My Brother, Coyote

by James Buchanan

  Slow, oh so slow, Seth sucked him down. True gasped and shook when he hit the back of his cousin’s throat. Seth pulled back then slammed down again. Lightening crawled up True’s spine. Each motion was accompanied by a twist of Seth’s tongue and a growl.

  True wove his fingers through Seth’s hair. Pulling Seth’s head to him as he thrust up, he fucked the mouth that kissed his skin, teased him. Seth gripped his waist, pinning True to the stone with his weight. A twist here, a graze of teeth there, reminded True just who was in control. True could do no more than ride the waves of pleasure. As the pace increased, True’s pants became grunts, his grunts became moans, and his moans turned into cries. “Ánaaí!” His hand scrabbled against the stone. “Ánaaí!” Everything was shaking as he came.

  He shuddered and shuddered again as Seth sucked down every drop. True’s knees went weak. Unable to bear his own weight, True slid down the cliff face. Seth followed his descent with licks and nips at True’s overheated flesh. It was delicious torture. Finally True could breathe again. He palmed his face and caught the unmistakable scent of raw earth. True pulled his hand back. It was covered in dark, rich soil. “Oh crap.”

  “Mmm?” Seth’s tongue was drawing fiery circles just below his left nipple. Things were starting to heat up again.

  So caught up in each other, they hadn’t even paid attention to their surroundings. A swift mental kick to remind himself that such things were pretty stupid in rattlesnake country and True was struggling to his feet. Disappointment sounded in Seth’s whine. Seth rocked back on his knees studying True’s eyes. With his chin True pointed to the newly turned earth and fumbled with the zipper of his khakis.

  “Oh, look, dirt, in the outdoors no less.” In the flat delivery of an elder Navajo speaking English, Seth mocked him, “I’m so excited.”

  As he tucked his shirt back into his pants, “Someone’s been digging here, jerk.”

  A moment as it worked through Seth’s mind. “Hmm,” it wasn’t Seth’s line of work, but he was far from stupid. It clicked. Golden eyes went from hungry and hurt to curious. Then a sharp bark of a laugh, “Oh bro, how you plan to tell your biliganna bosses you found it?” More laughter sounded. “Get those high priced BLM experts out here, measuring the print of your feet compared to my knees in all that soft sand.” Gaining his feet, Seth could hardly breathe. Mimicking a bureaucrat’s intonation, “Well, by the angle and the depth of the depression, I would say he had to be getting sucked off pretty hard to leave those kind of marks.”

  True hated it when Seth teased him. He was ashamed because someone was going to know something had happened. Seth wasn’t far off with his joke. Every print in the area would be cast and compared to his and Seth’s boots. Some kind of explanation would be needed. And he couldn’t think because Seth was laughing at him. With both hands he shoved Seth away. He was bigger than Seth, carrying the traditional Navajo build of broad shoulders and narrow hips.

  Seth was wiry and fast and stronger than he looked. Before his touch had even left his cousin’s shirt, True was spun. Stone ground into his cheek. Pushing his lithe body against True’s stockier frame, Seth nuzzled under the back of the uniform’s collar. “You got off, I didn’t. You owe me bro.” He licked a line of sweat from True’s jaw to ear. One hand drifted down to grab True’s ass. True trembled, desire running rampant again. “And I’m going to make you work so hard to apologize for that.” Fingers worked around and cupped where True’s throbbing cock was trapped. Seth pulled True back against his own erection, grinding their hips together. “I’m going to fuck you for days when we get home.” All the strength faded from his legs as anticipation shot up True’s spine. Seth never threatened. He said what he was going to do and then damn well lived up to it. True wished he could get out of the back country and let Seth live up to it.

  Instead he took a deep breath and pushed away from the cliff. Churned sand was kicked onto the backfill… the pile of dirt left by the Digger at the base of a cliff. Scattered about were gold foil wrappers from mini-candy bars. Littering was one of the minor, but somehow disproportionately offensive traits of pot thieves. At least their scuffle removed some of the obvious evidence of what they’d been up to. BLM would probably buy a just-horsing-around story now. There’d be an ass chewing for carelessness, but probably not more than that.

  Scanning the base of the stone, he couldn’t spot any trenches. But, high above them was a shelf. With no furrow, it would have come from above. Diggers, pot-thieves, grave robbers roamed the rugged expanses of the Southwest in search of prehistoric baskets, pots and even bones to sell. Someone once told True that more than three-quarters of the Native American archeological sites had suffered looting. It was True’s job to find the remote crime scenes. Then experts would cull clues from foot-prints, cigarette butts and discarded soda cans. Eventually, in theory, they’d track the looters into rural bars, across Internet auction sites and into big city galleries.

  Problem was the take was too great and the sentences an annoyance at best. Steal a basket worth three-hundred-thousand off BLM lands and you’d only pay a thousand dollar fine and spend a couple of years in lock-up. If you were caught. If you were a repeat offender. Even those who weren’t professionals got sucked in for easy rent money. Sadly, sometimes the thieves were tribal members; overcoming taboos and desecrating their ancestors’ graves for a quick buck. Outnumbered and outspent, BLM did what they could.

  Sulfur stained rocks, mottled by orange and rust lichen, reached into the sky. He scanned the face of the stone. Faint, ancient weathered hand and toe holds crawled up. Seth’s fingers were working his shoulders. Easy to anger, quick to forgive… the touch let True know he was forgiven, for now. Seth nipped at his cousin’s ear, whispering, “We going up?”

  “Yeah probably ought to see what’s up there.” Dropping his head back on Seth’s shoulder, eyes crawling up the side of the mountain, “See what damage has been done.”

  His own finger was twining itself into a longish strand of rust colored hair. Huge clouds billowed in an immense sky and a hawk turned lazy circles high above. Somewhere, far off, the metallic scent of rain drifted in with the wind. With a sigh, he broke from the perfection of the moment.

  Their digger had cheated. The imprint of a ladder was pressed into the soft sand. It was useless trying to fathom how whoever had gotten a ladder into this backcountry. Diggers always had their methods; horses, trucks, helicopters even. They had no ladder, but True and Seth were most likely in better shape than the man they were after. If ancients had been there, they could get there with just their hands. He shouldered his pack and readied himself for the climb.

  Hand stretched out, fingers searching the ancient surface… True found it, the place where a thousand fingers before him had been. Muscles extended to screaming, True hugged the shear wall. Sandstone stroked his cheek. Finally his foot found purchase and he hauled himself up the span. About twenty feet up, they came to a space where they were just jumping from rock to rock moving higher up the slope. Then another period of the painful crawl. Climbers called this bouldering. Free climbing across crags and fissures in the stone. Like most kids along the Checkerboard Reservation, he and Seth had been free climbing rocks since they could walk, with nothing but dusty tennis shoes and torn pants for equipment. Trust the biliganna to say it was a sport and give it a fancy name.

  Of course you never wanted to get too high or the rock might just sprout wings and leave the earth with you. And The Holy People lived at the tops of mountains. They tended to have the petulant morals and manners of spoilt children. It wasn’t wise to go visit them without being invited.

  Inch by scraping inch they worked up. His backpack tugged on his shoulders and his fingers cramped from the strain. True set another handhold and pulled onto the top of a house-sized boulder. It, and several others, clung to the rock-face almost halfway up from the base of a hundred-foot cliff. They clustered together to form the roof over a Hogan sized hole. A capstone had once been center
ed over the cavity. Now it rested, broken, off to the side. The dirt below would have covered it, but not hidden it. True reached down, giving Seth a small tug to bring him up and over.

  True judged the difficulty of climbing out, and then dropped into the protected enclosure. When his eyes adjusted from the Northern New Mexico sunlight to deep shade, he could see that they were not the first to discover this hideaway. Muffled thuds echoed as first Seth’s pack, and then Seth, landed behind him. Someone had been here before, and with a pot of paint. But the image wasn’t graffiti. It was an intricate snake painted by an artist hundreds, perhaps more than a thousand years ago. It crawled across the ceiling heading for the rear of the cave.

  Narrow and tight, just barely wide enough for a man, a slot in the rock wall ran back into the mountain. At the entrance: more candy wrappers… and boot prints disappearing within.

  True looked back at Seth, “Wanna try it?”

  His cousin shrugged and then nodded. Both packs were dropped against the wall. True inched his way through, sucking in his gut a few times to get past particularly tight spots. Not that he had anything to spare around his middle, it was just incredibly narrow. Covered in dust the color of corn pollen, True almost fell into the natural cathedral. A grunt and cough and Seth was behind him. With a low whistle Seth voiced the awe that struck them both.

  Windswept flows of rock spiraled into a domed ceiling. Small openings brought in a filtered, yellow light, bathing the world in a golden glow. So powerful was the effect it seemed the rocks were lit from within. Presences beyond seeing or hearing crowded around them. People who lived centuries before came alive again through images they painted on the rocks. Snake crawled on his belly, witch medicine cradled in his mouth. Prairie dogs danced around Coyote’s body. The Holy Rain Children were separated. Everywhere there were animals and gods and the outlines of ancestors’ hands.

  Warm arms wrapped about True’s hips, Seth sliding close against him. “Wow, bro, what a place.” At the back, sheltered in shade so no algae could grow, was a heuco, a natural cistern. Jumbled bones and hide from a mountain lion lay near the rim. Fangs bared in death, a lonely, silent guardian of the most precious substance in the desert. Arranged on ledges, jammed into crevices and scattered by time on the floor were baskets and pots. Ceremonial goods, their contents centuries gone, given as offerings to the spirit of the water.

  This was what their thief had been after.

  Shadows settled into the world. The scent of new water kissed the tips of their tongues. They breathed it in through the whorls at the tips of their fingers. Thunder boomed, echoing about the tiny space. Grunts and teasing followed them through the narrow slit and back into the ante-chamber. Clambering back up onto the boulder ledge, the first darkness of rain dampened the rocks. A flash cut the mid-day twilight and both jumped. They jumped again as the storm’s drum sounded above their heads. True chewed the inside of his cheek. “We need to get off this rock.” Summer thunderheads and open rock faces were a bad mix.

  The faded dun of the rocks was deepening to a rich orange. The smell of water hitting thirsty earth washed about them. Leaning over the edge, Seth studied the possibilities. “No way we can make it down when it’s raining like this.” His tone said we’re fucked.

  “It’s going to get worse before it gets better.” Standing in the rain, a not quite female rain, they laughed. Hair plastered to his skull, True pulled Seth to him. “We can ride it out inside.”

  “Yep, could do that.” He moved to the hole and held his hand out for True. “Too bad you didn’t bring any real food.” Most of their supplies they left at base camp, only packing what they might need for the day. After they dropped back down, Seth stood, studying his rain soaked shirt. “Of course, what your mom makes… ain’t food. How did you not starve growing up?”

  “You used to eat it too. Government cheese is nasty to begin with.” True shrugged as if that should explain it.

  Seth popped his shoulder with a fist, “Yeah, but she made it worse.” With the capstone gone, water was pouring in the opening above their heads. “While I needed a shower after being out here a few days… this ain’t my idea of one.” He moved to the opening in the face of the stone, “Come on.” Grabbing the packs, this time Seth led the way.

  In the dark of the storm the cavern was almost more mystical. Water fed water in a shimmering flow. Every surface fissure birthed a rivulet, every crack a stream. The cascade folded over and over itself until the far wall seemed to breathe with the precious blood of the desert.

  Laughing, Seth pulled his t-shirt over his head. It left his body with a sucking sound. “Come on, bro, get out of those wet clothes.” He pitched the soaked material on an outcrop.

  Fingers struggling with buttons and damp cloth, “Here?” True teased, “I knew you were horny, but come on.”

  “Geez, bro, it ain’t like I haven’t seen you without clothes before.” Seth snickered as he was hopping out of wet jeans. “If we throw them over the rocks in the corner they’ll dry faster.”

  “Really? I think you just want to get me out of my clothes.”

  Standing in just his boxers, Seth folded his arms across his chest and smirked. “That is a really nice fringe benefit.”

  True folded his clothes over a ledge. When he turned, Seth tossed both packs at him, hard. They slammed into his chest, knocking True on his ass. “What the hell you got in here?” He rubbed his ribs. There was something very hard in Seth’s pack.

  Laughing, “Uncle Jim’s pistol.”

  “Oh.” This was New Mexico, True didn’t have to ask why Seth had hauled a pistol along with him. As they were out after grave robbers, he didn’t have to ask why Seth thought they needed one. Setting the packs against the wall, he stood and walked to his cousin. True pushed his nearly naked body up against Seth. Their cocks rubbed together through cloth and both jumped at the contact. “I think someone made me a promise earlier.”

  “I did, didn’t I?” Seth slid one arm about True’s waist and the other between their bodies. Seth rubbed True’s crotch through his shorts as his hardness built. True’s hand found his cousin’s cock as they slid into a gentle kiss. Working it slow, but not so gentle, True savored the feel of Seth in his palm. Just touching Seth excited him. His fingers wound into Seth’s hair as they kissed.

  Breaking off the kiss, True closed his eyes and just took in Seth’s smell. Warm and heavy, like kneel-down bread baking in his mother’s kitchen. He nuzzled his cousin’s neck, licking and nipping the skin. Seth’s tongue danced between his ear and his collar. Each touch of True’s fingers, each brush of his lips, drew deep sighs and hard caresses against his own throbbing cock.

  Finally Seth moved a hand beneath the fabric. True groaned, thrusting his hips. Moving his hand to cup Seth’s balls, their heavy weight sent shivers up his arm. Frost from the licks met them somewhere in his chest, coating his stomach in ice. Fondling, stroking, touching; both were mumbling encouragement and promises.

  True pushed Seth’s boxers down, snagging his own briefs with his thumb. Naked, hard flesh slid together. “This good enough?” True breathed the question against Seth’s neck.

  “For now,” Seth’s reply was almost lost in True’s hair. “Oh, bro!” Seth’s hand wrapped about both their dicks, pulling them into each other.

  With determined strokes, Seth started rubbing their hard cocks together. It felt so good having Ánaaí’s hand working them like that. Moans rebounded in the cavern and echoed back to them, driving their hunger. Their juices mingled, smoothing the friction. True slid his mouth on Seth’s and set their tongues dancing. He sighed. He moaned. He begged Seth to keep going and to stop all at once. True shuddered. He shuddered again and then he was losing himself in Seth’s grip. The world swirled as he clung to his cousin’s shoulders.

  Seth was shaking as hard as True.

  Both slid to their knees. True’s head was pressed into Seth’s collar. Seth’s pulse twined with his own until they were indistinguishable
. Seth brought his fingers up to their lips. They were coated in mingled essences. Two tongues licked the musky cream, meeting and toying with each other time and again. True laughed with a quiet, satisfied sound, “Twice today Ánaaí, how much am I going to have to make up for that?”

  Seth wrapped his arms about True, settling on the hard ground. Their packs would serve as pillows. It wasn’t all that comfortable, but with Seth there True felt like he was in a feather bed. As Seth kissed him into day heavy slumber, his sleepy voice answered, “A lot.”

  ~~~~~

  The prod of a barrel woke True. A gravely voice sounded from above. “Looky what I got here… two half dressed Injun boys.” He felt his cousin tense beside him. Seth’s arm slithered beneath his body, fumbling in the pack wedged between True and the wall. Slowly, True opened his eyes to find a rifle aimed at the bridge of his nose. “Come on now, get up.”