My name is Theodore but all my friends and family call me Ted for short. I'll just jump right into this as I can hardly believe what happened and need to get it out while it's still fresh in my head. I had several friends who I used to go camping with during high school and for a few years after we finished school. Nick and Joe were like me, just average guys who liked to get away from the city and put their limited outdoor skills to the test.
Brant was different. He was different in every way you could think of and far from average in every way. He was a hulking brute who used to play on the football team in high school. He only became our friend because he was falling behind in his grades and in order to stay on the team he needed a tutor to help get his marks up to snuff.
Anyway all that was over a decade ago and we had lost touch with Brant. The last we heard he had joined the French Foreign Legion. If you knew him you wouldn't be surprised. He often did crazy things like that and marched to the beat of his own drum. Even though he had a reputation for being quite a lady's man, during the last year of high school he actually went on a few dates with the quarterback of his team who was openly gay, just because of how cute he was.
Now he was back in town and had contacted Nick and Joe to see if we could all pick up our tradition of going camping at least once a month. When they called me to check and see if I was game they also shared that he had served time overseas for something. The details of what were not so easily forthcoming and I was told Brant was somewhat sensitive about it all and we should just let him bring it up when he was ready to talk about it.
I didn't really care all that much as I was excited to get back to nature and go camping with my old high school buddies. I told them I was definitely in and we set a date for next weekend. This would give us all time to dig out our tents and camping gear from storage and dust it off, plus visit a sporting store and replace anything else we might need.
The only thing I needed was a new tent. I didn't want to spend a fortune on one though because i wasn't sure if this was a one off or we were actually going to be doing this every other weekend like when we were younger. I mean who knew if we all had the spare time in our lives now after all these years. So with that in mind I just grabbed a small two-man tent, the cheapest one they had for sale.
Over the next week, all the way up to the night before the trip I was excited and looking forward to getting into the great outdoors once again. I couldn't even sleep the night before I was so distracted by the thoughts of what it would be like to hike into the wilderness and pitch our tents somewhere, living in the rough for the next few days. We had planned our trip to coincide with a long weekend, also taking a day off work early to get four days out of it.
I didn't have a ride so Joe told Brant to pick me up and they would meet us up there the next morning as neither Joe nor Nick could get an extra day off from their jobs. When Brant pulled up in his old pick-up and I loaded my tent and supplies in the back I noticed he didn't have a tent packed.
"Hey, where's your tent?" I asked him.
"I'll just sleep under the stars. I'm all jacked up about getting back to nature." Brant responded in his deep baritone voice.
I had forgotten how masculine and butch he sounded. "No worries, mine can fit two hands."
"Hey, speaking of missing gear, where's your rod? You are planning on dong some fishing aren't ya?" he quizzed.
"Jeez Louise! I knew I'd forgotten something." I responded a little disappointed, thinking I had thought of everything.
"No worries, I always bring several poles. You can borrow one of mine since you offered me shelter. Turn about is only fair play after all. The important thing is that we all pull together and have a great time outside." Brant jokingly thumped me on the shoulder with his fist. He actually caused me to shuffle a step to the left to maintain my balance. He was still as strong as an ox, and twice as big.
We made some small talk on the way up there and joked about Nick and Joe missing out even if it was only for a day. Once we hiked in and found our campsite we set to our old routines. Brant went off to try and catch some fish while I tried to pitch a tent. Apparently I was out of practice and couldn't figure out this new two man tent with it's strange configuration of how the poles were supposed to go.
When Brant returned with half a dozen trout he found me frustrated and swearing on the mess I had made of it. He put his big hand on my shoulder and told me not o stress, he would set up camp and I should gather some firewood and get to cleaning and cooking the fish. That was something I felt more comfortable doing and got a good meal going while he sorted out the tent and had it set up in no time.
"Hope you're hungry?" I asked. "I've added a few things I brought up in my supplies just in case we didn't catch anything. Should of known better with you around. You always were quite the fisherman."
"Yeah, I'm sure whatever you've made is good. You were always a great cook." He began to dig into his food. "I see that hasn't changed."
"You've changed though. I don't want to push but the fellas told me you spent a stretch on the inside. Care to enlighten me further or is it still a sore subject?" I prodded.
"Nah. It was nothing. Misunderstanding is all, and well, it's behind me now. I did my time and would rather leave it in the past and focus on the future. Speaking of which we should of stopped at a strip joint somewhere on the way up here. The one thing you miss the most on the inside isn't your freedom, it's access to some grade A pussy."
"Well, at least that hasn't changed about you. Once we get back you'll probably get back into the swing of things again. With the women I mean."
"That's what I mean. You know how big my appetite in that area is, I don't know if I can wait until we get back." He made a half-hearted attempt at laughter. "Here you want some of this?" He tried to change the subject by offering me some of the chocolate bar he had retrieved from his pocket.
"A little desert out here in the wild." I joked as I took a piece and chewed on it. It was really good.
Brant noticed my surprise, "Yeah, I know right. I can only get them in France. Probably going to have to go back there to live. That or have someone ship them over to me."
I know he was trying to distract me from the direction of the conversation a moment ago but I was curious. I had never known anyone who had did actual time before and wanted to know how much of it was like the way it is in movies. Life in prison that is. I didn't stop to think if it would upset him or anything.
"Did you... you know. Do anything with anyone on the inside to get by. That is, something sexual, just until you got out of course. Or is that stuff we see in the movies all a load of crap?" I pried, although I'm not sure why.
"Yeah, you do what you have to in the moment just to get by. You survive until you get out and can enjoy life again." He answered while looking off in the distance, musing over some stray thoughts.
"Well, that's over with and you did survive. Now you're back among friends and once this trip is over you can pick up where you left off here with the ladies." I tried to keep him form getting all melancholy.
