Growing up on a huge farm in the middle of nowhere does not lead to much of a social life.
Blessed with a Father that was as honest as it was possible to be instilled things in Cary.
His Dad was a tall and lean man, hard as nails. His Mother was a round and pleasant woman who worked as hard keeping up the house and preparing meals as his Father worked outside.
Add in that Sundays meant church without fail, and every other day of the week began at 5 in the morning and ended around 9 each night?
Football, basketball, girls? That was not in the plan at all.
Cary's two older brothers escaped early, one off to the Coast Guard fresh out of high school and the other to the Army.
Of course they could have gone on to college but no way was Dad going to pay for it, so that meant go get a job.
Cary had been an afterthought, much younger than his two brothers so even survival was one of the issues. Eddie was the worst until one day he did just one mean thing too many and there was a long drawn out scuffle in the front yard which was rather muddy at the time.
Cary got marked up pretty good but so did Eddie, enough so that the picking on him stuff all ended. The teeth marks were the part that Eddie complained about the most. Mud mixed with blood didn't taste very good but Cary didn't care.
Fed up with the constant bullshit from his older brother, Cary had also let his fingernails grow longer than normal. He was smaller and younger, no real match in strength for his bratty brother, but he made up for it in speed and meanness. He glanced down at them after, relishing in the fact that they were mixed with mud and blood also.
His Dad sat on the porch smoking his pipe and watched. He never said a single word about it, just got out the hose and washed them both off before he would let them back into the house.
Eddie whined about how cold the water was, Cary just gritted his teeth and took it.
A year or so later Cary was barely fourteen when Eddie left for the Coast Guard. His oldest brother Sid was long since gone, just three days out of high school he boarded a train.
A couple of times Cary mentioned that he could drop out of school and then have more time to work around the farm. His Dad never said anything about that much, the look on his face told what he thought of that idea.
Just one time did he ever say anything, that was the last time it was mentioned.
"Boy, you are going to get an education, we pay taxes around here so you can and by God you are going to!"
That was pretty much the end of that idea.
Cary stayed the Summer after finishing school, and he could tell his Father was now hoping he would stick around and help run the ranch.
Cary had other plans by then, he had applied for and gotten a government loan to go on to State college. Straight A's and B's helped some with that, he even won a small scholarship.
There was quite a discussion once he got up nerve to tell his folks. He saw that his Dad was unhappy about that but he became resigned to it.
"Guess I can hire me a couple of them Mexicans to help out, it will be OK." He muttered, more or less to himself.
His Mom was so tickled pink she made donuts from scratch to celebrate. With two of her sons in the military smack dab in the middle of a war, she was happy to have one son not to worry about.
"You can maybe stay with your Uncle Ben and Aunt Ellen, I will give them a call and see, OK?" She said.
Ben was his Mom's half brother, he was a truck driver in his middle forties, his wife Ellen was quite a bit younger, barely over 35. Uncle Ben walked with a pronounced limp, one day he was in their living room and sat down, taking off his right leg.
That was somewhat of a shock to Cary. He wondered how Ben managed to drive that huge truck with a steel leg like that but he seemed to do just fine. Then he took off the other one, scratching the end of his stumps.
Cary decided right then that if his Uncle Ben could do that, then with two good legs he could do anything himself.
That all settled in at them asking for $200 a month for a bedroom and food, which was far better than Cary could manage anywhere else.
Fall came and Cary stepped off the bus in the midsized college town of Eugene.
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Cary quickly discovered that his Uncle Ben was gone nearly all the time, driving the big rigs all the way to the East coast and back.
The second thing he discovered was the nearly solid string of men, and a few women that came to the door every single day. They were there about 90 minutes and then left. The phone also rang several times each day, Ellen answered and spoke so softly he really couldn't hear.
The first couple of days he was too bashful to ask, then finally while Ellen was fixing some sandwiches one evening, he did.
"Oh, I am a massage therapist, honey. I do that for the extra money. Didn't you know that?" She told him, setting down the plate of food.
"Your Uncle Ben is only home two or three days then he is back on the road, so it keeps me busy and helps with the bills." She smiled at him, sitting down to eat.
Cary had only seen his Aunt Ellen perhaps a dozen times in his life, and he had no idea. In fact, he did not even know what that was for sure, so he asked.
"People get tired and sore, all stressed out so I do massages, you know, rubdowns? I have been doing them for nearly 10 years now and it's pretty good money."
Cary wasn't quite sure why his Uncle Ben didn't get upset at the idea of her rubbing strange men but it was none of his business so he kept mostly to his room when her customers came by.
He understood after just a couple of times that seeing a strapping young eighteen year old in the living room made some of Aunt Ellen's clients uncomfortable. So he did his best to make himself scarce, retreating to his bedroom to study.
But he was curious. Ellen used the back bedroom, and since the bathroom was between his room and her massage room, he couldn't even hear anything.
The customers would come in, Ellen led them down the hall. Soon he would hear the shower start for just a few minutes, then all became quiet.
Later he would hear his Aunt in the bathroom, she always went in and scrubbed it until it was spotless. Even his Mom could not keep their bathroom at home like that, not with three sons on a farm. It smelled just like the dentist's office he had gone to once.
Once when he was getting up to use the bathroom late one night, he saw the back door was slightly open so he peeked in.
All there was in there was a long narrow table with some pillows and sheets, a table and a lamp, a chair and some charts hanging on the walls.
Glancing around with curiosity, he noticed the windows faced the back yard. He had been in the back yard several times and just never thought about it. Those had heavy curtains that pulled down from a roller at the top, and there was a tiny gap of an inch or so at the bottom.
Cary closed the door and went back to his room.
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