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  I worked with an ill will, doing as little as possible, antagonizing Mr. Windridge to the point that he would threaten, once or twice a week, to “speak to your father.” I dared him to do it, and went back to doodling winged cocks on my notepad. Somehow or other I learned the basics of accountancy, but it was more in the way that a tree soaks up rain than by any positive effort on my part. In years to come, I would thank Mr. Windridge for that grounding he gave me in dollars and cents; at the time, however, I regarded him as little better than a troll from a fairy tale, barring the gate to the garden of delights.

  And so I might have continued, wasting my youth in pleasure, heedless of the future, burying my head in a book (or a hairy crotch) every time there was talk of politics. When Abraham Lincoln was elected in 1860, the town was alive with talk of trouble to come, with cheers and boos and rallies and counterrallies; the papers carried nothing but stories of secession and abolition and constitutions and conferences. It meant nothing to me—a background hum, the wind in the trees, the gurgling of a stream.

  Even Mick was shocked at my lack of interest in current events. “This is history in the making, Jack,” he said to me one Sunday afternoon when we had headed off for a walk in the mountains, looking for secluded places where he could fuck me in the open air. “You should pay attention.”

  “There’s only one thing I’m interested in,” I said, hauling his half-hard cock into the dappled light of a forest clearing. The subject was quickly dropped as I sucked him to a full stand, and wasn’t resumed until his dick plopped out of my ass an hour later.

  “There’s going to be trouble, Jack,” he said, as we washed ourselves off in a clear, fresh pond. “Not just for you and me, but for the whole country. Father against son. Brother against brother. Friend against friend.”

  “Gloomy old man,” I said, splashing him. We wrestled ourselves dry on the forest floor.

  But he was right. Trouble arrived one day in February 1861, and with it came Aaron Johnson.

  At home, over breakfast, we read about the secession of six more states from the Union, the adoption of the Confederate constitution, the threat to military establishments in the South. There were dark looks, pregnant silences, and my father mentioned the word war.

  “Don’t talk like that,” my mother said. “You’ll frighten the girls.” My sisters, in fact, looked far from frightened; they were much more interested in the troubles than I was, and found the prospect of war exciting.

  “I’d go and fight for Lincoln right now if I was a man,” said Margaret, older than me by two years—and she looked as if she meant it.

  “I’ll not have that talk at this table,” my mother said, fussing with plates and napkins. My father sighed and rubbed his eyes. I’m sure he’d have preferred it if the fighting talk came from his son, rather than his daughter.

  “Jack,” he said, “I want you in the office early this morning. Remember?”

  “Oh, father…”

  “We have a new employee starting in the accounts department and I particularly asked you to look out for him. Or have you forgotten already?”

  “Let Windridge take care of him.” I imagined another little accountant, a sort of miniature Windridge, crouched at his desk, scratching away at his figures. Perhaps I would have more free time for fucking…

  “Mister Windridge,” my father said, “has enough to do sorting out your mistakes without having to take on extra responsibilities that I have already delegated to you, John.” I knew that whenever he called me John rather than Jack I had better act the obedient son.

  “Yes, sir. I’ll get there right now.”

  “Who is he, this new gentleman?” asked my mother; she was always interested in arrivals at the spa, hoping, I suppose, to find a husband for one of her daughters.

  “His name is Aaron Johnson,” my father said, puffing out his chest. “He comes to us from Virginia. And he is a Negro.”

  Time stopped for a moment, forks poised halfway to mouths, teacups held above saucers. My sisters’ eyes—and I suppose mine—were as round as dishes.

  “A black gentleman!” Jane, my junior by two years, said. “Here in Bishopstown? Oh, how wonderful!”

  “And we are not to treat him any different from anyone else, do you hear?” my father said. “He’s an educated man, he comes with the most impeccable letters of recommendation, and he will be, I hope, an important citizen in our community. A hardworking, honest, decent, and, I may say, a God-fearing man.”

  We weren’t listening. All of us, including my mother, were intensely alive to the novelty presented by this newcomer. Black faces, if they were seen at all in Vermont in those days, passed through quickly, on the other side of the tracks; Negroes could not even afford a room in the White Horse. My sister Margaret, I know, longed to fight for the rights of the Negro, and would waste no time in taking Mr. Aaron Johnson under her wing. My sister Jane, fascinated as she was by Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, would gawk at him if he walked into the room.

  My thoughts focused on the piquant image of a black cock stretching my white ass. I had heard, in schoolyards and bars, of the legendary advantages of the colored races, and hoped they were not exaggerated.

  “I’ll be off right now, father,” I said, more eager to get to the office than ever before. “Leave him entirely to me.”

  Was it my imagination, or was that a look of distress, disappointment, disgust that flitted across my father’s face? What did he know? How much did he guess?

  “Good-bye, girls,” I said, running out of the room.

  As I raced down the hall, struggling into my jacket, I heard Margaret’s familiar cry: “It’s not fair! Why wasn’t I born a boy!”

  My ass was twitching and my dick half-hard as I walked along the road to the spa. I had envisaged it all: Aaron Johnson, young and athletic, his ill-fitting clothes revealing the magnificent animal beneath, meek and respectful as I walked into the office, gratefully accepting my offer of friendship and guidance, shocked at first when I put my hand into his pants but then unable to resist the tidal wave of feelings as they surged through him… Lying back as I rode his massive cock to glory, as I’d ride our black stallion… Following me slavishly but at a respectful distance, waiting for me to notice him again, ready to fuck me whenever I gave the command.

  As I walked through the gates of the Hydropathic Establishment, I was nearly knocked down by a fine white horse cantering down the path, obliging me to step quickly aside. Some wealthy customer, I thought, looking at the stylish cut of his clothes, the bright whiteness of his riding gloves. I swallowed the curse that was on my lips, remembering my father’s injunction to treat the customers at all times like little gods.

  The horse stamped to a standstill, the rider jumped to the ground and turned to face me. Underneath the black riding hat, above the white collar, was a face of the most beautiful brown I had ever seen.

  “Pardon me, sir,” he said, touching his brim. “My horse is a little too eager.”

  My eyes were goggling out of my head, until I remembered that this was an employee, and I his employer’s son.

  “I’ll thank you to take more care in the future, Mr. Johnson.”

  “I am expected, then,” he said in a voice less friendly than before.

  “You are. Stable your horse and report to the accounts office.” Oh, how prim and prissy my voice sounded! He rode off without another word, and I did not see him again until Mr. Windridge led him into the accounts office a half hour later.

  “And this is our little home away from home,” Windridge said, his nasal voice more ingratiating than ever. “This is where the real business of the day is done, I like to think.” I tried to look busy, scratching in a ledger with a pen that seemed intent on blotting everything, the paper, the desk, my fingers and cuffs.

  “And this,” Windridge continued with considerably less enthusiasm, “is Mr. John Edgerton, the proprietor’s son.”

  I half-hoped that Johnson would cower respectfully
before me, regretting his earlier insolence, giving me the opportunity to be magnanimous in my forgiveness. Oh, the fantasies that played around my mind! They shame me now.

  “We’ve met,” he said, extending a hand. “Aaron Johnson. Pleased to meet you.”

  I got to my feet and held out a dirty hand, which he grasped. Ink, still wet, stuck our fingers together for a second.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. It should have been him apologizing, not me, I thought.

  “Don’t matter, Jack,” he said—was that a wink? “It won’t show on my hands.”

  I sat down, completely abashed, and listened as Johnson asked Windridge question after question about profit and loss, adjustments, discounts, offsets, and a thousand other things that I did not understand even after a year in the accounts office. It was quite clear that this was a man with a future, a man with ambition and drive and all those other qualities I so obviously lacked.

  Windridge’s answers were long, droning, circumlocutory. I started to drift off into a daydream, largely inspired by the back of Johnson’s neck, the only part of his skin that I could really see. Occasionally his large, square hands with their pale palms and neatly trimmed fingernails would flash through the air, but apart from that, and the dense, closely cropped hair on his head, there wasn’t much to look at. But it was enough, and I was already imagining how good it would be to eat his big, round ass.

  “And you will be working under young Mr. Edgerton, at least to start with.” Windridge’s voice for once commanded my attention, and I sat up. Johnson was to be my subordinate?

  “How will you like that, sir?” Johnson said, turning in his chair to fix me with a penetrating stare. “Think you can handle me?”

  “I imagine so, Mr. Johnson,” I said, suddenly pretending to be busy with a complicated calculation. “Forty, forty-three, at eighteen percent, over a period of seven months…”

  “Well,” Windridge said, “I’ll leave you in young Mr. Edgerton’s capable hands. I have business to attend to in the director’s office.”

  It was then that I thought my hastily formed plans would come to fruition; I imagined a furtive game of show-and-tell, a quick suck under the desk, a rendezvous made for later, when I would bend Johnson to my will.

  “So,” I said as soon as Windridge was out the door, “you’re going to be working under me. That sounds like an interesting position.” I had used lines like these, and even cornier, to good effect with other Hydropathic employees.

  Johnson, however, became suddenly businesslike. “Certainly. I want to learn as much about your father’s business as I can.”

  “Why don’t I show you around?”

  “Mr. Windridge has already done that.”

  “Did he show you the stables?” He could fuck me over the saddle rack, I thought, with the smell of horses and straw rising around us.

  “I have seen the stables. They’re very fine.”

  “How about the hot pool? It’s under maintenance at the moment, but if I ask them they’ll fill it for us.”

  “I’d be more interested in the books, Mr. Edgerton.”

  “Please. It’s Jack.”

  “How old are you, Jack?”

  “Twenty-one. How old are you, Aaron?”

  “Thirty-one. But not too old to learn. Perhaps you’d like to explain this complicated calculation you’re undertaking. What was it? Forty-three at eighteen percent over a period of seven months. Oh—” He looked at my notebook, perhaps expecting to see calculations, perhaps not. What he saw was my usual doodles, fortunately a little less blatantly phallic than usual. “You like flowers and birds, do you, Jack? And what’s this? A railroad train, perhaps.”

  “They’re just notes.”

  “And I’m sure they mean a great deal to you. Now, if you would just hand over the ledgers, I’ll make a start.”

  I had a smart riposte on my lips, and was ready to make it, but one look at Johnson’s serious face, his furrowed brow, killed the words in my mouth. I handed over the book.

  “That’s a good fellow. Work for work time, play for playtime. Let’s get cracking, shall we?”

  Oh, he would pay for that, my fine Mr. Johnson, my supposed subordinate. I planned out the witty things I would say, the clever strategies for undermining his confidence, all with the purpose of bending him to my carnal purposes. I wanted to put him in his place—and that place was up my ass.

  But somehow it didn’t work out like that. In private, when we were alone in the office or when I engineered an “accidental” meeting in the remoter corners of the building, Johnson was polite, professional, and distant. In company—when Windridge or my father was in the office, or when paying social calls at the house—Johnson was much friendlier, treating me as a pal, a buddy, the butt of his jokes (how my father enjoyed his remarks about my professional expertise!), and leavening his mockery with just enough flirtatious humor to keep me from protesting. It was the exact reverse of the situation I wanted. I would have preferred him to be formal in company, but friendly in private—very friendly, and very private. If Johnson had set out deliberately to keep me at arm’s length, he could not have done a better job.

  His visits to the house, at first duty calls, soon became a regular Sunday occurrence, and after he’d been in Bishopstown for a couple of months he was as much a part of the family as I was. My sisters made no secret of the fact that they were both in love with him, and he was able to talk to them on exactly the right level. With Margaret, he discussed politics and the Rights of the Negro. He entertained Jane with stories of his Virginia childhood, whereby we learned that he was the son of a slave woman and a white plantation owner; there was little doubt from whom he inherited his complexion! His mother had died, and his father, stricken with conscience, raised the boy as part of his own family—or as much a part as his wicked legitimate sons would allow. They put him down constantly, landed him in trouble, told lies about him, and did all they could to persuade their father to disinherit him. Aaron kept his head down, did well at school, and finally left home at the age of 18 to make his way in the world. Since then he had plowed a lonely furrow, without home or family, welcomed by neither his black brothers nor his white peers. By the end of one of these recitations, my mother and sisters had tears in their eyes, my father was pacing up and down huffing and puffing about social injustice, and I was fuming about how this charming cuckoo was ousting me from the position of favored son.

  “So why did you leave your last job?” I asked one Sunday afternoon, as the table was cleared. “You seem never to stay anywhere very long. Are you going to leave us in the lurch as well?”

  My father frowned, and my mother tutted, but Johnson just smiled. “Oh no, I’m in no hurry to leave Vermont,” he said. “Believe me, Jack, compared to the South, this is an earthly paradise. Where else would a man like me find a welcome at the family table, the respect of his brothers and sisters”—here he gestured toward my family, who positively squirmed with delight—“and the love of comrades?”

  His eyebrow was cocked, his head to one side. I could have cursed him out loud.

  “But surely more good can be done in the South, by setting an example to these secessionists we hear so much about?”

  “Ah, yes, there’s no doubt that that’s where my duty lies, Jack.” Johnson looked serious now.

  “Then why are you here? Why hide yourself in the North? What are you running away from?”

  “That’s enough, John,” my father said. “It’s none of our business.”

  “Have you ever been to the South, Jack?”

  “No, of course not, but—”

  “Do you know what a lynch mob is?”

  My sisters gasped in excitement.

  “Of course I do.”

  “I left Virginia hotly pursued by one. So far, Vermont seems a lot less dangerous. Give me a chance to catch my breath and maybe we’ll go back and face them together, Jack. What do you say?”

  I said nothing. My father laughed. “Show y
our mettle, Jack! Make us proud!” He marched around the table whistling “Yankee Doodle Dandy.” “Oh, no fear, not our Jack! Always with his nose stuck in a book, or running around town with his fine college friends!” This was the convenient fiction that had been established in the family to explain my nocturnal ramblings. “But if it comes to war with the South, what will you do? Eh?”

  “Please, let’s not talk of war at the table!” my mother said.

  “Do you think it will come, Johnson?” my father said.

  “Of course. As sure as rain and snow.”

  “And will we be safe here?”

  “We’ll be safe nowhere, sir.”

  “Oh dear,” my mother said, suddenly busy with a duster. “Let’s not frighten the girls! Come on, Margaret, Jane. You can help me in the…er…in the parlor.”

  “I’m not frightened,” Margaret said. “If it comes to war, I’m ready to fight for what’s right.”

  “I believe you would, Miss Edgerton,” Johnson said, “but God forbid we should ever see ladies reduced to the bestial condition of men. Jack, let’s take a walk and leave your family in peace.” He stood up, folded his napkin, and led me out of the dining room with a heavy arm around my shoulders.

  We walked through the hall, out of the house, and onto the road at a striding pace, not saying a word. It was only when we had reached the stream, some 100 yards from the house, that he slowed down. The arm remained around my shoulders.

  “You don’t like me very much, do you Jack?”

  I was unused to direct questions like that; in our circle, things were expressed in much more roundabout ways.