Stevens School Runaways -- Part 19

“Awakenings”

Tom and Rich lay snug under their comforters the next morning, when Edgar came bounding into their room. He was wearing a pair of soiled jockey shorts, nothing else. What he was saying was incredible.

“C’mon boys! Daylight in the swamp! Up and at ‘em! Ready for a swim in the pond?”

The huge bearded man, looking a bit like a monstrosity, shook Tom lightly but vigorously by the shoulders, then Rich. Tom promptly buried himself deeper under the covers. But Rich responded, began to wake. Lifting the sleepers from each eyelid, he asked, “What drug are you on Edgar?”

This only engaged the bearded giant, made him focus on the apparently willing young one. He repeated, “Ready for a swim in the pond? It’ll wake you up young one!”

Rich sat straight up. “It’s till early, not much after sunrise. Besides, any pond in the area is likely to be frozen solid.”

“Not so. It’s been slightly above freezing for weeks. There are only little floes of ice left – here and there. We will go!”

Within seconds Rich found himself being lifted up from the warmth and comfort of the quilt-laden bed, about to become a human polar bear. A moment later, Edgar and Rich were holding hands, the big man was dragging the boy, and both were naked as the day they were born. Outside, running barefoot through thigh-deep snow, until they came to the pond. It was sunny, dazzlingly bright with the reflecting snow, almost blinding. The air temperature was maybe 35 degrees Fahrenheit – not a degree warmer.

It was unfrozen, that mountain pond, but unbelievably cold, Rich couldn’t believe this was happening, it was crazy, he was in the frigid water up to his chest, then over his head; for a few seconds Rich thought he was going to drown for sure. Next he was out of the water, and swept through the snow as if he were a fledgling broom, and when they got to a porch in back of the lodge, it’d been swept clean of snow, he was being toweled dry by Edgar and by Alfred, and once Rich’s body was completely dry, and covered, at least his torso, with a welter of thick, fleecy bath towels -- within moments of all this frenzied activity the loosely-clad boy was sunning himself, the sun was much stronger than he’d assumed it would be, and with another hot toddy, and another, he sipped them down, he felt great all of a sudden, strangely invigorated – not cold in the slightest. Edgar and Alfred had joined him now -- sitting on lounging deck chairs just like he was – each man was naked but covered lightly with a single towel, except that Edgar’s towel didn’t quite cover his privates, at least where the big man’s privates were supposed to be, the man had no balls, no penis, could that be possible? Rich was slightly tipsy after two morning toddies, so maybe he was seeing things, or not seeing the man’s things, as the case may be, and anyway, he started yelling up to Tom in his bed from the rear porch, sounding crazy Tom remarked to him later.

“Hey Tom, c’mon down, the water’s fine! I’ve just been swimming!”

“How do you like our little morning ritual?” Alfred asked.

“It’s great!” Rich was saying, but the world was spinning, he was almost drunk from two slugs of rum, but somehow his teenaged eyes were drawn to the men’s privates. Alfred had pea-sized ball-sacks, and just a bulbous finger of a dick, a little odd-shaped thing, it looked like a middle finger somehow delightfully obscene, and Rich starting giggling and laughing, and his kid’s eyes darted to Edgar’s missing genitalia, no balls whatsoever and a little-bitty pencil-thin thing for a dick, just something to piss with, but barely, and then Rich blurted, “You guys are eunuchs!”

“I never thought you’d notice!” Edgar said, and Alfred said “You get used to it,” or something like that, but both men were relieved, or at least Alfred was, when Rich reacted differently than Tom had the night before, and out of the blue the sparkling boy said, his fresh skin features sparkling like diamonds in the sunlight, “That was so fun! In fact, it was incredible!”

“What?” Alfred said just to make sure that he’d heard the darling right.

“The skinny-dipping of course,” Rich answered, “Can we do it again tomorrow?”

*

It was at least an hour when Rich went upstairs to the alcove to dress, he’d already had breakfast, and after what seemed like a full morning already, he couldn’t believe that Tom was still snuggled in bed under the covers in his pajamas. “Are you EVER going to get up?” he yelled, a bit too loud, at his slumbering friend.

When Tom did, he was crying, still traumatized from his experience of the night before – the vision of Alfred emerging from his bath.

“What’s the freaking matter? Why are you blubbering?” Rich was getting perturbed.

“I got something to tell you. I can’t even say it out loud.” Rich leaned over so that Tom could whisper in his ear.

“So? I knew that. Same thing with Edgar – they’re eunuchs. That’s all.”

“That’s all – are you bonkers? It’s freaking weird!”

“No, it’s not. It’s normal for them,” Rich argued.

“Can you get serious? They’re probably going to make you and me eunuchs. That’s why Mr. Cousins – I mean Alfred – probably brought us here in the first place.”

“You don’t know that. I think it’s going to be fun up here. Just wait and see. I’m optimistic. It’s a lot better than being stuck at Stevens. Think about it.”

But logic couldn’t sway Tom. He was still traumatized. This was all way too weird. Finally, the truth came out; Tom’s greatest fear. “I don’t want to lose my cock and balls – or even just my balls. I’d die before I’d let that happen. I’m not kidding. I’d find a way. I’d just die!”

Rich measured his words to reassure his addled friend. “Listen to me. I don’t think that Alfred, or even Edgar, would ever make you do anything that you didn’t really want to do.”

“How do you know that?”

“I just have a gut feeling, that’s all.”

There was a long pause as Tom regarded his friend, staring intently at his eyes. They’d been through a lifetime together. It seemed like forever. He knew they’d be friends forever, no matter what happened. “I don’t know. I hope you’re right.”

“I think it’s your upbringing. Your parents were tight-asses. It’s screwing you up. You gotta adjust, guy.”

Suddenly, on an impulse, Tom hugged his friend tight, wrapped his arms around him. To his credit, Rich hugged back, realizing the moment’s emotion.

“Hey up there. Tom. Want some breakfast?” It was Edgar’s voice – a voice that would become so familiar.

“Yeah,” Tom said, “We’re coming down. I’m starved!”

*

May. June. By the time it was July in the Canadian wilderness, Tom and Rich had become like a family – even if Alfred and Edgar were the slightly eccentric parent figures. Fishing. Hiking. Backpacking. The skinny-dipping grew into a daily ritual for both boys and the neutered men – soon it didn’t matter that their older friends and companions were basically without genitalia. Everyday was fun, and adventure. The lodge also had pets – Edgar’s Angora cat “Fluffy” and the sled dogs – “Ralph” and “Maria” – the female was part wolf but invariably friendly to the boys.

Mysteries were still unsolved, but to a lesser degree.

First there was the clandestine visit. Rich’s parents came to visit – Arthur had arranged this as a treat – it was in no way safe to bring the boys back to the Lower Forty-Eight and Tom’s parents, being straight-laced and narrow-minded Christians – were too great a risk to chance – but Rich’s parents just being there with them all for a week worked well – they snuck into the area from a roundabout – back roads traversed through the Northwest Territories and heading south and east. “Nobody followed us,” said Rich’s dad.

One summer afternoon, it was hot, maybe upper 80s and surprisingly humid, and Alfred told the boys some details about how he’d become a eunuch, and like the rest of the eunuchs in the secret cult, almost nullified.

“I was fifteen,” Alfred began, “and Edgar was my savior. You should have seen him in those days.” It was a crush, or an infatuation – they’d met in California, where Alfred had grown up as a male prostitute, working the streets of Merced. There’d been a legal guardianship, and then a migration to Alberta. “The society was just starting out. I doubt we had more than twenty members but they were from different countries, and especially Russia, refugees and dissenters from the notorious Sergei Dostchevski’s “Brethren of Death.” Alfred had continued to turn tricks, working the streets of Calgary that first summer. He was involved inextricably it seemed in a vicious cycle, an established habit -- homosexual sex in exchange for drugs. He’d run away repeatedly. Gotten Edgar sent to prison for “contributing to the delinquency of a minor.” Edgar didn’t know what to do, he was barely thirty himself, and in over his head trying to raise Alfred, the hellion teen. “Finally, the Gentle Ones, that’s what they were called, they’re still called that – came to our rescue, to Edgar’s rescue. Edgar was their leader, he still is. They suggested it – castration – at least a gelding – to take away my promiscuity. Edgar went along with it. You have to know. I had these violent mood swings because of the drugs, because I was emotionally unstable, because I loved Edgar – and I still felt so much guilt and shame.” To make a long story short, cutting through the repeated drug withdrawals and the screaming jags, and a million other things barely remembered that Alfred had probably repressed, after all, thirty-five years had passed, there’d been the initiation. “It was a ritualized rite, like a tribal rite, in the thickest woods just a few miles from here. They led me naked to lie spread-eagled on the bloody stone. The stone is situated in a grove of whispering pines 2.4 miles from this lodge.”

Alfred’s mind drifted off again, back through a mist of time. “But I was always ambivalent. I loved Edgar like the dad I never had, but I wasn’t absolutely sure I wanted to be like him, to lose my testicles, my penis, to be one of the Gentle Ones.”

It was interesting, perhaps more than a footnote, when Tom left before Alfred had finished his story’s gory conclusion, but Rich stayed to listen, transfixed in a fascination that rivaled a trance. Tom went to pet “Ralph” and “Maria” while caught indelibly in a mood swing of his own.

End of Part 19 – Part 20 “The Conclusion”