Vagabonds

As always, thank you to my awesome team. Harddaysknight is my mentor and gives me critical review. My editors are Papakilo14, Hal, Olddave1951, GeorgeAnderson and SBrooks103x. Love you guys and thank you so much.

In the original version of LW, the category description was: "These ladies really know how to please their men." In the spirit of the original, I posted it here.

This is a story I have on another site, revised and expanded, and I wanted to repost it here as I rebuild my library. If you have already read it, thank you, you need not read, vote or comment, and if not, I hope you enjoy, Randi.

*****

I stumbled out the patio door with a nightstick in my hand. The damn dogs were in my trash again. The rumble of my trash container turning over woke me. It was the third time that week, and I was getting sick of it. Why couldn't people keep their damn dogs at home? I knew the dogs were just hungry, but this was ridiculous.

I opened the back gate stealthily and prepared to rush out and deal the mangy curs some punishment. I flung the gate open and dashed to the garbage containers. There were two dark forms with one container on its side. I raised the club and they noticed me.

"Please, mister, we was just hungry," one of them said. "We'll clean it up! Don't hit us!"

It wasn't dogs; it was two children. They were definitely feral, though. It was dark back there and I grabbed them by the collars, dragging them into the backyard under the security lights. I stood them up and looked them over. They were ragged and dirty. They looked like vagabonds. They had on nondescript baggy clothes and ball caps. It was cold out, and I could see them shivering.

"Did you two turn my garbage over earlier in the week?" I asked.

They looked at one another. "Yes, you always leave some stuff like pizza or something in your trash," one of them said. "I'm sorry we left it. We won't do it anymore. Just let us go, mister, we won't bother you no more. We'll clean it up."

This wouldn't do. I took them firmly by the shirts and marched them inside. I took them straight to the bathroom, pushed them in and shut the door. "Don't come out until I get back," I said.

I went and got some of my ex-wife's sweatpants, hoodies, clean socks and big fluffy towels. I took them to the bathroom and opened the door. They were trying to open the window and get away. "You may like being dirty," I told them, "but I don't think a hot shower is going to hurt you. There's soap and shampoo in the shower. Here are clean clothes and towels. Get undressed and get in the shower."

"We don't like being dirty," the biggest one hissed at me. "We ain't got no nice shower like you. You just going to stand there?"

"You might steal something," I said.

"Yeah, right," the little one said. "We going to steal your toilet paper. We ain't thieves. You some kind of a pervert, mister? You like little girls?"

I was dumbfounded. Now that I looked closely, there were definitely girls under all that dirt. "I... I..." I stammered, "I didn't know you were girls. Just clean up and I'll get you something to eat. Come to the kitchen when you get clean and I'll feed you."

I left them the bathroom and went to the kitchen. I opened the refrigerator and took stock. There was cold fried chicken, half a bowl of potato salad, a half-eaten vegetable tray, some pastrami for sandwiches and baby dill pickles. I divided the chicken onto two plates. There were three pieces for each one and I gave them each a big pile of potato salad. I put the veggies on a plate and got some ranch for them to dip in. Some pickles on the plate, a pastrami sandwich for each of us and some chips for me, and them, too, if they wanted them, completed a pretty good meal, I thought. I hoped they liked Muenster cheese, mayo and mustard on their sandwiches.

I heard the bathroom door open quietly and whispers outside the kitchen door. After a minute, two of the most beautiful girls I'd ever seen walked into my kitchen. They had long, midnight black hair and olive skin. The greenest eyes on earth, a little almond shaped, high cheekbones and just the cutest little noses imaginable made them quite a pair. They looked like they hadn't quite made it to teen yet, maybe eleven or twelve. It was funny seeing them in Brianna's clothes. She's a tall girl, and they were very little. They had sleeves and pant legs rolled up and they looked like vagabonds.

"Pull up a chair," I invited them. "Do you like Coke, or I have juice or milk."

They both wanted milk. "I'm McCay North," I told them as I poured their milk. I sat it on the counter in front of them. "Dig in."

"I'm Maggie," the bigger one said. "That's short for Margret. She's Stokely. Can we really eat all this?"

"You can have more if you want another sandwich," I said. "I'll cook for you in the morning. I'm not cooking at 2 AM."

"No, this is good. Thank you," Stokely said.

Maggie looked at me suspiciously. "What do you want from us? We ain't doing no nasty stuff."

I laughed. "No, me either. If either one of you has any designs on my virtue, you're going to be disappointed."

They clearly didn't understand my sense of humor. "I'm not available to little girls," I said.

I could tell they didn't like the "little girls" reference, but they started eating. They ate like wolves. "Hey, whoa, slow down," I told them. "It isn't trying to get away. The chickens are dead and the potatoes were never very fast. You're going to make yourselves sick!"

That got a chuckle out of them, but they ate less ravenously. "Where are you girls staying?" I asked them.

"There's an empty house down the block," Maggie said. "We found a mattress and we've got some stuff to cover up with. We're afraid the crackheads are going to move in, though. As soon as they find out it's empty, they will."

"Would you like to sleep in a warm, clean bed tonight?" I asked them.

They looked at me suspiciously again. "Not mine," I laughed. "I have three spare bedrooms. Well, they're mine, too, but you know what I mean."

They giggled nervously. "We ain't got no money," Stokely said. "We can't pay you. We collect cans, but we just spend all that on food."

"I'm not asking you to pay me," I said. "Did you hear me say I want you to pay me?"

"What gives?" she asked. "Why you being so nice to us, Mc... Mc..."

"Call me Mack," I said. "Everyone does."

"Why you acting all nice, Mack?" she asked.

"I'm not 'acting' any way," I told her. "I'm a nice guy, just ask my mom." That got smiles from them. I liked that. I decided I'd make them do it a lot. "If I were in your shoes I'd want someone to be nice to me," I said.

They seemed to consider that. "Can I have some of those chips?" Stokely asked. I pushed the bag over and they both reached in while they ate their sandwiches. I had finished mine. They drank their milk and looked like they wanted more. I poured them another glass and they drank that, too. I was amazed, but they cleaned their plates down to the crumbs and ate all the veggies. They must have been really hungry.

"Off to bed," I told them. "You'll each have your own bathroom. There are toothbrushes, combs and stuff like that in the vanities. Aspirins, tummy ache stuff, toothpaste and floss in the medicine cabinets. Anything else you need you have to ask me."

"Can we lock the doors?" Maggie asked.

"Yes, but you have to open them in a reasonable amount of time if I ask you to," I said.

They looked at me funny. Light dawned in Maggie's impossibly green eyes. "He's afraid we'll steal stuff," she told her sister. "We won't steal anything, Mack. It's okay if you don't trust us. We don't trust you very much either."

I had to laugh. "Okay, we have a mutual distrust. You're going to find out you can trust me. I hardly ever harm beautiful girls."

That got me another pair of flashing smiles. I think they liked the "beautiful" part. They followed me down the hall and went into their rooms. I heard the locks click and smiled to myself. When I got back in bed, I lay awake for a while. What was the deal on these girls? Why were they rummaging around in my trash? Why were they on their own? Where was their family? I was going to get some answers in the morning.

I was getting dressed when I heard the floor creak down the hall. I opened the door a crack and they were sneaking toward the living room. I figured they were going to leave so I opened the door. They froze.

"You girls ready for breakfast?" I asked.

They looked at each other. "Maybe we better just go," Maggie said. "You ain't going to, like, keep us or nothing, are you?"

"You mean, force you to stay?" I asked.

They looked at each other again. They looked back at me and nodded.

"No, I won't force you to do anything," I said. "It's against my rules to force people to do things. I'd like it if you'd eat breakfast with me, though."

They glanced at one another again. "You'll let us go after that?" Stokely asked.

"If you want to," I said. "Actually, I was hoping you'd want to spend the day with me. If you don't, that's okay, but do you have an appointment somewhere?"

"Yeah, we need to meet with our stockbroker," Maggie smiled. It lit her up like a Christmas tree. "What you going to feed us?"

"First, you left an 'are' out of that sentence," I told her. "It's, 'What are you going to feed us'."

"You an English teacher or something?" she asked.

"As a matter of fact, I am," I told her. "I teach English Literature at the University."

"Cool," Stokely said. "We don't go to school. Too busy."

"You do eat breakfast though, right? I was thinking waffles and bacon. Do you girls like that?"

They did, so we went in and they got out the waffle iron while I mixed up the batter. They cooked the waffles while I fried two pounds of bacon. I'm kind of a syrup snob. I'm a coffee snob, too. I let Maggie turn the bacon while I ground coffee beans and put the percolator on. It all came together pretty well, and we had real maple syrup and waffles. They disgusted me by asking if I had creamer for the coffee. I keep some around for the barbarians and Brianna, and they liked the vanilla hazelnut. We ate all the bacon and they each had three waffles.

"You girls stick with me and I'll have you as fat as toads in a week," I told them. They both laughed and it was the most wonderful sound I'd ever heard. They drank milk like starving calves, too. My pantry was going to need some work.

"So tell me about Maggie and Stokely," I said. "What's up with you girls? Why are you digging through people's garbage for food?"

We took mugs of coffee into the living room and they told me a tale of woe. Their father was an autoworker. He lost his job when they were little and started drinking and knocking them around. Their mother divorced him and they never saw him again. The Detroit economy was a mess. Well, everything about Detroit was a mess, but jobs were hard to come by. Their mother drove a cab and she picked up the wrong fare one night. He stabbed her for what little money she had on her and left her to bleed to death.

They'd been put in foster care and the man of the house started molesting them. They ran away and they'd been living on the streets for three months. Their last name was Steele and they worried about freezing to death, being raped or killed, and where their next meal was coming from.

I sat there for a while after they finished talking. Jesus Christ, they were breaking my heart. I wondered how many like them were out there. It was probably a more common story than I imagined. I wondered if they'd let me help them. I wondered how I could help them. It seemed unlikely that child services would let them stay with me. A single man keeping two young girls sounded like something a pervert would dream up, and I was pretty sure it wouldn't fly with social services. They interrupted my reverie.

"Mack, you married?" Stokely asked.

"I was," I told them. "My ex decided I wasn't ambitious enough. She's a hotshot lawyer and she was going places. She didn't have room in her life for being married."

"What a bitch," Maggie said.

I laughed. "She's really a very nice person. She didn't cheat on me or anything and we're still very close friends. We mutually decided that we should never have gotten married. We were very young and very dumb."

"How old are you?" Stokely wanted to know.

"I'm twenty-eight," I told her. "How old are you?"

"I'm eleven and she's thirteen," she said. "What we going to do today?"

"What 'are' we going to do today," I told her.

"Yeah, what you said."

"We're going to talk," I told her. "First, I'm going to introduce you to someone."

I opened the garage door and a bundle of wiggling fur shot through the door. He noticed our guests and shot over to them, leaping onto the sofa and lying across their laps, swiping them with a big pink tongue.

"This is Grandville," I told them. "I call him Granny."

They were giggling hysterically as he drenched them with his tongue. He weighs about 130, and they weren't getting up with him on their laps. I'm sure he weighed more than they did.

"Down, Granny," I told him. He reluctantly climbed down and lay on their feet.

"He's huge," Stokely laughed, petting his head. "What kind of a dog is he? He's kind of striped like a tiger."

"He's a Bull Mastiff," I said. "He's called a brindle and that's why he's that color."

"He looks like he could bite our faces off," Maggie said.

"Yes, he could, but he won't. He's friendly to my friends. He sees you sitting in our house and being friendly, so he loves you. If you were being belligerent toward me, he would have been alarmed and very aggressive. Now that he knows you, he won't let anyone be belligerent toward you, either. If I yelled at you, he wouldn't like that. He's very protective of people he loves."

Stokely jumped down and lay on top of him, hugging him around the neck while he licked her arm. "I love him," she said. "He's so wrinkly and cute! Does he live in the garage?"

"No, he lives in the house," I said. "He was sick yesterday, and I put him out there so he wouldn't puke all over the house."

"What made him sick?" Stokely asked.

"He eats stuff he shouldn't," I said. "He chews up sticks, eats bugs, dead stuff he finds, no telling what. He seems to be okay today."

"Gross," Maggie exclaimed. "He was licking my face!"

"Yeah, he's cute, but kind of a mess," I said. "He's my buddy, though, so I just put up with him. He'll be your buddy, too, if you let him. We should take him for a walk."

I got his leash and Maggie wanted to lead him. He mostly leads the person with the leash so she stayed a few yards ahead of Stokely and me, being dragged along. Stokely put her little hand in mine. I looked down at her and she smiled up at me. God she was beautiful! "Is it okay?" she asked.

"Sure, baby," I said. "I like holding hands with pretty girls." She blushed a little but she didn't turn me loose. We walked a couple of miles and Granny was panting and drooling by the time we got back. It was cold but he does that anyway.

We got more coffee and talked all afternoon. I finally asked them if they would let me help them. "What can you do?" Maggie asked.

"I really don't know," I told them. "I could talk to Brianna. She's a lawyer, albeit a different kind. Maybe she would have some ideas."

"Is that the bitch?" Maggie asked.

"Maggie, she isn't a bitch," I told her. "Stop calling her that. Do you trust me?"

They looked at each other and then back at me. "Yeah, I guess so," Stokely said. "You're being very nice to us."

"Well, let's give her a call and see if she'll come over," I said. "You'll like her. Just give her a chance."

Brianna was busy, but she said she would come over for dinner. Bri is this tall gorgeous redhead. She's smoking hot but she's never figured that out. I could tell the girls were impressed when she walked in. She gave me a kiss that curled my toes and hugged both the girls.

"You've replaced me," she winked at me.

"No, Bri, you're irreplaceable, you know that," I kidded her. She really was. I told the girls we were still friends, and we were. We were friends with benefits. We still had some great sex together, sometimes once a week or more. Sometimes she came over and stayed with me for a week or so and we fucked like bunnies. She just didn't have time for a husband in her life and I doubted she ever would. She loved me, in her own way, and I loved her, too. We just couldn't be married. We got along perfectly as fuck buddies, but we fought like cats and dogs when we were married.

"So, who are your new girlfriends?" she asked. She smiled at them and I knew they were dazzled.

"I'm Maggie, and she's Stokely."

"Pleased to meet you," Bri said. "You do know that this guy is dangerous, right?"

"Not to us," Stokely said. "I think he might be to someone he was enemies with. He has a club and a really big dog."

Bri prodded Grandville with her toe and he snored in protest. "Hey, big guy," she knelt and hugged him. "Miss me?" He rolled his eyes up at her but couldn't muster the energy to raise his head.

"What's up, Mack?" she asked. "What did you want to talk to me about? Not that I mind the dinner invitation. He's a fantastic cook, girls, if you can get him motivated."

"I think he made lamb chops," Maggie said. "We've never had that before."

"Well you're in for a treat then, but what's up?" she asked again.

We ate dinner and I explained. "We need your help, Bri," I told her. "We don't know anything about legal stuff. The girls are orphans. Well, their dad may be alive but no one knows where. He abandoned them and their mother was murdered. They were in foster care and some asshole started feeling them up. They ran away and they're living on the street. They were dumping out my garbage looking for something to eat and I caught them. Now we're trying to figure something out so they won't be back out on the street."

She looked at me for a minute. "You want them, don't you? Jesus Christ, Mack! You've always wanted kids and because I won't give you any you want them, don't you?"

I blushed. "Yeah, I kinda do. How do you think that could happen, Bri?"

"I don't think it could," she said. "No family court is going to give you two young girls. You're a single man. It's a recipe for disaster. They won't do it."

I looked over at the girls. They were staring at me with wide eyes. "What?" I asked.

They looked at each other and burst into tears. Both of them ran over and threw their arms around me. "You wanted to keep us?" Stokely sobbed. "I can't believe that. I didn't think we would ever find anyone... anyone... " she couldn't go on.

I held them tightly. "Yes, girls, I was thinking about it. You need someone to watch out for you. I need someone to look out for me. I thought we might do that together, and Granny would look for for all of us." Their little bodies were shaking and they pressed against me tightly.

I looked helplessly over at Bri and there were tears running down her cheeks. She looked from the girls to me. "Damn it, Mack, look what you're done to me! Just when I think I know you, you always surprise me. What am I going to do with you?" There was an odd look on her face, like she was seeing me for the first time. "Let me think for a few days. Girls, you're going with me. You can't stay here with Mack. It would ruin everything if that ever came out. Mack, we're taking Granny with us. I can't stay home and he'll have to look after them."

She was like a tornado as she swirled around and swept them and Granny out of the house in into her Mercedes. "I'll call you," she said.

She did call for about thirty seconds, three times over the next two weeks. I didn't see hide or hair of them until she called me Friday morning and told me she wanted to meet me for dinner at Alphonso's. It's a nice Italian place in Pontiac, and we went there a lot. She was already there when I arrived, sitting at the bar with men swirling around her. She jumped up when she saw me and left them drooling. We went to a booth and she pushed me over and sat by me. She usually wants to sit across from me so I knew something was going on. We ordered and she didn't say anything for a while.