Chapter 8: Buffaloed

2 August 2014

Every day was taking me closer to the nineteen-year-old stripper, Alice. There’s no fool like an old fool. I was sure I was being the King of Fools. I was amazed at what an important focus of my journey Alice had become, but I was determined to enjoy every day for itself. That included meeting my old friend Stan at Brookfield Zoo in Chicago. He was one of the younger guys I’d worked with a few years ago and I’d been a mentor in the office. We walked around the zoo and I got the scoop on the fact that he had fallen in love and that he was in training to become an EMT. I figured he’d be good at it.

“How did you meet Roberta?” I asked.

“Gaming. We were at a LARP in Arkansas and kind of fell in love while hunting a magic ruby,” he said.

“What is a LARP?” I asked.

“Live action role playing. It’s a game. We have a big one in Wisconsin about every two years. Takes a week. I’m a game master for a weekend LARP that I host in downtown Chicago twice a year,” he explained. “You should try it. I bet you’d be good.”

“Sounds interesting, but I can’t imagine it.”

I took another detour south of the highway in eastern Nebraska. Not terribly far, but I met a fan in Fremont. That was quite a trip for me since I’d chosen Fremont out of thin air as Tony’s hometown in Model Student. Bob showed me some of the places that I’d written about—not terribly accurately. He pointed out one gravel road to me that was just west of town.

“I figure Tony lived about a mile or two down that road,” Bob said. “Heck, when the story came out and all of a sudden Tony was visiting his parents out here, I drove up and down nearly every road out here trying to figure out which one was his.”

“It’s fiction, Bob.”

“Oh, I know that. I eventually realized that the location wasn’t a real spot, but you wouldn’t believe the number of old farmsteads out here that match what you described. It was fun to just imagine that I might bump into Tony and Lissa and Melody and Kate and Wendy as I was walking down the street. I even joined the Y to try to get fit,” he laughed. “Not like I actually expected to see them there. But it was a motivator. Might not look like it, but I’ve lost forty pounds.”

Another unexpected result of writing erotic fiction.

When I got to Wyoming, I still had a few days left before I was supposed to meet Alice. As much as I wanted to hurry things up, I knew that getting to Yellowstone a week early wouldn’t mean seeing her a week early. And there was something else about Wyoming.

Redtail.

I’d never been to Laramie, Wyoming. But I’d written an entire book set there. Like I told Mitch: Research.

Not So Long Ago: An Erotic Paranormal Romance Western Mystery

A few years ago, The Gutenberg Rubric won an award. I received almost as much money from the award as I did from sales the next year. Don’t let anyone tell you selling books is profitable. It’s a good thing that’s not why I do it. But I did start to get more involved with the writers’ association and ended up volunteering to help with the annual literary contest.

That help included getting together with a number of other volunteers to sort competition entries and distribute them to the various judges. It was a social event for those of us who were volunteers. Most of us were writers and when writers get together, they talk and tell stories.

One of the topics that came up was genres. We were separating the manuscripts into categories. Occasionally, we would make a joke about someone’s title and say something like, “Sounds like sci fi instead of romance.”

That led to a discussion on genres and genre-mashing which led me to jokingly say, “I think next year I’ll write an erotic paranormal romance western mystery.”

Never joke with the universe.

I’d no more than said it than I knew what the basic concept of the story was. I just needed a place for it to happen and a cast of characters.

Enter Laramie Wyoming Bell.

I’d spent a summer at a college prep school in Colorado at the urging of Joy. I probably mentioned it before. Joy didn’t spend any time urging me to go, but she went to a college prep school in the East in the summer and she was the coolest, so I figured that’s what I needed to do. I found one with a playwriting course and enrolled.

Of course, playwriting wasn’t the only thing offered and there were about 150 students enrolled for the summer. You couldn’t possibly know and talk to all of them. That was the summer of Sue and hiking and getting lost in the desert. One of the other students—I’m sure she was a senior, or maybe even a grad—was a regal dirty blonde whose very presence would make me choke up. I wasn’t in her presence much, but I knew who she was.

She was Laramie Wyoming Bell.

I never spoke to her all summer long. I just admired her. I admired the way she walked, what she looked like at the pool, and the way she handled her horse in the arena. She didn’t seem stuck up or anything, and didn’t flaunt her beauty, but she just carried herself like a queen.

The story I heard was that she was some Cheyenne mucky-muck’s daughter. As soon as I’d thought of setting Redtail in Wyoming, I thought of Laramie.

Back to Laramie

I spent three days in the wind, camped at Laramie. I drove out to Centennial and fell in love with the Bear Claw Café. I talked with folks there and gave them a copy of Redtail to share around. It was the only one of my erotic adventures I’d had made into a paperback at the time.

I took a day to walk back and forth across the campus of the University of Wyoming and completely became a Cowboys fan. Not Dallas. The real Cowboys of UWyo. While I was there, I stopped in the library to see where you could get a view across campus from the upper stories. And that took me to the rare books section and the University’s historical archives. I gave the librarian my card and told her that I’d written a book set in Laramie, some of it back in the 1880s. She asked for the name of the book and I had to tell her that it was published under a different author name. She tapped a few keys on her keyboard and said, “Oh, yes. We have a copy. Ordered it as soon as it came out. I haven’t read it, but I will. Are you thinking of doing a sequel?”

I hadn’t been, but now I was. I left Laramie and started north toward Cody with the idea for Blackfeather brewing in my head.

I camped at Wapiti, just at the eastern edge of Yellowstone. I spent my first night cleaning the trailer from top to bottom and the next morning went back into Cody for supplies. I was as nervous as a teenager getting ready for his first date. When my phone chimed, I almost dropped it.

“Ari, are you really here?”

“I’m here, darlin’. Here being in Cody. Where can I meet you?” I said.

“I’m stopped at the tourist info on the west edge of town. How soon, Ari? How soon can I see you?” she said.

“I’m at the grocery store. I’ll be there as soon as I finish checking out. Can’t wait to see you, babe.” Oh, that was suave. ‘Babe’? What kind of cool dude was I supposed to be? I finished paying for the groceries and headed toward the tourist info center across from the Buffalo Bill Museum. After I parked, I stepped out of the truck and looked around nervously. I wasn’t sure what to expect. I didn’t even know what Alice drove.

“I’d recognize that big black truck anywhere,” her voice said from behind me. I turned. She wrapped her arms around me and brought her lips to mine. “Kiss me, Ari. I’ve been waiting a fucking year for this.”

Alice was beautiful. I’ve described her. She’s close to six feet tall and in her cowboy boots, she had to bend her head to meet my lips. When we broke, I tried to keep my eyes focused on hers. But ... She had a western chambray shirt on—mostly. The sleeves had been torn off completely and instead of snapping it closed she had it tied beneath her unencumbered breasts. She wore cutoff shorts that were long enough to cover her butt ledge, but left the pockets hanging down below the ragged fringe. From there, her smooth bare legs extended down and into the tops of her bright red cowboy boots. I tilted my head under her cowboy hat and welcomed her lips again.

The skin at her waist was so smooth and the kiss so warm and welcoming that I was afraid we might get arrested if we let it go any further.

“Wow! God, Ari! Maybe we should do something to cool off and get used to each other before we get closed in a small space together. We might never come out otherwise,” she said. I shifted and stuck a hand in my pocket to move my hard-on to a more comfortable position. “Keep that thing handy. We’ll need it later,” she whispered.

After a few moments’ debate, we decided to just go across the street to the Buffalo Bill Museum. It was cool and we spent a long time in the Smithsonian Firearms exhibit. I discovered Alice knew a lot more about firearms than I did, though I did find an example of the Smith & Wessons that Cole used. When I told Alice that I needed to find a good example of an 1860s revolver that a woman could easily handle, she found the Colt Navy that I’d ultimately include in Blackfeather.

“Did Buffalo Bill really live here?” she asked as we went through the historical section about ‘Buffalo Bill’s Wild West and Congress of Rough Riders of the World.’

“Oh, yes. The town is named after him. A number of years ago on my first trip through here, I stayed at a ranch out west of here that was still owned by one of his descendants.” I didn’t say how long ago. It was before my daughter was born and Alice was younger. I didn’t want to dwell on that.

I asked her if she wanted to stay in town for dinner or go out to the campground and grill the steaks I’d purchased and put in my cooler before I met her. She got quiet and then said that she’d like to have the steak. She also said that she’d follow me out to the campground in her own car. I figured she’d drive out. I can’t imagine what had to be going through a teenager’s mind as she followed an old man to a remote campsite to spend a week with him. We’d had several phone chats over the past year—some pretty explicit. But it was different being face-to-face.

She pulled in behind the trailer when I pointed it out to her and I pulled the truck in front of it. I didn’t want her to have the impression that I was blocking off her escape route. Or mine.

I unlocked the trailer and took the cooler inside to put things in the fridge. I turned around to find her just inside the doorway sort of peeking at the layout. She seemed nervous.

“Ari,” she said, backing out of the trailer as I came toward her. We stepped outside.

“What is it, hon?”

“I know the rules, but could we not get naked right away? Do you mind?”

“Alice, you know I made that rule up just for Angie. I’m not going to make you be naked all the time. In fact, I’m not even ready to be inside the trailer. It’s hot in there. There are no RV hookups out here, so no air conditioning. It’s cooler outside. Let me light a fire and we’ll sit out where it’s comfortable and look at the flames,” I said.

“Oh, Ari. It’s not that I’m not interested and excited. But ... I just don’t want to feel like a stripper. Do you understand?” she asked. Yeah. I could see that.

I got the firewood out of the back of the truck and Alice helped get it started. We used a match, but I kind of felt she was hot enough to start a fire just by touching it. I pulled a can of sparkling water out of the cooler for each of us and we sat in front of the fire just getting reacquainted. I really did understand how she felt. It wasn’t just an empathic understanding. I was more than twice her age—I wasn’t saying how much more—and this was significantly different than either Angie or Becky. I had already grown to care for Alice through our correspondence and occasional phone calls. I wanted whatever we were going to do to work for us and be something—I didn’t know what—something that was more than a weeklong fling.

A Long Time Ago: Canoe Camp

I’d been doing an internship at what the churches called ‘Summer Institute’ after I graduated from high school. I assisted the director of theater at the institute in whatever stuff he needed to have done. High school students cycled in and out of the institute for a week at a time with a different group each week. There’s another story there for later. We got to the end of the last week of the institute and the conference director of camping came running into the theater calling for me. I got off my ladder and joined him.

“Ari, we’ve got a situation. I know you’d normally be taking a vacation now so you’re fresh before classes start in a couple weeks, but one of my counselors for the junior high camp just went into the hospital to have his appendix removed. I hate to ask this, but could you do a week of rough camping with these kids? You’d have an experienced co-counselor. And I know you’ve done primitive camping before,” he said. He’d rushed all the way through the speech and I was thinking I could do that. He looked desperate. But what was I going to do otherwise? Deb had moved out east almost as soon as we graduated and started with a summer session at Wellesley. My parents had moved again to help get my baby sister into a better school system, so there was no home where I knew people. I said sure.

I swung by my parents’ house long enough to change from theater gear to camping gear and Sunday at noon, I pulled into the camp.

I met my co-counselor, Ruth, as soon as I checked in. Oh. My. What do I know? Maybe I was just eighteen and horny. Deb and I had to part before we ever got around to consummating our love affair. We both knew we’d never get around to it now. The graduation blowjob was the last of the relationship. Damn, I miss her.

Ruth was as short as Deb but at least twenty pounds lighter. Everywhere except in her boobs. Those were tucked neatly into a lifeguard-style one-piece swimsuit. She wore a pair of shorts over this. She had short blonde hair in what I’d almost have called a man-cut if it weren’t for the bangs. The sides were trimmed up over her ears.

“Thank god you got here before the urchins,” Ruth said. “And thank you for coming to our rescue this week. I about died when Rob took sick Thursday and we had to get him out of here in an ambulance.”

“Nice to meet you,” I said. “I’m Ari.”

“Oh. Sorry. I’m Ruth. Rob and I have worked this camp all summer, so we really knew everything about each other. You and I are going to have to learn as we go. How are your canoe skills?” she asked. Canoe? No one said anything about a canoe.

“Well, I can paddle, but most of my rough camping has been on land. I’m good at that,” I said.

“If you can make a fire with wet wood and no matches we’ll be fine. Last week we got rained on and had to depend on a single burner camp stove for two days. I was sure that was what triggered Rob getting sick, but they told me it was his appendix,” she said.

She grabbed a backpack and I shouldered mine as she led me down to the shore. She tossed hers down and I put mine beside it. “Let’s go up to the lodge and cart our supplies down. We’ve got five girls and three boys this week. That works out well. When there is an even number, they tend to pair up and then you end up chasing them all over the woods. We’ll have five canoes. Can you handle a canoe by yourself? I never trust the supplies to a camper on the first day out. It’s better if you and I each paddle a canoe loaded with packs and supplies. We’ll put the three boys in a canoe and split the five girls between the other two canoes. Tomorrow we’ll have more time on the lake for training.”

“I’ll try not to let you down,” I said. I grabbed up the packs that contained food while she dragged a tarp with tents on it. We packed the counselor canoes as we got better acquainted. She told me what her signals were for both time on the water and time in camp. I could see she was as well-organized for the canoe camp as I had been with the theater institute and I just followed her lead and agreed to everything. She’d done all this before.

At two o’clock, the campers started arriving and by three o’clock, we had all our eight in their swimming suits and down by the canoes for orientation. I could see trouble forming right away. Three of the girls were in two piece suits and one of those definitely was classified as a bikini. The boys practically had their tongues hanging out. Ruth was cool. She handed out camp t-shirts to everyone and told them to put them on before they got sunburned. She had gym shorts that would fit each of the girls and told them that the canoes had aluminum seats that had been sitting in the sun. They would have blisters on their butts if they didn’t cover them. The boys were disappointed to see the flesh disappear, but I figured we hadn’t seen the end of it. These were kids between twelve and fourteen. There would be hormones.

Ruth explained the rules. Everyone got their lifejackets on and we launched our canoes. The first thing the boys did within ten feet of the shore was roll their canoe. I was glad Ruth and I had the supplies. It was five o’clock by the time we made our camp and only about half a mile from the lodge beach.

This was where I was able to excel and we had tents set up, sleeping bags unrolled, and a fire burning by five-thirty. We started having fun.

Of course, the kids wanted to stay up late on their first night at camp, but when I let the fire die and then poured water on the coals, they all got the message and went to bed. We had two girls’ tents on one side and one boys’ tent on the other. Ruth’s and my tent was in the middle. I was surprised when I found out we were sharing a tent.

“It’s a safety thing,” Ruth said. “Not only do we have to keep the boys and girls separated like their parents expect, but we can’t risk being alone with a camper. Having a camper accuse one of us of improper behavior toward them would end the entire program, even if we managed to avoid prosecution.”

Shit! I did not like the sound of that at all. And I really didn’t mind sharing a tent with Ruth. I was getting my sleeping bag rolled out, figuring I’d probably lie on top of it since it was still hot out. At least we didn’t have hiking boots to stow. We only had our water shoes. I turned to ask Ruth if we had a tent check for the kids planned and found her topless. I stared. Ruth caught me.

“Oh. Sorry. Go ahead and stare. I’m so used to tenting with Rob that I didn’t think about how it might look to you. I sleep in a t-shirt and panties. Believe me, you’ll want to be in something besides your swim trunks when you bed down.” She pulled a t-shirt on and then pulled her suit the rest of the way off. It wasn’t like she was showing me her slit or anything, and it was dark so I couldn’t even tell the color of the little tuft of hair I saw, but just the fact that we were in a small tent meant that we weren’t going to hide much from each other. She put her panties on and stretched out on her sleeping bag.

What the hell? I pulled off my trunks and put a pair of cutoff sweats on that I sometimes slept in if there was a reason. I hadn’t had to all summer, but I figured I’d need to jump out of bed in the middle of the night if anything happened and it was better not to run around camp nude.

Ruth sighed.

“You take the boys’ side and I’ll take the girls’ side. Just a quick reminder to them to take a buddy and their toilet paper if they need to get up in the night,” she said. She crawled out the tent flap and I followed, close behind her shapely rear. We went to our charges’ tents and quietly spoke the instructions. They all murmured their assent and I figured the guys, at least, were asleep before I finished my own trip to the latrine. I went back into the tent where Ruth was already stretched out on her sleeping bag.

“You didn’t take a buddy to the latrine,” she laughed softly.

“Oh. I ... Um...”

“I’m teasing, Ari. Get some sleep. We’ll be up with the sun. If it gets cold during the night, you might wake up to find me cuddled up next to you. Try to control yourself and don’t grope. We’re adults and we’ve got eight little responsibilities asleep outside,” she said.

“I think we’ll have a good time this week, Ruth. I’m glad I agreed to come along,” I said. I was more tired than I realized and was off to sleep in minutes.

I did wake up to find Ruth cuddled against me and pulled a lightweight blanket over us. Then I went back to sleep until daybreak brightened the tent and I heard Ruth moving outside. She was already dressed in her swimsuit.

We had a great week. We spent most of Monday on the lake teaching the kids how to recover if their canoe was swamped, how to get into a canoe from the water without tipping it over, how to paddle and jay-stroke. We were less rushed and the campfire included storytelling and singing. We paddled to our rendezvous with the truck on Tuesday and were taken to the Pigeon River. We were on the river for three days, moving our camp and just having a blast. We were taken back to the lake on Friday and camped back at our base, then packed everything Saturday morning, policed the campground, and paddled back to the lodge. At one o’clock, after the only meal we ate at the lodge, parents arrived to retrieve their tanned and tired kids. I grabbed my pack and piled it into the back of the car.

“Can I get a lift to Fort Wayne?” Ruth called.

“Sure. It’s a little car, but there’s plenty of room.” Ruth didn’t have much. She’d been at the camp for eight weeks and only had one backpack. “Boy, you sure pack light,” I laughed.

“A couple swimsuits and some panties don’t take much room. It’s not like I could get up every morning and rush into the bathroom to put on a ton of makeup. So are you headed for school now?” she asked.

“Orientation starts Thursday. I’ll check into the dorm on Wednesday. It’s kind of exciting,” I said.

“You’ll love college. I’ve got another year, but I’m taking a break before I finish.”

“Really? You’ll stop right before you graduate? Isn’t that kind of risky?”

“I can take a break year without triggering repayment of student loans,” Ruth said. “It’s a special program that continues to list me as enrolled while I’m doing a field practicum. If I wait till after I graduate, I have to start repaying loans.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Backpack around the world.”

“No way! By yourself?”

“I’m starting off with a girlfriend on Labor Day. We’ll fly to New Zealand first, but then we’re heading to Australia and from there to India. She can only go until Christmas, so I hope to have made enough contacts and friends to plan my next stage from there. I’m used to living out of a backpack,” she said.

“It’s just...” I thought about the kind of an adventure I could have hiking around the world. “I want to do that,” I said firmly. Yeah. I wanted to backpack around the world. I’d do it with Ruth if there was an invite.

“Ari, you’ve got to make a big decision in your life. You’ve got to decide if you really want to do that, or if you want to dream about doing it. It’s not an easy thing to be on your own and alone. Believe me,” she said. I’d lose track of that advice in the future, but eventually, I’d decide if I was a doer or a dreamer.

“I guess I’ll get a year of college under my belt first. I sure had fun with you this week, Ruth.”

“I loved working with you and having you sing in the evening and tell stories. The kids loved you. And I appreciate that you were respectful. It was kind of nice to wake up in your arms when it got cold at night,” she laughed. “Ari, under different circumstances, if we got together without the responsibility of all those kids, I might have been interested in ... you know ... in finding out if we were more compatible. Me being a little older and ready to run off around the world doesn’t make it much of an option. Not to mention that you’ve got your own adventure ahead of you in college this fall. Maybe our paths will cross again someday. But even if they don’t, know that you made a friend this week. I’ll always cherish that.”

Back to Alice

Alice and I talked. Oh, I still appreciated looking at her tall slender body, and she didn’t object to my eyes straying into her slight cleavage, but we really did talk. You might assume that an older guy doesn’t have much he can talk about with a young woman. I mean, what do we have in common? But Alice wasn’t into pop culture, so I didn’t have to listen to her rave about some boy band or actors I’d never heard of. Her tastes in music, because of her profession, tended to be things with a strong, driving, and sensuous beat.

She dug right in and helped prepare vegetables to grill with the steak and was suitably impressed with my method of grilling corn on the cob. I don’t husk it and try to clean the silk out or wrap it in tin foil. I toss it on the grill still sealed in its natural husk. When it is done, I cut off the stalk end and grip it with my Ove-Glove. Then I can just shake the corn right out of the husk, silk and all. Alice got into it and I scooped butter off her chin that had run from the corn. The steaks were perfect. I had zucchini on the grill, seasoned with Italian herbs and covered with Parmesan cheese. I poured wine from a box and she laughed, asking what vintage it was. It wasn’t legal for her to have alcohol. Technically, I didn’t think it was legal to have it in the National Forest, even though they never object to having it in your RV.

Mostly, our conversations were philosophical. That seemed to cut across the age difference like a knife.

“I’m not into Christianity,” she said. “Too much condemnation. Same with all the religions. Muslims don’t recognize Jews as the chosen people. Jews don’t recognize Jesus as messiah. Protestants don’t recognize the Pope as the head of the church. Baptists don’t recognize each other when they come to Roxie’s Foxes.” I laughed at her. She had a worldly sense of humor that I’d always enjoyed. “Can I sit on your lap, Ari?” she asked out of the blue. Well, the one luxury that I’ve carried with me on this trip has been my oversized camp chair. I’ve actually slept in it overnight and Angie and I used to cuddle in it while we were together. I opened my arms and Alice flowed into them. She kicked her boots off and curled up in my lap.

Alice is as tall as I am. It was easy to think of a couple of the tall girls that I’d written about. I wondered why I named them all Whitney. But the one thing that impressed me most, was Alice’s ability to curl up in a little ball in my lap. She was like having a kitten. A very sexy, silky smooth kitten.

She didn’t wiggle around or make like she was doing a lap dance. We didn’t kiss. I just held her in my arms and enjoyed her closeness as we kept talking.

“I think life is about seeking enlightenment,” she said. “You need to ‘know thyself’, as it says at the Temple of Apollo. Self-knowledge.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I’ve met myself. I wasn’t that impressed.”

“I was.”

“I’m so glad,” I whispered. I pressed my face into her hair and just inhaled. I gave her a little squeeze. “The concept of self-enlightenment has always impressed me as being a little ... masturbatory.”

“Ari!” Alice giggled in my lap. “What do you mean?”

“Think of it. It’s focusing on yourself. What’s in you? It’s a solo endeavor. I like masturbation as much as any other guy. I’m alone most of the time. I’m experienced at it. It feels good. But it doesn’t make babies. It doesn’t even connect me with another person. It’s all in my head.”

“And in your balls,” Alice laughed.

“Yeah. The thing is that for a lot of people, making love continues to be an act of masturbation because they are focused inside. A true narcissist can make love to a woman and hate every bone in her body except his own. Seeking self-enlightenment is similarly focused inside.”

“So you think we should seek enlightenment through other people?” she asked.

“I’m not sure enlightenment is that important. Why do you want to become enlightened?”

“To have peace.”

“Why? What’s so important about having peace?”

“To be a better person.”

“Why? What makes you want to be a better person?”

“Because I believe we are here for more than our own pleasure. I believe we are here to improve humanity.”

“Presto! You’re enlightened,” I laughed.

“What?”

“When you get down to the statement that starts ‘I believe, ‘ you are down to your true faith. Now enlightenment is no longer about having peace. It is about making the world a better place. Your self-enlightenment is no longer focused inside you. You aren’t masturbating any longer.”

Alice snuggled in my lap and we watched the fire as it burned down. The sun had set. Occasionally, she would giggle a little and whisper “Masturbation.” Later she’d find something completely different to be amused about and whisper “Lap dances.” She wasn’t really talking to me. We were just enjoying being close to each other. I could sit in front of the fire like this all night with her in my arms. The problem with that, of course, was that the fire was dying and to build it up again, we’d have to get up. When the sun had gone down, the temperature had started to drop as well. The elevation was over 6,000 feet, and even though it was eighty-five degrees during the day, it still got into the fifties at night.