North to Alasa

Fiction by Jamie

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All sexual situations depicted in this story involve adults at least 18 years of age.

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In an effort to continue paying for both the Great Society and the Vietnam War on credit the US Government repeatedly devalued the dollar in the early seventies while simultaneously making it impossible for US citizens to exchange script for gold, effectively unliking the two. Government price controls created artificial shortages, and the 1973 OPEC oil embargo plunged the nation into a deep recession.

The oil embargo also caused Congress to lift the moratorium on oil field development in Alaska. From January of 1974 to September of 1977 an estimated 45,000 different individuals traveled to Alaska to work building the Aleyseka Pipeline and supporting infrastructure, including the fictional ones in this story.

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"I'd build for my Jenny a honeymoon home.

Below that old white mountain,

Just a little southeast of Nome.

Where the river is windin' big nuggets they're findin,'

North to Alaska, go north the rush is on."

-Johnny Horton (North to Alaska)

***

71123

Taking my journal and a pen, I jotted down the fact that the truck's odometer read 71123 as we were to embark on our epic journey that Sunday morning in early August 1974. We had climbed into the back of the camper and changed out of our finery. It took a little bit longer than it should to hang our nice clothes in the tiny wardrobe.

Mainly it took longer because Chuck was kissing my neck and my back and my breasts through my bra. I grabbed his penis through his BVDs and said that I would love to reciprocate his affection. But being in the gas station parking lot with Todd just outside wondering why we were taking so long just wasn't the right time. I offered a rain-check, he kissed me deeply in accepting.

As Chuck drove north across the Colorado River, I snuggled up tight to my man and looked out the open driver side window of the light blue and white Ford carrying a white and silver camper. As we entered Colorado City, and the arid expanse beyond, I thought about what a weird feeling it was to leave the Edwards plateau. I had never actually been anywhere else. Chuck had been to Houston once.

Thinking back in time to earlier this morning, I knew that what I was doing was wrong. In doing so I had stepped into and then out of Chuck's former love, a Palomino Gold Cutlass, for the last time. Well, actually what I was doing was right. How... How I was doing it was the wrong part. I should have 'womaned-up' and faced my parents. But I just couldn't. So I created a deceitful plan. I hoped it would be my last.

We had taken the State road north from Jumano just outside of San Angelo. Chuck drove while I snuggled with him on the sky blue vinyl bench seat and was our navigator. I kept busy folding and unfolding and becoming frustrated with the half-dozen maps we had obtained from AAA. We would turn onto the US Highway and ride it between Snyder and Slaton and then take a different State Route north to Plainview thus avoiding Lubbock.

Chuck's beautiful Cutlass had been traded straight up to Todd, his friend and now former employer, for the six year old F-100 and camper we were taking on a four-thousand or so mile journey to our future together. Lenny had been one of the first to travel to Alaska right after Christmas, he had told Chuck everything. We talked and we planned, and here we were following in Lenny's tire tracks on the road to Fairbanks by way of Canada.

At Post the gas was down to a quarter-tank so we stopped at what appeared to be the only station in town to get the truck filled-up. That was good, I had to pee. It was almost one o'clock, and we had been on the road for three hours. After I peed in the camper's toilet, I wasn't about to go into that place's bathroom. I got some of the sandwiches that Juanita, Chuck's mom, had made for us out of the ice box under the tiny closet that contained a generous supply of canned food.

Having traded places with Chuck and sitting behind the wheel, I turned off of the US Highway at Slaton, and drove north through Plainview, Tulia, and Canyon, stopping for gas just outside of Amarillo six hours from home. Our day had been one of watching endless fields of prairie grass or cotton. The sorghum fields ended just north of home. We saw some sagebrush north of the Colorado and lots of cattle farms.

Chuck's cousin Hector had given him three boxes of dried chillies to drop off at a restaurant just north of Amarillo so we had lunch there. I asked the waitress what she recommended, and after she did a double-take of the grino speaking flawless Tejican she recommended something off-menu, migas. The mixture of fried tortilla, scrambled eggs, pico de gallo, onion, chili peppers and chihuahua cheese was delicious.

I thought about how fortunate I was to have found Chuck. How easy it would have been for him just to have left and gone to Alaska alone. He was fourteen months older, but two years ahead of me in school. He and Lenny were class of seventy-three. But Chuck had waited, I had offered to leave with him back in February after Lenny wrote him. Chuck loved me and he waited for me.

As Chuck drove through Dumas, I was snuggled up to and holding him. I joked that this town must be my family's ancestral home; I pronounced it "dumbass." He responded by romantically taking my hand and saying that we could always change my name if I didn't like the original. "You know, if (I) didn't want to remain a dumbass."

Then at Stratford he turned off of the US Highway onto the State Highway. Then we turned onto a different US Route at Kerrick on the Oklahoma border. It was six o'clock and we were in Oklahoma. Half an hour later we stopped to fuel up at Keyes. As I sat up he leaned over and gave me a serious tongue kiss before he got out of the truck.

By rights I should have graduated back in May; I should have been the youngest member of the class of seventy-four, being born on the last day of July. But my parents were too busy being passed out on the living room floor to be bothered registering me for school. I started the first grade without a day of kindergarten and did alright; in a couple years I was at the top of my class.

We switched places driving again; by seven I was driving through wheat fields of western Kansas. Chuck sat to my right and had his arm on the windowsill as we passed signs that said "Richfield," and "Johnson City," and "Syracuse." Each place being a few houses along the Kansas State Route. By eight o'clock we found a gas station, filled up again and looked for a hotel.

We had planned on driving for twelve hours a day. We had started late and had done ten today. We had the camper, but Chuck wanted us to have a real room, with a real bed and shower. We had been warned that there may not be rooms available on the Al-Can and there just wouldn't be any in Alaska. We stopped at the 'Prairie Grass Motel.'

"I don't know," the clerk said.

It was a hiccup that I had never considered. The clerk at the hotel wasn't sure if he could rent us a room together. But Chuck had considered it, that is why we had climbed into the camper and changed into our 'Sunday go-to-Church clothes' back at the gas station. We had already placed our Texas drivers licences on the counter, but the clerk noticed that our last names were different and asked for our marriage licence.

As he placed the little card his friend Gus had made for him at his print shop, Chuck said, "It's Sunday, Reverend White has to submit the signed form at City Hall tomorrow." The fancy ivory, heavy weight embossed invitation card in its matching envelope read...

"Mr. and Mrs. Henry and June Milleiir wish to invite you to the wedding of their daughter Jenny to Charles Gomez, the son of Mr. and Mrs. Enricho and Juanita San Filipe. Eleven A. M. Sunday August 4, 1974, Pentecost Baptist Church, Jumano Texas."

The clerk smiled and said, "here on your honeymoon?"

Chuck said, "officially it starts in Montana tomorrow, but we just might always fondly remember Tribune Kansas."

As the clerk started filling out the forms, Chuck leaned in and in a low voice said, "do you have a room away from other occupied rooms?"

Both the clerk and Chuck smiled at each other as I blushed.

As we took a little of our stuff out of the truck and put it in our 'honeymoon suite' I said, "Henry and June?"

"The parents you wish you had," Chuck said, giving me a kiss afterwards.

We enjoyed playing a little game as if we were a happy couple just returned from an evening out. We stood by the hotel clothes rod. There was a mirror at a right angle to it. Chuck got to unwrap his present first tonight, to remove my belt, to unbutton my dress, to slowly carefully lift my dress over my head and hang it properly.

He kissed me deeply, and ran a finger along my cheek and neck down the center of my chest where my bra halted its movement. He kissed my shoulders and my breasts beneath the bra. I could feel my blood rushing to my genitals. My vagina was preparing itself, filling itself and expanding. It felt tingly and nice and I started to feel a little light beaded.

Chuck removed my bra, draping it over a hanger. Then he returned kissing my bare breasts. The blood continued to flow south. He ran his hands along my sides, from under my armpits to the top of my panties at my hip points. While doing so he kissed my belly. Then he gripped both sides of my panties and gently tugged them over my hips letting them fall.

He threw my panties on the bed and planted a kiss on my pubic mound and its curly little hairs. I was already wet and ready for him. He kissed my sex again lingering longer and I pushed his head gently forward into me. After several more kisses he stood up and I began to unwrap my 'wedding' present.

I unbuttoned his cuffs and his shirt, slowly erotically removing it, and hanging it with my dress. I tongue kissed him as I played with the hairs on his chest. Then I kissed, nibbled sorta, a line from his neck to his belt buckle. His blood was making a similar pilgrimage and his dress slacks became taught.

I unbuclked him and unzipped his slacks carefully removing them, creasing them and placing them on a third hanger. His white cotton BVDs were unable to contain his happiness, so I playfully placed my mouth around his cotton covered appendage, He massaged my scalp lovingly in return. I removed my mouth briefly and slid his briefs off tossing them on top of my panties.

Then I placed his penis in my mouth and used my lips to slowly carefully roll his foreskin back. I stood and took his hand leading him to the bed, saying, "I want you inside of me tonight, tomorrow night and all of our nights on this earth."

As we climbed into bed he kissed me and said, "that is just what I want, Jenny."

***

71513

Early Monday morning as we were putting our bags back in the truck it's odometer read 71513, I recorded it in my diary. As we pulled out of the parking lot and onto the State road, I thought about the fact that the only home that I ever knew was nearly five-hundred miles behind me. I wondered what my future more than three-thousand miles in front of me with my new 'husband' was going to be like.

Lenny had said that the house that he shared was pretty crowded, with a pair of couples from Abilene and Lufkin living there with him and Marci. But two guys from Big Spring and Sweetwarer were moving up north to a construction camp in mid September. We could have an actual room then. From what we heard that was pretty good for Fairbanks, which had gained like 20,000 residents nearly overnight.

We passed through Sharon Springs, stopping just north of town to read the roadside sign at Mount Sunflower, the highest point in Kansas. It wasn't actually a mountain, it was a stone and rail fence with a wrought iron sign on the Colorado border. The sign said that on the other side of the fence was the lowest spot in Colorado. We were down to a half-tank and filled up before having breakfast at Goodland two hours down the road.

Chuck waited for me because he figured that if I finished my junior year it would be easier to go to school up in Alaska, maybe a senior year, maybe junior college. High school held no cache for me. In my opinion they had done quite enough to fuck up my life already. Why on earth would I give them another shot at me. At the end of second grade the school decided that I was doing fine and they would move me up to the fourth grade putting me in classes with kids my own age.

But my folks had to get me to school forty-five minutes early to cover what I missed in third grade. They were too hung-over to be bothered. So the school having decided in August that I belonged in the fourth grade, moved me back to third over Christmas break. To this day those drunks say I was left-back a year. Proof that two wrongs do absolve if not make a right. Thinking about it I feel better for not saying goodbye.

Chuck drove the next three hours to Ogallala Nebraska on the South Platte River and the Union Pacific main line. It was almost noon so we stopped to get gas at a station next to a little diner while Chuck pumped gas I bought us a couple sandwiches. We stretched our legs and walked over to the river to eat our wax paper wrapped lunch just to spend a half-hour not driving.

This town had been a railhead on the old transcontinental railroad. In cowboy days riders drove entire herds of cattle from as far south as San Angelo, nearly eight hundred miles behind us. It took them weeks to cover what we had driven in a day and a half. I wondered what that sort of life would have been like.

We walked past a school on our way back from the river, and I thought about school. About my senior year that I would not be attending. One of the three cards I mailed on Sunday was to Coach. One was to Carol, the most gossipy of my friends. The cards were nearly identical. Each said that I was going to miss them and the town I grew up in; that I was eighteen and by rights should be going away to college right now. That I was not running away; I was walking towards a future. The third one home omitted the 'missing them' part.

I drove the next three hours through Hyannis and Merriman Nebraska on the edge of the Sand Hills. There was nothing along our route but prairie grass and the occasional herd of longhorn cattle. It was funny, all of the herds that we passed between Slater and Amarillo were herefords. Here in Nebraska they were all 'Texas Longhorns.'

With Lenny's experience and advice we were well prepared for our journey. I was glad we had those six metal one-gallon cans of gasoline back in the storage compartment with the white gas for the stove and lantern. Without them I would really have been on edge watching the fuel gage at it neared "E" on a desolate road in, well someplace north of Texas and south of Canada.

We had tire chains on the floor behind the bench seat under bags and boxes of stuff Lenny said was unavailable in Fairbanks, and cans of oil in deference to the fact that the three-ninety-cid engine was powerful but it leaked. Todd had joked that was how you could tell that it had oil in it. Chuck's tool box and a box of 'likely suspect' parts were in here too.

Chuck took the wheel as we headed north into the Dakotas after we filled-up. Entering South Dakota and Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. Driving through Nebraska the landscape had slowly changed from sparse in Kansas to downright arid in South Dakota. How anyone could subsist here was a mystery to me.

We had talked about a side trip through Indian Country, but time was short and even more so it was just a really bad time. The situation was unstable on the tribal lands right now. We passed through Martin, the turn-off for the towns of Pine Ridge and Wounded Knee and turned east, away from them before turning north again near the Rosebud Reservation.

Historic Wounded Knee South Dakota, where the US Army in eighteen-ninety had massacred Spotted Elk's Miniconjou band of Lakota Sioux. More recently Russel Means and members of the 'American Indian Movement' had occupied the town and tribes administrative center for seventy-one days just over a year ago.

We fueled and switched places at Kadoka on the edge of Badlands National Park. We drove through Billsburg, Phillip, and Howes before calling it a day in Faith South Dakota just past the quarter way point. We found a small motel at the crossroads just outside of the Cheyenne River Reservation. The disinterested clerk had no problem renting us a room, no questions asked.

The situation in the Dakotas was chaotic as Means and his fellow defendants had just been acquitted in a federal court on all charges. When the government appealed, the judge dismissed the case with prejudice, saying that the FBI had "polluted the waters of justice," by suborning perjury, destroying records and offering altered documents as evidence.

We did what any rational traveler would do in the situation, we stayed in our room and slept between rounds of steamy sex.

I love the sort of slow ritualized undressing of my mate before coupling with him. Standing with him next to a bed where both of you knew exactly what was going to happen in just a few short minutes. Touching him as I unbutton his western shirt. Tossing the shirt on the chair. Kissing him, playing with his curly chest hair. Running my fingers lightly down his chest while nibbling on his shoulders or neck.

Kissing his chest while tracing a line down his sides. Removing his boots and blue jeans as he sits on a chair or the edge of a bed playing with the hairs on his leg. Gently teasing his clothed penis as it fills with blood and becomes long and hard. Removing his underwear and actually taking him into my mouth. Using my mouth to roll back his foreskin and then to...

I love it when Chuck slowly erotically undresses me removing my sundress lifting it over my head and tossing it atop his pants and his shirt. Kissing my exposed flesh tenderly as my body sends a flood of blood to my nether regions filling my vaginal tissues and making them expand giving me a tingly feeling causing my Bartholin's to make juice for his anticipated arrival.

I love having him kiss my mouth and my neck and my shoulders as her removes my bra and then kisses my naked breasts. I love it when he plants kisses on my belly and my pubis through the fabric of my panties. Before he then slides my panties off and plants kisses on my hairs and flesh. I love when he places his lips on my nether lips and makes a fish mouth movement.

Perhaps so much blood has rushed to my vagina and my engorged clitoris that I become light headed by virtue of decreased blood pressure in my brain. I don't know why but I become euphoric. My vagina has a mind of her own and seeks out her lover's flesh. She wants any part of Chuck inside of her, a finger, two, a tongue and the piece de resistance, his penis.

It was hot and the room was hot and the road had been dusty, so Chuck led me to the shower and we coupled in the stall with warm water running over our bodies. The water cooling them as our libidos kept them warm. He had me tight against the cool porcelain tile as he slid his turgid penis into me and started to push the walls of my blood filled vagina apart.

The top of his penis moved the skin attached to the head and top shaft of my clitoris while his girth applied light pressure to and moved the flesh attached to my crura. Just when I thought it could not get any better, his sensitive head bounced off of the flesh attached to my blood filled Skene's and sent me over the edge for the first time that night.

***

72168

We tried to get out early on Tuesday. We absolutely had to be in Fairbanks on Monday, Sunday really. Lenny had lined up an interview with his boss for his younger brother. Chuck was younger by about two minutes. Lenny loved him but never let him forget it. Because of our desire to eliminate drama in Jumano, we had started out a little late on Sunday. Besides that our schedule seemed to be slipping.