By Air Mail Ch.04

Rosa thought she'd about explode.

Craig said, "Maybe I'm dumb enough to want to try - without all the things you said," he smiled. "Look, this is a little dumb anyway, isn't it? You two were talking about love in three directions.

He looked down at her with an open expression and she could tell that this was a straight talk moment so she turned her head a little to hear a little better.

"If she'd never met me, but she did meet you," he said, "I think that Amelia could live like that. Her own mothers, including my aunt who is like my mother are like that. Us kids have always known. If she'd never met you but she knew me, that would be fine with her too, now that I know that she wants me.

But Rosa, on the way here today, I was thinking about you as well. I'm pretty sure that if I'd never known Amelia but I met you, I'd have been more than interested. I just don't think that you'd have Amelia's patience while I got up my nerve. This... today had been then best surprise of my life for what's happened. I feel so humbled."

She tilted her head again, "Did you say humbled? I don't understand. I'd have thought that you'd feel a little proud. I know I'm not much, but Craig, two women who want you - and they each even know about the other one and like it." She poked him in the chest lightly with a smile, "That's not doing too bad, in my book."

He shook his head a little, "I'm a little afraid that I'll screw that up like I - "

She shook her head and seemed to be talking to herself in some language that he didn't understand a word of, but when she stopped she hugged him tightly before looking up at him as though she was seeing him for the first time in a new light.

Rosa held her hand up with her fingers against his lips and she was shaking her head a little, "We won't let you.

Don't you understand that we want this? Amelia and I want this with you. You need to stop thinking of yourself as a man inside of us three. In there, we're three people, Craig. Any two of us can fuck each other. With there being three - not two women and one man - any of us can fuck any other one of us. And we can all help. You liked what I did for you. I'll do even better if I can because you're worth it to me - since you're sweetly innocent enough to think that you want me.

That's what makes you such a special man to me - well aside from emotionally. Most men who REALLY like that don't want a woman at all. We're like... potted plants to them or we might as well be. I know that you could like it with another man, but Amelia and I think that mostly, you'd like a woman more, and I'm the kind of girl who can make you very happy - even if I have to use a fake dick to do it, I would and between the three of us, I'd be very proud of myself for it."

She looked away for a moment, off someplace far away over his shoulder, "But you can forget about kids with me - even if we all get that far.

You can't make kids with me. I'm not fertile. I never have been. I think that's why I never grew more than this and why I don't have much in the way of hips or tits. I've never had a period in my life, Craig. This is the way that I was since before my mother was killed, so I've been like this since I was eleven. I only grew about four more inches, filled out a tiny little bit and then I stopped."

Rosa looked down, "I don't ever get any periods, so no egg ever comes down. I never have to worry about getting knocked up - even if I found a man that I'd want that with."

She shrugged, "Another reason why I told you what I did when you asked before you left last spring. So if there's going to be any marrying between us three, it should be you and Amelia."

She brightened a little and smiled at him, "But unless you think that it'll be a problem, or you don't want me because of it, I'll be happy if you'd like to use me for target practice."

But Craig wasn't smiling. He leaned in and he kissed Rosa in several places and he kept on kissing her as he spoke, "Nothing that you've said makes me think any less of you. I just want you so stop talking yourself down. I can see why Amelia is drawn to you because I feel it too.

I know that you can do all kinds of things, Rosa - probably far better than I can. Everything that you've said just makes me want you more. What you've told me doesn't put me off. If anything, it means that I want to take care of you just like I want to do that for Amelia. I just haven't learned how to do that for either one of you yet.

But I mean to try.

Thank you again for everything that you've done in here and for before. I'm just starting to realize how special you both are."

He stared softly for a moment "And I've just made it all worse because I can see that you're about to cry. I don't know what I've said wrong, but I'm sorry. I never meant -"

She hugged him very tightly and sobbed into his ear, "You didn't. I'm just happy. It doesn't happen often."

Amelia wandered in at that point, but she'd heard Rosa's side of the conversation from outside the room so she knew what it had been about. She stood for a moment and Craig looked up and saw her there, so she just walked over and hugged Rosa as well. It finished Rosa and she bawled for a little while. Nobody moved, they just kissed her wherever they could.

When she felt better, she sniffled and whispered, "We'd better get going before they send out search teams. But I'll show you how I feel about you both as soon as I get the chance."

-----------

"Think this'll work?" Amelia asked as she drove into town slowly with Rosa sitting on Craig's lap.

He nodded, still in some happy shock, "As long as we're honest with each other."

Amelia didn't look over. She was signing what he'd said to Rosa.

When she saw it, Rosa hugged Craig and whispered loud enough for them both to hear, "You've got two girls, Craig, as long as you know that we love each other, I'll try to trust you and now I want to love you both."

"Crap," He said, "I've just thought of the first roadblock."

They looked at him, Rosa struggling a little more because of the problems of communicating equally, so she grew determined that they all sign better.

"We'll need to get Amelia a bike."

Amelia shook her head, "Oh no."

"Oh yes!" Rosa laughed, "What's wrong with that?"

"Nothing," Craig nodded with a little smile as they both ignored Amelia's protests, "But what kind should she get?"

"A Harley," Rosa said when she understood it.

"See?" Craig asked, looking a little sad, "There's our trouble now. I think she ought to get an Indian."

"I'll tell my mothers on you both!" Amelia almost shouted as she pulled up in front of the café, "They won't go for this."

"You see?" Craig asked, signing to Rosa, "It just won't work. I'm sorry."

Amelia saw it and she didn't know what to think or how to fix what she hoped wasn't really a problem.

"You're right." Rosa said out loud, "Let's ditch her."

"HEY!" Amelia squawked and Rosa almost cried with laughter.

-------

Kansas, west of Dodge City, in an airplane climbing slowly and headed west.

"How's your stomach?" Quinton asked a little later, "Any sign of the dreaded air sickness?"

Emmy shook her head, "No. I feel fine - well, for a girl with no place to go, hardly any money -"

"And plenty of reasons to want to leave where she was?" He asked and she nodded in agreement a little glumly.

He made a radio call as she looked around, still trying not to look at him.

And still failing to manage it completely in spite of herself. With his hat and that coat off, it was a little like looking at an almost completely different man - who was even more attractive and it was beginning to annoy her.

He wore a denim shirt and a pair of jeans over his cowboy boots. Those clothes where she was from might have marked him as a working man and she unconsciously zoomed her gaze in to see if it was so, since his name sure sounded a little high-dollar to her and he had an airplane and all.

The clothes were clean, though she could see that they were at about the midway point of their lives though they fit his lean frame pretty well. Her gaze narrowed to see that his sleeves were rolled up a fair bit and she could plainly see the golden hair on his arm from where she sat - and he was tanned, so she knew that he'd spent some time outside that summer.

He turned toward her once, but she saw after a second that he was trying to hang up the cardboard sheets that he used as his checklists and for just an instant, she saw that his shirt was open a little, though not far - and that he had a little hair on his chest.

It had been more the angle of the sunbeam through the windshield and the timing of it piercing the clouds for only a few seconds than anything, but in that time, Emmy saw that he was just a little furry there, and what she saw was fine and golden.

Just what she needed to see, she scowled as she turned toward the side window again. She'd never even known a man with chest hair that didn't look like there was an animal trying to crawl up out of his shirt, and the very first man that she was even close to who had that was disGUSTINGly adorable without even trying.

AND that made it worse, that he wasn't even aware of it. She wanted to groan. It wasn't supposed to be like this. Why couldn't he understand that she needed for him to be all clipped, tight speech and ignoring her - at best?

Emmy shook her head slightly, more to herself than anything. For a long time now, she'd had it in her mind that while she'd never have thought of it without Janey, she'd come to think of herself as a girl who liked other girls. So that made a very difficult thing infinitely harder to her mind. Most men didn't even look at her and the ones who did tended to look at her as some sort of other species, if they didn't just scowl at her unconsciously and the worst were the ones who cast very hungry eyes in her direction.

But Emmy-Lyn's surmisal had been at least a little incorrect. Something which was still a painfully bittersweet period to her was the short time that she'd lived with her father. And in learning how to actually have a father who really did love her as a slightly awkward parent for a role model, she'd gotten to know and understand the machinery of the human male's body a lot better and she'd found that the two genders were the same species after all. There had been nothing even remotely sexual there, but two people living in the close proximity of bare-bones poverty can make privacy a bit of a challenge sometimes.

Emmy-Lyn would never in her life find a female who had a chest thinly covered in golden hair attractive. And yet catching a glimpse of Quinton's chest hair peeking over the open neck of his shirt seemed to have something of an effect on her at a visceral level. She really couldn't understand it and it bothered her because it was distracting.

His hair was a rather light blonde and it was more than a touch on the long side, even for a place in the middle of Kansas. He had a long curl that was almost in his eyes and she could see that the rest of his hair was long enough everywhere else for him to have to push it back behind his ears a little bit. Now that he'd taken that coat of his off, she could see that it went over the collar a ways too. As he was dressed earlier, it all fit on with a man who lived outside a lot of the time and rode herd to the stockpens at Dodge City maybe twice a year to deliver cattle, though mostly, it was done by truck nowadays.

But even most of the men in town didn't keep their hair this long, she said to herself. Of course, whenever she'd seen any troops on their way to and from the army bases to the northeast, she'd seen what truly short hair looked like on men. And it didn't exactly make her want to melt.

But Quinton seemed to have a rather surprising effect on her somehow, not that he appeared to be aware of it at all.

She looked around the interior of the plane for a moment and then glanced over at Quinton, who didn't notice it.

Something didn't add up here, to her mind.

Alright, she thought that she could handle the way that he looked so good, but she didn't understand what it was about him that had the effect on her.

He was tall, broad-shouldered, narrow-waisted, now that she could see it on him, and in some need of a shave. No man that she'd ever met had made her harbor a secret desire within herself to see how it felt if she kissed a cheek like that.

And where had that notion come from? That's what was so stupid to her.

Where she was from, men like this didn't just spring up out of the weeds - well, other than those cattle wranglers every now and then. But even they didn't look this good most times and even if they did, they tended to just look through her. Compared to Quinton, there wasn't a good-looking man that she could recall even knowing or having seen in that place.

And he appeared to be supremely pleased to have made her acquaintance - AND he'd called her pretty and beautiful - one time each, she reminded herself.

Just where do they grow men like him, anyway?

She saw him begin to turn his head toward her and she began to inspect the interior of the plane again, looking out at the scenery that she could see now the moment after that. She was surprised to find that it looked quite pretty.

Then she guessed that you had to be right down there for it's natural ugliness to show through - at least where she was from, anyway.

"Whadja call me beautiful for?" she asked the window next to her quietly, more her wondering out loud than anything.

She heard him chuckle, "Well my eyes work, I guess. I'm a pilot and you gotta have good eyes to be a pilot."

His reply surprised her for a few reasons. She'd forgotten the throat microphone and hadn't realized that he'd be able to hear her spoken thoughts - which she then resolved not to speak any more of.

She began to doubt his claim, however. She'd been called a lot of things, more lately for damn sure. But nobody had ever called her that before, not ever. Not even once in her life to this point by anyone other than her father.

"I thought that you were a cowboy back there in the park." She looked around some more, wondering about the place at her feet, the upholstered seat with no back to it on the floor, and also wondering if there were any steps down into the small passageway that she saw a little farther away.

"I can't say as I've ever seen a cowboy driving a truck before - leastways one that I knew was a cowboy," she said as she looked up and swiveled her head around at the panel full of buttons up there over her head, "I sure never expected something like this."

She was trying to get it all to fit with him somehow and she was failing at it. That annoyed her as well. She'd never met a pilot before, but she sure hadn't expected a man wearing a Stetson and a duster coat that hid the cannon strapped to his leg. Which she could now see plainly.

He gave her perhaps the worst answer possible for somebody like her who was curious and still a little nervous at the same time, though it hadn't been his intent.

"Well I used to be one," he said, "Only I didn't ride in a truck. I used a horse like everybody else."

Emmy sat for maybe five minutes, a little lost in thought.

Finally, she threw up her hands with an exasperated expression.

Quinton looked over with a small smile which perhaps betrayed his humor at her gesture, "What?"

"I dunno," Emmy began, "None of this makes any sense to me.

You show up and pull me away from a really bad time back there.

Which I'm really happy about, don't get me wrong or anything.

So I looked at you and I saw a cowboy, when every day there are less and less of them, what with the trains and with trucks to haul cattle and all. And you're wearing a six-gun - which is just a mite rare to see these days out on the streets of Dodge City, Kansas, if you follow me.

So you offer to give me a ride out of my mess all the way over to Pueblo in your AIRPLANE, but oh no, we don't even take off and you offer me work, like a real job.

Which I'm also really happy about, if you put yourself in my place for a minute.

But we're flying in an airplane at the moment, Quinton - which is just a li-i-i-ittle bit out of the everyday ordinary for me, as far as transportation goes, you understand. Which -I'm also told - is to be my new workplace.

So ok."

She looked at him, "So alright.

But there's this other stuff, like I STILL don't know what your mysterious 'business' is all about. I don't know barn swallow bottoms about airplanes, but this looks pretty strange to me in here, just saying.

I'm feeling a lot better, now that I'm warming up here, sitting bare-naked inside this huge suit, but..."

Quinton was chuckling then, thoroughly entertained by her manner of speaking.

"But - what? He asked with an innocent boyish grin that made her want to throw something at him.

She heaved a sigh and decided to forge ahead. "Why is most of this thing padded in quilts?

And why do these things on this old jacket say the things that they do?

And why are you STILL wearing that gun?

Where do you come from, the moon or something? I've never seen a man like you in my life."

She wound down then, gradually speaking a little more quietly, "And I still don't know why you said that I'm beautiful. Nobody's ever said that to me. I - I mean to me. About me."

She gave her head a shake, "You know what I mean. That's a compliment, I don't ever get any." She sighed heavily, "I just know what they are."

She ground to a stop then and sat looking over at him just a little sullenly, tiny unconscious pout and all.

There was silence for a moment and then Quinton began to laugh, though Emmy could see that he was trying to force it down, so as not to upset her more.

"Which one am I supposed to answer first?" he smiled.

He watched her eyes slide over in his direction and when he saw her expression, he almost laughed again at the way that she looked over rather coolly and said, "Well, you might think about starting at the beginning, though I for sure don't want to hear about no once upon a times.

That's how fairy-tales start, but they often end suddenly with a POOF.

We're a little high up at the moment for me to entertain the thought of a poof - even if you keep a different kind of paper bag in here for that."

She looked around for a moment as far as she could see, "Are there any parachutes in here at all?"

He looked ahead for a moment to scan the sky around them, along with his instruments. It gave him the time to ride down the laughter that he felt coming to him yet again. He knew then that he liked her, if for no other reason that she could make him feel good while she was wondering about things.

"Have you ever heard of the Spanish flu?" he asked.

She nodded, "Yeah, who hasn't? I learned in school that it was really bad over in Fort Riley and Camp Funston. A lot of soldiers got sick and died."

He nodded, "Along with a lot of people all around the world. My father was a doctor. He studied medicine and learned out in Portland, Oregon. Then he decided to move east and ended up in a mining town in the mountains of Idaho for a while.

That's where he met my mother. They fell in love and got married."

He looked at her for a moment, "I hope you don't mind that I'm giving you the cut-down version of it."

She shook her head, "No. Not at all, Quinton. You go on ahead and tell it any way you want."

He nodded, "Well, they moved east to Kansas before Christmas 1917. My father began a rural practise, but it wasn't long before influenza of a really nasty sort began to go around. Flu usually hits the young, the weak, and the infirm the hardest. It makes everybody else feel like a cowpie for a while. But this one hit a lot of people in the prime of their lives and killed a good many.