Date: Sun, 04 Jul 2010 14:23:36 -0400 From: tommyhawk1@aol.com Subject: The Boxcar THE BOXCAR By Tommyhawk1@AOL.COM WWW.TOMMYHAWKSROGUEMOON.COM [This story contains sex between an adult man and a younger boy, set in the age of the Great Depression of the early 30's, when many people were struggling to survive. Skip reading this story if this sort of storyline bothers you.] The boxcar was rocking back and forth gently as the train pulled it across the countryside. It was pitch dark outside, night combined with cloudy skies made it utterly black. The only light was inside, a coal-oil lantern that gave a very yellowish light to everything around it. The empty stalls were occupied by men lying out on the clean straw strewn across the floor (this car was meant to haul cattle but it was empty, one reason we hoboes on the tramp had all piled into it), and these men were divided by the sliding doors midway down the car into two groups. In the forward end (where I was, with some others), was men who were sleeping or trying to sleep. In the other end were the men who felt they had better things to do than sleep. Some had beer they were drinking, some were just talking and laughing rowdily, and some (my uncle included) were playing a game of craps. I didn't like that. My uncle had all the money my parents had given us for the trip to Chicago, and he was playing craps with that money. All I knew about my uncle and gambling was that he usually lost. One hand went to my pocket, which held a single dollar bill, which my mother had given me before my uncle and I had set out two days before. "This is just for you." she had whispered to me. "Don't let your Uncle Jack know you have it. Keep it safe, spend it only if you have to. It's for emergencies." I had nodded somberly and agreed. Mom had kissed and hugged me hard which was understandable, given I was leaving home, maybe for good. The Depression had come and with it, our family had lost the farm, and the nine members of the Clevin family had gone in four directions. Well, three directions for seven of us, with Mom and my sister Mavis staying where they were, though in a room in town. You see, my sister Mavis was disabled, bedridden, and Mom had to stay with her. My Dad and older brothers Frank and Tom were bound for California, where they planned to pick fruit. My older sister Johanna and her husband Bob were going to Florida, where they planned to say with Bob's mother. That left Uncle Jack, who announced he was going to Chicago where he'd find work. "That settles things, then." Mom had said with some relief. "What about Max?" Johanna was the one who had to remind her about me. I was used to that, believe it or not. The whole family seemed to sort of forget I existed now and then. You see, Johanna was like 25 years old, and married now. Frank was 20 and Tom was 18, they were big bruisers who did most of the work on the farm. Mavis was 16, and had been in her current condition since early childhood. I had been born when Mavis was already injured and Mom had been busy caring for her when I'd arrived. So I had started my life as an inconvenience to my family and stayed that way, and now with the family dispersing in order to survive, they had to figure out what to do with me yet again. Like I didn't really belong any place. It wasn't that they didn't love me, mind you. They just couldn't seem to get used to the idea of me. "Can't you take him with you?" Mom asked Dad. "No way!" Frank put in quickly. And Tom had nodded. "Mom, we're going to be working where and as we can. We can't have a snot-nosed little brat hanging around. He's too young to work, so they won't let him on the jobsites. And nobody wants to take a day off work just to babysit him!" "I don't need babysitting!" I'd protested, but Mom had just nodded, and turned to Johanna. "What about you and Bob?" Johanna had the grace to look abashed. "Mom, it's going to be hard enough on Mother Whitman as it is. Besides," she blushed demurely, "I think I'm pregnant." That had led to congratulations and Mother forgot about me again until I tugged at her sleeve. "What about me?" I complained. "Where am I going to live? With you and Mavis?" "Oh, no, no!" Mother said. "The room is too small already. They'll never let me bring in a third person, not without raising the rent, and of course, the boarding cost would be that much more. What can we do?" "He can come with me." Uncle Jack declared. "I got a place I'm going, he'll have other kids to hang out with during the day, and feeding one kid on the money I'll be making shouldn't be a problem. He can even go to school when summer is over, in Chicago." That all sounded nice, doesn't it? Well, it was ignoring just who Uncle Jack was. And that Uncle Jack was now gambling with the money we were going to live on until he could find a job in Chicago, and I was sitting in the other end of that boxcar, listening while he lost all our money. I didn't know he was losing, exactly, but then, he always did. I only hoped that he hadn't seen Mom pass me that dollar bill! If he had, when he ran out, he'd come to me and want it to try to get his money back by more gambling, I knew he would, I knew..... "Hey there, kid." a man said to me. I looked up at him. A big man, broad-shouldered, thin-waisted, his clothes the soft and shapeless kind and none too clean, but not filthy, either. He hadn't shaved in a couple of days, enough to give his cheeks a shaded look. His skin was browned by the sun, he had done a lot of outdoors work, then. Even my brothers didn't get as dark as he was, but his eyes were light blue even in this yellowish light that turned his white shirt into a dark yellow and his tan slacks into deep brown. But his smile, even in this yellowed light, was clean and white and kindly. "Hey." I said. "Who are you here with?" he asked. "Not traveling alone, run away from home?" He cocked an eyebrow. "No." I said. "My uncle's over there." I pointed. He looked nodded. "The one with the blond hair, yeah. The one who's losing bad?" "That sounds like him." I nodded. "He'll be there a while. Want me to sit with you until he gets back? Some of these guys can be rough customers. They might try to rob you." I thought about my single dollar and got nervous. A dollar was quite a bit of money for these men, I already knew, you could live on a dollar for nearly a week if you were careful and didn't mind sleeping outside, and in summer, what was wrong with sleeping outdoors? You didn't ride the rails unless you were broke, after all. I just wish that Dad hadn't given Uncle Frank that twenty dollars for the two of us, that much money was bound to make my Uncle Frank decide to test his luck. "Thanks." I agreed, and the big man sat down next to me, his long legs stretching out beside my smaller ones, his shirt bulging out (it was more than half unbuttoned), and showing me his massive chest. He raised his far leg up to rest his foot flat on the straw, put one strong arm on top of it, hand drooping as if holding a cigarette there. That accented his chest even more. "What's your name? How old are you?" I told him and he responded that he was Michael and he was twenty-seven years old. From there, he did all the talking and I did all the listening. From when he was my age, right up to the present day. Then it was hints on how to live a life on the rails and on the streets and in the backyards and junkyards and alleyways. Michael had been living like this for about four years and he knew plenty about it. He'd lost the money he'd saved up in the steel mills of Pittsburgh when the crash of 1929 came and it was now 1932 and he had found something of a new life in places like this, on this boxcar. He'd been talking for about a half hour like this, not rushing his stories or getting bogged down, just keeping me company like he'd said, when I moved closer and snuggled in under one of his arms which he obligingly raised up to let me in under. He smelled so good, and his chest was so soft, and I was getting sleepy, for it had been a busy day for a youngster like me. I would have gone to sleep like that, I think, if it hadn't happened just then. "Hey, Max." Uncle Jack said to me. His voice was hoarse, almost frightened. He was drunk, then, at least a little. I looked up. "What is it, Uncle Jack?" "Give me that dollar your Mom gave you." he slurred at me. "Why?" "I need it." he said. "Give it to me." "Mom gave it to me to keep." I protested. "You got the twenty dollars from Dad, and.... You lost all of it?" "I can win it back." Uncle Jack said. "Now give me the dollar, and I'll give you back five dollars when I win it all back. That's a promise." "Sounds like a hard promise to keep." Michael opined. Uncle Jack shot him a dirty look, but his hand stayed out to me. When I didn't move, he looked back at me. "Give me the dollar, Max." "No." I said. "It's mine. You can't have it." "I don't get our money back, you won't be eating tomorrow." he threatened. "Mom gave it to me to keep." I said. "It's for emergencies!" "This is an emergency." "No." I said again. "Don't make me thrash you, Max." Uncle Jack stormed. "You're mine until your Mom and Dad come get you, you know." "The kid said no." Michael said. "I think he knows better than you how to hold on to his money." "Michael told me how to buy day-old bread at the bakeries." I said. "And he knows where to go in Chicago for the free soup and when to get there to get the best of the pot's worth." "Give me that dollar or so help me, Max, I'm going to...." Uncle Jack reached his hand down for me and Michael grabbed it before he could grab me by my shirt and haul me to my feet, probably then to spank me until I gave him the dollar. Uncle Jack looked surprised, tried to twist his arm away, and only succeeded in hurting himself. He squirmed again, this time trying to pull away and Michael let him go. "Why don't you go lie down and sleep it off." Michael recommended. "It's all you got left to do, now that you're broke and not going to be able to feed yourself tomorrow. It's three days to Chicago by hobo express, if we don't get rousted when we aren't expecting it and get thrown into jail or put on a chain gang to work off the fine. We're coming into Tulsa tomorrow morning, why don't you get off the train and try to find some work there?" Uncle Jack looked dumbfounded, the gravity of his situation sinking in and staggered off to the rear end of the boxcar, probably to drink more instead of going to sleep like Michael had suggested. "You keep away from him until morning." Michael suggested. "He might be ready to see sense by then. You remember what I told you about how to live and make him get work if you can, and you should be all right. But hang on to all the money yourself, don't let him know where you got it. You can, you hide it somewhere." "Okay." I gulped. I was going to be more alone than I'd expected. Uncle Jack, for all his flaws, was family. But if he wasn't going to be taking care of me...who would? I clutched at Michael suddenly, spastically as Mavis did sometimes when she was having an episode. "Thanks for standing up for me." I said, my voice quavering in post-altercation fear. "It's all right, Max." Michael said, putting his other arm around me, and holding me. "Can I stay with you tonight?" I asked him. "Just...just in case Uncle Jack comes back?" "Sure, kid." He said. "I have a blanket, I'll get it while you bunch some straw up for us to sleep on." I did so and soon Michael and I were under his blanket, still both fully clothed. The men in the other end of the boxcar were still talking, but even that had damped down quite a bit. The lantern would burn all night, or until it ran out of oil. The train moved on and on, swaying gently, sending the light of the lantern back and forth, not hard and fast, just slowly moving like a miniature sun with light and dark every couple of seconds as it was cut off by a pole in the middle of the room. "Michael?" I whispered softly as I snuggled in to him. "Yes, Max?" His whisper was deeper than mine, but just as soft. "Are you married?" "No, Max. Never have been, and never will." "Why not?" "Well...." Michael hesitated. "Some things you just don't want to do. Other people do it, but you look at it and realize it's not what you want. Do you understand that?" "Not really." I said. "If you don't want to get married, what is it that you do want?" Michael shifted and I felt his hand land upon my leg, the fingers reaching to the inside of my thigh. High up, and sliding closer. He stopped just short of contacting my groin. "Now can you guess what it is?" "Oh." I said, because I could. Tasted the idea of it. Michael wasn't trying to make me do anything. Just letting me know, quietly, because of all the other men around us, sleeping and awake. "Yeah." He squeezed my leg and then took his hand away. "So that's why I never married." And I had decided something myself. I put my hand on his leg and because of our relative sizes, mine landed right up against his basket, I could feel his balls just the other side of the trousers. "I guess it's why I won't be getting married, either, huh?" "I guess not." And his hand came back again, this time, he landed right on my basket. His big fingers began to palpate, kneading at my cock and balls, making them move about and tingle. "How does that feel to you?" "Feels good." I began doing it to him. "Like this?" "Yeah, like that." he sighed huskily. His dong began to swell up alarmingly large. "You're making me feel really good." "Me, too." I sighed. My own, smaller pud had stiffened up under his fingers. His hand turned itself into unzipping my pants, and then reaching inside. I wasn't wearing underwear (both pairs I had were now dirty and in the bottom of my tuckerbag, waiting for a chance to wash them), so his hand promptly caught hold of my dick and began to fondle it. I moaned at the feel of that big hand, those big, fat fingertips holding my little peter and I hastily turned my hand to trying to get his undone. He had buttons, and he had to help me with them, but then he had it opened and I could reach in and.... "Oh, my God!" I gasped when I had hold of it. "It's so big!" "It's okay, Max, it's okay." Michael panted. "Just work it up and down like this." His fingers worked on my prick and I groaned, and using my entire arm, I was able to move his prong up and down in a way to make him moan. His fingers sent me to the crest of happiness in no time, I got the tingles and they grew and I gasped and shook and shivered as my youthful climax struck me, then it was over, and I had to push his hand away. But Michael needed more working. "My arm's getting tired." I said after a time. "I'm sorry." "It's okay, Max." Michael whispered to me. "There's something else you can do, if you want to." "What's that?" He explained and after a while, I agreed. Looking around to make sure nobody was noticing our activity, I slid under the covers and down his body, my head seeking out the source of my hand's heated hold, and when I got there, I gingerly put his cock into my mouth. I'd been dubious even though he'd assured me it didn't taste bad at all, and he was right. After that first taste, it was no nastier than my finger when I'd hurt it and stick it in my mouth to suck on and make it feel better. Only his cock was more rich, meatier tasting, and the slick goop on top (Michael had explained about that when he was convincing me to do it) had a salty flavor that was deep and satisfying. I licked it off with my tongue and Michael's hand came down to get me moving on it like he'd told me. With a mouth full of spit, that huge pud fit into my mouth but it was a tight fit. Michael didn't insist that I take more than I could, the glans and a bit of the shaft was all I could handle and I did it with all the gusto and delight that you have when you have just learned something new and find out that you love it. For I loved the taste of Michael's dong and the way that his deep baritone tones of lust rolled out at every move I made on him. When my movements slowed, his hands caught hold of my head and took over, all I had to do was hold on as he moved me faster and faster, keeping my lips tight and making him love every move, my tongue flicked out to taste at him and the new source of salty juice that he was releasing. And his body tensed up and convulsed, and then he was thrusting up with his hips and driving his cock deeper than was really comfortable, but the voice of his passion was not to be denied or stopped, and so I held on for dear life, and then Michael came. He'd warned me about this, but that wasn't enough, I didn't expect it to blast out at me all hot and heavy and thick and it flooded my mouth, I gulped it down hard as I could, but it was too much and I choked and it went up my nose and out my nostrils, and I had to turn loose and it went onto my face and his hands pushed me back onto it and I got more hot spunk in my mouth and I gulped again, dripping jizz from my nose and chin and running down my cheeks. "Ahuh-ahuh-ahuh-ahuh-ahuh!" Michael gasped as he released me, and the flood ended at the same time. I cleaned him off by sucking on him some more, and even got some more out of his cock itself, milking him dry, enjoying the feel of this, a lusty but sated man beneath me and me with his majestic pillar of virility drained but still luscious, and I sucked it until it had wilted down to a small flap of flesh. Michael grinned at me when I came back out from under the covers. "You were great, Max." he told me as he tousled my hair. "But you're a mess." "You did it." I pointed out. "Yeah. Well, I ought to help you with that." he said and he caught my head in both hands on the sides and proceeded to lick my face. I giggled as he did that, and then he said, "Now, you get some sleep, Max." "Okay." I said and snuggled into those brawny arms and went right on to sleep. The next morning, we were still moving, the train still going. But it would be in St. Louis by eight o'clock according to Michael. Uncle Jack staggered over, looked at me with red-rimmed eyes caused by a night of drinking. "I've lost all our money, Max." he mourned. "That single dollar of yours has to take care of both of us and it won't do it, it won't do it!" "It's okay, Uncle Jack." I said. "We'll make do one way or another. I can steal from the stores or something...." "No." Michael said. "Kid, you get caught stealing and it's reform school for you. A really nasty place, I know, a friend of mine got sent there. It scared me straight when I was no more than your age." "But we have to do something." "We got no money." "I'll make you a deal." Michael said to Uncle Jack. He dug into his pants pocket and pulled out a five dollar bill. "I'll give you this five dollar bill if you'll let me keep Max with me." "With you?" Uncle Jack looked stunned. "With you?" I chimed in. "I can take better care of him than you can. I got a job lined up in Chicago. You take that five, you get off here and earn some money here. When you get twenty dollars back in your pocket and can turn it over to Max to take care of, you come to Chicago and look me up and I'll give him back to you." "Uh...." "It's okay, Uncle Jack." I said. "I like Michael, he's nice to me. We're good friends." "Well...." Uncle Jack's eyes followed that five dollar bill, Michael waved it back and forth at him like a magic wand. "If you're sure you won't go crying to your Mom about this...." "I won't even tell her I'm not with you." I said. "You come get me when you can, and it'll stay our little secret." Uncle Jack looked at the money some more, and then his hand grabbed it. "You be a good boy and write your Mom every week like you promised." "I will." I said, and Uncle Jack moved to join the others about to jump off. You had to jump off the train at such stops, make it through town and get back on on the other side. It was why it would take us five days to get from west Texas to Chicago. I got to my feet. "We'd better get ready to jump, too." I said. We were about the only ones left on the train, about to pull into the town's outskirts. "No need." Michael smiled at me. "But they'll catch us." "I got a ticket right here." He pulled one out of his shirt pocket and showed it to me. "I'll buy one for you and we'll finish our ride in the passenger car. Be in Chicago by tomorrow morning." "But...I don't understand." "I said I have a job in Chicago and I do." Michael said. "That life story I told you is a lot of hooey. I'm actually a reporter for the newspaper there, doing a story about the life of a hobo. I already have all I need to do a whole series of columns on it." "So we won't be living on the street?" "I have a nice house in Evanston." he assured me. "Only one bed, but you won't mind that, will you?" I grinned slowly. "I sure won't." I agreed. And so, when the train pulled into the station, Michael and I stepped out of the boxcar and started walking toward the front of the train and the passenger cars that were waiting there for us. And I realized suddenly that I had found a place where I belonged at last! THE END Comments, complaints or suggestions? E-mail the Author at Tommyhawk1@AOL.COM WWW.TOMMYHAWKSROGUEMOON.COM