BURNING
By Tommyhawk1@AOL.COM
WWW.TOMMYHAWKSFANTASYWORLD.COM
WWW.TOMMYHAWKSROGUEMOON.COM
"Oh, Lord, here he comes again." Leroy said of Burton as he hoed at the stubborn, dried soil. The weather was warm enough for planting, but rain had been sparse for months and the dirt was like striking iron, you had to hit it over and over again to break it apart. There were teams working on plowing furrows of course, but there was plenty of work left behind for people such as he. The large clods yielded reluctantly to his hoe and the sun...the sun today was hot. Burning hot, for an early spring day.
"Just keep working and he can't complain." Tyler said from his place beside Leroy, wielding another hoe.
"He's such a hard, hard man." Leroy griped. "Never anything you do is good enough for him."
"Just keep working." Tyler urged him.
Leroy kept quiet because Burton had walked up to them. The man was the overseer of the hands working this large farm not far from the Ohio River in the year 1870. Slavery was gone, but the need for workers on the land, and thus men to watch over them, remained. And Burton had been an overseer (a black man but free-born) on a plantation before the War Between the States, and while he'd had to turn in his whip with the end of the war, his attitudes hadn't changed much toward the black laborers that now worked the fields in place of the slaves they once had been. Leroy puzzled the enigma, that a free-born black man could be twice the bastard of a white man in the same job. Maybe he was just making sure he measured up in the eyes of the white owner of this land. Whatever, he was one mean man.
"Is this all you lazy, shiftless bastards have done?" was his comment as he walked up.
"The ground needs rain, sir." Leroy returned. "Hard to hoe this dry dirt just plowed up, sir."
"You have to put your back into it." Burton said, his cold, mean face set in a permanent scowl.
That face was one that would never twist itself into a smile, never, ever, Leroy pondered as he said meaningless words of agreement, "Yes, sir, yes, sir, I'll put my back into it."
"We will, sir." Tyler said beside him.
"See that you do." Burton moved on down the rows of men, saying his hard words to the workers tilling the hard soil on this hard land. If only it would rain, Leroy thought as he worked. Even a few clouds to break up the sun, it had gotten too hot too early in the year.
He paused in his labor to look about, hands pressed into his back, his hoe resting on its blade and handle against his shoulder. Looking about let him look at Tyler. Such a big, strong man, stronger than Leroy, the muscles on Tyler's body were large, round and gleamed in the midday sun, deep brown and glowing. His face was large and square, with solid, flat jowls and deep, dark eyes that you would stare into until you drowned in them.
Leroy looked at his own, leaner form, the muscles on his middle-brown-only body were oblong instead of round, and didn't shine at all, even though he was as coated in sweat as Tyler. A certain...quality...was missing on his own body, Leroy thought sourly. If it would only rain a little, rain made everything glow....
Leroy raised his eyes up to scan the horizon, looking around for any promise of rain, any at all, above the trees in all directions, including towards home....
A plume of smoke. Dark smoke. Angry smoke. "Fire!" he called out. "Fire!"
He led the others at first, but Tyler outdistanced him easily. The fires were a constant hazard, the shacks in which they all lived were made of old, grayed, dried wood, it flamed at a touch. One only needed to forget to extinguish their fire before they left, or even when you were careful, it took the merest spark to make the shacks flame up like gigantic, square torches.
Leroy was well-mired back in the pack by the time he'd made the run of nearly a mile to the shacks, all in a row. Men were working to save the shacks on either side of the blaze, but as for the one already afire, it was much too late.
Leroy noticed first that the shack burning was three houses away from his own, with relief. He would not be homeless tonight. Second, he noticed which house was burning.
Tyler's. The big man stood watching, fists clenching and unclenching, as he watched his home, everything he had but the clothes on his back (and a shirt left back in the field where he'd laid it to work shirtless), go up in flames.
Leroy walked up beside him while about him, everyone worked to save the houses on either side of the inferno. "You all right?" he asked.
"What am I going to do?" Tyler said hopelessly. "What can I do?"
"The owner will build you another house, when the planting is done." Leroy pointed out. This was true, the owner paid them a small salary and provided them food (of a sort) and a house to live in. All combined, it was enough to survive but not to grow, not enough to marry, not enough to do anything but live until the next day's work called you out again.
"New house won't do me no good." Tyler said. "Got nothing to put in it."
Leroy couldn't bear it. Tyler was...defeated. If someone as big, as strong, as magnificent as Tyler, could be defeated, then what was the hope for him?
"You come stay with me until you get on your feet." he said suddenly.
"With you?"
"Yeah, with me." Leroy went on. "I'll share with you, you can buy your stuff a little at a time until you get on your feet and have enough to move into your own house again."
"Be crowded as hell." Tyler mused. The houses were designed, built, for one man and one man only. A bare eight feet by ten feet inside, a man was hard-pressed to have more inside than his bed, a stove to cook on and heat his house, and maybe a chair to sit on until you were ready for bed. A shelf near the stove to put your food until you were ready to eat it, and a nail or two on the wall to hang your clothes, and that was it. If you got more than that for some reason, it would tend to grow legs and walk off on you when you were out working the fields.
"It'll only be until you're ready to move into your own house again." Leroy repeated.
"Yeah, sure," Tyler turned to him with a bare smile. "Thank you, Leroy."
It was the first time Leroy could remember Tyler ever saying his name, smiling at him. Leroy felt like fainting. "Glad to have you, even. Kind of lonesome in there, nights, you know."
"I know." Tyler agreed.
Leroy grinned and would have said more, but his grin faded like sunset and a hundred times as fast. "Burton's coming."
"Just what I needed." Tyler's own smile didn't have as far to go, and it fell further just the same as he turned. "Yes, sir?" He asked as Burton walked up.
Leroy did the same, waited to hear the words, get back to work, you can't do nothing else here. The house was now down to black timbers still burning. But the immediate threat was over, a few men to watch the flames, make sure the embers didn't spread at this late point, would be more than enough.
"Tyler, about your house." Burton said.
Tyler's eyes came up, in surprise. "Yes, sir."
"Sorry you lost it. Until we can finish the planting and build you another one, you can come stay with me." Burton's house was the overseer's house and fair-sized. Two bedrooms, even, though Burton lived there alone, it was such that he could marry and have a family if he chose. And furnished as well, Burton had bought or built lots of furniture, though Leroy only remembered one bed, big enough to sleep a wife with him when he got one.
"That's powerful generous, sir." Tyler said. "But I'll be staying with Leroy, thank you kindly."
Burton clouded up. "With Leroy? The two of you going to sleep in that little bed of his?"
"We'll manage." Leroy said, backing Tyler up.
Burton's cloudy countenance turned into a storm. "The hell you say! Make a generous offer and this is what I get? The two of you better get back to the fields and get back to work. You, especial, Tyler, you got to earn your keep extra for a while, work hard and I'll see if the owner will give you a bonus."
"Thank you, sir."
As Burton walked off (stormed off, the closest thing to rain Leroy had seen since December...had it been that long?), Leroy said, "That man hasn't recommended anyone for a bonus long as I've been working for him. Don't kill yourself trying for it."
"I wasn't." Tyler said. "I got you to stay with, remember?"
"Yeah." Leroy agreed and as they walked back toward the fields, he thought to himself, how could I possibly forget that?
The work proceeded on, long, hot and difficult. The lone bright spot (dark spot) was that clouds were now in the sky, they got breaks in the unending sun when one would occlude the burning disk above. A few minutes of blessed shade, and then the sun would return once again.
But at long, long last, the sun reached the treetops and that was their signal to shoulder their hoes and wend their way home. Leroy walked with Tyler...together, side by side, the entire way home and up to his house and they walked in...together.
"Got to wash out my clothes." Tyler said as Leroy moved to the stove and his shelf of food. He could stir up some corn mush for them tonight. Maybe boil up some beans, get them ready for tomorrow, too. With luck and a fire left burning in the stove when they went to bed, they could just be done....
Then the words of Tyler sunk into Leroy's brain. "Wash your clothes?"
"Well, I can't wear yours, can I?" Tyler smiled. "I figure, I wash everything out and I can get them dry enough to wear them tomorrow.
"Sure, sure." Leroy had to agree to that. He had an old washtub hanging on his back wall, he fetched it and the bucket, and Tyler went to the well. Leroy fished out his scrub board and put it so Tyler could get it and turned to the stove, his stomach burning. There was only one way Tyler could wash all his clothes and have them ready for morning...wasn't there?
It was. Tyler stripped off all his clothes and washed his own body first, sluicing the water over his bare form, the body that had glowed silver all day long now glowed gold in the light of the stove's fire and the lantern Leroy had lit as the day died. Then he added soap to the water, stirred it to mix it well, then added his clothes. The mush was now ready and Leroy took it, all wet with the water as he was, and sat down on Leroy's chair with one leg up, ankle resting on his other knee, his cock dangling down easily, like it belonged like that. Leroy tried not to stare at it as he ate his own portion, sitting on the bed.
Tyler finished it and said, "That was good, damned good. Well, those clothes ought to be good and soaked now." He put the bowl on the shelf and turned to work on the clothes, his back to Leroy. Now Leroy could and did stare at the pair of orbs that shone, those luscious buns, so rich and brown and gleaming as if they begged to be touched.
When Tyler finished washing the clothes, he wrung them out then rinsed them with the bucket of clear water he'd saved. Done, he said to Leroy, "Well, we'd better get in bed, now, huh?"
Leroy started to protest, then said, "Uh, yeah, sure." Tyler couldn't sit around buck naked another hour or two, so bedtime would provide the excuse to be covered. "I'm pretty tired."
"Tired, yeah." Tyler said. "Better wash yourself before you come to bed. Keep ourselves clean as we can if there's going to be two of us in here."
"Yeah, sure." Leroy fetched a fresh bucket of water, washed himself as best he could. Tyler was lying in bed, hands behind his head, watching him. Leroy felt scrawny, naked, weak and frail. He finished, dried himself, and walked shyly over to the bed. "I'm ready to get in, now."
Tyler threw the covers back with an easy, fluid grace. "Crawl on in, then." He scooted over to the edge of the bed, against the wall, onto one side, facing Leroy.
Leroy crawled in and pulled the covers over him. The bed was so small, they'd have to sleep on their side all night long and at that, Leroy risked falling off the edge. He tucked the cover's edge under him as best he could, hoped it would help hold him inside.
"You okay?" Tyler asked.
"Yeah. Sorry about your house, man."
"Didn't have that much inside it, truth to tell." Tyler said. "When you got nothing to have, you got nothing to lose, neither."
"I know what you mean."
Tyler shifted and Leroy felt it then. Tyler's cock against his ass. It wasn't hard...yet. But it was getting there.
"I really appreciate you taking me in." Tyler said softly in Leroy's ear.
"Glad to help out." That cock was pushing against his butt now, nestling its length into the crack of his ass, a warm tube of turgid tumescence.
"Wish I could do something to pay you back." that velvet voice crooned in Leroy's ear, and the hips moved, slid that burning rod back and forth, softly, slowly, silkily slithering. And Tyler's hand and arm curled around Leroy's chest barrel, warm and firm and possessive. And Tyler's lips found and kissed the arc of Leroy's ear. "Something to show how much I appreciate you."
Moving as if in a dream, Leroy reached down to between his legs, caught the head of that glans and pulled it between his legs, fastening it in place so that the glans of Tyler's dong brushed Leroy's ballsac, and when Tyler moved, the glans snaked out and kissed Leroy's pud, now a curved scimitar of male lust jutting from Leroy's body.
"Mmmm, yeahhhh." Tyler sighed in Leroy's ear, a warm husky breath there, and Tyler's hand stroked down Leroy's body, found, chased, captured Leroy's cock and began to stroke it as he moved back and forth, back and forth.
"Oh! Oh! Oh!" Leroy gasped, small soft sighs that wouldn't have disturbed the lightest slumber of another had they been asleep in the room. The houses were close together, the windows were holes in the wall that shutters failed to effectively cover entirely, you heard your neighbors whether you wanted to or not, any lovemaking had to be like this, soft, silent, dark as the night.
"Turn around and give me that sugar." Tyler suggested and Leroy was more than glad to twist and shift and his cock slapped at Tyler's dong when he was turned and Tyler chuckled as Leroy's precome splashed on his dick like a sticky kiss from an overeager elderly aunt's lips, and when Leroy grabbed hold of both their puds, held head-to-tail against each other, glans brushing each other's pubic hair, and began to jack them, Tyler chuckled again, soft sounds that turned slowly, incrementally from jocularity to desire.
Tyler kissed Leroy, a full, all-out kiss that burned Leroy's lips with the heat of his passion, and Leroy's tongue whipped out to bury itself inside that hot maw which took it inside and held, suckled at it, tasting the pink invader and draining it of its essence. Leroy relinquished the field only to have Tyler's tongue enter him in its turn, and he revenged his former defeat by siphoning every ounce of fluid off of the soft, flexing, questing intruder. And Leroy's hand on their cocks grew more urgent, more frantic, moving faster, faster, faster....
"Man, you are hot." Tyler hissed at him when he fished his tongue back from Leroy's reluctant mouth with a nearly audible pop. "Why don't you rub some of that spit on your cock and shove it in me now?"
"Really?" Leroy couldn't believe it! "You want me to?"
"It's your bed and your house." Tyler said. "Only right that you get on top of me...first."
First. Yeah, right. Sure. Leroy panted as he hastily complied, his mouth spit conveyed by his hand down to his pud. And Tyler joined him in lubricating the thin prong, turning the shaft into a slippery pole of male fury.
"That ought to do it." Tyler said. "Now, crawl on top of me and fuck me face to face, so I can watch you do it."
Watch him. Watch him, yeah, yeah! Leroy shivered as he moved, as he raised up and felt that warm, warm body slide under him, as he felt the legs surround him, a pair of brown firebrands that seared his thighs, the plonk of Tyler's heels as they found purchase in the curves of Leroy's knees and those arms that held his back in two firm places on either side of his spine.
"Come on, slide that into me, get it in, yeah, come on." Tyler urged him.
Leroy moved and tried to find the entrance, it baffled him until Tyler took one hand from Leroy's back and caught hold of Leroy, guided him into position. "Right there." he said and turned Leroy loose.
Leroy pushed and the tender sphincter touched his glans, kissed it, puckered under it, then dilated and turned from a dimpled place into a ring that slid upon his cock like the ring that slides on the bride's finger at the wedding, and with this ring, I thee wed, the asshole clung to his shaft all the way down, until it came to rest a bare inch from Leroy's body, and all above it was surrounded in male fire.
"Mmmm, yeahhhh!" Tyler sighed. "Yeahhh, come on, now, get your ass moving, let me feel it, let me feel you moving, yeahhhh!"
Leroy began to move, slowly at first, but Tyler only sighed and moaned and Leroy became more bold, moving faster, and all that got him from Tyler was more grunts of joy. Yeah, yeah, he was fucking Tyler, fucking that marvelous ass he'd admired so longingly as it had flexed while Tyler scrubbed his clothes. That would be a nightly feast for his eyes until Tyler bought more clothes. Every night to watch that ass, and then, in bed, to possess it and love it.
"Ah-hah! Ah-hah! Yeah!" Leroy gobbled in his desire and his delight. "Man! Yeah! Good! Yeah! Ah! Ah! Ah-hah!"
"Come on, fuck me faster, you can do it, come on, faster, fuck me faster, yeah!" Tyler coaxed him as he bucked and thrashed in Tyler's arms. "Let me feel it, I want you to blast it in me, come on, harder, faster, let me feel you coming, Leroy, let me feel you ready to jizz, come on, man, come on, come on!"
"Oh, oh, ah, ah, ah!" Leroy groaned. "I'm, I'm, I'm coming, man, I'm coming, now, I, I, uh, uh, ah, ah, AH-AH-AH-AH, GUHHHHHHHHHH, HNNNNNNNNHHH!"
And Leroy's cock spurted into Tyler, who held him suddenly tighter, very tight and the beautiful face contracted into a squinting morass of urgency, and then Tyler burst out in a groan and hot spunk splattered Leroy's chest and stomach, splashed Tyler's body, the hot jizz stuck them together, burned their flesh, searing their souls, cementing them together forever, forever, and ever and ever and ever! Hot, hot, burning hot, burning, burning burning!
Leroy felt his climax end in the way that you might feel if, an angel upon your death and you soaring up to Heaven, those wings were to suddenly vanish, ending your flight and leaving you plummeting towards the ground and the gates of Hell! Falling, he was falling and unable to stop the fall....and he fell onto Tyler and lay upon him helplessly, hopelessly panting hard, unable to move, unable to do anything but moan atop the groaning Tyler and feel the spunk of Tyler's load burn between them, a dozen spots of heat-welding holding them together.
"Oh, man, oh, man!" Tyler grunted at last, while Leroy's brain was still sparkling with the afterlights of shuddering orgasm. "That was good, so good, hot, damned hot, yeah!"
"Yeah, hot, so fucking hot!" Leroy agreed. He roused enough to kiss Tyler's face and lips and Tyler kissed him back, but in that lackadaisical, exhausted way you kiss when you're half into the realm of slumber and only honor is keeping you in the real world.
Leroy understood that. Losing your home must be a draining experience no matter how cavalierly Tyler was acting about it. "Go to sleep now." he said. "We'll get up in the morning and see if your pants are dry, and what we can do about it if they aren't."
And Tyler's answer was only a gentle snore, he had slipped on into sleep as soon as he'd had permission. Leroy couldn't have moved off Tyler had he wanted to, there was no room on the bed with Tyler flat on his back, and he nestled his head against Tyler's chest, scooting down slightly to let him be a head shorter than Tyler, and fell into a deep and peaceful sleep.
They awakened to the sounds of men moving about outside, they'd slept later than they'd meant. Though Leroy had no clock other than the rising light of dawn, he knew that he and Tyler had only a score of minutes before they'd be expected to go into the fields and work again on the planting.
Burton came up to them when they were in the fields. "So how'd the two of you manage in that tiny bed of Leroy's, Tyler?" he asked cunningly. "My place has a big bed, if you're going to sleep with someone, better if you have enough room to sleep two, isn't it?"
"Leroy and I are doing fine." Tyler said. "We'll get by until we can get us a bigger bed."
"A bigger bed?" Burton stepped back.
"Yeah, like the one you got, only for Leroy and me." Tyler said. Leroy watched this, it was like they were talking on some level he didn't understand...or not entirely.
Burton got angry. "Fine, then. See if I ever do anything for you, either of you!" and he stomped off.
"That's funny." Leroy said after a short pause when Tyler didn't explain.
"Nothing funny about it." Tyler said and said no more. Leroy puzzled over it and couldn't make it out. Burton didn't return to the fields the entire rest of the day.
When they got back to their home that evening, Burton was there, bearing a couple of pies in his hand, small pies, meant for one man to eat as a full meal. "What's that?" Leroy asked.
"Just...sorry about getting mad this morning." Burton said. "You two are making the best of things and I shouldn't have lost my temper."
This was new, the mean, cruel overseer actually apologizing. "It was nothing, sir." Leroy said.
"I spent the afternoon making some meat pies." Burton went on. "Brought you each one. This one is for you, Leroy and this one is for you, Tyler. And I really am sorry."
"How about that." Leroy said as he smelled the pie. "Meat pies cooked for us by that bastard. Maybe there really is a God after all."
"Maybe." Tyler said.
"I guess we don't have to cook tonight." Leroy went on.
Tyler ate only a little of his pie and stopped, stirred up some more corn meal mush for his supper. "Saving some for later." Leroy ate all of his. He didn't get meat very often, a few times a year.
By morning, Leroy was feeling the effects of the pie. "That meat must have been ruint." he moaned to Tyler. "I done got me the galloping shits. No way I can work today."
"I'll stay and take care of you." Tyler offered.
"No, I'll be okay if I can ever get off the pot." Leroy denied. "It's not so bad, really, I ought to be okay by tonight. I hope."
"Well...stay in bed and drink lots of water." advised Tyler.
"I'll do that thing."
Leroy's bout with the chamberpot (his water bucket, hastily drafted into duty for this in the middle of the night) ended about ten o'clock and while he didn't feel up to lunch, he was able to sleep well enough.
He awakened to the smell of smoke and the shouts of men. Burton was one of them. Tyler was the other. "You son of a bitch!" Tyler called out. "Bastard, shit-faced bastard!"
Burton's words were incomprehensible to Leroy. He staggered out to see Tyler hastily hauling water from the well over to...his house at the side. A fire was burning there. Only a small one, but his house could go up any moment!
He grabbed another bucket from his neighbor's house and helped Tyler extinguish the blaze. "What happened?" he asked as the third bucket wielded by Tyler ended the threat.
"Burton was setting fire to your house with you in it." Tyler snarled. "He was about us in the fields all morning and then he left. I was worried about you and came to check on you, see if you were okay. Got here just in time to see him touch his torch to that patch of dead weeds on the side of your house."
"He was going to burn down my house?"
"Same as he did mine. Only with you in yours." Tyler agreed. "Me, too, I guess, only I didn't eat his damned meat pie, it didn't taste right to me, thank God. That bastard! He's plumb crazy, is what he is."
"Why would he do that?"
"So I'd move in with him instead of you." Tyler said. "So I'd be in his bed. And he could do with me what you did with me last night, I'd expect."
Leroy's stomach grew cold with the thought. "He was going to kill me!"
"The bastard. The owner is gone until Saturday, but when he gets back, you and me are going to tell him exactly what happened!"
"Fine with me." Leroy agreed. "Burton always was a bastard." He'd worked under Burton longer than Tyler by a couple of years, more experience with the cold, hard man.
Leroy went with Tyler back to the fields, he couldn't work that day but he sat in the shade and watched Tyler at his work. When the day ended, he walked back toward the houses only to see.... "Fire!" another worker called before he could.
His house! Leroy agonized as he forced his weakened body into a run. Burton done went and torched my house again! Now he and Tyler were both homeless!
Then they got there and saw the burning house. Not Leroy's house. It was the overseer's house, Burton's house was aflame. "He's inside there!" one of the workers nattered at them as they came up. "Burton's inside there on the bed, dead and burning away like everything else!" Nobody was trying to extinguished the blaze, it was too far on, and the overseer's house was well-separated from the others, no danger of embers from it burning other homes. And the fire was too far gone to put it out. Let Burton burn up in his home like he'd intended to.
Leroy pondered this. He felt Tyler's hand on his shoulder, shook his head. "Old Burton was a mean man. Looks like burning things was his answer to everything, wasn't it?" To getting Tyler out of his house, to getting rid of Leroy, to ending his own life. Everything done by burning.
"I guess so." Tyler agreed. "Come on, let's get home. I'll borrow some vegetables if I can, and fix you up a nice soup, help your stomach settle."
"Sounds good." Leroy agreed. "Yeah, let's get to our home." With both of them chipping in, they could probably buy a new bed, big enough for two, by the end of next month. Until then, he figured they'd sleep like they did last night, submerged in the slumber that comes when passion's fires have been allowed to burn themselves out for a while.
THE END
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