Chapter 3

For breakfast, Roy always ate from three to four fried eggs, toast, bacon, coffee, then finished off with oatmeal and cream, and more coffee. When he worked the land on the farm where they lived, Roy always came home for lunch. When he worked the fields on his other two tracts of land, one three miles away, another five miles off, he usually took a lunch, and used the time it would normally take to drive back and forth for a half-hour nap in the shade of his tractor after he ate. On this particular morning, a Thursday after Ellen's experience with the boy on Monday, she was packing him a lunch because he was plowing a tract of wheat stubble on what they called the Hoffsiger quarter, five miles North. In the kitchen, putting ice cubes in his thermos while Ellen made sandwiches, Roy issued some instructions.

"Now Jesse Wilson said he'd come Wednesday or Thursday for that old one-way I sold him, and I forgot to tell you about it yesterday, but he didn't come, so he's sure to come today. You know which one my old one is, don't you, Ell?" he queried.

"The one back in the weeds next to the round top?"

He nodded vigorously. "That's it. An old Krause. What I want you to do is make sure he gets it and that's all. Jesse ain't above loadin' a few loose things in his pickup when they're handy and nobody's around. I sold him that old plow for twenty-five dollars mainly because I don't want it around and it ain't worth haulin' in town for junk, but a guy like Jesse could plow with a crooked stick, so he'll get some good out of it. So when he drives in, you run on out and without sayin' what you're doin', keep your eye on him. Could you do that, Ell?"

"Maybe."

"Hell, don't you know?"

"I might," she said in a little, hurt voice.

"Okay, okay!" he said sharply. "What is it now?"

Deftly, Ellen tore Saran-wrap for his sandwiches. "Alberta Dorsey called yesterday, and said she and Hank are taking the kids up to Lake Rockridge for a picnic Sunday. She wondered if we'd like to go along, and I want to, Roy," she said earnestly. "I've got to!" She stood waiting for the decision, wondering if he could tell from her excited expression how important it was going to be.

"Aw, if it wasn't so godam hot, I wouldn't mind going up a few hours, but I get so godam much sun all week long on that tractor I don't see no sense in drivin' fifty miles just to get in a pair of swim trunks and burn hell outa my back. I can do all that out in the yard here."

"I know that," Ellen replied steadily. "But it isn't the idea of just getting your back burned. It's fun because there are so many others up there doing the same thing."

Roy laughed derisively. "Nobody goes up there to really swim. Girls go up to show their asses in them little Bikini things, and guys go to see asses and tits. Little bitty kids is the only ones that really hit the water."

"Well, I want to go and show my ass and tits, too!" Ellen said defiantly. "And I want you along to look at them!"

Roy grinned, wet a finger and with exaggerated caution, put it to her skin, then drew back sharply as if he'd gotten scorched. "That's pretty good heat for six in the morning. What else you gotta have or you're gonna stamp those pretty little feet?" Roy goosed her suddenly.

Ellen hunched protectively, and slapped at air. "Quit that, Roy! That's godam rude!" She rarely used profanity.

"Well, simmer down some, then. You don't go and tell me we're gonna haul ass up to that damned dusty lake grounds and fight everbody else for a place to spread a quilt to have a picnic, then fight flies to get your share. If Hank Dorsey spent more time tendin' to his farmin' plannin' for them five kids, he'd do a little better. Or, if he'd quit fuckin so much and not have so many he'd be better off too."

"You won't take me, then?" she snapped.

"I didn't say that! You get off your high-horse some, we'll see about it. And don't forget about Jesse Wilson and that plow." Thermos in one hand, lunch bucket in the other, Roy Carver wheeled away and stalked out the door. Sorrowfully, Ellen shook her head at his back, thinking, I tried! When Roy promised he'd see about something, the issue was as good as dead. It was merely another way of saying no.

After the pickup left the yard, Ellen turned on the radio to drown her thoughts. While she didn't particularly enjoy country music and long-winded commercials on farm products, this was about the only programming during early morning.

After breakfast dishes, she spent a lot of time with her hair, dressed in a way she thought Jesse Wilson might appreciate, made the bed, and cleaned house until she heard the sound of a light truck coming down the road. As she listened, the motor slowed, and the truck turned it. Ellen checked her makeup in the bathroom mirror, and walked casually toward the big Quonset building that Roy used for his machine shed and for storing grain. The disc-plow Wilson came after was backed against the North side, and some weeds had grown around it. Their neighbor to the West a mile and a half had already backed his flatbed truck into the weeds, and was positioning the tongue of the implement to hitch onto the vehicle.

Wilson was in his mid-twenties, older than Ellen, younger than Roy. He had a lively with that Roy lacked, however, and he wasn't nearly so big a man, at least not in weight. Wilson was inclined to be lean and gaunt, probably because he worked hard enough to get ahead, but lacked the managerial ability Roy had. He wasn't bad-looking. His angular, tanned face was clean-shaven, and he had a ready smile. "Hi, Ellen. I guess this is what Roy meant me to get, ain't it?"

"Hello, Jess. Yes, that's the one. I thought I'd come out and ask how you guys are. I haven't seen Hazel in weeks, and she's close enough I could get there barefoot in fifteen minutes. How are you, you and Hazel?" she asked courteously.

Wilson stood after he bolted the plow to the hitch on his truck. "She's good. Baby's been ailin' some. Doctor says his formula don't agree, so we changed that and think he's getting better. He slept a little better last night, thank the Lord for small favors. Most nights we see more of each other gettin' up and down than we do daytimes. How's you and Roy.'"

"Oh, I'm fine. Roy's up on the Hoffsiger place plowing the wheat land. He's just as ornery as ever," she laughed.

"I seen that crop before it was cut," Wilson said enviously. "Boy, if I could get two or three like that, I wouldn't worry none for a year or two. What'd that field make, Ellen?"

"Roy said seventy-three bushel average. He was pretty tickled about it."

"Who wouldn't be, a yield like that. Course, Roy fertilizes lots, and it rained just right. I might lay mine on heavier this winter, see if I can't gain some. You're lookin' mighty bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, Ellen. Goin someplace so early?" Wilson wasn't trying to disguise the admiration in his eyes.

Ellen smiled prettily. "Shoot, no! Way things are now, I'll die on this farm without gettin' off. Roy works so late he doesn't want to go no place."

Jesse smiled with her. "We're tied down too, with that youngster. Soon as he gets able, we'll get out some."

"How old is he?" asked Ellen, not sure.

"Five weeks yesterday."

"Hazel had a hard time, didn't she?"

Wilson's smile dimmed some. He nodded. "She's got a lot of gettin' well to do herself. Course, her mother's there. She's a big help around. I couldn't get any work done at all if she wasn't there."

The inference, so far as Ellen was concerned, was inescapable. The doctors always recommended six weeks waiting. With Hazel having transfusion after transfusion to keep her alive, Ellen guessed Wilson would have to wait much longer, and she felt genuinely sorry for him, knowing what it was to want and be denied. She spoke quite frankly, and for a purpose. "I don't suppose you and Hazel are sleeping together yet."

Jess Wilson shook his head regretfully, maintaining his steady, open smile, "Not yet."

"It's been a long time, I'll bet."

He nodded. "Doctor said it would take quite awhile. She was pretty bad there for a while." He snapped off a weed, stood picking off the leaves. "Good thing you get kids out of something like that. Otherwise, it wouldn't be worth it."

"I don't know when Roy and I will have a baby," she said offhandedly. "Sometimes, I think he's so busy farming he won't ever get time to make one."

Wilson's grin widened. "Boy, I could take time out any day for that!"

Ellen smiled mischievously. "Just what was that supposed to mean, Mr. Wilson?"

He was looking hard, making certain she knew he appreciated the sight of a gorgeous, healthy woman. "Just what I said," was his soft reply. "Any time, any day."

"What would Hazel say if she knew you were talking like this?"

"Hazel won't ever know, unless you told her. So how could she say anything?"

"Won't you get chiggers, standing there in those weeds?"

He waded out, stood confronting her. "They bite me and die, I'm so hard and tough," he boasted intentionally.

Ellen looked away. "You'd probably faint if you had a good piece."

Wilson moved on her like a cat, had her in his arms, growling softly, possessively, like a cat with a freshly caught bird. As the clinging, rubbing embrace built in intensity, Wilson's dormant passion roared to the surface. A hard, formless lump of prick gathered under his tight jeans, and the soft contact of her teasing belly made it even harder. Hungry, clutching hands worked frantically on the delightful softness of her hips, then impatiently went beneath her dress and found wonderfully naked flesh, and all the while their lips never stopped moving, one mouth against the other. Pliant, hot, intensely real, Ellen wanted it as badly as he. Wilson's quick eagerness had swept her along to his kind of passion-starved fever, and she pretended it had been weeks and weeks since she'd had the feel of a prick in her. Ellen moaned as loudly as Wilson.

Suddenly, he broke the loss, the embrace, and looked wildly around for a place where they could perform the act. The house was much too far away. It had to be done quickly. The truck bed, flat and roomy, was too high and hard. Wilson decided on the cab, and pushed Ellen in that direction.

"I never did it in a truck before," she panted excitedly. Her eyes were bright and big, her cheeks flushed. Ellen was enjoying the feel of inspired passion. She perched on the cushion, pulled up her dress and flaunted her cunt at her neighbor, who was trying to get naked from the waist down. "How do you want me?"

Wilson's eyes were feverish as he balanced out of one trouser leg, then another, unable to tear his gaze away from the cuntripeness of her. Torture-hard, his prick stood straight out. He was too low on the ground, too high on the short running board. Frantically, he got in the cab, stooped low enough to clear the overhead, and pulled at the naked legs, trying to get between them. "I don't give a damn how!" he panted. "Just let me at that!"

Ellen moved forward to accommodate the strained position, so her hips barely rested on the edge of the cushion, so she was within reach. Trembling, gloating, as deliberately as his anxiety permitted, Jesse buried the swollen, blood-gorged head, then the length of his shaft, in the golden-soft flesh of cunt, and this only quickened his response. The searing flame of pleasure was already shooting through his body. He cried. "Ellen, Baby! Move it!" and struck at her with big, heavy strokes, as ponderous as their cramped position would allow. She was too seductive, too mellowly complete in womanliness, and the gripping smoothness inside her cunt literally screamed for his orgasm. Wilson braced his head against the top, rammed deep and hard, then stiffened with a hoarse cry of ecstasy as the coursing semen boiled up and out in the spurting abundance when it has been too long contained in a man who loved sexual pleasure. Never had Wilson felt more relieved, or more grateful.

"You didn't come, did you," he panted, wondering if he should withdraw and let what must have been a deluge of semen drip out on the cushion.

Ellen had her solution for this. "I will next time. It was fun, just feeling you enjoy it."

Wilson grinned self-consciously, pushed away from her, and got down to the ground. Ellen, moving carefully, kept her dress up around her waist for obvious reasons. She laughed when she saw Wilson, his prick still sizable from ebbing passion, naked up to his shirt tail. "Shall we walk up to the house this way?"

"I will if you will."

Ellen shook her head. "Give me your hanky. I'll wash it out at the house. You can hold it out the window on the way home to dry." She applied the compress protectively and let her dress fall. "Drive on up to the house, Jesse," she suggested wickedly. "I'll show you how hot a real woman can get."

Wilson slipped into his trousers and shoes. "You got yourself a deal there. I need just about three more like that to bring me up to par. That was the best piece I ever had, Ellen," he said truthfully.

The farmer had to maneuver his truck some to clear some other implements, and by the time he was free to drive up to the house near the windmill, Ellen was already inside. He ran through the yard, knocked on the kitchen door.

"Come on in!" she called. "You've been here before. You know where the bedroom is."

Eagerly, Wilson pushed through the kitchen, living room, and into a short hallway and an open door. Ellen was naked, smiling, completely inviting. "Can you get ready again, Jesse?"

His shirt was already unbuttoned. He stripped it off, tossed it aside. "Like I said, about three more will fix me up."

Ellen, watching his nudity appear again, found the prospect exciting. "Can you really?"

Wilson nodded. "Hazel never went for it like I do, and if you can stand it, this is one time when I wanta feel godamned pussy-whipped, like if I ever had to see one again, I'd get sick." Naked, thoroughly aroused again, he moved purposely toward the bed.

Ellen's eyes were big and round when she saw his erection.

"Oh, honey!" she whispered, and got into position. When Wilson's penis slipped in, her loins and back were six inches off the bed. If a woman's legs can wrap around a man's waist in a forceful, business-like way, this was the fashion in which Ellen Carver gripped her neighbor, and each swung into a knowing, practiced cadence of two people proficient in sexual love, and just as equally positive they would enjoy every second of it.

"How're you doin'?" Jesse wanted to know after a long, soul searing kiss.

"Wonderful!" breathed Ellen, panting from the heady exercise. "It's getting real good for me."

Wilson kissed her again, intensified the fervor of hit probing drives, and Ellen punctuated each one with little muted cries of rapture. "Honey! Honey! Honey!" she cried over and over. The farmer, thinking she was far and away the best neighbor he'd ever had, lost himself in a supreme effort to recover all his lost pleasures in a single morning.

Ellen made a real thing out of coming. Instead of straining for the incomparable sensation, she pushed against it, tried to repel it, until the pressure was too intensely rapturous, then surrendered in a contorted, writhing frenzy that had Wilson overjoyed as he merely hung on and sent stroke after stroke plunging in and out or her vagina. When she collapsed, he rested with her.

When she stopped panting, took a long, recuperative breath and patted his face fondly, Wilson got her up dog-fashion, and here again the dual stimulation of sheer gratification, and the heady wonders of strange flesh, each combined to bring him off in a seizing, wrenching pleasure with his dick sunk to the hilt and him imagining he was sending it all the way to her mouth.

They talked while they waited. Neither expected any real, natural urge, although all the while, Ellen was almost feverish with anticipation. The taste had liberated the real grinding desire that always came along afterwards. With Roy, it nearly always died a natural death, but with Jesse Wilson dedicated to intercourse, until he was too weak sexually to maintain his ability, Ellen was knowing a drugged anxiety while they discussed their marital experiences. She had asked if Hazel liked it.

"Most times she does, especially during daytime. When we first got married, I'd come in for lunch, and after we ate, we'd go in on the bed and I'd undress her real slow, the way she liked it, and when I finally got it in, she was always red hot."

"You just didn't stick it in," Ellen said. "What did you do to her to get her hot besides take her clothes off?" Excitement underscored the questions. She was putting herself in Hazel's place.

"I sucked her titties. She likes that real good. I put my finger in until it was time to fuck. She said that felt good, too."

"Do me!" panted the blonde.

"Well alright!" he replied in kind, and before he put his lips to the turgid, expectant nipple, he murmured, "All you gotta do is let me .know you want me, and it'll come up." Jesse Wilson tasted the superb enchantment of Ellen's breasts and wondered why he'd ignored them before. His hand trailed down the flat, hollow belly, to the crisp pad of hair, fingered apart the genital lips and he inserted the middle one. Easily, gently, he simulated copulation with his finger and sucked at the nipple, while Ellen gasped in undisguised pleasure. "Oh God, God, God, put it in!" she finally pleaded.

Grinning hugely because he was waiting to do exactly that, Wilson mounted her with a pounding, insensible erection, and made the substitution for his finger. Ellen groaned as if she'd been stabbed, and tore at his prick with grinding jerks of her hips, as if she intended pulling it out by the roots.

It ended as an endurance contest. Wilson lost track of the times she came. It seemed a thing like alcoholism. Another taste and she was off again on her gluttonous, whorish binge, wanting even more pleasure, pleading with Wilson to supply her with it, when he was tiring by the second. Her vagina seemed endless in both space and appetite. While he screwed automatically, Wilson tried to remember the times she'd gasped through her wrenching orgasms, and he thought at least seven or eight. Without realizing, he'd been exercising control, assuring himself Ellen Carver received as good as she gave.

For some time, they'd been rolling over on their sides, on his back, on hers, Ellen upside down, all the ways love can discover. Now, aware his time would have to be, Wilson got her in the time-honored position, her on her back, got a handful of haunch on each side for ballast, and plowed her long and deep. Ellen sensed it was for real, and wailed for the last thirty seconds of her sexual spasm. Wilson groaned with relief when he finished, feeling he'd just dumped an awful burden off his back.

When he could breath normally and understand, he glanced at his watch. It was nine-forty. He'd been at the Carver farm an hour and twenty-minutes.

Ellen was blinking at the ceiling, her legs crossed over. Wilson took her hand. "I might have bragged some about that third time ... unless I come back this afternoon."

She plumped her pillow back to shape. "You don't have to, Jesse. It was wonderful. Just plain wonderful, every second of it. It was the best I ever had," she sighed, and pillowed her face in the hollow of his shoulder.

"Well, you can't do much better than that," he said contentedly, and kissed her forehead. "You wouldn't think I was backin' out on Hazel if I said the same thing, would you?"

"No. I know you love her."

"She had a kid for me, you know," he said slowly. "But if I was to wait for her to get as hot as you got, and let me fuck as long as I possibly could, I guess I'd have to wait forever. That's what I mean when I said you was the best ever."

"There's a difference alright. You're different from Roy. All he wants is to go once, sort of relieve himself, then he's ready to go to sleep. He won't do it in the daytime anymore, says it makes him too sleepy the rest of the day. Some afternoons, when I take a nap and wake up hot, I'm just dyin' for a piece."

"Ever use your finger?" he asked curiously.

"Sometimes," she admitted. "Just like you do. It's just a way to get over a feeling, though. I don't like to."

"You could have called me," he joked.

"Or Raoul Petersen, or Vic Ainsett, or Hank Dorsey," she named. "I guess about everyone around here would like to screw me. They've all said so more than once, with their eyes. But why should I have to call anybody!" she cried. "Why couldn't I have a husband like anybody else, one you got to keep pushed off part of the time?"

"Now wait a minute, Ellen. It wasn't me that introduced you to Roy," he cautioned.

"Oh, I know!" she said defeatedly. "It's times like these, when I'm about screwed out, when for one of the few times in my life I don't really want any more lovin', I think how easy it is to get this way, then I get mad at Roy all over again."

Wilson patted her in a comradely way. "I wish I could tell you somethin' helpful, but all I can do is hope I catch you this way again sometime."

She pulled away so she could see his eyes. "You don't think any less of me for this, do you Jesse? You won't look down on me, will you?"

"God, no! If we come over here when Hazel is up and around to show off the baby, it'll be hard for me to keep my hands off you. That's what it's meant to me."

"You really mean that, don't you?" she said, as if believing him were very important.

Soberly, he nodded. "Sure, I do."

"Then you'd understand why, if I left Roy, wouldn't you?"

"I guess so. I sure hope you don't. People around our community think a lot of you two. Is it that bad, Ellen?"

The discontented farm wife breathed deeply, so her breasts jutted high, not for his benefit, but because she needed control. "Not as bad as I try to make out, I guess," she finally decided. She looked him squarely in the eye. "Do you want to fuck me again, Jesse?"

He smiled faintly. "Tomorrow I'll be wild again, wanting you, knowing I can't because we've all got to live here, and we're taking one hell of a chance this morning. And, tomorrow, you might not like me. If I can, I'd like to," he concluded, as one not sure he could.

Ellen put her head on his chest. Gently, her fingers manipulated his limp, pendulous sex. "It won't take long to find out," she murmured. "Did Hazel ever kiss it for you?"

A flash of excitement shot through his body. "That's one thing she won't do," he confessed, hoping.

Her head was on his belly, face to it, caressing, "I don't see so much wrong with it, when it'll do the trick," remarked Ellen.

Wilson fought to keep from shoving her head down to his penis. "That's dure be something!" he whispered, not wanting to break the spell.

She was dangerously close now. The blood pounded in his neck, so near was she, her fingers working expertly, and now, she didn't have to touch it with her mouth at all, because he was already swelling into erection. "I used to do it to Roy," she admitted softly, "just for kicks. But he wouldn't do it for me, so I quit. Would you, Jesse?" she asked craftily, so near and yet so far.

"Get your ass up here!" he yelled hoarsely, and reached for her thighs and the golden trophy he would harvest in his strange, compulsive passion. In seconds, the lovers gasped from the sheer novelty of the act. Wilson's prick felt as if it would burst from pressure when she ran her tongue around and around the head. Hard and deep, he swabbed her cunt with his tongue, again returning as much as he received.

Ellen, when she had to find her relief, got on top of Wilson and pumped to her climax after he was unmistakably finished for the day. It was tremulous, weak, and he thought, probably empty. His voluptuous blonde bed-fellow sighed gustily, as if the finale were precisely what she waited for and jumped to her feet. "There," she stated with some satisfaction. "You don't have to leave thinking you flunked. If Roy came four times in one day, the undertaker would have to get three of them out of his balls."

"Don't talk that way," he chided gently. "I'm not gonna go off and leave Hazel, just because we don't think exactly alike."

Ellen leaned forward, so her breasts would fall properly into the cups of her bra. "I know, but you've got a baby to keep you together. We don't have any."

"They're easy to enough to get," he said informatively. "Why don't you?"

"We went to the doctor once," Ellen said informatively. "Roy isn't exactly alive with the little wiggle-tails, and I guess I'll have to have an operation before I can have a baby, so to hell with it. For anybody else, I might do it. But not for him."

Wilson felt uncomfortable. Her words sounded terribly final. "I'm sorry it didn't work out for you two, Ellen. Roy's pretty well respected. About everybody looks up to him. And you, you're the belle of the community. I don't know of anybody doesn't like you ... and me more'n anybody else. I'd sure hate to see you split with Roy."

Grim-faced, Ellen slipped into her dress. "Well, the rest of you don't have to live with the turd-head, and I've had enough a long time ago, so don't be surprised at anything."

Ready to go, Wilson didn't know whether to try to kiss her or not. He decided not to. It was all over now. "Goodbye, Ellen."

"Goodbye, Jesse. Say hello to Hazel"

"I will. Same to Roy. I already paid for the plow."

"He said you did."

After he was gone, Ellen got more infuriated, thinking how Roy had sent her out to be certain Jesse Wilson didn't steal anything. Her dislike for Roy grew to hatred. Jesse was one of the finest men she'd ever met up with.