Hazel - Harden my garden

The gate was open again.

Different day, different man, same open gate. Tuesday it's the pool boy, Wednesday it's me, and the gate has not been latched since May. The first time I saw it hanging there, I knocked anyway, like an idiot, and stood at the edge of the yard for four minutes while she watched me from the kitchen window and laughed at me through the glass. Now I walk in like I own a piece of the place, which I suppose I do – twelve dollars an hour of it.

She was on the side bed. The long one along the fence, where the roses are, and she was kneeling in the dirt in a pair of cutoff shorts and a man's white t-shirt with the sleeves rolled, and no bra under it, and no shoes, and no gloves. Just her hands in the black soil, both wrists buried to the tattoo, digging around the base of a rose bush like she was trying to find something she'd dropped in there.

Brown hair down today, loose and heavy and curling at the ends from the wet, pushed behind one ear and stuck to the sweat at her temple. Olive skin gone deep gold across the shoulders and down the arms, and the small of her back showing where the t-shirt rode up, that same tan line from yesterday, the two white straps crossing the golden brown. When she reached into the bush, the shirt pulled up and the shorts pulled down, and there was a whole inch of nothing in between, skin and the dip of her spine, and the top of her ass where the shorts had slid. Big soft tits swinging loose under the thin white cotton, nipples showing through it like two dark thumbprints, because it was hot and she'd been working, and she never wore a bra in the yard, ever, not once, not even in July.

"You're early," she said, without turning around.

"You're on your knees in the dirt at nine in the morning."

"I'm always on my knees in the dirt at nine in the morning. That's what Wednesdays are for." She sat back on her heels and looked over her shoulder at me and grinned. There was a smear of soil across her cheekbone, and she had no idea. Big brown eyes, that mouth, that face that had never once in its life looked guilty about anything. "Grab the wheelbarrow, honey. The far bed needs turning before it gets hot."

I got the wheelbarrow. She got the pitchfork, the spade, the hoe, and the little hand trowel and handed me the hoe with a look that meant something, and we went to the far bed together, she walking in front in those cut-offs with her heels lifting out of the dirt and me behind her carrying the long handle.

The far bed had gone to weeds. That's the truth of it. Two weeks of rain and then a week of heat, and it was nothing but crabgrass and chickweed and a stand of pigweed gone to seed, and she stood at the edge of it with her hands on her hips and said, "Look at that. Look at what happens when you don't tend something for two weeks."

"That's what happens," I said.

"Everything goes wild," she said. "Everything wants to go wild. All it needs is a couple of weeks and nobody paying attention."

She looked at me sideways when she said it. I let it sit.

We worked the bed for an hour. Me on the hoe breaking the crust, her on her knees behind me pulling the weeds up by the root and shaking the soil off them into the barrow. She worked with her ass in the air and her tits hanging, and every time she leant forward to get at something, the shirt dropped away from her chest, and you could see straight down it, both of them, heavy and full and swaying, and she caught me looking exactly one time and said, "Eyes on the hoe," and then went right on leaning.

"You know what's wrong with this bed?" she said.

"Two weeks of rain."

"The soil's compacted. Hardpan about eight inches down, you can feel it with the fork. Nothing can get a root in. You can water it all day; it just runs off." She sat back on her heels and wiped her forehead with the back of her wrist and left another streak of dirt there. "You've got to break it open first. You've got to go deep and turn it all the way over and then get some compost in there, and then, honey, then it'll take anything you put in it."

She was wearing a watch. She checked it. Then she checked it again about ten minutes later, and then a third time, and then she pulled her phone out of her back pocket, looked at it, and put it back.

"You've got somewhere to be?" I said.

"I've got a window," she said. "That's all."

Then the phone rang.

She had it up against her cheek before the second ring, standing there in the middle of the turned earth with the pitchfork in her other hand, dirt to the elbows, and hair stuck to her neck, and she said, "Hello, honey," like she was in a boardroom.

Peter. Of course. The same voice he had yesterday, that flat middle-manager chirp coming through the little speaker, asking what she's doing.

"Nothing. I'm in the garden. The gardener's here. Yes, the gardener, Peter. Wednesday. He comes on Wednesdays. We've been through this."

A pause. Her husband said something about the roses.

"Yes, I know about the roses. That's why he's here. He's got the fork in them right now."

"...Peter, the fork. The pitchfork. It's a tool. Peter, come on."

I broke another crust with the hoe, and the blade went in, and the clod came up, and she watched it come up, and her eyes went a little unfocused.

"Anyway, the far bed's gone to hell," she said. "It needs a full turn, deep, all the way down to the hardpan. He's going to have to work it hard. It's been let go too long."

"...What? No, that's what I said. It's been let go."

She listened. Her free hand went to the back of her neck and rubbed it.

"Peter, don't ask me questions right now; you know how you get."

I kept working, and she kept talking, and I started working closer to her, and every pass I made with the hoe brought me a foot nearer to where she was standing, and she noticed, and she stopped stepping out of the way. Then the next pass brought my shoulder up against her arm, and she didn't move. Then the next one brought my hip against her hip, and she didn't move, and she turned her head and looked at me with those big brown eyes and a small smile and said into the phone, "Peter, hold on one second," and put her hand flat on my chest.

And then she kissed me.

Right there in the bed, with the phone down at her side and Peter's voice going, 'Hello?' hello? Out of the speaker, she got a fistful of my shirt in her dirty hand and pulled me down and put her mouth on mine, open, hot, tasting like iced coffee and salt, and she kissed me for a good ten seconds while her husband said, 'Hazel?' into her thigh.

She came up off it slowly and licked her lip and put the phone back to her ear like nothing had happened.

"Sorry. Sorry, I dropped the — I dropped the fork."

"...No, it's fine. It's fine; it's just heavy. Yes. Anyway."

She looked at me. Then she looked down at the phone. Then she looked back at me, and she reached up and pulled the t-shirt off over her head in one motion and dropped it on the fence post, and she was standing there in the middle of the bed in nothing but the cutoffs, tits out, oiled gold, brown nipples gone hard in the morning air, dirt on her hands and her cheek and her stomach.

"Peter, it's hot out here," she said. "I'm working in the heat. I took my shirt off."

"...Yes, Peter, obviously I'm still wearing the other thing. What do you think I am?"

I stepped in and put both hands on her waist and pulled her against me, and she came easy, and her tits pressed flat against my chest, and she breathed out slowly through her nose, her eyes half closed. My hands were filthy. So was she. I left prints on her skin, two big brown hands on the golden brown of her waist, and she looked down at them, and something moved across her face that wasn't about gardening at all.

"Peter," she said, "he's got big hands."

A pause.

"I'm saying it because it's true. He can't do delicate work. He's all grip. That's fine. The bed doesn't need delicate."

I got the trowel off the fence and knelt down in front of her in the dirt, and she looked down at me with her eyebrows up.

"What are you doing?"

"Getting the root ball out of that rose."

"...Peter, hold on."

I put the trowel in the ground and started working around the base of the bush, slowly, and every time I leant in, my face came up against the front of those cutoffs, and on the third lean, she shifted her stance just slightly wider, and I felt the denim brush my cheek. Then she put her hand on top of my head, and her fingers closed in my hair, and she held me there, and she said into the phone, in a voice that was already a half step lower than it had been, "Honey, he's got his head in the bush."

"...Peter, the bush. The rosebush. What is wrong with you today."

I pulled the shorts down. No more waiting. One button, one zip, and she stepped out of them and kicked them off into the grass, and there she was, bare-ass in the flowerbed, with brown hair and gold skin and a triangle of dark hair between her legs, and the lips of her already shining, already open, already wet down the inside of one thigh.

She looked at the phone. She looked at me.

"Oh," she said, and sat down on the grass at the edge of the bed with her back against the fence post, knees up and apart, and pulled my head in with both hands, and I put my mouth on her wet slit.

"OH — oh, Peter, sorry, yes, I'm here, I'm here. He's—mmhh—he's got the—he's weeding around the—ohh."

I ran my tongue flat up the whole length of her once, slow, from root to tip, and she went quiet for a full three seconds. Then I got two fingers in her and curled them and put my mouth back on her clit, and she said, "hhhhaaah" straight into the receiver, and Peter said, "What? What?"

"Nothing. Nothing. The—the hoe. He dropped the hoe. The handle hit the — mmmh — the handle hit the fence."

I worked her slow and steady, the way you water a bed you want to keep – long and even and never stopping – and she was so wet it was running down onto my wrist, and her thighs were shaking on either side of my head, and the dirt was grinding into my knees, and I could feel her getting close the way you feel a bed go soft under the fork. Her hand tightened in my hair. Her heels dug into the grass. Her hips started lifting to meet my mouth, and her voice went up and up and up and then stopped coming out at all.

"Mm—mm—mm—oh—oh—ohh—Peter—Peter, I have to—"

She came the first time with the phone against her cheek and her thighs clamped hard on my ears, and she made a long low sound down in her chest like a hinge, and then a series of little ones after it, and her cunt squeezed my fingers so tight I couldn't move them, and she ground herself down on my mouth through the last of it like she was trying to get every drop of the feeling out.

Then she dropped her head back against the post and breathed.

"...Yes," she said, hoarse. "Yes. I'm here. No, nothing's wrong. I'm just — I'm just sitting down for a minute. It's hot."

Peter said something. She laughed at it. She laughed at it with her tits still heaving and her thighs still wet and her hair full of grass.

"You're very far away, you know that?" she said to him. "You're always very far away."

I stood up and got my belt off, and she watched my hands do it, and she watched what came out of the front of my shorts, and she looked at it for a second and then looked at the phone and then looked back at it, and she said quietly, "Oh."

I knelt in front of her and got a hand under each knee and opened her up, and she went with it all the way until she was flat on her back on the grass at the edge of the bed with her legs up over my arms and her cunt open and glistening and the sun on it. I put my black cockhead against her and slid it up and down the whole length of her slit twice, getting it wet, and she bit her lip.

"Peter," she said, "he's planting."

"...What? Yes, planting. He's — he's putting something in the far bed."

And I pushed in.

Slow. All the way. The head went in, and she opened around it and then kept opening, and I kept pushing, and she kept giving, and I felt every inch of the way go up inside her — the tight spot just past the entrance that grabbed and let go, then the long smooth stretch, then the little pocket at the end where it stopped — and I did not rush it, and she did not breathe the whole time.

"Oooooohhhh," she said, when I bottomed out. Long and low. Right into the phone. "Oh. Oh my. Ohhh."

"...Peter, nothing, I told you, nothing. He's—hhh—he's put the fork in."

I stayed there, all the way in, hips flat against her, and let her feel the size of it. Her cunt flexed around me twice, quick and greedy, squeezing and letting go, and her eyes rolled back and then came down and found mine.

"Peter, the soil's soft now," she said. "It's — mm — it's all turned over. It's ready. It's been ready for a while."

Then I started to move.

Long strokes at first. All the way out until just the head was holding, all the way back in until my hips clapped her ass. Slow, so she felt the drag of every inch going both ways. Her mouth came open and stayed open. Her tits were moving on her chest with each stroke, heavy and slow, and the dirt on her stomach was smearing under my hands, and the sound of it started — that first wet click and pull, and then the slap when I came back down, soft at first, then louder as she got wetter and I got faster.

"Ah. Ah. Ahhh. Peter. Peter, are you—are you listening to me—"

"Yes, I'm listening."

"Good. Good. Because — ohh — because I need you to know — the bed's fine, the bed's fine, everything's so fine — oh —"

I picked it up. Harder. The slaps got real — that flat skin-on-skin crack of my hips against her ass every time I bottomed out, and the wet one underneath it, and her tits starting to bounce and slap against her own ribs with every stroke, and the fence post knocking against the boards behind her head, and the whole bed going whap whap whap whap in the morning heat. There was no way Peter couldn't hear it. There was no way in the world.

"Hazel. Hazel, what's that noise?"

"That's — oh — that's the hoe, Peter. It's — ah — it's the handle hitting the fence. Every time he — ohh — every time he turns it."

"That's a lot of turning."

"He's got a lot of bed to turn."

I got a hand under her ass and lifted her hips up off the grass and drove in at the new angle, and she let out a real one — "AHH" — loud, unguarded, all the way across the yard — and then slapped her free hand over her own mouth and looked at the phone and then at me with wide eyes, and then took the hand away and just let it go, because there wasn't any point anymore.

"Peter, I'm going to have to call you back."

"...No. No, not right now. In a minute. Hold on. Just — hold on."

She put the phone down on the grass besides her head, screen up, still connected, and got both hands on my forearms and looked up at me and said, "Go."

And I went.

Hard now, and fast, and deep, all the way in every time, and she took it and pushed back up into it and matched me stroke for stroke, and the slapping got so loud and so constant that it stopped being separate sounds and became one long wet rhythm, like applause, like rain on a tin roof, like somebody beating a rug. Her cunt was gripping me now, tight and fluttery, that way it does right before it gives up, and I knew she was close again, and I reached down between us and got two fingers on her clit and worked it in circles.

"OH—oh—oh—ohh—don't stop—don't you dare—ohh—"

She came the second time with her heels up in the air and her back arched off the grass and her mouth wide open and nothing coming out of it but air, and her cunt clamped down on me and held me so tight that the next two strokes were a fight, and I kept going through it, and she rode it out on me, and when it broke, she went limp for a second and then grabbed me harder and pulled me down on top of her.

The phone was still on the grass. Her husband was still talking. Neither of us cared.

She got her breath back enough to pick it up.

"...Yes," she said, thick. "Yes. I'm here. No — no, everything's fine. He's — he's got the far bed almost done."

A pause. Peter asked something.

"No, Peter, it doesn't need water yet. It's — mm — it's got plenty. It's—ohh—it's got more than enough."

Then she looked up at me, and there was something in her face now, something decided, and she reached up and got her hand around the back of my neck and pulled me down to her ear and whispered it, low, right next to the phone so he'd hear.

"Don't pull out."

I looked at her.

"I'm ovulating," she said. "Right now. Today. It's today; it's the — it's the middle of it. That's what the window is." She bit her lip. "I've been off the pill six months, honey, and nothing's been in me, nothing, not once, and I'm—look at me, I'm ready, I'm turned all the way over and ready, and the soil is soft and warm, and there's nothing in the way—my Latina egg is so thirsty…"

"Peter," she said into the phone, still looking at me, "Peter, what's the name of that thing, that — that seed catalogue thing."

"...The heirloom seed. Yes, that."

She put the phone down again.

She rolled over.

Onto her hands and knees there in the grass, ass up, head down, cheek flat on the dirt, and she reached back with one hand and spread herself open for me and looked at me over her shoulder with her hair in her eyes and her mouth open, and she said, "Plant it."

I got behind her and put it in, and this time I didn't go slow.

Hard from the first stroke. Both hands on her hips, all the way in and all the way out and all the way in, and she dropped her head and started making that sound women make when they've stopped being polite, uh, uh, uh, punched out of her with every thrust, and the slapping came back twice as loud as before because now I had the whole of her ass to hit and her tits were hanging down and swinging and her oiled back was under my hands and the whole yard was full of it, whap whap whap whap whap, and Peter, four miles away with a coffee and a spreadsheet, was listening to it and probably still calling it the hoe.

"Honey," she managed. "Honey, are you still — ohh — still there."

"Yes."

"Good. Good. Because—uh—because I'm going to need you to—ohh—to tell me what the—the variety was called. The—ohh—the seed."

"...Hazel, what seed?"

"THE—ohh—the SEED, Peter—"

She gave up on the sentence. I grabbed a fistful of her hair and pulled her head up and drove in harder, and the rhythm broke loose and went from whap whap whap to something flatter and faster, more of a pock pock pock, the two of us moving at the same time now, her pushing back as I pushed in, and the sweat was running down my back and off my chin onto her spine, and she was so wet the sound had gone from wet to sloppy to something you'd be embarrassed about in church.

"I'm going to—" she said, and then, into the phone, "I'M GOING TO—oh—oh—OH—"

She came the third time.

Harder than the first two, and louder, and longer. She went stiff all over and then shook, and her arms gave out, and her face went down into the grass, and she just stayed there, ass still up, cunt still full, and she came around me in waves, squeezing and letting go and squeezing again, over and over, and I could feel every single one of them on my cock like a hand wringing me out.

"AAAAHHH—ohhhh—ohh—oh—mmmmhhh—"

And then Peter, tiny and tinny, from the grass:

"...Hazel? Hazel, are you okay?"

She got one hand up and gave me a thumbs up. She couldn't talk. She had her face in the dirt, and she was laughing silently, shoulders shaking, and she had my cock still all the way inside her, and it was the best thing I have ever seen in my life.

I was close. Real close. My full black balls drawn up tight and aching, every stroke bringing me nearer to the edge, and the sight of her — gold and brown and open and married, kneeling in a turned flowerbed with dirt on her face, holding her husband on the phone while another man's cock sat in her womb — finished me off.

"Three more," I said. "Then it goes."

She nodded into the dirt.

"Three."

"Two."

"One."

And I buried it all the way in and came.

It came up out of me like a pump, like the first pull off a deep well, thick and long and hot, and it hit the end of her, and she felt it and went OHHH and pushed back onto it, and then the next one came and the next one and the next one, deep, right up against the mouth of her, and she took all of it with her hips tilted up and her knees together and her face down, which is how you're supposed to do it, and she knew that, and she was doing it on purpose, and she milked me with slow, deliberate squeezes, one for every shot, taking them like she was being paid for it.

And when I was done, she stayed exactly where she was. Didn't move. Kept her hips up. Kept me in. And she reached back and put her palm flat on her own lower belly and pressed and held it there and looked at the phone.

Peter was saying something about lunch.

"Mm-hm," she said. "Mm-hm. Yes. Yes, that's — that's fine."

A pause.

"No, he's finished. He's just — he's just cleaning up. He's still got the mulch to do."

I pulled out slowly, and we both looked down, and there it was — one thick white rope of it sliding down out of her, over the swollen lips and down the inside of her thigh, dripping onto the black turned earth beneath her, and she made a small bereaved noise and pushed her knees together to hold the rest in.

"Peter," she said. "Peter, you should come home early."

"...No reason. Just come home early."

She listened for a second.

"Peter, I don't know; the garden's just looking really good. It's the best it's looked in a while. Everything's coming up." She looked down at the ground and at the white on the soil and smiled with half her mouth. "Yes. Yes, I know. I know. Yes. Bye. Love you. Bye."

She closed the phone and dropped it in the grass and rolled onto her back, knees up, and stayed there with her hand on her stomach while the sweat dried on her and the bees worked the roses over her head and the sun came up over the fence onto her belly like it was checking on something.

"Same time next Wednesday?" I said, buttoning up.

"Same time next Wednesday," she said. "And bring the compost. The bed needs feeding."

"...Hazel, the bed's already got plenty."

"I know, honey," she said, and closed her eyes and put both hands flat on her stomach and said it to the sky:

"But it's so thirsty."

Tob continued.