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Isaac was astonished when he came down the towpath to see that Lenert had opened the floodgate. It was dangerous to operate the machinery without understanding how it worked—it had taken him a week’s apprenticeship with the previous lock-keeper before the muscle memory kicked in.
He had been frightened that Lenert would hurt himself, or damage the barge and bring the wrath of the canal supervisor down on him. He had lashed out, and Lenert had looked at him like a scolded puppy.
But Lenert had opened the gate properly, and his help had been important, because there had been a steady stream of barges that afternoon, and the captains would have been angry at a delay, perhaps even reported him to the canal supervisor.
As they ate dinner, Isaac thought about what an unusual man Lenert was—able to pick up English words quickly and manage to operate the lock without any formal instruction.
Not to mention that he was quite handsome, and Isaac already knew he was possessed of a rod of impressive dimensions. He seemed like the kind of man ladies were attracted to, and his work along the canal had certainly given him access to many of them. He knew from speaking to some of the hoggees that there were women who could be hired in Easton and of course in Philadelphia.
He imagined for a moment Lenert with one of them. His big hands cupping her breasts, his wide mouth kissing her skin, his cock erect and dripping fluid... and then he realized he was thinking of his own mouth on that dripping cock, and stopped himself.
He dipped a crust of bread into the stew and brought it to his mouth—but even then, he was thinking of Lenert’s long, wide cock instead of what was in his hands.
Then he remembered why he had gone to Stewart’s Crossing that afternoon. He swallowed the bread, gelatinous as it was covered in stew, and said, “I almost forgot. I brought you clothes.”
He stood up and fetched the parcel he had brought back with him that afternoon. “A nightshirt for you,” he said, unfurling a garment like the one Lenert had been wearing, but larger. “Cotton drawers, and short pants you can wear until your leg heals.”
He held up a pair of knee-length pants in rough cotton, and Lenert shook his head. “Für einen Jungen,” he said, and Isaac understood he meant that the shorts were for a boy. “Ich habe so Lederhosen.”
Isaac’s cock pronged quickly at the thought of Lenert in leather shorts. “For a man with a leg like yours.” Isaac laughed. In English he said, “Don’t worry, no one will think you are a boy,” but didn’t bother to translate.
He stood up. “Come, we will change shirts.” He mimed having Lenert pull the nightshirt over his head. Lenert blushed as he did so, looking down at the ground.
Isaac struggled not to look too closely at Lenert’s naked body, though with Lenert looking down at the ground, he couldn’t resist staring just a bit longer than he should have.
Lenert’s cock began to stiffen. Issac assumed it was either from being exposed to the fresh air, or because he realized that Isaac was staring at him. “Bitte,” he said, holding out his hand for the shirt from Isaac. Then he added in English. “Please.”
Isaac gave Lenert the shirt, and he slipped it over his head. Isaac was much slimmer than Lenert, and the new shirt was fitted more for the Prussian’s size.
“Very good,” Isaac said. He patted down the fabric, pausing for a moment over Lenert’s broad chest. The skin beneath the shirt was warm and firm, and the touch sent tendrils of passion through Isaac’s body. He had not touched another man’s flesh for more than a year before Lenert’s arrival.
By then Lenert’s jack was at full stiffness, and he turned away to hide it. Isaac could not resist giving him a brief slap against his buttocks, and Lenert turned back, his mouth open comically.
Isaac laughed, and turned away before his own stiff peter gave him away. For a moment he indulged himself in a fantasy. He would turn back to Lenert and take the Prussian’s stiff cock in his hand.
How would Lenert’s jack feel? Warm? Hot? Would he be able to sense the pulsing of blood in the big vein below the cap? And then what if he went further—knelt to the ground, pushed aside the nightshirt and took Lenert’s cock in his mouth? It was longer than Stephen’s, and a bit thicker. Could he take it all in? Tease the tip with his tongue, take long licks along its surface, fondle each of those heavy, hairy balls with his hand?
What kind of noise would Lenert make? Would he speak in German, mumble, cry out? Would he grab Isaac’s head, as Stephen had sometimes done, push into his mouth as if he was a conqueror, take Isaac as a spoil of war?
Isaac realized he was about to spend in his pants, and he quickly pushed thoughts of Lenert aside. The man was a guest in his home, and he couldn’t take advantage of him while he was disabled and had nowhere else to go. And even if Lenert turned out to be amenable to overtures, Isaac wasn’t sure he should make them. After all, Lenert would leave as soon as his leg healed, and Isaac didn’t want to expose himself once more to the heartbreak of Stephen’s departure.
That night they shared the bed once again, though this time both in their nightshirts. Isaac resented having to sleep so far over on one side of the bed that his arm trailed over and his hand nearly touched the floor. How easy it would be to slide closer to Lenert, not only to establish himself fully on the bed, but to feel the big Prussian’s body close.
Just the thought of it made him hard, and when he woke the next morning he hurried to the outhouse to relieve himself in private. He bunched the nightshirt up and sat on the smooth wooden seat, his prick sticking out ahead of him like a flagpole.
He resisted touching it for a moment. He remembered the way Stephen had pinched his nipples and he repeated the gesture, though it wasn’t the same with his own hands. Then he circled his right hand around his cock, feeling it pulse in his grip. The head was already leaking enough fluid to lubricate his hand, and he tried a few gentle swipes.
The pleasure was almost unbearable, but he couldn’t stop. It took only a few strokes of his hand, and the memory of touching Lenert’s chest and seeing his prick, to cause Isaac to spend almost painfully. He remained on the seat for a few moments, letting his happiness flow through his body and waiting for his heart rate return to normal.
He looked down at his stomach and found the spend had spurted up there and dripped down into the bush around the base of his jack. He stood and pulled the nightshirt over his head. He’d wash himself at the bucket behind the house before going inside and waking Lenert.
He was startled when he opened the door to find Lenert waiting to use it. Had the big Prussian been listening outside as he pleasured himself? Had he whispered Lenert’s name as he wrapped his hand around the base of his cock and stroked?
Lenert looked embarrassed. “Sorry, ich warte,” he said.
Isaac hurriedly stepped around him, his nightshirt still bunched up at his shoulders. While Lenert went in, Isaac rushed to the bucket of water and cleaned himself as best he could, worried that at any minute Lenert would step outside and see him.
But Lenert remained in the outhouse, and Isaac hurried into the cottage and dressed. He was at the fire, boiling water for oatmeal, when Lenert came inside. While Isaac’s back was turned, he heard Lenert struggle out of the nightshirt, and Isaac resisted turning around to help him. Let him ask, he thought. He was a proud man, already trying to do for himself and then assist Isaac with the lock.
And he didn’t want the Prussian to know what he felt. Not until he knew for certain how his overtures might be received, and not until he was fully able to banish Stephen, and the way he’d hurt Isaac, from his head forever.
They worked together for the rest of the week, moving toward and away from each other in an intricate dance of desire and the fear of intimacy.
By Sunday, Isaac decided that he needed the quiet of a meeting to figure out what he wanted to do. Over oatmeal that morning, he said, “I belong to the Society of Friends. It is what you would call my church.”
He paused, and when Lenert nodded he went on. “We believe that God is in each of us. We read the Bible, and we have a Clerk of the Meeting who keeps us organized, but most of our service is quiet and reflective.”
“The ship that bring me here, were services like that. But they use different word, Quaker?”
“Yes, we are called that, too. Some of us shake when we feel the Holy Spirit move in us.” He smiled. “Not me, though.”
He stood up and began to wash his bowl. “It is Sunday, and there should be few barges. I am going to the Friends Meeting, in Stewart’s Crossing. You can come with me, if you like. The Friends welcome everyone.”
“No, I stay here for barges.”
Isaac accepted that, was almost grateful for it, because he feared that Lenert’s presence would interrupt the quiet reflection he needed.
“I will be back within two hours,” Isaac said. He washed up at the pump outside, then changed into a simple white shirt and a pair of black trousers.
As he walked down the towpath, he thought about the parts of the Christian Bible he had read as a child. Quakers did not consider the Scriptures to be the final authority on anything, using them as one source of sacred wisdom, and no one at the meeting he had attended with his parents in Philadelphia had ever spoken for or against loving relationships between men. He had taken it as a kind of de facto approval as long as no one spoke openly.
He knew several male pairs who lived together and worshipped at the Meeting, though he had never thought to question whether theirs were romantic or simply economic connections—it was expensive to live in the city, and in many cases adults shared lodgings, particularly those at the lower edge of the economic spectrum.
Did he want to live with Lenert? That was his big question. He had done so well on his own, but having Lenert there had uncapped the deep well of loneliness that had nestled inside him since Stephen left.
Isaac waited by the mill pond beside the meeting house until the last of the carriages had pulled up and emptied their occupants. As he walked forward, he encountered a woman in her fifties, escorted by a tall, handsome man perhaps a few years older than Isaac himself. He nodded politely and said, “Good day.”
He had been taught that Friends did not generally use greetings, because if the recipient was in an evil pursuit, then wishing him or her a good day was like condoning their behavior. However, his parents had always believed that those they met at meeting were behaving well by attending, so they were to be encouraged.
The woman nodded in response, but the younger man said, “Good day to you as well.”
Isaac walked inside and took a seat at the rear. He thought he’d be alone on his bench, but the man looked around, and Isaac slid sideways to allow the two to join him.
The man stepped into the row, then turned and offered his hand to the older woman, helping her to sit on the aisle. He smiled warmly at Isaac once he was settled, and Isaac felt a small frisson of delight, which he quickly tamped down. The man was just reciprocating Isaac’s gesture.
Even though simplicity was a hallmark of Quaker design, the Stewart’s Crossing meeting hall was even smaller and more rough-hewn than the one where Isaac had worshipped with his parents in Philadelphia. A simple table and spindle-back chair sat at the center of the building, under the apex of the roof. Three rows of unpainted wooden benches faced it on four sides.
He joined the other congregants in the practice of expectant waiting, the time when Friends become inwardly still and clear aside the activities of mind and body that clutter daily life. It was difficult, though, because he caught the man next to him glance at him, his eyes open and interested.
Isaac took a deep breath. He had come to the Meeting for spiritual guidance, not to share improper glances with another man. Though wasn’t it ironic that he might have found a man interested in him just at the time when he’d met Lenert!
Isaac kept his head down and his hands clasped together. Just being in the building made him feel better about his problems. Though in his experience the Stewart’s Crossing Meeting was “unprogrammed,” meaning that it had no formal structure, it often began with a brief prayer offered by the Clerk of the Meeting, a hatchet-faced elderly man named Josiah Wardwell.
That Sunday, Wardwell stepped up to the center table and said, “I met a black man this week whose presence reminded me of the reason our country engaged in the terrible War to Preserve the Union. Seeing him caused me to look at the book of Leviticus, chapter 16.”
In his sonorous voice, he declaimed, “Rejoice before the Lord your God—you and your sons and your daughters, your male and female slaves, the Levites resident in your towns, as well as the strangers, the orphans, and the widows who are among you.”
Then he sat down. Isaac immediately recalled the only black hoggee along the canal, a freed slave named Solomon, whom he had met occasionally at the lock, and wondered if it was the same man. Probably, as blacks were still uncommon in the small towns along the canal.
Isaac knew there was a thriving population of freed slaves in Philadelphia, and while he was in school the Fifteen Amendment had been passed, guaranteeing citizens the right to vote regardless of color or previous condition of servitude. The entire city had come together to mourn the death of Octavius Catto, a black organizer shot and killed on election day in 1871, just a year and a half before.
Across the room, Mrs. Pennington rose from her position beside her daughter. “The life of a widow is a difficult one,” she said. “But I echo Mr. Wardwell’s prayer to bless all those among us who are less fortunate.”
The meeting continued in silent contemplation, until a man Isaac did not recognize stood to speak about the recent rain. He was a farmer, Isaac inferred, who had lost part of his crop to flooding in his fields, and yet he appreciated nature’s grand design.
A few minutes later, another farmer, stood and asked the congregation to welcome a stranger he had brought with him, a refugee from Bohemia who had come to the United States with his wife and children in search of the same things that had brought their own forebears, and many in the congregation—freedom to live, work and worship as he chose.
The farmhand was a man in late middle age, and Isaac wondered what had forced him and his family to make such a hard journey. Failure of his own farm? An accumulation of debts?
Isaac thought he had seen the farmhand before, but had paid him little notice, probably because he did not speak much English. Was this the way people had treated Lenert along the canal, ignoring him, thinking him little more than a dumb animal like the mules?
A few others spoke after the farmer, and then after more silent contemplation the man next to Wardwell stood and shook his hand, signaling the end of the meeting. Isaac stood, as did the man next to him. “Amos Barclay,” he said, reaching out to shake Isaac’s hand.
Was Isaac imagining things, or did Amos’s hand feel especially warm in his own? “Isaac Evans. Are you new to Stewart’s Crossing?”
“My mother has just moved here,” he said. “Mr. Evans, Mrs. Barclay.”
The woman smiled and nodded. She was as comely as her son was handsome, with the same reddish-blonde hair.
“Mr. Wardwell is a cousin of my late husband,” Mrs. Barclay said. “The city air has become difficult for me to breathe, so he invited me to move to a small cottage he owns.” She took her son’s hand and squeezed. “I wish I could convince Amos to join me here, but he has his career in Philadelphia.”
“I feel the same way you do about the restorative power of the country,” Isaac said. “I grew up in Philadelphia and went to university there, but the city became too oppressive for me and I sought the solace of fresh air. I keep the lock on the Delaware Canal just north of town, and should you need anything I hope you will feel comfortable reaching out to me.”
“That is very kind of you, sir,” Mrs. Barclay said.
“Yes, very kind,” Amos added.
Then Mrs. Pennington approached like some kind of avenging angel, and though Isaac tried to slip away, he could not get past the Barclays quickly enough.
“It has been some time since we have seen you at a meeting, Mr. Evans,” she said, as Mrs. Barclay and Amos left. Her daughter Charity was behind her. “You must be very busy. Or is your new friend taking all your attention?”
“Lenert’s health continues to improve,” Isaac said. “He has become quite a valuable assistant at the lock. And as for my worship I find comfort in the silence of the woods when I am unable to attend a meeting.” He turned to Charity. “Good morning to you, Miss Pennington.”
With that, he sketched a quick bow and hurried away before Mrs. Pennington could seek to entrap him in idle conversation. He wanted to carry the quiet of the meeting with him on his return trip up the towpath.
And he could not stop thinking of Lenert, and quickened his step to return to Lenert, who was so endlessly grateful for whatever Isaac did for him, that Isaac could not help but feel kindly toward him.
There was more to his affection for Lenert, he knew. As he walked along the towpath his step was lighter, knowing Lenert was at the cottage waiting for him.
It was up to him to decide what this relationship meant. Even if it meant something to him, it might not mean the same thing to Lenert. And could either of them even begin to speak of such things, worrying how the other would react?
Though he had tried his best, sadly the meeting had left him no clearer in mind.
