The state of being continuous, uninterrupted, unending, much repeated

If you were a pioneer in some remote territory, wilderness, part of space, distant moon, new galaxy, if you were the sort of man who could start from scratch with only basic tools for building a life from raw materials, if you wanted to forge a new existence somewhere far away from the known and the complacent and the mundane details of this fast busy crowded world, I would go gladly with you into regions unknown, would cross rivers, mountain ranges, continents, oceans, into the dark of space without complaint, with an adventuring spirit like my great grandmother had, the tinsmith's wife, who followed her husband out of devotion and friendship and love, and sexual need too, because she could never bear to be too far from him and would give up friends and family to feel his hands on her body at night out in the open where she could cry out and beg and scream his name when my great granddaddy thrust into her from behind and rode her hard, finding her spot with his cock, that place that pushed her over the edge and she plummeted, exploding as she fell, shattering into a thousand million pieces of bright Technicolor, an orgasm that left her sobbing with the pure rightness of climaxing for her man exactly at the moment when he said, "Let it go, darlin', come for me," and then lifting her hips higher to give him more still and to take everything he could offer and knowing, when he howled into the star-ridden sky, that she had the sheer power of woman, the ability to make her man lose himself there in the emptiness of a country road where no one would hear them but God and all His angels and a billion insects and predators who lurked in the dark, owls and foxes and lost dogs and feral cats all listening to this lovemaking, this raucous mating that would, inevitably, produce another baby who would, nine months later, be bundled into the tinsmith's wagon with the rest of their offspring and away they would go down the road to another town, another village, another seashore, another far-flung place.

That is the spirit of readiness, camaraderie, and enthusiasm that I believe a pioneering woman would require, whereas I suspect it would behoove a pioneering man to be a sharp-eyed sort, able to see the small details of the land and every situation so that, at the very least, he could make an educated guess at what we are facing and could stand between the elements and his family, hawk-eyed and stubborn, the way you get when we are dead broke -- again -- and there is only you and me between the world out there and the children we hustle behind our backs where it's safe, because in the midst of this pushing shoving jostling multitude, it is nearly impossible to find a place to call one's own, or at least it is damned difficult if you are just working people with more dreams and hopes than hard cash, and more debt piling up every day because the insurance that we pay a fortune for only covers 80% or sometimes only 50% and our baby has asthma and you were in the hospital two years ago February, when I was so scared of the blood clot they thought was in your liver and -- remember? -- I couldn't stand the separation anymore, so I closed the door of your hospital room and sucked your perfect cock down my throat, crazy with hunger and longing because you were in that sterile place for four days and because we were starving for each other, which is why you fisted your hands in my hair, and pulled my mouth down onto you again and again while the hospital bed lurched and squeaked, and outside the door we could hear the bustle of nurses and patients, people being paged, a baby crying, endless bells and clanging and shuffling, but inside that hospital room there was just you and me breaking the bed with our ferocious need and a blow job so satisfying that angels reclined on a cumulus cloud formation outside the window to watch, and when it was all said and done, I swear one commented to another, "Thy lips drip as the honeycomb; honey and milk are under thy tongue," which was the poetic truth.

At least the hospital didn't charge us to repair the bed.

This is what I think of when I am standing in line writing checks to get the medicines we can't afford but can't afford not to have either. I am worrying how in the world we will ever manage to pay for the 20% or the 50% that the insurance doesn't cover to the hospital and the doctors and the pharmacy, when all I want is to go away to somewhere quiet with just you and me and a sunset so beautiful it will make me remember that there is still a god out there somewhere who now and again drops a bit of kindness into the lives of the common people, which would be a good thing to remember because sometimes I forget amidst the war and the yammering politicians and the never-ending scraping to get by.

But there are times too, when I remember without effort, like when you restored a cast iron, claw-foot bathtub salvaged from someone's field where they were using it for a cattle water tank but they wanted the twenty-five dollars more than the tub with its peeling paint and chipped porcelain and its missing claw feet so, with time and patience and your fix-it magic, you transformed the water tank back into a Victorian bathtub and set it up on a cedar stand in the bathroom of our doublewide, which was a wondrous, even a miraculous thing, particularly because it's big enough for both of us together and exactly the right height for you to bend me over and fuck me hard from behind with your fingers between my legs so that the lights are spinning and when you say, "Let it go, darlin', come for me," I am right there with you, panting and gasping because otherwise I will scream and wake the children and probably the neighbors too, considering that the dog and the cats have already run for cover, but afterwards when we are a heap of tangled arms and legs sprawled on the bathroom floor and laughter is beginning to percolate between us, I'll remember that sometimes the angels do look in our window and smile.

It occurs to me now, thinking about good fortune and small wonders, that blessings seem to come down through generations; perhaps they run in families; perhaps they move in perpetual spirals through time and space. Why else would I find myself with a man just like my great granddaddy, who can fix anything and makes me come so hard my legs give out beneath me and I find myself crying into the star-ridden night and kissing your beard in gratitude?

I should warn you though, when we go pioneering to remote and unclaimed lands, I will be like one of those women in the wagon trains on the Oregon Trail, who insisted that while they understood they must travel light, they simply couldn't leave behind the featherbed or the maple sideboard or any number of other unwieldy and impractical items from home because there was no going back, and the pioneering life would be hard enough even with those one or two small comforts, and I'm afraid, my love, that some things never change, so the one thing I would ask is if we could please bring my bathtub even though it weighs almost as much as a Volkswagen. Even if we use it to water the livestock, it will do my heart good just to look at it and remember that the angels have smiled on us in hard times.

©2005 by Elisabeth Hunter

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Elisabeth Hunter's work has been widely published, including a story in the newly released anthology, Wicked: Sexy Tales of Legendary Lovers, edited by Mitzi Szereto. She is a recipient of an Individual Artist’s Award sponsored by the Oregon Arts Commission and the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as the 2002 Silver Rose Award for Excellence in the Art of the Short Story, sponsored by American Renaissance for the 21st Century. She received her MFA in Creative Writing from Vermont College.

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