CHAPTER 1
Romance, oh why couldn't he experience romance? Just the once would do, thought Tom O. Bates whose trail of mixed-bag seductions lay in his wake like feathers of a rooster attempting to escape the red-faced farmer's wife wielding an axe and intent on having her sleep interrupted by only one cock at dawn.
Tom was an unsuccessful writer of sexy novels, rejected because his sentences were unacceptable. Too long. Another reason was although his hero and heroine met in the first chapter or at least the reader learned they knew each other, Tom's hero kept screwing lesser female characters and inevitably the heroine looked elsewhere for the man of her dreams. Not good.
Almost as fatal for his literary ambitions, although he was American and lived in America he'd slept around widely in many countries, tainting his literary style. His humor and internationally expanded outlook were considered un-American by in publishing house assessment editors and they considered his style fell outside well-worn formulas. That of course was Tom's final flaw: he'd stupidly never attempted to publish outside of America.
Tom leaned over the stone abutment of a 350-year old bridge in Vermont where tree leaves were turning. A cock of the feathered kind had awoken him pre-dawn and now he rested, attempting to digest the cold cereal mash the lazy bitch of a farmer's wife had left out for him. Breakfast it was not. She deserved to be shafted by her husband after breakfast, as well as before dawn when the cock crowed.
Yawning and thinking he'd better fetch the cows in, the farmhand cum collector of reject slips from book publishers was about to attend to his lowly-paid chores when he noticed a young woman with golden hair floating down the stream, the hem of her white party dress up around her neck and clearly she was without panties. Tom crossed to the other side of the bridge and watched the corpse float headfirst onwards to where? He didn't know.
She'd be the kid of rich parents attending the reform school upstream for wayward girls. Probably she'd been discarded beside the stream last night by male staff rampaging through the drugged-up and sex-starved college students whose understanding or desire for reform was negligible, if not zero. Poor kid, apart from her depraved habits she looked okay to become a mother. He vulva appeared well-set between deathly white thighs anchored to quality-looking child-bearing hips, not that he was any authority but his imagination was vivid enough to allow him to think like that.
The two most feminine members of the 11-cow herd, Betsy and Maud, refused to come to the gate when Tom called them for milking. In fact they ignored him. Tom trudged down to them picking up a stick ready to discipline the bovine delinquents and found they were staring at the corpse. Miss White with her deathly white face and white dress was tangled by hair in the drooping willows and moaning.
Tom was halfway cracking the two cows along with the stick when he stopped.
Moaning?
"Christ!"
Tom raced back and waded into the stream backwater. He felt Miss Very White's face. It was icy cold. But so was the stream. It seemed impossible she could be alive, the cold all but closing down vital organs. But then he was a would-be author, although taking a break, with a mind where everything was possible. Authors needed that facility to extricate themselves when they boxed their characters into impossible situations.
Tom quickly dragged the corpse, er, young woman to the bank by the hair thinking she'd be a heavy sod to carry. Miraculously Betsy had returned alone to the bank and her huge dark eyes showed signs of fretting. Well at least they looked slightly animated. Tom threw the...er...woman over Betsy's back and the cow turned and almost trotted after the herd in the distance winding its way homeward. To the dairy parlor actually.
When Betsy reached the barn Tom pulled the woman to his chest and staggered inside and threw her on some loose hay and covered her with a canvas cow blanket. He left to hurry Betsy along to start milking before his boss Kevin finished yet another marathon bout of molesting his wife Mrs Judd. Kevin liked to watch Tom at work. Tom wondered if Kevin was perverted so never turned his back on him and that could be rather awkward, like when preceding Kevin through the doorway to the table. Presumable Kevin thought Tom had good manners, always asking Kevin to go first. With his thoughts multiplying like that Tom forgot about the lady in white in the barn. He'd intended taking proper blankets to her and a couple of hot water bottles.
After lunch Tom was sitting at the window idly watching the fat thighs of Mrs Judd above her stocking tops as she hung out washing when he began thinking of the shapely thighs of the young woman in white.
"Christ! I forget about her. I've left her to die."
Tom scooped some hot soup from the pot and hurried to the barn. Miss White was actually quite warm with some color in her cheeks. He soaked his dirty handkerchief into the soup and pressed it against Miss White's lips. The lips moved and Miss White swallowed. Progress was slow but after thirty minutes Tom stopped, pleased Miss White had received some victuals. He checked under the blankets and found the water-induced wrinkles were receding. Stroking the soft hair between her legs he had romantic thoughts and wondered if she'd ever invite him to enter.
Walking back to the farmhouse to begin scrapping off peeling paint, his afternoon chore, Tom went by Kevin who was watching a ram mount a couple of sheep who didn't even bother stop grazing. That's typically Kevin and that's typically females, Tom thought sourly.
Just when he was about to begin scraping paint Tom thought...barn...Kevin. Christ if Kevin went into the barn he'd molest that woman for at least an hour and in her unconscious and weakened state she'd be unable to fight off the fiend. He raced inside, knowing Mrs Judd would be watching Soaps on TV and phoned the Sheriff's Department to report a missing blonde young woman in white.
"Yes, there's an APB out on a 22-year-old missing from the Walton Finishing School for Young Ladies. Tom Bates you jerk, you've kidnapped the sweet young thing and had your way with her you pig and now you've been forced by your guilty conscience to report her," said the dispatcher, who was a friend of Tom's mother. "Deputies will be coming out to get you both -- you'll swing for this you creep."
Friend of his mother's? Friend seemed unlikely he thought, not yet ready to panic.
Tom was sure the death penalty in his state was limited to crimes against the Governor and burning the flag. Or was that correct? Kidnapping -- but what about kidnapping? He ran off for a nervous pee thinking he should be a hero, not a fucking menace to society. That was Kevin.
Deputies in two cars arrived, sirens wailing, followed by a ambulance that overtook them in the long straight to the farm gate corner. A deputy immediately handcuffed and then cuffed Tom and read him his rights. He then snarled, "Lead us to her you weirdo."
Minutes later Kevin, who because of excessive ear wax had not heard the sirens, was approaching the barn when the ground shook as the three vehicles roaring towards him went by on both sides, braking heavily. He was handcuffed as a suspected accomplice.
One of the deputies cuffed Miss White awake and although she was barely conscious he pointed to Tom and Kevin said, "Tell me Miss in your own words, are these the two guys who kidnapped and had sex with you repeatedly?"
"I-I've never seen those g-guys, ever."
"Of course, you were blindfolded all the time. Get her to hospital guys, I want her medically examined. Call Deputy Jones and ask her to meet you there and stay with the kid until sperm samples have been retrieved."
Kevin protested his innocence but said if he was being charged with any crime he'd like an hour with the young woman to justify the charge.
A deputy, father of a 22-year-old daughter, attacked and Kevin hit the ground unconscious.
Tom looked sympathetically at Miss White and she whined, "Get away from me you smelly farmhand."
"There, conclusive evidence," said Tom's arresting deputy as he clouted Tom's head against the roofline above the car door, gleefully failing to follow correct procedures.
The Sheriff stood in front of the bruised and battered Tom, whose right eye was almost closed, the small finger on his left hand was dislocated and he had welts from rubber tubing all over his back and shoulders.
