Friday, January 1, 2016

The Hired Hand (Conclusion)

A Happy New Year to all of you. I hope it's a good one. Lets get right back into the story of Zip and Lonnie.
                                                      *****
                                                HIRED HAND

A few days later, I came home early from church and walked in on Lonnie lying naked on the couch masturbating. I almost lost control and jumped his bones right then, but I backed silently out the door without him knowing I was there and futzed around in the barn until I figured he’d taken care of his problem. He had, but he’d left me with a big one. I was falling in love and had no way to let this intriguing young innocent know about it.
Ever since I discovered how he relieved his sexual tension, I dawdled after church on Sunday to give him some precious privacy. To be honest, I knew that if I walked in on him again, I’d lose control. So I drove the back roads over my farm every Sabbath and masturbated in a grove of cottonwoods out of sight of the house, but it wasn’t working. The pressure, the need for physical human contact, built inside me. I caught myself watching the boy and fantasizing over the line of his tanned jaw, the curve of his chest, the lean sturdiness of his thighs…that full basket. I became the watcher in the woods. And it was driving me crazy.
The time to let him go came and went. The crops were in and growing satisfactorily. The calves were on the ground and thriving. The work load slackened. And still I could not bring myself to accept the cruel necessity of sending him away. His odd mixture of sweet innocence and physical earthiness prevented me from doing what needed to be done.
The boy brought things to a head himself after dinner one night while we were doing the dishes.
“Uh…Zip.”
Something in his tone caused me to turn and look at him.
“I-I think it’s time I moved on.” He rubbed his smooth jaw. “Somebody was saying they’re looking for help on the Bryce Farms up near Albuquerque.”
Flabbergasted, I sagged against the sink. “Albuquerque! I’m sorry you aren’t happy here.”
The boy gave me a look that pierced my heart. ‘It isn’t that, Zip,’ he said and turned away. Puzzled I watched him go to his room.
I puttered around for awhile longer, but he didn’t come out again, so I turned in to spend a long, miserable night tossing and turning. A dozen times I sat on the edge of the bed and fought to keep from going to him. Fear of the consequences kept me from following through.
#####
My fertile farm seemed like a barren desert within minutes of Lonnie Hydrack’s departure. I was shocked at the depth of my feeling. Judging from the ache in my gut and the depression that gripped me, he would prove to be more trouble absent than he had been present. Perhaps it was my imagination, but even the animals missed him. One old sow he named Penny chased me out of her pen when she realized I wasn’t Lonnie.
Work never ceases on a farm, and that was my salvation. Day by day, my loneliness and self pity lessened, only to come crashing down again when I’d come home from Church and picture him naked on the couch.
            A month after he left, I was still leaking tears and missing him terribly. One Sunday afternoon, the phone rang. I answered it, grateful for the diversion. I was puzzled when the operator said Lonnie Hydrack was calling collect, but I happily accepted the charges.
A curious hollow echo sang across the wire…and then came that mature voice so out of character in such a young man. “Hello, Zip. Sorry to call you collect, but…but that’s the only way I could call.”
“That’s okay. Good to hear your voice,” My heart pounded so hard I thought I was having an attack.”How you doing?  Get that job?”
“Naw. They already had all the help they needed.”
“Sorry. I should have let you go right away.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
A long pause developed. I could hear the banging of metal and male voices in the background. Afraid he would hang up, I blurted out a question.
“You don’t sound right, Lonnie. Everything  all right?”
“I gotta go now, Zip. Just-just needed to hear a friendly voice. I really miss you. You know, the farm and all.”
“Wait!’ I cried, panicked. "Don’t go, Lonnie! Come back, man. I-I love you.”
Half sobbing, I paused for an answer, but the line was dead. I don’t know if he heard me or not. I don’t even know if I wanted him to hear me!
I spent the rest of the afternoon brooding. My mood whipsawed all over the place. One moment, I was glad he was thinking of me, the next I missed him so much my gut felt like it was on fire. He was thinking of me?  He missed me?  Yeah, but he’d abandoned me, bailed out, left me in the lurch!  Fuck him!  Who needed him, anyway?
I did.
           My subconscious figured it all out and woke me in the middle of the night. Those metallic clangs. Those echoing voices spoken in commanding tones. The boy was in jail!  Oh, God!  Lonnie was in trouble.
I got up early and spent the entire morning on the telephone. By noon, I’d learned that he was in the Bernalillo County Detention Center but not much else. Another call got me the name of an Albuquerque attorney named George Festoon. Within a couple of hours after I called him, Festoon determined that one Lonnie Hydrack was serving forty-five days for drunk and disorderly and fighting. He was doing time because he couldn’t pay his five hundred dollar fine. In short order, I engaged him to spring my young friend, agreed to meet at his office tomorrow at noon, and rushed into town to wire the required funds.
Four a.m. the following day found me tending the animals and doing the irrigating. Then I turned the nose of my truck north for the hundred-fifty mile drive to Albuquerque far too early. I had to kill a couple of hours before meeting Festoon. He proved to be a short, plump, bald, good-humoured man of about fifty. He was also efficient. At two-o’clock sharp, a thin, haggard kid with dirty-blond hair walked through the thick, bullet-proof door of the detention center into the reception area. Lonnie stopped short at the sight of me. After a moment, he came over and accepted my outstretched hand. His throat worked for a moment before any sound came out.
“Zip!  You the one who got me out?”
“None other,” I said, my heart melting. “I finally figured out what those background sounds were and got Mr. Festoon here to find out what was going on. Drunk?  Fighting?  Doesn’t sound like the Lonny Hydrack I know.”
“Maybe you don’t know Lonnie Hydrack,” he said in a low voice.
“I know him well enough,” I said confidently. “Come on, let’s go home.”
            I could have been riding with a mummy. He claimed he didn’t have anything worth the trouble of recovering at the boarding house where he was staying, and settled back in the seat to stare out the window, making no protest as I turned south on I-25. When we stopped for something to eat, I had the feeling he wanted to talk, but didn’t push him. We had gassed up and hit the highway again before he mumbled something.
“What?”
“Aren’t you going to ask me why I got in trouble?”
“You’ll tell me if you want me to know. If you don’t then it’s none of my business.”
“From all the money you just laid out, I guess it is your business.”
I took the next exit and parked on the frontage road. Turning in the seat, I faced my young friend. His month away from home had not been kind to him. He was thinner and frayed looking.
“Lonnie, you don’t owe me nothing but to stay out of trouble. You’re free to come back to your job if you want, but you can go back to Albuquerque or El Paso or Timbuktu. But don’t ever do this again! That’s all I ask.”  I was reaching for the gearshift when his voice stopped me.
“I was flirting with this guy at a bar, and when he tried to follow it up, I beat his ass. Don’t know why. Just did.”  He recited it in a flat, dead voice.
There wasn’t much to say to that, so I held my tongue.
“Did you mean it?  What you said?” he asked finally.
“I’m not sure what you’re ….”
He sighed. “Did you mean what you said over the phone?  What you said when I was hanging up?”
My heart skipped a beat and then began thudding. “I usually mean what I say,” I hedged.
He looked at me, his eyes sparkling with anger. “Then why didn’t you show it?  Why’d you leave me in misery all those months on the farm?  I couldn’t take it any longer!  I had to get out or else I’d make a…a fool of myself.”
“Oh, Lonnie!  What are you saying.”
“Did you mean it!” he insisted.
I closed my eyes and nodded. “Every word of it. I love you, Lonnie Hydrack. I think I have from the minute I set eyes on you.”
“Then why didn’t you say something?  Do something?”
“I was afraid. You never gave me any sign you’d welcome that kind of attention,” I said in a small voice.
“Wasn’t my place. You were the boss. Afraid you’d throw me off the place.”
I touched his shoulder with a timid hand. “Oh, Lonnie, I wanted to throw you down in the field that first day…and every day after that, but I couldn’t take the chance. I didn’t know how you’d react. It was agony, man. Painful to be around you. But not nearly as painful as being away from you. It took a long time for me to admit to myself that I was in love, and that made me even more cautious about doing something you might not like.”
He gave an even deeper sigh. “Man, I got half-hard every time I saw you. I never set foot off the farm, never went into town to see any of the guys … or gals,’ he said sadly. ‘I thought you’d make your move sooner or later. When you didn’t, I figured I’d worked it out all wrong.”
“And I figured you just needed the work.”
He took a long time to reply. “I saw you at the feed store one day and thought you were about the handsomest man around. Decided to come out and ask for a job. Thought maybe you’d get to know me and like me. I-I didn’t figure on falling in love with you.’
My breath caught in my throat; my hands shook on the wheel. “Did you?”
He hung his head. “Yeah.”
My hands moved for him automatically, but I held back. “Well, what do we do now?”
“I don’t know what you want, but I want to fuck you, Zip. If you’ll let me, that is."
My only answer was a smile as I put the truck in gear and burned rubber. The farmhouse and privacy and blessed intimacy were still a long way down the road.
We didn’t make it. I parked out on the desert within sight of the busy Interstate and took his fantastic cock up my butt for the first time. Then I hauled ass getting back home so we could do it again … and again … and …
*****
Well, there you have it. Zip seems to have backed into it (if you’ll pardon the pun). At any rate two good guys managed to get together … the hard way. (I’ve got to quit that!)

At any rate, thanks for reading. See you next month.

Love to hear from you.


Mark

2 comments:

  1. Awww! That was so sweet and cute! And hot, of course!
    I'm glad it had a happy ending! Thanks, Mark! :)

    ~Ellie~
    ~Sweet-Hearted SilverEars~

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks, Ellie. Always appreciate your comments.

    ReplyDelete