*** I'm trying REALLY hard to have the timing of the next chapter up for Christmas. I hope I make it, or not far on either side. When I used to have the time for it, I liked to read over the holidays & if I couldn't get my mitts on anything else, due to lousy forward planning for example, I'd read The Hobbitt and LOTR again. Uh, that was LONG before they were what they've become to people now.
But my faves then were romantic novels set in a rich time in history. This story isn't like that, but it does have its elements and more than one legend. So I have to get busy pounding out the next chapter, and if you choose to read this during a little quiet time over the holidays, then I really hope that you enjoy it. 0_o
---------------
The thing about houses such as his was their solidness. The thickness of the beams and the age of the structure gave it such weight. The wood had been selected from what at the time had been first-growth forest cut with no need to think about economy since the land was to be cleared for crops anyway. The proportions of the lumber used to build the place would be looked upon as absurd in light of the methodology in use today. But there were all sorts of advantages to owning a home where the walls were a foot thick.
The floors didn't creak when you walked on them
As Cale let himself in, he heard Sylvia talking to someone quietly, and he gathered that she was at least a little upset from the soft sounds of her sniffles every now and then.
Easing out of his wet boots Cale walked down the hall soundlessly. He took one glance through the doorway and he leaned back slowly, feeling a little ashamed and also wanting to laugh a little.
Sylvia was sitting on the couch, right at the end. It was the only place where she could sit, since Rufus was on the couch as well, stretched out full length with his legs out in space a little over the edge and his great head on her lap. Her fingers were stroking his ears as she spoke to him in a quiet voice.
It was what she wore that caught his eye. Sylvia was wearing a hooded sweatshirt of his that he hadn't seen in over two decades. On her, it was more than a little large and he felt a flood of recollections of the times when she'd worn it long ago most often in this very room, though it now looked nothing like the abandoned farmhouse that it had been then when two young people came here every night to make love over the course of one summer.
"You're an old family legend, Rufus," she said as she looked down with a soft smile that became a smirk to herself in another moment, "We do have a lot of them and I had my doubts until I remembered it and spent a little time alone with you. But I get it now and I see that the Cù Sìth of the Mac Domhnaills of Antrim walks again. My grandmother said that there is always one here and always will be, as long as a Mac Domhnaill holds the land.
I think it must be at least a little true," she smiled at him, "I've lived here my whole life, except when I was away at school or with Paul in the city for the first few years. I've always seen glimpses of the Black Dog now and then, running the woods and the glens that my family never cleared here. Gramma said that it was that way for you and the ones before you, and that the wild parts were never to be cleared.
That's why you're here now, isn't it? You came down from the hills and walked across the stream to live with Cale. You can't remember him, since you're too young, but he was here before just like I was. He was the first man I ever loved, Rufus."
She looked up at the wall across from her, seeing the texture of the rough-hewn timbers there. "He was seventeen and in the militia the first time that I ever saw him. He came to the big house over the hill because he'd gotten separated from his unit during their summer exercises, and he needed to ask if he could use the phone.
I came into the kitchen with some berries for my Gramma and old Amy McDonnell and I nearly dropped the bowl on the floor when I saw him. He looked a little silly standing there all in green and feeling stupid to have gotten lost so easily. While Amy got him pointed toward the phone and he pulled his notebook out of his pocket as he followed her, my Gramma smiled at me and asked me if I liked him in a very soft voice.
I said that I didn't know, since it was hard to tell with his face all smeared up as it was and I'd only gotten one look at him. He was in the hall dialing the phone, so I looked at him for a minute before I looked back at Gramma. She gave me one of her questioning expressions and then I nodded. I was a bit of an ugly duckling then, seventeen myself and built like I was still eleven only taller. I had no hips and absolutely no boobs either, but I already had the Mac Domhnaill face -- so that didn't help."
The remark caused Cale to remember and smile. Many of the women in her family had those facial features. When they were girls, they looked a little odd and weren't considered pretty. Their noses were a just a tiny bit hooked, and the rest of the face lent itself to only one hairstyle, and that was long. They might keep it trimmed to look neat, but none of them ever really cut their hair very much unless it got to be too much trouble. Even then, they only cut it to where it would almost reach their hips. They looked ungainly when they were very young and that sort of face usually became the classic 'witch's face' when they'd grown to be very old crones, but in between, they all shared a very remarkable and rather haunting, ethereal beauty.
"It took a couple of hours before the big green army truck arrived to come get him," Sylvia smiled, "I kept him topped up with lemonade and we talked a lot. My dad came over from the barn and wanted to know what was going on and, seeing that Cale was dressed as a soldier, Dad wanted to tear a strip off him for the way that the noise of the exercises were upsetting the cows and all of the helicopters flying really low everywhere were causing the chickens to keel over in fright, but Gramma just told him to use his head, saying that it wasn't the young man's fault personally.
Right after that, she started in on him, working the notion in that with old Da in the hospital and Brodie going to be going home to Scotland for a visit the next summer that my Dad had better get started on giving some thought to getting someone to help with the work. Dad looked at Cale and asked him if he'd be interested and Cale said yes it the job started next summer."
She smirked down at Rufus, "Well Cale didn't always look like he is now. Back then he was nice for a girl like me to look at, but he was a little thin himself and Daddy told him so, too. Then he asked if Cale had ever done any sort of farming work and Cale answered, "No sir."
Just as Dad was about to say that he didn't need him, Gramma said that he'd be perfect, since Dad wouldn't have to get any bad habits out of him. He was about to answer when the big truck ground up the hill to collect Cale.
A sergeant or somebody got out and started yelling at Cale for being clueless and getting himself lost -- even though the back of the truck was full of other guys who'd done the same thing, but the man wouldn't stop yelling.
He didn't know it, but Cale already had a friend in Gramma. She came storming out and told him to shut his trap and get back in the truck and be gone, since he was wasting taxpayer money just standing there. He was about to say something, but as he turned, he fell over and looked confused. Gramma said it was what she expected, since he was either a fool or drunk and likely both, and when he tried to walk back to the truck, he tripped and fell against the side of the truck with his face. So he got back in, bloody nose and all and wanted to get the hell out of there. Cale hadn't even gotten into the back of the truck yet.
The sergeant was about to yell again, but he saw Gramma's face, I guess, and he asked nicely.
Gramma nudged me and said to go kiss Cale's cheek quick if I wanted to have him here the next summer, so that's what I did, and he asked me if he could come and see me before the summer and if it would be alright if he called. I said I'd like that, so I wrote our phone number in his little notebook and kissed his cheek again and then he climbed up into the truck and they drove off.
The first chance I got, I went to see Gramma in private, because I didn't know what this was all about. She asked me to make us some tea and she'd tell me all about it.
What she told me was that every girl, when they're growing up and after they're of age needs to know what's what, and that most never get that. They get married right away or they don't have anyone to tell them. She told me that by next summer, I'd need those lessons; the ones where a girl gets to know what men are and what they're not.
I didn't know what the hell she was talking about and I told her that I just liked Cale over the time that we'd talked. I grew up on that farm so I thought I had a pretty good idea about things, but she said no, and that she was going to see to it that her granddaughter got the gift of the one summer that every girl really ought to have in their lives. Mom was about ready to call us to supper, but when she walked in, she was smiling because she already knew.
I didn't know anything about all of that -- I was just hoping that I might get a boyfriend out of it, since nobody that I knew was showing any interest in me at all. But Cale was really good-looking to me and over the months, I got to really hoping for the rest of the year to fly by.
Cale came up from the city a few times to visit and after a while, my Dad got to like him, because he could see that Cale wasn't afraid of work or getting dirty. I didn't care about that, I had my first boyfriend," she grinned down at Rufus.
"Dad would lend us the car and we went to do all of the things that people our age did, and when my friends saw us together, I actually felt like a million bucks -- not in a showing off way; just because I didn't feel so plain and ordinary anymore. Cale was like that for me. When I was with him, I felt beautiful because I could see that I was to him. He was friendly to everybody, but it was pretty obvious that he only had eyes for me, and there is no better feeling to a girl than that.
So he came to stay with us the next summer and by then, I had just the barest bumps on my chest, but Cale loved them and we spent every minute that we could find trading kisses or hugs during the day. I still don't know why his bladder didn't explode for the way that I was always finding ways to get ahead in my chores so I could bring him something to drink as an excuse to be with him for a few minutes." She smirked, "but I really wasn't fooling anybody. Whenever I got back to work, my Mom or Gramma would smile at me every time, and Amy would make a remark about how surprising it was that I kept Cale's thirst top of mind so often.
My father spent every single day trying to work Cale into the ground and if he knew what we did afterward, he never said a word, but I think that he knew.
Every night, we came here and we taught each other. Gramma would ask me what sorts of things that we'd done and then she'd tell me some other things to try. I couldn't believe it. Gramma and Amy and Mom -- they all knew what we were doing. Mom told me it was only natural and to be careful -- and she said that as she handed me a box of condoms!
By the end of the summer, Cale had to buy a lot of new clothes because the ones that he came with just didn't fit him anymore. I still have a couple of his T-shirts that I've saved along with what I'm wearing now. And by then, I could actually say that I had tits and hips. My thought was that they'd just picked then to show up, but Gramma would argue that living like a woman could go a long way toward finishing what nature had started.
So this old place is pretty special to an old farm girl like me. There were a couple of times when I looked up and thought I could see a dark shape out there, and when I asked, Gramma told me about Cù Sìth and that there was always one, and not to ever need to feel afraid of it."
She looked a little sad then, "When the summer ended, I had to go to university and Cale had joined the army and had to report. We spent Labor Day weekend in here and made love as we cried at the same time. We said that we'd try to get together, but life never worked out that way for us. The women of my family all told me of their first lovers and the summers that they loved them, but they said that it was a time that a girl needs to finish growing up, and that those loves almost never are the ones of their lives.
I met other guys and eventually I met Paul. By the time that we were married, Cale was already on his way to a divorce. We only ran into each other in town one day a few years ago when he came up here to live. We're still best friends and I hope that we always will be. I never did find another man like him, though. A part of me is still in love with him after more than a quarter of a century, but that's alright -- or it was, until I found out about Pauls's latest ..."
