Chapter 4

Charlie Karogian was right. And I'm glad he had the forethought to wire me, because Dad would have turned up his toes and passed into the Great Beyond without showing a sign of weakness by letting me know he wanted me around. That was the sort of pioneer stuff my old man was made of. No, it wasn't heartless at all. My dad had the feeling that a kid was sort of like a baby duck; you threw him into the pond and let him sink or swim. If he had guts enough and instinct to survive he would, and then you could coach him a little.

What I didn't know and what I should have guessed that Dad had refused to go to the hospital. I drove into Fresno, narrowly avoiding a couple of crashes because of some stupid college drivers who were necking in the front seat and not watching where they were going, and I went right to Charlie's office and I barged in there past a perfectly gorgeous olive-skinned brunette who was his secretary and flung open the door and shouted, "Charlie, tell me what hospital my dad's in!"

"Simmer down, Carl," waving his hand at me getting me to notice he had a client in his office already. And what a client! Goldenhaired, maybe in the late twenties, great big blue eyes and a sweet full ripe mouth you'd just love to have working on your cock. A dark blue rayon dress hugged the melons of her titties, and did wonders for her lusciously ripe hips and full womanly thighs. She had a little felt turban on, perched very jauntily, and a pearl necklace around a skin that was already pretty white for a blonde. She also had a wedding ring on the third finger, left hand. I noticed when I had taken time to simmer down.

"Your father, young man, happens to be at home. He's dying from a combination of things, the first being old age, then arteriosclerosis, and I also suspect he may have just a touch of stomach cancer from the way he's been rejecting food. It all started to hit him at once. Now you get back over there as fast as you can, and as soon as I finish with Mrs. Maynard, I'll be along."

I flushed like a kid that had been called down by the teacher in front of all his classmates. "Excuse me, Charlie, but I had a hell of a drive and your wire didn't tell me where Dad might be. My apologies, Mrs. Maynard."

She looked at me and smiled. She had gorgeous white teeth, and then she crossed those luscious legs of hers so that her skirt hiked up just above dimpled kneecaps sheathed in beige-colored nylons, and she purred in a husky little voice, "That's quite all right. It's a nice quality in you to be worried about your father."

I nodded to her, then to Charlie, and I beat it back to my car and got up to the old house as fast as the speed laws would permit: Fresno's cops are not very sympathetic if you happen to go more than one mile per hour past the legal limit, even if somebody is dying. There was the house, just as I remembered it, the huge front porch, divided in two by the archway and the steps leading up to the door, the thick hedges at the front of the lawn at the sidewalks edge, and then all around the house, the old driveway and the garage where I had used to park my car when Dad and I were sharing the same roof. And up there on the second floor, was the old desert cooler. Air-conditioning is just about a must in Fresno, but all of the old-time residents go in for these fan-type arrangements which make a hideous racket and really don't do half the job a modern G-E would do. But Dad would never dream of changing, not he. He had paid for that desert cooler out of his own labor, and it meant something to him.

I rang the bell, and to my surprise the door was opened by a sultry-looking, rather tall auburn-haired young woman who wore a white uniform and white stockings and shoes and who obviously was a nurse. But in spite of her antiseptic outfit, she had one of the sexiest shapes and faces I had noticed since I first became cunt-conscious. "Yes?" she said in an icy, high-pitched voice.

"I'm Carl Venturi," I snapped. I was mad at myself for feeling the throbbing of my prick at a time like this. But I guess it was a Venturi trait, passed down from father to son.

Her face softened a little, but my cock didn't. "I'm sorry," she said in a less chilly tone. "Come with me, please. Your father is on the second floor left. It was always his favorite bedroom."

I knew that well. It was a big sprawling low double bed, and I wondered how many times it had creaked under Dad's weight while he was drilling for love-oil between the thighs of his accommodating housekeepers. My bedroom had been on the other side of the floor beside the downtown side of Fresno. I hadn't done much mattress-creaking though, except when I was so pussy-hungry that I couldn't sleep and used my right hand and dreamed up a whole harem to be right there and take care of my needs.

She led me to the door, nodded to me, and then discretely vanished.

There was Dad propped up by the pillows, and he looked like hell, but I recognized him just the same. He had been a big tall guy like me, but with a lot more meat on his bones. He'd lost most of his hair, and what little he had was white. But he still had that hawklike nose, that full sensual mouth, and those highset cheekbones which had made him such a devil with the girls, because he had looked like a real Italian pussyhound with cogliones constantly filled with the juice of which life is made for those thirsty pussies. But his color was terrible, there were big hollows under his eyes, and his nose looked bony. Yet those dark brown eyes of his were still fierce, and they lit up when he saw me coming.

"Good," he said in a hoarse weak voice. But it still had enough of that guttural bass which had scared the hell out of me when as a kid I had done something I ought not to have done. "You look fine, you bastard. I guess this is the last time, eh, Carlo?"

I sat down on the edge of the bed and I held out my hand, and he pulled his out from under the sheets and tremblingly held it to me. His fingers were gnarled from all the work he'd done all his life, and they were trembling so pitifully I had to glance away and pretend I was hunting for a cigarette or something because I felt like bawling. And that would have really teed my father off. He'd always said that funerals ought to be as joyous as weddings or births, because your spirit went on living and if you'd led a good life, there wasn't any reason to cry about it.

"I wish to hell it had been a long time ago, Dad," I said.

"That's all right. You're a Venturi. You've got the same pride here-" he brought his hand towards his heart-" as I do. Otherwise I'd disown you as my son. Are you married yet, have you got some bambini to carry on the name for the vino?"

I shook my head. "Nope, Dad. I couldn't find a girl who'd put up with me."

That made him laugh, and the way he tried to laugh and the sound that came out made me look away again and fight the tears.

"You see, you no good son of a bitch," he finally growled when the spasm had passed, "you didn't know when you were well off. You could have stayed here, helped me grown the good grapes, make the vino, screw some of the beautiful paisano girls, and had lots of bambini."

"I know. But I wanted to make it on my own."

"I know that. I know what you've been doing up in the big city, boy." He gave me a hard look. And then he started to cough, and I grabbed a towel and put it to his mouth, and it came away bloody. I looked around for the Goddamn nurse, but she was nowhere in sight. I owed her a fantailing for that. He managed after a few minutes to get some strength back, and then he quavered, "Sorry, Carlo. Didn't want you to see me like this. Anyhow, I know you've been a good boy. You haven't made much money, but you've held a job, you haven't disgraced the Venturi name. Good. Only now, I've got nobody else to take the land and make the vino from those grapes, boy. I want you to take it for me and go on with it."

"All right. If that's what you want, I owe you that much."

"No, you owe me nothing. But I don't want a stranger to have this. It's run down, because I haven't been well for nearly a year now-don't look at me like that, boy. I can still get out of this bed and use a strap on your ass, you know."

I began to laugh through my tears. Good old Dad! I wished to hell I hadn't been so proud, so cocksure that I wanted nothing to do with Fresno and the good earth and the grapes. I had forgotten about Sally Jeffries. Seeing Dad on his deathbed had driven everything else out except the fact that I was his son and there wasn't anybody else. "I believe you could at that," I finally told him. "Well, I'm not doing so well right now selling real estate, so I'll give the land a try if that's what you want."

"The cuttings ... in my safe. Somebody's stolen some of them, Carlo," he gasped out as he reached for my hand. "My old foreman, Jacopo, he died two years ago. I had to take the best man I could get, his name is Tulio. Tulio Verduga. He's a wop, too but he's not a good man. I can't prove it, boy, but the harvest wasn't good last year, and there's a mortgage the bank put on the land where we make the vino."

"I'll take care of it. Your old friend Charlie Karogian will show me all the papers, Dad. You just rest now. I'm here to stay."

"Good." He closed his eyes, and gave a great sigh, and then suddenly his head twisted to one side and I knew he was dead.

"Nurse!" I yelled. I was mad as hell that she hadn't been around to take care of that bloody phlegm, because he must have been spitting it up for a long time. "Nurse, Goddamnit, get your ass in here!"

I heard footsteps down the hallway, and then in came the auburn-haired broad who'd let me in at the front door. She had an angry look on her face, and her hazel eyes were flashing. "What did you say to me?" she snapped, and she raised her hand to slap my face.

"I said to get your Goddamned ass in here," I snarled. "My father's dead. And he's been spitting a lot of blood and it looks as if he'd been doing it for a long time. What the hell have you been doing today, besides parading around in that fancy uniform and acting like a Picasso painting on display?"

"How dare you!" And then she did slap me.

I saw red. I never was much of a gentleman, and the frustrations of the last five years seemed to burst inside of me as I grabbed hold of her slapping wrist, twisted it behind her back, and fastwalked her over to a low couch by the door, my right knee banging her bottom along the way while she yowled and threatened to have the police on me. I sat down on the bench, I flung her over my lap, I hoisted up the white antiseptic skirt and the whiter slip underneath it, and there was a bottom ideally made for spanking. Spacious, jouncy, sheathed with a white satin-elastic pan-tie girdle, and the tabs clung to her white stockings as if they loved her legs so much they'd never let go.

"You stop that, or I'll have you sent to jail for life, you filthy swine you! Who do you think you are to treat me this way?" she yelled at me, straining to get loose. I clamped my right leg over her calves, I grabbed one of her wrists with my left hand, and I raised my right hand and I let her have the hardest spank she'd probably ever had in all her life, flattening down the plump right cheek of her behind and letting it spring up again. She let out a yowl that would have passed muster for a wildcat, and she tried to throw herself off my lap. I wasn't having any. My hand rose and fell over her big backside with satisfying, noisy whacks until she stopped cursing and screaming and threatening me and began to sob and finally to yell, "Oh my God, you're killing me, please stop it, stop it! For God's sake, give me a chance to talk!"

I let up after about forty wallops, and I rudely shoved her onto the floor. She fell on all fours like a cat, and she shook her head several times as if dazed, and the tears were streaming down her face, and then she put one hand back to her bottom and began to massage it carefully, while she looked back at me and sobbed, "You big overgrown bastard, you bully you! I've only been here an hour because Miss Tolson, the regular nurse, got sick and Doctor Franklin had to get a substitute in a hurry, and I was just going out of town on my vacation. And this is the thanks I get."

The anger was all out of me now and I sat there dully, and I stared over at my dead father, and then back at this auburn-haired cutie, and then suddenly I began to laugh my fool head off. What a hell of a homecoming it was after five years! Yes, I had sure made some headway all on my own in San Francisco. I'd learned how to forget my almost virginal shyness towards women and take a strange broad over my lap and blister her bottom black and blue at first meeting. I wasn't sure that was the kind of social grace that would be acceptable in Fresno. But at least it showed that I had Venturi blood in me, and I think maybe my father, wherever he was now at this moment, was probably laughing too and calling me a bastard in that inimitable way of his and thinking that maybe after all I could make the grade.