Working Class Hero

"A working class hero is something to be ...
...If you want to be a hero, well just follow me."
John Lennon

^ ^ ^ ^

Johnny McMullen stared at the piece of paper in his hands, and felt a cold sweat break out all over his body, despite the unseasonably warm late-winter day.

It had come out of a sealed envelope with his name on it that had been placed under the windshield wiper of his pickup truck, which had been parked in the lot at the foundry where he worked as a master machinist.

As he read it, he could feel his whole world spinning out of control, and he had to squeeze his eyes shut for a moment to gain some equilibrium.

The message had consisted of two sentences, set in fairly large type in some commonly-used font. It read:

"Your wife is getting awfully chummy with one of the attorneys at her work. Don't think anything has happened yet, but it's headed that way fast unless you act NOW."

That was it. No salutation nor end line, and nothing on the envelope, either, except his name. Just the damning message, toxic as it was.

Johnny's first inclination was to wad the message up and forget it. The thought that Patricia would cheat on him was preposterous -- or it would have been up until a few weeks earlier.

But the message crystallized some niggling little things that had -- up to that point -- been bubbling under the surface of his consciousness, nothing he could really point to that would indicate his wife was considering stepping out on their marriage, but there nonetheless.

Now, suddenly, everything had been brought into focus, and he had to consider, for the first time, the possibility of a life without Patricia.

As much as it would hurt -- and it would hurt a lot -- he knew that if Patricia had an adulterous affair, it would mean the end of their marriage.

Johnny was certain he could forgive her if she cheated on him. After all, forgiveness was the Christian thing to do, and he had always tried to live his live as closely as he could to Christian values.

But he would never be able to forget it, and the level of disrespect and disloyalty such an act would show wasn't something he could live with. He knew it would eat him up from the inside out and poison everything in his life. Respect and loyalty were two of the most important things in Johnny's life, and he simply couldn't stay married to someone who wasn't loyal or respectful to him.

In spite of that, he could feel his eyes misting because the thought of losing Patricia was almost more than he could bear.

He'd first met Patricia Simmons in high school, and they'd been attracted to each other from the first. But it wasn't until a year or so after they'd met that they finally started dating, and they had quickly become an item.

They were actually a fairly mismatched couple, but that just proves that opposites attract. Patricia was a tall girl, almost 5-foot-10, and well-built, while Johnny was a shade under 5-foot-9. He had sandy blond hair with brown eyes; she had dark hair with blue eyes and a dazzling smile.

She was the oldest of three daughters born to a banker, and had grown up in fairly affluent surroundings, while he was the son of a machinist and a stay-at-home mom who earned extra income for the family as a professional seamstress.

The difference between Johnny's upbringing and Patricia's background would provide the only real conflict in what everyone said was a love that was meant to be.

He could still remember their first sexual encounter, and he smiled even in his pain. It had been a Saturday in early spring, after they had been dating about a year, the first really nice day of the year.

His baseball team had played a scrimmage game that afternoon, since the start of the season was just a week or so away, and they were driving home, sitting close. Real close.

Johnny was driving the old Ford pickup his dad had helped him buy. He'd put a good cassette tape player and a couple of fine speakers in it, kept the engine in tip-top condition and -- voila! -- he had a ride that he could take Patricia out in.

They'd ended up at the Little League park just as dusk was descending. They parked in a fairly secluded corner of the park and started necking furiously.

Johnny and Patricia had been exploring each other's lush bodies with their hands for a couple of months now, as their relationship had deepened.

Johnny's hands cupped Patricia's plump breasts, and her hands had found the throbbing lump in the shorts he'd put on after getting out of his uniform pants. Their lips were in hyperdrive and their tongues were slashing at each other like swordsmen as their passion climbed ever higher.

Suddenly, Patricia's hand slid under the waistband of Johnny's shorts and came into direct contact with his hard meat.

"Oh my," Patricia said, with mock alarm. "What have we here?"

"Don't start something there you can't finish," Johnny said with a husky voice.

"Do I turn you on?" Patricia whispered as she began to jack his cock softly in his pants. "Why don't you show me?"

"Only if you show me yours," Johnny said with a grin.

Patricia gave it a moment's thought, then quickly shimmied her tight shorts off her legs, followed by her cotton panties. Seconds later, Patricia had Johnny's shorts pooled around his ankles, his hard cock waving in the air.

Johnny's hands gravitated immediately to the junction of Patricia's legs to the wet valley of her hot pussy. He'd had a couple of girlfriends before Patricia, so he wasn't unacquainted with the female anatomy, and he began to roll her hard little clit, then slid two fingers in her juicy pie.

Patricia, on the other hand, had never seen a live cock before, but she'd talked with her girlfriends and read enough to know a little about them. Johnny's cock was a little larger than average, though nothing unusual, and she quickly got into a rhythm.

She quickly figured out that the clear fluid bubbling out of the tip of his dick was natural lubricant, and she deftly smeared the stuff all over the head of his cock. She loved the way it twitched in her hand, and she really loved the way Johnny's fingers were delving into her increasingly-horny pussy.

"Oh God, baby, I want you so bad," Johnny said as he built up a froth between his girl's legs.

"I want you too, my love," Patricia said. "But we'd better not. I don't want to get pregnant -- at least not right now. Soon. I promise."

"You need to finish this," Johnny said with a gasp. "Do you have any hand lotion?"

Patricia quickly fished in her purse and found a tube of lotion. She squeezed out a generous dollop onto Johnny's dick and began to massage the cream up and down the shaft. Meanwhile, Johnny returned his attention to Patricia' puss, working his hand in a frenzy as the urge to come built rapidly to a head.

"Look out, here ... it comes!" he shouted seconds before spewing a fountain of cum into the air that splattered on his abdomen and all over Patricia's hands.

Her eyes were wide in surprise, and no small amount of delight, at the display of orgasm her boyfriend had put on, and that -- along with the work of Johnny's fingers in her cunt -- gave her the first climax she'd ever had that she hadn't given herself.

She shuddered as the intense feelings washed through her body, and she felt almost giddy at what they'd just experienced.

Johnny just slumped back in the seat, sated and satisfied. He respected Patricia's desire not to get pregnant, and if she'd do what she'd just done on a regular basis, she wouldn't have to worry so much about a baby.

"We'd better get dressed, before the cops show up," Johnny said, and his timing was impeccable, because they had no more gotten cleaned up and put their pants back on when a police cruiser rolled into the park

The cop had stopped them just to check them out, but let them off with a warning to be careful.

It didn't take Johnny long after that to start stocking up on condoms, nor did it take Patricia any time to find a discrete family friend who helped her get on contraceptives.

^ ^ ^ ^

Johnny was not the least bit apologetic about growing up in a working-class environment. He was proud of his father and had eagerly followed him into the foundry after he'd graduated from junior college.

John and Eva -- Johnny's parents -- had raised three kids in a small but lively home in a working-class neighborhood of small houses. Johnny had an older sister and a younger brother.

The couple actually had had four children, but a daughter they'd had 18 months after Johnny's birth had been born with underdeveloped lungs and had only lived two days.

John and Eva never forgot their little girl and made sure their other kids didn't either. It made them appreciate what they had, and how quickly it can be taken away, and that's a lesson Johnny and his siblings learned and took to heart.

Johnny's little brother had been the golden boy of the family. Danny was off-the-charts intelligent, graduated with highest honors in high school, had gone to college and become the first of the family to earn a degree from a four-year university, then had gone to work for a chemical company for which he was now head of research.

Although he envied his brother to a degree, Johnny had never begrudged Danny's success. He was proud of his brother, and Danny always said he looked up to Johnny.

Johnny, in fact, was no dummy, but he'd never really liked school work, preferring to work with his hands. His passion as a kid was baseball, and he'd been good enough to start at shortstop for his high school as a junior and senior, and then went on to play two years of junior college ball.

He knew that was as far as he would go in baseball and in college. He was a very good fielder and not a bad hitter, but he was realistic enough to know he didn't quite have what it took to make it at a four-year college, on the field or in the classroom.

Besides, he'd always known what he wanted to do with his life, and that was to follow his father and fix machines. So he'd focused on tech courses -- plus a few academic subjects that interested him -- during his two years of college.

By the time he finished junior college, he was 20-years-old, ready to marry the love of his life and go to work.

In the years since, Johnny had moved up to become one of the foundry's master machinists, and he'd also gotten deeply involved in the union. Just a few months earlier, he'd enjoyed one of the proudest moments of his life when he was elected president of the local, after serving in several official capacities over the years.

That was one reason he'd never taken the company up on its offers to move into a management position. He believed in the union and felt like moving into management would be a sign of disloyalty to the guys in the ranks.

And, too, he still loved getting his hands dirty on a piece of machinery, taking it apart and figuring out what was wrong with it, or just doing the routine work that kept things running.

Patricia hadn't been entirely pleased that he'd turned down efforts to move up in the company, but she understood that was what made him happy. Or at least she'd always said that.

After marrying at age 21, they had waited five years before having their daughter, Brittany, then three years later their son Daniel had come along.

Fairly early in their marriage they had found a house in one of the outlying areas of the city and they had bought it. It was small, probably no more than 1,000 square feet, but it sat on a lot that was slightly over an acre and backed onto some woods. Johnny loved traipsing through those woods when he needed some solitude.

Johnny was a frugal man who believed in staying out of debt as much as possible, and they were getting closer and closer to paying off the mortgage, although they still had a couple of years left on the note.

He and Patricia had passed age 40 the previous year and were approaching their 20th anniversary. At the time, they'd seemed more in love that ever, but now it appeared that dark clouds were building that could threaten their happiness.

It was with all of this in mind that Johnny folded the letter, replaced it in the envelope and headed for home. Later that night, he'd have a couple of phone calls to make, but for the time being he had to act normally -- if that was possible.

^ ^ ^ ^

Patricia McMullen sat at the table that took up half of the den area of their small house and stared out the window. She knew she should be getting dinner together, but she couldn't motivate herself to get it going, and she'd about decided they'd just go out for pizza.

She knew at a subconscious level that the thoughts and fantasies she'd been harboring lately were wrong, but she couldn't help herself.

She looked around the house at the way everything was stacked up all over the place, and she dreamed of a bigger house. Her home was neat and well-kept, but it was small, and with two adults, a 14-year-old daughter and an 11-year-old son, the family was all but on top of each other.

Johnny had promised her that they might consider looking at something new, when the weather turned warmer, but thus far nothing had been said or done.

Patricia longed for the kind of house she'd grown up in, a nice big two-story house with lots of room. She'd adapted to living in a small house, but she'd never quite gotten used to it.

Moreover, she missed having the ability to buy whatever she wanted when she wanted. She knew it was selfish to think that way, but again she couldn't help it. Although they each made decent money at their jobs, it was still a battle every month to stay ahead of the bills and sock money back for savings.

Her folks had warned her when she agreed to marry Johnny what she could expect, but she'd been crazy in love and didn't listen. And, as time passed, the Simmons had warmed to Johnny, to the point where they now considered him the son they'd never had, more so than their other two sons-in-law, both of whom were rather humorless businessmen.

Johnny, on the other hand, was always full of stories, full of laughter, and he was always stopping by his in-laws to fix this or repair that. He knew they hadn't entirely approved of their daughter's marriage to him, so he'd always gone out of his way to ingratiate himself to them.

Patricia worked as a legal secretary for the law firm of Bradberry, Bradberry and Wilson, which had been founded by Richard Bradberry many years ago. Mr. Bradberry had died suddenly just a few months before, and the firm had passed to the control of his son, Randall.

Randall was well-liked around the office, as his father had been, but it had still been a difficult adjustment without Richard Bradberry's firm hand. Randall was still feeling his way around the power that came with control of the firm, and that had been a boon to the newest member of the firm, William Broadacres.

William had come to the firm about a year earlier after several years as a legal sharpie in Washington, D.C. He'd come highly recommended, and he'd already made something of a splash in local circles. He was rich -- both on his own accord and from family money -- tall and handsome. And aggressive.

He had immediately cast covetous eyes on the pretty brunette secretary, and had made a decision to take her for himself. It was something he'd done wherever he went. He had a way of finding a woman's vulnerabilities and taking advantage of them.

He'd sized up Patricia McMullen as someone who was dissatisfied with the life she'd fallen into as a working-class wife and mother, and used that to drive a small wedge between her and her husband.

And what of the husband? He'd met Johnny McMullen once, at Richard Bradberry's wake, and while he admitted that the man was good-looking, he didn't think a mere factory worker could stand up to him, his money, his position and his charms.

Patricia mentally castigated herself as a warm flash rushed through her at the thought of William. She was a happily-married woman, she told herself, with a man most women would kill for. Johnny was handsome, strong, pleasant to be around, a hard worker and she had never loved anyone else, never come close.

But curiosity is a funny thing, and she'd never had sex with any other man besides her husband -- never come close.

And William was definitely easy on the eyes, and he was definitely interested in her. She felt a connection with him she'd never had with another man besides Johnny, and it had her utterly confused.

He'd taken her to lunch a few times, and when he looked at her and listened to her, she felt like she was in confession, with a priest who looked like some movie star.

She had admitted her dissatisfaction with her life, something she'd never done with anyone before, and William had been sympathetic, telling her she deserved the kind of life she'd enjoyed in her youth, one of privilege, and hinting that he could provide her that kind of life.

Just the previous week, things had taken a decided turn.

She had surprised her co-workers be agreeing to go with them on their weekly Friday night girls' night out, and they had gone to a dance club, and who should be there, alone, but William Broadacres.

The girls had invited him to their table, where he turned on his charm for all of them, but especially for Patricia. She was the one he danced all the slow dances with, and a lot of the faster ones as well.

There had definitely been some underlying sexual tension between them, and a couple of the other secretaries exchanged knowing looks as they watched the two of them together.

And now he had invited her to dinner, just the two of them. Patricia hadn't said yes, but she hadn't said no, either.

Johnny would be working the swing shift the next week as the foundry went through a turnaround, so she'd have the opportunity. But could she go through with it? If she did, she'd have to do it behind his back, and that was wrong, she knew it.

However, it would only be dinner and conversation between friends, right? Nothing was going to happen, right?

It was in that state of mental and emotional turmoil that she heard Johnny's truck pull in, and she banished all the bad thoughts she'd been having. She plastered a smile on her face and stood up to greet her husband at the kitchen door.

^ ^ ^ ^

Dinner at the pizza place had been unusually subdued. Patricia had been detached and Johnny had been distracted, and even the kids noticed that their parents weren't as demonstrative as they usually were.

Johnny was trying to put his thoughts in order, to line up the clues that told him Patricia might be on the verge of a very bad decision.

For one, Patricia was moody. He could have attributed that to the onset of menopause, but he thought she was still a little young for that.

But there was no denying that she was occasionally bitchy about things she'd accepted in years past. She was complaining more and more often about the house, how they didn't have any room, how they never went anywhere (which wasn't true, and she knew it).

For another, their sex life had become a little erratic. Until a few months earlier, they had kept to a pretty regular schedule, making love three or four times a week, with a special date once a month on a Saturday night.

Now, they might have sex five or six times a week, then go a week or more without. And during the times when they made love a lot, Patricia was frantic, almost desperate, like she was trying to use sex to shore up her feelings for Johnny.

Finally, there was the night out she'd had, "with the girls from the office," just the week before. Johnny wasn't much of a barfly, and certainly not to the kinds of dance clubs these girls frequented.

He might have a couple of beers at the tavern down the block from the union hall every so often, usually after a meeting, but that was all the social life Johnny wanted or needed. And Patricia had come home excited that night, almost giddy, and she had dragged him to bed and jumped his bones in a way she hadn't done in a long time.