Chapter 9

Polka-dotted fly specks dulled the naked fifty watt light bulb dangling from the rafters in Jack's hay loft where he lay stretched out on the single bed, listening to his old friend, the night wind, whipping around the weathered hay barn. His rheumatism didn't pain him much tonight, thanks to the bottle of whiskey Louise, the Indian maid, had smuggled out of the Comstock's well stocked liquor cabinet and given to him in appreciation for driving her down to Moose last week.

Rolling to his side on the rumpled bed clothes, the old man's limpid blue eyes peered through the smudged window at the

Comstock's cabin where smoke belched like dragon's breath from the chimney, the high quarter moon bathing its darkened two stories in an unholy white glow. Strange that he felt ill at ease when the Comstocks came to the mountains . . . Their very presence gave him that run-for-your-life feeling he got when he spotted a cylindrical black cloud chewing its way down from the sky to munch up tree roots and hay barns. Mrs. Comstock was the worst; there wasn't a natural cell in her body. . . from her bleached blonde hair to her painted fingernails. People like that had no place in the peacefulness of the mountains. He took a second peek and shook his head. Not a lit window anywhere. On a June night like this they should welcome the moist, earthy smell of growing things, instead of hiding behind closed doors.

Hmmmm. . . . Jack sat up, the missing buttons creating a yawning gap in the crotch of his long legged underwear, his salt and pepper nest of pubic curls peeking out. The whiskey cut a burning trail to his stomach and he smacked his lips in satisfaction. Ahhhh.. . a leathery hand scraped across his mouth, drying it. Again he squinted through the murky glass, watching the cabin suspiciously as if he expected it to jump to life or a lit window to wink back at him. Wonder what they Ye up to. . . Hell, ain't none of your business.. .

The aged rodeo rider scratched his whiskers and lay supine down on the creaking mattress, the stretched knees of his underwear standing up like air-filled cotton bags. The whiskey lifted him to lightheaded euphoria, erasing the sting of loneliness that set in on warm spring nights like this . . . night when years back he and Mamie would be swinging on the porch swing back in Idaho planning families and him doing his darndest to plant the seeds of dreams right there on her family's front porch, while in the kitchen the slap of Mamie's ma's iron and hum of her soft voice accompanying the radio was reminder enough they weren't alone. They were courting in those days when he first started making the rodeo circuits for extra cash to buy a piece of land and make a respectable life for himself and Mamie.

Oh, she would giggle and wrinkle up her perky nose, smiling at him with her soft amber eyes . . . and his manhood would creep to life just from looking at her, making him flush with embarrassment while she turned her head and pretended not to feel it eagerly jabbing into her hip. Pretty little thing, his Mamie . . . black ringlets hugging her head, the rest of her tan and sassy.

Hell.. . the minute he rescued that young hiker his mind had been spinning in circles, reverting back to dead dreams and cracking the shell of contentment. Funny how Mamie and that girl looked so darn much alike. No wonder his gonads kicked into life that morning when she lay moaning unconsciously right here on his rumpled bed, her firm breasts rising and falling in shallow breathing.

In the raw crisscrossing beams, Jack watched a spider drop from the ceiling at End of her sticky web. Shucks . . . an old man like himself shouldn't be daydreaming about young girls, no matter if those girls were dead in the ground or alive in that house up there. He didn't even know her name, but the first glance into her innocent, helpless face churned up his masculine sense of protectiveness and regenerated in him a spirit that died the night Mamie and their newborn

Jack turned his anguished face toward the wall. Forget the past, you oV fool. . .

Limply, his arm draped over the side of the bed, his fingernails grasping the hard cold touch of glass and finding it, he raised his head for long gulping swallows. Mamie is dead.. . he told himself, but his recharged libido couldn't shove that lush-bodied hiker into the world of the deceased.

Ahhh . . . nothing like whiskey to rot the brain and kill memories.

Raising his gray head, the sentimentalist glanced dizzily down at his torso suddenly come to life and chuckled out loud, his bushy eyebrows arching in hilarity at the sight of his wrinkled, useless penis poking up like a shoot of growing crab grass from the wiry gray patch of curls. Old man, you're far from dead, he thought, moving his leathery hand down over his cotton clad chest down to the potent stalk and grasped it in a tight clutch, his heart thumping in his chest and an undeniable yearning in his testicles shedding many loveless years.

What the hell, he laughed, rummaging in the dust and dirty socks under his bed for the glossy paper of the Playboy magazines he'd salvaged from the Comstocks' dumpster. He'd saved them for starting fires in the pot-bellied Franklin stove on frosty winter mornings, but now on this warm June night they would keep him hot in bed. A little fantasy was good for the spirit. . . His cracked fingernails opened gleefully to the centerfold where a black curly-headed girl with aqua eyes winked out at him as she lay stretched out in a haystack wearing nothing but dusty hay chaff on her oiled breasts and smoothly muscled tummy. Lucky the photographer who crouched behind his tripod staring up between her spread legs to see the jewel of her thumping clitoris and the delicate petals of her pussy.

Jack sucked in his breath, surprised and strangely proud of the hot hardness of his rapidly stiffening penis. His hand pumped steadily up and down, pulling the foreskin lovingly back and forth with infinite enjoyment of the sizzling sensation romping through his loins. His sunburned eyelids drooped over his pale blue eyes glued to the luscious curves and bumps of the naked nymphet in the haystack whose long polished fingertips worked in narcissistic circles at her nipples-the way his hand was communing with his penis . . . as if they shared a secret.

Oh dear Jesus to wake up to a pretty baby-faced honey like that instead of staring at a horse's face every morning . . . ! All rationale left him in a pink mist of passion as the lonely bachelor envisioned a hot-assed girl (No . . . don't you dare say Mamie, his conscience warned. All right then, like the hiker.. climbing up the ladder to his loft, naked as the day she was born, her hair strewn with strands of hay, her pink nipples succulent strawberry tips on her white, milky breasts, puckering from the crisp morning air. Her buttocks creamy and full-swaying from side to side as she sashayed over to his bed and crawled down beside him, stretching out naked and lean. He would snuggle up to her and smother her belly with kisses, while his penis grew hard and ready for her.

Up and down his hand pumped at his blood-engorged penis, making a lewd slapping noise against his groin each time he struck downward. She would coo in his ear and roll over to straddle his hardened cock! Jack's body tensed and trembled and he bit his lip as he concentrated on how the hiker's breasts would jiggle above him. She would go wild, riding him like a bronco and he'd buck her up and down grinding his wiry pubic hair against her clitoris until her slippery pink cunt would soak his cock in hot, excited juices. Tight and velvety smooth like a colt's skin . . . and she would start cumming the minute he fucked up inside her hot little nineteen-year-old pussy. (Mamie had been twenty-two when they had married and the hiker nineteen exactly, but Jack's mind was too set on other things to realize his unconscious miscalculation and his own victory over the past.)

Mmmmmm . . . three more strokes and he would squirt right up into that wide-stretched little cunt of hers! Jack cupped his hand to the main force of his semen, and, with a grunt, executed the last stroke on his foreskin . . . the one that arched his whole cock backwards and pulled hard on the skin of the head so that it stretched painfully. The semen seethed in the heavy sac of his genitals and a sudden excruciating ache gave way to painless bliss as the showering relief spurted upward in great white gushes, his head snapping back, his mouth open in ecstasy. God, she was gorgeous! Grinding his teeth, he groaned a muted gurgle of pleasure and then lay still, breathing hard, his lungs burning.

He expected to feel the gloom of depression now that his flesh and blood fantasy floated back to two-dimensional paper, but instead a giddy sense of power and nimble agility suffused his body and he fell asleep with the light on, the magazine draped over his chest and his hand cupping the sticky flesh of his once again withered penis.

The impotence of defeat hung heavily in Jed's shamefully bowed head as he sat shivering on the ranger's army cot wrapped up in a scratchy army blanket, a bag of ice tied to his inflamed kneecap.

In the fabricated kitchenette of the Grand Teton Mountain National Park ranger station, the sound of ripping paper tore the silence as the park ranger spilled a packet of instant noodle soup into a coffee cup and poured boiling water over it, stirring it until the hard noodles softened to a palatable texture. Hiking boots clomped on the hard wood floor as Joe Barnes toted the steaming cup across the rustic room, pausing at the geological park map tacked to the wall above the desk. The pot-bellied park official squinted at the distressed youth out of the corner of his eyes and, falling into a decision-making state of mind, unconsciously pooched out his lips.

"You say you were about here when you first saw the bear, is that right?" His finger pointed to the base of the mountain.

Jed clutched the blanket tighter and muttered out a defensive "Yes . . . ", nodded his head, then let it fall slack, hating to admit his ignorance. His dirty palms hid the telltale pallor of his face from the interrogating ranger who stood studiously running his finger over the broken dotted line of the designated Grand Teton National Park trails, disdain written over his weather-wrinkled face.

"You say you weren't following a designated park trail, is that right?" Joe arched an accusing eyebrow, then shook his head derisively.

Jed did the same and let out a heavy sigh, slowly raising his head to stare ridicule in the eye. "I know . . . it was stupid of me," he muttered, then paused. ". . . I thought if I could fight my way on a college football field I sure as heck could survive without a map in the woods." The youth snickered bitterly at his defeat.

Joe Barnes stiffened. "My dear boy, it takes brains to survive the wilds . . . " The implication of this man's value judgment on football, Jed's life blood, made his blood boil, but he swallowed the insinuation and buried his face in his hands until the clomping footsteps intensified, then stopped directly in front of him. With a mild 'thanks', he accepted the cup of soup and wrinkled up his nose as the steam bit into his lips, eyeing over the cup's rim the ranger's broad behind waddling in his khaki walking shorts over to the map, hands clasped behind his back, studying it with the intensity of the supreme commander planning the Normandy Beach invasion.

"You say you found nothing.. . no sweater . . . shoe lace . . . " The paunchy man talked emphatically with his hands.

"No.. . "

"She's probably run into other campers by now. In the morning I'll contact the head ranger station and bulletins will be posted at every park exit." Joe sucked in his breath, caning the boy with his eyes. Never took the trails, these kids . . . had to play cowboy and Indian. The mountains to them was a big playground . . . but when they got lost they came crying to the park rangers. Joe couldn't count the number of plumped-up horror stories explaining the disappearance of hikers he'd found untouched on the other side of the park. He didn't know whether to spank this boy or pat him on the shoulder soothingly. He did neither.

"If she's not there?" Jed's face turned ashen at that grim prospect.

'Then we'll organize a search party and find her . . . "

Jed sputtered on his mouthful of soup. "And put it in the papers . . . ? "

"Skokie, Illinois girl deserted by boyfriend . . . found mauled to death by bear. . . " Goodbye football scholarship.

"Only if . . . " Joe squinted across the room at the pathetically distraught youth, then looked down at the floor. "Only if . . . for the obituaries."

Jed didn't know what to think about this whole situation. It was a messy problem.

Cindy . . . don't be dead . . . I promise I'll never force you into doing it with me. . . just don't be dead . . . don't do this to me!