ANNE
Copyright©2003 by Ed Howdershelt
ISBN 1-932693-05-X
Caution: Some Erotic Content
Introduction:
Anne was my first lover and first love. This story is a small tribute to her. She knows that I changed only her name and the names of other participants. She's already read the drafts and approved them after only a few corrections concerning event sequences. The others haven't seen this story yet.
* * *
Cyndi got home from work at 5:30, as usual, and had her clothes off before she'd crossed the living room, also as usual. Her march step told me that her day hadn't been perfect. I handed her a beer from the baby fridge on the ledge above the hot tub after she settled herself onto her favourite bubbly seat.
"Screw 'em all," she said, and took a long pull on the Ice House.
I waited until she put the beer down to lean over and kiss her and ask, "Captain Quirk made the meeting after all, huh?"
"Of course he did. He was just trying to look busy."
She took another pull on the beer and stretched herself out.
"Should I guess who got the job?"
"Hey, his Mom owns the company. Who else would hire him?"
We sat and soaked for a while without comment. Maybe fifteen minutes passed before Vickie came in from the garage. She set her briefcase on the floor by the couch and waved in our general direction. I waved my beer in response.
Vickie disappeared into her bedroom and reappeared a few minutes later as naked as the rest of us, pausing on her way to the hot tub to grab a can of Coke from the kitchen fridge.
"Hi, all. Any news?" she asked me, climbing into the tub. She kissed me and settled in opposite me in our usual arrangement for maximum leg-room.
"Yeah, Ed, any news?" asked Cyndi, "It's been a couple of weeks."
"Steve's cancer tests were negative and Anne will be able to spend about a week with us after all," I said, "She'll be here next Friday."
"It'll be like meeting the President, as far as I'm concerned," said Vickie, "You've told us so much about her, I feel as if I've met her already."
"Same here," said Cyndi, "You haven't seen her since, what? 1967?"
"Yup. A few days before I went into the Army. Spoke to her on the phone a few times over the years, though."
Vickie asked, "So how's progress on the book?"
"Good," I said, "Just about finished."
"Think she'll go for it?" asked Cyndi.
"I think so. She'll probably want some editing, but I think so."
"What about the sexy stuff?" asked Vickie.
"No, I don't think she'll mind it unless she's changed a great deal. I think she'll be editing it as a publisher would. Content, use of English, all that. She's been teaching for thirty years. She'd be embarrassed if a book she was involved with in any way wasn't just about perfect in that regard."
"I don't give a damn about the grammar," said Cyndi, "I want to read the sexy stuff. In fact," she rose from the tub, "It's been a rough day. I want to read some of it now."
Cyndi leaned over and kissed me as she toweled herself dry, then set a course for the living room table with her beer. I heard her flop open the cover on my manuscript folder.
Vickie stretched gloriously in the extra tubspace and asked for a beer. I opened one and held it out to her, but she chose to slide over next to me and gave me a kiss as she took the beer.
"Cyndi's going to be reading a while," she said, "I don't suppose you have an extra copy for me?"
"Nope. No extra copies, ma'am."
"Well, then," she said as her free hand trailed up my thigh, "I guess we could kill some time in the bedroom, couldn't we?"
"Time with you is never wasted," I said, kissing her.
Cyndi waved off on joining us.
"Later," she said, "I really did have a long day."
She sipped her beer, turned the cover page, and read.
Chapter One
Jim called at seven in the morning to remind me that we were supposed to help Mrs. Anne Barnell move to her new home outside Mesquite, Texas.
Although my enthusiasm for anything before noon on a Saturday was then as it is now, I told Jim to pick me up in an hour, then dragged myself through various preparations and a light breakfast and waited outside on the front porch.
It wasn't long before Jim Terry's old Ford pickup rattled into the driveway. We had become friends after each of us had been solicited by the coach for basketball and football. Jim overheard me telling the coach that I considered heavily organized sports to be a boring waste of time and energy.
Coach Keller hadn't accepted my decision not to participate in a gracious manner.
"Get your ass in gear, sport. This is your only chance to save your grade. Be suited up and out there in five minutes or you get an 'F' for the week."
"I'll take the 'F'. I told you I don't like football."
"What do you mean you don't like football? Everybody likes football. Now get your butt out there."
Coach Keller turned to go as if the conversation was over. He was about half a dozen strides away when he realized he was marching alone.
"What's the matter, sport? Are you scared? Is that it? Too delicate for football?"
I had simply been unmotivated before. Now I was getting pissed off.
"If you can't browbeat 'em, try poking them in the ego, right, Coach? Sorry, that tactic won't work with me."
"How would you like to be running laps for being a smart-ass? You want laps every day for the rest of the semester? While everybody else watches you?"
"There's no polite way to refuse, is there? No football. No running laps around the sacred football field, either. You offered me an 'F' and I'll take it."
"That's it. Get suited up and spend the rest of PE class running or get your butt over to the tryouts. One or the other, sport."
The activity was drawing a small crowd. I held my ground and waited in glaring silence. Coach Keller finally realized that I really wouldn't run or play. He sent me to the school office with orders to wait for him there.
When Jim Terry came in and sat down a few minutes after I did, the biddy behind the counter looked at us as if we smelled bad and might possibly stain the waiting bench.
"Got me, too," said Jim, "Run or play. Screw it. What can they really do to us for not wanting to run or play football?"
"Excommunicate us, maybe," I said with a shrug. "Rant and rave until we give in or go deaf."
People came and went for most of an hour. Most pretended not to notice us, but many gave us disapproving looks. We were on the principal's bench, reserved for wrong-thinkers and troublemakers.
I passed the time reading the book that I'd planned to read during PE class. Jim sat back and seemed to doze lightly.
Mrs. Barnell came in and checked her in-box, then made arrangements to have some test papers mimeographed. She leaned over the counter making notes in a folder and talking to the clerk and her skirt rose a bit as she leaned even farther to put something on the clerk's desk.
"Wow. Great legs, huh?" said Jim. I agreed. We spent some time pretending not to be staring at her as she organized her schedules.
Anne Barnell was a young and pretty teacher, the object of much adolescent lust and many female students' resentment or envy. She was nearly six feet tall with flat shoes and seemed to look a little bit like a combination of Natalie Wood and Ingrid Bergman to me. She had auburn hair that flowed below her shoulders and brown eyes that had appeared in some of my best dreams.
Widowed when a Viet Cong missile hit her Navy husband's plane, Anne Barnell had continued at her teaching post, trying to jam bits of History and pieces of English grammar into her students' heads.
Like most other high school students, I didn't know very much about my teachers' off-duty lives, but I did know that she spent more time at the school after the last bell than the other teachers.
The paperback was suddenly snatched from me by Coach Keller. He broke the binding and tore it in two, then tossed the pieces in my lap.
"You're not here to have a good time, sport. You're here because you're in trouble with me, and that means you don't read or eyeball women."
Mrs. Barnell turned around at that comment. I smiled and shrugged at her as I rose to place both pieces of the book on the counter and told the blue-hair behind it to notify the school library that Coach Keller owed them for a book. I noted Mrs. Barnell observing my actions with a raised eyebrow.
The coach grabbed our arms and walked us into the principal's office, where we wound up suspended for three days. I wondered aloud how missing classes for three days would benefit our educations and how a dislike of team sports could justify suspension from the true purposes of attending school and was offered another three days off.
Things were definitely getting out of hand when Mrs. Barnell asked to speak with the principal. Perhaps ten minutes later, we were told that our parents would be notified and that we were still suspended from school for three days. We had no idea what had been said in there.
Mrs. Barnell spoke with our parents. The school's psychologist suggested that we should be kept from PE classes for the remainder of the semester, probably just to keep a pair of dissenters away from other students, and we were assigned two weeks of after-school detention, which was one of Mrs. Barnell's classes.
Detention meant staying after school an hour a day for two weeks. Mrs. Barnell expected us to study, after hours or not. She was a serious teacher who taught as a friend more than as an authority figure. Now and then she asked me to help grade test papers or sort reports.
The two weeks became six weeks for me. I enjoyed helping her and being around her, so I kept coming to detention. She asked me why once, thinking there might be something wrong at home.
"Nothing's wrong," I told her. "TV is a waste of time and I've read everything in the house." She let the matter drop and didn't ask again.
In the last week of the semester, Mrs. Barnell told us about having bought a small farm in Mesquite and her plans to move during the first week of June. I immediately offered to help her and Jim volunteered the use of his truck. With something to look forward to, the last days of school seemed to drag by.
Jim's old Ford pickup rolled into the drive at about 8:30. We picked up his girlfriend, Judy, on the way. She was barely awake and making no real effort to wake further, but she was dressed for work, in jeans and an old shirt, her blonde hair tied back in a pony tail. We found the apartment in a maze of two-story buildings and rang the doorbell.
Several moments passed; I touched the button again. The door opened slightly. Mrs. Barnell was wearing a large man's shirt and a pair of fuzzy slippers. She looked at us rather blankly for a moment before the door opened and we were ushered inside. Books, boxes, dishes, and other items were all over the place.
"Thank you for coming," she said, "I'm sorry I'm not ready, but it was a long night. Get comfortable. I'll be right back."
She left us to our own devices in the dining room, bare legs flashing as she hurried down the hall to the bedroom, dodging stacks of boxes already filled and hopping over a small pile of stuff yet to be packed. We spent a minute marveling at how un-teacherlike she looked in the morning and found places to sit until Mrs. Barnell returned.
"Great, great legs," said Jim. Judy slapped his arm soundly.
"Yup," I said, heading to the kitchen. I found the makings and soon had a pot of coffee brewing. Judy claimed the couch and dozed. Jim was getting to know a big Siamese cat that had noisily appeared. A search of cabinets produced cups and spoons that hadn't been packed.
"Coffee's on in about five minutes, Mrs. B.," I yelled.
"Oh, great! Thank you!" she called back.
The cat jumped to the countertop to supervise my efforts. I ruffled his chin fuzz and said hello to him.
"Yaaow," he said, moving against my hand.
Mrs. Barnell had come into the kitchen; she accepted the cup from me and took a sip as she said, "He's not usually that friendly with men. Mmmm..! Who taught you to make coffee?" She seemed a bit surprised at the contents of her cup.
"Taught myself, I guess," I said, "Why?"
"You aren't concerned that it might be too strong for someone else?"
"Nope. They can water it down if they want pale coffee."
"Remind me to try you as a bartender when you're old enough," she said, "This is how I like it, too. Frank used to just stain the water a little. He hated my coffee and I hated his."
"Frank? Oh, your...uhm..."
"Don't worry about it. Husband is the word. I won't have a case of the vapors at the mention of him."
We moved into the living room. Mrs.B. still wore the big shirt and had added denim cutoffs and sneakers. She sat cross-legged on the floor near a box of books and found a flat spot for the coffee cup. The Siamese had sprawled out where he could see everybody at once.
"I see you've all met Kelly," she said, indicating the cat. "Are you sure you guys don't mind being drafted this way?"
She stretched and yawned as she spoke. I couldn't take my eyes off her.
"No problem," said Jim, "We do this or we do something else today." Judy grunted in what may have been agreement.
"And you, Ed?" she asked, taking a seat on the couch. "You couldn't think of anything better to do on a Saturday?"
A geology book in one of the piles had caught my attention. Leafing through it, I almost missed her question.
"Not a thing," I said. "No problem."
I opened another book and looked through it. It was a college text. There were two more; I brought them to my lap and spent several moments leafing through them all. I wrote their titles on a piece of scrap paper and returned them to the stack. I felt as if I was being watched, and I was right. My interest in her books hadn't gone unnoticed.
When I looked up Mrs. B was looking back at me. Our eyes met and her gaze held mine in such a manner that I very much didn't want to lose that contact, but I suddenly felt uncomfortably warm in an air-conditioned apartment.
She closed her eyes while she sipped coffee; when she opened them a few seconds later, it was as if she had softly placed a spell on me. I became lost in her eyes as the moment continued. The room around us seemed to fade away and I have no idea how long I wandered in her gaze before a sharp sound broke the spell.
Judy and Jim were staring at us; Jim picked up the spoon he'd dropped on the table. Mrs. Barnell rose quickly and went to the kitchen.
Jim and Judy shot me questioning glances, but said nothing. I gave them my best 'damned if I know' look and finished my coffee. The moving soon began in earnest. We packed boxes while talking about school, the Vietnam war, protest marches, and the world in general. Talk of the war led Mrs. Barnell to tell us a little about her husband.
She told us Frank Barnell had been a jet pilot stationed on an aircraft carrier, speaking of his flying and the Navy as if they were another woman he'd been seeing. I wondered if she realized how her feelings came across with her words.
Packing proceeded quickly. Her car and Jim's truck were almost full before noon and lunch seemed like a good idea. Judy and I had carried a box down between us. After heaving it onto the truck, she put her hand on my arm as I started to tie things down.
"What HAPPENED up there?" she asked. "You two were staring at each other for... for ages!"
I looked at her a moment before answering.
"Can't say exactly," I said, tossing ropes over the load on the truck. Judy looked at me a moment more before heading for the stairs. I finished tying the load and followed her.
For a while there had been a rush like being on a carnival ride, just from looking into Mrs. Barnell's eyes. Something that my sister once told me came to mind.
She'd read an article about eye contact somewhere. Pupil dilation as an indicator and tool for advertising success? The model would keep her eyes closed until the shot was ready. When she opened her eyes, the camera caught her eyes with pupils wide. It was a technique that made a picture seem to pull at you. Applied biological response, I think they called it. Whatever it was, I was ready believe it worked.
And maybe it had been just a ridiculous rationalization of a crush, I quickly realized. Could be I was just thinking myself into a kind of corner. After all, she was soon going to be gone, and I was taking every opportunity to study her face, legs, and hair as if to memorize her before she left. Yeah, I'd call that a crush. I finished tying the load and went back upstairs.
Laughter erupted from the apartment as I approached. I stopped outside to prop a boot on the rail and haul up my socks as I listened a moment before entering. Jim was enthusiastically telling about the time we'd caught snakes instead of fish at Mountain Creek Lake.
"The boat was sinking. Snakes were coming out from under the seat in all directions. Ed grabbed a big one that came up by his leg and whacked it's head on the motor, then used it to beat the water all around us to scare off the other snakes while I used my hat to bail water. There musta been half a dozen snakes swimming in the boat. Ed grabbed them behind the head and tossed them out when they got near us. Scared the hell out of us."
"He grabbed them? My God...! What happened then?" asked Mrs. B.
"Well, he couldn't let go of that one big-assed snake. It wasn't dead, and it was REAL pissed off, whipping itself around like crazy. He couldn't throw it away, because he had a tail-grip on it and he'd put his foot on the other end, and he had to help me bail to keep the motor up out of the water. He just had to keep a grip on that snake all the way back to shore, where some guy gave him ten bucks for it."
"Why would anyone buy a snake?" asked Mrs. B.
"It was the guy from the baithouse. I saw that snake on the wall later." Jim paused a moment and looked around his audience. "Anyway, next thing I hear is Ed asking the guy if he needed any more snakes."
Another round of laughter. I grinned as I found a three-foot piece of tie-down rope and tossed it at Jim as I entered the apartment. It landed in his lap. He yelled and stood up so fast the chair fell over behind him. Kelly pounced on the rope as it hit the floor. Judy and Mrs. B. were laughing themselves sick at both of them.
"I'll get you for that," said Jim, grinning and hitching up his pants.
Kelly triumphantly dragged the rope across the room to Mrs. Barnell. She made it move for him and then tossed it across the room. Kelly was after it in a flash, wrestling it into relative submission.
"About lunch..." said Mrs. B.
"Sounds good to me," said Jim.
I said, "Whatever from wherever."
"I'll buy if someone goes for it." said Mrs. B.
"And I'll fly if you buy," said Jim, rattling his keys.
"Who wants what?" asked Judy, paper and pencil in hand.
When the orders were all in, Mrs. Barnell produced money. Judy took it and she and Jim headed for the door.
"Wait!" called Mrs. Barnell.
She made a distasteful face and said, "I'm not your teacher anymore. My name is Anne, and I'm only twenty-six. 'Mrs. B.', 'Mrs. Barnell', or 'ma'am' makes me feel old."
Jim waved acknowledgment and Judy said, "Got it!" as they left. There were empty boxes near the piles of books. We had two of them filled and taped shut before Anne broke the silence.
"Ed...", she said as I shoved the boxes to the door and stood up. She sounded tentative.
"Present," I said, as if answering a roll call.
Anne sat with her shoes off and feet tucked under her on the couch. She had a wry expression on her face.
"I'm... Sorry, I suppose..." her gaze shifted to her cup.
"Define, please," I said.
It was a parody of her own classroom technique. When a student used a word in a questionable fashion, she would repeat the word as if it tasted strange and say 'Define, please'.
That tickled her and she managed to inhale some of her coffee, choking and laughing at the same time. I waited for her to settle.
"Well...um...You remember...um...How we looked at each other this morning?"
"I remember," I said, taking a seat across from her with my own coffee. "May I tell you what I think happened, at least to me? If I'm right, fine. If I'm not, it's better that you correct me right now."
Anne nodded and sat very still while I took my own turn at finding the right words.
"I think something about each of us interests the other. When you looked at me, I felt it, and your eyes are magical to me. I was so lost in there that nothing else mattered."
Her mouth fell open a bit and her eyes widened in surprise.
I continued, "I've thought about it some and decided it can't hurt to let you know how I feel about you, since you're leaving anyway."
It was my turn to stare into my coffee cup. For some moments Anne sat without speaking, then swung her feet off the couch, got up, and quickly went into the kitchen.
Her trembling was audible when she set her cup and saucer on the counter. Hoping that my little speech hadn't scared her, I went back to work, unflattening and taping boxes we'd need later. Kelly came to supervise. I made him a paper ball and tossed it into one of the boxes.
He dived in after it, peering back at me over the edge, so I picked up the rope and dragged it along the flap. The pile exploded as Kelly launched himself after the rope; empty boxes tumbled everywhere. Kelly thought he'd done something terrible and zipped under the couch.
"Hey, Kelly, it's okay," I said, reaching down to waggle the rope near the couch.
Kelly peeked out from under the couch as if fearing a trap. A hand on my shoulder nearly startled me under the couch with Kelly. Anne leaned down to ruffle Kelly's cheek, telling him in a soft voice that things were okay.
Her face was very close to mine. I saw the lovely lines of her face and neck from a distance of about six inches. Her fragrance and voice seemed to surround me as the moment stretched on. Skin, hair, soft voice, lashes, lips.
Her shirt gaped open a little bit at this angle and she wore nothing under it. I tore my eyes away, afraid she'd seen me staring into her blouse. I looked again at her face.
"Um..." I said, unable to say much else and unable to look away. She turned to face me at that very close range. I tried to clear my throat. She looked up at me. Her eyes met mine as they had before, and I fell into them again.
Time stopped, or maybe just my own brain activity. Kelly came out to see what was going on, making little questioning sounds and rubbing against us. We drew apart, but I could still feel her closeness.
We stared into each others' eyes for a long moment. Anne's face seemed to soften and her lips seemed to be a bit swollen. I suddenly ached to touch her. My hand went to her cheek and traced the line of her face.
The doorbell chimed. I helped Anne to her feet; she went to the door while I went to the kitchen, where I busied myself making another pot of coffee as an excuse not to have to turn around. Womens' voices came from the front room; a few minutes of conversation and then goodbyes and the door closed.
Someone who would be missed, I guessed. Anne came in with a small box of chocolates and put them on the counter. She opened the box and offered it to me, then took one herself. The moments ticked by as she regarded me thoughtfully. I munched my chocolate and leaned on the counter in an attempt to appear unruffled.
"About what you said earlier," said Anne, "You must have put every bit of yourself on the line to tell me that. I was absolutely amazed to hear it and amazed that you could say it. It must have taken a great deal of courage, Ed."
Courage..? I kept my mouth shut. I didn't even nod. It hadn't seemed all that courageous to me. I had just told her what was on my mind as concisely as possible, but I wasn't about to correct her impression of my courageousness. You might even say I was afraid to.
"I'm considering something," she said. "That farm is not in the best of condition. I'll need help fixing things just to be able to get settled properly. Do you think you can handle some basic carpentry and cleaning or painting everything in sight out there? Not as a volunteer, either. Money for work."
I mentally fumbled to catch up with her change of subjects. Work on her farm? "Sure, but how would I get out there? It's about forty miles to Mesquite, and I don't have a car to match my driver's license yet."
Taking another chocolate from the box, she said, "If it's okay with your parents, you can stay out there. There are four bedrooms."
I didn't have to consider the offer.
"Let me call home about it. Pray they say yes."
She laughed and reached for the phone, handing it to me. I called home and suggested that Mesquite was far enough away that it made sense to stay over and help out. My father wanted to talk to Anne. I handed her the phone and they discussed the idea.
I caught myself gripping my cup with both hands as I waited for an outcome. My Dad surprised me. He only confirmed details, traded phone numbers, and asked for the address of her new place with directions. After their thanks and goodbyes, the phone was handed back to me.
"You behave yourself out there," said my father, "Do as you're told and be careful with her equipment. Have a good time, work hard, and be careful what you say and do. She's a damned nice lady who's had a really rough time over the last couple of years."
I agreed emphatically. After I'd hung up, amazed and relieved, Anne handed me another chocolate and studied at me a few moments before speaking.
"Sometimes parents are like that," she said.
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