Honey Tom

It were Franny’s idea that we oughta keep bees, so, in the end, whatever the joke is, it be on Franny more’n on me.

“We need more than what we can grown on this land now that we have another mouth to feed,” she had said. Her sayin’ “we” struck me hard at the time, as it had done ever since I’d asked her pa for her hand over in Pearisburg, where we’d both been at school, she bein’ from the flatland and me from the mountain. She’d gotten herself in a bad way and people were talking about me too, and it seemed the right answer to two problems at the one time. It seemed the right thing for us to take up the old Tolbert place too, abandoned since my Uncle Eddie died two years before that, up Sugar Tree Holler on Sugar Run Mountain. Everything around here seemed to be somethingorother sugar, like you could make somethin’ sweet out of these mountains. I shouda knowed that takin’ on honey bees would be trouble, honey bein’ a form of sugar, as we all know.

“We can talk about it if you be wantin’ more work, Franny,” I said. “I got my hands full adding to the cleared land. But you be right that we need more out of the land than we are gettin’ this growing season. We’re still beholden to family for gettin’ by, and we won’t want to be in that way any longer than he have to.”

I were watching her feed Billy Junior with her tittie, looking at his little screwed up face again, tryin’ not to see the red hair. There was no red hair in the Tolbert family, or Franny’s Gleason family neither, as far as I knowed. I couldn’t see how people couldn’t see it right off. The redheads around in the Blue Ridge Mountain section of Giles County, Virginia, were the Previes. And it had been Jamie Previe who’d been at Franny that fall. Folks should tell how things were right off, I would think. But I guess not, if folks don’t see the baby. That’s why Franny had said yes to comin’ up here in Sugar Tree Holler, high up on the mountain. Franny was a flatland girl by raisin’ and she knowed how flatland folks could gossip and criticize. Mountain folk are more for keepin’ their mouths shut and lettin’ be what be and knowin’ that, in most cases, folks are just getting’ by as best they can.

Still, I could see the red hair every day, and I knowed what was what, and I couldn’t feel a family or a daddy much at all—at least not yet. Franny had said that would come in time. I’d said somethin’ to my pa, Michael Tolbert, about it when he was helping me figure what to do about the rumors—and what were behind them. He told me not to be a fool about it. He tole me to take it as a lesson and to fight the urge and to make peace with it. He’d seen Franny’s problem as a chance for me.

“Make a family,” he’d said. “Forget what else you been up to.”

“Easier to say than to do,” I told him, “under the situation.” He’d been forgiving but not understanding. But in telling me that there was Uncle Eddie’s abandoned spread we could have—the old, original Tolbert place—he’d told me that I was being given a second chance, a second chance not to be a fool. I couldn’t say he were wrong. Somethin’ was tellin’ me, though, that I could maybe deny myself if I tried real hard and temptation didn’t come my way, but was I bein’ fair to Franny? Could I ever be enough for her? Would she ever be enough for me?

“She’ll have the baby,” pa had said. “She’ll be a damn sight better with a Tolbert than lettin’ those Previes take the child.” I couldn’t say he was wrong about that either—or that I should expect better from him in understandin’. Some pas would have taken me out in the woods and shot me fer bein’ unnatural. And nobody on the mountain would have blamed him.

“Bees don’t take much care,” Franny had said. “All you need do is make boxes; I’ll take care of the bees. Two boxes. I got the directions for that. I already put in an order down at the general store in Thessalia when I met my folks down there for them to give us staples to tide us over.”

“You’ve already put in an order?” I asked. “For what?”

“I asked that the bee man bring us bees for the first hive. Will Lambert down at the store told me we should make two boxes, but only put one out. The bee man would bring bees when he got around to us for the first box. We’re not to put the second box out until that one fills with comb. Then the bee man will bring us another colony. And so on. One box will meet our own needs. If we can fill more, we can be making cash money off it. Will told me what to do to bottle comb what’s above our own needs and that we can bring it down to him to sell.”

“We can bring honey down to Will to sell in Thessalia?” I guess Franny didn’t know. She knew I married her out of more than the goodness of my heart, but she didn’t know it all. She didn’t know that I wouldn’t want to be goin’ to Will Lambert down at the Thessalia general store for anything. And the bee man. “What bee man would this be?” I asked.

“Why Honey Tom,” she answered, all innocent and unknowing. “It’s already done. He’ll be bringing bees in another couple of weeks, Will says. We need a box by then. You best make two off the bat. We won’t know how fast the first swarm will fill a box with comb.”

I couldn’t look at her direct. She weren’t in the know of it. It weren’t her fault. But it were her doin’ if the temptation of it got to me. She’d be the fool of the piece. She will have done fooled herself.

“I might be out working the field when he comes,” I said, lookin’ out of the window of the two-over-two wood house my grandpappy had built with his own hands, with the help of a few neighbors. There weren’t many around here close enough to call neighbors anymore, not that there ever were. The black hermit, Rufus Jefferson, up beyond the Sugar Holler pools at the top of the holler were the nearest neighbor, I guess. But I ain’t seed him for years. After Uncle Eddie passed on, I hadn’t come up here at all—not until we needed to hide our shame and from the gossips, Franny and me both. “You might be the only one here at the house when Honey Tom comes in with a swarm.”

“That would be OK with me,” Franny said. “I do hope it’s soon, though. The directions for the boxes are over there on your grandfather’s desk. Sooner is better to build them than later, I think, Billy Ray.”

“I’ll get right on that,” I answered. “And then I’ll go look for someplace to put down the boxes.”

“In sight of the house, I think, but not too near that we’ll worry about getting stung when we’re workin’ in the yard. Will said in a cleared area of milkweed, dandelions, clover, and goldenrod—that’s what they like to gather from, he says. As much as they can have near if we want them to fill the box fast.”

“I guess up at the top of the meadow, by the sycamore stand, will do,” I said. “Just be knowin’ that I can’t stand around waitin’ for Honey Tom to show up. I’ll probably be off in the field when he comes and goes. He comes and goes as he likes—and does what he likes too. Always has.”

“He’s a wild man for sure,” Franny said. “But he’s a fine looking man too, a golden man, a man standing in the sunshine. Half the ladies up the mountain swarm over him no different than those bees of his do.”

“That they do,” I said, “that there’s a fact.” And some of the men too, was my thought—but no way in hell I was gonna say that. I decided there and then that I damn well would make sure I were off in the field and would miss him comin’ and goin’. ’Stead of fightin’ her on this and makin’ her curious, I picked up the paper Franny had writ the directions for the bee boxes on and went out to the wood shed to get to work on them boxes.

* * * *

It were the last day of June and it were hotter than normal for this day. I’d been weeding in the new field south of the house all morning and was right tired and hotter than blazes. Franny was down on the flatland at Staffordsville, with her kin, sayin’ it were just too hot and close up here in the holler for her and the baby. I didn’t expect her back in the pickup before sundown.

It were too hot to work and nobody were there to say otherwise, so I took myself off to the pools up at the top of the holler. This was where we came, whenever the season allowed, to do our bathin’. The stream that came down near the house came from a spring up here. When the rains were good, as they’d been this year, water ran down the rock walls up there from one pool into the next before it ran out into a steady stream and by our house. The pools were deep and there was room to stretch out and dry on the rocky ledges around them.

I was doin’ that—stretchin’ out on a ledge after bathing in the cool water—and, I admit, I was naked and takin’ care of myself. I did that whenever I come up here alone, as a way to find relief. Franny was of a mind that we could do it—she said she wanted to do it—but I’d been puttin’ that off. That seemed just a might too far of this pretendin’. I supposed we’d have to do it eventually, though. I kept thinkin’ of my pa’s advice to just be normal now—to forget all of that other stuff and foolishness.

Well, I was layin’ there, stretched out, pulling on myself, gettin’ hot and bothered and real big—I was sort of prideful that way, although there were men around who were bigger than me—not that Will Lambert, but Honey Tom, most certain—and comin’ real close to flaring off when I heard rustling in the bushes off the trail leading up to here. Well, I curled into a ball right quick then and looked t’ward where I’d heard the noise comin’ from. There had been something out there, I was sure, but it wasn’t there now.

For some reason the name Rufus stuck in my mind—probably because the only other one living this high up in the holler now was the black hermit, Rufus Jefferson. He had a cabin not more than a mile from here on the rim of the holler, near the top of Sugar Run Mountain. I don’t know what Rufus did to keep himself goin’. He came down to Lambert’s store in Thessalia now and again for supplies, but I never seed him workin’ anywhere down there, and folks gave him a wide berth, as big and hulking as he was—and black. More of a chocolate brown, of course, but a black is a black. I admit when I did see him, it gave me pause, standin’ there and lookin’ at him with a funny feeling coming on me. It probably was because of what I heard about him from one of the men at the mill. At one time he was a trapper, I heard, but I didn’t rightly know if there was a market for skins anymore.

I lay back, but I couldn’t get my mind off Rufus. The last I knew, he was one fine figure of a man—big, massively big, but not fat. Muscular. A man there was once at the mill who asked if I’d ever lain under him or seen the size of him, sayin’ that when I remarked about Honey Tom. I never did, but it got me to thinkin’ ’bout him now and again. Whatever he had been doin’ for a living, he was built strong. Now that I think about it, I think I heard he was doin’ some blacksmithing or at least workin’ with bending iron to how he wanted it. If so, he had the muscles to show for it.

As I thought about him—the chocolate brown of his skin, the size of him, and that muscular torso, as I recalled it, my hand went back to my dick, and I lazily stroked myself off again. This time I went to completion, and then I just laid back and took myself a snooze.

When I woke, it was a good hour past noon. I slapped my canvas shirt over my shoulder, it being too hot to put it on and nobody around to care at me not wearin’ no shirt. I pulled on my worn jeans, noticing that they were getting’ a might small for me and pulled down at the waist until it was almost indecent wearing them. ’Course it might be too that I was toughening up and trimming down more from working the fields than I had down at the lumber mill in Pearisburg in those after-school hours. My chest was expanding and my waist narrowing and my biceps brought Rufus Jefferson back to mind—or Honey Tom, although I didn’t want to be thinkin’ of him. He hadn’t come yet with the bees, and I’d had the box sittin’ up there at the top of the meadow and waitin’ on them for nigh on to three weeks.

But just thinkin’ about him when I’d promised to keep him out of mind is probably what conjured Honey Tom up in the flesh. I’d gotten almost all the way back to the house when I heard whistlin’ and I turned and looked up into the meadow, and there he was. Honey Tom, blond and muscular and wild and untamed and golden looking, was stridin’ out of the tree line near where I’d set out the bee box and into the sunshine, which made him glow. He was carrying a cut from a tree, one with a hollowed-out section in it, and he was carrying it right gingerly. I could tell the hollow had a bee hive in it, because the bees was swarming all around him and buzzin’ something fierce. He was walking steady like, like he knew exactly what he was doin’ and could get away with it with them bees—and he was, in fact, doin’ that. The bees was all over him—in his tossed blond curls and his close-cropped beard and crawlin’ all up his naked, tanned, and muscular torso. But nary a one was stinging him. It was like they knowed he was taking them to a better home than where he’d found them. Everyone said it was a gift he had, and I guess it was, because that’s what he’d become—a honey man.

The gift weren’t just with bees either, I could tell a person. He had a way of calming a person and getting them to go where he wanted them to be and doing what he wanted them to do.

Even though he didn’t look my way at first, he knowed I was here, stopped in my tracks near the house, just in my low-riding jeans. I had the thought that I should pull my shirt off my shoulder and put it on and cover myself. I knew how he sometimes before got when he saw me all naked. But I was mesmerized in watching him get that there tree section put nicely into the box I’d built and settling those bees—all without getting stung. Then he looked my way, and Honey Tom were watchin’ me more than he were watchin’ what he was doin’ in putting those bees to bed. It was like he could do the bee work in his sleep, and he probably could. But it gave me chills that he was watchin’ me while he worked—giving me more attention than he were giving them bees.

He didn’t call out or nothing, but I knowed from the way he were looking at me that he wanted me to come to him. So I did. When I got there, he put a hand on the small of my back and said, “Billy Ray.”

I answered with a “Honey Tom.”

It took no more than that to bring us back together as before. Even with all the changes—me marryin’, Franny having what was called our baby, the move up the mountain to here—all he’d needed to do was come out of that there tree line, will me to come to him, and, when I did, say my name, and I would let him do what he wanted to me. He did say my name, and then he did do it all to me.

“I brought you your bees. When you see hive through the slit near the top of the box, you put out another box and I’ll bring you more. They get confused if they have more than one choice of box unless another colony is in the other box.”

“How will we let you know that—?” I said, my voice shaky—not because of the bees buzzing around us both but because of that hand he had palmed on the small of my back—on the flesh of my spine, running fingers below the dip in my waistband at my butt. He had the tip of a finger on the rim of my asshole and I couldn’t think of nothin’ but it pushin’ inside me—and when he’d get to doin’ that.

“I will know when to come,” he said. “Now—”

“I meant for Franny to be here when you came,” I said. “I didn’t mean to be here to meet you. This was Franny’s idea and arrangement. This weren’t my doing. Franny’s—”

“Franny’s down at her folks in Staffordsville till at least dark, I know,” he said.

I didn’t ask how he knew. I didn’t want to follow that line of discussion.

“I don’t know what we owe you for this or when we can pay you,” I said.

“You know what I want in payment,” he said, and his finger did push inside me then, and the heel of his hand was pressing on my back, turning me toward the house, showing me what was next.

“You know we can’t, Honey Tom. That ship has sailed. I’m a married man now. No more of that foolishness for me.”

“You say that, but your body tells me different,” Honey Tom said. His other hand was on my crotch, feeling me up, finding me hard. Hard for him. “We can sail that ship again anytime I come here and have the notion. Come on down to the house with me.”

And so I did. I didn’t see no other choice. I didn’t see no other choice from the first time Franny said Honey Tom would be coming up here on the mountain to us. Seems my mind and body couldn’t agree on wantin’ the choice or not.

I knelt between his spread thighs as he sat on the corncob mattress in the bed Franny and the baby slept in. I slept on a pallet in the other room upstairs. The light in the room was splotchy, bright on the floor where the windows let the sun in, but dim over here by the bed. His dick tasted sweet, the first of the essence coming out of it as I sucked it even sweeter. That’s what I’d remembered the most about Honey Tom—the sweet taste of his dick, leaving the idea that that was what he mostly ate—the honey that he dealt in. As I sucked him, he leaned over my back, his fingers pushing under the waistband of my jeans in back again and reaching all the way to my hole—entering me and opening me to him, rubbing on that nub there inside that made my juices rise.

When he wanted it, he pulled me up, upending me, till I were streaming down between his legs to my head bein’ on the floor, lookin’ up the line of my trembling body at him, my arms above my head, fingernails clawin’ at rough floorboards. My legs were bent on either side of his torso, feet pushin’ into the mattress, as he held my crotch up to his face by cupping and spreading my ass cheeks, the smooth blondness of his beard tickling my tender ass flesh, and, taking his time as he pleased, he done everything he wanted to do with my dick, balls, and asshole with his mouth.

When I were moaning and beggin’ for everything, wantin’ and needin’ his dicking, he done everything with me, givin’ me the dick, deep. Pushin’ in hard, stretchin’, and puttin’ me full of both pain and pleasure, the first time with me upended that way, body arching back t’ward the floorboards. Him grabbing me at the waist and pullin’ me on and off the dick, on and off the dick, on and off the dick. Diggin’ deeper, throbbing thicker, and me bein’ wild, cryin’ because of the pain and filling of it, but cryin’ out for it like I was possessed, like he couldn’t dig deep enough, couldn’t fill out thick enough inside me. As always before I gave him all he wanted of me, and were beggin’ for more. And he took more and then took more again.

“Remember this, Billy Ray?” he muttered.

“Shit yes, I remember it all,” I cried out.

“You been missin’ this, Billy Ray?”

“Fuck, yes, don’t stop. Give it to me hard, Honey Tom!”

Plowin’ me hard, deep, long, lickety-split fast, then slow, then fast again. The two of us workin’ together as one, groanin’, gruntin’, rutting animals of the wild. No, after him getting’ goin’ good, like angels dancing on the clouds, golden Honey Tom the angel Gabriel, playin’ me like a harp. Me singin’ with the angels, releasing my seed with a cry of passion, “Fuck! Shit yes!” Honey Tom goin’ so deep inside me with a growl deep in his throat and then a long, drawn-out sigh as he flowed in spurts.

Fuckin’ me real good.

“You are the sweetest lay,” Honey Tom murmured when he stopped jerking jism out and his muscles relaxed into a calmness.

It weren’t true that what I remembered most about Honey Tom was the sweet taste of his dick. What I remember most is that he had the biggest, longest, thickest dick I’d ever taken inside me before. And he put it to me directly, makin’ no bones nor nicety ’bout it. And I just lay back there on Franny’s corncob mattress when he done me the second time and spread and bent my legs for him and moaned as he slid it all inside me, me all open to him this time. Like we’d done this forever and were meant to be doin’ it for that long. He held there deep inside me until I begged him to do it to me. And then he started his hips moving and he did it to me, and did it to me, and did it to me.

We dozed a might and I woke to knowing that Honey Tom had the need again. He were hard and he were pulling on my dick, which were what woke me.

“You are one sweet lay, Billy Ray Tolbert,” he whispered to me, like he couldn’t say it enough. “You always was. You take it better than any lad on the mountain. This is your nature. This is what you were put on earth for—to give men the pleasure of putting it in you. You can set up family up here in the nowhere holler—that be very nice—but don’t you go denying your calling.”

“My pappy says it’s for a fool—to be drawn to it. ‘Don’t you go bein’ no fool no more,’ he tells me.”

“How do you feel with it inside you, deep in your sweet passage? Do you feel like a fool when I put it inside you, deep?”

“You know how I feel, Honey Tom. I feel like the most golden man on earth wants me, and I feel like one with him when he’s inside me. You gonna put it to me again? You done me for hours, it seems like.”

“You’re gonna put it to yourself, Billy Ray Tolbert. You’re gonna declare it as your nature—something natural for you that you won’t fight. You get that sweet body of yours on top of me now. Fuck yourself silly.”

I did as he demanded, him turning onto his back, his hands helping me get settled on his shaft, me swinging a leg over his hips and laying my palms on his chest as he held himself in position. With a big sigh and a groan, I came down on him, taking him all the way inside me, hard and thick and throbbing. Me being measured to size of him now, sliding down easy on the dick with the help of the honey cum he’d put inside me earlier—and then put inside me again and again.

I rose and fell on the staff, taking him deep, with him workin’ my dick with one hand and rolling and squeezing my balls with the other. When I had released on his flat belly, he took over the fuck. He grabbed my hips ’tween his hands and slammed me up and down on his cock, with me writhing on top of him, leaning back against his raised thighs, his feet flat on the mattress, pushing off his feet to thrust hard up inside me. Again he gave me a blast of his honey and we both collapsed, me on top of him, both of us breathing hard and sighing deeply.

“Woowie, you was hungry for it, Billy Ray,” he murmured in my ear.

“It’s been so long, Honey Tom. So long since I been laid out good like that. I tried to put it behind me. I surely did.”

“It don’t need to be that long. This is your nature. This is what you was meant for, Billy Ray Tolbert,” he murmured. “To bring pleasure to men like this. If it makes you a fool, as your pappy says it do, why then be the best fool in Giles County. Just don’t go on foolin’ yourself by trying to deny who you are and what you want and need.”

The sunlight through the windows had dimmed and moved together until both slices of light was picking us out—Honey Tom and me—on Franny’s bed before he was finished moving inside me. He had seeded me again and again, and I had laid there and taken it and asked for more, moving from gripping his buttocks to hold him inside me as he convulsed and released his seed, to digging my fingernails into his shoulder blades as he dug deep and fast inside me. I were filled to the brim with his honey and humming for it.

He left, whistling, before dark, not long before I heard the motor of the pickup returning. It was like Honey Tom was in tune with the whole world in ways that others were not. He knew when to come. He knew I would lay down for him. He knew how to work my body up to beggin’ for him. He knew when to come inside me. And he knew when to leave.

I walked to the door of the house, naked, and watched him melt back into the tree line.

As he passed by me in the doorway, he turned and gave me a kiss on the lips. He tasted of clover-fed honey, which were natural, but I said what needed to be sayin’. “That’s got to be the end of it, Honey Tom. Give some warning next time when you come and I’ll be away in the field. That were nice, it were, but I got to stop playin’ the fool.”

He gave me a knowing little smile and said, “I’ll be back, and you’ll be here for me when I come.”

I lowered my head at that, not wanting him to look into my eyes—into my soul. After he’d disappeared into the trees, and as I turned to enter the house and to fix up the signs of Franny’s bed having been used, a bee stung me on the ass. He had left me something to remember him by.

I should have been satisfied, completed. But I wasn’t. I was keyed up. I hadn’t had it since before Franny and I had gotten married. It was like Honey Tom had pulled me back into the need for it after I had dulled my senses and needed nothing more than to pull on myself for my own release. Now I needed more. I had got some. Honey Tom had fucked me for more than an hour and had tired me out for then—but he’d keyed me up for now, when Franny was back home, all smiles because of her time with her family.

“Put the baby in the cradle tonight, not in the bed,” I whispered to her as she was preparing Billy Junior for the night. She turned to me with a questioning look, but when I ran my fingers into her hair and brought her face close to mine, she was as much into the kiss as I was—our first kiss since the one we done during the ceremony because those watching expected it of us.

“You must have missed me today,” she murmured after we kissed. She was smiling. She’d been sayin’ that she wanted this—that we might as well, since we was married.

“I did. I missed you in the worst way,” I answered, almost choking on the words. I hadn’t meant it as some sort of joke, but I knew it had a meaning that she wouldn’t know—or, probably, appreciate.

But then maybe she would have, because she certainly showed that she appreciated me coming to her bed, to the mattress stuffed with corn cobs, for the first time. And that I covered and fucked her for the first time as well. And then, before the light of day, fucked her again.

I didn’t tell Franny about the bee sting or tend to it myself—I could not have reached it and I could not explain to her how I would have been bare assed to be stung there. It did bother me as I fucked her, but I think it also helped me through the awkwardness of fucking a woman—feeling the sting kept me thinking of moving with Honey Tom in a fuck and I could fantasize about him doing me while I were moving on top of and inside Franny in the dark. So much did I feel the presence of Honey Tom in the fuck—and, I don’t know, his approval and encouragement, I guess—that I imagined I felt him next to us, his hand on the small of my back, pushing me forward when I was thrustin’ inside Franny.

“That’s it. That’s it. Oh, Sweet Jezzusss, I think you done it, Billy Ray,” Franny cried out as I let loose inside her and she dug her fingernails into my shoulder blades.

* * * *

Our daughter—our daughter, not Franny’s and someone else’s daughter—was born in the early morning of April 1st. I’d managed to get Franny down to Staffordsville in time—and to her people—to help Franny in the birthing. God knows there twern’t nothin’ I coulda done to help her with that up there in Sugar Tree Holler. Billy Junior was down there as well. It were a long night, and, after the birthing, I came on home, as there were planting to do and I’d noted that the top of the bee box was bein’ lifted up by the overflow of the hive. I’d put the second box out and, after I’d had a rest, was fixin’ to go down to Thessalia to ask Will Lambert at the store to let Honey Tom know we was ready for another swarm of bees. I hadn’t wanted to eyeball Will direct in case the old yearnings hit, but there wasn’t any way out of it. Franny weren’t gonna be goin’ anywhere anytime soon, not while she was being tied down with two younguns. I’d go back in four days to get Franny and our little ones—our boy and girl—to bring them back home.

As I pulled into the yard in the pickup, though, there, comin’ outa the trees up by the bee boxes, gingerly carrying a hollowed out section of tree and with bees swarming all over his head and bare torso, was Honey Tom. Just as he said he would, he knew when we’d be ready for another hive.

He also knew when Franny wouldn’t be home.

I was exhausted from the panicked ride down the mountain and the hours of fretting as Franny was giving birth. There was nothing more I wanted than a cold beer from the house and to fall into the sack. Instead, I got out of the truck and walked to Honey Tom and stood there, submissively, beside him, as he settled the new bees in the second box. ’Course I went hard for him, and ’course, he knowed I was hard for him.

After he bedded the bees, he turned to me, put a hand on the small of my back, and pulled me into him. He kissed me, all out in the open like that, and I returned the kiss, hungrily.

“Come into the house with me,” I murmured, in resignation and want, not bein’ able to help myself from being a fool for him.

“Walk up to the pools with me,” he said. His hand on the small of my back guided me which way he wanted me to go, and I found we was walking up the path in woods, to the top of the Sugar Tree Holler, where the spring-fed pools was, the water falling from one rock-carved pool to the next lower one, on the stream’s way down past the house.

We weren’t alone when we got to the pool. I could hear him hummin’ and movin’ around in the pool as we approached—Rufus Jefferson, the big black hermit who lived in the log cabin up here abouts.

“Maybe we should go back down to the house,” I said, as we drew near. “Someone’s already at the pool.”

“I know,” Honey Tom said. “It’s Rufus, who lives up here. I told him to meet us here. Rufus takes pleasure in men too. Me and Rufus are gonna do you together.”

And so they did.

Upon hearing us approach, Rufus rose up out of the pool water, naked, all chocolate brown and hard bodied—and with a big ole erect thick and long cock, a cock to rival Honey Tom’s and any man’s in Giles County, and a big ole grin on his face. I couldn’t stop myself from stoppin’ and lookin’ and shudderin’. He were chocolate brown across his big, muscular body, exceptin’ that for his dick and balls. They was black, black, black, and huge. He were hard and standin’ proud, the head of his dick pushed out all pinkish and purplish. I started to tremblin’ then and there, knowin’ that he were gonna put that black snake inside me.

With a moan, I turned, thinkin’ of getting’ away, goin’ on down the mountain as fast as I could move my bare feet. But Honey Tom held me fast and then pushed me to my knees, holding me fast, as Rufus took up his place in front of me and held my head as I took that old black snake of his in my throat. He tasted tangy, not honey sweet, like Honey Tom did, but I moaned a moan of want for him as I took it all inside my mouth.

They lay me out on my back on a rock ledge hangin’ over the pool, Honey Tom saddled over my chest and me sucking his sweet-tasting dick and Rufus crouched in the pool between my spread thighs, sucking on my dick until he wanted more and stood up in the pool, hooked my ankles on his shoulders, fed that big ole black snake of his inside me, and fucked me good. I didn’t fight him any; I bucked against him in rhythm to his thrusts as I got all het up in the dicking. After Rufus done plowed me good, Honey Tom turned me on my belly and stood where Rufus had been and fucked me with his big shaft while Rufus sat, legs folded under him at my head, with my head in his lap, and his dick down my throat.

Through it all, I was cooperative and willing and giving them anything they wanted—and they wanted it all. I wanted it all done to me, and they obliged. They did it all but one thing—one thing I kept thinkin’ of them doin’ since there were two of them at me up here.

That big black cock really did me. Rufus filled me to full stretch and he knew just what to do to get my wall muscles to shimmerin’ and clutchin’ at the thick black snake, making love to it as it made love to me—and filled me with its cum, the tangy taste of it mixing with the sweet honey of Honey Tom’s seed inside me, creating a rich slick for the men to take turns slip slidin’ away inside me, me jacking off nearly as often as they done together. Completely drained, fully satisfied, moaning for them and clutching at their asses and their shoulder blades, beggin’ them to do it again.

There for some minutes, I thought as how they’d really do me together—that other thing I’d been thinkin’ about—both pushing inside me at once, but they didn’t do that then. They saved that for later, in Rufus’s cabin, when I was a full slave to them, opened up to them completely, and wantin’ everythin’ they could do to a man.

“You are such a little whore,” Honey Tom said, with a laugh, and that I couldn’t deny.

Afterward, Honey Tom said, “I know you’ll be wanting it more often than I can come by and give it to you. That’s why I talked it over with Rufus here. You can have as much as you want from Rufus—and from me when I’m here. You can have whatever you want, as much as you want. We are going up to Rufus’s cabin now, where we are gonna do you again—and again. You can stay as long as you want. Forever, if you want. As long as you stay, though, you will be a slave to Rufus’s cock, and mine when I am there.”

He was good to his word. They held me there in Rufus’s cabin for the next two days, doin’ me in turn—in all positions and all places: In Rufus’s bed, on the cabin floor, on his eating table, and bent over the railing on his front porch. And then, as I had been thinkin’ as soon as they was two, workin’ on me in the pools, they did me together, havin’ theyselves a Billy Ray sandwich. And I liked it that way too.

I loved it all. Honey Tom had been right. I had been made for this—to serve the pleasure of men, and both Honey Tom and Rufus knew how to give pleasure as well as how to take it.

Increasingly as time went by, though, the words of my pa rang in my ears those first days of April, while I was stretched out up here in Rufus’s cabin on my back with my legs open and Honey Tom lying on me, working his dick inside me, and then Rufus at me, stretching my passage with his big black dick, and then Honey Tom inside me . . . and then me between them, Rufus at my back, Honey Tom at my front, both of them sticking it inside me together, all of us gruntin’ at the effort and strain of it. I heard my pa sayin’ I would just be a fool to abandon what had been given me to pursue fleeting, sinful pleasure—to be used by other men’s lust. What I could give a man and be to a man would only be for a few years, while I was young and supple, and good-lookin’. Family, with a grateful wife and children to blossom into grandchildren, and so forth, down through the ages would be a forever pleasure.

On the morning of the third day, I got up sore from the bed, pulling myself out of the entangling arms of a hunk of a man on either side of me. Honey Tom woke up and smiled at me. Rufus continued to snore. He had been the one to fuck me hardest and longest in the night, and now was enjoyin’ the reward of a deep sleep.

As I was pullin’ my jeans on—the first time in two days, Honey Tom said, “You’re goin’ back down to the house, ain’t you?”

“Yes, Honey Tom, I got to. I took on responsibilities. I can’t be a fool forever.”

“There are ways of having your pie and eating it too, Billy Ray,” he said. “You can have what you have there and here as well. I do believe you’ll find all will be more content if you do—even Franny. You’ll be wantin’ to add hives, and I’ll be bringing bees to you ever once in a while. I’ll know when to come. I’ll know with Franny ain’t here. And you know you’ll lie down for me on those times. But there’s Rufus too. Anytime you need it, you can come to Rufus. Rufus will give it to you good. So, you go on now, and you raise your family. But you get your pleasures otherwise too. It’s in your nature. And it’s in Rufus’s and my natures to want to git inside you when we can and the chance is there. Can’t none of us escape or fight that.”

Then he turned over on his stomach, put an arm over Rufus’s chest, and looked away from me. I didn’t look back as I walked out of the cabin.

* * * *

“You were supposed to come tomorrow,” Franny said when she came out on the porch of her parents’ house, baby held against her shoulder, as I got out of the pickup. “Did you forget the day?”

“I couldn’t stay away from our family a day longer,” I said as I climbed up on the porch and Franny turned her shoulder to give me a good look at the baby. I could see it hadn’t been missed on her that I’d said ‘our family’ rather than ‘your son.’ It might have been the first time I’d done that—made all three of them my family. Nothing that happened on the mountain with Honey Tom and Rufus Jefferson changed what havin’ this baby Franny and me shared meant to me. I was a daddy now in my own right and a husband too. And I were feelin’ I needed to be Billy Junior’s daddy too. I knew he looked up to me as his daddy, and it ’twernt his fault I weren’t his natural pa. Honey Tom had made a point to tell me that I could run my life on two separate tracks and that, in fact, it would be better for everybody if I did.

For a while I’d thought that wouldn’t be fair to Franny. But me and Franny had been sittin’ better with each other after Honey Tom came back and got to me. We’d been havin’ at it off and on too. I were comfortable doin’ it with Franny now. I got hard fine with her now, and the plowin’ of her were easy and pleasurable enough. She sure as hell wanted it whenever I hankered to do it.

We’d created this baby together. Somehow havin’ Honey Tom on the side—and now the offer of Rufus when I needed it that way—had calmed me down and made me more of a family man than before. And if goin’ back with men occasionally made me a fool, like my daddy said it would, at least I was a fool who knew it. Talkin’ about April fools, that would be Franny, not me. She had brought it on—what led to Honey Tom getting his prick inside me again and now Rufus as well. She’s the one who brought Honey Tom back into my life and jammed up my ass. Franny was the one playin’ the trick that she didn’t know were a trick and that bounced back at her. And it more than likely was gonna work out to her benefit anyhow. Better she never know what an April Fool’s joke it had been.

“I can stay the night and we’ll go home tomorrow as planned,” I told her. ‘Home.’ Sayin’ that meant something had changed in our life, and Franny had picked up on that too.

“There’s just the bed I’m in at my parents’ house,” she said, lookin’ at me real hard. I’d been in her bed for fuckin’ off and on since that last day in June when Honey Tom visited and I fucked her after—the night when we probably made this baby, the night she kept sayin’ it happened and did her countin’ of time from—but I hadn’t moved in on her completely. Franny had made clear that I was welcome to, though.

“Well, I figure we need other space for the younguns from now on, so I’ll move to your bed when we get home. I understand we can’t do nothing for a while, but you might—if you want to—tell me when we can.”

“I’ll be sure to do that,” Fanny said, with a deep smile. “It won’t be long,” she added, holding that smile. Then she went on. “Good thing we’re here. Me and my parents have been talking names for the baby. You have any ideas on that? You get a big vote on that.”

I thought for a minute, and a little mischief came into my head, something April foolish in keeping with the baby having popped out on that date. I bet she’d grow up to be a mischievous little spitfire too. “She were born on the first day of April. How about we name her April? Maybe April Marie. April for havin’ the gumption to come out on April Fool’s day and Marie for your mother. I always liked that name.”

“Sounds like a possibility to me,” Franny said. I could tell she was please that I’d thought of using her momma’s name.

I didn’t care one way or other because I knew I’d call her something else altogether. I knew I’d always be calling her Honey—so’s I wouldn’t forget those two tracks I was on.

“By the way,” I said, as if it had only now come to me and was incidental like, “soons we get back to Sugar Tree Holler, I guess I’ll be goin’ back into makin’ those bee boxes.”

“Oh, somethin’ happen to the spare you made?”

“It ain’t a spare no more. The bee man has been by and brought another swarm. He tells me we have a real good place for raisin’ bees and we can really go into the business—that he could be bringing us new bee swarms as steady as we can put boxes out for them.”

“That sounds good,” Franny said. “With the adding of mouths to feed, it will be good to have a business bringing in money.”

“Oh, and you talked about having an iron fence built to go around your kitchen garden to keep the deer out,” I said, pushing my luck. “I hear tell that black hermit up on the ridge, Rufus Jefferson, is blacksmithing. I reckon I could go up there now and again and get him to do work for us.”

Franny bought that one too. Them two tracks were well on their way.