Hot Valley (16 page)

We slept three or four to a hut, or two to a tent, depending on our billet. Young kept me to himself in the largest of the log cabins at first, letting it be known that I was his and his alone, and I was not displeased with the arrangement, as he was an untiring lover whose appetite for carnal indulgence matched mine. I quickly realized that not only did the men accept their leader's predilections, they also shared them. Special friendships came and went, some endured. There was one pair, Caleb Wallace and George Scott, big hulking bears both of them, who were, Young informed me, like an “old married couple,” having joined their fortunes back in the '50s and remained together, through thick and thin, ever since. I wondered just how “married” they really were, when I saw Caleb staring at me through the campfire flames one night, licking his lips—and more than once I saw younger members of the gang accompanying them to their hut at the close of the day. I dreamed of taking those two huge grizzlies up my ass—one day. For the time being, it was kept very busy with Young's tongue, fingers, and dick.

There was something to suit every taste at Harmony—and, seeing as my tastes seemed to run to just about every type, so long as it was masculine and not entirely hideous, I was delighted by the spectrum of shapes and shades offered there. Alamanda Bruce was a handsome brown-skinned man, tall and lithe with the kind of muscles that you could count individually through his skin, his right ear pierced with a gold hoop. Thomas Collins, on the other hand, was a stocky little Irishman with thick red hair and freckles on his hands. Jim Doty and Samuel Gregg were the two lanky blonds from Kentucky, friends from childhood, happiest when they were racing along the river, climbing trees or hunting for wild turkey like overgrown kids. Turner Teavis, or “Squire,” as he was known, was the oldest of the group, a gray-haired man in his 40s who wouldn't have looked out of place behind a desk in a bank or a pulpit in a church.

Whatever the difference in their backgrounds, all shared one thing, an almost fanatical devotion to Bennett Young. They called him “Boss,” they fetched and carried for him, and I am quite sure that they had all, in their various ways, satisfied his appetites. Young took their adoration as a matter of course, and spoke of them as a general might speak of his armies. He sent them off on missions, mostly, it seemed, concerned with the getting of food. He spent hours in conference with his trusted subordinates, planning “operations”—discussions to which I was not party. When he was not working, or fucking me, he would write in a large, leather-bound notebook which he kept closed with a padlock. “My memoirs,” he said, whenever I questioned him about them. “You'll read them one day.”

Details of “operations” were kept from me, and to tell the truth I was none too curious. I believed Young's vague stories about “special assignments” from some mysterious power that was controlling the conflict, and I asked no questions. I was happy in my new life, fucking all night, sleeping
for most of the afternoon, waking only for meals and exercise. Occasionally I was sent into town to buy provisions from the store, or to conduct business at the bank, accompanied by Squire Teavis or Caleb and George, who would ride with me and wait, with the horses, just outside town, as a kind of guard. “You got the kind of face and voice that people in these parts trust,” Squire Teavis said, when I asked why he didn't simply conduct the business himself. “They hear a Southern accent up here, they think the worst. We don't need to draw attention to ourselves.”

Young himself never left the camp—or, if he did, it was at night, when I was sleeping. He certainly went nowhere near the town.

 

Our honeymoon lasted for a couple of months, before Young announced one night that he and a small group of men would be going on a reconnaissance mission down into Vermont. I would not be joining him, he said, despite my protests.

“I need you here, safe and sound, to wait for me,” he said. “It might be dangerous where we're going.”

My questions were all in vain, and the next morning Young departed with Thomas Collins and Alamanda Bruce, each equipped with a large leather satchel stuffed with food and clothing.

That night, there was a festival atmosphere around the campfire. The men, for all that they revered Lieutenant Young, obviously enjoyed his absences as well, and intended to abandon discipline and drill and give themselves over to drink. I was alone in the hut, daydreaming about my various adventures and dimly wondering what had become of Aaron, of Mick, of my family, when the door opened and a grizzly head stuck in.

“Hey, boy,” Caleb Wallace said, grinning through his thick beard. “You in the mood for a party tonight?”

“Sure,” I said. “What's the occasion?”

“You'll see.”

I dozed off, wondering what Young was up to in Vermont, and dreamed of the happy sunlit summers of my childhood. My sisters were in my dream, but Young was there too, and, inexplicably, Aaron. The girls disappeared, and I was stranded out in the middle of a large expanse of water, watching Aaron and Young fighting on the far shore…

I was woken by the sound of shooting, and, assuming that the camp was under attack, I grabbed a gun (I had no idea how to use it) and peered cautiously out the window. Red firelight flickered around the camp, figures flitted between buildings—was this the end of Jack Edgerton? I tried to muster the courage to go out fighting, to make a good end protecting my comrades, but my hand froze on the door, and I felt sick. I sat down on the bed and swallowed the rising bile.

A banging on the door made me jump—literally, I stood up and leaped about six inches in the air.

“What you locked in there for? You takin' a shit?” It was Jim Doty's Kentucky drawl. Perhaps I was not about to die after all.

“Er…yes.”

“Well, hurry up! We can't start without you.”

Start what, I wondered, putting the gun back in its rack with a shaking hand.

“Oh,” came Doty's voice again, “and be sure to wash yourself.”

It seemed an odd injunction, especially as I was a good deal more finicky about personal hygiene than some of my fellows. I had bathed in the river earlier in the day, and I knew that I was, as my mother would have put it, “nice.”

Straightening my sleep-rumpled clothes, and trying to still my nerves, I took a deep breath and opened the door. How fear alters our perceptions! Whereas before I had
assumed that the firelight and flitting figures betokened some kind of attack, now it was quite clear that there was nothing more dangerous than a party in the offing. It was not a party as we knew them in Vermont; there were no ladies in muslin dresses, no cloths spread on the ground, no bottles of lemonade cooling in the stream. There was one big bonfire crackling away on the parade ground, and groups of men in twos and three with bottles. From the cookhouse, as we rather grandly called the tin and wood structure where Hutchinson prepared his culinary miracles, came the smell of bacon and potatoes.

Doty saw me descending the steps of the cabin, and whooped loudly. “Here he comes, boys, the guest of honor!” He was answered from around the camp by a series of yells and whistles, and soon I was escorted by some five or six men toward the bonfire.

“Hey, young feller,” Caleb Wallace said, dressed only in pants and braces, his huge hairy barrel of a chest gleaming in the firelight, “come sit by me.”

I did as I was bidden, and a bottle of beer was thrust into my hand. Caleb put his arm around me; it was heavy, and hairy, and warm.

“The Boss said we're to look after you while he's gone, so me and the boys thought we'd throw a little party in your honor.”

George Scott, Caleb's equally hairy, equally ursine “husband,” stood by the fire massaging his crotch. “We've waited for this for a long time,” he said.

I had a pretty clear idea what “this” was, but I played dumb, uncertain whether the party was sanctioned by Young or not.

“Bennett said I was to wait for him,” I said, my voice sounding squeaky compared to the booming tones of Scott and Wallace.

“Ain't fair, the Boss having you all to himself.” This was the voice of Squire Teavis, whose regular conservative appearance had been completely abandoned as he toweled himself down after a recent dip in the river. “We share everything in this company. Food, clothing, liquor.”

“And pussy.” Doty again, standing now with his arm around Sam Gregg, their unkempt blond hair mingling.

“Take a drink, Jack,” Caleb said, pushing the bottle toward my mouth.

“Is there anything to eat?”

“Yeah, plenty,” he chuckled. “You hungry?”

“He's always hungry,” Scott said, still massaging the growing lump in his pants. “I've watched him and the Boss together.”

This was news to me, although I was hardly surprised; when Young and I were together, the whole camp knew about it, so loud were we. The walls of Young's cabin were full of knotholes—perhaps made, or assisted, by the men.

By now the fire was encircled by all the men in the camp, at least 20 of them, most of them drunk and in a state of undress. I may be greedy, but this was more than even I thought I could take.

“Git up, Jack,” Caleb said, taking the bottle from me. “We want to see you dance.”

“Dance?” I could execute a reasonably proficient waltz, thanks to my upbringing in the salons of Bishopstown, but I didn't think that was what they had in mind.

“Yeah, like one of them Yankee whores in Boston and New York City,” Gregg said, swigging from a bottle of whiskey.

Fortunately, I'd seen one or two such performances in the White Horse, where, occasionally, one of the local ladies would come in to entertain the more conventional-minded patrons. I knew the basic routine—bump, grind, wiggle, and pout—and thought I could pull off a reasonable imitation.

I jumped to my feet, my boldness returning, and grabbed
the bottle from Gregg. “I'd better have a little inspiration, then,” I said, taking a long swig. The whiskey ran down my throat, set my stomach on fire, and burned away the last few inhibitions. I was ready to perform.

“What would you gentlemen like to see?” I asked, thinking I sounded very seductive but probably just slurring.

“Your ass!” chorused the reply.

I started to dance, clumsily at first, tripping over my feet, but gaining in confidence and giving my audience a few of the moves that I'd seen down at the White Horse—vastly improved, I thought. I ground my hips in a figure-eight pattern. I squatted down on my haunches, as if lowering myself onto a big juicy prick, I bent over until my nose was almost touching the ground and wiggled my behind. The men responded with obscene encouragement; one or two of them, including Scott, had hauled their dicks out and were openly masturbating. Doty and Gregg whipped harmonicas out of their pockets and gave us a selection of battle songs popular with both Johnny Reb and Billy Yank. Hands drummed on thighs, on logs.

A slow-hand clap and cries of “Get 'em off!” indicated that the audience was ready for some flesh, and I was more than ready to show it. The heat from the fire, the whiskey, and my own gyrations had got me sweating.

I started off with my necktie, which I removed with a great deal of business and, I thought, a certain amount of artistry. This was obviously not what the men wanted. Caleb stepped up beside me, started grinding his hips in time with mine, and then, grabbing the front of my shirt with both hands, ripped it clean off my body. His efforts were rewarded with the loudest whoop of the night. Doty and Gregg increased the pace of their playing, the clapping accelerated, and more items of clothing were deposited on the ground.

I realized that I had better get stripping if I didn't want my entire wardrobe to be shredded, so I unbuckled my belt with the minimum of fuss and started lowering my pants. This is what they wanted to see; the hollering subsided, breaths were held, and the music hushed to an anticipatory hum. I turned and turned, inching down my waistband, until my ass was exposed to the burning eyes of the men and the heat of the fire.

This was the signal for all hell to let loose, and any ideas I had of enchanting them with my performance were quickly abandoned. Scott, who had been manipulating his huge club of a cock throughout, grabbed me by the hair and pushed me down to my knees. He slapped me rhythmically around the face with his hard member and then started rubbing it against my lips.

“Suck it!” roared the men. I had every intention of doing so, and opened my mouth. Scott wasted no time in getting inside me, thrusting to the back of my throat. My eyes opened wide in surprise, but fortunately the whiskey had relaxed me, and I didn't gag too much. He pulled out—the head glistened in the firelight—and then shoved it back in again.

There were hands at my backside; I looked around and saw Squire Teavis kneeling behind me, stark naked. There was little I could do, even if I wanted to; my ankles were still bound by my pants and boots. He spat in his hand and rubbed the saliva around my hole. If anyone had to be first, I wasn't too displeased that it would be him, with his handsome lined face and his steel-gray hair. His finger entered me, and I responded to the pressure by pushing my ass back against it.

A line was forming at both ends—about ten at my mouth, and ten at my ass. It was going to be a long night. Scott was fucking my mouth now with some vigor, and I could feel from the tightness in his balls that he wouldn't be long coming. Teavis pulled his finger out and replaced it with his cock, which glided up me and was soon buried to the hilt. It was
not the first time I had been used in such a way, and I quickly fell into a rhythm and started to enjoy myself. Two men—I could not see who—busied themselves with my boots and, when they were off, removed one leg from my pants, so that I could spread my ass even wider. Teavis never broke his stride for a moment.