Ravens Roost

I knew before we drove past it to the next lane, where we turned off to where the winery was being constructed, that I'd recognize it. And yet it caught me by surprise when I saw it, the stately manor house with the white columns that gleamed in morning light. Castleton. My grandmother had shown me faded photographs of it, of the family lounging on the steps. The fuckin' white family, that is. It had been a matter of pride for her to show where her family had grown up.

Her family wasn't in that photograph, of course. They was somewhere in the background—making it all possible for the fuckin' white folks. Where my grandmother had looked with pride, I could only look with shame and anger. That was the difference a couple of generations made.

I hadn't wanted to come here, at least not jus' yet, and Lucky couldn't understand why I'd think twice about takin' a fuckin' work project from someone like Dabney Belcastle. Some rich dude with money to burn. But I don't think Lucky would have been able to understand my aversion to workin' for fuckin' white "cousin" Dab even if I'd explained it to him. Lucky was a shitkickin' New Yorker, probably no better than second generation Italian. And a cute little piece of ass he was. But this was Virginia. This was the South. Lucky wouldn't be able to understand how Dabney Belcastle and I were related let alone why I wouldn't want to be in position to work for the man.

And perhaps if I hadn't seen fuckin' Belcastle at Sandy's that afternoon and the way he was lookin' at me and the ironic and fitting possibility that put into my mind, I would have just said no when Lucky said he had a job for both us over in Whitehall. The look on Belcastle's face as he heard me talkin' with that fuckin' businessman from over Harrisonburg at the bar at Sandy's. Knowing that I could be had at a price and wantin' me his fuckin' self. It hadn't been the first time he'd been in the bar and I'd caught him mooning over me. It amused me to ignore him, though, not to take the signals. I knew who fuckin' Dabney Belcastle was; I'd always known. I'd been brought up to know who was on the white side of the family, the ones still lordin' it over everyone else at Castleton. Them's that had it all and kept it from us others. It amused me that he didn't fuckin' know who I was, though—couldn't look beyond the chocolate and cream skin and the muscle and working man's talk and the attitude—couldn't recognize a Belcastle cousin behind the fuckin' race barrier.

I'd stood there at the bar, workin' the businessman bringin' his need to Waynesboro where he'd stand a good chance of not being recognized, and all the time knowin' that fucker Belcastle was just down the bar from us. Chattin' up the businessman as much for Belcastle's benefit—to tease him and put him and hold him in his place—as to see what I could get from the businessman. I made pretty good money from the house paintin', but I made better fuckin' money, faster at Sandy's bar. And all of that money could go to scratching my own itch. Lucky didn't need to know that I had that extra money to spend.

I had enjoyed the look on Belcastle's fuckin' face—the frustration and disappointment—when the businessman and I had concluded our dance of the deal and I guided him to the back of the bar, through the beaded curtains leading to the storeroom and that other special place, and passed the table where Sandy sat and ticked off the passage, givin' me the nod that sealed our own deal on his 30 percent cut. I left the door open between the storeroom and the private cell, fuckin' hopin' I'd get the added satisfaction of Belcastle bein' pulled in. And I assumed I had, as there was a shadow at the door all the time I was lettin' the businessman unzip me and push my pants down my legs.

I gave a little laugh as the fuckin' businessman discovered what they all discovered and gave an appreciative gasp and exclamation—findin' not only how low I was hung but how black my cock and balls was. Other than that, I passed—or at least caused speculation. But my cock and balls revealed who I was, what the fuckin' Belcastle genes hadn't been able to take from me.

The Harrisonburg businessman squealed in pain and delight as I took out all of my seething anger at the shadow at the door by poundin' away inside his ass, giving him more than his money's worth of ride.

It was while I was plowin' the fucker and he was writhing under me and clutching at my chest and nipples and subsiding from cries of filling him too fast and brutally to burbles and moans of pleasure that the plan blossomed full grown into my mind. It wasn't enough to tease Belcastle. I had to master him as his fuckin' kind had done my kind for generations.

And I had to laugh later, as I was settlin' with Sandy and he handed over the handful of dime bags of what was my real lover, when I found out that Belcastle had paid him more to watch me fuck the businessman than the businessman had paid for the actual servicing.

What I gave Lucky that evening was more a rent payment than anything else. He was OK, but he wasn't the satisfyin' lover that those dime bags was. I took him rough because I knew that was what he wanted from me.

I'd picked him up in Sandy's like I'd done most of the rest, but he wasn't a customer. I wanted variety that night, someone young and good looking, someone I was picking up for more than the size of their wallet. He was Italian with a New York accent and a nice slim, but well-muscled bod. Dark complexioned, with curly black hair. More my kind than most. More important to me, though, was his reputation as a painter. I was bustin' to do more with my painting—to make the walls talk to me and make love to me. And I thought Lucky could teach me a thing or two about making house paintin' an art. I was right about that. In turn, I thought I could teach Lucky a thing or two about fuckin'. And I was right about that as well.

That first night was a fumble in the room behind Sandy's storeroom. Lucky had been frightened when he saw the size and blackness of my cock, and he'd struggled away from me just as I was set to pork him. He surprised me then by pulling away from, mumbling and stumbling his way out of the room. I'd never been turned away like that before and it kinda turned me on. Good thing I still wanted him, or I'd have broken the fucker over my knee the next time I caught up with him. I went around paintin' the next day with my cock goin' hard each time I thought of that nice little piece of ass.

The next day, bein' a Saturday, I got in my truck early in the morning and waited outside of his house, a little stone cottage over near Jordan's mill. I'd heard him say he went up into the park on weekends to paint landscapes. And, sure enough, there he was loadin' his own truck with paint materials and takin' off over to route 250 and up to Afton and turning south on the Blue Ridge Parkway on the top ridge of the mountains.

I followed the little fucker to the Ravens Roost Lookout and held back in the truck 'til he was well set up and just beginnin' to dole out his paints on a palette. He did a double take when I sauntered up to him, my thumbs in my low-rise jeans pockets and my shirt hangin' open so he'd get a good look at the goods, and the resigned stare he gave me told me everythin' I needed to know right then. He'd been thinkin' of me this past day and of what he'd walked out on. And it had made him hard too.

I told him I'd come to fuck him and pointed to a trail goin' off into the woods along the ridge where the stone wall of the overlook gave out to the north. And Lucky put down his brush and stood and started walkin' in the direction with me behind him, my hand cupping his buttocks. As we neared the opening to the trail, the little fucker started a runnin' and stumblin' toward the trees. But I caught him up without any trouble.

I fucked him against a tree well off the path and down the slope in cruel, upward strokes of my cock that sent his belly rubbing up and down on the rough bark of the tree and had him sobbin' and moanin'. He broke away from me again after he'd come and before I did and slithered down the slope between the trees. But I hunted him down and slammed the fucker on the ground on his back, spread-eagled his legs with my hands, and finished him off with deep, stabbing strokes. Then I covered his body close with mine and held him until his trembling and sobs died out.

This was the crucial moment. But when he whispered his request that I do him again, I knew I'd won. And I took him rough again. And this time he let loose of all restraints and clawed at me like a wild animal and couldn't get enough of my cock inside him.

After I moved in with him, I'd sleep with him on the bed, but we always fucked on the floor or up against a wall or over a straight chair. And the fucker never told me to leave. Each and every time was a new excitement for him. For me, it was telling him he didn't own me and that I decided what was what. Ain't no white man who owns me.

Imagine my surprise that night after I'd decided what I wanted to do about Belcastle when Lucky laid the whole plan right out there on my plate with the steak he served me after he stopped purring from the fuckin' I gave him.

"What'ya fuckin' mean you got us a combined job over the mountain?" I growled. I liked gettin' my own work. I didn't like Lucky—or any man or woman—plannin' my life for me.

"Painting the public rooms of a fancy winery over in Whitehall," he'd answered. "I'm doing some murals and he wanted somebody to do a striking paint job on the rest of the interior. I have his card around here somewhere. The guy's name is Belcastle. Drives a Bentley, wears a fur coat, and didn't bother to bring up pricing, so I'm sure he's good for the money. And we'd get to work together."

I had frozen already at the sound of Belcastle's name. But then I came alive, and I surprised myself even by what I said. "Castleton. The bastard's not cuttin' up Castleton, is he? Ain't makin' it like the old folks cemetery they've made out of this place, is he?"

"Castleton? So, you know the place? No, the way he described it, the winery and vineyard are set well away from the house. He isn't subdividing or anything."

I didn't answer his question about knowing Castleton. Lucky didn't need to know that about me. "Asked for me, did he?" was what I asked instead. I wanted this to be my plan, not fuckin' Belcastle's.

"No, not in particular that I remember," Lucky answered. "He just asked if I knew someone who would do the walls. He asked me if I did that."

I almost said no, and I, in fact, gave Lucky a rough time about sayin' yes. I let him know in no uncertain terms that he didn't speak for me or my services—not any of my services. But he assured me that he hadn't said yes to anything but he hisself visiting Castleton and looking at the work that needed to be done.

When he asked me if I wanted him to find someone else to bid on the wall painting, I backpeddled and said I'd go over the mountain with him. I put my hands on my knees under the table, though. I didn't want Lucky to see them shake at the prospect of seein' Castleton after these years of avoiding it. I'd come up from Birmingham just to see what my grandma had found so compelling about the place—but once here, I hadn't built up the courage 'til now to drive across the mountain.

I shoulda thought deeper about the whole thing, though, as Belcastle admitted to me later that, in fact, it had all been his fuckin' plan to get at me.

He was standin' in the double doorway of a contemporary wood and stone building with big picture windows looking out onto a small lake and the slopes of the Blue Ridge when we rolled through a vineyard and into a newly graveled parking lot. He was tall and slim and wore his gray hair real good. I had decided he was fuckable back there in Sandy's, but he was even more compelling and inviting here in his element, on the family plantation at the foot of the Blue Ridge.

Belcastle didn't look directly at me while we were doing the introductions, although I could tell that he was seein' as much of me as he could in sidewise glances. Most of his attention was goin' to Lucky, as was proper, since he'd be doin' the most artistic work. But Belcastle was showing his nerves too. He came off all so suave, but I could tell he was keyed up. Probably wondered if I'd say anything about him givin' me the eye at Sandy's. At the time I didn't play him for knowin' I was fuckin' Lucky, but, of course, as I later found out, he knew exactly who was doin' who.

"If you gentlemen would come this way, I'll be happy to show you what work needs done," Belcastle said as he ushered us into a stone-floored foyer large enough to handle a crowd comin' and goin' and then into the main tasting room, which was large and airy and had a long bar on one wall and large expanses of glass on the two walls juttin' out toward the view.

I could hear Lucky startin' to hum, which he often did when the creative juices started up.

"And the wall where you want the autumn vineyard scene is . . .?"

"The long expanse behind the tasting bar, if you please," Belcastle ran off with Lucky's sentence.

"Splendid," Lucky exclaimed.

"I'm happy you're pleased. There's a party room wall I'd like done in a summer mode, and the walls of the men's and ladies' walls need scenes as well. I was thinking for those perhaps you could do what they'd see if there were no back walls on the bathrooms. As you'll see, their ceilings are skylights that I plan to have living grape vines wind across."

Lucky was umming and uhhing, and he may have taken in what Belcastle was saying, but he was largely lost to mapping out the wall behind the tasting bar in his mind.

"Perhaps you'd like to stay in here and plan and I'll take your Mr. Hemings off to the party room and pick his brain on what color to paint the long wall."

"Umm, umh," Lucky murmured, lost in his thoughts, and for the first time Belcastle looked directly and openly at me. I slightly tilted my head and gave him a little smile that told the fuckin' bastard that I was willing to play his game at least up to this point, and he extended his hand toward a doorway at the end of the one of the window walls.

I followed him into the next room, which was even larger than the first and had a second long bar in it.

"Take a seat at the bar, Mr. Hemings, and I will fetch you a beer—Millers is what you drink, if I have observed correctly. Am I right?"

I inclined my head again and gave him the little "go ahead" smile. So this was the way he was going to play it—cutting through the crap and lettin' me know he knew who I was and what I did.

Smug with himself now, Belcastle went on as he moved behind the bar and pulled a can of beer out of a refrigerator below the bar top. "We'll start with that long wall over there. What color do you think would be able to hold its own with the view through the windows?"

"I'll have to think," I answered, but I didn't look at the wall; I kept my eyes on his, which were looking amused now.

"And while you think, Mr. Hemings, perhaps you might tell me how much your services go for—and I'm not talking about house painting now."

"I told him, and he had the presence of mind not to swallow his teeth."