Ruthless

Scout

Chapter 1

I turned my head in surprise. When Gedu had left me to sit at the foot of the trail that led up from the highway, I had not thought that he had gone to hunt. He and Marvin had gone up together and Gedu had told me not to stop anyone who came along the highway, but to whistle as loudly as I could to warn him if anyone was starting up the path.

That was why I had the blade of grass. I had picked it to use as a whistle. Gedu's instructions to watch and wait had made me understand that he wanted privacy and I had supposed that he was going to do something with Marvin that was dirty.

Well, Gedu and Marvin had been a little unlikely, I realised. Gedu was fond of the pretty girls down at the tavern. He wasn't really attracted to anything male, despite the understanding that we had.

Fresh meat! I began to almost drool at the thought of it. So late in the summer, the game would be fat and succulent. If Gedu made a kill… It was a tantalizing thought. If it was only woodcock or something, there would not be enough meat on it for him to spare any for me. But if it was a deer, or a sheep!

Here, my thought stopped short. Surely it would not be a sheep! I discarded the idea as quickly as I had had it. I began to feel uneasy. Gedu, I knew, was not always completely honest. That was the thing. But he couldn't be poaching. No, he couldn't.

But why had he told me to stand watch by the highway and give warning then?

It was August. The sun was warm and burned through my threadbare shirt like the comfort of a heavy blanket. The highway was empty. There was no market today so everyone would be out working. Everyone except for me.

I banged my heels against the lower rail of the fence. If Gedu was poaching, I wanted no part of it. I wanted to jump off of the fence and walk briskly away. I stayed where I was because Gedu had heavy hands. If he told me to wait and I didn't wait, I'd feel his hands. I'd take a couple of good clouts at least. I had promised to mind Gedu now that he was looking out for me, and he in turn had promised to take his belt to me if I didn't. I needed someone to keep an eye out for me, on account of me being so young.

Poaching, killing another man's animals was stealing, a hanging offense. If I was supposed to be on watch so he could do some poaching and I made off, I'd feel his belt alright.

So I stayed on the fence worrying. Gedu looked out for me okay. The shoes I was wearing, Gedu had bought for me. Last winter a farmer had been looking out for me and had let me sleep in his barn. But the farmer's wife had hated me. I didn't earn my keep and she was afraid I'd lead her husband into bad ways. I'd wound up barefoot alone on the road in April, and nearly died of cold before I met Gedu. Gedu had a house rented near here. I had shoes to wear and a roof over my head. I'd be a fool to resent a few blows.

Another ten minutes passed as I perched there before I heard the slow steady clop of horse hooves. Automatically I looked up and down the highway. No, of course the sound was duller than that. It was the sound of shod hooves on an unpaved road. It came from the hill behind me. I looked up. The trees had great green leaves, dusty from the long summer. It was another minute before two horses appeared picking their way down the steep earth track. They had saddles but no riders. They were moving at an unhurried walk.

Somewhere along the line the grass blade slipped out of my fingers. The second horse appeared to be following the lead horse. Neither one had anyone guiding it. They were stray. If I stopped them and took them back, I could probably ask for something to eat as a reward. But I didn't go after the horses. I kept my eyes on them, watching fascinated as they came down the trail, past me and onto the highway.

They turned the other way, not toward Hoyt's Bay, the nearest town, but the other direction. They were good long legged horses, well kept. Their coats were shiny enough that I knew they were fed oats. Their empty saddles swayed. Their reins were on their necks, not the way men leave their horses. Both horses had identical grey saddle blankets edged with blue. They looked like policemen's horses.

I got off the fence and ran up the track. My heart hammered in my chest as I ran. No, I thought. No. I had no image of what I would find, only a sick sense that whatever it was would be very bad.

Gedu and Marvin weren't in the trees. I looked to both sides. If they were hunting I wouldn't help their hunting by running up and scaring the game. If they were doing the dirty thing, Gedu would kick me with his steel toed boots, all the way back down the hill for interrupting him.

I was panting, very close to winded when I got to the field at the top of the track. There were grasshoppers fiddling monotonously in the stubble. Mouth wide, I stared from side to side over the furrows of the field. The field was bound on three sides by trees. On the fourth side a corn crib divided it from the next field.

"Gedu!" I called. "Gedu!" My desperate voice hardly carried.

But Gedu was only a few yards away in the trees. He lunged out immediately. I saw his face was creased and white. He grabbed me by the shirt and yanked me into the trees out of sight.

There was a trampled place there, ten feet in and twenty feet away from the corner of the crib. Marvin was there, his eyes glittering with anger. There were two men there also, both lying on their backs and not moving. They wore blue uniforms. The front of one shirt was purple.

An inhuman sound came out of me.

"Shut your dirty fucking mouth!" Gedu belted me. The tap on the side of my head made me reel. I crashed into the brush beside me and as I staggered he tapped me again.

I made strangled sounds and didn't howl any more. My eyes must have been as big as eggs. I dropped to my knees gaping at the two policemen.

"What did you do? Why?" I begged.

"We were in the crib, alright?" Marvin said roughly.

I raised my eyes to him. His answer said it all. They had been stealing the corn. In the thicket with them were bushel baskets, two loaded, another stack empty. And stealing from a crib is like poaching. Any kind of stealing is usually a hanging offense.

I never asked which man had held the gun. I think it was Marvin. There were two rifles, the policemen's weapons also in the thicket. I sobbed. My eyes were mesmerised by the blood.

One man had no mark on him. There didn't appear to be any reason why he should be dead. His face almost looked alive. I'd seen enough dead men already to know the difference however. With no mark on him, it meant that he had been shot in the back.

The other policeman's blood made a great smeary mess. I could see it under my feet in the weeds where I was crouching. They had dragged him in here. It blotched his blue shirt an obscene colour. The front of his shirt and trousers were saturated. His chest, rising and falling in small jerky breaths, glistened with blood. He wasn't dead. His eyelids and lips were slightly blue. He was unconscious.

"He's not dead. This guy's alive! You've got to get him help!" I exclaimed.

"He's dying, you stupid little cunt." Marvin retorted in a harsh whisper.

"You've got to get him help!" I repeated.

"He's wounded too bad. He's going to die."

I was frantic. The two men had big glaring eyes. They were terrified and bitterly angry. But they had thought fast and within moments of the shooting they had hidden the two policemen in the thicket.

"He was just fucking there. I didn't see them!" Gedu breathed. "The God damn cocksuckers!"

"You've got to get him help!"

But Gedu and Marvin could not. I could see that clearly. For killing one policeman they would hang when they were caught, no matter what else they did. For them to go for help for the wounded man would be lethal to them.

"We can lie and say you found them like this!" I exclaimed.

"He saw us, Stupid!" Gedu snapped. "If he comes to, we're fucked. He can describe me."

"He's going to die." Marvin insisted. "I told you. He can't be helped. Will you shut up?"

I made to touch the man. I was reaching for his bloody belly, thinking with frantic revulsion of trying to stop the blood running. I didn't quite touch him though because Gedu yanked me back.

"Keep your hands off. You'll get blood on your clothes!" "Get the corn and let's get out of here." Marvin said.

"Leave him?" I looked up.

"Shit, no!" Gedu said. "We can't leave them here. If they find the bodies they get a dog out and track us. We can't leave them or they'll find the bodies and the dog'll find us!"

"Help him, please." I said. There were tears starting to drip down my face. I reached for him and this time I did manage to touch him. I took the yellow scarf from around his throat. Gedu didn't try to stop me.

"We get them over to the quarry, we can dump them there." Marvin was speaking in a voice that went up and down.

"Yeah… yeah…" Gedu agreed. "It's not far. As long as they don't know where to look."

I took the scarf and pushed it under the man's shirt. My fingers got smears of bright human blood on them. "But he's still alive. You can't dump him in the quarry. He'll drown!" I knew which quarry they meant. It was a very deep, very cold sink hole. It had been flooded for years and I had been told that it was the grave of a hundred cars that had been pushed over the edge in the past. It was also only something like a third of a mile away.

"I'm going to kill that boy of yours if he doesn't shut up."Marvin said bitterly.

"Jesus, man… We are fucked." Gedu said. "Yeah. we got to dump them in the quarry."

"Okay! Let's!" Marvin exclaimed. He grabbed the wrists of the man who was lying without breath. Gedu took the same man's ankles.

"Scout." Gedu breathed at me fiercely. "You stay here. And you don't make a sound.

I was too stupid to be afraid of the guns. "I'll tell the militia if you dump this man in the quarry while he's still alive."I said through my tears.

"You stupid little fuck." Gedu said. "What do you think happens to you if you go to the militia? How do you make your living?" he demanded. "How do you earn the money?"

"By sucking cock."

"If you go to the militia, what do you think they'll do to you?"

"I'll fucking blow your head off, Scout, if you threaten me."Marvin snarled.

"This guy is already dying." Gedu insisted. "We won't dump him in the quarry while he's still alive. Okay? But he is going to die, and when he dies, it's into the water he goes."

"Okay." I faltered. "Just don't kill him on purpose. You know I don't want to go to the militia. But I don't want you to murder him, not like that. I don't want him to die."

Gedu and Marvin dragged the dead man off then. They went crackling away through the woods with him swaying and left me with the bleeding policeman. I pressed the yellow scarf against the place where the blood was welling and held it there as still as I could. I stopped crying. I really don't cry as easily as all that.

I probably would have gone to the militia, because every part of me was distressed and appalled the murder. But one thought stuck into my head. If I could stop the policeman from bleeding, than maybe he wouldn't die. So long as I held the scarf pressed firmly down I couldn't see any fresh blood welling out. So I sat there and I held it with stiff elbows and I didn't move. I sat there for over an hour. At the end of the hour Marvin and Gedu came back, looking hot and nervous and the handkerchief was gummed into a mass of stiff black blood that wasn't oozing at all. The policeman's lips weren't quite so blue. He had blinked at me.

I got up and stood with hunched shoulders.

"Wash your hands."

Gedu threw me a wet cloth. He had brought it back from the quarry. Gedu was smart.

"Pick him up… easy." When Marvin and Gedu picked him up the policeman gave a small groan.

"You won't shoot him again, will you?" I asked nervously.

"I told you." Gedu sounded weary. "We're just going to let him die on his own. We won't finish him off."

"Where are you taking him?" I followed.

"The house." Gedu said. "Go back and clean up the grass. Clean up any blood in the grass and come after us with some of the corn."

"I don't want the corn!" I objected.

"You want to eat, don't you?" Gedu was too grim to be really irritable.

I did what he told me to, as quickly as I could. I didn't really do a good job on the blood. I only wanted to run after them and make sure they weren't taking the policeman to the quarry. And I didn't want to have anything to do with the stolen corn. I didn't want to pick it up or eat it or be caught with it. It was all because of the stupid corn that the shooting had been done. But I did what Gedu said, and I came after the two men as quickly as I could.

I caught up when they were in the wood at the top of the hill, not going to the quarry. I was sticky with sweat from running carrying the heavy basket. The policeman's two hands were dragging because Gedu was holding him by the shoulders and Marvin was holding him by the knees.

"Is he alive?"

"Yeah, he's alive. The stupid prick keeps making noises." Gedu complained.

I looked at the policeman but his eyes were closed, so I didn't see how he could have been making enough noises to bother the two men.

"Scout, run ahead and make sure that Caravaggi isn't in the top field."

Our neighbour was the farmer that Gedu had rented the house from. Mr. Caravaggi lived down the bottom of the hill, owned all the fields between us and was a big quiet man who seemed to watch our comings and goings a lot. He was in the top field with his sheep pretty often. They couldn't get the injured man into the house if the farmer was out.

But that afternoon the sheep were alone in the field without even the black and white dog to watch them. When I reported the coast clear, Marvin and Gedu ran bumping around the front of the house and hauled the inert man roughly inside. They manhandled him into the back bedroom that had no furnishings and dumped him on the floor.

"What if he comes around?" Gedu asked.

"He won't." said Marvin. I wasn't so sure. The man was sighing and moved his head a little. His face wasn't slack any more. It had little worry lines on it, of the pain getting through his unconsciousness. And when I stooped beside him, the yellow neck scarf came away easily because the drying blood was crumbly. He didn't seem to be bleeding at all any more.

Chapter 2

"You don't say a word about this, you get it? If he dies we'll dump him in the quarry. And if he doesn't…" He shrugged. "But you forget that he's in there. Don't tell anyone what you saw. Or you'll wind up in a brothel. You understand?"

I nodded.

He gave me another tap. It didn't hurt.

"When have I ever said anything I shouldn't?" I asked.

"Yeah, that's right." He hesitated. "This is different. This one is bigger. Now we got to act natural. Do our normal things. So you come on."

Gedu was right. This was different. I'd never been accessory to a murder before.

I followed him down the familiar walk beside the farmer's fields until we got to the highway. I stuck my thumb out and Gedu behind me stuck his thumb out and we waited for customers.

It was seven o'clock before Gedu went off to the tavern and turned me loose to go home. It was still broad daylight. It wouldn't be dark yet for another hour.

I walked back up from the highway. Gedu would expect me to wait outside of the tavern until he was ready to come home and I could always go there and wait, but now I went up to the old farmhouse above the sheep pasture. The farmer was out. He was doing something with the sheep. He glanced at me the way he always did and said nothing. I didn't like the farmer. He looked at me so closely but he never said "Good Morning" or "Hello". I nodded at him and smiled nervously.

I went into the house. One of my steps barked on the wooden floor although I was trying to walk quietly. I went into the back room where the policeman lay.

He was in basically the same position, some blood on the floorboards under him and much more of it on his uniform. He was breathing. When I crouched down near him, although I was pretty near silent, he opened his eyes.

We looked at each other. His face was creased with pain. His eyes were very dark. He didn't say anything while I got a good look at him and I suppose he got a good look at me. His breathing was quite strong and even.

I got up and went into the next room. I remembered there was a comforter on the bed in the other room and I started that way, but thought better of it. I could only think of one other thing. I went into the empty room that had been the living room. There were two faded flowered curtains in the window. I wanted the cloth. I took one and tugged. It stayed put. Then I grasped it firmly above my head and lifted my feet off of the floor dangling.

The curtain and I came down with a crash, bringing plaster, a couple of loose screws and the curtain rod. I got the curtain rod struggled out of the folds of soft cloth and then I carried it downstairs, doubled up in a loose bundle.

I crouched beside the man and I reached for his belly.

He spoke clearly. "What happened to Ron? What happened to my partner?"

"I think he might be dead." I said.

His eyes burned with the intensity of pain and anger but he didn't stop me so I reached for his belly again.

The blood was gummy and not fresh. He let me pick up his hand and lay it aside and unbutton his lower shirt. I went very delicately. If there were any scabs, I didn't want to disturb them.

"Where's the guy, Kid, the man that shot me?" His voice was hoarse.

"Out." I said. "Working."

"What are you doing?"

"Trying to help."

He let me try. I decided there wasn't so much blood as all that. It was just so red that it looked like a lot. The hole was quite tiny. It was just under his ribs, close to the side and it wasn't bleeding any more. I had been going to try to stop the bleeding with the curtain but he didn't need that.

Instead I got up, backed away and started trying to tear the curtain. It was old soft material but it didn't tear easily. I really wished I had a knife. But Gedu had the knife that used to be mine and I didn't have anything to start the rip with except my teeth and hands. He watched me for the several minutes it took to tear the curtain until I got a piece about two foot square off.

I carried it out and away down the hill outside and into the sheep meadow. I stayed as far away as I could from Mr. Caravaggi and went to the creek where the sheep drank. The water was icy. I got the rag sodden and I carried it back.

The policeman said nothing as I carefully wiped blood off of his belly with cold water. He didn't even stir when I opened his fly and got the blood off that was below his waist. While I was working I was worrying. I dried him with the curtain too. It must have hurt him a lot.

When I'd done that as best I could, I asked, "Can you roll over?"

"Yeah." He said slowly, then, "Skip it."

"You had a bullet go right through you. This is where it went in. I need to look at where it went out."

"Where it went out." His eyes flickered. Very heavily and with obvious agony, he managed to roll slowly onto his side. I moved the shirt tenderly.

I took a bit of blood off, tugged at his waistband and I said in a small voice, "I can't find it."

His breathing was choppy. After another moment he said, "Kid, what… , you know what calibre it was?"

I shook my head. "No."

"Slug still inside." He suggested.

I sat back on my heels a little amazed. I didn't know that was possible. I thought of bullets as things that ripped gory chunks off of people or animals.

"What do I do?" I asked.

"Go tell… city hall I'm here."

I was silent. He started to roll over again onto his back. I saw that his face was moist from sweating from the pain.

"I can't do that." I said mildly. "If I did that they'd arrest me and he'd kill me."

"I'm gonna die." He said. "Unless I get help."

I crouched solemnly. This murder then was going to fall into my lap. His life was going to be dependant on what I did or didn't do.

"I'm sorry." I muttered faintly.

I put another piece of curtain on his belly between the clammy shirt with the blood gummy in it and the blemish on his white skin. I did up his clothes. He needed to be bandaged properly. Since I didn't have tape it needed strips of cloth wound around his torso. I didn't have

the strength to roll him repeatedly side to side to wrap him when rolling at all hurt him so much.

But I got him as comfortable as I could. I dragged a cushion and comforter out and I put the cushion under his head and the comforter around him. He seemed not to mind the bedding.

"There." I said. "You'll be alright."

"Kid?" He said quietly. "I'm really, really thirsty."

"Oh…" I hesitated.

I went out into the kitchen and looked about. There were no dishes or anything like that. The place had been stripped. All the food and the plates were long gone. But in the pantry cupboard there was a little glass bottle with its cap beside it on the shelf. It was dusty. I picked it up and carried it down to the creek.

I rinsed it well, filled it and I brought it back to the man. He took it in his left hand, craned his neck up and drank it all down.

"I thought you weren't coming back." He remarked.

"No." I said. "It's just a ways to the nearest water."

"Kid, What's your name?"

"Scout."

"Scout? I'm going to die unless you tell them that I got shot and chained up here. I'm going to get an infection and die of that, or maybe go into shock. I need a doctor to take the bullet out." He paused. "Do you want me to die?"

"Yes." I said stonily.

He didn't say anything else.

Now it was getting kind of dark. I didn't want to go down and look for Gedu. It would be another three hours or so before he was done drinking and then as like as not, he'd have a girl with him and all he'd say to me was to go find a place to sleep. I lay down on the mattress. It was warm enough without any covers. I thought about the man in the next room.

It wasn't right he should die. If he would definitely live if I told the militia where he was and definitely die if I didn't tell them, then I would have to do it. But it wasn't like that. If he was in as bad shape as all that, then he might die even if I told them.

I knew that once, a couple of years back they would have been able to fix him in a hospital. Surgery, cutting people open to take bullets out of them used to be easy and routine. But that was then. A doctor couldn't do all that much more than I could. A doctor could pour bleach on his wound to sterilize it. Or give him pills to keep him from getting infection. But I could give booze for a painkiller as easily as a doctor could.

If he might die anyway, or might live anyway, I wasn't going to talk. I was going to do what Gedu told me to do. There would be too much trouble otherwise. After all, it wasn't my fault at all that he'd gotten shot.

I fell asleep trying to remember the story of the Good Samaritan.

In the morning I went down to him and found him sleeping. It was thin grey light and he was hunched up, looking in pain in his sleep. I took the bottle up softly and walked down to the creek.

That early it was cold. I stripped my shirt off and shivering, I washed myself. I bit my nails off short to keep the dirt from collecting under them and scrubbed off any dirt that I could see on myself before I put my shirt back on.

I filled my belly with cold water in lieu of breakfast and I filled the bottle to take it back to the man. I didn't wake him. I just laid it nearby where the policeman could find it.

I could go look for Gedu but he'd be passed out or sleeping, or I could go look for work. This early it wasn't likely I could find anything. I thought about that. I was very hungry. I wanted breakfast. And if the policeman stayed alive he'd start wanting breakfast too.

I went out in the woods and I scouted for stuff to eat. The woods had been picked and all I found was greens. The wood was too dry for cattails so all I found were leaves to pick. I added a few of them to my belly. They were no help at all. There are no calories to speak of in greens.

Then I went up in to the policeman and he was awake this time.

He looked bad, worse than the day before. The bottle lay empty and uncapped beside him. That surprised me, that he hadn't saved his water.

"Kid. Scout." he said. "I've got a problem."

"What?"

"I have to piss."

"Oh."

"Can you undo the handcuff. Please? I'm not going anywhere wounded as bad as this."

"I can't. The keys are gone." I said.

He looked up at me with bruised looking gloomy eyes.

"I'll look for a container." I said.

I tried the pantry. There was nothing there but I already knew that. I walked part way down to the highway and I searched there. I'd remembered vaguely seeing something and I was right. I found it. It was a sun faded pop can.

I brought it back.

He didn't tell me it was too small. He moved painfully and slowly onto his side to pee in it. I watched curiously.

"Want me to help?"

"I can do it." He said stiffly.

He peed some in it. I took the can.

"Bring it back." He asked me. I took it and dumped it out and brought it back. He did it like that, in instalments because it was only a small can.

"You need painkillers." I said.

"Pain's not so bad." He said. He looked like it was real bad to me. "I need antibiotics."

"Yeah." I said.

"You don't have anything to eat, do you?" he asked.

"No." I said.

I left him with a full new jar of water and an empty pop can and I went away.

I knew he needed those antibiotics badly. It was real simple. Wait too long and the infection would kill him. The only place to get antibiotics was a salesman. I knew of salesmen, of course. That's what I set out to do. I did the rounds.

I was out almost all of the day, tramping along. I went all the way around to Pelliville, across to Water Town, over to Burkett's Corner and then back to Hoyt's Bay. In Pelliville I got Catherine the cook at the hotel to give me some bread which she did purely out of kindness. I hung some baskets of washed clothes for her and helped her with the wringing for half an hour, then I went on with the bread carefully stowed in my pocket. I tore one third off and I ate that. The policeman would need more to eat than I did.

In Water Town, Peter the salesman told me he didn't have any pills and I got told to clear off at the tavern. At the Drury farm they said I could have an egg if I mucked out their barn and washed some milk cows but I didn't do it. Another time I might have, because an egg is protein

and I don't get too much of that, but it was at least four hours of work for something I couldn't carry without smashing and which might turn out to be gone or full of bony embryo. So I said "Thanks" and went on.

I got a one litre pop bottle out of the ditch on the Molay Road. Three salesmen told me they didn't have and couldn't get antibiotics. One had booze but wouldn't give me any. The fourth salesman told me to go back to Eric Duchamps in Hoyt's Bay, so I went there reluctantly.

It wasn't that I thought Eric would be rough and tell me to get lost. I had misgivings about Eric because he knew me and I'd seen him smiling thoughtfully after me at the tavern when I went off with a customer.

Eric was outside of his house with a fire burning and his son and his two wives helping him. They had slabs of red beef that they were grilling. The smell almost made me faint although I'd eaten a couple of cattail roots and the little bit of bread already. I couldn't help staring at the grilling meat.

Eric wiped his hands and came over to me. "You wanted to see me?"

"Yes, Sir." I said. He was smiling. "I want antibiotics, if you've got them."

"Oh, yes?" He opened his eyes wide. "Who sent you?"

"A woodcutter down valley way." I said. "He got his leg all cut open with an axe. You got any antibiotics like that? Or booze?"

He nodded. "I've got tablets."

"Yeah. I'll work for you for them." I offered.

He looked taken aback for an instant. "Work?" I thought he'd refuse me from his surprise. Then he smiled again. "What kind of work can you do?"

"Anything." I said briefly. "I'm wiry. I do housework. I weed. How about weeding?"

"I was thinking…" He paused and the pause went on while he made up his mind. I was quiet.

"Okay." He said. "A bottle of ampicillin for a fuck."

"You want me to go down on you? I can do that. Maybe more than once?"

"Oh, no." said Eric. "I want a fuck, really."

"I don't do that." I said.

"You do that kind of work." He said. "You go about with Gedu."

"Yeah, I do. But not… I always use my mouth." I struggled to explain. "I don't like to fuck."

"You don't want to?"

I considered unhappily. Actually, I was being offered a bargain and I knew it. I had only been fucked two times before. It hurts. I tried to fit on a smile anyway. "Thanks. Yes, I want to."

"Okay. Right now." Eric said, agreeably.

He called to his wife. "The batch on the table is for stewing. Don't put it over the fire." Then he led me around the building and into his back door.

"Okay." he said in front of his fireplace.

I nodded grimly, mechanically. I went to him and opened his fly and he put his hands on my shoulders. When I got his cock out, I gave it a lick. It was already stiffening up without any help from me. He pulled his pants and shoes off. I dropped my pants and turned around.

Eric took my bum in his hands and poked me. Then he let go and walked a bit away. I stayed bent over. He brought a bottle of oil and poured some out into his palm and slicked his cock up. I felt better when he did that.

It still hurt like hell. I did a lot of gasping. He never told me to shut up, so maybe it was a turn on for him, me wriggling around and gulping air. I staggered. It was an awkward business. I was too low for him. He did it fast at least.

When he was done, I was sticky. I pulled my pants up and watched him clean his cock off.

"You were small." He said. "A tighter fit than I thought. Real tight, Scout."

I nodded. It was hurting bad. I couldn't sit down. If he hadn't had oil it would have been much worse for me. I was bruised up as it was.

He said, "You go on out."

So I went out into the yard.

Eric came out a few moments later and gave me a pill bottle."There's forty-eight pills. He's got to take all of them. That's important. Two at a time, morning, noon and evening. Can you remember that?"

"Yes, Sir." I agreed. I was almost more sore than I could believe but I was glad.

"Tell him not to take half doses. The pills are old so he has to take lots of them. And tell him not to stop taking them before they're done."

"Okay."

He held up a pint glass bottle. I looked at that.

"You said you wanted booze?"

"Yes, Sir." I felt a sinking. I did want it, but I just couldn't bear the fucking.

"Apple jack ethanol." He told me. "If you want that…" He smiled. "You know, I'd like to try your mouth sometime."

"Okay. Yes, Sir." That I was prepared for.

"How often?"

"Three… or four times?"

"Three times is alright." He passed me the bottle. I put that in my shirt where I'd placed the pills.

"Thank you very much, Sir." I said politely. "I'll come back in a couple of days and see if you want a blow job then."

"Saturday night."

Saturday night was a busy night. I didn't know if I could make it but I didn't say that.

"Make it late." He said. "After dark. I go to church Sunday morning, so make it real late Saturday night.

"Yes, Sir." I'll be there if I can."

He looked around. "Martha," he said. "Give Scout a bit of meat. Yeah, that's right, a cooked bit."

She took a big steak off of the fire with two sharp sticks while I looked wide eyed. Eric found a plate for her to put it on.

"There. You look hungry. Eat with us." Eric said.

He had hurt me bad, but he was so friendly I was warm to him. I was also real surprised and delighted. I fell on the beef. The pain hadn't taken my appetite. I wasn't a one inch scrap either. It was a real slab, quite fresh and bloody in the middle. Eric even gave me salt.

I saved two thirds of it carefully, and carried it away, thanking him. Eric's wife Martha smiled at me, but she was very shy. I felt my hunger contented.

I was back at two, footsore and running late. When I ran the gauntlet of Mr. Carravaggi's eyes and went into the house, I was surprised to find my policeman sitting. He was looking better. He was back to the wall.

"Hi, Scout." he said, quite soft. "Thanks. I wanted to say thanks for you helping me here."

"That's okay." I said.

"Can you help me with the can again?"

"Sure."

I had filled the pop bottle with water. I brought out the things and then helped him. He cast his eyes over the bottles and leaf wrapped package of meat. "So they don't want me to die after all."

"Who? My friend? I bought this stuff. He hasn't been back, has he?"

"No. How'd you get it?"

"From friends."

"What's the pills?"

"Antibiotics."

He grunted.

I worked fast. I gave him the pills and the bottle of eth and the water bottle. I didn't have time to stay. "I got to go to work." I said and I ran off to go find Gedu and Marvin.

Mr. Caravaggi was at his gate. He stared at me as I came down the road. "Afternoon, Sir." I muttered. He didn't speak.

Chapter 3

I was really worried that Mr. Caravaggi knew what we had up there, that he'd suspect it and come up and see. But all the same I had to go up and down the hill all the time. I wound up sleeping there. It was as good as outside of the tavern. Mr. Caravaggi watched me steadily from his fields below, when I was making my pilgrimages to the creek and bringing food.

On the third day, we got the policeman's shirt off, onto the handcuff and I washed it in water I brought up from the creek to get the blood out. I wrung it out as well as I could but it had to dry bunched up and it took hours before it was dry enough for him to put back on. It was still a little damp at night. I did the man's trousers the next morning. I was able to hang them out over the porch rail in the sun until they dried.

The policeman told me that Marvin came up twice. He just stood in the door, looked at him and wouldn't talk and walked off again.

Gedu asked me, "Are you feeding that dirtball up in the farmhouse, there?"

"Yes," I answered. "When I can."

He didn't tell me to stop.

I could see that we had a very big problem. The two men had carried the policeman away into the farmhouse, so that if he became conscious he couldn't give a description of them. But they had done that when he appeared at the point of death. They hadn't had the stomach to kill him outright, in the face of my pleading with them. Now he was a problem that wouldn't die. The only way to silence him would be to kill him. I worried constantly that they might do it.

I went to Eric Duchamps so late on Saturday night that it must have been two or three Sunday morning. He was awake with a candle burning alone in his kitchen and was pleased to see me. He didn't complain at all that it was later than he had meant.

I gave him the first job of the three that I owed him. He was pretty drunk so it took rather longer that way. As I sucked him, he laughed very low and helplessly and he reached down and grabbed my prick. He was trying to caress it through my pants but he held it so tightly that I winced.

On Monday the policeman had been in the house for six full days. On that day I was down at the orchard, putting out mousetraps and carrying the supplies they wanted to use to mend the fences. They had promised me corn mush for doing it. I was hard at work when Gedu came striding in.

He was angry. He confronted me. "Is it true you went and sold your ass to Eric Duchamps behind my back?"

I stood shocked. I didn't deny it.

"You piece of shit! You sold your ass! You've been telling me you can't do that and selling behind my back! Little piece of shit!" I brought my arms up to shield my face. Gedu was so angry that he beat me pretty thoroughly. He punched me and called me garbage.

"Selling your ass!" He insisted. "You shit! Alright, from here on we do sell your ass. We sell it to any guy that wants a piece of it."

The orchard woman started yelling at him to get out before Gedu was finished hitting me, so I remember hearing her yelling steadily for the last half of the beating he laid on me. Gedu decided he was finished when I was a real mess. I heard him spit. I was lying face down trying to bury my face and belly and crotch in the grass.

The orchard woman let me alone. I never finished the work I had started for her. When I could get up I took off.

Now Gedu had hit me plenty of times before, but he had never laid a beating on me before like that one, not really. All I could do afterwards was lie in the grass and whimper and put creek water on my sore spots. By the time I crept painfully up to the farmhouse that afternoon my face was swollen and I was startling with bruises.

The cop looked at me and he gasped. "Christ, Scout! Who gave you the going over?"

"Gedu." I said. I went in. "Did you tell him how I got the antibiotics for you?"

"No. I don't know how. And he hasn't been here. I've never seen him."

That's how I knew it was Eric. And why shouldn't Eric have mentioned it to Gedu? I hadn't told him not to. I hadn't realised that Gedu would take it like that at all, getting angry and saying I was cheating him. He had told me before not to give suck to anyone without him knowing, but he'd said that was so he could look after me. I just hadn't put it together.

I told Gedu. "I don't want to fuck. It was just one guy. And it hurts."

But Gedu was bloody minded. "You stupid shit! It's just another way of making money. You want to starve next spring? You don't fucking give me any trouble or I'll kick your balls up your ass."

But the way it turned out I was so swollen up about the mouth and nose that I couldn't do much work. I couldn't even go suck because my nose was swollen up too much to breath and suck cock at the same time.

I was miserable. Not bum fucking. That scared me just too much. I questioned how much better off I was with Gedu looking after me than I'd be on my own. I didn't think I'd be any worse off. Maybe I'd even be better off, except I was still scared that I'd wind up in a brothel the first time that I was picked up by soldiers. I wondered how bad what Gedu wanted me to get into doing would be, compared to that. If only half of what I'd heard about being a brothel prostitute was true, than this wasn't all that bad, even with the beating.

I would have taken off for another town away from Gedu if it wasn't for the policeman. I wanted to wait that situation out and see what came of it. He'd die of thirst if I ran off and stopped bringing him water. That was maybe what Marvin was waiting for, I realised; For me to lose interest and the man to die.

It was pretty cool those days. We had a two day cold spell, although it wasn't nearly a frost and I went in to the policeman and I slept with him. I laid alongside of him, with all the covers I could find we both were warmer for it at night.

The next day after that, Gedu told me to meet him at the lumber camp and I wend down there like he said. There were a couple of lumberjacks wanted me to blow them and they gave him money for that. After they were done they went away and Gedu came to me in the cabin. I thought he'd just tell me I could clear off or to come with him again or something like that but he took me by the shoulder.

Gedu said, "Get your pants off."

"Why…?" I wasn't challenging Gedu as I was afraid of him. I made my voice meek when I asked it.

Gedu said. "I'm going to fuck your butt."

"Please don't." I said.

He jerked my trousers down impatiently, glaring at me. "Get used to it. You're going to be doing a whole lot of fucking from here on."

I dropped my pants and stepped out of them, keeping my lips compressed miserably. Gedu put me face down on the floor, moving roughly because he was irritated with me.

"If you don't act grateful." he said. "It'll be harder on you. Now don't give me any trouble."

The only thing he used for lubricant was a bit of his spit. It was a bad one. I put my wrist into my mouth and this way I was able to make not much sound. He banged and battered into me ferociously, hurting me very much. It made him angry.

"Fuckin' loosen up, Kid. You're hurting me," he demanded."Open it up! Stop clenching!"

But I couldn't control my resistance because of the hurting. I think I would have tightened up because of being afraid of him even if it hadn't hurt so badly. He battered away until he came inside me.

Afterwards he was irritated still. He didn't talk. He gave me a dirty look. I got my clothes together and he got his together and we went out. He led me down towards the highway.

"Listen, Scout." he said. "If we get you some suck work, fine. That's good. But if a guy wants to screw you, you're not to say anything. You're going to open up for him, right? No dragging it in like with me. And smile."

I didn't feel like smiling.

Business wasn't good. We were on the roadside in the sun for two hours before a corn merchant came along and he talked to Gedu and stared at me a lot. I smiled but he abruptly changed his mind. Maybe that was on account of the bruises still on my face. I wasn't very pretty. Another half an hour passed before two soldiers came along in a car and pulled over.

Soldiers have always scared me. I stood perfectly quiet while they chatted with Gedu. "You doing any business today?"

"Yeah, that's right."

"Doing some selling?" Gedu nodded. "What are you selling, the boy?"

"He rents." Gedu told them.

They looked at me. They were uniformed shorthaired men. They looked back at Gedu. "We want him, yeah, a rental. How much you want for it?"

"He'll do sucking for three and fucking for four." Gedu told them.

They looked at each other. "Sounds alright."

"I can sell you some rubbers too." Gedu offered.

"Don't want them." I saw one of the soldiers glancing about, looking for a place more private. He gestured and the four of us walked behind the building. There was also a shack there, so it was reasonably private with walls on two sides and the woods on the third. I went with the two soldiers.

One said, "Get it all off. All your clothes."

I smiled and I said, "I'd like to suck you. I like sucking big cocks." I started on my shirt.

"Good." he said. "We're going to do you, both at the same time."

I stopped smiling. I took my clothes off and the soldiers got their cocks out. They looked at each other and didn't have to dicker. One of them took me by the hips and pushed me towards the other guy and the second soldier took me by the head and pulled it down. I'd have fallen flat, off balance if it wasn't for the man getting into position behind me and holding onto me.

I didn't say anything. I had no kind of choice and I didn't deliberately make it difficult for the men. I got a cock put in my mouth so deep I couldn't make a sound. I gagged convulsively and threw up. My throat was blocked by the cock. There was no room for the bile to come up. He kept two fingers in my mouth and his hand clamped onto the back of my head. I got dizzy and half blacked out from smothering before he began to pull my head back and forth and some air got in.

At the same time the other soldier was trying to get his cock into my bum. He found it a problem. He used spit too but he couldn't get me at the right angle. I was flinching and tucking my angle over. He lifted me up by the thighs and got his cock in. I felt like I was being forced in two.

"Come on his face." The man behind me muttered. "I want to see you come in the punk's face."

Between pain and choking I wasn't taking in much. I could only manage to breath in little quick gasps when he did an out stroke from my mouth so I didn't smother. The guy in my ass came.

He pulled out and so did the guy in my mouth. I went on my knees, panting so hard that I was sobbing and the two men changed places. I realised that I was going to get another cock in my horribly tender bum and I cried out loud in despair.

I got taken by the ribs and lifted up. The cock was forced into me. I was whimpering in pain. The man inside my bum grunted and thrust in very long slow strokes.

The man who'd already done me pulled me downward again and tried to masturbate against my face while I was fucked. He was losing his erection, though, and I was toppling over. He held me on my feet until his friend was done.

They let go of me and silently put their clothes together and went to pay off Gedu, who had been hovering just behind the shack.

I got my pants on before Gedu came around. He slapped me angrily across the face. I had been trying to put my shoes on, gasping with shock whe-n Gedu came back. Gedu was angry.

"I fucking told you to cooperate! I fucking told you! I saw you giving them trouble!"

Then Gedu kicked me in the crotch.

Awhile later when I finally was able to pull myself weakly up into a sitting position, Gedu had rammed my shoes onto my feet and was bitterly complaining that I hadn't done what he'd said to make it easy for the customers. "You're making a fuss over nothing." He said. "Just for spite. I'd beat you so black and blue that it cripples you, only you'd get too disgusting to sell if I did."

It took me a minute more to work my way up to my feet. As soon as I could properly stand I ran away from him. Gedu didn't expect that.

"I can't do it!" I cried. I ran off into the grass.

"You snot!" he yelled. "Come back!" He didn't chase me at first.

I ran into the McHabe's barn and I barred the door behind me. Then I ran out of the back door and cut down to the stream.

I'm not sure if Gedu let me go away from him on purpose or not. I know if he had lunged after me at the very first he could have caught me, but he didn't. I think he didn't want to beat me like he said, so he was keeping me out of his hands, so that he wouldn't lose control.

Anyway, I was gone, without my shirt. I took off over the fields, running away as fast as I could while Gedu came on after me, three fields behind.

I was up near the headland, a half mile below the farmhouse where the cop was a prisoner before Gedu caught up to me. When he slugged me he made it a pulled punch. He didn't try to stop me running. He just slapped me.

I ran on and he ran too and caught up and slapped me again. I was stumbling I was so tired but I got away from him. I ran down to the road near the sheepfold. The sheep were in the field. So was Mr. Caravaggi, the sheep farmer, looking up towards me.

I wouldn't have noticed him at all because I was trying to see where Gedu had gone but the farmer gave a loud roar. All of a sudden I heard him yell. I looked back and saw him vaulting his fence. He started to run up the track after me.

This scared me too. I ran away from him. I couldn't run any faster than I already was running so although he was a ways back, the farmer began to catch up to me pretty quick.

I didn't see Gedu. He'd cut straight up towards the farmhouse. He'd realised that I was going that way and he cut me off. The two men got me between them.

Gedu didn't yell but Mr. Caravaggi gave a roar of rage."Faggot!" Gedu caught me first, by an instant; then the farmer closed in. I fell down on my knees so I didn't get hurt then. Any punching just missed me and then Mr. Caravaggi was hitting Gedu.

I collapsed and crawled off. I couldn't keep running. I was too winded.

I'd thought that Gedu was a good fighter from all the things he had said, but I'd never seen him fight. He was quick and savage against the farmer. They hammered each other monstrously hard, almost locked, before Gedu broke free by landing a bad blow in the farmer's face. A yard opened up between them. The farmer had his hands up holding his face but he kicked.

The kick was brutal. It connected squarely. It got Gedu in the balls. Gedu folded.

I managed to get back to my feet.

"Filthy, fucking faggot!" Mr. Caravaggi snarled. He kicked again. This time Gedu was down on the road with his knees up. He didn't aim for Gedu's crotch. He aimed for Gedu's face.

The farmer had work boots on. He was stomping on Gedu's head, kicking him in the head and body. "Faggot! Fucking whoremaster!" the farmer gasped.

I reeled away out of there. I ran and staggered into the trees. Even over the rustling and crackling I made as I blundered through, I could hear the sound of his boots connecting on Gedu. I didn't stop when I couldn't hear it. I kept on until I was a lot farther off. Then I lay on my belly under two pine trees, too winded to move and too distressed to breath.

I was good and hidden. Mr. Caravaggi could have passed a couple of yards from me but he wouldn't have seen me. I stayed still and my heart stopped rattling against my ribs until I had enough oxygen and sense back to assess.

I didn't know what had suddenly gotten Mr. Caravaggi pounding after me but it occurred to me that he could be one of the fundamentalists who take the bible's laws as a command and think that homosexuals should be killed. That was what I thought could be the reason, if he knew what Gedu and I did, and he probably did know. He'd been calling Gedu a faggot while he kicked him. It seemed to me that he meant to kick him to death and it wasn't unlikely that he succeeded.

My first impulse was to clear out altogether. I never wanted to have anything to do with Gedu again and if he was dead, I wasn't sorry. I had no place to go but I didn't care about that. I'd pick a direction where there wasn't a military base and go that way.

But there was the cop chained in the farmhouse. If I went he would die. I didn't want to come back but I couldn't leave him to die. I didn't know what to do about him.

I waited until it was beginning to turn to dusk before coming out of the trees. It was shadow velvet blues as I moved very slowly, stopping to listen. I didn't see anything in the fields below, not even the white backs of the sheep. I knew that I would be hard to see myself. As lightly as I could, warily and slowly because of I was terribly sore from the mishandling that I had been given, I made my way up to the lightless farmhouse.

I thought Gedu might be inside. If he had been able to move the farmhouse would probably be where he'd go. It was the nearest shelter. But I honestly didn't think Gedu would be able to get there. If he wasn't dead he would most likely be near unconscious, I figured. Either way he wasn't someone who scared me at the moment. Gedu would be in no shape to fuck me or to start hitting me around. He'd be crippled, in pain and needing help himself.

I got onto the porch and paused outside of the kitchen door. I was there, listening to hear if anyone was moving inside when Mr.Caravaggi came around the corner of the house, fast and silent and grabbed me around the ribs.

He locked his arms around my arms and ribcage, lifted me clear off of the porch, scooped me up and held me pinioned. I gave a frantic yell, squirmed and jackknifed and found I couldn't get anywhere.

He paid no attention to that. He turned his back to the door and started walking with a steady tramp, carrying me to the road. I stopped twitching. It was futile. The farmer was extremely strong. I leaned away from him as much as I could. His grip was so tight that it hurt me a little, biting and crushing the flesh on my arms against the bones. He carried me onto the road, then down the road, my feet dangling, catching at his knees. He carried me the way he might have carried a feed sack. He didn't say a word.

"Gedu, where's Gedu?" I cried.

He walked on, silent.

I thought about fighting, of moving deliberately, getting a hand or an elbow free where I could hit his face or trying to get a foot or knee up into his crotch but I knew I couldn't. I had already struggled to the best of my abilities.

"Where are you going, please? Mr. Caravaggi… please?"

He walked past where either Gedu still was in the grass in the dark or where he had been. It was getting so dark I couldn't see. It was overcast, a wind picking up.

The farmer didn't even hesitate as he went over fences carrying me. He merely changed his grip, then shifted me back again without pausing. He took me to his farm.

The farmer's house was one of several dark farm buildings. A lantern inside made two windows glow with yellow light. The other buildings were grey blurs in the farm yard. He strode through the yard, went to the house and release his hold on me enough to open the door. I gave a convulsive heave, not deliberately but as a reflex when I felt his grip slacken. I didn't get any lower. He took me inside a lamp lit kitchen, a dim hall, to an inner door. He opened this door, put me inside and closed it.

The room was inky black and had no window. I swayed for a moment and stood still. I still that way for a few minutes, feeling the complete darkness around me. I put my fingertips against the hard panels of the door. When I found the handle it would not turn.

After awhile I started to explore by feel. It was a small furnished room. I found a solid rectangular shape, knobs a dresser. I found a lumpy thick softness on the floor, some kind of a rug. I found a bed with a frame of smooth cold metal bars. I sat down on the end of the bed. I held the frame as if clutching something would make me safer and I waited to see what would happen.

I was almost asleep in the dark when the farmer came. He was carrying a lamp. He opened the door, came in and shut it. Now I saw the little room. There was a blue patchwork quilt on the bed. There was a nightstand by the bed. He put the lantern on the nightstand. His face had no expression at all. He spoke to me for the first time.

"Lie down and get under the covers."

Startled, I lay down on the covers, then sat up to kick my shoes off. I squirmed under the quilt. I saw that he was starting to undress.

He took every stitch of clothing off. His chest was massive. His shoulders were huge and wide. His cock was three-quarters erect.

If he wants me, I thought, Why didn't he rent me from Gedu?

The big man lay down beside me, under the covers, pulled them half off of me and began to touch me.

I was wearing my trousers. He traced him fingertips over my torso, pausing at every bruise, and he touched my face, moving his fingers over the marks. His eyes stared unwinking into mine.

"If you want me to." I said softly, "I'll do whatever you want me to."

He unsnapped my trousers and pulled them off. His fingers brushed over my legs too. He was fully erect. He took my wrist and placed my hand on his cock. I started to pump it. I was trying to smile but with his stony face I couldn't get one out. I squirmed down and put my mouth on his cock.

For a few moments he let me suck him. I didn't manage to bring him off. He pulled me up and held me against his chest, belly and thighs clasped closely, naked skin against naked skin. Then he got up on his knees and placed me on my hands and knees. He put his prick up to my bum, under the place, ready to push. His hands were tight. I did my best to help him.

"Please use spit." I begged. "Please use lots of spit."

He put his fingers to my mouth. I spat in them, giving him all the saliva that I could muster. He got it on himself and then, implacably he pushed his tool steadily into me.

I cried. I cried silently. He sawed into me silently. After a moment my trembling knees collapsed. I lay on my belly, legs pushed hugely wide to accommodate his great thighs. He only took a few moments. He gave a grunt and clutched me so hard that it hurt. His strong fingers bit so that they bruised me. Then he lay still inside me, on me with all his weight.

I wasn't getting enough air. His fingertips began to stroke my hair under his chest. After a few moments I began to twitch reflexively, needing to get away, to breathe. I had stopped crying. He sighed, took his weight off of me and dragged out. The pain of that made me flutter. He lay flat again, half on me now. His wet cock was on my thigh. His lips were against my head, his arm over my back.

The farmer lay this way, perfectly motionless. He fell asleep holding me down on his bed with the lamp still burning. I didn't sleep immediately but I was exhausted. I followed the path of least resistance. I was utterly worn out. After awhile I slept also.

Chapter 4

I said, "Can I put my clothes on?"

He gave a grunt and a shrug. I waited until he went out the door before I come out from under the covers again and I immediately put my trousers on.

I really wanted my shirt but I had lost it down by the highway. I looked down at my body. It didn't look good to me. Mostly it was just bruises but they were on my arms and ribs everywhere, tender places.

I hadn't heard the farmer lock the room door. After maybe twenty minutes I got up, padding softly over and tried it. It wasn't locked. I didn't try to go out yet. First I put on my shoes, then I listened.

He'd let me sleep, he hadn't tried to kill me. I didn't know that the farmer was going to do anything worse than fuck me, and he'd already done that. Perhaps he'd be willing to let me go? But I was more thinking in terms of escape. I was ninety percent sure I'd seen him kill Gedu and he might want me to die so that he could keep me from telling anyone that I'd seen that.

Moving softly I went down the dim hall. I went into the kitchen and the farmer was standing, looking at me. The windows showed pale blue light, so early that the lantern was needed. The farmer was standing at the sink with a knife.

I froze.

He put the knife down. He walked over to me and took me by the shoulders. Passively, I let him steer me to the table and push me into a chair. He didn't say a word so I didn't either. I didn't know why he wouldn't speak to me.

He went back to cutting beet root. He put that into a pot on his wood stove, but the wood stove was cold. Then he went to the kitchen door. I saw his fingertips were purply red as if they were bloody from the beets. He went outside. He looked at me through the glass and then brought a key out of his overalls and locked the door.

As soon as he was out of sight I got up. I ran quietly through the rooms to the back of the house. I found a room with dead square white appliances, stacked up under bushel bins. It had a door to the outside and this door wasn't locked. A few seconds after he had left me alone, I was outside.

I ran at once for a ditch and a hedge and got down behind the hedge. I stayed down on all fours like a dog and made my way rapidly and invisibly for the end of the hedge. Then I got up and just ran. I was no longer visible from the farm yard only a few moments later. I kept looking back over my shoulder at the white bulk of the house in the morning twilight, but I never saw the farmer. I made it to below the hill.

It was something like twenty four hours since I'd been to see the prisoner. That was the thought pushing everything else out of my mind. I needed to get back to him. I had no food to bring him. I felt a pang of regret that I hadn't stolen anything from the kitchen, even the raw beets, but escaping Mr. Caravaggi had been more important.

First of all, I didn't go up to the farmhouse. I wanted to badly. I'd gotten caught doing that the last time. I was certain he would think to trap me there. And yet, he might not give a damn, really that I had gotten loose.

What I did was go up through the trees around and over to where the farmer had had the fight with Gedu. I was real careful but there was lots of cover. I got where I could see the green sides of the road and I crouched looking out. There was no sign of the farmer. When I was certain he wasn't about, I came out.

Now, Gedu wasn't there. There was blood but no Gedu. I looked down and all about. So Gedu was alive. Back at the farmhouse, maybe? I looked to see if he was nearby because maybe he had only been able to crawl off, or to see if maybe I could get an idea which way he'd gone.

Gedu was several yards down the hill, on his back, arms and legs stretched straight under some bushes. You couldn't see him from the path.

I knelt down beside him. His face looked very lumpy. His skin was cold to my fingertips. There was plenty of dirty brown blood on him. Carefully I opened one of his eyes. The eyeball beneath stared through a grey film. Gedu was dead.

His body was closer to the farm yard below, not farther away. He was hidden, but he was also laid straight. The farmer had hidden Gedu dead or dying, I decided.

I got up and ran off.

Again, after I was gone I told myself off. I should have taken Gedu's shirt or something. I was half naked. But I was afraid to be around the body in case the farmer came back.

I went up and I watched the farmhouse. Nothing. I went around the meadow, skirting carefully, looking to see if the farmer was on the porch like before to ambush me. He wasn't.

I thought I heard someone yelling somewhere far off, but I was afraid that it was the prisoner yelling desperately inside the house. Finally I just went up at a half run by the shortest route.

I went in. No farmer, thank God, only the policeman, lolling on the floor. He was looking pretty rocky.

"Scout," He said huskily, "What happened?"

"Gedu's dead." I said briefly. I scooped up the water bottle empty, and the can full. "Sorry. I'll get water. I didn't forget you."

I took off again. I looked to both sides as I loped down the hill. No farmer.

I got the water bottle full and started up again. Again, I waited to scout the place out, but there was no sign of a watcher, so I went up. I'd tossed the can on the porch. I picked it up and paused listening. I went in.

After I went in I heard someone moving inside. It wasn't the policeman. It was behind me.

I startled hugely and spun. There was no where to go. I ran into the room where the policeman was. The feet behind me stamped heavily, dashing through the empty rooms. Three seconds later he was in the doorway.

I didn't see the look on the policeman's face. The farmer had a wild, wide eyed angry look. His massive hands were up. His gaze rested on the policeman.

I heard the policeman exclaim, "Christ! Who is that, Scout? Who is it?"

Mr. Caravaggi took three steps into the room, checking the policeman out. I looked down and made a muffled noise. I had a vision of the farmer stamping the chained man to death as he lay unable to escape, the way that he had killed Gedu. But the farmer went to me and not to the haggard, bloody policeman. I let the water bottle go, dropping it.

The farmer's hands didn't hurt me. He took me by the wrist. He locked his grip on me and looked down at the policeman. His voice was a growl. "I'll come back."

He took me out of there. He made me walk down the hill again. His long stride made me have to stretch. He headed straight downhill, just as before. When we passed where Gedu was, I turned my head up to look at Mr. Caravaggi again. The farmer was wearing an almighty scowl.

He took me to that same small back bedroom where I had spent the night. He tossed me in and shut the door, hard. I was imprisoned again.

The lantern was burning low and dim. It was almost out of oil. I sat on the bed. I was apprehensive for the policeman. I was apprehensive for myself. No matter what the farmer did, I was in bad trouble. He'd locked the door. He was going to make me face it.

I still didn't have a clue what was in the big man's head. A lot of anger, anyway. He wasn't belting me, like Gedu did when he got mad, but when he let all that anger out, Mr. Caravaggi killed. If only he'd tell me.

I decided that, unless he threw me over to the militia for my part in the policeman's murder and the kidnapping of the other policeman, I would try to talk to him. It would be difficult. His silence was intimidating. But I would try anyway. I would promise to do what ever he liked, however he liked it, for as long as he liked it if he let me live. He wasn't going to let me go. So I would try to reason with him, and make promises to him if he wouldn't hurt me.

The lantern guttered out. I curled up tightly on the bed to wait.

I'm guessing that it was an hour and a half later. Maybe it was two hours. The farmer unlocked and opened the bedroom door, looked at me and walked back to his kitchen. He left the door standing wide. I got up and followed him. He seemed to expect it and I wanted to try to bargain with him. When I entered the kitchen I saw the policeman.

It was my policeman, Gedu's prisoner. He was sitting in a chair at the table with both hands on a mug. I was very surprised to see him.

"Hey, Scout." He said softly and hoarsely. "What's the other man's name?"

"Him?" I looked at the farmer.

The policeman shook his head.

"Marvin." I said.

"What's his other name?"

"Favien, I think."

The farmer was by his wood stove. It held a fire now and the beets were bubbling on top.

The farmer took two steps towards me and made a shooing motion towards the table.

I scooted over to the seat he'd motioned to and sat down.

Mr. Caravaggi spooned food into a bowl and put it in front of me. It was boiled wheat. He didn't address me at all.

"The water is in the jug under the sink. Get the kid to heat it up for you." He said to the policeman.

The policeman nodded.

"William Holden, right?"

"That's right." the policeman said.

"It'll take a couple of hours." Caravaggi said. I started to guess that he was going to meet someone. He took a jacket and went out.

I had started to eat the wheat. There was a little chaff in it which made it scratchy, but it was very good food. It was filling, generous and warm. I sat scooping it out of the bowl hungrily and I looked at the policeman.

He said. "It looks like we're going to be alright, Scout."

"Yeah." I said. "Good."

I understood what was happening. Mr. Caravaggi was going to the militia, the way the policeman had begged me to for so long.

He stood up. He held the table to pull himself up, staggered a half step and sat down again. He was really weak. He'd been shot and then he'd been chained up so that he couldn't stand up or exercise for something like two weeks, so he was in pretty bad shape.

"Scout," he said. "Would you get me a blanket or something? I'm cold."

"Sure." I said.

I got up and went to the bedroom. I came back with the blue quilt. I draped it over the policeman's shoulders. He wrapped it close and gave me a feverish smile.

As I was standing near him, I saw the farmer drive a light two-wheeled horse cart out of the yard. The cart was going very fast. He was headed down the road to tell the other police. I went back to the table and dug back into the remains of the boiled wheat.

"That guy of yours laid another beating on you." The cop remarked. "You've got a bunch more bruises."

I nodded. "I had a rough customer."

The policeman frowned. "It wasn't… Gedu?" He remembered the name.

"He smacked me some more." I agreed. "I've had a bad week."

"You're telling me." He said. "Your friend doesn't talk a lot."

I knew he meant the farmer. I smiled faintly. "No."

I had finished the food. I got up and went back to the bedroom. I opened the dresser. Men's shirts were in the second drawer, folded neatly and smelling like soap. I took the top one out and put it on. I looked in the other drawers. I took a second shirt and a pair of socks. I put the socks on, although they were miles too big and made my shoes tight. I tied the second shirt around my waist and went into the kitchen.

The policeman was leaning on his arms on the table. I hesitated.

"You want to lie down?" I asked. "There's a bed in the back room there. I could help you."

"No, I'm okay." He sounded exhausted.

I went to the counter and looked. I found a small, very sharp knife and took it and I found a bag with potatoes. I put four of the potatoes into my shirt and went to the kitchen door.

"Where are you going, Scout?"

"Out to look for Gedu." I opened the door.

"But Gedu's dead, Kid. You told me yourself." He sounded bewildered.

Once off of the porch I started to run.

Sometimes I ran and sometimes I didn't. The shirts were flannel ones, too thick and warm to wear comfortably in summer. They would be very good to have in the winter. I was happy that they were so thick. But now I was a thief. I didn't go to the highway. I went the other way, taking the back road to the river. I went steadily all morning and made good time. The only place I was careful was at the bridge, but there was no one on it looking out for me.

By seven o'clock I was in Cutley outside the tavern. I smiled at the men going in. When they came out I tried to catch their eyes. They mostly looked away, startled and uncomprehending. Around eight o'clock, a fat man with a threadbare jacket let me walk down the road a pace with him. We went into a field a quarter of a mile off. He sat on the bumper of a rusty car, abandoned in the trees, and let me blow him. His belly was in the way of my forehead. He leaned way back, so I could reach him. The size of his belly and thighs made his cock seem small. Afterwards he gave me two dollars.

Around eight thirty I went to a woman who was boiling swill in a yard and asked her, "Could I put a potato into your fire, Missus?"

"Sure…" she said indifferently. She was a tired woman, moving slowly. While my potato roasted I stirred the swill and raked buckets of pig manure on her field and it got dark.

When the potato was cooked I carried it off on a stick. I lay down under a solid fence which blocked the wind and I slept.

It really wasn't too bad. I was homeless again. I had nobody to protect me or to look for customers for me inside the taverns, but I thought I just might be able to get enough business to keep me in food until the winter. Or if I couldn't find work, I could always turn thief.

I preferred suck work most of all, of course. Getting caught stealing had more serious consequences and stealing was a rotten thing to do, besides, even if they didn't lop the hands off of thieves. I'd seen it done once to an old man they had caught digging out of a field. They'd been so angry they hadn't waited to clear it with the militia. They had held his hands on an anvil to chop them while he had shrieked blue murder. Now, I was a kid, young enough that they might forgive me, But they were just as likely not to forgive me stealing.

Up until now I had been too scared to try to strike out on my own. I had wanted someone to look out for me. But now I was growing up. Gedu and Marvin had taken more from me than they had given. I'd have run off from Gedu anyway, I thought, even if he wasn't dead.

The big thing was that I was a fugitive. I'd stolen shirts and potatoes and a knife from the farmer. That was the least of it. I had been involved in a policeman's murder and I'd refused to release another policeman from the farmhouse. I guessed that it might not be a capital offense. I hadn't had anything to do with the murder, except knowing it had happened afterwards. And I hadn't been able to release prisoner. However, it seemed to me that they wouldn't stand for any excuses why I didn't run and tell them he was captive there. I thought, If they caught me, they'd consider it was a capital offense anyway. And if they didn't, they would turn me over to the militia for a brothel.

So the trick was to stay out of the sight of all policemen, soldiers and anyone else who might have heard that there was a boy hooker that had done some bad crimes.

I knew if I moved off thirty or fifty miles I'd be alright.You don't have to go far to get out of the jurisdiction of a local government. They wouldn't know or care much about what I'd done. But I was leery of doing that too. it was easier to work the territory I knew. Not every area of the country considered prostitution legal.

So what I did was hang about the fringes of the area I knew and move on a lot. It worked okay. If it rained I asked nice if I could sleep in someone's shed. If it didn't rain I slept out. One guy got me to suck him in return for letting me sleep inside with his cows. A few guys got mean and bawled me out and told me that I was a filthy God-hating degenerate when I told them I was for sale. Others said "Yuck!" and sent me away. A few gave me business.

Actually I was averaging about two suck jobs a day. I was glad there was no fucking. With me in control instead of Gedu, I could decide. I decided no way. There was blood in my shit for three or four days after I got away from Caravaggi. I didn't know which fucking had done it.

I was eating about a dollar and a quarter's worth of food each day so I was actually accumulating money. This made me nervous. It was inevitable that I'd get robbed. So when I worked I stashed my coins and then I picked them up again after the customer and I had parted company. I didn't think I could earn enough to pay for a place to live through the winter, but saving money was going in the right direction. Later, after I wasn't so likely to be being looked for, I would start really hunting for business, when I didn't have to keep moving around. I thought I could maybe survive.

There were people I talked to who knew what I did and were friendly. A smith named Manfred kept a tavern on the side and the day I was out there, he told a guy about me and sent him out back to look for me. I'd done four suck jobs that day. So after about eight more days I went back to the Anvil.

I went into the door and I asked Manfred, "Is it okay if I sit in your yard?"

"Sure." He looked up. "There's a guy looking for you."

"Uh huh?" I was interested and hopeful.

"Farmer with a two wheeled cart, Carvagolli or some Italian name.

"Oh yeah?" My eyes widened.

"He's been by two or three times now, looking for you."

"Thanks." I said quickly. "I'll go look for him."

I worked a little way from the Anvil that evening. I got two jobs. I went and dug up my coins in the dark and started to walk briskly again when it got dark. I walked all night.

Chapter 5

But I found a town. A woman told me it was called Redemption and gave me five cents to carry buckets of water for her. I checked out the tavern.

They didn't get too many prostitutes there like me. There was a woman with make up on going into the field but when I smiled at the men they looked quite startled. All the same, I got customers, three of them willing to pay two dollars each to choke me. I slept out in the damp that night and I was chilly even with the two warm flannel shirts.

The next day I wandered down and found a highway. That was good too. I stuck my thumb out.

I figured I was far enough off from Hoyt's Bay to stick around awhile. I planned to work and be ready to run off again, in case they came looking for me because someone told the police or the militia they had seen me. So every evening I went looking for suck work on the highway and during the days did field work or farm work when I could get it.

The highway wasn't bad. In fact, I was doing about four or six dollars worth of work a night. With Gedu I had been doing twice that, but this wasn't bad because I was getting to keep the money. I put most of it in a permanent cache when I had thirty dollars saved up. That seemed to me to be a lot. I thought, couldn't I get a place to live for a month, for that? But I would need food and other stuff too. The corner of a room wasn't enough. I'd have to have more than thirty. In the winter not many guys would be willing to give me work outside.

I think it was nine days after I came to Redemption, but it may have been ten. I went down to the highway at six thirty. It was the highway between Redemption and New Corn Field but closer to New Corn Field and I stuck my thumb out. The first vehicle to stop was a car.

There were three men in the car, all pretty young. Young men are usually hornier so that didn't surprise me, but the fact that there were three of them intimidated me. Anyway, I smiled and one of the three men asked me seriously, "Are you the boy that's been hanging about outside the Grain Sheaf?"

"Yes, Sir. I've been there."

"What are you doing?"

"Well… I look for work."

"What kind of work do you do, boy?" He was intense.

"Whatever."

"Do you do homosexual intercourse for money?"

"No, Sir. I don't."

He frowned and drew back.

"I don't do that, but I will, if you want me to I'll suck you." I looked at the three men. "If any of you are interested."

"Get in the car." he said.

I got into the car, into the back seat. The man in the back seat took a hold of me as soon as the vehicle began moving. He took some cord out. I said, "Don't! What? Why?" He tied my hands behind my back. He pulled the cord very tightly. With the three men in the vehicle I couldn't very well escape or fight them.

"You're a homosexual pervert." The man in the back with me informed me. "Bringing sin to these towns and trying to corrupt men into committing homosexual acts with you."

"I'm sorry." I said. "Let me go. I won't do it. I won't try to find customers here any more. I swear." I wasn't kidding. If they had let me go, I would have taken off out of there permanently.

They drove me past Redemption, through a hamlet, to another quite large town. It took about half an hour. There were a lot of small, very new buildings, a big white church and a clean tidy look to this town. Very near the church was a brick building which had probably once been a school. They brought me in here.

The building was a hall. There was an assembly room, some locked doors, presumably offices and several short haired men who weren't out working in the fields, and there was a cell.

The cell had been a little office once. Now it had bars in the windows and door that was divided in half with bars in the top half. Inside the room there was a cross on the wall, a little wooden kneeling bench below it, a metal bucket and a heap of straw bedding. There was also a bible. They locked me in.

That evening a man came and he untied my wrists. I couldn't use them. They were in bad shape from being tied. He said, "Give me that shirt."

So I fumble fingered removed my second shirt and gave it to him.

"Give me what ever's in your pockets."

I gave him that.

"Do you wish to eat?"

"Yes, Sir." I said.

"Then you must pray."

"Alright, Sir." I said hesitantly.

He went out. I knelt down on the kneeling bench, kneaded my wrists and thought about praying.

He came back with a jug and a plate. One the plate was a piece of unleavened bread. He put them down and ordered me, "Say your Lord's Prayer."

I said it.

"Say your creed."

I hesitated. "I believe in God, the Father Almighty, and in the son…" He was frowning. "I don't know it."

He told me the creed, sentence by sentence and I repeated it. He picked up the bible, turned it to an Old Testament passage and told me to read.

So I read. I read out loud and steadily, waiting to be told to stop. It was a part of the bible about laws and it had a bit about forbidding sex between boys and men. I read that and much more. He only stopped me after about an hour. It was getting too dim to see by then and my throat was dry.

Then he went through the creed with me again. He told me, "Don't touch the bread and water." and he went out. I didn't touch it. I glanced at it and got off of the kneeling bench to ease my knees.

He was back, two minutes later with a hand printed prayer book. He passed it to me, opened to the section where the creed was printed out and ordered me. "You must learn this prayer. When I come back tomorrow, I will expect you to know it." He withdrew out of the cell. When he had locked the door again he said through the bars, "You may eat now."

So I peered at the creed in the dark and said it out loud while eating the bread and drinking the water, but it was really too dark by then to see it.

I was afraid he would be back early in the morning. I didn't know the creed in the morning. I hadn't had time to learn it. It was two pages long. But that man didn't come.

I was brought a second jug of water in the morning by a man who hated me. He looked me up and down, sneering. "You the homosexual?" He said. "You make me sick. You know what you did is a crime?"

"I didn't know that." I said.

"It's a crime in the eyes of God." He said. "You know what we do to homosexuals?"

"No, Sir."

"They have to be put to death." he said. He smiled maliciously. "You're going to die for the sick things you did."

He left me alone and I read the creed and muttered it out loud.

The same man who was malicious came back several times during the day. He was the guard on duty. He told me that I was twisted and disgusting and things like that. I just mumbled, "Yes, Sir." He asked me if I was a Christian and I said.

"I'd like to be one."

In the afternoon he came in with another man who had a clipboard and they ordered me. "Kneel down here."

I knelt down facing them. I honestly thought for a moment they were going to order me to give them a free suck but it was nothing like that.

The man with the clipboard said, "What are the names of the men who you have had homosexual intercourse with?"

"I don't know any of their names." I said. "They were all strangers. I never did have intercourse. I only sucked."

I knew I couldn't deny everything but I was setting out to deny as much as I could.

"Have you ever read the bible?"

"I've read some of it."

"Did you know that God forbids homosexual acts?"

"I guess I did. I didn't know for sure but I'd heard some Christians don't like it."

"How many times have you committed homosexual acts?"

I didn't know what to lie. They wouldn't believe never, so I said "Thirty times, maybe… maybe not that much."

They wrote it down. They seemed to accept my lies without any problem.

"You sick little faggots have to die. You're depraved. If we kill all of you, maybe we can exterminate the sinning that you do." The guard sneered. They went out.

Late in the day, the man who had brought food last night for me came. I said the Lord's Prayer for him and then the Creed, word perfect but with some hesitance. He took me through a second, different creed, all while I knelt in front of the cross. Then he made me read another long bloodthirsty chunk of the bible. He left me another jug of water and another small round of bread. I was being underfed so I was getting pretty hungry. I was also instructed to memorize the second creed.

I had the same hostile guard during the day. "God tells us to kill all homosexuals." He said. "Do you curse your father and mother?"

"No." I said. "I don't even know where they are."

"You should curse them because they gave birth to you. You're going to hell when you die. How could you do such poisonous things? It's like spitting in God's face."

I didn't know what to say to that.

"We kill adulterers too," he said.

I made a mistake in saying the second creed that night. I got it muddled with the first. The man hit me a couple of times and stayed with me until I had learned it. He had to bring a lantern because it was getting dark on a rainy evening and I got anxious and kept making mistakes from being afraid I couldn't learn it.

When I could rattle off the prayer and the two creeds he got me to read the bible and set me to memorize a psalm that was about how God punishes sinners. I ate my bread in the dark.

The next morning was Sunday. Two men came in, including the hostile guard. They pinned a label to the back of my shirt. It said, "Degenerate." They tied my wrists in front of me and led me out of the hall with a rope around my neck.

The streets had a lot of people in them this morning. All the women had long skirts and either hats or veils on. All the men had hats too. I got taken into the church. It was big place but it was packed. Only there weren't very many kids. There were maybe a dozen of them in that entire crowd and no small ones. It was so full that people stood in the aisle. I was led up and they ordered me to kneel down with my back to the congregation a little to one side of the altar.

In the church all of the men were bareheaded. The service began with formal prayers and chanted hymns. They took a collection and all that behind my back. After another couple of responsive prayers and hymns, the priest running the show stood in front of me.

First I got about a half an hour lecture on how homosexual acts were evil and when I did them, I corrupted others. When I sinned, I sinned against God and this was very wrong. Then he actually talked to me and I said I was very sorry, several times. I said, "I didn't like doing it. I didn't want to do it. I only did it to get food so I wouldn't starve."

He told me, "If you had starved you might have gotten God's blessing and had a chance to go to heaven. But you chose to sin, ,just to feed your flesh, so your flesh will be cast into hell forever."

After that was the sermon. The sermon was where he told the congregation that it was their duty and privilege to fulfil God's will by eradicating sin and punishing sinners. God demanded that they kill sinners who commit monstrously evil acts, he said.

During this I got so tired of kneeling that I finally sat on my heels. I wasn't able to keep all my weight on my knees although I tried, because I figured they wouldn't like it. It didn't matter much.

The priest told them that I would be punished fittingly tomorrow.

The service didn't end there. There were some men named for committing sins, mostly Sabbath breaking and invoking the name ofthe Lord. One was pointed out to the congregation as a sinner, for sparing the rod, but the omission seemed to have been regarding his wife, rather than a child. Still other men were cited for failure to witness.

A man stood up and gave a sermon on how bad a sinner he was, and how grateful he was to be able to demonstrate his repentance by giving fruits of his field to the church.

The service went on for hours. It was hot and hateful. The people all sat perfectly silent when they were supposed to. The women never spoke out loud. Ever. The hymns and responsive prayers were only done by the men.

When it was finally over the two guards led me out again. They didn't take me straight back to the cell. They took me to a large area of paved open ground that had once been a parking lot, but was now the market square. There was a strip of earth in the square, too trampled to have much grass, with a couple of empty shallow potholes and some charring and ash on the ground about them.

"This is where you get punished tomorrow." the hostile guard told me. "You'll be burned here. We burn sick degenerates, like you! You're going to be led out into the middle of the market and burned. There were two women we burned once for being homosexual." His eyes glittered. "They were caught doing something sick together. The bitches were naked when we led them out, the same way you're going to be. We could have burned you the day we found you, but people come from miles around to see it when we punish degenerates and adulteresses. It's too bad you're not a woman because then we'd get a bigger crowd."

Chapter 6

"They like to come to see us burn the naked adulteresses too," he said.

He took me back to the cell in the hall. The other guard left him alone with me, while he took the sign off of my back and the rope off of my hands.

"You're a blasphemer." he told me. "Our Saviour was scourged because his enemies said that he committed the sin of blasphemy.You should be scourged too. The minister would have liked to have ordered you scourged, but then you might be in a faint when it's time to burn you and you wouldn't feel the flames. I hope he has you scourged anyway, just enough to make you scream. That's what we do. But you have to be completely aware when the flames start to burn you. Or else he would have had these filthy things cut off."

He took me by the balls and the cock and squeezed them brutally hard.

I collapsed to the floor with a strangled squeal. I heard him say something more about what sinners deserve before he went out, but I was too caught up in my pain to catch the exact words of his parting shot. I clutched my bruised flesh as I huddled on the floor. It took me several minutes to recover.

Since I'd spent so much of the day in church, I didn't have the time to memorize the psalm. When the man came in the evening, he didn't make any kind of a fuss about it. He just made me say the creeds and the Lord's Prayer and read, and he took the bread away again, but left the water.

They didn't come for me first thing in the morning. I didn't manage to learn the rest of the psalm. I stayed crouched, sick stomached, waiting.

About three, maybe four hours after it got light, the priest came in and the hostile guard and a third man. I stood up. My knees were trembling, but I don't think it showed.

"Take the clothes off."

I took them off. The priest said a prayer out loud. The third man carried my clothing away and came back.

The ordered me to kneel, they were great ones for kneeling, and the priest did some kind of a little service over me. I think it was an exorcism, because among other things, he ordered the devils to leave me. That completed the priest's part and when he was done he went out.

"Get up."

I stood with a little difficulty. My wrists were tied in front of my naked belly and a rope halter was put around my neck. It was this way that I was taken out into the street. There was a huge crowd there. There were over fifty people standing outside of the building to wait and watch me being brought out and a few of them hissed and cheered. I was changing colours, I think, scarlet and burning faced with shame, then white with fear. The crowd was a disciplined one. They stayed on the sidewalk with bright excited faces. I got led ten yards up the street.

There were some tethered horses and some uniformed policemen. The policemen closed in on us.

"Sorry." One was a great big red haired man. "You have to give us this kid. You can't have an execution today."

The argument on the street was brief.

"The law of God says he must burn!"

"But not civil law. And at the moment civil law supersedes religious law. You don't have the jurisdiction to kill this one." The crowd was pressing closer muttering and frowning, trying to hear all this. There were a lot more Christians than policemen but the policemen were steadfast.

"We've got a warrant for this kid. We're going to take him."

It probably took some courage for the policemen to insist on claiming me with so many people there bent on doing something else to me. No matter what the policemen intended, I was breathlessly gasping, hoping that they would be able to stop things before I was killed.

Surprisingly, the church officials and guards didn't want to hold the discussion about me in the street where the listening crowd could lend weight to their argument and the police were willing to retreat with them back into the hall. By now, one of the policemen had an iron grip on my collarbones so I went inside again too.

The churchmen argued that it was required that they burn me for what I had done, that this was the will of God. The policeman said, "Not today, it isn't. We have orders to bring this boy back to Hoyt's Bay. We can give you a receipt for him, or whatever, but he's coming."

"But he will escape his punishment!"

"Don't worry about that. The boy's gotten into enough trouble already."

"He committed homosexual acts here."

"He committed a whole lot more in Hoyt's Bay, first. We're not arguing. He has to come with us."

One of the religious men suggested a compromise. "You can take him, but first let us punish him. We'll give him a scourging in the market and then you may take him."

"Yes," the Christian priest agreed. "At least for his sins he must be scourged. You may take him, gladly after we have done that."

The policemen looked at each other. "No can do." The red haired police officer said. "If we let you scourge him, you'll scourge him right to death. This kid has to come with us alive and in one piece."

The Christians were disgruntled and hostile but they acquiesced.

One of the policemen said, "Where's his clothes?"

The Christians shrugged.

So I was taken outside naked again. The policemen led me to their horses.

"He's under our authority." One of them said. "He'll be punished. Don't worry."

"Put him belly over." Another policeman spoke tersely. I was slung up behind a mounted man and the halter was taken off my neck, tied to my wrists and that rope passed rapidly under the horse's belly to my ankles. I was dazed and very frightened still.

All four of the policemen mounted. They started out of the town, breaking into a canter immediately. The town was very crowded but it had defined side walks, so they didn't have a problem with people in the way, which they would have if they had gone in the direction of the market. What I saw was blurred and brief, but I looked back towards the market square and I honestly think that there must have been two hundred people in the town, come to the market and to see me burn.

"They get a hell of a lot of custom over this." The policeman whose horse I was on remarked. "Maybe they'll bring out some poor girl they've caught fornicating and expose her to the crowd to make them content."

I was in a jouncing, difficult position on the horses back. I stayed quiet. I doubt I would have had a voice.

The police rode until they were well out of town. When they were beyond all the houses, they reined in to walk the horses. "Fuck, that was a hairy one." The policeman on the horse above me remarked. "If they hadn't been so well disciplined, they'd have had the kid off of us in a mob. You alright there, kid?"

"Let's get him farther off." Another policeman answered him. They kept on going for awhile more. They had brought me several miles from the town before they reined in their horses to stop. The policeman in front of me scrambled off and went under his mare's belly to untie the rope that held me.

When he stood me on my feet, I sort of swayed there. We were in the middle of nowhere, between gleaned, short stubbled fields, with a cold wind blowing steadily. My naked skin was chilled through.

"Christ, we don't want to drag him across the countryside stark naked." the man said.

"Well, we don't have any spare clothes. Do we?"

They considered it.

"No. Come on."

They put me back on the horse, but this time riding pillion. I put my hands cautiously on the policeman's sides and he sort of glanced around at me, but said nothing. They went on again and I clutched the man in front of me abruptly. I had to get a good grip on him to be steady.

The next stop was where they watered the horses and while the three of them did this and I stood racked with shivers beside the creek, the fourth policeman rode back to house. He came back with a length of fabric about three and a half feet by two feet [100 x 60 cm].

"Come over here, Kid."

While the fourth policeman watered his horse, I got this cloth tied around my waist with the rope. It made me almost decent. One of the policeman took off his jacket, and slung that around my shoulders. That left him in a shirt and no jacket, but the loan of his garment made me a great deal warmer.

After we had set off again one of the other policemen spokeup, "It would be horrible if we've got the wrong kid."

"What's your name, Kid?" The man riding in front of me asked.

I thought of lying but figured instantly that they'd show me to the policeman who had been a prisoner and find me out, or worse, bring me back to the Christians.

"Scout." I said.

"He's the one. You know anything about a cop being murdered, the end of August in Hoyt's Bay?"

"Yes, Sir. I wasn't there." I said.

"You're lucky they send the word around that they were going to burn you today." he commented. "We rode all last night to get here in time."

"You know, Kid." the red haired policeman said. "You were fucking stupid not to come running to us, the first chance you had after our men got shot. That got you involved in a big way. If you'd have come to us, we'd have gotten our man out straight away and we'd have taken your misters and hanged them."

"Your friend," another policeman informed me. "Marvin Favien, we hanged him, nearly two weeks ago."

"You could wind up hanged too." One of them added.

"Am I going to go for trial for that too?" I asked faintly.

"Case is closed." He told me. "We hanged Favien for it. We won't be pressing charges on you for it. We still had an APB out for you through the militia. We picked you up on that warrant."

"I'm going to… I'm going to be in custody? What for?"

"Your work."

So it was to be a brothel then, instead of a trial. I went quiet. I'd tried to avoid it so long. A trial would have led them to hang me. At least the regimental brothel was better than being hanged or burned, I tried to console myself. It probably was a whole lot better, but I had heard that brothel prostitutes died soon.

They went on talking, but not to me, about completing their paperwork and having to use verbal warrants and make reports. I picked up from that, that they didn't have a written warrant out for me.

We stopped only a little while later. The men were okay but the horses had been ridden hard on the journey to Redemption. They stopped at an orchard, where the farmer readily agreed to let them water and pasture their horses and to take temporary possession of his sleeper. I didn't expect them to stop as early as they did, but because of the horses they were done travelling for the day.

When the horses were looked after and turned out to graze inthe orchard, the men dropped tiredly down into the grass, keeping their gear and me between them.

I said. "Would you be interested in me giving head? Do you want that? Maybe… you could let me walk off?"

"Save it, Kid." said the red haired policeman without rancour."You'll be having enough of that stuff ahead of you."

They weren't really interested in me at all, but handled me professionally. At least one of them kept half an eye on me at all times, and at night they stayed awake in shifts. They fed me reasonably, from their own rations and I was grateful. I shared a blanket in the apple sleeper, lying on litter to sleep and was very uncomfortably cold. I was miserably under dressed which made it a hard journey.

We passed a large militia base, but they didn't drop me off there. The trip continued steadily. I became cripplingly saddlesore. The territory became familiar at last. I recognized the road where I had stood with my thumb out. The policemen knew this territory also. They turned off the highway where a bare lilac bush marked a field where a lone cow was pastured. The track went steeply up to the farm. It was the track where it had all begun, where I had heard the shots and then seen the policemen's horses.

I thought that for some reason they were taking me back to the farmhouse to the place where the policeman had been chained or even to the place where Gedu had died for some reason. I was puzzled until they went in through Mr. Caravaggi's yard. Then I came up with a reason. They wanted to get the sheep farmer to make a formal identification of me.

Chapter 7

"We've brought you your boy." The policeman spoke briskly. "Best of luck with him."

I was pushed to dismount.

"Thank you." Mr. Carravaggi's voice was quiet. He took me by the upper arm. "Good morning."

They had given me to him. They drummed their way out of the yard and down the track. He turned me and led me into his house. He took me into a small room, furnished as a sitting room. Like his bedroom it had no windows.

"Sit there. Sit in that chair. And don't move until I come in." He shut me in with a candle. I heard a faint metallic click of the locks. I sat still.

I was not terrified although I thought with a sinking feeling of the shirts and the knife that I had stolen from him. He would probably at least thrash me for that. But I was confident that he wouldn't maim me. Surely, however cruel he might be, what he mostly intended was to make use of me. And while that meant that I could expect fucking again, one man's appetite held not nearly the horrors of a regimental brothel.

He was back soon. He spoke to me, again gripping me tightly as he drew me after him up a staircase. "Come up here."

There was, on the third story of the house, a bedroom. It held a large mattress and a washstand below a low sloping ceiling with two dormers. He took me in here and untied the rope around my waist. The cloth fell away. He ran his palms over me as I stood still. He took my genitals in his hand and fingered them. He pushed me onto my back, opened my arms and began to lick and taste me, working from my armpits over me. He didn't approach my face. He wasn't rough.

He was strange, I thought. He was so hugely self-controlled. He had killed Gedu in a fury without any hesitation but now his touch on me was very controlled. After he had gone from my arms down to my belly he put his face into my crotch almost as if he was going to suck me. However he lifted up, rolled me over a little onto my side and pushed a finger up my bum. It only hurt a little. After a couple of minutes he made it two fingers. That was quite uncomfortable. I tensed up more.

Then he stood and swiftly squirmed his clothes off. He lay on top of me. He took the back of my neck into his mouth, sucking and drew on it between his teeth. Gradually the pressure of his teeth increased. His hot cock was thrusting between my legs.

There was little more foreplay. When he pushed his cock, dry up into my hole I could not prevent myself from groaning and fluttering. I tried to squirm forward but he came too.He tried experimenting with leverage and angles to get a smooth stroke. He settled for kneeling, holding my thighs in the air and thrusting like that. I made small sounds of pain until he gave a deep explosive grunt and stiffened.

He didn't pull out of me. He was inside so deeply that he didn't drop out. He lay on his side so I lay on mine and he didn't move. When I twisted to look over my shoulder his eyes were open looking.

"Did I make you angry? I'm sorry," I said. "I'll pay it back. I promise that. Whatever kind of work you like."

He nodded slowly.

"Get it out. Please?"

He shook his head.

He must've lain there another ten or fifteen minutes before he took my bum in both his hands and dragged out. I put my hands under me and held my bruised anus. He took my wrist firmly, pulled my hand away and dropped it and brushed my other hand away. He didn't say anything. He climbed off the bed and dressed. He kept gazing at me.

When he was fully dressed he said. "I'm going down to the shippen. Do I tie you to the bed or will you stay put."

"I'll stay put."

He nodded.

I did stay put. I reasoned that the quality of my life from here on would depend on pleasing him. Evidently he wanted me and wanted me obedient to him. I was prepared to see if he would be worse than Gedu. Here at least I would probably not be arrested and sentenced to death.

So I stayed in Mr. Carravaggi's house. In the evening he came up and brought me downstairs. He took me into the small bedroom and dressed me in another one of his flannel shirts. It hung down onto my thighs and made me very nearly decent. But before he dressed me he took a look.

"I like you to be naked." he said.

We went into his kitchen. He cooked and ordered me to clean. I kept quiet and tried to work efficiently. When he laid the meal on the table, setting two plates, he called me. "Come here."

I came and as I stood he reached under the shirt tail and caressed my anus. "I like to fuck you." he said. "You're going to work for me now. I paid an indenture for you from the police. I expect you to work for it and work hard. I'm not going to feed you for nothing."

"Yes Sir." I said.

He nodded, smiling faintly. We sat down to eat. It was rabbit cooked with the garden vegetables. I had not eaten a meal like that since the middle of the summer or longer. The meat was delicious. He watched me eat without smiling.

We did chores afterwards. When the kitchen was spotless and a batch of soap poured out to set, he put his hand on my shoulder and steered me into the small bedroom where he had locked me in the first time.

"This is my bedroom. You're going to sleep with me. But the room upstairs is yours."

He stripped me. I got down unbidden and began to suck his cock. He held my head softly, stroking lightly, then gripped my hair firmly and forced me to deep throat its length.

"I don't want you to bring me off like this." He took my mouth off of his cock. "I want to come in your bum."

He got me to kneel on the bed and impaled me. I whimpered with it. The second time in such a short while with my tissue injured it hurt more. He turned me around so that my palms were on his floor. He held my thighs up. I was upside down. He fucked me like this. He tried a long while. He didn't come. I was all but crying when he stopped thrusting. He picked me up without withdrawing his cock, laid me on the bed face down and laid on me. Some of his weight was on his elbows so I could breath. "How old are you?" The farmer asked me.

"I don't know."

"You belong to me."

"Yes." My voice was stressed with pain. "To you."

"You ever come?" His fingers worked under us to gently caress my cock.

"No."

"You're going to," he ordered. He didn't go on fondling me. "You read?"

"Yes. Some."

"You milk?"

"No."

"Don't you ever run off on me. I'll track you down again. You'll come back here, be brought maybe. If you ever run I'll bring you back and I'll…" He paused, several seconds. His voice dropped. He touched my testicles. "… castrate you. You understand that? I'll hang you upside down by your bag and when you've screamed for long enough I'll cut them off and let you fall. You stay here. This is where you belong."

"I won't run." I gasped, close to sobbing. His fingertips were very gentle.

"You'll get enough to eat, a warm bed." He spoke slowly, musingly. "Is that all you understand, a man who has to hit you around?"

"You don't have to hit me."

"I won't have to hit you. That's right. But I will if you need me to. I've got hard hands. I can hit hard." He paused. "Now kiss me."

I squirmed to turn my head. I kissed his shoulder.

"I want you to kiss me every night."

"Yes Sir. I'm trying."

He didn't object to where my lips had brushed against him, nor tell me to do it again so I stopped.

"I don't want to get out of your butt." He said dreamily.

He didn't get out either, not for awhile. Maybe twenty minutes later his cock slid out, still partially erect. He was three quarters asleep by this time, with his arm loosely wrapped around my neck.

The next day I did work in his house. He brought me water and I did laundry. He had exacting standards. He wanted everything scrubbed and bleached and left clean. From time to time as I walked around the house he would stop me and caress my bum. He liked it when I was working over the big wash tub on the floor. He got down behind me and pulled the shirt tail up and chuckled and caressed me. He stopped to fondle my bum a few times.

Sometime during the morning he got a message out. I know because that afternoon a woman came to measure me for clothes which he asked her to sew for me.

At night he fucked me slowly and agonizingly again. This time he ejaculated. He seemed very satisfied.

I stayed inside his house for two days before the clothing was sewn. It was good thick fulled wool trousers, suitable for the frosty weather and a wool shirt of undyed wool. I thought that the wool cloth must have come from his sheep.

When I had clothes to wear I could leave the house and come outside. Then the farmer showed me the work that I could do. He kept one cow, a stallion and about forty sheep. He also grew fodder for the animals and some food for himself. There was plenty of work to do.

It was perfectly possible for me to run away now but I did not try. I would not have gotten far. I was barefoot. But even if I had thought I could make it cleanly away, I didn't want to. I was still very scared of Mr. Carravaggi. I was sure he would castrate me if I ran so I never even considered it.

A couple of days after I had gotten the clothes he took me off of his farm. He had to hitch the stallion up to the cart for us to ride. The beast was huge and blowing, uncooperative. It wasn't a gelding and it wasn't very well broken or trained to harness, I realised. This was because he kept the horse for stud for his neighbors. It was a powerful grey horse. When he buckled the harness under its belly he touched the animals gigantic balls.

"I bet you wish I was hung like that." he suggested. He smiled. I had learned that he would make jokes sometimes. His jokes were sexual innuendos.

"Mighty pretty," he would slap my bum lightly. "Just like a peach."

But he was not always playful. I got tired right out trying to keep up with his chores and then he would look at me coldly. "You're not earning your keep doing that, that's for sure." He said. "You'd better earn it with your tail."

The day he took me off of his farm we went to a shoemaker. The shoemaker measured my feet and the farmer purchased a pair of rubber boots for me. I knew that I was costing money. The boughten rubber boots were forty dollars and the made pair were sixty. The farmer paid, expressionless. The amount of money he spent worried me. The boots made it far easier to work and to work faster outside. The farmer was teaching me to control the flock and I needed to be able to run to do that. It was far easier to run once I had the boots.

The fucking took some getting used to. He never once came in my mouth. A couple of times he came onto my bum, stripping himself with his hand, but he usually came into me and then kept his cock inside me for as long as he could afterwards. I bled chronically, a small dirty trace and had some trouble containing my bowels.

Four days after I got the rubber boots he sent me back down to the farmhouse with two ewes that he had culled from the flock to be treated for maggots. He was a long way up and I knew there was no point going back up afterwards to rejoin him because I would only meet him coming down. So after I had locked up the two ewes I walked down to the highway.

I put my thumb out. An alderman pulled over and had me do the job behind his wagon. I didn't wait for more work after I had done blowing him, lest I be gone too long from my other chores. I trotted back to the sheep farm with my coin in my hand.

The farmer was already back. He was in the kitchen stirring up disinfectant. He glanced back at me stoney faced when I came in. I smiled nervously.

After a moment he said, "Where were you?"

"Down by the highway." I answered.

"Alright…" He started to turn around.

"Look." I held out the coin. "Two dollars."

"Two dollars." He repeated. He picked the coin out of my palm, placed it on the counter and belted me across the face. I staggered. There was a white crease in the center of his forehead, like an arrow point, straight down. His mouth was flat. His hands moved fast. He shook me, then slugged me in the head a couple more times. Then he punched me in the chest. He kept beating me until I fell down and tried to shield my face, until my lips were bloody. I was trying to grope under the table when he stopped hitting. He held his two clenched fists out towards me threateningly but he didn't follow.

"There's got to be more, right? There's got to be more." He stopped and drew a breath. "Scout." His voice was low and warning. "If you disappoint me, I'll kill you."

I rocked on the floor, elbows tucked in around my face.

"Get out of here," he said. "Go upstairs before I start hitting you some more."

He stood still. I got up and blundered out.

I went up to the room he had been calling my bedroom and stayed there all that night. My mouth puffed up. That was the first night that I didn't sleep in his bed in the room downstairs with a lamp burning. I slept in the unheated room alone above.

In the morning I came down and he just looked at me and said nothing. He was very taciturn that day.

It took me a little while for the swelling in my face to go down but faces tend to heal fast. It was a couple of days before Mr. Carravaggi began to play with my body again. He ordered me to take a bath in the big washtub in front of the wood stove one evening. He sat watching me bathe with the hard on visible in his pants.

When I stepped out of the water he picked me up in his powerful arms and carried me to the back door. He threw it open to the night. I was naked, water spotted and the air was very chill. Our breath plumed.

"Want me to let you loose?" He suggested. "Tell you to go find a friend, a friend with a cock big enough to satisfy you?" He made as if to throw me and swung me in the air. "It's November, Scout. Are you going to stay the winter with me? Better decide now. You want to make me happy?"

"Yes." I said.

He went on without pausing. "Or you want to go find a man who doesn't care if you do it for money or not? Tonight you'd be cold, but if I toss you out of the door like this in January…" He paused. "I'll throw you into the snow, Scout. Make me happy or I'll throw you into the snow."

"I'll try to make you happy. I will." I said. "I try to do the work your way. I'm willing to stay. I want to stay over the winter. I know I need to have someone looking after me."

He took me inside. He took me to his bed, laid me on my back and played with my genitals.

"How come you don't get turned on when I touch you?" He asked hoarsely as he kneaded and rubbed. "You don't like to kiss me, you don't ask me to fuck you…"

"Please fuck me, Sir." I said.

"You mean that?"

"Yes."

He flipped me over and got his cock out. I had healed up some in the last three days while I had not been used. I didn't moan or thrash. I kept my face frozen and tried to accommodate him. He jerked rapidly for a few minutes before he came. He pulled out as he was coming and it dripped on my leg and bum.

"If you leave me." He said. "I'll tell the police I don't want you back. And then either the fundamentalists will pick you up again and burn your lovely body like barbecued steak or the police will pick you up and take you to a brothel."

"I think that's what you'd like." He continued. "Twenty, thirty soldiers a night. In six months you'll have chancres in your penis, syphilis and herpes." He touched my mouth. "Sores that ooze. Here and here." He touched the divide in my legs. "When the medical officer says you're contaminated they'll take you out of service. You'll die, Scout, for being a whore."

He leaned on me heavily. "Be good to me. So what I do with you is unpleasant. You don't like my penis or my fingers. But the alternative isn't a nice man who'll indulge you and let you do whatever stupid things you want, the alternative is death, a disgusting death. Be good to me Scout."

"I'll be good." I said.

He released his weight from me and began to stroke me gently. "Hate me or not, I'm the best place for you to be."

"Yes." I said.

He sat brooding, caressing me. I lay passive. The pain in my rear end was fading now he was out of me. I didn't dislike the touch of his wandering fingers. If I had not been afraid of him it would have been pleasant in a way.

After several minutes Mr. Carravaggi said, "Do you want me to beat you, Scout? To slap you and hit you? I can do that."

"Don't hit me."

He was smiling painfully as he lay beside me. "Kiss me goodnight."

I kissed him.

"Don't make me hit you. I will if I have to." He murmured sleepily. He wiped up the spots of cum onto his two fingers from me and from himself and he smeared these fingers across my lips.

I licked the seminal fluid obediently. His fingers slowed down caressing me and he fell asleep.

Chapter 8

And he left me thinking, Do what right?

It was a busy season, so he kept me working with the farm for about a week longer. Then, around the twentieth of November he got his sleeper closed. It took us two days of back breaking labour to get all the stores inside. We were finished at four o'clock. Mr. Carravaggi was pleased. He came back up to the house to wash up and then he opened the door and gestured towards the lower field. "Go on." he said. "Yeah, I trust you. Go find some work to do."

I trotted out. I looked back uneasily. It would be an early dusk and the last time I had looked for work he had been furious with me. I would just have to do the best I could.

I went down to the highway and stuck my thumb out. This time I was lucky. I found customers easily. It was harvest and I guess they were flush and willing to waste two dollars on a few minutes of pleasure. None of the men were particularly memorable. They didn't crowd me or bully me or do anything of note. They took out their cocks and let me kneel and milk them with my mouth. The time went quickly. I found four men but it was after dark before I climbed the track up from the highway again.

I found Mr. Carravaggi just sitting in the kitchen. I had never seen him just sitting doing nothing before. I went in softly. He stood, guarded anticipation on his face. He wasn't going to look pleased until he knew the result of what I'd been doing. I wasn't confident, but I knew that eight dollars was more than I had ever made in one session without Gedu searching me out the customers. I held the coins out.

"This is what I did."

He stayed motionless. He gave me plenty of warning. After he went still I saw him gather himself and I ducked. He hit me only once. The blow smashed me tumbling across the kitchen. I felt myself hit the wall. The blow that I took was so hard that I blacked out briefly after I stopped rolling. I heard the coins scatter on the floor.

I was only blacked out for seconds, I believe. Mr. Carravaggi was breathing deeply. I curled up with my arms over my face and my knees under me. I curled tightly and protectively.

He picked up the fallen coins. He stood me on my feet. I slipped. He tugged me up and started me moving. We went outside in the dark November night and then into the byre where the cow was stabled amid the new stacks of straw. He dropped me onto the straw,. I was still dazed. He was hyperventilating and would not speak. He stripped my clothing off.

I began to cry. When I was naked he stood me facing the low fence of the lambing pen. He leaned on me and the fence with his shoulder and elbow and reached for a rope. He hauled me up, spread my legs and tied my ankles wide to the lowest rail. I had to take my weight on my hips on the top rail and use my hands to balance and take more of my weight. He wasn't finished. He stepped over the fence, took my wrists and stretched them together in front of me. My bum was upturned and opened and I was terrified.

I'm going to be whipped, I thought. He's going to whip me. I trembled and went on crying. The farmer wasn't looking at me. He was never looking at my face. He was staring closely and malevolently at my hands as he tied them.

Then he did something I didn't expect. He brought back a greasy lotion, took a fistful of it and smeared it up my crack.

It was lubricant, I thought. I was trembling with sobs. I didn't know what he was going to do but it was going to be horrible.

"I'm sorry." I sobbed. "I only had time for four guys. I'm sorry. I wanted more."

"You'll get more." His breathing was so tight that it was hard to understand him.

"Don't, oh God, please."

He went out of the area, down to the back of the byre.

"Please no!" I called after him.

I heard him down at the stalls. Not until I heard the clop of the stallion's shod hooves did I realise what he had in mind. He was leading out the stud.

"NO!!"

The horse's hooves clanged on the concrete floor. I heard it snorting and tossing. It was not leading dociley.

"You can't! Jesus No! Please not this!" I babbled. I just cried. He brought the horse up. I was almost turning my head completely around, staring with terrorized eyes. He took the stallion's head by the muzzle and pulled its nose down to my bum. It snorted very hard, shook and inhaled deeply.

"My cock isn't big enough?" The farmer hissed. "This cock will be big enough for you. We'll see if this cock satisfies you!" The horse snorted and snuffled again. I felt the wet muzzle jerk against my exposed bottom. I saw the man reach under its belly. He was rubbing its huge prick.

"Go for it, Stud! Fuck him!" The farmer snarled. "You want lots of cock? How's this for cock?!" He horse jumped a little, the beginnings of a rear, it's front hooves pawing the air.

The farmer crashed into the fence and began to back over it, hauling on the reins. I saw the horse's prick, the size of a large man's fist, hair covered and with the snaky erection jutting out. The horse reared again.

I screamed.

I was screaming uncontrollably before the dark bulk of the animal covered me. I felt it dimly come above me. I felt the heat of its body above my naked back. It snorted thunderously above my head. My own screams blurred the details. I did not know what was happening. I was screaming so hard that I had no air, but I went on screaming anyway. I was hysterical. I screamed myself into blindness.

I had been knocked out earlier without being fully unconscious. I think I passed out partially because of that. I was still feeling the effects of being punched across the room. When I used up all the air in my lungs shrieking I passed out. I came back slowly. That was not until after the horse was no longer above me.

I did not understand what the farmer was doing. I knew one thing. The horse was gone. I was gasping weakly. The man untied me, spoke to me, tried to stand me on my feet and then when this was futile he carried me.

When I was in his bedroom and he was lying beside me holding me firmly I slowly began to be coherent.

"Don't let the horse fuck me!" I begged. I had no voice, just a tiny painful rasp. "Please… please!" I kissed his hands, the parts of him that I could reach.

"Please no…" I begged.

Something hurt badly in the lower half of my body but it was not pain in my bum or inside me. It was not the agony that would have come with such a massive impalement. I did not understand what it was. I only started to register now that I had somehow been hurt.

The farmer stroked my hair and held me. "Little whore, stupid little whore. Baby prostitute," he murmured.

I could not breath properly for a long time. When I moved I cried out with pain. It was my leg. The source of my pain was my thigh. It wasn't my bottom. The stud had kicked me as it had reared over me.

"Stupid fucking disobedient whore." He kissed me all over my face.

"Please…" I vibrated. I twitched and flinched again. I had been reprieved, I realised. It had not happened. He had relented after I had fainted. I did not know what had happened.

"No horse! No fucking!" I cried until the man silently smoothed my hair. Then I lay quiet. Still the stroking went on. He spoke softly and urgently to me. I started to understand his words.

"Don't you ever let other guys stick it up your ass. I don't care. I bought your indenture. You belong to me. Nobody. And nobody gets to fuck you. Understand? Only me. Only me. I'm sorry I killed Gedu. But you're mine now."

I lay still listening. I was hugely sick from the terror and my leg was agony.

"You don't want me to let guys fuck me?" I whispered.

"I'll kill you if you do. I can't control myself."

"You don't want me to?"

"I'll kill you." He repeated. "I'll hurt you like this. I'll hurt you worse." He spoke bitterly. "I know you hate me and you're afraid of me and why shouldn't you be? But you belong to me now. I'll kill the guys. I'll take a knife to you. I'm the only man. Keep away from the highway. You mustn't go down to the highway. If you even talk to the men I'll cut your tongue off."

"You don't want me going to the highway?"

"I'll hurt you like this again if you do. I really will."

"You…" I was hopelessly confused. "You told me there had to be more."

"If I'm not giving you enough I'll give you more!"

"I don't want more."

"Stud too big for you?" He twisted his mouth grimly.

"I don't want to be fucked. Not ever."

He frowned at me. He didn't reply to it.

"Why did you say it wasn't enough? Don't you want me to go get money?" I asked.

"You mercenary fuck!" He exclaimed. "You've nowhere to spend money. You don't need it."

"I thought you wanted me to go suck…"

"I told you I don't."

"You told me to get more."

"I didn't!" He was staring at me hard.

"Please don't let the horse fuck me." I begged. "I'll die. It would rip me open."

"Then promise me you won't let other guys fuck you."

"I promise." I said.

"I'm stuck." He said. "I'm keeping you."

"No sucking?" I asked.

"Nobody." he said. "Nothing. Even that. You can't suck them off either or I'll hurt you. I'll hurt your pretty mouth."

"But how do I earn my keep?"

"You pretend you like it when I fuck you."

"Yes." I said. "I will."

He started to kiss me again, putting his tongue in my mouth. We did that for awhile. I was still shuddering. When he stopped kissing me he had an erection. He spoke seriously. "Why did you ask me that? Why did you say you thought I wanted you fucking other guys?"

"I did think so."

"You didn't." He contradicted me.

"I won't." I said.

"That's right." He said. "Understand me. "No sucking on other men. No letting them fuck you. If you get horny take it to me. Please, please take it to me. Tell me what Gedu did and I'll do that. Whatever it takes to keep you satisfied."

"I go insane." He told me. "I think I am insane when to comes to you. When I think of you doing that… I used to watch you in the rented house. I don't want to hurt you. But you wouldn't listen."

"I will listen. Please explain." I said in my small scratched voice.

He got on all fours above me as I lay on my back. "You've got no conscience." He said. "And no sense either. Gedu didn't take care of you right. He got you into doing crimes. He hit you. I won't do that. You have to start wanting me like you wanted him. I want to know why. Why did you give yourself to Gedu? He never acted like he cared about you. Every time I saw the two of you he belted you and I wanted to kill him. I killed him for you. Why did you let him take you?"

"He took me the way you took me." I said. "He didn't ask. I can't survive on my own. I don't know how."

"I used to see you going to the water every morning," said the farmer. "I used to come up and watch you. I got sick looking at you. I am sick. I thought…" He broke off. "I wanted to fuck you then but I didn't think I could. I didn't think it was right, guys fucking a little guy like you. I can't help it that I want to."

"I don't fuck." I said.

"Only me." He said. "From now on."

"But I didn't fuck." I explained. "I only did sucking. I wouldn't get into fucking and Gedu wanted me to. It hurts my bum too much. He said we'd make more money but I wouldn't do it."

"Gedu used to fuck you."

"Yes. He…" I was still near tears. "He was belting me because he wanted me to get into fucking. That was why I was running that day. I was running away from him because it hurts to be fucked."

He stared at me. "Scout?"

I kissed his hand.

"I spied on you." He told me. "I would come up and watch you by the water. I did. I wanted to get you then." He nodded. "When you stood in the river washing I'd watch. You were on my property. Living in a house that belonged to me. And Gedu hadn't said it was a boy. He'd said it would be a girl hooker."

He paused. "Gedu wanted to let guys fuck you?"

"He wanted them to because they pay more for it."

"I hate guys who fuck kids. You're more of a boy than a man. I hate them. And I wanted what they were getting. I was just like them. I wanted to fuck you ever since you came. I watched… Every time you went to get water."

"I saw you watching me over the fence."

"No." he said. "I spied. I'd run up after you. And then I look through the trees. Sometimes you'd take your pants off and sometimes you wouldn't. When you splashed your face and washed your arms."

"I didn't know." I said.

"I want to fuck you right now." He told me. "Say it's alright."

I tilted my face up to him. "I want that. It's alright."

He fucked me slowly and thoroughly. We were both exhausted. Whenever I could I kissed his body, wherever I could reach him. He sighed as my lips moved over him. I was broken, as feeble as an infant. I had to drag my body across the bed when I turned towards him.

"You're so pretty." He whispered. "So pretty, Scout, as pretty as a girl. This is pretty and this and this… If you were a girl I might be in love with you." It took an age of slow rocking for him to bring himself off. When he came he crushed me, clinging to me with his arms wrapped around me so that I could not draw a breath and I writhed for air. But he let me breath again and when we slept he lay on top of me with his warmth pinning me onto the mattress in the lamp lit room.

The End