Grandson Wanted

Norman Gieriger drove the big red Farmall 560 diesel up the driveway, stopped near the garden gate and shut off the engine. He had left the 5 bottom plow hooked on -- no point unhooking, he would continue with the spring plowing that afternoon. Still sitting high in the tractor seat, he looked around with satisfaction. There was the big barn, the loafing shed and milking parlor where morning and night almost 300 gallons of milk were collected from the 47 cows that were now lactating. There were the hog sheds from where every month they shipped 60 to 70 two hundred pound hogs for slaughter. Winter wheat had resumed growing and was waving in the light spring breeze. The smell of newly plowed rich black dirt was in the air.

When Norman was a boy, the farm had been much smaller -- 130 acres. Buying out less talented and/or childless farmers had increased that to 480 acres -- all rich black prairie soil that clever Yankee speculators in the mid 1800's had sold to unwitting German immigrants. That the church Norman and his family belonged to had played a key role in bringing in those immigrants, he knew only in a fleeting sort of way. For him, like lots of his family, neighbors and fellow church members, a detailed knowledge and understanding of history was a frivolous luxury, perhaps even a dangerous luxury. After all, he knew that educated people tended to harbor Communist ideas.

The two-story house where Norman lived with his wife Gladys was built in the 1920's by his father and grandfather. Beyond it was the single story ranch-type home he'd had built for his son Vernon and daughter-in-law Cora. Vernon had taken over the dairy operation while Norman ran the hog operation. The field work, corn, soybeans and wheat, the two men shared more or less equally.

The farm, his family, the church, yes Norman could be completely content with how his life had worked out. Except for one issue, and so far there had been no solution to that one issue.

When they sat down for lunch, Norman felt that Gladys had something on her mind, something serious and he had a feeling that it would not be a comfortable discussion. At the same time he had a feeling that the ensuing discussion would lead to a resolution of the issue that had been bothering him for years.

After Gladys had cleared the table and brought coffee, she sat down and took a sip of coffee. After a few minutes of silence, "Norm, we need to talk."

"I'm all ears." He had a feeling what the subject would be.

"Cora was here this morning."

He knew what the discussion would be about. He just couldn't bring himself to admit it. "Oh yeah. She's been here a lot lately hasn't she. Something wrong or are you two cooking up a new recipe?"

"Norm, please! Vern and Cora's wedding anniversary last June was their third."

"Boy time flies. Imagine our boy already married three years. That sure was a nice anniversary dinner she made."

"Dancing around the subject won't make the problem go away. And you know very well what the problem is. It's been bugging you long enough."

"Gladys, sometimes women just don't conceive right away and then all of a sudden, bingo!"

"Norm, it's not Cora who can't conceive. Vern has a condition."

Norman's face got red and he stood up. "Gladys, Vernon is not queer! I bet they were doing it before they were supposed to. No, no, our son is not the reason we don't have grandkids from them."

Gladys continued, "Norm, please sit down and hear me out. Of course he's not queer and of course, we don't know - they may have been doing it well before they were supposed to. We did too, remember? That's why we had a February wedding instead of in June."

Norman and Gladys had been engaged for several months when she had missed a period. To avoid the shame of a way-too-soon baby, their wedding was moved up from June to February. There had been whispering among neighbors, friends and family and when Vernon was born in September, they had all counted 8 months back to the wedding, but by then, the sensation of the slightly-too-soon baby wasn't too great. The old saying, 'The first one can come anytime, afterwards it takes nine months', was repeated among the voyeuristic and the jealous, but the Gieriger family had avoided the shame of a bride wearing her apron high.

Norman had fond memories of those tussles in the back seat of his dad's '36 Chevy. They had dated for many months before Gladys had finally let him fondle her breasts - over her clothing. Then things moved a little faster and a few weeks later the top of her dress was down and her bra was unsnapped. What he didn't have fond memories of were the many unsatisfied erections and aching testicles. How many times after dropping Gladys off at her parents' house, had he stopped the Chevy on the way home and gotten out to jack off? However, on the Saturday night when he had first touched the wet crotch of her panty, he didn't have to jack off. When she announced her high point with a whimpering moan and a squeeze of his arm, he had ejaculated in his underpants. On the way home, he'd tossed the underpants. His mother had missed them, but he had stonewalled. In the end a crow had gotten the blame for stealing them off the wash line.

The next weekend, he had gotten his hand inside her panty. Worried that he would have to blame a crow for another pair of lost underpants, he had managed to postpone ejaculating.

Her grabbing his arm brought him out of his reverie. "Norm, are you listening?"

"Oh yeah, sorry. I was just remembering."

"Remembering! What?"

"You know. What we all did in Dad's old Chevy."

"You mean like how we finally did it lying across the back seat with our legs sticking out the door?"

"I wasn't that far yet. Just to when I first got my hand inside your panties."

"Oh Norm, that's so sweet of you to remember. And then you took my hand and put it on you. You were really hard, and big. It did scare me a little. I had no idea what to do so you showed me how to move my hand back and forth on your slacks."

The conversation wasn't going without effect on him. He was already hard and wondered if this might lead to something more. "Yeah Gladys. I remember you were kind of embarrassed, but it was an eager embarrassment."

"You sure weren't embarrassed. I mean the way you pulled down your slacks and underpants and had me touch you bare. I always wondered if that old hanky you gave me to use just happened to be in the car. Was it?"

"No. I planted it. So, guilty as charged!"

Gladys' remembrance of that scene in the car was very clear. Although she had once seen her father's penis when he was peeing in the barn, she had never before seen an erect penis. Norman had been very hard and his exposed glans had been a glistening red.

The memory and the conversation affected Gladys as well. There was a twitchy feeling in her crotch and she felt lightheaded. That her panties might have a damp spot was pretty clear too.

Under the table, Gladys put her hand on the top of Norman's thigh. He lay his hand atop it and moved it up towards his crotch. She took the hint and went further. "You're just as hard now as you were then. Oh Norm!" She extended her head and opened her lips expectantly. They kissed.

Knowing the discussion about Vernon and Cora's childlessness was going to be interrupted, he said and she thought, "Shall we go upstairs?"

She said, "Yes!"

On the way up the stair, Norman was already unhitching his overalls and Gladys had her hands under her dress and her thumbs hooked in the waistband of her panties. In the bedroom, she flopped backwards on the bed, raised her hips and pulled her panties down. By the time she had them clear of her ankles, Norman had dropped his overalls and was getting out of his underpants one leg at a time. The sight of his erect penis with its shining reddish head free of the foreskin made her heart beat faster. She felt hot all over and there was a big tingling from her waist down.

The conversation and touching downstairs was foreplay enough for both. Lying back on the bed, Gladys pulled her dress up to her breasts. Now exposed from her waist down, she spread her legs and raised her knees. Norman was immediately on the bed and lay his throbbing penis on her pussy -- letting the shaft dab at her wet slit.

Although he knew well enough where he needed to go and knew exactly how to get there, he and Gladys had settled on another routine years ago. Gladys delighted in grasping his penis and guiding him in. Once he was more or less halfway in, she took her hand away and let him set the pace. Today he was really worked up and immediately plunged in as far as ever, which was not all the way groin to groin for good reason. Norman's penis was a few inches longer than Gladys' vagina and he had learned early on that he had to limit penetration to avoid hurting her.

Norman was very close to exploding. It wasn't just the touching and teasing downstairs in the kitchen. Perhaps it was the vibrations while driving the big Farmall tractor all morning. Perhaps he'd just had erotic thoughts. At any rate, Gladys had the feeling he wouldn't last long and she was right. After a few minutes of Norman's rapid thrusting, she felt his penis jerk and then she felt his ejaculate shoot against her insides. She closed her eyes, moaned and grasped his ass cheeks. Later when he was back out in the field, she would take a bath and enjoy an even more intense orgasm.

There was a box of tissues beside the bed. Gladys reached for a handful, wiped her own crotch. That was also part of their routine. He was still between her legs, now on his knees, penis hanging, foreskin covering the glans. She wiped his thighs, scrotum and then his penis, finishing off by retracting his foreskin and dabbing the sticky off his glans.

Who would get up first? Norman solved the problem. "I have to go pee."

Gladys was glad he had taken the initiative to break off. She needed to continue the discussion they had started right after lunch before they had had their 'nooner.'

If were not for Gladys, Norman would have avoided continuing the discussion. As much as he was bothered by Vernon and Cora not having produced grandchildren, there were lots of other subjects he would rather be discussing.

"Norm, I didn't say that Vernon and Cora aren't having sex. I know they are. Cora confides in me and has since the first year they were married. Look, they've tried very hard. Different positions. He leaves it in afterwards, sometimes so long that he gets hard and they do it again."

"Gladys! Cora tells you all that kind of stuff?"

"Norm, be quiet and listen! The first year they were married, Doc Banning examined her several times, but he never could find any physical reason why she didn't conceive. Finally he referred her to that university clinic in Champaign. A few hundred dollars later, they said the same thing and something more -- that her husband might be the problem. The doctors there told her that he should have a sperm count made."

"And Vernon masturbated into a jar and took it to Doc Banning?"

"Cora couldn't bear the thought of asking him to do that so she found another way to get the sample. Started keeping a sample jar by the bedside and with her next period, she used her hand on him. She managed to not let Vern see her wipe her sticky hand across the open jar. Of course she didn't take the sample to Doc Banning. Those girls who work for him -- well it'd be all over the county in a day. She took it to the university clinic. They had a hard time finding any sperm at all, let alone a low count."

Norman was devastated. Now it was pretty definite. When Vernon died, people would no longer talk about the 'Gieriger Farm'. That might be 4 or 5 decades in the future when he, Norman, was dead and buried but that time would come.

"Oh Norm, I'm so sorry. I'm sorry about the way it is and I'm sorry to have to tell you."

Norman was a principled Christian prude and he had the corresponding hyperactive erotic imagination and he and Gladys had a routine for situations when he got horny while she was menstruating. Had she ever wanted a semen sample from him, she would only have had to tell him to close his eyes and then jerk him off and collect the product in a jam jar. He didn't doubt that Cora might do the same thing.

His mind went back to the farm without a Gieriger grandson to run it. Gladys saw the sad look on his face and wondered whether to continue the conversation immediately or let him stew over it through the afternoon. She decided he might be more receptive to the solution that she had worked out with Cora after a nice supper and then some special treatment in bed or in the bathtub.

That evening after the evening news, Gladys shut off the TV and turned to Norman. "About this afternoon."

"Gladys, it was great. We haven't done that after lunch for some time." Then remembering her moans and clutching, he continued, "Gladys I could see on your face that it was good for you too."

"Oh Norm, yes, I really got off." But she was thinking of her DIY orgasm afterwards when she was alone in the bathtub and he was out plowing.

After giving him a quick kiss and squeezing his hand, she went on, "Yes, it was good for me, but I really want to talk about the other thing we started on."

Norman was dreading that subject but he knew there was no way around it. "Oh, well, okay." Then in an even sadder tone, "I've been praying for Cora to get pregnant for years. But I guess it's the Lord's will that Vernon can't get her that way and we just have to accept that."

Gladys knew she was going into very slippery territory and she would have to choose her words carefully. "Norm, that Vernon won't be able to get Cora with child, yes, we have to accept that. But maybe we don't have to accept that there won't be a Gieriger to take over the farm from Vernon."

"You mean adopt a little redskin from Guatemala? No way! Then everybody'd know Vernon was infertile and besides, those beaners are lazy. And didn't Don Trunt say they're all murderers and rapists?"

"Norm, you know perfectly well that you can't believe a word Don says."

"Well anyway, those beaners are lazy. It's true. Half the time they'd never get the crops in or do the milking. No, you could give one of 'em our name but he'd still be lazy and what self-respecting girl would ever marry him."

"Norm, I'm not thinking about not adoption. There's another way."

"You don't mean using one of them new sperm bank things? There was this article in Readers Digest. Women get implanted with semen from somebody they don't even know. Do that, you might get anything! Think of it, Catholics, Yankees, Polacks and what not. We got enough of them here in the county already. Running this farm? No way. I'd rather see the government take over this farm."

Although the Protestant church that they belonged to had services nearly as elaborate as the Roman Catholic mass, Norman held Catholics in great disdain. Likewise he didn't have much use for Yankees, meaning people with names like Patton, Brown, Jones, Wilson, Smith and so forth. For him Yankees were messy people whose farmsteads looked junky - broken down machinery standing around, buildings needing paint.

"I didn't say using a sperm bank. Let me finish. After they tested Vernon's semen at the clinic in Champaign, they mentioned artificial insemination. Cora ruled out using a sperm bank so the discussion turned to getting her pregnant with sperm from a suitable donor. I mean suitable in lots of ways, but particularly that the child would look like he was Vernon's."

"And how is that supposed to work? Gladys, even if we wanted to, we couldn't very well go to somebody we know and ask him for some semen."

For Gladys the discussion was coming to the point she wanted it to, but she still needed to be cautious. "Norm, I agree that we need to be secretive about this. It really is a matter of keeping this under wraps while finding a suitable donor."

"I have no idea how we can ask somebody without everybody finding out. Ask one person and bingo, the whole county knows. And who would the donor be anyway? What are we supposed to do? Go driving around looking for a guy who looks like Vernon?"

"Actually we wouldn't have to drive around looking. Norm, Vernon looks a lot like you and vice versa. Cora and I think you'd be the ideal donor."

Norman and Vernon used artificial insemination to breed their Holstein dairy cows so immediately, he was thinking along those lines. "So you two expect me to go to that clinic in Champaign and deposit some semen in an artificial vagina? And then Cora is supposed to go there at the right time of the month? By the way, what does Vernon say about these human husbandry plans?"

Now the discussion was getting critical. But Norman hadn't yet said no. "Okay, one thing at a time. We don't see a reason to tell Vernon. The blood types would work out okay and why not let him think he's actually the father."

"And he's not going to get suspicious about a bunch of trips to Champaign?"

"She wouldn't have to go to the clinic. The doctor there showed her a sort of do-it-yourself AI kit. Cora and I talked about that too and then we got to thinking. Why go through such a complicated procedure? Getting pregnant is pretty simple. Lots of pregnancies are not even planned."

"Gladys, no! You don't mean that I have intercourse with my stepdaughter? No! No way!"

There's a point in any argument when it's time to get tough. (Know when to walk.) Gladys was ready with Norman's own words.

"Okay Norm, you're the one who doesn't want the farm to be out of the Gieriger name. Now think a little. Remember there are Catholics who have money too. You wanna have a Catholic buy the farm after Vernon is gone? Every Friday the house is gonna stink of fish and there'll be pictures of the pope in every room. Or maybe a Yankee? You think the barn would ever get painted again? Imagine neighbors driving by and talking about how nice the farm used to look when it was the Gieriger farm. Then people are gonna say, 'old Norm must be turning over in his grave.' Is that what you want?"

Norman could only look straight ahead. Actually the thought of sex with Cora didn't disgust him so much. It was just that, well, what if he couldn't get it up? Sure he and Gladys still did it, once a week at least, but that was when he got horny. Just to up and have intercourse on command, he was anything but sure he could do it.

Norman and Gladys were religious and went to church every Sunday and on all Christian holidays. Their religiousness provided an opportunity for him to stall. "There's the Tenth Commandment and it's pretty definite."

"The Tenth Commandment says 'Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife'. Cora is your daughter-in-law, not your neighbor's wife. Besides Norm, you won't be coveting Cora, just breeding her."

"And how about the Sixth Commandment? It says 'Thou shalt not commit adultery'."

"Remember that sermon Pastor Heuchler made? The one where he said God didn't define what adultery is. Well he also said that God left it up to the church to decide what is adultery. Surely you remember that."

"Yeah but........"

"Pastor Heuchler has never said that breeding your daughter-in-law was adultery and for all we know, neither has any other pastor. So there!"

"Well I still don't know. It still sounds pretty sinful."

"Norm, back to the 10th commandment. 'Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house, nor his barn, etc.. For years you were coveting Leonard Kleinbauer's 100 acres!"

"Leonard wasn't really our neighbor and he wasn't much of a farmer! It was only a matter of time until he had to sell out. I just got there before everybody else."

"Okay, you weren't coveting Leonard's farm, you were just watching him go broke and get forced to sell. When you breed Cora, it won't be coveting any neighbor's wife either. It'll just be taking your son's place in getting her with child. Kinda like pinch hitting. You do that all the time for Vernon. He's taken over the dairy operation but there's always times when you do the milking for him."