You’d always believed your mother could play the angles with the best of them. She seemed to work magic with what little you all had when money got so tight for everyone. Like a lot of guys, you were convinced your mother could do just about anything with nothing. But watching her work off your dad’s debts made you wonder if she was as good as you’d been led to believe.

Growing up, you knew your dad spent every dime he could on booze, cards, and horses. Everyone knew it. No matter to him the whole country was going bust, the banks closing, people losing their jobs, their homes, their farms. Your dad went right on, getting in deeper and deeper.

Your mom always seemed to manage, but you didn’t know how, exactly. Turned out, everyone else knew how she did it. For the longest time, you thought she was just better with money than your dad. She had her ways, keeping food on the table, the lights on, rent paid. She even managed to keep up the cash payments on the Ford roadster, bought new, despite your dad being laid off his job at International Harvester plant, like everyone else.

The summer you finished high school, there was still no work so she started taking you along with her as she went around tidying up the family finances. It wasn’t for your company or for teaching you her frugal ways. No. You were the muscle, she said. Her backup. All those years of playing sports in school and hiring yourself out to farmers during the summers ought to be good for something, she said. Your job was to keep an eye on the guys while she tended to business.

Don’t let those guys try any funny stuff, she said. Which was funny all by itself once you learned how she went about settling your dad’s gambling debts and liquor tabs.

So, you did your best to look fierce, always keeping one hand stuffed in your letterman’s jacket, like gangsters in the newsreels, hiding something dangerous in easy reach.

Those first few times, you watched how she dickered with whatever guy was holding your dad’s chits.

Nobody has any money, she’d say, so she’d go right to pleading poverty, offering pennies on the dollar to settle up, which he’d turn down, of course.

Then she’d simper for a moment and wonder if there was anything a woman of limited means might have in the way of natural resources he’d find worth taking in trade.

If the guy seemed interested, she’d give you a nod. You’d step back a little, give them some room, and let her go to work.

Blowjobs were easiest. Very little wasted time and energy getting down to business. The only thing she bothered with was unpinning her hat—after one fella surprised her, pulling out to spray her face, ruining her brand new four-dollar tailored felt-and-veil.

If the guy wanted her to take off her clothes, she’d remove her jacket, skirt, and blouse. If they wanted any more to come off, they had to say so. She wouldn’t offer. Never give anything away for free, she said. Make them tell you if they want you to go further.

Sometimes it was enough for guys, having a mature, handsome woman, who carries herself with a little bit of class, down on her knees, working off her husband’s debts, wearing only her brassiere, garter belt, and stockings, with maybe a string of fake pearls.

Other times, guys wanted her to take off everything. She didn’t fuss, but stripped herself down to bare skin, leaving her underwear on top of the pile over your arm. All you had to do was stand there, holding her clothes, acting like it was nothing you hadn’t seen before. Because, after the first couple of times, it wasn’t. But you still hadn’t got used to it.

You’d swear you could smell her pungent aroma from the dark patch of hair at her crotch mixing with the perfume she touched to the pale skin of her shoulders, neck, and forearms. The sight and smell of your mother naked in a place of business unused to nudity worked on you as much as it did on the guy waiting for her to settle accounts.

Back in the car she would put back the lipstick left on yet another choice dick, and touch up her rouge, thumbed off by guys who favored a firm grip of her cheeks to keep her from pulling away as they shot their loads down her throat.

Watching how easy she seemed about it, you had to tell her you weren’t sure what sort of funny stuff a guy might try, given how they all managed to end up with their dicks in one end of her or the other, by the time she was finished.

Watch your mouth, she said, you just keep the guy from knocking me in the head and leaving me in the woods for the bears.

That meant being right there with them, close enough to keep an eye on the proceedings, which, it seemed to you, would wilt the hardiest pecker.

But, no, she said, you’d be surprised how many guys will take the chance to take full advantage of somebody else’s wife to collect a debt. There’s a special thrill, she said, for a man being in another guy’s wife and the guy’s got to shut up and take it. There’s no bother with romancing the guy’s wife away from him, making up sweet talk, convincing her how she’s the love of his life. You’ll see, she said. Lots of guys find that—she paused, her lipstick tube at the ready—stimulating. That’s it, she said. Stimulating. Then finished with her lipstick.

Guys never seemed put off by her insisting you stay, or having you stand there watching, so maybe she was onto something.

She’d finish the guy off with a flourish, demand a receipt like she’d paid them in cash, and then get back into her clothes.

Made you wonder if she found it as stimulating, seeing how easily she fell into it.

Then there were the guys who needed a lot more stimulation. A blowjob wouldn’t cut it. Gambling was expensive, especially the horses. It added up quickly, and those guys weren’t satisfied with wetting their weiners in a mature mouth painted up like Clara Bow, Joan Blondell, or Jean Harlow, no matter how soft the lips, how skilled the tongue, how deep she could take a guy, how long she seemed able to go without breathing as he unloaded, savoring the way her throat constricted his dick. It was her specialty, she said.

These guys wanted the full magilla. Usually in a back office or stock room. Never on anything comfy, like a sofa, club chair, or a watchman’s cot.

It wouldn’t be so bad, if they’d find someplace softer, she said. When they wanted to come in her front door, they’d lay her back on a work bench, table, or desk, the flat, hard wood rubbing her ass and shoulders raw, her sliding as they rode her, pushing and pulling her with each stroke.

When they wanted to come in the back door, they’d have her down on all fours, giving themselves room to squeeze her tits and pinch her nipples while they hunched over her. She’d get up off the floor with her knees rubbed raw, and holes through her stockings.

If she had her ‘druthers’, she said, and they wouldn’t settle for a blowjob, she’d rather they come in the back door. At least that way she didn’t have to worry about them using a merry-widow. Because they never have them, she said, and she wasn’t about to pay to keep extras in her purse.

In the car, afterwards, you’d said something about your dad’s foolish indulgences that put her in this position, and you asked, what if he found out? But she waved it off. He’s just glad they don’t come around and break his fingers or bust his knees. Then she’d stop and look over at you, and ask, you’re not upset are you?

You’d frown, but make no sign either way, hoping your grim look showed how much you appreciated what she had to do.

But really? You didn’t mind that dad was okay with it. Because—if you’d been honest with your mom—you weren’t upset. At all. You liked being right there, seeing everything. You didn’t have much experience with girls, so watching her—how her lips parted over those stiff and glistening fleshy rods, her throat working—or watching her face twisted up as she was pierced in the ass with another fearsome boner—or watching some crusty geezer’s dick sliding in and out of her ruddy red puss with hard, deep strokes, his balls slapping her ass—none of that upset you, or creeped you out, or made you angry. Certainly, it lit no fire of indignation on your dad’s behalf. Nothing like that.

What it did was make you swell, the skin of your dick buzzing against your trouser front to break free and find some release from the urgent heat of those encounters, the bartered breach of your mom’s wedding vows. Given how easily she went about it, and how easily your dad seemed to let her, you wondered if either of them ever said two words promising to be faithful, even with a minister standing over them.

No. You rather enjoyed it, watching your mom bent over gripping her ankles, or on her back keeping her knees pulled up against her chest, grunting in time with the imperious slam of unrelenting hips. You’d get so hard you gladly held her clothes, if only to keep your erection from being misunderstood.

Still, being the dutiful son, you suggested to her that maybe if she held out longer, maybe the guys would settle for less cash, instead of her giving in so quickly to get dad off the hook.

Use your money hole, she said, and keep the cold hard cash for a rainy day.

Money hole?

Momma—your grandma—always said, banks fail and jobs don’t last. But a money hole is as good as cash when times are tight if you don’t mind where a guy sticks his pecker. Grandma, into her seventies, was still blowing fellas when the chickens weren’t laying.

It was in the moonshiner’s cabin, your mom found a way to make the most of that idea.

Your dad was into this particular moonshiner for a lot of scratch. The moonshiner and your mom went back and forth as usual, and the guy wore her down—without too much effort—from a jaunty little blowjob to a full-on humping in her back door.

Like she usually did, she said to the guy, you don’t mind my boy sticking around, just to keep an eye on things? The guy didn’t blink and said he’d be glad to have him stay. With a lift of his chin, she signaled for her to strip down. All the way. She took a little tin of the slickum she carried for just such occasions, and handed her purse to you. You gathered her clothes as she stripped out of them, and then stepped back.

The guy grabbed her shoulders meaning to twist her around.

Not so fast, she said. She coated his pecker with the concoction from the little tin. Only then did she lean herself across the table, daubing more of the concoction between her butt cheeks and into her ass. Putting the tin down she gripped the edges of the table, then said, okay.