Chapter 4

“Kuy Neer, what are you doing?” Dorothy asked, amused as Kuy Neer continued to roll the scraps of cloth together.

“They are occupied, they are not whining,” Kuy Neer smiled as Nathan brought her three large sticks of wood he’d found.

Kuy Neer waited until the three children had brought her a good selection of sticks before selecting one of the branches that Nathan had found. She used her stone and smoothed out the stick.

“This is our ball,” she announced to the three children. “And this is our stick. Nathan, you are to throw the ball to Robert. Robert? You are to try to hit the ball. Tey Ogan? You are to catch the ball if Robert does not hit the ball. Then you throw the ball to Nathan and he throws the ball again. Um, Robert? When you hit the ball with the stick? You run to the tree. If you can touch the tree before Nathan can get the ball and touch you with the ball? Then you win. You can try, um, four times to hit the ball. Can we count to four?”

The three children demonstrated that they could count to four. Kuy Neer nodded in satisfaction and positioned the three children in a straight line.

“When Robert has had his four tries, then it will be Tey Ogan’s turn to try to hit the ball. Robert, you will throw the ball and Nathan you will catch the ball. Then, after Tey Ogan’s four times, she will throw the ball, Nathan will try to hit the ball, and Robert will catch the ball,” Kuy Neer instructed.

As the children played stick ball, Kuy Neer picked up one of the branches, a knotted, gnarled branch. Again, Kuy Neer dug into her deerskin bag and located a large knife. She whittled the bark from the curved piece of wood, always keeping an eye on the children.

“Robert, that was four tries,” she called out when Robert started arguing that he’d only had three tries.

“I don’t got listen to no Injun,” Robert sneered.

“You will listen to this Indian or I will march you home to your mother,” Dorothy snapped, eyes blazing angrily.

“Yes, Miss Dorothy,” Robert mumbled, dutifully chastened.

“Run, run!” both Dorothy and Kuy Neer encouraged as Tey Ogan managed to hit the ball.

Tey Ogan managed to reach the tree while Robert was scrambling to get the ball. Nathan gave his friend a hug, congratulating her. She smiled and turned to Robert. Robert was about to say something nasty, but a throat clearing from Dorothy stilled the words. He nodded in grudging acceptance that Tey Ogan had won that game and took his position as catcher behind Nathan.

“Watch,” Kuy Neer whispered to Dorothy as Tey Ogan took her position to throw the ball.

Tey Ogan made her toss of the ball a gentle arch. Nathan easily struck the ball, but sent the ball directly to Tey Ogan. She caught the ball and giggled as she easily caught Nathan, tagging him with the ball.

“But you hit the ball,” Dorothy praised her son.

“You did very good,” Kuy Neer praised.

By the time the three children had tired of throwing and hitting the ball, Kuy Neer had shaped the nineteen inch branch with her sharp knife. Dorothy looked at the chunk of wood and shrugged her shoulders; it did not look like anything she recognized.

Both ends of the branch had been rounded out. Behind the rounded ends, Kuy Neer had left a sizable flare, then the rest of the branch had been shaped to an approximately uniform girth. In the middle of the branch was a large knot, or flange. Then, past that flange the branch continued with the circumference, to the flare, and then the rounded end.

“You have a tongue,” Kuy Neer asked after they’d prepared a simple lunch for the children.

“Yes,” Dorothy blushed, but stuck out her tongue.

“No, no, from animal,” Kuy Neer smiled.

“Hmm? Oh, the beef, yes,” Dorothy agreed and found the tin.

“But Nathan will not eat this,” she said.

“Nathan will eat this; he will not know what he is eating,” Kuy Neer promised as she found a large pot.

She filled the large pot with water from the spigot and set the water onto the stove. She placed the large beef tongue into the water, making sure she did so out of Nathan’s sight.

An hour later, Kuy Neer fished the tongue out of the water. She also ladled two large scoops of the broth from the pot and put that into a smaller pot.

“You, the onion, the green pepper,” Kuy Neer said to Dorothy, quickly dicing the tongue into very small chunks.

She put a ladle of uncooked rice into the smaller pot and added tongue and diced onion and pepper. Giving the ingredients a quick stir, Kuy Neer covered the small pot.

Then, to Dorothy’s confusion, Kuy Neer took her whittled branch and dropped the branch into the large pot of broth. The cover was then placed onto the pot

Sarah again took her sweet time in fetching Robert. It was nearly time for the evening meal before the knock sounded at the front door of the home. Dorothy did determine that she would not be asking the woman to mind Nathan any time soon. Sarah Elgin seemed to be of the mind that if she gave you two pennies, you then owed her two dimes.

Kuy Neer was correct; Nathan ate every bite of the rice dish. When Kuy Neer asked him if he had liked the evening meal, he answered in the affirmative.

The following morning, Kuy Neer fished the branch out of the pot of tongue broth. She used a scrap of cloth to wipe the now darkly stained wood of the thick paste that coated the branch.

Then, as Nathan and Tey Ogan ran about in the rear garden, Kuy Neer briskly rubbed the branch with a cloth until the wood gleamed.

“This is very pretty,” Dorothy said as she gathered some vegetables from their garden.

“Tonight, you will say that our plaything is truly beautiful,” Kuy Neer giggled as she used some small tools to affix brass studs haphazardly along the length of the polished wood.

That night, the two women kissed, nude body pressed against nude body. Kuy Neer used her hand to determine that her lover was wet, was ready for her.

In the flickering lamp light, Dorothy watched as Kuy Neer held up the whittled branch. Dorothy’s beautiful eyes opened wide as Kuy Neer knelt on the bed, thighs apart, and poised one blunt end of the branch to the mouth of her slit. With a grunt and shudder, Kuy Neer slowly sank down, impaling herself on the blunt end. Her inner lips flowered open, accepting the wooden phallus.

“Ugh! Oh,” Kuy Neer moaned, eyes tightly shut as more and more of the instrument slowly pushed into her.

When she reached the flanged center, Kuy Neer rose up again onto her knees. Dorothy looked on in fascination at the end that was visible. It truly did appear that her lover, her woman lover now possessed the staff of a man protruding from her groin.

“And now, my friend, I enter you,” Kuy Neer whispered, holding onto the phallus by its flanged base.

“Yes, my friend, my heart,” Dorothy cried out as the blunt end of the branch came into contact with her wet slit.

Dorothy could feel the blunt end pressing into her. She could feel her lips flower open, could feel the lips wrap around the flared lip just pat the rounded end. That flared edge pressed into her, rasping against the sensitive walls of her womanhood.

“Ugh!” Dorothy cried out, now feeling the brass studs rasping against the walls of her womanhood.

“Ugh, oh my heart, I am in you,” Kuy Neer cried out and shuddered.

“Ugh, yes,” Dorothy cried out as nearly eight inches of warm wood was inside of her opening.

“Yes,” Kuy Neer hissed, rising up.

Dorothy watched as Kuy Neer’s inner lips pulled out, caressing the wooden instrument. Now it appeared that she, Dorothy now possessed a staff of pleasure, and was using this staff on her friend.

“Aieegh! Oh Heavenly Father!” Dorothy cried out in a thunderous wave of pleasure.

“Yes!” Kuy Neer also cried out in her own pleasure.

The two women grunted and thrust against one another, using the wooden instrument to pleasure one another. Sweat trickled freely as they grunted and pushed.

Finally, the pleasure grew too much and they winced as they gingerly parted.

“Oh my heart, my friend, what more have you to teach me?” Dorothy whispered, cuddling against Kuy Neer.

In the morning, Kuy Neer giggled as Dorothy reverently kissed the wooden instrument before placing it on the small chest at the foot of the bed. The two women kissed, then left the bedchambers to care for the children.

As Dorothy tended to breakfast, Kuy Neer went to the stables to fetch her and Tey Ogan’s belongings. She had several coins in her bag, knowing that the stable master would demand payment of each day of the week, even as she and her child had not been in the upstairs room.

She walked quickly, keeping her gaze straight ahead. Some seemed to take offense if an Indian dared to look directly at them.

The stable master was in a foul mood, reeking of the previous night’s excesses. But he did acknowledge that Kuy Neer and Tey Ogan had not been there the previous evenings.

“Tell you what, now, don’t be running your mouth, but hmm, how ’bout two dollars? Then we all squared up,” the man suggested.

Kuy Neer made a show of sighing, then nodding. She dug and dug in her bag, finally producing two coins.

She gathered the possessions, wished the man a good day, and left. Again, Kuy Neer kept her gaze straight ahead as she walked.

Safely ensconced in Dorothy’s home again, Kuy Neer let out the breath she’d been holding. She smiled and unwrapped Tey Ogan’s toys, including her ball and cup.

“Nathan, Nathan, this is mine,” Tey Ogan said excitedly.

The child showed Nathan how to get the ball into the cup. Again and again, she flicked her wrist, sending the ball up, then maneuvered to catch the ball into the wooden cup.

“The leather tie is so you do not lose the ball,” Tey Ogan explained why the ball was attached to the string. “Here. You try.”

Nathan did, frowning as he was unable to do the simple task of catching the attached ball into the cup.

“You can do it, Sweetheart,” Dorothy encouraged. “Just keep trying.”

“Here. You show me,” Nathan demanded, thrusting ball and cup at his mother.

Dorothy did try and had to admit, it was not as easy as Tey Ogan and Kuy Neer made it look. But she smiled and laughed, showing Nathan that it was fine, it was all right to fail. What was not all right, what was not fine was to give up, to quit.

“And…” Kuy Neer whispered, standing behind the two children as they laughed at Dorothy’s attempts.

Dorothy looked up and saw that Kuy Neer was holding another tree branch, quite thick, polished smooth. The rounded end looked quite blunt, quite imposing. Nathan and Tey Ogan laughed as Dorothy completely missed the cup.

Kuy Neer giggled and pursed her lips in a kiss. Dorothy shook her head, then squealed when she did manage to catch the ball into the cup.

“See, Sweetheart?” she encouraged Nathan.

Nathan again tried. Tey Ogan found her doll, a polished piece of wood dressed in scraps of buckskin. The doll was a representation of a Ridge woman, dressed in the clothing of a Ridge woman. Tey Ogan chattered with the doll while Nathan continued playing with cup and ball.

“All right, Nathan, it is Saturday,” Dorothy announced the next morning. “And what does Saturday mean?”

“No! No, don’t, I don’t need a bath, see? I don’t smell bad,” Nathan cried out.

“Nathan! Look at the dirt around that neck of yours! We could plant a tree in all that dirt,” Dorothy gently teased her son.

“But no washing my hair,” Nathan bartered.

“No washing… Nathan! We need get all them critters, all them varmints made a nest in that hair,” Dorothy fussed.

After the evening meal, Nathan watched as his mother heated some water on the stove. She filled a large washtub with cold water, then set it in the middle of the kitchen. Carefully, she added the now boiling water to the wash bin.