Cuff (Cuthbert) Stone, a laid-back 18-year-old waiting to go to college in California, couldn't believe it when his parents told him they'd leased the house and were moving to the small town of Briscoe in the northern Oklahoma for the summer.
"But we are city people," he protested. "We don't do country."
"It doesn't matter where we go providing we get out of here," said his stepmom.
"I'm pregnant and your father is so embarrassed in his position of Professor of Ethics at the seminary."
Cuff scratched his balls and said he didn't see any connection in that statement between his stepmom's pregnancy and his father's academic standing.
Edward left the room and Charlotte said, "You can see how embarrassed he is. It was bad enough when at 53, a widow, he married me and I was only thirty. But I carefully displayed humility and conservatism until I became accepted here and your father stopped telling me that our marriage had been his life's most unfortunate experience but it had been his considered choice."
"That was gross of him."
"Tone it down young man; I fully understood the position we were in four years ago and worked hard at stabilizing him."
"What attracted him to you; was it your tits?"
Charlotte turned a bit pink in the face.
"You are the walking epitome of vulgarity Cuff and I dislike it."
He grinned and goaded, "You are so upright mom that you're boring but I guess being with dad is partly responsible for that."
"Shut up Cuff; you don't understand. I was treated like someone with the plague when I was brought into this community and it was a wonder your father wasn't pelted with stones. You would have thought I was a hooker."
"Oh you weren't; then what were you?"
"You know that I was a librarian and that's a profession unlikely to harbor hookers. Anyway you should not be using that word."
"Who's the dad? I've noticed the Reverend Masefield eyes you a lot."
Charlotte picked up a hardcover book off the coffee table and threw it at her stepson.
He ducked and the book thudded against a vase of flowers on the sideboard.
The explosion sound of shattering crystal and loud thump of the solid base hitting the polished floorboards followed by his wife's scream sent Edward running back into the room.
"What have you done to your mother?" he asked severely.
"Cuff hasn't done anything and took what I explained to him calmly," Charlotte said. "I picked up the book quickly and it um flew over from my hand and broke the crystal vase your aunt gave us as a wedding present."
Edward looked at his wife in alarm. He faced evidence of her lying to him for the first time to his knowledge.
"And there was no provocation?"
"No," said his wife.
"Yes," said his son unhelpfully.
"I can't believe my family is lying to me," Edward said sadly. "I suppose he delivered a smutty remark when you told him that this religious community does not accept that a man of my age should be involved in sexual relations."
"Yes I provoked mom when hearing about that stupidity."
"You did nothing of the kind Cuff. Edward I had not mentioned the barbaric attitude of people around here in expecting sexual abstinence of married couples after the age of thirty-five."
"One of you is lying again," Edward said mournfully. "And Charlotte you should stop criticising the moral mores of my brothers and sisters of this community."
"Cuff is right, that moral pressure of the community is so fucking stupid," Charlotte said, running from the room sobbing.
"She's pregnant dad; go after her and calm her."
"How is it that you know about these things and about what to do and I don't?"
"I guess it's my superior formal education coming to the fore dad. And I advise you to fuck mum to her full satisfaction for as long as you both that manage to do that."
"Cuff please close your mouth and keep it zipped," Edward said with the calmness of a stiff-backed moralist.
* * *
The family of three, Edward Stone, D.Phil., his much younger second wife Charlotte, with a MSc. in Nutrition, working as assistant manager of the seminary's catering division, and her anti-social stepson Cuff arrived in Briscoe in their Buick Enclave with overloaded trailer of possessions for the 3-month stay.
Charlotte always drove because Edward insisted on driving at 10 mph below the speed limit and applied road driving law so ridiculously correct that he'd remain stationary at a stop sign even when the only approaching vehicle was up to 300 yards away.
"Well there it is," Edward said grandly, at they looked down at the small city where he'd rented a house for three months to update the student handbooks on the modern approach to philosophy and the teaching guide to ethics, morals and values.
"How far is it to the nearest beach," asked his bored son, who in just under three months would go to his stepmom's former university in California where he hoped to make the top surfing team.
Edward replied: "Well work it out, the nearest beach from Oklahoma City is in Texas just over 500 miles away and in other directions San Diego and Florida are a little over 1000 miles away. My head has no data for the distance to Hudson Bay up north."
"Aw dad, why didn't you pick Malibu to do this writing project?"
"I was restricted to staying anywhere in this state."
"Then why this hole?"
"It fascinated me because one of my top students came from there and no one I spoke to had ever heard of Briscoe in Oklahoma and that intrigued me."
"Yeah it certainly looks like a ghost town."
"Shut up," Charlotte sighed. "There is no need to provoke your father.
"Is your baby kicking yet?"
"Shut the fuck up."
"Charlotte!"
"I'm turning around and driving back home," she cried.
"Mom people are shifting into our house today."
"Oh fuck, fuck," she wept.
"Suggest she allow you to drive dad," his son yawned, "That will shake her out of this melt-down."
It worked.
They drove up the sweeping drive to a large and imposing 2-level dwelling.
"Oooh it's a mansion," Charlotte cried excitedly, pushing her remnants of meltdown into history.
The sound of the vehicle brought two females to the entrance. They stood side by side almost at attention.
"That's Helma Brandt and her daughter Odette who share the ground floor of the house as custodians for the absentee owners," Edward said. "Under the terms of the lease agreement they cook and clean for us and provide maid services."
"Mom that older woman on the right is the mother."
"Thanks," she wheezed drawing a finger across her throat, leaving Cuff in the back seat wondering why his dad was laughing.
After the friendly introductions, Edward spoke in German in introducing his wife and son. He'd met the two women a month ago when he visited to check out the accommodation and facilities.
Cuff's bedroom was at the north end where his father said that he and Charlotte wouldn't be disturbed by loud music.
Edward smiled tolerantly when his son quipped he wouldn't be woken during the night by creaking bedsprings and hearing Charlotte saying "Shhh, shhh."
Later Cuff heard a splash at the pool on the side of the house now bathed in afternoon sunlight. He looked down through the open window and saw Odette aged about um twenty cutting through the water indicating she'd had some training.
He remained watching, thinking that must place him into the category of someone invading someone's privacy. But it appeared the American-born 1st generation of German immigrants as her mother had pointed out, didn't care a fuck.
She stood drying her hair, looked up and saw him and waved.
He remained frozen as if caught in searchlight.
Odette pulled down her top and wobbled her cute tits at him.
Cuff grabbed his swimsuit from a drawer and a condom from the attached bathroom and raced down the stairs to his poolside siren.
But when he arrived she was nowhere to be seen.
"Bitch, bitch" he muttered and grinned.
He interpreted this as being promising as Odette was lively and into playing games.
When he saw her later he expected at least a wink but she maintained her slightly servitude manner.
Cuff thought of grabbing a tit to activate her but anticipated that would simply amuse his mom who'd produce the expected reprimand to satisfy her husband who might be plunged into morbid shock by his son's despicable and primitively aggressive behavior that mirrored graphically one of the very things that was wrong with human life on this planet.
During the family's pleasure in ploughing through a great 4-course dinner Cuff's interest quickened when Odette stood beside him to serve potatoes and greens and he thought he could smell pussy. But she just smiled at him and didn't show even the tip of her tongue.
He thought possibly he might die of boredom and drained motivation before it was time to head off to the sun, surf and wet-patch bikinis of California.
Cuff's other aunt had invited him to give his parents a real break and spend two months with her and his uncle who was a pastor. But all his three cousins had left home and to be imprisoned in Arkansas for more than 24 hours sent Cuff into a blabbering tail-spin much to the amusement of his mom.
"She'd be a bitch to live with," his mom had said, using that word in Cuff's hearing for the first time in the four years he'd known her, Christ perhaps she had been a hooker.
"Up there in the wilderness I'll need someone to play with me while your father attacks his literary project as if he's been ordained from The Mount to engineer the minds of the new generation of moralists."
Cuff's draw dropped about as far as if his mom had invited him to have sex. From the outset he'd wondered why his intellectual father had married a woman who appeared to be closer to being a bird-brain rather than a woman of substance. And then he'd just heard her utter a profundity that appeared to have released from a reservoir capable of manufacturing many more. He then recalled he'd occasionally been within earshot of such verbal missiles from her before this.
His mind raced about why both his parents continued to be so cagey about his mom's background. Perhaps she'd been the lawyer representing the hookers' collective that had service his dad's secret needs when he spent three months on furlough in Chicago 4½ years ago and his future mom had been called upon to defend his dad's innocent and name suppression when he was caught up in a drug raid?
Cuff had reveled in the thought of his mum been professional connected to a brothel until being released from such iniquity by his father who helped her to hide under a near-angelic persona of his creation that began with him offering her the hand in marriage.
Christ, Cuff thought. He could write the script and their story could become one of the top films of the century.
However that idea became too hard to pursue as it involved probing those two for the truth. And his interested in exposing his tricky parents evaporated.
But he'd remembered something from what his stepmom had said that day. What had she meant that she'd want him in Briscoe to play with? His usually somewhat lazy mind began to grind away relentlessly as it tended to do when he had surfing and sex on his mind.
* * *
Cuff awoke on the first morning at the mansion and tossed the sheet back. In the warmth of summer, with the sound of birds singing drifting in through the open windows he began tugging his morning erection and saw that it was 7;30.
