\n Welcome!  This is something I wrote a while ago, thinking back to my time in rural Texas.  I thought I'd put it up here for folks to read while I finish getting my next story ready for publication.  It's in nine chapters (or ten, I can't remember..)

\n I hope you enjoy it! :-)

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\n Winter Help - Chapter One

\n I  felt like I'd just gotten to sleep when I felt Bubba's big, rough paw shaking my shoulder. I managed to ignore him for about ten seconds, then the hand went from shaking my shoulder to whacking me in the back of the head. "Get up, Jason. I don't know how you did it in the city, but in the country we've got chores to do. Them cows don't have a snooze alarm." I reached up and managed to grab his wrist. It was warm, solid and thick, and I could feel coarse arm hair under my fingers. Just touching the big bull terrier was exciting. He was everything I imagined I wanted to be - confident, strong, and handsome to boot. He seemed so comfortable with his place in the world, and I couldn't even imagine what my place was.

\n He gave a halfhearted tug to retrieve his arm, and out of sheer cussedness I tightened my grip. I just about pulled him on top of me before releasing his wrist. The thought of having him on top of me, however it might happen, made my already stiff dick throb, and that was the last thing I needed right then. Oh, shit, I thought with a groan, realizing for the first time what was happening inside my jockeys. He was expecting me to jump out of bed, and I had morning wood like a thirteen year old.

\n With a snap, Bubba put a quick end to my hesitancy by yanking the covers off me. Cool air hit my skin like a slap, and my hand instinctively shot down to cover the four inches of erection sticking out of my sheath. Bubba took advantage of my temporary helplessness to roll me out of bed and give me a gentle shove towards the shared bathroom. "You think I ain't never seen a hard-on before? I was in the Marines, I've seen a thousand of 'em," he said with a laugh. "You got five minutes before I come in after you and drag your ass out." The thought of him coming into the bathroom with me wasn't something I wanted to think about right then.

\n I sat on the toilet for the first 60 of my 300 seconds of privacy waiting for my erection to go away. When my cock finally began to soften a bit, I stood up and pointed it at the water, and felt relief as the trickle of piss quickly became a hard stream into the commode. The last few drops were sticky, the result of too much fantasizing on my part the night before. Too many beers and too much close male friendship had just about gotten me in trouble with my new friends my very first night. In the wee hours of the morning, the alcohol had knocked down most of my inhibitions, and I knew that it would only be a matter of time before I tried to turn the friendly touches and grab-ass being played by my host and his buddies into something a little more serious and a lot more fun. When Bubba put his huge arm over my shoulders and pulled me close to him in friendly camaraderie, it was all I could do to keep from pulling him into a big bear hug.

\n What little sense I had left in my sloshing head had asserted itself at that point, and I pulled back before I embarrassed myself. I begged off to go to the bathroom, and ending up laying on top of the bed, acting like I'd passed out. Within seconds though, that was the reality of the situation. I didn't hear any more of the conversation as Bubba kicked out the last of the straggling guests, and I felt nothing as he pulled off my shirt and pants and tucked me into bed.

\n I had just enough time to splash some water on my face and brush my teeth before my buddy came back to pull me out of the john, ready or not. Hot coffee was pushed into my hands, and a heavy canvas Carhartt jacket tossed to me as we went outside to face the day.

\n "Christ, the sun isn't even up," I said, shucking into my jacket as best I could while holding onto the steaming insulated mug. The view out the back window of the house was still pitch black.

\n Bubba laughed, enjoying my discomfort immensely. "You'll get used to it soon enough," he said, "just be thankful I let you sleep in while I made the coffee"

\n At the mention of coffee, I remembered what I was holding in my hand. Strong, hot and black, just like I liked it. A few slurps started the gears grinding in my head, and the fog began to recede. Hot coffee wasn't the easiest thing for a fur to drink, but my muzzle was short enough to allow me to sip from a mug without using a straw like some furries with long snouts had to.

\n When Bubba opened the door and led us outside, the frigid air hit me in the face like a hammer. The thick jacket kept my body warm enough, but even on the short walk to the milking barn my hands and face grew numb with cold. Bubba seemed immune to any discomfort, and I tried my damnedest to be the same way. If he could do it, so could I.

\n It had been years since I'd last been out here, ever since the last family reunion, as a matter of fact. That had been back when I was a freshman in high school, and I still remember it well. Actually, I remember one single thing well - my cousin Bubba. Although he was only two years older than me, he'd seemed bigger than life, especially to my city-raised eyes. He could rope a steer, shoot a gun, and he wasn't afraid to get nekkid and go skinny dipping in the river behind the barn. The world seemed too small to contain him, and he'd seemed to like it that way. Now, years later, he was still too much for color TV, as my grandmother used to say.

\n Inside the milking barn, the smells of manure, hay, and old machinery blended together like nothing I'd ever smelled before. It was comforting. It was home. It was indefinably right. Inside the barn was warm and humid, the cows patiently waiting for us to perform the morning rituals on them. It wasn't physically demanding work, but it was busy. Something was always needed to be changed out or cleaned or fitted or moved. It was clear that being active paid double dividends - not only did the work get done faster, but it kept you warm as well. Before long I was surprised to find that in spite of the freezing temperatures outside, I was sweating inside my coat. I looked over to my cousin and saw that he'd already hung his own coat on a peg by the door. Taking my cue from him, I looked around and found a nearby nail to hang my own coat from. As I paused for a moment to wipe the sweat off my forehead with the back of my hand, Bubba looked up from attaching a set of hoses to a cow's teats and grinned. "Having fun yet?"

\n "This is a ball, let me tell you," I shot back, returning his smile, "beats the hell out of sleeping." In spite of my sarcasm, I was actually interested in what my cousin was doing. He moved with a swift surety that only comes from long practice, and he kept up a running monologue as much for the cow's benefit as mine. He explained what he was doing, then he told me why it was done that way. To my surprise I found that, mentally, Bubba was very well organized. I didn't know why it should come as a surprise that he had his shit together, but somehow it did. Perhaps it was because he was big, strong, and handsome. People like that, in my experience, usually learned to get by on their looks, without ever developing any sort of mental acuity. Bubba seemed to be one of those rare instances where being astoundingly handsome wasn't the focus of his ego.

\n Thanks to the mostly automated equipment our chores were finished surprisingly quickly, and by the time the sun was clear of the horizon we'd finished our duties in the barn. The milking machine was cleaned, and the manure hauled to a pile out back. Now that the machines were turned off and the cows were quiet, a radio voice could be heard softly announcing the weather. Snow, and lots of it. The voice was dry and dusty, sounding like the radio hadn't been touched since the radio was plugged in 20 years prior. The sound made for good company in the quiet of the morning.

\n "Aw, hell."

\n My head turned at the sound of Bubba's irritated voice. "What's up?" I asked. I wondered if I'd done something wrong.

\n "We got a straggler. Geez, she always does this." He opened the cattle door, and in poked a large brown cow which I later learned was named Gertie. "She hides behind the barn where you can't see her until everyone else is out of here. Then she shows up and complains." True to his description, Gertie lowed softly, her large milk bag swinging uncomfortably between her legs. "I think she's shy, or something."

\n Shy. Great, I thought. She's shy, so we've got to dirty up the milking machine again right after we've cleaned it. When I looked up at Bubba, he didn't seem particularly annoyed, so I let it pass without comment.

\n He looked over and saw me picking up the stainless milking nozzles. "Naw, don't bother with that," he stopped me. At my questioning look, he opened up a cabinet and pulled a stainless steel bucket from it. "We'll just use this instead. Hell," he said with a grin, "you can't say you've worked on a dairy if you can't milk a damned cow." He pulled a low stool from a corner and sat it next to the patiently waiting cow. The metal bucket barked sharply as he set it underneath Gertie's bulging milk bag. She lowed softly and turned her head to look back at him expectantly. But instead of sitting down, he motioned me over. "Have a seat, cuz."

\n He was enjoying this, I could tell. I hitched up the knees of my jeans and sat on the low milking stool, eye level with Gertie's pendulous bag. At first my balance on the three-legged stool was off and I tilted to one side, nearly falling onto the cold concrete. Catching myself, I repositioned the stool so my weight was smack dab in the middle. This time I stayed put.

\n In spite of the fact I'd never done this before, I thought I had some idea of how to proceed. In my youth I'd seen videos of farmers milking cows, probably on Sesame Street, and it looked like they were just squeezing the teats like you might squeeze a tube of toothpaste, tightening your fingers in an undulating motion while pulling down a bit. Simple, right?

\n Bubba handed me a towel moistened with sterilizing liquid, and I cleaned her teats and my own hands. The feel of Gertie's udder was disconcerting, somehow. Warm and alive, the teats felt like the fingers of a huge latex glove filled with warm water. Rubbing them was too intimate, bordering on kinky.

\n I took hold of one and gave it an experimental squeeze at the base. For my troubles, a few drops of milk came out and dripped on my shoe. Bubba laughed at my pitiful efforts, and I shot him a glare. "You did so well your first time?" I asked, embarassed.

\n "Nope. Did just about the same thing." He knelt down beside me, filling the small distance between Gertie and me with his huge presence. All of a sudden, the air felt summer hot and humid, and I was burning up. I wanted to take off my coat, but remembered it was already hanging on the hook. "Put your hands back on her teats. Both of them."

\n I grabbed two of the warm teats and began to gently work them up and down as I squeezed from the base to the tip. Gertie mooed aggrievedly as if to chastize me for doing it all wrong, and I looked to Bubba for help.

\n The big farmer bent further down to look underneath at what I was doing. Balancing himself with his left hand on my shoulder, he reached under Gertie and wrapped his other thick, calloused paw around one of my hands. I was so surprised at his touch, I let go with the other hand and nearly pulled away from him, but even if I'd really wanted to I couldn't have. His other hand was still on my shoulder, locking me in place. "Relax your hands a bit," he said quietly, as he matched his fingers to my own. He shook his arm a bit, loosening muscles in my arm that I didn't realize were tensed. "Hell, loosen your wole body up. You just got tense as a long-tailed cat." His voice was close enough to my ear that I could feel his breath on my cheek as his left paw squeezed my shoulder. His face and mine were inches apart, and the heat from his skin felt like it was roasting me alive, even through my fur.

\n "You've got to stay loose," he explained in a voice that was deep and rich, with a soft accent that reminded me of Sam Elliot, "you're not pulling on a machine here, Gertie's a living, breathing animal that doesn't enjoy having her tits being torn off." With a massaging motion, he squeezed my hand in just the right way, and a thin stream of milk shot out Gertie's teat, hitting the bucket with a tinny sound. "Way back in your head, you already know how to do this." He repeated the motion a dozen times, then instructed me to put my left hand back into the game.

\n "And it's not just about pulling - while you're squeezing with your fingers, push the top of your fist back up into her bag, just like a calf does. That stimulates her to release the milk." When he took his hand off of mine, the air in the barn suddenly felt cold and unfriendly against he back of my paw. I kept up the motions Bubba showed me, and the milk kept coming out. Success!

\n "See? You can do it." After a few minutes watching me pull milk out of Gertie, he walked over to her other side and knelt down on one knee. Reaching underneath, he grabbed two teats of his own and began coaxing more milk into the bucket. From my vantage point, I could see that his fur-covered hands were so large that her teats nearly disappeared inside them. Watching his thick-fingered paws squeeze milk from a teat was damned near the most erotic thing I'd ever seen, and I had to look away before I embarrassed myself. Jesus, this was going to be a long day.
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