Kept for Training

by Emily Tilton

  Dr. Brown. Brownsville. What was this place?

  “What is this place?” she finally whispered to Mary, voicing at last the question that had burned so long in her mind but without finding its way out of her throat for fear of what kind of answer Alice might receive.

  Mary smiled. “It’s Brownsville,” she said simply. Alice gave a tiny sob of frustration at this answer, but then she saw that Mary’s face reflected concentration, as she clearly tried to organize complicated thoughts in a way that might make sense to someone who had never come to this strange place before.

  Finally the naked redheaded girl spoke again, slowly as if still pondering what she should say, in what order. “The elders will explain it better, when you go to school, but…”

  The very thought of that school, which Joe had also mentioned, made Alice feel hot all over, for she suddenly remembered the strange way she had felt standing in the corner at Miss Thacher’s school back in Boston, and how it seemed to have something to do with the way she had felt, tied to Joe’s bed, watching him fuck Mary’s bottom. Would she have to stand in the corner, in the Brownsville school? Would the birch rod come down off the wall to make a rough acquaintance with the pupils’ backsides?

  Mary seemed at last to find the words she hoped would enlighten Alice, then.

  “But there’s a doctor—you know, a medical man, a physician, I think they say? His name is Dr. Brown.”

  That seemed a promising start, but didn’t tell Alice anything. “Does he live here?” she ventured.

  Mary shook her head. “No, he lives in England. He’s from Scotland. The elders have met him—they came from a college he has over there. Some of the men—the ones from England—met him too, before they sailed to America.”

  “But you haven’t?” Alice asked, suddenly curious in a new way, the way she always got when she felt interested in a story. Mary’s voice clearly wasn’t American, whether the North or the South. It sounded English, but not quite.

  “No,” Mary said, with a little awe in her voice, as if to indicate that she would feel honored and humbled to meet Dr. Brown, but didn’t consider herself worthy of the boon. “I came from England—I was born in Wales, and sailed from Liverpool, after I… well, I came later, just last year. The elders and the first men came two years ago, and built the town.”

  Alice felt a frown come over her face as she heard Mary decide not to tell her something. “After you what?” she asked softly, sensing the memory might hold sorrow for the other girl.

  Mary’s mouth twisted in a wry expression, as if acknowledging that the fact she would now disclose had once been a source of great pain, but the present had its own challenges to which she must attend—and the passage of time had placed her far from the place and the person she had been, then.

  “After the boy at home seduced me, and my parents turned me out, and I had to go to London to see if I could find a living as a whore, or else cast myself into the river and save the world the trouble of keeping me.”

  Alice’s eyes went wide. “Did you?” she whispered.

  Mary shook her head. “No. Elder George stopped me, thank all that’s good.”

  Alice felt her lips part, as if about to exclaim that dark things had begun to fall into place, but no sound came out, for the whole picture now seemed rapidly to assemble itself: fallen girls, gathered in and sent to America—to Brownsville, where…

  Mary continued, “He paid my passage, and my train fare out to Nebraska on the new railroad. He was so kind to me.”

  “But…” Alice finally managed. Mary must have seen on her face the trouble Alice felt in her heart. “But he… he… didn’t he? And now he sent you here to Joe… to… do… that?”

  At that the smile returned to Mary’s face, though Alice could hardly think why it should. “He fucked me, you mean?”

  Though Alice had now heard Joe say it so many times, now, it was the first time the word had emerged from Mary’s pretty red lips, and it shocked Alice to hear it spoken so openly by a girl. When her friends back East had spoken the terrible word, their voices had dropped to a bare whisper. She nodded mutely.

  “That’s the part I don’t think I can explain,” Mary said with a gentle smile. “The elders are much better at it because they’ve met Dr. Brown and talked to him about his little book.”

  Now Alice found herself fascinated despite everything. “Book? About… that?”

  Mary nodded. “Yes. It’s got a very complicated title. Something about men and their natural rights. Natural is a very important word here.” To Alice’s astonishment she gave a little giggle. “It’s kind of funny to hear the big men—that’s what us girls call them, men like Joe who came from the yards and the docks and places like that—talk about being natural men as if they were philosophers.”

  “And you’ve read the book? You’re allowed to?”

  Mary giggled again. “We’re allowed to, of course! The elders read little bits of it in school. But it’s boring. Cam, a big man the elder sent me to last week—and I mean big…” She giggled again. Alice had the feeling Mary had decided she liked the new girl, and though it seemed so very strange, she felt herself warming to the naked Mary, too. But Mary’s giggle made Alice’s cheeks get very hot, because she felt sure she knew what Mary meant about being big, and if this Cam were bigger than Joe, in that way… Alice’s heart raced, and she tried to stop thinking about it. How could Mary giggle that way, when talking about a man’s thing?

  “He said that even though the men are supposed to read the whole thing—Joe has, I’m sure, by the by—he couldn’t get farther than the first ten pages. And we girls don’t have to read the whole thing, so I only read the parts Miss Reynolds—that’s Elder Shaw’s young lady, who mostly teaches the school—assigned.”

  At that moment a pounding came at the cabin door, which Mary had barred after Joe’s departure. Alice gave Mary a wide-eyed look, and Mary reached out to squeeze the golden-haired girl’s hand.

  “Don’t worry,” she said simply, as she got out of bed to go to the door, pulling on her shift as she went.

  In case it’s someone else, Alice thought a little numbly. But if it’s Joe and the elder, will she have to take the shift off again? Will Joe fuck her while the elder ‘examines’ me?

  What is this place?

  Chapter Six

  Joe hadn’t had any difficulty in securing Elder Hilton’s assistance, despite the uninviting prospect of getting back out to Joe’s cabin in the deep snow.

  “The girl must be terrified,” the elder had said after Joe had informed him of the events of the night.

  Joe had felt a little stung by that. “I did what I thought Dr. Brown would tell me to do—or you, Elder,” he had said, wondering whether he had misinterpreted the teaching that had brought him so much happiness, so far in Brownsville.

  But Elder Hilton smiled reassuringly. “Oh, no harm done, I’m sure, Joe. That kind of terror is far from a bad thing in the training of a submissive young lady—and from what you’ve said, this Alice is most certainly a true young lady, and a very fine addition to our little community. It’s of the utmost important, however, that we quickly put her mind at ease about her safety and the elders’ and other girls’ care for her welfare.”

  Joe had nodded, seeing the elder’s point and feeling confident again in what he had learned to call his natural instincts. “I had Mary talk to her and tell her that nothing bad would happen,” he had said as they departed back out into the snow, once the elder had bundled up in the buffalo robe he had acquired on a trading visit from the local Sioux village.

  Now that Joe thought of it, he supposed it had had to have been a war party from that village who had raided Alice’s wagon train. Now that the transcontinental railroad ran through here, the Indians’ concerns about the U.S. government stealing their land had—justifiably, Joe thought—seemed to grow. He would hardly be surprised to find that that group of peace-loving but proud Sioux had struck at one of the few wagon trains t
hat still traveled the Oregon trail now that the trains provided a more efficient, if less direct, journey to Oregon.

  “Very good. Very good,” the elder said as he strode through the snow behind Joe, using the tracks the younger man had forged on his way into town. The snow had drifted so that Joe had been able to find a way through places only a foot or so deep, though two feet must have fallen in the night. It would put an end to the Indian raiding for the winter, at least, he felt sure. The freakishly early blizzard would surely have doomed the wagon train, as well, he reflected—even Alice wouldn’t have escaped, so perhaps the Indians raiding it and saving the women, if as slave wives, had been an act of providence.

  “Dr. Brown tells us,” Elder Hilton continued, as they went, “that as long as a properly submissive girl receives proper care and attention to her basic wants, she must have got a benighted kind of so-called education indeed, if she does not respond with gratitude and compliance to the exercise of a natural man’s rights. We must only discern who should have the right of the phallus over her, and then she will go to the home of that man for him to enjoy her as he likes and to discipline her as she needs, for their mutual happiness.”

  “Begging your pardon,” Joe said, speaking over his shoulder to the elder, “but shouldn’t that be me, since the girl came to my cabin?”

  He thought he remembered the specific passage to which Elder Hilton must be referring. He had read Dr. Brown’s treatise so many times now that he had its contents nearly word-perfect in his memory—at least those parts that had inspired him so thoroughly through the hardships of the initial settlement of Brownsville.

  What even most natural men do not fully grasp about the needs of women is that the act of sexual coitus itself, and the submission implicit in nature’s plan of giving the penetrating penis to the male of the species and the receptive vagina to the female, are essential to her happiness just as a natural man’s vigorous dominance inside her body is essential to his. Nature, in her great regard that all creation fit together, has decreed that once a woman’s most basic requirements for bodily survival have been satisfied through the efforts of a natural man, she will naturally feel pleasure in his mastering her as he exercises his right of the phallus over the orifices in which he can find the supreme pleasure providence has afforded the natural man. As he thrusts, so she will receive, whether her master elects to enjoy the vagina provided most clearly by nature for his pleasure, or instead uses his godlike reason to delay the onset of parental responsibility, employing her mouth or her anus instead as the receptacle of his seed.

  Joe felt sure the elder meant to invoke that passage, when it came to his and Alice’s mutual happiness, but he also remembered now another one that made him rather less secure in his excitement about being the man who would master Alice as his own young lady. The elder probably meant Joe to consider this second place in Dr. Brown’s little book, also.

  The discernment of which natural man has the ultimate right of the phallus over a young lady who has come into the power not of one but of several natural men can present grave difficulties. Indeed, the very determination of whether this sort of situation has arisen can lead to conflict, as a natural man who has come into possession of a girl when he has himself undertaken to participate in a community of several natural men will almost inevitably judge that he alone should have the right of the phallus over her, though reason suggests otherwise.

  I foresee a time, previous to the final triumph of the ideas I have here propounded, when communities of natural men will band together to secure their mutual enjoyment of their natural masculine rights, over against the censure of our benighted society. Indeed I have it in mind to assist as I am able in this process, as I see it as a necessary intermediate step to the conversion of all society to the recognition of proper relations between the sexes.

  Only through the work of like-minded individuals can come the restoration of natural men’s proper pleasures in dominant coitus with the women who belong to them. Only through such small communities can men secure their benevolent mastery over their young ladies’ erotic training, as well as provide firm-handed discipline in the other areas of a girl’s proper feminine existence.

  In these communities, however, I foresee that uncomfortable occasions may arise, when a junior member finds himself in a position to exercise his natural rights over a young lady’s person, but the agreement that brought into existence the community specifies that all girls acquired for men’s enjoyment are to be delivered to the man or men who govern the community.

  Joe had thought, when Alice arrived, that his cabin might be considered his own little castle, separate from Brownsville, but now he saw—with displeasure but nevertheless also resignation—that he would never have had the cabin without Elder Hilton, the other two elders, and Dr. Brown himself. Indeed, Joe would never have even heard of the doctrines that had made him so happy here in Brownsville despite not yet having a girl of his own.

  The elder clearly understood the difficulty into which Joe had fallen, and just as the cabin came into view he spoke again, his voice soothing and conciliatory though he puffed with the exertion of the mile’s walk through the snow.

  “I don’t have much doubt that we’ll recognize your right of the phallus over this girl, Joe. I know you believe just as firmly as I do in the good doctor’s intentions in assisting us in founding Brownsville, though. What if Elder Shaw had kept all the girls he brought from England, when he came back, six months ago? Would it make sense for him to have the right of the phallus over all of them?”

  Joe had to admit the justice, and the importance, of the point. The elders went on their journeys to find natural men and young ladies like Mary Jones, who through a fallen state as the world judged such matters would thrive in Brownsville as they might not thrive elsewhere. Someday, Joe thought, he himself might be an elder, for Elders Hilton, George, and Shaw had all commended his understanding of Dr. Brown’s ideas, and would even confide in Joe about plans for the town’s development, seeking his opinion. He looked at the situation from Elder Hilton’s perspective and he saw that much as he would wish Alice merely to be given to him, as she had come to him, the elder must look to what would make Brownsville strong, and would promote the doctor’s ideas about the proper relation of the sexes.

  If Alice did come to Joe as his young lady, he would share her of course just as Dr. Brown held to be natural for the happiness of all—just as Mary Jones, who had come from England with Elder Shaw, had been shared with him by Elder George, to whom the right of the phallus over Mary had been given. He had thought at first that perhaps his willingness to share her would be sufficient for the elders to give him mastery over her. Now, though, he could see the circumstances would require more consultation. Perhaps he would even have to compete with Ken Sweeney, who had arrived at the same time Joe had, and still didn’t have a young lady of his own, for the right to pop Alice’s cherry and open her bottom on his cock.

  Well, if he did have to compete, Joe knew he would do his best, and more important, contests for the award of girls in Brownsville had their own charm. The winter weather would prevent the fuckings and whippings from taking place out of doors in the town square, unfortunately, but the pot-belly stove in the meeting house made for a cozy place for all of Brownsville to watch men demonstrate their mastery.

  They reached the cabin at last, and Joe pounded on the door, giving Elder Hilton a confident smile to show he held no ill will over the necessity of the elder having to wait to award Alice to him, for the moment. They heard the bar being raised, and then Mary opened the door, holding the shotgun just as every Brownsville girl had been taught to do. It might not form a part of Dr. Brown’s recommendations for the training of young women who belonged to natural men, but early practice in the handling of firearms served the very important purpose of ensuring girls’ safety.

  Joe often thought about how the elders of his town made clear in such little ways that the erotic realm, wherein Brownsville
girls learned to submit themselves to their masters’ wills entirely, had a complicated relationship with the domestic realm of everyday life. Girls had to do as their natural men told them, and they received spankings and whippings as necessary to ensure their obedience, but that sort of loving discipline fostered their independence, too, in the end. A girl like Mary Jones, if she should be told to get over Joe’s knee for a spanking, would respect his right to discipline her despite her being able to grab a shotgun and ward him off with it.

  “Hello, Elder Hilton,” Mary said with a smile as the men came in to the warm space of the little cabin. “It’s nice to see you. I think Alice will be very glad to hear your teaching.”

  “Hello, Mary,” the elder said warmly. Then, glancing over at Alice where she lay on the bed, still bound to the wall, “Hello. You must be Alice. It’s very nice to meet you.”

  Alice frowned and bit her lip, clearly unable to think of what to say—even in greeting.

  The elder turned back to Mary. “Mary, why don’t you go ahead and take off your clothes, please? It will help make Alice more comfortable, I think, when I examine her, if you’re naked too.”

  Chapter Seven

  Alice had known this part would happen, but she hadn’t wanted to think about it. With everything Joe and Mary had said, how could it not occur that she would have to take off her clothes, too, just like Mary?

  The elder did try to make her feel as comfortable as she could, though, Alice supposed, given the nature of the examination he seemed intent on making.