Yuon - She Never New the Real Me

My alternate version of the original story,

Yukon

, is the first story I wrote. Between other stories I was writing, I wrote four different versions that I finished, and later I deleted three of them. The only one I liked enough to publish was this version. GeorgeAnderson wrote a sequel about the events after Helen and her husband, a man with no name, returned home. I chose to write about a husband who was a lot more observant than he was given credit for, even if he wasn't a physical specimen. It never occurred to Helen that he could figure out her betrayal so quickly and turn his back on her. At the end of the story, I just wanted closure. I emailed ukresearcher for permission to publish it a month ago but haven't received a reply.

*******

I met Helen when she was twenty-two, and I was twenty-four. We became a couple very quickly and soon moved in together, sharing a flat for a year before deciding to get married. With both of us at the start of new careers, money was tight when we married, so Helen suggested delaying our honeymoon for five years.

"We can't afford much now, but we should both be on good salaries in five years," she said and then added something I wanted to hear, "That's also when I want to start a family, so my idea is that we spend the next five years working hard and having lots of fun, but then we can have the honeymoon of a lifetime before settling down to family life. I don't mean just a two-week trip; I'm thinking more like a month or six weeks."

I couldn't fault the idea, so that is what we agreed to do.

We are complete opposites in most things. Helen is outgoing, positive, and a doer with a quick temper when she perceives she has been offended. I am more reticent and tentative, an observer who sees everything, says nothing, and is easy to please but hard to pick a fight with.

However, I do not forgive when someone pushes me past my limits and angers me. This is a side of me that Helen has never seen.

As different as our personalities are, we meshed perfectly when we were together as a married couple, and the sex was good, at least I thought it was.

Helen played field hockey and basketball in school at the University of Michigan and has been into physical pursuits all her life. At Michigan State, my idea of sports is playing bridge, poker, and chess for money. Although very attractive, she lacks the sylph-like form or straight body type that fashion models require but would have been in much demand as a photographic model had she chosen that route.

Physically she is a woman, not a girl, and I love that fact. I adore her full breasts, narrow waist, and round buttocks. However, my body has a more wiry build, and at 5' 11", I am three inches taller than Helen, and while weighing in at 170 pounds, I am only 40 pounds heavier than her.

I prefer sedentary hobbies but don't consider myself unfit, getting a tremendous amount of pleasure keeping up with my wife on long hikes in national parks and over the sandhills of Michigan.

Over the next five years, I made excellent progress in Saginaw, working for a large reinsurance firm. Helen made quite a name for herself selling houses in Midland, where we lived, and her office was located. I received an annual bonus each year with big jumps in the amounts over the five years we had been married. The first bonus I received I wanted to save, but Helen wanted to enjoy spending it. With her forceful personality, she usually got her way, and she did this time.

When I received my second bonus, I opened a personal account at another bank and saved that bonus check and the next three. The money was for the down payment to buy a house after we had our first child.

When we reached our third anniversary, good luck contributed to her selling three substantial properties within six months. The resulting bonuses were the equivalent of twelve months' extra salary. We could have shortened the five-year plan to three years, but Helen decided to stick to the program, spending the extra cash upgrading our cars, buying new clothes, and eating out. I resolved then to stay quiet about my separate account in a different bank.

The time finally came for us to have our much-delayed honeymoon but, bearing in mind our differing outlooks, Helen suggested that instead of discussing, we should separately write down a description of our ideal holiday. Mine was easy, a six-week tour of all the major cities of Europe. I proposed starting with London, moving on to Paris, taking in Rome followed by Athens, heading to Istanbul, and finishing up in Lisbon.

Before showing her preference, Helen prepared me with a bit of background. "When I was young, my dad was always taking me camping, and I loved it. The best of the lot, though, was when we spent two weeks in a crofter's cottage way up in the wilds of Scotland. It was very primitive with oil lamps and water from a pump, but it was fantastic. The weather was splendid, and I believe it was the most marvelous two weeks of my life, and I've wanted to do it again ever since. Well, for our honeymoon, I'd like to go one better and have a full month in the Canadian wilderness, actually within the Arctic Circle."

We decided to choose by using the supposedly foolproof variation of the coin toss, with a coin that Helen supplied. She tossed the coin in the air and called heads, and when it finally lay flat on the floor, I looked down and could see a face. I was not too upset about losing, but when I reached for the coin, Helen snatched it up and put it in her pocket.

That was when I suspected she cheated, but I didn't want to make waves since once we arrived at our destination, there would be no more travel, and we would have the entire month to enjoy an abundance of adventurous sex. So the thought of trying new things sexually and the prospect of being alone with Helen was not something that made me depressed. On the contrary, it promised to be a memorable month, and on that basis, we decided that Helen should leave her birth control pills behind when we went. Helen took care of all the arrangements, although I never saw her doing anything on the computer or by phone.

Our month fell at the end of the Arctic summer, and we planned to take three days getting there and eleven days on the return journey riding a train on the Trans-Canadian Railroad. We flew from Detroit to Edmonton and spent two days sightseeing before boarding a regional plane that flew us to Fort McPherson, Northwest Territories. We stayed overnight at the Peel River Inn, and the next morning we walked toward a small port on the Peel River, where a boat was waiting to take us to our honeymoon retreat. The six-hour water voyage would carry us over the border into the Yukon Territory, onto a side branch from the river to our cabin.

We walked hand in hand along the pier to where forklifts had just deposited our stuff; two large crates filled with supplies for the month, together with a travel trunk and a holdall containing our personal effects. As we approached, the Captain stepped off the boat to greet us. He was a cheery older man with a ruddy complexion and a full white beard that made him look like a combination of Captain Ahab and St. Nicholas.

"Bonjour, I am Captain Maurice Richard. Welcome to my humble riverboat." After a few minutes of chatting, we saw a squat-looking figure heading towards us with an almost waddling gait.

As he drew closer, I was surprised to see that this new male was slightly taller than myself and that it was his incredible breadth of the body that gave the foreshortened impression. His face was decidedly ugly, carrying many scars together with a nose that appeared to have been broken multiple times. His hideous appearance was finished off with small piggy eyes. "This is my crew, Pierre," the Captain said, loudly as a way of introduction, "He doesn't say much, but he's a one-man workforce. He can hump almost anything I ask him to." I didn't pick up that double entendre.

I smiled and said, "Hello," half extending my hand, but all I got in return was a surly nod as he moved past.

The man was powerful and made quick work loading all of our gear onto the boat deck. As he efficiently used a pulley to hoist the cargo on board, single-handedly, Helen stood and stared admiringly until I cleared my throat. As we left the docks with the Captain steering the boat, I escorted Helen below deck to a cabin where she could lie down and rest. The hideous-looking crewman knocked on the door and said the Captain wanted to speak to me.

"Get some rest, Helen, and I'll be back after I see what the captain needs."

Walking onto the bridge, I asked the Captain what he needed to speak to me about.

"I wanted to get to know little about you and your wife, curiosity mostly, and to see if you have any questions."

I had no questions, and he asked me what I did for a living, what Helen did for a living, and what our plans for the future were. I talked nonstop, spilling all of our family history and details of our work. I wrapped it up and finished when I realized I'd been up on the bridge for four hours.

The last thing I said was, "I hope when this trip is over, Helen will be pregnant, and we can get on with our happy lives."

"Ah, mon amie, sometimes we only get half of what we want."

That was a strange response, and I questioned him about it, "What did you mean by that statement?"

"Nothing, please forgive me. I'm just an old man running my mouth without thinking."

I turned, and as I started down the stairs to the cabin passageway, the ship's horn blew. I thought I saw Pierre turning the corner at the end of the passageway as I stepped off the stairs, but I probably imagined it. As I entered the cabin, there was a strange odor in the air that I couldn't place. Helen was on her side with the blanket pulled up to her neck, and her cheeks looked flushed.

"Wake up, honey, we're almost there."

"In a minute. Why don't you go take some pictures of the forest while I freshen up?"

A strange request since all I could see on both sides of the boat were tall trees, not very photogenic, but I shrugged my shoulders and went back up on deck.

I could see the cabin up ahead with a small jetty on the left side of the boat. The narrowing river widened into a pond about 50 yards in diameter, with tall vertical rock formations of granite on the right rising 50 feet or more.

As Pierre tied the boat to the small jetty, I foresaw a problem with our luggage, for there was no helpful pulley to assist. However, Pierre took the unloading in stride. Crouching with his back against a packing case, he reached back to grab the straps, then leaned forward and stood with the two and a half hundredweight crate balanced on his broad back. He then slowly carried it a hundred feet or more up to the cabin. This trip was repeated three more times with the second packing case, holdall, and the trunk, making an imposing display of pure strength.

We said our goodbyes to the Captain, and we walked behind Pierre on his last trip to the cabin. I expected him to go straight back to the ship, but instead, he sat down in front of a radio standing on a shelf sticking out of the wall. Taking a screwdriver from a pocket, he removed the outer case and then twisted the dials until receiving a signal, upon which he reported that we had been delivered to the cabin. Having memorized the sequence, leaving him to reassemble the radio, I pulled a beer from the first packing case for Pierre as a small reward for his efforts. He took it and drank it without remark, then stood and headed for the door, totally ignoring me but throwing a funny kind of smile at my wife.

We watched the boat until it disappeared in the distance and then did some sorting out, but while still only half unpacked, I crept up behind my darling wife, pressed my groin against her rounded buttocks, and, grabbing a ripe breast in each hand, rubbed my face amorously into her neck. Helen responded to me but warned, "Don't get your hopes up, lover, my period just started. I had hoped it would be a day or so earlier."

"Shit," I swore, stepping back, "A fine bloody start to a honeymoon."

Helen laughed. "Don't be such a male chauvinist pig. We can still mess about. Anyway, it's only three days, and then I'm all yours for a whole month. It's going to be a honeymoon to remember because you have no idea what a sexy lascivious trollop you married."

With my dreams crushed for the first few days, I inspected our surroundings. The cabin was basic but built of solid log construction. The main room contained a large, heavy table with a bench down each side, a big armchair, and a couch, which had seen better days. Near the cabin's center was a large iron potbellied stove, obviously used for cooking and heat. Under a window in the sidewall was a stone sink but, of course, no running water. Several cabinets were hung on the wall next to the sink, containing dishes and cups. On the back wall, there was a large cabinet that was reasonably deep with five shelves. I guessed that this was for storing our food supplies that didn't need refrigeration. On one of his return trips to the boat, Pierre had placed the sealed-up cooler, with meats and eggs, in a depression underwater where the arctic waters became our refrigerator. On the next trip, he submerged another cooler filled with beer bottles a little farther out.

I put everything from the food crates on the shelves and broke down the wooden boxes for firewood. I started a fire in the stove and then continued my investigation.

The bedroom contained a massive bed and a wardrobe with drawers, that covered one wall and a horizontal window high in the wall over the bed. On the other side of the living room was a very narrow windowless room probably intended for storage but now containing two full-size beds along the outer wall.

Going back outside, I walked around the cabin and saw an iron hand pump for water outside the window over the sink. Some yards farther back, an outhouse stood in front of a clump of bushes and trees. I slept in the bedroom with Helen that night, but she turned and pushed me away every time I rolled over. So whatever sleep I got was not very restful.

Helen was not feeling energetic for the first three days, so we didn't even mess about. So I went out by myself, exploring the immediate area. To the right of the pond, beginning just past the jetty, a narrow path headed into the forest. A rock ridge rose ten-foot-high off to the right and ran parallel to the trail, 50 yards away. I walked down the path, a mixture of gravel and leaves, for an hour, cataloguing the types of trees and brush I saw into a file on my brain. Finally, when the trail changed to smooth granite, I turned back because I'd brought nothing with me to go for a long walk.

I attempted telling Helen about my discoveries today, but she waved me off and crawled back into bed. Not wanting to repeat the previous night, I tried sleeping on the couch, but there was a strange odor seeping from the cushions, a smell I previously had been exposed to but couldn't remember where.

Upon awakening on the second day, I decided to operate the radio transmitter to report that we were settled in and safe. I could see no reason for removing the outer case, so I tried just turning buttons without success. So I partially dismantled the equipment the way Pierre, the guy from the boat, had done, but the damn thing still would not work despite repeating his sequence of actions exactly. However, I did not envisage using the radio, so I was not unduly concerned.

I decided to go for a long hike. I packed a lunch and brought two canteens of water, and carried everything in a backpack along with a warm coat and rain gear.

After telling Helen where I was going, I walked along the trail, entering the woods, and had walked well past the change in the trail's makeup when the rock ridge gradually rose into a solid fifty high ridge to my right. Continuing my walk into the forest on the smooth path, I came upon a foot wide, gray line of rock on the ground, snaking its way through the woods toward the ridge. Walking along this narrow path, it zigzagged to where a slab of rock had broken off from the top, sliding down and partially blocking the entrance to a cave. Unfortunately, I didn't have a flashlight in my backpack, so I decided to come back tomorrow to inspect my find.

Helen was still crabby the next day, so I packed a flashlight along with lunch and water, hiked back up the trail, and reached the cave entrance after a brisk two-hour walk. Turning on the flashlight, I slid inside the narrow opening, but I fit through it easily. It opened up into an irregular thirty by thirty-foot room with an eight-foot ceiling. The floor was granite, mostly smooth, but sections were covered with sand, and at the end of the room, there was a four-foot by five-foot area two feet lower than the rest of the cave. I looked up and could see some light shining through. This area would be an excellent place for a fire. Fortunately, I didn't see any sign of animals or spiders living in the cave, so it was now my secret hiding place. I wonder what Helen would think about it when I showed it to her?

Before we went to sleep at the end of the third day, and I did return to her bed, Helen whispered in my ear that she would be ready for some hanky-panky by tomorrow night. I slept well with happy dreams that night.

On the afternoon of the fourth day, while my wife was in the cabin cleaning up after lunch, I was standing on the beach, skimming pebbles at the surf, when a speck far out on the water caught my eye. Curious, I started to watch it, wishing my binoculars were in hand. As it drew closer, I could see that it was a kayak, and it was moving purposefully in my direction. However, it was not until the last few paddle strokes that I recognized the kayak occupant as the boat captain's uncommunicative assistant, Pierre, the guy who was the last to work the radio.

Pierre ran his craft onto the narrow beach and climbed out, pulling it clear of the water. He took a pack and rifle out of the kayak and set them on the ground before beckoning me to assist with the kayak. Together we lifted it, but as soon as the kayak was off the ground, he flipped it up and strode up the beach with it balanced on his broad shoulders. Then when he was well clear of the water, Pierre carefully put it down in the lee of a sand ridge and turned back to pick up his pack and rifle. At that point, I said, "I'm glad you're here; the radio doesn't work."

He shrugged his shoulders. "Sorry, can't help you, I can work the things, but I can't fix them. It's probably a valve. There should be spares, but I don't know where ."

"You work for the company; isn't that your responsibility?"

"Not anymore. I quit Saturday. I'm going trapping like I do every fall and winter. I was heading past this place, and I think to myself, 'they seem like nice couple; they will let me stay for the night.' So I can stay, 'oui'?"

It put me on the spot. I did not particularly like the guy, but more importantly, I didn't welcome having a third party in the cabin to inhibit my anticipated night of passion.

On the other hand, having been introduced by the Captain, the guy seemed bona fide, and I had heard that hospitality was a bit of a tradition in northern latitudes. "We can certainly offer you a meal, and there are two empty bunk beds in the other room," I said grudgingly.

After eating dinner, which Pierre helped prepare, we settled down for the evening but soon found that the stranger's presence restricted our activities, even talking to each other. Pierre made no attempt at conversation and returned only monosyllabic replies when either of us asked him anything. He just sat in the chair, doing nothing, but his eyes were never still, and I suspected him of mentally undressing my wife. Finally, after a couple of hours of this, Helen stood up, saying she was going to turn in even though it was still early.