Page 46 of Bucked Hard

“Do you ever talk to Mama?”

Jessie stays quiet. Her hands pause with fingertips ready to snap the base off the corn cob. Instead she holds it there, her fingers shaking like the corn silk in the breeze.

“No. We don’t talk.” She finally answers with a hint of disdain in her voice.

It’s odd, I thought I would miss her, wonder where she is or how she’s doing. Feel like I wasmissingsomething by not having my mother in my life. But, I don’t.

“Do you want to talk to her?” Jessie’s face is tight.

“No, I guess not. I just wondered.”

“Some doors are best left closed, I reckon. But, if you ever want to talk to her, you let me know.”

Jessie reaches over and stops my fingers as I pinch the silky strands from the corn. I look up from the corn and Jessie’s eyes are waiting for me.

“You’re a survivor, Rachel. Tougher than anyone I’ve ever known. You can do anything with your life, you hear me? Don’t you let me, or your past —or anyone— ever tell you otherwise. Understand? When you feel that something is right, you follow that feeling. If it’s art, writing or school, or whatever, you gotta trust yourself in life. You done been through enough for three lifetimes already, and you still here, and ain’t you just a wonder to me. Beautiful, smart, talented. God had his hand in your life already, Rachel. I know it may not feel like it sometimes, but how you done come out of that life with your Mama and become such a godly soul, Lord only knows.”

She lowers her head and goes back to shucking. I see two drops fall onto the soft yellow cobs resting on the worn flowered apron covering her lap.

“Whew! That’s quite enough of that talk.” Jessie shakes her head and smiles at me. “Get this corn on, we got lunch to finish.”

There’s a flutter in my belly, thinking of Chad and taking the lunch out to them in the field. The sight, sound and thought of him never seems to fail to send a wave of heat over my face. I imagine his walk, the way he dips just a little bit to the left with each step, his crooked smile, hand on his hat, dust on his boots, walking out of the field. I swallow hard and breathe through my mouth trying to stop my wandering imagination before it gets too out of hand.

Jessie whistles as she heads inside to get the rest of lunch on the stove. She takes the corn with her and asks me to go on down to the barn and tend to the chickens. I know there are a couple other chores that need completing today, too. I hear the loud whirl of the hay baler out in the back forty acres. Thoughts of last night of Chad’s hands on me, his mouth, the way he filled me with himself playing over and over in my head like a really great movie you just can’t forget.

I head on down to the coop, and the clucking and scratching of the chickens take over as I shuffle inside their screened home. Reaching into the hen baskets and setting the eggs gently into the basket on my arm, I feel like I’m walking on pillows. Everything seems surreal, like an airbrushed photo.

I think about what Jessie had said, about following what feels good. Am I that kind of girl that might like the slap of a hand on my behind? Being talked to the way he does?

Never in a million years would I have thought my first time could be so dirty and so right at the same time. And, with a man like Chad. He’s kind, sweet but my skin chills thinking of that other side of him, the stern alpha that whispers those filthy words to me, those hands that command me and draw out sounds I didn’t know I could make.

I woke during the night last night, drenched in sweat. Dreaming of Chad pushing me down on the bales of hay in the barn, tearing my clothes off the way he did last night.

Spreading my legs as far as they would go and diving his head down, his tongue lapping between my legs, his hand slapping and stinging my behind as he sent my body into spasms. Moving over me, his giant cock released from the front of his jeans, as he lifted me like a doll and plunged his cock deep inside. His face looking into mine, he laughed and pulled me hard toward him, pressing his cock as deep as my body would take. The roar when he came, and my body getting filled with white, sticky liquid, spilling out of me and covering the bales of hay below us, gallons and gallons of cum. As he smiled and jerked, holding me tight, forcing me to take every drop of his release.

My body shuddered and I climaxed in my sleep. When I woke up, I struggled to figure out what was real and what was dream.

I shake my head, chastise myself for my daydreaming. I have to get myself back to the real world. Chores need to be done and I need to help Jessie finish up lunch so I can drive it out to the field. The guys are baling hay today and it’s hot, hard work especially with our old machines. Always something falling off, or coming loose. Enrique does his level best to keep things working with a few Band-Aids and duct tape every year.

Jessie’s in the kitchen window of the elderly farmhouse. It seems to me the structure has spread as it’s aged, got wider, but more bent over somehow. The paint peels like shedding skin, and the porch seems heavy and stooped.

But Jessie always seems comfortable with her life. She always talks about how happy she and my Uncle Dan were. I wish I had known them more then. It really was a good life for them.

I’m just not sure whatI want.Do I want a farm life? Or, should I go to college, get myself a degree in art or design and try my hand at life in a city? Now, all I seem to be thinking about is Chad, and that has to stop.

But we haven’t talked about where he comes from or why he’s doing field work. He seems smart, able to do something else. Enrique does it because he loves Jessie.

I want to know more about him. Jessie must know something – she’s paying him. Walking back to the house with the eggs, I try to figure out how to bring it up without her figuring out there’s something going on with me and Chad.

“I’ll put the eggs in the ice box.” I swing the screen door open and smell the fried okra and cornbread. My stomach does a different kind of flip this time when I smell her wonderful cooking.

Jessie nods and keeps working at the stove. I shuffle around in the kitchen, getting the napkins ready in the box we take out to the field for lunch.

“Jessie…”

“Yessum.” She doesn’t turn. Her silver-white hair sits pinned up on the top of her head, neatly braided.

“How do you find the guys that come and work?”

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