The Merrimans of Maine

First off, I thank the Black Rand for the gracious invitation to participate in this Wine & Old Lace event although I must also apologize for the approach I chose; I think more in terms of Maine flannel and Applejack liquor than wine and old lace especially in the historical settings of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Because I am a procrastinator at heart and practice I am going to start this with posting Chapter 1 and will continue as appropriate.

The story has the elements for several Lit categories; the romantic young lady, the wayward and insatiable wife and mother, sensuality and carnal ruination. For now it is here.

All sexual activities are between legal adults although this is also a coming of age story for a couple of the characters. For those who want every character to live out their story as they imagine it, well, I look forward to reading their endeavors. For now, I'm going down this path.

Chapter 1

...a teen comes of age in a long bygone era in rural Maine

1912, Preble Landing Road in Sebec, Maine

The leather reins were loose in the sturdy man's hands as the Percheron team of horses turned up the dirt road just past the school house. As if on cue, the hooves picked up and nostrils flared and snorted as the wagon jilted forward towards the farm up on the hill.

Leland Merriman had raised teams of work horses since he was a young fellow over twenty years earlier, always Percheron and when traveling, dressed in black leathers and trim. With sunlight glinting off the polished fastenings and the steeds in high spirts, Leland and his horses were a sight to behold.

"Git there, git" the sturdy man bellowed as the team moved into a fast trot and he stood on the buckboard to look over the south pasture as they swooshed past the blackberry bushes lining the roadway.

The girls tending to the pasture fencing looked up and watched the team moving up the hill, waving at their father.

"Gertie, you need to pull your wire tighter so we can get this done. Papa's back from town and you know what that means." Twelve year old Mildred Merriman implored of her older sister. The oldest of the girls, Sylvia was already on the run up the lane between the two fields of oats with little more than the evidence of her blue gingham just a flash in the sunlight.

"Help me, darn it." Gertie half whispered to her sister. "Mama told us we had to get this done before we could come back up to the house. Come on now."

Gertie, short for Gertrude and Leland's middle daughter, poured every ounce of her fourteen year old frame into the iron lever forcing the wire taut to the wooden post as Mildred pounded the fastener into place. She let loose of the fulcrum and the fencing stood tight and strong and then picking up the tools and what was left of the wire spool, the girls each grabbed a handle of the barrow and began pushing it up the lane toward the house and barnyard.

A partridge flushed out of the oats to the side as the girls worked their way up the hill and they watched as their father drove his team into the yard with two border collies chasing after them. Leland looked up past the smith shop and saw his wife walking toward the yard adjusting her hair and work dress with a slight smile on her lips and waved to his love. She waved back just as the younger girls made it up from the south pasture.

"Papa!" Mildred rang out as she ran towards the wagon with Gertie close behind on her young heels.

Leland Merriman was a strong, stout man, his shock of sweated red hair glistening in the bright sunlight as he hopped down and swung up both girls in his arms cradling each with a shoulder and forearm. Sylvia had already snatched up the brown leather satchel, triumphantly carrying it into the shed on her way into the big rambling farmhouse.

"Papa, was it a good trip? How much did you get?" Gertie asked while hugging her father's strong neck.

"My little girls, it was indeed a good and profitable journey but you all run along now and get washed up. Mama will have dinner ready shortly."

Leland set the girls on their feet and both of them made a beeline to the house as Nina Merriman joined her husband upon entering the home. Mrs. Merriman kept her long blond hair tied up in a French braid and wore just a slight tinge of rouge on her face and in keeping with the modesty of the times ensured her ample bosom was well secured beneath the breasted brocade of her knee length gingham dress; except for the one button she missed in her rush back to the house. Glancing down, she discreetly fastened it as they crossed the threshold.

"The stew smells wonderful, Nina and the bread too. You must have slaved in this kitchen most of the day" Leland smiled at his bride of seventeen years. "Harold, please give the blessing before we begin."

Harold looked to his Papa and smiled. All of ten years old and the youngest of the Merriman's, the request always gave him a proud purpose in the busy family and he recited his Congregational blessings with anxious approval. Mildred stymied a giggle as he stumbled a bit halfway through and Gertie gave her shin a slight nudge, just enough to cause her to sit up straight.

The Merriman family of six were of longstanding custom to take their dinner meal together at the long oak table in the dining room, Leland at the head and Nina opposite him; the two older girls, sixteen year old Sylvia and Gertie on one side and Mildred and Harold facing them. From her vantage point through the bay windows, Nina could see the smith shop as well as the carpenter shop and her mind drifted between the sentences of her husband to thoughts of those places so far from the dinner table yet so close in proximity.

Nina Merriman, neatly proper, a wife and mother, looked upon her children and husband remembering the unfastened button as the pleasures of the blacksmith seared her conscience. With a spoon of stew, a morsel of bread and her husband's adoration, her mind replayed it over again; the blacksmith's grunts as he emptied himself and used her for his pleasure. He held it in her for several moments with no concern for consequences.

It wasn't her fertile time as womenfolk measured it so Mrs. Merriman could safely bask in the pleasure of her illicit desires and it was that heat and yearning that distracted her from the table even momentarily.

"Mother! Did you hear? Mother?" Sylvia asked her bringing her out of her daydream. "Papa got top price for the calves this time!"

Nina recovered quickly. "I'm sorry, dear, I was thinking of when you girls were little and you planted those apple trees over past the first field out there." She nodded out the window past the blacksmith shop. Her eyes met Leland's without fault.

"Indeed, best price for the last four seasons, for sure." A proud Leland boasted with a grin from ear to ear.

After dinner, the delighted father handed his treats to the children and set out for the evening chores in the barn. Leland Merriman watched as the craftsmen finished up closing their shops and the blacksmith, carpenter and leatherworker who plied their trades out of buildings on the property to the benefit of the neighborhood headed to the cottages constructed for their use.

Except for the blacksmith, each had a wife and a couple children to occupy their evenings and Sundays off. Angus Philpot was the blacksmith and it was said he had a child bride several years earlier but died in labor along with the unfortunate infant. Nobody talked about it and he didn't offer up any insight into the matter so most sensible people left it alone. Leland thought it the good Christian thing to offer him a building to work his craft.

For Leland, they were men like him going about their professions and returning to their personal pursuits; ordinary lives in these ordinary times...

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High summer rolled into the cool harvest days of autumn with Macintosh apples ripe for picking and Blue Hubbard squashes piled next to the back door. Leland spent the better part of a couple days loading seasoned firewood into the shed in preparation for the long, cold winter that was fast approaching as the girls and Harold climbed ladders in the orchid picking the crisp fruit.

With beans in the oven and the ham only needing cutting before serving, Nina slipped out the kitchen door and hastened between the gilded leaves of her bedroom lilacs out of sight from the industrious chores of her husband and children until she reached the latch of the nearly empty smith shop.

"You're late." Angus Philpot said almost in a whisper because of the rhythmic thud of Leland's firewood hitting the growing pile in the woodshed.

"It's couldn't be helped." The adulterous farmwife whispered as her paramour worked his hand under the unfastened blouse to grasp a full bare breast. With both naked breasts exposed in moments, her hand worked the brass buckle of the man's trousers until she could reach in and take his fully engorged cock in her hands.

Stroking its length and relishing the extended size of his prick, Nina felt his strong hands push her gently to her knees bringing the uncircumcised penis to her moist lips. It had been a foreign thing to the rural farmer's wife, to suck his cock, but Angus had been insistent having learned of such things from a whore in Portland familiar with the French decadence.

Faithful women would never take such a man's organ into their mouth but Nina's excitement overwhelmed her and her lips pushed past the skin encased mushroom head as her tongue swirled and danced with the foreskin before peeling it back with just a slight pressing of the tip of her tongue inside the fold at his piss slit.

"Jesus H!" Angus groaned as the woman worked his prick just as he had taught her to do over the past year or so. Nina's mouth worked up and down the large cock, slobbering her spit all over it while cupping the enormous balls in her small hands.

The blacksmith's hands held her head, grasping the blond braids as Nina relished her cock sucking talents until Angus couldn't take it anymore and pulled his full thick cock from her mouth and had her lay across a chest on her back with her legs opened wide.

One of his strong hands went to pull the gusset aside until he smiled realizing she left the obstacle at the house and came to him bare, her hairy blond cunt moist, pink and ready for him. One hand on a smooth pale white thigh and the other on his cock still moist with her saliva, he pushed the fat cockhead into the married woman's cunt and began fucking his full length into her.

Strong, deliberate strokes in and out of her quim with the continuing sound of the firewood hitting the pile, her husband only beyond ear shot, Nina knew it was close. She knew the quivering in her thighs and the excitement in her loins would grow and build until Angus would growl in her ear and whisper obscene things and take her over the edge.

"You feed that cuckold husband of yours, Mrs. Merriman, and I'll continue putting this fuck to his wife" he whispered with hot breath in her ear as he came closer to spewing in her womb. It was enough. It was all it took to thrust Nina into an uncontrollable orgasm.

She began to scream out but Angus muffled it with her face to his chest as he tensed up and began ejaculating several ropes of milky semen into her hairy vagina. Drops of sweat fell from his bearded face and the moist matted hair of his chest pressed against the naked breasts of his woman, the farmer's wife.

The thud of another stick of wood broke them both from their sated exhaustion and Mrs. Merriman rose up and straightened her dress, returning her heaving breasts back inside the brocaded blouse and using a handkerchief, wiped the semen spilling out of her cunt and running down the inside of her thigh.

The lovers hastened to gather their things and with every button in place and her hair pulled tight, she gave him a wet kiss and slipped out the door. When Angus exited to retrieve a load of coal, the blacksmith shop was quiet as the lithe form of a strawberry blond haired Sylvia Merriman, Nina's oldest daughter, slipped down from her hiding place in the eaves and made her way back to the orchid...

It was late at night when deep sleep had overtaken Leland after fulfilling his missionary duties with Nina that she lay in bed awake and aroused, titillated at the salacious thoughts of illicit men, penises and the things they might have her do in secret. It hadn't always been this way; until a little over a year earlier, Leland had been the only man she had been with or even seen in a naked manner. She was raised upright in the Congregational Church traditions, married before God and men and consecrated with children and a farmer's good life.

It was first seeing Angus Philpot naked as he showered the grime off his hard body underneath the water tower just behind the shop. She hadn't intended to but stumbled upon it and remained discreet as she fixated on the sharp contrast between him and her husband. Angus was big, hairy, bearded and when he turned he was soaping up an enormous penis or at least it seemed so to her innocent eyes; it was certainly far bigger than her husband. As he soaped it, it grew to a fully engorged length and it was thick and full and mesmerizing. She continued watching as he stroked it and running the moisture over the head, she glued her eyes to it until he arched his back a bit and had an orgasm, spilling his seed on the ground.

However her discretion was hardly enough; Angus had caught the flicker of sunlight off the only piece of jewelry she wore and with his own discretion observed the proper and desirable blond wife and mother watching him. His hand began stroking his aroused prick with a purpose and in quick fashion he was fully erect and turned to the side to ensure the farmer's innocent wife would catch all of his glory. She watched every moment of his lewd display and afterwards he smiled to himself knowing full well it was only a matter of time.

A couple days later, the blacksmith took what he wanted from the hesitant Mrs. Merriman bending her over a hoop barrel and taking her pussy. He pulled out that time and came all over her naked ass. When he finished, he seized her face and kissed her, his tongue exploring her mouth until she gave in and returned it in fashion. When they were done, she could no longer claim he forced her even though true at first because she knew she would be back and back again after that.

So as she lay in bed with her husband sound asleep at her side and toyed with her clitoris, rubbing it gently and quietly so as to not disturb her husband, she thought of Angus and his cock; she imagined Morris the carpenter and his friend Earl the leatherworker, both of them fucking her, devouring her charms after having sodomized her willing mouth. The orgasm came quick and was stifled with her mouth to a bed pillow.

A couple doors down that same late night, Sylvia lay in her bed in the room shared with her two sisters contemplating about what she had witnessed and scheming for things she knew next to nothing about. Gertie quietly listened to the soft almost inaudible moans of her older sister while feigning sleep and drifted off to slumber when all went still...

1914, the Merriman Farm in Sebec, Maine

Gertrude Merriman sat before the double mirror combing her long auburn tresses with the sunlight revealing seemingly fine copper thread woven throughout it. She had her Papa's hair and eyes, more so than her siblings with maybe the exception of Harold who everybody said was his spitting image.

Sylvia picked up a bit of strawberry hue from Papa but the soft Scandinavian blond hair of her mother was most dominant as were her facial features and the full bosom she proudly sported beneath the buttoned front of every dress.

The two sisters were a contrast in more ways than one. Sylvia was the full breasted precocious and conniving of the two, more to her mother's predilection and given Sylvia's knowledge of her Mama's perversions and her illicit choices of men, certainly lacking the innocence of her younger sister. She had made her own ventures to the workshop boudoirs of late following in her mother's footsteps and offered her fair pleasures to an assortment of fellows in the various trades. The men for the most part knew the necessity of waiting until the young promiscuous Merriman girl was past that tender age of innocence turning eighteen and ready to leave the boys behind.

Gertie on the other hand was considerably more innocent in most matters and knew little about the pleasures of lust other than the comfort found late at night beneath the covers of her own bedded retreat. For the time she knew nothing of her Mama's cuckoldry; for that matter she probably wouldn't know what the term meant not to mention the impact had her Papa ever found out.

She knew Sylvia used to often run off with a boy after school not to be seen for a couple hours after the other children had returned to the farm but she never said anything. That is just how the sisters were; tattling was never allowed between them. Now Sylvia had received her diploma and she spent as much time hanging around the workshops much to Mama's chagrin as she did tending to chores and housework.

Unlike her sister, Gertie was reserved, studious and physically quite the opposite. Her breasts were small, adolescent in Nina's view and if she expressed any interest in the boys at school, she kept it to herself, perhaps out of shyness and a natural reserve.

"I have a date with the new farmhand Papa hired last month" Sylvia said as she applied a light gloss to her lips as Gertie continued combing her hair. "Will Hammond is his name and he's a good fine gentleman... well, I hope he's not too gentle." She giggled as she pursed her lips together admiring the dainty sheen.

"I wouldn't have thought he was your type of fellow, Sylvie." Gertie replied with genuine surprise.

"He will be when I get him broke in." the older sister replied with peals of laughter.

Gertie glanced over at her sister with a tinge of regret while remembering her first glimpse of the young Hammond fellow. He was tall, sinewy and strong with a shock of dark hair and the most brilliant blue eyes she had ever seen. When he smiled at her she melted back into her seat utterly smitten with his charm.

The younger Gertie didn't particularly look upon her older sibling with any strong aversion but the notion of Sylvia conquering the object of Gertie's young girlish fancies was several degrees off from her romantic desires of having the young Will Hammond expend his fancies on her instead. Sylvia used her conquests for little more than her own pleasures whereas Gertie's soft desires for romance were of the heart rather than the desires of flesh...

Leland hired Will Hammond on good recommendation and set him to work replacing the roof on the sugar shack down in the sap grove. It would take all of the fall for the youngster to complete the task on his own. The sugar maple sap grove was always a playground of sorts for the Merriman children and Gertie considered it her favorite retreat when she wanted to slip away on quiet afternoons.

She carried a basket and a blanket and lay back under the broad expanse of maple leaves and branches watching the young man's progression in discretion, daydreaming of those things young innocent teenaged girls fancy themselves without crossing that fine line ladies should always observe. If she thought she was unnoticed, it was a mistake for Will could see through the canopy of color up through the grove from his perch on the roof top hammering cedar shakes as fast as they were split from the rail.

He admired the young girl and if he admitted it to himself, more so than her older sister but Gertie was still so young and as long as he was courting Sylvia he would only watch from a distance. Of course Gertie knew nothing of that for all she saw was her older sister arriving every afternoon to bring him a sandwich and a canister of lemonade. They would break and the two of them would sit in the shade and laugh and smile and in Gertie's eyes just break her lovesick heart with their merriment.