This is a ten chapter romantic Crime thriller with consenting erotic and romantic sex, male on male violence and a lot of exciting cliff hangers at the endings of each chapter.
As is usual in my stories there are a large selection of colourful characters and not all of the people in my stories have happy endings.
You have been warned -- so if you like the kind of story that combines sex, violence, complicated and interweaving story lines, and that you can sit back each day and read a new chapter -- read on.
*
The guards were opening the iron box early the next morning where the prisoner called Brandon had been thrown in the night before. Jake and the other prisoners watched as they lined up ready for work detail under the blazing morning sun as the limp form of the black man was hauled out of the box where it was recessed into the ground. Last night the temperature had stayed hovering in the late eighties and inside the box it would have risen well past a hundred.
The men in the hut had heard the screams and begging to be let out by Brandon for hours until his noise had stopped sometime in the night, and then the terrible silence from outside had echoed through all the men's heads as they thanked God that they were not in the box that night instead of him.
Jake stood in line and kept his eyes on the figure lying on the ground where the guards had dropped it, still and soaked with the wet of his own sweat. One of the guards gave the prone man a kick, and getting no response bent down and placed his fingers at the prisoners throat looking for a pulse. Looking up at the other guard who stood there, the kneeling man shook his head, and they dragged the dead figure away and out of sight.
"Bastards, Brandon was only a kid," Jake heard a male voice growl behind him, "ended up here after stealing some food from a local store to feed his family, Got a young wife and two small kids."
Another voice added, "If I wasn't in these damn leg irons I'd like to get my hands on just one of those fucking bastards. Kill him; show him what it feels like to have real pain."
"You'd get shot as you ......"
"Be worth it to kill one, and dying don't scare me.....living like this for the next twenty years do."
Shuffling off in his line, chained to the five other men, Jake tried to shut down his feelings and concentrated on walking the five miles to the work station. The mood in the chain was one of anger mixed with sadness for the loss of one of their own, with an overriding feeling of helplessness.
*
Sheriff John Millet sat in the chair in front of the wooden desk of Mayor Gaudet and watched as the well padded man took his time lighting the cigar in his hand. Claude Gaudet always made a long ritual out of lighting the fat cigars he smoked, cutting the end with a silver antique cigar cutter, then smelling the cigar by passing it a number of times under his red veined nose, rolling the damn thing over the flame of the gold lighter he kept in the pocket of his suit vest, puffing and pulling on the cigar until the end started to glow, and then sitting back sighing as if he had just had an orgasm.
During the ritual John knew not to interrupt, but just sit there, patiently, until the Mayor decided he had finished and would address him.
"So Sheriff.....you went and made another offer to the girl? She biting?"
"She'll bite.....she's just holding out for pride.....she'll come 'round."
"Make it sooner than later......I need to sell off that last bit of land to allow for the road to go through. Promised them they would have it by next month. Nudge her harder to agree."
"I told you she'll sell.....water table is low and getting lower as the levees are biting in."
The Mayor sat forward, the smoke from the cigar swirling up towards the ceiling where a wooden fan turned, moving the hot humid air around the room. "I ain't asking......I'm telling you. Put some pressure on her....get her to agree.....maybe a little fire....burn down her crops....pull the rug from under her feet....she don't have crops to sell, she starves......she'll agree."
John felt the bile raise up in his stomach. "I'd rather try other ways, I don't think......"
"I don't pay you to think John........just do." The fat man interrupted, jabbing his cigar towards the Sheriff. "And do it soon....my patience is wearing thin."
John got up, hat in hand and looked down at the man in whose pocket he was deep in, nodded and said. "Sir." and walked out of the office, down the corridor and out of the building. Stopping on the sidewalk he placed his hat back on his head and ground his teeth. He wasn't happy about doing what the Mayor had suggested. He had feelings for Hannah and last night he realised he had handled her in a stupid and clumsy way, but damn it she made him feel like a schoolboy whenever he saw her.
She rarely came into town, even less now that her parents had died, sending instead her farm worker that had lived and worked on the farm for years. But every time she had come into the town he had watched her, yearned to ask her out, but she treated him with distain and he just always seemed to say the wrong things, did the wrong things around her. It had been like that for years and now the Mayor was asking him to do things against her, things that would hurt her and he was caught between a rock and a hard place. Knowing he couldn't do what he was being told to do, set fire to her crops and starve her out, nor could he let her stay there in the old place. It was prime land now, needed for the road building that would join up the towns in the area, and would put money in the pocket of the suit vest that was stretched tight across the big belly of the Mayor, and thus ultimately put money in his own pocket.
Striding down the street he walked towards his own office, trying to think of another way he could put the pressure on her to take the money and sell up without it getting out of hand.
*
Sitting at his desk in the office he once shared with Jake, Rory went over the accounts he was preparing for the towns only Pharmacist and noted that even in this difficult time of Great Depression they were doing alright. Later on he thought to himself would walk over and maybe buy Abigail some fancy female doodah that smelt good. Maybe some soap, or perfume, or maybe some of that bubble bath stuff that he had seen either Jean Harlow or Claudette Colbert bathe in, in some movie at the Movie Theatre a few months ago. He would love to see Abigail sunk up to those beautiful breasts of hers in white frothy bubbles, even better he would like to join her in those white frothy bubbles and make love to her in the big claw footed large bath that was in her house just on the outskirts of town.
Wiping his brow he sat back in the chair. It was hot, even though it was only mid morning, and getting hotter. Deciding to grab a cold drink at the small café over the road from his office he got up and grabbed his jacket from where it hung over the back of his chair and left, locking up the office to step out onto the street. Sheriff John Millet was just passing when he left, and the two men nodded at each other, aware that each held the secrets of the other when it came to the framing of Jake Bailey and the forcing out and selling on of the small farmers land to the state for the development of the new road.
John strode on past the other man, the tightness in his stomach a hard ball, the bad taste in his mouth at what he and Rory Kendal had done and what was now expected of him to do to Hannah.
*
Bending over in the back field Hannah picked the Blueberries from the bushes, placing them in the rapidly filling up old tin bucket next to her. Further up the field Frank her farm hand, his muscled body also bent over was also picking the fruit. She wore a large tattered straw hat to protect her fair skin from the blazing sun up in the sky, and rivulets of sweat trickled down her back and between the valley of her breasts as she worked. It was back breaking work, and something she wouldn't have been doing in the past. Back then, before the big financial crash, before the levees started to dry up the rice fields, back when her parents were alive, they could afford to hire men to do the harvesting. But that was all behind her now. Now to survive, the rice fields were gone, but the vegetables, fruit and her hens were left and she and Frank harvested the produce and then sold it off in town to local shops and restaurants for the small pittance to help them survive.
Frank would drive into town with the produce in the big old truck that had seen better days, and every so often she would go on in, buy what she needed and come back home, the feelings of loneliness assaulting her after each visit.
But still she held out against selling up.
This had been her parent's home, and her grandparent's home before them. It was where she had lived all her life. But without realising it she had made it a prison of her own making. And as the Depression bit down on the country, and as the falling water table dried up the fields, so was her life drying up.
Straightening up to stretch her aching back she looked out across the land and sighed. To be able to pick enough fruit to sell in town to pay for the taxes her and Frank would be picking fruit until late and it would be too dark to see. What she really needed was some more workers, but there wasn't any spare cash to pay them, even the odd out of work hungry men who came looking for work, those transient workers who had the look of utter desperation on their faces, those she would share a meal, give some of her father's clothes to, and let sleep in the old barn for a night before they went on their way in search of work.
There wasn't much around.
There wasn't much of anything anymore.
