The line at the funeral parlor led out the front door, around the side, and down the street for three blocks and was composed primarily of men who had come to pay their respects. The civilian men wore a white shirt, dark jacket, dark pants, and a white name tag that read either First or Last.

The military and ex-military wore their uniforms; they honored Shyloh with the same white name tag neatly affixed to cover all the ribbons on their chest. Most of the military men had prosthetics and tended to group together with men in wheelchairs. Many of the men clutched a bouquet of flowers. The newspaper estimated more than a thousand attended but, out of respect for the funeral, no pictures were taken.

Inside the parlor, three women greeted each man with a warm handshake and thanked them for coming. Amanda Thompkins (nee Sinclair, sister of the deceased) was surprised at the public stature of some men who came; she wasn’t surprised by the quantity though.

Allison Sinclair, Shyloh’s daughter, wondered which man might be her father. She knew she could rule out anyone with Last on his name tag. Well, maybe rule them out. It was possible that one of the Last might also have been First thirty years before.

Shyloh’s best friend since high school, Ellie Bartels-Williams, knew many of the local men plus their wives, and their children, and their home addresses. As a real estate broker, she’d sold homes to a number of them. The married men who knew Ellie were apprehensive; she could see that easily enough. Ellie knew the true stories about the married men and the affairs with Shyloh. The ones they could never tell anyone lest their families heard about them.

She hugged the married men close so she could whisper in their ears, What happens in the funeral parlor stays in the funeral parlor and, after all, we are here to honor our memories of Shyloh and there’s nothing anyone else needs to know. Thanks for coming.

The relief was palpable. Shyloh once told Ellie that if you hug a man and whisper in his ear, He will believe every word as if it’s the God’s honest truth. Ellie figured today was a good day to use this advice.

There were women who also came to the funeral, some of them with husbands in tow but there was no doubt that Shyloh had more men friends than women. Maybe twenty men for every woman.

There had been a small debate about where the dinner afterward should be held. Between the three women, they couldn’t think of a place within thirty miles that didn’t have a Shyloh story associated with it. They finally decided to accept Paul Dirkes’ offer. He owned the Come Back Inn. Said he’d have a free buffet and a microphone for anyone who’d share a story about Shyloh. He had a First name tag on today. Paul had defended Shyloh’s reputation over the years and thrown a lot of men on their asses and out the door for speaking ill of her.

At the Come Back Inn, Allison Sinclair was first up at the microphone and thanked everyone for coming to pay their respects to her mother. She told a few childhood memories about her mom and her Aunt Mandy Thompkins and then motioned for Ellie to come up.

Ellie stood and began an exaggerated walk up to the microphone. She sashayed herself in a full circle to give everyone her best impression of Shyloh’s walk. Then she gave her best imitation of Shyloh’s sultry voice.

“Ain’t these the best titties you never touched?”

Ellie shook her breasts towards the crowd. The restaurant bar erupted with cheers, clapping, and laughter that shook rafters and windows.

“My best friend, Shyloh Sinclair, said that to every man she ever met and probably to half the women, too.” The crowd roared again.

“If’n you don’t know me, I’m Ellie Bartels-Williams. Shyloh and I met when we were sixteen and those were her first words to me, too. God bless her. At that age, I had both of my newly-formed breasts strapped neatly into my white brassiere so neither one could get away. When you finally get ‘em, you don’t want to lose ‘em. Am I right, ladies?"

She continued, “I can tell you I was shocked at what she said. I was happy enough to just fill out the front of my sweater and Shyloh, being who she was, lifted her shirt up, wiggled them babies at me and said, ‘Ain’t these the best titties, you never touched?’ She was so proud of them. The second thing she said to me was ‘Do you want to?’”

The laughter that followed rolled out the front door and down the street, it was so loud. Ellie, Allison, and Amanda laughed along with everyone else. Ellie dabbed at the corner of her eyes and composed herself before continuing. She had to do that twice before the laughter died down.

“Now, I suspect there will be a few stories like this about Shyloh tonight. Be true to her memory, please, and enjoy the story you tell. We aren’t all friends but we were all friends with Shyloh and we should let that be enough.”

Ellie paused and looked around the room.

“The same year I met Shyloh she turned seventeen. She announced to me she’d decided to kiss every un-kissed boy in our high school class before the year was over. Raise your hand if Shyloh was the first girl to ever kiss you. Don’t be shy now; she wasn’t. Get those hands up.”

Many of the twenty or thirty men who raised their hands wore a First name tag. The room held about two hundred people.

“Any women?”

No hands went up but the crowd laughed again when Ellie timidly raised her hand.

“We were good friends and we simply had to practice with each other. I mean, we were oh so sophisticated; we had to practice kissing with each other before we French-kissed the boys. That’s what Shyloh told me and I believed her.”

Ellie rolled her eyes.

“Later I learned she’d practiced kissing with quite a few boys before me and after me. She told me she was trying to figure out if she liked girls more than boys when she was kissing me.”

Some began to laugh again.

“And looking at all the men in the crowd here, I’m guessing it was the boys.”

The room exploded again with laughter, whistling, clapping, and cheering.

Allison covered her mouth and laughed with the crowd. These were things she didn't know about her mother but she figured they were likely true.

Allison and her mom had a good relationship but Shyloh knew where to draw the line with Allison about mom’s personal relationships with men. Allison was looking forward to hearing stories her mom never shared with her when she was alive.

Ellie spoke above the crowd. “Shyloh began her campaign to kiss every un-kissed boy by making a list of boys who did not have girlfriends and hadn’t been on a date. This was more difficult than you can imagine but eventually, she had a list of fifty-two boys in junior class that were our age. I asked her why she wanted to do this. She said, and I remember this so clearly, 'No boy will remember all the girls he kisses but he will always remember me if I’m his first.'”

“Hear, Hear.” Sam Winston, the Chevrolet dealer, stood up, pointed to his First label, and raised his glass in a toast. The crowd raised their glasses but before they could sip, Barbara Winston stood up next to him and raised her glass, “She was First, but I taught Sam how to do it right.”

More laughter and the crowd saluted both Shyloh and Barbara.

“Is Bill Eberhard here?” Ellie scanned the room.

“Okay, Bill isn’t here. I guess I can tell you this story then. When word got around that Shyloh was going to give every un-kissed boy in our class a kiss, Billie, as we called him then, tried everything he could to get Shyloh to kiss him but she wasn’t having any of it. She told him he’d already kissed Melissa Forester and everyone knew it. She wasn’t giving him a kiss and that was that. But Billie was never one to give up on a challenge. He called Shyloh one night and asked her to meet him behind her garage. His plan was to swoop in and kiss her before she knew what was happening. Shyloh suspected it and told her Dad that a boy wanted to kiss her and she didn’t want to kiss him. Could he scare the boy away if he tried?"

She continued, “When Mr. Sinclair started banging on the garbage can lid and shouting at him, Billie ran so fast you’d of thought the Hounds of Hell were after him. He stumbled, he fell, he got up again and when he tried to leap over that short fence next door, he didn’t quite make it. His testicles took a beating when he landed with one leg on each side of the fence. He fell off in pain and landed with his face in the gravel. That didn’t stop him from getting up and running even faster though.“

More laughter and some rapping knuckles could be heard.

“The next day, Billie’s face had a couple of Band-Aids on it and a few scratches. He walked funny, too. He told his parents how he got hurt but he left out the parts about Shyloh and her Dad. Shyloh felt so bad for him that she went up and kissed him in front of everyone at school. She also told him to never try to kiss a girl who didn’t want to kiss him first.”

“Hey, Ellie!” Bill Eberhard called from around the doorway. “I did get a kiss and that’s what counts at seventeen.”

Ellie raised her glass to Bill. He was wearing a First name tag. “Heard you had two sons and grandkids now, Bill. Good to hear nothing was broken.”

More clapping and laughter. “Why’re you wearing a First name tag, Bill?”

“She was my first crush. I was in heaven that she kissed me in front of everyone. It never went any further but I loved her for kissing me like that. To Shyloh.” Everybody toasted her again.

Ellie set her glass down and continued, “Shyloh had many campaigns over the years involving men. Some of you were part of it. Before Shyloh was nineteen, she’d had her picture in the paper seven times for skinny dipping in hotel pools and each time with a different boy. And one time she organized a skinny dip event with twenty of her friends in the City Hall fountain that became a local legend. No one thought she could get away with it but she did. Anybody here that was there at the time?”

Six hands went up.

“How do you feel about that now?”

Maddy Albright stood up, “I’m fifty-eight years old and if Shyloh was here and ask me to do it again, I would.”

“Me, too,” said Bernie Ohlmeyer as he pointed to his name tag. “That was my first skinny dip event but not my last,” Bernie said it with pride. Maddy nodded, too.

Ellie smiled and continued, “I can’t count how many times the newspapers had Shyloh on the front page with a big black band across her chest. There was always a protest or a cause for Shyloh to show off her titties. Anybody remember the headline Shyloh Shows Again? Or how about Sinclair Bares?”

The knuckle rapping assured everyone these events were not forgotten.

“Shyloh wanted to be the first experience for a man…and sometimes for a woman. Shyloh always wanted to be First, with a capital F, for someone. It was her nature. For some men, Shyloh was his first extramarital affair; for many of them, she was also his last if and when his wife learned about it. This applied to a few women, too, from what I hear. Shyloh was generous with her sexuality as long as she could be First. And those who chose to wear a First name tag tonight have a story to tell about why Shyloh was a First for them."

She added, “I remember there was a motorcycle club formed in town by Dirk. Waterman was his last name. I think Shyloh was about twenty-three when she decided she’d be their first biker chick. Six men in the club plus Shyloh. The first time I saw her on her bike, she was wearing these tiny leather shorts and leather boots above her knees. She had a leather bra that couldn’t hold her all in. Her hair was in a ponytail. What a sight she was. She’d bought a Harley and planned to tour with them. She said she planned to be the first biker chick that all of them would enjoy, separately or together. This was Shyloh. She rode one of the first soft-tails ever produced, of course.”

Knuckles rapped on a lot of table tops at hearing she rode a soft tail.

“It’s not true that Shyloh was arrested in Sturgis. She was detained while she explained why she rode through town just like Lady Godiva. She had a hundred bikers follow her through the streets. When a policeman finally stopped her –he was a really brave cop to face down a hundred bikers- what do you think her first words to him were?”

The crowd shouted in reply, “Ain’t these the best titties you never touched?”

Ellie nodded. “Yeah, she was a pistol alright.”

“After the biker club, it was one man at a time…sometimes, of course, there were two men in a day. She lived a wilder life back then. If something was being cooked up and involved men, Shyloh was either planning it or part of it. Because of her biker chick experience, Shyloh took a liking to big-bellied men. She said big-bellied men put a heft on her belly that other men didn’t and that it led to a breathless orgasm for her. She wasn’t all that much into fat men but give her a man with skinny legs, small butt, and a big belly, plus the right equipment, and, well, he could… and I'm quoting her… ‘take me home and to heaven in a single night.’ Those were her words. ‘Take me home and to heaven in a single night.’”

More knuckles rapped on table tops. Several men rubbed their bellies in agreement. They wore First tags also.

“She worked at the truck stop after she quit the club. She became pregnant with Allison in 1986 and settled down for the next eighteen years; only one man at a time while she raised Allison. Good men, too. Long Haulers. Some wanted to marry her. She told all of them no.

“Allison, honey, I remember when you were born. Shiloh said she wasn’t going to give you any name that began with the letters S H. She said that women with names like Sharon, Shelly, or Shirley were more sexual than other women. She didn’t want you to spend your life with that hanging over your head as it did her. She wanted you to finish college and have a better life… Mission accomplished, I’d say.”

More knuckles rapped louder on the table and few handclaps could also be heard. Allison blushed and raised her glass to the crowd as a thank you.

A knock of agreement really meant something in this area. Allison knew she was respected for her accomplishments as the young editor of a Minneapolis woman’s magazine. The rapping affirmed it.

Ellie continued, “Shyloh and I stayed in touch over time but Amanda and Shyloh grew closer as Allison got older. Amanda, do you want to take over now? You know more about what happened with Shyloh after Allison turned eighteen.”

Sixty-year-old Amanda stood and made her way to the front of the room. She had a black low-cut mourning dress on. Taking the microphone from Ellie, she put her arm around Ellie’s waist.

“Ellie, for a friend of hers, that was a fine imitation of Shyloh. Mighty fine. But you really have to have the DNA to do it right.”

Amanda thrust her chest out, rolled her shoulders back, and rocked her breasts slowly from side to side. In a stage whisper, she said, “Ain’t these the best titties you never touched?”

Thunderous applause erupted again and there was a chant of “Amanda” coming from the back of the room. Ellie bowed to Amanda’s attributes, slipped free of her arm, and sat in a nearby chair.

Amanda began to speak.

“I wore this dress on purpose to honor my sister. Y’all know she was a generous woman, more to the men than the women, but still generous. She liked men. She loved sex more than any one man ever did…which is why she never married one. She said men were like puppy dogs, if you don’t train them, they’ll do their business every place you don’t want ‘em to and it’ll leave stains that don’t come out. I know that’s going to upset a few of you out there but the rest of you already know that Shyloh trained you to become the man you are today and that means you're a better man after knowing her than you were before her. You know that it’s true or you wouldn’t be here to honor her passing today.”

More table knocking for the truth of her words.

“Many of you will come up and tell your story about how Shyloh changed your life and most of those stories will involve sex. I remind y’all that her daughter is here and that Paul throws anyone out who is disrespectful of Shyloh’s character. Tell your story with all the sexual fervor and language necessary to make your point. Just don’t dishonor her. She deserves better than that. Now let me tell you about the three years she helped men and women returning from Afghanistan and Iraq.“

At this time, a mountain in a military uniform stood up. “Mrs. Thompkins, I’m Colonel Adams, would you mind if I told that story? I was her First at the VA in 2005.”

Amanda looked him over. “You’re bigger than she said you were. She said you were big but I never knew you were a giant.”

‘Yes, ma’am. I might be large to you today but I can tell you that when I met Shyloh, I was the smallest man on the planet. My head was down and I stared at my shoes all day. I was a sad man, a vulnerable man. PTSD can make you feel small. She right-sized me.”

“Come here, Colonel. Tell us your story.”

“Ma’am, my voice is as big as I am. I can do that from right here. Everybody can hear me, right?”

The Colonel spoke loud enough for everyone to hear. “I learned later it was Shyloh’s first day at the VA when I met her. I didn’t know it at the time. I thought she was one of those well-meaning but totally fuckin’… excuse me… I mean completely useless people who want to help you but really want to just feel good about themselves. She walked up to me, invaded my personal space, looked up at me with those sweet brown eyes, and asked me to pick her up with one hand. She clutched her fingers together, entwining them like little kids do, and she held them over her head. I am so big and she was so small, I felt like I was looking at a little girl asking her daddy to play with her. I put my hand under both of hers and lifted her up and over my head. She was as light as a feather. She giggled and said ‘Colonel, the floor is lava for me. You can’t put me down. You have to carry me wherever I want to go or I will burn up in the hot lava.’"

He continued, “Man, the tears came flowing down my face. I cried and I carried Shyloh for a half an hour wherever she wanted to go. Inside, outside, I’d set her down on a chair or a table or a stair, but I never set her down on the floor. It was lava. She asked me why I was crying. I told her the floor was lava and I had to protect her. I told her that since I came home, no one until now had asked me to protect them. I said I’d been trained to protect people from lava outside the United States and no one needed that back home. She said I had to be her protector from that day forward and save her from the lava no matter what. I said ok.

He carried on, "The second time she came to see me, she wore a short denim jacket, a see-through blouse, and no bra. She opened her jacket and shook her breasts at me and said what you said earlier, 'Ain’t these the best titties you never touched?' I wasn’t sure how I should reply. The obvious answer was Yes. I wasn’t sure what I ought to say after that so I didn’t say anything. She interlocked her fingers again and held them over her head. ‘The floor is lava again. Protect me.’”

"I picked her up over my head again and found my head tucked between her two breasts. Shyloh being Shyloh said ‘Maybe you’ll have an answer for me next time.’ She twisted and bounced her breasts against my neck for a half hour while I carried her all over the place. She asked me who I protected before her. Man, I started crying again. I told her the names and the places I’d been and how I protected people under my care. When I was done telling her who I protected I started to tell her how I was unable to protect some others and she told me to never mind. She said being a protector was all about the ones you did protect. She said I better never forget that I protected her from the lava. Said it was important to her that I always remember her because I was the first man to protect her from the lava."

Colonel Adams wiped tears of memory from his eyes. “Before Shyloh, I’d talked to three psychiatrists and a lot of veterans and no one figured me out like she did. Every time she came, I had to carry her around and protect her from the lava. It was our thing. People thought we were crazy. We might have been, I don’t know. I only know it was important to me to protect Shyloh from the lava.

“So I did it until one day she said to me, ‘I am strong enough to protect myself from the lava now if you are strong enough to protect someone else from the lava.’

‘I believe I am’ is what I told her."

Colonel Adams wiped more tears from his eyes. “I asked to be assigned to the PTSD unit after that. The guys with PTSD became the ones I had to protect from the lava when they returned. I still do that today. Thanks to Shyloh.”

The restaurant bar was quiet when Colonel Adams finished. Several people blew their noses or wiped their eyes.

“Ma’am, there are men here who want to tell their stories about Shyloh but the stories are personal and not meant for crowds like this. They asked me to tell everyone that they are willing to talk to anyone individually. They also wanted Allison to know that everyone respected her mother for the hope, and for the help, she gave each of them.”

Allison stood and approached the Colonel to hug him. Then she interlocked her fingers over her head and presented herself to the Colonel.

“The floor is lava, Colonel. Protect me like you protected her.”

The big man nodded and took hold of Allison’s entwined hands and lifted her high over his head. The tears streamed down his face. To the clapping of the crowd, one last time, he walked and carried a woman high off the ground to protect her from the lava on the floor. Finally, he set Allison in her chair.

Amanda and Ellie hugged him. He let them know he and his men would be outside for a little while if anyone had a mind to talk to them.

Paul Dirkes walked up to the microphone and let everyone know the buffet had been refreshed and there was still a crowd outside who wanted to eat and pay their respects to the family. He said this was a good time to take a break from the stories.

Chairs scraped on the floor and a small din began as some left and others came in.