Date: Fri, 22 Mar 2013 14:53:46 -0700 (PDT)
From: Macout Mann <macoutmann@yahoo.com>
Subject: SUMMER JOB 1

This is the story of a city boy who worked for a summer in rural Alabama
shortly after World War II.

The story is fiction and it involves explicit homosexual activity.  If such
is offensive to you or if you are underage, please read no further.
Otherwise, please enjoy.

I would love to hear your reactions to the story.  Anything like a summer
adventure you've had?  All comments or criticisms are welcome, and will be
politely answered.  macoutman@yahoo.com.

Also, please remember that although you may read these stories for free,
your contributions keep nifty.org operating without charge.  Please give
what you can.


				SUMMER JOB

			      By Macout Mann

				     I

I grew up in Birmingham, Alabama back before the Red Mountain Expressway
was built. In fact our house, near Key Circle, stood right in the middle of
what is now the expressway.

I was a good looking kid, brown hair and eyes, almost six feet tall, with a
swimmer's body honed from almost daily summertime workouts in the country
club pool and daily wintertime sessions at the school gym.  I was popular
with the girls, had made out a few times, and was well liked by most guys.
I was totally straight.  Was that is.

My name's Joel, by the way, Joel Estes.

My dad was a prominent attorney, and the summer I graduated from high
school, he told me to find a summer job.  That's what boys were supposed to
do, and he was a firm believer in doing what you are supposed to do.  I was
looking forward to the fall, when I would head to Vanderbilt.  That's where
my dad had gone both to college and to law school and where my grandfather
had been chancellor.

I was much more interested in playing around with the gals and having fun
swimming and playing tennis with my best friend, Eric, than I was trying to
get on at a gas station or a grocery store, much less being a grunt doing
landscaping or construction work.  Also, my dad was away in Atlanta,
working on an important case, so I wasn't looking for work very
energetically.

So you can imagine my surprise, when about ten days later I got a
long-distance call from my dad, telling me to pack my bag and the next
morning head for the bus station.  There would be a ticket waiting for me,
and I was to take the 7AM bus to Camden.  There would be someone there to
take me to Sykes, where I would be employed by the Sykes Sawmill Company.

I damned well should've looked harder for work at home.

It turned out that the Sykes Sawmill Company was a family owned enterprise
and that Sykes was a company town in the truest sense of the word.  It sat
in the middle of a 197,000 acre Alabama forest, totally owned by the
company.  Cutting timber year round, the company milled both pine and
hardwood.  Starting to harvest trees on one side of the forest, and
planting new trees as old ones were felled, the company had a never-ending
supply of timber.  Thirty or forty years later, when crews got back to
where their predecessors had started, the new growth would be fully mature
and ready to be cut anew.

The town consisted of a general store and post office, the company offices,
the mill, a hotel, and a hundred or so assorted houses, all of which
belonged to the company.  The houses ranged from the Sykes' residences,
which were large and comfortable, but certainly not opulent, to little more
than sharecropper cabins, where the mill workers, timber crews, and their
families lived.  There were less modest homes for middle and upper
management folk.  But everyone but the Sykes paid rent to the company and
bought and charged all their necessities at the company store. Everyone was
paid once a month.  Their pay was in cash, and it was what was left after
taxes, rent, and what was owed to the store had all been deducted.

The hotel was American Plan and served visiting salesmen and others having
business with the company, but was also the residence of unmarried
employees who were not part of other employee families.

There was a battered pickup waiting when the bus stopped at Camden.  It was
driven by a guy in bib overalls and nothing else.  He was maybe a couple of
years older than me.  He introduced himself as "Paul Earl."  We shook hands
and began the twenty-mile drive to Sykes.

Paul Earl told me he grew up in Sykes, left and joined the navy, decided
not to re-up, and was back home at least for a while.  He'd been working on
a timber crew, but had hurt his leg, so was left to do odd jobs for a
while.  He was a blond with blue eyes, medium height, crew cut, well built.
If I knew then what I know now, I would have been drooling like a sheep dog
in heat.

I told him I didn't know what I'd be doing.  He said it'd probably have
something to do with the survey project.  The company had lost track of
where all their land was and had hired a civil engineering firm to resurvey
the whole spread.  I asked him what there was to do for fun in Sykes.

"Not a fucking thing," he answered.  "There's only one unmarried gal in the
whole town, and her older sister got knocked up by one of the boys; so her
old man won't let her even look at a guy, much less date.

"Once a gal graduates from County High, she heads off to Selma or
Montgomery.  Most of the boys do too.  There's only five or six white guys
our age left in Sykes.  Working for the company's the only thing there is
to do.

"I'm heading out again as soon as I get enough cash to get away."

"Some of the guys that live at the hotel play poker every night.  A guy
comes every couple of weeks and shows movies for a quarter.  The married
men spend all their time off work fucking their wives or sleeping."

The truck pulled into town.  I guess you could call it a town.  We drove up
to the office.

Paul Earl said he'd take "my shit" over to the hotel.  "That's where you'll
be staying," he told me.

With a great deal of trepidation, I climbed the six well-worn steps to the
doors leading into the office.  A plain Jane twenty some-odd woman with no
makeup welcomed me.  "Joel Estes?" she said, "Welcome to Sykes.  I'll take
you to Mr. Malone."

Bill Malone was the office manager.  He was a thin, pasty-faced guy with a
squeaky tenor voice. He seemed happy to see me and was pleasant enough.  He
wore a dress shirt with no tie and chinos, which I discovered was more or
less the uniform for male office workers.  That was good, because that's
all I'd brought.  It had been what all the guys wore at school.

He asked me if I was ready to start to work.  I told him "yes," but that I
had no idea what I was to be doing.

"You...?"  He was confused.  "Well, Mr. Ramsey Sykes called me and said to
cancel all our ads, that you'd be here today.  I thought..."  After a long
pause he asked, "You do type?"

"Well, I took a typing course, 'cause my dad said everybody needed to know
how to type these days.  I didn't do as well as the girls in the commercial
program, but I did pass."

"And your map reading skills?"

"I passed geography," I said.  "I can read a map good enough to get from
one place to another."

He was becoming quite perturbed.  "Does `township,' `range,' `section,'
mean anything to you?"

"Land, you mean?  I know my dad has some property that he says is about a
section."

Malone picked up the telephone and a moment later said, "Kate, get
Mr. Ramsey for me, please," and hung up.  I noticed for the first time that
the phone had no dial on it.

I sat silently.  After a moment he said, "Nobody told you what this job
entails?"

"I'm sorry, Mr. Malone," I responded.  "All I know is that I got a phone
call from my dad.  He said I was to come, and I came.  It can be very
painful to disobey my father."

The telephone rang and Malone picked it up.  "Yes, sir," he said.  "Sorry
to bother you, sir, but the Estes boy is here."

"But, sir, the reason I'm calling is that he is totally unqualified."

"Yes, sir, I think he can type."

So far, I could hear only Malone's side of the conversation.  I was
beginning to think I might get a reprieve.

As the call continued, however, I still couldn't hear what Ramsey Sykes was
saying, but the crackle from the earpiece became louder and louder.

"Yes sir.  We'll take care of it, sir.  You can count on us sir.  Thank
you, sir!"  The call ended.

"He says to teach you what you don't know."  His was the sound of total
defeat.

I later learned that Ramsey and Dorothea Sykes had moved to Chicago after
their father died and only occasionally visited Alabama.  Their younger
brother, Matthew, was relegated to running day to day operations and was
the only Sykes in residence.  He usually came to the office for part of
each day.

Malone ran the office, the store, that sort of thing.  There were two
accountants, both yankees, who made sure finances were in order.  Sam
Berger, a huge, gruff, sixty-year-old up-by-the-bootstraps s.o.b., was in
charge of operations.  And while Matthew was in charge of everybody, Ramsey
was in charge of everybody and everything.  Dorothea just amassed wealth
and played the Grand Dame.

Malone led me to another part of the office, where there was a huge map
spread on a table about six feet square.  "This is a map of Wilcox and
parts of Monroe and Butler Counties," he said.  "The shaded areas are
properties owned by the company, according to the Thornberry Reports.
Those are a compilation of deeds and surveys made back in 1936.

"We can't afford to cut timber that doesn't belong to us, and so the Sykes
have employed Hatfield and Associates, a civil engineering firm from
Mobile, to resurvey the company's holdings.  Capt. Hatfield and his crew
have been here now for two months, and we have enough results to begin to
plot what they have found against what the Thornberry map shows.

"It will be your job, if you can do it, to compare the Hatfield surveys
against the map, and if you find discrepancies, to type out your findings
so that lawyers can reconcile the differences.

"You will see that the map is divided by north to south lines and east to
west lines.  These define the townships and ranges that will be described
in the land descriptions that you'll be dealing with.  And within those are
the sections and quarters that you'll have to find, if you can.

"I'll ask Capt. Hatfield to come over tomorrow morning to explain it all to
you, and I hope you can understand."

Obviously Malone thought I was the village idiot, and at this point I
thought I might be.

It turned out that little Miss Mousy who had greeted me when I arrived was
also the desk clerk for the hotel and the credit manager of the store.  I
learned that her name was Miranda.  She said my room would be number 18,
that it was on the second floor, and that all the rooms opened onto the
veranda.  She said that all meals were included in the rate and that supper
would be at 6:30, breakfast at 7, and dinner at noon.  Anything I bought at
the store I would just sign for.  Room rent and purchases would be deducted
from my pay.  Mr. Ramsey Sykes had said he'd let them know what I was to be
paid, but hadn't done that yet.  They would see me at eight tomorrow
morning.

I walked across to the hotel.  Like all the other structures in town it was
a white, wood frame building.  It was bigger than the office or the store,
with a veranda surrounding both stories and an outside staircase front and
back.  I walked to the main entrance and was greeted by a black woman, who
told me my luggage had been put in my room.

I found myself in a large common room with comfortable sofas and lounge
chairs and a couple of card tables with chairs for players.  Since it was
still before four, there was no one there.  Beyond the lobby, or whatever
they called it, was the dining room. It contained a long table which could
accommodate probably as many as twenty people at a sitting.

I decided to go up to my room.  It was large, containing an armoire, a
dresser, a small table with a single chair, and a double bed with feather
mattresses and pillows.  There was also a basin with hot and cold running
water (thank god) but no other facilities.  Exploring the veranda I found a
communal toilet adjacent to a shower.  I decided to shower, and afterward
returned to my room and lay on my bed, contemplating the worst, until I
heard activity outside.

Back on the veranda I encountered Paul Earl. "Hi," he said, "you got
settled in?"

"Yeah," I replied.  "You live here too?"

"I do," he responded.  "Costs me, but I don't wanna be cooped up with Mom
and Dad.  See ya at supper."  His room, it turned out, was right next to
mine.

I went back downstairs to the common room.  There were now several people
there, but I particularly noticed a middle-aged man, sitting with—I
guessed—his wife.  He was in his fifties, weather-beaten, dressed in
matching khaki shirt and pants, with an urbane look that immediately
attracted me.

When he saw me, he immediately got up and extended his hand.  "Hello!" he
greeted me, "I'm George Hatfield.  You must be Joel."

"Yes sir," I responded.

"Good to meet you.  This is my wife, Helen."

So this was to be the nemesis I was to encounter in the morning?  He seemed
pleasant enough.

He walked me around the room introducing me to the others: Sam Taggart, the
accountant who was still single; Dick Massy, Hatfield's assistant; Otto
Baumgartner, the head sawyer; and Walter Clement, another guy that worked
at the mill.  Later the group was joined by Maude Smith, whom I learned ran
the company store.  Paul Earl arrived just before the gong announcing
dinner rang.

It was a motley group.  Taggart, mid thirties, brown hair and eyes, was
well-built and clean cut.  He wore a polo shirt and Palm Beach grey
trousers.  Palm Beach was a summer weight fabric popular at the time.
Massy was the same age as Hatfield, thin and black headed with a five
o'clock shadow.  Wearing a graying white t shirt and jeans, he sported a
U.S. Army tattoo on his right arm.  Baumgartner was probably the oldest,
overweight and coarse.  He had a gravelly voice and spoke with a trace of a
German accent.  Clement looked very much like Massy and was obviously
local.

The two women couldn't have been more different.  Helen Hatfield was svelte
and confident.  She had obviously been a beauty in her day.  Maude Smith in
her sixties was plain and always had been.  She was dumpy and evidently no
longer cared how she looked, if she ever did.

The food, however, was a wonderful surprise.  It was country fare, served
family style, but was plentiful, well prepared, and tasty.  Roast chicken,
candied yams, butter beans, sliced tomatoes and cucumbers, both corn bread
and hot biscuits, and apple cobbler.  The meal was absolutely delicious, as
was every subsequent meal.  I could easily see why Baumgartner and Maude
Smith were overweight, and wondered why everyone else wasn't fat too.

After dinner, the group broke up.  Hatfield, Taggart, Massy, and Clement
began a poker game.  Mrs. Hatfield sat over in a corner knitting.  I was
invited to join the game, and said that I might later on but for now I'd
like just to kibitz, if that was all right.

Some of my high school friends and I had played penny-ante from time to
time, so I was familiar with the strengths of various poker hands; but I
wanted to see how serious a game these guys were playing before I risked
the few dollars I'd arrived with.

The game was five card stud.  That was all they played.  And it was a
friendly game.  The ante was a dime and raises ranged from a dime up to a
dollar.  That was plenty when the minimum wage was a dollar an hour,
though.

The players didn't seem to be all that skillful, so I decided to join in
the next time I was invited.  Also, Mrs. Hatfield asked me if I played
Bridge.  When I said that I did, she told me that they had been looking for
a fourth.  Some evening soon we'd have to play.

Going up to bed, I noticed a light on in Paul Earl's room and on impulse I
knocked.

"Oh, hi," he said.  He came to the door wearing only skimpy briefs.  The
tinny sound of a cheap radio could be heard in the room.  And he seemed
very surprised to see me.

"Sorry to bother you," I said, "but I noticed you were still up.  I
was...well, I guess I was wondering why you didn't stay downstairs after
dinner."

"Oh," he said again.  "Come in, if you wanna," he added.

He motioned me to the room's only chair.  He sat on the bed and lit a
cigarette.  "I dunno," he began, "I just aint got nothin' in common with
them guys, and I sure as hell don't need to have nothin' to do with Miss
Maude.

"I play poker, but I'm tryin' to save as much scratch as I can.  I want to
get outa here, but like I wanna be able to get up to Birmingham or Atlanta
and hang out long enough to find me a half-way decent job.  Don't wanna be
on the fucking streets.  I had enough of that in New Orleans 'fore I joined
the navy.

"There's a black gal down the road that makes home brew.  I'll spend a buck
or two on that sometimes.  And I gotta have my smokes.  But that's about
all."

"Well I was just curious, I guess.  You'd rather have home brew than a
Bud?"

"Shit, man, home brew's all you can get around here.  This county, this
whole part of the state's fucking dry."

I'd tried beer a few times.  I could take it or leave it.  Being a swimmer,
I hadn't smoked. I didn't comment.

We chatted a few more minutes and he reminded me that morning comes real
early around here, so I said "goodnight," headed next door to my room, set
my travel alarm, and hit the sack.  Damn, I could see how feather beds got
such a good reputation.



Copyright 2013 by Macout Mann.  All rights reserved.