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I had requests for a sequel to "The Surrender of Sibella" and although this story may not be what the readers had in mind, it is a sequel but it has a different tone and 3rd person POV. If the reception is good, I'll write more - gladly. I hope you enjoy it.
Ponderosa Lysistrata
Chorus of Old Men: "How true the saying: 'Tis impossible to live with the baggages, impossible to live without 'em."
― Aristophanes, Lysistrata
I
Sibella looked down at her child as he peacefully slept in the basket. She wondered if that was how Adam had looked as an infant, if he had had the face of a little angel, a pink rosebud mouth and rounded cheeks. It was so hard to imagine it now as Adam always had a greyish sheen to his cheeks even after freshly shaving. And then she smiled again before plying her needle to her section of the quilt; thinking about her husband always sent a slight thrill through her blood and warmed her. But oftentimes, as Sibella held her son and looked into his face, she wondered if her darling son would grow up to be a hairy, randy man who wanted nothing more than to lay with his wife like his father did. Probably, but at the moment, she didn't want to consider it. That small, darling boys would grow up to be lusty men was just one of life's inevitable injustices. Sibella sighed.
"So," Mrs. Hardy, a heavy-set woman who loved her pies and cakes, said to the women sitting about the two pushed-together tables over which the large quilt hung, "I said to Abner, what if the men can't find anyone to run for mayor? He said then that the city council – all men, of course - would make the decisions. I would have said more but Abner said it was stuff and nonsense for me to even fill my head with such things and to get about serving dessert. I wanted to dump that slice of rhubarb pie right into his lap!" Mrs. Hardy stabbed the needle into the fabric for emphasis.
Sibella half-smiled. "He might have taken that as meaning that you wanted to eat it up out of his lap and take a taste of him as well."
"Sibella! The things you say!" Patty Broward said, but then broke into giggles and some of the other young wives did as well. They found Sibella's company quite liberating.
"That would be the day I'd take that thing in my mouth – unless of course, he squirted vanilla cream!" The women laughed, Mrs. Hardy laughing the loudest at her joke. Only Mrs. Rowley remained staid.
"You know," Sibella said once the laughter died, "before I was married, I wanted to work for woman's suffrage – go to New York or Philadelphia - even Baltimore to help. But why can't we start our own version of women's suffrage here and demand a vote in local elections – perhaps even run for offices ourselves? If the men can't find someone to run for mayor, one of us could run. Or at least help decide who should run."
"Now, Sibella," Mrs. Maybeth Rowley said, "I can understand your saucy talk - although Agnes doesn't need much encouragement to follow suit, but, well, you're young and have Adam Cartwright as your…"
Sibella raised one eyebrow; after all, what did having Adam as her husband have to do with it? Or was Maybeth referring to the gossip that Sibella learned had run rampant through Virginia City after she had shown up on the Ponderosa, a new bride. It had been passed on from a few Ponderosa ranch hands who had one too many beers of a Friday night, to some of the local ranchers and merchants and then to their wives, that Adam Cartwright would lock himself and his new bride in their bedroom for hours at a time and revel in all sorts of perverse behaviors. It was rumored that there might even be a fling with sodomy on occasion. And at night, the ranch hands claimed, sleep was hard to come by due to all the moaning and creaking of the bed floating on the night air from the newlyweds' open bedroom window.
And once, as Mr. Hardy told his wife, he had shown up at the small house into which Adam had moved his wife; he was delivering an order of nails and hoped to be invited to say for the mid-day meal. Adam's horse was tied up in the yard and his black Stetson, hanging on a peg inside, his gun belt over the back of a chair. But Adam himself was nowhere around. Their housekeeper, Nellie George – a flighty woman by nature - blushed and stammered, not knowing what to say, her plump hands fluttering about like maddened butterflies. But the thudding of a headboard against a wall and a woman's cries and moans was all Mr. Hardy needed to hear. So, word got about that Adam Cartwright came home to lunch everyday but it wasn't to eat dinner! It was to have his fill of his wife or, the men had said, nudging each other, to fill her!
It had taken a few months before Sibella was accepted by the other wives of Virginia City and it hadn't helped that she was so lovely – beautiful, actually, and their husbands acted like fools around her, doffing their hats and smiling like a "witless child," Agnes Hardy had reported early on to the quilting group. "Why I swear, Clovis stood there as hard as when we were first married; he could have hung his hat on it! When that Sibella Cartwright is around, he thinks he's a young man again! Let me tell you, I dragged him home right then and there, lifted my skirts and climbed on top of him and if he needed to think about putting it in her to stay hard for me, I didn't much care. I just took advantage of the situation. For that, I have to thank her. Best ride I've had in years!"
Eventually, Sibella Cartwright had been invited to join the community quilting bee that met every second and fourth Wednesday evening at the large community hall at the edge of town. But many of the women still occasionally glanced at Sibella wondering in what exotic sexual practices she and Adam might indulge; after all, Adam Cartwright had even been to France and everyone knew what the French were like!
"I don't see what my husband has to do with anything, Mrs. Rowley. I just think that we women need to have more say in what goes on in Virginia City. Why, those of us with children, well, our children will go or do go to school here; they will have to live in this town and if we're good enough to raise them, well, why aren't we good enough to decide what happens in their environs and vote for the people who make the laws and ordinances that affect them?"
"It's just not done," Mrs. Rowley said. "that's not the way of things."
"Did you know," Sibella said, her cheeks taking on more color with her enthusiasm. "that Wyoming territory already allows women to vote – and in Missouri, widows with children are allowed to vote on school board elections." The communal intake of breath could be heard.
"Really?" a pregnant, young Patty Broward said, her eyes as big as her belly.
"Utah as well," Sibella added. "I think that Nevada or at least Virginia City should allow us women to vote." Sibella stayed her needle and looked down at her sleeping son. With a little tug at her heart, she felt a bit as if she was betraying him and his future as the dominant sex.
"Sibella," Abby Kirkland asked, "are you sure about all this? I mean, how do you know?"
"I know because I read all the newspapers my husband subscribes to; we have some subscriptions from as far as New York. My husband reads them for stock information and silver prices, trends in construction and some such other business, but I keep track of the suffrage and temperance movements and the battles they've won – and lost."
"Now, temperance," Mrs. Millicent Raymond said, angrily stabbing the fabric she held, "that I could get behind. I have to save pennies and such but Ward, why he thinks nothing of supplying himself with two whiskey bottles every Friday. You know, Maybeth, you asked me last Sunday where my husband was –why I was there at church alone - remember?" Maybeth Rowley, a woman in her fifties and the leader of the quilting group, nodded. "Well, I told you then he was ill and he was. He drank too much the night before and was too hungover to attend – but whenever he's soused, he actually tries to climb on top of me as if he could get that thing hard enough being so drunk. Sinful, sinful!"
The women clucked their tongues and tsk-tsked.
"Men are such beasts," Mrs. Hardy said, shaking her head. "Only thinking of their own appetites."
"As far as appetites go," Mrs. Rowley said pointedly toward Agnes Hardy's massive frame, "You have a few yourself." And Agnes Hardy, once she realized the joke, laughed just as loudly as the others.
Sibella smiled to herself; she rather enjoyed her "beast" and his appetites but then she considered, despite Adam's forward views on many things including the rights of women, he still liked to keep Sibella on her back with her legs spread and if she was too haughty on occasion, he did take her over his knee. But, Sibella considered, she did enjoy a spanking on occasion and the heat it added to her enjoyment of their couplings. But sex was one thing, Sibella considered - politics and women's rights were another.
"What if we could manage to convince our husbands to agree to letting us vote in the local elections?" Sibella asked.
"Oh, that would never happen," Widow Jones said, a plump, pretty woman with gray about the temples.
The other women giggled and smiled and looked at one another.
"Is that because you're afraid that Roy Coffee would be voted out of office?" Clara Driscoll asked.
"Perhaps he would go elsewhere then," Millicent Raymond said, suppressing a smile, "and then you'd have to find another man to warm your bed every Friday night."
The women laughed and Widow Edwina Jones flushed a deep red.
"I never…Roy Coffee is a very nice man and he's alone and I'm alone, so I just have him over for dinner Fridays."
"Yes," Millicent Raymond said, still stitching, "and he has you for dessert and doesn't leave until Saturday morning—after breakfast, I'm sure!"
"Why, Millie! How can you say…." Edwina Jones found herself unable to finish the sentence.
But Sibella interrupted. "I think we can get our husbands and all the men - including Sheriff Coffee – to agree to let us vote."
"Now, Sibella, we all know because we've seen it, that you have Adam Cartwright wrapped around your little finger and can convince him to see things your way. Why you lead him around by the nose like a prize stud bull."
"It's not Adam's nose she had ahold of," Alison Osmond said, smiling. "She has a tight grip a little lower down!"
The women laughed and Sibella had to smile at the image of her with a firm hand on Adam's prick, leading him around.
"Okay, Sibella. Just how to we do this thing?" Abby Kirkland asked, her face serious.
"I have an idea and - I tell you what. When we next meet, I'll reveal it all."
"Why not now?" Patty Broward asked. "I'd like to tell Jack this very evening and see what he has to say about it and then tell him what's what."
"I have some other women to invite to our next meeting – let's meet in two days, Friday – I also want to give all of you time to consider what we women, in solidarity, can accomplish. I still have to work out the details of the plan - exactly. But think of it this way ladies: We can be women warriors – and be unbeatable."
"But how?" Patty Broward asked. "We don't have any weapons."
"Oh, yes we do," Sibella said, a sly look in her eyes. "It's right between our legs."
"On, my goodness," Widow Jones said, one small hand flying to her mouth.
"Of course!" Patty Broward said. "Do you think it would work, Sibella?"
"It may – if we stick together and…well, like I said, there are some other women in town I want to talk to and then I'll know if we have a chance."
Excitement filled the air at the idea of being able to cast a ballot for the first time, to be on equal footing with their husbands for once. Chatter broke out and Sibella looked around at the animated faces. Perhaps the hope of voting could be accomplished. Perhaps she could fight for suffrage right here in Virginia City. And wouldn't Adam be surprised. A smile embraced Sibella's lips. Yes, Adam would be most surprised.
Mrs. Hardy placed her needle firmly in the quilt and stood up. "Shall we have refreshments now, ladies? If we're going to beard the lions in their dens – or in the bedrooms, we'll need to be well-fed."
"Yes, ladies," Sibella said, rising as well. "And tonight, treat your husbands well. Lay with them and whet their appetites for even more to come later – supposedly. Be the tigress you can be but sheath your claws until the time is right. And then we'll snatch victory."
"With our 'snatches'," Alison Osmond said, laughing. And the others joined in as they moved to the table holding the cookies and sandwiches, but Sibella's mind was roiling with plans. Poor Adam, she thought – poor, poor Adam; a soon-to-be casualty of "war".