1

That winter, seemed nothing much happened the way I would have said it should have. First off, I was noticing things I'd not before. So were Erin and Nadine. Mum had to start chasing us out of her kitchen when we'd get to talking. She'd tell us we were fools and too young for the foolishness we were inviting.

My dad, though, he took my side. Always had. Always would, I suspect. He'd come in from the pens, catch Mum's tirade at our latest antics and he'd grab her up ... remind her of some of the stuff she did to catch his eye, he did.

See, that was another odd thing, there. When had Mum ever before tried to get me and my friends to stop growing up? She used to tell us all the time how glad she'd be when we were finally old enough to be women so we'd see what was what.

Naddles used to smart her off. She'd tell Mum that she was just jealous of our youth and Mum would say we none of us were old enough yet to know what to even do with it.

But now, it was like Mum really wanted us back to playing dollies and keeping us away from the boys we liked to spend our time talking about.

I told Naddles and Eza just not that long ago that I suspected Mum knew I'd done more with Mack than that kiss she'd caught us in a few months ago. I suspected Mum might know we'd done a whole lot more than kiss. But I hadn't seen Mack in two weeks by then and Mum had said something to me just the other day about boys getting what they want.

Dunno. Maybe I'm wrong.

Another thing's been happening, too. Mum's got herself preggers again. At her age, too. My youngest brother's ten now and you'd think she'd have been fair done wanting more babies around the station.

Dad says her being knocked up is making her act different. Says it's why she flies off the handle so much lately. Says she's happy about the baby and all, but that she just needs taking care of.

And see, that's odd, too. Dad ... love me old Dad something fierce, but it sure isn't like him to be telling me such things. Never needed him to be getting in between me and Mum before.

Eza figures it's like a rite of passage ... that Mum's admitting I'm a woman now and she's maybe seeing her own youth leaving as I'm in the flower of mine.

That made me and Naddles laugh. Eza always figures she knows so much. Not that she's not smart, cos she sure is. Everyone would choose her to cheat off of when we're taking tests, that's how smart she is. But she's also a bit out there, ya know? Like how she reads our fortunes with Tarot cards and sometimes Naddles and I really think she believes in it.

What else weird was happening around me? Part of it was me, for sure. I was not really so upset that Mack and I had broke up. He was a total bastard, he was. Trust me on this. But he had opened my eyes to some things. Like my body. It seemed different now. Like it somehow was open for business. Like I'd see boys and men now in a whole different way. I was thinking that maybe I knew them a bit better now. Or maybe it was just that I knew them in a different way.

Sure. That had to be what it was.

I spent so much more of my time alone and liking it that way. Hours spent out riding the fences, seeing to things Dad thought was all there was to me out riding. But there was so much time that I spent just watching the way things looked a sight different to me now. Like I was just waiting for something and not knowing what it was.

Came to me one day not just a few days before how different I was now after knowing Mack the way I'd come to know him. It was like the mysteries that I'd been kept from my whole life were just there for me. Like maybe I shouldn't have seen them yet but that I'd gotten them presented to me without any pretty bows or ribbon. Like my adulthood came to me as an unwrapped present.

Eza and Naddles were still innocents. They didn't understand what I meant when I talked about how everything seemed so different now. It wasn't just in the knowing of Mack, of course; in fact, I really knew that had just been another step in me being less a child than I had been. But Eza and Naddles ... they still hadn't really been touched by life. Maybe when they'd been with a boy, we'd talk the same language again.

See, that's the oddest thing of all that'd been happening. I mean, Eza and Naddles and me had been chums since we were little girls. They both lived in town and we'd met at Sunday school. And we'd just always been together. Through all the stuff that happens when you're growing up in some small town in Australia up near the foothills, we'd just always been friends.

But it seems to me that ever since I'd lost my innocence, I was looking at life different than them.

Not that we hung about together any less. Nope. In fact, since I'd broke it off with Mack, the three of us couldn't have been together more. Now that Eza's daddy had let her have her brother's old car after he went off to join the military, we were more free to come and go wherever we wanted.

Seems we still so often ended up in Mum's kitchen though. Not that much really for us to be going to see in this town. And Mum's kitchen had always been a place we liked going. But Mum ... she's just been a bit moody lately, is all, I suppose.

So she was chasing us out of the kitchen, telling us to go use our energy on helping Dad out with the cattle. But then Dad was in there, hugging on her, making us all giggle as he pretended to be trying to talk her into going behind closed doors. Mum told him to go on, get out right along with us.

Not much to it. They were little odd things. Like life was changing on me right while I was watching. To everyone else, they probably would have been nothing. But to me, they were significant because I was changing so much lately and no one seemed to be noticing.

That night at dinner, I told Mum and Dad that I was going with Eza and Naddles to the annual dance to celebrate the return of the cattle from the high country. The dance was all part of the giddiness that seemed to overtake our town when the men came back to us. Before summer's worst heat would sear the grass and bleach the trees, drovers would leave with the herds and drive them up to the high country so the cattle would have open grazing and sweet living. But long before winter approached, they'd start returning and our sleepy town was reunited with the men who'd been gone for all those months. And when nigh on the last of the drovers were known to be back, there'd be celebrating to be done. The dance was all part of that. It was coming up that Friday and I wanted to be sure we were all clear on it.

They didn't have any problems with that. In fact, I think they liked that I was going with my girlfriends. It'd been a while and forever since the three of us had gone out like that because it seemed for the last year, one of us was always dating some bloke and when something special like this came up, we'd be with him rather than each other.

So that's how it came to be that Friday night, the three of us were holding up the wall, scouting out the community center, seeing who was with who.

The stockmen were back in town. Most'd been back about three weeks now but we didn't hold the dance right away because there was always too much work for every cattle rancher to do when the stock just came in. Dad was still hard at it even with the drovers who were helping him out every so often. He was still carrying a load few others were.

You could spot the single stockmen a mile away even if you didn't know who they were. They were the ones dressed in their best jeans and flannel shirts. They were the ones who looked like they'd gotten chummy with soap and a comb just that day ... and that they'd done it as much to be with each other as to chat up some sheila.

Naddles kept making goofy noises, trying to imitate what those hopeless men were up to. They'd be huddled up together over there, close to the stage, and you knew they were passing a bottle or a flask of something strong. Then they'd spot some woman and they'd make eyes at each other.

"Reckon they're asking if they'd like to poke her," Naddles said, in that stage whisper that just the three of us could hear.

"They're daring each other to ask her for a dance," I said and we all giggled as they nodded at each other.

"You'd think they were boys the way they're acting. For the Lord's sake, they're men," Eza said.

Naddles and I just laughed at her. She was so disgusted with them.

The ladies serving the punch gave us the evil eye for the way we were cutting up. We moved a safe distance away. I saw Mack come in with Dorie.

Eza said, "If one of them were to come ask me to dance, I'd do it. But you know they won't. They'd rather stand over there in a pack and ogle Naomi Proctor than ask a decent girl to dance."

Naomi Proctor. Town bike, she was. But Lord, the way she walked. And the way she would hold herself. I used to sit in front of my mirror for hours on Saturday mornings and try to practice that way she had about her. Shoulders back. This tiny smile like she just knew every man around was looking at her and wanting her. No doubt she was right. What I wouldn't have given for just a bit of that whatever it was that made Dad smile whenever Mum called Naomi a sexpot like it was a bad thing. Whatever it was, it just seemed to ooze right out of Naomi like she just couldn't help it.

So, sure, she walked in that dance hall and there wasn't a man's eyes that weren't checking a bit of her action. Hell, most any boy already through puberty was watching her.

We both looked at Eza when she said that. Then we looked at each other. "Well, now, Eza, maybe you should pick yourself out one of those blokes and you should ask him to dance. Don't leave Naomi with all the pickings," I teased her as I looked over at Naomi.

"Maybe I just will," Eza told me.

"Dare you," I said and we faced off.

"Dare you first."

"For pity's sake, Eza, you're the one wanting to dance with one of them so bad," I said, putting my hands on my hips.

"And you're the one not taking your damned eyes off Mack since he come in with Dorie," she said.

"What's that got to do with anything in heaven's mercy?"

"Maybe something. Maybe. Anyways, you been thinking you're so much better'n us now that you ... you know. So prove it. Prove to us that you doing it with Mack has made you more a woman than me and Naddles. Go pick the stockman you want and get him to dance. Dare you."

I took in a sharp breath at that. Looked at Naddles. I could read it in her eyes, too. They both thought I was all talk. They thought I'd been just giving them what for when I told them how different I felt now that I was no longer a virgin. Now that I was in that club that good girls secretly aspire to join. The one where you know the secrets your parents spend their lives trying to keep you from learning.

"You think I won't?" They both gave me these wicked smiles. "Fine then. I will. Let's see now. Don't want to waste this, do I? So which of them's the finest? Let's all agree and I'll just go ..."

"Egan." They said his name in unison and then Eza nudged me hard, saying, "Dare you to ask Egan Trask to dance."

"Egan?" I about choked his name out. "That's not fair. You both know I always had a crush on him. C'mon. Not fair. Pick another."

"Nah. Egan. Besides, it'll be funny. He don't even know how to dance. He's got two left feet and one of 'em is lame," Naddles said. "He only comes to these things to get drunk with his mates. Maybe he don't like girls?"

"Oh, he likes girls, all right. He likes Naomi for sure. I hear she's sweet on him," Eza chimed in.

"Naomi?" We all turned to look at Naomi and see who she'd set her sights for. If it was Egan, she was taking her time. I didn't ever like the idea of competing for a man's attention against Naomi. So we waited until she seemed to settle on the banker, Mr. Whitney. Then my best mates looked at me and I could tell, they were throwing me into it and it was either swim to safety or die trying.

Egan it was. So's I told them, if I asked Egan to dance and he said yes, then next dance, they both had to ask other of the men to dance. We shook on it.

I went by myself to get a cup of punch. After, I strolled over easy like to the board that listed the community classes coming in the next month. The board was up near the stage and it gave me the perfect place to look across and see if I could find Egan in the loose group of stockmen on the other side of the room from me.

The band was playing some silly number and hardly anyone was dancing. So I searched across a nearly empty dance floor for Egan and finally found his form. His back was to me, but let me tell you, I'd stared at him often enough in the last few years to have picked him out easy even in a crowd.

Egan Trask. Just a tad on the tall side. Wide shoulders. What a chest; I'd seen him a few times with his shirt off and I was standing there looking at him when it dawned on me that I now knew exactly why seeing Egan shirtless had always made me feel like I was running a fever. It's because seeing it left no doubt in a girl's mind that this was a man she was looking at. His arms were thick, strong ... like he could have picked you up with no effort. What he would have done with you after that ... guess that's what was making me sweat now, wasn't it? For the first time in my life, I had some real appreciation of what a man like Egan might have been hiding inside those jeans.

He turned just then and I could see him in profile as he looked up at the band. His hair was always so neat if a tad long. This short beard that he kept trimmed and presentable. He had a great face; I thought he was the most handsome man I'd ever seen. Surely the best looking bloke in my town. I couldn't tell if he was smiling. He didn't smile that often unless he was laughing at some joke some mate of his told. He'd never smiled at me.

No. I take that back. He'd smiled at me once. I'd been with my Dad when a group of the stockmen had come to help him do repairs to the barn. Dad hadn't been expecting the help; it was after we'd lost my big brother. Harry had taken a bad fall from his horse during a storm. That was last winter, in fact. Dad had taken it hard, he had. Him and Harry, they'd been close. It'd always been Harry who'd been the one Dad relied on when there were things needing done.

But when Harry died, I think my Dad lost more than his son. I think he lost his best friend. I'd wanted to help; but it just wasn't the same for my Dad. How could it be?

So some of the men in town, they'd come out to help my Dad when they found out he'd ordered all that lumber. Knew he'd need more help than me, Mum and my little sister and brother could give him. It was their way of helping Dad get over Harry's death. Their way of saying they were sorry he'd had that loss.

People liked my Dad. Always quick with a joke and fast with a helping hand, was my Dad. Harry'd been just like him. He'd been a right good big brother to me. I missed him a lot.

So, anyway, Egan had been one of the men to come out to help that weekend. Second day they were there, I was carrying out drinks to the men and when I'd handed a bottle to Egan, he'd smiled at me.

When he smiles, his eyes seem to go from this dark shade of blue-green into this lighter green color. They sparkle. His mouth looks soft when he smiles. His whole face relaxes.

I hadn't even realized how lost I'd been in remembering that day when the band stopped playing and I blinked back to being aware that I was standing there staring.

Egan was looking in my direction. I swallowed hard and smiled at him. He kind of nodded at me. I don't know that he even remembered who I was but I figured this gave me a bit of an opening. So before I could get scared, I was walking right over there to him.

"Hey, there, Egan," I said and realized my voice was squeaking. He regarded me with that serious look of his. I plowed on after clearing my throat. "Just wanted to take this time to thank you for what you did to help my Dad."

"Your dad?" he said, his voice deep but soft enough in the noise of a new song the band was playing that I had to lean in closer to him.

"Yeah. Remember? You came and helped with the barn after Harry died and ..." My voice trailed off because I realized that he didn't have a clue as to who I was.

Damn, but that was embarrassing. Standing there on a dare. About to ask him to dance once we said our hello's and I had an opening. Only, he didn't have a clue as to who I was. All this time, all those years I'd been drooling over Egan Trask, thinking all these girlish things whenever I'd chance upon him in town ... and he'd never even noticed me. Guess I just assumed he had. But he hadn't.

I heard myself mumbling ... My dad's Corky Williams, I was saying when he didn't seem to register who I was... and I could feel myself blushing with the way it felt to now be at the limits of anything I could say to him because I for sure couldn't ask him to dance, could I?

"You're Marter? Harry's sister?" he asked me and gave me this puzzled look. "Well, love, you've grown up, haven't you?"

"Well, yeah."

"And done a nice job of it, too."

I stood there as he gave me the second grin he'd ever given me. My cheeks were hot ... almost as hot as this pulse tattooing a heady rhythm in a whole other area of my body. Through the flush of it, in spite of the heat of it, I still asked, "Would you like to dance, Egan? I mean, the next slow dance, maybe you'd like to dance with me?"

He looked up at the band and then around the dance area before looking at me. "I'm not much of a dancer, love. Maybe another bloke would be a better choice. Over there's some mates from your school, I bet. One of them would be a good partner, I'm sure."

I looked down at the ground and then got this instant image of that. If I walked away from here without just one lousy dance with Egan, then every single person in there from my class would know that I'd asked a man to dance and he'd tossed me back to the boys. And you really think any boy would ask me to dance after that?

"See, the thing is, Egan, my old boyfriend is here with his new girlfriend. And I could ask one of my class chums to dance but I figure if he sees me dancing with someone like you, an older bloke, that he'd maybe figure I'd traded up. So to speak."

"You want to make him jealous, then, that's it?" When I nodded, he narrowed his eyes across the room and asked me which had been my boyfriend. I pointed Mack out to him.

This was how he agreed to dance with me. He said he'd make it a point to lead me over where Mack would see us.

Only problem was that as soon as we got to the dance floor ... as soon as he took my hand in his and I put my other hand on his shoulder ... as soon as he counted under his breath to get the beat ... he took the first step ... and he stepped right on my toes.

My eyes must have gotten huge and I know tears sprang to my eyes but I tried hard to pretend it was nothing. But, my Lord! He'd done crunched my toes! And it didn't help matters that I heard Naddles' laughter floating right over all the other noise and I started blushing at what we must have looked like. Would have looked for sure like some big galoot tromping all over a little sprite of a child.

He apologized to me, said he'd warned me he didn't know how to dance. We tried again. He stomped on my feet at least eight times during that dance. I was limping by the end and Naddles sounded like someone needed to get her fitted for a straightjacket. He ended up breathing this huge sigh of relief when the dance was over but there was no one happier than me that I was going to survive this encounter with his big old feet.

I was standing outside with Naddles and Eza maybe twenty minutes later. We were all three busting our guts. They'd been telling me how Mack's face looked when he saw me dancing with Egan. I had loved their reports. Then they were laughing at how Egan danced. They started dancing together, imitating for me what we'd looked like. I was laughing with them but inside, I was remembering something about that dance that I'd not taken in right there in that moment when I'd been concentrating more on keeping my toes out of his way. But what had lingered on for me was how it had felt to have his hand holding mine. Even more than that, how it had felt to have his big, warm hand in the small of my back. Lord. Excitement was overtaking me just to remember the feeling of being that close to his body. He had felt so good moving next to me.

Suddenly I came to with an awareness that there was silence around me. I blinked and looked at my two friends. They were looking at the side door we were near ... their faces were red and their mouths' were in big O's. I looked over my shoulder and saw Egan standing there.

"You girls too old to be acting like such brats," he said coldly. He nodded in my direction. "Little Marter, Harry'd not be too proud."

We none of us moved until long after he left in his truck. We went back inside but we were quiet and shaken by his anger at us. Don't think we stayed around more than maybe fifteen minutes. All I wanted was home. Barely said anything to Eza and Naddles, though they started trying to make light of what had happened.

But, I knew something ... we'd made fun of the wrong man.

2

Sometimes, it's all I can do to keep from going itchy when the sun's hiding and the days are not quite long enough. Blue turns to gray and you just feel like something's got to give good and proper or you'll turn evil.

Dad caught me just as I was sneaking off for town. "Marter," he called out, "chores done, love?"

"Yeah, sure they are," I yelled back.

"Got your coat, girl?"

But I was springing for freedom and happy to be moving. I got near the depot and pretty well knew I'd be seeing someone from school. Hadn't quite expected it to be Mack. He trailed me in his truck until he was pretty sure that I was keeping on going without waiting on him. Then he drove up even with me, keeping pace to my walking, trying to see if I'd turn and acknowledge him.

"She give you what you want then, mate?" I asked him while I just kept staring ahead in the direction I was heading but saying it like we were buddies when I was anything but feeling good toward him.

"You're the one's called it off, Marter," he told me. 

"It had to be Dorie, did it?" I stopped and looked off over the field near me. Heard him brake that old truck and I moved so the dirt he'd have scudded up didn't overtake me. Rain was still crowding in close to us but it hadn't yet come to pay me the visit I knew was coming.

"Dorie's a good 'un," he said as he was getting out of his truck. 

This time, I looked at him. Tall and lanky. Raw boned and pale as wheat after it's been thrashed. A skinny boy. Cute but nothing solid or noble about him. What'd I ever see in him? Why'd it still make me feel odd to know I wasn't anybody special to him? How'd I ever get over the way his mates now thought I was off limits? Who'd he think he was, coming out here, sniffing around me like this?

"She not giving you any, that it?"

"It's not like that, Marter. You and me ... it's not like that with Dorie."

"So you figure what? That you can come out here and I'll hitch up my skirts and drop my knickers? It's not like that for me, neither, Mack. You just go back to Miss Dorie and you work your charms with her. But this better be the last time you scout around me, hear me?"

Like that storm coming in, I needed that snap of electricity to let loose. He tried to get me in the truck, said he'd give me a ride to town, but I didn't want a ride in. No, sir. Not from him, least ways.

Water was washing dirt away. Mud ruts caught at my feet as I trudged along. Closer in to town, I thought to go see Eza but then something made me hesitate. So's he must have seen that hesitation. It must have been the thing that made him slow to a crawl as he passed me in his battered blue truck.

"Marter? Love, you better get in here."

I looked at the voice. "I'm okay, Egan. Just heading in to town. You go on."

But he turned the truck around and drove right up alongside me. I gazed at him, his head leaning out the window and him telling me plain and no polish to get in the truck. It'd been two weeks since the dance and I still felt myself blushing at both getting caught making fun of him and having these thoughts on him that would have shocked him.

When I was settled in the truck and he'd rolled up his window, he looked over at me and gave me this long, slow appraisal. "I'm gonna take you home, Marter."

I didn't argue with him. I didn't tell him I had needed out walking. I didn't tell him that the rain's one reason I like where we live. He didn't have any reason to want to know such things about me.

But, see, the thing is that the rain here is clean and bracing. I like the way it can change everything. But I also know its power, don't I? Because it was a rainstorm like hell that took my brother from us.  We get them up here. When they're that bad, best thing to do is to wait 'em out. There doesn't seem any real way to fight that kind of rain and if you're stuck out in it, then you find a safe place and hold out.

"How long's it been since Harry passed?" Egan asked me.

"About nine months now. Going on, I think."

"How's your dad doing with the station? He handling it okay without Harry around?"

"Sure. We all pitch in. You know."

"Pretty thing like you's probably out dancing with the boys every weekend, eh, Marter? Bet you don't give your dad near enough time he needs."

"Give my dad all the time he needs. Don't be so mean."

Our eyes met and I think he could see the anger rippling off me. "Sorry, love. Just meant ... well, a pretty sheila like you? Figure she'd be off with the boys, not helping with the stock and such."

He thought I was pretty. Or maybe it's what he said to every little girl. Only thing was, I wasn't no girl. Not how he thought anyway. And I wondered ... what would he think to know that I was a woman now? Would he maybe be liking me in that way if he were to find out that I wasn't a virgin? And for the rest of the ride in to the station, I pondered on this ... just how does a woman make sure a man knows she's willing to be with him that way and that she can do it?

Dad was sipping a coffee up on the porch when we came squishing through rain swells to the house. Egan and I jumped out and made a run for it. Think it took Dad some few seconds there to wonder what a man like Egan was doing with his daughter. But then Egan said he'd seen this drowned rat on the side of the road and figured he'd best make sure she got home safe. So Dad knew then; Egan was on another mission of mercy.

They spent the next hour on the porch, drinking beer. Me up in my room listening to men's deep voices and feeling good to hear my dad having another man around to talk to. Egan had his quiet ways but he liked my dad and it made him talk more than I think I ever heard him before.

Mum made him stay for dinner because the weather got worse. It was one of those kinds of rains and there wasn't anybody in our home that night that wasn't some on edge. We did our best to hide it but even Egan seemed affected by it. He didn't put up more than a token battle when Mum insisted he spend the night. Nothing else for it, he and my dad agreed.

But I rather sensed that Egan might have been as happy sleeping out in his truck as he was taking Harry's room for the night.

By the time morning was calling in, I was out in the barn bringing in the eggs and clucking right along with the chickies. Before I finished my chores there, Egan was examining the handiwork the men had done after the winter on the barn and he seemed satisfied they'd done fine by my dad. Right in the middle of him making this soft 'hmm' sound as he checked on the condition of one of the stalls that needed mending, I interrupted his sense of thinking on what needed doing around there.

"I never did say sorry to you, Egan. But you know what? You shouldn't of gotten that mad at us, neither. We were just being goofs. And you did step on my toes a lot, y'know."

His head came up sharp and quick. Fixed me with this glare that made me grin. "You thought that was funny? You girls ... Just didn't figure you for that, Marter. Doing you a favor and you just wanted sport."

"Wasn't sport, Egan. Wasn't. I did want a dance. Well, actually, it was a bet, but ..."

So I told him about the dare but I didn't tell him that he was chosen because my friends knew of my crush on Egan Trask. He tried to act mad but mostly I think he was a bit embarrassed to find out some girls he didn't really even know were having such conversations and then dragging him into them.

Nothing was needed saying between us after that. Nothing really. I mean it. I figure I'd apologized and since he was talking to me meant he'd accepted it. But there was something about standing there in the middle of that dawn-shady barn with him looking all disagreeable.

"Why'd you not know how to dance, anyway, Egan? Seems to me a man like you'd know a thing or two about dancing with ladies."

"Mind your business, little girl."

"I am not so little anymore, Egan, not so's you'd have noticed, I suppose. But I am not a little girl any more. I'm a woman now."

"Yeah? You're a woman now, are ya, love? And what makes you a woman now? Because you had you a boy?"

My eyes widened at that. I wasn't sure, but I thought it was just possible that Egan sure did know about me and about the real reason I was no longer a girl. Truth be told, I hadn't been a girl since Harry'd died. That's really when the changes came over me. It was something about being the oldest one of the children and being expected to step in and take care of the little ones when Mum found it hard for long months after we lost Harry. And I really do think finding something warm in Mack's arms brought me forward in a way I'd been ready for. Mack'd been more surprised than I ever was when I finally told him we were doing it. It hadn't been so great at first but eventually we got it down to something that felt pretty good.

And ever since that first few times, ever since I felt I'd been let in on this big secret world of adults, I'd been feeling like my body had caught up with my mind and my spirit.

But somehow, hearing those words come charging out of Egan's mouth shocked me. The way he said it ... it sounded like he knew I'd been doing it with Mack and that he didn't think that meant so much.

"A woman's someone been taking on what I been taking on for these nine months," I told him in the silence there between us. "And don't you ever go forgetting that, Egan Trask. Ever."

"Don't you neither, Marter."

I didn't expect much in the way of words to be passed between me and Egan after that. But then he decided he was going to make my dad into a cause of sorts. He started coming out most Fridays to help Dad with projects that'd been either put off or not done too good if it was me helping Dad. Face it, sure enough, I wasn't strong enough to be much more than a gofer whereas Harry'd been strong like Dad. They were a team to be sure.

And there was Egan, coming out helping Dad like it was nothing for him. Winter chasing in on all of us and you had to know that Egan had things needed doing at his own place. But still he came to help us. Within a month, seemed we were not only a lot better prepared for the really bad weather about to come in but Dad seemed to not have all the weight of the world on those shoulders.

Mum asked me one Friday why it was I never stayed for dinner when Egan was around. When I said I wanted to be off with Eza and Naddles, she told me to stick around that night. I made a face at her but she caught me. So's I told her about the dance ... about Egan's heavy feet and us having sport with him. She told me a Christian girl would have taken it upon herself to be doing something nice for a man helping us out like Egan was ... and that I had this perfect way to do it.

"You should teach Egan to dance, Marter," she pronounced and I started to give her lip but lately, you didn't do that. She was well into feeling her new baby growing inside and she wasn't having much fun.

Mum told Egan that night that I was going to start giving him dance lessons every Friday after dinner. I about choked but Dad pounded my back and without a pause told Mum what a great idea that was.

My parents were sitting on the veranda, right outside the front room when I turned on the music and tried to figure out how I was going to teach a man to dance. I could catch them turning every so often to look inside the window and pretty soon, Mum was up and leaning in on the door, giving Egan tips and telling me how to show him what to do.

Don't know about Egan ... you can't always tell with him ... but that sure bugged the shite out of me, let me just say it. There's nothing worse than having your olds hanging around you on a weekend night when you should be off with your best mates being young. So I made Egan help me pack up the record player and we took it with us out to the barn. Out there was where we had our first real dance lesson. Out there away from the nosy parents who thought they were teaching me a lesson by having me be nice to Egan.

We worked at it for near on an hour. Even in the chilly air, we were sweating. It wasn't taking him long to get the rhythm and that's all I really wanted him to be doing that night. Tapping along with me and just doing the steps without having to worry about a partner. Went back to the house and returned with beer for us both. Told Dad they were both for Egan and he winked at me. He knew but then that kind of thing never bothered my dad.

It was while I was drinking a beer with Egan that I started remembering again what it had felt like when he'd first taken me in his arms at the dance. After the beer, I said we should try dancing together again. It was rough at first, but he only stepped on me twice and neither time was horrible. I told him that in the next lesson, I'd show him how to loosen up his hips and feel the sway of the music.

That night, lying in my bed, I dreamed of more than dancing with Egan.

3

Lots of people my age want out of this town. I never have. Maybe part of it is knowing that if I ever leave, it's going to be like Harry leaving all over for my family. Who'd want to do that to them?

I think that way because I just know that if I ever left this town, I'd never come back. I'd forget, I imagine, all the reasons I love living here.

There's something about knowing you're right where you belong, I suppose. This was my place. There was a whole world right out there, always waiting on me to explore it. I never got bored. Not with the woods or the hills or the big stream that chased its way through town. There were horses that loved riding with me and there were people who cared what happened to me.

Eza said that was most of her reason for wanting out. She hated that it felt like everyone was always in her business. She hated that. It never bothered me one way or the other. Naddles was more like me. We neither of us had much wish to be leaving even if the occasional trip into the city was fun. Eza talked about moving to Sydney someday and we'd try and tell her how she would have a tough time there. But truth be told, if anyone could do it, it'd be Eza.

We were having a lunch that Saturday at Waterman's in town when Naomi Proctor came waltzing in. "Town bike," Naddles said under her breath and we all three giggled when she settled into the booth across from us.

Looking off around that diner and there wasn't a man in there didn't have eyes on her. I kept watching her. Still wondering what it was about her ... that indefinable 'thing' that just made her ooze sex appeal. Her figure wasn't really any better than mine, I told Eza and Naddles. Maybe if I took to wearing tight sweaters and even tighter jeans ...

"It's the walk," Naddles finally said and we looked at her. "You know? She walks like she's asking to be fucked."

"Nadine Madelyn Bishop!" I tutted. "The things that come out of your mouth!"

Eza and I were both shaking our heads at her but sure enough, when Naomi got up and sauntered on out of that diner, some silent communication happened between us and we got up to follow her. We were studying her walk and danged but I think Naddles was right, I told Eza. That walk she had! The way she swiveled those hips and the way men studied her arse as she passed them.

And then we were walking right past the post office when Egan Trask came walking out right into Naomi's path. He didn't exactly grin at her; it seemed more polite than that. His eyes were almost hard but he tipped his hat to her and we heard that husky laugh of Naomi's waft back to us. When she continued on, it didn't fail any of our notices that Egan's eyes followed her walking away.

"Why, Egan Trask, there's medicine for that condition, y'know," I told him as we walked past him.

"Miss Marter, you're looking cute today, girl," he teased me.

I looked back after we passed to give him an evil glare but there was something about the way he was watching us walk away from him. And then his eyes swept up and locked on mine and Lord but it was my arse he'd been studying.

That look he'd been giving my body stayed with me all that next week and on Friday, it was all I thought about. It's why I kissed him all of about twenty minutes into the dance lesson. He didn't kiss me back at first. I imagine he felt it was wrong. I imagine I felt it was right.

Because it was some right. 

4

Wind chases in with the rain some nights and I can be found up wandering on the covered porch that stretches fine and true across the front of our house. I watch the fence between reports of lightning. I listen for the boom and shudder with the quake.

It never matters to me how wet and cold I get. It's like paying tribute to loss to be out there.

A night that could have been any night. But it brought sodden memories to me. It chased the girl and pulled the woman. I'd been dreaming thoughts I shouldn't have had. But have them I did. And worse than that ... they had left me warm and no amount of winter rain seemed to take away that internal fire.

Egan had kissed me good and proper that night. He'd been the one seeking the kiss in the barn this lesson. His rhythm ... like he'd learned something about dancing from the way his tongue and mouth could keep a pace with mine.

He'd left right after.

And all I'd known since then was the feel of his lips and the way I just couldn't settle down after.

Next morning, Mum seemed to be watching my every move. She kept asking me what was wrong. But I was off somewhere else, lost inside the memory of how he'd felt against me.

His hand had been on my arse and he'd had me pressed hard against him. He'd maybe never danced better but I do think it was because he was hearing the beat in his soul not in his ears.

I'd felt his hardness. It had awed me. This wasn't any boy. This was a man.

And all day long, all that next day, I just kept rehashing the way that had made me feel. I kept wondering if maybe Mum knew I was lost inside how it'd felt to be held by a man like Egan Trask.

I was up in my bedroom, sitting before the mirror and wondering why I felt like I looked different. Heard my parents talking. Their low voices made me curious. I walked slowly to the top of the stairs.

"... man like that anyway," Mum was saying. "You didn't see them out there. It was like he was ..."

"Now, love, whatcha think the man's up to? He comes out here, nothing in it for him but work to help an old mate's family ... She could do worse by him."

"... it was like he was fucking her standing up dancing."

My eyes opened wide. Never heard Mum say something like that. Think it caught Dad off limits, too. He hissed her name out, tough and no-nonsense.

"That's your girl you're talking about," he finally said to her.

"You know right where this will lead."

Silence between them. My heart sounded harsh. 

"I remember a time when you and I couldn't hardly stop touching. We were so young then. Have we gotten too old? Never have thought we'd be here worrying over some innocent dance."

"It wasn't innocent. He's a man. She's a girl."

"She's a woman, love. Surely you've noticed?"

"And you think it's right? You want same kinda thing happened to Harry? Well, d'ya?"

Sometime late that arvo, I finished my chores that had to be done and then I'd taken a bath before changing into clothes that seemed to me to be older than I had a right to look. But they made me feel like I felt, if you know what I mean. Like I was older that day.

By the time I made town, the sun was getting low. I meandered my way through the main street, taking care not to be too obvious. I didn't know where he'd be. All I wanted to do was see him. Figured he'd either be at the pub or he'd be easing off chores at his own place. But if I played it right, no matter where I saw him, I'd look like I was just heading to either Eza's or Naddles' home.

Just had to see him. Had to see if seeing me made him want to be with me. Wanted to give him the chance to take a chance that I might want to be with him. Because I did. I sure did. I would have given a lot just to find out what promise lay in store with me if a man like Egan Trask decided he'd want to do more than just kiss me.

Hung around across from the pub and didn't see him. He might have been inside but he never came out so I figured maybe he wasn't there. I wandered a bit then headed over toward the road that led to his place.

Then I saw that blue truck coming toward me. Chugging resolutely down the road like it knew I was waiting. My smile was for sure waiting on him. Just waiting for him. He gave me not a look as he cruised by.

Why would he? With Naomi Proctor sitting right up next to him? Him looking off ahead of him and her whispering in his ear.

And you just knew what was going on. He'd probably had her at his place. Had her, I mean. As in fucked her. Right then and there. And they were heading out ... I turned to follow his truck's route and knew they were heading for her place. He'd fuck her there, too.

It's what men do with women like Naomi, right? Right. That was that.

Egan and Naomi. Fucking like banshees.

There was a real particular bitterness in the vile tears that kept wanting to come out of me. I swallowed them down as I shook my head side to side like somehow I'd make this all not true if I just convinced myself.

I kept turning in these tight little circles ... heading first to Eza's house then to Naddles' then to mine then to anywhere where no one would witness my shame. And finally I just stood there looking up at gathering darkness and wishing I was anywhere but there knowing that Naomi had Egan that night.

Don't know how it happened. Somewhere in those circles, I'd found my way in front of the blue truck. The house it was parked in front of, sitting there on the edge of a field and looking for all the world like it could care less that I was out there eaten up with the roughest way of feeling I'd felt in so long. Inside that house, that woman had seduced her another man. I wouldn't be hiding any more of her secret lovers.

My fingers traced the pitted metal of the truck's hood. I rested a hip against the driver's door and refused to look behind me at Naomi's house. Nothing to see there anyway with only this little light making her front window glow blue-green through the aqua drapes.

I scratched at the blue paint along the crease of an old dent. Flecks of it flitted off. Blue chips fell and gathered on red-brown hard-packed dirt. I squinted into the streetlight's harsh glare and tried not to imagine what was going on behind me.

My thoughts were chasing them inside my imagination ... thinking of them doing it ... knowing they were so good at it ... wondering how I'd ever been this foolish to think a man like Egan Trask ever had to wait on some dumb schoolgirl to get a bit of frisky business.

She'd know so much more'n me. He'd never even meant that kiss.

There were flecks of blue on my nails as I put my hands on the rough cement blocks that formed a thin ledge under her window. There was a crack in the curtains and the light that spilled through it was yellow-orange and raw. I looked from my blue-flecked fingernails up into the yellow-orange sliver of light.

I never really saw that much. But what I saw, it was like opening up another world to me.

They were on the couch that ran under the window. Her legs were spread wide. He was in between them. I couldn't see her face. I was so close. I could hear their noises.

He had his clothes off. His jean were sprawled on the floor and his white undies were indecently poised on the hem of those jeans. His shirt ... red checked flannel ... was on a chair near the record player.

Grunts. Moans. She yelped his name. Once. Twice. His deep voice said something so low to her that I could not understand the words. Saw her nod and then he was moving on top of her in this rhythm that ...

My eyes darted away.  My face was flushed; my armpits were damp; between my breasts, a trickle of moist fear ran even in the cold of that night.

Her clothes were placed neatly along the back of an armchair across from the couch.

She wailed. I jumped. He had stopped pumping and I heard him curse ... short ... mean ... scary. I fell on my arse in stunned silence at what I'd born witness to. Just sat there for too long like I had not the sense or decency God was to have granted idiots like me at birth. Shadows passed in front of the window. A light flicked on somewhere on the side of the house. Her bedroom? Adult laughter floated out to me.

Between my legs ... a feeling I should not have had.

I ran for the Lord knows how far from there.

But never far enough for the image that shocked me to track me down and tackle me. His head thrown back as he was pumping so damned hard and she was wailing these obscene prayers to heaven's angels. He'd been grimacing. His mouth open. His hips shoving and I understood this raw moment of Egan losing track of himself was a fearsome display of masculine power and loss and victory.

She had claimed him. He was lost to me. I'd never recover.

Should have gone home. Should have gone to see Eza. Should have walked to Naddles' home. But I didn't. I was in front of his place before I ever even thought about it. It wasn't that far out but I'd been wandering for so long that when I got there, I had nothing left to give but myself.

On his porch, I sat in the swing that he'd hung there to take the evening breezes. I sat there and thought about Egan sitting there. I swung there and pictured him swinging there with me. I daydreamed there about him daydreaming about me in his bed. I imagined him with me and I never should have imagined him taking his clothes off to touch me.

In my head, the images piled up like dust builds into mounds of reddish dirt against the barn where we danced. His hands were on me. There was a part of me that felt dirty and gritty. I couldn't explain away the itching ... the yearning to have those hands touching me. I wanted his fingers to push down under my knickers. To probe right up into me. Why did that thought ... that feeling ... keep me hanging onto its image for so long? My head lolled back in the swing and my hand was between my thighs. I played hard with the crease of my jean's seam. I was so close to coming that I could taste it ... but the frustration snapped a current inside me. When I realized what I'd been doing, I groaned at my own hopelessness.

I took a heavy breath and realized that I'd been in that swing so long that I'd found a new way to be stupid and childish.

Should have rushed away. But for some reason, I just didn't give a good damn anymore. Maybe if I had, I wouldn't have been heading down the road that led only to his place when I saw the lights coming toward me. I knew it had to be Egan and feeling like I was, I didn't even so much as find the will to be bothered to be found out there. How could it have been any different for me than to have him find me out there after he was coming back from fucking Naomi Proctor?

"Marter? Girl, what are you doing out here?" Egan asked me after pulling the truck to a stop. Calling to me over the cold night air and leaning across the passenger seat to have me hear him speak out the window he'd rolled down. I kept right on walking.

Heard the crunch of his truck stopping good and solid behind me. In the noise of my rebellious mind, I was thinking all sorts of retorts to Egan Trask. But when he grabbed me from behind and tried to get me to stop ... when he was telling me to tell him what the hell was going on ... when I was smacking him smart across that face I'd been dreaming of kissing again ... when I was wiping my tears and he was holding on tight to my arms ... well, I just stood there finally and wondered what would happen.

What would happen if I just told him?

"You fucked Naomi," I said and couldn't believe I had let those girlish words out.

His eyes narrowed at me and his chin tucked down low as he regarded me. "How's that any of your business, Marter?"

"My name's Emma," I whispered to him.

It was Harry who'd first called me Marter.

I was all gangly arms and knobby knees that summer. I followed him anywhere I could. He'd been six years older than me and he used to tell me that he never could figure out a use for me.

One day we were swimming when he asked me my favorite food. Tomato, I had yelled and dove under water. When I came up for air he was still chuckling. Mainly he was laughing, I think, because everyone knew it was true. Harry introduced me to tomatoes the summer before and after the last one I'd had that growing season, I think I spent the rest of those months just waiting for the green tomatoes to turn red under that hot airless sunny sky.

Harry had been the one to show me how great a freshly picked, still warm tomato was ... bursting with juice and running with seeds and meaty with hearty red flesh ... tasted that much better for its native warmth and the swell addition of salt sprinkled down generously. We'd take to digging in together out in the field ... Harry always managed to sneak out a folded over paper cup with salt littering its bottom ... we'd wait until Dad was on other rows and then Harry'd pull me behind him and we'd skulk down out of sight and eat the best tomatoes we'd picked that morning.

Dad always knew what we were up to. He always turned his eyes to the sun and pretended he didn't notice the red fingers and sticky faces we'd end up with.

That was Harry. He showed me the good things. And he showed me how to have fun. Since he'd been gone, it seemed the fun wasn't such a great deal of fun as when it'd been shared with him.

Ever after that morning at the creek, Harry'd honored my adoration of tomatoes by calling me Marter. Seems to me everyone about that town had understood the tale of calling me after a tomato. Seems to me everyone who called me that reminded me that it was Harry'd who given me that name.

And then there I was, escaping more and more into a girl named Marter.

Seems I'd never be the woman named Emma.

I'd been born Emma. Until Harry'd re-christened me at the age of 8, everyone called me Emma or Ems. And here I was, almost a year after he'd been gone, turned a woman and I was still his Marter. Yet inside me, whilst I was standing there with Egan Trask, I felt like I was Emma for maybe the first time in my life.

Think maybe that Egan knew what that meant that I said my real name to him. Think maybe he knew I wasn't a child anymore. I was no longer Harry's little sister. I was a woman on the brink of her life. Think maybe Egan'd known it more and more each Friday when we'd been dancing. Think maybe he'd known Emma more than he'd ever known Marter.

Think maybe he'd not felt at all guilty that it was him who'd brought Emma out to stake her claim on my life.

He dropped me off at Naddles' home. I stood there on her front porch and watched him watch me. Like something passed between us. When he took off, I wondered if he was going home or going back to Naomi's.

Next time he came to my house, he had a ready-made excuse not to stay for dinner or the dance lesson. His taillights were long gone memories of red in the black night before I started trying to mash the images of him fucking Naomi from my mind.

It was close on midnight by the time I was walking in front of his house. My olds thought I was at Eza's for the night. Eza was on a date. Naddles was sitting home watching the moon ... and I was standing under that moon watching Egan's house. He wasn't there.

Couldn't chase them out of my mind. All those things they must have been doing. All those things I'd have liked to have been doing with him.

I walked back to town and went to Naddles' home. Talked her into going out with me ... sneaking out into a cold night that harbored nothing but the foundation of a dirty dream. We were walking way across the street from old Ned's pub when men came pouring out of frosted-glass doors. Lots of shouting, more obscenity than I might have ever heard, and testosterone on the wind in a way neither of us had ever tasted before.

Wild men. My Lord above, it tasted good and it made me want to know things.

We looked at each other and seemed frozen in our places. We huddled together where we watched unnoticed by those men. We took in the way they milled about out there in the middle of the street. Two men were about to fight. They were stumbling about, half drunk and punch happy. Other men lounged about and egged them on. By the time they were landing fists on faces that began spitting blood, Naddles and I seemed caught up in the mystery of things men do when women aren't around.

But then some man spied us standing over there spying on them. None of that testosterone-drunk rabble knew who we were; all they knew was that we were females. Their aggressive rudeness ... it should have offended me. I knew it should have. It didn't. I heard it all. Hoots. Calls. Names. Things said that had never been said to me before.

I wondered with this flash ... 'how does Naomi Proctor ever survive being looked at by men and thought of the way they do?'

I knew it then with clarity. This is what men really thought of when they were watching your arse walking away from them down the street. It didn't scare me, the thought of what those men thought they'd like to be doing to my body ... it just made me feel dirty. And it excited me in a way I did not understand but that I relished for some reason.

"You girls shouldn't be out here," this deep male voice was saying to us.

Naddles grabbed in hard on my arm and I felt her trying to draw me away. "Give us a ride, Egan?" I asked him, somehow knowing he'd not come over there just to tell us to go home. I felt bold with him. First time in a long time. Like I knew. Just knew.

I whispered to Naddles as we trailed along behind Egan's body. Told her tonight was it for me. That when we got to her house, she was to get out of his truck and go in her house. She was to not look back. And she was never to tell anyone what I was up to. Not Eza. Not Mack. Not anybody.

Like he was expecting it, Egan didn't say a word when Naddles slid out of the truck and I stayed there sitting next to him. In fact, as she slid out, his hand stroked down the side of my knee even as he stared straight ahead. She bounced the door shut, took one searching glance at me over her shoulder and then she ran up her walk. His hand on my thigh kept me from even thinking about sliding away from where I was sitting right up next to him. When Naddles was inside her house and no other eyes were on us, I asked him if he'd call me Emma.

He drove me home. To my house. Before I got out of his truck, all shaky with this breathless air of wanting him, he kissed me.

It was the kind of kiss that I knew only a man gave a woman. He might have kissed me before but it was never like this ... it was never a promise of more. It was never a mystery all on its own. It was never a kiss that included a full body feel. He touched along my body ... stroked, caressed, kneaded. He took my hand in his and whispered hot fevered words to me ... to touch him, to feel how he felt, to understand what he was wanting. I remembered the way he'd held me and touched me for that entire week. I thought I'd crawl clear out of my skin before Friday crept around again.

At dinner, I itched for him. Inside the barn, we circled each other. He finally told me that he'd learned something new and wanted to show me. We danced like we'd never done before. I gave myself over to him and let him lead me into a dance that felt like gliding on air. Our eyes never left the other. We sweated right up against each other and to hell with the cold that brindled the hay in the loft up above us.

Just before he left, he asked my dad if he could take me to the dance down at the Methodist hall the next night. I stood there with my hand on the door, going inside, but waiting for my final look at Egan as he got in his truck. Only he was standing there, one big foot leaning up on the second step while his other foot bore his body's weight down there on the ground. Mum looked between us but Dad never hesitated.

He figured Egan wanted to show off his new dancing abilities and felt like taking the one girl he felt comfortable doing that with in public. Besides, Dad liked Egan. I don't think anything more dawned on him but I think Mum sussed us out right then and there. I don't think she liked the idea of me with a man that much older than me; I don't think my dad ever imagined a man that much older than me would see me as anything but a girl named Marter.

But that night, I had come to know this ... Egan, he saw me as a woman. First man ever to see me that way. From that moment on, I realized I was going to get the chance I'd been after to find out what happens with a man who knows.

We never made it to the dance. We'd intended to. But Egan pulled into the lot there and I'd shivered in the seat near him and he'd leaned into his door like he was getting out ... only then he leaned back my way and we were kissing.

He drove me to his house and sitting there right in front of his tired place, he touched me again. It was soft and searching. I took the rubbing on my breasts. I took the heavy breathing and him asking me if I was sure. I took the kiss he gave me that ended only after his hands were between my thighs stroking under the seam of my skirt. I took it all and wanted more.

I took it all and thought I'd about had it all.

I took it all and thought he'd put it in me and that'd be all that was left.

He sat too far from me until I asked him if I could touch him. He unzipped himself when I asked for more. He let me touch him and he let me really look at him. He was unashamed of my examination. At first, all I really understood was that he was more than I'd been expecting. It made me wonder how I'd handle him. He pressed a hand over mine after a while and told me this was how a man liked to be touched. He took in my nervous licking of my lips. He took my smile when he leaned in to give me a little kiss. He took my hand and kissed it.

He took me in his house.

He took me places I never knew existed and all that was left of the girl named Marter in the morning was white cotton panties she'd left behind at Egan's house.

5

When something comes along to mess up a future, it's not the present that really suffers. It's the past.

There're just so many things I'd do differently in my past if I'd only known my future. I'd not have kept that one secret for Harry, that's for sure. But I'd been his Marter and that meant too much to me to not stick by him when he asked me to cover for him.

Rain beat in on us too bad that night. I begged Harry not to go but go he had. I had stood at my window and watched him ride off in between the flashes of lightning coursing like my heart's pulse across the sky.

He'd left me there and I'd not ever forgotten how I'd felt in the morning when he wasn't there to help me deal with the news brought to us by Father Flanagan. I remember that so clear. I just don't always remember clear hearing Dad shoot that bitch of a horse he blamed for killing Harry.

Wrong bitch, I thought bitterly as I looked out my window at a sodden day of gray lightness. "Shoulda shot the bitch in heat he was heading for that night," I said to the morning's beginning.

It was a favorite saying of mine, see? I'd been saying it for so long about this woman I at once admired and was repulsed by. I'd said it about once a week now as the memory of Harry's smile came more often now than the memory of my mum's howling at the news of his death.

But in this morning, I felt like I maybe knew a bit of something about Harry that I never had before. There is something that will drive a person out into a danger of a night just to gather to yourself the love you seek from a mate you are unable to get enough of.

Dragging myself from the window, I sunk into the bathtub as the warm water crept up higher on my body. I washed and scrubbed ... and I never stopped myself from exploring between my thighs just to see if the soreness still felt as good as it had when I'd been laying in bed reluctant to arise from the warm memories of a night with Egan.

And all I really wanted was to be with him again. If I'd for once thought I'd not find a way to have at him again, I do believe I'd have gone mental.

I sunk low in the water and felt the back of my head clunk softly against the bottom. Encased there in warmth and floating underneath the tub's water, I found the perfect escape from the world in which to drive myself back to my past. I saw Egan's face, felt his hands ... and then saw Harry's form flash in the lightning burst as he left me ... one last glance back at where I stood at my window and Harry was gone to be with Naomi Proctor.

My hair flowed back from my forehead as I came slowly up from my watery grave of memories.

I let only my face break the plane of water. I rested there, breathing in, considering this curious mix of memories. I began waving my head slowly, feeling the trail of my hair as it flowed in the wake of my head's movements. Somewhere in this movement, my memories smoothed out and the night before came in to take me over.

Egan'd not even bothered to zip up his pants when he'd slid from the truck. He'd just gotten out, turned to me, held out his hand, helped me down and then took my hand to make sure I knew I was welcome inside with him.

I was struck by the feel of his place when he ushered me into that little house of his. Just inside the door, I wiped my feet on a scrap of rag carpet and he drew me up against his solid body for a kiss that was wet and indecent.

He pressed me right up against the wall, his body shoving itself at me. I struggled in the kiss and when he released me from it, he was boring into me with his eyes. He made me feel things I hadn't with Mack.

See, with Mack, it'd been more timid and fumbling. That first time, it'd been my idea and I sprung it on him so fast that about all he could do was quick get his pants down around his ankles and rub up on me before working his way in ... stabbing against me three times before I finally asked him if that's what was supposed to happen. He said he wanted to get it in me before I changed my mind. I said, slow down then, because I'm not changing my mind. But after we did it that time, I asked him if that's all there was to it. Not that it hadn't been profound, mind you, but just because it had seemed a lot of mess for not a lot of effort.

From then on, we'd both of us just get to it. I kept waiting for something wonderful and he just kept trying to get me to appreciate what he was doing with me. But in the end, I was a willing girl and he was a boy learning his way around my body. It's just that I never really had the confidence that he knew any more than me about these things, no matter what he said.

With Egan, though, in that one moment of being pressed up against the wall, I realized with a start that he knew things I'd never imagined. He knew the things men wanted from women ... and I realized that I didn't. I didn't know what a man like him really wanted. I was no longer sure that my willingness to let him fuck me was going to be enough. I was no longer confident that I even knew what to do.

"Second thoughts?" he asked me softly and I wondered if he would have been angry if I said yes.

"No. Just ..."

"You said you weren't a virgin. You weren't lying to me, were you?"

"No. Never." His hand crept slowly down my body and I looked down to follow it. When it reached my thigh and pulled my leg up so he could nestle his groin right in with mine, I swallowed hard. "I just never ... I've only been with Mack."

He dropped my leg and backed away from me. "You've only done it once? Jesus."

"No! We did it a lot. We did. It's just that ... well, he's the only one before."

I was watching him intently. He just stood there, breathing hard, staring at me, making up his mind, his eyes sweeping down then back up my body, taking his time to decide if I was someone he wanted that night I think. When his eyes made it back to mine, he gave me this little nod and asked me if I'd like something to drink.

As he went to his kitchen, I stood there against the wall for a minute and got my bearings.

It occurred to me that if I was to be treated as an adult by a man such as Egan, then I would need to behave like one. What would a true woman have done in this moment, I wondered. Well, she'd be comfortable enough to know manners dictated she be sociable, right? So I decided ... I'd just take me a seat, act as though I had come calling to get to know him ... and I'd go along with whatever happened as if I wasn't as scared as I felt just then.

No. Not scared. Just anticipating and realizing that I didn't know what I was anticipating.

His place felt rough. Yet it also felt sturdy and functional. That's about all. Not like it had things in there that were there for any reason other than he needed them. Two chairs. One couch. All made of wood frames with cloth cushions. Cushions of muted blue and green plaid. Only picture on the wall was of a mountain; it was a print of some painting that I doubt Mum would have let in our house. It hung there like it was a concession to his understanding that every house had to have at least one thing hanging on the walls.

The kitchen ran right off this living space. Between this living area and the kitchen was a round table that might have been able to fit four people around it. Severe metal chairs were pulled up to the formica-topped table. Their plastic cushions were an odd aqua color.

He had barely any knick-knacks around this space. A few gee-gaws, as Mum called them, upon the side table next to his couch. Books clustered upon the low table between the couch and chairs.

I sat on the couch to look through his books. But I confess that my eyes might have been looking at his books, but my mind was on what was to come between us.

He sat next to me on the couch and I accepted a bottle of beer from him. His hand slid along the back cushion until it reached my shoulders. When I looked over at him, he took that look and acted like it was the only invitation he'd ever need. Maybe it was. I know for sure that that look most probably conveyed a lot to him.

I wanted this between us. I wanted something only a man like Egan could give me. I wanted to understand why the want of sex drove a man and a woman to take chances. I wanted to find a chance I'd be willing to die for. I wanted to understand why a woman like Naomi Proctor spends her life in the search of a man to fuck her. Why she wanted Harry that bad. Why Harry wanted her. What would it take for a man to want me that bad?

But I found something else in that night. I found out the difference between a girl's imagination and a woman's reality. I went there unaware of what drives a man; I left his hold only after he taught me that I'd never stop wanting a man who could make me want with passion and lust.

So his fingers stroked the back of my neck and he edged his body closer to mine even while he was tilting his head back and sipping long and deep from that beer bottle. I closed my eyes and drank my own beer. When I brought the bottle down, I looked in his eyes and swallowed. Dank taste of beer. A bite of alcohol hit the brain. A rush of estrogen lit my desire. My eyes darted down to where his zipper was down and where the invitation to him was waiting on me to open.

He was so close that I could clearly hear him when he whispered to me.

"You can touch me."

The moment my hand reached for him, he placed a hand on my forearm and just lightly stroked me as I touched him. Then he leaned in until I felt enveloped by his body. He kissed at my neck and murmured against my ear that what I was doing felt good to him.

"Do you want to touch me, too?" I asked him softly, my eyes flickering up to find his face serious and his eyes dark.

"Let's take your shirt off, Emma," he said.

Emma.

Not Marter.

I reached for his lips and kissed him deep and hard while his fingers undid the buttons of my shirt.

Time slipped away.

Funny the way that happened. I guess I would have waited and waited for a moment of time like this. And then when it happened, it gathered speed and rushed away from my clutching spirit.

He laid me back on the couch and asked me what I liked. I said, I like doing what feels good. He gave me this small grin and asked me what I'd done with Mack. I shrugged my shoulders as he caressed my breasts. When he opened his mouth and suckled at my nipples, I gasped at how it felt. He didn't do that, I allowed.

"Then he missed some good parts," Egan said, giving me this look that told me I could tell him anything and he'd want to know what I was saying.

I tried to hold still but he kept licking and sucking on my breasts while his hands were doing things to me ... it just felt ... good.

He kissed in on my neck and rubbed in hard over where I felt myself growing so wet that I wondered if I was peeing. His hand started sliding my skirt up until his fingers were moving lightly over the crotch of my knickers. He groaned when he touched me there and told me I was so wet. Too wet, I asked him. He gave me this little chuckle but then he sat up on the couch and pulled me up on his lap.

"Maybe we shouldn't do this, Emma," he said.

"Did I do something wrong?"

"Love, you ain't done a thing wrong. But, Emma, you're still so young ... and I'm not too sure this is right." His finger on my chin forced me to look up at him. He looked so serious. "There's more than just age between us, love. There's a whole world of experience."

"Then show me, Egan. Teach me."

"You wanting me, girl, or you just wanting to teach Mack a lesson?"

"I want you. You know I do. All these weeks, Egan Trask, I've been dreaming things about you and tonight I want to do more than dream."

He sucked in this deep breath and I swear I could see him battling himself. I decided that if I wanted this, then I had to show him. So I unbuttoned his shirt and while he leaned back into the couch, I stroked his chest. I remembered how it had felt to have his open, wet mouth on my breasts, so I kissed in over his nipples and then did what felt right ... just sucking lightly at first but as his hand petted in over my head and as his body seemed to shift, I sucked harder.

This time with him seemed to change things in my favor. When I sat up from licking and kissing his skin, I leaned in to kiss him. We did it rough and with such heat that I could not even try to get myself to keep from grinding my wetness against his hardness. And he picked me up in his arms, stood up and walked down the short hallway to his bedroom.

Kissed me the whole way, he did. His loving was much too strong. But it also sheltered me.

He lowered us to the bed and I just held on to him. I didn't really want to stop kissing him. I didn't want to stop feeling the way I felt in just that moment of realizing that the way he kissed made me different. There was just more than that he wasn't hesitating. It was that as he laid there next to me and his hands touched along my sides and as I felt his hardness pressing in and off my thigh, that it seemed to me what was normally kissing that got sloppier and slurpier, was turning gentler and more purposeful.

What is it men want? 

Why was he not just sticking himself in me and beginning?

What was that? I pulled from his mouth and we just stared at each other ... our eyes open ... his dark, mine wide.

"What are you doing?" I asked him.

"You don't like that?" he asked me softly, his hand slowing in its stroking under my knickers.

"It's not that. It's just ... I wasn't sure ... should I be doing something?"

"Did it feel good?"

Nodding enthusiastically at him as he rubbed and then grinning at him when he grinned at me.

"That's all right then, isn't it?" 

It was more than all right. I let him slide my knickers off when he whispered to me that he'd like me naked. I lay there on his bed and when I had no clothes left to cover me, he sat up and looked at my body. One big hand hefted my breasts ... slowly caressing each one until the nipples peaked and almost ached. Then that hand traveled down over my belly and I felt myself tremble. He leaned over, kissed me soft and said he'd show me his way ... see what I liked from him.

Things were not what I'd thought they'd be. I'd thought he'd be rough and brusque and just take what he wanted from me. I thought he'd be Mack only stronger. I thought I'd learn something and I was but it wasn't what I thought I'd learn.

"Anyone ever kissed you down here before?" he asked me suddenly as his fingers parted me and I gasped at the way everything down there felt so alive.

"Kissed me? There? But that's where ..."

"Let me show you. I'll stop if you don't like it." He told me to open for him and I did it, feeling more curious and excited than anything. I just felt like he knew what he was doing.

And the next thing I knew, he had moved on the bed and his mouth was on my opening. This light, sucking kiss ...his eyes watching me and I felt my eyebrows rise and I said it felt good. Then his tongue felt like it was going up in me and I closed my eyes and wondered ... did all men do this? What did it taste like? I remembered touching myself there, I remembered Mack's fumbling hands spreading me, I remembered him going inside ... this felt somehow different ... like it was so unexpected.

I felt something shift inside me ... I'd lost focus as I wondered about what he was doing and how it was feeling ... and without warning, I felt warmth flood me and wetness seemed to shoot out of me and he was sucking hard down there and I felt something of pure delight race through me.

These startled gasps and embarrassing grunts were coming out of me but I bit my tongue to stop it. And then he was kissing me, telling me to taste what he had tasted ... it tasted forbidden.

I tried to hide in his neck but when he whispered to me and asked if I'd like him to show me more things, I nodded hard.

"Would you like to taste me?" he asked.

"I want to do what you like. Don't make me make choices ... just show me how it should be."

"Emma, I'll take care of you, I promise. But if you don't like something, it's good to tell me. K? You have to join in."

He sat up and slid the rest of his clothes off. I watched him ... he looked different. Where Mack was wiry, Egan had a solidity that fascinated me. Arms that maybe doubled Mack's. Bunching muscles along his back when I touched him there as he came and took me inside those arms.

Kissing on me again and then shifting in the bed so his head was going the wrong way. He told me to hold him and I did. He said, "Lots of women like this. You take your time, ease up to it. But a man ... let me show you."

He taught me about his penis. How to touch it, how to taste it. That sounds like he was giving me a school lesson, but he wasn't. He just let me explore and told me when something felt real good to him. Then he told me to lick it and that I could take it inside my mouth.

I am not sure now why, but it seemed ... natural. Like once he said it, I realized it was right. And he helped me understand what to do and he made me feel good to be eager to learn his body. He said to trust my instincts. I had him in my mouth and I was experimenting with my tongue like he said I should and I couldn't help sucking on him ... I heard him give this moan and I swear that something inside me just seemed to unleash.

It was the moan.

A man's moan, when he's unable to stop himself.

His fingers played in my folds and my legs spread of their own volition. I was too involved in sucking him and feeling his heavy balls and smelling this scent of man that seemed to turn me into liquid. But then his mouth was kissing me there again, between my legs and it sounded wet and it felt incredibly fulfilling.

He gave this strangled roar all of a sudden and his fingers were pushing my mouth off him but I was too far into the feeling I'd just had from his mouth.

We both lay their panting and he said, "Ems, love, no biting on my cock, K?"

He shifted again and when his face was before mine again, his eyes were stern.

"Didn't mean to do that. Just ... Well ... What you were doing felt good," I croaked out. "I mean really good."

"Ah, Ems, just you wait. Let me come inside you, baby. Let me show you how good it should be."

Strong voice. Not giving me a choice even though he seemed to think he was. Telling me to move as it felt good. Kneeling between my legs, telling me to touch him again, asking me if I knew how wet I was, letting me know it was such a good thing to be that wet.

He stroked through my folds with his cock's top. It made me mad to feel him inside me. I moved around, angled my hips to see if he'd just fall inside or something. But he was muttering to me that we'd make it right. Setting his tip inside me, spreading me. Going so slow ... it made me concentrate ... feeling how this was ... and knowing almost instantly that this was making love to a level that made me think I was only then really learning this mystery.

Whispering against my neck as he inched in ... telling me things ... sweet things ... loving words.

My world seemed to rock around me. All I could do was feel him. Between my legs. A big man. His chest against mine. His elbows on either side of my head But it was between my legs that had my real attention. This huge feeling ... the immensity of the reality of him inside me. Like it hurt good. Stretching me so wide ... this blunt force spreading me open ... going inside ... feeling forbidden and perfect.

I think I held my breath the whole time he was edging into me. Each time he'd push in and I'd let out this startled puff of air and the intrusion ... he's stop until I adjusted under him. And then I felt my body shift and take him inside me.

Never in my entire life would I feel something that felt so good.

In me all the way and just pausing until I wasn't panting quite so fast. Shifting my knees up and telling me to wrap my legs around his waist. Then moving ... I remembered this part but his rhythm was slower at first. And then he was kissing me ... his mouth consuming mine ... my entire body divided between my mouth and my clit ... totally in his thrall ...

His mouth getting rougher when mine got hungry. My body squirming under his, instinctively seeking friction and release. And then my body felt soft and open as his rhythm sped up. My heart raced. My hands couldn't stay still. My hips wanted to thrust against him and then they did and when they did, I went flying away in this shocking sensation that took my breath and my mind jolting out of my body.

My fingers were clutching in on his back and all I could do was hold on ... riding it out ... wanting to sing and shout and cry out as it ebbed and I could think again but my thoughts were insane.

And then I did cry out ... his name ... a note of fear there as I felt the release come back as a wave and I wasn't sure I'd survive it because it was so foreign to me ... but in a flash, it came to me ... this was coming. This was a real orgasm.

All those other times that I'd felt remnants of edgy urges and releases that were a semblance of this ... I'd thought that was it. I'd always wondered why women thought an orgasm was a big deal ... I'd always wondered why they cared ... it had seemed okay ... but not like this.

This was ... this was indescribable.

He started pumping in harder, telling me he had to come. And then I felt him explode inside me as his mouth buried in my shoulder bit in and he let out this noise of release that was garbled and muted ... but it was pure man.

Even after he came, he moved ... ever so slightly, his hips rocking as if he was milking every last ounce of this moment.

When he withdrew from me, his semen oozed out and he cuddled me to his body, pulling me with him to lie upon the pillows. He pulled the blanket up over us and whispered to me, asking me if I was okay.

I just nodded against his chest and his arms held me tight to him. I was on the verge of sleep, my body feeling spent, sore and sated.

"Let me care for you, Emma," he said, his voice as hushed as the silence around us sometime later. I hadn't been asleep; I'd been laying there listening to his heart beat and feeling his fingers playing with mine where they were splayed along his chest. He edged me onto my back. He propped his head up on his elbow, looking down at me with such a serious face as his big hand caressed gently over my folds. "How you feel here?"

I stretched and felt the achy soreness between my legs. "Different."

He looked different to me, as well. Something about the way he regarded me. As if he had some new need to watch over me. It fit his face.

What I would have given to stay that night with Egan would be more than I'd ever come to possess in my life. But he cleaned us both up after guiding me into the bathroom. Then he dressed me with such care and such brevity. Like he was familiar with me and my body now so he'd earned that right. We barely talked on the drive to my house. His hand was draped between my thighs the whole ride out there. It made me itch so much. We parked just down from the dirt road that wound right to my house. I wanted more of Egan that night but he wanted sentimental loving with me just then.

"Emma love," he whispered and his mouth kissed along my neck as we nuzzled together before I got out of his truck to go inside my house. "You got a softness about you that I like."

"Do you, Egan? You like me?"

"More than I should. You are so beautiful, Emma," he said to me. "Those sad eyes of yours, they make a man want nothing more than to put some new light there."

6

Days can run together when you let them. Tough then when you're looking back from the distance of years to see a time that you'd like to remember in detail only to find that it's more the sense of that time that you can focus on.

That night with Egan started a chain of events that might have been inevitable. I wonder if when I am an old, gray-hued woman that I will be able to remember the man named Egan.

Will I remember the details of these days?

Those first heady feelings of living only for sex and the touch of a man who knows how to touch a woman's body?

Those first moments of abject craving and absolute delight in being a woman?

The ways he brought me into a brand new understanding of what it really was that I wanted in life?

How it truly can be that your moments in each day are divided between making love and wanting to make love?

I hope I will always remember. I believe I will never grow old if I can remember how it feels to have Egan touch me and love me.

We spent that winter making love. Even when I was away from him, I felt him inside me. Everyone knew. Who could miss the way I'd be at his house all the time? Who could not have seen the way his hand touched me in this possessive gesture as if he was staking his claim?

He asked me to marry him late one night. He'd picked me up to take me to the movie they were showing in the community center. We'd left after the second reel. We'd not made it past his front door.

It had been four days since I'd seen him. School and parents who wouldn't acknowledge my need to be with him.

He'd pulled me from his truck; I'd been clinging to him and he just carried me straight inside. He slammed the door shut and then slammed my body up against the door. I was bundled for the cold but he ordered me to get everything below the waist off. He leaned in on me while my fingers struggled ... he got his pants down around his ankles and when I wasn't fast enough, he ripped things off me.

He'd hoisted me up off the floor, grunting into me that he was fucking tired of waiting ... that he wasn't a patient man. I knew better ... but think on that ... he was a patient man driven past the level of his patience. It was the first time we'd ever done it so rough. I screamed when I came and he collapsed after he came. We ended up in this heap on the floor. I cried and he held me tight to his chest.

"Need you with me, Emma. Always," he panted out finally.

"Don't let go," I whispered to him.

Sometime late in that night, he was sitting at his kitchen table while I scrambled him up some eggs. When I handed him his plate, he kissed my hand. I watched him eat and he grumbled at me to fix myself something. I couldn't. Wasn't hungry. Just wanted to watch him.

When he finished, I went to clean up. He pulled me to him. He asked me plain and simple. Marry me and have my babies, was all he said.

Days go by.

My belly's getting bigger each one that passes.

He is up in the high country and I wait for his return.

I remember nothing more than how it felt the day I told my Dad that I was having a child. It was the first time in too many years that my parents called me Emma.  My youngest brother will be nigh on a year soon. In him, I see a spirit of desperation that my parents must feel whenever they think of letting one of their children out there in that world that can change them in ways you never see coming.

Just this morning, I have known a change in me that will astound Egan.

I felt our baby kick. This solid, full feeling of knowing a life is about to come out of the love we feel for each other.

Some days, I fear for this child. A child who will be my responsibility. Will I be ready for it?

Mum tells me it's normal to wonder. But she says I will be fine. She says that to me like I might be the least bit silly to have such thoughts. But she also says it like she has memories of having those thoughts herself.

It has made me think on Harry. He was her first child. She must have spent days like I am spending now. Wondering what this child would be ... boy or girl. Imagining what the child would look like, what he or she would be like. Every day is like a mystery to be uncovered.

I wish Egan were here with me. I picture him up in verdant pastures of high, flowing grass and meadows ringed by white-trunked trees that grow sparse and spindly the higher up the mountain he goes.

He has told me so many stories of his life in the high country.

For a man who chooses what he says with such care, Egan can paint a world for me in more than words. When he speaks of these places, I watch his eyes and feel that in their expressions and lights, I can see his memories playing before his mind's eyes.

He feels a freedom up there. It's the wind that chases and the simplicity that calms. It's the rough cabin he shares with nothing more than his dog and his bare necessities of life. It's the way he can roam through grass and trees and streams ... and in that wilderness, he's got just enough domesticity to remind him that waiting for him down below is a life that will lead him back to me.

Egan told me before he left that he would miss me worse than he'd ever realized. He was up in his saddle and he'd circled back around after saying goodbye. His eyes glistened and he looked so tough with this deep frown on his face.

When I am gone, he said, we will be together each night.

"Just look up at the stars, Emma. We'll be dreaming of each other under the same skies."

"I'll dream of only you."

I had believed that. But the truth was that when I found out about two weeks later that I was pregnant, I dreamed sometimes of the baby. I think it will be a girl. But I don't really know. The women in town, they debate this. They see different signs and different sexes. I don't really care. It isn't sex that's important to me. I want the child to have Egan's eyes.

What's past seems to have led to this day.

I care not for the way marrying Egan seemed to deflate my mother until she realized what this really meant was that I'd always be in that town. To my dad, my marriage brought him kinship with a man he thought highly of. Egan was never a replacement for Harry; but he also wasn't robbing me from my family's hearth.

The first of the stockmen returned home three days ago. Every dawn, I'm down on my knees with a prayer that Egan will come in the next group bringing cattle back. Every night, I drag through loneliness with the realization that my arms are still empty.

This day when I woke, I bathed as if I knew he'd be returning. Perhaps I did. Perhaps it's why the child has moved so strongly that I felt it sure and comforting.

So when I hear the noises come nearer, I am waiting expectantly for the scrape of boot upon the porch. The door opens and he is outlined in the doorway. I'd know his form anywhere. He was not expecting my shape to be different. It takes him long minutes of flicking his eyes up and down me.

We cannot stay that way for long. I move to him when he moves to me. 

In that night, hours after he has dragged me from our bed to help him settle his horses and check on the million other chores his drovers are doing to settle his stock in place in the pens, he speaks to his child for the first time.

His big hands rub along my heavy belly and he feels the baby kick out. I thought he'd laugh as I had the first time it happened. But instead, he eyes grow misty. His heavy voice whispers to our child and he promises he will always care for her.

Mum says I will realize in the fullness of time that all a mother can do is her best. What's to become of a child ends up being as much the child's choice as it was the mother's influence.

Now that I will have a child of my own, I wonder at this.

It has been a long time since I wondered if Harry's last thoughts were of her. Naomi. The woman he was insane for. The things he used to tell me. Late at night and our parents both asleep. Me and Harry sitting in the dark waiting until he was sure they were good and out before he could sneak off to Naomi Proctor's bed. I'd listen to his voice and the way it sounded. That deep want in there. The way he'd had to have her. The way nothing in the world ever seemed more mysterious to me than the want of a man for a woman. Mysteries you only got the clue of when you were the woman that a man wanted.

In this night, as Egan strokes my full belly, I get to wondering about the want that he feels for me. What would he go through to get to me? The idea of the immense strength of his love makes me reach for him and I am stroking his hair even as he lays his head against my belly and touches me there.

Would he always know that I would be this trembling bit of woman waiting on him no matter where he roamed? I sit there picturing what he must have looked like, coming to me across those hills. His eyes searching for me even though he'd be miles away. This quiet intensity set heavy on his features. His chin down. His eyes cruel in their determination. His hands brisk with his horses. His movements spare and not wasting a single motion not absolutely needed.

His horses must have sensed his annoyance that the miles were not melting away faster. There was an impatience in Egan that was rare -- so when it was out and about, you paid your mind to it.

I would always feel his impatience as he was nearing me.

With a kick that makes me gasp, the baby gets me to mind where I am. I look into Egan's eyes and hope he sees the light in mine shines with happiness he's given me.

I used to dream of unicorns and faeries with girlfriends who weathered childish things with me. I was a girl when Harry died. A girl named Marter.

I dream of sharing the simple pleasures of believing in unicorns and faeries with a child I am carrying. I am a woman now that Egan has claimed me. A woman he calls Emma.