Our Private Eden: A Memphis Miracle

"She's beautiful, Corey, and yes, you do look older than she does," mom said. "How'd you meet?"

I told her about my dinner that Friday evening at Conway's, a restaurant and bar named for her late father, and how she was working as a waitress serving my table, even though she had inherited the place and sold it to its current owner.

"So she's Holly Conway?" mom said.

"Holly Raymer. Her dad was Conway Raymer. He built most of the business district outside of downtown that is along the Current River on land he owned. She inherited it all and a log lodge halfway up a mountain overlooking the town and the river. Holly doesn't have to work but she just can't sit still. Worked all her life and loves to be around people, so she fills in every now and then at Conway's, and that's what she was doing that Friday night after a long, hot, difficult week when I ordered a rib-eye and a Coors. Her pickup truck was in the shop so she asked if I could give her a lift after her shift ended at 10 that night and I gave her a lift home."

I left out what happened after we got to the lodge, but mom handed the photo back to me with one eye arched knowingly. "Mmm hmm," she said.

"So is it serious?" she continued as dad joined us on the porch with a bottle of Maker's Mark and three tumblers.

"It's strongly heading that way, let's say that much," I said.

Dad poured a finger of the good Kentucky bourbon in each of the three glasses, and we lifted them together.

"To Corey being back home," dad said. And we took a sip, savoring the fiery sweetness as it went down.

"Corey was just telling us about Holly, his girlfriend from Van Buren," mom said, "and seems our boy's found somebody special. Tell us more, son."

I fidgeted a little. It's always a little tough to talk to your parents about things like this, at least for a guy, but I wasn't 13 anymore and I was confident of what I was saying. I told them that she was feisty and independent and utterly incapable of sitting around doing nothing. How her father raised her when her mom abandoned them both when she was very small, and how she had a slightly tomboyish childhood even though Conway Raymer did his very best to be both mom and dad to her. I told them that she was unable to have kids because of a childhood infection, but that she has made peace with that. And I told them that, unlike anyone else I ever met, Holly had come to dominate my waking thoughts.

"Mom, dad, you remember what Pop-Pop said at your silver wedding anniversary? About how love's not a feeling, not just passion and so forth but a state of attention?"

"I remember it very well because he had said that same thing to me not long after your mom brought me to Memphis to meet him for the first time. We had 'the talk' and he wanted to make sure my intentions were honorable," dad said.

I nodded.

"Well, that's the way it is for me with Holly. She's on my mind all the time. I am constantly thinking about what she needs, things I can or should do for her whether she asks me or not, how to make her life better," I said and took another sip of the choicest product of distillers in the Bluegrass Country.

"Because of Pop-Pop's words and because of the way I have seen both of you make those words a living example, I was confident of it, and I told Holly so. I told her that story, and I told her that I love her."

Mom began dabbing her eyes. Dad reached over from his rocking chair to hers and took her hand. I smiled.

"And she told me the same thing. She said that I was only the third man in her life she had said those words to after her grandfather and her father," I said.

"When do we get to meet Holly?" mom asked.

"Soon. We're taking a little trip together down to Hoss House's beach house just outside Gulf Shores, Alabama, and we will probably make a weekend trip here a week or two later," I said. "We're going to stop in Memphis and I'm introducing her to the Rendezvous."

"I told them about my meeting the next day with the Midwest vice president at the regional headquarters. I don't know what it's about, but I suspect it involves my next project. They've just started moving dirt on projects in Mississippi and Oklahoma and maybe they want me one of those places."

Dad asked if I wasn't getting a little tired of living out of suitcases in fleabag hotels in small towns to work in the scorching sun or freezing cold every day directing roadbed projects.

"You know, I've always enjoyed being out in the open - even in the heat - working with the guys. It's a good mix - some actual physical labor, a lot of managing workers, and a lot of engineering and science. But I'm getting a little long in the tooth for that, and since I met Holly, I can't wait to get done and get home. I've started begrudging the hours it takes me away from her."

"Oh dear, Hugh," mom said to dad. "Our little boy's got it bad."

"Mmm hmmm," dad said and took another sip of whiskey. I smiled and nodded my affirmation.

The sun dipped below the flat horizon as one of the final cicada choruses of the dying summer rose over the chill breeze.

●●●

I had three professional options moving forward: Mississippi, Oklahoma, or our regional corporate office in Kansas City or our global headquarters near Columbus, Ohio. They gave me until the first of October to make up my mind. I'd have until the first of December to relocate.

Holly knew that my time in Van Buren - at least with my current employer - was coming to an end. The entire project was to be wrapped up, dedicated and in service as a functioning federal highway by the end of 1978.

It was a known article of faith that we love each other. She felt confident in that, as did I. But she had never known a home outside Van Buren except for a few years when she was at SEMO State just a two hour drive to the east. A big decision loomed for her. For us.

All that swirled in my mind as I returned home, driving south across Missouri on a brilliant, balmy day dressed in shorts, a T-shirt and my favorite old sneakers with the top to my Mustang down, my hair blasting in all directions in the wind. By the time I pulled into the gravel driveway and parked beside Holly's F-150 behind the lodge, I had not solved any of the questions that I had when I hugged mom and dad goodbye after my second night back home and hit the road early this morning.

"Over here, Corey," came Holly's voice from a garden across the gravel drive from the rear of her house. In it grew sweet corn, tomatoes, okra, green beans and onions on about a quarter of an acre of what had been rocky soil tilled and fertilized into submission by Conway Raymer for decades and made progressively more productive the past couple of decades by his daughter. A thicket of honeysuckle that had long ago overtaken a barbed wire fence surrounding the quarter-acre garden concealed even the corn, growing in up to seven feet in height.

"Where's my beautiful girl?" I asked.

"You'll have to find me," she said with a mischievous giggle.

No sense looking among the low-slung tomato vines and the stakes that kept them from drooping as they produced fist-sized fruit. Same with the green beans and onions. That left the corn and the bushy stalks of okra.

"Hide and go-seek, huh? No fair. You had a head start because I had to drive all the way from Kansas City. Come out, come out wherever you are!"

A giggle she couldn't completely muffle from somewhere behind me. But I decided to add a little intrigue to the game and kept walking straight.

"You're getting colder... colder," she said.

"Well we can't have that, can we?"

I got to the end of a row of corn and turned to walk the other way, back into the afternoon sun now just over the tree line as shadows grew longer.

"Warmer..."

She couldn't be more than 10 yards away. I stopped in my tracks and made no sound. After a minute or two, she couldn't stand it.

"OK, you may have gotten warmer but I'm getting colder," she said.

I stifled a giggle, but not well enough.

"Come on, asshole. Didn't you ever play this game as a kid?" she said.

I was walking as she spoke, and it seemed to startle her when I appeared at the end of the row. But I was even more taken aback. There, in a corner of the field filled with clover, she had spread a tarp and put a blanket on top of it. On one corner, she had a cooler with a sixpack of beer icing inside and a picnic basket. Beside it sat Holly. Naked.

"God, I missed you," she said as I sat beside her, my shirt already discarded somewhere in the clover and my shaft already hardening in my shorts. She attacked the belt and zipper and in seconds, my shorts and underwear joined my shirt unattended in the clover.

"I missed you too, angel," I said as I kneeled facing her and our mouths joined in a lewd, hungry kiss. My hands cupped her gorgeous ass and kneaded each muscular cheek. My hardness was poking her lower abdomen, until she took it in her hand and began gently stroking it.

My right hand slipped beneath her, touching he sopping pussy from behind. My fingers slid easily along her dripping folds. I let my forefinger insinuate itself just inside her opening and swirl clockwise, stretching and teasing it in repeated 360-degree circuits.

"Forty-eight hours is long enough. I want you now," Holly growled. She reclined onto her back on the blanket and pulled me down on top of her. My mouth moved down to her neck and began a greedy, sucking assault on her taut, swollen nipples, sending her crotch into a heaving overdrive as her clit sought out contact. He slippery pussy imprinted my upper thigh with her ample arousal as the alluring smell of her rich, womanly musk filled the air.

Holly pulled my face from her chest where I had been tormenting her tits with my tongue and up to meet her face. Then she grasped my cock, swabbed it up and down her glistening slit and positioned its head against her opening.

"Now," she said, locking her heels behind my ass to push it forward as she thrust her hips upward, burying most of my length inside her. She inhaled with a hiss, savoring the feel of my bloated penis parting her labia and entering her.

There in our love nest, in a clover patch hidden from all but the heavens as the afternoon sun set and the fresh, crisp breeze cooled our hottest, wettest parts, our carnal pairing was frantic, animalistic, our moans and cries unmuffled and there for the natural world to absorb.

I supported myself with my arms so I could see as much of Holly's beautiful body as possible, consumed in wanton lust and my spike-hard prick plunging into her ravenous twat. At least that's what I could see when our tongues were not entangled in a lascivious kiss.

Our orgasms were rushing toward us fast, and we only quickened our tempo to expedite them, making up for two whole days apart. Holly's hips were straining powerfully into mine, matching my frenetic pace as I pistoned my prick into her depths.

"Cum in me Corey," she growled just as her torso began the wild spasms that signaled her climax. And I did as she commanded - as if I had a choice - emptying what seemed to be loads of hot, white semen into her convulsing vagina.

I doubt anyone down the mountain in Van Buren heard us yelp and moan as we came together, but it wouldn't surprise me if someone did. It was the most uninhibited, raw sex of my lifetime. The tremors of our al fresco orgasms coursed through us for several minutes, our genitals blissfully joined. Once it passed, we lay winded as though we had run wind sprints.

"Now that's a welcome home," I said.

She kissed me softly, looping her arms around my neck.

"Never knew I could miss someone so much. Two months ago, I couldn't imagine anyone else taking up space in my house. Now, it feels abandoned and creepy without you."

"I wanted you there with me, Holly. I love you and being apart made me aware of how much. I felt empty and so alone. That's never happened to me before. I don't like it," I said.

"So I guess this is when I ask you how the actual trip went," she said.

"Well, the most important part first: I told my parents all about you. Showed them that picture of us rafting on the Current a few weeks ago. They said you're beautiful. They asked if it was serious and I told them it is, that I love you and you love me, but they'd already pretty much figured that out. They asked when they can meet you. I told them that hopefully later this month, after we get back from the Gulf."

She nodded. Her fingers played in my hair, tousled by 300 miles of open road at an average speed of 70 miles per hour.

"I guess that's what happens: you meet the parents. Never been in a relationship that got as far as meeting the parents, getting the 'stamp of approval'," she said, using her fingers to accent the last two words with air quotes.

"That won't be an issue, honey. They'll love you for the same reasons I love you. They want the best for their boy, and that's what you are."

She kissed me again. Then she just lay there on her side, looking into my eyes and smiling.

"I love that look on you: peaceful. And I can feel the love radiating from you. It fills me," I said, barely above a whisper as my fingers brushed ringlets of her gold-auburn hair from her face only a few inches from mine. The sun was beneath the horizon now, and the sky was ablaze with shades that ranged from bright gold to saffron to lavender.

"Maybe it's because I feel like I belong," she said.

"You do."

"So tell me about the business part of the trip."

"Essentially, I have four opportunities, and all come with a raise and a promotion. Two of them would make me project boss for new contracts we have in Mississippi and Oklahoma. That puts me in charge not just of earth-moving and roadbed construction but also paving and interchanges. It would be a mostly administrative position with less work outside with the men and more in the on-site office. I'd get about 50 percent more in pay, but the hours could be unpredictable because you're dealing with lots of things you can't control like weather, accidents, workers who get sick, quit or come to work drunk - things like that."

Holly nodded.

"And the other two?"

"One would make me an executive vice president for project management in the Plains/Midwest office in Kansas City. I'd be the guy project bosses call to work out logistical problems with resources from money to equipment in up to a dozen sites across a region from Louisiana to Texas and north to the on the west to Minnesota on the east. It's mostly an office gig but I'd fly out to sites from time to time - usually out and back in a day, sometimes one overnight - to meet with project supervisors and interface with company execs to troubleshoot and keep operations smooth," I said.

"Would you have to wear a suit and tie?" Holly asked with a smirk. "I've never seen you dressed up."

"Maybe once in a blue moon, but mostly khakis and open-collar white Oxford shirts. They're not big on a lot of formal shit in Kansas City. That would raise my pay by at least 75 percent, double it within two years."

"And the fourth?" she said.

"Associate vice president for U.S. procurement based in Columbus, Ohio. That would mean wearing a suit, meeting and negotiating contracts with product vendors like U.S. Steel, major national and local cement vendors, heavy equipment giants like Caterpillar and Linkbelt," I said. "Essentially, my job there would be to do most of the work, make my boss look good and take it in the neck when things go wrong. It's a cutthroat corporate environment at the HQ in Ohio where you either kiss ass and play the game or you wash out in a few years. That would double my pay to start and triple it within three years."

"Don't do this for the money, baby. Whatever you do, wherever you go, I want you to be happy doing what you do," Holly said, a sad wistfulness in her voice.

"We," I said. "Wherever I go, I want you with me."

She smiled weakly. "That's a pretty big decision. I've lived my whole live here in these hills, along that river. I don't know... I can't imagine ever totally leaving Van Buren. My family's been in this county since before the Civil War. It's part of me. I'm part of it."

She swallowed hard and I pulled her tight to me.

"What I am going to do is whatever it takes to make us work," I said.

She was quiet as the moment passed. I held her, kissed her forehead and stroked her hair as it did.

"Sorry I'm so emotional. I just seem to get overwhelmed a lot easier. I guess that's what love does," Holly said. "I love you, Corey. I have faith in you. It's just... sometimes I have trouble having faith in myself."

"It's OK, Holly. You've got me to lean on when you're feeling shaky, and I have you."

She nodded and we kissed as the darkness crept in and began to chill our naked bodies. We kissed until she winced slightly.

"What's the matter, honey?"

"Oh nothing. Gas pain or something. Or maybe I'm just hungry. It occurs to me that I have an entire picnic dinner here we haven't touched yet, and now it's almost too dark to see what's in it."

"I'll take Holly for supper any time," I said. "You know what, let's just grab the basket and go inside, clean up and have supper on the floor in the den. Just leave our clothes here and come get them in the morning. They're not going anywhere, and nobody's going to see us."

"Your clothes. I walked out here naked in the broad daylight," she said, arching her eyebrows proudly.

She found her flip-flops, and I had never taken off my sneakers. We walked across the gravel to the back door as nude as newborns in the gathering dusk, showered together and ate the fried chicken and salad she had prepared in our bathrobes. We dozed off in each other's arms on the sofa, watching Johnny Carson make Ed McMahon guffaw.

●●●

I packed light. Holly, slightly less so.

It was finally September 15th, and the plan was to hit the road by 9 in the morning to make it to Memphis and check in to the Rivermont hotel in time to languish beside the pool and then have dinner. I had loaded everything I wanted to take - shorts mostly with a single dress shirt and a pair of khakis and another pair of blue dress pants - into a single bag. Holly had put ensembles for every evening into a very large 1950s-vintage suitcase, though I had told her that a bathing suit - sometimes, not even that - would more than suffice for our time on the beach.

The Mustang has a deceptively large trunk, and it turned out we needed every square inch of it for our getaway. I was examining my collection of cassette tapes for the long drive - everything from Willie Nelson to the Temptations to the Rolling Stones, plus a few mix tapes pulled from my collection of vinyl LPs with tracks. I was looking for one I had labeled "Road Tunes" filled with upbeat tracks suited perfect for blasting down the open road in a convertible with the top down. The first track was the extended version of "Jessica" by the Allman Brothers. I found it hidden near the bottom of my case filled with at least 60 cassettes.

"Holly, you 'bout ready, baby?"

No answer. That's strange. I walked inside and heard a noise from the bathroom, a retching, almost choking sound.

"Holly, you OK?"

She was bent over the toilet. She looked at me and waved me on. I stood outside the bathroom door - didn't want to gawk at her while she was, in our frat-house lingo, calling Earl on the great white phone. But I dared not walk away lest she encounter unforeseen difficulty. A few minutes later, I heard the commode flush, the sink water run and Holly was brushing her teeth.

"Hmm. Usually, that happens to me shortly after a night of drinking, not the next morning," I said, hoping for a chuckle but getting an eye-roll and the middle finger instead. I was the one who chuckled.