Spit and Grit

by Jeanie P Johnson

  “Take your clothes off, Mazy. We’ll hang our clothes outside so the rain can wash the mud off of them, and in the morning, we will bring them in and dry them by the fire.”

  He starts pulling his clothes off and I stand there watching him.

  “Come on, Mazy, you seen all of me, and I have practically seen all of you. I’ve seen naked women before, so it is nothing new to me. We gotta let the rain wash all the mud off of us too before we go in.”

  He comes over and starts unbuttoning my shirt.

  “You keep your hands off of me,” I spit.

  “Let up, Mazy. You’re not going to keep those muddy clothes on. How are you going to sleep?”

  I stand there staring at him without a stitch of clothes on, while the rain slowly washes away the mud from his body, and I realize I don’t want to be in my muddy clothes. What more can happen, I ask myself? Finally, I start taking my clothes off and Granger takes them and hangs them on a line that is tied from the porch post to another post, which I assume is used to hang dishtowels out on when they clean up the dishes after cooking for the cattle branding. Then Granger comes over to me and starts working the mud out of my hair.

  “I’m sorry, Mazy. I really am. I won’t touch you and I won’t make you touch me, except we have to sleep on the cot together. If I am laying next to you, we can’t help but touch. Just ignore it. Don’t think I am trying to put one over on you, you understand?”

  He turns me towards him and looks into my eyes.

  “And by the way, you have pretty nice breasts. They aren’t too small at all and I like the fact that you are slim. You are going to make some man a mighty nice wife someday.”

  “I’m never getting married,” I whimper, and then I pull away from him and walk into the house, lay down on the cot with my face to the wall, and try not to shiver.

  Granger comes in and builds up the fire. He makes some porridge and pores what’s left of the canned milk over it, then brings me a bowel. I sit up reluctantly and eat it, but he makes it a point not to look at me as he sits at the table with his back to me, while I sit on the bed eating the porridge.

  When I am through, he takes my bowel and then he comes over to the cot and I lay back down with my back to him. He lays down beside me, hugging my body against his, and I can feel his muscular body against me, but the warmth of his body warms me, as his arms around my waist holds me snuggly against him. I don’t even notice when I finally fall asleep.

  CHAPTER TWO

  I must have turned in the middle of the night because I start to stir, and I realize instead of my back being against Granger, I am facing him. His arms are still around me and my breasts are crushed against his chest. I can feel his hardness is pressing against my stomach. When I realize this, I lay perfectly still, trying not to move. I am astonished when I feel Granger moving against me. His eyes are still closed though, so I don’t know if he is even awake or whether he is just moving in his sleep. The feel of him pushing against my stomach alarms me and sort of excites me at the same time. I am trying to sort out the two feelings. I can feel his hands on my back, clutching me to him as he pushes against me. Then his hands lower to my bottom and I take in my breath as I feel his fingers start to caress my inner thighs.

  “What in the hell do you think are you doing?” I shriek, as I push against his chest, and his eyes fly open. Then he sorts of grins.

  “I was having this wonderful dream that I was just about to make love to a beautiful woman, who had her hands all over me last night. Then I opened my eyes and discovered Mazy is in her place,” he says, as he pulls his hands away. “I’ll go out and get our clothes,” he almost snickers and gets out of bed. I watch him walk across the room and go through the door. I am trying to figure out what he meant about a beautiful woman who had her hands all over him all night, but then he comes back in.

  “Well, guess what? It stopped raining and our clothes dried overnight.”

  He throws my clothes at me.

  “Get dressed before you start accusing me of something I never did and will never do with you,” he taunts. “Even though you begged me to last night.”

  I start pulling my clothes on.

  “I don’t know what you are talking about!” I grumble. “If you tell one soul about me sleeping naked with you or what happened in the cave, I will hang you by your thumbs, Granger Snider,” I warn.

  “Hell, even if I told anyone they wouldn’t believe me. Everyone calls you crazy Mazy, who thinks she’s a man and acts like it! You are right, you will never get married, Mazy, cause no one wants a woman who never combs her hair and wears britches and almost smells like a man. Hell, I am surprised you even have tits!”

  I just stare at him, and it dawns on me, that all that stuff about how he liked my breasts and liked the fact that I was slim, telling me that I would make someone a nice wife someday, was just sweet talk so I would calm down and not make a fuss about him putting his man parts on me all night.

  I finish putting my clothes on and then I go outside, get on Rocket’s back and ride away.

  “Where are you going, crazy Mazy?” he yells after me.

  “To get my cows and be someplace where I don’t have to look at your ugly mug any longer,” I throw over my shoulder. “Go home, Granger, I don’t need your help any longer.”

  I head out in the opposite direction of where we looked the day before, but a few minutes later, Granger is galloping up beside me.

  “What is your problem? Can’t you tell when you are not wanted?” I bellow.

  “What’s your problem, miss spit, and grit? You got your nose in a twitch over something? Must have been what I said about your tits,” he chuckles.

  “You leave my tits out of this,” I snap back.

  “Seems like you had your tits up in my face last night and didn’t seem to mind it,” he tells me. “I thought you liked the way I was touching your breasts and playing with those tits.”

  “You touched my breasts?” I shriek. “What was all that stuff you said about not touching me? Were you touching me all night?”

  “The way you were moaning and groaning and snuggling up to me, I thought you knew,” he tells me.

  “I never…” and then I vaguely remember the dream I was having which involved a rapturous feeling that consumed my whole body, and how someone was touching me in such a way that all I wanted was to feel more of it. “You took advantage of me while I was sleeping?” I hiss.

  “You made me feel so good in the cave, I figured you wanted me to return the favor,” he says sheepishly. “You weren’t complaining, Mazy, you were encouraging me. You turned over in the middle of the night and put your hand on me like you had in the cave. I thought it meant that you actually liked doing that, so I started touching you too so you could feel how good it felt to have someone touching you that way. You told me not to stop, so I didn’t.”

  “I can’t believe a word you say. You are trying to blame it on me for what you did!”

  “I think I like you better when you are asleep. The problem with you, Mazy, is that you want a man touching you, but you just won’t admit it. The fact that you were all over me in your sleep, proves it.”

  “Is that all I did?” I ask, suddenly. “I mean just touch you?”

  “You don’t remember any of it, do you?” he says, with a chuckle.

  “We…we didn’t do something more than just touch, did we?” I gasp.

  “Hell, Mazy, it is not hard to tell you are still a virgin. What do you take me for?”

  “Someone who would touch me while I was asleep and then tell me I was begging for it,” I tell him. “You are just making this all up, cause that’s what you really want to do with me.” I accuse.

  “You are right about me wanting to do it with you. You don’t have to believe me if you don’t want to, but maybe if I describe it to you, it might jog your memory.”

  “You keep your mouth shut! I don’t want to hear it,” I snap.

  “You say you don’t wa
nt a man touching you or even telling you how he did touch you, and yet, there is a hidden side to you, Mazy, that you only let escape in your dreams.”

  “Go away, Granger! I don’t ever want to talk to you again. You have a filthy mind,” I say and I kick Rocket into a gallop, and Granger doesn’t follow me.

  I am trying to untangle all my thoughts. Everything seems to be mixed up in my mind, touching Granger in the cave, seems to be mixed up with me touching him on the cot, and then I start to remember how his mouth felt on my breast and his hand was…I stop as the memory suddenly comes crashing back. I realize it wasn’t a dream. It was really happening. I was letting Granger touch me intimately, the same way I had touched him, and his mouth had been touching me all over as well. I vaguely remember even kissing him. I am feeling mortified. He thinks I am this lose woman who would let him do all those things to me willingly and then beg him to make love to me. Yes, I had begged him to make love to me, and he had refused because he said I was a virgin, and that kind of thing needed to wait until my wedding night. I had been so tired and exhausted, I hadn’t even woken up enough to know what was going on! Now it was too late to change it.

  I will never be able to face him again, I think, and I am shaking all over.

  “Mazy!” I hear Granger calling, “I found your cows,” and Granger is galloping up beside me again. “Come on and we’ll round them up, and take them back.”

  I can’t even look at him as we head down together to round up the cows and turn them back to my ranch. My mind is reliving all those things that I hadn’t been aware I was doing at the time, but now, they are all vividly clear to me. I glance over at Granger, while he is trying to pull in one of the cows that were breaking the line. His hair is all ruffled and I realize he must have lost his hat in the storm as well. His eyes are focused on the cow as he anticipates its next move. Then he is bringing it back to the rest of the herd, and as it joins the others, he glances up at me and his look changes. He just sort of stares at me for a moment, and then he is all back to business again.

  We bring the herd in and Granger jumps down again to open the gate as I heard the cows in. Then I watch as he closes it and latches it. He climbs back up on his horse and rides over to me.

  “Well, I guess I had better head home,” he says, and I nod.

  He gives me a long look, and then sort of shrugs and turns away.

  “Granger,” I call suddenly.

  He looks over his shoulder.

  “Thanks for helping me,” I say at last.

  “Thanks for pulling the thorns out of my butt,” he smiles.

  Then he kicks his Roan and is galloping away. I think I will probably never see him again. How would he ever want to see me again after all the mean things I said to him, I ask myself? Only I believe it is for the best.

  “I was worried sick about you, Mazy,” Ma tells me as I bring Rocket up to the house. “The cows were gone and you were gone and it rained for two days. I thought maybe you fell down a washout or something.”

  “I was just fine,” I tell her. “Granger Snider helped me find the cows. We stayed in the old cook shack.”

  “You stayed with a man for two days?”

  My mother looks shocked.

  “And hated every minute of it,” I reply. “I can’t handle being around a man, Ma. I don’t think I will ever want to get married.”

  “You will change your tune when the right man comes along,” she predicts.

  “Well, Granger certainly is not the right man, you can be sure of that! Only he did help me bring the cows in, so I guess I should be thankful for that.”

  “You look plumb tired out. You better go bathe that mud off your skin,” she tells me.

  I realize that the rain had not washed the mud off completely, and I wondered how Granger could enjoy touching me and kissing my body when I was so darn dirty? Then I remember him saying I even smelled like a man, and I guess he was right.

  I go to the bathhouse and start heating water for the tub. When it is finally full, I sink down in the water. As I lay in the warm blessed water, I savor every moment of the night before when Granger was touching my body and waking up something in me that I didn’t even know was there. Somehow, he had managed to pull the woman out from under the counterfeit man I pretend to be. I have been trying to take my Pa’s place, and in doing it, I was forgetting that I was even a woman.

  Maybe it was a way to protect myself from men like the Snider brothers, though, I think. Granger is just as bad as the rest of them, finding ways to get me to let him touch me and have me touch him. All his kind ever think about is how to get a woman in bed with them. And Granger certainly succeeded, I bemoan. Yet in a way, I think I am glad that he did. If I ever do get married, maybe it won’t be as bad as I imagined, now that I know how it feels to have a man touching me.

  I occupy myself with washing my hair and scrubbing all the mud off of my body. I think about how I had rolled around in the mud with Granger and he just let me beat on him like that, like he wanted to feel my fists against his body. I am having a hard time figuring Granger out, but then, I know nothing about men, I decide.

  I get out of the tub, and for the first time that I can remember, I dab some of my mother’s cologne onto my body. She often told me how Pa loved the smell of that cologne. At least he didn’t think she smelled like a man, I tell myself.

  A week goes by, and my thoughts are constantly filled with my experience with Granger, and I wonder why I can’t shake it? I have tried everything to just distract myself from the memory. I don’t see Granger and I really don’t expect to, after the tongue lashing I gave him. He is probably starting to hate me the same way I professed to hate him, I think.

  I have to go out and find our heifer, that is ready to drop a calf, and bring her up to the barn. I am out on Rocket doing that very thing.

  “You looking for your heifer?” I hear a voice ask, and I turn around to see Granger coming up behind me on his Roan.

  “She’s due to drop any day now,” I tell him.

  “Well, we got her up at our place,” he says. “I was coming over to tell you. She wandered in and started to go into labor, so we took her to the barn. She had a nice little calf. In a day or two, it will be strong enough to follow her mama over to your place. I’ll bring her when the time comes.”

  I turn and look at him. I am not sure what to say because I have been thinking of him all week.

  “Can I come over to see it?” I ask impulsively.

  Granger gives me a wide grin.

  “Didn’t think you wanted anything to do with me, after, well you know…” he says.

  “I want to see the calf,” I say, trying not to make eye contact with him.

  “Sure. I’ll gladly take you,” he says, and he turns his horse, and I follow behind him.

  I have never been to the Snider spread. I never had a reason to go there, and then after my Pa died, I never wanted to go there, so I feel slightly uncomfortable going with Granger and am asking myself why I even asked to come? We pick our way through the brush until we come upon the trail that leads to their spread. We cross the dividing line between their property and ours, which happens to be the stream where Granger first started to talk to me that day of the storm.

  Granger wades his horse through and I follow. Then we ride up over a hill, where I can look down on their spread. I am a little taken back by the size of it. I knew they had a lot of cattle but now I am realizing, just by looking at the house and the barns, that Granger’s family is rather wealthy. I hesitate for a moment, as I sit there looking down at it.

  “What’s the problem?” Granger asks. “I thought you wanted to see the calf?”

  I shrug.

  “Nothing,” I say, and I continue to follow him down towards their spread, feeling more insignificant the closer we get.

  When we get to the house, he ties his horse up to the post, while I sit there gazing up at the most beautiful ranch house I have ever seen. Our little house is not
hing compared to this!

  “What you waiting for?” he asks. “The calf’s in the barn.”

  He lifts his hand up to help me down off of my horse, and I realize a subtle change in Granger. He is starting to treat me like a woman instead of just another cowhand.

  I dismount and he sort of puts his hands around my waist to steady me as I climb down.

  “Hey,” he sort of murmurs, against my neck. “You actually are smelling like a woman.”

  I turn and look at him. His mouth is so close to mine, it makes me take in my breath. Then he gives me this wide grin, takes my hand and leads me towards the barn.

  When he opens the door, and I see Polly with her newborn, I fall to my knees and put my arms around the calf’s neck.

  “You’re beautiful!” I whisper in the calf’s ear, and I start to pet it’s soft perfectly shaped head.

  “You’re beautiful, the way you look right now,” Granger says, and I take in my breath at his words and look up at him, but we are interrupted by a commotion outside the barn, and one of Granger’s brothers comes racing inside.

  He stops and blinks for a moment when he sees me.

  “Didn’t know you had company,” he says. “Come on, the mares ready and we’re bringing in the stud. You said you wanted to watch to make sure we didn’t let her get hurt,” he says.

  Then he pauses, takes off his hat and nods at me.

  “By the way, I’m Butch,” he says. “Get a move on, Granger!”

  “Well, I think you are in for a treat,” Granger says to me with a sly grin on his face. “You said your Pa never let you watch the horses breeding, so this is your lucky day. Maybe it will teach you a few things you haven’t thought about yet.”

  He takes my hand and helps me up.

  “It’s time you see how it’s done. You’re not a little girl anymore and you seemed pretty ignorant about what gets a man all excited.”

  At first, I hold back, but he puts his arm around my waist and prods me on.