Juxtaposition Ch. 01

"I wonder how many inches of dust I've wiped off this bookshelf over the years?" Valerie Benchkoff wondered aloud, singing hymns to herself as she robotically lifted item after item up to clean underneath. Nearly 32 years worth of marriage, motherhood and memories resided on the oak shelves in front of Valerie as she went about her weekly routine.

Those 32 years of marriage to her Husband, Nolan, hadn't been easy. Wedded at the age of 17, more to get away from her own folks than any real comprehension of love, Valerie had certainly grown to treasure and adore the man she married and wouldn't have traded her life for anyone's. Pregnant by the age of 19 and then again when she was 22, the latter half of Valerie's life had whizzed by in a blinding rush. One morning shortly after her son and daughter had moved out for good and proceeded with their own lives away from the family farm, Valerie had woke up one morning and suddenly wondered where her life had went.

The weekly routine of dusting the years' worth of accumulated photos was one way she had to keep reminding herself of how great her life had been and what joys she had to be thankful for. Yet, after having two kids running around the house, discovering life at every turn for nearly three decades, to have that simple joy missing from her life, with each passing day, Valerie felt increasingly empty.

The rigors of running a small and struggling family farm on the outskirts of Davenport, Iowa however kept Valerie from dwelling on the negatives for too long. There were still chores to do, bills to pay, trips into town to make and a Husband to take care of. And Nolan, eight years her senior, had gradually had his health decline over the past decade. A mild heart attack two years earlier had gone a long way towards helping with his eating habits, but the fear of another one combined with a litany of back and shoulder problems has slowed his work around the homestead.

Still, it was a good life they had made together and when the work for the day was done and the sun had set for the evening, Valerie could rest her head on her pillow most nights thankful for all her blessings.

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1500 miles to the East, in the Bronx, a 17 year old boy was resting his head on a tattered and worn pillow as well. The same age Valerie Benchkoff was when she got married back in Iowa long ago, Rodrego Munoz's prospects for the future weren't nearly as promising as Valerie's had been.

Burdened from day one, born to a Mother of only 15, and conceived by a Father he never knew, Rodrego had dodged more bullets, literal and figurative, than 90% of the soldiers do during a war.

Even though his Mother cared enough to keep Rodrego's attention turned towards school and a decent life while he was younger, the same lure of the street that had felled many of his fellow generation constantly nipped at Rodrego's heels.

In the ultimate of ironies however, it was failing to dodge one of those bullets that might have saved his life. An innocent bystander on the opposite side of the street from a drug deal gone bad, a shell had ricocheted into his shoulder, landing Rodrego in the Emergency Room.

A fact of life living in that neighborhood Rodrego readily accepted, but one of the doctors treating him saw more in the young Puerto Rican boy than mere cannon fodder.

Hugo Moralis had once been a Puerto Rican street punk as well, and even when his parents up and left San Juan when he was 12 for the US to work the fields and orchards wherever they could find employment, he remained a punk until someone saw potential in him. So in many ways Hugo saw himself in the injured teenager in front of him.

Having finally settled in West Texas with his family, Hugo had quickly picked up English and made progress in school. So much in fact, he had earned a scholarship to college through the Hispanic College Fund and six years after escaping the war zone of poverty he was born into, Hugo enrolled as a Freshman at Texas Tech. After getting his undergraduate degree there and working three jobs to save up, Hugo moved to New York where he completed Medical School, spending the previous 15 years working as a trauma specialist at hospitals in some of the city's poorest and roughest neighborhoods. So when Hugo approached Rodrego, a fuse was hesitantly lit.

Rolling his eyes initially from Hugo's description of moving from farm to farm, picking everything from cotton to corn as a youth, Rodrego might as well have been listening to the Man in the Moon for all the sense it made.

"What does any of this have to do with me?" the 17 year old bluntly spat, flinching in pain from the tightness of the bullet wound in his shoulder.

"It has to do with the next time you come through those Emergency Room doors...three inches to the right and we wouldn't be having this conversation, Rodrego," Hugo soberly replied. "Three inches..that's all..and there'd be a tag on your toe going out the backdoor of the hospital right now!"

Still, Hugo understood completely the angst and sense of resignation a kid like Rodrego was feeling. Never one to forget the valuable, and often times hard, lessons he learned during his trek across America's fruited plain as a child, Hugo had searched endlessly for ways to give back to the community and help kids that had been in his position. One such outlet he and his wife had found was supporting a program called "The Fresh Air Fund" that took at risk, inner city teenagers and placed them with a farm family for a few months during the Summer, in hopes that the time away would help the kids develop some life skills and an individual sense of self worth, away from the inherent and ever-present dangers of home.

When Hugo first broached the idea to Rodrego of enrolling in the program, the 17 year old laughed incredulously in the older man's face. But after discussing the idea with Rodrego's Mother, whether it was having to see her Son laying in a hospital room with a gunshot wound, or knowing the streets would be waiting for him as soon as he checked out, Desiree Munoz was slightly more open to Hugo's idea, and in the end convinced her Son to take the four month sabbatical with the program.

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Sitting in a coach window seat on a half full plane trip from New York City to Iowa City where his host family would be waiting at the airport, all Rodrego could do was stare aimlessly out the window.

"Iowa...where the fuck is Iowa?" Rodrego's stomach churned, feeling as if he were being shipped off to a place as remote as Central Antarctica rather than some place in the heart of the United States.

"And to a fucking farm on top of it..what the fuck is that about...They want me to learn to drive a tractor ....FUCK," he mumbled on and on, at one point causing a concerned flight attendant to come over to check to see if he was OK.

"Damn..she's pretty hot," Rodgero thought to himself as the buxom, sandy blonde stewardess leaned in closer, her perfume causing his angst to stir even more, reminding him that he'd be away from all the girls in the neighborhood all Summer. "I turn 18 in a couple of months and I probably wont even get to get laid."

"I'm..I'm..OK," he told the flight attendant. "Just my first time flying..that's all."

"You'll do fine," she smilingly reassured before turning to continue with her rounds, leaving Rodrego with a brief but lasting glimpse of her tight behind.

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The idea would have probably never crossed Valerie Benchkoff's mind if it hadn't been for the moment of weakness she was caught up in driving down Main Street one afternoon running errands. The weekly trip into Davenport to pay bills and get groceries was one of the rare times Valerie could get away from home and all the stresses there. Still, the pile of outgoing bills sitting on the passenger seat of the pickup was an all to real reminder that times on the farm were not getting any easier.

The weather forecasts for that Summer were promising and Valerie had little doubt they'd be able to make the loans again that Fall but with Nolan's deteriorating health and the difficulty everyone in the area had finding quality help, there was an ever constant gnawing in the back of Valerie's mind when it came to money.

Financial troubles aside, Valerie was fending off a litany of personal demons as well. Part of it, Valerie had convinced herself, was the change of life she thought she was going through. The fact that both her kids had grown up and moved out wasn't making it any easier either.

After spending the past 25 years with the sounds of extra footsteps in the house, Valerie was faced with the fact that her Son had accepted a position as a junior partner at a law firm out of state, and her Daughter had married a Naval Officer and they were stationed in Japan. All that combined with the constant stress of the business and Valerie truly felt she had no outlet for her sanity. So when she heard the PSA for the Fresh Air Fund that afternoon on the radio for probably the 100th time, a spark was lit within her as well.

Formulating the idea the entire way home inside her head, Valerie saw several advantages for the family. First, and most importantly, it would give Nolan some much needed help around the farm. It would also bring in some added income as well as cutting down on the extra help they had to hire that Summer. And selfishly, Valerie's motherly instincts couldn't resist the idea of having a kid around the house, even if it was only for a few months. All in all she concluded, it was just what everyone needed.

After first running the idea by her skeptical Husband and then discussing it with the people back East who ran the Fund, Valerie agreed to take on the task, hoping it would be an education for everyone.

Ever the tough guy, Nolan Benchkoff initially balked at the thought. Not so much from sharing his house with an outsider, like his wife he felt the same twinges of loneliness with the kids gone as well, but more from having to come to the realization that he couldn't do as much physically as he used to and the days of being able to run the farm on his own were gradually slipping away.

The people at the agency had also gone out of their way to tell the prospective hosts that the kids they'd be taking in were troubled and often times had spotty pasts, but Valerie had spent her entire life in a small town and while she had seen plenty of bad parents, she had never met a bad child.

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A chilling sense of surreality enveloped everyone involved the instant Rodrego and the Benchkoff's met at the airport.

His head resting against the passenger side of Valerie and Nolan's pickup as the drove him to his new Summer home, Rodrego couldn't help but feel as if he had been abducted by aliens as a wall farmland engulfed him on each side.

"So...you've never been out of the city before?" Valerie casually asked, trying to make conversation with the young man.

"No..hardly ever been out of my neighborhood," Rodrego replied, still too uncomfortable to make sustained eye contact with the couple.

The scattered buildings on the outskirts of Davenport given way to nothing but farmhouses now, Rodrego couldn't help but feel as if he had somehow become a drafted soldier, snatched from his home and shipped out to a war zone he knew he wasn't prepared for. Quickly feeling a pit develop in his stomach, Rodrego fought to keep a welling tear inside his eye as he thought of his Mother and everything he had taken for granted back home, knowing none of that would help him in this strange new world.

If the culture shock wasn't bad enough, Rodrego trembled and stewed as Nolan began explaining what a day on the farm would be like. How at 5 every morning, they'd get up for a quick cup of coffee and breakfast before heading out first to take care of the animals and then work the 90 acres of land.

And as rough as the Rodrego thought the new routine would be, it turned out to be infinitely tougher than he could have imagined.

"This is fucking crazy," he would mutter to himself over and over in the darkened hush of his bedroom late at night, his hamstrings burning and throbbing as he lay there, dreading the sound of Nolan knocking on his door a little before sunrise every morning.

"How can a guy three times as old as I am keep that up everyday of his life," Rodrego wondered, knowing he wasn't going to stick around long enough to find out.

"I should have joined the Navy or something...If I have to get up this early and work this hard...I might as well be getting paid for it and be able to do it somewhere like Hawaii," Rodrego sighed in between stealing peeks at his alarm clock.

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As with most forms of purgatory, the development of a routine doesn't necessarily make the stay any easier but it does make it tolerable. To Rodrego's surprise, the day to day litany of chores became manageable and at night, too tired to fret over what he might be missing back home, he retreated to his room and watched MTV and most of the other channels he got at home, off the Benchkoff's satellite dish.

Even though he had never been around people quite like Nolan and Valerie, and vice versa, the three steadily came together as the weeks wore on. As the first month of Rodrego's stay drifted by, a burgeoning sense of pride welled inside of Valerie and Nolan, both by how much progress he had made as well as their ability to learn things about themselves through that fostering process. Still, there was a level of guilt involved knowing they had, in a sense, taken Rodrego way from his home, especially when it came to the lack of available social interaction for someone like him in Davenport.

"You should have seen the way he was eyeing Darla Pitts down at the General Store the other day," Valerie said to her Husband one night in bed before they turned in.

"Was she looking back at him," Nolan laughed as he lazily thumbed through that morning's Gazette.

"No..not really..I think he was making her uncomfortable to be honest," Valerie replied.

"Ah..no big deal..Boy's almost 18.....at that age he's nothing but a stirring pot of hormones to begin with....now he's up and moved completly away from his comfort zone..I can't imagine how hard things must be for him," Nolan thoughtfully related. "Besides..me must be desperate if he found Darla worth a second look!"

"Stop that..But I guess you're right," Valerie sighed. "Do we know anyone with a Daughter about his age..maybe we can fix the two up....maybe...?"

The two looked at each other before either could say another word, knowing any sort of arrangement like that would most likely cause more problems down the road than it would solve, and long after Rodrego moved back to New York, Valerie and Nolan would still have to worry about any repercussions at home.

So with that, Valerie flipped off the light, and the subject was dropped.

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Everything Nolan had been telling his wife about the cauldron of hormones a kid like Rodrego would be experiencing was an understatement. Three doors down the hall, Rodrego lay naked on top of his sheets allowing the fan in the window sill to take some of the edge off the late Spring Iowa heat.

"1 AM," he sighed, knowing he had to be up in four hours to start his morning rounds.

His need for sleep was trumped however by a more primal and pressing need. Pressing being the throbbing girth of his aroused cock rubbing like a smooth and warm pipe down the inner length of his left thigh. Rubbing it steadily as he swayed his head lazily on the pillow, Rodrego knew he could make it cum pretty much anytime he wanted, but for the moment, he was enjoying the burgeoning buildup to orgasm as he allowed multiple images to dance in his mind.

Not that there was a lot of day to day fantasy material to commit to memory around the farm.

"Not a lot of sirens hanging out behind the pasture," he laughed to himself.

Aimlessly flipping the TV remote in his right hand for something to catch his eye as he continued to fondle his dick with his left, Rodrego thought longingly of several of the girls he knew back home, some of the women he saw during the occasional trip into town with Nolan and Valerie, intermingled with the occasional image on the TV screen. One memory kept leaping into his head however that caused his cock to jump ever so slightly each time he played it over in his mind.

It had been true what Valerie told her Husband earlier about seeing Rodrego stare longingly at the big boned clerk named Darla, down at the General Store. But what Valerie hadn't shared was that Rodrego had caught Valerie watching him, and even more to the point, catching the way Mrs. Benchkoff blushed when it happened.

Once back in the pickup for the drive home, Rodrego couldn't help but notice there was a different kind of tension in the air between the two. Granted, laying in bed at that moment and masturbating, it was probably his hormones extending any meaning to what happened on the trip home that day, but as Rodrego closed his eyes and intensified the grip on his cock, he could clearly picture the way Valerie stewed nervously in her seat and the way her erect nipples poked out the front of her teeshirt as she drove back to the farm.

Stroking his cock faster and faster as he replayed that image in his head, Rodrego's lean and muscular hips lurched repeatedly up from the mattress, fucking the imaginary image above him until wad after steaming wad of thick milky ejaculate shot into the air, landing in a messy dotted pattern on his thighs, groin and belly.

"Doesn't mean anything...doesn't mean anything at all..I just needed to get off," Rodrego sighed after it was done, thankful for the release and the ability to finally go to sleep as million of tiny endorphins swam through his overworked body.

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Rodrego's 18th birthday passed the first week of June during his stay in Iowa. After spending an hour or so talking to his Mom and some of his friends from home on the phone, he enjoyed some cake and ice cream with the Benchkoff's and some of their friends. While it wasn't a big production, it was one of the neater birthday's Rodrego could ever remember.

Later that evening, after all the revelry had died down, Valerie found herself wide awake in bed. For a woman who usually fell asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow, she tossed and turned next to her fast asleep Husband until well past midnight.

"It must just be from having the party for Rodrego tonight," Valerie theorized, unable to keep herself from thinking back to her own Son and Daughter's 18th birthday and how quickly they had grown up.

"Reminds me of how good it is to have that youthful energy in the house..honestly..I don't know what I'll do when Rodrego's gone in a few months...we'll be right back where we started," she thought to herself, allowing her mind to wander as Nolan snored beside her.

"This isn't getting anything done," Valerie finally decided, fighting off insomnia for another ten minutes until giving up.

"There's a load or two of dirty clothes downstairs I can get to...get a head start on the wash tomorrow..besides.. I can catch up on that paperback I've been reading..that usually helps me get to sleep," Valerie hummed to herself, pulling her body gently out from under the covers and slipping on her housecoat before making the silent trek from her bedroom, past Rodrego's closed bedroom door and down the basement stairs to the laundry space.

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Tucked safely away in the refuge of her basement laundry room, Valerie paced through the cluttered space as the relaxing hum of the washing machine soothed her nerves. Purposefully keeping the stressful thoughts of loan payments, interest rates and weak profit margins at bay, Valerie tried to concentrate on more pleasant things.