39 comments/ 32174 views/ 12 favorites Old Country By: Flavian Description: From Birmingham to Ohio, Luanne's job travels offer a promise of the good life ahead for her and her husband, Glenn. But things begin to get complicated when she encounters 'Old Country.' Inspired by the Mark Chesnutt song of the same name. ***** I was drifting ... peacefully; just enjoying the simple pleasure of a warm summer day, lying on the floating platform anchored in the middle of the small lake. I was enjoying the quiet of no cars or crowds around there at the State Park near my uncle's house. Our family went there at least three times each summer when I was growing up. At least we had until I had gone off to college. But ... that was years ago. Why am I out on that floating platform now? And that soft beeping sound I keep hearing; what's with that? And ... SHIT! Why does my body ache so damned much all of a sudden? Oh, SHIT!! My chest and side are in agony! I may have groaned out loud. I don't know. It was dark all around me. I could not see anything, and I could only hear that damned beeping, and then the rustle of cloth and a couple of footsteps close by. I heard a voice - female - I think - speaking softly, but with some measure of authority. "Get the doctor. He seems to be coming out of it." Then, I lost all sensory contact with everything and I guess I went back into a deep sleep. I don't know how much later it was after I had had the summer lake dream and had partially awakened in agony. But I was coming awake now to the realization that my eyelids had quite an accumulation of that crystalline stuff. You know; the stuff that seems to gather when you have been asleep for quite a long time without having rubbed your eyes reactively in your sleep. That is when you are so absolutely dead to the world that your arms and legs do not move while you are sleeping. The lights in the room in which I was awakening were dim at the moment, and somehow it registered to my brain that it must be nighttime. I guess the logic centers in my brain were cueing to the fact that I was in a hospital and that the very low activity level around me lent itself to the atmosphere of a night shift. The pain that I remembered having felt when I had last come out of my slumber was not gone by a long shot. But it was now a recognizable dull ache - and not a small one, either - but at least it was not an overwhelming press in the left side of my chest as it had been before. The loopy sensation in my head and the dryness in my mouth seemed to bring back memories of how I had felt when I had taken Percocet following my arthroscopic shoulder surgery to remove a bone spur back a few years earlier. But, why the hell did I need Percocet? And why the hell was I in a hospital? The last thing I could remember was leaving my office at the airport, heading out to get in my car to drive home for the evening, and then ... a movement in my periphery, a large shape coming quickly at me, and then huge pain in the side of my head, and falling, and ... darkness. Believe me. I really tried to stay awake after I began to realize my current situation, but I could not. The next time I awoke, there was a friendly, not-too-homely, smiling feminine face above mine. Next to that face was a hand holding a small penlight. I realized pretty quickly that this lady must be part of the ward staff and that she was checking out the reaction of my pupils while holding my eyelids up one at a time. "So," she said in a voice that sounded as if it belonged to someone who had smoked at one time, but had quit a few years earlier, "you seem to be ready to join us at last." I did not say anything until she let go of my eyelid and allowed me to blink. The crusty eye stuff was mostly gone. Either I had wiped it away myself in my sleep or else someone had taken a cloth and cleaned it away for me. "Why," I began and felt the dryness in my throat. She must have heard it, as she reached beside the bed and brought back a small cup of water with an articulating straw. I gulped the water down once, coughed softly once-oh, shit; that hurt; took another swallow, and then attempted to clear my throat. "Why," I said again, "am I here? What happened?" "Mr. Reese, you are in Saint Elizabeth's in Covington. They brought you in here Tuesday evening. It would appear that you were attacked and beaten in one of the employee parking lots out at CVG." I did not say anything for a minute as I tried to let my brain process what she had said. My name is Glenn Reese, and I live in Cincinnati, Ohio. But my workplace is just across the Ohio River, on the Kentucky side, at the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport - a name long enough that a lot of folks related to the airport or airline industry and the surrounding community of Covington, Kentucky, know it simply by its International Air Transport Association airport code as CVG. "Tuesday, you say?" I said at last. "What day is it now?" "It is just after midnight on Thursday morning. You have been out since they brought you in on Tuesday evening; and then there was the surgery, of course." She began to check out the electronic IV delivery system next to my bed before she continued. "But I don't want you to worry about that right now. You need to rest and get well. Your doctor will be doing her rounds sometime after seven, and I am sure that the police officer who was here earlier will want to speak to you." Police? Well, yeah. I guess if I were attacked and beaten, the police would get involved somehow. But who would have done this to me; and why? I noticed that she had not said anything about my being robbed; just attacked and beaten. I closed my eyes and tried to 'feel' myself out by imagining each region of my body mentally, since it hurt too much to move right now. Head? Sore on the right side above my ear ... and a whopper of a headache; kept under control by the effects of the Percocet, no doubt. Neck, shoulders, and arms ... stiff, sore... Warm pin-prick feel of the IV catheter in my left arm... Chest and abdomen ... aches like a mother!... And now I can feel an ache in my groin ... oh, shit ... it's my balls ... what's up with that... Legs and feet ... can't seem to feel any difficulty down there ... I mean I can bend my knees and wiggle my feet and toes without much in the way of discomfort. Shit ... I guess that about does it. For the areas that are not injured or achy, the bed sure feels soft and comfortable. As for the rest; thank you, Percocet. And that's all I remembered until later that morning. Luanne! Does she know where I am? Did anyone contact my wife? I awoke in a panic and immediately regretted my sudden movement as the pain in my chest, side, and groin let me know that I was still in a hospital bed, evidently as a result of a beating. And I had no clue as to the reason behind the beating or any clue as to the identity of who did it. "Mr. Reese, calm down. You don't want to put a strain on your sutures. And I certainly don't want to have to do them again." This voice sounded feminine yet determined. When I opened my eyes, I saw the stereotypical white smock with hospital badge and ubiquitous stethoscope around the neck of a doctor. But this doctor was a woman who looked to be about forty-five or so years old, with hair that looked, with the able assistance of her hairdresser, to be about thirty-ish; and tired and experienced eyes that looked to be about a hundred and fifteen. Dr. Crabtree was her name, according to her badge, and she examined me quickly but thoroughly. I was a bit embarrassed at having a woman examine my 'package' when she pulled to covers aside and lifted my hospital gown. I tried to suppress a groan when I felt her hand on my balls, as she gently lifted them, evidently to check out her handiwork, if her comment about sutures from before were any indication. "I had to take care of a torsion that had developed in your left testicle caused by the bruising following the assault on your groin area. It appears as if someone struck you above the right ear; and, when you fell, the assailant kicked you several times in the groin, along with giving you several kicks to the ribs. That is why your thoracic region will be sore for a while and why I had to operate on your testicle. If the bruising, coupled with your torsion condition, had continued down there for many more hours, I would have been forced to take the left testicle." I don't know how my facial expression looked to her at that moment, but my gut was churning at that point with the natural aversion any man feels about a threat to his reproductive glands. Dr. Crabtree continued, answering my unasked question. "You should not worry about your manhood at all, Mr. Reese. It's all there. And I predict that, if you follow my post-operative instructions and stay with the topical testosterone hormone regimen that I am prescribing for you over the next few weeks, you and your wife should be able to continue in wedded bliss, meeting each other's sexual needs and expectations in no time at all after you heal." She held my left hand loosely as she said this, noting my wedding ring. "It might itch a bit when the sutures begin to dissolve, but I am sure that you and your wife can figure out who will apply the zinc oxide ointment to the affected area in order to ... make it better." Dr. Crabtree had a twinkle in those ancient eyes of hers as she said that. "My wife," I said, "has anyone contacted Luanne? She was out of town on business-her job. Has anyone called her?" "I will check with the floor nurse and have her give you an update on that. Saint Elizabeth's is pretty anal in its approach to HIPAA laws. But the nurse can get the next of kin notification business worked out with you and make sure that any authorized family members are apprised of your situation." Dr. Crabtree's voice, although businesslike and detached, seemed to calm my fears. I knew that this was one very professional woman. She was coming across to me as someone who was very capable and who had things well under control. And, from what she had said, she had all the confidence in the world in the nursing staff that was working on my ward. I relaxed a little mentally as she assured me that the staff here at Saint Elizabeth's would get in touch with Luanne. - Luanne and I had only been married for just over four years. We had met shortly after I had gotten a job right out of college, graduating from Western Kentucky with a degree in Art History. I had been hired by the firm that ensured the proper interior design work for the shops and the public passageways at Cincinnati airport. CVG was actually somewhat of a combination of artsy showpiece and traveler's shopping mall. The Airport Commissioner's office and the Airport Authority wanted the place to be a really enjoyable experience for folks traveling through there; allowing them to be soothed by their surroundings when they would otherwise be panicking about flight delays or venting their anger over lost luggage. Luanne Campbell - her maiden name before we were married - had grown up in Steubenville, Ohio, where the locals laughingly bragged that the pollution there was measured in 'Steubens.' She had graduated from Ohio State and worked in hotel and resort management for a company based out of Miami, but with its major Midwestern office in Cincinnati. They were a fast-growing company and were continuing to acquire properties as they bought up timeshares and smaller hotel chains all over the U.S. and the rest of North America, as well as into the Caribbean. Luanne loved her job and had advanced rapidly after coming to work for them. She had finally, after only a couple of years out of college, landed a very-well-paying position with the company; and well ahead of her peers. The fortunate side of this was the pay and benefits package that she was receiving. The unfortunate side was the travel requirement. For just over a year now, Luanne had been required to be away from home - and me - for approximately half of each month (home two weeks; away two weeks). Because she was dealing with new properties mostly in the Deep South, specifically along the Gulf Coast (known locally as the Redneck Riviera), she had two offices. One was here at the company's office building in downtown Cincinnati. The other was in Birmingham, Alabama. When Luanne had taken this position, I had stated my initial objections about having to endure all of this separation, but she was determined to succeed. I realized that I loved her enough to give her the opportunity to grow in her career. At one point, after the first few months of the lengthy periods away from home, I had carelessly voiced the feeling that I could not help but wonder if Luanne was more excited about her career than she was about our marriage. She had gotten really angry with me for a bit for saying that, but she had assured me later that she was committed to our happiness. I noticed, however, that she did not seem to argue the truth of my observation about her work quite enough, in my opinion. Luanne had also assured me that the Vice President in charge of her division had promised her that the situation would resolve itself within eighteen-to-twenty-four months. After that, she would be back home in Ohio for good. When that happened, she promised me, we could get about the business of starting to have kids before we got into our thirties. - A Kenton County (Kentucky) Police Officer came in to see me later in the morning to take my statement and ask questions. It seems that an officer of the Cincinnati Northern Kentucky International Airport Police Department had been alerted to my beating by a report from one of the men monitoring the parking area security cameras. Unfortunately, it had been pretty dark; and the distance from the camera to my reserved parking space was just too great, to make any sort of identification of my assailant. The only thing I could determine in my discussion with the officer was that whoever had attacked me had been a pretty big guy and he had really done a number on me. I only remembered clearly that it had happened in the early evening just when the light was finally fading out and all the parking lot lights were coming on. I had been working later than usual; but without any guilt, since Luanne was out of town. I remembered the first strike against my head, and my assailant saying something that I could not discern as I had suddenly realized that I was about to become better acquainted with the pavement as I slid against the side of my car toward the concrete surface; and then-darkness. I was too weak to have a long conversation with the officer. Actually, I was not so much tired, as sore, and it hurt to breathe too heavily in order to carry on a long conversation. The officer left me with a reminder to let his office know if I remembered any more about the night of the attack, or if I could figure out if I knew of anyone who might have held a grudge against me; and then he handed me his card. That last part of his request was not hard; I knew of absolutely no one who, for any reason, would have it in for me. I went under again and did not awaken again, except for a brief stir whenever someone came in to take vitals, until suppertime. - I had just finished my Jell-O, that dreaded lemon stuff, when Luanne came charging into the room. Thankfully, the nurse's aide was between my wife and me, or else I am sure that Luanne would have thrown herself onto me and bruised or broken every one of my ribs. The nurse's aide asked my wife to be careful when touching me because of my injuries. Throwing her light jacket and her purse into a chair, only to have them slide to the floor, Luanne came directly over to me with tears in her eyes. "Oh, Glenn, Honey!" Luanne cried, "What happened? Who did this to you? They called me when I came in to work yesterday in Birmingham, and I tried to get on a flight last night, but the storms and flight delays had everything going into and out of Atlanta in a hairball; there were no direct flights here available from Birmingham; and I could not get anything out until this morning. I was just so frantic and so frightened and..." At this point, she just covered her mouth with her hand and sobbed as tears flowed down her cheeks from those wonderful brown eyes. Her dark brown hair fell to the sides of her face as she looked down at me with a frightened but still loving gaze. I glanced down and was amused, but curious as to what she was wearing. She had on a white polo-style shirt with a vaguely familiar, rather large script capital 'A' over her left breast, emblazoned in dark red to contrast sharply with the white background. Her nice high-riding B-cup-sized breasts were jerking somewhat as she sobbed, but they did not jiggle. I grinned up at her in an attempt at giving her a reassuring look. "What's that big red 'A' on your chest all about?" I asked her. "Oh." Luanne actually blushed. "We had a wager in the office this past weekend. Vernon, my manager there, is a Bama grad and he bet me that Alabama would score more points against Vanderbilt than Ohio State would against Nebraska. Naturally, I had to stand by my Buckeyes. But, the Tide evidently really rolled on Vandy in a big way, and that left me with having to wear this University of Alabama shirt home to Ohio." I had met Vernon Talbot, her Birmingham office manager, about six months before the attack on me in the parking deck, when he had come up to Cincinnati for company business. Luanne had been in the ladies' room at the cocktail hour organized by the company when he had introduced himself. Vernon had displayed a bit of surprise when I had said that I was Luanne's husband. He had looked strangely at me and started to say, "YOU are her husband? But, I thought..." and let it trail off, as one of the company's execs had asked him a question to distract him before he and I could carry on any further conversation. Luanne had returned and had taken my hand to pull me over to meet another of her co-workers; she had appeared a bit nervous when she had seen me speaking briefly to Vernon, but had relaxed a bit as we had left the party shortly afterward, and I had not thought about it anymore after that. - When I was finally released from Saint Elizabeth's, Luanne was with me. She got me settled at home and, in the days ahead, she ensured that I took care of myself. She made sure that I established and kept all my physical therapy appointments for the next two weeks. Unfortunately for me, Dr. Crabtree had warned me to put off having sex until my sutures were dissolved, and that did not happen before Luanne had to return to her Birmingham office for her next round of work down south. I was not really all that super pissed; it was just frustrating. I had not gone longer than two weeks without having sex with my lovely bride since before our marriage; and, by the next time I was going to see her, it would have been six weeks! I would definitely be quite horny by then. And I am sure that she would be as well. Luanne promised to make our next time together very special, and she gave me her very best sexy smile. She said this just after scorching my lips with one of her patented hot kisses when I dropped her off at the airport departure lane. After I waved at her as she passed through the terminal doors, I pulled out and around a waiting taxi standing ahead of me and into the exit lane for the terminal before going around to the airport's main office facility and to my parking space. I had been back working since the week after I had gotten out of the hospital; I just needed to take things easy for a while. Being alone for the next two weeks, I had time in the evenings to ponder the recent strange events in my life. Bits and pieces of the night of the attack come to me every now and then. And it was strange how little things would bring back the memories of the incident. Old Country First, I tripped during one of my easygoing jogs one evening during my second week back and, as I lay there on the ground, I could smell the soil under the new turf grass next to the sidewalk and remembered that same smell from that night - like that of freshly-turned earth - wafting off the guy. I had already remembered that my assailant was a very large man, and he was alone. Finally, I remembered something about hearing the guy say the word, "Wife." After a week of this, I began to make notes to myself in order not to forget the details later. When I called the police and told the detective who was handling my case about what I was able to recall, he surprised me. He straight out asked me if I was having an affair with a married woman, as the attack on my testicles was telltale of an attack by an enraged husband for that type of insult. I assured him that I was happily married and that I had NOT been messing around with anyone else - single, married, or even divorced. Needless to say, when Luanne returned from her latest southern sojourn, after her two weeks away from me, I was horny as hell! She seemed to be too and, after giving me one of her patented scorching hot kisses when she got in the car at the airport, she put her hand in my lap and did not move it away from my erection all the way to the house. WOW!! Did we ever have the hots for each other by this time!! When we got home that night, we did not even wait to get Luanne's bag out of the car. We were in the house and headed upstairs before the motor for the garage door opener had finished closing the overhead door. "Oh, Glenn, Baby," Luanne panted, "It has been soooo long. I need you; right now!" And, with that, she removed her last remaining items of clothing-lace panties and matching bra; the rest of her clothes having left a trail from the kitchen all the way up the stairs. She lay back on the bed, spreading her legs, raising her knees, and fingering her slit. I was so on fire at that point, from all the touching of my cock through my clothes on the way home from the airport; and from watching her gorgeous ass as it had swayed in front of me during the ascent to the upper floor of the house. I was surprised that I had not cum spontaneously in my pants before now. Within seconds, I was between Luanne's legs, pumping my rock-hard shaft in and out of her very wet honey hole while I kissed her neck. She moaned loudly in my ear as she held me down over her. She bucked her hips up so that her pelvis smacked mine by gripping my thighs in a death-lock with her heels and pulling me to her repeatedly. It only took a couple of minutes for her to begin to moan in ecstasy. In all the time we had been together, Luanne had always been a moaner and never a screamer. I only lasted a few seconds longer, as her pulsing, gripping pussy milked me like a machine on a cool morning at a Wisconsin dairy farm. Luanne held me after our climaxes, while we let our pulse rates drop a bit, and would not let go; all the while telling me that she loved me. Finally, she relaxed and my cock slipped out of her pussy, leaving wet love traces all over the sheets. A little while later, upon my return from taking a leak, I entered the bedroom to find Luanne on all fours with her ass pointed toward me. She was looking over her shoulder at me, arousal written all over her face again. "Fuck me, Lover. I need you to fuck me again!" Luanne hissed at me. This was only somewhat unusual; rarely did she offer to let me do her doggie. In fact, we had never done anything much more adventurous than missionary and an occasional doggie in all our time together - not by my choice, though. Luanne never asked for more. I had not ever wanted to push things sexually with her; and we both seemed to be satisfied sexually, even with our limited repertoire. And there had never been any arguments about our sexual escapades. I moved behind my wife's sexy body quickly, since Little Glenn had suddenly felt the need to put on another burst of energy. Holding Luanne's hips with my hands, I bent my knees slightly in order to facility alignment. Once I felt her fingers take my tip and get it centered, I pushed in smoothly, eliciting an, "Ooh, yes," from Luanne. This episode lasted about five minutes, bringing Luanne off twice with the shivers and moans, and a groan from me with several mind-blowing blasts of cum from the tip of my cock deep inside her grasping pussy. Later, as we just lay in each other's arms, after both of us had cleaned up, I heard Luanne sigh. "What is it, Sweetie?" I asked softly, kissing her hair on the top of her head as she lay with her cheek against my chest. "Oh," here Luanne paused for almost five seconds, "I ... I just love you. That's all." If I had not been so happy that she was home again, and worn out from our love session this evening and had been paying attention enough to her hesitation and had followed up, maybe - just maybe - I might have asked the right question. Only weeks later did I get the answer that helped me to realize the need for the question in the first place. - The ivory tower in which I had been living did not necessarily crumble down around me, as generally seems to happen when a husband discovers that all is not perfect in paradise. In my case, though, that tower did begin to develop a few cracks in the foundation about a week-and-a-half later, four days before Luanne was scheduled to fly back down to Birmingham for another two-week stay. I routinely update our monthly expenses on my computer using a utility program that accompanies the tax preparation software that I use each year. This utility program allows me to enter Luanne's and my legitimately deductible expenses and keep track of them electronically. That way, when it comes time in March and April, at which time I get the chore of preparing tax returns for Uncle Sam and Uncle John (our current Governor), the tax program can just electronically 'inhale' the information about all our deductible expenses in a blink. Luanne's travel and the apartment in Birmingham, that she maintained as a second residence in order to do her job, constituted legitimate major business expenses, well in excess of the two-percent adjusted gross income threshold. Thus, we were able to save some big bucks on taxes, provided we kept track of the expense details. Luanne routinely maintained electronic copies of the receipts for all of her associated business expenses, while scanning the printed or mailed paper copies at her office into PDF files and storing them on her Surface tablet and then emailing them to me at the end of each week. By the previous Friday, the mid-week Friday, she had still not forwarded her expense file to me by email. I realize now, after the fact, that, if I had not been so task-focused at that point on that Wednesday morning, I may not have discovered the evidence that proved that my wife was hiding a part of her life from me, evidence that changed my whole outlook about our marriage and our life together. That Wednesday morning, Luanne had been checking email, weather, her favorite blog sites, and whatever else she checks before leaving for her workplace when she's here in Cincinnati in the morning. But, for some reason, she had absent-mindedly left her tablet computer on the counter on the way out the door. I did not have to be at work until mid-morning today, and I had a couple of hours to kill before I had to leave. I had grinned to myself at the idea of missing the early morning traffic slow-downs on the approaches to the bridge over the Ohio. Seeing Luanne's computer on the peninsula-shaped counter in the kitchen, I realized that now would be a good time to reconcile her most recent expense files before she had to leave town on Sunday. I awakened her Surface computer and flicked my finger across the screen in order to bring up and open her documents files. My finger accidently tapped on another application icon and it brought up an open web browser in which I could see some of Luanne's email. I did not know then if it was a good thing or a bad thing that I dwelled for a couple of seconds longer than I normally would have on what was open on the screen. Now, however, in hindsight, I realize that, even if I had just pushed on by and skipped those few seconds of perusal of what was on the screen in front of me, I still would have only been delaying the inevitable. It was the email address names that caught my eye. Luanne was receiving quite a few messages from an email address called 'BamaBoy06.' When I opened one of these messages out of curiosity, I did not even get into the text of the message before I noticed that Luanne was using an email account that I did not know that she had opened, using the name 'OhioBabe08.' What the shit was this all about? Well, I guess that you can imagine, by now, that the electronic conversations I was moving through that morning had nothing to do with Luanne and me. But, they sure had everything to do with Luanne and some guy in the Birmingham area calling himself BamaBoy06! You know how you read about the emotions of the husband moving through what amounts to the grief cycle when he discovers that his wife has been seeing another man, one who evidently (based on some of the steamy stuff I was reading there) causes her not just to moan during sex, but to scream? Well, that did not happen with me. I went really quickly from shock to anger, and then to sadness and disappointment; and then back to a simmering case of simply being pissed off. So, this guy, this BamaBoy06, evidently had the talent to get Luanne sexually wound up in bed and could get her body humming to a level that I never could. At least that is what I determined from the few emails that I read before quitting in disgust. No. I did not reach for the bottle of Maker's Mark, as some of the guys in this situation that you read about do. Yes, I was pissed, but surprisingly not overcome by despair or any of that other emotional 'downer' crap I hear and read about from guys who discover that their wives are running around on them. I just poured another cup of black coffee and then tried to make some sense of what I needed to do next. Well, obviously, I was not going to stay in a marriage with a cheating wife. Yes, I was still sad and disappointed, but I was also already thinking about the 'what next' phase of things. Guys tend to be problem solvers and process-oriented. This appeared to be a pretty easy problem to solve; simply get a divorce and move on. That answered the question about the process as well; get a lawyer, have her served, and move on with my life, hoping to find someone to replace Luanne in my heart and life while I am still in my late twenties, so that I can get on with the business of having a family somewhere down the line. Did my love for Luanne die at that point? No. Of course not; I had loved and still did love Luanne, and I guess I felt more disappointment than anything else; but anger was running a close second to disappointment at that point. And my anger extended not only to Luanne, but to this asshole in Birmingham who had helped her to cause my problems. Curiosity was running third. Why would she seek comfort in the arms of another man in the first place? Why would she deceive me all these past months? Could it be something as simple as the quality of the sex? Was I not man enough to satisfy her sexual needs sufficiently that she could not wait just two weeks each month to have me 'tickle her fancy?' Did she need something that I could not provide; financially, emotionally, or sexually? Or could it simply be the stresses of her job that led to all of this? Oh, there were plenty of other questions that I would need to have answered and I was developing new questions in my mind as every second passed. I knew that I needed to protect myself legally in case she decided to take action to divorce me. And I had to confront her, at some point in all of this, about her need for 'Southern Comfort, ' so to speak. But I could not corner her now; not until I knew more. But I had to ask myself if I really needed to know any more than I already knew. I mean ... her emails told me quite enough to decide on divorcing her; she had cheated and given her body to another man sexually. Did I really need to know any more than that? Things were not as warm around our apartment that evening, or for the next three days. Luanne asked me several times what was causing me to be so down and withdrawn. Yep. I lied like crazy. I told her that the economic situation was causing everyone at my company to worry about the long-term stability of our jobs. Then I put on a fake smile and said to her, "I would hate to be out of work and not be able to support you, Sweetie." Then I gulped before continuing, "And we would not want to start having children at a time when we could not provide for them, would we?" Luanne displayed what I thought at that moment was a very sad expression as she glanced away from me and looked at the far wall. Then she took a deep breath and I watched as she deliberately pasted a smile on her face; one that was definitely forced. "Well, Honey; you know that I make a pretty decent living from what I do. Once all this split living is finished in a year or so, we should still be okay financially," Luanne said, now looking at me with what I would describe as expectation and hope written on her face. That night, the Saturday night before she left on Sunday, we made sweet love, despite everything that I had discovered earlier. I felt sad that this beautiful woman, in whom I had invested my emotional future, could be so seemingly devoted to me, yet so duplicitous. As I drove her out to the airport the next day, our normal bright conversational pattern was replaced by a strange silence in the car. Luanne's left hand reached out to lie gently on my right thigh as I drove, but she said very little and I only spoke in response to her. As I stopped in the Departures lane to let Luanne out, she gave me one of her megawatt smiles and leaned in for her goodbye kiss. It was super hot, as usual. I knew from all these indications that she loved me; you just cannot hide that. But, inside, I could not understand why all the other shit was going on. - I hated the idea of divorce, even though I knew that it was the logical next step. I had seen it rip families completely apart and wring everyone out to dry financially. Fortunately, Luanne and I were not overly in debt. I had paid off my college loans at around the turn of the previous year. Luanne still had a couple of years to go on hers, but, with the hefty income she was drawing down in her job, that should not be a problem for her. Living as we did in an apartment, we had not gotten to the point of home ownership yet, so our debt situation beyond student and car loans was not that great. We each had investments through our work-related 401(k) plans, but the biggest investment that would be disrupted by all of this would be the emotional investment we had both put into our relationship. And I felt as if I could never recoup what I now considered to be almost four lost years. I got a referral for a good divorce attorney through one of the guys at work who had gone through the ordeal about two years before. Evidently, the divorce business was booming in our area, because I had to wait three days to get an appointment for two hours of his time. "Are you sure that reconciliation is not possible?" Mark Helmond, my attorney asked me, as we were filling out all the questionnaires and other forms necessary to begin the divorce proceedings. "Do you believe that counseling might help? I just ask because, if she contests the divorce, seven times out of ten, the judge in the case rules for mandatory counseling." I took a breath and considered what he was asking. After a couple of more seconds, I responded. "No. I know Luanne. And I know that this is not a case that will be one of bitter fighting over money or other assets; hell, we don't have that much. And it is not that we do not love each other. It's just that I cannot remain married to a deceiver; a manipulator; a cheater. And I am pretty sure that, when I confront her, she will not fight about this." "Okay, then," Helmond sighed and went on, "it should not be too difficult then. If you want the easy way out, we will file a petition for Dissolution of Marriage under the Ohio no-fault provisions. I presume that this is what you want; right? Otherwise, we can go for a petition for Divorce, using Adultery as grounds for the action." He was just giving me the options, I know. Everything I could read from his body language told me that he thought I would be better off simply going for a no-fault dissolution. I might have still been pissed at the situation in which I had found myself, but I was not entirely stupid. I knew that it would be better for me financially, emotionally, and with respect to time and the ability to get on with my life, to take the easier option. I nodded to him and told him to go with the no-fault dissolution. I did not hate Luanne; I just hated what she had done to me ... to us. We finished up and he stood to shake my hand. I would have very probably left Mr. Helmond's office and gone on with my life, awaiting the outcome of the dissolution proceedings, if his PA had not buzzed him at that moment. "Mr. Helmond," came her voice over the intercom speaker, "I am sorry to interrupt your meeting but I have Paul in the outer office and he says that he needs to see you right now." Helmond sighed and said, "I apologize as well; I guess it is good that we are finished with our business. The PI that I use in contested divorce cases is working on some time-sensitive stuff for me in another case and we need to get it resolved. I will be in touch." And, with that dismissal of me, Helmond shook my hand and ushered me to the door to his outer office. A handsome man in a nice suit and a runner's body - not the image I had of the unshaven, overweight, poorly-dressed PI that I had from TV and reading - stood anxiously in the outer office and passed quickly around me and into Helmond's office as the PA showed me out of the main door. I had planned to leave and go about the rest of my daily business; but something made me stick around. I stood in the hallway outside Helmond's office for about ten minutes, waiting for some reason. I had not planned to consider using a PI for my situation, since I was not going to Divorce Luanne for Adultery, and I did not figure that I needed any additional evidence. Hell, I had enough in the emails that I had surreptitiously forwarded to my account on the day that I had first discovered her deception. But the nagging curiosity still lingered for some reason. Why? Why had she really done this to us? What was this lover of hers in Alabama giving her that I could not? And, hell, I still had a bit of residual soreness in my ribs from being on the receiving end of one hell of an ass-whipping a couple of weeks earlier. Did that relate to all of this? I still had flashbacks about that big dude smacking me upside the head and my waking in the hospital later with sore ribs and bruised balls. "Excuse me," I said to the PI, that I had earlier heard addressed as Paul, as he left Helmond's office suite and turned down the hallway in my direction. He glanced at me, then beyond and around me (possibly assessing the situation for potential threats; he WAS a divorce investigator, after all, and people could get might angry and hold grudges in these cases), and back at my face once he was satisfied there was no reason for alarm. "Yes, can I help you?" he asked. "If you have a few minutes, I would like to talk to you about hiring you for something," I told him. Old Country His name was Paul Robertson and he gave me an hour of his time over coffee at a nearby Starbuck's; the one on this side of the street, as opposed to the one across the street and six doors down. He told me that it would cost me a couple of thousand dollars to satisfy my curiosity, but Paul assured me that he could get me most of the information that I sought within a few weeks. He did not guarantee that I would get all that I wanted; no one could do that. But he was affiliated with a network of investigators that either swapped favors or sub-contracted work out all over the country. He described it as 'Private Investigation in the Age of Facebook, ' as the efforts were all coordinated through their very own version of social media. Imagine LinkedIn for PIs. Welcome to the modern cyber age of cooperative private investigation! True to his word, Paul called me at work just three weeks later and asked me to arrange to meet him. - "Well, she is definitely involved with at least two different men in Birmingham," Paul Robertson told me after we had sat down with our coffee and gotten past the opening conversational greetings. "Two?" I asked, shocked that this news. Hell; that just immediately raised some new questions in my mind. "Yeah," said Paul, "in one case, it would appear that she takes long lunches at a local hotel with her boss once or twice a week during the periods while she is working out of her Birmingham office. And, about once every two-to-three months, they take a long weekend together at a hotel in Mobile, using an otherwise legitimate business trip as a cover story." I said nothing while I tried to absorb this information. This was just SO unlike Luanne. It took me a minute, though, to remember her manager as the guy I had met during his visit to Cincinnati. "Vernon Talbot," I said. "Yeah, that's the guy," Paul said, looking at me with his brows furrowed. "You know him?" "Met him once; did not come across to me then as a scum bag; but I guess initial impressions can fool you," I answered. I could not help but think at that particular moment that this business with her boss was just so cliché. "It would appear that the last time they went out of town together, they spent three days together in Mobile! No pictures of actual sex, but they shared a hotel room, even though they traveled separately. My contact down there said that Talbot was the first one to the room, and had ice and drinks sent up before she got there. She came later and they kissed and held each other tight at the door before going inside, and he got pictures of them in the clinch. They weren't somewhere they had never been before, if you know what I mean. They were real comfortable-like." But then Paul dropped the other shoe. "What has me confused is the farmer," he said. "Farmer?" I asked. "Yeah; it would appear that, for the past eight months or so, she has maintained her apartment in Birmingham and paid the rent and all. But she has actually been staying at the house of a guy who owns a small farm just outside of town." When I did not say anything, he went on. "I have it all here..." Paul's report was a bit confusing to me at first glance. There was lots of routine boilerplate about her daily activities, but the interesting part, the part that made my irritation resurface, concerned the fact that she was actually staying in a farmhouse outside of Birmingham just east of Shoal Creek Golf Club and its surrounding suburbs along Bear Creek Road-NOT in town at her Birmingham apartment as she had told me. Luanne was evidently living there on the farm with the owner, a man named Travis Hinton, who actively farmed the land, while boarding six horses, two of which he owned. Hinton evidently had investments that he had inherited that provided for his financial needs, but he still loved the farm life and produced a not-too-small income from the farm from soybeans and some peanuts. But he had to purchase his feed for his stock from elsewhere. The boarding fees that he was charging for the horses were pretty steep, and that helped him as well. "I'm still checking out sources to find out how your wife and Travis met up and how long they have been together overall," Paul said as he drained the last of his coffee. "There is also a live-in housekeeper; a fifty-plus-year-old Mexican-American lady, named Velma Ortega. I don't know if she's 'wet, ' but I can put a request in with a fellow who works for ICE to find out. "If you want, and if you can afford it, I can continue to find out more about this Hinton guy. But I think you have enough to chew on with her and the situation with her boss, based on your facial expression a few minutes ago," Paul said. He was right about my facial expression. I had not been able to disguise the utter contempt and disgust that I had felt at finding out about Luanne's screwing around on me with not one BUT TWO different men. The most egregious case, to me, was her boss, Vernon Talbot. He would be the BamaBoy06, I guessed. Of course, BamaBoy06 might be this Hinton guy that she was shacking up with when she was not out screwing Talbot. Who was this woman that I had married? This was just so unlike anything I had ever imagined about her. "No," I said. "I don't need to spend any more on this. I guess I know enough now to reinforce my decision to eighty-six her ass." "Well, I hope that everything turns out well for you personally in the long run," Paul told me with an encouraging smile. "I know that this type of misery hurts in the short term, and it takes different lengths of time for it to go away, depending on the person it is happening to and just how bad the situation is to begin with. Here are two copies of the files for your own reference. We did not get any shots or footage of them 'in the act, ' so to speak. But there are some candids in the file showing her together with either Talbot or Hinton at different times." I looked at the pictures and they did not tell me anything on the face of things about any ongoing relationships that Luanne might have had with either man. The only exception was that she was holding hands with Hinton as they walked across a downtown street in what I presumed was Birmingham. As I looked at the picture of the man in the picture with Luanne, that guy, Hinton; his face, his build; I suddenly had a flashback to a time of dusk, limited visibility, fatigue at the end of a work day, sudden movement ... and pain. The irritation that I had had from learning about Luanne's shacking up with this farmer continued to grow as I looked at that picture. "I think this guy, Hinton, might be the guy who lit into me a few weeks back," I said, "But I still have no clue what would make a guy who seems to be in a stable lifestyle take up with a married woman; and, of all the cockamamie things, fly all the way to Ohio and beat up her husband. It just makes no sense to me." "Do you want me to try to get enough information to bring charges?" Paul asked. 'I would love to do that, ' I thought; but I did not say it. I had a different idea. I was already mulling over plans to get my own payback at this guy; not only for shacking up with my wife, but also for his assault on me. I mean ... it is one thing to hurl an insult at a guy by fucking his wife; but, to travel hundreds of miles to beat on her husband is another thing altogether. AND the BIGGEST insult to me was the beating my testicles had taken and the fact that I had almost lost one and, along with it, the ability to have a family at some point in my life. I would never want to harm Luanne physically, even after what she had done to me. But this guy was not going to get off with beating me up, if he was the one, that is, without some sort of payback. I was not about to reveal my thinking to Paul. I needed plausible deniability, after all, once this thing over. "No; I don't want to bring charges," I said out loud to him. "I just want this all to be over." I thanked Paul for the report and told him that I had enough now for what I had to do. I asked him just to send me a final detailed invoice. We shook hands, I paid for the coffees that we got to take with us, and we parted. I had decided to confront this situation in more of a head-on manner. I know it was not too smart, but I was still pissed at all that had happened to me lately! - Somehow, I managed to keep my anger at bay and pretend that all was well for the rest of the week. Luanne could tell something was bugging me, but she and I were able to carry on in what I considered now to be only a semblance of a happy marriage. When it came to physical intimacy, there had been a marked difference in the outcomes of our bedtime escapades. Over this past period of Luanne's presence here in Cincinnati, when we had had sex, I had deliberately been a bit cruder and rougher. After all, if she was going to act like a whore, why should I not treat her as one? The surprise was on me, though! Luanne responded to my rough treatment as if it were custom-made for what she needed in bed. For the first time in our five years together, four in marriage, Luanne demonstrated her satisfaction with the attentions I was paying to her body during sex so much that she actually cried out when her orgasm hit her. Hell, a couple of times, she even screamed out her indication of the pleasure she was experiencing. Needless to say, I was both disappointed and pleased at the same time; disappointed that she was not taking my treatment of her as a sort of sexual punishment; pleased that I was able to stimulate a higher level of sexual response in my partner than I ever had before in our relationship. "Oh, Lover," Luanne said to me on the Saturday night before her next departure, "if only you knew just how good that is for me." Then she tickled me a couple of times, giggled, and said, "Where have you been hiding this beast for the past four years?" I just held her close, smiled to myself, and thought, 'Oh, Luanne, if only you knew what I have in store for you in the next few weeks.' Then, I grimaced, out of her line of sight, since her cheek was in the crook of my neck. 'And just where have you been hiding the slut for the past year or so?' I thought as we both began to drift off to sleep. - When I got back from the airport after dropping Luanne off on Sunday, I began to implement the plans that I had made weeks ago. Luanne was pretty good about keeping her Google Calendar up to date, and she and I had coordinated online to link hers with mine. Thus, I knew that the weekend at the midpoint of this period of her work out of the Birmingham office involved a three-day weekend with business meetings in Mobile once again, Friday evening to Monday afternoon. Naturally, I assumed that Vernon Talbot would be going along to participate in the business meetings; both the work-related business and the 'monkey business' with Luanne. I could not avoid the jitters entirely, all caused by the anticipation of what I had planned for later in the week. Monday through Wednesday, I went to work as usual. I left early Thursday, so that I could have the afternoon off. I was on a sort of emotional high, now that I was actually in the 'go' mode for my plans. I retrieved the bag that I had packed the night before. Then I headed back out to the airport to catch an early Thursday afternoon flight to Atlanta. I had packed a ball cap that I had bought at a truck stop out on I-71 before coming home one afternoon the previous week. I would wear it in the terminals in order to deflect any recognition if, for some reason, any of Luanne's or my acquaintances or any of my co-workers out at the airport might have been wandering through the terminal. I had other uses for later in the week for that ball cap. The flight to Atlanta was uneventful and the car rental place in Atlanta really surprised me when I got there. I had asked for a mid-size sedan; they had provided me with a dark blue Mustang convertible. I just smiled and chose not to argue. Cruising west toward Birmingham on I-20 in the Mustang with the top down was a blast! But I also found another unplanned use for that ball cap; to keep my hair from blowing all out of whack. When I got near the eastern outskirts of Birmingham, I got off the interstate and pulled into a Hampton Inn in the suburb of Leeds, Alabama. Surprisingly, I was able to sleep very well that night. I was up and moving on Friday morning at about five o'clock; too early for the hotel's complimentary breakfast, but I grabbed a quick breakfast at an early-opening Hardee's nearby and bought two sausage biscuits to take with me for later, if I needed them. I had Googled the location of Travis Hinton's farmhouse and I drove out toward Bear Creek Road, just southeast of Birmingham. I was planning to be in a position I had found using Google Earth from which to observe his place ahead of morning traffic. However, I did not count on the fact that not everyone who lived in the suburban areas around Birmingham worked in Birmingham. Quite a few must have been commuting all the way to Atlanta, based on the flow of traffic heading in that direction. As this area is on the lower end of the Appalachian Mountain range, I found the terrain to be quite hilly. Thus, I was able to find a good location in the parking area of a fairly new corner convenience store at one of the crossing roads that led to the still-growing subdivisions that were steadily encroaching on the farmland. The lot had sufficient altitude to overlook Travis Hinton's house; his place was set back from the road a few hundred yards across and down the road slightly from the intersection. Hinton's fields looked well-tended, as if he were a very conscientious farmer, even if it was mostly for his own enjoyment, since I knew from the PI's report that Hinton was already pretty well off financially. The stable in the back of his place looked very modern and well-kept, as did the fenced off pasture and the exercise corral behind the stable. As you would expect from someone accustomed to farm life, somebody in the house had probably been up since well before first light. The lights were on in the house and in the stable. I could see the glow in the windows clearly, as the sky was only just now beginning to show early morning light in the sky above me. I had bought some coffee and a hunting magazine, even though I don't hunt, from Mr. Patel - that was what his nametag said - the Indian-American guy behind the counter of the convenience store. I told him a story about meeting a friend in his parking lot and asked if it was okay with him if I sat in my car in his lot and read the magazine and drank my coffee. He said it was fine with him as long as I did not block his gas pumps. I thanked him and thought to myself that I now had an established reason for being there, in case another of the Shelby County (Alabama) Sheriff's Deputies came by for coffee and pastry and wondered what a rental car with Georgia plates was doing parked here all morning. Right about the time the sun peeked over the horizon, I saw vehicle traffic associated with Hinton's farm come about in two ways. First, I saw an older minivan drive up to the place. What looked to be a middle age Hispanic woman, from what I could tell through my sports binoculars that I had brought along, got out and went into the house without knocking. 'That must be the housekeeper, ' I thought. Ten minutes later, I tensed a bit as I saw Luanne exit a door at the back of Hinton's house and go to the car that she had bought for use here in Alabama, looking as if she were every bit the working wife of a gentleman farmer, leaving her home of a morning to go to work in the city. A few minutes later, she pulled out of Hinton's gravel driveway and turned toward the crossroads. I had my hat on, and was in my Mustang rental, so I was pretty sure that she would not recognize me. But I scrunched down anyway until she had turned out on the main road and driven away. I turned my gaze back toward the farmhouse out of which my wife had emerged a few minutes earlier. The rage built in me at the thought of my wife spending her nights warming the bed of this ... farmer, this ... interloper, this ... cuckolding son of a bitch. I did not have time to dwell on my anger, though; my bladder was screaming and I had to go inside to prove that you do not really buy coffee; just like beer, you rent it. When I returned to my car to resume my vigil, I noted that a man was already headed out back of the house toward a cold barn that doubled as an equipment shelter. With his hat on, I could not identify him for sure, but I assumed he was Travis Hinton. He was looking over a fairly new - from what I could see - Mahindra tractor. After a few minutes, I saw him go back up to the house, only to emerge onto a back porch and sit there enjoying the vista of his farm in the morning light with a steaming cup of coffee in his hand. After about fifteen minutes of this, he turned and went back inside, and I saw no more movement from the place for about an hour, when the sun was well up. When he emerged next, Hinton spent some time in the stable. He followed this up with a couple of hours on his tractor, plowing a section of his land until about noon, when he quit and put the tractor away in the cold barn. I saw the housekeeper depart about an hour after Hinton had gone inside following his work in the field. When I saw her pull out onto the main road and turn toward the Interstate, I smiled grimly to myself. From this point in time, early in Friday afternoon, with the housekeeper away for the weekend, and with Luanne and her boss not due back from their three-day working fuck fest in Mobile until Monday afternoon, Hinton was alone in his house. Now I had to decide if I really wanted to do this. - When Travis Hinton came to the door to answer the bell, he could see a man of about 5'11" height standing out on the porch as he looked through the curtained window in the upper half of the front door. The guy was wearing a ball cap and was looking out across the front yard, turned away away from the door. When Travis opened the door, he only got as far as, "Yeah; can I help..." before the man began to turn and continued to turn with his gloved right hand extended and balled into a fist. I rounded on Travis and caught him across the temple with a gloved fist filled with a roll of quarters to give it more weight and power. Even with the glove on for protection, it still hurt like a son of a bitch when the knuckles of my right hand connected across his left temple. He staggered and went almost to his knees, and was about to shake it off and rise up to meet me, but my kick to his groin caused him to collapse and grab his aching balls. At that point, a swift kick to his head put him away for a while. I looked around to make sure that no one was within view and moved inside, ensuring that his feet were clear of the doorway and closing and locking the door behind me as I entered. I pulled the roll of duct tape out of the fanny pack I had on and went to work. I did not need to hurry, but I felt rushed, as I did not want this guy, who was obviously in good physical condition, regaining consciousness and opening up a king-size can of whoop-ass on me. I began to peel the end from the roll of duct tape and rolled Hinton over and wrapped the tape about eight times around his wrists. I then wrapped it around the stretch between his wrists in order to separate and tighten the binding. Then I quickly wrapped his ankles together in order to limit his ability to kick me or regain his mobility if he were somehow able to gain his feet once he regained his senses. Then I waited. It was very quiet as I sat there motionless waiting for Hinton to regain his senses. I neither heard nor saw anything during that time to give me pause or alarm. Old Country But, it was neither the visual nor auditory input that confirmed that I was on the right track for what I had started out to accomplish at this house. It was what my nose detected. The smell confirmed it; the earthy smell that rolled gently off Travis Hinton, as he lay there on the floor, was the very same smell that I had remembered from the night of the attack that I had endured that night weeks ago in the airport parking lot. This was the guy! The other smells that I detected were more associated with the house and the life that went on there by its inhabitants. Somewhere in my brain I registered the term 'Grandma's House Smell.' That is exactly what his house smelled like; Grandma's house. It took Travis Hinton between twenty-five and thirty minutes before he even groaned. Then it took about five more minutes before his senses began to return to a degree that allowed him to open his eyes, recognize my presence, and glare at me. He did not jerk or struggle, but I could see him flex slowly in order to get a feel for the level of his freedom of movement; realizing at last that he had very little. I simply waited in silence. "Well," he croaked, "I gotta say ... that you ... got the drop on me ... you bastard." He said all of this in a soft voice, but I could tell that he had hard ideas. I was for damned sure not going to let him get loose before I finished what I was doing here and was a long way gone. I took my hat off and scratched an itch that had developed on the top of my head. When the hat came off, I heard Travis gasp, and I looked at him as he scowled at me. I must admit that what he said next was NOT anything at all like what I had expected to hear. "So; you are not satisfied with trying to get in my wife's pants up in Ohio. You have to bring your wife-stealing Yankee ass down hyeah to try yore shit," he said with all the anger he could muster. "Buddy, I am definitely going to kick yore butt all the way back across the Mason-Dixon if I ever get loose." I must have sat there with my mouth open slightly, trying to process what he was saying for almost a full minute. During that time, Hinton had begun to strain against the duct tape binding his appendages; his anger overcoming his common sense. Finally, I was able to say something. "Mister, I have absolutely no clue at all what you are talking about." Hinton snorted and shook his head once; I saw him wince at the pain that the shake caused him as a residual effect from my striking and kicking him. "Shit. One of my Kappa Alpha fraternity brothers was traveling back here from Calgary. He had a long layover in Cincinnati and decided to get something at the food court and then stretch his legs by walking in the terminal outside the security zone. He had met my wife at a barbecue we had hosted out here about three months before then; and he was about to approach her to say his howdies, when he saw some feller..." Hinton glared at me, "walk up to her and give her a big tongue-swapping kiss right there in the entrance to the terminal." I was still confused. "How does all this relate to your wife?" But even as I asked the question, my brain was beginning to tingle with a bit of unease at a vague memory. "He was shocked that someone would do that to the wife of one of his friends. So he followed that feller out the terminal door and into the parking lot for employees at the airport. He saw the reserved and numbered space where the guy was parked and what kind of car he was driving." Here Travis paused and ran his tongue around his teeth; I guess his mouth was getting a bit dry. Then he continued. "When he got back to Birmingham, he passed on that tidbit of information to me, to include the guy's parking spot number and the description of his car. Well, I can tell you; I wasn't going to put up with that shit. So, I cashed in some of my sky miles for a round-trip ticket and flew to Cincinnati to let you know just where the bear shits in the buckwheat!" This last sentence he almost spit at me, and he almost growled the word, 'You, ' at me. Well, that verified the answer to one question. Travis Hinton was the shit bird who had given me the going-over in the parking lot that evening at CVG. He was the one who had kicked me in the balls and ribs. I acknowledged this by saying, "Okay, so you are the bad-ass who blindsided me and put me in the hospital. But I have no idea why this guy would tell you that I was putting the make on your wife. I am happily married; at least, I thought I was until recently. And I do NOT kiss other women." The next words out of his mouth definitely put a different spin on things. "Well, he swore up and down that it was you who was kissin' and puttin' the make on Luanne that day." 'Luanne.' . Hinton's use of the term, 'my wife.' . Oh, Hell, no! Oh, Hell, no; this can't be happening. Oh, shit ... no wonder... I said, "So, YOU are BamaBoy06?" Travis Hinton looked at me as if I were out of my mind. Then he said in disgust, "Yeah; that's my email handle. What the fuck's 'at got to do with anything?" And here I had thought that I was the one who was confused. This poor bastard was not clued in either. I started to speak slowly and somewhat softly. "You remember when I said a moment ago that I am married?" I started pulling my wallet out of my pants while I awaited his answer. "Yeah," he said, "what the fuck does that have to do with you and Luanne?" I had pulled out my favorite picture of Luanne and me together that I carried with me. I looked at Travis and said, "I want to show you a picture of my wife and me on our honeymoon in South Florida four years ago." Travis did not say anything to me as I moved closer. I could see that he was alert for any opening I might give him to gain an advantage over me and get free. But that was not going to happen. I held the picture up in front of him, about a foot from his nose. The picture had been taken while Luanne and I were holding each other on the back deck of a restaurant in Key West. Travis looked at the picture for a few seconds with anger, evidently at the idea of me with my arm around Luanne in the picture and at the idea of the love we were reflecting for each other when that picture was taken. As realization hit him, he closed his eyes and sighed before saying simply, "Aaawww, shee-it." I watched as his expression morphed into one of painful sadness. I had heard and read about the figure of speech describing someone as 'deflating.' But now I saw it happen right before me. Travis Hinton simply deflated. I heard him mumble something and I had to ask him to repeat it. He looked up with a mildly pissed look that was a far more comfortable thing to see than his previous angry look. He repeated with more volume, but less irritation, "How about you cut me loose and we can pour up some of the good stuff and talk this out?" He looked me in the eye and asked, "We-ah in the same boat hyeah; huh, Podnuh?" I simply nodded and asked him if he had scissors. He shifted his head so that he could look into the next room over. "Top right drawer of that desk over yonder." I have to tell you that I was still a bit nervous about cutting this guy loose. I mean here I was, having assaulted him in his own home and was sitting here trespassing in his living room. Did I trust him not to come out swinging? I had to ask before I approached him with the scissors. "Can I trust you not to get all ignorant on me and start beating on me if I cut off the tape? After all, we are sort of even now. I mean with you putting me in the hospital that day, and all." I looked at him as I asked this. Hinton's face showed momentary shock, and then sadness. "Look, I just wanted to vent on you when I did that because I thought ... shit. Looking back now, I have to admit that, if I did not know then what I know now, I would be quite content at the idea that I had put a wife-stealing bastard in the hospital. Now, though..." He sighed again and looked at me with eyes that might be described as pleading. "Now, though, I gotta tell you. I am real sorry for letting all this shit lead me to doing you harm; and for all the wrong reasons." I could tell from the way Hinton hung his head after he said this that he was sincere. It took me more than five minutes to help him get all the duct tape off his feet and wrists. Yes; I had been liberal in its use, as motivated as I had been at the idea of self-preservation after hitting a big guy and invading his home. Once he was free, Hinton extended a hand toward me in a silent request for me to help him up. I paused for only two seconds before grasping it and pulling him shakily to his feet. Once he was sure that he had his equilibrium and that the blood flow was sufficient for his arms and feet, he turned toward the back of his house and started walking. Without a vocal invitation from him and without anything better to do, I followed. In his kitchen, Travis had two juice glasses out already and was pouring each almost full of Wild Turkey, based on the label I saw on the bottle from which he was pouring. He picked up one and gestured at the other. "Roll Tide," he said, as he gulped down a healthy swallow and sighed heavily. I did not offer a counter-salute, but I did take a small swallow. As they say, it 'burned real good' all the way down, and it actually started to relax me right away, helping to ease the tension that had been a part of me from the moment I had driven up Travis Hinton's driveway. We took the glasses out to his back porch and sat in two of the four chairs that were out there. Over the next hour or so, we shared our stories of how we each came to be married to Luanne Campbell ... AT THE SAME TIME. I gave him the story of our meeting right out of college; our courtship, our living together, and our wedding; our lives together; our jobs; our apartment in Cincinnati; the oddities of Luanne's word that required her to work in Birmingham for two weeks, followed by two weeks back... 'at home' ... in Cincinnati; my discovery of her revealing emails and my hiring of a PI; my plan to divorce her. For some reason, I held off on telling Travis about her doing the nasty with her boss. This poor bastard had enough to process listening to me contribute to the crashing down of his world around him. Travis told me the story of him and a couple of his old fraternity brothers here in the Birmingham area meeting Luanne at a bar with some of her co-workers; of her telling him about her work with hotels and resorts; of her female co-workers inviting him and two of his old fraternity brothers out to Las Vegas for a hotel convention the following week; of Luanne's initial discomfort at the suggestion; how they all showed up out there at the same hotel; how they all went out to a party and had a bit too much to drink; how they woke up the next day naked in bed together with a vague memory of someone saying, "Wouldn't it be a hoot to visit one of those themed wedding chapels?" Then he told me that they had found the marriage certificate on the table, along with a congratulatory basket full of goodies for the 'Happy Couple' from the Blissful Haven Wedding Chapel. "We laughed at our predicament; but, after a few minutes, we ended up back in bed. Luanne even got in a bit of trouble because she skipped her meetings that day; and we spent the whole day in bed together, and..." He saw me clenching my teeth, I guess. "Oh, shit, Glenn, I'm sorry as hell. I didn't think..." "It's okay, Travis," I assured him, "I understand. She evidently got carried away with all the drinking, the partying, the atmosphere, the scenario. Then, when reality hit her, she just conveniently forgot to tell you that she was already married ... to me." I took another sip of the fine whiskey and said, "I'm afraid it gets worse, though." Travis frowned as he looked over at me. I had to tell him. "She's been cheating on the both of us." - I asked Travis if he knew where his wife ... our wife, actually ... was right now. He said she was at a planning conference held at Mobile every month or so, reviewing the status and situation with some of the properties there on the Gulf Coast that her company managed; of course, he pronounced it, 'Guff Coast.' I asked him what she did on her two-week trips to Cincinnati, and he said that her job required her to maintain an office up there so that she could manage the properties in their 'northern portfolio, ' as she referred to it with Travis. At this point, I told Travis what my PI had discovered about her activities with Vernon Talbot, her manager here in her Birmingham office. Travis said that he had not been aware of her fucking Vernon. He had met him a couple of times at her local company functions, but did not know about the long lunches and the sex during their trips together. But he HAD begun to suspect something about her trips up north to the Cincinnati office when his fraternity brother of his from his days at the University of Alabama traveling back from Canada had reported seeing Luanne kiss me at the airport in Cincinnati. The guy had not only gotten the information to Travis about my parking space, he had gotten a shot of Luanne's and my kissing with his cell phone camera. Travis had been pissed that I had apparently been seducing his wife and more than likely sleeping with her whenever she came up from Birmingham to Ohio. How we might have met, nobody seemed to know, but Travis had flown in to put a stop to the situation by dealing with me physically and warning me off. I had remembered him having said something to me at the time, but I had not understood what he was saying after the first blow, since the head smack had put me out of it early on in the attack. "Hey, I am really sorry about that beating, Glenn. But," Travis said, rubbing the bruise that I had left on his temple from my blow and my kick earlier, "I guess you got some of yours back." The side of his face was red now, but I was sure that the bruising would begin to look purple and yellow soon. Suddenly, he stood up. Without a word, he strode back into his house. I took the silent invitation to follow him inside. I was putting my glass next to the sink when he reached for his cordless phone and hit one of his speed-dial entries. After a few seconds of silence, I heard him say, "Ben? Travis. Yeah, I need to see you real quick. . Yeah, like this afternoon. . You betcher ass it's important. Otherwise, I wouldn't ask. . Okay, we'll be there in thirty. Bye, now." Hanging up his phone, Travis turned to me and said, "That was my attorney. He is also a KA fraternity brother, even though he went to..." at this, he made a grimace, "TEN-a-see." I insisted on driving, since I was not sure if Travis had all his faculties back from the head blow. Plus, I had consumed much less Wild Turkey than he had. I also think that Travis was getting a kick out of the idea of being able to ride along in the Mustang convertible I was driving instead of his truck. We arrived at the office of Benjamin Talmadge, Attorney-at-Law, within thirty minutes. Thus we honored Travis' promise of timeliness. "You want an annulment?" Mr. Talmadge asked. "But, Travis, what has Luanne done that deserves that?" He evidently knew both of them quite well. "Ben," answered Travis, "she's done a bigamy number on me." He pointed to me and said, "When she married me out in Vegas, she was still legally married to Glenn here; and evidently has been for like about four years now." "Oh, my," said Talmadge, "you know I am going to have to let Jimmy know about this, don't-cha?" "Yeah," Travis said in response, "I kinda figured." Looking over at me, he said, "He's talking about Jimmy Ragsdale. Jimmy's also an alum at Alabama. But he was two years ahead of me. He got himself elected to the job as the DA here over in Columbiana, the county seat for Shelby County." "You know, if I remember rightly," Talmadge went on, "bigamy is only a misdemeanor up in Ohio; she pays a penalty and then you are back as square one. But I can tell you that, by law, the state in which the bigamous marriage takes place has jurisdiction-that would be Alabama in this case, where bigamy is a Class C felony, punishable by jail time of no less than one year, but could be as much as ten years." I actually rocked back a bit when I heard this. Wow! They took bigamy seriously here in the South. I would be sorry to see Luanne get any jail time; but, shit! She had brought it on herself. When I voiced all of this, Ben Talmadge related to me more about the legal situation in Alabama. "You had better believe we take bigamy seriously down here, especially since the Richards case back in 2000. That was when one Shonda Nichole Richards became the first woman in Walker County history to receive the death penalty. It seems that Mrs. Richards was convicted not only of bigamy but of having one of her THREE husbands kill another of her husbands; the one who had discovered the bigamy and had sued her for it after reporting her to the DA." I just shook my head as I took all this in. Ben Talmadge was on the phone a few minutes later and he spoke for about ten minutes. He had paused after the first minute to give me the fax number to the DA's office in Columbiana, and he asked me to contact my attorney in Ohio and ask him to fax the divorce paperwork that I had initiated in Ohio to the DA. Part of the packet had included a copy of the marriage certification from Ohio and our most recent Married-Filing-Jointly IRS Form 1040; the DA needed that as evidence to swear out a warrant against Luanne for bigamy. After hanging up the phone, Ben (he had asked me to call him by his first name now that we were better acquainted) got busy with the process of getting the petition together for Travis' annulment. While his PA was putting the packet together, a copy of my packet was coming across his fax machine. When Travis and I told Ben about the fact that Luanne was, as we were meeting, off at a tryst with her boss, Vernon Talbot, he grinned and asked, "How'd you boys like to present Mr. Vernon Talbot with a law suit for Intention Infliction of Emotional Distress? We used to have tort law here in the State of Alabama for Alienation of Affections, but the damned feminists seem to have gotten to the legislatures of most states to get that one off the books. It seems as if A-of-A suits make it seem too much like revenge, and cause more hurt feelings than you'd find at an Amway convention. They claim that any hope of reconciliation, that might otherwise be a possibility, becomes impossible as a result of such a suit. So..." he shrugged his shoulders and looked to us for our input. "Hell, yeah," said Travis. "I want to sue him ... and his damned company too; you can't hide that much activity between a boss and an employee without folks there in the office knowing all about it." "What about you, there, Glenn?" Ben asked me. I thought for a second and realized that, at this point, I just wanted out of my lie of a marriage. I would probably get my no-fault dissolution. Travis would no doubt, get his annulment. Luanne might get lucky and not get jail time, but she would sure go through legal hell in any case. And Travis' IIED suit would put a hurt on Vernon Talbot. I could pile on in order to get my share of revenge on Talbot, but it just did not seem to be worth it at this point; and I told Ben as much. "Okay, then." Ben's PA had the papers ready for signature; we all signed where tagged; and she was faxing them over to the courthouse in Columbiana within the hour. Having gotten the filing in right before the close of business hours, Ben chuckled and pulled a bottle out of his desk. Pulling three glasses with University of Tennessee logo from the shelf behind him, he began to pour. Once he had recapped the bottle of Old Overholt rye whiskey, he said, "Gents, here's to striking a blow for freedom." Old Country I had no idea what he meant by that toast, but Travis and I both joined Ben in raising our glasses. The rye 'burned real good, ' just as Travis' Wild Turkey had earlier that afternoon. - "I still can't get over how fast you got this thing in motion," I said to Travis on Monday morning. We had just pulled up to the Waffle House across the street from the hotel in Mobile where Luanne and her boss and lover, Vernon Talbot, were either sleeping or getting in one more morning of fucking before having to emerge, eat, and get on the road back to Birmingham. "Well," drawled Travis, "it helps to know the right folks in the right places." He had a knowing smile on his face that dissolved to a look of grim determination as he looked across the street. We went in and had eggs, bacon, and hashbrowns (scattered, smothered, and covered) while we waited for the Trooper that we were expecting. About thirty minutes after our food arrived, a car with the lights and livery of the Alabama Highway Patrol pulled into the lot. A very large, muscular black Trooper emerged and put on his hat before coming around to the door of the Waffle House. When he came inside, Travis grinned and called out, "Come on over, Cuz. I won't chew ta meet somebody." Needless to say, I was floored by this comment. The Trooper, who I saw wore the rank of a Lieutenant, responded with a grin, "Hey, Cuz. You buyin'?" "Naw," replied Travis as he stood up. Then he surprised me even more when he reached out and hugged the Trooper ... and the Trooper hugged him right back. "Hey, let me introduce Glenn Reese to you," said Travis, turning to me. "And, Glenn, I'd like you to meet my cousin, Terry Hinton." Well, that was a conversation stopper. The very white Travis ... and the very black Terry were grinning at my confusion. "You mean ... you guys are really related?" I asked. "Yeah," answered Lieutenant Terry Hinton. "His great-great-great-grandpappy owned my great-great-great-grandmaw." Then he went into an intonation that sounded like a television preacher. "And he KNEW her-ra ... and she BORE him-ma ... a SON-na." "Shit, Terry," said Travis as he chuckled. "That ain't very politically correct. You cain't get away with sayin' that kinda shit these days." Terry gave him a grin and said, "No. YOU can't ... but I can!" And they both broke into laughter that, I have to admit, was contagious. Although, I also have to admit that, having grown up a bit farther north of here, I was a somewhat uncomfortable with that topic of conversation. - Luanne stepped out of the hotel room with her lover, her boss, Vernon Talbot. A very large black Lieutenant from the Alabama Highway Patrol was waiting just outside the door on the sidewalk. She paused momentarily in surprise; not only at the presence of a law enforcement officer, but one that had a name tag with the same name as her husband over in Birmingham. "Mrs. Luanne Hinton?" asked Lieutenant Terry Hinton "Yes." "You are under arrest for bigamy," said Terry as he held out a hand for one of Luanne's. In her shock, Luanne simply complied. Terry turned her around and attached the handcuffs while she tried to say something, but decided to hold her tongue as Terry recited the Miranda warning to her. The shock must have taken control, because she was unable to speak a word after that. "Mr. Vernon Talbot?" Terry asked the man who had stepped back against the wall of the hotel, watching the arrest of his employee and lover. "Yes," Talbot managed to croak out. "Sir, you have been served." With that, Terry handed Vernon the notice of Travis' intent to sue him for Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress. While Vernon was trying to process mentally what was transpiring around him, Terry turned back to a now-crying Luanne. She had looked around to see Travis and me standing together behind Terry Hinton's official Alabama Highway Patrol interceptor, a new Dodge Charger. I guess seeing 'both' of her husbands' witnessing her humiliation at being arrested with her lover and boss was quite a significant emotional event for her. Terry executed the next act of this street-side stage play. "Ma'am, you have also been served." At this, he held up the document that showed the Travis Hinton's intention to seek an Annulment of his marriage to Luanne Hinton, nee Campbell. Being handcuffed, Luanne could not reach for the paper, so Terry folded it and slid it into the back pocket of the jeans she was wearing. Terry asked if either Travis or I would get Luanne's purse from the hotel room. Travis said nothing, but went inside to get it; when he came out, he handed it to Terry, who tossed it in the back seat of his interceptor. Vernon Talbot was simply walking toward his car by this time. I guess he realized that he was now caught up in the middle of a major shit storm and he needed to get to an attorney. Luanne was crying heavily now as Lieutenant Terry Hinton led her to his car in handcuffs and placed her in the back seat where he had tossed her purse. When the door closed, she screamed and kicked the back of the front seat in frustration, until Terry yelled and warned her. After that, she just looked down and cried. Travis and I just shook our heads as they drove off. Travis suggested that he and I go to a local bar and have a drink together, even though it was still morning. I just did not have the heart to do that and I thanked him for the offer, but declined. Since we had arrived together, he changed his mind about the drink. - Luanne hired a female lawyer in Cincinnati long-distance and spoke to her later, when she was out of jail on bond back in Columbiana. She instructed her Ohio lawyer that she wished to waive any attempts at reconciliation or mediation, and that she did not want to delay the proceedings in our Divorce with lengthy discovery or pretrial negotiation. She asked her to pass on to my lawyer, Mark Helmond, that she was sorry for what she had done to me and wanted me to be able to get on with my life ... without her, she had added sadly. In Ohio, depending on all the agreements that must be negotiated, dissolution for an uncontested divorce can take place anywhere from 30 to 90 days. In my case, because she was awaiting trial in Alabama, with the involvement of long-distance negotiations, I received the signed judge's divorce order from the Hamilton County Clerk of Court in just 45 days after my attorney had filed. I emailed Travis to let him know. He told me that he had received the notification of his uncontested Annulment from the Clerk of the Court for Jefferson County, Alabama within three weeks of its filing, as there was no 30-day waiting period in his case. Luanne was convicted of Bigamy. She had pleaded guilty and received a light sentence of only eighteen months; everyone figured that she would probably get out after only about six-to-eight months if she behaved. Luanne had tried to email me before her sentencing with an explanation of why she had done what she had done, and why she had deceived me, but I was not interested, so I deleted it after looking at it briefly. Travis said that she had wanted to meet with him, only after convincing him that she simply wanted to tell him why she had done what she had done, and he was curiouser than I was about the whole situation. - About two months into Luanne's sentence, Travis invited me to come down and see him so that both of us could visit Luanne while she was incarcerated. I balked at first, but he convinced me that it was the charitable thing to do, since she had no one else to come visit her and he knew that we both needed some sort of closure on the situation in which we were all involved. He even ponied up the cost of the round-trip airfare and let me crash at his place. The visiting area of the Shelby County Corrections Facility, the minimum security detention center where Luanne was serving her sentence, had a few tables and chairs. It was not like the separated glass-walled center with telephones for communicating with inmates like you see in the movies and television. It was open, but with corrections officers nearby to ensure that visitors did not pass contraband and that no disturbances that might develop got out of hand. Despite losing a little weight and the unflattering look of her prison jumpsuit, Luanne was still a beautiful woman. She was surprised to see both Travis and me together as she was led in and came to sit down across the table from us. She started to reach out to take a hand from each of us, but hesitated when the female corrections officer glowered at her. "Glenn ... Travis," Luanne said. Then she was quiet for a moment and I saw her skin redden from her embarrassment. I could not tell if this was from her realization of what she had done to all of us or from our seeing her in such surroundings. The mystery cleared a bit with what she said next. "I am truly sorry for what I put you through; both of you," Luanne said. She looked sad, but I guess she was all cried out by now, because there were no tears yet. "Luanne," began Travis, "I guess I can understand how you and I got carried away out in Las Vegas; and I truly felt as if it was love at first sight with you. What gets me, though, is why you did not come clean with me when we woke up together out there and realized that we could not be legally married ... I mean ... what with you already being married to Glenn here." Luanne took a few seconds before she responded. "Glenn, what I am about to tell Travis is going to be the truth; but it is truth that will probably be hurtful for you to hear. Do you want to leave while I answer him?" I had already sort of figured out how this was going to go, based on the contemplation of our years together that I had gone over in my head during the past couple of months. "Go ahead, Luanne. We all need a dose of truth here. After all, the absence of truth in all of this was the true catalyst for all the pain I have been feeling. And, anyway, I am pretty much past the really hurting time now." Luanne took a deep breath and looked at Travis and spoke. "Travis, yes, I was already married; to a wonderful, caring, loving man." I saw her eyes dart to me for a second, but her face did not move. Then she looked back straight on at Travis and her face reddened again as she continued. "But, all during that night together, and then over the next day or so, I experienced a surge of pleasure from the way that you were making love to me that I had not felt in all the time that I had been together with Glenn ... or any other man with whom I had been physically intimate in my life." She looked at me directly now, and I could see tears at last. "Glenn," she told me. "You were not my first lover, but you were my first true love. You cherished me, cared for me, and you made love to me with sweet gentleness every time we were together; and it was absolutely wonderful." Here she paused to wipe away one errant tear. "But, when I was with Travis, he was forceful as well as loving, and I found myself on a sexual plateau far above anything I had experienced with you ... up to that point." She sniffed and continued, "I am sorry about having you hear that, and I want you to know that I truly treasure memories of the time and loving effort that you always put into making love with me. And, Travis, I want you to know that I will also truly treasure memories of the way that you made love to me, too. "I used to want to climb the walls with the feeling that something was missing. I never realized that it was a deep need for better sex at the time. It almost felt as if I had never really been completely loved before-but in the physical sense only; never in the relational or emotional sense-until that time that Travis came to town and we met at the tavern near my work place; then, in Las Vegas ... well... "It is strange, really, Glenn," Luanne said with the beginning of a small smile, "but the last few times that you and I were making love together, you approached our lovemaking almost the same way that Travis did; and you really thrilled me." Luanne shook her head and said, "Isn't it ironic that I could have had the best of both worlds if I had been patient enough and had been open enough to help you to see what I needed in bed? We could have both learned to be better lovers together, like a husband and wife should. But, I guess I got panicked when I woke up that day in Las Vegas and, with Travis' proximity and his loving attention, I just decided then that I would not say anything about what was happening." "But, Luanne," Travis interrupted, "how did you think you were ever going to carry this off long term? I mean ... At some point, all of this was going to come out anyway. You could not hide the fact that you were married to two men forever." "I know that now, but I was scared," Luanne answered, looking down at the table. "I needed to take some time to try to figure my way out of the mess I had let myself get into. I figured that, with a good attorney, I could probably get things settled before the law got wind of what I had gotten caught up in ... or before either of you did. Then, maybe I could figure out a way to fix things somehow." I had been holding one question back for quite a while and I asked it now. "If you loved Travis and me, like you say you did, can you tell us why you cheated on us with your boss? Whatever in the world possessed you to start fucking that asshole, Vernon Talbot?" Travis' eyebrows went up and he nodded as he looked at Luanne, awaiting her response as I was. "Blackmail," was Luanne's one-word answer. When she did not continue for a few seconds, my mind churned in anger at her boss blackmailing her for something in return for sexual favors. Idiot that I was, I was still thinking about it when Travis guessed correctly. "He found out; didn't he? I mean about the two marriages," Travis said. I almost did the V-8 forehead slap as it hit me. I now remembered Vernon Talbot's trip to Cincinnati months earlier and my meeting him at a company function. I remembered his surprise at meeting me and finding out that I was Luanne's husband ... in Cincinnati. Of course, he had already met Travis when Luanne's had introduced Travis as her husband ... in Birmingham. Luanne was nodding. "He threatened to tell one or both of you ... or the police ... if I didn't ... if I didn't ... well, you know." She was actually feeling ashamed now; I could tell by her expression. Then she looked up with a grim look. "But, you two don't need to worry about Mr. Vernon Bastard Talbot. The Jefferson County DA's office in Birmingham has already sent out an ADA and a Court Recorder to take my statement in order to prosecute Vernon's sorry ass for blackmail. And he has been fired from the company, based on what I already learned after I told the HR director about what he was doing. It seems that I was not the only married female employee being pressured for sex by that asshole." Then she brightened. "Oh! I found out that they are holding my job for me when I get out," Luanne told us. "It seems that, up until this little vacation that I am on right now, they were impressed with my work performance enough that they want to keep me; and right here in Birmingham full time. It seems that they already moved someone to Cincinnati to take on what I was doing up there. "I also think," Luanne continued, with a cagey look, "that they kept me on because they do not want to have a record of firing a woman employee who was the victim of workplace sexual harassment and blackmail by a male supervisor." There was a bit of small talk among all three of us over the next ten minutes or so and then we simply ran out of things to say. "I am truly sorry for the way things worked out, but especially for how badly you two were treated," Luanne said. "Neither of you deserved what happened." She asked the corrections officer if she could give us a hug, and the woman gave a nod. "I love you," is all Luanne said to either of us as she hugged each of us separately, me first and then Travis. Afterward, I could see tears in Luanne's eyes as she turned without saying anything else, and walked out of the visiting area with her escort. - "I guess this is it," I said to Travis, as he dropped me off at Birmingham-Shuttlesworth International Airport in his Ford F-250. Normally, I would have expected to connect in Atlanta for another leg to Cincinnati. But, this time, I had a non-stop flight from BHM to CVG. "Now, Glenn, you don't have to be a stranger; you hyeah?" Travis said to me with a grin. "After all, I get season tickets every fall over in Tuscaloosa. Y'All need to come down here and see what REAL college football is all about." "Hey!" I said with an expression of mock indignation, "My Hilltoppers play pretty good football, you know. Maybe not with as big a name as the Crimson Tide ... but, nevertheless..." I just let it go at that. Travis' smile diminished and he was quiet for a few seconds before he asked, "You gonna come back down and be here when she gets out?" "I don't think so," I answered. "I might touch base with her once in a while by email to make sure that she is getting reintegrated with the world. And, I need to find out where I need to send her all things from our place in Cincinnati." After a pause, Travis turned to look out his front wind screen. Then he said, "Just ship them to my place and let me know how much it costs." I stopped moving and turned in surprise to look at Travis' face. He was actually blushing. "You're going to take her back; aren't you?" I asked. "You are going to give her another chance after all that nasty stuff with Talbot ... and me?" After a pause, Travis nodded and said, "Yeah; she's like a bugger stuck on my finger that I just cain't seem to flick off." I cringed at the imagery of that metaphor, but I could understand it. Travis asked, "You aren't going to feel uncomfortable about staying in touch with me ... and maybe taking in a game or two ... if she's around, are you?" I just smiled at my new friend and shook my head. Then I shook his hand and said, "I'll let you know." I turned then and pulled my bag out of the back seat of the king cab. When I looked back at Travis, he had a double CD jewel case in his hand that he was extending toward me. "Here," Travis said to me, "I thought you might like to listen to this when you get back home. It's the Mark Chesnutt Ultimate Collection. You might want to click forward to Track 12 on Disk 1. I think you might find it ironically entertaining." As I turned toward the terminal, he waved and pulled away from the curb. I stowed the CD case in an outer pocket of my bag, and headed inside. - The flight home was on time and uneventful. I actually napped the whole way. Magically, my bag arrived on the same plane as I did and I walked out of the terminal at CVG and headed toward my parking space, remembering a not-so-pleasant time in that very spot a few months earlier. I stowed the bag in the trunk and got in to begin the trip back to our ... make that MY ... apartment. As I pulled on to Terminal Drive, I slipped Disk 1 of the CD into the player. I hit the track selector a few times to get it to Track 12. As the music began, I glanced at the back of the CD and saw the name of the song on that particular track; 'Old Country.' As I merged into traffic on I-275 that would lead me to I-71/75 North across the Ohio River to Cincinnati and home, I listened to Mark Chesnutt's country baritone voice singing the two stanzas, finishing with the chorus: From Birmingham to Ohio How they met nobody knows But every now and then they get together She used to want to climb the walls She'd never really been loved at all