The Family Tree

by John Everson

  Scott smiled at her, and realized that if he didn’t stop now, he was going to have sex with Rocky again. How could he not…she was tomboyish hot, and her body glowed with sensual oil. She was a Penthouse centerspread dream at that moment. “I should go,” Scott said, leaning back, forcing the sexual connection to break. “Caroline will be looking for me.”

  She surprised him by agreeing. “I don’t want you to…but I did promise her that I’d leave her something.” She reached out and stroked his flagging erection, which instantly thickened. “You can still show her a nice night, right?”

  Scott slapped himself invisibly (What the hell?) before he answered her.

  “Yes, I think I can.”

  “Great. She’s a good kid.”

  With that, she pushed her fingers against his chest, dismissing him, and Scott stepped back from the bed. Without a word, Jerry took his place almost instantly, lying down naked atop his wife.

  “Thanks, Scott,” Rocky said, and then without missing a beat, she began moaning beneath the attentions of her husband, who slipped across her well-oiled body and made his own noises of pleasure. Scott wasted no time in picking up his clothes and vacating the room before the rhythm of their excitement reached a scream.

  Chapter Fifteen

  When Scott reached his own room, he put the key in the lock and vowed to shower before taking a walk to find Caroline. It was absolutely twisted to be dating two women in one night…yet they’d both consented. Encouraged it, even. Still, he wanted his body to be a clean slate with Caroline. She was a sweet girl, and he felt guilty now for having been inside Rocky when he knew that he was going to be intimate with Caroline as well. Permission or not. He could see himself as the luckiest guy in the entire freakin’ world…but at the same time it just didn’t feel right.

  The door squeaked open, and there was movement just before him on the bed. The sheets rose and then Caroline’s face grinned up at him from above his pillow.

  “I’ve been waiting for you,” she said quietly.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, and closed the door. “I should freshen up,” he added. Awkward.

  She shook her head. “Just come on over here. I’ve wanted to be alone with you for days. You keep avoiding me.”

  He walked closer to the bed, and Caroline held her arms out to welcome him. Scott leaned down, and she pulled herself to him, raising her head off his pillow to kiss him with warm, anxious lips. “I’ve missed you,” she whispered, when she finally pulled back.

  Scott nodded. “I didn’t want you to get hurt.”

  “Just come to bed,” she said.

  He took his shirt off for the second time that night in a couple hours, and felt hands on his belt as he did. Seconds later, they were lying skin to skin, hip to hip, against each other in the bed.

  Caroline’s hands pulled him closer, and Scott couldn’t resist when her lips met his—her way was so different—she was soft and open where Rocky was hard and demanding. Rocky took what she wanted, while Caroline begged for what she needed.

  Scott found himself desperate to please her. As he slipped himself easily inside her, he moved with deliberate speed to touch the spot inside her that he knew would bring her the most pleasure. She wrapped her legs around him and drew him deeper, helping him to answer her need.

  Scott moved fast, at first, but then lay down to press as much of his body to hers as he could. He didn’t want to “bang” her, he wanted to make love to her. Her breasts were soft and lusciously warm against his chest, and he kissed her neck and shoulder as he moved inside her, searching for that perfect spot that would make her gasp.

  It only took a moment before he found it. And then he was grinding against her, teasing that spot, praying that he could last long enough to give her the moment she’d asked for. He only wanted to please her. He realized, as his own moment insisted on coming, that out of everyone he’d met here at the inn, she was the one he cared about most.

  And with that thought, he suddenly couldn’t hold back anymore and came hard inside her, releasing himself in a rush of come and complex emotion. She opened her mouth wide beneath him as she felt him let go, and her teeth shone white and happy as she relaxed her whole body to accept his spasms, letting him press and spurt and fill her.

  “Yesss, that’s it,” she encouraged, and he trembled as she stroked his back and face, letting him know that it was okay that he was inside her, it was okay that he’d given himself to her in that way.

  And then…it was over, and he felt her arms wrap tight around him, and pull him close beneath the sheets.

  “Sleep with me,” she whispered. “I just want to feel you next to me.” And in just moments, he felt her breathing grow long and slow, as her head burrowed against his shoulder.

  It wasn’t long before he, too, was dreaming.

  When Scott awoke, the dawn was filtering in the window, already bringing a warm, orange light into the dark. Caroline was pulling her jeans on at the foot of the bed.

  She saw him stir and raised a hand to his head. “Sleep.”

  “Where are you going?” he asked, with a slur.

  “Sleep,” she said. “You need to be prepped for tonight. It will take all of your energy.”

  “I thought it was a party?” he asked, his words coming as slow as a drunk’s. He was barely awake.

  “It’s a party,” she said. “But it’s also a fertility ritual. If you think you’ve been busy tonight…”

  She winked at him, and then walked to the door.

  “Caroline,” he said.

  She stopped and looked back.

  “Thank you,” he said. “You’re the only one who’s been real with me here.”

  She flashed him a faint smile, and nodded. “I like you,” she said. And then she slipped out of his doorway and into the dawn.

  Scott slipped back to sleep after she left, but when he awoke, he avoided the inhabitants of the inn and instead walked up the hidden stairs to spend the day in the eyrie, working on his laptop. He saw Ellen and Sherrilyn and the others again in the distance in the field, bent over as, nearby, a tractor worked doing whatever tractors do at planting season. Breaking up the ground, he guessed. After a couple hours, he remembered what Caroline had said last night about everyone pitching in to plant. It seemed selfish and lazy of him to be lounging up here while she was working back-bent in the field.

  He packed up his things and walked down the circular steps. He left the laptop in his room and walked out of the hotel to the field, finally zeroing in on the curve of Caroline’s denim-clad ass where it curved and wiggled in the afternoon sun. She reached into a sack on her side and extended her hand, again and again.

  “How does this work?” he asked, stopping closer to her.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked.

  He nodded. “I saw you bent over, and I couldn’t resist.”

  That earned him a loud snort, and Caroline stopped what she was doing to straighten up.

  “Here,” she said, and handed him a bag heavy with corn seeds. “Walk down to the end of this row, and start dropping seeds a couple inches apart, like this.”

  She pitched a couple into the furrow so he could see. “Don’t worry about covering them over, we’ll have the plow do that. But we want to get the corn evenly spaced. We’ll meet in the middle then, and start on the next row together.”

  “Um, okay,” he said. He had thought he might help her out a bit, but didn’t think he’d be sent to the opposite end of the field to do it.

  “We need to cut this short today so that we can get ready for the Last Tap tonight anyway, so we’ll probably only stay out here another hour,” she said. Then she bent over and began dropping seeds again. He watched her method for a minute, and then walked to the end of the row.

  His splinted leg made it clumsy for him, but the work was actually refreshing in a mi
nd-numbing way. Most of Scott’s life was spent sitting in front of a computer, pushing numbers and words around. He was not big on physical exertion, and certainly not used to it. But this was actually work that meant something—people would eat because of his effort. It felt good to bend and sweat in the spring sun, knowing that.

  However, an hour and a half later, as his legs and back began to complain—loudly—he was beginning to rethink his “sweat is good” philosophy. Luckily, that was right about the time Sherrilyn called for a stop from halfway across the field. Everyone who was planting worked their way to the end of their rows, and began to leave the field.

  “Thinking about changing your career to farming now?” Caroline asked as they walked back to the inn together. Her hair was plastered to her forehead and strands stuck to the sides of her face. Her shirt stuck to her body, accentuating her curves. The signs of exertion only made her look more sexy to Scott.

  Vital.

  He suspected that sweat didn’t look nearly as good on him.

  When they stepped into the lobby of the inn, the grandfather clock was chiming the four o’clock hour. Ellen looked up from the front desk and immediately pointed to the hallway. “Y’all stayed out there too long. Now hurry and git yourselves freshened up. We’ll be having people arrive in less than two hours, and we still need to set the grand ballroom!”

  “I know, Mama, I know.” Caroline turned to Scott and put her arms around his neck. “Thanks for helping out,” she said, and pressed her lips to his before he could answer. His eyes widened as she held the kiss and tickled his tongue with her own. Then she drew back and apologized. “Sorry, I’m sweaty and disgusting, I shouldn’t have touched you!”

  He just shook his head, stumbling for words. “No, it’s fine,” he finally said. “I’m the disgusting one.”

  “Will both of ya go and shower off ’n’ stop talkin’ about it,” Ellen called from across the room. “We’ve got work ta do!”

  With that, she picked up a tray of glasses that had been stacked up on the corner of the registration desk, and walked across the room to begin arranging them on a sideboard that already had a wealth of glasses and silver pitchers.

  “Come back here around six o’clock,” Caroline said. “People will gather here first before going to the ballroom.” She leaned up on her toes and planted one more peck on his lips before dashing down the hallway to her room.

  Chapter Sixteen

  “And so the big night begins,” Scott murmured to himself as he walked down the maze of hallways towards the front entrance of the inn. A couple brushed past him, obviously intent on getting to the festivities on the dot of six p.m. He didn’t rush, because, frankly, he was a little nervous. He wasn’t sure what he was getting into, but it obviously was a very important event at “his” establishment. For the whole town, he amended, noting the number of people he saw moving about just ahead in the lobby.

  He’d been worried about what to wear after his shower, since he hadn’t brought any “fancy” clothes on this trip. But looking at the assemblage, which already numbered at least three dozen people, he realized he needn’t have worried. His best jeans and blue polo shirt were just fine. There were people dressed better; but there were also those in threadbare shorts and tank tops. He stepped into the lobby and Sherrilyn appeared almost instantly, wearing a filmy red dress. She barely said hello before taking his elbow, and moving him into the mix.

  “Mr. Scott Belvedere, I’d like you to meet Mimi Schults and her husband Aaron,” she said, bringing him to an elderly couple whose eyes widened as they nodded. “So he’s the last Belvedere, then,” the older woman asked, as if Scott weren’t there.

  Sherrilyn nodded. “He is,” she said. “And he’s our guest of honor tonight!”

  She led him around the room, introducing couple after couple—the owners of the grocery, the cousins of Emmaline, the clerk at the post office…it seemed that in ten minutes, Scott had met the entire town. He also saw some of the distant relatives of Ellen and Caroline who he’d met at dinner the night before.

  Somehow a goblet appeared in his hand and Scott was soon sipping a now-familiar, deep amber ale, as he spoke with a balding middle-aged man about the potential for the Chicago Cubs to break the Billy Goat curse at last this season…

  The bells jingled on the front door five more times and the floor grew increasingly crowded as Scott moved about the room, and then suddenly Ellen was there in the middle of it all, wearing a yellow sundress and clinking a spoon on her glass to get everyone’s attention.

  “Welcome, friends and family and guests,” she called out. “I’m so glad you could join us for this season’s Last Tap. Tonight we will do our best to empty the last kegs of the Family Ale that we brewed last year, and then we’ll fill those kegs. We’ve already got the brewery cleaned up and ready out back and the bourbon mash is ready for the sap that we’ve been collecting since March for the coming year’s bottling. It’s a tradition that goes back more than one hundred and fifty years ago to when William Melton Belvedere founded this inn after discovering the restorative powers of the sap of the Family Tree. The tree he built this inn, and his family, around.”

  A voice in the back of Scott’s head added, “And the tree he stole from the Indians who used its sap to bring him back from near death.” Luckily, he held his tongue in check.

  “We’re saddened this year that Maximilian is no longer with us; we all know he enjoyed this day as much as anyone, and y’all know he always drank his fill back in his younger days…and more. Even at the end, we always brought him a mug.” She raised an eyebrow and flashed the crowd a conspiratorial grin. “Let’s raise a toast to Maximilian, and his unquenchable spirit!”

  Someone in the back yelled, “And thirst!” and the crowd laughed before answering Ellen with glasses in the air and a rumble of “To Maximilian.”

  Ellen gave a sad smile and then held her glass up again. “But while we’ll miss Maximilian, his passing has brought us a new face to The Family Tree Inn. Thanks to Jacques Pirdue,” she began, pointing at the thin, bespectacled lawyer who stood in a dark suit in the corner of the room, “we have found Maximilian’s grandson, Scott Belvedere, and called him home. I think many of you have met him already tonight.” She smiled and waved a hand at Scott, who nodded, as the eyes of the room turned toward him.

  “Here’s to a new Master of the House,” Ellen exclaimed and held her glass in the air once more.

  Scott felt himself blushing as the room responded with a “Here, here,” but he covered by quaffing a drink with them. The brew warmed his chest as it went down, and then Ellen was calling them all to the Great Hall for the dinner. They’d be having a pig roast, Caroline had told him earlier. He had smelled the tantalizing smoke from the barbecue while he’d been up in the eyrie earlier, but he hadn’t actually seen the pit.

  The mob filed down a hallway that wound around and then branched to an area Scott hadn’t been in before. He’d been wondering where they hid a “great hall” in this labyrinth of an inn, and it came as no surprise when he saw that it was a room wrapped around the central trunk of the tree—just on the opposite side from where his room was located.

  The ceiling was high, and supported by large, rough-hewn timbers, while the walls were paneled in the same dark wood that seemed to cover every surface in the inn. The floors were wood as well, a beautiful web of thin hardwood strips, the center done in a circle of blond wood, while the outer perimeter was stained dark. A rich red wood separated the two with planks running at right angles to the rest of the flooring. At the back of the room, next to the exposed trunk of the tree, a man in a white chef’s uniform was cutting slices from the roast pig and serving them to a line that had already formed.

  There were eight long banquet tables set up around the room, with white china place settings and wineglasses awaiting the guests, who quickly began to claim spots. Seated atop the center of eac
h table, was a wooden keg. Scott saw one of the men step up to the keg and turn a spigot tapped into the bottom to refill his glass with amber.

  “Damn,” Scott said to himself. “These people know how to party! Barbecue pork and an endless tap…”

  A cool hand touched his arm then, and he turned to see Caroline beaming at him. She was in a gauzy white slip of a dress, and her hair was twisted up in a knotted bun, spiked through with a silver ornament. The end of the hairpin looked like a small bird.

  “You clean up nice,” he said.

  Caroline smiled. “You’re not so bad yourself.” She motioned towards a table. “Let’s get a seat before they’re all gone.”

  She led him across the room and they sat on the end of a table near the wall. “I’ll need to be up and down to help tonight,” she explained. “But once the band starts, this pretty much runs all by itself.”

  They were joined quickly by a group of strangers, but before the table filled, Rocky and Jerry showed up and grabbed seats beside Scott. “Thought you could steal him away and keep him all for yourself, did you?” Rocky said to Caroline. She was smiling, but Scott thought there was an edge to her words.

  Caroline shrugged. “A girl can dream, can’t she?”

  The tables soon filled with food, and one by one bowls of mashed potatoes and green beans and rolls and a platter of smoky pork passed hand by hand down the line. Scott filled up his plate with everything that went by, including a couple things that he couldn’t identify.

  The room filled with the hum of conversation and the clink of plates. Glasses passed back and forth across tables to the kegs with increasing fervor. Caroline disappeared for a while to help serve and then again to help clear dishes. But she was back by the time the band set up in the middle of the room on a small makeshift stage. The laughter and chatter was quickly subdued by the easy strum of two guitars, the yearning cry of a violin and the backwoods rhythm of a standup bass and small drum kit. Scott was not a big country fan, but the friendly beat and warmth of the music quickly drew him in.