The Addicted Natural


Chapter 12 – The White Witch of Walden – Introduction and Climax


A DAY AWAY FROM WALDEN


On a Friday in late July, we loaded up the pickup for a trip away from “Walden.” It was Brenda who had begun calling it that, though I, despite having taught Thoreau in an American Authors class several times in the past, refused to totally accept the moniker. I’ve always thought old Henry David a bit too folksy. That stuff about “you can tell a lot about a man by the way he stacks his firewood” is just too … cute, I guess. And anyway, our lake is nothing at all like the “pond” in the books (or the actual Walden lake today, for that matter). Anyway, there was no denying Brenda her image, so I didn’t really argue the point.

It took awhile to get the boat trailer hooked up, and when I pulled it around to the front of the house, the girls were ready with the various boxes we’d need for our little camping adventure abroad. Maxine bounded all around barking frantically and seemingly getting in everyone’s way at once. We’d done this twice before this year, and she knew what was coming. 

Dee was forced to do less of the manual labor, and was really beginning to look like a woman six months along. Both girls wore shorts, but Dee had begun wearing stretch shorts and maternity tops more than a month before, and there was no doubt in anyone’s mind that she was seriously knocked up. Being unable to lift heavy items was having a detrimental impact on her “chief cook and bottle-washer” place in the family, but she knew it was only for a few more months. Actually, she seemed to have a glow about her. She made a very pretty pregnant lady.

We finally hit the road by late morning, and we pulled into a National Park campground (courtesy of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers) about noon. I decided to pitch the tent later, after I’d done a couple hours fishing, but I set up lounge chairs for the girls and unloaded several boxes for them. I packed a small cooler with sandwiches, beer and dog treats, and Maxine and I left them in the shade of a giant oak. The fishing was good, but we’d already decided on burgers for dinner, so I released the several bass I caught (much to Maxine’s dismay). I decided to pull the boat back out of the lake because there was no room in the marina, and I drove back to our camp site in the late afternoon.

As I pulled in, I caught sight of the girls talking to an older woman. They’d dragged our three lounge chairs to the opposite side of the huge oak tree since the sun had shifted the shade away from the table. Dee and Brenda were facing me, and all I could see at first was the back of the other woman’s head. Her hair was pure snow white, and she seemed to hold the girl’s attention to such a degree that at first, they didn’t even see me pull up. They were all laughing at some joke. There was something about the woman’s hair that held my attention. It was long. Older women usually don’t wear their hair long. Then I saw the woman’s legs beyond her, stretched out toward the girls on the lounge chair. Long, muscular legs. Nice legs. VERY nice legs. Something wasn’t quite … right; and as the girls finally saw me and waved, before the woman turned around toward me, I thought I knew the answer.

She was an albino. And she was not an old woman at all. In fact, she was a very young woman. Very young. And she was, without reservation or exaggeration, the most exotically beautiful girl I have ever set eyes on. 

She stood to meet me, smiling, and I was instantly enthralled. Not tall, about five-two; very slender; legs, as they say, that went all the way to the ground. Hips that seemed to denote power (a runner?), and small breasts with nipples that were very prominent below her blouse, which was tied below her chest to reveal a flat, tantalizing stomach. Her skin, though the pale pink-cream color caused by her condition, was smooth and without blemish. The skin of a young, vital girl in the prime of life. Her eyes were slanted very slightly, and held a secret of the orient, though that trait was obviously buried far back in the roots of her family tree, and they were the deep, pure, pale blue of a clear summer sky; once again the characteristic impact of albinism. Her hair was like Brenda’s; long, heavy, straight and thick, but while Brenda’s was absolute black, this girl’s was the purest white. White, thin, slanting eyebrows and lashes only tended to heighten the oriental look, but the full lips made me think there was, despite the straight hair, a trace of African blood in her veins as well.

I was instantly hard. And more to the point, I was instantly tongue-tied. Despite living with two very nice-looking women, I have always been (and probably always will be) extremely shy around beautiful girls. Still, I didn’t seem to have the capacity to look away, and this “Venus Rising” rapidly became self conscious, blushed, and cast nervous eyes downward under my gaze. Fortunately, Maxine saved the moment by bounding up to the new girl, jumping on the lounge chair, and nuzzling and licking her frantically. With a new diversion, the girl gladly turned her attention to the dog, petting and cooing to her, while the girls introduced the little beast.

But then she was forced to give me her attention again while Brenda introduced me. “Freddy, this is Willie. She’s camping in a trailer several campsites down the road.”

Each of her movements was graceful, and petting the dog took on a sensual note in my mind. Now she extended her hand to me, and even that seemed somehow sinuous. We shook hands.

“Wilhelmina,” I guessed.

She laughed, and it sounded like crystal bells; happy, open. Her teeth were perfect. “Frederick,” she guessed (correctly) in turn, bowing slightly. “I’ve been hearing so much about you.” It was a pleasant derivation of a British accent, with slight overemphasis of short vowel sounds. Exotic, just like she was. Ah, I thought, not a runner … a swimmer.

“Barbados?” I asked.

She opened her mouth in astonished mirth, blessing me with a grin that I somehow found slightly pornographic. “Very good, Frederick,” she said. “I lived not too far from there. Actually, I’m from a very, very small island between Kingstown and St. Gorges.” She continued smiling, but blushed again and lowered her blue eyes.

“Fred, you’re staring,” Dee admonished.

“He’s not staring; he’s leering,” Brenda said. I glared at her, but she was ignoring me, and she placed a friendly hand on Willie’s shoulder. “Don’t take it personally; it’s just what men do.” 

“It’s okay,” Willie said quietly, her eyes still downcast. “I’m used to it. I know I look … different.”

“The truth of the matter is,” I said rather too forcefully, trying to steer quickly away from this topic, “I WAS leering; but only because you are a remarkably beautiful girl. Please accept my heartfelt apology and deepest contrition. It won’t happen again.”

“Wanna bet?” Brenda said, grinning tauntingly at me. I gave her another glare and she laughed.

I was making a very conscious effort NOT to stare, and just for something to do, I reached into my pocket and pulled out a map of the campground. I handed it to Willie. “Where are you camping?”

She took the paper uncertainly. She suddenly looked very nervous. “Um … I’m not too good with maps, I’m afraid.” 

She was holding the sheet upside down. I took it and righted it. Then I pointed to a sign hanging from a post beside our picnic table. “We’re in campsite D-17,” I explained.

Again, she looked nervously at the paper in her hands. “Yes … well ….” She stared at it for a long moment, then lowered her face until it was only a few inches from the page and glared myopically at it. “Yes, well, you see … the thing is ….” She seemed to make up her mind about something, straightened her back with false pride, and handed the map back to me. “The thing is, actually, that I can’t … I can’t … read.”

I was shocked into inaction. All I seemed to be able to do, for the moment, was to stare unbelievingly.

“Well, I suppose I really must be toddling along, then,” she said. She smiled bravely, but her eyes were glistening. She made a movement away from us, toward her right.

“No!” Dee said quickly. She was suddenly at Willie’s side, her arm around the girl’s waist. I became cognizant that Dee had always been near the girl physically, ever since I’d walked up to them. She seemed … I don’t know … entranced by her, and there seemed to be some sort of subtle connection between them. “Please, Willie! Please don’t go yet. Reading isn’t that big a deal. I’d really like for us to get to know each other better. Maybe we could teach you ….”

“I didn’t mean to react that way,” I told her levelly. “It’s just that you’re … well, you’re very well spoken. I couldn’t imagine that someone with your verbal skills wouldn’t be able to …”

“It’s a long story,” Willie said. “My auntie raised me.” (She used the extended short “au” sound in the word that’s prevalent in England and the northeastern U.S., but was a bit of a curious, delightful oddity in the Midwestern states.) “She was very strict about the way I spoke. But I was never taught to read … words.” The way she said it made it sound as if she’d been taught to read something other than words. I didn’t question her about it. I never got the chance.

“You BITCH!” a gruff male voice yelled. It came from several dozen yards away, and we all turned in that direction. A guy was walking toward us; a BIG guy. And he looked familiar. I suddenly realized that I’d seen him fishing while I was out on the lake. He’d been in a john boat which had the marina logo on the side, meaning he’d rented it. He was now striding purposefully (and angrily) toward us.

“Who’s that?” Dee asked.

“Oh my goodness!” Willie exclaimed. “Does he have a beard?”

Again, something basic but profound about our new friend was instantly evident. She was practically blind. The man, who was still a good way off but getting rapidly nearer all the time, did indeed have a beard; a bushy, black beard that covered his whole face. He wore a checked t-shirt and blue jeans, and he carried himself with the authority of command. 

Albinism robs the eyes of pigment (as well as doing so to the skin and hair, obviously). I’d done a paper on it once upon a time, and found the people who had the condition were, overall, a fascinating group; or at least the ones I’d interviewed had been. There’s a lot of adversity to be overcome, but by far, the greatest was simply coping with the general population’s outright rudeness. Individuals with the condition stand out in a crown. They are different. And people never seem to let them forget that.

Without pigment, the eye loses definition, and as a result, depth perception. Objects tend to blur when they are distant, and not even strong glasses can correct the lack of sharpness and detail. To compensate for this, it is not uncommon to see a person’s eyes jitter and shift rapidly. Willie had not displayed this trait, but it was now obvious that her eyesight was extremely degraded. (It is another widely-held misconception that all albinos have pink eyes; and while a very few do, the vast majority of those I came into contact with shared Willie’s eye coloring – pale blue.)

“Who is it, Willie?” I asked levelly.

She took a deep breath. She suddenly looked like a child. A child in trouble.

“It’s my husband.”

Another shock. I took a deep breath and turned to meet the oncoming stranger.

“Hi,” I said smiling. I put out my hand to shake. “Fred Fielding. We were just talking to your wife. Pleased to meet you.”

But the man just swept me aside with the back of his arm and continued past me. I staggered, off balance. He took two more strides toward Willie, raised his huge hand, and hit her hard across the face, knocking her to the ground. “You fuckin’ BITCH!” he screamed. “I told you to stay in the tent!” He reached down, grabbed her by one arm, hauled her to her feet, and raised his hand to strike again.

I truly don’t remember taking the two steps toward the guy. Come to think of it, I don’t remember any of this too clearly. But I was there, somehow, and I’d grabbed the man’s upraised arm with both of my hands. I think I said something really stupid, like “Hey, now! That’s enough of that!” But before I could get the words out entirely, he dropped Willie, swung hard and low with his other arm, and caught me right in the gut.

The air exploded from my lungs. The blow was of such impact that it literally lifted me off my feet, propelled me backwards several feet, and I landed hard on all fours. I found I couldn’t move. And more to the point, I found I couldn’t breathe. Now, I realized that such a punch (a sucker punch!) would probably do no lasting damage. I realized also that, with time, I would probably be able to breathe again. But take it from me: when you can’t breathe, there is little on this earth more important than taking your next breath. That, unfortunately, wasn’t happening. And so, with nothing else to do except to await either life or death, I raised my face, my mouth open grotesquely, and watched an amazing drama unfold before my misting eyes. It happened in slow motion, so I wouldn’t have to miss a single nuance. Rather a nice view, actually.

Willie sat at the brute’s feet, her hands on the ground in front of her, her head hanging downward, her white hair covering her face. The guy slowly reached for her again, but as he did so, Brenda, who was behind him, raced forward with a screech and jumped on his broad back. She began clawing at his head and neck with her nails. Dee, who was standing in front of him, stepped forward and slapped him hard across the face; but it made no sound (and probably did no harm) because of the thick beard. Maxine lunged for the guy’s leg, grabbed a mouthful of denim, and began shaking it ferociously, as if it were a deadly enemy (or maybe a chew toy). It was an astounding site. What was more astounding was how easily he dispatched all three of them.

He twisted violently and brought back his elbow, throwing Brenda several yards. She showed just a bit more perseverance than I, however; for when she hit, she rolled, and immediately raised her butt like a sprinter in the starting blocks, ready to race back into the fray. In the meantime, the guy had sort of kicked his right leg forward (the one dangling the snarling little dog), took a kind of hop, and brought his left foot around hard, kicking Maxine in the midriff. She gave a long, high-pitched yelp, and flew all the way to the picnic table, beyond my range of sight. And almost simultaneously, he spun to face Dee, raised his big meaty fist high, and started bringing it down violently toward her head. Dee, for her part, simply stood there, feet apart, hands on her hips; her chin elevated to meet the oncoming fist, and she glared defiantly up at the asshole. She looked very small, very brave, and very, very pregnant. I opened my mouth even wider to yell “NO!” but there wasn’t a spare cubic centimeter of air left in my poor lungs. 

Suddenly, the guy’s eyes widened with surprise, shame, and … something else. I couldn’t figure it out. His fist stopped its savage trajectory, and he staggered back a step just as Brenda pounced on his back again.

And that’s when fuzzy little lights swam in my eyes and I pitched unceremoniously forward onto my face.

The ground was hard, but not too hard, and in time I found myself thinking that it was really rather comfortable. Still, I must have decided to roll over onto my back, because that’s where I eventually found myself. The fuzzy little lights continued to whiz around me, and oddly enough, they started talking to me. They were letting me breathe again. They touched me tenderly, and they even licked me. But when I finally opened my eyes, it was Maxine who was licking my face, while Brenda leaned above me on one side and Dee, crying, worried over me on the other. I groaned, tried to sit, failed, and then made a supreme effort to force myself upright. Willie and her husband were gone.

I have never felt more miserably humiliated in my entire life.

The girls’ first concern was about ME, which only made it worse. Then, they urged me to take some action against the louse, which made it worse still. Because I couldn’t. Not because I was afraid, but because the guy would obviously, without question, take any aggression toward us out on his wife. That’s how wife beaters worked. Yell at them, they take it out on the little lady. Threaten them, they’ll just restore their good cheer by knocking her around a bit. Throw them in jail today, they’ll be out in a week. Out with a vengeance. I hadn’t been able to protect Willie. I hadn’t been able to protect my own women. I hadn’t even been able to protect my dog! And I was just as ineffective now.

I finally decided to simply call it a day. We hadn’t set up our camp yet, and now I had no stomach for it. I threw the few boxes and lawn chairs back in the truck and we drove home. 

Oh, man, I felt lousy!


THE GIRL WITH THE WHITE HAIR


The girls gave me exactly 24 hours to feel sorry for myself. At dinner the next evening, they launched into their case, which unfortunately, was poorly thought out and frankly impossible. We had to find her, they said. We had to find her, and we had to help her.

“Come on, Brenda,” I argued pleadingly. “You’ve been writing about women’s issues for a couple years now. You know what the chances are against getting an abused wife to leave her husband; especially one as young as Willie. The younger a wife is, the more convinced she is that it’s all ‘her fault;’ and that ‘love will prevail in the end.’” 

“She’s not in love with him,” Dee said earnestly. “She never has been.”

I looked curiously at her.

“And she’s not even legally married to him,” Brenda chimed in. “I mean, she may be married, but she could get it annulled pretty easily. She’s still a virgin.”

I turned to gawk at my pretty wife. “She TOLD you these things?”

“Well, no ….” The girls looked at each other for a long moment. I swear that when they lock eyes like that, it’s almost as if they’re communicating. Brenda took a deep breath and turned her attention back to me. “No, she didn’t. I could just tell. It’s just the way she … looks; the way she acts. She’s never been … with him. Sexually, I mean. She’s never been with any man.”

“You can tell if a girl is a virgin just by LOOKING at her?” I asked. I made it sound like an accusation.

She held my gaze. “Well … no. No, not from looking at a girl. Not any girl. But I could tell by looking at HER.”

“She’s right, Master,” Dee cut in with certainty. “She IS a virgin! And she doesn’t love him. She hates him!”

I closed my eyes and shook my head for a moment. My life hadn’t been what I considered “normal” for a long time now. But this was getting bizarre. I looked from one to the other with curious concern.

“Please, Freddy, I know you think that sounds really weird, but it’s true.”

“And how do know these things, exactly?”

“Because she’s like us, Freddy.” She turned to look into Dee’s eyes again for a second before returning her attention to me. “She’s just like us. She’s one of us.”

And, strange as it sounds, I almost believed that. I sat back in my chair and stared at a spot midway between the two of them, my eyes out of focus, remembering. The girls were silent, letting me see back into the past. Back to Willie. If they saw the bulge in the front of my trousers, they wisely withheld comment.

Every now and then, once in a very, very great while, you’ll see a girl like that. Usually, I see them from a great distance; across a crowded room. I rarely come into direct contact with such a woman, because 1) I’m not the sort of guy who EVER gets near a girl like that (or vice versa), and 2) there’s inevitably a very large group of guys who ARE near a girl like that (hence the crowded room). They’re extremely rare, those girls like that. And I’ve never really been able to figure out why. I have no idea just exactly what it is they have that other women DON’T have.

I suppose I could subscribe to the old “phemerones” hypothesis. Maybe she gives off a particular scent that makes a man desperately want to hold her, and take her away from the sight of other men, and stroke her for the tactile reassurance that she’s real, and selfishly protect her from all the things that he himself wants so desperately to do to her. But no, it couldn’t just be a smell, because I could still feel those emotions just from the memory of her. Can a person “remember” a smell? Not like that. The smell most definitely wasn’t here now, and I had an erection that was almost painful. No, it was something about the way she looked. And in that appearance, she was certainly different from Brenda and Dee. 

And yet, she was certainly the same, too. The way she held herself. The way she smiled. The way she couldn’t hold your eyes, and the way she’d blush and cast her own submissively downward. It was almost like an aura of some sort. And the way she’d stood next to the girls, the way she reacted to them, the way she looked at them (and they at her) lent a firm support to the concept of a sisterly bond of some sort.

I took a breath and returned to the present. “Let me get this straight,” I said evenly. “She never mentioned hating her husband, or about not having had sex with him, but you still think these things because of some association you have with her.”

“She never even mentioned her husband,” Dee said.

“And we don’t think it,” Brenda stated firmly. “We KNOW it!” She let that sink in a moment. “She’s a Natural, Freddy.”

“Now, wait a minute!” I said defensively. “You’re not suggesting ….”

“No. I’m only saying that we need to find her. We need to find her and HELP her!”

I sighed and leaned back in my chair. Logic dictated that this was not going to end well. But no one ever accused women of having an overabundance of logic. 

“Okay,” I said firmly, desperately trying to maintain some semblance of control. “I’ll see what I can do about finding her. But neither of you is permitted to contact her or take any other action without my implicit direction, is that understood?”

They glanced at each other, smiled broadly, and nodded their concurrence.

“Now,” I said, “what’s her last name?”

They looked at each other again, helplessly this time, then back at me with blank expressions.

“You don’t know?” More blank looks. “And you don’t know which campsite they were in.”

“She said she was in a trailer,” Brenda said earnestly.

“But HE accused her of not staying in the TENT,” I pointed out.

Dee was starting to cry. “We have to HELP her!” she wailed, and Brenda went to her and held her soothingly. 

“Oh, Freddy, what are we going to do?”

I sat racking my brain, which was difficult since there was a crying woman in the room. My brain sort of derails when a woman cries. “Tell me about your conversation,” I suggested. “What did you guys talk about?”

It wasn’t a very big help, except that it allowed Dee to get her tears under control. They’d met Willie in the women’s public bathroom, and then they’d coxed her back to our camp for glass of iced tea. They’d only been talking for fifteen or twenty minutes before I arrived, and their topics had ranged from albinism to the weather; but while the girls had mentioned me several times, Willie had never said anything about her husband.

Brenda had returned to her seat across from me, and Dee sat looking down at her folded hands for a long minute as I thought the situation out. She squirmed slightly, and frankly looked slightly guilty about something. Finally, in a meek voice, she said: “Rudy …. Her husband’s name is Rudy.”

I blinked at her, then looked across at Brenda, who was staring openly at our pregnant lover. “She never told us that,” she said.

Dee shrugged without looking up. “Maybe she muttered it while we were … fighting,” Dee said. She took a breath and finally met my questioning gaze. “But that’s it, I’m sure,”
she told me firmly. “His name is Rudy.”

I decided not to question her on the point, though I frankly wasn’t sure if I believed her or not. At least it was something. I chose to attack the problem on several fronts. I would go back to the campground Monday evening (I still had a job to contend with) and try to find a list of campers for the day in question; then I’d get another list of people who rented john boats from the marina. That, at least, would narrow the number of possibilities down below the entire population of the United States. Brenda would try to match the names Wilhelmina, Rudy, Rudolph (or any other derivation or the name) to any spouse abuse complaints within a hundred miles or so (a long shot, at best). And Dee would try to figure out which island Willie might be from by studying online maps. 

The prospects did not seem very good.


THE NIGHT BEFORE THE BIG BANG

	
“Surrender and sleep!” I commanded. My wife immediately sagged back against the cushions of the couch, her hands at her sides, deep under the influence of her hypnotic trance, while Dee slumped across Brenda’s lap, also in a profound sleep. I’d begun hypnotizing them together like this as an expedient. It saved time and energy on my part, and the girls oddly liked it better this way.

It also helped me set up the nightly sleeping arrangements. Usually, I left one of them in a trance, had her go into Dee’s room, strip and get into bed, with instructions that when the grandfather clock in the hall struck two, she would leave her trance and slip into a natural sleep, full of pleasant dreams. I would awaken the remaining woman and allow her to show me her gratitude in the master bedroom. For while we engaged in a “threesome” once or twice a week, I found that I much preferred the company of only one intimate partner for the night.

I still hadn’t been able to break Dee of the unconscious habit of sneaking into the big bedroom and curling up on the floor at the foot of the bed on the nights it was Brenda’s “turn”. She was definitely doing it while still in a trance, for she swore she had no knowledge of coming into the bedroom, and I believed her. Even deep hypnotic suggestions had little effect. I came to believe that this was the epitome of subservience in her mind, and that’s why she did it. And while I normally let her indulge in her submissive feelings, I was beginning to worry about the affects of the hard, cold floor on her health, as well as the health of our unborn baby. She was less than three months away now.

But for two nights out of the last five, I chose to sleep alone, and I was going to do so again tonight. There was a lot on my mind, and I’d be staying up late again this evening. Major changes were taking place in my life (little did I realize just how much it would change in the next 24 hours!), and I had a lot of thinking to do. Normally, I would command each girl individually when in a trance, but I now decided on yet another expediency.

“You can hear only my voice,” I commanded. “Where are you now?” Each of them answered that she was in her wonderful room, on her wonderful bed. “Who, in the whole world, is most important to you?” I asked. 

“You are,” they answered in unison.

“And who, in the whole world is the next most important?” And they immediately answered with each other’s name. I smiled. Too easy. “Think about her now. Think about her kisses. Think about her caresses. The feel of her skin. Think about how you can make her feel, how you can make her move in response to your touch, how you can make her moan. Think about your love for each other. Think about your need, about your desire … feel it ….”

They were beginning to move very subtly. Hips were twisting, dreamily; thrusting ever so slightly. Dee began making little noises in her throat. I left them like that and walked into my office for a few minute’s work. I had taken on a summer class, and I was really suffering from burnout. In addition, the department had just circulated a memo asking non-tenured professors to consider cutting back to part-time. The state was in serious financial straits, and the state universities were viewed as a great place to start swinging the old cost-cutting axe. This just might be an opportunity for me. I didn’t really need the money. Well, not REALLY. Not with Dee bringing in more than a million a year on top of the fortune she already had. But, I argued, that was DEE’s money. I’d promised myself that I wouldn’t touch it. But I had, of course. There was the truck, the boat. And I’d been “dipping” into her funds more and more lately, especially for pre-natal medical costs. Now, with the coming of the baby, she’d more or less convinced herself that she’d be my slave for life; my slave forever and ever. She would never need the money ….

I heard Brenda moan loudly. I smiled. Time to let them go. I went back into the living room, where they were both writhing on the couch in the midst of their individual hypnotic yearnings. 

“Listen to my voice,” I commanded. “Listen and obey. Do you feel your need for your sister-in-slavery?” They both moaned an affirmative. “Do you want her?” And again they both gasped an emphatic “Yes!” “When I awaken you, your desire will not slacken. Your need will consume you. You must have her. You must have her immediately. You will go into Dee’s room, and there you will allow your passion to consume you. You will lie with her all night, holding her, loving her. Do you understand?”

“Yes!” in living stereo.

“Wake up.”

And they popped upright, fully awake, fire in their eyes. At once, Dee sprang to her feet, grabbed Brenda’s hand, and started pulling her in the direction of the door. Brenda hesitated, looking at me. “This isn’t fair, Freddy!”

“I’ll be fine, my dear. Off with you, now.”

“We’ve done this two times this week already, Freddy. We should be pleasing YOU tonight!”

Dee was getting frantic. “COME ON, Brenda!” she begged, tugging desperately on my wife’s arm. “Please!”

But Brenda wrenched herself free, ran to me, threw her arms around my neck and kissed me on the lips. “I love you, Freddy!”

“I love you, too,” I told her. But Dee was back, pulling frantically on Brenda’s arm again, and Brenda allowed herself to be extricated from my body. 

“Thank you, Freddy!” she said over her shoulder as she sprinted from the room, hand in hand with her slave-sister-lover.

I smiled wanly and walked back to the office. “You’re welcome,” I muttered under my breath. I picked up the Part Time Enrollment form and started filling in the blocks. With only one class a week in the Fall Term, I’d have time to work on the novel, time to be with the girls, time to get ready for the baby, time to find Willie ….

She never seemed to be very far from my thoughts. It had been almost a week now, and I still couldn’t shake the vision of the young (very young!) woman with the white hair. I’d finally discovered her last name: Wharton; but that very hard-to-find bit of information had proven to be no help at all so far. 

At first, we’d learned that no “Wilhelmina” Anybody had filed domestic violence charges against a husband in any county in the state, at least so far as Brenda could determine from her sources in the police department, and that no complaint had ever been filed against anyone named Rudy (or Rudolph, or Rudyard) Wharton. But that wasn’t too surprising for reasons already discussed.  There were more than fifty very small islands dotting the South American coast below Barbados, between Kingstown and St. Gorges; so that, too, was of little help. I had gone back to the campground, but my entreaties for information from the campground manager had wound up becoming a full-fledged argument, and I left with no answers at all. Having learned my lesson, I withdrew five hundred dollars from the bank in hundred dollar bills, and armed with this ammunition, I returned the next day to the marina, where I begged the guy at the boat rental for assistance. Begging goes a long way when Mr. Franklin uses his influence (times five), and I got the name (though no first name was listed on the rental form). He’d paid for the boat rental in cash, so there wasn’t a credit card number. There was a phone number, but I’d since found that it had been a phony; no such number existed. No amount of digging had produced any results. I’d even paid fifty bucks for one of those internet searches, but to no avail. We’d found a few hundred “Whartons” living in the United States in the on-line White Pages, but none of them matched the first name that Dee had insisted was his. And, of course, since the phone number had been a fake, it was highly probable that the name was, too.

Down the hall, Brenda was making her “coming noises.” I smiled.

The girls had taken the news first with excitement and then discouragement, as the sole clue was discovered and then looked as if it might peter out. I’d had to reiterate my promise that I wouldn’t give up the search. But things definitely didn’t look good at this point. Oddly, in the past two days, both Brenda and Dee had lacked the level of urgency they’d had the day after “the attack.” This might be a good sign, and it might not. If they were cooking something up by themselves, we could be in for some REAL trouble. I made a mental note to question them about this during our next hypnotic session.

I was really tired. I folded my hands across the employment form and rested my head on them. 

I dreamed about Willie. And a tree. Was she climbing it? When I awoke in the middle of the night, I was in a panic. The dream faded too quickly for me to hold, but I knew it had been a bad one. She had seemed so real. 

I had a massive hard on.


WILLIE AND THE TREE


I returned home about three the following afternoon. I taught for four hours on Thursdays, and the young men and women in that class were not my favorite students. Let’s face it: no one WANTS to be in summer courses. I had dropped my application and letter on the dean’s desk, expressing my desire for only one course during the fall semester. Though my two years toward tenure would be held in reserve until I began teaching full-time again, I somehow knew my career as a professor was over. I sighed as I pulled the Mercedes into our driveway. At least I had Friday off. A three-day weekend looked especially tantalizing. 

The girls were outside, waiting for me. They were dressed much the same as they’d been six days ago; in shorts and t-shirts, Dee’s stretched tightly over her protruding belly. They stood nervously beside the truck, which had obviously been packed again for another camping trip. Maxine was especially excited, bounding around, barking, whining to be let in the truck’s back seat for the trip she knew was coming.

“What’s all this about?” I demanded, getting wearily out of the car.

“We thought that we all needed a getaway,” Brenda explained. She had a nervous expression. There was something she wasn’t telling me. “We didn’t get to spend the night last week. We owe Maxine a camping trip.” She reached down and stroked the dog’s head.

“The boat’s still down at our marina,” I said. “Why don’t we go tomorrow morning? I’ll have time to get it out and take it with us.”

“We don’t need the boat, Freddy. You can rent one, if you really want to go fishing later. We want to go camping today!” She couldn’t seem to keep eye contact. Dee kept her eyes downcast, as well. She’d developed the habit of running her fingertips across her abdomen when she was nervous or thinking about something. “Please, Freddy,” Brenda pleaded softly, finally looking me in the eye. “We want to go today! Please?”

“They’re calling for a good chance of thunderstorms tonight.”

“Please?”

“What’s this all about, Brenda?”

“Don’t ask, Freddy. Okay? We’ll tell you tonight, after we’re there. It’s important to us.”

“Is this about Willie? Have you been in contact with her? Are you going to meet her?”

“No.” She looked back down at her feet again. “I mean … no. I mean, it has something to do with her, but we haven’t been in contact with her, and we aren’t going to meet her. I don’t think. I mean ….” She looked back up again, exasperated. “Oh, Freddy, please! Don’t make me beg you! We NEED this!”

I held up my hands. “Okay, okay! I’ll get ready, and we’ll go camping!” I started walking toward the house, Maxine running circles around me, barking, urging haste.

The drive to the same campground was done mostly in silence. This was my fourth trip there that week (including my two fact-finding excursions), and it was almost two hours away. It was a warm day, and we had the windows rolled down, so conversation would have been difficult, anyway. Maxine kept going from one side of the back seat to the other, sticking her head out, seeing if the air was any different on opposing sides of the truck. When we got there, the campground wasn’t as crowded as it had been the previous week, but of course that would be the case on a Thursday versus a Friday. Still, our choice campsite from the preceding trip was occupied, and I chose another one nearby that was more out in the open.

The girls told me they would set up camp, and I grabbed my favorite fly rod and walked down to the lake’s edge, Maxine at my side. There is nothing as therapeutic as fly fishing; and an hour’s effort, though producing only one perch (which I let go), was just what the doctor ordered. As I walked back to the campsite, the dog bounding all around me, I found that I had a much improved disposition and calmer nerves.

The campsite was in more or less good order when I got there. The tent was up, though the girls had missed a few tie points on the large alpine tent, an error I easily rectified. The air mattress was inflated and the sleeping bag was spread atop it. There was a fire going, and Dee had made foil packets containing ground beef, bacon, onions and sliced potatoes, which sizzled on the coals and smelled wonderful. I took out a folding shovel and dug a shallow trench around the tent, just in case the weatherman was right about those storms, which, with building cumulonimbus on the horizon, looked probable. I waited until the meal was almost over before broaching the subject of what had brought us here. 

“We’ve been having dreams, Freddy,” Brenda said as she cleaned up the table, throwing the paper plates and my empty beer bottle into a trash bag. Dee was quick to get me a second beer. I had just decided I’d like to have another, but hadn’t yet asked. 

“Dreams?”

“Dreams about Willie. 

I looked toward Dee. “Both of you?”

“Yes,” Dee answered. “But that’s not the weird part.”

“Weird part?”

Brenda took over again. “We have the same dream, Freddy. Each time it happens, we’re always together, Dee and I, and when we wake up, we’ve found that we’ve had identical dreams. It only happens when we sleep together, but it’s been three times this week. And we’ve always had the same dreams. I mean, they’ve been different dreams, each time, but we’ve dreamt them together. Does that make sense?”

“Yes,” I said flatly, “it does. One of you has been talking in your sleep, and the other has the dream as she hears it.” They looked dubious. “You are both very, very suggestible,” I continued gently. “That’s how I can hypnotize you so easily.”

Brenda shook her head. “It’s not like that at all. I KNOW when you’ve given me a suggestion during a trance. I can … feel it. I never, ever fight it because … well, because … I like obeying you. I NEED to obey you. But I know when you’ve implanted a feeling in me. Like last night with Dee. I know that you made me have those feelings. But I always surrender to them. Always. Because it’s what you want, and because … because … I like to surrender.”

This was a bit of a revelation. I wasn’t entirely sure I believed it, but I saw no reason to argue the point. “Okay,” I said, “so YOU talked in your sleep, and it was Dee who heard and had a copycat dream.”

Dee suddenly couldn’t make eye contact. She was hiding something. I looked at her curiously. “Dee?”

“I….” She looked guilty. “I can .… Sometimes, I can … see Willie. I can go to her. And I can take Brenda with me. When I’m dreaming, it’s easy.”

I shook my head. “Oh, Dee. That’s just … crazy.”

“It’s true, Freddy,” my wife stated. “In the dreams, Dee and I are just … there. We’re not really participating. We’re just there, watching Willie.”

I couldn’t think of anything to say. There was some sort of mental unbalance at work here. Had the hypnosis contributed to this?

“Please, Freddy. Please don’t look at us like that. We’re not going crazy. It really happened!”

“Okay,” I said softly, perhaps a bit too sadly. What was I going to do? What sort of psychosis was this? I’ve never had any experience with mental disorder. I decided to humor them. “What were these dreams about?”

“Well,” Brenda said, “in the first one, she was just sitting there, in some sort of strange room. It had funny green wallpaper, with wooden strips running down the walls. And there was a couch that was sort of built into one wall.”

“And a bed that took up nearly the whole bedroom, past the open door,” Dee chimed in. “The kitchen was part of the room she was in, but the whole house looked …”

“Small,” Brenda continued. “And Willie was just sitting there. And that’s all she did.”

“That’s all she EVER does,” Dee said, almost crying from the remembered emotion. “That’s all she does all day long. She just sits there. Nothing to do. Nowhere to go. No one to talk to. Oh, Master, she’s so horribly, terribly SAD!” Maxine, sensing the emotion, put her head in Dee’s lap and whined softly.

“And then she looked at us,” Brenda continued. “And she said: ‘What are you doing here?’ And I … we … woke up.”

I could only gawk at them. Brenda, fearing a comment from me, hurried on. “And the next time we slept together, we had another dream. We were in the same place, the same room in the same little house. And Willie was sitting at a table playing a game of solitaire with a strange deck of cards. The cards were ….”

“Too big,” Dee went on. “And they didn’t have numbers, though I couldn’t see them very clearly. I didn’t recognize the game ….” She glanced at Brenda, who shook her head. “And she picked them all up, all the cards that she’d dealt, and she laid out some more, and she leaned over and put her eyes just inches from them, as if she couldn’t see them properly any other way, and suddenly she gasped, and then she ….”

“Started crying,” Brenda continued. “And she cried and cried. But then she saw us, standing there watching her, and she said ‘You again!’ and we woke up.

“We have to help her!” Dee sobbed.

This was worse than I thought. My psychiatrist fishing buddy on campus sprang to mind. Maybe I could take the girls to him. I might as well get the whole story, though. “And last night?” I asked. “What was your dream last night?”

They exchanged one of their “looks” before Brenda turned back to me and took a deep breath. “We were in Willie’s dream,” she began. “She was asleep, and she was dreaming; And we were IN her dream. It was a terrible! It was about … a tree.”

A tree? My mind immediately went to my own dream last night. This stuff couldn’t be real. Things like this just didn’t happen. 

And suddenly, thunder boomed loudly. We all turned toward the west, and I beheld one of the most impressive meteorological sights I’ve ever seen in my life.

The sky had been darkening for some time now, both with the coming of the storm and with the late evening sun setting behind the towering clouds. This campsite was on a clearing that extended all the way to the lake, and so we had an unobstructed view of western sky. Massive nimbus extended to spectacular heights over our heads, and the last few rays of sunlight streaked their tops. But down low, along the far shore of the lake, a long, black, roiling, ominous roll cloud stretched from the northern horizon to the southern, as far as the eye could see. It was, by far, of the most powerful gust front I’ve ever set eyes on. It looked like a massive steam roller barreling directly toward us. As we looked, the trees on the opposite lake shore were lost from view in the inky blackness of the churning horizontal cylindrical cloud. Maxine started barking.

Dee grabbed Brenda’s arm with both hands. “It’s happening, Brenda! Now! We have to do it now!”

I stood, mesmerized at the sight of the approaching storm. I glanced at them curiously. “Do what?”

Brenda tore her eyes from the spectacular sight, turned to me, and stripped her t-shirt over her head. “We have to make love, Freddy.”

I looked at her dumbfounded. As I did so, to my utter and abject amazement, Dee pulled her shirt over her head as well. The wind was picking up, and it was raising goose flesh on their exposed skin. Brenda began fumbling with her bra strap behind her back. This was so incredibly UNLIKE them that it took me a long moment to react. Normally, they were both painfully shy. It was just part of their nature (and perhaps one that I kept at the fore of their psyches through hypnotic reinforcement because I found it sexually stimulating). I glanced around, nervously. There were a couple other people within our viewing, but I doubted if they could see us in the gathering gloom. And they all seemed to be gawking at the rapidly approaching gust front, which would be upon us in just a few minutes. I grabbed Brenda’s discarded t-shirt and held it out to her.

“Brenda, for God’s sake, put this back on. We need to get in the truck. There’s a storm coming!”

She popped the catch on the bra strap and pulled it off. “No, Freddy, in the tent! I need you! WE need you! We need to do it now!”

Dee, topless now as well, unzipped the front flap on the tent, stepped inside, sat on the air mattress and began taking off her shorts. “Hurry!” she urged.

Brenda reacted by pressing herself against me, nibbling on my ear, and then whispering provocatively into it. “Please, Freddy! Now! We need you!”

“What in the world?!”

She gripped my hand, the one holding the discarded t-shirt, and pulled me toward the tent.

“Tell me what’s going on!” I demanded.

“Later. Please. Please, Freddy!”

Maxine jumped through the door into the tent just before us and lay down next to the mattress, her assigned sleeping spot for the night. I turned and sat heavily on the air mattress as Brenda turned to zip the tent’s door back up from the inside and Dee attacked my belt buckle and the snap on my jeans.

“This is crazy,” I told them. “All hell’s about to break loose out there. I’m not sure this tent is going to be adequate.” In resignation, I began unbuttoning my shirt, but Dee reached up and put a hand on my chest, stopping me.

“Let us do that, Master. Lie back. Let us do the work. Please.” She managed to work my pants and underwear down over my hips, and then pushed me backward. I lay on my back. Brenda, completely naked now, stood over me, watching, as Dee lowered her face and took my manhood into her sucking mouth.

“At least let me take my shoes off,” I moaned, but then gave in entirely to the overzealous pregnant lady sucking my cock. They ignored me. I couldn’t figure it out. They’d both seemed so … sane … this morning when I went to work. What in the world had gotten into them?

The walls of the tent began rippling in the growing wind. Thunder boomed. It was growing very dark. Brenda produced a glow-stick from somewhere and broke it, shaking it a few times, and the interior of the tent was suddenly bathed in an eerie green light. The sucking mouth left my cock, and as if it were choreographed, Brenda lowered her cunt to my fleshy pole. She was extremely wet, and she slid all the way to the base in one easy motion, groaning loudly. Then she just sat there, unmoving, eyes closed, seemingly lost in the sensation.

Dee curled herself next to me, pressing her swollen breasts and baby-laden belly into my side. She gently but firmly took my hand and guided it between her legs, then lewdly began humping my fingers. She’d never done anything like that before, and it took me completely by surprise. “Please!” she begged, and when I stiffened my fingers and began probing her slit, she groaned loudly. As a reward, she reached out with her right hand and cupped my balls, squeezing them gently, massaging them with her fingers and palm. My turn to groan. Brenda still refused to move at all. She leaned forward, the palms of her hands flat on my chest. She was panting heavily.

“I want to move,” she said.

“Not yet,” Dee urged, and moaned again as my fingers worked naturally into her moist crack. “Almost time … but … not yet.”

“What … what ….” I panted. Brenda’s cunt was contracting around my cock, though she still refused to begin pumping herself on it, and Dee’s fingers were squeezing more persistently. “What ….”

In response, Brenda leaned forward and pressed her lips to my ear. “Think about her, Freddy. Think about her now.” Then she sat upright again. I was incredibly deep, up inside of her. I didn’t have to ask who she was talking about. The very suggestion caused the image of the girl with the white hair to leap unbidden into my mind’s eye. The wind howled with amazing volume. The tent was really shaking now. It started a strange undulation, like a balloon inflating and deflating. When I’d purchased it, the box had boasted that it was safe in a 75 MPH wind. Was it going to make it through this?

“… want to move!” Brenda moaned above the wind.

“Wait!” Dee answered loudly, and groaned again herself. “Almost time. Almost ….”

“What ….” I gasped. The wind was deafening. Maxine started whining.

“Now!” Dee yelled, and she started putting even more pressure on my balls as she grabbed my wrist with her left hand and began frigging herself in earnest with my fingers. Brenda raised herself immediately on my pole and slammed her body back down on my own. Using her hands as leverage, her hips and lower body became a well lubed piston, driving relentlessly toward our mutual orgasm.

“BANG!” And, though I’ve never been very good at sit-ups, I jerked myself into an immediate, stiff sitting position, my chest pressed into Brenda’s, completely alert and very, very scared. I knew that sound. There was not another like it on earth. It was the sound of impending death.

“What … What was … Aaahhh! …. Aaahhh! … What was tha … Aaahh! … Aaahhhhh!” Brenda was coming hard on my cock, and due to her contractions and Dee’s vice-like grip on my balls, I was coming, too.

But my mind was elsewhere. Because another sound would soon be coming. And all I could do was wait for it.

And now, dear reader, we must leave that frantic scene for a moment while I utilize just about the only literary device left in my repertoire. You knew it had to come sooner or later: the flashback.

It was eight or nine years earlier. I had just made E-5 (Sergeant), and my Information Support Detachment had been deployed out of CONUS for nine months. I had more than 60 days leave on the books, and I had to “use it or lose it,” as they say; but with no family or close friends around, and with my funds tight, there weren’t many options. A close buddy, Jimmy Johannes, had invited me to go home with him, and I gratefully accepted. He lived in a small town on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State. His dad was a logger. His granddad was a logger. When he got out of the Army, he would be a logger, too. Everyone in the community made their living in the forest. Destroying the forest. But hey, it’s a living.

And an interesting living it is, too. After lazing around for several days, it was time to go to work with everybody else. It was an opportunity for me to make an extra thousand bucks or so, and to learn about a way of life very foreign to most people. I learned about various saws and how to use them. I learned about hard work, and about trusting the guys on your crew, and about the old ways of logging, and about the new. But most of all, I learned to respect a tree. It can stand there, unmoving, for a thousand years. And in a few seconds, it can kill you.

There is a time in the life of a tree, a fraction of a second long, when its heart fails and gravity - that inevitable, powerful force - takes over. The saw works and works and works, until only a littlewood at its center is left, and then, in that split second, the tree makes a sound. It is, scientifically, the sound of thousands of wood fibers breaking simultaneously under extreme pressure. But I’ve always thought of it as the instant the tree dies. A romantic sort, ain’t I? But romance or no, the sound is one that every logger knows. A crack. A bang. A loud fucking noise, at any rate. And, as I’ve said, it’s like no other sound in the world. When he hears it, the logger will always stop whatever he’s doing and look up. Because most of the time, a tree will fall right where the professionals want it to fall. But sometimes … well, sometimes, people die.

And now, back to our story. Shall I refresh your memory? The wind. The whining dog. The two humping girls acting insane.

BANG! “What … What was … Aaahhh! …. Aaahhh! … What was tha … Aaahh! … Aaahhhhh!”

Wait for it … wait for it …. And off in the distance - but no, not too far away; a few hundred feet, maybe - the sound started. The sound of hundreds of small branches scraping against each other, moving through the air, picking up speed, falling, falling. Loud enough to be heard above the howling wind. Too far away to be a threat to us, but close. Pray there’s no one under it! Pray!

The ground shook when it hit.

“Aaahhh! … What … Aaaahhh!”

With strength I didn’t know I possessed, I grabbed Brenda around the waist, lifted her off of my engorged rod, and threw her to my left. Curled up on my right, Dee was bent around her large midriff, lost in the throes of her own orgasm. “Willie,” she intoned, then she moaned loudly as another spasm of pleasure washed over her. “Willie ….”

To my utter humiliation, a long, white, ropy string of semen shot up from my prick, hung suspended in mid-air for a long moment, and then landed with a sickly plop on the front of my shirt. Well, shit! No time to think about that now! I unzipped the tent flap and staggered outside, fastening my jeans. 

It was absolutely pouring. I needn’t have felt embarrassed by a cum stain. I was immediately drenched to the bone. The wind had died down somewhat, but the rain made it impossible to see more than fifty feet or so. It was now very dark, a combination of the setting sun and the thick, towering clouds overhead. I reached back into the tent and found my trusty three-cell Mag-light, and with a drenched little dog at my side, I made my way forward through the blinding rain. There was the tree! It was the same campsite we’d been at last week. The same massive oak. The wind had caused a twist-fracture about twenty feet up. And my worst fears were realized as I saw something under it. I couldn’t make it out, but there was definitely a tent or something there. There must have been ten tons of tree on top of it. If there was someone in there, they were gone.

I straightened my back. Well, hell! There’s always a chance! I fished the keys out of my front pocket, raced back to the truck and started it up. I pulled it up to the campsite as close as I could, set the parking brake, and turned the headlights to bright. By the time I got out again, other people were milling around the scene.

“We need light!” I yelled loudly. “Bring your cars! We need more light!” Several men raced away. Already, another car was positioning itself, its lights blazing.

A guy was trying to start a small chain saw, but seemed to be having no luck. I walked over to him. “The kill switch is off!” I screamed over the pouring rain.

He gave me a blank look, fumbled with it for a moment, and then handed it to me. “I just bought it,” he told me. “I’ve never used it. I don’t even know how! YOU do it!”

It was a trimming saw with a fourteen-inch blade. It would have to do. I primed it, threw the kill switch, and it roared to life with the first pull. It was a new blade, and despite the hardness of the oak, it ate through the wood easily. I cut a large limb, and then killed it. “Someone pull this away!” I screamed, and a large man sprang forward to do my bidding. Other guys started lining up. 

A woman ran up to me waving a cellular phone. “The fire department is on the way! Twenty minutes!”

Suddenly, for the first time in my life, other people seemed to naturally assume I was in charge. No time to dwell on my newfound leadership skills. I fired up the saw again and began lopping off limbs.

It had been one of those pop-up campers; a small trailer with a tent-like, canvas top and two shelf-beds that extended out, one on either side. The tree had hit it so hard that the wheels had splayed and broken off underneath. As I made my way beneath the limbs and debris, I saw a telltale sign of the futility of it all. A thin stream of red was mingling with the water pooling under our feet. This wasn’t going to be pretty.

I killed the saw to give a couple of guys a chance to haul away some other limbs. “Holy Mother of God!” a guy next to me exclaimed. I followed his gaze and saw Brenda and Dee, huddled together thirty feet away. They were each wearing one of my t-shirts, and it was very, very easy to see that that’s ALL they were wearing. The soaked, thin fabric clung to their bodies like a second skin. I didn’t pause. I’d talk to them later. I started the saw again.

Only two more cuts, and I was at the tent fabric. I killed the saw once again, took out my pocket knife, and sliced the canvas. Bile rose in my throat. The man next to me promptly turned away and threw up. It was a horrible sight. The man’s body had been hit with such force that it had literally exploded. Bits and pieces of him were everywhere. But the wide staring eyes were familiar, and the full black beard left little doubt. It was Mr. Wharton, our favorite wife-beater.

I snatched the nearest flashlight and shined it around the body. “Willie!” I screamed. No response. I suddenly realized (Hoped! Prayed!) that she must be in the other bed on the other side of the trailer. As if to embolden this wish, Maxine began barking frantically from that direction. I grabbed the saw, raced around the fallen tree, and began cutting again. The debris wasn’t as thick on this side. Most of the tree’s force seemed to have been concentrated on HIS side. Again, men lined up to carry away the limbs as I cut. I hoped beyond hope that the little saw wouldn’t run out of gas.

And then I was through! Once again, I killed the saw and pulled out my knife. I sliced the fabric … and there she was. She was lying on her back, her eyes closed, as if sleeping; her shirt was ripped so that one breast was exposed. And to my utter shame, my first thought was that her nipples were magnificent.

I heard someone gasp beside me, but I didn’t turn. “Is she … is she …?” the guy said in awe.

I reached out and stroked her face. “Willie?”

Her eyes opened, then widened with recognition. “Frederick? You! You did this?”

“No,” I stammered. “A tree fell.”

“You!” she said again. She reached up and stroked my face with the palm of her hand. “You did this to me!”

“No, a tree fell ….”

I couldn’t take it any more. I reached down and tugged her shirt back over the exposed nipple. She blushed. “Can you move?” I asked urgently.

Red lights were flashing. The fire department was here.

“My arm,” she said matter-of-factly. “I can’t move my arm. I think it’s caught under something.” She stroked my face again. “My husband is dead.” It was said in a mild tone. She was smiling.

“I’m sorry, Willie.”

“I belong to you now, Frederick.”

A burly guy in a yellow slicker and fireman’s hat was suddenly beside me. “We have a live one here!” he screamed back over his shoulder.

“Her arm’s pinned under that branch,” I told him, pointing. “Want me to cut it?” I held up the saw.

“Better let us handle it, buster!” he said, and bent over Willie.

I backed off and left it to them. Thus endth my fifteen minutes of fame. I thanked the guy who had lent me the saw and gave it back to him, telling him he’d bought a good one. He beamed and wandered off. 

I approached the girls. Dee was white with worry. “Is she …?

“She’s okay,” I told them. “They should have her out in a few minutes.”

And indeed they did. Brenda and Dee both rushed forward to her while the EMT guys carried her to the ambulance on a stretcher; and when I joined them, Dee turned to me with tears in her eyes.

“I’m going with her to the hospital!” she declared.

“Dee …”

“I’m going with her!”

I sighed, took off my shirt, and put it on her. It didn’t come close to hiding the fact that she was pregnant, but it did a passable job of covering her other assets. I asked for the name of the hospital they were taking her to, and then I stood with my arms around Brenda as we watched the ambulance pull away.
