things I'd never done. Dreams of things men like me didn't do. Voices, now. Downstairs. His. A woman's. They whisper, the urgent whisper of what needs saying but what the invalid upstairs is not to hear. "Another of her spells," he says. "I'll need your help." I can't make out what she says. "I can't tell yet," he answers. "About as bad as I've seen." Plates clatter. Liquid pours. "Yes," he says. "Like the time she thought she was -- well, you know." A long sigh. "Sick. Sometimes I think I'll never touch her, not after that. You were a big help then." A condoling murmur. And, I'd bet -- flash of something sour -- the soft touch of hand on shoulder. "We do what we must," he says. "No point to complain. Just watch. Take your lead from her. Tell her what she says she needs to know. Do what needs doing." The back door bangs shut. Again, it startles. I hear footsteps on the stairs, lighter steps than his, clicking of heels. A heavy sigh. "You slept like that?" Her voice not harsh, not kind. She's maybe just a little older, red hair pinned up in a bun, plain housecoat. "Come on, dear, time to get up." I swing my legs free of the bed, stand. "Come on, can't stay in those." A nod that seems to mean I should undress. My hands, a quick and helpless turn of wrist, my face must tell her that I don't know what to do. Another heavy sigh. "Turn for me," she says, and takes my right wrist as I do that. She gently leads my hard, my arm behind my back; it's not the way a man would force you in a fight, somehow I know she's leading me to... A button, hidden beneath my hair, almost out of my reach; together, we push it free; another button, down my back, easier. A third; I've got both hands behind me, I can manage, the button on the waist as well. She eases sleeves down arms, a tug, I step free. I'm not, I wasn't completely inexperienced, but usually, it was the girl who ... In any event, I made her sigh again, unhooking petticoat to let it drop, tugging chemise over my head. Her hands brush skin, I shiver. She's standing close, she has to, to help me. I want to -- but something's missing to be sure; inside, sure I want, soft hands have brushed, she's pretty enough, close. My mind says, but there's not ... It's not like what I try so hard now to remember, what I'd tried to remember, lying there in the bed that morning. Not like those times you turn to her, but, maybe you're tired, maybe it's something else, but whatever, you aren't ready, so that she sighs and maybe reaches down or maybe simply rolls over with a disgusted sigh and turns her back. Not quite like that, but not quite all that different, either. Still, I lean a little. And she -- oblivious? expecting and prepared to dodge? -- eases just out of reach. "Bath" she says, bright and artificial. Hot bath, long soak. I am unwinding into a kind of comfort. It's pleasant to steam here, to lather soft skin, feel hands slide on calf, and thigh. On arms, arms pressing on breast, then lathered hands. Expanding in the heat, I seem to fill this body just a little more. I'm taking way too long, of course. But she's patient. Perhaps practiced, as I think about the morning whispers, yesterday's strange talk. Patient, too, once I am out. Here's a fresh chemise, from here, see. Drawer: No turn them the other way, there, that's the back. Petticoat. Tug this, smooth, sliding, thin cloth briefly cool before your skin, still glowing warm from the bath, warms it, too. Pull this down, touch it into place. This dress? Maybe this. I've always thought this color... It's too late in the year for that. Hands in thick hair, gather, lift, sweep round. A clip, brief tugging of a strand or two that makes you flinch. A tube in my hand, hers around, a waxy touch on lips, like this, one daub, another. Tissue to kiss. The mirror. xxxx If she was impatient, in the days that followed, showing me around what she'd have understood to be my house, she didn't show it. Nor did she seem to grudge giving the little hints -- we sit like this, don't stomp around so. l learned to take smaller steps, because she told me to, because of the way a skirt can catch a knee, because of tottering in pair of fancy shoes (why must the heel be quite that high?) -- but also this: a body's muscles sliding back to the familiar. I see, she doesn't need to say, just flash a look at me and so I know: You hold your hands so, not like that. Sometimes, a wrist like this. Don't stare like that. You touch your hair, look downwards -- why? You just do. You learn to see where his eyes go. Lean forward if you care to. When she was home -- she had her own man to look after, she told me once in a tiny flare of exasperation -- when she was home, I took to wandering. Not far at first, the river suited fine. The aspens were yellowing in the autumn, the hillsides drying brown, so many browns, sumac in the wetter gullies flaming red. The huge sky arching overhead, the low hills sweeping up as if to meet the blue, they seemed to urge me on, and so I walked along the river, west towards the mountains I knew were there but couldn't see, east sometimes, towards where I remembered... But while I remembered when I choose, so that, on waking in the night, staring at moonlight slanting down, trying to shake off a dream, I could pull up picture from the past. I could still tell myself I was, I am, someone other than the person wakened from a dream -- while I could still do that, I seemed to need to less and less. So days went by. He usually was gone when I awoke, she was down in the kitchen cleaning up. Sometimes, she stayed on through the morning, sometimes, she said, she had other things she had to do. Once in a while, still, she'd touch me, show me how to do this or how that should lie. Sometimes, as she pinned my hair in place, as we stood, fingering through the clothing in the wardrobe, paused together on the porch to say good-bye, we were just half a step apart -- but a half step never taken. The afternoons, I wandered. I found the stakes that marked the corners of the section, I saw the barn, the corral. When I found the hired hard working there one sunny afternoon, he showed me the mare they'd kept for me to ride, saddled her -- an old fashioned sidesaddle, I was so awkward that I made him laugh. I took to riding out among the hills. The mare so tame, so easy that it didn't matter that I was city-raised, not a good rider -- so tame that one day when we'd ambled farther than I'd gone before and I had been half dreaming as the mare trudged on until we paused to drink and watch a hawk wheel in the sky and I saw, with a sudden chill, that I had no idea where I was at all; so tame that I just let the reins fall and let her find the way home. Home? Home. Relief, when we finally climbed the western hill, and I saw the place, and told myself that we had made it home, home. And fear, too. That I would call it that. Twice a week, I'd wait for the train to pass. Watching, just in case. xxxx It was a mild autumn, that one. Indian Summer, sun warming the porch, yellow leaves lingering. Some mornings now, when I came down, he hadn't left; the mornings had that summer feeling, you want to dawdle in the sunlight, pause a bit and breath the warm scent of earth and tang of brush, the late blooming rose by the back door, tricked by the mild air. We didn't talk much -- she talked to me, she talked to him: you want another egg? looks like a fine day. We talked to her, question, answer. A nod, a grunt. I sensed he looked at me those mornings -- you know how you can tell when someone's eyes on you? Sometimes, I wasn't too afraid to look at him -- afraid, not of him, but of me. Sometimes, I looked at him. And wondered. How long can you be surrounded by people, nice people, people who gently worry about how you're doing, who care for you, for whom you find your start to care? We all of us must care for someone sometimes; how long before you start to thaw a bit? Before all of feeling swirling round you starts to change you. How many days and nights must pass in the company of folks who know the you they think you are is coming back, maybe is starting to, despite the me-me-me who still whispers to you in night. How many days, days after days, days merging into weeks, weeks melding to an Indian Summer like no one has ever seen before. Watching Bill and the hired hand working the horses, horses dancing, dodging in the corral, the men riding among them, waving arms to move them do, lassoing a wilder one that will not follow where he's led; watching shirts tossed off for the heat, muscles in a taut, bent back shifting as a horse's leg is lifted, as a shoe is hammered in, muscle flexing, regroup, bulge, brown skin, heat and work and sweat. Not thinking about work like that you yourself might have done once. Just watching. Sun and warm breeze though you know the winter's coming; we all of us wanted to run, to fly over the hills, to feel sunbaked air rushing past -- take the grey, this time, Ottie, let 'im gallop for you. Leg slung over strong, wide back, a gallop, farther than you think you should, muscles beneath warm horsehair working, hot and glowing. Blood pumping, heat rising from the great animal heaving beneath you, between your legs. And then you're soaring. Something's changing. Sometimes, in the evening, when he takes a bath, I see -- he is less careful now, he isn't staying out of sight. The modesty you keep, for strangers, he doesn't fret so much about. Not thinking, I go one night to fetch a comb, he's stepping into the bath, I see everything. Blush, but do not look away. As I said, a big man. I see him growing, rising towards me, a flush of warm blood, pink-brown pillar. "Ottie" he whispers. And I flee. xxxxx For I still watch when the train is due. I stand there on the porch, hand lightly resting on the post, long hair unpinned and floating in I feel the breeze. For all the weeks that passed, for all that the small sensations of my daily life were becoming so familiar, I feel them still. Delight in them. If anything, sensation strengthens -- hair tickling neck, breasts pressing cloth, the lightest brush of finger on cheek, below the eye where, unaccountably, a tear trails down. Fragments of feeling growing larger, knitting together. New feelings. Waiting, watching, I've seen, just once or twice, passengers on the train gazing out over the valley, I've seen the trembling aspen leaves catch their eye, the silver water of the river lead their eyes to mine before the train, not stopping, slowly carries them away. I've felt the slanting rays of sun make the hills glow, the magic that the day's end always seems to promise. I've caught their eyes; no, I think, I don't look like what Hollywood has said is beauty, but still am I think what folks would call a handsome woman. Am? Am. I know, because she's taught me how, in those mornings when the hired hand's missus and I talk together, I know that what I'm wearing flatters, know how the cut of skirt follows the curve of hip just so, know that you see enough -- not too much -- just enough of rise of breast. I see their eyes looking me over. I see, I think I see, the glint of eye. I see a set of mouth that says, you want adventure? I'm adventure. I see what I was once. I see them stare and calculate, play with a notion; look and lust. I think, you're not so bad yourself. Something is stirring, a heat from below is rising. But nothing happens. The trains crawl slowly past, they do not stop. Each time, I watch them slip behind the western hill, and see the sun redden and sink. The first afternoon I felt how wet I'd grown down there with watching, I think I understood. When I'd sat on the well-worn corduroy of the train seat, staring down the valley, at the river, at the trees and horses running, when our eyes caught, one difference was the train had stopped, our eyes had time to look and lock on one another. But there was this difference, too: When I was on the train, when I was gazing out at her, I had not wondered, merely, what it might be like to live here. I'd wondered what it might be like for her. I'd wondered how it felt to live her life. xxxxx Understanding that, accepting that, now I watched, standing on porch, as Bill and the hired hand led the horses out the corral and down the track that led, eventually, to the little town I'd yet to see. The hand's wife stood beside me, watching, too. It was time for the auction; the buyers from the city, the farmers from down the line, where it was just a little wetter and the wheat grew better than it did up here, were assembling to buy their next year's stock, there to let us know if we'd had ourselves a good year or a bad one. Live on the land, you grow a little superstitious, Bill didn't want us there; bad luck, he thought. We watched them climb the eastern hill, disappear down the other side. We watched the cloud of dust the horses' hooves stirred as they trotted on, out of sight now. Her arm slipped round my waist. We stood like that a while, watching, though there was nothing more to watch, just the water rippling past the river sand bars, the reeds bend in the wind, yellow leaves floating off the trees. We stood like that a while. And then pulled closer. She pulled? I pulled? Skirt brushes skirt, hip presses on hip, quietening the rustling of moving cloth. Warmth rising through cloth, a hand reaches out, lightly rests on shoulder. Face turns, faces turn. The hand, still light but not as light, gently guiding, shoulder follows turning face. Green eyes gazing deeply into brown. Hand slipping down a back, a stroke, two strokes, then resting just where curves swell outwards. Resting, then pressing. Faces close together, closer. Lips brush lips. Once, then a small retreat. Again. We kiss. The lightest touch, then lips press. A hand moves up, palm on breast. Press closer, lips open, a tongue, a moan. One's hand stokes, the other's rises, behind now-loosening hair, to touch a neck, pull her still closer. We break apart, we need to breath. One's hand now holds the other's, gently tugs, leading inside. The hands that once had showed me, weeks ago, where buttons were, to hook the clasps, what to tug, what pulled over head now undoes the buttons, undoes hooks-an-eyes, tugs. My hands, that needed hers to guide them, to get dressed, now unwrapping her. Nude now, I touch her, nude now she touches. She reaches a hand to my chest, just a finger brushing, steps toward me, our bellies touching now. Her face bends towards mine once again, lips part and I feel myself sinking into her. A wave of warmth, a sense ... maybe of melting, maybe expanding. A sense that, at last, I fill my skin. Knowing that once, a year ago, months ago, maybe the flush rising from between my legs would make me fill and swell, make me stand, demand I turn and plow her. Knowing that, but now not really caring. Just something I knew had happened once. Something not missed, not now, barely remembered. The urgent need is different now. Wet. A slow, slow burn, burning still more as I feel her hand slip lower, fingers gently trace the curve of belly, down to the valley just below. We topple into bed, me first, dragging her along. A deeper kiss, a pause. Then tiny brush of lips on throat, on one breast, the other. A line of kisses, lower, lower. My fingers in her hair; I hear moaning, my moaning, and can do nothing except to hold her tighter, moan and feel the mounting waves pound on and on, each stronger, on and on, until, at last, screaming with joy I cross the threshold. "Back with us now?" she breaths, a timid whisper. "Have you come back now, Ottie?" All I can do is nod. I lay there, in my bed -- my bed -- tired, glowing. Almost content. Almost complete. xxxx Know how you worry they suspect? That they can see right through the shell you built, that what you know should make you burn with guilt is blazoned on your face, the way you walk. Know how you worry -- as I worried she suspected how I'd been watching her man, that somehow she knew what I thought seeing him arch his back to ease a stiffening muscle, worried that she knew the way he grinned at me, when he caught me looking. Worried as she might have been, had she turned her head in time to catch me watch her walk round the back yard to where Bill waited, saw them bend heads close and whisper, walk off -- far too close together, out of sight behind the barn. Worried as I was the men would somehow see, when they returned, excited, bubbling with the money they had raked in at the auction, presents from the dry-goods store slung behind their saddles. See what had happened between their two girls. It turned, almost overnight, to fall again, late fall, promising the winter in its winds. Somehow, there never seemed to a time where she and I could be alone; if I was in the sitting room alone, reading, say, and she came in, it seemed like Bill would follow an instant later. She didn't like me to stop by her own place, when, once or twice, I came there anyway, it was her man I'd see. Grinning. Inviting me to stay. Daring me. And I was tempted. I knew he made her happy, happier than I could. Happy as a woman was, because she had a man. She had something from him, she'd never get from me, though once she might have done, if we had met long enough ago. Once, maybe, I thought, with just the tiniest regret. I knew, for all I yearned to burn again beneath her lips, that I still missed something that she had. That I knew now I wanted. And so we worried, so we burned, as autumn slowly ebbed down into winter. Bill, now that the auction had worked out so well, now that the mares spent most days in the barn with next year's profits growing in their bellies, relaxed almost into conversation. He talked, anyway. And since the hired hand and his wife had business of their own in that quiet season -- I walked to her place once and heard her moan the way that I had when I tripped her into my bed -- since she was not around as much, Bill had to talk to me. And I, hesitant, to him. He talks, I listen. I have my lessons in Ottilie. Where born, where schooled, where met. What that day had been like, what had been said, what worn -- although I suspect Bill had missed some of the finer touches. I learn, or guess, at when he first tumbled her, and guess, too, that he may have missed that she tumbled had him. I learn how he had brought her here. I learn how the life they'd started weaving here started to unravel. Nothing direct, mind. No explication, no theory of Ottie here. A snatch of conversation, recalled years later. A word here, weeks later, another clue. It's not for everyone, this kind of life. Not everyone finds the arch of sky, the sweep of grass an invitation to soar free, a dare to gallop wildly. For some, the big sky is a heavy weight, oppressing. For some, the sweeping space does not make you want to run, but only run away. And in all the huge and open space, intensity. Passion and feeling don't diffuse, they boil down into an essence. Just four people, you see the same three others, day after day, week after week. Fewer clues here, but still enough. Let's say, the permutations all played out. And still, for some, would never matter. They take for better or for worse seriously, out here. The first break, first breakdown came after the second year. Ottie had talked enough for Bill to figure out what he would call, sometimes, her fantasy, sometimes her insanity. I knew that it was something else. The first time seems to have been a school teacher, timid, heading up the line to another tiny, lonely spot. So like the ranch, as Ottie seems to have explained to Bill before she grew too cautious an he convinced that she was ill, so like the ranch that she'd simply circled back and rode the train until it stopped one day, eyes met, catch reeled in. The second time, a dance-hall girl. Ottie couldn't dance. The girl, though, had a fine old time at the ranch. It came to blows. It nearly came to shooting. The time it was a farm-equipment man was almost too much for Bill I wonder, piecing this together, how she is finding me. xxxx It took a while to see that he was courting me; to realize that he had noticed I no longer waited for each train, that I forget sometimes, too busy crunching through the frosted grass by the river's edge, too busy cooking, badly, in the kitchen, too lost in the book I'd found that morning. It took a while to accept that I was courting him. I turn and see him gazing. See his smile. I bend to lay his plate down on the table, see him look down my dress. Know that I could have, but I didn't, fasten one more button. Reading, head bent, warm yellow light, I feel him stand behind me, lay hand softly on my still-pinned-up hair, turn and lift my face to see him, feel my hair slip past his palm. Walking up the stairs, he just behind. The moment at the top, a look. Then he goes his way. I go mine. Snow comes. Hills gleam white in the sun, shadows blue. We go together to the barn, make sure the horses are alright. Cheeks red with cold, the snow, the way it changed the world, our world, demands we play. I clop him with a snowball -- dead on, I wasn't bad, when I pitched on the sandlot long ago. He gives chase. I run. Up the hill, laughing awkward. He will not stop to throw a snowball back, he's going to catch me. And does, just at the hill crest. Panting, laughing. Warm despite the cold wet of snow melting through my skirt, my petticoat. He lies beside me, head on hand. Eyes me; grin fades to something else, his face falls towards me, lips meet. At last. Lips meet, but not the brush, retreat, brush again when she and I had ... Lips meet, mean to meet. He kisses. I kiss back. Cold surface, glowing center. His lips push just a little harder, mine part. I feel his tongue. I twist my had, so we fit even closer. I barely feel the melting snow beneath me. We break our kiss, he stands, and as he rises, lets his arm slide down my shoulder, down my arm, grabbing my hand, pulling me, laughing now, to my feet. Hand in hand we tumble, sliding, running, back to the house. Our coats thrown on the floor, once we're inside, he takes my hand again, and we're upstairs. This time, at the top, we both turn in the same direction. His hands rest on my hips, my palm on his chest. We pause, I can't say quite how long, to look each other over, and then, I hook a finger, only one, behind one of his button, take a small, backwards step, and tug him towards my room. He watches me unhook my dress, let it fall to the floor -- I've learned, I don't need any help, though to be sure, I wouldn't have minded. He watches petticoat drop, drawers, chemise pulled over head, breasts rising, falling back in place. He watches me take one step, two steps, until we stand so close I feel his warm breath on my face. Before he can reach behind me, to pull me closer still, the way I know he wants to, lift my own hands to his face, let fingers lightly float down, over his eyes, his cheeks, down his neck, plucking at the top button of his shirt, the next, the next. My hands then to his shoulders, between collar and skin, pushing his shirt off, then fingers trace the muscles of his chest, harder than mine, and lower; fingers trace the line of back, down most of the way and up again, down until 'til they reach cloth, one finger slips down next to his skin, around. A harder button to undo, another and another. Knuckles against the bulge of him, freed as I start to tug his trousers down. I pull, sink to my knees and pull. One hand on him, the shaft of him, I press it, warm skin to my cheek. A tiny trembling of fear: this inside me? But only for an instant, for he reaches down, hands between my chest and arms, gently lifts me to my feet, presses me close, bends his face to mine. Lips barely touch, bellies pressed close, the warm, smooth rod of him pushing my skin. I'm melting. I can feel me melting, feel the wet flow down, flow down. Now my hand on his lower back, a backwards step, he follows, another, still he follows. I feel the bed touching the back of my knee, my hand slides up his back, I slowly sit, trying to push him down with me as I wriggle my way backwards to the center of the bed, pushing with right leg, left leg. He follows. Now he is on me, the weight of him a shock at first, a need within a moments. Lips press lips. Hand cups breast, stroking. I moan, he is panting. My legs spread wide, I want him closer still. I feel him sliding in, slowly, so slowly. Firm rod slow-slips soft wet flesh, setting nerves aflame, waves surging on and up. I gasp. I can't believe how deep he is, I want him deeper still. Slowly now he retreats, slowly back again. My legs wrap round his hard thighs, I can feel them tremble as he plunges once again. Faster now, waves piling onto waves, like waves that build and build until the giant, seventh wave. Frantic, he drives into me, frantic I drive him on. Until the seventh wave -- I wasn't counting, don't know if it was seventh or seven hundredth -- breaks. Shattered though I am, I feel the thudding of him pumping into me. In the silence, holding him on me, I hear the distant clank of a train, lurching from a stop. Once. Twice. Carrying whoever sat there, gazing out the window, far away. Leaving me here.