Stew and Biscuits

Here's a pretty fresh flash fiction story:

Stew and Biscuits—a 10 minute writing response to the prompt:  write about a romantic moment long ago 11/14, edited 11/23/12

Melanie brought the coal to the stove, her back aching from pulling in the stiffly frozen laundry from the cotton clothesline spread between the leafless maple trees.  These days the sun didn’t do much for drying the wash.  So she’d have to pull out the linen later and dry them by the fire.  But for now, she had to stock the wood in the stove and get dinner ready for Frank before he came in from the fields.  The corn had been stored away for the winter but Frank was still working on bundling the hay for storage.  After a dry summer, the hay wasn’t as thick as it should be for getting the animals through what seemed to be an early and cold winter.  Melanie stirred the stew and set the corn biscuits on the platter to bake.

A burst of cold air blasted the light from the oil lamps as Frank entered the house.  Stamping his feet on the pine floorboards, he shouted across the hall, “Mmmm, somethin’ smells mighty good for dinner, honey.”

“Oh, just biscuits and stew, nothin’ special.”  Melanie wiped her hands across her faded blue apron and quickly turned to Frank for a welcoming hug.

“Doesn’t need to be special as long as my special gal gives me somethin’ to warm me up!”

They spread arms open around each other’s wide backs, Melanie nuzzling her nose into Frank’s still chilled neck.  His grey-brown beard brushed across her auburn hair, knotted into a thick single braid.  Gently, he pulled the braid so that she turned her head upward for a kiss.  Stepping back as the stew bubbled, Melanie giggled.  “I swear, old man, you’d think you were still a young buck workin’ for my Pa.”

“No, Ma’am.  I’m a happier man now after all these years.  No pa of yours to tell me to step away from our lovin’ we used to do in the barn.  I can kiss you now anytime, anywhere, and I do.”

The stew bubbled a bit longer that night and the biscuits burned.