The Naked Cherry

Chapter One- Sample

The loons were crying out to each other across Sweetberry Lake that late spring evening we entered The Naked Cherry. Their eerie burbling calls echoed across the small body of water—it wasn’t much more than a pond, really, but up in this neck of the woods of Vermont, if it was big enough to attract ice skaters, swimmers, boaters, fishermen, and the occasional wayward moose, it was dubbed a “lake.”

“Bernie,” my beautiful Genevieve said in her low Quebecois lilt, “Listen to them, are they not lovely this time of year? Oh, how I miss them when they go away to warmer spots in the winter. Their love songs are so comforting to me.”

Lovely. She was lovely, my friend, my lover, my Genevieve. With her Scottish-Mohawk mother and French-Canadian father, she was an exotic jewel. Her drowsy eyes, sea green lit with amber sparks, were rimmed with paintbrush-thick eyelashes. Her hair was a blue-black waterfall cascading to her slender waist. When she sailed across a room, her jutting breasts leading like the prow of a ship, her tight ass swayed as the rolling of an ocean wave. She could have been a fashion model, but chose to stay behind the camera lens. Whether her latest literary project was a chapbook of Native American poetry or a photographic anthology on New England villages, she worked tirelessly out of her studio in the small cottage behind our farmhouse.

I nodded in silent agreement with her assessment of the sleek water birds as I searched with for the light switch on the foyer wall of The Naked Cherry. We were losing our light fast this far back in the woods, and I didn’t want to get stuck scrambling around in the dark in some run-down, century-old hotel long abandoned to its ghosts and an airborne division of spiders by its elderly owners.

One of the loons wailed mournfully just before my fingers ran across the light switch, and Genevieve added, ‘You know, the Ojibwa used to say that the cry of the loon was an omen of death.” I flicked the switch and we were bathed in a sunset glow from a chandelier hanging high above the foyer floor.

“Is that what you believe, Genevieve?” I asked as we stood together and gazed upward at the massive light fixture, then let our eyes wander along the polished balustrade of the curving grand staircase sweeping upward to the second floor. Run down, my ass. Someone had been taking care of this old girl.

My Genevieve smiled, her water-fairy eyes twinkling with mischief, as she answered, “Oh, Bernie, it just might be true. You know, there are all sorts of rumors about this place about murders and suicides and disappearances. As much noise as our lovely little loons make, they could have been quite busy indeed bringing omens to all those unfortunate souls here. But that’s why I’m here, to investigate all the legends and rumors for my book. And to study the photographs and paintings left behind over the decades. There is a story behind each one, you know. The people who are selling this place said that they heard from their parents, who passed the hotel down to them, that the renderings actually hold the souls of the people in them.”

“Crazy folklore,” I scoffed, helping Genevieve haul her photographic gear up the staircase.

My dark-haired beauty shrugged and kinked her wide lips in a half-smile as she threw open the French doors to the second-floor balcony overlooking the lake. “Maybe, maybe not,” she responded as she stepped out into the night and gazed down upon the calm waters below. One of the loons fluted a sad trill whose three ascending notes reminded me of the triple-repeated bar of ‘Taps.’ “’Crazy as a loon’ is what they say. But maybe the loons aren’t so crazy. Maybe they just know something we don’t.”

Genevieve shivered and came back inside, closing the doors behind her. She led the way down the hallway to the bedroom she would occupy for a few weeks while she continued to research the book that she had begun one month earlier about this once-thriving hotel. She threw open the double doors to the master suite, the one once occupied by the establishment’s original owners. Another light switch, another chandelier, this one much smaller than its big sister standing guard over the foyer.

I stood at the doorway and whistled. “Holy shit, I’ve lived in apartments smaller than this!”

The suite was bifurcated into two rooms by a set of etched French doors. The outer room, probably called a ‘sitting room’ by our ancestors, housed a massive sofa covered in burgundy velvet and accented with hand-embroidered matching pillows. Crouched before the sofa was a solid cherry coffee table with hand-turned legs and intricate carving, while a set of wing-backed chairs that matched the couch completed the set. A native rock fireplace that I could swear was the size of our bathroom back at the farmhouse was the focal point in the room, with a cherry wood mantel adorned with delicate blown glass ornaments in the shapes of animals. A stalking panther stood next to a slender buck poised for flight, while a ruby-throated hummingbird hung in a silent eternal hover on a slender thread suspended over a crimson-tinted rose. Someone had recently dusted everything, for the glassine wildlife sparkled and shone beneath the chandelier’s light. The sitting room walls were trimmed with a dusky pink wallpaper trimmed with perfectly straight and narrow columns of what I discovered were tiny cherries.

“My love, come back to the bedroom with me,” Genevieve beckoned from where she stood between the opened French doors. Her even white teeth flashed in a quick, coy smile, and she glided into the master bedroom, wiggling that fine ass of hers just a little in my direction. The wallpaper design was continued in this portion of the suite, and heavy deep red draperies framed the doors to a small balcony looking out upon the lake. Genevieve cracked open the doors so she could enjoy the flavor and aroma of the night air. My raven-haired night owl, delighted that the loons were providing an endless concert this evening.

“Wow. I’m giving up sleeping with you here in favor of a barn full of horses and injured wildlife? I must be nuts.” I caught up with my lover and gave her a sharp smack on the ass. She whooped and spun around, catching my hands in hers and pulling me down onto the king-sized canopy bed. I held my breath and clenched my eyes, expecting a cloud of dust.

Genevieve poked me in the ribs. “Breathe, dopey! The owners had the suite cleaned and dusted before we got here. I can’t guarantee what they did with the rest of the place, but I insisted that these rooms be ready for us.” She rolled over onto her belly and kicked off her sandals.

“What ‘us’? You’re the one who gets to stay here. I have to stay back and take care of all the critters. I’m a game warden: that’s my job, remember?” I fondled her upturned butt and back. She stretched like a cat beneath my hand and rolled back over, her large breasts begging for their freedom from beneath her lace-up halter top.

“Oh, but Bernie, you can come and stay with me on the weekends. Your assistant, Roger, he can take care of the little ones, can he not?” she pleaded with her husky voice and her innocent eyes.

“I guess so,” I sighed in resignation.

“So you really like this place?” Genevieve asked.

“Yeah, I do. It has character and class. And this bedroom is great!”

Genevieve half-turned onto her side and grinned. Her cat-that-just-ate-the canary grin. I should have known.

“Good, because I bought it.”

“You WHAT?” I stared down at her in shock.

“I bought it. My last three books sold very well, and I couldn’t let them just sell the land and destroy The Naked Cherry. It’s too precious, there’s too much history here. The escrow closes in a month. I fell in love with her the moment I walked into the foyer. It was as if she were calling out to me to be rescued. Like the loons, crying out to be brought back from the edge of extinction here in Vermont. Listen, they call to me again!”

“And just what do you plan to do with your Naked Cherry?” I asked, cocking an ear in the direction of the open portals to listen to the mating calls of our endangered waterfowl. The wildlife biologist in me was overjoyed that the loon population, once decimated by careless boaters and the birds’ ingestion of lead through abandoned fishing weights, was growing again. It sounded as if this particular pair were well into upping the chick population this year.

Genevieve reclined back onto the bed and raised her arms, offering up those gorgeous breasts to me again. “I’m going to turn it into a museum of local history and offer the rooms for literary conferences. Wouldn’t it be just perfect?” My Genevieve was excited, and when she was excited, I got excited.

“Well, my sweet beauty, if anyone can pull it off, you can. And while I’m thinking of pulling it off . . .”

I ran my fingers over her breasts and began to unlace her halter top. She sighed and raised her arms over her head, watching me intently as I worked the rawhide lace out of the eyelets. The fabric fell open and revealed the large pink aureoles and nipples. I leaned forward and suckled at them, savoring their sweetness and the pert nubs. Genevieve moaned deep in her throat and entwined her fingers in my tangle of chestnut curls. I shifted my weight and she opened her legs so I could crawl between them, then she closed them around me. We rubbed together like that for a long time, me sucking her tits while she rocked me between her powerful long thighs, sighing and making little animal noises as I piqued the interest of her sensitive nipples.

“Lower, Bernie, suck me lower,” she begged, pushing my head down to her nether regions. I unbuttoned her tight jeans, and slid them down those long dancer’s legs. As usual, she was wearing nothing beneath, and I buried my lips in the black thatch that she left to grow wild like the blueberry bushes around our fifty acres of woodlands.

Ah, she was already wet, damp with her sweet, musky dew, her inner lips engorged with her need. I embedded my tongue within her crevice and slowly licked deep inside her, drawing out the moment, teasing her, making her want me, making her need me.

Genevieve began to squirm and pull my hair. I glanced up while I licked her—her head was thrown back on the pillow, her face twisted in a grimace of pleasure, eyes closed as she concentrated on whatever fantasy she was playing inside her mind. It must have been a damned good one, and I must have just hit the right spot in her sodden pussy, because she suddenly cried out in French and jerked her hips in a frenzy of orgasmic climax.

I lay with my face pillowed on her creamy thighs, still feeling the residual quivering emanating from her loins as she relaxed. Finally, she whispered, “Bernie, baby, come here. Let me take care of you now.”

I got up on all fours and made my way up the bed. She sat up and pulled my tee shirt over my head, running her hands down my chest, over my six-pack abs and muscular biceps and quadriceps, all maintained by hours of mucking out stalls, stomping though the forest in search of wayward black bears and wounded deer, and wrestling with various forms of wildlife in an effort to capture, tag, treat, relocate, or sometimes, sadly, send them to their great Creator in the big Forest upstairs.

My Genevieve ran her hands over my body, kissing my skin, my lips, my eyes, my neck, all of me. It was my turn to moan and thrash as she removed my boots and jeans and laid her lovely face between my legs and excited that awakened beast lying between them.

She licked my residual moisture from her lips and snuggled up next to me, lying her face upon my breast. We had the night together, as I had asked my assistant warden, Roger, to keep an eye on the farm for the night. He only lived a mile down the road from us, and with his wife gone for two weeks to her mother’s in New Hampshire, Roger was more than happy to check in on all the creatures, both domestic and wild, as well as the leg of lamb and steamed vegetables we had left for him in our refrigerator.

We fell asleep that way, she in my arms, a content smile on her face as she was soothed by the haunting wails of the Ojibwa’s messengers of the afterlife.

* * *

“Hey, wake up, gorgeous. That crazy lady you’re interviewing is due in half an hour.” I nudged Genevieve and she rolled over and sat up, instantly awake and alert. She smiled, threw her arms around me for a quick hug, then padded across the deep carpeting to the bathroom. I watched with a contented sense of pride as her smooth ass and heavy breasts moved away from me. The door snapped shut and I heard the shower kick on, and soon Genevieve was singing to herself in her native tongue, something light and happy.

I threw on my jeans and tee shirt, pulled on my hiking boots, and bounded down the staircase to get the rest of Genevieve’s suitcases out of the truck. I brought them upstairs and left them for her to unpack as she desired, then hauled in the boxes of canned and dried goods and a cooler of perishable items we had left outside overnight. I quickly stocked the pantry and kitchen with food items, noticing that the cupboards were well-supplied with all the cooking utensils the finest chef could need. The hotel’s owners had been considerate enough to extend a thorough cleaning to the kitchen area, and the copper cookware gleamed on their hooks while the glasses and stoneware dinnerware were spotless.

I heard the brass knocker on the front door smack against the wood, once, twice. Just in time, I thought. I skidded out to the foyer and had to bite my tongue as I was about to call out to Genevieve, “The crazy lady’s here!” No need. Genevieve scampered down the curved staircase, her excitement as fresh as a child awaiting a visit from Santa Claus. She shot me a warning glance and waggled a long index finger at me, chiding me for what she instinctively knew I had been about to say.

I opened the door to admit Charlina Fayette, the Crazy Lady of Sweetberry Lake, as she was known around the local villages. She was the local color, the woman who lived alone way back in the woods along the lake in a small log cabin. The woman who had never married, who never bore children to care for their mother. The woman who spoke of the ghosts and captives of The Naked Cherry. She would be my Genevieve’s ‘spirit guide’ through The Naked Cherry.

“Grandmere,” Genevieve greeted the elderly woman in their common tongue. “Bonjour, bienvenu. Welcome, Madame Fayette. And thank you so much for coming.” Genevieve kissed Madame Charlina on both cheeks, not having to stoop too far down as the old woman had once been as tall as my lovely sapling; time and age had not bowed the Madame much and she still walked straight and proud. We led her into the dining area of the kitchen and I listened to their conversation as they sat at the small table near a bright window while I prepared eggs, fresh bacon, and toast for the three of us.

Genevieve introduced me to her guide as I set the table. “This is my friend, Bernie. Bernie, this is Madame Fayette, my historical source for The Naked Cherry.”

Madame Fayette gazed at me thoughtfully and eyed my reddish mop of curls, my deeply tanned face, and calloused hands roughened by years of working in the wild and with the wild. “You are the one who takes care of the wild creatures,” she said, a statement, not a question. “Including this lovely untamed creature, I gather,” she added, nodding at my Genevieve.

“Yes, Madame, I am.” Her serenity and forward manner rattled me a little bit. I had expected the Crazy Lady of Sweetberry Lake to have wild eyes and unkempt hair, and certainly not all of her own perfectly straight, white teeth.

I gathered my rattled nerves, saying, “You’re the Crazy Lady of Sweetberry Lake. So how do you know so much about The Naked Cherry, which had a considerable reputation as a brothel, Madame?”

There was a moment’s silence, then Madame Fayette patted her cotton-white bun as if checking for loose hair pins, scanned her pearl-polished nails, and leaned her chin onto the palm of her hand as she propped her elbow on the table.

“My lovely children, I was one of the original providers of illicit entertainment in this establishment when it truly earned its name of The Naked Cherry. The girls and boys who came through these doors and through these halls all knew me as Crazy Charlie, and for good reason. I’ve tasted my share of the draughts of ambrosia from both the cock and the pussy. We just had to keep it all a lot quieter in our day, my dears.”

Genevieve sat back in her chair with a small, “Oh, my,” issuing from her copper-lined lips. Her water-fairy eyes widened in shock, then returned to normal as the Crazy Lady’s revelation sank in.

I finally closed my gaping mouth and turned back to the stove to fry my bacon, leaving poor Genevieve to pick up the pieces of the conversation.

“You were a prostitute?” Genevieve asked in amazement.

“Yes, dear, I was. My poor pappa had died during the influenza, what we called the Spanish flu, in 1918. I was only eleven then, only a decade younger than this hotel.”

“You’re 97 years old? You’re kidding me, right?” Genevieve interrupted Charlina’s tale. “Wait, may I tape record our conversation? I don’t want to miss any of this. Or is it something you don’t want to talk about?” Genevieve had pulled out her tape recorder and had one slender finger poised over the ‘record’ button, then paused.

Our guest shrugged her shoulders and spread her hands apart, palms upraised. “Yes, I’m that old. I have heard the loons calling often this summer--I suppose my time is nearing to go, so it does not matter that I tell these truths. I am not ashamed of what I was or did. And as far as the history and secrets I know, most of those involved are beyond the condemnation of the living now, so that doesn’t matter either.”

Genevieve’s finger descended and the tales of The Naked Cherry began.

“So you were eleven when you became a … a …” Genevieve stumbled.

“A prostitute. We preferred ‘ladies of the evening’ or ‘sweet cherries’ – our own little pun on la cerise sucre—which literally meant “sweet cherry.” We were their sweet chéries—their sweet darlings. And, no, I wasn’t eleven. As I was saying, my father passed away when I was eleven. My mamma worked hard here at this hotel before it gained its reputation as a brothel and changed its name.”

“The Naked Cherry isn’t its original name?” Genevieve sat back in her seat as I laid down plates heaped with their steaming breakfast and poured orange juice for them. I kissed the top of her head and waggled my fingers in a silent “see you later” as I made my way out of the kitchen. This was her project, not mine, and I had four-footed children to tend to. I would have their voices on the tapes long after the loons delivered their messages.

“No,” continued the Madame’s tale on the tape. “It was simply Sweetberry Hotel when they built her back in 1897. People came from Montpelier and Burlington, and even as far as St. Johnsbury to get away and take vacations. The lake is small, but back then, we didn’t have all the boaters and jet skis and such nonsense. It was just a place to gather with families and enjoy the wild berry picking, and to fish by the lake or in a canoe. This area isn’t very citified even today, but back then, it was still fairly wild and densely forested around here, with only a few villages scattered around.”

“Mamma was a big raw-boned Swedish immigrant who found work as a maid and later became head housekeeper for the motel. My pappa was a dark-haired, delicate-boned newspaper editor for a daily in Montpelier whose family stock was rumored to have come from the armies of Joan of Arc herself.. He was gone quite a bit, but when he came home, la, what fun we had! We would go pick baskets full of blueberries and blackberries, the wild hazelnuts, and mamma would take us deeper into the forest to see the lady’s slippers. There were so many more of those beautiful orchids back then, hiding amidst the laurel--pink ones, sunshine yellow, simply magical.”

“Did you have brothers and sisters, Madame?” Genevieve’s voice would interject a question now and again.

“I had one of each, both younger than I. Maurice and Pauletta. They are both gone now, many years each. How sad that the oldest outlives the young.” One could almost hear the elderly woman shaking her head in regret on the tape.

“Pappa went overseas during the Great War, World War I, to report on the battles and the conditions. When he came back on the great ship with the soldiers, they were already dying aboard, already infected with the flu. He, too, was already dying, and he went after four days of horrid gasping for air, his skin turning the blue from the disease, the lack of oxygen. Such a small, fragile man, it didn’t take long for the flu to kill him. We buried him and then turned to the business of surviving.

“Mamma worked her fingers to the bone at this motel, until 1922. Then the loons cried for her, and she was gone.”

“What happened to her?” Genevieve asked. The clinking of tableware indicated they were still enjoying breakfast as they talked.

“She got cancer, a woman’s cancer, and her body ate her up. I was fifteen years old and I was left with a twelve-year-old sister and a brother of just ten years. The woolen mills were an option, but I needed more money than you could make there to take care of Paulie and Maury.” There was a brief silence.

Genevieve gently urged her on. “So you became a prostitute.”

“Well, not at first. They let me work here as a maid, and Pauletta and Maurice could go to school during the day.”

“But you had to quit school?”

“But of course. That was okay, I was always a nuisance to my teachers. Too wild for them—I despised their skin-milk Yankee harshness.” I could imagine Genevieve smirking at the term, one she often used herself for the pale-skinned, hard-nosed descendents of the founding bloodlines of New England. “I was smart, though, I always read, still do, every day. Two books a week. Don’t need glasses to do it, either.”

“So you knew what you needed to know, and didn’t need what they taught in the school.”

“Exactly, chéri. And what I didn’t know, I learned from watching what went on here at the hotel. I can tell you, a great deal went on here, especially in the nights. This place holds many secrets.”

“When did the name change?”

“In 1925, three years after Mamma went away. As the cities grew and more villages sprang up in these parts, the world began to change. Things weren’t so innocent anymore, especially after the war. Soldiers were coming back to these parts, men who had seen a whole different part of the world. They wanted the same things they had found in Europe. That included the brothels. So one of the soldiers who had made his fortune after the war, before the Crash of ’29, bought the Sweetberry Hotel and began to import girls from the big cities further south, even some from other states. They entertained the troops long after the war ended, I can tell you that.” A dry chuckle from both ladies.

“He had everything redecorated as you see it today, the lilac paint covered over with the reds and pinks of the cherries, the plain fixtures replaced with elegant chandeliers. And he renamed it ‘The Naked Cherry.’ Oh, I tell you, people were scandalized, simply outraged at the affront to their stodgy Yankee ways. But the men kept coming in at all hours of the day, so the loud talk became but a whisper. After all, it was good for the economy here and people couldn’t quite complain about that, now could they?”

“How so?” Genevieve asked.

“Oh, we needed more maids to constantly clean up after the endless flow of men coming through here. And kitchen help, cooks, bakers, servers, all of that. Have you seen the dining room, yet? Wonderful, isn’t it? It was always busy, always serving breakfast, lunch, and late dinners to our guests. They were ravenous in many ways, many ways.

“The owner made sure the working gals paid taxes so the government would not come after them. We had quite a few ‘entertainers’ and ‘nurses for the infirm’ here, I tell you.

“I decided that if I were to keep my brothers and sisters alive—we had no relatives who would take us in, you see, so there was just the three of us—I would have to make more money. So one night, I approached the owner as he counted up the night’s take, and offered my services.”

“What did he say?”

“He looked me up and down, made me turn around a few times, lift my skirts so he could see my legs. Then he asked me to undo my bodice so he could see my breasts. I was still so very young, and many of the girls had not developed yet. But as I showed him that night, the Fayette women were amply endowed, and not in the manner of cows. We worked hard, and I swam and played games with the boys, so my breasts were firm and high. He was very impressed. Then he took me to his private quarters and he took my own naked cherry.”

“How terrible,” Genevieve exclaimed.

“Oh, not really. I was not a stupid girl. I had seen what the ladies did, I peeked in through bedroom windows while they worked. I knew what to do. And I was very practical and somewhat desperate. I did what I had to do, and I can’t say that it was altogether unpleasant. Marcel was a kind man and quite a gentle one. Not your typical pimp like today. He personally broke in the new girls, made sure they weren’t hurt. He never beat the girls, never forced them into anything. We came of our own accord, and if desired, left of our own accord. He could always get others, but only the finest. What we did that night, and for many weeks after that, was simply a business transaction and he was training me for my position—or positions, considering what I did.” Charlina laughed.

Madame Fayette’s voice sank into seriousness. “I think that’s when it started.”

“When what started?” Genevieve coaxed gently.

“The paintings, the photographs. They began to show up on the walls of the bedrooms, and in the halls, and in the great rooms. We were never quite sure who put them up on the walls, no one ever took credit for them.”

“What was so strange about the pictures? I saw many of them and just thought they were perhaps pictures of guests or family members of the people who worked here.”

“There is an odd little story surrounding each subject of the renderings. None of the portraits are of any of the girls who simply worked here and married and moved on, or the johns who just came for a quick lay and went home without incident. No, the pictures were only of the really interesting creatures who passed through these halls, the ones who were surrounded by scandal, or tragedy, or incidents that made them the topics of conversation when we all sat around the annual autumn bonfire on the shores of the lake and told ghost stories. It was as if a hidden artist or photographer had captured their souls and encaged them within frames right at that moment in time that they passed into the hotel’s folklore. They are frozen there forever, as if they could still be alive in the brush marks and grains.”

“Show me.” The sound of Genevieve’s chair scraping along the floor as she arose.

“Are you sure, beautiful child? I am the only one left who knows of these things. Perhaps the truth should die with me.”

“No, I must know. I have come too far in my research to let go of this now, Madame. Show me.”

“All right. They will not believe you, you must realize that. They will think you crazy, as crazy as the loons that send us fair warning of our demise.”

“So they will think I am merely telling ghost stories. That is their choice to believe or not believe. This is a book about the legends and history of The Naked Cherry. So let us share the tales and let them wonder.”

The sound of footsteps clacking along on the tile and becoming muffled in the carpeting could be heard as they walked along, Madame giving a guided tour of the origins of much of the furniture and decorations as they passed through the house.

“Come, let us go into the parlor, as we called it back then. There is a portrait you should see there, and then I shall tell you the tale of the wild creature it captured.”

There was the sound of door latches being turned and a set of heavy leaded glass doors opening with a slight creak.

“Look, there she is, La Belle de le Bal. The Belle of the Ball. Although from what we know of her sexual appetites, her life was more like ‘the ball of the belle.’ Sit over here next to me in the sunlight, I do get chilled more often these days, and we haven’t reached summer yet. Let me tell you the tale as I heard it from one of the sweet cherries, the one who taught me how to dance. She also taught me how to sip the dew from a woman’s trembling southerly lips as delicately as the butterfly savors the nectar from the throat of the tiger lily. Her name was Madeleine and when she said she had seen a ghost, we all knew we had best keep our rosaries next to us as we slept at night. This is what she had seen . . .”

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