Josie Wilson watched the tree-filled landscape scroll by from the inside of the carriage, the rhythmic clip-clop of the horses nearly lulling her to sleep. But she fought the urge to doze—and the roaming hand of the "gentleman" beside her, who seemed bent on touching her thigh, protected as it was by her best blue checked dress, four frilly petticoats, ankle high buttoned boots, pantaloons, and, of course her chemise. En route to room in at the Douglas home and teach in the schoolhouse in Fairfax, Kentucky, she was eager for her assignment to begin. A spinster at 26, Josie enjoyed the relative autonomy of the classroom and her important task of filling young minds with knowledge that would prepare them to raise families and run farms of their own.
The Douglas household was a busy and crowded one. Josie was lucky to have her own curtained room, which barely fit a bed, her trunk, and a small washstand. In the loft above her were the four Douglas girls, ranging in age from 5 to 12. In the bedroom of Joe and Edna Douglas, next to her own, slept also the youngest two Douglas boys, a baby and a toddler. Joe and Edna were a handsome couple. He was tall and broad and tanned from the fields, with green eyes and tousled brown hair. Edna was a small, attractive, stout woman.
Apparently the Douglases had not yet completed their family, thought Josie wryly that night, as the sounds of their rutting came clearly through the heavy curtain between the bedrooms. A child of a widowed mother, she had never seen the activity she was now hearing so clearly.
Fighting her embarrassment—but lured by her curiosity—she crept out of bed and peered around the edge of the curtain where the log walls created a small space. In the candlelight she saw Edna on her back, legs apart, and nightgown unbuttoned to reveal her large breasts heaving. Joe, his face sweaty and dark hair damp, was kneeling between her legs and kissing her nipples while his naked buttocks moved up and down. Josie saw a pink sac between his thighs and a hard column of glistening flesh joining the pair together before she lost her courage and returned to her bed. "Men!" she sighed. "Selfish beasts, only out for their own pleasure."
The next morning Josie was quiet at breakfast and could barely face Joe, so embarrassed was she by the memory of his muscular, thrusting behind, powerful thighs, and stiff manhood. "I'll come 'round and pick you up when school's done," he said, and she nodded, glad to escape to the relative freedom of her new class. "Bye papa!" yelled the Douglas girls as they streaked out the door for the walk to school, laughing.
The smaller schoolchildren, a passel of young girls and boys with scrubbed faces and well-worn jumpers and coveralls, were a familiar challenge to Josie. This was her third school in five years, and she felt up to the task. She called the role, obtaining names and ages. "Clarise Woods?"
"Present, Miss Wilson."
"Age?" "I'm 8, ma'am."
"Peter Fielding?"
"Present. I'm 10."
The three older boys who sat in the back of her new classroom must be almost done with their schooling, she thought, frowning, as they jostled and joked. They looked full-grown. They were a man's height and weight, and looked out of place with the younger children. "John Wacker?"
"Present. I'm 18. We three're all 18. Ma'am," he added with a sneer.
"Don't you mean wanker?" jeered one of the older boys.
"That's enough!" Josie said. "I expect quiet and obedience in my classroom."
"Oooh, obedience," mocked one boy, but then they were quiet.
As the day progressed, she drilled the children on their ABCs, checked their reading levels, tested multiplication and division skills, and quizzed them on geography. Throughout, the three older boys teased and taunted, tripped the younger students, threw wads of paper, and generally created disruption, despite her best efforts. "Why are you here if you don't want to learn?" she finally asked them in frustration.
"Because if we wasn't here, our pa's would make us work," drawled Tom, a large boy, whose dirty blond hair hung in his face. "This is our last chance to get us some schoolin' and not have to farm."
"How did your first day go?" asked Joe.
"The Martin boys and Tom Campbell were awful," said the oldest Douglas girl. "Even worse than with Mrs. Locke."
"Is that true, Miss Wilson?" he inquired.
"Unfortunately yes," Josie answered, still having trouble looking him in the eye.
"I'll go along to school with you in the morning, then. Keep an eye on things and thrash one of 'em to teach 'em a lesson. They ought to leave you alone after that."
Joe was as good as his word, and it didn't take long to find an infraction worth punishing. "Ben Martin!" he shouted to the oldest of the three troublemakers as he strode into the room, "get outside and cut a switch. You need a good whuppin'."
At the edge of a row, the little Taylor boy was still crying, nursing a bruised cheek after Ben tripped him. Faced with an angry man bigger than he was, Ben obliged, returning with a switch. Joe grabbed him by the ear and marched him up to the front of the classroom.
"Drop yer drawers," he ordered.
"What?! Here? I can't!" the boy answered.
"Fine. But I guarantee it'll be worse for you." Easily clamping both of Ben's wrists behind his back with one hand, Joe unbuttoned the boy's breeches, which dropped and puddled around his ankles. His shirttails had not kept up with a recent spurt to his adult height, and his large family didn't waste scarce pennies on summer drawers for boys. The net effect was that Ben's genitals were exposed, and though he struggled, with his arms pinned behind him, he could do nothing to hide them. The whole class tittered and pointed. Most humiliating of all, feeling the breeze on his nakedness, his penis started to swell.
"Look, it's growing!" shrieked a girl.
Ben wanted to sink through the floor.
"Come on, you ain't got nothing they haven't seen before," noted Joe, turning him around. "Bend over."
Josie, simultaneously attracted and repelled, couldn't tear her eyes away from the half-naked young man, whose stiffening organ she glimpsed. He bent over with his hands on the desk, exposing his buttocks to the thin switch. Ben shouted and cried out as Joe delivered a long series of stinging whips, alternating between one cheek and the other, each marking a pink path on his white skin. He wriggled back and forth trying to avoid the blows, spreading his legs in the process and exposing his testicles, which occasionally also bore the brunt of the switch.
When the boy was sobbing out loud, his ass a bruised map of pink and purple, Joe set down the switch, slapped him hard on the sorest part of his anatomy, and said, "you ain't going to sit down without feeling this for a week, and your buddies are next if I get wind of any more of this foolishness. You hear me?"
Ben and the other boys nodded, their eyes round as saucers. And for a couple of weeks, it was quiet.
