"I suppose you’re right," Sandy agreed. "We never have it available on the road, so we’ve never gotten in the habit of using it. I can see how it would help, but we’re just not prepared to do it. We’ve never even worked with a drummer, let alone rehearsed this stuff with one."

"Would you be willing to try an experiment?" Walker asked.

"Bring one in? Sure," Dayna said. "But you know how much stuff we want to knock out."

"What are you thinking?" Sam asked. "Mr. Tom?"

"Oh, yeah," Walker laughed. "’Specially if we mention Lucille Bogan. We do that, he won’t even charge much."

"I’ll go call," Sam grinned. "It’s a nice day; he should be at his usual pitch. If he’s there, I’ll go get him. I could pick up some subs on the way."

Twenty minutes later, Sam walked in, carrying some drums, along with an ancient, wizened black man. "Dayna and Sandy, I’d like you to meet Mr. Tom Watkins, who may be the best old-time blues drummer still alive. He’s long retired, but he sets up on the sidewalk in front of his apartment building on nice days when he’s bored with TV. I told him you knew the dirty version of Shave ’Em Dry."

"I never even heered Lucille do it herself," Mr. Tom grinned. "I was just a kid when I played with her, and that wasn’t too long."

"You played with Lucille Bogan?" Dayna said, astonished. The doors that name had opened around this place!

"Not real long, just a fill-in now and then in juke joints and speakeasies when I was gettin’ started, back in the twenties," Mr. Tom grinned. "Miss Dayna, it’d be easier to name the names of the people I ain’t played with one time or other. Walker, why don’t you run me what these ladies did this morning, and I’ll see what I gotta do for it while the rest of you eat your sandwiches."

A couple minutes later, they sat listening as Walker played two different cuts of Cold Cold Heart.

"Oh, my," Mr. Tom shook his head. "My oh my. And to think that was once a Hank Williams song." He shook his head again and said, "Walker, I think I like the second one a little better. Let me hear it one more time." He picked up the drumsticks and played along – with Dayna and Sandy listening in pure awe. This guy was good! He picked the feeling of it up right now!

He turned to Dayna and Sandy after it ended and said, "That ’bout what you had in mind?"

"That was incredible," Dayna said. "I always thought good percussion would help it out, but I never dreamed of percussion good enough that wouldn’t overwhelm it. I’m honored to hear your work, sir."

"Miss Dayna, you got a talent," he smiled. "It ain’t often that I hear someone that don’t bitch the blues. You breathe the blues. I’m honored to work with you, ma’am." He turned to Walker. "You want to get me a set of cans and kill the speakers, let’s do a couple takes."

By the time lunch was over with, Mr. Tom had done percussion tracks for everything they’d done that morning. In the afternoon, they’d run through a piece without drums once, have him play along a second time, and go ahead and start cutting tracks the third time. They usually did a piece several times, but they never once heard Mr. Tom make a mistake.

To their amazement, they blew through their ambitious schedule, with a few extras thrown in, in four and a half days. Mr. Tom – who turned out to be in his eighties – played with them on all of the blues cuts, and most of the pop songs. The renfaire music was a little strange to him, but it didn’t slow him down any. This was music that didn’t demand percussion, but his unobtrusive playing with many of the pieces certainly added to them.

The last afternoon was intended to be pure fun, and it was. Just for the hell of it, Walker and Sam brought in another ancient black man with a string bass, and yet another to play the piano, and they started in on Lucille Bogan pieces. They did cleaner ones in the afternoon, when crowds were around, but they stuck around after hours to do Tricks Ain’t Walkin’, Bull Dyke Blues, both the clean and the dirty versions of Shave ’Em Dry, and a new one to Dayna and Sandy, Till The Cows Come Home, which they hadn’t heard before but was just as nasty as the dirty version of Shave ’Em Dry. It took Walker until late to do a quick mix on them, but Sandy and Dayna headed back to Knoxville and the renfaire with a box full of CD masters of songs, including the Lucille Bogan pieces, along with the comment from Walker that he could arrange clearances on any of them.

It took longer than they’d hoped to get the rest of the pieces pulled together, work out the order of the tracks, have John find a graphic artist to do some cover art, and other administrivia. Everything wasn’t completed until after they’d had to head down to Louisiana for another renfaire, but a month after the recording session, a stop at the faire manager’s office came with the news that UPS had delivered several boxes that were waiting for them.

Half the boxes contained CDs of Faire Maiden. The title track was an original, about a modern girl who wanders renfaires dreaming she was in the fifteenth century and wishing that a knight in shining armor would sweep her off her feet. The only cover on the album was Scarborough Fair; the rest were traditional, or Dayna and Sandy originals, and three Steam Train John originals. Two they’d never heard before that Monday night the month before, and the other one he wrote for them during a renfaire show! The cover art was a shot that Jeff had taken of them with their guitars one afternoon in Mount Pleasant, up against the backdrop of the steps of a cut-stone building, with them wearing corsets and summer-weight renfaire clothes – it had been taken in January, and they’d been freezing!

The other half of the shipment contained CDs of Genie in a Bottle. The basis of that cover art was another one of Jeff’s photos, this time of them in the harem-girl outfits, but the graphic artist had gotten cute with Photoshop, placing them in an almost-clear glass bottle. That album contained the title track, such things as Cold Cold Heart and the old, plaintive woman’s version of House of the Rising Sun. The rest of the album consisted of Dayna and Sandy originals, except for two songs attributed to Steam Train John, and two to Lucille Bogan, fairly clean versions.

It would be another year before the girls would be saddened to find that Mr. Tom Watkins died of a heart attack less than two weeks after finishing work on their album – the last of literally thousands of tracks he’d worked on. Bluesman and busker to the end, he’d been playing his drums out in front of his apartment building when he died.

*   *   *

It took a little while to learn how to effectively sell the CDs to a crowd without cutting into the hats too much, but almost from the first they sold twenty to thirty copies of Faire Maiden a day at renfaires. They soon learned to keep copies of Genie in a Bottle around, because they’d sell a handful or more of them as well. Sales soon picked up a degree; by the time they finished their dates at the renfaire in Louisiana, a significant dent had been made in the supply of CDs, some of which they shipped back to Bradford to free up space in Home. They learned, though, that it wasn’t worth unpacking the box containing the renfaire albums when they played Genie in a Bottle-type music in a club date.

Within weeks they realized that the CD sales were well ahead of their expectations. It had seemed like a huge gamble to order a thousand copies of each CD, and it seemed like that would be a supply adequate to hold them for years; now, though an immediate reorder wasn’t imperative, it was clear that there was going to have to be another one along in the spring – and knowing they’d sell, it probably would be larger to take advantage of volume discounts.

When the renfaire in Louisiana came to an end the weekend after Thanksgiving, the season was winding down. To squeeze the last drops out of it, they decided to play a couple of small one-weekend faires in Texas. At the time they made that decision, another problem was looming – whether to head for Florida afterwards, where they could probably stitch together a combination of smaller weekend renfaires and the same sort of club and busking tour they’d done down there the past two winters, or seek other fields.

About the only possibility of playing a renfaire outside of Florida was one in Arizona that started in January. This was a bit of a problem; up till now they’d played mostly Midwestern stands, and getting booked onto a small stage hadn’t been a problem since they’d built a reputation in the Midwest as a good, solid act that people really enjoyed. The Arizona faire, however, was on a different circuit, where they didn’t know anyone, and didn’t have any reputation; it was supposedly tougher to get booked on the western circuit, anyway.

Dayna didn’t have much hope when she called the entertainment manager of the Arizona faire, and he didn’t waste any time with her, saying that they were pretty well booked up, and since he didn’t know them or their music he didn’t think there would be an opening. "I could send you one of our CDs," Dayna suggested. "Would that help?"

"You have a CD?" he said, perking up a little. "Sure, I’d love to hear it."

Figuring what the hell, on a whim, Dayna dropped a copy of Genie in a Bottle in with the Faire Maiden disc. About ten days later, she called the manager up again, just to check. "Boy, you’re hard to get hold of," he said. "I left a message for you at that number you gave me, and I’ve been waiting to hear from you. We had a spot open up on one of our main stages, and we’d be glad to have you fill it, starting the weekend after Christmas."

"Sure, we’ll be there," she told him.

"I’ll be looking forward to meeting you," he smiled. "I played that Genie in a Bottle album for my wife, and she loves it. We both really loved Cold Cold Heart and Lonesome Midnight. Isn’t that a Lucille Bogan cover?"

"Sure is," Dayna laughed. "In fact, the drummer on that cut played it with her once."

"No fooling? That must have been an experience!"

"Yeah, Mr. Tom is something else. We recorded that in the same studio where Elvis cut his first records."

"Wow," he said, obviously amazed. "That must have been exciting. We don’t often get performers with that kind of story to tell. I’d sure like to hear you play some of it."

"We don’t do blues in our renfaire act," she told him. "But I’m sure we can set up a special session some time."

"I’ll be looking forward to it," he said.

They spent a few minutes working out details, then ended the conversation. Dayna had called from an outdoor phone booth; Sandy had been sitting in Home a few feet away. "So how did it go?" she said.

"We’re going to Arizona," she replied. "Lucille Bogan just broke us into the western circuit."

"You know," Sandy shook her head after Dayna explained what happened. "Considering that we started doing those songs to pull the leg of a professor of a class we took for kicks, Lucille Bogan has been damn good for us."

"That she has," Dayna grinned. "You know, we haven’t turned a trick since last spring, but sometime I wonder if maybe we shouldn’t do one some time in her honor."

"Something to think about," Sandy grinned. "From what Walker and Mr. Tom told us about her, her spirit would probably appreciate it."

"I think so too," Dayna grinned. "And I wouldn’t mind getting a little action myself. But here’s something to think about. We got our foot in the door in the western circuit with this. What do you say we try to get into some more western faires to fill out the spring before we go to Mackinaw City for the summer? That’d build up our rep out there, and it might be useful in the future."

"Sounds good to me, and it’s new country to both of us." Sandy nodded.

"That’s just about what I was thinking," Dayna agreed. "We can get a few lines out, and see if our rep from Arizona can get us in some other places. If we can, fine. If we can’t, I’m sure we can get in some place in the eastern circuits come spring."

"Works for me, and spring in California sounds cool to me," Sandy agreed.

"That leads to one more thing to think about," Dayna told her. "We have to be out in Arizona about three days after Christmas if I see the calendar right. We could get back to Michigan for the holidays, but it means that we’d have to haul ass to get back out west."

"Dayna, would it hurt you too much if I said I’d really rather not go back to Michigan for Christmas? I mean, I know I’d be welcome with your folks, but if I get back that close I’m going to feel pretty guilty if I don’t at least stop off and see mine, and I don’t want to have to put up with more shit again."

"I understand," Dayna nodded. "And being with my folks would rub everyone’s noses in it, right?"

"Yeah, especially mine," Sandy said unhappily.

"As far as I’m concerned, three days to Arizona from Michigan in Home and then having to start a main stage show in country new to us is pushing it damn tight," Dayna said. "And we’ve pushed awful hard this fall. What do you say we find a quiet place to park Home for a few days, just rest up and screw around, then take our time getting out there?"

"Sounds perfect to me. Hell, we might even find a guy or two to screw around with."

*   *   *

On just a little asking around, they’d received several suggestions to go park on the beach in the national park on South Padre Island south of Corpus Christi. There was a paved road along the shore for several miles south of the visitor center, then it turned to hard-packed sand for several more miles. The ranger at the visitor center warned them to not go too far on the sand road, since there were places where there were soft sand blowouts that could easily get them stuck. They headed south, expecting to see wall-to-wall people, but found the place almost deserted, although the ranger had told them there’d most likely be more people around as the holidays approached.

They found a particularly lonely spot not far before the first of the blowouts; finding a place to camp mostly consisted of turning off the road into the wind off the ocean, shutting off the engine and setting the parking brake.

Even though they were well to the south of the snow they’d have expected in Michigan, winter had come to the south Texas shoreline, and even at midday the sun had only warmed the air into the sixties. But there was a nice and tempting surf crashing in. "I don’t know about you," Dayna said, but I hate to let that go to waste."

"I’m with you," Sandy said as she got out of the driver’s seat and headed for the back of Home. "It’ll be chilly but think how bad it would be if we were in Michigan."

"Oh, I agree," Dayna nodded, looking around. "Boy, this place is empty," she added. "There isn’t anyone around. Hell, we could go skinny-dipping if we wanted to and nobody would be the wiser."

"Yeah, sure could," Sandy said. "What if we got caught?"

"Then we get caught," Dayna grinned. "So what?"

"All right, I’ll do it if you will."

"Why do you think I suggested it?"

It took them only a minute to strip down to an absolute buff, not even sandals. In the past two years they’d spent a fair amount of time in string bikinis that covered very little, but both were just a little red in the face when stepping outside Home onto the deserted beach. Even with no one around, there was a big difference between "very little" and "nothing at all." But they got over their embarrassment quickly and headed for the surf.

Both the air and the surf could have been warmer, and the breeze coming off the ocean was cool indeed. They played around in the waves a bit, tried some body surfing, and were getting pretty chilly when they decided to head back up to Home and dry off, running naked and blue across the beach, thrilled with their bravado.

"That was fun," Dayna said as they dried off inside. "What do you want to do this afternoon?"

"Oh, I don’t know," Sandy sighed. "You got any ideas?"

"I don’t know," Dayna said. "But would you believe I’d just like to leave the guitars packed up for a day or two and call this a vacation?"

"I hear you, Dayna," Sandy laughed. "Here’s an idea. It could be pretty sunny on that stage in Arizona, maybe we ought to work on our tans a bit before we head out there."

"We could do that, but it’s a little chilly out there in that breeze."

"True," Sandy sighed. "But you know those dunes up behind the beach? There’s some bushes and tall grass, maybe we could find a place out of the wind."

"Worth a try," Dayna agreed. "Let’s take our bikinis with us in case someone shows up, but if they don’t we can sunbathe nude."

It took a few minutes to find bikinis and towels, sunscreen and some granola bars and a couple bottles of juice for a light lunch. Still naked and carrying handfuls of stuff, they walked back through the cool ocean breeze and up to a spot in the dunes that seemed to hold promise.

It was harder walking in the dune sand than it looked; although there were patches of brush and grasses, a lot of it was soft sand, loose and hard to walk on. Fairly soon, they found a place that was pretty well out of the wind behind some sand and bushes, but warm in the afternoon sun. They spread out towels, dosed themselves down with sunscreen, and laid themselves out on the towels to bake.

Except for faces, arms, and shoulders, which had been exposed a lot at the renfaire in Louisiana, they were pretty white; the outfits that they’d worn covered much of them up, and of course, sunbathing nude they were exposing places that hadn’t had any sun before. Dayna had a slightly darker complexion than Sandy and could take a lot of sun before burning; but while Sandy could tan up nicely, she knew from bitter experience that sun had to come in small doses at first. Well before an hour was up, she knew that the time to be heading in was in sight. "You can stay out here if you like," she offered.

"No, I’ll head in if you do," Dayna smiled. "It’d be boring to be out here without you."

"I’d like to stay out here, but I really need to be thinking about covering up." She let out a sigh. "It’s a shame, too, I’m really enjoying laying out here and doing nothing. If you want to stay here, I’ll run down to Home and get something to put on."

"Suit yourself," Dayna smiled. "I’ll admit, I don’t want to head in."

"All right, back in a minute," Sandy said, getting up. "Boy, this sand is soft and loose," she commented. "I wonder why it’s so loose up here and hard on the beach?"

"Don’t know," Dayna said. "It’s pretty dry up here, and it probably gets damper down on the beach. That probably has something to do with it."

"Could be," Sandy shrugged as she headed for Home, a hundred yards away.

She was back a few minutes later, still nude, but rather than carrying clothing, she was carrying a metal bucket and the short-handled shovel from the RV’s emergency supplies. "I thought you were going to get a cover-up," Dayna frowned.

"I got to thinking about it," Sandy grinned. "As loose as this sand is, it shouldn’t be any big deal to cover up with it."

"You’re talking about wanting to get buried, aren’t you?" Dayna grinned. "You know where that’ll lead!"

"Well, it is a little boring out here," Sandy laughed. "And I figure I can scream to my heart’s content. I can bury you later if you like."

"You know, it’s been a while since we’ve done this," Dayna grinned as she picked up the bucket and started to scrape a hole.

Sandy grabbed the shovel and joined in. "It’s been too long since we’ve done any bondage game," she said. "I’ve been missing it. But this is the perfect place to do this. Maybe we can do some other outdoor game rather than just burying you. Like maybe we can find some stakes and I can stake you out naked and tickle you. That’d kill two birds with one stone. You can work on your tan while I’m driving you out of your tree."

"Works for me," Dayna grinned. "I was sort of wondering what we were going to be doing out here, anyway."

As Sandy had noticed, the sand was light and easily moved; it didn’t take them long to get a big enough hole for her to get into, and before long only her head and feet were showing. Dayna found the stem of some tough beach grass, lay down by Sandy’s feet, and started in. The next half hour was filled with giggling and screaming and futile protests and pleas. Dayna was gentle but relentless; they’d been on both sides of that sort of action long enough to know how to drive the ticklee wild without pushing her out of breath – but keeping it near the edge. Twice, Sandy was tickled to screaming, head thrashing orgasms.

Finally, Dayna figured that Sandy had had about enough for now and decided to give her a real break. She put a towel over her feet – no point in getting them sunburned – and lay down next to her while she was still recovering a little. "I can dig you out now," she offered. "Or I can leave you there till I head in, and maybe we can do another round."

"Oh . . . that feels so good . . . " Sandy panted, still recovering from the effects of the last memorable orgasm. "Go ahead, leave me here. I’d rather be buried in the sand here with you than be sitting in Home and feeling lonely."

"I can do that," Dayna said, lying down next to her. "I’d rather be up here with you buried in the sand than be up here by myself. Damn it, Sandy, I love you."

"Oh, God, I love you too, Dayna," she said. "I don’t know what the hell I would do without you. Probably be sitting at home right now with my folks pushing Robbie down my throat, if they hadn’t already succeeded. Dayna, you took me away from all that. You know about the girl in Faire Maiden dreaming about a knight in shining armor coming and sweeping her off her feet? I guess I always dreamed something like that, but I never figured that the knight in the armor would be a girl."

"Funny," Dayna grinned. "I thought pretty much the same thing myself. You know, it’s sort of funny. Before I met you, I’d sort of hoped that sooner or later I could find some guy with about my musical tastes who I could partner with and do just about what we’re doing. I never figured it would be a girl, and I never figured it would end up like this for us. But you know what? I think I’m just as happy."

"I am, too," the girl buried in the sand said. "Don’t get me wrong. You taught me to like sex, and you taught me to like it with men. But you know, I’ve come to realize that while I enjoy having sex with men, when you and I do each other, we’re making love, and it’s not the same thing. Dayna, I love you a lot, and I hope we can keep it that way, but I don’t want to give up men."

"Me, either," Dayna grinned. "I’ve figured out that I don’t want to fall in love with a man just yet, but I do like fucking them once in a while. I’d hate to give that up, but I’d do it if I had to if it was what it took to keep you."

"You don’t have to," Sandy said softly. "I feel the same way. Dayna, I never thought I could love a woman the way I love you. I didn’t even dream it was possible. Do you ever feel jealous when I’m in bed with a guy?"

"No. Never," she smiled. "Mostly because I can’t tell you the last time that I wasn’t in bed with a guy at the same time you were. And it’s been the same guy often enough that it’s extra special. Mostly I’m hoping that you’re having a good time with him. Jealous? No. I think we both still have the need to feel a live dick in us once in a while, but that doesn’t make us love each other any less. Maybe more, since we both understand it."

"That’s pretty much how I feel," Sandy nodded softly. "Christ, I hope the day never comes when a guy will come between us. God, I love you, Dayna."

"You know what, Sandy?" Dayna said, rolling on her side and bringing her lips close to her lover’s. "I love you too."

The kissing went on, mouth to mouth, tongue to tongue for a long time. Finally, Sandy pulled her lips back a little and whispered, "Dayna, please, let me do you."

"Sure," Dayna said, getting up. She got onto her knees, legs spread wide, straddling Sandy’s face. They’d done each other orally a lot over two years, enough to know what worked and what didn’t, what the other liked, and the mere touch of Sandy’s tongue drove Dayna just about half wild. She leaned back, snuggled a little closer to that powerful tongue, felt its power, felt its love driving pure ecstasy up her spine. All too quickly, she felt a powerful orgasm coming on her; she put her hands on Sandy’s head, held it in place, arched her back and screamed as it washed over her, then relaxed, tried to catch her breath, and moaned, "Oh, God, I love that."

"I know you do," she heard Sandy say from down between her legs. "That’s why I love doing it to you. I think I love giving it to you more than I enjoy getting it, because I know it makes you happy. God, I love you."

"Oh, Sandy, I love you too, more than I could have ever dreamed. Would you like me to dig you out so we can do each other?"

"No. You don’t have to. All you have to do to make me happy is to slide a little closer so I can make you happy again."

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.