The Emigrant’s Daughter

 

The Emigrant’s Daughter

Coming of age on the frontier

(Erotica) 

I came to write an erotic short story and wrote an 86-page erotic love story instead. It’s more than just your usual non-stop erotica sound bite, but it’s definitely not your grandmother’s romance novel either. So, for those who like a story, a little character development, some pictures and music, and most importantly, some romance with their gritty erotica, or if you just like to read, I believe I’ve turned out what ended up becoming a very nice tale.

 

Chapter One

We moved west in the summer of 1853. My father’s plan was to go to California, where gold had been discovered a few years earlier and which resulted in the mad rush to riches from the east. A man, a woman, and a pubescent boy. We made it as far as the Brennan River Valley, Utah, near the tiny town of Morgan, an Irish settlement community, when the wagon wheel broke. I was 12 years old then.

My father attempted to fix the wagon wheel with what we had available, which wasn’t much. He built a cantilever of sorts, using a narrow log and a thicker log as a fulcrum point to raise up the wagon. He then put a shorter third log vertically under the front of the wagon to hold it in position.

The first repair he made didn’t work, as the spokes he fashioned from wood he found in the surrounding area were too weak to support the weight of the wagon. Therefore, we set up camp and my father went to work for a local millwright shop in Morgan to earn enough money to pay for a wagon wheel. My father would have to work several weeks in order to earn enough for the wheel and some other badly needed supplies.

Mother and I explored the area near our camp while my father was in town working. We came upon someone’s abandon homestead that consisted of a cabin, a barn, an outhouse and a rather rickety fenced area inside a shaded grove of trees near the river. It was rustic and rather rundown, but since no one was using it, Mother and I moved all our camp belongings and the horses to the property. We now had a solid roof over our heads should it rain. 

After a thorough cleaning, we slept in our new accommodations. My father and mother stayed in the cabin while I slept in the barn. I had started masturbating the previous year and needed my privacy, and I’m very sure my parents needed their privacy also.

 

On the day my father returned with the wheel, dragging it behind one of our horses on a hastily-fashioned travois, my mother and I gathered at the wagon to watch him install it. The wagon, still supported by the vertical log beneath it, needed to come up a bit, so my father raised the wagon with the makeshift fulcrum and I put wedges as he instructed between the bottom of the wagon and the vertical log. Once in place, my father proceeded to install the wheel.

Mother and I are still not sure exactly what happened, but as my father lifted the wheel, the wagon rolled forwards slightly, coming off the log support and down on his head, breaking my father’s neck.

There was a lot of screaming and crying and wailing that day. When I came back with help from town, one of the men surmised that my father must have died instantly, and thereby painlessly. At least that’s what he told Mother. We buried him in the Morgan town cemetery. The parson in Morgan volunteered his services for no charge.

Later that week, a few of the men from Morgan came back to fix the wagon, also for no charge. However, my father, John McKennitt, was no more and his plans for gold prospecting died with him. There was no further need for Mother and me to go on to California. The gold was his dream, not ours.

 

The town of Morgan sold the property on which we were staying to Mother for a dollar, and we proceeded to become part of the community. After a time, she got a part-time job at the dress shop in town and I worked around the homestead, hewing wood to repair parts of the cabin, the barn, and the fence, using skills my father had taught me. I built a roofless wooden bathhouse, equipped with a livestock watering trough for a bathtub. I hung a metal water barrel outside the structure that we heated with a fire beneath it, so Mother and I could take baths. I also started a little garden at the side of the house and built a chicken coop near the barn. With what little money we had left, we stocked it with a few chickens that Mother purchased in town. So, at the tender age of 12, I was now the man of the house.

Like my father before me, I took up the guitar, his guitar, and I taught myself how to play, studying from his music books. Two days out of the week, I would go to school in town, at the insistence of my mother, to try and get an education.

 

My cock had been increasing in length and girth over the last year ever since I started growing hair down there and in my armpits, and I was masturbating more and more and with increasing frequency with each passing day. Driven by my constant insatiable thoughts and fantasies of naked girls and women, I would often stop at whatever chores I was doing in the middle of the day and go up to the loft in the barn. There I would get completely naked, lie or sit on a blanket and go about the serious business of purposefully relieving myself with abandon, sometimes finding it necessary to go up there several times a day. Whenever I would hear Mother calling me, I knew I was safe up on the loft from her ever catching me in the act.

I slept in the cabin with Mother at night and when I determined her to be asleep, I would bring up my favorite fantasies, sculpt them to perfection, and masturbate to these, sometimes for hours on end, eventually spilling my seed into a rag beneath the covers. I often did this several times each night, trying ever so hard to do it silently. As I would wake up every morning with a raging boner and aching groin sack, I would relieve myself yet again, assuming I had time before Mother awoke. I just couldn’t get enough. In hindsight, I know she probably wasn’t always sleeping, but instead consciously opted not to stir, mercifully so, knowing that her growing young man, a slave to his adolescent lusts, needed his relief.

 

We struggled with money that first winter, and at the start of the next spring, at age 13, I worked myself into a job moving bales of hay and transporting supplies to the various farms in the area using our wagon, and alternating the horses. During harvest, I would transport produce from the farms to town. Having one of the only sizable wagons in the community, this enterprise soon raised the standard of living for Mother and me significantly. We were soon much better off than when we first occupied the homestead.

 

The one-room schoolhouse on the hill in town is where children of all ages were educated together. We were boys and girls, ages 6 to 16. Mostly, the boys associated only with other boys at school; and likewise, the girls socialized only with one another.

I learned from listening to the older boys that they were also masturbating regularly. “Jacking off,” they called it. Suddenly, I realized I wasn’t the only one in the world doing it, and that pretty much all boys do it once they reach a certain age. And like me, sex, girls and girls’ bodies were the things with which they also primarily occupied their minds.

During reading time, I would often look around the room and mentally undress some of the older girls, those that were already filling out, always aware of the throbbing boner growing steadily in my britches beneath the desk as I did so. More than once did my heart sink in my chest when the teacher called my name, thinking she might tell me to go up to the head of the class at an inopportune moment, exposing the shameful bulge in my britches for all to see. But, fortunately, it hadn’t happened yet. A couple of the older girls in class were moderately good looking, and I had taken to incorporating them into my elaborate nightly masturbation fantasies.

 

Chapter Two

The next year I turned 14 and with all the repairs having been done around the farm and with me bringing in good money with the wagon, I began to have more and more time to myself. I never really cared to make friends with the other boys from school and preferred to spend time alone. I explored the surrounds in all directions riding one of the horses bareback, often miles from home. In these outings, I found there were a number of other vacant farms, which had also been abandoned by people who couldn’t make it here.

Several times a week, I would ride to one of the secret places I had discovered during my many travels, all of which were located near the river, but quite a distance from home. Here, I would swim in one of the many warm pools, which had separated themselves from the river after the flooding season. Then, I would commence to walking around the area naked for hours on end. Of course, just being naked always aroused me to the point to where I would eventually be compelled to do the deed. And, this I would do with gusto, either while standing or lying on the ground, masturbating to my heart’s content, as the sun-drenched my nakedness with its warmth. Because the distances were so vast here, the chances of anyone ever surprising me engaged in my sin were extremely remote.

 

But, as far-fetched as the possibilities were, one fateful day, after tying up the horse and walking through the woods to the pool at one of my favorite spots, I heard voices, girls’ voices, talking and laughing, squealing and giggling.

I slowly walked in the direction of the sounds and peered between some bushes to see two teenage girls, strangers to me, swimming in MY pool. I couldn’t see much, as they were in the water with only their shoulders and heads visible, but they appeared to be naked!

My heart started pounding heavily in my chest at the prospect of seeing more of them! I couldn’t believe my good fortune! I was going to wait, crouched down behind these bushes, daring not to move even so much as an inch in order to feast my eyes upon their nakedness when they finally do come out of the water, even if it took the rest of my life!

My mouth became dry, my hands became clammy and I swallowed hard. Suddenly, one of the girls rose up out of the water far enough to where I could see her bouncing naked breasts! What a glorious sight! They were of moderate size, with areolas that appeared swollen and protruding a bit. This girl turned around in the water and walked up onto the bank. Once there, she bent over to reach for a towel to dry herself. Suddenly, she turned! I again swallowed hard.

Her pussy was covered with hair, dark dense hair! I’d never before seen a pussy in real life, nor any part of a naked girl for that matter! In those books in the libraries back east, those having in them paintings or drawings of naked women from the olden days, you never see hair. But there it was, she had hair down below, just like me! I felt my boner rising in my britches, despite my nervousness at being discovered watching them.

The second girl walked from the water and unto the bank. She was more voluptuous than the first and her butt cheeks wobbled as she moved. She, too, grabbed a towel and then turned to bless my eyes. She had an even larger patch of hair between her legs! I again swallowed hard as I took in the sight, my mouth agape in awe.

The second girl’s huge breasts swung pendulously as she bent down to dry her legs. They bounced and wobbled wildly—up, down, sideways, back and forth—as she again stood to dry beneath them. Each breast had large thick nipples and huge areolas, large enough that they covered at least one-quarter of each breast.

My eyes went from girl to girl, breast to breast, pussy to pussy, absolutely overwhelmed by the sight, yet completely aware of my heightened sexual arousal. Suddenly, my aching balls let loose of their burden and I came in my underwear—wet, warm, and sticky. As much as I suppressed making any sound, small uncontrollable grunts and whimpers emoted from deep inside me at the fits of pleasure I felt between my legs, all as I took in the forbidden sights before my eyes.

I continued watching them as they dressed, first putting on their underpants, then their undershirts, then their britches, and finally their shirts, to end up looking like any of the other drab-looking farm girls in the area, all of whom wore the standard gray shirts and gray britches.

They didn’t attend school in town or I would know them, as the school was the only one in the area. They might be the parson’s daughters, though. Mother and I would occasionally attend church, but we only cursorily knew any of the parishioners there. I will take a better look at them the next time Mother and I go to one of the services. Whatever the case, they looked quite a bit different with wet hair and they definitely looked different naked than they did dressed for church!

Both turned and walked farther up the bank and into the woods. I could hear them talking, their voices growing ever fainter as they disappeared in the opposite direction from where I had come. When I was sure they had gone, I slowly stood, my legs cramped from crouching. I hadn’t even noticed the pain in my legs for all that time, so engrossed was I, studying the wondrous and arousing sights before me. My cock was still hard, moving about in the wetness of my underwear as I walked.

Had the girls delayed coming to the pool a few hours later, they for sure would have caught me jacking off, I thought. Regardless, I couldn’t go back to this particular area to get naked and masturbate any longer, but I will certainly come back here again to see if I could catch another glimpse of them.

 

I didn’t get far down the trail before I moved farther off into the woods, where I pulled down my britches and underwear, and liberated my stiff cock. There, I commenced to masturbating to the visions of what I had just seen, still so very fresh in my mind. With my back up against a tree, my pants down around my ankles, and my aroused cock in my hand, it wasn’t very long at all before I let loose voluminous streams of hot cum onto the forest floor.

I masturbated five or six times that day, in the woods, in the loft of the barn, and then in my bed after Mother went to sleep. I was a hopeless slave to visions of hairy pussy and wobbling female flesh. I was sure that the vision of those girls frolicking naked at the pool, which I was oh-so-lucky to have witnessed, would give me many years of masturbatory pleasure.

 

Chapter Three

Another year passed and I was now 15, still a loner, still playing the guitar, and still vigorously masturbating each day, though not nearly as much as I had been previously. It was all a matter of time. More people were moving into the area and the business of delivery had picked up to such an extent that I was busy from sunup to sundown, every day but Sunday. Between my deliveries and Mother working at the dress shop, we did alright financially; our income was steady, and we were rapidly becoming one of the wealthier poor folks in the area. We were even able to afford a few more improvements to our homestead.

However, all the work was seriously cutting into the time I had for myself. It seemed like ages since I had indulged myself and paid a visit to one of my secret places to do the deed. I needed to hire someone so I could get my life back. The wagon brought in enough money for me to hire help and as long as I was fulfilling the unwritten contracts I had with the local farmers, who cares who was doing the work.

 

After dinner, Mother and I were once again sitting on the porch of our cabin, the way we had done so many times in recent months as a way to relax after a hard day’s work. As I strummed the guitar, she and I were once again going through the entire medley, singing those old-time favorites–Billy Boy, Old Dan Tucker, Blue Tail Fly, When the Chariot Comes, Oh Shenandoah, Turkey in the Straw—just about everything in my father’s old guitar book. Mother and I had actually become very good friends these past few years in our struggles.

As I began to pick up another tune, Mother motioned to me with her head. I looked up to see a man and woman walking on our property toward us.

“Howdy, neighbor! I’m Patrick McGill. This is my daughter, Maighread,” he said with an Irish accent, coming up to the porch.

“Christine McKennitt; my son Taylor,” she said, shaking the man’s outstretched hand while remaining seated.

“Excellent, a fellow kinsman! We just moved into that old place, just about three miles from where you are here, up the road to the east.”

“Actually, my forebears were English; my husband was the Irish one. We came here from South Carolina.”

“Let me grab some more chairs,” I said, leaning my guitar up against the cabin wall while eyeing the man’s red-haired daughter, who so boldly returned my glances.

“Was?” said the man.

I came back with two more chairs from inside the cabin and arranged the seating so that the man and his daughter sat on one end of the porch, while Mother and I sat at the other. Still, the porch was small enough to where we could all see and hear one another clearly.

“He died right over there, by that grove of trees, three years ago. Wagon fell on him.”

“Oh, I AM terribly sorry, Mrs. McKennitt, perhaps I should have asked a bit differently.

“It’s alright and call me Christine, please—Patrick.”

Mother proceeded to explain to our guests our history since coming here, as the redhead and I continued to exchange glances. I was always the first one to break eye contact and it was becoming obvious to the both of us that she was definitely the stronger personality. Not only that, she was strikingly beautiful, sitting there in the last of the day’s light illuminating our porch—creamy white skin, green eyes, freckles on her face, neck and arms, and the reddest red hair I had ever seen. I studied her intently, at least whenever she wasn’t looking directly at me. Even through her loose gray work shirt and saggy britches, I could tell she was shapely and had large breasts. Her uncommon beauty only further added to my intimidation.

As the conversation progressed and the ice began to break between us, everyone relaxed a bit. It seems the man and his daughter’s story was also one that had been fraught with difficulties. He had come to America five years ago seeking employment, while his daughter remained in Ireland to care for her sick mother. When her mother died last year, following a long struggle with the consumption, the daughter had no choice but to leave Ireland. She had no kin left there, and the entire country was facing a nation-wide crop failure and increasing political repression by the English. So, several months ago, she started the long process of embarking on the ocean voyage alone in order to come here and live with her father.

McGill had heard about the cheap availability of land for anyone interested in homesteading in Utah and shortly after her arrival, she and McGill started the difficult land journey west in a rented wagon as part of a wagon train. The wagon master dropped them and their farm implements off here a few days ago before the rest of the wagon train proceeded on to California. However, as was our situation years ago, having made the journey this far, they were now out of money and had nothing with which to start.

“So, you play the guitar?” said the woman, looking at my guitar leaning up against the cabin wall. While I had been around people of Irish descent all my life, she had what must have been the heaviest Irish accent I had ever heard.

“Yes, the guitar and the mouth harp. I taught myself,” I answered.

“I play the violin and the flute,” she said, brushing back the red locks from her forehead. “Perhaps we can play together sometime.”

Her voice was that deeper, more mature-sounding female voice, like that of my mother, not the childish squeakiness of the girls in school.

“I would like that.”

“So,” said the man. “Do either of you know where a body might find some work around here?”

Mother looked at me.

“What sort of work were you looking for?” I said.

“Anything, really. I just need some sort of steady income until I have enough to where I can buy seeds and get the farm up and running.”

“The millwright shop in town is about the only one in these parts that has ever done much hiring around here. All the other businesses mostly hire family. However, I may have a job for you, if you’d be interested.”

“Really?” he said, apparently incredulous at the idea that a mere adolescent boy could employ him. “What would I be doing?”

“Driving a wagon, picking up produce from the local farms, picking up supplies in town to take back to those same farms, loading and unloading.”

“How much can you afford to pay me,” he said, still not believing that this teenager could actually be his boss.

“We can talk about it after you’ve put in a week or so to see if you like the work. But, I can tell you now, you’re going to be putting in long hours, working Saturdays also, Sundays off. No one works Sundays around here. Whatever the case, you’ll be making a whole lot more than the millwright would ever pay you.”

“Great! When can I start?”

“You can start tomorrow. I’ll show you the ropes for the first week until you get to know all the routes and the people on those routes. Then, I’ll cut you loose and you’ll be on your own.”

“Excellent! It sounds better all the time. How can I ever thank you?”

“No need to thank me; I need a worker as much as you need a job. I’ll pick you up at sunrise at your farm tomorrow.”

“Alright, I’ll be waiting! Right now, Maggie and I had better start heading back. Looks as if it’ll be dark by the time we get there as it is.”

“I’ll take you back in the wagon,” I said. “Just give me a hand hitching up one of the horses.”

“Oh, I couldn’t put you out to do that. You’ve done enough already.”

“Not a problem. I want to do it.”

 

The woman rode up front with me on the seat, while her father rode sitting on some sacks of grain in the back of the wagon. When we got to the McGill property, I had a quick look around the area.

“Boy, this place sure needs a lot of work. It’s worse than our property was when WE took it over. Perhaps I can patch up some of the holes in the house and barn while you’re out on deliveries. I have some spare planks that are just sitting around at home. I’ll give them to you, no charge.”

“How am I ever going to repay you for all this kindness?” said McGill.

“Don’t worry about it. When my mother and I needed help, people around here went out of their way. It’s the least we can do. What have you got in there to eat?”

“Well, not all that much, but we’ll manage.”

I looked at the man with a grin of disapproval.

“Let’s take a look, McGill.”

They had almost nothing inside their rickety cupboards—some old cornmeal, beans and lard.

“I’ll see you in the morning,” I said.

The woman and I looked at one another up close. Her red hair was an indistinguishable gray in the fading light, but was she ever good looking! Wow!

“Good night, Taylor,” she said softly.

“Good night—Maighread.”

I almost called her Miss McGill. I didn’t know her age, but I guess I actually did see her more as a grown woman than someone my own age. I mounted the wagon and left.

 

In the morning, I came to the McGill property just before dawn. McGill and I unloaded the planks and several bags of flour, some lard, yeast, various spices, vegetables from our garden, some chickens and eggs, and a large slab of bacon, all for which Patrick McGill was ever so thankful.

“You’re more than welcome, McGill. That should tide you over until I pay you for this week’s work on Saturday.”

Maighread waved goodbye as McGill and I headed down the road and into the sunrise.

 

McGill’s week-long training was uneventful. He caught on quickly. He liked the work and pay. To all those places to which we didn’t go this week, I drew a map and gave him the names and usual requests that those customers generally had.

The next week, with McGill on his own, I rode the other horse to the McGill property to see what I could do as far as repairs to their place. I nailed some new planks onto the house and barn, fixed the fencing to the chicken coop, and cleared weeds from the area of what had once been the garden.

Maighread retrieved a bucket of water from the well as I worked shirtless and sweating, digging out fence posts around the area of the barn. She then stood in the shade with her back against the barn to watch me drink and douse my head.

“Do you have a girlfriend?” she said.

“Nah.”

“Why not?” Don’t you like girls?”

“I like girls well enough. I just don’t run into a whole lot of them around here. The farms are few and far between and the girls currently at my school really don’t interest me all that much.”

“I could be your girlfriend,” she said.

I looked at her and gulped. She was even bolder than I initially thought.

“Yep, I suppose you could be.”

“How old are you?” she said.

“Fifteen. Why—how old are you?”

“Eighteen.”

“Well, that’s OK, too—”

“How gracious of you to find that acceptable,” she said.

“Well, that’s—that’s not exactly what I meant.”

“Do you think I’m pretty?”

I closed my eyes and couldn’t help but crack a smile.

“You’re very pretty; beautiful, in fact.”

“What kind of music do you play on your guitar?”

I told her of the old standards that I had learned from my father’s music book.

It was a hot sunny day. When I walked over to water my horse with the water left in the bucket, I was already dry from having drenched myself only a short while ago.

“So, what do I call you, Maighread or Maggie?”

“Maighread. My father is the only one who ever calls me Maggie.”

“I have to go,” I said.

“Will you be back here tomorrow?”

“Yes, I still have a number of fence posts to dig.”

“Bring your guitar. I can teach you some really nice Irish songs.”

As I went to mount my horse, Maighread ran up to stand in front of me. We were the same height. She then quickly kissed me on the cheek before stepping back.

“Well, if you’re going to be my boyfriend, I at least have to kiss you on the cheek,” she insisted.

“I’ll dream of you tonight, Taylor McKennitt.”

 

McGill kept the one horse and wagon over at his place nights, while all week long, I would ride the other horse over to the McGill property to work on whatever improvements I could make. I would work only a few hours each morning until it got too warm, after which Maighread and I would practice our music on their porch, turning the porch into our stage. We had come to know one another quite well in a short span of time, thanks to her prodding. We found out our birthdays were only about a week apart.

I also became acutely aware that she was developing feelings for me and I for her. I didn’t want to call it love exactly, or I was afraid to call it love, because we had only known one another for such a short time. Still, it was something, and I could tell something noticeable was changing inside me. It also started to cause me some consternation. What if she changed her mind? What if I continued to have feelings for her and she loses interest? These thoughts and many others brought me to the conclusion that any relationship with a woman would always be destined to become a double-edged sword.

Even though she did have a few years on me, I now saw the red-haired green-eyed teenage girl with the slightly upturned nose as just that, a teenage girl, someone around my own age, and not the grown woman, as was my initial impression of her, the day she and her father came walking up to our porch.

She had the most beautiful singing voice I had ever heard and played the violin and flute exquisitely. On songs that would require my participation, she would hum the music and I would improvise until I got the guitar accompaniment down just right. Once I learned the words to the songs, I would sing harmony. I even learned to sing a little in the old Irish Gaelic language, though I didn’t know the meaning of most of what I was singing.

This went on for several weeks as her father worked the deliveries. I generally left before he got home nights. We always kissed goodnight and as time went on, our kisses were becoming more and more passionate with each passing day. This was also due to her prodding. I often wondered just how much experience she had had with other boys, or even men. But that is not something a gentleman asks a lady. She was the first girl I ever kissed. I had no idea that their lips were so soft.

I’d finished most of what simple improvements needed to be made around the McGill place, but I would still come each morning after her father left to spend time with Maighread. We’d work on our music, we would ride my horse together, we’d go on walks and picnics and talk for hours on end. Whenever I was alone, I couldn’t help but spend a lot of time thinking about her.

 

Chapter Four

It was an unusually hot summer, 1856. Shortly after my arrival at the McGill place, Maighread and I set off on horseback to ride along the river as she suggested the previous night. At one point, we picked out a spot in the shade where we sat for a spell. Maighread had packed a picnic lunch, which she put into an enormous leather bag.

“Let’s go swimming,” she said.

“Water’s too swift. We’ll get washed away.”

“Oh, c’mon, you must know a place around here where we can go swimming. Don’t tell me that you’ve lived here all this time and you’ve never gone swimming.”

We rode a bit further along the river, took a few turns and detours, before stopping to tie the horse to a tree. I then led Maighread through a maze of brush to come out at one of my secret places, a spot where I had come countless times to swim, to take a bath, and do the deed.

The deep rocky pool here was fed by a year-around small stream, the outflow of which ran into the river about a mile away. The area was well hidden. There were cottonwoods, Rocky Mountain maples, and Manzanita shrubs in full bloom with pink flowers. The entire water-fed sanctuary of green provided an oasis in the otherwise dusty parched Utah summer landscape.

Still, I didn’t know what she meant by going swimming. I guess we could always swim in the clothes we were wearing, as they would soon dry in this hot weather.

“Oh, this is beautiful! Perfect! A paradise! The Garden of Eden!”

“Well, sort of,” I said with a smile.

We both stood on the large flat sandstone rock near the pool’s edge. She looked around the area, then bent down and felt the temperature of the water.

“So this is where you come to do it, huh?” she said looking over at the other side of the pool.

“What? Come to do what? Go swimming?”

She looked at me and smiled.

“You know what I mean, Taylor. This is where you come to be alone—to get naked and touch yourself. This is where you come to masturbate.”

I swallowed hard and my mouth became dry. I didn’t know what to say. I would never even have figured her to have known the meaning of that word. I could not quite figure out how she knew anyway. No one knew. I never told anyone of my masturbatory practices, not her, not even the boys at school. Was she testing me?

“How do you know what I do here?”

She looked at me again, but this time without so much as the hint of a smile.

“You know, Taylor, sharing a rented covered wagon with my father hasn’t exactly afforded me a lot of privacy these past months. At least now, when he leaves to go to work every day, I have the opportunity to be able to relieve myself. But still, I’m stuck doing it at the property, in a dusty old cabin.

I stood there, arms at my sides, listening to her.

“Look, Taylor, you’re no different than I am. This is just the sort of place I would come to do it if I had the option of getting away. In fact, this is exactly the sort of place I always sought out to be alone back home in Ireland—when I could find someone to watch my mother. We all have our needs.”

I knew her to be honest, perhaps to a fault, about everything, but I never expected her to reveal anything like this to me, or to speak so openly of such matters, at least not so brazenly and not so soon in our relationship. Perhaps it was just a matter of her being female. They do seem to reveal much more freely of themselves about such things, often wearing their hearts on their sleeves without so much as thinking they have to excuse themselves—at least once they get to know you. They just don’t seem to be under the same burden to lock things up as tightly as males do.

However, even as far as her gender was concerned, she seemed to be an exception. Her revelation to me just now was actually quite disarming, even flattering, seeing how she was putting herself out there in such a vulnerable position by opening herself up to me like that. Most people, male or female, would not do that. It spoke of trust. Still, at the same time, her boldness about such matters, along with being disarming, was also a bit intimidating.

She backed away from me several steps, and without undoing the buttons, pulled her over-sized shirt up over her head. She then removed her gray t-shirt. Below her freckled upper chest was a pair of rather large white breasts that wobbled side to side at the slightest movement. They were even larger than I had imagined them to be. She had thick pink prominent nipples and large light-colored areolas.

She looked at me for my reaction. I was desperately tempted to look and stare, but instead looked to the side, as I didn’t want her to see me looking.

“Well, aren’t you going to get undressed?” she said with a chuckle, her breasts bouncing and wobbling as she tossed her undershirt over onto the grass. “You don’t very well go swimming in your clothes, do you?”

“Huh? Uh, yeah, sure,” I said, slowly unbuttoning my shirt.

She smiled and undid her britches, pulling them down and letting them drop to her ankles, to stand there in underwear that looked as if they had been cut from a pair of her father’s long johns. She then slid these down exposing a healthy patch of pussy hair at the center of her shapely hips. The color of the hair wasn’t as bright as what she had on her head, but instead consisted of hair a shade darker with reddish-yellow highlights that glistened in the sun.

I kept stealing glances of her, then looked away, then my eyes would again come back for another look as if they had a mind of their own. I couldn’t resist.

She looked at me with upturned palms and shrugged her shoulders, as if to say, well, here I am, this is me, this is how I look.

She walked down the partially submerged flat rock landing leading into the pool, stuck in her toe, and then gingerly proceeded to walk down into the water.

I couldn’t help but stand there as if possessed, watching the sight of her full-figured butt wobble, up to the very moment she sprang into the water. This was no school girl for sure. This was a full-grown woman, with a full-grown woman’s body, fully developed. Of course, I sort of figured as much anyway, but to see the stark reality of it left me with indefinable, even somewhat uncomfortable feelings.

I believe I was actually envious, envious that this mature developed body of hers, this prize that only women possess, this valuable thing that a woman can lord over a man, was something that I didn’t have, something that was all hers, to share or not. I wanted her to want me as much as I wanted her, and as crazy as it sounds, I saw her body as some wonderful exclusive thing that only she possessed, something that separated her and me, something that put a distance between her and me. Women are different in this respect, I thought to myself. They do not have these same sorts of thoughts and feelings about men’s bodies, that men have about their bodies.

I took off my shirt and watched as she swam to the far shore and then back toward me, only to push off once again and do a backstroke, belly up, before coming to stand on the far shore, chest-deep in the water. The only things that were visible of her body now were her shoulders and her large buoyant breasts, just below the surface of the water, moving in concert with the gentle current that she had just stirred up during her swim.

She stood there with her wet red hair flattened against her head and waved for me to join her.

“Come on, slowpoke, the water’s fine! It’s warm,” she yelled.

I slowly dropped my pants and underwear. The fact that I had not developed a boner did not surprise me. I believe I was just too nervous, or just so much in shock at seeing Maighread naked, or I just wanted to resist letting her know just how much power her seductive awe-inspiring nakedness had over me as a male. I was also aware that this was the very first time anyone had ever seen ME naked since I was a baby. I nearly broke out in laughter at my own thoughts.

Testing the texture of the stone beneath the water to make sure it wasn’t too slippery, I felt the roughness of the sandstone on my bare soles as I slowly walked into the water.

I crouched down to push off from the rock landing to swim up next to Maighread. We both swam around the periphery at the deepest part of the pool several times, me following her. Finally, a bit out of breath, we both came to stand on the same flat rock where we had started. We were facing one another other, her large white breasts floating in the agitated water between us.

She rested her upper arms on my shoulders, her face close to mine. She kissed me on the lips as her right hand simultaneously reached beneath the water to grab my cock. I felt myself jump slightly and let out a grunt of surprise at her unexpected move.

She never took her eyes off mine as she began stroking me, retracting the foreskin taut, and then gently pulling the skin back and forth over the swelling head in a slow rhythmic fashion. My cock grew inside her hand in mere moments, until I had as stiff a raging boner as ever I had. I was aroused yet embarrassed at her knowing my arousal.

I thought of how sexual arousal is not something a man can hide from a woman, but mostly I wondered where she learned how to jack off a man. It can only be from experience—with other men. How else would she have learned it? Just something else to make me feel bad. Not only was she the one with the gloriously mature woman’s body, with which she knew she could tempt any man, but she was also the one in this relationship with all the knowledge of men, whereas I knew nothing of women’s bodies. The experienced woman and the virgin boy. That bothered me on several levels, not the least of which being that I had come to love her, and wanted her, and we were not equals in this respect. She had something else in the sexual realm I did not have—experience.

Maighread swam back over to the other side where we had first entered the water to walk up the rock landing and out of the water. She wrung out her wet red hair and let it drip on the hot dry rock. She then climbed up the rock face and proceeded to walk down the indistinct trail between the Manzanita bushes in the direction of where we had left the horse.

“I’ll be right back,” she yelled. I again watched her butt cheeks wobble as she walked into the trees and out of sight.

I also swam back to where we started and left the water to stand on the hot rocks of the shore. I let the sun dry my naked body, ever conscious of my erection, which had subsided only slightly. After about 5 minutes, Maighread returned with that rather large leather bag she had brought.

She pulled a thick fancy quilt from the bag and carefully spread it out in the shade atop the tall green grass behind the Manzanitas. She then walked over to where I was standing and took me by the hand to lead me to the area. We were both already dry, except maybe for our hair.

“Lie down on your back,” she ordered.

She laid down next to me, the front of her torso hovering over mine, looking into my face. She began kissing me hungrily, with wet lips, as her hand slid down my belly and once again started working my partially stiff cock. I regained a full erection in a matter of moments. She slid down, and as I watched her, she put the swollen bulb of my throbbing erection in her hot mouth. I had several dry contractions and let out several involuntary grunts. She glanced up at me.

“Go ahead and look,” she said.

Gently working the loose foreskin back and forth with her hand to the rhythm of her lips sliding over the length of my hard shaft, I was sure I was going to spill my seed into her mouth at any moment. That would be so embarrassing, I thought. However, to my surprise, I did not.

Once again, I had those same thoughts, the thoughts of all the men who must have come before me, on whom she had also once performed this very act. I was painfully jealous of yesterday’s ghosts. After a few minutes, her lips left my cock with a very audible smacking sound, which I deemed she purposely made.

There seemed to be some urgency on her part as to what came next, as if, for some reason, there was a need to be in a hurry. She flung her right leg over my torso and reached between our legs to work the engorged head of my swollen cock between her opening. After quickly wetting the bulbous tip with her juices, she pressed down to have her pussy completely envelope the aroused jumping organ. She was warm and very wet.

She moaned loudly. I also let out several involuntary grunts, as her silky slick wetness slid over my aroused cock again and again. For me, it was not only the physical sensation that aroused me, but the idea that, at this very moment, I was having my very first sexual experience with a woman. It was my first introduction to intimacy and real sex. The thing for which I had pined so very long was actually happening to me. The thought excited me terribly.

Still, something was so very different about the experience from what I had always imagined it to be, during all those years I had spent jacking off to my fantasies. It was definitely real, almost too real. Not that it wasn’t good. It was very good. It’s just that it was so very different from how I thought it would feel physically, and how I thought I myself would feel while engaging in it.

She sat back on her haunches, her back straight, looking down at me. With her full weight on my torso, we had maximum penetration, her pussy swallowing my cock to the hilt. She then bent down and put her hands on the quilt next to my head, her arms straight.

“Look at me!” she ordered. “Look me in my eyes.”

Slowly at first and then more vigorously, she began to hump me purposefully, her pussy sliding over the length of my hard shaft again and again. Whenever she stopped moving, I would reach up beneath her and fondle her soft undulating breasts, one in each hand, cupping them from the sides and then slowly stimulating each of her hard nipples with my thumbs in a circular fashion. She let out open-mouthed grunts in appreciation.

A few times, I broke eye contact with her and she would admonish me again to keep looking into her eyes. When it happened yet another time, she put her elbows on the quilt, so as to position her face just inches from mine and grabbed the hair on the top of my head with her right hand. Whenever I even hinted at looking away, she would squeeze the fistful of hair and shake my head.

“Look at me, dammit! Look at my eyes! Don’t look away!”

I felt her positioned herself so that a certain part inside her pussy rubbed against the top of my hard shaft at its base. It did hurt a bit, but I certainly wasn’t going to ask her to stop. She continued to look into my eyes and kept the rhythm going. Sweat had formed on her brow and her long red bangs, and droplets of her sweat dripped into my face. I licked my lips to taste her. Whenever she would pause in her movements for a few seconds, I would flex my muscles down there, which in turn would elicit from her a deep appreciative grunt, acknowledging that she felt me. I’m not sure why I did that; it just seemed the thing to do.

She began to hump me hard, to fuck me with abandon. My thoughts were muddled. I had no idea a girl—well, a woman—could be sexually animated to this extent. Was it all something she had learned from being with all those other men or was it just the pent-up sexual pressure she had built up over the last 18 years, during those times when her only outlet was masturbating alone in secret?

She increased the pace of her movements and with the surge came increased vocalizations—cries and moans. Shortly thereafter, she shook as if convulsing, let out a loud cry, and collapsed into my body. I felt her hot breath on my neck as her chest heaved for air. I could feel her contractions as the full weight of her body buried me into the blanket. I flexed my cock in an effort to swell its girth inside her and she again acknowledged me with a deep grunt.

She rose up and kissed me with what seemed to be an almost gratuitous, or polite, kiss, merely a kiss of recognition. Then, again with a demanding look in her eyes, she began humping my hard cock anew. After an even shorter span of time, she came again, but this time didn’t collapse into me. Rather, she had her orgasm while supporting her weight with both arms outstretched, her hands on either side of my head. As much as it appeared she resisted, she finally did close her eyes. I saw her countenance change from one of dominant lust to one of submission. This same action again played itself out another three times, until finally, she fell into me, exhausted, but apparently sated.

With her face between my neck and shoulder, she began crying. I laid there still fully erect inside her, feeling pretty much like a useless bump on a log, unsure of what to do next. After a few minutes, she rolled from me and onto her side. She put her arm around my torso and I rolled onto my side to have our eyes meet.

“I’m sorry I came across as aggressive as I did, Taylor. Somehow I got it in my head that everything was going to vanish, as if I was dreaming. That somehow, it was all going to disappear—you, the sex, the relationship—just before I had my orgasm each time. So, I had to hurry before it did.”

She sat up and smiled.

“Actually, that’s stupid. I’m not exactly sure what I thought. I’ll try not to look quite so desperate or be in such a hurry the next time.”

“It’s alright,” I said weakly, trying hard not to appear as if I was surprised or taken aback. Her apology actually came across to me more like one coming from a family member rather than something a lover would say.

“OK—well, just relax then. We are nowhere near being done,” she said. “Lay right there on your side and don’t move.”

I did as she commanded, my elbow on the quilt, my hand supporting my head. She sat up, reached around to pull forth another blanket, a rolled-up gray horse blanket, from the oversized bag. She put it behind her, to prop herself up with it. She then spread her legs in my direction. I looked at the glistening wet hairs around her slit, and then back up at her face.

“Look at it. Look at my pussy. Don’t be shy. I’m going to educate you.”

“Unlike men,” she started, “a woman’s parts are all on the inside. Most men, even married men, go through their entire lives not knowing anything about this part of a woman’s body.”

Looking down at herself, she spread her legs wide to reveal two thick wrinkled wet flaps of pink flesh protruding from the slit of her hair-covered mound. She pulled outward on these with her thumb and forefingers and then let go. They partially retracted back into the hair.

“These are the inner lips, OK?”

Seeming rather enthusiastic, she held herself open to reveal even more.

“This is the opening to the vagina,” she said, putting her index finger inside herself. “This is where a man’s cock enters during sex, like yours just did. This is also where the baby comes out.”

I was still hard as she shared her secrets with me, but I was not necessarily becoming more aroused at the sight of what she was showing me. I was more fascinated at seeing and learning these things about a woman’s body; things, which, just as she said, I probably never would have learned otherwise. 

“OK, look closely. You see this area a little further up from there, this part with the hole in it? This is from where a woman pees.”

She would occasionally look up at me as she explained to make sure I was getting it. I would look up at her each time and wonder how this woman, at her tender young age, became so bold as to shamelessly share the most intimate parts of her body so freely with a man. She spoke rather dryly and matter-of-factly, almost as if she was the teacher, showing me today’s lesson on the blackboard. Well, we were boyfriend-girlfriend, but still, we were only now getting to know one another sexually. Was this lack of inhibition to share these things with me also the result of having been with men, perhaps numerous other men?

“OK, now, pay attention here—this here is the most important part of all,” she said, pulling up on her pussy so as to retract the fold of skin at the top of her glistening parts, revealing a small shiny pink nodule.

“This is called the clitoris. During intercourse, or when masturbating, or getting oral sex, stimulating this, or stimulating the skin around it, makes a woman have her orgasm.”

She removed her fingers from her pussy.

“Any questions?” she said, searching my face.

“Yes. Where did you learn this stuff? The names of the parts and everything.”

“My mother’s health books. She gave them to me. Well, they’re not really health books. They’re marital guides for women, written by a woman. I still have them. Where we lived in Ireland, most everyone is very religious and it is difficult to come by things such as these. Sex isn’t talked about there openly.”

“So, these books are also where you learned how to masturbate a man?”

“Yes.”

She gave me a frown.

“Why?”

“Oh, uh, no reason. I was just wondering.”

Books! A sudden epiphany, followed by a lightness of heart. In so much as the merest of moments, all my fears had very much been allayed. The men, with whom I imagined that she had had all this sex, didn’t exist! Or, probably didn’t exist.

I also felt a bit ashamed. I doubted her and thus I had been unfair to her in my mind. Then again, even if she had learned about sex from being with other men, what could she do about it now? It would have been in her past. I can’t very well expect her to change what had happened before she met me.

I have to admit though, I did feel better knowing that I was the first. Well, I didn’t know that for sure, but I was probably the first in any sort of serious way. I’d better just forget it I thought, push it out of my mind, before I ruin something really good.

Still, I wondered about the way she did sex. Where did she learn to do it the way she does it? Did all that come from the books as well or was it just her? Was she following some prescribed script or was it all natural? Do all women do sex the way she does it? So many questions.

Well, then again, on second thought, it’s not that I was all that “normal” either when it came to my own sexual thoughts and masturbatory practices. I didn’t learn that from anywhere in particular; it just sort of developed over time. So, why would I expect differently from her, or any other person, really. We are probably all very different, one from another, in what we like.

Maighread taught me all about women’s periods and babies and fertile times and such. Of course, I already knew about much of that sort of thing working around farmers and their animals.

As I lay on my back, she laid across my chest, looking into my eyes. The sun flickered through the leaves, painting our naked bodies with ever-changing shapes of light and shadow. She kissed my lips softly, as her hand again slid down my belly to my cock, still fully erect. She again began working my flesh.

This time, I was much more relaxed, knowing how it was she came to know what it takes to pleasure a man. In fact, it now aroused me greatly to know that she WAS so schooled in what a man likes sexually. After all, what secrets did I have left to conceal from her now, if she already knew in advance, thanks to the woman who authored her books, all the probable masturbatory practices and all the other well-guarded carnal secrets that my heart harbored because I WAS a man? I felt naked before her, free to expose my body, soul, and lust to her—and what a grand feeling it was! It was freeing—SO freeing—to be able to let go and reveal one’s most private passions to another!

After about a minute of working my erection to an uncontrollable jumping frenzy, she rolled on her back next to me, spreading her legs, presenting herself to me. She wriggled and lifted her arms above her head to stretch out on the quilt, revealing the pelts of thin light-colored hairs under her arms. What I did next came as natural to me as if I had done it a thousand times, even though I had never before done it even once.

I straddled her waist, pressed my thumbs into her armpits, and while gently rubbing the hair, kissed her on the lips. Then, without removing my hands, I slid down to have my face even with her breasts. In this position, they were flattened against her chest and had become very soft and wobbly, like gelatin. Her nipples were hard and erect, and the areolas and the skin surrounding each areola had tightened and taken on a crinkly appearance.

I opened my mouth wide to take in the larger part of each areola, while teasing her hard nipples with the tip of my tongue, first one, then the other. My mouth could feel the tightness of the crinkly skin defined by her areolas as opposed to the softness of the rest of her breasts. After a time, I slid down further to kiss her belly. She jumped a bit, as if ticklish.

Bending her knees, she spread her legs even wider, inviting me to lie down between them. I did so, wrapping my arms around her thighs. I kissed her belly just above where the pussy hair began and started working my way down. Once my mouth was even with the top of her slit, I lifted my head to gaze at her pussy up close, to look at the dense dark red hair and thick wrinkly protruding flaps of flesh that were her inner lips. I licked both the hair and the flesh of her pussy. She was wet and salty. She spread her legs yet wider and with the fingers of both her hands, reached down to hold herself open to my wanton gaze and the accommodation of my tongue.

With my hard cock pressed into the quilt, I worked my tongue around her entire pussy. However, based on what she had told me, I concentrated mostly on the upper part of her, around the clitoris, inventing different movements with my mouth and tongue while listening for her audible responses, sensitive to each of her moans and pauses. I could smell her scent. It was the best smell in the world. It was my lover’s smell. I’m not sure exactly what compelled me to initiate this particular act, but somehow I knew that if I wanted to be truly intimate with my lover, this was the most obvious thing for me to do. It was the RIGHT thing for me to do.

She became very wet, very quickly. At one point, I didn’t know if the wetness on my face and mouth was due to my saliva or if it was from her secretions. I resolved that it must be both. I thought about her juices melding together with the saliva inside my mouth, to become a part of me. I swallowed.

I would occasionally lick her wet fingers, so as to impress further upon her the intimacy of the act I was performing on her. I would occasionally stop to take another look at her raw feminine wares, surrounded by all that hair, before my tongue again dove into her glistening wetness. In the worst way, I so wanted to make her orgasm while my mouth was on her.

She removed her fingers from her pussy and began to hump, clasping my face between her thighs, inadvertently pushing my head away from her body as she did so. I had to grab onto her butt cheeks with both hands and pull her toward me, so as not to have her movements cause my mouth to lose contact with her pussy. Finally, I settled on just letting her rub herself on my open mouth and flattened tongue. She humped my face, occasionally reaching down to stimulate her clitoris with her fingers, then she’d go back to humping my face. Suddenly, she stopped moving.

“Come on,” she said, grabbing hold of my forearm.

I crawled up to be at eye level with her and kissed her on the lips with my wet mouth. I mounted her quickly. She reached between our legs and positioned me at her opening, and I pushed. We both let out quiet groans as my stiff cock slid effortlessly into her slick wetness. She drew back her legs and bent them sharply at the knee.

As I began slowly thrusting into her, I thought of how the different sex positions made me feel. With her on top, I had a heightened awareness of her sexuality, her needs, her person. I could look at her and touch her body with my hands. I could fondle her breasts, suck her nipples, and when she sat back on her haunches, I could stimulate her pussy with my thumb —everything was within the reach.

However, with me on top, things felt different. I felt as if she was giving herself to me. I felt as if she was giving me pussy, giving me HER pussy, mercifully and generously satisfying my manly needs with altruism in her heart. I felt she wanted to give herself to me for my pleasure, because she sympathized with the all-consuming compulsion of her lover’s desire.

Each time I pushed my stiff cock into her wet slick flesh, she moved her legs in rhythm to my movements, lightly brushing her soft thighs against my hips and legs. She would then draw her legs back up again, keeping perfect pace with each of my well-timed thrusts.

I thought of the perfect rhythm that male and female created for one another during this intimate act, how we fit together so perfectly, and how well the sexes complimented one another. I thought of how having sex was so much like the way Maighread and I made our music together, how it was so much like the give and take in the way we spoke and flirted with one another. This act, singularly, was the culmination of all that our relationship engendered, the climax to a perfect crescendo. God must have intended it this way. There was no other explanation.

It came all so natural now. This time, it was I who wanted to look into her eyes, my outstretched arms supporting my weight, my hands at the sides of her head, my knees pressed into the quilt below us. She moaned softly in her submission, the look of pleasure on her face increasing with each movement we made.

At one point I raised up, straightening my legs so the only parts of us touching were her pussy and my cock, our pubic hairs lightly rubbing on the up-stroke. I would slowly penetrate her and then just as slowly pulled out of her, nearly to the point to where my cock was in danger of coming out of her altogether, then I would push deep inside her once again. I would then do it faster, making wet clicking sounds, my stiff slippery cock sliding in and out of her slick pussy with each pleasurable thrust. Her moans told me she liked that sound and that sly look of lust on her face revealed to me all else I needed to know.

“Fuck me!” she whispered, looking me in the eyes. “Fuck me hard!”

I complied, but surprised at her language. Never once had I previously heard her utter even the most moderate of vulgarities, but now, in the heat of the moment, it seemed appropriate somehow. I slammed my hard cock into her, seemingly penetrating deeper into her pussy each time. Still, I felt myself holding back a bit. After all, she was a soft, vulnerable, tender and delicate female, and I didn’t want to hurt her. She began moaning loudly, calling out a name.

“Fuck me, Acushla! Fuck me harder!” she demanded. “I’m almost there!”

I concentrated hard so as not to cum too soon, conscious that my swinging groin sack was aching with overwhelming need and on the verge of losing its burden at any moment. However, I so wanted her to get off first, I needed her to get off first.

She cried out, grunting, holding onto my waist. With her back curved, she humped my torso in response to my thrusts, her legs spread wide and held high in the air. My body shook, my mind reeled, and I called out, open-mouthed, with several deep soul-felt groans, as I submitted myself to the mercies of my lover’s gifts. I could hold off no longer and my hot lust spilled uncontrollably into her belly in several intense pleasurable spurts.

My still-erect cock was now sore and raw, and my balls ached uncomfortably from having cum so hard, but I kept thrusting, knowing she would probably cum again in just a few moments, if I just kept going—and she did.

She let out several loud cries and then closed her eyes to let the contractions milk the last of the energy from my waning erection. I collapsed into her, supporting my weight with my elbows, my head next to hers. We lay there together, our chests heaving in unison.

After about a minute, she let out a chuckle, as did I. One giggle, then another. Soon we both began laughing uncontrollably. Then, when the contractions caused by her laughter squeezed and expelled my now flaccid slick cock from of her pussy in one quick spurt, I rolled off her and we both started laughing like lunatics. Were the ridiculous antics of sex all that humorous or was our laughter due to the relief we both felt? We looked at one another and laughed so loud that we were actually screaming. I believe it was in that moment that she and I bonded, inextricably and forever, linked to one another by the wondrous consummating power of sex between a man and a woman.

After a time, she put her head on my chest, and we rested quietly in each other’s arms, soaking in the warm ambiance of intimacy’s delights.

I don’t know which one of us fell asleep first, but when we awoke after what might have been an hour or two, the shade had moved from over the quilt and we were lying right in the sun’s glare.

“We’d better move before we both end up getting burnt,” I said. “Especially you, my redheaded Acushla.”

“Now, who taught you that word?”

“You did.”

“It’s an old Irish word,” she said. “It means my pulse, my vein, my heartbeat.”

After we slid the blanket further into the shade, she took the lunch she had prepared for us that morning from the leather bag and we sat naked on the blanket, eating our food. Potato salad, bacon and egg sandwiches, slightly soggy—but to us, they tasted better than anything either of us had ever eaten. With a mouthful of food, she leaned over and kissed me on the lips.

“This has been the best day of my life ever, Taylor McKennitt. I love you.”

I smiled and returned the kiss. I loved her too, but I wouldn’t say it just now; but at some point, I would say it. All I know is that I was glad that she led today’s dance, and that, thanks to her mother’s books, she had the knowledge to do so. I shuddered to think of where we would be, had the seduction been left up to me.

I took the empty potato salad bowl, rinsed it out in the pool and took some water to the horse. When I returned to the area of the blankets, Maighread stood stretching, standing on the flat rock over near the pool’s edge. I looked down to see a mixture of blood and cum on the quilt that I hadn’t noticed previously.

“Let’s get back in the water,” she yelled.

We swam the length of the pool several times to come to rest on the same flat rock below water level on the opposite shore where we had previously stood. We kissed and held one another without speaking. I never knew it was possible to enjoy another person’s company so completely as I enjoyed being with Maighread. I was in love. I was in love with this woman, my lover, my friend. I so felt blessed of God.

After about an hour, we left the water and stood on the shore to dry off in the sun. Thereafter, we decided to walk around the area a bit, down indistinct deer trails, through the Manzanitas, around fertile berry bushes, always watchful where our bare feet landed as we so gingerly stepped over obstacles. We were naked and unashamed, free and happy, two lovers at the dawn of their relationship. Heaven was real.

We walked down the trail to where the horse was tied to a tree, then around the dry sun-parched perimeter on the periphery of our oasis, our Garden of Eden. We stopped to kiss, with our feet buried in the dust of the trail, before we again returned to the area of the pool and our blanket.

We lay on our sides, facing one another and began kissing and touching one another anew. It was evident to the both of us that we just weren’t going to get enough.

“Here,” she said, lifting both legs in the air. “Lie on your side and scoot up to me.

I did as instructed, so that with her legs spread wide and her left leg draped over my lower right leg, my head now rested on her lower right leg, so that my flaccid cock was flat up against her pussy. I reached between us and rubbed her pussy hair and the exposed parts of her sun-dried inner lips with my foreskin. In mere moments, I was hard again. I pulled back the foreskin to put the head of my cock at her opening and gently pushed, easily penetrating her. In this contorted yet comfortable “T” shape, we had the ability to keep uninterrupted eye contact, with her looking down at me and me looking up at her.

As I began thrusting, she pushed downward with each stroke, so that my cock became fully enveloped inside her with each of our movements. We looked into one another’s faces as we kept this up for some time, slowly, and then very slowly, never breaking eye contact. There was no hurry. We had both had our fill of orgasms. What we wanted was intimacy—true and unequivocal intimacy.

She reached down between her legs with her left hand and began to masturbate. I stopped thrusting and scooted up to her so that my throbbing cock was deep inside her to the fullest length possible. I then placed my right hand atop her hand to feel every movement her hand made as she pleasured her flesh. I thought it was doubtful whether either of us could again achieve orgasm. Our actions were merely sex for sex sake, sex for intimacy’s sake—having sex, free and unencumbered, because for the first time in both our young lives, we could.

I would occasionally break eye contact to watch her hand stimulate her clitoris. She used her middle and ring fingers to manipulate the skin around the nub. I know she wanted me to look at her, to watch her, to be witness to the act, which, up until today, she had practiced only in secret all these years.

Amazingly, it wasn’t long at all before her face flushed red and with her mouth agape, she submitted to her need once again, closing her eyes, her face pointed heavenward. My stiff cock felt her contractions. She laid there for some time before again looking at me. She smiled.

“It was just a small one.”

We remained in our position, my erect cock inside her, my hand atop her hand, her hand loosely cupped around her pussy.

“You see the quilted blanket on which we’re lying?” she said. “I brought it over from Ireland. My mother made it for me. I told myself that I would lose my virginity on this blanket when I met the right man, and in the day that I did, my mother would be a part of it.”

I felt privileged and humbled, but said nothing.

“You miss her, huh?”

“My mother and I were very close. She taught me everything I know. Most importantly, she taught me how to love—to love life, to love people, to love men, to love animals.”

We spoke of our parents—her father, my mother, her dead mother, my dead father. We spoke of sex, our sexual fantasies and masturbation. We spoke of our lives up to this point in time. We spoke of God and the afterlife. We spoke of our relationship, the future, our hopes and aspirations, all the while with our organs coupled together as one.

“Do you see any reason why we can’t encourage your father and my mother to get together?” I said.

“No, I don’t see any reason at all. I mean, I saw my mother up until a year ago, before she died. For me, it was devastating. It still is. But my father has been living over here. He has been away from her for over 5 years now. I’m sure it’s not the same for him.”

I realized just then that I had become so accustomed to Maighread’s voice that I had all but lost my awareness of her accent.

“No, I suppose not.”

A moment of quiet transpired between us.

“I want to hold a barbecue picnic this Sunday after church at my house. You, me, your father, my mother. Tell your father to take Saturday off with pay. That way, he’ll be well-rested for Sunday. You can help me with the food on Saturday and we can all go to church together on Sunday before the picnic. How’s that sound?”

She lifted her brow, smiled and nodded in agreement.

We laid there quietly for some time relaxing, my hand still atop her hand and her hand still resting on her pussy. I looked into her green eyes and took her hand in mine.

“I love you, Maighread McGill.”

We washed our clothes at the pool’s edge and waited for them to dry on the rocks, so it was early evening before we got back to the McGill property.

“My father will be home soon. I need to fix him some dinner.”

“What would your father say if he found out about us?”

“It’s not a problem. My father treats me like an adult, which I am. Still, you are the a rún mo chroí.

“I’m the what?” I said, smiling.

“You are the secret of my heart and I want to keep it that way, at least for a while. It makes everything so much more exciting, daring, intimate, romantic.”

We kissed and said our “I love yous.”

“I want to go back to our spot tomorrow, Taylor McKennitt,” she said, almost demandingly.

“We will, Maighread. Oh, and today’s Thursday—don’t forget to tell your father about Saturday and Sunday, the barbecue.”

She clung to my pant leg as my horse walked away. We touched fingertips before I rode off.

 

As I rode home, I could smell her scent on my face. I licked my lips and thought of the day’s events. I guess now that I’ve lain with a woman, I can call myself a man. I chuckled at the idea. How childish. I knew one thing—I was happy, the happiest I’ve ever been in my life. I was in love, crazy in love. In one day, my life had changed completely and forever. I knew I would never look at life the same way again.

Something else I realized is that none of what had happened today between Maighread and me was an accident. She had it all planned out. The ride; the desire that we go swimming, so that we could be clean; the big leather sack stuffed with the two blankets, the one, her mother’s quilt. Then, there was the way she went about assuaging my inhibitions by revealing to me that she also masturbates and under what circumstances, breaking down any resistance to letting go that I might have felt.

Yep, she was a sly one alright, surely my better in that area, but in a good way. They say girls mature much sooner than boys. With her, I believe it. Not only that, she is also three years older than I am. She was still a teenage girl, but it wouldn’t surprise me at all if maturity-wise, she had at least ten years on me. God, I love her!

 

I could smell the cornbread when I entered. My mother had set it atop the stove next to the pot of beef stew to keep it warm.

“Hi, Mother, it sure smells good in here.”

She looked at me with suspicion.

“Well, you seem to be in an especially cheery mood this evening, Taylor.”

“Am I? I hadn’t noticed.”

“You told me you’re all done with the work that you were going to do down at the McGill place, yet you still go down there every day.”

“Um—yeah,” I said, nodding.

“What do you and the McGill girl do all day?”

“Maighread? Well, you know, we practice our music, go for walks, talk, things like that.”

“Uh-huh—”

“I was thinking, Mother. We should have a barbecue and invite McGill and his daughter over here Sunday. Maighread agreed to help me with the preparations. If it’s alright with you, that is. You know, in appreciation for McGill putting in all that hard work for us.”

“—in appreciation?”

“Yeah, you know.”

“Well, if you and the McGill girl want to do all the cooking, I have no objection.”

“I’d better bed down the horse for the night,” I said.

 

I only masturbated once that night after Mother went to sleep. This time, my thoughts during the act were much different. I didn’t think of imaginary girls, their naked bodies, their pussies and having sex with them. This time, I thought only of Maighread, her face, her voice, her laugh. For some reason, I gave only cursory thought to her body. It was not some distant object to be thought of in terms of lust alone, to be worshiped through an act of masturbation; my girlfriend’s body was my best friend’s body, something with which I was now familiar, as familiar as I was with my own body. Yes, it was still a sexual body, one with which I wanted to be intimate, but it was unseemly, even disrespectful, for me to think of her only in terms of her body. In fact, it wasn’t at all possible for me to think of her only in that way.

When you love someone I thought, you love their spirit. Your physical acts of sexuality only reinforce that love, and it is not something that stands apart from your overall relationship. I quietly laughed at myself and the new-found wisdom that I, a 15-year-old boy with his head in the clouds, had.

I again realized the day’s events had changed me forever—happy, yet still so very confused about a lot of things. I have Maighread to thank for my growth as a person. I KNEW that, and I felt indebted to her. I even liked feeling indebted to her. I was so happy as to be giddy. So much so that I had a difficult time going to sleep. I thought of her lying in bed thinking of me and our day down at the pool together. I wished there was someone else to whom I could tell all the happiness that I felt.

 

Chapter Five

Late morning, the next day, Maighread and I rode off to another one of my many secret places, a shadier one, one having several pools of different sizes, all connected. I made the lunch this time and we both brought blankets. However, her mother’s quilt, she left at home. Today, I didn’t even have to pretend that I didn’t know what she meant, had she asked if I come here to be alone and masturbate—I had already told her everything about me concerning my sexuality, my masturbation habits and all else. Everything, which, up until yesterday, I thought I could never share with anyone. Likewise, she had reciprocated in kind, and I was now just as informed about her own inner thought life, her sexual practices and fantasies, as she was informed about mine.

We got undressed, got into the water and immediately started kissing and touching one another. She grabbed my cock under the water. This time, I was already hard, even before she began stroking it. I didn’t have to worry or pretend about that either.

 

The stream that connected the many pools ran down a hill and out of sight into the brush of a densely forested area. The area of the largest pool was located in the sunshine for most of the day, whereas the areas of the smaller pools were in the shade of the many trees surrounding each particular pool all day long. Over the millennia, the running water had cut deep holes into the rock, forming cisterns, large enough in which to swim. The smaller pools, through which the water flowed more slowly, were as warm as bathwater and they would be good places in which we could sit in the water and discuss for hours on end if we so wished during future visits.

However, we didn’t spend as much time in the water today. Instead, we walked out from our bath and up onto the cushion of deep grass, where we had laid out our blankets. We both knew why we were here, what we wanted, and what we needed to do. Neither of us had to pretend with each other about anything.

We knelt on the blankets, kissed, and fell together. We flowed into one another as easily and naturally as if we had spent an entire lifetime together. We now had license with one another, to touch and to express affection as we saw fit. We did most of the same things we had done the previous day, but we also experimented, seeking out new positions and variations, things about which Maighread had read and seen illustrated in her mother’s books.

At one point, she knelt down on the blanket and for a time sucked my aroused cock as I stood on my feet, naked and erect before her. Another thing we tried was the way animals do it, also something from her mother’s books. She bent way over, her head resting on crossed arms, her chest flat on the blanket and her butt in the air. I could see everything, her pussy, her butthole, the red hairs growing in the crack of her butt. I could look down and see my stiff white glistening cock sliding in and out of her wet pink pussy, her thick moist reddened inner lips clinging to the sides of the hard shaft with each partial withdrawal it made. She rose up, so as to be on all fours, and instructed me to grab a fistful of her hair from the back of her head.

“Fuck me! Fuck me hard!

She moaned and groaned loudly, as my haunches slammed up against her naked butt, making very audible slapping sounds in the stillness of the forest. The sound seemed to excite her terribly.

However, as much as she seemed to enjoy this position, which we tried at her insistence, I had reservations about it. Fucking her from behind in this manner made me feel not as if we were pleasuring one another, and not as if I was pleasuring her, but more like I was doing something to her, using her, raping her in fact, and it made me feel a bit squeamish.

In hindsight, my impression of why she wanted to engage in this position was that, as bold as Maighread was, she needed to act out her role as the submissive woman, and during sex was one of the few times she could do just that. I didn’t tell her about my reservations, and I never would. I would just continue going along with this practice, just as I would go along with ANY future practice, so long as it was something she liked to do.

Given our preferences, there was also something I found I like to do best, and that was licking her pussy to orgasm. I believe in my mind, it made me feel as if it puts a woman in a very vulnerable position and that if a man performs this act on her with regularity, she will never have reason to hide anything from him about anything that should lie upon her heart, ever. I also figured, if he’s any good at it, she’ll never have reason to leave him for another either. Something about this singular act made me feel as though I was not only being intimate with Maighread’s body, but with the collective personages of all womankind—strange.

 

After engaging in sex for several hours, and having had our fill of orgasms, we once again remained in our favorite position for discussion, the “T” position—our organs united, her pussy swallowing my stiff cock to its base, all the while as we conversed. She told me how, last night, her father said he hadn’t seen her this happy since she arrived in America and wondered why. I told her about my mother wondering the same thing about me.

“I think my mother knows about us,” I said. “At least she strongly suspects. But just as I’m sure she knows that I’m masturbating at night and doesn’t say anything, I don’t believe I’ll ever hear her say anything about us, either.”

“Well,” said Maighread, “she was young once too, and I’m sure she still has her needs now. What, with your father gone and all. You have to figure, it has been nearly 3 years for her.”

“Yeah, I suppose you’re right. The same thing could be said about your father. I guess we just don’t like to think of our parents in that way.”

“By the way, what did your father say about Sunday?”

“He’s all for it! I told him about taking off tomorrow, too.”

“Great!” I said. “Come to town with me tomorrow so we can pick up the things for the barbecue?”

“Yes!”

 

Chapter Six

I rode to the McGill farm early. It would be Maighread’s first trip to town. She had very little in the way of clothes to wear. So, since she and I are about the same size, I took her a pair of my blue jeans and a nice dress shirt, one which mother had bought for me when we lived back east. The problem was, Maighread couldn’t button the top three buttons of the shirt, so once we got to my house, my mother lent her a light blue silk scarf with which she could cover herself.

 

I introduced Maighread as McGill’s daughter to those people in town who were important to me in my business and who had come to know McGill. I then gave her the tour of the small town, showing her where I go to school, the dress shop where my mother worked, and several other places before she and I went to the Shamrock for lunch. Afterward, we went grocery shopping at the mercantile and the butcher shop, things for the barbecue, before heading home.

 

When Maighread and I got back to my house, we set about cooking the ribs, the roast, and some of the food in advance of the barbecue, so that the only thing we would have to do tomorrow would be to reheat the roast and the side dishes and throw the precooked ribs onto the fire pit grate.

As Maighread and I worked together in the kitchen area of the cabin, I was feeling a bit apprehensive, pretty sure that Mother, sitting at the kitchen table, was watching every move Maighread and I made, interested in how the two of us related to one another.

Maighread and I would often exchange glances when the eyes of at least one of us were hidden from my mother’s view. It was pretty obvious to anyone taking notice that she and I didn’t exactly behave like strangers toward one another. Apparently feeling the same sort of stress I was feeling right now, I figured Maighread was probably wishing for the same thing for which I was wishing right now—for the both of us to be back down at one of our pools. However, we both understood that we had obligations and that there would occasionally be other things we had to do in life—like conspiring against our parents to try and get them together.

“Do you like butter in your mash potatoes while they are being made, Mrs. McKennitt, or do you prefer to put the butter on later?” said Maighread.

“Either way is fine by me,” Mother replied in monotone.

“You know, Mother, Maighread’s father plays both the accordion and the mouth harp. I suggested they both bring their instruments tomorrow and we can all play and have a sing-along.”

“That would be nice,” Mother replied.

“Thank you so very much for letting me use your beautiful scarf today, Mrs. McKennitt. It accentuated the rest of my outfit beautifully.”

Mother stood and pulled some baking pans from below the sink.

“I suppose the least I can do is prepare the makings for the sourdough biscuits and cornbread and get it all ready for baking,” she said smiling.

She then walked over to Maighread, put her arm around her and kissed the side of Maighread’s head.

“You’re very welcome, dear. You keep the scarf. I have many others. Our families getting together for a barbecue is a wonderful idea and I want to thank you for helping prepare the food, Maighread.”

I was more than thrilled that Mother finally called Maighread by her name. The three of us worked in the kitchen a few hours, conversing quietly, all in seeming perfect harmony. When we were finished, we put lids on everything and I took Maighread back home.

 

“I was beginning to wonder if she liked me,” said Maighread.

“She’s coming around. You’re the new female on the scene. First, she loses her husband and now she feels she’s losing her son to another woman. It’s difficult for her. She really is a nice person.”

“You’ll always be her son.”

“I know. Still, it’s all the more reason to get her and your father together. Don’t you agree?”

“Yes.”

 

I had purchased a couple of brightly colored banners on strings at the mercantile in Morgan when Maighread and I were in town. I strung these from the front corners of the roof outward and fastened the other ends to pegs in the ground. I also constructed a makeshift wooden frame, over which I stretched a light-colored tarp to shield the dining area from direct sun. I set up a couple tables and some chairs beneath the tarp. The fire pit was in the corner of the front yard, so it was only a short distance for me to walk to supervise the preparation of the ribs.

Maighread and her father arrived in the wagon about 7 AM. Mother sat on the seat with McGill while Maighread and I rode in the rear of the wagon.

There were two churches in town, one Catholic, the other Protestant. We attended the Protestant church. In Ireland, the Catholics and Protestants had often been at odds with one another historically, but on the frontier, because we were all out of our element, most religious denominations tolerated each other well. Besides, we were living in a territory largely controlled by the Mormons, so, with the rest of us being a minority, everyone made an extra effort to get along. During services, I pointed out to Maighread the parson’s daughters, the ones I had seen naked at the pool.

 

Upon getting back home to mine and mother’s cabin, we sat at the picnic table I had set up outside. We talked about what we knew of the local events and personalities living in the area. Whenever McGill started to talk shop, I made sure to steer the conversation elsewhere, so as not to leave the women out of the discussion.

I put the condiment rack in the center of the smaller table and asked Maighread to help me with the barbecue sauce inside the cabin, leaving Mother and McGill to sit at the table by themselves.

 

Once inside the cabin, I glanced out the doorway, then grabbed Maighread’s left butt cheek through the dress that Mother had loaned her for church. I pulled her toward me, pressed my groin against her crotch, and gave her a quick kiss on the lips.

“Keep that up and you’ll have to do something about it, Taylor McKennitt,” she whispered, smiling.

“Hey,” I said, motioning with my head toward the door. “After we eat, we need to leave the two of them by themselves as much as possible today.”

Maighread looked over my shoulder at the doorway, sidled up to me and ground the palm of her hand into my crotch. She then spun around to return the kiss.

“I figured as much.”

I grabbed the barbecue sauce, my guitar, stuck my mouth harp into my pocket and headed back outside. Maighread went to the wagon to collect her violin and flute. After I coated the ribs with the sauce, both Maighread and I returned to where Mother and McGill were seated at the table.

 

“OK,” I said with a smile. “The ribs are just about done and lunch will be in about a half hour. As you both know, Maighread and I have been practicing our music over the last few weeks and we are going to entertain you while we all wait for the ribs to finish cooking.”

I encouraged Mother and McGill to sit closer together as I took a chair from the table and set it next to where Maighread was standing. With me seated in the chair, guitar in hand, mouth harp on my knee, and with Maighread standing, violin in hand and flute in pocket, Mother and McGill sat in anticipation.

“OK,” said Maighread, “our first offering is a piece called Laddie Lie Near Me.”

While both our parents clapped tepidly at her introduction, I cringed. I thought maybe Maighread had taken leave of her senses as to her choice of song. This song, due to its intimate subject matter, is not something I would have chosen to put on display before our parents. Besides, I thought she wanted our relationship kept secret.

At the end of the song, Mother and McGill clapped vigorously. However, about halfway through the song, Mother had started crying. I hadn’t seen her cry since Father died. 

“That was beautiful, Maighread—absolutely beautiful, you two,” said my mother tearfully. “My husband took me to a dance hall when we visited Boston and that was the first time I heard that song. You sing it beautifully, my dear. You are as talented as anyone I’ve ever heard sing.”

My mother looked at McGill, again trying to explain how it was that she knew the song and why it affected her so.

Maighread and I played another song, which was just as enthusiastically received by both Mother and McGill. Maighread and I then went inside, reheated the roast and side dishes, and baked the cornbread and sourdough biscuits Mother had made the previous day, and brought everything outside. We set everything on the small table holding the condiments. I brought up the ribs from the fire pit and cut them into sections. Everyone dished up their own food.

McGill said grace and we ate our meal under the shade of the tarp. The conversation took us to places back east, to music, to life out here on the prairie, and to conversations about how much things had changed for each of us from what they had once been. When we finished eating, Maighread and I went for a walk, leaving Mother and McGill seated at the table.

 

Maighread and I walked the boundary of the property along a rusted old barbed-wire fence, held up by an odd assortment of dried-out fence posts, leaning in all sorts of directions.

“What were you thinking with that first song?” I said. “You were the one who wanted to keep our relationship a secret, remember? You said it was much more exciting, daring, intimate and romantic that way.”

She thought for a moment and then gave me a searching look.

“You know, you’re right! That completely went over my head! My intent was to instill the thought into THEIR heads of how it used to be for them, when THEY were young and THEY both had someone to lie near. I guess they could have taken it to mean I was singing about us.”

“Well, that’s OK. I did feel a bit squeamish singing about that sort of thing in front of our parents though, either way. I just thought it was a bit odd, that’s all.”

“Perhaps I’m getting senile early. Or perhaps my heart is just getting the better of me. See, it’s all your fault, Taylor McKennitt.”

I rolled my eyes.

She quickly walked ahead of me and then turned to face me, walking backward and jumping up and down.

“So, are we going to one of our spots again tomorrow?” she said with a big smile.

I stopped and touched my index finger to the tip of her nose, then ran the finger down through the middle of her lips before kissing her on the mouth.

“Of course. But remember, tomorrow is Monday. I go to school on Mondays and Tuesdays, so I’ll be in school in the morning. I’ll try and make up some excuse to leave early though. Be ready about noon or so.”

By the time Maighread and I returned to the area of the table and chairs, Mother and McGill had left. We looked in the cabin, but they weren’t there.

“They probably went for a walk,” she said. “I’m sure they don’t need us to babysit them. They have old people’s stuff to discuss.”

“Old people’s stuff?”

“Yes.”

“How old IS your father?”

“He’s 39.”

“My mother is 42. Yep, they’re ancient alright,” I said with a chuckle.

“I’m serious. I read in a newspaper before we left the east that the average life expectancy on the frontier is 40 to 45 years. That means my own life is almost half over!”

“Yep, you’re an old woman alright. I think I see even more gray in all that red hair today than I did yesterday. Goes with the senility you’re experiencing.”

“Oh, shut-up, Taylor, you know what I mean. Life here is short and ends quickly, and we should all do whatever we can to live it to the fullest in the short time that we do have.”

“Well, that’s what you and I are doing, and I hope we continue doing. But, whatever the case, I also think things are going according to plan as far as them two are concerned,” I said, motioning with my head and chuckling.

I glanced around the immediate area, then quickly kissed Maighread on the mouth.

“I think if we make this picnic a bi-monthly event, we can cinch things up and be assured of them getting together in a couple month’s time,” I said.

“What if they get married?” she said.

“What if they do? Then you and I will be brother and sister—and you’ll be fuckin’ your brother.”

I burst out laughing.

“Hush!” she said with a frown. “Although, that would be sort of funny.”

Whenever Maighread spoke, I would study her face closely. I loved everything about her—the way she spoke, the pauses in her speech, her laugh, her frown, her little facial expressions of joy and disapproval, the things she did when she was being silly.

Everything about her was absolutely perfect. I was a kid with a new toy. The best toy for which anyone could ever hope. I kept wondering just what it was that I had done to have God reward me with such a girl, such a woman. I wondered why He should introduce us at THIS particular time, or even be interested in having us meet at all. Then again, perhaps it wasn’t God, just dumb luck. Or perhaps, all my impressions of her were just me being crazy in love, all because of the way she looked at me with those fascinating green eyes. But, I WAS in love, dammit—and I felt that love returned to me in countless ways whenever she was with me, and even when she wasn’t. Life was good. Life was VERY good.

 

Upon Mother and McGill returning, Maighread and I, and McGill with his accordion, played our respective instruments while the four of us sang a medley of songs that we collectively knew. At one point, Mother took me aside and told me that the owner of the Shamrock had come into the dress shop that week. She learned that he was looking for some sort of entertainment that would bring more customers into the bar. Mother reiterated how impressed she herself was with Maighread’s singing and suggested that I have a talk with the man.

All and all, the picnic was a success. It was good food, good company, and more importantly, it gave Mother and McGill an opportunity to get to know one another better. As Maighread said, life on the frontier is short and whatever one could do to expedite matters in such affairs was a blessing.

 

In the coming weeks, Maighread and I visited one or another of our pools nearly every day. I did show her a third place, one where a creek had cut a narrow passage through the rock, forming two sandstone cliff faces. It soon became one of our favorite places to go, as it offered sunshine, shade, and an abundance of soft grassy areas where we could lay our blankets. We would often walk naked and explore the entire area with all its secret passages for hours on end. We even found what looked to be some old Indian artifacts. The only drawback to the place was that it was a long way off and each time we went there, it was always dark when we got home.

Only on days that it rained were we constrained from going to any of our pools. We would spend these days together at her home, playing music or doing whatever indoor activity we could invent. Sometimes, we played checkers and she would get mad because I always beat her. We never had sex in her father’s house, as we both thought that it would be deceptive and disrespectful to use their cabin in this manner, behind his back, while he was at work.

On cooler days or whenever it looked as if it might rain, I helped Maighread with the garden plot she had started. While it was quite late in the year, we could still plant a few useful things that wouldn’t be harvestable until just before winter. I also started winterizing the McGill cabin, as it had originally been hastily constructed and offered very little protection from the cold. McGill himself was too busy doing the deliveries to do it himself, so it was the least I could do to help out.

Maighread and I would sometimes take long walks near the McGill property. Along with being lovers, she and I had become the closest friends either of us had ever had. Seeing that I had mostly been a loner since childhood, this in itself was a new experience for me. We discussed with one another all the hopes and fears that we had in these, the youngest years of our lives.

Maighread showed me her mother’s books. Each contained hand-drawn illustrations. We read about the various sex acts and positions that couples practiced, discussing what we’d like to try and what we found just a little too weird. She read me excerpts from one chapter talking about how to pleasure a man through masturbation and by sucking his cock. She asked me if I thought it was accurate. I told her that I thought that it was, but that I was sure men were probably quite a bit different, one from another, in what sort of sex they liked. She said she had read that chapter over and over again, as she knew that someday she would meet the right man and she wanted to do it correctly. I asked her when she expected to meet this Mr. Right and she hit me with the book.

 

Chapter Seven

Another Monday, a couple weeks later, and I rode onto the McGill property a little after noontime. It had rained most of last week, and Maighread and I had not had sex for all that time.

“Sorry I’m late. I had a few things to do in town after school.”

“Well, let’s make haste then,” she said. “I made lunch and I’m all ready to go.”

We decided on going to the first pool, as it was closest. Immediately after dismounting the horse, we kissed passionately, long-drawn-out kisses, then multiple kisses, on the lips and all over the face. After having had several days rain, we were hungry for each other. We raced to our spot, spread out the blankets and then ran to the water’s edge, stripping off our clothes along the way.

We embraced in the water and kissed. While I stood on the submerged flat rock, she wrapped her legs around my torso. I could easily hold up her weight by holding onto her butt while the both of us were partially submerged in the water as we were. However, as we soon found out, trying to have intercourse this way was problematic at best.

Taking great care, she reached down, grabbed my cock and retracted the foreskin. We managed to get my cock partially inside her. However, it seems her lubrication gets washed away in the water and things become a rubbery affair at best. Also, there wasn’t really any good way to get traction, except by slowly lifting her up and down. Not only that, standing there, I kept losing my balance and falling forward. So, I would let go of her to regain my balance, resulting in us not only repeatedly becoming separated down there, but we also both ended up with our heads underwater several times.

All and all, it didn’t work well, but we had to try it, and we were both glad we did. Maybe if one of us had something at our backs on which to lean, things might work better. We didn’t know. We’ll try it again sometime.

We decided to walk around the area a bit while the sun dried our naked bodies. At one point, we meandered down a rather indistinct deer trail, which ran parallel to the small stream that fed the pool. I had cursorily explored the area previously, but I had never wandered this far from the pool itself. After a half hour of walking, stepping ever so gingerly in our bare feet and carefully negotiating sticker bushes to keep them from brushing against our bare butts, we came upon another clearing. Ringing this area was a number of fruit trees, all bearing some fruit, an abandoned orchard. There were cherries, green apples, plums, pears, even peaches. Around the base of the trees was an assortment of berry bushes, also in their prime and bearing fruit.

“See,” said Maighread, standing next to the cherry tree. “I told you this place was the Garden of Eden.”

“Wow! I had no idea this was here,” I said.

She picked a few cherries from the lower branches and gave me some to eat. She then looked around and found a dilapidated old wooden chest, overgrown with weeds, a few feet away from the trunk of one of the fruit trees. She squatted down to lift the lid. The dry-rotted wood broke loose at the rusted hinges.

From the box, she picked up some old blankets and clothes, including a wedding dress that fell apart in her hands as she tried to unfold it for a better look. She lifted out two ornamental wine glasses that lay beneath the clothes and held them up for me to see. There were also some green-encrusted brass pieces, candle holders and the like, along with some fine china, and various household ornaments and kitchen decorations. Most everything made of cloth or wood had mostly been destroyed by the weather.

“Looks like someone’s heirlooms that they just left here,” I said. “Makes you wonder why.”

“This was once someone’s life, Taylor. Memories. Perhaps they were lovers like you and me. Then something happened and they just left it all here, for whatever reason.”

“Maybe it was Adam and Eve,” I said.

She carefully put the items back in the trunk and closed the lid.

“Let’s head back,” she said.

We each picked a few ripe peaches to carry back before leaving.

“We need to come back here with some bags the next time,” I said.

We walked back in silence to where we had laid out the blankets.

 

I laid down on my back and she hovered over me, enveloping my upper torso with her body, repeatedly kissing my mouth with her soft wet lips. Our warm naked sun-dried bodies slid against one another like warm silk in very natural unrehearsed movements.

After a period of prolonged kissing, she mounted me. I felt the evidence of her arousal drip on my thigh, then run down my balls and between my legs. She reached down matter-of-factly, and without taking her eyes off mine, pulled back the foreskin of my stiff cock and lubricated the head of it by sweeping it between her slick inner pussy lips. Then, with one intentional push, she slid over the full length of the hard shaft. She was warm, wet and tender.

Her face expressionless, her arms straight, we remained in this position motionless for a few moments. She looked down at me with a rather serious and purposeful-looking continence. She then began to rock back and forth slowly on my erect organ, occasionally stopping to kiss me on the lips, again with that kiss that was more a kiss of acknowledgment and respect than a kiss of passion. This time, I did not fondle her breasts as I had done previously, but instead put my hands on her upper legs, bent at the knee, watching her face as she repeatedly slid herself over my stiff cock.

I could sense something was different about this encounter from the other times we had sex. This led me to believe that sometimes sex can be erotic, sexual, nasty, with intimacy being arrived at in that fashion. At other times, there can be yet another way of fulfilling intimacy—one in which the sex can be slow, loving, quiet, with less experimentation and with more of an emphasis on togetherness, two friends engaging in sex in an effort to reach the spiritual goal of achieving ever greater closeness. Both were good, even very good. I would discuss it later with Maighread to see if she felt the same way.

After a time, she took each of my wrists in her hands and pressed them into the blanket at the sides of my head. I felt her shift position, which placed my cock at a different angle inside her, and then she began fucking me harder, faster, more matter-of-factly and more determinately.

Once again, I could feel some part of her pussy rubbing the upper part of my hard cock at its base to where it again became a bit painful. However, I was resigned just to lie there, giving her full control. Occasionally, she would rise up and straighten her back, which caused her previously flopping breasts to tighten up against her chest, as she sat on me with her full weight. From this position, she would hump my fully engulfed cock for a time before again coming back down to take hold of my wrists.

I felt more of an observer than a participant in the activity. I knew I probably wasn’t going to orgasm in this way, but that was OK, too. Right now, it wasn’t about me having an orgasm. It was again sex for sex sake, intimacy for intimacy’s sake, closeness, with not a thing in the world separating the two of us. I was always learning new things about my lover, and my mind was swimming in the sensuality of that knowledge. I relished observing Maighread in the throes of desire, becoming ever more familiar with her, as she so freely exposed yet again a different facet of herself to me, just as she did nearly every time we had sex.

Her face became more and more flushed with each purposeful drawn-out downward thrust. She began to moan loudly, even cry out. Her green eyes told me that she wanted me to see her arousal, that she wanted to expose her sexual desire to me fully. They told me that she wanted to open herself up for me to peer deep into her soul to see what lies there. They told me that she wanted me to know her in the biblical sense. I was always humbled by the fact that this woman, my lover, trusted me so completely that she felt she could present the entirety of who she was to me so freely.

As she fought the urge to close her eyes, I felt her entire body tighten, and then shake, almost as if convulsing. At what I felt was the right time, I again flexed my hard cock to where I knew she could feel it swell inside her. Suddenly with one loud cry, she buried her face into my neck and there drooled through her open mouth onto my shoulder, her bare teeth digging into my flesh. She moaned and shook. I could feel her contractions, her involuntary spasms, as they clenched at my hard swollen cock over and over again in rapid succession.

She laid there for a few minutes moaning between deep rapid open-mouthed breaths.

She then rose up and wiped her mouth. She again kissed my lips in a quick but mannerly fashion before again proceeding to hump my throbbing shaft. Twice more she brought herself to orgasm before she dismounted and rolled from me.

With my arm around her shoulder, she laid her head on my chest and reached down to take my cock in her hand. She began stroking it, slowly, gently retracting the foreskin from over its wet swollen head again and again. Purple veins protruded visibly from the sides of the stiff reddened organ, hard with need, as she held it within her slender white fingers.

Previous to the last few weeks, never in a million years would I have believed I could feel so comfortable in exposing my secret sin to any one person—a person of the opposite sex no less, who was not only more than willing and capable, but who sympathized with my need to relieve, regularly, the manly lusts of my aching groin sack. I moaned quietly as she lovingly took control of my pleasure.

She would get a rhythm going and then stop to pull the skin taut, teasing me, gently holding the aroused jumping organ so I could watch it spasm uncontrollably in her hand. She knew that looking was important to men.

If there was anything I knew about Maighread, it was that she watched me closely, forever sensitive to my reactions, in and out of sex, to see what pleased me. She was as attentive as a mother hen when it came to pleasing me in all aspects of our relationship. Like right now, while she was working my stiff cock, I knew her to be listening for my utterances, my moans and grunts, the pauses in my breathing, and the movements my body made.

I could only guess at what went on in this 18-year-old woman’s head, having so carefully read her mother’s sex books for so many years and now having the opportunity to put into practice all that she learned. The very fact that she was so informed about men’s bodies and so able to handle a cock and jack me off with such expertise was a testament to the book’s author. However, I knew there were some things particular only to her–such as the gentleness, patience, and caring with which she treated me, not something she had picked up from reading any book.

She carefully cupped my tender groin sack in her open hand, fondling it for a time. She then took my throbbing cock and held the skin taut, as a clear string of pre-cum issued from the tip to run down her fingers and pool on my belly. Again she pulled the foreskin back over the head of my cock, lubricating the bulbous tip. She inched up to kiss me shortly on the lips before concentrating on jacking me off in a serious way, again starting slowly and working up to a steady pace.

I thought of her, a woman, seeing the unequivocal evidence of my arousal. I thought of her having the knowledge of what it takes to arouse a man. I thought of her knowing the power she had as a woman to arouse a man. I thought of all the intimate knowledge about myself that I had shared with this woman around whom I had my arm. I was just like her in this respect, in wanting to be known sexually. It’s as if we both knew on some primal level how revealing our lust and pleasure to another was essential to the eventual intensity and satisfaction of our orgasms.

Under the coolness of our shade tree, I submitted my wanton lust to Maighread, body and soul, as my stiff cock gave up the burden of my groin sack in long intense pleasurable streams of clear and white cum that painted glistening lines of wetness across my chest and belly. She milked the organ to its last drop, until I finally had to put my hand atop hers, signaling for her to stop. I was completely drained and more than sated.

As we lay there together, she took the fingers of her right hand and proceeded to paint circles on my belly with the cum. Turning her head to look up at me, she then put three cum-soaked fingers of her hand into her mouth. She took the same fingers, went back to my belly to pick up more cum and rubbed it on my lips and then scooted up to kiss me on the mouth, deeply and for a long time.

Reaching between her legs with her right hand, Maighread put her head on my chest. Still on my back, I looked up at the sunlight flickering through the leaves of the trees as my lover began to pleasure herself. With my arm around her, I could feel every movement her jerking body made.

Sometimes her body moved slowly, rhythmically, as if rocking to a lullaby. She would then go into a flurry of movements, exerting herself and tensing within my embrace. She would then go back to pleasuring herself slowly for a time. She seemed not to be in any particular hurry. Without removing her hand from her pussy, she would every so often kiss my chest and cozy up to me, pressing her body tightly against mine.

She kept this up for some time, resting now and again, barely moving, before again resuming her hand’s mission. Then, while firmly pressing into my body, almost climbing onto my chest, she shook violently, crying out as she rubbed herself into a frenzy. Finally, she let herself go, groaning deeply and low as she orgasmed, before collapsing into a state of relaxation. She rolled onto her back and reached for my hand to share my view of the sunlight through the leaves.

We laid in the shade of that tree for a long time without saying a word. Maighread and I had only known each other for a few weeks, but on the level that we did know one another now, it seemed much longer, perhaps even a lifetime. I thought back to the day I met her, the day I was going to address her as “Miss McGill”. I nearly started laughing when I thought of how stupid and naive I was, only a short time ago.

Were all relationships this good, at least when starting out? Do all couples experience the same sort of intensity that she and I have known these past couple months? I was tempted to think not, that there had never been a love quite like the one Maighread and I have. She always said she felt the same way. But perhaps we were just a couple of love-struck teenagers, deluding ourselves. Why do negative thoughts always accompany positive ones? I guess it’s just that everything was so perfect that we wanted it all to last forever. After a time, we both fell asleep.

When we awoke, we got dressed and went to where I had tied up the horse.

“I have something for you, Maighread.”

I pulled out several packages from the side pockets of the horse blanket and unwrapped them. The first contained a new pair of jeans, a new green jacket with silver sequins and some women’s underpants. The second package contained a pair of low-cut brown shoes and a white dress with green trim. Maighread did not look happy.

“Are you trying to shame me, Taylor McKennitt—giving me presents?”

“What do you mean?”

“You know I’m poor and I don’t have an income, so there’s no way I can buy you anything in return. Even though he’s working, my father can’t afford to buy me things like this right now. So, I can’t accept these things.”

“You don’t understand, Maighread. You’ll need these. These are your stage clothes.”

“What?”

“These are your stage clothes. After hearing you sing at the barbecue the other day, Mother suggested I talk to the owner of the Shamrock, who’s looking for someone to entertain there. So, I spoke with him today and he’s willing to give us a shot. Half of anything over his usual take on any given Saturday night, if by us being there, we bring in more customers and he sells more drinks. Myself, I see no reason why everyone shouldn’t hear you sing.”

Maighread stood there bewildered.

“You’re kidding, right?”

I kissed her on the mouth.

“No, I’m not kidding, lover. I even found a woman who can sing harmony and also plays the violin. I also spoke with a man who plays the piano and a number of other instruments. They agreed to help us for a percentage of the take. I helped the guy move his piano over to the bar this morning. That’s why I was late.”

“I don’t know what to say.”

I put my hand on the side of her face and rubbed her cheek with my thumb.

“Just say you’ll come to town with me tomorrow so we can all practice for Saturday.”

She smiled at me, still bewildered, but I could see she was happy.

“Yes, yes, of course I will!” she said, wrapping her arms around my neck, jumping up and down and laughing. She then kissed me on the mouth, over and over again.

“Here, try these things on to make sure they fit. Mother helped me pick them out and then did some alterations.”

 

Chapter Eight

The next day, I took Maighread to town with me. She sat in the back of the class to wait for me while I attended school. Afterward, we called on Maire, the backup singer, and Ernie, the pianist, and after the necessary introductions, we all walked down to the Shamrock together. The owner didn’t open the bar until 5 PM, so we pretty much had the place to ourselves except for the few people in the dining hall.

Both Maire and Ernie were already familiar with most of the songs Maighread wanted to sing and the rehearsal went rather well. We practiced for about 3 hours that first day, after which Maighread and I left town to go out to the second pool.

 

We kept up this schedule all week, generally practicing 2-3 hours in the late morning before again visiting one of our haunts to have sex. When I found out that McGill was visiting with Mother after work each evening before coming home to Maighread, I began to spend more time with Maighread at the McGill place and generally didn’t leave until McGill came home around twilight. When he did, he and I cursorily discussed the day’s deliveries before I went home to Mother.

 

Saturday came and our band was as ready as we would ever be. We helped the owner of the establishment rearrange chairs and tables. We then set up oil-burning lanterns around the stage and on the tables for when it got dark. We also decorated the stage with strings of colorful banners like the ones I had purchased for the barbecues at the house. The bar had originally been built with a small stage that had never been used for anything except as a storage area, so it took a little doing to clear everything off.

Around 5 o’clock, the sunlight was shining through the glass of the entranceway and the bar’s usual customers started coming through the door. Word had gotten around town from the patrons of the dining hall that the Shamrock planned to have entertainment, so the crowd was just a little larger than usual. We decided we would start playing around 7 o’clock or so, which would still give us a little daylight and ease us into the time that we would have to light the lanterns.

Around 6 o’clock, Mother and McGill arrived and seated themselves in the dining room, the doors to which had been swung wide open.

Word got around quickly and the bar began filling up. All the doors to the bar were swung open and music filled the streets around the Shamrock, attracting a crowd. All sorts of people who normally didn’t patronize the establishment—including women, couples and old people—started filling up the place. After the first song, there was excitement in the air, and soon, both the bar and dining room were filled to capacity to where there was standing room only. Some of the younger ones in this town had never before seen a stage act and it had been ages since most of the older ones had. Maighread and I found our parents in the crowd and waved to them. After Maighread and I had a brief discussion with Maire and Ernie, we began another song.

Part-way through the song, people were crowding around the front and rear doors, and listening at the open doors and windows outside the establishment. Some of the usual patrons even left the bar to come back with their wives and girlfriends. The crowd was to overflow capacity and the bartenders, the brothers of the owner, had taken to serving drinks to patrons outside the building. They had all come to hear my lover sing. And there she was, standing at center stage in her beautiful new white dress with the green trim. I was so proud of Maighread I thought I was going to burst.

We would do another couple of songs or three every 45 minutes or so. At the end of the evening, we had the entire crowd of drunks singing along with us. At one point, a fight broke out outside the bar in the streets, to which the owner’s brothers quickly put an end, beating the belligerents unconscious in the alley. However, it was a great crowd overall.

As agreed, we, the stage act, wrapped things up shortly after midnight. Maighread and I said goodnight to Maire and Ernie. We then sat at the table with Mother and McGill for a few minutes before Maighread and I headed for home.

 

“They loved us! They thought we were great!” said Maighread.

“Not US, Acushla—YOU! The rest of us are just your accompaniment.”

“No—”

“Oh yes, Dear! And I can’t tell you how proud I am of you. You are such an uncommon talent, Maighread. In fact, I feel honored just to be in your presence.”

“Oh, stop it, Taylor. That’s not funny. I don’t like you talking like that.”

“Sorry. Anyway, we made $60!” I said.

“$60?! You’re kidding!”

“I’m not kidding. That’s a month’s pay for a skilled laborer and two months pay for a working stiff—back east! And that’s all in one night! Not only that, that’s your take, after I paid Maire and Ernie!”

“OUR take, Taylor McKennitt. There is no mine and yours, ONLY OURS.”

“Well, whatever the case, you hold on to the money for us,” I said.

I handed Maighread a little green leather bag with the money and the case containing her violin from the horse blanket pockets. We were both tired and kissed goodnight without much ado.

 

When I got close to home, McGill’s horse and wagon were sitting at the front of my house. I could see a lantern burning in the window from quite a distance, so I quietly walked my horse to the fenced area, where I fed and watered it. I don’t know what Mother and McGill were doing, but I certainly wasn’t about to bother them. I would make my bed in the loft of the barn. After all, my masturbation blankets were all still up there.

 

I woke up later than usual the next morning. McGill’s horse and wagon were gone. I must have dozed off early, because I never heard him leave. I sort of dreaded walking into the house, as I really didn’t want to embarrass Mother. If she didn’t try to give me an explanation, I surely wasn’t going to mention it.

 

“I didn’t hear you come in last night, Taylor.”

“Oh, you know, Mother, I was so tired after our performance that, after feeding and watering the horse, I must have fallen asleep in the barn.”

“Well—I’m sure you saw Mr. McGill’s wagon out in front of the house when you got in. You know, Taylor—“

“Mother—you’re the mother, I’m the son,” I said, shaking my head. “You don’t owe me any explanations.”

That conversation ended there and while we ate breakfast, we talked about Maighread’s performance and how the entire town would be abuzz about it until next Saturday came.

 

I told Maighread about finding her father’s wagon at the house and she suggested finding a way to give her father more time off each week to spend with Mother.

She also informed me that we had to stop having intercourse for the next 10 days or she might get pregnant. It all had to do with cycles, fertility, counting backward from her periods and such, all things she learned reading her mother’s books. I’m glad she was keeping track of it all. It sounded far too complicated for me to remember. We didn’t mind, though. There were other things we could do, not the least of which being masturbation, something that was SO much more fulfilling for the both of us, now that each of us had a partner with whom to share the experience. We never missed even one opportunity to go down to one of the pools all week long.

 

The next two Saturdays saw the Shamrock packed with people, not only town’s people, but also folks coming from nearby settlements in the area. The entertainment venue was becoming so popular that the owner was contemplating doing some renovations to the building, like knocking out one of the walls and replacing it with a wall that could be removed and replaced as needed. Another solution he entertained was having a stage constructed outside, so that we could hold the entertainment outdoors in the summer, whenever weather permitted.

Because the performances were so lucrative, Maighread and I were soon in a position to purchase another wagon and two more horses the next time a wagon train came through the area. We had no problem finding someone to work the new wagon team and we now had an economic hedge in case things didn’t work out at the Shamrock for whatever reason.

We ordered all new musical instruments through connections the owner of the mercantile had. They would be here within a month’s time. At my insistence, Maighread also bought herself a few things in the way of new clothes from the money—some for our stage performances and some for everyday wear. She even started buying me gifts here and there, with which she would occasionally surprise me.

 

“We’re going to have a problem having sex at all here real soon, Acushla,” I said.

“Why is that?”

“Winter’s coming.”

“Oh yeah, I thought about that,” she said. “What can we do?”

“I could rent a room in town, but it would be impossible to keep secret. They may like our performances but we’re still a religious community, and you know how some people will be. They would feel that, here is this unmarried couple, entertainers no less, flaunting it, throwing their sin up in our faces. As we both agreed, it wouldn’t be right to use your father’s house while he’s at work, so I don’t know right now. I’m working on it.”

 

For the next few weeks, the Sunday picnics became regular events between Maighread, myself, Mother and McGill. We had all become fast friends, business partners, and valued members of the community of Morgan. And since we were now running another delivery wagon, I gave McGill Friday and Saturday off also, without him having to take a cut in pay. However, in order to do this, Maighread and I would occasionally have to sacrifice some of our time at the pools, so that I could cover McGill’s deliveries those two days, at least until we found someone willing to work part-time.

 

Friday and Saturday nights, I overnighted with Maighread at the McGill place, so that Mother and McGill had those two days to themselves. We had all taken to tiptoeing around any discussion of the obvious—the nature of our respective relationships, and the fact that carnal desire and convenience had won out over any religious morals we might have previously honored. Only Maighread and I spoke about it with one another.

Still, Maighread and I continued in our practice not to have sex in the McGill cabin on the days and nights that Mother and McGill spent together, out of respect for the fact that it was still her father’s house. However, it was alright, since we generally went to one of the pools Sunday after church following the picnics anyway, just as we would do today.

 

We had just finished our meal when Mother pulled out a bottle of wine from a bag beneath the table.

“Mr. McGill—Patrick and I—have an announcement to make,” said Mother. “We are planning on getting married.”

Maighread and I looked at one another. We were both surprised, yet we weren’t. Of course, what immediately came to my mind, as I’m sure it did to Maighread’s also, is how this would raise some awkward privacy issues. After all, I was still living with Mother, and Maighread was still living with her father, and we both did so in two one-room cabins.

“That’s wonderful!” Maighread blurted out. “I’m so happy for you. I’m happy for ALL of us.”

“Yes,” I said. “That is wonderful news for BOTH our families.”

Mother looked at me, as if thanking me for my approval.

There was a brief pause.

“Maighread and I also have an announcement to make,” I blurted out.

All three pairs of eyes trained on me, with Maighread looking at me as if to ask, “WE do?”

“Maighread and I would also like to get married.”

I felt like the three adults were looking incredulously at what some child had just uttered. I could see Maighread holding back a smile.

“Of course—I haven’t actually asked her yet,” I said looking at Maighread, “and then again, I AM still only 15. But I will be 16 in the spring and as long as Mother and Maighread’s father gives their permission—“

Both our parents looked at Maighread.

“Well, I suppose he already knew what I would say. Of course I’ll marry you, Taylor McKennitt.”

I looked up at Mother and McGill.

“My little boy, my baby, you’ve grown up so much in just 3 years. Yes, of course I’ll give you my permission.”

I raised my eyebrows at McGill.

“I’d be more than happy to turn my daughter over to you, Taylor,” he said. “You are exactly what any father would want in a son-in-law.”

We all decided we would marry the next spring, on the same day—my 16th birthday. I never saw a happier bunch of people in my life, and I probably never will again. We ate our picnic lunch that day with gladness and singleness of heart.

 

“Well, I must say, that was about as unconventional a marriage proposal as ever there was one,” said Maighread as she and I rode off on horseback to one of the pools.

“Well, when you asked me what we can do about finding a place to have sex in the winter and I told you I was working on it? That was it. When they made their announcement to get married, I thought this would be the ideal opportune moment to put everyone on the spot—and it was. It was either now or never. After all, what could the newly betrothed couple say to us at a time like that? Besides, you do want to marry me, don’t you?”

She hit my shoulder with her fist.

“It would have made for some very strained living arrangements otherwise,” she said clinging to my waist as we rode along the river.

 

Some things would change immediately, and we weren’t going to wait for the wedding bells to implement everything else. First off, McGill no longer worked for Mother and me. My father’s wagon and horses were now Mother’s and his, and they were in business together for themselves. We were again turning a blind eye to our church-going mores by not waiting for the actual marriages as far as our living arrangements were concerned. McGill would move in with Mother right away, and Maighread and I would live on the McGill homestead. After all, this was the frontier and most people, those not part of a religious community, didn’t marry at all. As far as the town’s people, we rarely got visitors and they had no idea of the goings-on out this far anyway. What I found ironic is that all the work I had put into the McGill property was now ultimately going to benefit only Maighread and me.

 

Between our Saturday music presentations, my going to school, us practicing our music three days a week in town, and readying our home for the winter, Maighread and I had a busy life. However, what made it all the more worthwhile were our visits to the pools to have as much sex as we could have there before the weather turned. And this we still did, even though we now had a house and a bed of our own.

 

Chapter Nine

1857. Spring came and I finished my schooling. Shortly thereafter, we were all married on the same day—my sixteenth birthday—at the Protestant church in town. With the money that both families were bringing in regularly, we had upped our standards of living considerably and we even commissioned a photographer traveling through the area on that wondrous day to take several wedding pictures of both couples with his newfangled contraption.

 

McGill had hired someone to drive the wagon, and now he and Mother were concentrating on farming and building a much larger home on their property. Because the community had grown substantially and there was a large call for our services, Maighread and I weren’t really in direct competition with our parents, as far as the delivery business was concerned. Both our households had more than enough work to keep us busy.

 

Maighread and I were routinely entertaining Saturdays at the Shamrock, and our troupe, now expanded to six persons, had made quite a name for itself in this part of the territory. Our income and savings from the appearances had become sizable, and we had men over to the property daily, working on what would become OUR new home. When done, it was destined to become one of the finer homes in the area, at least by this community’s standards.

Although we often heard of the many political wranglings back east, concerning the abolition of slavery, the threats of succession and the like, most of the people in our area saw themselves as part of the frontier and worlds apart from the goings-on there. Other than being interesting topics of discussion, not many who did not otherwise have direct involvement concerned themselves with these matters.

 

In May, following years of back and forth between the U.S. government and the Mormons, President Buchanan sent an expeditionary force of federal troops into Utah, and at the end of September, I became a member of the newly-formed Brennan Valley Militia. Earlier that month, a group of Mormons, in collaboration with some Indians, attacked a wagon train of settlers from Arkansas that was passing through the area on their way to California at Mountain Meadows. Thinking there was a conspiracy afoot to deprive them of their land and lifestyle, these Mormons killed over 120 people and buried them in shallow graves, which were later dug up by wild animals. They killed men, women and children, sparing only the very youngest children, which they then took in as their own. Since the site of the massacre was only a short distance from our town, some in the Brennan Valley community felt it was perhaps only a matter of time before this same group came for us.

 

Early in the following year, Maighread and I moved into our new two-story home, built not far from what was the original McGill cabin. The new home was spacious, especially considering that we had just come from living in a rudimentary one-bedroom shack. Water from a windmill-driven pump and a series of pipes supplied water to the house and we could now take hot baths inside our home, utilizing water heated in a metal drum built into the fireplace.

“What have you got there?” I said, as a couple of men from the mercantile loaded a large decorative wooden box onto the back of our wagon.

“It’s my new hope chest,” said Maighread. “I couldn’t bring the one with me that I had started in Ireland, so I’m building one now. It’s actually going to be more of a memory chest than a hope chest.”

“What are you putting in there?”

“Everything that pertains to you and me—my wedding dress and your tuxedo, the glasses from which we drank at the wedding. I’m also including the first dress you bought me for our act, the white one with the green trim. Then there’s that first pair of jeans, along with that green jacket with the sequins on it and also the shoes you gave me, my first pair of dress shoes ever. That’s just for starters. As time goes on, I’ll be adding things to it. You know, memories of our life together.”

 

As couples do, Maighread and I had both grown together spiritually, from all the conflicts and concessions that a good relationship engenders, yet we both still retained the individuality of our own personalities. I had matured in so many countless ways. I learned about sacrifice, humility, compromise, and the invaluable love of a woman toward a man, and it was all due to my beautiful lover.

Often, when I found myself alone in the middle of the day, I would stop and reflect on just how much I HAD changed from the boy I once was—a reclusive teenager whose only joy in life was masturbation—to an adult, in an adult relationship with a woman, all in just a little over two years. I shuddered to think of the mindset I might still have today if it had not been for Maighread. I was now a husband with responsibilities, I was an entrepreneur, and I belonged to a militia safeguarding our community. Of course, Maighread would say that I had helped her just as well, but I can’t help but think she had done a whole lot more for me than I ever did for her.

One thing Maighread and I hadn’t forgotten were the experiences that had formed so much of the basis of our relationship. So, while we regularly had sex on our over-sized bed at home, we still visited one of the pools at least once a week during the summer months. We had both learned about sex in those places and sex elsewhere just wasn’t quite the same. And while we had both become comfortable with “our way” of doing sex, we still experimented frequently and sex was as exciting as it had ever been. Of course, we still masturbated regularly too, both in each other’s company and when we were alone. Only now, when we did do it alone, we had someone with whom to share the experience later—a ritual of exposure and confession. It was all part of the warm comfortable intimacy that we had come to know.

 

Chapter Ten

The next two years passed rather uneventfully. A non-Mormon governor took the place of the Mormon, Brigham Young, and more federal troop came into the populated areas of Utah. Most of those guilty of the massacre at Mountain Meadows fled after a judicial review of the case in Provo. Still, our region’s loosely-knit militia stayed in effect just in case.

 

The McKennitt-McGill Transportation and Produce Company had grown exponentially and we were all financially very comfortable. Together, the families had bought more land and we were now in the farming business, also. Both families had a number of employees, itinerant farmers, working for us. We supplied our employees with bunkhouses, meals, and we paid them well. Therefore, most were in no hurry to go anywhere. On Saturdays, Maighread and I, and the rest of the troupe, continued to entertain at the much-expanded Shamrock.

 

My father’s state, my state—South Carolina—was the first to secede from the Union at the end of 1860, following the election of Abraham Lincoln. The next year, several more southern states followed. The shooting began in earnest in April of 1861, shortly after my twentieth birthday. For the next several months, more states left to join the Confederacy. The North called it a rebellion and the South called it a war of independence. Whereas no one out here in Utah had much cared for the politics back east previously, sides were now beginning to form.

On one occasion, Sean “Loudmouth” O’Leary and I got into a fight inside the Shamrock following an argument at the table concerning the war. He took the side of the north, and I, the south. After the owner and his brothers chased us both outside, we ended up finishing the fight in the street to pretty much a draw. The stage performance later that Saturday saw the guitar player a little worse for wear, with two black eyes and a swollen face.

 

“Taylor, why even waste your time with that idiot?” said Mother. “He doesn’t have the sense of two pennies rubbed together.”

Mother and I were sitting at her kitchen table.

“He was berating everyone who came from a southern state—myself, Father, you, everyone.”

“Well, it’s not our fight. One of the reasons your father moved us was to get away from all that back there. THIS is our home now,” she said.

“I don’t know, Mother. What would Father do?”

“What would Father do about what?”

“You know as well as I do that Father would go back and fight the Yankees for states’ rights and honor of South Carolina.”

Mother didn’t say anything.

“I’m going, Mother. Father’s not here and I’m going on his behalf. I’d go with him even if he WAS here. I’ve made up my mind. I bought a saddle in town today.” 

“Taylor—no! Think about Maighread. Have you said anything to her?”

“Not yet, but I know she’ll understand. She won’t be happy about it, but she’ll understand.”

 

We laid the blankets out on the deep grass. Maighread and I then took off our clothes and walked to the water’s edge. We raced one another to “our” rock on the opposite shore. As we stood in the chest-deep water, she looked sympathetically at my battered face, touching portions of it with her fingers.

“Does it hurt?

“No, not really, it looks a lot worse than it is.”

“You know, Taylor, I remember well the very first time we came here.”

“I remember it too, Acushla. I was nervous as all get out and you were all calm and collected.”

“Don’t you believe it, lover. I was dying of embarrassment on the inside. No one had ever seen me naked before and here I was, taking my clothes off in front of a man.”

“Well, you sure put on a good act. If you were so embarrassed, why did you do it?”

“Because, Taylor, my need was greater than my embarrassment. Time was going by and I wanted something more than masturbation. I wanted to do the things written about in my mother’s books. I wanted intimacy. I wanted to feel like a woman. I wanted to be with a man in every sense of the word. I knew at some point I would just have to grin and bear it and let myself become vulnerable if I ever wanted these things to happen.”

“It took you all this time to tell me this?”

“I was embarrassed to have been embarrassed. I was terrified at the time, but if I had shown you any embarrassment that day, I know it would have inhibited how you yourself would have reacted to me. Of course, once we did start having sex, all my fears quickly fell by the wayside.”

I kissed Maighread on the lips and shook my head at her, as if in disbelief. I then held her to me and whispered in her ear.

“I love you, Acushla. I don’t believe I could love you any more than I do.”

 

I backed up a step and looked down into the water.

“OK,” I said, “since we’re having confession time, I have a confession of my own to make that I’ve kept bottled up all these years.”

“Oh?” she said, raising my chin with her index finger to look me in the eye, barely daring to smile.

“Yes. You know when you so boldly took off your clothes in front of me that day, and then afterwards, when we started doing things on the blanket? I thought you were so bold only because you had been with so many men and learned about sex from all the experience you had had with them. It bothered me, the idea that you had all this experience and I was this stupid kid.”

Maighread started laughing so hard I thought she would bust a gut.

“I was a virgin the same as you, Taylor! And you thought I was this highly experienced woman who was seducing you? At what point did you come to the conclusion that I wasn’t?”

Her laughter echoed through the trees beyond the pool. I stood facing her, still embarrassed at my confession, even after all this time.

“It wasn’t until you told me about your mother’s books and explained to me the names of the female parts and such. It was then that I realized that you knew everything about sex from reading books. That’s when I started to calm down and relax.”

“Oh, Taylor, you should have just said something,” she said with a chuckle and a smile. “I love you too, my cute little virgin boy.”

“Well, the reason I didn’t say anything is because I didn’t want to start accusing you of things that weren’t true and insult you.”

We swam back to the other shore and dried ourselves in the sun before proceeding to lie on the blankets.

Lying on my back, I put my arm around Maighread as she rested her head on my upper chest. She took hold of my cock, and with familiar expertise, worked it into a stiff frenzy. She then scooted down my torso to coddle my aching groin sack as her warm mouth engulfed the throbbing organ. With her usual skill, she teased the tip of my foreskin and brought me right to the threshold of ecstasy, stopping just short of bringing me over the edge. She knew me well.

We changed positions. She bent her knees and spread herself wide. I lay my head between her legs, my arms wrapped around her outer thighs. I pushed up against her soft pliable lower belly with my fingers, which lifted her hair-covered mound upward, causing her thick wrinkled inner lips to protrude more visibly from her slit.

My tongue slid between her flesh. She was wet, warm and salty. I could smell her scent. It again came to my mind how this was one of my favorite things to do of all the other intimate acts that we performed regularly. And again, I felt closer to Maighread during this act than at almost any other time during sex, except for, perhaps, when we conversed heart-to-heart with our organs coupled together.

With my mouth, I tugged on her inner pussy lips, first one, then the other, stretching them outward slightly in the process. I then dove into her wetness with my entire mouth, sticking the tip of my tongue into her vagina as far as it would go, lamenting the fact that it would go no deeper into the salty orifice. I gently licked each part of her, emphasizing to her the intimacy of the contact I was having with the one physical attribute that most defined her as a woman.

I removed my arms from around her thighs and slid both arms between her legs. Without lifting my mouth from her pussy, I reached up until both my thumbs and forefingers found her rock-hard nipples. She spread her legs wider. With my lips and the tip of my tongue, I stimulated the loose wet skin covering her clitoris. I then did what I usually do, and flattened my tongue to lick the entirety of her pussy with graduating pressure. My face was wet and slick.

The years had taught me well also, and I too knew what she liked. Sometimes she preferred to have her first orgasm during this act, and at other times, she would stop me just as she was getting close. She tapped me on the arm.

I crawled up to be face to face with Maighread and kissed her on the lips with my wet mouth. She sat up and pushed against my shoulder, indicating she wanted me on my back. She mounted me, taking my throbbing erection between the fingers of her right hand, positioning it below her. She pushed down, and her slick wet pussy slid effortlessly over my stiff jumping cock. She let out a deep and lustful groan.

With that same look of insistence that she had always had during sex, she began to rock back and forth, moaning quietly. She did not break eye contact even once, nor did I. Over the years, she had taught me well the value of looking into one another’s eyes when face to face during intercourse. Now, I had come to insist on it also.

We settled into our familiar pattern. There was no hurry to achieve orgasm. There never was. Intimacy for intimacy’s sake, once again. Our orgasms were only a secondary goal. There were even times when the two of us forewent orgasm, only to take up having sex a few hours later, just to keep the magic going a little longer. Two lovers enjoying one another’s company, engaging in the acts that consummated our life together and put the crowning glory on all the other aspects of our relationship.

 

The only problem we ever had during sex was deciding how we each wanted to HAVE our orgasms—her on top, me on top, cumming while doing one another orally or by masturbation. However, we had never orgasmed together during intercourse. Generally, she had her orgasm first, followed by me. Then, if I put off too long having mine, I often couldn’t have one except through masturbation, either by her hand or mine.

 

She climbed from me and rolled over onto her back. As I took my place between her spread legs, I could feel the weight of my stiff weighty cock, lumbering below me. The sensation only reinforced to me my need, which further added to my already heightened state of arousal. She took the jumping joint between her fingers, pulling down to make sure the foreskin was retracted and the head fully exposed. As I closed the gap between us, she positioned the swollen bulb at her wet opening. With one slow push, I easily entered her. Her warm pussy was wet and inviting, and she was already quite loose from our previous activity.

Supporting my weight with my outstretched arms while looking into her eyes, I slowly began thrusting into her. She responded to the wet sounds by moaning in approval. As I listened to her utterances, I also became conscious of the sounds of the birds chirping in the trees around us.

Again, in this position, as before, I thought of Maighread giving herself to me, spreading her legs for me; mercifully giving me, her husband, the pussy she knows every man needs. That thought always excited me terribly and always succeeded in making my already stiff cock even stiffer.

With each thrust my hard cock took, my heavy swinging groin sack ached all the more. Whenever I was in this position, I knew it wouldn’t take much for me to lose control and spill my lust inside her, if I did not discipline my thoughts and consciously restrain myself. Good sex, for me, required that I always keep my partner, her pleasure, and her orgasm at the forefront of my mind. That was always my first priority, regardless of how aroused and burdened with need I became.

We were both sweating from the activity and the unusually hot temperature we had today. Sensitive to Maighread’s breathing pattern and the look of my lover’s countenance, I shifted my position slightly, until her moans indicated to me that it was just right. She began responding to my thrusts with leg movements, grunts, and thrusts of her own. We moved together in perfect unison. It was only a matter of moments now until she would have her first one. I so wanted to cum with her.

I felt her body tighten and begin to shake. She was just seconds away. Her vocalizations, her moans, her grunts and groans became louder and louder, until finally, she cried out with all abandon. It was time. I felt her contractions, and with a few more thrusts, I let my seed spill inside her in massive pleasurable spurts.

After about a minute of lying together immobilized, I rolled to lie next to her. Something I had never previously done, because I always knew she would have a second, a third, and sometimes a fourth, not long after her first. However, this time, she would just have to wait just a little longer, a half hour or so, before I could again accommodate her.

She looked me in the eyes, slightly raising her brow.

“Give it a few minutes, lover,” I said, as I stretched to kiss her on the mouth. “We’re not done yet.”

My words echoed of a previous time, when she said those very words to me.

“You came with me?” she said.

“Yes, first time!”

“Wonderful!” she said smiling.

We both lay on the blanket, looking up at the sunlight through the trees.

“This is such a peaceful place,” she said. “I think we’ll still be coming here when we’re old and gray.”

“You’re 23 now, Acushla. According to what you said a few years ago, you were already old and gray back then.”

“You know, Taylor McKennitt, you’re only 20 years old, and you should really watch that mouth of yours when you address your elders.”

I laughed.

“OK, mother, or should I say—sister.”

She laughed.

“Yes, I suppose legally, you’re both my husband and my brother.”

I picked up her hand and kissed her palm.

“You know, you and I are the only ones the two of us have ever known in the biblical sense, Maighread. I’d say that makes us pretty special.”

“Yes, it does, Taylor. And, you’re the only one I’ll ever want.”

 

I pushed against the insides of her thighs with my hand, indicating I wanted her to spread her legs. I then slid between them and matter-of-factly again started licking her pussy. She began to squirm and moan. I knew for sure she had a couple more orgasms left in her. 

I loved the feel of her pubic hair on my lips and cheeks. I could smell her scent mixed with the scent of the cum that I had spilled inside her, not more than a half hour ago.

As my mouth and tongue did its work, my mind would inevitably go to thinking about every aspect of my lover, from her voice to her laugh to the way she smiled when she touched me. However, even with so much going through my head, I was always very cognizant of every sound, every movement, and every response Maighread made while my mouth pleasured her.

She began her usual leg movements and hip thrusts. I again grabbed her butt cheeks with both hands and held her to my face as I knew her legs would soon clamp around my head and begin pushing me from her. Occasionally, she would blurt out, “higher” or “lower.” It was some of the only dialog we ever had during sex, other than the usual grunts, groans and moans with which we communicated our pleasure to one another.

She arched her back. I momentarily glanced up to see her pull on her nipples with her thumbs and forefingers as she let out a cry and came hard. After a few moments, I released my grasp on her butt cheeks and raised my head. Her thighs were wet and glistening. I again buried my face in her pussy and started licking her anew. After only a few seconds, she came again.

Still lying on her back, she extended both her arms out to the side as if surrendering and began chuckling in her relief. I scooted up to be face to face with her.

“Hey, we’re STILL not done yet,” I said.

“We’re not?” she said, laughing loudly.

I mounted her, reached down to grab a hold of my erect cock and tried to find her opening. After several feeble attempts, she reached down to guide me inside her. I began thrusting deep and hard. I knew neither of us would cum again, but it seemed like the right way to leave off. After a few minutes, I again rolled from her and we both had a good laugh.

“Ah,” she uttered, laughing. “I’m completely drained.”

“I was completely drained a long time ago,” I said. “But you know I can never get enough of you.”

We lay there together for some time before we got dressed and walked to where we tied up the horse.

 

“Why so quiet?” she said, as I untied the harness from the branch.

“Maighread—I have to leave.”

She chuckled.

“You do? Where are you going?”

She sounded so lighthearted and happy. I knew she didn’t really understand what I had just said. It pained me terribly to break her mood.

“No, you don’t understand, Maighread. I have to leave. I need to go back east—to join the Confederate Army.”

“What?! For what?!” she said angrily. Her disposition changed instantly, as I knew it would.

“It’s something I’ve got to do, Acushla. My father would be doing the same thing if he was still alive.”

“Well, what about our life here?! What about me?!”

“It’ll just be for a little while. I’m sure the war will soon be over anyway. Heck, it might even end before I get there.

My words rang in my ears and I heard them as if I was lamenting the fact that there was even the slightest possibility that the war might end before I could participate in it.

“Taylor, people die in wars.”

“People die here, Maighread.”

“What, am I supposed to be happy about this? Are you looking for my blessing?”

“No, not your blessing, just your understanding. Sometimes, there are just things a body has to do. I can’t just do nothing and let others fulfill my obligations for me there.”

“So, when did you make up your mind to do this?”

“Shortly after I got into that fight with O’Leary; but I’ve been thinking about it for awhile now.”

I could see Maighread was flustered and about ready to cry.

“Look, it’ll be alright; I’ll be back before you know it.”

“So, why did you wait until after we had sex today to tell me this?”

“I didn’t want to ruin anything. I knew this would be the last time for awhile that we WOULD have sex. I wanted it to be good for both of us.”

“I don’t believe this, Taylor,” she said, shaking her head. “You’re making a big mistake! You have no business getting involved! The time will surely come when you will rue the day that you decided to do this thing.

She began stomping about the area in her anger and frustration, throwing up her hands in disgust.

“So, when were you going to leave?”

“Day after tomorrow. It’ll take me awhile to get back to South Carolina.”

“Taylor—“

She shook her head and turned to look at me. Tears were in her eyes. There really wasn’t much else to say.

 

The next morning, I said my goodbyes to Mother and McGill. Maighread and I then spent a quiet day together at home. She and I didn’t talk about the war or me leaving. We wanted what would be our final day together for many months to be one of joy and friendship. We wanted the last day before our parting to be remembered as having been a positive and happy one. We did not have sex on our last night together either. Instead, we lay in bed and reminisced about our history together. We talked about how much each of us had learned about love, life, relationships, and the essences of what makes for happiness.

 

Neither of us slept and we were both quieter than usual the next morning. I put the new saddle on one of the horses. I then hung the two bags in which I had my provisions, gear, and rifle from the saddle horn.

“I hired a man to manage the deliveries and to help you with the farm workers. You already know about the guitar player who will take my place at the Shamrock. He’s been a regular in the audience and knows all our songs by heart. He’ll be at practice Tuesday. So, all of you will be able to continue performing without interruption.”

Maighread handed me several pencils and some stationery.

“Write me as soon as you get somewhere,” she said. “Or just write me from anywhere you happened to be on your journey between here and there.”

“It’ll probably take a month and a half to get there by the route I’m going. I don’t imagine the mail will be traveling much faster.”

“I don’t care. As long as I get something from you, and often.

“Everything will be just fine, Acushla. You know as well as I do that a love like ours was destined from the beginning to last forever.”

I took out a gold heart-shaped locket. Below a cross on the cover was the engraving of an interlocked pair of hands. Inside the locket was a polished ceramic cameo of a pool of blue water surrounded by a wreath of flowers and greenery. I kissed Maighread’s neck as I fastened the clasp from the back.

She reached into her pocket and retrieved a gold pocket watch. Both our names had been engraved below a cross on the cover. Inside, opposite the watch face, was a cameo with two hearts atop a circle of leaves as the background.

I smiled at her.

“I guess we were thinking alike.

“Yes—still,” said Maighread.

We held one another for some time. As hard as I tried, I could not control the tears coming to my eyes. When she saw them, she herself brought forth a wellspring, but very quietly. I kissed the tears from below her right eye.

“I love you, Acushla.”

“God go with you and bless you, my wonderful lover,” she said, blubbering.

 

Chapter Eleven

“I got a letter from Taylor,” Maighread said, standing in the McGill kitchen.

“I got one, too,” said Mother McGill. “I’m surprised. It has only been a month.”

Maighread walked around the kitchen nervously, rereading bits of the letter, as if, perhaps, this time, it would say something different.

“He says he’s in Tennessee. They inducted him into the southern army there. He doesn’t say why.”

“I wouldn’t worry too much about him right now, Maggie,” said Patrick McGill. “Winter will be here in a few months and I doubt there will be much fighting until it passes.”

“Of course,” said Mother McGill. “They probably can’t walk in the snow, much less think about having a war in it.”

Maighread looked up from her letter.

“He says the food isn’t very good. He says they’re living off the same thing every day—salted pork and rock-hard bread. He says, once in a while they manage to acquire a few chickens from the locals. He says, if they’re southerners, they pay them for the chickens; but if they’re northerners, they just take what they need. God, what I wouldn’t give to prepare him a nice home-cooked meal right about now.”

“You know, Maighread,” said Mother McGill, “you’re more than welcome to come stay here with us for the time that Taylor’s gone. It can’t be much fun all alone down at that empty house all by yourself every day.”

“I’ll be alright, Mother McGill. I don’t mind so much being alone. I find plenty of things to do during the day that keep me busy.”

“It’s the nights that concern me, Maighread. Say you’ll stay with us just one day out of the week, say Sunday. You could overnight here Saturdays after your performance. We could start having our picnics again Sundays, just like we did when Taylor was here. We haven’t had even one since he left. When winter comes, we can have them indoors.”

“Sure, why not,” said Maighread, appearing deep in thought.

“It’s settled then. You’ll overnight here Saturday nights, and then Sunday, all three of us will spend the entire day together.”

 

1862. After several cold winter months, spring came to the Brennan River Valley. The day of the McKennitt-McGill wedding anniversaries and Taylor’s 21st birthday came and went without fanfare.

 

A week later and Maighread was squatting at the edge of the stage addressing Mother McGill before the night’s performance was to begin.

“I was going to take my birthday off,” said Maighread. “But, I didn’t give the owner fair enough notice. So, here I am. I did want to thank you again for a great birthday though, Mother McGill. The dinner and the cake were wonderful.”

“You only turn twenty-four once, Maighread. With your birthday and Taylor’s so close together, we’ve always only celebrated on April 5th, your birthday. I’m sure he thought of you all day long.”

“I know for a fact that he did, Mother McGill.”

 

The next day, Maighread, her father, and Mother McGill had breakfast at the Shamrock after church. Ernie, Maighread’s pianist, brought a letter to the table.

“I took the liberty of collecting your mail after hours yesterday, knowing that you’d be in town today.”

“It’s from Taylor, sent a month ago,” said Maighread. “Thank you very much, Ernie. I’ll see you at rehearsal this week.”

Maighread carefully cut the edge of the envelope with the tip of her steak knife.

“He says they spent a very cold and miserable winter in the field. He says that many of the men became sick and some died from disease and the harsh winter conditions.”

Maighread read down the letter several more paragraphs before raising her head. She addressed her father and Mother McGill with a frown.

“He says that at this point, he doesn’t see a quick end to the war. He says that the resolve on both sides seems to be entrenched.”

Suddenly, Maighread stood up, clutched her belly and fell onto the table, toppling the table and its contents, before falling to the floor with a thud.

 

“The doctor says he can’t find anything wrong with her,” said Patrick McGill, coming out from the examining room.

“Well, that’s the damnedest thing,” said Mother McGill. “I thought for sure she was dying. Is she awake now?”

“Yes, you can go into her.”

Christine McGill slowly opened the door, daring to peek inside. Maighread was sitting up on the edge of the bed.

“How are you feeling, Dear?”

“Taylor’s dead, Mother McGill.”

“You don’t know that! How could you know that, Maighread?!

“I know. Believe me, I know.”

About a month later, the two letters came a few days apart. The first letter, a form letter on stationery labeled Confederate States of America, was inside a package addressed to Maighread, which was dated as having been shipped the 10th of April 1862. It was signed by a few people, Jefferson Davis, president CSA, and someone else named General G. T. Beauregard CSA. The only real signature on the letter was by someone named Capt. George Pinkerton.

 

It is with deepest regrets that we must inform you that your husband, Private Taylor McKennitt CSA, has been killed in action, engaging the enemy on the battlefield at Shiloh near Pittsburgh Landing – April 6, 1862 – Hardin County, Tennessee. He fought bravely and with distinction in the defense of liberty. He will be buried in a place of honor near the battlefield. His country and countrymen will forever be indebted to such a brave and loyal soldier.

Inside the box was his wedding band, the pocket watch Maighread had given him before he left, a certificate for back pay, a wallet in which there was $10 Confederate money, and a well-worn picture of the two of them at their wedding.

The second letter, the more important letter, arrived a few days later. It was from a Private Amos Flanagan CSA, who introduced himself as Taylor’s friend. He had promised Taylor he would contact Maighread, should he himself survive the battle.

“I’m sorry to have to write this letter, Miss Maighread. I wrote as exactin’ as Taylor said the words to me on the battlefield. He said:

‘I’m not going to make it back, Maighread. Given the sort of wound I have, a gutshot, I know from what I’ve seen of other men wounded in the same fashion that there’s no way I’m going to survive.

This war is not at all what I thought it would be. There is no glory nor honor here, only death and endings. I’ve seen so many lives destroyed. All for nothing.

You were right, Maighread. I should never have left you to come here. All I’ve been able to think about since I came here is you and me together that first time at the pool. If only I could be there with you again, just one more time. Unfortunately, some mistakes we make in life are for keeps, Acushla, and sometimes, there are no second chances.

Be strong, Maighread. Know that, as close as we’ve been, I will be gone in body only, my spirit will live on inside you forever. I’ll be there when you think of me, and each and every time you call my name. I believe you know that and I believe you will always feel my presence.

I love you dearly, Acushla—my lover, my heartbeat, my wife. God go with you. It will only be a short time before we again see each other in heaven, to be together forever.

—Your husband, Taylor’”

The soldier added that Maighread’s name was the very last thing Taylor uttered before he died. He also said that if she had any further questions about Taylor, she could write, and gave both his unit and home addresses.

 

Chapter Twelve

The war ended three years later. While the north won, things only changed on paper and most resigned themselves to the fact that nothing would ever justify the tremendous loss of life on both sides.

 

Maighread gave her home and all her holdings to her father and Mother McGill. Before she left, she said goodbye to the people in town and thanked those at the farms for whom Taylor had worked. She said goodbye to the owner of the Shamrock and to all her fellow singers and musicians with whom she and Taylor had entertained all those years.

 

Beneath the trees and the flickering sunlight, Maighread pulled her hope chest from the horse-drawn travois onto the grass where she and Taylor first lay together, those precious few years ago. She opened the lid and carefully straightened the contents, jostled about during the trip here.

Inside was her wedding dress, the tuxedo Taylor wore that day, the china from their kitchen, the scarf Mother McGill had loaned her that first time Taylor took her to town, Taylor’s original guitar and mouth harp, her first violin and flute, the white dress with the green trim he had given her for her first performance, her first pair of dress shoes, the green jacket with the sequins, the dozens upon dozens of trinkets and things that had hung on the walls of their home, and the glasses with which they had toasted their union on their wedding day. She picked up one of Taylor’s shirts, held it to her face and breathed in deeply. She returned it to its place in the chest. On the very top, she lay her mother’s quilt, and atop this, her mother’s books. Maighread closed the lid, set her forehead atop it, and cried.

 

Rumor had it that Maighread worked the stage in San Francisco for a time, until a Yankee northerner, a retired colonel from Ohio, bought up the place. The last anyone heard, she had joined a musical troupe, which was headed back east to leave for an extended tour of Europe.

The End

Written by Manfred Knight.

The story, names, characters, times and places are entirely fictional. Any similarities to any person, living or deceased, is entirely coincidental. The photographs, artwork, and music are highly modified versions of the originals by unknown copyright holders.

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