Shorty Read online

Shorty's coming-of-age gift was a purebred, registered Morgan Horse gelding, with matching saddle, bridle and martingale. Shorty named him Amigo, and Amigo was perhaps the finest example of horseflesh in the valley. He was as tall for a Morgan as Shorty was short for a man. Therefore, the pair looked a bit odd until they moved. Then they looked like an equine ballet. Shorty had literally grown up on horseback. It was about the only kind of play available to him growing up with only sheep and horses. He rode better than he walked, and the sight of him riding Amigo at a quick walk gladdened the eye of every person who knew anything about riding, which, of course, included everyone in the valley.

  Jake was in his seventies when Shorty turned of age, still trying to work the way he had all his life. But he couldn't keep it up. Slowly he slowed down. Shorty picked up the slack, but one day his dad just couldn't get out of bed. Shorty helped him into the old pickup the Stoddards had passed on to Jake after WWII when rationing was lifted and they were able to get a new one. It was their way of helping Jake cope with his advancing age, something that was making it harder for him to run down a team and hitch up a wagon every time he needed to get supplies from town. When Shorty got Jake to Doc's place he was told there wasn't anything to do but put the old herder in the hospital over in the county seat and wait for the end. It came a little more than a week later.

  Shorty would have liked to bury his dad next to his mother's grave at the secret place in the mountains. But he was only sixteen at the time, and didn't command either the respect or fear that had enabled Jake to bury his lady up there. So Jake was buried at the cemetery in town. Shorty also assumed he would take over his dad's job, but that wasn't feasible. Not only was he young, but his refusal to slaughter meant he couldn't feed himself. What was worse, a herder who won't shoot coyotes is as handicapped as a preacher who won't beg. So the Stoddards asked around and found a job for him at the Marcek place.

  III

  The Marcek place was small, less than forty acres, not big enough to be the only support of Stan and Helen and their two daughters. Stan Marcek supplemented their income by working on cars and trucks and every other kind of mechanical equipment. But the Marceks had excellent water rights, so they provided most of the family's food with the biggest garden in the valley. The only thing they didn't grow that could grow in their climate were grains. There simply were no reapers or threshers in the ranching valley. Also the biggest acreage they could have grown was much too small and the valley was too far from the wheat belt for the new itinerant combiners to bother with. But Helen Marcek minimized what she had to buy by making her breads and other baked goods in part from potatoes, which they grew in abundance. The Marceks kept a couple animals mainly for their own needs, steers, pigs, and even a couple sheep, but their principal agricultural income was from a small mixed dairy herd of about two dozen mostly Holsteins with a couple Guernseys and Jerseys and even one Swiss Brown. Like so many rural families with small holdings, the Marceks survived by hard work. That's why they needed a hand. They had been struggling to get by with drunks and drifters, so the chance to get a hand as sober, strong, hard working and as committed to staying in the valley as Shorty, well that was a blessing for them.

  Shorty fitted the Marceks as if he had been custom designed for them. The only job he wouldn't do was slaughter animals. He wouldn't even kill chickens, so Helen or her girls had to do that. For everything else that had to be done around the place, Shorty was willing, eager and able. What is more, the whole family liked him and enjoyed his gentle, easy-going company. They soon decided he should have the attic room in the house rather than bedding down in the shed Stan had build for the other hired hands the Marceks had had. But before too long Helen became concerned that Shorty might be too likeable, especially to her oldest daughter, Liz, who was just passing puberty. Liz and Shorty were showing a strong attraction to each other. This alarmed Helen.

  "Stan" Helen remarked to her husband one night as they prepared for bed, "I'm worried that Liz and Shorty are taking to each other too much."

  "I guess that's only natural for kids about the same age" Stan answered, showing little awareness of what his wife was getting at.

  "Natural or not, I'm not going to have any baby born to my daughter when she's still almost a baby herself."

  "Oh! I get your point" Stan answered, as he caught on to Helen's concern. "But the girls aren't in any danger. Shorty's the kindest, most gentle, harmless kid I've ever known. He won't even slap a mosquito. He sure as hell ain't going to rape Liz."

  "He won't have to the way she's been acting with him. You should have seen the way she was hanging onto him when he took her bareback riding on Amigo today" Helen solemnly informed her husband. "She can ride. She doesn't need to hold onto Shorty so tight. We've got to do something, Stan, before those two start fooling around together!"

  "What the hell can we do? We can't fire him just because Liz likes him. And God, I'd hate to loose him. He's better than any of the hands we've ever had. Hell's fire! He's worth more than all the rest of them put together. There ain't a damn thing I ask him to do he doesn't get done."

  "Why don't you talk to him. Let him know we won't stand for him fooling around with our daughter."

  "Talking ain't going to do no good" Stan answered. "I've never known of any man you could talk out of a hard-on."

  "Then we've got to do something so he can scratch his sexual itch before he brings Liz into heat. Why don't you take him down to the Buffalo Wallow?" Helen suggested. "That's what it's there for."

  The Buffalo Wallow was the valley's co-op whore house. It was located about four miles down the road from the Marcek place. It was founded in the early 1930's when the depression made travel to the county seat for occasional rest and recreation too expensive for the valley's hands and helpers. And though the co-op was against state law, the depression and then WWII kept the state authorities so occupied they never found out about it. Or if they ever did, they never let on. As for the county sheriff, he was one of the founders. Law and order, experience had taught him, is a lot easier to keep when drunken cowboys have a natural outlet for their excess energy.

  Since The Buffalo Wallow was tolerated by the valley's law, a person could consider it almost an official institution. But even if it was semi official, it was completely illegal, which is why the sheriff supervised its operation as a kind of ex officio duty. The only illegal activity allowed there was prostitution. Nothing else illegal was permitted, and the sheriff made damn sure this rule was followed to the letter. He didn't want anything going on at the Wallow which might attract the attention of anyone who might cause trouble over the valley's technically illegal pleasure house. Since it would have been impossible to get a liquor license without letting on what kind of place it was to the licensing people back at the state capitol, not even alcohol was allowed. Condom use was required, and Doc came by once a week to examine the gals to make sure no diseases were being spread. All in all, it was a sensible solution to a problem the elite people in the big city, people who didn't have much if any knowledge of the laws of biology, had presumed they could abolish by the laws of man.

  So the very next day Stan told Shorty to saddle up Amigo and put him in the pickup. Then he drove the young man to the Buffalo Wallow. As he did he explained what the Buffalo Wallow was, and that it was there for him to get the satisfaction nature was demanding. Then he bluntly said the Marcek girls were not, under any circumstances, for that purpose. He finished by letting Shorty know that if he ever fooled around with the Marcek girls Stan would make him a perfect match for his gelding horse by removing the offending orbs which otherwise would be a source of Shorty's lifelong pleasure.

  When they reached the Buffalo Wallow they took Amigo from the pickup and tied him to the rail where a couple other customer mounts were waiting to carry their tired but happy riders home. Then Stan took Shorty in and introduced him to the deputy in charge that afternoon. It wa
s the first time Stan had been inside since before he was married. He laughed to himself when he noticed the old motto still painted on the lobby wall. "All businesses screw their customers" it said. "Only here the screwing is why you come." He still remembered how, as a naive teenager, it had been necessary for his first Buffalo Wallow server to explain the double meaning in the second line. The sight of the business gals in their business attire immediately caused a swelling response in Stan. Handing Shorty his wages and then leaving him to the services of whichever gal he might select, Stan hurried back to his place where, their daughters being at a Four-H meeting in town, he immediately engaged Helen in an extensive investigation of the decor of their bedroom.

  IV

  Helen's plan worked. Shorty's relationship with Liz immediately changed from goo-goo eyes to the tolerant but condescending affection of a worldly older brother for a kid sister.

  The next day Shorty was in a particular rush to get all his chores done. When Stan couldn't think of another task to assign him, Shorty saddled Amigo and was off. The same thing happened every day for the next three weeks. Shorty had found the