I didn't know if it was the unseasonal heat or the heavy work we'd done that day or Jake's scary stories or Miguel's empty bed that kept me awake in the dormitory that night, but I had nervous energy to spare. I would doze, but I'd wake up with a start and look over at Miguel's bed, the emptiness of it now explained, and then I'd check all of the other beds to see in guys were there. And sometimes they weren't, and then I'd speculate. Did they get up to piss or get a smoke or just stand outside the Quonset hut dormitory that was like an oven in the October North Carolina heat? Or were they hunting or being hunted.
I had gravitated for the fall harvesting toward Lunsford Farm in Yanceyville, North Carolina, dead center in the east-west range of the state but just a few miles south of the Virginia border because of who I was and what I wanted and what Lunsford Farm tolerated. But it was because of what Lunsford Farm tolerated—encouraged even—that had me on edge and nervously watching the movements of those around me.
And maybe, just maybe, it was my own need that kept me awake. Miguel had been a relief valve for me. He and Raul. It was that college student—Frank Lunsford's young man—who I'd really like to get to. But thus far I had stayed with the other migrant workers—mostly with those from the south of the border, like me. In scratching my itch, I'd had to waltz around the big, black Cuban, Duardo, who was fucking the same young Mexicans I was, but thus far we'd managed.
There also was the American black, Rufe, a tall, gangly, rangy long-time worker here, who was only half here mentally, but whose snake-like dong went with his height and thinness and either was an object of fear or desire for those he sniffed after. Whether fear or desire depended on how masochistic the day worker poor-white-trash types were who came to work here straight out of high school because their prospects weren't any greater and because Lunsford Farm was a haven for young guys wanting to be dicked. Rufe stuck mostly with the white day worker twinks, like Matt and Shawn, because he had some sort of mad on about those of us coming up from south of the border for the farm work and, he said, taking work from real Americans. He'd go around muttering under his breath something about the only good "wetback" being a dead "wetback."
He didn't say that right to my face or Duardo's, and he was respectful enough to us—because if he wasn't either one of us was quite capable of kicking his ass up between his ears—but he steered clear of the Mexican boy pussy and, despite being black himself, strictly stuck to white meat. That was fine with Duardo and me; it meant more spicy meat for us. But with Miguel gone now, Duardo and I had to sift in some white meat from time to time ourselves. We both had to have it nearly daily. It wasn't all that hard, though. Although the white-trash day workers weren't bunked here in our dormitory, they wanted it so bad that they often were here at night.
Duardo usually kept to other Hispanics, but he was eying the young, white college student, Kyle, today, I had noticed. But Kyle was Frank Lunsford's. I didn't think either of us would get a piece of that plump, young tail. It was tantalizing, though—especially today, when we'd all been in the pumpkin patch pulling out pumpkins for the big sale at the farm's produce store out on highway 158. The apples, raspberries, tomatoes, and corn also needed to be harvested, but this was the big push weekend for those buying pumpkins for the Halloween season they marked here in the States. So we were all in the pumpkin patch, working double time. Even Lunsford's young man, Kyle, had been there—all of us stripped down to the waist, muscles straining, sweat pouring off our bodies in the unseasonable heat.
It wasn't until today that I saw how tantalizingly arousing Kyle's body was. I could see that he had as much affect that way with Duardo as with me. Duardo moved around all day, eyes glued to Kyle, with a raging hard on—and Duardo's hard ons definitely were raging. The white boy, Kyle, could hardly miss Duardo's interest—or mine, for that matter. And he was being a little tease with us.
Kyle usually worked in the produce store and only on weekends, as he was in school as some North Carolina university. I had no idea how cut and perfectly muscled his body was until today—and what sultry, sulky dark-haired, "come-and-get-me" luscious looks he had. He had bedroom eyes and thick lips that looked at a man in a knowing, interested way. I thought, but couldn't be totally sure, that he was doing this purposely to make men lust after him—which both Duardo and I, and even the overseer Jake, did that day—but I did know that Frank Lunsford was a lucky man to have Kyle in his bed, if only for the weekends.
But it was more than the presence of Kyle in the pumpkin patch that set the tension of the day for the migrant workers. Miguel had been missing for two days. Jake, who slept in the dormitory with the migrant workers and who had worked at Lunsford Farm for a good many years, dismissed this as a concern for those two days, telling us that it was a normal occurrence for migrant workers to pick up stakes and just leave. I normally would have agreed with him, but today was payday for the past month's labor. No migrant worker I knew would take off two days before payday.
And then, while we were out in the pumpkin patch, near the main house, a police cruiser had driven up, two officers went into the house, and, after a while, Mr. Lunsford came out of the house with them and left with them in the cruiser. Jake had gone up to the house to see what was what, and when he came back, he told us that the police had found a body in the woods nearby and wanted to take Mr. Lunsford off to discuss the matter.
At dinner that night, eaten at picnic tables outside the dormitory building, and with several of the day workers hanging around for free food and maybe a roll in the hay later, Jake completely changed his tune. The body had been confirmed as that of Miguel. It had been found less than a mile away from the farm in woods that were part of a huge partial owned by a logging firm but nowhere near being ready to be logged again. Not only did Jake say it was Miguel, but he told us stories of other young migrant workers who had been found dead near here during previous harvest seasons. Duardo chimed in to confirm there had been two in the previous season when he'd worked here, and the other long-term worker, Rufe, nodded his head in agreement.
Jake proceeded to tell us of the circumstances of the deaths and it wasn't pretty, involving slashing with a large-blade knife. He went on to spin a horror tale for us as he'd been doing almost nightly in the weeks coming up to Halloween.
"Way back, nearly two hundred years ago," he said, "the farm house here was once the mansion house for a plantation that covered nearly this whole county. Some say I'm related to this here family, which would be something, wouldn't it?—under other circumstances me owning this whole kit and caboodle rather than just herding you lot around for Frank Lunsford."
After patting himself on his back with that claim, Jake continued. "Well, that didn't happen, because that there house over there was the scene of a mass murder of the entire family save my ancestor who was off studying. Some dozen darky slaves—young men all—rose up and slaughtered the family one night—close to Halloween, they say hereabouts—in their beds. Since then, legend has it that the house is haunted by the ghosts of the family, who won't rest until a dozen young men are sacrificed to make up for the slaves' crimes."
