Country Boys, page 5
More snapping, crackling, breaking brush behind him.
Five more steps and the ground started getting softer. Slicker, slipperier, as ferns clustered at the side of the trail.
It was hard to keep his footing, but he was pretty motivated to stay upright and moving. The creek couldn’t be far.
It wasn’t. In fact, the sharp black ribbon of water had just come into sight when a beefy paw fell on his shoulder.
Kenny went sprawling, pushed off balance by his pursuer. All the wind was knocked out of him by the fall, kept out of him by the couple of hundred pounds that collapsed onto his back.
He tried to scramble away, but it wasn’t happening. His captor was too big, too strong.
Kenny swallowed, preparing for the worst. He could feel the hot breath on the back of his neck, burning, wanting.
Teeth close to his ear.
And then:
“Kenny Collins, you sorry excuse for a bastard! How many times do I have to explain to you what dawn till dusk means?”
The weight on his back started to feel a whole lot better.
“Ranger LaCroix.”
Maybe his legs splayed wider. Just a little. Maybe.
“I mean it, Kenny.”
“Dawn’s been and gone, Ranger.”
“It wasn’t when you set out. Sun hadn’t even thought about coming up.” Long fingers twined through Kenny’s hair, pulling his face up out of the mud. “Let’s not talk about them three doe you’ve already got hanging behind your garage. You’re in a heap of trouble here, boy.”
“What can I say?” Kenny brought his hips up, just high enough so his ass brushed against the unmistakable bulge trapped in Ranger LaCroix’s uniform pants. “I’m a bad boy.”
“Don’t give me that bullshit.” Kenny’s face was suddenly in the mud again. “You can’t be out here poaching deer.”
“Screw you.” Kenny spat the words out, pissed now. “Sun’s up. T’aint nothing you can do about it, and you know it. So get off of my ass.”
Those teeth were next to his ear again. “Oh, I will,” Ranger
LaCroix hissed, pausing to take a small nip at Kenny’s earlobe. “But not until you’ve learned your lesson.”
One hand reached under to Kenny’s fly, working the stiff leather awkwardly.
“What’re you doing, Ranger?”
“Nothing, Kenny.” Another bite, firmer this time, on the side of the neck. “I’m as innocent as you are.”
Ranger LaCroix’s hand slid down the front of Kenny’s jeans, wrapped round his rapidly swelling cock. “And you feel pretty damn innocent to me.”
A slight squeeze, and Kenny was moaning.
“I swear, Ranger, I didn’t do nothing….”
“Not for lack of trying, I reckon.” A few awkward strokes and then Kenny’s jeans were being peeled down. “You need something to keep you occupied. Make sure you stay out of trouble.”
Kenny shivered, his cock now hard and snaking up his stomach. “You volunteering for the job, Ranger?”
“Maybe.” The air was cool against Kenny’s ass, cooler between the cheeks being forced apart. Fingers slick with god-knows-what pushed in. “If you think I’m man enough.”
Kenny groaned, his hips rising to meet the thrusting fingers. “Think you’ll have to show me before I can answer you.”
A zipper coming down can be remarkably loud in the wilderness.
“Smartass.” The blunt head of Ranger LaCroix’s cock pushed against Kenny’s pucker. “What d’you think so far?”
“Mmmm,” Kenny replied, pushing back to envelop the probing cockhead. “So far, so good.”
Ranger LaCroix dropped his ass onto his ankles, pivoting Kenny upward in the process.
“Garrh!” Kenny cried, as the rest of the ranger’s shaft was buried deep inside him. “Holy fuck!”
“Yeah,” Ranger LaCroix agreed, wrapping one hand around Kenny’s shaft. “You’re so tight. So hot.”
Then there was silence again—but this was the natural silence of the woods, punctuated by occasional feathered squabbles and the splashing of brook trout arcing ever so briefly toward heaven.
And, of course, all the rutting grunts and groans two sweaty men can manage. They added another layer of sound to the mix, a frenetic, earthy, needing symphony of lust, punctuated with oh and yes and god and other, less recognizable words.
Kenny was on his stomach again, hips cantilevered upward as Ranger LaCroix plowed into him. “Don’t stop. I’ll freakin’ die if you do.”
“T’aint planning on stopping,” Ranger LaCroix groaned. “I’m just like you.”
The ranger’s hands were splayed in the mud beside Kenny’s face, one thumb a few tantalizing inches from Kenny’s mouth. He couldn’t resist. With a smile, he started tonguing the short digit, tracing over the bumpy knuckle, the smooth expanse of fingernail, the calloused tip.
“Jesus, that’s hot,” Ranger LaCroix groaned, skewing a thrust so it bumped squarely against Kenny’s prostate. “You’ve got a fuckin’ awesome mouth. A pussy mouth. When I’m done riding your ass, I’m gonna get me a piece of that mouth of yours.”
“Anytime,” Kenny agreed, closing his lips around the ranger’s thumb.
“Suck it, suck it, suck it,” Ranger LaCroix urged, collapsing onto Kenny’s back. “Oh, fucking holy god, I’m gonna come.”
Kenny sucked harder, flexing his ass at the same time.
In response, the ranger bit his shoulder, bit it so hard it drew blood through the camo.
Sharp-edged pain ran alongside the sheer pleasure coursing through his system, too much for any man to bear. He came with a cry that sent the startled birds flying for their lives.
Ranger LaCroix chuckled, slowly rolling off of Kenny’s back. “I take it that was good for you?”
Kenny sat up, eyed the ranger warily. “Let’s just say you’ve got the job if you want it.”
“Oh, I want it, all right.” Ranger LaCroix’s grin was broad and bright. It faded as he continued “But you keep this shit up, it might turn out to be my only job. Half the county’s already talking about the mad poacher and his ranger boyfriend.”
“Ah, screw them.” Kenny grinned. “I can keep you in high style. You’ll have venison year round.”
“I mean it, Kenny.” Ranger LaCroix reached for him, only now giving up a long, lingering kiss. “Can’t you think of anything else to do in the wee hours of the morning besides go hunting?”
“A few ideas spring to mind,” Kenny said, dipping down for another kiss. “They should hold me over. At least until bear season opens.”
NOEL, FOR THE LAST TIME
Wayne Courtois
About a quarter mile from the house, down a narrow dirt road, the pond lay like a stain on the landscape. There wasn’t much else to see on this part of the farm: a barren field, the partial shape of an abandoned barn, wheel-ruts leading to an old quarry that indented the woods. I stood on the pond’s grassy bank and looked up at the diving platform, twenty feet above me. Noel’s toes clenched the edge. I nearly held my breath, not wanting to move, till the platform finally creaked and he hit the water.
He surfaced, blowing water off his lips, curls leaking down his forehead. “Feels good,” he said.
Those were the first words he’d spoken since we came down here, and they eased the tension a bit. I hadn’t seen Noel in years, not since he’d left for New York. But when I was driving by the farmhouse and saw him sitting on the front porch, I had to stop. He’d miscalculated in choosing this weekend to surprise his family with a visit, since they were out of town. “Yeah, I know,” he said. “Riley told me.” He seemed almost shy, taking the hand I offered. Had we ever shook hands before? As my girlfriend’s older brother, he was pretty much an unknown quantity. “He couldn’t tell me where Matt was, though.”
So it was up to me to tell him, and right away I saw why Riley, who was only the hired hand, hadn’t dared; Noel blew up, yelling, stomping, sweeping photographs off the mantel: Why the fuck didn’t they tell me?
I’d hoped that a swim in the pond might calm him down, but it was hard to tell. He stayed in one spot, treading water, either looking at nothing or looking inward. Then he raised an arm and let it fall, hard, striking the surface.
“Noel,” I said.
He smacked the water again, harder.
“Noel!”
He looked at me, no favor in his dark, hooded eyes. All I could say was, “Take it easy.”
His voice carried softly over the water: “Fuck you.”
“He was seventeen. Dogs don’t live forever.”
I stripped down to my underwear, sat on the bank and stuck my feet in the water. They became cool, heavier than feet. As I eased down I scraped my back, but the pond took my body away from me, only to return it moments later, wanting air. I rose to feel the surface break over my face, and began to swim laps, recalling the first time Margaret had brought me here. It had been full dark then, with nothing but moonlight to see by.
“I’m not swimming,” I’d said.
“What’s going to hurt you?”
“Snapping turtles. Bloodsuckers. Snakes.”
She always found it easy to laugh at me; I liked that. “We’ve got a saying where I come from,” she’d said, tossing her hair back for the climb to the platform. “There’s only one thing to do when you’re scared of something.”
“And what’s that?”
She showed me. It was the first time I saw her dive, and I ached to see it again—the curl, the reach, a brushstroke ending in a splash. I waded in after her, and soon we were both pressed against the bank, tasting the pond on each other.
“Listen,” she’d said. “Noel’s here.”
“That’s Matt, hunting frogs.”
“There’s one frog that sounds too much like a frog to be a frog,” she’d said.
Ri-bit. Noel swooped past us, in a dive that was almost a belly whopper. He never paid much attention to us, wasn’t protective of his youngest sister. He was just a shadow passing a window as we necked in the dooryard, a creak overhead as we sank into the sofa—or footsteps moving up the gravel road, along with a deep, fading voice: “C’mere, Matt. Come on with me now.” He kept the big Saint Bernard by his side, always.
Now Noel went under, came up sputtering, went under again. I gulped air and swam down, through layers of cold, colder, colder still, till my fingers brushed decay at the bottom. When I plunged my legs down, the muck formed a second skin from my toes to my knees. Flakes and shreds of old plant life roiled around, the merest brown against the dark water. I stayed until my lungs began to burn, then slowly rose, the muck shifting, dragging against my legs….
Something grabbed my shoulder.
Water burst into my throat. I doubled over to fight off choking. By the time I began to claw my way upward, Noel was high above me. Goddamn him! My lungs itched for air as the surface seemed to approach, then recede, over and over. Finally I hauled myself up on the grass to lie choking and snorting.
In a few minutes I skimmed the water with my foot. Its touch connected with the moldy taste in my throat, and I knew I was through with swimming for the night. I looked over the landscape, which was still as a painting, not a bird or mosquito in motion. The edge of the sky held a leftover yellow, while the deepest blue jelled overhead. As I crossed the bank the grass rustled under my feet, a lonely sound.
Noel’s clothes lay on the ground where he’d left them, with one addition: his briefs, soaked dark except for the white band. I called him. No answer. I looked up at the diving platform, walked to the foot of the ladder. “Noel!” No answer. I shook the ladder, its rungs so worn they looked like bones. “Damn it, I’m not coming up after you!”
I found my clothes and pulled them on, yanking my T-shirt into shape, lacing my sneakers too tight. I returned to the ladder again and said, “I’m going home.” I meant it, yet I stayed where I was till I had to admit I couldn’t leave without making sure he was all right.
No, I didn’t like climbing, but anger got me started. By the time I was halfway up, my legs were shaking. Clenching my teeth against the urge to look down, I couldn’t look straight ahead anymore, either: there was too much sky between the rungs. I closed my eyes and reached for another. Another. I squinted up to see the lip of the platform just above me, but the craving to look down was too much. I looked. The ground took a sickening twist.
“Grab my hand,” Noel said.
I couldn’t move, so he grabbed me, pulling me up by the arm. I sat down hard on the platform, which seemed to be turning slowly.
His voice came from above and behind me: “Thought you were going home.”
“Tell me,” I said, trying to catch my breath. “Tell me why you had to get me up here.”
“Did I get you up here? I didn’t say a word. You got yourself up here.”
“I was mad.”
“Is that all?”
I looked at him then, standing there naked. He had the handsomeness that ran in the family, his eyes dark and hooded, like a bird of prey. His lean, strong build was familiar to me, but his dick wasn’t—not hard like that, sticking out in front of him. I looked away, my face burning. I’d never seen a guy like that, not in the flesh, not that close.
“Go ahead and look,” he said.
Just thinking of it made my legs start shaking, as if I were still on the ladder.
“I thought so,” he said. He came closer, the platform creaking. When I looked up his head was coming down, his fingers tunneling warm through my hair. His tongue swelled in my mouth, tickling my palate, snagging cusps of teeth. I stretched my mouth to take more of him, my lips tingling against his stubble. He smelled of the pond, of himself. When he raised his head I rolled away, but his finger found the neck of my T-shirt. “I always thought so,” he said, bending down again, using his mouth on the top of my spine as whole minutes grew and broke silently.
I followed him back to the house. He’d put his jeans back on but carried his T-shirt in his hand. I kept my eyes on his broad back, noticing how it tapered to his narrow waist. He led me up the lawn, across the porch, and through the front door—not my usual means of entry. The hallway, with its bare floor, coatrack, and faded brown wallpaper, was a face put on for the formal visitor. It seemed to be asking me, What are you doing here?
Beyond the hallway was the living room and its family of furniture—two worn sofas, a litter of chairs, a rocker, and a loveseat. It was a larger family than the one still living here, which had dwindled to three, Margaret and her parents. Noel and Jeannie, his other sister, were like so many who grew up in Maine: they craved places filled with people. Jeannie had only made it as far as Framingham, while Noel had struck off for New York. I was about to ask him for a cigarette—I’d left mine down by the pond—when he disappeared up the stairs. Was he expecting me to follow him? Instead I found a pack of his mother’s cigarettes on the cluttered mantel behind the Franklin stove, and settled on the threadbare sofa I knew so well, my feet on the braided rug where Matt used to sleep. I wasn’t about to leave this room, so loaded with familiarity, the kind you depended on when your closest neighbor lived over a mile away. In this case that would be Riley. It made me mad that Riley didn’t tell Noel his dog had died, but I couldn’t really blame him. He was, as people said in whispers, feebleminded. But why hadn’t Noel’s family written or called him to let him know his dog had died? Didn’t anyone have the nerve? His mother would have; Pat had more nerve with him than anyone else. As the bitter tobacco of the unfiltered cigarette brushed my tongue I could almost hear her, scolding Noel as if he were the youngest, not the oldest: Noel, where have you been? Who do you think you are? Noel, for the last time, don’t drink from the milk pitcher! Take your shoes off when you come in from the barn, and wipe that smile off your face when I’m talking to you!
Noel came downstairs with his arms full. He kicked some chairs aside, spread out a green and yellow quilt. “It’s cooler down here,” he said.
I stepped back, as far back as I could. Whatever had seemed possible down at the pond was impossible now. “Look, I have to go.”
Not looking at me, he tried to pound shape into two flat pillows. “What’s your hurry?”
I picked up one of the photos he’d knocked down earlier. A shot of Margaret, taken at the beach. It was one of very few pictures in the room with her face in it; usually she was the one behind the camera. I set it back on the mantel.
He came for a look. “Good old Maggie,” he said.
That made me wince. “Don’t call her that, she hates it.”
“I’ll call her what I want. She’s my sister.”
“Well…” It was time to say, “She’s my girlfriend,” but I was recalling how his mouth had felt on the back of my neck.
“Come here,” he said. He was already close enough to touch.
I turned away, kicked at the braided rug. “I spent time with you tonight,” I said, “because your dog died and I felt sorry for you. That’s all.”
He unzipped his jeans. I looked at him: there was no way I couldn’t. When his jeans were around his ankles he reached down and adjusted himself. Probably his dick was sticky, he had to pry it free from his balls so it could grow. I had done that myself, countless times. But to see him do it…my legs started shaking again.
“Tell me you don’t want me,” he said. “Make me believe it, and I’ll let you go.”
I moved through the kitchen, letting the screen door bang behind me, but got no farther than the back steps, where I sat with my head in my hands. This had been one of Matt’s favorite spots; he should have been within reach, whimpering as I scratched behind his ears. Instead the loneliness of a country night settled around me like pollen.
“Goodnight,” Noel said, unexpectedly close, behind the screen door.
I couldn’t answer, my voice would crack.
“Goodnight,” he said again.
I wanted to say I was scared—scared of the feeling I’d had by the pond. Scared it would come back, scared it wouldn’t. Scared of a future where I wouldn’t be myself, but someone else.
