Finding Maw a Man

FINDING MAW A MAN

By Tommyhawk1@AOL.COM

WWW.TOMMYHAWKSFANTASYWORLD.COM

My Sunday clothes felt odd on me as I rode into Carver's Crossing that Tuesday morning in 1842. I felt it was only right that I wear my best, my black jacket, my black jeans, my whitest, newest shirt. Maw had agreed with me, and let me wear Dad's hat, flat-topped and wide-brimmed, to complete the look. It felt odd, wearing Dad's hat...but like Maw said, he would've wanted me to have it. He hadn't said nothing about such things while he was a-dying of the fever, but what he had said then hadn't made no sense nohow.

The fever had left more homes than mine without someone. In our case, it had taken my two little sisters and my father. I'd been horribly sick but recovered. Maw didn't catch it at all, for some reason. Maybe cause she'd been laid out with fever the winter before, as she'd said, sometimes something like that would give a person immunity.

But now spring was coming and with it, the need to start things all over again, and that was why I was dressed up in my Sunday best and riding into town.

Ben Jackson's house was down at the end of the next lane.

A small house, enough for a man now living all alone and without a farm no more. It had been Widow Cornell's place before the fever...now her son was renting it out to Ben Jackson. The fever had passed through during the fall and winter, killing half of the county, we all had to make over our lives with what was left.

Ben Jackson hadn't. Losing his wife and son to the fever, among the first to do so, he had given up. Sold his farm and was living now on what money that had brought in, and spending most of that on whiskey.

He was Maw and me's greatest hope. If he hadn't sunk too far into the whiskey to care no longer, that is.

His door was ajar, but I knocked anyway. A loud groan greeted me, the sound of a man who had been awakened from an alcoholic dream to a horrible hangover. "Go away!" he groaned out.

"Mr. Jackson?" I said. "Mr. Jackson, sir? Can I speak with you a moment, please, sir?"

"Gaaah! Who are you?"

"John Martin." I said.

"He's dead." Ben Jackson pointed out.

"I know." I said. "I'm his son, John Martin, Jr."

"Johnny? What are you doing here? You getting married?" He'd noticed my clothing.

"No, sir." I allowed. "But maybe you will be."

"Huh?"

"Can I come inside, sir?"

"Yeah, come in." he called. I went inside and he was crawling off his bed. Neither he nor his bedding had been washed in what looked like weeks. Maybe months. He wore his pants, suspenders and undershirt stained with heavy gray smears under both arms and down the middle of his chest in a wide, curve-sided V shape. The marks of his sweating, once from working on the land, now just his alcoholic heebee-jeebees.

"What's this about me getting married?" Ben Jackson sat up.

"Nothing, maybe." I said. "Maybe Maw could do better'n you. Maybe I should keep looking."

Ben got it, then. "You came to fetch me out to marry your mother?"

"Got to have someone to help me with the farm." I said. "Can't do it alone." We had nearly five hundred acres of cleared land, three hundred of it prime bottom land, one of the biggest farms in the county. The other two hundred let us keep fifty head of cattle. Yes, too much for one man, especially me, barely man-high, the only man on the place.

"And you figure me to be the man to marry your mother?"

"Not so sure no more." I said. "You look like hell, you know. Supposed to bring Maw home a decent man, not a drunkard."

He grinned up at me, and I suddenly realized that Ben Jackson was a pretty good-looking man underneath that beard-stubble, grime and sweat-washed clothing. Sharp cheekbones and graceful, straight nose (courtesy of one-quarter Cherokee Indian blood), broad shoulders, a washboard stomach. One month of dissolute living hadn't fazed it yet. "Didn't it ever occur to you that a person can be both a decent man and a drunkard?"

"Maybe." I conceded, "But still wouldn't want to bring it home to Maw. She's looking for to marry whoever I bring in, have a baby or two with him if'n the man wants to, and most men would want to." I didn't care about that, the state law was firm that I, as oldest son, would inherit the farm upon her death, all she had was lifetime tenancy as my father's widow. Not that I would've kicked her off the land if I could've. Others might have, like Widow Cornell's son, a real bastard. His mother was hardly cold in the ground when he put her home up for rent, and him with a sister and her family needing a place to live.

"So what your mother's plan, I go home with you and jump in bed with her and if'n she likes how I do my pushing of her, she'll marry me?"

I shook my head firmly. "No, sir. You'll start off a hired hand and have to do your courting of her as is proper. Just that if'n you take the job, know that if you suit her, you can marry her and have use of the land long as she lives. Even after, if'n I like you enough, too."

"Hell of a proposal to make of a man just three months after he lost his wife and children."

"You're not the only one who had to dig graves for family in the middle of the snow this last winter." I said somberly. "Fever got my father and sisters, there's only me and Maw left on that big farm. We need help if we're going to keep it up. If you and Maw don't get along, you can still stay on as a hired hand."

"Well, then." Ben Jackson said as he got to his feet and I realized he was more'n four inches taller than me...and I'm six foot! A big, strong man. "You just go home and tell your Maw I'll come calling with my things tomorrow, and we'll see what happens after that."

"What about your pay?" I said. "Don't you want to discuss it?"

"Can't until I see what kind of woman your mother is. If'n she's ugly, I'll want more to go a-courting of her, even for a little while."

I smiled at that. "She'll do, I think. You'll see. Tomorrow, then."

"I'll be there."

And he was there. Cleaned up, shaven, wearing clean, new clothes and looking nothing at all like the drunken wreck I'd seen the day before. Maw stood and I looked at her, and she was staring at Ben like a woman looks at a man when she's available and interested. That didn't seem right, so soon after Dad's death, but it wasn't like Ben would be holding her hand right away. He was to stay with us, work with us, and make her acquaintance a little at a time. So why did I notice Maw brushing some flour dust off her black dress, to make it more presentable?

T'warnt right, Maw acting like that as she took him into our parlor and sat him down to discuss the terms of his hiring. Nothing was said about him courting her, she hired him on at a fair price. I was there, in the doorway, not part of it but listening to all of it and feeling it was wrong for Maw to be thinking of marrying this man, not right at all.

Closest he came to mentioning his possible marriage to my mother was at the end, when he stood up. "So where do I sleep?" he asked.

"There's a tack shed off of the barn." Maw said. "You can clear out a space for yourself there and I'll bring out some bedding for you. You can pack some sod in the chinks to close it off from the wind. And if the tack shed is too cold for you, you can come knocking nights and we'll make a place for you inside the house."

"He can sleep with the horses in the barn itself." I put in. "Horses keep the barn warm as our house come nights."

"We can't be unfriendly." Maw said to me. "Your father always wanted to treat our visitors well, there's no call to be making him sleep next to horses like a traveling peddler-man."

"He's not a visitor, he's our hired hand." I grumped. "Hired hands sleep in the barn!"

"If it gets cold, I'm not going to turn him out." she said, "Now, Junior, you be a credit to your poor, dead father." My father, like she wasn't the one who'd been married to him. She looked back to Ben and smiled. "Now, Mr. Jackson, would you care for some more tea?"

"No, thank you, Mrs. Martin." Ben said. "If you don't mind, I'll go put away my tucker and get to work on that barn. With only your boy about, the place could probably use a good mucking out."

"I've kept the barn clean enough." I objected.

"Then I'll have less work to do, won't I?" Ben smiled at me and I smiled back. He was right, the animals needed clean quarters, it was the first job a hired hand should tackle.

Ben's clothes were new, but he didn't hesitate to get them messy. He started by mucking out the barn, and did a good job of it, my own work had been only barely good enough. I hadn't had time to do more than make sure the animals had clean stalls and fresh hay to lie on, but there's more to keeping a barn clean than that. Then he started in on the pig pens, a nasty, smelly job that could near ruin a man's clothes if he let it.

Mother fixed a really nice dinner that night. I watched Ben washing up at the trough near the barn and Maw came over, wiping her hands dry, and said, "Son, you picked a good man to take your father's place."

"I reckon I did." I said. "Only why should he take Dad's place? I'm a man now. I just need some help around the farm is all. And Dad hired people every spring and fall to help with the planting and harvest even with me to help him year-round."

"You'll be the man of the house." Maw assured me. "This place is yours soon as I pass on. Just don't be mad if I want to not spend my last days all alone."

"I'm sorry, Maw." I said.

"It's all right, Son. Now go fetch Ben and tell him I'm putting supper on the table."

"He's eating with us?" I was surprised. Hired men had a plate of food taken to them, they didn't sit at the table with the family!

"Son, I'm hoping to maybe marry that man." Maw said. "Might as well see what he looks like when he's eating my food at the table."

"All right." I said. "But I sit at the head of the table."

"Always, Son." Maw agreed.

Having Ben at the table added something. Our meals had been quiet, lonely things ever since the fever, but Ben was talking and making plans on how to do the work around the farm for the next few days, he and I talked about what to plant and how much, and we even laughed and joked some. Hadn't done that since Dad had passed away, and my sisters. I had missed that noise something terrible!

My sleep that night was troubled, partly because I was doing without one of my quilts and the weather was still cold enough to make that difference noteworthy. I wasn't shivering, but I could have been warmer and slept better if I had been. You know the state, where you wrap yourself in a ball and only half of you stays warm. But that was only part of it.

The other part was dreams. Dreams of me and Ben, him living in my house. Sharing my life, sharing my rooms...sharing my bed. None of the dreams were overtly sexual, the closest I came was one where I was lying in his arms and he was sleeping like that, and he felt all warm and soft, and I felt safe and loved...and I woke up shivering, sweating despite the cool air.

I got my clothes and spread them over the top cover and crawled into that...that helped keep me warmer...but the dreams kept on coming just the same, only I didn't wake up from them as easy.

The next day, I pitched in and helped Ben work on the fences. He laughed at one lattice-work of timbers I had put in one place. "Damn, Johnny, you been keeping in the cows more by magic than by fencework."

"I didn't have time to do nothing more." I defended myself.

"That's why you got me for a hired hand." Ben said. "Let's get this done."

And we did. Two men don't fix a fence in half the time, it's more like a quarter the time. One to hold while the other hammers, one to cut while the other steadies, both of you to lay the timber into place, hammering both ends at once fixes the board tight in a couple of blows.

It was a good day's work, and only one thing darkened the day for me. The storm that was blowing up over the mountains, you could see them building up, that steel-gray color so uniform that it seems unreal, something ethereal and other-worldly heading your way. And the way the air cleans itself, something about a storm makes every speck of dust fall out of the air. With that cleansing comes an almost palpable tension, your senses pick up and become extra-alert, the animal in you is seeking information, should I run, should I hide, should I hunt now so I'll be fed and able to wait out the storm or should I wait and hunt after, when the air will be washed so dry that every sparrow's titter and every squirrel's scent tells you exactly where it is?

What it meant to me, of course, was, "Storm's coming up. We'd better get the cows in from the uphill pasture."

Ben went with me, knowing the dangers to cattle in high ground during a storm. You didn't lose many cows to lightning strikes...but it happened.

Ben moved with a practiced ease of years of experience in handling cows, he could chivvy them down the hill better than I could, and these cows were individuals to me with their own quirks and I knew what they'd do to try to do the contrary to what I wanted.

The first drops were falling as we got them into the pasture near the barn, with several sheds they could get under when the rain started. Assuming, being cows, they didn't just stand there in the open and complain about the water hitting them in sheets.

Maw was waiting for us with dry towels and we dried off on the back porch.

"Come on inside, you two." she said as we finished. Her voice was for both of us, but her eyes were only on Ben, the rain had glued his shirt to his body and showed his every line on his arms and his chest. My shirt had done the same...but you can't show off what you don't have!

"I won't have you out in that tack shed tonight, Ben." Maw said firmly. "You can sleep in the house with us tonight."

"I wouldn't want to impose on you." Ben started.

"Nonsense." Maw said. "We have an extra room." The one my sisters had slept in; we had burned their bedding in hopes of killing the fever. It hadn't helped, and it left us with a spare room but no bed for it. Maw seemed to realize that. "Of course, we can't put you in there tonight. You and Junior can go into town tomorrow and pick up a bed for you. I guess the parlor couch will work for you tonight...."

"He can sleep with me." I said quickly.

"Well...well of course he can." Maw said. "That's better than the couch in the parlor, I reckon."

"Bound to be warmer than where I was last night, too." Ben agreed.

"You, too?" I said to him. "We need a couple of extra quilts, all right."

"I'll make some new ones soon as I can." And Maw sobered and I knew why. Our extra quilts...they had gone to make shrouds for Dad and my sisters, something for them to lie upon while waiting for eternity to end.

Ben laughed then, and it wasn't intruding on the sorrowful memory at all, it was covering it up, making the pain go away. "Did you see what your son did on those back fences? He had two boards hiked up agin each other and tied in place with a shoestring!" he hooted.

"No!" Maw said in feigned astonishment.

"It was all I had with me at the time." I said. "I was going to go back and fix it better later, and then I just plain forgot!"

Ben was deliberately diverting us from our pain and, as I said, the pain went away. Dinner that night was like the one before, only even more so, the three of us relaxing and talking about the farm, Ben like he was already married to my mother and planning the spring planting. It felt so very natural for me to visit with him afterward, all the way up until it came time to go to bed. I retired first, Ben remained up speaking to my Maw. By then, it was only natural that he would, he was part of our family.

I had just gotten undressed and was bathing myself in my room, using a pitcher of water and a sponge and basin to catch the run-off, when Ben entered.

I guess I looked startled. "Need me to come back when you're done?" he asked me, making no effort to leave.

"Uh...no, I guess not." I said.

"Thanks, Johnny." Ben said as he began to take off his shirt.

My eyes locked on him as he undid his shirt. To take the focus off me watching him, more than anything, I said, "Ben, can I ask you a question?"

"What is it, Johnny?"

"Why were you drinking so much when I found you?"

Ben sobered. "When I lost my family, I couldn't bear being on the farm. So I sold it, just took what I could get for it, nearly gave it away. Then I was left with nothing to do. I not only didn't have a family anymore, I didn't have a farm nor a reason to live, either. So I was drinking. Would have kept it up, except you came knocking on my door."

I thought it over, nodded. "So you needed to get back on a farm again." That made sense.

But Ben shook his head. "That wasn't it."

"Oh." I said. "Right. My mother, a wife and new family...."

He cut me off again. "Not that either."

I thought it over again and it baffled me. "I don't understand." I said.

"When you drink too much, coming down off from it, it's like all your defenses are shut down. You can see yourself for who you are. Usually, it ain't pretty and you try to forget it, usually with some more drinks. But I hadn't had any yet, and that was where I was when you knocked on my door and I saw something about myself clear as could be."

"So what did you see?" I asked him.

"I saw you." Ben said. Shirtless, he came over next to me sitting on the bed. Putting out his hand, he cupped my chin in one palm and lifted my eyes up. "If I got to marry your mother to stay here with you, that's what I'll do." he said softly.

I reached out and took his arm in my own hand, squeezed it gently. "You don't have to do that." I said. "We can work something out. Maybe hire another man like we done you...."

Lightning flashed again, turning his body from the golden brown it had been in the coal-oil lamplight into brilliant blue-white, turning him from mere mortal man into something other-wordly. He looks like an angel, I thought to myself, built out of light and stars and moonbeams, and nothing but.

Then the light was gone and I was faced with a mortal man again, or rather, this angel made flesh. He was still there, even when the glory of heaven had faded away from him. Still smiling at me, my chin in his hand.

My other hand came up and stroked the side of his body, reassuring myself that he was there, that he was really, truly real. I'd fetched this man for Maw, not for myself. But he was choosing me, me! How can I explain it when feelings you've had your entire life but haven't understood become crystal clear because your prayer has been answered and you never even speaking it? It was like that...my greatest need fulfilled and me not even knowing I'd had it until it stood before me.

Yes, he was real, and I shuddered as my hand reached for the center of his body, felt through his pants at the nexus of his legs, feeling there the center of his life, feeling it swell and hearing the soft moan as he vented the pent-up breath he'd been holding for who-knew-how-long? My own breath had been locked inside my heart for about a decade, I guess, and when it turned loose, it came out the same way, long, low, crooning and deep as the low of a cow needing to be milked, my own need was like that, the release so powerful that it could only moan its way loose.

Our groans were all the convincing either of us needed, you couldn't fake such a sound. Both our hands were fumbling at the buttons on his pants, our fingers collided trying to get it unbuttoned, get it opened, get it out!

And I had in my hand his dong, held nine fat inches of solid manhood, the head begging me to take it, take it, and I did!

The head was soft as a sponge, warm as a kiss, virile as a prize bull, my lips wrapped around it and it was like a joining of our bodies unlike anything I'd thought possible. How was it that a man who I'd not even known save for second and third-hand conversations could be this for me, the part of myself I'd been missing for so long, and never realized?

"Ahhh, yeah, Johnny!" Ben gasped as my lips slid up and down upon his strength and his life. "Ahh, yeahhh!"

I made small grunting sounds without meaning to, the exertion and the trapped air as I moved my mouth back and forth upon his dong drove them out of me, I sounded like some kind of pig, hnk-hnk-hnk-hnk-hnk! I was in a state of sheer bliss, driving this pud in and out of me, and would have continued like this for as long as he would have let me, but then he reached down and his strong arms caught me in the armpits and lifted me up and then I was in his arms and his lips were reaching for mine!

God, the sheer marvel of it, to be held by this strong man, kissing this handsome face, feeling the power of his arms around me, able to crush me if he chose, but choosing instead to hold me with gentleness and passion. My own erection was pressing against his and he reached between us to clutch them together, his hand slid up and down, jerking both of us at once and I had to release his lips, I had to, I had to groan as the pleasure that motion created drove straight through my heart and pinioned it to my brain. My hands fumbled as I tried to touch him everywhere at once, I wanted to somehow bring every part of him under my hands, an impossibility but I need to, I needed to!

"On the bed, Johnny, on the bed." Ben gasped to me. I wouldn't have let go only he pushed against me, not cruely, but making me move, and I hit the bed with the backs of my legs and I fell over onto it. Bounced, scooted into place, looked up at him.

He was removing his pants, his shoes and socks had vanished from his feet earlier in the day, and were now drying in front of the dying fire in the parlor fireplace. Beneath those were a pair of boxer shorts that he skinned out of and was nude and climbing on top of me. The taste of the skin on his shoulder as I kissed it was of sweat and exertion and the way your body can't evaporate the moisture of the day when the rain comes, all of that laid upon my tongue and sank into my senses, the taste of a man that had worked through the day, the flavor of a body that had built a piece of the future through the movement of those muscles that now moved to touch me in tenderness.

My legs lifted themselves up to wrap around him as in a dream, I couldn't believe that this was happening, that this man was upon me now, that he was going to take me. When his dong pressed against my anus, all I could do was keen in the pleasure of the touch, the joy of the possession, the delight of the penetration!

It was not an easy entrance that he had, my body was unbreached and Ben had to be patient and add more sputum to his shaft, to ease the path, but patient as a blacksmith coaxing a length of metal to slid into a pipe so he could meld them together, Ben continued pressing into my body and after a time, he paused, panting. "Ahh, Johnny, that should do it for now." He said. "I need you so much I'm near to spilling my seed just from the feel of you."

"God, Ben, yes, please, I need it in me, come on, please!" I begged shamelessly.

"Ah, boy, I'll plow your furrow for you, but I want to do it right by you." Ben said. "Let your body get used to my shaft and then I'll begin my pushing of you."

I clawed at his back as he held himself inside me, crooning wordless sounds that begged him to begin it before I burst, but he kept himself still and then I felt a tension in my bowels that eased and Ben smiled, and that smile told me all and his motion that pulled his cock out of me and then pushed it back in was no surprise at all. That didn't make it any less delightful, I was in awe at the way that this small motion drove so much ecstasy through my body, how every nerve in my skin came alive at once. Ben was above me, his large, supple form curving into mine, his muscles moving in harmony as his hips pumped his prick in and out of me, his smile was there, too, gleaming down at me like the moon, only this one was close enough to touch, and it was all mine!

I lost all track of time, lost in myself and in this embrace, I could only let the pleasures wash through me and over me, cooperate as he moved and I moved with him, and when I got atop him and he was lying under me, tired but still game, I rode him with a joy that no mule or horse could ever have brought to me, for this saddlehorn was driven up inside of me and it was the focus of my world, and I wanked myself as I rode him, pumping my prick with a frenzy I hadn't done since my first days of puberty, my first discovery of my body's ability to such a height of ecstasy.

Ben's throat was giving out guttural grunts of joy, ah-ah-ah-ah, and they heterodyned with my own, oh-oh-oh-oh-oh! and I was riding Ben and his grunts reached a fever pitch, his fingernails dug into my hips and he groaned, "Oh, Johnny, I'm coming, I'm coming!"

"Oh, yes, yes, uh-huh-uh!" I coaxed him. "Shoot it in me, shoot it in me!" His cock was so hot and so hard, I knew he was right, he was going to come!

"Ah-ah, yes, ah, ah, ah!" Ben groaned. "Here it comes, boy, here it comes! Ah-ah-HAH-AH-GUHHH-HUHHHH!"

I crooned as I felt the hot seed splash up into me, and Ben's fingernails dug into my flesh, eight points, four on each leg, points of pain that somehow transformed into climax, and my body flashed into orgasm, I squirted hard and fast and Ben's eyes grew wide and he howled in his last moments of ecstasy as he felt my seed burning onto his flesh.

"Ah, damn, Johnny, ah, yes, damn!" Ben's words weren't a curse, they were more like a prayer, for they echoed from his soul. I could only sag helplessly down onto him, our body's fluids, sweat and sperm, intermixed, mine upon his chest and his ensconced safely within my guts.

"Ah, boy, that was what I've been dreaming of all these years, and never had a word or memory of it when I woke up." Ben sighed.

"Me, too." I groaned. "God, Ben, we got to come up with a way you can stay in my bed, we just got to!"

"I'll only be down the hall." Ben said as he patted my back fondly, protectively. "I can slip out and join you and get back before dawn. I can wake up when I need to at night."

"But I want you here with me." I groaned out, knowing it was impossible, knowing it was not something I could do without revealing everything to Maw, and that was utterly unthinkable. It was one thing to take a man intended for her, Ben had only been with us for two days, it was another to place him in my bed as my lover. We needed discretion, too, for the neighbors. A hired hand could (just barely) be placed in a spare bedroom, more often he had his own place in the barn like the tack shed. But in the son's bed...no, that wouldn't be tolerated, it would generate gossip that could lead to trouble; a farmer depended upon his neighbors.

So it was in a hopeless way that I slept and awoke the next day, moving through the motions of dressing and going to tend to the chickens and pigs and the mule. I could have sent Ben out to do it, but I looked at him still sleeping, his face soft and beautiful in the morning light, and I walked out to see a marvelous rainbow in the western sky, framed against the clouds that had burst out upon us the evening before.

I went back inside and Maw was fixing breakfast. "You did the chores?" she asked me. "Why not put Ben to it?"

"He was sleeping." I said. "Besides, I'm used to it."

"I know." she said.

"Guess we should go get him a bed soon as he gets up." I sighed.

"Why don't I get dressed and come with you?" Maw said. "We can get married, him and me, and won't be no need for a bed, will there?"

I felt a stab through my heart at that. Ben might well marry Maw...and he was mine! "If that's what you think is best." I said and it was ripped right through my heart as I said it.

"I think it's best he be married to me if he's going to stay in the house." Maw said. "That way, won't nobody be surprised he's in here and not out in the barn. And you and him can keep right on sharing that bed of yours easier that way."

"Maw?" I said, looking at her.

"I woke up last night." Maw explained. "So you don't have to explain anything. I knew it anyway, you two looking at each other. I'm a woman, you think I can't read the eyes of a man who's in love?"

"But to marry him."

"Be less scandal that way." Maw said. "People won't notice the two of you getting on that way. And I got another reason to go to town with you today."

"What's that?" I asked.

She smiled at me. "You and Ben together still leaves me alone. We still got to find me a man!"

THE END

Comments? Complaints? Suggestions?

E-Mail me at Tommyhawk1@AOL.COM

WWW.TOMMYHAWKSFANTASYWORLD.COM