The Shooting at Our Merciful Lord

I wanted to talk to her now, alone, privately, about private things. I wanted to talk about marriage and family and futures. Suddenly I wanted to have all those conversations that lovers need to have before marriage: religion, children, homes, goals, love, life. Life was full of the potential of happiness, the potential of family, the potential of sex, the potential of someone wanting me. Someone wanting ME. We needed to talk, and it felt urgent.

I pulled my chair closer to Maria's. Just then, some master of ceremonies turned down the lights and started to talk. They had a spotlight. He pointed out the oldest present, the ones who travelled farthest, the youngest, and so on. The light found each one. I paid no attention, but then I had to look up.

"Yes, we have the Saviour of Merciful Lord Hospital, John Buck. Stand up, John." A spotlight (when did they start having a spotlight at a wedding reception?) shone on me and Maria, she being much worthier of people's attention. But they had found me, and so I stood and waved as they all clapped, and I sat. I whispered to Maria, as the clapping died out and the mc went on, "Loving you is hard sometimes."

She laughed and said, "I think it was my dad."

I said, "You owe me, Grey. It's lucky you're the most beautiful woman in the room."

She looked at me intently, deeply. I looked into her eyes. Deep, dark blue. She leaned against me in the dark hall, and pushed her arm into my hardening sex. She kept it there until the spotlight went off and the lights went up, and I wondered if I'd have to walk around in the next few moments. I mellowed without incident.

I liked the looks we received from various relatives and friends of hers. I assumed many of these people had noticed her cloistering and welcomed this change. She was probably the subject of years of family concern and talk. She sat with me, leaned into me, slowly turned her head and looked at me, and kissed my lips. It felt right, gentle, sexy. Every kiss with her did.

"Someday, when you're ready, when all is right, I want you to ask me to marry you," she said quietly, or as quietly as you can at a noisy gathering.

"Very good to hear," I replied, my lips brushing her ear. "I don't want to ask that question without knowing the answer ahead of time."

The DJ started playing songs, and I asked her to dance. She put her arms around my neck, and we danced poorly but close together on the slow songs. We rested on fast ones, but I think her parents liked seeing us so close together, so openly loving, so much a pair. When it was almost over, dancing and hardly moving, she and I kissed gently on the dance floor. I took her hand and told her parents we would go straight home. Her father nodded after initially hesitating, as if he wondered why I was bringing her home this night. Maria went to the restroom then, and I stood with her father.

"I love Maria."

"I can see. Her mother and I are pleased. And I think she wants to marry you, John."

"I think she's much stronger now than when we first met."

He nodded. He put his hand on my shoulder. "She is special, and meeting you has been a blessing. Are you ready to propose?"

"I wanted a year. A year after divorce. A year knowing her. Yes. It'll be soon. She means so much to me." My sentences were short, a staccato.

Her father said, "We should meet your parents. Grill out next Sunday afternoon, our house?"

I nodded. Maria and her mother returned, and we left holding hands.

I asked her to a classy restaurant near Dayton for Friday evening. I made reservations and asked her to dress nicely.

She did, and I wore a suit. It was early September now, not quite autumn. I made a point of touching her when I saw her. I held her hand, touched her arm, held her chair and let my hand linger on her neck and shoulder. She shivered at that, leaned her head to my hand until her cheek touched it. I whispered in her ear, "You're gorgeous. I can't look away." I wasn't alone in appreciating her appearance, but I didn't want to mention others on this night.

The light was soft. I was glad. The table was small, with a candle. I held her left hand in my right as I spoke to her.

"Maria, I have never been so in love."

She said, "I wouldn't want to be anywhere else, with anyone else. I don't care where I am as long as it's with you."

I felt each finger. I spoke softly when I reached her ring finger. "I love you, too. I hope you'lll always love me. I'm new to being loved. I hope you'll say yes." I pulled the ring from my pocket, still in its box. I released her hand and opened the box.

I spoke softly, sure that only she could hear. "Please marry me?" I turned the box so she could see it.

"Yes, yes," she almost whispered, looking first at the ring but then at my eyes. "I promise to love you. I'm so overwhelmed that you love me." I took the ring and slipped it on her left ring finger, so thin, delicate. She inhaled at the act in the moment.

I smiled and held her hand. Her eyes were bright, wide, shining in the flicker of the candle flame, dark blue.

"John," she said, as if reciting something she had practiced, "since that first moment we spoke, I've wanted you to love me. I never thought it'd happen for me. I thought love and marriage and family had passed me by. No man... was okay." She cried gently for a moment. We sipped wine. I held her ring hand, happy the ring seemed to fit.

Some people at two other tables saw her tears, the ring box, her left hand in mine with a diamond ring, recognized our moment, and smiled.

It was a sweet and loving evening. The service was excellent, the food was terrific. The woman with me was lovely and rare, willing to commit herself to me for life. We left the restaurant around nine, arm in arm. She rested her cheek on my arm occasionally.

"Do you have more planned for this evening?" she asked.

"Yes, and no. But we need to talk, so I'd like to stop soon at a place I know, where you and I can discuss all the things engaged couples should discuss." We found that place just outside of Sky Grey, a preserved water wilderness that was not buggy in mid-September.

"If we go somewhere, would your parents object or be disappointed?" I asked.

"No. It's our decision."

She called her parents and said they shouldn't worry, she would be late. Her father said, "We love you and completely understand. Are you engaged?"

"Yes!"

Her mother said, "I'm so happy for you. Come home safe tomorrow morning, honey."

We parked. I pulled a bag out of the backseat, which Maria looked at. "I thought it might get cold-a blanket and quilt." We walked in the cooling evening breeze. I held her hand. It was almost completely dark. We were alone. In the far distance we heard the highway, but we saw only a distant glow. We sat on a park bench, looking out at a wetland glistening in moonlight. She slumped against me, my arms around her and hers on mine.

I whispered in her ear. "Maria, I want you so much. We have not talked of sex..." My hands found her small breasts, caressing, fondling gently.

"I've been afraid of sex," she said, turning her head and kissing me easily. "I've avoided it. Only with you have I been able to imagine enjoying hands on me. Your lips, your sex." She was breathing hard. "I want it. I even think I need it, but I want it right. I'm thirty, a virgin, because of... but still a virgin. I know how unusual that is. It's time, John. I want you, I want you in me, against me. I love you, I trust you're sincere. I've never trusted anyone else like this. Certainly no man."

I held her little body against me, and we sat on a park bench looking at the moon and stars lighting the area, glistening on still waters.

She put her hand on me, her small hand on my growing shaft in my clothes, and I kissed her upraised lips. She smiled, squeezing me through my pants. I felt her hand, and I kissed the side of her neck as I fondled her breast. She sighed. That was a moment.

"I know a place..." I said, waving to a path barely discernible through the trees and undergrowth, away from the maintained one.

She said, surprised, "Outside?" She smiled. "Let's go." I was surprised at the husk in her voice. I kissed her again, harder, her hand sliding up and down me, my fingers tickling her. I stood, holding her one hand as she rose beside me.

I nodded. "There's a spot..." We walked down that path, holding hands in our good clothes, she in low heels and a dress, level for a while and then up to a knoll. It was grassy, soft, and overlooked the waters. There was just a small breeze, chilling. I spread the quilt with Maria. Her eyes were shining, looking down at the quilt and up at the stars, and at the wetlands down the slope.

"Perfect," she said.

I was behind her. I reached around and squeezed her small breasts. She sighed and leaned back into me. I unzipped her dress, slowly, pushed the shoulder straps aside and let the garment drop to the quilt. I unclasped her bra and slid the straps down those wonderful arms. I touched her tits, so small, with large, pointed, hard nipples, and she shivered. Her hands were behind her back, down my pants, and she found my dick. She turned her head so that our lips were close, and she whispered, "You're big."

I kissed her hard, very hard, and she whimpered and her hands moved on me. I turned her then, found the sides of her panties and pulled them down, and I saw her naked for the first time. Her bush was full and dark, and I helped her push my trousers and underwear down. I put all of our clothes together in a pile. I was naked, my dick sticking in her stomach, her hands up and down it. She knelt on the quilt, and I sat beside her, kissing her neck and shoulder

"I'm going to make love to you soon," I said.

She looked at me, lay back on the quilt, and spread her legs.

"Please?"

I lifted her legs and put my tongue in that soft slit, licking and flicking left and right and up and down. She made sounds like groans and sighs and spoke ever so softly, as if it didn't matter if I heard her. "Yes, yes, lick, eat me, again, do that over, eat me yes!" I pushed my nose and mouth into her vulva, found her hole with my tongue and she inhaled. I ran my tongue up her slit to her clit, flicked it as she writhed, sucked it and I think she had an orgasm, but it went on, through the writhing and squeals. I pushed her up the quilt then, her head now on the folded blanket, and I said, "I love your body."

Her eyes showed desire, and a little fear. "John, I want you in me. No man has ever done this to me. Go slow but go in. In me." Go in me seemed to be important words for her, as if she had wanted to say them, thought them, awaited them.

Kneeling between her legs, I put myself near her entrance. I put my left hand on her right thigh and she spread herself even wider. It is an image always vivid in my memory, her nude and those legs so widely spread in that soft, ethereal glow of stars and moon. I pushed, the head of my cock was embraced by her lips, and then it was engulfed. She gasped, said, "You are so much! I didn't know..." I waited, pushed a little more in, and she started to writhe. Then she said, "More, John." I pushed in until she gasped and I had no more to push in. She moved, like an eel, around my inserted cock as if it was an axis. She said, "I didn't know it would be like this. I'm full. You're in me so far." She opened her eyes, looked in mine, and said, "As hard as you want. I love this. Love you."

I moved then, slowly as she still writhed, then harder as she went from wide spread to knees bent to knees together. I thrust in her, she grunted, I slowed, I scissored her legs and rammed her on her side.

She was quietly vocal. "I'm so full of you."

Then she looked at me as we were in the missionary position, and she said, "Cum in me. I want it."

"You could get pregnant, you know," I warned quietly with my lips near her ear.

"No, not now. Please, I want to feel it."

I plunged into this little woman, with her grunting at each hard thrust, and then I felt my swelling member in her and semen spurting from me. She said, "Yes, baby, I feel it in me, I feel it coming." I stiffened up with one more thrust and was empty. I lay still half on her, kissing her chest, her lips, her shoulder, as the warm exhaustion passed through me. Her arm was around my shoulders, the other hand on my stomach. As we rested, we unfolded the second blanket and covered ourselves in the cool breeze, looking up at the universe. The sky was bright with as many stars as Ohio allows view.

I slept for a while then, or just dreamed, loving the feel of her head on my arm and her body touching mine. Perhaps she slept, but it wasn't for long. I wondered for some minutes if she were awake, too, feeling her every breath. Past midnight, I felt her lips on my soft dick, a feeling like no other, and she sucked and licked me to hardness. She climbed on it then, facing me in the slim light, a limn about her as if she were ethereal, and I saw her face screw up as she screwed me into her. When she leaned forward, I reached up and lightly pinched those wonderful pointed nipples and she seemed to like it when I rubbed them with my thumbs. For a moment, I sat up, took her pointed nipple in my mouth and she clasped me to her chest, hard. "Oh, I think I'm going to cum!" she said, and then several light spasms passed through her body, seeming to last some time.

"John, I feel so loved," she said. I started to move, shoving up into her little self, lifting her higher with each harder thrust, hearing her "oh" repeated each time, until she said, "You are swelling, I feel it getting bigger," and as I spurted she said as if to herself, "Oh my God, yes!"

Then this little woman rested with me as I shrank inside her vagina. Her head was on my chest, a small smile on her lips. Perhaps an hour later we were awake, cuddled together against the sharp air, looking up at a brightly spangled night sky. She whispered, "It was perfect, John."

It was a few minutes later I stood and looked down at her beautiful self. I shook my head and said to her, "Before I die, I will kiss your every freckle." She laughed.

"You can't even see them in this light, but I look forward to it."

Then we dressed, brushed the leaves and twigs from us as best we could, and returned to the car. I drove her home, walked with her to her door, kissed her, and let her enter alone to see her parents, to show her ring, and possibly to discuss our new relationship. She said later that they were shocked she was home by three in the morning. They'd assumed we'd gone to a motel.

Maria said she just smiled, shook her head, and said, "Better." Some things were too important for sharing, or didn't deserve to be.

I called my parents next morning, told them I had proposed and Maria'd accepted. Mom squealed; I wondered if she was jumping up and down. Dad just harrumphed and said, "Good. Good." I couldn't remember how they'd acted when I'd proposed to Karen Ann.

I stopped by to drive them to the picnic the next morning. When we arrived, I introduced Mom and Dad to the Greys and the smiles seemed genuine. Mom and Dad hugged Maria and exclaimed over the ring, and I thought Mom had found some sort of soulmate in my wife-to-be. Perhaps she had.

The Greys and the Bucks were easy talkers. There seemed to be friendship and interest, the Reds, the town, the history, us, everything. Mr. Grey burned the hamburgers. The wine was good. It was a gentle and friendly picnic.

*

I sent a text to Karen Ann, proposing that she keep the house as she seemed settled in it, and that if she ever sold it I would expect half of the equity as of the date of the divorce, which at modern rates would have been $5,000. It was not insignificant, but I didn't like the feeling that I was pressuring her and she didn't have the means to move without using her children's money. The kids needed a home and a future. The divorce had made our marriage a deadweight for her. I had moved on.

She replied three days later that she had spoken to her lawyer and I should soon receive some papers to sign. Two days later, they did and I did.

*

We set a date for the wedding in March. It allowed me to settle into my new situation at work, which was growing with my office. I had now two assistants and three full-time degreed specialists. I wondered if they minded working for the least-qualified administrator in our department, but no one said anything because I was the one who hired.

I was beginning a master's program designed for me by Father Mike and a professor at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine. I would work mornings or afternoons in my office and attend classes or seminars at various schools or hospitals in the afternoons or mornings depending on the day of the week. My notes to Father became notes and essays to Dr. Loren Fortner in hospital administration education. The University of Cincinnati had pioneered the cooperative education concept a hundred years before, so it was accepting of my circumstance and willing to work with me when Dr. Fortner volunteered. It would last a year, perhaps 18 months, depending on my progress. The hospital was picking up the tab, and somehow I was awarded a federal grant.

Maria's desire to be wed in the Catholic Church meant I had a hurdle to jump. I had to apply for a Declaration of Nullity, annulling my first marriage in the eyes of the Church. That was not as hard to get as I thought it would be, but it took time. Karen Ann's lack of fidelity was well proven: Dylan's birth within 18 months of our wedding was seen as evidence she had not been sincere in her vow even from the inception of the marriage, especially since we had been separated for eight months in the first ten, which was a kind way to put it. We should not have been married. Several people wrote essays—Fr. Mike, Fr. Phil, Maria—about my character and answering questions posed by the Church. Some months later a board approved the application and I was free for Maria. Ironically, it was my Protestant mother who was most pleased by the Declaration.

A few weeks before our wedding, we purchased a house ready for move-in, and less than a mile from Merciful Lord hospital. It was a short walk to Maria's motel job, almost equidistant to Merciful God Church and elementary school. It was not far to the public school either, I reminded her. That would be a future discussion and decision. She wanted to continue to work until she found a better situation. Every extra moment was then spent cleaning, painting, buying some furniture, and generally getting the house in shape. It was not going to be ready, we'd need more furniture and painting and some plumbing replaced, but then who ever finishes work on their house?

At any rate, we would come home from our honeymoon to our own home. I had been living with a priest; she had been with her parents. Now 13 months into my revamped job, we had enough income we would live in the old part of Sky Grey. The house had a porch, three bedrooms, two baths, a kitchen/dining area and living room. Hardwood floors, older but working appliances: it was a new beginning for us with each other. We could hear bats hitting balls when kids played in the fields behind, but we would have to put up with dust on everything when the fields were dragged. On the far end of the park were basketball courts, a tennis court, and a public pool.

We were to be married at Merciful God with Father Mike as celebrant. Since I had no formal association with a church, and Maria was Catholic, the priests decided that they should examine my beliefs. They insisted that our plans should include children, and they wanted my guarantee they would be raised Catholic. Catholic organizations or officials had created my job, found me a home, helped me through a divorce, ushered me to Maria, and introduced me to my best friends. I was happy to agree. Being without a religion—but perhaps not without faith—myself, it was not a hard decision.