Many thanks to BeautifulStorm for first editing and improving this story and to AdrienneL whose editing resulted in major changes that made it much better.
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Everyone liked Balek because he was polite, honest, friendly and modest.
He also had a great sense of humor, and nothing anyone said ever seemed to bother him -- except on one subject.
The exception was his wife, Hon, short for Honette. He was old-fashioned when it came to women. In his mind, God created them to civilize the brutes, men like himself. He considered most women superior in looks, brains, morals -- everything except brawn. And to him, Hon was the pinnacle of womanhood.
He put her on a pedestal. She could do no wrong. If pressed, he'd admit, grudgingly, she wasn't perfect, but only because nobody was perfect. She came as close as anyone could. He admired her. He worshipped her.
Early in their relationship, she had tried to stop his awe of her because it made her uncomfortable, but she got nowhere and finally decided to ignore it.
When they began having sex, however, she put her foot down. She told him she was attracted to him because he was a strong take-charge guy. If he wanted to be subservient in bed, he needed to find another woman to marry.
He agreed to what she wanted, but when she tested him, she found he still gave in to everything she wanted during sex and didn't think of his pleasure at all. When she called him on it, he protested that despite what it looked like, he was being selfish.
"I get off on getting you off" is how he explained it.
That didn't satisfy her. When she threatened to end the engagement, he tried harder to be the "sexy brute who ravishes me," as she put it. She told him later that if he had called her bluff, he would have won, because, by then, she loved him too much to give him up.
Both of them enjoyed sex, but she was the more imaginative of the two and created what she called the "situations." "Sexy brute" was the most frequent of them, but she liked variety, and came up with situations of all kinds. Some of them bordered on what he thought was kinky, but anyone else would have thought them barely naughty.
When they were playing out the situations, she was always upset when he didn't throw himself into his role the way she did. He tried to hide his amusement at what she thought up, but sometimes he couldn't control himself, and his smile broke through. That made her scold him for not taking the situation seriously, but she could never be angry at him for long.
The more elaborate her situation, the harder it was for him to keep a straight face and stay in character. Usually, the situation was just foreplay leading to sex, but sometimes it got elaborate and lasted days before the climax in bed.
Outside of sex, they argued like all couples, but even when he knew he was right, he usually deferred to her, because that's what a man does. Whenever she would find out later that she had been wrong and admitted it, he always told her it didn't matter.
Customers of his heavy equipment rental business and even his friends had no idea Balek had a college degree in history, because he was the salt of the earth. He didn't like college and just stuck it out for his parents. As soon as he graduated, he got a job in construction and began saving his money to achieve his goal of owning his own business.
It didn't take him long. His personality and ability to soak up information about anything that had a motor helped him quickly grow his small business into a large, profitable one.
He was often approached by would-be investors, who wanted him to expand regionally and even nationally, but he turned them down because he was happy with his life as it was.
Besides Hon, his life revolved around Pam, 12, and Jeremy, 11. His kids were high spirited and independent and sometimes got into trouble, but nothing serious. And, like Hon and Balek, they were always respectful to their elders.
Balek's feelings about Hon sometimes came out in a negative way whenever someone spoke about his wife in anything less than flattering terms. If it was a woman talking, he might bare his teeth or bite his tongue and try not to snarl as his nostrils flared like a bull about to charge.
If it was a man, Balek didn't hold back. Even if the slight to Hon was unintentional, he demanded an apology. Any man foolish enough to stand up to him was usually on the floor in short order. Even when Balek was outmatched and ended up getting the worst of it, the offender was so bloodied that he never made a remark about Hon again.
Such episodes were rare and usually occurred when Hon wasn't present. But he could also get into trouble when she was around, because where she was concerned, he was overly sensitive to anything that he thought would offend her.
Hon was so open, warm and ebullient that no one ever said anything mean to her face, but when they were in a group of people, someone, usually a man, might talk about something slightly off color or, even worse, use a word that Balek believed should never be spoken in polite company. Polite company to him was two or more people that included his wife.
At such times, his eyes blazed and he spoke a soft warning, something like, "Hey, watch it!" If the man ignored him, the second warning was an invitation to step outside should the man slip again.
Balek knew every double-meaning expression, dirty remark and obscene word in the English language, because he heard them often and used them himself. Never at home and never at work, but every Friday night at O'Blivion's Pub.
Balek, Jerry, Bill, Charley and Mel got into a virtual time machine on Fridays and took a trip back to their high school locker room in the days when they were on the football team. That's what it was like at O'Blivion's.
They enjoyed the beer, but what they really enjoyed was acting like untamed teenage animals again. There were no wives around to hear them talk about sports and sex -- mostly sex -- so they could say anything, no matter how outrageous.
They needled each other mercilessly, The biggest victim was Balek, because he would never take offense at anything, or almost anything. The others soon learned that if they ever mentioned Hon, it had better be in a positive, or at least neutral, context. Anything that Balek thought was even slightly insulting to her was off limits.
The other wives didn't get off that easy. When somebody's else's wife was brought into the discussion, she was savaged mercilessly by everyone except Balek. He immediately dropped out because he never disrespected a woman he knew.
He had no problem joining in if it was a woman none of them had seen since high school. Sexy actresses also qualified, along with any hot woman who wandered into O'Blivion's, either alone, on a date or with others. As long as long she didn't come too close or speak to any of them, she remained an object and was fair game.
Balek also clammed up when his friends started in on Raven. Raven was his assistant. An only child who grew up on a farm, she told him her father had treated her like a son until she reached puberty. She learned to operate all the farm machinery, and she could handle backhoes, huge dump trucks, cherry pickers and anything Balek rented better than he could.
Her background, resourcefulness and efficiency made her indispensable in the two-person operation. Another bonus was her husband, Gavin, who also grew up on a farm and had begun working on tractors before he was ten.
Gavin owned his own thriving repair business. He mostly worked on cars, but people came to him to fix anything with moving parts because he could work miracles. Though he didn't work for Balek, he was almost like a second employee, because he would drop nearly everything when Raven called him with an equipment problem.
When Balek hired Raven, Gavin sniffed around him suspiciously. Once he found out that Balek's view of women was similar to his, he did a one-eighty. He and Raven went out of their way to show their gratitude to Balek and Hon.
Balek told Hon that he thought Gavin and Raven loved them more than their children. Once it got to the point where Hon had to tell Raven that they had to back off because she and Balek could never repay them for what they had already done if it took a hundred years. Raven explained that it was mostly Gavin. He was so grateful that she was working for a decent man that he couldn't stop looking for ways to thank them.
Hon and Balek gathered that there had been problems with Raven's previous male employers because of the way she looked. She was like one of those sexy models on the diesel truck calendars. Her face was cute and country and full of freckles, but her body was full and voluptuous.
She wasn't ashamed to show some of it in the work clothes she wore. Because she had grown up around farm hands, she could swear up a storm as good as any man. Sometimes when she and a male customer were trying to outcuss each other, Balek had to leave the room. He could handle the language from a man, but hearing a woman say those words bothered him.
She would also flirt shamelessly and swap dirty jokes with male customers in front of him. It was all words and looks and never got as far as touching, but one day she was so outrageous that when the customer left, he called her into his office and asked her to sit down.
"I know you and Gavin attend Lambs of the Shepherd more often than Hon and I do," he said. "How can you be a good Christian and act like that?"
She laughed.
"It's easy. Jesus doesn't care what I say because he knows I love him completely in my heart, and I also love Gavin and would never hurt or dishonor him.
"I honor you, too, Balek, because you run an honest Christian operation. You are loyal to your customers and never cheat or cut corners, like a lot of your competition. But you don't understand that your business would only be half as big as it is right now if it wasn't for me.
"Your big accounts sometimes tell me what they've been offered by other companies to get their business. Some of the things are really disgusting -- not just kickbacks and vacations. I'm talking whores and drugs.
"Why do they keep coming here? It's mostly because they know you would never take advantage of them. But they also like to look at me and flirt. Sometimes a new customer doesn't understand the rules, so I have to warn him that he can't say anything about what we say to each other in this office because even though it's all in fun, if Gavin ever heard about him talking about me, his life wouldn't be worth much.
"I show them a picture of Gavin in his Special Forces uniform, the one that I love because it's too tight on him. That scares them, so I tell them to relax. I want them to have a good time whenever they come in to rent something, as long as the good time ends when they walk out the door. They soon get it, and they love coming here and recommending you to their friends."
"What does Gavin think about this?" Balek asked.
"We don't talk about it. I think he may suspect a little, but he would never bring it up. He's like you and Hon. You know she would never do anything to disrespect you, so you don't go looking for things to get upset about."
"It's still hard for me to see and hear you with customers and not worry about you and Gavin."
"I love you, Balek. Hon is so lucky. You and Gavin are one in a million, or maybe two in a million. Hey! I just thought of something. You have a lot of nerve warning me about the way I talk. I bet you do the same thing I do."
"I do?"
"Yeah. Hon told me about your Friday nights with the guys."
"That's different."
"No it isn't. Has Hon ever gone with you to O'Blivion's?"
"No way! Men only!"
"What do you talk about?"
"You know. What guys talk about."
"Tell me some of the things you and your friends talked about last Friday."
"Never. They're too disgusting for a woman to hear."
"See what I mean. Hon knows that you and your pals are acting like idiots at Oblivion's. You would be embarrassed if she heard you, but believe me, she doesn't care. She's happy that you're getting it out of your system. It's perfectly harmless."
Balek didn't say anything. Raven looked at him.
"What are you thinking? You look really uncomfortable. What is it? Don't look away. Oh, I get it!"
She began giggling and then broke into her full hearty laugh that was so contagious that no customer could ever resist laughing with her.
"It's me. You talk about me! You son of a bitch! I'm going to get you for this if it's the last thing I ever do."
She spoke these words a few at a time, because she couldn't keep from laughing. By the time she finished, she was holding her sides. She got up and ran to the bathroom.
When she came back, she was wiping tears from her eyes and still giggling.
"You look so funny sitting there with your long face. Don't be silly. I'm not mad at you. In fact, the idea of you talking about me is hilarious."
"I never talk about you."
"You don't? Then what -- oh, it's the other guys. You don't have to say anything. It's written all over your face. They think we get it on."
"Don't say that."
"What do you do when they talk about us? Do you threaten them?"
