The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

You just got here today? It’s a bit late in the season, isn’t it? I mean the harbor’s starting to freeze…

Oh! That’s actually a smart move. I wish I’d thought of coming up here at the end of last season to get a good deal on a gold dredge from someone who was throwing in the towel. Most dredgers fail, you know.

Me? Nope, I’m good. I had an interesting season, but I’m definitely hooked.

Really? Well, if you have a couple of minutes, I suppose I could. It didn’t really start the minute I got here, I guess it all started with a question...

“Where you from, son?”

Calling him a crusty old man probably would have been charitable. His beard was long, grey, and scraggly. I got the feeling that if I looked in the dictionary under ‘Alaska Prospector’ I’d probably find a photo of him. He was easily in his eighties.

“Rockland, Maine.” He nodded, apparently in approval.

“At least you got a real ocean there.” He extracted the cigarette from his mouth and used it to gesture toward the crowd drinking at The Breakwater. “Half them never saw salt water before they got here.” He gave a rattling cough, turned his head, and spat into the crackling fire on the huge stonework hearth next to the his table.

“Name’s Frank. Have a seat.” He gestured with his cigarette toward the chair across from him. Apparently laws banning smoking in restaurants and bars hadn’t made it to Alaska yet. Or if they had, they weren’t enforced in Nome.

“I’m Jim Cutter,” I said as I sat.

“They come up here every summer, Jim. They all think they’re gonna strike it rich here, dredging the Bering Sea. Most of them got no idea what they’re doing. Almost none of them got the proper respect for her.”

“For who?”

“The Bering, son. You gotta respect her. If you do that, she’ll treat you fairly. You got a dredge?”

“I think so. I bought a 25 footer called ‘Sea Panner’ sight unseen. I just got here today and I took a look at it. It seems to be okay, as far as I can tell, though I’m no expert. I’m hoping to make enough money this summer to pay for a nice wedding for me and my fiancee.”

Kayla Ducharme and I had been going out since our junior year in high school, even attending the same college together. She told me that her grandmother had once mentioned that her grandfather had done some gold prospecting in Alaska and, after some research, I thought that it might be a good a way for us to finance a reasonably classy wedding and maybe get a start on our own house.

“That’s Roger Burrick’s old rig,” Frank said. “You’ll do okay with her. Roger and Jean got divorced last year and they both moved to the lower 48. He spent all his time obsessed with gold, so she found someone who was interested in her. Several someones, actually. You buy it from Jake?”

“Yeah. He had it listed on the internet, along with a trailer and pickup truck. I bought the whole lot from him.”

“Jake’s a good boy, but he don’t have the gold fever that his old man had. He’ll probably sell his parents’ house this summer before he goes back to college in Nebraska. You’ll do okay with the Sea Panner, long as you give the Bering her due.”

“How do I go about doing that, Frank?”

“She’ll give you gold as long as you respect her. If she’s in a foul mood, you just let her be and she’ll sort it out herself. Never challenge her moods. Take what she gives you and don’t get greedy. And always remember that it’s a trade; she gives you something and she takes something from you.”

“What does she…”

A loud voice from behind me cut me off: “Don’t be payin’ no mind to that old coot, boy! He’ll spend all day tellin’ you all kinds of superstitious crap about the sea. Ain’t nothing to it.” I turned and saw a large man wearing a cowboy hat.

“You just ignore him and go out there and work your claim for every speck of gold its got. You wanna see how it’s done, you just watch how Brad Tucker’s operation hauls in the big money.” He turned and elbowed his way to the bar, not waiting for a reply from me.

“I’m guessing that was Brad Tucker?”

“Yup. He’s had a crew here all winter building his dredge. He shipped in tons of raw material at the end of last summer and they air-freighted in even more during the winter. No roads come to Nome, you know. Built himself a 80 foot aluminum monstrosity. I ain’t the only one that told him it’s not wide enough and it’s too top-heavy. He stacked up two long sluices so he can process his dirt twice to squeeze every little bit of gold out of it. One sluice is enough for everyone else, but ol’ Brad is from Dallas, Texas, and he knows better’n anyone else how to build a dredge. Just ask him, he’ll tell you. Ain’t no oceans or seas in Dallas, though.”

“80 feet? That’s a huge dredge!”

“No need for it. He’s set up to run four divers with suction lines at the same time. That’s a heavy load of dirt to be dumping into the top of a stacked pair of sluices. Just plain greed, if you ask me. It’ll be interesting to see what the Bering takes as payment from him this year. If he ever had any manners, I’d say she’s already got them.”

“What did you mean when you said that the Bering Sea takes something from us?”

“It’s always a trade, son. Look at Roger Burrick. She gave him a good living, but she took away his marriage and his dignity. He left Nome with his tail between his legs, too ashamed to show his face in public.

“Seems she always takes a little bit of your sanity; sometimes more’n a little bit. Take the Caldwell boys, for instance. Every year they get richer and every year they get more and more touched in the head. You’ll know their place when you see it, what with all them sneakers and shoes nailed to the outside of the house and all.”

“You seem to know everyone here, Frank.”

“Well, I been here my whole life. I seen plenty of people come and go. I seen Nome go from boom to bust and back.”

“So how do I keep from losing my sanity and still make money dredging?” Somehow it seemed almost normal to be asking a question like that.

“Don’t worry about your sanity. A little crazy is good for anyone—helps you understand things better. You just make sure that you keep an eye on your common sense. If you lose your common sense, that’s when the Bering Sea will hit you with a bill you don’t want to pay.” He gestured toward the loud man at the bar with his cigarette. “Tucker there’ll have a big bill come due for sure. Maybe this year, maybe next, but she’s eventually gonna demand payment for his lack of respect.”

We talked a little while longer, then I made my excuses, paying for both his beer and mine before I headed out of town to find my rented cabin somewhere up the Snake River Road.

I had to wait over a week for the seas to calm enough so that I could go out, then it took me three days of running to really get the hang of operating the dredge. It worked well as a one-man operation, though I could see where having another person topside might be helpful, especially when it came to hauling the heavy 8-inch suction hose back up after a long stint of wrestling it around the bottom of the frigid Bering Sea. A warm day in Nome this time of year was in the low 50’s, and the water was about 10 degrees colder. I repeatedly thanked and blessed whoever had invented the idea of feeding hot water down from the dredge rig to the diver’s suit.

I only managed to get a total of four ounces those first three days of operation. I’d thought it was more, but then I learned about the difference between the standard avoirdupois ounce that is used to weigh just about everything and the heavier troy ounce that is used to weigh (and price) precious metals. I’d brought the wrong kind of scale, but I was able to get a troy ounce scale at the outfitter’s store in Nome.

After those first three days of good weather, heavy seas moved in, beaching me and my little dredge. Some of the bigger rigs, including Brad Tucker’s, were able to stay out for the first day of rough water, but even they were forced to stand down when things got worse the second and third day. The fourth day brought the nasty storm that had been driving the heavy seas before it. That was when I first met Jenny.

I walked from the kitchen into the living/dining area of the cabin carrying a plate of bacon and eggs, and there she was, standing just inside the front door. I hadn’t even heard the door open, which was surprising, given the raging storm outside.

“Hi, I’m Jenny Alton. I’m here to do the cleaning.”

“Um, hi Jenny, I’m Jim Cutter. I don’t remember hiring a housekeeper.”

“I’m included in what you pay,” she said.

“Hmm. I didn’t know that. Thank you for coming out in such bad weather. You caught me having breakfast, but I’ll be out of your way in a couple of minutes.” I was glad that I’d put on sweats before making breakfast, rather than doing it in my underwear.

“Not a problem,” she said as she shucked her hat and rain jacket.

She looked to be a couple of years younger than me, probably in her late teens or early twenties. Her long, straight black hair came down to the middle of her back. She was slim, but still curvy, and she had a very pretty face, with full lips and deep blue eyes the color of the sea on a brisk morning.

Seeing the sexy girl reminded me of how much I missed Kayla. I wolfed down my breakfast and put the dishes in the dishwasher, then headed upstairs to shower as Jenny was vacuuming the downstairs. Nome was out in the boonies for Alaska, given that no roads went there, but I was out in the boonies even for Nome. There was no cell signal where I was living, so I needed to head south toward the city (I chuckled at a place with 3600 residents being called a “city”) to get a cell signal if I wanted to call Kayla.

When I got out of the shower, all of the towels in the bathroom had been changed for fresh ones. I hadn’t even heard Jenny come into the bathroom! I dressed in there, then emerged to find the whole cabin cleaned and Jenny gone. I was amazed at how thorough a job she’d done in such little time.

I was still a little north of the airport when I got a solid cell phone signal. It was mid-afternoon back in Maine, so I wasn’t surprised when Kayla’s cell phone went straight to voicemail. I hung up and dialed the main number at her work.

“Wakeman Solutions, how may I direct your call?”

“Kayla Ducharme, please.”

“Oh hi, Jim, it’s Lori! How’s the gold mining going in Alaska?” Her question surprised me, since Kayla and I had agreed to keep my summer expedition quiet. If Lori knew, then the whole company probably knew. According to Kayla, the receptionist was known for gossiping.

“Um, it’s stormy today, so I’m at the mercy of the weather.” I figured that would give her nothing new to gossip about.

“Kayla’s been in and out of meetings all day. Do you want me to put you in her voicemail?”

“No, that’s okay. I’ll give her a try later.”

“Okay, Jim. Have fun up there and try to remember us little people when you’re rich.”

“Uh, sure thing, Lori.”

I was a bit pissed at Kayla, and I didn’t want to leave a nasty message. We’d discussed my trip to Alaska at length. Her grandfather had died of cancer when her father was young, so she’d never known him, but she’d heard stories of him prospecting for gold in Alaska. We’d agreed that even the mention of me diving for gold in Alaska would probably bring some unwanted attention. Whether or not I made any money dredging, some people would assume that we got rich and at least a few of them would try to leech a handout from us.

Even more important to me, I didn’t want to give her boss, William “call me Big Bill” Edgecomb, any more ammunition to use to belittle me. He was two years older than we were, and Kayla had dated him during her freshman and sophomore years of high school, before we’d gotten together during our junior year. “Big Bill” made no secret of the fact that he was still interested in Kayla, openly flirting with her right in front of me. And he was always giving me backhanded “complements” about how I must be a great guy because Kayla stayed with me even though she had successful guys who were going places that were interested in her. The obvious implication was always that I was a loser and I didn’t deserve her. If Chatty Lori knew what I was doing, then it was almost certain that “Big Bill” knew. He was probably calling extra staff meetings, just so he could poke fun at my gold hunting in front of Kayla.

I closed my eyes and willed my anger to dissipate. It only worked a little.

Edgecomb was the only thing Kayla and I had ever really argued about. She tried to excuse his actions, saying that he was just joking and it was all harmless fun. I told her that there was no “harmless fun” in hitting on an engaged woman and publicly insulting and belittling me every chance he got. She told me I was making a big deal of nothing. We fought. Eventually I agreed that I needed to let it go, for the sake of our relationship. I didn’t talk about it with her any more, which made her happy. I hadn’t been able to let it go, though.

I sighed and headed the truck south, toward the harbor. There was no way I was going to take the little Sea Panner out in this storm, but the weather forecast said that the next day would be calm. I figured that I could distract myself for a few hours by doing a little maintenance work on the dredge and making sure that she was ready to go for the next day.

Around 2:30 my stomach let me know that I’d been puttering around long enough. I buttoned everything up and headed off to The Breakwater for some lunch.

Tom McKay, the owner of The Breakwater, was working the grill when I entered. He was an old-timer like Frank. I gave him a nod and looked around the room. Frank wasn’t there, but Brad Tucker was an obvious presence at the bar. He was loudly regaling everyone with stories about his success and how building what he called “a big Texas-style dredge” let him and his crew keep working in conditions that forced “the little wimpy operations” back to the docks. Judging by the expressions on some of the faces around the room, I wasn’t the only one who didn’t want to hear about it. I found an empty table in a far corner of the room and sat down. A waitress came over and took my order for a burger and a beer.

“If you ask Tom to make my burger raw, do you think that would help?” The other cooks would give you a decent medium-well burger, but Tom McKay made burgers one way: Very well done.

“Not likely,” the waitress laughed.

It was 3:30 by the time I’d finished my blackened burger and beer. I paid the check and went out to the truck to call Kayla. Her cell went straight to voicemail again. I frowned. It was 7:30 back in Maine. She should be out of work and her phone should be on. Maybe she’d forgotten to turn it back on after work. Or maybe her battery was dead. Or maybe she’d had to work late. Maybe… I stopped myself before my mind headed down a path toward jealousy, frustration, and anger.

I started the truck and headed back toward the cabin. I’d make an early night of it and make sure I was well rested and ready to go in the early morning. The weather in Nome didn’t give you very many nice days to dredge, and I planned on making the most of the ones I got.

The hidden “gotcha” with dredging gold in Nome is that the sea conditions make it impossible to go out most days. You can’t make any money if you can’t get out where the gold is. Over the next month I was only able to go out six days. Each of those days ended the same way: I carefully extracted the matts of tangled plastic threads known as “miner’s moss” from the Sea Panner’s sluice and put them into large plastic bins so that I wouldn’t lose any of the gold they’d trapped. Then I loaded the heavy bins into my pickup truck. Once I got them back to the cabin, I ran all the dirt through a small separator to extract the gold from the silt.

My best take was just over ten ounces of gold after a marathon day where I spent 14 hours on the bottom of the Bering Sea. My worst was about an ounce and a half after ten hours working a patch of sea bottom that simply didn’t have much gold in it. On average I netted a little over five ounces of gold every day I went out.

I spent a lot of time watching DVDs and reading books. I spent more time than I should have at The Breakwater, trading stories with my fellow dredgers. I ran into Frank there a few times. We’d usually sit and chat over a beer, when he was there.

The big rigs could handle rougher seas than the small dredges most of us were running, and they stayed out longer when things were getting rough and went out on a couple of days that had the rest of us stuck at the docks. Brad Tucker pushed the safety limits more than anyone else. He’d rankled more than one person with loud comments like: “Y’all here to make money or y’all here to run away when from a little rain?” Still, though, he was pulling in well over ten times as much gold as I was. Maybe it would be enough to cover his running expenses and the cost of that huge new dredging rig he’d built…

The other constant in my life was Jenny. Actually “constant” isn’t the right word. She didn’t appear to have any set schedule for cleaning the cabin. It didn’t matter whether it was spotless or messy, she showed up when she showed up. The only patterns I could see were that she only showed up when we were having a bad storm and she only showed up when I was there. She didn’t show up at every bad storm, but if she was there, you could be sure that it was ugly outside. And if I went into town, I’d never return to find that the cabin had been cleaned. She did once appear shortly after I returned home from town, though. And “appear” was exactly what she did. I never saw or heard her come in or leave. Usually I’d walk into the living/dining room and find her standing on the mat inside the front door, dripping wet. Later she’d leave without ever announcing that she was going. I’d just look up and she’d be gone.

We talked a bit while she was there. She never seemed to tell me much about herself, but she was always interested to hear about me and my life. I made sure that she knew about Kayla right up front. Before I’d left Maine we’d promised each other that there would be no “final fling” for either of us while we were apart. Jenny was intoxicatingly sexy, but I knew that I’d keep my promise.

The worst day of the summer started out looking like one of the best.

It was the third calm day in a row and I was on the gold. Each of the previous two days had yielded over eight ounces when I’d done my cleanups. I’d marked the spot on my GPS and I was back for a third day of getting rich by poking a suction hose into the seabed under 25 feet of water. I stayed down nearly six hours before surfacing for lunch. A couple of sandwiches from the cooler filled me up, and a few gallons from the red plastic gas cans lashed to the deck filled up the various small gasoline engines running things like the suction pump, the air compressor, and the heater system. There was a little breeze, but the water conditions were practically perfect. The anchors were holding the Sea Panner stationary a few hundred yards from shore and I was ready to dredge more gold.

It was only about three hours later when I heard it.

“Come to me, Jim.”

I actually looked around the seabed where I was dredging. The voice had been clear as day, even though there was obviously no way anybody could have been talking to me down there. I shook it off and pushed some rocks out of the way so that I could get the suction hose into the silt under them.

“Come to me, Jim.”

Again I paused. The voice was female and it sounded familiar. I knew I wasn’t down deep enough to get nitrogen narcosis or anything like that. Why the hell was I hallucinating about hearing a voice? I shook my head to clear it and looked back down to the task at hand. Was it getting darker?

“Come to me, Jim.”

Was that Jenny’s voice? Maybe she’d come out to visit me on the Sea Panner. How the hell would she be talking to me, though? Finally I looked up toward the surface and saw the darkness.

I surfaced into rough, choppy waters. The sky was dark with storm clouds and a stiff wind was whipping up good sized waves—waves bigger than my little dredge was built to handle. I hauled the dredge hose up as quickly as I could and started up the outboard motor clamped to the rear of the rig. I was a couple of miles away from the safety of the harbor jetties. I wasn’t sure that I’d be able to make it before the waves swamped the Sea Panner. The closest shoreline was rocky, so beaching wasn’t an option. I pointed the craft toward the harbor entrance and opened up the throttle on the outboard.

In the distance I saw Brad Tucker’s dredge motoring out into even deeper water.

“The man’s an idiot,” I muttered to myself. This wasn’t just some choppy water, this was a full-scale Bering Sea storm. It may have come up in a hurry, but it was obvious that it was a serious storm. I grabbed my binoculars and focused on Tucker’s rig just in time to see four divers go over the side with suction hoses. It looked like Tucker meant to keep on working, despite the danger.

It was a fight to keep my heading toward the harbor. The waves kept growing in size, slamming into the Sea Panner and trying to push me in toward the rocks. I kept the outboard at full throttle and constantly adjusted to try to keep course on the harbor entrance. After what seemed like forever, I reached the channel and turned in toward the harbor entrance. I glanced back over my shoulder at the angry sea I’d just barely survived, and that’s when it happened.

A big swell rolled under Brad Tucker’s dredge broadside, lifting the seaward side of it high and tilting the huge craft at a dangerous angle. As the swell continued toward shore, the craft righted, then kept going as momentum continued the swing of the tall sluices past vertical. A huge wave slammed into the side and it just kept on pitching until it rolled over sideways and capsized.

My first instinct was to turn around and head for the huge rig foundering in the water, but I realized that the Sea Panner would never make it out there. There were unprotected men in the 39-degree water and they wouldn’t survive long. I grabbed the radio microphone and yelled over the wind to tell the harbormaster what had just happened. I was still motoring into the harbor a few minutes later when two of the big rescue boats shot out past me toward the crippled dredge. They were 40-footers with big, powerful inboard motors. They were halfway to Tucker’s rig when the big dredge suddenly righted itself. The sluices had broken off and were gone. Thankfully it still appeared to be floating. I turned my attention back to the task of negotiating the harbor so I could dock.

The memorial service was held outdoors, to accommodate the crowd. When the dredge had capsized, the big compressor that pushed life-giving air down hoses to the divers had gone over the side, sinking quickly and landing on one of the divers. He was pinned to the bottom and he drowned. The other three divers had surfaced immediately when their airflow stopped. Thankfully there was only one death in the incident. Tragically, it was Brad Tucker’s 17-year-old son Garrett.

It looked like all of Nome had turned out to pay their respects. That’s what happened in seafaring towns. I’d been to a couple of similar memorial services back in Rockland. A death at sea reminds everyone of how fragile and transient our lives really are. Brad Tucker had left, flying back to Texas with his son’s body. We still paid our respects.

At the end of the service I spotted Frank at the edge of the crowd. I made my way over to him.

“Poor kid,” I said, not really knowing what else to say. Frank turned to me and he studied my face. His eyes looked like they were filled with a lifetime’s sorrow and pain.

“Ain’t right when a kid’s gotta pay for the sins of his father, Jim,” he said. He turned and walked away and I watched him go with tears in my eyes. For some reason the death of a kid I barely knew had hit me hard. Like many, I headed toward The Breakwater to try to take the sharp edge off the pain.

Jenny was waiting inside the cabin when I drunkenly slewed the pickup into the yard. She didn’t say anything, she just hugged me for a minute. She helped me up the stairs to my bedroom and got me stripped down to my underwear and safely into bed. I thanked her as I laid there on my back. She just smiled and gently rested her hand across my forehead for a moment. She stood, then walked toward the door. I knew she was leaving, but I didn’t want her to go. My last thought as I fell asleep was that it was a clear night outside.

My dreams were vivid and intense. All of the little things I’d been trying to pretend I wasn’t thinking about when I spent hours alone at the bottom of the Bering Sea came to me in full 3D with surround sound and narration.

She told everyone about you. They’re all getting a good laugh.

Kayla was talking to Lori, telling her about my trip to Alaska and calling it “Jim’s Folly.” They laughed, The scene shifted and she was sitting in a conference room with a group of people. Bill Edgecomb was there. They were all laughing as Kayla said: “He’ll probably find as much gold as he has brains—less than an ounce!” They laughed even harder. Kayla’s hand was resting on the table and Edgecomb put his hand on top of it as they laughed together.

She says she can’t call you because she has special projects at work. Special projects with special people…

I could see just Kayla’s face, the cell phone held to her cheek as she was talking to me: “I really have to go, Jim. I’m just so busy with all this special project work. I won’t be able to talk to you very much. You understand how important this is to me…” Slowly the rest of the scene came into focus. She was naked and bent over a desk as she was talking to me. Bill Edgecomb was behind her, thrusting rhythmically into her.

You know he’s fucking her and she’s loving it.

Kayla was sitting on the edge of a bed in an unfamiliar bedroom. Edgecomb walked up to her and she wrapped her hand around his cock and sucked it greedily into her mouth. She’d told me that she hated giving blowjobs, but there was nothing but raw lust burning in her eyes as she bobbed her head on his cock. He grunted and she gave him a look of pure ecstasy as he pumped into her mouth. A droplet of come ran down from the corner of her mouth. She scooped it up with her finger and greedily licked it off.

She was on her back, arching upward in passion as he drove his cock into her. She moaned and arched even further. Insipid porno movie dialog came out of her mouth: “Oh God! I can see why they call you ‘Big Bill.’ Jim could never make me feel this good. Fuck me harder, Big Bill, HARDER!” She moaned louder and louder…

I sat bolt upright in the bed, shaking violently. I could still hear the moaning. Looking frantically around the bedroom I finally noticed rain driving against the window. The moaning was the wind outside. I got up and went into the bathroom to relieve myself. Everything had been so vivid that I wasn’t sure if it had just been a dream. It certainly agreed with everything I’d been worrying about for the past couple of months.

I finished up, washed my hands, and returned to my bedroom. There was a neat pile of clothes next to the bedroom door. I looked at the bed and saw raven hair spread across my pillow and deep blue eyes looking at me.

Jenny.

“You… you’re here.” Surprised, I stated the obvious.

“Yes, Jim, I’m here for you.”

“Jenny, I can’t… we can’t…”

“Come to me, Jim,” she said. My feet moved of their own accord, obeying her command.

“When a promise is broken by one, Jim, the other is no longer bound by it.” That made sense to me… no, it didn’t! I made a promise to Kayla and I had to… But if Kayla broke her promise, did I… It hurt to think about it. Jenny just looked at me with those eyes and smiled and it all made sense. Of course she was right.

“Besides, I know how to make you feel good, Jim. I know what you want that she would never give you.”

She sat up, the bedclothes falling away from her smooth, white skin. Placing her hands on my hips, she slid my boxers down to my knees and then let them fall to the floor. My erection pointed straight outward. She parted her full lips and slid them over my aching knob.

“Jenny, I shouldn’t…” She just turned those blue eyes up at me as she sucked my cock deep into her mouth and the “shouldn’t” was gone. I knew that I would. A thought suddenly pushed through the blissful haze.

“Wait, Jenny.” She paused and fixed her gaze on me. “Are you, like, you know, old enough?” She released my cock from her mouth and giggled.

“I’m old enough, Jim. Trust me.” She took me back into her mouth and my cock was suddenly in a maelstrom of sucking and tonguing and moaning and humming. It wasn’t long before I was shooting what felt like an entire ocean of come into her mouth. My knees buckled and I fell sideways onto the bed, but she kept sucking on my cock until she’d milked every last bit of my orgasm from me.

“That—that was amazing,” I panted. Her reply was to push me onto my back and straddle me. I could feel the hot slickness as she began rubbing her pussy up and down my spent cock.

“I’m gonna need a few minutes, Jenny…” She leaned down and kissed me, then lifted her head back up and smiled at me. I felt my cock hardening. Bracing her hands on my chest, she slowly pushed herself down onto my renewed erection.

She started with a slow, rhythmic rolling, like the swells of the sea. But as her pleasure built, she moved faster and harder. She growled her building passion.

“Fuck me, Jim. Fuck me! Give me what that cheating bitch never deserved. Fuck it into me, Jim! Give it all to me. FUCK ME!”

Our bodies slammed violently together, over and over. The raw animal emotions boiled up inside me and I did exactly what Jenny demanded—I fucked them deep into her, blasting rope after rope of come inside her. She came, her head thrashing back and forth as her black hair whipped back and forth like the wind that was lashing sheets of rain against the window. I pulled her down onto me and I knew immediately what I felt and what she needed to know.

“I love you, Jenny. I love you like I didn’t know I could love anyone.”

She snuggled against me and softly said, “I accept your love. You are mine, Jim.” I felt a contentment rising within me. There was something I needed to do, though.

“I need to… take care of something, Jenny. It’ll take a little while, but I’ll be back as soon as I can. Will you wait here for me?” She rolled to the side, looked deeply into my eyes, then smiled and nodded. I got out of bed and quickly dressed in sweats, then grabbed my rain jacket and headed down the stairs.

“It’s five in the morning, Jim, why are you calling so early?” Rain pelted the pickup’s windshield as I watched the marker light at the airport sweeping its beam like a lighthouse.

“I’m not coming back, Kayla. I’m staying here.” The words surprised me almost as much as they surprised her. Somehow I knew that I meant them, though.

“What? What are you talking about?”

“We’re done. There’s not going to be a wedding.”

“Jim, I don’t care if you didn’t make enough for a big wedding…”

I snapped.

“Oh, I’m sure you’d just LOVE that! You’d have a great time laughing with everyone over me failing, wouldn’t you? Well you know what? Next time you’re fucking ‘Big Bill’ you can just tell him that I made more last month than he makes in a year.”

“Bill… What the hell are you talking about?”

Tell her about your true love.

“And you know something else? Since you decided that ‘Big Bill’ was worth breaking your promise, I found someone who’s showed me what a real woman is. She’s woman enough to suck my cock and love doing it. Of course you’ve been doing that for ‘Big Bill,’ haven’t you? No matter, Kayla, I love her. I love her more than I ever loved you. I’m going to have a big wedding, but you’re not going to be in it.”

“Jim, I never…”

Tell her who you love.

“Her name is Jenny Alton. Remember that name, Kayla: Jenny Alton. She’s the girl who is everything you refused to be for me. Today her name is Jenny Alton, but soon it’s going to be Mrs. Jenny Cutter.”

Ask her grandmother.

“You should tell your family that name, too: Jenny Alton. Especially your grandmother. Ask her why Jenny Alton is going to be my wife and not you.” I had no idea what I was talking about, but the words seemed right.

“You’ve been too busy whoring yourself to Bill Edgecomb to call me, so I’m sure you won’t have any problem never calling me again. Goodbye, Kayla.” I thumbed the disconnect button and turned the pickup back toward the cabin. Jenny was waiting in my bed when I arrived. We made love twice more before falling asleep in each other’s arms.

The morning broke clear and calm. Jenny was gone.

For the next few weeks the Bering was unusually accommodating. Everyone took advantage of her good mood and put in long hours dredging. Brad Tucker never returned. His boat had been towed into the harbor and it was tied up at the salvage docks. They’d also recovered his sluices, deck equipment, and the rest of the debris that had sunk. It all sat on the deck of the derelict dredge, a reminder to the rest of us to respect the sea.

Of course it wasn’t all clear and calm. A good mood for the Bering meant that only about half the days were stormy. And we did have some ugly storms from time to time. I always stayed at the cabin during those storms, but Jenny didn’t come. After a week or so I started doing all of my own housekeeping. It’s what I’d expected to do in the first place. I knew Jenny was probably just getting her head together. Our love was intense enough to overwhelm a young girl like her at first, but I knew she’d be back.

When it started snowing in town, I hauled the Sea Panner out and trailered her all the way up to the cabin. There was already a little snow at the cabin, and I knew that Snake River Road was supposed to close in the winter, but I needed to stay there so Jenny could find me. I carefully measured out two ounces of my gold to keep. Call me sentimental, but I wanted our rings to be made out of the gold that I’d mined. I took the rest of the gold down to the assayer and watched him test and weigh it and then write me the biggest check I’d ever seen in my life.

The Breakwater was nearly empty when I went in to have a celebratory drink. Tom McKay was tending the bar.

“Hey, Jim, how’s it going?”

“It’s going damn well today, Tom. I cashed out my gold today and I’m here to celebrate. Not many people here to celebrate with, though.”

“Most of them headed home. I expect you’ll be doing that soon, huh?”

“Actually, I’m probably going to stay for the winter. I like it around here.”

“No kidding! Well maybe Frank Alton will wander in for a drink with you. I haven’t seen him in weeks. You two sure seem to get along well, which is unusual for Frank.”

“Frank Alton? Is that his last name? Is he any relation to Jenny Alton?” Tom looked at me in surprise.

“There’s a name I haven’t heard in awhile,” he said. “You probably don’t want to mention her in front of Frank, though. No sense in bringing up all the pain over how she died and all.”

My world imploded.

“Jenny died… how?” I couldn’t form complete thoughts, much less speak complete sentences.

“Drowned most likely, though they never found the body or the boat. She just took Frank’s little tender boat straight out of the harbor and into the storm. A 12-foot rowboat with a little outboard motor is no match for even a little squall up here, much less the full-blown storm that day. I guess she was so upset after the trial that she just wanted to leave town and never come back. Frank probably would have killed him for what he did to his daughter if he hadn’t left.”

“Trial?” My head was spinning. The center of my universe, the love of my life was gone. Nothing made sense.

“Yeah, it was a shame the way they treated her; the whole town, actually. The guy brought up some high-powered lawyer from Anchorage and he turned everything she said all around. She said that he’d offered her a ride home and then taken her to his cabin up Snake River and raped her instead. The lawyer said that she was a 16-year-old slut who dressed to turn men on and she’d begged him for it. She said she was just wearing her school clothes, but the lawyer said that any girl that dressed that way was just looking for sex. Nobody would believe that shit today, but back then I guess everyone just wanted to believe what the lawyer said, rather than think that we had an actual rape here in Nome.”

“Who raped her?” Rage burned inside me. Who had defiled my beautiful Jenny? Who had driven her to her death?

“Some guy who was up here for summer prospecting. I heard that he had a pregnant wife back home. Name was Dumont or Duchesne or something like… Ducharme! That was it! Tom Ducharme. He left right after the trial. Never came back.”

The fucker even had the same last name as my whore ex-girlfriend! So he left town, did he? Well I had money. I could find him and make him pay.

“When did this happen? When did he leave town?”

“Let’s see,” Tom said, rubbing his chin. “Oh yeah, it was the summer before the big quake in Anchorage. September, 1963.”

The world twisted to a crazy angle inside my head, then slowly came back to normal—almost. I dropped a few bills on the bar and walked outside. My phone rang. It was Kayla again. She’d been leaving me several messages a day, but I’d just deleted them without listening to them. I thumbed the green button.

“What do you want?”

“Jim, honey, you’re there!”

“What do you want?”

“I want you, Jim. I want us to be together.”

“You probably should have thought of that before you decided to become Bill Edgecomb’s little fuck-slut.”

“I never did anything with Bill Edgecomb. I don’t know why you think that. It’s like you’ve gone crazy or something.”

“A little crazy is good for anyone—helps you understand things better.” I liked that quote, but I couldn’t remember where I’d heard it.

“Look, Kayla, it’s over and it’s never coming back. I got $147,000 in my pocket and you’re not getting a penny of it. I’m going to use it for a wonderful wedding with Jenny, the REAL love of my life.”

“Jenny Alton’s dead! I talked to my Grammy and she told me everything. You can’t torture me with stories about a girl who’s been dead 50 years, Jim.”

“You’re the one who’s dead, Kayla. You’re dead to me. You made your choice and now you have to live with it. I’ve made my choice and Jenny and I are going to get married. Goodbye Kayla.” I closed the phone and then threw it in the garbage barrel outside The Breakwater. It wasn’t like I couldn’t afford a new one, with a new number, after all.

So that was my summer. I’m much better off now, financially and emotionally. I’d stay and chat some more, but I’m sure you can see the dark clouds out past the harbor. There’s a nasty storm coming and I need to get back to the cabin. Jenny’s probably going to show up, and I need to be there when she does. We’re in love, you see, and I’m going to ask her to marry me.