Bill Underhill

The Profile

The kid couldn't've been more than nine or ten years old. He was fair-skinned and sunburnt over his cheeks and the backs of his forearms, freckled and with the kind of dark red hair that some people call auburn.

He wore an old green football jersey, cut off raggedly at a level just below his ribs, and a fashionably too-big, fashionably too-loose pair of blue denim jeans that sagged slaunchwise from his hips, exposing the waistband and most of the rest of his white underpants.

He turned back at the bottom of the steps and grinned at the man who stood in the doorway.

"Tomorrow?" I heard him say. "After summer school?"

"Sure," the man replied. He smiled. "And bring your books with you next time."

The boy made a face. "Social studies!"

"You want to pass, don't you?"

Reluctantly, the kid nodded. "Yeah, I guess…" He looked up. "It's just that there's other stuff I'd rather do."

"Sure." The man nodded. "Playing video games and watching movies."

The kid smiled a knowing, tolerant smile as he shook his head. "You know what kind of stuff I mean."

The man's eyebrows rose. "But homework's important. Without good study habits…"

The kid laughed. "I gotta go. My mom's got a habit of whacking my butt if I'm not home before she gets in from work."

With a scuffle of neoprene soles on the sidewalk, the kid turned and dashed away. I watched the man watch the boy until he turned the corner, disappearing behind a hedge. Then he sighed, shook his head, and smilingly re-entered the house.

I flipped open the cover of my notepad and nodded. This guy certainly fit the profile. Paul Weymouth, age 52, never married, no kids, no steady honey – male or female. Living in the same house he'd grown up in, the one he'd inherited from his parents when they'd died six or seven years ago.

The guy ran some kind of business from his home, providing billing and recordkeeping services for professional people – doctors, consultants, attorneys – all over the valley. He took his vacations in late September and mid-January, making some kind of reciprocal deal with a competitor a couple of counties west of here. Each would link into the other guy's computer systems and take care of clients' needs whenever the other guy was away.

No stories about wild parties or late-night comings and goings from the neighbors. No recollections about biker types dropping by, or visitors wearing the kinds of styles that were all the rage in places like Calle or Medelin.

Any visitors the neighbors'd noted had been people who looked like business contacts – men in their twenties or thirties or forties, guys who dressed like computer types, even a couple with nerd-pack pocket protectors.

Nobody took any notice of the boys, of course.

Shamong Valley is the kind of town that Hollywood sent American men off to defend in World War II. Everybody knows everybody else, and the few disputes that do get to court are settled under the eyes of an incorruptible justice of the peace. Trial lawyers have tried to set up their practices in this town and found themselves with nothing to do but probate wills and settle real estate titles.

Not that there's much business in those areas, either. People in Shamong Valley are long-lived, and those who die tend to do it only after selling their property – "for one dollar in hand and certain valuable considerations" – to their prospective heirs.

Come to think of it, two of the lawyers in town have had to take part-time jobs lately, and the only time of the year they get busy is the middle of March, when some of the local businesses bring them tax work.

The town's spent the last fifty years growing at a glacial pace, with no big industries coming in and no major economic disasters driving people out. Even the high school dropout rate was stable. Zero.

I'd moved to Shamong Valley for family reasons. I'm used to life in what the sociologists call a 'ring city', a belt of intensively growthful suburbs circling a dying metropolis populated entirely by welfare mothers, gang-bangers, and a municipal government so blatantly corrupt it would shock and disgust the ghost of Boss Tweed.

Despite the absence of shopping malls, industrial parks and corporate centers, I found plenty of things to keep me busy in Shamong Valley. Most of all, I really liked the part of town I'd moved into.

It was the kind of neighborhood where none of the kids took property boundaries seriously, and where the only fences were put up by people who wanted to keep their dogs from running around loose. Paths had been worn across lawns around houses that held their third and fourth generations of the same families, a few of the present or past owners having given in to the point that they'd even flagstoned or sidewalked them.

It was also the kind of neighborhood where everybody watched out for everybody else's kids, where pre-school children could go to just about any house, knock on the door, and ask for a glass of water.

I confess to having suffered a bit of culture shock when I'd moved in. The first time a four-year-old girl – a complete stranger – comes to your kitchen door all by herself, fidgeting the way kids will, saying that she's gotta use the bathroom now and shouldering past you to show you that she knows just exactly where it is…

Well, it makes you wonder when the state Child Protection Services people are going to move in and take over.

I suppose that it'd been my rabbit-on-the-roadside hyperalertness after that incident that'd given me cause to notice Mr. Weymouth. His house was four doors down from mine, and there was something peculiar about the way the local kids treated it.

First of all, though the smallest children – the nursery school and kindergarten and first-through-third graders – didn't shy away from it, they didn't linger around it. That wasn't too odd, as little kids tend to gravitate toward yards in which there's interesting stuff to play with, and Mr. Weymouth had nothing on his property but trees and shrubs and a brick-red wooden tool shed.

More significantly, though, were the boys. Ranging in age from eight at the youngest to fourteen or fifteen at the oldest, boys popped in and out of Mr. Weymouth's house quite frequently in the after-school hours and on week-ends. Most of the time they were in there for only the time it'd take to use the bathroom or to get themselves a drink of water, but that was in itself kind of odd.

Boys that age don't have the innocent boldness of smaller children, and they know they're not as cute, either. They can generally sense that grown-ups don't welcome them as readily or afford them the same kind of tolerance that the little ones get. That's the reason why they don't usually make free with the facilities of any homes but their own.

Besides, they're better bladder-trained than the pre-schoolers, and they won't hesitate to find themselves the back of a bush when the situation becomes too urgent for them to run home and use the john.

So why were they clattering through Weymouth's kitchen door every day after school and all day long on Saturdays and Sundays?

But the most significant observation of all was the fact that a few of these boys – one at a time and occasionally in pairs – would pop into Mr. Weymouth's house and wouldn't pop out again for an hour or two. One of them I'd seen go in toward the end of a Sunday morning had been wearing his much-too-big Grateful Dead tee shirt backwards. When he'd come out again, early in the afternoon, it'd been set aright.

I closed my notebook and tucked it into a hip pocket. I'm as 'techie' as the next guy, but I don't like to rely on anything that needs batteries, can be hacked, or gets busted when you drop it on the ground. I was also the most junior guy in the program, having tested out with a score that had the supervisors' eyebrows up around their hairlines, and I was still getting a little friendly chaff from the older people. Right now, I felt as if I deserved every bit of their flak and more. Test scores reflect intelligence and what you've learned, but they don't say squat about your street smarts. I'd had this guy right under my nose for over a month, and I hadn't even noticed him.

I decided that it was time to get to know him personally.

"Mr. Weymouth? I'm Jim Tilden. May I come in?"

He stepped aside and gestured me through the door. Identification was no problem. He obviously knew who I was and why I'd come.

"Can I get you anything?" he asked. It was almost as hot and breathless inside as it'd been outside. Eighty-six, maybe eighty-eight degrees Fahrenheit [30-31°C] in spite of the pair of fans whirring in the background. "A soda, perhaps?"

I nodded and looked around. The kitchen ran the width of the old house, with oven and range, sink and cupboards and refrigerator at one end and a long, broad wooden table toward the other. Against that opposite wall was a small daybed, covered in faded floral chintz and backed by three broad pillows slipcased in the same printed cloth. There'd be a dining room toward the front of the house, tastefully furnished in a style a couple of generations out of date and all but completely unused for a decade or more.

I was surprised at the sight of the bookshelves that lined the wall of the half of the room given over to the heavy, dark-grained old table. Mr. Weymouth followed my gaze and smiled.

"My father's influence," he explained. "He was never one to waste space. He started with shelving for my mother's cookbooks, and when my brothers and I got to the age when we were doing most of our homework here, after supper every night, he just added more shelves and moved the dictionaries, the encyclopedias, and all our schoolbooks in here."

There were some more recent additions, almanacs and other reference works that weren't more than a year or two old. "I see you're still under his influence. Didn't your father pass away seven or eight years ago?"

His eyes narrowed a little. "I see you've done your homework. Is there a specific reason for this visit, or are you merely here to admire my library?"

Library. If this guy fit the profile, there'd be more in his library than almanacs and an encyclopedia. Out in the open, more or less, there'd be all kinds of things you could find in any big city bookstore – fine art and photography, history and sociology, psychology and even stuff from the self-help movement.

There'd be novels of all kinds, police procedurals and mysteries. There'd be scientific studies and travelogues and stacks of old National Geographic back issues.

Not one item would raise the average eyebrow. Taken together, though, they'd provide strong presumptive evidence of a powerful interest in one topic most particularly.

And hidden away, what might be found? Nothing, unless you were looking for it. Nothing, unless you brought in some damned sharp scene-of-the-crime investigators. What was more explicit – whatever might've even been up close and personal for Mr. Weymouth – that kind of stuff would be stored behind false wall panels or beneath floorboards, in carefully concealed closets or within false corner furrings. In an old house like this one, the list of potential hiding places was longer than my left arm.

I looked him in the eye. "Do you think I'm with the Gestapo, Mr. Weymouth?"

A smile quirked up the edges of his mouth. "Gestapo? More like the Hitler Youth, you mean."

I felt my face go hot, and I was angry at myself for letting him get me flustered so easily. It's useful, sometimes, to look younger than I am, though it's also something of an embarrassment. I sometimes think that I'll be getting straight-armed by roadhouse bouncers demanding proof-of-age when I'm in my forties.

I sat down at the shadowy end of the table, away from the door, turning the chair so that I could face the one he'd been sitting in, both of us on the same long side of the turn-of-the-century antique. The top of it was battle-scarred by a century of family life, but it'd been sanded, stained, and sealed with the kind of loving care that knew no purpose other than the preservation of its functionality. It was a table that wouldn't go on any resale market until there was no longer a Weymouth living to give it houseroom.

He poured me a cola and took one for himself, just to be hospitable. Sitting down to face me, he apologized for his discourtesy.

"It can't be easy," he said, "looking so young. I hadn't the same problem at all." He indicated his own hair. "I turned gray when I was about fourteen, and people have always taken me for someone ten years older."

I took a sip of soda. No further mention of Gestapo or Hitler Youth. Good.

"I need to know something, Mr. Weymouth."

He nodded understanding, holding up his own glass and gesturing politely for me to continue.

"I need to know why -"

"Hey, Paul!" The screen door screamed in anguish and sprang shut again with a series of diminuendo bangs. "Guess what? My mom's not gonna be home until seven-thirty at least. She left a message on the answering machine."

It was the redheaded kid, his football jersey up over his face and head, wriggling to kick off his sneakers as he came into the kitchen.

"I – umph! – thought we could maybe eat something and have a little more fun…"

Holding the jersey in his hands, the kid caught sight of me, the expression on his face changing swiftly from delight to confusion and then settling on the kind of look a watchdog gets when he suddenly spots a stranger on the property he's been posted to guard.

"Who's he?" he asked Weymouth, not taking his eyes off me.

"Jim Tilden." Weymouth turned his head toward me. "Mr. Tilden, meet Anthony Novello, a neighbor and a friend of mine."

"Anthony." I nodded and kept my voice neutral.

The redheaded kid finished kicking off his sneakers and he draped his jersey over one of the kitchen chairs. Barechested, he padded closer to Weymouth in his stocking feet, coming to stand protectively at the man's side, one arm on the back of Weymouth's chair.

"What're you doing here?" he asked.

Weymouth chuckled and looked up at the kid. "Direct and to the point, as always." He turned back to me. "Mr. Tilden is here to ask some questions, Anthony. He's wondering why I've got boys like you coming in and out of my house all the time."

Anthony glanced down at Weymouth, an instant's worth of disbelief on his face. Then he looked up at me again, his mahogany-colored eyebrows lowered and a lickerish smile bending up the corners of his mouth.

"Want me to show you?" he asked. He began wriggling again as he stood there, holding Weymouth's chair with one hand for balance as he tucked the tip of one sock under his opposite heel. He pulled his foot out of the grimy white cotton tube and then repeated the job on the other side.

His eyes on mine, he slowly unfastened his button-fly jeans and let them fall to his ankles. Defiantly then, Anthony thumbhooked the elastic waistband of his briefs on either side and sent them to the floor as well.

He stepped out of his clothing as calmly as if he'd been undressing in the gymnasium locker room at school, his pink and hairless little penis as hard as a hammer. It stuck up from the base of his belly like a surface-to-air missile, quivering as if it'd already locked onto its target.

Seeing that I wasn't able to keep my eyes off it, Anthony smiled even more broadly, showing his teeth in an expression of feral pleasure.

"I don't know about all the other guys," he said, putting his hands on his hips and tilting his pelvis forward with deliberate provocation in mind. "But I come here because Paul sucks my dick really nice."

I swallowed hard. The kid looked at Weymouth. "D'you want to show him how good you can do it?"

"Again? So soon?" The man's eyebrows rose a trifle, but he put his arm around the kid's waist, drawing him close.

"C'mon!" Anthony grinned and stroked the top of his stiff little pecker with one finger. "You only did me twice, earlier. I'm good for two or three more times today."

Then he glanced at me. "Besides, I never got sucked with somebody watching before. I bet it'd be way cool." He put his hand on Weymouth's shoulder and his voice softened a little as he looked down at the man.

"Please?" he said. "Right here, on the table?"

"Anthony," the man protested calmly, "people eat from this table."

The kid grinned, turned and put his back to the edge of the table between us. His hands on either side, he glanced at Weymouth and then at me, then boosted himself up to sit upon the tabletop.

"Well, now you can eat me." He parted his legs and leaned back on his elbows, lifting up his middle ever-so-slightly to flaunt his prepubescent hard-on. "I'm delicious and nutritious, and I don't leave dirty dishes."

Weymouth chuckled and slid his chair down the table, the kid lifting his right leg up and over the man's head as Weymouth moved into position.

Thunderstruck, I sat there and watched. Weymouth ignored my presence as if I didn't exist, gathering the kid's sweaty little buttocks into his hands on either side. He was a big man – six-two or six-three [1.88-1.90 m], at least – and he held the boy so that the naked prepubescent seemed even smaller and more helpless in comparison.

Then Anthony shot me a sidelong glance full of smug superiority, lifting up his middle that commanding trifle by which he conveyed an unequivocal nonverbal imperative: Suck my dick!

Weymouth obeyed. His head bent as if in worship, the man took Anthony's pale pink penis into his mouth, sending a shudder of ecstasy up and down the length of the young redhead's slender body. With a sound that blended a sigh of delight into a groan of passion, Anthony sank back upon the tabletop, settling one foot in the bend of Weymouth's elbows on either side and pushing his pelvis upward. His fingers curled 'round the edge of the table to hold himself in place and he closed his eyes in pure bliss.

Slowly and methodically, Weymouth sucked the kid's penis, his fingertips massaging the rounded smoothness of Anthony's muscular little ass as his lifted and lowered the youngster's body in a rhythm matching that of his fellation.

Anthony responded as I supposed any boy would have to respond, whimpering softly and rocking his hips up and down in a thrust-and-withdraw reciprocation as ancient as the institution of sexuality itself.

Weymouth stepped up the pace with a deliberate and practiced adroitness that spoke of a lifetime's experience in the art of bringing little boys to orgasm, and Anthony didn't disappoint. He gasped, his face fiery and contorted, and then he came, bucking so hard that the heavy table banged up and down on the bare wooden floor beneath us.

I sat there, unable to say or do anything to intervene, phrases beginning with "Why didn't you…?" and "Why couldn't you…?" running through my head.

Weymouth let the kid's still-stiff little dick slip out of his mouth, and he moved lower, licking and sucking the baby balls beneath. Shuteyed with bliss, Anthony raised his legs, flexing them at hips and knees, his arms sliding up alongside his thighs and his hands slipping underneath to grasp the inner part of each ankle, spreading himself wide in an obvious invitation.

It was an invitation impossible to misinterpret. Weymouth took the boy's hips in his hands and lifted them up, bringing the kid's bottom into line with his mouth. The redhead groaned as he felt Weymouth's tongue make contact with his anus, and he shuddered when it started to spread him open and push up inside his body.

I caught the kid glancing at me for only an instant, as if he'd suddenly become aware of my presence. Then he blushed and turned his head away, embarrassed at having had a stranger see how profoundly Weymouth's skilled tongue job was affecting him.

Letting go of his ankles, Anthony tried to sit up. Weymouth raised his head and helped the youngster rise. The boy pulled himself up only a little before sinking down upon the tabletop, reclining more or less on his right side, his head on Weymouth's shoulder as the man cradled him gently in one arm. The kid's left knee was flexed and upraised as if he was deliberately trying to make sure I could see his pale pink pucker, glistening with the saliva that Weymouth's tongue had spread between the cheeks of his bottom.

He took the man's right wrist and guided Weymouth's hand down to his still-moist little dick, shivering as he felt the strong fingers close around it and begin to masturbate him. His grip still on Weymouth's wrist, he pulled the man's hand upward, then, toward his face.

With artlessly erotic deliberation, Anthony kissed the tips of the man's fingers and then – looking directly up into Weymouth's eyes – he took the middle finger into his mouth and sucked it, slowly and sensuously, before sliding the hand back down his body and settling it between his legs, up underneath his little balls.

"Anthony," Weymouth said softly, "are you sure…?"

The boy nodded. "Yeah. I want to see what it feels like." His brow crinkled with worry lines. "It's not going to hurt too bad, is it?"

Smiling, Weymouth kissed the kid on the forehead. "No, of course not. You're going to love it, I promise."

"Okay." Anthony looked at me, grinning nervously. "I watched him do this to another kid, j-just before he fucked him. The kid r-really liked it." Anxiously, the boy put his hand on Weymouth's forearm again and looked up into the man's eyes.

"Just go slow, all right?"

"Sure," Weymouth said. He slipped his left hand down behind the boy's body, into the sweaty small of the youngster's back.

Anthony flinched then, his teeth bared in a grimace of surprise, hissing softly as he felt the man's finger find its target between the smooth little cheeks of his ass. A sudden gasp heralded its entry, and he shuddered uncontrollably as Weymouth began to slowly twist and turn his wrist. The man's eyes never left Anthony's pale, frightened face as he worked his finger all the way up inside the redhead's bottom.

Looking down between his legs, Anthony nodded gravely, his eyebrows rising as if he were surprised to find that the man had been able to fit his whole finger up in there. Then he looked up at Weymouth with a terrible sadness in his eyes. Letting go of the man's arm, he relaxed his whole body, slipping down upon the tabletop, reclining for a moment on his side and then rolling slowly over onto his back, his stiffer-than-ever little dick sticking up in a pulsant proclamation of his need.

Using the hand beneath the boy's body, Weymouth lifted up the kid's hips as he bent low again to take Anthony's quivering little pecker into his mouth.

This time, the youngster's orgasm was longer in coming and more passionate in its building. The slender, naked little body writhed in what seemed to be utter agony as the man's finger twisted and turned, sliding in and out of the kid's anus in time to the inexorably accelerating rhythm of Weymouth's fellation. Anthony's skin glistened with sweat from head to toe, his hair darkening with perspiration as he turned his head slowly from one side to the other.

The kid's hands were beneath him, on his own buttocks, lifting them as if he were offering himself up to his molester with sobs of what sounded like terror and revulsion, pushing upward with rippling voluptuations of his entire body as the hand between his legs moved harder and faster, the finger sliding out and then corkscrewing back up inside him, the stokes becoming shorter and more frequent as the man acknowledged the boy's wordless but eloquent demand for the completion of this unspeakable abuse of his innocence.

Then, with a scream of rage and indignation, Anthony came, the muscles of his wiry little frame standing out in stark relief as he convulsed once, twice, and again, giving himself up with every molecule of his being to the disgraceful pleasure of being finger-fucked to a faggot orgasm.

Quivering with exhaustion, the boy groaned as Weymouth continued to suck his penis slowly and lovingly, the man's captive finger moving gently inside his body to stir his guts and make him gasp with delight.

"Oh, man!" the kid breathed. "What's it ever going to feel like when you put your dick up inside me?"

Weymouth raised his head and smiled. "Want to find out?"

Blushing, suddenly shy, Anthony shook his head. The man gathered him close, sliding the sweaty little boy off the tabletop and onto his lap, his finger still all the way up inside the kid's bottom.

"Soon, right?" asked Weymouth, his fingers flexing in a slow internal/external massage of Anthony's ass.

Shuteyed, the boy nodded. "Sure. Soon." He yawned. "Just now, I'm kind of sleepy." He nuzzled Weymouth's shoulder and put his hand on the man's arm. "Keep doing that, inside me. It feels really nice…"

And he was out like a light.

Weymouth got to his feet without difficulty, the naked little boy seeming even smaller and more vulnerable in his arms than he'd looked when he'd seated himself so boldly on the tabletop.

He carried Anthony over to the daybed and let him down gently, sliding his finger out of the kid's anus as he kissed him lightly on the lips.

Anthony muttered and rolled over onto his belly, gathering one of the big pillows into his arms and drawing his top leg up on top of it. Smiling, Weymouth covered the boy with a light blanket and sank down gently to one knee beside the bed.

"He does this all the time," Weymouth explained. "One or two times, and then he goes right off to sleep in my arms." He smiled at me. "He'll nap for half an hour or so, and then he'll wake up hungry as a lion."

"And ready for more?" I kept the tone of my voice as dry as could be managed under the circumstances.

Weymouth smiled and stroked the boy's bottom with a proprietary fondness. "Who knows? His mother's not going to be home until seven-thirty, and it's a fine opportunity." He looked up at me. "Having you watch makes him hotter than he's ever been before. If you're still here when he wakes up, I might see if he'll want to go the rest of the way."

Regarding the sleeping little boy again, Weymouth ran his fingers through damp dark red hair. "I've wanted him that way ever since I first laid eyes on him. Who wouldn't? He knows it, too. Now I think he's ready for it."

I swallowed again, dizzy with the unreality of the situation.

"Why?" I asked. He looked up.

"Why what?"

"Why this?" I nodded toward the boy. "Why little kids? What made you this way?"

He grinned. "Good taste? Good fortune?" A good-natured shrug. "Who knows? Just lucky, I guess."

"But you're so good-looking, so…" I sputtered a little and then shrugged. "I can't imagine a woman who wouldn't turn on like a light switch just at the sight of you."

Weymouth laughed. "Thanks for the compliment. But what makes you think I'd ever be interested in women, illuminated or otherwise?"

Yeah, there was that. "How about men, then?" I glanced at Anthony. "Or at least someone a little bit older?"

It was his turn to shrug. "Men don't interest me, either." His hand made circling movements, caressing Anthony's round little ass. "I've tried it with adults – male and female. It's not just about what people do in bed; it's about needs and the satisfaction of needs. No one I've ever met needs the kind of love a boy like Anthony does."

"And you?" I asked. "What kind of 'needs' do you have?"

He smiled. "I've thought about that. I guess I need to know that my love makes a difference in somebody's life. Anthony's like a lot of other kids his age, hungry for some sense of validation, some kind of acknowledgement that he's a human being – an individual – and not some kind of appendage of his parents."

"And you intend to provide that acknowledgement by fucking him up the ass?"

Weymouth fixed his eyes on me. "Of course. I love him. I lust for him. He knows that. Why should there be anything contemptible or evil about connecting the three kinds of love? Philos and agape and eros go together as naturally as breathing. Little kids get lots and lots of philos simply because they're little kids, and little kids are cute.

"Agape is something only a few of them ever find, a love that arises not out of what a child is but who he is as a person. And eros, the love that shows itself as a stiff cock and the desire to hold him and pleasure him and take pleasure in him…"

Anthony shifted a little in his sleep, working his pelvis slowly back and forth upon the pillow in his embrace.

"Well, that's something wonderful for anyone. It means that someone finds you beautiful and sexy and special. How many adults know what that kind of feeling is like? How many break their own hearts trying to find that feeling just once in their lives?"

He looked down at the sleeping youngster. "He's not gay, you know. Not very many of them are. But he's afraid that being fucked up the ass will make him gay."

"Won't it?"

Weymouth looked up at me, faintly surprised. "I thought you knew better."

I did, of course. Just about any person can be seduced into just about any kind of sexual activity imaginable; seducing someone into any sexual orientation other than the one they'd been born to…

Well, that was just about as easily done as 'seducing' a five-foot-two-inch [1.57 m] Japanese man into becoming a six-foot-three-inch [1.90 m] Scandinavian woman.

Weymouth nodded, though I'd said nothing. I suppose the look on my face was confession enough.

"All right, then," I said, "so it won't make him a homosexual. But isn't it bad enough that he thinks it will? Isn't it bad enough that you've already gotten him involved in the single kind of sexual behavior that society condemns the most?" I nodded toward Anthony's sleeping form. "Doesn't it bother you that even if nobody else ever finds out about what you've done to him, he's always going to think of himself as a faggot?"

Weymouth sighed. "I don't think you understand."

"I'm willing to listen."

He nodded. "Good." He began to move his hand up and down the length of Anthony's body, looking down at the boy as he spoke to me.

"Anthony came to me because he thought he was gay. Like so many other boys his age, he's been sexually attracted to other boys and to men ever since he can remember." Weymouth looked up. "That's quite normal, you know, even in a boy who's bound for a life of adult heterosexuality."

Yeah, I knew. I'd read the studies. In my position, given my ability to extract information online, who wouldn't?

The stuff I'd gotten about this subject before I'd come to join the program had been – let's face it – so baldly fabricated that in retrospect it's pathetic. The public libraries and the official databases are just as bad, and I've become convinced that it's as hard to find an honest 'government-approved' psychologist as it is to find an honest prosecuting attorney.

There are plenty of authority types who want to keep us little folk in the trenches as far away from the truth as they can. After all, what we don't know can't hurt them.

But access to the 'Net makes it impossible for the information police to keep a persistent investigator from getting his hands on the results of what little real research there is on the subject. How the hell can the feds keep control when people can download stuff from places so far outside U.S. jurisdiction that nobody at the other end of the line knows what a Senate appropriations bill is?

Hell, I get the best part of my most reliable information from an address in Helsinki, with echoes in Hangkow and two places in Byelorussia.

Weymouth saw that I was far enough ahead of the curve to understand, and continued.

"Not long after he moved here, Anthony meet a boy in the neighborhood who saw how uncomfortable he was. That youngster brought Anthony here, to me, and the three of us… talked for a while."

Weymouth smiled. "The best part of that conversation was conducted upstairs, sprawled out on my second-best bed. We talked about hypocrisy and self-delusion, about social taboos and the blind idiocies of the herd mentality. Anthony told us how he felt affection for other boys, and how much shame he felt because of it.

"We cuddled together and discussed the way some people openly condemn same-sex lovemaking while secretly being excited about it, and after a while all three of us finished getting rid of our clothes and got under the covers to give Anthony got his first introduction to the kind of sexual acts that our self-appointed social guardians consider illegal and immoral."

I could imagine what that little educational session had been like, and the thought of it made me more than a little bit uncomfortable.

"Since then, Anthony's returned for a number of additional lessons. Sometimes he comes with his friend, sometimes he's alone on my doorstep – but he's kept on learning more and more about himself and his own sexuality."

"And what has he learned?" I asked cynically. "How to get a grown-up man to suck him off?"

Weymouth shook his head tolerantly.

"Not that any healthy little boy wouldn't consider that kind of thing pretty important in and of itself, no. Not entirely." He began scratching Anthony's back, lazily and lightly, through the coverlet. Anthony made soft pleasure-sounds in his sleep, and shifted to offer his back for better attention.

"Most of all," he continued, "he's learned that he's probably not gay." Weymouth bent over and kissed the top of the boy's head. "He likes girls. The sight of a skin magazine gatefold makes his little pecker spring up like a pop fly. He just doesn't speak their language yet, and he hasn't the confidence to approach them – yet."

He looked down fondly at the sleeping little boy. "He will, though. And soon enough. He's learning how to love, you see, and how to express his love in the most tender and intimate ways. He's also learning that he deserves to be loved himself, and how to accept that love without shame or embarrassment. When a woman senses that in a man, she can't help but be drawn to him."

Weymouth looked up at me with a grin. "Of course, he's also learning that 'society' and the people who run it are as full of crap as a Christmas turkey. That's about the most important growing-up lesson a youngster can learn, isn't it?"

I frowned.

"The damage you're doing him isn't justified by the positive value – if any – of any lessons he might learn."

"Damage? What damage?" Weymouth cocked his head as if curious.

"Well, there's the sense of alienation he's got to be developing because of this."

"Alienation?" Weymouth's eyebrows rose together in an display of merry amazement. "In this town?"

I didn't quite understand, but I shook my head gravely regardless. "Don't make light of it, Mr. Weymouth. Haven't you ever heard of the S.C.A.R.E. Program? Don't you know how it's designed, and what effect it can have on kids like Anthony?" I paused. "Aren't you even the least bit afraid of what might happen if a boy with whom you've, uh, been intimate speaks about it to his S.C.A.R.E. counselors?"

Weymouth nodded. "Ah, yes, the S.C.A.R.E. program. The federally-mandated and state-supported Sexual Crimes Awareness and Resistance Education plan. The grand government project designed to protect kids from child molesters the same way the D.A.R.E. Program protects them from drug pushers."

He looked me in the eye. "How effective would you say the D.A.R.E. Program really is, Mr. Tilden?"

I suppose I looked as uncomfortable as I felt. "Not very. The long-term survey results have proven to be a bit...disappointing."

"I'd say that's a hell of an understatement," Weymouth said. "The survey reports have been bad for years, and they're getting worse – so bad that the administrators of the program have been denying the validity of the results, even when they themselves set the survey criteria. Long-term drug use among D.A.R.E. Program graduates is still as high as it is in kids who'd never been run through the process, bumper stickers, fancy black tee-shirts and all."

He looked me in the eyes. "What makes you think that the S.C.A.R.E. Program results are turning up any better?"

"More child molesters are being turned in," I replied. "The prosecution rate is up so high the courts can barely cope with it."

Weymouth nodded. "That's true – in some jurisdictions. Not here. In this county, our prosecutions tend to be confined to cases in which there's been an element of real abuse. Here in Shamong Valley, the rates of arrest and indictment for sexual assault against a minor are about the same as it is for physical abuse and neglect. Most cases involve parents or other caretakers who batter as well as diddle the children they're responsible for."

He paused for a moment, thinking hard. "Have you met either of the police officers responsible for running the S.C.A.R.E. Program here in Shamong Valley?"

I shook my head.

"The officer in charge is Sergeant Hammond. His assistant is Patrolman Eddie Behr. They teach all the courses in the grammar schools and in the middle school; I'm surprised you haven't met them."

"Sorry. I haven't bumped into either of them yet."

"In some ways, the S.C.A.R.E. Program isn't such a bad idea. Sometimes kids get bullied out of more than just lunch money by their older peers." He looked down at Anthony. "I've known a lot of boys who'd been roughed up by older kids, in school and out, and who'd been forced to do things nobody should ever be forced to do."

"Oh? The kind of things you've seduced Anthony into doing?"

Weymouth tilted an eyebrow at me. "No score, Mr. Tilden. Anthony understands and consents to whatever we do together. He also understands that my affection for him isn't predicated upon how much – or how little – he's willing to do in bed."

"Sorry. No offense intended. I think."

"None taken, whether intended or not." He smiled. "After all, you haven't been the beneficiary of the Shamong Valley version of the S.C.A.R.E. Program. Tom Hammond isn't involved in your program, is he?

I nodded. I'd expected something of that sort when I'd been brought into the program, and I'd been waiting for that shoe to drop. If Weymouth could be relied upon, however, I wasn't going to hear that thud! anytime.

Ever.

Weymouth turned his attention back to the sleeping little boy. "There's been something missing from Anthony's life since his parents split up."

"His father?"

Weymouth nodded. "In part. A father's presence in a boy's life tends to provide him with an anchor, someone to emulate as well as someone to teach him about the things that no woman ever seems to think are important."

"And you take the place of a father in Anthony's life?"

The man shook his head. "No, not really. I have no real authority over him, and no real responsibility for him."

"How convenient for you."

"Yes, it is." His expression was mild as he regarded me. "It enables us to relate to one another without a lot of struggle. Neither of us can own anything of the other. Father and son can never have that kind of a relationship."

"It still doesn't give him what he needs."

"Everything he needs?" Weymouth shrugged. "Of course not. It does give him some of the things he hungers for: approval, guidance, concern."

I let my skepticism show in my expression. Weymouth nodded courteous acknowledgement. "And why do you think he comes to me?"

It was my turn to shrug. "A need for all those things you mentioned, even if it means he has to degrade himself to get them from you."

"Degrade himself?"

I looked at the small form under the thin blanket on the daybed. "He strips for you. He offers you his little pecker and then he lets you slide your finger up his ass. You're hoping that he's going to let you fuck him. I'd call that degrading, wouldn't you?"

Weymouth shook his head. "Of course not. I'd call it love." He paused. "So how old are you, anyway, Mr. Tilden?"

I shrugged. "I'll be twelve next January."

Weymouth and I spoke for perhaps three quarters of an hour after that. From him I learned a few of the simple facts of life in Shamong Valley, about the people who'd lived here for generations, about the people who'd settled here more recently, about what was acceptable and what limits were quietly and stringently enforced. I learned that the compassionate use of medical marijuana here antedated any "legalization" statutes enacted in any of the several other states, and that there were amazingly well-concealed growing sheds that had been gradually improved to prevent their exposure by even the most sophisticated sensors on the DEA's aerostats and drones and satellites.

"It's anarchy, isn't it?" I glanced at the window. "Outside laws simply aren't applied here, are they?"

The man shook his head. "Not anarchy, but order maintained by way of self-government. There's a long history in the Valley of keeping to ourselves, peaceably and without fuss. There's not much to draw attention, and what attention we get tends to be well-managed. You'll learn more about that as time passes."

I frowned. "I'm surprised that someone – some scandal-mongering news reporter or television program – hasn't blown the whistle on this place. Not just the free-ranging little kids but all the rest of it. 'Live and let live' simply isn't considered politically correct anywhere in this country any more."

Weymouth shrugged. "There's money and influence involved, of course. Decades' worth of quiet effort, accomplished with a very light touch. I suppose you can say that I grew up in it. The Foundation started bringing me into the work when I wasn't much older than you are now." He smiled. "The Foundation keeps track of all the children in town. Like a lot of others, I was encouraged to follow my interests, especially in computing. Back when they were still calling it 'the information superhighway,' the trustees and the other administrators knew that the protections had to extend into cyberspace."

It was about then that Anthony stirred, blinked, sniffed, and sat up. He let the coverlet slide unconcernedly, and regarded me in belligerent silence for a moment.

"How come I haven't seen you in school?" the boy asked. "Or are you in that stupid 'Christian Academy' just outside town?"

"When we moved here, I went directly into the Accelerated Study Program at Shawcross College."

"The college?" Anthony's expression was almost comical.

I nodded. "I've been achieving at a pretty high level. The program asked my Uncle Jack for permission to test me, and they were satisfied that I could do the work. We moved here in June and Uncle Jack got a job with the Foundation."

It was Weymouth's turn to nod. "I'd heard about another youngster getting into the Shawcross program from outside the Valley. After a couple of minutes speaking with you, I figured that you were the one."

"The administrative people at the college have been good about keeping my name and face out of the media. The other students understand what it's like to be treated like a brainiac freak, and they don't chatter about me."

"Jeez!" breathed Anthony. "What's it like to go to college?"

"Not bad." I smiled. "Beats the hell out of going to the public school back where we used to live. The guys in the program's summer session are all older than I am, but they help out a lot. One even picks me up at home in the morning and drives me out to the campus. We've both got the same eight o'clock lectures most days. A couple of others take turns driving me home." "Are any of them good-looking?" The glint in Anthony's eye was lickerish as he grinned at me. "Have any of them, you know, tried anything with you?"

The thought caught me aback for just an instant. Was that what Sam had been hinting at the last couple of mornings? I wondered about Jeff and Marcus, among my afternoon drivers, and some of the things they'd said over the weeks.

Anthony pushed himself upright without putting his feet over the edge of the couch, unconcerned as the thin blanket slid the rest of the way down to expose his nakedness. He shifted himself to sit on his knees beside me and put his hand on my shoulder. "None of them did, right?"

I shrugged, blushing as I looked at him. "No."

Anthony smiled. "They will," he said. "You look pretty nice, y'know." With his other hand he brushed the hair up away from my forehead and then ran fingertips down my cheek. "I betcha one of them would like to get you home from school a little late."

I thought dizzyingly about Weymouth's reassurances that Anthony wasn't really a homosexual. Apparently what he'd really meant was that Anthony wouldn't score a Kinsey Scale reading above five-point-nine. I was intensely aware of his smooth, sweaty body right next to my own, and I felt the unbuttoned collar of my shirt go inexplicably tight around my throat.

"Uh, Anthony…" I swallowed. "Are you 'trying to do something' with me?"

Anthony's head tilted to one side. "I guess so," he said. Then he grinned. "Jeez, but you're a college guy, aren't you?"

"But you're – what? – nine years old!" I protested. "Ten. But that doesn't mean anything." He snickered. "I bet your dick isn't much bigger than mine, so if you put it in me, I wouldn't even feel it."

I felt my face go hot. "You'd feel it, all right! I'd make certain of that!"

"Gentlemen," said Weymouth, "this is an argument the two of you should settle equably."

Anthony gave him a puzzled look.

"He means," I said, "without fighting, without insulting each other." I gave Weymouth a small smile and a cocked eyebrow. "Peaceably, right?"

"Yeah?" Anthony looked back and forth between Weymouth and myself. "Well, if we're gonna get friendly, you gotta get naked. Or I gotta get my clothes back on." He frowned. "You want me to get dressed?"

Automatically, I shook my head. "No, of course not." I paused. "I, I like seeing you like that." Then: "You're a very, uh, nice-looking boy."

Anthony grinned. "You mean I make you horny!"

I darted a glance at Weymouth, the only adult present and therefore – my hard-won maturity notwithstanding – the person I unreasonably expected to function as arbiter of conduct in this exchange.

"Mr. Tilden," said Weymouth with a conspicuous lack of helpfulness, "are you reluctant to expose yourself in the presence of a man who is most definitely interested in having sex with you?"

Damn that blush of mine.

"Why, no, Mr. Weymouth," I replied with forced calm. I stood and began unbuttoning my shirt. "Not at all."

It wasn't as if I hadn't gotten naked in the presence of other males – perfect strangers – in the locker room at the swimming pool, right?

My clothes draped over a nearby chair and my shoes tucked neatly underneath, I stood with what I hoped was a calm expression before Weymouth and Anthony, determined not to behave like the stereotypical nervous virgin.

(Yes, that's precisely what I was. But a man's got to preserve his dignity, right?)

"Anthony," said Weymouth, "I've got some work to do. You know the way to my second-best bed?"

The kid blinked, glanced at our mutual host. "Huh? Bed? Oh, yeah. Upstairs." Then he smiled at me and got up to grab my hand. "C'mon," he said, and looked down at my genitalia, his grin broadening.

"Jeez," he observed, "you haven't got any hair yet?" He looked up. "Heck, you're littler'n me down there."

I hem'd self-consciously. "Still Tanner stage one," I replied. "Late onset of puberty is common in my family."

"Well, it's nice and hard, anyway." Without so much as a by-your-leave, Anthony reached down with his opposite hand and gathered my erection into his grasp. Despite his gentle touch I was drawn up on tip-toe by the unexpected tug and had some trouble breathing.

"Sorry!" But he didn't let go of my masculinity, smiling with delight. "You never played dicks before?"

I became uncomfortably aware that, if anything, Anthony was perhaps a centimeter or more taller than I was. I caught sight of Weymouth's expression, interested and amused.

Back to Anthony. "Er, no," I replied. "Never had occasion…"

The kid laughed and gave my penis a squeeze that startled me. "C'mon upstairs, then!"

Dragging me by the hand (and not the other part on which he kept a grip), Anthony drew me toward the stairway at the end of the hall. I looked back at Weymouth, trepidation writ large on my face.

"Good luck, Mr. Tilden," he said, smiling. "Remember, 'Once a philosopher…'."

As Anthony started hauling me up the stairs, he frowned down at me. "What's that 'philosopher' thing about?"

I paused for a moment, but his grasp on my hand was insistent. "Nothing important," I temporized, following him helplessly. "I suspect you're going to promote me to 'pervert' anyway."

I certainly fit the profile.

The End