I'm not all that sure how I got roped into going to Ken's daughter's place up on Blue Mountain near Front Royal. It was something about the Appalachian Trail, though, I'm sure. We were sitting at the bar at Scotties, a truck stop bar in Opal where Route 17 breaks off east from Route 29, south of Washington, D.C., to go over to Fredericksburg and the Eastern Shore, and Ken mentioned the Appalachian Trail.
"I've always thought it would be fun to hike a section of that," I'd said. "But I haven't gotten around to it yet. There are the mountains right over there, with the trail running along the top of them, and I haven't found time to hike them yet. October, with the trees changing color would be a great time to be up there."
"Yep, October is the time to be hiking in the mountains," Ike the bartender had said. "You're probably still hitting the books pretty hard at that college you're going to, though. You got no time for hiking."
"Yeah, I guess," I'd answered. "But a guy can waste his time away hitting the books 24/7—and that sometimes just leads to spending all your time working after you're done with college. I've met a lot of guys who have never been up on the Blue Ridge mountains—never having found the time—even though they are right out there where we all can see them."
"Hiking the mountains can be pretty rough," Stan, the guy who owned the gun shop and firing range in Opal said from down the bar. "You look like you could handle it, though. You on the football team over at that college?"
"No," I answered. "We're too small to be in a football league. I wrestle, though—and work out a couple of times a week. And I ride hills with my bike. When I'm exhilarated, I just have to get out on my bike."
"Yeah, you look like you work out a lot," Ken, who had saddled up to the bar next to me, said. "Lookin' real good."
I didn't know if I was supposed to melt to that or not. Ken had been nosing around me for several weeks now. I'd found this guy's bar only recently. A few years ago I'd been going into Washington, D.C., to meet guys—there had been a full-service club on O Street near the southeast Washington waterfront, where the Anacostia flowed into the Potomac. But that was a long way to go, they'd now built a football stadium smack dab on top of where the O Street club had been, and I had no idea where the club had moved. I'd hooked up with a couple of young, good-looking guys here at Scotties, so I'd come here when I didn't have time to go into D.C.
It wasn't really my kind of bar for what I wanted, though. There weren't too many young, in-shape guys coming in here. It was mostly lonely truckers who worked the eastern seaboard and local service worker types who could get pretty rough. And older guys, of course. Those guys were always around gawking and doing their wishful thinking thing. That was Ken—two out of three. He was a trucker, kind of a redneck. Hard muscled, but wiry and older, probably in his mid forties. He was uglier than a fence post, and he didn't seem too bright. About all he could talk about was his truck route and sports—and my body. Not at all the kind of guy for a young college student to hook up with.
Whenever Ken came into the bar when I was here, he tried to saddle up to me and bring the conversation around to complimenting me on my body and getting suggestive about going with him.
"You really want to do some hiking on the Appalachian Trail, you should go up to my daughter's place on Blue Mountain one of these days," Ken was saying. "She's got a house right across the road from where it runs by on its way to the Skyline Drive along the top of the Blue Ridge. You could start with just walking a section of the trail there. There are a couple of entrances to it along the road running up the mountain to her place."
"Yeah, that would be an idea," I'd said. I just said it to be polite, though, and those of us gathered around the bar went on to talk about the rain we'd been having leading into October.
"It'll be a great year for leaf watching," Stan said. "We'll have a lot of tourists coming through as early as the weekend to go up on the drive. The show should be spectacular this year because of the rain we've been getting."
"I'd sure like to see that," I said. On hindsight, I guess that's where I made my mistake—giving Ken his opening.
"I'll be up there, at my daughter's, week after next," Ken said. "I'll be dog sitting. Her and her husband are taking a Caribbean cruise, and I've agreed to house and dog sit for them. I'll be having a gathering up there—doing some hunting and some cookouts for neighbors up there I know. You've got some sort of fall break comin' up from college, don't cha, Dan? You could come up for a couple of days and walk a chunk of the trail. There's plenty of room at the house. I could take you up there when I went."
"Yeah, that would be nice," I said. I wasn't really thinking on what he was saying, though. I was giving the eye to a young hunk who had just come into the bar. I was pretty sure I'd seen him at the Sheetz gas station. He was some sort of shift manager there, I thought. He was a real good looker and strutted around like he had something special. And maybe he did. I was surprised to see him in here. Sheetz was nearby, up at the intersection where 17 broke off from 29, so he must know what sort of bar this was.
He was looking right back at me. Showing interest. So, I wasn't paying all that much attention to what Ken was saying.
"I could pick you up at the college next Friday afternoon and take you up there for a couple of days. Four o'clock in the afternoon suit you?"
"Yeah, sure, that would be nice. Thanks," I said, not fully listening to him. My eyes were on the Sheetz guy, who had sat—or, rather, slouched—at a table, with his chair turned sideways, pointed at the bar, his tight-jeans-clad legs spread and his hand on his crotch. He was still staring directly at me and giving a little smile.
When I went over to his table, he said he had a new Camaro I might like to see. And then he asked me if I'd ever been fucked in a Camaro.
After all of Ken's beating around the bush, I found this guy's direct proposition refreshing. "Not until abut fifteen minutes from now, if you've got the time and the dick for it."
He drove me into the car wash building over behind the Sheetz that was supposed to be closed this time of night and shut the line down so we were alone. After he'd sucked me off, he moved over into the passenger seat and I sat on his cock and concentrated on not letting my head bounce off the ceiling of the low-slung sports car.
This had been worth all that time of putting up with Ken trying to zero in on me.
* * * *
"Uh, I'm tired, Ken—and I've had too much beer. If we're going to walk the Appalachian Trail tomorrow afternoon, I need some shut eye. OK?"
"Yeah, sure, we can go on upstairs."
"You probably need to clean up down here first, though. Didn't you say there'd be some families arrive tomorrow morning for a cookout before we hiked?"
"Yeah, maybe, although they may not come before Sunday. They didn't commit to a specific day. We could leave this and clean it up in the—"
"Sure, if it's there in the morning, I'll help you with it. Goodnight." I didn't let him finish his sentence and my feet were already on the stairs to the second floor. I went straight to the bedroom at the end of the hall he'd said I could use and shut and locked the door, thanking the heavens that the bedroom had its own bathroom. I wouldn't unlock the door until morning.
I could see what he was doing—what he wanted. He kept saying without really saying it that there would be families up here with us. But we'd gotten to his daughter's house after he'd taken me to dinner at the Apple House at the foot of the mountain, and his daughter and her family were already gone. There were just two hound dogs here, which seemed happy to see Ken.
I guess he thought that if he bought me dinner, I'd let him fuck me all night up here.
The time that any other people—any families—were coming up here was conveniently receding into later days than he'd suggested. If I'd known he was going to get me up here without others around, I wouldn't have come.
He was old, and rednecky, and ugly—and not the sharpest knife in the drawer. There was nothing he had that I wanted. I was into younger, good-looking guys.
He'd tried his best to carry on a conversation with me in the evening, but he finally gave up and found a college football game on ESPN. Neither one of us gave a crap for either of the teams playing, but we were both more comfortable with that to focus on than fumbling at cross-purposes with each other. The beer had been flowing, but I didn't want to get drunk with him. He was one of those bottomless pits who never seemed to get drunk no matter how much he'd had. I'd noticed that down at Scotties.
He must have thought I was getting drunk, though, because he came over and sat close to me on the couch while we watched the game. He had an arm in back of me on top of the couch back. When I felt the touch of his fingertips on my shoulder, I made like I had to go to the can. And when I came back, I made a point of sitting in one of the armchairs rather than back on the couch—and as soon as I could feign some yawns and remark on what an exhausting week I'd had at school, I escaped to my bedroom and locked the door.
Ken wasn't there the next morning when I got up. He left me a note about having to go down into Front Royal for some groceries and had left some breakfast for me.
When he came back he was all smiles and good humor, saying that we could pick up the Appalachian Trail up here near the house and walk a couple of miles back toward the foot of the mountain and then turn and come back and that this would be a good introduction to the trail to me.
He seemed to have decided I wasn't going to let him fuck me and was making the best of the situation.
We went out on the trail after lunch, and now I was glad I'd come up here. The forest was a riot of autumn colors. And it was so quiet and everything was so lush and dreamy and mysterious that I was almost having a religious experience out here.
As we approached the intersection of the trail with a pathway that Ken said went back to the road and to a parking lot next to the communications towers that were at the very top of Blue Mountain, we heard muffled voices of men. Right where the other trail came in, there were two young men hikers, sort of sitting on large rocks beside the trail.
"We're foreign students taking a year off and hiking the whole way up from Georgia to Maine," one of the guys said when we approached them and struck up a conversation. They both looked like they were fully capable of doing so. Both were muscular and good looking. They were wearing tight T-shirts, with back packs; cargo shorts; and hiking boots, and they seemed oblivious to the chill in the air.
The blond, clean-cut one said his name was Hans, that he was from Amsterdam, and that he was studying to be a doctor. He was the heavier and taller of the two, but was solid rather than fat. The darker-haired one, with a profusion of curly body hair and a heavy five-o'clock shadow was named Alain; he said he was just studying to study. I thought their English was exceptionally good for foreigners. I also thought they were both so sexy looking that I had trouble keeping my eyes off them.
They and Ken took to each other immediately. They told me they were resting from coming off the Skyline Drive portion of the parkway and were looking for someplace to change into warmer clothes as it was getting chilly.
"Hikers usually follow the warmer weather by hiking down from Maine in the fall," Ken said.
"We know that now," Hans said, with a laugh. He was the more jovial and outgoing of the two. He also seemed to be the "take charge" one and the one ready to make an instant decision and get on with it.
"We're from a house just up the trail there," Ken said. "And we're turning back from here anyway. If you want, you could stop at our house and change your clothes there. Maybe take a break from the hike."
"You live together in that house?" Hans asked. He turned to me and gave me a penetrating look.
