1 comments/ 8251 views/ 6 favorites By Air Mail Ch.01 By: TaLtos6 I'm posting this in the Novels and Novellas category, largely because it's scope is a little large and odd due to the relationships which are in it. Also, the sex scenes in it occur a little sporadically and they can vary in a few ways, such as in their depth as well as their nature. Translation: I didn't really know where else to put it. As far as the regular Literotica categories go, it could go in a couple of them, but not really fit into any one in particular as a whole, so it's frustrating to some extent. Well to me as the author, since at first, until it became a little clearer to me, it seemed to shift under my fingertips as I typed it - which is an alarming thing while writing a tale, to say the least. This first chapter, which also serves as a bit of a prologue, carries the non-sequential memories of a rather lonely young man as he thinks back over his life. I don't know about you, but when that happens to me, my thoughts don't often flow in chronological order, so that's how they come out of him in this. Another thing, this is set just after World War Two. Things were a lot different - even in Idaho - at that time. The rationing of raw materials for the war effort was just coming to a close. I doubt that the railroad in this story even had any diesel locomotives at that time, and still relied on steam locomotives on anything other than the big main lines even if they did have diesels. Electronics wasn't what it is today, and fewer people in out of the way places had land-line telephones. The motorcycle mentioned was a little-known model produced in limited quantities for the U.S. Army's evaluation, though the same engine and drivetrain configuration was used many years later in some Honda touring models beginning in the 1970s. Hairstyles were different. Clothing - especially women's undergarments were different. And out of the mainstream - in out-of-the-way, rural places back then, it was nothing for kids of fourteen or sixteen to go hunting with small caliber rifles once in a while. As I often try to do, I've gone for some signposts. For example, I know that there was at least a tower on Iron Mountain, though I don't know about what might have preceded it. All that remains up there today are the remains of the tower. Life out where this man grew up was more of a contact sport and I've tried to let that come through where I think that it would have shown itself. 0_o ***** 19 September, 1946 Craig walked over to the window for a last look around. His world at the moment measured exactly 11ft X 11ft. A last look around up here meant walking a few steps, and it was already getting dark. Still, he lifted his binoculars and scanned the mountains out there in his field of view. He knew that he'd likely have only a few more minutes for it, the way that high-powered optics needed a decent amount of ambient light to see through properly. With evening coming on, you had to really look to see if there was a plume or smudge of smoke to be seen on one of the ridges or slopes far out from where he was. Then again, he reasoned for perhaps the one hundred and twentieth time since he'd been here this time, it ought to make a distant blaze a little more visible as well. But then it was raining a little so it seemed rather unlikely. He looked at his watch, since he'd have to note the time in his log. At least he didn't have to try for one more last-minute scan of the skies as well, since with the war finally over, he didn't have to watch for waves of incoming Japanese bombers over the skies of Idaho - as if that had ever been a possibility. But he did as he'd been told until last year when that part of it had been called off at last. 7:40PM. The days were definitely getting shorter. And that meant only one thing - his time of self-imposed isolation on a mountain top was just about over. He wasn't a monk or anything stupid like that, he smiled to himself as he thought about closing the place up tomorrow; it was his summer job, after all. For the fifth year running, Craig found himself ending his last day on watch with a smile, as well as a hope that he wouldn't find himself up here again next year. So far, it hadn't worked all that well. And anyway, by the spring every year so far, he'd wanted the money so that he could continue his backwoods learning by correspondence and by then, he'd forgotten all of the times that he wondered if he was going a little nuts out here all alone. Then again, with a social life as empty as his usually was, what the hell difference did it make? He'd only lost his virginity this summer - at twenty-three years old, for God's sake. And it hadn't even been with a girl. Craig then had to fight off the memory of Chance which came to his mind unbidden. Not quite as tall as he was (meaning not very), Chance was beauty incarnate in a thin male body, having almost golden-toned skin, soft, thoughtful brown eyes set in a pleasantly attractive face which was framed in soft medium brown curls. As well, he was possessed of irrepressible drives as far as humor and sexual desire were concerned. Chance Coulter was a walking, talking summer fling that Craig knew that he'd never be able to fully put behind him. It hadn't been planned or foreseen, and looking back, Craig admitted to himself that it hadn't really been desired - yet it had still happened anyway. But summer was over now. Craig listened to the wind outside for a few seconds. Where he was, there was more to the wind than just the sound. Right now, there was also a little bit of sideways rain pelting the vast expanse of glass surrounding him at the moment. There was also the slow creaking and gentle swaying of the fire lookout tower that he was in. The first year, it had been murder just trying to get used to it, but now, it was just something that happened. Five years, he told himself, and it hadn't exactly been blown down yet. But he needed to hurry a little now, before it got full dark, if he wasn't careful. Walking down all of those many steps while he couldn't see a thing could be a bit of a nightmare the way that the wind could try to rip you right off the steps sometimes. It would be a hell of a thing, he told himself, to die of a broken neck just before he left to go home for the year. More likely, he'd pitch off the stairs and break his leg. The end would likely be the same; it would just take a while longer. He closed up the cab as it was called and making sure that the door was securely closed, he hurried down the one hundred and five steps as carefully as he could, feeling the sting of the cold rain which lashed him in light and variable gusts. The layout of the steps and the open construction of the tower itself meant that he had to turn at the bottom of every flight of seven to start down the next one and that turned him around at intervals so that the rain had a fair chance to wet him evenly, once in his face and then once down his neck. Repeat as necessary. He reached the bottom and walked toward the slightly overgrown shed which was his quarters and had once been the lookout tower before his time, hurrying more now because he was wet enough to feel the bite of the wind. He thought about his dwindling supply of food; which mouth-watering combination of soups he'd dine on tonight, since he intended to eat them all so that he didn't have to haul them out with him when he left the next day. And also because they were all that he had left, which had been good planning on his part, he thought. He got the heavy steel plate covered door open and almost tripped over the threshold as he barreled inside. His glasses had gotten enough rain on them to make seeing a little iffy. He turned on his battery-powered lantern, noting that it's output looked to be definitely yellowing, so he reasoned that the battery was on it's way out as well. He shrugged; he just needed it for maybe five more minutes, just long enough to get his fireplace lit. Then he'd turn the lantern off for hopefully the last time. But the lantern was fading fast, so Craig abandoned the fire for the moment and lit his hurricane lantern by the dim illumination of the last of his electric one. Just in time, he had some light and turned off the battery-powered one. He adjusted the flame with the wick and then hung the lantern up to start on the fire. Five minutes later, he got up from his knees and sat down on his stool for a minute as the hearth got going and illuminated the rest of the cabin with it's warm, friendly glow. He listened to the wind as it picked up even more and he could just hear the beginning of it's moans through the many steps of the tower out there. It reminded him that he'd be a lot warmer much sooner if he closed the shutters down over the many windows that the building still had from it's days as a fire lookout cabin. He walked out again and around the deck outside closing the things and trying not to look over the edge, because now it was so dark on the one side that you couldn't see anything at all but one huge shadow, though he knew that it was a long way to fall if you went over the rail. "My last night," he sighed after coming in and closing the door. His voice was a little rough from long disuse, since there was nobody around to speak to but himself and he'd worked on not doing that for over a month and a half now when he was alone - just like he did every year before he rejoined civilization. You had to curb that habit, or they'd all think you were nuts, walking around muttering to yourself all the time. This year was the only one in which he'd had any company at all - and it wasn't something which was supposed to happen. Fire lookouts spend their time alone. And yet Chance had thrown all of that away with a quiet chuckle and that smile of his that made it almost impossible not to give in to the sudden want to kiss him. Craig sighed, knowing that he missed Chance already, but his summer lover had been gone now for a week and a half, since the store where he'd worked had been sold, the new owners not wanting to keep him on and with the war over for a year now, he'd been wanting to go home. But what the hell, Craig thought, wanting to avoid feeling morose. "My last night on Iron Mountain," he said out loud in a clearer voice as he looked at the calendar there on the wall with only one day not crossed off yet. "Lord, get me the fuck off this overgrown pimple, wouldja?" Dinner was going to be a tantalizing combination of beef barley, beef vegetable, and onion soups all thrown into the same pot to heat over the fire with only half of the water that Mr. Campbell said to use on the label. Actually, he now wondered why he'd never thought of it before, since it didn't sound too bad in a crazy, one man alone on a mountain top sort of way. He opened the bread box that he'd made last year out of frustration over losing the race for the bread to the mice so many times and he squinted at the last of the rolls that he'd bought on his last trip into town. He smirked. Some trip. It was eleven miles of steady, sometimes winding downhill just to get off this heap of rock and a lot more to head into town. Thank God for his faithful old Indian 841. He thanked God for it even more, remembering just how tough it could be to walk up those eleven miles at this altitude for a man like he was, carrying his supplies for at least a week on his back. He'd sure done that enough, back before he'd bought the motorcycle by mail order. Back in 1941, somebody in the army had figured out that one day, they might just have to fight in the deserts of North Africa. They must have seen the uses that the Germans put their motorcycles to when they fought their blitzkriegs. Troops who were mounted and highly mobile seemed to work for the Nazis, so they must have reasoned that it could work for Uncle Sam too. What they asked for were tough, battle-ready, air-cooled, shaft-driven (if possible) bikes that could be depended on in that harsh climate. Craig didn't know all of the details, but he knew that both Harley-Davidson and Indian had been offered a whole lot of money to produce one thousand motorcycles each, built especially for desert warfare and submitted for testing. The Indians looked to be the better steed, in his opinion, but in the event, the army changed it's mind and decided that Jeeps were the better way to go for what they had in mind. Craig didn't know what had happened to the Harleys, but he knew that the Indians were sold off cheap as surplus at the Indian factory and he'd sent off his money and collected his iron horse at the train station when it had arrived in it's crate. The thought passed and he looked at the bread rolls again. He selected the only roll out of the last two which hadn't gotten moldy yet. It was as hard as a brick, but Craig didn't care anymore. He'd bust it up with a hammer if he had to. It was going into the pot too once things got going a little. As the questionable feast began to simmer and the smell of his dinner filled his nose, Craig allowed himself to actually think about home for the first time in months. He did that on purpose, since once you were here and all, there was just no point to dreaming about what you couldn't have, was there? Well, other than when you played with yourself, he grinned. He was twenty-three and he realized how much he missed his family. Not the ones that he was related to, the ones who actually loved him. He'd been born into a well-to-do family in Portland, but it had only taken a few years for him to be diagnosed as severely asthmatic -almost to the point where his life could be in danger. The many specialists who'd been consulted had only agreed on one thing between them. He had to be gotten out of the city and into a clean, arid climate. Well they weren't going to move to Arizona for the sake of a lesser son's health now were they? Not when there was money to be made hand over fist in the many companies which comprised the family concerns. His millionaire father had once had a brother. That brother had perished a few years before Craig's birth. But ... That unknown uncle of Craig's had married and that woman - also not high enough in anyone's regard - lived in Idaho, in some backwater where about all they had to their names was clean air. It wasn't the desert but one out of two couldn't be too bad. So ... Off he'd been sent to Idaho with his governess so that he might be accompanied and dropped off -along with the requisite guardianship paperwork of course - before the governess returned to Portland to resume taking care of the other brats. There was a yearly stipend set aside and paid out monthly until he'd reached eighteen. At the end of that time, the sizable remainder was Craig's and he'd used it and saved on it with his odd jobs to put himself though a technical school long-distance. Craig never grew much taller than five foot, eight inches and he only weighed about a hundred and sixty-five pounds if he was holding a twenty pound bag of flour these days. He was a touch near-sighted and he was still asthmatic if he wasn't in the clean mountain air, but he grew up to be a fine ... A fine ... Painfully-shy, tow-headed young man who had a brain and a heart. He'd never have had the thought, but he was stunningly attractive in his rather quiet and intelligent, unassuming way. He tortured himself as he nurtured some almost silent loves within his breast because they were unrequited and he knew that they'd always remain only that. His asthma had gotten him a pass at the induction center when he'd tried to follow in his older cousin's footsteps, and he couldn't hack the work at the dusty sawmill which was the single largest employer where he lived. So he worked when and where he could in a little place called Cascade, Idaho. Where the men are men and the sheep are nervous, as they say. Until he'd arrived, unhappy and a little fearful as a very young boy, he'd never met his aunt Marjorie. She was a red-haired, blue-eyed fireball of a beauty, but not long after he'd landed in her care, she became more of a mother to him than his own had ever been. He'd almost run smack dab straight into a bear of a man named Deke Potter, who'd laughed to put him at ease and then became what a real father should be to him, raising him like a proper boy - who just needed a little consideration as he got going was all, as Deke would say to anyone who even looked half-interested. Aunt Marjorie had a really close and dear friend named Rebecca who just happened to be a real live Paiute Indian woman with lively dark eyes and a sassy, effervescent, no horseshit common sense personality. She'd settled his asthma down right quick with a noxious-tasting combination of tree barks, pine needles and assorted other mountain medicines. He came to regard her as his other - other mother and she was as good for his heart just for the way that she loved him as she was at almost snapping his ribs with her hugs. Nobody ever called them Margie or Becky. There were buck and bull moose heads adorning the wall in prominent places along the back of the Marjorie's café and everybody in town knew that those two girls had tracked, hunted, shot, skinned, butchered, and hauled those things out of the deep forests by themselves, while hunting on horseback too, though you'd never know it to look at them. If anything, their slightly rough and rustic previous lives had only honed their beauty. And that had been for fun - as well as the want of the meat. Oh, and because Rebecca had shown Marjorie what a treat moose oysters could be if they were done up properly, the way that she'd learned from her grandmother. If anyone asked her, Rebecca would smile and say they were 'Plenty big and tasty.' And if it had been a man who'd asked, then she'd look at him and beam about having to use a knife and fork to eat them, too. They never really said anything about it, but they'd met while both were trying to survive alone through one of the longest, coldest, Idahoan winters on record and Marjorie had given birth to Craig's cousin Tad out in the middle of nowhere, and not in any building either, no sir. Right there in front of God and Renecca out in the snow miles from the cave where they'd lived by that time. Tad never heard anyone whisper the tale behind his back as it was said about him, but he was something of a legend in Cascade just for that and a lot of the women there regarded the circumstances of his birth as having played a part in him growing up tall, lean, and so good-looking. So they'd never really spoken of it, but everyone knew that when it came time to cut the cord, neither one had a clean knife, since they'd been butchering a doe when Marjorie's water broke and Rebecca had done it the old-fashioned way and used her teeth. So nobody ever called them anything but Rebecca and Marjorie. Craig smiled as he thought of them and he hoped that they were alright as he finished the last of his odd stew - since he didn't really think of it as soup by that point. He sat back and mentally ran down the list of things that he had to do in the morning. Shut up the tower, lower the outer storm covers over the wall-to-wall, and right-around the block windows up there, lock the door and remember not to lose the key so that he could turn it in when he got to Boise on his way through. He had to clean up the shack and pack his gear before somehow finding a way to load it all onto his mechanical mule - making sure not to forget his technical books, since he had to make arrangements to travel to the correspondence school's headquarters so that he could write his final exams on aviation electronics and take his practical tests as well. Then he could leave for hopefully the last time and Iron Mountain could just fade into his memory like the necessary prison that he'd had to endure to make his money over a few summers. By Air Mail Ch.01 He didn't relish the thought of the ride into Fairfield, since a lot of it would be over rough mountain trails until he got within a few miles of the place. With any luck, the gas in his motorcycle's tank would last all the way there. If that didn't happen, he'd pour the last of his little gas can into the tank and fill it up once he was in town for the long haul that he couldn't wait to start out on. He wanted to wake up early so that he could get a good start into town and then ... oh, then, he had a long, one hundred and eighty mile haul back home, some of it over forestry roads with a hopefully short stopover in Boise to hand in his logbooks, keys and all to get paid off. With a bit of luck, he planned to be home and walking into his mother's café before this time tomorrow. There were a few people who he now absolutely needed to see. The two that he ached to see the most were also the causes of some slight pain to his heart all the same, but he yearned to at least see them as soon as possible. He saw the big sketchpad that he'd brought with him in the spring, now almost raggedy-looking with some loose pages due to long use. He picked it up and sat down before the hearth to look at his drawings once more. There were a lot of his drawings that he wanted to keep; landscapes, still-lifes and such drawn in a place with a stupendous view almost everywhere that you looked. There were also some that he'd drawn out of his memories and with a fair bit of longing. Those were the ones which had to perish right here in the flames. He looked at each one for a moment and smiled to himself a lot of the time before he tossed them into the fire. Prominent among the nude figure studies was one woman as well as one man. There were also some that had nudes involved in some rather sexual ... Ok, he thought, VERY sexual situations and those ones, especially the good ones, were the hardest to feed the fire with. They were nothing more than his sexual fantasies and he appeared in a few of them as well, some even with that man. Well, nobody ever said that a fire lookout's life wasn't lonely. He looked through once more before remembering that there had originally been two men and a woman used as subjects, but he'd given Chance the ones with him in them. With one more careful look through to be sure that none of the naughty ones had escaped the blaze, Craig banked the fire a little to last over the night, since lately, he'd seen plenty of signs of frost at his present elevation of almost 9700 feet above sea level. With that done, he moved the lantern to another nail, closer to his bed and he unzipped his heavy sleeping bag and shook it out in case any of the mice had held thoughts about staking their claim while he'd been up the tower at his job during the day. You only need to feel them scurrying around in your bed while you're in it one time to make this precautionary exercise a nightly habit. Satisfied, he looked at his watch once more and listened to the wind moaning while deciding that it was a sound that he wouldn't miss if he never heard it again in his life. It was time to move on and hopefully start some kind of career. His watch said twenty to nine. Time to hit the hay, if he was going to get a move on early in the morning. He got undressed, turned out the lantern, and crawled into his sleeping bag, telling himself that tomorrow night, he was going to be sleeping in clean crisply-ironed sheets for the first time in over four months. But sleep wouldn't come right away. Though he was able to keep his thoughts of Chance away ... now ... Craig was thinking about Amelia. She was Rebecca's daughter and they'd been kids together. For almost as long as he could remember, he'd loved her from afar. The trouble was that she thought of him as almost a brother and he doubted that he would ever be able to get her to take him seriously. The war had been an unsettling thing - even as far out of the mainstream as Cascade, Idaho. Amelia had always liked his cousin Tad. She never said it, but you only had to see her light up whenever he was nearby. But that hadn't been the worst of it. Tad was handsome - even as a boy, and he'd grown up to be the kind of man that women cast longing gazes at as he walked past on the street. Seriously. Tad was an all-around wizard at many things. He'd been an actual cowboy - and he looked better doing it than anybody that Hollywood had ever trotted out on the silver screen - and he actually knew how to be one, too. Tad could make anything look disgustingly easy. But the war had taken him away years ago and he hadn't been back since. He'd gone to be a pilot and Craig knew that you had to shoot down five enemy planes to be called an ace. Well, true to form for him, Tad had shot down seven - and he'd done it at night as he'd hunted Japanese aircraft. But as far as almost anyone knew, Tad was gone. The war had ended and no one had heard from Tad in almost a year, since his squadron had been moved to Hawaii and then returned to fly in defense of occupied Japan herself. Somewhere in there - sometime during Tad's long absence, Amelia had met and married someone. That had almost crushed shy and unassuming Craig when he'd come back that fall. What was worse was that while Craig had been gone with his ass high up on Iron Mountain that summer, the boy that Amelia had married treated her terribly and no one knew anything of it. By the time that Craig had gone again and gotten back in the fall the next year, Amelia was a widow, her husband killed the very first time that his unit had gone into action after training and shipment overseas. Amelia was free of her ogre but the damage had been done. There was almost none of that sparkle left in Amelia's eyes anymore. Craig spent many evenings sitting with Amelia as she poured her heart out to him while she wept. But she had gotten a little better very slowly. Too bad that no one - especially Amelia - knew that Craig still loved her and would have done anything to see her smile again like before. But he was going home the next day, he reminded himself and he had hopes again, because he had to. He hoped to see Amelia and maybe this time, he'd have enough of a spine to be able to tell her how he felt about her - how he'd always felt about her. And just maybe ... She might listen. Craig tried to think about her the way that he always saw her in his mind, in little scenes from his life. Amelia had been the little hellion who'd completed their trio, the impulsive, impetuous, high-speed moppet who seemed to obey the laws of physics only out of courtesy because she was absolutely fearless in all things. As far as anyone knew, Amelia hadn't learned to ride her bicycle in the more usual way where one learned to balance as they maneuvered. It was more like the bike had given up and just acquiesced, since allowing the girl to ride might result in fewer crashes - which Amelia only stomped away from with a scowl anyway. It had been Amelia who had taught Craig how to climb trees. Years later, she'd come to admire the way that he could shoot a .22 very accurately, though she pointed out that he couldn't hit a barn if there was little time to aim. Amelia could, with no trouble at all. At thirteen years of age. There wasn't a rabbit who was safe anywhere if he was within her sight. Amelia and Craig used to hunt together sometimes after Tad had gone off to the army. By then, her father and mother had gotten her a .22/410 over-under single shot. She used the shotgun barrel when she was after rabbits for the café sometimes because at certain times of the year, Marjorie offered things like that on the menu as limited specials. Craig noticed once that she sometimes used the .22, but only for two or three rabbits. "Are you out of shells?" he asked her. "Nope," she'd smiled, "These ones are for us and our mothers. With just one bullet, you don't have to worry about biting into a pellet that got missed when it was cleaned." As a little girl, she'd always idolized Tad, though she'd always been closer to Craig, since they were only a year apart in age and they did everything together. The way that she'd grown up had given her the body of a goddess to his eyes. She wasn't tall or stacked in the ridiculous way that a lot of the guys he'd known in school liked to fantasize about. Craig's fantasies were much milder. They involved actually making love to Amelia. He sighed as that old feeling rose in him and he reached down to masturbate. When he thought of her all grown up, he did it slowly. This time, as always when Amelia was in his mind, it went on for a long time. But over that time, he also began to think about someone else and in a slightly different way. From the moment that Craig had arrived - and promptly suffered his first asthma attack in Cascade after finding out that he was going to be left in with a pack of strangers all alone in some awful strange-looking country, Tad had been there for him, stepping up to offer him quiet assurance and a helping hand. Craig had only been six when he'd been handed over to Marjorie, but after a little while, once the attack was over, Tad took him out for a walk and they went out back. Tad asked what was wrong with Craig's breathing and the younger boy already knew the name of his personal curse. Tad nodded and dropped the issue, but he quietly asked his mother later on. Some years later, he surprised Craig with what he knew of it and when Craig had asked, Tad had just shrugged and said that he'd looked it up in the encyclopedia at school, since he'd wanted to learn what he could because it was what Craig lived with. Tad had astounded Craig when he said that Teddy Roosevelt had suffered from it from when he was a young boy too. Tad didn't know Craig from Adam that first day, but he found that he liked the quiet boy and once Craig found that Tad was genuine and never played him for a fool or used him, he began to trust him implicitly almost right away. They were talking, sitting on a very low bough of an old twisted pine tree out there and Tad slid off and helped Craig down before he went to a hidden place and pulled out a slingshot that he wasn't supposed to have. They spent the afternoon walking in the thin woods not far from the train station, shooting at boxcars as they went past slowly. When they came back, everyone was in an uproar, especially Marjorie, who fussed over Craig and asked if he was alright or if he was hurt or anything. Craig had been amazed as he'd shaken his head and said that he was fine and that they'd just been having lots of fun. Marjorie was about to get a little uncharacteristically wound up, since the governess hadn't been gone for twenty minutes and look what had happened. Rebecca had interceded then and she pointed out that nothing had happened but two boys being boys and she pointed at the two of them, both a little dirty, but otherwise unharmed. "Look into their eyes, Marjorie," she whispered, "What I see is the best thing that you could ever see there. They left as strangers. Let them be like brothers. That is what I can see already." Marjorie looked and nodded before she told Tad to show Craig where to wash up for dinner. As they left to go upstairs, Marjorie had the strangest moment as she watched them climbing the steps side by side, still talking. She chuckled to Rebecca, "I almost feel like I've got two sons now, the way they're getting on. We'll have to see how long this lasts." At dinner, Craig didn't see one thing that he really even knew, never mind liked. The only familiar things were the potatoes and they weren't mashed in butter the way that he'd always had them served to him. They weren't even mashed at all. "I don't like any of this," he'd whispered to Tad, "I don't see anything that I like here." Tad shrugged, "Better get used to it. This is what we eat here. You ought to just try it." Marjorie had overheard and she smiled at Craig, "This isn't where you used to live. There are no paid servants here. I don't have the money to make anything special for just one person." Marjorie, Deke, and Rebecca came to Tad's room that night to try to comfort Craig as best they could. It was a traumatic thing to him, but he still remembered Marjorie sitting on the edge of the bed stroking his back and shoulder, "The letters that I got said that you needed to grow up in better air," she smiled. "You'll get used to things here, Craig. You'll see, in few months when they come to get you, you'll be breathing much better - and you've already made one friend, I can see that." He'd nodded, not out of his feeling much better, but out of his wanting to feel better, because it was something that he'd never had. This beautiful stranger - the mother of his new friend Tad, who sat with him, sometimes running her fingers through his light blonde hair a little bit. He did actually feel a little bit better when she leaned down and kissed him on the cheek. That was what he'd seen her do to her own son and he began to wonder if that was what mothers do here, since he'd seldom gotten much of anything like that from his own mother. The thing of it was that they never came for him or ever would, though Marjorie hadn't known that then, or she'd never have agreed to help by taking Craig in. She'd thought that the money which she was to draw from the bank was only to cover any costs to her over the interim. She'd only learned from the bank years later that it was to run until he was eighteen. By the time that he was ten and Marjorie realized that they didn't want or expect him back, she was surprised at herself. She thought that she should have gotten angry over it, but then she found that she couldn't. If there were losers in this, it had been his callous parents. By then, Craig was her son in about everything and she'd fallen in love with him from almost the first. Deke was happy to have Craig as a son and he belonged to them as much as they belonged to him. When she'd asked them, while thinking with Deke about formally adopting him, she'd expected caution out of her husband, but it had been Craig who had told her something strange. "I don't remember them much anymore," he'd said, "I feel like I belong here. But I know that Tad's name is what yours used to be when you had him. That's my name too. Tad tells anybody who asks that I'm his brother. That's the way that everybody knows me here. I want to keep it because of that." Back on that first night, Craig was having a bit of a tough time coming to grips with everything, but he already knew that Marjorie looked as though she cared about him and she was trying to make him feel as at home as she could. He was a little shocked to see the other woman again. Rebecca had gone home to feed her own family, but now she was back and she'd brought someone to meet him. Craig was still trying to fathom Rebecca's appearance, since he'd never seen anyone like her. Back then, Rebecca's English was pretty good, but she hadn't finished smoothing it out yet. "I learned at the school where I lived," she said, "Never wanted to know it when I was a girl. Too hard and for what? Now?" She laughed a little, "I need it here every day, all the time. I met Marjorie. Have to speak English good. She can't speak Paiute. How can you fight if you don't speak the same thing? Can't argue, nothing." Craig thought that he would have smiled a little, if he wasn't so homesick. "I will try fix your chest," Rebecca nodded with a friendly smile and a finger against him over his heart, "Don't worry, it's not something I gotta break to fix." He saw a motion near the door and a little girl came to him slowly. Rebecca tisked, "Come meet Craig, Amelia. Well, come on ..." Craig got his first look at her and he remembered a mop of wild, deep brown hair and such big eyes. "He doesn't look like he's from far away," she said a little suspiciously. She pointed here and there, "No dust." Seeing that no one made any answer, Amelia thought that she must have said something a little wrong and she whipped up the hand which had been behind her back. It held a slightly worn teddy bear. "For you," she said, "He needs somebody too. I have another one." Craig looked up, blinking through his cooling tears and he saw Tad looking back. Tad said nothing, he just moved his chin in Amelia's direction slightly, but Craig got the hint and reached for the bear. Amelia looked pleased and he thanked her. While Craig cried and cried in the room that he shared with Tad after everyone else had gone while coming to grips with being sent away without anyone, Tad had been there. That first night as Craig wept because he couldn't understand why his parents had sent him away was the first night that Tad sat on the bed with Craig to try to comfort him. "I don't know much about it," he said, "All's I know is that Momma says we're both related to a pretty strange bunch out there in Portland. My Momma isn't one of them, but my Dad was - not Deke, I mean the man that Momma married who got sick and died. When we got here, I was still just little, but Momma wrote to them to tell them what happened and they just thanked her in a pretty cool way, like it was nothing much. I've never seen my grandparents on that side, and I never even knew that I even had an uncle or that he was married with three kids." "My brother and sister are older than me," Craig told him, "They'd always tell me that I'm the runt of the litter. I don't know what that means and Mother wouldn't ever tell me." "But she'd tell you that they were just being mean and not to worry about it, right?" Tad asked over. Craig had looked up and later on, Tad came to see it as some kind of moment for him when Craig had just said, "No ... She didn't say anything." As they grew to know each other, the older boy never once rolled his eyes at being told to run an errand while taking Craig along and they were always together back then, a nine year-old walking everywhere with a spindly six year-old who needed clean air. Deke took Craig flying with him when he could sometimes and while Craig knelt in the other front seat and looked at the mountains and forests sliding past underneath him, Deke took the time to get to know his sort-of son, though that was only how he'd have said it if he had to explain it to anyone. Between them, he regarded the boy as his son and Deke remembered needing to wipe away a tear the first time that Craig had called him Dad without thinking. There were only two things that Deke felt regret over; that the boy hadn't come to them sooner, and that he could only take Craig along on routes where he knew that he could fly at lower altitudes out of consideration for the boy's asthma, though it got Craig a lot of incredible scenery a lot of the time. To go higher on the trips that needed that meant that Craig had to go on bottled oxygen and a mask long before Deke and Tad had to and though he never said anything to Craig, Deke felt that the boy had been a little cheated by life in some ways. It didn't change anything for Deke, it was just something that he had to be aware of. Craig eventually got to like most of the food that landed on the table at suppertime as the years passed and he grew. Going hungry didn't work for him for very long. Clean mountain air just does that to you. There were times when other boys would try to lean on Craig, but Tad made sure that it stayed fair. Whenever he'd heard enough of the stupid talk about him fighting Craig's battles, he'd just grin and say that it hadn't happened yet, but if any of the other boys hanging around wanted to find out about it, all they had to do was step up. Walking home with Craig a little scuffed up later on one time, Tad put his arm around Craig's shoulders to tell him a few things. By Air Mail Ch.01 "Look Craig, I don't care what you try to tell yourself, but you're not weak. You've been helping load Deke's plane and Harry's too. I'll bet that no boy in Portland can do that 'cause it sure isn't easy. You help me at any job that I get handed to me without even being asked to. You never say you can't do it. Nobody yet has said that you're not strong enough, 'cause you are. Your trouble with fighting is that you can't keep going for long sometimes. If you get wound up tight or you get scared before a fight, then you've only got so much time before you have trouble getting your wind." Craig looked over past his swelling eye, "So that means that I'll always lose." Tad shook his head, "Nope. What it means is that you gotta get your licks in while you can. Right at the start, everybody only pokes or swings a little, kind of testing to see what you'll do. That wastes time and wind that you're not gonna have later. So what you gotta do, is when they throw the first swing, you get in there and you give them heck with all you've got before you run out of breath." "That'll work?" Craig asked in surprise. "Only one way for you to know," Tad chuckled. "Listen, have you ever watched me fight?" "Yeah," Craig nodded, "You always win so fast, but I'm not -" "But WHY do I always win?" Tad asked with a grin, "It's because if I gotta fight, then I'm probably gonna go home in dirty ripped clothes and what's Momma gonna say? You know it'll get loud, right? So if I'm gonna catch it no matter what, that's what I think of if I have to fight and can't get out of it. That's when I wait for the first punch and then I just let go and give them what they want so bad. I don't fight any harder than anybody else my size, Craig. I fight fast. I've never had to fight the same kid twice, but one time." "Why did that happen?" Craig asked. Tad shrugged, "Some people need two lessons, I guess. But you gotta watch to see what's gonna happen. You can't use that plan if you think you're gonna have to face more than one fool. That's when you gotta pace yourself, and for you, that means that you can't give in to feeling scared or you WILL run out of air." The next time that it happened, Tad watched closely, but said nothing, not wanting to give away the secret of Craig's limited wind. When it ended quicker than it began, Craig looked more surprised than the loser and Tad walked him away with his arm over Craig's shoulder again to hopefully hide the signs of heaving ribs and to give the younger boy a chance to catch his breath. One of the others threw a remark that time and Tad stopped dead and looked back, "Come here," he said, "Tell it to me to my face just once time when I can reach you. If you ain't got the nuts to do that, then shut the hell up or I'll catch you when I can - and I can hold a grudge forever Staanleeey." There were no takers and they walked off with Craig feeling victorious for the first time in his life. He looked almost dazed by it. When they got home, they were told to go out to the shed at the back and bring in a new sack of potatoes. They stood not far apart in the dark shed, looking at the size of the task for a minute since there wasn't a lot of room to do anything else. "I'll bet that weighs a hundred pounds, " Craig said. "There's two of us," Tad reminded him, "We'll just do our best between us and if that won't work, then we'll get one of the empty sacks and take some out until we can carry one bag apiece." "Thanks for helping me and for looking out for me every time," Craig said looking up, "I always do better when I listen to you and if I know that you're in my corner." Tad smiled, "I'm always in your corner. You don't ever need to worry that I won't be. That's what we're supposed to do, isn't it?" "I guess," Craig nodded quietly, "but I don't see a lot of other older kids being the way that you are to me with their younger brothers or sisters." Tad just shrugged, though he was a little curious about the way that Craig was speaking quieter all of a sudden. To him, it usually meant that Craig was feeling sad over his lousy parents, who'd only written one time asking how he was - and they hadn't thought to write even a line to him at all. Tad just couldn't understand it. "And I'm not even your brother," Craig almost whispered. "You're near enough," Tad smiled, "And you're way smarter than I am. I'm always surprised at the things that you know about." He shrugged again, "And I'm proud of you for it." Craig looked amazed and it pushed him a little from inside. He'd always felt alone back where he'd come from. It had never been a stretch to him once he'd gotten a little older and thought about that. Nobody was on his side, even in his home and with his family; he'd just been the unwanted, weak underdog who was always in the way. But that wasn't the way that things were here, he decided. "I don't know how to say more than thank you for all the things that you're always helping me with," he whispered while Tad wondered why he felt it necessary to be that quiet about things. He accepted it, though. Once you got to know him, Craig was given to periods of introspection far more than he was himself. Then they got to work and with a lot of grunting, they carried the sack of potatoes in spite of doubting themselves. Craig came back to himself as the memory faded and then he remembered a time when Deke and his brother Harry had taken Craig along on a cattle drive along the Snake River Plain. No one had even thought of it then because Craig's asthma had been so much better for a long time, but the chill night air down low in the grass had gotten to him anyway. He lay in his sleeping bag coughing his lungs up and feeling like each labored breath had been a hard-won thing. He'd thought that he'd die for sure. All of the others -the hands and the other men, even Deke, were beside themselves without any idea of what could be done for the boy - and they were miles away from even a road and it was the middle of the night. As he coughed and coughed, choking on the cold, dew-laden air and wheezing just to inhale, he saw a lean shape coming his way in the darkness holding something large. Craig had been not quite thirteen at the time, but he recognized the one out there, coming to him in long, purposeful strides. Tad told everyone to bugger off and give him a little room and the next thing that Craig knew; his cousin was spreading out a blanket and moving him onto it. Craig was still inside his own sleeping bag and Craig wondered how Tad could do that. Then Tad got down to lie with him, pulling his own open sleeping bag over them both, especially so that it covered their heads. "Breathe," Tad said gently, "You can't win a two-sided race. You need air, but you're out of control at the same time. Just try to slow down, Craig. You're gulping air so fast and hard that your lungs don't even get time to take out the oxygen. We gotta warm up the air that you do get. Here," he said in a whisper, "put your face against my shirt - right against my chest, if you can. The air's warmer there and I'll cover us more. Just slow down and try to relax. You'll be better soon, I promise." In a few minutes, Craig found that his cousin was right. With warmer air to breathe and by re-breathing what was there, his bronchial passages opened slowly and he could get air at last. Craig remembered ... not bursting into tears exactly, but beginning to weep softly after a little while because he felt so helpless and he'd been humiliated by his body's weakness once again. Tad was an experienced cowpoke then, sixteen years old and already so worldly. He was already a licensed pilot by that time and he was taller than Craig knew that he'd ever be. "Shh, Craig, It's alright," Tad had whispered, lowering his head to rest upon his cousin's, "Don't make this harder on yourself. Why, you're smarter than most of these guys and I can tell you, most of them ain't all that tough. Cookie, he'll turn white and run, just to see a bee, 'cause he's allergic, see? He gets stung, and he knows he's a dead man. He'll have ten minutes and then his throat will swell shut and he'll choke to death and there's not a thing that anyone can do about it. And mean old Porkchop? I've seen him faint dead away, just because a snake slid across the toe of his boot at dinner one night. I'm not joking. Everybody, every man here's got something that they're scared of." Craig lifted his head then, and his cousin had allowed it. He remembered seeing Tad's eyes in the darkness, so concerned for him because he now felt less than useless. "What are you a-scared of, Tad?" Tad had taken a long time to answer and he'd looked up a little to tell Deke that Craig was getting better and then he pulled the sleeping bag even lower around their heads. He looked into Craig's eyes for a long moment. "Me?" he whispered, "I'm scared to death right now to lose you." Craig never forgot that night. Tad had always looked out for him back then. Craig didn't see him as much in those days for the speed at which his cousin seemed to move through life back then. He saw him even more seldom after that. But he never forgot it - or how it had felt to him to hear Tad's quiet words to him. Craig spent a warm night against the strong body of his older cousin who didn't appear to sleep that night at all, preferring to keep watch over Craig and never saying a thing about the way that he had far less warm sleeping bag over him. Afterwards, they never spoke of that night again. But Craig remembered. When Craig turned fourteen, Tad presented him with a .22 caliber rifle, a Mossberg single shot. It had a gleaming fine wood stock all the way out to the muzzle and it was the most beautiful rifle that Craig had ever seen in his life. "No more plinking and trying to hunt with mine," Tad had laughed, "I expect you to outshoot me with that beauty." Craig hadn't known what to say. "It's not a regular rifle," Tad smiled, "That one's made for fine shooting. Hell, I think it's only got about four different front sights on it that you can choose from for whatever suits you and the rear sight is what makes the deal. It's a micrometer match sight. Come on; let's head out to the woods, Craig." Almost ten years had passed since that day, but that rifle was still Craig's most cherished possession and he didn't think that it was strange at all that in his heart, that rifle stood right next to his other most prized possession - which as a very old and worn teddy bear. It had been a severe shock to learn that Tad had been accepted and ordered to report for flight training for the Army Air Force. Everyone was almost holding their breath in those days, just waiting for the war to start. Well it had already, but America hadn't joined the fight yet. Tad already was a pilot, but he told Craig that it didn't matter. He had to learn the army way if he was going to fly their planes. Before Craig could really shrink back into himself, Tad grinned and said that they ought to go fishing one more time before he had to go. They'd always done this the last few years, just the two of them riding off on horseback to a favorite fishing hole together to spend the day. They'd catch what they could and cook it up right there and have a feast on some fine Idaho trout or salmon - if the time of year was right for it. So that was what they'd done, setting out without eating breakfast, so that if they didn't catch anything, then they just had to try harder. They did pretty well every time and enjoyed the time together after eating their catch - which Craig was always better at catching for some reason which eluded both of them. The last time, it had been about perfect and they really enjoyed it. By that time, they were eighteen and fifteen and Craig had finally begun to come into his own - though he'd never have said it of himself. As they sidled their horses along on the slow ride home, Craig called over to Tad once they'd reached a meadow where they could ride beside each other. "I'm gonna miss you, Tad," Craig said, "Probably more than anyone but Mother, Rebecca - and Amelia. Just ... well, take care of yourself wherever they send you and ... please come back to us alive." "I'll miss you too," Tad replied, though he held it there, not daring to say more for fear of choking up. "I don't know what I'm gonna do without you," Craig said, fighting back his sadness. "You raised me more than anybody. I've always loved you." Tad nodded as he looked over, "Ok. It's the same for me. I've never had a chance since you came to us. I love you too, Craig." That had been almost six years ago, Craig thought to himself. He still missed the cousin who'd been amazed to find that he was related to him the first day and had taken such care of him from that day on. But Craig remembered. As though he had any choice in the matter. He was a poor boy who was saddled with loving two people, and neither one of them knew exactly how he felt. His sketches of Amelia had been done using only his eye and his mind, guessing the way that she looked when she was naked, now that she was grown up and so beautiful. But in that time after Amelia's heartbreak, it hadn't been the time to exactly speak of his feelings. To Craig, it would be a miracle if she ever wanted to come near to a man again. His thoughts took a turn then as they did about half of the time when he masturbated up here alone this past little while. Just as he had when they'd met that first time, Chance had stolen into Craig's thoughts again. Craig was running low on supplies and bright and early one Saturday morning, when it wasn't even full light yet, Craig had risked not signing on watch and ridden into Fairfield to buy some. When he'd gotten there, they'd just opened and Craig parked right next to another war surplus Indian motorcycle, a 500cc 741 Army Scout, which was the more usual steed produced for army use where his was the desert warrior type. As he'd spoken to the storekeeper, the man said that for a two dollar fee, along with a list, they'd be pleased to have their delivery boy bring his groceries up to the tower every week. Craig was astounded. "Does he know how to get there? It's a long way up nothing but hill." He doesn't know yet," the man said, "But it can't be too bad, since you've made it a couple of times. I'll give him a little time for you to lead him so he'll know the way next week." He turned and bellowed and Chance had come walking up with his hand held out, "That your 841 out there?" They shook hands and Craig showed Chance the road up and the trails where he could shave some of the distance off if he took them. They spent an hour just shooting the breeze and Craig learned that Chance had been in the Army Air Force, just as Tad had been, but he was being taught to repair radio equipment. He'd just completed all of his courses and been waiting for a posting somewhere when the war had ended. "Since then," he smiled, "I've been working my way from back East on my bike." He'd laughed then, "I've still got a ways to go too, since I'm from Bakersfield, California.But I stopped off here a while ago, to help out my uncle. He's fixing to sell in the fall, so I'll be on my way after that anyway." They parted company then, but Chance came once during the week before bringing the grocery order up late Saturday afternoon. "Can I stay the night?" he'd asked, "I closed a little early, since my uncle was already drunk. I'll bet he's asleep by now already." Craig was a little uncomfortable, but Chance had a way about him and put Craig at ease, "I brought my own sleeping bag, so if you got a few spare feet of floor, I won't bother you much." But Chance stayed until early Sunday morning and by that time Craig was no longer strictly a virgin. Chance was anything but inexperienced and by Sunday morning, Craig and Chance had done about everything that two young men could possibly so with one another. Chance returned and stayed every weekend, most often spending most of Saturday up in the cab with Craig, since the firewatch had to go on seven days a week. But from the second weekend on, Craig was doing his very best not to fall in love, though he supposed that it had happened to a large degree regardless. When he'd arrived for their last weekend together, Chance had said exactly the wrong thing, though he'd only meant it as a joke. He'd walked in, taken his clothes off and knelt on the floor. While Craig stood staring, wondering what was going on, his lover looked back with a smile and said, "This is your last Chance." As he remembered fucking Chance for the last time, Craig's hand had been picking up speed and grunting a little, he arched his back right off the bed a little and before he could even reach for his handkerchief, he'd shot his load all over his chest with a quiet cry as he imagined himself in those arms again.