Yeller Prides (unedited)

June 21, 1967. Yeller Pride Lakes, Perry National Forest. Named for the great “Yeller” pines. Drive north of Perry to the end of the road. Park. Hike 1.5 miles to Muse Lake. Base camp. Four mile hike to Prides. Boy, 8 days from my 9th birthday. Four foot three inches tall, 78 pounds. Hiking between lakes at 2:30 in the afternoon he gets lost, starts calling out for the various adults of the party. Stumbling through the woods he encounters Mike Davis, son of one of the adults and a member of the camping party. Mike is urinating and smoking. Mike is 6 feet 4 inches tall, two hundred and twenty five pounds, star football player, dating the prettiest girl in town. Recently turned loose from high school, he has been drunk much of the time since and even more belligerent than usual. Mike says, "Lost Kid? Come over here and lick this off for me and I might help ya out." No response. "Ah, come on Kid, I won't hurt ya, you know me, always joking around." No response. I had been in this situation before and I knew what he wanted to do and I knew he would be able to do it. He was extremely fast and strong and knew this territory well. I did not respond. "You're not really lost are ya? You followed me out here didn't ya? You want to suck my big ten inch don't ya? You probably want me to bust your ass don't ya?" He steps closer with that smile on his face. "You see..." He grabs my hair and pushes his erect penis in my mouth, "... I heard about you from the boys at ARE (a road construction company that many of my previous abusers had worked for). They said you were the best lay they ever had, said you liked it too." I began my well-practiced fellatio. "Damn, you are good." He stopped talking. He came more than anyone I could remember. Sometimes they passed out for a second when they came that much. I saw that as my only chance. He did so but he did not release my hair. Struggling always made it worse, a lot worse. There are a million ways a kid can get banged up in these woods, he would have been my rescuer. "OK, Kid, I'm gonna help you out here. I'm gonna lead ya back to the campground and you're gonna do me a little favor. Don't try runnin' or I'll splatter ya all over a tree. And I think you know what happens if you tell anyone. People die, your sisters get raped. Not that they wouldn't like it, you understand, but you wouldn't want that to happen now, would ya?" I shake my head no. "Ok, now, let's get movin' Kid, Now! Walk in front, I'll tell you where to go." It wasn't much of a hike, we were there in a few minutes.
There was little clear, level ground in this remote site so the tents were pretty widely scattered with the the adult camp in the largest flat spot with most of the others in two smaller spots and a few scattered around. His wasn't visible from the rest. It was what passes for a four man tent but really only fit two comfortably.
"I don't have to tell you to be quiet now do I? Thats what the boys said, you learned right quick to be really quiet..." I nodded. I went in and started taking my clothes off. "Alright!" He said in a hard whisper, "Can't wait can you?" No response. He slowly stripped in relative silence while I stood there naked. A few grunts and groans and a slight alcoholic stumble. "You know what to do, Kid, get comfortable. Yes you are a fine figure of a girl, aren't you?" He was huge. To my great shame and anger and loathing of myself, I felt my penis getting hard. I quickly hid it and prayed he wouldn't notice, that always made it worse. Maybe I do like it, I thought. What I didn't know was a boy of my age wasn't necessarily supposed to have an erection. I now know it is a conditioned response to sexual stimulation in one so young, mostly related to my female abusers who could be relatively pleasant and painless compared to the men, they didn't penetrate me. Penetration is always extremely painful when one is so small, no matter how many times it is done.
He knocked me over and jumped down hard on top of me and started running his hands all over me me and kissing me hard, savagely actually. He did notice my erection. "Ahh, yes you do love it!" he hissed. He gleefully slapped me hard several times and squeezed my penis really hard. It was strangely numb. "Fucking little white trash whore." He swung a backhand that drew blood on my cheek. "Oops," he said, laughing quietly, "Tripped over a root and fell on the path didn't ya? I'll have to rub a little dirt in that." He jumped back on top of me and put our penises side by side and clamped his legs around me and rolled over in a strangely feminine way. He groaned and said ride me little cowboy. No response, oops. He hit me hard in the chest with his huge fist while holding my arm with his other hand. "Ride me!" he says in a hoarse whisper. I couldn't breath but I rode him. I knew exactly what he wanted, a gently accelerating motion with my legs clamped around his penis and a hard drive at the end. "Oh, you are so good." He came and held me almost gently for a few moments. He came out of it and once again gleefully knocked me about. He used his open hand and gauged his blows so they wouldn't leave obvious marks. I knew about this part, too. He wasn't done. This was the easy part. He hit me hard in the chest again and then scratched the place with his finger nails. "There we go. 'So what happened, Marky'", he whined. "'I was lost and I got scared and ran and tripped over a root and fell on the trail. And... Mike came along and...' And made Marky all better, right?" I nodded. "Ya see? I am a good guy." He was laying down across the tent. "Walk around the tent a little boy, yeah, you are fine figure of a child." Pointing at his penis he said come on down here child and do me another good turn. His penis was only slightly erect at first but almost immediately became fully erect. I knew what was coming. He knocked me aside and stood up. "Assume the position boy, on this." He throws me a dirty beach towel. "I'll get the KY (referring KY jelly, a sexual lubricant). What he got was actually Sterno, a grease that slowly burns and is used for camp cooking. The position was on my knees on the towel, legs slightly separated with my head resting on the ground, my parted butt cheeks in the air toward him. "Dan, can we not do this part? I know a lot of other stuff we could do." I meant it. "What? Skip the coo dee grass? No way, Son. You deserve it, you've been downright neighborly up to now. Me, too, savin' ya like I did. You just stay right there whilst I lube ya up here." He slathers Sterno on my anus, sticking his sterno-filled fingers in and spreading them around. I winced only a little though it hurt bad. This prelude was actually somewhat merciful. Others had just let my blood lubricate. Now is when I close my eyes tight and try to go somewhere else. 'Okay boy, this isn't gonna hurt a bit, honest," he says almost gently. Liar. I hear him behind me as my hearing becomes more acute, his breathing explodes in my ear, his rustling feet and knees grate my nerves. "I'm getting there." As his hands spread my buttocks, I feel the warmth spread through my body and the sounds fade like when descending a steep slope in a car. Everything becomes farther away, not that it didn't still hurt, perhaps it hurt more as my senses were still acute, I was just able to separate a bit and handle it without screaming. Given more time I may have been able to separate better but it takes longer when you're older, and you have to work at it. When you can separate you just kind of float away and it just burns and aches and presses on your organs. When I was little sometimes it only hurt a little. He enters me and the first thing I feel is a nauseating slither and sharp, excruciating pain as my anus tears, worse than that, at the same moment, is a sensation that is hard to explain. Its more like an intense pressure, it feels like something the size of a tennis ball is forced through my anus and then expands, causing pain not only in that area but in my hips and and intestines and genitals. I don't really feel the penis in me, per se, except near the entry point. What I feel is that expanding pressure like my lower abdomen is being blown up like a hard beach ball. It is a sensation I knew well and would know well all my life. It would awaken me at night throughout my life and I would go sit on the toilet, thinking it must be some kind of awful bowel movement without gas or feces. I thought that everyone felt from time to time. I was nearly forty when I found this wasn't true. "You know, when it feels like a tennis ball is exploding in your ass" Blank stare.
When he came there was even more pressure and then he quickly when flaccid and slid out of me with another familiar sound that haunts me. He collapsed and I quickly got up, the familiar pain still intense but manageable. The bleeding quickly stopped and I cleaned myself up with the towel and tossed it beside him where he lay in the semi-darkness and started to leave. "Boy, remember: People will die, namely you, your women will be raped. That little sister of yours, she must be four now, prime meat." He knew what to say. He was both gentler and very more much dangerous than any of the others. He seemed to care little what people thought of him, he cared nothing for me. The others had jealously guarded their reputations and wanted to preserve me for the future. I believed him. "Tomorrow, same time, same place. You know what to tell anybody who cares?" I nodded. "Great, thanks for stoppin by. To bad about fallin down." I stepped out into a beautiful spring mountain day. Hell to heaven in one step. Now I could cry. Crying was another thing that made it worse. I started running. I saw the rock in the trail but something made me trip over it anyway. I got up and looked at myself. Alibi secured, "He always was a very clumsy boy." Right.
The walk to the the adult camp was short now. I knew at least some of the women would be there. Sheila, Mike's Mom was there, a really nice lady who really liked me. Everybody's Mom liked me. She predictably fawned over me and cleaned me up. "I got lost and started running and I fell. Mike found me and brought me back." His mom looked at me a bit quizzically. She knew he was an asshole. She shrugged and said, "Why don't you just stay here and lie down in your mom's tent?" I knew I'd catch hell from the older boys if I did that. "No, I want to go fishing but I lost my pole." "Take mine, maybe you'll find yours on the way. I'll ask Mike to help you if you can't find it." No thanks. "How do I get there?" She looked at me with that sad, pitiful, self conscious look that mothers get. "Stay on this trail that runs through the camp until you get to the fork, stay left and you'll see the the lake through the trees before you go too far. Just walk toward the lake. You'll probably see the men out there still." It was about three thirty.
I saw the glitter of the lake through the trees just like she said. If I'd known that none of this would have happened. I back tracked to the fork looking for my pole and realized I probably dropped where I sucked off Mike. I didn't want to go back there but a fisherman who lost his pole would catch hell around camp for it. This looked like a friendly group but they seemed to notice everything and let nothing go by without a "friendly" barb. Life is like that for those who live on the edge of poverty, going wherever the work goes like we did. You never relax, you always have your armor on and have to make sure others do, too. I took a deep breath and walked fast and almost tripped over my pole. It was sticking out into the trail only about ten yards from the fork. I grabbed it and ran, a pole in each hand as I started crying as hard as I ever had. There was no tripping now even though I could barely see. I just followed the glitter of the lake. Something told me to stop. I took two more steps and burst out into the sunlight. The lake was crystal clear and beautiful. I stood on a big log that jutted into the lake and looked around. It was the most beautiful place I'd ever seen. I stashed Sheila's pole in the bushes and climbed back up on the log. The log was a really big tree that had fallen into the lake. I could see its wavering image until it buried itself in the bottom. I'd like to do that. But every one could still see my feet and that would be a mess. I wished I could just disappear. That would be messy too, though. I needed to stick around and protect my sisters and my little brother, the rest of them could go to hell. I looked again at the water. I saw a large fish gently swaying near the burial point of the tree. I cast my wormless hook out near it. It flinched but didn't run away. I sat down and cried softly for what seemed like a few minutes. I heard the men and older boys coming noisily down the lakeside trail. They must have quit early, a fisherman with fishing to do was quiet as not to scare the fish. I looked up and saw the sun had dropped to the mountain tops. About two and a half hours had gone by. They were going back for dinner then. Most would come back out for twilight fishing, a beautiful experience. Mike was with them. They all had big, hard grins on their faces. "Get lost again, Mark? (My older brother-Go to hell Dave)." I just shook my head. Dave looked in the water and looked at Mike and shook his head. They all laughed and filed by grinning. Mike had told his story. Nothing else was said. Funny thing, for all the barbs exchanged, when there was something that I thought needed to be said, like "Are you all right?," or "Sorry I didn't tell you how to get here," or "Stay away from Mike," it was never said. In fact, nothing important was ever talked about in my family, those were the things that were avoided. Just a lot of petty bullshit. This could be a blessing at times but usually a curse.
There was one thing about this incident that was mentioned and became a community joke. It seems some of the group had passed by me during the time I was on the tree, not breaking the code of silence, but noticing how long I was there and seeing I had lost my worm. Sheila had gotten out the commonly-held 8mm camera and filmed me on the tree a couple of times as she filmed the others she could see without breaking code. When the film was viewed in our cramped living room a few weeks later, my part came up and everyone started to snicker. The snickering became louder with each successive time she viewed me. Barely controlling himself, my Dad says, "Did you ever catch that fish Mark?" I shook my head as the room exploded in laughter. Thanks, Dad. "Did ya ever think about puttin' a worm on your hook?" More laughter, no response. This sequence played out countless times over the next eight years, reminding me what happened the first several times but eventually I forgot and could laugh with them. What was it, two hours you sat on that damn log trying to catch that one fish? Two and a half, it was a big fish.. Laugh. It was funny.
After they had gone I got up and grabbed Sheila's pole and walked with my head down, scuffing my feet in the dirt. I had planned to sneak Sheila's pole back to her tent but I arrived in camp before I realized it and they all looked at me and laughed again. I don't remember that night except for lying awake listening to the stillness and paradoxical loudness of the forest at night.
My date with Mike the next day was mostly a repeat of the previous day. He was more careful with his blows which can actually be more savage. What I remember most was after the last act he rolled up in a corner of the tent and started crying. I stared at him. Nobody had ever done that before. He sobbed he was sorry. Yeah, right, ya big wimp, sorry for yourself. I quietly said, "Go to hell Mike," and left. I went to the adult camp looking for what I wasn't sure. Strangely there was no one around. Whatever it was I didn't find it in my parent's tent. With guilt and shame in my mind I went into Sheila and Peter's tent (Mike's parents) and there it was. Sheila's one-piece bathing suit, a pretty blue with heavy duty, reinforced cups for the large-breasted woman. I slipped into it and immediately felt warm and vibrant though it was cold and damp. This is it, this is what I was looking for: safety, freedom, love. Oh, to be a woman, protected, placid, soft, sweet, beautiful. All the things I could never be in the hard, cruel world of men. Besides, if I was a woman, when men had sex with me it wouldn't be as sinful or as painful. I would later learn that the very vulnerability I craved made the world of women much more painful.
Someone was coming, coming to this tent! I jumped out of it and threw it down where it was an instant before Peter poked his head into the tent. Before he could say anything I lied, "I wanted to make sure Sheila got her pole back." "Its probably out here on the rack with the rest of them," he says in his rough bewildered voice. I knew very well that a fisherman didn't store his pole in the tent when out in the wilderness, it was too easy for it to get snagged on something. He made a rack out side the tent, out of the way so as not to be tripped over or stepped on, made it out of sticks and twine. If you were a real fisherman, like almost all the males but me, you had different poles for different kinds of fishing but rarely took out more than one at a time so there were always poles on the rack. I never knew why he had been in camp that time of day and I never asked and he never mentioned me being in there. I was sure at the time that he knew what I had done, but looking back now, my tenderfoot image and my reputation for being painfully honest probably had him believing me. Abuse and crossdressing were the only things I could bring myself to lie about, no matter what the consequences. That I had put on his wife's swimming suit would never occur to him.
That night around the late campfire, Peter got out his guitar and sang songs for us for hours. Some of them he handed out the words for and we sang along. Many of the party knew the words by heart. This is one of my most cherished memories of my childhood. It was such a romantic image, a roaring campfire in the mountain night that was so very, very black but yet the stars were so bright it hurt your eyes to look at them. With most of the members of three large families huddled 'round in the high altitude chill, singing along with a real trubador. Hell in the afternoon, heaven in the evening. There was Bill Davis, one of Mike's older brothers who would die in a construction accident in his late twenties. There was Barry Walden who would die of MS in his thirties. There was Ellen, Barry's mom. One day when I was in high school I would enter our living room where many of the clan were sitting around talking. Ellen would make room for me on the couch and take my hand, pulling me down close to her. For the next ten minutes she would sob quietly will patting my leg and holding my hand. I eventually became uncomfortable and excused myself. She had never done any such thing before or since, never even touched me that I can remember. My mother, Althea, a pretty, dark-haired, blue-eyed woman who refused to give me more than barely minimal care until my father forced her to when I was about seven. She tried hard later and we became quite close but there was always an unspoken resentment between us. My Dad, Jim Sr., whom I still respect more than any person I've ever met. He was absent for the most critical years of my childhood, working away from home much of the time and not emotionally there when he was home. He made up for it later but I can't quite forgive him for not being there, for not protecting me. I don't think he can forgive himself, either. My parents were civil but to say they never got along would be a great understatement. I often wondered why they had so many kids. There was Sheila, a pretty, kind woman who was sometimes beaten by her husband though I was certain he deeply loved her. Peter was a gruff man who could be both very kind and very cruel. He looked and sounded a bit like Johnny Cash and claimed he had "Pulled out the git fiddle" and sang for his supper more than once, grinning mischievously at his wife. I believed him. My Mom pulled out hers as well but but she was no match for Peter. She would stumble along, singing in her sweet but off-key voice. I could almost forgive her. She had taken lessons when we were quite young and bought a nice Spanish Classical guitar with the idea she would teach her children. This, like so many of my Mom's ideas of that time, never came to fruition. Of course there was Mike, sitting there, barely containing his grin. To my knowledge he was the only criminal in this group of about eighteen people.
The rest of the camp out was uneventful or else I just don't remember. I rarely saw Mike after that though he lived in his parent's trailor which was next to ours for probably another year. He eventually married his high school girl friend when she graduated three years after that spring. A curious event occurred about ten years later that brought him back to mind. I was at a local discotheque when I saw Melanie, Mike's wife. She was the second in a family of four very beautiful daughters in our small town (I had dated one of her younger sisters). I had not known Melanie well as she was several years older than me but I had liked and admired her. She was surrounded by a group of girlfriends and seemed uncomfortable and out of place. I was fairly certain she wouldn't recognize me as I had grown a beard and put on quite a bit of weight since I'd seen her last. As I walked up she seemed slightly pleased at the attention, but as I did the typical small talk of such situations: "Hi, you probably don't remember me, but my name's Mark Williams, we went to the same high school, you knew my older brother... " All she could do was stare at me with wide eyes and dropped chin. I could tell there was something very odd happening but still I asked her if she would like to dance. She was so incredibly beautiful. She finally just nodded and said shakily, "Yes, but I just can't," trying hard to smile, she started crying and turned away. I walked away thinking she was probably somehow separated from Mike (he would never have allowed such a thing) and her girl friends had dragged her out. I turned around in time to see her being ushered out by them, sobbing heavily. The real significance of this was lost to me at the time, even when I later learned that they had indeed divorced. I thought maybe she had reacted so because I looked a little like him, big and dark and I soon forgot the incident. When I was near forty and my memories returned with a vengeance I saw that look on her face and her sobbing, escaping figure. She knew, somehow she knew. When I was forty three I heard that Mike had indeed been accused of child abuse though I never learned any details.
This incident of abuse, though not as horrific as some of the previous incidents, was perhaps the most damaging of all. It occurred when I had successfully submerged the earlier events and I was feeling relatively safe and secure. I am naturally extroverted, outgoing, loquacious, expressive. I had been forced into a shell by the events that occurred between ages five and seven but I was still at a very resilient stage and those events were rendered surreal by my very youth. There was an unreal quality about them as I was better able to dissociate and forget. In the two years that passed between abuse events I had begun to work my way out of my shell. By age nine I was more mature, less able to dissociate and, feeling safe, I was caught off guard. Not that I wasn't when I was five, it was just different. I had never liked Mike, I was even a little afraid of him, but he had been around as long as I could remember. Though I knew he could be verbally mean, I never expected what he did. In a sense I trusted him, as children must. I was brutally aware of the incident, every sensation, nuance, there was no escape. It broke me. I retreated into the shell I had just begun to escape and made it thicker. It is with me still. I have to escape it occasionally but it takes great effort. I have shaken free from time to time in my life but most people know me as quiet and reserved though I know that persona to be one that I have built to my own detriment. I cry out for expression but can so very seldom break loose from this prison.