The Handyman Ch. 05: 1849

Unable to speak, John turned and walked out of the tavern.

But John wasn't only a man of high morals; he also was a man of determination. Within three weeks, he was spending nearly his full time at the tavern, which already had been renamed Dungan's. The Semples had been dismissed, as had been all of the loose-looking women and men he'd seen there on his first visit. While he was looking for trustful and competent barmen, he was tending the bar himself.

He actually was enjoying getting back in touch with the world of liquor and had already arranged a cut-rate price with his own family's distillery, which brought an Irish liquor to Shernhaven that the hedonist town he was slowly becoming fully aware of lapped up like milk. Business had slacked off by the redirection of it, but it was still good—all because of the popularity of the Blaguere brand of whiskey.

With Mary's permission, he engaged the local Geer construction company to completely redo the tavern, which was a hodge-podge of ancient, shoddy construction and haphazard add-ons. The main structure was two stories, but it had expanded to the side lot, where there were two other stories composed of a warren of small rooms, the function of which had been made shockingly and quickly apparent to John on his first visit to the tavern.

He had the side building torn down, and he sold the lot at a profit, which helped keep Mary quiet against the many private complaints she received about the changes at the tavern. Being the good businesswoman she was, she merely provided another building on the other side of Shern Park, on Semple street—fittingly enough—for the Semples to set up another enterprise, to Mary's profit, privately reported by Silas Cole, to replace the Landho tavern. She permitted this one to be named Henry's, as Henry Semple was the best advertisement for what could be found there.

John had the upstairs of the newly renovated tavern building turned into an apartment for himself for the many nights he would have to stay there because of his duties at the tavern. He didn't begrudge being away from home frequently at night—in fact, it somewhat relieved him. Of course to satisfy Mary to this new arrangement, he had to be extra dutiful when he slept at the Geer mansion on the Upper Head. As Mary gave birth twice subsequently, to healthy male babies, the arrangement obviously satisfied her enough too.

The one loose end John left—and shouldn't have—was what he had intended to do about his stepson, Garen Fischer. It was a very delicate matter, because Mary doted on her children from her first husband, and John knew he had to walk softly in the world of an established family he had entered. Garen was of age. There was little John could do about the behavior he had seen no matter how disgusted it made him. The problem was so sticky, though, and so unsure was John on how to approach it with Garen—and so busy did he become with reestablishing the tavern as a respectable business—that he eventually let the matter slip his mind.

This was probably a mistake—at least in not having corrected the impression Garen Fischer had gotten by seeing his stepfather enter the tavern and then go upstairs—and, to Garen's knowledge, since he was otherwise occupied, not seeing John quickly come back down the stairs. Garen knew what happened up those stairs. And even though John Dungan was making sweeping changes at the tavern, Garen had no knowledge that John didn't know of the opening of Henry's as a Geer business, and he had no reason to think that John's personal interests were different from what Garen had surmised. In looking in John's glazed eyes that afternoon, Garen had seen what he interpreted as interest rather than shock.

Thus, on one dark night, when John had had such a heavy work day that he could barely climb the stairs to his rooms above the tavern, not to mention the bluff to the Geer mansion on Upper Head, John stripped, doused himself with water from the pitcher on the bureau, toweled himself off, and stretched out on the bed to sleep the sleep of the dead.

So exhausted and deep in sleep was he that the weight of another body coming down on his bed didn't awaken him. Neither did the gliding of a hand over his body or lips on his chest and on his belly and covering his engorging cock. John dreamt of Mary, who, when encountered in the darkness of night was an experienced and inventive lover.

It was long after his cock had been encased by the welcoming, moist warmth of a tight channel and he had encircled his lover with his arms and set his pelvis in motion to meet the rhythm of the hips plastered to him—in fact, at the moment of ejaculation—when he woke up to find . . . that he had fucked his stepson.