Uncle Frank, Pauline, Sex, and Me
Copyright© 2024 by Fatbastard
Chapter 29
Coming of Age Sex Story: Chapter 29 - Coming of Age in 1960s New Zealand. My father's much younger brother guided and mentored me from early adolescence through my teenage years and a series of girlfriends. While each story can stand alone, readers will get most out of this series if they read chronologically starting with Andrea, and progressing through Bronwyn and Robyn to my adventures with Pauline
Caution: This Coming of Age Sex Story contains strong sexual content, including mt/ft Teenagers Consensual Romantic Heterosexual Fiction Farming School Vignettes First Oral Sex Petting
August - September 1962
Grandma June, Uncle Bruce, and Robert were all pleased to see me. Grandma hadn’t been away from the Henley farm for more than a couple of nights since she had broken her hip and convalesced with my Mum ‘n Dad more than two years before, and she was really excited to be going on holiday with her ‘boys’.
They were not expecting lambing to start until a week after they were due back, and had finished shearing the previous week, so apart from watching the weather and being prepared to muster 1900 naked sheep down off the hill if a very cold snap was forecast, there was not much to do. Bruce had saved enough grass in the lower paddocks to feed all the stock for two or three days, and prepared some fairly detailed written instructions and a list of telephone numbers: vet, contractors, local Ag Dept office, Farm Advisor etc. We went over them to make sure I understood what was needed.
Grandma June was amused. “Remember he needs an excuse to consult the Morrows!”
She took me aside before they left. “There’s only two double beds in the house. Use mine. Just remember to change the sheets before we get back!”
In fact, by the time I had established a routine to deal with the regular chores and been around the stock a couple of times, it was three days (nearly four), before I phoned the Morrows. Della was friendly, Sandra wasn’t.
She was distant and offhand, and I had clearly done (or not done) something to offend her. She was ‘too busy’ to come over and spend some time, let alone stay the night. She didn’t ‘feel like’ a hunting trip, and I was pretty sure that her reluctance wasn’t related to her broken ankle, since her cast and crutches were long gone and she was passed fit for PE in the last couple of weeks of school.
I drove over to the Morrows place before breakfast the following morning and with Della’s active cooperation and Johnny’s tolerant amusement, I ‘ambushed’ Sandra as she came out of the bathroom. She was not pleased to see me.
“What the fuck are you doing here?”
“Waiting to talk to you.”
She curled her lip. “Sure you’re not too busy with all you other girlfriends?
I took a couple of very deep breaths. “Sandra -...”
“Don’t Sandra me you bastard!”
“Stop being a bitch and tell -...”
I saw her bodyweight shift, and the ‘situational awareness” I had practiced so often with Dad a couple of years before kicked in, so that when her slap arrived where my face had been, it wasn’t. I moved back another couple of feet.
“What the fuck is going on with you?”
“Fuck You!” she screamed, and retreated back into the bathroom.
By now both Della and Johnny had crowded into the hall. They made me go and sit down in the kitchen, while Della talked to Sandra through the bathroom door. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but after about five minutes Sandra appeared in the kitchen. She still wasn’t hugely happy. Her eyes were red and I guessed she had been crying. She was finding it hard to look at me.
“I get that you are very hurt and angry, and that it’s my fault, but I don’t know what I’ve done.”
Johnny stifled a snort and Della flashed him ‘a look’, but there was still a grin in his voice. “Welcome to the world of relationships!”
Della’s look became a glare. “That isn’t helpful!” She turned to Sandra. “He’s not lying to you. He really doesn’t know why you’re upset.
“Ten weeks and not a word! Arrived at the bloody Henleys nearly a week ago and doesn’t call until yesterday!”
On one level, she was right. Her statement was reasonably accurate, and I was certainly guilty as charged. I should have acknowledged that immediately. Shoulda woulda coulda! But I was hurt and feeling unfairly treated.
Looking back at that particular incident across a gap of many years, my reaction seems quite strange. I was well used to handling power relationships, and I could cope with unreasonable expectations or outright injustice inflicted by those with more power without getting caught up in my own feelings. But my relationship with Sandra wasn’t supposed to be like that! This was unfair! I bit back.
“So your writing hand was paralysed, or you couldn’t afford a stamp? You didn’t know the Henley’s phone number and your mum wouldn’t tell you?
Frank says sarcasm is the lowest form of wit. My tone was sneering, and things went rapidly even further downhill from there. Sandra got up and left the room without another word, and Della and Johnny looked embarrassed.
I should have shared my hurt and sense of outrage with them, but I didn’t know what to say, so I made my excuses, and drove back to the Henley farm, where I fed the dogs and chickens, collected the eggs, milked the cow, and moped about the house, wondering how much a toll call to Pauline might cost.
By one o’clock, I was hungry. I had mumblefucked the morning away and missed both breakfast and morning tea. I was frying some mutton chops when Johnny rang. I started to apologise, but he was all business
“Forget this morning. This is important. I’ve just heard the forecast. There’s a southerly on the way, and I know you’ve got freshly shorn sheep on the hill. Bruce told me he had been saving grass in the bottom paddocks. Do you need a hand to get them down?”
“I think I’ll be okay. Two of Robert’s dogs will work for me, and the only paddock that could be a problem is the scrubby one at the top right out the back. Anything that gets left behind up there will be able to take shelter in the scrub.”
“Okay. Sing out if you need a hand.” He laughed. “I can send Sandra over with a couple of dogs.”
“She’d probably set them on me!”
“Time of the month, I reckon. Give her a call in a couple of days.”
I wondered briefly how the women I knew would react to that comment, but I put that aside and thanked him again for the ‘heads up’. We said our goodbyes and I went back to my lunch. I polished off four chops and a couple of the scones Grandma Henley had made a few days before I arrived. They were past their best but lotsa butter and strawberry jam does wonders. Then I got a couple of dogs and went up the hill.
Right at the top of the scrubby paddock, I found the dead ewe. Or rather, Robert’s dogs did. They were not only intelligent and generally obedient, but they knew their business. Once they understood that we were bringing all the sheep down as a single mob, they moved along the top fence, fifty yards above me, working together to make sure all the sheep stayed in front of them, and (since they were huntaways) barking fiercely enough to move the stragglers along.
Things went smoothly until the dogs abandoned their task and stopped on the far side of a small patch of low scrub. They stayed there, barking steadily until I climbed up to them and found the carcase.
She was lying on her left side, very dead. Her back legs were bloody, her throat had been crushed and torn, and her bulging belly ripped open so that some of her guts spilled out. She was, or had been, two or three weeks from lambing, and from the size of her belly, she was carrying twins or possibly even triplets. From the size of the maggots on her guts, she had been killed last night.
I felt sick. I had seen lotsa dead sheep and killed a few myself, a lot more bloodily than this. but those deaths had been relatively clean and quick. This ewe had been harried and chased by one or more feral dogs. She was probably hampered and slowed by the lambs she was carrying, and was eventually seized by the throat and suffocated. Maybe one of the dogs had been gnawing at her liver before she was even dead.
Shit! The ewe was a problem, but a dead problem, and she would still be a problem tomorrow. The rest of the sheep were a problem right now. I patted and praised the dogs and then we got on with the muster. There was no more drama, but moving a big mob of sheep downhill is a lot slower than moving them uphill, and it was getting dark by the time I had put the dogs away and I was buggered.
I scarfed down a couple of cold chops and the last of the scones with half a gallon of tea while I thought about what to do next. The dead ewe had to be dealt with, either by burial up the hill, of by being dragged down and then either butchered for dog tucker or tipped straight into an offal hole. If I left it up in the scrub, the smell would eventually attract wild pigs, and in a fortnight or so there would be lotsa newborn lambs up there. That wouldn’t be good. But that was a problem for tomorrow.
Meantime, there were one or more feral dogs in the neighbourhood, and I knew I needed to let everyone know. Starting with the Morrows.
Sandra answered the phone. Her ‘Hello’ was normal, but as soon as she heard my voice, her tone changed. She sounded much younger, and perhaps a bit sad.
“Look, I’m sorry. I know I behaved like a bitch.” She paused for a breath. I would have interrupted, but I couldn’t think of how to phrase my own apology, and Sandra went on. “I could have written from school or rung from here.”
“I’m sorry too. I was thoughtless and uncaring, and then when you told me what you were upset about, I just got shitty and sarcastic.”
“Do you still want to spend time with me?”
“Absolutely! We have lots of talking to do, but right now I need to talk to your dad. There’s a dog problem.”
“I’ve got a dog that will work for you. Did you have trouble bringing them down?”
“No. That was fine, but there’s a dead ewe up in the scrub with its throat torn out and most of its liver missing.”
“Oh shit! Fucken pig hunters! I’ll get Dad.
Johhny came to the phone quickly. “The dead one’s up in the scrubby patch right at the top?”
“Yup. Robert’s dogs wouldn’t come away until they were sure I’d seen it.”
“Did you get the rest down okay?”
“Yup. They’re running as one mob in the three paddocks down on the flats.”