Hot Valley Page 7

  I reached out and grasped him.

  “Take it, Jack. I’ve waited so long to find a friend like you.”

  “Me too,” I said, and I meant it. He, I soon found, did not.

  I drew him to me, delighting in the heat and hardness of his cock, and he lay on top of me. Our two pricks jumped when they touched, slipping and rubbing against each other, both wet and sticky.

  When he entered me, lubricated only with spit, my head spun and colors burst before my eyes. But I knew by now how to manage sensations that would have had a novice screaming out in pain, and by breathing deeply and regularly and relaxing my ass muscles I soon had him right inside me, and any discomfort was translated into waves of pleasure.

  When I’m getting fucked, I lose myself entirely in the experience. My soul, my consciousness, leaves my head and travels downward. As Young began pumping me, my whole world was concentrated on the point where my ass lips stretched around his long, probing dick. I heard nothing but his breath in my ear, the creaking of the bed. I suppose I was conscious on some level of other sounds—cries in the court-yard, the rattle of wheels, the slamming of doors—all the usual noises of daily life—but they did not register. There could have been a thunderstorm, a revolution, a battle, and I would have been none the wiser.

  Young was as good as his word, and fucked me all night, or at least till first light. The first time he came was soon after he entered me; that was a hard, fast fuck, and we brought ourselves off together. My load went over my hairy belly; his went deep inside me.

  We recovered quickly. By the time Young had washed his prick in the ewer of cold water on the dressing table, he was already starting to get hard again, and wasted no time in sticking it in my mouth. “I wanted to see those lips around my dick as soon as I saw you, Jack,” he said, stroking my hair as I guzzled his rod.

  Then it was his turn to put his mouth to use, and he ate my ass, licking and nibbling it before sticking a good inch of his tongue up me.

  “Best pussy I’ve ever tasted,” he said. I basked in his admiration, and squirmed under the assault of his tongue. I was ready to be fucked again.

  This time he took me from behind, slamming into me even harder than before; my head was pressed painfully up against the fancy metal bedstead, my neck twisted at a crazy angle, but I didn’t care; the discomfort heightened the pleasure. When we had finished this time, I had deep grooves impressed into my forehead and cheek; he kissed them and ran his finger along them as we lay together in the now quiet night.

  We may have dozed for a while. I came to with the sensation of fingers probing my sore ass; Young was ready for round three. This time he was gentler, more tender, talking to me as he lay on his side, entering me slowly. “Don’t go to Montpelier, Jack,” he said, between kisses on my neck. “Come with me. We could have a grand life. I need you.”

  “Oh, Bennett,” I said, sighing like a schoolgirl. “I’ll never leave you.”

  And with that, I pushed my ass back into him and surrendered once more to his expert fucking.

  When I came this time, it was like swooning; sleep claimed me, and I fell into the depths of unconsciousness.

  The room was flooded with light, and Young was standing at the window, shaving, when I awoke.

  “What time is it?” I mumbled, my voice thick and slurred.

  “Good morning, Sleeping Beauty!” He leaned over the bed and kissed me, smearing my face with lather. “Ready for your breakfast?” He was wearing only a towel wrapped around his waist; he parted it, and showed me the cock I had been riding all night.

  “The coach,” I said. “It must leave soon.”

  “Come on, Jackie,” he said, the blade of his razor scraping across his bristly chin, “give it a little suck.”

  I couldn’t resist, and half clambered out of bed so that I could reach my “breakfast.” It soon began hardening in my mouth. Young kept shaving, stretching his body so that he could see the small pocket mirror that he’d hung on the window catch. He moved back, step by little step, so that I was obliged to crawl from the bed and across the floor to keep ahold of his prick. Soon he was fucking my mouth and shaving simultaneously.

  I forgot all about the coach for a moment, and concentrated on sucking. I looked up, expecting to see Young with his eyes closed, his head thrown back in heedless delight, as I’d seen so many men. Instead he was looking down at me with a steady, ironic gaze, and I was suddenly aware of the naked razor that hung in his hand a few inches from my left ear. He could have cut my throat right then and there. What did I really know about this man into whose hands I had put my life?

  I stopped sucking; some instinct told me that I was in trouble.

  I sat back on my heels. “What time is it, Bennett?”

  “Don’t know.” He squinted out the window, wiping his face on his towel. “About eleven?”

  “Eleven!” I leaped to my feet and leaned out the window, stark naked as I was. “But the coach leaves at nine.”

  “Left at nine. Didn’t you hear it? Boy, you were sleeping deeply.”

  “You mean it’s gone? It’s gone and you didn’t tell me?”

  “I did tell you, Jack. I shook you and told you it was leaving. You mumbled something about wanting to sleep, and then I guess we both dropped off.”

  “But my trunk!”

  “You and your trunk!”

  “It’s got everything I own in it.”

  “I’m sure it will be perfectly safe.”

  “That’s what you keep saying.” Certain things were beginning to form disturbing, vague patterns in my mind. I was not sure what the picture was just yet, but something was struggling through the mists of sleep and sexual satiation.

  “Now, where were we?” Young’s cock was still fully hard, inviting my attention.

  “When you met me last night—” I said.

  “It was love at first sight. Come on, Jack. I need you.”

  “You knew where I was going, I suppose.”

  “You told me. Montpelier.”

  “The bank. My trunk. My papers.”

  “You’ve got a suspicious mind, Jackie-boy.”

  “I suppose by now someone’s well on their way to Montpelier in my place. Is that the name of the game? Someone’s using my letters of introduction to the manager of the bank, getting inside, and then what? Robbing a Union bank to pay for a Rebel army?”

  “Well that’s a fancy imagination you’ve got there. If you must know the truth, Jack, and I see that nothing else will do, your trunk is currently resting in the landlord’s cellar, where my men entrusted it last night.”

  “Your men? Entrusted it? What the hell is going on?”

  Young sat down on the bed and patted the crumpled sheet beside him. I sat, our legs touching. His cock, slightly deflated, rested on his thigh.

  “I couldn’t let you go, Jack.”

  “What are you talking about? Have I been kidnapped?”

  “You could say that, I suppose. I prefer ‘recruited.’ ”

  “How dare you?”

  “Easily. I’m a daring fellow, Jack.”

  “And what do you plan to do with me?”

  “We’ll go north, into Canada, where the company is camped. Fifty of us, Jack, Rebels and Unionists, grays and blues, blacks and whites, we don’t care, we live in comradeship and peace. We trouble no man.”

  “What are you, Young? A bandit? A highwayman?”

  “I’ve taken nothing from you that you didn’t give willingly, Jack.”

  “But why?”

  “I told you. I need a friend.”

  “I’m sure you’re not short of friends.”

  “It’s true, we are all good pals in the camp. You’ll meet many men up there, Jack, who will be proud and happy to call you their friend. But I need someone to be by my side at all times. To take care of me and love me.”

  “And you thought all that, did you, as you saw me eating my supper in the bar last night?” I made the words sound as ridiculous, as un
believable, as I found them.

  Young put an arm around my shoulder and looked me straight in the eye. “I did.”

  He drew me to him and kissed me on the mouth, softly, without aggression. His face, which had ripped me raw with its stubble in the night, was smooth and soft now. His body was warm and hairy. And his cock—that ever ready cock—was pointing to the ceiling again.

  With a feeling of giddiness, of half-delightful vertigo, I abandoned myself to his embrace.

  By midafternoon, we were on the road: Bennett Young, myself, and a company of three other soldiers of fortune, as I assumed them—us—to be. They were all arrayed in odds and ends of military uniform, scavenged, I guessed, from camps and stores around the country. They respected Bennett as a leader, they welcomed me as a comrade, and, just as had been promised, they had my trunk, still tied with cords as I had left it on the roof of the carriage.

  We camped that night in the woods south of Barre. Two tents did for us all—one for Bennett and me, one for the other three. They were a handsome enough group. One of them appeared, by his complexion, to be Spanish, Italian, or Mexican, and answered to the name of Bruce. A gold hoop in his right earlobe proclaimed that this was no ordinary soldier. The other two, Doty and Gregg, could have been brothers, sharing the same pale skin, blond hair, and brown eyes, although Young assured me that they were not. “They’re as close as brothers, though, Jack, like I told you. They’ll stick by one another now, till death.”

  “Poor Bruce, then. Three’s a crowd.”

  “Perhaps you’d prefer him to bed down with us, then? He’s eager to taste your ass, Jack.”

  “Another night.”

  “Good boy. I want you all to myself. Like I told you, I love you.”

  And so, as if in a dream, we traveled northward, avoiding towns except when we needed provisions, when I was dispatched to the local store with a list. We camped in fields and forests, we bathed in streams, we shared our rations and our bodies.

  By the time we crossed the border into Canada, I had forgotten my new life in Montpelier, my family and friends, the warnings of Mick and Aaron.

  I was content, and blind.

  PART TWO:

  Go Down, Aaron

  V

  DEAR JACK,

  I want to tell you that I am alive, that I am well, that I have not forgotten you, and that I am writing this letter to relieve the feelings of a heart too full. I hope that you are safe at home, that you remember the words of a friend who never wished you anything but happiness, and who will always cherish the time he had with you. I know, and you know, that I can never send this letter, but writing it and keeping it by me through the dark days ahead is some comfort.

  I have settled in the place to which I swore I would never return, Richmond, the Rebel capital, a place where I have few friends and many enemies. The town looks superficially the same, but is totally different. The faces wear a new expression: one of fear, and hope, and hatred, rather than the uniform expression of haughty pride that they once wore. I have met no one I know. What is one more shiftless, rootless black man in a town full of freaks and oddities of every color? War has brought the circus to town, every day of every week. Up is down, wrong is right, day is night, and in such an environment I can live in relative safety and seclusion while I decide how best to shape my future. I know that my father is dead, that I have been defrauded of the inheritance that he promised me by the connivance of my so-called brothers, those jealous thieves who resented my presence in the house from childhood. Should I pursue them, punish them, and secure what is rightfully mine? Or should I, as the Good Book teaches me, turn the other cheek?

  We shall see what Fate washes my way. Once again, my life is a blank slate. I thought, when I moved to Vermont, that I would turn a new page, accepted by your family and townsfolk, able at last to make something of my education. That dream is over. It has faded, just as the cuts and bruises that I took with me from Bishopstown have faded. I did not leave town without a warm send-off by Windridge’s gang. Or did you not know? He made some unpleasant friends at his anti-abolitonist rallies, the scum of the North who wanted nothing more than to ape the nigger-hanging ways of their Southern brethren, and who saw my friendship with your family, and particularly my friendship with you, as all the pretext they needed for stringing me up from the nearest tree. I escaped, and took great pleasure in busting a few noses as I did so. I stole Windridge’s horse, and left its owner writhing in the dust as I galloped to freedom. They were too fat, and too slow, to catch me.

  Happy to have escaped with my life, it did not take me long to realize that my dreams were shattered and my heart broken. Why did I ever meet you, Jack? Why did we allow ourselves those dangerous intimacies? You and I are from different worlds, and we should never have come so close. I believed at first that we could be friends, that we could tame our baser passions and prove to the world that men like us—for I do believe, Jack, there are thousands of us, who crave the love and companionship of our own kind—could live noble and blameless lives. But we know how that dream ended, in the filth of a stable.

  I could think of nothing else as I rode out of town, the road blurring in front of my eyes. I could see only your face, your lips, your taunting smile as you lay there in the straw daring me to take what I wanted but I knew I must never have. I thought of the other men to whom you had given it—so casually, so cheaply!—in the bars of Bishopstown, in the woods, on the floor of the boiler house that same afternoon. I saw you, Jack, and I watched for as long as I could before the urge to kill someone drove me away.

  My horse slowed to a canter, to a walk, and stopped altogether, cropping the grass at the edge of a field.

  I dismounted, and was violently sick.

  I puked until there was nothing left to bring up. I had been kicked in the stomach, of course, that was the reason—and yet I felt as if I was voiding all the love that I felt for you, Jack, all the sweetness that had turned to bitter bile. I was empty. I remounted my horse, my guts in pain, and rode slowly into the night.

  Ill-equipped as I was for life on the road, I had no alternative but to avoid towns and large settlements and to put some distance between myself and Bishopstown. I slept that first night in the woods, under my coat; luckily for me the night was dry and I was unmolested by animals. I woke up aching and sore in my limbs, but rested and ready to face whatever fortune might throw at me.

  Fortune played her first trick: the horse had worked loose from its tether in the night and gone, presumably to find its way back to Bishopstown. I cursed my carelessness, and the stupidity of the horse: it deserved a better master than Windridge. I was alone, and on foot.

  The first question was which way to head. North, toward the Canadian border? South, into Massachusetts and Connecticut? West, into New York State? And then where? To stay in the Yankee states, or to return to the South?

  Whichever way I turned, the path seemed strewn with dangers. As a lone black man, on whichever side of the political line, I ran the risk of being arrested, declared “contraband of war,” and set to work on the railroads, a fate I will avoid at all costs. But New England, far from being the haven of tolerance and opportunity I had fondly imagined, had dangers of a subtler sort. I thought, by and large, my best chance lay in the South, to return to Virginia, claim whatever remained of my inheritance, and then to continue my travels as far west as possible, to California, maybe, or even into Mexico. Away from all these fine gentlemen and their not-so-fine friends, from ladies who smile at you in church but whisper behind your back in the street.

  And away from you. Poor Jack—poor, childish, brave, fond Jack, too spoiled to know what life could do to an ill-matched pair like us! We were nothing but a danger to each other. I thank God that I never took the final irrevocable step that would have bound us together, however much I may have longed to do it.

  Putting on my shirt, I munched on a piece of stale bread that I had managed, despite my haste, to shove into my bag, and I quenched my
thirst with water from the stream. The first priority was to equip myself with the necessities of life—a horse, if possible, warm clothes, a weapon, blankets, food. I had a little money, all that I had saved, rolled up and stuffed into the toe of my boot. It was enough to feed me for a few days, to make a few necessary purchases, but it would not furnish me with a mount or the means to protect myself. Those things I would have to earn or steal.

  The other side of the mountain, there was a village where I knew there were farms; and where there were farms, there was work, and outbuildings, and horses, and all manner of useful things for a man in need. My inclination is to be honest, but I’ve seen enough of how the world treats an honest man to consider the alternatives.

  The sun was up, and the farms would be busy, and I thought this the best time to present myself as a hired hand—and also, if I was lucky, get a little breakfast into the bargain. The first establishment that I found was a run-down farm, just a house and a barn with a few ill-tended vegetable patches, a cow in desperate need of milking and a handful of scrawny chickens pecking for worms in the yard. But there was smoke rising from the chimney, and a good smell of coffee, so I braved the yapping of the mangy yellow dog that snapped at my heels, and presented myself at the door.

  I knocked, although the door was open, and shouted a hello. There was banging within, and an upper window was flung open. “Get away from here!” came a high, frantic, female voice. “There’s nothing for you! My husband will come out and shoot you!” I could tell she was on the verge of tears, and I had no desire to frighten her further—not least because she was waving a shotgun out the window. I bowed, and tried to look harmless.

  “I’m just looking for work, ma’am,” I said.