Peter Jensen - A husband_s hobby

The pretty black-haired woman dressed herself quietly, keeping her ears alerted for any sound in the adult staff cabin. If anyone was in now, he might have heard her abandoned cries of a few minutes ago, and he might become suspicious. Normally, she knew, all the adult camp staffers should be occupied with their afternoon duties; it was only four, and everyone but Natalie and Lucille Wells was assigned to some afternoon activity or another. And the wife of the marine biology expert stayed in the trailer that she and her husband shared at the edge of the camp grounds.

Natalie sighed in relief as she stepped out of her room and went down the hall to the living room. She had some planning to do for her 3-R's classes tomorrow, and she had some ideas that she wanted to have approved by Stuart Brooks, the Camp Director and a friend of her husband's. She knew that Mr. Brooks should be down in his Director's Office until five, and she had planned to speak to him this afternoon.

As she gathered her lesson plans from one of the bookshelves in the living room, Natalie wondered ashamedly whether her face or her appearance would in any way give a clue as to her salacious activities this afternoon. It was important not only to her, but to her husband Mark as well, that the Camp Director be completely satisfied with their work here. He had been reluctant to hire Natalie in the first place, because he had wanted to preserve the all-male feeling of the boys' camp. In fact, it had been almost a favor to Mark that he had accepted their applications, and the beautiful young teacher was afraid that she now understood the true reason behind Stuart Brooks' reluctance.

Well, she thought resolutely, the only thing I can do is hope no one finds out… I've got to at least act responsible or someone will get suspicious.

Taking her lesson plans and her classroom proposals, the curvaceous camp teacher stepped out of the cabin into the bright sunlight. She squinted her big brown eyes against the brightness, so she couldn't see the boys whose voices she heard distinctly.

"Honest to God?" one said.

"You're shittin' me…! Aren't you?" asked another incredulously.

"Fuck no! I swear to God, he was fuckin' it to her like some kind of super-stud!"

Natalie started. It was unlikely that the teenagers were referring to Jason and herself, she knew… But why hadn't she thought of this before? What was to prevent young Powell telling his friends what he'd done to Mark Jenkins' wife when he'd been sent to get the book? Oh, God, please! the woman begged silently. Please don't let Jason be indiscreet… please don't let him say anything…

Stuart Brooks was a handsome bachelor of thirty-two. He was two years older than Natalie's husband Mark, but he had known the younger man briefly in college. They had been bunkmates on a month long archaeological dig in Arizona. The Camp Director remembered Jenkins as a rather serious university sophomore who had taken the trouble to transplant nearly forty ocotillo shrubs that the students and their professors had dug up during the expedition.

Brooks himself had received his degree that same year, and after that, he had had little contact with his former classmate. He had almost immediately begun working on the project of helping urban adolescents, although he had little money of his own with which to finance any of his projects.

An enterprising, charming young man, Stuart Brooks had managed to woo the widow of a wealthy financier, Sybil Weatherly, into practically giving him the money for the camp project he wanted to start up by Lake Devonshire. She agreed to finance the land purchase and the construction program with only a negligible interest charge to Stuart, a charge which her accountant and lawyers had insisted upon. In appreciation, Stuart had named the camp after her, adding his own name with a hyphen to symbolize his undying indebtedness to her.

The fifty-ish widow was, in her words, "Pleased as punch" with the arrangements her young partner made for the camp. She had demanded to be driven up there when the first session opened ten years ago, serving twenty five underprivileged boys from the city almost entirely at her expense. The six week program was highly successful, and the following year, Stuart had been able to negotiate government grants to expand the camp's operations.

Mrs. Weatherly's health had declined steadily over the next eight years, but the energetic Camp Director kept up his frequent visits to her and brought her numerous gifts of candy or flowers. He became such a well known figure in Mrs. Weatherly's upper class neighborhood that the rumor spread that young Brooks was the widow's private gigolo. When her son heard about her apparent indiscretions, he completely renounced his relationship with her, declaring that no mother of his would cavort around with some young social climber.

Sybil didn't even bother to explain to her son that Stuart Brooks was no social climber, but she quietly disowned him and replaced him in her will. When the wealthy widow died two years ago, Stuart could hardly believe the extent of his good fortune. Not only had she left him enough stocks and property to be independent for life, but she had also deeded the Lake Devonshire property to the county with the stipulation that the Summer Camp for Boys was solely at the disposal of Stuart Brooks.

Since then, the camp's operations had expanded tenfold. Instead of twenty-five boys for six weeks, they were now able to handle a hundred boys for three different sessions throughout the summer, a total of three hundred boys. More cabins and recreation facilities were being built all the time, and Brooks envisioned that in three years, Weatherly-Brooks Summer Camp for Boys would be able to accept five hundred boys for each six week camping session.

Already the camp was providing academic instruction as well as the traditional outdoor activities that most summer camps had. There were counseling and social programs as well, to give specific help to the often immature or insecure young boys who would be entering high school in the fall. Boys who had been through Stuart Brooks' camp showed a remarkable improvement in maturity and confidence as a result of their camp experiences, and the Camp Director was anxious to see that trend continue.

That was why he had decided, after Mrs. Weatherly's death, to hire women as camp staff members. When the old widow had been alive, Stuart had thought it prudent to limit his teachers and counselors to men, to insure that his benefactor wouldn't be offended or even possibly envious. But two years ago, he had hired Arlene Thatcher as a cook, feeling that the large, buxom nutritional expert couldn't possibly be seen as a threat to Sybil Weatherly's memory.

Last year, a marine biology expert had joined the staff on the condition that he be allowed to bring his wife with him. That was Lucille Wells, and she stayed out of sight so much that she might as well have lived elsewhere. The only time she came out of her trailer was to teach a leather-working class, and she only did it to keep from being bored.

It was a bit of a shame, too, Brooks reflected. Her husband was busy throughout the day with his counseling and guidance duties. Lucille was petite, blonde, and voluptuously proportioned – she definitely had the kind of possibility that Arlene Thatcher lacked.

But this summer Stuart had Natalie Jenkins to think about. He remembered when his old classmate Mark had contacted him in town a couple weeks after Easter. He'd always thought Mark was the kind of guy to plug his way through school, at a slow, thorough pace, emerging with a post-graduate degree of some kind. Then he'd end up in some kind of laboratory experimenting with some kind of plasmic substances while he lived in a darkened basement below the lab.