Her small cabin sat a hundred yards back from the county road with thick brush between the two. The driveway had an “S” curve in it so the cabin and yard couldn’t be seen from the road. The yard as such was only fifty feet around the house. Maggie loved her privacy for several reasons.
The main reason was that she seldom wore clothes when the weather was warm and mostly because, out of sight was out of mind. With a sigh, she dropped the peeled apple in a bowl and picked out another from the box on the floor. Her mind idled over as her hands worked the knife.
Her parents had been killed in a plane crash when she was four. Her grandparents on her mother’s side had taken her in. They were the only family she had. Her mother had been an only child and her dad also. His parents were dead also. She sighed and looked at the finished apple.
She sat the apple in the bowel and looked around. The small cabin here now was not the big house of her childhood. It had burned to the ground twenty years before. She had been in college. Her grandparent’s had moved into the nearest small town. That was the beginning of the end for them.
Her great grandfather had started the farm. Eighty acres of pasture and pecan trees. The only woods that had been kept were eight acres around the house and that was all old large oaks. Maggie had let the woods grow wild except for the yard and her garden out back.
She leased out the pasture for hay to a rancher down the road. He got three cuttings a year if the rain was right. A guy came around in the fall and harvested the pecans. Both brought in money. Not that she needed the money but she didn’t like anything going to waste. Shortly after she graduated from college, her grandparents had died one behind the other. One of cancer and one from a broken heart at the loss of the first one.
Maggie dropped the knife in the bowel with the apples and stood up. She stretched up on her toes several times and smiled at the sound of a semi truck going down the road just out of sight. She wondered what the driver would think of a short middle aged woman standing on a porch naked.
Maggie was short, barely five foot four with full breasts that looked large on her slender frame. She had just crossed the line into mid forty land but didn’t worry about her weight. She had a problem of keeping weight on. That happened when you forgot to eat.
She grinned as she stuffed a strip of apple peeling into her mouth and started to chew. The crisp sweet skin with a slightly bitter over taste was excellent. She picked up the bowel and headed inside to slice up the apples and get them ready for the pie.
As she sliced the apples, she wondered what she would fix for supper. It was just lunch time but she didn’t have anything out of the freezer. If she didn’t get something out now, she would forget. The first thing her eyes fell on was a package marked “Quail.”
“Just what the doctor ordered,” she said as she placed the package in the sink.
*****
The pie was made and in the oven. She headed for the back porch. “Fresh peas and maybe some carrots if the rabbits have left me any,” she said to herself as she headed for the garden.
Being outside naked was exciting to her. After twenty years of working in public offices, it was a total change in so many ways. She had a retirement, a 401K, and some good stocks. Some of that was from her grandmother. She had chosen wisely how she spent her egg money back in the day.
Her bills and taxes were covered easily with some left over. The garden provided her vegetables. Hunting covered her meat. Rabbits, squirrels, quail, even an occasional deer. She had been raised on wild game and knew how to clean and cook it.
She was pretty self-sufficient. She had sold the house in town and the condo in the city when she retired. An older couple had kept the house in town rented since her grandparents died. Their daughter had bought the house when Maggie put it up for sale.
The cabin wasn’t expensive to build. Cleaning up the overgrown mess of the old place took time and heavy equipment. One bedroom and one bath was all she needed. The kitchen was open to the living room, which was small. She didn’t have a TV but there were two computer desks full of computer equipment.
The peas only took a few minutes to harvest. The carrots took longer. There were more carrots than she thought there would be. She had a smile on her face as she headed back inside. “Maybe a trip to the Farmer’s Market this weekend,” she said aloud as she went up the steps to the porch.
She had the peas shelled and the carrots peeled and chopped when a bell rang on the back porch. She looked out the front window to see a sheriffs car coming in the driveway. It stopped by the barn and Larry Cook, the local sheriff got out.
With a grin, Maggie walked to the front door, opened it, and stepped out onto the porch. “Am I under arrest again?” She called out as she walked to the edge of the front steps.
Larry grinned as he shook his head. He looked the naked woman up and down. “Why would I arrest you?” As he walked toward the porch, he asked, “What did I arrest you for the last time?”
“Something about distracting an office while he was on duty,” Maggie replied.
“Yeah but I threw those charges out,” he said as he stopped at the bottom of the steps and looked the naked woman up and down again.
Maggie made a whimpering sound. “Not before you handcuffed and frisked me.”
“I don’t remember any complaints out of either of us,” Larry shot back.
Maggie grinned. “That was my first time in handcuffs. I was too shocked to complain.”
Larry chuckled. “You came your brains out even before I had read you your rights.”
“I’ve got a bell on the driveway so you can’t slip up on me anymore.”
“I turned on the lights and siren the next time I stopped by,” Larry said with a grin.
“And I still came out on the porch naked.”
“The highlight of my day,” Larry said with a wink.
“I can’t be the only crazy woman running around naked in the woods in this county.”
“Probably not but you’re the only one I’ve caught red handed, so to speak.”
“Have you ever even looked at my hands?” Maggie asked with a grin.
“Nope,” Larry replied with a grin of his own.
“Not even when I have a two handed grip on your beautiful dick?”
Larry groaned softly. “Usually we’re kissing at that point and I can’t see past your boobs.”
Maggie laughed. “If you’re off duty, I can offer you a beer. If you’re on duty, I have iced tea.”
“Have you been doing any shooting or heard shots out this way?” He asked.
“Nope on both parts of that question. It’s been quiet,” she replied.
Larry nodded. “Kind of what I thought. Dottie, down the road called in and said someone was shoot all over the place.”
Maggie smiled. “She lonely since Ben, her dog, died.”