On Highway 17

by B. Z. R. Vukovina

  “Cob Augo. Fated,” she said.

  “You don’t believe in fate?” he shot back.

  Winnie stood up from the table. “Come,” she said. “You have one day to spare before you become famous. Come with me. I want to show you something.”

  (“Arnold, make sure nobody touches my jars!”)

  Winnie led and Cob and his guitar followed, out of the Tasty Totem and down a narrow gravel lane that cut away, perpendicular, to Highway 17 and away from Black Bear Portage.

  The lane led into the forest. Its gravel soon became dirt, needles and decomposing leaves. Tire marks remained faintly visible in sporadic patches of dried mud. “Where are we going?” Cob asked.

  “Home,” Winnie said.

  “Do you have a car?” Cob asked.

  “I don’t drive,” Winnie said.

  He struggled to keep pace with her long strides. He struggled to keep his eyes off her long legs. She wore bulky brown homemade boots that didn’t go at all with her pink dress, the loose ends of which bounced hypnotically off the insides of her knees as she walked. Lower, her calves flexed; her calves slackened. The dress had a simple cut that hid most of her figure, but at least from the knees to the ankles she was bare. Cob’s eyes didn’t discriminate between bare skin and covered. They made out the shape of her ass through the dress. They studied the folds in the cotton material as it gathered around her hips. And they marvelled when, in the intermittent streams of late morning sunlight flashing through the foliage, the black hair sliding across her back teased black and flirted with blue.

  Winnie turned off the lane without stopping. “Shortcut,” she announced. Cob stared into the forest, which threatened with shadows and hidden moisture, and tried to wonder why he kept following — why not refuse, why not turn back? But the truth was impossible to avoid. The way he’d felt in the restaurant, how Winnie had made him feel: he wanted to feel that way again. To feel joy with her again. If only one more time.

  “Are there bears out here?” he asked.

  “Of course,” she said. “Black ones, and wolves.” And took several steps forward, which Cob dutifully aped. Winnie looked as comfortable covered by shade, in the land of the wild creatures, as she had in the light, in the land of people. Cob felt unsure, cooler. The guitar weighed more heavily on his body here. “It’s not much further. Just to the river, then across, then up the mountain.” She waited for a reaction. When none came, she continued. “It’s not actually a mountain,” she admitted. “It’s really more of a hill.”

  ♦♦♦♦

  Cob heard the water before he saw it: a faint buzzing that intensified like a swarm of insects, steady without the monotony of mechanisms, always on the verge of crashing, of waves, like the string of a guitar plucked hard, once-and-forever.

  The trees ended.

  He emerged from amongst them and approached Winnie, who was already standing on the slick, rocky edge of the white rushing water of the (“They call it the Dead Horse.”) river.

  Lovely, he thought. “Because the horse could go no further,” Winnie said in the direction of the opposite shore. The sun was transforming the sky into afternoon. Morning felt foreign, distant. “The rider was being pursued. When he realised that the horse was dying of thirst, heard the howling of the hunt, he dismounted, fell to his knees and prayed to the gods to save them both — to allow his escape.” She stepped into the water. It rose to the tops of her boots. Cob remained where he stood. “On hearing his prayers, the gods granted his wish. And the rider became the river.” Another step forward: the surface surrounded her calves. “The horse drank and was refreshed, and the pursuers passed. But the horse lived a long and unhappy riderless life until, one day, passing the river once more, it fell in and drowned.”

  Winnie’s boot slid — but she threw out her arms in time to keep her balance.

  Downriver, something smashed into a jutting rock.

  “Winnie!” Cob called out.

  Her body looked magical walking on the water. “What are you doing?” he asked. But she couldn’t hear him. She was already halfway across and the torrent’s growl was too loud. Yet, for all the noise, its foamy claws still reached no higher than her calves.

  Three, four, a dozen more steps, the last few conquered at a skip, and she was safely on the other side.

  She spun, the wind whipped, snapped at her hair, she was laughing, her dark boots dripped water. “Come on!” she yelled. He could see the shapes of the words on her lips more clearly than he could hear them.

  “That horse story doesn’t make any sense,” he yelled back.

  “I made it up.”

  The wind pushed her pink dress against her brown body and, for the first time, he saw the outline of her stomach, her breasts, the triangular space between her thighs. He wanted to cross the river as badly as he’d wanted anything — almost: he wanted it almost as much as he wanted Berkeley.

  “Take off your shoes if you’re too civilised,” she called. “And don’t worry. There’s a path. Just stay on the rocks.”

  “I don’t swim!”

  Her shore was fifty paces from his but every step seemed undefeatable.

  She sat and took off her boots. “Don’t swim. Walk.”

  He hesitated. He waited. But the Dead Horse River paid no attention and provided no clues, merely seething and frothing as before. The forest seemed to nudge him from behind.

  “Are you afraid, Cob Augo?” Winnie asked from the opposite side of the world. Seated, she’d placed her bare feet on the warm Canadian Shield, spread her legs, and hugged her knees. A pair of lavender panties peeked out from under her dress. “If you believe in fate, tempt it.”

  Cob took the guitar from his back and grasped it with both hands for comfort as much as balance. The air about him spun. He took the first step. He felt the first, cold, volume of water seep through his shoes, soak through his socks and surround the skin of his feet. It wasn’t an unpleasant sensation. The sensation muted his fear. He gained in confidence. He walked forward, over the water, step-after-step, one rock to the next, toward Winnie’s spread legs, as around him the river spluttered and splashed, spraying his hands. He raised the guitar. He held it over his head. The water rose past his shoes. The path of rocks had been carefully laid. The rocks were slippery. He was halfway there, Winnie was half as far, when, without warning, the Earth rotated —

  Directionless submersion.

  The water rising noisily past his head.

  Winnie dissolved.

  The river flowing down his throat and into his lungs.

  Sound flickering colours.

  Hushed words beat against the surface of his head like the wings of so many terrified seagulls: “Stand up! Stop moving.”

  The gulls were right. His legs were bent. When he straightened them he grew and the volume returned to his ears and underfoot it was solid. His clothes drooped heavy with wetness. He spat out cold water and focussed his eyes, which, through the incoming waves, saw the blinding sun. He squinted. A hand brushed against his arm and grabbed his collar. His own hands were still raised. He was still holding the guitar above the surface of the river. As long as he saved the guitar — that was most important. Winnie’s nose bumped into his chin. The nose felt warm, elastic. Her fist pulled him by the shirt, toward the shore. Although there was still water in one of his ears, the other heard well enough: “It’s only up to your shoulders. Stand. You’ll be fine. You fell off the path. Did you bang your head?”

  He let himself be pulled out of the river without answering, put down the guitar, and collapsed onto the hard, hot shore.

  Water escaped from his clothes.

  Hair stuck to his face.

  Winnie spread her palm on his shirt over his solar plexus and pushed gently. “I’m sorry,” she said.

  His stomach rose and fell, and he felt more ashamed with each successive breath
. He didn’t want to look her in the face. He couldn’t. But her touch was comforting and he didn’t want it to end, so he let his vision meander between her neck and the reddened knees supporting her body kneeling beside him. She was as wet as he was, his flannel shirt as soaked as her dress, which clung to — exposing — the feminine shapes beneath.

  “It’s not your fault,” he said. “I slipped.”

  Her fingers dug into and tickled him. “I meant I’m sorry I lied about the horse and the river.”

  He heard her smile without seeing and remembered the way her twitching lips always betrayed her. He wanted those lips. He wanted to see her whole body with his hands until his cheeks burned red.

  She said, “You’re not dying, you know. You’re just a little watery, like an undercooked jam. Don’t be so silently dramatic. More time on the burner is what you need.”

  Her tickling hand tiptoed lower.

  And pulled the ends of his shirt from under his belt.

  Cob propped himself up on an elbow and placed his own hand on Winnie’s thigh, then started it upward, below the tightfitting cotton. The motion was anything but smooth; his damp skin sandpapered over hers, his fingerprints grazed and teased her pores. The stickiness of the dress felt like a tapestry of unshelled molluscs sliding over his knuckles.

  She leaned over him, so face-to-face he couldn’t look away, and kissed his lips. The kiss was brief — she pulled back quicker than he could push forward. “The black bears and the wolves,” she whispered, and kissed him again as briefly, “are watching. Notorious….” This time, she let her tongue enter his mouth, before slowly extracting it, hissing, “peeping toms and perverts.”

  She pressed a hand to each of his smooth cheeks.

  “I can taste the river on your tongue. That’s what it’s really called. The Tongue River. Do you want to know why?”

  He purred.

  “It’s because —”

  And he lunged at her so hard she almost fell backward and his teeth almost clattered into hers, before his tongue penetrated and sank into the warmth inside her mouth.

  Her arms fell to her sides. His rose to grab her shoulders.

  Which he used to lay her down upon the rocks.

  “Cob Augo of Boston, I am older than you,” she said as he caught his breath, looming over her. “I am married. I am a lesbian. I am the Chief’s daughter. You have fallen into the river. You are dead. You are dreaming. I am a fish, and you cannot catch me.”

  He unbuttoned his flannel shirt and tossed it aside, leaving his upper body covered only by a nearly transparent white t-shirt. She hiked up her slightly less transparent dress and wrapped her legs around his waist until her lavender panties were touching his pants. Material rubbed against foreign material, which rubbed against white and brown and delicate skin.

  As Cob kissed her over and over, there were no black bears or honest mechanics, no Tasty Totems or Khrushchev-Kennedys, no fall-out shelters in the event of nuclear war. There were only — they. Their moving bodies and their fluids; the wide, cracked slabs of rock beneath them, the stones scattered about; and the river — but even that was not wholly there. For now, the river was just a sound, a background hum over which they could hear themselves suppress their moaning and their gasps.

  Cob spread his arms, each of which branched out into five stiff and trembling fingers. The tips of those on the left were calloused and thick-skinned from too many years of pressing strings. He placed that hand under Winnie’s head to cushion the back of her skull as it bobbed against the rocks. The hair into which his fingers dug was dense and moist. The other hand, the gentler one, he turned, knuckles up, and placed on the ground to keep himself from falling. He continued kissing her; she hadn’t stopped kissing him. Under that second hand, fitted perfectly into his palm, he felt a large, polished stone.

  He pulled his face, his lips, away from hers as her front teeth seized at his unexpectedly fleeing tongue and she tightened her legs’ grip around his waist.

  He wanted more. He was feeling the joy again. He wanted to kiss her neck and her chest and the insides of her thighs, where the purple panties formed a visible, unwanted and audacious barrier. To breach that barrier, to see her pussy — that’s what he most desired. What peculiar shades of brown and beige was it? How pink and purple were its insides? How was it groomed? His cock had thickened with blood. “Take off your panties,” he said.

  Winnie let her legs unclamp, straighten. She reached down with her hands and, scooting backward, half-pulled, half-wiggled out of her panties until they were past her ankles — from where Cob took them, crushed them in a fist and threw them into the river. The river re-saturated them instantly. Its waters ran roughly. A gust of wind rattled the branches of the shoreline trees. Winnie exhaled.

  “You are older than I am,” Cob said. “You are married. You are a lesbian. You are the Chief’s daughter. I have fallen into the river, but I am alive. I am not dreaming. You are not a fish, and I have caught you.”

  He raised himself onto his knees and pulled Winnie by the legs toward him. “Lick me,” she breathed. Cob flipped the bottom part of her dress onto her stomach and breasts, exposing her pussy and the smooth merge of her tummy above. It was good to expose her. But the wind today was mischievous: jealous, immature wind! It puffed and Winnie’s dress ballooned, then the wind huffed, and the dress returned to its rightful place, all the way down to her knees. Cob growled, grabbed the material and, again, flipped it onto Winnie’s stomach. This was one battle he would not lose. Winnie’s lips twitched. Her skin learned the texture of faint goose bumps. She smiled. Cob took the stone he’d felt under his right hand and placed it on the folded material between Winnie’s breasts — a paperweight. A dress-weight. They both laughed. The stone felt heavy and warm, even through two layers of cotton. Cob leaned in and kissed Winnie’s chin. Then, with his nose, he drew a line from the stone to her belly button, and he finished the game by kissing her moistening pussy.

  It was generally the colour of umber, with fine black hair cross-hatching and a slightly raised, slightly swollen outer labia surrounding the cocoa-toned, delicately crumpled inner lips that guarded the entrance to Winnie’s pink, peeking interior. Above, a tiny and tough spherical clitoris kept soundless watch.

  Cob kissed them all, sometimes one by one, sometimes mouthfuls at a time. He kissed precisely yet greedily while his hands massaged the body to which the pussy belonged: the moving body, the bucking hips, the leg muscles pulling, the abdomen pushing, the pair of unseen lungs filling with the freshest, most unspoiled air; and the breasts, hugged by the wet dress, responding to both pleasure and gravity. He cupped and squeezed until Winnie squirmed and forced her lower body at his face. He kissed. He kissed more and more quickly until he couldn’t keep up and he was forgetting to breath and — slick — their bodies slid out of rhythm and his nose, still blushing from its long trip from chest to sex, penetrated Winnie’s vagina.

  The sensation wasn’t unpleasant. It was just completely unexpected. Cob pulled his face away immediately. Winnie’s hips bucked several more times before realising they were bucking against air. She opened her eyes. Where, they seemed to ask, did you go? Cob’s nose, a good two thirds of it, felt colder than the rest of his stunned face as he stared at hers. He didn’t know what to say, what to do. But his nose must have shone in the intense sunlight because before he could decide to do anything, the edges of Winnie’s lips twitched.

  “Don’t,” Cob said, his voice slurring the words to get them out quickly enough, “laugh.”

  Winnie bit her lower lip. She was a good girl, an obedient girl. She wouldn’t laugh. She didn’t even crack a smile. The stone on her chest merely rose and, lowering her head back onto the rocks, squinting at the sky, “You fucked me with your nose,” she murmured.

  Cob wiped Winnie’s juices off his face. His nose felt instantly warmer. He tried to appear indifferent, to bluff,
but no woman had ever had his nose inside her before, and he was genuinely irritated by the idea — though he couldn’t explain why — which irritated him even more, and now Winnie’s shoulders and belly had started to jiggle and she had buried her face in her hands and was rocking back and forth like a child with an incurable case of the sillies.

  “Don’t laugh!”

  He said it sternly, while thinking at the same time that it was now impossible to imagine himself singing serious songs to serious people in serious coffee houses having experienced something like this. Some events, like knee injuries for running backs or infidelity for presidential candidates, just could not be overcome. He tried imagining Woody Guthrie’s bony nose in some woman’s cootch. It was undoable. That crop of wild hair and —

  He started jiggling, too. “Stop it and be serious,” he warned, his voice joyfully staccato. “Or I’ll do it again, I swear.”

  “I dare you!”

  He crawled onto her and they were both laughing. He was trying to wipe his nose against her face, which she still covered with her hands, which were — at the same time — attempting to shield herself and swat him playfully away.

  To counter, he fell on top of her like a sack of sudden potatoes. The impact knocked some of the wind out of her. His chest flattened her breasts. But she kept laughing: “I dare you. I dare you.”

  Only their wet clothes and the warm stone was between them. It poked at his sternum and the more he laughed the more it poked. And the more she laughed, the more he laughed; and she was laughing more and more, until he didn’t know whether to give in to the laughter, too, or sit up and rub his aching bone. Finally, he did neither. Finally, he moved his body down until his chin was in her belly button, and tickled her with it. She kicked her feet in pleasure. He grabbed and held down her legs. She was biting her lower lip again, her eyes were shut. Further down he went, his chin flicking her clit, catching on the skin of her pussy; his chin stopping, nose hovering a quarter of an inch away, and he blowing through it, the unexpected air sending Winnie into another fit of giggles. His arms barely managed to contain her wild, imprisoned legs.