This story is an entirely fictional work of adult erotic fantasy, involving consensual sexual relations between related persons.

Copyright me 2017.

If you're under the age of majority in your jurisdiction, please come back when you're of legal age. 

Influences for this story are wide ranging and include: The films of Pedro Almodovar; deceased wrestler Rick Rude; the writing of Gabriel Garcia Marquez; the Brief Lives story from Sandman; Her Kind by Anne Sexton; a brilliant live performance by Sade; a quote from Derek Jarman about his production of Edward II; and of course The Story of Ferdinand.

Importantly: credit for the lyrics to the song Is It a crime go to Stuart Matthewman Helen Adu and Andrew Hale.

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You can find my tumblr at http://boymercuryx.tumblr.com/

IS IT A CRIME  By Boy Mercury X

1.

My grandmother told anyone who would listen that she got my father as a 60 year old widow by beating the devil at cards.

Obviously we didn't believe this, nor did we believe that Abuela was 60 when she became pregnant with Father. But with no birth certificate for her we had only her word on her age, as implausible as that might be.  She certainly looked the part, tiny, wizened and clad in black with dense eyeglasses that looked like they weighed ten pounds.

We tried to poke holes in her story, asking by the devil did she mean Satan, and was Dad Satan's son?  But Abuela says it isn't like that.  When we ask if she is really over 100 but still getting around so well she just shrugs in resignation, and says it must be.  When we ask why no one ever sees the devil around, she simply says that's how it was in Spain, she can't help how it is in New Orleans.

We do know she came to the US so her only son could be born a US citizen, and that he attended a prestigious university on a wrestling scholarship where he met and impregnated a girl born to old Southern money, which is how I came to be born.  I was named Max, and I was the only child they ever had together.

Of course marriage was required, and after college Mother's wealthy parents brought Dad into the fold and started him in a construction business, which he shrewdly parlayed into his own fortune, which he diversified so he could sit back and watch his money earn more money, effectively going into retirement by the time he turned 40.  The son of a poor immigrant, Francisco Tosco became Frank Tosco, lord and master of a former plantation house.  He livened the place up with his bold, boisterous nouveau riche ways, which galled Mother.

And we learned that in all the ways that matter, he might as well have been won from the devil.

2.

Father was a bull of a man.  He looked like a bull, with his thick neck and massive shoulders, a block of a head with a tough guy square jaw, a short wide nose with flared nostrils and fleshy lips and tongue.  He had dense curling brown hair kept meticulously short, and an equally dense trimmed mustache.

He most often wore suits, but even so you could see how powerfully built he was.  He maintained his wrestler's body with rigorous workouts in his own gym for hours every day, growing more masculine with age.  The testosterone practically wafted off of him.

I imagined that everyone in a five-mile radius could pick up on his musky scent and wet themselves in anticipation, which may have been my own projection.  The one person who let it be known did not feel that way was Mother, who was plain in her loathing of Father, as only an old money southern matriarch can be.

"He doesn't need me for sex," she'd say, "he's got every whore in the state on his bankroll."

With Dad's wandering eye and Mother's grudging acceptance, home often seemed more like antebellum days rather than the 1990's and Dad was King Cotton rather than an investor in software and oil. There's a timeless quality to New Orleans, especially if you lived at either extreme on the economic scale.  Middle class people might contend with modern day opportunities and challenges.  But if you had enough money you could be protected from the modern day, and if you had not enough nothing else could much protect you.

 

3.

I'd known Ash my whole life.  His mother was a maid at the house, which made him, by extension, something like unpaid staff.  He was often called on to be my playmate, obliged to do what I wanted and to let me win every game. 

Ash amused me often with his hand articulations.  The long elegant fingers of his right hand fluttered as the hand floated through the air between us, each finger tracing its own erratic path.


"What's that one?" I asked.

"That's Butterflies migrate south for the winter," said Ash, and I could see among his flickering fingers the flock of butterflies.

His hands dropped low and slowly writhed upward with fingers in tight buds that opened slowly with fingers dropping into a gentle sway, Wisteria in spring.

Ash was the most elegant creature anyone at the house had ever seen, more feminine than any woman on the estate.  He was the spitting image of his beautiful Creole mother, with the same full lips, pointed chin and high smooth brow, his lighter complexion presumably from his unknown white father.

Abuela liked Ash's pantomimes also.  One day she read Ash's future, and with her dense eyeglasses on she studied his infinitely graceful palm, saying in Spanish, "You are a lady of evil luck, desiring to be what you are not, longing to stay where you can only visit."

I told Abuela in her own tongue that that was terrible to say to Ash, and that if she was too blind if she to see that Ash was a boy how could she possibly see the lines in his palm.  She showed me the lines of his palm but it made no sense to me, so she sighed and threw up her hands. 

Ash asked what she saw, so I lied.  I pointed to random lines and said, "This means you will be famous and successful and marry the love of your life."

 

Ash rolled his eyes and said "God bless you for a liar."  In truth my fortune did not seem very likely for a skinny effeminate Creole boy with a housecleaner mother, and it seemed even less so sitting in a former plantation house owned by old white money.

Ash held out one arm and the fingers of his other seductively beckoned a strong wind, then became crashing waves that battered the barrier arm until it trembled and fell. 

"What was that?" I asked.

Ash looked right at Abuela with a witchy glint in his eyes, adopted a mock Cajun patois and said "Dat's de hurricane gon' come and wash dis ol' debil city away one day."

Abuela left the room quickly.  Everyone knew she was terrified of hurricanes, and she didn't need any English to take Ash's meaning.

Dad and I flew to New York that afternoon for one of our frequent weekends away.  Mother said goodbye to us from the top of the grand staircase, never one to let personal affection get in the way of appearances.

"Doesn't she look beautiful up there?" asked Dad, proud of her chiseled poise.  His deep gravelly voice gave me an erection.

In the car, behind dark glass, he nuzzled his face against my ear and neck, with hot kisses, and whispered "you're so much like her before she got hard." He wrapped his meaty hand around the bulge in my pants, and I spread my legs wide.

4.

Our weekends away were something Dad and I did alone, and always in hotels, never our properties.  We'd see some sights, eat at both exclusive restaurants and dives.  I loved walking the streets together, so proud to be on his arm, hoping the more cosmopolitan would assume we were a handsome couple, Dad with his manly face and muscular form, me in the prime of my youth with a lean fit body and my mother's blonde hair and refined features. 

But the real point of the weekends was the fucking.

Dad would instruct the hotel staff that we did not wish to be disturbed.  Once the door locked, Dad would devour me and fill me up with his big bull cock.  He would discharge in me, filling me with his hot cum, and then keep fucking me lubricated by his own load until I came in my own fist or his, or most often just into the bed, provoked by nothing but his slamming me inside.

We'd fuck for as much of the weekend as we could, going out to shows and meals for a chance to build up our cum.  As we recharged, we'd begin to flirt with each other, knees brushing under the table, or lowly groaning as we wrapped out fingers together.  Sometimes we couldn't wait to get back to the hotel, and Dad would take me to the men's room to shove my hand down his pants while his thick tongue plunged my throat.  Or he'd had the driver cruise for hours while we blew each other in the back seat.

Dad's stamina was stunning, as was his appetite for my ass and throat. I was very fit myself from swim team, but I could barely keep up.  Sometimes after a hard fuck, I'd drift off to sleep with his cock still in me, milking out whatever seed slowly escaped his full handful balls.

His cock was huge, 10 inches by my measure, thick around, dark, veiny and fierce, and Dad said he never knew anyone else who could take it the way I did.  I felt I was made for this, and though he could be rough Dad was thoroughly invested in my pleasure.  I experienced so much more sexually than most people my age, and loved it all.

We'd return home satiated for a spell, and drift back into daily life, building our lust for our next trip.  I never felt I was disloyal to Mother, and probably thought I was helping them both by taking the burden off of her to meet Dad's sexual appetite.

5.

When I attended college it was hard to go without times away with Dad.  We could steal away now and then, but it wasn't as often and we both seemed distracted. 

I suspected his marriage to Mother might suffer without his weekends away with me to take the edge off the marriage, and to give him an outlet for sex as rough and as often as he liked it.  I supposed he might use prostitutes, and certainly he could meet a fee that would ensure both discretion and flexibility.

Ash became my eyes and ears at home.  He was already working part time for the house, and after he graduated high school he would go full time.  He said things seemed much the same.  Mother managed appearances, Dad managed business, Abuela scuttled through the house like a black beetle redundantly cleaning or arranging what was already done by the housekeeping staff.

Ash was also taking dance classes, which seemed like a ridiculous luxury on his mother's earnings as a housekeeper.  He ought to be doing something more practical, given his prospects, and it galled me a bit that he was so self indulgent.

I dated a girl with an appropriate pedigree, but fucked other boys.  Unlike my times with Dad, I was the top.  I never considered bottoming for anyone but him, and they all seemed bound to disappoint.  My ass was made for him and no one else.

I had a charmed life, born to advantageous genetics just as I was born to money, and both made me an appealing catch even among the privileged.  By the end of my freshman year I'd fucked 7 guys, four of them peers at University, three of them good-looking boys from the wrong side of the tracks.  I mounted and bred each of them, and could have had more, but none were the one I most wanted to be with.

6. 

After my freshman year, Ash's mother died.  Ash stayed on as a house employee.

Dad took us to Spain that summer, and asked Ash to join us, as a kindness but also to be my similarly aged travel companion. It was the first time since she left that Abuela returned to her homeland. 

It was hard to be have Abuela and Ash along on the trip because they hampered my ability to be alone with Dad.  Still, in the mornings I would sneak into his bed to hold myself against his hard body.  I loved to feel the soft downy fur on his chest, and just to cup his heavy cock in my hands even if it couldn't be in me. 

I whispered my deepest desire that after college Dad and I move away together, just us.  I wanted us to have a penthouse in New York City, where I thought passers by on the streets would be sophisticated enough to see that we were not just a father and son, but a pair, bound in love and lust.

Although Abuela was the only native Spaniard among us, she looked the most out of place, in her ceaseless black she was more a ghostly shade of the past than a living Spaniard.  Still, she never bemoaned what was lost, saying all was fated to happen and it was pointless to fight what had to come to pass.

In Madrid we went to the bullfights.  Ash said he didn't want to see animal cruelty, but Abuela insisted there was nothing cruel about it.  She explained that in the final stage of the bullfight the matador draws the bull with the motion of the red cape to maneuver it into position to stab it through the heart, the strike called the estocada. A clumsy estocada is shameful to the matador and will raise protests from the crowd. If unsuccessful, the matador must then perform a descabello and cut the bull's spinal cord to kill it instantly.  If this too is a failure, the bull is paralyzed and must be dragged away, and is a great shame to the Matador to have made the beast suffer rather than giving it a quick end.

In the end it was as Abuela said, but Ash wept long and hard for the bull, and nothing I said could console him.  Dad was very sweet and offered to take Ash to see more tranquil sites while I stayed at the fight with Abuela.  We met them later at the hotel and by then Ash his usual self.  After dinner we asked him what he saw, and he showed us with knuckles gently rolling and then jerking abruptly tourists on Segways.  Then with long fingers flowing over each other, his hands became the palace waterfall at Parque del Retiro.

I laughed, but Dad was uncharacteristically wistful.  I was sorry he had to leave the bullfight to care for Ash, and thought I should have done it myself so he could have stayed for the spectacle.  Over the years I would wish it many more times.

7.

After that trip things changed.  Dad seemed more serious and more distant.  In my own way I did as well, getting more engaged with people my own age at school.  I continued with my girlfriend, and boys as well, and often missed the feeling of wholeness I'd had with Dad's erection lodged up inside me.  Mother became more rigid in her constructed order and beauty, Ash worked for the house and Abuela continued to compress with age into a tiny lump of coal.

By the summer after my sophomore year the tension between Mother and Dad was intolerable.  They fought daily, saying the most horrible things to each other.  I felt responsible, thinking my absence had removed the pressure valve they both needed to stay married.  Even Abuela was distressed by the rancor of the household.

I made myself scarce, spending large spans of the summer months outside New Orleans.  That didn't stop the phone calls.

"Max, honey, he's humiliating me," Mother would cry into the phone to me, "how can I hold my head up in society the way he carries on?"

"Mother," I'd say, "are you smoking again?  It sounds like you are.  Besides, you all should get out of there.  Hurricane Andrew is all over the news."

"Max, honey, no, I'm not going anywhere.  I'm not leaving him alone to degrade me in my absence.  This isn't like the other times, with his flings and whores. He's different."  There was a chill in her voice.  "I think he's in love.  Honey, I think he's going to leave me."

As she sobbed into the phone I understood the human heart would never make sense.  She hated Father, she would be so much happier without him, and had probably wished for his death dozens of times.  But somehow the thought of him leaving her was the worst thing in the world. I could only suppose being left by him after so many endured slights was simply too much.

It made no sense that he could be in love with someone else, because I was the someone else and always had been. If he were to leave it would be with me.  Of course I couldn't tell her that.  But I began to fret that she might know something I didn't. 

I phoned to talk to Dad but Abuela answered.  She was frantic, saying the hurricane was coming. She said it was the witch bringing it, the bruja.  I asked for Dad and she said the bruja had taken him too.

I knew I had to go home immediately.

8.

Most in New Orleans won't leave no matter the weather warning.  Some were too stubborn, some had seen it all before and perhaps the majority simply didn't have the means to leave, even if they wanted to.

Over a million evacuated Louisiana as Andrew approached, and I was the only fool desperately trying to get in.

I arrived after midnight, the wind raging outside.  There was not a single light to be seen, meaning the power was out.  Entering the house I could hear screams and shouting on the upper level, coming from the left side of the grand staircase.  I was too late, I thought, too late.

I ran to the top of the grand staircase, dripping wet, where the scene was unfolding.  Mother as there, Mother shrieking and stripping a frail young woman of a red negligee, lashing out with nails and fists, the young woman who crumpling to the ground unclothed and submissive.

And Dad was screaming too, shirtless and in pajama bottoms, yelling at Mother to stop.  She turned her attention to him and her rage spiraled, striking him hard, screaming obscenities.

"You've gone too far Frank!" she screamed, "Not in my own house, not in MY HOUSE, not with that child!  Not with your own child!"

I didn't know how me Mom know about Dad and me, but we never did it in her house.  It made no sense.  And what did it have to do with the sylph of woman on the floor?

"My heart BLEEDS for you!" Dad screamed in response, striking his naked chest hard where his heart was, his hair raised and his wrestler's body ready to fight. "You CUNT!"

I stepped between them, but they were already on each other, spit flying from his Dad's lips as he spewed obscenities, Mother shrieking and the damn red negligee in her fist whipping in all our faces.  In the eye of the hurricane I felt a sudden calm, turned to and recognized the woman on the ground, looking on in fear.  "Ash?" I asked.

The thoughts hit me as hard as a dozen of Dad's fists.  Dad with Ash, wearing Mother's negligee?  Mother said his own child?  Who was Ash's father?  What happened in Spain?  I could see suddenly how I'd lost Dad to Ash, probably beginning the day of the bullfight in Spain.  What a fool I'd been. 

Abuela and the housekeeping staff had gathered on the ground floor and watched our fight spin out above then.  My fists joined Mother's, us both against Dad, while Ash sat there sobbing.  We struck and shoved, the floor slick with rainwater from my coat, and Dad's face went funny as he tipped back over the balustrade.  He grabbed for anything to hold onto, catching only the red negligee in his grasp, which slid out of Mother's hand like smoke.

For a long horrible moment Dad fell, hitting the ground below hard, flat on his back, perfectly still. Mother screamed, and I said no, no no. 

Abuela dropped down on her hands and knees beside Dad's broken body, sobbing and praying.

Ash howled, and Hurricane Andrew made landfall in Louisiana.

9.

Dad was never the same.  Confined to a wheelchair, the life went out of him. 

His doctors tried to convince him that he could have an active and fulfilling life, and that even sex was not out of the question with some special accommodations.  But for a man like Dad that would not do.  He shrunk into himself, and spoke rarely, and then most often in Spanish.

It wasn't only the break to his spine that left him in this state. I sided with Mother against him, distanced myself as much as appearances would allow. I was so hurt by indignity that my heart closes like a fist to him and went hard. I really was like Mother after all. 

If the pace and tone of life in our house had been dictated by Dad before the fall, Mother's reign began after.  She took over, with a banker's mind for the debts that must be paid.  I think she relished in those days.

Her first order of business was to establish that Dad's fall was the accidental result of domestic dispute gone awry.  There would be no investigation, no charges, and no ugly rumors that Dad had been shoved. When it really mattered, Mother was a Southern lady and I a young heir, and Dad was a poor immigrant's son. Money runs deep in New Orleans, but old money runs deeper still, all the way to Hell according to some.

Her next priority was to give chase to Ash, hiring men to harass and threaten him at every turn, driving him out of Louisiana in ways so miserable he'd never return.  Hera's wrath had nothing on Mother's, and Ash was cursed with being the known face of every infidelity she'd endured, even though the greatest of those infidelities was secretly her chief accomplice, me. But I didn't lift a finger or utter a syllable to discourage her campaign. I hated my old friend with the same zeal and wounded pride as much as Mother.

She then privately ordered genetic tests to determine that Ash was Dad's son using hair samples Ash left behind in a brush.  So I learned Ash was all along my own baby brother, as well as the greatest rival for the love of my life. As far as Mother was concerned, this made Ash a threat to my inheritance, so better gone altogether.

Only Abuela seemed to care about Dad in his deepening despair.  As usual, she came around to accepting fate, reasoning perhaps that she won Dad in a deal with the devil, so of course there would be consequences.  So she reverted to caring for her hard won baby, feeding him by hand, wheeling him outside for sun, bathing him and singing him to sleep.

It would have been a greater mercy for him to die in the fall, but life is not kind.

10.  TWENTY FIVE YEARS LATER

I never thought Dad would live in New York City, but in my custodial care he had no more option than a bull with a ring through its nose to go where he was guided.  My penthouse was palatial, with stunning views and abundant space, so we could go almost days without seeing each other. 

By her count, Abuela was almost 130 years, but still going strong, tending to Dad's daily care, his feeding and bathing, replacing his catheter and wiping the shit from his ass.  My daughters and their mother were cosmopolitan and beautiful and spoke barely a word of Spanish.  Abuela and Dad were just eccentric fixtures in our home, and I suspect some of their friends thought Abuela was nothing but hired help.

I waited until I was on the old side to marry and have my own children.  When my eldest was born I was 40, nearly as old Dad had been at the time of the fall. Maybe I wanted to avoid his reckless path.  Or I was waiting to meet the love of my life, but I already had, and I wasn't his.  So I made a prudent choice in a bride and enjoyed a highly civil marriage, a meeting of the minds if not the souls, you could say.

Mother divorced Dad not long after the fall, and married an even more wealthy man, one not tainted by old world curses, foreign languages or strange appetites.  In fairness to her, she was adored and it softened her and she enjoyed her marriage.

Ten years after we left it, Hurricane Katrina devastated it.  Ash's prediction of the hurricane coming to wash away that devil city had come true, nearly. 

We rarely took Dad out in public, but for my 45th birthday my wife arranged for us to go to a special show.  Abuela stayed home with the children, even with a nanny on site, because she didn't trust anyone but family.  We dressed in our finest, and Dad was a handsome and distinguished, if unwilling, participant. If I learned nothing else from Mother it was the value of keeping up appearances.

The show was at The Jewel Box, a small exclusive club, and the performer was Ishtar, a European sensation with a limited engagement in the states. My wife told me Ishtar would perform only seven numbers, but each would be a masterpiece according to the reviews. 

When the light came up, her back was to the audience, her long straight hair like a black snake against her impossibly thin back.  One arm was extended in full, palm up.  As the music began, the hand curled like smoke, and the arm draw it in.

I knew before she turned that Ishtar was Ash.  My heart rose up in my throat.

Turning to us confirmed what I knew, this was Ash's face, the cafŽ au lait skin magically unmarred by creases or lines, eyes dark with thick lashes, lips plush and saturated as her shimmering evening dress, red as a fire truck

She sang with languid ease, in a voice that spanned male and female in its depths and heights. Of course each song was paired with hypnotic pantomime, grown beyond those magical hands to full body expression of every image and ideas.

Dad wached

For the seventh and final song, the music started soft and low.

This may come, this may come as some surprise
But I miss you
I could see through all of your lies
And still I miss you

 

Ishtar looked right at our table, at me, at Dad.

 

Is it a crime
Is it a crime
That I still want you
And I want you to want me too

 

Dad had tears welling up in his eyes.

 

My love is wider, wider than Victoria Lake
My love is taller, taller than the Empire State

It dives and it jumps and it ripples like the deepest ocean

Ishtar's voice went deep at wider, as deep as a man's.  Her long arms spread wider than they could really be, then came upright as the Empire State building, in gorgeous art deco rigidity, and then dropped into the currents of the ocean depths. 


I can't give you more than that, surely you want me back

 

At the last line her voice rose to its loudest and warmest pitch, smooth and deep and searing. She slid in serpentine motion off the stage to stand, directly before Dad, reducing the rest of us to voyeurs in their reunion.

 

Is it a crime
Is it a crime
That I still want you
And I want you to want me too

It dives and it jumps and it ripples like the deepest ocean
I can't give you more than that, surely you want it back

Tell me,

Is it a crime

Dad was choked with emotion, and Ishtar kissed him softly on the lips. 

I could swear I saw his crotch rise.

11.

Dad was invited to meet with Ishtar in the dressing room.  Of course he couldn't go on his own, so I asked my wife to go home and I brought him.

Ash, or Ishtar, was radiantly beautiful.  I don't know what witchcraft she learned, but she used it to great effect. The spell of her hands was now of her whole body, and every turn was overlaid with greater meaning. Even in a dressing robe, she was as elegant as strands of wisteria blossoms in sway.

Ishtar largely ignored me, but kissed Dad full on the mouth, their tongues seeking each other out.   She caressed his face and unbuttoned his shirt. 

He had gone grey since the night of the fall, and his chest hair had as well, on a body gone slack since its prime.  He still had the frame of a great athlete, but he was older and not in the same condition that once inspired such great lust in me.  But in Ishtar's loving hands I could see the embers of what he was. 

She unzipped his pants, and a full stiff erection sprung to life. 

"That shouldn'tÉ"I began, but stopped.  Ishtar worked his cock, and he looked more alive than he had in many years.  She removed his catheter, them let her robe fall to the ground, gracefully raised herself to straddle her lover, and to plunge the full beast of his cock into her.  Dad gasped and buried his face in her breasts and he groaned loudly.

I turned to give them some privacy, stepping behind a screen.  But I could hear them as Ishtar rode him and he breathed heavy and snorted.  I couldn't clear my head of the vision of Dad's cock sprung back to life, and jerked my own erection.  Seconds after I heard Dad gasp with his climax, Ishtar moaned, and mine followed.

12.

On the drive home, Dad was unusually alert.  He watched everything that happened on the streets, everything we passed.  He seemed alive and spoke of seeing Ash, or Ishtar, again.

I stewed in silence.  It was so arousing to see his prick hard again, to hear his hard snort as he came, and to imagine his hot breath as if it were on me.  But it galled me also.

Even now after so long, just the sight of Ash was enough to fill Dad's cock, while every day my existence went unnoticed by him. How could you choose Ash over me, I wanted to ask.  In my head I imagined the exchange, I fell in love, is what I guessed he would tell me.

I had long ago become Dad's legal guardian, and his choices were in fact mine to make.  And so Dad was my prisoner, not mine in the way I'd always wanted, but still as much mine as he would ever be. 

I remembered Abuela's palm reading, that Ash would be a lady of evil luck and could only visit where she'd wish to stay.  I remembered also my lie, that Ash would be famous and successful and marry the love of his life.  Or, now, her life.

12.

At home Little Marta was awake and said she couldn't sleep until I read her a story.  I said only a short one, and handed me her worn copy of The Story of Ferdinand.

"Once upon a time in Spain," I read, "there was a little bull and his name was Ferdinand. All the other little bulls he lived with would run and jump and butt their heads together, but not Ferdinand. He liked to sit just quietly and smell the flowers."

I read about Ferdinand's favorite spot under the cork tree where he could smell the flowers, and how his mother worried about him.  I read about how the men came to find the biggest, fastest roughest bull to fight in the bull fights, and Ferdinand was stung by a bumble bee which made him snort and butt as if he was crazy, so they thought he was the fiercest bull of all. They brought him to fight and called him Ferdinand the Fierce and all of the Banderilleros were afraid of him.  But when he saw the flowers in all the lovely ladies' hair he just sat down to quietly smell them, and wouldn't fight or be fierce no matter what they did. So they had to take Ferdinand home to sit in the shade of his favorite tree and smell the flowers.

 

"Why are you crying, Daddy?" Marta asked.

"I was thinking," I sniffled, "there was a man who didn't like the story of Ferdinand, so he wrote his own children's story about a bull who was not Ferdinand.  This bull loved fighting, and fell in love, but died fighting anyway."

In Hemingway's story, the bull who loved fighting was put to breed because he was so strong and ferocious and his owner wanted to breed many more just like him.  But this bull was in love with just one breeding cow, and paid no attention to any others because he only wanted to be with her. This made him useless for breeding, so he was sent back to the bullfighting ring to be killed. He fought wonderfully and everyone admired him and the man who killed him admired him the most, and the sword handler said this was the bull who had to go to the ring to die because he was so faithful.

 

"That doesn't sound like a children's story," said Marta.

 

"No," I said, chuckling a little as I wiped my nose, "and I'm crying a little because I don't know which of the two stories to believe."

 

"Papa," said Marta, "why don't you pick the one you like best?"

13.

Years ago Ash had become Ishtar overseas with some shoddy faked paperwork.  My attorneys did some clean up, and by the time they were done the paper trail verified beyond any reasonable doubt that Ishtar had always been Ishtar, and never Ash, and certainly not related to Dad in any way.

It was illegal to falsify the records, but it was such a small crime in the story of our lives.  I was certain fate would excuse it.

Ishtar and Dad married in the spring, in Spain. In this way Ishtar could be assured her inheritance, while keeping secret their biological relationship. 

I set them up in a house there, where Ishtar could become a famous musical recluse.  Or they could leave and go somewhere else.  It was their choice now.

When I last saw them they were there, sitting under a shade tree, Dad in his chair and Ishtar on his lap. For all I know they are there still, sitting just quietly. I like to believe they are very happy. 

END