Date: Sat, 16 Feb 2002 07:03:01 -0700 From: Clone Buggs Subject: Across the Alley part 19 Across the Alley XIX Listening to the boys in the back bedroom, I stared blankly at my computer screen, remembering Karl, the old guy who had shown me my sexuality. He had been rank and dirty, but that was a condition of his station in life. He wasn't educated, but he had a native intelligence and knew nature well, since he spent so much time out in the world. He and I became good friends, and I started bringing him things he couldn't afford on the pittance Mister Dobson paid him to irrigate his groves of Orange and Grapefruit trees. He had a sweet tooth, and I started bringing him little packets of sugar and coffee out of my mother's supply. She never missed it, and Karl was so grateful to get it it made me feel good I was able to give him something useful. We continued my homosexual education, and he taught me to take his big cock in my ass, and showed me how to please a man with my little dick fucking him. I guess I came to love him, but when he was caught with another boy named Steve Hollander, by Mister Dobson, playing with each other's cocks in his citrus grove, I was horrified at his duplicity. I imagined he was only having sex with me. At first, I was hurt, but that soon changed to something else. Karl was arrested and taken to jail. Nothing was said openly about it, but my parents whispered about the scandal, and it wasn't long before they asked me if I knew the old man who lived in the mesquite jungle along the canal. I said I'd seen him, but didn't know him. Something told me to keep silent about Karl and my afternoons together. They wanted to know if I knew the boy the old man had been caught with. They seemed relieved when I said I didn't, and seemed to forget the incident of the scandal. A few weeks after the arrest of Karl, his trial began. I knew about it, because my dad listened to the news every night on the big Philco radio that stood next to his easy chair while he smoked his last few cigarettes before going to bed. I was laying on the floor, drawing horses from photographs in a magazine I'd found in the trash in an alley on the way home from school. His name was Karl Kraus, and the newsman on the radio said he was charged with child molestation, and that several boys had come forward telling of being fondled and abused, and forced to touch him sexually. He was downcast and morose in his shackles in the dock according to the newsman, and had refused to speak to the authorities. The second day of the trial, as he was being led back to his cell, the father of Steve, the boy who had been caught with him, stepped up to Karl, and shot him in the head. The deputies holding the shackled Karl between them watched, doing nothing to stop the shooting. The next morning, the newspaper head line congratulated the father for his act against the vile man who had defiled his son. I read it on my way to school in front of the drug store, and was overwhelmed with sorrow. I ran down an alley, and hid myself in a pile of boxes behind the store where I'd bought Karl's peaches, and cried for an hour. Afterward, I made my way tearfully to the jungle, and saw the mess the police had made of his pitiful camp. The box was kicked apart, and the few cans of food were smashed and bent. The fire pit was kicked apart, and his few pieces of clothing, already rags, had been reduced to shreds and scraps hung here and there on mesquite thorns. His camp, which I'd learned to love, had become an eerie abandoned ruin, with little of Karl left present. Back in the underbrush, I spotted the dark form of the iron skillet I'd stolen from my mother. One of the destroying cops had pitched it deep into the thorny jungle in his fury with Karl. I crawled on my hands and knees through the thorns and stickers, feeling them pierce my skin again and again, until my hands and legs were running blood from dozens of punctures. I picked up the skillet, and held it in my arm pressed against my chest while I crawled back through the punishing thorns. I sneaked back to the house, and since my parents were already gone for the day, I buried the skillet in the crawl space under the house. I cried over it as if it was a much loved part of Karl himself. I was miserable, and spent the day feeling alternately sorry for Karl, and myself. He'd taught me who I was. I knew in my heart of hearts, that we hadn't done anything I hadn't wanted to do. I knew instinctively, that none of the boys who had come forward had done anything with Karl they hadn't wanted to do. It was not Karl's way to force any act on me if I didn't want to experience it. I knew he hadn't forced any of the boys to do anything they didn't want either. That night, when my folks came home that night, my dad was full of vitriol against Karl, and Queers in general. I think it was the first time I'd heard the word Queer, and asked him what it meant. His response to my question was a backhanded slap across my face. I fled, crying, to my bed, and stayed there until the next morning, doing without my dinner. I noticed my mother didn't bother to try to comfort me. I was confused and disoriented about what was happening, and wanted desperately someone to answer my questions. I knew instinctively my parents were not part of my salvation. I slept little in that lonely bed that night, and got up the next morning, bleary and hungry. It was still dark as I made myself a bowl of cold cereal, and a glass of Orange juice. I ate quickly, then brushed my teeth and washed my face. I dressed and was ready to go to school, as may parents were getting up. I told my mother I was going to one of my friend's house to help him feed his goats before we went to school. I was out the door, before my dad had finished his morning dump. Instead of feeding goats, I ran to the street a few blocks away to the house where the boy whose father had shot Karl lived. I sat on an adobe wall across the street, and waited until he came out with his school bag slung over his shoulder and started down the street toward the high school. He was a couple of years older than me, but I knew who he was, because Sunnyslope, was a small community, and even though we may not associate with each other, all the kids knew who each other was. I caught up to him when he reached the corner. He looked at me as we waited for some traffic to clear before crossing. I could see his eyes were pained by something he was trying to keep under control. "Hi Steve." "Dave." He acknowledged me as we walked across the street, while I tried to think of a way of broaching the subject that I wanted to talk to him about. It was difficult, but I knew I had to speak to him somehow. On the sidewalk after we'd crossed the street, he looked at me again, and it just blurted out of me. "You were a friend of Karl's too?" He stopped in his tracks, and his face froze in an emotion I couldn't immediately identify. I stepped back from him, almost afraid he was going to hit me. His chin began to tremble, and he suddenly wheeled away from me and started walking away from me fast. I tagged along after him a few yards behind. He turned into an alley, and I ran to the entrance to the unpaved alley, and saw him walking rapidly away, and I could hear him sobbing. I ran after him, and put my hand on his shoulder. He was slightly taller than I was, and he tried to shrug my hand off. I could see tears flowing down his cheeks. I wracked my brain to try to think of something to say that would comfort him. I was also trying to keep myself from tearing up like he had. Neither attempt was successful, and I burst into uncontrollable tears as we made our way down the trash filled alley. A vacant lot opened on our right, and the older boys in town had built a ramshackle club house of discarded junk lumber and cardboard. Steve headed for it, and held the door open for me to come inside. The gloomy interior was more comfortable than I imagined it to be. Since it belonged to the high school boys, I'd never seen inside before, being only an eighth grader. A thin four inch mattress was rolled up against one wall, and an old slat back chair with most of its legs worn off occupied a space just inside the door. What light there was came from mote filled beams of sunlight that found chinks in the shell of the homely structure, making near blinding shafts of light into the darkness of the interior. Steve threw his bag onto the cardboard covered floor, and dropped onto the roll of mattress. I sat down on the chair and we looked at each other for a long silent time. The tears were abating, and our breathing was becoming a little more normal. He finally sat up straight, leaning against the wall. The whole structure rocked with his shift of weight, indicating how flimsy it was. "You knew him too?" His voice had gone dead without emotion. "Yes." After a long moment, he seemed to shrink in size as the tension left his body. "Did you and him..." He didn't finish, but instead, looked to the left, through a chink in the ceiling, directly into the light. The brightness on his face, threw his features in sharp patterns. He was a thin handsome boy. "Yes," I said, intuiting what he was trying to voice. "Did you?" He nodded almost imperceptibly. "Did you..." I paused trying to think of a way to voice what he wanted to know. He interrupted me. "Like it?" His head swiveled and his dark eyes fixed on me. "Yeah. I liked it." He looked away again, and the light threw his head into stark relief. I took a deep breath, and let the air out of my lungs in a sigh. He spoke quietly, almost in a whisper. I strained to hear. "What are we going to do?" "I don't know, but my dad is really talking hate about queers, and I realized last night, that it includes me." I pushed my legs out in front of me, stretching, tired after my sleepless night. "Yeah, mine too. He thinks I'm a queer because I let Karl fuck me, and made me tell him all about how I sucked his cock. He's told me I have to get out of his house. I don't know what I'm going to do." "We could live here." He looked at me again, and a grunt like a laugh erupted from his lips. "We cain't live here dummy. The other boys would be all over us." He looked away again, and I watched him in silence while I thought about what we could do. "Let's run away." My own words shocked me, as much as they shocked him. "Sheeit" He muttered glancing at me. "Where could we go? Who'd want two queers around anyway?" "I don't know? Maybe California. My dad says there's nothin' but fruits and nuts over there." "I ain't no fruit, but I might be a nut," He laughed and I could see a bitter look on his features. "Well, maybe we could just keep it to ourselves." "How d' you `spose we could get there? I ain't got no money do you?" "I got almost forty dollars saved from sellin' rabbits. I could sell my does and bucks and maybe get another ten." "Yeah?" "Yeah. Billy Dean offered to buy them from me last year. He might still want to do it. I might even sell him my pens for somethin'." "Yeah?" "Could be." "I might be able to come up with about fifty bucks myself." "Well, that'd be a hunnert dollars. That ought to be enough to get us to California; doncha think?" "Ought to." "Well, how'er we goin' to get over there?" "Karl told me he rode the rails when he came out here from back east." "You mean in boxcars?" "Yeah, there's boxcars full of fruit goin' over there all the time. I've seen `em when we visit my grand daddy and grandma in Casa Grande." "Well, let's do it. When do you want to go?" "I need to see Billy about buying the rabbits, but I can do that today. Maybe I can get him to ditch school to pay me and we can get out today before my folks come home." "OK. I'll go home and get my money and stuff together, and meet you back here as soon as you can find Billy." We hugged each other before we left the clubhouse. Steve headed back to his house, and I took off to school, to find Billy before the first bell rang. "No shit?" Billy Dean was aghast that he was going to help me run away from home. We split the school yard just as the bell rang, and beat it through the alleys to his house. He got his money out of his Mexican pig bank, and gave me almost fifteen dollars. I helped him carry his cages with a dozen rabbits into his back yard, telling him the names of people who would buy them from him when he needed to sell off some. In his yard, when the rabbits were lounging in their new patch of shade, I helped him replace their spilled water, then shook hands. I ran off toward the clubhouse being careful to stick to the alleys. It wouldn't do to be seen by an adult running the streets during school hours. Steve was waiting for me when I pushed through the door. We decided to wait until school was out before making our way to the train yard. He unrolled the mattress on the floor, and laid down on it. He patted the place beside him and I laid down, spooning myself into the curve of his body. He pulled me closer to him, and we laid there in the gloom, watching the sun transit though the sky. At lunch time, he opened his bag, and handed me a candy bar. He had one as well, and we ate the chocolate talking quietly. "So what did you and Karl do together?" I was interested if he and Karl had done the same things that Karl had done with me. "Well, just about everthing I guess. He liked to suck me off, and then fuck me. What about you?" "Yeah. He really liked to fuck, but he always made me suck him off first. He liked to cum in my mouth first, so he'd last longer when he fucked me." "You like sucking?" "Yeah. He said I was a born cock sucker." "What did you like the most?" I felt his cock hardening behind me. My own was well on the way to stiffness. "I liked everthing we did together." I reached behind me, and groped his stiffness. He moaned softly in my ear. His hand found my cock, and we laid there groping each other for several minutes. He kissed my ear and cheek, and then used his tongue to explore my ear. I felt his hand tugging at my belt, and I helped him pull my pants open and I pushed them down my legs. When he had my butt exposed, he took his own pants down, and I felt his precum oozing cock push into my ass crack. It was my turn to moan. The head of his cock found my hole, and using his slick of precum for lube, he began to push through my opening. His cock was a lot smaller than Karl's, so his entry into my ass was easy and smooth. He groaned as he slipped into me, and I moaned with the pleasure of having his dick inside me. We were both so tired from our sleepless nights, that the fuck was long and gentle. He was in no hurry to cum and stopped several times to avoid it. We spent the afternoon spooned together, with him in my butt fucking gently a little now and then to keep himself hard inside me. It wasn;t until later in the day, when he whispered he was going to cum in my ass, because school would be out soon, and we had to finish and get ready to head for California. He picked up the speed a little, but not much, and together we rocked with me pushing back onto his shaft as he pushed into me. Our breathing became more labored, and I felt him stroking and thrusting deeper into me as his climax approached. He groaned into my ear, and his body stiffened, and I felt his cock flex in my ass and begin to pump his cum into me. He grabbed my stiff cock, and jerked on it a few strokes, and then I was shooting my cum across the mattress, groaning and writhing under his shaft in my butt. After it was over, he turned my head and kissed me on the lips. I'd never experienced a kiss like that before, and knew I wanted more from him. We dressed quickly, and in just moments after we'd rolled the mattress back up, the door was pulled open and two boys from high school stood there, looking at the two of us trying to get ourselves in order. "These two queers've been jackin' off. I kin smell it cain't you?" "Shut up ya dumb fucker," Steve said. "You know you come runnin' over here after school to choke yer chickin' too." "Yeah, what of it?" "Nuthin'," he grabbed my arm, and pulled me out of the shack past the two boys. "Enjoy yer selfs dickheads." The train yards had several empty boxcars sitting on the sidings. We stopped in a little Mexican grocery store, and bought some tortillas and some canned beans. Several candy bars, and some rat cheese and crackers filled out our food supply. Neither of us knew how long it would take to get to California. He thought we might need some water, but the only thing we could find was a gallon jug of distilled water for a steam iron. We took our stuff to the yards, and crawled into a boxcar. There were crates of oranges filling one end of the car, and the other had tow sacks filled with yellow onions. We arranged some of the orange crates into approximations of chairs, and sat down to wait. Later in the afternoon, the car was hooked up with an engine, and we hid ourselves when a yard worker came along and slammed the door closed. We heard him slap a lock on the door, and we were suddenly in pitch darkness, and terrified at what we were doing. The car jolted, and the onions collapsed, and rolled in a noisy heap, into the open space in the center of the car. The threat of being crushed was a real possibility, and we realized for the first time what a dangerous thing we'd undertaken. It was three days before the door to the boxcar was thrown open. We found ourselves not in sunny California, but a rainy and muggy Kansas City, Missouri. To say we were shocked, would be the understatement of the century. Worse yet, the yard dick arrested us and called the cops. Life for two dumb boys from Arizona was about to get complicated. End