Sapphic Voices Romance

End Of The Drought

Part One

It was one of those hot sticky late summer days. The sun beat down on me like a mad mama on her step-child. I was drained, physically, not mentally because I refused to let my mind do too much wandering. That started me dwelling on how lonesome I was since Anna got tired of the farm and me and took off to parts unknown. That was in ‘91.

Anyway, I was kicked back in a rocker on the front porch with my feet up on the railing, sucking down an ice cold beer. My old dog, Hemingway was stretched out beside me glad to be out of the sun too.

I sat there a while watching the bees dive bombing Anna's scorched flower garden looking for some tidbit of nectar that might be left. I tried keeping up her flower gardens because it made the old place look a little more homey but my heart wasn't in it so I just let them dry up and die.

Everything on the farm was scorched. There hadn't been any measurable rain in weeks, just that blasted sun raining down pulling the life out of everything it touched. It sure did need to rain soon. It was getting that time of year that fires break out for no apparent reason except that it was hotter than Hell. That destroyed too much of what the good Lord had seen fit to give us in the form of Mother Nature and all her little critters. Plus, my pond was about dried up.

The only good thing about the drought was that it gave me the time to do all the repairs on the barn and fences that I had put off in the spring. I wished I had done them then. It sure was a lot cooler outside back then. In the middle of a pasture there's no place to hide from the heat and inside the barn was even worse.

Anyway, like I started telling you, me and old Hemingway were resting our tired old bones. I was getting ready to go inside and take a shower when I looked up and this cloud of dust was coming up the road towards the house. I couldn't figure who it could be. I knew it wasn't the mailman's car. I think he is probably the only one who knows for sure where I live. If anything ever happens to him, I figure I won't get any more mail.

The road ended at my place so that meant whoever it was coming here was lost as Hell. Nobody ever came to see me so it had to be somebody lost.

The seclusion was the reason I bought this place when Anna and I first got together. I didn't need nobody messing with me and Anna. I thought that would be the perfect life for us. I guess Anna didn't see it my way but she did stay for 9 years. Then one day out of the clear blue I came in and caught her packing up stuff around the house into boxes. I asked her what she was doing. She said she was getting her stuff together because she was leaving. You could have bowled me over with a feather. I didn't know anything was wrong. She told me she hated being on the farm, she hated animals, she hated the seclusion and lastly but not least, she hated me. I figured it was one of those hormonal things so I didn't push it. I figured she'd get over it in a few days. Within a week she was gone. I haven't even had as much as a postcard from her in all these years. I guess she's okay or surely somebody in her family would have let me know

Again I am rambling about the past and I didn't meant to. Where was I? Oh yeah, I remember. That dust cloud was coming up the road. I figured whoever it was must be in an awful hurry ‘cause that dust rose up higher than my biggest elm tree. When it got closer I could tell it was one of those 2 seater foreign jobs. It had to be a woman driving or a guy with awfully long hair ‘cause it was all up in the air blowing in the wind like a yarn mop in a tornado. I don't even know how she could see to drive. She came roaring right up to the front of the house where the driveway circles around in front then slid to a stop. Dust covered me and Hemingway. He got up and shook himself off and it looked like somebody shaking out an old rug. I waited until the dust settled some then got up and brushed myself off. I made a big production of it like I was "Sunday morning, going to Church clean. Then I leaned on the rail and just looked at this woman. She was brushing her hair and spit washing her face with a paper napkin. Finally she turned and looked at me as though she hadn't known I was standing there.

"Is the posse after you?"

"I beg your pardon?" she asked looking at me totally confused.

"I thought you were dodging bullets the way you came flying down the road."

"I was just trying to stay ahead of all that dust flying up."

"From the looks of it, it all caught up with you when you stopped."

She looked down at herself realizing that she was completely covered with dust.

"Would you look at this! I just wanted to take a nice quiet ride in the country and I look like I fell in a vacuum cleaner bag!" she said as she got out of the car to try to brush herself off.

"I'm afraid the only thing that's gonna help you at this point is a water hose and a bar of soap."

"Oh my! I'm afraid you are right. This stuff won't just brush off."

"Well, I don't much figure you want a bath right this minute but I bet you could stand something cold to drink to wash the dirt out of your throat."

"That would be wonderful!"

"I've got some Iced tea and some soft drinks. I was just going in to get me another beer anyway."

"A cold beer sounds wonderful."

"Funny, but you don't strike me as the beer drinking kind. I would figure you for a wine drinker."

"Wine is my drink of choice as a rule but a cold beer sounds like just what the doctor ordered for now."

"Yes ma'am. Two beers coming up."

When I got back to the porch she had taken over my rocker and was talking to Hemingway like he was a long lost friend. Well, I just let her keep my chair and got me another one. I pulled it up along side of her, handed her the beer then sat down to enjoy mine. We sat there for a while not saying a word, just sipping our beers and relaxing. Finally she asked me what my dogs name was.

"That's ol' Hemingway."

"That's a strange name for a dog."

"Somebody I use to know named him after her favorite author."

"By the way, what's your name? I like to know who my drinking partners are."

"Anna, Anna Penson.'

"Oh no! Deja vu."

"What do you mean "deja vu"?"

"The last woman that lived here was named Anna."

"Is that who you bought this place from?"

"No, she was my uh.......roommate."

"Roommate?"

"Yeah, roommate!"

"In what capacity do you mean roommate?"

"What do you mean?"

"Define roommate."

"Okay, she was my lover." I told her. I watched to see her reaction but she didn't even twitch an eyelash. I thought to myself that this was a strange woman, but interesting.

"I sort of figured that." she told me while still trying to brush some of the dust off.

"How's that?"

"Let's just say you look the part."

"How do you figure that?"

"Look, I'm not dumb. I have been around your kind all my life. I've got an aunt that has lived with the same woman since before I was born. Anyway you remind me of her, a younger version of course."

"Is this an aunt you liked?"

"Oh yes! Aunt Jo is my favorite person in the whole wide world. In fact I use to spend every summer with her and Billie Jean. They had a small farm outside of Kansas City with horses for me to ride and a whole bunch of other farm animals. They even built me a dock in their pond and Aunt Jo bought a little flat bottom boat so I could sail the pond."

We sat there in silence for a while. I could tell she was going back in her mind to those days.

Finally she came back to the present and said, "Gosh, I never realized how much I miss those days but they seem so long ago."

"Don't you ever go back anymore?"

"No, they had to sell the farm to pay for a nursing home for both of them. Billie Jean has Alzheimer's and Aunt Jo has lung cancer from all those years of smoking unfiltered cigarettes, pipes and cigars."

"I'm sorry to hear that."

We sat there quietly for awhile maybe daydreaming, voiding our minds of all thought or remembering back on times long gone. I'm not sure where my mind went for a while.

She snatched me back to reality asking, "Do you have any horses?"

"Yeah, but, they are kinda old and worn out like me."

"You don't look so old and worn out to me. How old are you anyway?"

"My next birthday I will be 50 years old, a half of a century, 5 decades old."

"That's not old! Aunt Jo didn't start losing it until she was 82. She is 90 now but there isn't much hope of seeing her reach 91. She is in really bad shape. She gets pissed when somebody says something about the chemo treatments. She lets them know real quick that doctors make you go through that just so they can afford another set of golf clubs, and it damn sure is a waste of time and money."

"Whose side of the family is she kin to you on?"

"She is my dad's sister."

"I guess he is taking this pretty hard too."

"He has been dead since I was in my late teens. Lung cancer too."

"I'm sorry."

"Nothing to be sorry about. He and I weren't close at all."

"Neither were me and my dad. We were too much alike and he hated seeing his flaws projected through me."

"My dad only wanted boys, and I knew it because he told me often enough that he had only wanted sons. He told me he couldn't understand me or what made me tick. Of course he never tried to understand me "

"Didn't your mom take up for you when he started that crap?"

"She died when I was 4 so he was left to raise me. Him and Aunt Jo. He was so afraid I would turn out just like her if I spent too much time with her and Billie Jean. But it seemed he wanted his freedom more than he was concerned about them corrupting me."

"Well, I see you proved him wrong!"

"On the contrary, he was 100% right. But Aunt Jo and Billie Jean aren't the reason that I am who I am. They just made it easier for me to understand myself and be able to be open about it and unashamed."

By about that time you could have knocked me over by leaning a Q-tip on me. I have to admit I have been really confused by these modern day lesbians. You know the ones I mean, those Lipstick Lesbians. I have heard they are "high maintenance" lesbians. I guess you have to have a lot of money to keep them up. I don't get out in public much and never get out into the Gay public so my education of these things is rather limited. Hey, but I watch Jerry Springer and Ricki Lake so I know a little bit about what is going on out there. Until now I had never met one I would consider a Lipstick Lesbian.

I didn't know what to say to her at this point ‘cause I figured I would just stick my foot in my mouth and make a fool out of myself so I quickly changed the subject.

"It's starting to get dark so I guess you will be wanting to leave before very long." I said as I finished my beer.

"I'm not sure I can get out of here at night." "I can give you pretty good directions but some of the landmarks can't be seen at night."

I thought long and hard before I said anything else. Finally I told her, "I have a spare bedroom if you want to stay here until it gets light enough for you to see to get headed for home."

"I don't want to put you to any trouble." she told me, but I think I saw a twinkle of excitement in her eyes when I mentioned her staying. I don't even think she was aware that she did it.

"I'm sure I can find my way home. How hard can it be?"

"Oh about as hard as it would be to drive my old Chevy truck through the eye of a needle.."

"It can't be that hard!"

"Just about, but what if you get lost? These roads around here can take you in circles all night long. What if you run out of gas? My neighbors don't take too kindly to somebody knocking on their doors at 2 or 3 in the morning."

"I guess you are right. I just hope I'm not putting you out any."

"If you were, I wouldn't have offered in the first place. Anyway, it will be nice to have someone besides Hemingway to talk to for a change."

" I think we better get inside. It is about time for the vampire mosquitoes to start attacking. They always attack in a place that is real embarrassing to scratch."

I got up and held the door open for her and Hemingway to go inside. That damned old dog followed her just like a little puppy right over to the chair she sat down in, then laid his old bones down at her feet.

"Traitor!" I thought to myself. But it was sorta typical of him. He use to do that with my "other" Anna.

I sat down in my favorite chair, an old recliner. When I looked over at her she was studying the framed pictures on the table beside her.

"Are these your children?"

"Good God no! Those are my nieces and nephews. What would an old dyke like me be doing with kids?

"I wish you would stop referring to yourself as "old". You aren't too much older than me.''

"Wanna bet?" I teased.

"Sure what do you want to bet?"

"I don't know! You're raping this cat, I'm just holding the tail." I told her.

"Holding the tail. Holding the tail. That could give a girl ideas. I could bet my body." she told me.

I don't know if my blood went to my feet first on my face. I was so shocked by her collateral that I was totally at a loss for words and that didn't happen to me very often.

"Well, what do you want to bet?"

I still couldn't think of anything, well, anything reasonable. I wanted to faint but that would have made me look like the world's biggest chicken shit, which I really was. But she didn't have to know that. I couldn't answer. My mouth was as dry as Alabama's biggest cotton bole. Finally I managed to squeak out, "If that is what you are betting, what am I supposed to bet?"

"The same thing of course, silly. Our bets have to be equal."

"Wait a minute. Something is wrong with this picture. Whose dumb idea was it to make a bet anyway?"

"Yours."

"Mine? Are you sure about that?"

"Absolutely! You said, ‘Wanna bet?'"

"Well, I was just kidding."

"No you weren't, you were serious."

"But I didn't expect you to bet something like your body. I was thinking more along the lines of a dollar."

"Just what is wrong with my body, may I ask?"

"Nothing that I can see. This is all just a little too weird for me. What the hell are we betting on? I can't even remember now."

"We are betting that I am older than you think I am."

"Do I get a little leeway in here?"

"What do you mean leeway?"

"Hell, even the carnies at the fairs give themselves a few years to play with when guessing your age."

"OK, I will go along with that. How about 5 years." "This is going to be a piece of cake. Wait a minute, if I win or lose I still end up in bed with you or have I misunderstood something along the way?"

"No that's about the sum of it."

"Are you always this fast of a mover with people you just meet?"

"No! It's just when I decide I want something, I go after it. Plus, you are nothing like the people I usually meet."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean you are REAL. You are honest and down to earth. You don't waste words and you are very confident in yourself."

"You found out all of this in the last hour and a half?"

"Yes I did." she told me smiling broadly.

"I think I need to start wearing camaflouge gear if you can see me that well."

With that, she threw her head back an laughed out loud as thought I had just told her some hysterical joke.

I liked the way she laughed. I liked the sapphire blue of her eyes. I liked how good she looked in my house. I didn't mean like a fixture of some kind. Maybe I was just getting soft in my old age but I already liked having her around.

A silence fell between us. Anna toured the room examining everything in it. I just sat and watched her. Occasionally I saw a question mark in her eyes but she seemed to file it back somewhere in her mind to question me about later. In one sense I felt invaded and on the other hand I enjoyed watching her touch and explore everything she saw. Occasionally she pick up something that seemed to particularly interest her and look over to me with such a sweet and gentle smile on her lips. Abruptly I realized that I was having strange sensations brought on by just watching her. Sensations I hadn't felt in years. I thought that when my other Anna left that I had hardened enough that nothing or no one could penetrate my defenses again.

I sat there like a naked child exposed and vulnerable to this stranger who had all but said "Take me, I'm yours". I caught myself mesmerized by the sway of her body as she moved from one thing to another.

The gentle breeze in the room brought a slight scent of Giorgio mixed with the sweet smell of sweat only a woman can produce.

I was sweating also. My hands felt like damp warm clay against each other. I was holding my hands tightly together. I don't know why. Maybe it was my sub conscience mind trying to keep me under control so I wouldn't reach out for her, pulling her to me to hold her body next to mine.

My mind and body were dueling to win control. My body screamed to touch her, feel her warm naked body next to mine, to kiss her from head to toe. My mind was telling me I didn't know anything about her. She could be a child molester, a bank robber a street whore, a drug addict or seller. She could be into bondage and S&M role playing My head was swimming and my body was aching. I couldn't believe I was caught so off guard by a woman in a sports car being chased by a dust storm.

She finally finished her tour and sat back down in the chair.

I turned away from her to try to calm my mind and body. I knew she was gazing at me. I wondered, in horror, if I really was transparent or obvious in some way so that she could see through my cool calm exterior to see the volcano that was building up inside of me.

Finally she broke the silence saying, "Are you ok? You are awfully flushed now."

"Yes, I am fine. What about you?"

Oh God, my voice cracked. Did she hear it? Was it so slight she couldn't catch it? I drilled myself over and over rerunning that statement in my mind.

"I am just fine except that I am filthy. Do you have hot running water here?"

"Yes ma'am and my toilet is even inside." I told her laughing.

"Well, I am impressed!"

"You will be!" I told her.

Little did she know I had done a lot of remodeling to the house and the bathroom was my main accomplishment. I was really proud of how it turned out. I had put a large oval shaped Jacuzzi tub in plus a separate shower. The old bathroom had a claw legged tub with not much enamel left in many places and I won't even discuss the toilet!

"Would your Highness like for me to go draw you a bath of warm water and put some perfumed oil in it?"

"Don't tell me you have perfumed oil. Do many women get stranded or lost out here? Am I just another name for your list or notch on your bedpost?" she asked teasingly.

"No. No other person but you ever got stranded here overnight. And yes I do have perfumed oil. It was some freebie that came with a present I bought for a sister-in-law."

"What kind is it?"

"It is Youth Dew by Este Lauder."

"How interesting. I have never tried any Este Lauder products."

"I use to love the smell of it . I could catch a whiff of it walking down the street and follow that woman for several blocks just to smell it."

"You aren't some kind of pervert that peers in windows late at night or sniffs women's underwear at the Laundromat are you?"

"I haven't gone quite that far yet but the smell of it turns me into an animal."

Suddenly I realized what I had said and wished I could take it back.

"Well, if that is the case, yes I do want perfumed oil in my bathwater."

I had already blown it so all I could say was, "Your wish is my command" then got up and went to the bathroom.

I didn't realize it but she had followed me. I bent over to turn on the water when she brushed up against me. A warm shiver went all the way through me.

"This is beautiful! This is the kind of bathroom you find in one of those house books that show you all kinds of decor and how to do it. Who did the work on it? I might want to hire him to do some remodeling in my house. I am trying to sell it and get a few acres of land to live on."

"Actually, I did every bit of it by myself."

"Where did you learn to do work like this?"

"Actually I have worked with my hands all my life doing all kinds of things. I saw different parts of this in different magazines my other Anna used to subscribe to. When I saw something I really liked, I tore that page out and filed it in a folder in my desk. After a while, I had all the information and ideas I needed."

"I just thought of something. I have nothing to put on after I get out of the tub."

"Don' t worry about that. I have a brand new robe, some new house slippers and a long t-shirt you can sleep in, and I will have your clothes washed and dried by the time you get ready to leave."

"Goodness, I have stayed at some of the finest hotels around the world and I have never gotten service this good at any of them."

"You never stayed at Kate's Place before. At Kate's you always get service with a smile."

By the way, I won't need the t-shirt. I always sleep in the nude. So, that must mean your name is Kate. Right?"

"Yes, Kate, Katherine Wallis."

"Well, I am glad to meet you Kate, Katherine Wallis."

"Most everybody calls me Kate or Kat." "Which would you prefer?"

"It doesn't matter. I answer to lots of names."

"I like Kate. That sounds like a strong name for a strong woman."

"I guess it does fit me pretty good. My Mom was a big fan of Katherine Hepburn so she named me after her. Little did she know I would grow up to be a strong and hermit like individual."

"I think your mom knew something you didn't."

"Seems sorta like that at times. I have had several people compare me to her. Actually that kinda makes me proud to be compared to a woman as much an individual and intelligent as her."

"Don't go breaking your arm patting yourself on the back." she told me as she laughed at my comparison of myself.

I poured some oil in the tub, turned around and she was starting to undress right before my very eyes. I was frozen in place. I couldn't move but I should. I knew that. As she pulled her shirt off over her head, I was treated to a grand look at 2 of the prettiest breasts I had ever seen. They were perfectly round and firm, standing at attention like a 15 year old's might. I hadn't noticed earlier that she wasn't wearing a bra but I knew instantly when she removed her shirt. Her skin was tanned and seemed that it would be very soft to the touch. I wanted to reach out for her even more. I knew I couldn't take too much of that so I tried to excuse myself with the excuse of getting a load out of the washer that I had in it so I could wash her clothes.

"Wait, you need the rest of them." and right before I could say anything she dropped her jeans to the floor.

My knees turned to jelly as I stood there hypnotized by the most perfect and beautiful body I had ever seen.

If you have enjoyed C.Y. Watkins' "End Of The Drought, Part One", then please be certain to e-mail her at  trucknwomyn[at]united.net  and thank her for posting this Story.

Click here to continue on to "End Of The Drought, Part Two"

Click here for a list of all of C.Y. Watkins'  Stories and Poetry at  Sapphic Voices Authoresses.