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My name is Andrew Robert Hatcher...Andy to most everyone. Just so we get the preliminaries out of the way, I'm 5' 11" and 180 lbs with dark brown hair and eyes. I try to keep my body in shape (without being a gym rat), and I think I've done a good job of it. At 26 years of age I'm still trim with a flat, but not washboard, stomach. I've had women tell me I've got a cute ass. There's a moderate amount of hair on my chest and stomach trailing down to a thick pubic patch from which sprouts what I think is a nice looking cock and balls.

My cock is usually around 4" soft but it grows to 8 1/2" when it's hard. My legs and ass are pretty hairy, and I also have a triangular patch of hair in the small of my back just above the crack of my ass.

I had a pretty normal upbringing in a small town in Ohio. I did pretty much all of the normal things growing up. Played sports...football and track. I dated my share of girls in high school and college and went to bed with most of them. A couple of buddies and I jacked off together a few times in high school, but I had never touched another man.

The only thing remotely unusual about my adolescence and teenage years was that I lived with my grandmother because my parents had been killed in a car wreck when I was three. Grams was great. She didn't spoil me. She made sure I had chores to do and that I did my homework every night. She always welcomed my friends into the house, and there always seemed to be a crowd of us there eating her homemade cookies.

Grams had a massive heart attack at the start of my senior year in college. I think the whole town showed up for her funeral. Her death really threw me for a loop. Maybe that's why I hooked up with Andrea right after that. I needed some stability in my life, and I thought Andrea could provide that. Boy, was I wrong.

Andrea and I were business majors together at Ohio State. She was a bit of a bitch but brilliant and full of life. She had ambitions. When we got serious, she made it very plain that her career would be at least as important as mine. I thought I was in love so I agreed.

Before graduation, we both had job offers from one of the big megabanks in the Southeast. We accepted the offers, got married, and moved to Charlotte, North Carolina, to start our careers.

We quickly acquired all the trappings of yuppiedom. House in a fashionable part of town. Two new vehicles, a Lexus ES 300 for her and a Toyota Tacoma extended cab 4x4 pickup for me. And a big dog named Larsen (after the cartoonist). Larsen was mostly golden lab with a few unusual bits thrown in for good measure. Like most labs, he was a friendly fella, and he could chase his slobbery tennis ball for hours.

I thought everything was fine, but one spring day Andrea came home and announced that she had taken a new job out on the west coast with another one of the megabanks. I was flabbergasted since I hadn't known she was even looking for another position. After I recovered my wits, I congratulated her on her job and told her I'd start looking for a job in the same area. Without batting an eye, she told me that I wasn't moving out to California with her. She was going alone, and she wanted her half of the money in the house as soon as we could arrange the sale. She left the next week. I haven't seen her since.

Larsen and I put the house up for sale and started looking for anapartment that would allow dogs. There weren't many choices, but we did finally manage to find one that wasn't too run down.

I fell into a real depression and started drinking too much. My job performance at the bank began to suffer. I thought things looked pretty bleak. I missed a couple of days (several actually) because I was too hung over to function.

By the next spring, I knew my career was on the skids. I cut back on the drinking and started running and working out again, but I was afraid it was too late. Then one day my boss called me into his office. When I arrived, it was not only my immediate boss but the division manager as well in the room. I knew my goose was cooked.

My boss started off by telling me how well I had done in the first couple of years with the bank. He moved from there to the sad litany of my previous year's performance. I knew what was coming. I just wondered how long they would give me to clear out my desk. To my surprise, my boss said that he knew I'd been going through some difficult personal times and that he was pleased with my recent improvement.

"Andy, I'm glad that you've made the decision to turn your life back around, and that's why we think you're ready for a change. We want you to become the manager of the branch in Carterville. We need someone young and dynamic who will help build up the bank's business in that part of the state."

So that's how Larsen and I ended up in Carterville, NC. For those of you not familiar with North Carolina, Carterville is in the Nantahala Mountains in the extreme southwest part of the state where North Carolina, Georgia, and Tennessee all come together. The area is sparsely populated. The mountains are verdant and softened by eons of erosion. There aren't any big cities close by. Atlanta lies to the south, Chattanooga to the west, and Asheville to the northwest. Carterville is the county seat for Carter County, but that didn't make it a large town.

Larsen and I drove up to check the town out the day after I got the offer, and I fell in love with the place. In many ways it reminded me of my home town in Ohio...only the landscape wasn't as flat. I accepted the offer as soon as I got back to Charlotte.

The bank gave me a couple of weeks vacation to get moved and settled. I had a good bit of money from the sale of Andrea's and my house plus some from the sale of Gram's place back in Ohio. I contacted a real estate agent and went house hunting.

We found the place on the first day. It was a two bedroom cabin in the middle of eight acres of woods on a secondary road about a mile outside of town. The three things that sold me on the house were the isolation (the house could not be seen from the road), the stone fireplace in the living area, and the view off the back deck across a pristine mountain valley. Since I worked for the bank, the mortgage was approved in record time.

Three weeks after getting the job offer from my boss, I was ensconced in Carterville and learning my way around the small town. The people in the county were warm and welcoming. As I learned more about the county and the people I realized that there were some important family names in the area. For the most part, these names represented the first settlers in the area. Of course there were the Carters after whose ancestor the town and the county were named, but there were also Johnstones, Zebulons, Vances, and the Stuarts whose cousins sometimes spelled their name as "Stuwart" and sometimes as "Stewart". I had a hard time keeping all of the interrelations straight in my mind so I set up a geneological program on my office computer. Every time I got another bit of information about who was related to whom I entered it into the computer. Nancy, my secretary who had been born a Zebulon but had married a man from a neighboring town by the name of Jones, caught on to what I was doing and good-naturedly laughed that you had to be born into the system to be able to understand it and since I had been born in Ohio and was therefore not only an outsider but a Yankee as well I might as well just give up the project before it drove me mad. There were days when I agreed with her.

I quickly fell into a comfortable routine. Larsen and I would jog in the morning along the road. After a quick shower and breakfast I'd head into the bank. My days were spent in meeting customers, going to civic meetings, and smoozing the local political leaders. At five, I'd retreat back to Larsen and my cabin to cook a light dinner which I often ate out on the deck enjoying the sunset and the peace of the mountains. Some times on weekends, I had civic functions that took me back into town, but mostly I spent the summer weekends in my jogging shorts working on some landscaping projects around the cabin or endlessly tossing the dog saliva-soaked tennis ball for Larsen.

One small source of irritation in my new life was the irregularity of delivery of the newspaper. The closest "city" newspaper was the Asheville "Citizen", and the paper was delivered by one C.Z. Johnstone (great local name) who I had never actually met. To start the paper I had called the circulation office in Asheville, and they had made the arrangements. I got a notice in the mail that the carrier would be C.Z. Johnstone and his phone number. I paid the subscription by mail directly to the office in Asheville.

It's not that the paper didn't appear daily. It was a question of when.

Most days the paper would be in my box at the end of the driveway when Larsen and I returned from our jog, and I was able to scan the paper while eating breakfast. But on other days it wasn't there until I left for the bank or even until I came home at night. After Labor Day, the problem seemed to get worse so following one such episode I called the number I'd been given for C.Z. Johnstone to complain.

A very tired and elderly sounding woman answered. I explained why I was calling, and she apologized saying, "C.Z. had some problems on the route this morning and had to start driving the school bus before he got 'round all the way."

I had a vision of an old man like "Mr. Crankshaft" of the morning cartoons driving the bus. "I'm sorry to hear that Mr. Johnstone had problems, but this is a fairly common occurrence."

"Sometimes the papers are late getting in from Asheville. If they're late then C.Z. can't get done with the route in the morning, and he has to finish in the afternoon after he does the afternoon bus route. I'm sorry, Mr. Hatcher. I'll tell C.Z. that you called. I know he'll do the best he can to get your paper to you on time."

* * *

After that phone call the paper was there on time for a couple of weeks, but then one Thursday early in October it wasn't there either in the morning or in the evening when I got home. I tried calling C.Z. Johnstone again, but there was no answer. The next morning both Thursday's and Friday's paper were in the box when Larsen and I got back from our jog.

I guess I'd gotten up on the wrong side of the bed that morning, but seeing both papers lying innocently in the box made me mad. Didn't that man realize what he was doing? I decided I'd call the paper's office in Asheville and complain.

Nancy saw the look on my face when I walked into the office. "You don't look happy this morning. What's wrong."

"That old paper carrier has done it again. He didn't deliver yesterday's paper until some time this morning. I'm going to call Asheville and complain. I think the old guy has gotten dotty."

She held up a hand. "Wait just a minute. Who's your carrier?"

"Some old guy by the name of C.Z. Johnstone." I saw the look in her eyes, and a sinking feeling settled into my stomach. "You're related aren't you?"

"Yes. We are. You just sit right down at your desk, Mr. Hatcher. You're interested in all the relations around here. Well, let me tell you about Carter Zebulon Johnstone."

He tone of voice told me that I'd crossed the line. I knew I was going to get a lecture, and so like any sensible grown man confronted by a middle-aged woman shaking her finger, I sat down.

She started. "First of all, Mr. Hatcher, C. Z. Johnstone is 16 years old, not the 'old man' that you thought."

"But I talked with his wife, and she sounded as old as the hills."

"Emily Zebulon Johnstone is younger than I am. She sounds old because she has viral cardiomyopathy. C.Z. is her son, and that boy is doing the paper route, driving a school bus, raising Christmas Trees, and doing whatever other work he can find on the weekends to try to support the both of them since his daddy up and left four years ago. I don't know when the boy ever sleeps or does his homework, but he is probably the top student in the junior class and a darn good athlete too. He's the star of the high school track team."

"Emily Johnstone is a cousin of mine on my mother's side. As I said she has a very weak heart, and the reason your paper wasn't there yesterday is that C.Z. had to take her into the emergency room the other night. He spent the whole night in there with her and then left to go drive the school bus."

"If you call the Asheville office to complain, they might take the route away from C.Z. At the very least it will get him in some trouble, and lord knows, he doesn't need any more trouble right now. Now it's your choice, but if you need your news so badly in the morning I suggest you turn on the TV."

She got up and steamed out of the office. I felt small enough to crawl under the fancy blotting pad on my desk.

* * *

That Saturday morning, Larsen and I went jogging as usual. Larsen's form of jogging was to follow every possible scent off into the weeds beside the road. Sometimes he would scare up a rabbit or quail, and then he would be off on a chase before galloping along the road to catch up with me. It had rained hard that night and the road was muddy from wash off the fields and banks. It started raining again about halfway through my normal course, but the rain was warm and the fall leaves were just reaching their peak of color so I kept jogging.

Both Larsen and I were drenched by the time we approached the driveway on our return. My tee shirt and jogging shorts clung to me like a second skin. There wasn't much left to the imagination by the scanty, wet clothes.

I saw an old battered Subaru wagon approaching up the road. It pulled over to the paper receptacle, a well-muscled arm stuffed a plastic wrapped newspaper into my box, and then the car pulled out into the road in my direction. Well, I thought I was finally going to get to see C.Z. Johnstone, the Boy Wonder.

I raised my hand in greeting as the car approached and saw the driver, a good-looking young blond guy smile and begin to return my wave. Just then Larsen spotted a rabbit and ran in front of the car. I yelled. Larsen saw the car and darted the other way, and the car swerved violently and ended up in the ditch.

I ran over to the car and scrambled into the ditch to get to the driver's window.

"Are you okay?" I yelled into the interior of the car.

"Yeah, I'm okay. What about your dog? Did I miss him?"

"You did, but it looks like you're stuck now. Let me help you out."

The driver's door was jammed into the mud in the ditch. The passenger seat was filled with plastic wrapped papers. The kid started to climb over the papers to open the passenger side door. He was well-built and blond as I'd seen earlier. He was dressed for the warm weather in a tee shirt and soccer shorts. As he maneuvered to get out of the passenger door I noticed a tear on the hip of the soccer shorts and a thin line of blood running down his left leg.

I moved over to the passenger side of the car and helped him get the door open. Because the car was at such an odd angle, he sort of tumbled out the door and into my arms. We stood in an awkward embrace, and I looked into one of the most handsome faces I'd ever seen. He had full lips, a straight nose, high cheekbones, and pale green eyes with just a few flecks of gold and yellow mixed in close to the iris. There were hints of dark shadows under his eyes that gave him the appearance of being older than sixteen.

"Ah...thanks." He finally got his footing and moved away from our embrace.

I felt curiously warm despite the rain that continued to fall. "Are you sure you're okay? It looked like you have a cut on your leg."

He looked down at the blood on his leg. "Oh shit!" His face reddened. "Sorry. I didn't mean to swear."

"No problem. It's understandable. Can you walk? My house is just uphere. Let's get you inside and see about your leg."

"Oh man, my hip hurts. I must have hit it on the door handle when Iwent into the ditch."

"Here. Lean on me."

He put his arm on my shoulder and we hobbled off toward the house. His limp didn't seem too bad, but clearly it was painful for him to put his entire weight on his left leg.

"I'm Andy Hatcher, and the one-dog car wrecking crew is Larsen."

"I'm Carter Zebulon Johnstone. Folks call me C.Z."

"Glad to finally meet you C.Z. I wish it were under better circumstances."

"Same here. Do you think the car is all right?"

"I think so. I didn't see any real damage. I've got a truck. When we get your leg checked out, we'll come back and pull the car out of the ditch."

"Thanks, Mr. Hatcher. I sure hope the car's okay. We can't afford any more repairs this month."

"I'm sure it's okay, C.Z. And please call me Andy."

He turned and smiled. Perfect white teeth. Two dimples on either cheek when he smiled. I felt a jolt rush through my groin that I put down to a shiver because of the rain.

We reached the front porch, and I opened the door. Larsen started inside, but I stuck out a leg and blocked his path. "No, Larsen. Shake first."

Larsen knew that he needed to shake off out on the front porch before coming in the house. When I was by myself I always managed to get out of the way of the flying spray from his shaking, but with C.Z. in my arms I wasn't as quick. As a result both us received a shower of water as Larsen did his doggy thing.

C.Z. laughed. "He's a smart dog."

I guided the two of us toward the bathroom. "He's still dumb enoughto chase a rabbit right in front of a car."

Larsen knew I was talking about him. He came over and followed us into the bathroom trying to get our attention by nosing our hands. I had C.Z. sit down on the closed lid of the toilet. Larsen put his head right in C.Z.'s lap and was rewarded with a two-handed ear scratch and pat that seemed to satisfy him so he wandered off back into the main part of the cabin.

"Let me look at your leg."

I took a wet wash cloth and started wiping the blood away. As I wipedmore blood oozed out from under the edge of his soccer shorts.

"The blood is coming from under your shorts. You'll have to take themoff to let me find where it's coming from."

He hesitated. "I...I don't have any thing on underneath them. I'll be embarrassed."

It's okay, C.Z., we're both guys. Besides I'm going to be looking at your hip, not your dick." But as I said it I realized that I really did want to look at his dick.

He thought for a moment and then slid the soccer shorts down to his knees, and I helped as he lifted his legs out of the torn shorts. He had a nasty scrape on his hip that was the source of the blood. I cleaned the area as gently as I could, but I could tell from his face that it hurt.

"It's not bleeding very much at all. All the water from the rain made it look like more blood than there really was. I do think you're going to have a beauty of a bruise on that hip in a day or so."

As I wiped off his hip I found myself checking out the body that was revealed before me. He still had a summer tan line. The smooth skin above his waist and the lightly haired skin of his legs was a golden tan contrasting with the lighter skin of his hip. My gaze moved around his hip to his crotch. He had a thick patch of dark blond pubic hair. His circumcised penis looked like it was fairly thick and about 4 to 4 1/2" long. It was angled over toward his right leg. His scrotum was about the color of his tanned legs and sported just about as much hair. As I watched, his egg-sized balls moved in the loose skin of their covering and his penis moved and seemed to enlarge. Quickly, he placed his hands in his lap covering my view.

I stood up and handed him a towel. "C.Z., I'm going to get some ice to put on your hip to help keep the swelling down. Why don't you pull off your shirt and dry off. I'll find something for you to put on and throw your wet things into the drier."

He pulled his tee shirt over his head. As he did I noticed his well muscled torso. He had thick patches of dark blond hair under his arms, but other than that his upper body was smooth. His nipples were a dark brown and about the size of quarters capping off nicely rounded pectoral muscles. He had a well-defined six pack on his abdomen. The boy must have had zero body fat.

I tore my eyes away from his body, took his shirt and the torn soccer shorts, and headed to the kitchen where the washer and drier were located. After I tossed his things in the drier I realized that I was just as wet as he had been so I quickly added my tee shirt and running shorts and started the drier before heading into the bedroom to find something for us to wear.

I had to pass by the open door of the bathroom on the way to the bedroom. C.Z. was still sitting on the toilet drying himself with the towel. As I passed by the door he stopped and looked at me. I felt his gaze follow me into the bedroom.

By the time I got to the closet to pull out some other clothes, my face was flushed and my cock had risen to half mast. My feelings were confused. Why was my body reacting to this kid?

I pulled on a dry pair of running shorts and tee shirt and found some cut off sweat pants and another tee shirt for C.Z. Returning to the bathroom, I handed him the dry clothes.

"I think the sweats will be loose and feel better against that scrape on your hip. Let me go get some ice."

He accepted the clothes and looked up at me. "Thanks, but I really need to try to get the car out of that ditch and get the paper route finished."

"Okay, just let me put a gauze pad on your hip to stop the seepage from the wound."

I gathered the gauze, tape, and scissors and started to work. Before when I had been cleaning the wound, my hand had been covered by the wash cloth so I hadn't touched his skin directly. This time there was direct skin to skin contact as I applied the gauze and pressed the tape into place.

He shivered a little as I applied the tape.

"Are you cold?"

"No, it just tickles a little." He placed his hands back over his crotch hiding his manhood from my view.

I found touching him to be extremely stimulating, and my cock was again at half mast by the time I finished applying the bandage. When I stood up I quickly turned away from him so that he wouldn't see my dick tenting out the front of my running shorts.

* * *

The rain had stopped by the time we got in my truck and out to his car. I hooked up a chain between the under carriage of the car and my truck, and the car came out easily. He climbed into the car and winced in pain as he flexed his left leg to depress the clutch. Suddenly, I didn't want to see him leave.

"C.Z. you're going to have trouble working the clutch for a day or so. Why don't you pull the car into my driveway, put the papers in the truck, and I'll drive you around the rest of your route."

He looked at me for a second or so and then broke into a warm smile. "Thanks, Andy. It does hurt when I use the clutch, but are you sure about this? It'll take another hour or so to complete the route."

"Yeah, I'm sure. I didn't have any plans for this morning, and it'sthe least I can do since my dog was the cause of this."

He laughed. "Deal."

* * *

We soon had everything moved from his car into the truck. Larsen insisted on coming along so the three of us drove around stuffing newspapers in boxes for the next hour.

As we drove, we exchanged the usual information. He told me a little about his mother and her illness. He asked where I was from, so I told him a shortened personal history mentioning Grams, Andrea (briefly), and how I came to Carterville. He talked some about his classes at the highschool. They were all college prep courses. He told me about his jobs. Besides the paper route and driving the school bus, he was a part-time janitor at the highschool filling in when the regular janitors needed an extra hand or one of them was on vacation. He sometimes did deliveries for the two drug stores and the one supermarket in town. In his spare time he hired out for odd jobs painting, raking leaves, mowing lawns, and the like. The Johnstones' main source of income was from Christmas Trees that they grew on the land beside their house.

I asked when he found time to sleep. He replied that he sometimes only got three or four hours a night since he had to get his homework done after completing all of his jobs. That explained the dark shadows under his eyes that were so unexpected in a teenager.

I asked if he had a girlfriend. He didn't reply for a moment or two and then carefully said, "No. I don't really have the time to go out." Then he added as an afterthought, "Besides, there isn't a lot of money with all of mom's medical bills and so on."

There was something in his response to that question that seemed curious. Then he turned the table on me.

"What about you? Have you found a girlfriend here in Carterville yet? You're a good looking guy."

Now it was my turn to hesitate. I hadn't been interested in any female since Andrea had pulled her disappearing act. Was I still bruised from her callous rejection or was it that I just wasn't interested? The only sex I'd had since my ex- wife's leaving had been provided by my own hand, and until that morning when my cock had responded twice to the sight of C.Z.'s body I hadn't felt any sexual attraction to any one...male or female. What the hell was going on?

"Andy?" His voice brought me out of my reverie.

"Sorry, I sort of zoned out there. No, I don't have a girlfriend. I'm not looking for one either."

He looked out the window. "Yeah, same here."

We didn't say anything for a while. When we did start talking again, it was about "safer" topics than our relationships, or lack thereof, with the opposite sex.

* * *

We completed the paper route and turned into my driveway. Larsen jumped out of the truck and started after another rabbit. Again I didn't want C.Z. to leave.

"I haven't had any breakfast yet. Do you want to come in and have something with me. I'm afraid all I have is toast and dry cereal."

He grabbed my right hand in his. "Thanks, Andy. I would really like to stay, but I need to get home and check on mom. She hasn't felt well all this week, and I'm late already. She'll be worried."

"Okay. I hope your hip gets better quickly."

"Thanks. And thanks for all your help. It really made a difference.I'm not sure I could have done the rest of the route using the clutch."

"Will you be okay to drive home?"

"Yeah, I actually live pretty close to here just at the edge of town, but thanks again."

We both looked down and realized that we had been clasping hands during the entire conversation. I let go of his hand, and he pulled away but I felt the tips of his fingers drag lightly across my palm as he did. It sent a shiver down my back and a warm pulse into my groin.

He limped toward his car. Suddenly desperate I called out, "You'restill going to be sore tomorrow. Do you want me to drive you on the route again? I'd be glad to do it."

He turned and smiled. "I'll be here at 4:00 a.m. Thanks."

* * *

After C.Z. drove off in his rusting Subaru, Larsen and I went back into the cabin. I made another pot of coffee and some toast. I don't remember eating the toast and drinking the coffee. I was trying to sort out what had just happened.

I'd never reacted sexually to another guy before. Or had I? I remembered the few times my highschool buddies and I had jacked off together, and I knew that I'd been looking at their cocks. Seeing their arousal had heightened my own.

I thought back on the common showers in the college dorm my freshman year. My roommate and I always seemed to make sure we took showers at the same time standing at adjacent shower heads and "accidently" brushing up against each other as we showered. Our dicks had always grown during those showers, and we had laughed and talked of the relaxing effects of the water.

What about my relationship with Andrea? We had been in love. Or had we? Perhaps we were more a convenience for each other than true lovers and spouses. Andrea always wanted more material things which showed the world how successful we (read she) were. Even with the good sex, we had never shared our thoughts and lives the way other couples seemed to.

Was I really gay? Bisexual?

I spent the rest of the day and evening in front of the computer searching for sites on homosexuality. I was amazed at the number of hits from the key word "gay." I found a couple of sites that sported images of good looking naked men with huge erections. I was turned on. Then I came across the Nifty Archive and started reading the stories. To my surprise, the stories turned me on more than the images had. I'd always heard that men are mostly visual in our sexual fantasies, but the word images in those stories were hotter than any thing I'd ever seen before. In fact, I jacked off twice while reading.

I wasn't sure what was happening to me or what it was about meeting C.Z. that had suddenly released this long hidden or suppressed aspect of my psyche. I just knew that I wanted to be with him, and, if possible, to see him naked again.

I went to bed earlier than usual that night after setting the alarm for 3:30 a.m. I wanted to be ready when C.Z. showed up at the house!