Koos Smit

Johan

Summary

Disclaimer added by Céladon Puerulus

Measurements

Note

First Publication

Chapter 1

A boy of about 13 is the only passenger. He lies on a stack of grain bags inside the cage formed by the thick steel cattle railings that bang and rattle continuously. He lies on his back, an arm flung up over his eyes that are closed against the sun and the swirling dust. He looks like any Afrikaner farm boy tough, tanned and sturdy. His straw coloured hair, now spiky with sweat and dust, is cut bristle short. His eyes are navy blue and he has the broad face, wide mouth and determined jaw of his Dutch forebears. He wears faded navy blue rugby shorts and a grey gym vest that are both too small for him. His bare feet are hard and brown, his soles tough and leathery from going barefoot all year round as most Afrikaner boys of his age do. If there were anyone out here to see him as he passed by they would think him some farmer's son on the back of his father's truck.

For they would not see the shackles clamped around his ankles, or the chain that connects them to a steel ring bolted to the floor. If they did they would realise that he is not going home to his father's farm but is on his way to the correctional facility for young offenders further to the north that everyone knows simply as 'the Boys' Farm'.

Though his eyes are closed, Johan de Beer is not sleeping. He is still trying to come to terms with the sudden whirl of events that wrenched him from his life and his home in the city (if you can call it a home, he thinks) and dumped him on this truck on the way to the unknown terrors of the Boys' Farm.

Is it really just four days ago that he got busted for lifting a box of condoms from old man Cohen's cafe? Johan was on his way to gymnastics practice when he popped into the corner cafe to buy an Energade. He saw the condoms as he passed down the aisle and, impulsively, slipped a pack into his shorts pocket. Always need condoms and the old man won't miss "em was the extent of his thinking about it. What he did not realize was that old man Cohen saw him do it in the overhead mirror.

Shit, I could kick myself, Johan thinks angrily. For a lousy pack of condoms I got my arse whipped and now I have to spend the next six months like Farmer Brown feeding chickens and getting cowshit on my feet.

He never got to gymnastics practice. Just his luck to have a cop walk by just as he stepped out of the café. What a hoohah Mr Cohen, the old fart, made about it all, yelling "catch that thief' like Johan had just held him up with a gun and robbed him of all he owned. And of course the cop had to be that bastard Badenhorst that Johan has had a run-in with before. Just because Johan got selected for the First Rugby XV at school ahead of his dork son.

Well now I can kiss goodbye to my provincial gymnastics colours for sure, thinks Johan, and tears of frustration brim his eyes. He wipes them away with his forearm, leaving streaks of muddy dirt on his cheeks from the mingled dust, sweat and tears.

Gymnastics and rugby are his greatest passions and he is good at both. He loves gymnastics for the soaring sense of individual power and achievement that it gives him. Rugby he loves for its sheer brute physicality and also because, as the ultimate team game, it gives him a sense of belonging that he gets from nowhere else, including his family, such as it is.

Johan thinks about his family. Johan and his mother live with his mother's sister and her two kids in a tiny two-bedroomed municipal flat in a 'sub-economic' housing estate. His mother and his aunt share a room and he has to share the other with his cousins, a weedy, wet-nosed boy of 11 and an over-developed girl of fifteen who seems to be permanently on heat and just can't keep her hands to herself. 'My nympho cousin' Johan calls her.

His cousins have different fathers whom they have never met and whom his aunt only ever saw once and can't even remember their names, although she pretends to and makes up stories about them when her kids ask. Sometimes she can't remember the names she made up and the kids have to remind her. His aunt is a disaster when it comes to men. Actually, she is a disaster all round, Johan decides.

His mom is OK, although she is permanently overwhelmed by everything and sometimes can't even get out of bed to go to work. Then she loses that job and it takes a huge effort to find another, only to lose that when the boss gets tired of the excuses why she didn't get to work.

Johan's mom did marry Johan's dad and Johan has dim memories of a big man play-wrestling with him on a lawn in a happier time. His mom says that was the house they had on the mine property where his father worked as a crew captain. There was a rockfall underground which killed his father when Johan was 5. All Johan remembers of that is that his dad was no longer around and they moved away from the nice house and have been moving ever since. His mom just could not get it together. She withdrew more and more into herself and after a while it seemed she was also not really around.

No wonder Johan hates being at home. Every minute there is torture for him. He stays away as much as he can. In rugby season he trains alone on the school fields or in the weight room long after the rest of the team have gone home, until eventually the groundsman would chase Johan home so he could lock up. After gobbling down his supper Johan rushes off to the evening practices at the community sports centre rugby club, where again he would be the last to leave. In the gymnastics season he would do the same, training at school all afternoon and then going down to the community centre and training there until he would be sent home.

When there is neither rugby nor gymnastics he spends all his time after school at the community sport centre swimming, wrestling or just pushing weights in the gym. Anything to get away from that dingy flat and its depressing occupants.

Johan lifts himself up onto his elbows and looks down at the grimy, sweat-soaked gym clothes he has been wearing since that afternoon when Badenhorst took him down to the police lock-up. His wide mouth grimaces in distaste. I look like a poor-white from the gamadoelas he thinks. That's what his mom always says. Then he chuckles to himself. Hell, I am a poor-white. Now I look like one too.

Impulsively, he yanks his wet and filthy gym top over his head and tosses it away from him. He feels better at once. Freer and somehow cleaner with the hot sun on his skin. Like he can breathe again. He sits up and stretches, flexing his torso from side to side with his hands behind his head. His many days and hours in the gym, on the rugby field and in the weight room have given Johan a body that is superbly proportioned and muscled for his age.

Sitting up renews the stinging in his buttocks and brings Johan sharply back to the events of the last few days.

The whipping that he got this morning before the truck came to fetch him was brutal and painful, but appearing before the cold and disdainful magistrate the day after he was arrested was far worse. The magistrate looked down at him from behind his high bench like Johan was something nasty that had got on his shoes. Johan felt small and naked, standing there in his threadbare gym kit and his bare feet among the be-suited and be-gowned magistrate and the court officials. And the way the magistrate looked at Johan's mother made his blood boil.

Johan's mother asked for Johan to be released into her custody. She would make sure that he behaved in future. "He's not a bad boy, really, it's just 3; well his father died a long time ago and 3;," she trailed off.

"Are you working just now, Mrs De Beer?," asked the magistrate.

"No sir, but I'm expecting to get a job soon."

"When did you last work, Mrs De Beer?"

"About two months ago 3; I've been ill 3; but I'm better now."

"Yes, well 3; according to the social worker, you've had five different jobs in the last two years?

"I've had some problems 3;"

"What sort of problems? Alcohol? Drugs?"

"No, no 3;. I get depressed."

The magistrate rolled his eyes disbelievingly, "Yes, well 3; Mrs De Beer, let's be frank about it. Your 'problems', whatever they are, are obviously consuming your energies to the extent that you are incapable of taking care of your son. You must see that, surely?"

Johan's mom nodded vaguely, "I 3; I suppose 3;"

"Constable Badenhorst tells me that your son has been seen hanging around outside the railway station on weekend nights. Did you know that?"

"No 3;I 3;"

"No, I didn't think so. Do you know what boys hang around there for?"

"No 3; I don't."

"They get picked up there by homosexuals and have sex with them for money."

"No! Johan wouldn't do that!"

Johan blushes deep red and hangs his head

"Oh no, Johan! Please say you don't do that!," his mom cried.

Johan bit his lip and examined his stubby toes.

"Johan, please tell me you don't do that!"

Johan could not look at his mother. It sounded so sordid when you heard it said out loud like that. He had never thought of it as anything dirty. Sure, he knew it was naughty. But the way the magistrate said it and the way he looked at Johan, Johan wished he could crawl under a rock like the insect he felt.

Then he felt a flush of anger. What was wrong with it anyway? It was only a bit of harmless fun for a bit of cash. What else can a poor kid like him do for pocket money? He's too young to get a job. No one will give him even a part-time job until he turns sixteen.

"Well, Mrs De Beer 3; I am sure you will agree that what Johan really needs at this point in his life is a good dose of discipline."

"It seems so 3; yes 3; but 3; this is all my fault 3; I'm sure that if I 3;"

"Now look, Mrs De Beer," said the magistrate impatiently, "let's have no more of that nonsense. Johan is teetering on the edge and if we don't take firm measures now it might soon be too late. I just don't think you have what it takes and that is that."

"I suppose you're right," Mrs De Beer said at last.

"I know I am. I see these boys come through here every day. But you can put your mind at rest, Mrs De Beer, there is an alternative to sending Johan to a reformatory. With your agreement he can go instead to a private correctional facility that operates on a working farm in the Northern Transvaal. If they accept him into their program he will work hard doing farm chores and learn decent values in a structured and disciplined environment far away from the evils and temptations of the city."

"I don't have any money for that."

"It doesn't cost you anything. The owner of the facility has a government contract that covers the costs. Besides, the boys have to work hard for their living. It's part of teaching them that life is not a free ride. You would have to sign a contract giving the owner certain rights over Johan, including the right to act in loco parentis, but that's all."

"In loco what?"

"It means the right to act in the place of the parent. In other words, to authorize medical treatment, administer corporal punishment and 3; so on."

"Oh."

And so it was done. His mother agreed to sign him over to the owner of the Boys' Farm to keep him from going to reformatory. If he got a good report, he could come out after six months. He didn't pay much attention to what would happen if he didn't get a good report. He didn't think there was any chance that he wouldn't get a good report. All it depended on now was if the Boys' Farm would accept Johan into their program.

Then the magistrate dropped his bombshell.

"And also 3; to help him remember that there are consequences when you break society's rules 3;," he signed a document and then banged it with a rubber stamp, "I am sentencing him to receive ten strokes with the light cane."

Sure didn't feel like a light cane to me, Johan thinks, wincing as the truck bounces over a particularly rough patch. He twists around, peeling back the top of his shorts, and takes yet another look at the thick purple welts whose ends he can just see if he strains hard enough. He wonders what the rest of his arse looks like. Must be a real mess, he thinks.

The whipping itself was bad enough, but what made it worse was the waiting. He had to wait a couple of days for Boys' Farm to send the truck for him and they only whipped him this morning before breakfast. Badenhorst did it and loved every minute of it, the bastard!

Badenhorst came for him at 5 o'clock this morning. Johan went to the District Surgeon yesterday for a medical examination. To see if he could take the whipping. The doctor took one look at Johan and signed the papers, saying cheerfully, "He's as strong as an ox. He'll be OK."

"Shit," thought Johan, "How would he know I don't have a heart condition or something!"

As if reading his mind, the doctor smiled at Johan and said, "You couldn't get that built with a weak heart, now could you?"

"S'pose not," Johan smiled back, wryly.

"Don't worry about it, old boy. It'll hurt like hell, but you'll survive!"

Now Badenhorst leads him down into a brightly lit corridor that seems to go on forever with its twists and turns. Johan's bare feet pad soundlessly on the smooth concrete floor ahead of Badenhorst's echoing boots. Although it is not cold, shivers gust through Johan's body. Johan knows it is fear and tries to stop himself but cannot.

The policeman first takes Johan to a lavatory. "Make sure you empty yourself good. I don't want you peeing or shitting all over the room!"

Then down to the end of the corridor and into a cavernous room with a table and a long wooden bench: the strafbank (punishment bench). In one corner a small table with a bunch of yellow rottangs (rattan canes) on it. They are like the ones they use at school, only thicker and longer. Johan has had plenty of the cane at school. He's forever getting himself into shit. But this looks like something else altogether and Johan feels his stomach heave.

"Get your clothes off and lie on your belly on the strafbank," Badenhorst orders.

Shaking, Johan pulls off his gym vest and drops it on the floor.

"Put it on the table."

Johan picks it up and puts it on the table. He looks wide-eyed and pleading at Badenhorst, as if hoping that, somehow, the man will show him mercy. Fat chance! Badenhorst hates him and wouldn't spare him even if he had the power.

"Your shorts and underpants too, everything off!"

Johan pushes his shorts down to his ankles and steps out of them. He isn't wearing underpants. He doesn't have any. He picks up his shorts and puts them on the table, folding them carefully, trying to drag out the moment.

Badenhorst feels a rush of anger as he looks at Johan. The boy represents everything he hates. As far as Badenhorst is concerned, Johan is in league with the Devil. He is a filthy minded little criminal who does not deserve to breathe the same air as Badenhorst's son Kobus. Yet it is Johan who gets into the First Rugby XV, it is Johan who is popular among all his peers and it is Kobus who seems to suck the hind tit. When he complained to the principal of the school about Johan, even he seemed to have a soft spot for the boy. "Ag, Manie," he said, "The boy has a tough time and has done well to rise above it. Why don't you cut him a bit of slack, hey?"

Badenhorst grits his teeth as he remembers. He'll show this little animal what a tough time really is!

"Get on the bank!," he snarls at Johan, "Belly down and arms down the sides!"

Johan does so. The smooth wood feels cool against his skin. Johan wonders briefly how many other boys have been whipped on this very bench over the years. It looks pretty old, he thinks, must have been hundreds.

"Move up so your shoulders are level with the end of the bank."

Johan levers himself forward with his toes until his head sticks out over the end of the strafbank. His arms hang down either side, his fingers touching the floor.

Badnhorst taps one of the legs of the strafbank with the toe of his boot. "Grip these tight with your hands," he says.

Johan takes a firm grip of the strafbank's legs.

"Don't let go until I tell you and keep your legs together and flat on the strafbank. If you let go your hands or pull away or jump off the strafbank that stroke won't count."

"Yes sir."

"And if I have to call people to hold you down you're going to get double the lashes."

"Yes sir."

Johan watches Badenhorst choose a long yellow rottang. He swishes it through the air a few times just in front of Johan's face. It makes a whistling sound that bounces inside Johan's stomach. Badenhorst can see the tension in Johan's face and in the tightly knotted muscles of his back, his buttocks and his legs. He takes his time, savouring the boy's fear.

Johan's eyes remain fixed on the rottang, his head turning to follow Badenhorst as he moves to take up a position on Johan's left.

"Eyes to the front, boy! Don't look at me!"

Johan snaps his head forward and fixes his gaze on a patch of peeling paint on the wall. Every muscle in his body is tensed in anticipation of the coming stroke. Out of the corner of his eye he senses rather than sees the rottang lift high before fluting through the air to smack against his buttocks with a loud crack. His whole body jerks involuntarily and it seems that it takes whole seconds before the most excruciating pain shoots through him and explodes in his head. He hears someone scream. It takes a moment to realise that it is himself.

Hotness flushes through his whole body and he breaks out in an instant sweat. He shakes uncontrollably as his nervous system struggles to cope with the shock. Although Johan somehow manages to keep from jumping up, his back is arched and both hands are rubbing frantically at his buttocks, trying to rub the pain away.

Badenhorst waits until the shock subsides and Johan stops writhing and shivering.

Johan realizes he let go without being told and he quickly grips the strafbank legs again.

"You let go, so that one doesn't count," says Badenhorst.

"Please, sir, I won't let go again 3; please give me a chance," begs Johan.

"Stop whining and take your punishment like a man! You swagger around on the rugby field like you're a big hero, but I always knew you were nothing but a moffie. I wish Kobus could see you now! I'm going to tell him how you screamed and begged for mercy like a girl!"

Stung by the insult, Johan's fear and pain turn instantly to anger. He will show this bastard what he is made of, if it kills him. He fixes his watering eyes on the peeling paint, grits his teeth, grips the strafbank legs and waits for the next stroke.

Another ten times the rottang rises slowly and then flashes through the air to bite into Johan's quivering buttocks. Badenhorst waits a full minute between each searing stroke. Johan does not let go again. He does not scream again.

When it is all over, Johan lies dazed and panting, his chest heaving, his vision a blur through the silent tears. His hard round buttocks, white against his tanned back and legs, are a latticework of double-ridged purple weals. Tiny droplets of dark blood ooze from some of the welts. Badenhorst leaves the room for about fifteen minutes while Johan recovers. When Badenhorst returns, Johan is still lying on the strafbank, gripping the wooden legs tightly.

"Well, look at that," says Badenhorst, "you're learning already! Maybe there's hope for you after all."

Johan does not trust himself to speak.

"You can get up now," Badenhorst tells him.

Johan struggles painfully to his feet and then stumbles over to the table where his clothes are. His arse feels like it has been stroked with red-hot pokers. Pulling his too tight shorts over his buttocks is agony and walking in them back to his cell is worse. Several policemen make rude jokes about the stiff, splay-legged way Johan has to walk. The moment he gets to his cell he pulls his shorts off gingerly and lies on his bunk naked and belly down until the Boys' Farm truck arrives a few hours later.

Constable Badenhorst takes Johan and another boy of about 15 out to the police station yard, where the Boys' Farm truck is waiting.

Standing next to the truck with his hands on his hips is a stocky boy about the same age as Johan. He looks like a farm boy in his khaki shirt and shorts, his dusty bare feet and his Blue Bulls baseball cap jammed over his cropped blonde hair.

"Hallo Hein, how goes it with Mr Basson?" is Badenhorst's greeting.

The boy touches the peak of his cap politely and replies, "My pa is well, Oom (Uncle) Manie, He sends greetings."

"I hope he sent more than greetings."

Hein laughs and pats his bulging shirt pocket. "That depends on what you've got for us, Oom Manie."

Badenhorst gestures toward the two boys. Hein walks over to them and looks them up and down. Johan offers his hand and says, "Hi, I'm Johan."

Hein looks Johan in the eyes and pointedly ignores both the hand and the greeting. He reaches out a hand and starts feeling Johan's biceps. Johan jerks away and steps back. Instantly Badenhorst gives Johan a stinging slap to the side of his head that makes his ears ring. "Stand still for the jong baas (young boss)," he hisses.

"Let them strip, Oom Manie," Hein says matter-of-factly.

"Did you hear? Strip off your clothes," Badenhorst orders.

The boys strip. Johan sees that the other boy, a pale and lanky red-head, has no welts across his backside. Lucky shit, Johan thinks.

Hein slaps, prods and feels the two boys as if he were buying oxen. Or slaves, Johan thinks, angry and humiliated.

"How old are you?" Hein asks Johan.

"Twelve 3; sorry, I'm thirteen since last month."

"Where did you get these calluses?," he asks, feeling Johan's leathery palms and fingers.

"From my bar work in gymnastics."

"And how old are you?," Hein asks the other boy.

"Fifteen."

Hein slaps at the boy's hands to make him hold them palm up. He feels his hands and looks in his eyes.

"You've never done a day's labour in your life!" he says to the boy.

Eventually, he turns to Badenhorst, "We'll take just this one, Oom Manie," he says, pointing to Johan.

"What's wrong with the other one? You know, I went to a lot of trouble getting his case transferred to me so I could get him for your pa."

"I know, Oom Manie, but he's a bit too old. He's 15 already and you know Pa won't keep them after 16. Means we'll get less than a year's work out of him. This other one's just turned thirteen, so we'll get nearly four years out of him. And you can see he's strong and hard. We can use him in the quarry right away, we won't have to toughen him up in the lands first."

"Yes I know, but I thought 3; your pa has many contracts and he's so short of labour 3; eight or nine months is better than nothing."

"Ag, I don't know, Oom Manie. I don't think so. In any case, he looks a bit soft to me. He won't last a week in the quarry. He won't last a day, in fact. Look how white he is. The sun will cook him there among the rocks. Look how soft his hands are. There's just no muscle on him. And the first time I lay a whip on his back he'll probably pass out. He'll end up in the infirmary on the first day. Think how that will eat the profits!"

Johan has difficulty following what Hein is saying. What does he mean, four years? I'm only going to be there for six months! And what's that about a whip?

He decides that he must have misunderstood and puts it out of his mind.

Hein pulls out the wad of banknotes from his shirt pocket, peels off a couple of hundred Rand and hands them to Badenhorst.

"Thanks, Oom Manie. There's a bit extra for your trouble."

Badenhorst hands Hein a large brown envelope. Johan recognizes it as the one with the contract that his mom signed yesterday. "And here's your "ownership papers"," he chuckles.

That was three hours ago.

Johan feels the truck suddenly slacken speed, the engine protesting as the driver grinds down rapidly through the gears. Johan twists round and scrambles onto his knees on the pile of grain bags, leaning against the back of the cab and looking over its roof in the direction they are traveling. Almost at once the truck turns off the road and enters a wide gateway, clattering over the steel cattle grid that spans the entrance. There is no gate but on either side of the entrance is a white gatewall bearing the name of the farm, Welverdient (Well Deserved).

It is a common enough South African farm name and Johan smiles inwardly at the unintended joke. Well, I suppose I do deserve this for being so dof (dumb), he thinks.

Chapter 2

The boys look strong, tanned and healthy and the work does not look too hard. The anxious lump in Johan's belly rests a little easier. It doesn't look so bad, he thinks.

A short while later the truck pulls into a neat compound of white painted buildings surrounding a big open space, something like a parade ground, covered in a grey coloured crushed stone. Here and there among the buildings are neat patches of grass and colourful flower beds being watered, clipped, weeded and tended by yet more young boys.

The driver leaves the engine running as he climbs onto the back and unlocks Johan's shackles. Hein is waiting behind the truck with his left hand on his hip and his right hand hanging down, holding a three foot long sambok (a short whip cut out of a thick piece of stiff hippo hide). He taps the thinly tapered tip impatiently against his thick bare calf.

"Get down and wait here," he orders, pointing with the sambok to a spot on the gravel before the verandah fronting what seems to be an office building.

Johan clambers down stiffly and stands on the indicated spot as the truck lumbers off to deliver its load. Hein yells an order and the boys tending the gardens at once drop their tools and race off after the truck, their tough bare feet impervious to the hot sharp stones of the gravel parade ground.

Hein steps onto the shaded verandah and Johan follows him. As Johan's foot touches the verandah Hein delivers a stinging cut across Johan's calf with his sambok. "Ow!" yelps Johan and he jumps back.

"The stoep is out of bounds for you guys!," Hein says sternly.

Johan glares at Hein.

"Don't look at me like that!" says Hein, stepping off the verandah aggressively and lifting his sambok as if to strike, "The fuck you think you are!"

Johan says nothing but he continues to glare at the angry Hein, his fists balled tight. He wants to smash Hein in the face but something warns him to control himself.

Hein also struggles to keep his anger in check. He would like nothing better just now than to whip the shit right out of this piece of rubbish. Eventually he calms down. Plenty of time for that he tells himself and he turns on his heel and steps back onto the verandah. He drops into a wicker chair, his one foot on a low wicker table. He looks at Johan standing shirtless and still smouldering with rage in the blazing sun and a little tremor of anticipation runs through him as he thinks about how he will cut this cocky bastard down to size. A session at the whipping post is just what he needs. A dozen or so strokes of the sambok will take that cockiness right out of him. He'll be squealing like a stuck pig and begging for mercy before I'm halfway through with him, thinks Hein savagely.

Just then a big man in khaki work clothes strides around the corner of the building and mounts the verandah. He stops short at the sight of Hein.

"So you're back, Hein," says Hein's father, Mr Basson, "Is this the new muscle for the quarry? I thought there were two?"

"Yes, Pa, but the other one was no good, so I left him."

"Well this one is nicely built. He should do fine there."

"Yes, Pa, but, Pa 3; I think he's a bit windgat (cocky) 3;he needs to be broken or he will give us trouble."

The big man chuckles, "Really?"

"Yes, Pa, don't you think I must give him a good hiding before he goes down to the quarry? 3; I could do it right now."

"I don't think so, Hein. After a week in the quarry he'll be as docile as all your other little slaves down there. There's no need to flay the skin off his back before he's given us even a day's work. You know my rules. Whipping is for laziness and for disobedience, not just so you can prove to every new boy that you're the bull in the kraal (corral)!"

Hein flushes red and throws Johan a glare. Johan knows he is in for a rough time with Hein.

The man motions Johan inside the building. In the passage a boy of about ten years old waits apprehensively outside an office.

"Oh, are you still here, Toby?" says the man, "I forgot about you. I will deal with you as soon as I am done with this one,"

Johan stands in front of the man's desk as he goes through the papers that Hein gives him.

"Take him and get him cleaned up and issued with his things and then run him down to the quarry camp before the gangs get back. He can start with Stompie's gang tomorrow."

The man picks up a cane lying on his desk.

"Get in here, Toby, I'm ready for you now!"

As Johan and Hein leave the building the sounds of the cane smacking against naked flesh and of Toby's agonized cries follow them.

An hour later, showered and fed, Hein drives Johan to the quarry camp on the back of an old and battered pick-up truck.

The quarry camp is a stark contrast with the neat white buildings of the main farm compound that they have just left. It stands right next to the granite outcrop that is being mined. It consists of a collection of long wooden barrack type huts grouped around a big open patch of bare, stony earth. The huts sag disconsolately on low brick supports. Dingy grey paint is peeling off the boards and most of the filthy window panes are broken.

Inside each hut there are about 30 or 40 steel cots with uncovered sponge mattresses. A tatty brown army surplus sleeping bag is rolled up on each cot. Against the wall above each bed are two shelves holding a tin mug and bowl, a spoon and the meager possessions of its occupant.

Hein shows Johan to a vacant cot in the middle of the hut. All he possesses: his towel, his toothbrush and the two T shirts and two pairs of shorts that he has been issued with, fit on one shelf.

Behind each pair of huts is a brick-built ablution block with cold water showers and washbasins. The toilets are a row of open holes in the concrete floor under the showers. You have to squat over the hole to do your business and then turn on the shower to flush. Hein enjoys the look of horror that passes over Johan's face as he sees this.

"Did you think you were coming to a hotel? This is a work camp, not a holiday camp!"

Johan says nothing.

"This is the way things work here, and I'm only saying this once, so you better listen 3;"

Johan looks at Hein and lifts his eyebrows quizzically.

"This quarry is my project. It is my money that comes from these rocks. If production is good, the money is good and I am happy. If production falls, the money falls and I am not happy. If I am not happy then you are not happy, I promise you that 3;," and he waggles his sambok under Johan's nose.

"You work in gangs. Each gang has a bossboy. Your bossboy is Stompie. You must produce at least one skip full of crushed stone each day and your gang must produce at least one dump truck full. If you don't meet your own target you are basically stealing my money and you get five strokes of the sambok. If your team doesn't make target the whole team gets five strokes 3; You'll see for yourself just now how it works."

"There's no fences and no guards here. There's nothing but three hundred kilometers [200 miles] of bushveld and wild game between here and the nearest town. You can escape but you won't get far. If the lions or the leopards don't get you, our dogs will. And when we get you back here, you'll wish the wild animals got you rather."

From outside they suddenly became aware of a distant, rhythmic, thudding sound.

"There's the gangs coming in now," says Hein, "Come let's see if there'll be any sports this afternoon!"

Johan follows Hein outside onto the big open space. For the first time he notices a small rectangular cage standing alone on one side of the open area. It has four sides made of thick steel wire mesh welded to four steel posts. The roof is also of wire mesh, providing hardly any shade against the white hot heat of the African sun. There are two naked boys inside, one is lying on his back on the bare earth and the other is sitting with his back against a post.

"That's the hok," says Hein, "That's where we put boys who don't toe the line 3; a few days in there on bread and water once a day and a caning for breakfast and you'll be surprised how motivated you get."

The work gangs are returning from the quarry. Squads of boys, shirtless, barefoot and filthy with sweat and dust, came jogging into view. Like a Zulu Impi, they are jogging in disciplined step to a cadence called by a boy in each squad, their hard bare heels thudding the compacted earth in rhythm on every fourth step.

As each squad arrives at what seems to be a predetermined spot it halts and turns into line under the orders of an older boy jogging alongside. Johan supposes that they must be the bossboys of the gangs. Each bossboy carries a leather strap fixed to a short wooden handle.

Johan looks at the boys now standing at ease in the squad just opposite him. They range in age from around 12 or 13 to about 16. Most of them wear shorts that are filthy, frayed and threadbare. Many are torn and holed. Some hang in tatters from the elastic waistband. Some boys have no shorts at all 3; (Johan later learns that there is a new clothing issue only every six months and, if your clothes wear out before then, you just go naked until the next issue)

Underneath the film of sweat and dust Johan can see that the boys are all burned teak brown by the sun. Their bodies, without exception, ripple with bulging muscle. Hefting granite boulders and swinging heavy sledgehammers from morning till night must be like working out in a gym all day, Johan thinks. If you look at it like that, there could be worse things 3;

Eventually all the gangs are assembled in front of Hein. By now the supervisors have also arrived and they report to Hein, going over the production figures of each gang and making notes on their clipboards. Johan can see the anxiety on the faces of the boys in front of him and he senses the tension rising steadily in all the squads as Hein and the supervisors confer.

Eventually the supervisors stand aside and Hein steps forward, a piece of paper in one hand and his sambok tucked under his other arm. Although he is barefooted like all the boys and is only about 13 or 14, Hein is clearly the master of the quarry and he obviously enjoys this role.

"I'm happy to see that all teams made their targets today," he announces.

The relief is instant and many of the boys cheer.

"But there are some of you guys who have been stealing my money! 3; You've been loafing while your teammates carried you on their backs!"

Suddenly the tension ratchets up again and everyone falls silent, looking at each other nervously and wondering could it be me.

"When I call your name, you know what to do 3;," and Hein slowly calls out a list of five names.

One of the boys called out is in the squad opposite Johan. He is a well muscled boy with black hair and dark brown eyes. Johan sees him start slightly and bite his lower lip nervously. He stands stock still as if hoping that he heard wrong. His bossboy turns and crooks his finger at him.

"Get going, Tiaan, time to get your back tickled again!" he says.

Feet dragging, the boy shambles forward to take up position next to the other four boys who have already come forward.

Hein points his sambok at Tiaan and a supervisor touches him on the shoulder. Tiaan turns and steps up to a pole planted in the ground that Johan notices for the first time. Tiaan stands docilely as the supervisor fastens a length of rope to each of Tiaan's wrists. The supervisor then puts the ropes through steel rings on either side at the top of the whipping post and pulls them down hard, stretching Tiaan's muscled arms up above his head and forcing him to stand on his toes.

Tiaan stands quietly, the muscles of his back knotted in anticipation of the first stroke, his calves bulging as they take his weight.

Hein's first stroke is delivered against the bunched muscles of Tiaan's back with a sickening meaty crack that snaps his head back and jerks his whole body forward against the post. His breath is instantly driven out of his lungs so that he cannot even scream as an excruciating agony blasts through his body. His bare toes scrabble in the dust as he loses his toehold and hangs in the ropes, his body thrashing and writhing against the whipping post and his barrel chest heaving and gasping for air. A dark red weal mushrooms instantly over the boy's muscled back, hard to see against the teak brown of his skin unless you are close to him.

Hein waits until Tiaan has regained his toehold and has stopped thrashing about. He hangs against the post, his back on fire, his chest heaving, every muscle in his body knotted and quivering in taut anticipation of the next stroke.

The second stroke tears a strangled groan from deep inside the boy's chest. His eyes are screwed shut, he bites his lip and the veins stand out on his thick neck as he fights the urge to scream.

After the last stroke Tiaan is untied from the rings and he staggers painfully back to his place in the squad, his back striped with five ridged and fiery welts.

For the next half hour the camp echoes with the smack of the sambok on flesh and the cries of the boys being flogged, interspersed with Hein lecturing them on their idleness, on how they have let down their teams, on how they have stolen his money and on how they will be there for ever if they don't show some improvement. Hein is an expert with the sambok, a vicious whip that can take the skin off in strips. Hein applies it hard enough to inflict the most excruciating pain but never so hard that it breaks the skin. He is a young businessman, after all, and, like his father, is astute enough to realize that a boy in the infirmary is one that is not breaking rock.

Chapter 3

After the whippings the boys are dismissed to go eat their supper, which has arrived from the main compound in big pots on the back of a wagon pulled by a big red Massey Ferguson tractor. The boys rush to their huts to fetch their eating utensils and then queue up behind the tractor for their food. There is no dining hall and they sit or stand anywhere to have their supper. The food is plentiful, if plain.

The inmates of the Boys' Farm are always fed well. Being farmers, Hein and his father are aware of the importance of good diet in the condition and performance of their animals and they treat the boys in their charge no differently. The boys' staple diet is mieliepap, a thick porridge made from maize meal, served with vegetables and a meat stew. They are given as much milk to drink as they want. All of these items are produced and processed on the farm, and paid for by the Department of Corrections. This arrangement provides Mr Basson with both a captive market for his produce and an additional incentive to feed his charges well.

After supper the boys strip off their shorts in their huts and then run to queue naked outside the ablution block to shower and to wash their eating utensils at the same time. Johan joins the queue, although he showered at the main compound before coming down. In any case, he needs to wash his mug and bowl.

Johan finds himself behind Tiaan in the queue. Tiaan seems to have recovered from his ordeal and is laughing and wrestling with the boys next to him. He turns to Johan and puts out a hard and callused hand.

"You're the new guy in our gang," he says, "I'm Tiaan Bekker."

"Johan de Beer," replies Johan as he grips Tiaan's hand.

There is a sudden warmness as their eyes connect and they smile at each other, knowing without thinking about it that they will be friends.

"Welcome to Hein's little Hell on Earth," says Tiaan.

"Aw, come on, it can't be all that bad."

"I'm telling you 3; the guys who work the farm are on a holiday camp compared with us 3; you'll see 3; you gonna work like a slave down here 3; you set a foot wrong here, you get whipped 3; all there is to it."

"So I noticed 3; I thought you would be down and out for a week after that 3;," says Johan.

"Ag, it was nothing 3; I missed target 3; I had it coming 3; It's fucking sore when you get it but it quickly passes 3;I mean 3; it's still sore, of course, but by tomorrow the welts will go down and its just the bruises left 3; At least he didn't cut me."

"Shit, I hope that never happens to me!"

"Oh, it will! You can count on it. There's no one here that's met his target every single day. It's not easy. It's fucking hard work. Because you're new you'll get a week to come up to speed. After that 3; you don't meet your target 3; you get jacked 3; no exceptions, no excuses. You'll get used to it."

"Let me look at your back," Johan asks. Tiaan turns around and Johan examines his back closely. Now he sees that, apart from the five fresh welts, Tiaan's muscled back is criss-crossed with many older stripes, only slightly darker than the teak brown tan of his skin.

"Geez, you must get whipped every day!," Johan marvels, tracing some of them with his forefinger.

"Just about 3; But they're not all from Hein 3; You got the bossboys and the supervisors also at you all day with their straps 3; whipping you to make you work harder or move faster 3; that's why we're not allowed to wear shirts."

Tiaan grabs Johan by the shoulders and turns him around. He points at Johan's backside.

"I see they jacked your arse pretty good too. What was that for?

"No, I got those by the police. Ten with the rottang"

"Oh. Why you here?"

"For stealing condoms"

Tiaan laughs. "Geez, don't talk about condoms. You'll make me jags (horny)!"

"Fat lot of good that will do you here!," snorts Johan.

"Oh, you'll be surprised! Here you learn to make do with what you got!."

"Sure," says Johan, a little uncertainly.

"You'll see! When you been here a while and you never see a girl you make do with what you got, is all I say."

"So you wank, big deal!"

"Ja 3; or 3; lots of guys here go with each other."

"You mean like 'bum chums'."

"Well 3; Ja."

"Well, I'm only here six months anyway, I reckon I can hold out."

"Six months, my arse, you'll be here till you're sixteen, same as everyone else!"

Johan feels a cold hand clutch at his heart.

"No, I swear, I got only six months."

"So's everyone else. Me too. I been here a year already. See Daniel over there? He's fifteen. He's been here since he was twelve! Once you get in here you don't go out till you're sixteen. And then you transfer to a reformatory till you're 18! Because by then they have you down as 'incorrigible' or something'."

"What do you mean? That can't be!"

"Old man Basson makes money out of us. The government pays him to keep us and he uses us as slave labour to make more money for him. He can't afford to let us go. When your six months is up he pays some social worker to give a report to the magistrate that you are a hopeless case that needs to stay longer. The magistrate orders that you are "incorrigible" and then you're committed until you're 18. Only Basson sends you to the reformatory when you turn seventeen because he says older boys give too much trouble."

"Fuck 3; that's 3; bad!"

"Sorry 3; better you know sooner than later."

"Ja 3;"

Johan digests this a moment. "What about running away?," he asks.

Tiaan snorts. "You can try 3; maybe you'll be the first to get it right!"

"What's so hard about running away?"

"Well, first you got to go 300 kilos to get to the nearest town. You got to cross a lot of big game farms that belong to old man Basson's chommies (friends). They'll all be looking out for you with their hunters and their trackers. All their workers will turn you in 3; they'll be kicked off the farm with their families if they help you. Then there's the lions and the leopards and the wild dogs and the hyenas to worry about. And you'll also have Hein and his buddies running you down with their four-wheelers and their dogs. It's big sports for them."

"No one has ever gotten away. If you aren't killed by the wild animals or shot you get dragged back here and then you really shit off!"

Johan looks disbelieving.

"You don't believe me? Ask that oke there!" Tiaan points to a boy further down in the queue, "Hey Manie! Come here a moment!"

Manie comes forward. His head and shoulders are bowed and he wears a beaten and frightened look. He shuffles and limps badly. Johan sees that his left leg is hideously scarred from his thigh down to the middle of his calf. It looks like great chunks of muscle have been torn from his leg.

"Hey Manie, show Johan what happens when you run away from this place."

Manie points wordlessly to his disfigured leg.

"That's where Hein's dog got him!," Tiaan explains, "Now show him what Hein did to you with his sambok."

Manie turns around. His back and his buttocks are almost completely covered with a latticework of permanent whip scars, white against the mahogany brown of his skin.

"Manie was two weeks in the infirmary after Hein was finished with him. He nearly died. The blood was running down his legs and dribbling on the ground."

Johan looks away, sickened at the sight of Manie's scars. He feels a stab of both anger and fear that Hein, or anyone else, could have such unbridled power over him because of just one silly mistake that he had made. If only he had never zukked (stole) that pack of condoms! It wasn't like he didn't have the money to pay for them.

By now they are at the entrance to the ablution block. A boy squirts blobs of liquid green detergent all over their bodies and they move forward under the cold water streaming from the shower heads.

Johan sees that it is painful for Tiaan to reach back to wash his whip-marked back.

"Can I help you with that?," he offers.

Tiaan is grateful for the help and insists on washing Johan's back in return.

"This doesn't make us "bum chums," right?," says Johan with a wide grin.

"Well, that's up to you!," says Tiaan with a wink.

Back in the hut the cots are quickly filling up with boys, too tired from their day's labours to get up to the rough-housing that one would normally expect from such strong and healthy youngsters. They all lie naked on the uncovered mattresses, using the rolled up sleeping bag as a pillow it's too hot and sticky for clothes or for getting into a sleeping bag. In the distance the diesel generator that supplies electric lighting to the camp growls monotonously.

As he lies there with his eyes closed, passing the day through his thoughts, he hears a commotion to his left. He opens his eyes. Tiaan is telling the boy in the cot alongside Johan that he wants to swap cots. The boy does not want to move, so Tiaan tips him onto the floor. Tiaan stands over him with hands on hips and looks down at him, the expression on his face daring the boy to make something of it. The boy decides to let it go and he takes his things and moves to Tiaan's old cot.

Tiaan turns to Johan and slaps him playfully on the chest before putting his own few things up on the newly empty shelves.

"Now we're together," is all he says, and he climbs onto the cot. He lies on his belly because his back is still sore. He looks across at Johan, winks and smiles and then closes his eyes and is almost immediately asleep.

Johan lifts himself onto his elbows and looks around at his new home. Most of the exhausted boys have already plunged into sleep. A few are still talking quietly. The diesel generator coughs into silence and the lights flicker out. Johan closes his eyes and passes out.

Chapter 4

Johan sits up to see that the hut is alive with noise and bustle as boys swing out of bed and head for the door, pulling on their shorts as they run, their hard bare feet thudding on the wooden flooring.

Johan's bossboy, Stompie, strides down the walkway between the cots, flailing his strap at the laggards and yelling at them to get going.

Johan swings out of bed and bends down to retrieve his shorts from under the bed where he threw them last night. As he straightens up Stompie's strap catches his bare back and the sting makes him yelp and jump up. He collects another lash as he pulls up his shorts and scrambles to get away. Tiaan is already at the door, looking back and grinning at Johan's discomfort.

The tractor is already waiting with their breakfast and they have 30 minutes to gobble it down, wash their utensils and do whatever ablutions they want to do. Nobody cares if they wash or brush their teeth or not.

As they stand about shoveling their pap in their mouths, they gather around expectantly to watch the two naked boys in the hok getting their breakfast canings. They are let out of the hok one by one and receive their punishment lying stretched out on their bellies on a wooden strafbank just like the one Johan was whipped on yesterday at the police station. Boys are a cruel race of beings and, although it is a daily occurrence, the boys seem never to tire of watching their unfortunate comrades being tortured on the strafbank.

"What did they do?," asks Johan of Tiaan.

"I dunno," says Tiaan, "Maybe they just pissed their bossboy off. You don't ask. You just take your straf and carry on."

Johan watches, fascinated, as the first victim, a sandy-haired, well-made boy of about 14 years, obviously aware of his audience, walks up to the strafbank almost jauntily and waits to be told to get onto it. He has a smooth and well-muscled body, deeply tanned and hairless and, as he stands there with his hands on his hips, Johan is amazed to see that his cock is hard and jutting out horizontally. Even more amazing, the boy seems to be completely unfazed by it. On the order of the bossboy, the boy swings his one leg over the strafbank with a show of bravado, as if mounting a rather low horse, and sits down on his perfectly formed bare arse with his legs straddling the bank. Then he lowers his muscle-ripped trunk onto the smooth surface of the bank in front of him, taking care to align his stiff penis comfortably straight out on the bank under his hard belly. Then he swings his bulging legs up to stretch out on the bank behind him. He hooks his leathery toes under the bottom end of the strafbank and grips the top end firmly with strong hands. He lies still, waiting for the first stroke, his back arched and his head and shoulders lifted off the bank, the muscles of his back, his buttocks and his legs standing out hard and knotted in tensed anticipation.

The long yellow rottang hisses through the air and cracks against the boy's bare brown buttocks. A white stripe, almost like a chalk mark, appears instantly over the smooth brown skin of his buttocks. In seconds the white stripe mushrooms into a livid red double-ridged welt. He gasps as his head snaps up and his muscled back arches even further. His face screws up with pain, the cockiness gone. His buttocks clench and thrust his erect penis and balls against the hard surface of the bank, adding to the pain searing his buttocks. A low moan escapes his clenched teeth.

Johan feels a tingling in his own cock. He is appalled to realize that he is being aroused by the sight of this boy with the barbarically muscled body and the perfectly rounded arse being whipped. He tries to squeeze the idea out of his head, but as stroke follows sizzling stroke and the boy jerks, writhes and moans in agony in front of him, his cock grows and stiffens until its swollen head pops out the top of his shorts. He tries to cover it with his hands, but his hands are not big enough. He looks about desperately to see who might be noticing, but everyone is intent on watching the writhing boy. Then he notices several other boys with long thick bulges in their shorts, some of them unabashedly fingering themselves as they watch the boy suffer. Johan folds his fingers around the head of his cock sticking out of his shorts, meaning just to cover it from view, but before he realizes it, he is rolling the tip rapidly between thumb and middle finger.

Next to Johan, Tiaan nudges Johan. Johan looks at his new friend.

"Look at him fucking the bench!," says Tiaan.

Johan looks back at the boy being whipped. He sees that his buttocks are now clenching and releasing rhythmically in between the fiery strokes of the rottang, and the boy's moaning has taken on a different quality as he stares open-mouthed and unseeing into the middle distance. Suddenly the boy's body goes rigid, his belly lifts off the bank and his buttocks and legs quiver in quick shuddering spasms as his penis squirts out thick jets of white cum along the length of the bank.

The sight of this is enough to push Johan over the top and he shoots great spurts of hot cum into his cupped hand, dripping down to splash on his muscular legs and his broad brown feet.

Johan soon realizes he is not the only one. Some of the other boys have pulled their shorts down below their balls and are masturbating openly.

Finally the boy being whipped is allowed to get up. He can hardly stand up straight. Fifteen thick welts, already turning purple, cover his buttocks from the point where the hard round mounds melt into his back to the top of his muscular thighs.

"And that's just the first morning," says Tiaan, "He's gonna get this for three more days!"

As the second boy, a stocky red-head of 12 years, is led out for his whipping, the work gangs are fallen in. Roll call is taken to the accompaniment of the rottang hissing and cracking against naked flesh behind the squads of boys. Not a murmur escapes the boy's lips, however, and eventually Johan, standing in the back rank, turns in admiration to see who it is. He is instantly rewarded with a stinging crack of Stompie's strap across his bare back.

"Face your front, new boy!," snarls Stompie, and Johan yelps and snaps his head forward. Soon after, the boys are doubled off in step to the quarry workings, their tough bare feet stamping the ground in the rhythm Johan heard yesterday.

Once there, Stompie issues each boy with a sledgehammer, a cold chisel and a shovel. First, the whole gang goes to the rock face and loads several wagons with granite boulders that have been blasted from the rock face with dynamite. Some of the boulders are too big to be lifted and so the boys have to break them into more manageable pieces with their sledgehammers and their cold chisels. Tiaan is an expert at sizing up a boulder and deciding just where to insert the blade of the big chisel.

Once the wagons are full, it takes the whole gang to push and pull them to where the boys use their hammers to smash the boulders and rocks into gravel chips. Each boy shovels the stone he has crushed into his own skip, standing nearby on a narrow gauge rail track. On top of the skip is a sieve that the chips have to pass through. The chips that are too big have to be smashed smaller. At the end of the day the boys have to push and pull the skips along the rails to a point where they are hooked to a chain that pulls them up a steep ramp and empties them into a big hopper before taking them down to the other side where the boys have to pull them back on a circle track to where they started, ready to be filled the next day.

It is back-breaking work under the blazing sun. Their bodies glisten from the sweat pouring off them. Every hour the bossboy blows a whistle and the boys take a five minute water break so they don't dehydrate. Strong and tough as Johan is, his muscles are screaming for relief after just four hours' work. Tiaan and the other hard-muscled members of Johan's gang are swinging and shoveling like well-oiled machines. Tiaan grins at Johan.

"Don't worry, after a few weeks you'll get into the swing of it."

Johan is too exhausted to reply. He stops a moment and leans on his shovel to catch his breath, the sweat running off him in rivers. Tiaan throws him a warning look but is too late. Stompie's strap snaps into Johan's bowed back.

"Who said you could rest, De Beer?," Stompie barks from behind him. Johan yelps and drops his shovel. Stompie lays two more strokes in quick succession across Johan's back as he twists and ducks while scrambling to pick up his shovel and get back to shoveling chips into the skip.

The shock of the strap pumps a healthy shot of adrenalin into Johan's blood and for the next hour he works like a demon.

"Works every time," grins Tiaan at him, "Whenever you feel like you want to take a rest, ask Stompie to help you out with a few jacks across your back!"

"That's not funny!," growls Johan.

"Well, it's better than lashes with the sambok!"

Johan says nothing as he keeps swinging his hammer.

At midday the tractor brings their lunch to the workings pap and stew like they had at supper and breakfast. They have half an hour to eat and rest. Johan is starving and he wolfs his food and milk down in less than five minutes, like all the other ravenous boys. Then he finds Tiaan, who is sitting with his back against a rock and resting in a scrap of shade with his eyes closed. Tiaan moves over to share his bit of shade with Johan. Johan flops down and rests his still stinging back gingerly against the warm rock. He closes his eyes for a few minutes.

Strong and healthy young boys' muscles recover quickly and after a few minutes he is rested enough to want to chat to Tiaan. He opens his eyes and sees Tiaan looking at him, obviously also rested and alert.

"Let me see your back," Tiaan orders.

Johan leans forward. Tiaan runs his fingers lightly over Johan's weals.

"It's nothing," he says, "Stompie was going easy on you."

"Huh! Didn't feel like it!," says Johan.

"Ag, you're a just sissy, man!," teases Tiaan, "All you got was a pissy little strap! Wait till you get Hein's sambok!"

"OK, OK!," says Johan.

Johan manages to get through the afternoon without collecting any more lashes, but his work rate is way slower than anyone else's and his skip is only three quarter full at the end of the day.

Back at the camp in the late afternoon only one boy is strung up to the whipping post and flogged for poor production. Johan's belly lurches with fear when his name is also called out but when he reports shakily to the whipping post Hein sends him back.

"That's your first day of grace, boy. You got a lot of improving to do in the next six days if you don't want to be whipped!"

"Yes boss."

"Remember you got to improve every day in your grace period. As long as you're doing better each day you'll be OK. The first day you don't improve is your first whipping and the end of your grace period!"

"Yes boss."

It is Saturday evening and there is almost a festive atmosphere in the camp. Tiaan explains that Sunday is the only day of the week that they don't have to work.

"Old man Basson is a bit religious that way," he snorts.

"So what happens do we go back to the main compound or what?"

"Ja, sure! We get dressed up in our stepping out clothes and they take us to the Wimpy and a movie!," snorts Tiaan.

Johan blushes. "OK, OK .. How do I know what goes on?," he says crossly.

Tiaan throws his arm around Johan's neck.

"Hey, I'm only taking the piss 3; Don't get so kwaai (cross)!"

Johan puts an arm around Tiaan's back.

"OK 3; sorry 3; so what's happening?"

"You and me and a couple other okes is going down to the dam and we're gonna braai some meat and have a couple beers and a couple zols (joints) and we're gonna have some fun."

"Where'd you get all that?"

"Old Andries, the tractor driver, will bring the meat and beer when he comes with the supper."

"But where do you get the money?"

"We give him dagga (marijuana) that we grow in the veld 3; never mind where 3; and the zols we make ourselves."

The sun is just above the treetops when Tiaan, Johan and two other boys from their gang make their way along a cart track that leads to a small reed-lined dam on the far side of the quarry's granite outcrop. The two other boys are the fifteen year old Daniel that Tiaan pointed out to Johan the night before and a fourteen year-old named Chrisjan. Each one carries his sleeping bag as they plan to spend the night at the dam. Daniel and Chrisjan each have an old army rucksack that they use to carry the meat and beers that old Andries brought them. They had packed the meat and beers and at the bottom of their rucksacks, along with a variety of tins of food that they spirited out from somewhere. They then packed their sleeping bags on top. Johan noticed that Daniel and Chrisjan packed their clothes and their few other possessions in as well, but assumed that they were worried they might be stolen while they were away and did not say anything about it.

Chapter 5

An hour later the four boys are sitting on a grassy patch close to the water as they wait for the fire to burn down to coals. Suddenly Tiaan jumps up and strips off his shorts.

"I'm lus for a goof! (I crave a swim) Who's with me?' and he runs into the water.

The other boys need no further invitation and they rip off their shorts and rush in after him.

Afterwards they sit naked on the grass and drip dry as the sun goes down, painting the white African sky quickly orange and then purple and then, suddenly as always in the Bushveld, it is night and the black sky is almost misty with the millions of stars of the Milky Way.

There are only two beers each not enough to make them forget where they are but enough to pass for a kind of happiness. And when the beer is finished, Tiaan brings out his dagga zols, and the boys pass them around and get gently elated.

As Daniel and Chrisjan get more and more smacked on the dagga, they whisper conspiratorially and they play-wrestle, prod, tickle and grope each other to the accompaniment of a lot of giggling.

Soon they are visibly aroused and Johan and Tiaan exchange knowing smirks. Not long afterwards Daniel and Chrisjan have advanced beyond the clumsy boyish foreplay and are grunting and panting rhythmically as they pleasure each other, completely oblivious to Johan's and Tiaan's interested gaze.

When Daniel and Chrisjan are done, they get up and dive into the dam to clean themselves off and to cool down.

Daniel calls out from the water, "Hey you two, you gonna do it or you gonna waste the whole night away?"

Johan looks at Tiaan quickly, abashed, "I don't 3; Do you 3;?."

"Nah 3; he's just spaced 3; don't worry about it 3; I'm not lus anyway."

Johan points to Tiaan's maleness, lengthening like a filling hosepipe between his legs, "If you're not lus, then what's that?" he asks, laughing.

"OK, so I am lus, but it's OK if you don't want to play, I can always do self-service."

"Sorry 3;," says Johan, "I just didn't expect 3;."

"Hey, I said it's OK!"

They lie side by side on their backs on overlapping sleeping bags, looking up at the zillions of stars overhead, listening to the other two cavorting and giggling and then suddenly becoming still as they wind each other up repeatedly to yet another audibly throbbing climax. Johan feels his own member stirring as they do and as he notices that Tiaan's is still rampant

"Did you have sex with a guy before?," asks Tiaan suddenly.

Johan's mouth is dry and he says nothing for a long while, not sure of his ground, wondering how far he can trust Tiaan with such intimate details of his life.

Eventually, he thinks, what the hell.

"I been with guys before. At the railway station where I live guys come at night looking for boys to give them a wank or a blowjob. Right there in their cars. They mostly drive Mercs and BMs and they pay good cash money for it."

"Sometimes they buy you things and they take you to a motel. Of course, then they want more than a wank or a blowjob!"

"Once this guy took me and my mate, Benni, to his house. He had this really posh house with a big pool and a snooker table and everything. There was this big party with all these bigshots. It went on the whole week-end. It was wild, hey! We couldn't hardly walk or sit afterwards but we made a stack of cash!"

"So 3; ja 3; I've had plenty sex with guys."

Tiaan turns onto his side to face Johan, his head resting on his elbow.

"My mom died when I was six and my dad got married to this witch who had her own kids," he begins.

"My step mom and me didn't like each other one bit. My dad sent me to board at this government farm school just so he could have peace at home. At first I used to go home every weekend. Then they would fetch me only for holidays."

When I was eight they moved to Cape Town and there was no money to get me there, so in the holidays I went to stay on my uncle's farm with my cousin Frikkie.

"Frikkie was a good oke. Like a big brother to me. He used to take me everywhere with him on the farm. He was three years older than me. He taught me lots of things. Taught me to shoot 3; to fish 3; to drive a tractor 3; He taught me how to smoke 3;He would zuk his old man's cigarettes and we would smoke them behind the pigsty."

"We used to camp out at the farm dam, just like this one. We didn't have sleeping bags, just an old blanket each. We'd make one big soft mattress out of hay with a blanket on top and we would lie together kaalgat (naked) under the other blanket."

"That's where Frikkie taught me about sex. Every holiday he had something new to show me. I looked forward to the holidays with Frikkie so much that one time when my dad wanted to send money for me to go to Cape Town for Christmas I told him I'd rather go to the farm."

"Then, a year ago now 3; a bit longer 3; Frikkie's dad caught us doing it in the feed store. He was in town but he came back sooner than we expected 3; I'll never forget the look on his face when he walked in and saw us."

"Well, that was the end of holidays with Frikkie! After his dad gave us both a hell of a whipping he threw me into the back of his bakkie and drove me to the police station. He charged me with corrupting Frikkie. Can you believe that? I'm twelve and Frikkie's fifteen and I corrupted Frikkie!"

"Didn't Frikkie tell his dad the truth?," asks Johan, outraged.

"Yes, he did, but his dad didn't want to hear it. His dad wouldn't even let him talk to the police. Said he was too traumatized. Said that he saw what happened with his own eyes and they would have to be satisfied with that."

"What a bastard!," says Johan, "So what happened?"

"Well, I went to court 3; got a whipping from the police, same as you, and then I got sent here. My dad said he made some deal that I wouldn't get sent to reformatory if I came here instead. It was supposed to be only for six months but after six months old man Basson called me in and told me the magistrate declared me incorrigible or something and now I got to stay here or in a reformatory until I'm 18. Only later I found out the old man pays this tame social worker to write reports saying we are hard cases and must be made long term inmates."

"Fuck it, that stinks!," Johan rages.

"Ja 3; but there's fuckall you can do about it 3; just have to take it and go on."

"But what about your dad? Can't he do something?"

"He doesn't give a shit. Who's he gonna believe, anyway? Any case, I think it suits him. Now he doesn't have to bother about me, he can get on with his new life and his new kids. Fuck him!"

Johan puts out a hand and squeezes Tiaan's shoulder. Impulsively, Tiaan closes a strong fist around Johan's wrist and rolls backward onto his back, pulling Johan onto him as he does so.

Taken by surprise, Johan resists momentarily but then surrenders and they lie in each other's arms, hugging tightly, almost desperately, for a long while, saying nothing, aware only of the hardness of their muscled young bodies pressed against each other and the hotness of their breath on each other's necks. Then, slowly, they become aware of a delicious tension growing between them and, as if by unseen signal, their hands move to explore each other's bodies, at first hesitant and fumbling, then ever more insistent and purposeful, probing, stroking, urging, - until suddenly first one and then the other stiffens and shudders with pulsing rushes of sweet pleasure and relief.

Afterwards they fall asleep in each other's arms, sated and happy in the moment, forgetting both the anguish that is past and the fear of what is to come.

Chapter 6

Trust them to bugger off back to camp with the food, Johan thinks, irritated. He walks back to where Tiaan has just sat up and is stretching the sleep out of his muscles.

"Those buggers have fucked off with the food," Johan complains.

"Ja, I know," says Tiaan, "They left last night already."

Johan cocks his head enquiringly at Tiaan.

"They gapped it," says Tiaan.

Johan still looks puzzled.

"They gapped it! They're gone! They're outta here! What don't you understand?"

"But are they mad? You told me no one can get away!"

"I dunno. They wanna try."

"We gotta stop them! They could get killed!"

"They know that. They been thinking about it a long time. They didn't just decide last night."

"But still 3;."

"But nothing 3; Any case, they're ten hours away already 3; if we go after them they'll say we also ran away."

Johan sits down and puts his head in his hands. "Shit!," is all he can say.

"Shit is right," says Tiaan, "When they find out at roll call tomorrow morning, the whole gang is gonna be in shit."

"Why, we had nothing to do with it 3; did we?"

"Doesn't matter. They'll say we must've known about it and we should've told them."

"Well you did know about it!"

"Was I supposed to rat on them, then?"

"I s'pose not."

After a moment of thought, Johan asks, "What will they do to us?"

"They'll try to get us to say where they went or what their plans were."

"And we'll just say we don't know 3; because we don't."

Tiaan snorts, "Ja 3; but they'll try to beat it out of us in any case."

The two boys wander back to camp to see if there is anything left over from breakfast. Afterwards they head back to the dam where they spend the rest of the day swimming, looking for rabbits, trying to catch fish with a handline and lumps of bread or, when it gets too hot, lying on their sleeping bags under the shade of an umbrella thorn.

But the grim prospects of the next day, when Daniel's and Chrisjan's absence will be discovered, hang over them like a cloud, however much they try to forget it.

Back in the camp that night, after lights out, both Johan and Tiaan lie sleepless, staring up into the darkness. By now all the boys in their gang know that Daniel and Chrisjan have gapped it and there is a subdued atmosphere in the hut.

When eventually Tiaan slips quietly onto Johan's cot to lie up against him, Johan turns to him gratefully, pressing his hard young body against Tiaan's, his blood surging, lusting to fill something that feels empty and anxious, somewhere in the middle of his chest. Tiaan has the same feeling, though neither can articulate it. They enjoy the warm, firm, smoothness of each other's muscular bodies and they can sense the pounding of each other's hearts, the hot blood racing through each other's veins and the swelling, thrusting, hardness against each other's bellies.

Tiaan wastes no time on preliminaries. He grips Johan's dick in a rough strong hand and massages its tip rapidly with his thumb, his fingers curled around the back of the thick and rigid shaft. Soon Johan is gasping and thrusting his dick rapidly into Tiaan's fist. Johan closes his fist around Tiaan's hand and squeezes it.

"Harder!" he grunts, "Gimme pressure!"

Tiaan closes his fist tightly around the tip of Johan's shaft and starts pumping it hard and fast.

With his spare hand, Tiaan grab's Johan's hand and closes it around Tiaan's own rampant cock.

Johan does not need Tiaan to say what he wants. He grips Tiaan's cock at once in his callused hand and pumps rapidly up and down the tip of Tiaan's shaft.

Soon Johan feels close to climax and he pushes Tiaan's hand away, getting up onto his knees. Tiaan immediately scrambles up onto his knees and elbows, legs spread apart, offering his hole to Johan. Johan plunges his shaft into Tiaan and after just a few hard, quick thrusts, goes suddenly rigid and rapidly fires off several shots of his hot juice deep inside Tiaan's bum.

Johan leans his upper body on Tiaan's back for a while, still inside Tiaan, as he allows the warm tingling echoes of his orgasm to wash pleasantly through his body.

A minute later, to Tiaan's amazement, he feels Johan's cock stiffening inside him again and Johan, still lying over Tiaan's back, begins to move it slowly in and out of Tiaan's hole. As he does so, he reaches a hand around under Tiaan's belly, finds Tiaan's cock and begins to stroke his fist up and down its hard and quivering length.

Tiaan is also close to climax and it does not take long before he unloads his juice in great spurts that spray his belly, his chest and the sponge mattress underneath him.

Johan continues to bang away at Tiaan's arse and fifteen minutes later he comes again.

By now, Tiaan is also hard and he crawls forward to pull himself off Johan's cock before Johan starts all over again. Johan reluctantly bends down onto knees and elbows for Tiaan and Tiaan mounts Johan for his turn.

The two boys do it again and again over the next few hours until, exhausted yet strangely still unsatisfied, they finally both surrender to sleep.

Their nightmare begins the next morning after breakfast, when the roll call reveals that Daniel and Chrisjan are absent.

There is consternation and anger and the bossboys and supervisors rush about like demented creatures as they search for the missing boys in the huts, the showers, the dam and the quarry workings. Eventually the dread truth is confirmed. The two boys are gone.

Hein and his father are notified and they arrive at top speed in a bakkie, pulling up in a cloud of dust, Hein jumping out with his long black sambok in hand and yelling to Stompie to get his gang over to their hut.

Tiaan, Johan and the rest of the twenty boys that make up Stompie's gang wait outside their hut while Hein and Stompie make a quick inspection of Daniel's and Chrisjan's bed spaces to see if they can pick up any clues. Then Hein stands in the doorway and addresses the frightened boys, wagging his sambok at them.

"One or more of you knew about this and didn't report it. If you own up now, it will go easier with you than when I find out the hard way. I am going to count to ten and I want the guilty ones to step forward and tell me where they went. If not, I'm gonna take you in here one by one and whip the shit out of you until someone talks."

Hein counts slowly to ten. No one steps forward.

Hein goes red with anger. "All of you drop your shorts where you stand, and you!," he points to the first boy in the front row, "Get in here!"

Trembling, the boy pushes his shorts to his ankles and steps out of them. Then he mounts the steps and disappears inside the hut as all the other boys also strip off their shorts. Moments later the boys outside hear the sickening smack of sambok against tensed muscle and the boy's anguished yelp. They hear Hein's voice raised in query, a short silence and then another stroke of the sambok and another yelp. After five of these the shouted questions are almost drowned by the boy's agonized yells. By the tenth stroke the boy is sobbing continuously, rising to a full-throated scream with each stroke of the sambok.

Eventually, several strokes later, the boy emerges, snivelling, and takes his position in the line, his buttocks criss-crossed with angry red weals, some of them oozing droplets of blood.

Johan is next in line and Hein beckons him curtly with his thumb. Johan enters the hut.

Stompie points to a cot. "Lie over the end with your arse in the air and grip the sides with your hands," he says, "Don't let go until you're told or you'll get extras."

Johan does as he says. He grimaces as he notices that the end of the mattress is wet where the previous boy must have pissed himself.

Without wasting any time Hein delivers a sizzling stroke across Johan's clenched buttocks. Johan gasps. The pain is excruciating and he struggles to regain his breath.

"Where did those two go to?," he yells at Johan.

"I only just got here, boss 3; how would I know?," Johan stammers breathlessly.

Another searing stroke cracks against Johan's buttocks. Hein repeats the question.

Despite himself, Johan yelps with pain, "Oh please boss 3; I don't know 3; I promise 3; I don't know!"

"This doesn't have to go on," says Hein, "It can stop right now if you tell me where those two went."

"But I don't know!," Johan pleads.

The sambok hisses and bites into Johan's backside by way of answer.

"Oh shit, that hurts!" yells Johan, "Please, please 3; I really don't know."

Johan has never experienced anything as painful as the sambok before. The police whipping with the rottang seems like a mild spanking compared with this. Johan knows that if he did know where Daniel and Chrisjan had gone, he would have blurted it out by now to escape the pain. He feels a little ashamed through the red blur of pain about this.

Again the sambok bites into Johan's quivering buttocks. Johan realizes that Hein must know that he would not know anything about the runners but is going to give him the full treatment anyway. So he grits his teeth and tries desperately not to cry out.

Johan is amazed to feel the tingling between his legs that, up to now, he has only ever associated with sexual arousal. He thinks at once of the sandy-haired boy that he witnessed being flogged on his first morning here. It has not dawned on him until now that that boy's arousal and ejaculation had anything to do with his being whipped. Johan's dick, up to now limp with fear, has begun to swell and lengthen. Thinking about that boy heightens the feeling and Johan has to lift his hips now to allow his rapidly erecting penis room to lie straight beneath him.

At least he has something to take his mind off the pain, Johan thinks, as the jerking and writhing of his body from the whip strokes involuntarily thrusts his thick and throbbing penis back and forth between his hard muscled belly and the sponge rubber of the uncovered mattress.

The fifteenth stroke propels Johan into climax and he lies there gasping from mixed pain and ecstasy, his buttocks clenching repeatedly in spasm as his dick shoots wad after wad of hot cum out between his belly and the mattress.

Hein looks at Stompie in disgust.

"Fuck! Another one who gets his rocks off when he's whipped!"

Hein delivers another stroke across Johan's welted backside.

"Get up now, for fucksake, and get outta here!," he yells.

Johan yelps and jumps up. He scampers to the door, trying to wipe off the cum spread all over his belly before going outside.

Tiaan looks at Johan knowingly when he sees the cum smear on Johan's belly and the shiny white globs of it on his dick and tangled in his tiny patch of pubic hair. But he says nothing. He has his own impending flogging to think about.

Hein whips every boy in the hut but no one tells him anything.

A short while after the last boy has been whipped, Hein and Stompie come out the hut. Both of their shorts bulge in front and the fabric bears telltale dark wet splotches.

Hein and his father race away in the bakkie. An hour later Hein returns with three barefoot boys his own age, all of them mounted on four wheelers. They have sleeping bags and camping provisions strapped to their bikes and each one has a rifle slung over his shoulder. A moment later Hein's father arrives with several dogs, each with a black tracker, on the back of the bakkie. They all go immediately to the dam, where two of the dogs quickly pick up Daniel's and Chrisjan's scent and take off on their trail, straining at their leashes, the black trackers jogging behind. A short while later Hein and his friends set off after them excitedly on their four wheelers, faces flushed and eyes glinting with the lust of the hunt. The bakkie follows slowly with the relief dogs, ready to take over when the dogs on the trail get tired, as they soon will.

The rest of the day drags on in grinding labour for Johan and the boys of his work gang. The bossboys and supervisors are all angry about the escape and they take it out on Johan's gang especially. They ply their straps relentlessly against the boys' straining backs and arses and the quarry echoes all day to the crack of leather on flesh and the yelps of the boys. They are made to work naked so that the others can see their stripes and be warned. In truth, their arses are too sore to wear shorts anyway, so they do really not mind what is meant to be an additional humiliation.

The boys all make their personal targets at the cost of huge physical effort but the gang, despite superhuman effort, cannot cover the loss of production of the two boys on the run. This results in the whole gang collecting five lashes of the sambok each across their backs at the end of the day. These are administered by one of the supervisors, since Hein has not yet returned from the hunt for Daniel and Chrisjan.

Every boy in Johan's gang sleeps on his belly this night and, except for Tiaan, the toughest boy in the gang, and Johan, who has discovered interesting new things about his body, no one is in the mood for sex.

NEXT PART