May 2018
"I don't want you to go... and leave me alone out here at the farm."
"You won't be alone, Nancy. I hired Wayne Strickland to take over running the farm while I'm gone. You've got your job in town and the baby coming along. Time'll go real fast and I'll be back and we'll be better fixed."
Boyd Talbot moved his hips back, extracting himself from his wife. It was a Sunday afternoon on the Talbot farm just east of Kokomo, Indiana. He remained in place for a few more moments, spooned into his young wife's back, a hand cupping her belly, feeling for the heartbeat of the baby four months on the way. It would be a February baby. He'd be four months into his eighteen-month stint in the U.S. Army. He already knew he'd be serving that in Stuttgart, Germany.
All of this was for that baby baking in his wife's oven. They'd been married just shy of a year and the baby had been a surprise--financially sooner than they could manage, but Nancy had proved to be a firecracker in bed, so he guessed a baby was inevitable. They were both not that long out of high school, and the family farm had already come to Boyd. He couldn't think of any more he could do--any better for Nancy and the baby--than what he was doing.
He turned from her, rolled over, and sat up on the side of the bed, preparing to go shower and then to get on with it. They were doing this part of the good-bye in the afternoon, because he had to report to the Army recruitment office in Lafayette, to the west, early the next, Monday, morning, and Wayne was driving him over there after dinner tonight, so Boyd would be there on time the next morning.
"I wish there was some other way," Nancy murmured, close to tears.
"We've been over this. We're barely scraping through with the farm. Eighteen months in the Army and I can come back and join the national guard, with benefits. The GI bill--I can get some college paid for--life and health insurance, and a bit of extra cash. I'll be in the Army when the baby comes. Your health care will be covered. It's all to get us protected better, especially the health care now that the baby's coming."
"You didn't ask me before hiring on Wayne," she said, blurting out what he knew she'd been harboring. She'd been leery about the big half-breed Boyd had brought in to run the farm while he was gone.
"Someone has to take care of the fields and bring in what they can, Nancy. The Army is supposed to supplement our income, not cover it all. We're lucky I found Wayne."
"Where did you find Wayne?" she asked. "He scares me a bit. He's so big--and dark--and he glowers at me."
"He'll protect you and the farm good while I'm gone. He's just older than us and not our kind. He knows farming, though. And he'll be on the other side of the farm, in the old homestead cottage. It will be fine. You know where I met him--Charlie's Roadhouse, up Reed Street on the north end of town."
"Charlie's Roadhouse," Nancy said, with disdain. "You know I don't like you going there. I've heard stories about that place. I don't like what I've heard about what goes on at that place."
"Don't believe everything you hear about anything, Nance," he said. That was one road he didn't want to go down with Nancy. "You need to just not fret about everything you hear about anything. Just stick to what we got here--bringing in the baby and making a life for us here on the farm. We're lucky we've got this at our age. This Army stint will make it better."
"Well, I wish you didn't have to bring in a man--a man I don't know--to work the farm--and I don't like what I hear about Charlie's Roadhouse."
"Well, I won't be going there for nearly two years now. It probably won't even be in business when I get back. The good thing is that it's where I found the guy who is going to keep this farm going while I'm gone. That'll free you for your job at the Dollar Store in Kokomo until the baby comes, and then you'll have your hands full. You won't want to have to do any worrying about running this farm. You'll be perfectly safe with him over on the other side of the farm. Trust me on this. And, speaking of Wayne, I'll have to shower and go over to his place and go over a few things about the farm before I'm gone."
He stood up from the bed, but Nancy grabbed his wrist. "Again, Boyd. You're still hard. I can see that. Again before you go."
"Geez, Nance, enough... didn't we--?"
"Never enough, babe. And it will be eighteen months. God, I'm gonna miss you."
With a sigh, Boyd turned to the bed, grasped Nancy by the ankles, and pulled her toward him, spreading and bending her legs as he did. She giggled, putting a pillow under the small of her back as he pulled her to him.
"Oh, yes, baby, baby," she cried out as, crouched over her between her spread thighs, he entered her, as gently as he could, and began to slowly pump. The doctor had said sex would be fine even beyond this time as long as they didn't do anything athletic. Of the two of them, it had been Nancy who was the more aggressive and insatiable with sex. She had been Boyd's steady all through Kokomo High School, where he was the football quarterback, she the head cheerleader, and the two of them Kind and Queen of Homecoming in 2017. It had been Boyd who had lost his virginity on the night of the senior prom, not Nancy.