A Different Kind of Woman

It appeared his parents had a sense of humor, his full name was Thadious S. Swarthski. He hated that name.

Plus his older sister was named Teanna F. Swarthski, not much better.

He was around age 9 or 10 when he asked his Dad what the initial stood for.

"Tea was first and you was second." His father guffawed like that was somehow funny. His Dad had a really strange sense of humor. A huge man, his face always looked dirty from working in the mines.

By the time he was 18 Thad was using the nickname "Sec." His sister had already gotten herself knocked up and ended up married, she was actually quite tickled about that.

Her husband Dale was tall and lanky and also worked in the mines, nearly everyone did. Tea took one look at him and pursued him relentlessly, finally cornering him in one of the barns at exactly the right time.

The young man had at first resisted the idea of getting married, but Dad had done a bit of encouragement.

Sec inherited his Father's square jaw and broad shoulders, so did Teanna. The biggest difference between Sec and his sister was that she had longer hair. Same heavy build, the same heavy eyebrows, she was just as tall as Sec was. However she was female, and in the company camp that appeared to be good enough. Most of the women in the town were solid, big, hardened from heavy work.

Life was hard living in the mountains and working for the company. All of the tiny little houses were rented from the company, food was purchased at the company store, the company owned the gas station, clothing store, everything. They even stocked the local meeting hall that doubled as a bar on Friday and Saturday nights and church on Sunday, it somehow always ran out of booze by late Saturday and it was always a week before any more arrived.

The company store didn't even stock beer, a truck rolled in at around shift change on Friday with enough for the weekend and that was it.

Somehow many men in the camp managed to have something to drink around anyway, almost everyone had a Corn patch.

The grocery had canned goods and staples, plus meat from time to time. Nearly everyone just went out and shot something when they wanted meat. The hills were full of skinny mean little Pigs, the meat was tough but tasty. There were Deer, too, getting one of those was a treat. If one showed up nearby it didn't last very long.

Hunting required a truck, there were very few animals near the town except for some giant Rats. Any animals that got too close quickly became dinner.

Sometimes the Rats ended up in a stew pot if they weren't quick enough.

There was just one Doctor, Jeremiah Cox, also on the company payroll. He was a rough and crabby old guy, most of the time he set broken bones and sewed up cuts.

He even delivered a few babies, but if anything serious cropped up, or something he didn't know what to do about they were loaded in the company station wagon that doubled as a hearse and hauled down the mountain to the city.

There were a few stories that went around about old Jeremiah, he apparently tended to be on the friendly side with the female patients. For one thing, he didn't have any plastic gloves, or a nurse, and the standing joke was that if any female went in for even the sniffles, she got a pelvic exam.

But if anyone needed a Doctor for anything, he was it so nobody ever really said much except to snicker about it. A few of the housewives also knew that if they tolerated his typical business practices, they didn't have to pay him the ten dollars it cost.

Sec heard all the stories from the other kids in camp, nobody really said too much though. Things were just the way they were.

Sec knew what his fate in life would be, and right on schedule at age 18 his Dad handed him a hard hat and told him it was time for him to start paying his own way.

He didn't like that one bit, Sec had a serious problem.

He was claustrophobic. He even had a struggle using the outside johns, when the door swung shut his body would break a sweat and he just had to get out of there.

So Sec did his business way out in the woods.

"Something wrong with that boy!" His Dad would say when Sec took off with some paper and a shovel, then promptly forget about it. All his Dad ever did was sit around the cabin and drink his beer until he fell asleep, then he would go to work in the mines the next day.

He wasn't a bad father really, except for the fact that he just never paid much attention to the two kids, he left them to fend for themselves.

But he did provide, there was always food, clothing, all of the usual essentials. Heat was no problem, everyone just brought home coal.

Tea did all the cooking and cleaning, but one day her belly started to swell and Dad spotted that. There was a bit of a fuss, and Dad went down and had that discussion with the young man and his family.

Their Mother had taken off years before, she had been there one day and then she was gone the next. A tall man had come to town selling pots and pans, household goods.

It seemed he also did a lot more than just sell pots and pans, when he left, Sec's Mom went with him. They did that when Sec's Dad was at work down in the mines, otherwise the odds were high the salesman would have probably stayed around somewhere, most likely in one of the canyons up in the hills.

That was something that just was not talked about around their house.

When Tea was gone the cooking and cleaning fell to Sec to do. It was just the way things were.

They walked to the lift that first morning, climbed onto it for the long trip down. Sec never made it, the thing had not gone more than 50 feet and he simply freaked out.

They probably would have tried to force him to ride all the way down and go to work but Sec had become quite a strapping young man. The other men on the lift quickly gave up, reversed the thing and let him off.

"Something wrong with that boy." He heard his father say as Sec stood there gasping for breath.

If a man didn't work, he didn't stay in the company housing though. So Sec took a shift working in the power plant, shoveling the coal in to keep the fires hot. He hated that, he could taste the stuff all day every day. But both ends of the firehouse were open, it was something he could do.

Then the manager came by and asked Sec if he wanted to work as the company cop.

Sec agreed, it was something he could do, also. It wasn't really hard, there were a few bad apples in the town once in awhile. His job was to see to it that they either straightened up and toed the line, or they left.

There was a jail, all it was was cement blocks, no light, no heat, not even a chair or bed. There were a couple of windows, just areas that they left the blocks out. The toilet was a hole in the floor in the corner, no lid. It got pretty cold and miserable in there in the Winter and stifling hot in the Summer, no one wanted to be put in there at all, not after one time.

The company never bothered with trials, either. Management just looked at any problem and made a decision.

The rest, if someone got out of line, Sec beat them up. He had learned how to fight very well, growing up with other kids that were all on the rough side. He also carried an old double barrel 10 gauge shotgun, loaded with buckshot. He never had to use it, not one time.

Early on back in school one of the bigger kids had been harassing him, of course that led to a scrap. The kid had taken Sec down and pinned him, it was a mistake. The panic had set in, Sec exploded off the ground and threw the much larger boy into the air, then waded in. The results were rather serious.

Next the boy's Dad had come down to teach Sec a lesson, with the same result. Sec's own Dad had sat on the porch and watched that, sipping on his beer. He never said a single word, just grinned.

Most of the time things got settled that way, no need for lawyers and courts, besides, there weren't any.

None of the other boys around his age really messed with Sec much after that. Later on he just grew to be so large the idea didn't even cross their minds.

By age 19, Sec was a solid 240 pounds. Some of the older men didn't show very much respect to an 19 year old Cop, and since any real cops were a good four to five hours away if anyone could get them out there at all, Sec spent a few weeks proving himself.

So a half dozen or so of them learned respect the hard way. After that, it got a lot more peaceful.

The job wasn't hard, in fact Sec really liked it. There were just the few incidents, fights, things like that.

No one ever stole anything, although there had been a few cases of things that happened over the years. If it was a really serious situation, the canyons had some secrets that no one was likely to ever discover. Sec had heard the stories but he never had to deal with anything like that himself.

There was that problem with one of the miners that tended to get drunk and ended up hitting his wife. That was a pain in the ass because it always seemed to end up out in the street in front of everybody.

She probably had it coming since she hopped around the camp from one guy to the next, everyone knew that. There were a half dozen women like that, some of them single and some not, working in the different stores. Quite a few of the men were single too, so having a few women available was important. Sec ignored that mostly because it helped to keep the peace, and he was sure the guy knew about what his wife was up to, and he only acted up when he was drunk. In fact, he figured they picked up some extra cash that way, since she had even suggested to Sec once that for ten bucks he could have a little fun. She opened her shirt and showed Sec her breasts, they sagged heavily, the nipples pointing straight down.

Sec wasn't interested. Yep, probably she had it coming.

But the man couldn't go hitting her, not in public. That stuff always caused a fuss.

Sec warned him the first time, then the second time when it happened again a week or so later he dragged the man out into the street and slapped him over and over, asking him each time how he liked it.

Sometimes there were other nasty fights, nearly always over one man's wife in another man's bed. One woman did it enough times and created so much trouble that finally Sec told her to head on down the road. She did, carrying a backpack, her husband following along behind meekly, bent over with their worldly possessions strapped to his back.

He shook his head at that one.

Then there was the man that liked to get drunk and stand in his window nude, and he did that when some of the more conservative women were passing by. While there were always the loose women in the town, a larger portion of them were ordinary housewives. Sec thought of dragging the man out into the street naked and working him over, then he realized the guy just might like that.

Instead, he went over there and hauled him down to the little bridge over the river and dumped him over the edge of it. It was about 10 feet to the stream. That might have not been too big of a deal except it was around 20 degrees out at the time.

The man managed to crawl out alive but barely, he left town not too long after. By this time Sec knew he could handle things pretty much any way he wanted to, he was the police force. The company didn't give a damn, as long as they made money.

One of the women that were available was named Millicent. She was the prettiest woman that was unmarried in the town. She happened to be at the local meeting hall that doubled as a bar everyone went to. Sec was down there keeping an eye on things, she started flirting and batting her eyes at him.

Sec found out about sex that night, it cost him twenty dollars though. But he never went near her again when she happened to mention that Sec was a lot bigger than his Dad was.

That part even Sec didn't know about.

It was a year or so later that things came to a head. One of the company men was messing around with the wife of one of the workers. The husband had told the guy to leave her alone, but he just threatened the miner's job and kept right on.

She really was not willing, and the man was using his position of authority. She worked in one of the company stores, and after a few complaints about him feeling her up every time he got her cornered somewhere, Sec went over to have a word with him.

"Mind your own fucking business!" Was all that got Sec. So he reached out and dragged the man out into the street, proceeded to dish out a bit of local justice. Several people saw that, they all stood around and smiled.

It was just two days later that he found himself walking down the road. Some things just were the way they were, it seemed. The company man he had dispensed a bit of justice to saw to it that he was fired. There had been a tense moment when Sec considered working over the main boss for that, but then he thought better of it.

For one thing there were four of them in the office, one of them had a big .45 revolver strapped to his hip.

Sec wasn't stupid.

He just turned around and walked out, headed home to get his gear.

His Dad had actually hugged Sec and patted him on the back the day he left, something Sec never remembered ever happening before. He looked at the huge man, spotted the trace of tears in his eyes. He felt his own getting damp at that and quickly grabbed his sparse belongings and left.

He knew his Dad would be just fine, he had seen Millicent sitting on the porch, a smile on her face.

Life on the road is not easy. Sec had no car, so getting anywhere meant walking or hitching a ride on one of the huge trains that hauled the coal down the mountain.

He soon learned the ways, all the tricks to getting a meal, how to look for clotheslines and snag something to wear when his own got too badly worn. The first few times he did that he felt a little bit guilty, but after awhile that kind of stuff was normal, just survival.

What had been the only home he ever knew was quickly very far behind him. He became aware that the outside world was a very big place.

One day he hopped off a train as it struggled up a long grade, he had spotted a lake and some homes off in the distance. It looked to be worth checking out, since the pair of cheap jeans he had on were not only too small but they were developing holes. His spare pair were in about the same condition.

He usually went cross country, since he had run into the local version of his former self a couple of times. Local policemen usually encouraged him to move on, just one time he had resisted and found out very quickly that he might be large and strong but there was one heck of a lot of them.

Sec did manage to cold cock a couple of them but then he found himself on his back. Panic had set in, but that time to no avail, there was just too many of them.

They didn't even charge him, they just threw him in jail and left him there for a day or so. There were three of them there the day they let him out and told him to hit the road, all as big as he was. He had been a panic stricken blubbery mess for several hours, then one of them brought him some coffee, telling him that until he got himself under control he was going to stay right there.

Sec somehow managed to force a calm and just sat there. By the time they let him out, he had taught himself to control the panic that set in in tight places.

When they told him to hit the road, Sec hit the road.

Now he was hundreds of miles from there, crossing a field towards the lake. He found a little park, it had some tables and stone fire pits. No one was around, which was the way he liked it.

Early on he had tried staying at the camps other hard and dirty men gathered in. One night he had woken up with a start to find a hairy looking man holding a knife. There had been a quick struggle, Sec ended up with the knife.

It was a good knife, too. Sec had it tucked away in his pack. But now he kept as much to himself as he could.

He selected a camp site way off away from the main section, settled in. Soon he had a nice pot of stew going.

He was hoping to find some work, maybe some odd jobs to pick up some cash or food, he had just six dollars left in his pocket.

That evening, he stripped down and bathed in the lake. It was very cold but by now he was used to that. He got out his only change of clothes, the worn blue jeans and a heavy work shirt he had managed to nab just a week before. In the country some people still hung clothes out to dry, in the cities and towns he only rarely saw that. He had just slipped out of the bushes and quickly grabbed a pair of large socks and the shirt, and he was back into the brush and gone in no time.

The shirt looked like it would fit, it was hard to find shirts large enough for him. He also had two other shirts, both way too small. He knew that sooner or later he would run into someone else living on the road, and they just might have trading stock that was too big.

Items like clothing were a form of currency, none of them ever had any money to speak of.

He had just laid the clothing out on the table in the moonlight, when he heard a voice.

"Hello!" Then a small titter.

He jumped, startled, looking over he saw a young woman standing there looking at him. Sec was naked, waiting to drip off before putting anything on.

"Sorry, I was taking a bath." He said, grabbing the shirt and holding it in front of himself.

"I see that. Why don't you just do that at home?" She asked.

"I don't have a...I live out here."

"Oh." She took a step closer. She looked to be about 20 or so, tall and slender. Her hair was medium length, it was dark enough he could barely make out her face since she was still standing in the shadows from a nearby tree.

"Hey, do you mind? I need to get dressed." Sec was totally uncomfortable now. The only females to ever see him naked was Millicent that one time and his Mom and sister, Tea. But Tea was about the same size and build as he was so he never paid any attention to her. Their house didn't have any inside doors anyway, so nobody paid any attention to nudity.

"I don't mind at all, I just have never seen anyone..all naked like that out here." She stepped out of the shadows, now she was less than ten feet away.

It was obvious that she did not intend to leave, turn her back. In fact, she seemed very interested.

"Look, I am going to put my pants on now." He told her, warning her.

"Go ahead." She giggled and stepped even closer.

Good grief.

Sec put down the shirt, reached for his jeans, deciding to hell with her. He stuffed one leg in, then the other. They were too damned tight, he was struggling to pull them up. She stood there and watched.

"Oh, my!" She giggled again.

"What?" Sec demanded, starting to get angry with her. He finally managed to get the pants up and buttoned, but he couldn't quite get the top button.

"I saw my Dad's once, but it was only...." She held up a thumb and forefinger about four inches apart.

"How would you like it if I caught you naked and just stood there and stared?" Sec growled as he reached for his shirt, it was a better fit.

"I wouldn't mind." She giggled again. She walked over and sat down on the top of the picnic table, leaned back and crossed one leg over the other.

Sec sat down at the other end.

"I'm Alice." She smiled at him.

"Sec." He held out his hand, she took it. Sec noticed it was extremely soft, all the women he had ever known had work hardened hands. His huge paw was more than twice the size of her hand.

"Sec? That's an odd name."

"Just a nickname."

"I never saw a man completely naked like that before." She smiled at him. Sec noticed that she had a very nice smile.

"I'm sorry, I didn't know anybody was around."

"It's OK, that was interesting. Besides, it was pretty." She smiled at him.