In the fall of 1970, less than a week before I was supposed to report for induction into the Armed Forces of the United States, my girlfriend and I went camping. That June I’d graduated from college with a draft number of 126. Ever since I received the induction notice at the beginning of the summer, Chrissy and I talked about me going to Canada. She was for it. I wasn’t sure. I didn’t want to go to Viet Nam for all the usual reasons, but I didn’t want to go to Canada, either. Now that I had Chrissy as a girlfriend, I just wanted things to continue exactly as they were. I think Chrissy thought this camping trip—it was her idea—was going to prepare me somehow. I’d been in Boy Scouts a couple of years, but I was never much of an outdoorsman.

“If I go to Canada will you come with me?” I didn’t ask that question. She had another year of college left—her classes would be starting in a week—and I told myself it wasn’t fair to ask her to drop out. That was my rationalization, but the truth was I wasn’t brave enough to ask the question. I was pretty sure her answer would be no, and I couldn’t bear that. Maybe I could handle Canada if she were with me. Without her I’d just as soon deal with Viet Nam.

On a Friday afternoon I picked her up outside of the department store where she had a summer job in the book department. The previous evening she’d packed all the gear we’d need into the trunk of my eleven year old Mercedes Benz 180SL, which I’d bought from my college advisor for $200. We drove for a few hours before stopping at a small town cafe. Behind the diner was a rundown motel, the K&K. We decided to stay the night and get an early start in the morning. The scrawny guy behind the counter looked like a kid at first. He had ragged red hair and glasses thickly taped at the bridge. “Just the two of yuz?” he said.

“Yeah, just the two of us,” I told him.

“Twenty dollars,” he said. “Each.”

I put two twenty dollar bills on the counter and he handed over a key and pocketed the cash. This would be the first motel I’d ever been in. I was both relieved and disappointed that I hadn’t had to sign a register or bing a bell. We got to room 9 and the key wouldn’t go in the lock.

“Maybe it’s room 6,” Chrissy suggested.

“You’re right,” I said, looking at the key again. We walked over three doors and sure enough the key fit. But it went around and around in the lock and the door didn’t open. I looked at Chrissy and she shrugged.

“Sometimes you have to push or pull it as you turn,” she said.

I pushed it and pulled it and it opened. We stepped inside. The place smelled of mold. The shower dripped when it was shut off and barely did more than that at full force. The water never got hot. There was a single thin towel. Still damp, we jumped into bed. The mattress sagged, and the bedsprings sang a cricket-like song when we made love. Still, Chrissy was smiling the whole time, rejoicing in the noise of our fuck, except for the thirty seconds or so right before, during, and after her climax, when she looked like she was gasping so hard and deep she might have been drowning in the pleasure. As we lay in each other’s arms, she said, “Bradford Reynolds DuPres, you’re gonna love making love outdoors. It’s fucking awesome.”

“Are you speaking from experience?” I wanted to ask. Of course she was. She didn’t talk about her previous boyfriends and I didn’t talk about my previous girlfriends, but then I hadn’t had any previous girlfriends. I was always amazed that Chrissy was with me. Last spring, less than a month before the end of the term, the end of my college career, I’d won the college poetry prize. There was a reading, which she’d attended, along with about two dozen other people, mostly faculty as far as I could tell. I only had six poems, and they weren’t very long. One was about mushrooms and one was about birth control and another was about burning a rag doll in a back yard incinerator. My favorite was about my grandfather’s copper watering can – the swanlike curve of its spout and the way the water sank into the worm-churned soil.

After the reading, Chrissy came up to me. “I love your poems. And you have such a great voice,” she told me as everyone was filing out. “It makes me frizzle and churn.”

I wasn’t hard to seduce. We walked around campus talking about poetry and poets and ended up sitting on the low stone wall of an old cemetery. In the twilight we kissed. We were still kissing come dawn.

We spent a lot of summer evenings in that cemetery. Days Chrissy worked and I sat at the little desk in my rented room staring at the blank page in my boat-sized Royal typewriter, about my only possession besides the dictionary I’d had since second grade. After a lunch of peanut butter on saltine crackers, I’d head to the gym, shoot baskets for a few hours, shower, and go over to the department store to wait for Chrissy to get off work. We’d stroll around town, get something to eat, and then stroll some more, and when she didn’t have to work the next day we’d end up back at that cemetery where we’d kiss the night away. When she did have to work the next day, we’d sneak into my room and make love as quietly as we could, often standing up or sitting in the desk chair or with the mattress on the floor, before she’d hustle off to her own place.

“You going to put this motel in one of your poems?” she asked me. It took me a moment to remember where we were. The K&K motel – morning light slanting through the slitted curtain of room 6. “Yeah, probably,” I said. The truth was I hadn’t written any poems since before that poetry reading. “Someday,” I said.

“That’s so neat,” she said, beaming, and she thrust the threadbare cover off us and swallowed my cock. She stopped after a minute to say, “I’m going to make you come quick because we’ve a long way to go. Okay?”

“Sure,” I said, as if it were no big deal.

She used her hands and her mouth in such a way that I came almost immediately. “Mmmm, mmmm, mmmm,” she said, licking her lips and swallowing. “I love your cock and your cum. Now move your butt. We’ve got miles to go.”

“You love my cock and my cum, but do you love me?” I wanted to ask, but I didn’t. I moved my butt, and by noon the flat farmland cornfields had turned to hilly meadows rimmed with wildflowers and pine forests. As we drove I told her about my Boy Scout camping experiences: the search for green compass water; the games of strip poker in the supply tent; the Hawaiian style chicken with burnt wings and raw everything else. I also told her about the mid-winter campout in sub-zero temperatures when it was so cold I couldn’t get water to boil; I couldn’t get the zipper of my tent to close; and in the middle of the night when the snow had stopped and the wind had stopped, I stepped outside my tent and heard angels singing.

Chrissy laughed. “You heard real angels, wow!”

“Probably just some kid’s transistor radio, but the sound was definitely coming from the sky,” I told her.

“I wish I could have heard them, too,” Chrissy said.

We drove in silence awhile, and then Chrissy said, “When you were outside listening to the angels, was it so cold you couldn’t unzip your zipper?” She laughed while unzipping me.

“I don’t remember.”

She fished out my cock. “I have this picture of you out there peeing and it’s so cold the pee freezes before it even hits the ground. Wouldn’t that be neat?”

“I guess so,” I said, “but it didn’t freeze.”

“Ha! That’s because of your guardian angel keeping you warm and safe.”

“Guardian angel?”

“Uh-huh. It wouldn’t do for the world to be without your wonderful poems. It wouldn’t do for me to be without your beautiful penis.” She stroked me slowly, carefully. I was enormous in her hand.

“You want to come so bad, don’t you?”

“Uh-huh.”

She bent low and gave the tip of me a tiny lick. “Yeah, I can taste how bad you want to come,” she said, “but it wouldn’t do for you to fly off the road, would it?”

“I guess not.”

She smiled and resumed her slow, slow stroking. “Mmm, you feel so good. So warm and big. Mmmm. I’d love to make you come, to watch your cum fly from your lovely cock, but you’ve got to stay in control. I’ve got to help you stay in control. Tell me your Mickey Mantle poem again. I want to hear about his big blond bat.”

She stroked me harder, faster, while I recited best I could, and just when I was about to come, she stopped.

“No, no,” she said. “Control. No joy in Muddville if you come too soon.” And she let me cool down, and then she started up again, slowly, carefully, mile after mile of the most tormenting masturbation, gradually taking me to the edge.

“I want to make you come so bad,” she said. “But we have to be good. We have to keep in control We don’t want to fly off the road. No-no. No-no.” And she stroked harder, firmer, faster, stopping just in time. “Turn here.”

“What?”

“Here. We’re almost there. Here. Turn. Now.”

“Oh.”

I turned the car onto a road that was mostly gravel and a little later onto one that was mostly dirt. Then it was barely more than a path going up a shallow hill. Just beyond the crest of the hill stood the charred remains of a burnt-out house. “We’re here,” Chrissy announced. I parked the car, I managed to get my erection stuffed back into my pants, and we got out.

“How do you know of this place?” I said. While we hiked across a weedy field carrying the packs, a sleeping bag, and the tent, Chrissy explained that the farm had belonged to her dad’s uncle. Back when she and her brother were kids, her dad had taken them here a number of times to hunt and fish. “That was before Uncle Bob fell off the roof shoveling snow. He had to move to a nursing home in town and he died within a year. We came back the summer after that and found that the house had burned down. Probably struck by lightning. My dad always talked about rebuilding it, but he never did. It belongs to him and his brothers. The land’s not too good for anything but hunting. The creek runs along the far side and ends up at Ketler’s Slough.”

We walked up a small hill and at the top we looked down at the creek. We followed the crest of the hill for about twenty minutes until the creek below us spread out into a wide pond. On the far side, maybe two hundred yards away, was a forest. The trees were just starting to turn.

“Isn’t it beautiful?” Chrissy said. I had to agree.

We made our way down the hill. “It’s not very deep,” Chrissy said of the water, after we’d set up the tent and gathered some wood for a fire. “Maybe five feet in the middle, but the mud is so soft you can sink ten feet down. Come on, I’ll show you.” Chrissy quickly stripped off her clothes. I followed her lead. Both naked, we paused. “No, no, no,” Chrissy said, smiling as she eyed my erection. “Swim first, fuck later.” She grabbed my hand and led me into the water.

She was right about the mud. It sucked at our feet with every step, almost as if it were a living thing. Pretty soon the water was above my waist and almost up to Chrissy’s breasts. “It’s just the right temperature,” she declared, and she pushed away from me and began swimming. Not much of a swimmer, I waded after her. The water was high enough and the bottom mud sticky enough that it was impossible to make any progress. Chrissy turned around, dog-paddling, and said, “Gosh, DuPres, as fish go, you’re a turtle.” Then she grinned and said, “If you catch me you can fuck me.”

I set off after her, churning the water with vigorous strokes, but she had no problem eluding me, darting and skimming and always staying just out of reach. Frustrated, I tried to rampage through the water, but it was impossible. I might as well have been making my way through jello or cement. She let me get close. Then she’d laugh, splash me, and glide away. Next time I changed my strategy. I feinted another lunge, and when she darted to the side, I took a deep breath and submerged.

The water was murky enough that I couldn’t really see anything but shadows, but I figured she couldn’t see much either. One of the reasons I wasn’t a good swimmer, besides being afraid of the water, was that I hadn’t an ounce of extra body fat, so instead of floating I’d sink. I crept along the bottom of the pond. When I couldn’t hold my breath any longer I popped up, and there she was, right next to me. I grabbed her. She squealed and I wrestled her around and the next thing you knew she had her legs around my waist and I was in her. She wrapped her arms around me and squeezed her legs while I bounced up and down in the waist-deep water. “Oh yeah,” she gasped, and almost immediately her face took on that pained expression that meant she was on the verge of orgasm. When it started, I stopped bouncing, the better to feel the spasms. She thrashed, and it was all I could do to hang on. She flung herself backward, but we remained joined, her belly jerking with each powerful clench of climax. Just when I thought the contractions were at an end, another series would start up. “Oh God, I’m going to again,” she said, and then she did.

At last she lay still, floating on her back, a sated smile on her lips. I held her to me, my hands on the crest of her slender hips, my cock hard in the hot slush of her sex. “I guess you caught me,” she said, “I thought sure you were a goner. I thought the monster of Ketler’s Slough had got you.” A sputtering sigh came out of her mouth. I thought for a moment she’d swallowed some water, and I let go of her hips so she could stand, but instead she did some kind of slithery kick and floated away from me. Ribbons of semen issued out from between her legs. I took a deep breath and sighed myself. The strands of semen floated for a while and then sank.

Eventually we made our way to shore. We didn’t bother dressing. Chrissy unfolded her sleeping bag just outside the tent and we lay on that, staring up at the clear blue sky.

“What about mosquitoes?” I asked.

“There aren’t too many,” she said. “Ducklings eat all the larvae. Then foxes and eagles eat the ducklings. It’s called nature, DuPres.”

“I don’t mind nature as long as you’re part of it,” I said. “But what’s this about the monster of Ketler’s Slough?”

Chrissy chuckled. “You’re the monster of Ketler’s Slough,” she said. “I thought we’d established that.”

“Just as long as there’s no bears,” I said. “I’m not too fond of bears.”

“I used to have a teddy bear,” Chrissy said. “His name was Baba. Probably short for Bear-Bear. I really loved him.”

“What happened to him?”

“Got lost. There are actually a few bears in the woods here. That’s why you don’t want to leave any food lying around.”

After a while, twilight came and then fireflies and stars and a fat full moon. We lay arm in arm, kissing sometimes, breathing each other and the fresh, clean air. Off in the distance crickets chirped. The sound made me think of the bed in that motel. Chrissy must have had the same thought. She said, “Weren’t those the creakiest bedsprings ever?” I couldn’t help wondering how many other beds she’d been in with how many other boyfriends. She was fondling my erection more or less to the rhythm of the crickets, and after a time she sat up and bent over and took me in her mouth. She sucked me slowly, thoughtfully, dreamily, and I stroked her back. I had this thought that maybe I didn’t have to go to Canada, I could just hide out here. The thought made me feel bad for some reason, and I shivered. Perhaps thinking I was about to come, Chrissy released my penis and quickly mounted me. “Yeah,” she said, lifting and settling. “Yeah, yeah, yeah.” She did it slow, her hands pressing on my chest, pressing slower than my heartbeat, and I couldn’t help compare the sensations of being in her sex with being in her mouth. I wondered whether anyone had ever written a poem about it.

“Oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah,” Chrissy sang, a soft breathy song complementing the juicier song of her lubricious sex. She rode me that way for a long time, and I was thinking I wouldn’t mind doing this forever. Again as if reading my mind, Chrissy said, “Oh Bradford, let’s do this forever.” She leaned back and let the moonlight bathe her breasts. I’d never seen anything more beautiful. “You’re not going to go, are you?” she said. I didn’t answer. I wasn’t entirely sure what she was asking. “Are you?” she demanded, and I could feel the squeeze of her. Her face looked sad.

“I’m here,” I said.

“Yes,” she said, “or so you say.”

I think her orgasm started then. Her eyes flickered. Her face took on a lost look. She lifted up. Sank down. Lifted up. She lifted up so high she was all the way off. The cool air shocked my wet cock. “Quick,” Chrissy said, now on her back on the sleeping bag, her legs spread wide. “Quick, get in me and fuck me. Fuck me hard.” I mounted her, penetrating fully in a single thrust. I was all the way in, and then she opened more. And more and more, like the earth opening up for me, swallowing me. It had never been like this. The harder I fucked the more she opened the further I sank.

“You cold, DuPres?” Chrissy said. The night air licked my skin. I wasn’t cold. I wasn’t anything.

“Should we build a fire?” I asked, thinking maybe she was cold.

“Naw,” she said, “let’s just go in.”

She pulled the sleeping bag into the tent, we wrapped it around us, wrapped our arms and legs around each other, kissed one or twice, and fell asleep.

When I woke up, Chrissy wasn’t in the tent. I looked out the tent flap. Outside was gray. The foggy air felt moist and chilled. I could barely see to the water’s edge. The light was stronger to the east, and as I watched, some of the fog cleared away. Now I could see Chrissy. She was standing in water not quite up to her knees, facing the opposite shore, which was fully obscured by the fog. It occurred to be that the fog was the same color as my semen. It took me a moment to realize that she was fishing. I could barely make out her rod. But the fog cleared some more, wisps of it drifting and lifting, and now sunlight splashed her thigh. Farther out the mist hung like a low curtain. There was a strange stillness, a peculiar silence, as if the gray air had swallowed all sound. I watched Chrissy fish. She’d draw in the line and cast it out again in a motion as graceful as anything as I’d ever seen. Her body, her being, standing there, naked in the gray light, was completely serene. I scuttled to the back of the tent, dug into my pack, and pulled out my Kodak Instamatic, which I’d loaded with a fresh cartridge two days ago. Peering through the slit of the tent, I took a picture of Chrissy fishing without really thinking about it. A moment after I pushed the button, I felt bad, as if I’d ruined something, though exactly what I’d ruined I couldn’t say. I stashed the camera back in the bag. When I peered out of the tent again, Chrissy had a fish dangling from the line. It looked to be a foot long, and its body jerked and flipped, but the hook held. Chrissy took the fish in her hands, strode back to shore, and swung the fish hard against a flat stone. I could hear the smack, soft but sharp, and it made me shiver. The fish quivered once and was still. She laid it on the ground next to the stone alongside two other fish of similar size. Suddenly I was hugely erect. Somehow I’d connected the killing of the fish to sex. I tried to shake the thought from my head. I decided to take a picture of those fish before Chrissy made them for breakfast, and I crawled back to the back of the tent and dug my camera out of my bag again.