Oh Brother, where art thou?
A certain wulfie asked me a question, and instead of answering him in P.M. I have chosen to do so publicly and in the form of a story post. This is something I can do due to the anonymous nature of the interwebs and my natural inclination to bottle everything up. I think it is about time someone besides me and Jack* knew this...
I grew up an only child of my father and one of two on my mother's side. I got used to being Daddy's spoilt darling and so was not prepared for the shock I got when I was twelve. It began one hot day (as they all are) in South Africa.
My dad's family have always been business people, but they live on farms and drive million-dollar trucks to work, rather than tootling their Mercs through smokey traffic into cities. This has always been the way. Anyway, I grew up going to school in the week and off to the farm Friday-Sunday. One day, soon after another experience I will write about shortly, I was walking back up to the house from the barn when I saw someone slouching along up ahead. Now, we do not take kindly to strangers casually slouching around our properties. They tend to either want to murder or rob you, so I grew up tough. I had the dogs with me, five of the nine we had at the time, and I told Trigger and Meisie (my ridgeback and his sister) to 'hold' whoever it was, warning them to 'be nice.'
When I got to where they were they had a very still figure pinned to the ground. I thought maybe they'd killed him so I called them away but he stood up slowly, showing his hands, and smiled when he saw me. He was tallish, a bit skinny for my taste, with floppy brown hair and grey eyes. His grin was pretty yummy but at this point in time I had other (hairier) males on my mind, so I just frowned at him and asked him what the hell he thought he was doing on our land. He gestured in a way that asked if it was ok to come closer. I nodded and giggled inside when I saw how cautious he was. He told me later that this little girl with the wild hair and five glaring dogs at her feet had him flustered. Teehee.
Anyways, moving on.
He asked for my dad by name, but wouldn't give a reason why he wanted to see him. I told him my dad was away on business for the day. I wasn't going to let him see my dad until I had a reason, and he wasn't going to talk to anyone but my dad about it, so we struck a stalemate. Eventually I got bored of waiting, so I went to fetch my A.T.V. and he followed me. I was irritated but I offered him the use of one, which he accepted. He had a pretty thick Australian accent and as we rode and shouted to each other, the dogs running behind us or sitting around looking bored, I started to forget what had been in my head when he showed up. Instead, my thoughts were replaced by snippets of things I'd quite like to do with this funny stranger who lay still when dogs jumped on him.
We stopped off near the old beehives and he sat next to me. I have never been one to sit around, so I stood up and planted one on him. After some rather intense petting (it was for me at twelve, anyway) he stood up and grinned like a mad thing.
"I'm Jack*, by the way."
I shook his hand with my best business shake and replied: "Helix*, nice to meet you."
He just smirked at that. "So, what do you do around here?"
I am a very private person so I just said "Work."
"Secretary, dog-walker, watchdog, that sort of thing?"
"Yeah, basically."
"Cool. I like you." He took my arm and steered me towards the A.T.V.s "So, think I can talk to Harold* now?"
"Why do you want to, anyway?"
"Can you keep a secret?" His eyes were very serious. I nodded. He patted my hand. "I believe you. Well, I need to speak to him 'cause he's my dad."
ERM?
Yeah, that was my reaction too. Turns out his mother had left my dad sixteen years earlier and gone back to her family in Australia without telling him she was pregnant because they weren't in love and she didn't want him feeling like he should do 'the honourable thing."
We are still quite close, though we hardly ever see each other anymore, and there have been slip-ups. As there are bound to be when two people meet in their teens and find each other attractive. I might write some more about this sometime, I just don't want people getting the wrong idea. We are not lovers, or fbuddies, or having some secret affair. It's just that we were not raised together and there is a weird chemistry, so things do sometimes get out of hand.
Anyway, there you have it, Zyf.
*Names have been changed.