Green Man Pt. 03

Holly, Joss, and their best friends Sam and Libby spend an eventful day at the farmer's market. There they each experience the Green Man's powers. Joss embarrasses himself. A deal is struck that will change their lives.

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"Yeah, she says he will be there.....No, I haven't seen him yet.... Uh huh.... I know, but you have to see the things he's carved. They are pretty cool. I mean, really well done.....Yeah... No, I don't see a name on the bottom.. No, I don't think we know this guy's work.... Okay. See you at 9:30 at the courthouse, then... Okay. Bye." Joss pressed the red button on his phone and ended the call with Sam. Sam and he had been friends since childhood and it was Sam who got him interested in woodworking.

Sam, the old scout, always carried a pocket knife, even in his suit pants. Sam knew about carpentry from working with his dad building houses. Fine woodworking like furniture building or turning, though, was not his skill. Sam's hands were more skilled, but Joss had the eye for design. Thus, Sam and Joss were about equal in talent.

Saturday broke clear and cool, a perfect day for a farmer's market in Darlington, the little county seat with cobble-stone streets and brick walkways. Holly was happy that Libby and Sam were coming. She and Libby were good friends, able to share secrets and frustrations easily.

Libby's red hair and freckles gave her a perpetually young look. Even after two kids, she was stunning and men stared at her hips and ass as she walked past. Sam knew the effect and was proud that she could turn heads. Where Holly wanted to be an exhibitionist but lacked courage, it was Libby who was actually more overt about being seen with one button-too-far holding her blouse together or her slacks so tight they appeared to be sprayed on with no visible panty line. She and Sam seemed not to have gone through the doldrums of middle-aged married life and, from the way Libby described it, Sam was open to her fantasies in the bedroom.

"Okay, so where is this guy? What did you say his name was?" asked Sam impatiently. He was already dismissing the fellow as a wannabe, a wood butcher. That's the way it is with these new "makers." They are arrogant, disdainful, having the trappings of craftsmen without the years of work to earn such a title.

Holly directed them along the east side of the courthouse square. The girls took the lead, arm-in-arm, their hips in rhythm as they walked. Sam and Joss with hands stuffed in their pockets sauntered behind, each watching the other man's wife. Soon enough the stall came into view. Above it the sign read 'GreenWood Wares' and seated in the shade of the tent was the man himself.

Both Sam and Joss remained back a foot or two from the table and let the ladies approach. The man sat on the same low stool. He had watched them approach. Green nodded to Holly. She was pleased he seemed to remember her.

His eyes passed from one to the other then back to Holly. His voice came deep and slow, melodically, like wind sloughing through pines in winter. "You've come back, then."

"Yes. And brought my husband and friends. I told them all about you!" She was gushing, nearly giggling with obvious excitement.

"You were pleased with your purchases? They were good to you, then?" Green asked familiarly. Holly blushed deeply and nodded. A part of her wanted to tell him how splendid the spoon and bowl had been, but not with her husband and friends there. He saw it in her face and she knew she had been revealed.

Libby had picked up a spatula and, already, was leaning against the table oddly off-balance. Holly recognized the effect and moved closer to her, slipping a supporting arm around her waist in a casual, yet comforting way. As Libby's hips began to move, Holly kept up the chatter with Green.

"Mr. Green. Oh, I guess I don't really know your name. Is that it?" She stammered.

He nodded. "People call me what they will." He shrugged his shoulders. "Green is fine." His voice was touched with an accent that could not be placed and surrounded them like the damp of an evening field in autumn.

Holly noticed a hand mirror set upon the table, round with a carved wooden handle. Despite the glass placed face-down upon the cloth, it could not be anything else. She had not noticed mirrors on the table the week before.

Her eyes came up and met the strange man behind the table. As Holly curled her finger tips under it to lift it, knowing Mr Green liked people to touch his wares, she heard him say he carved it only days before.

"I thought of you as I carved it, thought it might be the sort of thing you were looking for when you came." He knew she would be back.

Holly turned the mirror in her hand, showing her face to the mirror. It felt light in her hand, lighter than it should have been. Was the mirror not glass? She looked again and there, reflected, was her own face, her eyes blinking, her face not made up like the week before. But...but...behind her in the reflection was Green himself. That just could not be; he was still sitting in front of her. She peered over the object in her hand. He was indeed in front of her. But as she focused again on the image, there was his face hovering so strangely behind her.

The handle felt sensuous. Thicker, the mirror heavier than the spoon, but certainly lighter than she expected. He had carved more brazenly the head of a penis on the end of the handle. There was no denying or explaining away the rude way the head of the cock completed the rigid handle.

Flustered and thrilled by it all, not least by the mirror in her hand -- had he really carved it just for her? Holly blurted, "This is my friend Libby, and her husband Sam and my husband Joss."

Libby had been fondling—that is the only way to describe it—some of the articles on the table. They had the same effect on her as they had on Holly last week. Holly tried her best to deflect and prevent the men from noticing Libby's sexual distress. It did not matter. The men did not notice Libby's rhythmic movements against the heavy table, her face damp and glowing. They were more than interested in the tools upon the table and the strange figure of Mr. Green.

Knowing more than he let on, Green spoke to them. "You may inspect my work, if you wish. Touch, feel." Green held out a shaping axe, so they could examine it. Joss took it and immediately felt how absolutely perfectly it fitted his hand. Looking down, the handle seemed unlike any axe handle he had felt before, so comfortable in his hand, so familiar. The handle seemed veined, even alive. Most modern handles, factory-made are smooth and varnished, unsatisfactory for use unless the finish is sanded off.

The axe head had been forge welded, a harder piece of steel trapped in folds of softer steel, giving it a strong edge. Joss made the common mistake of running his thumb along the edge, testing the sharpness and immediately was sliced deeply. Blood spurted from the cut. Joss just stared stupidly, in disbelief and shock. The axe fell from his hand. Instantly Green caught it with his right hand before it hit the table.

Green struck out his left hand and grasped Joss's thumb tightly, stanching the flow. Joss was transfixed by Green's grip and an odd feeling of arousal. He blinked and looked down at his thumb in the wild man's fist, the hand strong and large. He swayed slightly looking from his thumb to the axe. Green had caught it by the iron head. A deft catch, indeed avoiding the so-sharp bit.

Held as it was caught, by the iron, the carved handle rose in the air. Joss' vision blurred and then he thought he saw the wooden handle not as it was, something to be grasped as an axe is usually wielded, but as a man's cock, an erect penis, large and strong rising up towards him. The end of the axe handle, the knob, usually flared to prevent the axe slipping from one's hand, now appeared in Joss's hallucination as the head of a cock. And just below the cock head where it met the shaft, was a gold ring, separating the knob from the pulsing shaft.

Joss felt the strange man pulling his wounded hand toward the cunning axe handle Instinctively, Joss grasped it. Blinking, dizzy, his heart pounding, Joss stood there with his hand surrounding what to his dazed eyes appeared to be a very large penis. It felt both hard and warm, a living thing, big in his hand. He had looked at photographs, had admired but... but had not felt. He was confused. He found he could not let go of the axe handle cock, as if it held him, magnetically, almost magically.

He was thrilled to actually be holding a cock other than his own. All the months of fantasy looking at men's cocks now happening for him in the midst of a country fair on a public street. Exhibitionism, homoerotic arousal, and freely holding a large, very hard cock in his hand, Joss realised his secret desires were suddenly coming together in this time and place.

And another recognition: An erection forming, rising strongly and pushing against the material.

Joss felt the erection getting harder and, unbelievably, an ejaculation coming on. Joss looked up at the man, worried. The man's face was expressionless, immobile. Joss was on the edge of cumming, at the point of no return, an imminent ejaculation only a synapse spark away. Then Green raised one shaggy eyebrow and Joss's nerves fired in synch.

He felt the cum boiling in his testicles. His mouth fell open and he felt his legs buckle, his breathing heavy and, again, he looked down at what seemed to be a real live cock in his hand. His semen seared through the tunnel of his cock and bolted out the end, obstructed by his pants and underwear. In the midst of his orgasm, Joss realised he was cumming while holding another cock. It was a thrill he had often masturbated thinking of while looking at porn on his computer.

The spurting in his pants was ecstatic, as good as any he had had, yet what an awful thing to be doing there at the fair, at a table with another man looking on and knowing. It was a thunderous event, made more so by being torn between the outright joy of it and the terror of it at the same time.

Holly still, holding the mirror, stared at her husband, her face at first puzzled as she watched Mr Green pull Joss's hand to the axe handle then watched Joss holding the wood. She recognized the effect Green had, knew something of what Joss was feeling. Her brow furrowed. Surely he was not... not having an orgasm? But had she not the week before?

In his hand, what Joss believed was a man's full and strong cock seemed to throb and then, all at once, it too began to ejaculate, the flow rising toward him and landing, as if aimed, in a wooden bowl upon the table. Strong bolts of cum, splashing down onto the wood, enough to soak the bowl. And yet it was immediately absorbed, disappearing in the satin finish.

Joss could not help himself. His tongue went across his lips imagining the cock in his own mouth, spurting. Too much time spent alone in his basement away from Holly, thinking of cock. He looked up embarrassed by his actions and thoughts. From under his bushy eyebrows, the man's green eyes bore into him exploring every secret Joss hid in his soul.

Green seems unfazed by it all, by Joss' powerful ejaculation, his wavering and staring at the axe handle. Joss on the other hand was quite undone and began to fall. Green grabbed his arms, and held him upright. Joss felt trapped by the man's strength, given over to Green's power. Joss's pants were sodden with semen seeping through, looking like he had spilled a cup of coffee on himself.

In her anxiety over seeing both Libby and Joss have public orgasms, Holly had an ejaculation of her own. The verbal kind.

"We'll take it!" she blurted, waving the mirror toward Green hoping to divert the action.

Joss's attention was snatched by Holly's voice. He looked down at his hand, expecting it still to be gripping a stout cock, but the image and idea had vanished as quick as they had come. Instead, Joss was clutching the handle of the axe that sliced him so deeply only moments earlier. Laying the axe handle carefully down, he looked at his wounded thumb and frowned. All he could see was an old scar, white and smooth, where there had been a deep laceration once upon a time -- yet only moments before.

Meanwhile, Libby's throat was flushed and she was damp with perspiration. Her left hand was splayed across several wooden items and her right hand supported her weight as she leaned heavily against the table. Her orgasm had washed over her and subsided. She turned to Holly, whose steadying arm surrounded her waist, and smiled. Whispering, her lips close to her friend's ear, "It's just like you told me it would be!"

Holly pulled her closer and rubbed her forehead against Libby's, and purred, "Mmmm, yes.

Only Sam seemed unaffected by Green's will. He wasn't being obstinate, but was just not taken in by the power that seemed to find a person's weakness and exploit it. Sam was, of the four, the most comfortable in his own skin.

Sam had served a long tour in the Navy and experienced sexual pleasures from around the world. Those experiences woke something deep in Sam, something he had not known before, but realised was true about himself.

Sam knew the shape and feel of it when men got sexually aroused. Where Joss merely looked and jerked off imagining, Sam knew firsthand the ecstasy other men could provide. He had held more than one cock, brought many to full stand and to spurt excitedly. More than once Sam had joined two other men in taking a woman with insatiable needs, filling her every orifice.

He knew the feeling of another cock rubbing against his own, separated by the thinnest of tissue as he and a fellow libertine double-fucked a woman, he in her anus and the other in her vagina. He liked the feeling everytime he and a bunkmate frotted, the familiar rhythm of Sam's ejaculation driving the other man excitedly to shoot moments later.

He also knew how many ways there are to enjoy a woman, whether in submitting to her desires or imposing them on her. In sum, Sam, beneath his calm exterior, was a most exciting lover.

Libby dearly loved him, partly because he was so open with her. He confided all his sins to her. A woman who can listen to a man's secrets has his loyalty forever. Libby knew he had dabbled in what is called these days polyamory. That is, he was able to enjoy the pleasures of both men and women. Libby knew this when they were first married; he had told her that much.

Because he was so loving and so loyal, though, Libby never felt threatened by the width of Sam's desires. She knew they were deepest for her. In fact, his constant experimentation was a source of constant refreshment for their own sex life. Sam never approached Joss, that was not part of their relationship, although he would not have dismissed an opportunity either.

He seemed to connect with Green in a way the others did not. Sam did not need to prove his manhood, he was quietly confident of it. He recognized the same confidence in Green. Sam recognized that Green was certainly different from other men he had either had sex with or shared a woman with. But he was neither fascinated nor put off by him.

Instead, Sam could focus on the carved items that Green had on display. He did not presume it was permissible to lift another man's tool as Joss had done, paying for the impoliteness with a nasty laceration. He examined with his eyes and asked, "May I?" when he wanted to heft something.

Green saw the honest spirit in Sam, the way he did not have to compete, the way he was both polite and confident. Green knew Sam had a heart of oak.

"You know wood and you know tools, I see," Green drawled to Sam.

"My father and grandfathers were carpenters or shipwrights. I guess I have it in my blood. But I have not been able to follow them in the trades." He paused, his voice lowered. "There doesn't seem to be that much demand for fine carpentry or trim...or furniture." Sam's voice trailed off conceding to himself that he was unable to follow his passion. He started up again, "So, I did some framing and repairs, but have..." And lowered again, ending the sentence in his mind by accepting that he had settled into a life of quiet desperation.

"Have ye a knife, lad?" Green asked.

Without thinking Sam shot back, "Have I got pants on, now?"

Sam recognized worksite jibe and smiled. Sam reached into his pants and pulled out an Opinel, the French, folding, single blade knife. It was an inheritance from his grandfather, a master craftsman. Sam was proud of the way it had been carved, its handle a cluster of acanthus leaves. Holding it out to Green, the man examined the workmanship. Then he opened the knife and scraped it along his hairy arm. As if it were not a pocket knife, but a well-stropped razor, Green shaved a grove of thick hair easily. He looked at Sam and lifted his eyes slightly, tilting his craggy head a degree or two higher. Green knew. Sam knew.

The others looked on amazed at how Sam and Green interacted. They had something in common. No one could not name the commonality, but knew the truth of it, nonetheless.

Green examined the knife again and handed it back, keeping his eyes level with Sam's. "I am looking for apprentices. Do you want to learn?"

Sam felt a rush like dry leaves pressed by the wind surrounding him. It was a momentous question and he froze. Yes, he would gladly chuck it all and dive into an apprenticeship with a master craftsman. But he had responsibilities, practical things, duties.

Joss burst out "Hell, I sure would take you up on it!" Green turned his head slowly toward Joss and cast his eyes down at Joss's wetted pants. Joss felt put in his place, found out, exposed for the phony he was. Neither his money nor his possessions were enough to erase the kind of weakness Joss felt at that moment.

Turning back to Sam, Green waited for his answer. The question hung in the air. Joss wanted Sam to say yes so they could shed their current hobbies and become real woodworkers.

Sam weighed the offer carefully and said flatly, "Yes, I want to learn." Joss could breathe again. Green extended his hand and Sam gripped it firmly. They measured each other by the strength of their grips, neither wanting to win or to lose the contest, just to take the other's measure.

"Then you shall. You and this careless lad here seem like good stock. I will give you the time. I demand your hearts and minds and hands. Absolute obedience if you are to learn the ways of a woodman."

It was more of a command, a barter they could not refuse. He would teach and they would learn, they must. There was no "or else" but Sam felt certain failure was not an option.

Looking at Joss, he asked the same of him, with the same requirement of obedience.

Holly looked at Joss pleadingly. This was the chance he needed to break away from the job that was stealing his life from him. "Say yes, Joss. Say yes," she begged silently in her mind. "Oh, do say yes."

Joss could only nod, his usual quick wits having left him. He did not know what he was agreeing to, but he was transfixed by the power of this man, this Mr. Green. He felt compelled to follow him. Where? Into the wild, away from the tame and emotionally straitened life he had endured for too long?

"Come back at the closing time and we will make arrangements," Green said, then turned from them and moved into the shadows of his stall. He blended into the distance as if he were a tree in a fog.

"We haven't paid for our things, yet," Libby called into the dark tent. Sam assured her they would settle up when they returned.

Joss did not seem embarrassed that his pants were soaked in front, so he walked easily with the others around the market. If folks observed his condition, he did not notice. They found cheese and sausages and cider. Sitting on benches, they made a meal of them while waiting for the sun to meet the horizon before making their way back to GreenWood Wares.