BAE BOY

2-30

When I leave this Earth, I swear, this is the last song I want to hear--my family has been made aware of that final wish, in fact. To honor all my relations but especially the Native friends and family who love me so deeply and unconditionally. It fits here, somehow, with the story an old Apache man is about to tell. Close your eyes and go...

"She settle down yet?" I asked Kendall.

And she turned to face me on the big bed beneath the big skylight that some really smart architect had come up with as if he--or she--had put it there with me in mind.

Each of the houses scattered around the ranch was built to do something Duke had thought of that the previous one hadn't done.

It was his little Paradise, back in the day, when he was just beginning to go a little deeper into his life, as he put it. Pulling away from the business thing, the worldly world.

We were in one of the smaller ones, a real log cabin in the woods near a creek that we could always hear a little bit in the background, like one of those Web sites with natural sounds. Only this was the real deal. Real water, constantly running over the rocks.

Every room had big windows so that you could all the way the mesas and mountains in the distance and feel like you were always outside. And the upstairs master suite, which was actually the entire top floor, had a skylight that let in the sky and the stars.

He thought it would be the perfect way to end the day, staring up at the night sky with his woman in his arms. His woman, of course, didn't see it that way at all.

It was all too "country" for Vivi. And too damned quiet, she told him. Which was the point, right? The quiet and the "country."

He'd been hoping she'd be swayed by the beauty of it all. But she couldn't even see it. She got upset, tense, he said. She was afraid of the critters in the woods, mad when she couldn't just ring for someone to clean up or cook. She wasn't sure how to "be" in a place where makeup was optional and her jewelry just got in the way.

Kendall, on the other hand, blossomed there. First day, she kicked off her shoes, put a little loose dress that let her move free and easy despite the new weight she was carrying and walked across the creek, laughing as the cold water tickled her toes.

I wish you could've seen it. She was like a little girl. All rosy cheeked, those coppery curls blowing in the wind.

She collected all these rocks--turned the skirt of her dress into a little "basket" to carry them in. They were more colorful in the water than out, but we kept them. And she chose this one perfectly round one about the size of her palm as a "touch stone," to hold and rub between her hands the way some people use those prayer beads to calm themselves down.

Oh, and let me just say that any man who isn't turned on by a female body carrying his own child has to have serious issues. I know a lot of women really hate losing their figures and all that, but I am one man who discovered very quickly how effing sexy women's bodies become, to me anyway, as that's all happening.

I'm not being abstract or philosophical here. I actually loved her physical shape. I loved to hold her and run my hands over her belly. I loved her rounder, fuller breasts and also the way those shapely legs of hers stood just a little stronger, a little more...I don't know, powerfully, as she pushed back in the knees a bit to offset the load.