Shannon's Offer

This story is a work of, hopefully, humorous fiction. Any similarities to persons living or dead are purely coincidental. Any products or organizations that appear do so in a fictional manner, too.

Thanks for reading. Any feedback will be greatly appreciated.

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When I took a new job in the suburbs of a major southeastern city some years ago, my wife and I looked for a home on a quiet street where we could raise our then pre-teen children. It was spring when we were in the housing market, with plans to relocate from our old home in Iowa right after the school year ended to allow our son and daughter plenty of time to adjust to their new surroundings. My wife knew exactly what she wanted in our new home, giving the realtor a pretty comprehensive list in advance so she could have some suitable candidates selected for our viewing.

When we got to her office, Mrs. Carstairs, the realtor we'd selected based on a recommendation from my new boss, pulled my wife's list out of her file and said, "You have excellent taste, Mrs. Jones. I've chosen eight homes for starters that meet almost everything you have listed and that are within your preferred budget. I really think we'll be able to fix you right up with this."

She turned to me and asked, "And what about you, Mr. Jones? Do you have anything to add?"

"It's all on Shannon's list. The only thing I'd really like is to be within ten or fifteen minutes of my new office. The address is on the application form."

She glanced at the address, looked up at our preferred price range, and then raised an eyebrow and looked at me over her glasses. While she normally spoke in a rather refined manner, she was about as southern as they come so when she said, "Right," stretching it out to practically three syllables and seemly topping it with a big pat of butter.

She focused on my wife as we were leaving. "Now, honey, this first one..."

The first one sucked, and the second wasn't much better. Personally I think Mrs. Carstairs staged it that way since she wanted to make us think we were making progress as the day went along. I later discovered that they'd been on the market the longest of those she planned to show us, so she was probably trying to drive up interest in them, too.

"Now this next one is a real gem," she said as she turned into a subdivision with a nice, landscaped entry sign. That raised my hopes after the first two dogs, but, considering she'd also complimented the others in different terms, not too much.

She stopped in front of a lovely, two-story brick home with a daylight basement in back. "This one just went on the market yesterday. It's backed up against the wooded part of a city park, so you won't have any neighbors staring back at you in your bedroom window." I swear I think she winked at Shannon when she said it.

That was an excellent drawing point, but it was the lot itself rather than the house that really drew my attention. It was covered with a numerous towering oaks, a number of large maples, a few hickory trees, one black walnut tree, and several sweet gums that I could have done without. There were a few smaller types I didn't recognize, but there weren't any of the pines we'd been warned to avoid.

I was surprised to find myself nodding in agreement when Mrs. Carstairs said, "With all of the trees, you can see it's quite shady and in the summertime in the South, that can do wonders for one's attitude. Note the grass in the yard isn't bermuda like in most homes around here, either. Bermuda's a sun-loving grass, so this yard has Zoysia, which does really well in the shade. It's a nice, soft grass, too. You can run around barefoot on it in the shade and be the envy of all your neighbors!"

Thinking about what the lady said, I recalled visits to my grandparents' home in northern Alabama when I was a kid. I loved visiting Grandma and Grandpa, but their house, an old plantation home, didn't have air conditioning until I was in high school. Before that, it had fans and shade trees that kept us reasonably cool, even in the heat of summer when we always visited. Between that and cold glasses of Grandma's sweet tea, my brother, my sister, and I always enjoyed our visits while Mom and Dad went on what we were to later learn was their so-called "annual adult sanity vacation."

Inside the house, my wife loved it even more than I like the lot. She was getting exactly what she wanted, even if it was twice as far from my new office as I'd hoped. After a short discussion, we put in an offer that was accepted and early that summer we moved into our beautiful new home surrounded by trees. We packed the kids off to my parents for a week so we could enjoy our own adult sanity vacation.

We used our few days to unpack as many boxes as possible and, sometimes between boxes, to appropriately "christen" every room in the house. Some rooms got the treatment several times. However, I think my favorite memory of the week was one night as we were getting ready for bed. We turned off the light, raised the shades, and had a pile-driving, doggy-style session with Shannon looking out the back window over the forest in our back yard and beyond while gripping the window sill for dear life. It was our third or fourth time of that particular day so I had to really work long and hard for it. Shannon later told me it was one of the best sessions of her life, though she was a bit afraid I was slamming her so hard that she was going to go sailing out the window.

*****

One doesn't give it much thought in late April when we first saw our new home or even in early June when we moved in, but when autumn arrives in the south, one who lives on a tree-covered lot quickly learns why autumn is called fall. Suddenly, I had a new, practically full-time job during the evenings and on weekends: gathering up leaves.

Leaves in the south start to change colors sometime in mid-October and start coming down with a vengeance in late October or early November. Leaves don't do nice things to Zoysia grass if they're left there for any significant period, so they have to be gathered up regularly. Another problem is that leaves aren't very cooperative. Instead of falling off in short order like they did off the few trees we had in our yard in Iowa, leaves in the south seem to compete to see which can cling to the branch the longest. Therefore, gathering up leaves becomes a long-term challenge that often lasts into February or even March.

While most of my neighbors with few trees had it relatively easy, my life became a living hell. I raked and raked and raked. I bought rakes for the children; they raked, too, but generally not all that effectively. Then, they'd jump in their piles and scatter them around almost as bad as it had been before they started.

Shannon, never exactly one to enjoy yard chores other than working with her flowers, would sometimes bring a lawn chair out to watch and laugh while we fought our non-stop battle with the leaves, but she would usually look at her watch and say, "Kids, the cookies are ready. Come on inside!" She'd take the kids inside for cookies and milk while I'd stay out to clean up the mess they'd made and continue the fight against the colorful interlopers alone. That got a little better in later years as they got older and the financial incentives offered by the Jones family management got better.

When one has leaves, one quickly learns that the leaves themselves aren't the only enemy. They appear to have some sort of unholy alliance with that bane of suburbanites everywhere, the Homeowners' Association. We were barely two weeks into Deluge Season when I received the first warning from our neighborhood's HOA.

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Jones:

It has come to our attention that there are leaves on your lawn. According to the covenants of our association, leaves must be removed promptly...

Miss Arabella Bustamonte, the lady in charge of our HOA (who was commonly known as Miz Airhead Busybody or even more colorful monikers by her subjects), didn't seem to understand that the leaves can be collected one minute and be replaced by the next batch falling five minutes later. I sent in a dutiful response, explaining the situation, but still received several more letters on our repeated violations as fall turned to winter and winter crept toward spring. Each was answered in turn, though each response was shorter and more curt than the one before. I don't remember the exact wording but the last one was something like

Miz Bitchybody,

I've sent off 115 bags of leaves so far this fall and those bastards are still falling. I deal with them as soon as possible when they fall. If you want to help, instead of wasting all that hot air sending me your airheaded and seemingly incessant violation notices, why don't you come huff and puff and blow the rest off the trees. If not, go blow yourself.

Of course, Shannon shook her head sadly and made me rewrite it before it went in the envelope.

The leaves' other evil ally is local governments that regulate the hauling and disposal of yard waste. Unfortunately, we have one of those. Our suburb is one of those little cities that ring the metropolis. They provide trash and yard waste services for a monthly fee, but they're very strict on how much they will collect. If you exceed their guidelines, they don't pick up the excess. If one tries to exceed their guidelines too many times, they don't pick up the excess

and

they hit the errant homeowner with a fine. Therefore, some people with king-size leaf problems are forced to bring in outside assistance for large additional fees or go the composting route.

Since we didn't have the money for outside help, we went the composting route. Composting is good for the environment and for the yard, so I established a heap soon after the first bags were collected. Unfortunately, our little city decided to establish a composting center. Wanting to maximize the profit for their operation, our city council passed a new protective ordnance limiting the size and number of compost heaps allowed on residential properties. By doing so, they forced most homeowners to send the majority of their leaves to the city's composting center. The problem is that they are also in charge of the yard waste collection service, so, as I mentioned earlier, they set those strict limits on the number of bags that could be collected each pickup. Shannon and I were limited to a maximum of twelve bags each week.

Therefore, I quickly learned to maximize the number of leaves I could get in a bag and before too long I got pretty good at estimating how many leaves I could fit in a bag. It took a while but I eventually discovered that I could get yard waste bags somewhat cheaper in quantity at the wholesale club and the cashier wouldn't look at me like I was crazy for purchasing so many at once.

That first season of leaf hell continued until the last leaf fell and was collected and I had the next nine months to plan my campaign for the next fall and winter.

*****

When that next fall arrived, I was ready. The Zwirco Industries 1000 Leaf Boss was mounted on my back, earplugs were in, and electronic noise cancelling headphones were on my ears. With a big gas engine, the Boss could blow leaves like crazy and made the collection process somewhat easier, but it sounded like a turboprop plane engine and the little buggers still had to be bagged. I spent a lot of time bagging.

Halfway through the season, I stopped in at the local big box home supply store and bought the Zwirco 1201 Leaf Vac to make bagging easier. It sounded like a herd of about a thousand munching brontosauruses (okay, Apatosauruses for any of you dinosaur purists) and it seemed to shit finely ground leaves out the back into the bags almost as effectively as the ancient herd. However, while I loved the Boss, the Vac didn't live up to its promise, breaking just after its warranty expired the next season. I purchased the 1202 model when the first one broke, but the next year, it broke just like the first. I didn't bother replacing that one.

When the Boss finally blew its finale after five seasons, I went with the walk-behind Zwirco 2001 Leaf Annihilator. Based on the experiences with the Vac a few years earlier, I never got the optional vacuum feature on it.

With the right equipment, my annual battle with my small but numerous antagonists and Miz Bitchybody continued unabated.

*****

It was about the tenth or eleventh leaf season we'd been in the home. Both of the kids were now in college and my college football team was attempting to set a new record for loses in a season, so my focus was on getting my equipment ready to deal with the little bastards. The self-propelled Zwirco Model 3003 Leaf Obliterator, opening its first season on Team Jones, was ready, though, once again, I'd skipped the optional vacuum and mulch feature. Shannon said bagging was good exercise for me, too.

It was early November and abnormally hot. The leaves had finally started to fall, so on Saturday afternoon, I used the remote control to steer the Obliterator under battery power out of the storage shed to its starting position out along the road. We hadn't even made it out there when I discovered how hot it really was. A quick check of the weather app on my new cell phone revealed it was 84 degrees with a high of 87 expected. At least I'd be working in some shade in a little while.

With my faceplate and ear protection in place and wearing blue jeans, long sleeves, and cotton gloves to protect my skin, I hit the electronic ignition on the Obliterator. The roar was almost as loud as a jet engine, even with the hearing protection. Despite the hydraulic shock absorbers on the machine, the ground practically shook, making me think of the Hitachi vibrator I'd gotten for Shannon a few years earlier. I was practically tingling as I waved off a few concerned neighbors who'd come out of their homes to make sure World War III hadn't just broken out on our street. Satisfied, everyone went back inside to continue watching the rare, regular season matchup between Bama and the Dawgs. With everything set, I engaged the blower.

While I'd thought it was loud before, now it was ridiculous. There are jet fighters on afterburner that aren't as noisy. More neighbors came running back out to check what was happening, but quickly ran back inside. I think something exciting happened in the game so our usually quiet street was deserted once more.

Still, it wasn't the noise that was concerning me right then. The Obliterator has a wide chassis and I quickly saw why. With the blower fan on maximum, the poor device appeared to be practically straining to keep it from blowing itself over and tumbling away. I quickly lowered the level to prevent that from happening and to gain better control of the blowing operation while also reducing its infernal noise. In the little area where I'd started, the leaves had blown all the way across the yard against the shrubs, with some flying over into the windows themselves. If i'd been just a little closer, an acorn caught in the Obliterator's fury would probably have broken a window!

One round around the yard with judicious use of the Obliterator's finely tuned blower and I had a mountain of leaves collected in the middle of the front island.

"You'll do, Obliterator. You'll definitely do," I told the machine as I gave it a love pat and lowered it to an idle before killing the engine.

With my ZI 42-tine leaf rake and my collection of bags in hand, I attacked that mound, essentially shoving those bastards in the yard waste bag. I'd just finished the first bag when Shannon came out.

Shannon is a gorgeous woman, 5'-6", green-eyed, and athletic, with a body to die for. She's a near perfect 36-24-36, and runs and exercises regularly to stay that way. As a fourth generation Irish-American with cousins still in the Olde Country, she's an honest-to-God redhead, too (she always leaves a little strip to prove it when she waxes). With the sun and afternoon heat, she was walking barefoot on the Zoysia, wearing Soffe shorts, an athletic tank top, and a sun visor. In her hands were her gardening mat and bucket of gardening tools.

"Chris, are you done with that monstrosity?" she called before venturing beyond the the corner of the garage. "I thought the house was falling down!"

I nodded and she practically skipped forward to me, craning her neck to give me access to peck her lips but little more. Even with that, I detected a taste of beer, which I confirmed seconds later when I saw the open bottle of Blue Moon in her gardening bucket.

She went over and looked at her patch of fall flowers and then frowned at me. "It's a wonder that beast didn't pull them up by the roots and toss them over the house into the back yard."

"Hey! I saw them," I said, "and I used Zwirco's 'trademarked precision blower control' to work around them with no damage at all."

She laughed, since my indulgence in high-end leaf equipment was a frequent source of teasing from both sides. Shannon put down her mat next to the flower bed and started working.

I'd filled up a couple of bags before I peeked over to check on her progress. She was on her on her hands and knees working with her flowers. What surprised me, though, was that her head was facing directly toward me and gravity was putting on a show.

Her beautiful breasts were hanging down together, creating some impressive cleavage. She always wears an athletic bra when dressed like this to hold everything safe and securely in place, so I was quite surprised at its relative ineffectiveness until I realized with some judicious observation that, instead of the usual bra, she was wearing my favorite of her string bikinis. It's light blue overall but it actually fades from white to light blue to darker blue as one ventures from the top to the bottom of the triangles and from the waistline to heaven on the bikini bottom. It was a tiny little thing, purchased for the hot tub on an adult sanity trip to a cabin in the mountains, and it didn't cover all that much under ideal conditions.

My understanding is that string bikini tops are designed to provide a bit of cover while holding things up that nature is trying to pull down while also exciting the menfolk. Such bikinis generally work fairly well when the wearer is standing up, even for women with larger attributes. Depending on the size of the breasts they're trying to cover, they work somewhat well when the woman is on her back. They often become less effective when the woman turns over on her stomach, and don't do a thing other than excite the guys when the woman's on her hands and knees or when she's hanging upside down on a tree limb or trapeze-type bar. Don't ask me how I know that last one.

Now Shannon's breasts are high and pert for a woman in her mid-forties, but when she got down on her hands and knees, her boobs shifted a bit higher, relatively speaking, than normal, and were sticking out like those incredible bullet bras women in Hollywood wore in the 1950s. With this movement and those tiny triangles, well, let's just say that a bit of shifting occurred inside her shirt even as another shift started taking place in my pants. Maybe I was dreaming but I swear I saw the tops of her areolas and then one of her nipples slipped free of the bikini, just below the edge of the neckline of her shirt. I was greatly enjoying the show as she swayed a bit to pull weeds or aerate and my penis was getting harder by the second. It was all I could do to look away and appear to be doing something important when she glanced up to check my progress.

I leaned down with my rake to scoop up a batch of leaves but discovered that it's not exactly easy to do when one's penis is fully erect and one's jeans are a tad too tight. Still, with a bit of a turn and some bend to my legs, I gathered up a few leaves and kept Shannon, and hopefully any neighbors coming out for a break from the game, from seeing the bulge in my pants. Knowing what would happen if I looked back in her direction, I was careful to avoid looking her way for a while, allowing things to cool off a bit down under even as the afternoon heat continued to build. By now, I was sweating for more than one reason.