The Quinlans Came to Tae Her

The Quinlans came to take her from me one October night, they came while chanting ancient psalms in darkening twilight, they came to rescue her, they said, from my impure designs, to cleanse from her all traces of her bestial human side.

The pious congregation had for weeks devised this mission. This lovely Quinlan girl had turned her back and risked perdition! They heeded all the tortured pleas of he who had begot her; this perfect lamb who strayed was their own widowed preacher's daughter.

We heard them massed outside and murmuring their sacred songs, we peered through parted curtains as the faithful droned along, and then the minister stepped forward; stern, rotund, and greying, pontificating to me as the others stood near praying:

"God loves you (as he loves us all) in spite of your transgressions; God loves you and will bend his ear to hear sincere confessions; He blesses you, but bids you choose to live a pious life; He gives you twenty minutes to return your tainted wife."

(This served as introduction. He continued in like manner:) "We humble servants of the Lord are chosen to demand her. We are appointed from on high to rescue from your clenches This angel you have turned from God to be one of your wenches.

You sullied what was pure, he said, you dirtied what was chaste. You corrupted the immaculate. You laid her soul to waste. You planned and plotted to destroy her prospect for salvation. You worked your wicked wiles and she succumbed to your temptations.

Beneath your human skin you sport the serpent's raspy scales! Beware, deceiver! he cried out, for God always prevails! His perfect justice will be done! No sinner will escape! Reveal my hidden angel now! Pull back your darkened drape!"

His righteous diatribe abruptly ended on this note. His stirring oratory done, he puffed his chest to gloat. His congregation gathered there, all looking up, all certain, that the power of the preacher's words would open up the curtain.

(For his part, the preacher sought the concentrated gaze of all his congregation there to vaporize the haze he figured must be fogging up his daughter's common sense, which, once restored, would shame her to renounce her impudence.)

My wife and I acknowledged to each other with a glance the time had come for her to choose the future or the past. She'd tried and failed to mold herself to fit her daddy's notions, suppressing her identity because of her devotion.

But one hot night she dreamed she was a princess of the realm, bathing in a sunlit stream within a grove of elms, when suddenly out of the woods a naked man appeared, bearded, brawny, beckoning; she smiled and felt no fear.

She enrolled that fall semester in the art class that I taught. Within a week she rang my doorbell, crying and distraught; her daddy'd thrown her out; she wondered, could she spend the night? Against my better judgment I took pity on her plight;

I calmed her down and set her up to sleep there on the floor (I knew the consequences of seductive sophomores); yet sometime later, in the dark, she kissed me without warning and I awoke and welcomed her and loved her until morning.

Within a month we tied the knot, without her father's blessing. We sensed his vengeance might become his plan for repossessing; but ever since that first night when she slipped into my bed, she knew the world held more for her. From Dad she'd been misled.

What followed was intended as her last and best farewell. She did it fearing little an eternal life in hell. She saw her startling beauty as God's handiwork and blessing. She flung the curtain back, and smiling down, began undressing.

I watched enthralled as anyone the movements of my spouse; she softly popped the buttons down the front of her white blouse, slipped it from her shoulders, let it billow to the floor, her full breasts straining to escape the lacy bra she wore,

and moved her hands behind her, all composure, to unzip the pleated tartan skirt she pulled down, wriggling, past her hips. She paused a moment, smiling still, to measure the reaction of the dumbstruck crowd beneath the window, shocked into inaction;

she'd been the little red-haired girl who held her daddy's hand, the little girl who jumped to meet her daddy's least command, who always did her homework and who always said her prayers; this little girl now stood above them in her underwear.

And now she reached behind her and unhooked her lace brassiere, and freed from their confinement the fine globes that I revered, firm and freckled, full and pale, with nipples pink and hard, my wife revealed her perfect breasts with haughty disregard.

(I broke my gaze a moment to observe the crowd below. Beneath the tranquil surface I could sense an undertow; the men, still hypnotized, began to fidget and contort to reposition items angled badly in their shorts.)

She tossed her flaming hair and ran her hands beneath her panties (an embroidered masterwork of lace, and dangerously scanty). She bent to peel them off, then stood, defiantly displaying the furry fertile delta I would spend my life surveying.

How many fasting holy men have seen a greater vision? How could the sacred be defined with any more precision? My lovely naked wife embodied in her splendid form a heavenly communique that Nature had transformed.

The crowd below began to leave, the husbands with their wives; once home, the healthy ones made love to celebrate their lives; they soaped each other in the shower, touched and laughed and kissed, and in the bed paid their respects to every orifice.

Alone beneath a streetlight, with his noble face inscrutable, the preacher stood with eyes upraised, his character immutable; my wife regarded him with love, but with her resolve certain; she smiled goodbye and I stood up to close the final curtain.