Summer of Twenty-Nine

Jack Cranford himself picked me up at Denver International Airport in the Hunt's Ranch Range Rover for the nearly four-hour drive up into the Rockies to the northwest to the ranch. He had said it was no trouble because he had to meet the flight of another couple that would be lodging at the ranch. When we'd exchanged e-mails, he hadn't asked me why I was coming or how long I was staying. He had no reason to know of my troubles with Amy in New York and my difficulty in getting my current novel written—that I needed to get away from her and the city. There was no question of whether there were accommodations at the ranch, which I'd heard was doing great lodging business. There would always be room for me in the main ranch house. I was Rick Hunt. I owned one-twenty-sixth of the family-owned ranch that still raised cattle but had moved on to taking timber off the surrounding mountains for construction projects in the boom state of Colorado and had become a dude ranch for the well-heeled who wanted to get away from everything, as I did, and wanted to be taken up in the mountains to hunt elk.

I had known going up in the mountains for a different kind of hunt.

Amy had said that it was just my having turned twenty-nine life crisis—that and that we no longer shared a bedroom, let alone a bed, and we certainly didn't share interests. She was a doctor in a busy hospital and highly social, with her own set of friends the few hours a week she wasn't on duty. I was a typical novelist—a recluse, a writer, a teacher of creative writing, which I had to be, at NYU, but one who hated vapid cocktail party chit chat—and pretty much anything and anyone else Amy liked.

I had tried to make a go of the marriage, attempted the camouflage, but it wasn't working. I needed to get away from New York. I needed to finish this novel and get it published. We needed the money—to get a divorce and each be able to get on with our lives. Mine had been a sham.

I longed for what I'd had when I was eighteen.

The other couple Cranford picked up had been two men—both expensively dressed, one middle aged and the other barely legal and cute. The older man had his wallet out during the skycap tipping phase, so I could guess which one of the two had paid for the clothes and would be paying for this vacation in a remote valley of the Rockies. The other one would be lying on his back and opening his legs on demand, I was quite sure.

Cranford motioned me to sit up front with him and they took the seats in the row behind us. They could have been the only ones in the Range Rover for all they cared. They were mesmerized with each other, although the sense I got was that the middle-aged guy was the more smitten of the two. By the time we got onto I-70 in downtown Denver, headed West, up through Golden, then headed northwest to Kremmling and up into the valley between the Rocky Mountain National Park and the Routt National Forest, the couple had settled into dozing off after their plane ride from wherever, had requested that the Sirius radio sound be turned up in the backseat, and Cranford and I found we could talk freely without them hearing us.

Cranford was the head honcho at the ranch. The last time I'd been there, eleven years previously when I put in an obligatory Hunt family summer working on the ranch between high school and college, Cranford had been married to my Aunt Sylvia, who had previously taken responsibility to manage the ranch with my father's brother, Sylvia's first husband, Brandon Hunt. Brandon had died, Sylvia had continued running the ranch, and she married the hunkiest of the cowboys then in the bunkhouse, Jack Cranford. He'd been a good fifteen years her junior, had ridden her into the grave, and wound up managing the ranch himself. He wasn't a Hunt, so he wasn't related to me, except in an in-law way, but he knew everything there was to know about the ranch and the Hunts would be lost without him running it.

When I was last at the ranch, Jack was the hunkiest, most massive cowboy on the spread, which, knowing how hard cowboys are worked, is saying something. At six-foot-five of muscle, he was the god of the ranch, a Zeus figure. He was all power, and the family's take on Aunt Sylvia's relatively early demise was that he wore her out, but that she died smiling. The Hunts didn't much care. She was an in-law who was somewhat imperial in her management of the Hunts' property and probably scraped off more of the profits for herself than she was accounting for. He was one rough character. Eleven years later, he was still all of that.

"That's what we do now," Jack said, gesturing toward the backseat with a nod of his head.

"What's what we do?" I asked.

"Those two, back there. We're an isolated dude ranch now catering to guys who want to get away and do each other. And it's a good business. They don't usually make any trouble or demands, and we don't have to do any advertising. They find us by word of mouth. Good business. We added two cabins last year, and we still keep booked up. Even the hunting lodge up in the Routt forest. Regulars come there to hunt elk but also to hunt each other."

"You OK with that trend in the business?" I asked, thinking, if you only knew what's eating at me.

"It's fine with me."

"And the Hunts—the ones on the management board."

"They don't care about anything but the bottom line," Jack said, with a snort, "that and the business not making any waves—not getting a lot of attention."

"Having such a ranch doesn't cause trouble in the valley?"

"The valley's still sparsely populated, and the county sheriff is queer. So's the local judge. So, we're OK for now. We're serving a demographic." He switched gears then. "You haven't said in your e-mails how long you plan on stayin'."

"I don't know myself. Maybe a few days; maybe most of the summer. I have the summer off—I teach at Barnard College, in New York, next to Columbia University. I'm taking the summer off to finish writing a novel that's giving me fits." And I didn't know how long I'd being staying anywhere anymore. I was antsy. I'd have to light someplace comfortable and quiet to get the novel written. I was trying coming back to the setting, but that threatened stirring up too much of the origins of what I was writing to allow me to write dispassionately. But maybe I shouldn't be trying to write it dispassionately. Maybe that's what it needed—more pathos and passion. But passion was already a problem. While writing it I'd already allowed the writing to go to racy for my kind of novel and had had to rip whole pages of description out. Then I'd told my agent what the problem was and he'd said to put it all back in and he'd just find an appropriate publisher. I could always publish it under a pen name. I just didn't know where I needed to be to get it finished. I'd give Hunt's Ranch a try, and if that wasn't working, I'd move on. Maybe California.

"I read The Photograph and Raven's Possession. They was set here in the valley, wasn't they?"

"Yes, they were." I was surprised Jack had read them. I hadn't taken Jack as the reading kind. He wasn't well educated, not that that kept him back in his line of business. He just needed strength, decisiveness, meanness, and command to do his work, and he had them in spades.

"They was a little racy. Your new one that suggestive as well?"

If only he knew. "The mainstream is pretty open to that now. It's mostly a matter of finding the right publisher for it. The novels do well."

"I bet they do," he said, with a little laugh. "I just bet they do."

"And I don't know where the new novel leads," I said. "It hasn't come together yet." That was a lie. It was beyond suggesting. I didn't have a clue how racy it would wind up. I just knew I wanted it to be honest and that that would change everything in my life. Maybe it putting me on the brink of massive change—not being able to turn back from there—was what was holding me up in the writing of it. I damn well knew what the story was—what I wanted to write. "Would you read it if what I write is racy?" I asked.

"Would you read it to me?" he asked and then laughed. But he continued before we could get into that. "The new one—the one you're writing—that set in the valley too?"

"Yes, it is," I answered. That's where it all came back to—that valley in the Rockies. That's where I've come back to to see if it can help me finish the writing. The Valley. No, I couldn't say how long I would be staying at Hunt's Ranch for—maybe most of the summer. Maybe I'd flee in the morning.

"Rafe's glad you're coming back for a visit. It's been a long time, hasn't it?"

"Rafe? He left." How the hell had that gotten dropped into the discussion? What did Jack know about that? Shit. Maybe I'd flee in the morning. He was twenty-six when I last was here. That would make him what now? Thirty-seven? Time for some of the vinegar to have drained out of him?

"He came back. He's head honcho in the bunkhouse now. He leads the hunting parties. Most of the guests hunt with cameras now. That's a trend too. Rafe don't like it much. He's still a rough and tumble kinda guy."

Was he ever, I thought, as Jack continued.

"He don't cotton with the cameras much. He wants to use his gun."

Hasn't changed there much, I thought, and went on to fantasize over Rafe and using his gun. But I fought out of that. "You asked if the new novel is set in the valley. Yes, it is. I guess that's why I've come back, to try to get back in touch with it." Although now, right now, I was thinking of asking him to turn the Range Rover right around and going back to the airport—across the busy city. But we were driving up into the mountains on I-70, west of Denver, now, and, as always, that was having a calming, "coming home," effect on me. "And, yes, it's been a long time since I was here. Eleven years. I was just out of high school and worked on the ranch for the summer. Since then it's been the East Coast and big cities. My branch of the Hunts broke away from here."

"You like it on the East Coast—lots of people, big cities?"

"Sometimes." And that was true. I couldn't imagine how limited my horizons would have been if my branch of the family had remained here, in the mountains of Colorado. Besides, New York was a "lot of people" town. You could get lost there. You could lead a double life and few would ever know it. And there were opportunities for almost any kind of lifestyle you wanted to lead.

"But it's good to be grounded in what you were, where you came from," Jack said. "It's good to come back now and again—more often than eleven years."

"Yes, sometimes," I repeated. I looked over at him, at his strong, beefy hands on the wheel and his ruggedly handsome face. He was what? Nearly fifty now. Still a Zeus. But then I looked away at the slopes rising on each side, at the massive concrete buildings of the Coors brewery as we passed it in Golden. I didn't want to get into that now. Did I?

"You want to be a hermit at the ranch?" he asked. "I don't know what writers need. You can have the main house to yourself most of the day. I'm living there now, but we don't let the guests use the house anymore. We've built cabins and a lounge and dining room for them."

"You living there alone?" I asked. "You haven't found anyone since Aunt Sylvia?"

"I'm doing fine alone," he said with enough finality that I didn't pursue it. There were rumors about him floating in the greater Hunt family, but I wasn't really "in" with the greater Hunt family—and I'm sure there were rumors inside the family about me too.

"I don't know what I'll need. Maybe I'd like to go up into the mountains. Maybe not. I'll have to see when we get there and I get settled in." Settled in. When would I be settled in to almost being thirty and still not honest with myself—with what I was and what I wanted from life? Thirty. No longer young. Life was passing me by.

"But you'll let me know what you want? I want to help you get what you want. Rafe said he'd like to take you up into the mountains—we have to supply the hunting lodge later this week. Maybe you'd like to go up with those doing that. It's a two-day trek by horse. The road up there washed out in a couple of places in the spring and there don't seem to be any hurry up for the county to repair it."

"Let me know when they go up. It sounds like maybe I'd like to do that."

Then we settled into a comfortable silence, Jack concentrating on the road rising into the mountains and becoming narrower, more twisting, and rougher when we got off I-70/40 and started heading north from Kremmling, and I savoring the mountain views—the lack of skyscrapers and people hurrying here and there. The couple in the backseat were becoming more aware of the surroundings too and, having asked for the volume to be turned down on the radio, were asking Jack more questions about the ranch and the life there. He was patiently answering them, while maintaining a rugged cowboy persona. I watched him closely, though. What he had was authentic. And sexy. I had no doubt that the men in the backseat saw that too and were attracted to it.

I wondered about Jack's sex life. I couldn't imagine a rugged, virile man like him not getting it. Were there any women working at the ranch now?

When we had reached the ranch and I'd settled into a room in the main house—the same one I'd occupied eleven years previously, one of three kept open for any Hunts who had a notion to visit the ranch, and down the hall from Jack's bedroom—I switched to my cowboy gear—low-rise worn jeans, a chambray shirt, and boots—and walked the central complex of the ranch, regaining my bearings here and working on getting back into the mood of the setting. I hadn't brought cowboy boots; I didn't have room for them on luggage I could bring on the plane. They were lined up in the main house's mud room for the picking, and I didn't have trouble finding a well-broken-in set that fit and satisfied me.

I was turning the corner of one of the bunkhouses when I felt a rope lassoing me and putting me on my butt on the ground.

"Rafe," I exclaimed, looking up at the man who had expertly roped me and brought me down. He was still tall and lanky, hard-bodied, with wiry muscles. Dark and foxy and dangerous looking, a look of perpetual sulkiness, scheming, a vein of meanness and cruelty. A bad boy to the core. One you wouldn't want to cross. One some called a rattlesnake and others called sexy as hell. While being wary of the first view, I couldn't help being in the second group of those. I couldn't eleven years ago. I couldn't now at seeing him eleven years later, now in his mid-thirties. If anything, the man who had ripped my virginity out of me eleven years earlier in the mountains in the shadow of Hahn's Peak and broken my heart when I discovered I was just a notch on his holster was more arousing and compelling than ever.

"Let me up from here, Rafe. Take this rope off me."

"I heard you'd come back for me," he said with a laugh, as he came down on his haunches beside me. He didn't pull the rope off my torso that had my arms pinned to my sides, though. "You come back to come for me like you did when you were not much more than a boy?" he asked.

"I didn't know you'd be here. I heard you'd left the ranch—been run off by something you did or didn't do. You weren't on my mind at all. You had nothing to do with me coming back here."

"But you've had me on your mind ever since you heard I was here, I reckon," he said. Another laugh. I didn't have an opportunity to answer that, because he leaned into me, cupped my head with one hand, and brought me into a kiss. The other hand went to my basket, enjoying the feel of me hardening up for him. I resisted the kiss at first, but as it went on, I surrendered to it, opening to him, hungrily receiving him.

He came out of the kiss, took his hand away from my basket, and pulled the rope noose over my head. Extending a strong hand to mine, he pulled me up to my feet.

"Yes, you still want me," he said, and continued before I could deny that. "Welcome back to Hunt's Ranch," he said. "I knew you'd come back to me. Later you'll come for me too, for old time's sake. You're still looking good. You're looking great. Good enough to eat." He tilted his hat at me and turned and strode off.

Now that I was back up and on my feet and he was gone, I looked around. We'd been watched from the horse corral not far away. At least four of the guests, all men, all paired off. They seemed interested in what they'd seen, but not shocked. I'd already been told that this was that kind of ranch now.

Rafe did come for me and I did come for him—the way he liked it—later, in the night. I probably conveyed the message he could that afternoon when I kept coming upon him in the work areas of the ranch building complex and stopped and watched him—forking hay into troughs, shirtless, his muscles rippling, or at a water pipe dumping a bucket of water over his head to cool down, once again shirtless. I'd always move on when he saw me watching him, but not until he'd laughed and flexed his muscles for me. Once he even crouched down and held his fist in front of his crotch, making jack-off motions. Me watching him obviously amused him and gave him confidence. It frustrated me.

The rest of the preceding evening was spent getting my writing materials out, reviewing what I'd written, and contemplating where I was going from there. Rafe, despite myself, had gotten my juices going and I felt I could pick up the writing and hone in on the direction now. It was only Jack and me at the dinner table in the main house, served by a woman with a voluptuous figure but a good many hard years on her. Her name was Muriel and she was at least partially Hispanic. She was younger than Jack, and I wondered if she was his sexual relief. I felt a pang of jealously. I said nothing about that, though, only telling him that he didn't have to sup with me. I knew he was busy running a ranch.

"I like talking with you," he said. "And this is your first night here. We'll see what comes later. I hope you'll be with us for a longer rather than a shorter time. It's always good to have a Hunt visiting."

I retired to my room after dinner and got 1,000 new words, most of which I thought I'd probably keep, written to the novel before I stripped and went to bed. I always slept in the nude when it was convenient for me to do so. I also often put myself to sleep masturbating to some sex scene in my mind that may or may not appear in some form—most likely watered down—in something I would later write. I surprised myself that night. I assumed my scene would feature Rafe, but it didn't. It featured Jack. And the Jack of the fantasy scene was hung like a bull and hovered over me, his knees pushed in under my buttocks, my body streaming down in front of me, and Jack gripping my waist with his hands and looking down into my face. He obviously was inside me, fucking me, in the dream, but, as dreams go, I felt nothing of him inside me. I so wanted to feel a stud of a man inside me.

The reality of the night did feature Rafe, though. I was asleep in some dark hour I couldn't name when he stole into the room. I woke and struggled with him, but he slapped me down and stunned me by banging my head against the brass headboard. In no time, he expertly had me hogtied, on my knees, with my cheek pressed to the mattress, and my wrists tied to my ankles by rough rope and a bandana stuffed in my mouth. He knelt behind me and ate my ass out and milked my cock until, moaning deeply, I came for him. Then, naked except for wearing his boots, he came up on the bed, crouched over me, mounted and penetrated me, and, riding me high like he was in a rodeo, fucked the stuffing out of me. He had brought a riding whip—he was the Rafe I remembered so well of eleven years ago—and, as he rode me, he lightly whipped my flanks—stings that had me yelping behind the bandana he'd pushed into my mouth and admonished me from trying to spit out. I remembered what he'd do if not obeyed, and I kept it in, something to bite down on as he was being cruel in my passage.