Travelogue

It wasn't long before Lila appeared to rescue me ("Oh, you're here!"). After making sure I'd made the acquaintance of the males, she led me away to a short tour of the inside of the house and of the ranch itself. She really did mean to show me everything, but it wasn't hard to sense that Lila had something else on her mind. And when she showed me her room in the ranch house, it was pretty clear that she'd had a strong urge to push her lips into mine, and for our tongues to slide together. I didn't mind; I was having the same urge, and more.

Lila smelled so good. It's hard to describe the euphoria of sitting on her bed in her room and kissing her; I remember stroking her soft, long hair, and how she touched my face, and how passionate we both felt. I recall the smell of cinnamon and flowers, and how her scent seemed to absolutely fill my soul at that moment.

But that moment was interrupted.

At first, it was just a faint noise, a crying, a slight annoyance. It got louder, though, and soon enough, it was a constant shriek that filled the whole house.

"Goddammit," whispered Lila. She got up and left the room.

For a few seconds I just sat there on her bed, absent-mindedly scanning the book titles on her shelf ("Roads to Santiago", "Spain from a Backpack", "Le Road Trip: A Traveler's Journal of Love and France"). I was musing about how the books looked like old library copies when I realized that she might be more than a minute, and that I should probably go keep her company. I stood up and went to the hallway.

Lila was way down at the end of the hall, heading into a room. That day, she was wearing a nice dress, similar to the one she'd worn the day before: light blue, pretty. I noticed her chest, her boobs, as she turned: they seemed especially pronounced, proud. I could see points poking out right where I thought her nipples might be. I took an excited breath at that moment. I remember wondering if it was actually the same dress as yesterday or not (it was not).

There weren't many infants in the family, but I didn't really know the difference between an infant's cry and a toddler's. There were a fair number of toddlers running around (mainly the sons and daughters of Judith and Eliza and some cousins), so I wasn't going to be any help at all.

It didn't matter: Lila had known where to look. When I got to the room, there was baby Zack, in a small crib wearing only a diaper, laying on his back, screaming.

Lila was bent over the little crib, gently stroking his face, her frustration having melted. "Aww," she purred. She picked up Zack and sat down on the bed with him on her lap.

I was standing at the doorway.

Lila leaned down and kissed Zack's forehead. He kept screaming.

Then, suddenly, I felt like I was on another planet.

Lila was fingering a big blue button on her dress, right around where her collar bone would be. When it came undone, I saw the front of her dress loosen. She undid the button on the other side, too. Then, I watched Lila pull the whole front of her dress down, baring her bra. She fumbled with a clasp between the bra cups, and then her bra burst open.

Shock coursed through me: I was looking at Lila's plump, pale breasts. I couldn't help but gasp quietly.

Immediately, the thought flashed: I should leave, go back to her room, give her privacy for whatever she was doing. But I felt frozen, too dumbfounded to move.

Full instinct had kicked in: I was gawking at her bare chest. Her nipples had my attention first, dark pink, long, and knotty. I took another breath. Her breasts were not gigantic, but were certainly big, with a wonderful oval shape; they stood away from her frame dramatically, seeming to almost float in front of her.

Lila was looking down at her chest, attentively. She cupped one of her breasts from beneath and squeezed a little, then leaned down toward Zack, cradling him with her other arm, gently lifting him to her chest. He was still crying. Her nipple was pointing at his mouth like a soft pink dart. She rubbed the nipple around his lips until he fastened his mouth around the end of her breast. Just like that, the screaming had stopped.

I heard Lila exhale, softly.

There was absolute silence in the room, save for some slight creaks from the bed as Lila shifted a little.

I watched, frozen in place. Lila was stroking the top of her breast with a couple of fingers, and then she massaged it a little, and then she went back to stroking again. After a minute of this, she let out a long, audible sigh, and now her hand cupped her breast from underneath, holding it firmly to the baby's mouth. She sat up straighter. The bed creaked again.

Me, I was in complete shock. I wasn't sure what I was seeing, and if I understood it at all, I didn't know whether I was aroused by her bare breasts, or just stunned. She was sitting there, half-naked, looking somewhat as I might have imagined her (the top part, anyway). Lila looked beautiful, in a most natural, pure way; her face held a gentle, beatific smile as she gazed at Zack, and what I could see of her body—her chest, I mean—was hypnotically attractive. Tiny creases had formed in her lovely, flat belly as she leaned slightly over the baby. I just stood there, gaping.

After another minute, Lila looked up at me. She gave me an angelic grin, but didn't say a word. My eyes went back to her boobs, the one that Zack had his mouth on, and the other one that was bare, and I wasn't pretending not to stare. I didn't dare say anything. Lila didn't seem bothered by my reaction, and she didn't seem self-conscious at all. When I looked to her eyes again, she held my gaze.

Then, a voice: "You got this handled, Lila Ann?" It was Esther. She bustled into the room, right past me. I realized with a start that she was topless. She had on a long gray skirt, nothing more. Her breasts were big, bulbous things with gigantic, beet-red nipples.

Lila looked up at her. "Yeah."

Esther glanced at me, then at Lila. "Maybe. I dunno. I'd better take over." She leaned over Lila, who gently pulled her nipple out of Zack's mouth. Lila passed him over to Esther; Zack fussed. The end of Lila's breast was now shiny wet, and had turned a deep, angry maroon. Her nipple had grown visibly longer.

Esther sat down on the bed and fed one of her giant nipples to Zack, who swallowed it urgently. Esther closed her eyes and sighed.

Lila had found a rag and was wiping her breast. Then she refastened her bra and pulled the front of her dress back up, rebuttoning. "Jeez, Esther, he was crying his fool head off."

I was looking at Esther. She had a beautiful body. She had much bigger breasts than Lila, like I said, but she was fairly thin, and looked surprisingly sexy for a mother nursing a baby. Esther's figure somehow seemed more mature than Lila's, a little more womanly, her curves slightly more filled out and dramatic. Esther took a breath and let it out slowly; she glanced down at Zack for a second, and then back up at Lila.

"Listen," Esther started. "I was out back talking to Judy and the men. I should've been here taking care of him. I feel bad." Then she smiled. "I always like it when you nurse him. Judy was just ... oh, it don't matter." She paused. "And you know he probably would've kept on crying if you weren't enough for him."

Esther, holding the baby with one arm, was brushing her long blonde hair out of her face with her other hand. Her free breast jiggled slightly. I noticed a dark shadow under Esther's arm, and realized that there was a thick brown mat of hair in her armpit.

Esther was looking at me: "Well, you must be bored out of your mind. Nothin' more exciting in the world than a couple of girls minding a baby!"

I grinned, awkwardly, and managed, "It's OK."

Lila was smiling at me, knowingly.

—

The family grilled that evening, barbecued chicken breasts, and Lila and I didn't get a chance to spend any more time alone together. At the time I wasn't sure if that was intentional—had something changed between us, for the worse, that quickly?—but it really was just how the day went, and nothing ominous. My paranoia knows no bounds, sometimes.

After the chicken, a couple of the husbands brought out the ice cream (vanilla), which they'd finished churning. I helped scoop and serve it, so I didn't get to taste it until everyone else was already well into their bowls. It was really, really good; I'd never had (plain vanilla!) ice cream that good, and this includes the local ice cream shop in "downtown" Watley that my parents had become fans of. I savored it, and wondered if there was any chance that the milk for the ice cream had come from Esther's enormous breasts. Weird thought, I know, but I felt like I'd been around enough of her breastmilk in the past two days that it was a reasonable thing to wonder about. Whatever it was made of, it was delicious.

For a while in the early afternoon, right when it had started to get really hot, Lila had disappeared. I was caught up in a conversation about fishing with her brother-in-law Samuel (Eliza's husband; he was a lanky cowboy type with a mustache). I'd noticed she was gone, but I hadn't had time to wonder about it much. I was busy telling Sam about my adventures catching walleye out near Decatur Dam. When Lila reappeared, she'd changed her clothes. Now she was wearing a shorter-sleeved, lighter blouse ("shorter" meaning that the sleeves ran only to her elbows), and a shorter skirt (scandalous!). It wasn't really a short skirt, by the way—it settled just below her shins—but I hadn't seen her legs before, so it was almost as if she was half-naked again. Seriously, I was excited when she sat down on the bench next to me, and I started sneaking looks at what I could see of her legs.

One thing I wondered: did she shave? I mean, Esther obviously didn't; her underarm hair was dark, thick, and almost bushy, like a man's, and it might've been kind of disgusting if Esther herself wasn't so pretty. I took a couple of good glances at Lila's legs, but couldn't tell for sure. From my vantage point, her legs seemed smooth enough—if she had leg hair, it wasn't dark or course—and I liked their shape (what I could see of it, that is). I kept glancing at them, and I'm pretty sure Lila knew I was doing it. It was suddenly obvious to me why, in olden times, if a woman showed any skin at all, it had been taboo, an erotic thrill.

—

By about 10 PM, Lila's mom and dad had both gone to bed, and Judith was putting her son to bed, and Eliza was saying she was heading home with her husband and their daughter (Shirley, the little girl I'd first met).

Esther was putting her baby to bed at the ranch, too (no sign of a husband). She had stayed topless the whole day, and no one—not even the men—seemed to notice it much. I tried to play along, but it was hard not to sneak looks at her; her tits were so big and powerful. It blew me away that none of the other guys were staring, or even paying attention. How could bare tits—especially tits so large and raffish—ever become uninteresting?

I had been looking a lot at Lila, too, but I didn't try to hide that. We had sat together, next to Sam, for a lot of the afternoon, and so she and I did get a chance to talk and even snuggle a little.

Obviously, what had happened earlier that day was still on my mind. I kept thinking: had it changed the way I saw Lila? I wasn't even sure what I'd seen! Lila was 18 years old and I was pretty sure she didn't have any babies, so I knew she couldn't really have been breastfeeding that baby Zack—not actually feeding him, I mean. She was just pacifying him with her nipple. Right? That seemed bizarre enough, though.

There was also just the general weirdness of a girl my age (one I barely knew, really) being so casual about opening her top in front of me and putting her baby nephew to her breast. Maybe this was just a normal thing here, with all the big families. (I'm an only child, so just being around a giant family like this was an adjustment.) When Esther came in, she hadn't seemed fazed by the fact that I was staring at her half-naked sister. Then again, Esther herself was only wearing a skirt, and the fact that I was seeing her half-naked as well was apparently inconsequential.

The thing was, Lila and I had exchanged those looks, even long gazes, while she was nursing (or pacifying or whatever you called it). And there had been a sexual charge in the air when we were looking at each other. Maybe everyone else in this family didn't care who was around half-naked women, but I was pretty sure that Lila knew how it had affected me. Her gaze had been an intimate one, and she'd been as thrilled in that moment as I had been; she had been excited for the excuse to bare herself in front of me, I was sure of it.

For a few minutes that afternoon, I had entertained the idea that Zack was actually Lila's baby. It would explain why she felt so free to put him to her breast, and made sense of why she'd do it: if she'd given birth to him, she would be able to give him milk. But then why would Esther be able to walk in and breastfeed Zack, too? She didn't seem to have any other kids of her own. And would Lila really keep it a secret? Besides, I'd noticed light stretch marks on Esther's bare stomach, and there was nothing like that on Lila. No, Lila was just using her nipple to calm the baby down, however strange that may have seemed. Esther was Zack's mother.

That day, I'd also started to really think about how odd it was that all these women were wearing longish dresses on a hot July afternoon. None of them seemed to be sweaty or uncomfortable, but it was still sort of remarkable. The women seemed to drink a lot of water—Lila and Esther in particular always seemed to have a glass in their hands—but it didn't seem like it would be enough to cool them down much. I wondered why they all dressed like this. The dresses (or skirts and blouses in some cases) weren't alike enough to be any kind of religious uniform; Lila and her family weren't Amish or anything. All the other women from the town dressed like that, too—dresses long enough to go below their shins and even lower, sleeves that covered half of their arms, no exposed shoulders or back. I figured it had to be some kind of religious modesty or something, a kind of custom local to the town and the area.

I'd also noticed that the women didn't wear jewelry—no rings, no earrings, no necklaces. This realization came one of the umpteen times I was checking out Lila and her body; she wasn't wearing a necklace, and I think most girls do, don't they? So then I looked to her ears, and nothing there either. After that, I did stealth checks of her sisters, mother, even the little girls, and nothing. I didn't think they even had their ears pierced. This wasn't crazy, but it sure was different from what I was used to. My mom can't go three steps without a couple of rings on.

—

Anyway, it was getting late, and since lots of the family had already headed home or to bed, I figured it was probably time for me to walk back to my house. I said as much, and Lila said she wanted to see me to the gate.

I was glad! Even though she had spent the whole day talking with me, sitting with me, I was still not sure she was going to try to be alone with me again. I was anxious, partly because this was all new, Lila and me. And part of my anxiety came from not knowing what it meant that I had been witness to her disrobing and, well, attending to her nephew with her breast.

I'd wanted to ask her about that, what it was that I had seen her doing, but I really had no idea how to bring it up. Up until this point, I really hadn't had the chance. After Lila had buttoned up her dress, we'd gone outside and the rest of the day had happened, the two of us socializing with her family, with no more said about what she'd done.

But now I was too nervous to ask her anything about it. We were alone, walking down the long front walk in nothing but moonlight, the crickets serenading us. Her hand brushed mine, and then her finger hooked onto one of my fingers, and then we were holding hands. It felt nice. Who would want to ruin a simple, intimate moment like that?

We walked slowly, but we eventually reached the gate anyway. The two of us stood there facing each other, and she smiled at me, her face close to mine.

"Thanks for coming over," she said.

"Thanks for letting me come over," I said, emphatically. "Your family is pretty awesome."

"They're a pain sometimes," she grinned, her Southern accent especially apparent right then. "But I love 'em."

Again I felt the urge to ask her about what she'd done in front of me, earlier, and again I chickened out.

Then she said: "Wanna come over tomorrow?"

I almost laughed in surprise and delight. "Sure," I said.

Before I could ask what she had in mind, she said, "We can maybe go on a long walk. I can pack us some snacks or something."

"OK," I said, simply. "Yeah, that sounds really good."

She smiled at me again and just looked into my eyes. "Maybe about 9?"

"Hmm?"

"Can you come over at 9 AM, I mean?"

"Oh! Yeah, I can be here."

She nodded and we kept gazing at each other.

Finally, I started to lean my face into hers, and she leaned toward me, too, and we were kissing. I felt her lips open, her tongue sliding softly in my mouth, and mine sliding into hers. It was wonderful. We were holding each other, hugging tightly, and I could feel the curves of her body as she pressed into me. I was very aware of the soft, warm pressure of her breasts against my chest. For a moment, I thought I could feel a firm pointiness—her nipples?—pushing into me, but I might've been imagining it.

"See you tomorrow!" she called to me as I wandered away on the dark road.

—

When I showed up at the ranch that next morning, it was chaos. There were kids running around the front, women working and chatting, cats and dogs chasing each other, lots of noise. A couple of the men were digging what looked like fence post holes.

Lila was nowhere to be seen. I smiled and waved at a couple of Lila's sisters (Esther and Judith), who waved enthusiastically and said hello. Lila's dad, hard at work (digging), grunted and waved, too. I noted that Esther was fully clothed today.

The ranch wasn't really the kind of place where you'd bother to go up to the front door and knock, especially with so many people out front anyway. So I just kind of stood around and watched the kids play (Tag?) and figured that Lila would show herself eventually.

One of the boys, Joshua (about five) was apparently "It" and was chasing his (mostly girl) cousins all over the yard. One of the girls ran out the front gate, right past the place where Lila and I had been kissing just the night before, and one of the moms yelled, "Not out the front! Stay in the yard!" It was a frantic game. The girls—Shirley in particular—were faster than Joshua, even though they were younger. Joshua was chasing Shirley with absolute determination, and as he started to lose her, he made a desperate leap and caught her heel with his hand.

Shirley went down hard. I gasped, startled, suddenly scared for her. Joshua sat on his knees, staring. Shirley just laid there for a second, and then started howling loudly in a cry that rivaled her baby cousin Zack. Of course, this attracted the attention of the women, and even the men (although the men did little more than grunt and look). The women had started over to see if Shirley was all right, but then Lila appeared out of nowhere, running to Shirley and cradling her. She was speaking quietly, and then Shirley was getting up. Lila led her by the hand toward the house.

I had also started over to where Shirley had fallen, and so Lila suddenly noticed me. "Heyyy, Billy!" she said, almost as if nothing had happened to the little girl. "Come on in with us."