PART NINE – Summer Trip

Chapter 5: Skinny Dipping

We arrived at the North Unit entrance of Theodore Roosevelt National Park at 8:20 and showed the ranger Henry’s Military National Park Pass and were at the Juniper Campground at 8:40, but the campground was full. Noticing a couple who seemed to be getting ready to break camp at a campsite right next to the restrooms, I parked the Tesla across from them while Henry got out and confirmed that they were getting ready to leave. It wasn’t a prime spot, but any spot in the Juniper Campground inside the park was better than the best spot in the CCC campground outside the park. I sent Henry to the campground headquarters and had him put down the money for two nights in that spot, and then we waited.

At about 9:15, the other couple pulled away and we pulled in and set up camp. The spot was right by the restrooms, but we were glad to get it. A couple of other cars that arrived while we were waiting had left empty handed. Had we stopped in Dickinson to charge up the Tesla today as originally planned or spent the morning driving the scenic loop, we’d have been shit out of luck.

Once we were settled in with our campsite secured, we packed up the things we would need for the day’s hiking into our backpacks, sliced four of the bagels and smeared them with peanut butter, changed our clothes into appropriate hiking attire, consisting of shorts, socks and hiking boots, applied fresh sunscreen, and took off in the Tesla. We made several stops along the way on the scenic drive, most notably at the River Bend Overlook and the Spring Overlook, both of which involved short hikes. It was still only morning when we pulled into the Oxbow Overlook parking lot, but already there were several cars parked there. Securing our Tesla, Henry and I set out on the South Achenbach Trail. We stopped at Sperati Point, one of the highest points in the park. The view of the Badlands and the river, hundreds of feet below us, was spectacular, and I must’ve shot hundreds of photos. Unfortunately, the river was where we were headed next.

We had to backtrack a bit, although that wasn’t evident on the park trail map. The walk into the valley was steep and at times involved climbing over rock formations. Fortunately, the trail was reasonably well-marked or we could’ve easily gotten lost. We quickly learned to recognize the piles of rock that served as trail markers.

When we got to the river, Henry suddenly said, “Let’s go skinny dipping!” Stripping out of his clothes, he jumped into the river and exclaimed, “Fuck, it’s cold!”, but he remained in the water. There was a broad sandbank and a much narrower channel than when we’d crossed the river near the Cottonwood Campground, and I could see that skinny dipping made sense. After all, there was no one around that we could see anywhere near us, and our stuff would’ve gotten wet if we’d attempted to wade across. “Get undressed and hand me all our stuff, and I’ll ferry it over to the other side,” Henry suggested.

After packing up his clothes in his backpack but not his hiking boots, which were too big, I got undressed and packed up my clothes too. I handed him first his backpack and then his hiking boots and then did the same with mine, and I joined him in the river. The water was very muddy, and the soft squishy silt at the bottom actually felt good as it sifted through my toes and covered my feet. I just wished the water wasn’t so cold, but then I thought of a way to keep warm. Diving into the water and scooping up a bunch of silt from the bottom, I surfaced and flung it at my boyfriend, which caused him to respond by declaring, “That means war!” Soon he was flinging silt at me, and we ended up in an absolute mud war and were soon completely covered in mud. It was fun!

Suddenly I heard a female voice say, “Skinny dipping! Let’s do it.” In horror, we realized we were no longer alone and I in particular was standing near the riverbank, fully exposed. We turned to see two women who appeared to be in their thirties as well as a boy of about twelve and a boy of about nine, all of whom were soon naked. They quickly joined in our war, and it quickly deteriorated into a free-for-all as thoughts of being naked were quickly forgotten. The twelve-year-old in particular seemed interested in wrestling with both Henry and me, but when he grabbed my dick, I retaliated by grabbing his. It was a stupid move ’cause that was obviously what he wanted. Next, he went after Henry, just as the younger boy grabbed me; I wasn’t about to grab him. Henry had the good sense to ask, “Why’d you do that?”

“’Cause I was hopin’ you’d grab mine like your boyfriend did,” the boy replied.

Henry looked at me pointedly, and I responded by explaining. “At the time it seemed like a good way to retaliate.” Then turning to the boy, I asked, “So, you’re gay, too?”

Laughing, he answered, “I think the only breeder among us is my little brother, but the jury’s still out on him. He does seem to like to play dick tag, though. Of course, our mother’s an ex-breeder. Otherwise, Franky and I wouldn’t be here. If it isn’t obvious, she’s the blonde, and her girlfriend’s the redhead.”

“My name’s J.J., by the way,” I responded, “and my boyfriend is Henry.”

“Hey,” Henry responded as he nodded his head.

“What’s J.J. stand for?” the boy asked.

“It stands for Josiah Joshua,” I replied, “but I doubt even my boyfriend knew that.”

Shaking his head, Henry responded, “I’m a bit embarrassed to admit that I never even thought to ask. Henry’s short for Enrique, for what it’s worth.”

“That I knew. But you still haven’t told us your name,” I addressed the boy.

“Right. My name’s Brian, and I already told you my brother’s name is Franky. Our mom’s name is Lynn, and her girlfriend is Vanessa.”

“Do they know?” I asked.

“About me bein’ gay?” Brian responded, and I nodded my head. “I came out when I was even younger than Franky, so yeah, they know.” Then after a brief pause, he asked, “So, where are you guys from?”

“I grew up in a small town in Southern Indiana,” I answered, “but I ran away when the abuse got to be too much and ended up living with Henry’s family in Omaha. That was a few years ago, but then I got a job with Applazon and spent a couple of years being sent all over the world to install new data servers. Now, I’ve got a job as head of their new artificial-intelligence division in New York, and Henry’s starting school at New York University, so we’re moving there.”

“You’re in charge of A.I. at Applazon?” Brian asked, and I nodded my head. “Next thing you’ll tell me you’ve a Ph.D. in computer science.”

“Actually, I do,” I replied, “and I’m going to be working on a Ph.D. in A.I. and machine learning at Columbia.”

“That’s crazy, man,” Brian responded. “You musta done something big for Applazon to hire you like that.”

“Well, they did have a critical need for data-center technicians during the pandemic, but I invented their next generation of data server… and the one after that,” I replied.

Excitedly, Brian asked, “I read a story online about how Applazon’s using these humongous self-contained, mini data centers that are cooled with liquid nitrogen, did you have something to do with that?”

“That’s my design,” I replied. “I invented it. The next generation after that uses a new room-temperature super­conducting ceramic. It’s true quantum computing on a massive scale.”

“Whoa,” Brian exclaimed. “And for your next trick, you’re gonna invent a supercomputing brain based on a positronic matrix and change your name to Noonian Soong.”

Laughing, I replied, “The leap from artificial intelligence to self-awareness is huge and poorly understood at best. I don’t think we’re going to see a Lieutenant Commander Data anytime soon.”

“So, is your boyfriend a genius, too?” Brian asked.

“He’ll be starting work on his Ph.D. in mathematics,” I explained.

“And you guys are what, seventeen?” Brian asked.

“Actually, I’m nineteen and Henry’s turning sixteen in a couple of months,” I explained. “I’m guessing you’re twelve?”

“On the money,” he replied, “and an incoming freshman at Brooklyn Tech.”

“So, you’re a fellow New Yorker,” I exclaimed.

“You’re getting ahead of yourself,” he replied. “You can’t call yourself a New Yorker until you say ‘fuhgeddaboutit’.” We both laughed in response to that. “So have you guys got a place yet?”

“Yeah,” I replied. “We bought an apartment in a rehabilitated Art Deco building in Chelsea.”

“The Walker building?” he asked, and I nodded my head. “You gotta fuckin’ be kidding me.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Our apartment’s on the sixth floor,” he answered. “We’re neighbors.”

“Really!” Henry chimed in for the first time. “We’re on the fifteenth floor.”

“Did you guys buy that huge two-level place with the terrace?” Brian asked.

“Yeah, we did,” Henry answered. “It’s a bit big for our needs, but we hope to adopt kids eventually, and we fell in love with the layout and the views.”

“Who can blame you?” Brian responded. “You can adopt me if you want. I love that view.”

“You’re more than welcome to visit,” I suggested. “You can bring a friend if you want.”

“Believe me, when I get my first boyfriend, I will,” Brian responded. “Trouble is, it’ll probably be someone I meet at school, and Brooklyn Tech’s ginormous, so he could be from Staten Island, for all I know.”

“Brian, come on,” his mother called out. “We need to get going if we’re going to get back to the campground before dark.”

“Shit, I gotta go, but we’ll get together for sure when we get back to New York,” Brian said.

“You guys staying in Juniper Campground?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he replied. “We’re doin’ the Achenbach Trail, all twenty-something miles of it. Call us crazy.”

“You headed to Oxbow Overlook from here?” Henry asked, and Brian nodded. “So, you’re goin’ around the loop in a clockwise direction. You’re makin’ decent time. J.J. and I started out in the South Unit this morning. Fortunately, we’d already stopped in Dickinson earlier in the week to recharge the car, thanks to the rain, so we were able to hightail it here this morning. As it was, we got the last spot in Juniper, so there was a silver lining to all that rain.”

“You got an electric?” Franky asked excitedly. I hadn’t even realized he was listening in on the conversation.

“A 2020 Tesla Model 3,” I answered. “The extended range, all-wheel drive performance model.”

“You get it in red?” Franky asked.

“With the white leather interior,” I answered.

“Oh man, that car comes with sport wheels, too, doesn’t it?” he asked, and I nodded. “It does zero to sixty in something like three seconds, has a range of about 300 miles, and it’s fully loaded. I get an orgasm thinking about that car.”

“Franky, where did you even learn an expression like that?” Brian asked.

“I learned it from you, brother,” he replied.

“You don’t even know what an orgasm is,” Brian challenged.

“Sure, I do,” Franky countered. “I jerk off. You showed me how. Just because I don’t squirt yet, doesn’t mean I don’t get orgasms. Jeez.”

“What is it with guys and cars anyway?” Brian asked of no one in particular, “and why would anyone care? What makes a Tesla any more special than a Chevy Bolt?”

“Are you kidding?” Franky countered. “Comparing a Tesla to a Bolt is like comparing Five Guys to Bugger King or Crap Donald’s.”

“The difference is that Five Guys is overpriced,” I countered. “Steak ‘n Shake is way better and less expensive, too.”

“What’s Steak ‘n Shake?” Franky asked.

“It’s a popular burger joint in the Midwest,” I explained. “But they’re not widespread. We don’t even have one in Omaha yet, but they have them in Kansas City, and they were everywhere in Indiana, even in dinky Seymour, near where I grew up.”

“Why did you get a Tesla, J.J.?” Brian asked.

“My boss at the time had one, and I really liked it. It’s affordable luxury and comparably priced to a similar BMW, but most of all, it’s sustainable. I like doing my part to mitigate climate change.”

“Mitigate?” Franky asked.

“It means to compensate for something bad,” Brian explained.

“You look like a kid, J.J.,” Franky commented, “but you sure don’t talk like one.”

“He’s not,” Henry quipped. “He’s really sixty-five and had his brain transplanted into a teenager’s body.”

I responded to Henry with my middle finger, much to Brian’s and Franky’s laughter.

“Come on, boys,” their mother again implored them. Coming up to us, Lynn introduced herself and her girlfriend, and I introduced Henry and me.

“We need to get going, too, although our hike’s not quite as ambitious as yours,” I said. “As I was explaining, we drove up from the South Unit this morning, so we couldn’t get an early start. We parked the car at the Oxbow Overlook, and we’re hiking the South Achenbach Trail today. Tomorrow, we’ll have more time and do a combination of the Buckhorn Trail and the North Achenbach Trail, returning to Oxbow Overlook to pick up the car.”

“That’s actually ingenious,” Vanessa exclaimed.

“It was Henry’s idea, but born of necessity,” I replied.

“Are you guys staying at Juniper Campground?” she asked.

Nodding his head, Brian responded, “They are, but get this. They’re moving to New York, and you know that two-level apartment on the fifteenth floor? They’re the ones who finally bought it.”

“Really!” Lynn exclaimed. “What a small world!”

“Isn’t it, though?” Vanessa agreed.

“But you said that place was overpriced. And you guys are just teenagers,” he added. “What the fuck are a couple of teenage boys doin’ buying a multimillion-dollar apartment?”

“Franky!” Lynn admonished her younger son.

“For one thing, the apartment was maybe two million over market value,” I replied, “but the real deal killer for most folks was that you had to buy it with the furnishings. They had a lot of designer stuff and wanted full value for it. Since we’re starting out with nothing and most of the furniture was in good taste, we considered that acceptable. The only rooms we’re changing are the family room, which we’re converting to a state-of-the-art home theater, and the second-floor media room, which we’re converting to a home theater and gym. We may have overpaid, but we really wanted that apartment, and I could afford it.”

“J.J. invented a radical new data-server design, Mom,” Brian explained for us. “He works for Applazon and made a mint off of it. Henry’s a genius, too. He’s starting work on his Ph.D. in math at NYU.”

“I’m impressed, but we really do need to get going,” Lynn urged. “We’ll have plenty of time to get to know you better when we return to New York.”

“For sure,” I agreed. As they departed to the west, Henry and I departed to the east. We didn’t worry about the ladies seeing us nude ’cause we didn’t have anything they’d be interested in seeing any more than they had anything we were interested in seeing. Rather than don our clothes over wet bodies, Henry and I set up a blanket – this time we remembered to pack a real one – and we got out two of the bagels with peanut butter for each of us. They were delicious. We were stuffed by the time we finished, and we were dry.

The hike resumed with a monstrous climb of over a thousand feet in just two miles, but there was a good reason for putting us through that. The climb took us to the highest point on the trail, at 2687 feet above sea level, and it led to a natural spring, Achenbach Spring. Ironically, it was hilly when we came to the highest point, but it didn’t seem all that high, as by then we’d ascended onto a vast plateau. After that it was one rise after another as the trail climbed ridge after ridge, only to drop back down into a canyon or gully. It was a pretty strenuous hike, but not all that long, and we got into the Juniper Campground in the early evening after another river crossing, leaving us plenty of time to make dinner, shower and make love before going to bed.

Because there was time, Henry decided to make his famous three-alarm chili for dinner. He started by throwing dried kidney beans, black beans and pinto beans into a pot, covered them with water, added salt, brought the water to a boil and then set the beans aside to soak for an hour. Next, he browned a couple pounds of ground turkey in a large pot. After draining the meat, he sliced, diced and added green peppers, red peppers, jalapeños, onions and a minced clove of garlic. Next came tomatoes – lots and lots of diced tomatoes. We didn’t have tomato sauce or even pasta sauce, so we’d have to make do. We did use the rest of our supply of ketchup as well as a little spicy, brown mustard and relish. He brought the pot full of liquid to a low boil and added some cumin, chili powder and an Italian seasoning mix and then covered the pot, leaving it to simmer while we took turns showering so the other could watch over the pot. Finally, Henry drained the beans and added them to the simmering sauce and brought it back to a slow boil, leaving it to simmer while we made love in our tent. Boy, did we make love.

After another hour, with the sun low in the sky and it starting to get dark out, the chili was ready. Henry grilled some garlic bread to go with the chili. I wasn’t sure why Henry had made so much food and wondered if the ground turkey would keep until tomorrow night, but then Lynn, Vanessa, Brian and Franky staggered into camp. Henry had figured out when they would return, and he’d timed it perfectly. We of course asked them if they’d like to join us in eating Henry’s famous three-alarm chili, and, of course, they accepted. We warned everyone that it was called three alarm for a reason, but everyone loved their food spicy – even Franky – and they dug in with gusto. We all finished off the pot, then we shared the oatmeal-chocolate-chip cookies; there were enough for everyone to have two large cookies. We were stuffed when we said our goodbyes and good nights.

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With another long hike ahead of us, we got up at daybreak and, after getting dressed in layers, headed out into a sky aflame in shades of red and gold. Finding a nice spot where we could sit on some rocks overlooking the river below us, we ate our breakfast of white-chocolate-raspberry scones washed down with ice-cold coffee. Today, there’d be no need to cross the river at all, but there’d be more bluffs to climb and then descend, canyons to navigate and stream beds to meander along. We started out eastbound on the Buckhead Trail, which initially paralleled the road at the base of a series of bluffs that towered hundreds of feet above us. We then entered a deep canyon and followed it as it gradually rose to the point that it was possible to ascend to the top of the adjacent bluff. At the top was a broad plateau. By then, all the layers of clothing were packed away in our backpacks, and we’d applied liberal amounts of sunscreen to each other’s bodies.

“Do you feel up to continuing with your story?” Henry asked as we hiked.

Nodding my head, I agreed, “Yeah, I think I’m ready.”

“Why don’t you go back and start with what happened when you got home after trying out your new bike and continue from there? I think the more you repeat the events around the death of Alan Farmer, the less traumatic they’ll seem.”

“Okay,” I agreed, and then I resumed talking in detail about killing Alan Farmer and disposing of the gun and my boxers. As I did so, we skirted a large prairie-dog town, and I shot a ton of photos of the adorable little critters and of the adorable big critter who was hiking with me. On the other side of the trail was a natural spring right in the middle of a broad plateau. But then we descended into another deep canyon, and things got very interesting after we lost sight of the trail and couldn’t find it for the life of us.

The GPS on our phones showed us as being right where we should be, but the trail map wasn’t that detailed. Clearly, we couldn’t get down into the canyon ahead of us from where we were, so we backtracked and followed a gentler, sloping path until, lo and behold, there was a trail marker, nowhere near where we thought it should be. We soon came to the Cedar Canyon Road, Grassy Butte parking lot, crossed the road and continued onto the Caprock Coulee loop trail. I had to stop talking about my kidnapper’s death for a time, as there were a lot of people hiking the trail.

The south branch of the loop closely hugged the north rim of a steep bluff overlooking the Little Missouri River basin. Because the trail was right on the rim, we expected the head of the Achenbach Trail to be obvious, but when we came to the road again and yet another parking lot, we knew that somehow, we’d gone too far. Doubling back, we nearly missed the turnoff yet again as the trail was nothing more than a narrow dirt path that angled off the Caprock Coulee Trail. It was no wonder we’d missed it as it angled back the way we’d come and was virtually invisible from the other direction. It was hidden from view, and there wasn’t even a sign. Even after we found the trail, it seemed to end at a viewpoint with no way down. There was yet another turnoff that we’d missed.

With very few people on the trail, which we seemed to have to ourselves, I resumed telling my story. “After I heard the splash from throwing down the Ziplock with the gun and my shorts, I climbed back out of the cave entrance and made my way back inside the shack. Only then did the cold hit me, and I shivered violently. Grabbing fresh clothing, I got dressed in boxers, long johns, jeans, a hoodie, sneakers and socks. I started to pack up everything I could fit in my large duffel bag and donned my winter coat, when it dawned that it was too easy to recognize me. Even people who didn’t know me at all could recognize me from a school picture circulated by the police, so I decided I needed to alter my appearance. My hair was really long back then, much longer than I wear it now, so I decided to change that drastically and give myself a buzz cut.”

“Was it, like, shoulder length?” Henry asked.

Shaking my head, I replied, “No, more like halfway down my back, but I’d just turned thirteen and I’d worn it that long all my life. I kinda think Alan Farmer liked it long back then. I’ve sometimes thought about growing it long again. What do you think, Babe?”

Pondering it for a moment, Henry replied, “Long hair would be sexy on you but totally out of place on a corporate executive.”

“Corporate executive?” I asked in incredulity.

“What else would you call yourself, J.J.?” Henry asked in return. “You’re the fuckin’ director of a major division at Applazon. It’s only a matter of time until you’re the CEO of an entire group. You might get away with wearing it long, given Applazon’s corporate culture, but it would only emphasize your youth. Like it or not, people in the corporate world mistake youth for inexperience. Medium-length hair makes you look more sophisticated, more intelligent. You shouldn’t hafta keep proving yourself worthy, but long hair would make it harder.”

“Did you say that wearing my hair long would make you harder?” I asked with a devilish smile.

Rather than respond, Henry jumped me and wrestled me to the ground. The trail was level where we were and rolling around, we got ourselves thoroughly dirty. Finally, I had my baby pinned. Rather than hold him there in triumph, though, I leaned down and kissed him deeply. The kiss would’ve likely turned into a full-blown, make-out session had it not been for the sound of approaching laughter coming from further down the trail. By the time the young couple passed us from the other direction, Henry and I were standing and had hand-dusted ourselves off as best we could.

Once we were out of earshot, I continued the story. “Alan Farmer had electric clippers in his bathroom, and that was really the only way I could cut my hair that close, so I went back into his room. In a way it was a mistake ’cause as bad as it was when I first killed him, it was much worse then. He’d emptied his bowels, and between that smell and the smell of flesh that was just starting to rot, it was overpowering. I almost puked right there, but that would have been disastrous, and I managed to calm my stomach down. Even worse, however, was the way he looked with bluish-grey skin. It was the stuff of nightmares. I retrieved the clippers, which I planned to pack in my duffel after I was done and closed his bedroom door behind me.

“I pulled off my shirt and used the clippers to cut my hair as close to the scalp as I could, until there was just a little stubble on my head. I flushed all the hairs down the toilet, checked for stray hairs and flushed again. I knew they could retrieve my hair from the septic tank, but I figured by the time they bothered to exhume the septic tank, I’d be long gone, and my hair would’ve decomposed.”

“If there even was a septic tank,” Henry interjected.

“If the sewage emptied directly into the cave under our house and if the police managed to find it, I would’ve been screwed anyway ’cause they’d have found the gun,” I pointed out.

I continued, “I ditched everything in my wallet except my cash and my Applazon gift cards, and I grabbed the small amount of cash from the hiding place where Dad kept it. I was actually already outside the house and locking the door when it dawned on me. If the police found a dead body in a locked-up house, they’d know it had to be done by someone who had the keys. It would’ve had to have been an inside job. It was then and there that I decided to make it look like he’d been killed in the midst of a break-in so the cops would think I’d been abducted or taken and murdered someplace else, rather than think that I was the killer. I totally trashed my bedroom to make it look like there’d been a struggle.”

“By totally trashed, what do you mean?” Henry asked.

“I yanked my bed covers off and threw them on the floor,” I explained. “I took all the clothes that were hanging in my closet and threw them on top of the bed clothes, hangers and all. I pulled all the drawers out of my chest and dresser and turned them upside down, and then tossed them on top. I pulled all my books out of my bookcases and threw them down every which way, and I threw the lamps down and smashed them. I went back to Da – Alan Farmer’s bedroom and opened the door, but figured his dead body was enough, so I didn’t trash his room. Finally, I exited the house through the front door, left the door ajar and then got on my bike and rode away.”

“Wow,” Henry exclaimed. “I can’t blame you for anything you did. Killing the man who you thought was your father was self-defense and clearly justified. However, in thinking so clearly and covering it all up, you made yourself look guilty as hell. It would’ve been better if you’d have just left the scene as it was and gotten the fuck out of there.”

“Sometimes I can overthink things,” I acknowledged. “It’s just something I do. At least with the shack burning to the ground, the evidence of the coverup was destroyed, too.”

“You’re right,” Henry responded. “I hadn’t thought of that. You said they closed the case?”

“That’s right,” I said as I nodded my head.

“They probably think the gun belonged to the guy who shot him and not to Alan Farmer,” Henry replied, “and any fingerprints on the cartridge were probably destroyed in the fire. We just need to focus on you accepting that you were innocent.”

As we hiked, the incredible disappearing trail seemed to be the theme of the day as the route was etched into the side of steep bluffs along much of the way. There were times when I was certain we were off trail, but so long as we were in the vicinity of the trail based on our phones’ GPS and so long as the route was safe, we relied on our common sense to get us down to the river basin. When we came to a level spot that overlooked the river, we found a place to sit and ate a lunch consisting of bagels with peanut butter and the rest of the oatmeal-chocolate-chip cookies.

Once down at the bottom, the trail became a series of meandering, branching dirt paths that occasionally disappeared altogether. So long as we followed the base of the bluff, we couldn’t get lost, but then we came to the steep ascent up to the Oxbow Overlook parking lot, where our car was waiting for us. Fortunately, we had no difficulty finding the trail to the top.

It was already getting dark by the time we got back to the campsite, so we grilled turkey hot dogs and ate them with grilled onions and spicy mustard. After cleaning up, we spent the evening slowly making love. How I loved this boy! We tried our best not to let our passion get the best of us, but Henry was so fucking sexy with sweat glistening on his skin and a strong musky scent, particularly in his armpits and groin. It drove me crazy. I could only hope our efforts to make love quietly had been successful and that no one had been close enough to hear us on their way to using the nearby restrooms.