Copyright 2005 by Luc Milne lucmilne@telus.net All Rights Reserved. Downloading one copy for personal enjoyment allowed.
THE SUGARING by Luc Milne
Seth awoke from a dream of waving grass in a sunlit meadow to find a warm hand, not his own, pleasuring the shaft of his morning-stiff rod . "If that ain't your hand, Rob, then your sister Lizzie must have grown up real fast since my last visit," he growled, arching his back so that his rump ground into the body spooned against him. Rob's room was a sort of lean-to attached to the family's log house and it was so cold his breath fogged: he snuggled even deeper into the bedcovers. March in the Vermont of 1865 could be frosty, as if spring still hadn't decided that it wanted to stay around yet.
"How's my man-milking coming along?" Rob whispered into Seth's ear. "Am I getting better at it?"
"Yep, I seem to have taught you real good" answered Seth, "but shut your mouth now and do your chores."
Rob pressed closer to his friend's lean body, gripping the long root harder, tugging the loose skin down over the plump crown and rubbing it between his thumb and forefinger before pulling it slowly back over the flaring ridge. He felt an exciting stickiness on his fingers and he thrust forward with his own knob against Seth's bare arse.
"I don't mind your little dogie nosing into my bum, Robbie, but you keep him out of my chute. Just concentrate on your milking. You're getting to be a real little milkmaid." Seth felt Rob pull away, when he said "milkmaid", and roll over, taking some of the quilt with him. "Don't stop now, Robbie," he pleaded, turning, so that it was his hard tool that probed against soft globes, "you were just staring to get my butter churned up proper."
"I'm not your 'little milkmaid' Seth. You know I don't want you saying that I'm like a woman."
Seth gave a silent groan and began to stroke his bed mate's flank. Gradually his hand moved around and fondled Robbie's pecker, which just fit into his palm like a cow's soft teat. He didn't care much for milking a man's nipple because as far as he was concerned any kind of milking was strictly women's work, but Rob was a skittish fella and had to be joshed along.
"Come on, you know I was just funnin' you. No milkmaid could squeeze a cock like you do. It takes a man to do it right" He forced Rob's body back around toward him so that they looked into each other's face. Seth saw the shine in his friend's brown eyes, and he brought his nose right up to Rob's, nuzzling him, their lips just a breath away from kissing. But when he felt the younger man's head start to close the distance, he slid his face off to the side, letting his rough, whisker-shadowed cheek rub against Rob's smoother one.
Rob sighed resignedly and reached down for the thick handle of flesh jutting from the groin opposite. His own cock began to firm up under Seth's thrumming hand. He brought the head of his friend's meat to his own and rubbed the sticky tips together. Seth took his hand away from the cock he was squeezing idly, so that his comrade could take over. Rob knew what Seth liked. He pulled the thick foreskin of Seth's pipe down over his own smaller rod and pumped the flesh-connected tubes vigorously. They climaxed together, their comings mixing in the cavity of Seth's long skin. Rob let his cock slip free, pressing Seth's loose flesh firmly between his fingers to keep the creamy mixture inside, and ducked beneath the covers to suck out the results of his morning "chores" . In his mind Seth cringed a little. He could never get used to the idea that a man, especially a mate, could get down and eat up his spunk, like a calf drinking at its mother's tit. Still, Robbie had strummed him well, and deserved his reward.
Seth had come to the Carpenters for the annual March maple syrup "sugaring", the collecting of the sap to be boiled down into the sweet syrup and maple sugar so prized in all the kitchens around. He was almost nineteen years old; many men his age already had a wife and a couple of whelps by now, but somehow he could never get up an interest in the girls that his Ma would invite out to the house for dinner after the long Sunday morning church services in the village Meeting House. His Ma took to telling people that he was "shy" and just needed a good woman to bring him out. One of the girls, Sarah Knox, had even tried. When he was taking her back, in the little two-wheeled cart, to her family's farm on a warm Sunday afternoon the previous summer, she'd let her hand drop onto his thigh. It laid there like a dead fish for the best part of an hour, until she sighed and drew it back into her own lap.
Seth's mother told her husband she was worried about him. She was afraid there was something wrong with her son. Her father told her to hush up. "He'll find the right mare to mount one of these days. He's got a good hang on him--you've seen it yourself on bath nights. The truth is, I'll bet some of these fillies around here have already got a taste of that meat." But his mother had left the room. She always did when her husband started talking smutty that way.
Now Seth and Robert were on their way into the sugarbush, the stand of maple trees some distance from the Carpenter cabin. Seth's lanky body, with its mane of blonde hair, and Robert's smaller wiry one with its cap of brown curls seemed a perfect match of opposites, as they pulled a sled with barrels and buckets on it. There was still lots of snow on the ground. The sugaring camp had already been set up by Robert's father, and the best trees were already tapped with sumac spiles that had been hollowed out with a hot wire. They would spend two days and nights in the sugarbush, collecting the buckets that the sap dripped into at each tree, and cooking it down in the kettles that had been set up over fires in the boiling area.
The two young men worked hard all day long. In the evening, after a good supper Robert's mother had packed into their food satchel, they settled down in the shelter they had built: a tent of sapling poles and spruce boughs. Snuggled into their nest of fragrant spruce limbs, they lay spooned closely until Robert felt Seth's lumber begin to harden against his bum. Seth reached into the satchel he had stowed in the shelter and dipped his fingers into the little crock of butter provided for their bread. It was a creamy white, because the cow was still eating the winter hay. He slicked the swelling knob of his cock with the grease; then brought his fingers to the soft brown ring of Robbie's arse. He circled around the tender flesh with an ever increasing pressure, until Robbie began to hum deeply on each outgoing breath. Then Seth pressed his moist thumb up into the quivering muscle and on through into the warmth beyond: his slick palm fitted up into the smooth vee of Robert's crutch and his butter-fingers stoked the pliant sack of the boy's nuts. Seth had never penetrated Robbie's bud before, but now, in the spicy fragrance of their hideaway, after a long day together in the hard but satisfying labor of sugaring, it seemed the most natural thing in the world to do . He moved the head of his cock in the warm cleft and nosed it gently against the softness there. "Let me take you, Robbie, let me push my yard into you." In answer Robert thrust back into the hard invader, opening, gripping, taking the first hurt readily, with joy. Seth began to pump slowly. Pressing his lips against the back of Robbie's neck, he murmured hoarsely, "Oh, Robbie, let me in. Let me in deeper, let me ride you." His thrusting became harder and faster; he crushed the younger man beneath him, forcing a grunting breath out of him with every plunge. He felt his seed begin to collect at the base of his root and his body began to shudder uncontrollably. "Oh, sweetheart, I'm going to spend in you...It's coming...Oh, sweetheart, my sweet Robbie, going to fill you...now!"
Robert felt a warm liquid rush, deep inside him. "Sweetheart" Seth had called him. "Sweetheart". His life was fulfilled, his joy, complete. Seth made no move to bring Robert's cock to climax, but Robert understood. He didn't need that. His lover's happiness was enough.
The early morning light found Seth lying on his back with Robert nestled in the crook of his arm beside him. Coming out of a heavy, dreamless sleep, Seth took Robert's hand and moved it down to his morning cockstand. "Get to your chores," he mumbled to the sleepy boy and soon, under his friend's slow pull, hot milk bubbled up over the squeezing fist. When he felt Robert start to move down to take his drink, he kept him from it, pressing his mate's lips against the raspy skin of his throat, where Robbie moved his tongue in slow circles as the cock in his hands drooled out its last ribbon of cream.
"That's enough now, little milkboy," he said, pulling Robert's hand off his teat, "you've pressed me dry. But don't worry, my bags will be full again for your evening chores."
During the crisp spring morning they continued the work of the sugaring. The fires had to be built up again, and the three big kettles kept on a constant boil. In the first one, the thin unflavored sap was cooked heavily to release the excess of water, which came off in an acrid steam. Then the thickening liquid was poured into the second kettle where it simmered, with constant stirring to keep it from scorching. In this kettle the table syrup was made. And, finally some of the thickened syrup was drawn off and put into the third kettle over a low fire where it was stirred until it turned into maple sugar with its heady, mouth-watering sweetness.
At midday they ate the last of the dried apples and the last of the sharp cheese. They smiled knowingly at each other as they dipped into the crock for butter to spread on their bread, and Seth even spread some on his fingers and held them up to Robert's mouth for him to suck and lick. For dessert, they dribbled thick hot syrup from a spoon into a patch of clean snow, then chewed greedily on the sweet taffy lumps. Later, Seth crawled into the shelter for a nap, while Robert went off into the bush on a secret errand . In the afternoon, after they had done the rest of the day's sap-collecting, Robert told Seth he had something he wanted him to see . "If it's your arsehole, partner," joked Seth, "I think I'll wait for nightfall. That's not something I want to look at in the daytime."
"No, you lumberhead, it's something prettier than that, I guarantee." He took Seth's arm and they walked down a little trail deeper into the sugarbush. Finally they came to a small, natural clearing. Robert was excited. "This is it," he said breathlessly.
"I see," drawled Seth, "and just what is it that I'm looking at here except for some trampled-down snow and a few straggly weed stalks?"
"This is our house," Robert shouted. He ran forward and paced around the outline that he had trodden down earlier in the snow, to create the floor plan for a big cabin. "I came on it last summer, just after you started me on my 'milking chores'. This is where we'll build our cabin. I know my father will give me the land. See, the big fireplace can go here in this middle wall, and it can open on two sides and we can have a separate room for our double bed right here, and still have the warmth of the fire at night."
Seth stared at Robert. "Are you loco, boy? Did your Pa's old mule kick you in your head? I ain't going to live in a house with you. Two men don't build their own cabin in the woods and settle down in it like sweethearts."
"But they do," Robert insisted. "There's those two over by Little Creek. They have a nice place and they run their farm really well. My father says so. He's been over there and visited them."
"Robert," Seth cried, disgusted, "you know what my Pa calls those two? He calls them 'molly men'." It was an old-fashioned word for effeminates and buggers, but still good as the currency of insult in places like America and Canada. "They're like two old maids," Seth sneered, "they've probably got bumholes as big as pork barrels. Everybody knows they lift their shirts for each other."
"My mother says they're just bachelors who couldn't find the right sort of wives, " countered Robert. "There's nothing wrong with not getting married."
"It's not their not getting married that matters," argued Seth, hotly, "it's their getting arse-poked in the same county with decent folks like your family and mine. I'm plumb flabbergasted at you Robbie, thinking that you and me could hitch up like a couple eunuchs and play house in the woods. Come on let's get back to the sugar kettles before I sock you one in the gut." He started back toward the sugaring camp with Robert trailing miserably behind. Just at the edge of the clearning Seth's eye was caught by a fresh scar in one of the tree trunks.
It was a heart carved in the bark with the inscription "R.C. LOVES S.A!"
"What in the name of beelzebub is this Robbie? Did you carve this horseshit thing here?" He was so angry his body trembled as he stared at the boy standing petrified behind him . "I...I just thought it would be a souvenir, Seth...something to remember and laugh about when we built our house."
"I'd better not ever see it here again," Seth snarled. "You get your axe and chop it away, you hear?" He turned and stalked off . Robert followed, mocked by his own fear, ashamed that he didn't have the stones to tell Seth to chop it out himself, if he thought it was such a blemish on the forest. Back at the kettles Mr. Carpenter and two of Robert's sisters had come to deliver some food for the evening and to take back on their sled any of the barrels that were filled, so there was no chance for further communication between the two men. But Seth's scowl lasted all afternoon, and by the time the rest of the family had gone, Robert wondered if he would ever see his comrade's sly grin and that sardonic, challenging look in his eyes again . A long tense evening of silence followed, until it was time to bed down in the shelter. It was too cold to lay apart, and after a few minutes of shivering, Seth finally turned to Robert and roughly drew him into an embrace, sharing their body warmth. Little by little the heat of their closeness seemed to melt the chill in their hearts. Rob could feel that familiar luxurious lump of Seth's club lengthen against his ass. Memories of the previous night's glorious sensations flooded Robbie's mind. He took one of Seth's hands from its grasp on his chest and moved it down to his own rising member. But instead of the soft pulling that usually amounted to Seth's sole caress on his cock, the bigger man grabbed him harshly and ground his hand painfully down against Robert's eggs. He cried out and tried to pull the hand away, but Seth continue to maul his crutch and Robbie felt the iron shaft at his ass swell even harder.
"You want to be my molly boy, do you?" rasped Seth, "you want to play the girly to my meat--take my sugarstick down your throat, lick up my spunk with your lady lips?" He ground his fist even harder against Robbie's groin, making him whimper with pain. "Shall I make you into my eunuch right now, Robbie?...Squash your little oysters till they pop?"
Seth pulled Robert flat onto the ground and straddled his chest, pulling out his rammer and his stones so they hung down on Robbie's face. Robbie tried to move his head to one side, but Seth gripped his cheeks with his calloused hands and squeezed his lips open, like a gasping fish, then brutally plunged his cock to the back of Robbie's throat gagging him, making him heave and writhe beneath the heavy weight on his arms and upper chest. With strength he didn't know he had, he pushed Seth's body off him and rolled away, scrambling on hands and knees toward the dying fire in front of the shelter . But Seth caught him by one ankle and pulled him back. Then, seeming to have another idea, Seth stood, taking Robbie's ankles in his hands, and dragged him over to the sugar kettles still warm from the coals heaped up beneath them. "Let's give you a real sugarpop to lick" Seth growled as he knelt again over Robbie's face. He had picked up a wooden ladle hanging from a stake in the ground beside the middle kettle, the one with the table syrup for porridge or pancakes bubbling in it. He dipped the ladle into the syrup, then tested it with his finger. "It's cooled down enough to eat," he said, and he poured a thick stream of it over his cock and down onto his nuts, letting some of it drip onto Robbie's face staring up, fearfully, from beneath. "Now, lick your syrup up, like a good little molly," he crowed, laughing as he rubbed the sticky red plum of his penis over the boy's lips and up into his nostrils. He hitched his body forward a little and let his syrupy balls rub against Robbie's mouth, finally taking his fingers and stuffing them both into the boy's cheeks so they puffed out like a squirrel's. The sweet liquour on the cock was leaking into Robbie's eyes, gluing them shut and he began to feel faint from a lack of air. Seth took this relaxing of the body beneath him as a sign that the boy was beginning to enjoy his torment, and somehow that made him even angrier. He flipped the boy over, pulled down Robert's breeches and rammed his pulsing meat into his bunghole. The stickiness of the syrup created a clinging, gripping suction as he buggered his "molly" . Robert refused to cry out, taking the punishment with grunts and gasps until he felt Seth spurt his scum into the maple-sweet hole. Seth fell heavily onto Robert's back, letting the last spasms of his rod die away. "Is that what you want, molly boy?" he said between breaths. "Is that what you want us to do in our little house in the big woods? Want me to breed you with my sugarstick, give you a little sugarbaby? Tell me, Robbie...no, tell me Roberta. That's what I'll call you now. My sweet little sugarcunt Roberta."
The syrup that pasted Robert's eyelids shut melted in the hot salt tears that trickled down his face, which was dotted with bits of snow and dirt that had been ground into it.
Seth got up and walked to the edge of the clearing. He took his penis in hand and began to piss. When he finished, he pulled Robert up by the back of his collar and dragged him over to see what he had done. There, in yellow script, the words Rob loves Seth were frozen into the snow.
By mid-afternoon of the next day they were on their way back to the Carpenter farm pulling a sled loaded with a barrel of table syrup and another of maple sugar. Sugaring was over. At the house, Robert's mother looked curiously at the sticky, smudged face of her son. She teased them about getting their faces down into the syrup kettles to lick them out, and she poured some hot water in a bowl so they could wash up. Seth said he had to get back home, and he left, carrying a small tin of sugar and a little barrel of sweetening in a canvas bag over his shoulder, his payment for helping with the sugaring.
Rob walked him as far as the edge of the house clearing so none of the family would notice that anything was wrong . "I'm sorry, Seth," he said, although he hated himself for apologizing because he didn't know what he had to apologize for.
"I'm sorry too, Robbie." Seth looked almost as if he were going to cry now. "I don't know what got into me. I didn't mean to hurt you. I know you're a good mate and I hope we can still be chums."
"We'll see," replied Robbie. "I've got to think a few things out first." He held out his hand. Seth reached eagerly forward and shook it. Then they found themselves stuck together when they tried to pull apart. They laughed and Robbie saw in Seth's eyes a hint of that old teasing seductiveness he loved so much.
"You've got a real sweet hand, partner. I've got a big slab of taffy that you can pull with it any time you've got a mind to." Seth turned and walked away, raising his hand high in a wave, without looking back, as he entered the woods.
Rob knocked timidly on the door of the small cabin. It was getting dark and he'd walked several miles to get there. When the door was opened, he found himself looking into the plain, honest face of Edward, one of the "molly men" that people of the area snickered about . "Robert! Why, come in." He turned to speak to someone else in the room. "John, it's young Robert Carpenter. What brings you here, lad?" he asked drawing the young fellow into the snug one-room house. "Is there something wrong at home? Do your parents need our help?"
"No, no, it's not anything like that," Robert replied quickly. "I just...I just thought that maybe...that maybe I'd come for a visit." He looked toward the bright fireplace. Standing beside one of the two wooden armchairs facing each other across the hearth was John, the other "molly", a short, thick-set man with a broad face, full, long hair, and a bushy beard that reached to the middle of his chest.
"Come in, Robert, we're always happy to have visitors--don't get many in these parts," John said, gesturing for him to sit down by the fire. "Edward, ladle out a bowl of your good stew for our young friend. He looks a little peaked."
They both moved easily about and made him comfortable, as if he'd been there many times before and had arrived for an eagerly expected call.
Finally, his innards warmed by the stew and his brain fired up by a cup of potent cider, he began to try to explain why he had come. It was embarrassing, almost shameful, even, to have to describe his feelings for Seth, to relate the troubling events of the last few days. And all the while he knew that he could be making a horrible mistake, that they might rise up and throw him out the door, calling him a sodomite, angry that he should think they wanted to hear about such things.
But the "molly men" listened intently and prompted him with gentle questions when he came to images that seemed to inimate to relate. At last he came to a stop in his sad litany and just sat, looking at them with forlorn eyes.
"And how can we help you, Robert? What did you expect two strange old bachelors like us could do for you and Seth?" asked John quietly. "I thought maybe you could tell me what to do," Robert replied, realizing how pathetic that sounded.
John look at his mate, then back at Robbie. "Nobody can tell you what to do, lad," he said sadly. "Edward and I were lucky. We never doubted that we belonged together and neither one of us has ever abused the other the way you say Seth has treated you." He went on to tell how they had been the sons of neighbors on adjacent Connecticut farms, how they had been bed mates, not for maple sugaring, but for harvesting, one week at one farm just before the full September moon, and one week at the other, just after the full moon. Those two weeks had sealed their love for each other and they had declared their intention to set up house together as "bachelors". To escape the anger and loathing of their families they came to Vermont where they knew they were objects of disgust and ridicule, but where people pretty much left them alone to live their lives as they wanted. "So, you see," John finished, "about all we can say to you is that you and Seth have to know so certainly that the two of you belong together, that you're willing to give up everything this world thinks is important in order to live your two lives as one."
There was a long silence, broken only by the crackling and shifting of the logs burning down to embers in the fireplace. Robert looked up and said hesitantly "I was wondering if I could sleep here with the two of you tonight."
"You mean sleep with us in our bed?" asked Edward . "Yes, if you'd let me. I'd like to feel a man's body against mine tonight." He held Edward's gaze, steadily.
Edward cut his eyes toward his comrade and shook his head slightly. John cleared his throat and spoke for the two of them. "I'm sorry Robert, I'm afraid that just isn't possible. Edward and I are true mates, we're as good as married, in fact. And we're loyal to each other in every way. It just wouldn't be a good idea to bring a handsome, well-set up fellow like you into our bed. In the end it would only cause trouble."
"I understand," Robert muttered as he got clumsily to his feet, preparing to go back out into the cold night for the long walk home. "I should never have asked such a thing."
"Now, now, Robbie" cried Edward, "you're not leaving. Of course you're going to stay here with us tonight. We'll bed you down in front of the fire. You'll be right snug here, and we'll be just over there in the corner keeping watch over you."
So he let himself be bundled into warm blankets and rested his head on a pillow fragrant with bedstraw as he drifted into a deep sleep
In the early morning light that filtered through the one window of the cabin, he woke to a muffled sound from the bed in the corner. He could make out the shapes of the two men's bodies spooned against each other and he knew from their movements that they were making love. After they both stiffened and then groaned in the pleasure of their spending, one of them turned to the other, and he could see that it was John who had "played the woman" to Edward's thrusting, even though to his eyes it had seemed that Edward was the "wife" of the marriage. He realized then how pointless those terms were when it came to men loving each other. If only he could help Seth to understand that simple truth. Then he saw how the two men kissed deeply and how they fell asleep again, their faces inches from each other, breathing into each other's mouth.
What a fool he had been! Seth would never kiss him like that. Seth would never give up his precious "manliness," never treat him like a lover . He rose silently, put on his boots, wrapped up warmly in his coat and muffler and crept out of the house. On the walk home in the bitter March morning air he felt something hard hit against his leg in his coat pocket. He reached in and pulled out a small book. Inside on the fly leaf was written
to Robert from Edward and John these are some poems written by one of our chums we hope they help you understand why each of us has to make his own decisions, secure in the knowledge that his brothers are with him.
He opened to the title page: The Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman. He turned to the first poem strangely titled "Song of Myself". He read:
I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good as belongs to you.
He quickly closed the book and thrust it back into his pocket, as if he'd been caught reading something he shouldn't. Dazed, he walked a little further. He realized that his life's journey had come to an important fork in the road. On one side there was a well-beaten lane to familiar things: a house, a wife and children, and neighbor named Seth who had his own house and wife and children, and who came from time to time to help with the maple sugaring or the harvest, but who never spoke of the spring of 1856. On the other side there was a dark, forbidding track leading back toward Boston, where his family had come from over sixteen years ago when he was just a baby, and maybe even further, back across the ocean to England where his grandfather had come from before the War for Independence. It didn't occur to him that he could go further West: no, his choice was either here, or back to the life of towns and cities where he might find the true song of himself among other of his own kind.
He paused, lost in thought, beside the line of maple trees that marked the beginning of the sugarbush. He breathed in deeply: there was a sickening, familiar sweetness in the air. In truth there wasn't any choice at all.
Seth awoke from a dream in which he seemed to wade endlessly through a pond of amber maple syrup toward an indistinct figure on the far shore. His wife Sarah snored gently beside him; his two daughters coughed and sniffled in their bunk, and the baby began to fret in his cradle. It was late March and he would get away this morning for three days, going to the Carpenter farm to help the old man with the maple sugaring. Last year Robert's father had silently passed him a letter sent by their son from London, England. It was a bland, almost formal note written on heavy, cream colored paper with his name embossed on the top of the sheet:
ROBERT CARPENTER, ESQUIRE
He enquired about his parents' health, asked after his brothers and sisters, and briefly apologized for "running away" four years earlier. There was nothing about his work, nothing about where or how he lived, nothing about friends. Just at the end he requested that his best regards be given to Seth Adams "my old maple syrup comrade." Seth had to give the letter back to the old man, but those words froze in his mind, like dregs of hot sweet liquor thrown into the snow: his maple syrup comrade!
This year, he would, as always, walk to the clearing where Robbie had paced out their "home". He would sit smoking his pipe beneath the tree where Robbie had carved the heart with the inscription "R.C. loves S.A." Every year he intended to gouge it out of the bark so no one would ever see it, but every year he left it there, a reminder of things that might have been.
When he came back from the sugaring he would tell his wife once and for all that he was going to sign on with the Vermont Volunteers. He'd heard that even John and Edward, the ones he used to call the "molly men," were joining up. It was 1861. There was a war on now and he was going to help the Union Army free the slaves.
But in his heart he knew that he just wanted to get away--to find once again the company, the comradeship, the sweet love of men.