Chapter 12
Sheila accepted the package, and Mr. Carter said, "Protein. Healthier. I carry a hunk around in my pocket to nibble on."
He approved of the shack and greeted the folding chair like a long lost friend. "Have much trouble breaking it in?" he asked. "Had one in my other cabin. I was the only one who could ride it. Ah," he settled down, "never thought of putting a pad on it."
Yes, he'd sent the children off, fortunately in different directions. "They're too much a-like to get along," he explained. "They're both perfectionists, like their mother. Wonderful woman. If she hadn't taken me in tow as a young man, I'd have been a waster with sand in my shoes."
Yes, he would have a bowl of soup; he'd been hoping Sheila would suggest it ever since he'd caught his first whiff. And would she mind writing down how she'd made it?
"And don't write, 'Salt to taste.' How can a man tell when putting it in how it's going to taste, and if it's too much how can he get it out?"
He didn't get around to telling her the reason for his visit until they'd eaten the last biscuit and emptied the soup pot.
He said he had hoped for a long vacation, but he was finding he couldn't take it without working a hardship on the rest of the family.
"So I found a job today, in town."
"You did?"
"I did. I had it figured out way back when I first heard rumors of the company merger. Most accountants of my caliber haunt the cities where they can command the salaries to which they've accustomed their families. I planned to find some small place where such talent would have the value of the unusual and living costs would allow me to accept without asking a salary the asker couldn't pay."
Sheila listened, amazed. Andy had been trying to spare him from the knowledge he already had and had used to work out an economic survival plan.
Carter went on. Caroline hadn't wanted him "hovering" while she shopped, so he'd gone into town with her one day and had done a little hovering in a tavern. He'd heard about a new cannery planned down the coast, had found out when they'd be ready to open and the names of those in charge.
"So today, with my boy still lecturing me from the bus window, I took off. Found my men right there at the cannery discussing things, and got me a job. Got you one, too."
"Me!" Sheila exploded.
"Only four days a week, five hours a day at first. Your mother won't need you all the time, will she? You can go back and forth with me. Minimum wage, though. Take home won't be more than twenty a week."
What she could buy with twenty dollars a week! Steaks and chops and fresh green vegetables. And my, how she would stock her shelves with canned goods. She'd buy lumber and close in the front so she could put up shelves to hold what she'd buy.
"Oh, please. Wait. What do they expect me to do?"
"Type, don't you? And file? I told them you didn't know shorthand, but they said they could tell you what they wanted written and you'd take over from there. Now why are you crying?"
"I dunno," she blubbered. "I just felt so cut off from living, I didn't think I could last until next winter."
Andrew Carter nodded. "Know just how you felt. Mother was always at me to buy insurance so we'd have enough annuities to carry us to our grave. I bucked. I said life was for living, not fading out.
"So now we live; we've both of us got claims to support. Imagine, Sheila, having to work to support a gold mine."
After their first burst of laughter, Sheila asked, "You knew all the time?"
"I read a lot," he explained. "I wanted the out-of-doors somehow, and this offered a means of getting it."
He said he'd be going into town the next day for preliminaries, suggested she go with him to meet her new employers. Then Tuesday they'd start their nine-to-four shift.
Sheila flew down the steps after he left to break the good news to her parents.
"Thank goodness for that," sighed Mrs. Norris. "I told Nate living alone was not good for a young girl."
"Now, Mother, you know that wasn't in my mind when I encouraged her."
"What was, Dad?" Sheila asked. But he banged out of the house, slamming the door so hard crockery danced.
Mrs. Norris asked about transportation and was relieved to learn Mr. Carter would be driving her.
"Your father has a job of sorts and will need the jeep. Of course you could use the car, but it's quite a walk from the road."
"But, Mother, you'll be here alone."
"There are different kinds of aloneness, Sheila. You'll both be home evenings. Knowing you're out earning the means to improve the claim and feed us will keep me contented."
As they made out a small grocery list for the next day, Sheila asked about other kinds of aloneness and what her mother considered the worst.
"The frustrated kind. Feeling finished. Having no place to go and no way to get there. You can feel that in the city as acutely as in the country."
Puzzled, she returned to her shack, her mind full of the day's contrary information.
She sat before the big window, for which she could thank Jed, and thought about him.
Imagine having to live with a man like Jed. What would Caroline do to him if she captured him? Jed seemed to admire her efficiency as well as her looks. And Caroline would never quarrel with him. She was like Andy in that she quietly waited for the storm to subside, then sailed on over calm waters.
That was good, wasn't it? Then why was Andy so upset at the idea of Caroline falling in love with Jed? For that matter, why was she?
And Sheila threw up her hands.
The next day she shopped with an abandon she had never before known. Not that she spent much, but she spent what she had freely. She even allowed Mr. Carter to stake her to a sweater she saw in a window.
"Good for your spirit, Sheila; you can pay me back fifty cents a week."
"How about you?" she asked, for hadn't he spoken of having to pay Caroline for the jeep?
He chuckled. "I'll get by. No rent to pay, you know. Silly, isn't it, to save over so many years, then not be able to lay hands on it? Well, the savings account gives Mother comfort."
He'd refused to have his evening meal at the Norris place to pay for Sheila's transportation. It wasn't, he told her mother, that he didn't know she was the best cook in the hills, but that he had a hankering to prove he could take care of himself.
Now, over coffee and pie, a particular treat before they started back, he asked Sheila if she thought she was going to like her job.
"Oh, yes," she returned with enthusiasm. "Imagine me all alone in an office, my own boss. Oh, please, I didn't mean that as it sounded. Andy is wonderful to work under."
"I understand. In your previous job you were a small cog to a big wheel. Here you're the wheel. There is a challenge to keeping that wheel moving smoothly. And your bosses?"
Sheila thought of the two men and gave a motherly smile. Experts in their own line, they looked like baffled babies tiptoeing around the little cubicle that would be her office, pointing fingers at papers, asking what she would need in the way of equipment.
It was a lot like her shack, she thought, this raw-lumbered building set on pilings, with bay waters splashing below at high tide. Knowing there was limited capital and months ahead before they could realize on their investment, she suggested she make the necessary purchases. She was on chummy relations with the second-hand store.
Sheila and Mr. Carter bounced home late that afternoon, in high spirits. Later Sheila would put a thought tag on their feelings. Sheila had spent every penny she had and would carry her lunches that first week, but she was happier than she'd been in "I don't know when." And she worried over being happy.
"It's my father coming out in me," she shouted at Mr. Carter. "He likes to 'shoot the wad.'"
"Gets full value from his investment," Carter shouted back, after they'd struck a hidden boulder, zoomed into the air and come down with a breath-taking jolt. "I've laid up dollars that aren't worth a dime today. Had I spent them I'd have had the dollars' worth."
"I suppose," she agreed.
Because of her purchases, Mr. Carter drove as close to the Norris place as possible. Later Nate would drop logs across the creek, stringers for a shallow bridge.
"Oh," cried Sheila, looking into the shadows, "something's happened to the cabin."
It had grown and taken on the look of a ranch house. A room at least thirty feet long was rapidly shaping up. Though only the uprights indicated where it would be, dusk gave it the illusion of being finished.
"Nothing like ingenuity, muscles, and cooperation. I wish," his voice had grown wistful, "but no." And he said no more. The three men from the Norris house came down to relieve the jeep of Sheila's purchases so he could get on to his cabin before dark.
Because Mrs. Norris had been waiting for the meat Sheila would bring, supper was not ready, a good excuse for the men to show Sheila the new addition.
"I'm being a lot of trouble," she mused aloud.
"This isn't for you," Jed said abruptly; "all you get is the last twelve feet. "This here," he waved at a small enclosure, "is the bathroom; just cold water, but a hot tub can be added. We can pick up a tub for practically nothing; board it up to hide the scars."
Here would be a clothes closet, and here a linen and storage room.
"None of this is for me," Sheila told them as they went in to gather around the small table. "You're turning the back room into a kitchen, aren't you? Then why don't the folks have the bedroom? I have the shack. I can sleep on the divan such nights as I spend here."
She couldn't miss the look of triumph her mother shot at Jed and wondered anew why he must always think the worst of her, see her as selfish, thoughtless.
"I'll see you up the hill," he said later. And when she told him she was quite capable of climbing the cliff, he snapped, "This is no time to risk a fall. You're starting a new job, remember?"
After that she had to accept. She was so angry she knew she'd do something foolish and come to a crashing fall.
He walked behind her, playing his flash on each step, and when they were at the top she wasn't sorry someone was there. She didn't mind nights in the shack if she were already inside with lights on before dark. Seeing it like this, a dark huddle against a darker background, it was a little frightening.
He built the fire while she lighted lanterns, then went out to bring in two armloads of wood. Ready to leave, he stood at the doorway staring at her.
"Sheila, I've never known any one man or woman who can rile me as you do. And I don't know why."
"It's probably my fault," she said wearily. "I had to take so much charity as a kid, I can't accept anything graciously."
What had she said! The door had banged as it had banged only once since she'd moved in. Pots, pans, and dishes crashed.
She had called his help charity; that was it. But why such a violent rejection? She must get to the bottom of this somehow.
"Jed," she stumbled over a bowl en route to the door, threw it open and saw him standing outside, "I'm sorry. I don't know what I said, but forgive it. We could have coffee."
He returned slowly, reluctantly. Sheila backed to let him in, stumbled backward over the same bowl she'd stumbled forward over, crashed into the folding chair and folded.
It was the first free laugh they had ever had together.
"There should be one in every house," Sheila said solemnly.
"With a bottle of liniment attached," he agreed. "Sheila, about this charity business-"
He helped her up, straightened the chair, and she went to look for instant coffee.
"You were talking tonight about how your fingers itched to get into those papers down at the cannery, how you wanted to straighten them up. Suppose those men were friends, not employers-wouldn't you want to do that anyway if you were given a chance?"
"I suppose. Yes, of course. I helped out in a friend's office when their girl was sick. I enjoyed doing it."
"It's the same with Danny and me. We see something that needs doing, something we can do. It's a darned sight more fun than sitting up on our claim waiting for the water to come down. Then think of your mother's cooking."
It sounded all right. Thoughtfully Sheila unwrapped cinnamon rolls she'd bought with a grand gesture at the small home bakery in town.
"Besides," she risked, "you know what Mother says: 'How would givers work up feathers for their wings if there were no receivers?'"
For the first time Jed did a little talking about himself. Not too much. His parents were dead; he'd kept an eye on a younger brother and sister until they were self-supporting. Now he owned two trucks, Danny drove one, he the other. He'd put them up for the winter.
The company for which he hauled had hired him to take a load south for a driver who'd had a minor operation; they'd had the chance to bring two trucks back. Meanwhile they'd run into Nate and heard him talk of the claims, had thought it would make a good vacation for them.
"Give us something to do in off seasons."
"Don't you plan to marry some day?"
Jed stood up and glared down at her. "I wouldn't marry the best woman on earth," he informed her.
"Don't worry," she screamed. "She wouldn't have you."
Then they stood there in the stillness of the cabin, listening to the echoes of their harsh words. They were both staring down at the floor like two little children suddenly scolded for bad behavior.
Jed was the first to look up. "I'm sorry," he said softly, so softly that Sheila could barely hear him.
"What did you say?" she said crisply.
"I said, I'm sorry."
"Well, I guess I'm sorry, too," she said.
Then Jed grinned at her and stepped forward. Taking her in his arms, he said, "And I can think of only one way to make up."
Sheila smiled, knowing exactly what he meant, and then leaned forward to accept his kiss. They embraced for a long time standing up, enjoying the feel of their bodies pressed tightly together, relishing the delicious sex-heat that passed between them.
"You know," Jed began haltingly, "ever since I met you, my life has really changed."
"Oh, Jed, you sound like a character in some romance novel."
"No, really. I don't care what you think. If that's how I feel, then that's what I'm going to tell you. I want you to know how I feel about you, and I'm going to tell you. Whether you want me to or not. If it's not good enough for you, then too bad. At least, I will have spoken my mind."
"Oh, Jed, I'm sorry. It's just that I've got this thing with Andy hanging over my head. I've felt so mixed up lately. It's like I can't get in touch with my true feelings. I feel really frustrated inside. I just wish I could figure this whole thing out. Sometimes I think I love you more than anything, and then Andy writes me another letter and I start dreaming about him again, and ... "
"Hey, let's not hear any more," Jed said softly, putting his hand across her mouth. "You're just worrying yourself too much. You need to relax and let your mind drift for a bit. You're thinking yourself to death. Now just hold me and enjoy it and give in to your feelings. That's all. Sometimes the easy way is the best way. It's so simple, Sheila, darling, just relax ... yes ... yessss...."
They kissed long and hard. And Sheila went limp in his arms, following his lead, doing just as he asked her to, paying attention only to the wonderful feelings that he was stirring up deep within her. Yes, he was so right, she told herself, just give in, just relax, just enjoy ... just make love!
Breaking off their kiss, Jed lifted her up and carried her over to her little bed. While she lay sprawled out, allowing him to do whatever he wished to her, he removed her clothes.
"That's it, baby," he murmured, realizing that she had given herself up to her passion. "Just relax and let me take over. I'll make you feel good. I'll make you forget about Andy and all those things that are troubling you. Yes, baby, just leave it to me."
Quickly shedding his clothes, Jed crawled up on the bed. He spread her legs and then dove into her crotch, slithering his tongue between her labia.
"Oooooo ...!" Sheila squealed, surprised by the unexpected sensation of his tongue snaking into her cunt.
Jed just grunted with the effort of kissing her pussy. He flicked his tongue back and forth rapidly across her clit until it grew hard and erect, protruding from its pink sheath. And at the same time, he eased his chin between her pussy-lips, working his jaws up and down in her slit.
Then he removed his tongue from her clitoris and opened his mouth wide. Moving down slowly, he pressed his lips hard against the lips of her vagina. Then he sucked in ward until he had produced a tight vacuum seal, fusing his face to her cunt.
Sheila couldn't believe how good it felt to have Jed sucking so expertly on her vagina. Massive jolts of pleasure were emanating from her loins, spreading outward until her entire body was tingling with desire. Then Jed began sucking in and out, filling her vagina with hot air and then inhaling deeply. It felt so strange, yet so satisfying, as if he were fucking her with his breath.
Finally removing his mouth from her drenched vagina, Jed wiped his face off on the sheets and then smiled broadly. He looked at her as if to say, How's that feel? But Sheila was so lost to her pleasure that he would have had to yell loudly to communicate anything to her at that point.
When he realized just how turned on she was, Jed swiftly brought his hard cock up against her warm vagina. He worked it around the juicy lips of her pussy, teasing her and enjoying it immensely.
"Please, Jed!" she gasped. "I can't wait much longer. I have to feel you now. Inside me. Now...."
But Jed waited just a little longer, thoroughly enjoying the sight of his lover squirming on the bed, caught up in the ravenous throes of her desires. She reached out frantically and tried to pull him closer, but Jed avoided her extended fingers, pulling his cock just out of her grasp.
"No, Jed! Stop that! Ohhhhh, I want it so bad!" she cried. "Stop playing with me and ... and ... ohhhhh....!"
He could hold back no longer, having exerted all his willpower to hold out as long as he did. His cock was now throbbing wildly, just as hot as was her vagina, and it was dribbling a thin stream of pre-cum.
He found the entrance to her pussy on the first try, and eased in until he was fucking her the way she wanted to be fucked. They entwined their bodies and then rode out their climaxes until they had wrung as much pleasure from their bodies as they could.
A few hours later, as Sheila lay in silence, listening to Jed breathe deeply next to her, she thought about how satisfying their lovemaking had been. But even so, thoughts of Andy began to nag at her, making it hard for her to sleep.
A determined Sheila went to the Norris cabin the next morning a good half-hour before Mr. Carter was due to pick her up. She told her mother almost all of what had occurred the night before and said, "Now tell me the whole story, regardless of any promises you've made."
Mrs. Norris looked at her, sighed, poured coffee for them both and sat down. "All right. Jed is trying to make up to us for something his stepmother did to your father."