Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 09:42:52 +0000
From: hobby391@att.net
Subject: Boy from the High Country, Chapters 6 & 7

BOY FROM THE HIGH COUNTRY Chapter 6

by Hobbyboy

hobby391@att.net

DISCLAIMER: See the warning before Chapter 1.

MY PERFECTIONIST SIDE:  If you have a good memory for
Chapter 1, you'll remember that Art picked up Kelly on a Saturday
afternoon. In Chapter 6 one day has passed, but it's Wednesday.
This is one of the problems that can occur when posting an
uncompleted story. So if you are the type that gets upset if your
copies of National Geographic aren't kept in chronological order,
go back to Chapter 1 and change Saturday to Tuesday and
everything will be fine.

CHAPTER 6: HELLFIRE

I am normally a restless sleeper, tossing and turning without ever
actually waking up. Either my sleep that night was unusually quiet,
or Kelly asleep was insensible to anything less powerful than an
earthquake. At some point during the night his body must have
become too heavy for me, because now I was spooned against
him, the warmth of his naked back tantalizing me as it touched my
equally naked front. My slowly rising penis nestled into the crevice
of his backside. I didn't want to go there, either figuratively or
literally, so I carefully extricated myself from the bunk. I would
rather have gone back to sleep, but my over- active kidneys made
it imperative that I make a trip to the bathroom. For once, the
pressure had not given me an erection. Not for the first time on this
trip, I wished the little camper had room for a portable toilet.

As long as I was going to the bathroom, I decided to take my
toothbrush. My mouth tasted like the Russian army had slept in
there overnight. The trip to the bathroom didn't take long, but it was
still early and the air was cool, so by the time I slipped back in
beside the sleeping boy the touch of my cold skin was enough to
disturb his slumber. He stretched slowly and turned toward me, his
hair rumpled, his eyes only half open. He looked a little confused
for a moment, then he broke into a grin. "Good morning," he
mumbled. His breath was not as fresh as it had been the night
before, but I could stand it.

I leaned forward and kissed the end of his nose. "Good morning
yourself." As I recall, my last thought before drifting off to sleep
was that I would really have to think about what was happening
between Kelly and me, examine the legal and moral implications of
what I was doing, and in general be the adult and let him be the kid.
Impulsively kissing him like that was not a good way to start my
self-reformation. Interestingly, Kelly seemed completely untroubled
by my behavior.

"What time is it?" He seemed a little more awake now.

"It's about five o'clock."

"Five o'clock? Shit!" He rolled away from me and resumed his
near- fetal position. I snuggled in behind him. "Damn, you're cold."

"I arranged that just to torture you."

"I believe it. Now I have to go to the bathroom. Feel this," he said,
and before I knew what was happening he grabbed my hand and
pressed it firmly against his morning erection. "Why does that
happen all the time?"

"This one's easier to explain than the classroom boner. Did you
study erections in your sex ed class?"

"I haven't had much time to study any erections, but we did learn
about them." Apparently his sense of humor woke up before the
rest of his brain.

"So do you know how that soft little thing gets to be big and hard
like this?" I asked, giving his penis a couple of wiggles.

"Is this going to be like a lesson now?"

"Yes."

"Damn, you really are a teacher. It's five A.M., I want to sleep."

"You said you had to pee."

"I guess I do."

"And you have a hard on because you have to pee, so I repeat,
how does this" (and I touched him) "get to be like *this*?" I gave
one firm stroke to make my point.

"Ummm. That felt good. It's got all kinds of, like, tubes in it and
they fill up with blood and that makes it stiff. Our sex ed teacher
blew up an air mattress to show how it works." A rather different
kind of blow job, I thought.

"Okay, so during the night your bladder fills up and presses against
the blood vessels that go to your penis. The blood in the arteries
going to your dick has enough pressure to get through. But the
blood in the veins on the way back has less pressure and gets
blocked.. So blood can get into your penis, but it can't get out, and
all those little tubes" (a few more illustrative strokes) "fill up and
bingo, you've got a boner."

"So that's why it goes away as soon as you piss."

"Right."

"Well I haven't pissed yet, so are you going to do something about
this?"

So much for my hope that last night would be viewed as a one-
time indiscretion. I still did not know what I was going to do in the
long run, but at the very least Kelly and I were going to have to talk
about this before anything else happened. I would have to put him
off, without making him feel that I was rejecting him. "No," I said
lightly, "you've got morning mouth," and I gave him a friendly slap
on the rump. "Besides, we've got a big day ahead. We're going to
Yellowstone, remember? So grab some clothes and head for the
bathroom. If you wear the long T-shirt you won't be embarrassed.
And take your toothbrush."

Breakfast was cold cereal and milk, plus toast made in a little metal
gizmo that held four slices of bread at a time around the heat of a
gas burner. There was hot chocolate for Kelly, and for me, a
double tall mocha courtesy of the little electric espresso maker I
had bought back in Portland. This was, in fact, my idea of "roughing
it." We chatted about nothing in particular, so at least half of my
brain was available just to observe him.

His face was always animated, and he used his hands so much
when he talked that I guessed he would become a mute if I tied
them behind his back. I had known him less than one day, yet I had
already had a sexual encounter with him. If someone had told me
about such a thing I would have immediately assumed that the child
was a wanton, a hardened seducer, perhaps even a prostitute. But
Kelly seemed to be bright, alert, entirely normal, and no more
preoccupied with sex than any other normal fourteen-year-old boy.
Well, there was also the fact that he seemed emotionally younger,
rather like a twelve-year-old who just happened to have entered
puberty.

I got up to make myself another mocha. It wasn't Starbucks, but it
would do. It was my low-budget substitute: a shot of espresso, plus
about twice that much boiling water and a packet of non-fat Swiss
Miss. Don't knock it until you've tried it, as they say. As I sat back
down with my mug of mocha, I did not respond to Kelly's
description of a fabulous save made by the goalie of his school's
soccer team. Instead I said, "Kelly, we need to talk about a few
things."

The light in his eyes suddenly went out. He slumped down in the
cushions of the dinette, his hands went into his lap and he gazed
down at them. A photo of the moment could be captioned, "Sent to
the Principal's Office." Without lifting his gaze, he softly asked, "Are
you going to make me leave now?"

"What? No!" I quickly worked my way around to the other side of
the small dinette and wrapped my arm around his shoulders. "Kelly,
I told you I would try to help you, and I will. We are going to
Yellowstone today, and we are going to have a good time, and we
are going to sleep tonight in this camper, and we're going to just
take one day at a time until we figure out what to do, okay? Why
would you think I'd want you to leave?"

"I thought you'd think what we did last night was bad."

"Who told you that?"

"My step dad. He said if we feel things down there, it's Satan
between our legs trying to get us to do things and if we give in to
temptation and touch it we'll go to hell and God will hate us
forever."

Shit! Well, that's exactly what I've stepped into this time. My lack
of self-control has caused Kelly to doubt his own value as a
person. I am supposed to be the adult here. When I should have
been finding out more about him, getting to know him, forging a
relationship with him, I was molesting him in the shower. All I could
do now was to deal with the situation as best I could. Doctor
Spock didn't cover this situation.. And while I pondered, my silence
was adding to his anxiety. I took a deep breath and forged ahead.
"Do you go to church, Kelly?"

"All the time."

"Does you pastor say the same thing?"

For this first time, Kelly looked up at me. "My step dad is the
pastor," he said.

Deeper and deeper! The only thing needed to make this picture
complete would be to find out that his step father's church had
nothing to do with any denomination anyone had ever heard of, but
was just a splinter group of people who thought there was no point
in being a Christian if it didn't make you superior to everyone else.
"What's the name of the church, Kel?"

"It's the One Way to Truth Tabernacle."

"And how many people are there in church on Sunday morning?"

"Maybe a dozen, and their wives and kids."

Game, set and match. Hook, line and sinker. Three strikes and
you're out. Your honor, I rest my case. Some damn saying must be
appropriate here. I had met too many of these guys with their
personal little flocks. Trained in a mail-order Bible school if at all,
ordained by some traveling evangelist with no connections to any
legitimate church organization, or maybe  just suddenly "called,"
they gathered a group of people so stupid and wrong-headed that
by comparison the "Reverend" looked brilliant, and they started to
preach. Ignorant of the great tradition of two thousand years of the
Christian church, they thought that they and they alone understood
the Truth. Certain that every question had one right answer and that
they knew what it was, picking and choosing bits and pieces of
Bible verses because they didn't know how to read intelligently,
they used the Christian faith to support their personal prejudices
and attack their pet peeves. They were the dark underbelly of
American Christendom. They were racists like Samuel Butler,
fascists like Billy James Hargis, showmen like Jim Baker, mass
murderers like Jim Jones. So what about this "Reverend" Foster? I
remembered Jim Baker, after he got his life squared away, saying
that the deeper he became mired in his secret life of sexual excess,
the harder he preached against it. Foster was probably a pervert in
preacher's clothing. But, of course, who was I to be talking about
perverts? Who was that in the shower with Kelly last night? Not
Reverend Foster.

"Kelly, listen to me. That's not what God is like. He isn't waiting
behind a door so he can catch you doing something wrong and hit
you over the head with a big heavenly two-by-four. That was just
your step-father trying to use God to get more power over you.
God loves you. He gave you a beautiful body, and it's working just
the way it's supposed to. You haven't done anything wrong, Kel.
The only person who has done anything wrong is me."

"You?"

"Me. I shouldn't have touched you like that in the shower last night.
It's wrong for an older person like me to do things like that to a
young person like you."

Kelly looked up at me again, and tears came to his eyes. His face
twisted into a grimace, like someone experiencing a great grief. He
barely managed to choke out his words. "But I thought... when you
picked me up I thought... I thought that bad people were going to...
were going to... and then you came and I... I thought... I thought
you loved me!"

I had never used the word 'love'. It had crossed my mind, but I had
dismissed the thought as presuming too much, too soon. Now it
seemed that I had the heart of a very vulnerable young boy in my
hands. I could crush it with a word. I had already run out of time to
be cautious. I hugged him to my chest and said, "I do love you,
Kelly." But he was in  too much emotional turmoil to take that in.

Kelly was still sobbing almost uncontrollably. "When you... when
you touched me... I thought... I thought it was... because you loved
me... and... and it felt so wonderful... and now you say it was
wrong... and so... and you must hate me now... I'm sorry I made
you do something wrong... I'm sorry, I'm sorry."

God, wasn't this a lovely mess? I didn't trust myself to say anything.
I just held him tight, holding on for life, for love, for joy, for grief, as
he poured out the pent-up emotion of the last two days, and longer.
In the sobs that wracked his body, in his hoarse panting cries, I
heard the pain of his motherless childhood, his father's death, his
step mother's hostility, his step father's condemnation, and other
events about which I dared not even guess. I kissed the top of his
head, and then again, and then his ears and his forehead and his
eyes, and I began to say, over and over, "I love you, Kel, I do love
you. I couldn't hate you, not ever." And when at last his paroxysm
of grief had spent itself, and his heaving sobs became hiccuping
breaths, I said, "I want you to lie down on the bunk with me, Kel."

I helped him up onto the bed above the cab, and lay down beside
him. I enclosed him in my arms, and he clung to me and rested from
his ordeal. When his breathing was calm and regular, I said, "Let's
start over, Kelly, okay? I've made a mess of this, and one thing you
can't ever do is unscramble eggs. So just forget everything else I
said, and know this. I'm going to stop worrying about what's right
and wrong, I mean the big words with capital letters, RIGHT and
WRONG. I'm only going to think about what's right for you. I'm
going to think about what you need, and I'm going to try to give you
what you need. You said that when I touched you, you thought it
was because I loved you. Well, it's true. I do love you. I can't
explain it, but it's true. From the time I first saw you asleep on that
picnic table you started worming your way right into my heart, and I
now I can't get you out. I don't *want* to get you out. I love you,
Kel."

The light had come back on in his deep blue eyes. He smiled at me,
and the smile made his face seem to glow from within. Then once
more he did something unexpected. He moved toward me slightly
and kissed me on the lips. It was not a not a passionate kiss, not a
lover's kiss, but it was more than the kiss a son might give his
father. It lasted longer than the fleeting touch of last night, but not so
long as to be arousing. "I love you too, Uncle Art."

It was as if time had been suspended, and was now resuming. I
could not even guess how long he had wept, how long we had
snuggled together on the bed. But when I checked the travel alarm
that hung near the bed, it said 7:30. We had awakened so early in
the fresh morning that we had put in a full day's emotional workout
before the other tourists had stirred in their trailers. "Okay, tiger,
how about we go see some geysers?"



CHAPTER 7: TRUCKERS

We were more than an hour from the east gate of Yellowstone
National Park. Having lived all my life in the green moistness of the
Pacific Northwest, I was not captivated by the view out the window
of my pickup. There was a grandeur to the vast expanse of the high
plateau, but the vista changed so slowly that I preferred a series of
snapshots to a continuous movie. Kelly and I were both wide
awake, Alan Vizutti was playing in the background, courtesy of the
CD changer located in the rear of the extended cab, and it was a
perfect opportunity for a little conversation.

"You remember back there when I said that what I did last night was
wrong?"

"Yeah." He looked at me quizzically, as if a bit anxious that I might
go back to that traumatic time an hour ago.

"Let me try saying it a different way. What I did last night is against
the law. It is so illegal that if anybody found out about it I would go
to jail for a very long time."

"Would they put me in jail, too?"

"No, I'm the only criminal here. The minute I touched you in the
shower, the law says I was taking indecent liberties with a minor.
Actually, just getting into the shower naked with you would probably
have done it, if anyone had seen us. I really wasn't thinking very
clearly about this, and I didn't take very many precautions to keep
what we did private. So that makes my behavior not only illegal, but
stupid as well."

"But nobody knew about it."

"I'm surprised half of Wyoming didn't know about it. Remember
this?" I launched into my best imitation of Kelly's voice. "Unh...
unh...  O God... Don't stop... Unh..." I started to feel like Meg Ryan
in the restaurant scene from 'When Harry Met Sally.'

Kelly blushed a deep scarlet and started to laugh. "I wasn't that
loud," he protested.

"Oh, we haven't even gotten to the loud part yet. When you had your
orgasm you sounded like a wounded elk."

"Did not."

"Did too. We are so lucky that no one was listening. Hey, it's
Wyoming, maybe they really thought it was an elk -- in heat."

"Shut up."

"Okay. But the fact remains that as long as you are under eighteen,
anything sexual we do together is a crime."

"That's stupid."

"Maybe so. Maybe not. You see that line down the center of the
highway? How long has it been since we saw a car coming towards
us on the other side of that line?"

"Dunno. It's been a while."

"So what would you think if I just moved over to the other side, like
this!" The road was straight and flat, and I could see at least two
miles ahead, so I swung over into the oncoming lane.

"Don't do that."

"Why not? As long as I can see the road ahead, it's perfectly safe."

"No, there might be another car coming. Don't!" Kelly actually lifted
his feet from the floor of the cab and cringed into the corner as if
there really were an oncoming vehicle.

I brought the truck back to its proper side of the road. If he had
thought driving on the wrong side was just an adventure, I would
have been forced to give him a stern little lecture on why it was
dangerous. I was happy to see that this would not be necessary.

"We need rules, Kel, we need laws. We don't always like them, but
we need them. Like, you can't vote unless you're 18 years old. Now
you're only 14, but you're a smart kid and I'll bet you could be an
intelligent voter, but you can't vote because that's the law. There are
some people my age who are too ignorant to vote, but they can do it
anyway. But we have to draw a line somewhere, and sometimes
people get caught on the wrong side of that line. Maybe that's where
you and I are, I don't know. What I do know is that basically it's a
good law. It's there to protect you from sexual predators, people
who would just want to manipulate you into having sex with them just
for their own pleasure, and not care what happened to you. And a
lot could happen. Sex is so powerful that if you get too much of it
when you're too young it can really mess you up for the rest of your
life."

"But I hear kids at school talk about having sex all the time, and they
don't get arrested."

"Well, it's a little different if it's someone your own age. In most
states if you're under eighteen, and you have sex with anybody who
is more than four years older than you, then that person is committing
a crime."

"So what you did with me is a crime?"

"Yes."

"So the law wants to protect me from you when I want to be with
you, but it doesn't protect me from my own... I mean... What about
that truck driver?"

"What truck driver?"

"Oh, shit!" Kelly had obviously revealed more than he intended to.
There was a fierce anger in him, and it was directed against... whom?
He said the law couldn't protect him from his own... something.
Something had happened that was close to home, probably that
Bible- thumping step father. Other than the fact that he was too thin,
I had not seen any signs of physical abuse on Kelly, and I had
certainly had enough opportunity to look. But for right now, there
was the matter of that truck driver. Kelly was blushing furiously, and
appeared very interested in the backs of his hands.

"Kel, you don't need to embarrassed in front of me. I love you. As
far as I'm concerned, that means you can tell me anything, and I
could never hate you for it. I know your step father threw you out
because of something you did, or he thought you did, but I will never
do that. I will never turn you away because of anything you have
done." I paused to let that sink in. "And besides, you pretty much
gave it away about the truck driver already."

"What do you mean?"

"When you first got into my truck yesterday, you offered to, well, to
pay me, in a way. You said, 'I know how it works.' You
remember?" I took his silence for agreement. "So I guess I know
how you got from Casper to that rest area. Is that where you learned
'how it works'?"

"That's what the first trucker who picked me up said. I guess I
sounded pretty desperate. He said, 'Well, if you're going to ride with
me, you're going to have to know the rules of the road. Here's rule
number one. Nobody gives away rides for free. Here's how it
works. I give you a ride, you suck my dick. Is it a deal?'" Kelly
turned toward me in his seat, and he began to cry again. "I'm sorry,
Uncle Art, but I wanted to get away from there so bad, and I
couldn't think of anything else to do, so I said yes."

I patted his knee to try to give him some encouragement. "You did
what you had to do, Kel. When you're desperate, you do desperate
things. Was it bad?"

"It was awful. He took me back into that sleeper cab, and he was all
hairy and fat and he smelled bad and he pushed my head down so
hard on his smelly dick that I couldn't breathe and I almost threw up
and when I tried to spit it out he slapped me across the face and he
said, 'Swallow it, you little cunt,' and then he just stuffed everything
back in his pants and got back behind the wheel and started driving
and he just left me lying there and I felt so awful I wanted to die."

It was another five miles before I could find a place to pull over. In
the meantime, all I could do was keep one hand on the wheel and
stroke his cheek with the other while over and over I said, "You're
safe now, Kelly. You're safe, and I love you. I'll never let that
happen to you again." By the time I was able to stop he had calmed
down, but was still in obvious distress. I turned to him, took his
hands in mine, and waited until he looked me in the eye.

"Kelly, I said to you that you can't tell me anything that will make me
hate  you or ask you to go away. We're going to get through this
together. But I need to know what happened to you, so I'm going to
have to ask you some more questions. Is that okay?"

I could tell he was not completely sure, but finally he said, "Okay."

"Will you be all right if I get us back on the road?"

"Yeah, I think I'll be okay."

I started the truck and got back onto the highway. Once we were up
to speed, I picked up more or less where we had left off. "Did that
one trucker take you all the way to Sheridan?"

"No. He got in his radio and called some other trucker, and he said,
'I've got some chicken aboard this trip. Meet me at the rest stop
north of Casper.' I didn't know what he meant, yet. We got there
and about ten minutes later another truck pulled in and the driver
came over and opened my door and said, 'You're mine next, kid.'
He carried me to his truck and made me do the same thing. He was
younger, and he didn't hit me or call me names and he didn't smell as
bad. I don't remember how many times this happened, maybe four
or five, and one guy slept for a few hours, but the next morning it just
started again and I kept getting sicker, but they didn't care. Finally I
just couldn't do it any more and the last guy just opened the door
again and said, 'You ain't worth shit. Get out of my fuckin' truck.' He
threw out my back pack and drove away. Every time a truck came
in I hid behind the bathrooms. I  was hoping somebody with a family
would come along, but they didn't. Finally I got up on the picnic table
and went to sleep. When you shook me I thought you were another
trucker. That's why I tried to use my knife." Suddenly he looked
down at his belt, and felt around his waist. "What happened to my
knife?"

"I took it off when I took your clothes last night. It's in a cabinet in
the camper. So listen, Kelly. Those truckers put you through hell.
Why did you offer to do the same thing to me?"

"I didn't really want to do it. But you seemed so nice, and I didn't
think it would be too bad, and I just figured that what those truckers
said was true. But when you said that it didn't work that way with
you, and you were going to give me a ride and not make me do
anything, then I just knew."

"Knew what?"

"I knew that you were the one who was going to rescue me."

I didn't quite know what to do with this piece of information. I
remembered that just before he went to sleep, Kelly had said, "I
knew you would come." But that little mystery could wait until later.
What I needed right now was to find out just what I had gotten
myself into, just how much Kelly had gone through other than
meeting some complete assholes who gave a bad name to the whole
trucking industry. He would probably never be able to see a big rig
on the road again as long as he lived without feeling nervous.

"Kelly, what those truckers made you do. Had you ever done
anything like that before?"

And slowly the story came out, how he and his friend Freddie
Watson had slept together the first time Kelly ran away from home,
how they had begun to explore their bodies and had discovered the
pleasures of mutual masturbation, and eventually the even greater
pleasure that one man could give another with his mouth. Freddie's
family had gone to Reverend Foster's church, which was why
Freddie was the only friend Kelly was allowed to have. By the time
Kelly ran away the second time, the Watsons had left that church,
but they threatened to report Foster to child services if he forced
Kelly to go back before he was ready. Eventually he convinced
Kelly that everything would be find if he came home, and Kelly
believed that he had to go because the Bible said that children were
supposed to obey their parents. And then Freddie's family moved to
Seattle. The Watsons insisted that Kelly be allowed to spend one
last night with Freddie before they left. The clothing Kelly had put in
his pack for that last sleepover were the only things he had when I
found him in that Wyoming rest area.

I asked Kelly why, when he and Freddie sucked each other, he
didn't find it digusting the way it was with the truckers. "I love
Freddie," he replied. "We didn't just do sex things. We talked about
stuff and we played Playstation and sometimes we would just lie in
bed at night and hug each other and not do sex stuff at all." This part
of the story brought tears to my eyes. I was so afraid that he had
gotten into sexual activity as a substitute for love. Instead, he had
learned that without love, sex was empty and sometimes revolting.

Kelly's story explained why he started hitchhiking rather than going
to the Watsons when his stepfather threw him out. But why had he
run away twice before? What information did the Watsons hold over
Foster's head? And why did the Reverend finally cast his step son
away? Much as I wanted to know these things, they would have to
wait. The east portal to Yellowstone lay directly ahead.

NEXT: Chapter 8, Storm Clouds