The Bride Wore White

Copyright by ProfessorR ©

by Prof. Richard W.

(formerly of the University of ____________)

The Bride Wore White

Te'Anne N. bustled around the hotel room, gathering up her clothing from the night before. Her slacks here, her cinnamon lace panties there. The matching bra that I had so enjoyed removing was on the floor. She tossed articles of my clothing onto a chair as she found them. I stacked another pillow behind me so that I could sit up in bed and watch.

"I'm done in the bathroom for now, so you'd better head in there, honey mannn." Teasing, Te'Anne stretched out the last two words. At once the head of the African-American History Program at my former university managed to issue a direct order and flirt. We had known each other -- not in the biblical sense -- when she was a grad student.

I was told that she had a serious boyfriend back then, but now she was divorced. So much can happen in a couple of decades! She had come to Denver for research on the role of Black entrepreneurs in the struggling years between the silver crash and World War I. A mutual friend (Barbara, the German prof) had connected me with her via e-mail when she learned that Te'Anne would be coming to Denver. By day she probed the archives with sharp eyes. By night we enjoyed conversation, dinner, and her dark eyes watched me pleasuring her.

Now she was hurrying to catch the train out to the airport. She took a moment to come over to the bed and offer a prolonged goodbye kiss -- and then snatched the covers off of me.

"Better get moving," she said. "No breakfast in bed this morning." More orders, but with a covetous smile. She backed away before I could pull her down onto my growing excitement. No matter, I thought, her smile showed that she would be back again.

From across the room, she pulled a photocopy of an old manuscript out of her messenger bag.

"I came across this while I was in the archives, and it looked like something along your lines. Staying here at the Oxford with you saved enough on the budget that I could afford ordering copies of all these pages." She plopped the manuscript down on the antique buffet.

"It's only a block to the station, but I'd better get moving." She was always about 'getting moving' I mused. And then she was out the door. She glanced over her shoulder and silently mouthed those sweet words again: "honey mannnn" and licked her lips. And then she was gone. I headed toward the shower.

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Not too long later I was dressed and down at the coffee place with the old manuscript. I sipped at the intensely hot brew and unclipped the half ream or so of one-sided copy paper sheets. For a moment it reminded me of unclipping Te'Anne's bra. I had sensed her swelling pleasure. Damn, that felt good! I turned my attention back to the document.

It turned out to be a final draft of a story, whether fiction or journalistic I could not tell. A note in archaic penmanship said that it had been turned down for publication. I have gone through it and updated the writing style somewhat and now will submit this to Literotica.

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Before she dressed, Anne looked herself over in the full-length mirror. Behind her the bed coverings were in disarray, but her tea-time trick had been an easy one. A rancher in town to see a banker had wanted to find out if Queen City's ladies were as entertaining as Wyoming friends had said. The banker had recommended Anne, showing his client her business card, a sepia-toned photo that he kept locked in a small drawer of his roll-top desk. Now she hoped that the satisfied rancher had made his train. Tucked in his pocket was one of Anne's photo cards that showcased her inviting figure.

"That was business," she mused, "now for fun." She rang for the maid and soon was in a warming bath while the maid changed the bed sheets and straightened up the room. There was time enough for a good soak before a special evening. Anne closed her eyes and could see him. Imagining his hands caressing her. They were strong hands, hands that controlled the powerful locomotives that climbed the mountains west of Queen City. She trembled as she thought of what those hands did.

Anne's next customer would be 'Johnson' Barr, a locomotive engineer. The other girls teased her about her 'special friend' when they were heading to bed with Queen City's leading businessmen, famous traveling actors, politicians, and so on. Maggie, who ran their bordello, had done everything right to make it a civic institution. Anne just smiled at the teasing. Johnson had come to her on his first visit and that experience had been different than the routine. He had been a widower for several years and before plunging deep inside he had tenderly explored every part of her 20-something body. Afterward, he confessed that he had not been sure that he would have the power to satisfy her.

"A steady hand on the right place keeps things moving," he whispered. None of her other customers had thought about satisfying her and here was a man old enough to be her vanished father sincerely concerned with her pleasure! She said nothing about that to other girls, although she suspected that Helga, the maid, knew.

Anne had taken their connection so far as hinting that she and Johnson should move west together. She offered to change her name and he could get a good reference from the Queen City & Pacific Railroad for a job in the clean air of sunny California. She remembered a cottage she had seen in Roseville, with a garden. It was easy to visualize packing a crisp, homegrown carrot with some sandwiches in his lunch pail. Maybe a cucumber.

Helga helped her out of the bath and toweled her dry. Anne's smooth skin glowed, perhaps from the warm bath, perhaps from the anticipated excitement. She wondered how much Helga knew. That was hard to find out, as English was not one of the maid's specialties.

"It goes snow," Helga offered as she fetched Anne's best robe. Anne nodded and went to the window, pulling aside curtains that had been draped for insulation as much as for privacy. Even in the luxurious purple robe she felt a cold draft around the sash. In the darkness of early evening, pedestrians appeared in the yellow circles of the new electric streetlights along Market Street, and then disappeared in side street shadows. An occasional horse-drawn carriage trotted past; an even rarer auto-mobile sputtered in the cold. Snow had been falling since lunchtime, wet, spring snow. And now, sloshing through the white stuff came Johnson.

Helga took a last-minute check around the room and then scurried out. What did her wink mean?

Downstairs, Johnson appeared to be blown in on a gust of arctic wind. That was quite a wind because he was a sturdy figure. Anne could hear Maggie hurrying to meet him.

"Good evening, Mr. Barr!" welcomed the madame. All of her girls' customers were "Mr." if they could pay.

"Helga, help him with that grizzly bear coat!" Helga was already assisting him, but Maggie liked to show who was running things.

"You have an appointment with Anne, right?"

"Yes, ma'am." Johnson moved assertively toward the stairs. He knew the way to joy.

Anne turned from the window as Johnson entered the room. For a moment her robe swayed open, and he caught a glimpse of her red curls. He had been on the road for a few days and now felt an electric surge through his loins. They embraced long and hard; his excitement growing; abruptly the spell was broken by a loud pounding from downstairs. Maggie's voice sternly admonishing. A teenage boy's voice shouting a reply.

"You know you can't come in here. Come back when you turn 16!"

"I'm here to call Mr. Barr!" He said it in an officious tone.

"He isn't here," Maggie lied.

"Then what's his bear coat hanging up over there for? Tell him to call the Extra Board!"

It was the call boy from the Queen City & Pacific office. Johnson saw the crestfallen disappointment in Anne's face. They heard Maggie asking the boy why Mr. Barr was needed. Parts of the conversation escaped the front room. There had been a snow slide up around Paradise Point. Train 1 was trapped between the slide and deep snow behind it. A skilled engineer was needed for the rescue plow.

"Mr. Richardson said for me to tell him that the company needs him now. That he can screw that whore later." Somehow that snake's sentence slithered up the stairs. Johnson felt Anne's hot tears. Angrily she pulled away from his arms.

"Go! Go! Damn the railroad!"

In the front room Helga held his coat ready. The call boy had already left.

Upstairs Anne buried her face in a pillow as other girls came to comfort her.

On the sidewalk, Johnson saw the call boy's silhouette disappearing on the right toward a row of small houses. That was the direction to Big Tony's house. He could picture the Italian maintenance foreman, surrounded by a gaggle of children, his pregnant wife doling out delicious soup with vegetables from their garden at the family table. Little Tony lived up that way, too, although rumors had it that he spent a lot of time sharing his suave, matinee idol Mexican looks with a society lady. He was an accomplished guitarist. To the railroad, he was the plow operator. The call boy was on his way to interrupt those lives, too. Johnson turned left toward the railyard.

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The green shade barely protected Jack Madison's tired eyes from the glare of the new electric light hanging over the desks in the dispatcher's office. Or perhaps, he mused, it did not protect him at all from the glare on Mr. Richardson's face. Telegrapher Madison liked it best when the telegraph sounder was silent and the Chief Dispatcher stepped out for coffee, but this was not one of those quiet times. The soft, snow globe scene outside the window masked the intense storm hitting the mountain villages above Queen City. A "frozen hell" was how the Chief described it.

In those quiet times, Jack could let his thoughts drift to Emma Watson. His fiancé was up there, working the night trick at the Paradise Point telegraph office. The dots and dashes of Morse Code were a foreign language to customers who came in to pencil out their messages, but to Emma they were a second tongue, learned by immersion as she grew up in her father's home upstairs over a lonely, desert railway station. Jack and Emma had met on the wires, held to polite exchanges with the knowledge that there were other operators on the same circuits strung out along the Queen City & Pacific.

Emma's smooth hand on the keys delivered more than dots and dishes. Before they ever met face to face, Jack knew that she was special. She told him when the wildflowers bloomed up around Paradise Point, of visits by interesting mountain folk and foreign hikers. He told her of office doings and of the vaudeville shows and of the newest thrills on the screens of the Nickelodeons. Her smooth touch on the key sent a unique thrill through him. His rapid pace told her of a city life different from her isolated existence and sent a warm feeling that whetted desires. Eventually there were code words shared and visits exchanged. Then they were engaged.

Now, he repeated her most recent message to himself. There had been a snow slide up around Paradise Point. Train 1 was trapped between the slide and deep snow behind it. Then the sounder went silent. Urgently Jack pounded out a request for more information. The apparatus remained dumb, a useless hunk of brass. The operator from Goldstrike cut in from the bottom of "the hill" as folks called the mountain grade. He had not been able to reach anyone west of his station. Somewhere in the storm above Queen City the line was down.

Jack swiveled around in his chair and noticed the reflection off of Mr. Richardson's perspiring bald head. The Chief had been fussing over a graph of train movements. With a red colored pencil, he added a new line, pretty easily Jack thought, given how few trains they ran. Nevertheless, the Chief did things by the book, as stiff as his celluloid collar. He looked up at Jack.

"Your relief will be here pretty soon." Jack knew that. "I want you to grab a portable key and lineman's gear and get on the plow train up to Paradise Point. Big Tony will be in charge." Jack's tired body groaned internally, but his thoughts turned directly to Emma. The Chief had not asked if he wanted to go; in theory the union might have backed Jack up if he had pointed out how many hours he had already worked and refused the additional hours of unfamiliar labor. But despite his aloof manner, the Chief, like everyone else in the dot-dash fraternity knew that Jack had a special reason to get to Paradise Point as soon as possible.

Jack collected his boots from the twin pools of melted snow by the door and swapped them for his office shoes. He suddenly remembered that Goldstrike needed to know what was going on. He started toward his key, but the Chief interrupted.

"I still know how to pound brass, get the hell out of here! I'll wire Goldstrike." Jack grabbed his coat and got the hell out of there.

Ahead in the swirling flakes were shadowy figures, seemingly drawn by magnetism toward the Queen City railyard. Some of the figures had oil lanterns, others brought their own picks or shovels. Word had spread that the company needed casual labor and the unemployed who were drawn to the city when work in the mountains was halted by weather wanted in on the action.

Jack found the rescue train easily. Before he even saw it he heard it hissing and sputtering. As if in a strange choir there were deeper tones, too: human voices greeted old friends, former friends, and cursed enemies. He recognized the commanding voice of Big Tony.

"It's a pirate ship crew," Jack told himself. The amusing image took his mind away from wondering what might have happened to Emma. He hoped that she was on the other side of the slide.

Incongruously, a chauffeured limousine pulled up. The driver went through the snow to open the door; men who were close and had the best angle view claimed that they had seen Little Tony's hand up the fashionable skirt as he kissed a rebellious society lover good night. Cooler heads thought the story was crazy enough to leave out the hand-in-skirt. Little Tony, dressed for a night on the town, ignored the whistles and remarks as he headed to his plow.

"It's a pirate ship with a dance card," Jack told himself. He swung onto the battered old coach at the end of the plow train.

Passengers on the "Pacific Express" and "Atlantic Express" -- Trains 1 and 2 -- were assured in newspaper ads of "Electric Lights in Every Car". Jack's voyage was to be on a creaking, wooden pirate vessel that was provided with gas lights that cast a pale, yellow glow. Some of the men were already snugged down in the worn velvet seats with assorted blankets and overcoats. Others smoked nervously and peered out at the snowscape; a tobacco haze filtered the yellow glow. For a few minutes the wind swirled, and the smell of tobacco was supplemented by the aroma of a stockyard.

There were two blasts of the engine's whistle and Jack braced himself for a lurching start. Instead, the peculiar plow train smoothly worked its way through the yard and gathered speed.

"Of course," realized Jack, "Johnson Barr is in the engineer's seat. He has a steady hand on the throttle." He made his way forward to the old dining car that Big Tony would be using as an office. It would have hot coffee, and for Jack, warm dreams.

Jack waited in line with the motley bunch for the coffee. Some of these guys, he mused, likely have not had a good cup of the dark brew in ages. Then they lined up to register for the work with Big Tony. Some of them had not had work in ages, too. He wondered about their reasons for volunteering -- for some, it was a chance to proudly put a small stack of silver on the kitchen table. For others, when the company clerk had counted out their coins, it was a chance to carouse and then fuck in Queen City's places of pleasure. For all of them, it was the adventure that they would remember, rather than the interminable winter waiting for work.

Lights flashed outside and through the blowing snow Jack could see the Goldstrike agent shivering on the station platform, coat collar turned up, waving them on. No additional orders. They were cleared to head up the mountain. Jack found a vacant table and slid into a half-broken seat. Slight ripples in the coffee from the motion of the train and the warm, moist air in the old diner reminded him of happier trips on the mail train with his employee pass to Paradise Point. He let his mind wander.

Emma Watson had caught his ear long before she caught his eye. For months after she signed on to work in her own right -- not just pinch-hitting for her father -- Jack had paid special attention when he heard the telegraph code for Paradise Point. Then the day came when she came into Queen City to open her own bank account. She had promised Jack that she would drop by the office and say hello.

Of course, given their dot-dash conversations, one thing led to another. They knew each other so well that it made sense to share supper downstairs at the Union Station Cafe between the end of Jack's shift and the near midnight departure of the Mail. Jack had noticed people at other tables eyeing his blonde companion. Emma, on the other hand, noticed other women eyeing the two of them. Now, in his dreamy state he was amused to think that they had so readily agreed that they were just colleagues talking shop.

Emma knew the mountains as well as Jack knew the city. She roamed the Indian and wildlife trails and knew where the best fields of wildflowers were exploding with colors. Jack met a few of the mountain characters who came for their newspapers and mail at Paradise Point, but often they went for hours without seeing another soul. Occasionally they ran into Ute Mary, the elderly native of the mountains who had somehow evaded the forced move of her people. She had been a sort of counselor and teacher for Emma and her eyes sparkled when she caught the two of them stretched out on a picnic blanket in a secluded grove.

So, it had not seemed odd when Emma said that Mary had told her that they should wait an extra week before his next trip up the mountain. Indians knew things that he did not, he surmised, and gave it little thought. What he now knew in hindsight was that either Emma or Mary had figured out that he was a virgin. As the train rocked back and forth on this icy night one of the other guys might have mistaken the smile that crossed his face as part of the reaction keeping his balance.

He was saving his money. He knew that Maggie's excitement-prone girls would have welcomed him with open arms, let alone the lower priced cribs. Somehow that did not seem right though. He wanted a lifetime connection. Yes, he thought he was a romantic. Little Tony had tried to teach him some things between hopping from one bed to another. Yes, he thought, Little Tony had answers for questions that he had not even been asked yet.

That warm summer night when the Mail dropped him off at the Paradise Point flag stop, Emma had an indefinable special look in her eyes. And, Jack noticed, her well-defined figure in a flirty summer skirt and blouse. Jack picked up his luggage and they stowed it in the baggage room. Emma signed off on the telegraph circuit. Her office was not staffed for twelve hours after the mail train came through. Twelve hours on, twelve hours off, better than the train crews sometimes had to work, Mr. Richardson liked to point out.

"Let's take the path up to the Point. The moon's out." Emma said that softly, but in the quiet room it almost seemed to echo. "Then you can catch some sleep."