Maddie Sturm gripped the front of her coat and held it tightly shut under her chin as she quickly walked across the Hurricane Box Company parking lot. It had been the coldest winter in years in Hurricane, West Virginia and Maddie couldn't wait for spring.
Maddie shuffled gingerly through the newly fallen snow. She never tied her size five Timberlands, and she was trying not to get snow down inside them. Stepping up to the large four wheel drive pickup truck, Maddie opened the passenger side door,
"Geez Louise Bubby, couldn't you park any further away?!" Maddie playfully scolded the young man behind the wheel.
"Sorry Maddie. But you look like you could use some exercise anyhow," Bubby Lundy teased back.
Maddie struggled into the tall truck and settled in. The climb up was hard enough when she wasn't tired, but now, after fourteen hours at the box plant, it took what seemed like all she had. The one consolation was she only had three more years until she could retire. Maddie, and her husband Reg, had figured it out that by the time Maddie reached sixty, they would have enough in savings to buy a little place in Florida and retire. No more boxes for Maddie and no more cross country trucking for Reg. The most recent hitch in the plan was Maddie's car breaking down. She was really counting on it lasting three more years as well. So now it was in the shop for two weeks and she had been riding with Bubby.
Bubby worked on the shipping dock. He had been there since he dropped out of high school at the age of fifteen, four years ago. He was extremely shy and backward around most people, but Maddie and his grandmother, Emily, had been best of friends when they were girls, so it was almost like he and Maddie were family.
They had gotten about five miles from the plant, traveling on state route five, when they were stopped at the foot of Miller's Mountain, a long hill on the way home. Bubby turned on the cb radio and they heard the chatter between the other drivers that a eighteen wheeler had jack knifed two thirds of the way up the mountain and flipped onto its side, blocking both lanes. The one driver said the state trooper on the scene told him it would be an hour before they could get traffic moving again.
Maddie let out a groan, "Like today hasn't been long enough!"
Bubby chuckled in agreement, "Speakin' of trucks'n truckers, where's Reg?"
"I talked to him at lunch time today. He was still in Cleveland and they were gettin' hammered with snow then, so he figures it'll be sometime Sunday afternoon before he gets home. So, I guess I'll just sleep until then."
They both laughed knowing Maddie couldn't be that lazy. Even at fifty seven she could out pace any girl on her production line at work. She had, in her husband's words "Aged Very Well". If one looked closely at Maddie, one could see the faint ravages of time, but at a glance, even at a second glance, Maddie had held on to her simple good looks. Her dishwater blond hair had streaks of grey now, but not blatantly noticeable. A little makeup hid the few lines and wrinkles and she had always been of diminutive build, and that had always seemed to help the illusion of her appearing younger than she really was.
"So how's your Gramma Em?" Maddie asked, making small talk.
"Mean as ever I 'spose," Bubby replied.
Maddie reached over and slapped him on his arm, "Don't you be talkin' bad about your Gramma!" she pretend scolded him, "Or she and I will whip up on you!"
"Me and her go way back," Maddie said.
Bubby looked out of the drivers window and rolled his eyes. His grandmother said the exact same thing whenever she talked about Maddie, and he swore he had heard both of their stories a hundred times over.
Then after a pause Maddie said out of the blue, "Her daddy, your great grand daddy, made the best home made cherry wine I ever had."
Bubby looked over at Maddie, a little surprised to hear a story he had never heard before. Also a little surprised anyone knew about the wine making. Everyone in his family made their own wine, but kept it secret as it was frowned on by the Baptist church they attended.
"Yessir, you can't buy wine as good as your great grand daddy made," Maddie said almost wistfully as she looked out of her window.
Almost forty years ago, in August, Maddie had gone to Em's daddy's farm to help with the haying. It was just something all the neighboring farms did back then, everyone would help everyone else. This particular day was stifling hot, too hot to work and all the boys had gone down to the creek to swim. Emily's folks had gone to the house to rest and Emily had procured a quart of her daddy's cherry wine and she and Maddie had snuck off to the root cellar.
It was cool and dark in there. The only light once the door was closed, aside from a few stray beams of sunlight that shone through cracks in the door, was an old kerosene lamp. Em took a long sip from the jar and then handed it to Maddie. Never having had a drink before, Maddie took a little sip and then puckered up her face. It was sweet enough, but the alcohol in it made her shudder. Emily just giggled and took another sip. Not to be out done so did Maddie. After about twenty minutes both girls were giggling and shushing each other to be quiet.
"Wanna know a secret?" Emily asked Maddie.
There was nothing Maddie loved better than a good secret, even to this day. "Sure!" she replied with a slight slur.
Emily motioned with her finger for Maddie to move closer, Maddie assumed Emily was going to whisper it to her. When her face was close to Emily's, instead of a secret, Emily kissed Maddie full on the mouth. Maddie was so shocked she didn't know what to do at first. Then she pulled back from Em, instinctively wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. Maddie looked at Emily, there in the dim half light, and who she saw was no longer the girl she had played with dolls, climbed trees and swam with. It was another person, a woman. Something shook through Maddie's very being. It wasn't fear or disgust. It wasn't love or lust even. It was excitement. The excitement of exploring something new, something not discussed in the small community of Hurricane. This was adventure.
Emily stood up, without a word, and unbuttoned her blouse, slipping it off her white shoulders and draped it over the small table next to the door. Maddie calmly stood up and walked over to Emily and kissed her, deeply, passionately, like a lover. Maddie had never kissed anyone before, but something deep inside her seemed to be navigating her in the direction she was now going. What transpired between those two girls in the cool darkness of that root cellar, may have been presented as evil from the Sunday morning pulpit, but was so natural and beautiful it couldn't have been wrong. Passion guided their hands and tongues, and it was wonderful. For the next hour Maddie and Em were eternal lovers. Every touch, every taste, every caress bound them together forever. When they finally walked out into the hot, blinding sun, they were changed forever. They were now women. Women with a secret. And while it never happened again, and there had been no other women in either of their lives, the memory never failed to make either woman smile.
Maddie was pulled back from her revelry by Bubby nudging her arm,
"It ain't cherry, but it ain't bad," Bubby said as he offered Maddie the wrinkled paper bag he had retrieved from under the seat while she was remembering she and Em as girls.
Opening the top of the bag, Maddie found a Mason jar. Opening it, her nostrils were filled with the delicious smell of strawberries. Raising the jar to her lips, she took a small sip. It was ambrosia of the gods! It was as good or maybe even better than the wine that Bubby's great granddad made all those years ago.
"Oh Bubby!" Maddie said, "This is delicious!" and took another sip.
"Yeah, we had lots of extra strawberries two years ago, so me and Gramma Em made about sixteen gallon of wine. It's just now gettin' good. But it'll sneak up on ya," Bubby warned, "It don't taste like it's got much kick, but it'll hit ya when ya ain't lookin'!"
Maddie took another long sip. The wine made a warm path inside her and all of a sudden the night didn't seem quite so cold. For the next half hour or so Maddie and Bubby chatted and laughed while they waited for the road to be cleared. Maddie, ignoring Bubby's warning, kept sipping as she and Bubby talked. Then all at once her head was swimming. Bubby had been right, it certainly did sneak up on you. Of course not eating much all day didn't help either,
Whoa, Bubby!" Maddie said, her slurring was just barely noticeable "You better take this, I think I've had enough!" With that she shoved the now empty jar back to Bubby.
After a few minutes , Maddie leveled out a little. She struggled out of her jacket and then leaned back against the passenger door and put her feet up on the seat after kicking off her Timberlands. She studied Bubby for a moment. The tall, shy boy was the subject of speculation among several women at the plant. The general consensus was that he absolutely had to be hung like a horse and a complete animal in bed. No one, as quiet and shy as Bubby, could be anything but a seething volcano of lust, when he wasn't at work.
Sudden Maddie shifted around on the seat, drawing her feet up under and shifting next to Bubby,
"I sure wish you'd let me give you money for gas. You've been so sweet haulin' my butt into work and home again all this time," Maddie said as she reached up and toyed with lock of hair that peeked out form the back of Bubby's cap.
Bubby chuckled, "Gramma Em would skin me alive if she knew I took money from you."
