by JQ Jones
The cabin, in addition to solar panels and a windmill, had a row of five-foot concrete cisterns lining the front and side of it. A small porch was screened in and, once Clint climbed the steps up to it, decorated with a small sitting area. Flowers sat on a low table that was crowded with books, games, and candles. A series of tall, slowly revolving metal wind panels stood even higher up the mountain completely hidden from the path.
He had to duck to enter the house. It exuded a combined sense of home and solitude that belied its lack in square feet. There was a kitchen that opened into the living area. Steps led up to what he assumed were bedrooms while Sebastian kept a steady stream of chatter as he showed Clint his favorite toys and games. Nora disappeared upstairs and came down in ten minutes with fresh jeans and a new T-shirt. Her breasts bounced ever so slightly as she ran down the stairs.
“Spot, take Clint upstairs to my bedroom.”
“Can’t he…?”
“Nope your beds are too small. He’ll just barely fit my bed much less yours. Take him upstairs and let him take a bath or shower, whichever he prefers,” Nora said. She smiled at Clint before going into the kitchen.
“Chicken and juicy broccoli?” Sebastian called down from the top of the steps.
“Chicken and juicy broccoli, it is Wednesday after all,” she answered up the stairs.
Once in the shower, Clint ducked under the low showerhead to wash off the honey and almond shampoo. Well aware that Sebastian was standing right outside the door to the tiny room. Clint gingerly washed his balls and cock, willing himself to go down. He spent the last few minutes standing under the beating cold water, thinking of fly-fishing in Montana, gingivitis, or anything that could replace the image of Nora’s taunt, bubble butt swaying in tight jeans as she walked up the trail. He started to shiver before he got the thought out of his mind.
Spot and Nora had retrieved his overnight bag from the rental car he’d left at the bottom of the mountain. At least now he wouldn’t have to put his dirty jeans back on. He filled the basin with hot water before he began a shave. Sebastian entered the bathroom as soon as the shower stopped. The little boy sat on the toilet watching Clint with wide-eyed interest.
“Do you go to school yet, Sebastian?” Clint said. He frowned into the mirror, not comfortable with the lighting or the position of the mirror.
“I’m not in pre-K yet, I’m four years old but I do go to Mrs. Baker’s daycare,” he said. He tilted his head to catch every move Clint made.
“Do you like it?”
“Sometimes the other kids call me a bastard or call my mother a whore. It really doesn’t bother me ’cause Nora says that it’s OK to be a bastard by definition but not by deed. We’re both bastards, Nora says that most of the kids in the hollow are too and most all people are whores. Besides Mama wasn’t a whore she was a slave, but Nora says that’s OK ’cause she loves us with her whole heart.”
“A slave?”
“Yep, my dad brought her from some smugglers in Columbia. He brought her home to take care of Nora but she was younger than Nora so they were just friends. Then our Dad got dead in a car accident when I was a baby. Esperanza was sad and moved to Miami to cut ladies’ hair. My daddy was trying to get home so that he and Esperanza could have a date when his car wrecked. That’s why Nora says that dates are overrated.”
Sebastian kept sweeping his hair out of his eyes as he stared at Clint maneuvering in the mirror. “You going to stay with Nora while I’m visiting Iona? I don’t like to leave her alone. She gets into trouble sometimes. Last week she got her dreads in the weird thing that goes around. I was at school so all day she was alone, trying to get her hair out after she turned it off but nothing would work so I had to cut her hair.”
“I’ll try to be with Nora for as long as I need to, Little Man. But she might not want me around but so much. Was she hurt really badly from the spinning thing?”
“It hurt her head and she had a headache for a long time. She was going to change businesses anyway but we were going to stay here, but since the accident, Nora’s been crazy worried about me getting hurt. I don’t want to leave but a man has to keep his women happy,” Sebastian said.
“Who told you that?” Clint said. He continued to shave but stopped at the surprisingly adult proclamation from the child barely three feet high.
“Nick. We talk when he’s not having a problem. Sometimes he remembers the war and goes a little nutsy but the rest of the time we talk and he tells me stuff. He says it’s stuff that women don’t know because they don’t have balls, and sometimes it takes balls to do what’s needed,” Sebastian said.
“Which war was he in?” Clint said. He stopped again as another very adult statement came out of the tiny person watching him.
“You know about Vietnam? It was a long time ago. Nick says it was a dirty war but that all wars are dirty and it’s best not to get involved in them. When he remembers too hard he thinks he’s back there and Nora and I stay out of his way and make sure that he doesn’t hurt anybody. The police said that the next time he does he’s going to have to go to the state hospital. Nick says that he’ll kill himself before that happens, so it’s up to me and Nora to make sure that Nick doesn’t get caught.”
“How do you do that?”
“We spring the traps and track him to make sure that he doesn’t come down from the mountain. A couple of times he went too close to Mt. Olive and Nora had to knock him out with the slingshot. Since the sheriff took away Nick’s TT it’s way safer. Does that hurt?” Like the child he was, Sebastian switched topics without realizing how terrifying the things he said were.
“Shaving, no it doesn’t hurt. Well it stings when you put on the aftershave and sometimes I cut myself. Do you mean TNT?” Clint said.
“Yes, like they use in cartoons but it makes really big holes. Nora always cuts her legs when she shaves. She said she doesn’t know why she bothers ’cause nobody sees her legs and arms but me and I don’t care.”
“No boyfriends?”
“Nope, Nora says that most men are inna, innat…they think she’s a badass. Don’t tell her I said ass. Using rude words is for grown-ups but only in mod, mod, a little bit.”
“I’ll remember that,” Clint said.
“You missed a place. I can get the scissors if you want.”
“Thank you for the offer, Sebastian, but I’ll have to get that myself.”
“Do you have a girlfriend, Clint?”
“No.”
“I’ll tell Nora, she’s available.”
“Available for what?” Nora stood in the doorway.
“To be Clint’s girlfriend. Mrs. Crockett says that you need a husband and none of that living in sin that goes on in our family. What is living in sin, Nora?”
“Something Mrs. Crockett used to do until she found religion about ten years ago and decided to make people feel guilty about having fun. Go wash up for dinner. The broccoli is especially juicy today.”
“OK, see you downstairs, Clint,” Sebastian said.
Nora took over her brother’s seat on the toilet watching Clint with the same intense stare.
“You missed a place.”
“Sebastian told me,” Clint said. He took a deep breath, gripping the side of the sink in a knuckle-whitening grip. Clint prided himself on being able to hide his sexual urges. He was large, strong, and rough when he had sex. He chose the women he fucked with an eye for their ability to handle his needs. He considered the dark fairy smiling slight up at him too delicate. She looked so fragile and breakable.
Before realized he had moved, he reached down for the tiny woman sitting calmly in the over-crowded bathroom. He placed her on the edge of the sink and kissed her gently, feeling her mouth open for him and savoring the taste of her. She responded by wrapping her legs around his waist and her arms around his neck.
She dove into his mouth with such fierce power that Clint staggered back a step. It made him answer her exploration of his mouth with such passion that
they both gasped. He cupped her head, liking the feel of the soft, short hair that covered her scalp. He tilted her to the right to accept more of his kiss while she answered him move for move. He moaned into her, licking her lips and neck. His tongue swirled over her ear, learning the whorls and dives. She moaned and rotated her hips closer to his naked chest, her hands opening and closing onto his shoulders. He broke off the kiss when he realized that he was licking her neck between little nips and bites.
“I shouldn’t have done that. I can’t honestly say why I did it, the only thing I know about you is that you’re slightly murderous,” Clint said. His voice was deeper than before and shaking with suppressed emotions.
“Sure you should. I want you, you want me and I think we would be really damn good together. Strictly sexual, no strings but intense. Know what I mean?” She said. She used powerful thighs to hold him into place while she bent her head to bite on his hardened nipples. He groaned again. She brushed her hands over his hard thick cock.
“Oh that’s big, Mommy like,” she said.
The ringing of Clint’s phone finally brought them both back to the present. “Saved by the bell, huh, big guy?” She jumped down from the sink. “Better be quick, juicy broccoli doesn’t last long with Spot around.”
Clint leaned into the mirror taking deep, deep breathes before answering.
“Hey, Cousin, you OK?” CJ said.
“Oh, no, I’m really, really fucked and not in a good way,” Clint said.
Chapter Three:
Take It Slow
It really was a cozy house, small rooms with touches of hominess in them. There was a needlepoint of a plant obviously done by a very young person, stuffed pillows on a well-worn leather couch, rag rugs on the floor and two padded wooden chairs around a nicked and scratched pine table. There were small handmade shapes, possibly frogs and rabbits, lining the windowsill behind the table in the kitchen. Sebastian was perched on a stool that made him level with the table, while Nora removed a set of thick encyclopedias from the chair she waved Clint to.
The food was surprisingly good, rich broccoli steamed to perfection with fresh garlic and other herbs. Nora had baked chicken medallions that were heavily encrusted with fresh basil, parsley and rosemary. The salad had lettuce, spinach, and tomatoes in succulent raspberry vinaigrette. She and Clint drank peach tea while Sebastian had a small glass of just peach juice.
Clint concentrated on eating and letting the siblings talk. They spoke as equals, Nora not speaking down to her brother but correcting when necessary. For his part, Sebastian held his own on all topics, making several good points on why he thought they needed a dog, and quickly drawing Clint into the discussion.
“A dog would protect Nora while I’m at daycare, right, Clint? He could be like Lassie and come get me when she needs me.”
“Clint doesn’t have a say-so in the dog issue. You might get a dog when you’re older and can take on the responsibility. I think we should wait until we figure out where we’re going to live first anyway. You know I get all wrapped up in work and I don’t want any animal running while up in the mountains like the Dexters’ do. Remember when their pack of dogs chased us over the ridge? I want us to have a nice dog like Bunny and Buster. All right?” she said.
“It’s not right but it’s OK. We can talk about it later,” he said.
“Let’s do that,” she said.
“What do you do, Clint?” Sebastian said.
“I work with my cousin CJ at Okey Energy.”
“What do you do?”
“I do what’s necessary.”
“What does that mean?”
“I make sure my family’s company runs smoothly.”
“That’s what Nora does, too. Do you like it?”
“I love it.”
Nora laughed. “I can’t see you loving the day-to-day work of a corporation handling other people’s middling little problems.”
Clint smiled. “There are no middling little problems at a corporation like Okey. It’s a multi-national energy company that prides itself on doing bleeding-edged energy technology, and that keeps me awake at night. I noticed that you’re pretty much off the grid here.”
“We are. I grew up that way. I just upgraded the solar and wind panels, otherwise they’ve been in place since the late seventies. Except for the internet connection we’re totally off the grid. I felt like a traitor when I got satellite for the wifi but my business has gone very high tech so I joined up. Besides, when we get snowed in, it keeps Spot entertained.”
“I go to daycare so that I can be with other people. Nora says that I’m the first person in our family to do that. Isn’t that right, Nora?” Sebastian said.
“Yes, I hated homeschooling but Dad was very strict about that sort of thing. Major recluse. But he was proud of me when I got a scholarship to Georgetown. And he tried to change when he and Esperanza hooked up.”
She refilled plates of vegetables for both Clint and Sebastian without asking smiling at her brother as he ate more broccoli than Clint had ever seen a small boy eat on purpose. Clint looked at the plate heaped high with greenery and wished for more meat. Maybe they didn’t have enough. He ate in silence for a few minutes.
“Where did you go to school, Clint?” she said.
“I did undergrad at OU and got my law degree from Harvard.”
“So after Harvard law you decided to do what you do?”
“I’m really very smart,” he said.
“Oh, I don’t doubt your intelligence, I just think you’re too passionate to sit at a desk.”
“I doubt that anybody who knows me would accuse me of being overly passionate. Besides, I didn’t say I spent a lot of time at a desk.”
“I’m just saying if they don’t know you’re passionate, they don’t know you at all do they?” Nora said.
* * * *
After the meal, Nora and Sebastian washed, dried and put up the dishes before she went upstairs to start his bath.
“I like showers but I flooded the bathroom because I stopped up the tub and tested the umbrella I made out of leaves a while ago. So my punishment is I have to only take baths for a month. That’s OK though ’cause Nora made me some really cool paper boats.” The little boy bounded up the steps after his sister called him.
Clint was able to explore the living room closer. There were several pictures of a smiling black man, the younger version with a black woman who looked too much like Nora not to be her mother. The older version showed him with a younger Nora and a very young, very petite Hispanic girl.
“That’s me, my dad, and Esperanza when she first came to live here,” Nora said. Clint almost dropped the picture he was holding. He went to stand beside the empty fireplace.
“Sebastian said she was a slave.”
“That’s the rumor from around these parts. She was a sex worker from the time she was eleven until Dad bought her. He brought her home when she was fifteen, I was nineteen. He bought her for the price of a kilo of marijuana, which was kinda’ high but he couldn’t leave her to be used like that. I remember how scared she was. You could see that she thought we were going to make her do the same thing but after about a year she really came around. She decided to become Dad’s girlfriend when she was sixteen. He was crazy about her but didn’t so much as kiss her until she was eighteen and had her GED. He wanted her to go to Georgetown with me but she wasn’t having that. So he convinced her that she needed to go out and see the world.”
“Where did she go?”
“She went all over at first, Europe, Asia, Africa anywhere but South or Central America. Then she settled in Miami to go to cosmetology school, stayed six months, came home, and never left Dad’s side until he died about eighteen months later. She couldn’t bear to be here after that so she moved back to Miami. She has her own shop now.”
“And left Sebastian?”
“It was a good trade. She’s a nice person but she wasn’t ready for single motherhood. She needs to have a n
ormal twenty-three-year-old life,” Nora said. She smiled broadly and moved closer to the fireplace. Clint walked over to the window.
“What do you do for a living? Iona didn’t say.”
“I suppose she wouldn’t have mentioned that to an officer of the court,” she said. She pulled out a five dollar bill and handed it to him. “Let’s consider this a retainer. OK?” At Clint’s nod, she went on. “I’ve a Master’s from Georgetown in Botany and I teach one class at the community college in Beckley. As for Dad, he was a world-renowned hydro grower. He grew some of the best marijuana in the world. I’ve chosen to not participate in that aspect of the business because…well, it’s just bad karmically for both Spot and myself. Unfortunately, I have the knowledge base to carry on that aspect of the family business. It’s regrettable because Dad’s closest distributors are anxious that I continue and I’m just as adamant that I don’t.”
Clint had backed all the way to the couch and sat down with a whoosh of air.
“I need to talk to these distributors over the next few days so that number one, they understand that I’ll never be in that business and two, try to get them to contribute to my hydroponic and aquaponics food business.”
“I can see why Iona didn’t mention any of this.” He frowned more as Nora’s laugh echoed through the room.
* * * *
Clint and Nora sat at the small kitchen table drinking beer from the bottle. He couldn’t keep his eyes off her mouth as she continued explaining her business. Her lips were full with a slight upswing. She smiled a lot, showing even, white teeth. He had to shake his head to bring himself back to the conversation.
“My dad created a highly potent strain of weed called Oh My God or OMG. The THC level for OMG is right at thirty-five percent. Weed from the seventies and eighties was regular weed, no hybrids, no hydro and had a THC level of around three to five percent. Now with medicinal and high-end growers, twenty is normal, thirty is great and thirty-five is make-you-see-heaven level,” Nora said. “You want to try? I can get some from Nick if you do.”