Chapter 4

When I next woke, I was cuddled against Mom's back. My arm lay loosely around her ribcage; my hand cradled her downhill breast. My morning wood had again found its way through the fly of my boxers and was nestled in the warm, smoothly talcumed canyon between Mom's butt cheeks. My adrenaline shot sky high and I catapulted myself backward with such force that I smashed into the wall and slid to the floor. With my heart hammering, I crawled around the end of the bed, snatched my shorts off my desk chair, and continued on to the bathroom.

If things continued the way they had been over the weekend, it was going to be a long week, I thought as I waited for my hard-on to go down so I could pee. I was supposed to be the responsible one, which meant that I should be making the decisions about what we were going to do and setting limits on Samantha's behavior. But Mom was still in charge, in part because she had the ability to assert herself, and in part because I still deferred to the Mom I saw rather than guiding the child she said she wanted to be. It was time for that to change. I got myself together and returned to my room with determination. Inexplicably, considering my explosive exit from the bed, Mom was still asleep. Or faking it very well.

"Okay, kid, rise and shine," I said. "Time to get going."

Mom didn't budge.

I shook her shoulder. "Time to get up now. Wakey, wakey."

Mom didn't budge.

I threw the covers back and had grabbed her wrist before remembering that she was naked. She went into a full stretch and splayed her legs before I could turn my eyes away.

"Ooh," she said, yawning. "Are you here to play already?"

"No, I'm not here to play," I said, dropping her arm and looking at the door. "I'm here to get you up. Get yourself dressed and come to the kitchen. I'm going to fix you some bacon and eggs."

"I want Cocoa Puffs!"

"You've had enough sugary stuff for breakfast. Today I'm going to feed you real food."

"I want Cocoa Puffs!"

"If I'm going to be a responsible person, I have to feed my little girl right." And with that, I left for the kitchen.

Mom, wearing her sleep shirt rather than clothes, came into the kitchen just as I was putting bacon into the pan. "I thought I told you to get dressed," I said.

"Too early," Mom said, sitting sideways on a chair and letting her shirt slide most of the way up her thighs. "I'll get dressed after breakfast."

When the bacon slices were separated and sizzling, I turned back to Mom, who now had her knees widely spread, putting her bare vagina on display. "Aren't you going to ask me what I want to do today?" With an innocent look on her face she started swinging her thighs open and closed, making her pussy open and close along with them.

"Nope," I said. "I'm going to tell you what we're doing today: today we're going to pack a picnic lunch, go to the lake, and maybe hike a little."

"I want to go to the mall," Mom said.

"Not today. Today's the lake and the mountains. We can go to the mall another day. Besides, four-year-old girls don't have enough money to shop at the mall."

"Oh, foo," Mom said. "Sometimes you're no fun at all."

"Sure, I'm fun," I said, turning and looking at the wall over Mom's head. She was still swinging her legs. "Just look at all the fun we had at the park yesterday."

Mom shot me a hard look, but didn't say anything.

When we'd finished eating, I told Mom to go brush her teeth and get dressed. "And be sure you wear solid shoes and clothes for being in the woods. I'll make some sandwiches and pack a cooler while you do that."

Presently, Mom returned to the kitchen sporting yet another skin-tight, thin tee-shirt (with no bra) and a pair of shorts she must have used a shoehorn to get into. She was wearing ankle-high light hiking boots appropriate for our outing.

"You know," I said, as I wrapped our turkey and swiss sandwiches, "you really should have long pants on."

"It's too hot for long pants," she said.

"I sure hope you don't get your legs scratched up. Get a couple of cans of soda and a few bottles of water out of the fridge, and we'll be on our way." I loaded the food and drinks onto ice blocks in the cooler, and we were ready to go.

Our destination was Reservoir Park, a county facility in the foothills only a dozen miles out of town. Built around a small lake that was part of the groundwater recharge system, it included drive-in camping, picnic tables, swimming and non-power boating—a great place to get away from the noise and grime of the city without having to drive too far.

We found a nicely shaded picnic table not far from the water's edge. Because it was a Monday, we had the place virtually to ourselves. And it was an absolutely ideal day for being in the hills: blue skies, moderate temperature, just a hint of breeze, and blessed silence. I drew in a deep breath, letting the scents of sage, dry grass, moist earth, and woodland tang sink into my soul. As my ears became more attuned to the out of doors, the relative silence gave way to leaves rustling in the tops of the oak trees that dotted the picnic area, the occasional echoing shout of a child, humming flies, and the small clatter of the insect world going about its business in the carpet of leaves beneath our feet.

"What a great day!" I said to Mom. "Let's go for a walk around the lake."

Mom plopped her butt down on one of the picnic table benches. "Don't wanna," she said.

"What do you mean, you don't want to?" I asked, genuinely surprised.

"Don't wanna!" Mom said again. "It's too hot to go for a walk."

"Nonsense. It's not hot at all. You couldn't have asked for a nicer day."

"It's too far," Mom said, facing away from me.

"Samantha," I said, "I brought you out here to give you some exercise in the fresh air and an opportunity to see something besides our house and yard. Now let's get going."

"Don't care," Mom said. "Not gonna."

I stepped in front of Mom, put my fists on my hips, and leaned toward her. "Little girls who don't obey the people who are responsible for them are likely to get a spanking, you know."

Mom looked at me with her lower lip stuck out in a parody of a pout. Before she could react, I grabbed her arm, stood her up, turned her around, and delivered a smart smack to her rear.

Mom' eyes popped open wide and her hand went to her butt. "Ow, Cameron," she shrieked, rubbing the sore spot. "That hurt."

"Well, then, you don't want any more of it, do you?"

Mom bared her teeth at me as she continued to rub her bottom.

"It is too far to walk all the way around the lake. We'll go for a half hour or so to help us work up and appetite, then come back and eat, okay?"

We walked the short distance to the lake and decided to turn to the right. Once we got going, Mom had no problem with it. Of course. She easily shifted her little girl persona from being obstreperous to that of a kid out for a day in the sun. She happily skipped along, stopping to look at rocks and sticks and trees on one side of the path, and on the other, throwing rocks into the water and terrorizing any frogs that happened to stick their noses up as she passed by.

The sandwiches did taste particularly good after our walk in the fresh air. As we tossed our wax paper and napkins into the trash and our soda cans and water bottles into the recycling bins, I asked, "How about if we finish our afternoon by going the other way around the lake for a while?"

"Okay," Mom said, immediately running off without waiting for me.

And so it went. I caught up with Mom, she ran on ahead of me; I caught up with Mom, and she ran ahead of me. I know that Mom had had experience with me as a little kid, but I really wondered whether maybe she'd studied up on four-year-old behavior before she announced her intention to become one again. It seemed to me that she was playing her role exceptionally well.

We strolled and ran for another half hour or so, then turned back. On the return, Mom spotted a trail head sign that read

Short Loop Trail

0.8 mi.

The little map below it showed that the trail made kind of a meandering loop up into the hills and returned to the lake near our picnic table.

"Ooh, Cameron, let's do that!" Mom said.

Why not? Some new sights and even more of a departure from civilization.

What the map didn't indicate was that Short Loop Trail was 0.4 mi. straight up and 0.4 mi. straight down. We'd no sooner got away from the edge of the lake before the trail started uphill. Oak trees forming a canopy overhead had dropped layers of slick, dry leaves on the little-used trail, and as the grade steepened, Mom and I began to slip and slide.

"Mo—"

"Sa—"

"—mantha, it's getting pretty slippery. What do you think?"

Mom's voice said, "This is a short trail in a county park, for heaven's sake. It's not like we're going to have to scale cliffs or cross chasms. Let's go."

"Okay," I said, "you get in front of me so I can brace you if you start to slide."

And up we went, Mom's butt chugging along in front of me, stretching first one cheek and then the other in her clinging shorts as she scuffed her toes through the leaves to find purchase on the soil beneath. It was slow going, but we kept moving. A couple of times Mom did slip, and I stopped her by catching her dampening rump with my open palm. As we approached the crest of the hill, the slope was so steep that we were walking on our toes and fingertips.