Chapter 7

Lena and Roland did not look at each other. Roland kept his eyes on the road Lena, hugging the window on her side, watched the road too but was looking at nothing. She was in a state of trauma after the long weekend. They had a long drive ahead of them, but Roland could see by her condition, all her usual spunk was gone, that he would not have to worry about her trying to jump out of the cab and escape again. Besides they were going too fast.

After they had passed Lima and were really out on the open road, Roland said to his daughter, "Get down on the seat."

She turned and stared at him wordlessly.

"Get down on the seat girl, I say," he snapped nastily.

"Roland, leave me alone," she said wearily her blue eyes deep in haze.

"Get down on the seat with your little behind over here, close, where I can touch it, in 30 seconds. And if you don't move fast, do you know what I'm going to do to you? I'm going to have you committed for the rest of your stupid little life to a county institution for crazy people. I reckon you're just about crazy now, anyway. You look pretty crazy to me. And I guess Doc. Elbert would say you look pretty crazy too."

Lena just looked at him.

Roland looked at his watch. "I ain't jestin' girl," be said in a very low voice. "Thirty seconds," and he pointed to the seat.

Lena crouched as he had instructed her. She no longer cared at all what happened to her. Sexual abuse was becoming familiar. She could close her eyes and through most of it think of something else, waiting, hoping, and enduring until the end of it.

This time she closed her eyes and thought of life in a county mental institution. No, Lord, please not that. She had visited one once. The glazed looks in the eyes of the patients, who all had the same color, grey, in their eyes, their hair, their skin, their voices, their clothes, the very air had been grey: no she was afraid of that kind of existence.

Her father had raised her skirt and lowered her panties as she lay beside him in a slavish position. Now he had only one hand on the wheel. The other hand was occupied with his daughter's cunt, served up on the seat right beside him.

Damn, it was so fucking good, he thought, to have some good quality meat around again. He poked his fingers up the cunt he had paid $50 for. It was soft and sticky and young and healthy. Tight, too, he thought, testing out the width of the inner canal. Slimy, the way he liked it, he remembered, sliding down the passage from the tip of the labia to the root opening.

Cars passing were no trouble: the drivers couldn't see the girl crouched on the seat. But trucks were another story. A big rig traveled with them for several miles, almost an hour, to watch the big man poking his fingers into the pretty young girl in obeyance on the seat. The riggers cracked jokes and made lewd remarks.

"Got you some car-cunt, there, fella, don't you?"

"Yep, that's how I like it."

"Mmmmm, sure looks good. Hello there little lady," the rigger called down.

Lena was thinking of how, if she were put away she would never again smell the open fields at haying time, never see the brown earth turned over fresh and dark at planting time in spring. She would never again ride a horse, and feel the dark wind blowing in her hair. Never again wake to the possibility of freedom and a life of her own. She recalled the week of freedom she had enjoyed, waking up alone at Bill's every morning, going down the street for a cup of coffee in the cafe, talking to the waitresses and truck drivers. She thought of the pleasure she had received collecting her tips at the club, the money she had earned.

Roland grew tired of finger fucking and he let her sit up. They rode on in silence again. The rig that had been watching moved on.

They stopped at a gas station for gas and Lena said she had to pee. She went into the ladies room after getting the key from the station attendant. She stood in the small dirty cubicle looking at herself in the mirror over the sink.

She saw a very sad girl, her blonde hair in disarray, with sad blue eyes and a strong set look to her lips. She didn't recognize herself. What she saw was no longer the little girl who could be shocked, or hurt by the lack of love she received. She no longer expected love or care from anyone. She had only herself, and she made a vow to take care of herself as best as she could. She told herself she loved herself very much and she lectured herself there in the mirror before looking around for some movie-like escape. But there was no window in the bathroom, no back door to slip out of. She peed, and went back outside where her father was standing outside of the car waiting for her.

The attendant came up to him to give him his change.

"Please, help me, I'm going to be raped by this man! Help me! Please help me! Please! Help!"

She hadn't known she was going to do it, but she found herself clinging to the arm of the gas station attendant while her father tried to pull her away.

The gas station attendant was a young pimply guy, a high school kid, who was totally bewildered by this situation.

"Don't pay her any mind, son. This is my daughter. She's a very sick girl. I'm just bringing her home from Beau Rive, the mental home, you know. We're supposed give her a trial stay at home, but as you can see, she's still not adjusted to normal life."

"He's lying! Please! Help! Help!" Lena kept crying, but her father succeeded in prying her loose from the boy and sticking her back in the cab of the car. He did this as gently as he could, talking to her in a low voice.

"It's all right honey. Everything will be all right." That was for the gas station attendant's benefit. Under his breath he whispered fiercely, as he secretly jerked her arm, "You'll pay for this, miss."

"Well, gee, sir, gee," was all the boy could get out, and he watched them drive off shaking his head.

Roland couldn't risk tying her up, but now he knew he couldn't trust her. He couldn't tie her up until they got home, for that just wouldn't look right if anyone on the road saw him riding with a girl in bonds.

However, he found a place for her, where she would be out of the way and useful at the same time. He made her sit between his legs under the steering wheel.

"Open my pants and suck my dick," he said.

He held her securely between his thighs and he could hit her on top of her head anytime he wanted. He hit her soundly now with his fist, for she hadn't jumped to answer his command fast enough.

She unzipped his pants and pulled out his soft cock with the indifference of a nurse emptying her thousandth bedpan. She played with it expertly until it got hard, swatting it back and forth between her hands and sometimes laying her lips on it.

Once it got hard she began licking it, the way he liked it: with the hard flat beam of her tongue down the back starting at the tip.

He swatted her on the head when he wanted her to change.

"Suck it now."

She had to suck him and suck him for what seemed like hours, the whole way home to Linden. She did her mind trick again which helped her to forget what she was doing, and the humiliating position she was in.

She thought of her father's stallions. If she were put away in mental home she would never again be able to sneak out of the house late at night and ride off across the plain on Red Beauty or Black Pride. Never again be able to take one of them down by Neversink Creek, where it crossed the King's land and there was a little grove. Never again would she know the electrifying fear, which turned somehow to a terrifying joy, when she approached the underside of the horse, approached its genitals, and felt the horse stiffen as he waited for her touch. Never again know the strange passion of mounting a horse and feeling its power, greater than the power of any man, flow between her thighs.

Her father was a virile man, himself, however. She went in and out of her fantasy of soothing or exciting images, and once she found herself, still under the wheel whose shaft pressed down against her neck, with come dripping out of her mouth. She had been on her knees for hours, and this must have been the fifth or sixth time he had come. She felt sick, at the slime in her mouth, and at the amount of times that lay ahead when she would have to perform this same feat of acrobatic mouthwork on this man whom she despised.

Roland Hanson was singing to himself as he saw the road signs announcing they were approaching Linden, population, 9,000.

"Get back up here on the seat, girl," he said.

Wearily, with a cramped back and neck and achingly cramped legs, and even a cramped mouth, she crawled out from under the dashboard and resumed her place on the seat beside him.

"We're almost home," he said.

She looked wearily out the window at dark countryside passing by, the familiar billboard for Black Velvet whiskey and the one for Holesome White Bread, and at the familiar barns and rises in the land. She wiped her mouth and spit out the window and her eyes became glazed again as she waited to arrive home.

He stopped the car when they came to the lane that led to their farmhouse. He bound and gagged her. He told her: "Now your mother's sick and she don't know you're home again. I don't want no noise out of you. The doctor said she's got to have quiet."

He pulled the car into the driveway and went around to the other side to help Lena out. She stumbled on her tied feet as she stepped out onto the ground.

Roland picked her up and carried her into the barn. He threw her on the hay in a corner by the horses.

"That's going to be your home from now on, until you learn to behave. If you're going to act like an animal, running away from home and disobeying your father, then you're going to live like an animal." And he left shutting the door behind him.

Lena was thankful for the solitude she enjoyed that night. She kept fearing her father would come to her and fuck her, but he didn't. She heard his car drive off in the middle of the night and knew she would have peace until morning. She wondered what he meant by saying her mother was sick. How sick? Sick with what? She wondered if her mother's sickness was just something made up in the imagination of Roland Hanson for his own convenience.

She watched the stars come out, through the window high in the barn. She could only see a small patch of midnight blue but she watched it faithfully, as if she were a disciple, come a long way to cast her eyes on the shrine of some sacred teacher. It was a long while before she even became aware of the presence of the horses.

They had champed and stamped their feet a little when Roland brought her in, and he had told them to quiet down. But when he left her, they had stood quietly, curiously, looking at her lying there with their bright dark horse eyes. She looked at their eyes and wondered about their intelligence. They had a look of knowing or understanding a body's feelings, she thought. But they were horses. How could they feel pity or love for her? She felt cold and apart from them. She was less of a free creature than they were. All three of them were tied up, but she alone was the human.

Finally she fell asleep, into a deep dreamless sleep where there were no phantoms, no danger, no joy either, but no pain.

She spent the next day in the straw and the next night too. Once, in the evening, her father came out and brought her some water and cheese.

He removed her gag to let her eat.

"How's mother?" she asked.

He said nothing, as if she hadn't spoken, and when she had finished the cheese and water, he replaced the gag and left.

She spent many days like this. She never heard anyone moving about in the kitchen or the yard, and so surmised that her mother must indeed be sick. She heard the chickens screeching for food, and she came to realize that more than half the cows had been sold. She only heard one or two of them on the other side of the partition. Her father came in and milked them at night.

He brought her water and cheese everyday, and she passed from a state of mental and physical exhaustion, to one of constant hunger and a dreamlike state of fear and fantasy.

Finally, one evening when he brought her food, he untied her. He was carrying the milk bucket "You milk the cows," was all he said.

From that time on he allowed her to do the chores of the barn and barnyard. He allowed her to remain untied as long as he was home. But he always tied her up again at night or when he left for the day. His knots were fast and tight, and she had tried many times to break out of them but could not.

The one thing he made clear to her was that the house was off-limits to her. Under no circumstances was she to enter, or stand close to the windows or speak when nearby. If she disobeyed he said he would simply tie her up in the barn and leave her there until she starved to death.

She obeyed him. A month passed in this way and she saw no one and spoke to no one, and heard only her father's voice. He came out to fuck her at irregular times. Sometimes he stayed away from her for a whole week at a time. Sometimes he fucked her four or five times a day. She would be stooping over to pet the cat or play with Bennie, the new puppy, and suddenly she would feel him standing over her back. His shadow fell across the ground, and she would turn and see him motion to the barn She followed him in and spread her legs for him in whatever way in desired.

Sometimes he liked to take her up in the loft. At noon, with the sun blazing on the roof of the barn and the smell of the horse and cow dung rising like dough, he put a saddle across her back and made her crawl around on the scratchy hay while he rode on top, his dick hard against the horn.

Leaving the saddle on her, and holding her head by reins, he made her take his cock in her mouth and suck him off. It took an hour sometimes to bring him to an orgasm. He could control his cock so well. Whenever he felt his come rising in him, he would withdraw from her mouth, and delight for a while he switching her lovely naked bottom with a cowhide whip, not hurting her unless she failed to move in a way that pleased him.