Date: Sat, 04 Jul 2009 01:29:31 -0400 From: tommyhawk1@aol.com Subject: The Traveling Man THE TRAVELING MAN By Tommyhawk1@AOL.COM WWW.TOMMYHAWKSROGUEMOON.COM I heard the cheery whistle coming our way. Living on a farm with no nearby neighbors, any sound of people is something to remark on, that is, when the people isn't your mother or your older sister, whom you have seen and heard so long as to not hear them when they do make noise, if you see what I mean. I heard a whistle, it was a person's whistle, and it wasn't Momma or Suzy, and that was all I needed to get very interested. So I jumped up from the floor where I had my book, ran over and perched on the couch on my knees, looking over the couch back out the window, waiting for the whistler to appear from behind the long line of bushes that kept our house screened from the roadway (and the dust from blowing into our open windows all summer long!) He couldn't have been in a automobile, a Model T made a horrible racket, and while other autos were quieter, hardly anyone could afford to drive anything else. Besides, in the country, you could hear any automobile coming down the road. Even the jingling of a horse's reins when they got closer. None of that, this whistler would be walking. Yep, there he was, the guy walking up the road to our house. No mistake about him coming to see us, our house set back a good hundred yards from the road. My father (now departed six years) had felt that no decent country man could live right up next to a road. I told you all that so you could see that our whistling visitor was something of a phenomenon, enough to bring me to the window, my sister to the front porch (she was sixteen years old and rather brazen in her way according to my mother) and my mother from around the side of the house where she'd been tending to the chicken pens. Our visitor wore poor but patched clothes, composed of tan trousers, a white shirt, and a tan jacket tossed over his back and held by one hand. A white hat with a black band covered his head and protected his eyes from the overhead sun, and his trousers were held up by a pair of plain brown galluses. His sleeves were rolled up, showing bronzed, well-formed forearms. His chest was broad and his shoulders wide, his face bore a couple of days' stubble but no worse, enough to give the faintest shade of a beard to his sharp jaws, the dark eyes and the long nose gave him a look faintly Indian, faintly mischievous. The smile was nothing Indian-stoic, it was the carefree grin of a man who was happy with his life. As was proper, my mother is the one who did the greeting. "How'dye'do?" she said to the man when he came close enough to permit her to greet him without shouting. She would have shouted to a known visitor, this man was a stranger. "Howdy-do." the man said in return. You could hear his abbreviation of the term in how he said it. "My name is Charles Schiffman. Are you the Widow Martin." "I am. These are my children, Susan and Michael. What can we be doing for you?" Momma asked, rightfully suspicious. "It's what I can be doing for you." the man said. "Do you know the Richfield family over in Carlton?" "I do." Momma allowed carefully. "I have a letter from them, to introduce myself to you." the man said, producing the letter. "I am a traveling man, seeing the country and paying my way by stopping and working as I go along. Mrs. Richfield mentioned when I was ready to leave that you were maybe needing someone who could help you about the place for a day or so, and the letter will assure you I am an honest and dependable worker." He handed the letter to Momma. "Suzy?" Momma called out to my older sister. "Read this for me, I left my glasses inside." Momma didn't wear glasses, but she (and we) wouldn't admit to a stranger that Momma couldn't read, she'd never learned her letters. Suzy read the letter aloud to Momma, and it said what the man said it did, that his name was Charles Schiffman, that he had come to Mrs. Richfield with a similar letter of recommendation, that he had worked for Mrs. Richfield for three days, and she was pleased with his work and could recommend him for any job we might have for him. He had the prior letters if Momma wanted to see them, as well, he said, a string of letters from across the country, in his bag which he'd left back at the roadside. "So you're a traveling man." Momma said, looking at him now in appraisal of his workability, like she'd evaluate a mule or a cow. So did I, now I knew he'd be working for us, if we was. He stood and let Momma look at him. A big man, that was my thought. Big and strong. Momma felt the same way. "Well, yes, I could use someone to work on some jobs here. It'll be hard work, but I'll pay you..." Momma took a deep breath, "...I'll pay you six bits a day for four days' work, plus your meals, if you'll work hard." "I'll work hard." the man agreed. "The day's half done and it's nearly noon. If you'll feed me lunch and supper, I'll work for you for this afternoon for two bits more." "Done." Momma said. "Suzy, set another place at the table." Suzy had been preparing lunch for us, she nodded eagerly, her eyes fixed upon our new hired hand, and went to add a plate to the table. Suzy was going to be finding excuses to go talk to him, I could tell. At the table, I listened enthralled as much as my mother and Suzy. Charles had been all over this country, traveling as he had for nearly seven years now. He'd been to California and to New York, he'd been to Alaska and to Nova Scotia, he'd been...God, he'd been everywhere! Like the birds, he traveled northward in the spring and southward in the summer, keeping to temperate lands. He talked of the Grand Canyon and of the Mississippi in words that said he'd been and experienced them both, up close and in detail. It was hard to get away from the table, even Momma let him talk on for over an hour after we had finished. Then she took him out to the barn and Charles started working on cleaning it out, I mean, really cleaning it out. I stopped by to watch him now and then, and he was working every moment I saw him. He had taken off his shirt within the first hour, and his undershirt was soaked clear through. When I checked on him again about four in the afternoon, he saw me, smiled, and lifted off his t-shirt. His stomach was narrow, taut and firm. His chest flared out as the t-shirt revealed it, the rib cage covered with a heavy sheath of muscle, the pecs hair-covered, big squares of man with arcs of fur reaching halfway up, the delineation of his chest hair, the shoulders bearing only scattered hairs, thin as the trees at a municipal park, left for decoration and occasional shade, and nothing more. His biceps bulged as he wrung his t-shirt, and the sweat flowed from the cotton cloth in a stream onto the barn's floor, and my nostrils flooded with the raunchy smell of man-sweat. He rolled the t-shirt back over his body and said, "Want to help me out with this, kid?" "Sure." I volunteered. It let me hang around and feast on looking at his large, male body. I spent my days surrounded by women and children (my home and my school) and male role models were few and far between, I feasted on my dose of masculine interaction. Charles went easy on me about the jobs he had me do with him, and when I grew bored with the chores a couple of hours later, he let me go without anything but good feelings about the time we'd spent together. Both Momma and Suzy found reasons to come by the time I was there, and probably before and after, I guess we all needed a dose of man in our lives. Suzy was flirting with Charles, Momma was more solicitous. He treated both with simple polite kindness and with Suzy, he was blissfully ignorant of her intentions, at least on the surface, until she would withdraw in a sort of miffed dismay. The second time that happened, Charles saw me looking at him as she left, and he winked at me, and I laughed. He knew, oh, yes, he knew! I was in the house, at the time when Suzy was in the barn and Momma walked in on one of her increasingly desperate ploys. I heard the yells, Suzy screaming back at Momma, and then they both came in the house and stayed there, Momma watching Suzy like a hawk. Charles ate supper with us, and at the end of it, regaled us with more stories of his travels. Momma was torn between listening to him and keeping my sister at bay. "Well, I'll want to get to work on that fence tomorrow pretty early." Charles ended after a time. "Is it all right with you if I make my bed in one of the empty stalls in the barn?" Momma looked at Suzy and I knew she was thinking that Suzy would find the barn all too easy to get into after Momma went to sleep. Then at me, and Momma smiled and said, "No need for that. Michael has a large bed. You can sleep with him tonight." "But mother..." Suzy started and Momma froze her with a glare. "Well, if that's okay with Micky here, it's all right with me." Charles said. I'd told him to call me Micky that same afternoon while we worked together. "It's fine with me." I agreed. A coal-oil lamp was our only illumination as we readied for bed. Clouds obscured the moon and the stars. "Think it's going to rain tomorrow?" I asked Charles. "Probably." Charles agreed, looking up from unlacing his boots. "Makes a man glad to have a roof over his head." "What about the fence?" I asked him. "I can get the fence done in the morning." Charles judged, pulling off his socks, showing a set of long, athletic toes that wriggled in their newfound freedom, I watched them in fascination. Charles had hair even on the top of his feet! "I think the rain will hold off until afternoon, mostly. I last saw rainclouds like this over in Ohio, the rain always builds up about a day before, and this morning was clear." Charles stood and unbuttoned his shirt, it was now heavily stained from his labors. "Yeah, Ohio." I said. "You've been everywhere, haven't you?" "Not everywhere." Charles said as he removed his shirt. The t-shirt underneath was yellow-white from his sweat. Charles had bathed himself at the water-pump, I knew, but he only had one change of clothes in his bag. I knew, because Momma had volunteered to wash these clothes he had on now for him, and let him use some of Dad's old clothes she had held onto to work in. That felt right to me, some way, this big man using my father's clothes as he labored on our farm in my father's stead. Dad wasn't here to do it for us, so this man would. "Plenty of places I still want to see." Charles said. "Been traveling ever since I got out of the Army, back in 1918. I'd spent three years being told what to do by anyone who had more stripes than I did. I never wanted to do that again. And going to Europe told me that there was a lot to see out yonder." The t-shirt went on top of the shirt, in the pile of his dirty clothes, for my mother to retrieve tomorrow to wash. "Yeah." I agreed. "I want to see the world, too." "Being a traveling man is a good way to do it." Charles said. "Always a new place, but you stay long enough to get to know people, too. Better than traveling on a vacation or something, when you have to hurry to see all you want to see, and it's all just a blur of faces and houses and trees, and you have trouble remembering which you saw where." Charles stood up and his pants were undone now. I watched them in fascination as they slid down his legs. Now only a pair of boxers covered this broad, strong male body from my sight. I had undone my own clothes in imitation of him, as he took off his, I took off mine. My own jeans slid down my legs and I stepped out of mine as he stepped out of his. This was how I slept, wearing my underwear, but I was ready to do what he did. "How do you sleep, Micky?" Charles asked me. I looked and realized that Charles was waiting on me the way I waited on him. "Uh...I dunno." I mumbled. "You don't know?" "I mean, however you sleep." I said. "Yeah?" Charles looked at me and that easy, half-mischievous smile was on his face, and I matched it, felt myself free. In the boldness borne of that freedom, I reached for my underwear and said, "I think it's too hot to wear anything tonight, don't you?" "Not that hot, but it sure is a sticky night." Charles agreed. I skinned my underwear down my flanks and stood nude before him. "Then let's do this." I said. "All right." And Charles turned away from me to remove his own boxers. "Hey!" the protest slid from my mouth without my meaning to. "What?" Charles said, his back to me, me seeing only the brown orbs of his back, the white orbs of his buttocks. "I...nothing." I said. "Let's get in bed...I guess." I got under the covers, annoyed and even angry at Charles. He had seen me, I should have gotten to see him, too! When my friends and I would swim, we didn't turn our backs on each other! Checking each other out was part of the fun! I felt Charles hand on my shoulder. "Hey, there, Micky." he said to me softly. "Are you okay?" "Yeah." I said. "I just...never mind." "What's wrong?" "I just wanted to see you." I said. "See me?" "Yeah, you know. All of you." "Oh." Charles said. "I've never seen a man before." I said. "Just my friends when we go swimming and we, you know, we look at each other." Charles hand moved over my shoulder and down my side, I was lying on my back away from him. "I'm sorry." he said. "I didn't realize you wanted to look at me. I'll let you look tomorrow, okay?" "Okay." I said. As quick as the anger had come, it had vanished again and I turned onto my back, and then onto my other side, and that put me up against Charles' body. He had rolled onto his back when I did, and his hand came up and brushed my arm as I moved it over his chest, feeling that thick fur on his chest. It wasn't like petting a dog or a cat, it was more like touching large, warm, smooth skin and the hairs were like the skin was reaching up and touching me back. The hairs slid between my fingers, silken, soft things as delicate in feel as spider webs, only a web when it got you was yucky and this was just...nice. My hand was eagerly finding his body, figuring out where it was, and it sped down the ribcage and over the stomach and Charles' hand on my arm caught me as I touched the edge of the deeper thatch of hair below his abdomen. Just a pause, and then the hand let me go and I reached on down and my hand found...a mountain! "Whoa!" I said as I felt the hard thick shaft, like cloth covered steel, only the cloth was warm and soft, very, very soft, and the steel was warmer still. Charles took in a long, slow gasp of air through his teeth in an audible hiss of sound. "Hsssssssssssssss!" My fingers clutched around his manhood, and I said, "It's all hard." "Yes, I know." Charles said to me softly. "It's why I didn't let you see it." "Why is it so hard?" "It gets that way sometimes." Charles said. "When someone looks at it, or someone touches it." "Like I'm touching it?" I wanted to know. "Yeah." Charles moaned. "It gets hard when it feels good like it does now." I moved and that's when I realized. "Mine's all hard, too." It was, I felt it pressing against Charles' leg. "Yes, it is." And Charles hand, the one nearest to me and which I was pressing into his body, slid up between us and his fingers caught hold of my dick and I sighed with how good it felt to have someone else touch it. "That feels really nice!" I enthused as his fingers moved over my dick. They were only finding a purchase, and then they firmed up and he had a grip and he began to work his fingers up and down my prick...and I moaned! I mean really moaned, it felt so good, I just had to! "Oooooooh, oh, oh, ohhhhhh!" I gasped out. "Really nice." "Do mine for me, Micky." Charles said. "Slide your hand up and down like I am." I did, but my fingers alone weren't enough. Charles gave a groan of exasperation, not in fury but in frustration, and he grabbed my hand with his, wrapped my fingers around it like I'd had them when I was holding on, and he moved my hand with his up and down the column, my hand keeping a grip on the thick velvety sheath of flesh that covered the steel beneath. "Like that." he panted. "Just like that, Micky." I pumped his cock like he showed me and had the pleasure of listening to his moans and sighs of joy. My own dick was tingling from his fingers that had me in a circle atop so that my head hit the tip of my glans sometimes, and his hand was big enough and my dick was small enough, that wasn't a problem. Meanwhile, I had a tube of warm man-meat in my hand and I was jerking it with my entire arm. Which grew tired in a hurry. It wasn't only that it was a new thing for me, but I had worked hard that day with him, carrying buckets and such, and I was tired. "I can't keep doing it for you." I groaned as I stopped. "I'm sorry." "It's okay, Micky." Charles said huskily. "That's only one way to do it. You want to learn the other ways?" "Sure." I said readily enough. "What else is there?" "You can use your lips and mouth." Charles gasped. "If you want to, that is." "In my mouth?" I hesitated. Charles understood my hesitated. "I'll do it for you, too." He promised me. "If you'll take mine in your mouth, I'll do it for you, too." And so with that promise, I pushed the covers back to bare both our bodies, and I climbed on top of that huge, male body and before I could even take a tentative taste of Charles' maleness, he had caught mine and my entire cock and balls was buried in his mouth. His tongue began lapping at my balls as he held on, and I groaned, and suddenly stuffing his prick into my own mouth in a sort of feeling I can only describe as hunger, not for food, but for this man. I sucked on him and tasted the luscious heady foam of saltiness as it beaded from his tip, and the meatiness of the glans beneath, flavored by his sweat and his funk and his maleness, all boiled into one savory blend. My own delight was boiling through me as Charles more experienced lips wrung pleasure from every motion, I copied him as best I could but taking the entirety of his monster organ was impossible, I worked him and was rewarded by his blissful sighs. Still, my own body was less resourceful than his and I could only let the ecstasy take me as it would, and I groaned, exploded and my climax was done and my prick suddenly sore within him. "Good boy," Charles said approvingly as I rolled off him in my moaning exhaustion. "That's one other way to do it. Ready for yet another?" What other way could there be? "Yeah, I'm ready!" I gasped out. Charles lifted my body like a limp strand of ropes and rearranged me so that I was on my back on the bed, my legs lifted up and in the elbows of his arms. I felt his cock, all slimy from my own ministrations, as it pressed up against me. "Oh, oh, oh!"I gasped as the huge head pushed into me. "This is the other way." Charles said to me, his nose bare inches from mine. "You want me to do it like this?" And Charles leaned down and he kissed me as he waited for my answer. The way he kissed me and touched me, this wasn't something we could do with our mouths on each other, and using my hand now felt horribly inadequate when measured against the liquid joy of my mouth. I wanted this way to work! "Yeah, I want to." I gasped. "I just don't know if I can do it." "You can do it." he said. "We'll just take it slow and easy on you, slow and easy." And he did, I spent a long time on that bed underneath Charles' brawny, strong body, and he slowly worked it into me. Even after he had managed to push that huge glans into me and a segment of his long dong, he stayed slow and gentle with me, moving back and forth as kindly as a butterfly's touch, and as my body learned him, the pain went away and only the pleasure of the feel of him inside me remained. As I groaned and reveled in his possession of me, Charles began to move faster, and I was discovering the ecstasy of an entirely new sort, the joy of giving myself to this man, and I gazed into his sweat-soaked face in trusting delight and his grin teased me, and I reached up for a kiss as he rammed into my ass. "Oh, oh, Micky, I'm going to come." Charles murmured after a time. "Right into your hot little ass, Micky, right into you. You're mine, Micky, mine!" "Yours, yours!" I sighed in return. "Uh, huh, huh, uh, huh, uh, gh-huh-hunnnnhhhh!" in soft syllables, Charles stiffened, threw his head back, arched his back to drive his pud deep into me, and as he did that, his body disgorged his pent-up load of wet joy into my bowels, I was injected with his hot cream, felt it simmering inside me, and I wanted this to last, all the time, every day and every night, for the rest of my life! After he was done, Charles lay atop me, his prong still imbedded in me, and only after a good while did he soften enough to slide out of my body. I wrapped myself in him, his sweat and mine mingling and bonding us together, and even in the heat of that early summer night, we stayed like that until the dawn. Charles stayed with us four days in all as Momma and he had agreed, and at the beginning of the fifth, he made ready to leave. Momma wrote him a letter of introduction to her cousin over in Harrison, and Charles left as he had come, walking down the road, his huge, broad body equal to the travails of the road, and the three of us waved as he left. "Oh, my, wasn't it nice having a man around the house again?" My mother sighed as he vanished from sight and only his resumption of his whistle marked his nearness. "It sure was." Suzy sighed. "I know I'm going to miss him." I said with genuine feeling. "You know, Momma, when I grow up, I think I'm going to be a traveling man like Charles." "Well, we'll see." Momma said. And the whistling continued as it ebbed in tone until the sound blended with the music of the wind. Our traveling man had come and gone. THE END Comments, complaints or suggestions? E-mail the Author at Tommyhawk1@AOL.COM WWW.TOMMYHAWKSROGUEMOON.COM