Culvert Mozart Lane Ch 02

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One winter day, I was doing my daily walk checking my traps in the woods. At the time my trap line was a triangle starting near the barn, crossing the creek and going to the southeast corner of our land, over to the southwest corner, then crossing the creek again on the way back.

I was angry that I'd caught two mink but something had eaten most of them. I saw wolf tracks near them and some of my other traps near the southwest corner. The wolf had circled all three empty traps, but hadn't gotten within two feet of them.

As I crested the hill near my trap at the corner of my land, I saw a man standing about ten yards from a wolf caught in a trap! They were fifty or so yards from me, on tribal land that adjoined mine. He was taking a blanket out of his backpack. As I approached I saw he was a tall Native American, or what we called an 'Indian' at the time. In my 24 years, I'd never talked to a person who wasn't White before. I was nervous and quite suspicious, but resisted the urge to take the 30/30 rifle from my shoulder or the.22 pistol from my belt. I thought I'd seen him at the fur trader's a few times. I held up my hand and called out, "Hi, I'm Bruce. My land ends at the tree over there." I pointed to it.

He waved back. "Hello. I'm Pine, Pinesong Rivers. Help me release him."

"What? Wolf pelts go for thirty bucks! That's a week's pay!"

He looked at me disapprovingly and frowned. "The pack's leader is getting old and he's their only young male. They'll be in trouble without him. I'll toss the blanket over his head and grab him. You release the trap."

I admired his bravery. There's no way I'd get my hand near a wild wolf's mouth! I shrugged. "Okay, if you're sure." I took out my trap bar, which was like a crowbar but thinner and lighter.

"On three. One, two, THREE!" He threw the blanket over the wolf's head and grabbed him around the neck, while I pushed the spring down to release the trap. A second later, the wolf was twenty yards away and running fast.

Pine said, "It's good he won't come back for a long time. He ate some of my muskrats."

"He got a couple of my mink, too."

"I use conibear 110 traps in a wood box for mink, so coyotes and wolves don't get 'em."

"Hmmm. I have good luck with number 2 traps, but a coyote ate one last year too. Using a box is a good idea. Thanks!"

"You're the culvert guy, right? My nephew could use a job next summer, if you need more diggers."

"Sure. Have him visit me sometime."

I saw Pine near the border between my land and the tribe's a few more times that year, and we swapped stories and ideas. We eventually became good friends and his nephew James worked for me a couple of summers.

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Two days before Thanksgiving I brought Jake and Nora some cheese, butter, and two rabbits I'd shot. I invited them to Thanksgiving dinner, and they happily accepted. Jake said he wished they had more children, partly for help with the farm work, and I agreed. For four years after the birth of their first son Roger, they had no luck getting pregnant. My Elaine hadn't gotten pregnant in eight years of marriage either.

While Jake walked down their long driveway to get the mail, Nora revealed a big secret. Elaine didn't want any more kids, so at the right time of the month she drank a special tea. As I recall it had petals from two kinds of flowers, plus roots and seeds from a certain plant. It would stop a baby from growing in her! She hadn't even told me she didn't want more kids!

Nora wondered if their problem was with Jake. She didn't think it was her, since she had a son. She made me uncomfortable with the fact that for over three years they'd made whoopie at least twice a week, which was triple what I got. She blushed as she also told me Jake was willing to go without the good stuff if she kissed the right part of him the right way. She was content doing it for him often, since he took great care of her and her son.

My face must have been as red as hers when Jake handed Nora a letter from her mother and drastically changed the subject. "I have some spare lumber from building the new hog barn. I think there's enough left for an ice fishing shack. Would you give me a hand building one and getting it to the lake, Bruce?"

I smiled and replied, "Sure! You supply the nails and the beer."

Putting together the frame, walls, and roof only took us an afternoon. Most ice shacks were 6 by 6 or 4 by 8 feet, and a few were only the size of an outhouse, barely big enough for one person to sit down out of the wind, with just a peep hole to look outside.

Ours would be an 8 by 12-foot ice fishing palace, with three windows! We built it in two halves we could move without too much trouble, then bolt it together once it was in place. Jake had replaced the wood stove in his kitchen a few weeks before. We put the old one in the shack with galvanized sheet steel under and behind it, then put in a chimney. On the side opposite the door, we built a long bench with a big storage box under the seat.

We attached a card table to a wall on hinges, so we could flip it up or down easily. On the other walls we put in screw hooks for the ice auger, ice saw, a radio, a few folding chairs for when friends came over, and several other things. I put another couple of hooks in the ceiling to hang lanterns, in case we wanted to ice fish after dark.

Eventually it had a coffee pot, plates, utensils, and a couple of pans to cook up some fish on the spot. Later we even put in a small flip-down kitchen counter with a removeable basin so we could use water heated on the stove to wash up after meals. We laughed a good bit when Nora jokingly asked where we were going to put the bathtub.

Once we had it loaded on a wagon and tied it down, Jake nervously told me, "We really want more kids. I think maybe... maybe I can't." He rested a hand on my arm. "You're my best pal, Bruce. I... I love you like a brother. If you and Nora would... uh... If we could have another baby and uh... and if nobody found out... ah..." He was awkwardly giving me permission to make love with his pretty wife!

I stared at the ground with him and thought quite a while. "Jake, you know a married man would never do anything like that." He smiled happily when I winked. "Let's get this sucker to the lake, so I can be home by milkin' time."

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When the ice was finally thick enough, Jake and I dragged the two halves of our ice shack onto the lake. I bolted it together as he gathered some wood for the stove. Soon after, we were sitting in our new home away from home, drinking coffee and listening to a football game on the radio. Every minute or two, we'd look out the windows at our tip-up fishing rigs, waiting for a flag to show. There were no other shacks or fishermen for a good 100 yards.

Talking about radio reminds me, electricity was quite a new thing. Our farms had only been wired up a year before my marriage. We had four light bulbs in the barn, two in the machine shed, another on a pole in the yard, and only five in the whole house. We were content with just those, a refrigerated tank for the milk we sold, and two outlets in the kitchen; up until we could afford a television in 1954. We only got two black and white channels, but it was a marvelous improvement over sitting around talking or singing while we were cooped up inside most of the winter.

Well, on our ice shack's first day of use, Nora opened the door and walked in. "You're not wearing your coats? I brought lunch and blankets in case you got cold." I smiled and proudly said, "The shack's as comfortable as the kitchen at home! Take your gloves off and feel it." I pointed to the thermometer, which showed 65 degrees. Fahrenheit of course, there weren't fancy metric degrees in those days.

She handed her husband Jake a bag, then happily took off her gloves, hat, and winter coat. "I brought sandwiches, peanut butter and jam, and ham with cheese." She paused a moment and awkwardly said, "Jake, I think you should um, go check on the hog barn roof."

My best pal put his winter garb back on. He had a sad and embarrassed expression on his face as he walked toward me and the door. He quietly whispered in my ear, "She likes if you kiss... uh between her legs."

He awkwardly cleared his throat and told us in his normal voice, "Yup, there's a corner of the barn roof where the tin flaps in the wind sometimes. The other pigs don't mind much, but it scares the bajeebus out of the big boar. I'll be back in a couple hours." I knew it was only a ten-minute walk to his farm and back, and fixing the roof corner wouldn't take more than a few minutes. He was leaving the two of us alone for a shameful but important reason.

I saw him through the window, walking away slowly. Nora spread a blanket on the bench as I said, "You and Jake want another kid and he doesn't think he can do it. I feel a little guilty, but..."

She cut me off with, "We need a baby, and you need something your wife won't give you. We'll do what needs to be done." She reached under her long dress and pulled her panties down to her ankles. "You don't have to be nude but pants won't help." She giggled as she sat on the bench and unzipped me.

I pulled my jeans down a little and the guilt returned. I started to ask, "Nora, are you really sure..." She interrupted me by taking out my Willy and licking it! Nobody had ever done that before! It felt WONDERFUL! My conscience did all it could, so I closed my eyes and imagined my wife Elaine was polishing my sausage instead. I was close to popping off when she stopped to hike up her dress and lay down.

I leaned down toward her waist and licked my lips, looking at her fur patch and preparing to kiss the most mysterious of the holies. She gently pushed my face away. "This is about me getting a baby and you feeling good. Anything else would hurt Jake even more."

I somehow felt terrible and highly aroused at the same time. I climbed atop her and gave my friends what they wanted. It only took a few exciting and dirty minutes. When it was over, I took a sandwich from the bag and ate slowly. I struggled with my guilt as I stared out the window.

Wearing her winter coat again, Nora said in a formal and matter-of-fact tone of voice, "Thank you. We'll do this again until I'm in the family way." She put on her hat as she left. I looked outside and saw her wipe her eyes as she walked away.

A little while later Jake returned. He asked, "So how did it go?"

"I'm so sorry, Jake. I did what you wanted." I felt like crying too.

"It's all right, pal. If you're helping us, you should feel good. Thanks." He patted my shoulder.

We didn't catch any fish, and our next words were exchanged many hours later. The sun was starting to set when I told him, "I need to go home for milking."

It excited and embarrassed me when he said, "See you here tomorrow, after you two... do it again. Nine in the morning?"

"Yup, I'll see her then, and see you after."

I got up to leave and put on my coat, thinking about what I'd tell my wife Elaine about that day. As I left he said, "You're a good man, Bruce. The best pal a guy could ask for." My nagging conscience hurt me more than watching him die many years later.

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One afternoon in the shack we heard a speech from the president, 'Give 'em Hell' Harry Truman. He said the evil Russian Commies were blockading the city of Berlin, and America and her allies needed to do everything we could to help. Jake told me about his time there, after Germany surrendered. It was either very sad, walking around the mostly destroyed city, or very tense. He was a sergeant in charge of a squad, standing opposite a squad of Russians. They stared at each other through a barbed wire fence all day for months.

He also told me about a moral quandary he had on a two-day leave. Exploring the American sector, he met an attractive young widow with a little boy and a baby. Their home had been bombed out and they were living in the remains of a ruined barber shop. She agreed he could to whatever he wanted with her body, all weekend long, for only a box of twelve c-ration Army meals. He felt bad and added some cash before he left. It's one of those situations where nobody can really say what the right thing is. He took advantage of a woman in distress, but if he hadn't the family would have starved. He said he felt the same way about marrying Nora before she was even 19.

He finished the story as I saw a flag pop up through the window. I shouted "FISH!" as I ran out. I pulled mightily, but it was too big to fit through the ice hole. Jake had to widen the hole with an axe while I kept hold of the line. The catfish was a heck of a whopper, 54 pounds! It was by far the biggest fish either of us ever caught, or even saw somebody catch. I didn't think to check until months later, but it was only a few pounds short of the state record! We cleaned and split it before it froze, and we each took half home to our amazed wives.

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By the time the ice was thinning in the spring and we needed to move the shack off the lake, my guilt had fully faded away. I looked forward to the three or four times a week I'd get together with Nora and wet her womanhood. About half the time she'd finish me in her mouth first, but she always started that way. Elaine wouldn't even look at it when she did me by hand, but Nora didn't mind swallowing! Her lips and tongue gave me more joy than Elaine ever did, let alone Nora's tight and fuzzy funhole!

Partly as an alternate place for our illicit meetings, I set up a hunting blind in the woods. It had a wooden roof painted a dark green, chest-high log walls, a large bench, and a big tin box where I stored a few things. I built it with a two-foot gap between the roof and tops of the walls, to give plenty of space to see and shoot from. On the second morning that Nora met me there, she told me the good news. "Jake and I are so happy! I'm going to have a baby!"

"That's great! I'm so happy for you!" We hugged quite a while. I worried that she wouldn't want to do sexy things with me anymore, until she sat and said, "Drop your pants. You deserve a big 'Thank you'." She joyfully jacked me into her mouth, before leaving with a wide smile.

We reduced our meetings to twice a week, but she polished my knob every time. She stopped two months before our daughter Renee was born, and didn't meet me for three months afterward. When she finally did, she asked me something that nearly blew my mind. "Bruce, you've been great to us, helping our family grow. You deserve something special. How would you like to try my back door? My bottom hole?"

I couldn't believe it. "YOUR BUM? You mean it?"

"Jake likes it a lot now, and he doesn't mind if you try it. Do you want to?"

"Uh..." I couldn't believe her offer was real!

She handed me a small bottle, then pulled up her skirt as she leaned over the bench. "Get us nice and slippery. I think you'll like it too."

All I'll say is I had one of the best and dirtiest times of my life. She didn't walk away smiling but didn't complain either. We started trying for another child the next day.

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