Hayseed

HAYSEED

By Tommyhawk1@AOL.COM

WWW.TOMMYHAWKSFANTASYWORLD.COM

I was lost in the middle of nowhere in southern Missouri or northern Arkansas. My own fault, taking the directions of some old codger I'd met at the last gas station. Him and his short- cuts! Maybe it was a shorter way through the high hills I was driving through, and maybe not! All I knew is that my car was beginning to overheat as I forced it to climb hill after hill after high, high hill as I made turn after turn according to the old man's directions. When it gave up the ghost, entirely, not just overheating, I took off walking the same way I had been driving. I knew I hadn't passed any houses for miles and miles, and the road I was on had to go to somebody's house, or it wouldn't be there, would it?

Two miles later, I wasn't so sure. The road kept branching off and I tried to follow the main one each time, but it got smaller and less traveled, until finally I was faced with not two but three roads, all of them tiny, rutted things, overgrown like no one had been on them for weeks at a time. But I was committed to my trip, I chose the one on the left, pretty much at random, and because it was headed downhill and my feet hurt, and took off walking again. I was so relieved to see finally the outline of a house at the top of the next hill, and even though it was a long ways off, I at least had a destination. I got to the house and knocked, footsore and weary, but happy to be somewhere besides on that road. Waited, knocked again.

Then a voice came from my right. "Who are you?"

I turned and looked. A man stood there, wearing only a pair of overalls and worn workboots, holding a pitchfork. He wasn't aiming it at me, but I didn't think he'd been using it for anything else, either. His hair was brown but bleached pale by the sun, his face was deeply suntanned, round and honest-looking. His gaze into my eyes was steady, the look of a man who was standing on his own land, and knew his own worth. His arms and shoulders were equally bronzed by the sun and I looked at his shoulders, a round mass of man-flesh on each side of his head, his arms big and burly, his forearms a tangle of hair that moved to smooth rows of wheat- colored streams just above his wrists, his hands calloused and rough, but solid. This was a man who could do anything he could think of doing, and didn't ever think of doing anything other than working the land and bringing life out of it, for himself and his animals that I could hear in the background, the low of a cow, bleats of some goats, the clucking of chickens that roamed free.

"I said, who are you?" he said and his second hand went to the pitchfork, again not aiming it, but now ready to do so if he needed to.

"Uh, I'm lost." I said. "My car broke down a few miles back up the road and I've been walking for hours. Could I have a drink of water and a ride into town?"

He looked at me without a smile but without a threat, and said, "Water I can give you, pump's over there." he gestured. "But I ain't got a car."

I pumped the antiquated device and after a while, water did come out, but only a slow stream. I had to pump and pump to get the bucket even half-full. I stopped then and dipped the dipper into the water and drank, not caring by then if the dipper was clean or not. It looked clean and that was enough for me! I drank deeply, then dipped and drank again.

"What about your neighbors?" I asked. "I'm willing to pay for a ride back into town."

"Neighbors don't neither." the man said. "We need something, peddler man comes by on Saturdays and we buy off from him or we ask him to bring it the next time. He takes our eggs and milk and vegetables and gives us money and we give money back to him for what we buy. It works for us well enough. Or sometimes a sheriff or a forest ranger drops by, but I couldn't tell when they'd come by. They show up when they show up."

Today was only Tuesday and I was dismayed. "How far is it to the nearest town?" I asked.

The man shrugged. "Don't rightly know. Haven't been off this farm in years. No need to. Towns are dangerous places." he said. "I stay here and mind my own business. And don't cotton much to strangers."

I didn't know what to make of this hayseed! But I knew I needed a place to stay for at least the night. "Can I pay you for a place to sleep tonight and for supper and breakfast?" I asked him.

He regarded me. "I reckon so." he conceded. "You plan on walking out tomorrow?"

"Will if I have to." I said. Then I thought about the territory I had driven through. No way I'd make it to even the next house back down the road before night fell again on me. "But what about if I stay until Saturday? Will the peddler give me a ride?"

"I expect he will, he'll do anything for the right price." he conceded again grudgingly. "Can't say for myself, I ain't never asked him. I stay here and mind my own business."

"And don't cotton much to strangers." I said for him. "I know. I didn't plan to come visit you, but I'm stuck here. How much would you want for three days' room and board?"

"Wouldn't know what to charge." he said.

"I'll give you fifty dollars." I said. "Cash, right now."

That made his eyes light up. Then he sobered. "That's too much. Just the one room inside and food will be what I've grown and put away. Twenty-five would be more fair."

I'd never seen this, a man dickering himself down. "But I wouldn't be any help to you around the farm for three entire days. Let me make it forty."

"Okay, stranger." he said and stepped up to shake my hand.

I laughed. "Oddest trading I ever did." I said. "If my partners back on Wall Street knew I had bid my price up instead of down, I'd never hear the end of it."

"Wall Street?" he said. "Is that where you live?"

"It's where I work."

"Oh, you live on a different street, then." he seemed impressed by that.

"Wall Street is the name for the financial district of this entire country." I explained. "But I work out of Chicago. I was heading for a business seminar in Tulsa, which I decided to turn into a driving holiday, got sidetracked by the scenery, then got some bad directions on how to get back to the main highway. So here I am."

"Yep, here you are." he said. "Go on in and make yourself to home. I got to milk the cows before I can fetch you supper."

"Don't you want your money?" I asked, fishing for my wallet.

"You can pay me tonight at supper." He said. "Ain't like you're going anywhere, are you?"

He had a point! I went inside. He had a wood-burning stove for cooking! A counter-top with shelves above it and a small tub sitting on it, that seemed to be all his kitchen and it covered one wall. A cabinet (I opened it to look) held not clothing, but huge slabs of dried meat. This wasn't a cabinet, he had a smoke-room attached to his house! His only other furnishings were a straight-backed chair and a crude-looking bed with a hand-made quilt on it. Mattress looked hand-made, too. The windows had shutters but no glass in them. The entire room measured maybe ten by twelve feet. I sat down on the chair and looked around, deciding he'd been right to ask only twenty-five dollars for this sort of accommodations! I'd been gypped!

He came in a little later and said very kindly. "I got some sugar-cured beef I can fry you up for your supper and I'll make some biscuits and gravy. Will that suit you?"

"Whatever you have." I said, determined to survive as well as I could the next three days and next time I came through this part of the country, I wouldn't even get off the interstate!

He built a fire in the wood stove and began mixing with flour and milk straight out of the bucket he had brought in. Hot milk straight from the cow! I started to protest, looked at his ample and very healthy body, and decided it couldn't kill me. Cooking would sterilize the milk, wouldn't it? Did milk even need to be sterilized?

I forgot my complaints when I tasted the "vittles" he had prepared. The biscuits were heavenly to the taste, seeming to melt in my mouth. The beef had been preserved with salt and sugar, but when cooked, it only served to spice the beef itself, which became flavorful and a touch sweet. His gravy was heavy, but it suited the rest of the meal. I copied him by sopping the gravy up with the biscuits and only using the fork to spear out the pieces of beef and place them atop the drenched biscuits. By the end of that meal, I felt a lot more friendly toward my benefactor.

I expected to sit and chat a time, but he was silent, responding to my overtures with only a few words, seeming to have no curiosity about the outside world. Then he yawned and stretched after the meal, and said, "Well, it's bedtime."

I looked at my watch, it was only nine o'clock at night. "Now?" I asked.

"I rise early so I go to sleep early. If it's a problem, you can sit up."

I yawned as he did again. "I could sleep now. Been a rough day." I stood up and then realized that we'd have to share the bed! And it wasn't a very big bed. "Is the bed big enough for both of us, or do I bunk with the cows?"

He shrugged. "Bed ain't too big, but it'll do if you ain't fussy. But the barn's full of cows right now. Don't have an empty stall you could use. I'm going to add on to the barn after the spring harvesting is done, but haven't done it yet. Not even split the timbers or dried them yet."

"So I'll sleep with you." I said and gulped, removed my shirt. Watched as he pulled off his boots and socks, then shucked his overalls and I saw he wore nothing underneath them. And goggled at the large piece of meat he had swinging there, thick and loose, a cock which had never known the binding of cotton and elastic, but had hung free all its life.

He turned and crawled into the bed just like that, lay down on the edge nearest me. "Crawl over me when you're ready." he said. "Unless you want to rise with the chickens, too."

"Okay." I said and began to get undressed the rest of the way. I folded my shirt neatly and made a square of it and put it on the chair. Then my shoes and socks, tucked underneath the chair. Then my pants, which I folded along the creases and put them down over the chairback. I turned and he was looking right at me, not lustfully, not disapprovingly, just looking at me like he was entitled and nothing wrong with it. His mammoth arms were a triangle, hands tucked beneath his head, showing a thick patch of hairs at his armpit, his posture turning his pectorals into twin triangles of huge muscle, these triangles surrounding his round face, solid and honest and un-deceptive. I hesitated, wearing only my boxers, then with a sudden decision, I pulled them down and was nude. I folded them into a neat square and placed them atop my shirt and stood up straight, looked over at him.

He didn't say a word, just looked at my body, my muscles gained by working out, which gave my body definition but far from the powerhouse this man was, my skin pale and white so that it nearly shone in the encroaching darkness. At my groin, my cock dark brown and buried in the black hair that was so much darker than my own brown thatch. I felt him looking at me and felt, too, a vague sense of approval. I wasn't some pasty-faced city-slicker, I could do some work if I had to! That was the sense I got from him. Like I was a horse he was considering buying and appraising my work ability.

He threw back the covers at one corner, so I could climb in and over him and still get beneath the covers. This exposed all of his chest and most of his abdomen and a bit of his hip showed at the very end. All of it massive, muscled curves of male flesh! The big body of a bodybuilder and this man had never lifted a barbell or a free-weight, only hay and corn and--I didn't know--wagon wheels? He had earned his body the way most men only dreamed of, by hard labor and honest effort, and this body formed this bulky physique because it needed to be that way!

I got a massive erection, looking at my bedmate/landlord, and I gulped as I raised my eyes to his. What would this simple country boy think of a man getting a hard-on looking at his body?

He simply pushed the covers the rest of the way back and revealed his own nine-inch, thick monster rising up like a cobra to stand proud and independent in the dim light of dusk! Again, that look on his face as he regarded me, no guilt in it, not the simpering lust you found in the baths, just the look of one man to another, lust combined with understanding and trust.

I walked over and as I got close enough, he reached out with his hand and grasped my hard prong, and I groaned as I felt the hard knobs of callouses on his hands as he palped my tumescent rod, stroked me like it was the most natural thing in the world. I reached down to take his own cock in my hand and he sighed, then, closed his eyes and leaned his head back and he stroked my cock harder.

I then leaned over and gulped down his thick prick, tasting the honest sweat of the day's labors on it and the thick musk of a male animal in heat, the man-male animal! He groaned and hunched at my mouth and I thought I must be giving him a new sensation. Here in the sticks, where would he ever find a blow-job?

But he swiveled around as I climbed into bed to get a better purchase on his cock and I felt his lips slather my prod, and he expertly took it down to the very base!

All this time, never a word had been said by either of us, and unlike so often in the city, I got no feeling of furtiveness or shame from him. He didn't see a thing wrong with us sucking on each other's cocks, he enjoyed it and he gave himself to me fully, both with his hard schlong thrusting in and out of my mouth as he bucked his hips roughly against my mouth, and his warm, moist, sucking lips that milked at me, trying to drain me dry with every lunge and pulling suction, as if he intended to drink his absolute fill of me.

With the innocent lust of two animals in the field, we sucked each other's cocks and when his load built inside of him, he moaned and groaned without stifling the sounds, the heat in his cock matched the volume of his grunts, and he reached a crescendo, his cock nearly burning my lips with its heat and with a long, choked groan, he blasted his wad into my mouth, the hot semen spraying my throat with a heavy coating of thick, salty, juicy jizz, and I swallowed it happily, enjoying the taste of his country bumpkin whose strong arms were gripping my buttocks to send my cock deeper into his own throat as he recovered and began to milk me harder than ever. I felt his lips like living things running up and down my prong, pulling at me, gripping me tight to release me for a gentle stroke downwards, to fasten again and pull up again.

I sucked on his cock, still hard in my mouth, draining the last vestiges of sperm out of it, and then a pool of boiling tingling built in my balls and I groaned a warning, so short, before I burst loose with my own comeload, pumping it into him, his mouth welcoming my intrusion and gift-package of lust which he drank down greedily.

He milked my cock until it was a flaccid, limp mass of tissue in his mouth rather than a steel rod and then released me. He then turned around to lie beside me and pulled the covers over both of us. Still without words, or the need for them, he covered us up, rested one arm over my chest, his body pressed against me without demand or possessiveness, just beside me and touching me, and settled in to sleep. I heard his light snores a moment later.

I lay there for some time like this, this huge man-beast sleeping beside me, and puzzled over his life. All alone here miles from anyone else, he worked his land and lived alone and kept his own counsel and seemed to prefer it that way. His life was that of the Earth itself, the needs of the land, the planting of seeds, the caring and harvesting of his plants, the animals with their own cycles of birth and usefulness. I lay there, comparing it to my own existence, with more creature comforts but less of the connectivity to the world, and I wondered then which of us had chosen the better life?

I woke up the next morning literally to a cock-crow. Some rooster had gotten up onto one of the open windows and was perched there, crowing inside at us. His feathers were the rich color of gold, so that he seemed to be wearing a coat of precious metal.

"All right, Geoffrey." the man said as he groaned. "I'm up!" He rose in bed and rubbed his eyes, looked down at me. "I got to go feed the chickens and the hogs. Then I'll come back and make breakfast for you."

"Can't you stay here a little while?" I said seductively.

He shook his head, but he smiled, a timid thing on that strong face. "Animals got their needs. Geoffrey comes to get me and the rest of the animals listen for him. They'll all be calling in a moment if I don't get a move on."

"Geoffrey is your alarm clock, then?" He even woke up, then, not to mechanical shrieks, but the call of a golden rooster which reminded him of the duties of his day.

"Been waking up to him ever since I got him two years ago." the man rose and pulled on his overalls. "Before that, it was Edward, a Rhode Island Red."

I realized something. "What's your name?" I asked him.

"Mark." he said. "Yours?"

"Richard." Somehow, first names were all we needed.

"Well, Richard," he said as he tugged on his shoes. "I'll be back in a short while."

I looked at him as he went out and heard a short time later his calling to the chickens as he fed them, their happy clucking. He wasn't alone, he was surrounded by life at all hours of the day, animals who depended on him and he on them, in a closed circle. I pondered again my own life, dealing with paper and numbers, until money itself was just a method of keeping score, my dinners at fine clubs where you often couldn't guess what you were eating even by looking at it, it had been intermixed and cooked and shaped into whimsical shapes.

I got dressed, just pants, shirt and shoes/socks, and went outside, found him at the hogs, feeding them coarsely ground corn. I had passed a corn rack on my way, the bin nearly empty, and knew it was the same corn, the very corn he raised in his field and where stalks stood now, heavy with the new harvest. "Came out to see if I could help out." I said. "Don't have anything else to do."

"Not right now, thank you kindly." Mark said. "But I'll be harvesting corn later today, if you think you can handle it. It's rough work."

"I'll give it a try." I said.

"Good." he said. "I'll fetch your breakfast now. Eggs and bacon okay?"

"Great."

"We got biscuits left from last night, I'll heat them up, too."

We ate a huge breakfast, me feeling that lunch would probably be something light. Or that his huge body needed such massive quantities of calories to handle the burden he placed on it. Then he hitched his mule to a wagon and guided it out and I learned how to harvest corn. He had planted them in groups of two rows, and guided the mule to where it walked right over the corn rows. Between the mule and the wagon, the corn was pushed down to the ground, and he and I walked behind it, him calling to the mule as he needed to guide it, but the mule needing little of that, and he and I pulled off the corn from the stalks as we moved, pitching the cobs heavy with corn into the wagon.

It wasn't that hard, but it was hard on the back. I kept up with Mark, though he probably did twice my labor, and when the field was done some four hours later, I was exhausted and sweaty. So was he, the day was heating up rapidly. "Now what?" I asked, looking at the field once of standing corn, now flattened and battered-looking.

"Back to the barn." he said. "We'll have corn on the cob for lunch."

I helped him unload the corn, first taking the last of the old corn out of the rack, then piling in the fresh. Only a few bushels of the old corn was left, and we toted that into the barn where he had a hand-cranked corn kerneler. I looked at the antique device, and he showed me, putting a cob of corn in the top, and turned the crank, and the kernels of corn popping out of the bottom into the wooden box, whole and undamaged. "I'll use this last batch to plant the fall corn harvest." he explained. So balanced was his life, nothing wasted.

We went to the pump and he pumped up a tub full of water (if you pumped hard, more came out, I saw, but he said the well was going dry and he'd need to dig the well deeper before long), and I was surprised to see him shuck his clothing there at the well. Nude, he scooped water over his body, sluicing himself clean.

I thought it over and followed suit, the cool water sounding awfully nice right then. And it was wonderful, the clean water pouring over my frame, carrying all the sweat and poisons away from my body, washing all the sins of the city with them. I felt nearly reborn from that country water. My clothes were soaked through and sticky and I grudged putting them back on. I shuddered at the salty, clammy feel of them and I said, "What do we do after lunch?"

"Swimming." was his response.

"Really?"

"Got a good swimming hole just down a piece that way." he pointed through the woods. "Wash off this sweat. Getting too hot to work during the afternoon nowadays." He was right about that.

So we went inside and the house got damned hot while he boiled a pot of water and tossed in freshly-picked corn. He had left the milk of the day before on the counter, and while the corn cooked, he skimmed the butterfat off the top and put the rest into one of a series of four crocks I saw. "What are those? Milk?"

"Yep." He said. Tapping them, he counted them off, "Drinking milk two days, then cooking milk, then milk for the hogs. Each day they go down one step. Hogs love the milk, and it makes them nice and fat. I give them the milk from the goats, too."

He sat down on the chair (I had perched on the bed) and said, "We got about fifteen minutes 'fore lunch. Tell me about Wall Street. What is a financial center of the country like?"

I tried to explain it, using increasingly simple terms. Mark wasn't stupid, he just didn't have a frame of reference. How do you explain stock options to a man who uses the word "stock" to mean his animals? And when money was pieces of paper or metal you traded for food and clothing once a week, but the rest of the time, you had no use for it at all? Mark had lived his entire life on this farm, caring for his family, his mother and father dying only two winter's before. "Paw died of the pneumonia and Maw just wasted away without him." he said. "I been living alone ever since. I think about maybe getting me a wife, but not in any hurry for that. Farm takes a lot of time and so does courting. And a proper girl won't marry you until she's been courted by you for at least two years and I don't know any right now. So mostly, I just don't think about it. Maybe later in the summer when there's a revival, I'll see what women are still available. Haven't been to one in years, not got much use for religion. Well, corn's ready now."

We made a meal off of that corn, nothing but corn still on the cob, still full of its juices, slathered with butter made from whole cow's cream and churned himself in the old fruit jar. I had five ears of the corn and again absolutely wonderful at the end of the meal. Mark ate the other seven (he had planned six each, but when I turned down the last, he took it as if eating all the food he cooked was a necessity--waste not, want not, I could hear him thinking.), then leaned back and patted his stomach. "Well, let that settle a bit and we'll go swimming." he declared. The longer he knew me, the more he talked, though he was never going to be accused of being garrulous. "You done any traveling to Europe?" he asked me, almost eagerly.

"Sure." I said. "I've been to France and England and Italy and Greece and..."

"What's Paris like?" Paris probably meant all the lustful sights of the big city to him, and I looked into his eager eyes and I gave him what he wanted, not the Arc D'Triumphe or the Left Bank, I told him of the cabarets and the dancers they had. I described adagio dancers to him and he was fascinated that they didn't wear anything but a few wisps of cloth, men and women, in that dance. "So they're moving around nearly naked?"

"Yes, but it's also artistic. Like paintings, the nudity is an expression of their dance." I said.

"Mmm." He said and reached down, unselfconsciously stroked his groin. "I'd sure like to see that."

"I'd like to see that, too." I said, looking at his hand.

He was puzzled until he saw where I was looking, and he grinned and got up. Again, I was struck by the sheer lack of hesitation or compunction about his sex life. He simply got up (he had taken off his shoes and socks when he got inside, the country boy's famous prerogative) and pulled at the straps of his overalls and they fell to the floor and he was naked but for the ring of cloth at his ankles and feet. "Can you see it well enough now?" he asked as his cock rose up to point at me.

"Let me get a closer look at it." I said and went from sitting on the bed to on my knees before him, sliding over almost like those dancers I had been describing. His cock slid into my throat like an old friend, and his thick beefy hands threaded into my hair like they belonged there. As I bobbed on his cock, he sighed and said, "Richard, you sure are a handy fellow to have around here."

I let go long enough to say, "I was just thinking the same thing." and dove back to my task. He grunted and moaned and I could tell I was really heating this big country boy up but good.

So I let go and said, "Fetch me some of that butter. I want this thing greased up and inside me."

He didn't argue and stepped out of his fallen overalls and went to the counter. I picked up and sniffed his overalls, a heavy musky smell of him mixed with sweat and hay and animal, and a heavenly combination it was. He came back, his cock still so shiny with my saliva it almost didn't need it. "I'll smear it on and you get undressed." he said, his chest heaving. "I'm going to pop if I don't move quick."

I stood up and shucked my clothes, this time not worrying about their arrangement (they'd been ruined for further wear by the morning's work anyway) and was nude by the time he finished giving his cock a thick coat of thick, white (not yellow!), home-churned butter. As I lay on the bed, I leaned back with my legs spread wide and said, "That'll be enough, Mark. Come and get it!"

He grinned and walked over, standing by the bedside as he knelt down slightly to get the right angle and shoved his cock at my ass. That butter was so smooth and thick that I didn't need anything else, my butt got slathered and there was still plenty left to slick the way inside me. Between that butter and my need, he got his cock inside me in no time.

I wrapped my legs around his waist and he fell over to lie atop me and with just his toes clinging to the floor for purchase, he fucked my ass there on that home-made bed with home- made mattress coverings and slicked with home-made butter, that home-made gorgeous body humped my ass hard and gracefully, his ass moving in an harmonious ease of coordinated thrusts. His whole body, his whole soul, went into fucking me. He wasn't going anyplace, or thinking of anything else, he was completely here, with me, and his whole world consisted of his cock plunging in and out of my ass. I found my own world-view shrinking. Here was everything I ever wanted. To have a big, gentle, loving man fucking my ass and completely giving himself to me in the process! I never wanted this to end.

But Mark had warned me he was too hot to last, only a few minutes of his heavenly cock plugging my butt and he groaned, leaned over and kissed me hard, stifling his groans by pumping them into me in time with his thrusts, filling me from both ends and I found the lack of air to be a stimulus, I groaned, choked on the air I was breathing and re-breathing from his lips, only our noses bringing in fresh and it wasn't enough! I felt my mind recede even as my orgasm grew to fill its place, and I groaned, my climax took over a bigger percentage of my brain and racked me with the extra passion and I groaned, jerk-spurted all over him and me, as his cock jettisoned his thick cargo into my waiting ass. I felt possessed, controlled, owned by this big man, and I held tightly to him even after the lust had released my body, not letting go of his body or his lips on mine, nor his arms around me nor his cock in my ass! He let me keep him, his cock remaining hard as it did for quite some time the same as the night before, and it was only slowly that my mind returned to me, as my body replenished the oxygen in my body and it coursed through my veins again and restored me to existence from the brink of oblivion.

And still I held him, and he let me, as my hands stroked his back, feeling the huge muscles rippling there as he stroked me in return, like waves washing into crests before reaching the shore to crash and die there. At long, long last, without a clock in the room to tell me how long, I let go of him and he sighed. "I'm going to miss you when you leave." he said simply.

"Ready to go swimming now?"

"Sure!" he said. "We'll take soap and wash off while we're at it." He cut a chunk of brown, crumbly stuff from a pan he had--home-made soap, of course!--and we went to the "swimming hole" he had mentioned. It turned out to be a bend in a fair-sized creek, and while the water flowed rapidly in the stream beyond, this little eddy was placid and smooth and about four feet deep overall. One section, the section he led me down, was covered with rocks and he mentioned he had hauled them here. Looking at the muddy shores of the rest of the bank, I understood why the rocks, though they hurt my feet as he led me by the hand into the water.

We washed each other's bodies in that cool water, without hurry, without promises, and without concern for anything else. Then we swam to rinse off and I watched his body, massive and ponderous in size, moving like a seal through this water. He came here every day, I knew, to wash himself, only resorting to a home tub sponge-bath in the dead of winter when the cold was too much. The soap he used on us didn't lather up, but neither did it pollute the water, being made of organic matter that integrated itself into the ecosystem and joined back into the great circle of Mother Earth. Again I was struck how close he lived to nature, not raping it with massive machines, but with simple tools that let him take only what he needed and gave the rest its place alongside him. Birds nested in the rafters of his home, a hive of bees made their home in the oak tree near his barn and he took only a little from their hive for his own use and left the rest for the bees, even his few tools were like the pitchfork, wood and metal that would one day rejoin the world to be born anew into something else.

I was happy and singing an old melody as we walked back to his home, and I was startled by the alien thing in his front yard--an automobile, a black-and-white Sheriff's car, but built with all-wheel drive and bearing heavy tires for these poor roads.

"Hello, Mark!" came the voice.

"Hello, Dave!" Mark called out.

"Some city dude from Illinois left a Mercedes down the road. You seen him?"

"It's mine!" I called to him. I was wearing only my boxers, but hell, only men around, why be embarrassed?

I looked at Mark, happy, to see him concerned. He seemed to withdraw some, becoming again the quiet man of few words he had been the night before. "You'll be leaving now, I reckon." he said.

"I have to." I admitted. "I should be in Tulsa by tomorrow morning. Look, Mark, I really have had fun here. Maybe I can come visit you again one day?"

He smiled a little, then. "Sure. I'll be here."

"Hello, Sheriff." I said.

"Deputy." he corrected me. "Sheriff's back in town. I was driving out this way and saw your car and began checking the houses around. Did you know you passed a dozen homes to get here?"

"I just followed the main road."

The deputy smiled. "Mountain men don't build next to roads. Every one of those little roads you passed went to a house."

I shrugged. "I don't mind where I ended up."

"Yeah, Mark's a nice guy." the deputy said. "You ready to head back with me?"

"Let me get my clothes." I said and went into the house.

Mark came inside with me and talked as I dressed. "Know when you'll be coming back?"

I smiled. "When I can. And as often as I can. But I don't know yet. Can I write you?"

"Sure. Just put General Delivery. The peddler man will pick it up for me and bring it on his regular Saturday."

"I need your last name."

Mark smiled. "Bowline. Mark Bowline."

"Sedlow is mine. I'll put my address on my letter. But I'd better go."

"Yeah." Mark hesitated and then reached out roughly and took me in his arms. Kissed me hard. He knew how to suck cock and how to fuck ass, but gentle loving kissing was something he knew nothing about for he kissed me the same way he had during sex, it had eagerness and need, but there was no grace to it, messy and rough.

But I didn't care. I saw the hint of tears and said, "I'll write you soon. I'll miss you, too."

"Yeah." Mark said and turned away, stood there, a big man suddenly smaller somehow. He didn't move to watch me leave. Nor did he come to the door and wave, through I stared back as long as I could.

The deputy was a chatterbox. "Sad, him being the last of the Bowline clan around here. They used to be a fair-sized family. But they get too attached to their land, all of them, and each year fewer and fewer were born and now he's the last. I don't think I've seen Mark in town for years and years."

"He loves his land." I agreed. "And it provides all he needs. What he can't make himself, he buys off that peddler man with the things he sells him."

"That peddler man is a thief. Charges all the country folk three times what they'd pay in the city and gives them little to nothing for the eggs and such they sell him in return. But without a car, they don't have a choice unless they take an entire day to come in on mule or on foot. Still, Mark would rather pay that than leave his land. Too bad he's going to have to leave it soon."

"Why's that?"

Deputy chunked the back of his hand on a paper on his seat. "I was supposed to hand that to him today. Going to pretend by seeing you that I forgot to. Bank's foreclosing on his property. His father made a loan to pay the back taxes, and then never paid it back. Bank gave Mark two years and plenty of mail that he never came in and picked up. So they took legal action."

"That's not fair." I protested. "He never checks his mail, then how does he know?"

"He doesn't." the deputy said. "So he loses his land. Taxes are the one thing the land can't provide for him." We had made it to my car. "What do you want to do?" the deputy said, pointing at my car with his head.

"Take me into town." I said. "I'll send for a tow truck. And you can drop me by that bank while you're at it." I said.

I don't think I have to tell you what I did, and I thought of it as a last favor to Mark when I returned to Chicago. But then, things about life as a stock broker didn't have the appeal it used to. Instead of watching the trades, I'd find myself remembering a small farm and a big man living there alone. Thought of the gentle arms around me, the simple life he led without demands, without pressure, without even a calendar or a clock around. So I was getting in more and more trouble with my partners. I put up with that for about three weeks, then I tendered my resignation, sold my partnership and my condominium and nearly everything I owned.

Two months after I had said good-bye to Mark, I was knocking on his door again, this time driving a Jeep Cherokee with extra cargo room in the back.

Mark's eyes lit up when he answered the door, for I had arrived in the early dawn hours before Geoffrey could call for him. "Richard!" he said, wiping his eyes, completely nude and heedless of it, nor any reason to be concerned about it. "You came to visit?"

"More than that." I said. "I got back to Chicago and found I was broke. You can't live in the big city without any money. And I knew you could maybe use a hired hand? You'd have to teach me everything I need to know, but I only ask for my food and board. I have some money left. Can I come in, this time for good?"

"Sure, and welcome." he said. "Come on in." And the grin on the big lug's face was as broad as a country sunrise.

I walked in, and he grabbed me. As our lips met again and his hand groped for my crotch, I sighed happily, stroking that huge back while his cock thrust itself demandingly between my legs. Mark need never know I now owned his farm. I could take care of any future problems with the trust fund I had set up.

Maybe, if Mark would let me, I would even show him Paris one day.

THE END

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