[This is the prologue to a GM historical novel in eleven chapters of the men of Shernhaven, Massachusetts, as the leading families of the harbor town are established over waves of immigration. Posting of the chapters will be completed by mid-November 2015.]
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The Trailways bus came in south from Boston on the Boston Road, turned right onto Cushing Street to come into Shernhaven on the east side of Shern Park, the center green of the old Massachusetts harbor town. Half way down the green it turned right again, headed east on Braintree Road and made an almost immediate turn left into the Shernhaven bus depot.
Only six passengers disembarked before the bus took on four more and headed east toward its next destination in Braintree.
The last one off the bus in Shernhaven was a young man of twenty-five or so in dusty jeans, a tight white T-shirt, and brown, ankle-high construction boots. He walked just a couple of paces down the curb toward the park from the door to the bus and bent over and placed a duffel bag and his jeans jacket on the ground. While he was straightening back up in a languid motion, he pulled a pack of cigarettes and matches from under the fold of the sleeve on one of his biceps. Cupping his hand over the flaring match and leaning his head down, he lit a cigarette between his lips.
He shook out the match and rather than tossing it on the ground, ran it into the hem of his jeans at one ankle. Taking several deep drags on the cigarette, he stood there and looked up and down Braintree Road, seemingly a stranger in town getting his bearings.
Standing in the window of the Union Bank of Norfolk directly across Braintree Road from the bus station, the bank's president, Trevor Cole, was taking the scenery in. He liked to have his desk near one of the front windows. He was a window shopper of sorts. And this young man who had gotten off the bus was just the sort of shopping Trevor Cole liked to do.
He found the young man quite attractive. Slender, but with a good build. He had an assuredness about him and a fluid movement that Cole liked. In fact, he was sexy as hell. Trevor identified him immediately as a working man. The jeans, boots, and T-shirt helped him peg the young man, but so did his deep tan, his close-cropped dirty blond hair, and that red bandana around his neck. It was just the sort of bandana the Stilton kid had been wearing last summer on the road crew fixing the pot holes on the road up to the Upper Head. Cole had seen Andy Stilton there, because this was where the Cole mansion was located, on the bluff to the north of the Shernhaven harbor, one of three mansions of the town founders sitting in that prominent position.
The kid—home from college for a short vacation last summer before he had to report back for football practice, Cole had known—was the flag holder for the road crew, standing at one end to hold up traffic to take its turn on the one lane they weren't working on. He'd wanted a better-paying job at the shipyard, but he couldn't be home long enough for them to hire him. That's where he was working this summer, though. There had been little traffic on the Upper Head road that day because there were only the three houses at the top of the bluff, where the road led up from its intersection with Wharf Street, at the Shern Shipyards. But Cole guessed there must have been some sort of union that made them employ flag holders regardless.
The Stilton boy wasn't home for long, so he had to take the work he could get. Cole, whether Andy knew it or not, had arranged for him to get this job. Trevor Cole prided himself in thinking ahead. The pay was OK, but it was dusty work. That was what the red bandana was for. Andy had it around his neck and would pull it up and over his mouth and nose whenever a vehicle went by and kicked up dust. The road was asphalted, but, even though it led up onto a bluff, the sand got up there on dry days like it had been last summer and kicked up a choking cloud.
Even with the bandana—especially with the bandana—Andy looked good to Cole. He liked the construction work look. It gave him a thrill to slum. And Andy was in great shape—a college football player, just like Trevor Cole himself had been at Harvard only four years previously—and had been wearing just construction boots and low-hanging shorts in addition to that bandana.
Trevor Cole didn't just know when Andy Stilton would be home from college for the summers; he also knew quite a bit about what Andy did at college.
A twenty-dollar tip to the head of the road crew and another twenty to Andy, and Andy had ridden to the top of Upper Head in Trevor's BMW convertible with him, gotten in the backseat with Cole, and let the banker suck him off before folding Trevor's belly over the tonneau cover and fucking him doggy style. The college guy had been surprised that Cole had been the one who wanted to be bottomed. He was easier to convince and handle when he'd found that out. He'd said that Cole had looked too macho to want to be the one giving it up, but Cole just laughed and said he had always been good about putting up a good façade.
Yes, Trevor Cole had fond memories of a hunk with a red bandana around his neck.
And here, standing in front of the bus station, smoking a cigarette and acting like he was considering where to strike out next, was another hunk with a red bandana around his neck. He was older than the Stilton kid was, but he looked a whole lot more experienced. It got Trevor Cole's juices flowing.
"Ben," he called out across the bank lobby. "Come over here, please."
Ben Semple, sitting at the loan officer's desk, got up and trotted over to Trevor Cole's side. Ben always answered the call of a Cole—as had his ancestors back in time.
"See that young man standing across the street?"
"Yes sir, I do."
"Want you to go over and welcome him to Shernhaven. Find out if he's new here and needs anything. Anything at all. Understand, Ben?"
"Yes, I do," Ben answered. And indeed he did understand. There was a very good reason he understood.
"If he needs a job or some place to stay, take care of that for him. Just say the word at the shipyard and they'll take him in. Tell them I suggested it. You can tell him it was I who set it up, too. And there's an apartment over my garage he could use for a couple of days at least."
"Yes sir, I'll tell him."
Cole watched Ben leave the bank and cross the street. His eyes went to the bulbous buttocks in the tight-fitting trousers of his loan officer. Cole loved those butt cheeks. He loved pressing his face between them just before Ben got in the mood to grab him and turn him and skewer him with that big black cock of his.
Ben Semple was another one of Cole's "slumming down" fetishes—in fact his primary one. As he watched the young black man walk away from him, like he was dancing on the balls of his feet, Cole marveled at the perfect V from massive shoulders and biceps down to a thin waist and hips and then flared buttocks bouncing along on strong thighs.
This was not your typical bank loan officer. This was more like a prize fighter or a champion bodybuilder. But the Semples had been in Shernhaven almost as long as anyone else, brought here by Trevor's own ancestors. And Trevor's ancestors went back to the beginning of the harbor town. One of the streets here was named Semple. Not a major street, though, but, to Trevor's consternation, it was almost as prominent as the street named for the Coles.
So, although Cole often made Ben put on construction boots and a bandana when they fucked—which was frequently—to the rest of the town, Ben Semple, who had been a sports hero in the minor baseball leagues before coming home, was quite acceptable. He and his family were a colorful part of the town's long history.
* * * *
"Hello, I couldn't help but notice you arrive on the bus. I don't wish to be forward, but if you're new to Shernhaven, I'd like to welcome you—and help you get to where you're going if you aren't sure."
The young man looked Ben Semple over from top to bottom and gave him a little half smile that piqued the black man's interest. Cole sure can pick them, Ben thought. From across the street he could tell. He put out his hand. "Hi, my name is Ben. Ben Semple. I work in the bank across the street there. Can I help you with anything?"
The young man met Ben's hand with his and gave him a firm, assured handshake, holding on maybe a bit longer than he really needed to do. "My name's Tab. And, yes, I've come to town to try it out. How's the work around here?"
"Tab . . ."
"Just Tab. That will do. Work possibilities?"
