"Old Pete agreed to meet us round about here somewheres." Clyde said to me as we trudged among the trees and hills heavily laden with early-morning mist. There's a part of the American West that has never been tamed, where men's feet seldom if ever tread, places where deer grow fat with large racks of antlers on their heads, places where the bear still is king of the forest, and where the wolves' howl is enough to put the chill into your bones.
"Do you even know where we are?" I complained to Clyde as we walked through knee-high grass that slopped heavy burdens of its dew on my trousers as I waded through it; I was soaked through clear to my hips by the time we entered the trees again and only had to endure heavy falls of dried, dead leaves. We lost the wetness and paid for it by the heavy shoof-shoof-shoof of our feet in the leaves.
"Sure." Clyde said. "It's Pete who doesn't always wait in the same place. He just...wait, there he is!"
I peered ahead in the mist. Was that a grizzly? The form lumbered towards us between the trees, and I gripped my rifle ready. I was only licensed to kill a single buck deer, but if a bear wanted to argue about who was going to eat who, I intended to win that argument with my rifle and pay the fine.
But the form resolved into colors, hunter's red-and-black plaid jacket, skull-hugging cap with thick ear muffs on it, which look ludicrous and useless on you until you get out into the wilderness and the wind bites your ear-lobes, then they look sensible and practical. There was a rifle in his hands, a sharp line of a nose, dark brown skin of a weathered color, eyes that burned into your very soul and made you quiver, he was the hunter and you were his game. He got up to us and I realized that my impression of size hadn't been spookiness brought on by wilderness and mist...Pete was just big!
"Hey, Pete, good to see you again." Clyde said. "This here is Kevin, who I told you about."
I cradled my rifle in my left hand and reached out with my right hand to shake his; he ignored it, looking right into my eyes. I shrank back under that gaze, wiped my hand on my coat as if it were dirty and smiled, shrugged at him. He didn't respond to any of that, just turned to Clyde and said, "Are you ready to go?"
"Sure." Clyde said. "Going to get us each a deer. Venison's great!" he enthused.
Why was I out here about to hunt down and shoot a defenseless deer? Because I was working in an office where I was stuck in a dull job, having to say "Yes, sir" and "No, sir" to a total jerk, because the work was fast and my boss always found fault with it, enough to keep my employee reports at "satisfactory but" so that I was never going to advance, but the job market was so bad that I couldn't get out, it left me with a commute where they always seemed to be fixing the roads, so that getting home was an hour-long nightmare of honking horns and creep-creep-creep. You endure that, days and weeks and months, and something inside you rises up and you either let it get out somehow or you become the guy who sits in the dark polishing an AK-47, and for me, the way out was to first read magazines about hunting, then buying rifles and learning how to use them, and then, meeting Clyde one day, setting up with him to go on this trip. He said he'd introduce me to Pete who really knew the wilderness. And here Pete was.
Pete. Silent, large, competent. I watched him when we got to camp and turned our backpacks into a tent and supplies. Pete knelt on one knee in the short grass at the camp (you can see why I now had learned to appreciate short grass), hammering a stake into the ground, pulling the tent taut with one hand, tying it down. I got the feeling that, in the wilderness at least, Pete could do anything.
He looked over at me, his face still expressionless, and then turned back to his job, he didn't care if I was watching him or not. "Can you make a fire?" he asked.
"Uh, sure." I said.
"We need a fire to cook on tonight, and enough firewood to keep it going for a while."
"Sure, Pete, I'll take care of it." Gratified that I could be of some use to this man, I diligently set out in search of firewood. I was working on trying to start a fire, a bundle of dried sticks beside me, when Pete came up.
"You're doing it wrong." he said. "Watch." I watched as he took some dried moss and used the match to strike it alight. Smaller sticks went on top of the moss, and leaves with them, until they were a fair-sized blaze, then the sticks I had brought him. I was aware of Pete beside me, how big and warm he seemed, not friendly, just...warm, like he was radiating power and heat of his own.
"That's how you do it." Pete said when he stood up. "You need to remember that." he told me opaquely. And turned away. "Cook us what you have." he said. "Tomorrow we'll eat what we kill."
"Sure thing, Pete." I fumbled for my backpack, and its supplies of canned goods and ready-made food. I didn't bother trying to ration it, I believed Pete when he said from now on, we'd live off the forest.
As I warmed up the canned stew and pork-and-beans over the fire, I watched Pete build us a hanging rack, a place where we would string up the deer we killed to butcher and clean them. Then he took his knife and with no other tool but that and the saplings and vines around, he built a stretching rack so we could cure the hide for turning it into buckskin cloth. Clyde said that Pete had a relative who used the hides to make a fair living for himself and his family. Pete would also take any of the meat we weren't going to use ourselves and pack it away and take it home with him. Little of the deer was going to be wasted, with Pete around, we weren't allowed to be sport hunters, we would hunt for meat.
That night, as I lay on my bedroll with a quilt on top of that, knowing that Pete had lay out on the bare ground beside the fire to sleep, without even a covering, I thought over what had brought me here. What was I trying to do with my life that I would come to these woods to hunt?
And I decided that I would learn from Pete and become as much like him as I could.
I awoke early the next morning, the result of the cawing of a nearby flock of crows. A raoucous, frightening sound, but far away, it made a tolerable alarm clock buzzer like that.
I staggered groggily to my feet, wearing only my boxers and the quilt I carried with me, intending to find a bush to take care of my business and get back in bed, but that plan got stopped when I saw Pete.
In that chilly October morning, Pete was stripped to the waist, on his knees, chanting softly. His long hair was rumpled looking and sleek, his body was a deep brown color. And I knew without asking that I was watching him at his meditation.
Softly as I could, I scampered over behind the tent to take a leak, then came back. Pete hadn't moved, was still chanting softly. I moved up to him quietly, his eyes opened and darted over to note me, then closed again, and he chanted on without pause or hesitation.
I settled down by the embers of the fire, used a few sticks to build up a blaze, watching Pete. From here, he was in front of me, a three-quarters profile. I saw how his chest moved with slow ease and grace, as he breathed his mantra; saw the strength imbedded in his arms, quiescent but powerful in repose, saw the way his hairs made a diamond in the center of his chest, not pretty-boy clean or hirsute beast. He was a man.
Pete was a man's man, I saw that now. He lived his life on his own terms, in his own way and didn't seek confirmation of the validity of that existence from anyone. He hunted but used all the meat, took nothing from the land that he didn't specifically need right then, used the minimum of everything in his life.
Yep, my decision repeated itself, if I wanted to remake my life, I should set out to become just like Pete.
I hesitated, then shucked the quilt. I cheated this much, I stayed near the fire, but I struck Pete's pose in his chant, on my knees, my buttocks resting on my heels, my hands with palms uppermost on my thighs, head slightly elevated. I closed my eyes, tried to think of a mantra that would work. All I could think of was the "Om mani padme hm" mantra, so I did that, determined to ask Pete what he did. As I chanted, breathing the way I'd heard once on an early-morning television show, breathe in, chant the phrase, breathe out, chant the phrase. I entered an internal peace I hadn't touched for many months.
"Hey, Pete! Hey, Kevin!" Clyde said as he came out of the tent. It was a large tent, he and I had shared the burden of carrying it up the side of the mountain and through the woods. Almost like a small room, big enough for both our cots, and could have managed a third if Pete had had one. Clyde regarded me curiously, wearing only a pair of blue boxers and shivering somewhat from the cold. "Kevin, I didn't know you were into that stuff." He said.
"Never mind." I said as I got to my feet. "Who's ready for breakfast?"
"No breakfast." Pete said as he got up. "Time to go hunting now."
"Huh?" I looked, the sun was well down below the trees still, though we now had full light in the sky.
"The deer like to eat in the morning. We'll find some...that way." He pointed with his chin. "There's a meadow of grass that is still soft and green."
As I got hurriedly dressed, I wondered if his meditation had told him where the deer were. Or if he had scouted out the place ahead of time. Whichever it was, he was right. A small herd of five deer were there, one a beautiful buck with a fine rack on his head. Trembling, I raised my rifle up to my shoulder. My scope let me see the deer perfectly; I wanted a clean kill so I sighted his head in the crosshairs and pulled the trigger, and the rifle made a cracking sound like a slender branch breaking in Pete's hands.
The big buck dropped like a stone. Clyde whooped like a maniac, and the other deer went running. Not that I cared; I had paid for one buck and that was what I'd gotten. First day, too. Now, I could play back up to Clyde and his three-deer license, and spend the rest of my time studying Pete, how he behaved.
He loped to the buck I had shot easily, not hurriedly. When he got there, he reached down and checked the buck, nodded approvingly. "Dead." he said. "Clean kill. Very good."
My chest swelled with pride. I looked down at the buck, clean and neat, with only a small hole in the side of his head, a thin gutter of blood, bright red, trickling out of it onto the leaves. I knew that some people had to pump a deer full of bullets, and even then the guide had to use a knife to finish off the poor beast. Or the hunter had to chase after his kill and find and finish it off, if he could even find the animal. But I hadn't done that, a quick, clean kill. The buck had probably never known what hit it.
Pete pulled out his knife and, rolling the buck onto its back in one practiced motion, made a single, deep cut along its midsection and belly. The deer's stomach bulged out as he cut it and then the insides almost spit themselves out. I caught a whiff of the innards of the deer, surprised how its smell wasn't at all repulsive, it smelled hot, wild, strong...but not sickening at all.
Pete rolled his sleeves back and dug into the buck, emptying out the organs of the buck onto the ground. He retained the heart and liver, but the rest went onto the ground. I had expected a lot more blood than there was, but it was more like dumping out a load of soft plastic-looking tubes and bags onto the ground.
"Sixteen-point buck. Head's no good with that bullet, but do you want the rack for a souvenir?" He asked me.
"Yeah." I said.
He cut the deers head and neck from the animal. "Then you carry it back to camp." he informed me.
I did, lugging the massive weight by the horns, surprised how heavy it all was. Pete threw the rest of the carcass over his shoulders, and carried it like that back to the camp.
Back at camp, we had our belated breakfast, fresh deer meat of course, and at Pete's insistence, I ate the heart. I half-expected him to do some sick thing like ask me to drink the animal's blood, but this was his compromise, or his custom, the meat was well-cooked before I took a bite. It was tough and rather stringy, but I ate it anyway, it was my first kill, I was eating meat I'd brought in, and there was a hell of a lot more when I got hungry again. It makes a man feel, sort of, self-sufficient when he can say that.
Then we finished butchering out the beast. Now there was blood, but Pete had dug a trench under the rack for that, what we got on our hands was easy enough to wash off.
That finished the hunting for the day. We had a week and only Clyde's three deer to go, so there was no hurry. We played poker, which surprised me, but I've always done okay with cards, we stayed pretty much even throughout the afternoon, winning some, losing some, three evenly matched players. You know, that kind of takes the fun out of it!
And we talked, Pete keeping his words slow and dignified, like an elder lion with two playful cubs nearby, ignoring their ruckus. When he talked, Pete kept to one subject, the animals of the forest and their habits, what they ate, how they behaved at different times of the year. Listening to him, I again felt that sense of peace, that oneness with the entire world, he understood not only the practicalities of the world, but also had a sense of its beauty, the poetry of a songbird, the brushstrokes of mist on the hills, the songs of the wind.
When Pete left to tend to some business of his own for a half hour or so, I grilled Clyde about Pete and his behavior here in the wild. "Oh, Pete knows all about the wilderness." Clyde said. "I've known him for years, he's always been like this."
"I can't believe I've actually met someone like him." I enthused. "It's like he's everything I ever wanted to be. Strong, handsome, quiet, wise. I wish I could be just like him."
Clyde looked up and I turned around, Pete had quietly walked up behind me. He looked at me with a face neither angry nor amused, just still and appraising, as always.
But he had heard. From that time onward, he was less a guide and more a teacher. He showed me how to sharpen a knife using just a small pocket-sized whetstone, and the next morning, I felt his hand on my shoulder, he was there, bare-chested, and at a nod from him, I went out and he showed me how to do his morning meditation.
We went back to that meadow, I guess deer don't have much sense, or maybe it was a different set of four deer we saw. Clyde banged away three times, but none of them dropped. Pete ran out to where the deer had been, pointed to a spot of red on the ground, and others nearby. "You wounded one of them. We'll have to chase it down."
"Aw, let's just forget it!" Clyde said. "Plenty of other deer out here."
"No." Pete said and he took off after the deer, and I was right with him. Clyde stood there sneering at us. I determined that Clyde was going to get a good look at that deer when we ran it down.
After a time, there was no time for anything but running. The deer had curved around, and we ended up near our own camp before we found it, a timid hurt doe lurking behind a bush. It was snorting heavily, blood pouring from its nose, it was choking, drowning in its own blood. When I'd killed the buck it had been clean and nearly bloodless, but here was blood aplenty, it poured down the doe's side, it pooled on the ground by it, the creature looked up at us in fear and tried to stand, but its legs no longer obeyed it, it simply began to thrash as it tried to run even while lying on its side. I felt awful, looking at that suffering; it was a mercy when Pete drove the blade into its throat and slashed it wide and fast, giving it relief from pain at last.
"I'm going to chew Clyde's ears off but good the rest of this week." I griped as we carried the deer back to camp. "He had no business leaving this animal to suffer and die from its wounds. That's not the hunter's way."
"No, it isn't." Pete agreed. "The animal's spirit cries out to the Earth, and it rejects the man who has failed to finish his kill."
"Yeah." I said. Looked at the doe's bloody nostrils and felt sick like I hadn't when we had brought down my buck, thinking how it had suffered. "It's not the hunter's way." I said again.
I felt a hand on my shoulder. "No, it isn't." Pete agreed, and now there was some emotion in his voice. Tenderness.
I wiped a tear from the corner of my eye, feeling foolish. "Damn it!" I groused. "I came out here to be a man, not a crybaby."
"Don't worry about it." Pete said. "I won't tell."
I looked up into his face, and then I reached up for it with my own. Somehow, I knew that he wouldn't mind one bit. And he didn't. His lips were soft, his body's aroma caressed my face as we kissed, a muskily male smell. His arms as they went around me felt just as good as I had imagined they would. Strong, warm, comforting. I felt so safe within them. Safe...and alive!
I pressed my hips up against Pete's, pushed my hard-on into his leg, let him feel it while I brushed his own basket with the front of my thigh. It was like a soft rag inside, but then it got bigger, and swelled up and then it wasn't nearly as soft as it had been.
"Oh, God, Pete." I groaned. "Make love to me, please! Here, now! I never felt as close to any man as I do to you, it's like I have to be with you, all the way with you. Please!"
His response was a small smile touching his lips, and then his hand gripping my hair at the back of my head and pulling my head back and my mouth opened as I was pulled backwards, and he dived onto my mouth like that, his tongue drove into me like a spear, like the knife that dove into the doe's body, and in the same way, it ended my pain entirely.
His hands cupped my buttocks and he ground against me as we kissed again. I can't describe how it felt to be held, to be loved, by this man, this powerful, strong, all-knowing man of the mountain. It wasn't a kiss of equals, it was more like he was claiming me, like I was letting myself be claimed, grateful for being claimed by him, ready, eager, willing to be owned by him, always and forever.
Timidly, looking up at him time and again for permission, I unbuttoned his shirt, to touch that broad, muscled chest, feel it, run my fingers through the tangle of hair in the hollow of his breast, feel the heart beating beneath, feel the rib cage expand and rise as he breathed in. The sighs of his breath were like strokes against my face as I looked up into him, his eyes were no longer opaque and unreadable, they were now soft, vulnerable things.
I had touched something inside of him. Something basic. Something he didn't show to many people. It was like receiving a gift, that look in his eyes that he was giving to me.
I lowered my head and buried my face in that chest hair of his, it was like pressing my face between a pair of pillows, soft warmth pressed on me on both sides, while the coiled masses of hair tickled me in a hundred places at once.
My tongue reached out to taste that hairy morass, salty, musky, rich, redolent, fuming, cascading, uproarious delights of flavor assailed my taste buds in rapid succession. There was no one taste to him, there were an abundance of tastes, changing, moving, supplanting each other. The rich round button of his nipple beckoned to me, I pressed it to my lips and felt that thick nub on my tongue, wishing that I could suckle at this breast, take in this man who was everything to me, all I wanted, all I dreamed of, it was in him and I could get it out of him if I could figure out how.
A vampirish-like lust took me over, I began to run my lips and tongue over his body, drinking and savoring him, until he was panting, gasping, until he was groaning and nearly whimpering in my grasp.
"Damn, but you're hot." He said to me when his big paws pulled my head away from his succulent body for a time. "Let's go into the tent."
I broke away from him and raced into the tent, inside I pulled and tugged at my clothes, hard, not caring if they ripped or burst or simply came undone, as long as they got off of me.
Pete entered the tent almost shyly, as if he were calling upon me somehow, his bare chest shone from his opened shirt, giving him an air that was piratical, adventuresome, dashing and swashbuckling. Yet he only walked into the tent, and his hands moved up to coyly finish removing the shirt, while I stood on the ground in sock-covered feet and my pants were yanked down into a pile around my ankles, and I was bare but for those socks, that ankle-high wad of denim.
I got the pants off and then sat on the bed to get the socks, while Pete sat on Clyde's bunk to unlace and remove his shoes. I couldn't recall how I'd gotten my own shoes off, but I was nude now, I dove to my knees and at his feet, I grasped his shoe and yanked at it, got it off, leaving a gray sock with a red top behind, then the other shoe, it was laced up still, but I fought the laces free, grasped and held that shoe against my chest, and then heaved...and his other foot was free, Pete laughed...laughed!..and I went back for the socks, they were loose things and easily pulled free.
Pete stood up and I didn't let him unzip his own pants, I got hold of the zipper myself and shshshshsh'ed it down in an instant, and then my hands grabbed a double handful of blue jeans at the waist band and I ripped it down from his large body.
Looked up at majesty, his erection, big, tall, powerful, beautiful, glorious, impressive...and I caught it and scarfed it down, my head was bobbing on his prick by the time he realized that I had hold of it for him.
Hungrily I crammed that huge rod into me, thirstily I sucked on it, wrenching from the proud prick its juices, until salty precome poured out onto my winsome tongue, and I relished that flavor, craved that taste, my mouth was a demon on his pud, and I was sucking him hard, hard and fast, I wanted him, all of him, inside of me, and by God, this would get me his essence! I knew it, I just knew it!
Grunting, gasping, groaning, roaring, his hands caught and manhandled me free from him. "Damn!" He panted. "Take it easy!
"No!" I said. "I have to have it, I have to! Give it back!"
"Lie down on your cot, face-down." He ordered. And with that order, he was the master here once again. Meekly, submissively, I obeyed him, and on all fours, I pressed my face down onto my pillow. I presented my buttocks to him, sobbing with my need, God, he had to get it into me, soon, soon, now!
I felt the cot shift as he climbed on, and I sighed in relief. "God, Pete, shove it in me, all the way in, hurry, man, hurry!" I groaned.
Silently, strongly, I felt his massive manhood press against my sphincter and I groaned, tried to shove back against it, but his hands, his powerful hands, prevented me for they held my buttocks hostage. They held me in place, kept me still, as he pushed his tower, his citadel of maleness, into me, in a dignified, stately progression, and I groaned as that magnificent dong of his slid into me, impaling me, splitting me open, breaking me wide! Then he was done in pushing inside me, now his cock turned into a fat sausage imbedded in me, and I groaned, for wrapped around that fat dick was me, all of me, I felt like I was nothing but a thin sheath around him.
And with lithe, slow movements, he began to fuck me, my body exploded with delight and ignited with ecstasy as he thrust his hips and his powerful tool slid in and out of me.
"Oh, God!" I groaned. "Oh, God, oh, God, more, more!" I gasped.
But with slow, deliberate strokes he fucked himself on me, and I grunted, my breath caught, and I was wracked with ejaculation, I sprayed my seed onto the cot beneath me, and still he fucked me, slowly, stately, calmly regal in his movements.
Panting, sweating beneath him, him continuing to fuck me in methodical deliberation, I trembled and felt my body take on a certain numbness. I could feel still the wonderfully commanding pillar of his manhood as it plunged into me, as it withdrew for the next assault, but that was overlaid with a certain detachment. I realized what I'd attained in a thought of glory, now I was like Pete, I had become a part of him, taken on his abilities, his attributes. By some process of osmosis, our lovemaking at his steady, sustained pace had brought out that part of me I had sought from him.
I raised up onto my elbows and knees and enjoyed the calmness and serenity of this place, even as I was enjoying as well the turgid prong that dove in and out of my bowels. I felt like this could go on forever, and realized that this was what Pete was trying to do, to make love to me all day long, that was why he wasn't hurrying, he was taking his time for there was no reason to hurry, we could fuck like this for days if we wanted, for the world was outside somewhere, not in here with us, and we could suit ourselves.
So long, slow and sweetly, Pete fucked me in that way, I felt climax rise up in me again and this time as I panted, as I clenched with my buttocks on his prick, I felt Pete responding, his cock swelling and hardening, heating up, and with a staid, dignified manner, in this way, calmly and sensibly, Pete and I reached our climax together. I felt his sperm pouring into me, a hard, steady flow that seethed and surged inside of me, I felt as well the dangling/tingling/bursting lights of ejaculation in my brain, yet again, as I said, there was a sense of detachment and mastery over this, I was having an orgasm because I permitted it to happen, and even in my joy I was in control. I don't mean that it felt any less wonderful, it did, but its basic nature was different somehow, like I could participate in this life-spasming moment and still be uniquely me.
Done, Pete sighed, his cock still inside of me, and his breathing was rapid but not frenetic, he was in control, he was in charge.
"Keep it in me." I begged him. "Do that again, please."
"I will." He assured me. We were like that, joined but unmoving, me on my arms and knees, Pete on his knees behind me, one hand resting on my back, when Clyde returned and opened the tent.
"Hey, guys, I see you found the deer...oh!" he said.
"Get out of here." Pete said simply, without heat, and Clyde disappeared. I found out later he gathered his stuff and left, at that moment, I only knew that he was gone again, and Pete and my lovemaking, the dignified embrace of two men of the mountain, continued.