Although Sam's coming into our lives was accompanied by lightning and thunder, we never could have imagined the impact of his arrival. I guess I still can't.
I'm seventy-two years old now. I was seventy when the story began. My wife, Corrine, was sixty-eight.
We have two boys and a girl, all born and raised in this small Midwestern town. They've moved away to start careers, families, and to follow their dreams.
Corrine and I stayed, though.
The winters here were cool. The summers were warm. Everything was in moderation in the climate and in our lives.
Before retiring, I worked as a salesman and then as a sales supervisor. I did okay. Nothing great. I received a few awards and, yes, a gold watch when I retired. We travelled a little after retirement, but eventually decided we were happiest at home. I liked the front porch. She liked the back. She cooked and cleaned. I did yardwork and minor repairs around the house, and took care of the small garden that provided all our vegetables.
Corrine had some minor surgery a few years ago and was beginning to have breathing issues, which resulted in a mostly sedentary lifestyle. She grew thicker around the waist and the behind, but still, to my mind at least, remained an attractive woman. She had a sweet personality and was always attentive to my needs. As best she could be, anyway.
Sexually, things dropped off and I attributed that to the inevitable effects of aging. We had sex only those few times when I could maintain an erection, which wasn't often. It was frustrating for me and, I'm sure, for her as well.
Sam's arrival was, as I said, a day of lightning and thunder, but it wasn't as bad as the storm that brought him here in the first place.
A few weeks back, an EF-4 tornado slammed into our town, destroying many homes and businesses, especially in the small downtown area. Luckily, our house escaped any damage at all. Out of town contractors and workers arrived by the busload, and the community was asked to assist with the berthing arrangements since the few hotels in town were heavily damaged, and the next town of any size was many miles away.
Sam arrived at our door shaking the rain out of his thick curly black hair as the lightning flashed behind him. I saw dimples when he grinned after introducing himself. He had a smile as friendly as a warm hello from an old friend. He must have been six-two and two-hundred pounds at least. He was broad across the shoulders, and he had brown eyes that never left yours when he spoke. He was thirty-five years old.
I'm sure when Corrine greeted him, she couldn't help but notice the contrast between his size and mine. I'm about one-hundred-sixty pounds and almost five-nine if I stand up straight.
Sam couldn't have been more gracious to Corrine, and she shook his hand in a polite and even businesslike manner.
He would be staying in our boys' room, they being long gone now. It was plenty large and he didn't have much luggage. There was a bathroom just down the hall. Our bedroom was farther down at the other end.
Few of the teams helping rebuild our city came with transportation, and at a community meeting it was decided that, when possible, the families putting up the workers would drive them to and from work for the two to four weeks it was expected they would be here. Sam was a contractor overseeing the efforts of about twenty men from Wisconsin who were conducting clean up in one of the destroyed residential communities.
The first night went well. Sam couldn't have been a better house guest. He joined us for dinner, helped Corrine clean up the dishes, and briefly joined me on the porch afterward, where he had a beer and I had some of Corrine's wonderful lemonade.
As I pulled up to the cleanup site on the first day, his expression changed from the cheerful, friendly guest I'd been socializing with the previous day, to something else. The men waiting in hardhats for his arrival were bunched together when he got out of my car, but quickly dispersed, looking back over their shoulders like frightened dogs.
Sam pointed at front end loaders, dump trucks, and the debris field, and began barking out orders to individual men. In one case he took a man by the shoulder and pushed him so forcefully toward a debris pile that the man's hard hat flew off his head. Sam apparently thought that was pretty funny.
I wondered which Sam I would be picking up later: the cordial, soft-spoken one, or the bully who intimidated his workers.
He was fine again that night when I picked him up. He didn't help Corrine with the dishes and didn't spend any time on the porch afterwards, but was convivial during the meal. So I put the other thing out of my mind and said nothing to Corrine.
There was a fabric shop in town that was undamaged from the storm, and Corrine asked to ride along when I dropped Sam off so we could stop by the store to pick up some material. She was one of the many women in town who were preparing window dressings for the families trying to redecorate their damaged homes.
Corrine sat in the front seat and Sam sat in the back. When he got out of the car, Sam laid into his workers again right away, actually grabbing one by the neck when he apparently got mouthy. The man slunk away.
The color rose in Corrine's face and I was afraid she was going to get out of the car and give Sam a dressing down for treating his men like animals. When she turned to me, her eyes were wide.
"Did you see how he took charge right away? This is a man who knows how to get people to do what he wants."
Corrine looked at me as if waiting for a reply, but I was shocked. It's true that when I was working, she sometimes had urged me to be more aggressive with my subordinates. I told her that as a small man, I had to use my wits, not brawn, to get things done.
"These men aren't plow horses, love," I said. "You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar."
"Oh, posh," Corrine said. This display of power had obviously moved her in unexpected ways, as I would learn later.
On the third morning, Corrine and I were leaving the bedroom together and heading down to breakfast. Yesterday, Sam had not joined us, even though my wife prepared a full country breakfast including both bacon, sausage, scrambled eggs and pancakes.
The door to the bathroom was closed and it appeared Sam wouldn't be ready for breakfast today, either. Not if he wanted to make it to work on time.
Just as we neared the top of the stairs, the bathroom door opened and Sam stepped out into the hall, naked as the day he was born except for the towel thrown casually over his shoulder. He stared at us both, then focused his gaze on Corrine who looked like the clichéd deer in the headlights.
The man had shoulders like a football running back, abs that were hard but not gym-rat hard. And a semi-flaccid penis that was longer and bigger in girth than anything I thought possible.
Corrine stared at his waist; she couldn't take her eyes off his huge penis - she was drawn to it almost instinctively, as was I - until she finally broke free of the spell, looked over Sam's shoulder at the wall, and reddened.
Sam wasn't the least bit embarrassed. The big smile, the dimples, the open stance suggested he was comfortable with his role as the alpha male, and had lived with that knowledge long enough to be unashamed at its impact on others.
"Don't worry," he said, turning around and heading for his bedroom. "I'll be ready in ten minutes so we can get out of here by seven forty-five."
Then he turned around and ambled down the hall, the powerful muscles of his ass flexing with each step.
Corrine and I said nothing to each other as we ate breakfast together at the kitchen table, her eyes never quite meeting mine.
Sam came down the stairs two steps at a time, acting as though nothing unusual had happened this morning. I grabbed the car keys and went to the door.
