On Highway 17

He hesitated. He waited. But the Dead Horse River paid no attention and provided no clues, merely seething and frothing as before. The forest seemed to nudge him from behind.

"Are you afraid, Cob Augo?" Winnie asked from the opposite side of the world. Seated, she'd placed her bare feet on the warm Canadian Shield, spread her legs, and hugged her knees. A pair of crimson panties peeked out from under her dress. "If you believe in fate, tempt it."

Cob took the guitar from his back and grasped it with both hands for comfort as much as balance. The air about him spun. He took the first step. He felt the first, cold, volume of water seep through his shoes, soak through his socks and surround the skin of his feet. It wasn't an unpleasant sensation. The sensation muted his fear. He gained in confidence. He walked forward, over the water, step-after-step, one rock to the next, toward Winnie's spread legs, as around him the river spluttered and splashed, spraying his hands. He raised the guitar. He held it over his head. The water rose past his shoes. The path of rocks had been carefully laid. The rocks were slippery. He was half-way there, Winnie was half-way closer, when, without warning, the Earth rotated—

Directionless submersion.

The water rising noisily past his head.

Winnie dissolved.

The river flowing down his throat and into his lungs.

Sound flickering colours.

Hushed words beat against the surface of his head like the wings of so many terrified seagulls: "Stand up! Stop moving."

The gulls were right. His legs were bent. When he straightened them he grew and the volume returned to his ears and underfoot it was solid. His clothes drooped heavy with wet. He spat out cold water and focussed his eyes, which, through the incoming waves, saw the blinding sun. He squinted. A hand brushed against his arm and grabbed his collar. His own hands were still raised. He was still holding the guitar above the surface of the river. As long as he saved the guitar—that was most important. Winnie's nose bumped into his chin. The nose felt warm, elastic. Her fist pulled him by the shirt, toward the shore. Although there was still water in one of his ears, the other heard well enough: "It's only up to your shoulders. Stand. You'll be fine. You fell off the path. Did you bang your head?"

He let himself be pulled out of the river without answering, put down the guitar, and collapsed onto the hard, hot shore.

Water escaped from his clothes.

Hair stuck to his face.

Winnie spread her palm on his shirt over his solar plexus and pushed gently. "I'm sorry," she said.

His stomach rose and fell, and he felt more ashamed with each successive breath. He didn't want to look her in the face. He couldn't. But her touch was comforting and he didn't want it to end, so he let his vision meander between her neck and the reddened knees supporting her body kneeling beside him. She was as wet as he was, his flannel shirt as soaked as her dress, which clung to—exposing—the feminine shapes beneath.

"It's not your fault," he said. "I slipped."

Her fingers dug into and tickled him. "I meant I'm sorry I lied about the horse and the river."

He heard her smile without seeing and remembered the way her twitching lips always betrayed her. He wanted those lips. He wanted to see her whole body with his hands until his cheeks burned red.

She said, "You're not dying, you know. You're just a little watery, like an undercooked jam. Don't be so silently dramatic. More time on the burner is what you need."

Her tickling hand tip-toed lower.

And pulled the ends of his shirt from under his belt.

Cob propped himself up on an elbow and placed his own hand on Winnie's thigh, then started it upward, below the tightfitting cotton. The motion was anything but smooth; his damp skin sandpapered over hers, his fingerprints grazed and teased her pores. The stickiness of the dress felt like a tapestry of slugs sliding over his knuckles.

She leaned over him, so face-to-face he couldn't look away, and kissed his lips. The kiss was brief: she pulled back quicker than he could push forward. "The black bears and the wolves," she whispered, and kissed him again as briefly, "are watching. Notorious"—This time, she let her tongue enter his mouth, before slowly, hissing, extracting it.—"peeping toms and perverts."

She pressed a hand to each of his smooth cheeks.

"I can taste the river on your tongue. That's what it's really called. The Tongue River. Do you want to know why?"

He purred.

"It's because—"

And he lunged at her so hard she almost fell backward and his teeth almost clattered into hers and his tongue penetrated and lapped up the saliva inside her mouth.

Her arms fell to her sides. His rose to grab her shoulders.

Which he used to lay her on the rocks.

"Cob Augo of Boston, I am older than you," she said as he caught his breath, looming over her. "I am married. I am a lesbian. I am the Chief's daughter. You have fallen into the river. You are dead. You are dreaming. I am a fish, and you cannot catch me."

He unbuttoned his flannel shirt and tossed it aside, leaving his upper body covered only by a nearly transparent white t-shirt. She hiked up her slightly-less transparent dress and wrapped her legs around his waist until her crimson panties were touching his pants. Material rubbed against foreign material, which rubbed against white and brown and delicate skin.

As Cob kissed her over and over, there were no black bears or honest mechanics, no Tasty Totems or Khrushchev-Kennedys, no fall-out shelters in the event of nuclear war. There were only: they, their moving bodies and their fluids; the wide, cracked slabs of rock beneath them, the stones scattered about; and the river—but even that was not wholly there, for, now, the river was just a sound, a background hum over which they could hear themselves suppress their moaning and their gasps.

Cob spread his arms, each of which branched out into five stiff and trembling fingers. The tips of those on the left were calloused and thick-skinned from too many years of pressing strings. He placed that hand under Winnie's head to cushion the back of her skull as it bobbed against the rocks. The hair into which his fingers dug was dense and moist. The other hand, the gentler one, he turned, knuckles up, and placed on the ground to keep himself from falling. He continued kissing her; she hadn't stopped kissing him. Under that second hand, fitted perfectly into his palm, he felt a large, polished stone.

He pulled his face, his lips, away from hers as her front teeth seized at his unexpectedly fleeing tongue and she tightened her legs' grip around his waist.

He wanted more. He was feeling the joy again. He wanted to kiss her neck and her chest and the insides of her thighs, where the crimson panties formed a visible, unwanted and enemy barrier. To break through, to see her pussy: that's what he most desired. His cock thickened with blood. What peculiar shades of brown was it, how pink and purple were its insides, how was it groomed? "Take off your panties," he said.

Winnie let her legs unclamp, straighten. She reached down with her hands and, scooting backward, half-pulled, half-wiggled out of her panties until they were past her ankles—from where Cob took them, crushed them in a fist and threw them, eyes dripping at the sight of Winnie's black hair, into the river. The river didn't so much as a skip a hum. Its waters ran roughly. A gust of wind rattled the branches of the shoreline trees. Winnie exhaled.

"You are older than I am," Cob said. "You are married. You are a lesbian. You are the Chief's daughter. I have fallen into the river, but I am alive. I am not dreaming. You are not a fish, and I have caught you."

He raised himself onto his knees and pulled Winnie by the legs toward him. "No orgasms," she breathed. Cob flipped the bottom part of her dress onto her stomach and breasts, exposing her pussy and all the tummy above. It was good to expose her. But the wind today was mischievous: jealous, immature wind! It puffed and Winnie's dress ballooned, then the wind huffed, and the dress returned to its rightful place, all the way down to her knees. Cob growled, grabbed the material and, again, flipped it onto Winnie's stomach. This was one battle he would not lose. Winnie's lips twitched. Her skin learned the texture of faint goose bumps. She smiled. Cob took the stone he'd felt under his right hand and placed it on the folded material between Winnie's breasts—paperweight: dress-weight. They both laughed. The stone felt heavy and warm, even through two layers of cotton. Cob leaned in and kissed Winnie's chin; then, he drew a line with his nose, from the stone to her belly button, and finished the game by kissing her moistening pussy.

It was generally the colour of umber, with fine black hair cross-hatching and a slightly raised, slightly swollen labia majora surrounding the cocoa-toned, delicately crumpled labia minora that guarded the entrance to Winnie's pink, peeking interior. Above, a tiny and tough spherical clitoris kept soundless watch.

Cob kissed them all, sometimes one by one, sometimes mouthfuls at a time. He kissed precisely yet greedily while his hands massaged the body to which the pussy belonged: the moving body, the bucking hips, the leg muscles pulling, the abdomen pushing, the pair of unseen lungs filling with the freshest, most unspoiled, air and the breasts, hugged by the wet dress, responding to both pleasure and gravity. He cupped and squeezed until Winnie squirmed and forced her lower body at his face. He kissed. He kissed more and more quickly until he couldn't keep up and he was forgetting to breath and—slick—their bodies slid out of rhythm and his nose, still blushing from its long trip from chest to pubic hair, penetrated Winnie's vagina.

The sensation wasn't unpleasant. It was just completely unexpected. Cob pulled his face away immediately. Winnie's hips bucked several more times before realizing they were brushing against air. She opened her eyes. Where, they seemed to ask, did you go? Cob's nose, a good two thirds of it, felt colder than the rest of his stunned face as he stared at hers. He didn't know what to say, what to do. But his nose must have shone in the intense sunlight because before he could decide to do anything, the edges of Winnie's lips twitched.

"Don't," Cob said, his voice slurring the words to get them out quickly enough, "laugh."

Winnie bit her lower lip. She was a good girl, an obedient girl. She wouldn't laugh. She didn't even crack a smile. The stone on her chest merely rose and, lowering her head back onto the rocks, squinting at the sky, "You fucked me with your nose," she murmured.

Cob wiped Winnie's juices off his face. His nose felt instantly warmer. He tried to appear indifferent, to bluff, but no woman had ever had his nose inside her before, and he was genuinely irritated by the idea—though he couldn't explain why—which irritated him even more, and now Winnie's shoulders and belly had started to jiggle and she had buried her face in her hands and was rocking back and forth like a child with an incurable case of the sillies.

"Don't laugh!"

He said it sternly, thinking: it was impossible to imagine himself singing serious songs to serious people in serious coffee houses having experienced something like this. Some events, like knee injuries for running backs or infidelity for presidential candidates, just could not be overcome. He tried imagining Woody Guthrie's bony nose in some woman's cootch. It was undoable. That crop of wild hair and—

He started jiggling, too. "Stop it and be serious," he warned, his voice joyfully staccato. "Or I'll do it again, I swear."

"I dare you!"

He crawled onto her and they were both laughing. He was trying to wipe his nose against her face, which she was still covering with her hands, with which she was—at the same time—attempting to shield herself and swat him playfully away.

To counter, he fell on top of her like a sack of sudden potatoes. The impact knocked some of the wind out of her. His chest flattened her breasts. But she kept laughing: "I dare you. I dare you."

Only their wet clothes and the warm stone was between them. It poked at his sternum and the more he laughed the more it poked. And the more she laughed, the more he laughed; and she was laughing more and more, until he didn't know whether to give in to the laughter, too, or sit up and rub his aching bone. Finally, he did neither. Finally, he moved his body down until his chin was in her belly button, and tickled her with it. She kicked her feet in pleasure. He grabbed and held down her legs. She was biting her lower lip again, her eyes were shut. Further down he went: chin flicking her clit, catching on the skin of her pussy; chin stopping; nose hovering a quarter of an inch away, and he blowing through it, the unexpected air sending Winnie into another fit of giggles. His arms barely managed to contain her wild, imprisoned legs.

"Don't blow your nose at me. Fuck me with it," she said. "Pinocchio," she said. "Liar, liar," she said. And relaxed her body in the most comfortable nose-fucking position she could assume, laughter still flitting inside her stomach like butterflies. Cob couldn't believe what he was seeing. Such a beautiful pussy but such laziness—expecting him to do all the work, waiting for his nose to enter her and do what: breathe, squish around? All while she laughed and enjoyed herself at his expense? It was demeaning, a blow against his manhood. Cob Augo was not a kept boy. He was not a toy. He was a nose-fucker once and by accident. To be the same twice, and by a woman's choice...

He lifted the stone gently from her dress.

If she wanted something put in her, he'd give her something. Strange for stranger, unexpected for more-unexpected: a substitution. He chuckled at his own ingenuity. But somewhere deeper and more honest, he marvelled at how playful she was making him feel, at how little he knew about her, how little time they'd spent together, yet how at-ease they were together.

Her hips throbbed, inviting company. Her empty pussy called for an occupier.

He let the stone travel from finger to finger as he imagined reaction after reaction, shock followed by humiliation followed by humility, and he would be the one laughing, but then he would also be the one to kiss her and tell her that she was the most wonderful woman he'd ever known and she would confess that she'd never had a stone in her before and she would say it felt odd but enjoyable and he would feel special for being her first. He even invented the corny phrase he would use. "Am I the first man you've ever been stoned with?"

"What," Winnie moaned.

He hadn't meant to say it out loud. He positioned the stone at the entrance to her pussy. A few hairs scratched its stony surface. Water, the river's perhaps, had polished it to near-perfection. His hand started to shake. He was rushing. Why was he so nervous? "Cob?" The edge of the stone disappeared between Winnie's inner labia, her excitement coating it with sticky darkness.

He'd pushed it in with his forefingers. Now he fanned his fingers out on her thighs and belly and put his thumbs against the stone. "What on Earth." His thumbs pushed, the stone slid, Winnie's pussy swallowed it up, but of all the possible reactions that his imagination had devised, none were:

Winnie leapt to her feet!

Her knees barely avoided making violent impact with Cob's head as he bobbed out of the way. Before he could right himself, Winnie was already wearing one boot and lacing up the other. Cob was still wearing his shoes. They were fine shoes, but squelchy. "Winnie," he said without knowing what to say next and ended up saying nothing. He picked up his guitar instead, slung it over his shoulder and took a few squelchy steps toward her, but she turned before he could look at her face, so he followed: squelch, squeak, squish. The sounds, indecent in their suction, turned him on. He realized he had an erection. The wet shoes and the erection made walking difficult. He couldn't keep up. "Winnie," he called after her again. He'd left his flannel shirt behind but there wasn't time to go back for it now: Winnie disappeared into the forest.

Cob disappeared after her, waddling like a duck. The buzz of the river faded. The trees cast their shadows. Catching up to her to say he was sorry was one thing—and, truth be told, he didn't quite know how to do that yet: he'd burn up from shame; but he also needed a guide. He didn't know where he was. He needed to eventually get back to Black Bear Portage. "Slow down, please," he yelled, but, if she heard him, she didn't let it show.

The ground sloped upwards. Cob tripped over a root and covered a dozen feet at a crawl before becoming a biped again. But even bipeds are primitive, he knew, because all he could think about was whether the stone was still in Winnie's pussy. "I'm sorry," his conscience and manners wanted to tell her while his cock was telling him that his neck needed to bend-and-peek and his legs should learn to manoeuvre more efficiently. "You threw her panties into the river," his cock reasoned. "Therefore, she is not wearing panties. Therefore, her pussy is unprotected. Catch her. Position her. Make her yours."

"Winnie!"

But Winnie passed behind a tree and vanished into the shadows.

* * *

Half an hour later, Cob, out-of-breath, conquered the crest of a hill and cast his forlorn and horny gaze upon a clearing. In the middle of the clearing stood a house—small, white. Attached to the front of the house: a porch. On the porch, sitting on the railing, legs dangling, black hair flowing, was Winnie. She wasn't wearing the pink dress anymore.

Cob fell to his knees. "I'm sorry," he pleaded. His lungs wheezed rust. "It was wrong of me."

Winnie slid off the railing and went inside.

Cob hobbled up to the front door. It was locked, but at least his erection was almost gone. He knocked. "Yes," came the voice from inside. "Oh, for the sake of all that's good, open up. I don't have any more stones." Silence was followed by the subtle creaking of floorboards. "Who is it? I'm a woman alone and I've just been chased by a pervert."

Cob sat back on his heels on the porch. He finger-picked a melody from the strings of his guitar.

A minute later, the lock clicked and the door swung open. "Hello, stranger," Winnie said. "You play beautifully." Her lips twitched, before opening and smiling at the same time, and she added, "For such a pervert."

Cob felt relief: immense and sudden relief. He wouldn't die in the wild after all. Mostly, though, he just wanted to see Winnie again. He took a step toward the door—but found the way barred unexpectedly by a slender brown arm.

"Excuse me," Winnie said, "but you are soaking wet and I will not have you dripping water all over my house." Cob blinked—three times. "What I mean is, take off your clothes, musician."

Cob removed both shoes, unbuckled his belt and let his pants drop to the porch floor. He then flipped his t-shirt over his head in such haste that the collar caught on, dishevelling, his hair, and tossed the whole collection into an unfolded pile by the door. Winnie left the shoes, but picked up the rest. She remained barring the doorway.

"May I come in now?" Cob asked.

"Your undergarment is still wet, musician," she said.

He became aware of the burgeoning erection faintly visibly through his wet boxer shorts. The word "undergarment" had stirred up ideas: Winnie was wearing a blue dress of the same cut as her pink one, but her boots were off and feet bare. As she squeezed her unpainted toes, what else is bare, Cob wondered. Had she put on a fresh pair of panties, a dry bra? She hadn't been wearing a bra before. If he squinted, he could almost make out the faint outlines of nipples—