FRANKLIN'S GENERAL STORE
By Tommyhawk1@AOL.COM
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I dodged a couple of yahoos on bicycles. Half of Tompkinville seemed to travel by two wheels whenever they could. Of course, the town was small enough to make it practical, nothing of interest was more than three miles away. A few houses lay beyond that distance, of course, but as they weren't considered part of Tompkinville, that didn't change the attitude of the villagers. If you lived in Tompkinville, you owned a bicycle and most people thought that meant you had to use it. Me, I was going to walk until I got a car and then it would be "eat my dust, you dumb yokels!"
So I walked then, across the town square, the grass neatly trimmed and edged with demure strips of flowers in red and yellow. A bronzed cannon sat in the middle of the sidewalk, a tribute to our town's Civil War heroes, the Tompkinville Artillery Corp. Twenty men had gone to war on the Union side, manning four cannon donated by the town. Eight men had come back, only two under their own power, and of the four cannon, only one survived, the rest had perished, at Second Manassas, I think. Maybe it was the first one, my Civil War knowledge was fuzzy. I could have found out by reading the plaque on the cannon, of course, but didn't care enough to bother. I had my eyes on my target the other end of the square.
Franklin's General Store was just across the way. I'd heard something, and now I had to see it for myself. He couldn't have! Ben and I had made plans for the summer!
Yeah, my friend was named Benjamin Franklin. No relation to the Founding Father I knew of, just a father with a weird sense of humor and a mother who went along with it because her father's name was Benjamin. You have to wonder about some people.
I nodded at the three old men sitting on the bench on the porch and went past them to the front door. The bell over the door jingled as I walked in. Ben would be there if he was home, for his home was over the store. Tompkinville was that kind of town, his family had lived there for over a hundred years.
The store was large and dark inside, filled with brown and black colors. The shelves, the rows, the beams above them, these could have been standing like this when the cannon on the town square was new. Only two things about the store looked new; one was the products on the shelves, all modern goods, of course. The other was the register, a new electronic white thing with digital display.
Ben came out from behind a shelf where he'd been cleaning, wiping his hands dry on the apron he wore. I didn't like the apron, it made him look middle-aged, not the guy who'd graduate from high school with me in a few more weeks.
"Hey, Joe!" he said to me, his thin face breaking out in a smile above his shock of blond hair.
I didn't smile back. "Is it true?"
He didn't need me to explain. "Yes." he said. "I'll be staying here this summer."
"But why?" I pressed him. "We were going to get out and travel. Go to Florida, go to California, maybe Hawaii, and you want to spend the summer here in Tompkinville?"
"I'm needed here." he said.
"What the hell are you talking about?"
The doorbell rang and Old Lady Haskell came in and he moved over to wait on her. She was old and feeble; this meant she stood by the counter and told him what she wanted and he fetched it for her off the shelves. She only took a few items at a time, just what she needed for her next few meals, and came into the store every day. Watching him taking care of her, I calmed down some. Without this store, people like Mrs. Haskell would have been forced to travel nearly thirty miles to buy their groceries. Not to mention my own childhood memories of summer, after a day of swimming or playing baseball, we'd all run to Franklin's store and buy a cold drink, God, nothing tasted better than a cold grap e Nehi on a hot summer day!
So when he finished with her, writing her charges on a slip (she paid her bill on the first of each month when her check came in) and bade her farewell, I walked up and said, "So what happened with your parents?"
"They're taking a long vacation." he said. "Left last night."
That evaporated most of my goodwill so recently earned. "And they're leaving you here to run the place? What about graduation? Couldn't you just shut the store down?"
"You don't understand." he said. "I get to keep all the profit the store makes for the three months they're gone. Just pay the bills that come in, is all I have to do. And summer is the best season in the store, what with tourists and all. I'll graduate, I talked to the principal, they'll let me take the tests and such."
"So that's all this is, about money?"
"Money for college." he said.
"What about Florida, and California?" I demanded.
"We can do it next year." he said.
"Unless your parents take to traveling again." I sneered.
Ben was quiet and he said, "I'm coming back here when I finish college."
"What?"
"To work in this store." he said. "It's what I'm going to do, take over my father's business when he's ready to retire."
"But, God!" I said, exasperated. "Why? Don't you want to get out and see the world, see what it has. Find out what's outside of Tompkinville? God, man, why?"
Ben looked at me and a soft look came over his eyes. "I have my reasons." he said opaquely.
I'd always known Ben was more in love with Tompkinville than I was. But this was throwing me for a loop. "God!" I said. "I was counting on you coming with me. Helping with costs, we were going to share rooms at the motels and such. Now...I don't know what I can do!"
"I do." Ben said. I looked at him and he said, "Move in with me and help me with the store this summer."
"Huh? Ah, hell!" I said.
"I need someone." Ben urged me. "I can't take care of this store all the time! I got to have time to eat and wash clothes and I need help in between, too, like when I have to cut meat or stock the shelves on delivery days. Joe," He put his hand on my arm. "I need you."
I looked down at his hand. "What's in it for me?" I said.
"I'd cut you in for half the profit." He said. "There'll be enough to go around. The store brings in better'n ten thousand a month profit in the summertime. You live with me and food and board is free, that'd be pure profit for you."
I began to see how his father talked Ben into giving up his summer plans. "What about the rest of the year?" I said to him. "If you're going to live off this place."
"It's less." he admitted. "But there's enough to pay the bills and a couple of thousand left over, enough to live on, what with living above the store. And the summers bring in enough to save and buy things you need, like a car...."
"A car?" I said.
"Sure." He said. "By the end of summer, you'd have enough to put a nice down payment on a new car. Not even a used one, Joe, a new one!"
Three kids came in then and he waited on them while I thought about it. When they were done, he saw them out and then turned his Open/Closed sign over so that it read "Closed" in the window. Beside it was a wooden plaque with a clock on it, just wooden, moveable hands on the bare dial, that said, "Back at" and you set the time to show when you'd be back.
"Okay." he said. "I'm closed for the next half hour."
"All right." I said to that, though I didn't see why. "Okay, you got yourself a helper for the summer. After all, I can't go anyplace without you. We can see the sights next summer."
"Uh, actually, the plan is for my parents to turn the store over to me every summer." he said. "All the time I'm in college."
"Huh?"
"They've saved the store's profits for over twenty years and want to travel. Store makes enough to live on the rest of the year, like I said. I get the place summers and that lets me pay for college and stuff."
"So you're going to be here every summer." I said. "Ben, I had plans for us to travel around and see things together. Just you and me."
He put his hand back on my arm again and this time it wasn't just to get my attention. "Joe." He said. "If we stay here working the store, it will be just you and me. That's kind of why I'm asking you."
I looked down at his hand on my arm and then back up into his face. He was looking so serious, so intent...so kissable. His tongue reached out, a timid pink thing, and licked his lips, moistening them, and then he leaned toward me.
I guess that had always been the unspoken part of our plans to travel the country together all summer. Him and me, alone on the road, sharing a motel room, just the two of us. We'd never talked about it that way, but it had been there, in all our plans, in my anger at his backing out of it, in his offer to join him in the store. And live with him, and his parents gone, just the two of us when it turned eight o'clock and we closed the door and turned out the lights downstairs.
So when he leaned toward me with those lips glinting in yellow arcs from their moisture, I quickly licked my own and met him halfway, my other hand coming up and stroking up his arm to his shoulder, his hand on my arm did the same, our inner arms reached to go around the other's back and then we were not just kissing, we were holding each other, our kiss turned open-mouthed and I felt his tongue sliding into my mouth. Shit, a French kiss! I'd tried them once or twice on the girls I'd dated (not really serious about the girls, but you know how it is, a part of growing up and you end up on a date whether you want to or not and you're expected to do certain things and you do them, feeling kind of silly but expecting those feelings you're supposed to feel to show up and they don't, so you try something else...that kind of attempt to French-kiss a girl), but the girl had always shied away or I'd felt like I was sucking on a slimy garden slug instead of a person. Not this time, it was warm and alive and it was part of Ben and it tasted good, damned good, I didn't want to let it go!
So I savored that tongue, loved the feel of his arms around me, quivered at the point of hardness I felt on my leg that had to be his hard-on, pushing at me through our clothes, covered, blunted, but there, very there!
When Ben finally stole his tongue back from me (I sucked at it trying to hold onto it), I leaned over and kissed at his neck, his long, sinuous neck, tasting the hard cord of his throat like a taut rope covered in skin that was flavored like I'd always imagined nectar tasted to bees, sweet, so very sweet!
"Oh, God, Joe!" Ben gasped. "The window!"
"What about it?" I murmured over his throat.
"People can see us in here." He said.
I was startled and raised back, looked at the outside.
"No, nobody's seen us." Ben clarified. "But they could. Let's get back between these shelves." There was a wooden bench there that had been there in that spot as long as I could remember. Sometimes people sat on it while waiting for their partners to finish shopping.
"We can't be seen here." I said as Ben sat on the bench. It was small, there was no place for me to sit, and I knelt down beside him instead.
"It's why it's here." Ben said. "You work in a store, sometimes you get tired of being seen all the time. So this bench is here, a place to sit down and not be seen for a while."
"Or a place to kiss your boss?" I smiled and he smiled back, but instead of leaning forward to kiss me again (he had to move some for us to kiss in that position, that or I'd have to sidle on my knees), he grabbed his apron and pulled it up to bunch the bottom half of it at his midsection. The thin cotton material made a rather narrow ridge there.
"A place to do things with your boss." he agreed as his hands went to his zipper and I knew then what he wanted.
I got on down onto both knees, and when he got his pants unzipped and the button above it undone, I grabbed his jeans and tugged at them. The apron tie at his waist hampered that some, but not much, I got the jeans down below his knees and he was exposed and his cock was standing upright for me.
God, that dick! I'd seen it at school sometimes in the shower after a game, and it made a funny feeling in my stomach, seeing it there, all limp but still plump. Now it was even plumper and rock-hard! My feelings about Ben crystalized, I wanted this man and had always wanted him and while my mind hadn't had the words to put to my emotions, they'd been there. They'd been there all along, and he'd understood better than me.
"Go ahead and suck it for me." He breathed huskily. "I want you to do me, right here and now. Right here, God, right here!"
I took that stiff pole in my hand and it burned with desire, hot in my palm. "Okay, but why right here?" I said.
"`Cause this is where we do it." he said. "We Franklins, it's where we've always made it for the first time. My Dad, his father, his father, every one of them, has brought their future wife into the store after it was closed and their parents asleep, and it's happened right here on this bench."
"And now it's your turn?"
"Why mess with a family tradition?" Ben said with a grin. "We only got another twenty minutes and then people will start tapping at the window. Come on, Joe! Do me and then I'll put you on the bench and do you."
With a promise like that, I was even more ready to work on this hot dong. I bent over and my tongue touched the tip and Ben groaned and suddenly the tip of his cock was sticky. He was pouring out precome onto my lips and onto my tongue and into my mouth as I slid my lips down and over the steaming shaft, feeling the hot shaft nearly searing my throat as it touched the sensitive skin at the back of my mouth. Jesus, so hot and it was still pouring out boiling pre-jizz, salty spunk that sunk into my taste-buds and covered them with their essence and sank into them and converted them into worshipers. Never again will they spew their saliva for anything else, I feel, nothing but Ben's jizz will bring them to life again.
But Ben has plenty of it. Sucking his cock is like sucking on a leaky faucet, the more I suck the juice away, the more replaces it. My head bobbing up and down as Ben groans above me, I begin to wonder if I'll even be able to tell when he comes.
I look up at him, thinking I'll need to watch his face to know. If I roll my eyes up high in my head, I can just see him, see that face, blond hair that insists on remaining slightly disarranged, the long slender nose, the softly planed cheeks, the open mouth showing me the upper row of teeth, his chest below that rising up and down in soft waves as he loves what I am doing to him, and his cock, loving me back the only way it can, by pouring yet more liquid onto my tongue, spreading it like largesse to the grasping crowd around it and my taste-buds drink it down and want more, more, now my throat is almost coated with his fluid, a hot salty road paved and slick for his entrance.
And Ben groans in a tighter note and his hands come up and grab my head and he grunts in helpless abandon, his body is no longer his own, his passion controls it, his passion is making his hands take me and force me to move faster upon him, faster, faster!
"Oh, God, Joe!" He groans. "God, man, I'm going to shoot! God, I'm going to shoot!" He pants a few seconds, then says, "Can I shoot it in your mouth, Joe? Can I, please?"
But his hands aren't giving me the choice, they hold me firmly to my task, driving me with their fingers for whips, laid upon me and keeping me sucking on his dong, faster now, even faster!
"Oh, Joe, can I come in your mouth? Please, God, Joe, I, uh, uh, UH!"
I guess my answer had better be yes! My only other choice was to rip myself out of his hands, pull away from him, interrupt this moment of shared lust we had. I might have preferred the option to be more two-sided, but I still think I would have chosen to hold on.
And I did hold on, I didn't pull away, I kept my lips tightly upon his cock, which was burning hotter than ever, Ben was bucking his hips now, too, giving out cries so loud I felt sure the old men sitting outside could hear him! "Oh, uh, Joe, oh, oh, KUH-UH-UH-UH-UH-HUHHHH-NNNNNN-GGGGGHHHH-KKKKK!"
I had so much pre-come in my mouth, it really didn't make a lot of difference to me, Ben's coming in my mouth. I had slimy stuff on my tongue, but it rolled down that road of precome into my throat easily, my tastebuds carried it across like fans will carry a rock star on their hands over the tops of the crowd, Ben's come poured triumphantly down my throat and Ben's cock was steel-hard and I sucked on it and he groaned, and groaned lighter, and then panted heavily and I still sucked, sucked that cock even when it was wrung dry, when only a ghost of the jism flavor remained, only when it started to shrivel down did I let it go, vacuum sucked dry as a bone, bone-dry, it fell onto his thigh, a spent dick, nicely shaped but arced over and limp again.
Ben sat there, his eyes closed, panting ever softer, for so long I began to wonder if he was about to renege on his promise. "Hey, Ben." I said to him, making my tone a near whisper.
"What?" He said, opening his eyes.
"Your turn." I said.
He grinned at me, easily, and my doubts that he regretted his promise evaporated. He was a teenaged boy fastening his pants after a hot bout of sex and loving the after-glow.
Me, I was the same sort of teen-aged boy, undoing my pants and letting them fall to my knees, and sitting down, my prick glaring at him angrily with its one eye. "Come on, your turn." I urged him.
Ben knelt down, one hand pulling the apron out of the way easily to let it fall before him, ready to capture and ward off any spills. "So that's what yours looks like." He said. "I've been wondering what you've been hiding in the showers."
I felt abashed, I had indeed turned away whenever I saw someone about to look my way, not like Ben, not caring who looked. But my cock is a "hider,", when it's soft it is like a dot on my groin above my balls. Only when it gets hard does it jut out, ready to face the world.
"This is it." I agreed. "Ready for service."
"Service with a smile." he agreed. "After that great blow-job, I owe you a hot one!"
Ben did, too. I had been a rank virgin when I knelt down to him and had expected the same from him. He was a novice, too, his knowledge gleaned from books and magazines rather than from experience. It's enough to give a guy a good idea of what to do, though!
So he started my licking my cockhead, his tongue dancing over the glans and making it tingle every time he touched me. It felt great, more than great, but I was cognizant of the time and his warning about customers, and I said, "Come on, we're running out of time here, hurry up or I'll bust my nuts!"
His answer was to lock his lips onto my cock and I nearly fainted, it felt so damned good! Ben's mouth was full of his spit, and it was like my dick dived into a pool of hot liquid warmth churned up like a sauna by his lips and tongue, and it was pounding my prick in twelve directions at once, sending surges of delight through my body.
"Oh, shit, Ben, that's it!" I moaned. "God, yeah, suck me like that, more, harder!"
Ben took to making strokes on my cock, his mouth rolling around as he dove down and screwed about as he pulled up, his hand holding my cock's base firmly in place.
"Ah, damn, Ben!" I gasped. "Gah, shit!"
Ben's mouth was a cavern of delight for me, I had never experienced anything even remotely like this before, and it was my first time and it was good, damned good! Ben was moving with motions any hooker would envy for its sales value, but this was mine, all mine, for Ben was staying here in Tompkinville with me and I was moving in with him and this would be mine, all night, every night!
"Oh, shit, Ben, damn, I'm about to come already!" I panted as my senses built up within me, a tenseness permeating my body, coming at me from everywhere at once until I was a rigid mass of muscles unable to move, afraid to move for fear they'd dislodge the sensations rushing through them, damn right I was about to come. I was barely holding it back, in fact!
I didn't think Ben had anything left to do to me, but he did, his hand pulled my foreskin back and his mouth now impacted directly on the flare of my glans, and it was more intense than it was before, and it drove me screaming to a higher plane of passion, I'd just thought I was ready to come, I had a ways to go if this was what it took!
What Ben did was incredible, done without proper lubrication it's painful and harsh, but with him, it was like velvet gripping me and rubbing me and pleasing me.
In that sky-high impetus of delight, I gasped out a final warning, "Now, Ben, now!" and that was all I got out before I could only gurgle and my orgasm assailed me the way a storm's downpour gets you wet all over at once with no halfway time of dampness, just boom, you're wet!
Well, boom, I was shooting, I ejaculated my wads into Ben's mouth and he pumped at my cock with his hand while he continued to suck just my cockhead with his mouth, and I felt my jizz pelting out of my cock and onto his tongue and I knew that my load was one of the biggest I'd ever shot. It seemed to just keep going on, and I was a screaming banshee, and if the old men could hear us, that scream would erase any doubts they had about what they were hearing!
So that was my first time, shooting a heavy load into Ben's talented mouth, and then I was done, finally done, and I was a quivering lump of Jell-O in a teenaged body, unable to do anything but sort of jiggle where I was, looking at Ben with glazed eyes and sweaty brow.
Ben let go and his tongue made a large circle of his lips, an insolent gesture from this ordinarily subdued young man. "Hoo, you really had a head of steam on, didn't you?" he said.
"Yeah." I said, trying to get my body to let me stand up again, or at least fasten my pants.
As it was, I was an invalid with dropped drawers, to be seen by anyone who happened by. My fingers came up and like so many sausages, I tried to bend them to my will once more.
"I think you'd better move in tonight." Ben said. "We'll need to get you started in the store right away."
"Sounds good to me." I said. "My folks sure won't complain about me staying in town because I got a job."
"Of course, working in a store is no picnic." he cautioned me. "We open at 8:00am and stay open until 8:00pm, six days a week including holidays, and Sundays we're as busy as any other day of the week. It'll be a long, hard haul."
"Long and hard." I said. "I can get into that."
"I knew you could." Ben said. Then, as if he thought of it suddenly, he said, "You asked me why I was giving up on travel to stay here this summer and why I plan to stay here in Tompkinville after college."
"Yeah." I said, barely remembering my verbal lashing at him when I'd arrived.
He smiled. "`Cause everything I want is right here in this town." he said. "I love this town and I love this store and with you by me, I see no reason why I need to go anywhere at all."
I looked out the window and those same two boys rode by on their bikes. Beyond it, I saw the cannon, sitting there as it had since the end of the Civil War. Tompkinville was like this, staying the same, year after year, a town frozen in time. A nice place for a person to settle down for good.
"You know." I said. "I'm beginning to think you have something there after all."
THE END
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