Boy From the High Country
by Arthur Kent
Chapter 12
FLIGHT
I woke in the early light of morning, feeling more peaceful and relaxed than I had in months. I could feel Kelly's warm breath against my neck. He was snuggled against me, his arm over my chest, his leg over mine. Just hours earlier I'd had one of the most intense sexual experiences of my life. And it was with a boy, a young man in some ways, a small, vulnerable boy named Kelly. He was more experienced than anyone his age should be in both sex and the enduring of pain, less experienced than anyone his age should be in love and genuine affection. He stirred slightly, and seemed about to wake up, but I was in no hurry to leave his side. If only there were a way to pee without getting out of bed. I gave a deep sigh of contentment. Little did I know how soon that contentment would be shattered.
A sleepy voice next to my ear said thickly, "G'morning."
I turned my head and, for the second morning in a row, kissed the tip of his nose. "Good morning, champ. I need to get up and go pee."
He tightened his grip on my arm. "I don't want you to go."
"I have to."
"Do we have to go anywhere today? Can't we just stay in bed?"
That was the best invitation I had heard in a very long time. "We're in no hurry to go anywhere," I said. "We can just stay here today, if you like. But I have to go," and once again I started to move toward the edge of the bed.
"Why don't you just pee in the sink?" I started to laugh, then thought better of it. The idea did have a certain appeal. I remembered a home stay in rural Denmark the summer after my sophomore year in college. Every morning I could hear the sound as the farmer's strong stream hit the wall of the metal sink in the kitchen. No one seemed to think this was strange behavior. Of course, we weren't in rural Denmark. But then, we weren't in Portland, either. There was that 10-gallon auxiliary tank collecting everything that drained from the sink, the kind with wheels to make it easier to haul to the dump station. And after all, urine doesn't carry disease organisms. On the other hand, I would still feel like using a disinfectant later.
"If you pee in the sink, you can just come back to bed," Kelly said, and I thought I heard a hint of seductiveness in his voice.
"Okay, you asked for it," I said. "Let's use the sink."
Kelly suddenly was wide awake. "No, wait! Let's brush our teeth first, and pee after."
So there we stood in front of the sink, Kelly naked as a jaybird, me in my T-shirt and nothing else, assiduously scrubbing the accumulated scum from our teeth. We drew water into paper cups and rinsed and spat, rinsed and spat, and then he said, "Let's do it together."
The first problem was that the sink was just a little bit too high. I had a single-step stool that I used outside when I wanted to brush leaves off the camper roof. Kelly used it as a booster step, and I stood on the book I had read briefly the night before while he was in the shower, a nice fat John Grisham thriller. We stood side by side, the man and the boy, gripping our members lightly and preparing to take aim. I looked at Kelly, and found him looking back at me. We had never before compared our respective anatomies, and each of us was taking a good long look at the other. We were surprisingly alike. I had never been what one might call well-endowed, but it appeared that Kelly was going to be, since he had a few growth years left and was already nearly the same size as me. This, however, was when neither of us was excited. My foreskin barely covered my second head, but his extended beyond the tip and formed a puckered extension that looked for all the world like -- and this makes no sense to anyone who has never gone clam-digging at a Pacific Ocean beach -- like the neck of a razor clam. I had to admit one thing. I liked looking at him. In fact, I felt I could hardly get enough of the sight of him. I determined to do something about that later.
I thought of a naughty rhyme I had learned in junior high school, and to break the silence, I said it out loud:
"They was floatin' down the river, Just a settin' on the stern. She was holdin' his'n, And he was holdin' her'n."
Kelly began to giggle, and for a moment I thought he was going to fall off the step. The he straightened up and said, "OK, we still haven't done anything." He boldly reached over, pushing my hand away, and took over the aiming process. I immediately returned the favor. We grinned at each other. It felt daring and intimate and right, all at the same time. I summoned up an imitation military drill instructor's voice. "Prepare to pee!" A few seconds pause, and then, "Pee!"
We did, and played the games that I supposed small boys must play at the toilet. My older brother was so private that I had never even seen him naked, to say nothing of playing pissing games. But Kelly and I now crossed our streams, and wiggled each other's dicks from side to side a little to watch the zigzag pattern, and wrote our names. I asked him if he knew rule number one of camping in winter, the answer being, "Don't eat the yellow snow!" It's a good thing Kelly's bladder was down to the dribbles; otherwise he would have created a small flood on the counter around the sink, but I kept him from falling by holding on to a convenient appendage. I went back into my drill sergeant voice and said, "No matter how you shake and dance, The last few drops run down you pants." And then, of course, I had to add just one more old joke, which like the others was new to him: "If you shake it more than twice, you're playing with it."
With that we were done, because we had nothing to zip up. Kelly held the spring- loaded faucet in the on position while I did a quick scrub of the sink. To complete the cleanup, we both retracted our foreskins and splashed on a little water to remove the last vestiges of our activities. If you aren't cut, it's a nice extra step to take when you have a chance, particularly if you are about to spend some time in bed with a friend. We had already showered after our love making the night before.
We crawled back into bed, but we were in no hurry. "I just want to touch you," Kelly said. His palms gently stroked my chest, and my rib cage, then reached around to touch every inch of my back. My arms lightly wrapped around his body, and I stroked his back from his neck to his buttocks, as tenderly as he was touching me. His hands returned to my chest, then smoothed their way slowly downward until he began to play with my pubic hair. Suddenly he lifted his body up onto one elbow and pulled the sheet and blanket down and away. "I want to see more," he said. He squirmed around in the shallow vertical space, narrowly avoiding a collision with the ceiling, until he had upended himself and was staring directly at the most private region of my body. I found myself face to face with his lengthening penis.
Kelly was beginning to fondle me, and I could tell that he was examining me carefully, almost clinically, moving my balls this way and that, holding each new position until his eyes had drunk their fill. But I scarcely noticed Kelly's movements, because I was transfixed by the sight of his youthful erection. Blasphemous it might be, but it was as if I were worshipping at the shrine of his boyhood. That sounds so pretentious as I commit it to writing, but it is the metaphor that came to me then, and I cannot shake it.
The little clam-neck was gone now, the engorging tissue of his shaft having stretched his foreskin back until the opening of his urethra was exposed. With no soap suds to obscure the view, the shape of his glans and the outline of his corona were clearly visible under the tightly-stretched sheath. Blue veins made a delicate tracery under the surface of his nearly-translucent skin. A small crown of soft black hair rested above the base of his penis, and his completely hairless scrotum rested against the juncture of his thighs, holding the secret of the continuing life of humanity.
There was a sensation of moist warmth between my thighs, and I gently rolled Kelly's body away from me. "Come up here first, Kelly," I said. "I want to kiss you." He turned his lithe body around until he again faced me, and I did kiss him, with passion but without urgency. "This is going to be a first for me, Kelly," I said, "and I don't want to be distracted. Also, I want to be able to look up and look you in the eye." He smiled at me and nodded.
I moved downward until I again came face to face with the center of his emerging manhood. I leaned forward to bury my nose in his sparse public bush, and drew a deep breath. There was a faint scent of soap from last night's shower, a hint of muskiness from the sweat glands of his groin, and an undefinable aroma that was somehow unique to this boy. Perhaps it was the pheromones that everyone talks about, but no one seems to understand. I only know it was elusive, exciting, intoxicating.
Until this moment I had been moving blindly, instinctively, not thinking about what I would do when I reached my goal. I had always thought that taking a penis into my mouth would be distasteful, disgusting, impossible. But this was not a theoretical situation. This was Kelly, the boy I loved, and if I could bring him pleasure, if I could fulfill his evident need, then nothing I would do in the process could be distasteful. Tentatively I licked the surface his foreskin, and found the sensation not unpleasant at all. I covered the sharp edges of my teeth with my lips, and slowly enclosed half of his naked boyhood in my mouth. He was not much larger than a good cigar, and I swirled my tongue around the end as I might before lighting a Churchill. Kelly gave a long shuddering sigh, like "ah" in staccato series. Pulling back slightly, I touched the tip of my tongue to the tip of his penis, then forced it down until it was trapped between the glans and the skin of his sheath. My tongue continued to travel the complete circuit of the head of Kelly Junior, and this time he pulled up his knees and thrust his hips upward.
With the movement of his hips, I allowed his erection to pass fully into my mouth. It was just long enough to be fully engulfed without causing me to gag. I now began to do with my lips what two nights before I had done with my hand, but the additional pressure of my tongue caused his excitement to rise more rapidly. He began that little grunting sound that I had now come to expect, and the movement of his hips became more insistent, more driving. The motion caused his foreskin to slip back and forth over his glans, and when it was exposed, the swirling of my tongue gave it another jolt of stimulation before the skin made its return trip. My own sexual experience until this time was so conventional and staid that I had never felt a mouth on my own member, so I could only guess what might be most stimulating for Kelly. From the evidence of his grunting and his thrusting hips, I seemed to be doing fairly well so far. His little cries were becoming more frequent now, and suddenly he stiffened, and I felt a warm, slimy liquid pulsing into my mouth.
I had read a number of stories on the Nifty archive, and it seemed that this was always the point at which the sucker found the suckee's ejaculate to be the nectar of gods. It did not work that way for me. My stomach threatened to turn on me as my mind conjured up the image of eating someone else's snot. And then I looked up, and I saw Kelly's face pull into a grimace of intense pleasure. I heard his cry of exquisite joy, and I felt his orgasm rippling through the muscles of his abdomen and his legs, and suddenly these things no longer mattered. I stopped trying to interpret what I was feeling, and instead thought only of giving him the greatest pleasure possible. When I stopped thinking, my body went on auto pilot, and I swallowed in self-defense, and I felt nothing but joy that I had been able to express my love for Kelly in this most intimate way. And I thought, yes, I could certainly do this again.
It was not long before Kelly got his other wish, and brought me to the same peak of pleasure in the same way. Afterwards, we lay in each other's arms, exhausted and content.
"Uncle Art, why can't I live with you?"
The question came out of nowhere. My mind was not focused, and it took me a moment to tune in. My response was not particularly intelligent. "What?"
"I mean, Jeff was older than Cody, and he--"
"Wait, Kelly. Hold it a minute. If we're going to talk about this, I want to have some clothes on." Then I patted his flat stomach. "And we need to get some food into our bodies, too." I steered the conversation to geysers and waterfalls and elk while I made a big breakfast of scrambled eggs and pancakes, plus a large imitation Starbucks mocha for me. When the dishes were done, I dug into the side cupboard and pulled out the laptop computer that had sat unused since Kelly came into my life. I booted it up and clicked to the folder where I had stored some stories downloaded over the slow telephone internet connection back home. I chose the story that for Kelly seemed to have the value of Biblical prophecy: 'Caring for Cody'.
"We're going to look at this story together," I said. "In the first place, it isn't a true story."
"It isn't?"
"No. Cody and Jeff are characters made up by--" I looked at the story introduction, but there was only an email address for the handle 'Teentales'. "Well, he doesn't give his name, but because he made up the story, he can make it go any way he wants. Now, Kelly, do you remember what Jeff's house was like?"
And I slowly took him through parts of the story, using the "Find" feature to search out the relevant passages. Wasn't it convenient that Jeff was had a big house, that he was independently wealthy, that he really didn't have to work and could devote all his time to Cody? Look how easily he posed as Cody's father and got a copy of the birth certificate. And wasn't it handy that Jeff had a friend who was a lawyer who specialized in custody cases? And what about the school? Well, what do you know! Jeff had friends in the school district offices too, so he could get Cody into classes without too many questions being asked.
When I was finished, Kelly sat silently for a long moment. Then he said, "I really liked that story."
"So did I, Kelly. I think it's a great story. I love stories where everything turns out the way we want it to. But it's a story, Kelly. And you know what else? Every story I've ever read about a lost boy being rescued by an older man has the same ideas. The man is always rich, the parents or stepparents always die or just sign some papers to get rid of the kid, the man always has connections to make everything legal, and they live happily ever after.
"But this isn't a made-up story, Kelly, this is real life. I'm not rich. I don't know any lawyers who owe me a favor, and I don't have enough money to hire one. I'm a teacher, and I know the kinds of questions schools ask about new students, and I can't answer them about you. Oh, by the way, I did sort of try to make the fantasy come true. I called the school district in Cheyenne and told them I was Reverend Foster. Asked for a copy of your school records."
Kelly looked almost hopeful for a moment. "What did they say?"
"They said I'd have to come in person and sign for them." We sat for a moment of shared discouragement. "On top of everything else," I finally said, "I only have one bed. Not that I'd mind, but you know, those social workers might get the wrong idea. They might think we were lovers or something." I winked at him, then added seriously, "I don't think they would like it. But do you know what the worst thing is?"
"No, what?"
"I might be able to get a lawyer, I might even be able to get a bigger apartment, just maybe, but there's one hurdle I can't jump. There isn't a social service agency in the country that's going to accept a 55-year-old single man as a guardian for a 14-year-old boy who isn't a relative."
Kelly was crying now, silently weeping, and there was nothing I wanted more than to gather him in my arms and tell him that everything was going to turn out just great. But I was not at all sure that was true, and I had promised not to lie to him. I did take him in my arms. "I promised you I would never turn you away, Kelly, and I won't. I do have one hope."
"You do?"
"Yep. Your stepparents obviously don't want you. That's a good thing now, because it means they probably won't fight it if someone else wants to be your guardian."
"But who?"
"I don't know for sure. But I do have one place I know I can start."
"Where?"
"Two words. Freddie Watson."
Kelly's face came truly alive for the first time in an hour. "Freddie? The Watsons? Really? Do you think--"
"I did get their forwarding address from the school in Cheyenne. And it appears that they have been there long enough to get phone service started, and I got their number. But we do have one serious problem."
His face fell again. "What is it?"
"Do you think the Watsons know about you and Freddie?"
He looked down, embarrassed. "I hope not."
"We'll have to tell them, Kelly."
Panic is the only word that can describe the look on his face. "No!" he exclaimed. "Why?"
"Think about it, Kelly. What if the Watsons said they wanted you to live with them? Would you and Freddie be able to keep your love secret forever?"
"No, I suppose not."
"And what if they find out next week, or next month, or next year, and they don't like it? What if they think you're corrupting their son? What if they tell you to move out?" Kelly looked stricken. "The worst thing that could happen to you, Kelly, is to have somebody else throw you out."
"They wouldn't do that."
"You don't know that, Kelly. If they want you to live with them, they have to know."
He was defeated, and he knew it. "I guess so."
"Okay, are we ready to make that phone call?"
"Okay."
The phone was picked up at the Seattle end after three rings. "Mrs. Watson, my name is Arthur Kent. You have never heard of me, but we have a mutual friend named Kelly Grayson."
"Kelly?" she nearly shouted. "Is he all right?"
"Yes, he's fine. He's right here, and he wants to talk to you. Did you know his stepparents threw him out of their house?"
"So that's what happened! Where did he go? What is he--"
"All in good time Mrs. Watson. The short version is that Kelly was hitchhiking, and I picked him up and he told me about you. I got your number from the school in Cheyenne, and here I am. And that's enough for now. Here's Kelly."
Kelly was practically dancing with anticipation. He kept reaching for the phone, then pulling back because I was still talking. When I finally handed it to him, he snatched it away and put it to his ear. "Hi, Mom! This is Kelly," he said. Well, what do you know. When I was in high school, I called a neighbor's mother 'Mom', with no disrespect to my mother at home.
"Yeah, I'm fine... We're in Yellowstone Park. It's so great! We saw Old Faithful, and we saw a bunch of elk, and we... What?... No! He's really nice. Is Freddie there?... Well, can I call him later?... No, really, I'm fine, I... You what?... Oh, shit! I mean -- I'm sorry, Mom, but -- I think you'd better talk to Uncle Art again."
Kelly's face had gone a pasty gray color. If he had my complexion, he would be stark white. Something had clearly frightened him. I took the phone again. "Mrs. Watson, you scared Kelly somehow. What's going on?"
"Well, I wanted to know if he was all right. We called the Fosters to speak with Kelly, and they said they didn't know where he was. Well, we thought that was odd, so we called the police in Cheyenne and they--"
"Oh, shit! Um, pardon me, Mrs. Watson, I -- look, I'm going to cut straight to the chase here. Kelly stayed at your house once for several weeks when he ran away, is that right?"
"Yes, he was with us over a month."
"Well, I'm going to be blunt. Would you be willing to have him again? I'm sorry to be so direct, but I don't think we have a lot of time."
"Of course he can stay with us! But would that work? I mean..."
"Mrs. Watson, I don't have time to explain. I will call you again and explain in more detail what's going on. I really have to go. You'll hear from me. Soon. Good-bye."
My head was spinning. Shit, shit, shit! They called the police in Cheyenne. The police would go the Fosters. And damn, I gave that prick Foster my phone number. How long did that give us? How long before somebody saw a 'Missing' poster and remembered us? What if the highway patrol stopped us for something and asked who this boy was? What if -- there were too many 'what ifs'.
Kelly was just staring at me, wide-eyed with shock and confusion. "Come on, Kelly, let's get out of here," I said. "We're headed for Seattle. Now!"
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