World War Two had rarely considered effects in such remote areas as the farming region of Tetonia below the western slopes of the Grand Teton mountain range in eastern Idaho in 1943. The most noticeable effect was throwing the area back into the nineteenth century in transportation. Because of war-time petrol rationing, gas was being conserved for farm tractors and everyone had reverted to wagon and horseback except for people like old Doc Williams, whose home-visit services were absolute necessities, and like the town’s mid-aged lawyer, Lawrence Singleton, who was too important to travel by anything by car.

The other most prominent visual effect was the absence of able-bodied men, all of whom were off fighting the war in Europe or East Asia. This had put the area on minimal-services and mostly women workforce standing. The males to be seen were the elderly and/or absolutely necessary, such as Doc Williams; the young, such Jimmy Jones, the fourteen-year-old farm boy just then riding the family’s old mare into town to gather supplies, or his fourteen-year-old friend, Sam Anderson, keeping the town’s stable open for his absent soldier father; those who had connections to avoid military service, such as the lawyer, Lawrence Singleton, who was almost too old to be called up anyway; or the infirm and already back from the front, such as the dark, handsome, sultry looking cowboy giving Jimmy Jones a hard look from the porch of the town saloon, as Jimmy rode toward the stables.

At the stables, Jimmy came off his horse and led the mare to the feed box, where he knew his friend, Sam, would let the horse feed while Jimmy was in town. The stable was Jimmy’s first stop, anyway, as he wanted to consult with Sam on their school assignments, which both of them received from the town’s teacher to work on at night when they weren’t working, as fourteen-year-olds had to be men during this time of thinning of the male population. They couldn’t attend classes. Jimmy and Sam had grown up together and they were the best of friends and shared each other’s secrets. Among those secrets were that, as they were growing into manhood, they both had admit that they were more attracted to men than women. That they both were attracted to dominant men, though, meant the there was little sexual heat between them—just understanding that they were both in a secret place that they couldn’t opening acknowledge in Idaho farm country.

They had both reached an age, though, that they were able to recognize what some other men in the area saw in them that was arousing. This had been alleviated in some degree by the growing absence of able-bodied men over the past two years, but there remained a few men, mainly the town’s lawyer, early-fifties, somewhat pudgy, but highly self-assured and ruggedly handsome, Lawrence Singleton. Sam, being in town every day, had already succumbed to him. Jimmy, living on a small farm some ten miles out of town, was still in the “standing off” phase with the lawyer, which only made the lawyer’s interest in him greater.

Jimmy was not really attracted to Singleton, but there were so few other options available here in the middle of the war as the boy started into puberty and development of his sexual needs and desires. It was probably just a matter of time, unless the situation changed, before the lawyer’s advances prevailed. He was a ruggedly handsome man for his age—just a bit too well fed. Both Jimmy and Sam were smaller-than-normal boys, well-muscled for their ages because they both were manual workers, both were handsome, blond boys, willowy, smooth, and tanned of body and slim of hips—just the ticket to get the juices such as Singleton’s flowing.

Jimmy heard them in the loft of the stable, but that didn’t stop him from climbing the ladder and peeking over the top and watching for several minutes. He wasn’t ready for Singleton at the moment—he wasn’t sure that he ever would be—but Jimmy was ripe for being covered by some man, so he didn’t shrink away from watching Sam being fucked by the lawyer. Sam, wearing a flannel plaid shirt and his boots but otherwise naked, was on his belly on a hay bale, his head and arms draped over one end and the sides and his booted feet pressed into the floor on either side of the bale. The lawyer, fully dressed, although his suit jacket off and on the floor next to the bale, and his fly open, his thick erection out and half buried in Sam’s ass, was mounted on the boy’s buttocks, his hands gripping the boy’s hips, and was riding Sam hard.

Part of the reason Jimmy didn’t pull away immediately was that this was the first good look he’d gotten of the lawyer’s equipment. Was the size of it in erection arousing? Yes, it was, he had to admit.

As he fucked, Singleton, sensing they weren’t alone, looked around and saw Jimmy peering at them from the top of the ladder into the loft. It wasn’t lost on Singleton that Jimmy didn’t withdraw as soon as he saw what the two were doing—that he remained there, watching. Singleton pulled out of Sam’s ass momentarily and turned his pelvis toward Jimmy to give the boy a good look at what Singleton had to work with. He laughed to see Jimmy’s eyes open wide. The man took the erection in hand and wagged it at Jimmy, pleased to see that Jimmy didn’t turn his gaze away. He gave Jimmy a “you’re next” grin. Jimmy involuntarily returned the smile and it was only then, when Singleton seemed more interested in connecting with him than with the boy he was fucking, that Jimmy pulled away and Singleton turned back to Sam, causing the stable boy to cry out when the man’s cock was thrust up inside of him again and the pumping resumed.

Later, as Jimmy moved about town picking up the supplies his mother had sent him into Tetonia to pick up, he sensed that Singleton was always there, somewhere, watching him. At one time, Jimmy saw the man talking with the dark, sultry cowboy who had watch Jimmy ride into town. The cowboy was younger than most men still in the area. He was tall and lean, but muscular, dark-haired, with a perpetual tight, curly mustache and beard and piercing dark eyes. The characterization that came into Jimmy’s thoughts when he first saw him was “foxy,” which was ironic considering what Jimmy later found out his name was. The someone that young and fit was still here and not fighting overseas was explained by how the left arm of his flannel shirt was pinned. His forearm was missing. He was one of the few men his age in the area who could be listed among the infirm. In his case, though, disabled for war didn’t seem to be the same as incapable. The man was obviously fit and was dressed as a working cowboy. He obviously was able to work, which in this farming country at haying time meant that he was a man in his prime.

As Jimmy was preparing to mount his mare and leave town, he saw that the man was being engaged in conversation by Lawrence Singleton and that the two were looking at him. Were they, Jimmy wondered, talking about him? Whereas he had heretofore been able to stave off the advances of Singleton, Jimmy wasn’t at all sure that he could resist the foxy-looking cowboy if the man was bent in that direction. Despite the missing forearm, the man was a hunk—and there were few hunky options available in eastern Idaho in 1943 with so many of the younger men away at war.

As he rode back to his family farm, Jimmy’s thoughts were mixed. He kept pulling up the sexy-looking cowboy, but when he did so, the size of the lawyer’s massive erection being wagged at him floated up to intrude.

They got out to the field early in the morning, as soon as it was light. They could tell a storm was coming later in the day. The hay had been cut, but now they had to bale it. The storm that was coming promised to ruin any hay on the ground and not yet baled. They were delayed an hour getting started because the tractor wouldn’t start. Old Man Jenkins from the next farm was fetched by Jimmy to tend to the tractor, while Jimmy’s mother, Sarah, and the hired girl, Rachel, called a hired girl but she really was with them because she had no other family and was given room and board in exchange for work, not money, went over to the Jenkins’s farm to tend to ailing Mrs. Jenkins to relieve her husband of that chore. He couldn’t help the Joneses bale because he had his own fields to tend to before the storm hit.

Jimmy’s dad and older brother were off to the war—the dad in Europe and the brother in the Pacific, so any crops they were going to get in this year would be those Jimmy, his mother, and Rachel could harvest.

The tractor not completely fixed but sputtering along, they got the baler going behind it by 8:00. They’d already lost an hour. There was no way they’d get this field done before the storm hit, but they had to save what they could. They needed the hay. So, they got started, Rachel driving the tractor, Jimmy picking the hay up as he walked along beside the baler and stuffing it in at the side. Sarah, his mother, walked behind, wearing the heaviest work gloves she could find to save her hands, and poked the wires into the bales as they came out the back. This was normally a two-person job, but there was only one, so that had to do. What Sarah could manage determined how fast the tractor could go.

Occasionally, they all looked up at the sky at the gathering clouds. There was no way this was going to get done before the storm hit. It was coming from the west, from the coast, and wasn’t likely to last long, but it was projected to be intense. There was a barn dance at the Donaldson’s that night and Sarah was determined to take Jimmy and Rachel to that. She was bent on the family getting its pleasures as it could no matter the wartime conditions and the sacrifices that had to be made on the home front. “However bad we have it, we’re not getting shot at like Frank and Junior are,” she said.

Around about 9:00, Rachel called out, “Who’s that?”

“I don’t know,” Sarah answered. “If he needs a meal, though, he’ll have to wait. I wonder what a man that young is doing ... Oh, I see.” That’s when she saw the pinned-up shirt arm of the man riding up on a horse. “I wonder...”

Jimmy looked up to see that it was the foxy young man he’d seen talking with Lawrence Singleton in Tetonia the previous day.

“Howdy, Ma’am,” the man said, as we approached them on his horse. He raised his hat with his right hand, still holding the reins with that. The left arm hung at his side. “It looks like you could use some help with that baling.”

Both of the women instinctively ran their hands down their skirts, trying to brush hay and dust off. Sarah patted her hair back into place. Both women were fine looking and had good figures. They weren’t at their best, but a young, handsome man had ridden up. Neither had seen a man this interesting and arousing in over a year, despite the problem of the arm.

“I’m sorry. I can’t hire help, but if it’s a meal you need—” Sarah said. She didn’t mention the doubt of how much help he could be with only one hand.

“No, Ma’am. I’ve been hired already to come out here to give you whatever help you need. I can help you bale that hay. I can manage. It looks like you’ll need the help if you’re going to beat the coming storm. Maybe supper and a place to put my head down tonight if you can offer that. But I’ve been paid to help you.”

“Paid to help me?” Sarah asked. “Who paid you?”

“Mr. Singleton in Tetonia. He says he’s a good friend of your husband’s. I needed work and he didn’t need help in town, so he sent me out here.”

“I’m not too proud to accept any help I can get,” Sarah said. “I’m Sarah Jones and his is my son, Jimmy, and our hired girl, Rachel. The meal is no problem and we have a bunk house going begging now because of the war. And if you are interested, there’s a barn dance tonight you could go to with us. I’m not sure what you could—”

“The arm?” the man said. “Don’t worry about that. I still got half of the arm left and I can put in man’s day of work. I was in Europe with the army. Got sent home when I lost half of this arm. I try to make up for not being there by doing what I can back here.”

“Well, then, I think you for the help, Mr...”

“Fox. Jack Fox,” the man said.

The other three did what they could to suppress smiles, because that’s exactly what all of them had been thinking of him as—a fox; a sleek, dark, sultry, foxy kind of man. And all three of them thought of him in terms of sex. Sarah had gotten it regularly from her husband as Rachel had from her boyfriend before their men had gone off to war. Neither had gotten it since; both missed not getting it. But they weren’t the only ones. Jimmy had fantasized getting it from a man too—and this foxy Jack Fox was one hunk of a man. Jimmy had been fantasizing about getting it from this man all during his ride back from town the previous day.

Jack Fox made all of the difference in the field. With only one hand he couldn’t stuff hay into the side of the baler or walk behind it and poke wire, but he could drive the tractor—and he could get it to working better than Mr. Jenkins had too. So, Rachel walked beside the baler, stuffing the hay in, and Sarah and Jimmy walked behind, poking wire, and they finished the field a good half hour before dark. The storm raged as they were eating dinner after all four had cleaned up, the women in the house and Jack Fox and Jimmy at the side of the bunk house, behind a wooden fence and under a water barrel. Both of them were stripped down to naked to sluice themselves down and Jack Fox did as much surreptitious ogling of Jimmy naked as Jimmy did of Jack Fox. Both seemed impressed and weren’t able to hide their arousal.

Other than the missing forearm on the left side and bullet pock marks at the shoulder and on the torso on the same side, showing that the man had suffered more wounds than just the arm in the war, Jack Fox’s body was perfect. He was trim but muscular, with bulging biceps and thighs that showed that the war wounds hadn’t kept him from doing a man’s heavy-manual work. His chest was expansive, tapering down to a narrow waist and a flat belly. He was hirsute, his chest and legs covered in the same tight curls of his lightly bearded face. He moved with grace, not in the least being hampered by the loss of a forearm and hand.