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When I was a boy there used to be a lot of lascivious jokes about farmers’ voluptuous daughters, and though I haven’t been a boy for quite some time now, I suppose some of those jokes are still making their way through today’s sixth-grade classes. Here we have a rather darker take on the classic farmer’s-daughter tale, written in August, 1960. I submitted it under the title, “Stranger in Town,” but editor Scott, whose acquaintance with erotic folklore went back a generation before mine, hung the nudge-nudge “Farmer’s Daughter” on it, and I have kept it here. The byline was Mark Ryan’s when it was used in the May, 1961 Trapped.
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THE FARMER’S DAUGHTER
She was just a country girl built to lead a man to doom.
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The afternoon was darkening rapidly, with big black-bottomed storm clouds clustering in the sky up ahead, and Jack Marshall was beginning to wonder where he was. He’d been heading south toward Jefferson on State Highway 96, a broad four-lane speedway, and then he had misread a sign and taken a left fork onto an unnumbered county road. He had gone ten miles before he had realized his mistake.
Pulling up by the side of the road, Marshall took his roadmap out of the glove compartment and studied it thoughtfully. He had been driving since lunch time, all the way down state, and had covered several hundred miles; he was tired. And lost. He ran his thumbnail down the red line that was State Highway 96, trying to remember where it was he had turned off. There were plenty of spidery black lines radiating out from the highway. Frowning, he closed his eyes, cudgeled his memory. He had left the highway just below Millerton, hadn’t he? That sounded right. Which meant that he had taken this route right here, the one that was marked County Road 7 on the map. Road 7 seemed to have only one town lying along it, a place called Leggetsville. Following along the map, Marshall was pleasantly surprised to see that 7 curved and rejoined State Highway 96 about eight miles below Leggetsville.
That was a relief. Ten miles back to the highway, eight miles ahead. So it made sense to keep on going. If a storm descended, he could always stop and wait it out in Leggetsville. He might even decide to stay there overnight, he thought. He was expected in Jefferson tomorrow at noon, to pick up his wife, who was being discharged from the big hospital down there.
He had hoped to get all the way to Jefferson tonight, and stay in some hotel there. But it was still another ninety miles ahead of him, and there was no use killing himself to get there. Especially if the rainstorm that was threatening should arrive. This way, he could stop off here and go on into Jefferson tomorrow, well rested for the last leg of his journey.
He put the map away and started the car.
–
This was dreary country, he thought. Farmland but heavily grazed, so the fields were bare and stubbly. The trees looked scrawny. The road was bumpy and rough, with gravelly shoulders. An occasional ramshackle barn was the only building in sight. A depressed area, Marshall thought. Where the people just barely made a subsistence living, and where they thought of a trip to the state capital in the same terms as city people would think of a trip to Europe or California.
He drove on. There were no other cars on the road. Not very surprising, he thought, when you considered that this bumpy road had been put here for the benefit of just one Godforsaken little town. Anyone in his right mind just kept going on 96. Only the locals would use this road, and evidently the locals didn’t get around much.
Marshall found himself wondering whether he had really taken Road 7 or not. There was still no sign of the town, and he was thirteen or fourteen miles away from the highway now.
But then he saw the town, a thin line of yellow buildings on both sides of the road a quarter of a mile ahead.
A moment later, the rains descended.
–
It was a downpour like none Marshall had ever seen before. The rain came down in one solid mass, as though somebody had picked up an entire lake and dumped it down on the town of Leggetsville. He slowed his speed to twenty miles an hour as the windshield wipers vainly tried to hurl aside the sheets of rain. A lucky thing there were no other cars on the road, Marshall thought. He could just barely make out the end of his car’s hood, a few feet beyond his windshield. The rear view was completely gone, nothing but cascades of water showing up in his mirror.
He inched along, trying to hold the right-hand lane on the unmarked road. Once, the whirr of wheels on gravel told him that he had veered too far to the right. He hastily corrected and got back on the road.
He was uncertainly aware that he had reached the town. The dim shapes of low, rickety wooden buildings were visible through the rain. He pulled into what looked like the center of the little town, nudged the car over to the side of the road, stopped it, turned off the motor. No use trying to go any further in a storm like this. It was the kind of summer cloudburst that exhausted itself in a short while. He would only be looking for trouble if he continued.
The air in the car was hot and muggy. Marshall, a tall man in his early thirties, was inclined to be a little plump, and beads of sweat were soon running down his cheeks even though the windows of the car were open. Ten minutes went by that way, and then, just as if a faucet had been turned, the flood began to abate and the sky began to clear. Twenty-five minutes after it had begun, the storm had ended.
Marshall looked around. The town was horribly shabby. The biggest buildings were two-story frame affairs with windows so dirty they must have been nearly opaque. There was a general store, a butcher shop, a post office, and just about nothing else. Marshall shuddered. It wasn’t the sort of place he wanted to spend ten minutes in, let alone an entire night. The best thing, he thought, was to continue on his way back to the highway, now that he had waited out the storm. He would be in Jefferson in less than two hours—by seven o’clock or so. And if he got tired of driving along the way, well, there were motels he could pull into.
First thing to do, though, was to make sure he was really on the road he thought he was on. He stuck his head out the window. A few of the locals were starting to emerge from the stores, now that the storm had ended. Typical hayseeds, Marshall thought. Slow-moving, sloppy of dress and of mind. They were looking at him with cold-eyed curiosity.
I guess they don’t see many strangers around here, Marshall thought. He felt uncomfortable.
“Excuse me,” he said. “Could you tell me if this is Leggetsville?”
A man of about thirty, with faded blue jeans and faded blue eyes, pushed straggly blond hair up over his forehead, spat into a rain-puddle, and said slowly. “Yeh. This here’s Leggetsville, mister.”
“And I can get to Highway 96 by going straight ahead?”
The man shrugged. “I suppose. Don’t get down that way too much myself.” He spat again and walked away, over to another little group that was gathering in front of the post office. Unfriendly bastards, Marshall thought. But in two minutes they’d be miles behind him. He turned on the car and pushed the starter button.
It coughed and hawked like a sick old man, whined a moment, and began to buck. The car didn’t move.
Marshall frowned. He tried again, feeding in some gas, pushing the button. Nothing. He pulled out the choke, tried again. Nothing. The car wouldn’t start. The gawkers on the post office steps were regarding him with interest now.
–
He got out of the car, opened up the hood, peered in with a layman’s bewilderment. He didn’t know much about cars, except that when you left them in the rain a long time they sometimes didn’t start. This one had been in the rain less than half an hour. But it had been so heavy a downpour, he thought.
He checked the battery, looked at the fan belt, and then, his knowledge of the auto’s workings exhausted, returned to the driver’s seat. Again he tried to start the car. Nothing happened. He tried again and again, growing panicky now, until finally it occurred to him that he had probably flooded the engine with gas.
He was in trouble.
Fuming, he stuck his head out the window again. None of the town’s many loungers had moved toward him. He called, “Say, is there a service station in town? Damn car doesn’t want to start.”
“They’s a garage nine mile up the road,” somebody called to him. “Ain’t none closer.”
Marshall got out of the car. “Is there someplace I can phone him? It’s probably something he could come right down and fix.”
“Whitey ain’t got no phone mister,” a flat country voice told him. “You could try walking.”
“Nine miles?”
“Too much for you?” came a jeering reply.
He was aware of the cold hostility in their faces, the hostility of the yokel for the sophisticated city man. He said, as politely as he could, “Maybe somebody could give me a lift down. I’ll pay for it.”
Nobody answered. They were determined not to help him.
The sky still looked menacing. He didn’t feel like walking nine miles up a lonely road at this hour. Besides, the garage would probably be closed when he got there. And that meant walking nine miles all the way back, accomplishing nothing but wearing him out.
“Look,” he said in desperation, taking a five-dollar bill from his wallet. “Maybe one of you knows something about cars. I’ll pay five bucks to anybody who can get my car started again.”
That stirred a little flurry of interest. After a long moment of hesitation accompanied by a whispered conference on the porch, a boy of about sixteen detached himself from the group and sauntered over. He looked at Marshall with undisguised contempt. “Open your hood, mister. For five bucks I’ll have a look.”
Grateful, Marshall smiled and pulled the hood lever. It popped up. The boy peered in, chewing his lip reflectively. “Try the starter, mister. Let’s see what’s what.”
Marshall tried it. The boy nodded. “Okay,” he said. “Cut the ignition. Let me have a close look.”
Marshall waited while the boy leaned further and further into the car. With sudden wild fear Marshall wondered whether the boy might be wrecking the car, ripping up leads and connections in unmotivated maliciousness. A couple of minutes went by. Then the boy straightened up, slammed the hood shut, and wiped his hands off on the thighs of his jeans.
“Well?” Marshall said. “You fix her?”
“Not a chance. You got wet wires in there, mister!”
“What does that mean?”
“Means you can’t start the car till they dry out.”
“How long will that take?”
“Three-four hours, maybe. If it don’t rain any more. That hood of yours lets a lot of water in.”
“Three or four hours?”
“That’s right, mister.” Hands in pockets, the boy waited. “You gonna give me something for fussing in your car?”
“Why—sure. Sure.” Marshall nervously handed him the five-dollar bill. He remembered that he had promised the five only to someone who could get the car started. But the boy had done his best. Marshall didn’t want to stir up any trouble here by appearing to cheat him.
He looked at his watch. Twenty after five. If what the boy said was true, he wouldn’t be able to leave Leggetsville till eight or nine o’clock. It would be close to midnight before he reached Jefferson.
Scowling, he said, “Is there someplace in this town I can stay for the night? A hotel?”
“Yeah, mister,” the boy said. “Yeah. We got a hotel. Right over there.”
–
The hotel was a two-story affair, like all the other buildings in Leggetsville. It looked rickety, and the white-wash job was ancient. Marshall walked over to it. The lower floor was a diner-luncheonette and newsstand sort of place. A hard-faced woman of about fifty stood on the porch, arms folded, as he trudged over to it.
“Do you have a room for tonight?” he asked.
She laughed in a deep baritone. “We ain’t had a guest in three months, mister. You want to take a look at the rooms?”
“All right.”
She led him upstairs. The upper floor was hot and musty. There were half a dozen rooms, of which three were used by the proprietors of the hotel. Only three were used as guest rooms. They were almost identical, boxy little cubicles with a single window. They each had one ancient bed with metal posts, one decrepit dresser, one chair. No sinks, no toilet.
“Three-fifty for the night,” the woman said. “Pick any room you like. The john’s right down here to your left.”
At random Marshall picked the left-hand room. “Is there a key?” he asked.
“Nope. The rooms don’t lock. We don’t steal around here.” She glowered at him. “You gonna want dinner and breakfast?”
“Why—yes. Yes, I will.”
“Served downstairs. Any time you like.”
She left him. He closed the door and sat down bleakly on the bed. It creaked beneath his weight. A hell of a place, he thought. He wondered what it was like to live in Leggetsville the year round. Like serving a life sentence, probably.
But they seemed to like it here, or else they wouldn’t stay. Maybe pride kept them farming these miserable acres, pride kept them hovering around the dusty main street passing the time of day. Pride and their hatred of the outside world. A tight, closed little society this was, with sullen resentment of outsiders.
He looked out the window. A little knot of about a dozen men had clustered around his car, across the street. He was glad he had locked it up. It was only a 1959 model, but they were looking at it with something akin to awe. Probably hadn’t ever seen one that new.
He kicked off his shoes and stretched out on the bed. The long afternoon of driving had worn him out. He relaxed, or tried to. He was oppressed by the ugliness of the room, the squalor of the entire town. He fell into a light doze, and woke up around twenty to seven, feeling hungry. He dressed and went downstairs.
The hotel proprietor was sitting out front, knitting. She ignored him until he walked around her, coughed, and said, “I’d like to have dinner now.”
“Okay. Come on inside.”
A table had been set for one. There was no menu. The woman disappeared into the kitchen and left him alone for a long while. When she came out, she said, “Ellie Mae will serve you. My daughter. She’s in there cooking.”
“Fine,” Marshall said. Feeling that some conversation was expected of him, he said, “I guess you don’t get many guests in this part of the country.”
“We get a few,” the woman said. “Not many. Had a man just April. Same thing as you, car broke down in town. He wasn’t any good, that man. Thought he owned us, just because we don’t have much money here.”
She looked at him, beady-eyed. “Stranger comes into town, puts on high and mighty airs. Thinks he can fool around with our womenfolk all he pleases. Treats us like dirt. Sure hope you aren’t that way, mister. Some of the strangers who come through, they give us a bad impression of the outside. Makes us kinda unfriendly toward whoever comes through.” Giving him an enigmatic smile, she turned and made her way back to the porch to resume her knitting.
–
Marshall fidgeted. Probably these people had been given a hard time by passers-through. They were simple, churchgoing, poverty-stricken people, and it wouldn’t take many flashy outsiders to sour them on city folks. One sharper with a few sarcastic remarks about yokels could do it.
Maybe the last guy who had come through had made a pass at a local girl, figuring that everything was free and easy in a rural area. Well, maybe it was—for locals.
He was uncomfortable, conscious of the enormous gulf that separated him from these people. He was college-educated, he had a thriving dental practice in a medium-sized town, he read good books and bought classical music records by mail from Jefferson.
These people here probably never read anything but the Bible and the county paper and the farm almanac. And they knew as much about Beethoven as they did about nuclear fission, which is to say, nothing.
“Here’s your soup, mister.”
He looked up. A girl of about eighteen had emerged from the kitchen. The only word for her was beautiful. She was tall and moved with natural poise. Jet-black hair tumbled down to her shoulders. Her face, deeply tanned, was without makeup of any kind. Her breasts were deep and full and ripe, jutting out steeply inside the plaid shirt she was wearing. Her tight blue jeans sensually molded the lush lines of her thighs and buttocks. As she put the soup before him, he felt his chest tighten with desire. His wife had been in the hospital three weeks now. And he had been faithful to her. A girl like this was very disturbing indeed.
She retreated, her buttocks moving from side to side with perhaps unconscious erotic appeal. Marshall took a spoonful of soup. It was practically tasteless broth. He added some salt and pepper and drank it reluctantly.
When he was finished, Ellie Mae returned with the next course. Chicken, with some vegetables and salad. Not a bad meal at all. Hardly gourmet fare, but at least it was edible.
The girl didn’t say a word throughout the meal, simply entered with her tray, served him, and went out again. He envied the farm boys who probably climbed on top of Ellie Mae back of the haystacks all the time. In these little towns the kids all slept with each other soon as they knew how to do it. At least, that was what Marshall had always heard.
He finished his meal around half past eight, leaving the muddy coffee only half-consumed. It had begun to rain again, this time a light drizzle. No use even trying the car now, he thought. It was too late to go any further tonight. But there was nothing much doing around here. The towns-people didn’t care to mix with him, and he felt uncomfortable with them. The best thing to do, he thought, would be just to go upstairs and wait for morning, and to clear out of Leggetsville as early as he could.
There were a few ancient paperback books in a rack on the counter. Marshall picked out a detective story and left a quarter. He went upstairs, washed up in the squalid little bathroom, and went into his room. Getting undressed, he climbed into bed to read by the dim light of the single lamp.
By ten, he had finished his book. He was getting drowsy anyway. Might as well sack out now, he thought, and make an early start tomorrow. He switched off the light, pulled up the covers, and shut his eyes.
The only sound was the steady drumming of the rain on the roof. He hoped the rain would let up, give the car a chance to dry out by morning. He waited for sleep.
Ten minutes went by.
Then his door opened.
“Who’s there?” he asked, sitting up instantly. A dark figure stood at the threshold.
“Shhh. Ellie Mae.”
“What do you want?” he asked nervously.
“Just come to visit,” she said. She stepped in. She was wearing only a light robe, Marshall realized. It was open for the top couple of buttons and he saw the big creamy swells of her young, ripe breasts. “What’s your name?” she asked.
“You shouldn’t be here.”
“That ain’t your name.”
“My name’s Jack. Listen, Ellie Mae, your folks could make a lot of trouble for me if they found you here. Please go away, will you?”
“Don’t you like me?”
“I think you’re very sweet, but I don’t want any trouble.”
“There won’t be no trouble. You interest me, Jack. I don’t see no new faces here very much.” She sat down on the edge of the bed. “How’d you like to take me with you tomorrow? To the big city, wherever you’re going.”
“I couldn’t do that. I’m married. I—”
“I bet I’m prettier than your wife. I’m the prettiest girl in the county. Everybody always says so.”
He was aware that the girl was slow-witted. Desire left a coppery taste in his mouth, but there was the taste of fear too. This was dangerous, fooling with a local girl.
“Go away!” he whispered.
“You don’t really want me to.” With a quick shrug she came out of her robe. In the darkness, he could plainly make out the sensual contours of her body, the fullness of her breasts, the inviting warmth of her belly.
She was a superb creature, a magnificent animal. She pulled the covers off him. The next moment, she was crawling all over him. He tried to resist, tried to push her away, but the eager, insistent challenge of her body was too much for him. Sucking in his breath in a deep sigh, he let the last vestige of his resistance collapse.
A moment later, the door burst open and the room was full of people.
They were shining a flashlight in his face. He blinked, tried to cover his eyes and his nakedness at the same time. He couldn’t see who was in the room, but there were at least half a dozen of them.
They had dragged Ellie Mae out of the bed and hurled her roughly to the floor.
A voice Marshall recognized as that of the woman proprietor boomed, “I warned you we don’t like strangers fooling with our womenfolk!”
“I told her to get out of here,” Marshall replied. “She wouldn’t listen to me! She—”
“Shut up!” A masculine hand smashed across his face. Marshall felt a salty trickle of blood. His knees buckled with fear. It wasn’t fair to let a sexy girl come crawl all over him, then break in like this.
Someone was saying, “I saw Ellie Mae go to his room.”
“That’s because he paid her to come,” someone else said. “The girl ain’t got but half a wit anyway.”
“City folks,” someone else said contemptuously. “What do they think our women are, breed mares?”
“Listen,” Marshall said. They were holding his arms now, and he wanted to get some clothes on. “I tell you I didn’t ask the girl to come here. This is all a big mistake. She—”
Someone kicked him in the small of the back. The light went out and two others grabbed him. He struggled, tried to break loose, but they were much too strong for him. They started to frogmarch him, stark naked, out of the room and into the hall.
“Hey! What is this? What are you doing to—mumph!” A calloused hand was clamped tight over his face. Wild, panicky thoughts raced through his mind. Would they lynch him? Tar and feather him? This was monstrous, he thought.
“The last one got away,” someone was saying behind him. “We’ll fix this one though.”
“Yeah. Teach these city folk a lesson.”
“Who’s gonna get his car?”
“Guess we can hold a raffle?”
“That Ellie Mae. Ought to marry her off before she gets herself into trouble.”
“Would you wanta marry her?” There were loud guffaws. “Take five men a night to satisfy that one.”
Marshall struggled to speak, to bite the hand that held him. No good. He was downstairs, now. They were half-dragging him along. Out into the street? No. There was a cellar below the hotel. A door was opening. They were shoving him in. Into a dark, musty room.
A bolt closed. A key turned.
He pounded on the door.
“Hey! Let me out! I didn’t mean to touch that girl! I swear I didn’t!”
“Goddam city people,” came the reply through the thick door.
He looked around. No windows, nothing. Just complete darkness. And a town ten miles off the highway, in the middle of nowhere, on a rainy night. He clawed at the door till his fingernails were ragged. Nobody knew he had come here. And nobody in town would say a word about him.
Would they just leave him here, let him starve to death or suffocate? Quite possibly. These sullen, bitter people could do almost anything. He screamed out into the night, trying to tell them it wasn’t his fault, but nobody answered him, and he knew he was being punished not so much for what he had done, though that was bad enough, but for the sins of others, for every slick city man who had ever come through this town sneering and laughing at the poverty, the ignorance, the simplicity of the people.
But they’ll let me out in the morning, he thought. They’re just trying to scare me. To show me that they mustn’t be trifled with.
Panicky, he stumbled around the little room. He heard a dry hollow sound, as though he had stepped on some twigs. He knelt and peered into the darkness.
Not twigs.
Bones.
Human bones.
“The last one got away,” they had said. Yes. But not the one before that. Marshall stared in horror at the desiccated thing curled up in the corner of the room, and a low moan escaped his lips as the true impact of his situation struck him. He began to shiver despite the mugginess, and scream after scream echoed in the little room, screams which he now knew would never be heeded.