Chapter 14 (v.1)
Three Dog Night
Jeremiah was a most venerable bullfrog. A wily and esteemed Catesbian greenback. The jagged white scar stretching diagonally down his back confirmed the over large specimen for who he was. Voy backed the gig away and after a moment of silent reverence, turned in search of other sources to satisfy Winnie. The shallow marshy bywater had proven a particularly fertile venue for which to hunt the current object of his very pregnant wife's gastronomic desires. Other Rana legs would have to grace the skillet, Voy decided, because he and the old frog had an understanding.
Two years before, the bullfrog had serendipitously leapt a path of intersection between Voy's bare leg and a pissed off copperhead. The angry snake launched a strike which would have likely caused irreparable, if not fatal, damage had the venomous fangs connected.
By sheer dumb luck, Jeremiah had somehow absorbed the bite and the venom instead. Voy managed to wield his machete and decapitate the writhing serpent but the huge frog had dropped and lain limp, quivering in certain death throes. The compassionate fisherman and river dweller had scooped the stricken amphibian up and placed him on a flat rock in a protected corner on the off chance that he didn't die. He had heard the lore about river frogs' resistance to poisonous excretions so dangerous to warm-blooded animals and thought to offer the critter a chance.
Months later, on a pre-dusk trout line run, the man happened upon the most humongous emerald bullfrog he had ever seen basking in the last tippling sunbeams of an Indian summer day on the exact rock he had left him that fortuitous morning. Though grown significantly larger, a jagged scar adorned his dorsum, proving to Voy that Nature did, indeed, work mysterious wonders. Human and bullfrog had communed together for a while over the shared incident from that time before. They exchanged formal introductions under the new, less volatile circumstances, and the name 'Jeremiah' had lived on. Subsequent crossed paths had validated their eccentric oddity and now the two carried on in their private understanding.
Jeremiah's legs would remain intact for the bullfrog's continued jumping pleasure...and needs. Who could say when serendipity might strike again?
Voy's knee-high heavy rubber boots, a hunting accoutrement since meeting the big frog, picked their way through the bog in the hunt for the complementary half of the salt-water taffy duo now preferred by his pretty young wife in the gestational journey to delivery of the couple's third child. His cut-off jeans rode up on slim hips and crotch as he stalked, putting inadvertent pressure on the baby delivery device that was a presently under-serviced organ.
The thick piece responded of its own volition and Voy accepted the pleasurable feeling of his phattening cohort without either much choice, or effort, at quelling the effect. The gooey pre-cum escaping and dribbling down his bare leg evidenced the man's unslaked need for attention. Advanced stages of pregnancy did little to spawn amorous exploits, as Voy well knew. He was also aware that the big body part would receive some proper relief in the coming hours after he finished the present labor-of-love in the quest to satisfy his baby-mama's needs. Winnie's, as it were...
Torchy Lane, his sancha-in-chief, was returning to Rome today after an extended absence on a quest of her own at the international transgender talent competition in Berlin, Germany. She came victoriously back wearing the crown of first runner-up in the overall competition to show for her own efforts. Voy would be picking up the beauty queen at the Atlanta airport in a welcome home that would service multiple purposes. Not the least of which would be the highly anticipated multi-orgasmic emancipation in that newly crowned, un-impregnable bitch's Hershey Highway. The savoring of the thought served as succor to his and his nine-inch buddy's hormonal state of fervor...
A half dozen plump pairs of frog legs later found Voy traipsing the riverbank path toward the home he and Winnie had made almost eight years before. Come to think of it, he reflected, the same year that his big brother, Cal, had first brought Dr. Jake home with him. The two had arrived as a new couple, open and vulnerable, for his and Winifred's wedding. A ceremony officially denied the two soulmates. The fact that matching sets of external plumbing rooted the reasoning baffled the hunky man.
Voy pondered the irony as he entered the solid old brick house. The hunter now cleaned the catch and cranked on the slow-cooker already prepared with the stew-makings for his adored baby-mama's discriminating taste buds. Kissing the sleepy wife and children nesting together in the big poster bed, the tall man showered to shed the smelly grime in preparation for a short drive to Hartsfield International.
The boys had magnanimously celebrated the well-planned nuptials, he remembered, carried out in the First AME Church of Rome sanctuary. With nothing but joy in their hearts for Cal's little brother, the two had avoided asserting the elephant in the room which was their quite unignorable jungle fever gay relationship bursting the seams of small town America's volatile societal psyche... right there for the whole of Rome, Georgia, to see. And judge.
While the esteemed Broadhearst family had doubled down on their joy at recognizing two additions rather than one into their family, the social fabric of the community had openly wrestled with the divisive scenario. The boys had not purposely embroiled the community in a heated public debate then bubbling the nation's conscience, yet the arrival of the unusual up-and-coming couple for a marriage celebration denied to themselves had set off a cannon-shot of controversy still lingering to the present time. The patriarchal professor and his wife had opened their arms wide to both new couples; acceptance and consternation bookended their stance in demonstrable fashion.
Voy and Winnie had tied the proverbial knot and jumped the broom just as generations of young lovers had done before them. The Limerence-smitten gay couple had hailed the union in time-honored custom without any inkling of jealousy or chagrin, not wishing to diminish the beauty of the youngest Broadhearst son's Big Day. Winnie and Voy both got this. Nevertheless, the fact remained of this real-time personification begging the existential question under tumultuous debate throughout the social order. And being argued before judicial America. The ranges of response in Rome crisscrossed the local spectrum in parallel portrayal of the broader nation.
As he reminisced on the shock of the boys' wedding gift, Voy smiled at the memory of incredulous attendees' wide-eyed looks when the brand new Lincoln Navigator had pulled to the curb outside the church as the newlyweds exited the chapel. Bedecked in the silver and lavender wedding colors, tailgate open, the sound-system rang out Beyonce's 'Put a Ring on it' while Siri broadcast the South Beach Fontainebleau Hotel wedding suite as its initial destination. The plane tickets to Barbados and secluded wedding bungalow with all the trimmings, added by the doting parents, had fulfilled a dream honeymoon which Winnie still founded her conception of the perfect wedding model upon.
Still, the naysayers had created reasons to denigrate Cal and Jake as blights on proper society. Voy wondered at the sick bitterness abiding in those hearts as he drove toward the planned rendezvous. His mindset could not wrap around the cynical notion hallowed by such people. The very ones who professed and proclaimed their Christian devotion, yet stubbornly clung to a perceived right of denying sanctuary to those not adhering with their own narrow version of a much-translated holy book. The irony of the issue playing out in the world's citadel of secular freedom, so astutely devised by the Founders, did not elude the country man.
Thinking of his own situation, Voy thanked his lucky stars to have married such a worldly and loving woman as Winnie. A woman who not only accepted Torchy Lane but actually welcomed the benefits of her existence, even blessing the transgendered woman regarding her husband's libidinous needs. The girls realized they provided and derived different advantages in the relaxed arrangement. And, TL had been instrumental in attending to Winnie's necessities during this pregnancy in her capacity as a medical professional. The fact of no worries for extramarital side pregnancies merely added to the gravid woman's ease of mind. Yes, Voy counted himself as doubly blessed for such rare indulgence. As did his middle-leg cohort.
Reaching the international arrival gate, Voy lifted his mouth in a broad smile upon viewing the hubbub surrounding the deplaning corridor doorway. A sexily adorned Atlanta Falcon cheerleader was presently wowing passers-by and flight-greeters by her arrival... The dark-haired beauty waved red and gold pom-poms in time to the musical accompaniment broadcasting from the girl's speaker-app phone device. Her dance routine brought his dick to attention--- as intended, no doubt. Finishing with a back-flip flourish to a full leg split on the concourse, similarly affected male travelers applauded the foxy vixen, little suspecting that the woman working the crowd was his own Torchy Lane.
Ahhh, yes, ironies abounded, the black stud reflected, as he pulled the woman into his arms. Most present thought he was a Falcon team member by his size and athletic physique, so the scenario satisfied many persons' fantasies without a single qualm. The levity grasped solely by the reuniting lovers was a private hoot.
Just as they came up for a breath, a hand on Voy's shoulder pulled him around to the beaming visage of his big brother, Cal. Jake flashed a grin from a few feet away and the four greeted like long-lost war pals in the coincidental encounter. Cal and Jake had come to meet their best friends, Luke and Jeremy, in from the high country of Colorado for a week. The four bosom buddies, best men in each other's recent SSM highland ceremonies several months past, were consummating a pre-planned get together.
