Looking Out for the Water Dog

Neither she nor Maia came to the tower.

October rolled around and the weather cooled. The first serious rain since spring fell, the wind whipping the antennas and rattling the lightning rods in the dark. I started cleaning up, packing things away. It felt strange, the thought of coming off the mountain.

I was puzzled about what to do next. I had a good nest egg from six months rent-free living, but not something that would carry me far. I hadn't applied for law school and I felt disconnected from the idea of study and classrooms. I asked Tony about winter jobs with the service.

On a blustery afternoon, Maia made an appearance, this time wrapped in her service coat and climbing up from the parking spot, rather than going cross country. She had lunch with her.

"You haven't been up in a while."

"My ride went away. I checked out the truck myself today."

"Where did your ride go?" I asked, wondering if I had anything to be jealous about--or any right to be jealous. She was probably ten years older than me and maybe she was just being nice to a summer worker.

"Well, it was Claire, before she took off."

"I was wondering what became of her," I said. She smiled a thin smile.

"I'm sure you were," she said. "You know, there are few secrets out here." I nodded to show understanding, although inside my stomach did a somersault.

"She got to you first," she went on, "so I had to play it cool. I'm glad you're still here." Her hand touched me on the arm. I felt a pang of desire for this woman, even while wondering what became of my erstwhile lover.

"What happened to her?" Her eyes were evasive.

"She got a transfer. She was due a promotion, I'm sure," she said. "You're off next week, right?" She meant that I'd be coming off the mountain.

"That's right."

"There's a dance at the grange hall, in Arcata. Come find me there."

"I will!" And with that, Maia headed down the tower, down the hill, and left me at the summit.

Finally that last week, Tony came up with a couple of part timers and we set about closing up the tower. I added my initials where the old-timer had shown me: here was a record of decades of summers staring out over the forest from on high.

Tony drew me aside and told me there was a good gig I might get, if I was willing to go to Utah. I was welcome back next summer if I wanted it. He also encouraged me to investigate a career, not just seasonal work. I bunked at the headquarters for a couple of nights, making phone calls, preparing to chase a winter job.

While at base, I met some of the other summer lookouts. Our seasons ended more-or-less together. All of these voices that I had never met, known only as letters and digits, turned out to be a motley yet fascinating collection of folks. I was the youngest.

One was a gal, "L54", who'd been two ridgelines over all summer. She was probably Claire's age, and she had a big brown Dodge van fitted up as a camper. She was called Des, which, I learned later, was short for "Desiree".

"Headed down to Baja for the winter. Got room for one more, if you're interested in an old bag of bones. Rumor has it you might enjoy the ride." I gave her the "no idea what you're talking about" look and she laughed.

"I like a man who knows when to shut up," she said, nudging me in the ribs.

"You know something? I'm not in the loop exactly."

"Not mine to share, although if you get me drunk south of the border..."

I laughed. "Let me think it over. I might do the Utah thing. Find out if snow's my thing. Don't think I'm not tempted, though."

Saturday night there was that dance. Arcata felt like a metropolis. The grange hall was a long, low building with a hundred strangers inside, mostly older couples. The band was playing loud and out of tune. It was a sour reunion with civilization until I saw her.

Maia was wearing a blue peasant skirt and a batik print that flowed to her ankles and a black scoop-neck long-sleeve top that hugged her sumptuous curves. She was talking to a neck-bearded lumberjack wannabe, but her eyes locked on to me moments after I spotted her.

She excused herself and we made a beeline for one another.

"You made it! I'm glad you're here," she shouted over the wheezing brass and syncopated drums.

"I'm glad I came," I yelled back, but she sensed the lie.

"You want to stay?"

We went outside. She had a service truck, maybe even the same GMC Claire had often driven, battered and tired looking, but more comfortable than my falling-apart Chevy. She started the engine so the heater could blow some hot air.

"I've been jonesing for some private time for you all summer," she started.

"More private than an isolated lookout tower up twenty miles of unmaintained logging road and a mile of broken trail?"

"Yeah. Private in another way. You're not on the clock and nobody is picking me up and the rumor mill won't be spinning on us." Those miraculous blue eyes, hiding behind her glasses, seemed to see right through me. They were like little lasers, pinning me there.

My gaze was less steady: it kept wandering down. I was looking at her lips, pink and mobile and expressive. The way the sound came out. I licked my lips. She finally glanced down. She leaned a bit towards me, those lips slightly parted.

I kissed her. I'd waited all summer long and finally I kissed her. We pulled back. I swallowed.

"I've been waiting for that," she said. "Let's go somewhere private."

We kissed again and it was a few minutes before she broke off, turned resolutely, and started the truck.

She drove to the Fairwinds Motel. I went in and got us a room, feeling vaguely naughty. It was upstairs, clean, and well-lighted--wood-grained Formica and a lumpy bed, with a view of the freeway.

It didn't matter.

Maia walked into the room and her eyes stayed focused on mine the whole time. I closed the door behind us and reached out to take her in my arms. Our tongues met and danced. I felt her breasts against my chest, felt the arching of her back. My lips were on her neck, my breath softly blowing into her ear.

She undid the buttons of my shirt and then plunged her hands under my t-shirt, feeling my pecs. I let my hands squeeze her ass, our bodies crushing together.

"Get in that bed," she whispered, turning away, and tearing at her form-fitting top before pushing her skirt down. I fumbled out of boots and trousers and more. I heard her slithering under the covers so that, when I looked up, she was holding up the sheet to shield her body from my view.

I, however, was fully on display. For one thing, I was as hard as a rock.

I pulled at the sheet, while, laughing, she clutched it tighter.

"No fair," she said. "You big manly man. A glimpse will cost you."

"Name your price, fair maiden."

"Hmm..." she pondered. I wormed closer. I could feel the warmth of her under the covers. "I think you need to..."

I covered her mouth with mine. There was a hunger inside me.

"I think you need to take me and make me yours," she whispered, tearing free. "I waited all summer and I think you want me."

"You know I do. You made me wait. I, uh... don't have any..." I fumbled, thinking again of protection.

"You didn't use any with her. I want everything you gave her. Don't deny me that."

I was shocked, surprised to find she knew anything about what I'd done with Claire, even if I already had been told there were no secrets.

"And I do mean everything," she went on. "I want to feel you shoot up inside me, where it belongs. I think we have something here. I know you feel it too. I want you to claim me."

We kissed and I felt her naked body against mine for the first time. Heavy globes tipped in succulent pink, ripe for fingers to grab. A furry mound waiting to be summited.

"You gave her a miracle, but I want something far more pedestrian," she murmured, our sensitive bits coming aligned. A steady stream was already flowing in her canyon. It took little effort to find its source. Our lips met and we moved together. But her words didn't go unnoticed.

"A miracle?" She nodded.

"But I want my brace, herd, bevy. And I'm not running away either." I looked down into her blue eyes, seeing the vulnerability there. Feeling her smooth, muscular body under me, around me.

This was too distracting. I stopped.

"Maia, I'm falling for you. But this is kind of big news. Why didn't you tell me? Why didn't she tell me?"

"I don't know, love. It's... just something funny about her. I don't think she thought it could ever happen, and then it did. And, well, it wasn't my place to tell about it."

I looked into her big sapphire eyes.

"You want it too, huh?" She nodded. Her hands gripped my ass. I could feel the solid mass of my organ pressing at her entrance. My mind was churning, though. I'd played it safe and it had been drilling into me. Don't get the girl in trouble and don't risk your life and so much more. And she was an older woman, whom, on some level, I hardly knew.

But those eyes and that sensual tongue won me over. I plunged in, sheathed in a moment and with a sigh. She was tall and muscular, our movements perfect together. I stroked my cock inside her and it made her lips quiver. She flexed her hips and it made me groan.

I couldn't last long and I didn't. I'd dreamed of her all summer, only now the reality was intoxicating. I felt it building inside me before I was ready, unbidden, unexpected, a rushing wave of release. I bucked and jerked as my heavy cream splattered into Maia's loins.

We held each other for a long while, until the absurdity of our crummy little motel room made us both laugh nervously. There was an edge of something bothering me. I was falling, had fallen for Maia. But I needed to see Claire. And I didn't know where any of this was going.

Which is how, two days later, I found myself in Des's brown Dodge van, headed for Mexico for the summer. Maia's job was continuous, but there wasn't anything for me to do here. Her living situation didn't permit us to be together. We talked about it and she encouraged me to go with Des rather than going to Utah.

"I know her. I know what you'll be up to. And I know you need to think about things."

Des was complicated. She was fifty and a nomad. Everything she owned in the world was in that van. But then everything I owned, except my decrepit Chevy, was in Des's van and it was a lot less than she had. She'd worked lookout for many years, filling her off months with sunshine, cheap liquor, and Mexican pot. I learned to stay out of the sun, to body surf in the Sea of Cortez, some "comida Spanish".

I also learned something about free love. There was nowhere to sleep except in her arms. There was no sense that we were a "thing" or in a relationship. Indeed, she seemed to understand that my heart was taken. But her pancake breasts and barrel shaped body were full of surprises.

Like the day we spent with her facing me in my lap, my rod planted firmly inside her, but with each of us leaning back on our arms. We only moved our hips, watching each other's expressions, feeling where our bodies connected, talking about chakras. Or the sensation of drowning while she rode my face. Or the sensation of jealousy, as she went off with an older, wealthy gringo into his palapa for a night of loving.

Or the day she hooked us up with a married lady, Beth, she'd met in a beach bar while her husband was out fishing for marlin. The three of us got naked and frisky under the A/C in a little pink casita. Des drove her crazy with lips and fingers and hot writhing, before bending her over and telling me "get in there, champ... breed her good", withholding the condom the young wife had produced early on.

When we got back to San Diego, we parted ways. She was going to work her way up the coast, towards a rendezvous with "L54". I wanted to stop off and see family.

I hitched rides back to Arcata and from there I called Maia, hoping she'd come get me. When the Service truck pulled up, though, the driver wasn't Maia. It was Claire.

"Well, cowboy, you look a bit road worn there," was her first remark.

"Claire..." I started. She slid down from the truck. Her belly was huge. She smiled a grim little smile.

"Any week now," she said, "we'll be having a little ranger. Guess I won't be up to the tower much this summer."

"Why didn't you tell me? What..." I trailed off. So many questions, so many feelings.

"I figured this was my problem. Heck, at first, I didn't believe it. All my life and it never happened, no matter what I did. I'm not looking for it, thinking that's all done with, and--wham!--there it is."

"Anyway," she went on, "Maia told me about you and her. She kind of insisted that I come down here and at least face up to you. There'll be plenty of time for, well, stuff. You eat yet?"

We got fast food and headed up towards the north part of the park, where I'd be working that summer.

"You know," she said, "Maia's had a tough winter, wondering if you were coming back. She lit up when you called her. I thought she was going to explode."

"I missed her a lot, but the situation didn't really let me hang around."

"You going to do something about that?"

"I'm going to talk to Tony about a full-time job."

"See that you do that. I think you've found a calling, provided you can avoid any more of those water dogs. I'd appreciate you being around a bit, but Maia, she needs something more."

I laughed. "She's communicated her plan pretty well. I think she wants junior here to have plenty of company."

Claire gave me a mysterious look that was resolved when we pulled up into the parking lot. Maia was waiting, sitting on a bench. Her belly wasn't as pronounced as Claire's, but there was no doubt what she was hiding.

Twice that season Tony sent someone up to my tower to spell me. Once when Conor was born. And again when little Max made an appearance.

When I came down after that season, unlike before, I had a plan. It was only last year that I retired from the service. Maia and I were together for ten years and four kids, before cancer took her from me. My parents and siblings never understood how I could have two babies close together like that, nor did they understand how Claire, Maia, and I stayed close.

Claire always joked with Maia that "I guess I was the water dog". When Maia passed, though, she helped me get through it. Our children, Conor and the four who have Aunt Claire, are the better for it.